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Anti Russian Hysteria Bulletin, 2017

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[May 11, 2019] Report How Fusion GPS and the Obama Administration Weaponized the Trump Dossier by Kristina Wong

Brennan role in weaponizing dossier now became more clear.
Notable quotes:
"... Indeed, Fusion GPS hiring of Nellie Ohr -- the wife of senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr -- also shows that Steele's role in producing the dossier may be exaggerated. Ohr is a Stanford Ph.D. whose expertise is Russia and she appears to be fluent in Russian. She may have conducted interviews or written parts of the dossier. ..."
"... The dossier, however, only has Steele's name on it -- helping to credential the research as an "intelligence product." ..."
"... A Democratic consultant and Ukrainian-American activist named Alexandra Chalupa, told the Clinton campaign about Manafort's work for Yanukovich. "I flagged for the DNC the significance of his hire," Chalupa told CNN in July of this year. ..."
"... Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS in April, shortly after Trump hired Manafort. Manafort's role now allowed Simpson to highlight corruption that he already knew to exist, from his reporting. A line from the dossier states: ..."
"... Steele -- it notes -- had not lived or worked in Russia for nearly 25 years, but his name "at a minimum" would be useful in marketing whatever his firm pulled together. Plus, Steele had a good relationship with the FBI and could "spill secrets" to journalists. ..."
"... it is likely that Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook cited Fusion GPS's work in a July 22 interview after embarrassing leaks of Democratic National Committee emails. He told ABC News's George Stephanopoulos that "some experts are now telling us that this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump." ..."
"... The FBI did launch an investigation into possible collusion, however, known by "only a dozen or so people at the FBI," including then-director James Comey and Peter Strzok, who was chosen to supervise the investigation. ..."
"... She said by August 2016, the CIA had "verified the key finding of the dossier" to the point that it was having "eyes only" top secret meetings with President Obama about it. ..."
"... CIA Director John Brennan had also briefed top lawmakers on Russian efforts to help Trump last summer and had said the CIA had limited legal ability to investigate Russian connections to Trump, prompting Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to write a public letter to the FBI -- which collects domestic intelligence -- about the threat of Russian interference. ..."
"... It appears that Brennan was briefing Reid on the Steele dossier. ..."
"... Brennan apparently sent the dossier to the White House, prompting the "eyes only" meetings. ..."
"... The Post also writes that the "material was so sensitive that CIA Director John O. Brennan kept it out of the president's daily brief, concerned that even that restricted report's distribution was too broad." ..."
"... But as Tablet asks, "if the material was so sensitive that it had to be kept out of the PDB and withheld from the Senate majority leader, why was someone telling The Washington Post about it?" ..."
Dec 24, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

Did the Obama administration launch an investigation into the Trump campaign based solely off of unverified political opposition research? And was that "research" dressed up and given more credibility than it should have? It appears that way based on an investigation of open-source information by Tablet.

The outlet's investigation begins with a June 24, 2017, Facebook post by Mary Jacoby, the wife of Glenn Simpson, the former Wall Street Journal reporter who started Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier.

Jacoby, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who once shared bylines with Simpson, bragged how her husband was not getting the credit he deserved for the dossier.

"It's come to my attention that some people still don't realize what Glenn's role was in exposing Putin's control of Donald Trump," she wrote on Facebook. "Let's be clear. Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn."

Until this day, the dossier is often referred to as the "Steele dossier," named after the former British spy Christopher Steele who is believed to have authored the document.

Steele's background has been used by collusion-believers to argue that the document is credible. But Jacoby's post suggests that Steele might not have played as big of a role in the dossier as he is given credit.

Indeed, Fusion GPS hiring of Nellie Ohr -- the wife of senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr -- also shows that Steele's role in producing the dossier may be exaggerated. Ohr is a Stanford Ph.D. whose expertise is Russia and she appears to be fluent in Russian. She may have conducted interviews or written parts of the dossier.

The dossier, however, only has Steele's name on it -- helping to credential the research as an "intelligence product."

Tablet also took a look at Simpson and Jacoby's work for the WSJ . In April 2007 -- in the lead-up to the 2008 election -- they co-wrote a story about Republican links to Russians.

In that story, titled "How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington," they detail how prominent Republicans helped open doors for "Kremlin-affiliated oligarchs and other friends of Vladimir Putin."

They reported on Viktor Yanukovich, who had paid political fixer Paul Manafort to introduce Yanukovich to powerful Washington, DC, figures. They later reported on May 14, 2008, that Manafort's lobbying firm was escorting Yanukovich around Washington. Yanukovich would later become president of Ukraine in 2010.

Tablet explains how their reporting may have been the origins of the Trump dossier:

So when the Trump campaign named Paul Manafort as its campaign convention manager on March 28, 2016, you can bet that Simpson and Jacoby's eyes lit up. And as it happened, at the exact same time that Trump hired Manafort, Fusion GPS was in negotiations with Perkins Coie, the law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, to see if there was interest in the firm continuing the opposition research on the Trump campaign they had started for the Washington Free Beacon. In addition to whatever sales pitch Simpson might have offered about Manafort, the Clinton campaign had independent reason to believe that research into Manafort's connections might pay some real political dividends: A Democratic consultant and Ukrainian-American activist named Alexandra Chalupa, told the Clinton campaign about Manafort's work for Yanukovich. "I flagged for the DNC the significance of his hire," Chalupa told CNN in July of this year.

Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS in April, shortly after Trump hired Manafort. Manafort's role now allowed Simpson to highlight corruption that he already knew to exist, from his reporting. A line from the dossier states:

Ex-Ukrainian President YANUKOVYCH confides directly to PUTIN that he authorised (sic) kick-back payments to MANAFORT, as alleged in western media Assures Russian President however there is no documentary evidence/trail.

Tablet notes that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would later find corruption by Manafort related to money laundering (before he joined the Trump campaign). It also points out that Tony Podesta -- Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's brother -- worked for Manafort at the time he represented Yanukovich. (The Podesta Group disbanded this year after those connections were made public, and the special counsel is reportedly investigating Podesta too.)

Tablet notes that while Simpson had begun working on the dossier on Trump collusion with Russia, he was also working for a Russian lawyer to undermine an American law called the Magnitsky Act and that Steele may have been hired to disguise that contradiction.

Steele -- it notes -- had not lived or worked in Russia for nearly 25 years, but his name "at a minimum" would be useful in marketing whatever his firm pulled together. Plus, Steele had a good relationship with the FBI and could "spill secrets" to journalists.

Ohr -- Simpson's next hire -- also hadn't lived in Russia for decades and was "not a spy, or even a journalist." "In this world, she was definitely an amateur," Tablet writes.

"Presumably, as a result of all the above, much of the reporting in the dossier is recognizably the kind of patter that locals in closed or semi-closed societies engage in to impress expats -- the kind of thing you hear in a bar, or on the cab ride from the airport to the hotel," it says.

Tablet then goes into the bad shape of U.S. intelligence on Russia -- likely making officials less skeptical of the dossier even though, to date, they have not been able to confirm any of its allegations on collusion.

And Tablet notes that it is likely that Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook cited Fusion GPS's work in a July 22 interview after embarrassing leaks of Democratic National Committee emails. He told ABC News's George Stephanopoulos that "some experts are now telling us that this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump."

At that point, a tech firm had attributed the leaks to Russia but was not able to explain why. The FBI was looking at the leak but had not yet publicly determined political motivation.

"But the DNC and Clinton campaign did have an oppo-research firm under contract that was in the middle of putting together a file that would claim that the Russians were trying to get Trump elected," Tablet notes.

The FBI did launch an investigation into possible collusion, however, known by "only a dozen or so people at the FBI," including then-director James Comey and Peter Strzok, who was chosen to supervise the investigation.

But by late October, they had not yet found any evidence that showed Russia was working to elect Trump. So, ten days before the election, angry Clinton supporters and unnamed intelligence officials spoke to the New York Times in an October 31, 2016, story about what the investigation had found so far.

Jacoby would post that story in her June 24 Facebook post, slamming the FBI and accusing it of "ineptitude," while the CIA "hopped to and immediately worked to verify" the dossier.

She said by August 2016, the CIA had "verified the key finding of the dossier" to the point that it was having "eyes only" top secret meetings with President Obama about it.

Thus, while the document could not be verified and was not used in any intelligence assessment because of its inability to be verified, it was now the topic of meetings with the president.

CIA Director John Brennan had also briefed top lawmakers on Russian efforts to help Trump last summer and had said the CIA had limited legal ability to investigate Russian connections to Trump, prompting Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to write a public letter to the FBI -- which collects domestic intelligence -- about the threat of Russian interference.

Reid then wrote another letter to Comey after he reopened the investigation into Clinton's emails -- accusing him of letting Trump slide.

"It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government -- a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity," he wrote.

"I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public and yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information."

That "information" Reid was referring to was the dossier, according to Tablet:

According to David Corn's Oct. 31, 2016, article in Mother Jones , the Nevada lawmaker was referencing the findings of "a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence."

Corn now explains that the "former Western intelligence officer -- who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a U.S. firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients" is Christopher Steele. According to Corn, Steele said that "in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump."

It appears that Brennan was briefing Reid on the Steele dossier.

Brennan apparently sent the dossier to the White House, prompting the "eyes only" meetings.

"An envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried 'eyes only' instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides," the Washington Post reported on June 23, 2017.

"So was the Steele dossier in the envelope?" Tablet asks.

The Post writes that inside that envelope "was an intelligence bombshell" -- a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detained Putin's direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the presidential race, defeat or at least damage Hillary Clinton, and help elect Donald Trump.

The Post also writes that the "material was so sensitive that CIA Director John O. Brennan kept it out of the president's daily brief, concerned that even that restricted report's distribution was too broad."

But as Tablet asks, "if the material was so sensitive that it had to be kept out of the PDB and withheld from the Senate majority leader, why was someone telling The Washington Post about it?"

Tablet writes:

Sources and methods are the crown jewels of the American intelligence community. And yet someone has just told a major American newspaper about a "report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that captured Putin's specific instructions." If the CIA had a human intelligence source that close to Putin, publication of the Post article could have exposed that source -- doing incalculable damage to American national security. He and many of his loved ones would then have presumably died horrible deaths.

Or, as Mary Jacoby surmised, it was her husband's handiwork that landed on the president's desk.

[Apr 23, 2019] Groupthink at the CIA by Philip Giraldi

Looks like tail wags the dog -- CIA controls the US foreign policy and in the last elections also played active role in promoting Hillary. A the level of top brass we have several people mentioned by Giraldi who are probably as dangerous as Allen Dulles was. Brennan is one example.
The parade of rogues that Philip describes is really alarming. Each with agenda that directly harms the USA as a country promoting the interest of military-industrial complex and neocon faction within the government...
Notable quotes:
"... Indeed, one can start with Tenet if one wants to create a roster of recent CIA Directors who have lied to permit the White House to engage in a war crime. Tenet and his staff knew better than anyone that the case against Saddam did not hold water, but President George W. Bush wanted his war and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA had any say in the matter. ..."
"... Back then as now, international Islamic terrorism was the name of the game. It kept the money flowing to the national security establishment in the false belief that America was somehow being made "safe." But today the terror narrative has been somewhat supplanted by Russia, which is headed by a contemporary Saddam Hussein in the form of Vladimir Putin. If one believes the media and a majority of congressmen, evil manifest lurks in the gilded halls of the Kremlin. Russia has recently been sanctioned (again) for crimes that are more alleged than demonstrated and President Putin has been selected by the Establishment as the wedge issue that will be used to end President Donald Trump's defiance of the Deep State and all that pertains to it. The intelligence community at its top level would appear to be fully on board with that effort. ..."
"... Remarkably, he also said that there is only "minimal evidence" that Russia is even fighting ISIS. The statement is astonishing as Moscow has most definitely been seriously and directly engaged in support of the Syrian Arab Army. Is it possible that the head of the CIA is unaware of that? It just might be that Pompeo is disparaging the effort because the Russians and Syrians have also been fighting against the U.S. backed "moderate rebels." That the moderate rebels are hardly moderate has been known for years and they are also renowned for their ineffectiveness combined with a tendency to defect to more radical groups taking their U.S. provided weapons with them, a combination of factors which led to their being denied any further American support by a presidential decision that was revealed in the press two weeks ago. ..."
"... Pompeo's predecessor John Brennan is, however, my favorite Agency leader in the category of totally bereft of his senses. ..."
"... Brennan is certainly loyal to his cause, whatever that might be. At the same Aspen meeting attended by Pompeo, he told Wolf Blitzer that if Trump were to fire special counsel Robert Mueller government officials should "refuse to carry out" his orders. In other words, they should begin a coup, admittedly non-violent (one presumes), but nevertheless including federal employees uniting to shut the government down. ..."
"... And finally, there is Michael Morell, also a former Acting Director, who was closely tied to the Hillary Clinton campaign, apparently driven by ambition to become Director in her administration. Morell currently provides commentary for CBS television and is a frequent guest on the Charlie Rose show. Morell considerably raised the ante on Brennan's pre-electoral speculation that there had been some Russian recruitment of Trump people. He observed in August that Putin, a wily ex-career intelligence officer, "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them [did exactly that] early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." ..."
"... Nothing new. In the '50s CIA was making foreign wars and cultivating chaos at home, and blaming all of it on Russia. In the '80s CIA was cultivating anti-nuke groups to undermine Reagan, and blaming it on Russia. CIA has been the primary wellspring of evil for a long time. ..."
"... Yes you read that right and they are going to the rotten core of this coup against the United States by presenting a report stating that the DNC was "Leaked" not hacked. The real hacking came from President Obama's weaponizing of our intelligence agencies against Russia. ..."
"... The CIA is the USA's secret army, it is not comparable to a real intelligence organization like the British MI5. The CIA is more like WWII SOE, designed to set fire to Europe, Churchill's words. ..."
"... As has been the case for decades the Deep State allows Presidents and legislators to make minor decisions in our government as long as those decisions do not in any way interfere with the Deep State's goals of total world hegemony and increase in overwhelming power and wealth. Those who make the important decisions in this country are not elected. The elected 'officials' are sycophants of the Deep State. ..."
"... The term is appropriated from the use to describe the mutually loyal corps of Ataturkians in the Turkish military and intelligence services who were united in service to uphold the ideal of Ataturkian secular modernisation. The term implies no public accountability or publicity unnecessary to its purposes. ..."
"... The CIA's source, its birth, is from British secret service. Brit spying. And Brit secret service, long before the official founding of MI5, did exactly the kinds of things you note the CIA has done. ..."
"... The Mossad is another direct fruit of Brit secret service, as is the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency. ..."
"... While there can be no doubt about the crackpots in high positions of the most powerful bureaucracies, it seems to me that the CIA loonies are merely shock troops for an even worse bunch of evil psychos, the bankster mafiosi. ..."
"... I am a retired CIA operations officer (something none of the men mentioned by Giraldi are – Brennan was a failed wanna be, couldn't cut it as an ops officer). He is spot on in his comments. The majority of people in the CIA, the ones who do the heavy lifting, are patriotic Americans who are proud of serving their country. I am sure that most voted for Trump as they all know too well the truth about the Clintons and Obama. ..."
"... Giraldi is not the only one to notice the upward progress of the most incompetent yes-men in the Agency. A close look at most of them reveals a track record of little or no operational success balanced by excellent sucking up skills. These characters quickly figured out how to get ahead and doing your job in the field is not it. Of course, most are ego maniacs so they are totally oblivious to their own uselessness. ..."
"... How "Russiagate" began: After the primaries, both Hillary and Donald faced divided political parties even though they had won the nomination. These divisions were worse than the normal situation after contested primaries. On the Democratic side, Hillay had just subverted the will of the voters of her party, who seemed to favor Bernie Sanders over her. Hillay had won with corrupt collusion and rigging amongst the DNC, the higher ranks of the Democratic Party, and major media such as the NYT and CNN. ..."
"... Then, a leak of emails from the DNC HQ publicized her interference in the democratic processes of the Democratic Party. This threatened to ene the Hillary for President campaign right then and there. If the majority of Democrats who'd favored Bernie refused to support Hillary because of her corruption and collusion in denying democracy within the party, she was a sure loser in the fall election. The Hillary camp then immediately started blaming Russia for the exposure of her corruption and rigging of the Democratic process. And that's how "Russiagate" began. ..."
"... Take that bunch of mediocre thinkers, and then make most of them obsessed with their own career advancement above all else. The most dangerous place for a career-obsessed individual is outside the group consensus. ..."
"... So, for instance, Trump should veto the act of war known as the recent sanctions bill. Who cares if it gets overridden? Then he goes back to the voters, who are clearly sick of endless war and who for obvious reasons don't want a nuclear war, and he says this is where I stand. Support me by electing Fill-In-The-Blank to Congress. With the nuclear Doomsday Clock pushing ever closer to midnight, he might just win that fight over the big money and media opposition he's sure to face. ..."
"... Not only has Trump failed to even try to fight the Deep State, but he's also failing to set himself up for success in the next elections. ..."
"... What we are seeing now is The Donald's role in the serial Zionist THEATER. Think deeper about the motive behind Mr. Giraldi's choice to use the Orwellian word "Groupthink" in characterizing the CIA zeitgeist? In the classic work "1984," one observes Big Brother as the catalyst in control of the proles' thought pattern & subsequent action. ..."
"... To rise & FALL as a POTUS is a matter of theater and the American proles are entertained by the political for either 4 or 8 years and the Zionists get their next Chosen actor/actress dramatically sworn in on a bible. ..."
Aug 01, 2017 | www.unz.com

Long ago, when I was a spear carrying middle ranker at CIA, a colleague took me aside and said that he had something to tell me "as a friend," that was very important. He told me that his wife had worked for years in the Agency's Administrative Directorate, as it was then called, where she had noticed that some new officers coming out of the Career Trainee program had red tags on their personnel files. She eventually learned from her boss that the tags represented assessments that those officers had exceptional potential as senior managers. He added, however, that the reverse appeared to be true in practice as they were generally speaking serial failures as they ascended the bureaucratic ladder, even though their careers continued to be onward and upward on paper. My friend's wife concluded, not unreasonably, that only genuine a-holes had what it took to get promoted to the most senior ranks.

I was admittedly skeptical but some recent activity by former and current Directors and Acting Directors of CIA has me wondering if something like my friend's wife's observation about senior management might indeed be true. But it would have to be something other than tagging files, as many of the directors and their deputies did not come up through the ranks and there seems to be a similar strain of lunacy at other U.S. government intelligence agencies. It might be time to check the water supply in the Washington area as there is very definitely something in the kool-aid that is producing odd behavior.

Now I should pause for a moment and accept that the role of intelligence services is to identify potential threats before they become active, so a certain level of acute paranoia goes with the job. But at the same time, one would expect a level of professionalism which would mandate accuracy rather than emotion in assessments coupled with an eschewing of any involvement in the politics of foreign and national security policy formulation. The enthusiasm with which a number of senior CIA personnel have waded into the Trump swamp and have staked out positions that contradict genuine national interests suggests that little has been learned since CIA Director George Tenet sat behind Secretary of State Colin Powell in the UN and nodded sagaciously as Saddam Hussein's high crimes and misdemeanors were falsely enumerated.

Indeed, one can start with Tenet if one wants to create a roster of recent CIA Directors who have lied to permit the White House to engage in a war crime. Tenet and his staff knew better than anyone that the case against Saddam did not hold water, but President George W. Bush wanted his war and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA had any say in the matter.

Back then as now, international Islamic terrorism was the name of the game. It kept the money flowing to the national security establishment in the false belief that America was somehow being made "safe." But today the terror narrative has been somewhat supplanted by Russia, which is headed by a contemporary Saddam Hussein in the form of Vladimir Putin. If one believes the media and a majority of congressmen, evil manifest lurks in the gilded halls of the Kremlin. Russia has recently been sanctioned (again) for crimes that are more alleged than demonstrated and President Putin has been selected by the Establishment as the wedge issue that will be used to end President Donald Trump's defiance of the Deep State and all that pertains to it. The intelligence community at its top level would appear to be fully on board with that effort.

The most recent inexplicable comments come from the current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, speaking at the Aspen Institute Security Forum. He began by asserting that Russia had interfered in the U.S. election before saying that the logic behind Russia's Middle Eastern strategy is to stay in place in Syria so Moscow can "stick it to America." He didn't define the "it" so one must assume that "it" stands for any utensil available, ranging from cruise missiles to dinner forks. He then elaborated, somewhat obscurely, that "I think they find anyplace that they can make our lives more difficult, I think they find that something that's useful."

Remarkably, he also said that there is only "minimal evidence" that Russia is even fighting ISIS. The statement is astonishing as Moscow has most definitely been seriously and directly engaged in support of the Syrian Arab Army. Is it possible that the head of the CIA is unaware of that? It just might be that Pompeo is disparaging the effort because the Russians and Syrians have also been fighting against the U.S. backed "moderate rebels." That the moderate rebels are hardly moderate has been known for years and they are also renowned for their ineffectiveness combined with a tendency to defect to more radical groups taking their U.S. provided weapons with them, a combination of factors which led to their being denied any further American support by a presidential decision that was revealed in the press two weeks ago.

Pompeo's predecessor John Brennan is, however, my favorite Agency leader in the category of totally bereft of his senses. In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee back in May, he suggested that some Trump associates might have been recruited by the Russian intelligence service. He testified that "I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals."

In his testimony, Brennan apparently forgot to mention that the CIA is not supposed to keep tabs on American citizens. Nor did he explain how he had come upon the information in the first place as it had been handed over by foreign intelligence services, including the British, Dutch and Estonians, and at least some of it had been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan unofficially in the first place. Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into a possible Russian operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump were to somehow get nominated and elected, which admittedly was a longshot at the time. That is how Russiagate started.

Brennan is certainly loyal to his cause, whatever that might be. At the same Aspen meeting attended by Pompeo, he told Wolf Blitzer that if Trump were to fire special counsel Robert Mueller government officials should "refuse to carry out" his orders. In other words, they should begin a coup, admittedly non-violent (one presumes), but nevertheless including federal employees uniting to shut the government down.

A lesser known former CIA senior official is John McLaughlin, who briefly served as acting Director in 2004. McLaughlin was particularly outraged by Trump's recent speech to the Boy Scouts, which he described as having the feel "of a third world authoritarian's youth rally." He added that "It gave me the creeps it was like watching the late Venezuelan [President Hugo] Chavez."

And finally, there is Michael Morell, also a former Acting Director, who was closely tied to the Hillary Clinton campaign, apparently driven by ambition to become Director in her administration. Morell currently provides commentary for CBS television and is a frequent guest on the Charlie Rose show. Morell considerably raised the ante on Brennan's pre-electoral speculation that there had been some Russian recruitment of Trump people. He observed in August that Putin, a wily ex-career intelligence officer, "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them [did exactly that] early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

I and others noted at the time that Putin and Trump had never met, not even through proxies, while we also wondered how one could be both unwitting and a recruited agent as intelligence recruitment implies control and taking direction. Morell was non-plussed, unflinching and just a tad sanctimonious in affirming that his own intelligence training (as an analyst who never recruited a spy in his life) meant that "[I] call it as I see it."

One could also cite Michael Hayden and James Clapper, though the latter was not CIA They all basically hew to the same line about Russia, often in more-or-less the same words, even though no actual evidence has been produced to support their claims. That unanimity of thinking is what is peculiar while academics like Stephen Cohen, Stephen Walt, Andrew Bacevich, and John Mearsheimer, who have studied Russia in some depth and understand the country and its leadership far better than a senior CIA officer, detect considerable nuance in what is taking place. They all believe that the hardline policies current in Washington are based on an eagerness to go with the flow on the comforting inside-the- beltway narrative that paints Russia as a threat to vital interests. That unanimity of viewpoint should surprise no one as this is more of less the same government with many of the same people that led the U.S. into Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. They all have a vested interested in the health and well-being of a fully funded national security state.

And the other groupthink that seems to prevail among the senior managers except Pompeo is that they all hate Donald Trump and have done so since long before he won the election. That is somewhat odd, but it perhaps reflects a fear that Trump would interfere with the richly rewarding establishment politics that had enabled their careers. But it does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of CIA employees. Though it is admittedly unscientific analysis on my part, I know a lot of former and some current CIA employees but do not know a single one who voted for Hillary Clinton. Nearly all voted for Trump.

Beyond that exhibition of tunnel vision and sheer ignorance, the involvement of former senior intelligence officials in politics is itself deplorable and is perhaps symptomatic of the breakdown in the comfortable bipartisan national security consensus that has characterized the past fifty years. Once upon time former CIA officers would retire to the Blue Ridge mountains and raise Labradors, but we are now into something much more dangerous if the intelligence community, which has been responsible for most of the recent leaks, begins to feel free to assert itself from behind the scenes. As Senator Chuck Schumer recently warned "Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community -- they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you."

exiled off mainstreet, August 1, 2017 at 5:06 am GMT

In jumping this fascist nihilist shark, the groupthinkers have closed themselves off from the logical conclusion to their viewpoint, which is final annihilation.

Dan Hayes, August 1, 2017 at 5:47 am GMT

Schumer's statement is true (and probably the only such one in his political career!).

annamaria, August 1, 2017 at 6:03 am GMT

Brennan, Morell, and Pompeo should better find ways to justify their salaries: the U.S. has suffered the greatest breach in cybersecurity on their watch:

" an enormous breach of the United States Security Apparatus by as many as 80 Democrat members of Congress (past and present). We rail on about the Russians and Trump, but t he media avoids providing nightly updates about these 5 spies that have compromised Congress ."

http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-awan-brothers-compromised-at-least-80-congregational-computers-and-got-paid-5-million-to-do-it-we-may-never-know-the-extent-of-the-breach/

"In total, Imran's firm was employed by 31 Democrats in Congress, some of whom held extremely sensitive positions on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affair s."

polistra, August 1, 2017 at 6:17 am GMT

Nothing new. In the '50s CIA was making foreign wars and cultivating chaos at home, and blaming all of it on Russia. In the '80s CIA was cultivating anti-nuke groups to undermine Reagan, and blaming it on Russia. CIA has been the primary wellspring of evil for a long time.

Bruce Marshall, August 1, 2017 at 6:39 am GMT

And back to reality we have VIPS Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Yes you read that right and they are going to the rotten core of this coup against the United States by presenting a report stating that the DNC was "Leaked" not hacked. The real hacking came from President Obama's weaponizing of our intelligence agencies against Russia.

That is war, World War Three and it would seem now that Congress is marching that way, but the report below hold the key to fighting back.

http://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2017/2017_30-39/2017-30/pdf/37-41_4430.pdf

One of the VIPS is William Binney fomer NSA Technical Director, an important expert. leading the group is Ray McGovern with some whit and grace, well yes how about some sanity, to which humor is important to the insight and to stay in the sights of what is clever thievery and worse. Much worse, and there is a twinkle in the eye when realize that it is straight forward.

And Congress could stop it tout sweet, but well old habits but they have taken an Oath of Office, so, so what, yeah they did go after Bernie, so will you challenge your elected officials, either do their sworn duty or resign, for what this sanctions bill against Russia and Iran is a declaration of war, not only against Russia and Iran, but a declaration of war against the United States. for there is no reason to do this against Russia when indeed there are great opportunities to get along, but war is the insanity as it is sedition and treason. Tell them that,

https://larouchepac.com/20170731/breaking-lyndon-larouche-crush-british-coup-against-president

Priss Factor, • Website August 1, 2017 at 7:01 am GMT

Moderate Rebels = Toothfairy Rebels

jilles dykstra, August 1, 2017 at 7:21 am GMT

I wonder if groupthink exists. In any organisation people know quite well why the organisation exists, what the threats are to its existence. If they think about this, I wonder.

The CIA is the USA's secret army, it is not comparable to a real intelligence organization like the British MI5. The CIA is more like WWII SOE, designed to set fire to Europe, Churchill's words. If indeed Trump changes USA foreign policy, no longer trying to control the world, the CIA is obsolete, as obsolete as NATO.

animalogic, August 1, 2017 at 7:44 am GMT

" but President George W. Bush wanted his war and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA had any say in the matter."

Not to defend the CIA, but didn't Rumsfeld, doubt the enthusiasm of the CIA for providing the slanted, bogus, "sexed up" intelligence the Executive required to make its "destroy Iraq now" case ? So Rumsfeld therefore set up an independent intelligence agency within the Defence Dept to provide/create the required "intelligence" ?

The Alarmist, August 1, 2017 at 7:45 am GMT

I think they find anyplace that they can make our lives more difficult, I think they find that something that's useful."

Yeah, because that's what resource-constrained countries with limited ability to tap the global capital markets do. Methinks Mr. Pompeo is projecting his and the neocons' fantasies on the Russians.

Realist, August 1, 2017 at 10:14 am GMT

As has been the case for decades the Deep State allows Presidents and legislators to make minor decisions in our government as long as those decisions do not in any way interfere with the Deep State's goals of total world hegemony and increase in overwhelming power and wealth. Those who make the important decisions in this country are not elected. The elected 'officials' are sycophants of the Deep State.

CalDre, August 1, 2017 at 10:43 am GMT

If only Trump would really clean the swamp – particularly the neo-cons and other traitors and globalists. One can dream .

Wizard of Oz, August 1, 2017 at 11:04 am GMT

Being resistant to jargon and catch phrases it is only slowly that I have accepted that "Deep State" is not entirely pretentious waffle when used to describe aspects of the US. However I may not be your only reader PG who would appreciate a clear explanatory description of the American Deep State and how it works.

Here are some suggested parameters.

The term is appropriated from the use to describe the mutually loyal corps of Ataturkians in the Turkish military and intelligence services who were united in service to uphold the ideal of Ataturkian secular modernisation. The term implies no public accountability or publicity unnecessary to its purposes.
And its origins imply that it is not just one in a number of major influences ln government or those who vote for it.

So one has to acknowledge that in the US the Deep State has to be different in the important respect that levers of power are observably wielded by lobbies for the aged, gun owners and sellers, Israel, Wall Street, bio fuels, sugar and other ag, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, the arms industry, Disney and other Hollywood and media, health insurers and the medical profession, and I could go on.

These are all relevant to legal events like votes on impeachment or to hold up appointments. The CIA and FBI together completely united (and note how disunited 9/11 showed them to be) wouldn't remotely approach the old Turkish Deep State's ability to stage a coup. Are all of the putative elements of the Deep State together today as powerful as J.Edgar Hoover with his dirt files on everyone? (A contrast and compare exercise of today's presumed Deep State configuration and modus operandi with the simpler Hoover days might shine some light on who does what and how today. And how effectively).

To avoid lack of focus can a convincing account of the US Deep State be best given in terms of a plausible scenario for

  1. getting rid of Trump as President and/or
  2. maintaining the lunacy and hubris which has the US wasting its substance on totally unnecessary antagonistic relations with China and Russia and interference in the ME?

I would read such accounts with great interest. (Handwavers need not apply).

Jake, August 1, 2017 at 11:26 am GMT

Of course the US Deep State must hate Russia. First, Jews have a very long history of hating Russia and Russians. That never changed. The USSR was not Russia; the USSR was Marxism replacing Russia. Jews tended to love that. Rich Jews from across the world, from the US and the UK of most interest to us, sent money to support the Bolshevik Revolution.

Russia managed to survive the USSR and is slowly coming back around to Russian common sense from the Christian perspective. Neither Jews nor their WASP BFFs can ever forgive that. They want Russia to act now to commit cultural and genetic suicide, like Western Europe and the entire Anglosphere are doing.

Jake, August 1, 2017 at 11:32 am GMT

@polistra The CIA's source, its birth, is from British secret service. Brit spying. And Brit secret service, long before the official founding of MI5, did exactly the kinds of things you note the CIA has done.

The Mossad is another direct fruit of Brit secret service, as is the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency.

jacques sheete, August 1, 2017 at 11:36 am GMT

While there can be no doubt about the crackpots in high positions of the most powerful bureaucracies, it seems to me that the CIA loonies are merely shock troops for an even worse bunch of evil psychos, the bankster mafiosi.

We should always keep that in mind.

Jake, August 1, 2017 at 11:37 am GMT

@CalDre If only

But doing so would mean a voluntary end to playing the role of Sauron, determined to find and wear the One Ring to Rule Them All. The average Elite WASP, and his Jewish BFF, definitely would prefer to destroy the world, at least outside their gated compounds of endless luxury, than to step down from that level of global domination.

Philip Giraldi, August 1, 2017 at 12:02 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz Wiz – Here is an article I did on the Deep State two years ago. It was one of the first in the US media looking at the issue. It would have to be updated now in light of Trump, but much of what it states is still more-or-less correct.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/deep-state-america/

Jake, August 1, 2017 at 12:09 pm GMT

@jacques sheete Yes, indeed.

But we need to make certain that your use of the word 'mafiosi' does not lead anyone to assume that group has more than a handful of Italians. Jews, WASPs, and continental Germanics each will outnumber Italians by at least 30 to 1.

Chris Bridges, August 1, 2017 at 12:46 pm GMT

I am a retired CIA operations officer (something none of the men mentioned by Giraldi are – Brennan was a failed wanna be, couldn't cut it as an ops officer). He is spot on in his comments. The majority of people in the CIA, the ones who do the heavy lifting, are patriotic Americans who are proud of serving their country. I am sure that most voted for Trump as they all know too well the truth about the Clintons and Obama.

Giraldi is not the only one to notice the upward progress of the most incompetent yes-men in the Agency. A close look at most of them reveals a track record of little or no operational success balanced by excellent sucking up skills. These characters quickly figured out how to get ahead and doing your job in the field is not it. Of course, most are ego maniacs so they are totally oblivious to their own uselessness.

Well before he was elected I had a letter delivered to President Trump in which I outlined in detail what would happen to him if he did not immediately purge the CIA of these assholes. I know that at least some people on his staff read it but, of course, my advice was ignored. Trump has paid dearly for not listening to an ordinary CIA guy who wanted to give him a reality brief on those vicious snakes.

Proud_Srbin, August 1, 2017 at 1:00 pm GMT

Historical facts teach humanity that Anglo-Saxon group of Nations was built on slavery, thuggery and theft of other peace loving Civilizations. We Slavs are the New "niggers", hate is the glue that holds you "toGether".
People of color have been successfully conditioned and practice it as well.
Time will tell how well it holds when balloon bursts and 99% gets called to serve as cannon fodder.
Terrorizing UNARMED and WEAKER is not true test of "superiority" and "exceptionalism".
Tiny, extremely tiny minority of Anglo-Saxons and Satraps understand this.

Bernie voter, August 1, 2017 at 1:20 pm GMT

How "Russiagate" began: After the primaries, both Hillary and Donald faced divided political parties even though they had won the nomination. These divisions were worse than the normal situation after contested primaries. On the Democratic side, Hillay had just subverted the will of the voters of her party, who seemed to favor Bernie Sanders over her. Hillay had won with corrupt collusion and rigging amongst the DNC, the higher ranks of the Democratic Party, and major media such as the NYT and CNN.

Then, a leak of emails from the DNC HQ publicized her interference in the democratic processes of the Democratic Party. This threatened to ene the Hillary for President campaign right then and there. If the majority of Democrats who'd favored Bernie refused to support Hillary because of her corruption and collusion in denying democracy within the party, she was a sure loser in the fall election. The Hillary camp then immediately started blaming Russia for the exposure of her corruption and rigging of the Democratic process. And that's how "Russiagate" began.

Beauracratic Mind, August 1, 2017 at 1:42 pm GMT

@jacques sheete

I wonder if groupthink exists.

It probably does as do group psychoses and group fantasies.. Anyone who's ever served in a beuaracracy knows that groupthink exists.

Take a bunch of mediocre minds. And, they do exist, as Garrison Keiler once famously made a joke out of with his line Welcome to Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average.

Take that bunch of mediocre thinkers, and then make most of them obsessed with their own career advancement above all else. The most dangerous place for a career-obsessed individual is outside the group consensus. If everyone is wrong, then there is safety in the group. After all, if they are wrong, so was everyone else in the organization. Thus they are immune to attack and censure for being wrong. But if someone takes a position outside of the group consensus, that can be a career-ending move if they are wrong, as now everyone else will be in the I-told-U-So camp. And even if they are correct, they will still be hated and shunned just for being the person who pointed out to the group that they are wrong.

So, you take your typical average mind, and not only do they not have any great insights of their own, but they tend to stick to the group out of sheer survival and then when you take a mass of these mediocre minds you have 'groupthink'.

Eticon, August 1, 2017 at 2:00 pm GMT

@CalDre

If only Trump would really clean the swamp - particularly the neo-cons and other traitors and globalists. One can dream ....

What we've learned from Trump is that 'Draining the Swamp' will take more than an individual. It will take a political movement.

One sees this on the fringes of politics. Someone gets the idea of running for President, and they point out all that is wrong. But, they focus only on their own campaign, their own goal, and they thus gloss over the fact that they'll be outnumbered and powerless even if they win.

Seen this often on the Left. The most recent example is Bernie Sanders. Likewise, had Bernie been elected President, he too would face an entrenched establishment and media with only a small fraction of the Congress supporting him.

Change has to be built from the bottom up. There are no shortcuts. Electing a Trump, or a Nader or a Bernie does not lead to real change. Step one is to build the political movement such that it has real voting block power and which has already won voting majorities in the legislature before the movement achieves the election of a President.

What Trump has needed to be doing for this first two years is to form clear divisions that he could then take to his voters in the mid-term elections. He's needed to lay out his own agenda. So what if he loses votes in Congress? He then takes that agenda back to the voters in 2018 with a nationwide slate of Congressional candidates who support that agenda and runs a midterm campaign asking the voters to help him drain that swamp.

So, for instance, Trump should veto the act of war known as the recent sanctions bill. Who cares if it gets overridden? Then he goes back to the voters, who are clearly sick of endless war and who for obvious reasons don't want a nuclear war, and he says this is where I stand. Support me by electing Fill-In-The-Blank to Congress. With the nuclear Doomsday Clock pushing ever closer to midnight, he might just win that fight over the big money and media opposition he's sure to face.

Not only has Trump failed to even try to fight the Deep State, but he's also failing to set himself up for success in the next elections.

ChuckOrloski, August 1, 2017 at 2:19 pm GMT

@Jake Hey Jake,

It is a serious error to consider President Trump "naive."

What we are seeing now is The Donald's role in the serial Zionist THEATER. Think deeper about the motive behind Mr. Giraldi's choice to use the Orwellian word "Groupthink" in characterizing the CIA zeitgeist? In the classic work "1984," one observes Big Brother as the catalyst in control of the proles' thought pattern & subsequent action.

To rise & FALL as a POTUS is a matter of theater and the American proles are entertained by the political for either 4 or 8 years and the Zionists get their next Chosen actor/actress dramatically sworn in on a bible.

Mr. Trump is neither naive nor stupid. Sheldon Adelson would not donate $millioms to any POTUS wannabe who could not effectively lead the American Groupthink tradition. Subsequently, the political horror show is brought to you in the understandable form of the perpetually elusive Deep State which gets annual Academy Award.

Beware the fake, Jake!,

[Apr 21, 2019] John Brennan's Police State USA

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Sadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers. ..."
"... Convincing Americans in Russia's influence or Russia collusion with Trump was only a tool that would create pressure on Trump that together with the fear of paralysis of his administration and impeachment would push Trump into the corner from which the only thing he could do was to worsen relations with Russia. What American people believe or not is really secondary. With firing of Gen. Flynn Trump acted exactly as they wanted him to act. This was the beginning of downward slope. ..."
"... Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. Trump can concentrate on Iran in which he will be supported by all sides and factions including the media. Even Larry David will approve not only the zionist harpies like Pam Geller, Rita Katz and Ilana Mercer. ..."
"... The only part that is absurd is that Russia posed a bona fide threat to the US. I'm fine with the idea that he ruined Brennen's plans in Syria. But thats just ego we shouldn't have been there anyway. ..."
"... No one really cares about Ukraine. And the European/Russian trade zone? No one cares. The Eurozone has its hands full with Greece and the rest of the old EU. I have a feeling they have already gone way too far and are more likely to shrink than expand in any meaningful way ..."
"... " ..factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people." ..."
"... All the more powerfully put because of its recognisably comical. understatement. Thank you Mr Whitney. Brilliant article that would be all over the mainstream media were the US MSM an instrument of American rather than globalist interests. ..."
"... A sad story, how the USA always was a police state, where the two percent rich manipulated the 98% poor, to stay rich. When there were insurrections federal troops restored order. Also FDR put down strikes with troops. ..."
"... The elephant in the room is Israel and the neocons , this is the force that controls America and Americas foreign policy , Brennan and the 17 intel agencies are puppets of the mossad and Israel, that is the brutal fact of the matter. ..."
"... "The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result " ..."
"... But it DID achieve the desired result! Trump folded under the pressure, and went full out neoliberal. Starting with his missile attack on Syria, he is now OK with spending trillions fighting pointless endless foreign wars on the other side of the world. ..."
"... I think maybe half the US population does believe the Russian hacking thing, but that's not really the issue. I think that the pre-Syrian attack media blitz was more a statement of brute power to Trump: WE are in charge here, and WE can take you down and impeach you, and facts don't matter! ..."
"... Sometimes propaganda is about persuading people. And sometimes, I think, it is about intimidating them. ..."
"... The Brit secret service, in effect, created and trained not merely the CIA but also the Mossad and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency. All four are defined by endless lies, endless acts of utterly amoral savagery. All 4 are at least as bad as the KGB ever was, and that means as bad as Hell itself. ..."
"... Traditional triumphalist American narrative history, as taught in schools up through the 60s or so, portrayed America as "wart-free." Since then, with Zinn's book playing a major role, it has increasingly been portrayed as "warts-only," which is of course at least equally flawed. I would say more so. ..."
"... Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. ..."
"... That pre-9/11 "cooperation" nearly destroyed Russia. Nobody in Russia (except, perhaps, for Pussy Riot) wants a return to the Yeltsin era. ..."
"... The CIA is the world largest criminal and terrorist organization. With Brennan the worst has come to the worst. The whole Russian meddling affair was initiated by the Obama/Clinton gang in cooperation with 95 percent of the media. Nothing will come out of it. ..."
"... [The key figures who had primary influence on both Trump's and Bush's Iran policies held views close to those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. The main conduit for the Likudist line in the Trump White House is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, primary foreign policy advisor, and longtime friend and supporter of Netanyahu. Kushner's parents are also long-time supporters of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank. ..."
"... Another figure to whom the Trump White House has turned is John Bolton, undersecretary of state and a key policymaker on Iran in the Bush administration. Although Bolton was not appointed Trump's secretary of state, as he'd hoped, he suddenly reemerged as a player on Iran policy thanks to his relationship with Kushner. Politico reports that Bolton met with Kushner a few days before the final policy statement was released and urged a complete withdrawal from the deal in favor of his own plan for containing Iran. ..."
"... Putin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical land bridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington. ..."
"... Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can't say. ..."
"... Such a truthful portrait of reality ! The ruling elite is indeed massively corrupt, compromised, and controlled by dark forces. And the police state is already here. For most people, so far, in the form of massive collection of personal data and increasing number of mandatory regulations. But just one or two big false-flags away from progressing into something much worse. ..."
"... Clearly the CIA was making war on Syria. Is secret coercive covert action against sovereign nations Ok? Is it legal? When was the CIA designated a war making entity – what part of the constitution OK's that? Isn't the congress obliged by constitutional law to declare war? (These are NOT six month actions – they go on and on.) ..."
"... Syria is only one of many nations that the CIA is attacking – how many countries are we attacking with drones? Where is congress? ..."
"... Close the CIA – give the spying to the 16 other agencies. ..."
Oct 22, 2017 | www.unz.com

Fran Macadam , October 20, 2017 at 3:08 pm GMT

A credible reading of the diverse facts, Mike.
Kirk Elarbee , October 20, 2017 at 8:27 pm GMT
Sadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/10/everyone-hacked-everyone-hacked-everyone-spy-spin-fuels-anti-kaspersky-campaign.html

utu , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:18 am GMT
Again Mike Whitney does not get it. Though in the first part of the article I thought he would. He was almost getting there. The objective was to push new administration into the corner from which it could not improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he wanted to during the campaign.

Convincing Americans in Russia's influence or Russia collusion with Trump was only a tool that would create pressure on Trump that together with the fear of paralysis of his administration and impeachment would push Trump into the corner from which the only thing he could do was to worsen relations with Russia. What American people believe or not is really secondary. With firing of Gen. Flynn Trump acted exactly as they wanted him to act. This was the beginning of downward slope.

Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. Trump can concentrate on Iran in which he will be supported by all sides and factions including the media. Even Larry David will approve not only the zionist harpies like Pam Geller, Rita Katz and Ilana Mercer.

Pamela Geller: Thank You, Larry David

http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2017/10/19/pamela-geller-thank-larry-david/

anon , Disclaimer Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:54 am GMT
OK.

The only part that is absurd is that Russia posed a bona fide threat to the US. I'm fine with the idea that he ruined Brennen's plans in Syria. But thats just ego we shouldn't have been there anyway.

No one really cares about Ukraine. And the European/Russian trade zone? No one cares. The Eurozone has its hands full with Greece and the rest of the old EU. I have a feeling they have already gone way too far and are more likely to shrink than expand in any meaningful way

The one thing I am not positive about. If the elite really believe that Russia is a threat, then Americans have done psych ops on themselves.

The US was only interested in Ukraine because it was there. Next in line on a map. The rather shocking disinterest in investing money -- on both sides -- is inexplicable if it was really important. Most of it would be a waste -- but still. The US stupidly spent $5 billion on something -- getting duped by politicians and got theoretical regime change, but it was hell to pry even $1 billion for real economic aid.

ThereisaGod , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 6:37 am GMT
" ..factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people."

All the more powerfully put because of its recognisably comical. understatement. Thank you Mr Whitney. Brilliant article that would be all over the mainstream media were the US MSM an instrument of American rather than globalist interests.

jilles dykstra , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 6:46 am GMT
I am reading Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the USA, 1492 to the Present. A sad story, how the USA always was a police state, where the two percent rich manipulated the 98% poor, to stay rich. When there were insurrections federal troops restored order. Also FDR put down strikes with troops.
Logan , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 11:16 am GMT
@jilles dykstra

You should be aware that Zinn's book is not, IMO, an honest attempt at writing history. It is conscious propaganda intended to make Americans believe exactly what you are taking from it.

DESERT FOX , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 1:30 pm GMT
The elephant in the room is Israel and the neocons , this is the force that controls America and Americas foreign policy , Brennan and the 17 intel agencies are puppets of the mossad and Israel, that is the brutal fact of the matter.

Until that fact changes Americans will continue to fight and die for Israel.

TG , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 2:03 pm GMT
"The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result "

But it DID achieve the desired result! Trump folded under the pressure, and went full out neoliberal. Starting with his missile attack on Syria, he is now OK with spending trillions fighting pointless endless foreign wars on the other side of the world.

I think maybe half the US population does believe the Russian hacking thing, but that's not really the issue. I think that the pre-Syrian attack media blitz was more a statement of brute power to Trump: WE are in charge here, and WE can take you down and impeach you, and facts don't matter!

Sometimes propaganda is about persuading people. And sometimes, I think, it is about intimidating them.

Anonymous , Disclaimer Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 2:05 pm GMT
Whitney is another author who declares the "Russians did it" narrative a psyop. He then devotes entire columns to the psyop, "naww Russia didn't do it". There could be plenty to write about – recent laws that do undercut liberty, but no, the Washington Post needs fake opposition to its fake news so you have guys like Whitney in the less-mainstream fake news media.

So Brennan wanted revenge? Well that's simple enough to understand, without being too stupid. But Whitney's whopper of a lie is what you're supposed to unquestionably believe. The US has "rival political parties". Did you miss it?

Jake , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 2:32 pm GMT
The US is doing nothing more than acting as the British Empire 2.0. WASP culture was born of a Judaizing heresy: Anglo-Saxon Puritanism. That meant that the WASP Elites of every are pro-Jewish, especially in order to wage war, physical and/or cultural, against the vast majority of white Christians they rule.

By the early 19th century, The Brit Empire's Elites also had a strong, and growing, dose of pro-Arabic/pro-Islamic philoSemitism. Most of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which means being pro-Wahhabi and permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite Mohammedans.

So, by the time of Victoria's high reign, the Brit WASP Elites were a strange brew of hardcoree pro-Jewish and hardcore pro-Arabic/islamic. The US foreign policy of today is an attempt to put those two together and force it on everyone and make it work.

The Brit secret service, in effect, created and trained not merely the CIA but also the Mossad and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency. All four are defined by endless lies, endless acts of utterly amoral savagery. All 4 are at least as bad as the KGB ever was, and that means as bad as Hell itself.

Logan , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:04 pm GMT
@Grandpa Charlie

Fair enough. I didn't know that about the foreword. If accurate, that's a reasonable approach for a book.

Here's the problem.

Back when O. Cromwell was the dictator of England, he retained an artist to paint him. The custom of the time was for artists to "clean up" their subjects, in a primitive form of photoshopping.

OC being a religious fanatic, he informed the artist he wished to be portrayed as God had made him, "warts and all." (Ollie had a bunch of unattractive facial warts.) Or the artist wouldn't be paid.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/08/cromwell-portraitist-samuel-cooper-exhibition

Traditional triumphalist American narrative history, as taught in schools up through the 60s or so, portrayed America as "wart-free." Since then, with Zinn's book playing a major role, it has increasingly been portrayed as "warts-only," which is of course at least equally flawed. I would say more so.

All I am asking is that American (and other) history be written "warts and all." The triumphalist version is true, largely, and so is the Zinn version. Gone With the Wind and Roots both portray certain aspects of the pre-war south fairly accurately..

America has been, and is, both evil and good. As is/was true of every human institution and government in history. Personally, I believe America, net/net, has been one of the greatest forces for human good ever. But nobody will realize that if only the negative side of American history is taught.

Wally , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:16 pm GMT
@Michael Kenny

Hasbarist 'Kenny', you said:

"There must be something really dirty in Russigate that hasn't yet come out to generate this level of panic."

You continue to claim what you cannot prove.

But then you are a Jews First Zionist.

Russia-Gate Jumps the Shark
Russia-gate has jumped the shark with laughable new claims about a tiny number of "Russia-linked" social media ads, but the US mainstream media is determined to keep a straight face

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/10/robert-parry/jumping-the-shark/

Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet?

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia-story-falls-apart-is-skepticism-permissible-yet/

+ review of other frauds

Logan , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:20 pm GMT
@Jake

Most of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which means being pro-Wahhabi and permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite Mohammedans.

Thanks for the laugh. During the 19th century, the Sauds were toothless, dirt-poor hicks from the deep desert of zero importance on the world stage.

The Brits were not Saudi proponents, in fact promoting the Husseins of Hejaz, the guys Lawrence of Arabia worked with. The Husseins, the Sharifs of Mecca and rulers of Hejaz, were the hereditary enemies of the Sauds of Nejd.

After WWI, the Brits installed Husseins as rulers of both Transjordan and Iraq, which with the Hejaz meant the Sauds were pretty much surrounded. The Sauds conquered the Hejaz in 1924, despite lukewarm British support for the Hejaz.

Nobody in the world cared much about the Saudis one way or another until massive oil fields were discovered, by Americans not Brits, starting in 1938. There was no reason they should. Prior to that Saudi prominence in world affairs was about equal to that of Chad today, and for much the same reason. Chad (and Saudi Arabia) had nothing anybody else wanted.

Grandpa Charlie , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:25 pm GMT
@Michael Kenny

'Putin stopped talking about the "Lisbon to Vladivostok" free trade area long ago" -- Michael Kenney

Putin was simply trying to sell Russia's application for EU membership with the catch-phrase "Lisbon to Vladivostok". He continued that until the issue was triply mooted (1) by implosion of EU growth and boosterism, (2) by NATO's aggressive stance, in effect taken by NATO in Ukraine events and in the Baltics, and, (3) Russia's alliance with China.

It is surely still true that Russians think of themselves, categorically, as Europeans. OTOH, we can easily imagine that Russians in Vladivostok look at things differently than do Russians in St. Petersburg. Then again, Vladivostok only goes back about a century and a half.

Seamus Padraig , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:39 pm GMT
@utu

Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration.

I generally agree with your comment, but that part strikes me as a bit of an exaggeration. While relations with Russia certainly haven't improved, how have they really worsened? The second round of sanctions that Trump reluctantly approved have yet to be implemented by Europe, which was the goal. And apart from that, what of substance has changed?

Seamus Padraig , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:45 pm GMT
@Grandpa Charlie

That pre-9/11 "cooperation" nearly destroyed Russia. Nobody in Russia (except, perhaps, for Pussy Riot) wants a return to the Yeltsin era.

Ludwig Watzal , Website Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:46 pm GMT
It's not surprising that 57 percent of the American people believe in Russian meddling. Didn't two-thirds of the same crowd believe that Saddam was behind 9/11, too? The American public is being brainwashed 24 hours a day all year long.

The CIA is the world largest criminal and terrorist organization. With Brennan the worst has come to the worst. The whole Russian meddling affair was initiated by the Obama/Clinton gang in cooperation with 95 percent of the media. Nothing will come out of it.

This disinformation campaign might be the prelude to an upcoming war.
Right now, the US is run by jerks and idiots. Watch the video.

anonymous , Disclaimer Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:50 pm GMT
Only dumb people does not know that TRUMP IS NETANYAHU'S PUPPET.

The fifth column zionist jews are running the albino stooge and foreign policy in the Middle East to expand Israel's interest against American interest that is TREASON. One of these FIFTH COLUMNISTS is Jared Kushner. He should be arrested.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/donald-trumps-likudist-campaign-against-iran/5614264

[The key figures who had primary influence on both Trump's and Bush's Iran policies held views close to those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. The main conduit for the Likudist line in the Trump White House is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, primary foreign policy advisor, and longtime friend and supporter of Netanyahu. Kushner's parents are also long-time supporters of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank.

Another figure to whom the Trump White House has turned is John Bolton, undersecretary of state and a key policymaker on Iran in the Bush administration. Although Bolton was not appointed Trump's secretary of state, as he'd hoped, he suddenly reemerged as a player on Iran policy thanks to his relationship with Kushner. Politico reports that Bolton met with Kushner a few days before the final policy statement was released and urged a complete withdrawal from the deal in favor of his own plan for containing Iran.

Bolton spoke with Trump by phone on Thursday about the paragraph in the deal that vowed it would be "terminated" if there was any renegotiation, according to Politico. He was calling Trump from Las Vegas, where he'd been meeting with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the third major figure behind Trump's shift towards Israeli issues. Adelson is a Likud supporter who has long been a close friend of Netanyahu's and has used his Israeli tabloid newspaper Israel Hayomto support Netanyahu's campaigns. He was Trump's main campaign contributor in 2016, donating $100 million. Adelson's real interest has been in supporting Israel's interests in Washington -- especially with regard to Iran.]

Miro23 , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 4:56 pm GMT
A great article with some excellent points:

Putin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical land bridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington.

American dominance is very much tied to the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency, and the rest of the world no longer want to fund this bankrupt, warlike state – particularly the Chinese.

First, it confirms that the US did not want to see the jihadist extremists defeated by Russia. These mainly-Sunni militias served as Washington's proxy-army conducting an ambitious regime change operation which coincided with US strategic ambitions.

The CIA run US/Israeli/ISIS alliance.

Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can't say.

They are given the political line and they broadcast it.

The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda coupled with the extraordinary advances in surveillance technology, create the perfect conditions for the full implementation of an American police state. But what is more concerning, is that the primary levers of state power are no longer controlled by elected officials but by factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people. That can only lead to trouble.

At some point Americans are going to get a "War on Domestic Terror" cheered along by the media. More or less the arrest and incarceration of any opposition following the Soviet Bolshevik model.

CanSpeccy , Website Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:11 pm GMT
@utu

On the plus side, everyone now knows that the Anglo-US media from the NY Times to the Economist, from WaPo to the Gruniard, and from the BBC to CNN, the CBC and Weinstein's Hollywood are a worthless bunch of depraved lying bastards.

Thales the Milesian , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:53 pm GMT
Brennan did this, CIA did that .

So what are you going to do about all this?

Continue to whine?

Continue to keep your head stuck in your ass?

So then continue with your blah, blah, blah, and eat sh*t.

You, disgusting self-elected democratic people/institutions!!!

AB_Anonymous , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:59 pm GMT
Such a truthful portrait of reality ! The ruling elite is indeed massively corrupt, compromised, and controlled by dark forces. And the police state is already here. For most people, so far, in the form of massive collection of personal data and increasing number of mandatory regulations. But just one or two big false-flags away from progressing into something much worse.

The thing is, no matter how thick the mental cages are, and how carefully they are maintained by the daily massive injections of "certified" truth (via MSM), along with neutralizing or compromising of "troublemakers", the presence of multiple alternative sources in the age of Internet makes people to slip out of these cages one by one, and as the last events show – with acceleration.

It means that there's a fast approaching tipping point after which it'd be impossible for those in power both to keep a nice "civilized" face and to control the "cage-free" population. So, no matter how the next war will be called, it will be the war against the free Internet and free people. That's probably why N. Korean leader has no fear to start one.

Art , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 6:18 pm GMT
An aside:

All government secrecy is a curse on mankind. Trump is releasing the JFK murder files to the public. Kudos! Let us hope he will follow up with a full 9/11 investigation.

Think Peace -- Art

Mr. Anon , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:07 pm GMT
@utu

The objective was to push new administration into the corner from which it could not improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he wanted to during the campaign.

Good point. That was probably one of the objectives (and from the point of view of the deep-state, perhaps the most important objective) of the "Russia hacked our democracy" narrative, in addition to the general deligitimization of the Trump administration.

Art , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:11 pm GMT
And, keep in mind, Washington's Sunni proxies were not a division of the Pentagon; they were entirely a CIA confection: CIA recruited, CIA-armed, CIA-funded and CIA-trained.

Clearly the CIA was making war on Syria. Is secret coercive covert action against sovereign nations Ok? Is it legal? When was the CIA designated a war making entity – what part of the constitution OK's that? Isn't the congress obliged by constitutional law to declare war? (These are NOT six month actions – they go on and on.)

Are committees of six congressman and six senators, who meet in secret, just avoiding the grave constitutional questions of war? We the People cannot even interrogate these politicians. (These politicians make big money in the secrecy swamp when they leave office.)

Syria is only one of many nations that the CIA is attacking – how many countries are we attacking with drones? Where is congress?

Spying is one thing – covert action is another – covert is wrong – it goes against world order. Every year after 9/11 they say things are worse – give them more money more power and they will make things safe. That is BS!

9/11 has opened the flood gates to the US government attacking at will, the various peoples of this Earth. That is NOT our prerogative.

We are being exceptionally arrogant.

Close the CIA – give the spying to the 16 other agencies.

Think Peace -- Art

Rurik , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:12 pm GMT
@Ben10

right at 1:47

when he says 'we can't move on as a country'

his butt hurt is so ruefully obvious, that I couldn't help notice a wry smile on my face

that bitch spent millions on the war sow, and now all that mullah won't even wipe his butt hurt

when I see ((guys)) like this raging their inner crybaby angst, I feel really, really good about President Trump

MAGA bitches!

Mr. Anon , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:15 pm GMT
@jilles dykstra

I am reading Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the USA

A Peoples History of the USA? Which Peoples?

Tradecraft46 , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 8:04 pm GMT
I am SAIS 70 so know the drill and the article is on point.

Here is the dealio. Most reporters are dim and have no experience, and it is real easy to lead them by the nose with promises of better in the future.

[Mar 05, 2019] The Shadow Governments Destruction Of Democracy

Highly recommended!
Trump actually proved to be very convenient President to CIA., Probably as convenient as Obama... Both completely outsourced foreign policy to neocons and CIA )in this sense the appointment of Pompeo is worst joke Trump could play with the remnants of US democracy_ .
Notable quotes:
"... "The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street." ..."
"... "It's agencies like the CIA, the NSA and the other intelligence agencies, that are essentially designed to disseminate disinformation and deceit and propaganda, and have a long history of doing not only that, but also have a long history of the world's worst war crimes, atrocities and death squads." ..."
"... Greenwald asserts the the CIA preferred Clinton because, like the clandestine agency, she supported regime change in Syria. In contrast, Trump dismissed America's practice of nation-building and declined to tow the line on ousting foreign leaders, instead advocating working with Russia to defeat ISIS and other extremist groups. ..."
"... "So, Trump's agenda that he ran on was completely antithetical to what the CIA wanted," Greenwald argued. "Clinton's was exactly what the CIA wanted, and so they were behind her. And so, they've been trying to undermine Trump for many months throughout the election. And now that he won, they are not just undermining him with leaks, but actively subverting him." ..."
"... But on the other hand, the CIA was elected by nobody. They're barely subject to democratic controls at all. And so, to urge that the CIA and the intelligence community empower itself to undermine the elected branches of government is insanity. ..."
"... He also points out the left's hypocrisy in condemning Flynn for lying when James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence during the Obama administration, perpetuated lies without ever being held accountable. ..."
Feb 19, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
And on the heels of Dennis Kucinich's warnings , The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald, who opposes Trump for a variety of reasons, warns that siding with the evidently powerful Deep State in the hopes of undermining Trump is dangerous. As TheAntiMedia's Carey Wedler notes , Greenwald asserted in an interview with Democracy Now, published on Thursday, that this boils down to a fight between the Deep State and the Trump administration.

https://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2017/2/16/greenwald_empowering_the_deep_state_to

Though Greenwald has argued the leaks were "wholly justified" in spite of the fact they violated criminal law, he also questioned the motives behind them.

"It's very possible - I'd say likely - that the motive here was vindictive rather than noble," he wrote. "Whatever else is true, this is a case where the intelligence community, through strategic (and illegal) leaks, destroyed one of its primary adversaries in the Trump White House."

According to an in-depth report by journalist Mike Lofgren:

"The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street."

As Greenwald explained during his interview:

"It's agencies like the CIA, the NSA and the other intelligence agencies, that are essentially designed to disseminate disinformation and deceit and propaganda, and have a long history of doing not only that, but also have a long history of the world's worst war crimes, atrocities and death squads."

Greenwald believes this division is a result of the Deep State's disapproval of Trump's foreign policy and the fact that the intelligence community overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton over Trump because of her hawkish views. Greenwald noted that Mike Morell, acting CIA chief under Obama, and Michael Hayden, who ran both the CIA and NSA under George W. Bush, openly spoke out against Trump during the presidential campaign.

Greenwald asserts the the CIA preferred Clinton because, like the clandestine agency, she supported regime change in Syria. In contrast, Trump dismissed America's practice of nation-building and declined to tow the line on ousting foreign leaders, instead advocating working with Russia to defeat ISIS and other extremist groups.

"So, Trump's agenda that he ran on was completely antithetical to what the CIA wanted," Greenwald argued. "Clinton's was exactly what the CIA wanted, and so they were behind her. And so, they've been trying to undermine Trump for many months throughout the election. And now that he won, they are not just undermining him with leaks, but actively subverting him."

"[In] the closing months of the Obama administration, they put together a deal with Russia to create peace in Syria. A few days later, a military strike in Syria killed a hundred Syrian soldiers and that ended the agreement. What happened is inside the intelligence and the Pentagon there was a deliberate effort to sabotage an agreement the White House made."

Greenwald, who opposes Trump for a variety of reasons, warns that siding with the evidently powerful Deep State in the hopes of undermining Trump is dangerous. "Trump was democratically elected and is subject to democratic controls, as these courts just demonstrated and as the media is showing, as citizens are proving," he said, likely alluding to a recent court ruling that nullified Trump's travel ban.

He continued:

"But on the other hand, the CIA was elected by nobody. They're barely subject to democratic controls at all. And so, to urge that the CIA and the intelligence community empower itself to undermine the elected branches of government is insanity."

He argues that mentality is "a prescription for destroying democracy overnight in the name of saving it," highlighting that members of both prevailing political parties are praising the Deep State's audacity in leaking details of Flynn's conversations.

As he wrote in his article, " it's hard to put into words how strange it is to watch the very same people - from both parties, across the ideological spectrum - who called for the heads of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Tom Drake, and so many other Obama-era leakers today heap praise on those who leaked the highly sensitive, classified SIGINT information that brought down Gen. Flynn."

He also points out the left's hypocrisy in condemning Flynn for lying when James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence during the Obama administration, perpetuated lies without ever being held accountable.

[Mar 02, 2019] Watters Words The swamp strikes back

Pretty interesting video... no we know that the Swamp consumed Flatfooted Donald rather quickly
Notable quotes:
"... Pete Hegseth and Jesse Watters discuss the bitter establishment's desperation to manufacture a Trump scandal ..."
"... Most people don't know that after the 134 men died on the Forrestal fire in 1967 McCain was the ONLY person helicoptered off the ship. It was done for his own safety as many on the ship blamed him for causing the fire by "wet" starting his jet causing a plume of fire to shoot out his plane's exhaust and into the plane behind McCain causing the ordnance to cook off on that jet. McCain then panicked and dropped his own bombs onto the deck making matters much worse. McCain should have ended his career in jail. Oh, wait, he kinda did, maybe karma justice? ..."
"... FakeStream Media ..."
"... The very Fake Media has met their match ..."
Feb 18, 2017 | www.youtube.com
Pete Hegseth and Jesse Watters discuss the bitter establishment's desperation to manufacture a Trump scandal

Louis John 2 hours ago

@hexencoff

McCain is a trouble maker. supporter of the terrorist and warmonger Iraq Libya Syria he is behind all the trouble scumbag

Gary M 3 hours ago
McCain is a globalist
belaghoulashi 2 hours ago
(edited) McCain has always been full of horseshit. And he has always relied on people calling him a hero to get away with it. That schtick is old, the man is a monumental failure for this country, and he needs to have his sorry butt kicked.

ryvr madduck 1 hour ago

+belaghoulashi

Most people don't know that after the 134 men died on the Forrestal fire in 1967 McCain was the ONLY person helicoptered off the ship. It was done for his own safety as many on the ship blamed him for causing the fire by "wet" starting his jet causing a plume of fire to shoot out his plane's exhaust and into the plane behind McCain causing the ordnance to cook off on that jet. McCain then panicked and dropped his own bombs onto the deck making matters much worse. McCain should have ended his career in jail. Oh, wait, he kinda did, maybe karma justice?

Michael Cambo 4 hours ago
When you start to drain the swamp, the swamp creatures start to show.
Alexus Highfield 3 hours ago
@Michael Cambo

don't they...they do say shit floats.

Geoffry Allan 41 minutes ago

@Michael Cambo - Trump has not drained the swamp he has surrounded himself with billionaires in his cabinet who don't give a damn about the working middle class who struggle e eryday to make a living - explain to me how he is draining the swamp

tim sparks 3 hours ago
Trump is trying so fucking hard to do a good job for us.
Integrity Truth-seeker 2 hours ago
@tim sparks

He is not trying... HE IS DOING IT... Like A Boss. Thank God Mark Taylor Prophecies 2017 the best is yet to come

Jodi Boin 3 hours ago
McCain is a traitor and is bought and paid for by Soros.
Grant Davidson 4 hours ago
Love him or hate him. The guy is a frikkin Genius...
Patrick Reagan 4 hours ago
FakeStream Media
Michael Cambo 4 hours ago
@Patrick Reagan

Very FakeStream Media

aspengold5 4 hours ago
I am so disappointed in McCain.
orlando pablo 4 hours ago
my 401k is keep on going up....thank u mr trump....
Dumbass Libtard 3 hours ago
McCain is not a Republican. He is a loser. Yuge difference.1
Mitchel Colvin 3 hours ago
Shut up McCain! I can't stand this clown anymore! Unfortunately, Arizona re-elected him for six more years!
robert barham 4 hours ago
The very Fake Media has met their match
H My ways of thinking! 3 hours ago
Why does everyone feel that if they don't kiss McCain's ass, they are being un American? Mccain has sold out to George Soros. He is a piece of shit who is guilty of no less than treason! Look up the definition for treason if you're in doubt!
Sam Nardo 3 hours ago
(edited) Mc Cain and Graham are two of the best democrats in the GOP. They are called RINOS
kazzicup 3 hours ago
We love and support our President Donald Trump. The media is so dishonest. CNN = Criminal News Network.

Geoffry Allan 34 minutes ago

@kazzicup - yeah if you get rid of the media Trump becomes a dictator - is that what you want he will censor everything and tell you what he wants - Trump is still president and he is doing his job and fulfilling his promises even though the media is there and reporting - so what's the problem - I don't want a got damn dictator running this country - if you don't like the media then just listen to Trump - 2nd amendment free speech and the right to bear arms we have to respect it even if we may disagree

[Mar 02, 2019] Pulling a J. Edgar Hoover on Trump

So the coup against the President was exposed already in Jan 2017 and Trump did not take any measures to prevent the appointment of the Special Prosecutor.
Notable quotes:
"... The stories about Russian intelligence supposedly filming Trump in a high-end Moscow hotel with prostitutes have been circulating around Washington for months. I was briefed about them by a Hillary Clinton associate who was clearly hopeful that the accusations would be released before the election and thus further damage Trump's chances. But the alleged video never seemed to surface and the claims had all the earmarks of a campaign dirty trick. ..."
"... However, now the tales of illicit frolic have been elevated to another level. They have been inserted into an official U.S. intelligence report, the details of which were leaked first to CNN and then to other mainstream U.S. news media outlets. ..."
"... In American history, legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was infamous for using his agency to develop negative information on a political figure and then letting the person know that the FBI had the dirt and certainly would not want it to become public – if only the person would do what the FBI wanted, whether that was to reappoint Hoover to another term or to boost the FBI's budget or – in the infamous case of civil rights leader Martin Luther King – perhaps to commit suicide. ..."
"... Still, perhaps the more troubling issue is whether the U.S. intelligence community has entered a new phase of politicization in which its leadership feels that it has the responsibility to weed out "unfit" contenders for the presidency. During the general election campaign, a well-placed intelligence source told me that the intelligence community disdained both Clinton and Trump and hoped to discredit both of them with the hope that a more "acceptable" person could move into the White House for the next four years. ..."
"... Then, after the election, President Obama's CIA began leaking allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin had orchestrated the hacking of Democratic emails and provided them to WikiLeaks to reveal how the DNC undermined Sen. Bernie Sanders's campaign and what Clinton had told Wall Street bigwigs in paid speeches that she had sought to keep secret from the American people. ..."
"... Now, we are seeing what looks like a new phase in this "stop (or damage) Trump" strategy, the inclusion of anti-Trump dirt in an official intelligence report that was then leaked to the major media. ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
"... There are moments in history when it seems almost the entire population of a nation has been struck with deafness and blindess. This maybe one such moment for the United States as a political elite begins the process of tearing the Union apart. ..."
"... The Craft of Intelligence, by Allen Dulles, (1965, if memory serves; alas, that book's text seems unavailable on the internet) ..."
"... At Kent State the National Guard was quite willing to shoot "their own people". The increasingly militarized Police of the US have been getting lots of practice shooting at "their own people". ..."
"... I'm wondering if we are seeing the beginnings of a President Pence. ..."
"... Why are you in the US so keen on destroying any credibility of your government? ..."
Jan 12, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Exclusive: President-elect Trump is fending off a U.S. intelligence leak of unproven allegations that he cavorted with Russian prostitutes, but the darker story might be the CIA's intervention in U.S. politics, reports Robert Parry.

The decision by the U.S. intelligence community to include in an official report some unverified and salacious accusations against President-elect Donald Trump resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press.

Legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover

In this case, as leaders of the U.S. intelligence community were pressing Trump to accept their assessment that the Russian government had tried to bolster Trump's campaign by stealing and leaking actual emails harmful to Hillary Clinton's campaign, Trump was confronted with this classified "appendix" describing claims about him cavorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room.

Supposedly, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan included the unproven allegations in the report under the rationale that the Russian government might have videotaped Trump's misbehavior and thus could use it to blackmail him. But the U.S. intelligence community also had reasons to want to threaten Trump who has been critical of its performance and who has expressed doubts about its analysis of the Russian "hacking."

After the briefing last Friday, Trump and his incoming administration did shift their position, accepting the intelligence community's assessment that the Russian government hacked the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's campaign chief John Podesta. But I'm told Trump saw no evidence that Russia then leaked the material to WikiLeaks and has avoided making that concession.

Still, Trump's change in tone was noted by the mainstream media and was treated as an admission that he was abandoning his earlier skepticism. In other words, he was finally getting onboard the intelligence community's Russia-did-it bandwagon. Now, however, we know that Trump simultaneously had been confronted with the possibility that the unproven stories about him engaging in unorthodox sex acts with prostitutes could be released, embarrassing him barely a week before his inauguration.

The classified report, with the explosive appendix, was also given to President Obama and the so-called "Gang of Eight," bipartisan senior members of Congress responsible for oversight of the intelligence community, which increased chances that the Trump accusations would be leaked to the press, which indeed did happen.

Circulating Rumors

The stories about Russian intelligence supposedly filming Trump in a high-end Moscow hotel with prostitutes have been circulating around Washington for months. I was briefed about them by a Hillary Clinton associate who was clearly hopeful that the accusations would be released before the election and thus further damage Trump's chances. But the alleged video never seemed to surface and the claims had all the earmarks of a campaign dirty trick.

However, now the tales of illicit frolic have been elevated to another level. They have been inserted into an official U.S. intelligence report, the details of which were leaked first to CNN and then to other mainstream U.S. news media outlets.

Trump has denounced the story as "fake news" and it is certainly true that the juicy details – reportedly assembled by a former British MI-6 spy named Christopher Steele – have yet to check out. But the placement of the rumors in a U.S. government document gave the mainstream media an excuse to publicize the material.

It's also allowed the media to again trot out the Russian word "kompromat" as if the Russians invented the game of assembling derogatory information about someone and then using it to discredit or blackmail the person.

In American history, legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was infamous for using his agency to develop negative information on a political figure and then letting the person know that the FBI had the dirt and certainly would not want it to become public – if only the person would do what the FBI wanted, whether that was to reappoint Hoover to another term or to boost the FBI's budget or – in the infamous case of civil rights leader Martin Luther King – perhaps to commit suicide.

However, in this case, it is not even known whether the Russians have any dirt on Trump. It could just be rumors concocted in the middle of a hard-fought campaign, first among Republicans battling Trump for the nomination (this opposition research was reportedly initiated by backers of Sen. Marco Rubio in the GOP race) before being picked up by Clinton supporters for use in the general election.

Still, perhaps the more troubling issue is whether the U.S. intelligence community has entered a new phase of politicization in which its leadership feels that it has the responsibility to weed out "unfit" contenders for the presidency. During the general election campaign, a well-placed intelligence source told me that the intelligence community disdained both Clinton and Trump and hoped to discredit both of them with the hope that a more "acceptable" person could move into the White House for the next four years.

Hurting Both Candidates

Though I was skeptical of that information, it did turn out that FBI Director James Comey, one of the top officials in the intelligence community, badly damaged Clinton's campaign by deeming her handling of her emails as Secretary of State "extremely careless" but deciding not to prosecute her – and then in the last week of the campaign briefly reopening and then re-closing the investigation.

Then, after the election, President Obama's CIA began leaking allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin had orchestrated the hacking of Democratic emails and provided them to WikiLeaks to reveal how the DNC undermined Sen. Bernie Sanders's campaign and what Clinton had told Wall Street bigwigs in paid speeches that she had sought to keep secret from the American people.

The intelligence community's assessment set the stage for what could have been a revolt by the Electoral College in which enough Trump delegates could have refused to vote for him to send the election into the House of Representatives, where the states would choose the President from one of the top three vote-getters in the Electoral College. The third-place finisher turned out to be former Secretary of State Colin Powell who got four votes from Clinton delegates in Washington State. But the Electoral College ploy failed when Trump's delegates proved overwhelmingly faithful to the GOP candidate.

Now, we are seeing what looks like a new phase in this "stop (or damage) Trump" strategy, the inclusion of anti-Trump dirt in an official intelligence report that was then leaked to the major media.

Whether this move was meant to soften up Trump or whether the intelligence community genuinely thought that the accusations might be true and deserved inclusion in a report on alleged Russian interference in U.S. politics or whether it was some combination of the two, we are witnessing a historic moment when the U.S. intelligence community has deployed its extraordinary powers within the domain of U.S. politics. J. Edgar Hoover would be proud.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

Bryan Hemming , January 12, 2017 at 11:06 am

Excuse the mixed metaphors, but this looks like another entirely predictable nail in the coffin of US democracy, as the chickens come home to roost. For some time it has been quite obvious the CIA has been pulling strings from behind the scenes to make whatever puppet occupies the White House dance to its tune. But it won't end there. Only when the CIA climbs completely out of the coffin can the epic finale between the CIA, FBI and NSA begin.

The big question is as to how long the people of states like Texas and Florida stand by in the wings as the theater catches fire.

There are moments in history when it seems almost the entire population of a nation has been struck with deafness and blindess. This maybe one such moment for the United States as a political elite begins the process of tearing the Union apart.

Jean-David , January 12, 2017 at 11:22 am

Don't mix your metaphors before they are hatched. ;-) Reply

Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 2:05 pm

There are moments in history when it seems almost the entire population of a nation has been struck with deafness and blindess. This maybe one such moment for the United States as a political elite begins the process of tearing the Union apart.

The United States has been accused of decadence for decades by Americans and non-Americans without much concern being shown by anyone not in a certain minority. The great tragedy of a decadent way of life is its durability.

In 1961 William Lederer's book, "A Nation of Sheep" revealed the abuse of American power and the ignorance of the American people regarding this misrule. Nothing much has changed since then except the names of the aggressors and their primary geographic areas of intended domination. The mass of people are essentially clueless and content to believe whatever lies and salacious tales are told them from the nation's Towers of Babel. This is in line with human history that shows people of authoritarian dispositions tend to be more aggressive and dominant in politics and commerce and the masses accept their lot as long as they get enough crumbs from establishment's plate..

(The title of the book was also an insult to sheep, but that is another story.)

Common Tater , January 12, 2017 at 4:59 pm

The saying goes, "power corrupts," but i believe that it is the corrupt who seek power to begin with.
Most people are content to live and let live, to live by the golden rule, mind their own and reciprocate kindness etc., etc.
Then there are those who get a thrill from exercising control over others. Those are the ones who shoot straight to the top.

Jack Flanigan , January 14, 2017 at 1:47 am

An interesting and clear observation. As an australian I note our system is dominated by two major parties (and I mean dominated) similar to the US. The two parties are vehicles for ambitious and corrupt individuals to fast track political careers. The power rests in these organizations and attracts the corrupt like bees to honey. Reply

Curious , January 12, 2017 at 6:09 pm

Bill, regarding your sense of human history I might add that for many centuries people couldn't read, except for the aristocracy and the religious sects mostly. The reformation produced a 100 year war and literacy was at an all time low in Luthers time but something motivated them to fight for such a long time, and it wasn't information nor intellect.

Where has our literacy gone which would prevent a repeat of endless war and violence these days? Oh yes, corporate controlled media hiring people who are certain to have no critical thinking skills, no moral rudder, nor worldly experience to shed the scales from their eyes. We are almost in pre-Gutenberg times of short attention spans and 140 character 'news truths' covering the landscape of the ignorant. One can only hope the Tower of the oligarchs Babel has rapidly decaying clay feet. We certainly know how to reduce cultures more ancient than ours to ashes without so much as a second thought regarding the sanctity of life. Where are all the pro-lifers now? Oh yeh, that's only in the womb, and after the umbilical cord is cut they are fair game for destruction. The US values we rave about will really hurt when other cultures treat us as they have been treated.

Curious , January 12, 2017 at 6:32 pm

Or better yet, we are in Gutenberg times where the "type" is set by the big players and the papers around the country keep the same type and only add ink. It's their only function now at the national level to inhibit discourse, excluding this site of course. Reply

Curious , January 12, 2017 at 6:34 pm

Or better yet, we are in times of the early press machines, where the "type" is set by the big players and the papers around the country keep the same type and only add ink. It's their only function now at the national level, meant to inhibit discourse and ideas. (excluding this site of course) Reply

Wendi , January 12, 2017 at 5:41 pm

In its Hoover relation, this article reprises the passage in The Craft of Intelligence, by Allen Dulles, (1965, if memory serves; alas, that book's text seems unavailable on the internet).

It describes the power struggle involved post-FDR, during-HST 1946-48, at the institution of the CIA (The Agency was not legislatively enacted, only instituted through Executive Order.)
Hoover opposed the creation of an intelligence collection that would compete with the FBI's monopoly of spies snoops and snitches.

The compromise settlement set the FBI with domestic coverage and the CIA with international haunts for its spooks.

Come the the present day, they still have turf wars in power rivalry for budget money.
However, in effect, after the budget shuffle the two legions merge their 'assets' - making each one double its real size. They join in advocating for (the oxymoronic) 'authoritarian morality,' gaining both the unlawfulness funded in the Judiciary with same unlawfulness, (or, being 'outlaw,' 'above the law'), funded by the Executive.

You can depend that they employ the same techniques. Coercion, extortion, blackmail, assassination, torture, defamation, slander and Press Release aspersion. The polity is hung pendant on those strings the outlaws pull. Or, 'hanged' pendant.

As Hoover, so Clapper et al.

Trump seems to have reconsided, maybe recanted, his defiance of 'intelligence' after he has seen some truth in it regarding things he knows he did in places he knows he was. He knows he dare not let the public see him through the cyclopian 'eye' of the intelligentia illumination.
_____
My wit sez, Lo! That explains his undocumented wife - he heard about Russian mail-order brides and flew off to visit the showroom. And brought back some capital equipment, manufactured in foreign lands.

Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 10:04 pm

The Craft of Intelligence, by Allen Dulles, (1965, if memory serves; alas, that book's text seems unavailable on the internet)

Try alibris or abebooks dot coms. They have copies.

Joe Lauria , January 14, 2017 at 9:08 am

There's a Kindle edition available. Reply

Kiza , January 13, 2017 at 8:34 am

Good comment Bryan, but I wonder if we should pay attention at all to this decline of everything, not only of democracy. Yet, I wish to highlight two humorous comments which best characterise the situation.

The first one was a title I saw on Russia-Insider website: "Trump watch out! John Brennan throws even a kitchen sink at Trump in desperation."

The other was a comment by a zero-hedge reader: "Trump could have had sex with a goat in a Moscow hotel room and be videod as much as I care if he only delivers on his election promises. I voted based on his policy promises, not on his sexual preferences."

The sexual smear is so 20th century, the same as the CIA – obsolete.

Kiza , January 13, 2017 at 11:39 am

To continue on the humorous side, the vile RT has one on the Pornhub reporting a huge increase in searches for "Golden Showers". Perhaps the kiddies are adding a new term to their vocabularies.

https://www.rt.com/viral/373545-pornhub-golden-showers-trump/ Reply

rosemerry , January 13, 2017 at 5:10 pm

It seems that Trump supporters are many and varied, and very loyal. To pretend that all these shenanigans were needed to help elect him against such a faulty candidate as Hillary is pathetic in the extreme. The terrible results, when we see how the new Administration is being gently helped by the Senate including Democrats, will be bad for us all if their warlike statements lead to facts. However, Obama's sending of 2800 tanks and 4000 troops to help Germany(!) and Poland against "Russian aggression" right now, plus Hillary's promises, do not give a hopeful alternative scenario for the "land of the free" or peace on earth. Reply

W. R. Knight , January 12, 2017 at 11:06 am

The saddest part of this entire debacle is that the intelligence agencies, as well as main stream media, the president and most members of Congress have destroyed their own credibility. Lacking credibility, they cannot be believed; and when they cannot be believed, they cannot be trusted; and a government that cannot be trusted is doomed.

J. D. , January 12, 2017 at 1:35 pm

Trump proved more feisty than expected at his first press conference as President-Elect, hitting back at both Buzzfeed ('You're fake news" and CNN ("you're organization is terrible") And went on to say that "If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what, folks? That's called an asset, not a liability," describing the urgency of cooperation in defeating terrorism. Lost in the shuffle however was the source of the lies - British intelligence agencies.In fact, the NYTimes reported Jan. 6 that the official report released last week by the US intelligence agencies, which accused Putin of subverting the U.S. election, also came from British intelligence, which "raised an alarm that Moscow had hacked into the Democratic National Committee's computer servers, and alerted their American counterparts.Talk about foreign interference.

Anna , January 12, 2017 at 9:52 pm

friends of Israel in action in the UK Reply

Furtive , January 12, 2017 at 11:40 pm

A 4 chan blogger wrote it as a hoax Reply

Steve Abbott , January 12, 2017 at 2:15 pm

Get with the program! We are supposed to believe that all we have heard from and about the CIA in this century was pure and innocent incompetence, and should therefore continue to put all of our faith in their motives and methods. Reply

Godfree Roberts , January 13, 2017 at 4:55 am

Do you know which major government is the most trusted by its citizens?
The Edelman Corporation does. They've been doing 'government trust' surveys for decades. Check it out. http://www.slideshare.net/EdelmanAPAC/2016-edelman-trust-barometer-china-english .
Hint: China Reply

Dan Kuhn , January 12, 2017 at 11:08 am

The entire sordid mess needs to be dismantled brick by brick and rebuilt from the ground up. Washington should be razed to the ground. It is beyond rescuing. it is beyond saving. It is rotten from the foundations to the pinicle of the obilisk. The American People should declare war on Washington DC and invade the place and clean house. Bring the Guillotine along with them and the baskets for the heads.

The stench is overwhelming. It needs to be cleaned up. No it needs to be wiped from the face of the earth. One of the founding fathers said that periodically, the tree of democracy had to be watered with blood. That time has arrived. Reply

Znam Svashta , January 12, 2017 at 11:22 am

George Orwell predicted our current mess in his classic, "1984". Interestingly, that was the year that the neocons took over the Pentagon's Office of Risk Assessment, the State Department, and the whore-house American media. Reply

Lin Cleveland , January 12, 2017 at 11:50 am

What's going on here? I think Julian Assange may be on to something. ( my bold )

"Hillary Clinton's election would have been a consolidation of power in the existing ruling class of the United States. Donald Trump is not a D.C. insider , he is part of the wealthy ruling elite of the United States, and he is gathering around him a spectrum of other rich people and several idiosyncratic personalities. They do not by themselves form an existing structure, so it is a weak structure which is displacing and destabilizing the pre-existing central power network within D.C. It is a new patronage structure which will evolve rapidly, but at the moment its looseness means there are opportunities for change in the United States: change for the worse and change for the better."–Julian Assange

floyd gardner , January 12, 2017 at 2:02 pm

Thanks, Lin [for your 'bold.' Assange and Snowden are two voices "in the wilderness" always worth listening to. Reply

Jessejean , January 12, 2017 at 2:10 pm

Brilliant– as always. No matter how vilified JA is and no matter how much he's lied about, he still is a force for reason and subversion, both of which we desparately need. Thanks for the quote. Reply

D5-5 , January 12, 2017 at 4:50 pm

Curious to me in the two-pronged attack on Trump (a. demonizing to delegitimize and replace with Pence coming from the political establishment; b. hysterical fear of Trump coming from left wing journalism sources including left-oriented alternative news sites) is why the hysteria in the left continues so virulently. Assange's comment, to me, is balanced and sober. We don't know what will happen out of Trump and his collection of "idiosyncratic personalities," we don't know what will turn out "change for the worse and change for the better," and all the fear-mongering from people like Robert Reich, appearing regularly in Truthdig, is entirely speculative. I then question–would these same people on the left, that I once thought to be colleagues, prefer Hillary Clinton and "consolidation of power in the existing ruling class"? This fracturing in what I had thought was an intelligent left opposition is disturbing.

floyd gardner , January 12, 2017 at 9:36 pm

As an "old leftie" myself, I'd have to agree with Paul Craig Roberts that there IS no left anymore. It was co-opted and bought by Big Money. Maybe we need to forget about "left" and "right" and operate according to our own minds rather tha taking our cues from apologists for the establishment like Robert Reich. But it sounds like you're already doing that. Reply

Mark West , January 12, 2017 at 5:10 pm

Change that will undoubtedly benefit the privileged in a big way.

I don't give a crap about if Trump had prostitutes. That's between he and his wife. What I do care about is if there are Trump financial threads to Russia and if his team had illegal meetings with Moscow before the election. There are too many questions that need to be answered.

Why does Trump continue to dote on Putin? He's a vicious killer who has no qualms of eliminating his opponents. Those are facts.

Why won't he release his tax returns? It could only mean he is hiding something.

What benefit does the world intelligence community gain in smearing a president elect? Is it financial? idealogical? Power? Are they not tied and beholdened more to the entrenched financial hierarchies then to the ever changing political landscape?

What advantage did this operative from British intelligence gain from compiling this info? Money, fame, a 2nd home in Portugal?

How does anyone watching that press conference not come away with the chilly realization that our president-elect is psychologically impaired? My god you don't have to be a trained psychologist to see the guy has some serious mental health issues.

Anna , January 12, 2017 at 9:54 pm

"He's a vicious killer " – this is a music for the Kagans' clan Reply

JayHobeSound , January 13, 2017 at 4:10 am

"What advantage did this operative from British intelligence gain from compiling this info?"

Reportedly he asked his neighbours to feed his cats and he went into hiding. Bizarre.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article126129709.html Reply

Godfree Roberts , January 13, 2017 at 4:59 am

'Why does Trump continue to dote on Putin? He's a vicious killer who has no qualms of eliminating his opponents. Those are facts.'
Facts? I'm pretty familiar with Putin's career and I've seen nothing to suggest that Putin is a killer at all.
Can you provide links to evidence? Not just links to other people making assertions without evidence, please. Reply

Truth First , January 13, 2017 at 6:20 pm

"Why does Trump continue to dote on Putin? He's a vicious killer who has no qualms of eliminating his opponents. Those are facts."
You talking about Trump or Putin? In any case has Russia or Putin killed as many people as America or Obama. The "facts" say no, not even close. Reply

stinky rafsanjani , January 16, 2017 at 9:36 am

vicious killer? since when is that a bad thing? jinkies, obama of nobel fame
sends missiles and drones around the planet, bombing and killing for fun and
profit. why, he even orders the assassination of citizens of his own country,
without trial even. meanwhile, putin has, umm look! a squirrel!

James van Oosterom , January 16, 2017 at 11:45 am

Nobody said it was a bad thing. You're inferring things. Stick to squirrels . Ah yes, the door . Reply

Andreas Wirsén , January 12, 2017 at 11:54 am

A "new phase" in Intelligence meddling with presidential candidates, yes – but only in how openly they stand behind it as the source. Campaigns to scandalize unwanted primary challengers have been alleged before. Senator Gary Hart, for one, has said in interviews he believes he was caught in a honey trap, which cost him his candidacy.

floyd gardner , January 12, 2017 at 2:08 pm

Gary Hart, a potentially strong contender, was also [like Trump] not up to Deep State's standards in Russophobia. Reply

LongGoneJohn , January 12, 2017 at 12:04 pm

Didn't Trump just acknowledge that attacks on cyber US infrastructure including the DNC takes place, in a general way? That is what his statement read and to me that does not sound like "Trump acknowledges Russian DNC hack" at all.

So is it me, or ?

floyd gardner , January 12, 2017 at 2:12 pm

No, LGJ, it's not just you who can read through MSMB[ullsh t.] Reply

Michael Morrissey , January 12, 2017 at 12:05 pm

If Trump & Co. accept "the intelligence community's assessment that the Russian government hacked the emails," they are only saying that, as is common knowledge, everybody hacks everybody. This is not, as Parry says, an acceptance of the intelligence "assessment" that Putin or Russian hackers released the emails, or even got them. Assange and Murray have said unequivocally that the source was inside the DNC, which means it cannot have been the Russians.

Zachary Smith , January 12, 2017 at 1:07 pm

Assange and Murray have said unequivocally that the source was inside the DNC, which means it cannot have been the Russians.

Assange and Murray might be right, and they might not. There is a term being tossed around – "cutout". Just because an intermediary claims to be a DNC leaker doesn't mean he actually was such.

Under the circumstances I just don't care. Now if the Russians or Chinese or Ugandans or anybody else had done more than facilitate the release of true information useful to voters, I'd be agitated myself. Not that I'd expect anybody else to be. US votes have been hacked ever since the no-verify touchscreen devices were first introduced, and nobody in authority has given a hoot about it.

Jessejean , January 12, 2017 at 2:18 pm

Zachary–you are so right. It drives me crazy that Bush got away with stealing the voting system and all the Damn Dems care about is using it themselves. And now it drives me crazy that the Clintonistas took down Bernie and are getting away with it. With that cat's paw Obusha hanging around to "work" on rebuilding the DNC, we'll never see democracy again.

Sam F , January 13, 2017 at 6:52 am

We must indeed Dump the Dems. We need a progressive party.

There is a strong progressive majority everywhere which is being deliberately fragmented by the Dems. In the US, Clinton supporters must unify not only with the critics of Dem warmongering for Israel and KSA, but also with the Trumpers who want economic security in a rapacious oligarchic state. Clinton supporters will have to admit their mistake and abandon the Dems as a scam of oligarchy serving only as a backstop for the Repubs.

The solution is for a third party to align moderate progressives (national health care, no wars of choice, income security) with parts of the traditional right (fundamentalists, flag-wavers, make America great) leaving out only the extreme right (wars, discrimination, big business imperialism), use individual funding, and rely upon broad platform appeal to marginalize the Dems as the third party.

RMDC , January 13, 2017 at 9:28 am

Sam F. I agree with you but you have to stop using the term "progressive." The Clinton faction of the demo party owns that term. It arose with John Podesta's Center for American Progress. Podesta is the ideologue of contemporary progressivism. It has nothing to do with the Progressive movement of the early 20th century.

The right term is Sander's term: Democratic Socialism. I know socialism is a problematic term, too, but at least it is now claimed by the right people.

Sam F , January 13, 2017 at 2:20 pm

RMDC: Do you think "Progressive" can be brought back to its original meaning, or given a better one, despite people falsely claiming to be progressive? Sanders' term might be incorporated into that. It would be nice to deny the fakers the use of it.

Truth First , January 13, 2017 at 6:23 pm

"we'll never see democracy again."

Humm? When did we last see that "democracy" thing? Reply

Bill Cash , January 12, 2017 at 12:08 pm

Trump could end all this by releasing his tax returns but he won't do it. I believe the intelligence community had fears that once inaugurated, Trump would squash the whole thing. The Russian connection is the only theory that connects all the dots. I'm waiting t see what happens with Assange. Will he suddenly be able to go to Sweden?
As far as Trump's behavior, don't forget he was accused of raping a 13 year old girl but the woman had to withdraw the suit because her life was threatened.

Anna , January 12, 2017 at 9:56 pm

Why is your post such a strong reminder of Pizzagate? Reply

Furtive , January 12, 2017 at 11:48 pm

Wont make any difference what t he does. He's an outsider. There's no escape except trying & convicting the traitors running obama. Reply

Wm. Boyce , January 12, 2017 at 12:14 pm

Very interesting column. I guess Mr. Trump is getting a lesson in who really runs things around here. Reply

Patricia Victour , January 12, 2017 at 12:22 pm

Unless Trump killed a prostitute on film, how could whatever is on the alleged video be any worse than the pussy-grabbing debacle and all the other accusations of sexual predation? I don't think you can embarrass Trump. He would just brush it off, and his base would probably think he was a super stud.

Wm. Boyce , January 12, 2017 at 12:52 pm

Oh, I don't know, they could well have much worse stuff to leak, given Mr. Trump's complete lack of control of his desires.

Zachary Smith , January 12, 2017 at 12:59 pm

I collected a lot of "stuff" on Trump from the internet in the past year, and was surprised to see virtually none of it used against him. My best guess is that Hillary & Co. didn't think it was necessary against their carefully selected "easiest" opponent. That "stuff" is still available, and might well be used to buttress wilder and unverifiable claims.

col from oz , January 12, 2017 at 7:49 pm

Yesterday on anther site i wrote how Hillary was complicit in a very serious charge.
Please watch video titles, where is Eric braverman on you tube . I have watched some and most of the material gives you the reality of what is occurring. A example is this. A fact is Gaddafi wanted to have some kind of gold backed Dina money policy. Fact. So Libya had a lot of gold maybe hundreds of tons. Where is it now. Did the "invaders' get it with their usual cut out Libyan man?
In the spirit of trying to make a better world i put this up, it seems political unbiased however it shows the Clinton as they are?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vam6qxfQrgA

day 70

Gregory Herr , January 12, 2017 at 8:48 pm

"For over four decades, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi's rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans."
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/20/libya-from-africas-wealthiest-democracy-under-gaddafi-to-terrorist-haven-after-us-intervention/

"Libya's Qadhafi (African Union 2009 Chair) conceived and financed a plan to unify the sovereign States of Africa with one gold currency (United States of Africa). In 2004, a pan-African Parliament (53 nations) laid plans for the African Economic Community – with a single gold currency by 2023.

"African oil-producing nations were planning to abandon the petro-dollar, and demand gold payment for oil/gas Qaddafi had done more than organize an African monetary coup. He had demonstrated that financial independence could be achieved. His greatest infrastructure project, the Great Man-made River, was turning arid regions into a breadbasket for Libya; and the $33 billion project was being funded interest-free without foreign debt, through Libya's own state-owned bank.
That could explain why this critical piece of infrastructure was destroyed in 2011. NATO not only bombed the pipeline but finished off the project by bombing the factory producing the pipes necessary to repair it."

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2987399/why_qaddafi_had_to_go_african_gold_oil_and_the_challenge_to_monetary_imperialism.html

dave , January 12, 2017 at 3:24 pm

Speaking of "leaks", isn't the specific accusation in this case that Trump paid a prostitute to "take a leak" on the bed where he believed the Obamas had spent the night? (So I guess it was the prostitute that had "worse stuff to leak"!)

Gregory Herr , January 12, 2017 at 8:58 pm

And while no one at Trump's press conference mentioned the specifics, Trump stated, "Does anyone really believe that story? I'm also very much of a germaphobe, by the way, believe me."

Anna , January 12, 2017 at 9:56 pm

Check Chan4

Gregory Herr , January 12, 2017 at 11:04 pm

Anna, do you mean the British television programme?

Furtive , January 12, 2017 at 11:48 pm

What? Dim wit. Reply

backwardsevolution , January 12, 2017 at 12:36 pm

The Saker writes in "The Neocon's Declaration of War Against Trump":

"After several rather lame false starts, the Neocons have now taken a step which can only be called a declaration of war against Donald Trump. [ ] All of the above further confirms to me what I have been saying over the past weeks: if Trump ever makes it into the White House (I write 'if' because I think that the Neocons are perfectly capable of assassinating him), his first priority should be to ruthlessly crack down as hard as he legally can against those in the US "deep state" (which very much includes the media) who have now declared war on him. I am sorry to say that, but it will be either him or them – one of the parties here will be crushed. [ ]

As I predicted it before the election, the USA are about to enter the worst crisis in their history. We are entering extraordinarily dangerous times. If the danger of a thermonuclear war between Russia and the USA had dramatically receded with the election of Trump, the Neocon total war on Trump put the United States at very grave risk, including civil war (should the Neocon controlled Congress impeach Trump I believe that uprisings will spontaneously happen, especially in the South, and especially in Florida and Texas). At the risk of sounding over the top, I will say that what is happening now is putting the very existence of the United States in danger almost regardless of what Trump will personally do. Whatever we may think of Trump as a person and about his potential as a President, what is certain is that millions of American patriots have voted for him to "clear the swamp", give the boot to the Washington-based plutocracy and restore what they see as fundamental American values. If the Neocons now manage to stage a coup d'etat against Trump, I predict that these millions of Americans will turn to violence to protect what they see as their way of life

If a coup is staged against Trump and some wannabe President ŕ la Hillary or McCain gives the order to the National Guard or even the US Army to put down a local insurrection, we could see what we saw in Russia in 1991: a categorical refusal of the security services to shoot at their own people. That is the biggest and ultimate danger for the Neocons: the risk that if they give the order to crack down on the population the police, security and military services might simply refuse to take action. If that could happen in the "KGB-controlled country" (to use a Cold War cliché) this can also happen in the USA."

Zachary Smith , January 12, 2017 at 12:54 pm

If a coup is staged against Trump and some wannabe President ŕ la Hillary or McCain gives the order to the National Guard or even the US Army to put down a local insurrection, we could see what we saw in Russia in 1991: a categorical refusal of the security services to shoot at their own people.

At Kent State the National Guard was quite willing to shoot "their own people". The increasingly militarized Police of the US have been getting lots of practice shooting at "their own people". I suspect that's why a great many of them joined up in the first place. Finally, carefully chosen drone operators thousands or tens of thousands of miles away won't have the slightest problem slaughtering evildoers. That's what they do all the time in their regular jobs.

Brad Owen , January 12, 2017 at 3:44 pm

Don't forget veterans, millions of them. When THEY stepped up to the North Dakota pipeline, security forces backed off. Backwards' described scenario could be our "1991" moment to break free and break the Deep State, and reinstating Glass-Steagall would break their Imperial paymasters in The City and The Street. A new World could suddenly come about, faster than even the USSR/Warsaw Pact disappeared. Reply

Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 10:14 pm

At Kent State the National Guard was quite willing to shoot "their own people". The increasingly militarized Police of the US have been getting lots of practice shooting at "their own people".

Police departments all over the U.S. and other nations have a long history of acting as goon squads and occasional firing squads for their local establishments. Lots of examples in labor histories. Reply

Peter Loeb , January 13, 2017 at 8:23 am

KILLING OUR OWN PEOPLE .

Special thanks to Zachary Smith.

In the US it's called "heroism", patriotism" and the rest. But if we are
inconvenienced to kill our own people, we can kill other peoples'
people. Gigantic weapons deals to Saudi Arabia and Israel
are proof of that.

By the way, did anyone happen to notice in the NDAA (Defense Authorization
Act) the increase of funds to rebels in another country whose goal is to
defeat the Syrian Government?

-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA

PS For those who object to our killing our own people in the US join
Black Lives Matter. Reply

Oleg , January 13, 2017 at 2:53 am

At the very least, the US should get rid of this prolonged waiting period between the elections and actual assuming power by the president-elect. It was meant to facilitate the orderly transition of power, but as we see now it is serving just the opposite goals. I cannot believe Obama is so keen on hurting Trump he is ready to badly hurt his own country as well. Reply

Zachary Smith , January 12, 2017 at 12:37 pm

Whether this move was meant to soften up Trump

The motive I see is to "soften" him up for his impeachment. Given Trump's temperament, it could be a winning strategy for the people who prefer President Pence. In my barely informed opinion, that would include a majority of both parties in both houses of the US congress.

Joe Tedesky , January 12, 2017 at 1:41 pm

Read section 4 of the 25th amendment .

"Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President."

I'm wondering if we are seeing the beginnings of a President Pence. Although Donald Trump may give one some consternation to his being a qualified person to sit in the Oval Office, Mike Pence may bring down the house with his religious leanings inside of his political philosophy. Either way we Americans are in for a most interesting time of it in our country's brief history. We should all probably prepare ourselves for the worst, and hope that the best will happen.

Zachary wasn't Mike Pense your governor, or do I have you in the wrong state?

Realist , January 12, 2017 at 4:27 pm

Fascinating and disturbing at the same time. That section was surely MEANT to apply to the president's health and physical capacity to do the job. However, a declaration by the VP (supported only by a simple majority of the cabinet or the congress) "that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" can be based in an insurrection, a coup, or simply the erosion of political capital. Gerald Ford could have argued that Richard Nixon no longer had the support to govern (which is what Nixon himself conceded as the basis for his resignation). It basically gives the VP and whatever insurgents he can muster the ability to quickly overthrow the sitting president without the inconvenience of an impeachment and trial in the Senate. It could be the Maidan without the messy blood all over the pavement. How wonderful.

Very resourceful of you in looking that up, Joe. I would never have imagined the seeds for a coup existed right in the constitution.

Kiza , January 13, 2017 at 9:16 am

I have a saying: For the people in law-enforcement, law is a fringe benefit. Those who control law always use it as a tool. Have you ever heard of a coup which was not based on some law, even if it was the one written post-festum by the coup plotters? In other words, a coup is never difficult to justify by the winners.

I have no doubt that the coup that Joe describes is possible. But the issue for the coup plotters has always been: what happens with all the Trump voters after such a coup, the millions of them? Will they sit and just watch the destruction of their social contract?

To some extent such US coup dilemma is not dissimilar to the nuclear war dilemma: easy to start, difficult to finish.

Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 10:53 am

KIza, nice to hear from you it's been awhile.

Read this link. Trump got 26.8% of the total citizenry to vote for him. In all honesty I haven't seen any polls on how the American populace shakes out on these controversies such as this most recent fake news story, but I would imagine that a clever beat down campaign would be able to soften the blowback .but then again I agree with you to some extent, that by pushing Trump out of office this would have to have some kind of consequence that would not be pretty.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/12/bringing-trump-nation-down-to-size/

Kiza , January 13, 2017 at 11:20 am

Joe, in general I am trying to highlight that it is one thing to bamboozle sheeple with a talk of democracy (which does not exist) and another to openly crush even this reassuring lie. I just cannot see the end game of a US coup and Trump is but a minor obstacle if they want to start it.

Therefore, they really want to make a Trump a lame and controllable President, not to take over. Maintaining a reassuring lie of democracy is a much more sophisticated and efficient control mechanism than direct control. I may we wrong but I do believe that Trump is just being house trained/broken by TPTB in front of our eyes.

You write: I have not seen any polls how American populace shakes out on these controversies.
My reading of the online beat is that the Trump voters are not swayed, whilst the Clinton voters use the "controversy" as confirmation that they were right all along about Trump. But then Clinton voters would receive a confirmation even from an oily rag thrown in their direction. In other words, a mountain shook and a mouse was born – almost no change at all on either side.

Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 12:56 pm

KIza your comparing Trump's attackers to how the MH17 story was spun is right on.

http://journal-neo.org/2017/01/11/trump-and-mh17-just-one-step-too-far/

Trump is an easy target since his nature is certainly different than that of the usual norm of our politico class who are cookie cutter politicians on the whole. I'm disappointed by how people such as Michael Moore are going out of their way attacking Trump, while they completely ignore how corrupt and dishonest the Clinton's are.

I wouldn't go so far as to predict that Trump supporters won't rebel against his impeachment, but there again I believe the Trump supporters would be out numbered due to an over aggressive media who could sway the majority into believing we must get Trump out of office. Any other method other than impeachment is to horrible to even contemplate, so let's hope that all of our concerns turn to ashes, and that for the good or bad of it that Trump finishes out his first term in good health.

Kiza , January 13, 2017 at 8:19 pm

Yes, Joe, those 26.8% of citizenry who voted for Trump are built into 75-76% of citizenry who do not believe in the MSM any more and in the John Brennan's two kitchen sinks, that is, his two top secret but leakable kompromat dossiers on Trump – the first one apparently from an MI6 agent and the second one promoted by the BBC (source unknown yet).

But this is not about Clintons any more, this is about the owners of the Clintons training/braking Trump to be like the Clintons. If they cannot have a Clinton as a President, they want to have a President as Clinton. If kompromat does not work, maybe a billet will, their patience is limited.

Always enjoyable to exchange thoughts with you Joe.

Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 11:14 am

Realist, considering how our country's founders were a bunch of slave owners declaring how all men are created equally well need I say more?

Words are just words, that is until lawyers interpret these legal words into a reality, which doesn't always fit into our own personal definition of a certain word usage. You and I deal with this stuff all the time. Whether it be a traffic ticket, or an ordinance summons, we read one thing, and the judge administers another thing. Prisons are filled with people who swear with, 'yeah but' explanations which give these prisoners no relief what so ever so I do think these crafty legislators could pull a fast one, and install Mike Pence into the White House. Let's you and I hope that I'm the one out in left field with my 25th amendment comment, and that we won't end up with a Christian whack job as our president. Reply

Zachary Smith , January 12, 2017 at 5:23 pm

Yeah, Pence was elected Governor of Indiana. But despite this state being one of the most conservative in the nation, Pence was too "nutty" and "far-right" for Mississippi North, and would have surely been defeated. Now the man is one heartbeat/one impeachment conviction from becoming President of the United States.

Quote: "From his denial of climate change to his belief in creationism, Pence is the most hard-right radical to ever appear on a national ticket. Just this week a federal court had to block his atrocious bill barring Syrian refugees from his state because his reasoning that Syrians scare him is discriminatory."

Quote: "it is a literal truth, Mr. Speaker, to say that I am in Congress today because of Rush Limbaugh, and not because of some tangential impact on my career or his effect on the national debate; but because in fact after my first run for Congress in 1988, it was the new national voice emerging in 1989 across the heartland of Indiana of one Rush Hudson Limbaugh, III, that captured my imagination.""

It's a fact we are very, very close to having a Rush 'druggie' Limpaugh clone as President. In my opinion, Pence is Trump's worst mistake up till now. If they can't have Hillary, for the neocons and neo-liberals and the Christian End-Timers there remains Worse-Than-Hillary Mike Pence.

Trump is a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors. With Republican control of the House and Senate and the prospect of dramatically and decisively tilting the balance of the Supreme Court to the far right, the incoming administration will have a real shot at bringing the fire and brimstone of the second coming to Washington.

"The enemy, to them, is secularism. They want a God-led government. That's the only legitimate government," contends Jeff Sharlet, author of two books on the radical religious right, including "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." "So when they speak of business, they're speaking not of something separate from God, but they're speaking of what, in Mike Pence's circles, would be called biblical capitalism, the idea that this economic system is God-ordained."

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/mike-pence-will-be-the-most-powerful-christian-supremacist-in-us-history/

Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 12:36 pm

Zachary I looked forward to your reply, since you always have references to your level headed comments .so thanks for getting back to me.

In my world I don't even like bringing up the word God, or religion, since I believe a government should be governed in a truly secular way. Who I pray to, and who I pay taxes to, are two completely different things. My devotion to God is a very private matter, and I don't need some politician interpreting God's greatness to me in anyway. So with that if Mike Pense wants to preach the gospel to me, then he should resign from public office and become a full fledged preacher and even then I will not go to his mean spirited church. Amen.

Realist , January 13, 2017 at 3:13 pm

What a troubling coincidence that Hulu is releasing its production of "the Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood this April, which tells the story of the United States government being taken over by extreme Christian fundamentalists and the consequences, especially to women and religious dissenters. Read the book by Atwood and you'll see where Isis/Daesh got many of their ideas on punishment and control of the masses. The Spanish Inquisition was six hundred years ago, but its urges lie just beneath the veneer of our civilised modern world. Human nature hasn't changed, only technology has. I thought this country was in danger of playing out the novel during Dubya's administration, as 9-11 was exactly the kind of pretext for such a takeover in the book's plot narrative and the Islamic world was portrayed as the great global adversary just as many Americans believe in the real world. Trump has never struck me as a religious man, certainly not a zealot, but Pence, with a little help from the Deep State, he could bring this disturbing novel to life.

Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 10:16 pm

I'm wondering if we are seeing the beginnings of a President Pence.

A very plausible and ominous possibility.

Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 12:53 am

Seriously Bill even taking into consideration how some like Glenn Beck along with Rick Santelli ridiculed an early President Obama back in 2009, I can't recall a more hostile media such as the likes of how this current day corporate media is going after Trump. True, that Donald Trump by just being Donald Trump can be an outrageous person with his words and actions, but still I just can't get over the 24/7 media coverage, and how most of it isn't good coverage at that. This leaves me to wonder if we all are not being setup for something big.

With Trump's winning streak putting away a whole herd of Republican primary candidates, and how he sent 'low energy Jeb' packing, and then to go on and beat Hillary by his winning the Electoral vote, he has had a great run. Now Donald Trump is battling not only the CIA/FBI/NSA, but he is also bumping up against the congressional establishment. You know that McCain and Graham hate him, but you can only bet that there is yet much more to come.

I'm sorry, but I don't sense there is much good to come with all of this. Thanks for the reply.

Kiza , January 13, 2017 at 9:57 am

Joe, I wonder if people missed the crazy similarity of the media campaign on the Trump "report" and the one on MH17 ?

It appears that the TPTB have decided that if they generate enough media screaming, the lack of proof does not matter any more.

Thus, I have become a strong proponent of the theory that whatever TPTB use outside, it is only a practice for what they will use (more productively) inside. Drones anyone?

Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 1:06 pm

KIza read my comment above, it pertains to what you brought up here.

Gregory Herr , January 13, 2017 at 2:44 pm

Weaponized drones anyone?

http://youtu.be/1sK5mDTCNEU

Pablo Diablo , January 12, 2017 at 12:42 pm

All this turmoil and a dysfunctional Congress insures that nothing will change. The 1% loves the status quo and will do anything to preserve it. Simply a smokescreen to keep US from dealing with the corporate stranglehold on our government.
An Empire in decline. Reply

Mike Flores , January 12, 2017 at 1:24 pm

While others laugh and make jokes, those of us who study Intel know that what just happened with the leaked report was that the CIA has involved itself in U.S. politics, which it is forbidden to do. How did the alliance between the Democratic Party and CIA begin? President Truman had allowed 200 Nazi Intel agents to come into the U.S. – including the men who created the blueprint for the holocaust. Fearing Joe McCarthy would discover this, the CIA faked an Intel report and has spent decades ever since lying about Joe. They actually confessed that his 2 lists were correct, so they had to fool him with a fake dossier right before the Army hearings to shake his confidence. Just search CIA AND THE POND and you will find on their website STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE in the last third of the article a full confession of framing Joe. This Facebook photo album THE REAL JOSEPH McCARTHY is packed with forbidden information and can be viewed with this link by anyone whether they are on FB or not. The alliance between the Democratic Party and CIA began by hiding the people responsible for the holocaust. ( We should keep in mind Truman was KKK and forbade the bombing of the train tracks to the death camps. The reason soldiers were not prepared for the camps was that none had been told about them. Truman did not want our troops wasting time on them). Interesting to note that absolutely no one has ever done an article or book on the impact of the beliefs of the KKK on the 5 Democrats who were Presidents and Klansmen in the 20th century. That would reveal the true nature of the Democratic Party.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153995222685986.1073741929.695490985&type=1&l=6dd1544b9d Reply

Bill , January 12, 2017 at 1:37 pm

You don't mention President Obama, but it certainly seems likely that he's involved with this. Who told Brennan and Clapper to go on TV to hype the intelligence reports and bad-mouth the next President?

And were the leakers within the agencies acting on their own, or were they given orders from above? There's a conspiracy going on and it's not my imagination.

Does the behavior rise to the level of treason or espionage?

Furtive , January 12, 2017 at 11:58 pm

Obama is a deadhead it is Brennan who instructs him. But who instructs Brennan? Reply

Michael Morrissey , January 12, 2017 at 1:46 pm

As I have just learned from another reader's comment on another article, David Spring has augmented his earlier article to an 85-page expose. Seems it was both a leak and a hack, but in neither case by "the Russians."

I hope Ray McGovern and especially Wm Binney (and some Trump guy) read this and tell us what they think!

https://turningpointnews.org/hack-everything-special-report

Lois Gagnon , January 13, 2017 at 11:04 am

I read it last night. Very much worth the couple of hours it took. Reply

Realist , January 14, 2017 at 3:42 am

Well, that's THE comprehensive treatment in a nutshell. Everything documented chronologically. Nothing important left out. Everything explained clearly and concisely. As organised as possible and argued like a philosopher rather than a lawyer. The man has exceptional writing skills as well as incredible computer knowledge. I'd like to see him question Clapper on the witness stand. I hope that President Trump puts the Justice Department on this case to do a thorough investigation, including potential indictments of spooks that perjured themselves and/or engaged in partisan activities during the election and its ugly aftermath. Reply

Oleg , January 12, 2017 at 2:47 pm

I am really surprised to no end. Why are you in the US so keen on destroying any credibility of your government? I do not really know what would happen in the US but in Russia there would be riots. Any leader in Russia can govern only until he/she is trusted. Think Tsar Nicholas II, Gorbachev I hope it will not get to this and some sanity will prevail in your country.

Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 10:22 pm

Why are you in the US so keen on destroying any credibility of your government?

What credibility? Oleg, if you check the graphic at the top of the right sidebar on this page you will see a reference to "I. F. Stone" who was one of this nation's great journalists of the 20th Century. He is noted for a dictum that says, "All governments lie." All governments certainly include the U.S. government. You can get plenty of examples of lies with a little effort.

Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 11:12 pm

Lies out of government agencies and elected politicians are not the only problem. Hypocrisy is another and has been part of American governance since the writing of the Declaration of Independence by slave owners who said that all men are created equal with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now hypocrisy is rampant with politicians decrying alleged Russian intervention is U.S. elections with the claim that it is wrong for any nation to interfere in the elections of another nation. There is no nation on the planet that interferes in the governments of other nations than the United States. Reply

Oleg , January 13, 2017 at 3:02 am

Well, I certainly agree, but a government can still be largely trusted even if they resort to some petty lies. As we all do too sometimes. But this this is not a petty thing, this is an intentional attack on the whole institution of elections and democracy when they try to impeach the elected President because some part of the establishment, not the people, dislike him. This has a potential to really get very dangerous, and having any kind of uprisings (as was also mentioned by other commenters above) in a country like the US is extremely dangerous for the whole world. Reply

Abe , January 12, 2017 at 3:01 pm

Anyone in Washington seeking a golden shower from a couple of Russian prostitutes just has to hop on one of those all-expenses-paid AIPAC junkets to Israel.

It's truly amazing how streams of urine help elevate one's anxiety about Iran's nuclear energy program.

Adam , January 13, 2017 at 3:11 am

Best comment, Abe! Reply

Abe , January 12, 2017 at 3:25 pm

American journalist and activist Chris Hedges noted a key purpose of the declassified report "Russia's Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election" from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI):

"to justify the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization beyond Germany, a violation of the promise Ronald Reagan made to the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Expanding NATO in Eastern Europe opened up an arms market for the war industry. It made those businesses billions of dollars. New NATO members must buy Western arms that can be integrated into the NATO arsenal. These sales, which are bleeding the strained budgets of countries such as Poland, are predicated on potential hostilities with Russia. If Russia is not a threat, the arms sales plummet. War is a racket."

The Real Purpose of the U.S. Government's Report on Alleged Hacking by Russia
By Chris Hedges
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_real_purpose_of_the_us_governments_report_on_alleged_hacking_by_russi

Abe , January 12, 2017 at 4:54 pm

Israeli arms sales to Europe more than doubled from $724 million in 2014 to $1.63 billion in 2015. http://jfjfp.com/?p=83806

Israel is the leading arms exporter in the world per capita (2014), and ranks 11th among the top 20 exporters of military equipment and systems (2011-15).

75-80% of Israeli military exports are generated by just three companies - the state-owned Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries and the publicly traded Elbit Systems.

The largest categories of Israeli military exports are upgrading aircraft and aerospace systems (14%), radar and electronic systems (12%), drones (11%), and intelligence and information systems (10%).

In 2015, the Russian government described Israel's delivery of lethal weapons to Ukraine as "counterproductive". There is a close arms trade and production co-operation between Israel and Poland. Israeli companies have invested in building arms manufacturing facilities in Poland. Reply

jfl , January 12, 2017 at 3:26 pm

However, in this case, it is not even known whether the Russians have any dirt on Trump.

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

- said to have been said by redhat richelieu

what is known is that the nsa/cia/fbi have all the dirt on everyone, and that they use it on the leaders of the eu, for instance.

if the only thing that comes out of this filthy little exercise is the death of the nsa/cia/fbi – superpower america's superstazi – by executive fiat it will have been worth trump's election.

it's either that or another dead president. with pence playing lbj. Reply

F. G. Sanford , January 12, 2017 at 3:41 pm

Funny how these "leaks" work, isn't it? If there really were an "insider" able to provide insight on the deepest, darkest secrets that had been gathered by Russian intelligence, why would any responsible intelligence agency completely destroy that asset only to expose a mundane fetish like "golden showers"? But don't anybody dare leak "The Torture Report". Don't even consider leaking information about war crimes, election fraud, financial crimes, murder, state corruption or state sponsorship of terrorism.

Just my opinion, but here's how it really went. The "hack" scenario is a diversion from the "leak" scenario. The "deep state" didn't really want Hillary. While she may superficially represent their interests, the Clinton machine is too knowledgeable, too experienced and too selfish and self-centered to predictably execute their programs. The Clintons have plenty of dirt on them. But they had enough dirt on her to compromise her electability. They don't want Trump either, but they can manufacture or dig up enough dirt to compromise his Presidency. Their first choice was Jeb Bush. Their second choice is Mike Pence.

The DNC stuff was leaked by an insider, and the Podesta stuff was hacked by the NSA. The only plausible alternative points to hacking attempts by the neo-Nazi Ukrainian hacking outfit "RuH8", not the Russians.

A bunch of recent articles seek to analyze Barack Obama's legacy, personality and motivations. That's all superfluous. The "real deal" has been well documented. His grandparents were CIA His mother was CIA His first job after law school was with Banking international Corporation, a CIA "front company". He was groomed and thoroughly vetted.

Nobody wants to hear the truth or look at real evidence. The circumstantial – though well documented – evidence connecting Ted Cruz's father to the anti-Castro Cubans, the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald is actually much more plausible and substantial than the evidence for "Russian hacking" of the election, yet the general public has no problem dismissing that as a "conspiracy theory".

Between the two, Trump was perceived – mistakenly – as the lesser threat to the "deep state". Just a guess, but we may be about to see all hell break loose.

It's about time some journalists and researchers started naming names and making lists. The "New McCarthyism" uses lists to good advantage. It creates the perception of a vast subversive network dedicated to destroying our "democracy". Until some names are named and fingers pointed, the "deep state" and its intelligence community enforcement arm will continue to control the "democracy" we don't really have. Blackmail is just one of their methods, and it's far from the worst.

Abe , January 12, 2017 at 4:14 pm

Funny how these "streams," er, "leaks" work:

http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.764452

Abe , January 12, 2017 at 10:17 pm

Buzzfeed's "explosive and unverified" golden shower (guess that's not highlighter on the documents):
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984/Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.pdf

Oleg , January 13, 2017 at 4:42 am

And someone has been paying for this crap? If anything, this report exposes its authors much more than anybody else. Reply

Abe , January 13, 2017 at 1:00 pm

The "authors" dominate a post-truth regime that demands popular attention to and participation in its discursive games.

Are you not entertained?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsqJFIJ5lLs Reply

F. G. Sanford , January 13, 2017 at 6:37 pm

My favorite quotes from the "Company Intelligence Report":

"However, he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow " (Is this a pun?)

"PUTIN angry with senior officials who "overpromised" on TRUMP and further heads likely to roll as result. Foreign minister LAVROV may be next" (What Putin is going to make him change the sheets in Trump's hotel room?)

" TRUMP has paid bribes and engaged in sexual activities there but key witnesses silenced and evidence hard to obtain" (Were the "key" witnesses the same ones that claim Putin shot down MH-17?)

I think they dug up the script writers from "The Man from Uncle" and put them back to work. This sounds like a Quinn Martin Production straight out of a Hollywood "B Movie". Reply

Abe , January 12, 2017 at 10:24 pm

First Draft coalition "partner" BuzzFeed is leading the charge to make fake news, hybrid war propaganda, and hoaxes "more shareable and more social"

https://firstdraftnews.com/buzzfeed-wants-use-social-media-might-take-hoaxers/ Reply

Abe , January 12, 2017 at 5:09 pm

Funny how that "leak" worked:

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb565-Was-U.S.-Nuclear-Weapons-Fuel-Diverted-to-Israel/

"OK, but I doubt advisability of getting into this (redacted)." – FBI Director J. Edgard Hoover Reply

Abe , January 12, 2017 at 5:17 pm

Funny how that other "leak" worked:

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB407/ Reply

Gregory Kruse , January 12, 2017 at 8:37 pm

FG, I'm not gay, but I always scroll down to find your comment. You are always looking into the big picture, not the big illusion.

backwardsevolution , January 13, 2017 at 1:44 am

Gregory – I agree. His comments are always very good. Reply

Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 1:07 pm

Me three.

F. G. Sanford , January 13, 2017 at 6:41 pm

Thanks to all – sometimes I wonder if it's worth putting in my two cents. We're probably a statistically insignificant group of readers on the world's stage, but I like to think at least it's worth a try. Reply

Jessica K , January 12, 2017 at 4:34 pm

We must organize beyond cyberspace as this is a coup in action. CIA is greatest meddler of all nations, coups and assassinations well documented. DC is the Aegean stable that must be cleaned, a truly Herculean task and We the People have to get organized because this planet is imperiled. Agree with Dan that whole sordid mess is beyond a swamp, a stinking pit and pitchforks are necessary! Reply

LJ , January 12, 2017 at 4:36 pm

It's more doublethink logic from the Intelligence heads. It would require a tremendous leap of faith for anyone with a brain to think that Russia/Putin/Lavrov would use this info, if it existed at all, in public manner. To do so wouldn't help them achieve a goal and it would only hurt Russia .. The tape would never become public even if it existed. That means this rumor is clearly slander and was aimed at some political end. . Where is the smoking gun?, sorry. By the way , Putin is friends with Bertoloscini , Sarkozy and other notorious womanizers and is known to like women himself. This is not something he would do. He is not a mobster. This is puerile and it is coming from the Democrats although the word is that George Bush initially hired the guy, the former MI5 spy, who wrote the dossier/smear piece on Trump in the first place. . Hoover would have kept it in shop and tried to leverage Trump himself. Reply

Bernie , January 12, 2017 at 5:09 pm

There's an article at ABC News today about US tanks rolling into Poland. This reminds me of Nazis rolling into Austria in 1938 and then Poland on Sept 1, 1941 to start WWII. "American soldiers rolled into Poland on Thursday, fulfilling a dream some Poles have had since the fall of communism in 1989 to have U.S. troops on their soil as a deterrent against Russia. Some people waved and held up American flags as U.S. troops in tanks and other vehicles crossed into southwestern Poland from Germany and headed toward the town of Zagan, where they will be based. "

Abe , January 12, 2017 at 6:32 pm

Like Poland, Ukraine is eager to express its devotion to the Reich, er, its "Euro-Atlantic aspirations".

If only for the sake of NATO "cooperation" and "capacity building", Poland and Ukraine have much to forgive and forget:

http://observer.com/2016/09/from-friends-to-bitter-rivals-poland-and-ukraine-accuse-each-other-of-genocide/

Of course, reports of Russian "euphoria" remain "unconfirmed". Reply

Mark West , January 12, 2017 at 5:36 pm

Absurd. Who is this "they" everyone is talking about? How many are/is this 'they'? 5, 10 20? Who is in control of 'they'? Who's in charge? The political elite? Do they have a club and do they meet for bridge every Tuesday? Do they have a secret handshake? Are they all really Mason's?

This conspiracy holds no credibility because 'they' is just an 'idea'. That is all. Until someone can give names of those who are responsible and running this political elite then its all storybook conjecture. We should be more concerned with the obvious psychological dementia affecting the president elect. He was a total looney tune in that press conference.

Wendi , January 12, 2017 at 5:52 pm

Here are the names.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/meet-the-80-people-who-are-as-rich-as-half-the-world/

Mark West , January 12, 2017 at 7:09 pm

What you are saying with this list then, Wendi, it is not the political elites, intelligence agencies or career politicians whoTrump continuously rails against as the cause for the end of the American Empire. It is the financial hierarchies that Trump so desperately wants to be a part of. Putin is obviously at the top of this list and Trump sees him as a way to become a player in this club. That makes sense to me. Reply

Dr. Ibrahim Soudy , January 12, 2017 at 6:14 pm

"THEY" are the people who control the MONEY. They are referred to as the BANKERS. Those are a mafia that runs the political circus BEHIND the scene. The parties and elections are a diversion to keep the idiots busy arguing with each other like the crazy fans of sports teams. The BANKERS always make sure that the "idiots" are choosing between alternatives that ultimately BOW to the BANKERS. Read for example the following:

– "All the President's Bankers" by Naomi Prins.

– "Memoirs" by David Rockefeller.

– "The Crisis of Democracy" a publication of the Tri-Lateral Commission on their website.

-Here's How Goldman Sachs Became the Overlord of the Trump Administration
http://wallstreetonparade.com/

-Goldman, Wall Street and Financial Terrorism | The Inline image 2
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-whetten/goldman-wall-street-and-f_b.. .
Jun 19, 2010 · The most disturbing aspect of the recent Goldman Sachs lawsuit isn't just the legal violations involved Goldman, Wall Street and Financial Terrorism.

-Goldman Sachs Are Financial Terrorists | FacebookInline image 1
http://www.facebook.com/Stop.Goldman
Goldman Sachs Are Financial Terrorists. 95,662 likes · 6,188 talking about this. Get the Honest truth on the economy, this page sponsors no organization

Those will give you a good start ..Good Luck. Reply

Sam F , January 13, 2017 at 7:29 am

Perhaps you do not mean the ridicule you suggest. The effects of economic aristocracy and political conspiracy are of course not "storybook conjecture" but the combined deductions of experienced observers. That would become conjecture only if specific persons were accused, which is seldom done without evidence.

The demand for detailed evidence of an old-fashioned conspiracy to effect societal trends is not valid. It becomes propaganda when used to attack the means by which we all deduce that events are driven by cabals, or loose organizations of interested parties. While we are occasionally surprised by the detailed evidence that emerges long after events, even that is incomplete and not very relevant.

The means of ridicule shows its invalidity. There is no reason to speculate upon clubs, meetings, or handshakes, as there is no need for such specific or antiquated organization. No modern organization works that way, no one has suggested that, and no one here has reasoned from such nonsense, but rather from well documented effects of cabals. So I hope that you merely overstated a wish for more evidence.

Kiza , January 13, 2017 at 9:49 am

Bravo. Reply

Howard Mettee , January 12, 2017 at 6:27 pm

Robert, Could it not be true that the real losers in the neocon push to extend the American dominion might actually be the intelligence services? They have become so politicized in domestic politics since the Iraq War build up (a la Rice, Chaney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Powell) that they figure they can shape American public opinion to support any war, no matter how "unthreatening" the enemy (say Russia) might actually be. Originally they were basically "fact collectors" (objective) – at first from around the world, but since 9/11's Patriot Act, at home also. Then, they became "interpreters and analyzers of motives" which takes a bit of a weed-gee board (subjective!) on the part of the "experienced eye". When whatever these very effective (and appreciated) fact collectors opine suddenly becomes gospel in their "estimates" (interpretation), we have lost the ability to even influence the fate of our nation. Is this the country I grew up in? Or, has it been this way since we were led so effectively to support World War I? Take care, HM Reply

Thurgle , January 12, 2017 at 6:44 pm

The NYT skirts around the issue of who paid the huge sums for the research that produced the story of Trump's alleged sexcapades in Moscow. They never say the funders are unknown, but instead use devices like the passive tense to avoid saying. But it would be very interesting to know who signed the checks. Apparently, there was a Republican funder during the primaries who stopped payment when Trump prevailed, whereupon Fusion found a Clinton backer to write their checks. It would be very interesting to know who these funders were and why the MSM seems so keen to avoid saying. Reply

BlackPete , January 12, 2017 at 7:46 pm

When it comes to cavorting with prostitutes JFK was the undisputed champion. Given the high regard JFK is held in in some circles maybe Trump's alleged misbehaviour is a positive sign. Also, now that Trump's behaviour has been made public isn't the Russian threat to expose him now worthless and their alleged hold/influence gone?

Mark West , January 12, 2017 at 8:01 pm

Its not about the hookers. That's useless drivel. It's about the potential of illegal financial dealings with Russia prior to the election. Just show the damn tax returns. What the hell is he afraid of? What could possibly go wrong?

Anna , January 12, 2017 at 10:03 pm

Are you keen on asking Clintons to reveal their financial dealings with Saudis, the sponsors of 9/11?
How about the Kagans' clan being currently "supported" financially by Qatari?
And this is much more interesting than tax return: "The NYT skirts around the issue of who paid the huge sums for the research that produced the story of Trump's alleged sexcapades in Moscow. They never say the funders are unknown, but instead use devices like the passive tense to avoid saying. But it would be very interesting to know who signed the checks. Apparently, there was a Republican funder during the primaries who stopped payment when Trump prevailed, whereupon Fusion found a Clinton backer to write their checks. It would be very interesting to know who these funders were and why the MSM seems so keen to avoid saying."

col from oz , January 12, 2017 at 10:25 pm

I read it was Rubio commissioned the dirt.
Look at day 69 of eric braverman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwKhbsASDhI Reply

akech , January 12, 2017 at 8:07 pm

Is this the face of the "DEEP STATE"?

It is controlling, deceptive, organized, bloody and does not give a "rat ass" about the needs of any other human being on earth who does not belong to it!

It neither tolerates opposing views from anybody who does not belong to its members nor allows the outsiders to organize . It is determined to be the lens through which everybody under its control see the rest of the world; any conclusion drawn by the besieged population, based on what it is forced to see, must conform to the "DEEP STATE" norms; otherwise, you are in deep trouble. The POTUS or the Congress must toe lines dictated by the members of this organization, (the Deep State). We are observing that no effort is being spared to see to it that President-Elect toes the "DEEP STATE" line; it is deep and scary indeed! Reply

John , January 12, 2017 at 8:40 pm

Russia is the half naked female in the magic show The real slight of hand is the relationship with the American oligarch and china .wow !!! . talking about messing with the bottom line some of you big brain folks will get this in 4 ..3 2 ..lol Reply

Abe , January 12, 2017 at 9:54 pm

What I Learned From the Intelligence Report on "Russian Hacking"
By James Corbett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ecxu7EStgs Reply

CitizenOne , January 12, 2017 at 9:55 pm

There is little doubt that the obvious blackmail will never be covered in that light by main stream media. To those of us who are historians or are natural skeptics or have actually lived through those times, this is all fairly obvious. They are trying to put Donald Trump in a corner so he can be controlled.

I suspect that is why Trump retained Steve Bannon for. Not just a house racist but someone who can get down and dirty on those that dish up dirt on Trump. We'll have to see if it works. Headlines: "Donald unleashes TwitterBomb on CIA". But he'll have to go on the internet since the CIA owns the press in the USA.

He has two choices. Listen to the CIA and do their bidding which is the requirement to start WWIII with Russia or resist and be smeared in the press. It's an uphill battle too. Unlike Silvio Berlusconi or Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump does not actually own the press. That will make it especially hard to do.

This thing is shaping up to be a geopolitical oil war. Rex and the Russians vs the Saudi/CIA Team USA.

All I can say is fine America. Don't give a damn about privacy. Don't give a damn about anything. But one of these days this massive spying ring gathering every shred of any and all traces of your life and filing them away forever cannot be good. It will most certainly not end well.

When AI has us all pinned up against a wall threatening to out all of us if we do not do exactly what it wants then what will we do?

We need some privacy laws. Also we need to throw the main stream media out with the trash. It is pure evil. Back in the day, the press wouldn't run the stories about MLKs extramarital affairs it recorded secretly. The press demanded to know the source of the B.S. and the FBI did not want to tip their hand so the Mexican standoff led to the suicide letter which said "if you accept the Nobel Prize, we will shame you and ruin you and you should consider preserving you legacy by killing yourself instead. At least the MSM had some ethical standards and smelled a rat and refused to run the stories. Imagine that. If MLK was alive today we and we still had segregation, people and the media would fight to keep it! MLK would be a portrayed in the press as a philandering bad guy. A sexual predator. The Civil Rights movement would end in a quagmire of gossip surrounding its leader.

The Republicans have certainly had their fun with it too making Monica Lewinsky describe to a court the distinctive features of the president's privates. I bet they were rolling in the aisles when that happened. Now it's their turn. Will they defend Trump or will they hope that perhaps Mike Pence would make a better leader.

All this tawdry B.S. really gets old fast. I could care less what people do in private as long as nobody gets hurt.

One person abroad when asked what they thought about Bill Clinton's circumstances replied they were confused since after all we were not electing the Pope. Amen. I feel the same way about Trump. It's all B.S.

The problem is America can't remember what happened yesterday. We are collectively like terminal Alzheimer patients. Two seconds after we see something, we forget it and are completely susceptible to B.S.in two seconds after we forgot what just happened which ignores the facts which occurred a mere two seconds earlier but we are none the wiser since we can't remember what happened more than two seconds ago. That means there are a lot of opportunities each day to fool us.

What ever happened to the story about James Comey influencing the election? We just forgot it. What ever happened to all of the other historically "likely suspects" thought to have been likely suspects in vote rigging schemes. They are all absent and not presented as possible influencers of the election by our CIA owned press. Instead we are presented with a fake narrative filled with salacious gossip and naughty bits designed to turn public opinion into a weapon for further increases in militarization and military spending while preserving foreign relationships which benefit wealthy investors.

We need to wake up and start taking some strong medicine to ward off the Alzheimer disease that is affecting us in order to put the daily snow job presented by the MSM and the CIA into perspective. That perspective would include what just happened two seconds ago.

Unfortunately, that is not likely to happen since the medication would have to include administering it to the MSM too.

The ability of the MSM to erase our collective memory and present us with a new fake narrative on any given day should ring alarm bells that we are obviously vulnerable to being fooled.

We are being fooled. Every day. Time to start taking the meds. Reply

Jurgen , January 12, 2017 at 10:01 pm

This is no "deep state" this is rather in-plain-sight US Government at work.
Trivial task:
1) Create a dense smoke screen by broadcasting on every single TV channel non-stop anti-Russian and anti-Trump*** hysteria (they know it can't go wrong – they know Trump would try to reply to every single fake thus making their task easier and the picture even more colorful)
2) Behind that smoke screen ship few thousands of US troops and tanks over to Poland and to those parasitic micro quasi-states in Baltic and by doing that de-facto lay foundation for 4-5 new military bases,
which (yet another NATO expansion) otherwise would not be approved and likely axed by Trump. But now it went through s-m-o-u-ht-ly, like a butter. Highest class of the old Shell Game. Where CIA, FBI and other spook shops are used as shills and the population of the US are total losers (everyone's taxes will be used to pay for that yet another NATO expansion).
3) Behind the same smoke screen Obamacare has just been demolished late last night, congrats 20 million of poor folks!

*** Just wait till grainy videos surface showing some naked figures – one of them would be vaguely resembling Trump.
That'd be no hard task for talented movie makers from either PSYOP or/and PAG (just remember their masterpieces featuring Jessica Lynch and other ones featuring fat "Osama bin Laden"-looking dude).

Note: Authorization to create and finance state Propaganda apparatus, S.2943, was quietly passed late Friday night Dec.23 behind the smoke screen of the same anti-Russian and anti-Trump hysteria, thus what we are seeing now is perfectly lawful – propaganda machine at full throttle, who said bureaucracy is slow(?)

Anna , January 12, 2017 at 10:05 pm

is not it nice that Obama is leaving office while being decorated with salacious fake stories which he is promoting Petty and dishonest in everything.

Gregory Herr , January 12, 2017 at 11:17 pm

I tried to watch his good riddance speech last night, but couldn't get through the half of it. For relief I turned to this video:

http://youtu.be/F5K7UmYkD1I Reply

Franz Rock , January 12, 2017 at 10:11 pm

As a non-citicen one has to wonder about the mind boggling machination the US politic is capable of.
After WW2 the European countries looked upon the USA as the beacon of democratic values.
How bitter for the young generation to find, bit by bit, that behind the American facade lurked a system
of smoke and mirrors. As ruthless as the very system they replaced in Europe. Slowly sugarcoating
their deep aims of domination. Under words like freedom,liberty and equality there is the underlying
unbelievable lust for money and with it power. From a human point of view, and the thinking person,
the politics and aims of the United States of America is an abomination for all the worlds people.

Oleg , January 13, 2017 at 3:27 am

I certainly agree with you, but also I am really saddened that this pattern is far from being unique and repeats itself all over and over again. The power corrupts, and it is true for states as well as for people. But the US are indeed a sad champion in hypocrisy. Their predecessors were not as skilled in hiding their true intentions behind the screen of freedom and all other very attractive values. This makes it especially hard to accept. Reply

Brad Owen , January 13, 2017 at 5:08 am

You've fingered the wrong culprits, or rather indicted fellow victims. It's the same bloody, titled ruling class and their managerial elites in business and banking from old-line European/British families who've been playing their Imperial games and still are. THEY created the late 19th century Synachist Movement for Empire (SME) that gave birth to Fascism and its' feverish twin NAZIism,really just movements to update the workings of the old-fashioned European Empires. It's also the Cecil Rhodes/Milner RoundTable Group that dove-tailed with SME machinations to update old Empires, campaigning strenuously, through their managerial elites on Wall Street, to recapture their "rogue colony" USA and bring it into the British version of Empire. Right at the moment of FDR's death (may have been assassination), the tables were turned on us, with Churchill leading stupid Truman around by the nose speaking of iron curtains and Red Scares and Cold Wars. FDR's intelligence community was taken over by Anglophile RoundTable allies in the post-war 40s. Having helped win the battles, we lost the War to the fascist/NAZI SME and RoundTable groups who never received so much as a scratch from all the bombs and bullets. Have you seen the show Hunting Hitler? WWII never ended, the methods of fighting just changed.

Brad Owen , January 13, 2017 at 5:44 am

P.S. Not only did WWII never end, just a change in fighting methods, BUT the SME/RoundTable Groups managed to get the two most powerful allies turned against each other: USSR and USA, so that we, together, couldn't focus on the REAL enemy; SME/RoundTable group of elites (which would have happened under FDR in post-war. He would have been President until January 1949 if he hadn't died/been killed, Stalin told FDRs son that "that Churchill gang killed him" been trying to do the same to Stalin) and THIS is why Trumps' Russophilia is such a grave and real threat to our Establishment.

Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 1:13 pm

Brad you hit the nail on the head with your comments here .bravo! Reply

John P , January 14, 2017 at 9:55 pm

Where on earth did you get this fable. Roosevelt had polio and needed a wheelchair, he was a heavy smoker, had high blood pressure, angina followed by congestive heart failure all finalized by a stoke. He had been weakening over a long period. This is all before the days of polonium the USSR uses to kill its foes today.
Russia wasn't following the agreements drawn up in Yalta and fair free elections were not provided in Poland and many Poles who fought for the allies in the war felt betrayed. The Soviets went their own way, so were we to tell the Poles, tough.
Allied convoys, mainly British, at great cost in ships and men, supplied the Russians with war supplies. They faced U-boats and heavily armed German battle-cruisers in freezing arctic waters. After the war Germany got assistance in rebuilding, but the British were held to paying off debts for US build liberty ships used to replace ships lost on the Atlantic convoys. I had an uncle who's ship was sunk and very luckily, after much time in a life boat, was picked up. Many Americans sat back and watched until Pearl Harbour. The British had warned the Americans some time before, that they had lost contact with one of the Japanese fleets they were following, and you can guess the consequences.
Britain saw what was coming when Germany attacked Poland and declared war on Germany. We didn't have much. My father was almost killed assisting surgeon in a Liverpool hospital and luckily had to leave to go out in an ambulance. When he came back the OR was gone. Bombed out. Luckily on another occasion, the day staff had been told to stay on duty with the night staff and the nursing residence was flattened. We had rationing until 1950, and had to grow food in our small back garden, sprouts, peas, cabbage. We had 6 chickens and a rooster, a source of much needed nutrition from eggs. I remember my mother weeping terribly after telling the police she had lost her ration books. As a young lad I went on a search and eventually found them in the folds of a chair. You may never have had to live through something like that.
And if you think America is any better than others, read "What is America?" by Ronald Wright. Learn about the Trail of Tears and traders knowingly giving natives blankets used by whites with small-pox.

Brad Owen , January 15, 2017 at 6:47 am

You relate the manufactured cover story, thanks to the anglophile Intel community that took over in post-war forties, and did their typical change of the narration, much like they do today with the phony crap about Russian aggression. This kind of sh!t has been going on since the revolution, as the wealthy and powerful Imperial Tories never left and never relented. I got this"fable" from EIR and Tarpley.net. It makes more sense to me than the current fable we call history. Check it out for yourself, it amounts to mountains of articles and essays. It took me years to piece it all together and relay it adequately in brief paragraphs. Choose to believe there is no over-arching Imperial ruling class inimical to the interests of commoners if you want. I refuse to be blind to it anymore.

David F., N.A. , January 12, 2017 at 10:18 pm

What if the intelligence community wasn't choosing between HRC and Trump, but, in stead, between HRC and Pence. So no matter who won, wouldn't this hedged election mean business as usual?

Sorry, HRC, but for this downward neoliberal/fascist spiral thingy to work, you lesser-of-2-evil conservaDems are just going to have to learn to share with the equally-corrupt conservatives. See ya in 4 (or maybe 8 (naw, 4)).

Hail to the de facto Chief. da dada da dada dada dada da. Reply

Furtive , January 12, 2017 at 11:36 pm

You forgot to declare who is the drag queen in this matter?

Let's warn these evil psychopaths that a JFK OUTCOME IS OFF LIMITS.
That is the inference of your article.

By the way, Trump NEVER READ THE REPORT PRIVATELY. THERE WAS AN ORAL PRESENTATION, & CLAPPER & Brennan took the CLASSIFIED documents back with them. Trump never read the 2 pg libel nor was it discussed in the presentation.

Carl Rising-Moore , January 13, 2017 at 2:38 am

This is also reminiscent of Hoover and JFK. When JFK attended Hoover's office, he was handed the President's file. JFK read some of the file while Hoover waited. When JFK stood up to leave, Hoover told the President that the file remains with him. No wonder JFK and Bobby hated this dangerous psychopath. Reply

John P , January 12, 2017 at 11:43 pm

It's all slime, Americans let their political system fall into the trap of big money (lobbying system and PACs) and neo-liberalism. I have no faith that Trump has the capabilities to be a good president. His dialogue is simple, his temper easily aroused as are his feelings of hurt. He shows little historical knowledge or political skills and speaks in a petty childish way. Who is going to pay for the southern border wall ?! What is going to replace Obama's medical care programs, more big business institutions ?! To me it looks like the Palestinians are on the Titanic run by captain Trump and his son-in law, and only minutes to go. What real in depth policies has Trump ever stated ?! Look out because Trump has a habit of passing on the bills be it cash, broken promises or a road you never thought he would take.
And yes we need a calming down and discussion between the US, Russia and China, but I don't see any hope in the line of folks Trump has chosen or Clinton. To me, Trump is like passenger on an aircraft in which the pilot has expired and he is relying on others to tell him what to do because he has no idea or understanding.
I think this and a world where jobs have been taken by microprocessors and robots, is a very dangerous place and we don't need a blind narcissist leading the way. Sadly Bernie Sanders got burnt on the stake. Reply

Carl Rising-Moore , January 13, 2017 at 2:28 am

At times like this I miss the wise words of the late Chalmers Johnson. Chalmers was not encouraged by the possibility of America stepping back from her efforts to control the entire world. He felt the deep state was too committed to America's Full Spectrum Dominance. Is this the sloppy end to the legacy of the Sole Super Power? Or, is this just the middle of the play before curtain call?
When Russia came to the aid of Syria, I believed that we were entering the Multipolar World Order. Hopefully that is still possible but better sooner than later before we enter the No World Order of endless chaos. Does the American deep state really want to play Russian Roulette with live nucs?

Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 1:16 pm

I wish Chalmers Johnson were still with us, and able to comment on our current events good of you to bring his name up. Reply

John P , January 15, 2017 at 7:01 pm

I'm sorry Brad. With your EIR's reference, the first story I saw concerned Obama-care connected to some Nazi policies. Next they claim global warming is fake. The US was the only western nation without a national health program. People die because they haven't the money to pay for drugs or health care. The health of a labourer is more important to them that a rich bloke sitting at a desk. And excuse me but back in the late 60s I studied astronomy besides my major, another science, and even then learned that both CO2 and methane each trap the sun's energy and cause temperatures to rise. That was long before global warming came to peoples attention. Sorry, your story is pure fiction.

Also, Trump hasn't a clue what he's talking about as far as global warming is concerned. Take a look at the temperatures in the far north. They have been warmer than ever while we down here are having huge cycles of heat and cold and are experiencing the fury that those changes can induce.

Dieter Heymann , January 16, 2017 at 2:23 pm

As a scientist you ought to know that CO2 and methane do not trap the sun's energy but absorb upward IR radiation from Earth part of which they radiate back towards Earth's surface part out into space. The blanket I use on my bed at night does not trap the heat generated by me either. If it did it might catch fire?

John P , January 16, 2017 at 4:13 pm

Dieter I was just trying to make it simple, not write an article for Nature. The point being so many people don't believe that we are altering the earths climate through burning fossil fuels. We take down our forests, and plants are a big reason we are here as they take in carbon dioxide, utilize the suns energy through photosynthesis and create organic compounds thus setting the stage for further developments. There is so much irrationality out there brought on by job losses through technology, and this creates huge divisions within society and that can lead to awful consequences as history has shown.
I not sure some would understand the true science behind it. The subject was a reliance on a web site that promoted climate change denial and a mentioned link between Obamacare and Nazism. Is that a firm foundation of reliance ?

John P , January 16, 2017 at 4:33 pm

Just to clarify, I said astronomy wasn't my major, it was microbiology and medical sciences. I had an interest in star gazing and following the planets. Reply

Jamie , January 16, 2017 at 1:54 pm

Many liberals fail to understand that Hillary was the chosen candidate of the deep-state and international finance capital. Unlike the unwashed masses - these forces don't care if politician has a 'D' or 'R' next to their name. It is how well they will serve capital.

[Jan 13, 2018] Remarks of Stephen Bannon at a Conference at the Vatican

Looks like Bannon is really weak in political economy. He does not even use the term neoliberalism. Go here to read the full transcript of his speech.
One very interesting quote is ""I believe we've come partly off-track in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union and we're starting now in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of capitalism."
Notable quotes:
"... That war triggered a century of barbaric -- unparalleled in mankind's history -- virtually 180 to 200 million people were killed in the 20th century, and I believe that, you know, hundreds of years from now when they look back, we're children of that: We're children of that barbarity. This will be looked at almost as a new Dark Age. ..."
"... I believe we've come partly offtrack in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union and we're starting now in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of capitalism. ..."
"... I see that every day. I'm a very practical, pragmatic capitalist. I was trained at Goldman Sachs, I went to Harvard Business School, I was as hard-nosed a capitalist as you get. I specialized in media, in investing in media companies, and it's a very, very tough environment. And you've had a fairly good track record. So I don't want this to kinda sound namby-pamby, "Let's all hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' around capitalism." ..."
"... One is state-sponsored capitalism. And that's the capitalism you see in China and Russia. I believe it's what Holy Father [Pope Francis] has seen for most of his life in places like Argentina, where you have this kind of crony capitalism of people that are involved with these military powers-that-be in the government, and it forms a brutal form of capitalism that is really about creating wealth and creating value for a very small subset of people. And it doesn't spread the tremendous value creation throughout broader distribution patterns that were seen really in the 20th century. ..."
"... The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing, is what I call the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism. And, look, I'm a big believer in a lot of libertarianism. I have many many friends that's a very big part of the conservative movement -- whether it's the UKIP movement in England, it's many of the underpinnings of the populist movement in Europe, and particularly in the United States. However, that form of capitalism is quite different when you really look at it to what I call the "enlightened capitalism" of the Judeo-Christian West. It is a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them almost -- as many of the precepts of Marx -- and that is a form of capitalism, particularly to a younger generation [that] they're really finding quite attractive. And if they don't see another alternative, it's going to be an alternative that they gravitate to under this kind of rubric of "personal freedom." ..."
Jan 13, 2018 | the-american-catholic.com

Buzzfeed has the remarks of Stephen Bannon, former CEO of Breitbart News , and currently appointed by President Elect Trump to be his chief advisor, at a conference at the Vatican in the summer of 2014:

Steve Bannon:

Thank you very much Benjamin, and I appreciate you guys including us in this. We're speaking from Los Angeles today, right across the street from our headquarters in Los Angeles. Um. I want to talk about wealth creation and what wealth creation really can achieve and maybe take it in a slightly different direction, because I believe the world, and particularly the Judeo-Christian west, is in a crisis. And it's really the organizing principle of how we built Breitbart News to really be a platform to bring news and information to people throughout the world. Principally in the west, but we're expanding internationally to let people understand the depths of this crisis, and it is a crisis both of capitalism but really of the underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian west in our beliefs.

It's ironic, I think, that we're talking today at exactly, tomorrow, 100 years ago, at the exact moment we're talking, the assassination took place in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that led to the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the bloodiest century in mankind's history. Just to put it in perspective, with the assassination that took place 100 years ago tomorrow in Sarajevo, the world was at total peace. There was trade, there was globalization, there was technological transfer, the High Church of England and the Catholic Church and the Christian faith was predominant throughout Europe of practicing Christians. Seven weeks later, I think there were 5 million men in uniform and within 30 days there were over a million casualties.

That war triggered a century of barbaric -- unparalleled in mankind's history -- virtually 180 to 200 million people were killed in the 20th century, and I believe that, you know, hundreds of years from now when they look back, we're children of that: We're children of that barbarity. This will be looked at almost as a new Dark Age.

But the thing that got us out of it, the organizing principle that met this, was not just the heroism of our people -- whether it was French resistance fighters, whether it was the Polish resistance fighters, or it's the young men from Kansas City or the Midwest who stormed the beaches of Normandy, commandos in England that fought with the Royal Air Force, that fought this great war, really the Judeo-Christian West versus atheists, right? The underlying principle is an enlightened form of capitalism, that capitalism really gave us the wherewithal. It kind of organized and built the materials needed to support, whether it's the Soviet Union, England, the United States, and eventually to take back continental Europe and to beat back a barbaric empire in the Far East.

That capitalism really generated tremendous wealth. And that wealth was really distributed among a middle class, a rising middle class, people who come from really working-class environments and created what we really call a Pax Americana. It was many, many years and decades of peace. And I believe we've come partly offtrack in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union and we're starting now in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of capitalism.

And we're at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which if the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs, but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that's starting, that will completely eradicate everything that we've been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years.

Now, what I mean by that specifically: I think that you're seeing three kinds of converging tendencies: One is a form of capitalism that is taken away from the underlying spiritual and moral foundations of Christianity and, really, Judeo-Christian belief.

I see that every day. I'm a very practical, pragmatic capitalist. I was trained at Goldman Sachs, I went to Harvard Business School, I was as hard-nosed a capitalist as you get. I specialized in media, in investing in media companies, and it's a very, very tough environment. And you've had a fairly good track record. So I don't want this to kinda sound namby-pamby, "Let's all hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' around capitalism."

But there's a strand of capitalism today -- two strands of it, that are very disturbing.

  1. One is state-sponsored capitalism. And that's the capitalism you see in China and Russia. I believe it's what Holy Father [Pope Francis] has seen for most of his life in places like Argentina, where you have this kind of crony capitalism of people that are involved with these military powers-that-be in the government, and it forms a brutal form of capitalism that is really about creating wealth and creating value for a very small subset of people. And it doesn't spread the tremendous value creation throughout broader distribution patterns that were seen really in the 20th century.
  2. The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing, is what I call the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism. And, look, I'm a big believer in a lot of libertarianism. I have many many friends that's a very big part of the conservative movement -- whether it's the UKIP movement in England, it's many of the underpinnings of the populist movement in Europe, and particularly in the United States.

    However, that form of capitalism is quite different when you really look at it to what I call the "enlightened capitalism" of the Judeo-Christian West. It is a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them almost -- as many of the precepts of Marx -- and that is a form of capitalism, particularly to a younger generation [that] they're really finding quite attractive. And if they don't see another alternative, it's going to be an alternative that they gravitate to under this kind of rubric of "personal freedom."

The other tendency is an immense secularization of the West. And I know we've talked about secularization for a long time, but if you look at younger people, especially millennials under 30, the overwhelming drive of popular culture is to absolutely secularize this rising iteration.

... ... ...

[Jan 06, 2018] Looks like Bannon self-immolated himself by his cooperation with Wolff

Notable quotes:
"... Bannon is almost universally loathed by the Washington press corps, and not just for his politics. When he was the CEO of the pro-Trump Breitbart website, he competed with traditional media outlets, and he has often mercilessly attacked and ridiculed them. ..."
"... The animosity towards Bannon reached new heights last month, when he incautiously told the New York Times that "the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while." He also said the media was "the opposition party" to the Trump administration. To the Washington media, those are truly fighting words. ..."
"... Bannon's comments were outrageous, but they are hardly new. In 2009, President Obama's White House communications director, Anita Dunn, sought to restrict Fox News' access to the White House. She even said, "We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent." The media's outrage over that remark was restrained, to say the least. ..."
"... Reporters and pundits are also stepping up the effort to portray Bannon as the puppet master in the White House. Last week, MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said, "Legitimate media are getting word that Steve Bannon is the last guy in the room, in the evening especially, and he's pulling the strings." Her co-host, Joe Scarborough, agreed that Bannon's role should be "investigated." ..."
"... I'm all for figuring out who the powers behind the curtain are in the White House, but we saw precious little interest in that during the Obama administration. ..."
"... Liberal writer Steven Brill wrote a 2015 book, America's Bitter Pill , in which he slammed "incompetence in the White House" for the catastrophic launch of Obamacare. "Never [has there] been a group of people who more incompetently launched something," he told NPR's Terry Gross, who interviewed him about the book. He laid much of the blame at Jarrett's doorstep. "The people in the administration who knew it was going wrong went to the president directly with memos, in person, to his chief of staff," he said. "The president was protected, mostly by Valerie Jarrett, from doing anything. . . . He didn't know what was going on in the single most important initiative of his administration." How important was Jarrett inside the Obama White House? Brill interviewed the president about the struggles of Obamacare and reported Obama's conclusion: "At this point, I am not so interested in Monday-morning quarterbacking the past." ..."
"... five of the highest-ranking Obama officials had told him that "as a practical matter . . . Jarrett was the real chief of staff on any issues that she wanted to weigh in on, and she jealously protected that position by making sure the president never gave anyone else too much power." When Brill asked the president about these aides' assessment of Jarrett, Obama "declined comment," Brill wrote in his book. That, in and of itself, was an answer. Would that Jarrett had received as much media scrutiny of her role in eight years under Obama as Bannon has in less than four weeks. ..."
"... I've had my disagreements with Bannon, whose apocalyptic views on some issues I don't share. Ronald Reagan once said that if someone in Washington agrees with you 80 percent of the time, he is an ally, not an enemy. I'd guess Bannon wouldn't agree with that sentiment. ..."
Feb 15, 2017 | www.unz.com
... ... ..

Bannon is almost universally loathed by the Washington press corps, and not just for his politics. When he was the CEO of the pro-Trump Breitbart website, he competed with traditional media outlets, and he has often mercilessly attacked and ridiculed them.

The animosity towards Bannon reached new heights last month, when he incautiously told the New York Times that "the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while." He also said the media was "the opposition party" to the Trump administration. To the Washington media, those are truly fighting words.

Joel Simon, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told CNN that "this kind of speech not [only] undermines the work of the media in this country, it emboldens autocratic leaders around the world." Jacob Weisberg, the head of the Slate Group, tweeted that Bannon's comment was terrifying and "tyrannical."

Bannon's comments were outrageous, but they are hardly new. In 2009, President Obama's White House communications director, Anita Dunn, sought to restrict Fox News' access to the White House. She even said, "We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent." The media's outrage over that remark was restrained, to say the least.

Ever since Bannon's outburst, you can hear the media gears meshing in the effort to undermine him. In TV green rooms and at Washington parties, I've heard journalists say outright that it's time to get him. Time magazine put a sinister-looking Bannon on its cover, describing him as "The Great Manipulator." Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of Time , boasted to MSNBC that the image was in keeping with a tradition of controversial covers that put leaders in their place. "Likewise, putting [former White House aide] Mike Deaver on the cover, the brains behind Ronald Reagan, that ended up bringing down Reagan," he told the hosts of Morning Joe . "So you've got to have these checks and balances, whether it's the judiciary or the press."

Reporters and pundits are also stepping up the effort to portray Bannon as the puppet master in the White House. Last week, MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said, "Legitimate media are getting word that Steve Bannon is the last guy in the room, in the evening especially, and he's pulling the strings." Her co-host, Joe Scarborough, agreed that Bannon's role should be "investigated."

I'm all for figuring out who the powers behind the curtain are in the White House, but we saw precious little interest in that during the Obama administration.

It wasn't until four years after the passage of Obamacare that a journalist reported on just how powerful White House counselor Valerie Jarrett had been in its flawed implementation. Liberal writer Steven Brill wrote a 2015 book, America's Bitter Pill , in which he slammed "incompetence in the White House" for the catastrophic launch of Obamacare. "Never [has there] been a group of people who more incompetently launched something," he told NPR's Terry Gross, who interviewed him about the book. He laid much of the blame at Jarrett's doorstep. "The people in the administration who knew it was going wrong went to the president directly with memos, in person, to his chief of staff," he said. "The president was protected, mostly by Valerie Jarrett, from doing anything. . . . He didn't know what was going on in the single most important initiative of his administration." How important was Jarrett inside the Obama White House? Brill interviewed the president about the struggles of Obamacare and reported Obama's conclusion: "At this point, I am not so interested in Monday-morning quarterbacking the past."

Brill then bluntly told the president that five of the highest-ranking Obama officials had told him that "as a practical matter . . . Jarrett was the real chief of staff on any issues that she wanted to weigh in on, and she jealously protected that position by making sure the president never gave anyone else too much power." When Brill asked the president about these aides' assessment of Jarrett, Obama "declined comment," Brill wrote in his book. That, in and of itself, was an answer. Would that Jarrett had received as much media scrutiny of her role in eight years under Obama as Bannon has in less than four weeks.

I've had my disagreements with Bannon, whose apocalyptic views on some issues I don't share. Ronald Reagan once said that if someone in Washington agrees with you 80 percent of the time, he is an ally, not an enemy. I'd guess Bannon wouldn't agree with that sentiment.

But the media's effort to turn Bannon into an enemy of the people is veering into hysterical character assassination. The Sunday print edition of the New York Times ran an astonishing 1,500-word story headlined: "Fascists Too Lax for a Philosopher Cited by Bannon." (The online headline now reads, "Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists.") The Times based this headline on what it admits was "a passing reference" in a speech by Bannon at a Vatican conference in 2014 . In that speech, Bannon made a single mention of Julius Evola, an obscure Italian philosopher who opposed modernity and cozied up to Mussolini's Italian Fascists.

- John Fund is NRO's national-affairs correspondent . https://twitter.com/@JohnFund

[Dec 31, 2017] John McCain: I gave Russia blackmail dossier on Trump to FBI by Jamie Schram

Notable quotes:
"... "Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public," McCain said. "Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue." ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Sen. John McCain admitted Wednesday that he gave the FBI a dossier detailing claims of a Russian blackmail plot against President-elect Donald Trump.

The Arizona lawmaker, a longtime Trump critic, made the public statement as questions piled up about his alleged role in spreading an unverified and error-riddled document that Trump has denounced as "a complete and total fabrication."

"Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public," McCain said. "Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue."

[Dec 31, 2017] How America Spreads Global Chaos by Nicolas J.S. Davies

Highly recommended!
Essentially CIA dictates the US foreign policy. The tail is wagging the dog. The current Russophobia hysteria mean additional billions for CIA and FBI. As simple as that.
The article contain some important observation about self-sustaining nature of the US militarism. It is able to create new threats and new insurgencies almost at will via CIA activities.
The key problem is that wars are highly profitable for important part of the ruling elite, especially representing finance and military industrial complex. Also now part of the US ruling elite now consists of "colonial administrators" which are directly interested in maintaining and expanding the US empire. This is trap from which nation might not be able to escape.
Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S. Davies. ..."
"... Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the 1954 Geneva Accords and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die was cast. ..."
"... No U.S. president could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited from them. ..."
"... The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book Roots of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing," Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination." ..."
"... Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere, but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991. ..."
"... Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility as Johnson and Nixon did. ..."
"... Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only become more entrenched over time, as President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now, the lack of any actual military threat to the United States. ..."
"... U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World , was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role of the CIA in U.S. policy. ..."
"... The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such pretexts for war. ..."
"... The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years. ..."
"... Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment, ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out. ..."
"... Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq. ..."
"... But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty meant ..."
"... The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror," would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy objective. ..."
"... This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on a continental scale. ..."
"... China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every 10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business." ..."
"... As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash on others. ..."
"... But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike. ..."
"... Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist, beginning with his book on The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled The CIA as Organized Crime : How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy. ..."
"... In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to "make the economy scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. ..."
"... The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction. ..."
"... Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the most expensive military budge t of any president since World War Two. ..."
"... Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition, as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor. France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and destruction. ..."
Oct 30, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S. Davies.

As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment that had already killed millions of people.

As conversations tape-recorded in the White House reveal, and as other writers have documented, the reasons for wading into the Big Muddy, as Pete Seeger satirized it , and then pushing on regardless, all came down to "credibility": the domestic political credibility of the politicians involved and America's international credibility as a military power.

Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the 1954 Geneva Accords and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die was cast. The CIA's support for the repressive Diem regime and its successors ensured an ever-escalating war, as the South rose in rebellion, supported by the North. No U.S. president could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited from them.

The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book Roots of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing," Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination."

Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere, but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991.

Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility as Johnson and Nixon did. His predictable response has been to escalate ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and West Africa, and to threaten new ones against North Korea, Iran and Venezuela.

Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only become more entrenched over time, as President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now, the lack of any actual military threat to the United States.

Ironically but predictably, the U.S.'s aggressive and illegal war policy has finally provoked a real military threat to the U.S., albeit one that has emerged only in response to U.S. war plans. As I explained in a recent article , North Korea's discovery in 2016 of a U.S. plan to assassinate its president, Kim Jong Un, and launch a Second Korean War has triggered a crash program to develop long-range ballistic missiles that could give North Korea a viable nuclear deterrent and prevent a U.S. attack. But the North Koreans will not feel safe from attack until their leaders and ours are sure that their missiles can deliver a nuclear strike against the U.S. mainland.

The CIA's Pretexts for War

U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World , was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role of the CIA in U.S. policy.

Prouty surprisingly described the role of the CIA as a response by powerful people and interests to the abolition of the U.S. Department of War and the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947. Once the role of the U.S. military was redefined as one of defense, in line with the United Nations Charter's prohibition against the threat or use of military force in 1945 and similar moves by other military powers, it would require some kind of crisis or threat to justify using military force in the future, both legally and politically. The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such pretexts for war.

The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years.

Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment, ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out.

Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq.

CIA in Syria and Africa

But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty meant. In late 2011, after destroying Libya and aiding in the torture-murder of Muammar Gaddafi, the CIA and its allies began flying fighters and weapons from Libya to Turkey and infiltrating them into Syria. Then, working with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Croatia and other allies, this operation poured thousands of tons of weapons across Syria's borders to ignite and fuel a full-scale civil war.

Once these covert operations were under way, they ran wild until they had unleashed a savage Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria (Jabhat al-Nusra, now rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), spawned the even more savage "Islamic State," triggered the heaviest and probably the deadliest U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam and drawn Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Hezbollah, Kurdish militias and almost every state or armed group in the Middle East into the chaos of Syria's civil war.

Meanwhile, as Al Qaeda and Islamic State have expanded their operations across Africa, the U.N. has published a report titled Journey to Extremism in Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment , based on 500 interviews with African militants. This study has found that the kind of special operations and training missions the CIA and AFRICOM are conducting and supporting in Africa are in fact the critical "tipping point" that drives Africans to join militant groups like Al Qaeda, Al-Shabab and Boko Haram.

The report found that government action, such as the killing or detention of friends or family, was the "tipping point" that drove 71 percent of African militants interviewed to join armed groups, and that this was a more important factor than religious ideology.

The conclusions of Journey to Extremism in Africa confirm the findings of other similar studies. The Center for Civilians in Conflict interviewed 250 civilians who joined armed groups in Bosnia, Somalia, Gaza and Libya for its 2015 study, The People's Perspectives : Civilian Involvement in Armed Conflict . The study found that the most common motivation for civilians to join armed groups was simply to protect themselves or their families.

The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror," would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy objective.

"The more intimate one becomes with this activity," Prouty wrote, "The more one begins to realize that such operations are rarely, if ever, initiated from an intent to become involved in pursuit of some national objective in the first place."

The U.S. justifies the deployment of 6,000 U.S. special forces and military trainers to 53 of the 54 countries in Africa as a response to terrorism. But the U.N.'s Journey to Extremism in Africa study makes it clear that the U.S. militarization of Africa is in fact the "tipping point" that is driving Africans across the continent to join armed resistance groups in the first place.

This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on a continental scale.

Taking on China

What seems to really be driving the CIA's militarization of U.S. policy in Africa is China's growing influence on the continent. As Steve Bannon put it in an interview with the Economist in August, "Let's go screw up One Belt One Road."

China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every 10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business."

China is too powerful and armed with nuclear weapons. So, in this case, the CIA's job would be to spread violence and chaos to disrupt Chinese trade and investment, and to make African governments increasingly dependent on U.S. military aid to fight the militant groups spawned and endlessly regenerated by U.S.-led "counterterrorism" operations.

Neither Ledeen nor Bannon pretend that such policies are designed to build more prosperous or viable societies in the Middle East or Africa, let alone to benefit their people. They both know very well what Richard Barnet already understood 45 years ago, that America's unprecedented investment in weapons, war and CIA covert operations are only good for one thing: to kill people and destroy infrastructure, reducing cities to rubble, societies to chaos and the desperate survivors to poverty and displacement.

As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash on others.

But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike.

Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist, beginning with his book on The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled The CIA as Organized Crime : How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy.

The Three Scapegoats

In Trump's speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he named North Korea, Iran and Venezuela as his prime targets for destabilization, economic warfare and, ultimately, the overthrow of their governments, whether by coup d'etat or the mass destruction of their civilian population and infrastructure. But Trump's choice of scapegoats for America's failures was obviously not based on a rational reassessment of foreign policy priorities by the new administration. It was only a tired rehashing of the CIA's unfinished business with two-thirds of Bush's "axis of evil" and Bush White House official Elliott Abrams' failed 2002 coup in Caracas, now laced with explicit and illegal threats of aggression.

How Trump and the CIA plan to sacrifice their three scapegoats for America's failures remains to be seen. This is not 2001, when the world stood silent at the U.S. bombardment and invasion of Afghanistan after September 11th. It is more like 2003, when the U.S. destruction of Iraq split the Atlantic alliance and alienated most of the world. It is certainly not 2011, after Obama's global charm offensive had rebuilt U.S. alliances and provided cover for French President Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Cameron, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Arab royals to destroy Libya, once ranked by the U.N. as the most developed country in Africa , now mired in intractable chaos.

In 2017, a U.S. attack on any one of Trump's scapegoats would isolate the United States from many of its allies and undermine its standing in the world in far-reaching ways that might be more permanent and harder to repair than the invasion and destruction of Iraq.

In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to "make the economy scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. But the solid victory of Venezuela's ruling Socialist Party in recent nationwide gubernatorial elections, despite a long and deep economic crisis, reveals little public support for the CIA's puppets in Venezuela.

The CIA has successfully discredited the Venezuelan government through economic warfare, increasingly violent right-wing street protests and a global propaganda campaign. But the CIA has stupidly hitched its wagon to an extreme right-wing, upper-class opposition that has no credibility with most of the Venezuelan public, who still turn out for the Socialists at the polls. A CIA coup or U.S. military intervention would meet fierce public resistance and damage U.S. relations all over Latin America.

Boxing In North Korea

A U.S. aerial bombardment or "preemptive strike" on North Korea could quickly escalate into a war between the U.S. and China, which has reiterated its commitment to North Korea's defense if North Korea is attacked. We do not know exactly what was in the U.S. war plan discovered by North Korea, so neither can we know how North Korea and China could respond if the U.S. pressed ahead with it.

Most analysts have long concluded that any U.S. attack on North Korea would be met with a North Korean artillery and missile barrage that would inflict unacceptable civilian casualties on Seoul, a metropolitan area of 26 million people, three times the population of New York City. Seoul is only 35 miles from the frontier with North Korea, placing it within range of a huge array of North Korean weapons. What was already a no-win calculus is now compounded by the possibility that North Korea could respond with nuclear weapons, turning any prospect of a U.S. attack into an even worse nightmare.

U.S. mismanagement of its relations with North Korea should be an object lesson for its relations with Iran, graphically demonstrating the advantages of diplomacy, talks and agreements over threats of war. Under the Agreed Framework signed in 1994, North Korea stopped work on two much larger nuclear reactors than the small experimental one operating at Yongbyong since 1986, which only produces 6 kg of plutonium per year, enough for one nuclear bomb.

The lesson of Bush's Iraq invasion in 2003 after Saddam Hussein had complied with demands that he destroy Iraq's stockpiles of chemical weapons and shut down a nascent nuclear program was not lost on North Korea. Not only did the invasion lay waste to large sections of Iraq with hundreds of thousands of dead but Hussein himself was hunted down and condemned to death by hanging.

Still, after North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, even its small experimental reactor was shut down as a result of the "Six Party Talks" in 2007, all the fuel rods were removed and placed under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the cooling tower of the reactor was demolished in 2008.

But then, as relations deteriorated, North Korea conducted a second nuclear weapon test and again began reprocessing spent fuel rods to recover plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.

North Korea has now conducted six nuclear weapons tests. The explosions in the first five tests increased gradually up to 15-25 kilotons, about the yield of the bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but estimates for the yield of the 2017 test range from 110 to 250 kilotons , comparable to a small hydrogen bomb.

The even greater danger in a new war in Korea is that the U.S. could unleash part of its arsenal of 4,000 more powerful weapons (100 to 1,200 kilotons), which could kill millions of people and devastate and poison the region, or even the world, for years to come.

The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction.

China has proposed a reasonable framework for diplomacy to address the concerns of both sides, but the U.S. insists on maintaining its propaganda narratives that all the fault lies with North Korea and that it has some kind of "military solution" to the crisis.

This may be the most dangerous idea we have heard from U.S. policymakers since the end of the Cold War, but it is the logical culmination of a systematic normalization of deviant and illegal U.S. war-making that has already cost millions of lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. As historian Gabriel Kolko wrote in Century of War in 1994, "options and decisions that are intrinsically dangerous and irrational become not merely plausible but the only form of reasoning about war and diplomacy that is possible in official circles."

Demonizing Iran

The idea that Iran has ever had a nuclear weapons program is seriously contested by the IAEA, which has examined every allegation presented by the CIA and other Western "intelligence" agencies as well as Israel. Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei revealed many details of this wild goose chase in his 2011 memoir, Age of Deception : Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times .

When the CIA and its partners reluctantly acknowledged the IAEA's conclusions in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), ElBaradei issued a press release confirming that, "the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran."

Since 2007, the IAEA has resolved all its outstanding concerns with Iran. It has verified that dual-use technologies that Iran imported before 2003 were in fact used for other purposes, and it has exposed the mysterious "laptop documents" that appeared to show Iranian plans for a nuclear weapon as forgeries. Gareth Porter thoroughly explored all these questions and allegations and the history of mistrust that fueled them in his 2014 book, Manufactured Crisis : the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare , which I highly recommend.

But, in the parallel Bizarro world of U.S. politics, hopelessly poisoned by the CIA's endless disinformation campaigns, Hillary Clinton could repeatedly take false credit for disarming Iran during her presidential campaign, and neither Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump nor any corporate media interviewer dared to challenge her claims.

"When President Obama took office, Iran was racing toward a nuclear bomb," Clinton fantasized in a prominent foreign policy speech on June 2, 2016, claiming that her brutal sanctions policy "brought Iran to the table."

In fact, as Trita Parsi documented in his 2012 book, A Single Roll of the Dice : Obama's Diplomacy With Iran , the Iranians were ready, not just to "come to the table," but to sign a comprehensive agreement based on a U.S. proposal brokered by Turkey and Brazil in 2010. But, in a classic case of "tail wags dog," the U.S. then rejected its own proposal because it would have undercut support for tighter sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. In other words, Clinton's sanctions policy did not "bring Iran to the table", but prevented the U.S. from coming to the table itself.

As a senior State Department official told Trita Parsi, the real problem with U.S. diplomacy with Iran when Clinton was at the State Department was that the U.S. would not take "Yes" for an answer. Trump's ham-fisted decertification of Iran's compliance with the JCPOA is right out of Clinton's playbook, and it demonstrates that the CIA is still determined to use Iran as a scapegoat for America's failures in the Middle East.

The spurious claim that Iran is the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism is another CIA canard reinforced by endless repetition. It is true that Iran supports and supplies weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas, which are both listed as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. But they are mainly defensive resistance groups that defend Lebanon and Gaza respectively against invasions and attacks by Israel.

Shifting attention away from Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and other groups that actually commit terrorist crimes around the world might just seem like a case of the CIA "taking its eyes off the ball," if it wasn't so transparently timed to frame Iran with new accusations now that the manufactured crisis of the nuclear scare has run its course.

What the Future Holds

Barack Obama's most consequential international achievement may have been the triumph of symbolism over substance behind which he expanded and escalated the so-called "war on terror," with a vast expansion of covert operations and proxy wars that eventually triggered the heaviest U.S. aerial bombardments since Vietnam in Iraq and Syria.

Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the most expensive military budget of any president since World War Two.

But Obama's expansion of the "war on terror" under cover of his deceptive global public relations campaign created many more problems than it solved, and Trump and his advisers are woefully ill-equipped to solve any of them. Trump's expressed desire to place America first and to resist foreign entanglements is hopelessly at odds with his aggressive, bullying approach to every foreign policy problem.

If the U.S. could threaten and fight its way to a resolution of any of its international problems, it would have done so already. That is exactly what it has been trying to do since the 1990s, behind both the swagger and bluster of Bush and Trump and the deceptive charm of Clinton and Obama: a "good cop – bad cop" routine that should no longer fool anyone anywhere.

But as Lyndon Johnson found as he waded deeper and deeper into the Big Muddy in Vietnam, lying to the public about unwinnable wars does not make them any more winnable. It just gets more people killed and makes it harder and harder to ever tell the public the truth.

In unwinnable wars based on lies, the "credibility" problem only gets more complicated, as new lies require new scapegoats and convoluted narratives to explain away graveyards filled by old lies. Obama's cynical global charm offensive bought the "war on terror" another eight years, but that only allowed the CIA to drag the U.S. into more trouble and spread its chaos to more places around the world.

Meanwhile, Russian President Putin is winning hearts and minds in capitals around the world by calling for a recommitment to the rule of international law , which prohibits the threat or use of military force except in self-defense. Every new U.S. threat or act of aggression will only make Putin's case more persuasive, not least to important U.S. allies like South Korea, Germany and other members of the European Union, whose complicity in U.S. aggression has until now helped to give it a false veneer of political legitimacy.

Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition, as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor. France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and destruction.

Americans had better hope that we are not so exceptional, and that the world will find a diplomatic rather than a military "solution" to its American problem. Our chances of survival would improve a great deal if American officials and politicians would finally start to act like something other than putty in the hands of the CIA

Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq . He also wrote the chapters on "Obama at War" in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader .

[Dec 31, 2017] What Happens When A Russiagate Skeptic Debates A Professional Russiagater

Highly recommended!
What a pitiful pressitute this Like Harding is...
The fact that he is employed by Guardia tells a lot how low Guardian fall. It's a yellow press (owned by intelligence agencies if we talk about their coverage of Russia).
Notable quotes:
"... In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept 's Jeremy Scahill accurately described as "brutal". ..."
"... Russiagate only works if you allow it to remain zoomed out, where the individually weak arguments of this giant Gish gallop fallacy form the appearance of a legitimate argument. ..."
"... That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority - Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read my whole book" is just getting to the silly season. Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Have you ever wondered why mainstream media outlets, despite being so fond of dramatic panel debates on other hot-button issues, never have critics of the Russiagate narrative on to debate those who advance it? Well, in a recent Real News interview we received an extremely clear answer to that question, and it was so epic it deserves its own article.

Real News host and producer Aaron Maté has recently emerged as one of the most articulate critics of the establishment Russia narrative and the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, and has published in The Nation some of the clearest arguments against both that I've yet seen. Luke Harding is a journalist for The Guardian where he has been writing prolifically in promotion of the Russiagate narrative, and is the author of New York Times bestseller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.

In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept 's Jeremy Scahill accurately described as "brutal".

The term Gish gallop , named after a Young Earth creationist who was notoriously fond of employing it, refers to a fallacious debate tactic in which a bunch of individually weak arguments are strung together in rapid-fire succession in order to create the illusion of a solid argument and overwhelm the opposition's ability to refute them all in the time allotted. Throughout the discussion the Gish gallop appeared to be the only tool that Luke Harding brought to the table, firing out a deluge of feeble and unsubstantiated arguments only to be stopped over and over again by Maté who kept pointing out when Harding was making a false or fallacious claim.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Ikf1uZli4g

In this part here , for example, the following exchange takes place while Harding is already against the ropes on the back of a previous failed argument. I'm going to type this up so you can clearly see what's happening here:

Harding: Look, I'm a journalist. I'm a storyteller. I'm not a kind of head of the CIA or the NSA. But what I can tell you is that there have been similar operations in France, most recently when President Macron was elected ? -

Maté: Well actually Luke that's not true. That's straight up not true. After that election the French cyber-intelligence agency came out and said it could have been virtually anybody.

Harding: Yeah. But, if you'll let me finish, there've been attacks on the German parliament ? -

Maté: Okay, but wait Luke, do you concede that the France hack that you just claimed didn't happen?

Harding: [pause] What? -- ?that it didn't happen? Sorry?

Maté: Do you concede that the Russian hacking of the French election that you just claimed actually is not true?

Harding: [pause] Well, I mean that it's not true? I mean, the French report was inconclusive, but you have to look at this kind of contextually. We've seen attacks on other European states as well from Russia, they have very kind of advanced cyber capabilities.

Maté: Where else?

Harding: Well, Estonia. Have you heard of Estonia? It's a state in the Baltics which was crippled by a massive cyber attack in 2008, which certainly all kind of western European and former eastern European states think was carried out by Moscow. I mean I was in Moscow at the time, when relations between the two countries were extremely bad. This is a kind of ongoing thing. Now you might say, quite legitimately, well the US does the same thing, the UK does the same thing, and I think to a certain extent that is certainly right. I think what was different last year was the attempt to kind of dump this stuff out into kind of US public space and try and influence public opinion there. That's unusual. And of course that's a matter of congressional inquiry and something Mueller is looking at too.

Maté: Right. But again, my problem here is that the examples that are frequently presented to substantiate claims of this massive Russian hacking operation around the world prove out to be false. So France as I mentioned; you also mentioned Germany. There was a lot of worry about Russian hacking of the German elections, but it turned out? -- ?and there's plenty of articles since then that have acknowledged this? - ? that actually there was no Russian hack in Germany.

In the above exchange, Maté derailed Harding's Gish gallop, and Harding actually admonished him for doing so, telling him "let me finish" and attempting to go on listing more flimsy examples to bolster his case as though he hadn't just begun his Gish gallop with a completely false example .

That's really all Harding brought to the debate. A bunch of individually weak arguments, the fact that he speaks Russian and has lived in Moscow, and the occasional straw man where he tries to imply that Maté is claiming that Vladimir Putin is an innocent girl scout. Meanwhile Maté just kept patiently dragging the debate back on track over and over again in the most polite obliteration of a man that I have ever witnessed.

The entire interview followed this basic script. Harding makes an unfounded claim, Maté holds him to the fact that it's unfounded, Harding sputters a bit and tries to zoom things out and point to a bigger-picture analysis of broader trends to distract from the fact that he'd just made an individual claim that was baseless, then winds up implying that Maté is only skeptical of the claims because he hasn't lived in Russia as Harding has.

jeremy scahill 0
@jeremyscahill
This @aaronjmate interview is brutal. He makes mincemeat of Luke Harding, who can't seem to defend the thesis, much less the title, of his own book: Where's the 'Collusion' - YouTube
11:03 AM-Dec 25, 2017
Q 131 11597 C? 1,148

The interview ended when Harding once again implied that Maté was only skeptical of the collusion narrative because he'd never been to Russia and seen what a right-wing oppressive government it is, after which the following exchange took place:

Maté: I don't think I've countered anything you've said about the state of Vladimir Putin's Russia. The issue under discussion today has been whether there was collusion, the topic of your book.
Harding: Yeah, but you're clearly a kind of collusion rejectionist, so I'm not sure what sort of evidence short of Trump and Putin in a sauna together would convince you. Clearly nothing would convince you. But anyway it's been a pleasure.

At which point Harding abruptly logged off the video chat, leaving Maté to wrap up the show and promote Harding's book on his own.

You should definitely watch this debate for yourself , and enjoy it, because I will be shocked if we ever see another like it. Harding's fate will serve as a cautionary tale for the establishment hacks who've built their careers advancing the Russiagate conspiracy theory , and it's highly unlikely that any of them will ever make the mistake of trying to debate anyone of Maté's caliber again.

The reason Russiagaters speak so often in broad, sweeping terms? - saying there are too many suspicious things happening for there not to be a there there, that there's too much smoke for there not to be fire? - ? is because when you zoom in and focus on any individual part of their conspiracy theory, it falls apart under the slightest amount of critical thinking (or as Harding calls it, "collusion rejectionism"). Russiagate only works if you allow it to remain zoomed out, where the individually weak arguments of this giant Gish gallop fallacy form the appearance of a legitimate argument.

Well, Harding did say he's a storyteller.

* * *

Thanks for reading! My work here is entirely reader-funded so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following me on Twitter , bookmarking my website , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , or buying my new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . Our Hidden History 4 days ago (edited) That Harding tells Mate to meet Alexi Navalny, who is a far right nationalist and most certainly a tool of US intelligence (something like Russia's Richard Spencer) was all I needed to hear to understand where Luke is coming from.

He's little more than an intelligence asset himself if his idea of speaking to "Russians" is to go and speak to a bunch of people who most certainly have their own ties back to the western intelligence agencies.

That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority - Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read my whole book" is just getting to the silly season. Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument.

Few in the US know about these cases or what occurred, or of the many forces inside of Russia that might be involved in murdering journalists just as in Mexico or Turkey. But these cases are not explained - blame is merely assigned to Putin himself. Of course if someone here discusses he death of Michael Hastings, they're a "conspiracy theorist", but if the crime involves a Russian were to assign the blame to Vladimir Putin and, no further explanation is required.

[Dec 31, 2017] John McCain: I gave Russia blackmail dossier on Trump to FBI by Jamie Schram

Notable quotes:
"... "Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public," McCain said. "Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue." ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Sen. John McCain admitted Wednesday that he gave the FBI a dossier detailing claims of a Russian blackmail plot against President-elect Donald Trump.

The Arizona lawmaker, a longtime Trump critic, made the public statement as questions piled up about his alleged role in spreading an unverified and error-riddled document that Trump has denounced as "a complete and total fabrication."

"Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public," McCain said. "Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue."

[Dec 31, 2017] How America Spreads Global Chaos by Nicolas J.S. Davies

Highly recommended!
Essentially CIA dictates the US foreign policy. The tail is wagging the dog. The current Russophobia hysteria mean additional billions for CIA and FBI. As simple as that.
The article contain some important observation about self-sustaining nature of the US militarism. It is able to create new threats and new insurgencies almost at will via CIA activities.
The key problem is that wars are highly profitable for important part of the ruling elite, especially representing finance and military industrial complex. Also now part of the US ruling elite now consists of "colonial administrators" which are directly interested in maintaining and expanding the US empire. This is trap from which nation might not be able to escape.
Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S. Davies. ..."
"... Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the 1954 Geneva Accords and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die was cast. ..."
"... No U.S. president could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited from them. ..."
"... The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book Roots of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing," Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination." ..."
"... Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere, but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991. ..."
"... Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility as Johnson and Nixon did. ..."
"... Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only become more entrenched over time, as President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now, the lack of any actual military threat to the United States. ..."
"... U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World , was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role of the CIA in U.S. policy. ..."
"... The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such pretexts for war. ..."
"... The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years. ..."
"... Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment, ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out. ..."
"... Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq. ..."
"... But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty meant ..."
"... The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror," would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy objective. ..."
"... This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on a continental scale. ..."
"... China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every 10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business." ..."
"... As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash on others. ..."
"... But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike. ..."
"... Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist, beginning with his book on The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled The CIA as Organized Crime : How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy. ..."
"... In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to "make the economy scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. ..."
"... The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction. ..."
"... Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the most expensive military budge t of any president since World War Two. ..."
"... Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition, as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor. France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and destruction. ..."
Oct 30, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S. Davies.

As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment that had already killed millions of people.

As conversations tape-recorded in the White House reveal, and as other writers have documented, the reasons for wading into the Big Muddy, as Pete Seeger satirized it , and then pushing on regardless, all came down to "credibility": the domestic political credibility of the politicians involved and America's international credibility as a military power.

Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the 1954 Geneva Accords and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die was cast. The CIA's support for the repressive Diem regime and its successors ensured an ever-escalating war, as the South rose in rebellion, supported by the North. No U.S. president could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited from them.

The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book Roots of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing," Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination."

Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere, but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991.

Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility as Johnson and Nixon did. His predictable response has been to escalate ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and West Africa, and to threaten new ones against North Korea, Iran and Venezuela.

Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only become more entrenched over time, as President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now, the lack of any actual military threat to the United States.

Ironically but predictably, the U.S.'s aggressive and illegal war policy has finally provoked a real military threat to the U.S., albeit one that has emerged only in response to U.S. war plans. As I explained in a recent article , North Korea's discovery in 2016 of a U.S. plan to assassinate its president, Kim Jong Un, and launch a Second Korean War has triggered a crash program to develop long-range ballistic missiles that could give North Korea a viable nuclear deterrent and prevent a U.S. attack. But the North Koreans will not feel safe from attack until their leaders and ours are sure that their missiles can deliver a nuclear strike against the U.S. mainland.

The CIA's Pretexts for War

U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World , was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role of the CIA in U.S. policy.

Prouty surprisingly described the role of the CIA as a response by powerful people and interests to the abolition of the U.S. Department of War and the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947. Once the role of the U.S. military was redefined as one of defense, in line with the United Nations Charter's prohibition against the threat or use of military force in 1945 and similar moves by other military powers, it would require some kind of crisis or threat to justify using military force in the future, both legally and politically. The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such pretexts for war.

The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years.

Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment, ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out.

Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq.

CIA in Syria and Africa

But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty meant. In late 2011, after destroying Libya and aiding in the torture-murder of Muammar Gaddafi, the CIA and its allies began flying fighters and weapons from Libya to Turkey and infiltrating them into Syria. Then, working with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Croatia and other allies, this operation poured thousands of tons of weapons across Syria's borders to ignite and fuel a full-scale civil war.

Once these covert operations were under way, they ran wild until they had unleashed a savage Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria (Jabhat al-Nusra, now rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), spawned the even more savage "Islamic State," triggered the heaviest and probably the deadliest U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam and drawn Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Hezbollah, Kurdish militias and almost every state or armed group in the Middle East into the chaos of Syria's civil war.

Meanwhile, as Al Qaeda and Islamic State have expanded their operations across Africa, the U.N. has published a report titled Journey to Extremism in Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment , based on 500 interviews with African militants. This study has found that the kind of special operations and training missions the CIA and AFRICOM are conducting and supporting in Africa are in fact the critical "tipping point" that drives Africans to join militant groups like Al Qaeda, Al-Shabab and Boko Haram.

The report found that government action, such as the killing or detention of friends or family, was the "tipping point" that drove 71 percent of African militants interviewed to join armed groups, and that this was a more important factor than religious ideology.

The conclusions of Journey to Extremism in Africa confirm the findings of other similar studies. The Center for Civilians in Conflict interviewed 250 civilians who joined armed groups in Bosnia, Somalia, Gaza and Libya for its 2015 study, The People's Perspectives : Civilian Involvement in Armed Conflict . The study found that the most common motivation for civilians to join armed groups was simply to protect themselves or their families.

The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror," would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy objective.

"The more intimate one becomes with this activity," Prouty wrote, "The more one begins to realize that such operations are rarely, if ever, initiated from an intent to become involved in pursuit of some national objective in the first place."

The U.S. justifies the deployment of 6,000 U.S. special forces and military trainers to 53 of the 54 countries in Africa as a response to terrorism. But the U.N.'s Journey to Extremism in Africa study makes it clear that the U.S. militarization of Africa is in fact the "tipping point" that is driving Africans across the continent to join armed resistance groups in the first place.

This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on a continental scale.

Taking on China

What seems to really be driving the CIA's militarization of U.S. policy in Africa is China's growing influence on the continent. As Steve Bannon put it in an interview with the Economist in August, "Let's go screw up One Belt One Road."

China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every 10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business."

China is too powerful and armed with nuclear weapons. So, in this case, the CIA's job would be to spread violence and chaos to disrupt Chinese trade and investment, and to make African governments increasingly dependent on U.S. military aid to fight the militant groups spawned and endlessly regenerated by U.S.-led "counterterrorism" operations.

Neither Ledeen nor Bannon pretend that such policies are designed to build more prosperous or viable societies in the Middle East or Africa, let alone to benefit their people. They both know very well what Richard Barnet already understood 45 years ago, that America's unprecedented investment in weapons, war and CIA covert operations are only good for one thing: to kill people and destroy infrastructure, reducing cities to rubble, societies to chaos and the desperate survivors to poverty and displacement.

As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash on others.

But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike.

Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist, beginning with his book on The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled The CIA as Organized Crime : How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy.

The Three Scapegoats

In Trump's speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he named North Korea, Iran and Venezuela as his prime targets for destabilization, economic warfare and, ultimately, the overthrow of their governments, whether by coup d'etat or the mass destruction of their civilian population and infrastructure. But Trump's choice of scapegoats for America's failures was obviously not based on a rational reassessment of foreign policy priorities by the new administration. It was only a tired rehashing of the CIA's unfinished business with two-thirds of Bush's "axis of evil" and Bush White House official Elliott Abrams' failed 2002 coup in Caracas, now laced with explicit and illegal threats of aggression.

How Trump and the CIA plan to sacrifice their three scapegoats for America's failures remains to be seen. This is not 2001, when the world stood silent at the U.S. bombardment and invasion of Afghanistan after September 11th. It is more like 2003, when the U.S. destruction of Iraq split the Atlantic alliance and alienated most of the world. It is certainly not 2011, after Obama's global charm offensive had rebuilt U.S. alliances and provided cover for French President Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Cameron, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Arab royals to destroy Libya, once ranked by the U.N. as the most developed country in Africa , now mired in intractable chaos.

In 2017, a U.S. attack on any one of Trump's scapegoats would isolate the United States from many of its allies and undermine its standing in the world in far-reaching ways that might be more permanent and harder to repair than the invasion and destruction of Iraq.

In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to "make the economy scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. But the solid victory of Venezuela's ruling Socialist Party in recent nationwide gubernatorial elections, despite a long and deep economic crisis, reveals little public support for the CIA's puppets in Venezuela.

The CIA has successfully discredited the Venezuelan government through economic warfare, increasingly violent right-wing street protests and a global propaganda campaign. But the CIA has stupidly hitched its wagon to an extreme right-wing, upper-class opposition that has no credibility with most of the Venezuelan public, who still turn out for the Socialists at the polls. A CIA coup or U.S. military intervention would meet fierce public resistance and damage U.S. relations all over Latin America.

Boxing In North Korea

A U.S. aerial bombardment or "preemptive strike" on North Korea could quickly escalate into a war between the U.S. and China, which has reiterated its commitment to North Korea's defense if North Korea is attacked. We do not know exactly what was in the U.S. war plan discovered by North Korea, so neither can we know how North Korea and China could respond if the U.S. pressed ahead with it.

Most analysts have long concluded that any U.S. attack on North Korea would be met with a North Korean artillery and missile barrage that would inflict unacceptable civilian casualties on Seoul, a metropolitan area of 26 million people, three times the population of New York City. Seoul is only 35 miles from the frontier with North Korea, placing it within range of a huge array of North Korean weapons. What was already a no-win calculus is now compounded by the possibility that North Korea could respond with nuclear weapons, turning any prospect of a U.S. attack into an even worse nightmare.

U.S. mismanagement of its relations with North Korea should be an object lesson for its relations with Iran, graphically demonstrating the advantages of diplomacy, talks and agreements over threats of war. Under the Agreed Framework signed in 1994, North Korea stopped work on two much larger nuclear reactors than the small experimental one operating at Yongbyong since 1986, which only produces 6 kg of plutonium per year, enough for one nuclear bomb.

The lesson of Bush's Iraq invasion in 2003 after Saddam Hussein had complied with demands that he destroy Iraq's stockpiles of chemical weapons and shut down a nascent nuclear program was not lost on North Korea. Not only did the invasion lay waste to large sections of Iraq with hundreds of thousands of dead but Hussein himself was hunted down and condemned to death by hanging.

Still, after North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, even its small experimental reactor was shut down as a result of the "Six Party Talks" in 2007, all the fuel rods were removed and placed under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the cooling tower of the reactor was demolished in 2008.

But then, as relations deteriorated, North Korea conducted a second nuclear weapon test and again began reprocessing spent fuel rods to recover plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.

North Korea has now conducted six nuclear weapons tests. The explosions in the first five tests increased gradually up to 15-25 kilotons, about the yield of the bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but estimates for the yield of the 2017 test range from 110 to 250 kilotons , comparable to a small hydrogen bomb.

The even greater danger in a new war in Korea is that the U.S. could unleash part of its arsenal of 4,000 more powerful weapons (100 to 1,200 kilotons), which could kill millions of people and devastate and poison the region, or even the world, for years to come.

The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction.

China has proposed a reasonable framework for diplomacy to address the concerns of both sides, but the U.S. insists on maintaining its propaganda narratives that all the fault lies with North Korea and that it has some kind of "military solution" to the crisis.

This may be the most dangerous idea we have heard from U.S. policymakers since the end of the Cold War, but it is the logical culmination of a systematic normalization of deviant and illegal U.S. war-making that has already cost millions of lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. As historian Gabriel Kolko wrote in Century of War in 1994, "options and decisions that are intrinsically dangerous and irrational become not merely plausible but the only form of reasoning about war and diplomacy that is possible in official circles."

Demonizing Iran

The idea that Iran has ever had a nuclear weapons program is seriously contested by the IAEA, which has examined every allegation presented by the CIA and other Western "intelligence" agencies as well as Israel. Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei revealed many details of this wild goose chase in his 2011 memoir, Age of Deception : Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times .

When the CIA and its partners reluctantly acknowledged the IAEA's conclusions in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), ElBaradei issued a press release confirming that, "the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran."

Since 2007, the IAEA has resolved all its outstanding concerns with Iran. It has verified that dual-use technologies that Iran imported before 2003 were in fact used for other purposes, and it has exposed the mysterious "laptop documents" that appeared to show Iranian plans for a nuclear weapon as forgeries. Gareth Porter thoroughly explored all these questions and allegations and the history of mistrust that fueled them in his 2014 book, Manufactured Crisis : the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare , which I highly recommend.

But, in the parallel Bizarro world of U.S. politics, hopelessly poisoned by the CIA's endless disinformation campaigns, Hillary Clinton could repeatedly take false credit for disarming Iran during her presidential campaign, and neither Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump nor any corporate media interviewer dared to challenge her claims.

"When President Obama took office, Iran was racing toward a nuclear bomb," Clinton fantasized in a prominent foreign policy speech on June 2, 2016, claiming that her brutal sanctions policy "brought Iran to the table."

In fact, as Trita Parsi documented in his 2012 book, A Single Roll of the Dice : Obama's Diplomacy With Iran , the Iranians were ready, not just to "come to the table," but to sign a comprehensive agreement based on a U.S. proposal brokered by Turkey and Brazil in 2010. But, in a classic case of "tail wags dog," the U.S. then rejected its own proposal because it would have undercut support for tighter sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. In other words, Clinton's sanctions policy did not "bring Iran to the table", but prevented the U.S. from coming to the table itself.

As a senior State Department official told Trita Parsi, the real problem with U.S. diplomacy with Iran when Clinton was at the State Department was that the U.S. would not take "Yes" for an answer. Trump's ham-fisted decertification of Iran's compliance with the JCPOA is right out of Clinton's playbook, and it demonstrates that the CIA is still determined to use Iran as a scapegoat for America's failures in the Middle East.

The spurious claim that Iran is the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism is another CIA canard reinforced by endless repetition. It is true that Iran supports and supplies weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas, which are both listed as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. But they are mainly defensive resistance groups that defend Lebanon and Gaza respectively against invasions and attacks by Israel.

Shifting attention away from Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and other groups that actually commit terrorist crimes around the world might just seem like a case of the CIA "taking its eyes off the ball," if it wasn't so transparently timed to frame Iran with new accusations now that the manufactured crisis of the nuclear scare has run its course.

What the Future Holds

Barack Obama's most consequential international achievement may have been the triumph of symbolism over substance behind which he expanded and escalated the so-called "war on terror," with a vast expansion of covert operations and proxy wars that eventually triggered the heaviest U.S. aerial bombardments since Vietnam in Iraq and Syria.

Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the most expensive military budget of any president since World War Two.

But Obama's expansion of the "war on terror" under cover of his deceptive global public relations campaign created many more problems than it solved, and Trump and his advisers are woefully ill-equipped to solve any of them. Trump's expressed desire to place America first and to resist foreign entanglements is hopelessly at odds with his aggressive, bullying approach to every foreign policy problem.

If the U.S. could threaten and fight its way to a resolution of any of its international problems, it would have done so already. That is exactly what it has been trying to do since the 1990s, behind both the swagger and bluster of Bush and Trump and the deceptive charm of Clinton and Obama: a "good cop – bad cop" routine that should no longer fool anyone anywhere.

But as Lyndon Johnson found as he waded deeper and deeper into the Big Muddy in Vietnam, lying to the public about unwinnable wars does not make them any more winnable. It just gets more people killed and makes it harder and harder to ever tell the public the truth.

In unwinnable wars based on lies, the "credibility" problem only gets more complicated, as new lies require new scapegoats and convoluted narratives to explain away graveyards filled by old lies. Obama's cynical global charm offensive bought the "war on terror" another eight years, but that only allowed the CIA to drag the U.S. into more trouble and spread its chaos to more places around the world.

Meanwhile, Russian President Putin is winning hearts and minds in capitals around the world by calling for a recommitment to the rule of international law , which prohibits the threat or use of military force except in self-defense. Every new U.S. threat or act of aggression will only make Putin's case more persuasive, not least to important U.S. allies like South Korea, Germany and other members of the European Union, whose complicity in U.S. aggression has until now helped to give it a false veneer of political legitimacy.

Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition, as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor. France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and destruction.

Americans had better hope that we are not so exceptional, and that the world will find a diplomatic rather than a military "solution" to its American problem. Our chances of survival would improve a great deal if American officials and politicians would finally start to act like something other than putty in the hands of the CIA

Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq . He also wrote the chapters on "Obama at War" in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader .

[Dec 30, 2017] Denouncing and openly hating Russia has now become a form of virtue-signaling. Since the entire US political elites have endorsed this phobia, it is exceedingly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. That increases the probably of confrontation by The Saker

Notable quotes:
"... What will not stop is the full-spectrum demonization of Russia, thus the relationship between the two countries will further deteriorate. Putin's Russia is a kind of Mordor which represents all evil and stands behind all evil. Denouncing and openly hating Russia has now become a form of virtue-signaling. Since the entire US political elites have endorsed this phobia, it is exceedingly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. ..."
Dec 29, 2017 | www.unz.com

Russia option 1 : rumors that the US would disconnect Russia from SWIFT or steal (that is politely called "freeze") Russian assets and funds in the US have been going in for a long time already. And the Russians have been making all sorts of menacing noises about this, but all of them very vague which tells me that Russia might not have any good retaliatory options and that this time around the hot air is blowing from Moscow. Of course, Putin is a unpredictable master strategist and the folks around him are very, very smart. They might hold something up their sleeve which I am not aware of but I strongly suspect that, unlike me, the US intelligence community must be fully aware of what this might be. I am not an economist and there is much I don't know here, I therefore assessed the risk as "unknown" for me.

Russia option 2 : the reaction of Russia to the shooting down by Turkey of a SU-24 in 2015 might well have given the US politicians and commanders a feeling that they could do the same and get away with it. In truth, they might be right. But they might also be wrong. The big difference with the case of the SU-24 is that Russia has formidable air-defenses deployed in Syria which present a major threat for US forces. Furthermore, if a Russian aircraft is under attack and the Russians reply by firing a volley of ground-to-air missiles, what would the US do – attack a Russian S-400 battery?

The US is also in a tricky situation in an air-to-air confrontation. While the F-22 is an excellent air superiority fighter it has one huge weakness: it is designed to engage its adversaries from a long range and to shoot first, before it is detected (I mention only the F-22 here because it is the only US aircraft capable of challenging the Su-30SM/Su-35). But if the rules of engagement say that before firing at a Russian aircraft the F-22 has to issue a clear warning or if the engagement happens at medium to short range distances, then the F-22 is at a big disadvantage, especially against a Su-30SM or Su-35.

Another major weakness of the F-22 is that, unlike the Su-30/Su-35, it does not have a real electronic warfare suite (the F-22's INEWS does not really qualify). In plain English this means that the F-22 was designed to maximize its low radar cross section but at a cost of all other aspects of aerial warfare (radar power, hyper maneuverability, electronic warfare, passive engagement, etc.).

This all gets very technical and complicated very fast, but I think that we can agree that the Neocons are unlikely to be very impressed by the risks posed by Russian forces in Syria and that they will likely feel that they can punch the russkies in the nose and that these russkies will have to take it. Local US commanders might feel otherwise, but that is also entirely irrelevant. Still, I place the risk here at 'medium' even if, potentially, this could lead to a catastrophic thermonuclear war because I don't think that the Neocons believe that the Russians will escalate too much (who starts WWIII over one shot down aircraft anyway, right?!). Think of it: if you were the commander of the Russian task force in Syria, what would you do if the US shot down on of your aircraft (remember, you assume that you are a responsible and intelligent commander, not a flag-waving delusional maniac)?

What will not stop is the full-spectrum demonization of Russia, thus the relationship between the two countries will further deteriorate. Putin's Russia is a kind of Mordor which represents all evil and stands behind all evil. Denouncing and openly hating Russia has now become a form of virtue-signaling. Since the entire US political elites have endorsed this phobia, it is exceedingly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Donbass : will the Ukronazis finally attack? Well, they have been for many months already! Not only did they never stop shelling the Donbass, but they have this new "frog-jump" (pseudo) strategy which consists of moving in military forces in the neutral zone, seize an undefended town and then declare a major victory against Russia. They have also been re-arming, re-organizing, re-grouping and otherwise bolstering their forces in the East. As a result, the Urkonazis have at least 3:1 advantage against the Novorussians. However, we should not look at this from the Ukronazi or Novorussian point of view. Instead we should look at it from the Neocon point of view:

Possible outcomes US reactions
Option one: Ukronazis win Russia is defeated, US proves its power
Option two: Novorussians win Russia is accused of invading the Ukraine
Option three: Novorussians lose and Russia openly intervenes A Neocon dream come true: the NATO has a purpose again:decades of Cold War v2 in Europe.

The way I see it, in all three cases the AngloZionist prevail though clearly option #2 is the worst possible outcome and option #3 is the best one. In truth, the AngloZionists have very little to lose in a Ukronazi attack on Novorussia. Not so the Ukrainian people, of course.

Right now the US and several European countries are shipping various types of weapons to the Ukronazis. That is really a non-news since they have been doing that for years already. Furthermore, western made weapons won't make any difference, at least from a military point of view, if only because it will always be much easier for Russia to send more weapons in any category.

The real difference is a political one: shipping "lethal weapons" (as if some weapons were not lethal!) is simply a green light to go on the attack. Let's hope that the Urkonazis will be busy fighting each other and that their previous humiliating defeat will deter them from trying again, but I consider a full-scale Urkonazi attack on the Donbass as quite likely.

[Dec 30, 2017] Bill Maher as a tool of deep state

It is interesting how easily Bill Maher was owned by Stone. Stone has higher level of IQ and that shows.
And Bill Maher is not that easy guy to own. Pretty slick political operative is this Roger Stone.
Notable quotes:
"... Bill Maher gets absolutely stumped. He can't stop stammering after what Roger says about the CIA. ..."
"... Bill Maher is a LIAR, and a very cunning one at that. ..."
Dec 30, 2017 | www.youtube.com

mrbossandbeast , 8 months ago

Stop, the anti trump bullshit just needs to stop. Terrible videos against him and his family is so wrong. It's getting old and people are finally understanding!

Diego Carrera , 8 months ago

Roger Stone nails it at 12:25 - 12:45 ish, and what our real problems are in America. The dude is spot on.

Lui Pietro , 8 months ago

You sound like a person that isn't open minded and is rather biased, leaning to the left. You sound just like one of these schmucks like Colbert, Samantha Bee, Maher, etc. "Hating Trump is not being liberal. It is being sane." Stfu.

These are the people who I constantly see in the trending section, all liberal propaganda that of course you must enjoy watching. But yet there is also conservative channels that get just as many views and likes but yet none of them are trending. You probably also believe that Russia hacked the polls when there is no evidence what so ever.

So, I feel that no matter what I say to you, you will simply dismiss is it and just keep on believing what you believe. Trump is just a puppet. You want someone to hate?

Why don't you hate the bankers like the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and the Morgans who are controlling this country and leading us to all these problems. They are the ones who make all the decisions behind the curtains. Its just that the media doesn't like to talk about them because the CIA controls what they want you to see and believe and the bankers control them. If you don't go along with their agenda they will ruin your life. Just like they had JFK murdered for not going with their agenda. Inform yourself please.

This country is going to shit and you're being led to believe that Trump is the problem when the bankers are the ones fucking our government up. Once we get rid of them we can have our country back.

Patrick Corbett , 7 months ago (edited)

11:00 Bill Maher gets absolutely stumped. He can't stop stammering after what Roger says about the CIA.

Steven Paul , 4 months ago

Bill Maher is a LIAR, and a very cunning one at that.

Eric Courtois , 8 months ago (edited)

BILL MAHER IS SIMPLY A RUDE IDIOT!

[Dec 30, 2017] The recent blather in the "Conservative" Commentariat that Haley is looking like Presidential material. God help us all

Dec 30, 2017 | www.unz.com

The Alarmist , December 29, 2017 at 2:32 pm GMT

"Nikki Haley -- there is the real imbecile!"

And yet there is recent blather in the "Conservative" Commentariat that Haley is looking like Presidential material. God help us all.

[Dec 30, 2017] On Luke Harding interview, give the guy who exposed him some credit if you have Twitter

Dec 30, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jen , Dec 28, 2017 2:49:47 PM | 1

Finally an opportunity comes to offer B and MoA commenters a nice little Christmas present, courtesy of ZeroHedge who have in the past reposted some of B's articles on their site.

True, ZH reposted this priceless gift from Caitlin Johnstone's own site but she seems to have given her permission for the reposting.

Why priceless? - well who doesn't want to see the ever smug Luke Harding and his idiotic and baseless arguments about Russian intrigue and inteference in US and European politics taken down in a well-deserved thrashing by Aaron Mate?

Priceless to read the transcript and priceless to watch.

What Happens When A Russiagate Skeptic Debates A Professional Russiagater

Anonynmous , Dec 29, 2017 6:16:02 AM | 34
Jen / 1

Luke Harding gets exposed for the fraud he really is and in such a way then!
If b has time I think he should make a post just about that interview/harding because he seems to fool alot of people with these claims he is making.

Anonynmous , Dec 29, 2017 11:03:36 AM | 46
Re: On Luke Harding interview, give the guy who exposed him some credit if you have Twitter,
https://twitter.com/aaronjmate

Its is people like him, b etc that makes the big work these days researching and exposing the corruption of this world.

Tony_0pmoc , Dec 29, 2017 12:31:06 PM | 50
Anonymous @ 46

I did watch the Luke Harding interview, largely as a result of Caitlin Johnstone, who I have enormous respect for. However, I do not do Twitter. Incidentally, Julian Assange of all people, brilliantly exposed Luke Harding (and the Guardian) in 2015. You can smell the sense of betrayal.

http://www.newsweek.com/assange-how-guardian-milked-edward-snowdens-story-323480

[Dec 30, 2017] The role Senator Mccain played in pushing Stele dossier

Dec 30, 2017 | theduran.com

Via Fox News

The man who says he acted as a "go-between" last year to inform Sen. John McCain about the controversial "dossier" containing salacious allegations about then-candidate Donald Trump is speaking out, revealing how the ex-British spy who researched the document helped coordinate its release to the FBI, the media and Capitol Hill.

"My mission was essentially to be a go-between and a messenger, to tell the senator and assistants that such a dossier existed," Sir Andrew Wood told Fox News in an exclusive interview with senior executive producer Pamela K. Browne.

Fox News spoke to Wood at the 2017 Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada. As Britain's ambassador to Moscow from 1995-2000, Wood witnessed the end of Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the rise of Vladimir Putin.

Just after the U.S. presidential election in November 2016, Arizona GOP Sen. McCain spoke at the same security conference. Wood says he was instructed -- by former British spy Christopher Steele -- to reach out to the senior Republican, whom Wood called "a good man," about the unverified document.

Wood insists that he's never read the dossier that his good friend and longtime colleague prepared. It was commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS and funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

In August 2016, "[Steele] came to me to tell me what was in it, and why it was important," Wood said. "He made it very clear yes, it was raw intelligence, but it needed putting into proper context before you could judge it fully."

August 2016 is a critical period, just after the FBI opened the Russia meddling probe, and after then-director James Comey recommended against prosecution for Clinton's mishandling of classified information.

Wood said Steele had "already been in contact with the FBI" at the time.

"He said there was corroborating evidence in the United States, from which I assumed he was working with an American company," Wood said.

British court records reviewed by Fox News as well as U.S. congressional testimony revealed that Steele was directed and paid at least $168,000 by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson to push the research that fall to five American media outlets. According to British court documents, Steele met with The New York Times (twice), The Washington Post (twice), CNN, The New Yorker and Yahoo News (twice).

"Each of these interviews was conducted in person and with a member of Fusion also present," according to the records associated with separate civil litigation against Steele and Fusion GPS.

Wood said he'd heard of Fusion GPS, as the group Steele was working with, but had "never heard of Mr. Simpson."

Three weeks after Trump won the presidential election, at the Canadian security conference, the details were finalized for the dossier hand-off to McCain.

Along with the senator, Wood and McCain Institute for International Leadership staffer David J. Kramer attended the Canadian conference.

British court records state McCain ordered Kramer to get a personal briefing from Steele in Surrey, just outside of London, and then return to Washington, D.C., where Fusion GPS would provide McCain with hard copies.

In January, McCain officially gave the dossier to the FBI, which already had its own copy from Steele.

Of note, listed in the official program for the 2016 November Canadian conference as a participant was Rinat Akhmetshin -- the same Russian lobbyist who was at Trump Tower five months earlier in June for a highly scrutinized meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and others.

The senator's office noted to Fox News that McCain said in January 2017 he had no contact with Akhmetshin. "Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public. Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue."

It is not known whether Akhmetshin had any contact with Kramer. Fusion GPS and Kramer did not respond to requests for comment from Fox News.

erry Ross , December 12, 2017 8:55 AM

Doesn't this make McCain guilty of offenses under the Logan act; the very offense that was commonly levelled against Trump and called "collusion" in the press.

mksimp2822 Terry Ross , December 15, 2017 7:42 PM

Trump endorsed McCain during his 2016 Republican primary for senator. The race was very close. This is how McCain repays Trump.

Gano1 , December 12, 2017 8:00 AM

Deep State at work in America.

S.M. De Kuyper , December 12, 2017 9:09 AM

This confirms that Congressional Senators and Congressmen should operate under time limits as well as be harshly punished for treasonous activity, meaning they are policed.

André De Koning S.M. De Kuyper , December 12, 2017 8:14 PM

Exactly, as this will go on forever just to escape any scandal and other involvements of a dubious nature. The US "justice" system is obviously primitive enough to allow this kind of nonsense to continue.

spoint , December 12, 2017 9:35 AM

I never read it. I was just following orders. The devil made me do it.

tjoes , December 12, 2017 8:16 AM

"According to British court documents, Steele met with The New York Times (twice), The Washington Post (twice), CNN, The New Yorker and Yahoo News (twice)."

Right there are your "fake news" propaganda sources. What do you want to bet they are all Jewish owned...yet Trump kisses judea'sass?

Mark Millers , December 15, 2017 9:41 PM

Well, at the least it makes John McCain a total stooge who let his bias against Trump override his ability to use good judgement, which by the way is already lacking.

[Dec 30, 2017] Fusion GPS founder admits that Trump Dossier was built entirely on rumors

(Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kELstnHUWw0
Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Comey FBI also used the largely debunked Trump dossier, which alleged Russian ties to the President's campaign associates, to convince a judge to grant them a FISA warrant, allowing them to secretly monitor Trump campaign official Carter Page. ..."
"... Remember..."It is honourable to deceive the 'infidel'." This is just an 'inkling' of how far our mainstream media and 'establishment politicians' have waded into this 'cesspool'.... ..."
Dec 30, 2017 | theduran.com

Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson spoke with US House investigators in a closed-door meeting Tuesday, and confirmed what many in the non-establishment media already knew that Fusion GPS never verified the Dossier claims before passing on the ridiculous document to the corrupt establishment press.

According to The Gateway Pundit , Herridge also said that her source told her that Glenn Simpson was "upset" when Comey re-opened Hillary's email investigation at the end of October and wanted to push back.

And he did

On October 31st, 2016 with just days to go until election day, David Corn of Mother Jones broke the story of a 'veteran spy' who gave the FBI information on Trump's alleged connections to Russia. Christopher Steele, British spy and author of the garbage dossier was not named in this Mother Jones report. Only hints of the dossier were published; the salacious claims were omitted.

Hillary Clinton was disappointed the entire dossier hadn't been published in full prior to the election. After all, she paid millions of dollars for the smear document.

The author of the dossier, Christopher Steele was also desperate to get the salacious document out to the public. He told David Corn of Mother Jones, "The story has to come out."

A week later, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats were in utter shock when Trump won the presidential election. Desperate to delegitimatize him, BuzzFeed published the entire dossier on January 10th, right before the inauguration.

According to the Washington Post , the FBI agreed to pay the British Spy who compiled the garbage dossier after the election to continue to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia.

The FBI pulled out of this arrangement once the author of the dossier, Christopher Steele was publicly identified in media reports.

Comey FBI also used the largely debunked Trump dossier, which alleged Russian ties to the President's campaign associates, to convince a judge to grant them a FISA warrant, allowing them to secretly monitor Trump campaign official Carter Page.

Guy , November 16, 2017 2:02 PM

Totally BUSTED ! Scam artists that they are. So how much money is the wild goose chase going to cost American taxpayers. When are they going to start indicting some of these scumbags, this is getting old already.

obidiah_slope , November 16, 2017 11:57 AM

Smug looking bastard isn't he?

john vieira , November 17, 2017 1:49 AM

Remember..."It is honourable to deceive the 'infidel'." This is just an 'inkling' of how far our mainstream media and 'establishment politicians' have waded into this 'cesspool'....

[Dec 30, 2017] Denouncing and openly hating Russia has now become a form of virtue-signaling. Since the entire US political elites have endorsed this phobia, it is exceedingly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. That increases the probably of confrontation by The Saker

Notable quotes:
"... What will not stop is the full-spectrum demonization of Russia, thus the relationship between the two countries will further deteriorate. Putin's Russia is a kind of Mordor which represents all evil and stands behind all evil. Denouncing and openly hating Russia has now become a form of virtue-signaling. Since the entire US political elites have endorsed this phobia, it is exceedingly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. ..."
Dec 29, 2017 | www.unz.com

Russia option 1 : rumors that the US would disconnect Russia from SWIFT or steal (that is politely called "freeze") Russian assets and funds in the US have been going in for a long time already. And the Russians have been making all sorts of menacing noises about this, but all of them very vague which tells me that Russia might not have any good retaliatory options and that this time around the hot air is blowing from Moscow. Of course, Putin is a unpredictable master strategist and the folks around him are very, very smart. They might hold something up their sleeve which I am not aware of but I strongly suspect that, unlike me, the US intelligence community must be fully aware of what this might be. I am not an economist and there is much I don't know here, I therefore assessed the risk as "unknown" for me.

Russia option 2 : the reaction of Russia to the shooting down by Turkey of a SU-24 in 2015 might well have given the US politicians and commanders a feeling that they could do the same and get away with it. In truth, they might be right. But they might also be wrong. The big difference with the case of the SU-24 is that Russia has formidable air-defenses deployed in Syria which present a major threat for US forces. Furthermore, if a Russian aircraft is under attack and the Russians reply by firing a volley of ground-to-air missiles, what would the US do – attack a Russian S-400 battery?

The US is also in a tricky situation in an air-to-air confrontation. While the F-22 is an excellent air superiority fighter it has one huge weakness: it is designed to engage its adversaries from a long range and to shoot first, before it is detected (I mention only the F-22 here because it is the only US aircraft capable of challenging the Su-30SM/Su-35). But if the rules of engagement say that before firing at a Russian aircraft the F-22 has to issue a clear warning or if the engagement happens at medium to short range distances, then the F-22 is at a big disadvantage, especially against a Su-30SM or Su-35.

Another major weakness of the F-22 is that, unlike the Su-30/Su-35, it does not have a real electronic warfare suite (the F-22's INEWS does not really qualify). In plain English this means that the F-22 was designed to maximize its low radar cross section but at a cost of all other aspects of aerial warfare (radar power, hyper maneuverability, electronic warfare, passive engagement, etc.).

This all gets very technical and complicated very fast, but I think that we can agree that the Neocons are unlikely to be very impressed by the risks posed by Russian forces in Syria and that they will likely feel that they can punch the russkies in the nose and that these russkies will have to take it. Local US commanders might feel otherwise, but that is also entirely irrelevant. Still, I place the risk here at 'medium' even if, potentially, this could lead to a catastrophic thermonuclear war because I don't think that the Neocons believe that the Russians will escalate too much (who starts WWIII over one shot down aircraft anyway, right?!). Think of it: if you were the commander of the Russian task force in Syria, what would you do if the US shot down on of your aircraft (remember, you assume that you are a responsible and intelligent commander, not a flag-waving delusional maniac)?

What will not stop is the full-spectrum demonization of Russia, thus the relationship between the two countries will further deteriorate. Putin's Russia is a kind of Mordor which represents all evil and stands behind all evil. Denouncing and openly hating Russia has now become a form of virtue-signaling. Since the entire US political elites have endorsed this phobia, it is exceedingly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Donbass : will the Ukronazis finally attack? Well, they have been for many months already! Not only did they never stop shelling the Donbass, but they have this new "frog-jump" (pseudo) strategy which consists of moving in military forces in the neutral zone, seize an undefended town and then declare a major victory against Russia. They have also been re-arming, re-organizing, re-grouping and otherwise bolstering their forces in the East. As a result, the Urkonazis have at least 3:1 advantage against the Novorussians. However, we should not look at this from the Ukronazi or Novorussian point of view. Instead we should look at it from the Neocon point of view:

Possible outcomes US reactions
Option one: Ukronazis win Russia is defeated, US proves its power
Option two: Novorussians win Russia is accused of invading the Ukraine
Option three: Novorussians lose and Russia openly intervenes A Neocon dream come true: the NATO has a purpose again:decades of Cold War v2 in Europe.

The way I see it, in all three cases the AngloZionist prevail though clearly option #2 is the worst possible outcome and option #3 is the best one. In truth, the AngloZionists have very little to lose in a Ukronazi attack on Novorussia. Not so the Ukrainian people, of course.

Right now the US and several European countries are shipping various types of weapons to the Ukronazis. That is really a non-news since they have been doing that for years already. Furthermore, western made weapons won't make any difference, at least from a military point of view, if only because it will always be much easier for Russia to send more weapons in any category.

The real difference is a political one: shipping "lethal weapons" (as if some weapons were not lethal!) is simply a green light to go on the attack. Let's hope that the Urkonazis will be busy fighting each other and that their previous humiliating defeat will deter them from trying again, but I consider a full-scale Urkonazi attack on the Donbass as quite likely.

[Dec 30, 2017] Classified Huma Abedin Emails Found On Anthony Weiner s Laptop Discussing Hamas, Israel And Palestinian Authority

How Strzok could miss those? They were available to him since 2016.
Notable quotes:
"... As you may recall, the discovery of these emails on Weiner's computer is what prompted Comey to re-open the Hillary Clinton email investigation roughly 1 week prior to the election, a decision which the Hillary camp insists is the reason why they lost the White House. ..."
"... Large portions of the 2,800 page release were redacted prior to release by the State Department. ..."
"... In at least two instances, Abedin directly forwarded Anthony Weiner official conversations - one of which included Hillary Clinton and senior advisor Jake Sullivan with subject "Lavrov" - referring to Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov. The email discusses an official response by a "quartet" of envoys (The US, EU, UN, and Russia) over Israel's announced changes to its Gaza policy, ending a contentious blockade. ..."
"... In a statement issued Friday, Judicial watch called the release a "major victory," adding "After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch has forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents. It will be in keeping with our past experience that Abedin's emails on Weiner's laptop will include classified and other sensitive materials. That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner's laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton's and Huma Abedin's obvious violations of law." ..."
"... Really, is anyone surprised that there were classified emails on Huma Abedin or Anthony Weiner's laptop? ..."
"... The surprise is that it was confiscated back in October 2016 and it took 14 months to reveal that at least 5 emails were classified as confidential. Apparently there were 2800 such emails, an average of 7 per day every day, or 10 per day using 5 day workweeks. Although these 2800 were released, this evidently is a subset of "tens of thousands" of email reported last year to be on that laptop. ..."
"... "Fitton also commented that it's 'outrageous' that Clinton and Abedin 'walked out of the State Department with classified documents and the Obama FBI and DOJ didn't do a thing about it.' " And so far, neither has Jeff Sessions. Get after him, Donald!!!! ..."
"... The lunacy of all of this is that it is taking private groups and citizen journalists to pull out the information that one would think the DOJ would have been interested in months ago. And it means that organizations like Judicial Watch and citizen journalists like George Webb and others are limited to using civil courts because they are not federal prosecutors. ..."
"... Hillary, Huma, et al exchanging classified emails on unsecured servers and computers was a big nothing burger according to Andy and friends at the FBI. ..."
Dec 30, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

As you may recall, the discovery of these emails on Weiner's computer is what prompted Comey to re-open the Hillary Clinton email investigation roughly 1 week prior to the election, a decision which the Hillary camp insists is the reason why they lost the White House.

Of course, while the Hillary campaign attempted to dismiss the emails as just another 'nothing burger', the Daily Mail reports that an initial review of the 2,800 documents dumped by the State Department reveal at least 5 emails classified at the 'confidential level,' the third most sensitive level the U.S. government uses.

The classified emails date from 2010-2012, and concern discussions with Middle East leaders, including those from the United Arab Emirates, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas - which was declared a terrorist organization by the European Court of Justice in July. Large portions of the 2,800 page release were redacted prior to release by the State Department.

According to the Daily Mail , three of the emails were sent either to or from an address called "BBB Backup," which one email identifies as a backup of a Blackberry Bold 9700 - presumably belonging to Abedin.

As a civilian, Weiner - though once a congressman, was unlikely to have possessed the proper clearance to view or store the classified documents on his laptop .

A sample of the documents can be seen below, first, a "Call Sheet" prepared for Hillary's discussion with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

And another update regarding "Hamas-PLO Talks":

In at least two instances, Abedin directly forwarded Anthony Weiner official conversations - one of which included Hillary Clinton and senior advisor Jake Sullivan with subject "Lavrov" - referring to Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov. The email discusses an official response by a "quartet" of envoys (The US, EU, UN, and Russia) over Israel's announced changes to its Gaza policy, ending a contentious blockade.

One wonders why Anthony Weiner would need to know about this?

Abedin also forwarded Weiner an email discussion from July 22, 2012 which had previously been released by WikiLeaks - which included the Ambassador to Senegal, Mushingi Tulinabo. While the contents of the email are redacted, Senegal had elected a new President earlier that month . Of note, the Clinton Foundation has supported or been involved in several projects in the country.

In a statement issued Friday, Judicial watch called the release a "major victory," adding "After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch has forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents. It will be in keeping with our past experience that Abedin's emails on Weiner's laptop will include classified and other sensitive materials. That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner's laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton's and Huma Abedin's obvious violations of law."

Fitton also commented that it's 'outrageous' that Clinton and Abedin 'walked out of the State Department with classified documents and the Obama FBI and DOJ didn't do a thing about it.'

Not surprisingly, Abedin was spotted heading into the Hillary Clinton offices in midtown Manhattan earlier today just a few hours before the release of the 2,800 emails. Seems you're never too old to be called into the Principal's office...

We're confident this will all be promptly dismissed by Hillary as just another effort to "criminalize behavior that is normal "because what government employee hasn't shared classified materials with their convicted pedophile husband? Certainly, just another boring day in Washington... Tags Politics

up! 1 Vote down! 0

Mark777 Dec 29, 2017 9:10 PM

Really, is anyone surprised that there were classified emails on Huma Abedin or Anthony Weiner's laptop?

The surprise is that it was confiscated back in October 2016 and it took 14 months to reveal that at least 5 emails were classified as confidential. Apparently there were 2800 such emails, an average of 7 per day every day, or 10 per day using 5 day workweeks. Although these 2800 were released, this evidently is a subset of "tens of thousands" of email reported last year to be on that laptop.

topspinslicer Dec 29, 2017 4:47 PM

It's a small club of idiots and I ain't in it

shitshitshit -> topspinslicer Dec 29, 2017 4:52 PM

this shows how Hilary is being more and more isolated and rejected because she can no longer silence the truth.

Go to jail bitch. Now.

chubbar -> shitshitshit Dec 29, 2017 6:35 PM

It's been reported on an other site that the Awan trial, which had been postponed until Jan 8th, is now erased from all federal court dockets. No one knows the significance of this, whether it means the "fix" is in or they are turning state's evidence on Hillary, etc? I hope it's the latter but knowing Sessions and the rest of the fucking corrupt pieces of shit in the DOJ and FBI, I fear these assholes are being let off the hook.

greenskeeper carl -> chubbar Dec 29, 2017 8:25 PM

This fix is in. Nothing is going to happen to any of them. Bet on it.

IH8OBAMA -> IH8OBAMA Dec 29, 2017 4:59 PM

"Fitton also commented that it's 'outrageous' that Clinton and Abedin 'walked out of the State Department with classified documents and the Obama FBI and DOJ didn't do a thing about it.' " And so far, neither has Jeff Sessions. Get after him, Donald!!!!

FoggyWorld -> IH8OBAMA Dec 29, 2017 6:31 PM

The lunacy of all of this is that it is taking private groups and citizen journalists to pull out the information that one would think the DOJ would have been interested in months ago. And it means that organizations like Judicial Watch and citizen journalists like George Webb and others are limited to using civil courts because they are not federal prosecutors. The question is why are those who are being paid with our tax dollars to enforce the law in criminal courts expending so much effort to avoid doing that job.

Ultimately, President Trump has to answer that question because this is now coming out on his watch.

greenskeeper carl -> FoggyWorld Dec 29, 2017 8:27 PM

Ya, its pretty infuriating. Trumps been in office for a year. Sessions, at least on paper, is in charge of the DOJ. The FBI works for him too. Why isn't anything being done about this?

techpriest -> IH8OBAMA Dec 29, 2017 5:25 PM

I wonder, will Abedin be the fall girl for the Clintons? "It was all her fault! She took the emails without me knowing it!" Her being "called into the principal's office" is also telling. Instructions on what to say.

francis_the_wo -> Consuelo Dec 29, 2017 5:04 PM

I am curious as to what assurances we have that there weren't actually another 100 emails that didn't just magically disappear? We've given these alphabet agencies years to "redact" sensitive material, how do we know that the "smoking gun" emails weren't redacted entirely?

insanelysane Dec 29, 2017 7:55 PM

DNC doing actual opposition research by paying actual Russians for information is perfectly acceptable. Trump team allegedly doing opposition research by speaking with Russians is a criminal offence. That seems reasonable.

Hillary, Huma, et al exchanging classified emails on unsecured servers and computers was a big nothing burger according to Andy and friends at the FBI.

thebigunit Dec 29, 2017 8:04 PM

Huma Abedin

Associate Editor, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs

1996-2008

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huma_Abedin

Hmmmmmm.

hanekhw Dec 29, 2017 5:13 PM

I was searching for a word to describe our media and Federal law enforcement who are both impervious to truth and justice. It led me to wondering if the Devil permits truth to penetrate in Hell and decided that the condemned there hear more of it that Americans do today. You'd have to go back to NAZI Germany or Stalinist Russia for a comparison of how little we're told was true.

Don't believe me? We're mushrooms, kept in a dark cave and fed a steady diet of bullshit. We're GOOD mushrooms. A bumper crop this year.

Miss Expectations Dec 29, 2017 5:23 PM

The emails were discovered on Anthony's laptop by NYPD when they were investigating the pervert's connection to the child in North Carolina. The laptop was turned over to the FBI. If you want to say the FBI discovered the emails, that takes the credit away from the NYPD. Comey reopened the Hillary investigation because NYPD kept copies.

MusicIsYou Dec 29, 2017 6:49 PM

Most shit classified "classified" shouldn't be anyway.

Koba the Dread Dec 29, 2017 6:50 PM

" [A]n initial review of the 2,800 documents dumped by the State Department reveal at least 5 emails classified at the 'confidential level,' the third most sensitive level the U.S. government uses. "

While I'm for anything and everything that harms the Clinton family and its cohort, let me point out that the 'confidential level' security classification, in addition to being the third most sensitive level of security classification is also also the very lowest level of security classification.

One would hope (in vain I've recently concluded) that ZH would make some small attempt to not slant its 'news' coverage with such erroneous and inflammatory 'reporting'. I thought we had decided to leave fear mongering and lying to the mainstream media. I suppose I was wrong.

Fidelios Automata Dec 29, 2017 7:47 PM

The classified emails were a smokescreen to distract investigators from the porn.

[Dec 30, 2017] Bill Maher as a tool of deep state

It is interesting how easily Bill Maher was owned by Stone. Stone has higher level of IQ and that shows.
And Bill Maher is not that easy guy to own. Pretty slick political operative is this Roger Stone.
Notable quotes:
"... Bill Maher gets absolutely stumped. He can't stop stammering after what Roger says about the CIA. ..."
"... Bill Maher is a LIAR, and a very cunning one at that. ..."
Dec 30, 2017 | www.youtube.com

mrbossandbeast , 8 months ago

Stop, the anti trump bullshit just needs to stop. Terrible videos against him and his family is so wrong. It's getting old and people are finally understanding!

Diego Carrera , 8 months ago

Roger Stone nails it at 12:25 - 12:45 ish, and what our real problems are in America. The dude is spot on.

Lui Pietro , 8 months ago

You sound like a person that isn't open minded and is rather biased, leaning to the left. You sound just like one of these schmucks like Colbert, Samantha Bee, Maher, etc. "Hating Trump is not being liberal. It is being sane." Stfu.

These are the people who I constantly see in the trending section, all liberal propaganda that of course you must enjoy watching. But yet there is also conservative channels that get just as many views and likes but yet none of them are trending. You probably also believe that Russia hacked the polls when there is no evidence what so ever.

So, I feel that no matter what I say to you, you will simply dismiss is it and just keep on believing what you believe. Trump is just a puppet. You want someone to hate?

Why don't you hate the bankers like the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and the Morgans who are controlling this country and leading us to all these problems. They are the ones who make all the decisions behind the curtains. Its just that the media doesn't like to talk about them because the CIA controls what they want you to see and believe and the bankers control them. If you don't go along with their agenda they will ruin your life. Just like they had JFK murdered for not going with their agenda. Inform yourself please.

This country is going to shit and you're being led to believe that Trump is the problem when the bankers are the ones fucking our government up. Once we get rid of them we can have our country back.

Patrick Corbett , 7 months ago (edited)

11:00 Bill Maher gets absolutely stumped. He can't stop stammering after what Roger says about the CIA.

Steven Paul , 4 months ago

Bill Maher is a LIAR, and a very cunning one at that.

Eric Courtois , 8 months ago (edited)

BILL MAHER IS SIMPLY A RUDE IDIOT!

[Dec 30, 2017] Stone Releases His Opening Statement

The opening statement can be also hear at Roger Stone Opening Statement for a Secret Session of the House Intel Committee, September 2017 - YouTube
Dec 30, 2017 | dailycaller.com

"I am most interested in correcting a number of falsehoods, misstatements, and misimpressions regarding allegations of collusion between Donald Trump, Trump associates, the Trump Campaign and the Russian state," Stone writes in the opening statement he provided to The Daily Caller.

外国人说中文 3 months ago Roger Stone is the MAN!!!

Steve McAtee 3 months ago

WAIT! Didn't Debbie Washerwoman Shultz's long term, computer team from Pakistan just get criminally charged with not only hacking over 30+ democrats in the House and possessing not only the DNC files and all of Shultz files but also of selectively sending secure DNC and congressional files to their own clandestine server, and then probably dispersing those files to various foreign parties or the highest bidders?

WHEN THIS WAS UNCOVERED IN PART, THE DEMOCRATS DESPERATELY COBBLED TOGETHER INFORMATION FROM A DOSSIER AND OTHER SOURCES AND ACCUSED TRUMP AND HIS CAMPAIGN OF COLLUDING WITH RUSSIANS! DUH!!!!!!!!!sm

Polydynamix 3 months ago

Well as long as this guy 'believes' it then I guess there's no need for evidence. Go forth, subservient minions and spread the fake news based on a Trump advisors 'feelings'. Because there's no incentive for a Trump advisor to say something negative about Democrats so by all means, spread it as if it were true and if ANYONE asks for evidence or says you're wrong don't you DARE give them any kind of evidence, or talk to them like they have a valid request- just get mad, freak out, call them a 'libtard'

[Dec 30, 2017] The Senate committee has deemed anyone "of Russian nationality or Russian descent" relevant to its Russiagate investigation

Dec 30, 2017 | theduran.com

The email reveals that the Senate committee has deemed anyone "of Russian nationality or Russian descent" relevant to its investigation , which means the Russiagate conspiracy theory and accompanying congressional investigation has officially jumped straight from neo-McCarthyism – smearing anyone that may have had contact with Russian government officials, diplomats or intelligence, and into xenophobia – eyeing any and all Russians or friends of Russians as a potential threat plain and simple , which is far down the slippery slope that many commentators have long predicted.

The American government has now gone full blown McCarthy.

The fact that Russia hating, progressive left news channel, The Young Turks, has uncovered and published this bombshell email should concern all Russian Americans that the witch-hunt against Russia may now be extended to US citizens, residents, and tourists in the United States no evidence needed except profiling based on Russian heritage.

Via Zerohedge

The Young Turks Network (TYT), a popular progressive YouTube channel and news site, has obtained a bombshell internal email related to the Senate committee probing alleged Russian interference in the American political system, and though currently being covered in Russian media, mainstream US media is passing it over without comment.

The email reveals that the Senate committee has deemed anyone "of Russian nationality or Russian descent" relevant to its investigation , which means the Russiagate conspiracy theory and accompanying congressional investigation has officially jumped straight from neo-McCarthyism – smearing anyone that may have had contact with Russian government officials, diplomats or intelligence, and into xenophobia – eyeing any and all Russians or friends of Russians as a potential threat plain and simple , which is far down the slippery slope that many commentators have long predicted.

[Dec 30, 2017] Russiagate Is Devolving Into An Effort To Stigmatize Dissent

Confident elite does not file such "amicus briefs". This is a sign of the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA. Frightened elite now was to stigmatize the dissent.
Notable quotes:
"... The amicus brief purports to explain to the court how Russia deploys "active measures" that seek "to undermine confidence in democratic leaders and institutions; sow discord between the United States and its allies; discredit candidates for office perceived as hostile to the Kremlin; influence public opinion against U.S. military, economic and political programs; and create distrust or confusion over sources of information." ..."
"... Professor Lears also observed that as regards Russiagate, "In its capacity to exclude dissent, it is like no other formation of mass opinion in my adult life, though it recalls a few dim childhood memories of anti-communist hysteria during the early 1950s." ..."
"... In trying to accuse Trump the Deep State is using a logical fallacy called "Begging the Question" a.k.a. "Guilt by Association". It's yet another sign of how desperate the Deep State is. How desperate are they? Read this and you might get the idea: https://voat.co/v/RepealSmithMundt/2240641 ..."
"... They are definitely desperate. Desperate people lose the ability to step back and observe how ridiculous their position is in context. ..."
"... Well, of course. Tailgunner Joe and all the rest of the commies-under-the-bed crowd. And its appeal is direct to all the bright younguns who've never lived through Cold War propaganda. Because they're trained to mindlessly howl at certain key words, 'racism' 'Nazi' 'homophobe' and the rest. Now they're being trained to howl at 'Russia'. ..."
"... Publishing any facts outside the official narrative is dangerous and criminal, because it might derail the training. ..."
Dec 30, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

In a new development, in early December, 14 former high-ranking US intelligence and national-security officials, including former deputy secretary of state William Burns; former CIA director John Brennan; former director of national intelligence James Clapper; and former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul (a longtime proponent of democracy promotion, which presumably includes free speech), filed an amicus brief as part of the lawsuit.

The amicus brief purports to explain to the court how Russia deploys "active measures" that seek "to undermine confidence in democratic leaders and institutions; sow discord between the United States and its allies; discredit candidates for office perceived as hostile to the Kremlin; influence public opinion against U.S. military, economic and political programs; and create distrust or confusion over sources of information."

The former officials portray the amicus brief as an offering of neutral ("Amici submit this brief on behalf of neither party") expertise ("to offer the Court their broad perspective, informed by careers spent working inside the U.S. government").

The brief claims that Putin's Russia has not only "actively spread disinformation online in order to exploit racial, cultural and political divisions across the country" but also "conducted cyber espionage operations to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process and, in the general election, influence the results against Secretary Hillary Clinton."

Much of this has been said before. But where the briefers branch off into new territory is in their attempt to characterize journalism and political speech with which they disagree as acts of subversion on behalf of a foreign power.

According to the 14 former officials, Russia's active-measure campaign relies "on intermediaries or 'cut outs' inside a country," which are rather broadly defined as "political organizers and activists, academics, journalists, web operators, shell companies, nationalists and militant groups, and prominent pro-Russian businessmen."

Such "intermediaries" can range from "the unwitting accomplice who is manipulated to act in what he believes is his best interest, to the ideological or economic ally who broadly shares Russian interests, to the knowing agent of influence who is recruited or coerced to directly advance Russian operations and objectives."

In other words, a Russian "cut out" (or fifth columnist) can be defined as those "activists, academics, journalists, [or] web operators" who dissent from the shared ideology of the 14 signatories of the amicus brief.

In a recent essay for the London Review of Books, the historian Jackson Lears observed that "the religion of the Russian hack depends not on evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and their overlords." And this amicus brief is one such pronouncement.

In spite of the brief's high-flown language ("The threat posed to our democracy by Russian active measures campaigns is serious, ongoing and will require vigilance on the part of the U.S. government and people"), it is little more than yet another effort to stigmatize political speech that questions the necessity of demonizing Russia -- political speech, in other words, with which these former high-ranking intelligence and national-security officials surely disagree.

Professor Lears also observed that as regards Russiagate, "In its capacity to exclude dissent, it is like no other formation of mass opinion in my adult life, though it recalls a few dim childhood memories of anti-communist hysteria during the early 1950s."

That is only too true; indeed, as of this writing, the Russia-Trump collusion narrative is fast devolving into an effort to stigmatize and marginalize expressions of dissent, with the overarching aim of short-circuiting and stifling debate over US-Russia policy.

Billy the Poet -> BlindMonkey Dec 29, 2017 9:32 PM

Knowledge is power, the truth will set you free. Background to "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections": The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution "Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries."

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

chubbar -> Billy the Poet Dec 29, 2017 10:29 PM

Not only no forgeries, which means the emails told the truth about what these morons were doing, but also it's been demonstrated that the emails could only have been downloaded to a thumb drive because of the speeds they were transmitted. Why these fucking dimwits keep overlooking that inconvenient truth is anyone's guess, likely because it doesn't dovetail with their scenario of a Russian hack. This lawsuit goes nowhere but is being used to slowdown and divert attention away from the crimes of the DNC, et al.

It burns me that Brennan and Clapper, those two fucking traitorous cunts, filed a brief supporting this bullshit. Those 2 assholes were running the illegal spy operation against Trump during his campaign.

AgLand Dec 29, 2017 9:07 PM

The US loses it's collective sanity in the "New McCarthyism"...

nmewn Dec 29, 2017 9:22 PM

"In a new development, in early December, 14 former high-ranking US intelligence and national-security officials, including former deputy secretary of state William Burns ; former CIA director John Brennan ; former director of national intelligence James Clapper ; and former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul (a longtime proponent of democracy promotion, which presumably includes free speech), filed an amicus brief as part of the lawsuit."

How revealing, the co-conspirators have filed an amicus brief ;-)

TheGhostOfJame Dec 29, 2017 9:23 PM

In trying to accuse Trump the Deep State is using a logical fallacy called "Begging the Question" a.k.a. "Guilt by Association". It's yet another sign of how desperate the Deep State is. How desperate are they? Read this and you might get the idea: https://voat.co/v/RepealSmithMundt/2240641

At the very minimum many high fliers who put on these Smith-Mundt hoaxes are going away for charity fraud. That's one reason they're so desperate.

MuffDiver69 -> TheGhostOfJame Dec 29, 2017 9:30 PM

They are definitely desperate. Desperate people lose the ability to step back and observe how ridiculous their position is in context. It's a bit like my wife when I tell her I'm not in the mood.. hehehehehe

scraping_by Dec 29, 2017 9:23 PM

"In its capacity to exclude dissent, it is like no other formation of mass opinion in my adult life, though it recalls a few dim childhood memories of anti-communist hysteria during the early 1950s."

Well, of course. Tailgunner Joe and all the rest of the commies-under-the-bed crowd. And its appeal is direct to all the bright younguns who've never lived through Cold War propaganda. Because they're trained to mindlessly howl at certain key words, 'racism' 'Nazi' 'homophobe' and the rest. Now they're being trained to howl at 'Russia'.

Publishing any facts outside the official narrative is dangerous and criminal, because it might derail the training.

Promethus Dec 29, 2017 9:26 PM

These people are TRAITORS.

They have violated their oaths of office and have conspired to over through the constitutionally elected President of the United States. Instead of filing amicus brief they should be swinging from ropes.

WTFUD -> Promethus Dec 29, 2017 9:42 PM

Yeah true, but think of the Army of New Recruits/Converts if Trump had the foresight/Inclination to Drain that SWAMP . . . . To have a modicum of credibility in my eyes he'd have to Deputize Deplorables to shoot these treasonous bastards in the face.

Billy the Poet -> Promethus Dec 29, 2017 9:44 PM

The mutineers must be held accountable according to the harshest possible terms.

MuffDiver69 Dec 29, 2017 9:26 PM

We see this thought pattern all over college and lower education now. People defending the right to censor and even criminalize things they don't believe in and often enough these people have nice penalties for not bowing down to our betters...We've come full circle back to King George the III and the American Revolution it seems..The founders had enough of this exact bullshit ...

WTFUD -> MuffDiver69 Dec 29, 2017 9:33 PM

'lower edumakation' at premium rates. lol

gwar5 Dec 29, 2017 9:29 PM

All nonsense. The Russians wanted Hillary to win. She (and everybody else) was already bought and paid for after Uranium One.

John Brennan still needs to answer for Passport Gate and the murder of his employee, Lt. Quarles Harris Jr., in 2008 two weeks before he was to testify. Brennan hacked the State department and tampered Obama's passport and was rewarded with the first post-election appointment. Before there was Seth Rich there was 24 year old, Lt. Quarles Harris Jr.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/apr/19/key-witness-in-passpor

WTFUD Dec 29, 2017 9:29 PM

Claptrap, Brennan . . . two warmongering Shadow Government Lackey's who should be in Orange Jumpsuits. 12 months on and NO jail sentences. MoFo Puppet!

otschelnik Dec 29, 2017 9:35 PM

Roger reemed the dem's on the house intel committee, only his opening statement has been made public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ6sgOpKeUM

so now the deep state trying to settle the score with Roger.

[Dec 29, 2017] Luke Harding on Trump, Russia, and 'Collusion' The Nation

So nations participates in the witch hunt, because they do not like Trump. Nice... The level of degradation of the remnants of US left is simply incredible.
And they cite "intelligence community conclusion" (a group of hacks personally selected by Brennan for hactchet job which, as we now know, included Peter Strzok)
And then Harding talks about Watergate he might be right: it might well be that CIA setup Nixon to remove him from the office. See Watergate Was A Setup - Business Insider, Why the CIA targeted Nixon for removal from office in 1972 - Watergate - The Education Forum and Did you know that Richard Nixon was set up in Watergate Yahoo Answers
Notable quotes:
"... Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win ..."
"... Couple that with the intelligence community's conclusions about Russia's active-measures campaign, and the fact that, as both a candidate and as president, Trump has consistently staked out positions that perfectly align with Moscow's, and it's clear that this is all far from a partisan "witch hunt." ..."
"... I think this is a huge story. Without wanting to come across as hyperbolic, I think it's bigger than Watergate because this isn't one set of Americans doing dirty tricks to another set of Americans, as was the case back in the '70s. This is one set of Americans basically contracting with a powerful foreign power to help it cripple an opponent, Hillary Clinton. The stakes are much larger. ..."
Dec 11, 2017 | www.thenation.com

[Dec 29, 2017] Luke Harding : the hack who came in from the cold by BlackCatte

Notable quotes:
"... Well, they didn't renew his accreditation, which is the same thing. They pretended it was because he didn't have the right paperwork for an extended visa and offered him a short extension so his kids could finish up at school. But Luke knew it was actually a Soviet-style expulsion. Because Luke can always see the real game when most of us just can't. ..."
"... He demanded to know if President Medvedev had been told – personally – that Luke was going home. The person in the press department he was speaking to just sort of looked at him and didn't say anything. Luke was pretty sure he worked for the FSB. So he went home, got on the lecture circuit and wrote a book all about his terrible experiences in Vladimir Putin's neo-Stalinist hell. ..."
"... Is Luke Harding: "the reporter Russia hated" an "enemy of Putin" a borderline psychotic paranoiac, whose narcissistic delusions have been deliberately encouraged and exploited by an intelligentsia that will use any old crap it can find to further its agenda a bit of a tosser ..."
"... Luke Harding is indeed a piss-poor journalist. He is one of the reasons I gave up on the Grauniad after 20 years; and I persuaded my siblings to look farther afield for real news. Such an irrational man, unless of course you assume that he is not a hack but a low-level CIA stooge. ..."
"... Being serious for a change, one has to ask: if Luke Harding is so lousy as a journalist, and The Guardian had to pay some compensation to The eXile for plagiarising Mark Ames and another guy's work, why didn't the paper send Harding back to journalism school to do an ethics course, as The Independent had to do with Johann Hari when he was caught plagiarising other work? Or why didn't The Guardian get rid of Harding? ..."
"... Is LDH with The Guardian for the same reason that American news media like The New York Times and The Washington Post among others always had someone in their offices who couldn't spell or write to save their own lives, much less others' lives, but who rose up the ranks quickly nevertheless – because they were really working for the CIA? ..."
"... In terms of honesty and journalistic integrity when it comes to geopolitics, he is simply the worst journalist I've ever had the misfortune to read. When the whole Ukraine thing started and the Guardian thought all their readers were insular and stupid, they had our hero writing a whole slew of anti-Russia articles .alongside opening their comments section. Bad "mistake" on their part. ..."
"... Luke saw Russian tanks cross the border into Ukraine despite being 26 miles from the border crossing with a Russian aid convoy ..."
"... Actually it was that other bastion of serous journalism Shaun Walker who saw the invisible invasion. Luke would be too scared of getting zapped by mind rays to get that close to a Russian tank. ..."
Sep 09, 2015 | off-guardian.org

Luke Daniel Harding (born 1968) studied English at University College, Oxford. While there he edited the student newspaper Cherwell . He worked for The Sunday Correspondent , the Evening Argus in Brighton and then the Daily Mail before joining The Guardian in 1996. He was the Guardian's Russia correspondent from 2007-11.

Aside from his more publicly known achievements, it's worth noting Harding was accused of plagiarism by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of the eXile for publishing an article under his own name that lifted large passages almost verbatim from their work. The Guardian allegedly redacted portions of Harding's article in response to these accusations.

According to his own testimony , Luke Harding is the guy who realised he was in the siloviki cross hairs one day when, during his stay in Moscow as the Guardian's bureau chief, he came home and found one of his bedroom windows open.

A less situationally-aware person would have made the fatal mistake of thinking one of his kids or his wife had done it, or he'd done it himself and just forgotten, or that his landlord had popped in to air the rooms (a bit of a tendency in Russia apparently). But Luke was sure none of his family had opened the window. So it had to have been the FSB.

You see, Luke isn't confined as we are by the constraints of petty mundanity. That was why it had been so clear to him, even without any evidence , that the FSB had murdered Litvinenko. And that was why Luke took one look at that open window and realised the entire Russian intelligence machine was out to get him .

The dark symbolism of the open window in the children's bedroom was not hard to decipher: take care, or your kids might just fall out. The men – I assume it was men – had vanished like ghosts.

And that was only the start of the vicious campaign that was to follow. Tapes were left in his cassette deck, when he knew he hadn't put them there. An alarm clock went off when he knew he hadn't set it. Luke was filled with " a feeling of horror, alarm, incredulity, bafflement and a kind of cold rational rage."

Things developed rapidly. Luke went to visit a woman called Olga who warned him to take care, because he was "an enemy of Putin." He was sure someone had hacked his email account. Whenever he said the name "Berezovsky" his phone line would go dead, so he started using the word "banana" instead. A person from the Russian president's office called and asked for his mobile number. Unable to imagine a single good reason why a Russian government official would need a cell phone number for the Guardian's Russia bureau chief, he refused.

That wily Putin wasn't going to catch him that easily. The game of cat and mouse had begun.

A middle-aged woman with a bad haircut knocked at his door at 7am, and walked away when he opened it. Had she just gone to the wrong door? Of course not, it was the FSB taunting him. At the airport on his way back to London a man with a Russian accent (in Moscow!) tapped him on the back and told him there was something wrong with his jacket. Noticing the man was wearing a leather coat, which meant he must be from the KGB, Luke immediately rushed to the gents and took off all his clothes to find the "bugging device" the man had planted on him. He didn't find one, but that didn't mean it wasn't there.

When the Russian government launched its prosecution of Berezovsky for fraud, someone from the FSB phoned Luke and asked him to come in and make a statement about the interview he'd conducted with the man a short time before. They also advised him to bring a lawyer, which seemed sinister to Luke. A man called Kuzmin interviewed him for 55 minutes. Luke got quite thirsty, but wouldn't drink the fizzy water he was offered, because he was pretty sure it had been tampered with. Surprisingly Kuzmin didn't interrogate him as expected, but Luke decided this was because the FSB were trying to intimidate him. They probably didn't need to do an interrogation, thought Luke, since they'd been breaking in to his flat almost every day for like – ever , switching on his alarm clock and probably also bugging his phone.

After the western-backed Georgian invasion of South Ossetia Luke was amazed to note there was widespread antagonism toward western journalists in Moscow. And the FSB just would not leave him alone. Worried by this "campaign of brutishness" he decided to keep a log of the dreadful things they were doing. Reading this we find not only did they continue to regularly open his windows, they once turned off his central heating, made phantom ringing sounds happen in the middle of the night (Luke couldn't find where they were coming from), deleted a screen saver from his computer and left a book by his bed about getting better orgasms.

All this would have broken a lesser man. But Luke didn't break. Maybe that's why in the end, they knew they'd have to expel him like in the old Soviet days. Which is what they did. Well, they didn't renew his accreditation, which is the same thing. They pretended it was because he didn't have the right paperwork for an extended visa and offered him a short extension so his kids could finish up at school. But Luke knew it was actually a Soviet-style expulsion. Because Luke can always see the real game when most of us just can't.

He demanded to know if President Medvedev had been told – personally – that Luke was going home. The person in the press department he was speaking to just sort of looked at him and didn't say anything. Luke was pretty sure he worked for the FSB. So he went home, got on the lecture circuit and wrote a book all about his terrible experiences in Vladimir Putin's neo-Stalinist hell. But just when he thought all his espionage problems were over, they started up again when he began his book about Edward Snowden.

This time it was the NSA, GCHQ and a host of other western agencies stalking him. The PTB obviously realised that Luke's book would be much much more of a threat to national security than even Snowden himself, and did everything they could to try to stop him writing it. They followed him around (he knew they were agents because they had iPhones) and even used spy technology to remote-delete sentences from his computer – while he was typing them. Especially when he was writing mean things about the NSA. But after he typed "I don't mind you reading my manuscript but I'd be grateful if you don't delete it", they realised they'd met their match and stopped.

He wasn't sure if the culprits were NSA, GCHQ or a Russian hacker, but one thing it definitely wasn't was a glitchy keyboard.

I mean that would just be stupid.

NOTE: In case any of our readers are (understandably) inclined to think we must be making this up or exaggerating, we encourage them to read about it here and here in Luke's own words. You'll find we have merely summarised them.

Yes, he really does believe everything attributed to him in this article. He really does think the FSB were opening his windows. And he really did run to the public toilet and take all his clothes off because a man tapped him on the back in an airport.

We also recommend you take in this opinion piece by Julian Assange, and this one by a Brit ex-pat in Moscow.

After that feel free to complete the following questionnaire:

Is Luke Harding: "the reporter Russia hated" an "enemy of Putin" a borderline psychotic paranoiac, whose narcissistic delusions have been deliberately encouraged and exploited by an intelligentsia that will use any old crap it can find to further its agenda a bit of a tosser

Comments

PaulC says December 28, 2017

Luke Harding is indeed a piss-poor journalist. He is one of the reasons I gave up on the Grauniad after 20 years; and I persuaded my siblings to look farther afield for real news. Such an irrational man, unless of course you assume that he is not a hack but a low-level CIA stooge.
London Grad says December 28, 2017
The force once again fails to materialise for Luke as TheRealNews Aaron Maté sends him scurrying back to his conspiracy theories safespace during this brutal interview on Luke's latest fictional release titled "Collusion".

http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20761:Debate:-Where%27s-the-%27Collusion#pop1

Even the Soros-Worshipper cargo cultists running the Guardian must surely realise by now that Luke's becoming a liability.

https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/945324064494714881

Alfred Nassim says October 9, 2016
Luke Harding's article on Grozny and Chechnya is a classic of the sour grapes variety. "The once war-torn country has been transformed, but change has come at a price" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/22/russia To the best of my knowledge, Chechnya is still enjoying its peace and prosperity – totally unsupportable.
Flinx says August 13, 2016
You have to remember that without old Luke we'd not have as much fun reading pages like this!!! That's likely the only positive outcome of what he writes but a very important one.

In this 'insane asylum' light relief coupled with 'some decent perspectives' is a god send. For those that like this page / the humour you might like this site: http://ckm3.blogspot.co.uk/

Francis says September 11, 2015
So, the time has come. Surrounded by the KGB (they no longer exist Ed) Surrounded by the KGB (they no longer exist!! Ed) i, Luke Harding pen this my last will and testament. For though the end has come, (Hurrah! Ed) my enemies made one final mistake, by thinking they could take me alive. They left me the Book, the noble karma sutra

No Walter Mitty I, I carry no arsenic pills about me for such a mournful deed as this. No, I, a writer, a cavalier of the epistolary kind, shall use The Book they left me on my bedside table, the noble Kama sutra. And now, gently removing the cellophane – to my children I bequeath my writing talent, to Pussy Minor disturbance (here he seems to be attempting to outwit the KGB Ed.) my gift for self promotion, and to my wife, Phoebe, my greatest possession, my reputation. And now, gently removing the cellophane, (you see, phoebe, your bootless cries at bedtime fell not on deaf ears, I will use it once, as I promised) and turning the page, I see the very position with which to foil my enemies (who must almost be upon me, for I heard the catflap flap) – "Chicken Butter pasanda, also known as the headless chicken". (How ironic, Ed.) Like the chicken, my head also shall be hidden from view. Here goes! England, though I never knew you (very true, Ed) perhaps you will vouchsafe me a place among the poets? Here goes again! Butter? Tick. Dilate? Tick. Bloody hell, I never realised I had such a big head! Push! Push! They shall not catch me alive!

Like a candle in the wind .oooff! I really shouldn't have had extra beans. England, I do it for thee! But hold, what's this I see? Tracks? Caterpillar tracks? Tank tracks?!! My god! Wait till Shaun sees these, it's the biggest scoop of all time! And it's mine! I must stop this foolshness now. KGB, be damned! Maybe they'll now take me back at the Daily Mail. I must remove my head from my .

(at this point, the recording ends Ed. he will be missed Ed the world will be a sadder place Ed there will be less laughter in the world without him. Phew. Got it. Ed)

Jen says September 10, 2015
Being serious for a change, one has to ask: if Luke Harding is so lousy as a journalist, and The Guardian had to pay some compensation to The eXile for plagiarising Mark Ames and another guy's work, why didn't the paper send Harding back to journalism school to do an ethics course, as The Independent had to do with Johann Hari when he was caught plagiarising other work? Or why didn't The Guardian get rid of Harding?

Is LDH with The Guardian for the same reason that American news media like The New York Times and The Washington Post among others always had someone in their offices who couldn't spell or write to save their own lives, much less others' lives, but who rose up the ranks quickly nevertheless – because they were really working for the CIA?

Steven Lacey says September 10, 2015
Can you please do Lucas and the horrible Neo Con Weiss. Brilliant !
Eric_B says September 10, 2015
Luke wrote:

I ventured out the next morning. My laptop was in the unlocked safe. (It didn't contain any secrets; merely a work in progress.) A tall American immediately accosted me. He suggested we go sightseeing. He said his name was Chris. "Chris" had a short, military-style haircut, new trainers, neatly pressed khaki shorts, and a sleek steel-grey T-shirt. He clearly spent time in the gym. Tourist or spook? I thought spook.

I decided to go along with Chris's proposal: why didn't we spend a couple of hours visiting Rio's Christ the Redeemer statue? Chris wanted to take my photo, buy me a beer, go for dinner. I declined the beer and dinner, later texting my wife: "The CIA sent someone to check me out. Their techniques as clumsy as Russians." She replied: "Really? WTF?"

WTF indeed. Dude, Chris just fancied you.

Moscow Exile says September 10, 2015
Shortly before I was banned from Komment Macht Frei, Mr. Harding popped up in the CiF column in which I had just made a comment ridiculing his "journalism" to state that he believed that I am probably a member of the FSB.
Mark Chapman (@MarkCha40189515) says September 9, 2015
Luke Harding is not a journalist; he is the perennial centrefold in an imaginary magazine called "Smug Prick". There is an irreconcilable gap between the Luke Harding he sees in the mirror and the chowderhead we all know and mock. The Guardian keeps him on because it does not give a tin weasel why you read, just as long as you read. It does not care if you do so with gritted teeth, murmuring obscenities.
Bryan Hemming says September 9, 2015
Luke Harding, even tapping his name onto my keyboard makes me think he is watching over my shoulder. Get away! Luke! Get away!
Dipset says September 9, 2015
In terms of honesty and journalistic integrity when it comes to geopolitics, he is simply the worst journalist I've ever had the misfortune to read. When the whole Ukraine thing started and the Guardian thought all their readers were insular and stupid, they had our hero writing a whole slew of anti-Russia articles .alongside opening their comments section. Bad "mistake" on their part.

It did not take long for readers to start pointing out the hilarious lies, half truths and smears in Mr Harding's articles.

How did he/they respond ?

Not only did he start moderating comments himself, he (and Shaun Walker) had readers banned for highlighting the "inconsistency" in their reporting. Ha! Good luck with that.

It was quite pitiful to see him yesterday on the Grauniad's 'Troll Factory' story maoaning, whining and blaming the readers for not beliveing his "truthful" reporting on Russia haha.

It's going to be fascinating to see how he and his pals report the upcoming battle in Syria between Russia/Syria/Iran/China VS America/ISIS/Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Fun times

Eric_B says September 9, 2015
yes indeed, hilarious article on the Guardian about how people who dare to dispute their propaganda are either Russian or brainwashed.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/sep/08/russia-troll-army-red-web-any-questions

Way to go Guardian, vilify your regular readership. That should really sort out your revenue problems.

shatnersrug says April 7, 2016
Surely it's obvious to all that Luke Harding is an establishment stooge isn't it? He might even be MI5 (not 6 – he's not smart enough)
Jim Scott says December 24, 2017
Just started reviewing Harding's past articles and agree he is clearly a stooge but I can't decide whether he is Curly Larry or Mo.
Nino says September 9, 2015
"The dark symbolism of the open window in the children's bedroom was not hard to decipher: take care, or your kids might just fall out. The men – I assume it was men – had vanished like ghosts."

That there is just pure gold, it was written as a serious piece but even if it wasn't it would still be brilliant piece of comedy and sarcasm, but the fact that it's unintentionally funny and not a sarcasm is what makes it one of the greatest arrangements of words ever. Man sees an open window and "deciphers" that it was secret agents who opened it for the whole purpose of leaving him a "message" and then "vanished like ghosts". A whole script from an open window. Perhaps next time they will make an offer he can't refuse? Brilliant sketch, someone mentioned Inspector Clouseau in the comments but I have to say that Clouseau has nothing on this level of deduction skills, self importance and delusions of grandeur, or delusions in general. I read that thing many times now and its still hilarious as first time "The dark symbolism of the open window .."

There is a video of Carl Sagan where he explains how not to do science and logic and uses clouds on Venus as an example how to get a grand and completely wrong conclusion out of nothing, now know as The Venutian Dinosaur Fallacy:

"I can't see a thing on the surface of Venus. Why not? Because it's covered with a dense layer of clouds. Well, what are clouds made of? Water, of course. Therefore, Venus must have an awful lot of water on it. Therefore, the surface must be wet. Well, if the surface is wet, it's probably a swamp. If there's a swamp, there's ferns. If there's ferns, maybe there's even dinosaurs. -Observation: we can't see a thing on Venus. Conclusion: dinosaurs."

I think that Harding perhaps gave us even better example.

Eric_B says September 10, 2015
Who knows what the terrifying window openers might do on a subsequent visit? Perhaps give Luke and Phoebe an air freshener or even a pot pourri?
Rob Baggott says September 9, 2015
Luke saw Russian tanks cross the border into Ukraine despite being 26 miles from the border crossing with a Russian aid convoy. Despite there being a 5000 foot elevation between where he actually was to where the border crossing was.Despite there being EU monitors at the border crossing who did not see any tanks.When I pointed this out to Luke,as a comment on his Guardian article,the article comments section disappeared and the placement of Russian tanks at the border changed to a different border crossing.All of my previous comments were purged,any other comments were moderated meaning an effectual ban and Luke carried on as if nothing had happened.Something did happen,he stopped saying he personally saw Russian tanks because he had been busted.In my opinion he is paid handsomely to post,anything,negative against Russia and sometimes he just makes shit up when his wife needs a new kitchen appliance.He is obviously a tosser to boot.
BlackCatte says September 9, 2015
Actually it was that other bastion of serous journalism Shaun Walker who saw the invisible invasion. Luke would be too scared of getting zapped by mind rays to get that close to a Russian tank.
Eric_B says September 9, 2015
Yeah that was good old shaun. shaun also saw a Russian vehicle somewhere in ukraine with peacekeeping symbols from Chechnya. there was actually a photo of that one. unfortunately it was impossible to verify where and when the photo was taken and no other such vehicle with those markings has ever been seen before or since in ukraine. the woman who supposedly took the photo had a long history of photographing Russia vehicles in Chechnya.
Francis says September 10, 2015
Nice to see we're developing a decent comments section as well, keep it up .
astabada says September 23, 2015
Luke did take pictures of the Russian tanks entering Ukraine, but the FSB promptly deleted any footage.
Jennifer Hor says September 10, 2015
Luke wouldn't even have taken any photos of the Russian tanks. He would have thought the tanks were sent after him and he would taken off like a rabbit. Even if the tanks were going in the other direction.

BTW Luke's wife Phoebe Taplin (also a journalist) wrote a series of books about walking in Moscow at different times of the year according to season and exploring the city's parks and open spaces on foot while they were stationed there. Folks, make of that what you will.

"Moscow walks. Spring" by Phoebe Taplin goes on sale
http://themoscownews.com/ournews/20120503/189687562.html

Moscow Exile says September 11, 2015
Mrs. Harding's articles in the now defunct "Moscow News" were always an interesting and informative read, I thought.
Katherine Da Silva (@KathyDaSilva2) says September 9, 2015
I think he has survived as a journalist which is in a way commendable. However, he irritated Glenn Greenwald, when he interviewed him because Glenn could see the details Luke was interested in writing about were literally going to be the material for a book, and I think Glenn had not finished his own at that point! So a bit exploitive to say the least. It's an irony that the Snowden film produced/directed by Oliver Stone is going to be based on Luke's version not Glenn, guess who gains financially for example.
BlackCatte says September 9, 2015
Personally I'm not sure Luke has ever been anything definable as a journalist – but he definitely has survived.
Yonatan says September 9, 2015
Tricky – a mix of 3 and 4 might do it.

On the other hand, you have to give him credit for foresight – moving from the Daily Mail to the Guardian before it was fashionable. Maybe his talents alone explain the lack of substantive difference between these two organs of State.

Rhisiart Gwilym says September 9, 2015
E L Wisty used to shout "Get away, silly old government!" down his loo, because he knew they were bugging it.
Jen says September 9, 2015
If I didn't know that Luke Harding was a journalist, I'd have thought he was a comedian in the tradition of Peter Sellers overdoing Inspector Clouseau in too many Pink Panther sequels.
Eric_B says September 9, 2015
Mr Harding is a huge threat to the ruthless Russian government due to his fearless journalism, but rather than off him with some polonium tea or crumpets they decided to leave a sex manual by his bed.

Was the idea that Mr Harding would die from over exertion?

yalensis says September 10, 2015
When KGB left the orgasm manual, that was Putin's way of voting #4: "Tosser".
Jennifer Hor says September 10, 2015
Even the sudden appearance of the Kama Sutra in English by the bedside table would have aroused LDH's suspicions. What, he would have wondered, were the terrifying secrets encoded in the manual?
Brad Benson says September 10, 2015
Maybe his wife left the book because she was tired of walking through parks in Moscow by herself.

[Dec 29, 2017] Did Awans Cut A Deal January Court Date Mysteriously Disappears From Docket

Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a really interesting player as for DNC leak... This Anan brothers story is simply incredible and probably hides some really nasty staff related to DNC espionage over congress members.
Notable quotes:
"... To briefly recap, our report from last week , the Awan family - which was employed by quite a number of House Democrats, had full access to highly sensitive Congressional computer systems , both on-site and remotely from Pakistan , with which they are suspected of committing a variety of crimes - including brokering classified information to hostile foreign governments. ..."
"... would frequently simply go across the street to longstanding dealership called AAA Motors and get one. ..."
"... While Imran and Abid Awan ran their car dealership in Falls Church, Va. in the early part of the decade, Drug Enforcement Agency officials a few miles away in Chantilly were learning that the Iranian-linked terrorist group frequently deployed used car dealerships in the US to launder money and fund terrorism , according to an explosive new Politico expose. - Daily Caller ..."
"... "Based on the modest way Awan was living, it is my opinion that he was sending most of his money to a group or criminal organization that could very well be connected with the Pakistani government ," said Wayne Black - a private investigator who worked in Janet Reno's Miami public corruption unit, adding " My instincts tell me Awan was probably operating a foreign intelligence gathering operation on US soil." ..."
"... In February, the Daily Caller dropped two bombshells: that the Awans were under criminal investigation after being caught accessing congressional computers without permission, and they had borrowed, laundered, and never repaid $100,000 from a shady Iraqi expat physician – Dr. Ali al-Attar , a Hezbollah-linked fugitive who led a group of other expats which regularly advised the Bush administration on their plans to invade Iraq in 2002-2003 ( source ). ..."
"... Al-Attar's license to practice medicine was revoked by the Maryland State Board of Physicians and he had to pay a $50,000 fine for unprofessional conduct, healthcare fraud, and failure to cooperate with an investigation. ..."
"... It's not clear where the dealership's money was going, because it was sued by at least five different people on all ends of a typical car business who said they were stiffed. ..."
"... CIA didn't pay the security deposit, rent or taxes for its building, it didn't pay wholesalers who provided cars, and it sold broken cars to people and then refused to honor the warranties, the lawsuits say . ..."
"... Moreover, when the Awans' shady car dealership ran into money troubles, Florida Congressman Theo Deutch began paying a monthly salary to a man who had threatened to sue the Awans . ..."
"... The brothers had numerous additional sources of income, all of which seemed to disappear. While they were supposedly working for the House, the brothers were running a car dealership full-time that didn't pay its vendors, and after one -- Rao Abbas -- threatened to sue them, he began receiving a paycheck from Rep. Theodore Deutch (D-FL), who like Wasserman Schultz represents Florida. - Daily Caller ..."
"... " It was in the garage. They recycled cabinets and lined them along the walls. They left in a huge hurry," the Marine said. " It looks like government-issued equipment. We turned that stuff over ." ..."
"... If the Awans cut a deal , one might speculate that a liberal prosecutor and a DNC-friendly court might be conducting a dog-and-pony show. For months, rumors swirled that brother of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Wasserman was handling the prosecution - however court filings reveal that assistant U.S. Attorney Michael J. Marando is handling the case. Marando is married to JoAnna Wasserman - an employee of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in D.C. ..."
"... While the notion that Imran Awan cut a deal based on his name vanishing from the court calendar, Federal prosecutors certainly have enough evidence against the Awan clan to put them away for a long time. Perhaps they've decided they like the outside of a prison cell better than the alternative. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Luke Rosiak of The Daily Caller pointed out a mysterious twist in the case of Pakistani national and long-time DNC IT contractor, Imran Awan - who was arrested in July at Dulles Airport while trying to flee the country after having wired nearly $300,000 to Pakistan .

Awan's court date on four counts related to bank fraud, which had already been reschedule twice, has disappeared from the docket altogether:

Which begs the question - did Imran Awan cut a deal with Federal prosecutors?

Of note - Imran's wife, Hina Alvi - who had fled to Pakistan in March with the Awan children, struck a deal with federal prosecutors in September to return to the U.S. and face charges. One wonders why Alvi would willingly leave the relative security of her family in Pakistan to face arraignment in the United States?

To briefly recap, our report from last week , the Awan family - which was employed by quite a number of House Democrats, had full access to highly sensitive Congressional computer systems , both on-site and remotely from Pakistan , with which they are suspected of committing a variety of crimes - including brokering classified information to hostile foreign governments.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/KDVFAnZsnJk

Of note, the Awans had access to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence - whose members have top secret clearance and are looking into Russian election interference.

The Pakistani nationals also operated a shady used car dealership in Falls Church, VA operating under the title "CIA" which Luke Rosiak of The Daily Caller reported has all the signs of a money laundering operation .

On its Facebook page, CIA's "staff" were fake personalities such as "James Falls O'Brien," whose photo was taken from a hairstyle mode l catalog, and "Jade Julia," whose image came from a web page called "Beautiful Girls Wallpaper."

If a customer showed up looking to buy a car from Cars International A, often referred to as CIA, Abid Awan -- who was managing partner of the dealership while also earning $160,000 handling IT for House Democrats -- would frequently simply go across the street to longstanding dealership called AAA Motors and get one.

While Imran and Abid Awan ran their car dealership in Falls Church, Va. in the early part of the decade, Drug Enforcement Agency officials a few miles away in Chantilly were learning that the Iranian-linked terrorist group frequently deployed used car dealerships in the US to launder money and fund terrorism , according to an explosive new Politico expose. - Daily Caller

"Based on the modest way Awan was living, it is my opinion that he was sending most of his money to a group or criminal organization that could very well be connected with the Pakistani government ," said Wayne Black - a private investigator who worked in Janet Reno's Miami public corruption unit, adding " My instincts tell me Awan was probably operating a foreign intelligence gathering operation on US soil."

In February, the Daily Caller dropped two bombshells: that the Awans were under criminal investigation after being caught accessing congressional computers without permission, and they had borrowed, laundered, and never repaid $100,000 from a shady Iraqi expat physician – Dr. Ali al-Attar , a Hezbollah-linked fugitive who led a group of other expats which regularly advised the Bush administration on their plans to invade Iraq in 2002-2003 ( source ).

The money which the Awans borrowed was moved from Ali Al-Attar through accounts intended for Fairfax County real estate. Both Imran Awan and Khattak -- who also put up $200,000 in cash as an investor in CIA -- had realtors licenses.

Dr. Ali al-Attar

Al-Attar's license to practice medicine was revoked by the Maryland State Board of Physicians and he had to pay a $50,000 fine for unprofessional conduct, healthcare fraud, and failure to cooperate with an investigation.

It's not clear where the dealership's money was going, because it was sued by at least five different people on all ends of a typical car business who said they were stiffed.

CIA didn't pay the security deposit, rent or taxes for its building, it didn't pay wholesalers who provided cars, and it sold broken cars to people and then refused to honor the warranties, the lawsuits say .

Moreover, when the Awans' shady car dealership ran into money troubles, Florida Congressman Theo Deutch began paying a monthly salary to a man who had threatened to sue the Awans .

Rep Theo Deutch (D-FL), Awan Benefactor

The brothers had numerous additional sources of income, all of which seemed to disappear. While they were supposedly working for the House, the brothers were running a car dealership full-time that didn't pay its vendors, and after one -- Rao Abbas -- threatened to sue them, he began receiving a paycheck from Rep. Theodore Deutch (D-FL), who like Wasserman Schultz represents Florida. - Daily Caller

The Awans were also turned into the Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) by two renters occupying a home they owned , after they found "wireless routers, hard drives that look like they tried to destro y, laptops, [and] a lot of brand new expensive toner" in the garage.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity over concerns for his wife's naval career, the former Marine told the Daily Caller:

" It was in the garage. They recycled cabinets and lined them along the walls. They left in a huge hurry," the Marine said. " It looks like government-issued equipment. We turned that stuff over ."

If the Awans cut a deal , one might speculate that a liberal prosecutor and a DNC-friendly court might be conducting a dog-and-pony show. For months, rumors swirled that brother of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Wasserman was handling the prosecution - however court filings reveal that assistant U.S. Attorney Michael J. Marando is handling the case. Marando is married to JoAnna Wasserman - an employee of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in D.C.

While JoAnna Wasserman shares a maiden name with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, her parents are named Mark and Donna, while Debbie Wasserman Shultz's parents are Larry and Ann Wasserman. Plus, if there's any relation, JoAnna Wasserman got all of the family's good genetics.

US Attorney Michael J. Marando and wife JoAnna Wasserman (top). Steve Schultz and wife Debbie Wasserman Schultz (bottom)

While the notion that Imran Awan cut a deal based on his name vanishing from the court calendar, Federal prosecutors certainly have enough evidence against the Awan clan to put them away for a long time. Perhaps they've decided they like the outside of a prison cell better than the alternative.

[Dec 28, 2017] How CrowdStrike placed malware in DNC hacked servers by Alex Christoforou

Highly recommended!
If this is true, then this is definitely a sophisticated false flag operation. Was malware Alperovich people injected specifically designed to implicate Russians? In other words Crowdstrike=Fancy Bear
Images removed. For full content please thee the original source
One interesting corollary of this analysis is that installing Crowdstrike software is like inviting a wolf to guard your chicken. If they are so dishonest you take enormous risks. That might be true for some other heavily advertized "intrusion prevention" toolkits. So those criminals who use mistyped popular addresses or buy Google searches to drive lemmings to their site and then flash the screen that they detected a virus on your computer a, please call provided number and for a small amount of money your virus will be removed get a new more sinister life.
I suspected many of such firms (for example ISS which was bought by IBM in 2006) to be scams long ago.
Notable quotes:
"... Disobedient Media outlines the DNC server cover-up evidenced in CrowdStrike malware infusion ..."
"... In the article, they claim to have just been working on eliminating the last of the hackers from the DNC's network during the past weekend (conveniently coinciding with Assange's statement and being an indirect admission that their Falcon software had failed to achieve it's stated capabilities at that time , assuming their statements were accurate) . ..."
"... To date, CrowdStrike has not been able to show how the malware had relayed any emails or accessed any mailboxes. They have also not responded to inquiries specifically asking for details about this. In fact, things have now been discovered that bring some of their malware discoveries into question. ..."
"... there is a reason to think Fancy Bear didn't start some of its activity until CrowdStrike had arrived at the DNC. CrowdStrike, in the indiciators of compromise they reported, identified three pieces of malware relating to Fancy Bear: ..."
"... They found that generally, in a lot of cases, malware developers didn't care to hide the compile times and that while implausible timestamps are used, it's rare that these use dates in the future. It's possible, but unlikely that one sample would have a postdated timestamp to coincide with their visit by mere chance but seems extremely unlikely to happen with two or more samples. Considering the dates of CrowdStrike's activities at the DNC coincide with the compile dates of two out of the three pieces of malware discovered and attributed to APT-28 (the other compiled approximately 2 weeks prior to their visit), the big question is: Did CrowdStrike plant some (or all) of the APT-28 malware? ..."
"... The IP address, according to those articles, was disabled in June 2015, eleven months before the DNC emails were acquired – meaning those IP addresses, in reality, had no involvement in the alleged hacking of the DNC. ..."
"... The fact that two out of three of the Fancy Bear malware samples identified were compiled on dates within the apparent five day period CrowdStrike were apparently at the DNC seems incredibly unlikely to have occurred by mere chance. ..."
"... That all three malware samples were compiled within ten days either side of their visit – makes it clear just how questionable the Fancy Bear malware discoveries were. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | theduran.com

Of course the DNC did not want to the FBI to investigate its "hacked servers". The plan was well underway to excuse Hillary's pathetic election defeat to Trump, and CrowdStrike would help out by planting evidence to pin on those evil "Russian hackers." Some would call this entire DNC server hack an "insurance policy."

... ... ...

[Dec 28, 2017] The Mueller investigation will delay and stall closing the investigation until the 2018 Congressional Elections, with the Dems presuming these elections will be won and Nunes removed

Notable quotes:
"... I sense The Duran and Zero Hedge are suspect for readers of this site, but however they may be seen as biased for Trump, they continually broadcast the sham the Mueller investigation has become. ..."
"... Why there is not more attention to the outright sham of the investigation is not clear to me. The Mueller case re election peddling rests entirely on the Steele dossier, now shown to be false. Instead, Mueller is going after unrelated matters in Trump re Russian business deals, or matters taking place AFTER the election, or stupidly investigating Jill Stein for attending a dinner with Putin present. Anything Russia is gobbled down by automatic demonizing as "them Russian bastards did it Oh for sure." Trump tweets and complains but apparently does nothing to create a new prosecutor going after Clinton, where the investigation should focus, possibly because Mueller is continually miscalculating and the near collapse of what the committee is doing. ..."
"... I don't comment on all this as a fan of Trump. Far be it. I'm very critical of Trump as essentially incompetent, an egotist, a foolhardy war-monger, and indeed I'll go with Tillerson's "fucking moron" assessment. But to concentrate simply on Trump, as moderate previous "liberals" are doing, is to ignore the other half of the problem in the corruption that is the current Washington. I want to see the farce of the Mueller investigation get more attention, and thank you b, for bringing it up here. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Sid2 , Dec 26, 2017 12:58:36 PM | 12

I sense The Duran and Zero Hedge are suspect for readers of this site, but however they may be seen as biased for Trump, they continually broadcast the sham the Mueller investigation has become.

Today Alexander Mercouris, to me one of the best reporters on this matter additional to b, indicates the Mueller investigation will delay and stall with this and that until the 2018 congressional elections, with the Dems presuming these elections will be won by Democrats, which will take the heat off Mueller's show by current Repubs led by Nunes--now shifting to investigate Clinton.

http://theduran.com/fbi-russiagate-strategy-stonewall-congressional-elections/

Why there is not more attention to the outright sham of the investigation is not clear to me. The Mueller case re election peddling rests entirely on the Steele dossier, now shown to be false. Instead, Mueller is going after unrelated matters in Trump re Russian business deals, or matters taking place AFTER the election, or stupidly investigating Jill Stein for attending a dinner with Putin present. Anything Russia is gobbled down by automatic demonizing as "them Russian bastards did it Oh for sure." Trump tweets and complains but apparently does nothing to create a new prosecutor going after Clinton, where the investigation should focus, possibly because Mueller is continually miscalculating and the near collapse of what the committee is doing.

I don't comment on all this as a fan of Trump. Far be it. I'm very critical of Trump as essentially incompetent, an egotist, a foolhardy war-monger, and indeed I'll go with Tillerson's "fucking moron" assessment. But to concentrate simply on Trump, as moderate previous "liberals" are doing, is to ignore the other half of the problem in the corruption that is the current Washington. I want to see the farce of the Mueller investigation get more attention, and thank you b, for bringing it up here.

[Dec 28, 2017] The Harding book contains nothing but conjecture and shaky circumstantial evidence built upon a "dossier" filled with verifiable lies from an operative that was hired by the Clintons

Dec 28, 2017 | www.amazon.com

Amazon Customer , November 29, 2017

If there is a smoking gun that proves that Trump is beholden to Russia, I want to know about it. Having slogged through this book, though, I can tell you that the smoking gun is not here. That is disappointing, because the cover of the book implies that proof of collusion will be provided. Instead, the book provides a series of "it seemed as if something more was going on" types of speculations. It also restates everything you already know about the alleged scandal.

Some readers will be happy with this book -- primarily those who are already certain that Trump is controlled by Russia, despite the lack of evidence to that effect. If you are a liberal looking for confirmation bias, this book will make you nod knowingly.

Other readers should note that this book accepts the controversial "Russian dossier" about Trump on face value, even though the dossier has been debunked by Newsweek, Bob Woodward, and others, while the New York Times (embarrassed by initially treating the dossier as legitimate) has called it "unsubstantiated." This book's perspective on the dossier is to the left of even the New York Times. At one point, the book references the publication Mother Jones as a mainstream news source -- that says everything you need to know about the author's political slant.

This book provides no insight into Donald Trump himself. If you want to learn something about how Trump's mind works, try Scott Adams' excellent book, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter .

Good source of confirmation bias, bad source of new information

azon.com/gp/customer-reviews/ROHSECZT4AORE/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0525562516">

By Amazon Customer on December 16, 2017
This book is very deceptive! beware of confirmation bias!

I just got through reading this and I have to say if you are looking for a book with nothing but conjecture and shaky circumstantial evidence built upon a "dossier" filled with VERIFIABLE lies from an operative that was hired by the Clintons, then this will be a delight to read! This book will do nothing but reinforce your confirmation bias!

[Dec 28, 2017] The New Zealand flagship National Radio channel interview with plagiarist Luke Harding

Notable quotes:
"... The irony of the NZ interviewer calling RT a Kremlin propaganda outlet while she works for a state run broadcaster and promotes Harding's rubbish book is stunning. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Thominus , Dec 27, 2017 2:52:00 AM | 81

@Ike , Dec 27, 2017 3:39:17 AM | 82

The New Zealand flagship National Radio channel recently played an interview of the above mentioned plagiarist Luke Harding https://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018624819 It is interesting to compare the free ride he is given by the interviewer, Kim Hill, noticeably anti-Russian, and the far more intelligent approach from Aaron Mate of the Real News.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1731&v=9Ikf1uZli4g

The irony of the NZ interviewer calling RT a Kremlin propaganda outlet while she works for a state run broadcaster and promotes Harding's rubbish book is stunning.

[Dec 28, 2017] Harding is a prime example of the Russiagate supporters in MSM A real bottom feeder

Notable quotes:
"... Well done interview Aaron. I want to see Trump go down, but we do need to have proof. That is called justice. He may have colluded to get dirt on Hilary, just like Hilary getting dirt on Obama and Trump as well but the outcome of our recent presidential election was the fault of the DNC itself. If PROOF comes out on Trumps wrong doing, then that is when you write a book about it. Not a book on trying to build a ridiculous connecting of the dots of similar situations. Yes, looking at past history is important but to make a fabricated scenario is irresponsible journalism. Until we have solid proof of actual tampering then we should do it the right way. I agree that Israel had more collusion and tampering with Trump yet this writer ignores that. Thank you Aaron for asking the real-questions. Much respect to you. Peace. ..."
"... Bravo Aaron! This interview made me even happier I was able to scrounge up a few bucks to throw your guys way recently. Harding seems a raging establishment shill, with his connections and past (journalist based in Russia, big opposition fan, Oxford educated, Guardian) I would be shocked if he isn't at the least friendly with Mi5/6. ..."
"... I see Russiagate as a reverse Birther - Obama might be a US citizen but he grew up in Indonesia so lets give him shit for it - All of Wall street has been taking Russian money for years, but if ur President? - so now they can slowly dig up innuendo and possibly evidence of dodgy transactions all the while minimizing Wikileaks and the systemic corruption it revealed - I think its mainly a containment strategy while keeping Trump isolated and its working well but for people paying attention we are seeing the system at work and what its capacities are, how much empty propaganda can be pushed even after something like the Iraq war. Also part of a pattern with past outlier presidencies where there is a concerted push to restrict them to one term and in this case amplified by embedded Clinton allies. ..."
"... Wait. Did he say Steele was involved in the Ukraine Coup? :)) ..."
"... A kitten trying to climb out of a wood chipper. This was not easy to watch. It bordered on abuse. The assault on this conspiracy opportunist parasite was a fine example of real investigative journalism. By publishing this nonsense and then agreeing to go on an interview about it in public, he subjects himself to the most brutal humiliation. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Sini Koncar , 4 days ago

How can this guy write a whole book about the "collusion" and not give a single clear proof in the interview. He is a prime example of the Russiagate supporters. Good Job Aaron!

RVGODZILLA , 4 days ago (edited)

That was the best interview I've watched in awhile about this trumprussia stuff // Aaron mate you did a stellar fckn job bro! Cheers!

MI55ION , 4 days ago

Aaron is boss in this interview... damn I've watched 5 mins so far and this "author" has shown himself already to be a complete tool. The only opportunist I see here is him cashing in on this anti Russian craze that only serve the interests of Intel agencies and the Democratic party insiders.

eglaham , 4 days ago

Thanks for keeping this joker honest, Aaron!

Peace Beuponyou , 4 days ago

Well done interview Aaron. I want to see Trump go down, but we do need to have proof. That is called justice. He may have colluded to get dirt on Hilary, just like Hilary getting dirt on Obama and Trump as well but the outcome of our recent presidential election was the fault of the DNC itself. If PROOF comes out on Trumps wrong doing, then that is when you write a book about it. Not a book on trying to build a ridiculous connecting of the dots of similar situations. Yes, looking at past history is important but to make a fabricated scenario is irresponsible journalism. Until we have solid proof of actual tampering then we should do it the right way. I agree that Israel had more collusion and tampering with Trump yet this writer ignores that. Thank you Aaron for asking the real-questions. Much respect to you. Peace.

M V , 4 days ago

Aaron Maté, you are gold. This so-called journalist was condescending and highly unprofessional throughout the interview to point where he most likely cut the line because he couldn't handle being interviewed by a real journalist and seeker of truth. His failure to directly answer Aaron's questions regarding evidence of collusion show his inability to be factual and impartial. The 'evidence' the author presents seems circumstantial at best and unconvincing. Thank you, the Real News Network. Your high standard of journalism is always appreciated by your loyal viewers.

Sergio Rico , 4 days ago

Good job Aaron for doing actual journalism and not simply taking statements with no evidence for granted

beelovedfuzz , 4 days ago

I love you, Aaron. You and the Real New are one of the few who actually challenges this ridiculous narrative. Trump is a horrible man but so is the rest of the US plutocracy. Making him out as some sort of special sort of evil is pathetic. He wasn't hired because of the Russians. He was hired because Americans cannot seem to understand that the changes they want from the economic system here in this country will not happen if they exclusively use voting as their change mechanism. Especially if they keep voting in the two fake opposition parties for all positions. Also, Mr. Harding, we don't need to read your book. We've been hearing this garbage through the mainstream media for over the last year. You are not providing anything new or any actual proof.

manti core , 4 days ago

That is just a brilliant destruction of the Russia hysteria. Harding just fell apart. Well done!

magicpony9 , 3 days ago (edited)

Aaron: "What evidence is there of this?" Luke: "I was a Moscow correspondent for four years!" Aaron: "What evidence is there of this?" Luke: "Trump is nice to Putin and rude to other world leaders!" Aaron: "What evidence is there of this?" Luke: "What do you think Russian spy agencies do all day if not spy? Huh?"

Luke O'Brien , 4 days ago (edited)

I despise Trump, but where the fuck is Harding's evidence for collusion? He responds to direct questions with, "weeell..." and goes onto talking about obscure meetings with musical producers or vague connections with Russian business men. Or, worse still, reminding us how awful Putin is (what does that prove in regards to collusion?). And how dare he claim that he's living in the "empirical world," when he can't substantiate his headline - collision. Stunningly, he even suggests later on that skeptical people can't appreciate Putin! Cash-in, little more. Good job, Aaron.

tom robbins , 4 days ago

Storyteller told on himself

rollofnickles , 4 days ago

Luke is full of shit as he pushes hacking of the 2016 election. William Edward Binney[3] is a former highly placed intelligence official with the United States National Security Agency (NSA)[4] turned whistleblower who resigned on October 31, 2001, after more than 30 years with the agency. He was a high-profile critic of his former employers during the George W. Bush administration, and later criticized the NSA's data collection policies during the Barack Obama administration. In 2016, he said the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election was false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(U.S._intelligence_official) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv0-Lnv0d0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoeJeWfoSpQ

Niding , 4 days ago

Aarons calm, but critical, questioning/demand for evidence is very refreshing. It has to be very uncomfortable for a guest that is acustomed to mainstream neo-libs/con journalists.

Marta K. , 4 days ago

I just ❤️ that look on Aaron's face at 11:47 ! Like "dude, you can't be serious... are you serious?"

Kristen Saunders , 3 days ago

Great interview! Awesome push back with facts! This should be done EVERYTIME!

Cartoonishly Inept , 4 days ago

So this guy's whole body of evidence can be summarized as because Russia engages in espionage then that proves the collusion? Great interview Aaron, he wasn't expecting you to call out his bullshit, thought he didn't seemed at all phased by it. 10:30 "I'm a story teller." I think that sums this guy up pretty nicely.

441rider , 4 days ago

Funny he lost his cool so fast and went into teacher mode, LOL! Good job interviewer this is how "stories" get vetted no matter how favorable they are to you position. :o)

MI55ION , 4 days ago

Shit just got real... one of the finest interviews I've seen in a while. Bravo Aaron, bravo! ));

frosty buckets , 4 days ago

This is why I watch real news network. They are willing to debate the issues

Michael Maxfield , 4 days ago

Watching this interview was like a breath of fresh air. You NEVER see a "journalist" challenge their guests on network TV (probably because guests are pre-screened to fit the prevailing orthodoxy). If we just had an army of Aarons doing the news, I think the world would be in a lot better shape.

Richard Gere , 4 days ago

Good job, Aaron, thank you. It's not the first time I've been impressed by your objective questioning and reasoning that may offend a guest but leads to the truth. Good, unbiased journalism seems very rare these days

Paul Randall , 4 days ago

Bravo Aaron! This interview made me even happier I was able to scrounge up a few bucks to throw your guys way recently. Harding seems a raging establishment shill, with his connections and past (journalist based in Russia, big opposition fan, Oxford educated, Guardian) I would be shocked if he isn't at the least friendly with Mi5/6.

And I wouldn't be surprised if he had done work for them, which means he effectively still works for them (you never leave the intelligence club, you keep getting fat wads of cash on occasion while understanding that very bad things will happen if you turn on them). Again and again, he presented arguments which were whole cloth bullshit, either 'facts' that were proven untrue (like the bare-faced lie about Russian interference in the French elections) with laughable ease by Aaron, or threw a word salad of tales of nefarious Russia being nefarious to somehow 'prove' something completely unrelated, that Russia got Trump elected with a bunch of random, laughably tiny, obtuse efforts (a couple of ads on FB, some supposed Twitter trolls, RT, Pokeman f-ing Go (!) ) which are all that has been openly claimed.

And there is NO REAL EVIDENCE for that crap either, just the word of the always trustworthy spooks (a hand selected group from 3 agencies, btw) and some heavily leaned on establishment toadies in Silicon Valley. This book (I am guessing here- no, I have not nor will I waste my time reading it) appears to be a disgusting cash grab on the level of 'What Happened?', selling self-serving vacuous BS to credulous morons looking to feel better about the epic failure of their disgusting, characterless idol. Also will undoubtedly be a big hit with the McCain wing of right wing nuts, who have been itching for the fun of a REAL WAR (oh boy oh boy oh boy! mass tank clashes in Poland! carrier battle groups attacking Vladivostok!!!) with the always evil Reds... errr, Russians.

Disinformation trolls like this guy are willing to put in their two cents toward making that happen. How the fuck they look themselves in the mirror, especially if the have young people they care about, baffles me. But considering the Oxford background and government connections, his kids sure as hell won't be digging a trench frantically in ESTONIA (which I also have heard of, btw, you pompous, pompous puke). THANK YOU REAL NEWS! MORE LIKE THIS PLEASE!! :)

Baal Baphomet , 4 days ago

this is another nothing burger by a member of the UK MSM this time who should know better - Citing Chris Steele as a source for info is a complete joke - this guy needs to go back to Journo school .

Michael , 4 days ago

What a great debate by Aaron. Slapped that jackass so many times & revealed how deceptive & outright false his position is. He has no evidence & is so condescending/arrogant despite the baselessness of his position.

Lissen Tome , 4 days ago

I'm not even a trump fan and dude there is no collusion this guy's a shill

Noss Cern , 4 days ago

I find blinking isn't usually a good sign - I do think Trump has had Russian money, some of it laundered, through his properties for decades and Russians probably have enough to place pressure on him in the same way Hillary could be compromised by Uranium One, he might have considerable debts owing. However Trump like Tillerson/Exxon and many others just want to get into Russia and start doing deals.

They are over this Brezinzski like need to crush Russia for all time that the deep state has got lined up.

I see Russiagate as a reverse Birther - Obama might be a US citizen but he grew up in Indonesia so lets give him shit for it - All of Wall street has been taking Russian money for years, but if ur President? - so now they can slowly dig up innuendo and possibly evidence of dodgy transactions all the while minimizing Wikileaks and the systemic corruption it revealed - I think its mainly a containment strategy while keeping Trump isolated and its working well but for people paying attention we are seeing the system at work and what its capacities are, how much empty propaganda can be pushed even after something like the Iraq war. Also part of a pattern with past outlier presidencies where there is a concerted push to restrict them to one term and in this case amplified by embedded Clinton allies.

arcanaco , 4 days ago (edited)

Wait. Did he say Steele was involved in the Ukraine Coup? :))

Paddy Flaco , 3 days ago

A kitten trying to climb out of a wood chipper. This was not easy to watch. It bordered on abuse. The assault on this conspiracy opportunist parasite was a fine example of real investigative journalism. By publishing this nonsense and then agreeing to go on an interview about it in public, he subjects himself to the most brutal humiliation.

miclewis55 , 4 days ago (edited)

Luke is part of the UK metropolitan liberal elite. Still in shock that HRC was rejected by the US voters . Still in shock that UK deplorables voted for Brexit . His monumental arrogance is such that he believes we were too stupid to understand the issues and therefore were 'guided' by Russian propaganda. Aaron exposes Lukes lack of evidence perfectly.

Anticapitalist X , 4 days ago

Kudos to Aaron Mate and the Real News for asking Harding serious questions; the upshot is that this Harding character did not have shit to prove that Russia meddled with the US election. Good job Aaron Mate and the Real News.

John Mina , 4 days ago

Well done Aaron. This guy is a liar, plain and simple.

[Dec 28, 2017] I think many British journalists work for the British secret service, and they were recruited at university and slotted into journalist employment

Notable quotes:
"... Tisdall's weekly spiel about the Evil Empire and its Dark Lord made many CiFers comment that he must report regularly to Chatham House, London, at weekends for briefings, after which he'd knock out some good, blood-curdling copy about Russia in order to please his masters. ..."
"... As a matter of fact, I think many British "journalists" – Tisdall and Harding being prime examples thereof – primarily work for the British not-so-secret secret service, that they were recruited at university and were slotted into journalist employment to do their business of propagandizing. ..."
Sep 15, 2012 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile says: September 15, 2012 at 11:58 am

Something went wrong there!

Here's Tisdall on Russia:

And on and on

Tisdall's weekly spiel about the Evil Empire and its Dark Lord made many CiFers comment that he must report regularly to Chatham House, London, at weekends for briefings, after which he'd knock out some good, blood-curdling copy about Russia in order to please his masters.

I don't think that's far from the truth actually. As a matter of fact, I think many British "journalists" – Tisdall and Harding being prime examples thereof – primarily work for the British not-so-secret secret service, that they were recruited at university and were slotted into journalist employment to do their business of propagandizing. That might explain why Harding is such a god awful journalist that has had on occasion to take recourse to a spot of cut and paste plagiarism.

Tisdall and Harding being prime examples thereof – primarily work for the British not-so-secret secret service, that they were recruited at university and were slotted into journalist employment to do their business of propagandizing. That might explain why Harding is such a god awful journalist that has had on occasion to take recourse to a spot of cut and paste plagiarism.

[Dec 28, 2017] Collusion Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

The book contains nothing but conjecture and shaky circumstantial evidence built upon a "dossier" filled with verifiable lies from an operative that was hired by the Clintons
I think many British "journalists" – Tisdall and Harding being prime examples thereof – primarily work for the British not-so-secret secret service, that they were recruited at university and were slotted into journalist employment. But at the same time he is so pathetic that this would be embarrassment for MI6 to cooperate with such bottom feeders.
Notable quotes:
"... Luke Harding has found it, finally! The real, complete, final proof of COLLUSION between Donald Trump and the Russian government! Secret NSA intercepts, perhaps? Deep dark banking secrets? Sorry, folks. It's just Donald, Jr's email exchange with private lawyer and occasional Kremlin emissary Natalia Veselnitskaya. These emails have been picked through by every media organization in the world by now (why? Because Don Jr. made them public, all three of them), and they have all come up short. But for Harding, these emails finally gives us "proof of collusion." And it took him 249 pages just to get to this point, after spinning every looney-tunes conspiracy theory and crackpot allegation ever aired against Donald Trump. ..."
"... I call this the wouda-couda shouda school of pseudo-journalism, a crock pot spiced with insinuation and allusion. At one point, Harding even wants us to believe that Donald Trump's first wife, Ivana Zelnichova might have been a Czech spy! ..."
"... DNC CORRUPTION and GASLIGHTING with the Steele dossier being bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton herself. The knowledge that Hillary's emails were not stolen by Russian hackers but by DNCs failure to secure their systems and not click on phishing emails ..."
"... This seems like yet another attempt to divert blame from the guilty. Maybe Imran Awan should be asked, I bet he and his family have some interesting stories to tell about what was really happening at the DNC. This book is laughable, at best. None of the speculation within has been verified and has overall been disproven ..."
"... I am perplexed that Harding's account doesn't appear to coincide with Steele's under-oath court testimony. Was he lying to the courts or to this author? Can this book be used against Steele in the various libel lawsuits he is defending? ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.amazon.com

Kenneth Timmerman on December 22, 2017

A shoddy piece of work

Luke Harding has found it, finally! The real, complete, final proof of COLLUSION between Donald Trump and the Russian government! Secret NSA intercepts, perhaps? Deep dark banking secrets? Sorry, folks. It's just Donald, Jr's email exchange with private lawyer and occasional Kremlin emissary Natalia Veselnitskaya. These emails have been picked through by every media organization in the world by now (why? Because Don Jr. made them public, all three of them), and they have all come up short. But for Harding, these emails finally gives us "proof of collusion." And it took him 249 pages just to get to this point, after spinning every looney-tunes conspiracy theory and crackpot allegation ever aired against Donald Trump.

I call this the wouda-couda shouda school of pseudo-journalism, a crock pot spiced with insinuation and allusion. At one point, Harding even wants us to believe that Donald Trump's first wife, Ivana Zelnichova might have been a Czech spy! [p219]. As someone who has spent the past thirty-five years as a war correspondent and investigative journalist, I find it a bit disappointing to think that this is the best the Left has to offer. A more shoddy piece of work I have rarely seen.

Dawna Donaldson on November 27, 2017
DNC CORRUPTION and GASLIGHTING with the Steele dossier being bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton herself. The knowledge that Hillary's emails were not stolen by Russian hackers but by DNCs failure to secure their systems and not click on phishing emails.

This seems like yet another attempt to divert blame from the guilty. Maybe Imran Awan should be asked, I bet he and his family have some interesting stories to tell about what was really happening at the DNC. This book is laughable, at best. None of the speculation within has been verified and has overall been disproven.

Beverly Smith on November 16, 2017
Confusing

I am perplexed that Harding's account doesn't appear to coincide with Steele's under-oath court testimony. Was he lying to the courts or to this author? Can this book be used against Steele in the various libel lawsuits he is defending?

[Dec 28, 2017] Luke Harding is not a complete lunatic. He is just an intelligence asset who is paid to propagate all this nonsense

The book contains nothing but conjecture and shaky circumstantial evidence built upon a "dossier" filled with verifiable lies from an operative that was hired by the Clintons
I think many British "journalists" – Tisdall and Harding being prime examples thereof – primarily work for the British not-so-secret secret service, that they were recruited at university and were slotted into journalist employment. But at the same time he is so pathetic that this would be embarrassment for MI6 to cooperate with such bottom feeders.
Notable quotes:
"... Luke is just a fucking story teller, and thats it! Making money off of a book, in the middle of mass hysteria and group think! Great business move. I think ill write a book and call it "Got Him, Donald Trump will Eventually Go Down"! ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.youtube.com
Greg McKenzie , 4 days ago

The Problem With Espionage The purpose of espionage is to keep your opponent at a disadvantage by cultivating an alternate reality in their mind that is different from the facts. Whatever the government or agency they work for an agent wants to distort your impressions of them and their own personal capabilities. All agents want you to believe that they don't have the capabilities, contacts, or powers that they actually do posses. By the same token secret agents want you to believe that they DO have capabilities, contacts, or powers that they, in fact, do NOT have. When deception is such an integral part of the game you are playing it makes sense to assume that you know less than you think you do. That's what actual journalism is about -- particularly when dealing with spies and espionage. In this video Aaron Mate' is acting like a real journalist. Luke Harding is not. "Real News" is getting the story right. Thank you! We need more real journalism.

Zorro in Hell , 4 days ago

Luke is just a fucking story teller, and thats it! Making money off of a book, in the middle of mass hysteria and group think! Great business move. I think ill write a book and call it "Got Him, Donald Trump will Eventually Go Down"!

jones1351 , 4 days ago

Imho, this guy's full of shit. Not quite ready for a 'Reynolds Wrap' hat, but seeing smoke where there's mist. Takes me back to when there were definitely WMD's in Iraq. To TRN's credit, they did give him a hearing. Which is more than the MSM gives to say, Chomsky or Hedges.

Bryan Wallace , 1 day ago (edited)

He speaks Russian and has lived in Russia -- so I guess that settles it. LOL Maybe somebody ought to ask Sarah Palin about it, since you can actually see Russia from parts of Alaska. And the French intelligence report is inconclusive but if you get more context from reading his book, you will see that it may be inconclusive but is actually conclusive. (It's complicated.) And of course, he's lived in Berlin and he knows people there, so that proves the German elections were hacked too. And only the most hidebound skeptic could fail to see the smiley face connection. If you read his book you'll find out all this great context and facts that prove the Russians did it. It's too bad he couldn't provide any of that for us in this interview. (This whole thing has a sort of dog-ate-my-homework feel to it.)

bboucharde , 4 days ago

Luke, Now you should investigate the collusion between Russia and the Clinton Foundation---and the direct transfer of Russian funds to Bill Clinton.

Jared Greathouse , 4 days ago

The main question NOBODY'S been able to answer me is that "What policies has Trump enacted, political, economic, military or otherwise, that benefits the interests of the Russian state?" As far as I can tell, Trump is either indifferent to the interests of the state of Russia, or is hostile, directly or indirectly, to them.

dylan , 3 days ago

"I'm a storyteller."

Tochukwu Azubike , 4 days ago (edited)

I tried really hard to follow this story as credible without prejudice and it was just a bunch of babble without any evidence whatsoever.. this is just a re-print and re-title of the Steel dossier updated with MSNBC and CNN reportage

Consuelo Concepcion , 4 days ago

This entire collusion scheme is occurring because the Democrats can't admit that Hillary ran a horrible campaign and she's a murderer and a war criminal. I'm glad Mate is putting a fire under Harding's arse and trying to make him accountable for these specious speculations. I'm not a fan of either Putin or Trump, but this whole "scandal" has been little more than a massive distraction. I've speculated that the entire election was a CIA psychological operation to influence foreign policy to appease certain elements of the Deep State.

Raymoan Ford , 4 days ago

Aaron Mate should have read the book before interviewing the author about the book. LOL.

Dan Howard , 4 days ago

Great interview! Harding was getting uncomfortable.

HongPong , 1 day ago

this interview is a good example of how TheRealNews is careful at what they cover -- and how far a British accent can help to inflate fuzzy claims!

Animal Farm , 4 days ago (edited)

I dislike Trump as much as the next man but when the Guardian publishes this BS it will only bolster Trump when the lies dissolve over time and the facts eventually come out. Sadly you might have never heard of Dr Udo Ulfkotte and his exposure that the CIA has an army of journalists on its payroll, especially in Europe. So why are you not questioning the integrity of this individual in more detail. These are the type of CIA and MI6 stooges that Tony Blair used to promote the illegal war against Iraq. When this CIA stooge says, 08:25 "I think that Russia played a role in last year's election is a matter of fact. This is only what US intelligence agencies believe" he must be assuming the majority of the US population are just ignorant fools. The US Intelligence agencies also believed Iraq had WMDs and the British Intelligence believed Saddam was sourcing nuclear material from Africa. This deceitful idiot Harding still pushes the idea the MI6 published Trump-Putin Dossier when it has been shown it was paid for by the DNC. So would you believe any intelligence agency whose motive is a push for war? And the best way to achieve this goal and have the misinformed population back the corrupted corporate government would be to promote this BS from this sleazy CIA puppet. If you get a chance, have a look at some other YouTube videos of the BS this CIA journalist produces: "The KGB left a sex manual after breaking into my home" or "Putin is Building an Empire" or the ever popular "Putin May Secretly Be One Of The World's Richest Men". Then may I suggest you look at any story on Russia by the truth-tellers, the whistleblowers that have actually been prosecuted for telling the truth in this fascist system: William Binney, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou, or Ray McGovern. So there will always be some imbeciles that believe this fabrication just as there were some that believed the New York Times and the Washington Post about the Bush-Blair Iraq War rhetoric when the oligarchs' real intentions were so clearly stated by General Wesley Clark in his admission of "7 countries in 5 years". I am interested to know if TRN approached Harding or Harding was offered up to TRN as a CIA stooge to spew their propaganda. It is sad to see the Guardian employ such a hack; sure they are now a mouthpiece for the Empire but they have done some good work over the years. It is clear that Harding writes to influence the apathetic and the stupid; he conflates innuendo and supposition with fact in his attempt to distort perception and for the imbecile with no intellectual honesty; this is very effective. I find it frustrating that TRN attempts to expose this garbage when the oligarchs' MSM would lap it up. You would never hear the BBC or Maddow questioning this MI6-CIA stooge like Aaron Maté did. Aaron has done a competent job; not an effective job like one would expect from Paul Jay at questioning this farce but sadly, this is the best TRN has to offer. There will always be a number of scared and pathetic individuals within the population that will always be incapable of differentiating between fact and fantasy or between truth and lies. These are the Useful Idiots of Empire and they have been used to justify and instigate Imperial aggression since the beginning of time.

Camcolito , 2 days ago

My God this guest is full of it.

J Scott Bryant , 1 day ago

What a joke-- rambling, deflecting, with no evidence presented in almost 20 minutes!

Pete Smith , 3 days ago

Host - So basically your proof of collusion = Putin is bad? Book author - No...but...yes...but...no...but...(logs off in a strop)

Pete Smith , 3 days ago

Host - So basically your proof of collusion = Putin is bad? Book author - No...but...yes...but...no...but...(logs off in a strop)

John Snow , 19 hours ago

Harding is an ordinary opportunist, useful idiot and evil man.

M.K. Styllinski , 17 hours ago (edited)

Maté wiped the floor with Harding. It's also interesting that Harding appeared to confuse Russian espionage with what is essentially Mossad-driven sexpionage when he mentioned the "swallows." He seems woefully ill-informed when it comes to dual nationality, Russian-Jewish mafia ties with Israel and Anglo-American foreign policy. This is also why Trump has been encircled with Russian corporate interests to a certain degree - they are connected to Russian-Israeli underworld objectives. Hence, the real conspiracy here is via Israeli intelligence working through its traditional syanim in both Russia and the United States.

Klub Svetnikov , 4 days ago

This lunatic Harding is trying to sell USA and CIA as pillars of truth, democracy and integrity, playing positive role in international affairs. How stupid and sold can a writer get?!

Jon Stephen , 3 days ago

Good job Aaron! Luke Harding is bathing in the kool aid.

Michael , 2 days ago

Can you imagine if the so-called journalists on MSM interviewed like Aaron. Think corporate MSNBC here, Chris Hayes, and Rachel Maddow.

Paul Jackson , 4 days ago

Good work again Aaron. Luke Harding and Marcy Wheeler would be such a cute couple, maybe populating the West with a new race of sycophants.

minkusmaz , 3 days ago

I love how this guy keeps harping the point that Mate should have read his entire book. This is so sad to watch, our media should be as critical as this, and this shows how far they are from that.

Ahmed Mansour , 2 days ago

Aaron was enjoying this a bit too much 😂😂👌🏽👌🏽. Great work

John Johnson , 1 day ago

Interviewer: "Your book is called Collusion. What evidence do you present for an act of collusion?" Author: "Well, you see, Russians are bad and they do bad things, and you have to see a pattern of bad things, and Trump is bad, so <waves hands> you know, context." Interviewer: "I didn't hear any actual evidence there" Author: "Did you read my book? Because I say stuff in there that suggests that my title is true. Also, go to Russia and ask Russians, because you can trust them about what they have to say about the US election. Don't listen to me, listen to them." At this point I'm wondering if the author read his own book...

Aaron Childers , 1 day ago

That guy had become unhinged by the end of the interview. This is the same behavior I've seen from Russia-gaters when every talking point they bring up gets immediately debunked. I'm surprised he didn't start ranting xenophobic nonsense about how the interviewer was also a Russian agent. I've seen this conversation play out this way so many times over the past year that the fact we're still talking about this is asinine.

scuddymud2 , 4 days ago

This is Journalism. You need to answer the questions with hard evidence, facts, links and ties. Names, Dates, Times these have to add up. Donate to The Real News!!

M Rede , 1 day ago

Brave Luke "kind of" Harding.

Charles Robertson , 4 days ago

Seems Luke wasn't expecting a grilling from an outlet like the real news. He's probably not used to a left-leaning American news outlet that tolerates dissenting opinions on the Russia narrative. A sad reflection on what the atmosphere must be like at the Guardian. Thanks again Aaron.

fearhungerpride , 4 days ago (edited)

This is a great exchange between a believer of Russiagate and a sceptic. Both guys did a great job pushing their arguments. Shame you don't see this on the msm. They're too busy pushing their editorial lines instead of being challenged.

Chill Bill , 4 days ago

Impressive dissection of this guy's factless assertions and parroted MSM hollow-headedness, Aaron.

David Ramsay Steele , 4 days ago

"Collusion" is to the left what birtherism was to the right.

Nick Mando , 4 days ago

What is easier? Russia pulling off collusion OR Russia convincing idiots that they pulled off collusion. I think that both have the same effect on delegitimizing our electoral process, one is just a lot easier.

Nick Mando , 4 days ago

ALSO if the kgb is so good and so well trained at this then why is it so obvious? The perfect crime is one that your enemy thinks you committed yet has no proof of, because spoiler, you didn't commit it.

Loyd Frontham , 4 days ago

Thank you, Aaron, for being one of the few reasonable voices in news today.

ThaddeusCorn , 4 days ago

Great job. Good guest and the interviewer didn't just let the guest go unquestioned.

Ramiiam , 4 days ago

Aaron Mate is your best journalist, among the new TRN crowd. You could do with more of him, less of people like the Noors.

Invisible Man , 18 hours ago

I loved Real News for years...but lately ur guys content exposing the blind Russiaphobia has been award winning caliber.

ZantherY , 4 days ago (edited)

Thank you Aaron for being a JOURNALIST unlike the guy trying to well a book, why not every body ids entitle to profit from a nation which from here seem to be populated by MORONS! The Guardian lost its way back in 2001 by toeing the official White House Line, it asked very little questions, it was very thick on speculation (a bit like this moron)!

Anthony George , 4 days ago

A "story-teller". Yep.

szymborska , 2 days ago

Aaron 1 - Other Guy - 0

Jonathan Mintram , 4 days ago

Well done Aaron. Your focus on evidence and proof was perfect. That guy makes me feel embarrassed to be British.

Busterpeek21 , 2 days ago

One of the best interviews I've seen in awhile! I put it up there with Jimmy Dore's recent interview with Jill Stein.

Doginu , 4 days ago

It sounds like your Butt hurt about getting thrown out of Russia..This guy is a Repeater, not a Reporter!

Karl Malone , 3 days ago

Bravo Aaron

craig robb , 4 days ago

nice job aaron, the dude was about5 seconds away from calling you a puppet of putin lol

Jen V , 1 day ago

This "author" or hack journalist is absolutely ignorant. Clearly he hates Russia and Puti. And is just fine to create lies and stories. This was a great interview by Aaron! Excellent job asking valid, intelligent questions and holding his feet (and fables) to the fire. People creating and spreading this type of propaganda should all be held to the standards Aaron just held this doofus to! When asked real questions, for proof of their statements of fact and confronted with opposing information, you just get stuttering and the same old line of Putin is bad so therefore my lies must be true! No proof yet people r still writing books and profiting from spreading a very dangerous type of propaganda!

wleao13 , 4 days ago

Luke 'alex jones' Harding what joke. he claim be a reporter

oldscorpion13 , 3 days ago

This is hilarious. Everytime TRN interviews anyone about the Russian case, they - the interviewee - ends up being flustered, frustrated. I am waiting for that obscenities laden outburst one of these interviews

TheSpiritOfTheTimes , 4 days ago

Very good Aaron! Finally someone's called out the fabulilt Harding, arguably the worst Anglophone reporter from Russia, and there's stiff competition.

The Solo Activist , 4 days ago

Refreshing!

truthcrusades , 4 days ago

I'm getting fed up with this shit. Trump just sent lethal weapons to Ukraine. This guy and his administration have done nothing but escalate tensions with Russia since he took office. Sanctions, banning RT, Syria strike, buzzing Russian jets, the latest Ukraine BS, that Obama refused to do because it would escalate tensions. I wish this guy was Putin's puppet, but he is more likely to give us a nuclear exchange with Russia.

Farero Lobos , 9 hours ago

10:29 Please, I beg you, Luke the fluke, decide if you are a journalist or a story teller.

Angel Tibbs , 1 day ago

"Saddam has WMDs!" - same agencies.

Doginu , 4 days ago

It was the USSR until 1991, then the US Oligarchs pillages the New formed Russia.I don't even think that Psychics would have fathomed Trump ever running for President 35+ years later... Idiot....

Ian Nixon , 3 days ago

Trump is crocked in my opinion, but who cares about my opinion--NO ONE. So why don't we just wait for the evidence to come forward after the investigation. If he is guilty of something then we will know. Clearly Mueller and his team is NOT going to put evidence out in the public if indeed they do have something at this time. So everyone is just speculating, BUT that does not mean the investigation should be over because SOME people feel there is nothing there. That just does not make sense to me. Let the investigation conclude just like they wanted it to conclude when Bill Clinton. By the way, he should read the book (not skim it) and then get quotes to ask. The author is right to call out the interviewer for not reading his book, but wants to talk about---the BOOK! Really?

Other Voices, Other Choices , 4 days ago

Just what is the proof that Trump is Putin's puppet? Is it the NATO troops moving ever eastward in Europe, holding war games on Russia's borders? Is it the extra billions earmarked for nuclear war preparations? Or perhaps the US troops and bases illegally placed in Russia's ally Syria? One has to be an idiot to believe this Russiagate nonsense.

Trevor R.N. , 2 days ago (edited)

Luke Harding is so full of shite, I'm surprised it's not oozing out of his pores. He says nothing new in this interview he just rehashes the narrative. Intentionality? Luke is obviously not used to being questioned on his storytelling.

Koot Orand , 4 days ago

This fella seems to be more interested in advertising his book than answering the questions. These Guardian article writers may as well write for Daily Express or The Sun or any other gutter press

RichardTheThird , 2 days ago

I wonder if Luke Harding thought that doing this interview would sell a few copies of his book. If so, he will be disappointed - he doesn't seem to be very knowledgeable, to say the least.

Luther Rhein , 3 days ago

this guy is pissed of with Putin, and thinks he knows everything just because he is a rich boy from Oxbridge elite, yet this wanker has not a single fact supported with solid evidence. That sums up the state of liberal fascists. Oh God!

Pete D. , 4 days ago (edited)

Harding never voiced any proof or real evidence of collusion. Speculation, speculation, speculation and inference. I'm so tired of this. And yes, Putin's not a nice guy.

zwergie256 , 20 hours ago

Omg, how embarrassing. ;))

Josh Lockie , 2 days ago

This guy is deep state and super bad at it lol

j bloggs , 17 hours ago

Great interview. Shows up Harding for what he is, an establishment shill.

GreySide , 23 hours ago (edited)

The guy said go to Russia, meet Navalny (a man with less than 1% support)..lol. go to any country on earth and meet the opposition and see if they will have anything positive to say about the running government.. they are opposition for a reason... smh

EveyMash , 4 days ago

Luke Harding is a conspiracy theorist.

bookashkin , 3 days ago (edited)

They say where there's smoke, there's fire. Sometimes there's fire without smoke. Like Luke Harding's pants.

Raph Tjoeb , 2 days ago

Jesus christ, did this Guardian guy take a fall flat on his face. Reality hit you 'ol fella.

shamanahaboolist , 4 days ago

Gerrymandering and the "Democrats" election fraud against Sanders was the cause of Trump's victory more than anything else.

Julius Galacki , 1 day ago

I heard a really, disappointing softball interview on KCRW (NPR affiliate in LA) with this same author where he was presenting correlations as causation and making the same broad generalizations with nary a challenge from Warren Olney (who could be an excellent interviewer) , but rather exclamations of approval. Aaron Mate on the other hand does a fabulous job of showing the Emperor has no clothes. So, big big kudos to him for leaving this fraud in a stumbling, stuttering pout of ineffective arguments. This author is at best making a buck jumping on the Russian hysteria bandwagon, and at worst is part of a concerted propaganda effort by those who would benefit from a new Cold War. One can oppose Trump for not only his vulgarity but more importantly he does, policy-wise. Unfortunately, many of those policies are the same or just a bit more radical than many of the politicians whose style is less overly vulgar and divisive.

Andrew Zibuck , 7 hours ago

At the end Harding implies that definitive proof of collusion would be Trump and Putin in a sauna. That would actually only be proof both men like a good steam.

kerpital , 1 day ago

If you remove "kind of" "sort of" "I think that" "I mean" "Uh" from that man's vocabulary, there's nothing left.

frosty buckets , 4 days ago

Russia is a paper tiger .. Let's focus on deescalation and saving humanity from over consumption and climate change .. Russia will follow.

War Dynamics , 12 hours ago

Aaron Mate not having any of this guys BS. Great interview.

bookashkin , 3 days ago

Luke: There are only two honorable ways to respond to the charge of lack of proof for your bold claims. 1. Point to proof 2. Admit there is no proof. Only a pathetic weasel with zero intellectual integrity would take another course. After this interview I don't even believe you know any Russian beyond "can I have the check please" Oh, and Hillary Clinton is a deranged mad woman. Who else would laugh like a hyena about being accessory to Qaddafi's gruesome murder?

Michael Maxfield , 4 days ago

I think Mr. Harding completely missed Sergey Nalobin's tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.

Hollywood Art Chick , 1 day ago

Mate' is nobody's fool. This is what an interview should be, not a beaming love-fest between "journalist" and guest. It's wonderful to see a strong journalist who's informed and not rubber-stamping BS to crawl up the ass of someone with connections. You go, Aaron!!! Much respect to RT.

deliciousmorton , 16 hours ago

Luke Harding is all over the place.

Peace and Love , 4 days ago

Aaron. Probably the best journalistic interview that I have ever seen. Anyone watching this will realise this collusion stuff is nonsense. And yes, i despise Trump and Putin's corruption.

adammontana9 , 16 hours ago

"The people who promote the "Russian influence" nonsense are political operatives or hacks. Take for example Luke Harding of the Guardian who just published a book titled Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. He was taken apart in a Real News interview (vid) about the book. The interviewer pointed out that there is absolutely no evidence in the book to support its claims. When asked for any proof for his assertion Harding defensively says that he is just "storytelling" - in other words: its fiction. Harding earlier wrote a book about Edward Snowden which was a similar sham. Julian Assange called it "a hack job in the purest sense of the term". Harding is also known as plagiarizer. When he worked in Moscow he copied stories and passages from the now defunct Exile, run by Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames. The Guardian had to publish an apology." https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/27/from-snowden-russia-gate-cia-and-media.html

Simon and Gar Farkell , 1 day ago (edited)

This Real News host could teach "mainstream media" how to ask hard questions.

mrtriffid , 1 day ago

Thank you, Aaron, for convincingly exposing a shill for the Imperialist agenda and committed cheerleader for the "deep state." Harding could do nothing more, in the face of demands for evidence, than splutter endlessly on irrelevancies and assertions that the Russians don't like us (gee, I wonder why not?!?!?). Excellent job Aaron: you are a credit to true journalism.

ParrhesiaJoe , 1 day ago

Fantastic interview. All interviews should be like this :)

leboulenoire , 1 day ago

Great to see a REAL journalist make an absolute FOOL of this story teller. Wonder why you don't see this sort of debate on the corporate media.

Gabriel Olsen , 4 hours ago

This is the best video on the Russiagate conspiracy theory I have seen all year. I wish people would remember that there is equal evidence that the US kills journalists; when you hear people say that about other countries they're clearly propagandists.

Bim Star , 1 day ago

Nailed it.

Punk Rock Kick , 3 days ago

That was awkward viewing.....but you can see why people like me in England went from buying the guardian everyday to being dismayed to see the publication have such a skewed agenda on politics that I now avoid clicking on their online articles. Basically the media here is "London thinks this, so you should too"

HorstQueck , 2 days ago

Harding is a stumbling joker, but he's right when he says that he is a storyteller..

Kathy Smith , 1 day ago

Your sign off with a plug for the propagandist book, despite his abrupt fleeing of your interview, was very civilised. Great job, I enjoyed the squirm and deflecting done by Luke. I think he was well grilled by the time he left.

Ghassan Karwchan , 16 hours ago

OMG. He totally trashed him, with politeness and class

jjbeerj , 1 day ago (edited)

17:09 "Did they do this with Donald Trump? We don't know". Interview over.

Matthew Hamann , 1 day ago

This is one of the best owns I've ever seen. Well done Aaron Mate, I now hold you in high esteem. Chorus of applause on this side of the interwebs.

Paul Shippam , 16 hours ago

Well done for not reading the whole book Aaron. I hope you didn't pay for it either. Great interview.

Avalaon Adulwulf , 20 hours ago

It should be acrime for so called Journalists to be allowed to propagate this abaloute disgraceful nonsense. The guy is talking about 1987 - a single time Trump visited Russia during the 80's. Next time he wsa there was about 5 years ago for miss universe contest. Yet this is evidence or him being a Russian puppet. Total nonsense! No, this is communists realizing Trump is a sledgehammer to their narrative. They are looking at political wilderness across the west if Trump can do what he wants to do so in desperation they attempt to drag out anything they can to keep their bs narrative going even going back almost 30 years...

jerseygrl5 , 15 hours ago

Well, that's one book I won't be adding to my "Need to read" list.

tim measures , 4 days ago

thank Aaron mate this guy is just a fiction writer

Joel Rodriguez , 16 hours ago

Oh please, that is the best that guy had, read my book? The notion that russia influenced voters is absurd.

Auguste Comte , 4 days ago (edited)

Just to be clear: Russia hacked both DNC and Macron emails, and released them, mixed with false information, in a disinformation campaign. The DNC emails became source of conspiracy on facebook. Macron emails were never allowed to be published in any form.

joe564357 , 1 day ago

"Do you have any evidence that the Russian government interfered in the U.S. election or colluded with Trump?" "I can see Russia from my house!!!!"

joe564357 , 1 day ago

"I'm a journalist and a storyteller." Storyteller, yeah. Journalist, no.

his202 class , 4 days ago

When subjected to some skepticism, Harding's assertions collapse into vague "because the intel agencies told us" nonsense. Hats off to Aaron for knocking down the Russia hysteria once again.

Nick Mando , 4 days ago

It is like Project Veritas only on an international level. Disinformation 101. Also the author clearly has a personal vendetta against Russia.

AP CreativesLDN , 4 days ago (edited)

This man is Luke Harding he is owned by the British Conservative Friends of Israel. The biggest lobbyist in Britain. Nice try... Next!

godkingofspace , 4 days ago

Pretty embarrassing interview with this British guy... When he gives that snarky "oh too bad you didnt read the book.." line i really wanted to hear the interveiwer say "Oh its really too bad you didnt think to memorize one fact about the subject your being interveiwed about..."

Chris Ramsbottom Isherwood , 1 day ago

Check Mate!

teronnie richardson , 4 days ago

I see y'all trying to discredit him

Julie Rowan-Zoch , 1 day ago

Great work, Aaron. Thank you.

Mari Ma Cheri , 3 days ago

How Aaron kept a straight face, I don't know. He looked like he was going to laugh a time or two because of the absurdity of this Luke guy.

Drago Varsas , 1 day ago

What bollocks. The guardian has become less than toilet paper lately anyway.

Libby Arndt , 6 hours ago

Now he leans on whether Aaron has read the whole book or not. I know I won't read it, as the man as not said a convincing word in the entire interview.

izamugginzweebopalaba , 14 hours ago (edited)

Russiagate is a conspiracy theory. Let's be frank. It presupposes it's conclusion and finds circumstantial and hearsay evidence to support it. "Collusion-rejectionist" Mate points this out time and time again (not only to this guy) and this guy says 'go talk to people; the russians do things this way; everybody knows; you are a fringe character for not agreeing' - it just doesn't hold water. No doubt Trump has shady deals with Russians among others. The idea that such a buffoon been cultivated since the mid-80s by the KGB as a Manchurian Candidate wouldn't make for a plausible pop spy thriller plot - maybe a good satire of one, however.

lapsus5 , 1 day ago

I hope this fucker's factless conspiracy theory stops people from buying his shitty book.

crushsatan , 4 days ago

sounds like this guy just wrote his book off of watching the news.

maskedavenger777 , 4 days ago (edited)

Oh as if we don't have kleptocracy here in the States. And the assassination of Seth Richards is no where comparable to Putin's hits?

TheOldGods , 1 day ago

Omg this guy is unreal! Good job Aaron and thank you Real News for exposing frauds like this poophead

Se Lu , 4 days ago

Isn't it the authors job to sell his book rather than demand that the interviewer must have read it from cover to cover to question him?

Jen V , 1 day ago

OMG is Purim a former KGB agent? I had no clue😂😂 why did Putin quit the KGB? I bet he won't address that or tell the truth there, right?

Hello, Jerk! , 1 day ago

"Have you heard of Estonia?"

sinisa majetic , 4 days ago

Omg this was fun. Btw, we can all agree that Pyutin made Luke to wrote that idiotic book just to toss a doubt how he did not collude with Tryump, because there's no limit of his cunningness.

danmcc22 , 3 days ago

Luke's stories, just like the whole collusion theme, is a nothing burger left out of the fridge too long. So now it stinks and needs to be thrown in the garbage where it belongs.

allgoo19 , 3 days ago

He probably published the book half cooked just for the best timing of the sale. Maybe they need a better guests? This doesn't prove anything that Trump is clear of the allegation.. Far from it. Probe will continue.

Noosejunkie , 4 days ago

Crappiest interview ever. You don't read the book and then you spout your pre-conceived notions of the its subject matter. Cherry on top, with a pro-Trump bias.

nicolas grey , 4 days ago

He obviously didn't bother to read the book , why bother to interview the guy ? They are talking past each other , if he had read the book they could have had a descent debate . This is as bad a Fox News segment . Terrible .

Geoff Whyte , 3 days ago

Absolutely nothing in 28 mins to justify writing a book with evidently a faceless title.

red fury91 , 4 days ago

This clown only response is to stammer and stutter until the regurgitated corporate propaganda eventually spews out of his mouth with very very little confidence lol

Farero Lobos , 8 hours ago (edited)

21:11 Deripaska sits at the right hand of Putin?! Please, I beg you pardon.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48Kk7kobMQY

G. , 13 hours ago (edited)

This conspiracist has not listened to Putin speak. If he had, he would not be painting such a one-dimensional, comic book character of him. Can we please move on from such naively simplistic analyses of global power structures? Any leader unable to manage Intelligence is at the mercy of a Deep State -- as we have learned time and again in the US. Before cheerleading for World War, start by watching some of the hours and hours of footage showing Putin engaging deeply with citizens and world leaders. Try critiquing that. Maybe learn some history.

jacqueline thomson , 1 day ago

In watching the video interview it is obvious this 'Journalist' has his own Personal Agenda regarding Putin and wants to get Putin any which way he can even if it means lying to the America People. He is no true journalist. Great Interviewer!

ano nymous , 3 days ago

Great interview. The stories this guy keeps making up because of lack of evidence is jaw-dropping.

freespeech_zone , 4 days ago (edited)

The more I hear "experts" push this stupid Russia-phobic conspiracy theory the less I believe it...This is why I like the Real news and you're worth supporting. You haven't fallen for the mainstream narrative... There are many legitimise things to criticise Trump on. The Trump-Russia conspiracy theory is NOT one of them.

Patricia Leary , 4 days ago (edited)

Opposition Research on oligarch Hillary and Don Jr goes to find out what they've got. That's it? We already know that the DNC emails were an inside job and subsequent DNC coverup to blame Russia. We KNOW that (see VIPs report on consortium.) Stop blaming Russia! Luke Harding is a delusional red-baiting Russophobe. Were I the Guardian, I would sack him! He's an embarrassment! Don't buy his book!

Andi Amador , 4 days ago

Hillary's rush to threaten military action toward Russia over leaked/hacked DNC e-mails, which simply exposed some of their corruption during the Democratic primary process, likely did more to further harm her chances in the general election than any memes or any efforts by anybody else. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz_dZ2SlPgw

Yuri muckraker , 4 days ago

aaron mate! thank you for putting this Guardian hack into account! brilliant stuff! once more the Real News is exceeding my expectations, this was superb journalism and holding the media gatekeepers an extension of the establishment into account.

No Way , 4 days ago

Luke kinda had his mind made up prior to setting up this interview. Russian collusion? IDK, but let's just see what turns up. Mueller's already indicted some people. The issue with the Russia investigation is the excitement over it on both sides. Everyone needs to just lay back and let it happen regardless of how you feel. Close your eyes and think of England, and maybe something comes out of it. I would rather we were investigating how we got into Iraq and the abuses that happened after we invaded, but no one should be opposed to an investigation where people have already been indicted. Media pushing the war with Russia narrative are being silly, but the same with media saying we shouldn't investigate anything about this. ON the left we also shouldn't expect too much to come from this. Great if we can use this investigation to get Trump out of office for something; if not, useful political theater if the Dems would just recognize the importance of that.

HighFieldLux , 2 days ago

Aaron is hot!

Peter Lermann , 4 days ago

How fair to give him a platform. Will you invite Alex Jones next? How about some flat earthers? ahh right, it's only ok when it's mainstream conspiracy theory, sorry, totally forgot

DootDoot , 4 days ago (edited)

Aaron challenges Russia assertion : Guy goes onto tell some story how he lived there and he just knows "Believe him" Because he lived in Russia for 4 years... ??????????? Goes to assert further... Aaron responds.. "proof" Response to that "Well the history from the 1970's.... " PROOOOOF?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Look. I am fine with the fact that Russia might have interfered with the election. JUST GIVE ME SOME FUCKING PROOF. Until then? Fuck off... There are real problems to deal with.

Robert , 4 days ago

LOL I loved Mate's performance in this interview. He totally flipped the script on this crackpot realist. He felt like a dissenting person feels on MSM, if they ever bother to have one on.

Jode Ville , 4 days ago

The collusion is with Israel.

John Mastroligulano , 1 day ago (edited)

Telling how this "person" being interviewed spouts of a word like empirical when it comes to an accusation with no supporting evidence so to him if you are accused of something that in itself is empirical evidence?=horse shit propagandist no offense to horses. He first won't accept there is no proof but when asked what the proof is he starts talking about his personal feelings as if they are proof(superiority complex).

ozwhistles , 4 days ago (edited)

So? The "real" news is now doing book-promos? Shame on you - this is unmitigated garbage. (edit: after watching the whole article, I'm still not satisfied. The problem with a public "hatchet-job" is you give oxygen to your "victim" and get seen with a hatchet in your hand. That does not look good. And in your victim's dying breaths, he will plant a curse on you via those who saw you with the hatchet. Sun Tzu warns us to not give your enemy no-way-out .. your forces are no match to those fighting for their very lives. It is abundantly clear from the actual evidence that the 2016 election was willfully lost by Hillary Clinton, not won by Trump. This is a result of Clinton being high in the cluster-B spectrum -she gets sexual pleasure from torture and ugly death [Qaddafi] - whereas, Trump is lower on the spectrum: not a sociopath/psychopath, but clearly a narcissist bordering on malignant. And I pause to add that probably ALL global leaders are on the cluster-B spectrum of personality disorder. The thing you have to know about cluster-B in this context, is that those within the cluster-B are outside of normal social influence, such as "honey-traps" etc, because they lack the compassion link to empathy - i.e. they do not respond to the tools which work on healthy humans and tend to only respond to their own "world-view" in which the entire universe is composed of themselves. Next: I tried to influence the US election by donating to Sanders - so who is investigating the Australian "collusion" .. gimme a break - we all wanted Sanders. Clinton gave us the choice of a sociopath against a narcissist - and we chose the narcissist. And there he is doing the work he was made to do - to destroy the entire world-order so we can, at least, start over. With Clinton - we all knew - it was lights-out for all of us. At least with trump, the game is still in play. The lesser of evils. SO stop giving gas to the commercial-distractionists - they are remnants of the lights-out brigade who are eating, drinking, and being merry, because tomorrow, they intend to die .. the self-condemned. And none of them asked me, or any of the others who would like to see life continue. The whole thing disgusts me - dust your feet and leave the show - the finale is not worth sticking around for.)

MsTree1 , 4 days ago (edited)

PS: NSA is currently monitoring, downloading and repeatedly viewing some of our children for "security reason" ... Youth who are legally earning a living in the US as porn stars on the net in order to eat, get an education pay student loan debt and survive in a nation which gives little F about providing the true security realized via the the provision of privacy, organic food from local heritage seed, pure potable H2O, clean air, access to free Integrated Medicine, free and equal education and a comfortable roof over their heads, NOT based on how much potential they have to move money for the corporatist-elite or the ethnicity of their forefathers. How low will, WE stoop? @TheRealNews Pathetic

Tony Smith , 3 days ago

Not Israeli collusion then?

Mr. Agnew , 4 days ago

That guy wants a war with Russia

Mr. Agnew , 4 days ago

The funny thing is usa/russia tied havent gotten better at all but are even worse than obamas time

Yarrski , 3 days ago

the little liar got HAD

Platewarp , 18 hours ago

Hillary lost because most Americans despise her not because of Russian hackers.

Dan , 4 days ago

Aaron Mate that was absolutely BRILLIANT!!! You picked his bullshit story apart. Another journalist making money on Russiagate. I can't believe I called him a journalist. Bill Binney has already solved the hacking issue....lets move on. Awesome interview. Keep up the great work...I bow to you.

Zedwoman , 11 hours ago

Luke Harding is pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

G shawponee , 1 day ago

I've never heard of the interviewer needing to read the book before interviewing the author? Isn't it the author's "job" to plug his own book and inform the viewers of its contents? It's really obvious that Harding had nothing to counter with- it was awkward to watch as his Russian gate conspiracy fell to shit. Great job Mate!

Ahmad Reza Haj Saeedi , 4 days ago

Good journalism by Aaron. Thanks!

Robin Jagoda , 1 day ago

Ugh. Another opportunistic "journalist" trying to capitalize on Russia panic (PUTIN!). Great interview. You gave him plenty of time and room to make his case, and he just couldn't seem to defend his position.

Aniket Ghosh , 3 days ago

"Look, I'm a storyteller!"

Bryan Hemming , 18 hours ago

The Guardian was once a respectable news outlet. It both saddens and angers me that journalists such as Luke Harding and Shaun Walker, neither of whom seem to have any real grasp on the subjects they cover, are touted by The Guardian as leading experts on Putin and Russia. Almost as embarrassing as anger-making.

Bob Cicisly , 4 days ago

;)). :)) ;)):))

Ian Brown , 1 day ago (edited)

Sadly typical of what the Guardian has become. This reminds me why I can't read it anymore, just too much bullshit and innuendo sold off as fact. Good work, Aaron.

Cygnus X-321 , 3 days ago

Aaron: "Are you inferring that because two Russians used a smiley face that's proof that Manafort's associate was a tool of the Russian government?" 20:23 . HaHaHa!!! I don't miss Louis CK anymore. This is the goddamn funniest shit ever!

Cygnus X-321 , 3 days ago (edited)

Donald Trump just authorized the sale of sophisticated weapons to Ukraine. This ensures that fighting will intensify on Russia's border. We can thank Russia conspiracy theorists like Rachel Maddow, Marcy Wheeler and Luke Harding for providing a media environment that enabled/pushed Trump to move in this direction. Mission accomplished, propagandists! World War 3 in 2018?

fkujakedmyname , 4 days ago (edited)

the only collusion i saw in 2016 was rothschild zionazis, saudi arabia, isis, israhell,Fox msnbc cnn trump, and clinton against bernie sanders and the people

wilson lawson , 3 days ago (edited)

''Kind of, sort of....air quotes...sort of...'' If Trump colluded with anyone it was Netanyahu and other ultra nationalist Zionists inside Washington and Tel Aviv. It certainly is not in the interests of America to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And who is Gerard Kushner batting for? America...or Israel?

wilson lawson , 3 days ago (edited)

I just discovered theRealNews recently and they're certainly not a fake news echo chamber... impressive.

David Hanks , 1 day ago

"Not sure if that was intentional or not ..." hahaha owned

danny j , 4 days ago

This Harding hack is a perfect example of why The Guardian - a once proudly liberal publication - has become another neoliberal propaganda rag. He also wrote articles cheering ISIL in Syria, literally comparing them to the Republican Brigade who went to Spain to fight against the Franco Fascists in Spain in the 1930s.

Shan Ri Ha , 4 days ago

This guy is a goose.

Shan Ri Ha , 4 days ago

No, "you don't have to just take a look", this is more BULLSHIT for book sales. No way Russia colluded in the election, no hacking either. This Russia story was thought up by Podesta back in 2015. Peace

hoodiewoman louisiana , 4 days ago

He's playing "5 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon." So profound.

hoodiewoman louisiana , 4 days ago

"I'm a writer & I once lived in Russia so I have to be right!" AND he says, "I'm a storyteller." Well, that's the problem. Storytelling is also a synonym for lying.

Neil Mason , 4 days ago

This guy lives in a fairy tale land! STFU!

Philip Hall , 1 hour ago

Good job

Peter Smith , 1 hour ago

Aaron, Brilliant journalism. Well done sir that was a masterclass that should be studied in every journalism school across the globe.

lcrooks69 , 1 hour ago

wow. luke harding is a complete and utter moron. never thought a brit could make a british accent synonymous with stupidity.

Alexis Porter , 2 hours ago

That so-called journalist was so obviously bereft of facts and wore his blatant biases proudly. That kind of crap might play well on MSM shows, but doesn't work very well with a well-informed and neutral interviewer. Well done. "Collusion"? Maybe "My Cold War Fantasy World" would have been a better title for his book.

mysterbee06 , 3 hours ago

Excellent interviewer, disappointing interviewee. Harding's red herrings, guilt by association, appeals to "context," and repeated well-poisoning do not constitute *evidence*.

Kniteknite23A , 3 hours ago (edited)

@ 23:27 What is this "essentially a lie, kind of untrue" ? lol and "Now We know that...made... allegedly from kind of His activities..."and how does this schmuck expect to sell any books advertising it like this, unless His target group is 17-24 year old niblits.I almost forgot 30 is the new 20. Keep on talking and eventually Your mouth will come out with stuff. Silly~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NS7Gkv4NNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP0sqRMzkwo bonus~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJVROcKFnBQ

Abhishek Agarwal , 3 hours ago

It is because of these journalists is why I believe journalism is no longer a professional of finding and presenting the truth. It's more of floating around a narrative to serve the interests of their masters

MISTERASMODEUS , 4 hours ago

Brilliant and adversarial, yet respectful. Difficult combination to defeat.

hoochymama , 5 hours ago

Subscribed. Amazing job by the interviewer.

Angel O , 6 hours ago

Subscribed!

Evan Schulz , 6 hours ago

MI6 not sending their best.

Bob Boldt , 8 hours ago

The disturbing thing about this interview is Luke Harding not only is unable to respond to Aaron's request for evidence but he doesn't even seem to understand that his conclusions are based on surmise and implications gleamed from irrelevant material. I have to assume Harding has had some education in the journalistic rules of evidence, at least enough to land a prestigious job with the Guardian. And yet he is not only unable to submit forensic evidence of collusion between Trump and Putin but he doesn't seem to understand what would be required to actually identify that evidence to make his case. I have to assume the book only relies on inference and innuendo to establish its case: Putin is a bad man who will resort to anything to achieve his ends, hence he is guilty of resorting to any means to influence a Trump victory. This kind of "evidence" only goes to motivation and says nothing about ability or opportunity. (two of the three linchpins of circumstantial evidence. Of course this kind of shoddy thinking is nearly endemic today among not only journalists and pundits, who ought to know better, but also among the general public (most of my friends in particular). This epidemic is so vast and persistent that I am afraid it will only be staunched by a thermonuclear war. "We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." George Orwell

Toni Feldstein Chicago Luxury Real Estate , 10 hours ago

Clearly no compelling, unbiased evidence yet.

DeNeice Kenehan , 10 hours ago

Maybe Aaro Mate can read the rest of the book when he stops laughing.

Nan Bread , 10 hours ago

This guy is Mr Word Salad, Aaron really twists his balls in the best possible way. What a pathetic shill, you can tell this idiot works for the Guardian. "Where is the evidence of collusion?" "Putin is bad." "Yes but where is the evidence?" "Estonia, France, my friends died, Putin is bad." "Where's the evidence?" "Putin is bad." Idiot.

Allan Ewart , 11 hours ago

https://medium.com/@Scifiscreen/presscoin-the-voice-of-sanity-in-a-world-of-chaos-71176010477f

John Barker , 11 hours ago

The interviewee is lost in his fantasy world, and patronizing at that.

Johnny Maudlin , 11 hours ago

It's ironic that Mate presents himself (by virtue of the association implied with Real News) as somehow different from the (again implied) not-so-real news and then pursues a pretty familiar "gotcha" approach to this interview. Mate appears more interested in proving himself correct with his skepticism rather than at all curious about the author's point of view as it applies to his work. This is more of the Same News I think. Or at least the same games that talking heads favour. Mate, in addition, seems very amused with himself. That's hardly productive to anyone interested in learning something about the author or the author's premise.

Stars Die , 13 hours ago

Wow, this guy really doesn't have much. Surprised he wrote a book out of this stuff.

mitrovdan , 13 hours ago

17:58 , BINGO...Maté strikes.

Alex Bakaev , 13 hours ago (edited)

I love how Aaron is making this guy squirm with simple, logical questions. Taking the guest's own advice, he should venture out into the reality world out of his book's bubble. The icing on the cake is when the guest starts (around 8 minute mark) flailing his arms like a monkey in a zoo, to the delight of children observing the animal.

sugarhigh4242 , 14 hours ago

No offense to my Estonian friends, but Harding using them as an example of the broader hacking trend seems bullshitty to me. I don't think any leftists skeptical of the Russiagate narrative would say that Russia doesn't hack, or Russia doesn't attempt to influence foreign elections. But if you're going to say that Russia has the capacity to do it in the USA, showing they did it in France or Germany would be a decent analog, Estonia (formerly occupied by the USSR and in Russia's sphere of geopolitical influence) is not. Am I missing something?

Soft Insubordination , 15 hours ago

I had no idea "rejectionist" was a real term. I'm going to continue to live in a world where it's not a real term.

Charles W R , 16 hours ago

Folks, this is a garbage production, no better than S Bannon or S Miller products. Trash this video.

Charles W R , 16 hours ago

It is NOT about Donald Trump. It is about USA and the foundational principles of our democracy. IF there is even a small chance that the formation of our government is influenced by the forces from a hostile nation, this IS the problem. Go to hell Aaron Mate. Idiot Aaron, go to Russia and meet and the HR activists and see what the country is truly like before you interview, mofo idiot Aaron Mate

Charles W R , 16 hours ago

TRNN and Aaron Mate, this is Alt-Right channel.

adammontana9 , 16 hours ago

Great job Aaron

steven bones , 16 hours ago

bullshit beyound belief.

Ardavon Yazdi , 16 hours ago

Even if Putin directly helped trump get elected using his own personal computer, these ppl are gonna fuck up proving it up tripping all over themselves with adolescent anticipation and opportunism

peterboy sonicat , 17 hours ago

Sounds like the Brits are stirring the pot, bringing the Russian 'axis of evil' back into the mix. Think.. Did we ever have US sovereignty? What really happened back in 1775? Maybe the US is just the military arm of the UK and is still hell bent on achieving global domination after all. And the US has been annexed by them all along. Why else is this Brit demanding that the Russians are still a cold war enemy when Trump obviously has nothing against them? I'm having serious questions as to the strategic alliance and geopolitical relationship we have with Britain because of this guy's views. That being said, there may well have been collusion by the Russians to help Trump get into office. But that alone, still doesn't prove Russia the 'axis of evil' or anything near to being our enemy. It's about global domination. The NWO remember? The Brits/Rothschild banking cartel have been hell bent for it for centuries. Russia? Not so much.

John Kelleher , 17 hours ago

Mr. Harding is definitely having a hard time finding any collusion and he wrote the book on it!? Instead of addressing our unfair, closed and black box elections we waste time on a guy who can't seem to form a coherent sentence!?

Fred Munoz , 18 hours ago (edited)

Although there may have been collusion, Russia did not help Trump win. Hillary's record helped Trump win. After learning of her speech to Wall st., it made it impossible for me to vote for her. How dare she tell them one story and tell us what she thinks we want to hear.

Denis Lee , 18 hours ago

Wow Aaron Mate. Great interview.

Frank , 18 hours ago

great interview Aaron, i also am very skeptical of the whole "Russia did it" meme. great job asking for proof, i didnt hear any either, color me not impressed with the interviewee or his hypothesis,

banjo234 , 19 hours ago

Harding's persona could not be more like Tony Blair if he was trying to do an impersonation. Trust him like you'd trust a rat in your underpants.

Andrew Ahonen , 19 hours ago

The first Cold War was a tragedy. This new one is a Farce.

Pique Dame , 20 hours ago

Manafort was a recommendation of Roger Stone, friend of Trump. Manafort and Stone had companies together since the eighties. Harding doesn't know what he is talking about.

Tellthetruth n/a , 23 hours ago

Wow, a real journalist. MSM would have covered this conspiracy theory as absolute truth. No questions asked, which is why nobody trusts them. Harding has nothing but speculation and an obvious bias. I wonder who paid him to write the book.

Nikolai Szép , 23 hours ago

what a laughable muppet!

nikita novikov , 1 day ago

That's is some grade A interviewing. Never seen an argument so thoroughly dismantled.

Jim James , 1 day ago

This guy (Harding) can't make a point.

DM R , 1 day ago

Ooh this Harding dude was squirming in his shoes. At the end, very sweatie, voice is cracking. It's impressive how he's able to lie for so long but he stayed consistent with his questioning

DM R , 1 day ago

This Harding guy is a silly man. Grow up and get some integrity and speak the truth

damenji , 1 day ago

Harding do you still believe in Santa Claus, show us the evidence you tool!

Kevin Schmidt , 1 day ago

Given Harding's long chain of illogical arguments in this interview, I suspect his four year stint in Russia was heavily influenced by Russian vodka, from which he has yet to recover.

Najat Madry , 1 day ago

proper journalism

texshelters , 1 day ago

That included a lot of criticism of Russia and Putin for a supposed Russian controlled new out let. Again, there is no direct evidence of collusion and no evidence that Russia cost Clinton the election

PJ Authur , 1 day ago

I can see both sides. I want the evidence, but can see strong links...

Syncopator , 1 day ago (edited)

The guy's got nothing. I'd love to see some real proof but this guy is equivocating at every turn. Re: the "France hacks" he says it was "inconclusive" but due to a laundry list of unrelated other examples of Russians possibly doing some nefarious stuff he's willing to accept it as a fact. That is not what I would call "empirical." "Muckraking" would be a better term...

John Keown , 1 day ago

this poor conspiracy author was depthcharged by this artfull and rather demeaning interviewer. it demonstrates the need to be able to back claims unless they are presented as theories. I have not read this book but apparently claims were made as"common knowledge" that could not be supported by "empiracle data". this also points out why no massive claims have been announced by Mueller's team. all conclusions must be backed by solid data. I believe one would be naive to conclude anything from this interview except that claims made in this book are not supported by accepteddata -- yet.

poofendorf , 1 day ago

By "collusion" he means smiley faces.

Lee Lull , 1 day ago

Much like the circular arguments put forth by the pro Hillary anti Stein people. No matter how much you request the EVIDENCE they keep repeating suspicion, someone said, everyone knows....and CANNOT produce any evidence....and do not understand how that type of response is acutely reminiscent of Joe McCarthy waving of the paper with those names...one never gots to see.

BlackTalkRadio , 1 day ago

On the allegation of Russian meddling in the French election, if I remember correctly, it was not Putin who cut a campaign video ad for one of the candidates, I remember correctly, it was Obama who cut a campaign ad for the French Candidate who won.

Kay Donnelly , 1 day ago

He doesn't prove collusion . Lol

lapsus5 , 1 day ago

This was a great interview. Thank you.

guttural truth , 1 day ago (edited)

Aaron, you fucking badass. Really top notch interview, brilliantly done.

R.V. Scheide Jr. , 1 day ago

Should have just said you're a speed reader, Aaron.

R.V. Scheide Jr. , 1 day ago

Is he a journalist or a story teller? Those can be two different things.

R.V. Scheide Jr. , 1 day ago

Nice job Aaron, not caving to the Russophobic Guardian writer.

Terry P , 1 day ago

The reason mainstream media focuses on Russia is because of ratings but it is a huge nothing burger. No proof no real connections and all the "smoking guns" turned out to be cigarette lighters and the lamestream never retracts it or anything just goes on like all is well. Good to see some journalistic integrity. The author was making a leap from "He's a repressive dictator ao he must be guilty" with no evidence at all.

garyweglarz , 1 day ago (edited)

Excellent interview Aaron. Crushed it. Your guest has 28 minutes to make at least one salient point and he is unable to do that. Wow! However, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the next Russiagate shill to consent to an interview with you though Aaron. Just saying! :) :) PS - Oh, darn, I forgot and gave you the secret code of two Emoji smilies! Drats!

Matt Styles , 1 day ago (edited)

*slow clap*

Sear Tactical , 1 day ago (edited)

Luke Harding talks like he presumes all the rest of us just fell off the turnip truck 10 minutes ago. Uh... yeah dude... we DO know the history of the KGB and FSB, and yeah dude, we know about "honey pots" and that KGB and _______________________ (fill in Intel agency of your choice____) did them too... for... oh... lets see... a few centuries anyway. So what are you trying to sell? You constantly keep using past circumstance as "proof" when it is no such thing. You would get thrown out of a court for that... and ANYONE capable of critical thinking knows, all you are selling is "LOGICAL FALLACIES". Hey... I don't dispute that you will surely sell copies of your book to low information Kool Aid drinkers (You going to cite THAT as proof that your book is "true" now as well?)

MarStoryTime , 1 day ago

Of course he just left the conversation at the end. A complete fraud.

AttnJack , 1 day ago

That was painful and hilarious!

Song Mozart , 1 day ago

Is there any empirical evidence of Trump/Putin collusion in this fairy tale? Lol Why does Luke insist we read this without providing real, objective evidence? He expects us to just take his and his "sources'" word for it?

AD T , 1 day ago

Harding is so full of BS... good to see him being massacred. Good job!

mrtriffid , 1 day ago

Re-watching this interview, I'm absolutely astounded by the vacuity and ridiculous attempts on the part of Harding to misdirect the conversation at the same time that he tries to prop up his own credibility. This is literally a primer in the 'art' of Imperialist/careerist 'journalism.'

Nhoj737 , 1 day ago

Why H.R.C. 'lost'? "And it's deadly. Doubtless, Crosscheck delivered Michigan to Trump who supposedly "won" the state by 10,700 votes. The Secretary of State's office proudly told me that they were "very aggressive" in removing listed voters before the 2016 election. Kobach, who created the lists for his fellow GOP officials, tagged a whopping 417,147 in Michigan as potential double voters." http://www.gregpalast.com/trump-picks-al-capone-vote-rigging-investigate-federal-voter-fraud/

Song Mozart , 1 day ago

"Did they (Putin and Russia) do this with Donald Trump? We don't know."

Nhoj737 , 1 day ago

"it's opportunistic it's very often 04:45 pretty low-budget the kind of hacking 04:47 operation to hack the Democratic Party 04:49 was done by two separate groups of kind 04:52 of Kremlin hackers probably not owning 04:54 kind of huge sums of money and and so 04:58 some of it is kind of improvisational 05:00 the most important thing is that you you 05:02 have people with access which in this . . . " Wikileaks hacked the Democratic Party?

Greg Van , 1 day ago

The author who's own research is clearly dubious was chomping at the possibility of the host not reading the book. This man is made of straw.

Sleepy Alligator , 1 day ago

The lengths they go to take attention off of the content of the leaks.

godisgood603 , 1 day ago

Just outed himself, he has absolutely nothing, NADA, what a complete money grabbing douchbag. A TOTAL FAKE

Green Energy , 1 day ago

Luke Harding is a tool

Green Energy , 1 day ago

Oregon's Democrats vote for and support attacks on our civil liberties, love the emergence of censorship in social media and the press, vote for the criminalization of protest, vote for the militarization of police and the unconstitutional massive expansion of the surveillance state. Democrats Hate All Life on Mother Earth. Love torture. Love Killing millions of brown folk overseas. Democrats are steamy piles of Horse Manure. Republicans & Democrats are criminal organizations and are EVIL and war for profit groups; they do the bidding of foreign dictators before they listen to the American People. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

Green Energy , 1 day ago

Hi NRDC; I have made many monetary contributions to your organization. You are evoking the fear of Trump in this year end fund drive. Fighting against Trump is a democratic stance. Democrats cheated Bernie Sanders and gave us Trump; both parties are corrupt and enemies of all life on earth. Your organization is used for politics chiefly. I will find organizations to donate to that are for the people, not war and corruption and not run by selected leaders picked for their political powers and hate of common man and that actually love Mother earth. Politics is 100% lies and that makes you guys liars and cheats just like the democrats. Oregon Green Energy

Paulo Machado , 1 day ago

Hahahahah. One would expect a journalist/writer, who earns a living writing articles, to be a bit more, ahem, articulate. What a fool!

Song Mozart , 1 day ago

Harding, show us the evidence. If you had any real, objective evidence, you would all want to share it. You have shared NOTHING. None of you Russia-gaters share anything other than circumstantial. Nobody who is "skeptical," or who uses logic and critical thinking skills has ever said Russia and Putin weren't shady and oppressive, but that is not the argument.

Song Mozart , 1 day ago

You have to believe in fairy tales. Harding would have earned an F in my class.

Lloyd Succes , 1 day ago

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Glad that Aaron took Luke to task.

Danny White , 1 day ago

Ah- when something you claim to be true is actually inconclusive, it becomes "contextual". Got it.

00Billy , 1 day ago

crushing book sales in 30mins.

Ken Javor , 1 day ago (edited)

Why on Earth isn't Mueller investigating radical democrats for embezzling taxpayer money for the Climate Change hoax? Maybe Mueller needs to be investigated for fraud and collusion with North Korea and Iran.

Natural Theist , 1 day ago

Excellent job of interviewing! Actually asked important questions, unlike the way mainstream media simply parrots propaganda.

John Pagoto , 1 day ago

Nice job of keeping this insane relentlessly endless narrative of Russian's changing the election in any meaningful way. This is McCarthyism the modern day Maddowism. It's all mainstream wants to talk about. Meanwhile in real life: 1) The majority of the population doesn't have $500 in the bank to cover emergencies. 2) The War Machine continues to ramp up to epic levels 3) The USA continues to employ their regime change diplomacy 4) The Life Expediency in the USA is going down. Opiod's largely to blame 5) The USA is not even in the top ten among providing Quality Healthcare 6) The USA is Number ONE in passing on the HIGHEST COST Healthcare I could go, on it's exhausting....

Grant Jarvis , 1 day ago

Breath of fresh air. A journalist actually questions his interviewee.

Raphael Bernard , 2 days ago (edited)

This man is delusional there is no evidence of any collusion why is RealNews interviewing this hack...watch Aaron Mate show this hack up. The Guardian is a right wing rag now don't follow it end any association with them. Aaron Mate well done.

Buddy Lee , 2 days ago

The DNC/Hillary corruption was revealed in the emails and they have successfully distracted the public with a the dangerous fabrication of Russia collusion when the conversation should be about the corruption of the democratic process. There are too many complicit media and politicians so willing to go along with it but thankfully most Americans are awake to the scheme.

Ad year3 , 2 days ago

In order to read the book I would have to buy the book, get it? An author should be able to articulate their main arguments in an interview. The emoticons colluding was disturbing though.

Alien Robot , 2 days ago (edited)

If you ask for actual facts of collusion you are a 'collusion rejectionist'. Hillarious. Harding is a 'collusion conspiracy theorist'. Harding throws in the murder of Litvinenko as if this, in any way, relates to the US election. It doesn't. Yes, Russian, US and Israeli Intelligence kill people regularly for political reasons. Do I need to give Luke Harding a history lesson? The smiley face emoticon issue, which Harding tried to swerve away from, shows the level of journalistic quality Harding delivers. Harding deals in smear, supposition and innuendo to sell books. The misleading cover and title show his journalistic credibility. He actually raised as evidence of collusion, that Trump wasn't rude to Putin in interviews. Is he serious? What a hack writer. As a side note, the CIA wrote the book in interfering in other country's elections and governments. This indignation is a joke. If this is true they finally got some of their own back. See how it feels?

John Smith , 2 days ago (edited)

For the record, this is what these people sound like on Tucker Carlson, too. Tucker had Adam Schiff on and subjected him to real questions rather than the head-nodding interviews Schiff is used to. Needless to say, Schiff hasn't been on Tucker Carlson's show since. Pretty soon they'll start calling people skeptical of the evidence provided thus far "collusion deniers".

John Smith , 2 days ago

Noted right-wing hack Jeremy Scahill has it exactly right. This guy Harding is just an opportunist who knows what the audience wants. And he knows that 99% of the people who cite the book will never read beyond the cover; in fact, he's counting on it. Expect the rest of his little book tour to look like this: CNN, NPR, BBC, The Young Turks, The David Pakman Show (tee hee), Huff Po etc etc

psychanaut , 2 days ago

*You really should have read the book though. You could have seen that coming a mile away. Why give him the out? Read the book before you attempt to trap someone with it. You should still marry me though.

psychanaut , 2 days ago

whoever this Aarons guy is: 1/ you should be my husband 2/wonderful interviewing process

Nimo Ali , 2 days ago

Harding threw all the red herrings he could find! Just because the man has a British accent doesnt make him above scrutiny. Remember Louise Mensch? This was the sum (or scam) of all fears: the Cold War , "repressive regime, "opposition crackdown" ,Soviet KGB, throw in bits of Russian words.This was funny & painful at the same time. I nearly fell off my chair when Aaron said "emoticons", that part was kinda surreal.Talk to my friends! Go to Russia! I lived in Russia! I talked to the opposition! I speak Russian! I thought he was gonna add: my best friends are Russian! My wife is Russian!Niding is right Luke wasnt prepapred at all.Was it me or was Luke perspiring because he was struggling? Why was he throwing air quotes? Thanks Aaron!

Lola Lee , 2 days ago

Brutal interview and painful to watch. I never believed in the Trump/Russia collusion fake narrative. It doesn't exist. It was made up (FBI insurance policy) against Trump.

Terrence Alford , 2 days ago

Great job Aaron to hold this author's feet to the fire and discredit his conclusions of Trump/Russian collusion. I hate Trump and would love to see him kicked out of office, but this Russia-gate conspiracy theory so far has no legs and this author is a posture kid for this nonsense.

David Thompson , 2 days ago (edited)

The author repeatedly returns to his talking points when challenged for evidence to support his assertions. This is how ALL INTERVIEWS SHOULD BE CONDUCTED. And the claim that the interviewer had to read the whole book to rightly ask for evidence to support assertions is utterly ridiculous.

Ae Rein , 2 days ago

Inspiring work Aaron. Luke had to be thinking "Bugger off, asking for facts"-LOL

William Huston , 2 days ago

OMG! GREAT JOB!! by Aaron Maté, holding this guy's feet to the fire.

Vicki Kennedy , 2 days ago

Delusional, he has no evidence just hearsay. Just another Bolshevik

Juan Hdez. Vigueras , 2 days ago

This is a very biased interview. Mueller will tell the last word on Russia meddling Trump campaign. But you can not question the content of a book you had not read in advance as this young man does. I have followed the issue from the beginning in CNN and other media and I have read the book Collusion, which is worth reading, very informative about. So this debate lead me think this "journalist" may be paid by FSB/Putin.

nicolas grey , 2 days ago

I would say if you are going to critique the Christian idea of God it's essential you read the bible if you are going to do it in any meaningful way . I take it you also have not read the book . This is like debate climate denailists, it's the same tatic , they take some data and misrepresent it to prove an ideological point . What I don't understand is why . And that goes to my first point , why even bother debate it at all ? You say he offered no proof , but he was just defending matte attachs , which if you look into it, are not that credible either . If he thought he was going to debunk all the claims made in the book, he should of read it, as he just looks stupid . But if you have not read it either, it's easy to agree with him, as it's not a genuine debate .

Goberto Angela , 2 days ago

Another Libtard bites the dust, grand claims of collusion without the necessary proof. Going all the way back the 80' and 90' to justify hearsay. This libtard should be put in jail for defamation and slander for not have enough proof for those claims.

lxathos , 2 days ago

hehe.........

paganmaestro , 2 days ago

Luke's book is already discounted, being peddled for barely half of its list price. The man is a fraud with an anti-Putin vendetta he's trying to settle.

Act1veSp1n , 2 days ago

Luke uses CIA operation, opposition Navalny as a legitimate source....facepalm.

Bobby Cesspool , 2 days ago

His entire argument is a gish gallop fallacy......... They're throwing dozens of accusations at Trump, all of them individually weak arguments. If thier were actual fire, they wouldn't need all of the smoke & mirrors.

Act1veSp1n , 2 days ago

Russian KGB sent me here :)

Bobby Cesspool , 2 days ago

Well done.

Robert Kettering , 2 days ago

Dem Party media collusion.

roman brandle , 2 days ago

It seems (opinion = fact ) in the UK , just walk around and ask ordinary Russians what they think . The tactical guilt trip as a defensive tool , when you can't answer question . This is another propagandist colluding with we're not sure who? , believe me anyway , how dare you not believe me .

sheezle3 , 3 days ago

Good job, Aaron, thanks

S.E.L. 25 , 3 days ago (edited)

Wow!!! That's the best news interview I saw in ages... calmly, respectfully but surely exposing that joke of a journalist for what he is: a fraud. Tnx Aaron!!! Keep on truckin'...

madrussian1000 , 3 days ago

Great job,Aaron! What a sleazeball this Luke character is, jee wiz!

Andre De Angelis , 3 days ago

How did this clown manage to actually write a whole book based on zero evidence?

Kokoro Wish , 3 days ago (edited)

Russia seem to have gotten almost nothing out of this Presidency. If there was something transactional going on then Russian intelligence if far more incompetent than people are being led to believe.

Joanne Leon , 3 days ago

This is how every Russiagate interview should be conducted! Bravo.

Clint Warren , 3 days ago

This is painful to watch.

Joe shawn , 3 days ago

His answer to the very first Question explains everything, is the collusion ? we have to go way back to 1987. (I thought this was during the campaign) (IGNORE THE NOISE IN THE MEDIA) if you look at it, clinton payed many millions from KGB officers to get info on trump during the campaign.

Dave Klebt , 3 days ago

or it could just be a business trip to attract a successful real estate developer to invest in their country.

DanEMO592 , 3 days ago

This needs way more views. This is amazing

dylan , 3 days ago (edited)

Aaron did such a stellar job reigning this man's charade in 10:55

Thomastine , 3 days ago

"Uh, yes yes, I understand that, but let me dither on a bit more, offering non-evidence and avoiding your questions."

g00nther , 3 days ago

What a complete fraud this guy is. This is the book version of the "Steele Dossier", just a bunch of crap telling people what they want to hear to make a quick buck. Bottom feeders.

Martin Jančar , 3 days ago

i am thinking about writing a book about that collusion :-D doesn't seem much of an effort :-D what a BS :-)

0tube0user , 3 days ago

Why are we listening? Why did you interview an englishman of questionable character and background about a case that is in investigation and has not found a single connection. This book foremost is for profit and attention for the writer's benefit. Can he produce a single documents to back his statements? My guess is no. Everything he says is hearsay and fiction. The very first question asked is redirected... always when a question is redirected you can bet it's all garbage. He's just another babbling backward British pompous bozo looking to under mind and influence US citizens of our elected president. Brits by nature are globalist. The small island has for century plagued the world with globalist ideals of using people all over the world to enrich themselves. NEVER believe a Brit unless they are speaking ills of their own country which basically has 2 classes, rich and poor.

Denver Attaway , 3 days ago (edited)

Great work Aaron. Its great to see an interview that challenges the guest to rationally explain the basis of proof for this nonsense red herring issue. Harding could not do it without clear suppositions and assumptions - no proof. The Guardian - my how its prestige has fallen.....and that guy wrote the book on the collusion and could not justify his case. That is why his feed cut out - frustration he does not encounter thru corporate media softball.

Ilfart 218 , 3 days ago

Yeah don't trust evidence. Listen to "people" they'll tell ya something shifty is going on. This damn fool is all too common.

Zina J , 3 days ago

It is far too early to write off the investigation into Russian activities in the 2016 election or dismiss how long Russian operatives will cultivate a subject (POTUS Trump). They often do not know how or where the people they cultivate will eventually end up, but they do know that they have a hook in them, for future use. It's how they've done business for decades.

Sendan , 3 days ago

It was funny how the color of his face steadily changes:) OH NET NET did I put a smile face

MrDiogenes OfElmhurst , 3 days ago (edited)

Good job nailing him, however, " Putin is not a nice person" - what kind of BS is that? Not a nice person, comparing to whom? The Russians seem to like him just fine and that's the only thing that matters.

Steve Ennever , 3 days ago

Bravo Aaron. Bravo.

artcenterjo , 3 days ago

good on you Aaron Mate!

Frodo Ring , 3 days ago (edited)

Why he loses volume in the most critical parts of the video. He says """:the level of russians at the moment @#$%@#&$%@%#^$$&@^#""""" at minute 8:05

Hagbard Celine , 3 days ago

really i cringe listening to that guy - that's how that whole bullshit story implodes when not all parties follow some scripts. thanks aaron - well done. merry xmas @ all.

TheRedsRus , 3 days ago

@14.44 he talks about steele and trusted http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-24/wife-fusion-gps-founder-admits-her-husband-was-behind-fake-russiagate-story

Leo Jansen , 3 days ago

Luke Harding talks a lot of Nonsense and which kind of secret meetings? What the Hell? He just making Money with his Book and the truth doesn´t interst him whatsover!

TheJagjr4450 , 3 days ago

ONE SINGLE PIECE OF EVIDENCE... is all we ask... ONE POSITIVE PIECE.

TheJagjr4450 , 3 days ago (edited)

HARDING has no SHAME... the fact that he can blather this moronic nonsense without laughing is mind blowing. Aaron just wants to laugh out loud so many times... Harding loves to offer salacious antidotes regarding how evil Putin is, however there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO EVIDENCE!

TheJagjr4450 , 3 days ago (edited)

**IF THIS IS AN ACT OF WAR WE MUST HAVE EVIDENCE!** DID HARDING - "the reporter" (used loosely) contact the DNC in order to find out whether they allowed the FBI to inspect or examine the servers. This is PURE PROPAGANDA... Trump's phone calls have been monitored according to retired NSA whistle blowers since 2005. If there was any conversation it would have been leaked there is absolutely NO evidence what so ever of collusion. The FBI has no evidence and STEELE has testified in court that other than Carter Page's trip to Moscow the Dossier is ENTIRELY UNVERIFIED. When the entire thing is shown to have been a hoax will this idiot retract his drivel. PREET BAHARA -Hillary donor - is the US atty who allowed the Russian Lawyer into the country.

Tony Smith , 3 days ago

Guardian have always been estb. Clinton spent $10mn on opponent research w Russian collusion

hohaia rangi , 3 days ago

As soon as he started talking about Russian hacking of DNC he lost credibility. That claim has never been proven.

HighFieldLux , 3 days ago

10:30 "I'm a storyteller." Welp.

[Dec 28, 2017] Aaron interview is a case study of how to deal with the author of a shitty book

Notable quotes:
"... Russian collusion/ interference = FAKE NEWS; Israeli collusion/ interference = BINGO. Every Politician in the whole damn world knows this fact but nobody has the balls to say it, and ''Hello Jerusalem'' Wake up sheeple!!! ..."
"... I don't think that guy knows what the word "evidence" means. ..."
"... You know what's hilarious? This guy didn't even do the basic research required to know the kind of interview he was getting into. ..."
"... Thank you Aaron, you are now the most respected and honest journalist left in North America! Your professionalism and demeanor exemplify class and honesty, which so diametrically compared to Mr. Harding's lackings thereof, it illuminated how ridiculous and speculative this whole collusion fiction has become. ..."
"... This Luke is either a Shill trying to make a profit by selling to Trump haters or the worst journalist in the world, He has lotsa of innuendo but no hard proof. No evidence of tape that TRump agrees to Quid pro quo with Putin, No documents of a deal, nothing that could convict a spie, just innuendo. "Putin is a bad guy and hates America" That is all he has. ..."
"... I bet this clown sees Russian agents under his bed at night. ..."
"... This guy is better off appearing on Rachel Maddow show. he would get 0 push back from her ..."
"... Nowadays the facts and evidence are not part of the news .. it is enough giving a good speech and choose the correct words and you can even convince the people that the earth is flat ... the same is happening with the Russia gate, think tanks will continue with this no sense until the people give up and start believing in the Russia gate ..."
"... How many times & ways & years of Luke Harding being proven a fraudulent opportunist does it take for serious media platforms to simply stop paying him any attention?? ..."
"... the guardian, crap reporting innuendo and vague and propaganda ..."
"... Well done Aaron! This was a rare opportunity to dismantle a genuine, probably unwilling cog of corporate subversion and hysteria fueled by money chasing. Morons like this "storyteller" help harmful misunderstandings deepen. Wars and untold misery are started with stories like his. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Lear King of Albion , 3 days ago (edited)

This moronic Brit wrote an entire book? Beginning with a visit to trump tower by a soviet era diplomat who made a factual statement about how lovely Trump Tower is? It is a beautiful tower, and had I seen the Donald on the streets of NYC, I would have said the same thing. After a year of no implication.of collusion, we are left with delusion collusion. If the moron wants to make a great case, how about researching the names of tenants of projects to which Trump sold the right to his name? Or the Odessan taxi drivers who sometimes drove past Trump Tower? After 7 minutes, I wondered how the interviewer had any patience for the moron, except to get his worthless and lazy slime argument into the record. Click. The interviewer had patience.

freydenker , 3 days ago

Best joke: "I am not a storyteller" at around 10.00 : ]]]

Timothy Musson , 3 days ago (edited)

Another guy who, when asked for evidence to back up his assertions, answers with a non-specific hand-wave :'( Nice interview, Aaron - you asked him questions he didn't like, but you did it politely.

Luke, on the other hand, comes across as rude and petty... not a great way to present a viewpoint. BTW, I think it's great that TheRealNews interviews people with various opinions, and isn't afraid to ask them "hard" questions.

Jason Parker , 3 days ago

Russian collusion/ interference = FAKE NEWS; Israeli collusion/ interference = BINGO. Every Politician in the whole damn world knows this fact but nobody has the balls to say it, and ''Hello Jerusalem'' Wake up sheeple!!!

Michael Leone , 3 days ago

I don't think that guy knows what the word "evidence" means. He probably shouldn't use it methinks...

proudhon100 , 3 days ago

Now Jill Stein is being caught up in the witch hunt. Everyone's to blame for the election loss . . . except Hillary!

Ross Kolaric , 3 days ago

Just rubbish. Name the book collusion and sell lots of copies. Come on, get real.

Microsoft Word Technical Support , 3 days ago

You know what's hilarious? This guy didn't even do the basic research required to know the kind of interview he was getting into.

omlezna , 3 days ago

Thank you Aaron, you are now the most respected and honest journalist left in North America! Your professionalism and demeanor exemplify class and honesty, which so diametrically compared to Mr. Harding's lackings thereof, it illuminated how ridiculous and speculative this whole collusion fiction has become. e.g. Green Party Jill Stein's guilt for being at the same table that Putin sat at for mere minutes long enough to be included in a photo, now smeared by the press as a Russian asset. I never saw Aaron raise his hands and ape and gesticulate for added performance. Ultimately, when no evidence was ever presented (as there is none to be found), this hilariously unfunny supposed-journalist, moreover fiction author, invented the new term collusion-rejectionist, and promptly grabbed his mouse to click disconnect and terminate his utter embarassment so expertly elucidated in this interview. Thank You, Happy Holidays and best of luck in 2018 Aaron!

earthie48 Johnson , 4 days ago

Bullcrap! Hillary Clinton and her Cronies, secured Trumps win, by how they cheated Bernie during the 2016 Primary! Trump did not need Russia's, whatever you think they did, Hillary secured the win for Trump because of her DIRTY POLITICS, against the Democratic Base! Hillary and her thugs keep this up, they will secure the Republican Control in Washington, and quite honestly, its what they want! Because I firmly believe that the Clinton's and all whom support them ARE undercover Republicans, out to, and HAVE, destroyed the Democratic Party!

Citizens.Against.Corruption USA , 4 days ago

Hillary Clinton...COLLUSION!

tink2090 , 4 days ago

Having watched this interview, I feel the need to write the phrase: 'what a nutter.'

ValhalaFiveSix , 4 days ago

This Luke is either a Shill trying to make a profit by selling to Trump haters or the worst journalist in the world, He has lotsa of innuendo but no hard proof. No evidence of tape that TRump agrees to Quid pro quo with Putin, No documents of a deal, nothing that could convict a spie, just innuendo. "Putin is a bad guy and hates America" That is all he has.

MsTree1 , 4 days ago

This man is quite hilarious in that even if Putin did hack the election all this storyteller relates is predicated on the fact that, WE THE PEOPLE are entirely idiotic in in the US. 'Tis quite condescending @TheRealNews

Swinglow Alabama , 4 days ago

Remember some Tony Blair. Loud and big mouth and a big nought in the end.

Antman4656 , 4 days ago (edited)

LUKE= So I think there is proof from my point of view but I don't have any. Only a feeling and theories that can't be proven. No Evidence but Russia is bad. All oligarchs and billionaires work with each other to make more money. Of course Putin and Trump had meetings. So does Jeff Besos and the CIA.

Laura Cortez , 4 days ago

So basically he is saying that we should believe that Russia hacked elections in USA, France and Germany just because Putin is Baaaaad. 

drumsnbass , 4 days ago

I bet this clown sees Russian agents under his bed at night.

uche007us , 4 days ago

This guy is better off appearing on Rachel Maddow show. he would get 0 push back from her

tdr , 4 days ago

Good God I couldn't watch this silly yellow teeth Brit imperialist from the first few seconds. His accent is insufferable.

L G , 4 days ago

That's quite a title for a book that contains no evidence!

Laura Cortez , 4 days ago

Nowadays the facts and evidence are not part of the news .. it is enough giving a good speech and choose the correct words and you can even convince the people that the earth is flat ... the same is happening with the Russia gate, think tanks will continue with this no sense until the people give up and start believing in the Russia gate

Jared Greathouse , 4 days ago

One question: What kind of nation is modern day Russia? TOTALLY separate question: Did they conduct some insidious assault on American elections (as though corporations don't do this already)? These are totally unrelated issues. The human rights situation in Russia may be- and is- awful. But we can imagine an extremely murderous nation internally that doesn't happen to be much of a threat externally

Darwin Holmstrom , 4 days ago

Someone's trying to sell a book by giving it a hyperbolic title .

Jraymiami , 4 days ago

Omg these so called "journalists" opportunists are everywhere!!! Bravo Aaron Mate!

Canuck516 , 4 days ago

I guess to be hired by the Guardian, "opportunism" is a must-have!

DootDoot , 4 days ago

27:13 Sums up the entire book... And where the Author got his factless opinion.... How can a writer have such a clear comprehension problem?

Alan Mclemore , 4 days ago

Sez Corporatist Hack: "...The Russian media were portraying Hillary as some sort of warmonger madwoman." Hello: That's EXACTLY what she is. She said one of her first acts as President would be to declare a no-fly zone in Syria, which Gen. Dunford, testifying before Congress, said would require going to war with Russia.

But Clinton is a front for the neocon wing of the MIC, and they have been lusting for a new "Cold" War on the obvious grounds that it would increase the already appalling amount of US and world resources they suck up. The war corporations are so driven for profit that a little thing like the possibility of WWIII is of no concern to them. So they tell themselves the story that the Russians would back down and go home; the US would then be able to overthrow Assad so the oil companies could get their damned pipeline across southern Syria; and the Russians, angry at the loss of face, would ramp up their defense spending, which of course would require the US to ramp up theirs even more.

Neat plan for never-ending profits, brought to you by Hillary Clinton and the Warmongers. The problem is that Russia does not fear the US, and knows that it has the raw power to win a conflict in Syria if it wants to respond that strongly (look up "Zircon" hyper-sonic missile, which they have thousands of and against which US aircraft carriers have no defense). And Russia, being legally invited by the legally-elected President of Syria, and knowing the US to be acting illegally, might just decide to respond if the US attacks its planes.

And if they send a carrier to the bottom of the Gulf to stop American fighters from interfering with their legal activities in Syria, then President Clinton would have been faced with a choice: Go nuclear or go home. Which do you think she would have done? It's a damn good thing Trump won, detestable as he is. We are not at war with Russia, and that at least is ahead of where we very likely would have been if the Shill had slimed her way into power.

Dan Harris , 4 days ago

The interviewer totally owned that asshole. Awesome journalistic interview.

R Speechley , 4 days ago

Harding is a joke, he just talks nonsense

Alan Mclemore , 4 days ago

Sez Corporatist Hack: "I'm a story teller." No doubt about it, because he's told a bunch of stories on this video. The Guardian is worthless corporatist trash, and Luke Harding is a lying propagandist. I wonder who else KOFF*CIA*AHEM is paying his salary?

ZantherY , 4 days ago

It sounds as if someone has a book to flog! He should had stuck to CNN or Democracy Now, reporters there aren't likely to ASK anything intelligent!!

Joy Wilder , 4 days ago

How many times & ways & years of Luke Harding being proven a fraudulent opportunist does it take for serious media platforms to simply stop paying him any attention??

mic mccoy , 4 days ago

Luke Harding got his ass handed to him!!!!!!! Can't believe his book is a best seller as it states nothing provable.

mic mccoy , 4 days ago

This guy Luke Harding calls himself a journalist???? He is trying to sell a book based on no evidence.

mic mccoy , 4 days ago

This guy Luke Harding is a puppet of Main-Stream Media. What a joke!!!!!!

scheminsiman , 4 days ago

Aaron batting out the park these regular talking points so easily, It looked like Harding has never had pushback on this. Twas interesting seeing him on the backfoot.

marsmotion , 4 days ago

the guardian, crap reporting innuendo and vague and propaganda....what an ass. thanks aaron, for keeping his feet to the fire and not letting him get away with lying. very satisfying to see these a holes not get away with it for once.

Rick O'Brien , 4 days ago

Wow imagine governments having people killed. Outrageous! Can you say drone strikes? This guy Harding in not a serious person. Good job Aaron!

0 1 , 4 days ago (edited)

Everything this guy sites happens all the time with many countries involved. So the question is, why isolate one country? This another case of creating a narrative, and then looking for non existent facts to back up said narrative. Sounds zealous. I cannot finish watching this. Good job Aaron.

hypo krites , 4 days ago (edited)

Tough interview, while he has a point the book should have been read thoroughly, it was a shame he used that as a point to avoid answering the hard question, "where is the proof?". It was interesting to hear about "Trump's ties to Russia", I think it was a shame the author felt it was acceptable to defer to his mistrust (warranted) and bad feelings towards Putin/Russian power structure in order to seemingly (from my point of view) justify the position.

This interview goes to show how difficult REAL journalism is, and how REAL scholarship is very valuable. While the author has a lot of interesting points, on this issue, I only see this probe/issue as a political wedge used to disenfranchise the presiding elected president, and the best thing about this whole process is a clear illustration about how bankrupt and politically corrupt DC is.

The confidence game DC is pushing needs to be brought down a few levels, and some power needs to go back to the people. We all have our own part to play, and being a victim, I feel is a waste of time, except as a means of holding people accountable.

smoke and mirrors. The evidence is so over-whelming that if anything was going to be prosecuted the trial would already be completed.

old fan , 4 days ago

This is getting a lot more complicated than it needs to be. The buzzphrase that most Americans respond to (like Pavlov's dogs) is "Russia meddled in our election!" U.S. elections have always been "meddled" with. It's enough to say Trump, Kushner & their ilk made a lot of lucrative financial deals with Russia that turn out to be 1) conflicts of interest for ANY elected official and 2) abuse of (presidential) power. Isn't that enough?

ameighable , 4 days ago

I know that this person is trying to sell a book, but I see the investigation wrapping up. It would be pretty hard to carry on for another year. After all, Mueller has said it has completed all the WH interviews - and the ones at the top of an investigation are always the last ones questioned. Furthermore, in the first three week of November alone, 4,289 sealed cases have appeared in federal dockets throughout the nation - including the territories. There are probably more now. No one knows how many are Muellers, but the 4 unsealed cases are part of the initial group of filings. My prediction - nothing on Trump and Hillary goes to prison finally.

Marko Kraguljac , 4 days ago (edited)

Well done Aaron! This was a rare opportunity to dismantle a genuine, probably unwilling cog of corporate subversion and hysteria fueled by money chasing. Morons like this "storyteller" help harmful misunderstandings deepen. Wars and untold misery are started with stories like his.

rvaclavek , 4 days ago (edited)

If you live in the empirical world, you just believe the hearsay of the elites. DNC and Podesta hacks were empirically done with an external drive.

fahrout4 , 4 days ago

So, the Russians are running around the globe hacking elections?

Meta Vinci , 4 days ago

Seriously, RNN? Why do you give this puppets book play. Good for you Erin for questioning him. He's on the wrong side of this. There are so many connections among Obama FBI, DOJ, State Dept, Clinton and DNC to Fusion GPS that you're have to be a complete moron not to want to investigate THAT collusion to swing and election. They ere spying on trump and associates all last year. If there was collusion the leaky DC swamp would have spilled the beans.With regard to this collusion with Russia, Trump seems pretty clean. The NSA should know exactly who hacked the DNC servers the collect every oversees packet transfer. Given they have not come forward with that evidence I am more inclined to believe it was a leak, especially given Former NSA cryptographer and IC pro Bill Binney pretty much proved it was a leak when he showed the transfer rates were only achievable at a local port. Not over the Internet. Impossible! Trump is an international businessman, some as Clinton's who have just as much shady history with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. Follow the money there is a flow of money from Russian banks and players to the Clinton Foundation while she was SoS.

Lenore Olmstead , 4 days ago

So sad you cannot read the book and you cannot listen and dismiss a really serious threat to our elections. You did not even know what happened in Estonia. You demonstrate a real lack of willingness to explore the truth with an open mind.

Scott Turner , 4 days ago

That was great! The emoticon proof! Hahaha! His tenacity was quasi-religious, especially in the wrap-up and boils down to "There is evidence of collusion, even though I cannot point to any evidence."

doubtingmantis , 4 days ago

Luke's book is speculation. Thanks Aaron for holding his feet to the fire.

Colonel Chuck , 4 days ago

1987 all the way back when it was called the Soviet Union and was communist country. I am an Independent, but get a charge out of all the lying and BS going on in the USA and the 2 parties and their zombie followers. Empires going down and the 2 parties are just puppets for the Military Industrial Congressional Complex/Deep State. Big war coming and need lots of unemployeed young draftees.

CryinFester , 4 days ago (edited)

Good job, Aaron! What does the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko have to do with Donald Trump colluding with Russia to steal the election from the hideous witch?

[Dec 28, 2017] Regime Change Comes Home: The CIA s Overt Threats against Trump by James Petras

Highly recommended!
This was written almost a year ago. Not author demonstrated tremendous insight which was confirmed by subsequent events.
Notable quotes:
"... The decisive shift to 'regime change' at home has been a continual process organized, orchestrated and implemented by elected and appointed officials within the Obama regime and by a multiplicity of political action organizations, which cross traditional ideological boundaries. ..."
"... The outgoing President Obama mobilized the entire leadership of the security state to fabricate 'dodgy dossiers' linking Donald Trump to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisting that Trump was a stooge or 'vulnerable to KGB blackmail'. The CIA's phony documents (arriving via a former British intelligence operative-now free lance 'security' contractor) were passed around among the major corporate media who declined to publish the leaked gossip. Months of attempts to get the US media to 'take the bite' on the 'smelly' dossier were unsuccessful. The semi-senile US Senator John McCain ('war-hero' and hysterical Trump opponent) then volunteered to plop the reeking gossip back onto the lap of the CIA Director Brennan and demand the government 'act on these vital revelations'! ..."
"... Under scrutiny by serious researchers, the 'CIA dossier' was proven to be a total fabrication by way of a former 'British official – now – in – hiding !' Undaunted, despite being totally discredited, the CIA leadership continued to attack the President-Elect. Trump likened the CIA's 'dirty pictures hatchet job' to the thuggish behavior of the Nazis and clearly understood how the CIA leadership was involved in a domestic coup d'état. ..."
"... CIA Director John Brennan, architect of numerous 'regime changes' overseas had brought his skills home – against the President-elect. For the first time in US history, a CIA director openly charged a President or President-elect with betraying the country and threatened the incoming Chief Executive. He coldly warned Trump to ' just make sure he understands that the implications and impacts (of Trump's policies) on the United States could be profound " ..."
Jan 20, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

The norms of US capitalist democracy include the election of presidential candidates through competitive elections, unimpeded by force and violence by the permanent institutions of the state. Voter manipulation has occurred during the recent elections, as in the case of the John F. Kennedy victory in 1960 and the George W. Bush victory over 'Al' Gore in 2000. But despite the dubious electoral outcomes in these cases, the 'defeated' candidate conceded and sought via legislation, judicial rulings, lobbying and peaceful protests to register their opposition.

These norms are no longer operative. During the election process, and in the run-up to the inauguration of US President-Elect Donald Trump, fundamental electoral institutions were challenged and coercive institutions were activated to disqualify the elected president and desperate overt public pronouncements threatened the entire electoral order.

We will proceed by outlining the process that is used to undermine the constitutional order, including the electoral process and the transition to the inauguration of the elected president.

Regime Change in America

In recent times, elected officials in the US and their state security organizations have often intervened against independent foreign governments, which challenged Washington 's quest for global domination. This was especially true during the eight years of President Barack Obama's administration where the violent ousting of presidents and prime ministers through US-engineered coups were routine – under an unofficial doctrine of 'regime change'.

The violation of constitutional order and electoral norms of other countries has become enshrined in US policy. All US political, administrative and security structures are involved in this process. The policymakers would insist that there was a clear distinction between operating within constitutional norms at home and pursuing violent, illegal regime change operations abroad.

Today the distinction between overseas and domestic norms has been obliterated by the state and quasi-official mass media. The US security apparatus is now active in manipulating the domestic democratic process of electing leaders and transitioning administrations.

The decisive shift to 'regime change' at home has been a continual process organized, orchestrated and implemented by elected and appointed officials within the Obama regime and by a multiplicity of political action organizations, which cross traditional ideological boundaries.

Regime change has several components leading to the final solution: First and foremost, the political parties seek to delegitimize the election process and undermine the President-elect. The mass media play a major role demonizing President-Elect Trump with personal gossip, decades-old sex scandals and fabricated interviews and incidents.

Alongside the media blitz, leftist and rightist politicians have come together to question the legitimacy of the November 2016 election results. Even after a recount confirmed Trump's victory, a massive propaganda campaign was launched to impeach the president-elect even before he takes office – by claiming Trump was an 'enemy agent'.

The Democratic Party and the motley collection of right-left anti-Trump militants sought to blackmail members of the Electoral College to change their vote in violation of their own mandate as state electors. This was unsuccessful, but unprecedented.

Their overt attack on US electoral norms then turned into a bizarre and virulent anti-Russia campaign designed to paint the elected president (a billionaire New York real estate developer and US celebrity icon) as a 'tool of Moscow .' The mass media and powerful elements within the CIA, Congress and Obama Administration insisted that Trump's overtures toward peaceful, diplomatic relations with Russia were acts of treason.

The outgoing President Obama mobilized the entire leadership of the security state to fabricate 'dodgy dossiers' linking Donald Trump to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisting that Trump was a stooge or 'vulnerable to KGB blackmail'. The CIA's phony documents (arriving via a former British intelligence operative-now free lance 'security' contractor) were passed around among the major corporate media who declined to publish the leaked gossip. Months of attempts to get the US media to 'take the bite' on the 'smelly' dossier were unsuccessful. The semi-senile US Senator John McCain ('war-hero' and hysterical Trump opponent) then volunteered to plop the reeking gossip back onto the lap of the CIA Director Brennan and demand the government 'act on these vital revelations'!

Under scrutiny by serious researchers, the 'CIA dossier' was proven to be a total fabrication by way of a former 'British official – now – in – hiding !' Undaunted, despite being totally discredited, the CIA leadership continued to attack the President-Elect. Trump likened the CIA's 'dirty pictures hatchet job' to the thuggish behavior of the Nazis and clearly understood how the CIA leadership was involved in a domestic coup d'état.

CIA Director John Brennan, architect of numerous 'regime changes' overseas had brought his skills home – against the President-elect. For the first time in US history, a CIA director openly charged a President or President-elect with betraying the country and threatened the incoming Chief Executive. He coldly warned Trump to ' just make sure he understands that the implications and impacts (of Trump's policies) on the United States could be profound "

Clearly CIA Director Brennan has not only turned the CIA into a sinister, unaccountable power dictating policy to an elected US president, by taking on the tone of a Mafia Capo, he threatens the physical security of the incoming leader.

From a Scratch to Gangrene

The worst catastrophe that could fall on the United States would be a conspiracy of leftist and rightist politicos, the corporate mass media and the 'progressive' websites and pundits providing ideological cover for a CIA-orchestrated 'regime change'.

Whatever the limitations of our electoral norms- and there are many – they are now being degraded and discarded in a march toward an elite coup, involving elements of the militarist empire and 'in`telligence' hierarchy.

Mass propaganda, a 'red-brown alliance, salacious gossip and accusations of treason ('Trump, the Stooge of Moscow') resemble the atmosphere leading to the rise of the Nazi state in Germany . A broad 'coalition' has joined hands with a most violent and murderous organization (the CIA) and imperial political leadership, which views overtures to peace to be high treason because it limits their drive for world power and a US dominated global political order.

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. http://petras.lahaine.org/

[Dec 28, 2017] On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... I accept your point that the Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same coin, but it's important to understand that Putin is deeply conservative and very risk averse. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton may be a threat to Russia but she knows the "rules" and is very predictable, while Trump doesn't know the rules and appears to act on a whim ..."
"... However, given the problems that Hillary Clinton had to overcome to get elected, backing her against Trump would be risky. So the highly risk averse Putin would logically stay out of the election entirely and all the claims of Russia hacking the election are fake news. ..."
"... As for the alleged media campaign, my response is "so what!". Western media, including state-owned media, interferes around the world all the time so complaining about Russian state-owned media doing the same is pure hypocrisy and should be ignored. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Ghost Ship , Dec 27, 2017 10:17:37 AM | 92

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Dec 26, 2017 3:56:16 PM | 35
On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections.

I accept your point that the Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same coin, but it's important to understand that Putin is deeply conservative and very risk averse.

Hillary Clinton may be a threat to Russia but she knows the "rules" and is very predictable, while Trump doesn't know the rules and appears to act on a whim , so if Putin were to have interfered in the 2016 presidential election, logic would suggest that he would do so on Hillary Clinton's side. However, given the problems that Hillary Clinton had to overcome to get elected, backing her against Trump would be risky. So the highly risk averse Putin would logically stay out of the election entirely and all the claims of Russia hacking the election are fake news.

As for the alleged media campaign, my response is "so what!". Western media, including state-owned media, interferes around the world all the time so complaining about Russian state-owned media doing the same is pure hypocrisy and should be ignored.

[Dec 28, 2017] My Response To The McCarthyists – Extra Newsfeed

Dec 28, 2017 | extranewsfeed.com

Back in August of 2016, which feels like millions of years ago in terms of everything that's happened in American politics since that time, Glenn Greenwald published an article in The Intercept titled " Democrats' Tactic of Accusing Critics of Kremlin Allegiance Has Long, Ugly History in U.S. ". I took note of the article because I look up to Greenwald, but because of my focus on the US presidential election I couldn't really see the looming terror on the horizon that he was warning of at the time.

After the election I started getting comments on my anti-Democratic establishment articles accusing them of being "Kremlin propaganda", and I had no idea how to respond to this. I'm an Australian mother who started doing political commentary last year because I fell in love with Bernie Sanders; I've never been to Russia, I've never been involved with Russia, and at that point my interest in Russia amounted to an affection for Regina Spektor, those cool fur hats and the movie Spies Like Us . I'd certainly never in my life been accused of writing propaganda.

https://extranewsfeed.com/media/e3eac8cd5216d1c3f2fbea96b0d376d3?postId=ad769fcddc10

Now these comments have become a daily occurrence. I make unapologetically frequent use of social media blocking features, but I still get accused of being a Kremlin propagandist multiple times a day for my skepticism of the Russiagate conspiracy theory and my criticism of the Democratic party.

And now pro-establishment outlets are starting to publish attack editorials full of outright lies about me. Rantt News ran a hit piece on me last month which reported completely falsely that I'm a Russian shill hired "to spread alternative facts and false equivalencies in order to divide leftists and ensure Trump, Ryan, their cabal of billionaires, and their newfound Russian friends all continue to enjoy power at the expense of your civil rights." To substantiate his claim the author cited two articles of mine that I'd written for the Melbourne site Newslogue which were then republished without my permission by a website called Russia Insider, with whom I have never had contact apart from my recent request that they remove the articles.

As I pointed out in my response to the Rantt smear piece , Russia Insider very clearly labels those articles as copies that it took from elsewhere. Here is a screenshot from the first one , which very plainly labels the article as having come from Newslogue:

Here is a link to my original article from Newslogue . Here is a screenshot from that one:

Note the dates. Here is the second article Russia Insider published, again labeled as being from Newslogue:

And here is my original article.

[Dec 28, 2017] McCain Associate Subpoenaed Over Trump Dossier

Dec 28, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Wed, 12/27/2017 - 17:41 45 SHARES

Several months ago it emerged that the Republican sponsor behind the Fusion GPS Trump project was hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, a fact which surprised many who expected that John McCain would be the GOP mastermind looking for dirt in Trump's past. However, a new and credible McCain trail has emerged in the annals of the "Trump Dossier" after the Washington Examiner reported that the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to an associate of John McCain over his connection with the salacious dossier containing unverified allegations about Trump and his ties to Russia, which many speculate served as the illegitimate basis for FISA warrants against the Trump campaign - permitting the NSA to listen in on Trump's phone calls - and which the president yesterday slammed as "bogus" and a "crooked Hillary pile of garbage."

In the latest twist, committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) wants to talk to David Kramer, a former State Department official and current senior fellow at the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University, about his visit to London in November 2016. During his trip, at McCain's request Kramer met with the dossier's author, former British spy Christopher Steele, to view "the pre-election memoranda on a confidential basis," according to court filings and to receive a briefing and a copy of the Trump dossier. Kramer then returned to the U.S. to give the document to McCain. McCain then took a copy of the dossier to the FBI's then-director, James Comey. But the FBI already had the document; Steele himself gave the dossier to the bureau in installments, reportedly beginning in early July 2016. While McCain, recovering in Arizona from treatments for cancer, has long refused to detail his actions regarding the dossier, his associate Kramer was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee on Dec. 19. The new subpoena stems from statements Kramer made in that interview. In the session, the Washington Examiner reports, Kramer told House investigators that he knew the identities of the Russian sources for the allegations in Steele's dossier. But when investigators pressed Kramer to reveal those names, he declined to do so.

Now, he is under subpoena which was issued Wednesday afternoon, and directs Kramer to appear again before House investigators on Jan. 11.

As the ongoing government probe slowly turns away from Trump's "collusion" with the Russians and toward the FBI "insurance policy" to allegedly prevent Trump from becoming president by fabricating a narrative of Russian cooperation with the Trump, knowing Steele's sources will be a critical part of the congressional dossier investigation:

"If one argues the document is unverified and never will be, it is critical to learn the identity of the sources to support that conclusion. If one argues the document is the whole truth, or largely true, knowing sources is equally critical."

There is another reason to know Steele's sources, and that is to learn not just the origin of the dossier but its place in the larger Trump-Russia affair. As the WashEx adds, there is a belief among some congressional investigators that the Russians who provided information to Steele were using Steele to disrupt the American election as much as the Russians who distributed hacked Democratic Party emails. In some investigators' views, they are the two sides of the Trump-Russia project, both aimed at sowing chaos and discord in the American political system.

Still, investigators who favor this theory ask a sensible question: " It is likely that all the Russians involved in the attempt to influence the 2016 election were lying, scheing, Kremlin-linked, Putin-backed enemies of America – except the Russians who talked to Christopher Steele? "

On the other hand, the theory is still just a theory, for now... and as the Examiner's Byron York correctly points out, to validate -or refute - it House investigators will seek Steele's sources – and is why they will try to compel Kramer to talk.

Herdee Dec 27, 2017 5:48 PM

They just gave a bunch of suckers and con artists a lot of fucking bullshit. They wanted something they could use in a scheme to rig the election for Hillary. They'd believe anything.

bh2 Dec 27, 2017 5:52 PM

"...there is a belief among some congressional investigators that the Russians who provided information to Steele were using Steele to disrupt the American election as much as the Russians who distributed hacked Democratic Party emails."Since the emails could not have been hacked from the server by the Russians (according to Binny the download speeds are impossible across the internet), it naturally follows that anyone who still believes this myth is willfully ignorant.

BarkingCat -> bh2 Dec 27, 2017 6:04 PM

The download speeds thing is bullshit.Unless this was a dial-up connection there was plenty of speed to download tons of data.

johand inmywallet -> BarkingCat Dec 27, 2017 6:40 PM

Not that many tons!If you don't want to read the article and forensic evidence, 23 meg data transfer, transocean does not exist of 2 gig in 87 seconds. It does not exist locally, maybe now it does in certain point to point nodes only, but not through an IP."The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC's server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second.These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed. Compounding this contradiction, Guccifer claimed to have run his hack from Romania, which, for numerous reasons technically called delivery overheads, would slow down the speed of a hack even further from maximum achievable speeds.What is the maximum achievable speed? Forensicator recently ran a test download of a comparable data volume (and using a server speed not available in 2016) 40 miles from his computer via a server 20 miles away and came up with a speed of 11.8 megabytes per second -- half what the DNC operation would need were it a hack. Other investigators have built on this finding. Folden and Edward Loomis say a survey published August 3, 2016, by www.speedtest.net/reports is highly reliable and use it as their thumbnail index. It indicated that the highest average ISP speeds of first-half 2016 were achieved by Xfinity and Cox Communications. These speeds averaged 15.6 megabytes per second and 14.7 megabytes per second, respectively. Peak speeds at higher rates were recorded intermittently but still did not reach the required 22.7 megabytes per second."A speed of 22.7 megabytes is simply unobtainable, especially if we are talking about a transoceanic data transfer," Folden said. "Based on the data we now have, what we've been calling a hack is impossible." Last week Forensicator reported on a speed test he conducted more recently. It tightens the case considerably. "Transfer rates of 23 MB/s (Mega Bytes per second) are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance," he wrote. "Further, local copy speeds are measured, demonstrating that 23 MB/s is a typical transfer rate when using a USB–2 flash device (thumb drive)." https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-abo

Justapleb Dec 27, 2017 5:56 PM

Sorry, but any credence whatsoever to "Russia", even saying the name, is diversionary twaddle of the first rank.It is the content of Hillary's emails and the criminal conduct of the conspirators, not Russia, that matters. I don't give a shit about Russia, period. Irony in the story? So what. We need Clinton at the gas chamber for sedition. When Seth Rich downloaded the DNC files on a thumb drive, the conspirators had to get in front of the story. So before Wikileaks released the emails, the DNC and deep state already had the story out that Russians had hacked them.Since the Wikileaks release it has been nonstop Russia Russia Russia.

new game -> Justapleb Dec 27, 2017 5:59 PM

it is called loosing control. or loosing an election. now they are loosing it, mentaly, and starting to do really dumb shit. just like criminals when the law closes in. getting desparate. anything can happen, when psychopaths are cornered...

Tennessee Patriot Dec 27, 2017 6:10 PM

OOOhhh, a subpoena. Yeah, that'll do it. That'll scare the shit out of him. Got a suggestion: Have a couple of Federal Marshalls drag his ass out of bed at 0-Dark-30, handcuff him and drag his ass kicking & screaming into the House Chamber, with black eyes and multiple cuts & contusions. Maybe then, and ONLY THEN, will we get some real answers as to what is going on. Quit fucking around with these tratorious assholes for once.

johnnycanuck Dec 27, 2017 6:38 PM

A reasonably intelligent person would be insulted by the actions of these people who clearly think they can throw out meaningless garbage to keep people from paying attention to what is really important.Hookers widdled on the donald! Did not...Did too! Did not... Did too!Is your intelligence insulted yet? If not, maybe there's a reason for that.Apparently the fat Don gave up two of your National Parks recently to his friends, the Corporate resource extractors.. He's been busy shining Israeli boots too in case you didn't notice. He owes the old Vegas sin vendor you see., And when you owe Vegas, and the resource extractors like Koch bros, you pay the debt. Or else.

lurker since 2012 Dec 27, 2017 7:41 PM

Quote from articleThere is another reason to know Steele's sources, and that is to learn not just the origin of the dossier but its place in the larger Trump-Russia affair. As the WashEx adds, there is a belief among some congressional investigators that the Russians who provided information to Steele were using Steele to disrupt the American election as much as the Russians who distributed hacked Democratic Party emails. In some investigators' views, they are the two sides of the Trump-Russia project, both aimed at sowing chaos and discord in the American political system.IMOP As a Australian i await a 'republican or democrap' to come to me and ask (for monetary reward) whats my thoughts on Hellory CUNTon. I wont hold back and to hell with interfering with the Presidential election. Dying to good for her!

Lord Raglan Dec 27, 2017 7:11 PM

Bravo House Intelligence Committee!

Lord Raglan Dec 27, 2017 7:14 PM

I bet the Russians who gave that guppy Steele the information for the dossier must have laughed their asses off for months at a time! I bet they haven't stopped laughing.......

trailer park boys Dec 27, 2017 7:42 PM

"As the WashEx adds, there is a belief among some congressional investigators that the Russians who provided information to Steele were using Steele to disrupt the American election as much as the Russians who distributed hacked Democratic Party emails. In some investigators' views, they are the two sides of the Trump-Russia project, both aimed at sowing chaos and discord in the American political system." Well, the neocons should be happy. Either way, Hillary guilty or Trump guilty, the Russkis were complicit and sowing chaos and discord. Win-win for the war party narrative. BTW, the democrat party emails were leaked, not hacked - the biggest of all the big lies.

indygo55 Dec 27, 2017 7:50 PM

What about Binney? No mention of that little factoid? The emails were downloaded locally. The data proves that the data was down loaded at a speed that could only be done directly to, say a thumbdrive. Thump ordered the CIA head Pompaio to meet Binney and discuss the matter. It has been shown that US policy dictates that the local download cannot have happened lest the entire integegence community look stupid. Chack it out https://theintercept.com/2017/11/07/dnc-hack-trump-cia-director-william

MuffDiver69 Dec 27, 2017 8:00 PM

Just who is this Kramer fellow? Here's his Wiki page (clearly written by Kramer himself):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Kramer

He's a lifelong lefty swamp dweller with a background in Russian and human rights affairs. He left the State Dept. in 2009 for his current job at the McCain Inst. at Arizona State.

But just why was Kramer, of all people, sent to London to meet with Steele, and on whose initiative? On McCain's?

Is he connected to Fusion GPS or the Ohrs? And why would he make the bombshell claim to know the identities of the Russian sources of the dossier when testifying before the House Intelligence Committee and then refuse to actually name names?

Just a hunch, but I wonder if Mr. Kramer had a hand in fabricating the dossier?

Which begs the question: Was McCain involved in fabricating the dossier?

[Dec 28, 2017] The Mueller investigation will delay and stall closing the investigation until the 2018 Congressional Elections, with the Dems presuming these elections will be won and Nunes removed

Notable quotes:
"... I sense The Duran and Zero Hedge are suspect for readers of this site, but however they may be seen as biased for Trump, they continually broadcast the sham the Mueller investigation has become. ..."
"... Why there is not more attention to the outright sham of the investigation is not clear to me. The Mueller case re election peddling rests entirely on the Steele dossier, now shown to be false. Instead, Mueller is going after unrelated matters in Trump re Russian business deals, or matters taking place AFTER the election, or stupidly investigating Jill Stein for attending a dinner with Putin present. Anything Russia is gobbled down by automatic demonizing as "them Russian bastards did it Oh for sure." Trump tweets and complains but apparently does nothing to create a new prosecutor going after Clinton, where the investigation should focus, possibly because Mueller is continually miscalculating and the near collapse of what the committee is doing. ..."
"... I don't comment on all this as a fan of Trump. Far be it. I'm very critical of Trump as essentially incompetent, an egotist, a foolhardy war-monger, and indeed I'll go with Tillerson's "fucking moron" assessment. But to concentrate simply on Trump, as moderate previous "liberals" are doing, is to ignore the other half of the problem in the corruption that is the current Washington. I want to see the farce of the Mueller investigation get more attention, and thank you b, for bringing it up here. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Sid2 , Dec 26, 2017 12:58:36 PM | 12

I sense The Duran and Zero Hedge are suspect for readers of this site, but however they may be seen as biased for Trump, they continually broadcast the sham the Mueller investigation has become.

Today Alexander Mercouris, to me one of the best reporters on this matter additional to b, indicates the Mueller investigation will delay and stall with this and that until the 2018 congressional elections, with the Dems presuming these elections will be won by Democrats, which will take the heat off Mueller's show by current Repubs led by Nunes--now shifting to investigate Clinton.

http://theduran.com/fbi-russiagate-strategy-stonewall-congressional-elections/

Why there is not more attention to the outright sham of the investigation is not clear to me. The Mueller case re election peddling rests entirely on the Steele dossier, now shown to be false. Instead, Mueller is going after unrelated matters in Trump re Russian business deals, or matters taking place AFTER the election, or stupidly investigating Jill Stein for attending a dinner with Putin present. Anything Russia is gobbled down by automatic demonizing as "them Russian bastards did it Oh for sure." Trump tweets and complains but apparently does nothing to create a new prosecutor going after Clinton, where the investigation should focus, possibly because Mueller is continually miscalculating and the near collapse of what the committee is doing.

I don't comment on all this as a fan of Trump. Far be it. I'm very critical of Trump as essentially incompetent, an egotist, a foolhardy war-monger, and indeed I'll go with Tillerson's "fucking moron" assessment. But to concentrate simply on Trump, as moderate previous "liberals" are doing, is to ignore the other half of the problem in the corruption that is the current Washington. I want to see the farce of the Mueller investigation get more attention, and thank you b, for bringing it up here.

[Dec 28, 2017] Jill Stein the first victim of the political Witch-hunt that has started by the exposed McCarthyism in America

Dec 28, 2017 | bit.ly

Posted by: nhs | Dec 26, 2017 12:20:37 PM | 5

[Dec 28, 2017] The irony and hypocrisy as well as the buffoonery of the US Beltway Junta is certainly in full display with it's latest Russophobe allegation of election tampering

Notable quotes:
"... With the insertion of Alexei Navalny, a well-known USA/Wall St. stooge who learned his chops at Yale University as a fellow of the Greenberg World Fellows Program, into the Russian political landscape the US State Department certainly is interfering with Russian politics. Navalny was involved directly in founding a movement funded by the US government ..."
"... The "Democratic Alternative" (AKA DA!) front group that Nalvany "co-founded" was fully funded (and created) by the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (irony alert). ..."
"... That Navalny is supported by hard right reactionaries pretending to be populists should set off alarms but worse this is a clear case of US meddling in the electoral politics (another irony alert) of Russia. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Allen , Dec 26, 2017 3:52:34 PM | 34

The irony and hypocrisy as well as the buffoonery of the US Beltway Junta is certainly in full display with it's latest Russophobe allegation of election tampering. Put aside all the obvious items such as, zero evidence, US elections are already rigged by the US elites before a single vote is cast, the US has been tampering in just about every countries elections for decades overtly and covertly- and just consider the more recent attempt BY THE US to tamper in Russian elections through the ever-handy NED.

With the insertion of Alexei Navalny, a well-known USA/Wall St. stooge who learned his chops at Yale University as a fellow of the Greenberg World Fellows Program, into the Russian political landscape the US State Department certainly is interfering with Russian politics. Navalny was involved directly in founding a movement funded by the US government

The "Democratic Alternative" (AKA DA!) front group that Nalvany "co-founded" was fully funded (and created) by the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (irony alert).

That Navalny is supported by hard right reactionaries pretending to be populists should set off alarms but worse this is a clear case of US meddling in the electoral politics (another irony alert) of Russia.

But yes, of course, let's Call it Democracy and have some pretend outrage in the US Propaganda Sector where the US Chattering Classes are aghast that Russia won't allow the NED to interfere in it's elections.

[Dec 27, 2017] Bannon Puts Jared Through the Grinder

Notable quotes:
"... After scorning the Russia collusion theories as fiction, Bannon acknowledged the grisly reality that the Russia investigation poses for his former boss. And he blamed it all on Kushner, for having created the appearance that Putin had helped Trump. Dropping Kushner head first into the grinder, Bannon turned the crank. ..."
"... "[Kushner was] taking meetings with Russians to get additional stuff. This tells you everything about Jared," Bannon told the magazine's Gabriel Sherman. "They were looking for the picture of Hillary Clinton taking the bag of cash from Putin. That's his maturity level." ..."
"... Informing Vanity Fair that Kushner's hunt for political smut led him to over-fraternize with the Russians might not be the best way for Bannon to throw special counsel Robert S. Mueller III off the collusion scent. ..."
"... Sherman's piece reveals the cognitive split that evolved between Bannon and others, specifically Trump, on how to handle the mess that had been created. "Goldman Sachs teaches one thing: don't invent shit. Take something that works and make it better," Bannon told Sherman. He said he consulted with Bill Clinton's former lawyer Lanny Davis about how the Clintons responded to Ken Starr's probe. "We were so disciplined. You guys don't have that," Bannon recalls Davis advising him. "That always haunted me when he said that," Bannon told Sherman. Bannon said the investigation was an attempt by the establishment to undo the election, but he took it seriously and warned Trump he was in danger of being impeached. ..."
"... There's even more hot Bannon on Kushner action. Bannon tells of an Oval Office meeting he attended with Trump, Kushner and Kushner's wife Ivanka Trump in which he called Ivanka "the queen of leaks." "You're a fucking liar!" Ivanka allegedly responded. Hard to know how to score this round, but shattering the public image of Ivanka as poised princess must have been satisfying for a guy who called Javanka "the Democrats." ..."
"... Although "people close to Kushner, who decline to be named" told the Times they don't think the Mueller investigation exposes him to legal jeopardy, the young prince isn't taking chances. The Washington Post reports that his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has been shopping for a "crisis public relations firm" over the past two weeks. (Senator Robert Menendez, the recent beneficiary of a deadlocked corruption trial, is another Lowell client.) ..."
"... Why hire super flacks now? Does Kushner sense disaster? Another Bannon offensive? The Flynn plea bargain exposed him -- according to the press -- as the "very senior member" of the Trump transition team described in court documents who told former national security adviser Michael Flynn to lobby the Russian ambassador about a U.N. resolution on Israeli settlements. Maybe he's just buying reputation insurance. Or maybe he's taken to heart Chris Christie's scathing comments. Christie was squeezed out of the Trump transition early on, some say by Kushner who is said to hold a grudge against Christie who, when he was federal prosecutor, put Kushner's father in jail . This week Christie said that Kushner "deserves the scrutiny" he's been getting. It was almost as if Christie and Bannon were operating a twin-handled grinder, cranking out an extra helping of Kushner's tainted reputation. ..."
"... President Putin and President Trump occupied the same page about the scandal this week in what was either a matter of collusion or of great minds thinking alike. Speaking at a four-hour media event in Moscow, Putin blamed the scandal on the U.S. "deep state" and said, "This is all made up by people who oppose Trump to make his work look illegitimate." According to CNN , Trump took the opportunity this week to call the Russia investigation "bullshit" in private. In public, he told reporters, "There's absolutely no collusion. I didn't make a phone call to Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia. Everybody knows it." ..."
Dec 27, 2017 | www.politico.com

Former Trump chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon milled his former Oval Office colleague Jared Kushner into a bloody chunk of battle sausage this week and smeared him across the shiny pages of Vanity Fair . You've got to read Bannon's quote three or four times to fully savor the tang of its malice and cruelty. After scorning the Russia collusion theories as fiction, Bannon acknowledged the grisly reality that the Russia investigation poses for his former boss. And he blamed it all on Kushner, for having created the appearance that Putin had helped Trump. Dropping Kushner head first into the grinder, Bannon turned the crank.

"[Kushner was] taking meetings with Russians to get additional stuff. This tells you everything about Jared," Bannon told the magazine's Gabriel Sherman. "They were looking for the picture of Hillary Clinton taking the bag of cash from Putin. That's his maturity level."

Informing Vanity Fair that Kushner's hunt for political smut led him to over-fraternize with the Russians might not be the best way for Bannon to throw special counsel Robert S. Mueller III off the collusion scent. So what was the big man in the Barbour coat up to?

That Bannon and Kushner skirmished during their time together in the White House has been long established. Kushner advocated the sacking FBI Director James B. Comey, for example, and Bannon opposed it. He later told 60 Minutes that the firing was maybe the worst mistake in "modern political history" because it precipitated the hiring of the special counsel and had thereby expanded the investigation.

Sherman's piece reveals the cognitive split that evolved between Bannon and others, specifically Trump, on how to handle the mess that had been created. "Goldman Sachs teaches one thing: don't invent shit. Take something that works and make it better," Bannon told Sherman. He said he consulted with Bill Clinton's former lawyer Lanny Davis about how the Clintons responded to Ken Starr's probe. "We were so disciplined. You guys don't have that," Bannon recalls Davis advising him. "That always haunted me when he said that," Bannon told Sherman. Bannon said the investigation was an attempt by the establishment to undo the election, but he took it seriously and warned Trump he was in danger of being impeached.

Bannon's gripe against Kushner in Vanity Fair continues: He claims that Donald Trump's disparaging tweets about Attorney General Jeff Sessions were designed to provide "cover" for Kushner by steering negative media attention toward Sessions and away from Kushner as he was scheduled to testify before a Senate committee.

There's even more hot Bannon on Kushner action. Bannon tells of an Oval Office meeting he attended with Trump, Kushner and Kushner's wife Ivanka Trump in which he called Ivanka "the queen of leaks." "You're a fucking liar!" Ivanka allegedly responded. Hard to know how to score this round, but shattering the public image of Ivanka as poised princess must have been satisfying for a guy who called Javanka "the Democrats."

Getting mauled by Steve Bannon might not be the worst thing to happen to the president's son-in-law this week. He and Ivanka were sued by a private attorney for failing to disclose assets from 30 investment funds on their federal financial disclosure forms. Perhaps more ominous for Kushner, and according to the New York Times , federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have subpoenaed Deutsche Bank records about Kushner's family's real estate business. "There is no indication that the subpoena is related to the investigation being conducted by Robert S. Mueller III," the Times allowed. Yeah, but wouldn't you want to be there when Mueller's team invites Bannon in to talk to him about the Vanity Fair article, and they ask him, "What did you mean about Jared taking meetings with Russians to get additional stuff? Like, what stuff?"

Although "people close to Kushner, who decline to be named" told the Times they don't think the Mueller investigation exposes him to legal jeopardy, the young prince isn't taking chances. The Washington Post reports that his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has been shopping for a "crisis public relations firm" over the past two weeks. (Senator Robert Menendez, the recent beneficiary of a deadlocked corruption trial, is another Lowell client.)

Why hire super flacks now? Does Kushner sense disaster? Another Bannon offensive? The Flynn plea bargain exposed him -- according to the press -- as the "very senior member" of the Trump transition team described in court documents who told former national security adviser Michael Flynn to lobby the Russian ambassador about a U.N. resolution on Israeli settlements. Maybe he's just buying reputation insurance. Or maybe he's taken to heart Chris Christie's scathing comments. Christie was squeezed out of the Trump transition early on, some say by Kushner who is said to hold a grudge against Christie who, when he was federal prosecutor, put Kushner's father in jail . This week Christie said that Kushner "deserves the scrutiny" he's been getting. It was almost as if Christie and Bannon were operating a twin-handled grinder, cranking out an extra helping of Kushner's tainted reputation.

President Putin and President Trump occupied the same page about the scandal this week in what was either a matter of collusion or of great minds thinking alike. Speaking at a four-hour media event in Moscow, Putin blamed the scandal on the U.S. "deep state" and said, "This is all made up by people who oppose Trump to make his work look illegitimate." According to CNN , Trump took the opportunity this week to call the Russia investigation "bullshit" in private. In public, he told reporters, "There's absolutely no collusion. I didn't make a phone call to Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia. Everybody knows it."

Everybody, perhaps, except former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Appearing on CNN , Clapper used direct language to bind former KGB officer Putin to Trump tighter than a girdle to a paunch. "[Putin] knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president," Clapper said. "I think some of that experience and instincts of Putin has come into play here in his managing of a pretty important account for him, if I could use that term, with our president."

Writing in Newsweek , Jeff Stein collected other tell-tale signs of Trump's cooptation: He refused to take Russian meddling in the election seriously. He responds favorably to Putin's praise and seems to crave more. He dismisses worries about his circle's connections to Kremlin agents before the election and during the transition -- and he tried to call off the Flynn investigation.

It's enough to make you wonder why Bannon thinks Kushner is the enemy, not Trump.

******

If you've read this far, you're probably disappointed that more didn't happen in the Trump Tower scandal this week. Sue me in small claims court via email to [email protected] . My email alerts never believed in collusion, my Twitter feed is set to cut a plea deal with Mueller, and my RSS feed has several crisis PR firms on retainer.

[Dec 27, 2017] Mueller investigation can be viewed as an attempt to avoid going after Clinton and hide the fact that a corrupted intelligence service worked to derail Sanders

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... It should be Clinton-Gate not Russia-Gate. It seems that once again, as with late 02 and into 03, the populace has been hoodwinked into believing government falseness--as with the non-existent WMD and invasion of Iraq. ..."
Dec 27, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Sid2 , Dec 26, 2017 8:24:09 PM | 55

It's very difficult to get the head wrapped around the Mueller investigation as a contrivance to avoid going after Clinton, which shows a corrupted intelligence service working for political ends and saving the Democratic Party, which needs replacing. The evidence against Clinton is much more substantial than the continuing Mueller foray into inconsequence.

If you need more on Clinton beyond the massive email problems she had to avoid revealing how much pay money she was getting, search on the DNC convention entirely corrupted over to her and then the Uranium One deal. Why is all this not being investigated?

It should be Clinton-Gate not Russia-Gate. It seems that once again, as with late 02 and into 03, the populace has been hoodwinked into believing government falseness--as with the non-existent WMD and invasion of Iraq.

[Dec 27, 2017] Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections. Any candidate that WOULD make a difference would NEVER see the daylight of nomination, especially at the presidential level. I myself believe all the talk of Russia interfering the 2016 Election is no more than a witch hunt

Highly recommended!
Neocons dominate the US foreign policy establishment.
In other words Russiagate might be a pre-emptive move by neocons after Trump elections.
Notable quotes:
"... The dogma does not come from questioning this conclusion. Because Putin, during the campaign, complimented Trump, does not support the conclusion with its insinuation that those who voted for Trump needed to be influenced by anything other than being fed up with the usual in American politics. Same with Brexit. That dissatisfaction continues, and it doesn't need Russian influence to feed it. This is infantile oversimplification to say so. ..."
"... "The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. Responsibility for the absence of debate lies in large part with the major media outlets. Their uncritical embrace and endless repetition of the Russian hack story have made it seem a fait accompli in the public mind. It is hard to estimate popular belief in this new orthodoxy, but it does not seem to be merely a creed of Washington insiders. If you question the received narrative in casual conversations, you run the risk of provoking blank stares or overt hostility – even from old friends. This has all been baffling and troubling to me; there have been moments when pop-culture fantasies (body snatchers, Kool-Aid) have come to mind." ..."
"... But I do believe Putin, and for that matter Xi Jinping of China too, should make efforts to infiltrate the USA election processes. It's an eye for an eye. USA has been exercising its free hands in manipulating elections and stirring up color revolutions all around the world, including the 2012 presidential election in Russia. They should be given a taste of their own medicine. In fact, I believe it is for this reason that the US MSM is playing up this hocus pocus Russian-gate matter, as a preemptive measure to justify imposing electioneering controls in the future. ..."
"... USA may not be vulnerable as yet to this kind of external nuisances, as the masses have not yet reached the stage of being easily stirred. But that time will come. ..."
Dec 27, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Rhett , Dec 26, 2017 2:18:30 PM | 20

I have great respect for the reporting on this site regarding Syria and the Middle East. I regret that for some reason there is this dogmatic approach to the issue of Russian attempts to influence the US election. Why wouldn't the Russians try to sway the election? Allowing Hillary to win would have put a dangerous adversary in the White House, one with even more aggressive neocon tendencies than Obama. Trump has been owned by Russian mobsters since the the 1990s, and his ties to Russian criminals like Felix Sater are well known.

Putin thought that getting Trump in office would allow the US to go down a more restrained foreign policy path and lift sanctions against Russia, completely understandable goals. Using Facebook/Twitter bots and groups like Cambridge Analytica, an effort was made to sway public opinion toward Trump. That is just politics. And does anyone really doubt there are incriminating sexual videos of Trump out there? Trump (like Bill Clinton) was buddies with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Of course there are videos of Trump that can be used for blackmail purposes, and of course they would be used to get him on board with the Russian plan.

The problem is that everything Trump touches dies. He's a fraud and an incompetent idiot. Always has been. To make matters worse, Trump is controlled by the Zionists through his Orthodox Jewish daughter and Israeli spy son-in-law. This gave power to the most openly extreme Zionist elements who will keep pushing for more war in the Middle East. And Trump is so vile that he's hated by the majority of Americans and doesn't have the political power to end sanctions against Russia.

Personally, I think this is all for the best. Despite his Zionist handlers, Trump will unintentionally unwind the American Empire through incompetence and lack of strategy, which allows Syria and the rest of the world to breathe and rebuild. So Russia may have made a bad bet on this guy being a useful ally, but his own stupidity will end up working out to the world's favor in the long run.

Sid2 , Dec 26, 2017 3:17:40 PM | 27
@20

there is considerable irony in use of "dogmatic" here: the dogma actually occurs in the rigid authoritarian propaganda that the Russians Putin specifically interfered with the election itself, which now smugly blankets any discussion. "The Russians interfered" is now dogma, when that statement is not factually shown, and should read, "allegedly interfered."

The dogma does not come from questioning this conclusion. Because Putin, during the campaign, complimented Trump, does not support the conclusion with its insinuation that those who voted for Trump needed to be influenced by anything other than being fed up with the usual in American politics. Same with Brexit. That dissatisfaction continues, and it doesn't need Russian influence to feed it. This is infantile oversimplification to say so.

To suggest "possibly" in any argument does not provide evidence. There is no evidence. Take a look at b's link to the following for a clear, sane assessment of what's going on. As with:

"The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. Responsibility for the absence of debate lies in large part with the major media outlets. Their uncritical embrace and endless repetition of the Russian hack story have made it seem a fait accompli in the public mind. It is hard to estimate popular belief in this new orthodoxy, but it does not seem to be merely a creed of Washington insiders. If you question the received narrative in casual conversations, you run the risk of provoking blank stares or overt hostility – even from old friends. This has all been baffling and troubling to me; there have been moments when pop-culture fantasies (body snatchers, Kool-Aid) have come to mind."

this is b's link in URL form here:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n01/jackson-lears/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-russian-hacking

Oriental Voice , Dec 26, 2017 3:56:16 PM | 35
@20:

I echo you opinion that this site gives great reports on issues pertaining to Syria and the ME. Credit to b.

On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections. Any candidate that WOULD make a difference would NEVER see the daylight of nomination, especially at the presidential level. I myself believe all the talk of Russia interfering the 2016 Election is no more than a witch hunt.

But I do believe Putin, and for that matter Xi Jinping of China too, should make efforts to infiltrate the USA election processes. It's an eye for an eye. USA has been exercising its free hands in manipulating elections and stirring up color revolutions all around the world, including the 2012 presidential election in Russia. They should be given a taste of their own medicine. In fact, I believe it is for this reason that the US MSM is playing up this hocus pocus Russian-gate matter, as a preemptive measure to justify imposing electioneering controls in the future.

USA may not be vulnerable as yet to this kind of external nuisances, as the masses have not yet reached the stage of being easily stirred. But that time will come.

[Dec 27, 2017] Russia hacked the election. Never happened. No proof, no indication, all fabricated out of whole cloth. BS. The FBI constructs a crime and plants it on people. Like a misstatement in Flynn s case

Accepting a meme is what propaganda is all about
The key reason of Trump victory was the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA -- voters rejected candidates from two major and discredited parties and elected outsider -- Trump is vain hopes that he can change the situation for the better (similar hope were during lection of Obama who also positioned himself as an outsider). So far it looks like he betrayed his voters becoming "Republican Obama" with fame "Make America Great Again" slogan (great for whom, for military industrial complex ?) instead of Obama fake slogan "change we can believe in".
Notable quotes:
"... The Mueller case re election peddling rests entirely on the Steele dossier, now shown to be false. ..."
"... Instead, Mueller is going after unrelated matters in Trump re Russian business deals, or matters taking place AFTER the election, or stupidly investigating Jill Stein for attending a dinner with Putin present ..."
"... Trump has claimed he has no intention of sacking Mueller suggests that those who expect major revelations of a conspiracy between Putin and Trump are going to be disappointed. ..."
"... Flynn's lie is like Russia hacked the election. Totally ether. Never happened. No proof, no indication, all fabricated out of whole cloth. BS. The FBI constructs a crime and plants it on people. A misstatement or in Flynn's case, his duty is to deny, is not a lie. Accepting a meme is what propaganda is all about: ..."
Dec 27, 2017 | moonofalabama.org

Ghost Ship | Dec 27, 2017 10:38:32 AM | 93

>>>> Sid2 | Dec 26, 2017 12:58:36 PM | 12

Why there is not more attention to the outright sham of the investigation is not clear to me. The Mueller case re election peddling rests entirely on the Steele dossier, now shown to be false.

Instead, Mueller is going after unrelated matters in Trump re Russian business deals, or matters taking place AFTER the election, or stupidly investigating Jill Stein for attending a dinner with Putin present.

Is the investigation a sham? Most of what you read about it is supposition coming from partisan reporters working for partisan newspapers. The actual facts are few and far between.

Manafort was clearly influence-peddling but for Turkey and a Ukrainian oligarch. Flynn clear did lie but his actions, requesting Russia delay a response to the expulsion of diplomat and that Russia block a resolution against Israel, appear not to be of themselves illegal. Trump Jr holding a meeting with a Maltese professor of international relations, a Russian criminal lawyer and a "niece" of Putin who wasn't in fact a niece of Putin was neither here nor there unless Trump Jr. lied to the FBI.

There is no evidence that the Steele dossier corroborates any of the above acts, but if the Obama regime really used it to get a FISA warrant then that needs to be investigated. Even the author of the dossier admits it might be 30% wrong.

As for Jill Stein, it's news to me that Mueller is investigating her when it seems to be some Democrats in the Senate who are doing so.

There have been a lot of "leaks" about the Mueller investigation but most reports suggest none of the leaks come from the investigation itself which seems to be watertight. It's a matter of waiting and seeing what comes out later and that Trump has claimed he has no intention of sacking Mueller suggests that those who expect major revelations of a conspiracy between Putin and Trump are going to be disappointed. And nobody can then say that they weren't warned.

Red Ryder , Dec 27, 2017 12:29:58 PM | 102

@93, Ghost Ship, "Flynn clear did lie . . . "

What was the lie? You have the "lie" and no one else has it. There is no lie. There wasn't even a lie to Pence. Flynn was NSC advisor, prior campaign and transition advisor on Nation Security. He was protecting the President's "moves" and doing the President's business.

Flynn's lie is like Russia hacked the election. Totally ether. Never happened. No proof, no indication, all fabricated out of whole cloth. BS. The FBI constructs a crime and plants it on people. A misstatement or in Flynn's case, his duty is to deny, is not a lie. Accepting a meme is what propaganda is all about:

It's all memes for people to accept as facts. Mike Flynn's job is to lie to everyone but his commander-in-chief. That's what he did. In other words, he told "the truth" which everyone should know could be a lie. Flynn was working for President-elect Trump as his top Intel man. Of course, he would lie. He spent 33 years in military Intel, rose to the top and told a million lies. Spies lie. Espionage is about truth and untruth.

Ghost Ship , Dec 27, 2017 1:01:00 PM | 106

>>>> Red Ryder | Dec 27, 2017 12:29:58 PM | 102

So why did Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI? If he was that accustomed to/experienced in lying he would have known what to do. Such as:

  1. Knowing that with the FBI involved you don't lie but that doesn't mean you have to help them;
  2. Making sure he had a criminal lawyer with him before answering any question;
  3. Pleading the fifth amendment.

[Dec 27, 2017] Trump's election was a chance for people to vent their anger and in this sense essential for the Neoliberal Establishment to blow off the steam

Notable quotes:
"... My hypothesis is that pundits like Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Napolitano are still provided with mainstream platforms because they are willing to weave Russia into the scandal. Even a site among the dozen linked by our courageous publisher – "Who What Why" – is pumping "RussiaGate" with an ongoing chain of infoturds accessible at the foot of every page. ..."
"... It's fast becoming a loyalty oath that one must take in order to be eligible for the privilege of public discourse, unless a publisher (e.g., RT) is willing to register as a "Kremlin agent." ..."
"... There are some who see Mr. Trump's election as a chance for people to vent, and thus needful to the Establishment. (Linh Dinh, one of the best writers published here, called it well in advance.) ..."
"... Of course, as with the fraudster Obama, very little of fundamental importance to those that own "our" government will change. ..."
Dec 27, 2017 | www.unz.com

Bro Methylene , December 27, 2017 at 12:54 pm GMT

In the "mainstream media" Mueller is always pictured as deep-thinking and contemplative. In fact he is a foaming-at-the-mouth, scheming, power-hungry, unscrupulous Boris Karloff lookalike who has been secretly working on the Clintons' behalf most of his adult life.

I hope this era of public credulity and secret government wickedness is coming to a close. But too many Americans still rely on TV for information. It is indeed tragic. One can only hope people aren't as stupid in other parts of the world.

anonymous , Disclaimer December 27, 2017 at 1:51 pm GMT
@exiled off mainstreet

See my #5, above.

My hypothesis is that pundits like Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Napolitano are still provided with mainstream platforms because they are willing to weave Russia into the scandal. Even a site among the dozen linked by our courageous publisher – "Who What Why" – is pumping "RussiaGate" with an ongoing chain of infoturds accessible at the foot of every page.

It's fast becoming a loyalty oath that one must take in order to be eligible for the privilege of public discourse, unless a publisher (e.g., RT) is willing to register as a "Kremlin agent."

Flitcraft , December 27, 2017 at 1:58 pm GMT
Dear Sir,
How do explain Comey's second statement to congress two weeks before election then. I believe you but it doesn't fit.?
anonymous , Disclaimer December 27, 2017 at 2:31 pm GMT
@Flitcraft

There are some who see Mr. Trump's election as a chance for people to vent, and thus needful to the Establishment. (Linh Dinh, one of the best writers published here, called it well in advance.)

Of course, as with the fraudster Obama, very little of fundamental importance to those that own "our" government will change.

Ludwig Watzal , Website December 27, 2017 at 2:59 pm GMT
Mr. Buchanan demonstrated convincingly that a liberal war-prone conspiracy is going on against President Trump. Nobody understands why Trump hasn't drained the FBI swamp of the Obama and Clinton mafia. The whole Mueller so-called investigation into nothing sucks out loud. Mueller is not an honest man like the liberals claim. He was in charge when 9/11 happened, and he covered it up. That's why Mueller could serve under Bush and Obama. He belongs to the crooked and criminal DC political establishment. The FBI is nothing than a criminal organization serving the corrupt power elite. I do feel bad for the ordinary FBI agents who face the music and to take the blame for their superior thugs. The crooked US political elites should stop teaching other peoples a lesson in democracy or ethical behavior. It makes me wanna puke.
George Weinbaum , December 27, 2017 at 3:56 pm GMT
What bunk! The "investigation" has always been intended to remove Trump from office. There is nothing the FBI or DOJ could say to me I would believe concerning the results of the "investigation". The FBI has become Beria's NKVD. As Beria said, "You show me the man and I'll show you the crime". What do you think is going on here?

"Are the investigators after the truth, or are they after Trump?", you ask. Where have you been for 11 months?
Comey's "preemption of Justice Department authority was astonishing", you write. What preemption? I am sure Obama himself told Comey to say that Hillary should not be indicted!

Wally , Website December 27, 2017 at 4:44 pm GMT
@Rich

He is at least doing some "straying'.

Under Trump's new tax plan, those from leftist, very high tax states will no longer be able to get the previous federal tax break because of their high state tax.

Leftists wanted a neo-Marxist state, OK, they will now have to pay for all of it.

bluedog , December 27, 2017 at 6:21 pm GMT
Perhaps not but we will still have to subsidize the poor red states so the welfare states will still continue to be a drain on the economy
Svigor , December 27, 2017 at 10:18 pm GMT

This connects the dots in a reasonable fashion on most of the major issues brought out by what this is: the Clinton crowd/deep state effort to "get" Trump. The only thing I would take exception with is to call the phony allegations of the GPS Steele dossier to be "Kremlin" based. They might have talked to Russians, but they were not acting on behalf of the Putin government when they talked. These individuals were doing no more than telling the Clinton researchers what they thought they would want to hear so that generous payments would be forthcoming.

This does seem likely, but it's not writ in stone.

Rather obvious Steele made it all up.

That, too. *Meets with Russian contact, holds out dossier* "Here, hand me this, so I can honestly say I got it from you."

He was in charge when 9/11 happened, and he covered it up.

He got the job like a week before 9/11, but yeah, he did cover up the gov't's bumbling. 100% swamp creature.

Trump needs to find a real cop inside the FBI, one without a law degree, and put him in charge.

Perhaps not but we will still have to subsidize the poor red states, because negroes and mestizos, Democrat constituencies, so the negroes and mestizos in welfare states will continue to be a drain on the economy

FIFY.

[Dec 27, 2017] Mueller investigation as about attempt to avoid going after Clinton, which shows that a corrupted intelligence service working for political ends to save Clinton wing dominance in the Democratic Party, which needs to be replaced by Sanders wing and would be replaced if not this level of interference

Dec 27, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

55

Sid2 , Dec 26, 2017 8:24:09 PM | 55

It's very difficult to get the head wrapped around the Mueller investigation as a contrivance to avoid going after Clinton, which shows a corrupted intelligence service working for political ends and saving the Democratic Party, which needs replacing. The evidence against Clinton is much more substantial than the continuing Mueller foray into inconsequence. If you need more on Clinton beyond the massive email problems she had to avoid revealing how much pay money she was getting, search on the DNC convention entirely corrupted over to her and then the Uranium One deal. Why is all this not being investigated? It should be Clinton-Gate not Russia-Gate. It seems that once again, as with late 02 and into 03, the populace has been hoodwinked into believing government falseness--as with the non-existent WMD and invasion of Iraq.

[Dec 27, 2017] RT on the Steele dossier

Notable quotes:
"... It's why journalists like Luke Harding and Anne Applebaum want their readers to believe they are part of James Bond-style events in Moscow, where KGB agents are breaking in their windows and stealing their purses. More than anything else, those dubious tales are about confirming their own relevance and making sure their readers know how 'important' they are: Look at me, I was brave enough to venture into the Russian abyss, please acknowledge my efforts with endless praise and adulation. ..."
Dec 27, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Posted by: Forest | Dec 27, 2017 6:44:47 PM | 127

Ghost Ship , Dec 27, 2017 7:03:59 PM | 128

Good hatchet job in RT on the Steele dossier (which links to a Tablet investigation worth reading) which explains why you shouldn't pay too much attention to what writers like Luke Harding (The Guardian) and Anne Applebaum (The Washington Post) output:
But Ohr hasn't lived in Russia for decades either -- and she isn't a spy or a journalist, as Smith notes. This presumably is why much of the 'reporting' in the dossier is based on rumor and hearsay; the kind of information that gets bandied around in Moscow's expat circles where everyone is trying to one-up each other by claiming to have 'insider' knowledge.

This phenomenon is actually key to understanding not just Russiagate, but Western reporting on Russia in general. It's almost a kind of Cold War nostalgia. Journalists are lured by the prospect of appearing to be 'in on' the latest Kremlin intrigue or, even better, the appearance that they are so important that the Kremlin is out to get them; that they are truly living on the edge.

It's why journalists like Luke Harding and Anne Applebaum want their readers to believe they are part of James Bond-style events in Moscow, where KGB agents are breaking in their windows and stealing their purses. More than anything else, those dubious tales are about confirming their own relevance and making sure their readers know how 'important' they are: Look at me, I was brave enough to venture into the Russian abyss, please acknowledge my efforts with endless praise and adulation.

Anne Applebaum is now at the "London School of Economics as a Professor of Practice at the Institute for Global Affairs. At the LSE she runs Arena, a program on disinformation and 21st century propaganda". She should be well versed in disinformation and 21st century propaganda because she's been delivering it on behalf of the Washington establishment for quite some time although I suspect her program is a "hit job" on Moscow.

james , Dec 27, 2017 7:19:27 PM | 129
Annie applepants is a confirmed Russia hater... she never lets up even when he husband loses his position in the polish political process... and it explains why she is given regular opportunities to express her views in the CIA outlet - WaPo..

[Dec 27, 2017] Trump's election was a chance for people to vent thier anger and in sense essentail for the Neoliberal Establishment to blow off the steam. In this sense the Clinton crowd/deep state effort to "get" Trump might eventually backfire

Notable quotes:
"... My hypothesis is that pundits like Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Napolitano are still provided with mainstream platforms because they are willing to weave Russia into the scandal. Even a site among the dozen linked by our courageous publisher – "Who What Why" – is pumping "RussiaGate" with an ongoing chain of infoturds accessible at the foot of every page. ..."
"... It's fast becoming a loyalty oath that one must take in order to be eligible for the privilege of public discourse, unless a publisher (e.g., RT) is willing to register as a "Kremlin agent." ..."
"... There are some who see Mr. Trump's election as a chance for people to vent, and thus needful to the Establishment. (Linh Dinh, one of the best writers published here, called it well in advance.) ..."
"... Of course, as with the fraudster Obama, very little of fundamental importance to those that own "our" government will change. ..."
Dec 27, 2017 | www.unz.com

Bro Methylene , December 27, 2017 at 12:54 pm GMT

In the "mainstream media" Mueller is always pictured as deep-thinking and contemplative. In fact he is a foaming-at-the-mouth, scheming, power-hungry, unscrupulous Boris Karloff lookalike who has been secretly working on the Clintons' behalf most of his adult life.

I hope this era of public credulity and secret government wickedness is coming to a close. But too many Americans still rely on TV for information. It is indeed tragic. One can only hope people aren't as stupid in other parts of the world.

anonymous , Disclaimer December 27, 2017 at 1:51 pm GMT
@exiled off mainstreet

See my #5, above.

My hypothesis is that pundits like Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Napolitano are still provided with mainstream platforms because they are willing to weave Russia into the scandal. Even a site among the dozen linked by our courageous publisher – "Who What Why" – is pumping "RussiaGate" with an ongoing chain of infoturds accessible at the foot of every page.

It's fast becoming a loyalty oath that one must take in order to be eligible for the privilege of public discourse, unless a publisher (e.g., RT) is willing to register as a "Kremlin agent."

Flitcraft , December 27, 2017 at 1:58 pm GMT
Dear Sir,
How do explain Comey's second statement to congress two weeks before election then. I believe you but it doesn't fit.?
anonymous , Disclaimer December 27, 2017 at 2:31 pm GMT
@Flitcraft

There are some who see Mr. Trump's election as a chance for people to vent, and thus needful to the Establishment. (Linh Dinh, one of the best writers published here, called it well in advance.)

Of course, as with the fraudster Obama, very little of fundamental importance to those that own "our" government will change.

Ludwig Watzal , Website December 27, 2017 at 2:59 pm GMT
Mr. Buchanan demonstrated convincingly that a liberal war-prone conspiracy is going on against President Trump. Nobody understands why Trump hasn't drained the FBI swamp of the Obama and Clinton mafia. The whole Mueller so-called investigation into nothing sucks out loud. Mueller is not an honest man like the liberals claim. He was in charge when 9/11 happened, and he covered it up. That's why Mueller could serve under Bush and Obama. He belongs to the crooked and criminal DC political establishment. The FBI is nothing than a criminal organization serving the corrupt power elite. I do feel bad for the ordinary FBI agents who face the music and to take the blame for their superior thugs. The crooked US political elites should stop teaching other peoples a lesson in democracy or ethical behavior. It makes me wanna puke.
George Weinbaum , December 27, 2017 at 3:56 pm GMT
What bunk! The "investigation" has always been intended to remove Trump from office. There is nothing the FBI or DOJ could say to me I would believe concerning the results of the "investigation". The FBI has become Beria's NKVD. As Beria said, "You show me the man and I'll show you the crime". What do you think is going on here?

"Are the investigators after the truth, or are they after Trump?", you ask. Where have you been for 11 months?
Comey's "preemption of Justice Department authority was astonishing", you write. What preemption? I am sure Obama himself told Comey to say that Hillary should not be indicted!

Wally , Website December 27, 2017 at 4:44 pm GMT
@Rich

He is at least doing some "straying'.

Under Trump's new tax plan, those from leftist, very high tax states will no longer be able to get the previous federal tax break because of their high state tax.

Leftists wanted a neo-Marxist state, OK, they will now have to pay for all of it.

bluedog , December 27, 2017 at 6:21 pm GMT
Perhaps not but we will still have to subsidize the poor red states so the welfare states will still continue to be a drain on the economy
Svigor , December 27, 2017 at 10:18 pm GMT

This connects the dots in a reasonable fashion on most of the major issues brought out by what this is: the Clinton crowd/deep state effort to "get" Trump. The only thing I would take exception with is to call the phony allegations of the GPS Steele dossier to be "Kremlin" based. They might have talked to Russians, but they were not acting on behalf of the Putin government when they talked. These individuals were doing no more than telling the Clinton researchers what they thought they would want to hear so that generous payments would be forthcoming.

This does seem likely, but it's not writ in stone.

Rather obvious Steele made it all up.

That, too. *Meets with Russian contact, holds out dossier* "Here, hand me this, so I can honestly say I got it from you."

He was in charge when 9/11 happened, and he covered it up.

He got the job like a week before 9/11, but yeah, he did cover up the gov't's bumbling. 100% swamp creature.

Trump needs to find a real cop inside the FBI, one without a law degree, and put him in charge.

Perhaps not but we will still have to subsidize the poor red states, because negroes and mestizos, Democrat constituencies, so the negroes and mestizos in welfare states will continue to be a drain on the economy

FIFY.

[Dec 27, 2017] Did the FBI Conspire to Stop Trump, by Pat Buchanan

Essentially FBI has pushed Sunders under the bus and as such rigged the elections. In no way Hillary can become candidate if she woouls have benn charged with "gross negligence". In this sense they are criminals.
Notable quotes:
"... And so Hillary walked. Why is this suspicious? First, whether or not to indict was a decision that belonged to the Department of Justice, not Jim Comey or the FBI. His preemption of Justice Department authority was astonishing. Second, while Comey said in his statement that Hillary had been "extremely careless" with security secrets, in his first draft, Clinton was declared guilty of "gross negligence" -- the precise language in the statute to justify indictment. ..."
"... Who talked Comey into softening the language to look less than criminal? One man was FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whose wife, Jill, a Virginia state senate candidate, received a munificent PAC contribution of $474,000 from Clinton family friend and big bundler Terry McAuliffe. ..."
"... Also urging Comey to soften the fatal phrase "gross negligence" was key FBI agent Peter Strzok. In text messages to his FBI lover Lisa Page, Strzok repeatedly vented his detestation of the "idiot" Trump. After one meeting with "Andy" (McCabe), Strzok told Page an "insurance policy" was needed to keep Trump out of the White House. ..."
"... JFK wanted to break the CIA into a million pieces and I think Trump needs to shatter the FBI into a million pieces after these latest revelations. The FBI stinks to high heaven and have for quite a long time now. They have become a highly politicized federal law enforcement agency ..."
"... If any Joe or Jane Shmo at Boeing or Lockheed-Martin had done what Hillary did he or she would have been fired and fined or jailed or both. His or hers security clearance would have been permanently revoked. So much for liberty and justice for all. ..."
"... What was the original mandate for Robert Mueller? If after all this time he has not been able to find any connection between Trump campaign and Putin then that phase of the investigation must end. The Justice Department appointed him and they should put a stop to that portion of the investigation. They can always give him a new mandate to investigate Hillary campaign's connection with Russia. These investigations should never be open ended. Lots of money is wasted and it gives the investigator an opportunity to satisfy personal vendetta. ..."
"... This connects the dots in a reasonable fashion on most of the major issues brought out by what this is: the Clinton crowd/deep state effort to "get" Trump. ..."
"... The only thing I would take exception with is to call the phony allegations of the GPS Steele dossier to be "Kremlin" based. They might have talked to Russians, but they were not acting on behalf of the Putin government when they talked. These individuals were doing no more than telling the Clinton researchers what they thought they would want to hear so that generous payments would be forthcoming. ..."
"... Rather obvious Steele made it all up. ..."
Dec 26, 2017 | The Unz Review
List of Bookmarks

The original question the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign was to answer was a simple one: Did he do it?

Did Trump, or officials with his knowledge, collude with Vladimir Putin's Russia to hack the emails of John Podesta and the DNC, and leak the contents to damage Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump?

A year and a half into the investigation, and, still, no "collusion" has been found. Yet the investigation goes on, at the demand of the never-Trump media and Beltway establishment.

Hence, and understandably, suspicions have arisen.

Are the investigators after the truth, or are they after Trump?

Set aside the Trump-Putin conspiracy theory momentarily, and consider a rival explanation for what is going down here:

That, from the outset, Director James Comey and an FBI camarilla were determined to stop Trump and elect Hillary Clinton. Having failed, they conspired to break Trump's presidency, overturn his mandate and bring him down.

Essential to any such project was first to block any indictment of Hillary for transmitting national security secrets over her private email server. That first objective was achieved 18 months ago.

On July 5, 2016, Comey stepped before a stunned press corps to declare that, given the evidence gathered by the FBI, "no reasonable prosecutor" would indict Clinton. Therefore, that was the course he, Comey, was recommending. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, compromised by her infamous 35-minute tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton -- to discuss golf and grandkids -- seconded Comey's decision.

And so Hillary walked. Why is this suspicious? First, whether or not to indict was a decision that belonged to the Department of Justice, not Jim Comey or the FBI. His preemption of Justice Department authority was astonishing. Second, while Comey said in his statement that Hillary had been "extremely careless" with security secrets, in his first draft, Clinton was declared guilty of "gross negligence" -- the precise language in the statute to justify indictment.

Who talked Comey into softening the language to look less than criminal? One man was FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whose wife, Jill, a Virginia state senate candidate, received a munificent PAC contribution of $474,000 from Clinton family friend and big bundler Terry McAuliffe.

Also urging Comey to soften the fatal phrase "gross negligence" was key FBI agent Peter Strzok. In text messages to his FBI lover Lisa Page, Strzok repeatedly vented his detestation of the "idiot" Trump. After one meeting with "Andy" (McCabe), Strzok told Page an "insurance policy" was needed to keep Trump out of the White House.

Also, it appears Comey began drafting his exoneration statement of Hillary before the FBI had even interviewed her. And when the FBI did, Hillary was permitted to have her lawyers present.

One need not be a conspiracy nut to conclude the fix was in, and a pass for Hillary wired from the get-go. Comey, McCabe, Strzok were not going to recommend an indictment that would blow Hillary out of the water and let the Trump Tower crowd waltz into the White House.

Yet, if Special Counsel Robert Mueller cannot find any Trump collusion with the Kremlin to tilt the outcome of the 2016 election, his investigators might have another look at the Clinton campaign.

For there a Russian connection has been established.

Kremlin agents fabricated, faked, forged, or found the dirt on Trump that was passed to ex-British MI6 spy Christopher Steele, and wound up in his "dirty dossier" that was distributed to the mainstream media and the FBI to torpedo Trump.

And who hired Steele to tie Trump to Russia?

Fusion GPS, the oppo research outfit into which the DNC and Clinton campaign pumped millions through law firm Perkins Coie.

Let's review the bidding.

The "dirty dossier," a mixture of fabrications, falsehoods and half-truths, created to destroy Trump and make Hillary president, was the product of a British spy's collusion with Kremlin agents.

In Dec. 26′s Washington Times, Rowan Scarborough writes that the FBI relied on this Kremlin-Steele dossier of allegations and lies to base their decision "to open a counterintelligence investigation (of Trump)." And press reports "cite the document's disinformation in requests for court-approved wiretaps."

If this is true, a critical questions arises:

Has the Mueller probe been so contaminated by anti-Trump bias and reliance on Kremlin fabrications that any indictment it brings will be suspect in the eyes of the American people?

Director Comey has been fired. FBI No. 2 McCabe is now being retired under a cloud. Mueller's top FBI investigator, Peter Strzok, and lover Lisa, have been discharged. And Mueller is left to rely upon a passel of prosecutors whose common denominator appears to be that they loathe Trump and made contributions to Hillary.

Attorney General Bobby Kennedy had his "Get Hoffa Squad" to take down Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. J. Edgar Hoover had his vendetta against Dr. Martin Luther King. Is history repeating itself -- with the designated target of an elite FBI cabal being the President of the United States?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

KenH , Next New Comment December 26, 2017 at 11:07 pm GMT

JFK wanted to break the CIA into a million pieces and I think Trump needs to shatter the FBI into a million pieces after these latest revelations. The FBI stinks to high heaven and have for quite a long time now. They have become a highly politicized federal law enforcement agency who often collaborate with mortal enemies of America like the ADL and other "watchdog" groups in addition to assuming the biases of said organizations against certain groups of Americans.

They behave like a bunch of cowboys and police state thugs and their treatment of and unnecessary raid on Paul Manafort's home was just the tip of the iceberg. The FBI is becoming a clear and present danger to civil liberties.

Rich , Next New Comment December 27, 2017 at 1:34 am GMT
Trump was a bit of a wild card to the establishment elites. He lived in the public spotlight for most of his adult life, so his foibles were well known, and he had too much money to be bought off. Mueller was given his job to make sure Trump doesn't stray too far from the elitists program. He appears to have been cowed and is walking the straight left of center republican line, now.
T. G. , Next New Comment December 27, 2017 at 1:42 am GMT
"A game going on inside the intelligence community":
anonymous , Disclaimer Next New Comment December 27, 2017 at 1:58 am GMT
"For there a Russian connection has been established.

Kremlin agents fabricated, faked, forged, or found the dirt on Trump that was passed to ex-British MI6 spy Christopher Steele, and wound up in his "dirty dossier" that was distributed to the mainstream media and the FBI to torpedo Trump."

No worries -- as long as somebody can still accuse "Kremlin agents" of something, the Establishment will be just fine.

Time for Mr. Napolitano to take his turn at the spinning wheel?

MEexpert , Next New Comment December 27, 2017 at 6:52 am GMT

Second, while Comey said in his statement that Hillary had been "extremely careless" with security secrets, in his first draft, Clinton was declared guilty of "gross negligence" -- the precise language in the statute to justify indictment.

If any Joe or Jane Shmo at Boeing or Lockheed-Martin had done what Hillary did he or she would have been fired and fined or jailed or both. His or hers security clearance would have been permanently revoked. So much for liberty and justice for all.

What was the original mandate for Robert Mueller? If after all this time he has not been able to find any connection between Trump campaign and Putin then that phase of the investigation must end. The Justice Department appointed him and they should put a stop to that portion of the investigation. They can always give him a new mandate to investigate Hillary campaign's connection with Russia. These investigations should never be open ended. Lots of money is wasted and it gives the investigator an opportunity to satisfy personal vendetta.

exiled off mainstreet , Next New Comment December 27, 2017 at 8:05 am GMT
This connects the dots in a reasonable fashion on most of the major issues brought out by what this is: the Clinton crowd/deep state effort to "get" Trump.

The only thing I would take exception with is to call the phony allegations of the GPS Steele dossier to be "Kremlin" based. They might have talked to Russians, but they were not acting on behalf of the Putin government when they talked. These individuals were doing no more than telling the Clinton researchers what they thought they would want to hear so that generous payments would be forthcoming.

LondonBob , December 27, 2017 at 11:40 am GMT
@anonymous

Rather obvious Steele made it all up.

[Dec 27, 2017] Trump claims FBI used bogus dossier to go after his campaign by REBECCA MORIN

Notable quotes:
"... "WOW, @foxandfrlends "Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED." ..."
"... Rooney said the agency – and in particular Peter Strzok, a top FBI agent who was involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation – needs to be purged. ..."
"... "I would like to see the directors of those agencies purge it," Rooney said. "And say, look, we've got a lot of great agents, a lot of great lawyers here, those are the people that I want the American people to see and know the good works being done, not these people who are kind of the deep state." ..."
"... On Saturday and Sunday, Trump targeted FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whose role in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server has come under scrutiny because his wife, Jill McCabe, accepted $450,000 in campaign contributions from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe's PAC and more than $207,000 from the state Democratic Party when she ran for Virginia state Senate in 2015 -- money donated before McCabe was promoted to deputy director. ..."
Dec 25, 2017 | www.politico.com

President Donald Trump on Tuesday asserted that the FBI is "tainted" and it is using a "bogus" dossier alleging ties between his campaign and Russia to go after him.

"WOW, @foxandfrlends "Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED."

And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!" Trump tweeted. Trump seemed to reference a segment from "Fox & Friends," a TV show that the president watches and often praises. GOP Rep. Francis Rooney on Tuesday also raised doubt about the FBI's intentions. The Florida congressman said during an interview on MSNBC that the "American people have very high standards" for government agencies and suggested they aren't being met. Rooney said the agency – and in particular Peter Strzok, a top FBI agent who was involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation – needs to be purged.

"I would like to see the directors of those agencies purge it," Rooney said. "And say, look, we've got a lot of great agents, a lot of great lawyers here, those are the people that I want the American people to see and know the good works being done, not these people who are kind of the deep state."

The president's Tuesday tweet followed a series the president posted over the holiday weekend bashing the FBI and its leadership.

On Saturday and Sunday, Trump targeted FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whose role in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server has come under scrutiny because his wife, Jill McCabe, accepted $450,000 in campaign contributions from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe's PAC and more than $207,000 from the state Democratic Party when she ran for Virginia state Senate in 2015 -- money donated before McCabe was promoted to deputy director.

In two of his weekend tweets, Trump referenced something he saw on Fox News.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 3:27 PM-Dec 23, 2017

How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin' James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife's campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?

Donald J. Trump О @realDonaldTrump 3:30 PM-Dec 23, 2017

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 3:32 PM-Dec 23, 2017

Wow, "FBI lawyer James Baker reassigned," according to @FoxNews.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 7:25 AM-Dec 24, 2017

@FoxNews-FBI's Andrew McCabe, "in addition to his wife getting all of this money from M (Clinton Puppet), he was using, allegedly, his FBI Official Email Account to promote her campaign. You obviously cannot do this. These were the people who were investigating Hillary Clinton."

McCabe is expected to retire in the new year, according to a Washington Post report .

[Dec 26, 2017] Trump administration accelerates a new arm race

Notable quotes:
"... "The prospect of maintaining global and regional stability has been considerably reduced as a result of deployment of elements of U.S. missile defense in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East, as well as of practical implementation of the "global strike" concept and the deployment of strategic non-nuclear high-precision weapons, and also in the event of deployment of weapons in space." ..."
"... Now the United States shares the same concerns as Russia. This might be good news or bad news, depending on political decisions. ..."
"... The potential bad news is an arms race. If the two countries are unable to launch a dialogue, then the United States might seek to respond in kind. A hint at that option is contained in the NSS's requirement for creating an "overmatch" -- a force that is "capable of operating at sufficient scale and for ample duration to win across a range of scenarios." More troubling is the requirement that the future force must be able to "convince adversaries that we can and will defeat them -- not just punish them." This sounds like a prescription for an arms race -- a pursuit of superiority that some in the United States consistently sought (and equally consistently failed to achieve) during the Cold War. ..."
Dec 26, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

Extracted from The Russification of U.S. Deterrence Policy The National Interest

What is truly conspicuous, the language of the NSS closely matches relevant language in the latest Russian National Security Strategy (article 15):

"The prospect of maintaining global and regional stability has been considerably reduced as a result of deployment of elements of U.S. missile defense in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East, as well as of practical implementation of the "global strike" concept and the deployment of strategic non-nuclear high-precision weapons, and also in the event of deployment of weapons in space."

Indeed, the United States' strategic conventional capability has been a nightmare for Russian military planners since at least 1999, when it was employed in the Balkans. The initial Russian response was to increase reliance on nuclear weapons, which were assigned a mission of limited nuclear strike in response to a large-scale conventional attack. Moscow stated, however, that this was a temporary fix and that reliance on nuclear weapons would again decrease when it acquired a conventional strategic capability. Last month, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces, confirmed that Moscow planned to reassign some deterrence missions from nuclear to conventional assets at an undefined future time.

Now the United States shares the same concerns as Russia. This might be good news or bad news, depending on political decisions.

The potential good news is that being on the same page makes arms-control dialogue easier. For many years, the United States refused to discuss strategic conventional weapons at arms-control talks while Russia relied on the comfort of preserving a monopoly on these assets. That this position is outdated and counterproductive for U.S. interests became clear at least in 2013, if not earlier -- at least for the handful of analysts who took Russian intentions seriously. Washington seems to be catching up with reality, which helps establish a common agenda as well as opening prospects for an effort to regulate such weapons. Perhaps we can then stabilize the strategic landscape sufficiently to prevent not only nuclear war, but also a large-scale conventional conflict that might escalate to nuclear clashes.

The potential bad news is an arms race. If the two countries are unable to launch a dialogue, then the United States might seek to respond in kind. A hint at that option is contained in the NSS's requirement for creating an "overmatch" -- a force that is "capable of operating at sufficient scale and for ample duration to win across a range of scenarios." More troubling is the requirement that the future force must be able to "convince adversaries that we can and will defeat them -- not just punish them." This sounds like a prescription for an arms race -- a pursuit of superiority that some in the United States consistently sought (and equally consistently failed to achieve) during the Cold War.

Dr. Nikolai Sokov is a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Nick • 7 hours ago

America can ill afford another "Arms race", to put it simply we're in debt up to our eyeballs. However there's many in DC who yearn for a new "cold war" but more specifically the "arms race" that would come with it, just the same.

[Dec 26, 2017] Are sanctions pushing Russians to rally around the flag Not exactly

Notable quotes:
"... There is an ongoing conflict between Russia and the West concerning EU and NATO expansion into the former USSR. Russia's resisting this expansion, and the West is trying to bully Russia into accepting it. ..."
"... The Atlantic Alliance's support for the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine was all about pulling that country into the EU and NATO. The West's involvement in this revolt amounted to an aggressive move by the West against Russia. In return, Russia annexed Crimea, and triggered an anti-Ukrainian revolt in Donbass. ..."
"... The West's response to this was to impose economic sanctions on Russia, in an effort to destroy that country's economy. The goal was to force Russia to submit to the West's mandate, and to permanently forgo its vital national interests in Ukraine ..."
"... Sanctions are there because Russia. is an ally of Syria , and Israel wants Syria destroyed. The sanctions are a means to punish Russia for being Syria's friend, and also to remove Russian influence from that area of the world. Their base at Tarterus. ..."
"... For all it is worth , currently the Russians have more of a legitimate justification to attack the USA and Israel , than Japan did when they attacked Pearl Harbor, because of sanctions slapped on them since they would not leave China, and then moved into Vietnam after being allowed to by Vichy France. ..."
"... Quite obvious sanctions are not hurting Russia as they were Japan otherwise it would be a nasty scene right now. But still not advisable to poke that bear further. ..."
Dec 26, 2017 | www.washingtonpost.com

AMR56 6/18/2017 10:52 AM EDT

There is an ongoing conflict between Russia and the West concerning EU and NATO expansion into the former USSR. Russia's resisting this expansion, and the West is trying to bully Russia into accepting it.

The Atlantic Alliance's support for the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine was all about pulling that country into the EU and NATO. The West's involvement in this revolt amounted to an aggressive move by the West against Russia. In return, Russia annexed Crimea, and triggered an anti-Ukrainian revolt in Donbass.

The West's response to this was to impose economic sanctions on Russia, in an effort to destroy that country's economy. The goal was to force Russia to submit to the West's mandate, and to permanently forgo its vital national interests in Ukraine.

The first round of sanctions has obviously failed to have its effect. That's why the US Senate is now attempting a new, harsher round of sanctions in an effort to force Russia to submit to the West's mandate. ... more See More Like Share

MyFreeAdvice 6/16/2017 9:08 AM EDT
The new sanctions on Russia is all about giving an advantage to US LNG producers. First shipment of LNG to Poland from US, ever, was done just last week. It is all a game for the benefit of the big business while emotionally victimizing the common person in the US.
Alex Bes 6/16/2017 7:31 AM EDT [Edited]
Timoty Frai made a lot of research and did a lot of conclusions. Unfortunately he did not understand the only fact: we Russians has a little bit different mentality. Sanctions could not make us gave up if we believe that we are on a right side )))

For example: Imagine if someone say to you: "If you will not let me hurt your baby I will reject you as a customer!" Will you let him hurt your baby??? Most of the Russians won't!

Christopher Perrien 6/15/2017 9:06 AM EDT [Edited]
Sanctions are there because Russia. is an ally of Syria , and Israel wants Syria destroyed. The sanctions are a means to punish Russia for being Syria's friend, and also to remove Russian influence from that area of the world. Their base at Tarterus.

For all it is worth , currently the Russians have more of a legitimate justification to attack the USA and Israel , than Japan did when they attacked Pearl Harbor, because of sanctions slapped on them since they would not leave China, and then moved into Vietnam after being allowed to by Vichy France.

Quite obvious sanctions are not hurting Russia as they were Japan otherwise it would be a nasty scene right now. But still not advisable to poke that bear further.

Manuel Angst 6/15/2017 9:49 AM EDT
"... punish Russia for being Syria's friend"

Propping up the biggest butcher of Syrian people is hardly "being Syria's friend".

... more See More Like Nedlog and Manuel Angst 2

Revealer 6/15/2017 6:42 PM EDT
Must I remind you that many thousands of Americans living in both Southern and Northern states of American considered Abraham Lincoln a butcher of American people and a tyrant doing the U.S. civil war. In fact he outraged so many who thought of him that way he was assassinated because of a belief that he was a tyrant and a butcher of American people. Many people at the time remembered Gen. Sherman's military march through the South that burned everything in sight and believe it or not killed many civilians. Be careful who you call a butcher. ... more See More Like
Don Brook 6/15/2017 8:47 AM EDT
Putin's disciple Trump may well decide to invade some small country as a way of shoring up his own declining approval. ... more See More Like Share
Tebteb27 6/15/2017 8:54 AM EDT
You are a type locality example of the slow digression into destructive ignorance that we currently face as a nation. God help us. ... more See More Like
Ed Chen 6/15/2017 9:10 AM EDT
That is the best vision of how the leftist (the same word "liberal") propaganda screw the minds of the people like Don Brook, to bring this nation to a dangerous situation of clash with each other over nothing, but the pain could be great. Are sanctions pushing Russians to 'rally around the flag'? Not exactly. - The Washington Post
Bob Twou 6/15/2017 8:37 AM EDT
The sanctions have strengthen Russia's domestic economy and has turn the corner
despite low energy prices. Sanctions are never an effective tool for international relations, look at Cuba. lol
Russian are an educated people, they are not stupid which the Establishment media wants us to believe. Time to talk, isn't that what diplomacy is all about? ... more See More Like Share Erugo 1
altR 6/15/2017 8:58 AM EDT
You are also correct, sanctions are the biggest waste of time. They are only for the political elite to fake resolve

[Dec 26, 2017] A "color revolution" is under way in the United States by the Saker

This article and discussion now is almost one year old, but some people predicted that Trump will betray all his election promises with ease and will just try to survive color regulation against him and pander to Wall Street, Israel and neocons. Which is what he is currently doing. He proved to be far below the intellectual level required for a good president of such country as the USA. Blunders that he already did are inexcusable. May be this is age.
Notable quotes:
"... The forces which are currently trying to impeach, overthrow or murder President Trump are a clear and present danger to the United States as a country and to the US Federal Republic. They are, to use a Russian word, a type of "non-system" opposition which does not want to accept the outcome of the elections and which by rejecting this outcome essentially oppose the entire political system. ..."
"... It amazes me to see that the US pseudo-elites have as much hatred, contempt and fear of the American masses as the Russian pseudo-elites have hatred, contempt and fear of the Russian masses (the Russian equivalent or Hillary's "deplorables" would be a hard to pronounce for English speakers word "быдло", roughly "cattle", "lumpen" or "rabble"). ..."
"... It amazes me to see that the very same people which have demonized Putin for years are now demonizing Trump using exactly the same methods. ..."
"... My current opinion is that he is not neocon or part of color revolution, but he is not a champion of the people either. He is one of the competitors among the elite. (An anti-hero as Crosstalk recently characterized him?) ..."
"... He is pandering to neocons. He is result of people who fed up with the establishment. So he is result of revolution, maybe the first one of many to purge the system. ..."
"... Of course there is a color revolution in the US right now -- because all the sources of neoliberal fake-revolutionary ideology are right here. It's a poisonous ideology which really is popular with smug media elites, boosted by "nudges" from the deep state. It's just a lot of very corrupt, bad people. The ultimate, long-term objective of the deep state may not be readily apparent, but at a fairly serious medium-term level, their interests are precisely the same as what people like Michael Weiss, Dick Cheney, and Van Jones are making clear to us with their own words. ..."
"... Similarly, Trump found his support base from Wall Street/Masters of the Universe as outlined by Pepe Escobar. Of course he doesn't represent "the people" because "the people," whether left or right, are no longer interested in grassroots political organization for their own interests. Wall Street can do that, because they have a source of money independent from the gov't. The only question now is who gets more slices of a shrinking pie, and how radical either side is willing to go in overriding America's broken democratic process to make it happen. ..."
"... Had Clinton won, she could done much worse than Trump, and get away with public opinion. Neoliberal infrastructure would be live and well. ..."
"... A curious aspect of Trump and which "class" he belongs to: As a "kid from Queens" Donald Trump has always been an outsider to the Manhattan social elites. Even after he became far wealthier than they, even after his buildings transformed the New York City skyline he was never admitted into the club. He was only ever allowed in as a guest. ..."
Jan 28, 2017 | thesaker.is

The forces which are currently trying to impeach, overthrow or murder President Trump are a clear and present danger to the United States as a country and to the US Federal Republic. They are, to use a Russian word, a type of "non-system" opposition which does not want to accept the outcome of the elections and which by rejecting this outcome essentially oppose the entire political system.

... ... ...

It amazes me to see that the US pseudo-elites have as much hatred, contempt and fear of the American masses as the Russian pseudo-elites have hatred, contempt and fear of the Russian masses (the Russian equivalent or Hillary's "deplorables" would be a hard to pronounce for English speakers word "быдло", roughly "cattle", "lumpen" or "rabble").

It amazes me to see that the very same people which have demonized Putin for years are now demonizing Trump using exactly the same methods.

And if their own country has to go down in their struggle against the common people – so be it! These self-declared elites will have no compunction whatsoever to destroy the nation their have been parasitizing and exploiting for their own class interest. They did just that to Russia exactly 100 years ago, in 1917. I sure hope that they will not get away with that again in 2017.

J on January 28, 2017 · at 5:40 am UTC

Trump is part of neocon. If anything, trump is part of color revolution, not against it. I do not see his administration turn out well with his action so far. Trump is also a idiot. Any one pitch a fight with a neighbor like he is doing is not suit to deal with relation.

Talk about relation, check out internet video clips and see how much respect he give to his wife.

blue on January 28, 2017 · at 6:26 am UTC

My current opinion is that he is not neocon or part of color revolution, but he is not a champion of the people either. He is one of the competitors among the elite. (An anti-hero as Crosstalk recently characterized him?)

So who is there to champion the people and oppose the monstrous elite? Us -- just us. Each and all of us, and we need to get our acts together. If there is no 'great leader' then we have to lead ourselves: distributed leadership with collective intelligence and power.

J on January 28, 2017 · at 7:07 am UTC

He is pandering to neocons. He is result of people who fed up with the establishment. So he is result of revolution, maybe the first one of many to purge the system.

We need to make sure we take out garbage in every election, we will win in the end.

we can not only see things in one perspective. But it seems not something come naturally out side of east Asia.

J.L.Seagull on January 28, 2017 · at 8:26 am UTC

I don't understand why everything has to be either controlled opposition or controlled support.

Of course there is a color revolution in the US right now -- because all the sources of neoliberal fake-revolutionary ideology are right here. It's a poisonous ideology which really is popular with smug media elites, boosted by "nudges" from the deep state. It's just a lot of very corrupt, bad people. The ultimate, long-term objective of the deep state may not be readily apparent, but at a fairly serious medium-term level, their interests are precisely the same as what people like Michael Weiss, Dick Cheney, and Van Jones are making clear to us with their own words.

Similarly, Trump found his support base from Wall Street/Masters of the Universe as outlined by Pepe Escobar. Of course he doesn't represent "the people" because "the people," whether left or right, are no longer interested in grassroots political organization for their own interests. Wall Street can do that, because they have a source of money independent from the gov't. The only question now is who gets more slices of a shrinking pie, and how radical either side is willing to go in overriding America's broken democratic process to make it happen.

The readers of this website should cheer Trump's willingness to trample on the neoliberal narrative, but their own livelihoods will not be guaranteed by Trump or anyone else in power.

J on January 29, 2017 · at 4:52 am UTC

J.L.S

Had Clinton won, she could done much worse than Trump, and get away with public opinion. Neoliberal infrastructure would be live and well. So I am fully for get rid of her, and do not let Trump getting away with anything. So far, trump's actions are pity, until he cause some real war somewhere. I love to see MSM got taken down.

Sir Humphrey Appleby on January 28, 2017 · at 10:26 am UTC

Khrushchev says to Zhou Enlai, "The difference between the Soviet Union and China is that I rose to power from the peasant class, whereas you came from the privileged Mandarin class." Zhou replies, "True. But there is this similarity. Each of us is a traitor to his class."

I don't know if this is a true story, but Trump may end up obliged to betray his class like others have done in the past if we assume all rich people belong to the same class with homogeneous interests.

Anonymous on January 28, 2017 · at 1:32 pm UTC

A curious aspect of Trump and which "class" he belongs to: As a "kid from Queens" Donald Trump has always been an outsider to the Manhattan social elites. Even after he became far wealthier than they, even after his buildings transformed the New York City skyline he was never admitted into the club. He was only ever allowed in as a guest.

He isn't a member of "the elite" – other than the one of his own making. It's an odd thing but true.

[Dec 26, 2017] National Security Searches for a Strategy by Philip Giraldi

Trump is now 100% pure neocon. What a metamorphose is less a year from inauguration...
Notable quotes:
"... It says, with extreme hyperbole, that "China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence. At the same time, the dictatorships of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran are determined to destabilize regions, threaten Americans and our allies, and brutalize their own people." ..."
"... A somewhat more detailed account of what Moscow is up to is also contained in the written report, stating that "Russia is using subversive measures to weaken the credibility of America's commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions and governments. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its neighbors with threatening behavior, such as nuclear posturing and the forward deployment of offensive capabilities." ..."
"... Nearly every detail in the indictment of Russia can be challenged. Most notably, if anyone is forward deploying offensive capabilities in Eastern Europe or invading other countries it is the United States, a trend that continues under Donald Trump. Just this past week, Trump approved the sale of offensive weapons to Ukraine, which has already drawn a warning from Moscow and will make any dialogue with Russia unlikely. ..."
"... And, of course, there is the usual softball for Israel claiming that "For generations the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant preventing peace and prosperity in the region. Today, the threats from jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region's problems." It is a conclusion that must make the unspeakable Benjamin Netanyahu smile. One might observe that as Israel has attacked all of its neighbors since it was founded, holding its governments blameless is a formulation that others in the region might well dispute. ..."
"... So the Donald Trump National Security Strategy will be more of the same, a combination of the worst ideas to emerge from his two predecessors with little in the way of mitigation. Trump might balk at going toe-to-toe with North Korea because they have the actual capability to strike back and might think they have nothing to lose if they are about to be incinerated, something no bully likes to see, but Iran is certainly in the cross hairs and you best believe they have taken notice and will be preparing. Vladimir Putin too can sit back and wonder how Trump could possibly have gotten everything so ass-backwards when he had so much latitude to get at least some things right. The National Security Strategy will deliver little in the way of security but it will provide an answer to why most of the world has come to hate the United States. ..."
Dec 26, 2017 | www.unz.com

If one takes Trump at his word, the U.S. will use force worldwide to make sure that only Washington can dominate regionally, a frightening thought as it goes beyond even the wildest pretensions of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And equally ridiculous are the potential consequences of such bullying – the White House clearly believes that it will make other nations respect us and follow our leadership whereas quite the reverse is likely to be true.

On the very limited bright side, Trump did have good things to say about the benefits derived from intelligence sharing with Russia and he also spoke about both Moscow and Beijing as "rivals" and "adversaries" instead of enemies. That was very refreshing to hear but unfortunately the printed document did not say the same thing.

The NSS report provided considerably more detail than did the speech but it also was full of generalizations and all too often relied on Washington group think to frame its options. The beginning is somewhat terrifying for one of my inclinations on foreign policy:

"An America that is safe, prosperous, and free at home is an America with the strength, confidence, and will to lead abroad. It is an America that can preserve peace, uphold liberty, and create enduring advantages for the American people. Putting America first is the duty of our government and the foundation for U.S. leadership in the world. A strong America is in the vital interests of not only the American people, but also those around the world who want to partner with the United States in pursuit of shared interests, values, and aspirations."

One has to ask what this "lead" and "leadership" and "partner" nonsense actually represents, particularly in light of the fact that damn near the entire world just repudiated Trump's decision to move the American Embassy in Israel as well as the nearly global rejection of his response to climate change? And Washington's alleged need to lead has brought nothing but grief to the American people starting in Korea and continuing with Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and numerous lesser stops along the way in places like Somalia, Panama and Syria. The false narrative of the threat coming from "foreigners" has actually done nothing to make Americans safer while also diminishing constitutional liberties and doing serious damage to the economy.

The printed report is much more brutal than was Trump about the dangers facing America and it is also much more carefree in the "facts" that it chooses to present. It says, with extreme hyperbole, that "China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence. At the same time, the dictatorships of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran are determined to destabilize regions, threaten Americans and our allies, and brutalize their own people."

A somewhat more detailed account of what Moscow is up to is also contained in the written report, stating that "Russia is using subversive measures to weaken the credibility of America's commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions and governments. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its neighbors with threatening behavior, such as nuclear posturing and the forward deployment of offensive capabilities."

Nearly every detail in the indictment of Russia can be challenged. Most notably, if anyone is forward deploying offensive capabilities in Eastern Europe or invading other countries it is the United States, a trend that continues under Donald Trump. Just this past week, Trump approved the sale of offensive weapons to Ukraine, which has already drawn a warning from Moscow and will make any dialogue with Russia unlikely.

And, of course, there is the usual softball for Israel claiming that "For generations the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant preventing peace and prosperity in the region. Today, the threats from jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region's problems." It is a conclusion that must make the unspeakable Benjamin Netanyahu smile. One might observe that as Israel has attacked all of its neighbors since it was founded, holding its governments blameless is a formulation that others in the region might well dispute.

So the Donald Trump National Security Strategy will be more of the same, a combination of the worst ideas to emerge from his two predecessors with little in the way of mitigation. Trump might balk at going toe-to-toe with North Korea because they have the actual capability to strike back and might think they have nothing to lose if they are about to be incinerated, something no bully likes to see, but Iran is certainly in the cross hairs and you best believe they have taken notice and will be preparing. Vladimir Putin too can sit back and wonder how Trump could possibly have gotten everything so ass-backwards when he had so much latitude to get at least some things right. The National Security Strategy will deliver little in the way of security but it will provide an answer to why most of the world has come to hate the United States.

[Dec 25, 2017] The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate Consortiumnews

Notable quotes:
"... In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0. ..."
"... But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role. ..."
"... While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value. ..."
"... In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968. ..."
"... Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US. ..."
"... It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm. ..."
"... "Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one. ..."
"... The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak). ..."
"... So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel. ..."
"... So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first. ..."
"... Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection. ..."
"... Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference. ..."
"... I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along." ..."
"... The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy. ..."
"... FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story. ..."
"... God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact. ..."
"... I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war. ..."
"... Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence. ..."
Dec 25, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate December 23, 2017

While unproven claims of Russian meddling in U.S. politics have whipped Official Washington into a frenzy, much less attention has been paid to real evidence of Israeli interference in U.S. politics, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.

By Dennis J Bernstein

In investigating Russia's alleged meddling in U.S. politics, special prosecutor Robert Mueller uncovered evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressured the Trump transition team to undermine President Obama's plans to permit the United Nations to censure Israel over its illegal settlement building on the Palestinian West Bank, a discovery referenced in the plea deal with President Trump's first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the United Nations General Assembly (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal to block the resolution).

I spoke on Dec, 18 with independent journalist and blogger Richard Silverstein, who writes on national security and other issues for a number of blogs at Tikun Olam .

Dennis Bernstein: A part of Michael Flynn's plea had to do with some actions he took before coming to power regarding Israel and the United Nations. Please explain.

Richard Silverstein:

The Obama administration was negotiating in the [UN] Security Council just before he left office about a resolution that would condemn Israeli settlements. Obviously, the Israeli government did not want this resolution to be passed. Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead. They approached Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner became involved in this. While they were in the transition and before having any official capacity, they negotiated with various members of the Security Council to try to quash the settlement resolution.

One of the issues here which is little known is the Logan Act, which was passed at the foundation of our republic and was designed to prevent private citizens from usurping the foreign policy prerogatives of the executive. It criminalized any private citizen who attempted to negotiate with an enemy country over any foreign policy issue.

In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0.

But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role.

This speaks to the power of the Israel lobby and of Israel itself to disrupt our foreign policy. Very few people have ever been charged with committing an illegal act by advocating on behalf of Israel. That is one of the reasons why this is such an important development. Until now, the lobby has really ruled supreme on the issue of Israel and Palestine in US foreign policy. Now it is possible that a private citizen will actually be made to pay a price for that.

This is an important development because the lobby till now has run roughshod over our foreign policy in this area and this may act as a restraining order against blatant disruption of US foreign policy by people like this.

Bernstein: So this information is a part of Michael Flynn's plea. Anyone studying this would learn something about Michael Flynn and it would be part of the prosecution's investigation.

Silverstein:

That's absolutely right. One thing to note here is that it is reporters who have raised the issue of the Logan Act, not Mueller or Flynn's people or anyone in the Trump administration. But I do think that Logan is a very important part of this plea deal, even if it is not mentioned explicitly.

Bernstein: If the special prosecutor had smoking-gun information that the Trump administration colluded with Russia, in the way they colluded with Israel before coming to power, this would be a huge revelation. But it is definitely collusion when it comes to Israel.

Silverstein: Absolutely. If this were Russia, it would be on the front page of every major newspaper in the United States and the leading story on the TV news. Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby and they have so much influence on US policy concerning Israel, it has managed to stay on the back burner. Only two or three media outlets besides mine have raised this issue of Logan and collusion. Kushner and Flynn may be the first American citizens charged under the Logan Act for interfering on behalf of Israel in our foreign policy. This is a huge issue and it has hardly been raised at all.

Bernstein: As you know, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has made a career out of investigating the Russia-gate charges. She says that she has read all this material carefully, so she must have read about Flynn and Israel, but I haven't heard her on this issue at all.

Silverstein:

Even progressive journalists, who you'd think would be going after this with a vengeance, are frightened off by the fact the lobby really bites back. So, aside from outlets like the Intercept and the Electronic Intifada, there is a lot of hesitation about going after the Israel lobby. People are afraid because they know that there is a high price to be paid. It goes from being purely journalism to being a personal and political vendetta when they get you in their sights. In fact, one of the reasons I feel my blog is so important is that what I do is challenge Israeli policy and Israeli intervention in places where it doesn't belong.

Bernstein: Jared Kushner is the point man for the Trump administration on Israel. He has talked about having a "vision for peace." Do you think it is a problem that this is someone with a long, close relationship with the prime minister of Israel and, in fact, runs a foundation that invests in the building of illegal Israeli settlements? Might this be problematic?

Silverstein:

It is quite nefarious, actually. When Jared Kushner was a teenager, Netanyahu used to stay at the Kushner family home when he visited the United States. This relationship with one of the most extreme right political figures in Israel goes back decades. And it is not just Kushner himself, but all the administration personnel dealing with these so-called peace negotiations, including Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, the ambassador. These are all orthodox Jews who tend to have very nationalist views when it comes to Israel. They all support settlements financially through foundations. These are not honest brokers.

We could talk at length about the history of US personnel who have been negotiators for Middle East peace. All of them have been favorable to Israel and answerable to the Israel lobby, including Dennis Ross and Makovsky, who served in the last administration. These people are dyed-in-the-wool ultra-nationalist supporters of [Israeli] settlements. They have no business playing any role in negotiating a peace deal.

My prediction all along has been that these peace negotiations will come to naught, even though they seem to have bought the cooperation of Saudi Arabia, which is something new in the process. The Palestinians can never accept a deal that has been negotiated by Kushner and company because it will be far too favorable to Israel and it will totally neglect the interests of the Palestinians.

Bernstein: It has been revealed that Kushner supports the building of settlements in the West Bank. Most people don't understand the politics of what is going on there, but it appears to be part of an ethnic cleansing.

Silverstein:

The settlements have always been a violation of international law, ever since Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967. The Geneva Conventions direct an occupying power to withdraw from territory that was not its own. In 1967 Israel invaded Arab states and conquered the West Bank and Gaza but this has never been recognized or accepted by any nation until now.

The fact that Kushner and his family are intimately involved in supporting settlements–as are David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt–is completely outrageous. No member of any previous US administration would have been allowed to participate with these kinds of financial investments in support of settlements. Of course, Trump doesn't understand the concept of conflict of interest because he is heavily involved in such conflicts himself. But no party in the Middle East except Israel is going to consider the US an honest broker and acceptable as a mediator.

When they announce this deal next January, no one in the Arab World is going to accept it, with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia because they have other fish to fry in terms of Iran. The next three years are going to be interesting, supposing Trump lasts out his term. My prediction is that the peace plan will fail and that it will lead to greater violence in the Middle East. It will not simply lead to a vacuum, it will lead to a deterioration in conditions there.

Bernstein: The Trump transition team was actually approached directly by the Israeli government to try to intercede at the United Nations.

Silverstein:

I'm assuming it was Netanyahu who went directly to Kushner and Trump. Now, we haven't yet found out that Trump directly knew about this but it is very hard to believe that Trump didn't endorse this. Now that we know that Mueller has access to all of the emails of the transition team, there is little doubt that they have been able to find their smoking gun. Flynn's plea meant that they basically had him dead to rights. It remains to be seen what will happen with Kushner but I would think that this would play some role in either the prosecution of Kushner or some plea deal.

Bernstein: The other big story, of course, is the decision by the Trump administration to move the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. Was there any pre-election collusion in that regard and what are the implications?

Silverstein:

Well, it's a terrible decision which goes against forty to fifty years of US foreign policy. It also breaches all international understanding. All of our allies in the European Union and elsewhere are aghast at this development. There is now a campaign in the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the announcement, which we will veto, but the next step will be to go to the General Assembly, where such a resolution will pass easily.

The question is how much anger, violence and disruption this is going to cause around the world, especially in the Arab and Muslim world. This is a slow-burning fuse. It is not going to explode right now. The issue of Jerusalem is so vital that this is not something that is simply going to go away. This is going to be a festering sore in the Muslim world and among Palestinians. We have already seen attacks on Israeli soldiers and citizens and there will be many more.

As to collusion in all of this, since Trump always said during the campaign that this was what he was going to do, it might be difficult to treat this in the same way as the UN resolution. The UN resolution was never on anybody's radar and nobody knew the role that Trump was playing behind the scenes with that–as opposed to Trump saying right from the get-go that Jerusalem was going to be recognized as the capital of Jerusalem.

By doing that, they have completely abrogated any Palestinian interest in Jerusalem. This is a catastrophic decision that really excludes the United States from being an honest broker here and shows our true colors in terms of how pro-Israel we are.

Dennis J Bernstein is a host of "Flashpoints" on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom . You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net .

Drew Hunkins , December 23, 2017 at 5:37 pm

As most regular readers of CN already know, some dynamite books on the inordinate amount of influence pro-Israel zealots have on Washington:

1.) 'The Host and the Parasite' by Greg Felton
2.) 'Power of Israel in the United States' by James Petras
3.) 'They Dare to Speak Out' by Paul Findley
4.) 'The Israel Lobby' by Mearsheimer and Walt
5.) 'Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of U.S. Power' by James Petras

I suggest that anyone relatively knew to this neglected topic peruse a few of the aforementioned titles. An inevitable backlash by the citizens of the United States is eventually forthcoming against the Zionist Power Configuration. It's crucial that this impending backlash remain democratic, non-violent, eschews anti-Semitism, and travels in a progressive in direction.

Annie , December 23, 2017 at 5:47 pm

Which one would you suggest? I already read "The Israel Lobby."

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:38 pm

Findley and Mearsheimer are certainly worthwhile. I will look for Petras.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:38 pm

If you haven't already read them, the end/footnotes in "The Israel Lobby" are more illuminating.

SocraticGadfly , December 23, 2017 at 6:10 pm

That influence is also shown, of course, by the fact that Obama waited until the midnight hours of his tenure and after the 2016 election to even start working on this resolution.

SocraticGadfly , December 23, 2017 at 6:05 pm

While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value.

In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968.

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:41 pm

Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US.

JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:32 am

It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm.

The leaked emails showed the corruption plainly, and based on the ACTUAL evidence (recorded download time), most likely came from a highly disgruntled insider. The picture was starting to spill into public view. I'd estimate the real huge worry was that if this stuff came out, it could bring out other Israeli secrets, like their involvement in 9/11. That would mean actual jail time. Might be hard to buy your way out of that no matter how much money you have.

Annie , December 23, 2017 at 10:48 pm

The Logan act states that anyone who negotiates with an enemy of the US, and Israel is not defined as an enemy.

Annie , December 23, 2017 at 6:59 pm

The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would. I don't think anyone has been convicted based on this act, and they were part of a transition team not to mention the Logan act clearly states a private citizen who attempts to negotiate with an enemy state, and that certainly doesn't apply to Israel. In this administration their bias is so blatant that they can install Kushner as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestine peace process while his family has a close relationship with Netanyahu, and he runs a foundation that invests in the building of illegal settlements which goes against the Geneva conventions. Hopefully Trump's blatant siding with Israel will receive a lot of backlash as did his plan to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

I also found that so called progressive internet sites don't cover this the way they should.

Al Pinto , December 24, 2017 at 9:16 am

@Annie

"The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would."

You and me both .

From the point of starting to read this article, it has been in my mind that the Logan act would not apply here. After reading most of the comments, it became clear that not many people viewed this as such. Yes, Joe Tedesky did as well

The UN is the "clearing house" for international politics, where countries freely contact each other's for getting support for their cause behind the scene. The support sought after could be voting for or against the resolution on hand. At times, as Israel did, countries reach out to perceived enemies as well, if they could not secure sufficient support for their cause. This is the normal activity of the UN diplomacy.

Knowing that the outgoing administration would not support its cause, Israel reached out to the incoming administration to delay the vote on the UN resolution. I fail to see anything wrong with Israel's action even in this case; Israel is not an enemy state to the US. As such, there has been no violation of any acts by the incoming administration, even if they tried to secure veto vote for Israel. I do not like it, but no action by Mueller in this case is correct.

People, just like the article in itself, implying that the Logan Act applies in this case are just plain wrong. Not just wrong, but their anti-Israel bias is in plain view.

Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state. Even then, Russia contacting the incoming administration is not a violation of the Logan Act. That is just normal diplomacy in the background between countries. What would be a violation is that the contacted official acted on the behalf of Russia and tried to influence the outgoing administration's decision. That is what the Mueller investigation tries to prove hopelessly

Herman , December 24, 2017 at 10:54 am

"Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one.

Annie , December 24, 2017 at 1:55 pm

Thanks for your reply. When I read the article and it referenced the Logan Act, which I am familiar with in that I've read about it before, I was surprised that Bernstein and Silverstein even brought it up because it so obviously does not apply in this case, since Israel is not considered an enemy state. Many have even referenced it as flimsy when it comes to convictions against those in Trump's transition team who had contacts with Russia. No one has ever been convicted under the Logan Act.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:41 pm

The Logan Act either should apply equally, or not apply at all. This "Russia-gate" hype seems to apply it selectively.

mrtmbrnmn , December 23, 2017 at 7:36 pm

You guys are blinded by the light. The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak).

There is no doubt that Trump is Bibi's and the Saudi's ventriloquist dummy and Jared has been an Israel agent of influence since he was 12.

But half the Dementedcrat Sore Loser Brigade will withdraw from the field of battle (not to mention most of the GOP living dead too) if publically and noisily tying Israel to Trump's tail becomes the only route to his removal. Which it would have to be, as there is no there there regarding the yearlong trumped-up PutinPutinPutin waterboarding of Trump.

Immediately (if not sooner) the mighty (pro-Israel) Donor Bank of Singer (Paul), Saban (Haim), Sachs (Goldman) & Adelson (Sheldon), would change their passwords and leave these politicians/beggars with empty begging bowls. End of $ordid $tory.

alley cat , December 23, 2017 at 7:45 pm

So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel.

Mueller can use that evidence of sabotage and/or obstruction of justice to try to coerce false confessions from Kushner and Flynn. But what are the chances of that, barring short stayovers for them at some CIA black site?

So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first.

Leslie F. , December 23, 2017 at 8:28 pm

He used it, along with other info, to turn flip Flynn and possibly can use it the same way again Kusher. Not all evidence has end up in court to be useful.

JWalters , December 23, 2017 at 8:40 pm

This is an extremely important story, excellently reported. All the main "facts" Americans think they know about Israel are, amazingly, flat-out lies.

1. Israel was NOT victimized by powerful Arab armies. Israel overpowered and victimized a defenseless, civilian Arab population. Military analysts knew the Arab armies were in poor shape and would not be able to resist the zionist army.

2. Muslim "citizens" of Israel do NOT have all the same rights as Jews.

3. Israelis are NOT under threat from the indigineous Palestinians, but Palestinians are under constant threats of theft and death from the Israelis.

4. Israel does NOT share America's most fundamental values, which rest on the principle of equal human rights for all.

Maintaining such a blanket of major lies for decades requires immense power. And this power would have to be exercised "under the radar" to be effective. That requires even more power. Both Congress and the press have to be controlled. How much power does it take to turn "Progressive Rachel" into "Tel Aviv Rachel"? To turn "It Takes a Village" Hillary into "Slaughter a Village" Hillary? It takes immense power AND ruthlessness.

War profiteers have exactly this combination of immense war profits and the ruthlessness to victimize millions of people.
"War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror"
http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com

Vast war profits easily afford to buy the mainstream media. And controlling campaign contributions for members of Congress is amazingly cheap in the big picture. Such a squalid sale of souls.

And when simple bribery is not enough, they ruin a person's life through blackmail or false character assassination. And if those don't work they use death threats, including to family members, and finally murder. Their ruthlessness is unrestrained. John Perkins has described these tactics in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".

For readers who haven't seen it, here is an excellent riff on the absurdly overwhelming evidence for Israel's influence compared to that of Russia, at a highly professional news and analysis website run by Jewish anti-Zionists.
"Let's talk about Russian influence"
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/about-russian-influence/

mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:44 pm

Hitler and Mussolini, Trump and Netanyahoo – matches made in Hell. These characters are so obviously, blatantly evil that it is deeply disturbing that people fail to see that, and instead go to great lengths to find some complicated flaws in these monsters.

mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:49 pm

Keep it simple folks. No need for complex analyses. Just remember that these characters as simply as evil as it gets, and proceed from there. These asinine shows that portray mobsters as complex human beings are dangerously deluding. If you want to be victimized by these types, this kind of overthinking is just the way to go.

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 9:00 pm

There is a modern theory of fiction that insists upon the portrayal of inconsistency in characters, both among the good guys and the bad guys. It is useful to show how those who do wrongs have made specific kinds of errors that make them abnormal, and that those who do right are not perfect but nonetheless did the right thing. Instead it is used by commercial writers to argue that the good are really bad, and the bad are really good, which is of course the philosophy of oligarchy-controlled mass publishers.

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:54 pm

A very important article by Dennis Bernstein, and it is very appropriate that non-zionist Jews are active against the extreme zionist corruption of our federal government. I am sure that they are reviled by the zionists for interfering with the false denunciations of racism against the opponents of zionism. Indeed critics face a very nearly totalitarian power of zionism, which in league with MIC/WallSt opportunism has displaced democracy altogether in the US.

backwardsevolution , December 23, 2017 at 9:18 pm

A nice little set-up by the Obama administration. Perhaps it was entrapment? Who set it up? Flynn and Kushner should have known better to fall for it. So at the end of his Presidency, Obama suddenly gets balls and wants to slap down Israel? Yeah, right.

Nice to have leverage over people, though, isn't it? If you're lucky and play your cards right, you might even be lucky enough to land an impeachment.

Of course, I'm just being cynical. No one would want to overturn democracy, would they?

Certainly people like Comey, Brenner, Clinton, Clapper, Mueller, Rosenstein wouldn't want that, would they?

Joe Tedesky , December 23, 2017 at 10:33 pm

I just can't see any special prosecutor investigating Israel-Gate. Between what the Zionist donors donate to these creepy politicians, too what goods they have on these same mischievous politicians, I just can't see any investigation into Israel's collusion with the Trump Administration going anywhere. Netanyahu isn't Putin, and Russia isn't Israel. Plus, Israel is considered a U.S. ally, while Russia is being marked as a Washington rival. Sorry, this news regarding Israel isn't going to be ranted on about for the next 18 months, like the MSM has done with Russia, because our dear old Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, or so they tell us. So, don't get your hopes up.

JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:33 am

It's true the Israelis have America's politicians by the ears and the balls. But as this story gets better known, politicians will start getting questions at their town meetings. Increasingly the politicians will gag on what Israel is force-feeding them, until finally they reach a critical mass of vomit in Congress.

Joe Tedesky , December 24, 2017 at 11:12 am

I hope you are right JWalters. Although relying on a Zionist controlled MSM doesn't give hope for the news getting out properly. Again I hope you are right JWalters. Joe

Jeff Blankfort , December 24, 2017 at 12:18 am

Actually, Netanyahu was so desperate to have the resolution pulled and not voted on that he reached out to any country that might help him after the foreign minister of New Zealand, one of its co-sponsors refused to pull the plug after a testy phone exchange with the Israeli PM ending up threatening an Israeli boycott oturnef the KIwis.

He then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin, who owed him a favor for having Israel's UN delegate absent himself for the UNGA vote on sanctioning Russia after its annexation of Crimea.

Putin then called Russia's UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, since deceased, and asked him to get the other UNSC ambassadors to postpone the vote until Trump took over the White House but the other ambassadors weren't buying it. Given Russia's historic public position regarding the settlements, Churkin had no choice to vote Yes with the others.

This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US which, due to Zionist influence on the media, does not want the American public to know about the close ties between Putin and Netanyahu which has led to the Israeli PM making five state visits there in the last year and a half.

Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto. That Netanyahu apparently knew in advance that the US planned to veto the resolution was, I suspect, leaked to the Israelis by US delegate Samantha Power, who was clearly unhappy at having to abstain.

Abe , December 24, 2017 at 12:39 am

The Israeli Prime Minister made five state visits to Russia in the last year and a half to make sure the Russians don't accidentally on purpose blast Israeli warplanes from the sky over Syria (like they oughtta). Putin tries not to snicker when Netanyahu bloviates ad nauseum about the purported "threat" posed by Iran.

argos , December 24, 2017 at 7:00 am

He thinks Putin is a RATS ASS like the yankee government

JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:34 am

"This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US"

We've just had a whole cluster of big stories involving Israel that have all been essentially blacked out in the US press. e.g.
"Dionne and Shields ignore the Adelson in the room"
http://mondoweiss.net/2017/12/jerusalem-israels-capital

This is not due to chance. There is no doubt that the US mainstream media is wholly controlled by the Israelis.

alley cat , December 24, 2017 at 4:49 am

"He [Netanyahu] then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin "

Jeff, that characterization of Putin and Netanyahu's relationship makes no sense, since the Russians have consistently opposed Zionism and Putin has been no exception, having spoiled Zionist plans for the destruction of Syria.

"Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto."

Not sure where you're going with that, since the US vote was up to Obama, who wanted to get some payback for all of Bibi's efforts to sabotage Obama's treaty with Iran.

For the record, Zionism has had no more rabid supporter than the Dragon Lady. If we're going to make assumptions, we could start by assuming that if she had won the White House we'd all be dead by now, thanks to her obsession (at the instigation of her Zionist/neocon sponsors) with declaring no-fly zones in Syria.

Brendan , December 24, 2017 at 6:18 am

Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection.

Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference.

Skip Scott , December 24, 2017 at 7:59 am

I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along."

argos , December 24, 2017 at 6:57 am

The zionist will stop at nothing to control the middle east with American taxpayers money/military equiptment its a win win for the zionist they control America lock stock and barrel a pity though it is a great country to be led by a jewish entity.

Herman , December 24, 2017 at 10:47 am

What will Israel-Palestine look like twenty years from now? Will it remain an apartheid regime, a regime without any Palestinians, or something different. The Trump decision, which the world rejects, brings the issue of "final" settlement to the fore. In a way we can go back to the thirties and the British Mandate. Jewish were fleeing Europe, many coming to Palestine. The British, on behalf of the Zionists, were delaying declaring Palestine a state with control of its own affairs. Seeing the mass immigration and chafing at British foot dragging, the Arabs rebelled, What happened then was that the British, responding to numerous pressures notably war with Germany, acted by granting independence and granting Palestine control of its borders.

With American pressure and the mass exodus of Jews from Europe, Jews defied the British resulting in Jewish resistance. What followed then was a UN plan to divide the land with a Jerusalem an international city administered by the UN. The Arabs rebelled and lost much of what the UN plan provided and Jerusalem as an international city was scrapped.

Will there be a second serious attempt to settle the issue of the land and the status of Jerusalem? Will there be a serious move toward a single state? How will the matter of Jerusalem be resolved. The two state solution has always been a fantasy and acquiescence of Palestinians to engage in this charade exposes their leaders to charges of posturing for perks. Imagined options could go on and on but will there be serious options placed before the world community or will the boots on the ground Israeli policies continue?

As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.

Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 1:34 pm

As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.

The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:56 pm

Truly mind-boggling. Ahistorical, and as you say, fantasy.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:48 pm

FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story.

$50K of Facebook ads about puppies pales in comparison to that blatant, prima facia, public manipulation. God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:11 pm

Just for the record, Richard Silverstein blocked me on Twitter because I pointed out that he slammed someone who was suggesting that the Assad government was fighting for its (Syria's) life by fighting terrorists. Actually, more specifically, because of that he read my "Free Palestine" bio on Twitter and called me a Hamas supporter (no Hamas mentioned) and a "moron" for some seeming contradiction.

I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war.

Silverstein is probably not a good (ie. consistent) arbiter of Israeli impact on US politics. Just sayin'.

I wish it were otherwise.

Taras 77 , December 24, 2017 at 6:35 pm

https://www.therussophile.org/virus-found-inside-dnc-server-is-linked-to-a-company-based-in-pakistan.html/

This may be a tad ot but it relates to the alleged hacking of the DNC, the role debbie wasserman schultz plays in the spy ring (awan bros) in house of rep servers: I have long suspected that mossad has their fingers in this entire mess. FWIW

Good site, BTW.

Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 7:35 pm

I can't recall why I removed the Tikun Olam site from my bookmarks – it happened quite a while back. Generally I do that when I feel the blogger crossed some kind of personal red line. Something Mr. Silverstein wrote put him over that line with me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/us/06leak.html?hp

In the course of a search I found that at the neocon NYT. Mr. Silverstein claims several things I find unbelievable, and from that alone I wonder about his ultimate motives. I may be excessively touchy about this, but that's how it is.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 8:51 pm

Yeah Zachary, "wondering about ultimate motives" is probably a good way to put it/his views. He's obviously conflicted, if not deferential in some aspects of Israeli policy. He really was a hero of mine, but now I just don't get whether what he says is masking something or a true belief. He says some good stuff, but, but, but .

P. Michael Garber , December 24, 2017 at 11:54 pm

Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence.

[Dec 25, 2017] How Ex-Spy Christopher Steele Compiled His Explosive Trump-Russia Dossier by Howard Blum

Nice example of how US MSM advertized Steele dossier. No question was asked how Steele how was expelled from Russia more then 20 years ago and as such is "person non grata" point of contact in Russia managed to obtain such an information. It was clear that he can't pay for it. He got less then $200K for the dossier. All you can buy for those money is gossip. But no such questions were asked in this articles.
Looks like Steele was just a pawn in a much bigger game...
Notable quotes:
"... "Someone like me stays in the shadows," Steele would say, as if apologizing for what he did next. It was an action that went against all his training, all his professional instincts. Spies, after all, keep secrets; they don't disclose them. And now that the F.B.I. had apparently let him down, there was another restraint tugging on his resolve: he didn't know whom he could trust. It was as if he were back operating in the long shadow of the Kremlin, living by what the professionals call "Moscow Rules," where security and vigilance are constant occupational obsessions. But when he considered what was at stake, he knew he had no choice. With Simpson now on board, in effect, as co-conspirator and a shrewd facilitator, Steele met with a reporter. ..."
Apr 01, 2017 | www.vanityfair.com

There's a row of Victorian terraced houses on a side street in London's Belgravia district, each projecting a dowdy respectability with its stone front steps leading to a pair of alabaster pillars and then a glossy black door. And at 9–11 Grosvenor Gardens there is a small, rectangular brass plate adjacent to the formidable door. Its dark letters discreetly announce: ORBIS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE, LTD.

By design, the company's title was not very forthcoming. Orbis, of course, is Latin for "circle" and, by common parlance, "the world." But "intelligence" -- that was more problematic. Just what sort of international business information was the company dealing in? Advertising? Accounting? Management consulting?

For a select well-heeled set scattered across the globe, no further explanation was necessary. Orbis was a player in a burgeoning industry that linked refugees from the worlds of espionage and journalism to the decision-makers who ran the flat-earth multi-national corporations and who also, from time to convenient time, dabbled in politics. In their previous lives, the founding partners of Orbis, trained and nurtured by the Secret Intelligence Service, had been in the shadowy business of finding out secrets in the name of national interest. Now they performed more or less the same mission, only they had transferred their allegiance to the self-interests of the well-paying customers who hired them.

And so, on a warm day last June, Christopher Steele, ex-Cambridge Union president, ex-M.I.6 Moscow field agent, ex-head of M.I.6's Russia desk, ex-adviser to British Special Forces on capture-or-kill ops in Afghanistan, and a 52-year-old father with four children, a new wife, three cats, and a sprawling brick-and-wood suburban palace in Surrey, received in his second-floor office at Orbis a transatlantic call from an old client.

Video: Donald Trump's Conflicts of Interest

"It started off as a fairly general inquiry," Steele would recall in an anonymous interview with Mother Jones, his identity at the time still a carefully guarded secret. But over the next seven incredible months, as the retired spy hunted about in an old adversary's territory, he found himself following a trail marked by, as he then put it, "hair-raising" concerns. The allegations of financial, cyber, and sexual shenanigans would lead to a chilling destination: the Kremlin had not only, he'd boldly assert in his report, "been cultivating, supporting, and assisting" Donald Trump for years but also had compromised the tycoon "sufficiently to be able to blackmail him."

And in the aftermath of the publication of these explosive findings -- as nothing less than the legitimacy of the 2016 U.S. presidential election was impugned; as congressional hearings and F.B.I. investigations were announced; as a bombastic president-elect continued to let loose with indignant tirades about "fake news"; as internal-security agents of the F.S.B., the main Russian espionage agency, were said to have burst into a meeting of intelligence officers, placed a bag over the head of the deputy director of its cyber-activities, and marched him off; as the body of a politically well-connected former F.S.B. general was reportedly found in his black Lexus -- Christopher Steele had gone to ground.

A CALL TO LONDON

But in the beginning was the telephone call.

In many defining ways, it was as if Glenn Simpson, a former investigative reporter, and Christopher Steele, a former intelligence operative, had been born under the same star. Simpson -- like the onetime spy, according to those who know him -- was the embodiment of the traits that defined his longtime occupation: tenacity, meticulousness, cynicism, an obsession with operational secrecy. Also like Steele, who had filed for retirement from the Secret Intelligence Service in 2009, when he realized an old Russian hand would not get a seat at the high table in the Age of Terror, Simpson, approaching middle age and in mid-career, had walked away from journalism at about the same time after nearly 14 years doing political and financial investigations at The Wall Street Journal. And both men, suddenly footloose but guided by their training, talents, and character, had gravitated to similar businesses for the second acts of their careers.

In 2011, Glenn Simpson, along with two other former Journal reporters, launched Fusion GPS, in Washington, D.C. The firm's activities, according to the terse, purposefully oblique statement on its Web site, centered on "premium research, strategic intelligence, and due diligence."

In September 2015, as the Republican primary campaign was heating up, he was hired to compile an opposition-research dossier on Donald Trump. Who wrote the check? Simpson, always secretive, won't reveal his client's identity. However, according to a friend who had spoken with Simpson at the time, the funding came from a "Never Trump" Republican and not directly from the campaign war chests of any of Trump's primary opponents.

But by mid-June 2016, despite all the revelations Simpson was digging up about the billionaire's roller-coaster career, two previously unimaginable events suddenly affected both the urgency and the focus of his research. First, Trump had apparently locked up the nomination, and his client, more pragmatic than combative, was done throwing good money after bad. And second, there was a new cycle of disturbing news stories wafting around Trump as the wordy headline splashed across the front page of The Washington Post on June 17 heralded, INSIDE TRUMP'S FINANCIAL TIES TO RUSSIA AND HIS UNUSUAL FLATTERY OF VLADIMIR PUTIN.

Simpson, as fellow journalists remembered, smelled fresh red meat. And anyway, after all he had discovered, he'd grown deeply concerned by the prospect of a Trump presidency. So he found Democratic donors whose checks would keep his oppo research going strong. And he made a call to London, to a partner at Orbis he had worked with in the past, an ex-spy who knew where all the bodies were buried in Russia, and who, as the wags liked to joke, had even buried some of them.

Oleg Erovinkin (inset), a former F.S.B. general and ally of Putin confidant Igor Sechin (below, right), was a suspected source of Steele's; Erovinkin was found dead in his car in December.

PERSONS OF INTEREST Oleg Erovinkin (inset), a former F.S.B. general and ally of Putin confidant Igor Sechin (below, right), was a suspected source of Steele's; Erovinkin was found dead in his car in December.

Large photograph © Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters/Zuma Press.
SOURCE CODE

'Are there business ties in Russia?" That, Steele would offer to Mother Jones, was the bland initial thrust of his investigation after he was subcontracted by Fusion for a fee estimated by a source in the trade to be within the profession's going rate: $12,000 to $15,000 a month, plus expenses.

Steele had known Russia as a young spy, arriving in Moscow as a 26-year-old with his new wife and thin diplomatic cover in 1990. For nearly three years as a secret agent in enemy territory, he lived through the waning days of perestroika and witnessed the tumultuous disintegration of the Soviet Union under Boris Yeltsin's mercurial and often boozy leadership. The K.G.B. was onto him almost from the start: he inhabited the spy's uncertain life, where at any moment the lurking menace could turn into genuine danger. Yet even at the tail end of his peripatetic career at the service, Russia, the battleground of his youth, was still in his blood and on his operational mind: from 2004 to 2009 he headed M.I.6's Russia Station, the London deskman directing Her Majesty's covert penetration of Putin's resurgent motherland.

And so, as Steele threw himself into his new mission, he could count on an army of sources whose loyalty and information he had bought and paid for over the years. There was no safe way he could return to Russia to do the actual digging; the vengeful F.S.B. would be watching him closely. But no doubt he had a working relationship with knowledgeable contacts in London and elsewhere in the West, from angry émigrés to wheeling-and-dealing oligarchs always eager to curry favor with a man with ties to the Secret Service, to political dissidents with well-honed axes to grind. And, perhaps most promising of all, he had access to the networks of well-placed Joes -- to use the jargon of his former profession -- he'd directed from his desk at London Station, assets who had their eyes and ears on the ground in Russia.

How good were these sources? Consider what Steele would write in the memos he filed with Simpson: Source A -- to use the careful nomenclature of his dossier -- was "a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure." Source B was "a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin." And both of these insiders, after "speaking to a trusted compatriot," would claim that the Kremlin had spent years getting its hooks into Donald Trump.

Source E was "an ethnic Russian" and "close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump."

This individual proved to be a treasure trove of information. "Speaking in confidence to a compatriot," the talkative Source E "admitted there was a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between them [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership." Then this: "The Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to the WikiLeaks platform." And finally: "In return the Trump team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue and to raise US/NATO defense commitments in the Baltic and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine."

Then there was Source D, "a close associate of Trump who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow," and Source F, "a female staffer" at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel, who was co-opted into the network by an Orbis "ethnic Russian operative" working hand in hand with the loquacious Trump insider, Source E.

These two sources told quite a lurid story, the now infamous "golden showers" allegation, which, according to the dossier, was corroborated by others in his alphabet list of assets. It was an evening's entertainment, Steele, the old Russian hand, must have suspected, that had to have been produced by the ever helpful F.S.B. And since it was typical of Moscow Center's handwriting to have the suite wired up for sound and video (the hotel's Web site, with unintentional irony, boasts of its "cutting edge technological amenities"), Steele apparently began to suspect that locked in a Kremlin safe was a hell of a video, as well as photographs.

Steele's growing file must have left his mind cluttered with new doubts, new suspicions. And now, as he continued his chase, a sense of alarm hovered about the former spy. If Steele's sources were right, Putin had up his sleeve kompromat -- Moscow Center's gleeful word for compromising material -- that would make the Access Hollywood exchange between Trump and Billy Bush seem, as Trump insisted, as banal as "locker-room talk." Steele could only imagine how and when the Russians might try to use it.

THE GREATER GOOD
What should he do? Steele dutifully filed his first incendiary report with Fusion on June 20, but was this the end of his responsibilities? He knew that what he had unearthed, he'd say in his anonymous conversation with Mother Jones, "was something of huge significance, way above party politics." Yet was it simply a vanity to think that a retired spy had to take it on his shoulders to save the world? And what about his contractual agreement with Simpson? Could the company sue, he no doubt wondered, if he disseminated information he'd collected on its dime?

In the end, Steele found the rationale that is every whistle-blower's sustaining philosophy: the greater good trumps all other concerns. And so, even while he kept working his sources in the field and continued to shoot new memos to Simpson, he settled on a plan of covert action.

THE MEMOS BY THE FORMER SPY "BECAME ONE OF WASHINGTON'S WORST-KEPT SECRETS."

The F.B.I.'s Eurasian Joint Organized Crime Squad -- "Move Over, Mafia," the bureau's P.R. machine crowed after the unit had been created -- was a particularly gung-ho team with whom Steele had done some heady things in the past. And in the course of their successful collaboration, the hard-driving F.B.I. agents and the former frontline spy evolved into a chummy mutual-admiration society.

It was only natural, then, that when he began mulling whom to turn to, Steele thought about his tough-minded friends on the Eurasian squad. And fortuitously, he discovered, as his scheme took on a solid operational commitment, that one of the agents was now assigned to the bureau office in Rome. By early August, a copy of his first two memos were shared with the F.B.I.'s man in Rome.

"Shock and horror" -- that, Steele would say in his anonymous interview, was the bureau's reaction to the goodies he left on its doorstep. And it wanted copies of all his subsequent reports, the sooner the better.

His duty done, Steele waited with anxious anticipation for the official consequences.

FROM THE SHADOWS

There were none. Or at least not any public signs that the F.B.I. was tracking down the ripe leads he'd offered. And in the weeks that followed, as summer turned into fall and the election drew closer, Steele's own sense of the mounting necessity of his mission must have intensified.

As his frustration grew, the mysterious trickle from WikiLeaks of the Democratic National Committee's and John Podesta's purloined e-mails were continuing in a deliberate, steadily ominous flow. He had little doubt the Kremlin was behind the hacking, and he had shared his evidence with the F.B.I., but as best he could tell, the bureau was focusing on solving the legalistic national-security puzzle surrounding Hillary Clinton's e-mails. With so much hanging in the balance -- the potential president of the United States possibly being under Russia's thumb -- why weren't the authorities more concerned? He decided it was time for desperate measures.

"Someone like me stays in the shadows," Steele would say, as if apologizing for what he did next. It was an action that went against all his training, all his professional instincts. Spies, after all, keep secrets; they don't disclose them. And now that the F.B.I. had apparently let him down, there was another restraint tugging on his resolve: he didn't know whom he could trust. It was as if he were back operating in the long shadow of the Kremlin, living by what the professionals call "Moscow Rules," where security and vigilance are constant occupational obsessions. But when he considered what was at stake, he knew he had no choice. With Simpson now on board, in effect, as co-conspirator and a shrewd facilitator, Steele met with a reporter.

In early October, on a trip to New York, Steele sat down with David Corn, the 58-year-old Washington-bureau chief of Mother Jones. It was a prudent choice. Corn, who had measured out a career breaking big stories and who had won a George Polk Award in the process, could be imperious, a ruthless man in a ruthless profession, but he was also a man of his word. If he agreed to protect a source, his commitment was unshakable. Steele's identity would be safe with him.

Related Video: Vladimir Putin's Impact on the 2016 Election

Corn accepted the terms, listened, and then went to work. He began to investigate, trying to get a handle on Steele's credibility from people in the intelligence community. And all the while the clock was ticking: the election was just a month away. On October 31, in what one of Corn's colleagues would describe as "a Hail Mary pass," he broke a judicious, expurgated version of the story -- "A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump."

But in the tidal wave of headlines and breaking news in the weeks before the election, the story got swamped. It was, after all, the silly season. First, the F.B.I. exonerated Hillary Clinton over possible charges involving an insecure e-mail server. Then, 11 days before the election, F.B.I. director James Comey said, in effect, not so fast. Perhaps, he announced gravely, there was a smoking gun on the computer belonging to, of all improbable individuals, disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner. The press swarmed to the story. And attention was busily paid to the final jabs the two candidates were taking at each other. There were simply too many unsubstantiated claims in Corn's story for other journalists to check out, and the fact that the primary source was an unnamed former spook, well, that didn't make the reportorial challenges less daunting.

In early November, Corn shared a bit of what he knew with Julian Borger, of The Guardian. And Simpson, during a sandwich lunch with Paul Wood in the BBC's Washington radio studio, reached into his briefcase and handed over to the British journalist a redacted version of Steele's initial report. It wasn't long before, as The New York Times would write, the memos by the former spy "became one of Washington's worst-kept secrets, as reporters . . . scrambled to confirm or disprove them."

Then, on November 8, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.

Within hours of the president-elect's victory speech, Vladimir Putin went on Russian state television to offer his congratulations. And the Popular Front, a political movement founded by the Russian president, slyly tweeted, "They say that Putin once again beat all."

MOSCOW RULES
On a bright autumn weekend in late November in Nova Scotia, about 300 deep thinkers -- a collection of academics, government officials, corporate executives, and journalists from 70 countries -- settled in for a couple of ruminative days at the annual Halifax International Security Forum. There were cocktail parties, elaborate dinners, a five-K run, a seemingly endless schedule of weighty discussion groups, and nearly constant feverish chatter about the new, improbable American president-elect.

It was at some point in this busy weekend that Senator John McCain and David J. Kramer, a former State Department official whose bailiwick was Russia and who now toils at Arizona State University's Washington-based McCain Institute for International Leadership, found themselves huddling with Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Russia.

Sir Andrew, 77, had served in Moscow for five years starting in 1995, a no-holds-barred time when Putin was aggressively consolidating power. And in London Station, the M.I.6 puppeteer pulling all the clandestine strings was Christopher Steele. Sir Andrew knew Steele well and liked what he knew. And the former diplomat, who always had a few tough words to say about Putin, had heard the rumors about Steele's memo.

Had Sir Andrew arrived in Halifax on his own covert mission? Was it just an accident that his conversation with Senator McCain happened to meander its way to the findings in Steele's memos? Or are there no accidents in international intrigue? Sir Andrew offered no comment to Vanity Fair. He did, however, tell the Independent newspaper, "The issue of Donald Trump and Russia was very much in the news and it was natural to talk about it." And he added, "We spoke about how Mr. Trump may find himself in a position where there could be an attempt to blackmail him with kompromat." Any further answers remain buried in the secret history of this affair. Neither McCain nor Kramer would comment on the specifics of the meeting; all that can be firmly established is that McCain and Kramer listened with a growing attentiveness to Sir Andrew's summary of what was purportedly in these reports -- and the two men came to realize they had to see them with their own eyes. Kramer, the good soldier, volunteered to retrieve them.

On an evening about a week later, using a ticket purchased with miles from his own account, Kramer flew out of Washington and landed early the next morning at Heathrow. Once on the ground, as per stern instructions, he operated on Moscow Rules. Told to meet a man loitering outside baggage claim holding a copy of the Financial Times, Kramer engaged in an exchange of word code. At last satisfied, Christopher Steele whisked him off in a Land Rover to the security of his house in Surrey.

They talked for hours. And Steele passed him his report. Was this the identical, somewhat sputtering 35-page memo that had already been making the rounds among reporters? Or, as some intelligence analysts believe, was it a longer, more expertly crafted and sourced document, the final work product of a well-trained M.I.6 senior deskman? Neither McCain nor Kramer would comment, but what is known is that Kramer flew back to Washington that same night, guarding his hard-won prize with his life.

On December 9, McCain sat in the office of F.B.I. director James Comey and, with no other aides present, handed him the typed pages that could bring about the downfall of a president. Afterward, the senator would issue a statement that amounted to little more than a hapless shrug, and a disingenuous one to boot: he had been "unable to make a judgment about their accuracy" and so he'd simply passed them on.

But there were consequences. In the waning days of the Obama administration, both the president and congressional leaders were briefed on the contents of the Steele memos. And in early January, at the end of an intelligence briefing at Trump Tower on Russia's interference in the presidential election conducted by the nation's top four intelligence officials, the president-elect was presented with a two-page summary of Steele's allegations.

And with that mind-boggling moment as a news peg, the dominoes began to fall with resounding thuds. First, BuzzFeed, full of journalistic justifications, posted the entire 35-page report online. Then The Wall Street Journal outed Christopher Steele as the former British intelligence officer who had authored the Trump dossier. And next Steele, who in his previous life had directed the service's inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the former F.S.B. officer who was fatally poisoned by a dose of radioactive polonium-210, quickly gathered up his family, asked a neighbor to look after his three cats, and headed off as fast as he could to parts unknown -- only to return nearly two months later to his office, refusing to say little more than that he was "pleased to be back." His arrival was, in its guarded way, as mysterious as his disappearance.

WORLD OF DOUBTS
'Walking back the cat" is how those in the trade refer to the process of trying to resolve the bottom-line question in any piece of intelligence: Is it true?

And against the unsettling background of the early months of the Trump administration, the nation's intelligence analysts -- as well as eager journalists and just plain concerned citizens -- have been grappling with whether or not the allegations in Steele's report are accurate.

There are certainly items in the dossier that would leave any burrower shaking his head. The allegation that Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, had traveled to Prague last August for a clandestine meet with Kremlin officials appears false, as Cohen insists he has never been to Prague. And the repeated misspelling of the name of Alfa Bank -- the largest privately owned commercial bank in Russia -- as "Alpha Bank" does little to reinforce the report's unsubstantiated charges of the bank's illicit cash payoffs.

But some things do tally. CNN has reported that U.S. intelligence intercepts of conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russian nationals occurred on the same day and from the same locations cited in the memos. And the Trump campaign engineered, as one early memo warned, a Republican platform that steadfastly refused to give lethal defensive weapons to troops in Ukraine fighting the Russian-led intervention.

A grim case can also be made that the Russians are taking the memos seriously. Oleg Erovinkin -- a former F.S.B. general and a key aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister who now heads Rosneft, the giant Russian oil company, and whose name is scattered with incriminating innuendo through several memos -- was found dead in his car the day after Christmas. The F.S.B., according to Russian press reports, "launched a large-scale investigation," but no official cause of death has been announced. Was this the price Erovinkin paid for having apparent similarities to Steele's Source B, "a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin"? And, no less ominous, after both Steele and U.S. intelligence officials made their cases for the Kremlin's involvement in the election hackings, the F.S.B. arrested two officers in the agency's cyber-wing and one computer security expert, charging them with treason. Were these three the sources that Steele relied on?

Further supporting evidence of Steele's claims can perhaps also be found in the press reports of ongoing federal investigations. Three members of the Trump election team were mentioned in the dossier for their alleged ties to Russian officials -- Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman; Carter Page, an early foreign-policy adviser; and Roger Stone, a longtime ad hoc adviser. All are under investigation, but no charges have been filed, and all three men have vehemently denied any wrongdoing. And according to The Washington Post, the F.B.I. in the weeks before the election grew so interested in the contents of the dossier that the bureau entered into a series of conversations with Steele to discuss hiring him to continue his research. Once the report became public, however, the discussions ended, and Steele was never compensated.

But ultimately, in any examination of the veracity of an intelligence report, professionals weigh the messenger as heavily as the news. Steele's credentials were the real thing and, apparently, impressive enough to scare the hell out of James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, James Comey, John Brennan, the C.I.A. director, and Admiral Mike Rogers, the N.S.A. director. How else can one explain their collective decision to pass on the still-unverified dossier to the president and the president-elect?

Finally, but not least, there is Steele's own tacit but still eloquent testimony. Retired spies don't go to ground, taking their families with them, unless they have a damned good reason.

IN FROM THE COLD
Time to think is dangerous. And with the new president now ensconced in the White House, a man whose actions and reputation remain tangled up in a morass of disturbing speculations, the nation has, in effect, gone to ground, too. The concerns and questions escalate day after troubling day. With an intelligence community fighting its own secret war against a president who has time after time vilified it, the answers may soon be revealed. But for now all the nation can do is wait with tense anticipation for the congressional and intelligence-agency investigations to play out, for the high-stakes chase started by a lone ex-spy to move forward toward its conclusion and into history, for the clarity that will tell the American people it's finally safe to come in from the cold.

indiescene, 1/2/2017 5:53 PM EST

Politicians encourage broad surveillance instead of investing in intelligence and analysis. Investing in staff and cutting-edge analysis would be infinitely smarter than collecting ever more data.

indiescene, 1/2/2017 5:11 PM EST

Why does the President ignore calls to pardon Clinton / Snowden?

adelphean70, 12/30/2016 5:39 PM EST
Did the Russians actually tweet a picture of a duck with the word LAME in front of it?

That's really funny/sad.

[Dec 25, 2017] British ex-spy behind Trump dossier seen as a cool operator - CBS News

What a bunch of outrageous speculations. And not a single attempt to question the motives behind the dossier (money paid)
Steele was kicked out of Russia more then 20 years ago. He does not know the language. All he can be is a patsy for some more powerful and sinister forces. What contact he could have in Russia? He is exposed MI6 agent and as such a "person non grata" in Russia and any contacts with him are toxic. Even "liberasts" (Russian neoliberals; the most pro-Western part of Russian society) would think twice before communicating with him.
Notable quotes:
"... "I know him as a very competent, professional operator who left the secret service and is now operating his own private company," Andrew Wood, Britain's ambassador to Russia from 1995 to 2000, told the BBC on Friday. "I do not think he would make things up. I don't think he would, necessarily, always draw correct judgment, but that's not the same thing." ..."
"... Although Steele wasn't a senior figure in MI6, one of the officials said because of Steele's experience on the Russia desk and the high-level contacts he had during his time in Moscow, ..."
"... The material, they said, was more likely to have come from conversations with third parties. ..."
"... Wood said it seems unlikely that Russian operatives intentionally lied to Steele. He added that it is not surprising that he has gone into hiding. ..."
"... James Hudson, Britain's former deputy counsel in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, resigned in 2009 after a film emerged showing him with two women thought to be prostitutes. More recently, Britain was involved in a diplomatic flap after a former official under then-Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted that British authorities had rigged up a fake rock in Moscow to spy on Russians. ..."
Jan 14, 2017 | www.cbsnews.com

LONDON -- Christopher Steele, the one-time British spy who has compiled an explosive dossier on President-elect Donald Trump, is a well-regarded operative who wouldn't make up stories to satisfy his clients, according to diplomatic and intelligence experts who know him.

Steele, 52, worked for MI6, Britain's overseas intelligence agency, and served in Moscow in the early 1990s. After leaving the agency, he and a partner started Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd. in 2009. The firm provides strategic advice, gathers intelligence and conducts cross-border investigations, according to its website.

Steele produced the memo containing unsubstantiated claims that Russia had compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, CBS News' Major Garrett reported. Orbis was originally hired by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research firm working for an unknown client.

"I know him as a very competent, professional operator who left the secret service and is now operating his own private company," Andrew Wood, Britain's ambassador to Russia from 1995 to 2000, told the BBC on Friday. "I do not think he would make things up. I don't think he would, necessarily, always draw correct judgment, but that's not the same thing."

... ... ...

Wood said U.S. Sen. John McCain asked him about the document during a security conference in November because of Wood's relationship with Steele. After their conversation, McCain made arrangements to get a copy of the report, Wood told the BBC.

Wood is now an associate fellow at the think tank Chatham House and is a consultant for companies with interests in Russia.

Three British intelligence officers interviewed by The Associated Press described Steele as well regarded in the intelligence community, with excellent Russian skills and high-level sources.

Although Steele wasn't a senior figure in MI6, one of the officials said because of Steele's experience on the Russia desk and the high-level contacts he had during his time in Moscow, he was brought in to help with the case of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian secret service officer and Kremlin critic who was poisoned in 2006 in London by polonium-210, a radioactive substance. The official, who worked primarily on Eastern Europe, said he had no other details of Steele's involvement in the case.

James Nixey, the head of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, told the AP that parts of the document created by Steele "read exactly as reports from the secret services." "Some of the practices which we know and which are confirmed to have happened during Soviet and post-Soviet times are reported in this dossier," Nixey said, adding that Russia's denials were also part of a Cold War pattern in which the Kremlin "would outright deny something which is quite plainly true." All three of the former intelligence officials, however, cast doubt on whether the material in the report and its level of detail would have come from active sources within Russia. The material, they said, was more likely to have come from conversations with third parties.

Wood said it seems unlikely that Russian operatives intentionally lied to Steele. He added that it is not surprising that he has gone into hiding.

"Russia would certainly like to know where he got his information from, assuming his information is basically true and he hasn't just made it up, which I don't think for a moment," Wood said. "And they're accustomed to take action."

Still, British and Russian intelligence agents have a long history of spying on one another and setting traps.

James Hudson, Britain's former deputy counsel in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, resigned in 2009 after a film emerged showing him with two women thought to be prostitutes. More recently, Britain was involved in a diplomatic flap after a former official under then-Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted that British authorities had rigged up a fake rock in Moscow to spy on Russians.

Nixey said Moscow is unlikely to have changed its habits "for the simple reason that the Russians believe they are at war with the West." Anyone, he said, with a "considerable degree of involvement with Russia, goes there frequently on business, is going to be looked at, to a greater or lesser extent."

Russians have even coined a word for this type of compromising material: kompromat.

[Dec 25, 2017] Trump-Russia inquiry- Why attacks on Robert Mueller are mounting by Anthony Zurcher

The interests and sympathies of British government are clear form this peace:they are definitely afraid about reopening Clinton investigation. If British government was behind Steele dossier that was a very dirty job.
Notable quotes:
"... All of it could be setting the ground for new investigations into the FBI or Democrat Hillary Clinton's actions while secretary of state - something Mr Trump himself has suggested - or perhaps even for the president to order the end of Mr Mueller's probe. ..."
Dec 17, 2017 | www.bbc.com

In recent weeks, conservative commentators and politicians have begun arguing, with growing intensity, that Robert Mueller's investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia is the result of an intentional effort by biased investigators to undermine the Trump presidency.

There are a number of components to the case they are presenting, from doubts about the impartiality of Mr Mueller and his team to questions about the integrity of the FBI and the Obama-era Justice Department.

All of it could be setting the ground for new investigations into the FBI or Democrat Hillary Clinton's actions while secretary of state - something Mr Trump himself has suggested - or perhaps even for the president to order the end of Mr Mueller's probe.

Such an action would provoke a major political crisis and could have unpredictable consequences. For Mr Trump's defenders, it may be enough simply to mire Mr Mueller's investigation in a partisan morass. Here are some are some of the ways they're trying to do that.

Tell-tale texts?

Peter Strzok, a senior counter-intelligence agent in the FBI and until this summer a top member of Mr Mueller's special counsel team, has become Exhibit A of anti-Trump bias in the Russia investigation.

A Justice Department inspector general review of the FBI's handling of its 2016 election investigations unearthed text messages between Mr Strzok and Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer who also temporarily worked on the Mueller investigation and with whom Mr Strzok was having an extramarital affair.

Some of the messages, which were provided to reporters, showed the two had a hostility toward then-candidate Trump in 2016. Ms Page called Mr Trump a "loathsome human" in March, as the candidate was cementing his lead in the Republican primary field. Three months later - after Mr Trump had secured the nomination - Mr Strzok wrote that he was an "idiot" who said "bigoted nonsense".

In an August text, Mr Strzok discussed a meeting with then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe in which Ms Page apparently had mentioned there was "no way" Mr Trump could be elected.

"I'm afraid we can't take that risk," Mr Strzok wrote. "It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40."

Some have theorised that the "insurance policy" in question was an FBI plan to destroy Mr Trump if he were to win. Others have suggested that it was simply a reference to the need to continue working the Trump-Russia investigation even though his election seemed unlikely.

Media caption President Trump renews attack on 'disgraceful' FBI

"It is very sad when you look at those documents," Mr Trump said on Friday, apparently referring to the texts. "And how they've done that is really, really disgraceful, and you have a lot of very angry people that are seeing it." He said it was a shame what had happened to the FBI and that it would be "rebuilt".

Since the first coverage of the story, reporters have reviewed more of the Strzok-Page texts and found the two made disparaging comments about a wide range of public figures, including Chelsea Clinton, Democrat Bernie Sanders, then-Attorney General Eric Holder, Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich, and Mrs Clinton.

"I'm worried about what happens if HRC is elected," Mr Strzok wrote, referring to Mrs Clinton by her initials.

Why it could matter: If Mr Strzok, a high-ranking member of the FBI who officially launched the initial investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, harboured anti-Trump animus, there is the possibility it could have motivated him to influence the investigation to the president's disadvantage.

Why it might not: Government employees are allowed to express political views as long as they don't influence their job performance. The breadth of the Strzok-Page texts could indicate they were just gossiping lovers. Without context, Mr Strzok's "insurance" line is vague. When Mr Mueller learned of the text this summer, Mr Strzok was removed from the independent counsel investigation and reassigned to a human resources job.

The Clinton case

Mr Strzok also figures prominently in Republican concerns about the FBI's handling of its investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Mr Strzok took part in interviews with key Clinton aides and reportedly was involved in drafting the report that concluded Mrs Clinton's actions did not warrant criminal charges, including changing the description of her handling of classified material from "grossly negligent" - which might have suggested illegal behaviour - to "extremely careless".

During the campaign Mr Trump repeatedly insisted that the Justice Department should re-open its investigation into Mrs Clinton and, after backing away from the idea early in his presidency, has once again renewed those calls.

"High ranking FBI officials involved in the Clinton investigation were personally invested in the outcome of the election and clearly let their strong political opinions cloud their professional judgement," Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte said during a House Judicial Committee hearing.

There's also the possibility that there were more communications between Ms Page and Mr Strzok about the Clinton investigation that have yet to come to light.

"We text on that phone when we talk about Hillary because it can't be traced, you were just venting [because] you feel bad that you're gone so much but it can't be helped right now," Ms Page wrote in one text.

Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said he wants more information about the use of these "untraceable" phones.

Why it could matter: If FBI agents backed off their investigation of Mrs Clinton in 2016 it could be further evidence of bias within the bureau that could affect its ongoing investigation into Mr Trump. If public confidence in the FBI is eroded, the ultimate findings of Mr Mueller's probe may be cast in doubt.

Why it might not: Lest anyone forget, Mrs Clinton's candidacy was the one wounded by FBI actions in the final days of the 2016 campaign. Then-Director James Comey's announcement of new evidence in the inquiry into her private email server - perhaps prompted by anti-Clinton leaks from the bureau's New York office - dominated the headlines and renewed concerns about the former secretary of state. News of the ongoing Trump-Russia investigation, on the other hand, didn't emerge until well after the election.

Marital woes

When it comes to the ongoing investigations into the investigations, it's not just the actions of the principals involved that have come under the spotlight. Spouses have figured prominently, as well.

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the bureau's second-in-command, is married to Jill McCabe, a paediatrician who ran as a Democrat for a Virginia state senate seat in 2015 (before Mr McCabe was promoted to his current position). During the hotly contested race, Ms McCabe received $467,500 in campaign contributions from a political action committee controlled by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a close political ally of the Clinton family.

Conservatives contend that this donation should have disqualified Mr McCabe from involvement in the Clinton case - and was yet another example of possible anti-Trump bias in the FBI's Russia investigation.

"If Mr McCabe failed to avoid the appearance of a partisan conflict of interest in favour of Mrs Clinton during the presidential election, then any participation in [the Russia] inquiry creates the exact same appearance of a partisan conflict of interest against Mr Trump," Senator Grassley wrote in a letter to then-Director Comey in March.

Meanwhile, the wife of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce G Ohr was recently reported as being employed in 2016 by Fusion GPS, the political research firm that produced the dossier containing unconfirmed allegations of Mr Trump's Russia entanglements. Mr Ohr himself has been connected to Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence agent who collected the material for the dossier.

Fusion GPS's anti-Trump research efforts were originally funded by a Republican donor and later backed by groups associated with the Democratic Party and the Clinton presidential campaign.

Why it matters: "Power couples" - spouses with influential, complementary political jobs - are a Washington tradition, and the actions of one partner are often considered to reflect on the views and behaviour of the other. In Mr McCabe's case, his wife's Democratic activism and allegiances could shed light on his political sympathies. For Mr Ohr, his marriage could have served as a conduit to inject Democratic-funded opposition research into the Justice Department.

Why it might not: Having a political spouse is not evidence of official bias. The identity of the individuals or groups that funded and gathered anti-Trump research and how it ended up in government hands does not necessarily have a bearing on whether the information is valid or merits further investigation.

Follow the money

The individuals working on the Russia investigation have been billed as a "dream team" by Democrats and liberal commentators hoping the efforts will eventually topple the Trump presidency.

Many conservatives beg to differ.

In June, as details of the special counsel hires began to emerge, conservatives noted that some of the biggest names - Andrew Weissmann, James Quarles, Jeannie Rhee and Michael Dreeben - had given money to Democratic presidential candidates.

"Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair," former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich tweeted . "Look who he is hiring."

Ms Rhee's private law work included representing Democrats, such as Obama Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and the Clinton Foundation in a lawsuit brought by a conservative activist group.

Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz recently travelled to Florida with Mr Trump and said he told the president that the independent counsel investigation was "infected with bias" against him - a view echoed in the conservative press.

"What we've seen over the past seven months of the Mueller investigation reveals a lot about how big government can end up becoming a threat to representative democracy," Laura Ingraham said on her Fox News programme. "And the more we look at the web of Clinton and Obama loyalists who burrowed into Mueller's office, the more obvious it all becomes."

Why it could matter: Political donations and legal work may be evidence of the ideological tilt of Mr Mueller's investigative team. That he has assembled a group of lawyers that may lean to the left could mean the investigation itself is predisposed to findings damaging to Mr Trump.

Why it might not: Investigators are adversarial by nature, and as long as Mr Mueller's team builds its cases with hard evidence, personal political views should not matter. While political partisans may focus on staff-level appointments, the investigation will rise and fall based on perceptions of Mr Mueller himself.

Mr Mueller's waiver

Prior to accepting the position as special counsel investigating possible Trump campaign ties to Russia, Mr Mueller requested - and received - an "ethics waiver" for possible conflicts of interest from the US Department of Justice.

The government has confirmed the existence of the waiver but has not revealed any details, although speculation at the time was that it had to do with Mr Mueller's work at the law firm WilmerHale, which represented former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort - who Mr Mueller has since indicted on money-laundering charges - and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Why it could matter: Without further information about the nature of the waiver, some are speculating that there is more to this request than simply routine ethical paperwork. Given that Mr Mueller is a former director of the FBI, with ties to many of the bureau officials who are now coming under conservative scrutiny, Mr Mueller's own allegiances are being called into question.

Why it might not: Mr Mueller is a decorated war veteran who, prior to taking the special counsel role was widely praised for his independence and probity. He was appointed FBI head by Republican George W Bush in 2001. If Mr Mueller's waiver had explosive details indicating clear bias, it probably would have leaked by now.

[Dec 25, 2017] Let him do his job : Forty former government officials and attorneys pen letters telling President Trump that firing Robert Mueller would lead to severe repercussions

Notable quotes:
"... The letters come a week after speculation that Trump wanted Mueller fired over recent revelations that two former FBI agents, assigned to investigate the alleged collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia, had sent each other hundreds of 'anti-Trump' text messages during the campaign and election. ..."
Dec 23, 2017 | dailymail.co.uk

More than 40 bipartisan former government officials and attorneys [Deep State globalists] are telling President Trump and Congress to leave Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller alone so he can do his 'job.'

In two letters, the former U.S. attorneys and Republican and conservative officials pushed back against efforts to discredit the special counsel investigating [alleged] Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The letters come a week after speculation that Trump wanted Mueller fired over recent revelations that two former FBI agents, assigned to investigate the alleged collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia, had sent each other hundreds of 'anti-Trump' text messages during the campaign and election.

[Dec 25, 2017] The Petro-Yuan Bombshell and Its Relation to the New US Security Doctrine

Notable quotes:
"... The new 55-page "America First" National Security Strategy (NSS), drafted over the course of 2017, defines Russia and China as "revisionist" powers, "rivals," and for all practical purposes strategic competitors of the United States. ..."
"... The NSS stops short of defining Russia and China as enemies, allowing for an "attempt to build a great partnership with those and other countries." Still, Beijing qualified it as "reckless" and "irrational." The Kremlin noted its "imperialist character" and "disregard for a multipolar world." Iran, predictably, is described by the NSS as "the world's most significant state sponsor of terrorism." ..."
Dec 25, 2017 | russia-insider.com

"Russia and China ... have concluded that pumping the US military budget by buying US bonds ... is an unsustainable proposition ..." Pepe Escobar 12,072 198

The new 55-page "America First" National Security Strategy (NSS), drafted over the course of 2017, defines Russia and China as "revisionist" powers, "rivals," and for all practical purposes strategic competitors of the United States.

The NSS stops short of defining Russia and China as enemies, allowing for an "attempt to build a great partnership with those and other countries." Still, Beijing qualified it as "reckless" and "irrational." The Kremlin noted its "imperialist character" and "disregard for a multipolar world." Iran, predictably, is described by the NSS as "the world's most significant state sponsor of terrorism."

Russia, China and Iran happen to be the three key movers and shakers in the ongoing geopolitical and geo-economic process of Eurasia integration.

The NSS can certainly be regarded as a response to what happened at the BRICS summit in Xiamen last September. Then, Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted on "the BRIC countries' concerns over the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies," and stressed the need to "overcome the excessive domination of a limited number of reserve currencies."

That was a clear reference to the US dollar, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of total reserve currency around the world and remains the benchmark determining the price of energy and strategic raw materials.

And that brings us to the unnamed secret at the heart of the NSS; the Russia-China "threat" to the US dollar.

The CIPS/SWIFT face-off

The website of the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) recently announced the establishment of a yuan-ruble payment system, hinting that similar systems regarding other currencies participating in the New Silk Roads, a.k.a. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will also be in place in the near future.

Crucially, this is not about reducing currency risk; after all Russia and China have increasingly traded bilaterally in their own currencies since the 2014 US-imposed sanctions on Russia. This is about the implementation of a huge, new alternative reserve currency zone, bypassing the US dollar.

The decision follows the establishment by Beijing, in October 2015, of the China International Payments System (CIPS). CIPS has a cooperation agreement with the private, Belgium-based SWIFT international bank clearing system, through which virtually every global transaction must transit.

What matters, in this case, is that Beijing – as well as Moscow – clearly read the writing on the wall when, in 2012, Washington applied pressure on SWIFT; blocked international clearing for every Iranian bank; and froze $100 billion in Iranian assets overseas as well as Tehran's potential to export oil. In the event that Washington might decide to slap sanctions on China, bank clearing though CIPS works as a de facto sanctions-evading mechanism.

Last March, Russia's central bank opened its first office in Beijing. Moscow is launching its first $1 billion yuan-denominated government bond sale. Moscow has made it very clear it is committed to a long-term strategy to stop using the US dollar as their primary currency in global trade, moving alongside Beijing towards what could be dubbed a post-Bretton Woods exchange system.

Gold is essential in this strategy. Russia, China, India, Brazil & South Africa are all either large producers or consumers of gold – or both. Following what has been extensively discussed in their summits since the early 2010s, the BRICS countries are bound to focus on trading physical gold .

Markets such as COMEX actually trade derivatives on gold, and are backed by an insignificant amount of physical gold. Major BRICS gold producers – especially the Russia-China partnership – plan to be able to exercise extra influence in setting up global gold prices.

The ultimate politically charged dossier

Intractable questions referring to the US dollar as the top reserve currency have been discussed at the highest levels of JP Morgan for at least five years now. There cannot be a more politically charged dossier. The NSS duly sidestepped it.

The current state of play is still all about the petrodollar system; since last year, what used to be a key, "secret" informal deal between the US and the House of Saud, is firmly in the public domain .

Even warriors in the Hindu Kush may now be aware of how oil and virtually all commodities must be traded in US dollars, and how these petrodollars are recycled into US Treasuries. Through this mechanism, Washington has accumulated an astonishing $20 trillion in debt – and counting.

Vast populations all across MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) also learned what happened when Iraq's Saddam Hussein decided to sell oil in euros, or when Muammar Gaddafi planned to issue a pan-African gold dinar.

But now it's China who's entering the fray, following through on plans set up way back in 2012. And the name of the game is oil-futures trading priced in yuan, with the yuan fully convertible into gold on the Shanghai and Hong Kong foreign exchange markets.

The Shanghai Futures Exchange and its subsidiary, the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) have already run four production environment tests for crude oil futures. Operations were supposed to start at the end of 2017, but even if they start sometime in early 2018, the fundamentals are clear: this triple win (oil/yuan/gold) completely bypasses the US dollar. The era of the petro-yuan is at hand.

Of course, there are questions on how Beijing will technically manage to set up a rival mark to Brent and WTI, or whether China's capital controls will influence it. Beijing has been quite discreet on the triple win; the petro-yuan was not even mentioned in National Development and Reform Commission documents following the 19th CCP Congress last October.

What's certain is that the BRICS countries supported the petro-yuan move at their summit in Xiamen, as diplomats confirmed to Asia Times . Venezuela is also on board. It's crucial to remember that Russia is number two and Venezuela is number seven among the world's Top Ten oil producers. Considering the pull of China's economy, they may soon be joined by other producers.

Yao Wei, chief China economist at Societe Generale in Paris, goes straight to the point, remarking how "this contract has the potential to greatly help China's push for yuan internationalization."

The hidden riches of "belt" and "road"

An extensive report by DBS in Singapore hits most of the right notes linking the internationalization of the yuan with the expansion of BRI.

In 2018, six major BRI projects will be on overdrive; the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, the China-Laos railway, the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, the Hungary-Serbia railway, the Melaka Gateway project in Malaysia, and the upgrading of Gwadar port in Pakistan.

HSBC estimates that BRI as a whole will generate no less than an additional, game-changing $2.5 trillion worth of new trade a year.

It's important to keep in mind that the "belt" in BRI should be seen as a series of corridors connecting Eastern China with oil/gas-rich regions in Central Asia and the Middle East, while the "roads" soon to be plied by high-speed rail traverse regions filled with – what else - un-mined gold.

A key determinant of the future of the petro-yuan is what the House of Saud will do about it. Should Crown Prince – and inevitable future king – MBS opt to follow Russia's lead, to dub it as a paradigm shift would be the understatement of the century.

Yuan-denominated gold contracts will be traded not only in Shanghai and Hong Kong but also in Dubai. Saudi Arabia is also considering to issue so-called Panda bonds, after the Emirate of Sharjah is set to take the lead in the Middle East for Chinese interbank bonds.

Of course, the prelude to D-Day will be when the House of Saud officially announces it accepts yuan for at least part of its exports to China.

A follower of the Austrian school of economics correctly asserts that for oil-producing nations, higher oil price in US dollars is not as important as market share: "They are increasingly able to choose in which currencies they want to trade."

What's clear is that the House of Saud simply cannot alienate China as one of its top customers; it's Beijing who will dictate future terms. That may include extra pressure for Chinese participation in Aramco's IPO. In parallel, Washington would see Riyadh embracing the petro-yuan as the ultimate red line.

An independent European report points to what may be the Chinese trump card: "an authorization to issue treasury bills in yuan by Saudi Arabia," the creation of a Saudi investment fund, and the acquisition of a 5% share of Aramco.

Nations under US sanctions, such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela, will be among the first to embrace the petro-yuan. Smaller producers such as Angola and Nigeria are already selling oil/gas to China in yuan.

And if you don't export oil but are part of BRI, such as Pakistan, the least you can do is replace the US dollar in bilateral trade, as Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal is currently evaluating.

A key feature of the geoeconomic heart of the world moving from the West towards Asia is that by the start of the next decade the petro-yuan and trade bypassing the US dollar will be certified facts on the ground across Eurasia.

The NSS for its part promises to preserve "peace through strength." As Washington currently deploys no less than 291,000 troops in 183 countries and has sent Special Ops to no less than 149 nations in 2017 alone, it's hard to argue the US is at "peace" – especially when the NSS seeks to channel even more resources to the industrial-military complex.

"Revisionist" Russia and China have committed an unpardonable sin; they have concluded that pumping the US military budget by buying US bonds that allow the US Treasury to finance a multi-trillion dollar deficit without raising interest rates is an unsustainable proposition for the Global South. Their "threat" – under the framework of BRICS as well as the SCO, which includes prospective members Iran and Turkey – is to increasingly settle bilateral and multilateral trade bypassing the US dollar.

It ain't over till the fat (golden) lady sings. When the beginning of the end of the petrodollar system – established by Kissinger in tandem with the House of Saud way back in 1974 – becomes a fact on the ground, all eyes will be focused on the NSS counterpunch.

John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 10:11 AM

China and Russia been dumping US bonds for a good while.
They just have to do it slowly, so they can get as much cash, to buy stolen discounted gold with from the British Anglo Zionist Empire, as possible without tanking the market.

The Federal reserve, prints currency, "loans" it to USA corporation, at USURY rates, gives this currency to other "sovereign" puppet states such as Belgium, who then act like they are buying the bonds for themselves.

It is a scam. Those who trust the USA/British Empire, will wind up with worthless paper, while the Usury bankers, their bosses, China and Russia, will wind up with gold.
All you USA worshipers should understand something.
He who has the gold, makes the rules.
Guess the western sheep are going to be the bitc#s of China and Russia for the next century or so.

Tommy Jensen John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:26 AM

I believe America will win. Therefore I sold my gold and bought dollares. The bad guys always win.............LOL.

Cliff Aleksandar Tomić , December 23, 2017 6:20 PM

" Treason doth never prosper
What be the reason?
For when it prosper,
None dare call it treason" -William Shakespere

Mychal Arnold Tommy Jensen , December 24, 2017 4:49 AM

Hey Tim or whatever. Yep you always win huh? Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Sudan, .ring any bells I could go on but you have been embarrassed enough with your msm drivel. Always the weak and defenseless you lily livered chicken's. You better avoid war with the two most powerful countries in the world. Can you guess? and neither are you pedos and babykillers. You make me sick and disgusted. Voted again the most threat to world peace. Ussa, ussa, ussa. Proud are ya all. The time is coming where you reap what you have sown and on that day I shall dance my happy dance that you feel what you and your evil countrymen have wrought in the world in the name of democracy and freedom hope it is on cable! You rotten to the core people!

Richard Burton Mychal Arnold , December 24, 2017 11:11 AM

Here here, the US Holocaust, countless millions killed all over the globe as the USA plunders, wars and props-up evil, despot regimes. Bin Laden, Taleban, just two of the US former best allies, how long can a 200 year old, degenerate country like the USA keep sponging-off/ using exploiting the worlds billions to enrich itself? USA... infested with drugs, crime, rust belts, slums, homeless, street bums VAST inequality.

zorbatheturk Richard Burton , December 25, 2017 2:11 AM

It's still a million miles better than a craphole like RuSSia!

Mychal Arnold Richard Burton , December 24, 2017 12:01 PM

Yep! As Rome burns and eaten from within!

Le Ruse Tommy Jensen , December 25, 2017 2:32 AM

Yes Tommy.. Good move !!
Buy US$ !! US$ is backed by US government !! Gold is not backed by anything !!

Peter Jennings John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:09 AM

Remember the Belgium Bulge a few years back? the process must also work in reverse.

wilmers13 John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 12:43 AM

You cannot buy gold from the Empire, have you not read the book Gold Warriors.

Security is a propaganda term now, stands for war preparations.

John C Carleton wilmers13 , December 24, 2017 8:39 AM

The Empire sells other peoples gold to China and Russia everyday, having stole and sold Americans gold long since.
Works like this.
The not Federal, and no Reserve(s) dollar, is worth about 1 cent, of a 1913, pre Usury criminal banker scam "dollar".
That 1 % is swiftly loosing it's value.
To keep the American people, from realizing, the USA, is using them for cattle, stealing their labor, through planned hyperinflation,:
Israhell/Washington crime cabal, dumps massive amounts of "paper gold and silver", on the market, each and every damn day the rigged market is open, in order to artificially keep the price of gold and silver way the hell below where it should be priced in federal reserve currency.
This hide s the true inflation rate of the not federal and no reserves private Usury Banker Currency, falsely identified as the "US Dollar".
Israhell/Washington DC, does not have the physical gold and silver to cover what they sell.
It is a criminal scam.
Those who buy this paper gold and silver, small guy, will never be given physical for the paper.
Small guy, traded green paper for white paper. Either will be worthless soon.
Sovereigns, can buy enough of it, to demand delivery of physical.
The day the British Anglo zionist Empire defaults delivering physical gold, to China and Russia, for the paper gold, is the day the curtain comes down on the illusion of the USA financial empire.
Washington DC knows this, China knows this, Russia knows this.
In order to buy time, Israhell/Washington DC, has stolen, sold at hugely discounted prices, to keep the dollar scam alive, just a while longer, all the gold they were supposably storing for safe keeping, of other sovereigns.
They have stolen privately held gold, which was stored in commercial banks and vaults for "safe keeping.
They stole the gold which went missing from the basement vaults in the world trade centers, before they set off the demolition charges.
Then they sold it.
They stole and sold Ukraines gold.
They stole and sold, Libya's gold.
They had intended to have already stole and sold Syria's gold.
They are fast running out of other peoples gold, to deliver to China and Russia at huge discounts, to prop up the scam, just a while longer.
The day there is no more stolen gold to deliver to China and Russia, the music stops, all the chairs are removed, this game of musical chars is over. Starving Americans will eat their pets, rats, and each other.
Thanks Israhell!
Thanks Washington DC/USA.

Trauma2000 John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 1:11 PM

I want more information on this. Isabella said a similar thing. I want to know more... So the U$T's that are in actual fact worthless, Russia is using to buy gold at a huge discount to what should be the true market rate; and then Russia is storing this. I understand the storing thing. I'm a straight forward kind-of-a-guy. But its the U.$.T.'s to Physical Gold I can't get my head around.

Why is the U.$. honouring what is a knife-to-its-throat deal that is very soon going to result in the collapse of the U.$. dollar? And according to this forum fully 20% of Russia's reserves are still held in fiat U.$.T's..?

Why would Russia hold such a large percentage if its reserves in what will be worthless U.$.T.'s when it knows that the U.$. is going to try and scam Russia and default..?

I want to know more.

John C Carleton Trauma2000 , December 24, 2017 2:02 PM

Picture a crime family.
Some branches are pure evil.
Some not so evil.
Some are very open about their evil.
Some are sneaky hypocrites who use the news media to white wash their crimes, and vilify their victims.

BUT! And this is one huge BUT, they all know too much on each other to start talking too damn much.
Also, their criminal Empire, (shearing/raping/murdering the sheep for fun and profit) is all tied together. Common banks, common/interchangeable fiat currencies, Usury debt practices.
Take part of it down, the other part will suffer great losses, if not go down with them.
Russia, and China, has gotten tired of the British Anglo zionist Empire lording it over them and treating them like red headed step children.
Russia and China, have not seen the Light, are not operating for the sake of their people, but to keep themselves in power, by returning to the people, some of the wealth they stole from the people to begin with
British Anglo zionist pig fkers Empire, is too greedy to return any of the stolen loot.
The BAzE, have a let them eat grass like the animals they are elitist attitude.
China and Russia, are trying to position themselves to come out on top when the economic reset happens.
They both were FORCED, by Empire, to both buy and hold, huge stashes of both Federal reserve fiat currency, and bonds, to do business in the rest of the world.
The USA military is the enforcement arm for the BAzE.
USA military is corrupted, demoralized, veterans fked over royally, weapons do not work as their purpose, was to steal the labor of the American working man and women, not to produce weapons which worked as advertised.
Russia and China, will continue to buy gold, buy time, to get in a better position to give Uncle Sugar's pedophilic ass both middle fingers.
It is in their interest to do so.
The owners of the British Anglo zionist Empire, have their personal vaults filled with stolen gold.
The politicians you see, the Rothschild's even, are window dressing to hide the true owners, and to protect the true owners asses during slave revolts, by offering, kings, queens, politicians, bankers, heads to get chopped.
These owners have no loyalty to any other person, or country in the world. They see themselves as the chess players, humanity as the pieces, the earth as their personal chess board.
They do not give a FF about America, the American people, or the hand puppet political whore of DC/USA.
The hand puppet whores, are too stupid, and corrupt anyway, to understand whats coming, or to have the power, intelligence, or balls to stop it
There are all kinds of fun and wealth created, for deviant sick bastards, in creating, and tearing down empires.
Besides, all the death and destruction gets them sexually excited
Takes years of study, experience with, and intuition, to begin to understand their evil, and the way the world really works.
Whether someone started years back, educating themselves, preparing for whats coming, will determine if they will enter the kill zone as a sheep or not.
The only protection sheep have, is the hope, the jackals will rape and murder some other sheep, not them. That is why they will not stand up or speak up.
That is why they violently attack anyone wants to leave the herd mentality, everyone else forced to be in the same sheep state as them,
They are afraid the jackal will notice them individually.
Herd numbers and hiding in the herd, are the cowards only protection

Bd-prince Pramanik Trauma2000 , December 24, 2017 8:28 PM

your answer is in your question!

Mychal Arnold John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 12:41 PM

John I firmly believe they will get what is coming to them just a matter of time nothing endures forever. But mostly not in our life time, though!

John C Carleton Mychal Arnold , December 24, 2017 12:46 PM

Any day now, any week, not very many months, can the scam go on.
In other words, Americans might want to bone up on delicious recipes for Rats, cats, and their neighbors.

Trauma2000 John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 3:15 PM

re: "China and Russia been dumping US bonds for a good while.
They just have to do it slowly, so they can get as much cash, to buy stolen discounted gold with from the British Anglo Zionist Empire, as possible without tanking the market."

I have been reading this for a while. But I've yet to see it in practice. Rosneft is still accepting U.$. dollars for oil/gas transactions, the most recent of which I believe was the gas shipment from St Petersburg to Poland..? https://tomluongo.me/2017/1...

I need to read more on this subject.

BobValdez Trauma2000 , December 23, 2017 3:48 PM

Russia acceps dollars for oil, and uses them to buy physical gold. No need to hold useless dollars, just convert them to gold.

Paw Trauma2000 , December 23, 2017 9:48 PM

What you buy by petrodollars ?
Saudi .Arabia buys arms. But SA has got millions of unemployed people , because they studied Islamic religion , wahabist fanaticism ... Further SA employs millions of workers from other countries. And owns US assets in value over 1 trillion dollars. So what else to buy , where to spend their petrodollars? Only get billions dollars arms ,that are in couple years useless...Population hate the fully corrupt royal family in numbers approximately 40 thousands princess as they have to get about 500 thousands yearly salaries...For doing nothing , only to spend it everywhere...
Populations hate US presence in SA. Very much.

Richard Burton Paw , December 24, 2017 11:18 AM

But the Great Satan~USA adore such scum as the vile Crooked Saudi royal family, the snakehead USA ignore all their anti-democracy, anti- human rights their beheading, their evil ways, they worship money the US swine, its all they see and lap-up, plus they have Russia/ China /Iran to pick on and blame not their evil Saudi- swine arms buyers. View Hide

Isabella Jones Trauma2000 , December 24, 2017 11:54 AM

At the moment, because the US is illegally holding gold prices down using uncovered shorts on paper gold, and at the same time has used sanctions to devalue the rouble, Russia is producing oil at reduced - rouble - rates, selling it on the international market for U$, [artificially inflated] and buying massive amounts of cheap gold with the huge profits she is making.
Russia is singing all the way to the bank right now. The US backed itself into a corner on this one it cannot get out from - short of waging war on Russia !!!

Mychal Arnold Isabella Jones , December 24, 2017 12:32 PM

10% of GDP goes out where is the ussa 100 as are many others in the west. All western country have huge debts funny how that is or is it?

Tony B. Isabella Jones , December 24, 2017 11:31 PM

Why should anyone who is in love with gold be upset if someone is holding the price down? It should be a wonderful time to buy.
Russia is MINING gold, its own gold.

Isabella Jones Tony B. , December 25, 2017 5:41 AM

It is a great time to buy, if you have some spare cash to store, I agree. It's just a poor time if you need to realise your gold - you wont get the price for it you should. But indeed, it's a buyers market. Yes, Russia has a fair bit of gold "reserves" just sitting in the ground.

John C Carleton Trauma2000 , December 23, 2017 3:41 PM

There is the face the beast lets you see, and the real face of the beast.
You do not think the beast is stupid enough to show it's real face to all the sheep?
Really?
The sheep who are given personal attention in private places, see the real face of the beast, because it sexually excites the beast for the chosen sheep to die bleating in terror.

Nathan Dunning John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 4:36 PM

You're a tool for the left I bet you're American Liberal.

John C Carleton Nathan Dunning , December 24, 2017 9:44 AM

You are a sheep.
i Am a wolf.
You are lucky i lost my taste for mutton.
i prefer goat and jackal. View Hide

John C Carleton Nathan Dunning , December 24, 2017 9:49 AM

View Hide

Mychal Arnold Nathan Dunning , December 24, 2017 12:45 PM

Guess you just got here you friggin troll. You know nothing you shill. Go back to the basement mom has brought you dinner and cookies n milk and let the grown men talk, now that is a good boy bye. Sorry John I have disappointed my Mom said be nice but idiots bother me. Say hi to your lovely Mom for me and God bless. Merry Christmas everyone! Got your back as always.

alexwest11 John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:25 AM

John C Carleton • an hour ago China and Russia been dumping US bond
-------
no they don't! Russians reserves are about 100+ bln in UST

and WHOLLY 20 % OF RUSSIAN assets in Russian banks are kept mostly $$$ and some euro

John C Carleton alexwest11 , December 23, 2017 12:18 PM

Glad you are so confident in the currency, which has lost 99% of it's buying power since 1913, when the not Federal and no Reserve(s) was forced on the American people by the Usury Banker ancestors of the owners of the 'Fed", buying USA politicians.

Where did that 99% value go?
To the I%ters. You know, the pedophile elite.
They want it all, they are coming for the other 1% of the "dollar's" value.
They are coming for Social security, government pensions, private pensions, checking accounts, any thing with any value.

Oh by the way, just cause you are ignorant of how things work, don't mean they don't work that way, just means you are ignorant.
Have a wonderful day now!
See mother, i was nice to the bad person who was trying to run interference for pedophile baby rapers.

oncefiredbrass John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 2:44 AM

Good to see someone else Awake! A good portion of the Sheep are still sleeping, they think the National Debt and Zero Interest Rates mean nothing (in the Eurozone Interest is Negative). The US Dollar is soon to be Toilet Paper! Our Military can only overthrow small countries that defy the PetroDollar system. Now with so many doing it, John Carleton is right, the National Debt and Retirements Accounts are basically equal. That is why Obutthead set the start of grabbing them by creating the MYRA, the Theory is the Sheep are to stupid to manage their own retirement accounts, so the Government would grab them and put them in a so called safe investment called "Treasury's". Unfortunately the SS Trust Fund has been raided and is broke, but they do have drawers full of Treasuries. Trump has to immediately open public lands for Mining & Drilling! A normalization of Interest Rates to 5-6% would consume Government Revenues just to pay Interest on the Debt!

John C Carleton oncefiredbrass , December 24, 2017 8:22 AM

Will work like this, they may already be doing it quietly.
Take private pensions.
They are already in trouble, having stocks, bonds, commercial real estate holdings.
All of these will become worthless, or close to it.
Anything with value, currency, decimal dollars, will be taken by the Washington thieves, and worthless US bonds which will probably never be redeemed, or redeemed for chump change, will be put in their place by Washington, as they "protect" the retirement accounts.
Old people will eat rats, each other, dog and cats, die without medical care and meds which they can not afford.
Some will eat their pistols.
Not going to be nice or orderly.

Ron John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:11 PM

Dude, your postings are good and has an element of humor, thanks.

alexwest11 John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:25 PM

pedophile baby rapers.
------
people who associate everything w/ pedophile baby rapers.
USUALLY ARE pedophile baby rapers.!!!!!

YES, $ lost about 97 %, but rest of even worse

russian ruble of 1913 - worthless
german mark -worthless
japanese yen - worthless
etc!

John C Carleton alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 8:58 AM

Open mouth in ignorance, insert foot.
Don't worry about a foot in the other end, i will do that verbally with my Texas cowboy boot.

Dispora Pedophiles increasingly Use Israel as 'haven,' activist charge.'
https://www.timesofisrael.c...

'Advocacy group: Israel is a pedophiles paridise-Haaetz-Israel News'
https://www.haaretz.com/adv...

'Nachlaot, where pedophiles roam free,--the Times of Israel
https://www.haaretz.com/adv...

'Israel Found to be Safe For Pedophiles'
http://yournewswire.com/isr...

'Jewish Pedophiles Increasingly use Israel as a haven, activist charge'
https://freespeechtwentyfir...

'Power, Pedophilia and the US Government'
http://www.whale.to/c/power...

'Frankland Coverup Sex Scandal,
(pedophile prostitution ring being run out of Reagan's White House)
http://www.johnccarleton.or...

All pedo's, should be given a fair trial, and a fair hanging. A pedophile which was given a fair trial, and a fair hanging, never again, raped a child.
Amazing how that works.

How you like them Texas cowboy boots?

Aurora alexwest11 , December 23, 2017 1:19 PM

Correct and very easy at any given moment to be converted in a GOLD.Just follow dynamic Russia and China buying GOLD on a world market and everything will be clear to you

alexwest11 Aurora , December 24, 2017 12:43 AM

dynamic Russia and China buying GOLD on a world market
-----

btw . moron

Russia/ china don't buy gold on world market. they are 2 /3 gold producers in the world

WHAT IS YOU LEVEL OF FORMAL EDUCATION ??

it seems you are uneducated moron !

AM Hants alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 7:25 AM

Russian Gold Reserves 2014-2017 View Hide

Aurora alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 1:19 PM

While all eyes are on the oil price and the ruble to dollar rate, the Central Bank of Russia has quietly been buying huge volumes of gold over the past year. In January, 2016, the latest data available, the Russian Central Bank again bought 22 tons of gold, around $800 million at current exchange rates, that, amidst US and EU financial sanctions and low oil prices. It was the eleventh month in a row they bought large gold volumes. For 2015 Russia added a record 208 tons of gold to her reserves compared with 172 tons for 2014. Russia now has 1,437 tonnes of gold in reserve, the sixth largest of any nation according to the World Gold Council in London. Only USA, Germany, Italy, France and China central banks hold a larger tonnage of gold reserves.
Notably also, the Russian central bank has been selling its holdings of US Treasury debt to buy the gold, de facto de-dollarizing, a sensible move as the dollar is waging de facto currency war against the ruble. As of December, 2015, Russia held $92 billion in US Treasury Bonds down from $132 billion in January 2014.China bought another 17 tons of gold in January and will buy a total of another 215 tons this year, approximately equal to that of Russia. From August to January 2016 China added 101 tonnes of gold to its reserves. Annual purchases of more than 200 tons by the PBOC would exceed the entire gold holdings of all but about 20 countries, according to the World Gold Council. China's central bank reserves of gold have risen 57% since 2009 acording to data the PBOC revealed in July, 2015. Market watchers believe even that amount of gold in China's central bank vaults is being politically vastly understated so as not to cause alarm bells to ring too loud in Washington and London.

Mychal Arnold alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 12:50 PM

Dude stop your only making yourself look stupid by opening your gob and proving or in this case writing. Merry Christmas or is it happy Hanukkah? Troll boy.

Le Ruse Mychal Arnold , December 25, 2017 2:37 AM

Maybe Happy "Kwanza" whatever is that ??

alexwest11 Aurora , December 23, 2017 11:29 PM

any given moment to be converted in a GOLD.J
----------
???????? converted what ?

in Russia, in gold ? you are not Russian, don't live, know nothing

----------
most Russians are stupid and uneducated in finance, savings do not exist

average Russian rather buy car , or flat than save money for something.

it is USSR mentality plagued by memory of deficits

Bd-prince Pramanik alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 8:51 PM

alexwest11 You are stupid ! a flat or house is real money you know ! They are uneducated in Rothschild finance! are you a russlanddeutsche! or jew from holy ukraine like poroschenko ?

Tony B. Bd-prince Pramanik , December 24, 2017 11:36 PM

Rothschild finance can be described in a single word: THEFT.
The world's sole economic problem.

Le Ruse Tony B. , December 25, 2017 2:39 AM

Humm...
the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away ??

AM Hants alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 7:38 AM

You confuse me. If Russians are so stupid and uneducated in finance, then why is their President a Dr in Economics?

Why are they in control of their vast wealth of natural resources?

Why do they have virtually enough gold to back the ruble and decent currency reserves, that rise monthly?

Also, how come they have free healthcare and education, including university level, if they are so stupid and uneducated?

Why does the US require Russian engines to make it into space?

Like I said, you confuse me, as I assumed you were talking about another super-nation, that has seriously lost it's way.

PUTIN'S PHD THESIS ESSENTIAL READING FOR OFFICIALS
http://slavija.proboards.co...

Russia National Debt: $194,545,062,334
Interest per Year $12,805,556,000
Interest per Second $406
Debt per Citizen $1,330
Debt as % of GDP 19.32%
GDP $1,007,000,000,000
Population 146,300,000

Russia Foreign Exchange Reserves

View Hide
oncefiredbrass alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 2:52 AM

Russia is one of the largest Countries by land mass with a sparse population after the breakup of the Soviet Union. They run very low deficits and their National Debt is very low, they are one of the Countries that is best prepared for a major economic crash.

alexwest11 oncefiredbrass , December 24, 2017 3:19 AM

oncefiredbrass alexwest11 • 28 minutes ago Russia
is one of the largest Countries by land mass with a sparse population
after the breakup of the Soviet Union. They run very low defic
--------
but facts say quite opposite!!!!!!!!

during oil selloff of 2008*9 Russian ruble fall 50%, from 23 to 37 per$

during oil selloff of 2014*15 Russian ruble fall 250 %, from 33 to almost 90 per$

right now its about 60 per $ , still 100% devaluation from 2014
-------

i don't remember $ fall against euro or yen during 2000 or/and 2008 crises in USA

more than 20 %

oncefiredbrass alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 3:27 AM

The fall of the Ruble was an attack or sanction by the Obama Regime over Ukraine. Why not trying to look up the Debt to GDP ratio for Russia and then the US and then ask yourself what economy is actually in a better position to withstand a Depression. Russia almost has enough Gold to back all their currency. How much gold would it take to back all the Treasuries and Dollars that the US has spread all over the world?

alexwest11 JIMI JAMES , December 24, 2017 6:23 AM

because in the end only the strong will survive and russia just like china
-------
!!sure moron.

avg salary in Russia about 500 $
avg pension 200 $

that is why idiotic Russians twice in 20 century totally annihilated own country!!!!!! 1917 and 1991

-----
and for china!!!!!!! it just show how moronic you are
we will see how china is good in 100 or 200 years!!!

cause history showed china always being overrun by someone else;
mongols, Manchurians, etc

learn a history western moron!!!!!!!!

Mychal Arnold alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 12:59 PM

Hey let the grown men talk baby boy! You are spouting msm talking points you're trying to debate the choir about hymns. Your not going to make anyone here see the light because you have no truths behind or in front. Msm drivel. One simple question! Who took Berlin? In ww2 of course!

Why , December 23, 2017 9:42 AM

I hope Russia will survive UKUSA's onslaught.

Craig A. Mouldey Why , December 23, 2017 10:51 AM

Me too. The U.S. has become the evil empire. The bully on the world stage stealing everyone's lunch money. I know it will devastate us in Canada, but I would still rather see the U.S. economy crumble if it would cripple their war machine, than to see this situation go on. Ron Paul was right: Instead of war, why not pursue peaceful trade? But the U.S. controllers want everyone else under their thumb as obedient serfs. It is evil. And as Smedley Butler so bluntly put it "War is a Racket"! He said this because he was sent to war with Guatemala on behalf of the United Fruit Company, aka Chiquita Brands International. This time, they are trying to steal the lunch money from those who can defend themselves. We aren't going to sit on our couch watching this war on TV, because we will watch it out our front windows.

[Dec 25, 2017] McCabe Grilled, New Subpeonas Coming - Political Graffiti - SurfTalk

Dec 25, 2017 | www.stripersonline.com

· #1

Posted Wednesday at 11:38 PM (edited)

McCabe was grilled today behind closed doors. It is being reported that based on that grilling, as well as new evidence that has come to the committees, new subpoenas will be issued for other key figures in this. Among them Ohr's wife, the FBI general counsel and others.

This is turning into the mother of all narrative torpedoes (MoANT) as the demands of the Lib/Prog/Dems for a special counsel appears to be poised to blowing the lid off of the weaponization of the DoJ/FBI/Mueller probe.

Meanwhile, the investigation into Debbie 2-names IT specialists shows that his used car business may have been a front for a money laundering operation that supported Hezbollah.

And then there is the whole Hezbollah suppression operation meant to smooth the Iran nuke deal. The way Mary Hart is foaming at the mouth on Fox News defending herself and her old bosses, me thinks there is far more truth to that story than the "smart foreign policy" people of the last team would like us to believe. As we know, when Putin embarrassed Obama in a big way, BO changed the focus of his foreign policy legacy from Russian reapporachment to the Iran Deal. And, as a result, that was a "get it done at any and all costs" type of pursuit.

But hey Media and Lefties, lets lie about who is going to benefit most from the new tax bill, right?

· #6

Posted Thursday at 03:31 AM EXCLUSIVE: Congressional investigators tell Fox News that Tuesday's seven-hour interrogation of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe contained numerous conflicts with the testimony of previous witnesses, prompting the Republican majority staff of the House Intelligence Committee to decide to issue fresh subpoenas next week on Justice Department and FBI personnel.

While HPSCI staff would not confirm who will be summoned for testimony, all indications point to demoted DOJ official Bruce G. Ohr and FBI General Counsel James A. Baker, who accompanied McCabe, along with other lawyers, to Tuesday's HPSCI session.

The issuance of a subpoena against the Justice Department's top lawyer could provoke a new constitutional clash between the two branches, even worse than the months-long tug of war over documents and witnesses that has already led House Speaker Paul Ryan to accuse DOJ and FBI of "stonewalling" and HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., to threaten contempt-of-Congress citations against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

"It's hard to know who's telling us the truth," said one House investigator after McCabe's questioning.

Fox News is told that several lawmakers participated in the questioning of McCabe, led chiefly by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.

Sources close to the investigation say that McCabe was a "friendly witness" to the Democrats in the room, who are said to have pressed the deputy director, without success, to help them build a case against President Trump for obstruction of justice in the Russia-collusion probe. "If he could have, he would have," said one participant in the questioning.

Investigators say McCabe recounted to the panel how hard the FBI had worked to verify the contents of the anti-Trump "dossier" and stood by its credibility. But when pressed to identify what in the salacious document the bureau had actually corroborated, the sources said, McCabe cited only the fact that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had traveled to Moscow. Beyond that, investigators said, McCabe could not even say that the bureau had verified the dossier's allegations about the specific meetings Page supposedly held in Moscow.

The sources said that when asked when he learned that the dossier had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, McCabe claimed he could not recall – despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe's own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier's financing and provenance.

The decision by HPSCI staff to subpoena Ohr comes as he is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Until earlier this month, when Fox News began investigating him, Ohr held two titles at DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, a post that placed him four doors down from his boss, Rosenstein; and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), a program described by the department as "the centerpiece of the attorney general's drug strategy."

Ohr will retain his OCDETF title but was stripped of his higher post and ousted from his office on the fourth floor of "Main Justice." Department officials confirmed that Ohr had withheld from superiors his secret meetings in 2016 with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the dossier with input from Russian sources; and with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired Steele with funds supplied by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Subsequently, Fox News disclosed that Ohr's wife Nellie, an academic expert on Russia, had worked for Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.

Former FBI Director James Comey, testifying before the House in March, described the dossier as a compendium of "salacious and unverified" allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump and his associates. The Nunes panel has spent much of this year investigating whether DOJ, under then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, used the dossier to justify a foreign surveillance warrant against Page, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

DOJ and FBI say they have cooperated extensively with Nunes and his team, including the provision of several hundred pages of classified documents relating to the dossier. The DOJ has also made McCabe available to the House Judiciary Committee for a closed-door interview on Thursday.

The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment for this report.

[Dec 25, 2017] Steele dossier is actually about Obama "spygate"

Dec 24, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Anunnaki , Dec 24, 2017 11:12 PM

I recently read Ed Klein's book All Out War. It took the Obama admin 3 attempts to finally get the FISA warrant which they used to spy on Trump for oppo research. Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett were for it. Michelle was against

As a Clinton campaign project, the campaign was obligated to report the expenditure on their FEC report. Which they did not. That is another un processed crime

Clinton is the one who could shoot someone in NYC and get away with it.

xrxs -> Anunnaki , Dec 24, 2017 11:24 PM

That's a very bad batting average when it comes to the FISA court.

Anunnaki -> xrxs , Dec 24, 2017 11:50 PM

Absolutely correct. They are almost never turned down. Sally Yates was the bagman/lady who got it over the threshold

Corrupt to the core. Obama and his Deep State cronies

benb , Dec 24, 2017 11:32 PM

I'm no Newt Gingrich fan. He is a top globalist, (or was) The former college professor is one of the most intelligent observers out there. It's well worth hearing what Newt has to say in this Hannity interview. He says the corruption is unprecedented and they are all going to jail!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-GA8Ukmw6s

Yes We Can. But... , Dec 25, 2017 12:12 AM

An insurance policy is a sure thing . When I hear 'insurance policy' in this context being discussed by these supremely arrogant, venal fucks in McCabe's office, what comes to my mind is thoughts of vote fixing . Trump's 'rigged system'. Put 'em all - McCabe, Strzok, Page, Priestap, Comey, and whomever else, under oath and find out the precise nature of the 'insurance policy' they were discussing, and what Strzok meant by 'many levels'.

[Dec 25, 2017] Wife Of Fusion GPS Founder Admits Her Husband Was Behind Fake RussiaGate Story

Dec 25, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Mary Jacoby, the wife of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who is the man in the middle of the entire Russiagate scandal, boasted on Facebook about how 'Russiagate,' would not exist if it weren't for her husband.

Tablet Magazine reports

A Tablet investigation using public sources to trace the evolution of the now-famous dossier suggests that central elements of the Russiagate scandal emerged not from the British ex-spy Christopher Steele's top-secret "sources" in the Russian government -- which are unlikely to exist separate from Russian government control -- but from a series of stories that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and his wife Mary Jacoby co-wrote for TheWall Street Journal well before Fusion GPS existed, and Donald Trump was simply another loud-mouthed Manhattan real estate millionaire. Understanding the origins of the "Steele dossier" is especially important because of what it tells us about the nature and the workings of what its supporters would hopefully describe as an ongoing campaign to remove the elected president of the United States.

...

In a Facebook post from June 24, 2017, that Tablet has seen in screenshots, Jacoby claimed that her husband deserves the lion's share of credit for Russiagate. (She has not replied to repeated requests for comment.)

"It's come to my attention that some people still don't realize what Glenn's role was in exposing Putin's control of Donald Trump," Jacoby wrote. "Let's be clear. Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn."

This assertion is hardly a simple assertion of family pride; it goes directly to the nature of what became known as the "Steele dossier," on which the Russiagate narrative is founded.

The Gateway Pundit reports that the news of the Facebook post comes amid heightened scrutiny for the opposition research firm.

According to Fox News reporter Jake Gibson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has called on a senior Justice Department attorney to look into appointing a special counsel to investigate recently demoted official Bruce Ohr's contacts with Fusion GPS.

"Sessions on calls for a special counsel to look into Sr DOJ Official Bruce Ohr, and wife Nellie's contacts with Fusion GPS during the summer and fall of 2016: I've put a Senior Attorney, with the resources he may need, to review cases in our office and make a recommendation to me, if things aren't being pursued that need to be pursued, if cases may need more resources to complete in a proper manner, and to recommend to me if the standards for a special counsel are met, and the recommended one should be established," tweeted Fox News reporter Jake Gibson on Tuesday.

Fox News ' James Rosen and Jake Gibson recently reported the wife of Justice Department official Bruce G. Ohr worked for the opposition research firm during the 2016 presidential election.

Fox News reports

Contacted by Fox News, investigators for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) confirmed that Nellie H. Ohr, wife of the demoted official, Bruce G. Ohr, worked for the opposition research firm last year. The precise nature of Mrs. Ohr's duties – including whether she worked on the dossier – remains unclear but a review of her published works available online reveals Mrs. Ohr has written extensively on Russia-related subjects. HPSCI staff confirmed to Fox News that she was paid by Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.

In a statement to Fox News, a Justice Department spokesperson noted that

"It is unusual for anyone to wear two hats as he has done recently. This person is going to go back to a single focus - director of our organized crime and drug enforcement unit. As you know, combatting transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking is a top priority for the Attorney General."

bankonzhongguo , Dec 24, 2017 11:20 AM

Treason.

HisNameIsRP -> bankonzhongguo , Dec 24, 2017 11:26 AM

Where is Strzok's wife at? I'm sure she has words.

spieslikeus -> HisNameIsRP , Dec 24, 2017 11:31 AM

Busy looking for a divorce attorney I suppose.

knukles -> spieslikeus , Dec 24, 2017 11:42 AM

Somewhere between the bookends of Conspiracy to Overthrow and Treason, lies Sedition.
Take yer pick

And all this is coming to light because of Mueller and Hillary looking, bitching and trying to ruffle the bedclothes.
The Dems are their own enemy.

Had they sat the fuck down and shut the fuck up, this would never have come to light.

I for one am excited to support Hillary for 2020.
What wonders shall be uncovered

RAT005 -> Yes We Can. But Lets Not. , Dec 24, 2017 12:37 PM

Strzok's wife is one part of the problem, Strzok's girlfriend's husband should become another fun element of the story.

rockstone -> Mullet Master , Dec 24, 2017 1:54 PM

Is "swamp critter" a technical term

punishmentnotrevenge -> knukles , Dec 24, 2017 12:03 PM

I'm pretty sure Section II out lines all of this! Granted it was replaced by the 1918 Sedition Act but the premis is still there!

SEDITION ACT.

An act in addition to the act intituled, "An act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States ."

[Approved July 14, 1798.]

ABSTRACT.

SECTION I. Punishes combinations against United States government.
1. Definition of offence:
Unlawfully to combine or conspire together to oppose any measure of the government of the United States, &c. This section was not complained of.
2. Grade of offence:
A high misdemeanour.
3. Punishment:
Fine not exceeding $5000, and imprisonment six months to five years.
SECTION II. Punishes seditious writings .
1. Definition of offence:
To write, print, utter or publish, or cause it to be done, or assist in it, any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or the President, with intent to defame, or bring either into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against either the hatred of the people of the United States, or to stir up sedition, or to excite unlawful combinations against the government, or to resist it, or to aid or encourage hostile designs of foreign nations.
2. Grade of offence:
A misdemeanour.
3. Punishment:
Fine not exceeding $2000, and imprisonment not exceeding two years

[Dec 25, 2017] Can Peter Strzok take the fifth?

Notable quotes:
"... So these individuals should be questioned about what was meant by the phrase "insurance policy." There is no need to speculate on the meaning of that phrase... as this author does. Direct inquiry of these individuals must be conducted and if they are not fully forthcoming with answers they should be terminated by the executive branch immediately. It will take some cooperation between the branches of government but it is necessary. And if anyone has been unfaithful to their office they should lose their retirement benefits too. that is the only way we can stop this crap from happening again. ..."
Dec 24, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

When you are in such a high office you do not have the liberty of claiming the Fifth. Anyone in office, at or near the level of McCabe's position, who refuses to answer questions should be terminated on the spot. No further need to elaborate. And the interrogation should be conducted in public lest we lose faith in assinine-appearing-individuals we call our congress men and women.

Why should we trust a committee to interrogate in private and then deliver a consensus opinion of the interrogation when there is so little trust in government? All testimony should be public... let the public determine the truth in these matters. The verdict can be rendered in the next election.

So these individuals should be questioned about what was meant by the phrase "insurance policy." There is no need to speculate on the meaning of that phrase... as this author does. Direct inquiry of these individuals must be conducted and if they are not fully forthcoming with answers they should be terminated by the executive branch immediately. It will take some cooperation between the branches of government but it is necessary. And if anyone has been unfaithful to their office they should lose their retirement benefits too. that is the only way we can stop this crap from happening again.

Set an example!

Why are we fooling around with these issues. Unelected individuals are striking at the heart of our government. Who is in control here? if the allegations against Strzok regarding a meeting in McCabe's office are true then a crime has been committed.

This is your turn to cleanse the government President Trump. Keep Twittering. I have faith in you.

[Dec 25, 2017] The Federal Bureau of Indiscretion

The question is when does Opposition Research cross the line and become criminal conduct.
Notable quotes:
"... By now, most Americans paying attention have heard about Peter Strzok, one of the FBI's lead investigators on the Hillary Clinton email case and the Trump – Russia collusion probe. Strzok was second-in-command of counterintelligence at the FBI. He, single-handedly, put a dark cloud over the integrity of the two investigations when it was recently disclosed that he had exchanged thousands of politically-charged text messages with his mistress, Lisa Page, a senior FBI attorney. The couple used FBI-supplied cell phones to transmit and receive the text messages ..."
Dec 25, 2017 | investmentwatchblog.com

By now, most Americans paying attention have heard about Peter Strzok, one of the FBI's lead investigators on the Hillary Clinton email case and the Trump – Russia collusion probe. Strzok was second-in-command of counterintelligence at the FBI. He, single-handedly, put a dark cloud over the integrity of the two investigations when it was recently disclosed that he had exchanged thousands of politically-charged text messages with his mistress, Lisa Page, a senior FBI attorney. The couple used FBI-supplied cell phones to transmit and receive the text messages . The House Judiciary Committee requested copies of all the text messages from the Department of Justice but only received a small fraction of them.

Numerous text messages show, in explicit detail, that Strzok and Page were big fans of Hillary Clinton during the time she was being investigated for violations of the Espionage Act and while she was campaigning to be president of the U.S. The messages also show the utter contempt they had for Clinton's opponent, Donald Trump.

When Robert Mueller, special prosecutor in the Trump – Russia collusion investigation, learned about the existence of these text messages last July, he removed Peter Strzok from his team of investigators. Strzok was re-assigned to the FBI's human resources department and is still on the payroll.

After the name of FBI agent Peter Strzok catapulted above the fold, we learned more about his wide-ranging assignments at the FBI.

Two months prior to then FBI Director, James Comey's formal exoneration of Hillary Clinton, Strzok edited Comey's draft exoneration letter and suggested key changes that watered down the allegations against her.

Strzok was present at the FBI's interview with Hillary Clinton on July 2, 2016. Clinton wasn't put under oath prior to her questioning nor was the proceeding recorded, making the softball interrogation a farce.

Strzok also interviewed Clinton associates, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Miller, the previous month. These interrogations have been roundly criticized by legal authorities as nothing more than a charade because it is unheard of to have two potential witnesses present at the same interview.

Strzok was selected to be a key investigator on Mueller's team looking into potential collusion between President Trump and Russia. He participated in the interview of Michael Flynn, President Trump's short-lived National Security Advisor, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is now cooperating with the Mueller probe.

Strzok is suspected of being responsible for using an unverified dossier to obtain a FISA warrant in order to spy on President Trump's campaign.
In one particularly disturbing text message Strzok refers to an insurance policy of some kind if Trump should be elected, which could be the genesis of the current Trump – Russia collusion probe, which is yet to yield any hard evidence of collusion.

Apparently, super-agent Peter Strzok was a very busy man at the Bureau and the go-to guy on high-profile cases involving political figures.

A senior investigator, who expresses extreme opinions about politicians while he is investigating them, degrades his ability to be objective. One would have to be in deep denial to believe that Strzok's political sentiments didn't influence his handling of the Clinton case. Strzok's kid glove treatment of Clinton and her aides during their interviews and his edits of Comey's draft exoneration document are completely consistent with his favorable political view of Clinton.

It boggles the mind to think that senior FBI officials, like Strzok and Page, would be foolish enough to leave an electronic trail of their political proclivities. It is a gross understatement to say that they should have known better. Apparently, they and others in the Department of Justice never thought such conflicts of interest would ever be exposed because they were thoroughly convinced Hillary Clinton would be the next president and their next boss. They committed the mortal sin of presumption and are suffering the consequences. Presumption coupled with a monumental lack of discretion increases the chances that a scandal will ensue and that's exactly what happened in this case.

Although Peter Strzok was highly regarded within the Bureau, no one ever heard of him until he became an overnight media sensation along with his paramour, Lisa Page. As damning as the flurry of text messages is to the probity of high-profile criminal investigations, it may only be the beginning salvo in a barrage of shattering revelations because there are thousands of his text messages that haven't been released yet. The small fraction that have been submitted to congress were partially redacted. Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, is also seeking Strzok's text messages under the Freedom of Information Act. And the House Judiciary Committee intends to subpoena Strzok to testify under oath.

The DOJ and the FBI have studiously resisted requests for information by claiming the matter is still under investigation or would compromise intelligence methods and sources, if the records were released. They say Justice Department Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, is reviewing the FBI's handling of investigations relating to the presidential election. Therefore, DOJ officials say congress will have to wait until the IG's review is finished, giving the IG precedence over congressional oversight. The extreme reluctance of the DOJ and the FBI to be forthcoming seems to be motivated by a sense of self-preservation more than anything else given the can of worms Strzok's text messages has opened. This thing could easily metastasize into a mega-scandal that undermines our justice system at its core.

At the center of this escalating controversy is Mr. Strzok, who is a veritable one-man band. As the FBI's lead investigator, the guy was all over the place. When James Comey sought input on the draft Clinton exoneration letter, he solicited and accepted Strzok's recommendations. Strzok responded with a now-infamous turn-of-phrase. He suggested that Comey change "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless" when describing Clinton's handling of classified information. Strzok also watered down Comey's statement that it's "reasonably likely that hostile actors gained access to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email account." Strzok thought it would be less harmful to say "possible" than "reasonably likely" when characterizing our enemies' potential access to hacked classified information.

See http://investmentwatchblog.com/extremely-careless-or-grossly-negligent-an-fbi-conspiracy-to-obstruct-justice/

Despite being indiscrete with his political views, Peter Strzok appears to be a very bright individual whose counsel was avidly sought and valued by the top echelon of the FBI. In this respect, he was a lot like Mark Fuhrman, who was the most alert detective on the OJ Simpson case, seemingly everywhere at the crime scenes. Ultimately, Fuhrman was accused of being prejudiced against blacks and decided to take the Fifth during the Simpson trial. Strzok may face a similar fate, except his biases run toward politics.

Like Forrest Gump, the slow-witted protagonist in the eponymous Academy Award winning film, Strzok was everywhere at defining points in the high-profile FBI investigations of a sitting president and a would-be president. Unlike Forrest Gump, however, Strzok is anything but slow-witted. Unfortunately, he let his political predilections affect his law enforcement duties, which is anathema to the bedrock principle of equal justice under the law.

If the bulk of Strzok's text messages, when released, show that the FBI associates with whom he communicated had a similar rabid disdain or excessive adoration for those they were investigating, then the cases they were involved with would be tainted and compromised. And the premier investigatory body in the world will be derided as the Federal Bureau of Indiscretion.

Honest rank-and-file FBI agents deserve better. They shouldn't have to report to corrupt leaders who play politics and sully the Bureau's reputation. If FBI agents see something, they should say something. The evidence and only the evidence should dictate how the law is applied. To do otherwise is a travesty of justice.

[Dec 24, 2017] GOP Rep Gaetz We Have Email Evidence From Andrew McCabe Indicating That Hillary Clinton Was Going to Get a HQ Special

Notable quotes:
"... we have email evidence from Andrew McCabe indicating that Hillary Clinton was going to get an 'HQ Special,' a headquarters special. ..."
"... he had a very small group of people that had a pro-Hillary Clinton bias who had a direct role in changing that investigation from one that likely should have been criminal to one where she was able to walk. And so I think that we've gotta ensure that that never happens again, that the same processes that would apply to any American would also apply to people who were running for president of the United States ..."
"... Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor ..."
Dec 24, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

Friday on FNC's "America's Newsroom," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said a congressional committee had evidence FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe indicated Hillary Clinton was going to get an "HQ special" regarding the investigation of her unauthorized email server and ties to the Clinton Foundation during her tenure as secretary of state.

Gaetz, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, described the circumstances at the FBI regarding the investigation as "extreme pro-Hillary Clinton bias."

"The Judiciary Committee is engaged in an investigation, particularly as it relates to the handling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal and any potential investigations of the Clinton Foundation and the handling of bribes or other types of improper payments," Gaetz said. "I can certainly say that my impression after these interviews is that there was extreme pro-Hillary Clinton bias that benefitted her in this investigation and that she received special treatment as a consequence of her candidacy for president. That shouldn't happen. The law should apply equally to all Americans whether they're political candidates or not. And so, we need to institute reforms through the Judiciary Committee for more oversight, for more transparency so that this never happens again."

He went on explain that it was the committee's intention to find out if there was a departure from standard "procedures."

"[O]ur view is we need to find out if whether or not the procedures were departed from," he added. "And we have email evidence from Andrew McCabe indicating that Hillary Clinton was going to get an 'HQ Special,' a headquarters special. That meant that the normal processes of the Washington field office weren't followed and he had a special. And he had a very small group of people that had a pro-Hillary Clinton bias who had a direct role in changing that investigation from one that likely should have been criminal to one where she was able to walk. And so I think that we've gotta ensure that that never happens again, that the same processes that would apply to any American would also apply to people who were running for president of the United States."

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

[Dec 24, 2017] The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), has called for McCabe's ouster, saying he "ought to go for reasons of being involved in some of the things that took place in the previous administration.

Looks like "Mueller gambit" played on trump draw some additional sacrificial pawns.
Dec 24, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Extracted from: FBI Deputy Director McCabe Retiring After Trump Insurance Policy Debacle Zero Hedge

McCabe, who has been the target of Republican critics for more than a year, spent hours in Congress this past week, facing questions behind closed doors from members of three committees.

Republicans said they were dissatisfied with his answers:

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), has called for McCabe's ouster, saying he "ought to go for reasons of being involved in some of the things that took place in the previous administration. We want to make sure that there's not undue political influence within the FBI -- the [Justice] Department and the FBI."

[Dec 24, 2017] Trump also tweeted that McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?

He and Peter Strzok were two principal people have been involved in
He has also been deeply involved in the FBI's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election and the potential involvement of the Trump campaign
Ac
Dec 24, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

Extracted from: Donald Trump accuses FBI deputy director of Hillary Clinton bias

The US president, Donald Trump , has again questioned the impartiality of the deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, who is planning to retire from the bureau in the months ahead after being buffeted by attacks over alleged anti-Trump bias in the agency.

In a tweet on Saturday, the president wrote: "How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin' James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife's campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?"

... ... ...

From his South Florida home, where he is spending the holidays, Trump also tweeted that McCabe "is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!".

[Dec 24, 2017] Lisa Page might be interviewed

Dec 24, 2017 | dailymail.co.uk

Could be questioned: Two House committees are to make formal requests to interview Lisa Page, Strzok's FBI lawyer lover, after their exchange of anti-Trump texts was revealed

But the political storm the lovers have created is huge.

On Tuesday Strzok's boss Andrew McCabe, the deputy FBI Director, was questioned for hours by the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors.

McCabe is also facing demands from two other House committees that he answer questions on the Clinton probe in the wake of the texts being revealed.

The chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, and the Oversight Committee, Trey Gowdy, have requested transcribed interviews with him, CNBC reported.

They have also asked for a formal interview with Page, a registered Democrat who texted Strzok: 'God Trump is a loathsome human.'

... ... ...

The two lovers' texts had detailed their contempt for Trump and backing for Clinton, who Strzok had played a key role in clearing.

Strzok is reported to have been the official who changed a draft of then FBI Director James Comey's statement describing Clinton's conduct.

He is said to have removed the term 'grossly negligent' – language that mirrors the criminal code – to the softer words 'extremely careless', which does not rise to the level at which a criminal charge can be brought.

He also played a part in clearing her two closest associates, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, of lying to the FBI despite their evidence in a formal interview being at odds with emails they had sent.

The email probe included interviews with several senior Clinton aides including lawyer Mills and chief of staff Abedin.

Mills and Abedin both denied knowing of Clinton's unorthodox email server setup, according to summaries of their interviews that the Bureau released last year.

'Mills did not learn Clinton was using a private server until after Clinton's [State Department] tenure. Mills stated she was not even sure she knew what a server was at the time,' one agent's interview notes read.

And Abedin told agents, they wrote, that she 'did not know that Clinton had a private server until about a year and a half ago when it became public knowledge.'

But in emails released by the State Department, Mills and Abedin both referred to Clinton's server specifically. Lying to the FBI is a federal felony, but charges were not brought against either woman.

... ... ...

Strzok was removed from the Mueller team in August because of the texts, while Page had already left before they emerged.

" God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0"

Strzok to Page

But their existence was never disclosed and the affair was revealed early in December by the Washington Post.

... ... ...

The texts included a lengthy exchange in early March in which Page - a registered Democrat - told her lover: 'God Trump is loathsome human.'

Page replied 'Omg he's an idiot' and Page said: 'He's awful', prompting Strzok to say: 'America will get what the voting public deserves.'

" F TRUMP"

Strzok to Page

In the same exchange Strzok said: 'God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0.'

At the time the Clinton email probe was in full swing and Strzok was a key figure in it, under the direct supervision of Comey. Strzok also appears to have updated Page on the state of the Clinton investigation. In June he texted her: 'Now we're talking about Clinton, and how a lot of people are holding their breath, hoping.' And in July, after Comey announced that Clinton would not be prosecuted he texted her: 'F TRUMP.'

That prompted her to reply: 'And maybe you're meant to stay where you are because you're meant to protect the country from that menace.'

He texted her: 'Thanks. It's absolutely true that we're both very fortunate. And of course I'll try and approach it that way. I just know it will be tough at times. I can protect our country at many levels, not sure if that helps'.

But the text which has caused the most concern in Trump circles is one Strzok sent about an 'insurance policy' discussed at a meeting which Page and Strzok attended with McCabe, then Comey's deputy.

" It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40"

Strzok to Page

'I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office - that there's no way he gets elected - but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40 ' he texted her in August 2016.

Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has demanded that the deputy attorney general hand over any other messages, emails or documents which would explain what Strzok meant.

He also asked for details of what Strzok meant when he said: 'we text on that phone when we talk about hillary because it can't be traced, you were just venting bc you feel bad that you're gone so much but it can't be helped right now.'

[Dec 24, 2017] Was Steele dossier was to obtain warrant from FICA court to spy of Trump associates

YouTube video
Notable quotes:
"... as he made the point at the end about the RINOs, the DNC, the deep state and FBI all working in concert to defeat him and President Trump won anyway, all I could think of is that before this is all over they will be pointing to that massive illegal conspiracy as the "smoking gun" evidence that proves that he must have had outside help to win the election. ..."
"... "We had the dirtiest, most evil, most experienced traitors in the political sphere illegally using the entire US federal law enforcement apparatus to destroy him and cover it up...the only people who could have been more criminal than that and caused him to prevail is THE RUSSIANS!" ..."
Dec 20, 2017 | www.youtube.com

FBI, DOJ conspired against Trump, covered for Hillary Clinton Rep. Jordan - YouTube

reddit.com

keknical_advisory

as he made the point at the end about the RINOs, the DNC, the deep state and FBI all working in concert to defeat him and President Trump won anyway, all I could think of is that before this is all over they will be pointing to that massive illegal conspiracy as the "smoking gun" evidence that proves that he must have had outside help to win the election.

"We had the dirtiest, most evil, most experienced traitors in the political sphere illegally using the entire US federal law enforcement apparatus to destroy him and cover it up...the only people who could have been more criminal than that and caused him to prevail is THE RUSSIANS!"

[Dec 24, 2017] Possible role of DOJ Official Bruce Ohr, and wife Nellie in creation of Steele dossie

Dec 24, 2017 | theduran.com

Extracted from: Wife of Fusion GPS founder admits her husband was behind fake Russiagate story

The Gateway Pundit reports that the news of the Facebook post comes amid heightened scrutiny for the opposition research firm. According to Fox News reporter Jake Gibson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has called on a senior Justice Department attorney to look into appointing a special counsel to investigate recently demoted official Bruce Ohr's contacts with Fusion GPS.

"Sessions on calls for a special counsel to look into Sr DOJ Official Bruce Ohr, and wife Nellie's contacts with Fusion GPS during the summer and fall of 2016: I've put a Senior Attorney, with the resources he may need, to review cases in our office and make a recommendation to me, if things aren't being pursued that need to be pursued, if cases may need more resources to complete in a proper manner, and to recommend to me if the standards for a special counsel are met, and the recommended one should be established," tweeted Fox News reporter Jake Gibson on Tuesday.

Fox News ' James Rosen and Jake Gibson recently reported the wife of Justice Department official Bruce G. Ohr worked for the opposition research firm during the 2016 presidential election.

Fox News reports

Contacted by Fox News, investigators for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) confirmed that Nellie H. Ohr, wife of the demoted official, Bruce G. Ohr, worked for the opposition research firm last year. The precise nature of Mrs. Ohr's duties – including whether she worked on the dossier – remains unclear but a review of her published works available online reveals Mrs. Ohr has written extensively on Russia-related subjects. HPSCI staff confirmed to Fox News that she was paid by Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.

In a statement to Fox News, a Justice Department spokesperson noted that

"It is unusual for anyone to wear two hats as he has done recently. This person is going to go back to a single focus -- director of our organized crime and drug enforcement unit. As you know, combatting transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking is a top priority for the Attorney General."

[Dec 24, 2017] Court documents reveal that Trump dossier is fake document with limited intelligence by Alex Christoforou

Notable quotes:
"... Steele's admission that his now infamous dossier (that has spun the US into complete Russia hysteria) is based on information that is not "verified" (in other words made up rumors), comes moments after Mary Jacoby, the wife of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, posted on Facebook about how 'Russiagate,' would not exist if it weren't for her husband. ..."
"... So why is this information not splashed across MSM is the rhetorical question. The damage is done with the intended smears. A fait accomplit, ..."
Dec 23, 2017 | theduran.com

Ex-British spy behind Fusion GPS dossier admits it contains "Limited Intelligence". Former British spy Christopher Steele, who was tasked with compiling the 'Trump dossier' for opposition research firm Fusion GPS, admitted in court that the discredited document contains "limited intelligence."

"
While Mr. Steele stated matter-of-factly in his dossier that collusion between Mr. Trump and the Russian government took place, he called it only "possible" months later in court filings. While he confidently referred to "trusted" sources inside the Kremlin, in court he referred to the dossier's "limited intelligence." [ ]

In court filings this year, Mr. Steele doesn't sound as confident as his dossier. He answered questions through his attorney in a libel complaint brought by a Russian entrepreneur, Aleksej Gubarev. Mr. Steele has accused Mr. Gubarev of being pressured by Russian's FSB intelligence service to take part in hacking against the Democratic Party.

In one answer, Mr. Steele refers to the intelligence he gathered as "limited." On the charge of collusion by Mr. Trump and his campaign advisers, he now says there was only "possible coordination."

"The contents of the December memorandum did not represent (and did not purport to represent) verified facts, but were raw intelligence which had identified a range of allegations that warranted investigation given their potential national security implications," Steele wrote.

"Such intelligence was not actively sought; it was merely received."

Steele's admission that his now infamous dossier (that has spun the US into complete Russia hysteria) is based on information that is not "verified" (in other words made up rumors), comes moments after Mary Jacoby, the wife of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, posted on Facebook about how 'Russiagate,' would not exist if it weren't for her husband.

Tablet Magazine reports

"In a Facebook post from June 24, 2017, that Tablet has seen in screenshots, Jacoby claimed that her husband deserves the lion's share of credit for Russiagate. (She has not replied to repeated requests for comment.)

"It's come to my attention that some people still don't realize what Glenn's role was in exposing Putin's control of Donald Trump," Jacoby wrote. "Let's be clear. Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn."

This assertion is hardly a simple assertion of family pride; it goes directly to the nature of what became known as the "Steele dossier," on which the Russiagate narrative is founded.

Johnnyrvf 14 hours ago

Typical " upper " class English spiv.

Andrew Orr 8 hours ago

This involved limited intelligence in more ways than one.

A ndré De Koning • 3 minutes ago

Limited IQ: meaning subnormal level of intelligence, bordering level "moron".

It was "received" by an agency with even more limited IQ as the document would have been declared "not receivable" by anybody who can read the Daily Telegraph or other Murdoch "news" papers.

Diagnosis of the US Intelligence Agencies is not so high all of a sudden if they can manipulate (this where the IQ goes up a notch or two). If the DOJ has a slightly higher IQ or reaches the normal level of IQ=100, one might be lucky.

Gano1 • 12 hours ago

Former Ambassador to Moscow Sir Andrew Wood was the go-between.

Guy • 14 hours ago

So why is this information not splashed across MSM is the rhetorical question. The damage is done with the intended smears. A fait accomplit, so move on is the only answer .

[Dec 24, 2017] Steve Bannon Asked to Testify Before House Intelligence Committee in January - Breitbart

Dec 24, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

The House Intelligence Committee has asked the former CEO of President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, Stephen K. Bannon, to appear before them for an interview as part of their ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Bannon received a letter this week from the committee. In the letter, the committee requests that he appear in early January, according to Bloomberg:

"The invitation, which didn't come in the form of a subpoena compelling them to testify, was for a "voluntary interview" in the committee's offices, which means it would be held behind closed doors, the official said."

Former Trump presidential campaign manager Corey Lewandowski also received a letter requesting he speak with the committee in January.

The report further reveals that the letters to Bannon and Lewandowski don't specify reasons for the interview beyond relation to the committee's ongoing investigation into any Russian meddling in the 2016 election. At the time of the report, the committee had not received responses from either Bannon or Lewandowski.

[Dec 24, 2017] On a conference call on Wednesday, it was announced that James A. Baker, the F.B.I. general counsel who was seen as an ally of Mr. Comey's, would step down from that post, although he will remain at the bureau

Dec 24, 2017 | www.nytimes.com

Extracted from: F.B.I. Director Wants to Move Forward, but the President Is Making His Job Harder - The New York Times , Dec 22, 2017

Other changes are already in the works. On a conference call on Wednesday, it was announced that James A. Baker, the F.B.I. general counsel who was seen as an ally of Mr. Comey's, would step down from that post, although he will remain at the bureau. Mr. Baker provided counsel to Mr. Comey during the investigation into Mrs. Clinton's emails.

[Dec 23, 2017] UN General Assembly Adopts Resolution Condemning Crimea Human Rights Violations

Dec 23, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile , December 19, 2017 at 8:42 pm

UN General Assembly Adopts Resolution Condemning Crimea Human Rights Violations

The resolution was approved by 71 member states, including Canada, the United States and the EU. Twenty-five countries, including Russia, China, Iran, India and Syria, voted against the measure, while 77 delegations, mainly from Latin America and Africa, abstained from the vote.

"[The resolution] condemns violations, abuses, measures and practices of discrimination against the residents of the temporarily occupied Crimea, including Crimean Tatars, as well as Ukrainians and persons belonging to other ethnic and religious groups, by the Russian occupation authorities," the resolution said on Tuesday.

Moscow Exile , December 19, 2017 at 8:51 pm
Link: UN General Assembly Adopts Resolution Condemning Crimea Human Rights Violations
Jen , December 20, 2017 at 2:27 am
Well, er, guess whose teeth look a little discoloured?
Moscow Exile , December 20, 2017 at 5:31 am
Сенатор от Крыма дала оценку резолюции ГА ООН

The Senator from the Crimea has given an assessment of the UN General Assembly resolution

The Senator from the Crimean Peninsula, Olga Kovitide, has reacted to the UN General Assembly resolution, in which RF is called "an occupying power".

Earlier, the Press Secretary of the President of Russia, Dmitry Peskov, said the wording of the UN General Assembly resolution on the Crimea as wrong.

"We believe this language is incorrect and do not agree with them", the Kremlin representative told reporters whilst commenting on the document.

Kovitide said that the Russian Federation had clearly stated that the issue of the Crimea is closed. "The Crimea is not a problem: the Crimea is Russian territory, and any decisions and resolutions that are contrary to the legitimate will of the Crimean people shall never be accepted", the politician said in comments to the portal iz.ru .

They just don't seem to get it, do they?

The people have decided, not arseholes in Kiev or at the UN or EU.

Does not the term " We, the people ring a bell deep in the canyons of the collective historical memory of those Western "democrats"?

We the People of the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do hereby recognize the Constitution of the Russian Federation and with sound mind and a clear conscience do declare that the aforementioned republic is now a member state within that Federation and that the citizens of that self-same republic shall henceforth be citizens of the Russian Federation.

Moscow Exile , December 19, 2017 at 9:22 pm
Turkey voted for the resolution -- dear friend Turkey that ambushed and shot down a Russian warplane that had allegedly infringed Turkish airspace.
Moscow Exile , December 19, 2017 at 9:37 pm
CIS states that voted against the UN resolution that the Crimea is "occupied": Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan.

Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan did not to vote for this uncomfortable anti-Russian resolution (or could not?). They are not listed even among the abstentions.

The big ones that voted against were China and India.

Also against: Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Nicaragua, The Philippines, Serbia, Syria, Venezuela, Bolivia, Burundi, Cambodia, Eritrea, Myanmar, South Africa, The Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

So it is clear that Russia must face the facts and must immediately start moving out its occupation army from the Crimea in preparation for handing back the peninsula to the Ukraine -- or else!

So as long ago promised, there will soon be a Ukrainian victory parade in Simferopol!

What joy!

Source: Кто они – 25 друзей России, не признавших что Крым "оккупирован"

Who the 25 friends of Russia are that do recognize that the Crimea is "occupied"

yalensis , December 20, 2017 at 3:48 am
The Axis of Evil is getting bigger – up to 25 countries now – yay!
marknesop , December 19, 2017 at 10:04 pm
The Ukrainian politicians always reckon everything which goes in their favour is 'immensely powerful', and always make sure to publicly thank countries for even the slightest acquiescence, so as to make clear that they unquestioningly support Ukraine and its position. It's just their way of 'penciling in' friends and annoying Russia.

China voted against it rather than abstaining. Driving China and Russia into an alliance was the biggest mistake the USA ever made, because there is no way NATO could defeat both

[Dec 23, 2017] US President Donald Trump has outlined his new national security strategy, labelling China and Russia the primary threats to US economic dominance.

Notable quotes:
"... It explicitly states that "the United States will no longer turn a blind eye to violations, cheating or economic aggression" ..."
Dec 23, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren , December 18, 2017 at 1:43 pm

Trump: Russia and China 'rival powers' in new security plan

US President Donald Trump has outlined his new national security strategy, labelling China and Russia the primary threats to US economic dominance.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42401170

marknesop , December 18, 2017 at 3:55 pm
That's it; get that useless waster Trump out of there, and get Obama back in the White House. When Obama left, Russia was friendless and alone, without allies, and its economy was in tatters. Trump has barely had the job five minutes, and already Russia is half of America's problems with achieving economic dominance! What the hell is going on??

It explicitly states that "the United States will no longer turn a blind eye to violations, cheating or economic aggression" .

Lucky for America that other nations and blocs turn a blind eye to economic aggression, or America would be dead a thousand times over – there is no more economically aggressive nation on the earth. What would you call sanctions imposed – supposedly for the benefit of Europe – which Washington will now not let Europe back away from, and stubborn efforts to block an advantageous energy pipeline to Europe so that the USA has a better market for its own product? I'd call that pretty aggressive.

[Dec 23, 2017] Exclusive: Russian oil firm Tatneft ran Crimea fuel station, despite sanctions risk

Dec 23, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al , December 20, 2017 at 9:26 am

Neuters: Exclusive: Russian oil firm Tatneft ran Crimea fuel station, despite sanctions risk
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ukraine-crisis-crimea-tatneft-exclusi/exclusive-russian-oil-firm-tatneft-ran-crimea-fuel-station-despite-sanctions-risk-idUKKBN1EE1YI

Anton Zverev, Gleb Stolyarov

One of Russia's biggest oil companies, Tatneft, has been doing business in Crimea despite the risk of being placed on a U.S. sanctions blacklist, according to company documents and a source close to Tatneft.

Most big Russian oil firms pulled out of Crimea after Washington imposed sanctions over Moscow's annexation of the region from Ukraine in 2014 and threatened to put any company operating on the peninsula on its list of sanctioned entities.

Additional reporting by David Axelrod in SEVASTOPOL, Crimea, Agnieszka Barteczko in WARSAW, Wojciech Zurawski in KRAKOW, Joel Schectman in WASHINGTON and Alexei Yarkovoy and Olga Yagova in MOSCOW, Editing by Timothy Heritage
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
####

Neuters, acting as an arm of the United States government, hunting high and hunting low for Russian subterfuge of United States imposed sanction, in this case a lonely Crimean fuel station. Such groundbreaking investigative reporting of the highest order! Prize nominations for Neuters on the way. Not a shred of shame. Standards & Principles my ass!

Moscow Exile , December 20, 2017 at 9:36 am
You do know Tatneft is Tatar oil, don't you?

Based in Tatarstan, autonomous republic within the Russian Federation.

et Al , December 20, 2017 at 11:47 am
Indeed I do! There was the fear in the early 1990s that it might have voted for 'independence' as Chechnya did (Tartarstan did not sign the initial Russian Federation
agreement in 1992 & their referendum on 'sovereignty' passed in 1993), but thought better of it and got quite a sweet deal with Moscow instead which was supposed to be up for renewal/renegotiation quite some years ago but I've not heard of since. Tartarstan is quite the performer in aerospace and engineering technologies, the Kazan Aviation Factory (Tupolev):

http://www.tupolev.ru/en/kaf_spgorbunov

marknesop , December 20, 2017 at 5:49 pm
On the one hand, the western press sermonizes, hands folded to convey pathos, on the terrible plight of the Crimeans – mistreated, misguided, struggling. On the other, it does everything in its power to ensure nobody can do business there, and says nothing when Ukraine attempts to starve and freeze them into submission.

[Dec 23, 2017] marknesop

Dec 23, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

December 18, 2017 at 10:43 pm

Oh, look; isn't that sweet? The IOC is going to hold a medals ceremony at Pyeongchang, at which athletes who were deemed to have been cheated out of medals by the doping dreaming-of-Stalin Russian athletes at Sochi will be recognized as the champions they would have been . Probably. So if you won bronze, you might get that upgraded to a gold like anti-doping crusader Beckie Scott did . You know, that's what makes me so proud of the west; they don't just accept it when they're beaten – the tough get going, baby, and they simply hold a new medal ceremony and award themselves medals. They'll want to get their upgrades quickly, before 'Curveball' Rodchenkov's latest database story falls apart and they have to admit once again that they have nothing. And hey; it's a Canadian tradition – if you don't win, just make a big stink until you are awarded a medal, too.

Anything to further provoke and humiliate the Russians. I can't imagine what measures will be taken to ensure Russian athletes do not win any medals at Pyeongchang – perhaps they will have to start 5 seconds after the rest of the field, as a further justified penalty for their cheating. Or wear one sneaker and one boot.

yalensis , December 19, 2017 at 3:15 am
Mark, you were right to link that 2002 Olympics when Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze were forced to share their gold medal with the Canadian pair. Who should have been satisifed with the Silver, but decided to throw a big tantrum, like two big babies.
When the Olympic Committee gave in to the Canadians (who were backed by Uncle Sam on skates), that was the moment when Pandora's Box was opened all the way. Prior to that, I think the rule was pretty much, that judges decisions are final. Unless you can prove that the judges were bribed, then their word should be final. Especially in this case, where the judges could prove with chapter and verse why Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze performed a superior program and earned more points.

By the way, I have met both Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze, they are wonderful people as well as brilliant skaters. And my taking their side against the Canadian pair is not because they are Russians, either. My conscience is clean in this regard.
Because when the opposite happened, and Russian skater Plushchenko tried to dispute his loss to the American Evan Lycasek, I took Lycasek's side.
Plushchenko's argument was, in essence, "Well, I had a quad in my program, and Evan didn't, so I should get the gold."
Lycasek didn't have a quad, but he compensated for it by racking up more points in other parts of his program. He won fair and square, and Plushchenko showed poor sportsmanship at the time, he should have simply walked up to Lycasek and shaked his hand.

Similarly, the two Canadian twats argued that their program was superior to Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze because they "skated cleanly", and the latter had one little bobble on one landing of one jump. It doesn't matter. Berezhnaya could have fallen on her ass and still won, they racked up more points with more difficult elements. Plus, their skating was superior in general, they had more flow and better edgework.

It's all about the points, which is why people should not second-guess the judges. The judges are the experts here, not the public, nor even the skaters themselves.

marknesop , December 19, 2017 at 9:47 am
I don't really want to blame the Americans, because it seems even to me that I am doing that a lot lately and I am trying conscientiously to be fair. But I believe that without American backing and encouragement – as well as that of other western nations – the Canadian pair would have stopped whining and accepted the decision. I wouldn't say Canada was particularly beloved of the USA; they were simply a means to an end, which was to prevent Russia from a clean win. I thought the Canadian pair skated a very clean and professional-looking program – flawless, even – but it was unquestionably a safer and less complicated one.

How sad is the world when even figure skating must be weighed in its political impact?

marknesop , December 18, 2017 at 11:06 pm
As the Pyeongchang Games kick off in February, it will also mark five years since American Olympian Kara Goucher alerted USADA to doping at The Oregon Project , Nike's program for training American distance runners for the Olympics. Five years since USADA was tipped off, two years since the scandal was publicly announced, and what? What do you think – the investigation is still ongoing. I'll tell you what – get Richard McLaren, Dickie Pound, Gunter Younger and the WADA road show in there – it only took them a couple of days to find the 'evidence' in the Moscow database, which it allegedly received 'from a whistleblower' according to the New York Times and from Rodchenkov himself according to other sources, conclusively proved at last that Russia had a state-sponsored doping program. But investigations of the Land Of The Free in The Land Of The Free well, they take much longer. It's a time zone thing, I think.
James lake , December 19, 2017 at 3:15 am
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/40438287 .

The controversial decision to award the 2021 World Athletics Championships to Eugene, Oregon, is being investigated by the FBI and the Criminal Division of America's Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the BBC has learned.

The US city was awarded the event in 2015 with athletics' governing body the IAAF bypassing the usual formal bidding process.

French prosecutors investigating corruption within the IAAF launched their own inquiry into the awarding of the event in 2015.

Former IAAF president Lamine Diack, who is now effectively under house arrest in France over corruption allegations, was at the centre of the decision.

Eugene was handed the event despite strong interest from the Swedish city of Gothenburg.

The Oregon city is closely associated with Nike, whose birthplace is only a few miles away.

Nike funds much of the University of Oregon's sports facilities, where many of Eugene 2021 events will be held.

A BBC story in November 2015 suggested the IAAF president Lord Coe may have lobbied his predecessor over the bid, and revealed he had discussed it with a senior Nike executive.

At that time Lord Coe was paid £100,000 a year as an ambassador for Nike. Lord Coe denied he had lobbied anyone on behalf of Eugene's bid.

However, he stepped down from his Nike role – which he had held for 38 years – later that month saying accusations of a conflict of interest were "a distraction" and "not good for Nike or the IAAF".

Bjorn Eriksson, who was the head of the Gothenburg team denied the opportunity to stage a rival bid, said it had been a 'violation of fair play.'

Now, the BBC understands, the American authorities – including tax investigators at the IRS – are seeking to investigate if there has been any wrongdoing committed in the US, bringing to total number of agencies investigating the awarding of the championships to three.

A spokeswoman for the IAAF and Lord Coe said she was unaware of any FBI and IRS probes.

"The IAAF team has not received notification from the FBI or IRS. However we are committed to working closely with any key investigation, as we do with the French investigation team, and will take action if proof is found of any wrong doing in an IAAF bidding process."

Both the FBI and IRS have yet to respond to the BBC.

The FBI famously investigated corruption in football's world governing body Fifa, resulting in guilty pleas from numerous high-ranking officials.

The background

The Eugene bid was led by Vin Lananna's TrackTown USA, another organisation with close links to Nike.

The 2015 BBC investigation uncovered emails which claim Coe – an ambassador for sports giant Nike and then vice-president of world athletics – "reached out" to Diack with his support for Eugene's bid.

After of losing out in a bid to host the 2019 championships to Doha, Lananna and TrackTown USA quickly turned their attention to 2021, and began lobbying the IAAF.

Coe had been on the IAAF evaluation commission which visited Doha, Eugene, and the other unsuccessful bidder for 2019, Barcelona.

An email sent by Nike executive Craig Masback to Lananna suggested that Coe lobbied on Eugene's behalf.

The email, titled '2021' and in which Coe is referred to as "Seb", reads: "I spoke with Seb this morning. We covered several topics but I asked specifically about 2021.

"He made clear his support for 2021 in Eugene but made equally clear he had reached out to Diack specifically on this topic and got a clear statement from Diack that 'I am not going to take any action at the April meeting (in Beijing) to choose a 2021 site'."

Yet it was at that April meeting of the IAAF's council that Diack announced the surprise vote on giving the championships directly to Eugene.

Coe told the BBC he "did not lobby anyone" over Eugene's bid, but "encouraged them to re-enter another bidding cycle as they had a strong bid".

Other emails seen by the BBC revealed that Lananna made at least one trip to Europe to visit Diack a few weeks after this email was written.

And by 15 April 2015, the campaign had paid off.

Several IAAF council members have told the BBC that Diack made clear his support for Eugene, and urged his fellow members to follow suit.

The secret vote was carried by 23-1, with one abstention.

//wonder if anything will come of this!

marknesop , December 19, 2017 at 9:38 am
I highly doubt it; if the investigation is taking place in America, that self-righteous persecution thing tends to disappear in favour of ass-covering. They may have been a ball of fire investigating FIFA, but FIFA is not headquartered in America.

[Dec 23, 2017] Russiagate as bait and switch maneuver

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Gessen also worried that the Russia obsession was a deadly diversion from issues that ought to matter more to those claiming to oppose Trump in the name of democracy and the common good ..."
"... Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election fortunes have a resounding message for party leaders: Stop talking so much about Russia. Rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are much more worried about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and healthcare. ..."
Dec 23, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

Masha Gessen's Warning Ignored as Dreams of Trumpeachment Dance in Our Heads

Gessen felt that the Russiagate gambit would flop, given a lack of smoking-gun evidence and sufficient public interest, particularly among Republicans.

Gessen also worried that the Russia obsession was a deadly diversion from issues that ought to matter more to those claiming to oppose Trump in the name of democracy and the common good : racism, voter suppression (which may well have elected Trump , by the way), health care, plutocracy, police- and prison-state-ism, immigrant rights, economic exploitation and inequality, sexism and environmental ruination -- you know, stuff like that.

Some of the politically engaged populace noticed the problem early on. According to the Washington political journal The Hill , last summer ,

Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election fortunes have a resounding message for party leaders: Stop talking so much about Russia. Rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are much more worried about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and healthcare.

Here we are now, half a year later, careening into a dystopian holiday season. With his epically low approval rating of 32 percent , the orange-tinted bad grandpa in the Oval Office has won a viciously regressive tax bill that is widely rejected by the populace. The bill was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress whose current approval rating stands at 13 percent. It is a major legislative victory for the Republicans, a party whose approval rating fell to an all-time low of 29 percent at the end of September -- a party that tried to send a child molester to the U.S. Senate.

[Dec 23, 2017] McCabe draws blank on Democrats funding of Trump dossier, new subpoenas planned by James Rosen & Jake Gibson

Notable quotes:
"... Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., to threaten contempt-of-Congress citations against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray. ..."
"... "It's hard to know who's telling us the truth," said one House investigator after McCabe's questioning. ..."
"... Investigators say McCabe recounted to the panel how hard the FBI had worked to verify the contents of the anti-Trump "dossier" and stood by its credibility. But when pressed to identify what in the salacious document the bureau had actually corroborated, the sources said, McCabe cited only the fact that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had traveled to Moscow. Beyond that, investigators said, McCabe could not even say that the bureau had verified the dossier's allegations about the specific meetings Page supposedly held in Moscow. ..."
"... The sources said that when asked when he learned that the dossier had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, McCabe claimed he could not recall – despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe's own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier's financing and provenance. ..."
"... Ohr will retain his OCDETF title but was stripped of his higher post and ousted from his office on the fourth floor of "Main Justice." Department officials confirmed that Ohr had withheld from superiors his secret meetings in 2016 with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the dossier with input from Russian sources; and with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired Steele with funds supplied by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. ..."
"... Subsequently, Fox News disclosed that Ohr's wife Nellie, an academic expert on Russia, had worked for Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016. ..."
"... The Nunes panel has spent much of this year investigating whether DOJ, under then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, used the dossier to justify a foreign surveillance warrant against Page, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. ..."
"... Lets face it, the FBI officials and the DOJ jumped at the chance to investigate the Trump campaign and it was a combined effort between, McCabe, Ohr and his wife Nellie Ohr, Peter Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page and the Lord only knows how many more and they used a dosser which they hardly verified and they used a dossier that come through the DNC to obtain warrants from the FISA court to spy on the Trump campaign and at the end they come up empty and they are still coming up empty. ..."
"... The truth has already been found. All you need is the email between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. In that email it say's "we need an insurance policy". Look at the word "we". Now we know they Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page where in McCabe's office discussing the Trump campaign and the email between Lisa and Peter developed from that meeting ..."
Dec 23, 2017 | www.foxnews.com

Congressional investigators tell Fox News that Tuesday's seven-hour interrogation of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe contained numerous conflicts with the testimony of previous witnesses, prompting the Republican majority staff of the House Intelligence Committee to decide to issue fresh subpoenas next week on Justice Department and FBI personnel.

While HPSCI staff would not confirm who will be summoned for testimony, all indications point to demoted DOJ official Bruce G. Ohr and FBI General Counsel James A. Baker, who accompanied McCabe, along with other lawyers, to Tuesday's HPSCI session.

The issuance of a subpoena against the Justice Department's top lawyer could provoke a new constitutional clash between the two branches, even worse than the months-long tug of war over documents and witnesses that has already led House Speaker Paul Ryan to accuse DOJ and FBI of "stonewalling" and HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., to threaten contempt-of-Congress citations against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

"It's hard to know who's telling us the truth," said one House investigator after McCabe's questioning.

Fox News is told that several lawmakers participated in the questioning of McCabe, led chiefly by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.

Sources close to the investigation say that McCabe was a "friendly witness" to the Democrats in the room, who are said to have pressed the deputy director, without success, to help them build a case against President Trump for obstruction of justice in the Russia-collusion probe. "If he could have, he would have," said one participant in the questioning.

Investigators say McCabe recounted to the panel how hard the FBI had worked to verify the contents of the anti-Trump "dossier" and stood by its credibility. But when pressed to identify what in the salacious document the bureau had actually corroborated, the sources said, McCabe cited only the fact that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had traveled to Moscow. Beyond that, investigators said, McCabe could not even say that the bureau had verified the dossier's allegations about the specific meetings Page supposedly held in Moscow.

The sources said that when asked when he learned that the dossier had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, McCabe claimed he could not recall – despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe's own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier's financing and provenance.

The decision by HPSCI staff to subpoena Ohr comes as he is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Until earlier this month, when Fox News began investigating him, Ohr held two titles at DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, a post that placed him four doors down from his boss, Rosenstein; and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), a program described by the department as "the centerpiece of the attorney general's drug strategy."

Ohr will retain his OCDETF title but was stripped of his higher post and ousted from his office on the fourth floor of "Main Justice." Department officials confirmed that Ohr had withheld from superiors his secret meetings in 2016 with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the dossier with input from Russian sources; and with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired Steele with funds supplied by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Subsequently, Fox News disclosed that Ohr's wife Nellie, an academic expert on Russia, had worked for Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.

Former FBI Director James Comey, testifying before the House in March, described the dossier as a compendium of "salacious and unverified" allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump and his associates. The Nunes panel has spent much of this year investigating whether DOJ, under then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, used the dossier to justify a foreign surveillance warrant against Page, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

DOJ and FBI say they have cooperated extensively with Nunes and his team, including the provision of several hundred pages of classified documents relating to the dossier. The DOJ has also made McCabe available to the House Judiciary Committee for a closed-door interview on Thursday.

The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment for this report.

James Rosen joined FOX News Channel (FNC) in 1999 and is the network's chief Washington correspondent. Jake Gibson is a producer working at the Fox News Washington bureau who covers politics, law enforcement and intelligence issues.

Nam
I cannot find out much about the hearing the Senate Judiciary Committee had with Andrew McCabe but I have managed to find this. One, McCabe's testimony is not matching up with testimony from others who have been questioned so now the Judiciary Committee has issued a new set of subpoenas . The second thing I found out is when McCabe was asked when was it that he discovered that the dosser had come from the DNC, he said he could not recall, even though the committee has documents with McCabe's signature on them that shows that he McCabe did know it come from the DNC and was paid for by the Clinton campaign.

Also they found out that the FBI only verified one thing in the dosser before they jumped on it and used it. I also found out during the questioning of McCabe by the Democrats on the committee that they the Democrats busted their chops trying to tie Trump to the Russians but they come up empty. I also know that Bruce Ohr is going to get a new round of questioning by the Judiciary Committee.

Lets face it, the FBI officials and the DOJ jumped at the chance to investigate the Trump campaign and it was a combined effort between, McCabe, Ohr and his wife Nellie Ohr, Peter Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page and the Lord only knows how many more and they used a dosser which they hardly verified and they used a dossier that come through the DNC to obtain warrants from the FISA court to spy on the Trump campaign and at the end they come up empty and they are still coming up empty.

ytubepuppy

I heard a rumor that McCabe was grilled for 7˝ hours.

BrianrrInfluencer

Congress will NEVER get the truth from these professional crooks and liars. if there is evidence just charge them.
NowelhillLeader1d
Democrats can't seem to ever remember anything, yet they keep begging to be in power. I don't remember what for.
freedomtomarryLeaderNowelhill
Democrats are the majority and we have won six of the last seven elections popular vote. Without your electoral college handicap, the GOP doesn't stand a chance of winning the White House. Never forget that Trump got second place, and that was only after he paid Russians to hack voting systems in 21 states.

Nam -> MelGlass

The truth has already been found. All you need is the email between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. In that email it say's "we need an insurance policy". Look at the word "we". Now we know they Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page where in McCabe's office discussing the Trump campaign and the email between Lisa and Peter developed from that meeting.

The word "we" says it is organized and we know they were plotting. They needed an insurance police just in case. That is criminal. So we have "we" which constitutes organized and we have criminal. That has RICO written all over it. Off to the dungeons with them.

[Dec 23, 2017] A Break Down Of The Top FBI And DOJ Players. Possible Deep State!

Some people think that it now time to look closely into Mueller team.
Dec 23, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Some nice graphics, almost useless interview.

[Dec 23, 2017] Mueller himself who far from being a stand-up fellow with a spotless record, and an unshakable commitment to the rule of law

Dec 23, 2017 | www.unz.com

The second point we want to make, relates to Mueller himself who–far from being a "stand-up fellow" with a spotless record, and an unshakable commitment to principle–is not the exemplar people seem to think he is. In fact, his personal integrity and credibility are greatly in doubt. Here's a little background on Mueller from former-FBI Special Agent Colleen Rowley who was named Time's Person of the Year in 2002:

"Mueller's FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of "national security letters" to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating "terrorism."

Comey and Mueller were complicit with implementing a form of martial law, perpetrated via secret Office of Legal Counsel memos mainly written by John Yoo and predicated upon Yoo's singular theories of absolute "imperial" or "war presidency" powers, and requiring Ashcroft every 90 days to renew certification of a "state of emergency."

Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any "war crimes files" were made to disappear. Not only did "collect it all" surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller's (and then Comey's) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities

Mueller didn't speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn't speak out against torture. He didn't speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn't tell the truth about 9/11." ("Comey and Mueller: Russia-gate's Mythical Heroes", Colleen Rowley, Counterpunch)

Illegal spying on American citizens? Infiltration of nonviolent anti-war groups? Martial law? Torture??

This is NOT how Mueller is portrayed in the media, is it?

The fact is, Mueller is no elder statesman or paragon of virtue. He's a political assassin whose task is to take down Trump at all cost. Unfortunately for Mueller, the credibility of his investigation is beginning to wane as conflicts of interest mount and public confidence dwindles. After 18 months of relentless propaganda and political skullduggery, the Russia-gate fiction is beginning to unravel.

Anon , Disclaimer December 23, 2017 at 7:48 pm GMT

Please, let Mueller stay to become a poster boy for borgistas. With each day, the incompetence of the CIA' and FBI' brass has been revealing with the greater and greater clarity. They have sold out the US citizenry for personal gains.
Rod Rosenstein' role in particular should be well investigated so that his name becomes tightly connected to the "dossier" and all its racy tales.
" there was never sufficient reason to appoint a Special Counsel. The threshold for making such an appointment should have been probable cause, that is, deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should have shown why he thought there was 'reasonable basis to believe that a crime had been committed.' That's what's required under the Fourth Amendment, and that's the standard that should have been met. But Rosenstein ignored that rule because it improved the Special Counsel's chances of netting indictments. Even so, there's no evidence that a crime has been committed. None."
-- Anti-Consttutonal activity by Rod Rosenstein = Treason.
Anon , Disclaimer December 23, 2017 at 8:17 pm GMT
@Corvinus

You mean, we should have better read the New Times and WaPo instead, in order to get the "gigantic scope of the investigation?" -- Thank you very much. But these ziocons' nests have not provided any hard facts related to the main goal of this particular investigation. However, a true and immense value of the investigation is the exposure of the incompetence of and political manipulations by the FBI deciders -- as well as the sausage making under Clinton leadership in the DNC kitchen.

Anon , Disclaimer December 23, 2017 at 8:33 pm GMT
@Realist

"It should have never been started. Trump and his administration screwed themselves."
– Disagree.
The investigation is the best thing for the US. It has exposed traitors (leakers) in the US government, the corruption of the FBI (which provided the leaks and did not investigate the allegedly hacked DNC computers and white-washed Clinton's criminal negligence), and the spectacular incompetence of the DNC-FBI deciders (the cooperation with foreigners in order to derail the governance of the US by the elected POTUS). Cannot wait to hear more about Awan affair (the greatest breach of the US cybersecurity under the watch of the current FBI brass) and about the investigation of Seth Rich murder.

fnn , December 23, 2017 at 8:41 pm GMT
Relic Adlai Stevenson-type liberal law prof Jonathan Turley:

https://jonathanturley.org/2017/12/20/muellers-muscle-play-why-the-gsa-email-seizure-was-both-unprecedented-and-unnecessary/

For those familiar with Mueller, the blunt-force approach taken toward the GSA is something of a signature of Mueller and his heavy-handed associates like Andrew Weissmann. As I have previously written, Mueller has a controversial record in attacking attorney-client privilege as well as harsh tactics against targets. As a U.S. attorney, he was accused of bugging an attorney-client conversation, and as special counsel he forced (with the approval of a federal judge) the attorney of Paul Manafort to become a witness against her own client. Weissmann's record is even more controversial, including major reversals in past prosecutions for exceeding the scope of the criminal code or questionable ethical conduct.

Anonymous , Disclaimer December 23, 2017 at 11:50 pm GMT
"There is no proof of hacking,"

Nor will any be produced either. If Trump were to drop dead tomorrow or, alternatively, decide to pack it in and go back to running hotels, Mueller's Star Chamber Committee would close down the day after. Mueller is a tool of The Powers That Be. And they want Trump OUT -- no matter what the cost.

[Dec 23, 2017] Debunking Mainstream Economists on Secular Stagnation and the Loanable Funds Fallacy by Servaas Storm

Notable quotes:
"... By Servaas Storm, Senior Lecturer at Delft University of Technology, who works on macroeconomics, technological progress, income distribution & economic growth, finance, development and structural change, and climate change. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
"... Forget the myth of a savings glut causing near-zero interest rates. We have a shortage of aggregate demand, and only public spending and raising wages will change that. ..."
"... ceteris paribus ..."
"... simultaneously ..."
"... private households ..."
"... See original post for references ..."
"... This is the night of the expanding man I take one last drag as I approach the stand I cried when I wrote this song Sue me if I play too long This brother is free I'll be what I want to be ..."
Dec 22, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

by Yves Smith Yves here. This is a terrific takedown of the loanable funds theory, on which a ton of bad policy rests.

By Servaas Storm, Senior Lecturer at Delft University of Technology, who works on macroeconomics, technological progress, income distribution & economic growth, finance, development and structural change, and climate change. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website

Forget the myth of a savings glut causing near-zero interest rates. We have a shortage of aggregate demand, and only public spending and raising wages will change that.

Introduction

Nine years after the Great Financial Crisis, U.S. output growth has not returned to its pre-recession trend, even after interest rates hit the 'zero lower bound' (ZLB) and the unconventional monetary policy arsenal of the Federal Reserve has been all but exhausted. It is widely feared that this insipid recovery reflects a 'new normal', characterized by "secular stagnation" which set in already well before the global banking crisis of 2008 (Summers 2013, 2015).

This 'new normal' is characterized not just by this slowdown of aggregate economic growth, but also by greater income and wealth inequalities and a growing polarization of employment and earnings into high-skill, high-wage and low-skill, low-wage jobs -- at the expense of middle-class jobs (Temin 2017; Storm 2017). The slow recovery, heightened job insecurity and economic anxiety have fueled a groundswell of popular discontent with the political establishment and made voters captive to Donald Trump's siren song promising jobs and growth ( Ferguson and Page 2017 ).

What are the causes of secular stagnation? What are the solutions to revive growth and get the U.S. economy out of the doldrums?

If we go by four of the papers commissioned by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) at its recent symposium to explore these questions, one headline conclusion stands out: the secular stagnation is caused by a heavy overdose of savings (relative to investment), which is caused by higher retirement savings due to declining population growth and an ageing labour force (Eggertson, Mehotra & Robbins 2017; Lu & Teulings 2017; Eggertson, Lancastre and Summers 2017), higher income inequality (Rachel & Smith 2017), and an inflow of precautionary Asian savings (Rachel & Smith 2017). All these savings end up as deposits, or 'loanable funds' (LF), in commercial banks. In earlier times, so the argument goes, banks would successfully channel these 'loanable funds' into productive firm investment -- by lowering the nominal interest rate and thus inducing additional demand for investment loans.

But this time is different: the glut in savings supply is so large that banks cannot get rid of all the loanable funds even when they offer firms free loans -- that is, even after they reduce the interest rate to zero, firms are not willing to borrow more in order to invest. The result is inadequate investment and a shortage of aggregate demand in the short run, which lead to long-term stagnation as long as the savings-investment imbalance persists. Summers (2015) regards a "chronic excess of saving over investment" as "the essence of secular stagnation". Monetary policymakers at the Federal Reserve are in a fix, because they cannot lower the interest rate further as it is stuck at the ZLB. Hence, forces of demography and ageing, higher inequality and thrifty Chinese savers are putting the U.S. economy on a slow-moving turtle -- and not much can be done, it seems, to halt the resulting secular stagnation.

This is clearly a depressing conclusion, but it is also wrong.

To see this, we have to understand why there is a misplaced focus on the market for loanable funds that ignores the role of fiscal policy that is plainly in front of us. In other words, we need to step back from the trees of dated models and see the whole forest of our economy.

The Market for Loanable Funds

In the papers mentioned, commercial banks must first mobilise savings in order to have the loanable funds (LF) to originate new (investment) loans or credit. Banks are therefore intermediaries between "savers" (those who provide the LF-supply) and "investors" (firms which demand the LF). Banks, in this narrative, do not create money themselves and hence cannot pre -finance investment by new money. They only move it between savers and investors.

We apparently live in a non-monetary (corn) economy -- one that just exchanges a real good that everybody uses, like corn. Savings (or LF-supply) are assumed to rise when the interest rate R goes up, whereas investment (or LF-demand) must decline when R increases. This is the stuff of textbooks, as is illustrated by Greg Mankiw's (1997, p. 63) explanation:

In fact, saving and investment can be interpreted in terms of supply an demand. In this case, the 'good' is loanable funds, and its 'price' is the interest rate. Saving is the supply of loans -- individuals lend their savings to investors, or they deposit their saving in a bank that makes the loan for them. Investment is the demand for loanable funds -- investors borrow from the public directly by selling bonds or indirectly by borrowing from banks. [ .] At the equilibrium interest rate, saving equals investment and the supply of loans equals the demand.

But the loanable funds market also forms the heart of complicated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models, beloved by 'freshwater' and 'saltwater' economists alike (Woodford 2010), as should be clear from the commissioned INET papers as well. Figure 1 illustrates the loanable funds market in this scheme. The upward-sloping curve tells us that savings (or LF-supply) goes up as the interest rate R increases. The downward-sloping curve shows us that investment (or LF-demand) declines if the cost of capital (R) goes up. In the initial situation, the LF-market clears at a positive interest rate R0 > 0. Savings equal investment, which implies that LF-supply matches LF-demand, and in this -- happy -- equilibrium outcome, the economy can grow along some steady-state path.

To see how we can get secular stagnation in such a loanable-funds world, we introduce a shock, say, an ageing population (a demographic imbalance), a rise in (extreme) inequality, or an Asian savings glut, due to which the savings schedule shifts down. Equilibrium in the new situation should occur at R1 which is negative. But this can't happen because of the ZLB: the nominal interest cannot decline below zero. Hence R is stuck at the ZLB and savings exceed investment, or LF-supply > LF-demand. This is a disequilibrium outcome which involves an over-supply of savings (relative to investment), in turn leading to depressed growth.

Ever since Knut Wicksell's (1898) restatement of the doctrine, the loanable funds approach has exerted a surprisingly strong influence upon some of the best minds in the profession. Its appeal lies in the fact that it can be presented in digestible form in a simple diagram (as Figure 1), while its micro-economic logic matches the neoclassical belief in the 'virtue of thrift' and Max Weber's Protestant Ethic, which emphasize austerity, savings (before spending!) and delayed gratification as the path to bliss.

The problem with this model is that it is wrong (see Lindner 2015; Taylor 2016 ). Wrong in its conceptualisation of banks (which are not just intermediaries pushing around existing money, but which can create new money ex nihilo ), wrong in thinking that savings or LF-supply have anything to do with "loans" or "credit," wrong because the empirical evidence in support of a "chronic excess of savings over investment" is weak or lacking, wrong in its utter neglect of finance, financialization and financial markets, wrong in its assumption that the interest rate is some "market-clearing" price (the interest rate, as all central bankers will acknowledge, is the principal instrument of monetary policy), and wrong in the assumption that the two schedules -- the LF-supply curve and the LF-demand curve -- are independent of one another (they are not, as Keynes already pointed out).

Figure 1: The Loanable Funds Market: A Savings Glut Causing Secular Stagnation

I wish to briefly elaborate these six points. I understand that each of these criticisms is known and I entertain little hope that that any of this will make people reconsider their approach, analysis, diagnosis and conclusions. Nevertheless, it is important that these criticisms are raised and not shoveled under the carpet. The problem of secular stagnation is simply too important to be left mis-diagnosed.

First Problem: Loanable Funds Supply and Demand Are Not Independent Functions

Let me start with the point that the LF-supply and LF-demand curve are not two independent schedules. Figure 1 presents savings and investment as functions of only the interest rate R, while keeping all other variables unchanged. The problem is that the ceteris paribus assumption does not hold in this case. The reason is that savings and investment are both affected by, and at the same time determined by, changes in income and (changes in) income distribution. To see how this works, let us assume that the average propensity to save rises in response to the demographic imbalance and ageing. As a result, consumption and aggregate demand go down. Rational firms, expecting future income to decline, will postpone or cancel planned investment projects and investment declines (due to the negative income effect and for a given interest rate R0). This means that LF-demand curve in Figure 1 must shift downward in response to the increased savings. The exact point was made by Keynes (1936, p. 179):

The classical theory of the rate of interest [the loanable funds theory] seems to suppose that, if the demand curve for capital shifts or if the curve relating the rate of interest to the amounts saved out of a given income shifts or if both these curves shift, the new rate of interest will be given by the point of intersection of the new positions of the two curves. But this is a nonsense theory. For the assumption that income is constant is inconsistent with the assumption that these two curves can shift independently of one another. If either of them shift, then, in general, income will change; with the result that the whole schematism based on the assumption of a given income breaks down In truth, the classical theory has not been alive to the relevance of changes in the level of income or to the possibility of the level of income being actually a function of the rate of the investment.

Let me try to illustrate this using Figure 2. Suppose there is an exogenous (unexplained) rise in the average propensity to save. In reponse, the LF-supply curve shifts down, but because (expected) income declines, the LF-demand schedule shifts downward as well. The outcome could well be that there is no change in equilibrium savings and equilibrium investment. The only change is that the 'natural' interest is now R1 and equal to the ZLB. Figure 2 is, in fact, consistent with the empirical analysis (and their Figure of global savings and investment) of Rachel & Smith. Let me be clear: Figure 2 is not intended to suggest that the loanable funds market is useful and theoretically correct. The point I am trying to make is that income changes and autonomous demand changes are much bigger drivers of both investment and saving decisions than the interest rate. Market clearing happens here -- as Keynes was arguing -- because the level of economic activity and income adjust, not because of interest-rate adjustment.

Figure 2: The Loanable Funds Market: Shifts in Both Schedules

Second Problem: Savings Do Not Fund Investment, Credit Does

The loanable funds doctrine wrongly assumes that commercial bank lending is constrained by the prior availability of loanable funds or savings. The simple point in response is that, in real life, modern banks are not just intermediaries between 'savers' and 'investors', pushing around already-existing money, but are money creating institutions. Banks create new money ex nihilo , i.e. without prior mobilisation of savings. This is illustrated by Werner's (2014) case study of the money creation process by one individual commercial bank. What this means is that banks do pre-finance investment, as was noted by Schumpeter early on and later by Keynes (1939), Kaldor (1989), Kalecki, and numerous other economists. It is for this reason that Joseph Schumpeter (1934, p. 74) called the money-creating banker 'the ephor of the exchange economy' -- someone who by creating credit ( ex nihilo ) is pre-financing new investments and innovation and enables "the carrying out of new combinations, authorizes people, in the name of society as it were, to form them." Nicholas Kaldor (1989, p. 179) hit the nail on its head when he wrote that "[C]redit money has no 'supply function' in the production sense (since its costs of production are insignificant if not actually zero); it comes into existence as a result of bank lending and is extinguished through the repayment of bank loans. At any one time the volume of bank lending or its rate of expansion is limited only by the availability of credit-worthy borrowers." Kaldor had earlier expressed his views on the endogeneity of money in his evidence to the Radcliffe Committee on the Workings of the Monetary System, whose report (1959) was strongly influenced by Kaldor's argumentation. Or take Lord Adair Turner (2016, pp. 57) to whom the loanable-funds approach is 98% fictional, as he writes:

Read an undergraduate textbook of economics, or advanced academic papers on financial intermediation, and if they describe banks at all, it is usually as follows: "banks take deposits from households and lend money to businesses, allocating capital between alternative capital investment possibilities." But as a description of what modern banks do, this account is largely fictional, and it fails to capture their essential role and implications. [ ] Banks create credit, money, and thus purchasing power. [ ] The vast majority of what we count as "money' in modern economies is created in this fashion: in the United Kingdom 98% of money takes this form .

We therefore don't need savings to make possible investment -- or, in contrast to the Protestant Ethic, banks allow us to have 'gratification' even if we have not been 'thrifty' and austere, as long as there are slack resources in the economy.

It is by no means a secret that commercial banks create new money. As the Bank of England (2007) writes, "When bank make loans they create additional deposits for those that have borrowed" (Berry et al. 2007, p. 377). Or consider the following statement from the Deutsche Bundesbank (2009): "The commercial banks can create money themselves ." Across the board, central bank economists, including economists working at the Bank for International Settlements (Borio and Disyatat 2011), have rejected the loanable funds model as a wrong description of how the financial system actually works (see McLeay et al . 2014a, 2014b; Jakab and Kumhof 2015). And the Deutsche Bundesbank (2017) leaves no doubt as to how the banking system works and money is created in actually-existing capitalism, stating that the ability of banks to originate loans does not depend on the prior availability of saving deposits. Bank of England economists Zoltan Jakab and Michael Kumhoff (2015) reject the loanable-funds approach in favour of a model with money-creating banks. In their model (as in reality), banks pre-finance investment; investment creates incomes; people save out of their incomes; and at the end of the day, ex-post savings equal investment. This is what Jakab and Kumhoff (2015) conclude:

" . if the loan is for physical investment purposes, this new lending and money is what triggers investment and therefore, by the national accounts identity of saving and investment (for closed economies), saving. Saving is therefore a consequence, not a cause, of such lending. Saving does not finance investment, financing does. To argue otherwise confuses the respective macroeconomic roles of resources (saving) and debt-based money (financing)."

Savings are a consequence of credit-financed investment (rather than a prior condition) -- and we cannot draw a savings-investment cross as in Figure 1, as if the two curves are independent. They are not. There exists therefore no 'loanable funds market' in which scarce savings constrain (through interest rate adjustments) the demand for investment loans. Highlighting the loanable funds fallacy, Keynes wrote in "The Process of Capital Formation" (1939):

"Increased investment will always be accompanied by increased saving, but it can never be preceded by it. Dishoarding and credit expansion provides not an alternative to increased saving, but a necessary preparation for it. It is the parent, not the twin, of increased saving."

This makes it all the more remarkable that some of the authors of the commissioned conference papers continue to frame their analysis in terms of the discredited loanable funds market which wrongly assumes that savings have an existence of their own -- separate from investment, the level of economic activity and the distribution of incomes.

Third Problem: The Interest Rate Is a Monetary Policy Instrument, Not a Market-Clearing Price

In loanable funds theory, the interest rate is a market price, determined by LF-supply and LF-demand (as in Figure 1). In reality, central bankers use the interest rate as their principal policy instrument (Storm and Naastepad 2012). It takes effort and a considerable amount of sophistry to match the loanable funds theory and the usage of the interest rate as a policy instrument. However, once one acknowledges the empirical fact that commercial banks create money ex nihilo , which means money supply is endogenous, the model of an interest-rate clearing loanable funds market becomes untenable. Or as Bank of England economists Jakab and Kumhof (2015) argue:

modern central banks target interest rates, and are committed to supplying as many reserves (and cash) as banks demand at that rate, in order to safeguard financial stability. The quantity of reserves is therefore a consequence, not a cause, of lending and money creation. This view concerning central bank reserves [ ] has been repeatedly described in publications of the world's leading central banks.

What this means is that the interest rate may well be at the ZLB, but this is not caused by a savings glut in the loanable funds market, but the result of a deliberate policy decision by the Federal Reserve -- in an attempt to revive sluggish demand in a context of stagnation, subdued wage growth, weak or no inflation, substantial hidden un- and underemployment, and actual recorded unemployment being (much) higher than the NAIRU (see Storm and Naastepad 2012). Seen this way, the savings glut is the symptom (or consequence ) of an aggregate demand shortage which has its roots in the permanent suppression of wage growth (relative to labour productivity growth), the falling share of wages in income, the rising inequalities of income and wealth (Taylor 2017) as well as the financialization of corporations (Lazonick 2017) and the economy as a whole (Storm 2018). It is not the cause of the secular stagnation -- unlike in the loanable funds models.

Fourth Problem: The Manifest Absence of Finance and Financial Markets

What the various commissioned conference papers do not acknowledge is that the increase in savings (mostly due to heightened inequality and financialization) is not channeled into higher real-economy investment, but is actually channeled into more lucrative financial (derivative) markets. Big corporations like Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft are holding enormous amounts of liquidity and IMF economists have documented the growth of global institutional cash pools, now worth $5 to 6 trillion and managed by asset or money managers in the shadow banking system (Pozsar 2011; Pozsar and Singh 2011; Pozsar 2015). Today's global economy is suffering from an unprecedented "liquidity preference" -- with the cash safely "parked" in short-term (over-collateralized lending deals in the repo-market. The liquidity is used to earn a quick buck in all kinds of OTC derivatives trading, including forex swaps, options and interest rate swaps. The global savings glut is the same thing as the global overabundance of liquidity (partying around in financial markets) and also the same thing as the global demand shortage -- that is: the lack of investment in real economic activity, R&D and innovation.

The low interest rate is important in this context, because it has dramatically lowered the opportunity cost of holding cash -- thus encouraging (financial) firms, the rentiers and the super-rich to hold on to their liquidity and make (quick and relatively safe and high) returns in financial markets and exotic financial instruments. Added to this, we have to acknowledge the fact that highly-leveraged firms are paying out most of their profits to shareholders as dividends or using it to buy back shares (Lazonick 2017). This has turned out to be damaging to real investment and innovation, and it has added further fuel to financialization (Epstein 2018; Storm 2018). If anything, firms have stopped using their savings (or retained profits) to finance their investments which are now financed by bank loans and higher leverage. If we acknowledge these roles of finance and financial markets, then we can begin to understand why investment is depressed and why there is an aggregate demand shortage. More than two decades of financial deregulation have created a rentiers' delight, a capitalism without 'compulsions' on financial investors, banks, and the property-owning class which in practice has led to 'capitalism for the 99%' and 'socialism for the 1%' (Palma 2009; Epstein 2018) For authentic Keynesians, this financialized system is the exact opposite of Keynes' advice to go for the euthanasia of the rentiers ( i.e. design policies to reduce the excess liquidity).

Fifth Problem: Confusing Savings with "Loans," or Stocks with Flows

"I have found out what economics is,' Michał Kalecki once told Joan Robinson, "it is the science of confusing stocks with flows." If anything, Kalecki's comment applies to the loanable funds model. In the loanable fund universe, as Mankiw writes and as most commissioned conference papers argue, saving equals investment and the supply of loans equals the demand at some equilibrium interest rate. But savings and investment are flow variables, whereas the supply of loans and the demand for loans are stock variables. Simply equating these flows to the corresponding stocks is not considered good practice in stock-flow-consistent macro-economic modelling. It is incongruous, because even if we assume that the interest rate does clear "the stock of loan supply" and "the stock of loan demand", there is no reason why the same interest rate would simultaneously balance savings ( i.e. the increase in loan supply) and investment ( i.e. the increase in loan demand). So what is the theoretical rationale of assuming that some interest rate is clearing the loanable funds market (which is defined in terms of flows )?

To illustrate the difference between stocks and flows: the stock of U.S. loans equals around 350% of U.S. GDP (if one includes debts of financial firms), while gross savings amount to 17% of U.S. GDP. Lance Taylor (2016) presents the basic macroeconomic flows and stocks for the U.S. economy to show how and why loanable funds macro models do not fit the data -- by a big margin. No interest rate adjustment mechanism is strong enough to bring about this (ex-post) balance in terms of flows , because the interest rate determination is overwhelmed by changes in loan supply and demand stocks . What is more, and as stated before, we don't actually use 'savings' to fund 'investment'. Firms do not use retained profits (or corporate savings) to finance their investment, but in actual fact disgorge the cash to shareholders (Lazonick 2017). They finance their investment by bank loans (which is newly minted money). Households use their (accumulated) savings to buy bonds in the secondary market or any other existing asset. In that case, the savings do not go to funding new investment -- but are merely used to re-arrange the composition of the financial portfolio of the savers.

Final Problem: The Evidence of a Chronic Excess of Savings Over Investment is Missing

If Summers claims that there is a "chronic excess of savings over investment," what he means is that ex-ante savings are larger than ex-ante investment. This is a difficult proposition to empirically falsify, because we only have ex-post (national accounting) data on savings and investment which presume the two variables are equal. However, what we can do is consider data on (global) gross and net savings rates (as a proportion of GDP) to see if the propensity to save has increased. This is what Bofinger and Ries (2017) did and they find that global saving rates of private households have declined dramatically since the 1980s. This means, they write, that one can rule out 'excess savings' due to demographic factors (as per Eggertson, Mehotra & Robbins 2017; Eggertsson, Lancastre & Summers 2017; Rachel & Smith 2017; and Lu & Teulings 2017). While the average saving propensity of household has declined, the aggregate propensity to save has basically stayed the same during the period 1985-2014. This is shown in Figure 3 (reproduced from Bofinger and Reis 2017) which plots the ratio of global gross savings (or global gross investment) to GDP against the world real interest rate during 1985-2014. A similar figure can be found in the paper by Rachel and Smith (2017). What can be seen is that while there has been no secular rise in the average global propensity to save, there has been a secular decline in interest rates. This drop in interest rates to the ZLB is not caused by a savings glut, nor by a financing glut, but is the outcome of the deliberate decisions of central banks to lower the policy rate in the face of stagnating economies, put on a 'slow-moving turtle' by a structural lack of aggregate demand which -- as argued by Storm and Naastepad (2012) and Storm (2017) -- is largely due to misconceived macro and labour-market policies centered on suppressing wage growth, fiscal austerity, and labour market deregulation.

Saving/Investment Equilibria and World Real Interest Rate, 1985-2014 Source: Bofinger and Reis (2017), Figure 1(a).

To understand the mechanisms underlying Figure 3, let us consider Figure 4 which plots investment demand as a negative function of the interest rate. In the 'old situation', investment demand is high at a (relatively) high rate of interest (R0); this corresponds to the data points for the period 1985-1995 in Figure 3. But then misconceived macro and labour-market policies centered on suppressing wage growth, fiscal austerity, and labour market deregulation began to depress aggregate demand and investment -- and as a result, the investment demand schedule starts to shift down and to become more steeply downward-sloping at the same time. In response to the growth slowdown (and weakening inflationary pressure), central banks reduce R -- but without any success in raising the gross investment rate. This process continues until the interest rate hits the ZLB while investment has become practically interest-rate insensitive, as investment is now overwhelmingly determined by pessimistic profit expectations; this is indicated by the new investment schedule (in red). That the economy is now stuck at the ZLB is not caused by a "chronic excess of savings" but rather by a chronic shortage of aggregate demand -- a shortage created by decades of wage growth moderation, labour market flexibilization, and heightened job insecurity as well as the financialization of corporations and the economy at large (Storm 2018).

Figure 4: Secular Stagnation As a Crisis of Weak Investment Demand

Conclusions

The consensus in the literature and in the commissioned conference papers that the global decline in real interest rates is caused by a higher propensity to save, above all due to demographic reasons, is wrong in terms of underlying theory and evidence base. The decline in interest rates is the monetary policy response to stalling investment and growth, both caused by a shortage of global demand. However, the low interest rates are unable to revive growth and halt the secular stagnation, because there is little reason for firms to expand productive capacity in the face of the persistent aggregate demand shortage. Unless we revive demand, for example through debt-financed fiscal stimulus or a drastic and permanent progressive redistribution of income and wealth in favour of lower-income groups (Taylor 2017), there is no escape from secular stagnation. The narrow focus on the ZLB and powerless monetary policy within the framing of a loanable-funds financial system blocks out serious macroeconomic policy debate on how to revive aggregate demand in a sustainable manner. It will keep the U.S. economy on the slow-moving turtle -- not because policymakers cannot do anything about it, but we choose to do so. The economic, social and political damage, fully self-inflicted, is going to be of historic proportions.

It is not a secret that the loanable funds approach is fallacious (Lindner 2015; Taylor 2016; Jakab and Kumhof 2015). While academic economists continue to refine their Ptolemaic model of a loanable-funds market, central bank economists have moved on -- and are now exploring the scope of and limitations to monetary policymaking in a monetary economy. Keynes famously wrote that "Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." In 2017, things seem to happen the other way around: academic economists who believe themselves to be free thinkers are caught in the stale theorizing of a century past. The puzzle is, as Lance Taylor (2016, p. 15) concludes "why [New Keynesian economists] revert to Wicksell on loanable funds and the natural rate while ignoring Keynes's innovations. Maybe, as [Keynes] said in the preface to the General Theory, "'The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones ..' (p. viii)"

Due to our inability to free ourselves from the discredited loanable funds doctrine, we have lost the forest for the trees. We cannot see that the solution to the real problem underlying secular stagnation (a structural shortage of aggregate demand) is by no means difficult: use fiscal policy -- a package of spending on infrastructure, green energy systems, public transportation and public services, and progressive income taxation -- and raise (median) wages. The stagnation will soon be over, relegating all the scholastic talk about the ZLB to the dustbin of a Christmas past.

See original post for references

gtggtg , December 22, 2017 at 10:08 am

"Forget the myth of a savings glut causing near-zero interest rates. We have a shortage of aggregate demand, and only public spending and raising wages will change that."

But isn't "a savings glut" just the same as "a shortage of aggregate demand"? Or is Keynes so out of favor that this is outre thinking?

gtggtg , December 22, 2017 at 10:10 am

I mean, I just have this image of economists going, "It's the chicken! It's the chicken, I say!" "No! It's the egg, dammit!"

MisterMr , December 22, 2017 at 11:58 am

I second this.

The point is that the "saving glut" is caused bi unequal distribution of income, so it's a good thing that the "shortage of aggregate demand" is stressed, but still it's just two names for the same thing.

In the end the "money creation" is needed because there is not a "money circulation", IMO.

jsn , December 22, 2017 at 4:45 pm

Putting money into the broadest possible distribution and circulation is the key. It could be done with existing money through taxation or with new money through the federal fiscal lever.

Given the "Tax Reform" just passed, odds on the first option look vanishingly long. The second option is what the elites do whenever they want something, normally a war or tax cut. If they want a robust economy, eventually they will pull the fiscal lever.

Feudalism, however, may look better to our depraved current elite crop than any kind of broadly robust economy.

TroyMcClure , December 22, 2017 at 11:49 am

There was a link to an article yesterday called "I write because I hate" that described how incorrect and even dangerous metaphors can be when it comes to understanding the world. Yours is a case in point.

Jamie , December 22, 2017 at 12:00 pm

But isn't "a savings glut" just the same as "a shortage of aggregate demand"

I'm not sure I entirely understand your complaint, but at a first glance a savings glut is one kind of demand shortage, but not every kind of demand shortage can reasonably be called a savings glut. In one situation you have plenty of resource but no use for it other than possible future use (savings glut -- you have everything you need so cease purchasing) and in another situation you have insufficient resource (demand shortage -- you cease purchasing because you can't afford to purchase) but no savings glut. You don't even have the resources you need for today, never mind saving for tomorrow.

artiste-de-decrottage , December 22, 2017 at 1:54 pm

Aye, that's exactly how I understand it, so it is not exactly a chicken-or-the-egg conflation to try to distinguish a savings glut from a lack of demand.

James McFadden , December 22, 2017 at 3:25 pm

You seem to have missed the point. The problem is wealth distribution. Mainstream economists don't distinguish who has the savings in their simplistic models. When the rich already have a widget in every room of their mansion, they are not going to buy more widgets no matter how low the price of widgets sink. And when the poor have no money, they will not be able to buy the widgets no matter how much they want them. Demand is not just a function of price. To increase demand, we need a more equitable form of wealth distribution.

Skip Intro , December 23, 2017 at 9:30 am

One major difference, according to the author, is that the lack of aggregate demand exists, while the savings glut does not. The fact of companies sitting on liquidity, is detached from investment, for which they borrow. That investment is lacking because they do not see good investments, because of a lack of aggregate demand. if they did invest, it would not be constrained by their 'savings'.

Larry , December 22, 2017 at 12:58 pm

"But this time is different: the glut in savings supply is so large that banks cannot get rid of all the loanable funds even when they offer firms free loans -- that is, even after they reduce the interest rate to zero, firms are not willing to borrow more in order to invest."

That needs some explanation. Banks are not offering US businesses free money (excerpt briefly during the Crash). BBB bonds yields are aprox 4.3% -- and most businesses cannot borrow at that rate (excerpt when posting collateral).

For comparison over long time horizons, the real (ex-CPI) BBB corporate bond rate is 2.5% to 3% -- in the middle of its range from 1952-1980.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BAA

John Wright , December 22, 2017 at 1:45 pm

Banks are enjoying the privilege of loaning excess deposits to a risk free client, the Federal Reserve.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EXCSRESNS

This is at 1.5% per https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reqresbalances.htm as of 12-14-2017

Why should banks risk lending money to entities who might not pay it back?

Loan it to the Fed at 1.5%

Altandmain , December 22, 2017 at 1:17 pm

The real reason why the political system won't make any effort to address aggregate demand is because it would help the people.

I suspect that the elite know the truth. They just want to pretend to be ignorant to prevent the system from helping the people who need it.

Let's bring up Michal Kalecki again:
https://mronline.org/2010/05/22/political-aspects-of-full-employment/

We have considered the political reasons for the opposition to the policy of creating employment by government spending. But even if this opposition were overcome -- as it may well be under the pressure of the masses -- the maintenance of full employment would cause social and political changes which would give a new impetus to the opposition of the business leaders. Indeed, under a regime of permanent full employment, the 'sack' would cease to play its role as a 'disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness of the working class would grow. Strikes for wage increases and improvements in conditions of work would create political tension. It is true that profits would be higher under a regime of full employment than they are on the average under laissez-faire, and even the rise in wage rates resulting from the stronger bargaining power of the workers is less likely to reduce profits than to increase prices, and thus adversely affects only the rentier interests. But 'discipline in the factories' and 'political stability' are more appreciated than profits by business leaders. Their class instinct tells them that lasting full employment is unsound from their point of view, and that unemployment is an integral part of the 'normal' capitalist system.

In other words, one potential reason for business to oppose any efforts at addressing the problem is that the people would have more bargaining power. The elite are not after absolute wealth or power, but relative power over the rest of us.

Imagine for example if the alternative was passed say some form of social democracy with full employment and MMT policy.

This would undermine in their view their ability to dominate over the rest of us. Now they may arguably be richer (ex: we might see more money for productive parts of society like say, disease research), but they are willing to give that up for dominating us. That is what we are up against.

Mike , December 23, 2017 at 10:17 am

If what you say is true (re social democracy + MMT policies), how then to consider for even one second the further existence of a business cadre dedicated to upending such an agreement? We always theorize as if an actual resistance to "our" policies will melt away with the displacement of elite political control. I remember Chile and the "strikes" called to bring down Allende.

The innocence of our imaginations is not only disturbing, but dangerous. Once power is gained and capital has been put in its place, the fight begins right there, anew. Unless we wish to fall into Stalinist methods of "resolution", consideration for alternate methods of economic control, and an anticipation of backlash, are in demand if the "people" are to prevail.

Mark Anderlik , December 23, 2017 at 10:33 am

In my experience as a union organizer and negotiator the opposition by many employers to unions is not particularily because of money, but because of power and the erosion of the employer's grip of it by the collective action of workers. Many times in my experience employers have spent a boatload more money on fighting workers and hiring union-busting attorneys than whatever wage and benefit increase is being proposed. These employers are acting from their political self-interest rather than the narrow economic self-interest that is commonly assumed.

Cat Burglar , December 23, 2017 at 3:43 pm

Great comments -- the motivation behind the ideas is a need for power and control.

You can look at the first 20 years of the Cold War as a domestic experiment in social control: incomes were allowed to rise for most people, and inequality was moderated in the interest of politically consolidating the country to support arming and fighting the war.

By the early 70s our handlers -- as shown in the Powell Memo, say -- had tired of the experiment. With more income, free time, and education, women, students, non-white people, and the newly prosperous working class were entering into contention on every terrain imaginable -- and that had to reduced to a manageable level. So they "leaned-out the mix", reduced income for most people, and bumped up the level of indebtedness and indoctrination.

Now the fuel-air mix is so lean that the engine is starting to miss (for example, the Trump election and the Sanders challenge to the Dem elite). But it looks like they have no other idea but to double-down on austerity. I guess they assume they can maintain global financial and military hegemony on the backs of a sick, unfit, indebted, and politically fractious population -- an iffy proposition. No wonder they seem desperate.

paul , December 22, 2017 at 2:03 pm

unemployment is an integral part of the 'normal' capitalist system.

That is both the long and short of it.

To engineer the scarcity of the ability to sustain is the the greatest sin

Paul Hirschman , December 22, 2017 at 2:46 pm

The Trump/Republican tax law tells us (if we needed another message) that the link between economic policy and economic theory is so weak as the bring into question the point of theorizing in the first place, apart, of course, from convincing (semi)-smart but fearful people to remain timid in the face of powerful lunacy. Government spending to replace worn out capital, to satisfy basic material needs of the population, and to underwrite investment in an environmental and educational future worth creating is, OBVIOUSLY, a no-no to Wall Street, war profiteers, and the large population of yes-men and women who promote fear among the middle class. We should spend less time contesting economic thinking that is nonsense. Instead why not spend time proposing and explaining fairly obvious fiscal strategies that will promote a better society, as well as the time that will be needed to defend these life-affirming proposals against the scholastic nonsense that our saltwater and freshwater scaredy-cat friends will put out every day to explain why what we propose will wreck Civilization. Let's go on the offense for a change.

redolent , December 22, 2017 at 8:14 pm

let's go on the offensive for a change

precisely, but for the forementioned scholastic nonsense of our salty and fresh feline friends, one would need a salient and orchestrated defense, as to why such meddling with traditional economic trajectories, will mean that: by foregoing my 'short sided 2018 increase in my personal deduction', will I actually allow myself to feel benign about the sagging state of civilization, that those 'cats of all breeds', have so eloquently perpetuated upon a 'generation of our peers'.

calling 'message central', the 'greater good awaits'. Yes

Jabawocky , December 22, 2017 at 2:50 pm

I still can't get my head around the fact that these models can persist in the economics literature whilst everyone knows they are based on flawed assumptions. In science these would quickly end up as part of some distant history. Someone would publish another model, and slowly everyone would start working with it if it had strong explanatory power. Imagine the grief that climate modellers would get if theirs models were so poorly grounded.

Left in Wisconsin , December 22, 2017 at 6:33 pm

You could almost think it was ideology trumping evidence.

Susan the other , December 22, 2017 at 2:57 pm

Thank you for this post. It was as good as Michael Hudson and all the clear thinkers you post for us. Since we got rid of Greenspan (who admitted that interest rates had no effect on the economy but still freaked out about inflaltion), Bernanke and then Yellen have had better instincts – not straightforward, but better. If central banks know the loanable funds theory to be nonsense, the battle is mostly won. MMT will be the logical next step. Public spending/infrastructure is just good grassroots policy that serve everyone. Even dithering goofballs like Larry Summers. And, as implied above, public spending takes care of the always ignored problem of private debt levels which suck productive spending and investment out of the economy, because unemployment. It's hard to believe that academics have been so wrong-headed for so long without any evidence for their claims. Steve Keen's premise, that these academics ignore both the existence of private debt and the importance of dwindling energy sources is also addressed above. Storm's point – also made by both old hands and new MMT – that there is not a problem with inflation (too much) if there are slack resources seems to have morphed into an ossified rule whereby some inflexible academics see slack resources as scarce resources. What is slack is always a political definition. What is slack today is a filthy environment; there is a great surplus of it. Enormously slack. That's the good news.

cnchal , December 22, 2017 at 3:07 pm

What are the causes of secular stagnation?

Globalization is a disaster wherever you care to look.

Big corporations like Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft are holding enormous amounts of liquidity . . .

A better example is Apple, with it's roughly 1/4 trillion dollar cash hoard, beaten out of their Chinese work force in collusion of the Chinese elite. With wages crushed here and there, because they don't want to pay anyone anything anywhere, where will demand come from? The Chinese peasant slaving away on an Apple farm has a few square feet of living space, like a broiler chicken in a Tyson cage so where is she going to put the new furniture she can't afford?

Banks create credit, money, and thus purchasing power. [ ] The vast majority of what we count as "money' in modern economies is created in this fashion: in the United Kingdom 98% of money takes this form .

The banks are the MMT practicing intermediary between the federal government and the peasants.

Enquiring Mind , December 23, 2017 at 11:19 am

Was the Tax Cut a Hail Mary to get more aggregate demand? Perhaps the Administration is practicing anti-loanable funds on the sly.

knowbuddhau , December 22, 2017 at 3:22 pm

So much goodness, don't know where to start. It's a long post. It's my day (singular) off. I'm going long. Deacon Blues* applies.

This:

Ever since Knut Wicksell's (1898) restatement of the doctrine, the loanable funds approach has exerted a surprisingly strong influence upon some of the best minds in the profession. Its appeal lies in the fact that it can be presented in digestible form in a simple diagram (as Figure 1), while its micro-economic logic matches the neoclassical belief in the 'virtue of thrift' and Max Weber's Protestant Ethic, which emphasize austerity, savings (before spending!) and delayed gratification as the path to bliss.

Now we're talking. This puts the doctrine in the context of its parent beliefs.

The way I see it, beliefs:economics as operating system:application as mythology:religion. So shorter Storm: The LFF is a BS application for a BS OS.

Been dawning on me lately how neoliberalism is the spawn of a degenerate parent belief system, too. I was even thinking of Weber just the other day.

By speaking in apparently objective, pragmatic, "realistic" terms, public figures are notorious for "dog-whistling" their occult beliefs in terms their congregations hear loud and clear. When Her Royal Clinton's even more notoriously damned to hell half the population as "deplorables," she tipped her hand. The obscure term, ephors, is very instructive here.

To refesh the readers memory, "Schumpeter (1934, p. 74) called the money-creating banker 'the ephor of the exchange economy' -- someone who by creating credit (ex nihilo) is pre-financing new investments and innovation and enables "the carrying out of new combinations, authorizes people, in the name of society as it were, to form them."

Not so fast, though. Who were the original ephors?

Herodotus claimed that the institution was created by Lycurgus, while Plutarch considers it a later institution. It may have arisen from the need for governors while the kings were leading armies in battle. The ephors were elected by the popular assembly, and all citizens were eligible for election. They were forbidden to be reelected. They provided a balance for the two kings, who rarely cooperated with each other. Plato called them tyrants who ran Sparta as despots, while the kings were little more than generals. Up to two ephors would accompany a king on extended military campaigns as a sign of control, and they held the authority to declare war during some periods in Spartan history.[2]

According to Plutarch,[3] every autumn, at the crypteia, the ephors would pro forma declare war on the helot population so that any Spartan citizen could kill a helot without fear of blood guilt.[4] This was done to keep the large helot population in check.

The ephors did not have to kneel down before the Kings of Sparta and were held in high esteem by the citizens, because of the importance of their powers and because of the holy role they earned throughout their functions.

Ain't that something. We don't call it "class war" for nothing. More on the crypteia:

The Crypteia or Krypteia (Greek: κρυπτεία krupteía from κρυπτός kruptós, "hidden, secret things") was an ancient Spartan state institution involving young Spartan men. Its goal and nature are still a matter of discussion and debate among historians, but some scholars (Wallon) consider the Krypteia to be a kind of secret police and state security force organized by the ruling classes of Sparta, whose purpose was to terrorize the servile helot population. Others (Köchly, Wachsmuth) believe it to be a form of military training, similar to the Athenian ephebia.

So Schumpeter's metaphor is way too apt for comfort. Gets right under my skin.

For a modern equivalent of the pro forma declaration of civil war, I'm thinking "election cycle." Hippie-punching and all that goes a long way back, eh?

Let's cut to the chase: what's all this talk of econ as religion telling us? ISTM arguing with neoliberals as they frame the debate is like arguing with theologians in their terms. My learning psych professor, Robert Bolles, regarding the dismantling of ascendant BS models, always said, you don't take down an enormous tree leaf by leaf, you go where it meets the ground. Where does neoliberalism meet the ground? And its parent belief system?

Neoliberalism is so poorly grounded, it's shorting out all over the place. This could be easier than it looks. Storm's argument is compelling (at least to this newbie). What are its other weakest links? (Not being rhetorical here. I really don't know. A little help?)

Speaking of Weber, one of the major factors in the Reformation was the utter failure of the Catholic church to be able to produce a valid calendar . The trouble is of course, in their mythos, you have to perform the proper rituals at the proper time and often in the proper place, or you will fry in hell forever and ever amen.

Obviously, then, the calculation of the equinox assumed considerable and understandable importance. If the equinox was wrong, then Easter was celebrated on the wrong day and the placement of most of the other observances -- such as the starts of Lent and Pentecost -- would also be in error.

As the Julian calendar was far from perfect, errors did indeed begin to creep into the keeping of time. Because of the inherent imprecision of the calendar, the calculated year was too long by 11 minutes and 14 seconds. The problem only grew worse with each passing year as the equinox slipped backwards one full day on the calendar every 130 years. For example, at the time of its introduction, the Julian calendar placed the equinox on March 25. By the time of the Council of Nicea in 325, the equinox had fallen back to March 21. By 1500, the equinox had shifted by 10 days.

The 10 days were of increasing importance also to navigation and agriculture, causing severe problems for sailors, merchants, and farmers whose livelihood depended upon precise measurements of time and the seasons. At the same time, throughout the Middle Ages, the use of the Julian calendar brought with it many local variations and peculiarities that are the constant source of frustration to historians. For example, many medieval ecclesiastical records, financial transactions, and the counting of dates from the feast days of saints did not adhere to the standard Julian calendar but reflected local adjustments. Not surprisingly, confusion was the result.

The Church Saves Time

[Doncha just love that succinct bit of myth-making? smh]

The Church was aware of the inaccuracy, and by the end of the 15th century there was widespread agreement among Church leaders that not celebrating Easter on the right day -- the most important and most solemn event on the calendar -- was a scandal.

A functioning mythology tells one how to be human right now. The Catholic church couldn't even tell people what date it was, putting not just ephemeral souls in peril should one die, even more of a daily dread in those days, but lives and property were increasingly at risk.

ISTM we're in an analogous situation. Our two high holies, Wall Street and Washington, DC, are increasingly irrelevant to us helots. They're of no use to us in ordering our daily lives. In fact, they've becoming openly hostile, dropping any pretense of governing for the common good, and I'm not referring only to Trump, eg, whatever happened to habeas corpus ? "If you like your health plan, you can keep it." The betrayals come fast and furious, too fast to keep up.

Others are rejecting science. A schism here, a schism there, pretty soon it all cracks up one day "outta nowhere." And I do mean "one day."

Moving right along, let's look at "the virtue of thrift."

Like the "virtues" of the LF fallacy, it arises from a parent belief system. This is from Some Call for Reclaiming the Virtue of Thrift (emphasis added).

In the formative years of United States history, prominent thinkers such as Ben Franklin promoted a "thrift ethic" that encouraged hard work, frugal spending on self and generous giving to charity, he asserted, maintaining "thrift" was simply the secular term for the religious stewardship principle . And institutions developed to support that ethic, he noted.

That's what I'm saying: secular institutions are the operationalizations, the applications, of belief systems, and further, we can study them instead of just saying "religion = bad = no further analysis required" and then dismissing it all out of hand.

As with LF-supply and LF-demand, secular and sectarian are not the independent variables they're made out to be, as argued so well by Cook & Ferguson right here on NC in The Real Economic Consequences of Martin Luther , eg, "[Henry VIII] did not abolish the papacy so much as take the pope's place." Same goes for today, IMNSHO: Our "secular" leaders are sectarian high priests in mufti.

The Baptist article also goes on to say what the flock people should do: ignore Wall St. and DC. Unsuprisingly, it's also chock full of punching downwards and victim-blaming. Payday lending and lotteries are to blame, they say. People just need to be more thrifty , which apparently means, impoverish yourself for the betterment of your betters. Or else.

When HRC damned half of us to Hell, she was dog-whistling loud and clear in a tradition going at least as far back as the wars of the ephors on the helots. When the high priests of our high holy temples of finance tell us we need more austerity, although they speak in terms apparently objective and especially dispassionate, it's nothing but the failed preachings of the failed priests of a failed church.

Looked at as comparative mythology, and speaking empirically as well (much obliged to the present author and our hosts, sincerely) neoliberalism is no way of being human.

Sure, us nerds get that. But wonky discussions don't move people. The execrable Mario Cuomo is credited with saying, "You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose," and I think it's profoundly true. Telling my friends we've debunked the Loanable Funds Fallacy will get me nowhere.

Oy vey. The immense satisfaction I had been feeling, of seeing through neoliberalism all the way to its core, sure was short lived. Now I need to know what MMT says about being human. This is what happens when you start thinking in words, you know. It never ends!

I've heard Steve Keen's writing won't be much help in popularizing MMT in time. Who's a witty MMTer? Who can express its way of being human in one-liners? Who's punchy?

(Administrivia: "Suppose there is an exogenous (unexplained) *rise* in the average propensity to save. In reponse, the LF-supply curve shifts down ." Shouldn't that be "drop"?)

* This is the night of the expanding man
I take one last drag as I approach the stand
I cried when I wrote this song
Sue me if I play too long
This brother is free
I'll be what I want to be

knowbuddhau , December 22, 2017 at 4:23 pm

Oops left out two links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephor

knowbuddhau , December 22, 2017 at 4:23 pm

And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypteia

susan the other , December 23, 2017 at 12:11 pm

Very interesting rant, Knowbuddhau. Imo all we have to do is get over gold. It made sense before the days of sovereign fiat that you saved your coins before you spent them. How else? But fiat is the essential spirit of money while gold was/is a craze. And the Neoliberals are unenlightened just like the Neocons against whom they pretend to react. But they are reactionaries regardless. That's their problem. All reaction, no action. When Storm refers to Kalecki above saying the original sin of economics was confusing stocks with flows, I take it to mean confusing fiat with gold in a sense. Once upon a time a store of value (a pouch full of gold coins) was the same thing as a medium of exchange. Not any more. Fiat is the only mechanism, spent in advance to promote social well being, that can create an "economy" in this world of zillions of people.

JustAnObserver , December 22, 2017 at 5:16 pm

Isn't a bit of an irony that the academic papers being debunked here were commissioned by the Institute for *New* Economic Thinking ? Sad to see its also been corrupted by the neoliberal virus (political Ebola).

ewmayer , December 22, 2017 at 8:11 pm

The author writes about the fuctional LF paradigm: "Banks, in this narrative, do not create money themselves and hence cannot pre -finance investment by new money. They only move it between savers and investors." -- Note that that narrative doesn't even make sense *within* the loanable-funds model, because with fractional reserve banking, even if banks were required to loan against pre-existing deposits, they could amplify each dollar of same into multiple units of newly-created credit money. The fact that what really happens goes even further and entirely omits the need for pre-existing funds from the banks' monetary legerdemain is the reason for my pet term for the "loans create deposits" reality: "fictional reserve banking."

Dan , December 23, 2017 at 12:40 am

Aggregate demand increases investment only to the extant that it increases profitable opportunities. If costs remain constant, then obviously an increase in demand increases profitability. But an increase in wages doesn't merely increase aggregate demand, it also increases aggregate costs because that's what a wage is to a firm. If aggregate wages were boosted by $1 trillion, consumption will be boosted by less than 100% of that (workers will save some of their increased income) while firms will have to pay the full $1 trillion in increased wages if they are to employ the workers. So how is increasing wages supposed to increase profitability and investment? It seems like it would do the opposite.

We really need to look more at profit. The aggregate profit rate is determined by the cost of the total capital employed in relation to the output. If the costs rise faster than productivity growth, then profitability falls. How do aggregate costs rise? By capital accumulation, by an increase in savings and investment. Thus, it would seem that stagnation can only be reached if too much capital has been accumulated without a corresponding increase in productivity. This hypothesis doesn't rely on the loanable funds theory (it doesn't matter whether the money exists before it is spent), but it is more similar to the savings glut explanation because it is the accumulation of capital that leads to the fall in profitability. The suppression of wages is an effect, an attempt to create profitable opportunities when there are none.

Steven Greenberg , December 23, 2017 at 11:29 am

Your model is correct when you limit yourself to the variables in your model. Real life economies are complex, dynamic interactions of many variables. At different times some variable become more important than others.

I think your variable, capital accumulation, is itself a complicated mix of many variables. Sometimes the cost of "capital accumulation" may be controlling, and sometimes not. It also depends on which variables within capital accumulation are having the most impact.

Steven Greenberg , December 23, 2017 at 10:42 am

I think one of the major problems of the theory of supply and demand is that it may be true as a static model (all other things being equal), but the economy (and life) are not static. Unless you can take dynamic effects into account, then this static or even quasi-static model will just not represent what actually happens. This is just another way of saying what this article says. Over time, the supply curve and the demand curve interact. There is hardly, if any, point in time when all other things aren't changing.

In my world of simulating the behavior of integrated circuits, the problem involves non-linear differential equations, not just non-linear algebraic equations.

Steven Greenberg , December 23, 2017 at 10:55 am

Here is another problem. " by the national accounts[,] identity of saving and investment (for closed economies),"

Accounting is also a static snapshot of a dynamic system. A bank creates a loan payable in let's say 30 years. The spending occurs immediately. In accounting terms these two items balance. However, on impact on the economy, they do not balance. Why else would capitalism have noticed the value of buy now, pay later?

Steven Greenberg , December 23, 2017 at 11:02 am

This is no longer a chicken and egg problem of which came first, the chicken or the egg. In real life, there are lots of chickens and lots of eggs. Which came first is irrelevant. Chickens create eggs and eggs create chickens.

Steven Greenberg , December 23, 2017 at 11:23 am

Models are a simplification of reality. They apply best when the things that were simplified away don't matter much. They fail when the things that were simplified away become important. So, when does the loanable funds model apply?

IMHO, the loanable funds model applies when there is a run on the bank. When the fractional reserve banking system is running smoothly, the loanable funds model is irrelevant. That's why banks have reserves and monetary systems have central reserve banks. These reserve systems let us ignore loanable funds models.

Cat Burglar , December 23, 2017 at 3:56 pm

These are great comments! You put the whole process in time.

[Dec 23, 2017] If Libs Were Smart They Would Push For Mueller Firing Himself Now Zero Hedge

Dec 23, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Dec 22, 2017 9:45 PM 0 SHARES Authored by Tom Luongo,

The desperation of U.S. liberals to find some truth in the claims that Donald Trump's campaign staff colluded with Russian state actors is approaching infinity.

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's testimony to the House Intelligence Committee all but confirms that the only 'proof' the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller have of collusion is the discredited "Trump Dossier."

This dossier was compiled by Christopher Steele and sold to the Clinton Campaign as opposition research by Fusion GPS. McCabe stonewalled the HIC on this matter but couldn't point to anything in the dossier that the FBI verified to be true other than publicly-known knowledge of Carter Page visiting Moscow in 2016.

And the last time I checked (as least for now) visiting Moscow is not a crime.

Neither is what Michael Flynn did a crime either, but let's not bring facts in to dash the hope of the terminally insane.

McCabe has to stonewall on this issue otherwise he and the rest of the FBI are guilty of acting on behalf of Hillary Clinton to assist in spying on her political opponent. Because that's where all of this leads if people would take their ideological blinders off for five seconds and look at what we actually know as opposed to what we 'just know to be true.'

Everyone involved in this sordid affair should be tried for espionage and treason.

Those prominent liberals running around protesting the mere thought of Donald Trump shutting down the Mueller investigation to 'protect the sanctity of our elections' are a bunch of simpering morons.

And I'm sick to death of the blatant and rank hypocrisy when it comes to election fraud in this country.

For this reason alone, the Mueller investigation should be shut down.

The Stupid Show

Look, anyone taking the rumor seriously that Donald Trump was close to shutting Mueller's investigation down should have their head examined. This was a blatant plant by the Washington Post (and the CIA, let's get real) to create exactly the kind of response from the Wil Wheatons of our world .

These people are simply ab-reacting noradrenaline junkies living in their amygdalas 24/7 while the world moves on without them.

Oh, important thing that I forgot: There are hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans who are prepared to take to the streets when Trump tries to fire Mueller, DAG Rosenstein, or otherwise shut down the investigation. We're organizing here: https://t.co/0NjevMQ4oN (13/12)

-- Wil 'Kick the Nazis off the tweeters' Wheaton (@wilw) December 19, 2017

I don't know if we can stop it from happening, or if there are even enough Republicans in government who are capable of putting our country ahead of their party. But read up and know your history, just in case: https://t.co/79YhjPcKq9 (12/12)

-- Wil 'Kick the Nazis off the tweeters' Wheaton (@wilw) December 19, 2017

If this isn't the picture of someone in serious need of psychotherapy then

In the same week we also get this little ditty by Newsweek . You don't think these things aren't coordinated to evoke this kind of response in ' soy-boy ' Wheaton?

Painter, who worked under former president George W. Bush, appeared on MSNBC to discuss the widely criticized Fox News segment that suggested the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign could be considered a coup.

"The commander in chief is Donald Trump," Painter said. "There is a risk of him using that power to destroy our democracy, whether you call it a coup or anything else. It's not from the critics of Donald Trump that the danger is posed, it's the fact that the man who is commander in chief of our military is engaged in obstruction of justice."

The salient point here is why would Trump shut down Mueller?

Mueller has nothing on him. The longer this goes on the worse it looks for everyone involved and Trump comes out looking like the victim of a political witch-hunt.

Trump knows and has known from the beginning that there was nothing to investigate.

The only question has been whether Mueller could invent something through nigh-onto-illegal pressuring of people like Flynn, caught in the usual FBI web of procedural dishonesty, to turn on Trump and perjure themselves to avoid a prison sentence.

Trump v. Mueller

In fact, the more I think about the sequence of events, the more I think the meeting between Trump and Mueller the evening before Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel involved Trump telling Mueller, "Good luck finding anything, Bob, I'll hang you by your own rope when this is all over."

If I were in Trump's position I would have done exactly that. I would have goaded Mueller into this, knowing full well that Uranium One was out there. This would have lit a fire under Mueller to cast a wide net, turn over every rock looking for any kind of dirt. Doing so would expose the whole rotten mess and Mueller looks like a guy running around investigating himself in the end.

Remember, Trump is the one that brought up Uranium One in the first place on the campaign trail. In response, Hillary, as she always does, then accused Trump of that which she was actually guilty of – colluding with the Russians and using her position for personal gain.

The people who want to believe in Russia-Gate are missing this in their zeal to rid the world of Trump to validate their own failing world-view.

The longer this investigation goes on the more it will uncover the truth about what happened. In my mind, all the Mueller is doing now is compiling the actual case to exonerate himself over Uranium One and throw the rest of the FBI under the bus.

Given what we already know, I'd say Bob's done a good job of this and it's time for him to step aside and let this play out.

[Dec 23, 2017] Ex-CIA Director John Brennan Testified Before House Intelligence Committee About Election Meddling

Now we can view Brennan testimony throw the prism of Steele dossier scandal and Strzok-gate (with whom he who probably has direct contacts)
Please note that the interview was given directly after the appointment of the Special Prosecutor Mueller and at this time many though that Trump was "fully cooked" and that neocon and neoliberal swamp in Washington managed to consume him.
May 23, 2017 | www.npr.org

Former CIA Director John Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday that Russia "brazenly interfered in the 2016 election process," despite U.S. efforts to warn it off. Brennan testified in an open session of the committee, one of a handful of congressional committees now investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Brennan said he told his Russian counterpart, the head of Russia's FSB, last August that if Russia pursued its efforts to interfere, "it would destroy any near-term prospect for improvement in relations" between the two countries. He said Russia denied any attempts to interfere.

In his opening statement, Brennan also recounted how he had briefed congressional leaders in August of last year, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees about the "full details" of what he knew of Russia's interference in the 2016 election. Brennan said he became convinced last summer that Russia was trying to interfere in the campaign, saying "they were very aggressive."

Brennan said he is "aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign." Brennan said that concerned him, "because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals," and that it raised questions about whether or not the Russians "were able to gain the cooperation of those individuals." Brennan added he didn't know if "collusion existed" between the Russians and those he identified as involved in the Trump campaign.

While Brennan would not specifically identify any individuals associated with the Trump campaign who had contacts with Russian officials and would not opine as to whether there was any collusion or collaboration, he did tell lawmakers why he was concerned about the contacts occurring against the general background of Russian efforts to meddle in the election. Brennan said he's studied Russian intelligence activities over the years, and how Russian intelligence services have been able to get people to betray their country. "Frequently, individuals on a treasonous path do not even realize they're on that path until it gets to be too late," he said.

Brennan said Russia was motivated to back Donald Trump in the presidential election because of a "traditional animus" between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He told committee members there had not been a good relationship between Putin and the Clintons over the years. What's more, Brennan said Putin blamed Hillary Clinton's actions as secretary of state during the Obama administration for domestic disturbances inside Russia. He said Putin was concerned Clinton would be more "rigid" on issues such as human rights if elected president.

But Brennan told the committee he believed that Russia anticipated that Clinton would be the likely winner of the presidential race, and that Russia tried to "damage and bloody" her before Election Day. Had she won, Brennan said, Russia would have continued to attempt to "denigrate her and hurt her" during her presidency. If Russia had collected more information about Clinton that they did not use against her during the campaign, Brennan said they were likely "husbanding it for another day."

On another question, Brennan criticized President Trump's reported sharing of classified intelligence with Russia officials. Brennan said if reports were accurate, Trump violated "protocols" by sharing the information with Russia's foreign minister and ambassador to the U.S.

Brennan also said he was "very concerned" by the release of what he said appears to be classified information from the Trump administration. He said there appear to be "very, very damaging leaks, and I find them appalling and they need to be tracked down."

Reacting to Brennan's testimony, a White House spokesman said "This morning's hearings back up what we've been saying all along: that despite a year of investigation, there is still no evidence of any Russia-Trump campaign collusion, that the President never jeopardized intelligence sources or sharing, and that even Obama's CIA Director believes the leaks of classified information are 'appalling' and the culprits must be 'tracked down.'"

Under questioning from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., Brennan said the Russians have been trying to disrupt Western elections since the 1960s, and that they've quickly adapted to the times. Brennan pointed to the ease with which Russia was able to hack Democratic operatives' emails, which were then published on WikiLeaks.

"The cyber-environment now really provides so much more opportunity for troublemaking and the Russians take advantage of it," he said. Brennan said the use of spear phishing, and "whatever else so that they can then gain access to people's emails, computer systems networks," is something that the Russians are adept at.

He said Russia used WikiLeaks as a "cut-out," or go-between, and that protests by WikiLeaks that it is not working with Russia and Russia's claims it is not working with WikiLeaks are "disingenuous."

[Dec 23, 2017] What Did John Brennan and Anonymous Sources Really Say by Philip Giraldi

The rule for retired intelligence officials is to keep their mouth shut and disappear from the public view. This not the case with Brennan. Probably worried about his survival chances in case of failure, Brennan tries to justified the "putsch" of a faction of intelligence officials against Trump. Nice... Now we have indirect proof that he conspired with Michael Morell to depose legitimately elected president.
Now the question arise whether he worked with MI6 to create Steele dossier. In other words did CIA supplied some information that went to the dossier.
Moreover, since JFK assassination, the CIA is prohibited from spying on American citizens, especially tracking the activities of associates of a presidential candidate, which is clearly political activity.
This alone should have sent warning bells off for Congress critters, yet Brennan clearly persisted in following this dangerous for him and CIA trail. Very strange.
Notable quotes:
"... Speaking to a Russian becomes treasonous ..."
"... The article states that Brennan during the 2016 campaign "reviewed intelligence that showed 'contacts and interaction' between Russian actors and people associated with the Trump campaign." Politico was also in on the chase in an article entitled Brennan: Russia may have successfully recruited Trump campaign aides . ..."
"... The precise money quote by Brennan that the two articles chiefly rely on is "I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals." ..."
"... At a later point in his testimony Brennan also said that "I had unresolved questions in my mind about whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting US persons, involved in the campaign or not, to work on their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting fashion," clearly meant to imply that some friends of Trump might have become Russian agents voluntarily but others might have cooperated without knowing it. ..."
"... It is a line that has surfaced elsewhere previously, most notably in the demented meanderings of former acting Director of Central Intelligence Michael Morell. As the purpose of recruiting an intelligence agent is to have a resource that can be directed to do things for you, the statement is an absurdity and Brennan and Morell, as a former Director and acting Director of the CIA, should know better. ..."
"... In his testimony, Brennan also hit the main theme that appears to be accepted by nearly everyone inside the beltway, namely that Russian sought to influence and even pervert the outcome of the 2016 election. Interpreting his testimony, the Post article asserts that "Russia was engaged in an 'aggressive' and 'multifaceted 'effort to interfere in our election." As has been noted frequently before, even though this assertion has apparently been endorsed by nearly everyone in the power structure AKA (also known as) "those who matter," it is singularly lacking in any actual evidence. ..."
"... Last Wednesday, the New York Times led off its front page with a piece entitled Top Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer . Based, as always, on anonymous sources citing "highly classified" intelligence, the article claimed that "American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers " The "discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly focused on two aides in particular, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, both of whom had established relationships with Russian businessmen and government officials. ..."
"... It would appear that the New York Times ' editors are unaware that the United States routinely interferes in elections worldwide and that the action taken in various places including Ukraine goes far beyond phone conversations. In some other places like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan the interference is particularly robust taking place at the point of a bayonet, but the Times and Washington Post don't appear to have any problem when the regime change is being accomplished ostensibly to make the world more democratic, even if it almost never has that result. ..."
"... "The "discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly ." ..."
"... US is now like USSR? https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/05/29/forget-russian-collusion-we-are-russia/ ..."
"... The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war, since he seems to consider even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both fascist and nihilist and treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our survival. ..."
"... Of course those, their mouth pieces Washpost, CNN and NYT, who still want USA control of the world, have aligned their careers on this policy, do anything to get rid of Trump. As Russia is seen by them as the next country to be subjugated, any talk with this 'enemy' to them is high treason. ..."
"... Mr. Clapper finally found the answer to this 1 billion dollar question why US is suffering in his NBC interview -- it is because Russians are untermensch. Russian genetics is wrong and we all were so sweating and suffering over this whole mess., while the answer was so close, on the surface. ..."
"... "If you put that in context with everything else we knew the Russians were doing to interfere with the election, and just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were concerned." ..."
"... This is a fact showing the US' direct meddling in the affairs of another state and in creating a war on a border with Russian federation. Brennan has been so much immersed in lies and politicking and war crimes that it is impossible to expect any decent reasoning from this miserable opportunist. ..."
"... What Goering did say – cogently and precisely – is that, regardless of the form of government, the people can always be quite easily stirred up to want war. The key sentence is this: "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger". That is exactly what the US, UK and European governments have been doing for years to justify their terrorist scares and their wars of aggression. And Goering was absolutely right to point out that it works just the same in democracies (or "democracies") as under dictatorships. ..."
"... "Apparently we need to focus on protecting our vote from our own government". I very much doubt if the Deep State needs to resort to such small-scale and easily-detected trickery to retain control. As Philip Berrigan pointed out long ago, "If voting made any difference, it would be illegal". ..."
May 30, 2017 | www.unz.com

Speaking to a Russian becomes treasonous

The Washington Post and a number of other mainstream media outlets are sensing blood in the water in the wake of former CIA Director John Brennan's public testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. The Post headlined a front page featured article with Brennan's explosive testimony just made it harder for the GOP to protect Trump . The article states that Brennan during the 2016 campaign "reviewed intelligence that showed 'contacts and interaction' between Russian actors and people associated with the Trump campaign." Politico was also in on the chase in an article entitled Brennan: Russia may have successfully recruited Trump campaign aides .

The precise money quote by Brennan that the two articles chiefly rely on is "I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals."

Now first of all, the CIA is not supposed to keep tabs on American citizens and tracking the activities of known associates of a presidential candidate should have sent warning bells off, yet Brennan clearly persisted in following the trail. What Brennan did not describe, because it was "classified," was how he came upon the information in the first place. We know from the New York Times and other sources that it came from foreign intelligence services, including the British, Dutch and Estonians, and there has to be a strong suspicion that the forwarding of at least some of that information might have been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan unofficially in the first place. But whatever the provenance of the intelligence, it is clear that Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into a possible Russian operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump were to somehow get nominated and elected, which admittedly was a longshot at the time. That is how Russiagate began.

But where the information ultimately came from as well as its reliability is just speculation as the source documents have not been made public. What is not speculative is what Brennan actually said in his testimony. He said that Americans associated with Trump and his campaign had met with Russians. He was "concerned" because of known Russian efforts to "suborn such individuals." Note that Brennan, presumably deliberately, did not say "suborn those individuals." Sure, Russian intelligence (and CIA, MI-6, and Mossad as well as a host of others) seek to recruit people with access to politically useful information. That is what they do for a living, but Brennan is not saying that he has or saw any evidence that that was the case with the Trump associates. He is speaking generically of "such individuals" because he knows that spies, inter alia , recruit politicians and the Russians presumably, like the Americans and British, do so aggressively.

At a later point in his testimony Brennan also said that "I had unresolved questions in my mind about whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting US persons, involved in the campaign or not, to work on their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting fashion," clearly meant to imply that some friends of Trump might have become Russian agents voluntarily but others might have cooperated without knowing it.

It is a line that has surfaced elsewhere previously, most notably in the demented meanderings of former acting Director of Central Intelligence Michael Morell. As the purpose of recruiting an intelligence agent is to have a resource that can be directed to do things for you, the statement is an absurdity and Brennan and Morell, as a former Director and acting Director of the CIA, should know better. That they don't explains a lot of things about today's CIA

Brennan confirms his lack of any hard evidence when he also poses the question "whether or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals." He doesn't know whether the Americans were approached and asked to cooperate by Russian intelligence officers and, even if they were, he does not know whether they agreed to do so. That means that the Americans in question were guilty only of meeting and talking to Russians, which was presumably enough to open an FBI investigation. One might well consider that at the time and even to this day Russia was not and is not a declared enemy of the United States and meeting Russians is not a criminal offense.

In his testimony, Brennan also hit the main theme that appears to be accepted by nearly everyone inside the beltway, namely that Russian sought to influence and even pervert the outcome of the 2016 election. Interpreting his testimony, the Post article asserts that "Russia was engaged in an 'aggressive' and 'multifaceted 'effort to interfere in our election." As has been noted frequently before, even though this assertion has apparently been endorsed by nearly everyone in the power structure AKA (also known as) "those who matter," it is singularly lacking in any actual evidence.

Nor has any evidence been produced to support the claim that it was Russia that hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server, which now is accepted as Gospel, but that is just one side to the story being promoted. Last Wednesday, the New York Times led off its front page with a piece entitled Top Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer . Based, as always, on anonymous sources citing "highly classified" intelligence, the article claimed that "American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers " The "discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly focused on two aides in particular, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, both of whom had established relationships with Russian businessmen and government officials.

The article goes on to concede that "It is unclear, however, whether Russian officials actually tried to directly influence Mr. Manafort and Mr. Flynn ," and that's about all there is to the tale, though the Times wanders on for another three pages, recapping Brennan and the Flynn saga lest anyone has forgotten. So what do we have? Russians were talking on the phone about the possibility of influencing an American's presidential candidate's advisers, an observation alluded to by Brennan and also revealed in somewhat more detail by anonymous sources. Pretty thin gruel, isn't it? Isn't that what diplomats and intelligence officers do?

It would appear that the New York Times ' editors are unaware that the United States routinely interferes in elections worldwide and that the action taken in various places including Ukraine goes far beyond phone conversations. In some other places like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan the interference is particularly robust taking place at the point of a bayonet, but the Times and Washington Post don't appear to have any problem when the regime change is being accomplished ostensibly to make the world more democratic, even if it almost never has that result.

How one regards all of the dreck coming out of the Fourth Estate and poseurs like John Brennan pretty much depends on the extent one is willing to trust that what the government, its highly-politicized bureaucrats and the media tell the public is true. For me, that would be not a lot. The desire to bring down the buffoonish Donald Trump is understandable, but buying into government and media lies will only lead to more lies that have real consequences, up to and including the impending wars against North Korea and Iran. It is imperative that every American should question everything he or she reads in a newspaper, sees on television "news" or hears coming out of the mouths of former and current government employees.

RobinG , May 30, 2017 at 5:20 am GMT

Thanks for the reassurance, Phil. It's lonely standing against the tide, and many are trying to fabricate excuses for the lack of evidence.

Take Melvin Goodman, author of Whistleblower at the CIA, for instance. (I realize CIA is a big place, but did you know him?) I've met Mr. Goodman, and he struck me as thoughtful, rational and capable of objective discussion. However, in his talk at the Gaithersburg Book Festival, he seemed a rather different person. At the end of Q&A, he said that he was trying to figure out how the Russians had laundered the "hacked" DNC emails to make it look like they were leaked by an insider. He's sure the Russians did it. With such creative speculation, who needs facts?

The book, though, is probably pretty good. Which makes it that much stranger that he's taking the political line on the DNC emails!

https://www.c-span.org/video/?427995-3/whistleblower-cia

Melvin A. Goodman talked about his book, Whistleblower at the CIA: An Insider's Account of the Politics of Intelligence.

animalogic , May 30, 2017 at 5:32 am GMT

Ah, another day, another disgraceful display by the media. Incidentally: "The "discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly ."

"Presumably" here is quite generous: I'd be tempted to presume a whole string of lies .

Anon , May 30, 2017 at 5:51 am GMT

US is now like USSR? https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/05/29/forget-russian-collusion-we-are-russia/

The Alarmist , May 30, 2017 at 5:54 am GMT

It's like climate change: The MSM tells us that 17 intelligence agencies agree that the Russians hacked the election and thereby influenced it, but when you dig a little you find that NSA, for example, did not express a high degree of confidence that this might have actually been the case. Nevertheless, the case is settled. Pravda and Izvestia should have been so convinced in their day.

exiled off mainstreet , May 30, 2017 at 6:15 am GMT

The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war, since he seems to consider even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both fascist and nihilist and treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our survival.

jilles dykstra , May 30, 2017 at 8:00 am GMT

It all seems quite simple to me. After WWI the USA people decided that their sons should not die ever more for imperialism. Isolation, neutrality laws. In 1932 Roosevelt was brought into politics to make the USA great, great as the country controlling the world. Trump and his rich friends understand that this policy is not just ruining the USA, but is ruining them personally. If I'm right in this, it is the greatest change in USA foreign policy since 1932.

Of course those, their mouth pieces Washpost, CNN and NYT, who still want USA control of the world, have aligned their careers on this policy, do anything to get rid of Trump. As Russia is seen by them as the next country to be subjugated, any talk with this 'enemy' to them is high treason.

Russ , May 30, 2017 at 8:39 am GMT

Lisa Frank has recently (5/18/2017) written beautifully on the topic of Comey in the FBI: http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=72788

Just as Ms. Frank dissects Comey's background and motivations, so a similar dissection is now in order for Mr. Brennan.

LauraMR , May 30, 2017 at 9:32 am GMT

@exiled off mainstreet The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war, since he seems to consider even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both fascist and nihilist and treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our survival.

Is he an Anglo-Zionist? I kind of missed a reference to the true puppet-masters in the article

Renoman , May 30, 2017 at 10:08 am GMT

I'll say it again "what has Russia ever done to the USA"? The answer is Nothing!

mp , May 30, 2017 at 10:30 am GMT

Is someone going to look in to how the Izzys influence our politicians and elections? No. Why? Because Russia is the "enemy" and Israel is our "ally." Can someone explain in simple terms why Russia is the enemy? Yes. Because Jews don't like them very much. Can someone explain in simple terms why Israel is our ally? Because of New York City, Hollywood, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CBS and NBC, the major newspapers, Wall Street, porn, military subsidies, dual citizenship, etc. And because every president just can't wait to wear the beanie and genuflect at some wall. Any other questions?

Tom Welsh , May 30, 2017 at 10:52 am GMT

" One might well consider that at the time and even to this day Russia was not and is not a declared enemy of the United States and meeting Russians is not a criminal offense".

Although in point of fact the USA has committed, and continues to commit, acts of war against Russia.

Tom Welsh , May 30, 2017 at 10:53 am GMT

@Renoman "[W]hat has Russia ever done to the USA"?

Er, supported the US government during the American Civil War? Given it Alaska for a token payment? Won WW2 for it?

RealAmerican , May 30, 2017 at 11:23 am GMT

How many congressmen and other politicians in Washington are already suborned by AIPAC? Is that not AIPAC's raison d'etre ?

DanCT , May 30, 2017 at 11:33 am GMT

"Because of New York City, Hollywood, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CBS and NBC, the major newspapers, Wall Street, porn, military subsidies, dual citizenship, etc. "

Let's not forget 911 and it's ongoing coverup, the State Dept's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs exemplifying our bestest ally's parallel command and control apparatus in every federal agency such as the FBI, etc

Wizard of Oz , May 30, 2017 at 12:30 pm GMT

The only problem I have with the article is understanding the vehemence with which Brennan and Morell are denounced for, as I read it, blathering about unwitting agents who might have co-operated without knowing it. I construed the objection to be based on a foreign intelligence service necessarily seeking to "direct" its agents. It would indeed follow that the agents could not help knowing what they were doing. However .

Is there not a category of people who Brennan and Morell might be referring to who could be aptly described as useful idiots. You meet them at a writer's festival, invite them to accept your country's generous and admiring hospitality and soon have them spouting the memes you have made sure they are fed as well inadvertently feeding you useful titbits of information, especially about people.

alexander , May 30, 2017 at 12:31 pm GMT

@Tom Welsh

I think something fascinating is going on, Tom. Our leaders made a choice to defraud us into the Iraq war. Russia didn't. This is a very serious crime for which there has been zero accountability. It seems that all the various people who should be in federal prison for having done this, are the one's "braying the loudest" about the Russian threat.

The real crisis in our country is the absence of accountability for the heinous crimes THEY committed, not anything the Russians did. If we allow acts of "war fraud" to go unprosecuted, then War Fraud becomes acceptable behavior. I do not know of one American, anywhere, who feels this is okay.

Do you ?

Andrei Martyanov , Website May 30, 2017 at 12:50 pm GMT

Nor has any evidence been produced to support the claim that it was Russia that hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server

It doesn't matter. Mr. Clapper finally found the answer to this 1 billion dollar question why US is suffering in his NBC interview -- it is because Russians are untermensch. Russian genetics is wrong and we all were so sweating and suffering over this whole mess., while the answer was so close, on the surface.

"If you put that in context with everything else we knew the Russians were doing to interfere with the election, and just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were concerned."

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/james-clapper-trump-russia-ties-my-dashboard-warning-light-was-n765601

Agent76 , May 30, 2017 at 1:19 pm GMT

I know some others actually know you cannot believe spies. Some on the other hand so not.

Mar 22, 2017 How the CIA Plants News Stories in the Media. It is no longer disputed that the CIA has maintained an extensive and ongoing relationship with news organizations and journalists, and multiple, specific acts of media manipulation have now been documented.

August 30, 2015 THE CIA AND THE MEDIA: 50 FACTS THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW By Prof. James F. Tracy

Since the end of World War Two the Central Intelligence Agency has been a major force in US and foreign news media, exerting considerable influence over what the public sees, hears and reads on a regular basis.

https://www.intellihub.com/the-cia-and-the-media-50-facts-the-world-needs-to-know-2/ 

Tom Welsh , May 30, 2017 at 1:53 pm GMT

@alexander Alexander, I definitely don't think it's OK, but I am not American – I am British (Scottish, to be exact). Although we have exactly the same problem over here – in miniature – with our local pocket Hitlers strutting around in their jackboots just salivating for the blood of foreigners.

I think the people who are braying about Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, etc. are doing so largely to distract attention from their own crimes. The following celebrated dialogue explains very clearly how it works.

-------------------------------------–
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

- Conversation with Hermann Goering in prison, reported by Gustave Gilbert

jilles dykstra , May 30, 2017 at 2:23 pm GMT

@Tom Welsh I suppose the story is meant to show that Goering wanted war. The opposite is true, he sent the Swedish negotiator Dahlerus several times to London in his plane, taking himself care, telephoning with the Dutch authorities, that the Junckers could fly safely over the Netherlands. What Goering did not know was that Britain had been preparing for war at least since 1936. The march 1939 guarantee to Poland was meant to provoke Hitler to attack Poland. The trap worked.

jilles dykstra , May 30, 2017 at 2:29 pm GMT

@Agent76 That even Senator Moynihan, of the CIA Oversight Committee, was lied to by the CIA director, about laying mines in Havana harbour, says enough. The CIA is not a secret service, it is a secret army. This secret army began drugs production in Afghanistan, mainly for the USA market, when funds for the CIA's war in Afghanistan were insufficient.

Agent76 , May 30, 2017 at 2:32 pm GMT

This CIA director? May 19, 2010 Obama advisor John Brennan speaks about the beauty of Islam

jilles dykstra , May 30, 2017 at 2:34 pm GMT

@alexander It is.
After an investigation of some seven years the lies of Tony Blair were exposed, in a report of considerable size. What happened ? Nothing. Instead of being in jail, the man flies aroud in a private jet, with an enormous income, paid by whom for what, I do not have a clue.

Agent76 , May 30, 2017 at 2:43 pm GMT

Dec 12, 2016 Georgia Official Says Homeland Security Tried To Hack Their State's Voter Database

While most of the country frets over Russia's role in the 2016 election, the state of Georgia has come forward saying that they've traced an IP from a hack of their voter database right back to the offices of the Department of Homeland Security. Apparently we need to focus on protecting our vote from our own government.

annamaria , May 30, 2017 at 2:50 pm GMT

@exiled off mainstreet

The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war, since he seems to consider even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both fascist and nihilist and treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our survival. Brennan is just a regular profiteering opportunist. Someone needs to remind the scoundrel that the civil war in Ukraine (initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed by the US), had started immediately upon Brennan's arrival to Kiev in 2014. He tried to make the visit secret but this did not work and Brennan's presence in Ukraine became widely known: https://sputniknews.com/world/20140415189240842-ANALYSIS-CIA-Director-Brennans-Trip-to-Ukraine-Initiates-Use-Of/

"CIA Director John Brennan visited Ukraine over the weekend, information that was confirmed by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday, after being reported by media on Sunday.

Over the same weekend, Kiev authorities cracked down on pro-federalization protests in eastern Ukraine. Regime troops advanced toward a number of cities in eastern Ukraine Tuesday to attack the protesters. "Brennan's appearance in Kiev just before the announcement of a violent crackdown in eastern Ukraine is just too timely to assume that it is a coincidence," Turbeville [an American international affairs expert] said.

"Brennan, who has been actively involved in arming insurgents in Libya, Syria and Venezuela, has a reputation for using thuggish tactics in pursuit of CIA goals," Wayne Madsen, an American investigative journalist told RIA Novosti."

This is a fact showing the US' direct meddling in the affairs of another state and in creating a war on a border with Russian federation. Brennan has been so much immersed in lies and politicking and war crimes that it is impossible to expect any decent reasoning from this miserable opportunist.

alexander , May 30, 2017 at 2:58 pm GMT

@Tom Welsh Excellent quote, Tom.

.And so true.

Agent76 , May 30, 2017 at 3:08 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

Unfortunately for you and myself there are literally millions of people in America who do not think or challenge what they read or view as we do apparently. Thanks, *government schooling* .

Mar 6, 2017 Drug Boss Escobar Worked for the CIA

The notorious cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar worked closely with the CIA, according to his son. In this episode of The Geopolitical Report, we look at the long history of CIA involvement in the international narcotics trade, beginning with its collaboration with the French Mafia to using drug money to illegally fund the Contras and overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Tom Welsh , May 30, 2017 at 3:29 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

I suppose the story is meant to show that Goering wanted war. The opposite is true, he sent the Swedish negotiator Dahlerus several times to London in his plane, taking himself care, telephoning with the Dutch authorities, that the Junckers could fly safely over the Netherlands. What Goering did not know was that Britain had been preparing for war at least since 1936. The march 1939 guarantee to Poland was meant to provoke Hitler to attack Poland. The trap worked.

What Goering did say – cogently and precisely – is that, regardless of the form of government, the people can always be quite easily stirred up to want war. The key sentence is this: "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger". That is exactly what the US, UK and European governments have been doing for years to justify their terrorist scares and their wars of aggression. And Goering was absolutely right to point out that it works just the same in democracies (or "democracies") as under dictatorships.

As for your point about Britain having deliberately fomented the war, I don't think that holds water. Britain was grossly – almost grotesquely – underarmed in 1939, and came very close indeed to being conquered in 1940. In my view, it was FDR and his friends who assiduously wound up the Nazis and the Poles to fight one another, and then persuaded the British and French to give Poland guarantees. Everyone believed that, if war came, the USA would immediately join Britain and France in fighting Germany. Alas, they were very much mistaken.

Tom Welsh , May 30, 2017 at 3:31 pm GMT

@Agent76 "

"Apparently we need to focus on protecting our vote from our own government". I very much doubt if the Deep State needs to resort to such small-scale and easily-detected trickery to retain control. As Philip Berrigan pointed out long ago, "If voting made any difference, it would be illegal".

Agent76 , May 30, 2017 at 3:57 pm GMT

@Tom Welsh Well, another ruler also stated this, "Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." Joseph Stalin

Rurik , Website May 30, 2017 at 4:06 pm GMT

@annamaria

Brennan is just a regular profiteering opportunist. Someone needs to remind the scoundrel that the civil war in Ukraine (initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed by the US), had started immediately upon Brennan's arrival to Kiev in 2014. He tried to make the visit secret but this did not work and Brennan's presence in Ukraine became widely known: https://sputniknews.com/world/20140415189240842-ANALYSIS-CIA-Director-Brennans-Trip-to-Ukraine-Initiates-Use-Of/
"CIA Director John Brennan visited Ukraine over the weekend, information that was confirmed by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday, after being reported by media on Sunday.
Over the same weekend, Kiev authorities cracked down on pro-federalization protests in eastern Ukraine. Regime troops advanced toward a number of cities in eastern Ukraine Tuesday to attack the protesters. "Brennan's appearance in Kiev just before the announcement of a violent crackdown in eastern Ukraine is just too timely to assume that it is a coincidence," Turbeville [an American international affairs expert] said.
"Brennan, who has been actively involved in arming insurgents in Libya, Syria and Venezuela, has a reputation for using thuggish tactics in pursuit of CIA goals," Wayne Madsen, an American investigative journalist told RIA Novosti."
This is a fact showing the US' direct meddling in the affairs of another state and in creating a war on a border with Russian federation. Brennan has been so much immersed in lies and politicking and war crimes that it is impossible to expect any decent reasoning from this miserable opportunist.

the civil war in Ukraine (initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed by the US), had started immediately upon Brennan's arrival to Kiev in 2014

I wouldn't so much call it a civil war, as a ZUSA imposed putsch, installing a Zio-bankster-quisling.

PG:

the United States routinely interferes in elections worldwide and that the action taken in various places including Ukraine goes far beyond phone conversations.

getting to the crux of the matter

when Russia released the phone conversation where ZUS State Dept. – Kagan klan / Zio-bitch Nuland was overheard deciding who was going to be the next president of Ukraine (some democracy), it was this breach of global oligarch protocol that has riled the deepstate Zio-war-scum ever since. Hence all the screeching and hysterics about "Russian hacking".

The thug Brennan, (as you correctly call him [imagine this mug coming into the room as you're about to be 'enhanced interrogated'])

http://www.frontpagemag.com/sites/default/files/uploads/2015/03/John_Brennan.jpg

has his fingerprints not just all over the war crimes and atrocities in Ukraine, but Syria and elsewhere too.

All these war criminals are all scrambling to undermine Trump in the fear that he'll eventually hold some of them accountable for their serial crimes, treasons, and treachery. Which brings us to this curious comment..

The desire to bring down the buffoonish Donald Trump is understandable,

what the hell does Mr. G think will replace him?!

So far the "buffoonish Donald Trump" has not declared a no-fly zone in Syria, as we know the war sow would have by now. He's not materially harmed the Assad regime, but only made symbolic attempts to presumably mollify the war pigs like McBloodstain and co in the zio-media/AIPAC/etc..

His rhetoric notwithstanding, he seems to be making nice with the Russians, to the apoplectic hysteria of people like Brennan and the Stain.

In fact the more people like Brennan and Bloodstain and the zio-media and others seem on the brink of madness, the better Trump seems to me every day.

And if it puts a smelly sock in the mouths of the neocons and war pigs to saber rattle at Iran, with no possibility to actually do them any harm, because of the treaty and Europe's need to respect it, then what's the harm of Trump sounding a little buffoonish if it gets them off his back so that he can circle himself with a Pretorian guard of loyalists and get to the bottom of all of this. I suspect that is what terrifies people like Brennan more than anything else.

[Dec 23, 2017] Neither party is on our side. The establishment in both parties is crooked and corrupt.

Notable quotes:
"... Of course, the notion of 'reform' within the Democratic Party is an oxymoron. Its been around since Nader, when the corrupt-corporate Democrats tried to tell us that the way forward was to work within the corrupt-corporate Democratic Party and change things that way. ..."
"... And I see Steve Bannon trying to wage the fight within the Republican party that the fake-reformers in the Democrats never even tried . ie, numerous primary challenges to corrupt-corporate Democrats. ..."
"... Neither party represents any but the richest of the rich these days. Both parties lie to voters and try to pretend that they might actually give a damn about the rest of us. But the only sign of life that I see of anyone trying to fight back against this Bannon inside the Republicans. I'm not thrilled with Bannon, although he's not nearly as bad as the loony-lefties in the corrupt-corporate Democratic Party and their many satellites call him. But he's the only one putting up a fight. I just hope that maybe someone will run in primaries against the corrupt-corporate-Republicans who fake-represent the part of the map where I live. ..."
Dec 23, 2017 | www.unz.com

Liverpool , December 22, 2017 at 9:16 pm GMT

I was raised by Democrats, and used to vote for them. But these days, I think heck would freeze over before I'd vote Democrat again. From my point of view, Bernie tried to pull them back to sanity. But the hard core Clinton-corporate-corrupt Democrats have declared war on any movement for reform within the Democratic Party. And there is no way that I'm voting for any of these corrupt-corporate Democrats ever again.

Of course, the notion of 'reform' within the Democratic Party is an oxymoron. Its been around since Nader, when the corrupt-corporate Democrats tried to tell us that the way forward was to work within the corrupt-corporate Democratic Party and change things that way. We saw the way the corrupt-corporate Democrats colluded and rigged the last Presidential Primaries so that Corrupt-Corporate-Clinton was guaranteed the corrupt-corporate Democrat nomination. That's a loud and clear message to anyone who thinks they can achieve change within the corrupt-corporate-colluding-rigged Democratic Party.

Since I've always been anti-war, I've been forced to follow what anti-war movement there is over to the Republicans. And I see Steve Bannon trying to wage the fight within the Republican party that the fake-reformers in the Democrats never even tried . ie, numerous primary challenges to corrupt-corporate Democrats. That never happened, and by 2012 I was convinced that even the fake-reformers within the corrupt-corporate Democrats were fakes who only wanted fund-raising but didn't really fight for reform.

Neither party represents any but the richest of the rich these days. Both parties lie to voters and try to pretend that they might actually give a damn about the rest of us. But the only sign of life that I see of anyone trying to fight back against this Bannon inside the Republicans. I'm not thrilled with Bannon, although he's not nearly as bad as the loony-lefties in the corrupt-corporate Democratic Party and their many satellites call him. But he's the only one putting up a fight. I just hope that maybe someone will run in primaries against the corrupt-corporate-Republicans who fake-represent the part of the map where I live.

Neither party is on our side. The establishment in both parties is crooked and corrupt. Someone needs to fight them. And I sure as heck won't vote for the corrupt and the crooked. Since the Democrats are doubling down on corrupt and crooked and telling such big lies that even Goebbels would blush, it doesn't look like I'll ever vote Dem0crat again.

[Dec 23, 2017] Imperial arrogance and paranoia in full display

Notable quotes:
"... RUBIO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. McCabe, can you without going into the specific of any individual investigation, I think the American people want to know, has the dismissal of Mr. Comey in any way impeded, interrupted, stopped or negatively impacted any of the work, any investigation, or any ongoing projects at the Federal Bureau of Investigations? ..."
"... MCCABE: As you know, Senator, the work of the men and women of the FBI continues despite any changes in circumstance, any decisions. So there has been no effort to impede our investigation today. Quite simply put sir, you cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, protecting the American people, and upholding the Constitution. ..."
"... WYDEN: Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. ..."
"... Gentlemen, it's fair to say I disagreed with Director Comey as much as anyone in this room but the timing of this firing is wrong to anyone with a sembl ..."
"... At our public hearing in January where he refused to discuss his investigation into connections between Russia and Trump associates I stated my fear that if the information didn't come out before inauguration day it might never come out. With all the recent talk in recent weeks about whether there is evidence of collusion, I fear some colleagues have forgotten that Donald Trump urged the Russians to hack his opponents. He also said repeatedly that he loved WikiLeaks. ..."
"... MCCABE: No, sir, that is not accurate. I can tell you, sir, that I worked very, very closely with Director Comey. From the moment he started at the FBI I was his executive assistant director of national security at that time and I worked for him running the Washington field office. And of course I've served as deputy for the last year. ..."
"... MCCABE: I can tell you that I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard. I have the highest respect for his considerable abilities and his integrity and it has been the greatest privilege and honor in my professional life to work with him. I can tell you also that Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does until this day. ..."
"... MCCABE: Sir, if you're referring to the Russia investigation, I do. I believe we have the adequate resources to do it and I know that we have resourced that investigation adequately. If you're referring to the many constantly multiplying counter-intelligence threats that we face across the spectrum, they get bigger and more challenging every day and resources become an issue over time. ..."
"... Mr. McCabe, is the agent who is in charge of this very important investigation into Russian attempts to influence our election last fall still in charge? ..."
"... COLLINS: I want to follow up on a question of resources that Senator Heinrich asked your opinion on. Press reports yesterday indicated that Director Comey requested additional resources from the Justice Department for the bureau's ongoing investigation into Russian active measures. Are you aware that request? Can you confirm that that request was in fact made? ..."
"... MCCABE: Yes, sir. So obviously not discussing any specific investigation in detail. The -- the issue of Russian interference in the U.S. democratic process is one that causes us great concern. And quite frankly, it's something we've spent a lot of time working on over the past several months. And to reflect comments that were made in response to an earlier question that Director Coats handled, I think part of that process is to understand the inclinations of our foreign adversaries to interfere in those areas. ..."
"... LANKFORD: OK, so there's not limitations on resources, you have what you need? The -- the actions about Jim Comey and his release has not curtailed the investigation from the FBI, it's still moving forward? ..."
"... MCCABE: The investigation will move forward, absolutely. ..."
"... LANKFORD: Is it your impression at this point that the FBI is unable to complete the investigation in a fair and expeditious way because of the removal of Jim Comey? ..."
"... MANCHIN: I'm sure we'll have more questions in the closed hearing, sir but let me say to the rest of you all, we talked about Kaspersky, the lab, KL Lab. Do you all have -- has it risen to your level being the head of all of our intelligence agencies and people that mostly concerned about the security of our country of having a Russian connection in a lab as far outreaching as KL Labs? ..."
"... STEWART: We are tracking Kaspersky and their software. There is as well as I know, and I've checked this recently, no Kaspersky software on our networks. ..."
"... HARRIS: It's been widely reported, and you've mentioned this, that Director Comey asked Rosenstein for additional resources. And I understand that you're saying that you don't believe that you need any additional resources? ..."
"... MCCABE: For the Russia investigation, ma'am, I think we are adequately resourced. ..."
"... MCCABE: I don't believe there is a crisis of confidence in the leadership of the FBI. That's somewhat self-serving, and I apologize for that ..."
"... POMPEO: It's actually not a yes-or-no question, Senator. I can't answer yes or no. I regret that I'm unable to do so. You have to remember this is a counterintelligence investigation that was largely being conducted by the FBI and not by the CIA. We're a foreign intelligence organization. ..."
Dec 23, 2017 | www.washingtonpost.com

what is interesting is that whuile answering "yes" about Russian interference in election is safe answer, the real quesion is whehther Russian intergfernce exceed in scope British (Stele dossier), Israel (via Kushner) and Saudi interference to name a few. If no this is a witch hunt. Russia is just another neoliberal state, so why it can be a threat to the US neoliberalm and empire is unlear. It does has its own interests in former USSR space. How would the US react if Russia halped to depose legitimate goverment in Mexico and started to supply arms in order to get back California, Texas and Florida which new government would consider were occupied by the the USA illegally? the fact that Russia does not want ot be Washington vassal is not illegal. And there is nothing criminal in attempts to resist the spread of the US neoliberal empire on xUSSR space.

May 11, 2016

Full transcript Acting FBI director McCabe and others testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee

SEN. MARK WARNER, D-VA.: Intelligence community assessment accurately characterized the extent of Russian activities in the 2016 election and its conclusion that Russian intelligence agencies were responsible for the hacking and leaking of information and using misinformation to influence our elections? Simple yes or no would suffice.

ROBERT CARDILLO, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL GEOSPATIAL-INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: I do. Yes, sir.

STEWART: Yes, Senator.

ROGERS: Yes I do.

DAN COATS, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE : Yes I do.

MIKE POMPEO, DIRECTOR, CIA: Yes.

MCCABE: Yes.

WARNER: And I guess the presumption there -- or the next presumption, I won't even ask this question is consequently that committee assess -- or that community assessment was unanimous and is not a piece of fake news or evidence of some other individual or nation state other than Russia. So I appreciate that again for the record.

I warned you Mr. McCabe I was going to have to get you on the record as well on this. Mr. McCabe for as long as you are Acting FBI Director do you commit to informing this committee of any effort to interfere with the FBI's ongoing investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign?

MCCABE: I absolutely do.

WARNER: Thank you so much for that. I think in light of what's happened in the last 48 hours it's critically important that we have that assurance and I hope you'll relay, at least from me to the extraordinary people that work at the FBI that this committee supports them, supports their efforts, support their professionalism and supports their independence.

MCCABE: I will sir, thank you.

WARNER: In light of the fact that we just saw French elections where it felt like deja vu all over again in terms of the release of a series of e-mails against Mr. Macron days before the election and the fact that this committee continues to investigate the type of tactics that Russia has used.

Where do we stand, as a country, of preparation to make sure this doesn't happen again in 2018 and 2020 -- where have we moved in terms of collaboration with state voting -- voter files, in terms of working more with the tech community, particularly the platform -- platform entities in terms of how we can better assure real news versus fake news, is there some general sense -- Director Coats I know you've only been in the job for a short period of time -- of how we're going to have a strategic effort? Because while it was Russia in 2016 other nation states could -- you know -- launch similar type assaults.

COATS: Well, we are -- we will continue to use all the assets that we have in terms of collection and analysis relative to what the influence has been and potentially could be in future. Russians have spread this across the globe -- interestingly enough I met with the Prime Minister of Montenegro the latest nation to join NATO, the number 29 nation, what was the main topic?

Russian interference in their political system. And so it does -- it sweeps across Europe and other places. It's clear though, the Russians have upped their game using social media and other opportunities that we -- in ways that we haven't seen before. So it's a great threat to our -- our democratic process and our job here is to provide the best intelligence we can to the policy makers to -- as they develop a strategy in terms of how to best reflect a response to this.

WARNER: Well one of the things I'm concerned about is, we've all expressed this concern but since this doesn't fall neatly into any particular agency's jurisdiction you know, who's -- who's taking the point on interacting with the platform companies like the Google, Facebook and Twitter, who's taking the point in terms of interacting DHS image in terms of state boards of election? How are we trying to ensure that our systems more secure, and if we can get a brief answer on that because I got one last question for Admiral Rogers.

COATS: Well, I think the -- the obviously, our office tasks and takes the point, but there's contribution from agencies across the I.C. We will -- I've asked Director Pompeo to address that and others that might want to address that also. But each of us -- each of the agencies to the extent that they can and have the capacity whether its NSA though SIGINT, whether it's NSA through human or other sources will provide information to us that we want to use as a basis to provide to our -- to our policymakers.

Relative to a grand strategy, I am not aware right now of any -- I think we're still assessing the impact. We have not put a grand strategy together, which would not be our purview, we would provide the basis of intelligence that would then be the foundation for what that strategy would be.

WARNER: My hope -- my hope would be that we need to be proactive in this. We don't want to be sitting here kind of looking back at it after 2018 election cycle. Last question, very briefly, Admiral Rogers do you have any doubt that the Russians were behind the intervention in the French elections?

ROGERS: I -- let me phrase it this way, we are aware of some Russian activity directed against the Russian -- excuse me, directed against the French election process. As I previously said before Congress earlier this week, we in fact reached out to our French counterparts to say, we have become aware of this activity, we want to make you aware, what are you seeing?

I'm not in a position to have looked at the breadth of the French infrastructure. So I'm -- I'm not really in a position to make a whole simple declaratory statement.

WARNER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BURR: Senator Rubio?

RUBIO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. McCabe, can you without going into the specific of any individual investigation, I think the American people want to know, has the dismissal of Mr. Comey in any way impeded, interrupted, stopped or negatively impacted any of the work, any investigation, or any ongoing projects at the Federal Bureau of Investigations?

MCCABE: As you know, Senator, the work of the men and women of the FBI continues despite any changes in circumstance, any decisions. So there has been no effort to impede our investigation today. Quite simply put sir, you cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, protecting the American people, and upholding the Constitution.

RUBIO: And this is for all the members of the committee, as has been widely reported, and people know this, Kaspersky Lab software is used by not hundreds of thousands, millions of Americans. To each of our witnesses I would just ask, would any of you be comfortable with the Kaspersky Lab software on your computers?

COATS: A resounding no, from me.

POMPEO: No.

MCCABE: No, Senator.

ROGERS: No, sir.

STEWART: No, Senator.

CARDILLO: No, sir.

... ... ...

POMPEO: I'll -- I'll let Mr. McCabe make a comment as well, but yes, of course. Frankly, this is consistent with what -- right, this is the -- the -- the attempt to interfere in United States is not limited to Russia. The Cubans have deep ties, it is in their deepest tradition to take American visitors and do their best influence of the way that is in adverse to U.S. interests.

MCCABE: Yes, sir. Fully agree, we share your concerns about that issue.

RUBIO: And my final question is on -- all this focus on Russia and what's happened in the past is that the opinion of all of you -- or those of -- you certainly all have insight on this. That even as we focus on 2016 and the efforts leading up to that election, efforts to influence policy making here in the United States vis-a-vis the Russian interests are ongoing that the Russians continue to use active measures; even at this moment, even on this day.

To try, through the use of multiple different ways, to influence the political debate and the decisions made in American politics; particularly as they pertain to Russia's interests around the world. In essence, these active measures is an ongoing threat, not simply something that happened in the past.

MCCABE: Yes, sir, that's right.

POMPEO: Senator, it's right. In some sense, though, we've got to put it in context, this has been going on for a long time. There's -- there's nothing new. Only the cost has been lessened, the cost of doing it.

COATS: I -- I would just add that the use of cyber and social media has significantly increased the impact and the capabilities that -- obviously this has been done for years and years. Even decades. But the ability they have to -- to use the interconnectedness and -- and all the -- all that that provides, that didn't provide before I -- they literally upped their game to the point where it's having a significant impact.

ROGERS: From my perspective I would just highlight cyber is enabling them to access information in massive quantities that weren't quite obtainable to the same level previously and that's just another tool in their attempt to acquire information, misuse of that information, manipulation, outright lies, inaccuracies at time.

But other times, actually dumping raw data which is -- as we also saw during this last presidential election cycle for us.

... ... ...

COATS: I can't speak to how many agents of -- of the U.S. government are as cognizant as perhaps we should be but I certainly think that, given China's aggressive approach relative to information gathering and -- and all the things that you mentioned merits a -- a review of CFIUS in terms of whether or not it is -- needs to have some changes or innovations to -- to address the aggressive -- aggressive Chinese actions not just against or companies, but across the world.

They -- they clearly have a strategy through their investments, they've started a major investment bank -- you name a park of the world Chinese probably are -- are there looking to put investments in. We've seen the situation in Djibouti where they're also adding military capability to their investment, strategic area for -- on the Horn of Africa there that -- that you wouldn't necessarily expect. But they're active in Africa, Northern Africa, they're active across the world.

Their one belt, one road process opens -- opens their trade and -- and what other interest they have to the Indian Ocean in -- and a different way to address nations that they've had difficulty connecting with. So it's a -- it's clearly an issue that we ought to take a look at.

... ... ...

WYDEN: Thank you very much Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, it's fair to say I disagreed with Director Comey as much as anyone in this room but the timing of this firing is wrong to anyone with a semblance of ethics. Director Comey should be here this morning testifying to the American people about where the investigation he's been running stands.

At our public hearing in January where he refused to discuss his investigation into connections between Russia and Trump associates I stated my fear that if the information didn't come out before inauguration day it might never come out. With all the recent talk in recent weeks about whether there is evidence of collusion, I fear some colleagues have forgotten that Donald Trump urged the Russians to hack his opponents. He also said repeatedly that he loved WikiLeaks.

So the question is not whether Donald Trump actively encouraged the Russians and WikiLeaks to attack our democracy, he did; that is an established fact. The only question is whether he or someone associated with him coordinated with the Russians.

Now, Mr. McCabe, the president's letter to Director Comey asserted that on three separate occasions the director informed him that he was not under investigations. Would it have been wrong for the director to inform him he was not under investigations? Yes or no?

MCCABE: Sir, I'm not going to comment on any conversations that the director may have had with the president...

(CROSSTALK)

WYDEN: I didn't ask that. Would it have been wrong for the director to inform him he was not under investigation? That's not about conversations, that's yes or no answer.

MCCABE: As you know, Senator. We typically do not answer that question. I will not comment on whether or not the director and the president of the United States had that conversation.

WYDEN: Will you refrain from these kinds of alleged updates to the president or anyone else in the White House on the status of the investigation?

MCCABE: I will.

WYDEN: Thank you.

Director Pompeo, one of the few key unanswered questions is why the president didn't fire Michael Flynn after Acting Attorney General Yates warned the White House that he could be blackmailed by the Russians. Director Pompeo, did you know about the acting attorney general's warnings to the White House or were you aware of the concerns behind the warning?

POMPEO: I -- I don't have any comment on that.

WYDEN: Well, were you aware of the concerns behind the warning? I mean, this is a global threat. This is a global threat question, this is a global threat hearing. Were you...

(CROSSTALK)

POMPEO: Tell me...

(CROSSTALK)

WYDEN: Were you aware?

POMPEO: Senator, tell me what global threat it is you're concerned with, please. I'm not sure I understand the question.

WYDEN: Well, the possibility of blackmail. I mean, blackmail by a influential military official, that has real ramifications for the global threat. So this is not about a policy implication, this is about the national security advisor being vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians. And the American people deserve to know whether in these extraordinary circumstances the CIA kept them safe.

POMPEO: Yes, sir, the CIA's kept America safe. And...

WYDEN: So...

POMPEO: And the people at the Central Intelligence Agency are committed to that and will remain committed to that. And we will...

(CROSSTALK)

POMPEO: ... do that in the face of...

WYDEN: You won't answer the question...

POMPEO: We will do that in the face of political challenges that come from any direction, Senator.

WYDEN: But, you will not answer the question of whether or not you were aware of the concerns behind the Yates warning.

POMPEO: Sir, I don't know exactly what you're referring to with the Yates warning, I -- I -- I wasn't part of any of those conversations. I -- I... (CROSSTALK)

WYDEN: The Yates warning was...

(CROSSTALK)

POMPEO: ... I have no first hand information with respect to the warning that was given.

WYDEN: OK.

POMPEO: She didn't make that warning to me. I -- I can't -- I can't answer that question, Senator...

WYDEN: OK.

POMPEO: ... as much as I would like to.

WYDEN: OK.

Director Coats, how concerned are you that a Russian government oil company, run by a Putin crony could end up owning a significant percentage of U.S. oil refining capacity and what are you advising the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States about this?

COATS: I don't have specific information relative to that. I think that's something that potentially, we could provide intelligence on in terms of what this -- what situation might be, but...

WYDEN: I'd like you to furnace that in writing. Let me see if I can get one other question in, there have been mountains of press stories with allegations about financial connections between Russia and Trump and his associates. The matters are directly relevant to the FBI and my question is, when it comes to illicit Russian money and in particular, it's potential to be laundered on its way to the United States, what should the committee be most concerned about?

We hear stories about Deutsche Bank, Bank of Cypress, Shell companies in Moldova, the British Virgin Islands. I'd like to get your sense because I'm over my time. Director McCabe, what you we most -- be most concerned about with respect to illicit Russian money and its potential to be laundered on its way the United States?

MCCABE: Certainly sir. So as you know, I am not in the position to be able to speak about specific investigations and certainly not in this setting. However, I will confirm for you that those are issues that concern us greatly.

They have traditionally and they do even more so today, as it becomes easier to conceal the origin and the -- and the track and the destination of purpose of illicit money flows, as the exchange of information becomes more clouded in encryption and then more obtuse, it becomes harder and harder to get to the bottom of those investigations. That would shed light on those issues.

WYDEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. BURR: Senator Risch?

RISCH: Thank you very much. Gentlemen, I -- the purpose of this hearing as the chairman expressed is to give the American people some insight into what we all do, which they don't see pretty much at all. And so I think what I want to do is I want to make an observation and then I want to get your take on it, anybody who wants to volunteer. And I'm going to start with you Director Coats, to volunteer.

My -- I have been -- I've been on this committee all the time I've been here in the Senate and all through the last administration. And I have been greatly impressed by the current administrations hitting the ground running during the first hundred days, as far as their engagement on intelligence matters and their engagement with foreign countries. The national media here is focused on domestic issues which is of great interest to the American people be it healthcare, be it personnel issues in the government.

And they don't -- the -- the media isn't as focused on this administrations fast, and in my judgment, robust engagement with the intelligence communities around the world and with other governments. And my impression is that it's good and it is aggressive. And I want -- I'd like you're -- I'd like your impression of where we're going. Almost all of you had real engagement in the last administration and all the administrations are different. So Director Coats, you want to take that on to start with?

COATS: I'd be happy to start with that, I think most presidents that come into office come with an agenda in mind in terms of what issues they'd like to pursue, many of them issues that effect -- domestic issues that affect infrastructure and education and a number of things only to find that this is dangerous world, that the United States -- that the threats that exist out there need to be -- be given attention to.

This president, who I think the perception was not interested in that, I think Director Pompeo and I can certify the fact that we have spent far more hours in the Oval Office than we anticipated. The president is a voracious consumer of information and asking questions and asking us to provide intelligence. I -- we are both part of a process run through the national security council, General McMaster, all through the deputy's committees and the principal's committees consuming hours and hours of time looking at the threats, how do we address those threats, what is the intelligence that tells us -- that informs the policy makers in terms of how they put a strategy in place.

And so what I initially thought would be a one or two time a week, 10 to 15 minute quick brief, has turned into an everyday, sometimes exceeding 45 minutes to an hour or more just in briefing the president. We have -- I have brought along several of our directors to come and show the president what their agencies do and how important it is the info -- that the information they provide how that -- for the basis of making policy decisions.

I'd like to turn to my CIA colleague to get -- let him give you, and others, to give you their impression.

RISCH: I appreciate that. We're almost out of time but I did -- Director Pompeo you kind of sit in the same spot we all sit in through the last several years and I kind of like your observations along the line of Director Coats, what you feel about the matter?

POMPEO: Yeah, I think Director Coats had it right. He and I spend time with the president everyday, briefing him with the most urgent intelligence matters that are presented to us as -- in our roles. He asks good, hard questions. Make us go make sure we're doing our work in the right way.

Second, you asked about engagement in the world. This administration has reentered the battle space in places the administration -- the previous administration was completely absent. You all travel some too...

RISCH: Yes.

POMPEO: ... you will hear that when you go travel. I've now taken two trips to places and they welcome American leadership. They're not looking for American soldiers, they're not looking for American boots on the ground, they're looking for American leadership around the globe and this president has reentered that space in a way that I think will serve America's interest very well.

RISCH: Yeah I -- I couldn't agree more and we -- we deal with them not only overseas but they come here, as you know, regularly.

POMPEO: Yes sir.

RISCH: And the fact that the president has pulled the trigger twice as he has in -- in the first 100 days and -- and done it in a fashion that didn't start a world war and -- and was watched by both our friends and our enemies has made a significant and a huge difference as far as our standing in the world. My time's up. Thank you very much Mr. Chair.

WARNER: Thank you Senator.

Senator Heinrich.

HEINRICH: Director McCabe you -- you obviously have several decades of law enforcement experience, is it -- is it your experience that people who are innocent of wrong doing typically need to be reassured that they're not the subject of an investigation?

MCCABE: No sir.

HEINRICH: And I ask that because I'm still trying to make heads or tails of the dismissal letter from -- earlier this week from the president where he writes, "While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation." And I'm still trying to figure out why that would even make it into a dismissal letter. But let me go to something a little more direct.

Director, has anyone in the White House spoken to you directly about the Russia investigation?

MCCABE: No, sir.

HEINRICH: Let me -- when -- when did you last meet with the president, Director McCabe?

MCCABE: I don't think I -- I'm in...

HEINRICH: Was it earlier this week?

MCCABE: ... the position to comment on that. I have met with the president this week, but I really don't want to go into the details of that.

HEINRICH: OK. But Russia did not come up?

MCCABE: That's correct, it did not.

HEINRICH: OK, thank you. We've heard in the news that -- that -- claims that Director Comey had -- had lost the confidence of rank and file FBI employees. You've been there for 21 years, in your opinion is it accurate that the rank and file no longer supported Director Comey?

MCCABE: No, sir, that is not accurate. I can tell you, sir, that I worked very, very closely with Director Comey. From the moment he started at the FBI I was his executive assistant director of national security at that time and I worked for him running the Washington field office. And of course I've served as deputy for the last year.

MCCABE: I can tell you that I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard. I have the highest respect for his considerable abilities and his integrity and it has been the greatest privilege and honor in my professional life to work with him. I can tell you also that Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does until this day.

We are a large organization, we are 36,500 people across this country, across this globe. We have a diversity of opinions about many things, but I can confidently tell you that the majority -- the vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.

HEINRICH: Thank you for your candor. Do you feel like you have the adequate resources for the existing investigations that the -- that the bureau is invested in right now to -- to follow them wherever they may lead?

MCCABE: Sir, if you're referring to the Russia investigation, I do. I believe we have the adequate resources to do it and I know that we have resourced that investigation adequately. If you're referring to the many constantly multiplying counter-intelligence threats that we face across the spectrum, they get bigger and more challenging every day and resources become an issue over time.

HEINRICH: Sure.

MCCABE: But in terms of that investigation, sir, I can -- I can assure you we are covered.

HEINRICH: Thank you.

Director Coats, welcome back. Would you agree that it is a national security risk to provide classified information to an individual who has been compromised by a foreign government as a broad matter.

COATS: As a broad matter, yes.

HEINRICH: If the attorney general came to you and said one of your employees was compromised what -- what sort of action would you take?

COATS: I would take the action as prescribed in our procedures relative to how we report this ad how it's -- how it is processed. I mean, it's a serious -- serious issue Our -- our -- I would be consulting with our legal counsel and consulting with our inspector general and others as to how -- how best to proceed with this, but obviously we will take action.

HEINRICH: Would -- would one of the options be dismissal, obviously?

COATS: Very potentially could be dismissal, yes.

HEINRICH: OK, thank you Director.

BURR: Senator Collins?

COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Vice Chairman.

Mr. McCabe, is the agent who is in charge of this very important investigation into Russian attempts to influence our election last fall still in charge?

MCCABE: I mean we have many agents involved in the investigation at many levels so I'm not who you're referring to.

COLLINS: The lead agent overseeing the investigation.

MCCABE: Certainly, almost all of the agents involved in the investigation are still in their positions.

COLLINS: So has there been any curtailment of the FBI's activities in this important investigation since Director Comey was fired?

MCCABE: Ma'am, we don't curtail our activities. As you know, has the -- are people experiencing questions and are reacting to the developments this week? Absolutely.

COLLINS: Does that get in the way of our ability to pursue this or any other investigation?

MCCABE: No ma'am, we continue to focus on our mission and get that job done.

COLLINS: I want to follow up on a question of resources that Senator Heinrich asked your opinion on. Press reports yesterday indicated that Director Comey requested additional resources from the Justice Department for the bureau's ongoing investigation into Russian active measures. Are you aware that request? Can you confirm that that request was in fact made?

MCCABE: I cannot confirm that request was made. As you know ma'am, when we need resources, we make those requests here. So I -- I don't -- I'm not aware of that request and it's not consistent with my understanding of how we request additional resources.

That said, we don't typically request resources for an individual case. And as I mentioned, I strongly believe that the Russian investigation is adequately resourced. COLLINS: You've also been asked a question about target letters. Now, it's my understanding that when an individual is the target of an investigation, at some point, a letter is sent out notifying a individual that he is a target, is that correct?

MCCABE: No ma'am, I -- I don't believe that's correct.

COLLINS: OK. So before there is going to be an indictment, there is not a target letter sent out by the Justice Department?

MCCABE: Not that I'm aware of.

COLLINS: OK that's contrary to my -- my understanding, but let me ask you the reverse.

MCCABE: Again, I'm looking at it from the perspective of the investigators. So that's not part of our normal case investigative practice.

COLLINS: That would be the Justice Department, though. The Justice Department...

MCCABE: I see, I see...

COLLINS: I'm -- I'm asking you, isn't it standard practice when someone is the target of an investigation and is perhaps on the verge of being indicted that the Justice Department sends that individual what is known as a target letter?

MCCABE: Yes, ma'am I'm going have to defer that question to the Department of Justice.

COLLINS: Well, let me ask you the -- the flip side of that and perhaps you don't know the answer to this question but is it standard practice for the FBI to inform someone that they are not a target of an investigation?

MCCABE: It is not.

COLLINS: So it would be unusual and not standard practice for there -- it -- for there to have been a notification from the FBI director to President Trump or anyone else involved in this investigation, informing him or her that that individual I not a target, is that correct?

MCCABE: Again ma'am, I'm not going to comment on what Director Comey may or may not have done.

COLLINS: I -- I'm not asking you to comment on the facts of the case, I'm just trying to figure out what's standard practice and what's not.

MCCABE: Yes ma'am. I'm not aware of that being a standard practice.

COLLINS: Admiral Rogers, I want to follow up on Senator Warner's question to you about the attempted interference in the French...

ROGERS: French.

COLLINS: ... election. Some researchers, including the cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint claim that APT28 is the group that was behind the stealing of the -- and the leaking of the information about the president elect of France, the FBI and DHS have publicly tied APT28 to Russian intelligence services in the joint analysis report last year after the group's involvement in stealing data that was leaked in the run up to the U.S. elections in November.

Is the I.C. in a position to attribute the stealing and the leaking that took place prior to the French election to be the result of activities by this group, which is linked to Russian cyber activity?

ROGERS: Again ma'am, right now I don't think I have a complete picture of all the activity associated with France but as I have said publicly, both today and previously, we are aware of specific Russian activity directed against the French election cycle in the course -- particularly in the last few weeks.

To the point where we felt it was important enough we actually reached out to our French counterparts to inform them and make sure they awareness of what we were aware of and also to ask them, is there something we are missing that you are seeing?

COLLINS: Thank you.

BURR: Senator King.

KING: Mr. McCabe, thank you for being here today under somewhat difficult circumstances, we appreciate your candor in your testimony.

On March 20th, Director Comey -- then Director Comey testified to the House of Representative, "I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russian efforts.

As with any counter intelligence investigation this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed." Is that statement still accurate?

MCCABE: Yes sir, it is.

KING: And how many agents are assigned to this project? How many -- or personnel generally with the FBI, roughly?

MCCABE: Yeah, sorry I can't really answer those sorts of questions in this forum.

KING: Well, yesterday a White House press spokesman said that this is one of the smallest things on the plate of the FBI, is that an accurate statement?

MCCABE: It is...

KING: Is this a small investigation in relation to all -- to all the other work that you're doing?

MCCABE: Sir, we consider it to be a highly significant investigation.

KING: So you would not characterize it as one of the smallest things you're engaged in?

MCCABE: I would not.

KING: Thank you.

Let me change the subject briefly. We're -- we've been talking about Russia and -- and their involvement in this election. One of the issues of concern to me, and perhaps I can direct this to -- well, I'll direct it to anybody in the panel. The allegation of Russian involvement in our electoral systems, is that an issue that is of concern and what do we know about that? And is that being up followed up on by this investigation.

Mr. McCabe, is that part of your investigation? No I'm -- I'm not talking about the presidential election, I'm talking about state level election infrastructure.

MCCABE: Yes, sir. So obviously not discussing any specific investigation in detail. The -- the issue of Russian interference in the U.S. democratic process is one that causes us great concern. And quite frankly, it's something we've spent a lot of time working on over the past several months. And to reflect comments that were made in response to an earlier question that Director Coats handled, I think part of that process is to understand the inclinations of our foreign adversaries to interfere in those areas.

So we've seen this once, we are better positioned to see it the next time. We're able to improve not only our coordination with -- primarily through the Department of Homeland -- through DHS, their -- their expansive network and to the state and local election infrastructure. But to interact with those folks to defend against ; whether it's cyber attacks or any sort of influence driven interactions.

KING: Thank you, I think that's a very important part of this issue.

Admiral Rogers, yesterday a camera crew from TAS (ph) was allowed into the Oval Office. There was not any American press allowed, was there any consultation with you with regard to that action in terms of the risk of some kind of cyber penetration or communications in that incident?

ROGERS: No.

KING: Were you -- you were -- your agency wasn't consulted in any way?

ROGERS: Not that I'm aware of. I wouldn't expect that to automatically be the case; but no, not that I'm aware of.

KING: Did it raise any concerns when you saw those pictures that those cameramen and crew were in the Oval Office without....

ROGERS: I'll be honest, I wasn't aware of where the imaged came from.

KING: All right, thank you.

Mr. Coats -- Director Coats, you're -- you're -- you lead the intelligence community. Were you consulted at all with regard to the firing of Director Comey?

COATS: I was not.

KING: So you had no -- there were no discussions with you even though the FBI's an important part of the intelligence community?

COATS: There were no discussions.

KING: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

BURR: Thank you Senator King.

Senator Lankford.

LANKFORD: Thank you, let me just run through some quick questions on this. Director McCabe, thanks for being here as well.

Let me hit some high points of some of the things I've heard already, just to be able to confirm. You have the resources you need for the Russia investigation, is that correct?

MCCABE: Sir, we believe it's adequately resourced...

LANKFORD: OK, so there's not limitations on resources, you have what you need? The -- the actions about Jim Comey and his release has not curtailed the investigation from the FBI, it's still moving forward?

MCCABE: The investigation will move forward, absolutely.

LANKFORD: No agents have been removed that are the ongoing career folks that are doing the investigation?

MCCABE: No, sir.

LANKFORD: Is it your impression at this point that the FBI is unable to complete the investigation in a fair and expeditious way because of the removal of Jim Comey?

MCCABE: It is my opinion and belief that the FBI will continue to pursue this investigation vigorously and completely.

LANKFORD: Do you need somebody to take this away from you and somebody else to do?

MCCABE: No sir.

L.. ... ...

MANCHIN: Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Thank all of you for being here, I really appreciate it and I know that, Mr. McCabe, you seem to be of great interest of being here. And we're going to look forward to really from hearing from all of you all in a closed hearing this afternoon which I think that we'll able to get into more detail. So I appreciate that.

I just one question for Mr. McCabe it's basically the morale of the agency, the FBI agency and the morale basically starting back from July 5th to July 7th, October 28th, November 6th and election day -- did you all ever think you'd be embroiled in an election such as this and did -- what did it do to the morale?

MCCABE: Well, I -- I don't know that anyone envisioned exactly the way these things would develop. You know, as I said earlier Senator, we are a -- a large organization. We are -- we have a lot of diversity of opinions and -- and viewpoints on things. We are also a fiercely independent group.

MANCHIN: I'm just saying that basically, before July 5th, before the first testimony that basically Director Comey got involved in, prior to that, did you see a change in the morale? Just yes or no -- yes a change or more anxious, more concern?

MCCABE: I think morale has always been good, however we had -- there were folks within our agency who were frustrated with the outcome of the Hillary Clinton case and some of those folks were very vocal about that -- those concerns.

MANCHIN: I'm sure we'll have more questions in the closed hearing, sir but let me say to the rest of you all, we talked about Kaspersky, the lab, KL Lab. Do you all have -- has it risen to your level being the head of all of our intelligence agencies and people that mostly concerned about the security of our country of having a Russian connection in a lab as far outreaching as KL Labs?

Has it come with your IT people coming to you or have you gone directly to them making sure that you have no interaction with KL or any of the contractors you do business with? Just down the line there, Mr. Cardillo?

CARDILLO: Well, we count on the expertise of Admiral Rogers and the FBI to protect our systems and so I value...

MANCHIN: ...But you have I -- you have IT people, right?

CARDILLO: Absolutely.

MANCHIN: Have you talked to the IT people? Has it come to your concern that there might be a problem?

CARDILLO: I'm aware of the Kaspersky Lab challenge and/or threat.

MANCHIN: Let me tell you, it's more of a challenge -- more than a challenge, sir and I would hope that -- I'll go down the line but I hope that all of you -- we are very much concerned about this, very much concerned about security of our country watching (ph) their involvement.

CARDILLO: We share that.

MANCHIN: General?

STEWART: We are tracking Kaspersky and their software. There is as well as I know, and I've checked this recently, no Kaspersky software on our networks.

MANCHIN: Any contractors? STEWART: Now, the contractor piece might be a little bit harder to define but at this point we see no connection to Kaspersky and contractors supporting (ph)...

MANCHIN: ...Admiral Rogers?

ROGERS: I'm personally aware and involved with the director on the national security issues and the Kaspersky Lab issue, yes sir.

COATS: It wasn't that long ago I was sitting up there talking -- raising issues about Kaspersky and its position here. And that continues in this new job.

POMPEO: It has risen to the director of the CIA as well, Senator Manchin.

MANCHIN: Great.

(UNKNOWN): He's very concerned about it, sir, and we are focused on it closely.

MANCHIN: Only thing I would ask all of you, if you can give us a report back if you've swept all of your contractors to make sure they understand the certainty you have, concern that you have about this and making sure that they can verify to you all that they're not involved whatsoever with any Kaspersky's hardware. I'm going to switch to a couple different things because of national security.

But you know, the bottom gangs that we have in the United States, and I know -- we don't talk about them much. And when you talk about you have MS-13, the Crips, you've got Hells Angels, Aryan Brotherhood, it goes on and on and on, it's quite a few. What is -- what are we doing and what is it to your level -- has it been brought to your level the concern we have with these gangs within our country, really every part of our country?

Anybody on the gangland?

MCCABE: Yes sir. So we spend a lot of time talking about that at the FBI. It's one of our highest priorities...

MANCHIN: Did the resources go out to each one of these because they're interspersed over the country?

MCCABE: We do, sir. We have been focused on the gang threat for many years. It -- like -- much like the online pharmacy threat. It continues to change and develop harried we think it's likely a -- having an impact on elevated violent crime rates across the country, so we're spending a lot of time focused on that.

... ... ..

COTTON: Inmates are running the asylum.

(LAUGHTER)

COTTON: So, I think everyone in this room and most Americans have come to appreciate the aggressiveness with which would Russia uses active measures or covert influence operations, propaganda, call them what you will, as your agencies assess they did in 2016 and in hacking into those e-mails and releasing them as news reports suggest they did. In the French election last week -- that's one reason why I sought to revive the Russian active measures working group in the FY'17 Intelligence Authorization Act.

These activities that will go far beyond elections, I think, as most of our witnesses know. former director of the CIA, Bob Gates, in his memoir "From the Shadows," detailed soviet covert influence campaigns designed to slow or thwart the U.S. development of nuclear delivery systems and warheads, missile-defense systems and employment of intermediate nuclear range systems to Europe.

Specifically on page 260 of his memoir, he writes "during the period, the soviets mounted a massive covert action operation, aimed at thwarting INF deployments by NATO. We at CIA devoted tremendous resources to an effort at the time to uncovering the soviet covert campaign. Director Casey summarized this extraordinary effort in a paper he sent to Bush, Schultz, Weinberger and Clark on January 18, 1983. We later published it and circulated it widely within the government and to the allies, and finally, provided an unclassified version of the public to use," end quote.

I'd like to thank the CIA for digging up this unclassified version of the document and providing it to the committee, Soviet Strategy to derail U.S. INF deployment. Specifically, undermining NATO's solidarity in those deployments. I have asked unanimous consent that it be included in the hearing transcript and since the inmates are running the asylum, hearing no objection, we'll include it in the transcript.

(LAUGHTER)

Director Pompeo, earlier this year, Dr. Roy Godson testified that he believed that Russia was using active measures and covert influence efforts to undermine our nuclear modernization efforts, our missile defense deployments, and the INF Treaty, in keeping with these past practices.

To the best of your ability in this setting, would you agree with the assessment that Russia is likely using such active measures to undermine U.S. nuclear modernization efforts and missile defenses?

POMPEO: Yes.

COTTON: Thank you.

As I mentioned earlier, the F.Y. '17 Intelligence Authorization Act included two unclassified provisions that I authored. One would be re-starting that old (inaudible) Measures Working Group. A second would require additional scrutiny of Russian embassy officials who travel more than the prescribed distance from their duty station, whether it's their embassy or a consulate around the United States.

In late 2016, when that bill was on the verge of passing, I personally received calls from high-ranking Obama administration officials asking me to withdraw them from the bill. I declined. The bill did not pass. It passed last week as part of the F.Y. '17 spending bill.

I did not receive any objection from Trump administration officials to include from our intelligence community.

Director Coats, are you aware of any objection that the Trump administration had to my two provisions?

COATS: No, I'm not aware of any objection.

COTTON: Director Pompeo?

POMPEO: None.

COTTON: Do you know why the Obama administration objected to those two provisions in late 2016? I would add after the 2016 presidential election.

COATS: Well, it would be pure speculation. I don't -- I couldn't read -- I wasn't able to read the president's mind then and I don't think I can read it now.

COTTON: Thank you.

I'd like to turn my attention to a very important provision of law. I know that you've discussed earlier section 702.

Director Rogers, it's my understanding that your agency is undertaking an effort to try to release some kind of unclassified estimate of the number of U.S. persons who might have been incidentally collected using 702 techniques. Is that correct?

ROGERS: Sir, we're looking to see if we can quantify something that's of value to people outside the organization.

COTTON: Would -- would that require you going in and conducting searches of incidental collection that have been previously unexamined?

ROGERS: That's part of the challenge. How do I generate insight that doesn't in the process of generating the insight violate the actual tenets that...

(CROSSTALK)

COTTON: So -- so we're -- you're trying to produce an estimate that is designed to protect privacy rights, but to produce that estimate, you're going to have to violate privacy rights?

ROGERS: That is a potential part of all of this.

COTTON: It seems hard to do.

ROGERS: Yes, sir. That's why it has taken us a period of time and that's why we're in the midst of a dialogue.

COTTON: Is it going to be possible to produce that kind of estimate without some degree of inaccuracy or misleading information, or infringing upon the privacy rights of Americans?

ROGERS: Probably not.

COTTON: If anyone in your agency, or for that matter, Director McCabe, in yours, believes that there is misconduct or privacy rights are not being protected, they could, I believe under current law, come to your inspector general; come to your general counsel. I assume you have open door policies.

ROGERS: Whistleblower protections in addition, yes, sir, and they can come to you.

COTTON: They can come to this committee.

So four -- at least four different avenues. I'm probably missing some, if they believe there are any abuses in the section 702 (inaudible).

MCCABE (?): And anyone in their chain of command.

COTTON: I would ask that we proceed with caution before producing a report that might infringe on Americans' privacy rights needlessly, and that might make it even that much harder to reauthorize a critical program, something that, Director McCabe, your predecessor last week just characterized, if I can paraphrase, as a must-have program, not a nice-to-have program.

Thank you.

BURR: Thank you, Senator Cotton.

Senator Harris?

HARRIS: Thank you.

Acting Director McCabe, welcome. I know you've been in this position for only about 48 hours, and I appreciate your candor with this committee during the course of this open hearing.

MCCABE: Yes, ma'am.

HARRIS: Until this point, what was your role in the FBI's investigation into the Russian hacking of the 2016 election?

MCCABE: I've been the deputy director since February of 2016. So I've had an oversight role over all of our FBI operational activity, including that investigation.

HARRIS: And now that you're acting director, what will your role be in the investigation?

MCCABE: Very similar, senior oversight role to understand what our folks are doing and to make sure they have the resources they need and are getting the direction and the guidance they need to go forward.

HARRIS: Do you support the idea of a special prosecutor taking over the investigation in terms of oversight of the investigation, in addition to your role?

MCCABE: Ma'am, that is a question for the Department of Justice and it wouldn't be proper for me to comment on that.

HARRIS: From your understanding, who at the Department of Justice is in charge of the investigation?

MCCABE: The deputy attorney general, who serves as acting attorney general for that investigation. He is in charge.

HARRIS: And have you had conversations with him about the investigation since you've been in this role?

MCCABE: I have. Yes, ma'am.

HARRIS: And when Director Comey was fired, my understanding is he was not present in his office. He was actually in California. So my question is: Who was in charge of securing his files and devices when that -- when that information came down that he had been fired?

MCCABE: That's our responsibility, ma'am.

HARRIS: And are you confident that his files and his devices have been secured in a way that we can maintain whatever information or evidence he has in connection with the investigation?

MCCABE: Yes, ma'am. I am.

HARRIS: It's been widely reported, and you've mentioned this, that Director Comey asked Rosenstein for additional resources. And I understand that you're saying that you don't believe that you need any additional resources?

MCCABE: For the Russia investigation, ma'am, I think we are adequately resourced.

HARRIS: And will you commit to this committee that if you do need resources, that you will come to us, understanding that we would make every effort to get you what you need?

MCCABE: I absolutely will.

HARRIS: Has -- I understand that you've said that the White House, that you have not talked with the White House about the Russia investigation. Is that correct?

MCCABE: That's correct.

HARRIS: Have you talked with Jeff Sessions about the investigation?

MCCABE: No, ma'am.

HARRIS: Have you talked with anyone other than Rod Rosenstein at the Department of Justice about the investigation?

MCCABE: I don't believe I have -- you know, not recently; obviously, not in that -- not in this position.

HARRIS: Not in the last 48 hours?

MCCABE: No, ma'am.

HARRIS: OK. What protections have been put in place to assure that the good men and women of the FBI understand that they will not be fired if they aggressively pursue this investigation?

MCCABE: Yes, ma'am. So we have very active lines of communication with the team that's -- that's working on this issue. They are -- they have some exemplary and incredibly effective leaders that they work directly for. And I am confident that those -- that they understand and are confident in their position moving forward on this investigation, as my investigators, analysts and professionals staff are in everything we do every day.

HARRIS: And I agree with you. I have no question about the commitment that the men and women of the FBI have to pursue their mission. But will you commit to me that you will directly communicate in some way now that these occurrences have happened and Director Comey has been fired? Will you commit to me that given this changed circumstance, that you will find a way to directly communicate with those men and women to assure them that they will not be fired simply for aggressively pursuing this investigation?

MCCABE: Yes, ma'am.

HARRIS: Thank you.

And how do you believe we need to handle, to the extent that it exists, any crisis of confidence in the leadership of the FBI, given the firing of Director Comey?

MCCABE: I don't believe there is a crisis of confidence in the leadership of the FBI. That's somewhat self-serving, and I apologize for that.

(LAUGHTER)

You know, it was completely within the president's authority to take the steps that he did. We all understand that. We expect that he and the Justice Department will work to find a suitable replacement and a permanent director, and we look forward to supporting whoever that person is, whether they begin as an interim director or a permanently selected director.

This -- organization in its entirety will be completely committed to helping that person get off to a great start and do what they need to do.

HARRIS: And do you believe that there will be any pause in the investigation during this interim period, where we have a number of people who are in acting positions of authority?

MCCABE: No, ma'am. That is my job right now to ensure that the men and women who work for the FBI stay focused on the threats; stay focused on the issues that are of so much importance to this country; continue to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. And I will ensure that that happens.

HARRIS: I appreciate that. Thank you.

MCCABE: Yes, ma'am.

BURR: Thank you.

Senator King?

Second round, five minutes each.

Senator Wyden?

WYDEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to go back to the question I asked you, Director Pompeo. And I went out and reviewed the response that you gave to me. And of course, what I'm concerned about is the Sally Yates warning to the White House that Michael Flynn could be blackmailed by the Russians.

And you said you didn't have any first-hand indication of it. Did you have any indication -- second-hand, any sense at all that the national security adviser might be vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians? That is a yes or no question.

POMPEO: It's actually not a yes-or-no question, Senator. I can't answer yes or no. I regret that I'm unable to do so. You have to remember this is a counterintelligence investigation that was largely being conducted by the FBI and not by the CIA. We're a foreign intelligence organization.

And I'll add only this, I was not intending to be clever by using the term "first-hand." I had no second-hand or third-hand knowledge of that conversation either.

WYDEN: So with respect to the CIA, were there any discussion with General Flynn at all?

POMPEO: With respect to what sir? He was for a period of time the national security advisor.

WYDEN: Topics that could have put at risk the security and the well being of the American people. I mean I'm just finding it very hard to swallow that you all had no discussions with the national security advisor.

POMPEO: I spoke with the national security advisor. He was the national security advisor. He was present for the daily brief on many occasions and we talked about all the topics we spoke to the President about.

WYDEN: But nothing relating to matters that could have compromised the security of the United States? POMPEO: Sir I can't recall every conversation with General Flynn during that time period.

WYDEN: We're going to ask some more about it in closed session this afternoon. Admiral Rogers, let me ask you about a technical question that I think is particularly troubling and that is the S.S. 7 question in the technology threat. Last week the Department of Homeland Security published a lengthy study about the impact on the U.S. government of mobile phone security flaws. The report confirmed what I have been warning about for quite some time, which is the significance of cyber security vulnerabilities associated with a signaling system seven report says the department believes, and I quote, that all U.S. carriers are vulnerable to these exploits, resulting in risks to national security, the economy and the federal governments ability to reliably execute national security functions. These vulnerabilities can be exploited by criminals, terrorists and nation state actors and foreign intelligence organizations.

Do you all share the concerns of the Department of Human -- the Homeland Security Department about the severity of these vulnerabilities and what ought to be done right now to get the government and the private sector to be working together more clearly and in a coherent plan to deal with these monumental risks. These are risks that we're going to face with terrorists and hackers and threats. And I think the federal communications commission has been treading water on this and I'd like to see what you want to do to really take charge of this to deal what is an enormous vulnerability to the security of this country?

ROGERS: Sure. I hear the concern. It's a widely deployed technology in the mobile segment. I share the concern the Department of Homeland security in their role kind of as the lead federal agency associated with cyber and support from the federal government to the private sector as overall responsibility here.

We are trying to provide at the national security agency our expertise to help generate insights about the nature of the vulnerability, the nature of the problem. Partnering with DHS, talking to the private sector. There's a couple of specific things from a technology stand point that we're looking at in multiple forms that the government has created partnering with the private sector.

I'm not smart, I apologize about all of the specifics of the DHS effort. I can take that for the record if you'd like.

WYDEN: All right. I just want to respond before we break to Senator Cotton's comments with respect to section 702. Mr. Director, glad to see my tax reform partner back in this role. You know Mr. Director that I think it's critical the American people know how many innocent law abiding Americans are being swept up in the program. The argument that producing an estimate of the number is in itself a violation of privacy, is I think a far fetched argue has been made for years. I and others who believe that we can have security and liberty, that they're not mutually exclusive have always believed that this argument that you're going to be invading peoples privacy doesn't add up. We have to have that number. Are we going to get it? Are we going to get it in time so we can have a debate that shows that those of us who understand there are threats coming from overseas, and we support the effort to deal with those threats as part of 702. That we are not going to have American's privacy rights indiscriminately swept up.

We need that number. When will we get it?

COATS: Senator as you recall, during my confirmation hearing, we had this discussion. I promised to you that I would -- if confirmed and I was, talk (ph) to NSA indeed with Admiral Rogers, try to understand -- better understand why it was so difficult to come to a specific number. I -- I did go out to NSA. I was hosted by Admiral Rogers. We spent significant time talking about that. And I learned of the complexity of reaching that number. I think the -- the statements that had been made by Senator Cotton are very relevant statements as to that.

Clearly, what I have learned is that a breach of privacy has to be made against American people have to be made in order to determine whether or not they breached privacy. So, it -- it -- there is a anomaly there. They're -- they're -- they're issues of duplication.

I know that a -- we're underway in terms of setting up a time with this committee I believe in June -- as early as June to address -- get into that issue and to address that, and talk through the complexity of why it's so difficult to say...

WYDEN: I'm...

COATS: ...this is specifically when we can get you the -- the number and what the number is. So, I -- I believe -- I believe -- we are committed -- we are committed to a special meeting with the committee to try to go through this -- this particular issue.

But I cannot give you a date because I -- I -- and -- and a number because the -- I understand the complexity of it now and why it's so difficult for Admiral Rogers to say this specific number is the number.

WYDEN: I'm -- I'm well over my time. The point really is privacy advocates and technologists say that it's possible to get the number. If they say it, and the government is not saying it, something is really out of synch.

You've got people who want to work with you. We must get on with this and to have a real debate about 702 that ensures that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. We have to have that number.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

... ... ...

[Dec 23, 2017] Neither Robert Mueller's team nor the US Senate Intelligence Committee has bothered to contact WikiLeaks or me, in any manner, ever

Dec 23, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Northern Star , December 18, 2017 at 12:07 pm

"Neither Robert Mueller's team nor the US Senate Intelligence Committee has bothered to contact WikiLeaks or me, in any manner, ever." -- @Julian Assange, Twitter, September 20, 2017

This one tweet completely invalidates the notion that Robert Mueller has been conducting a legitimate investigation into the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections. Regardless of the degree of suspicion in which Assange is held, there is absolutely no excuse for the people responsible for investigating Russia not to have had any interaction of any kind whatsoever with one of the central characters in the official narrative about what Russia is supposed to have done.

"Prosecutors have been avoiding Assange because he has said multiple times that the Russian government is not the source of the DNC leaks."

If his job was to find out what actually happened last year, Mueller would have spoken with Assange personally, and he would have done so long ago. But finding out what happened last year is not Mueller's job. Mueller's job is to enforce a pre-existing narrative. It is painfully obvious at this point that the Senate Intelligence Committee and Mueller's team have been avoiding Assange the way Hillary Clinton avoids personal responsibility because Assange has said multiple times that the Russian government is not the source of the DNC leaks or the Podesta emails released last year.

If this is an actual investigation into an actual alleged crime, then Assange is necessarily either (A) a source of useful information, (B) a person of interest, or (C) a suspect in the crime itself. None of those allows for any excuse for not speaking to him. If it's either (A) or (B), he's a potential goldmine of information for their investigation to make use of. If it's (C), they can grill him and try to get him to give something up. Even someone caught on video committing a murder eventually gets interviewed by the law enforcement officials responsible for investigating their case to establish the accused's side of the story; if they didn't, they'd be committing malpractice. Since they did not seek to question Assange early and extensively, this cannot possibly be an actual investigation into an actual allegation.

"If his job was to find out what actually happened last year, Mueller would have spoken with Assange personally long ago."

The fact of the matter is that Russia has been America's Public Enemy Number One since the end of World War Two, and for that reason there is a longstanding tradition in the United States of tarring political enemies with baseless accusations of Kremlin ties. Establishment loyalists have been accusing WikiLeaks of being in bed with Russia since long before any election meddling accusations surfaced, despite the organization's long and continued record of publishing critical documents related to the Russian Federation. They have been doing so not because there is any basis for such accusations, but because WikiLeaks is their political enemy. There is nothing more hostile to America's pernicious unelected power establishment than unauthorized truth-telling, and WikiLeaks is currently the world's leader in unauthorized truth-telling. It is that simple.

Mueller's investigation has no interest in finding the truth. Mueller's investigation is actively avoiding all potential sources of truth. The US intelligence community to which Mueller is loyal is the right arm of America's unelected power establishment, and due to conflicting economic and geopolitical interests things have been coming to a head with Russia for a long time. The neoconservative ideology which governs America's foreign policy is geared first and foremost toward preventing the rise of another rival superpower, and the former seat of the Soviet Union will always be first on the list of suspects.
"WikiLeaks is currently the world's leader in unauthorized truth-telling. It is that simple.
Mueller's investigation has no interest in finding the truth."

Things are not going as planned for America's true rulers. Not in Syria, not in North Korea, and certainly not in Russia.

***People's unprecedented ability to network and share information due to rising internet literacy and access has caused a severe breakdown in the propaganda machine which holds their entire prison together, and people are waking up to their manipulations***
.
(Hence the move to eliminate net neurtrality as I posted supra)

These creeps are on the back foot now. Keep fighting and wrest control of the world away from the plutocratic sociopaths who are trying to deceive and enslave us"

https://www.blackagendareport.com/entire-russian-hacking-narrative-invalidated-single-assange-tweet

[Dec 23, 2017] Can the FBI Get Away With Getting Trump Team Emails, by Andrew Napolitano - The Unz Review

Notable quotes:
"... The practical effect of Mueller's acquisition of the transition emails could be devastating to White House staff who once worked for the transition. Many of them have been interviewed by the FBI while no doubt being ignorant of the fact that the FBI had read their emails. Stated differently, the FBI was in a position to lead Trump White House staff members into a lying trap -- just as it did with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn -- by asking them questions to which the FBI already had the answers. ..."
"... Lying traps are reprehensible, but they're lawful. And they are not unique to Mueller's practices; it is the way the feds work today. Can the FBI get away with getting the Trump team's emails? In a word: yes. This investigation is not going away soon. ..."
Dec 23, 2017 | www.unz.com

Within hours of his victory in last year's presidential election, Donald Trump dispatched his lawyers to establish a nonprofit corporation to manage his transition from private life to the presidency. This was done pursuant to a federal statute that provides for taxpayer-funded assistance to the newly elected -- but not yet inaugurated -- president. The statutory term for the corporation is the presidential transition team, or PTT.

In addition to paying the PTT's bills, the General Services Administration, which manages all nonmilitary federal property, provided the PTT with government computers, software and a computer service provider. During the course of the PTT's existence, the folks who worked for it sent or received tens of thousands of emails. The PTT ceased to exist upon Trump's inauguration, and a receiver was hired to wind it down.

Last weekend, a lawyer for the receiver revealed a letter he sent to Congress complaining that special counsel Robert Mueller -- who is investigating whether there was any agreement between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin that resulted in the now-well-known efforts by Russian intelligence to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election -- dispatched FBI agents to the GSA looking for copies of all the PTT's emails and that the GSA surrendered them.

How did this happen?

When the FBI is looking for documents or tangible things, it has several legal tools available. They range in their disruptive nature from a simple request to a grand jury subpoena to a judicially authorized search warrant.
The FBI request is the easiest for the government, and if FBI agents ask you for something and you give it to them, you cannot later be heard to complain that your privacy rights regarding the things you surrendered were violated. If they seize your documents pursuant to a subpoena or a warrant, they normally get to use what they have seized.

The issue becomes more complex when the FBI comes calling for documents of yours that are legally in the hands of a custodian -- such as your physician, lawyer, banker or accountant. In the case of Trump's PTT and Mueller's wish for all PTT emails, the sought-after data -- the electronic copies of all the PTT's emails -- were in custody of the GSA.

Anyone who has ever used a GSA computer is familiar with the warning that appears on the screen at the time of each use. It says that there is no right to privacy in the communications sent or received, as the electronic versions of those communications are the property of the federal government. This, no doubt, is the reason Hillary Clinton infamously used her husband's computer servers during her four years at the State Department rather than the government's.
We do not know whether Mueller's FBI agents merely requested the electronic data from the GSA or his prosecutors obtained a grand jury subpoena. If it was a simple FBI request and if the GSA simply complied, that was a lawful acquisition by the FBI of the PTT emails, yet in that case, the GSA violated its fiduciary duty to inform the PTT of the request before it complied with it.

If the FBI came calling on the GSA with a grand jury subpoena, that means Mueller's team must have presented evidence under oath to a grand jury and demonstrated that the sought-after items would more likely than not be helpful to the investigation. When a grand jury issues a subpoena to a custodian of records -- no matter who the custodian is -- it is the moral and fiduciary duty of the custodian, not the government, to inform the owner of the subpoenaed items that a subpoena has been received.

In some cases, it is also the legal duty of the custodian to inform the owner, but it apparently was not in this case. As far as we can tell, there was no written agreement between the GSA and the PTT requiring the GSA to inform the PTT of any document requests or subpoenas. Had such a request been revealed, the lawyer for the receiver of the PTT would have had an opportunity to challenge the government before a judge. Without that notice, there is no time for the challenge.

Until 1986, it was the duty of the government when seeking documents or tangible things from a custodian to inform the owner, as well as the custodian, of its intent. That fair procedure gave the owner of the records time to challenge the government before a judge. But the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (which has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting privacy), enacted at the dawn of the digital age, did away with that requirement.

Now if the custodian remains silent in the face of an FBI request or a grand jury subpoena, the owner of the documents loses his opportunity to keep them from the government. That is what happened here.

But there is more.

The practical effect of Mueller's acquisition of the transition emails could be devastating to White House staff who once worked for the transition. Many of them have been interviewed by the FBI while no doubt being ignorant of the fact that the FBI had read their emails. Stated differently, the FBI was in a position to lead Trump White House staff members into a lying trap -- just as it did with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn -- by asking them questions to which the FBI already had the answers.

Lying traps are reprehensible, but they're lawful. And they are not unique to Mueller's practices; it is the way the feds work today. Can the FBI get away with getting the Trump team's emails? In a word: yes. This investigation is not going away soon.

Copyright 2017 Andrew P. Napolitano. Distributed by Creators.com.

anonymous , Disclaimer December 21, 2017 at 8:29 am GMT

Judge Waterboy is back again this week, serving the Establishment by propagandizing against Russia while supposedly giving readers expert guidance on American governmental and legal processes.

" .. special counsel Robert Mueller -- who is investigating whether there was any agreement between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin that resulted in the now-well-known efforts by Russian intelligence to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election -- "

Where does one go to read any specification of and see any evidence for these "now-well-known efforts"? Has anyone who still watches TV seen that question put to Mr. Napolitano?

Notice, too, how the language has been massaged since Mr. Napolitano's column published here on December 7:

" .. the no-nonsense special counsel investigating whether any Americans aided the Russian government in its now well-known interference in the 2016 American presidential election .. "

Rather than copy/cut/paste, the author has taken the time to alter his words:

any Americans >>> the Trump campaign
Russian government >>> Russian intelligence
interference >>> affect the outcome

Mr. Napolitano may be giving himself room to navigate the evolving scandals in Washington, where we are invited to take sides in the intramural battle between Team Red and Team Blue or, for the relatively sophisticated, President Trump and Deep State. But no matter how that all turns out, the processes and this article about them serve to Otherize another people and state from which our rulers can keep us safe and free.

Realist , December 21, 2017 at 9:58 am GMT
"Can the FBI Get Away with Getting Trump Team Emails?"

They already have. We will hear more bluster from Representatives Gowdy and Jordan but as always in the past nothing will happen. I have lost count, but these two have been grandstanding for years on all manner of injustice .without one victory.

The Alarmist , December 21, 2017 at 10:11 am GMT

"Can the FBI get away with getting the Trump team's emails?"

Did Martha Stewart go to jail for changing her story to the FBI?

Clearly we are operating outside the rule of law, in the rule of men. Mueller and team are the law.

WorkingClass , December 21, 2017 at 3:43 pm GMT
Again with "now-well-known efforts by Russian intelligence to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election"?

The meme is well known. But approximately half of us know it is a lie. Judge Swamp Creature knows it's a lie but (repeatedly) repeats it anyway. What's in it for you Judge?

What is now well known is that Mueller is a political assassin, hired to lead a soft coup against an elected president.

polistra , December 21, 2017 at 6:56 pm GMT
Why bother to ask these silly questions? FBI gets away with anything and everything it wants to do. When a mob owns ALL the blackmail files, nobody can stop it. There is no such thing as "law". There is only bullets, bombs and blackmail.
Eric Rasmusen , December 21, 2017 at 9:40 pm GMT
Mr. Napolitano is taking a radical position when he confidently claims that it is legal for the FBI to secretly read transition emails without a warrant or subpoena, or, indeed, any official authority whatsover. It seems the FBI simply asked GSA for the emails, rather than getting a subpoena -- that's the big point here, since of course GSA has to hand them over if there is a subpoena, but a court has to authorize it then. So here, the FBI had no more authority than any other agency in the executive branch. Mr. Napolitano's position is that that's fine. If so, it would equally have been okay for the GSA to give the Secretary of Agriculture, the IRS Commissioner, or President Obama permission to secretly view the Trump transition team's emails during the transition. Indeed, the FBI was not acting with any authority in this case, just a request, so Napolitano's claim is that the GSA could have given the emails to Nancy Pelosi if she'd asked. Is that really the position you want to take? It's absurd. If that were the law, then no winning presidential candidate would ever want to make use of transition facilities and computer systems, since it would be to allow the opposition party open access to all of his plans.
Backwoods Bob , December 22, 2017 at 5:33 am GMT
Hey Andy, thanks.

It's sobering. So Mueller has more lying traps on Trump staffers. It's incredible.

It makes my stomach turn. But this is far from over.

Svigor , December 22, 2017 at 7:38 am GMT

who is investigating whether there was any agreement between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin that resulted in the now-well-known efforts by Russian intelligence to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election

For true? Great. Since they're so well-known, please describe them in detail.Oh, you mean nobody's got any idea WTF those efforts were? Yeah, thought so.

TV people. They live in the TV universe.

unit472 , December 22, 2017 at 7:54 pm GMT
Even assuming a GSA computer warns its user ( everytime?) that data stored on it is government property how does that allow Mueller or anyone else to seize the emails of the party not using a GSA computer? No warning was given to the party receiving an e-mail or replying to an email sent from a government computer.

I recognize a wiretap records both ends of a telephone call or email but that requires a judge to issue the warrant ( and we can hope the judge has more respect for the Constitution than the creep writing this does).

[Dec 22, 2017] Beyond Cynicism America Fumbles Towards Kafka s Castle by James Howard Kunstler

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... With the election of 2016, symptoms of the long emergency seeped into the political system. Disinformation rules. There is no coherent consensus about what is happening and no coherent proposals to do anything about it. The two parties are mired in paralysis and dysfunction and the public's trust in them is at epic lows. Donald Trump is viewed as a sort of pirate president, a freebooting freak elected by accident, "a disrupter" of the status quo at best and at worst a dangerous incompetent playing with nuclear fire. A state of war exists between the White House, the permanent D.C. bureaucracy, and the traditional news media. Authentic leadership is otherwise AWOL. Institutions falter. The FBI and the CIA behave like enemies of the people. ..."
"... They chatter about electric driverless car fleets, home delivery drone services, and as-yet-undeveloped modes of energy production to replace problematic fossil fuels, while ignoring the self-evident resource and capital constraints now upon us and even the laws of physics -- especially entropy , the second law of thermodynamics. Their main mental block is their belief in infinite industrial growth on a finite planet, an idea so powerfully foolish that it obviates their standing as technocrats. ..."
"... The universities beget a class of what Nassim Taleb prankishly called "intellectuals-yet-idiots," hierophants trafficking in fads and falsehoods, conveyed in esoteric jargon larded with psychobabble in support of a therapeutic crypto-gnostic crusade bent on transforming human nature to fit the wished-for utopian template of a world where anything goes. In fact, they have only produced a new intellectual despotism worthy of Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot. ..."
"... Until fairly recently, the Democratic Party did not roll that way. It was right-wing Republicans who tried to ban books, censor pop music, and stifle free expression. If anything, Democrats strenuously defended the First Amendment, including the principle that unpopular and discomforting ideas had to be tolerated in order to protect all speech. Back in in 1977 the ACLU defended the right of neo-Nazis to march for their cause (National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43). ..."
"... This is the recipe for what we call identity politics, the main thrust of which these days, the quest for "social justice," is to present a suit against white male privilege and, shall we say, the horse it rode in on: western civ. A peculiar feature of the social justice agenda is the wish to erect strict boundaries around racial identities while erasing behavioral boundaries, sexual boundaries, and ethical boundaries. Since so much of this thought-monster is actually promulgated by white college professors and administrators, and white political activists, against people like themselves, the motives in this concerted campaign might appear puzzling to the casual observer. ..."
"... The evolving matrix of rackets that prompted the 2008 debacle has only grown more elaborate and craven as the old economy of stuff dies and is replaced by a financialized economy of swindles and frauds . Almost nothing in America's financial life is on the level anymore, from the mendacious "guidance" statements of the Federal Reserve, to the official economic statistics of the federal agencies, to the manipulation of all markets, to the shenanigans on the fiscal side, to the pervasive accounting fraud that underlies it all. Ironically, the systematic chiseling of the foundering middle class is most visible in the rackets that medicine and education have become -- two activities that were formerly dedicated to doing no harm and seeking the truth ! ..."
"... Um, forgotten by Kunstler is the fact that 1965 was also the year when the USA reopened its doors to low-skilled immigrants from the Third World – who very quickly became competitors with black Americans. And then the Boom ended, and corporate American, influenced by thinking such as that displayed in Lewis Powell's (in)famous 1971 memorandum, decided to claw back the gains made by the working and middle classes in the previous 3 decades. ..."
"... "Wow – is there ever negative!" ..."
"... You also misrepresent reality to your readers. No, the black underclass is not larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated now than in the 1960's, when cities across the country burned and machine guns were stationed on the Capitol steps. The "racial divide" is not "starker now than ever"; that's just preposterous to anyone who was alive then. And nobody I've ever known felt "shame" over the "outcome of the civil rights campaign". I know nobody who seeks to "punish and humiliate" the 'privileged'. ..."
"... My impression is that what Kunstler is doing here is diagnosing the long crisis of a decadent liberal post-modernity, and his stance is not that of either of the warring sides within our divorced-from-reality political establishment, neither that of the 'right' or 'left.' Which is why, logically, he published it here. National Review would never have accepted this piece ..."
"... "Globalization has acted, meanwhile, as a great leveler. It destroyed what was left of the working class -- the lower-middle class -- which included a great many white Americans who used to be able to support a family with simple labor." ..."
"... Young black people are told by their elders how lucky they are to grow up today because things are much better than when grandpa was our age and we all know this history.\ ..."
"... It's clear that this part of the article was written from absolute ignorance of the actual black experience with no interest in even looking up some facts. Hell, Obama even gave a speech at Howard telling graduates how lucky they were to be young and black Today compared to even when he was their age in the 80's! ..."
"... E.g. Germany. Germany is anything but perfect and its recent government has screwed up with its immigration policies. But Germany has a high standard of living, an educated work force (including unions and skilled crafts-people), a more rational distribution of wealth and high quality universal health care that costs 47% less per capita than in the U.S. and with no intrinsic need to maraud around the planet wasting gobs of taxpayer money playing Global Cop. ..."
"... The larger subtext is that the U.S. house of cards was planned out and constructed as deliberately as the German model was. Only the objective was not to maximize the health and happiness of the citizenry, but to line the pockets of the parasitic Elites. (E.g., note that Mitch McConnell has been a government employee for 50 years but somehow acquired a net worth of over $10 Million.) ..."
Dec 12, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

On America's 'long emergency' of recession, globalization, and identity politics.

Can a people recover from an excursion into unreality? The USA's sojourn into an alternative universe of the mind accelerated sharply after Wall Street nearly detonated the global financial system in 2008. That debacle was only one manifestation of an array of accumulating threats to the postmodern order, which include the burdens of empire, onerous debt, population overshoot, fracturing globalism, worries about energy, disruptive technologies, ecological havoc, and the specter of climate change.

A sense of gathering crisis, which I call the long emergency , persists. It is systemic and existential. It calls into question our ability to carry on "normal" life much farther into this century, and all the anxiety that attends it is hard for the public to process. It manifested itself first in finance because that was the most abstract and fragile of all the major activities we depend on for daily life, and therefore the one most easily tampered with and shoved into criticality by a cadre of irresponsible opportunists on Wall Street. Indeed, a lot of households were permanently wrecked after the so-called Great Financial Crisis of 2008, despite official trumpet blasts heralding "recovery" and the dishonestly engineered pump-up of capital markets since then.

With the election of 2016, symptoms of the long emergency seeped into the political system. Disinformation rules. There is no coherent consensus about what is happening and no coherent proposals to do anything about it. The two parties are mired in paralysis and dysfunction and the public's trust in them is at epic lows. Donald Trump is viewed as a sort of pirate president, a freebooting freak elected by accident, "a disrupter" of the status quo at best and at worst a dangerous incompetent playing with nuclear fire. A state of war exists between the White House, the permanent D.C. bureaucracy, and the traditional news media. Authentic leadership is otherwise AWOL. Institutions falter. The FBI and the CIA behave like enemies of the people.

Bad ideas flourish in this nutrient medium of unresolved crisis. Lately, they actually dominate the scene on every side. A species of wishful thinking that resembles a primitive cargo cult grips the technocratic class, awaiting magical rescue remedies that promise to extend the regime of Happy Motoring, consumerism, and suburbia that makes up the armature of "normal" life in the USA. They chatter about electric driverless car fleets, home delivery drone services, and as-yet-undeveloped modes of energy production to replace problematic fossil fuels, while ignoring the self-evident resource and capital constraints now upon us and even the laws of physics -- especially entropy , the second law of thermodynamics. Their main mental block is their belief in infinite industrial growth on a finite planet, an idea so powerfully foolish that it obviates their standing as technocrats.

The non-technocratic cohort of the thinking class squanders its waking hours on a quixotic campaign to destroy the remnant of an American common culture and, by extension, a reviled Western civilization they blame for the failure in our time to establish a utopia on earth. By the logic of the day, "inclusion" and "diversity" are achieved by forbidding the transmission of ideas, shutting down debate, and creating new racially segregated college dorms. Sexuality is declared to not be biologically determined, yet so-called cis-gendered persons (whose gender identity corresponds with their sex as detected at birth) are vilified by dint of not being "other-gendered" -- thereby thwarting the pursuit of happiness of persons self-identified as other-gendered. Casuistry anyone?

The universities beget a class of what Nassim Taleb prankishly called "intellectuals-yet-idiots," hierophants trafficking in fads and falsehoods, conveyed in esoteric jargon larded with psychobabble in support of a therapeutic crypto-gnostic crusade bent on transforming human nature to fit the wished-for utopian template of a world where anything goes. In fact, they have only produced a new intellectual despotism worthy of Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot.

In case you haven't been paying attention to the hijinks on campus -- the attacks on reason, fairness, and common decency, the kangaroo courts, diversity tribunals, assaults on public speech and speakers themselves -- here is the key take-away: it's not about ideas or ideologies anymore; it's purely about the pleasures of coercion, of pushing other people around. Coercion is fun and exciting! In fact, it's intoxicating, and rewarded with brownie points and career advancement. It's rather perverse that this passion for tyranny is suddenly so popular on the liberal left.

Until fairly recently, the Democratic Party did not roll that way. It was right-wing Republicans who tried to ban books, censor pop music, and stifle free expression. If anything, Democrats strenuously defended the First Amendment, including the principle that unpopular and discomforting ideas had to be tolerated in order to protect all speech. Back in in 1977 the ACLU defended the right of neo-Nazis to march for their cause (National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43).

The new and false idea that something labeled "hate speech" -- labeled by whom? -- is equivalent to violence floated out of the graduate schools on a toxic cloud of intellectual hysteria concocted in the laboratory of so-called "post-structuralist" philosophy, where sundry body parts of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, and Gilles Deleuze were sewn onto a brain comprised of one-third each Thomas Hobbes, Saul Alinsky, and Tupac Shakur to create a perfect Frankenstein monster of thought. It all boiled down to the proposition that the will to power negated all other human drives and values, in particular the search for truth. Under this scheme, all human relations were reduced to a dramatis personae of the oppressed and their oppressors, the former generally "people of color" and women, all subjugated by whites, mostly males. Tactical moves in politics among these self-described "oppressed" and "marginalized" are based on the credo that the ends justify the means (the Alinsky model).

This is the recipe for what we call identity politics, the main thrust of which these days, the quest for "social justice," is to present a suit against white male privilege and, shall we say, the horse it rode in on: western civ. A peculiar feature of the social justice agenda is the wish to erect strict boundaries around racial identities while erasing behavioral boundaries, sexual boundaries, and ethical boundaries. Since so much of this thought-monster is actually promulgated by white college professors and administrators, and white political activists, against people like themselves, the motives in this concerted campaign might appear puzzling to the casual observer.

I would account for it as the psychological displacement among this political cohort of their shame, disappointment, and despair over the outcome of the civil rights campaign that started in the 1960s and formed the core of progressive ideology. It did not bring about the hoped-for utopia. The racial divide in America is starker now than ever, even after two terms of a black president. Today, there is more grievance and resentment, and less hope for a better future, than when Martin Luther King made the case for progress on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. The recent flash points of racial conflict -- Ferguson, the Dallas police ambush, the Charleston church massacre, et cetera -- don't have to be rehearsed in detail here to make the point that there is a great deal of ill feeling throughout the land, and quite a bit of acting out on both sides.

The black underclass is larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated than it was in the 1960s. My theory, for what it's worth, is that the civil rights legislation of 1964 and '65, which removed legal barriers to full participation in national life, induced considerable anxiety among black citizens over the new disposition of things, for one reason or another. And that is exactly why a black separatism movement arose as an alternative at the time, led initially by such charismatic figures as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. Some of that was arguably a product of the same youthful energy that drove the rest of the Sixties counterculture: adolescent rebellion. But the residue of the "Black Power" movement is still present in the widespread ambivalence about making covenant with a common culture, and it has only been exacerbated by a now long-running "multiculturalism and diversity" crusade that effectively nullifies the concept of a national common culture.

What follows from these dynamics is the deflection of all ideas that don't feed a narrative of power relations between oppressors and victims, with the self-identified victims ever more eager to exercise their power to coerce, punish, and humiliate their self-identified oppressors, the "privileged," who condescend to be abused to a shockingly masochistic degree. Nobody stands up to this organized ceremonial nonsense. The punishments are too severe, including the loss of livelihood, status, and reputation, especially in the university. Once branded a "racist," you're done. And venturing to join the oft-called-for "honest conversation about race" is certain to invite that fate.

Globalization has acted, meanwhile, as a great leveler. It destroyed what was left of the working class -- the lower-middle class -- which included a great many white Americans who used to be able to support a family with simple labor. Hung out to dry economically, this class of whites fell into many of the same behaviors as the poor blacks before them: absent fathers, out-of-wedlock births, drug abuse. Then the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 wiped up the floor with the middle-middle class above them, foreclosing on their homes and futures, and in their desperation many of these people became Trump voters -- though I doubt that Trump himself truly understood how this all worked exactly. However, he did see that the white middle class had come to identify as yet another victim group, allowing him to pose as their champion.

The evolving matrix of rackets that prompted the 2008 debacle has only grown more elaborate and craven as the old economy of stuff dies and is replaced by a financialized economy of swindles and frauds . Almost nothing in America's financial life is on the level anymore, from the mendacious "guidance" statements of the Federal Reserve, to the official economic statistics of the federal agencies, to the manipulation of all markets, to the shenanigans on the fiscal side, to the pervasive accounting fraud that underlies it all. Ironically, the systematic chiseling of the foundering middle class is most visible in the rackets that medicine and education have become -- two activities that were formerly dedicated to doing no harm and seeking the truth !

Life in this milieu of immersive dishonesty drives citizens beyond cynicism to an even more desperate state of mind. The suffering public ends up having no idea what is really going on, what is actually happening. The toolkit of the Enlightenment -- reason, empiricism -- doesn't work very well in this socioeconomic hall of mirrors, so all that baggage is discarded for the idea that reality is just a social construct, just whatever story you feel like telling about it. On the right, Karl Rove expressed this point of view some years ago when he bragged, of the Bush II White House, that "we make our own reality." The left says nearly the same thing in the post-structuralist malarkey of academia: "you make your own reality." In the end, both sides are left with a lot of bad feelings and the belief that only raw power has meaning.

Erasing psychological boundaries is a dangerous thing. When the rackets finally come to grief -- as they must because their operations don't add up -- and the reckoning with true price discovery commences at the macro scale, the American people will find themselves in even more distress than they've endured so far. This will be the moment when either nobody has any money, or there is plenty of worthless money for everyone. Either way, the functional bankruptcy of the nation will be complete, and nothing will work anymore, including getting enough to eat. That is exactly the moment when Americans on all sides will beg someone to step up and push them around to get their world working again. And even that may not avail.

James Howard Kunstler's many books include The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation , and the World Made by Hand novel series. He blogs on Mondays and Fridays at Kunstler.com .

Whine Merchant December 20, 2017 at 10:49 pm

Wow – is there ever negative!
Celery , says: December 20, 2017 at 11:33 pm
I think I need to go listen to an old-fashioned Christmas song now.

The ability to be financially, or at least resource, sustaining is the goal of many I know since we share a lack of confidence in any of our institutions. We can only hope that God might look down with compassion on us, but He's not in the practical plan of how to feed and sustain ourselves when things play out to their inevitable end. Having come from a better time, we joke about our dystopian preparations, self-conscious about our "overreaction," but preparing all the same.

Merry Christmas!

Fran Macadam , says: December 20, 2017 at 11:55 pm
Look at it this way: Germany had to be leveled and its citizens reduced to abject penury, before Volkswagen could become the world's biggest car company, and autobahns built throughout the world. It will be darkest before the dawn, and hopefully, that light that comes after, won't be the miniature sunrise of a nuclear conflagration.
KD , says: December 21, 2017 at 6:02 am
Eat, Drink, and be Merry, you can charge it on your credit card!
Rock Stehdy , says: December 21, 2017 at 6:38 am
Hard words, but true. Kunstler is always worth reading for his common-sense wisdom.
Helmut , says: December 21, 2017 at 7:04 am
An excellent summary and bleak reminder of what our so-called civilization has become. How do we extricate ourselves from this strange death spiral?
I have long suspected that we humans are creatures of our own personal/group/tribal/national/global fables and mythologies. We are compelled by our genes, marrow, and blood to tell ourselves stories of our purpose and who we are. It is time for new mythologies and stories of "who we are". This bizarre hyper-techno all-for-profit world needs a new story.
Liam , says: December 21, 2017 at 7:38 am
"The black underclass is larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated than it was in the 1960s. My theory, for what it's worth, is that the civil rights legislation of 1964 and '65, which removed legal barriers to full participation in national life, induced considerable anxiety among black citizens over the new disposition of things, for one reason or another."

Um, forgotten by Kunstler is the fact that 1965 was also the year when the USA reopened its doors to low-skilled immigrants from the Third World – who very quickly became competitors with black Americans. And then the Boom ended, and corporate American, influenced by thinking such as that displayed in Lewis Powell's (in)famous 1971 memorandum, decided to claw back the gains made by the working and middle classes in the previous 3 decades.

Peter , says: December 21, 2017 at 8:34 am
I have some faith that the American people can recover from an excursion into unreality. I base it on my own survival to the end of this silly rant.
SteveM , says: December 21, 2017 at 9:08 am
Re: Whine Merchant, "Wow – is there ever negative!"

Can't argue with the facts

P.S. Merry Christmas.

Dave Wright , says: December 21, 2017 at 9:22 am
Hey Jim, I know you love to blame Wall Street and the Republicans for the GFC. I remember back in '08 you were urging Democrats to blame it all on Republicans to help Obama win. But I have news for you. It wasn't Wall Street that caused the GFC. The crisis actually had its roots in the Clinton Administration's use of the Community Reinvestment Act to pressure banks to relax mortgage underwriting standards. This was done at the behest of left wing activists who claimed (without evidence, of course) that the standards discriminated against minorities. The result was an effective repeal of all underwriting standards and an explosion of real estate speculation with borrowed money. Speculation with borrowed money never ends well.

I have to laugh, too, when you say that it's perverse that the passion for tyranny is popular on the left. Have you ever heard of the French Revolution? How about the USSR? Communist China? North Korea? Et cetera.

Leftism is leftism. Call it Marxism, Communism, socialism, liberalism, progressivism, or what have you. The ideology is the same. Only the tactics and methods change. Destroy the evil institutions of marriage, family, and religion, and Man's innate goodness will shine forth, and the glorious Godless utopia will naturally result.

Of course, the father of lies is ultimately behind it all. "He was a liar and a murderer from the beginning."

When man turns his back on God, nothing good happens. That's the most fundamental problem in Western society today. Not to say that there aren't other issues, but until we return to God, there's not much hope for improvement.

NoahK , says: December 21, 2017 at 10:15 am
It's like somebody just got a bunch of right-wing talking points and mashed them together into one incohesive whole. This is just lazy.
Andrew Imlay , says: December 21, 2017 at 10:36 am
Hmm. I just wandered over here by accident. Being a construction contractor, I don't know enough about globalization, academia, or finance to evaluate your assertions about those realms. But being in a biracial family, and having lived, worked, and worshiped equally in white and black communities, I can evaluate your statements about social justice, race, and civil rights. Long story short, you pick out fringe liberal ideas, misrepresent them as mainstream among liberals, and shoot them down. Casuistry, anyone?

You also misrepresent reality to your readers. No, the black underclass is not larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated now than in the 1960's, when cities across the country burned and machine guns were stationed on the Capitol steps. The "racial divide" is not "starker now than ever"; that's just preposterous to anyone who was alive then. And nobody I've ever known felt "shame" over the "outcome of the civil rights campaign". I know nobody who seeks to "punish and humiliate" the 'privileged'.

I get that this column is a quick toss-off before the holiday, and that your strength is supposed to be in your presentation, not your ideas. For me, it's a helpful way to rehearse debunking common tropes that I'll encounter elsewhere.

But, really, your readers deserve better, and so do the people you misrepresent. We need bad liberal ideas to be critiqued while they're still on the fringe. But by calling fringe ideas mainstream, you discredit yourself, misinform your readers, and contribute to stereotypes both of liberals and of conservatives. I'm looking for serious conservative critiques that help me take a second look at familiar ideas. I won't be back.

peter in boston , says: December 21, 2017 at 10:48 am
Love Kunstler -- and love reading him here -- but he needs a strong editor to get him to turn a formless harangue into clear essay.
Someone in the crowd , says: December 21, 2017 at 11:07 am
I disagree, NoahK, that the whole is incohesive, and I also disagree that these are right-wing talking points.

The theme of this piece is the long crisis in the US, its nature and causes. At no point does this essay, despite it stream of consciousness style, veer away from that theme. Hence it is cohesive.

As for the right wing charge, though it is true, to be sure, that Kunstler's position is in many respects classically conservative -- he believes for example that there should be a national consensus on certain fundamentals, such as whether or not there are two sexes (for the most part), or, instead, an infinite variety of sexes chosen day by day at whim -- you must have noticed that he condemned both the voluntarism of Karl Rove AND the voluntarism of the post-structuralist crowd.

My impression is that what Kunstler is doing here is diagnosing the long crisis of a decadent liberal post-modernity, and his stance is not that of either of the warring sides within our divorced-from-reality political establishment, neither that of the 'right' or 'left.' Which is why, logically, he published it here. National Review would never have accepted this piece. QED.

Jon , says: December 21, 2017 at 11:10 am
This malaise is rooted in human consciousness that when reflecting on itself celebrating its capacity for apperception suffers from the tension that such an inquiry, such an inward glance produces. In a word, the capacity for the human being to be aware of his or herself as an intelligent being capable of reflecting on aspects of reality through the artful manipulation of symbols engenders this tension, this angst.

Some will attempt to extinguish this inner tension through intoxication while others through the thrill of war, and it has been played out since the dawn of man and well documented when the written word emerged.

The malaise which Mr. Kunstler addresses as the problem of our times is rooted in our existence from time immemorial. But the problem is not only existential but ontological. It is rooted in our being as self-aware creatures. Thus no solution avails itself as humanity in and of itself is the problem. Each side (both right and left) seeks its own anodyne whether through profligacy or intolerance, and each side mans the barricades to clash experiencing the adrenaline rush that arises from the perpetual call to arms.

Joe the Plutocrat , says: December 21, 2017 at 11:27 am
"Globalization has acted, meanwhile, as a great leveler. It destroyed what was left of the working class -- the lower-middle class -- which included a great many white Americans who used to be able to support a family with simple labor."

And to whom do we hand the tab for this? Globalization is a word. It is a concept, a talking point. Globalization is oligarchy by another name. Unfortunately, under-educated, deplorable, Americans; regardless of party affiliation/ideology have embraced. And the most ironic part?

Russia and China (the eventual surviving oligarchies) will eventually have to duke it out to decide which superpower gets to make the USA it's b*tch (excuse prison reference, but that's where we're headed folks).

And one more irony. Only in American, could Christianity, which was grew from concepts like compassion, generosity, humility, and benevolence; be re-branded and 'weaponized' to further greed, bigotry, misogyny, intolerance, and violence/war. Americans fiddled (over same sex marriage, abortion, who has to bake wedding cakes, and who gets to use which public restroom), while the oligarchs burned the last resources (natural, financial, and even legal).

The scientist 880 , says: December 21, 2017 at 11:48 am
"Today, there is more grievance and resentment, and less hope for a better future, than when Martin Luther King made the case for progress on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963."

Spoken like a white guy who has zero contact with black people. I mean, even a little bit of research and familiarity would give lie to the idea that blacks are more pessimistic about life today than in the 1960's.

Black millenials are the most optimistic group of Americans about the future. Anyone who has spent any significant time around older black people will notice that you don't hear the rose colored memories of the past. Black people don't miss the 1980's, much less the 1950's. Young black people are told by their elders how lucky they are to grow up today because things are much better than when grandpa was our age and we all know this history.\

It's clear that this part of the article was written from absolute ignorance of the actual black experience with no interest in even looking up some facts. Hell, Obama even gave a speech at Howard telling graduates how lucky they were to be young and black Today compared to even when he was their age in the 80's!

Here is the direct quote;

"In my inaugural address, I remarked that just 60 years earlier, my father might not have been served in a D.C. restaurant -- at least not certain of them. There were no black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Very few black judges. Shoot, as Larry Wilmore pointed out last week, a lot of folks didn't even think blacks had the tools to be a quarterback. Today, former Bull Michael Jordan isn't just the greatest basketball player of all time -- he owns the team. (Laughter.) When I was graduating, the main black hero on TV was Mr. T. (Laughter.) Rap and hip hop were counterculture, underground. Now, Shonda Rhimes owns Thursday night, and Beyoncé runs the world. (Laughter.) We're no longer only entertainers, we're producers, studio executives. No longer small business owners -- we're CEOs, we're mayors, representatives, Presidents of the United States. (Applause.)

I am not saying gaps do not persist. Obviously, they do. Racism persists. Inequality persists. Don't worry -- I'm going to get to that. But I wanted to start, Class of 2016, by opening your eyes to the moment that you are in. If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn't know ahead of time who you were going to be -- what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you'd be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you'd be born into -- you wouldn't choose 100 years ago. You wouldn't choose the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You'd choose right now. If you had to choose a time to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, "young, gifted, and black" in America, you would choose right now. (Applause.)"

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/obamas-howard-commencement-transcript-222931

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58cf1d9ae4b0ec9d29dcf283/amp

Adam , says: December 21, 2017 at 11:57 am
I love reading about how the Community Reinvestment Act was the catalyst of all that is wrong in the world. As someone in the industry the issue was actually twofold. The Commodities Futures Modernization Act turned the mortgage securities market into a casino with the underlying actual debt instruments multiplied through the use of additional debt instruments tied to the performance but with no actual underlying value. These securities were then sold around the world essentially infecting the entire market. In order that feed the beast, these NON GOVERNMENT loans had their underwriting standards lowered to rediculous levels. If you run out of qualified customers, just lower the qualifications. Government loans such as FHA, VA, and USDA were avoided because it was easier to qualify people with the new stuff. And get paid. The short version is all of the incentives that were in place at the time, starting with the Futures Act, directly led to the actions that culminated in the Crash. So yes, it was the government, just a different piece of legislation.
SteveM , says: December 21, 2017 at 12:29 pm
Kunstler itemizing the social and economic pathologies in the United States is not enough. Because there are other models that demonstrate it didn't have to be this way.

E.g. Germany. Germany is anything but perfect and its recent government has screwed up with its immigration policies. But Germany has a high standard of living, an educated work force (including unions and skilled crafts-people), a more rational distribution of wealth and high quality universal health care that costs 47% less per capita than in the U.S. and with no intrinsic need to maraud around the planet wasting gobs of taxpayer money playing Global Cop.

The larger subtext is that the U.S. house of cards was planned out and constructed as deliberately as the German model was. Only the objective was not to maximize the health and happiness of the citizenry, but to line the pockets of the parasitic Elites. (E.g., note that Mitch McConnell has been a government employee for 50 years but somehow acquired a net worth of over $10 Million.)

P.S. About the notionally high U.S. GDP. Factor out the TRILLIONS inexplicably hoovered up by the pathological health care system, the metastasized and sanctified National Security State (with its Global Cop shenanigans) and the cronied-up Ponzi scheme of electron-churn financialization ginned up by Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Banksters, and then see how much GDP that reflects the actual wealth of the middle class is left over.

One Guy , says: December 21, 2017 at 1:10 pm
Right-Wing Dittoheads and Fox Watchers love to blame the Community Reinvestment Act. It allows them to blame both poor black people AND the government. The truth is that many parties were to blame.
LouB , says: December 21, 2017 at 1:14 pm
One of the things I love about this rag is that almost all of the comments are included. You may be sure that similar commenting privilege doesn't exist most anywhere else.

Any disfavor regarding the supposed bleakness with the weak hearted souls aside, Mr K's broadside seems pretty spot on to me.

tzx4 , says: December 21, 2017 at 1:57 pm
I think the author overlooks the fact that government over the past 30 to 40 years has been tilting the playing field ever more towards the uppermost classes and against the middle class. The evisceration of the middle class is plain to see.

If the the common man had more money and security, lots of our current intrasocial conflicts would be far less intense.

Jeeves , says: December 21, 2017 at 2:09 pm
Andrew Imlay: You provide a thoughtful corrective to one of Kunstler's more hyperbolic claims. And you should know that his jeremiad doesn't represent usual fare at TAC. So do come back.

Whether or not every one of Kunstler's assertions can withstand a rigorous fact-check, he is a formidable rhetorician. A generous serving of Weltschmerz is just what the season calls for.

Wezz , says: December 21, 2017 at 2:44 pm
America is stupefied from propaganda on steroids for, largely from the right wing, 25? years of Limbaugh, Fox, etc etc etc Clinton hate x 10, "weapons of mass destruction", "they hate us because we are free", birtherism, death panels, Jade Helm, pedophile pizza, and more Clinton hate porn.

Americans have been taught to worship the wealthy regardless of how they got there. Americans have been taught they are "Exceptional" (better, smarter, more godly than every one else) in spite of outward appearances. Americans are under educated and encouraged to make decisions based on emotion from constant barrage of extra loud advertising from birth selling illusion.

Americans brain chemistry is most likely as messed up as the rest of their bodies from junk or molested food. Are they even capable of normal thought?

Donald Trump has convinced at least a third of Americans that only he, Fox, Breitbart and one or two other sources are telling the Truth, every one else is lying and that he is their friend.

Is it possible we are just plane doomed and there's no way out?

John Blade Wiederspan , says: December 21, 2017 at 4:26 pm
I loathe the cotton candy clown and his Quislings; however, I must admit, his presence as President of the United States has forced everyone (left, right, religious, non-religious) to look behind the curtain. He has done more to dis-spell the idealism of both liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, rich and poor, than any other elected official in history. The sheer amount of mind-numbing absurdity resulting from a publicity stunt that got out of control ..I am 70 and I have seen a lot. This is beyond anything I could ever imagine. America is not going to improve or even remain the same. It is in a 4 year march into worse, three years to go.
EarlyBird , says: December 21, 2017 at 5:23 pm
Sheesh. Should I shoot myself now, or wait until I get home?
dvxprime , says: December 21, 2017 at 5:46 pm
Mr. Kuntzler has an honest and fairly accurate assessment of the situation. And as usual, the liberal audience that TAC is trying so hard to reach, is tossing out their usual talking points whilst being in denial of the situation.

The Holy Bible teaches us that repentance is the first crucial step on the path towards salvation. Until the progressives, from their alleged "elite" down the rank and file at Kos, HuffPo, whatever, take a good, long, hard look at the current national dumpster fire and start claiming some responsibility, America has no chance of solving problems or fixing anything.

Slooch , says: December 21, 2017 at 7:03 pm
Kunstler must have had a good time writing this, and I had a good time reading it. Skewed perspective, wild overstatement, and obsessive cherry-picking of the rare checkable facts are mixed with a little eye of newt and toe of frog and smothered in a oar and roll of rhetoric that was thrilling to be immersed in. Good work!
jp , says: December 21, 2017 at 8:09 pm
aah, same old Kunstler, slightly retailored for the Trump years.

for those of you familiar with him, remember his "peak oil" mania from the late 00s and early 2010s? every blog post was about it. every new year was going to be IT: the long emergency would start, people would be Mad Maxing over oil supplies cos prices at the pump would be $10 a gallon or somesuch.

in this new rant, i did a control-F for "peak oil" and hey, not a mention. I guess even cranks like Kunstler know when to give a tired horse a rest.

c.meyer , says: December 21, 2017 at 8:30 pm
So what else is new. Too 'clever', overwritten, no new ideas. Can't anyone move beyond clichés?
Active investor , says: December 22, 2017 at 12:35 am
Kunstler once again waxes eloquent on the American body politic. Every word rings true, except when it doesn't. At times poetic, at other times paranoid, Kunstler does us a great service by pointing a finger at the deepest pain points in America, any one of which could be the geyser that brings on catastrophic failure.

However, as has been pointed out, he definitely does not hang out with black people. For example, the statement:

But the residue of the "Black Power" movement is still present in the widespread ambivalence about making covenant with a common culture, and it has only been exacerbated by a now long-running "multiculturalism and diversity" crusade that effectively nullifies the concept of a national common culture.

The notion of a 'national common culture' is interesting but pretty much a fantasy that never existed, save colonial times.

Yet Kunstler's voice is one that must be heard, even if he is mostly tuning in to the widespread radicalism on both ends of the spectrum, albeit in relatively small numbers. Let's face it, people are in the streets marching, yelling, and hating and mass murders keep happening, with the regularity of Old Faithful. And he makes a good point about academia loosing touch with reality much of the time. He's spot on about the false expectations of what technology can do for the economy, which is inflated with fiat currency and God knows how many charlatans and hucksters. And yes, the white working class is feeling increasingly like a 'victim group.'

While Kunstler may be more a poet than a lawyer, more songwriter than historian, my gut feeling is that America had better take notice of him, as The American ship of state is being swept by a ferocious tide and the helmsman is high on Fentanyl (made in China).

JonF , says: December 22, 2017 at 9:52 am
Re: The crisis actually had its roots in the Clinton Administration's use of the Community Reinvestment Act

Here we go again with this rotting zombie which rises from its grave no matter how many times it has been debunked by statisticians and reputable economists (and no, not just those on the left– the ranks include Bruce Bartlett for example, a solid Reaganist). To reiterate again : the CRA played no role in the mortgage boom and bust. Among other facts in the way of that hypothesis is the fact that riskiest loans were being made by non-bank lenders (Countrywide) who were not covered by the CRA which only applied to actual banks– and the banks did not really get into the game full tilt, lowering their lending standards, until late in the game, c. 2005, in response to their loss of business to the non-bank lenders. Ditto for the GSEs, which did not lower their standards until 2005 and even then relied on wall Street to vet the subprime loans they were buying.

To be sure, blaming Wall Street for everything is also wrong-headed, though wall Street certainly did some stupid, greedy and shady things (No, I am not letting them off the hook!) But the cast of miscreants is numbered in the millions and it stretches around the planet. Everyone (for example) who got into the get-rich-quick Ponzi scheme of house flipping, especially if they lied about their income to do so. And everyone who took out a HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) and foolishly charged it up on a consumption binge. And shall we talk about the mortgage brokers who coached people into lying, the loan officers who steered customers into the riskiest (and highest earning) loans they could, the sellers who asked palace-prices for crackerbox hovels, the appraisers who rubber-stamped such prices, the regulators who turned a blind eye to all the fraud and malfeasance, the ratings agencies who handed out AAA ratings to securities full of junk, the politicians who rejoiced over the apparent "Bush Boom" well, I could continue, but you get the picture.

We have met the enemy and he was us.

kevin on the left , says: December 22, 2017 at 10:49 am
"The Holy Bible teaches us that repentance is the first crucial step on the path towards salvation. Until the progressives, from their alleged "elite" down the rank and file at Kos, HuffPo, whatever, take a good, long, hard look at the current national dumpster fire and start claiming some responsibility, America has no chance of solving problems or fixing anything."

Pretty sure that calling other people to repent of their sin of disagreeing with you is not quite what the Holy Bible intended.

[Dec 22, 2017] FBI Reassigned Suspected Leaker And Comey Ally James Baker

Dec 22, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Just hours after FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe delivered private testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, his boss, FBI Director Christopher Wray, announced that the bureau's top lawyer would be leaving his post, an attempt to bring in "new blood" to an agency whose reputation has been hopelessly compromised by revelations that agents' partisan bias may have influenced two high-profile investigations involving President Donald Trump and his former campaign rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

As the Washington Post reported, the FBI's top lawyer, James Baker, is being reassigned. WaPo says Baker's removal is part of Wray's effort to assemble his own team of senior advisers while he tries to defuse allegations of partisanship that have plagued the bureau in recent months.

James Baker

But reports published over the summer said Baker was "the top suspect" in an interagency leak investigation, as we reported back in July

Three sources, with knowledge of the investigation, told Circa that Baker is the top suspect in an ongoing leak investigation, but Circa has not been able to confirm the details of what national security information or material was allegedly leaked.

A federal law enforcement official with knowledge of ongoing internal investigations in the bureau told Circa, "the bureau is scouring for leakers and there's been a lot of investigations."

The revelation comes as the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to contain leaks both within the White House and within its own national security apparatus.

The news of the staff shakeup comes as Trump and his political allies have promised to "rebuild" the FBI to make it "bigger and better than ever" following its "disgraceful" conduct over the Trump probe . Baker played a key role in the agency's handling of major cases and policy debates in recent years, including the FBI's unsuccessful battle with Apple over the growing use of encryption in cellphones.

CuttingEdge -> wmbz , Dec 22, 2017 9:41 AM

Getting a bit tired of this "one of the most trusted, longest-serving et al" shite they troll out for every one of these vermin.

They said Comey was honourable...

Ditto Mueller

Ditto McCabe

Ditto Baker

Ditto Rosenstein

Ditto Ohrr

And so many more...

Joe Davola -> ne-tiger , Dec 22, 2017 10:11 AM

And the DOJ attorney who was in the meetings with Ohr needs to be looked at also. From my post a week ago:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/fashion/weddings/trisha-anderson-charl...

who's husband was on the NSC

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:C0rbx2ui4ZcJ:https...

and as the article states, the husband is going to be working again with a guy who just so happened to be:

Prior to assuming his role in the NSD, Mr. Carlin served as Chief of Staff and Senior Counsel to Robert S. Mueller, III, former

https://www.mofo.com/people/john-carlin.html

Wondering if Newmann's name would be found on some unmasking requests or he's gotten some texts from Strok/Page.

Abaco -> wmbz , Dec 22, 2017 2:02 PM

Just like Clapper admitting to perjuring himself before congress and he is brought on TV to comment as if he is a decent person instead of being thrown in prison like anyone else would be.

[Dec 22, 2017] The Russiagate investigation may have busted an axle by Pat Buchanan

Dec 22, 2017 | www.unz.com

And the Russiagate investigation may have busted an axle. Though yet unproven, charges are being made that Robert Mueller's sleuths gained access to Trump transition emails illicitly.

This could imperil prosecutions by Mueller's team, already under a cloud for proven malice toward the president.

Recall: Daniel Ellsberg, who delivered the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, walked free when it was learned that the White House "Plumbers" had burgled his psychiatrist's office.

[Dec 21, 2017] The RussiaGate Witch-Hunt Stockman Names Names In The Deep State's Insurance Policy by David Stockman

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Needless to say, the Never Trumpers were eminently correct in their worry that Trump would sully, degrade and weaken the Imperial Presidency. That he has done in spades with his endless tweet storms that consist mainly of petty score settling, self-justification, unseemly boasting and shrill partisanship; and on top of that you can pile his impetuous attacks on friend, foe and bystanders (e.g. NFL kneelers) alike. ..."
Dec 18, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Deep State's "Insurance Policy" Tyler Durden Dec 18, 2017 11:05 PM 0 SHARES Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

There was a sinister plot to meddle in the 2016 election, after all. But it was not orchestrated from the Kremlin; it was an entirely homegrown affair conducted from the inner sanctums---the White House, DOJ, the Hoover Building and Langley----of the Imperial City.

Likewise, the perpetrators didn't speak Russian or write in the Cyrillic script. In fact, they were lifetime beltway insiders occupying the highest positions of power in the US government.

Here are the names and rank of the principal conspirators:

To a person, the participants in this illicit cabal shared the core trait that made Obama such a blight on the nation's well-being. To wit, he never held an honest job outside the halls of government in his entire adult life; and as a careerist agent of the state and practitioner of its purported goods works, he exuded a sanctimonious disdain for everyday citizens who make their living along the capitalist highways and by-ways of America.

The above cast of election-meddlers, of course, comes from the same mold. If Wikipedia is roughly correct, just these 10 named perpetrators have punched in about 300 years of post-graduate employment---and 260 of those years (87%) were on government payrolls or government contractor jobs.

As to whether they shared Obama's political class arrogance, Peter Strzok left nothing to the imagination in his now celebrated texts to his gal-pal, Lisa Page:

"Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support......I LOATHE congress....And F Trump."

You really didn't need the ALL CAPS to get the gist. In a word, the anti-Trump cabal is comprised of creatures of the state.

Their now obvious effort to alter the outcome of the 2016 election was nothing less than the Imperial City's immune system attacking an alien threat, which embodied the very opposite trait: That is, the Donald had never spent one moment on the state's payroll, had been elected to no government office and displayed a spirited contempt for the groupthink and verities of officialdom in the Imperial City.

But it is the vehemence and flagrant transparency of this conspiracy to prevent Trump's ascension to the Oval Office that reveals the profound threat to capitalism and democracy posed by the Deep State and its prosperous elites and fellow travelers domiciled in the Imperial City.

That is to say, Donald Trump was no kind of anti-statist and only a skin-deep populist, at best. His signature anti-immigrant meme was apparently discovered by accident when in the early days of the campaign he went off on Mexican thugs, rapists and murderers----only to find that it resonated strongly among a certain element of the GOP grass roots.

But a harsh line on immigrants, refugees and Muslims would not have incited the Deep State into an attempted coup d'état; it wouldn't have mobilized so overtly against Ted Cruz, for example, whose positions on the ballyhooed terrorist/immigrant threat were not much different.

No, what sent the Imperial City establishment into a fit of apoplexy was exactly two things that struck at the core of its raison d' etre.

First was Trump's stated intentions to seek rapprochement with Putin's Russia and his sensible embrace of a non-interventionist "America First" view of Washington's role in the world. And secondly, and even more importantly, was his very persona.

That is to say, the role of today's president is to function as the suave, reliable maître d' of the Imperial City and the lead spokesman for Washington's purported good works at home and abroad. And for that role the slovenly, loud-mouthed, narcissistic, bombastic, ill-informed and crudely-mannered Donald Trump was utterly unqualified.

Stated differently, welfare statism and warfare statism is the secular religion of the Imperial City and its collaborators in the mainstream media; and the Oval Office is the bully pulpit from which its catechisms, bromides and self-justifications are propagandized to the unwashed masses---the tax-and-debt-slaves of Flyover America who bear the burden of its continuation.

Needless to say, the Never Trumpers were eminently correct in their worry that Trump would sully, degrade and weaken the Imperial Presidency. That he has done in spades with his endless tweet storms that consist mainly of petty score settling, self-justification, unseemly boasting and shrill partisanship; and on top of that you can pile his impetuous attacks on friend, foe and bystanders (e.g. NFL kneelers) alike.

Yet that is exactly what has the Deep State and its media collaborators running scared. To wit, Trump's entire modus operandi is not about governing or a serious policy agenda---and most certainly not about Making America's Economy Great Again. (MAEGA)

By appointing a passel of Keynesian monetary central planners to the Fed and launching an orgy of fiscal recklessness via his massive defense spending and tax-cutting initiatives, the Donald has more than sealed his own doom: There will unavoidably be a massive financial and economic crisis in the years just ahead and the rulers of the Imperial City will most certainly heap the blame upon him with malice aforethought.

In the interim, however, what the Donald is actually doing is sharply polarizing the country and using the Bully Pulpit for the very opposite function assigned to it by Washington's permanent political class. Namely, to discredit and vilify the ruling elites of government and the media and thereby undermine the docility and acquiescence of the unwashed masses upon which the Imperial City's rule and hideous prosperity depend.

It is no wonder, then, that the inner circle of the Obama Administration plotted an "insurance policy". They saw it coming-----that is, an offensive rogue disrupter who was soft on Russia, to boot--- and out of that alarm the entire hoax of RussiaGate was born.

As is now well known from the recent dump of 375 Strzok/Gates text messages, there occurred on August 15, 2016 a meeting in the office of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (who is still there) to kick off the RussiaGate campaign. As Strzok later wrote to Page, who was also at the meeting:

" I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk......It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event that you die before you're 40."

They will try to spin this money quote seven-ways to Sunday, but in the context of everything else now known there is only one possible meaning: The national security and law enforcement machinery of Imperial Washington was being activated then and there in behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Indeed, the trail of proof is quite clear. At the very time of this August meeting, the FBI was already being fed the initial elements of the Steele dossier, and the latter had nothing to do with any kind of national security investigation.

For crying out loud, it was plain old "oppo research" paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. And the only way that it bore on Russian involvement in the US election was that virtually all of the salacious material and false narratives about Trump emissaries meeting with high level Russian officials was disinformation sourced in Moscow, and was completely untrue.

As former senior FBI official, Andrew McCarthy, neatly summarized the sequence of action recently:

The Clinton campaign generated the Steele dossier through lawyers who retained Fusion GPS. Fusion, in turn, hired Steele, a former British intelligence agent who had FBI contacts from prior collaborative investigations. The dossier was steered into the FBI's hands as it began to be compiled in the summer of 2016. A Fusion Russia expert, Nellie Ohr, worked with Steele on Fusion's anti-Trump research. She is the wife of Bruce Ohr, then the deputy associate attorney general -- the top subordinate of Sally Yates, then Obama's deputy attorney general (later acting AG). Ohr was a direct pipeline to Yates.....

Based on the publication this week of text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the FBI lawyer with whom he was having an extramarital affair, we have learned of a meeting convened in the office of FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe...... right around the time the Page FISA warrant was obtained......

Bruce Ohr met personally with Steele. And after Trump was elected, according to Fusion founder Glenn Simpson, he requested and got a meeting with Simpson to, as Simpson told the House Intelligence Committee, "discuss our findings regarding Russia and the election."

This, of course, was the precise time Democrats began peddling the public narrative of Trump-Russia collusion. It is the time frame during which Ohr's boss, Yates, was pushing an absurd Logan Act investigation of Trump transition official Michael Flynn (then slotted to become Trump's national-security adviser) over Flynn's meetings with the Russian ambassador.

Here's the thing. There is almost nothing in the Steele dossiers which is true. At the same time, there is no real alternative evidence based on hard NSA intercepts that show Russian government agents were behind the only two acts----the leaks of the DNC emails and the Podesta emails----that were of even minimal import to the outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign.

As to the veracity of the dossier, the raving anti-Trumper and former CIA interim chief, Michael Morrell, settled the matter. If you are paying ex-FSA agents for information on the back streets of Moscow, the more you pay, the more "information" you will get:

Then I asked myself, why did these guys provide this information, what was their motivation? And I subsequently learned that he paid them. That the intermediaries paid the sources and the intermediaries got the money from Chris. And that kind of worries me a little bit because if you're paying somebody, particularly former [Russian Federal Security Service] officers, they are going to tell you truth and innuendo and rumor, and they're going to call you up and say, 'Hey, let's have another meeting, I have more information for you,' because they want to get paid some more,' Morrell said.

Far from being "verified," the dossier is best described as a pack of lies, gossip, innuendo and irrelevancies. Take, for example, the claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen met with Russian Federation Council foreign affairs head Konstantin Kosachev in Prague during August 2016. That claim is verifiably false as proven by Cohen's own passport.

Likewise, the dossier 's claim that Carter Page was offered a giant bribe by the head of Rosneft, the Russian state energy company, in return for lifting the sanctions is downright laughable. That's because Carter Page never had any serious role in the Trump campaign and was one of hundreds of unpaid informal advisors who hung around the basket hoping for some role in a future Trump government.

Like the hapless George Papadopoulos, in fact, Page apparently never met Trump, had no foreign policy credentials and had been drafted onto the campaign's so-called foreign policy advisory committee out of sheer desperation.

That is, because the mainstream GOP foreign policy establishment had so completely boycotted the Trump campaign, the latter was forced to fill its advisory committee essentially from the phone book; and that desperation move in March 2016, in turn, had been undertaken in order to damp-down the media uproar over the Donald's assertion that he got his foreign policy advise from watching TV!

The truth of the matter is that Page was a former Merrill Lynch stockbrokers who had plied his trade in Russia several years earlier. He had gone to Moscow in July 2016 on his own dime and without any mandate from the Trump campaign; and his "meeting" with Rosneft actually consisted of drinks with an old buddy from his broker days who had become head of investor relations at Rosneft.

Nevertheless, it is pretty evident that the Steele dossier's tale about Page's alleged bribery scheme was the basis for the FISA warrant that resulted in wiretaps on Page and other officials in Trump Tower during September and October.

And that's your insurance policy at work: The Deep State and its allies in the Obama administration were desperately looking for dirt with which to crucify the Donald, and thereby insure that the establishment's anointed candidate would not fail at the polls.

So the question recurs as to why did the conspirators resort to the outlandish and even cartoonish disinformation contained in the Steele dossier?

The answer to that question cuts to the quick of the entire RussiaGate hoax. To wit, that's all they had!

Notwithstanding the massive machinery and communications vacuum cleaners operated by the $75 billion US intelligence communities and its vaunted 17 agencies, there are no digital intercepts proving that Russian state operatives hacked the DNC and Podesta emails. Period.

Yet when it comes to anything that even remotely smacks of "meddling" in the US election campaign, that's all she wrote.

There is nothing else of moment, and most especially not the alleged phishing expeditions directed at 20 or so state election boards. Most of these have been discredited, denied by local officials or were simply the work of everyday hackers looking for voter registration lists that could be sold.

The patently obvious point here is that in America there is no on-line network of voting machines on either an intra-state or interstate basis. And that fact renders the whole election machinery hacking meme null and void. Not even the treacherous Russians are stupid enough to waste their time trying to hack that which is unhackable.

In that vein, the Facebook ad buying scheme is even more ridiculous. In the context of an election campaign in which upwards of $7 billion of spending was reported by candidates and their committees to the FEC, and during which easily double that amount was spent by independent committees and issue campaigns, the notion that just $44,000 of Facebook ads made any difference to anything is not worthy of adult thought.

And, yes, out of the ballyhooed $100,000 of Facebook ads, the majority occurred after the election was over and none of them named candidates, anyway. The ads consisted of issue messages that reflected all points on the political spectrum from pro-choice to anti-gun control.

And even this so-called effort at "polarizing" the American electorate was "discovered" only after Facebook failed to find any "Russian-linked" ads during its first two searches. Instead, this complete drivel was detected only after the Senate's modern day Joseph McCarthy, Sen. Mark Warner, who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a leading legislator on Internet regulation, showed up on Mark Zuckerberg's doorstep at Facebook headquarters.

In any event, we can be sure there are no NSA intercepts proving that the Russians hacked the Dem emails for one simple reason: They would have been leaked long ago by the vast network of Imperial City operatives plotting to bring the Donald down.

Moreover, the original architect and godfather of NSA's vast spying apparatus, William Binney, has essentially proved that the DNC emails were leaked by an insider who downloaded them on a memory stick. By conducting his own experiments, he showed that the known download speed of one batch of DNC emails could not have occurred over the Internet from a remote location in Russia or anywhere else on the planet, and actually matched what was possible only via a local USB-connected thumb drive.

So the real meaning of the Strzok/Gates text messages is straight foreword. There was a conspiracy to prevent Trump's election, and then after the shocking results of November 8, this campaign morphed into an intensified effort to discredit the winner.

For instance, Susan Rice got Obama to lower the classification level of the information obtained from the Trump campaign intercepts and other dirt-gathering actions by the Intelligence Community (IC)--- so that it could be disseminated more readily to all Washington intelligence agencies.

In short order, of course, the IC was leaking like a sieve, thereby paving the way for the post-election hysteria and the implication that any contact with a Russian--even one living in Brooklyn-- must be collusion. And that included calls to the Russian ambassador by the president-elect's own national security advisor designate.

Should there by any surprise, therefore, that it turns out the Andrew McCabe bushwhacked General Flynn on January 24 when he called to say that FBI agents were on the way to the White House for what Flynn presumed to be more security clearance work with his incipient staff.

No at all. The FBI team was there to interrogate Flynn about the transcripts of his perfectly appropriate and legal conversations with Ambassador Kislyak about two matters of state----the UN resolution on Israel and the spiteful new sanctions on certain Russian citizens that Obama announced on December 28 in a fit of pique over the Dems election loss.

And that insidious team of FBI gotcha cops was led by none other than......Peter Strzok!

But after all the recent leaks---and these text messages are just the tip of the iceberg-----the die is now cast. Either the Deep State and its minions and collaborators in the media and the Republican party, too, will soon succeed in putting Mike Pence into the Oval Office, or the Imperial City is about ready to break-out in vicious partisan warfare like never before.

Either way, economic and fiscal governance is about ready to collapse entirely, making the tax bill a kind of last hurrah before they mayhem really begins.

In that context, selling the rip may become one of the most profitable speculations ever imagined.

CuttingEdge -> The_Juggernaut , Dec 19, 2017 2:05 AM

Not sure why Stockman went off on a tangent about Trump's innumerate economic strategy - kinda dilutes from an otherwise informative piece for anyone who hasn't a handle on the underhand shit that's been hitting the fan in recent months. Its like he has to have a go about it no matter what the main theme. Like PCR and "insouciance". And then there's the texting...

Clue yourself in, David.

A very small percentage of the public are actually informed about what is really going down. Those that visit ZH or your website. Fox is the only pro-Trump mainstream TV news outlet, and as to the NYT, WP et al? The media disinformation complex keep the rest in the matrix, and it has been very easy to see in action over the last year or so because it has been so well co-ordinated (and totally fabricated).

Given the blatant and contemptous avoidance of the truth by the MSM (the current litany of seditious/treasonous actions being a case in point), it is fair to say that Trump's tweets provide a very real public service - focussing the (otherwise ignorant) public's attention on many things the aforementioned cunts (I'll include Google and FaecesBook) divert from like the plague (and making them look utter slime in the process).

Don't knock it

A Sentinel -> BennyBoy , Dec 19, 2017 2:23 AM

I do respect stockman but here's bullshit-call #1: he says that the deep state doesn't like the divisiveness he causes: bush certainly did that and Obama' did so at an order of magnitude higher. I don't believe that the left is more upset by trump than we were by Barry- we're just not a bunch of sniveling, narcissistic babies like they are.

redmudhooch -> BennyBoy , Dec 19, 2017 1:14 PM

Hondurans accuse US of election meddling

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/hondurans-accuse-election-meddling...

The US embassy in Honduras has been surrounded by protesters infuriated by the three-week-wait for the definitive result of the presidential election.

Demonstrators accuse the US of meddling in last month's vote which both candidates say they won.

Wage Slave 927 -> shitshitshit , Dec 19, 2017 1:45 AM

When the details of the FISA warrant application are revealed, it will be like a megaton-class munition detonating, and the Deep State will bear the brunt of destruction.

enough of this , Dec 18, 2017 11:19 PM

The Comey - Strzok Duet satire:

http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-comey-strzok-duet-on-the-eve-of-the-c...

SheHunter , Dec 18, 2017 11:25 PM

For those of you who have not yet discovered it Mr. Stockman's Contra Corner is a hands-down great blog well worth a nightly read.

zagzigga -> Mini-Me , Dec 18, 2017 11:48 PM

Similar mass deception was in play to start the Iraq war as well. Constant bombardment led to public consensus and even the liberal New York Times endorsed the war. Whenever we see mass hysteria about something new, we should just go with the flow and not ask any questions at all. It is best for retaining sanity in this dumbed down and getting more dumber world.

Anunnaki , Dec 18, 2017 11:31 PM

Susan Rice and Obama should be indicted for illegally wiretapping Trump Towers for the express purpose of finding oppo research to help Hellary's late term abortiion of a campaign

Tapeworm -> Anunnaki , Dec 19, 2017 8:25 AM

This one is deeper but well laid out. Comey & Mueller Ignored McCabe's Ties to Russian Crime Figures & His Reported Tampering in Russian FBI Cases, Files

https://truepundit.com/comey-mueller-ignored-mccabes-ties-to-russian-cri...

I damned near insist that y'all read this one. Please???

Cardinal Fang , Dec 18, 2017 11:40 PM

Great read, loved the 'Imperial City's immune system' analogy...

I disagree about the economy though.

It feels strange to me that the architect of the Reagan Revolution is unable to see the makings of another revolution, the Trump Revolution.

We have had 10-20 years of pent up demand in the economy and instead of electing another neo-Marxist Alynski acolyte, the American people elected a hard charging anti-establishment bull in a China shop.

Surely Dave can see the potential.

It kills me when people are surprised by a 12 month, 5000 point run up on Wall Street.

For God's sake the United States was run by a fucking commie for 8 years, what the fuck did you think was gonna happen?

Jeez

GoldHermit , Dec 18, 2017 11:58 PM

America is divided and will remain divided. I think it will last at least for the next 50 years, maybe longer. The best way out is to limit the federal government and give each state more responsibility. States can succeed or fail on their own. People will be free to move where they want.

Not My Real Name -> GoldHermit , Dec 19, 2017 1:21 AM

"The best way out is to limit the federal government and give each state more responsibility."

Oh, you mean follow the Constitution as it was written. Good one, Hermit!

bh2 , Dec 19, 2017 12:01 AM

Somewhere there is a FISA judge who should be defrocked and exposed as a fraud. No sober judge would accept such evidence for any purpose, much less authorizing government snooping on a major party candidate for president.

MrSteve -> bh2 , Dec 19, 2017 12:29 AM

This makes FISA a totalitarian joke and that should be investigated.

RonBananas , Dec 19, 2017 4:51 AM

The CIA holds all the videos from Jeff Epstein's Island (20 documented trips by Bill, 6 documented trips by Hillary), I'm sure Bill doing a 12 year old, Hillary and Huma doing an 8 year old girl together, etc. So what are they willing to do for the CIA? Anything at any cost, getting caught red handed with a dossier is chump change when you look at the big picture..they don't care and will do anything...ANYTHING to get rid of Trump.

This is the only reason they are so frantic. There is absolutely no other reason they would play at this level.

Pol Pot -> RonBananas , Dec 19, 2017 4:57 AM

Correct on all except it's the Mossad and not the CIA who ran flight Epstein.

shutterbug , Dec 19, 2017 5:47 AM

Trump is gone in a few months or the DoJ, FBI and all others connected to FBI-gate are prosecuted...

Session's (in-)action will be crucial to one of these paths...

Stud Duck , Dec 19, 2017 6:42 AM

As always, Dave puts it all into prospective for even the brain dead. Ya think Joe and his gang will be talking about this article on their morning talk show today?? I wonder how Brezenski's daughter is going to tell daddy that the gig is up and they may want to look into packing a boogie bag just to play it safe?

David Stockman is a flame of hope in a world of dark machievellian thought!

Occams_Razor_Trader , Dec 19, 2017 7:25 AM

Why did the alt media and the msm all stop reportinmg that McCabe's wife recieved 700 thousand dollars from Terry McAulife (former Clinton campaign manager times 2!) for a Virginia State Senate run? Quid pro quo? Oh no, never the up and up DemonRats.

So when I hear that the conversation was held in McCabe's office- I want to puke first then start building the gallows.

MATA HAIRY , Dec 19, 2017 7:34 AM

fucken brilliant article!! There is a lot I don't like about trump (some of which stockman discusses above), but as a retired govt worker, I can tell you that he right about what he is saying here.

insanelysane , Dec 19, 2017 8:14 AM

One little tidbit that has been lost in all of this:

If the FBI was willing to use their power to back Hillary and defeat Trump at the national level, what did they try to do in McCabe's wife's state senate campaign? She is a pediatrician and she ran for state senate. ??? WTF is that about? She's not only a doctor but a doctor for children. Those people are usually wired to help people. Yet she was going to for-go being a doctor for a state senate position. ??? And the DNC forked over $700,000 to put her on the map.

I'm sure the people meeting daily in Andy's office were not pleased with the voter resistance to his wife and to Hillary. The FBI needs to be shut down. They have become an opposition research firm for the DNC. Even if they can't find dirt on candidates using the NSA database, they are able to tap that database to find out political strategies in real time on opposition The fish is rotten from the head down to the tail.

unklemunky , Dec 19, 2017 8:20 AM

No matter what article you read here, and don't get me wrong, I love the insight, but every fucking article is "it's all over. America is doomed, the petro dollar days are over, China China China. It's getting a bit old. The charts and graphs about stock market collapse......it becoming an old record that needs changed. If I say it's going to rain every fucking day, at some point I will be right. That doesn't make me a genius....it makes me persistent.

insanelysane , Dec 19, 2017 8:24 AM

It's a Deep State mess and Sessions is trying his best as he cowers in a corner sucking his thumb.

If they continue to go after Trump, the FBI is going to be found guilty of violating the Hatch Act by exonerating Hillary. See burner phones. See writing the conclusion in May when the investigation supposedly ended with Hillary's interview on July 3rd. The FBI will also be exposed for sedition as they then carried out the phony Russiagate investigation as their "insurance policy."

However, they have created an expectation with the left that Trump and his minions will be brought to "justice." If we thought the Left didn't handle losing the election well, they will not be pleased at losing Russiagate.

MrBoompi , Dec 19, 2017 4:25 PM

How dare anyone contradict or go against the wishes of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, or MSNBC? Don't you know they understand what's best for us?

[Dec 21, 2017] In Unexpected Move, Trump Enacts Obama-era Law Opening US Arms Sales To Ukraine

Notable quotes:
"... the same week that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be handling Trump like "an asset". ..."
Dec 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Though WaPo's Josh Rogin characterizes the decision as intended to appease hawks while seeking to avoid broader conflict escalation based on "limited arms sales" (and not approving some of the heavier weaponry sought by Kiev), the move is likely to further ratchet up tensions with Russia, which is ironic for the fact that the decision comes the same week that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be handling Trump like "an asset".

Or perhaps we will be assured this is just more 4-dimensional chess playing between Trump and Putin to prove that not Putin but the Military Industrial Complex is once again "unexpectedly" in charge?

[Dec 21, 2017] Former Intel chief Putin is handling Trump like 'an asset' by Olivia Beavers

Notable quotes:
"... "I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president," Clapper said on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper," clarifying that he means this "figuratively." ..."
"... Clapper took aim at the news that Putin called Trump on Sunday to thank him and the CIA for sharing information that helped prevent a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg, describing the move as a "rather theatric gesture." ..."
"... He said the U.S. and Russia have shared such intelligence "for a long time" and it seemed over the top for Putin to call Trump " for something that goes on below the radar and is not all that visible." ..."
"... The remarks come after Trump said the U.S. is in competition with "revisionist" powers like Russia and China in a policy release about national security, while also stating in a speech that he wants to form a "great partnership" with them. Clapper said he found the message to be contradictory. ..."
"... Clapper's remarks on CNN come after he and over a dozen other former national security, intelligence and foreign policy officials filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit earlier this month against the Trump campaign and Republican operative Roger Stone. The brief details how Russia uses "active measures" and "actors" to spread disinformation and influence politics worldwide. "These actors include political organizers and activists, academics, journalists, web operators, shell companies, nationalists and militant groups, and prominent pro-Russian businessmen," the brief reads. ..."
Dec 18, 2017 | thehill.com

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be handling President Trump Donald John Trump House Democrat slams Donald Trump Jr. for 'serious case of amnesia' after testimony Skier Lindsey Vonn: I don't want to represent Trump at Olympics Poll: 4 in 10 Republicans think senior Trump advisers had improper dealings with Russia MORE like "an asset."

"I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president," Clapper said on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper," clarifying that he means this "figuratively."

Clapper took aim at the news that Putin called Trump on Sunday to thank him and the CIA for sharing information that helped prevent a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg, describing the move as a "rather theatric gesture."

He said the U.S. and Russia have shared such intelligence "for a long time" and it seemed over the top for Putin to call Trump " for something that goes on below the radar and is not all that visible."

The former intelligence chief said Putin likely learned to recruit assets to help with his interests when he served as an officer in the KBG, which was the Soviet Union's main security agency.

"You have to remember Putin's background. He's a KGB officer, that's what they do. They recruit assets. And I think some of that experience and instincts of Putin has come into play here in his managing of a pretty important account for him, if I could use that term, with our president," he continued.

The remarks come after Trump said the U.S. is in competition with "revisionist" powers like Russia and China in a policy release about national security, while also stating in a speech that he wants to form a "great partnership" with them. Clapper said he found the message to be contradictory.

He also pointed to his previous experiences of trying to share intelligence with the Kremlin, stemming back to the early 1990s, describing the attempts as a "one-way street."

Clapper's remarks on CNN come after he and over a dozen other former national security, intelligence and foreign policy officials filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit earlier this month against the Trump campaign and Republican operative Roger Stone. The brief details how Russia uses "active measures" and "actors" to spread disinformation and influence politics worldwide. "These actors include political organizers and activists, academics, journalists, web operators, shell companies, nationalists and militant groups, and prominent pro-Russian businessmen," the brief reads.

"They range from the unwitting accomplice who is manipulated to act in what he believes is his best interest, to the ideological or economic ally who broadly shares Russian interests, to the knowing agent of influence who is recruited or coerced to directly advance Russian operations and objectives," it continues.

[Dec 20, 2017] It seems like the intelligence agencies are spending more time monitoring politicians and public than Al Queda.

Notable quotes:
"... Freedom Watch lawyer Larry Klayman has a whistle-blower who has stated on the record, publicly, he has 47 hard drives with over 600,000,00 pages of secret CIA documents that detail all the domestic spying operations, and likely much much more. ..."
"... The rabbit hole goes very deep here. Attorney Klayman has stated he has been trying to out this for 2 years, and was stonewalled by swamp creatures, so he threatened to go public this week. Several very interesting videos, and a public letter, are out there, detailing all this. Nunes very likely saw his own conversations transcripted from surveillance taken at Trump Tower (he was part of the transition team), and realized the jig was up. Melania has moved out of Trump Tower to stay elsewhere, I am sure after finding out that many people in Washington where watching them at home in their private residence, whichi is also why Pres Trump sent out those famous angry tweets 2 weeks ago. Democrats on the Committee (and many others) are liars, and very possibly traitors, which is probably why Nunes neglected to inform them. Nunes did follow proper procedures, notifying Ryan first etc, you can ignore the MSM bluster there ..observe Nunes body language in the 2 videos of his dual press briefings he gave today, he appears shocked, angry, disturbed etc. ..."
"... This all stems from Obama's Jan 16 signing of the order broadening "co-operation" between the NSA and everybody else in Washington, so that mid-level analysts at almost any agency could now look at raw NSA intercepts, that is where all the "leaks" and "unmasking" are coming from. ..."
"... AG Lynch, Obama, and countless others knew, or should have known, all about this, but I am sure they will play the usual "I was too stupid too know what was going on in my own organization" card. ..."
Mar 23, 2017 |
fresno dan March 22, 2017 at 6:56 pm

So I see where Nunes in a ZeroHedge posting says that there might have been "incidental surveillance" of "Trump" (?Trump associates? ?Trump tower? ?Trump campaign?)
Now to the average NC reader, it kinda goes without saying. But I don't think Trump understands the scope of US government "surveillance" and I don't think the average citizen, certainly not the average Trump supporter, does either – the nuances and subtleties of it – the supposed "safeguards".

I can understand the rationale for it .but this goes to show that when you give people an opportunity to use secret information for their own purposes .they will use secret information for their own purposes.

And at some point, the fact of the matter that the law regarding the "incidental" leaking appears to have been broken, and that this leaking IMHO was purposefully broken for political purposes .is going to come to the fore. Like bringing up "fake news" – some of these people on the anti Trump side seem not just incapable of playing 11th dimensional chess, they seem incapable of winning tic tac toe .

Was Obama behind it? I doubt it and I don't think it would be provable. But it seems like the intelligence agencies are spending more time monitoring repubs than Al queda. Now maybe repubs are worse than Al queda – I think its time we have a real debate instead of the pseudo debates and start asking how useful the CIA is REALLY. (and we can ask how useful repubs and dems are too)

craazyboy March 22, 2017 at 8:45 pm

If Obama taped the information, stuffed the tape in one of Michelle's shoeboxes, then hid the shoebox in the Whitehouse basement, he could be in trouble. Ivanka is sure to search any shoeboxes she finds.

Irredeemable Deplorable March 23, 2017 at 2:57 am

Oh the Trump supporters are all over this, don't worry. There are many more levels to what is going on than what is reported in the fakenews MSM.

Adm Roger of NSA made his November visit to Trump Tower, after a SCIF was installed there, to .be interviewed for a job uh-huh yeah.

Freedom Watch lawyer Larry Klayman has a whistle-blower who has stated on the record, publicly, he has 47 hard drives with over 600,000,00 pages of secret CIA documents that detail all the domestic spying operations, and likely much much more.

The rabbit hole goes very deep here. Attorney Klayman has stated he has been trying to out this for 2 years, and was stonewalled by swamp creatures, so he threatened to go public this week. Several very interesting videos, and a public letter, are out there, detailing all this. Nunes very likely saw his own conversations transcripted from surveillance taken at Trump Tower (he was part of the transition team), and realized the jig was up. Melania has moved out of Trump Tower to stay elsewhere, I am sure after finding out that many people in Washington where watching them at home in their private residence, whichi is also why Pres Trump sent out those famous angry tweets 2 weeks ago. Democrats on the Committee (and many others) are liars, and very possibly traitors, which is probably why Nunes neglected to inform them. Nunes did follow proper procedures, notifying Ryan first etc, you can ignore the MSM bluster there ..observe Nunes body language in the 2 videos of his dual press briefings he gave today, he appears shocked, angry, disturbed etc.

You all should be happy, because although Pres Trump has been vindicated here on all counts, the more important story for you is that the old line Democratic Party looks about to sink under the wieght of thier own lies and illegalities. This all stems from Obama's Jan 16 signing of the order broadening "co-operation" between the NSA and everybody else in Washington, so that mid-level analysts at almost any agency could now look at raw NSA intercepts, that is where all the "leaks" and "unmasking" are coming from.

AG Lynch, Obama, and countless others knew, or should have known, all about this, but I am sure they will play the usual "I was too stupid too know what was going on in my own organization" card.

Lambert Strether Post author March 23, 2017 at 4:08 am

> Was Obama behind it? I doubt it and I don't think it would be provable

I think he knew about it. After fulminating about weedy technicalities, let me just say that Obama's EO12333 expansion made sure that whatever anti-Trump information got picked up by the intelligence community could be spread widely, and would be hard to trace back to an individual source .

[Dec 20, 2017] Peter Strzok's insurance text and the FBI's plot to stop Trump by Alexander Mercouris

Strzok's "insurance" text shows the FBI disregarded warnings that launching Russiagate was wrong and the reason of launching investigation was purely politcal
Notable quotes:
"... Over the course of this discussion Page expressed the view – commonplace in August 2016 – that Donald Trump had no prospect of winning the election. She therefore counselled that the proposed Russiagate investigation was unnecessary. Strzok responded that the FBI had no choice but to proceed with the Russiagate investigation because of the risk of not doing so was too great. ..."
"... The proposal to launch the Russiagate investigation clearly ran into resistance from some members of the FBI. Clearly they were unhappy because they were worried that it would amount to improper interference in the election. Undoubtedly they were also worried that it might violate the Hatch Act, which forbids misuse of public office to engage in partisan political activity especially during an election. ..."
"... The hardliners – and Strzok's text message clearly identifies Strzok as one of the hardliners – however overrode those objections. They insisted the Russiagate investigation had to be launched. They did so because the mere possibility of Trump winning the election, however remote, was too great a risk for them to accept. ..."
"... The key piece in the jigsaw is again the Trump Dossier. It is now known that Christopher Steele – the Trump Dossier's compiler – was in contact with the FBI in early July 2016, before publication of the DNC emails by Wikileaks on 22nd July 2016. The very first entry of the Trump Dossier dated 20th June 2016 and almost certainly seen by Strzok before Wikileaks published the DNC emails and therefore before the earliest possible date for the launch of the Russiagate investigation already claimed that the Russians had compromising material on Trump because of Trump's supposed orgy with Russian prostitutes in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow in 2013. ..."
"... Later entries in the Trump Dossier dated 19th July 2016, 30th July 2016, 5th August 2016 and 10th August 2016, and one entry incorrectly dated 26th July 2015 but which can be clearly dated to July 2016, not only claimed that the Russians were meddling in the election on Donald Trump's behalf – purportedly on the direct orders from President Putin himself – but also claimed that Trump's campaign was actively colluding with the Russians in doing this. Some of these entries would almost certainly have been seen by Strzok before the Russiagate investigation was launched, and he had probably seen all of them before he texted Page on 15th August 2016. ..."
"... It is now known that the FBI gave credence to the Trump Dossier in the summer of 2016 to the point where it used information obtained from the Trump Dossier to obtain FISA warrants, notably one authorising surveillance of Carter Page. ..."
"... There is one further possibility which is more speculative. It is now know that sometime in August 2016 the CIA forwarded to President Obama a report alleging that the Russians were meddling in the US election. All the facts show that this report was based on the Trump Dossier. Assuming that the FBI and the CIA were consulting each other and exchanging information about the Trump Dossier – as is highly likely – it is possible that the discussion in McCabe's office was also about the report the CIA was proposing to send to Obama, with some people within the FBI concerned that the Trump Dossier's unverified allegations were being used to compile a report for the President of the United States. Regardless of this second possibility, the Strzok text is key evidence because it shows that the FBI pressed ahead with the Russiagate investigation despite the objections of some of its members. ..."
Dec 20, 2017 | theduran.com

Strzok's "insurance" text shows the FBI disregarded warnings that launching Russiagate was wrong

The last few days the media has been buzzing with speculation about the precise meaning of a text message sent by the sacked FBI investigator Peter Strzok to his lover FBI lawyer Lisa Page on 15th August 2016. I am puzzled by this speculation. I don't think there is any mystery at all about this text. There is no doubt it refers to the Russiagate investigation and its meaning is perfectly clear. Let's look first at the text itself

"I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40 ."

"Andy" is FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. "He" is Donald Trump. If that was not so someone by now would have said so. The text shows Strzok and Page took part in a discussion in McCabe's office in which Donald Trump and the election were discussed. Over the course of this discussion Page expressed the view – commonplace in August 2016 – that Donald Trump had no prospect of winning the election. She therefore counselled that the proposed Russiagate investigation was unnecessary. Strzok responded that the FBI had no choice but to proceed with the Russiagate investigation because of the risk of not doing so was too great.

The Russiagate investigation is obviously the "insurance" Strzok is talking about. Nothing else makes sense. Does the text message tell us anything else? The short answer is it does, and it is important.
The proposal to launch the Russiagate investigation clearly ran into resistance from some members of the FBI. Clearly they were unhappy because they were worried that it would amount to improper interference in the election. Undoubtedly they were also worried that it might violate the Hatch Act, which forbids misuse of public office to engage in partisan political activity especially during an election.

That there were discussions within the FBI about the Hatch Act over the course of the summer of 2016 we know because concern about a possible violation of the Hatch Act was the reason former FBI Director James Comey gave for his refusal to sign the US intelligence community's 7th October 2016 statement which blamed Russia for meddling in the US election.

It was clearly in response to these concerns about the possible unlawfulness of the Russiagate investigation and its possible impropriety that Page who is a lawyer suggested that there was no need to launch the Russiagate investigation because Trump was certain to lose the election anyway.

The hardliners – and Strzok's text message clearly identifies Strzok as one of the hardliners – however overrode those objections. They insisted the Russiagate investigation had to be launched. They did so because the mere possibility of Trump winning the election, however remote, was too great a risk for them to accept.

As to why this was so, the answer is that Strzok and the other members of the FBI who supported him had by this point clearly convinced themselves that the claims that Donald Trump was connected to the Russians were true.

The key piece in the jigsaw is again the Trump Dossier. It is now known that Christopher Steele – the Trump Dossier's compiler – was in contact with the FBI in early July 2016, before publication of the DNC emails by Wikileaks on 22nd July 2016. The very first entry of the Trump Dossier dated 20th June 2016 and almost certainly seen by Strzok before Wikileaks published the DNC emails and therefore before the earliest possible date for the launch of the Russiagate investigation already claimed that the Russians had compromising material on Trump because of Trump's supposed orgy with Russian prostitutes in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow in 2013.

Later entries in the Trump Dossier dated 19th July 2016, 30th July 2016, 5th August 2016 and 10th August 2016, and one entry incorrectly dated 26th July 2015 but which can be clearly dated to July 2016, not only claimed that the Russians were meddling in the election on Donald Trump's behalf – purportedly on the direct orders from President Putin himself – but also claimed that Trump's campaign was actively colluding with the Russians in doing this. Some of these entries would almost certainly have been seen by Strzok before the Russiagate investigation was launched, and he had probably seen all of them before he texted Page on 15th August 2016.

It is now known that the FBI gave credence to the Trump Dossier in the summer of 2016 to the point where it used information obtained from the Trump Dossier to obtain FISA warrants, notably one authorising surveillance of Carter Page.

That fact alone is sufficient to explain why hardliners within the FBI like Strzok were insisting in the summer of 2016 that the Russiagate investigation had to be launched despite the doubts about its lawfulness and propriety expressed by some people within the FBI.

It was in order to arrive at a decision whether or not to launch the Russiagate investigation despite the doubts some were expressing about it that the meeting in McCabe's office was called, with the decision being to proceed as Strzok wanted despite the doubts.

All this seems to me obvious from the wording of Strzok's text, from its date, and from the surrounding circumstances.

There is one further possibility which is more speculative. It is now know that sometime in August 2016 the CIA forwarded to President Obama a report alleging that the Russians were meddling in the US election. All the facts show that this report was based on the Trump Dossier. Assuming that the FBI and the CIA were consulting each other and exchanging information about the Trump Dossier – as is highly likely – it is possible that the discussion in McCabe's office was also about the report the CIA was proposing to send to Obama, with some people within the FBI concerned that the Trump Dossier's unverified allegations were being used to compile a report for the President of the United States. Regardless of this second possibility, the Strzok text is key evidence because it shows that the FBI pressed ahead with the Russiagate investigation despite the objections of some of its members.

Should there ever be an investigation by a second Special Counsel of the FBI's conduct during the election, and should criminal charges ever be brought against its top officials for the things they did during the election, this may prove to be important. It would show that they pressed ahead and did things disregarding warnings that what they were proposing to do was wrong.

[Dec 20, 2017] Using disinformation to promote an agenda of shifting more costs onto workers to enhance profit margins. Isnt this what Paul Ryan means by A Better Way

Mar 14, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
Jerry Brown : March 12, 2017 at 10:26 PM , 2017 at 10:26 PM
Nice post at Econospeak. The Safeway Amendment Scam - EconoSpeak

Especially agree with the conclusion- "Using disinformation to promote an agenda of shifting more costs onto workers to enhance profit margins. Isn't this what Paul Ryan means by "A Better Way"?"

pgl -> Jerry Brown... , March 13, 2017 at 01:48 AM
Check out the latest from the disgusting Paul Ryan:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/paul-ryan-number-who-will-lose-coverage-up-to-people

He is gloating that we have more "choices" as he takes away any possible means for actually paying for our health care. This in a nutshell is the entire GOP approach. We are free to die.

Lee A. Arnold -> pgl... , March 13, 2017 at 04:41 AM
"Free to die, Pay to live!"
DrDick -> pgl... , March 13, 2017 at 07:33 AM
In my state, one company (BC/BS) controls 0ver 70% of the health insurance market and there are only two other even marginally significant players. Market based my ...

[Dec 19, 2017] Former FBI agent spreads deliberate disinformation about Russia actions during Presidential elections

Yet another "national security parasite". Watt intentionally lied about wiretapping
Notable quotes:
"... "When he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, former FBI agent Clint Watts described how Russians used armies of Twitter bots to spread fake news using accounts that seem to be Midwestern swing-voter Republicans. ..."
"... In an interview Monday with NPR's Kelly McEvers, Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, says the Russian misinformation campaign didn't stop with the election of President Trump. ..."
"... One example, he says, is Trump's claim that he was wiretapped at Trump Tower by the Obama administration. "When they do that, they'll then respond to the wiretapping claim with further conspiracy theories about that claim and that just amplifies the message in the ecosystem," Watts says. ..."
"... The White House has blamed Democrats for the allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. election, saying the theory is a way to shift the blame for their election loss. ..."
Apr 03, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

im1dc , April 03, 2017 at 04:50 PM

Putin paid Millions of Rubles to get his puppet into office and keep Hillary Clinton out

Do you really believe he will sit back and do nothing now that he's been discovered

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/03/522503844/how-russian-twitter-bots-pumped-out-fake-news-during-the-2016-election

"How Russian Twitter Bots Pumped Out Fake News During The 2016 Election"

Listen 4:17

'Heard on All Things Considered' by Gabe O'Connor & Avie Schneider...April 3, 2017...4:53 PM ET

"When he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, former FBI agent Clint Watts described how Russians used armies of Twitter bots to spread fake news using accounts that seem to be Midwestern swing-voter Republicans.

"So that way whenever you're trying to socially engineer them and convince them that the information is true, it's much more simple because you see somebody and they look exactly like you, even down to the pictures," Watts told the panel, which is investigating Russia's role in interfering in the U.S. elections.

In an interview Monday with NPR's Kelly McEvers, Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, says the Russian misinformation campaign didn't stop with the election of President Trump.

"If you went online today, you could see these accounts -- either bots or actual personas somewhere -- that are trying to connect with the administration. They might broadcast stories and then follow up with another tweet that tries to gain the president's attention, or they'll try and answer the tweets that the president puts out," Watts says.

Watts, a cybersecurity expert, says he's been tracking this sort of activity by the Russians for more than three years.

"It's a circular system. Sometimes the propaganda outlets themselves will put out false or manipulated stories. Other times, the president will go with a conspiracy."

One example, he says, is Trump's claim that he was wiretapped at Trump Tower by the Obama administration. "When they do that, they'll then respond to the wiretapping claim with further conspiracy theories about that claim and that just amplifies the message in the ecosystem," Watts says.

"Every time a conspiracy is floated from the administration, it provides every outlet around the world, in fact, an opportunity to amplify that conspiracy and to add more manipulated truths or falsehoods onto it."

Watts says the effort is being conducted by a "very diffuse network." It involves competing efforts "even amongst hackers between different parts of Russian intelligence and propagandists -- all with general guidelines about what to pursue, but doing it at different times and paces and rhythms."

The White House has blamed Democrats for the allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. election, saying the theory is a way to shift the blame for their election loss.

But Watts says "it's way bigger" than that. "What was being done by nation-states in the social media influence landscape was so much more significant than the other things that were being talked about," including the Islamic State's use of social media to recruit followers, he says."

[Dec 19, 2017] Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein Just Admitted Who Is Really Behind The Year's Biggest Scandal

If FBI paid money for Steele dossier that would be a big scandal that can bury Mueller and Comey...
Notable quotes:
"... Congressional Republicans have long been suspicious of the dossier and now that it was discovered who funded, now Republicans are questioning whether the Justice Department and FBI are involved in it as well. ..."
Dec 19, 2017 | www.dcstatesman.com

­ Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein refused to say on Wednesday in front of the House Judiciary Committee, whether the FBI paid for the infamous Trump dossier, reports The Daily Caller . He would neither confirm nor deny the FBI's involvement in the now-disproved dossier that started the whole Russian collusion investigation against President Trump.

Rosenstein, who was grilled by the House Judiciary Committee, suggested that he knew the answer to the question, which was posed by Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis.

"Did the FBI pay for the dossier?" DeSantis asked.

"I'm not in a position to answer that question," Rosenstein responded.

"Do you know the answer to the question?" the Republican DeSantis followed up.

"I believe I know the answer, but the Intelligence Committee is the appropriate committee " Rosenstein began.

DeSantis interjected to assert that the Judiciary panel has "every right to the information" about payments for the dossier.

­ The Russian dossier, which was written by British spy Christopher Steele and commissioned to do so by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee, has been the starting point to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian collusion in the 2016 election.

Congressional Republicans have long been suspicious of the dossier and now that it was discovered who funded, now Republicans are questioning whether the Justice Department and FBI are involved in it as well.

"'According to some reports published earlier this year, Steele and the FBI struck an informal agreement that he would be paid to continue his investigation into Trump's ties to Russia. It has been reported that Steele was never paid for his work, though the FBI and DOJ have not publicly disclosed those details,' reports The Daily Caller."

CNN had reported earlier this year that Steel was already compensated for some expenses from his work investigating Trump and trying to dig up any dirt he could on the president.

The Deputy Attorney General told the House Judiciary Committee that he saw no good cause to fire Mueller from conducting the investigation, but many Republicans believe the whole investigation is now wrapped up in too many overlapping conflicts of interest

[Dec 18, 2017] The Scary Void Inside Russia-gate by Stephen F. Cohen

Highly recommended!
"A looming, aggressive enemy (so portrayed) is needed to sustain the US's parasitic surveillance, "security", and "defense" ecosystems." Well said. National security parasites are so entrenched (and well fed by MIC) that any change of the US foreign policy is next to impossible. The only legitimate course is more wars and bombing.
Notable quotes:
"... This is unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous, potentially more so than even Joe McCarthy's search for "Communist" connections. It would suggest, for example, that scores of American corporations doing business in Russia today are engaged in criminal enterprise. ..."
"... To suggest that such contacts are in any way criminal is to slur hundreds of reputations and to leave U.S. policy-makers with advisers laden with ideology and no actual expertise. It is also to suggest that any quest for better relations with Russia, or détente, is somehow suspicious, illegitimate, or impossible, as expressed recently by Andrew Weiss in The Wall Street Journal and by The Washington Post , in an editorial . This is one reason why I have, in a previous commentary , argued that Russia-gate and its promoters have become the gravest threat to American national security. ..."
"... Russia-gate began sometime prior to June 2016, not after the presidential election in November, as is often said, as an anti-Trump political project. (Exactly why, how, and by whom remain unclear, and herein lies the real significance of the largely bogus "dossier" and the still murky role of top U.S. intel officials in the creation of that document.) ..."
"... As Greenwald points out, all of the now retracted stories, whether by print media or cable television, were zealous promotions of Russia-gate and virulently anti-Trump. They, too, are examples of Russia-gate without Russia. ..."
"... Tillerson may be the last man standing who represents the possibility of some kind of détente. ..."
"... Unfortunately, and I can't believe I'm going to concede this, but FOX News, regarding this one particular issue: the baloney of Russiagate, is probably the most accurate mainstream source out there right now. Despite everything else they get wrong, FOX News, pertaining to Russiagate, is generally (generally) accurate from the bits and pieces I've seen. ..."
"... I agree. It seems sort of like the Nazi regime with more advanced technology and more complete ability for the gestapo to exercise control or more aptly like the Soviet Union where people actually believe the regime's propaganda. ..."
"... The neocon perpetrators of the Russia-gate hoax will continue putting their own greed (for money and power) ahead of American national security. That's who they are and what they do. They conflate global domination with American national security because it benefits them to do so. Sure, they don't want a hot war with Russia because they are neither psychotic nor suicidal. But they are power-crazed: delusional to the extent they think they can prevent the Russian-American hostility provoked by their own machinations from spinning out of control. ..."
"... Reason #3: A looming, aggressive enemy (so portrayed) is needed to sustain the U.S.'s parasitic surveillance, "security", and "defense" ecosystems. ..."
"... Thanks, Professor Cohen, and I happen to think that this phony Russia hacking fabrication is breaking down, along with many other false narratives of the West. So many things are exposing the lies and there are truly good investigators who are weighing in, so I am hopeful that the neocons will be finally outed as hopelessly behind the times. ..."
Dec 15, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Despite a lack of evidence at its core – and the risk of nuclear conflagration as its by-product – Russia-gate remains the go-to accusation for "getting" the Trump administration, explains Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen.

The foundational accusation of Russia-gate was, and remains, charges that Russian President Putin ordered the hacking of Democratic National Committee e-mails and their public dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Kremlin in this "attack on American democracy."

As no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced after nearly a year and a half of media and government investigations, we are left with Russia-gate without Russia. (An apt formulation perhaps first coined in an e-mail exchange by Nation writer James Carden.) Special counsel Mueller has produced four indictments: against retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's short-lived national-security adviser, and George Papadopolous, a lowly and inconsequential Trump "adviser," for lying to the FBI; and against Paul Manafort and his partner Rick Gates for financial improprieties. None of these charges has anything to do with improper collusion with Russia, except for the wrongful insinuations against Flynn.

Instead, the several investigations, desperate to find actual evidence of collusion, have spread to "contacts with Russia" -- political, financial, social, etc. -- on the part of a growing number of people, often going back many years before anyone imagined Trump as a presidential candidate. The resulting implication is that these "contacts" were criminal or potentially so.

This is unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous, potentially more so than even Joe McCarthy's search for "Communist" connections. It would suggest, for example, that scores of American corporations doing business in Russia today are engaged in criminal enterprise.

More to the point, advisers to U.S. policy-makers and even media commentators on Russia must have many and various contacts with Russia if they are to understand anything about the dynamics of Kremlin policy-making. I myself, to take an individual example, was an adviser to two (unsuccessful) presidential campaigns, which considered my wide-ranging and longstanding "contacts" with Russia to be an important credential, as did the one sitting president whom I advised.

To suggest that such contacts are in any way criminal is to slur hundreds of reputations and to leave U.S. policy-makers with advisers laden with ideology and no actual expertise. It is also to suggest that any quest for better relations with Russia, or détente, is somehow suspicious, illegitimate, or impossible, as expressed recently by Andrew Weiss in The Wall Street Journal and by The Washington Post , in an editorial . This is one reason why I have, in a previous commentary , argued that Russia-gate and its promoters have become the gravest threat to American national security.

Russia-gate began sometime prior to June 2016, not after the presidential election in November, as is often said, as an anti-Trump political project. (Exactly why, how, and by whom remain unclear, and herein lies the real significance of the largely bogus "dossier" and the still murky role of top U.S. intel officials in the creation of that document.)

That said, the mainstream American media have been largely responsible for inflating, perpetuating, and sustaining the sham Russia-gate as the real political crisis it has become, arguably the greatest in modern American presidential and thus institutional political history. The media have done this by increasingly betraying their own professed standards of verified news reporting and balanced coverage, even resorting to tacit forms of censorship by systematically excluding dissenting reporting and opinions.

(For inventories of recent examples, see Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept and Joe Lauria at Consortiumnews . Anyone interested in exposures of such truly "fake news" should visit these two sites regularly, the latter the product of the inestimable veteran journalist Robert Parry.)

Still worse, this mainstream malpractice has spread to some alternative-media publications once prized for their journalistic standards, where expressed disdain for "evidence" and "proof" in favor of allegations without any actual facts can sometimes be found. Nor are these practices merely the ordinary occasional mishaps of professional journalism.

As Greenwald points out, all of the now retracted stories, whether by print media or cable television, were zealous promotions of Russia-gate and virulently anti-Trump. They, too, are examples of Russia-gate without Russia.

Flynn and the FBI

Leaving aside possible financial improprieties on the part of General Flynn, his persecution and subsequent prosecution is highly indicative. Flynn pled guilty to having lied to the FBI about his communications with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, on behalf of the incoming Trump administration, discussions that unavoidably included some references, however vague, to sanctions imposed on Russia by President Obama in December 2016, just before leaving office.

Those sanctions were highly unusual -- last-minute, unprecedented in their seizure of Russian property in the United States, and including a reckless veiled threat of unspecified cyber-attacks on Russia. They gave the impression that Obama wanted to make even more difficult Trump's professed goal of improving relations with Moscow.

Still more, Obama's specified reason was not Russian behavior in Ukraine or Syria, as is commonly thought, but Russia-gate -- that is, Putin's "attack on American democracy," which Obama's intel chiefs had evidently persuaded him was an entirely authentic allegation. (Or which Obama, who regarded Trump's victory over his designated successor, Hillary Clinton, as a personal rebuff, was eager to believe.)

But Flynn's discussions with the Russian ambassador -- as well as other Trump representatives' efforts to open "back-channel" communications with Moscow – were anything but a crime. As I pointed out in another commentary , there were so many precedents of such overtures on behalf of presidents-elect, it was considered a normal, even necessary practice, if only to ask Moscow not to make relations worse before the new president had a chance to review the relationship.

When Henry Kissinger did this on behalf of President-elect Nixon, his boss instructed him to keep the communication entirely confidential, not to inform any other members of the incoming administration. Presumably Flynn was similarly secretive, thereby misinforming Vice President Pence and finding himself trapped -- or possibly entrapped -- between loyalty to his president and an FBI agent. Flynn no doubt would have been especially guarded with a representative of the FBI, knowing as he did the role of Obama's Intel bosses in Russia-gate prior to the election and which had escalated after Trump's surprise victory.

In any event, to the extent that Flynn encouraged Moscow not to reply in kind immediately to Obama's highly provocative sanctions, he performed a service to U.S. national security, not a crime. And, assuming that Flynn was acting on the instructions of his president-elect, so did Trump. Still more, if Flynn "colluded" in any way, it was with Israel, not Russia , having been asked by that government to dissuade countries from voting for an impending anti-Israel U.N. resolution.

Removing Tillerson

Finally, and similarly, there is the ongoing effort by the political-media establishment to drive Secretary of State Rex Tillerson from office and replace him with a fully neocon, anti-Russian, anti-détente head of the State Department. Tillerson was an admirable appointee by Trump -- widely experienced in world affairs, a tested negotiator, a mature and practical-minded man.

Originally, his role as the CEO of Exxon Mobil who had negotiated and enacted an immensely profitable and strategically important energy-extraction deal with the Kremlin earned him the slur of being "Putin's pal." This preposterous allegation has since given way to charges that he is slowly restructuring, and trimming, the long bloated and mostly inept State Department, as indeed he should do. Numerous former diplomats closely associated with Hillary Clinton have raced to influential op-ed pages to denounce Tillerson's undermining of this purportedly glorious frontline institution of American national security. Many news reports, commentaries, and editorials have been in the same vein. But who can recall a major diplomatic triumph by the State Department or a Secretary of State in recent years?

The answer might be the Obama administration's multinational agreement with Iran to curb its nuclear-weapons potential, but that was due no less to Russia's president and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which provided essential guarantees to the sides involved. Forgotten, meanwhile, are the more than 50 career State Department officials who publicly protested Obama's rare attempt to cooperate with Moscow in Syria. Call it by what it was: the sabotaging of a president by his own State Department.

In this spirit, there are a flurry of leaked stories that Tillerson will soon resign or be ousted. Meanwhile, however, he carries on. The ever-looming menace of Russia-gate compels him to issue wildly exaggerated indictments of Russian behavior while, at the same time, calling for a "productive new relationship" with Moscow, in which he clearly believes. (And which, if left unencumbered, he might achieve.)

Evidently, Tillerson has established a "productive" working relationship with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, the two of them having just announced North Korea's readiness to engage in negotiations with the United States and other governments involved in the current crisis.

Tillerson's fate will tell us much about the number-one foreign-policy question confronting America: cooperation or escalating conflict with the other nuclear superpower, a détente-like diminishing of the new Cold War or the growing risks that it will become hot war. Politics and policy should never be over-personalized; larger factors are always involved. But in these unprecedented times, Tillerson may be the last man standing who represents the possibility of some kind of détente. Apart, that is, from President Trump himself, loathe him or not. Or to put the issue differently: Will Russia-gate continue to gravely endanger American national security?

Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University and a contributing editor of The Nation , where a version of this article first appeared.

Abe , December 15, 2017 at 1:49 pm

"Thanks to Flynn's indictment, we now know that the Israeli prime minister was able to transform the Trump administration into his own personal vehicle for undermining Obama's lone effort to hold Israel accountable at the UN. A clearer example of a foreign power colluding with an American political operation against a sitting president has seldom, if ever, been exposed in such glaring fashion.

"Kushner's deep ties to the Israeli right-wing and ethical breaches

"The day after Kushner was revealed as Flynn's taskmaster, a team of researchers from the Democratic Super PAC American Bridge found that the presidential son-in-law had failed to disclose his role as a co-director of his family's Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation during the years when his family's charity funded the Israeli enterprise of illegal settlements. The embarrassing omission barely scratched the surface of Kushner's decades long relationship with Israel's Likud-led government. [ ]

"A Clinton mega-donor defends Kushner's collusion

"So why isn't this angle of the Flynn indictment getting more attention? An easy explanation could be deduced from the stunning spectacle that unfolded this December 2 at the Brookings Institution, where the fresh-faced Kushner engaged in a 'keynote conversation' with Israeli-American oligarch Haim Saban. [ ]

""The spectacle of a top Democratic Party money man defending one of the Trump administration's most influential figures was clearly intended to establish a patina of bipartisan normalcy around Kushner's collusion with the Netanyahu government. Saban's effort to protect the presidential son-in-law was supplemented by an op-ed in the Jewish Daily Forward headlined, 'Jared Kushner Was Right To 'Collude' With Russia -- Because He Did It For Israel.'

"While the Israel lobby ran interference for Kushner, the favorite pundits of the liberal anti-Trump "Resistance" minimized the role of Israel in the Flynn saga. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who has devoted more content this year to Russia than to any other topic, appeared to entirely avoid the issue of Kushner's collusion with Israel.

"There is simply too much at stake for too many to allow any disruption in the preset narrative. From the journalist pack that followed the trail of Russiagate down a conspiracy infested rabbit hole to the Clintonites seeking excuses for their mind-boggling campaign failures to the Cold Warriors exploiting the panic over Russian meddling to drive an unprecedented arms build-up, the narrative must go on, regardless of the facts."

Michael Flynn's Indictment Exposes Trump Team's Collusion With Israel, Not Russia
By Max Blumenthal
https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/flynn-indictment-exposes-collusion-israel

Drew Hunkins , December 15, 2017 at 2:19 pm

Unfortunately, and I can't believe I'm going to concede this, but FOX News, regarding this one particular issue: the baloney of Russiagate, is probably the most accurate mainstream source out there right now. Despite everything else they get wrong, FOX News, pertaining to Russiagate, is generally (generally) accurate from the bits and pieces I've seen.

One quick example -- a few months ago the otherwise execrable Hannity actually had on his show the great Dennis Kucinich who railed against the deep state for attacking Trump b/c of his overtures toward peace with Moscow and how the deep state was using Russiagate to do it, etc. Kucinich was sensational. I doubt Maddow would ever have given him such a platform to voice the truth like Hannity did on this particular occasion.

Patrick Lucius , December 15, 2017 at 2:27 pm

I may have to take a look at Fox again–I bet you are right. Hannity as an arbiter of truth–oh my god

Drew Hunkins , December 15, 2017 at 3:35 pm

On this one particular issue, Hannity gets things right.

Rob , December 16, 2017 at 2:00 pm

If Hannity ever reports a story correctly, it's only because it coincides with his deeply partisan interests. Being truthful is something about which he cares little, if at all.

Skip Scott , December 15, 2017 at 3:05 pm

Yeah Drew-

For years I railed against Fox, but nowadays they seem to be the relatively sensible ones. Tucker Carlson is exceptionally bright, and I have no idea what got into Hannity. I used to loathe him to no end. Him giving Dennis Kucinich a chance to speak his mind is something I never would have imagined.

Drew Hunkins , December 15, 2017 at 3:36 pm

Isn't it something Mr. Scott?

Dave P. , December 15, 2017 at 11:34 pm

Drew and Skip Scott – Yes, I agree with you. I watched Dennis Kucinich too. Hannity and Carlson have been doing some very good reporting on these issues. It is amazing how the things have changed. Fox News was "No" for progressives to go to.

Annie , December 15, 2017 at 4:25 pm

Prior to Trump's presidency I would never watch Fox News, but on this issue,, they are a more accurate source of information then any other broadcasting media. Rachel Maddow does nothing but rave, as if she had her own personal agenda, and maybe she does, ousting Trump, and that a woman didn't win the White House. I too saw the interview with Kucinich, and indeed it was a very good one.

RamboDave , December 15, 2017 at 5:27 pm

Tucker Carlson, on Fox (right before Hannity), has had Glenn Greenwald on several times.

David G , December 16, 2017 at 9:08 am

That basically maps directly onto the fact that Russia is the one issue Trump is right on.

Patrick Lucius , December 15, 2017 at 2:20 pm

Great article. Has America gone off the deep end? I just watched the first ten minutes of an anti-Putin and anti-Russian Frontline on television two nights ago. I have never seen more blatant or shameless propaganda. Because my mom watches tv all day and I am taking care of her, I see the same slop, drivel, and gibberish parroted all day long on the major news outlets. Perhaps I should state that more professionally: I see the same shameless propaganda parroted daily by the mainstream news media And it occurs to me–these young news commentators are not part of a conspiracy, willfully lying–they actually believe the propaganda. We are in trouble. I think as a group we act much more like bees in a hive or monkeys in a troop than we do as rational beings, and I mean no disrespect to bees or monkeys.

exiled off mainstreet , December 15, 2017 at 2:56 pm

I agree. It seems sort of like the Nazi regime with more advanced technology and more complete ability for the gestapo to exercise control or more aptly like the Soviet Union where people actually believe the regime's propaganda.

Annie , December 15, 2017 at 4:35 pm

Personally I believe that many do know that there is nothing to the Russia-gate story, but go along to get along, and they are no different then politicians, who bow before the Israeli Lobby, or NRA, or corporate groups to get reelected, and maintain their standing in their party. Another way of putting it, is to say they are willing to prostitute themselves. I can't see myself doing that.

occupy on , December 16, 2017 at 12:36 am

I, too, saw this scurrilous 'documentary' – "Putin's Revenge" – and made a point of writing down the names of a good number of those commentators moving the narrative along. All of them are well-known active Zionists or children of American Zionists who've helped create and ardently protect the State of Israel. I wish I could remember now at least some of the commentors' names. I didn't see Frontline' "Putin's Revenge" on PBS. It was on a National Geographic channel that traditionally shows those anthropological 'documentaries' about "Ancient Alien Visitors," "Gods from Outer Space, etc .pleasant programs to fall to sleep by. 'Putin's Revenge', however, was grotesque in its downright lies – making me furiously wide awake until I could google info on those names.

alley cat , December 15, 2017 at 2:36 pm

"Or to put the issue differently: Will Russia-gate continue to gravely endanger American national security?"

The neocon perpetrators of the Russia-gate hoax will continue putting their own greed (for money and power) ahead of American national security. That's who they are and what they do. They conflate global domination with American national security because it benefits them to do so. Sure, they don't want a hot war with Russia because they are neither psychotic nor suicidal. But they are power-crazed: delusional to the extent they think they can prevent the Russian-American hostility provoked by their own machinations from spinning out of control.

exiled off mainstreet , December 15, 2017 at 2:54 pm

This is a great article by one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable commentators on Russia remaining active despite the ongoing dangerous propaganda storm. Those responsible for this storm are threatening our continued existence. Because of this depressing salient fact, the democratic party, which has been fully on board with this, has totally sacrificed its legitimacy and degenerated to a clear and present existential danger. Clear thinking people have to view it as such and take necessary action based upon that fact, which is serious in its implications, since it is difficult in the extreme to supplant an existing party in a two party system (which has degenerated into a two faction one party state some time ago) in light of the media propaganda, intelligence and police control exercised by this odious system.

Bill , December 15, 2017 at 3:11 pm

Really glad, Mr, Cohen, to see your article in Consortium. Your voice is always a wise one. Weekly listener.

Very important and accurate information, for the most part, in my view, though I have a few caveats.

Unfortunately for our perception of the 'goodness' of those in power, I tend to think the level of knowledge and intention of those who spread Russiagate are more cynical than you imagine.

When we read certain articles from hardline think-tanks and serious political commentary from those publications and outlets which sustain the current 'scandal' we see a surprising awareness of Russia's true intentions and nature. Sober, and reasonable. The problem is that this commentary is not what is used to persuade any element of the public toward a certain view on Russia. You instead see it within the establishment essentially talking amongst themselves.

The problem, as I see it, is that these people are fully aware of the truth, as well as Russia's intentions. They are just quite simply spinning vast lies to the contrary whenever they speak to, or in front of, the public. For two main reasons:

The remainder of this piece refers to #2.

Russia is an 'enemy' now, more than anything else, because, for whatever it's self-interested motivations, it is a loud, prominent, powerful voice actively and methodically criticizing and opposing US imperial hypocrisy, double-standards, and deception.

Russia is a fake enemy, talked about in a fake way, by fake people in an increasingly fake democracy. Respectfully, Mr. Cohen, I don't think ideology is the problem. I don't think those at the helm of US foreign policy have had an ideology in a long, long time. I think they have, with few exceptions, a 'prime directive': The retention and expansion of Oligarchic corporate power.

Nowadays, fearmongering over immigrant crime, terrorists, non-state cyber-criminals, or whatever else conjured to make the extremely safe-from-foreign-threats (To this day no war on our soil since the Civil War. Itself a domestic threat) American people feel afraid, and thus controllable and ignorant, is no longer working. Only a big fish like Russia can even hope to do the job. Plus that big fish is one of the factors 'sowing chaos' by giving a voice to anti-imperialists in the West to spread the truth of the government we actually live under.

In short, Russiagate, and it's accompanying digital censorship efforts, are a desperate attempt to rest control back over the American people and away from honest, rational truth.

Even shorter, our rulers underestimated the power of the internet.

Kind regards,
Bill

Lois Gagnon , December 15, 2017 at 8:57 pm

Thank you. That is a really truthful post. It really is all about maintaining imperial hegemony at all costs. Unfortunately, the cost could be the end of life on Earth. These weasels controlling the machinery of state from the darkness must be exposed as the treacherous criminals they are.

David G , December 16, 2017 at 9:22 am

Reason #3: A looming, aggressive enemy (so portrayed) is needed to sustain the U.S.'s parasitic surveillance, "security", and "defense" ecosystems.

Jessica K , December 15, 2017 at 3:27 pm

Thanks, Professor Cohen, and I happen to think that this phony Russia hacking fabrication is breaking down, along with many other false narratives of the West. So many things are exposing the lies and there are truly good investigators who are weighing in, so I am hopeful that the neocons will be finally outed as hopelessly behind the times.

And Twitter is helping because western media sources will not tell the truth and people are taking to it to push back. I agree that at this time Fox is more interested in the facts than MSNBC, and particularly Tucker Carlson. (The sex scandals, now another witch hunt, are showing what a fouled-up society America has become. It is feminist McCarthyism, sadly, and I am glad Tavis Smiley is fighting back.)

Yesterday I had a conversation with a loud mouth believer of the "Putin did it" fable and told him some details, that outright it was a fabrication, and someone nearby in the coffee shop actually joined to support the pushback with other facts. So, I am hopeful that people are waking up. And Nikki Haley has just been called by people on Twitter for her lies about Iran provocation in Yemen. Plus documents on NATO expansion after Gorbachev was assured would not happen, have just been revealed. I do think people are waking up.

Bill , December 15, 2017 at 3:30 pm

Jessica,

That's what it takes. The political battle of our times. Good on you. I think you're right. The beginnings of which seem to have motivated Russiagate in the first place. I did a longer post on this above. Please keep spreading sense. I'll do the same.

Best wishes,
Bill

RnM , December 15, 2017 at 9:25 pm

It's good to be optimistc, but let us not forget the long history (short by Old World standards) of the oligarchy of doing anything and everything to get what they want.

The present cock-up of Russia-gate (Geez, I hate using that MSM concocted jingo term) points, not to the oligarchs losing their groove, but to an incompetent but persistent bunch of Clinton/Obama synchophants. Their days in any kind of power are, thankfully, numbered. But the snakes are lurking in the bushes, as are the deeper parts of the deep state. It's the long game that they are in for.

Martin - Swedish citizen , December 15, 2017 at 6:37 pm

Thanks, Jessica,
A hopeful comment! Here, too, I sense at least some more dissent among us citizens with the prevailing lies.
When the bubble bursts, the boy has cried and everyone "realises" the emperor is naked, I wonder, will our governments, politicians and media survive? Everyone, practically, is complicit.

Jessica K , December 15, 2017 at 3:35 pm

Thanks, Bill, and I think we're at a profound crossroads in world history. I saw an interview on YouTube with young Americans who did not even know who won the Civil War nor why it was fought! We all must speak out with conviction and without anger.

Realist , December 15, 2017 at 3:44 pm

My parents always used to use the old argument to keep my thinking on track and avoid conforming to dangerous groupthink: "if everyone else decided to jump off the cliff, in the river or out the 10th floor window, would you just follow the crowd?" Professor Cohen is one of the rare little boys who either learned that lesson well or has always had strong innate instincts to avoid following the crowd or jumping on self-destructive bandwagons. Most of the readers of this site seem to have similar predilections and are among the very few Americans not being led by the Pied Pipers of all-encompassing self-destructive Russophobia. (Is there some common childhood experience or shared gene in our personal biographies that compel our rigorous adherence to the principles we all uphold?) As other posters have noted here, those few media personalities with a seeming immunity to the pathological groupthink now infecting most of America are indeed a very curious lot, with little else in the way of ideological conformity, but thank heavens for them for any restoration of mass sanity will surely have to originate from within their ranks, examples and leadership. I, for one, am pulling for Professor Cohen to be among those leading this country out of the wilderness of lock-step madness.

Bob Van Noy , December 15, 2017 at 3:47 pm

We remember an era before 11/22/1963

Joe Tedesky , December 15, 2017 at 4:30 pm

Realist I'm glad you brought up the readers on consortiumnews, and their not falling for this Russia-Gate nonsense. People posting comments here in support of 'no Russian interference' have been accused of being Trump supporters, but that was never the case. No, instead many here just saw through the fog of propaganda, and certainly saw this Russia-Gate idiocy as it being nothing more than an instigated coup. This defense of Trump could have been for any newly elected president, but the division between Hillary supporters, and Trump backers, has been the biggest obstacle to overcome, while attempting to explain your thought. I truly think that if the shoe had been on the other foot, that the many posters of comments here on consortiumnews would have been on Hillary's side, if it had been the same kind of coup that had been put in place. It's time to tell John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and Robert Mueller, to call Hillary and say, 'well at least we tried Madam Secretary', and then be done with it.

Dave P. , December 16, 2017 at 2:43 pm

Realist and Joe – I always enjoy reading your thoughtful comments. Those of us who have been reading professor Stephen Cohen's articles for more than four decades now , know that he is the foremost authority on Russia. Instead of being courted to give his valuable input into the relations with Russia, he and others like him are being vilified as Putin apologists. It is the sign of the times we live in now.

As many comments posters here on this site had noted, the Russia-Gate has been deliberately created to confront Russia at this time rather than later on. Russia is in the way for final push for World domination – the Neoliberal Globalization.

Nobody, in Washington or elsewhere in the Country seems to ask why and for whom they, The ruling Powers want to establish this World Empire at any cost – even at the risk of a nuclear war. This process of building an Empire has changed the country as I had seen it more than half a century ago.

NeoLiberal Globalization, building this World wide Empire during the last three or four decades had its real winners and losers. Lot of wealth has been created all over the World under neoliberal global economy.

The big time winners are top .01% and another about 10% are also in the winners category, and have accumulated lot of wealth. From all over the World; China, India . . . this top 10% class send their kids to the best universities in the West for professional education; Finance, High tech, Sciences, and other professions and they get the jobs all over in Silicon Valley, and big financial Institutions and other professional fields in U.S. , U.K., Australia Canada . . .

The losers are middle class in U.S. – whom Hillary called deplorables – especially in those once mighty Industrial States in the Midwest, and East. With my marriage here , I inherited lots of relatives more than forty five years ago, most of them in the Midwest. As somebody commented a few weeks ago on this site about these middle class people that their " Way of Life " has been destroyed. It is true. All these people voted for Trump. With the exception of two, all our relatives in the Midwest and elsewhere on my wife's side voted for Trump. They are good, hard working people. It is painful to look at those ruined and abandoned factories in those States and ruined lives of many of those Middle Class people. Globalization has been disastrous for the middle class people in U.S. It is a race to the bottom for those people.

Ask those relatives if they have ever read anything about Russia during 2016. Not one of them have ever read or listened to anything related to Russian media or other Russian source. They did not even know if anything like RT or Sputnik News ever existed. Most of them don't even know now. And it is true of the people we associate with here where we live. None of them have time to read anything let alone Russian Media. I came to know about RT during events in Ukraine in 2014, and about Sputnik News over a year ago when this Russia- Gate commotion began. And I had read lot of Russian literature in my young age.

As several articles on this website have pointed out those email leaks were an inside job. Russia-Gate is just a concocted scheme to bring down Trump. And to destabilize Russia – a hurdle to Globalization and West's domination.

Skip Scott , December 17, 2017 at 8:39 am

Dave P-

Yours is a very accurate portrayal of the heartland of America. I live in a very rural area of the southwest, and you describe reality there to a "T". They are much too busy trying to survive to dig too deeply into world affairs. Thank goodness at least they've got Tucker Carlson at Fox to contrast the propaganda spewers on the other networks. They know the latte sippers and their government has abandoned them, but they don't fully understand the PNAC empire's moves in pursuit of global domination, and many wind up in the military jousting at windmills.

Realist , December 17, 2017 at 4:46 pm

I totally concur, Dave. I'm 70 and well remember, as a little kid, as a teenager and as a young man, folks talking about a far-off ideal of world unity, wherein all people on earth would share in earth's bounty and have the same democratic rights. The UN was supposed to be one of the first steps in that general direction. However, nobody thought that the eventual outcome would be what the movement has transmogrified into today: neoliberal globalism in which a tiny fraction of the top 1% own and control everything, with the rest of us actually suffering a drastic drop in our standard of living and a blatant diminution of our political rights.

It's been fifty years since I lived in Chicago, and about 45 since I last lived in the Midwest, but I was born and raised there and well recognise everything you have said about the place and the people in your remark to be entirely correct. It's also true for most of the other regions of this country in which I have lived, but the "Rust Belt" has paid the price in spades to satiate the neoliberal globalist "free traders." (Remember when THAT catchphrase was first sold to the working classes by Slick Willie's DLC wing of the Democratic party? He and Al Gore basically ended up doubling the ranks of "Reagan Democrats" whether they intended to do so or not. And, Hillary was so delusional as to assume those people would be on her side!)

Dave P. , December 17, 2017 at 11:36 pm

Yes, Realist. That Slick Willie and Gore did the most damage to the working class than any other administration in the recent American history. And being progressive democrats, we worked hard for their election as volunteers registering voters. At that time Rolling Stone Magazine called them as Saviors after Reagan and Bush era of greed – as they called it. Clintons sold the Democratic Party to the Wall Street and to Neoliberal Globalization. Tony Blair did the same in U.K. to the Labor Party.

Then we put faith in Hopey changey Obama and worked for his election. And he turned out to be big fraud too. After his Libya intervention and then on to Syria, I finally got turned off from Democratic Party politics. My wife, and I had started with McGovern Campaign in 1972.

Talking about Chicago, I landed at O'Haire fifty two years ago during snowy Winter, with just a few hundred dollars in my pocket enough for one semester on my way to Graduate School. You can not do it these days. America was at it's best. Ann Arbor was a Republican town those days with very friendly people. Compared to Europe, and other cultures, I found Americans the least prejudiced people, very open to other cultures. The factories In Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana . . . were humming. Never on Earth, such a prosperous middle class on such a scale has ever been created; made of good, hard working people in those small and big towns. The workers were back bone of the Democratic Party. And every thing looked optimistic. I, and couple of my friends thought it can not get better than this on Earth.

And all this seems like a past history now. Life is still good but that stability and that optimism of 1960's is gone. I visited Wisconsin and Michigan last Spring and in Fall again this year. It is painful to look at those gigantic factories shut down and in ruins. I lived for a decade in Michigan. As I said in my comments above, the biggest loser in this NeoLiberal Globalization is American Middle Class.

Piotr Berman , December 15, 2017 at 4:13 pm

Jessica K: The sex scandals, now another witch hunt, are showing what a fouled-up society America has become.

One could say that there is nothing bad about a witch hunt, provided that it genuinely goes after evil witches. Perhaps the worst hitch hunt in my memory was directed at preschool teachers accused of sexual molestation and sometimes satanism. Probably we are not in this Animal Kingdom story (yet):

Denizens of AK see a hare running very fast and they ask "what happen?" Mr. hare answers "They are castrating camels!" "But you are a hare, not a camel!" "Try to prove that you are not a camel!".

Abe , December 15, 2017 at 5:02 pm

"In a dramatic development in the trial in Kiev of several Berkut police officers accused of shooting civilians in the Maidan demonstrations in February 2014, the defence has produced two Georgians who confirm that the murders were committed by foreign snipers, at least 50 of them, operating in teams. The two Georgians, Alexander Revazishvili and Koba Nergadze have agreed to testify [ ]

"This dramatic and explosive evidence was first brought to light by the Italian journalist Gian Micalessin on November 16 in an article in the Italian journal Il Giornale and is again brought to the world's attention by a lawyer with some courage picking up on that report and speaking with the witnesses himself. These witnesses stated to Gian Micalessin, even more explosively, that the American Army was directly involved in the murders.

"The clear objective of the Maidan massacre in Kiev on February 20, 2014 was to sow chaos and reap the fall of the democratically elected, pro-Russian Yanukovych government. People were slaughtered for no other reason than to destroy a government the NATO powers, especially the United States and Germany, wanted removed because of its opposition to NATO, the EU, and their hegemonic drive to open Ukraine and Russia to American and German economic expansion. In other words, it was about money and the making of money.

"The western media and leaders quickly blamed the Yanukovych government for the killings during the Maidan demonstrations, but more evidence has become available indicating that the massacre in Kiev of police and civilians – which led to the escalation of protests, leading to the overthrow of the Yanukovych government – was the work of snipers working on orders of government opponents and their NATO controllers using the protests as a cover for a coup.

"One of the snipers already admitted to this in February 2015, thereby confirming what had become common knowledge just a few days after the massacre in Kiev and in a secretly recorded telephone call, the Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet reported to the EU head of Foreign Policy, Catherine Ashton, in early March 2014, that there was widespread suspicion that "someone from the new coalition" in the Kiev government may have ordered the sniper murders. In February 2016, Maidan activist Ivan Bubenchik confessed that in the course of the massacre, he had shot Ukrainian police officers. Bubenchik confirmed this in a film that gained wide attention.

'Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, at the University of Ottawa, published a devastating paper on the Maidan killings setting out in extensive detail the conclusive evidence that it was a false flag operation and that members of the present Kiev regime, including Poroshenko himself were involved in the murders, not the government forces. [ ]

"In the November 16 article in the Italian journal Il Giornale, and repeated on Italian TV Canale 5, journalist Gian Micalessin revealed that 3 Georgians, all trained army snipers, and with links to Mikheil Saakashvili and Georgian security forces were ordered to travel to Kiev from Tbilisi during the Maidan events. It is two of these men that are now being called to testify in Kiev."

The Maidan Massacre: US Army Orders: Sow Chaos
By Christopher Black
https://journal-neo.org/2017/12/15/the-maidan-massacre-us-army-orders-sow-chaos/

Abe , December 15, 2017 at 5:12 pm

The pretext for the western-supported overthrow of Ukrainian President Yanukovych was the massacre of more than a hundred protestors in Kiev in February 2014, which Yanukovych allegedly ordered his forces to carry out. Doubts have been expressed about the evidence for this allegation, but they have been almost entirely ignored by the western media and politicians.

Ukrainian-Canadian professor Ivan Katchanovski has carried out a detailed study of the evidence of those events, including videos and radio intercepts made publicly available by pro-Maidan sources, and eye witness accounts. His findings point to the involvement of far-right militias in the massacre and a cover-up afterwards:

– The trajectories of many of the shots indicate that they were fired from buildings that were then occupied by Maidan forces.
– Many warnings were given by announcers on the Maidan stage about snipers firing from those buildings.
– Several leaders of the then opposition felt secure enough to give speeches on the Maidan around the time that gunmen in nearby buildings were shooting protestors dead, and those leaders were not targeted by the gunmen .
– Many of the protesters were shot with an outdated type of firearm that was not used by professional snipers but was available in Ukraine as a hunting weapon.
– Recordings of all live TV and Internet broadcasts of the massacre by five different TV channels were either removed from their websites immediately after the massacre or not made publicly available.
– Official results of ballistic, weapons, and medical examinations and other evidence collected during the investigations have not been made public, while crucial evidence, including bullets and weapons, has disappeared.
– No evidence has been given that links the then security forces' weapons to the killings of the protesters.
– No evidence has been given of orders to shoot unarmed protestors even though the new government claimed that Yanukovych issued those orders personally.
– So far the only three people have been charged with the massacre, one of whom has disappeared from house arrest.

http://www.academia.edu/8776021/The_Snipers_Massacre_on_the_Maidan_in_Ukraine

Bob Van Noy , December 15, 2017 at 6:16 pm

Thank you Abe that article could change everything

Martin - Swedish citizen , December 15, 2017 at 6:54 pm

Abe,
Thanks for advocating Dr Katchanovski! I have been reading some of his papers since a year or two and his work seems very thorough! He uses physical facts like trajectories of bullets to determine where shots originated.

Another expert in the field who knows Mr Katchanovski fully endorsed his academic work without any hesitation when I asked him recently. He is being published by publishers with the highest demands. His work can be found in academia.com or is it .org, login is free of charge.
His work deserves the attention of real journalists.

Martin - Swedish citizen , December 15, 2017 at 6:57 pm

Oh, sorry, I see u already mentioned academia.edu!
No harm repeating though.
And it is .edu. :)

Litchfield , December 15, 2017 at 9:51 pm

Ditto with the airliner shootdown.
Russia is accused and evidence is destroyed/suppressed.
The pattern is quite clear. Russiagate is merely an extension of the same pattern.
Remember those intelligence tests that consist of presenting a series of numbers, and the test taker has to figure out what the next number in the pattern is . . .
So, the Russiagate thing is merely the next item that continues the pattern of Maidan, plane shootdown and cover-up, shootdown of plane in Sinai, etc. etc. etc.
I think the deep state REALLY went apoplectic when Snowden escaped to Russia.

They will have their revenged, at any price, to the USA, to Russia, to the world. These are madmen.

Joe Tedesky , December 16, 2017 at 12:32 am

It's prove Abe that 'only if you live long enough' applies to learning these newly uncovered facts regarding the Maiden Square riots. Let's hold out hope that the truth to MH17 comes out soon. Another thing, how can these sanctions against Russia stay in place while everything known as a narrative to that event comes unraveled.

Marko , December 15, 2017 at 5:31 pm

That's a good article , worth reading in its entirety. Thanks.

occupy on , December 16, 2017 at 1:23 am

Abe, thank you so much for this information. US fingerprints are all over Ukraine's sickening economic 'reforms', too! Have you read the House Ukraine Freedom Support Act – passed by both houses in the middle of the night Dec. 2014? I have. Wade through until nearly the end where it gives President Obama #1. the power to work toward US corporations exploring and developing Ukraine's natural resources (including fracking) once 'reforms' have been put in place (privatization); #2. the power to ask the World Bank to extend special loans for US corporations to develop those natural resources; #3. the power to install 'defensive' missile sites all along Russia's western borders; #4. the power to free US NGO's in Russia from their previously non-partisan restraints and allow them to work with anti-Putin political groups.

I urge you to google Dennis Kucinich/Ron Paul/Ukraine Freedom Support Act -2014. You won't believe how that bill got through the House of Representatives and Senate. And you'll have to laugh when you hear the word "democracy" in any context with "the USA".

Annie , December 15, 2017 at 6:48 pm

I also see the sexual allegations made against Trump, as another opportunity to oust him from his presidency. I in no way condone such behavior, but it's disturbing to think the main motivation driving this is another means of trying to oust him from his presidency. I don't believe, as these women claim, that they felt "left out", in the recent outings of men who have misused their positions of power to exploit women sexually.

Litchfield , December 15, 2017 at 9:58 pm

Yep, the Weinstein thing is being trumpeted and amplified to the extent that it synergizes wtih attempts to oust Trump. It is handy to the deep state. Trump qua political figure is being tarred with the Weinstein brush. That is the main reason we are seeing such a heavy dose of stories on male bad behavior. We would not be seeing this if Hillary were in power. Just a few stories but not full-court press. Because too many of these bad actors are actually in the Hillary camp. Like, most of Hollywood. The story wouldn't help her, politically, if she were in power. It only helps politically to drag down Trump. Before the Weinstein thing came along, we arleady had teh golden showers fairy tale. In fact it would not surprise me at all if Rose McGowan had some kind of political support and encouragement to "go public."
this is no way means that I think this kind of thing is OK. But, things are not straightforward in our world. It is a political as well as a "moral" or lifestyle story. One of the political targets is Trump. Notice that the heads of studios who knew all about this behavior and did nothing are not being forced to step down. Let's check out their political donations . . .

Joe Tedesky , December 16, 2017 at 12:44 am

What if the 'Sexual Predator Purge' stories along with the 'Get Trump Out of Office' campaign were but two stories colliding into each other? I mean a reporter in our TMZ world we live in would need paid a handsome sum to continually stay quiet over a Harvey Weinstein kind of scoop, so eventually these scandals had to come out. And then there's hateable loud mouth the Donald, who must be stopped by any means. Put the two together, and hey with how all these big shot perv's are going down, why not corral Trump and force him to resign. It's even cheaper than impeachment.

So the conniving once again craft together a piece of fiction, mixed in with some reality, and take the American conscience off into another realm of fantasy. Hate can get anybody carted off to the guillotine, if the timings right.

Joe Tedesky , December 16, 2017 at 12:55 am

Andrew Bacevich mentions the Weinstein scandal, and then goes on to suggest what the conversation should be.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48429.htm

Litchfield , December 16, 2017 at 9:12 am

Bacevich is fine as far as he goes
But he never quite "turns the corner" himself in taking the story as far as it needs to be taken and laying out the conclusions that the public needs to grasp.

David G , December 16, 2017 at 9:32 am

Yes! That! Thank you, Litchfield.

Bacevich is knowledgeable and worth reading. But he never, afaik, ventures to look deeply enough into the imperial heart of darkness – "turn the corner", as you say.

Leslie F. , December 15, 2017 at 7:11 pm

So the investigation isn't really about Russia. It is about corruption, money laundering, tax evasion, etc. All worthy of investigation. Not to mention the conspiracy to kidnap the Turkish cleric and collusion with Israel This investigation should not be shut down because the deep state and the press are in a conspiracy to blame it all on Russia. It is up to you guys in the press to convince your colleagues to call it what it really is, and expose those members who continue to misrepresent reality. The press, as a whole, has dropped the ball in a big way on this, but that is not Mueller's responsibility. The 4th estate is a mess and you should be trying to figure out how to clean it up without violating the constitution.

Annie , December 15, 2017 at 7:58 pm

This is one of the reasons I no longer support Democracy Now. As Mr. Cohen said, " worse, this mainstream malpractice has spread to some alternative-media publications once prized for their journalistic standards, "

God, help us, everyone including mental health professionals have no sense of professionalism, but they sure know how to make a buck, and try to undo a presidency.

"There are Thousands of Us": Mental Health Professionals Warn of Trump's Increasing Instability

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/12/8/there_are_thousands_of_us_mental

Litchfield , December 15, 2017 at 10:00 pm

Ditto, The Nation. See my post.

Annie , December 15, 2017 at 11:22 pm

I read your post, and of course I agree. Some of the allegations are so minor, as he hugged me and gave me a kiss on my mouth. He touched my breast. I was in the dressing room when he came in unannounced, and my hair was in curlers, and I was only wearing a robe, but I was nude underneath. Of course some were more disconcerting then those I mentioned, but all claim to be traumatized. I have no doubt their agenda is to bring him down and the whole thing has been orchestrated to do just that. Where is all the concern, and coverage of rape in this country where the estimates go from 300,000 to over a million women raped each year? Where are the stories about sexual trafficking of children, or the children who are sexually abused in their own homes? I've never seen coverage on these issues like what is happening now. That is another reason I find this whole thing appalling. Not to mention using sexual harassment as a political tool to bring down a president.

David G , December 16, 2017 at 9:41 am

So many examples of this. There's an alternative newspaper comic I used to like, "Tom the Dancing Bug" – smart, subversive, and "progressive". But the writer has completely bought into Scary Putin/Puppet Trump. It's depressing.

BobH , December 15, 2017 at 8:33 pm

"unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous" sums it up nicely. It was also good to have Professor Cohen's endorsement of this website's courageous initiatives in combatting the Russia-gate farce.

Bob Van Noy , December 16, 2017 at 11:15 am

I'll happily second that thought BobH. And thanks

Litchfield , December 15, 2017 at 9:29 pm

Thank god Consortium News keeps up the pressure on the Russia-gate scam.
And glad to see Stephen Cohen published here.
Readers of this site need to keep reminding themselve of the basic background on this -- at least, I do -- in case opportunities comes along to deflate others' credulousness.

One question for Stephen Cohen:
Your wife is the editor of The Nation.
What has The Nation done to stop the madness?
Not enough. What's the story?
In fact, during the campaign and post-election, The Nation shamefully lent itself to the craziness on the left that sought to devalidate not only the results of the election but Trump himself qua human being. Nothing has been too far below the belt for Nation editors and writers to strike. I have had the ongoing impression that The Nation's editorial board really cannot see below the surface on any of this and have driven a very superficial anti-Trump, "resist" narrative dangerous in its implications. I think I have seen just one story, by a Patrick someone, that seriously questioned the russia-gate narrative. The Nation has fallen right in to the trap of "I hate Trump so much and am so freaked out by his election that I will make common cause with any one and any forces in our polity that will get rid of him somehow." The nation seems too scared of facing head on the reality of deep state actors in the USA. Or is too wedded to its version of reality to see what has become incraseingly clear to growing numbers of Americans.
As many an intelligent and more knowledgeable than I person has said: There is plenty to decry about Trump. But worse is the actions taken in the name of ridding the country of him and his presidency.
Because of this consistent cluelessness I have canceled all gift subscriptions to The Nation. I'll pay for my own sub, to see where this magazine goes, but others will have to pay their own way with The Nation if they so choose.
So, please clean up at home and get the act together on what is left of the left.
First.

Herman , December 15, 2017 at 9:32 pm

Thought the acronym PEPs was clever, Progressives Except for Palestine. Now it has morphed into PEPIRs pronounced Peppers, Progressives Except for Palestine, Iran and Russia. Actually could be PEPIRS adding Syria. If we added Iraq it could be PIEPIRS or Peepers. Actually, I have little regard for such people whose aims include killing and maiming for land and money.

Professor Cohen's credentials are very impressive and his voice and pen are badly needed. People like him are precious resources for America and the world.

Herman , December 16, 2017 at 11:08 am

PIEPIRS is incorrect with the I before the E making Pipers. So we have PEPs, Peppers and Pipers. Please excuse the frivolous comments but it feels good to try to expose their hypocrisy in any way you can, that is of the Peps, Peppers and Pipers.

Gregory Herr , December 15, 2017 at 9:43 pm

What has really been astonishing to me -- beyond a lack of evidence for all the "Russia-gate" allegations–is the utterly preposterous nature of the narrative in the first place. Robert Parry has addressed this, but the voice of Stephen Cohen–with the perspective of specialized scholarship and experience vis-a-vis Russia–is a welcome voice indeed.

David G , December 16, 2017 at 9:55 am

The NY Times printed an allegedly explanatory graphic a couple of days ago showing the Trump/Russia "scandal" as a basically a proliferating root system descending from the central "collusion" premise, with the roots and rootlets branching down to encompass all the disjointed facts (and "facts") and allegations that have appeared in the media.

The graphic was unintentionally revealing of the phoniness of the whole business: instead of showing numerous observations leading to a deeper truth, it accurately depicted "Russia-gate" as a pre-existing (fact-free) conceit that has chaotically complexified to accommodate random developments. That's the definition of a weak and useless theory!

Gregory Herr , December 16, 2017 at 4:37 pm

It seems to that as a representative of the incoming Administration's foreign policy team Flynn was just doing his job speaking with the Russian ambassador about the sudden and striking maneuvers of Obama during the transition. And in trying to defuse potential fallout and escalation due to those sanctions he was doing his job well. Was it not perfectly legal and well within the parameters of his duties to establish some baselines of discussion with counterparts?
Flynn's expression of thoughts on policy to counterparts were, to my mind, subject to the approval of the head of the incoming Administration -- namely Trump, and Trump only.

By the time the FBI questioned Flynn, he surely must have had an idea his conversation with the Ambassador had been under surveillance. What was the "lie"? Was he forgetful of a detail and just caught in a nitpicking technicality? Or did he deliberately manufacture a falsehood? When he gets past his legal entanglement, I sure hope he sits down to a candid interview. I'd like him to demystify me about all this.

I like your phraseology David this nonsense has been chaotically complexified to accommodate random developments!

David G , December 16, 2017 at 6:46 pm

Thanks, Gregory Herr. In your earlier comment that I replied to, you reference "the utterly preposterous nature of the narrative". That's not bad phraseology either.

And it also gets to something I've been thinking all along: I'd like to hear a "Russia-gate" proponent, such as an MSNBC host, actually supply what they consider a plausible narrative that fits all these breathless Trump/Russia "scoops".

I'm not demanding they prove anything, but just want to hear a story that makes sense. Because it seems to me that all the little developments they rush toward with their hummingbird attention spans don't fit together, *even if you concede all the dubious and debatable "facts"*.

dhinds , December 16, 2017 at 7:28 am

An important interview, for anyone that wants to understand Russia, today.

https://youtu.be/E_WPk6Rxx00

Megyn Kelly Interview Vladimir Putin

June, 2017

Damn good Interview (on the part of Putin – He said what was needed to be said. including "well, this is just more nonsense Have you lost your mind over there, or something)? He then continued to wrap it up, in a reasonable and and diplomatic manner.

Effectively, the USA continues locked into denial, refusing to accept responsibility for it's own current state of affairs. (The mass delusion is so thick you could eat it with a spoon, if it wasn't so putrid).

Warmongering, terrorist and refugee creating Regime Change and mass assassinations (with neither congressional oversight nor due process), arms and influence peddling profiteering, the creation of a mass surveillance society and militarized police state that kills minorities, the homeless and poor with impunity, mass incarceration in private for profit prisons, increasingly gross inequality and the excessive cost of health care and education; show the USA to be a society adrift and devoid of fundamental values. (And that's me talking, not Vladimir Putin)

The Clintons, Bush's and their supporters are to blame and should be held accountable, but mainly a new course for society must be charted and neither of the two corrupt major political parties is capable of that at this time.

A new coalition is called for.

James , December 16, 2017 at 10:13 am

Thank you Mr. Cohen for your ever insightful and reasoned commentary on this disturbing trend.

Clif , December 16, 2017 at 5:04 pm

Yes, thank you Dr. Cohen.

The lack of scrutiny is alarming. I'd like to offer Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan as possible figures who are working the lines and should be drawn into the light.

rosemerry , December 16, 2017 at 5:53 pm

Professor Cohen is one of the few who really knows about Russia, so of course so any of the Fawning Corporate Media (to quote Ray McGovern) denigrate his work. Even in GWBush's time he often explained "the Cold War is over", and Obama's intemperate rush to expel diplomats and push ahead the Russophobia after Trump's election had no basis in fact and just encouraged the Hillary-Dems and neocons to continue the unjustified destruction of the one aspect of Trump's "plan" that would have benefited the USA and peace.

Bill , December 17, 2017 at 12:03 pm

Do you really think that Obama was misled by others? I don't believe it. Obama and Hillary are the origin of the fabrications. Will anyone hold their feet to the fire?

Jerry Alatalo , December 17, 2017 at 1:56 pm

"It's the state-sponsorship of terrorism, stupid." The largest-scale, ongoing, organized war criminal operation in the history of the world has murdered millions.

Jessica K , December 17, 2017 at 9:10 pm

Vox has an article "The Left Shouldn't Make Peace With Neocons -- Even to Defeat Trump", by Robert Wright. Bill Kristol of American Conservative and many other neocons including Robert Kagan have dual US-Israel citizenship, and they push the MICC toward war. They'll be pushing for war with Iran and maybe Russia.

Tim , December 18, 2017 at 10:13 am

Sadly, quite a concise, clear picture of the muddy waters called Russia-gate, Intel's baby, and the faint possibilities of Tillerson and Lavrov holding fast against sabotage. Let's hope against all hope.

[Dec 18, 2017] Kellyanne Conway Says Fix Was In Against Trump In Fox News Interview That Alleged FBI Texts Evidence Of Coup

Notable quotes:
"... Watters' World, ..."
Dec 18, 2017 | www.yahoo.com

Conway appeared on Jesse Watters program, Watters' World, to talk about the newly revealed content of text messages sent between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

When asked what she thought they meant when they said "they need to protect America from Trump and need to have an insurance policy against his presidency," Conway tore into the investigation's credibility.

Trending: Trump and Putin Keep Calling Each Other for Praise, Discuss North Korea and Terrorism

"The fix was in against Donald Trump from the beginning, and they were pro-Hillary. We understand that people have political views but they are expressing theirs with such animus and such venom towards the now president of the United States they can't possibly be seen as objective or transparent or even-handed or fair," she said.

As she spoke, the banner below Conway and Watters screamed "A COUP IN AMERICA?"

Watters proceeded to ask "how dangerous" Conway thought it was that people were "plotting what appears to be some sort of subversion campaign" against Trump.

"It's toxic, it's lethal, and it may be fatal to the continuation of people arguing that that matter is since behind us, he won he's the president, and the Mueller investigation is something separate," she answered.

Conway then slammed critics for defending the integrity of the probe by alleging that Trump is against the FBI, repeating the claim that he isn't under investigation, "we're told."

Released on Tuesday, Strzok and Page's messages referred to Trump as an "idiot" and "douche. At one point, Strzok told Page he was considering "an insurance policy" if Trump were elected. Page had also told Strzok that maybe he was meant to "protect the country from that menace," according to records reviewed by Politico.

Watters assessed the texts as evidence of a coup, or sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from the government, in America.

"The investigation into Donald Trump's campaign has been crooked from the jump. But the scary part is we may now have proof the investigation was weaponized to destroy his presidency for partisan political purposes and to disenfranchise millions of American voters. Now, if that's true, we have a coup on our hands in America," he said.

[Dec 18, 2017] Russia-Gate Is State-Sponsored Paranoia by Gilbert Doctorow

It's pretty interesting fact: "Even today more than half of the US Senators do not possess passports, meaning they have never been abroad, barring possible trips to Canada using their driver's licenses as ID."
While you can't exclude that Russia favored Trump over Clinton and might be provided some token of support, you can't compare Russia and Israel as for influence on the US domestic and foreign policy. And GB also have a say and connections (GB supported Hillary and MI6 probably used dirty methods). KSA provided money to Hillary. Still there is multiple investigations of Russia influence and none for those two players. That makes the current Russiagate current witch hunt is really scary.
The main theme of American political life right now is McCarthyism and anti-Russian hysteria
Notable quotes:
"... The American public is now experiencing mass paranoia that is called Russia-gate. Obnoxious and dangerous as this officially encouraged madness may be, it is, alas, nothing new. As from 9/11, the same kind of group hypnosis was administered from the Nation's Capital on the body politic to serve the then agenda of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, turning back civil liberties that had accrued over generations without so much as a whimper from Congress, our political elites and the country at large. ..."
"... Foreign policy issues are instrumentalized for domestic political objectives. In 2001 it was the threat of Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world attacking the American homeland. Today it is the alleged manipulation of our open political system by our enemies in the Kremlin. ..."
"... There is in the United States a significant minority of journalists and experts who have been setting out the facts on why the Russia-gate story is deeply flawed if not a fabrication from the get-go. In this small but authoritative and responsible field, Consortium News stands out for its courage and dogged fact-checking and logic-checks. Others on the side of the angels include TruthDig.com and Antiwar.com . ..."
"... Perhaps the most significant challenge to the official US intelligence story of Russian hacking released on January 6, 2017 was the forensic evidence assembled by a group of former intelligence officers with relevant technical expertise known as VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity). Their work, arguing that the attack on the DNC computers was an inside job by someone with access to the hardware rather than a remote operation by persons outside the Democratic Party hierarchy and possibly outside the United States, was published in Consortium News ("Intel Vets Challenge 'Russia Hack' Evidence") on July 24, 2017. ..."
"... The final word on Russia's electoral preferences during the October 20 show was given by the moderator, Vladimir Soloviev: "There can be no illusions. Both Trump and Clinton have a very bad attitude to Russia. What Trump said about us and Syria was no compliment at all. The main theme of American political life right now is McCarthyism and anti-Russian hysteria." ..."
"... "America is a very complex country. It does not pay to demonize it. We have to understand precisely what we like and do not like. On this planet there is no way to avoid them. Whoever becomes president of the USA, the nuclear parity forces us to negotiate and reach agreement." ..."
"... "The US has opened its doors to the most intelligent people of the world, made it attractive for them. Of course, this builds their exceptionalism. All directors, engineers, composers head there. Our problem is that we got rid of our tsar, our commissars but people are still hired hands. The top people go to the States because the pay is higher." ..."
"... How are we to understand the discrepancy between the very low marks the panelists gave the US presidential race and their favorable marks for the US as an economic and military powerhouse. It appears to result from their understanding that there is a disconnect between Washington, the presidency and what makes the economy turn over. The panelists concluded that the USA has a political leadership at the national level that is unworthy and inappropriate to its position in the world. On this point, I expect that many American readers of this essay will concur. ..."
"... Even today more than half of the US Senators do not possess passports, meaning they have never been abroad, barring possible trips to Canada using their driver's licenses as ID. ..."
"... And for those Americans who do travel abroad, the world outside US borders is all too often just an object of prestige tourism, a divertissement, where the lives of local people, their concerns and their interests do not exist on the same high plateau as American lives, concerns and interests. It is not that we are all Ugly Americans, but we are too well insulated from the travails of others and too puffed up with our own exceptionalism. ..."
"... It is not surprising that in the US foreign policy is not a self-standing intellectual pursuit on a chessboard of its own but is strictly a subset of domestic policy calculations, and in particular of partisan electoral considerations. ..."
"... As regards the Russian Federation, the ongoing hysteria over Russia-gate in particular, and over the perceived threat Russia poses to US national interests in general, risks tilting the world into nuclear war. ..."
"... JFK murder was about replacing the president elected by the people. Russia-gate has the same goal. ..."
"... As shown in this article, the American media has a long track record of misreporting key news items: ..."
"... The current cycle of fake news about Russia is definitely not a new phenomenon in the United States. ..."
"... Can someone tell the big fat cowards exercising around North Korea to please shut the hell up? Cowards make a lot of noise. When Libya was invaded there were no exercises, when Iraq was invaded there were no exercises...... when Vietnam was invaded there were no exercises.... ..."
"... It is obvious to the world that the fat cowards cannot attack a nuclear armed country. They are too yellow bellied to do anything but beat their chest like some stupid gorilla in an African jungle ..."
"... All the while the real diplomacy is going on between South Korea and China with North Korea paying close attention, I am sure. The Russian / Chinese proposal of a rail system from South Korea through North Korea and into China connecting to the connection grid of all of Asia is a far greater prospect for the peace initiative than the saber rattling presently outwardly being displayed. ..."
"... They keep raising the ante, and the North Koreans keep calling their bluff. They are made to look ridiculous as they don't have a winnable hand and the North Koreans know it. ..."
"... "American media simply were not interested in knowing what Russians were thinking since that might get in the way of their construction of what Russians should be thinking". ..."
"... Reminds me of the classic American boss's remark: "Any time I want your opinion, I'll tell you it". ..."
"... This is actually quite a neat and elegant example of the kind of deceptive language routinely used by politicians and the media. It is, of course, entirely true that no conclusive proof has surfaced. Indeed, that must follow from the equally true and indisputable fact that no proof of any kind has surfaced. Actually, nothing even vaguely resembling proof has surfaced. There is no evidence at all - not the slightest scrap. ..."
"... But by slipping in that little adjective "conclusive" the journalist manages to convey quite a strong impression that there is proof - only not quite conclusive proof. ..."
"... It is just as dishonest and cynical as Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign remark, "I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience". ..."
"... Russiangate is concocted BS, to keep the ignorant American sheep , from understanding Israel picked the "president of the USA". ..."
"... I think at times the CIA is actually assisting the Russian security services with terror operations. I realize it doesn't make sense with Langley assisting ISIS in Syria, but that's the world we appear to have: selective cooperation. ..."
"... After Uranium One, it would make sense to assume Russia would have preferred Hitlery in the White House ..."
"... Of course they also know Hitlery is a massive warmongering Nazi terrorist, but then again, looks like Trump doesn't differ very much from her on that. ..."
"... Funny how the CIA has better intel on terrorism in Russia than the Russians do, even stranger than the RF leadership doesn't seem to question the situation what so ever. ..."
"... Got to hand it to the Americans, a couple of months ago Putin joked about RF "cells" in the USA and now the CIA hands the RF a real cell all ready to go murder some Russians. ..."
"... "German media reported on Saturday that BND covertly provided a number of journalists with information containing criticism of Russia before the data were disclosed by the agency." ..."
Dec 18, 2017 | russia-insider.com

"The two (Trump and Clinton) cannot greet one another on stage, cannot say goodbye to one another at the end. They barely can get out the texts that have been prepared for them by their respective staffs. Repeating on stage what one may have said in the locker room."

"Billions of people around the world conclude with one word: Disgrace!"

- Vladimir Zhirinovsky - prominent Russian politician, leader of a major party in parliament.

The American public is now experiencing mass paranoia that is called Russia-gate. Obnoxious and dangerous as this officially encouraged madness may be, it is, alas, nothing new. As from 9/11, the same kind of group hypnosis was administered from the Nation's Capital on the body politic to serve the then agenda of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, turning back civil liberties that had accrued over generations without so much as a whimper from Congress, our political elites and the country at large.

This time the generalized paranoia started under the nominally left of center administration of Barack Obama in the closing months of his presidency. It has been fanned ever since by the centrists in both Democratic and Republican parties who want to either remove from office or politically cripple Donald Trump and his administration, that is to say, to overturn the results at the ballot box on November 8, 2016.

Foreign policy issues are instrumentalized for domestic political objectives. In 2001 it was the threat of Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world attacking the American homeland. Today it is the alleged manipulation of our open political system by our enemies in the Kremlin.

Americans are wont to forget that there is a world outside the borders of the USA and that others follow closely what is said and written in our media, especially by our political leadership and policy elites. They forget or do not care how the accusations and threats we direct at other countries in our domestic political squabbling, and still more the sanctions we impose on our ever changing list of authoritarians and other real or imagined enemies abroad might be interpreted there and what preparations or actions might be taken by those same enemies in self-defense, threatening not merely American interests but America's physical survival.

In no case is this more relevant than with respect to Russia, which, I remind readers, is the only country on earth capable of turning the entire Continental United States into ashes within a day. In point of fact, if Russia has prepared itself for war, as the latest issue of Newsweek magazine tells us, we have no one but our political leadership to blame for that state of affairs. They are tone deaf to what is said in Russia. We have no concern for Russian national interests and "red lines" as the Russians themselves define them. Our Senators and Congressmen listen only to what our home grown pundits and academics think the Russian interests should be if they are to fit in a world run by us. That is why the Senate can vote 98-2 in favor of making the sanctions against Russia laid down by executive order of Barack Obama into sanctions under federal legislation as happened this past summer.

There is in the United States a significant minority of journalists and experts who have been setting out the facts on why the Russia-gate story is deeply flawed if not a fabrication from the get-go. In this small but authoritative and responsible field, Consortium News stands out for its courage and dogged fact-checking and logic-checks. Others on the side of the angels include TruthDig.com and Antiwar.com .

The Russia-gate story has permutated over time as one or another element of the investigation into Donald Trump's alleged collusion with the Kremlin has become more or less promising. But the core issue has always been the allegation of Russian hacking of DNC computers on July 5, 2016 and the hand-over of thousands of compromising documents to Wikileaks for the purpose of discrediting putative Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and throwing the election to Donald Trump, who had at that time nearly clinched the Republican nomination.

Perhaps the most significant challenge to the official US intelligence story of Russian hacking released on January 6, 2017 was the forensic evidence assembled by a group of former intelligence officers with relevant technical expertise known as VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity). Their work, arguing that the attack on the DNC computers was an inside job by someone with access to the hardware rather than a remote operation by persons outside the Democratic Party hierarchy and possibly outside the United States, was published in Consortium News ("Intel Vets Challenge 'Russia Hack' Evidence") on July 24, 2017.

The VIPS material was largely ignored by mainstream media, as might be expected. An editorial entitled "The unchecked threat from Russia" published by The Washington Post yesterday is a prime example of how our media bosses continue to whip up public fury against collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin even when, by their own admission, "no conclusive proof has surfaced."

The VIPS piece last July was based on the laws of physics, demonstrating that speed limitations on transfer of data over the internet at the time when the crime is alleged to have taken place rendered impossible the CIA, NSA and FBI scenario of Russian hacking In what follows, I will introduce a very different type of evidence challenging the official US intelligence story of Russian hacking and meddling in general, what I would call circumstantial evidence that goes to the core issue of what the Kremlin really wanted. Let us consider whether Mr. Putin had a motive to put his thumb on the scales in the American presidential election.

In the U.S., that is a slam-dunk question. But that comes from our talking to ourselves in the mirror. My evidence comes precisely from the other side of the issue: what the Kremlin elites were saying about the US elections and their preferred candidate to win while the campaign was still going on. I present it on a privileged basis because it is what I gathered on my several visits to Moscow and talks with a variety of insiders close to Vladimir Putin from September through the start of November, 2016. Moreover, there is no tampering with this evidence on my part, because the key elements were published at the time I gathered them, well before the US election. They appeared as incidental observations in lengthy essays dealing with a number of subjects and would not have attracted the attention they merit today.

* * * *

Political talk shows are a very popular component of Russian television programming on all channels, both state-run and commercial channels. They are mostly carried on prime time in the evening but also are showing in mid-afternoon, where they have displaced soap operas and cooking lessons as entertainment for housewives and pensioners. They are broadcast live either to the Moscow time zone or to the Far East time zone. Given the fact that Russia extends over 9 time zones, they are also video recorded and reshown locally at prime time. In the case of the highest quality and most watched programs produced by Vesti 24 for the Rossiya One channel, they also are posted in their entirety and in the original Russian on youtube, and they are accessible worldwide by anyone with a computer or tablet phone using a downloadable free app.

I underline the importance of accessibility of these programs globally via live streaming or podcasts on simple handheld gadgets. Russian speaking professionals in the States had every opportunity to observe much of what I report below, except, of course, for my private conversations with producers and panelists. But the gist of the mood in Moscow with respect to the US elections was accessible to anyone with an interest. As you know, no one reported on it at the time. American media simply were not interested in knowing what Russians were thinking since that might get in the way of their construction of what Russians should be thinking.

The panelists appearing on these different channels come from a rather small pool of Russian legislators, including chairmen of the relevant committees of the Duma (lower house) and Federation Council (upper house), leading journalists, think tank professors, retired military brass. The politicians are drawn from among the most visible and colorful personalities in the Duma parties, but also extend to Liberal parties such as Yabloko, which failed to cross the threshold of 5% in legislative elections and received no seats in parliament.

Then there are very often a number of foreigners among panelists. In the past and at the present, they are typically known for anti-Kremlin positions and so give the predominantly patriotic Russian panelists an opportunity to cross swords, send off sparks and keep the audience awake. These hostile foreigners coming from Ukraine or Poland are Russian speakers from their childhood. The Americans or Israelis who appear are generally former Soviet citizens who emigrated, whether before or after the fall of Communism, and speak native Russian.

"Freshness" is an especially valued commodity in this case, because there is a considerable overlap in the names and faces appearing on these talks whatever the channel. For this there is an objective reason: nearly all the Russian and even foreign guests live in Moscow and are available to be invited or disinvited on short notice given that these talk programs can change their programming if there is breaking news about which their audiences will want to hear commentary. In my own case, I was flown in especially by the various channels who paid airfare and hotel accommodation in Moscow as necessary on the condition that I appear only on their shows during my stay in the city. That is to say, my expenses were covered but there was no honorarium. I make this explicit to rebut in advance any notion that I/we outside panelists were in any way "paid by the Kremlin" or restricted in our freedom of speech on air.

During the period under review, I appeared on both state channels, Rossiya-1 and Pervy Kanal, as well as on the major commercial television channel, NTV. The dates and venues of my participation in these talk shows are as follows:

For purposes of this essay, the pertinent appearances were on September 11 and 26. To this I add the Sixty Minutes show of October 20 which I watched on television but which aired content that I believe is important to this discussion.

My debut on the number one talk show in Russia, Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev, on September 11 was invaluable not so much for what was said on air but for the exchange I had with the program's host, Vladimir Soloviev, in a five minute tête-à-tête in the guests' lounge before the program went on air.

Soloviev obviously had not yet read his guest list, did not know who I am and stood ready to respond to me when I walked up to him and unceremoniously put to him the question that interested me the most: whom did he want to see win the US presidential election. He did not hesitate, told me in no uncertain terms that he did not want to see Trump win because the man is volatile, unpredictable and weak. Soloviev added that he and others do not expect anything good in relations with the United States in general whoever won. He rejected the notion that Trump's turning the Neocons out of government would be a great thing in and of itself.

As I now understand, Soloviev's resistance to the idea that Trump could be a good thing was not just an example of Russians' prioritizing stability, the principle "better the devil you know," meaning Hillary. During a recent chat with a Russian ambassador, someone also close to power, I heard the conviction that the United States is like a big steamship which has its own inertia and cannot be turned around, that presidents come and go but American foreign policy remains the same. This view may be called cynical or realistic, depending on your taste, but it is reflective of the thinking that comes out from many of the panelists in the talk shows as you will find below in my quotations from the to-and-fro on air. It may also explain Soloviev's negativism.

To appreciate what weight the opinions of Vladimir Soloviev carry, you have to consider just who he is. That his talk show is the most professional from among numerous rival shows, that it attracts the most important politicians and expert guests is only part of the story. What is more to the point is that he is as close to Vladimir Putin as journalists can get.

In April, 2015 Vladimir Soloviev conducted a two hour interview with Putin that was aired on Rossiya 1 under the title "The President." In early January 2016, the television documentary "World Order," co-written and directed by Soloviev, set out in forceful terms Vladimir Putin's views on American and Western attempts to stamp out Russian sovereignty that first were spoken at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007 and have evolved and become ever more frank since.

Soloviev has a Ph.D. in economics from the Institute of World Economics and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was an active entrepreneur in the 1990s and spent some time back then in the USA, where his activities included teaching economics at the University of Alabama. He is fluent in English and has been an unofficial emissary of the Kremlin to the USA at various times.

For all of these reasons, I believe it is safe to say that Vladimir Soloviev represents the thinking of Russian elites close to their president, if not the views of Putin himself.

On September 27 , I took part in the Sixty Minutes talk show that was presented as a post mortem of the first Trump-Clinton debate the day before. I direct attention to this show because it demonstrates the sophistication and discernment of commentary about the United States and its electoral process. All of this runs against the "slam-dunk" scenario based on a cartoon-like representation of Russia and its decision makers.

The show's hosts tried hard to convey the essence of American political culture to their audience and they did some effective research to this end. Whereas French and other Western media devoted coverage on the day after the debates to the appearance of the American presidential candidates and especially to Hillary (what else attracts comment from the male world of journalism if not a lady's hair styling and sartorial choices), 'Sixty Minutes' tweaked this aspect of the debates to find politically relevant commentary.

To make their point, presenter Yevgeny Popov came on stage in a blue suit and blue tie very similar in coloring to Trump's, while his wife and co-presenter Olga Skabeyeva was wearing a garment in the same red hue as Hillary. They proceeded to note that these color choices of the candidates represented an inversion of the traditional colors of the Democratic and Republican parties in American political tradition. And they took this a step further by declaring it to be in line with the inversion of policies in the electoral platforms of the candidates. Hillary had taken over the hawkish foreign policy positions of the Republicans and their Neoconservative wing. Donald had taken over the dovish foreign policy positions normally associated with Democrats. Moreover, Donald also had gone up against the free trade policies that were an engrained part of Republican ideology up until now and were often rejected by Democrats with their traditional financial backers from among labor unions. All of these observations were essentially correct and astute as far as the campaigns went. It is curious to hear them coming from precisely Russian journalists, when they were largely missed by West European and American commentators.

As mentioned above, foreigners are often important to the Russian talk shows to add pepper and salt. In this case, we were largely decorative. The lion's share of the program was shared between the Russian politicians and journalists on the panel who very ably demonstrated in their own persona that Russian elites were split down the middle on whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton was their preferred next occupant of the Oval Office

The reasons given were not what you heard within the USA: that Trump is vulgar, that Trump is a bigot and misogynist. Instead the Russian Trump-skeptics were saying that he is impulsive and cannot be trusted to act with prudence if there is some mishap, some accidental event occurring between US and Russian forces in the field, for example. They gave expression to the cynical view that the positions occupied by Trump in the pre-election period are purely tactical, to differentiate himself from all competitors first in his own party during the primaries and now from Hillary. Thus, Trump could turn out to be no friend of Russia on the day after the elections.

A direct answer to these changes came from the pro-Trump members of the panel. It was best enunciated by the senior politician in the room, Vyacheslav Nikonov. Nikonov is a Duma member from Putin's United Russia party, the chair of the Education Committee in the 6th Duma. He is also chair of a government sponsored organization of Russian civil society, Russian World, which looks after the interests of Russians and Russian culture in the diaspora abroad.

Nikonov pointed to Trump's courage and determination which scarcely suggest merely tactical considerations driving his campaign. Said Nikonov, Trump had gone up against the entire US political establishment, against the whole of corporate mainstream media and was winning. Nikonov pointed to the surge in Trump poll statistics in the couple of weeks preceding the debate. And he ticked off the 4 swing states which Trump needed to win and where his fortunes were rising fast. Clearly his presentation was carefully prepared, not something casual and off-the-cuff.

During the exchange of doubters and backers of Trump among the Russians, one doubter spoke of Trump as a "non-systemic" politician. This may be loosely interpreted a meaning he is anti-establishment. But in the Russian context it had an odious connotation, being applied to Alexei Navalny and certain members of the American- and EU-backed Parnas political movement, and suggesting seditious intent.

In this connection, Nikonov put an entirely different spin on who Trump is and what he represents as an anti-establishment figure. But then again, maybe such partiality runs in the family. Nikonov is the grandson of Molotov, one of the leading figures who staged the Russian Revolution and governed the young Soviet state.

Who won the first Trump-Clinton debate? Here the producers of Sixty Minutes gave the final verdict to a Vesti news analyst from a remote location whose image was projected on a wall-sized screen. We were told that the debate was a draw: Trump had to demonstrate that he is presidential, which he did. Clinton had to demonstrate she had the stamina to resist the onslaught of 90 minutes with Trump and she also succeeded.

The October 20 program Evening with Vladimir Soloviev, which I watched on television from abroad, was devoted to the third Clinton-Trump debate. My single most important conclusion from the show was that, notwithstanding the very diverse panel, there was a bemused unanimity among them regarding the US presidential electoral campaign: that it was deplorable. They found both candidates to be disgraceful due to their flagrant weaknesses of character and/or records in office, but they were also disturbed by the whole political culture. Particular attention was devoted to the very one-sided position of the American mass media and the centrist establishments of both parties in favor of one candidate, Hillary Clinton. When Russians and former Russians use the terms "McCarthyism" and "managed democracy" to describe the American political process as they did on the show, they know acutely well whereof they speak.

Though flamboyant in his language the nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the LDPR Party, touched on a number of core concerns that bear repeating extensively, if not in full:

"The debates were weak. The two cannot greet one another on stage, cannot say goodbye to one another at the end. They barely can get out the texts that have been prepared for them by their respective staffs. Repeating on stage what one may have said in the locker room.

Billions of people around the world conclude with one word: disgrace! This is the worst electoral campaign ever. And mostly what we see is the style of the campaign. However much people criticize the USSR – the old fogies who ran it, one and the same, supposedly the conscience of the world.

Now we see the same thing in the USA: the exceptional country – the country that has bases everywhere, soldiers everywhere, is bombing everywhere in some city or other. They are making their 'experiments.' The next experiment is to have a woman in the White House. It will end badly.

Hillary has some kind of dependency. A passion for power – and that is dangerous for the person who will have her finger on the nuclear button. If she wins, on November 9th the world will be at the brink of a big war "

Zhirinovsky made no secret of his partiality for Trump, calling him "clean" and "a good man" whereas Hillary has "blood on her hands" for the deaths of hundreds of thousands due to her policies as Secretary of State. But then again, Zhirinovsky has made his political career over more than 30 years precisely by making outrageous statements that run up against what the Russian political establishment says aloud. Before Trump came along, Zhirinovsky had been the loudest voice in Russian politics in favor of Turkey and its president Erdogan, a position which he came to regret when the Turks shot down a Russian jet at the Syrian border, causing a great rupture in bilateral relations.

The final word on Russia's electoral preferences during the October 20 show was given by the moderator, Vladimir Soloviev: "There can be no illusions. Both Trump and Clinton have a very bad attitude to Russia. What Trump said about us and Syria was no compliment at all. The main theme of American political life right now is McCarthyism and anti-Russian hysteria."

This being Russia, one might assume that the deeply negative views of the ongoing presidential election reflected a general hostility to the USA on the part of the presenter and panelists. But nothing of the sort came out from their discussion. To be sure, there was the odd outburst from Zhirinovsky, who repeated a catchy line that he has delivered at other talk shows: essentially that the USA is eating Russia and the world's lunch given that it consumes the best 40% of what the world produces while it itself accounts for just 20% of world GDP. But otherwise the panelists, including Zhirinovsky, displayed informed respect and even admiration for what the United States has achieved and represents.

The following snippets of their conversation convey this very well and do not require attribution to one or another participant:

"America has the strongest economy, which is why people want to go there and there is a lot for us to borrow from it. We have to learn from them, and not be shy about it."

"Yes, they created the conditions for business. In the morning you file your application. After lunch you can open your business."

"America is a very complex country. It does not pay to demonize it. We have to understand precisely what we like and do not like. On this planet there is no way to avoid them. Whoever becomes president of the USA, the nuclear parity forces us to negotiate and reach agreement."

"The US has opened its doors to the most intelligent people of the world, made it attractive for them. Of course, this builds their exceptionalism. All directors, engineers, composers head there. Our problem is that we got rid of our tsar, our commissars but people are still hired hands. The top people go to the States because the pay is higher."

How are we to understand the discrepancy between the very low marks the panelists gave the US presidential race and their favorable marks for the US as an economic and military powerhouse. It appears to result from their understanding that there is a disconnect between Washington, the presidency and what makes the economy turn over. The panelists concluded that the USA has a political leadership at the national level that is unworthy and inappropriate to its position in the world. On this point, I expect that many American readers of this essay will concur.

* * * *

Ever since his candidacy took off in the spring of 2016, both Liberal Interventionists and Neoconservatives have been warning that a Donald Trump presidency would mean abandonment of US global leadership. They equated Donald's "America First" with isolationism. After all, it was in the openly "isolationist period" of American political history just before the outbreak of WWII that the original America First slogan first appeared.

However, isolationism never left us, even as the United States became engaged in and eventually dominated the world after the end of the Cold War. Even today more than half of the US Senators do not possess passports, meaning they have never been abroad, barring possible trips to Canada using their driver's licenses as ID.

And for those Americans who do travel abroad, the world outside US borders is all too often just an object of prestige tourism, a divertissement, where the lives of local people, their concerns and their interests do not exist on the same high plateau as American lives, concerns and interests. It is not that we are all Ugly Americans, but we are too well insulated from the travails of others and too puffed up with our own exceptionalism.

It is not surprising that in the US foreign policy is not a self-standing intellectual pursuit on a chessboard of its own but is strictly a subset of domestic policy calculations, and in particular of partisan electoral considerations. Indeed, that is very often the case in other countries, as well. The distinction is that the US footprint in the world is vastly greater than that of other countries and policy decisions taken in Washington, especially in the past 20 years of militarized foreign-policy making, spell war or peace, order or chaos in the territories under consideration.

As regards the Russian Federation, the ongoing hysteria over Russia-gate in particular, and over the perceived threat Russia poses to US national interests in general, risks tilting the world into nuclear war.

It is a luxury we manifestly cannot afford to indulge ourselves.

TONY LANE , December 17, 2017 9:59 AM

But we all have to agree that the USA is the more infantile of all The Nations, and since the end of the last war they have made no effort to grow up. They have created RussiaGate where no other nation would dream up such Trivia.

Kjell Hasthi -> TONY LANE , December 17, 2017 1:50 PM

JFK murder was about replacing the president elected by the people. Russia-gate has the same goal. When the American president is enemy, you are not American

Jimmy Robertson , December 17, 2017 9:22 AM

As shown in this article, the American media has a long track record of misreporting key news items:

https://viableopposition.bl...

The current cycle of fake news about Russia is definitely not a new phenomenon in the United States.

tom -> Jimmy Robertson , December 17, 2017 9:23 AM

"Remember the Maine!"

GKW -> tom , December 17, 2017 2:13 PM

Don't forget the Turner Joy and the gulf of Tonkin.

John Tosh , December 17, 2017 9:47 AM

Can someone tell the big fat cowards exercising around North Korea to please shut the hell up? Cowards make a lot of noise. When Libya was invaded there were no exercises, when Iraq was invaded there were no exercises...... when Vietnam was invaded there were no exercises....

It is obvious to the world that the fat cowards cannot attack a nuclear armed country. They are too yellow bellied to do anything but beat their chest like some stupid gorilla in an African jungle.

Please cut out the announcements of exercises after exercises, it is clogging the airwaves. We are all tired of your stupid exercises... if you want to attack go ahead and get your fat asses whipped like a slave running away from its masters.

Shameless cowards are now becoming highly annoying... it can be called Propaganda terrorism. Cut that nonsense out. You cannot beat North Korea, you know it, the rest of the world knows it. You cannot fight China or Russia, the rest of the world knows it ... so please shut up once and for all.

You are terrorizing the airwaves with your exercise after exercise after exercise. Practice control of the ships that are becoming a maritime hazzard to commercial ships. That is what you need to practice.

Nobody is impressed with your over-bloated expensive war equipment which fail under war conditions. Cut out the exercises before we start turning off our ears for your propaganda.

YELLOW BELIED COWARDS!!!!! Go poison an innocent person or kill a child....it may make you feel better... Big fat cowards.!

Guy -> John Tosh , December 17, 2017 1:16 PM

I am also very tired of the bluster . They flap their gums and taunt. Enough already . You have made fools of yourselves in the eyes of the world .

All the while the real diplomacy is going on between South Korea and China with North Korea paying close attention, I am sure. The Russian / Chinese proposal of a rail system from South Korea through North Korea and into China connecting to the connection grid of all of Asia is a far greater prospect for the peace initiative than the saber rattling presently outwardly being displayed.

ALTERNATE HISTORY -> John Tosh , December 17, 2017 6:15 PM

They keep raising the ante, and the North Koreans keep calling their bluff. They are made to look ridiculous as they don't have a winnable hand and the North Koreans know it.

tom , December 17, 2017 9:39 AM

"American media simply were not interested in knowing what Russians were thinking since that might get in the way of their construction of what Russians should be thinking".

Reminds me of the classic American boss's remark: "Any time I want your opinion, I'll tell you it".

Emmet Sweeney , December 17, 2017 4:31 PM

The whole thing is orchestrated by the Zionist state within a state which controls not only America but most of the West - and own the entire mainstream media. They cannot forgive Trump for wanting to make peace with Russia. Their hatred of Christian Russia is visceral and unhinged.

tom , December 17, 2017 9:20 AM

'...by their own admission, "no conclusive proof has surfaced."'

This is actually quite a neat and elegant example of the kind of deceptive language routinely used by politicians and the media. It is, of course, entirely true that no conclusive proof has surfaced. Indeed, that must follow from the equally true and indisputable fact that no proof of any kind has surfaced. Actually, nothing even vaguely resembling proof has surfaced. There is no evidence at all - not the slightest scrap.

But by slipping in that little adjective "conclusive" the journalist manages to convey quite a strong impression that there is proof - only not quite conclusive proof.

It is just as dishonest and cynical as Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign remark, "I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience".

CaperAsh -> tom , December 17, 2017 4:17 PM

Yes, but R's comment was delightfully witty, and a great 'high ground manoeuvre.'

John C Carleton , December 17, 2017 7:20 AM

Russiangate is concocted BS, to keep the ignorant American sheep , from understanding Israel picked the "president of the USA".

That American children are murdering innocent children in foreign lands, for the benefit of, not Israel, it is just a figment of the imagination, as the USSR was, and the USA is, but the owners of Israel, City of London, Usury bankers.
Pedophile scum!

Kjell Hasthi -> John C Carleton , December 17, 2017 1:43 PM

- understanding Israel picked the "president of the USA".

The fraud is in every election district. Israel cannot afford the bussing of Liberals. This is too large for some poor nation like Israel. You are making up "Israel", just like Gordon Duff. It tells me you are the same as Gordon Duff.

rosemerry , December 17, 2017 3:29 PM

What an excellent article. If only people who have a very small knowledge of Russia/USA relations would bother to read this and reflect upon it, a lot of misconceptions could be cleared up if goodwill is part of the picture.

thomas malthaus -> Nationalist Globalist Oligarch , December 17, 2017 4:08 PM

I think at times the CIA is actually assisting the Russian security services with terror operations. I realize it doesn't make sense with Langley assisting ISIS in Syria, but that's the world we appear to have: selective cooperation.

I don't know if the FSB has the levels of electronics signals intelligence the US has, I do know the US and Russia may have cooperated in raids resulting in deaths of two Caucaus Emirates leaders in 2014-2015. I believe that group has since disbanded and members probably blended into other terror groups.

rosewood11 , December 17, 2017 2:03 PM

The thing that is absolutely ridiculous is that the American media and Deep State are what is causing this trouble. I don't know why they want to have a World War so badly, but the only thing keeping our two countries from destruction is Vladimir Putin's hard work and good nature, and Trump's defiance of his "staff."

These Deep State actors in the US have hidey-holes they can run to in case of the unthinkable, but they couldn't care less about the people of the US -- let alone Russia. Their day is coming, and they'll be praying for their mountains to fall on them when it does.

Anyone in the US that's paying any attention at all knows the real story on this, and none of those who do are blaming anyone in Russia. If the day ever comes that the US Deep State takes to their bunkers, they better be prepared to stay in there--Balrogs or no Balrogs--because those of us who manage to survive above will be looking for their sorry azzes when they come out!!!

You can call me Al -> rosewood11 , December 17, 2017 5:59 PM

I think that is a great comment.

Just to take your comment a little further ;- get to know every plumber and builder in your area as I am, get on a friendly basis and ask about these "Deep State actors in the US have hidey-holes" over a pint or two.

Then I am starting a crowdfunding fund to bring in "hundreds of thousands" to pay them to screw up their sewage facilities in their hidey-holes SO THEY CAN down in their own BS.

Stop Bush and Clinton , December 17, 2017 8:41 PM

After Uranium One, it would make sense to assume Russia would have preferred Hitlery in the White House - Uranium One gives Russia something they know all the details of and something they know the US public won't take lightly, so they could easily have blackmailed Hitlery with leaking those details.

Of course they also know Hitlery is a massive warmongering Nazi terrorist, but then again, looks like Trump doesn't differ very much from her on that.

Nationalist Globalist Oligarch , December 17, 2017 2:54 PM

No need for paranoia, it is a veritable American love fest at the Kremlin, RIA, etc., ever since the CIA informed Moscow that they had "information" on an imminent attack in Russia.

Funny how the CIA has better intel on terrorism in Russia than the Russians do, even stranger than the RF leadership doesn't seem to question the situation what so ever.

Got to hand it to the Americans, a couple of months ago Putin joked about RF "cells" in the USA and now the CIA hands the RF a real cell all ready to go murder some Russians.

Some people talk a good game while some people actually take action.

Guy , December 17, 2017 1:07 PM

For those of you that have some video viewing time available , you will probably enjoy the lecture at the National Press Club , not nearly well attended I might add for this quality venue, of Gilbert Doctoro.

http://www.informationclear...

I would highly recommend his latest book also .I am approx half way already and well worth the read.

Superior Europe , December 17, 2017 11:12 AM

New legatum prosperity index is up: Europeans enjoy the greatest quality of life worldwide, Russians fall into more impoverishment and low quality of life. Its no secret that, for the past 150 years, Russian's wealth, quality of life and life expectancy is unacceptably low for European standards).

Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark occupying the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th 7th and 8th places respectively.

Kjell Hasthi -> Superior Europe , December 17, 2017 1:37 PM

- low for European standards ... ) .... Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden Netherlands and Denmark

When you do copyworks, include your source. RI is not for illiterate globalist bots who cannot read an answer. The quality of trolls is now too low. The globalists are now hiring junk?

"German media reported on Saturday that BND covertly provided a number of journalists with information containing criticism of Russia before the data were disclosed by the agency."

Superior Europe is employed by Zionist BND?

[Dec 17, 2017] Dr. Stephen Cohen on Tucker Carlson: Empty Accusations of Russian Meddling Have Become Grave National Security Threat

Notable quotes:
"... Cohen, who has been quite vocal against the Russophobic witch hunt gripping the nation , believes that this falsified 35 page report is part of an "endgame" to mortally wound Trump before he even sets foot in the White House, by grasping at straws to paint him as a puppet of the Kremlin. The purpose of these overt attempts to cripple Trump, which have relied on ham-handed intelligence reports that, according to Cohen "even the New York Times referred to as lacking any evidence whatsoever," is to stop any kind of détente or cooperation with Russia. ..."
Dec 17, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

With eyebrows suspiciously furrowed, Tucker Carlson sat down tonight with NYU Professor of Russian Studies and contributor to The Nation , Stephen Cohen, to discuss the 35 page #FakeNews dossier which has gripped the nation with nightmares of golden showers and other perverted conduct which was to be used by Russia to keep Trump on a leash.

The left leaning Cohen, who holds a Ph.D. in government and Russian studies from Columbia, taught at Princeton for 30 years before moving to NYU. He has spent a lifetime deeply immersed in US-Russian relations, having been both a long standing friend of Mikhail Gorbachev and an advisor to President George H.W. Bush. His wife is also the editor of uber liberal " The Nation," so it's safe to assume he's not shilling for Trump - and Tucker was right to go in with eyebrows guarded against such a heavyweight.

Cohen, who has been quite vocal against the Russophobic witch hunt gripping the nation , believes that this falsified 35 page report is part of an "endgame" to mortally wound Trump before he even sets foot in the White House, by grasping at straws to paint him as a puppet of the Kremlin. The purpose of these overt attempts to cripple Trump, which have relied on ham-handed intelligence reports that, according to Cohen "even the New York Times referred to as lacking any evidence whatsoever," is to stop any kind of détente or cooperation with Russia.

Cohen believes that these dangerous accusations attempting to brand a US President as a puppet of a foreign government constitute a "grave American national security threat."

At the very end of the interview, Tucker's very un-furrowed eyebrows agreed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtwFEA4dM18

Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

[Dec 17, 2017] Congress hearing reveal the brazen attempt to defeat and then depose Trump by employers of FBI, CIA and the Department of Justice

Set of YouTube video on the subject. Some exchanges (especially the first two) are very interesting indeed. Although Rosenstein mostly ignored the questions.
There are several facts which suggest that employees of CIA, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), sympathetic to the neoliberal/globalist wing of Democrat Party (Clinton wing), used the power of their offices and (with the assistance of foreign nationals) tried to influence the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton, first to exonerate her and then obtain information to prevent the election of Donald Trump, to collect "insurance" -- compromising materials on him in case he win, and after his surprise win, to provide a basis for his impeachment and removal from the Office by forcing on his administration the Special Prosecutor.
From the Congressional investigations involving the Department of Justice and the FBI it looks like that those institutions are protecting themselves at the expense of transparency and accountability to the American people.
In other words, the government employees involved consider the survival of the Deep State more important than the survival of the Constitution. That is the definition of national security state.
Dec 16, 2017 | youtube.com

[Dec 17, 2017] Trump team claims Russia investigator unlawfully got emails

Notable quotes:
"... Comey, for his part, wrote a memo alleging Trump had asked him to drop his investigation into Flynn, an act which some say could constitute obstruction of justice and thus grounds for seeking Trump's impeachment. ..."
Dec 17, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

Comey, for his part, wrote a memo alleging Trump had asked him to drop his investigation into Flynn, an act which some say could constitute obstruction of justice and thus grounds for seeking Trump's impeachment.

[Dec 17, 2017] President Trump: I'm Not Considering Firing Robert Mueller, But It's Not Looking Good

This is a political battle between two faction of oligarchy. Mueller represents Clinton wing: neoliberal globalists and neocons.
Dec 17, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
rumors , denials, whistleblowers , backlash , demands, threats, lies , bias, and anti-bias surrounding Robert Mueller and his investigation, President Trump said Sunday that he is not considering firing the Special Counsel.

"No, I'm not," Trump told reporters, when asked if he intended to fire Mueller, according to Politico .

The president was returning to the White House from a weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat.

Trump's allies complained this weekend about the way Mueller's team went about obtaining from the presidential transition. Mueller's spokesman Peter Carr said Sunday that the office had followed appropriate steps to obtain the transition emails. Pro-Trump lawmakers and pundits also have accused the special counsel's office of bias after it was revealed that two FBI officials who previously served on Mueller's team had exchanged anti-Trump text messages.

And while Trump said "I'm not," Axios notes that he did criticize the fact that Mueller accessed "many tens of thousands" of emails from the presidential transition, saying it was "not looking good."

Son of Loki -> DingleBarryObummer , Dec 17, 2017 6:46 PM

Who is Seth Rich?

jeff montanye -> Son of Loki , Dec 17, 2017 8:45 PM

seth? he was the guy that stole the dnc and podesta emails (well at least the dnc emails) and got them to julian assange. after he was murdered (well at least shot twice) on the streets of d.c. (he actually died in a hospital; probably bears some looking into), julian offered a reward for info on it, making many believe he was wiki's source.

seymour hersh, who followed the case closely, thinks the same, but agrees with the d.c. police that he was just mugged, not shot by say hillary and podesta using imran awan or something. http://archive.is/lD4BV if so, for a lucky lady that hillary clinton has some real bad luck. but it is poetically fitting that someone who actually killed dozens of people as a private citizen (and maybe a million as a public servant), would be convicted in the public's eye of the one she didn't really do.

first as tragedy, then as farce.

azusgm -> shitshitshit , Dec 17, 2017 8:47 PM

YO!!! TYLERS!! OVER HERE.

Looks like Andrew McCabe may be a double agent!!!!!

https://truepundit.com/comey-mueller-ignored-mccabes-ties-to-russian-cri...

grunk , Dec 17, 2017 6:16 PM

Mueller WANTS Trump to fire him.

It's Mueller's only face-saving way out of this cluster fuck.

Kayman -> grunk , Dec 17, 2017 6:17 PM

Mueller has painted himself into a cesspool that is exploding. If he had an ounce of sense or honor he would get the eff out before he has to start covering his own tracks. But don't bet on Mueller doing the right thing. His pals in politics and the press have made him out to be some kind of saint when he really is all t'aint, no saint (don't ask me what t'aint is, ask someone else.)

Don't fire Mueller now- the cesspool is bursting at the seems and Mueller is standing right under it.

grunk , Dec 17, 2017 6:14 PM

Robert Mueller is D.C.'s Tomás de Torquemada.

Mzhen , Dec 17, 2017 8:04 PM

It makes little sense to me that if Seth Rich was an idealistic young man, standing on principle and conviction, who along with his brother contacted WikiLeaks and arranged to give it evidence of Hillary's and Debbie's treachery against Sanders, why he would then have been reported to be looking forward to joining the Hillary campaign staff in the Brooklyn headquarters.

CrowdStrike (run by Shawn Henry, who is a former FBI official, promoted by Mueller), which provided the narrative to the DNC that the "Russians did it," has never been independently verified in their conclusions by the FBI. Or Mueller. Pull that thread and the sweater starts to unravel.

Kelley , Dec 17, 2017 9:26 PM

Mueller doesn't have it in him to step aside. Therefore he needs to be indicted for prosecutorial abuse. Slap his ass down hard. Handcuffs would be a nice touch.

Mueller didn't oppose the raid of Paul Manafort at 5 a.m. in the morning with guns drawn. Sounds like a good law enforcement technique for the buzzard.

[Dec 17, 2017] The FBI Is Not Your Friend by Sheldon Richman

Notable quotes:
"... ask that Russia not escalate tensions ..."
"... Russia not vote to condemn Israel ..."
"... What about the Logan Act ? The Act, enacted in 1799, around the time of the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, prohibits private citizens from unauthorized "correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both." ..."
"... Right off the bat, the Act appears to violate freedom of speech. And as Parry writes, "That law was never intended to apply to incoming officials in the transition period between elected presidential administrations." ..."
"... I hold no brief for Flynn, whose conduct while working for Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan, his dubious efforts on behalf of Turkey's strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his apparent financial conflicts of interest are enough to make anyone cringe. But that cannot justify what the FBI did in this plea case. ..."
"... Government law-enforcement agencies should not be allowed to administer credibility tests to Americans or others. If they have evidence of real ..."
Dec 16, 2017 | original.antiwar.com
One of the unfortunate ironies of the manufactured "Russiagate" controversy is the perception of the FBI as a friend of liberty and justice. But the FBI has never been a friend of liberty and justice. Rather, as James Bovard writes , it "has a long record of both deceit and incompetence. Five years ago, Americans learned that the FBI was teaching its agents that 'the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.' This has practically been the Bureau's motif since its creation in 1908 . The FBI has always used its 'good guy' image to keep a lid on its crimes."

Bovard has made a vocation of cataloging the FBI's many offenses against liberty and justice, for which we are forever in his debt.

Things are certainly not different today. Take the case of Michael Flynn, the retired lieutenant general who spent less than a month as Donald Trump's national-security adviser. Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in connection with conversations he had with Russia's then-ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, between Trump's election and inauguration. One need not be an admirer of Flynn – and for many reasons I certainly am not – to be disturbed by how the FBI has handled this case.

One ought to be immediately suspicious whenever someone is charged with or pleads guilty to lying to the FBI without any underlying crime being charged. Former assistant U.S. attorney Andrew C. McCarthy points out :

When a prosecutor has a cooperator who was an accomplice in a major criminal scheme, the cooperator is made to plead guilty to the scheme. This is critical because it proves the existence of the scheme. In his guilty-plea allocution (the part of a plea proceeding in which the defendant admits what he did that makes him guilty), the accomplice explains the scheme and the actions taken by himself and his co-conspirators to carry it out. This goes a long way toward proving the case against all of the subjects of the investigation.

That is not happening in Flynn's situation. Instead, like [former Trump foreign-policy "adviser" George] Papadopoulos, he is being permitted to plead guilty to a mere process crime.

When the FBI questioned Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak, it already had the transcripts of those conversations – the government eavesdrops on the representatives of foreign governments, among others, and Flynn had been identified, or "unmasked," as the ambassador's conversation partner. The FBI could have simply told Flynn the transcripts contained evidence of a crime (assuming for the sake of argument they did) and charged him with violating the Logan Act or whatever else the FBI had in mind.

But that's not what happened. Instead, the FBI asked Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak, apparently to test him. If he lied (which would mean he's pretty stupid since he once ran the Defense Intelligence Agency and must have known about the transcripts!) or had a bad memory, he could have been charged with lying to the FBI.

As investigative reporter Robert Parry explains :

What is arguably most disturbing about this case is that then-National Security Adviser Flynn was pushed into a perjury trap by Obama administration holdovers at the Justice Department who concocted an unorthodox legal rationale for subjecting Flynn to an FBI interrogation four days after he took office, testing Flynn's recollection of the conversations while the FBI agents had transcripts of the calls intercepted by the National Security Agency.

In other words, the Justice Department wasn't seeking information about what Flynn said to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak – the intelligence agencies already had that information. Instead, Flynn was being quizzed on his precise recollection of the conversations and nailed for lying when his recollections deviated from the transcripts.

For Americans who worry about how the pervasive surveillance powers of the US government could be put to use criminalizing otherwise constitutionally protected speech and political associations, Flynn's prosecution represents a troubling precedent.

Why didn't the FBI charge Flynn with an underlying crime? It might be because his conversations with Kislyak were not criminal. McCarthy writes:

A breaking report from ABC News indicates that Flynn is prepared to testify that Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians – initially to lay the groundwork for mutual efforts against ISIS in Syria. That, however, is exactly the sort of thing the incoming national-security adviser is supposed to do in a transition phase between administrations. If it were part of the basis for a "collusion" case arising out of Russia's election meddling, then Flynn would not be pleading guilty to a process crime – he'd be pleading guilty to an espionage conspiracy.

David Stockman shows that the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller themselves indicate the Flynn-Kislyak conversations contained no evidence of criminal behavior.

Flynn spoke to Kislyak to ask that Russia not escalate tensions after President Obama imposed sanctions last December for the alleged election meddling and to ask that Russia not vote to condemn Israel , via a UN Security Council resolution, for its illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. In other words, not only were Flynn's discussions with Kislyak unexceptional – presidential transition-team foreign-policy officials have spoken with representatives of other governments in the past – but the content of those discussions should have raised no suspicions. Would non-escalation of the sanctions controversy or a UN veto have undermined Obama's foreign policy? I don't see how. (True, the Obama administration abstained on the resolution, but would Obama have objected had Russia vetoed it? By the way, Russia voted for it, and the resolution passed, as it should have.)

The Flynn plea certainly does nothing to indicate "collusion" with the Russians. For one thing, the conversations were after the election. And perhaps more important, Kislyak was not looking for favors from Flynn; on the contrary, Flynn was lobbying the Russians (successfully on the sanctions – Vladimir Putin did not retaliate – and unsuccessfully on the UN resolution.) Where's the evidence of Russian influence on the Trump team? There was foreign influence, but it was from Israel, a regular meddler in the American political process . All indications are that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Trump son-in-law and special envoy to everywhere Jared Kushner to lobby the world to defeat the UN resolution. Kushner, who has helped finance illegal Israeli settlements , then directed Flynn to call every Security Council member, not just Russia.

What about the Logan Act ? The Act, enacted in 1799, around the time of the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, prohibits private citizens from unauthorized "correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."

Right off the bat, the Act appears to violate freedom of speech. And as Parry writes, "That law was never intended to apply to incoming officials in the transition period between elected presidential administrations."

Note also that only two indictments have been brought in 218 years: in 1803 and 1852. Both cases were dropped. Far more serious contacts with foreign governments have occurred. In 1968 Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon (with help from Henry Kissinger who was working in the Johnson administration) had a representative persuade the president of South Vietnam to boycott the peace talks President Lyndon Johnson had been arranging with North Vietnam. That decision most likely prolonged the Vietnam war and resulted in combat deaths that would not have occurred. Unlike the Flynn case, Nixon's action undercut the sitting president's policy and, more important, the interests of the American people.

I hold no brief for Flynn, whose conduct while working for Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan, his dubious efforts on behalf of Turkey's strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his apparent financial conflicts of interest are enough to make anyone cringe. But that cannot justify what the FBI did in this plea case.

Government law-enforcement agencies should not be allowed to administer credibility tests to Americans or others. If they have evidence of real offenses against persons and property, bring charges. Otherwise, leave us all alone.

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute , senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society , and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com . He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies, former editor of The Freeman , published by the Foundation for Economic Education , and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation . His latest book is America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited .

[Dec 17, 2017] Mission Creep Mueller Grand Jury Fishing for Evidence Unrelated to Russian Interference Probe

As "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation" does not have time frame they are not limited to election campaign and allow fishing expedition into Trump business dealings.
Notable quotes:
"... any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; ..."
"... any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; ..."
Aug 04, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

After this striking admission, in effect acknowledging the weakness of the "Russian collusion" narrative more than year into the investigation and media hysteria, CNN goes on to report that these claimed grand jury subpoenas extend completely outside the scope of the supposed "Russia" investigation. CNN describes some subpoenas as "unconnected to the 2016 elections" and gives examples, including the tenant lists of Trump Organization properties and documents related to the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.

For the record, according to his order of appointment , Mueller's independent investigation was to be limited to:

(i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and
(ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; and
(iii) any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. §600.4(a).

Regulation 28 C.F.R. §600.4(a) is part of the federal regulations authorizing special counsels. It expands a special counsel's jurisdiction to crimes, such as perjury or obstruction of justice, that interfere with his original named responsibility.

[Dec 17, 2017] Senator John Cornyn Questions Legitimacy of Robert Mueller Probe

Notable quotes:
"... Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) caused a stir late Friday when he questioned the legitimacy of the investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into potential Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
Dec 17, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) caused a stir late Friday when he questioned the legitimacy of the investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into potential Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Cornyn spoke out via Twitter, in response to a tweet by former Attorney General Eric Holder, who defended Mueller against criticism and against efforts to urge the president to remove him from his post.

Speaking on behalf of the vast majority of the American people, Republicans in Congress be forewarned:any attempt to remove Bob Mueller will not be tolerated.These are BS attacks on him/his staff that are blatantly political-designed to hide the real wrongdoing. Country not party

-- Eric Holder (@EricHolder) December 14, 2017

In response, Cornyn tweeted to Holder, "You don't" (referring to Holder's claim to be speaking "on behalf of the vast majority of the American people."

He added later that "Mueller needs to clean house of partisans," referring to reports that FBI agent Peter Strzok had been removed from the investigation due to anti-Trump texts, and that other lawyers on the Mueller team have expressed strongly anti-Trump feelings or supported the campaign of his 2016 opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Later, asked by the Washington Post 's in-house liberal columnist, Greg Sargent, whether he would accept the legitimacy of Mueller's investigation, Cornyn suggested that would depend on the outcome:

Makes sense to me to wait to see what they are first https://t.co/9lCqpYujKN

-- Senator JohnCornyn (@JohnCornyn) December 16, 2017

The left-wing HuffPost translated that remark as meaning that Cornyn would only consider the probe legitimate if "if Republicans like his findings."

However, a more generous interpretation would be that Cornyn would wait to see if Mueller remained within his mandate, or used his sweeping powers to investigated unrelated matters.

[Dec 17, 2017] Rosenstein watches as Mueller's witch hunt veers out of control by Sean Hannity

Dec 17, 2017 | www.foxnews.com

The Russia investigation being overseen by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is beyond corrupt, beyond political and has now turned into an open-ended fishing expedition.

Rosenstein, who like Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has glaring, inexcusable conflicts of interest in the case, insisted to Fox News' Chris Wallace that he will keep Mueller from expanding his s not on a witch hunt.

"If he finds evidence of a crime that's within in the scope of what Director Mueller and I have agreed is the appropriate scope of this investigation, then he can," Rosenstein said on "Fox News Sunday." "If it's something outside that scope, he needs to come to the acting attorney general, at this time me, for permission to expand his investigation."

Rosenstein says he won't let the special counsel turn into a fishing expedition? It already has. The whole investigation was supposed to be about President Trump's campaign supposedly colluding with the Russians. This has gone on 11 months, no smoking gun proving it ever surfaced.

Yet, instead of ending it there, Mueller is reportedly now looking into the finances of President Trump and the Trump Organization and associates of President Trump. He has impaneled a grand jury in Washington, D.C., where the president got a little over four percent of the vote.

What Rosenstein really said was that he has now given Mueller the green light to do whatever he wants. Even respected legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a Democrat, has said Rosenstein needs to recuse himself.

After all, Rosenstein is likely going to be a witness in the investigation that he himself caused because he took the lead in writing the letter to President Trump on why former FBI Director James Comey should be fired. Mueller reportedly regards that as possible obstruction of justice.

Rosenstein is also the guy who appointed Robert Mueller and apparently either didn't know or didn't care about the fact that the day before he was named special counsel, Mueller interviewed with President Trump for the FBI director's job. You can't make this up.

Rosenstein has sat by while Mueller, with an unlimited budget, has assembled a team of 16 lawyers. Half have made political donations, shockingly, all to Democrats. How is that OK? If the tables were turned, would a Democrat allow a special counsel to only appoint Republican donors?

It all comes down to this: Does Rod Rosenstein know what is going to happen if Mueller's mission creep continues to go unchecked? How does he think voters are going to feel? How many Trump supporters will feel robbed of their right and their vote in the free election of the president of the United States?

That would be bad for the country. It would be bad for the system of justice. And it would be bad for anyone who believes in a constitutional republic.

Adapted from Sean Hannity's monologue on "Hannity," Aug. 7, 2017

Sean Hannity currently serves as host of FOX News Channel's (FNC) Hannity (weekdays 9-10PM/ET) . He joined the network in 1996 and is based in New York. Click here for more information on Sean

[Dec 17, 2017] Fox News' Jesse Watters We May Have an Anti-Trump 'Coup on Our Hands in America'

Robert Mueller does have massive conflict of interest -- Strzok-gate proves his inability to run a dispassionate investigation
Notable quotes:
"... we may now have proof the investigation was weaponized to destroy his presidency for partisan political purposes and to disenfranchise millions of American voters. Now, if that's true, we have a coup on our hands in America." ..."
Dec 17, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

Waters said, "The investigation into Donald Trump's campaign has been crooked from the jump. But the scary part is we may now have proof the investigation was weaponized to destroy his presidency for partisan political purposes and to disenfranchise millions of American voters. Now, if that's true, we have a coup on our hands in America."

[Dec 17, 2017] Unlike Nixon, Trump will not go quietly

Notable quotes:
"... Flynn asked Kislyak for help in blocking or postponing a Security Council resolution denouncing Israel, and to tell Vladimir Putin not to go ballistic over President Obama's expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats. This is what security advisers do. Why Flynn let himself be ensnared in a perjury trap, when he had to know his calls were recorded, is puzzling. ..."
"... Second, it is said Trump obstructed justice when he fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to cut slack for Flynn. But even Comey admits Trump acted within his authority. And Comey had usurped the authority of Justice Department prosecutors when he announced in July 2016 that Hillary Clinton ought not to be prosecuted for having been "extremely careless" in transmitting security secrets over her private email server. We now know that the first draft of Comey's statement described Clinton as "grossly negligent," the precise statute language for an indictment. ..."
"... Comey has also admitted he leaked to The New York Times details of a one-on-one with Trump to trigger the naming of a special counsel -- to go after Trump. And that assignment somehow fell to Comey's predecessor, friend, and confidant Robert Mueller. Mueller swiftly hired half a dozen prosecutorial bulldogs who had been Clinton contributors, and Andrew Weinstein, a Trump hater who had congratulated Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to carry out Trump's travel ban. FBI official Peter Strzok had to be been removed from the Mueller probe for hatred of Trump manifest in emails to his FBI lady friend. Strzok was also involved in the investigation of Clinton's email server and is said to have been the one who persuaded Comey to tone down his language about her misconduct, and let Hillary walk. ..."
"... There are other reasons to believe Trump may survive the deep state-media conspiracy to break his presidency, overturn his mandate, and reinstate a discredited establishment. Trump has Fox News and fighting congressmen behind him and the mainstream media is deeply distrusted and widely detested. And there is no Democratic House to impeach him or Democratic Senate to convict him. Moreover, Trump is not Nixon, who, like Charles I, accepted his fate and let the executioner's sword fall with dignity. If Trump goes, one imagines, he will not go quietly. ..."
"... I think the surprise is the degree and extent to which he is surrounded by hostile elements pretending to be disloyal and even when revealed like Comey and Sessions and Rosenstein they cannot be dislodged without great cost. ..."
"... The balance of evidence does not fall on Trump. The preponderance of evidence from Wasserman Schultz and her Pakistani technicians, from rigging the DNC against Sanders, from the McCain/FBI Dossier to justify wiretapping the RNC candidate, the pay for play Clinton Foundation and Clinton bankrolling the DNC in exchange for full control of the party, murdered members of the DNC like Seth Rich, the collusion between the CIA, FBI, DOJ, IRS, State Department and White House, etc etc etc. ..."
"... Beyond the Mueller investigation is the character assassination which has also backfired proving there are far more democrats and democratic donors engaged in rape, pedophilia and sexual harassment which is more of the same type of character assassination Hillary used by calling Trump and his base deplorables. ..."
"... People in the DNC and the Federal Govt were scared of Bill and Hillary Clinton and Obama but I truly think the DNC is under-estimating the degree they should be afraid of Trump. ..."
"... Of course, in reality there was NO hack. The emails were LEAKED by someone within the DNC who was utterly disgusted with the corruption and the sabotaging of Sanders nomination campaign to prevent any threat to the coronation of Empress Shrillary. ..."
"... IMHO its very likely that the leaker was indeed Seth Rich. Does anyone really believe in a "botched robbery" were the thief didn't steal his wallet or phone or watch? ..."
"... At this point there is an ocean of evidence that says Russia did NOTHING at all. More and more the revelations are that the Clinton slime machine moved on from Bernie Sanders to Trump without breaking stride. ..."
"... The Mueller shenanigans have for months been laid out for all to see by Andrew C. McCarthy, who ironically is a confirmed Putin-hater. More recently Victor Davis Hanson weighed in at long last, and it was a doozy. ..."
"... The Muller team is loaded with rabid Trump haters, which implies he either biased and out to get Trump, or just dumb. It has been very obvious from the moment Trump won the election that a large contingent of the government establishment has been determined to find a way to force him from office. ..."
"... My primary complaint with Trump is that in foreign policy, he has done nothing but endorse and continue the murderous and shameful policies of his predecessors: back Israel unequivocally, in spite of their record of aggression, back Saudi Arabia, ignoring the absolute evil of their country, pretend that Russia and Iran are the greatest evil in the world, with no evidence to support it. If there is a behind the scenes deep state, it consists of those who manage to continue this pattern, no matter if the president is an Evangelical or a Marxist. Foreign policy aside, he does have the interests of the common man at heart, and a very enthusiastic backing from "Joe six-pack" America, the America the left loathes. ..."
"... Listen to the speakers at political rallies, if they are only demonizing the other side in an unfocussed and vague way, this is what they are doing. It is a strategy of "divide and conquer." ..."
"... Those, who vote for one party or the other above all else, no matter whom the party nominates or what the party does, lawful or not, are engaging in the same political factionalism, about which Washington warned. Both parties have to be made to protect the Constitution and respect the rule of law. That is much more important than which party wins. At this point, neither party gives much of a damn about the Constitution or the law. The only goal is to win at any cost, vying for the attention of their globalist string-pullers. ..."
Dec 17, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Flynn asked Kislyak for help in blocking or postponing a Security Council resolution denouncing Israel, and to tell Vladimir Putin not to go ballistic over President Obama's expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats. This is what security advisers do. Why Flynn let himself be ensnared in a perjury trap, when he had to know his calls were recorded, is puzzling.

Second, it is said Trump obstructed justice when he fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to cut slack for Flynn. But even Comey admits Trump acted within his authority. And Comey had usurped the authority of Justice Department prosecutors when he announced in July 2016 that Hillary Clinton ought not to be prosecuted for having been "extremely careless" in transmitting security secrets over her private email server. We now know that the first draft of Comey's statement described Clinton as "grossly negligent," the precise statute language for an indictment.

We also now know that helping to edit Comey's first draft to soften its impact was Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. His wife, Jill McCabe, a candidate for state senate in Virginia, received $467,000 in campaign contributions from the PAC of Clinton bundler Terry McAuliffe.

Comey has also admitted he leaked to The New York Times details of a one-on-one with Trump to trigger the naming of a special counsel -- to go after Trump. And that assignment somehow fell to Comey's predecessor, friend, and confidant Robert Mueller. Mueller swiftly hired half a dozen prosecutorial bulldogs who had been Clinton contributors, and Andrew Weinstein, a Trump hater who had congratulated Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to carry out Trump's travel ban. FBI official Peter Strzok had to be been removed from the Mueller probe for hatred of Trump manifest in emails to his FBI lady friend. Strzok was also involved in the investigation of Clinton's email server and is said to have been the one who persuaded Comey to tone down his language about her misconduct, and let Hillary walk.

In Mueller's tenure, still no Trump tie to the hacking of the DNC has been found. But a connection between Hillary's campaign and Russian spies -- to find dirt to smear and destroy Trump and his campaign -- has been fairly well established.

By June 2016, the Clinton campaign and DNC had begun shoveling millions of dollars to the Perkins Coie law firm, which had hired the oppo research firm Fusion GPS, to go dirt-diving on Trump. Fusion contacted ex-British MI6 spy Christopher Steele, who had ties to former KGB and FSB intelligence agents in Russia. They began to feed Steele, who fed Fusion, which fed the U.S. anti-Trump media with the alleged dirty deeds of Trump in Moscow hotels. While the truth of the dirty dossier has never been established, Comey's FBI rose like a hungry trout on learning of its contents. There are credible allegations Comey's FBI sought to hire Steele and used the dirt in his dossier to broaden the investigation of Trump -- and that its contents were also used to justify FISA warrants on Trump and his people.

This week, we learned that the Justice Department's Bruce Ohr had contacts with Fusion during the campaign, while his wife actually worked at Fusion investigating Trump. This thing is starting to stink.

Is the Trump investigation the rotten fruit of a poisoned tree? Is Mueller's Dump Trump team investigating the wrong campaign?

There are other reasons to believe Trump may survive the deep state-media conspiracy to break his presidency, overturn his mandate, and reinstate a discredited establishment. Trump has Fox News and fighting congressmen behind him and the mainstream media is deeply distrusted and widely detested. And there is no Democratic House to impeach him or Democratic Senate to convict him. Moreover, Trump is not Nixon, who, like Charles I, accepted his fate and let the executioner's sword fall with dignity. If Trump goes, one imagines, he will not go quietly.

In the words of the great Jerry Lee Lewis, there's gonna be a "whole lotta shakin' goin' on."

LouisM December 14, 2017 at 11:38 pm

Trump has had to work with corrupt officials in govt, overwhelming bureaucracy, unions, media and criminal elements. All present in anti-Trump DC.

I think the surprise is the degree and extent to which he is surrounded by hostile elements pretending to be disloyal and even when revealed like Comey and Sessions and Rosenstein they cannot be dislodged without great cost.

The balance of evidence does not fall on Trump. The preponderance of evidence from Wasserman Schultz and her Pakistani technicians, from rigging the DNC against Sanders, from the McCain/FBI Dossier to justify wiretapping the RNC candidate, the pay for play Clinton Foundation and Clinton bankrolling the DNC in exchange for full control of the party, murdered members of the DNC like Seth Rich, the collusion between the CIA, FBI, DOJ, IRS, State Department and White House, etc etc etc.

There is no equivalent trail of collusion, corruption, fraud, slander, sedition etc from Trump, the GOP or the Conservative Party while the DNC and the Mueller investigation reeks.

Beyond the Mueller investigation is the character assassination which has also backfired proving there are far more democrats and democratic donors engaged in rape, pedophilia and sexual harassment which is more of the same type of character assassination Hillary used by calling Trump and his base deplorables.

I think Trump is playing nice and being patient. He is fighting back but with great restraint. I don't think Trump has pulled out all guns. My guess, if and when this does not work, then Sessions and Rosenstein will be fired and replaced with people who will have special prosecutors investigate the Mueller investigation, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Obama, the FBI and the DOJ. Imagine how devastating it would be to release information proving Bill Clintons rapes and murders. Hillary may be a master at deflection and obfuscation but Trump will scorch and burn. Of this I have no doubt. Infact, it would not surprise me if Trump has someone in the intelligence community reporting directly to him and covertly performing these investigations so Trump can either scorch and burn in the media, in the press room or to appoint special counsels for what I cited above.

People in the DNC and the Federal Govt were scared of Bill and Hillary Clinton and Obama but I truly think the DNC is under-estimating the degree they should be afraid of Trump.

Gazza , says: December 15, 2017 at 5:27 am
"In Mueller's tenure, still no Trump tie to the hacking of the DNC has been found."

Of course, in reality there was NO hack. The emails were LEAKED by someone within the DNC who was utterly disgusted with the corruption and the sabotaging of Sanders nomination campaign to prevent any threat to the coronation of Empress Shrillary.

IMHO its very likely that the leaker was indeed Seth Rich. Does anyone really believe in a "botched robbery" were the thief didn't steal his wallet or phone or watch?

Dan Green , says: December 15, 2017 at 9:18 am
The media tells us this administrations support is waning, so impeachment is a hot topic. I am not convinced the American people en mass will support the process.
SteveK9 , says: December 15, 2017 at 2:28 pm
Most of these comments are almost as ridiculous as 'RussiaGate' itself. One must have a very strong bias to believe any of this (I am a lifelong Democrat, but I'm still able to think).

At this point there is an ocean of evidence that says Russia did NOTHING at all. More and more the revelations are that the Clinton slime machine moved on from Bernie Sanders to Trump without breaking stride.

Ken Zaretzke , says: December 15, 2017 at 5:11 pm
"Unfortunately, your nay-sayers seem confined to calling you a "Do-Do Head" and other remarks more suited to a preschool classroom."

Amen to that. They might be willfully ignorant. The Mueller shenanigans have for months been laid out for all to see by Andrew C. McCarthy, who ironically is a confirmed Putin-hater. More recently Victor Davis Hanson weighed in at long last, and it was a doozy.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454543/mueller-investigation-too-many-anti-trump-coincidences

Saying Robert Mueller is a pillar of integrity is like saying George Will is a brilliant thinker–it's Beltway bushwa.

Honorable Shark , says: December 15, 2017 at 6:11 pm
The neocons forgot that Richard Nixon saved Israel in the 1973 war. He emptied the NATO reserves to replenish their lost weapons. Had he not done this, maybe a negotiated peace based on a fair fight would have negated many of the problems we face today? Then Ford came along and they realized Oops! A mistake has been made. Carter stopped drinking the neocon KoolAide when the facts became irrefutable. Comparing Nixon to Trump is a non-starter. Nixon had an incredibly high-IQ and he was pro-America first, second, .nth.
EliteCommInc. , says: December 15, 2017 at 11:10 pm
I remain a huge fan of Pres Nixon. I often think he should have fought it out. Having chosen not to do so – he did indeed go quietly. And he did so for reasons unrelated to Watergate.

He also remains one of the most astute and intelligent men we have ever had in the WH. Had he been an insider, he would not have had faced the storm that came by way a lot of hyperbolic nonsense. It easy to forget how much he and his admin accomplished despite the period.

I remain supportive of Pres. Trump and despite areas of disagreement, I have yet to see any evidence that would even hint that he should resign. I don't think there's any evidence that the country is uniquely on a path to destruction from Pres Trump admin.

-- -- -- -- -- --

"4 indictment and or guilt pleas. Nothing there you say?"

I don't think you grasp the breadth that a SP has. It is virtually limitless. That means one can indicted for something that is accused years before and totally unrelated to the original purposes of the appointment. It was that breadth that bothered Pres. Nixon. And as it turned out he was concerned with good reason.

-- -- -- -- -- -

"Middle East was causing a huge recession that led to Democratic wave in 1974."

The die were cast, despite all of the issues, Pres Nixon out maneuvered and outsmarted his critics on the issues and they bit one card, charges of misbehavior on the heels of a very contentious foreign policy. He could have only survived had he just chosen to readily give on the plotters and moved on. Pardoning them later.

His choice to protect his legacy in its entirety -- led to bad decisions, that fed the appearance of guilt -- when the tapes came out --

it was done, despite little of anything incriminating on them. He chose to depart quietly. And in the end, so nil was his accusations that he has had his tenure revived and I suspect with time, that will continue.

Molière , says: December 16, 2017 at 10:10 am
Here's a list of confirmed fake news concerning the "russiagate" (of course all going in the same direction):
  1. Trump team received access to DNC WikiLeaks files before they were released (CNN).
  2. Russia hacked into the U.S. electric grid to deprive Americans of heat during winter (Wash Post).
  3. An anonymous group (PropOrNot) documented how major U.S. political sites are Kremlin agents (Wash Post).
  4. WikiLeaks has a long, documented relationship with Putin (Guardian).
  5. A secret server between Trump and a Russian bank has been discovered (Slate).
  6. RT hacked C-SPAN and caused disruption in its broadcast (Fortune).
  7. Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app (Crowdstrike).
  8. Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states (multiple news outlets, echoing Homeland Security).
  9. Links have been found between Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci and a Russian investment fund under investigation (CNN).

Glenn Greenwald made an article about it. When we dig deep into the Russiagate it's not trump that we find but Brzezinski doctrine.

Peace from France

Stephen , says: December 16, 2017 at 10:13 am
The Muller team is loaded with rabid Trump haters, which implies he either biased and out to get Trump, or just dumb. It has been very obvious from the moment Trump won the election that a large contingent of the government establishment has been determined to find a way to force him from office.

This is an obvious truth, whether you want to call it a deep state conspiracy or something else. Trump is an imperfect man, but he has good ideas and plans for improving the life of the ordinary citizen.

One of the ways I know he is essentially decent is the hysterical hatred the left has for him. The left is the true enemy of this country, not Russia or radical Islam. In the past 50 years they have done great harm to this country.

The Conservative establishment has been utterly ineffective at stopping the destructive onslaght of the left, and in matters of foreign policy, have proven to be thoroughly corrupt and dishonest.

My primary complaint with Trump is that in foreign policy, he has done nothing but endorse and continue the murderous and shameful policies of his predecessors: back Israel unequivocally, in spite of their record of aggression, back Saudi Arabia, ignoring the absolute evil of their country, pretend that Russia and Iran are the greatest evil in the world, with no evidence to support it. If there is a behind the scenes deep state, it consists of those who manage to continue this pattern, no matter if the president is an Evangelical or a Marxist. Foreign policy aside, he does have the interests of the common man at heart, and a very enthusiastic backing from "Joe six-pack" America, the America the left loathes.

If Trump is successfully removed from office, I predict a breakout of serious unrest from the people.

DB , says: December 16, 2017 at 12:33 pm
Mr. Buchanan,

Do you have multiple personalities? One moment you are defending true conservatism and the next you seem to be supporting somebody because they have an R next to their name. Trump is a serious danger to our country. Far more than ISIS or any Muslim terrorists.

George Washington wrote a letter of farewell to the American People in 1796, in which he warned against the corruption of self-interested political parties. He called them political factions, but he is referring to the corruption and treasonous tendencies of the Democrat and Republican Parties of today, who are much more interested in the advancement of their party than the well-being of the Country, the protection of the Constitution or the rule of law.

Both of these now treasonous parties are funded and controlled by much the same global financial interests and are currently more loyal to their foreign paymasters -- which includes many foreign despots -- than they are to our country. The corruption of each of the two major political parties feeds on that of the other. Both parties have grown into foreign-controlled monsters. Individual Congressmen take orders from the party leadership, the lapdogs of their party bosses, instead of serving the interests of the nation.

The extreme partisanship and generalized demonization of members of the other party is a form of brainwashing that keeps Democrats and Republicans voting for their respective parties, no matter how corrupt the politicians of their own party have become. Listen to the speakers at political rallies, if they are only demonizing the other side in an unfocussed and vague way, this is what they are doing. It is a strategy of "divide and conquer." People should concentrate on specific misdeeds of individuals and not just be the cheerleaders of their own party. Both parties are parasitical entities feeding on the rotting carcass of America, which they have created.

Those, who vote for one party or the other above all else, no matter whom the party nominates or what the party does, lawful or not, are engaging in the same political factionalism, about which Washington warned. Both parties have to be made to protect the Constitution and respect the rule of law. That is much more important than which party wins. At this point, neither party gives much of a damn about the Constitution or the law. The only goal is to win at any cost, vying for the attention of their globalist string-pullers.

https://stop-obama-now.net/washingtons-farewell/

[Dec 16, 2017] Former US attorney says FBI wants to frame the President

Highly recommended!
Pretty interesting and revealing video of the interview...
There is indeed probable cause to conclude, meaning indictable offenses, that employees of the Department of Justice and/or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), sympathetic to the Democrat Party, used the power of their offices and with the assistance of foreign nationals to influence the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton, first to exonerate her and then obtain information to prevent the election of Donald Trump or to provide a basis for his impeachment should he win.
From the Congressional investigations involving the Department of Justice and the FBI it looks like that those institutions protecting themselves at the expense of transparency and accountability to the American people.
In other words, the government employees involved consider the survival of the Deep State more important than the survival of the Constitution. That is the definition of tyranny.
Dec 16, 2017 | www.youtube.com

William Branstetter , 9 hours ago

Treason is exactly what these people have committed! They should be tried, if convicted hung by the neck until dead or firing squad their choice!

Scott SonofJohn , 9 hours ago

"Comey sold his soul to the devil."

[Dec 16, 2017] Congressman Tells Rod Rosenstein That James Comey BROKE THE LAW then Rosenstein Agrees!

Dec 15, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Congressman Tells Rod Rosenstein That James Comey BROKE THE LAW then Rosenstein Agrees! 12/13/17

Congressman Louie Gohmert brings up the fact that past FBI Director James Comey broke federal law and FBI employee policy by intentionally leaking a memo of his conversations with President Donald Trump to a friend to then leak to the press. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein then agrees with the Congressman.

[Dec 16, 2017] Sessions Balks At Second Special Counsel Says Recent FBI Bombshell May Have Innocent Explanation Zero Hedge

Notable quotes:
"... House and Senate Committees are also trying to get to the bottom of a report last Monday by Fox News which revealed that recently demoted DOJ official Bruce Ohr's wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS - the firm behind the Trump-Russia dossier. It was also later uncovered by internet sleuths that Nellie Ohr represented the CIA's "Open Source Works" group at a 2010 working group on organized crime, which she participated in along with her husband Bruce and Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS. ..."
"... Last Tuesday, FBI Deputy Director McCabe unexpectedly cancelled a scheduled testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee -- thought to be related to the Fox report on Bruce and Nellie Ohr. Text messages between Strzok and Page were released the same day . ..."
"... Of course he won't, yet those who still support Trump will continue to perform mental gymnastics to explain why. Trump picked Sessions, just like he picked Cohn, Munchkin, Pence, etc. ..."
"... I've always been very uncomfortable with the nearly unlimited mandate afforded Special Prosecutors. Arguments that Mueller has exceeded his mandate and is now on a fishing expedition show a complete disregard for the law. Mueller is allowed to do that, just as Ken Starr was. That's the problem. Mueller hasn't done anything unlawful and nobody has seriously alleged that he has. The problem is that the law allows him to do whatever he wants. ..."
"... If by "insurance policy" Strzok meant the dossier, which was the basis for a FISA warrant, I'd say they were outside the law. ..."
"... Have you noticed that everyone with these impeccable, beyond reproach, do it by the book reputations are all really nothing more than reptilian scumbags? Comey, Mueller, McCain, Sessions....... ..."
Dec 16, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

In November. Sessions pushed back on the need for a special counsel to investigate a salacious anti-Trump dossier paid for in part by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, and whether or not the FBI used the largely unverified dossier to launch the Russia investigation. Sessions told Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) that it would take "a factual basis that meets the standard of a special counsel," adding "You can have your idea but sometimes we have to study what the facts are and to evaluate whether it meets the standards it requires. I would say, 'looks like' is not enough basis to appoint a special counsel "

http://players.brightcove.net/1077863425/HyenjoxZ3b_default/index.html?videoId=5646148989001

A flood of GOP lawmakers along with President Trump's outside counsel Jay Sekulow have renewed calls for a separate special counsel investigation of the Department of Justice and the FBI amid revelations that top FBI officials conspired to tone down former FBI Director James Comey's statement exonerating Hillary Clinton - altering or removing key language which effectively "decriminalized" Clinton's beahvior. The officials implicated are former FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Strzok's supervisor E.W. "Bill" Priestap, Jonathan Moffa, and DOJ Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson .

Also under recent scrutiny are a trove of text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok to his mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page showing extreme bias against then-candidate Trump, while both of them were actively engaged in the Clinton email investigation and the Trump-Russia investigation. GOP lawmakers claim the FBI launched its investigation into Russian collusion based on the 34-page dossier created by opposition research firm Fusion GPS - which hired the CIA wife of a senior DOJ official to assist in digging up damaging information on 5then-candidate Trump .

A particularly disturbing text message between Strzok and Page was leaked to the press last week referencing an " insurance policy " in case Trump were to be elected President. Strzok wrote to Page: " I want to believe the path you threw out to consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk ." It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40.... "

House and Senate Committees are also trying to get to the bottom of a report last Monday by Fox News which revealed that recently demoted DOJ official Bruce Ohr's wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS - the firm behind the Trump-Russia dossier. It was also later uncovered by internet sleuths that Nellie Ohr represented the CIA's "Open Source Works" group at a 2010 working group on organized crime, which she participated in along with her husband Bruce and Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS.

Bruce and Nellie Ohr

Last Tuesday, FBI Deputy Director McCabe unexpectedly cancelled a scheduled testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee -- thought to be related to the Fox report on Bruce and Nellie Ohr. Text messages between Strzok and Page were released the same day .

So with Attorney General Jeff Sessions saying things may have "more innocent explanations" here are some specific questions for the AG to answer:

18 U.S. Code ' 793 "Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information" specifically uses the phrase "gross negligence." Had Comey used the phrase, he would have essentially declared that Hillary had broken the law.

The list goes on and on, but hey: sometimes things that might appear to be bad in the press have more innocent explanations...

So Close -> Automatic Choke , Dec 16, 2017 6:31 PM

No! The true explanation cuts across the grain of the existing miasma currently being perpetrated as truth by the senior management at the FBI. One being ignored and covered up by the mainstream media. We have senior management at the top federal law enforcement agency that has willfully chosen to elevate their personal political opinion and beliefs above their sworn duty to uphold constitutional law. And this "explanation" is just the latest attempt to reinforce a violently shaking house of cards. The question that presents itself is whether we have the moral backbone as a country to correct our course. The outcome is questionable. And yet there is room for hope.

SWRichmond -> So Close , Dec 16, 2017 6:43 PM

Is Sessions the insurance policy?

Buckaroo Banzai -> Muddy1 , Dec 16, 2017 7:06 PM

"Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake" Appointing a second Special Counsel could be interpreted as an interruption. I'm not defending Sessions here, he simply might be doing exactly what his boss is asking him to do.

LetThemEatRand -> chunga , Dec 16, 2017 7:05 PM

Of course he won't, yet those who still support Trump will continue to perform mental gymnastics to explain why. Trump picked Sessions, just like he picked Cohn, Munchkin, Pence, etc.

veritas semper ... -> fx , Dec 16, 2017 7:35 PM

"The AAZ Empire the Judiciary domain is like central banking and media a goy-free zone. All lawyers, attorneys, judges, etc. are members of the BAR association, a private, Zion controlled monopoly, whose internal rules and regulations, that all BAR members are sworn to, supersedes the constitutions and laws of all nation states."

This quote is not mine,but it reflects exactly what I think. If you do not believe this,do a search about BAR association.

Look at this judge : https://fair.org/home/judge-tells-jury-informing-public-may-be-criminal-...

Look at her picture. You know she's a "chosen",even without knowing her name

Sessions is a gatekeeper. Like the Donald.

The simple fact that Hillary Clinton is not in jail, with the OVERWHELMING evidence we have against her, that the Weiner lap top has disappeared with all 650 000 incriminating e-mails, that all the Clinton dead pool is OVERFLOWING, including with the recent death of Dr. Dean Lorich, who had knowledge about the Clinton Foundation doings in Haiti, Seth Rich's death, etc. ALL THESE are proofs that we do not have a DOJ, an AG(which are named by the EXECUTIVE branch) .

This leads to only one conclusion=there is one party, having two wings ,to create an illusion of "democracy" and that voting matters.

stocktivity -> Everybodys All American , Dec 16, 2017 6:36 PM

I can't stand Sessions but in this one instance, he is correct.

swmnguy -> stocktivity , Dec 16, 2017 6:59 PM

Yes, the full-court press is on to end the Special Prosecutor investigation, and maybe even the entire law authorizing it. There appear to be no legal grounds for any of this. This seems to be pure politics and PR manipulation attempts.

I've always been very uncomfortable with the nearly unlimited mandate afforded Special Prosecutors. Arguments that Mueller has exceeded his mandate and is now on a fishing expedition show a complete disregard for the law. Mueller is allowed to do that, just as Ken Starr was. That's the problem. Mueller hasn't done anything unlawful and nobody has seriously alleged that he has. The problem is that the law allows him to do whatever he wants.

And investigators are allowed to communicate with each other. They shouldn't have affairs with each other, but they do. Nobody serious, in a position to say or do anything that counts, alleges that they did anything unlawful, or anything that should be handled any other way than the way it was handled, which is a job reassignment and possible termination. Prosecutors are biased against the people they investigate. That's their job. I don't like that either, but that's the deal.

I'd have a lot more respect for Sessions if he didn't blather on about the Constitution and State's Rights and Freedom, and then cheerlead enthusiastically for a violent police state and suspension of the rule of law for profit. But as you say, in this situation, he is indeed correct.

And the fatuousness of the campaign to discredit Mueller, which assiduously avoids any legitimate political argument, is a very bad sign. President Trump's attorneys are in way over their head and they're panicking. Perhaps with good reason. But it would be better for America if Trump could have retained any competent representation. Clearly all the good lawyers decided they wanted no part of him as a client.

lew1024 -> swmnguy , Dec 16, 2017 7:07 PM

No, you are wrong about a full-court press to end the special prosecutor.

He is ending himself just fine. Also, the IG's work is not yet done, how dirty are the other lawyers working for Mueller?

Note that all of the Clinton's oppo research didn't find anything serious enough to use on Trump? No matter how much they paid?

Akzed -> swmnguy , Dec 16, 2017 7:20 PM

Nobody serious, in a position to say or do anything that counts, alleges that they did anything unlawful

If by "insurance policy" Strzok meant the dossier, which was the basis for a FISA warrant, I'd say they were outside the law.

wcole225 -> Everybodys All American , Dec 16, 2017 6:43 PM

Have you noticed that everyone with these impeccable, beyond reproach, do it by the book reputations are all really nothing more than reptilian scumbags? Comey, Mueller, McCain, Sessions.......

ZH Snob -> Everybodys All American , Dec 16, 2017 6:48 PM

all benefit of the doubt has been exhausted. they obviously have something on Sessions, or he's been a deep stater all along.

[Dec 16, 2017] Mueller Improperly Obtained Tens of Thousands Of Trump Transition Emails

And the coup attempt continues...
Notable quotes:
"... And the coup attempt continues... ..."
Dec 16, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
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SILVERGEDDON , Dec 16, 2017 5:35 PM

Wake me up when Mueller starts working with Wiener's 600,000 strong kiddie porn email collection.

He might want to look at the Cankles erasure collection, as well as the Huma / Aswan Back Up Collection of dirty laundry as well.

just the tip -> SILVERGEDDON , Dec 16, 2017 5:39 PM

don't say that. we won't ever wake you.

Hal n back -> just the tip , Dec 16, 2017 6:44 PM

I have been Ill the last several weeks: who are the criminals?

toady -> Hal n back , Dec 16, 2017 7:32 PM

It's SO important to have all the supeanas in place before collecting any documents. I'm in the middle of a suit and people keep trying to rush... "I'm just gonna go over there and get a copy...."

"No, not until the lawyer says so!"

Apparently D.C. works by a different set of rules.... and they're blaming the idiots who gave up the documents, not the ones who are, and continue, to use them illegally. Alternate universe!

The Management -> toady , Dec 16, 2017 7:35 PM

At this point Jeff Sessions is going to go down as literally the biggest fucking douche bag in history if he doesnt do something - i mean ANYTHING - shuffle his feet / look busy ... get the group coffee & doughnuts - i'd settle for anything really...

Chuck Walla -> Hal n back , Dec 16, 2017 7:35 PM

"Cooperating"? I bet they were fucking gleeful in their wet dreams to remove Trump.

GUS100CORRINA -> SILVERGEDDON , Dec 16, 2017 5:43 PM

Observation: RULE OF LAW is under assault.

R USSIAN COLLUSION has been proven false. Therefore, Mueller's job is DONE!!!

END this charade and this witchhunt!!! Open all sealed indictments and proceed forward with arrests.

Chupacabra-322 -> GUS100CORRINA , Dec 16, 2017 5:48 PM

@ GUS,

"Rule of Law under assault?"

Check the scoreboard. Their currently isn't any rule of law among Criminals. We're

Tyrannically Lawless.

Chupacabra-322 -> kellys_eye , Dec 16, 2017 7:38 PM

Here's the short list of Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Seditious Psychopath Hillary Clinton's Crimes.

As a reminder, all the data to date suggests that Hillary broke the following 11 US CODES. I provided the links for your convenience. HRC needs to STAND DOWN.

CEO aka "President" TRUMP was indeed correct when he said: "FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!"

18 U.S. Code § 1905 - Disclosure of confidential information generally
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1905

18 U.S. Code § 1924 - Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1924

18 U.S. Code § 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2071

26 U.S. Code § 7201 - Attempt to evade or defeat tax
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/7201

26 U.S. Code § 7212 - Attempts to interfere with administration of internal revenue laws
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/7212

18 U.S. Code § 1343 - Fraud by wire, radio, or television
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1343

18 U.S. Code § 1349 – Attempt and Conspiracy
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1349

18 U.S. Code § 1505 - Obstruction of Proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1505

18 U.S. Code § 1621 - Perjury generally (including documents signed under penalty of perjury)
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1621

18 USC Sec. 2384?TITLE 18 - CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE?PART I - CRIMES?CHAPTER 115 - TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES
http://trac.syr.edu/laws/18/18USC02384.html

18 U.S. Code § 2381 - Treason
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381

The Preponderance of Evidence suggests that she broke these Laws, Knowingly, Willfully and Repeatedly. This pattern indicates a habitual/career Criminal, who belongs in Federal Prison.

If Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Seditious Psychopath Hillary Clinton would have been elected. Many if not all of the High Crimes, Crimes & sexual perversion's we see coming to Light never would have been known off.

The Tyrannical Lawlessness we see before our eyes never would have seen the light of day.

And, here's the Dark Humor in this. I'm not an Agent / Esq. Attorney from The City of London. This is common knowledge anyone could Investigate for themselves.

Americans have always been fascinated with the Law. It's the reason some of the highest rated Tee Vee shows we're all based on Law or the presumption of it. Show such as "Law & Order" & CSI. Christ Sakes, look at the OJ Trail ratings.

We're now a Nation of Men, not Law. Thus, to my point.

We're now absolutely, completely, open in your Face

Tyrannically Lawless.

Everybodys All ... -> SILVERGEDDON , Dec 16, 2017 6:13 PM

Mueller is doing more harm to the fbis already terrible reputation every day this sham is extended another day. When Mueller is done with this he better watch his backside is all I can say because many people are pissed at what he has put this country through.

bh2 , Dec 16, 2017 5:43 PM

Curious. Whatever transpired during the transition about "contact" with "Russians" would have been within the authority of the president-elect or his staff.

Why then would emails during transition be subject to review by Congress (or anyone else) with respect to alleged "collusion" between the campaign and foreign government officials? And why did not Trump just assert privilege and tell Congress to pound sand?

This is beginning to look like a snipe hunt which is being extended to provide political eyewash to blind the public to the reality there was no "there" there.

Kayman , Dec 16, 2017 5:40 PM

Mueller is dirty. Nothing more, nothing less. It's not the dirt we see on the surface, it is the dirty hidden below the cesspool of the Washington Mob.

Stan Smith , Dec 16, 2017 5:41 PM

It really is a soft coup by the FBI, CIA, DNC, among others. What a disgrace. These are the same people who want to be taken seriously. We'll take them seriously once they become serious. Which is likely no time soon.

chunga -> Stan Smith , Dec 16, 2017 5:58 PM

All these agencies are wacked right out. What we need is one moar... the Bureau of Pissed Off Citizens With Pitchforks. The Imperial City is out of control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fyr0zbaFyE

MuffDiver69 , Dec 16, 2017 5:50 PM

Yep...Now the Fake News has all the Trump transition emails and gossip. This entire operation was a data mining expedition for the DNC and democrats. If you want to know a mans motives look at who he hires and Mueller has 3/4 partisan left wing hacks working for him. The fact they think this is ok and no big deal tells you all one needs to know and if it's proven they have been leaked, then shut this shit show down..This country is a disgrace.

RussianSniper , Dec 16, 2017 6:08 PM

The left and right establishment of DC, the Intelligence agencies, the fake news, and the Department of Justice have undertaken an overthrow of the constitutionally elected President of the United States.

This is treason.
This is sedition.

People need to answer for their crimes and should be punished severely.

Justice in the USA is not a thing of the past....

No matter what the previous criminal administrations wish you to believe.

Manaze , Dec 16, 2017 6:09 PM

This article never did say what the unlawful conduct was in obtaining the emails. GSA has no choice in cooperating with Mueller. He has been given broad authority.

I wish there was more objectivity on zerohedge. Mostly it is right extremist hate mongers who are besotted with one-sided cool aid. They just decide who to hate then lambast them without looking at all the facts. Nobody would call that smart.

Irish Yoga , Dec 16, 2017 6:12 PM

No mention of Bill, Hillary, Awans, Debbie, Seth, Huma, Carlos (perv husband of Huma the Hummer), Chelsea, and many other things too long to list. Hmmm... maybe the FBI should be chasing real criminals. But they are merely guardians of the old guard these days. Investigation was long ago deleted from their mandate.

"Rebellion to t... , Dec 16, 2017 6:20 PM

The sad fact of the matter is that all those involved in this overthrow, fully understand, their actions and behavior up to and including the spying on, the unmasking, the leaking of classified information, the slanderous and disinformation shit out by the fake news, etc., would eventually be exposed.

Those complicit did not care!

They'd rather destroy the nation than relinquish their unchecked power and ill gotten wealth.

We are on the verge of the fight of our lives.

US patriots will soon be in the field of battle with the deep state/shadow government/evil empire.

When the dust settles, no Bush, Clinton, or Obama family member or administration team should walk free.

The intelligence agencies need to be broken down.

Traitors need to answer for their crimes.

Those convicted must pay the ultimate price.

Pigeon -> "Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God."-ThomasJefferson , Dec 16, 2017 6:30 PM

"would eventually be exposed."

No, they did not. Because Hillary was rigged to win.

Honest John , Dec 16, 2017 7:05 PM

But they still can't get Hillary's e mails. Mueller is obviously a Clinton stooge.

ErostheDog , Dec 16, 2017 7:06 PM

And the coup attempt continues...

I Write Code , Dec 16, 2017 7:15 PM

Of course if anybody put anything sensitive in any email - without serious extra encryption - then they deserve whatever comes.

Neochrome , Dec 16, 2017 7:21 PM

This whole thing started out of nothing, or rather from a planted lie, as losers refused to accept the outcome of the election they thought they have sufficiently gamed. Meanwhile we have DNC testifying that they don't give a shit about democracy as they can do as they please as a "private" organization, including sabotaging their own candidates, but yawn to that. We have a testimony that connects DNC to the murder of Seth Rich, testimony obstructed from proper investigation by the highest law enforcement agency in the country itself. We have bureaucrat insurrection, from lowest clerks and judges to highest government officials, aimed at undermining the duly elected POTUS. This is a revolution in reverse, where ruling class is trying to overthrow the will of the people. And who is in the forefront of this fascist takeover and trampling of democracy: exactly the agencies that suppose to protect the country from that scenario - CIA and FBI. Finally the veil of "democracy has slipped and we can all see the ugly truth behind it...

[Dec 16, 2017] Strzok and Ohr as two new important players in Steele dossier saga

Notable quotes:
"... It is now known that the FBI also met with Christopher Steele, the compiler of the Trump Dossier, who is now known to have been in the pay of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign in July 2016, shortly before the Russiagate investigation was launched. ..."
"... The department's Bruce Ohr, a career official, served as associate deputy attorney general at the time of the campaign. That placed him just below the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, who ran the day-to-day operations of the department. ..."
"... Unbeknownst to investigators until recently, Ohr knew Steele and had repeated contacts with Steele when Steele was working on the dossier. Ohr also met after the election with Glenn Simpson, head of Fusion GPS, the opposition research company that was paid by the Clinton campaign to compile the dossier. ..."
"... It is also now known that over the course of the election the FBI – on the basis of information in the Trump Dossier – obtained at least one warrant from the FISA court which made it possible for it to undertake surveillance during and after the election of persons involved in the election campaign of Hillary Clinton's opponent Donald Trump. ..."
"... Let's remember a couple of things about the dossier. The Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, which we now know were one and the same, paid the law firm who paid Fusion GPS who paid Christopher Steele who then paid Russians to put together a report that we call a dossier full of all kinds of fake news, National Enquirer garbage and it's been reported that this dossier was all dressed up by the FBI, taken to the FISA court and presented as a legitimate intelligence document -- that it became the basis for a warrant to spy on Americans. ..."
"... There is now talk of FBI Director Christopher Wray and of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein being held in contempt of Congress because of the failure of the FBI and the Justice Department to comply with Congressman Nunes's subpoenas. ..."
"... As the FBI's deputy director of counter-intelligence it is also highly likely that it was Strozk who was the official within the FBI who supervised the FBI's contacts with Christopher Steele, and who would have been provided with the Trump Dossier ..."
"... As the BBC has pointed out , it was also the Trump Dossier which Congressman Adam Schiff – the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Community, who appears to be very close to some of the FBI investigators involved in the Russiagate case – as well as the FBI's Russiagate investigators were using as the narrative frame narrative when questioning witnesses about their role in Russiagate. ..."
"... These facts make it highly likely that it was indeed the Trump Dossier which provided the information which the FBI used to obtain the surveillance warrants it obtained from the FISA court during the 2016 election and afterwards. ..."
"... Given Strzok's central role in the Russiagate investigation going back all the way to its start in July 2016, there has also to be a possibility that it was Strzok who was behind many of the leaks coming from the investigation which so destabilised the Trump administration at the start of the year. ..."
"... On the strength of a fake Dossier paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign the Justice Department, the FBI and the US intelligence community carried out surveillance during the election of US citizens who were members of the campaign team of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton's opponent ..."
"... Given the debacle the Justice Department, the FBI and the US intelligence community are facing, it is completely understandable why they should want to keep the Russiagate investigation alive to draw attention away from their own activities. ..."
"... Put in this way it is Robert Mueller's investigation which is the cover-up, and the surveillance which is the wrongdoing the cover up is trying to excuse or conceal, which is what I said nine months ago in March . Congressman Jordan has again recently called for a second Special Counsel to be appointed . When the suggestion of appointing a second Special Counsel was first floated last month the suggestion was that the focus of the second Special Counsel's investigation would be the Uranium One affair. ..."
"... Congressman Jordan has now correctly identified the surveillance of US citizens by the US national security bureaucracy during the election as the focus of the proposed investigation to be conducted by the second Special Counsel. ..."
"... There should be only one Special Counsel tasked with looking into what is the real scandal of the 2016 election: the surveillance of US citizens during the election by the US national security bureaucracy on the basis of the Trump Dossier. ..."
Dec 10, 2017 | The Duran

... ... ...

Extracted from Strzok-Gate And The Mueller Cover-Up by Alexander Mercouris

It is now known that the FBI also met with Christopher Steele, the compiler of the Trump Dossier, who is now known to have been in the pay of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign in July 2016, shortly before the Russiagate investigation was launched.

Whilst there is some confusion about whether the FBI actually paid Steele for his information, it is now known that Steele was in contact with the FBI throughout the election and after, and that the FBI gave credence to his work.

Recently it has also come to light that Steele was also directly in touch with Obama's Justice Department, a fact which was only disclosed recently. The best account of this has been provided by Byron York writing for The Washington Examiner

The department's Bruce Ohr, a career official, served as associate deputy attorney general at the time of the campaign. That placed him just below the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, who ran the day-to-day operations of the department. In 2016, Ohr's office was just steps away from Yates, who was later fired for defying President Trump's initial travel ban executive order and still later became a prominent anti-Trump voice upon leaving the Justice Department.

Unbeknownst to investigators until recently, Ohr knew Steele and had repeated contacts with Steele when Steele was working on the dossier. Ohr also met after the election with Glenn Simpson, head of Fusion GPS, the opposition research company that was paid by the Clinton campaign to compile the dossier.

Word that Ohr met with Steele and Simpson, first reported by Fox News' James Rosen and Jake Gibson, was news to some current officials in the Justice Department. Shortly after learning it, they demoted Ohr, taking away his associate deputy attorney general title and moving him full time to another position running the department's organized crime drug enforcement task forces.

It is also now known that over the course of the election the FBI – on the basis of information in the Trump Dossier – obtained at least one warrant from the FISA court which made it possible for it to undertake surveillance during and after the election of persons involved in the election campaign of Hillary Clinton's opponent Donald Trump.

In response to subpoenas issued at the instigation of the Congressman Devin Nunes the FBI has recently admitted that the Trump Dossier cannot be verified.

However the FBI and the Justice Department have so far failed to provide in response to these subpoenas information about the precise role of the Trump Dossier in triggering the Russiagate investigation.

The FBI's and the Justice Department's failure to provide this information recently provoked an angry exchange between FBI Director Christopher Wray and Congressman Jim Jordan during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.

During that hearing Jordan said to Wray the following

Let's remember a couple of things about the dossier. The Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, which we now know were one and the same, paid the law firm who paid Fusion GPS who paid Christopher Steele who then paid Russians to put together a report that we call a dossier full of all kinds of fake news, National Enquirer garbage and it's been reported that this dossier was all dressed up by the FBI, taken to the FISA court and presented as a legitimate intelligence document -- that it became the basis for a warrant to spy on Americans.

In response Wray refused to say whether or not the Trump Dossier played any role in the FBI obtaining the FISA warrants, even though it was previously disclosed that it did. This is despite the fact that this information is not classified and ought already to have been provided in response to Congressman Nunes's subpoenas.

There is now talk of FBI Director Christopher Wray and of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein being held in contempt of Congress because of the failure of the FBI and the Justice Department to comply with Congressman Nunes's subpoenas.

During the exchanges between Wray and Jordan at the hearing in the House Judiciary Committee Jordan also had this to say

Here's what I think -- I think Peter Strozk (sic) Mr. Super Agent at the FBI, I think he's the guy who took the application to the FISA court and if that happened, if this happened, if you have the FBI working with a campaign, the Democrats' campaign, taking opposition research, dressing it all up and turning it into an intelligence document so they can take it to the FISA court so they can spy on the other campaign, if that happened, that is as wrong as it gets

Peter Strzok is the senior FBI official who is now known to have had a leading role in both the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's misuse of her private server and in the Russiagate investigation.

Strzok is now also known to have been the person who changed the wording in Comey's statement clearing Hillary Clinton for her misuse of her private email server to say that Hillary Clinton had been "extremely careless'" as opposed to "grossly negligent".

Strzok – who was the FBI's deputy director for counter-intelligence – is now also known to have been the person who signed the document which launched the Russiagate investigation in July 2016.

Fox News has reported that Strzok was also the person supervised the FBI's questioning of Michael Flynn. It is not clear whether this covers to the FBI's interview with Flynn on 24th January 2017 during which Flynn lied to the FBI about his conversations with Russian ambassador. However it is likely that it does.

If so then this is potentially important given that it was Flynn's to the FBI during this interview which made up the case against him to which he has now pleaded guilty, and given the indications that Flynn's interview with the FBI on 24th January 2017 was a set-up intended to entrap him .

As the FBI's deputy director of counter-intelligence it is also highly likely that it was Strozk who was the official within the FBI who supervised the FBI's contacts with Christopher Steele, and who would have been provided with the Trump Dossier.

Recently it has been disclosed that Special Counsel Mueller sacked Strzok from the Russiagate investigation supposedly after it was discovered that Strzok had been sending anti-Trump and pro-Hillary Clinton messages to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer with whom he was having an affair.

These messages were sent by Strzok to his lover during the election, but apparently only came to light in July this year, when Mueller supposedly sacked Strzok because of them.

It seems that since then Strzok has been working in the FBI's human resources department, an astonishing demotion for the FBI's former deputy director for counter-intelligence who was apparently previously considered the FBI's top expert on Russia.

Some people have questioned whether the sending of the messages could possibly be the true reason why Strzok was sacked. My colleague Alex Christoforou has reported on some of the bafflement that this extraordinary sacking and demotion has caused.

Business Insider reports the anguished comments of former FBI officials incredulous that Strzok could have been sacked for such a trivial reason. Here is what Business Insider reports one ex FBI official Mark Rossini as having said

It would be literally impossible for one human being to have the power to change or manipulate evidence or intelligence according to their own political preferences. FBI agents, like anyone else, are human beings. We are allowed to have our political beliefs. If anything, the overwhelming majority of agents are conservative Republicans.

This is obviously right. Though the ex-FBI officials questioned by Business Insider are clearly supporters of Strzok and critics of Donald Trump, the same point has been made from the other side of the political divide by Congressman Jim Jordan

If you get kicked off the Mueller team for being anti-Trump, there wouldn't be anybody left on the Mueller team. There has to be more

Adding to the mystery about Strzok's sacking is why the FBI took five months to confirm it.

Mueller apparently sacked Strzok from the Russiagate investigation in July and it was apparently then that Strzok was simultaneously sacked from his previous post of deputy director for counter-espionage and transferred to human resources. The FBI however only disclosed his sacking now five months later in response to demands for information from Congressional investigators.

There is in fact an obvious explanation for Strzok's sacking and the strange circumstances surrounding it and I am sure that it is the one Congressman Jordan was thinking during his angry exchanges with FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Recently the FBI admitted to Congress that it has failed to verify the Trump Dossier.

I suspect that Congressman Jordan believes that the true reason why Strzok was sacked is that Strzok's credibility had become so tied to the Trump Dossier that when its credibility collapsed over the course of the summer when the FBI finally realised that it could not be verified his credibility collapsed with it. If so then I am sure that Congressman Jordan is right.

We now know from a variety of sources but first and foremost from the testimony to Congress of Carter Page that the Trump Dossier provided the frame narrative for the Russiagate investigation until just a few months ago.

We also know that the Trump Dossier was included in an appendix to the January ODNI report about supposed Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The fact that the Trump Dossier was included in an appendix to the January ODNI report shows that at the start of the year the top officials of the FBI and of the US intelligence community – Comey, Clapper, Brennan and the rest – believed in its truth.

The June 2017 article in the Washington Post (discussed by me here ) also all but confirms that it was the Trump Dossier that provided the information which the CIA sent to President Obama in August 2016 alleging that the Russians were interfering in the election.

As the BBC has pointed out , it was also the Trump Dossier which Congressman Adam Schiff – the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Community, who appears to be very close to some of the FBI investigators involved in the Russiagate case – as well as the FBI's Russiagate investigators were using as the narrative frame narrative when questioning witnesses about their role in Russiagate.

These facts make it highly likely that it was indeed the Trump Dossier which provided the information which the FBI used to obtain the surveillance warrants it obtained from the FISA court during the 2016 election and afterwards.

Strzok's position as the FBI's deputy director for counter-intelligence makes it highly likely that he was amongst those senior FBI and US intelligence officials who gave the Trump Dossier credence, whilst his known actions during the Hillary Clinton private server investigation and during the Russiagate investigation make it highly likely that it was he who was the official within the FBI who sought and obtained the FISA warrants.

Given Strzok's central role in the Russiagate investigation going back all the way to its start in July 2016, there has also to be a possibility that it was Strzok who was behind many of the leaks coming from the investigation which so destabilised the Trump administration at the start of the year.

This once again points to the true scandal of the 2016 election.

On the strength of a fake Dossier paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign the Justice Department, the FBI and the US intelligence community carried out surveillance during the election of US citizens who were members of the campaign team of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton's opponent .

Given the hugely embarrassing implications of this for the FBI, it is completely understandable why Strzok, if he was the person who was ultimately responsible for this debacle – as he almost certainly was – and if he was responsible for some of the leaks – as he likely also was – was sacked and exiled to human resources when the utter falsity of the Trump Dossier could no longer be denied.

It would also explain why the FBI sought to keep Strzok's sacking secret, so that it was only disclosed five months after it happened and then only in response to questions from Congressional investigators, with a cover story about inappropriate anti-Trump messages being spread about in order to explain it.

This surely is also the reason why in defiance both of evidence and logic the Russiagate investigation continues to grind on.

Given the debacle the Justice Department, the FBI and the US intelligence community are facing, it is completely understandable why they should want to keep the Russiagate investigation alive to draw attention away from their own activities.

Put in this way it is Robert Mueller's investigation which is the cover-up, and the surveillance which is the wrongdoing the cover up is trying to excuse or conceal, which is what I said nine months ago in March . Congressman Jordan has again recently called for a second Special Counsel to be appointed . When the suggestion of appointing a second Special Counsel was first floated last month the suggestion was that the focus of the second Special Counsel's investigation would be the Uranium One affair.

That always struck me as misconceived not because there may not be things to investigate in the Uranium One case but because the focus of any new investigation should be what happened during the 2016 election, not what happened during the Uranium one case.

Congressman Jordan has now correctly identified the surveillance of US citizens by the US national security bureaucracy during the election as the focus of the proposed investigation to be conducted by the second Special Counsel.

In truth there should be no second Special Counsel. Since there is no Russiagate collusion to investigate the Russiagate investigation – ie. the investigation headed by Mueller – should be wound up.

There should be only one Special Counsel tasked with looking into what is the real scandal of the 2016 election: the surveillance of US citizens during the election by the US national security bureaucracy on the basis of the Trump Dossier.

I remain intensely skeptical that this will happen. However the fact that some members of Congress such as Congressman Nunes (recently cleared of charges that he acted inappropriately by disclosing details of the surveillance back in March) and Congressman Jordan are starting to demand it is a hopeful sign.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Copyright © 2017 DRN MEDIA PLC.

[Dec 16, 2017] Trump's doubts about NATO, including his demands that European members pay more, are presented as evidence (it is hinted) of his collusion with the evil Putin.

Notable quotes:
"... History is bunk, as ol' Henry Ford said: Americans live in the eternal now. Our PDS (Putin Derangement System) journos insist that Putin is bad to the bone, as all Russkis are, and there's just no reason for it except for their dark slavic hearts which contrast so painfully with our bright pure red white 'n blue ones. :-( ..."
Dec 16, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Jim Haygood , , December 15, 2017 at 7:26 am

Nice timing for the release of these archives on Dec 12th. Yesterday the WaPo posted an article "based on interviews with more than 50 current and former U.S. officials" titled "Doubting the Intelligence: Trump Pursues Putin and Leaves a Russian Threat Unchecked":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/donald-trump-pursues-vladimir-putin-russian-election-hacking/

Axiomatic to the WaPo hacks authors is that NATO ranks right up there with the 1776 Declaration and the Constitution as a bedrock US principle. Trump's doubts about NATO, including his demands that European members pay more, are presented as evidence (it is hinted) of his collusion with the evil Putin.

Naturally the new archives released by GWU play no part in the WaPo story two days later, since they aren't "fitted to the narrative."

History is bunk, as ol' Henry Ford said: Americans live in the eternal now. Our PDS (Putin Derangement System) journos insist that Putin is bad to the bone, as all Russkis are, and there's just no reason for it except for their dark slavic hearts which contrast so painfully with our bright pure red white 'n blue ones. :-(

[Dec 16, 2017] Any time you hear or read a Russian conspiracy theory in the MSM or elsewhere, substitute the words "Jews" for "Russians" and the words "International Jewry" for "Russia". Then re-read the sentence.

Dec 16, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Sid Finster , , December 15, 2017 at 11:16 am

Any time you hear or read a Russian conspiracy theory in the MSM or elsewhere, substitute the words "Jews" for "Russians" and the words "International Jewry" for "Russia". Then re-read the sentence.

See how ugly that sentence now looks?

So why should we rightfully decry such racism against Jews or others, but applaud the same sort of racism when it is directed against Russians?

[Dec 16, 2017] The Real Crimes of Russiagate by Patrick J. Buchanan

In five month is is clear how wrong Pat Buchanan was. I expected from him a much better analysis with less prejudies. But he is absolutely right about leaks. Actually now it is clear that one of the requests from Trump team to Russian ambassador was about help Israel in UN, so this not a Russiagate. There is also suspection that Strzok was the person who had thrown Flynn under the bus and propagated Steele dossier within FBI. May be acting as Brennan agent inside FBI.
Notable quotes:
"... Just days into Trump's presidency, a rifle-shot intel community leak of a December meeting between Trump national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn and Russia's ambassador forced the firing of Flynn. ..."
"... Is it not monumental hypocrisy to denounce Russia's hacking of the computers of Democratic political leaders and institutions, while splashing the contents of the theft all over Page 1 ..."
"... Not only do our Beltway media traffic in stolen secrets and stolen goods, but the knowledge that they will publish secrets and protect those who leak them is an incentive for bureaucratic disloyalty and criminality. ..."
"... Our mainstream media are like the fellow who avoids the risk of stealing cars, but wants to fence them once stolen and repainted. ..."
"... Do the American people not have a "right to know" who are the leakers within the government who are daily spilling secrets to destroy their president? Are the identities of the saboteurs not a legitimate subject of investigation? Ought they not be exposed and rooted out? ..."
"... Where is the special prosecutor to investigate the collusion between bureaucrats and members of the press who traffic in the stolen secrets of the republic? ..."
"... Bottom line: Trump is facing a stacked deck. ..."
"... People inside the executive branch are daily providing fresh meat to feed the scandal. Anti-Trump media are transfixed by it. It is the Watergate of their generation. They can smell the blood in the water. The Pulitzers are calling. And they love it, for they loathe Donald Trump both for who he is and what he stands for. ..."
"... Sure, the media today are more deranged than ever. Media are also more cynical and in the control of globalists. But they got nothing on Russia. They have the cry of Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, but unless they can provide solid evidence, this is nothing. ..."
"... Pat Buchanan does his best – but apparently he just can't bring himself to doubt the integrity of America's "intelligence" services – even after their epic failure &/or deception when it came to Iraq's non-existent WMD's. "Confidential emails of the DNC and John Podesta were hacked, i.e., stolen by Russian intelligence and given to WikiLeaks." What reason do we have to believe this, other than the worthless word of these perpetually lying creeps? ..."
"... No it's not. The Republic died a long time ago: The Empire is in that rough middle period where the Praetorians choose the leader who suits them most, but occasionally have an unsuitable one slip past them. This ends with the barbarians moving in to assume all the trappings of being a Roman but lead the empire to a final crushing defeat at the hands of worse barbarians. ..."
"... There's still no need, unless Buchanan knows something a lot more significant than what he covers here, to give any credence whatsoever to the "Russia influencing the US election" black propaganda campaign. It should still be laughed at, rather than given the slightest credibility, whilst, as Buchanan does indeed do repeatedly, turning the issue upon the true criminals – those in US government circles leaking US security information to try to influence US politics. ..."
"... If there was any attempt by Russia to "influence" the US election it was trivial, and should be put into context whenever it is mentioned. That context includes the longstanding and ongoing efforts by the US to interfere massively in other countries' (including Russia's) elections and governments, and the routine acceptance of foreign interference in US politics by Israel in particular. ..."
"... If Trump and his backers really wanted to put a halt to this laughable nonsense about foreign influence, he should start a high profile investigation of the nefarious "influencing" of US politics by foreign "agents of influence" in general, specifically including Israel and staffed by men who are not sympathetic to that country. ..."
Jul 18, 2017 | www.unz.com

For a year, the big question of Russiagate has boiled down to this: Did Donald Trump's campaign collude with the Russians in hacking the DNC? And until last week, the answer was "no."

As ex-CIA director Mike Morell said in March, "On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all. There's no little campfire, there's no little candle, there's no spark."

Well, last week, it appeared there had been a fire in Trump Tower. On June 9, 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with Russians -- in anticipation of promised dirt on Hillary Clinton's campaign. While not a crime, this was a blunder. For Donald Jr. had long insisted there had been no collusion with the Russians. Caught in flagrante, he went full Pinocchio for four days.

And as the details of that June 9 meeting spilled out, Trump defenders were left with egg on their faces, while anti-Trump media were able to keep the spotlight laser-focused on where they want it -- Russiagate.

This reality underscores a truth of our time. In the 19th century, power meant control of the means of production; today, power lies in control of the means of communication.

Who controls the media spotlight controls what people talk about and think about. And mainstream media are determined to keep that spotlight on Trump-Russia, and as far away as possible from their agenda -- breaking the Trump presidency and bringing him down.

Almost daily, there are leaks from the investigative and security arms of the U.S. government designed to damage this president.

Just days into Trump's presidency, a rifle-shot intel community leak of a December meeting between Trump national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn and Russia's ambassador forced the firing of Flynn.

An Oval Office meeting with the Russian foreign minister in which Trump disclosed that Israeli intelligence had ferreted out evidence that ISIS was developing computer bombs to explode on airliners was leaked. This alerted ISIS, damaged the president, and imperiled Israeli intelligence sources and methods.

Some of the leaks from national security and investigative agencies are felonies, not only violations of the leaker's solemn oath to protect secrets, but of federal law.

Yet the press is happy to collude with these leakers and to pay them in the coin they seek. First, by publishing the secrets the leakers want revealed. Second, by protecting them from exposure to arrest and prosecution for the crimes they are committing.

The mutual agendas of the deep-state leakers and the mainstream media mesh perfectly.

Consider the original Russiagate offense.

Confidential emails of the DNC and John Podesta were hacked, i.e., stolen by Russian intelligence and given to WikiLeaks. And who was the third and indispensable party in this "Tinker to Evers to Chance" double-play combination?

The media itself. While deploring Russian hacking as an "act of war" against "our democracy," the media published the fruits of the hacking. It was the media that revealed what Podesta wrote and how the DNC tilted the tables against Bernie Sanders.

If the media believed Russian hacking was a crime against our democracy, why did they publish the fruits of that crime?

Is it not monumental hypocrisy to denounce Russia's hacking of the computers of Democratic political leaders and institutions, while splashing the contents of the theft all over Page 1?

Not only do our Beltway media traffic in stolen secrets and stolen goods, but the knowledge that they will publish secrets and protect those who leak them is an incentive for bureaucratic disloyalty and criminality.

Our mainstream media are like the fellow who avoids the risk of stealing cars, but wants to fence them once stolen and repainted.

Some journalists know exactly who is leaking against Trump, but they are as protective of their colleagues' "sources" as of their own. Thus, the public is left in the dark as to what the real agenda is here, and who is sabotaging a president in whom they placed so much hope.

And thus does democracy die in darkness.

Do the American people not have a "right to know" who are the leakers within the government who are daily spilling secrets to destroy their president? Are the identities of the saboteurs not a legitimate subject of investigation? Ought they not be exposed and rooted out?

Where is the special prosecutor to investigate the collusion between bureaucrats and members of the press who traffic in the stolen secrets of the republic?

Bottom line: Trump is facing a stacked deck.

People inside the executive branch are daily providing fresh meat to feed the scandal. Anti-Trump media are transfixed by it. It is the Watergate of their generation. They can smell the blood in the water. The Pulitzers are calling. And they love it, for they loathe Donald Trump both for who he is and what he stands for.

It is hard to see when this ends, or how it ends well for the country.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

Copyright 2017 Creators.com. ← Russia Baiters and Putin Haters Category: Ideology Tags: American Media , Donald Trump , Russia

NoseytheDuke , Show Comment Next New Comment July 18, 2017 at 5:27 am GMT

Pat, you are again presenting yourself to be a disinformation asset and are truly undermining your credibility here. The DNC and Podesta emails were leaked not hacked. Please write this out in full a hundred times on the blackboard or whiteboard of your choice. Maybe then it will sink in.
Priss Factor , Website Show Comment Next New Comment July 18, 2017 at 5:57 am GMT
There is nothing there. Let the media cry Russia Russia Russia forever. Trump can do other things. People will lose interest in this. This is different from Watergate because there really was a burglary and a coverup. There's nothing remotely like this here.

1. If Russians really did it, they did it on their own. Trump team had nothing to do with it.

2. If Russians didn't do it, this is just the media wasting its resources and energy on nothing.

Let the media keep digging and digging and digging where they is no gold. Let them be distracted by Trump does something real. Because Buchanan lived through Watergate, I think he's over-thinking this. It's like dejavu to him. Sure, the media today are more deranged than ever. Media are also more cynical and in the control of globalists. But they got nothing on Russia. They have the cry of Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, but unless they can provide solid evidence, this is nothing.

vinteuil , Show Comment Next New Comment July 18, 2017 at 8:43 am GMT
Pat Buchanan does his best – but apparently he just can't bring himself to doubt the integrity of America's "intelligence" services – even after their epic failure &/or deception when it came to Iraq's non-existent WMD's. "Confidential emails of the DNC and John Podesta were hacked, i.e., stolen by Russian intelligence and given to WikiLeaks." What reason do we have to believe this, other than the worthless word of these perpetually lying creeps?
The Alarmist , Show Comment Next New Comment July 18, 2017 at 9:37 am GMT

It is hard to see when this ends, or how it ends well for the country.

No it's not. The Republic died a long time ago: The Empire is in that rough middle period where the Praetorians choose the leader who suits them most, but occasionally have an unsuitable one slip past them. This ends with the barbarians moving in to assume all the trappings of being a Roman but lead the empire to a final crushing defeat at the hands of worse barbarians.

Randal , Show Comment Next New Comment July 18, 2017 at 11:37 am GMT
Buchanan still being too reasonable towards the enemies of US democracy (the Democrats and their neocon Republican allies trying to undermine and overthrow the elected US President), imo.

There's still no need, unless Buchanan knows something a lot more significant than what he covers here, to give any credence whatsoever to the "Russia influencing the US election" black propaganda campaign. It should still be laughed at, rather than given the slightest credibility, whilst, as Buchanan does indeed do repeatedly, turning the issue upon the true criminals – those in US government circles leaking US security information to try to influence US politics.

Did Donald Trump's campaign collude with the Russians in hacking the DNC?

Clearly not, as far as anybody knows based upon information in the public domain. There's no evidence Russia's government hacked anything anyway. A meeting by campaign representatives with Russians claiming to have dirt on Trump's rival is not evidence of collusion in hacking.

Confidential emails of the DNC and John Podesta were hacked, i.e., stolen by Russian intelligence and given to WikiLeaks.

Again, Buchanan seems to be needlessly conceding ground to known liars and deluded zealots.

If there was any attempt by Russia to "influence" the US election it was trivial, and should be put into context whenever it is mentioned. That context includes the longstanding and ongoing efforts by the US to interfere massively in other countries' (including Russia's) elections and governments, and the routine acceptance of foreign interference in US politics by Israel in particular.

If Trump and his backers really wanted to put a halt to this laughable nonsense about foreign influence, he should start a high profile investigation of the nefarious "influencing" of US politics by foreign "agents of influence" in general, specifically including Israel and staffed by men who are not sympathetic to that country.

That would quickly result in the shutting down of mainstream media complaints about foreign influence.

Gg Mo , Show Comment Next New Comment July 18, 2017 at 12:59 pm GMT
@NoseytheDuke

Yup, His name was Seth Rich . (and let us never forget Michael Hastings and the Smith Mundt Modernization Act put in place for a Hillary win/steal.)

Gg Mo , Show Comment Next New Comment July 18, 2017 at 1:05 pm GMT
Yipes -- What is the matter with Buchanan? Is he taking weird prescription drugs for Alzheimers ?

He seems to be a bit of an apologist for KNOWN liars and he doesn't seem to understand that the MSM is absolutely the mouthpiece for these agencies, populated with agents like Cooper and Mika etc etc etc

Andrei Martyanov , Website Show Comment Next New Comment July 18, 2017 at 1:45 pm GMT

It is hard to see when this ends, or how it ends well for the country.

It already didn't end well and it pains me to say this. What it may become only is worse. At this stage I don's see any "better" scenarios. The truth has been revealed.

[Dec 16, 2017] Seth Rich murder: The facts so far by Kit

Aug 11, 2016 | OffGuardian

Last month Seth Rich, a data analyst who worked for the DNC, was shot near his home in Washington DC. He was on the phone to his girlfriend when it happened. Police were called to the scene and discovered the young man's body at roughly 4.20am. It was reported that Rich was "covered in bruises", shot "several times" and "at least once in the back".

The New York Daily News reported:

" police have found little information to explain his death. At this time, there are no suspects, no motive and no witnesses in Rich's murder.

While initial theories were that the killing was robbery or mugging gone wrong, the Washington Post said:

" There is no immediate indication that robbery was a motive in the attack but it has not been ruled out as a possibility."

Rich's family have also reported that nothing was taken:

" [Rich's] hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything."

On August 9th Julian Assange gave an interview on Dutch television in which he seemed to imply that Rich's death was politically motivated, and perhaps suggest he had been a source for the DNC e-mail leak:

That same day wikileaks tweeted that they were offering a $20,000 dollar reward for information on the killing of Mr Rich.

These are the facts of the case, so far. And they are undisputed.

I'm not going to take a position on the motive for Mr Rich's killing, or possible suspects. But I do want to point out the general level of media silence. Take these facts and change the names – imagine Trump's email had been hacked, and then a staffer with possible ties to wikileaks was inexplicably shot dead. Imagine this poor young man had been a Kremlin whistleblower, or a Chinese hacker, or an Iranian blogger.

If this, as yet unsolved, murder had ties to anyone other than Hillary Clinton, would it be being so ritually and rigourously ignored by the MSM?

[Dec 16, 2017] The Trump team definitely colluded with a foreign power Just not the one you think by Aaron Maté

Notable quotes:
"... Published in The Nation on Dec 5, 2017 ..."
"... ccording to the charge sheet , Flynn first made contact with Kislyak to discuss the Israel vote. We found out this weekend his reason for doing so. "[Special counsel Robert] Mueller's investigators have learned through witnesses and documents that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked the Trump transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel," ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... In short, the first known contact between the Trump campaign and Russia after the election occurred in the service of a different foreign power, Israel, and was ultimately fruitless. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... * Aaron Maté is a host/producer for The Real News Network. ..."
"... Published in www.newcoldwar.org (New Cold War: Ukraine and Beyond) ..."
Dec 14, 2017 | www.defenddemocracy.press
Published in The Nation on Dec 5, 2017

Why are the media paying scant attention to Michael Flynn's admissions about Israel?

The indictment of former national-security adviser Michael Flynn on December 1 has confirmed that Donald Trump's inner circle colluded with a foreign power before entering the White House -- just not the foreign power that has been the subject of our national fixation for the past year. To be sure, the jury is still out on Russia, though there are new grounds for questioning the case for a plot tying the Kremlin to Trump Tower. But with Flynn's plea, we can now say for certain that the Trump team did collude -- with Israel.

To recap, Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his conversations with then–Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the period after Trump's November 2016 victory. As Foreign Policy previously reported , Flynn reached out to Kislyak as part of "a vigorous diplomatic bid" to undermine President Obama's decision to allow a December 2016 Security Council resolution condemning illegal Israeli settlement building in the Occupied Territories. The indictment fills in some details.

According to the charge sheet , Flynn first made contact with Kislyak to discuss the Israel vote. We found out this weekend his reason for doing so. "[Special counsel Robert] Mueller's investigators have learned through witnesses and documents that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked the Trump transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel,"

The New York Times reported after Flynn's court appearance on Friday. "Investigators have learned that Mr. Flynn and [Trump son-in-law Jared] Kushner took the lead in those efforts" -- efforts which failed to change a single vote, including Russia's, which backed the measure in defiance of the Trump-Netanyahu subversion attempt.

In short, the first known contact between the Trump campaign and Russia after the election occurred in the service of a different foreign power, Israel, and was ultimately fruitless.

The next contact between Flynn and Kislyak was more productive. In late December, Obama imposed new sanctions on Russia for its alleged meddling in the 2016 election. A day later, Flynn called the Russian ambassador to request that the Kremlin, according to the plea document, "only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner." Flynn's overture came after a Trump transition colleague told him that the incoming administration "did not want Russia to escalate the situation." By all accounts, Russia complied.

Read also: Turkish Fears

Whatever one thinks about this covert attempt to reduce tensions with a nuclear-armed power, it demonstrates an effort by the Trump transition, as with the Israel vote, to undermine the outgoing administration's policy. Trump critics have seized on that as a violation of the Logan Act, which bars citizens from having unauthorized negotiations with foreign governments in a dispute with the United States. But the Logan Act has seldom been used except as a partisan talking point , not a prosecutable offense. More importantly, there's the question as to whether Flynn's overture on sanctions prove a quid pro quo [a favor or advantage granted or expected in return for something].

Notwithstanding the post-election contact with Flynn, not only has Russia failed to gain a reduction in sanctions but its relations with Washington have deteriorated. In early August, Trump signed new sanctions on Russia overwhelmingly approved by Congress. The administration recently presented lawmakers with a list of targets that "reads like a who's who of the Russian defense and intelligence sectors," The New York Times noted. In September, Trump shut down the Russian consulate in San Francisco and two annexes in New York City and Washington, DC. Just last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson denounced Russia's "malicious tactics" against the West and vowed that sanctions imposed over Russian's role in Ukraine "will remain in place until Russia reverses the actions that triggered them."

Meanwhile, Trump has enlarged NATO over Russia's objections, carried out the "biggest military exercise in Eastern Europe since the Cold War" on Russia's border, appointed several anti-Russia hawks to key posts, and continues to deliberate over whether to supply Ukraine with a weapons package that Obama himself rejected out of fear it would worsen the country's civil war.

In the latest flare-up, Russia has ordered international media outlets to register as foreign agents in retaliation for the Justice Department first doing so to Washington-based RT America .

It is, of course, possible that all of this is an elaborate ruse to mask the secret, as yet unproven, conspiracy that many insist will lead to Trump's downfall. The fact that Flynn is now a cooperating witness has refueled hopes that this day is finally approaching. After all, why would Flynn lie about his contacts with Russia if he did not have something to hide? And why would Mueller offer him a plea deal if Flynn wasn't offering him a bigger fish to fry? (One plausible motive, as Buzzfeed notes , is that Flynn may have lied to hide his potential Logan Act violation.)

Read also: Trump and the Terrorists Support Le Pen

Only time will tell whether Flynn has something to offer Mueller, or whether Mueller has gotten from him what he can. In the meantime, more than a year after the election, we still have exactly zero evidence of any cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russian government -- nor, it must be repeated, any evidence to back up U.S. intelligence officials' claims that the Russian government meddled in the election. We do have instances of Trump campaign figures' -- namely, Donald Trump Jr. and low-level adviser George Papadopoulos -- making contact with people that they thought were Russian government intermediaries. But whatever they were told or believed, there is still no proof that their contacts led to an actual Kremlin connection.

What we do have is evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Israel to subvert the U.S. government's official position at the United Nations Security Council. Yet reaction to that news has been quite a departure from the standards of Russiagate when it comes to foreign meddling.

The contrast was put on stark display on Sunday, when Jared Kushner appeared with billionaire Israeli-American media tycoon Haim Saban at the latter's annual forum on U.S.-Israel relations. Saban took a moment to thank Kushner for his role in the subversion effort that Flynn admitted to have undertaken on Israel's behalf. "To be honest with you, as far as I know there's nothing illegal there," Saban told his stage companion. "But I think that this crowd and myself want to thank you for making that effort, so thank you very much."

For all of the fears of Russian oligarchs' having influence over Trump, the comment from this American oligarch reveals a great deal about who really influences practically everyone in Washington, Republican or Democrat. Saban was not a Trump donor. He is, in fact, Bill and Hillary Clinton's top all-time financial supporter, to the tune of more than $25 million ; a benefactor whose generosity has helped build not just the Clinton Library but also the Democratic National Committee's headquarters.

Read also: The real Marine Le Pen: Α Warrior against Islam, like the "Fake pacifist" Trump?

But there has been no outrage from democracy-defending #Resistance stalwarts over Saban's comments (and the Israeli subversion effort he endorsed). The same for news of Kushner's failure to disclose his leadership of a group that funded the illegal Israeli settlements that he tried to protect at the United Nations. And now we await to see how those who agonize over foreign influence on Trump will respond to his reported plans to move the American embassy to Jerusalem -- "a decision that would break with decades of U.S. policy and could fuel violence in the Middle East," as Haaretz notes .

It is unlikely that Trump will be challenged on Israel, because his approach is harmonic with a bipartisan consensus cemented in large part by the financial contributions of billionaires like Saban and his Republican pro-Israeli government counterpart, Sheldon Adelson. Hence, there are no editorials or opinion pieces denouncing Israel's ' Plot Against America ' or ' War on America ', or warnings that ' Odds Are, Israel Owns Trump ', or explorations of ' What Israel Did to Control the American Mind '. Likewise, there will be no new groups forming dubbed the ' Committee to Investigate Israel ' or the ' Tel Aviv Project '. In fact it is more than likely that, going forward, the media will give Israelgate the same treatment as cable's top Russiagate sleuth, MSNBC 's Rachel Maddow, gave during her exhaustive Flynn coverage so far, which is to not even mention it.

This weekend furnished us with another important contrast. Flynn's indictment was followed hours later by the passage of the Senate Republican tax bill, which stands to be one of the largest upward transfers of wealth in U.S. history. If protecting democracy is our goal, we may want to tune out the Russia-obsessed pundits and look closer to home.

* Aaron Maté is a host/producer for The Real News Network.

Published in www.newcoldwar.org
(New Cold War: Ukraine and Beyond)

[Dec 15, 2017] With US forces on the borders of North Korea, China, and Russia on a hair-trigger, the continuous assertion of ever greater war-making powers to the military brass massively increases the danger that a miscalculation, misunderstanding, or accident could quickly lead to full-scale nuclear war.

Notable quotes:
"... "Meanwhile, figures posted by the Pentagon last month -- with little media attention -- revealed that the number of US troops deployed in the Middle East as a whole had soared by 33 percent over the previous four months, with the sharpest increases taking place in a number of Persian Gulf countries, indicating advanced preparations for a new US war against Iran. ..."
Dec 15, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Abe , December 14, 2017 at 8:01 am

The Russia-gate 'scandal' sideshow provided a very useful diversion while military preparations were advanced:

"While still on the books, the War Powers Act has long ago been turned into a dead letter by the quarter century of US wars of aggression that have followed the Stalinist bureaucracy's dissolution of the Soviet Union, all waged without a declaration of war by Congress.

"Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have willingly acquiesced in the de facto concentration of dictatorial power in the hands of the 'commander in chief' in the all-important matter of the waging of foreign wars.

"The latest letter from the Trump administration, however, represents another qualitative step in this protracted degeneration of American democracy and the elimination of the last pretenses of civilian control over the military. [ ]

"The Trump White House has removed caps imposed on troop levels under the Obama administration, leaving it up to the military commanders to escalate US deployments at will. Obama's caps themselves were routinely circumvented through so-called temporary deployments that saw far more troops sent into US wars than were officially on the books.

"The secrecy surrounding troop deployments has been highlighted in recent months [ ] the so-called slip of the tongue by the commander of US special operations forces in Iraq and Syria who told a Pentagon press conference that 4,000 US troops were on the ground in Syria. He quickly caught himself and repeated the official figure of 500. Subsequently, the Pentagon allowed that the real number was over 2,000.

"Meanwhile, figures posted by the Pentagon last month -- with little media attention -- revealed that the number of US troops deployed in the Middle East as a whole had soared by 33 percent over the previous four months, with the sharpest increases taking place in a number of Persian Gulf countries, indicating advanced preparations for a new US war against Iran.

"These deployments are kept secret or effectively concealed not out of any concern about 'tipping off the enemy,' which in virtually every case is well aware of the level of US military aggression against their countries. Rather, it is aimed at keeping the information from the American people, which has no interest in continuing the ongoing military interventions in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, much less launching new and potentially world catastrophic wars against Iran, North Korea and even China and Russia.

"In terms of the waging of semi-secret wars abroad, as with attacks on democratic rights and the social conditions of the working class at home, Trump represents not an aberration, but rather the culmination of protracted processes that have unfolded under both Democratic and Republican administrations, which have ceded ever greater power over US foreign policy to US military commanders. This trend has only deepened under Trump, with an active duty general serving as national security advisor, and two recently retired Marine generals filling the posts of defense secretary and White House chief of staff.

"With US forces on the borders of North Korea, China, and Russia on a hair-trigger, the continuous assertion of ever greater war-making powers to the military brass massively increases the danger that a miscalculation, misunderstanding, or accident could quickly lead to full-scale nuclear war.

"Trump's further assault on the War Powers Act has elicited no protest from the Democrats in Congress. They are not opposed to the government's domination by the military or the drive to war. Their differences are merely of a tactical character, expressed in a campaign of anti-Russia hysteria waged in collaboration with sections of the US military and intelligence apparatus in preparation for a new and far more terrible conflagration."

Washington's secret wars
By Bill Van Auken
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/13/pers-d13.html

[Dec 15, 2017] FBI Edits To Clinton Exoneration Go Far Beyond What Was Previously Known; Comey, McCabe, Strzok Implicated Zero Hedge

Notable quotes:
"... In addition to Strzok's "gross negligence" --> "extremely careless" edit, McCabe's damage control team removed a key justification for elevating Clinton's actions to the standard of "gross negligence" - that being the " sheer volume " of classified material on Clinton's server. In the original draft, the "sheer volume" of material "supports an inference that the participants were grossly negligent in their handling of that information." ..."
"... It's also possible that the FBI, which was not allowed to inspect the DNC servers, was uncomfortable standing behind the conclusion of Russian hacking reached by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. ..."
"... Johnson's letter also questions an " insurance policy " referenced in a text message sent by demoted FBI investigator Peter Strzok to his mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page, which read " I want to believe the path you threw out to consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk." It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40...." ..."
"... One wonders if the "insurance policy" Strzok sent to Page on August 15, 2016 was in reference to the original counterintelligence operation launched against Trump of which Strzok became the lead investigator in "late July" 2016? Of note, Strzok reported directly to Bill Priestap - the director of Counterintelligence, who told James Comey not to inform congress that the FBI had launched a counterintelligence operation against then-candidate Trump, per Comey's March 20th testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. (h/t @TheLastRefuge2 ) ..."
"... That's not to say Hillary shouldn't have been prosecuted. But what we're seeing here looks like perfectly normal behavior once the decision has been made not to prosecute; get the statements to be consistent with the conclusion. In a bureaucracy, that requires a number of people to be involved. And it would necessarily include people who work for Hillary Clinton, since that's whose information is being discussed. ..."
"... And the stuff about how a foreign power might have, or might possibly have, accessed her emails is all BS too. We already know they weren't hacked, they were leaked. ..."
"... Maybe people who don't understand complicated organizations see something nefarious here, but nobody who does will. Nothing will come of this but some staged-for-TV dramatic pronouncements in the House, and on FOX News, and affiliated websites. There's nothing here. ..."
"... Debatable re. biggest story being kept quiet. The AWAN Brothers/Family is a Pakistani spy ring operating inside Congress for more than a decade, and we hear nothing. They had access to virtually everything in every important committee. They had access to the Congressional servers and all the emails. Biggest spy scandal in our nations hsitory, and........crickets. ..."
"... They have had a year to destroy the evidence. Why should the CIA controlled MSM report the truth? ..."
"... Precisely. That's actually a very good tool for decoding the Clintons and Obama. "You collaborated with Russia." Means "I collaborated with Saudi Arabia." It takes a little while and I haven't fully mastered it yet, but you can reverse alinsky-engineer their statements to figure out what they did. ..."
"... And get this, Flynn was set up! Yates had the transcript via the (illegal) FISA Court of warrant which relied on the Dirty Steele Dossier, when Flynn deviated from the transcript they charged him Lying to the FBI. Comey McCabe run around lying 24/7. Their is no fucking hope left! The swamp WINS ALWAYS. ..."
Dec 15, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

FBI Edits To Clinton Exoneration Go Far Beyond What Was Previously Known; Comey, McCabe, Strzok Implicated Tyler Durden Dec 15, 2017 10:10 AM 0 SHARES detailed in a Thursday letter from committee chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok

The letter reveals specific edits made by senior FBI agents when Deputy Director Andrew McCabe exchanged drafts of Comey's statement with senior FBI officials , including Peter Strzok, Strzok's direct supervisor , E.W. "Bill" Priestap, Jonathan Moffa, and an unnamed employee from the Office of General Counsel (identified by Newsweek as DOJ Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson) - in what was a coordinated conspiracy among top FBI brass to decriminalize Clinton's conduct by changing legal terms and phrases, omitting key information, and minimizing the role of the Intelligence Community in the email investigation. Doing so virtually assured that then-candidate Hillary Clinton would not be prosecuted.

Heather Samuelson and Heather Mills

Also mentioned in the letter are the immunity agreements granted by the FBI in June 2016 to top Obama advisor Cheryl Mills and aide Heather Samuelson - who helped decide which Clinton emails were destroyed before turning over the remaining 30,000 records to the State Department. Of note, the FBI agreed to destroy evidence on devices owned by Mills and Samuelson which were turned over in the investigation.

Sen. Johnson's letter reads:

According to documents produced by the FBI, FBI employees exchanged proposed edits to the draft statement. On May 6, Deputy Director McCabe forwarded the draft statement to other senior FBI employees, including Peter Strzok, E.W. Priestap, Jonathan Moffa, and an employee on the Office of General Counsel whose name has been redacted. While the precise dates of the edits and identities of the editors are not apparent from the documents, the edits appear to change the tone and substance of Director Comey's statement in at least three respects .

It was already known that Strzok - who was demoted to the FBI's HR department after anti-Trump text messages to his mistress were uncovered by an internal FBI watchdog - was responsible for downgrading the language regarding Clinton's conduct from the criminal charge of "gross negligence" to "extremely careless."

"Gross negligence" is a legal term of art in criminal law often associated with recklessness. According to Black's Law Dictionary, gross negligence is " A severe degree of negligence taken as reckless disregard ," and " Blatant indifference to one's legal duty, other's safety, or their rights ." "Extremely careless," on the other hand, is not a legal term of art.

According to an Attorney briefed on the matter, "extremely careless" is in fact a defense to "gross negligence": "What my client did was 'careless', maybe even 'extremely careless,' but it was not 'gross negligence' your honor." The FBI would have no option but to recommend prosecution if the phrase "gross negligence" had been left in.

18 U.S. Code § 793 "Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information" specifically uses the phrase "gross negligence." Had Comey used the phrase, he would have essentially declared that Hillary had broken the law.

In addition to Strzok's "gross negligence" --> "extremely careless" edit, McCabe's damage control team removed a key justification for elevating Clinton's actions to the standard of "gross negligence" - that being the " sheer volume " of classified material on Clinton's server. In the original draft, the "sheer volume" of material "supports an inference that the participants were grossly negligent in their handling of that information."

Also removed from Comey's statement were all references to the Intelligence Community's involvement in investigating Clinton's private email server.

Director Comey's original statement acknowledged the FBI had worked with its partners in the Intelligence Community to assess potential damage from Secretary Clinton's use of a private email server. The original statement read:

[W]e have done extensive work with the assistance of our colleagues elsewhere in the Intelligence Community to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection with the private email operation.

The edited version removed the references to the intelligence community:

[W]e have done extensive work [removed] to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection with the personal e-mail operation.

Furthermore, the FBI edited Comey's statement to downgrade the probability that Clinton's server was hacked by hostile actors, changing their language from "reasonably likely" to "possible" - an edit which eliminated yet another justification for the phrase "Gross negligence." To put it another way, "reasonably likely" means the probability of a hack due to Clinton's negligence is above 50 percent, whereas the hack simply being "possible" is any probability above zero.

It's also possible that the FBI, which was not allowed to inspect the DNC servers, was uncomfortable standing behind the conclusion of Russian hacking reached by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

The original draft read:

Given the combination of factors, we assess it is reasonably likely that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's private email account."

The edited version from Director Comey's July 5 statement read:

Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal e-mail account.

Johnson's letter also questions an " insurance policy " referenced in a text message sent by demoted FBI investigator Peter Strzok to his mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page, which read " I want to believe the path you threw out to consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk." It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40...."

One wonders if the "insurance policy" Strzok sent to Page on August 15, 2016 was in reference to the original counterintelligence operation launched against Trump of which Strzok became the lead investigator in "late July" 2016? Of note, Strzok reported directly to Bill Priestap - the director of Counterintelligence, who told James Comey not to inform congress that the FBI had launched a counterintelligence operation against then-candidate Trump, per Comey's March 20th testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. (h/t @TheLastRefuge2 )

Transcript , James Comey Testimony to House Intel Committee, March 20, 2016

The letter from the Senate Committee concludes; "the edits to Director Comey's public statement, made months prior to the conclusion of the FBI's investigation of Secretary Clinton's conduct, had a significant impact on the FBI's public evaluation of the implications of her actions . This effort, seen in the light of the personal animus toward then-candidate Trump by senior FBI agents leading the Clinton investigation and their apparent desire to create an "insurance policy" against Mr. Trump's election, raise profound questions about the FBI's role and possible interference in the 2016y presidential election and the role of the same agents in Special Counsel Mueller's investigation of President Trump ."

Johnson then asks the FBI to answer six questions:

  1. Please provide the names of the Department of Justice (DOJ) employees who comprised the "mid-year review team" during the FBI's investigation of Secretary Clinton's use of a private email server.
  2. Please identify all FBI, DOJ, or other federal employees who edited or reviewed Director Comey's July 5, 2016 statement . Please identify which individual made the marked changes in the documents produced to the Committee.
  3. Please identify which FBI employee repeatedly changed the language in the final draft statement that described Secretary Clinton's behavior as "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless. " What evidence supported these changes?
  4. Please identify which FBI employee edited the draft statement to remove the reference to the Intelligence Community . On what basis was this change made?
  5. Please identify which FBI employee edited the draft statement to downgrade the FBI's assessment that it was "reasonably likely" that hostile actors had gained access to Secretary Clinton's private email account to merely that than [sic] intrusion was "possible." What evidence supported these changes?
  6. Please provide unredacted copies of the drafts of Director Comey's statement, including comment bubbles , and explain the basis for the redactions produced to date.

We are increasingly faced with the fact that the FBI's top ranks have been filled with political ideologues who helped Hillary Clinton while pursuing the Russian influence narrative against Trump (perhaps as the "insurance" Strzok spoke of). Meanwhile, "hands off" recused Attorney General Jeff Sessions and assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein don't seem very excited to explore the issues with a second Special Counsel. As such, we are now almost entirely reliant on the various Committees of congress to pursue justice in this matter. Perhaps when their investigations have concluded, President Trump will feel he has the political and legal ammunition to truly clean house at the nation's swampiest agencies.

swmnguy -> 11b40 , Dec 15, 2017 4:42 PM

All I see in this story is that the FBI edits their work to make sure the terminology is consistent throughout. This is not a smoking gun of anything, except bureaucratic procedure one would find anywhere any legal documents are prepared.

That's not to say Hillary shouldn't have been prosecuted. But what we're seeing here looks like perfectly normal behavior once the decision has been made not to prosecute; get the statements to be consistent with the conclusion. In a bureaucracy, that requires a number of people to be involved. And it would necessarily include people who work for Hillary Clinton, since that's whose information is being discussed.

Now, if Hillary hadn't been such an arrogant bitch, we wouldn't be having this conversation. If she had just take the locked-down Android of iOS phone they issued her, instead of having to forward everything to herself so she could use her stupid Blackberry (which can't be locked down to State Dep't. specs), everything would have been both hunky and dory.

And the stuff about how a foreign power might have, or might possibly have, accessed her emails is all BS too. We already know they weren't hacked, they were leaked.

Maybe people who don't understand complicated organizations see something nefarious here, but nobody who does will. Nothing will come of this but some staged-for-TV dramatic pronouncements in the House, and on FOX News, and affiliated websites. There's nothing here.

youarelost , Dec 15, 2017 8:59 AM

What did Obozo know and when did he know it

E.F. Mutton -> youarelost , Dec 15, 2017 9:04 AM

False Flag time - distraction needed ASAP

Bigly -> E.F. Mutton , Dec 15, 2017 9:14 AM

We need to look for this as there are a LOT of people who need to be indicted and boobus americanus needs distraction.

My concern is that there are not enough non-corrupts there to handle and process the swamp as Trump did not fire and replace them 10 months ago.

shitshitshit -> Bigly , Dec 15, 2017 9:16 AM

I wonder how high will this little game go...

That obongo of all crooks is involved is a sure fact, but I'd like to see how many remaining defenders of the cause are still motivated to lose everything for this thing...

In other terms, what are the defection rates in the dem party, because now this must be an avalanche.

cheka -> eclectic syncretist , Dec 15, 2017 9:45 AM

applied neo-bolshevism

macholatte -> cheka , Dec 15, 2017 10:23 AM

I am tired of this shit. Aren't you?

Please, EVERYONE with a Twitter account send this message Every Day (tell your friends on facebook):

Mr. President, the time to purge the Obama-Clinton holdovers has long passed. Please get rid of them at once. Make your base happy. Fire 100+ from DOJ - State - FBI. Hire William K. Black as Special Prosecutor

send it to:

@realDonaldTrump
@PressSec
@KellyannePolls
@WhiteHouse


Does anybody know how to start an online petition?
Let's make some NOISE!!

Bay of Pigs -> macholatte , Dec 15, 2017 12:02 PM

Sadly, I don't see this story being reported anywhere this morning. Only the biggest scandal in American history. WTF?

11b40 -> Bay of Pigs , Dec 15, 2017 1:22 PM

Debatable re. biggest story being kept quiet. The AWAN Brothers/Family is a Pakistani spy ring operating inside Congress for more than a decade, and we hear nothing. They had access to virtually everything in every important committee. They had access to the Congressional servers and all the emails. Biggest spy scandal in our nations hsitory, and........crickets.

Of course, they may all be related, since Debbie Wasserman-Shits brought them in and set them up, then intertwined their work in Congress with their work for the DNC.

grizfish -> Bay of Pigs , Dec 15, 2017 1:53 PM

They have had a year to destroy the evidence. Why should the CIA controlled MSM report the truth? It's just like slick willy. Deny. Deny. Deny.

ThePhantom -> grizfish , Dec 15, 2017 3:35 PM

The Media is "in on it" and just as culpabale.... everyone's fighting for their lives.

grizfish -> Bay of Pigs , Dec 15, 2017 4:29 PM

Just more theater. Throwing a bone to the few citizens who think for themselves. Giving us false hope the US legal system isn't corrupt. This will never be prosecuted, because the deep state remains in control. They've had a year to destroy the incriminating evidence.

Lanka -> macholatte , Dec 15, 2017 2:27 PM

Tillerson is extremely incompetent in housecleaning. He needs to be replaced by Fred Kruger, Esq.

TerminalDebt -> cheka , Dec 15, 2017 12:43 PM

I guess we know now who the leaker was at the FBI and on the Mule's team

Joe Davola -> TerminalDebt , Dec 15, 2017 1:27 PM

I'm guessing the number of leakers is bigger than 1

eclectic syncretist -> eclectic syncretist , Dec 15, 2017 10:01 AM

What's next? The FBI had Seth Rich killed? Is that why Sessions and everyone else appears paralyzed? How deep does this rabbit hole go?

Overfed -> eclectic syncretist , Dec 15, 2017 10:58 AM

I'm sure that Chaffets and Gowdy will hand down some very stern reprimands.

Mr. Universe -> Overfed , Dec 15, 2017 11:24 AM

Ryan and his buddies in Congress will make strained faces (as if taking a dump) and wring their hands saying they must hire a "Special" Investigator to cover up this mess.

Duane Norman -> Mr. Universe , Dec 15, 2017 11:31 AM

http://fmshooter.com/claiming-fbis-reputation-integrity-not-tatters-comp...

Yeah, but it won't make a difference.

Gardentoolnumber5 -> Overfed , Dec 15, 2017 3:12 PM

Chaffets left Congress because he couldn't get any more help from Trump's DOJ than he did from Obama's. Sad, as he was one of the good guys. imo

ThePhantom -> eclectic syncretist , Dec 15, 2017 3:38 PM

did you notice the story yesterday about "Russian hacker admits putin ordered him to steal dnc emials" ? someones worried about it....

grizfish -> ThePhantom , Dec 15, 2017 4:38 PM

They tweet that crap all the time. Usually just a repeat with different names, but always blaming a Ruskie. About every 6 months they hit on a twist in the wording that causes it to go viral.

Bush Baby -> eclectic syncretist , Dec 15, 2017 11:37 AM

Before Trump was elected , I thought the only way to get our country back was through a Military Coup, but it appears there may be some light at the end of the tunnel.

eclectic syncretist -> Bush Baby , Dec 15, 2017 11:57 AM

I wonder if that light is coming from the soon to be gaping hole in the FBI's asshole when the extent of this political activism by the agency eventually seeps into the public conciousness.

rccalhoun -> eclectic syncretist , Dec 15, 2017 12:43 PM

you can't clean up a mess of this magnitude. fire everyone in washington---senator, representative, fbi, cia, nsa ,etc and start over---has NO chance of happenning

the only hope for a non violent solution is that a true leader emerges that every decent person can rally behind and respect, honor and dignity become the norm. unfortunately, corruption has become a culture and i don't know if it can be eradicated

Lanka -> rccalhoun , Dec 15, 2017 2:31 PM

Just expose the Congress, McCabe, Lindsey, McCabe, Clinton, all Dem judges, Media, Hollywood, local government dems as pedos; that will half-drain the swamp.

shankster -> eclectic syncretist , Dec 15, 2017 4:11 PM

Does the US public have a consciousness?

lew1024 -> Bush Baby , Dec 15, 2017 2:54 PM

If Trump gets the swamp cleaned without a military coup, he will be one of our greatest Presidents. There will be people who hate that more than they hate being in jail.

checkessential -> BennyBoy , Dec 15, 2017 1:00 PM

And they say President Trump obstructed justice for simply asking Comey if he could drop the Michael Flynn matter. Wow.

TommyD88 -> checkessential , Dec 15, 2017 1:09 PM

Alinsky 101: Accuse your opponent of that which you yourself are doing.

Overfed -> redmudhooch , Dec 15, 2017 2:47 PM

Getting rid of the FBI (and all other FLEAs) would be a good thing for all of us.

A Sentinel -> TommyD88 , Dec 15, 2017 2:13 PM

Precisely. That's actually a very good tool for decoding the Clintons and Obama. "You collaborated with Russia." Means "I collaborated with Saudi Arabia." It takes a little while and I haven't fully mastered it yet, but you can reverse alinsky-engineer their statements to figure out what they did.

lurker since 2012 -> checkessential , Dec 15, 2017 4:09 PM

And get this, Flynn was set up! Yates had the transcript via the (illegal) FISA Court of warrant which relied on the Dirty Steele Dossier, when Flynn deviated from the transcript they charged him Lying to the FBI. Comey McCabe run around lying 24/7. Their is no fucking hope left! The swamp WINS ALWAYS.

Ramesees -> BaBaBouy , Dec 15, 2017 9:31 AM

I have - it's was NBC Nightly News - they spent time on the damning emails from Strozk. Maybe 2-3 minutes. Normal news segment time. Surprised the hell out of me.

A Sentinel -> Ramesees , Dec 15, 2017 2:14 PM

Someone probably got fired for that.

ThePhantom -> Ramesees , Dec 15, 2017 3:41 PM

the "MSM" needs to cover their own asses ...like "an insurance policy" just in case the truth comes out... best to be seen reporting on the REAL issue at least for a couple minutes..

[Dec 15, 2017] Sic Semper Tyrannis Watergate Deja Vu and Fake News by Publius Tacitus

Notable quotes:
"... The real story is that the FBI, the NSA and the CIA effectively conspired to try to destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump. Hardly anyone in the media, mainstream or fringe, are writing about this fact and trying to rally public support for action. What is one to say when confronted with the fact that the FBI paid money to a former British spy for alleged dirt on Donald Trump that was initially commissioned by the Clinton campaign. And who is the FBI Agent paying for the dossier? Why a fellow now revealed as a Clinton partisan. ..."
"... How much of what we see is the real DJT and how much is a projected public persona? ..."
"... DJT's threat to "drain the swamp" has created fear, uncertainty and doubt amongst the swamp folk. They naturally fight back. By definition, all swamp critters must toe the neocon line else they would have been fired by previous incumbents. They are all therefore fair game for DJT. ..."
"... I admire your persistence and agree with the points you make in this and your other posts on the topic of Trump. This is an extremely important subject matter. A President was elected, lawfully, and a bunch of stupid ninnies got their panties in a knot over that and are therefore more or less willing to support a Borgist ("deep state", if you prefer) coup d'état. Said ninnies are immune to the rational arguments you present because they are not intelligent, they are hyper emotional and many of them belong to a cult called "[neo]liberalism" (or the "progressive movement", if you prefer). ..."
"... You mention briefly the Steele affair. I still find it difficult to believe that an ex-UK Intelligence Officer can get mixed up in American politics to this extent and scarcely an eyebrow raised. Surely someone's asking questions somewhere about this? The facts are clear enough, for once. ..."
"... And, off stage, a slow but powerful campaign exposing many of Trumnp's enemies as corrupt, perverted hypocrites. And, from time to time, unexpected presents like Brazile's book. But faster please ..."
"... I agree about the Trump Derangement Syndrome that has afflicted the media. I think they are suffering from O.C.T.D.: Obsessive Compulsive Trump Disorder. There are some in the media who are of the opinion that this may not be working with most Americans. ..."
"... The crucial point is not about respect for the man. It is respect for the office. All men are flawed, and high position exposes additional flaws. It is evident, to this outside observer, that Trump won "fair and square" according to the established procedures. The variety of "dirty tricks" used against him, both before the election and after, is astounding. There was a "back room" negotiation on election eve, visible in public as the long delay in final over-the-top results, and Trump's apology to his supporters for the delay, "it was complicated". ..."
"... He was smart enough to get elected, defeating a dozen professional republicans and the Democratic machinery along with the MSM. "In the end you will see that he does not live up to your expectations." I thought he was a boor and a mediocre showman. In that regard he's exceeded mine by surviving this long. ..."
"... You are correct that there is no public source yet confirming the FBI paid Steele. However, the FBI's refusal to turn over relevant documents regarding their relationship with Steele tells me there was money paid. What is indisputable is that the information in the dossier was used as a predicate to seek permission from a FISA court to go after Trump and his team. That is outrageous. ..."
"... Hillary, Bush, Obama and "the establishment" knew unconsciously not to "rock the boat". Trump was seen as too independent and uneducated in the ways of The Borg to be trusted. He had un-borg-like views like "..what the hell are we doing supporting Al Quida?" "...grab her in the pussy.." "..lets make Jerusalem the capital of Israel.." "lets get along with Russia.." "..the Media is fake and biased.." all very un-PC and un-borg-like positions. Too disruptive of the status quo. Might actually solve some problems and reduce the importance of government. ..."
"... I think the Borg determined he was N.O.K. (Not Our Kind). And he has royally pissed off the Media and he is in a death fight with the Media. ..."
"... This is increasingly my take as well -- the FBI, CIA and NSA do seem to have "conspired" to destroy Donald Trump. I finger Brennan, Clapper, Susan Rice, Benjamin Rhodes, and maybe Samantha Power as being involved in the flood of illegal leaks earlier in the year that did so much to pave the way for Mueller's appointment. ..."
"... Are you aware that the Office of Inspector General has been investigating politicization of the FBI and DOJ for 11 months now? The investigation was brought about at the recommendation of certain members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I believe. Among the allegations being looked into is that DOJ/FBI have highly political agents that should have at least recused themselves from certain investigations and that their politics may have influenced the course of the investigations. ..."
"... Given the revelations around Strzok, Rhee and Weissman, on Mueller's team, you'd think we'd be hearing more about OIG case. IMO, we are about to though. ..."
"... I'm also stunned by the stupidity of the Democrats. Any liberal who believes the intelligence agencies is a fool. They've just shown us their true nature by blocking the release of several thousand pages of records relating to the assassination of President Kennedy. ..."
"... If someone had told me 5 years ago that I would in 2017 consider Fox News to be the most reliable MSM news outlet, I would have rolled around on the ground laughing hysterically. Yet it is true. I am not quite sure what I should deduce from this but I think it is something along the lines of "one cannot be too cynical about the news media". ..."
"... He certainly gives them plenty of ammunition. However, I believe a great deal of the vituperative outrage directed at him has much (possibly primarily) to do with exactly whom he bested in the general election. Not to pile on, but see David E. Solomon's comments on this thread. ..."
"... One can't underestimate the cult of personality that was so carefully crafted around Hillary Clinton for the past two decades. Their chosen strategy of identity politics only kicked it into hyper-drive over the past eight years. ..."
Dec 08, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

That sure sounds a lot like the current state of the media. We have witnessed this type of hysteria ourselves in just the last two days. First there was the Brian Ross debacle, which entailed Ross peddling the lie that Trump ordered Flynn to contact the Russians. That "fake news" elicited an emotional orgasm from Joy Behar on The View. She was on the verge of writhing on the floor as she prematurely celebrated what she thought would seal the impeachment of Donald Trump. Whoops. Ross had to retract that story.

... ... ...

Watergate and "Russiagate" do share a common trope. During Watergate the Washington Post was mostly a lone voice covering the story. Washington Post publisher at the time, Kate Graham, reportedly remarked that she was worried that none of the other papers were covering the story. And it was an important story. It exposed political corruption and abuse of power and a threat to our democracy.

How is that in common with Russiagate? The real story is that the FBI, the NSA and the CIA effectively conspired to try to destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump. Hardly anyone in the media, mainstream or fringe, are writing about this fact and trying to rally public support for action. What is one to say when confronted with the fact that the FBI paid money to a former British spy for alleged dirt on Donald Trump that was initially commissioned by the Clinton campaign. And who is the FBI Agent paying for the dossier? Why a fellow now revealed as a Clinton partisan.

Publius Tacitus , 05 December 2017 at 11:52 PM
It is a shame you wanted to start the discussion with such a stupid comment. I have made no representation whatsoever about the intelligence or lack of intelligence of Trump. I have expressed nothing regarding "my expectations" for him or his policies. I get it. You don't like the man and want to grind a meaningless axe.
EEngineer said in reply to David E. Solomon... , 06 December 2017 at 01:12 AM

How much of what we see is the real DJT and how much is a projected public persona?

There's truth and lies, but then there's just plain old bullshit which has nothing to do with either. He seems to throw a ton of it around as a diversionary tactic. I understand the technique, but I can't see through the smoke screen to divine what he's up to or who he really is. So I continue to dispassionately observe.

walrus , 06 December 2017 at 01:49 AM
DJT's threat to "drain the swamp" has created fear, uncertainty and doubt amongst the swamp folk. They naturally fight back. By definition, all swamp critters must toe the neocon line else they would have been fired by previous incumbents. They are all therefore fair game for DJT.
sbjonez , 06 December 2017 at 02:36 AM
Maybe a citation could be offered here, but there does not appear to be any support for the assertion made by the author of this piece that "...the FBI paid money to a former British spy for alleged dirt on Donald Trump...".There were reports that the FBI 'considered' paying Steele to continue his work, ( a not altogether uncommon practice), yet within the more responsibly researched reports it was also clearly stated that in the end the FBI did not in fact pay Steele anything for any work at all.
Dr. George W. Oprisko , 06 December 2017 at 03:32 AM
As it happens the FBI and most probably the others were created by executive order.

Perhaps it's time to end them by executive order.......

INDY

Eric Newhill said in reply to Publius Tacitus ... , 06 December 2017 at 03:32 AM
PT,
I admire your persistence and agree with the points you make in this and your other posts on the topic of Trump. This is an extremely important subject matter. A President was elected, lawfully, and a bunch of stupid ninnies got their panties in a knot over that and are therefore more or less willing to support a Borgist ("deep state", if you prefer) coup d'état. Said ninnies are immune to the rational arguments you present because they are not intelligent, they are hyper emotional and many of them belong to a cult called "[neo]liberalism" (or the "progressive movement", if you prefer).

When you belong to a cult, you must suspend reason; make it subordinate to the hive mind. You lose all perspective. They believe all kids of ridiculous notions that fail to withstand the most basic rational scrutiny; like Islam and feminism can be allies, socialism would work if only it were applied correctly, if a man puts on a dress he has actually become a woman and that such a person would make a good 11 series in the military, low skill/low IQ immigrants - legal or otherwise - are actually good for the country......so of course they believe that a coup d'état is appropriate when the target is Trump. In their madness they have convinced themselves that Trump is uniquely dangerous. He is going to destroy the world via ignoring global warming, tax cuts, immigration reform, pushing the nuclear button just for fun; all of the above and maybe more. You know this, of course. You did mention "Trump Derangement Syndrome".

As for the rest of the subject matter, personally, I feel that what with all that has been revealed about the FBI, CIA and NSA, someone should be bringing the involved members of these agencies up on charges related to treason, sedition or whatever legal terms are correct. Actually, these people should have their doors kicked down and be brought out in hand cuffs. Death sentences should be on the table and should be applied when legally possible.

This is no more Watergate than a man in a dress is a woman.

The depths to which the govt, populace and values of this country have degenerated have never been more on display than in this witch hunt. We are in very bad shape. The media is thoroughly scurrilous. Officials in bureaucracies are treasonous and have no respect for the rule of law. Half of the citizens are insane and support the media and the traitors.

If someone doesn't at least just pull the plug on this "investigation", it's going to ruin what's left of this country. It may be too late. A lot of ninnies are going to wake up to a very harsh reality.

Peter Reichard , 06 December 2017 at 05:21 AM
From day one the Republicans were trying to impeach Bill Clinton by investigating every dark corner of the Clintons' past and present until they could find something that would stick. Same thing with Trump except this time it goes far beyond the opposition party to include elements of the government, most of the media and even leading members of his own party. Elections be damned, we have an empire to maintain and he is seen by the establishment as too impulsive, unstable and so far uncontrollable to be allowed to stay in power. While no threat to the sacred cows of Wall Street and Israel or even to drain the swamp they are terrified of his unpredictability, hence the full court press unprecedented in American history to remove him from office. My very low opinion of Trump doesn't blind me to the dangers inherent in this effort. \
English Outsider -> Publius Tacitus ... , 06 December 2017 at 05:45 AM
PT - Isn't the point you've just made central? The issues here are far more important than the personalities?

I like what I've seen of our PM, Mrs May. Nice person, to my outsider's way of thinking. Doesn't alter the fact that I consider her policies and philosophy to be hopeless. And since we're never going to meet her in the pub that's what counts. Would it not be possible to separate things out in the same way with Trump? Set on one side the partisan arguments about his personality - politics is not a TV show - and consider him on the basis of what he may or may not do or be able to do?

You mention briefly the Steele affair. I still find it difficult to believe that an ex-UK Intelligence Officer can get mixed up in American politics to this extent and scarcely an eyebrow raised. Surely someone's asking questions somewhere about this? The facts are clear enough, for once.

JMH said in reply to David E. Solomon... , 06 December 2017 at 07:29 AM
Actually, I think he shares many of Bismark's qualities: "a political genius of a very unusual kind [whose success] rested on several sets of conflicting characteristics among which brutal, disarming honesty mingled with the wiles and deceits of a confidence man. He played his parts with perfect self-confidence, yet mixed them with rage, anxiety, illness, hypochrondria, and irrationality. ... He used democracy when it suited him, negotiated with revolutionaries and the dangerous Ferdinand Lassalle, the socialist who might have contested his authority. He utterly dominated his cabinet ministers with a sovereign contempt and blackened their reputations as soon as he no longer needed them. He outwitted the parliamentary parties, even the strongest of them, and betrayed all those ... who had put him into power. By 1870 even his closest friends ... realized that they had helped put a demonic figure into power.[6]"-wiki

Bernie can be Lasalle.

Patrick Armstrong , 06 December 2017 at 07:55 AM
I think, I hope, I believe, I persuade myself that all is unfolding as it should. Mueller turns up nothing but further examples of officials pimping themselves out to foreign governments; meanwhile revelations of bias on his team; meanwhile chewing away at the Fusion GPS thing (one of the key pillars); meanwhile investigation of the FBI. And, off stage, a slow but powerful campaign exposing many of Trumnp's enemies as corrupt, perverted hypocrites. And, from time to time, unexpected presents like Brazile's book. But faster please
Martin Oline , 06 December 2017 at 08:02 AM
I agree about the Trump Derangement Syndrome that has afflicted the media. I think they are suffering from O.C.T.D.: Obsessive Compulsive Trump Disorder. There are some in the media who are of the opinion that this may not be working with most Americans. I saw two pieces this morning from BBC and The New York Times:

Perhaps this is the start of a change or a recognition that the MSM's habitual crying wolf behavior is not resonating with Main Street. I can only hope, but I stopped watching the national news long ago.

Ken Roberts , 06 December 2017 at 08:30 AM
The crucial point is not about respect for the man. It is respect for the office. All men are flawed, and high position exposes additional flaws. It is evident, to this outside observer, that Trump won "fair and square" according to the established procedures. The variety of "dirty tricks" used against him, both before the election and after, is astounding. There was a "back room" negotiation on election eve, visible in public as the long delay in final over-the-top results, and Trump's apology to his supporters for the delay, "it was complicated".

That truly is water under the bridge, and at least must be so, if you wish to preserve your republic. You all have the right to withhold consent and trash what you and your fathers and grandfathers have achieved. Most will not like the outcome. But I sincerely hope that you, each and collectively, instead will choose the positive aspects of this model:

"... that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Best wishes,
kr

Greco , 06 December 2017 at 08:56 AM
The ABC story had to be "clarified" given they originally reported Flynn had contacted the Russians DURING the election when in fact it was AFTER the election. The story had consequences on the stock market: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4129355-cost-fake-news-s-and-p-500 This all happened on the eve of the passage of Trump's tax cuts and it seemed timed to hurt the stock market. It may even possibly have torpedoed the tax cuts by putting into question Trump's legal standing as president.
jdledell , 06 December 2017 at 10:04 AM
I detest Trump as a person but still acknowledge that he is our current President. I will continue to fight against the implementation of his policies and work hard to to try to insure he does not win a second term. Other than that in 3 more years the American people will have an opportunity to judge his performance and make a decision on his worthiness to continue as President. That is as it should be.

Trump has taken some hard shots, some deserved and some not. That is the nature of our current political system. When Trump traveled the nation proclaiming Obama was not American born and thus an illegitimate President is also an example of "all is fair in War and politics".

Fred -> David E. Solomon... , 06 December 2017 at 10:20 AM
David,

He was smart enough to get elected, defeating a dozen professional republicans and the Democratic machinery along with the MSM. "In the end you will see that he does not live up to your expectations." I thought he was a boor and a mediocre showman. In that regard he's exceeded mine by surviving this long.

Publius Tacitus -> sbjonez... , 06 December 2017 at 10:35 AM
You are correct that there is no public source yet confirming the FBI paid Steele. However, the FBI's refusal to turn over relevant documents regarding their relationship with Steele tells me there was money paid. What is indisputable is that the information in the dossier was used as a predicate to seek permission from a FISA court to go after Trump and his team. That is outrageous.
rjj said in reply to JMH... , 06 December 2017 at 11:19 AM
is this doom-and-gloom or hope-assaulting-experience? Am guessing that the only thing he has shares with Old Otto is a preference for the classic method of donning trousers.

OOPS! there's this (was reminded of it by the hyperventilatory "breaking news" about Blackwater/Erik Prince):

Bismarck held von Holstein in high esteem, and when the latter went to him with his plan for establishing a vast organization of almost universal spying, the Chancellor of the new German Empire immediately grasped the advantages he could obtain from it. ....

Von Holstein ... had one great ambition; that of knowing everything about everybody and of ruling everybody through fear of the disclosures he could make were he at any time tempted to do so. ....

The German Foreign Office knew everything and made use of everything .... In the Prussian Intelligence Department as Holstein organized it there was hardly a person of note or consequence in Europe about whom everything was not known, including, of course, his weaknesses and cupboard skeletons. And this knowledge was used when necessary without any compunction or remorse. ....

His first care, whenever an individual capable at a given moment of playing a part, no matter how humble, in the great drama attracted his attention, was to ferret out all that could be learned about him or her. With few exceptions he contrived to lay his finger on a hidden secret. Once this preliminary step had been performed to his satisfaction, the rest was easy. The unfortunate victim was given to understand that he would be shamed publicly at any time, unless . . . unless . . .

https://archive.org/details/firebrandofbolsh00radz

As this has been the SOP of Karl Rove (presumably), of Jedgar, and before that [__fill in the blanks___], the only thing unprecedented about the Prince/Blackwater story is the disregard for omerta.

DISCLAIMER: The Princess Radziwill who published the passage on von Holstein was an opportunistic swashbucklereuse type and [guessing] would have been so even in less horrifically interesting times.

walter , 06 December 2017 at 12:06 PM
My humble opinion on what is going on. "The Borg" are individuals whose self-interest is tied to perpetuating "business as usual" in Washington DC. FBI agents, CIA, NSA need domestic and foreign conflict to aggrandize and justify their positions. They do not want our national problems solved...god forbid, budgets, salaries, bonuses, future contracting and consulting jobs might be reduced or eliminated.

Hillary, Bush, Obama and "the establishment" knew unconsciously not to "rock the boat". Trump was seen as too independent and uneducated in the ways of The Borg to be trusted. He had un-borg-like views like "..what the hell are we doing supporting Al Quida?" "...grab her in the pussy.." "..lets make Jerusalem the capital of Israel.." "lets get along with Russia.." "..the Media is fake and biased.." all very un-PC and un-borg-like positions. Too disruptive of the status quo. Might actually solve some problems and reduce the importance of government.

I think the Borg determined he was N.O.K. (Not Our Kind). And he has royally pissed off the Media and he is in a death fight with the Media.

Sid Finster , 06 December 2017 at 12:16 PM
I find the whole idea that "Deutsche Bank has branches in Russia and lends money to Russian borrowers, therefore Russians control Deutsche Bank" idea to be comical.

I have clients who also regularly borrow money from Deutsche Bank. Are they now Russians? Are they controlled now by Russians? Do Russians control them? What role does DB play in all this web of control?

If I have my mortgage at the same bank as a slum lord/toxic waste generator/adult bookstore owner/CIA operative, am I now his puppet?

Asking for a friend.

Does nobody understand how banking law works? (in Germany and the US, banks are forbidden to lend to any client or client group in an amount that would give the borrower de facto control over the operations of the bank). Of course the smarter conspiracy theorists understand this. Any stick to beat a dog.

Sid Finster said in reply to English Outsider ... , 06 December 2017 at 12:18 PM
The difference is that the establishment/Deep State/Borg/whatever you want to call it approves of Steele's activities.
Dr. Puck said in reply to Dr. George W. Oprisko ... , 06 December 2017 at 12:27 PM
FYI History of the FBI. www.fbi.gov/history/brief-history
Sylvia 1 , 06 December 2017 at 12:48 PM
This is increasingly my take as well -- the FBI, CIA and NSA do seem to have "conspired" to destroy Donald Trump. I finger Brennan, Clapper, Susan Rice, Benjamin Rhodes, and maybe Samantha Power as being involved in the flood of illegal leaks earlier in the year that did so much to pave the way for Mueller's appointment.

What I fail to understand is why Democrats are sitting back and cheering as these agencies work together to destroy a duly elected President of the USA. Does anyone really believe that if these agencies get away with it this time they will stop with Trump?
All these agencies are out of control and are completely unaccountable.

Eric Newhill , 06 December 2017 at 12:51 PM
PT,

Are you aware that the Office of Inspector General has been investigating politicization of the FBI and DOJ for 11 months now? The investigation was brought about at the recommendation of certain members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I believe. Among the allegations being looked into is that DOJ/FBI have highly political agents that should have at least recused themselves from certain investigations and that their politics may have influenced the course of the investigations.

Given the revelations around Strzok, Rhee and Weissman, on Mueller's team, you'd think we'd be hearing more about OIG case. IMO, we are about to though.

Peter VE said in reply to Sylvia 1... , 06 December 2017 at 05:05 PM
I'm also stunned by the stupidity of the Democrats. Any liberal who believes the intelligence agencies is a fool. They've just shown us their true nature by blocking the release of several thousand pages of records relating to the assassination of President Kennedy. If they can't allow the truth to come out after 54 years, they surely can't be trusted to be truthful about today's information.
Cvillereader said in reply to Eric Newhill... , 06 December 2017 at 06:54 PM
Fox News, which has been fairly reliable of late, reported last night that the FBI OIG report will be finalized and made public sometime in the next 4-5 weeks.
blue peacock , 07 December 2017 at 12:18 AM
Publius Tacitus
The real story is that the FBI, the NSA and the CIA effectively conspired to try to destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump.

How can this conspiracy be investigated? Who could do it? Clearly not anyone from the DoJ, FBI, CIA and NSA as they are fully compromised.

JamesT -> Cvillereader... , 07 December 2017 at 12:48 AM
If someone had told me 5 years ago that I would in 2017 consider Fox News to be the most reliable MSM news outlet, I would have rolled around on the ground laughing hysterically. Yet it is true. I am not quite sure what I should deduce from this but I think it is something along the lines of "one cannot be too cynical about the news media".
Imagine , 07 December 2017 at 12:50 AM
Real News: Outstanding official independent post-mortem of Charlottesville. Includes maneuver tactics, I think y'all will like it.

http://www.charlottesville.org/home/showdocument?id=59615

AK said in reply to English Outsider ... , 07 December 2017 at 04:06 AM
English Outsider,

"Any idea why?"

He certainly gives them plenty of ammunition. However, I believe a great deal of the vituperative outrage directed at him has much (possibly primarily) to do with exactly whom he bested in the general election. Not to pile on, but see David E. Solomon's comments on this thread.

One can't underestimate the cult of personality that was so carefully crafted around Hillary Clinton for the past two decades. Their chosen strategy of identity politics only kicked it into hyper-drive over the past eight years.

Still, this phenomenon existed long before Trump, The Politician, and even before Obama and his own cult. Many of these people were able to put their expectations on hold for eight long years. Obama was a result they could at least live with temporarily - " Just eight more years, and then they owe her. "

They had their very structures of reality built around a certain outcome, which didn't come to pass. So, the disappointment was all the more bitter when they realized that their waiting was in vain. That's a tidal wave of cognitive dissonance unleashed by that unimaginable (for some) occurrence of her defeat. He didn't put paid to Martin O'Malley or even Bernie Sanders. He vanquished The Queen. That sort of thing never goes down lightly.

AK said in reply to Richardstevenhack ... , 07 December 2017 at 04:23 AM
Richardstevenhack,

" As I've said before, I think Trump only ran for President for 1) ego, and 2) he knows he will have access to billions of dollars of business deals once he leaves office, with the cachet of having been President.

You might as well assert that lions only hang out around watering holes because 1) there's water there, and 2) gazelles and zebras have to drink water. Can you point me to one President from living memory who did not 1) run for the Office at least partially out of ego, and 2) take advantage in his subsequent "private life" of these exact perks of having held the Office? I ask seriously, because it seems you are pining for a nobility in presidential politics which to my recollection hasn't existed for at least three generations. Cincinnatus, they ain't. Maybe Ike, but anyone else is a real stretch.

[Dec 15, 2017] Andrew Weissmann, Mueller's Legal Pit Bull

Notable quotes:
"... But many defense lawyers have chafed at what they see as a scorched-earth approach, forged in Brooklyn while facing down Mafia members and refined on the government's unit of Enron superprosecutors, which left a mixed legacy of high-profile successes, overturned convictions and one unanimous defeat at the Supreme Court. ..."
"... Then came the shock-and-awe raid of Mr. Manafort's home - a Weissmann special, both admirers and critics recognized - the Zorro "Z" to announce his presence in the case. ..."
nytimes.com

top lieutenant to Robert S. Mueller III on the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign. Significantly, Mr. Weissmann is an expert in converting defendants into collaborators - with either tactical brilliance or overzealousness, depending on one's perspective.

If Mr. Mueller is the stern-eyed public face of the investigation, Mr. Weissmann, 59, is its pounding heart, a bookish, legal pit bull with two Ivy League degrees, a weakness for gin martinis and classical music and a list of past enemies that includes professional killers and white-collar criminals.

... ... ...

But many defense lawyers have chafed at what they see as a scorched-earth approach, forged in Brooklyn while facing down Mafia members and refined on the government's unit of Enron superprosecutors, which left a mixed legacy of high-profile successes, overturned convictions and one unanimous defeat at the Supreme Court.

... thousands of dollars in past donations from Mr. Weissmann to Democrats, including former President Barack Obama.

...Then came the shock-and-awe raid of Mr. Manafort's home - a Weissmann special, both admirers and critics recognized - the Zorro "Z" to announce his presence in the case.

"There's a name," the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh warned listeners last week, recapping the "intimidating technique" afoot. "Weissmann."

... ... ...

whose work has been taken up by Trump allies like Newt Gingrich. (In 2015, Ms. Powell criticized Mr. Weissmann in an article for The New York Observer - which was owned by Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump's son-in-law - after Mr. Weissmann was named to lead the Justice Department's criminal fraud section.)

[Dec 15, 2017] Wikileaks has offered a reward to speed up a search for the Seth Rich murderers, whereas DNC did nothing. Nothing! But the DNC was very active when certain Mr. Awan needed legal protection

Notable quotes:
"... How is your Debbie Wasserman doing -- did not she threatened the DC police investigator for doing his job of investigating the Awan affair? Debbie has been a major protector of the Awan family that accomplished the greatest breach of the US cybersecurity. And how is your Nobel Peace Laureate doing -- collecting nice fees from banksters for his betrayal of democracy in the US? ..."
Dec 15, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Anna , December 14, 2017 at 1:27 am

Are you shocked about Seth Rich murder? Wikileaks has offered a reward to speed up a search for the murderers, whereas DNC did nothing. Nothing! But the DNC was very active when certain Mr. Awan needed legal protection.

How is your Debbie Wasserman doing -- did not she threatened the DC police investigator for doing his job of investigating the Awan affair? Debbie has been a major protector of the Awan family that accomplished the greatest breach of the US cybersecurity. And how is your Nobel Peace Laureate doing -- collecting nice fees from banksters for his betrayal of democracy in the US?

[Dec 15, 2017] James Clapper Corrects Left's Narrative On Russia Election Interference 'Not All 17' Intel Agencies Affirmed

Notable quotes:
"... Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, " ..."
"... Aaron Klein Investigative Radio ..."
"... ." Follow him on ..."
"... Twitter @AaronKleinShow. ..."
"... Follow him on ..."
"... With research by Joshua Klein. ..."
May 09, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

During yesterday's Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing, James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, put the kibosh on a major anti-Donald Trump talking point that 17 federal intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

That talking point was amplified last October, when Hillary Clinton stated the following at the third presidential debate: "We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber-attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing."

Clinton was referring to an October 7, 2016 joint statement from the Homeland Security Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence claiming, "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations."

The statement was followed by a January 6, 2017 U.S. Intelligence Community report assessing Russian intentions during the presidential election.

While the U.S. Intelligence Community is indeed made up of 17 agencies, Clapper made clear in his testimony yesterday that the community's assessments regarding alleged Russian interference were not the product of all seventeen agencies but of three – the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA).

Referring to the assessments, Clapper stated : "As you know, the I.C. was a coordinated product from three agencies; CIA, NSA and the FBI, not all 17 components of the intelligence community. Those three under the aegis of my former office."

Later in the hearing, Clapper corrected Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) when Franken claimed that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Russia attempted to influence the election.

Here is a transcript of that exchange :

FRANKEN: And I want to thank General Clapper and – and Attorney General Yates for – for appearing today. We have – the intelligence communities have concluded all 17 of them that Russia interfered with this election. And we all know how that's right.

CLAPPER: Senator, as I pointed out in my statement Senator Franken, it was there were only three agencies that directly involved in this assessment plus my office

FRANKEN: But all 17 signed on to that?

CLAPPER: Well, we didn't go through that – that process, this was a special situation because of the time limits and my – what I knew to be to who could really contribute to this and the sensitivity of the situation, we decided it was a constant judgment to restrict it to those three. I'm not aware of anyone who dissented or – or disagreed when it came out.

The January 6 U.S. intelligence community report is titled, "Background to 'Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections': The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution."

The report makes clear it is a product of three intelligence agencies and not 17.

The opening states: "This report includes an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated by those three agencies."

Following Clinton's presidential debate claim about "17 intelligence agencies," PolitiFact rated her statement as "true."

However, within its ruling, PolitiFact conceded:

We don't know how many separate investigations into the attacks there were. But the Director of National Intelligence, which speaks for the country's 17 federal intelligence agencies, released a joint statement saying the intelligence community at large is confident that Russia is behind recent hacks into political organizations' emails.

PolitiFact's "true" judgement was the basis for a USA Today piece titled, "Yes, 17 intelligence agencies really did say Russia was behind hacking."

Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, " Aaron Klein Investigative Radio ." Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

With research by Joshua Klein.

[Dec 15, 2017] Republican Rep. Jim Jordan Get a special prosecutor for Hillary Clinton right now by Chris Pandolfo

Fusion GPs is an interesting part of the whole puzzle.
Notable quotes:
"... On Wednesday morning, Congressman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, responded to Attorney General Jeff Sessions' unclear position on appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton's ties to Fusion GPS and Russia and the Uranium One deal orchestrated by the Clinton State Department during the Obama administration. ..."
"... "It needs to be about everything, including Mr. Comey's handling of the Clinton investigation in 2016," Jordan said. "The inspector general is looking into that right now. We're going to look into it as a congressional committee, but it needs to be the full gambit because frankly it's all tied together, and we think in many ways Mr. Rosenstein and many ways Mr. Mueller is compromised; they're not going to look at some of these issues." ..."
Dec 15, 2017 | www.conservativereview.com

On Wednesday morning, Congressman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, responded to Attorney General Jeff Sessions' unclear position on appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton's ties to Fusion GPS and Russia and the Uranium One deal orchestrated by the Clinton State Department during the Obama administration.

Jordan, appearing on "Fox & Friends," said the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the full breadth of Clinton's potentially illegal activities "needs to happen."

"It needs to be about everything, including Mr. Comey's handling of the Clinton investigation in 2016," Jordan said. "The inspector general is looking into that right now. We're going to look into it as a congressional committee, but it needs to be the full gambit because frankly it's all tied together, and we think in many ways Mr. Rosenstein and many ways Mr. Mueller is compromised; they're not going to look at some of these issues."

"But the biggest part, I do believe, is the dossier," Jordan stressed. "The fact, as I said yesterday, the fact that a major political party can finance this dossier at the same time it looks like Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, was being paid by the FBI."

"So are they complicit in putting together this dossier, which was National Enquirer baloney, turning it into an intelligence document, getting a warrant, and spying on Americans? If that happened in this great country, that is just so wrong. That's why it warrants a special examination of this whole issue."

Asked by Ainsley Earhardt why the Department of Justice hasn't asked for a special counsel yet, Jordan said he thinks it's because "some of the career people at the Justice Department just don't want to go there." Jordan also said that Attorney General Sessions, who is "a good man," may feel compromised by his recusal from some aspects of the Russia investigation and therefore unwilling to push hard against those who don't want to go after Clinton.

On Tuesday, the attorney general testified before the House Judiciary Committee. When asked by Rep. Jordan if he would appoint a special counsel to investigate Clinton, Sessions demurred.

[Dec 15, 2017] Was Steele dossier the "insurance policy" to derail Trump the Strzok mentioned

Dec 15, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

In a recently released Aug. 15, 2016 text message from Peter Strzok, a senior FBI counterintelligence official, to his reputed lover, senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Strzok referenced an apparent plan to keep Trump from getting elected before suggesting the need for "an insurance policy" just in case he did.

A serious investigation into Russia-gate might want to know what these senior FBI officials had in mind.

[Dec 15, 2017] Protecting the Shaky Russia-gate Narrative by Robert Parry

Notable quotes:
"... The New York Times continues its sorry pattern of falsifying the record on Russia-gate, giving its readers information that the newspaper knows not to be true, reports Robert Parry. ..."
"... Trimming the total down to $44,000 and admitting that only a few of those ads actually dealt with Clinton and Trump would be even worse for the Russia-gate narrative. ..."
"... The only acceptable conclusion, it seems, is "Russia Guilty!" ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
Dec 15, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

The New York Times continues its sorry pattern of falsifying the record on Russia-gate, giving its readers information that the newspaper knows not to be true, reports Robert Parry.

If Russia-gate is the massive scandal that we are told it is by so many Important People -- across the U.S. mainstream media and the political world -- why do its proponents have to resort to lies and exaggerations to maintain the pillars supporting the narrative?

A new example on Thursday was The New York Times' statement that a Russian agency "spent $100,000 on [Facebook's] platform to influence the United States presidential election last year" – when the Times knows that statement is not true.

According to Facebook, only 44 percent of that amount appeared before the U.S. presidential election in 2016 (i.e., $44,000) and few of those ads addressed the actual election. And, we know that the Times is aware of the truth because it was acknowledged in a Times article in early October.

As part of that article, Times correspondents Mike Isaac and Scott Shane reported that the ads also covered a wide range of other topics: "There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads."

As nefarious as the Times may think it is for Russians to promote a Facebook page about "adorable puppies," the absurdity of that concern – and the dishonesty of the Times then "forgetting" what it itself reported just two months ago about the timing and contents of these "Russian-linked ads" – tells you a great deal about Russia-gate.

On Thursday, the Times chose to distort what it already knew to be true presumably because it didn't want to make the $100,000 ad buy (which is not a particularly large sum) look even smaller and less significant by acknowledging the pre-election total was less than half that modest amount – and even that total had little to do with the election.

Why would the Times lie? Because to tell the truth would undercut the narrative of evil Russians defeating Hillary Clinton and putting Donald Trump in the White House – the core narrative of Russia-gate.

Another relevant fact is that Facebook failed to find any "Russian-linked" ads during its first two searches and only detected the $100,000 after a personal visit from Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a leading legislator on Internet regulation.

In other words, Facebook's corporate executives dredged up something to appease Warner. That way, Warner and the Democrats could blame Russia for the Trump presidency, sparing further criticism of Clinton's dreadful campaign (in which she labeled half of Trump's voters "deplorables") and her neo-liberal economic policies (and neo-conservative foreign policies) that have alienated much of America's working class as well as many progressives.

Leaving Out Context

The Times also might have put the $100,000 in "Russian-linked" ads over a two-year period in the context of Facebook's $27 billion in annual revenue, but the Times didn't do that – apparently because it would make even the full $100,000 look like a pittance.

Trimming the total down to $44,000 and admitting that only a few of those ads actually dealt with Clinton and Trump would be even worse for the Russia-gate narrative.

Ironically, the Times' latest false depiction of the $100,000 in ads as designed "to influence" the 2016 election appeared in an article about Facebook determining that other Russian-linked ads, which supposedly had a powerful effect on Great Britain's Brexit vote, totaled just three ads at the cost of 97 cents. (That is not a misprint.)

According to Facebook, the three ads, which focused on immigration, were viewed some 200 times by Britons over four days in May 2016. Of course, the response from British parliamentarians who wanted to blame the Brexit vote on Moscow was to assert that Facebook must have missed something. It couldn't be that many Britons had lost faith in the promise of the European Union for their own reasons.

We have seen a similar pattern with allegations about Russian interference in German and French elections, with the initial accusations being widely touted but not so much the later conclusions by serious investigations knocking down the claims. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com's " German Intel Clears Russia on Interference. "]

The only acceptable conclusion, it seems, is "Russia Guilty!"

These days in Official Washington, it has become almost forbidden to ask for actual evidence that would prove the original claim that Russia "hacked" Democratic emails, even though the accusation came from what President Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged were "hand-picked" analysts from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.

These "hand-picked" analysts produced the evidence-lite Jan. 6 "assessment" about Russia "hacking" the emails and slipping them to WikiLeaks – a scenario denied by both WikiLeaks and Russia.

When that "assessment" was released almost a year ago, even the Times' Scott Shane noticed the lack of proof, writing : "What is missing from the [the Jan. 6] public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies' claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to 'trust us.'"

But the Times soon "forgot" what Shane had inconveniently noted and began reporting the Russian "hacking" as accepted wisdom.

The 17-Agencies Canard

Whenever scattered expressions of skepticism arose from a few analysts or non-mainstream media, the doubts were beaten back by the claim that "all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies" concurred in the conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the hacking to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump. And what kind of nut would doubt the collective judgment of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies!

Though the 17-agency canard was never true, it served an important purpose in establishing the Russia-gate groupthink. Wielding the "all 17 intelligence agencies" club, the U.S. mainstream media pounded politicians and policymakers into line, making any remaining skeptics seem more out of step and crazy.

So, in May 2017, when Clapper (along with former CIA Director John Brennan) admitted in congressional testimony that it wasn't true that all 17 agencies concurred in the Russian hacking conclusion, those statements received very little attention in the mainstream media.

The New York Times among other major news outlets just continued asserting the 17-agency falsehood until the Times was finally pressured to correct its lie in late June , but that only led to the Times shifting to slightly different but still misleading wording, citing a "consensus" among the intelligence agencies without mentioning a number or by simply stating the unproven hacking claim as flat fact.

Even efforts to test the Russian-hack claims through science were ignored or ridiculed. When former NSA technical director William Binney conducted experiments that showed that the known download speed of one batch of DNC emails could not have occurred over the Internet but matched what was possible for a USB-connected thumb drive -- an indication that a Democratic insider likely downloaded the emails and thus that there was no "hack" -- Binney was mocked as a "conspiracy theorist."

Even with the new disclosures about deep-seated anti-Trump bias in text messages exchanged between two senior FBI officials who played important early roles in the Russia-gate investigation, there is no indication that Official Washington is willing to go back to the beginning and see how the Russia-gate story might have been deceptively spun.

In a recently released Aug. 15, 2016 text message from Peter Strzok, a senior FBI counterintelligence official, to his reputed lover, senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Strzok referenced an apparent plan to keep Trump from getting elected before suggesting the need for "an insurance policy" just in case he did. A serious investigation into Russia-gate might want to know what these senior FBI officials had in mind.

But the Times and other big promoters of Russia-gate continue to dismiss doubters as delusional or as covering up for Russia and/or Trump. By this point – more than a year into this investigation – too many Important People have bought into the Russia-gate narrative to consider the possibility that there may be little or nothing there, or even worse, that it is the "insurance policy" that Strzok envisioned.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

WC , December 15, 2017 at 3:39 pm

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/taking-liberty/

Sally Snyder , December 15, 2017 at 4:13 pm

Here is an article that looks at how Google is proposing to "protect us" from all things Russian:

https://viableopposition.blogspot.lt/2017/11/how-google-manages-fake-news.html

George Orwell was right, he was just a few decades ahead of his time. Non-government actors in the United States, including Google, have learned an important lesson from the 2016 election and we can pretty much assure ourselves that the next election will see significant massaging when it comes to what we read and hear.

ranney , December 15, 2017 at 4:43 pm

Lately I've heard on PBS and other news shows that Russia "invaded Ukraine" and also attacked Crimea and essentially stole the island back to Russia. I forget the exact words used about Crimea but that was the gist. I have heard several times people on PBS using the the words Russia "invaded Ukraine" to describe what happened there. Like the N.Y.T. PBS is supposed to be the go to place for unbiased news and now they are blatantly lying to the public – and have been lying certainly as far back as 2014, if not before.

It's very discouraging to know that there are so few places where one can go to get actual facts. Consortium is one and, surprisingly RT is often another – at least RT tells us about stuff going on in other parts of the world that we never hear about in the MSM. Boy! talk about being an insular country! America is the most isolated country in the world when it comes to knowledge about other lands. We go on about how narcissistic Trump is, but the fact is that our whole government and our MSM is totally narcissistic and has been for quite a while – all we think about is us- and our government is willing to kill and lay waste anyone or any country that doesn't do exactly what we want, even when what we want is disasterous for not only other countries, but also disasterous for our own country. We are so narcissistic that we can't see it.

Padtie , December 15, 2017 at 6:09 pm

Well ranney, while I look at and read this site regularly, I gotta say that Trump is merely a doppelgänger for our country's collective psyche. This country is off the rails in every way possible. Yes, that includes those bad apples of the deep state AND compliant hamster citizens who vote and are currently scurrying about on the wheel of capitalism in pursuit of the Christmas Machine. All the hand wringing done on this web-site ain't gonna change any of it.

Mr. Parry would do everyone justice by taking his excellent skills and expanding his writing repertoire beyond Russia-gate. I'm seriously beginning to wonder what's up with him that he repeatedly beats the same old sorry drum- like the MSM- only on the opposite side. It's getting tiresome. How about proposing solutions to what ails us?

Sorry to ruin everyone's party.

Abe , December 15, 2017 at 4:46 pm

"major media outlets have made humiliating, breathtaking errors on the Trump-Russia story, always in the same direction, toward the same political goals. Here is just a sample of incredibly inflammatory claims that traveled all over the internet before having to be corrected, walked back, or retracted -- often long after the initial false claims spread, and where the corrections receive only a tiny fraction of the attention with which the initial false stories are lavished:

– Russia hacked into the U.S. electric grid to deprive Americans of heat during winter (Wash Post)
– An anonymous group (PropOrNot) documented how major U.S. political sites are Kremlin agents (Wash Post)
– WikiLeaks has a long, documented relationship with Putin (Guardian)
– A secret server between Trump and a Russian bank has been discovered (Slate)
– RT hacked C-SPAN and caused disruption in its broadcast (Fortune)
– Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app (Crowdstrike)
– Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states (multiple news outlets, echoing Homeland Security)
– Links have been found between Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci and a Russian investment fund under investigation (CNN) [ ]

"But what it means most of all is that when media outlets are responsible for such grave and consequential errors as the spectacle we witnessed yesterday, they have to take responsibility for it by offering transparency and accountability. In this case, that can't mean hiding behind P.R. and lawyer silence and waiting for this to just all blow away.

"At minimum, these networks -- CNN, MSNBC, and CBS -- have to either identify who purposely fed them this blatantly false information or explain how it's possible that 'multiple sources' all got the same information wrong in innocence and good faith. Until they do that, their cries and protests the next time they're attacked as 'Fake News' should fall on deaf ears, since the real author of those attacks -- the reason those attacks resonate -- is themselves and their own conduct."

The U.S. Media Suffered Its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages and Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened
By Glenn Greenwald
https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-suffered-its-most-humiliating-debacle-in-ages-now-refuses-all-transparency-over-what-happened/

JOHN L. OPPERMAN , December 15, 2017 at 4:49 pm

Hilary gave it away, as the (anti-democratic)"Democratic Party" gave it all away and has been doing it for decades.
Whereas the right has wisely (for it's purposes) built long term infrastructure of funded think tanks, media, fundamentalist ideologists, etc; the Democratic Establishment has dumped on it's base at practically ever turn, never really showing actual support for it's public community, and has joined with the right to destroy all attempt to build an actual peoples' political party.
I just turned 84 and have witnessed the ever-growing weakness and right-leaning of the Party" since I was a little kid and have seen it only become more disgustingly lame and disingenuous in all these years since, with extended travel, 20-year military service and work around the world, in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
And we are largely to blame, being humans and Americans, we sit back-busy with our lives, and neglect our responsibilities to our fellow man and community.
Get up off your ass, guys

JOHN L. OPPERMAN , December 15, 2017 at 4:53 pm

I must add, the so-called Party has quite consistently ACTIVELY fought against labor, consumers, t's own loyal public.

Joe Tedesky , December 15, 2017 at 5:10 pm

Among the many great comments posted here I find in your resume Mr Opperman a ton of experienced words worth listening too. In fact, it is people such as yourself that I feel our younger generation should be learning from. Your traveling, and working for the government has given you an insight that many of us do not have, nor will get since we are all not like you John. So keep posting, and tell us what you think America should do next, as we go forward. Thank you for your remarks, they are respected for what you have earned. Joe

Padtie , December 15, 2017 at 6:11 pm

Thanks for this post John.

Skip Scott , December 15, 2017 at 4:52 pm

In the end, this whole RussiaGate scandal may actually have a positive impact if it can be proven that it was a conspiracy cooked up by the "Deep State" as insurance in case of a Trump victory. If this is proven and actually becomes common knowledge, people like Brennan and Clapper, and their MSM mouthpieces, will never be trusted again. Though heads didn't roll after the exposure of the "weapons of mass destruction" lie, this one might tip the balance. Their argument that the "intelligence was mistaken" won't fly, as RussiaGate is so obviously a purposely constructed lie. It would be even greater if this led to a counter-investigation where all the perps were exposed and publicly prosecuted, and the Intelligence Agencies were "broken into 1000 pieces." Maybe while they were at it, they could get around to auditing the Pentagon. I like to dream big.

My hope is that websites like this one can continue to build an audience and speak truth to power now that net neutrality appears dead.

Joe Tedesky , December 15, 2017 at 4:59 pm

Funny how the NYT will try and make hay with a collection of various Russian disjointed ads on Facebook with an investment of $44,000.xx out weights the 4.9 billion dollars worth of free media coverage the MSM gave Trump through the whole 2016 presidential campaign, and nobody thinks nothing of it. If there was any type of collusion to help Trump win the White House then why not question this free media give away?

As a side note, should we investigate Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn for colluding with Israel?

Senator Mark Warner plays the part of the inquisitor well, and for that reason he has loss my respect, if he ever had it to begin with. Enough of covering up for Hillary's guilt complex to why she loss the election. Someone should just tell her, that even though she has done everything there is in her power to take Putin out of power, that her presidential loss is all on her. Putin didn't need to interfere, since by Hillary just being Hillary was enough to keep her out of reach of the Oval Office.

I hope that in the coming year, that by some stroke of luck, that William Binney will get the praise he deserves. We need more people like Binney working in our government, and without him we all are left vulnerable to the many who don't represent our citizen values. I thought the MSM's treatment of William Binney was disgraceful, to say the least.

Lastly, I would only hope that whoever it was that started this Russia-Gate nonsense would be revealed, but hope doesn't prosecute anyone, but knowledge at least allows you too see who and what is behind the curtain.

Marko , December 15, 2017 at 5:46 pm

" a collection of various Russian disjointed ads on Facebook with an investment of $44,000.xx .."

Yes , it was amazing that Russia was able to control our election so cheaply , but really , that was nothing. They swung the UK Brexit vote with Facebook ads costing them only 97 cents ! :

http://russia-insider.com/en/brilliant-russians-engineered-brexit-97-cents-facebook-ads/ri21937

mike k , December 15, 2017 at 5:34 pm

This whole Russiagate fraud could serve to awake a lot of Americans, if they would only look into it. You are not going to find a more blatant example of fake news by every major media, and also those supposedly upstanding Senators and Representatives, FBI and Justice Icons. If the public ignores opportunities to wake up to this outrageous scam being perpetrated on them now, there is little hope that they ever will. I try to get my friends interested in researching Russiagate, and a few of them have become curious and started asking questions – that's how awakening begins .

Marko , December 15, 2017 at 5:55 pm

Agreed. It's important to have just one or a few topics at most that you can suggest to your uninformed friends as being worthy of their own time to research , with the ultimate goal of " waking up ". Russia-gate is perfect. The Syrian War is another good one.

Pablo Diablo , December 15, 2017 at 5:55 pm

Also, a convenient excuse to discredit the "Special Counsel" Mueller investigation. "Witch hunt", "Fake News", which will come in handy if any real crimes are exposed. Reminds me of one criminal mob taking over territory from the current bunch of criminals.
Sad to see. The definition of "government" is that it represents "the people". Yet, I wonder if any government on Earth does represent "the people".

Brendan , December 15, 2017 at 6:02 pm

In spite of all the blatant lies that it publishes, the New York Times is still highly regarded by the political and media establishment, even in Europe.

In Hamburg on 3 December 2017, the NYT was awarded the Marion Dönhoff Prize for International Understanding and Reconciliation. In his presentation speech, the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier described the NYT as an authority of enlightenment and a beacon of reason.

Steinmeier even managed to sneak in some fake news when he said "We are paying tribute to a flagship of freedom of the press in an age in which independent newspapers are branded as foreign agents in Russia".
http://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/EN/Frank-Walter-Steinmeier/Reden/2017/12/171203-Doenhoff-Prize.html

In fact, none of the media outlets that were recently declared foreign agents by Moscow is either independent or a newspaper. That list consists only of the US government financed VOA and RFE/RL and a number of websites and broadcasters that VOA and RFE/RL control.

Apart from that, the Russian "foreign agents" list is just a direct retaliation against Washington for doing exactly the same thing to RT and Sputnik, who were forced to register as foreign agents. Apparently the "freedom of the press" isn't so important when it applies to Russian media organisations working in the USA.

[Dec 15, 2017] Possible MI6 links to Strzokgate and Steele dossier

Notable quotes:
"... Sir Andrew Wood is a close friend of Christopher Steele (of the Steele Dossier) and an associate of Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., which is Steele's private spy agency. [Does Steele still work for the British SIS, MI6?] "Before the election Steele had gone to Wood and shown him the dossier." (p.38). Wood is wired into the arch-NWO Chatham House, which is home to The Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), the companion organization of which is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). (q.v. "Tragedy and Hope" by Carrol Quigley; "The Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations & United States foreign Policy" by Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter; "Wall Street's Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2104" by Laurence H. Shoup). ..."
"... I am starting to wonder if Luke Harding might be MI6 with journalism for a cover. ..."
Dec 15, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Dunno , December 14, 2017 at 1:16 pm

Lately, I have been reading Luke Harding's "Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win." Harding is a journalist who works as a foreign correspondent for the Guardian newspaper. His book draws heavily upon the "Steele Dossier." (q.v. Wikipedia: Donald Trump-Russian Dossier) Harding's Wikipedia page is also very interesting, as is some of the information that he generously supplies in "Collusion." For example, on pp.37-38, Harding describes a three-day event in November of 2016 that was sponsored by the Halifax International Security Forum in Halifax, N.S. Harding describes the objective of the gathered international group as making sense of the world in the aftermath of Trump's stunning victory. Interestingly, Senator John McCain was one of the delegates; however, the participation of Sir Andrew Wood, a former Ambassador to Russia from 1995-2000 is perhaps even more interesting. Wood and McCain were participants in the Ukraine panel.

Sir Andrew Wood is a close friend of Christopher Steele (of the Steele Dossier) and an associate of Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., which is Steele's private spy agency. [Does Steele still work for the British SIS, MI6?] "Before the election Steele had gone to Wood and shown him the dossier." (p.38). Wood is wired into the arch-NWO Chatham House, which is home to The Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), the companion organization of which is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). (q.v. "Tragedy and Hope" by Carrol Quigley; "The Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations & United States foreign Policy" by Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter; "Wall Street's Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2104" by Laurence H. Shoup).

At this conference in Halifax, Harding reports that Wood briefed McCain about the contents of the Steele Dossier [rattle-tat-tattle-tale MI6's "ScuttleTrump" operation seems to proceeding swimmingly at this point]. The senile senator from Arizona evidently decided that " the implications [of the dossier] were sufficiently alarming to dispatch a former senior U.S. official to meet with Steele and find out more." The emissary, David Kramer, is currently a senior director at the McCain institute for International Leadership: Kramer was formerly the President of the highly questionable Freedom House, a nest of NWO neocons and neoliberals. (q.v. Wikipedia article, Freedom House, especially the section on Criticism/Relationship with the U.S. Government.) Please, recall McCain's role in the coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014.

I am starting to wonder if Luke Harding might be MI6 with journalism for a cover. Then there is the bizarre case of Carter Page, the former U.S. Marine intelligence officer and purported lover of all things Russian and of Putin. This obsessive enthusiast is beginning to remind me of another obsessive Russian enthusiast, U.S. Marine, and defector to the soviet Union; Patsy Oswald. I am starting to look at this Trump-Russia fraud as more than a takedown of the crooked Don. It seems to be an ingenious way of further demonizing Putin and the Russians, and, if so, it is working like a charm. The MSM echo chamber cannot get enough of it. and neither can the NWO.

[Dec 15, 2017] Russia-gate serves the Democrat party because it masks their corruption and their collusion with Israel

Notable quotes:
"... Russia-gate serves the Democrat party because it side-steps their collusion with Israel. It serves the Republicans less because of collusion with corporations in the effort to destroy democracy and the social programs of the New Deal, and Russia is in on it. What is the purpose of all this collusion? It's to bring Iran, North Korea, and Cuba into the New World Order. ..."
"... Washington Post today, in another story relying solely on anonymous sources, breathlessly states: "Nearly a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of American democracy and supported his run for the White House. The result is without obvious parallel in U.S. history, a situation in which the personal insecurities of the president -- and his refusal to accept what even many in his administration regard as objective reality -- have impaired the government's response to a national security threat." Objective reality? ..."
"... The "Red Herring" is a major distraction to what is fundamentally a very corrupted election process from within and non-action by both parties to pursue fair, transparent "un-rigged" elections, taking the money out of the elections, getting rid of the electoral college, ranked voting and more. ..."
"... "Israel's collusion with the Trump presidential transition team points to more than just Trump, Kushner, and Flynn violating the Logan Act of 1799, an arcane law prohibiting American citizens from engaging in their own foreign policies. By convincing Trump, Kushner, and Flynn that Obama was behind Resolution 2443, Israel co-opted the Trump transition team to do its bidding. The Logan Act is immaterial when Trump, Kushner, Flynn, and others committed virtual treason against their own country to further the political aims of Israel. ..."
"... "The phoniest aspect of so-called 'Russiagate' is that the political scandal involving Trump, Kushner, Flynn, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, and others hardly involves the Russian government. Instead, Eastern European-Israeli oligarchs, along with their thousands of offshore shell corporations located in places as far-ranging as the British Virgin Islands and the Isle of Jersey to the Marshall Islands and Seychelles, along with well-placed American agents-of-influence for Israel, are front-and-center in the scandal that now threatens to bring down the Trump administration." ..."
"... Mueller Names Trump's Foreign 'Colluding' Power: Israel By Wayne Madsen ..."
"... Liars always become very touchy when confronted with their falsehoods. They will inevitably attack there accusers with more lies to make them look bad. This is a fundamental reflex all liars respond to critics with. "I'm not lying, you are!" Those who want to believe the real liar love this response, because it gives them an excuse not to investigate if the accuser may be right. Then they can just turn on the accuser and blame them for false accusation – without the slightest proof, of course. ..."
Dec 15, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Gregory Kruse , December 14, 2017 at 1:48 pm

Russia-gate serves the Democrat party because it side-steps their collusion with Israel. It serves the Republicans less because of collusion with corporations in the effort to destroy democracy and the social programs of the New Deal, and Russia is in on it. What is the purpose of all this collusion? It's to bring Iran, North Korea, and Cuba into the New World Order.

China and Russia are only nominal adversaries in the world economy. They also want to impoverish the majority of the world's population even at the cost of enriching some individuals to the point of becoming gods. In a sense, this is what liberals have wanted, to level the field that the poor people of the world exist on.

jaycee , December 14, 2017 at 2:26 pm

Washington Post today, in another story relying solely on anonymous sources, breathlessly states: "Nearly a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of American democracy and supported his run for the White House. The result is without obvious parallel in U.S. history, a situation in which the personal insecurities of the president -- and his refusal to accept what even many in his administration regard as objective reality -- have impaired the government's response to a national security threat." Objective reality?

Colleen O'Brien , December 14, 2017 at 2:30 pm

All the layers of deceit, denial and distraction bode ill for the Democratic Party and MSM. Thank you Robert Parry for standing up to all this disinformation & propaganda. The "Red Herring" is a major distraction to what is fundamentally a very corrupted election process from within and non-action by both parties to pursue fair, transparent "un-rigged" elections, taking the money out of the elections, getting rid of the electoral college, ranked voting and more.

Reforming our election process is the most important issue because what we have now and what came before is because of the money which owns the politicians and who no longer represent the American People! Nothing will change until we fix this!

Abe , December 14, 2017 at 4:32 pm

"Israel's collusion with the Trump presidential transition team points to more than just Trump, Kushner, and Flynn violating the Logan Act of 1799, an arcane law prohibiting American citizens from engaging in their own foreign policies. By convincing Trump, Kushner, and Flynn that Obama was behind Resolution 2443, Israel co-opted the Trump transition team to do its bidding. The Logan Act is immaterial when Trump, Kushner, Flynn, and others committed virtual treason against their own country to further the political aims of Israel.

"There has never been a successful prosecution under the Logan Act and likely there will never be one. However, those who possessed access to classified information – Trump, Kushner, Flynn, Haley, and others – who were simultaneously taking orders from Israel on matters of US national security, could be found guilty of violating the US Espionage Act. Israel's 'Greek Chorus' of supporters in the US news media and Congress brought up the Logan Act to minimize the damage caused by collusion between Israel's skink-like ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, Netanyahu, Kushner, Flynn, Trump, and Haley to kill the resolution. If the Logan Act had any enforcement teeth, it would have been used a long time ago to indict George Soros, Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, Paul Singer, and other pro-Israeli billionaire influence-peddlers, who represent the interests of other nations and engage in their own foreign policies.

"The phoniest aspect of so-called 'Russiagate' is that the political scandal involving Trump, Kushner, Flynn, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, and others hardly involves the Russian government. Instead, Eastern European-Israeli oligarchs, along with their thousands of offshore shell corporations located in places as far-ranging as the British Virgin Islands and the Isle of Jersey to the Marshall Islands and Seychelles, along with well-placed American agents-of-influence for Israel, are front-and-center in the scandal that now threatens to bring down the Trump administration."

Mueller Names Trump's Foreign 'Colluding' Power: Israel By Wayne Madsen https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/04/mueller-names-trump-foreign-colluding-power-israel.html

mike k , December 14, 2017 at 4:51 pm

Liars always become very touchy when confronted with their falsehoods. They will inevitably attack there accusers with more lies to make them look bad. This is a fundamental reflex all liars respond to critics with. "I'm not lying, you are!" Those who want to believe the real liar love this response, because it gives them an excuse not to investigate if the accuser may be right. Then they can just turn on the accuser and blame them for false accusation – without the slightest proof, of course.

Mild -ly - Facetious , December 14, 2017 at 5:29 pm

... The new Reunion of Ismael and Issac

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/13/trump-netanyahu-mohammad-bin-salman-destroyers-neoliberal-world-order.html

Mild -ly - Facetious , December 14, 2017 at 7:16 pm

To whom it may concern: Forgive me, this isn't meant to be Hasbara .

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/11/30/us-foreign-policy-another-trump-organization-inc-property.html

[Dec 14, 2017] Was Peter Strzok the principal FBI liaison to CIA Director John Brennan?

Highly recommended!
That question arise during recent senate session of Rosenstein
It's been suggested that Strzok's job as counterintelligence deputy would have made him the principal FBI liaison to CIA Director Brennan.
Notable quotes:
"... Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post paid any price for their promotion of the invasion and destruction of Iraq. They might not get off as easy this time. One can hope. ..."
"... I can add one more. It's been suggested that Strzok's job as counterintelligence deputy would have made him the principal FBI liaison to CIA Director Brennan. At least this point was made explicitly in a recent LarouchePAC Live broadcast on Youtube (perhaps Will Wertz's presentation at last Saturday's Manhattan Project event) though I don't know what their evidence is. So we can ask: Was Peter Strzok the principal FBI liaison to CIA Director John Brennan? ..."
consortiumnews.com

Zachary Smith , December 13, 2017 at 11:00 pm

I've been seeing all sorts of places where this fellow Strzok's name pops up. Things like a FISA judge recusing himself. Things like him possibly arranging things so Hillary was able to continue her run for President. At a super-right-wing site I found these "questions".

  1. Did Peter Strzok receive the Steele Dossier from Hillary Clinton on July 4th when he interviewed her?
  2. If Hillary didn't give Strzok the dossier, who did?
  3. Did Peter Strzok put together the FISA Court material, which included the Steele Dossier?
  4. Did Peter Strzok go to the FISA Court and ask for the surveillance of the Trump team based on the Steele Dossier?
  5. Did James Comey assign Peter Strzok to the Clinton email case?
  6. Did James Comey assign Peter Strzok to the Trump surveillance case?
  7. Did James Comey know that Peter Strzok was compromised when he sent him to interview Michael Flynn (where surveillance was used to interview him based on the Steele Dossier that was presented to the FISA Court that Strzok put together?)

Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post paid any price for their promotion of the invasion and destruction of Iraq. They might not get off as easy this time. One can hope.

Steven A , December 14, 2017 at 8:36 am

I can add one more. It's been suggested that Strzok's job as counterintelligence deputy would have made him the principal FBI liaison to CIA Director Brennan. At least this point was made explicitly in a recent LarouchePAC Live broadcast on Youtube (perhaps Will Wertz's presentation at last Saturday's Manhattan Project event) though I don't know what their evidence is. So we can ask: Was Peter Strzok the principal FBI liaison to CIA Director John Brennan?

[Dec 14, 2017] The Foundering Russia-gate 'Scandal' Consortiumnews

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The disclosure of fiercely anti-Trump text messages between two romantically involved senior FBI officials who played key roles in the early Russia-gate inquiry has turned the supposed Russian-election-meddling "scandal" into its own scandal, by providing evidence that some government investigators saw it as their duty to block or destroy Donald Trump's presidency. ..."
"... As much as the U.S. mainstream media has mocked the idea that an American "deep state" exists and that it has maneuvered to remove Trump from office, the text messages between senior FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page reveal how two high-ranking members of the government's intelligence/legal bureaucracy saw their role as protecting the United States from an election that might elevate to the presidency someone as unfit as Trump. ..."
"... In the text messages, Strzok also expressed visceral contempt for working-class Trump voters, for instance, writing on Aug. 26, 2016, "Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support. it's scary real down here." ..."
"... Another text message suggested that other senior government officials – alarmed at the possibility of a Trump presidency – joined the discussion. In an apparent reference to an August 2016 meeting with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Strzok wrote to Page on Aug. 15, 2016, "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk." ..."
"... The scheme involved having some Democratic electors vote for former Secretary of State Colin Powell (which did happen), making him the third-place vote-getter in the Electoral College and thus eligible for selection by the House. But the plan fizzled when enough of Trump's electors stayed loyal to their candidate to officially make him President. ..."
"... After that, Trump's opponents turned to the Russia-gate investigation as the vehicle to create the conditions for somehow nullifying the election, impeaching Trump, or at least weakening him sufficiently so he could not take steps to improve relations with Russia. ..."
"... And, the new revelations of high-level FBI bias puts Clapper's statement about "hand-picked" analysts in sharper perspective, since any intelligence veteran will tell you that if you hand-pick the analysts you are effectively hand-picking the analysis. ..."
"... Although it has not yet been spelled out exactly what role Strzok and Page may have had in the Jan. 6 report, I was told by one source that Strzok had a direct hand in writing it. Whether that is indeed the case, Strzok, as a senior FBI counterintelligence official, would almost surely have had input into the selection of the FBI analysts and thus into the substance of the report itself. [For challenges from intelligence experts to the Jan. 6 report, see Consortiumnews.com's " More Holes in the Russia-gate Narrative. "] ..."
"... If the FBI contributors to the Jan. 6 report shared Strzok's contempt for Trump, it could explain why claims from an unverified dossier of Democratic-financed "dirt" on Trump, including salacious charges that Russian intelligence operatives videotaped Trump being urinated on by prostitutes in a five-star Moscow hotel, was added as a classified appendix to the report and presented personally to President-elect Trump. ..."
"... That discovery helped ensnare another senior Justice Department official, Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who talked with Steele during the campaign and had a post-election meeting with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson. Recently, Simpson has acknowledged that Ohr's wife, Nellie Ohr, was hired by Fusion GPS last year to investigate Trump. ..."
"... But the story soon collapsed when it turned out that the date on the email was actually Sept. 14, 2016, i.e., the day after ..."
"... Yet, despite the cascade of errors and grudging corrections, including some belated admissions that there was no "17-intelligence-agency consensus" on Russian "hacking" – The New York Times made a preemptive strike against the new documentary evidence that the Russia-gate investigation was riddled with conflicts of interest. ..."
"... Pursuing the truth can be a fascinating hobby, that leads to a person awakening. Make it interesting, awaken your friend's curiosity. ..."
"... Weeks before the 2016 election, Peter Strzok's FBI team agreed to pay former MI6 agent and Fusion GPS operative Christopher Steele $50,000 if he could verify the claims contained within the dossier – which relied on the cooperation of two senior Kremlin officials. (One more time for you, Walter Devine -- "if he [Steele] could verify the claims"). When Steele was unable to verify the claims in the dossier, the FBI wouldn't pay him according to the New York Times. ..."
"... Despite the fact that Steele was not paid by the FBI for the dossier, Peter Strzok used it to launch a counterintelligence investigation into President Trump's team. Steele was ultimately paid $168,000 by Fusion GPS to assemble the dossier. ..."
"... Of interest to me is why the Republicans did not hammer Hillary for placing an ambassador in what was essentially a CIA compound in the first place. My guess and I can only guess is that they no objection to its being a ratline to ship Libya's stolen armaments to head-chopping jihadists (with USA blessing) fighting Assad. So to raise the issue of why putting an ambassador there would have opened the door to sensitive questions -- if the press would ask them, of course. ..."
"... That's the real Benghazi story the MSM won't talk about. Although I suspect the armaments were given to the head choppers by the CIA, and then they rebelled at having them transferred to the head choppers in Syria after they had succeeded in killing Ghaddafi. ..."
"... "Madame Secretary, WHY was it necessary to destroy Libya?" No republican asked THAT question. ..."
"... Hello Skip, nice to read your good comments again and to exchange info. Here is an article which talks about the weapons ratline in Syria. Within four days, the powerful anti-tank missiles that CIA bought in Bulgaria and (supposedly) delivered to "moderate" rebels, ended up in ISIS hands. The only problem with the article's narrative is that it is still drawing the official line that the lack of oversight is to blame for such, whilst it was clearly a deliberate action to supply weapons to ISIS wrapped up in plausible deniability of passing them through the hands of some poor inept souls serving as intermediaries. ..."
"... Starting a grand-scale investigation on the basis of allegations of conspiracy with another government and treason is rather dubious when these allegations from dirty campaign tactics are not based on any tangible facts. It is true that the Muller team does not leak as much to the press as the intelligence services did previously. This investigation still plays an important role for the media propaganda that still pushes the Russiagate conspiracy theory even though there had never been any factual basis for it and no evidence has been found in over a year. Since there is still this investigation is going on, they can use it for justifying their daily minutes of hate against Russia, their calls for censorship and denounciation of any political position that diverges from the neoconservative and neoliberal ideology. ..."
"... the most dubious thing was, of course, the lobbying related to a UN security council resolution vote, but that might at best hint at colluding with Israel, it certainly does not fit the Russiagate conspiracy theory ..."
"... So, if we judge the Muller investigation by its results, it is not going anywhere. Obviously, that is what should be expected when a commission is set up for investigating a conspiracy theory for which there had never been any evidence to begin with. I suppose the result would be similar if the Illuminati, the Elders of Zion, or reptiloids were officially investigated. ..."
"... It seems that the Muller team wants to delay that moment when they have to confess that the conspiracy theory has broken down, but that won't necessarily make it easier, either. ..."
"... Think you nailed it. The bankster regime changers already tried once to structurally adjust Russia into being a US puppet state in the 90s under Clinton. Russia was robbed blind while Yeltzin drank himself into a stupor. Putin is the one who put a stop to the looting. That is his crime against the western oligarchs and why he is enemy #1. ..."
"... There's no 'lack of discussion about what they have uncovered' which has basically amounted to a pile of dirt. Have not read from the VIPS and William Binney? Uncovering shady business with oligarchs doesn't show collusion, but the dossier oppo does, but it's business as usual. Denying the FBI-DNC server subpoena was odd don't you think? ..."
"... "Fusion GPS appears to be in the center of a web of corruption. Who hired Fusion GPS to ramp up its opposition research against Trump? Hillary Clinton and the DNC. the wife of Justice Department official Bruce G. Ohr worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 presidential election. Nellie Ohr is listed as working for the CIA's Open Source Works department in a 2010 DOJ report." Look how the CIA, FBI, and DNC have found each other and made a friendship forever. ..."
"... Also, do you personally have any concern about the murder of Seth Rich? -- Donna Brazil has become afraid of being Seth-Riched. How come? What kind of scum the Democratic apparatus has become? -- Guess Tony Podesta and Bill Clinton and madame "we came, we saw, he died ha, ha, ha " are the composite face of the Democratic Party today. ..."
"... Have at it Walter. What exactly have they uncovered? The "process" lost credibility long ago. The "intelligence" report of January 6th was garbage and it's been all downhill since. ..."
"... Obama's expulsion of the Russian diplomats after Trump's election, with no reason based on fact/danger to the USA gave a good start to the Russophobia encouraged by the Clinton losers and leading on to the ludicrous extreme situation still going on. ..."
"... Since the whole Guccifer 2.0 operation appears to be an attempt to falsely smear WikiLeaks as a Russian agent (by publicly claiming to be a hacker associated with WikiLeaks and then being "caught" releasing documents (the ones of June 15, 2016) with "Russian fingerprints"), perhaps his uploading files (Sept 13, 2016) to a server with (past) ties to someone associated with WikiLeaks (Kim Dot Com) would have been part of the same effort. ..."
"... Such a reversal of evidence and conclusion bespeaks deliberate deception. The motive is unclear, as the failed Newsweek is said to have been revived in 2013 by a Korean-American Christian fundamentalist David Jang formerly of Moon's Unification Church, whose followers consider him the Second Coming of JC, according to the linked source. http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/03/newsweek-ibt-olivet-david-jang/ ..."
"... It's been a year and a half since Hillary Clinton first accused Donald Trump of being a Putin puppet and in collusion with the Kremlin. Any fool should be able to understand that if there existed any real evidence to support this accusation the world would have seen it under banner headlines long ago. ..."
"... Thank you for your spot-on analysis! The motives of the deep state – including FBI operatives, NY Times and WAPO – is crystal clear. They do not want Trump to be president, and are determined to either remove him or handcuff him indefinitely. But why? Why has the establishment gone crazy? Is it simply political, or something deeper and darker? ..."
"... The real "deep" reason is the PNAC plot to make sure that the USA remains the sole super power that can impose its will anywhere in the world. Trump's campaign position of seeking detente with Russia would have led us into a multi-polar world giving Russia a sphere of influence. That is unacceptable to the empire. ..."
"... RussiaGate is an attempt to remove Trump from power, or at a minimum make it impossible for him to seek detente. I am no Trump apologist, but I do think our only hope for a future in this nuclear age is to seek peace and cooperation in a multi-polar world that respects national sovereignty and the rule of law. I suspect Trump will continue to be brought to heel, with or without the success of RussiaGate. And there is always the JFK solution as a last resort. ..."
"... Where is William Binney's "Thin String" signals intelligence (SIGINT) software when it's needed? Wouldn't it be lovely to focus it on the communications of our own government? Binney says applying it after 9/11 to the pre-9/11 communications streams did successfully predict the 9/11 attacks. If only we had stored all communications of government officials dating back to . hey, let's say 1774 or so, what truths might we now know, and what proofs might we now have? What would FDR's communications prior to Pearl Harbor reveal? What about the JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X assassinations? ..."
Dec 14, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Exclusive: Taking on water from revealed FBI conflicts of interest, the foundering Russia-gate probe – and its mainstream media promoters – are resorting to insults against people who note the listing ship, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

The disclosure of fiercely anti-Trump text messages between two romantically involved senior FBI officials who played key roles in the early Russia-gate inquiry has turned the supposed Russian-election-meddling "scandal" into its own scandal, by providing evidence that some government investigators saw it as their duty to block or destroy Donald Trump's presidency.

Peter Strzok, who served as a Deputy Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, second in command of counterintelligence.

As much as the U.S. mainstream media has mocked the idea that an American "deep state" exists and that it has maneuvered to remove Trump from office, the text messages between senior FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page reveal how two high-ranking members of the government's intelligence/legal bureaucracy saw their role as protecting the United States from an election that might elevate to the presidency someone as unfit as Trump.

In one Aug. 6, 2016 text exchange, Page told Strzok: "Maybe you're meant to stay where you are because you're meant to protect the country from that menace." At the end of that text, she sent Strzok a link to a David Brooks column in The New York Times, which concludes with the clarion call: "There comes a time when neutrality and laying low become dishonorable. If you're not in revolt, you're in cahoots. When this period and your name are mentioned, decades hence, your grandkids will look away in shame."

Apparently after reading that stirring advice, Strzok replied, "And of course I'll try and approach it that way. I just know it will be tough at times. I can protect our country at many levels, not sure if that helps."

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, criticized Strzok's boast that "I can protect our country at many levels." Jordan said: "this guy thought he was super-agent James Bond at the FBI [deciding] there's no way we can let the American people make Donald Trump the next president."

In the text messages, Strzok also expressed visceral contempt for working-class Trump voters, for instance, writing on Aug. 26, 2016, "Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support. it's scary real down here."

Another text message suggested that other senior government officials – alarmed at the possibility of a Trump presidency – joined the discussion. In an apparent reference to an August 2016 meeting with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Strzok wrote to Page on Aug. 15, 2016, "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk."

Strzok added, "It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event that you die before you're 40."

It's unclear what strategy these FBI officials were contemplating to ensure Trump's defeat, but the comments mesh with what an intelligence source told me after the 2016 election, that there was a plan among senior Obama administration officials to use the allegations about Russian meddling to block Trump's momentum with the voters and -- if elected -- to persuade members of the Electoral College to deny Trump a majority of votes and thus throw the selection of a new president into the House of Representatives under the rules of the Twelfth Amendment .

The scheme involved having some Democratic electors vote for former Secretary of State Colin Powell (which did happen), making him the third-place vote-getter in the Electoral College and thus eligible for selection by the House. But the plan fizzled when enough of Trump's electors stayed loyal to their candidate to officially make him President.

After that, Trump's opponents turned to the Russia-gate investigation as the vehicle to create the conditions for somehow nullifying the election, impeaching Trump, or at least weakening him sufficiently so he could not take steps to improve relations with Russia.

In one of her text messages to Strzok, Page made reference to a possible Watergate-style ouster of Trump, writing: "Bought all the president's men. Figure I needed to brush up on watergate."

As a key feature in this oust-Trump effort, Democrats have continued to lie by claiming that "all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred" in the assessment that Russia hacked the Democratic emails last year on orders from President Vladimir Putin and then slipped them to WikiLeaks to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign.

That canard was used in the early months of the Russia-gate imbroglio to silence any skepticism about the "hacking" accusation, and the falsehood was repeated again by a Democratic congressman during Wednesday's hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.

But the "consensus" claim was never true. In May 2017 testimony , President Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that the Jan. 6 "Intelligence Community Assessment" was put together by "hand-picked" analysts from only three agencies: the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.

Biased at the Creation

And, the new revelations of high-level FBI bias puts Clapper's statement about "hand-picked" analysts in sharper perspective, since any intelligence veteran will tell you that if you hand-pick the analysts you are effectively hand-picking the analysis.

Although it has not yet been spelled out exactly what role Strzok and Page may have had in the Jan. 6 report, I was told by one source that Strzok had a direct hand in writing it. Whether that is indeed the case, Strzok, as a senior FBI counterintelligence official, would almost surely have had input into the selection of the FBI analysts and thus into the substance of the report itself. [For challenges from intelligence experts to the Jan. 6 report, see Consortiumnews.com's " More Holes in the Russia-gate Narrative. "]

If the FBI contributors to the Jan. 6 report shared Strzok's contempt for Trump, it could explain why claims from an unverified dossier of Democratic-financed "dirt" on Trump, including salacious charges that Russian intelligence operatives videotaped Trump being urinated on by prostitutes in a five-star Moscow hotel, was added as a classified appendix to the report and presented personally to President-elect Trump.

Though Democrats and the Clinton campaign long denied financing the dossier – prepared by ex-British spy Christopher Steele who claimed to rely on second- and third-hand information from anonymous Russian contacts – it was revealed in October 2017 that the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign shared in the costs, with the payments going to the "oppo" research firm, Fusion GPS, through the Democrats' law firm, Perkins Coie.

That discovery helped ensnare another senior Justice Department official, Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who talked with Steele during the campaign and had a post-election meeting with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson. Recently, Simpson has acknowledged that Ohr's wife, Nellie Ohr, was hired by Fusion GPS last year to investigate Trump.

Bruce Ohr has since been demoted and Strzok was quietly removed from the Russia-gate investigation last July although the reasons for these moves were not publicly explained at the time.

Still, the drive for "another Watergate" to oust an unpopular – and to many insiders, unfit – President remains at the center of the thinking among the top mainstream news organizations as they have scrambled for Russia-gate "scoops" over the past year even at the cost of making serious reporting errors .

For instance, last Friday, CNN -- and then CBS News and MSNBC -- trumpeted an email supposedly sent from someone named Michael J. Erickson on Sept. 4, 2016, to Donald Trump Jr. that involved WikiLeaks offering the Trump campaign pre-publication access to purloined Democratic National Committee emails that WikiLeaks published on Sept. 13, nine days later.

Grasping for Confirmation

Since the Jan. 6 report alleged that WikiLeaks received the "hacked" emails from Russia -- a claim that WikiLeaks and Russia deny -- the story seemed to finally tie together the notion that the Trump campaign had at least indirectly colluded with Russia.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Carl Hayden High School in Phoenix, Arizona. March 21, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

This new "evidence" spread like wildfire across social media. As The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald wrote in an article critical of the media's performance, some Russia-gate enthusiasts heralded the revelation with graphics of cannons booming and nukes exploding.

But the story soon collapsed when it turned out that the date on the email was actually Sept. 14, 2016, i.e., the day after WikiLeaks released the batch of DNC emails, not Sept. 4. It appeared that "Erickson" – whoever he was – had simply alerted the Trump campaign to the public existence of the WikiLeaks disclosure.

Greenwald noted , "So numerous are the false stories about Russia and Trump over the last year that I literally cannot list them all."

Yet, despite the cascade of errors and grudging corrections, including some belated admissions that there was no "17-intelligence-agency consensus" on Russian "hacking" – The New York Times made a preemptive strike against the new documentary evidence that the Russia-gate investigation was riddled with conflicts of interest.

The Times' lead editorial on Wednesday mocked reporters at Fox News for living in an "alternate universe" where the Russia-gate "investigation is 'illegitimate and corrupt,' or so says Gregg Jarrett, a legal analyst who appears regularly on [Sean] Hannity's nightly exercise in presidential ego-stroking."

Though briefly mentioning the situation with Strzok's text messages, the Times offered no details or context for the concerns, instead just heaping ridicule on anyone who questions the Russia-gate narrative.

"To put it mildly, this is insane," the Times declared. "The primary purpose of Mr. Mueller's investigation is not to take down Mr. Trump. It's to protect America's national security and the integrity of its elections by determining whether a presidential campaign conspired with a foreign adversary to influence the 2016 election – a proposition that grows more plausible every day."

The Times fumed that "roughly three-quarters of Republicans still refuse to accept that Russia interfered in the 2016 election – a fact that is glaringly obvious to everyone else, including the nation's intelligence community." (There we go again with the false suggestion of a consensus within the intelligence community.)

The Times also took to task Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, for seeking "a Special Counsel to investigate ALL THINGS 2016 – not just Trump and Russia." The Times insisted that "None of these attacks or insinuations are grounded in good faith."

But what are the Times editors so afraid of? As much as they try to insult and intimidate anyone who demands serious evidence about the Russia-gate allegations, why shouldn't the American people be informed about how Washington insiders manipulate elite opinion in pursuit of reversing "mistaken" judgments by the unwashed masses?

Do the Times editors really believe in democracy – a process that historically has had its share of warts and mistakes – or are they just elitists who think they know best and turn away their noses from the smell of working-class people at Walmart?

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

mike k , December 13, 2017 at 9:54 pm

The NYT is just another tool of the multi-billionaire oligarchs who rule this USA from the shadows. They fear nothing more than the light. When that investigative light gets strong enough, more and more ordinary folks will begin to awake to the massive fraud that has been perpetrated at their expense. And when that happens, we will finally see the Oligarchy begin to crumble under the pressure of the 99%. The truth will out, then heads will roll ..

mike k , December 13, 2017 at 10:00 pm

Keep up the pressure – get your friends interested, tell them about CN, Counterpunch, Strategic-Culture, Chris Hedges, etc. Pursuing the truth can be a fascinating hobby, that leads to a person awakening. Make it interesting, awaken your friend's curiosity.

incontinent reader , December 14, 2017 at 12:04 am

How about also including RT in your list? It's a news and commentary site with strong journalistic values and credibility, notwithstanding what the Administration or the MSM may say or imply.

T.J , December 14, 2017 at 8:45 am

If RT didn't have the qualities you describe, attempts by the Administration and the MSM to discredit it would have been successful. However they will attempt to silence it by other means.

Adam Kraft , December 14, 2017 at 11:59 am

Very true TJ. I found counterpunch when wapo / propornot blacklisted them. Gave 'em creds imo. I also like mint press, occupy, naked capitalism, **world socialist website**, disobedient media, truthout, some of Glenns work on the Intercept and my youtube subs include: wearechange, **anonymous Scandinavia**, **the jimmy dore show**, RT America, TeleSUR English*, Zoon Politikon, **democracy at work**, HA Goodman, theRealNews*, mintpressnews, watching the hawks, secular talk, laura kinhtlinger, judicial watch, empire files, redacted tonight, TBTV, a little from Julian Assange's twitter.

tina , December 14, 2017 at 11:06 pm

what about Al-Jazeera?

Erik G , December 14, 2017 at 8:03 am

Good suggestion; in such persuasion, one must respectfully suggest better sources and avoid any conflict.

Mr. Parry has well summarized for beginners these essential counterpoints to the mass media propaganda.

Those who would like to petition the NYT to make Robert Parry their senior editor may do so here:
https://www.change.org/p/new-york-times-bring-a-new-editor-to-the-new-york-times?recruiter=72650402&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
While Mr. Parry may prefer independence, and we all know the NYT ownership makes it unlikely, and the NYT may try to ignore it, it is instructive to them that intelligent readers know better journalism when they see it. A petition demonstrates the concerns of a far larger number of potential or lost subscribers.

Amyg , December 14, 2017 at 1:40 pm

I like this use of "awakened," in contrast to the establishment culture's fascination with "woke." People don't need to get woke. They need to become awakened. Thanks to Robert Parry.

Walter Devine , December 13, 2017 at 10:15 pm

I thought we were waiting to hear what the evidence is found. The lack of discussion about what they have uncovered seems to me to speak of a professional operation. Once they are done and present what they have found, then everyone can get on their soap boxes and let loose. As for Bias, that exists in everyone to some extent or another, where was the moral outrage from the Republicans charging this today when the Benghazi investigation was being conducted by folks with known axes to grind themselves? It is the Washington hypocrisy machine at its most obvious. As for the media, print or otherwise, they are just preaching to their choirs in order to sell whatever their particular consumers are buying. Frankly I have come to expect more from you than this article Mr. Parry, here's hoping

Robert Gardner , December 13, 2017 at 10:45 pm

I've been skeptical out the Russian conspiracy so far, but I agree with what Walter Devine wrote.

tina , December 13, 2017 at 11:42 pm

I am still waiting . Mr. Parry can ride on his story back in the 1980's. We are in 2017, The internet is good. What did those people in Washington do today? get rid of net neutrality? Love you all people on CN, Happy Hanukah Merry Christmas, and Kwanzaa, And the winter solstice. Peace to all. Love, tina everyone is going to believe that they want to believe.

incontinent reader , December 14, 2017 at 12:08 am

Are you kidding about Benghazi? Obviously you have still not informed yourself about the egregious security breakdown of the Administration or how the Benghazi facility factored into the CIA's proxy war in Syria. (And, btw, where was Hillary "Rod up her Hiney" Clinton when that '3AM call' came in at 4pm?

Larco Marco , December 14, 2017 at 4:32 am

Hillary Rodham Clinton AND William Hamrod Clinton

Anna , December 14, 2017 at 12:56 am

Thank you for bringing attention to the Benghazi scandal: "FBI Chief Instructed Agents To Lie About Benghazi To Protect Hillary" http://yournewswire.com/fbi-lie-benghazi-hillary/

"By placing the interests of the Obama administration over the public's interests, the order is yet another data point highlighting the politicization of the FBI: After the September 11, 2012 attack against U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, the Obama administration peddled a lie, telling the public that the attack was related to Muslims who had become enraged at an anti-Islam YouTube video, and not a planned act of terrorism – despite Hillary Clinton emailing Chelsea Clinton from her unsecure @clintonemail.com server the night of the attack to say exactly that."

-- On a topic of evidence: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-13/anti-trump-texts-between-fired-fbi-agents-having-extramarital-affair-leak-and-theyre "

In 2016, [the FBI] received the infamous anti-Trump "dossier" The "dossier" was a compendium of allegations about then-candidate Trump and others around him that was compiled by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. The firm's bank records, obtained by House investigators, revealed that the project was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Weeks before the 2016 election, Peter Strzok's FBI team agreed to pay former MI6 agent and Fusion GPS operative Christopher Steele $50,000 if he could verify the claims contained within the dossier – which relied on the cooperation of two senior Kremlin officials. (One more time for you, Walter Devine -- "if he [Steele] could verify the claims"). When Steele was unable to verify the claims in the dossier, the FBI wouldn't pay him according to the New York Times.

Despite the fact that Steele was not paid by the FBI for the dossier, Peter Strzok used it to launch a counterintelligence investigation into President Trump's team. Steele was ultimately paid $168,000 by Fusion GPS to assemble the dossier.

-- More evidence" "FBI Texts Reveal "Insurance Policy" To Prevent Trump Presidency" http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-13/we-cant-take-risk-fbi-texts-reveal-insurance-policy-prevent-trump-presidency

-- Have you noticed the numbers for payments? The bank records? The names? -- these are the evidence. Or you believe that there a Bias against the miserable Steele?

bobzz , December 14, 2017 at 3:06 pm

Of interest to me is why the Republicans did not hammer Hillary for placing an ambassador in what was essentially a CIA compound in the first place. My guess and I can only guess is that they no objection to its being a ratline to ship Libya's stolen armaments to head-chopping jihadists (with USA blessing) fighting Assad. So to raise the issue of why putting an ambassador there would have opened the door to sensitive questions -- if the press would ask them, of course.

Skip Scott , December 14, 2017 at 4:28 pm

That's the real Benghazi story the MSM won't talk about. Although I suspect the armaments were given to the head choppers by the CIA, and then they rebelled at having them transferred to the head choppers in Syria after they had succeeded in killing Ghaddafi.

Jon Adams , December 14, 2017 at 6:17 pm

"Madame Secretary, WHY was it necessary to destroy Libya?" No republican asked THAT question.

Kiza , December 14, 2017 at 7:16 pm

Hello Skip, nice to read your good comments again and to exchange info. Here is an article which talks about the weapons ratline in Syria. Within four days, the powerful anti-tank missiles that CIA bought in Bulgaria and (supposedly) delivered to "moderate" rebels, ended up in ISIS hands. The only problem with the article's narrative is that it is still drawing the official line that the lack of oversight is to blame for such, whilst it was clearly a deliberate action to supply weapons to ISIS wrapped up in plausible deniability of passing them through the hands of some poor inept souls serving as intermediaries.

Thus, the CIA kept being surprised that its powerful weapons kept ending up in ISIS hands but kept doing the same over and over: oops an oversight mistake, oops and another one, oops one more, and another one, . the two hundredth one

https://www.buzzfeed.com/aramroston/blowback-isis-got-a-powerful-missile-the-cia-secretly?utm_term=.joevpx9dG#.lxegj54A7

Adrian Engler , December 14, 2017 at 3:44 am

Starting a grand-scale investigation on the basis of allegations of conspiracy with another government and treason is rather dubious when these allegations from dirty campaign tactics are not based on any tangible facts. It is true that the Muller team does not leak as much to the press as the intelligence services did previously. This investigation still plays an important role for the media propaganda that still pushes the Russiagate conspiracy theory even though there had never been any factual basis for it and no evidence has been found in over a year. Since there is still this investigation is going on, they can use it for justifying their daily minutes of hate against Russia, their calls for censorship and denounciation of any political position that diverges from the neoconservative and neoliberal ideology.

I wonder how long this can go on. So far, the indictments of the Muller team have had nothing to do with the Russiagate conspiracy theory. Paul Manafort was indicted for tax evasion related to lobbying business with Ukraine, mostly years ago. Michael Flynn was indicted because when he reported a call from his holidays to the Russian ambassador to the FBI more than three weeks later, he left out two elements (the FBI had the recordings from the NSA, anyway, so they wouldn't have had to ask him about the telephone call). There was nothing illegal about the contents of the telephone call (the most dubious thing was, of course, the lobbying related to a UN security council resolution vote, but that might at best hint at colluding with Israel, it certainly does not fit the Russiagate conspiracy theory). It seems quite plausible that Flynn just forgot these two elements of a telephone call in which quite a large number of points was raised and that he pleaded guilty because of a plea deal (otherwise he might have been indicted in connection with his lobbying work for Turkey). Superficially, the closest to the idea of Russiagate is the indictment of Papadopoulos, someone who played a minor role in the Trump campaign and was looking for contacts with Russians, but, as it seems did not get very far (for some reasons he seemed to think a Russian woman he was talking with was a relative of Putin). His actions may have been naïve or misguided, but nothing about them was illegal, like in the case of Michael Flynn, he is only accused of lying to the FBI about normal, legal actions.

So, if we judge the Muller investigation by its results, it is not going anywhere. Obviously, that is what should be expected when a commission is set up for investigating a conspiracy theory for which there had never been any evidence to begin with. I suppose the result would be similar if the Illuminati, the Elders of Zion, or reptiloids were officially investigated.

The question is how they will wind down. If they just say that apart from things like Manafort's possible tax evation and Flynn's lobbying for Israel, they have not found anything – certainly nothing that confirms the Russiagate conspiracy theory -, that will be quite difficult, people will demand that it is investigated how it came about that such a conspiracy was spread and played such an influential role in political discourse for some time. It seems that the Muller team wants to delay that moment when they have to confess that the conspiracy theory has broken down, but that won't necessarily make it easier, either.

Antiwar7 , December 14, 2017 at 7:24 am

How long should we wait until we hear of ONE, that's right, ONE piece of evidence backing these claims up? Please answer: 2 years? 10 years? The only evidence so far amounts to "trust us".

And that's ignoring the monumental number of pieces of false evidence that have been put forward. That in itself makes the whole "investigation" suspicious. On top of the long, documented history of the CIA planting false stories in the press.

bobzz , December 14, 2017 at 3:09 pm

I don't know. How long did it take the Dutch to cook the evidence to condemn Russian partisans for the downing of the Malaysian airliner -- with Ukraine holding a gun to their heads.

Dunno , December 14, 2017 at 4:43 pm

Dear Mr. 7, I have come to the grudging conclusion that Russia-gate is and has always been more about Russia and Putin than about the crooked Don. If we stop to think about it, Trump has succumbed to the deep control of the Deep-State colossus. Russia evil; Israel good! Got it? When the pathetic wiener & crotch-grabber isn't bitchin' for Bibi and doing little pooch tricks for Israel, he is being programmed by the pentagon and the Deep State, and making sure that the super-rich get super richer. His own SOS Tillerson called him an effin' moron. Enough said!

Therefore, 7, Russia-gate is all about keeping the pot boiling for the presidential election in Russia next year. Demonizing Putin and Russia is the new great game of our era. The NWO Nebula lusts after Russia's geostrategic location and its abundant resources. It's 1905-1925 all over again. Read the book, "Wall Street and the Russian Revolution 1905-1925" by Richard B. Spence and also take a gander at Trine Day books' website of suppressed books. The deep-state Plutocrats and their secret societies hatch their evil little plots, while trying to keep the rest of us in the dark. Right now, Trump is a convenient platform for anti-Russian propaganda.

Lois Gagnon , December 14, 2017 at 8:24 pm

Think you nailed it. The bankster regime changers already tried once to structurally adjust Russia into being a US puppet state in the 90s under Clinton. Russia was robbed blind while Yeltzin drank himself into a stupor. Putin is the one who put a stop to the looting. That is his crime against the western oligarchs and why he is enemy #1.

Sam F , December 14, 2017 at 8:10 am

Once more the standard troll line about being a prior supporter, which plainly "Devine" is not.
We are well over a year into this matter with nothing but speculation and manufactured claims.
It is clear that Russia-gate = Israel-gate, a diversion from zionist control of the DNC.
Where is the concern of "Devine" for the lack of investigation of control of elections and mass media by Israel?
Why does he seek to cover up the complete destruction of democracy by the foreign power Israel?

Lois Gagnon , December 14, 2017 at 8:43 pm

Oliver Stone had this to say on the matter on FaceBook. If you're on FB, here is the link.

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=oliver%20stone

Adam Kraft , December 14, 2017 at 12:16 pm

facts don't show bias walt. yeah, media sells to the public, but they're also selling (or trading narratives for access) to the gov't. Wikileaks exposed the MSM – DNC collusion and we've witnessed the leaks and anonymous sources from the IC. Trust the CIA?

There's no 'lack of discussion about what they have uncovered' which has basically amounted to a pile of dirt. Have not read from the VIPS and William Binney? Uncovering shady business with oligarchs doesn't show collusion, but the dossier oppo does, but it's business as usual. Denying the FBI-DNC server subpoena was odd don't you think?

I personally believe that progressive hope dies at the DNC and exposing the party's lies (their private and public views) and undemocratic practices (preliminary process, fundraising) is the best thing for the country. It brings us one step closer to potentially building a third party that represents the proletariat and petty bourgeois classes.

Lois Gagnon , December 14, 2017 at 8:49 pm

I agree with your sentiment, but I'm finding it disturbing how many so called progressives are convinced beyond any doubt, despite the evidence I produce to instill doubt, that Russia interfered in "our democracy."

They have come unglued to the point of idiocy over Trump. They are firmly in the clutches of the CIA Deep State apparatus.

Anna , December 14, 2017 at 1:56 pm

Hey, Walter Devine, here is more for your whining about evidence: There are plenty of evidence when the disgusting clintonistas are concerned: http://theduran.com/fusion-gps-admits-that-it-hired-wife-of-doj-official-to-investigate-then-candidate-trump/

"Fusion GPS appears to be in the center of a web of corruption. Who hired Fusion GPS to ramp up its opposition research against Trump? Hillary Clinton and the DNC. the wife of Justice Department official Bruce G. Ohr worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 presidential election. Nellie Ohr is listed as working for the CIA's Open Source Works department in a 2010 DOJ report." Look how the CIA, FBI, and DNC have found each other and made a friendship forever.

Also, do you personally have any concern about the murder of Seth Rich? -- Donna Brazil has become afraid of being Seth-Riched. How come? What kind of scum the Democratic apparatus has become? -- Guess Tony Podesta and Bill Clinton and madame "we came, we saw, he died ha, ha, ha " are the composite face of the Democratic Party today.

Paul E. Merrell, J.D. , December 14, 2017 at 3:06 pm

@ Walter Devine: "Once they are done and present what they have found, then everyone can get on their soap boxes and let loose."

But overlook that the Democrats and mainstream media are doing the opposite? It seems to me that this is precisely the point that Mr. Parry's reporting has been aimed at, that the Democrats and mainstream media are jumping enormously to RussiaGate conclusions without disclosing any evidence to back up their incredibly dangerous claims and that there *is* very strong evidence of ulterior motives.

Gregory Herr , December 14, 2017 at 8:22 pm

Have at it Walter. What exactly have they uncovered? The "process" lost credibility long ago. The "intelligence" report of January 6th was garbage and it's been all downhill since.

Peter de Klerk , December 14, 2017 at 8:53 pm

I had great respect Parry's earlier writing which had a healthy dose of MSM skepticism (albeit largely for personal reasons). This whole business of jumping to conclusions on the Russia meddling has put me off him totally. All the reporting seems to be in service of defending a forgone conclusion. I wonder if this has anything to do with fundraising.

falcemartello , December 13, 2017 at 10:28 pm

This whole Russia ate my lunch has entered the realm of alternate truth. The MSM are now actually stating that the Russian hacking the 2016 election as fact. Just like all the other false and fabricated statements of world events in the last 20 years . Fro Yugoslavia, Milosovic exonerated for the falsely laid charges of genocide . How convenient after his death . Qadaffi murdering and slaughtering his own people hence RPL interventionist and voila the highest standard of living in the African continent is now reduced to takfiri heaven for the NATO proxy army recruiting centre. MH17 disaster is still being paroled as Russian deliberate murder. No facts no evidence that would stand even in a Stalinist show trial. Assad gassing his own people. More than debunked by multiple sources and US academics to boot no still being paroled as fact by western MSM.

The whole charade post 9/11 has gone into this Orwellian nightmare that just keep on growing and news and information has become pure Hollwoodian fantasy that the sheeple are sleep walking into this futuristic hell hole that these vile masters of the universe will not be able to back track without losing face and without causing the populace to stand up and be counted and kick tjhese vile players out for good.

john wilson , December 14, 2017 at 6:00 am

Take heart Falcemartello, its not all bad. Over here in the Britain RT has its own free to view TV channel which sits next to the BBC news and the parliament programme. It is now widely watched by the public and has millions of viewers with many using RT as their main news source. The fact that the American deep state criminals have made things difficult for RT America in the US, is a clear indication that the fake news masters otherwise known as the MSN, and their handlers in the deep state are rattled by the ever growing alternative voice. Its up to you, me and the rest of the posters on CN to tell our friends colleagues and others about CN, RT etc. If only one percent take a look then alternative opinion will start to filter through and more importantly, show the public what liars and criminals are in charge of their country.

Skip Scott , December 14, 2017 at 8:15 am

Thanks for the info John. I am really glad that at least Britain has a reasonable degree of freedom of the press. If it spreads across Europe, the USA may eventually find itself so isolated by its own propaganda that the whole evil empire scheme will implode, and we will have to learn to wage peace in a multi-polar world. That is my Christmas wish.

BobS , December 14, 2017 at 11:36 am

It's not difficult to get RT in the US- I watch it regularly on Dish Network. Youtube is another option- I'm guessing it's big and rich enough to survive any changes in net neutrality that will result from the Trump/Pai FCC (of course, Obama and Clinton were just as bad, DEEP STATE!!!!, etc.).
If you're going to tout conspiracies, get your facts straight.

rosemerry , December 14, 2017 at 4:48 pm

John Pilger has an article in counterpunch explaining the importance of documentaries (not just his!). It is notable that his first one, on Cambodia, in 1970, was shown free to air on TV in the UK and thirity other countries, with huge audience impact, but refused by PBS as too disturbing!!

The free press in the USA is in tune with the ptb.

rosemerry , December 14, 2017 at 5:06 pm

I see the Pilger article is here on consortiumnews. It is worth a read, like the rest here!

Kiza , December 14, 2017 at 7:58 pm

What you wrote john wilson is simply not the complete truth, although I wish it was. It is true that RT UK has its own terrestrial digital TV channel. It appears that Margarita Simonyan bid for such channel at an auction when Britain was converting from analogue to digital TV and got it. Thus, the British TV viewers can now see RT without any subscription or special equipment, "next to BBC" as you optimistically say.

What you did not mention john wilson is that the British Government regulator Ofcom is putting severe pressure on RT because their news offered an alternative view to the British propaganda. They rinse and repeat the same biased-news allegations almost every year, keeping RT UK under constant threat of the loss of its broadcasting licence due to "breach of truth standards" = "fake news". They even banned the lightbox, radio and other media advertising campaign of RT in Britain, the so called "RT is the second opinion", only because the campaign claimed that if RT existed before UK attack on Iraq in 2003, Tony Blair may have not been successful in passing the war resolutions through the parliament.

What most people do not appreciate is that the methods of suppression are not the same in all Western countries, and why should they be? Simonyan got a terrestrial TV channel and the broadcasting licence because of the British propaganda hubris – the British still believed that their post-imperial propaganda is the best in the World, just because it was the best in the world during the empire. They simply never expected the Russians to be so successful, just the same as US.

In summary:
US => force RT to register as a foreign agent to force reporting of every little detail of its operations; refuse journalistic credentials to Congress etc to disadvantage its reporting
UK => keep constant threat of the loss of broadcasting licence to skew the reporting towards the British Government version of the news

I post the links relevant to what I wrote here separately to avoid being put on hold.

Kiza , December 14, 2017 at 8:00 pm

https://secondopinion.rt.com/

https://www.rt.com/about-us/press-releases/rt-uk-second-opinion/

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/10/russia-today-ofcom-sanctions-impartiality-ukraine-coverage

https://theintercept.com/2015/03/02/uk-media-regulator-threatens-rt-bias-airing-anti-western-views/

Joe Tedesky , December 13, 2017 at 10:32 pm

Philip Giraldi writes about a shift occurring over at the CIA in Trump's favor, Politico's interview with a somewhat repentant Trump hater Mike Morell now saying 'maybe our plan wasn't that well thought out' , and now these MSM Russia Gate screwups coupled with a discovery of FBI Trump haters, is a result of Trump's recognizing Jerusalem as it being Israel's capital? Just say'n.

rosemerry , December 14, 2017 at 4:52 pm

Obama's expulsion of the Russian diplomats after Trump's election, with no reason based on fact/danger to the USA gave a good start to the Russophobia encouraged by the Clinton losers and leading on to the ludicrous extreme situation still going on.

BobH , December 14, 2017 at 1:43 pm

Amen

Kiza , December 14, 2017 at 8:19 pm

Spot on Bob, the unfortunate and idealistic Mr Seth Rich became the DNC's bottom line, the shining example of its "anything goes as long as we have friends in the right places" (FBI, DOJ, CIA, etc etc).

Lois Gagnon , December 14, 2017 at 9:04 pm

Agreed. Let's not forget Process Server for the DNC Fraud Lawsuit Shawn Lucas who died mysteriously 2 weeks after serving the DNC either.

I never would have believed the rot in the Democratic Party establishment would rival the Republicans, but here we are.

Anon , December 14, 2017 at 8:23 am

"Tina" is a troll assigned to CN to claim extremism, and never presents evidence or argument.

Steven A , December 13, 2017 at 11:16 pm

This is another great review by Robert Parry. However, he again uses the formulation that "WikiLeaks published" and "WikiLeaks released" purloined DNC emails on September 13, 2016. Greenwald and the Washington Post have stated, more carefully, that WikiLeaks "promoted" the data source of these emails by means of a Tweet on that date.

Adam Carter noted in a comment under Parry's previous article that the DNC emails in question are the NGP/VAN files associated with Guccifer 2.0's pre-announced "hack" on July 5, 2016 and reportedly released by him on Sept 13, 2016.

In fact, they are certainly not part of WikiLeak's official archive. One can see from their website that they published nothing between the times of the DNC emails release of July 22, 2016 and the Podesta emails release of October 7. So "published" is clearly the wrong word.

Whether or in what sense it may fairly be stated that WikiLeaks "released", "promoted" or "uploaded" (as according to the Erickson email, which probably represents nothing more than an outsider's impression) the September 13 files needs to be cautiously assessed. Their Tweet did include an access key, as did the Erickson email, and the address for the file given in the latter was a "mega.nz" address. I assume that this address is associated with Kim Dot Com, who also claims to have been involved with WikiLeaks.

Did Guccifer 2.0 himself upload the files to mega.nz? Did he play Kim Dot Com to use the latter's association with Wikileaks to get Wikileaks itself to put out the Sept 13 Tweet advertising the data release? I'm not sure how this all worked, but it seems that it is misleading to simply refer to this set of emails as having been "published" by Wikileaks.

incontinent reader , December 14, 2017 at 12:12 am

Didn't you read the VIPS analyses of the DNC leaks?

Steven A , December 14, 2017 at 8:21 am

Yes, I did, but not while writing my comment above. Do they say anything relevant to the question of whether it is accurate to correct the false media report that the Trump campaign was given access to the NGP/VAN DNC emails before WikiLeaks published them with a "corrected" statement that the Trump campaign was notified (but may never have noticed) of a link to those files by a random member of the public _after WikiLeaks had already published them_? As I recall, the original VIPS memo was itself somewhat confused about the distinction between the NGP/VAN material and the five DNC documents made public by "Guccifer 2.0" on June 15, 2016, so I'm not sure one will find anything relevant to my question there.

While it is true that the "correction" here is _much_ closer to the truth than the original misinformation, the underlined part at the end of my question still seems misleading in that the "publication" is attributed to WikiLeaks without qualification. And it seems Parry is not the only one to make this mistake. As Adam Carter pointed out two days ago, he was very surprised that almost no one has been noticing that the files in question came from "Guccifer 2.0" and not from WikiLeaks. While Parry's attribution misleading, I am still not clear in my own mind about precisely what did happen, i.e. how WikiLeaks came to "promote" the release of the files and whether in some loose or indirect sense WikiLeaks did "release" them.

mike k , December 14, 2017 at 11:08 am

Is there really any other purpose in your involved questioning but seeking to cloud and confuse the obvious issues in the "Russia hacked" affair?

Steven A , December 14, 2017 at 2:05 pm

How is it clouding the issue to suggest, as Adam Carter did, that one element in Parry's (and others') description of the facts in an otherwise excellent article seems to be misleading?

Paul E. Merrell, J.D. , December 14, 2017 at 2:33 pm

@ "the address for the file given in the latter was a "mega.nz" address. I assume that this address is associated with Kim Dot Com, who also claims to have been involved with WikiLeaks."

Kim Dot Com's relationship with Mega was already extremely strained by the time of the Guccifer leaks and to the extent he ever had control of the company it had apparently ended. See e.g., https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-warns-mega-users-to-backup-their-files-160421/

Steven A , December 14, 2017 at 3:17 pm

These are the sort of details I haven't been familiar with and about which I was hoping to learn more – so thanks! I was relying on a vague impression from memory when I made the link between the "mega.nz" address seen in the email from Erickson and Kim Dot Com.

Since the whole Guccifer 2.0 operation appears to be an attempt to falsely smear WikiLeaks as a Russian agent (by publicly claiming to be a hacker associated with WikiLeaks and then being "caught" releasing documents (the ones of June 15, 2016) with "Russian fingerprints"), perhaps his uploading files (Sept 13, 2016) to a server with (past) ties to someone associated with WikiLeaks (Kim Dot Com) would have been part of the same effort.

A contemporary article says this about the release: "'Guccifer 2.0' released over 670 megabytes of documents at a cybersecurity conference in London Tuesday . The documents were released on a file storage system and not on WikiLeaks or on Guccifer 2.0's website." https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hacker-guccifer-2-0-releases-more-dnc-docs-including-tim-n647921

Thus the statement that "WikiLeaks published" the files in question (repeated by Parry, Justin Raimondo and others) appears to be false. I share the surprise expressed by Adam Carter (under Parry's previous piece) that few appear to have noticed or bothered to correct this error – even though they were on target in exposing the main part of the latest MSM lie.

robjira , December 14, 2017 at 12:17 am

Great related reporting on BAR.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/entire-russian-hacking-narrative-invalidated-single-assange-tweet
https://www.blackagendareport.com/russsiagate-and-collapse-obamas-war-against-syria

Bob Van Noy , December 14, 2017 at 4:37 pm

Excellent links, robjira. Thanks.

Karl Sanchez , December 14, 2017 at 12:57 am

Those of us who live within the Outlaw US Empire have been seduced by lies Big and small since we could understand language. RussiaGate is an example of a Big Lie, just as the Outlaw US Empire being a democracy is a Big Lie–both are indoctrinational. Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, Great Pumpkin, Sand Man, Cupid, et al are other excellent examples of indoctrinational Big Lies. One of the most severe is the maxim delivered from parents: You must share and play nice, when the real world acts in the exact opposite fashion. What's more, RussiaGate serves as a cover-up for several major crimes–some by Clinton, some by DNC, some by FBI, some by Justice Department, and some by CIA: None of them are being actively investigated despite there being lots of evidence existing in the public domain, which is why we know those crimes occurred.

I very highly suggest reading this article, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/13/the-u-s-is-not-a-democracy-it-never-was/

Marko , December 14, 2017 at 2:22 am

The last great hope for the Dems :

"A Russian hacker accused of stealing from Russian banks reportedly confessed in court that he hacked the U.S. Democratic National Committee (DNC) and stole Hillary Clinton's emails under the direction of agents from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB)"

PUTIN ORDERED THEFT OF CLINTON'S EMAILS FROM DNC, RUSSIAN HACKER CONFESSES
BY CRISTINA MAZA ON 12/12/17

http://www.newsweek.com/russian-hacker-stealing-clintons-emailshacking-dnc-putinsfsb-745555

irina , December 14, 2017 at 4:03 am

And on PBS tonite the author of this Atlantic article got to put in her two cents about Putin:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/putins-game/546548/

in which she stated that not only did Putin 'annex Crimea' but also invaded Ukraine, among other things. None of her statements were backed up by any facts, which apparently are irrelevant anymore. Wikipedia has an interesting bio on her.

Bob Van Noy , December 14, 2017 at 9:57 am

Thank you irina for that "catch". I'm a long time reader of "The Atlantic Magazine" well aware of its long, liberal history and was surprised to find David Frum reporting there. David was a speech writer for W. Bush and apparently came up with the infamous "Axis of Evil" tag for President Bush's State Of The Union speech. I'll link the Wikipedia page below for those interested. I'm concerned that propaganda has spread far and wide

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil

Sam F , December 14, 2017 at 8:56 am

Despite its extremely conclusive title and substance, the Newsweek article later admits the extremely suspect nature of the accusation, and the lack of any evidence whatsoever:

"Andrei Soldatov an expert on Russian cybersecurity, said he believes Kozlovsky invented the story about his direction from the FSB for personal gain. 'I've been communicating with [Kozlovsky] for four months, and he has failed to give me any proof or answer my questions," Soldatov told Newsweek .'He was put in jail by these guys so it could be out of revenge, or he wanted to make a deal with the FSB,'"

Such a reversal of evidence and conclusion bespeaks deliberate deception. The motive is unclear, as the failed Newsweek is said to have been revived in 2013 by a Korean-American Christian fundamentalist David Jang formerly of Moon's Unification Church, whose followers consider him the Second Coming of JC, according to the linked source. http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/03/newsweek-ibt-olivet-david-jang/

Perhaps another quasi-religious CIA front like Fethullah Gulen's madrassas in Turkey and across central Asia.

exiled off mainstreet , December 14, 2017 at 3:13 pm

They keep publishing the same horseshit just like Pravda did in the Soviet era and just like the Voelkischer Beobachter and Stuermer did during the Nazi era. I guess the uninformed hoi polloi get so used to it in these situations that they accept the situation, like ducks and frogs accept watery ponds as their environments.

Manfred Whimplebottem , December 14, 2017 at 9:20 pm

I think I heard a similar story from newsweek months ago, looks like someone took the deal(?).

FBI Probe Into Clinton Emails Prompted Offer of Cash, Citizenship for Confession, Russian Hacker Claims

"On October 5, 2016, days before U.S. intelligence publicly accused Russia of endorsing an infiltration of Democratic Party officials' emails, Nikulin was arrested in Prague at the request of the U.S. on separate hacking charges. Now, Nikulin claims U.S. authorities tried to pin the email scandal on him."

"ikulin's lawyer, Martin Sadilek, [claims] that the FBI visited him at least a couple of times, offering to drop the charges and grant him U.S. citizenship as well as cash and an apartment in the U.S. if the Russian national confessed to participating in the 2016 hacks of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta's emails in July."

"[They told me:] you will have to confess to breaking into Clinton's inbox for [U.S. President Donald Trump] on behalf of [Russian President Vladimir Putin]," Nikulin wrote"

http://www.newsweek.com/fbi-investigation-clinton-emails-russia-hack-607538

Wm. Boyce , December 14, 2017 at 2:33 am

I'm curious as to why this is still an issue. Here's a link to an article from last August:
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-fbi-investigator-peter-strzok-steps-away-from-russia-probe-2017-8

At that time, it wasn't known why Mr. Strzok was transferred/whatever from counter-intelligence, but since then it has been revealed that Mr. Mueller did so for his ( Strzok) political opinions. That would seem a fair thing to do. What's the problem? Might be right-wing fear.

Marko , December 14, 2017 at 4:43 am

" What's the problem? "

C'mon , man. Given Strzok's position and his influence on Russiagate AND the earlier Hillarygate investigations , the fact that he was transferred in July is of little comfort. Any damage he could do he'd already done by then. Jim Jordan will explain it to you , in six minutes :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=69&v=cShxjlUfmhk

exiled off mainstreet , December 14, 2017 at 3:16 pm

The problem is that when that story first appeared, nothing else was disclosed. The damning material took months to emerge, as did Strzok's links to the Clinton coverups and the links to the fake dossier and the FBI's "anti-Trump" insurance policy. Those who want to believe the regime's falsehoods can always come up with rationales such as "I guess the government people know best" which was typical of the answers to sceptics against the Viet Nam war in the mid '60s.

Realist , December 14, 2017 at 2:43 am

It's been a year and a half since Hillary Clinton first accused Donald Trump of being a Putin puppet and in collusion with the Kremlin. Any fool should be able to understand that if there existed any real evidence to support this accusation the world would have seen it under banner headlines long ago. Instead, we get nothing but one set of sensational fake headlines unsupported by any actual facts time and again, all in an attempt to fool the mentally-challenged public. Yet the NYT and the rest of the yellow press continue to insist that the evidence continues to mount against Trump. What a laugh. Moreover, these deceivers are the people that want what they define as "fake news" to be systematically rooted out and stricken from the public record so no thinking person can ever see it. And, they tell us this is a free and democratic country. Got any more jokes?

Homina , December 14, 2017 at 3:48 am

Totally agree. And it reminds me of some reality "quest" shows about finding Bigfoot or the Oak Island treasure, etc.

If those were actually found, it would be reported a day or two later, unless every single one of the producers, actors, workers, etc. were under an NDA enough to wait until some season finale a year or two later. Ridiculous. If Bigfoot exists that will come to us on news, and big news, international. It won't come on a 4th season of some Bigfoot-finding show.

So yeah, season two of the Trump-Russia whatever.

Maddow/MSNBC and the likes have gone utterly insane. Bigfoot behind every door. Scant or zero facts, who cares. This isn't like Benghazi or White Water or Bush's air service this is 24/7 inane terrible journalism from nearly every journalist publisher in the US.

exiled off mainstreet , December 14, 2017 at 3:30 am

I think that the new evidence discussed provides Trump the cover to pull the plug on the whole Mueller operation despite the Alabama debacle. Sure the media talkers would compare it to the Saturday Night Massacre, but the proven falsity of the whole absurd circus renders risible such comparisons. While I don't expect much out of Trump, the championing of this absurd theory by the mainstream democrats renders them an existential threat to civilization itself based on the fact that enmity with Russia seems to be their be-all and end-all. It is all not only criminal but profoundly stupid.

Homina , December 14, 2017 at 3:40 am

"The primary purpose of Mr. Mueller's investigation is not to take down Mr. Trump. It's to protect America's national security and the integrity of its elections by determining whether a presidential campaign conspired with a foreign adversary to influence the 2016 election – a proposition that grows more plausible every day."

1. How is Russia an "adversary"? And even if Russia is, that's weasel-words and subjective. Is Turkey a foreign adversary? Is Israel? China? Mexico?

2. Why wasn't there decades ago a special Election Panel looking into foreign influence? I guess it just started to happen in this last election though .Only with Putin!

3. "more plausible" .this fucking idiot. After a year of headlines of "this is what will finally take down Trump" and such, all with zero reasons, zero facts .Is naught more plausible than naught?

4. I detest Trump. I more detest hypocrites and idiots.

But sure, "blah blah more possible take trump down" says some idiot or collective NYT idiocy. Bore me more your next op-ed, you partisan morons.

Sam F , December 14, 2017 at 6:27 pm

Yes, the NYT is mere propaganda. We already know that "a presidential campaign conspired with a foreign adversary to influence the 2016 election" because Clinton's top ten donors were all Zionists, and she supported all wars for Israel.

Rich Monahan , December 14, 2017 at 3:57 am

Thank you for your spot-on analysis! The motives of the deep state – including FBI operatives, NY Times and WAPO – is crystal clear. They do not want Trump to be president, and are determined to either remove him or handcuff him indefinitely. But why? Why has the establishment gone crazy? Is it simply political, or something deeper and darker?

Skip Scott , December 14, 2017 at 8:59 am

The real "deep" reason is the PNAC plot to make sure that the USA remains the sole super power that can impose its will anywhere in the world. Trump's campaign position of seeking detente with Russia would have led us into a multi-polar world giving Russia a sphere of influence. That is unacceptable to the empire.

RussiaGate is an attempt to remove Trump from power, or at a minimum make it impossible for him to seek detente. I am no Trump apologist, but I do think our only hope for a future in this nuclear age is to seek peace and cooperation in a multi-polar world that respects national sovereignty and the rule of law. I suspect Trump will continue to be brought to heel, with or without the success of RussiaGate. And there is always the JFK solution as a last resort.

M C Martin , December 14, 2017 at 6:08 am

Where is William Binney's "Thin String" signals intelligence (SIGINT) software when it's needed? Wouldn't it be lovely to focus it on the communications of our own government? Binney says applying it after 9/11 to the pre-9/11 communications streams did successfully predict the 9/11 attacks. If only we had stored all communications of government officials dating back to . hey, let's say 1774 or so, what truths might we now know, and what proofs might we now have? What would FDR's communications prior to Pearl Harbor reveal? What about the JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X assassinations?

While I can't endorse our government's illegal and immoral collection and storing of virtually all communications among people, if the store is there and is used against petty criminals, why couldn't or shouldn't it be used to detect and prove the illegal acts of our government power brokers?

What's good for the goose

[Dec 14, 2017] Trump Should Go F Himself - Texts Leak From FBI Agents On Russia Probe, Hillary Emails Investigation

Dec 14, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Fox reporter Shannon Brem tweeted that Fox News producer Jake Gibson has obtained 10k texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, one of which says "Trump should go f himself," and "F TRUMP."

... ... ...

In another tweet posted by Bream, Peter Strzok says "I am riled up. Trump is a f*cking idiot, is unable to provide a coherrent answer ," and "I CAN'T PULL AWAY, WHAY THE F*CK HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY (redacted)??!?!"

Page responds "I don't know, But we'll get it back. ..."

... ... ...

In another tweet posted by Bream, Peter Strzok says "I am riled up. Trump is a f*cking idiot, is unable to provide a coherrent answer ," and "I CAN'T PULL AWAY, WHAY THE F*CK HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY (redacted)??!?!"

Page responds "I don't know, But we'll get it back. ..."

... ... ...

The messages between Strzok and Page make it abundantly clear that the agents investigating both candidates for President were extremely biased against then-candidate Trump, while going extremely easy on Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information.

... ... ...

The messages sent between Strzok and Page, as well as Strzok's conduct in the Clinton investigation and several prior cases are now under review for political bias by the Justice Department . Furthermore, the fact that the reason behind Strzok's firing was kept a secret for months is of keen interest to House investigators. According to Fox News two weeks ago :

"While Strzok's removal from the Mueller team had been publicly reported in August, the Justice Department never disclosed the anti-Trump texts to the House investigators."

"Responding to the revelations about Strzok's texts on Saturday, Nunes said he has now directed his staff to draft contempt-of-Congress citations against Rosenstein and the new FBI director, Christopher Wray." -Fox News

Strzok also relied on the Trump-Russia dossier created by opposition research firm Fusion GPS. In August, 2016 - nine months before Robert Mueller's Special Counsel was launched, the New York Times reported that Strzok was hand picked by FBI brass to supervise an investigation into allegations of Trump-Russia collusion . The FBI investigation grew legs after they received the infamous anti-Trump "dossier" and decided to act on its salacious and largely unproven claims, According to Fox News

House investigators told Fox News they have long regarded Strzok as a key figure in the chain of events when the bureau, in 2016, received the infamous anti-Trump "dossier" and launched a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the election that ultimately came to encompass FISA surveillance of a Trump campaign associate.

The "dossier" was a compendium of salacious and largely unverified allegations about then-candidate Trump and others around him that was compiled by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. The firm's bank records, obtained by House investigators, revealed that the project was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. - Fox News

Weeks before the 2016 election, Peter Strzok's FBI team agreed to pay former MI6 agent and Fusion GPS operative Christopher Steele $50,000 if he could verify the claims contained within the dossier - which relied on the cooperation of two senior Kremlin officials.

... ... ...

When Steele was unable to verify the claims in the dossier, the FBI wouldn't pay him according to the New York Times .

Mr. Steele met his F.B.I. contact in Rome in early October, bringing a stack of new intelligence reports. One, dated Sept. 14, said that Mr. Putin was facing "fallout" over his apparent involvement in the D.N.C. hack and was receiving "conflicting advice" on what to do.

The agent said that, if Mr. Steele could get solid corroboration of his reports, the F.B.I. would pay him $50,000 for his efforts, according to two people familiar with the offer. Ultimately, he was not paid . - NYT

Did you catch that? Despite the fact that Steele was not paid by the FBI for the dossier, Peter Strzok used it to launch a counterintelligence investigation into President Trump's team . Steele was ultimately paid $168,000 by Fusion GPS to assemble the dossier.

There's more - according to journalist Sara Carter there are more anti-Trump messages exchanged between other members of Mueller's team

Sean Hannity: I'm hearing rumors all over the place Sara Carter that there are other anti-Trump text-emails out there. And we know about them.

Sara Carter: I think you're hearing correctly Sean and I think a lot more is going to come out. In fact, I know a lot more is going to come out based on the sources I've spoken to.

... ... ...

The text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are highly compromising , and prove that both FBI investigations into Clinton and Trump were headed by a man, aided by his mistress, who did not want to see Trump win the White House. Furthermnore, if anti-Trump text messages were exchanged between other members of Robert Mueller's special counsel, which are apparently on deck for later this month or January, it's hard to imagine anyone taking anything concluded by this dog-and-pony show seriously.

Mr. Universe -> Slack Jack , Dec 13, 2017 11:46 AM

So let's see here, I'm looking for the parts about the FBI?/special investigation, or even anything relevant to the subject matter in your post Jack. Nope nothing there except a speculation about something that has long since passed and with no real way to determine actual facts. But hey thanks for taking up all the unused space here on the forum.

Back to revelant speculation...

Melissa Hodgman is the wife of the FBI scum. Guess what she does? She is head of the SEC enforcement division. I guess that's where 'ol Pete learned how to turn "grossly negligent" into "extremely careless". I guess that's good enough for the SEC so it should be good enough for the Effing Bee Eye.

silverserfer -> Joe Davola , Dec 13, 2017 12:20 PM

funny how two libtards who are cheating on their partners, can have the audacity to believe theyre the intelligent ones. Lost, hollow, carcases of human beings they are.

Sherpa Bill -> Pandelis , Dec 13, 2017 9:24 AM

You can not be serious. A FBI investigator can't let any bias influence their investigations regardless of their personal feelings one way or the other. This Agent saying that he was in a position to protect the country from Trump puts his bias on full display. I expect FBI agents to be all Joe Friday all of the time.

Ex-Oligarch -> Theosebes Goodfellow , Dec 13, 2017 1:21 PM

Smoking gun:

"protect the country" = sabotage the election and transition processes to preserve establishment dominance

thepigman -> overbet , Dec 13, 2017 8:59 AM

Strzok smoking-gun text:

" I can protect our country at many levels ."

RumpleShitzkin -> thepigman , Dec 13, 2017 9:34 AM

Close 2nd place...
Page responds "I don't know, But we'll get it back. ..."

100% proof of Conspiracy to commit treason
And naked Sedition
Prosecute. Slam dunk.

Watch a million assholes across DC pucker.

eclectic syncretist -> RumpleShitzkin , Dec 13, 2017 11:31 AM

Yes......the personal explanation of those comments should provide a great popcorn moment in this sideshow of what was once a great country.

Thought Processor -> jcaz , Dec 13, 2017 8:30 AM

Who killed Seth Rich? ...

NumberNone -> Thought Processor , Dec 13, 2017 10:11 AM

When law enforcement is taking pro-active actions to protect Hillary and insure her presidency...should anyone be shocked that a 'rat' inside her campaign gets murdered and no one cares?

... ... ...

Thought Processor -> NumberNone , Dec 13, 2017 12:34 PM

Sexual Blackmail rings have been around forever. Every 1st world clandestine intel agency has long since perfected these types of traps. Starts with basic Honey Traps and goes to kids and much worse crimes than sexual misconduct (think the Godfather when the Senator was set up at the Brothel and you get a good idea).

Before someone becomes a dependable tool you need to have them by the balls. It has been estimated that 1 in 3 politicians in D.C. are comprimised this way at some point during their career. This is how the CIA controls politicians outside the US. It gets quid pro quo from other intel agencies for internal control (Mossad, MI6, or other). It's an old game. Epstein is Mossad. The island is a trap outside of U.S. Why would alan dershowitz go there? Simple he was lured and trapped. Think about it, if you are in this dirty business, how do get a good Lawyer? Good lawyers who are 'committed' to your cause always come in handy.

This is how real power is and has been aquired. With power comes control.

putaipan -> Thought Processor , Dec 13, 2017 1:29 PM

donald rumsfeld- "The only things that are lasting are conflict, blackmail, and killing."

number of blackmail cases revealed, ever? none. if you wanna clear the swamp, it sounds like a good place to start.

awakeRewe -> jcaz , Dec 13, 2017 9:01 AM

"Two more Walmart greeters......"

You must be missing the point - these are some of the most intelligent investigators the world has to offer /s

Even a deplorable like me knew more that 15 years ago to never use work emails for anything personal. These people are arrogant clowns.

Kayman -> awakeRewe , Dec 13, 2017 9:22 AM

Of course, at the FBI, 2 agents having a covert affair, wouldn't rise to a real issue like providing fodder for blackmail by a foreign government.

The head of the FBI snake needs to be chopped off.

Criminal and disgusting.

how_this_stuff_works -> bobdog54 , Dec 13, 2017 9:49 AM

"Somebody, anybody PLEASE tell me how someone who can earn a JD, AND an attorney for the FBI, such as Lisa Page, can be a Clinton supporter?"

Oh, easy. People like Strzok and Page feel they are "above" the law, like the Clintons. And as lawyers, it is THEY who interpret the law.

Problem is, we just don't know--nor appreciate--the good they do on our behalf. /s

Son of Loki -> lester1 , Dec 13, 2017 8:39 AM

Fuck "demoted."

Fire them and promptly arrest them!

Chupacabra-322 -> lester1 , Dec 13, 2017 8:42 AM

@ Lester,

They cannot. The Criminal Deep State & their Presstitute Criminal appendages will pull out the "Dictators" Scripted False Narrative / PsyOp.

They're eating their own. Trump is giving these Criminals just enough rope to hang themselves with under their own Hubris.

This is Death by one thousand paper cuts.

unplugged -> Chupacabra-322 , Dec 13, 2017 8:51 AM

dead-on bro

they are backing themselves into a corner for which there is no escape except confession and a lighter sentence

Trump is the chess master

the swamp truely is fucked

lovin' it !

Chupacabra-322 -> unplugged , Dec 13, 2017 9:29 AM

@ unplugged,

They're "going all in." Doesn't matter what Hand the Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Seditious Psychopaths at the Deep State & their cohorts have been dealt.

Win, stolen or lost. They were going & are going "all in" with the PsyOp, Scripted False Narrative of Russia hacking the Elections / Russia / Putin / Trump Propaganda gone full retard via the Deep States Opeatives in the Presstitute Media.

The misconception is that individuals believe we are dealing with normal, sane human beings. We're not. Far from it. What we are dealing with are sick, twisted, Pure Evil Criminal, Psychopathic, Satanic / Lucerferian elements from the CIA / Pentagram Temple of Set Scum literally making Hell on Earth.

What's at Stake is the Deep State Global network of MultiNational Central Banking, Espionage, Murder, War, Torture, Destabilization Campaigns, BlackMail, Extortion, Child / Human Trafficking, Drug / Gun Running, Money Laundering, Corruption, NSA spying, Media control & control of the 17 Intelligence Agencies.

Most importantly, The Deep State controls all the distribution lines of the aforementioned. Especially the Coaxial Cable Communication lines of Espionage spying & Surveillance State Apparatus / Infrastructure.
Agencies all built on the British Model of Intelligence. Purely Evil & Highly Compartmentalized Levels which function as a Step Pyramid Model of Authority / Monarch Reign Pyramid Model of Authority.

That's what's at Stake. How this plays out is anyone's guess. The Pure Evil Criminal Psychopath Rogue elements of the Deep State will not go quietly. If not dealt with now, they'll disappear only to resurface at a later date with one objective:

Total Complete Full Spectrum World Domination they seek through Power & Control.

It's those Select Highly Compartmentalized Criminal Pure Evil Rogue Elements at the Deep State Top that have had control since the JFK Execution that have entrenched themselves for decades & refuse to relinquish Control.

This impure evil has been running the world since the time of the Pharoahs, it's ancient Babylonian mysticism/paganism and it is nothing more than the worship of Lucifer; it has never died out, it just re-emerges as something far more wicked, vile and sinister. They are all the sons and daughters of satan and do what he does - kill, steal and destroy.

It would be Nieve to think that hundreds of thousands of years of control over mankind be simply turned over by the Criminal Pure Evil Psychopathic Elite.
The Deep State will always exist.

However, the Pure Evil Criminal Psychopathic Highly Compartmentalized Rogue Levels of it are being delt with. Which is what the World is witnessing.

Trogdor -> lester1 , Dec 13, 2017 1:17 PM

"President Trump needs to do mass firings at the corrupt FBI/DOJ"

Firings? Firings are for Starbucks employees who dip into the cash register. When people afforded this level of "trust" and responsibility show how deeply corrupt they are - in that they openly aid and abet horrific criminals (HRC et al) they need to go to JAIL. FOREVER. And their supervisors - who goddamn well knew what the fuck they were doing - need to be their cellmates.

The FBI and DOJ have lost ALL integrity, honor, and moral authority. At this point, if I saw an FBI agent on fire, I wouldn't piss on him to put him out.

Disgusting.

[Dec 13, 2017] All the signs in the Russia probe point to Jared Kushner. Who next?

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... More like he's denying the story peddled by the Democrats in some vain attempt at reducing his legitimacy over smashing Hillary in the elections. ..."
"... What is he going to prison for, again? Colluding with Israel? ..."
"... The most anger in the media against the POTUS seems to be directed against Russia gate. Time and energy is wasted on conjecture, most 'probables will not stand in a court of law. This media hysteria deflects from the destruction of the affordable healthcare act and the tax changes good for the rich against the many. I think the people are being played. ..."
"... In the 1990s and 2000s a large section of the American establishment was effectively bought off by people like Prince Bandar. These are the ones that are determined that the anti-Russian policy then instigated be continued, even at the cost of slandering the current President's son-in-law. The irony is that in the meantime an effective regime change has taken place in Saudi and Bandar's bandits are mostly locked up behind bars. ..."
"... True, and not just hypocrisy either. This has to be seen in the context of a war, cold for now, on Russia - with China, via Iran and NK, next in line. Dangerous times, as a militarily formidable empire in economic decline looks set to take us all out. For the few who think and resist the dominant narrative - and are thereby routinely called out as 'kremlin trolls' - it is dismaying how easily folk are manipulated. ..."
"... Your points are valid but, alas, factual truths are routinely trumped (!) by powerful mythology. Fact is, despite an appalling record since WW2, Washington and its pet institutions - IMF/World Bank/WTO - are still seen as good guys. How? Because (a) all western states have traded foreign policy independence for favoured status in Washington, (b) English as global lingua franca means American soft propaganda is lapped up across the world via its entertainment industry, and (c) all 'our' media are owned by billionaire corps or as with BBC/Graun, subject to government intimidation/market forces. ..."
"... Truth is, DRT is not some horrifically new entity. (Let's not forget how HRC's 'no fly zone' for Syria promised to take us into WW3, nor her demented "we came, we saw, he died - ha ha" response to Gaddafi's sodomisation by knife blade, and more importantly to Libya's descent into hell.) As John Pilger noted, "the obsession with Trump the man – not Trump as symptom and caricature of an enduring system – beckons great danger for all of us". ..."
"... If all Meuller has is Flynn and the Russians during the transition period, he's got nothing. ..."
"... It's alleged that Turkey wanted Flynn to extradite Gullen for his alleged involvement in Turkey's failed coup. Just this weekend, Turkey have issued an arrest warrant for a former CIA officer in relation to the failed coup. So, IF the CIA were behind the failed coup and Flynn knows this - well, a good way to silence him would be to charge him with some serious crimes and then offer to drop them in return for his silence. But, like your theory, it's just speculation. ..."
"... The secret deep state security forces haven't been this diminished since Carter cleared the stables in the 70's - they fought back and stopped his second term ... ..."
"... Seeing how the case against Trump and Flynn is based on 'probable' and not hard proof its 'probable that the anti Trump campaign is directed from within the murky enclaves of the US intelligence community. ..."
"... Hatred against Trump deflects the anger, see the system works the US is still a democracy. Well it isn't, its a sick oligarchy run by the mega rich who own the media, 90% is owned by 5 corporations. Americans are fed the lie that their vast military empire with its 800 overseas bases are to defend US interests. ..."
"... Wow this is like becoming McCarthy Era 2.0. I'm just waiting for the show trials of all these so-called colluders. ..."
"... the interest of (Russian Ambassador) Kislyak in determining the position of the new administration on sanctions is not unheard of in Washington, or necessarily untoward to raise with one of the incoming national security advisers. Ambassadors are supposed to seek changes in policies and often seek to influence officials in the early stages of administrations before policies are established. Flynn's suggestion that the Russians wait as the Trump administration unfolded its new policies is a fairly standard response of an incoming official ..."
"... "The problem is charging Flynn for lying. A technicality. But not charging Hillary for email server. Another technicality. That's all the public will see if no collusion proved, and will ruin credibility of the FBI and the Dems" ..."
"... It's not just collusion is it, what about the rampant, naked nepotism, last seen on this unashamed scale in ancient Rome? ..."
"... So he lobbied for Israel not Russia then? Whoops. How does the author even know where Mueller's probe is heading, and which way Flynn flipped? Flynn worked much longer for the Obama administration than for Trump's. ..."
"... You can easily impeach Trump for bombing Syria's military airfield, which is by UN definition war crime of war aggression, starting war without the Congress approval; and doing so by supporting false flag of AQ, is support of terrorists and so on ..."
"... Oh you can't do it, of course, it was so - so presidential to bomb another country and it is just old habit and no war declaration, if country is too weak to bomb you back. And you love this exiting crazy balance of global nuclear annihilation too much, so you prefer screaming Russia, Russia to keep it hot, for wonderful military contracts. ..."
"... If the US wanted to do itself a massive favour it should shine the spotlight on Robert Mueller, the man now in charge of investigating the President of these United States for "collusion" with Russia and possible "obstruction of justice" himself obstructed a congressional investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks. ..."
"... Dealing with western backed coups on its own doorstep and being the only country actually to be legally fighting in Syria - a war that directly threatens its security - does not amount to global belligerence. ..."
"... Clinton lied under oath ..."
"... The logan act is a dead law no one will be prosecuted for a act that has never been used... plus the president elect can talk to any foreign leader he or she wishes to use and even talk deals even if a current president for 2 months is still in office... ..."
"... Should all countries which try to influence elections be treated as enemies? Where do you set the threshold? If we go by the actual evidence, Russia seems to have bought some Facebook ads and was allegedly involved in exposing HRC's meddling with the Democratic primaries. Compare that to the influence that countries like Israel and the Gulf Arabs exert on American politics and elections. Are you seriously claiming that Russia's influence is bigger or more decisive? ..."
"... The goal of weakening the US is also highly debatable. Accepting for a moment that Russia tried to tip the balance in favor of Trump, would America be stronger if it were engaged more actively in Syria and Ukraine? Is there a specific example where Trump's administration weakened the American position to the advantage of Russia? And how is the sustained anti-Russian information warfare helping anyone but the Chinese? ..."
"... The clues that Kushner has been pulling the strings on Russia are everywhere... He then pushed Flynn hard to try to turn Russia around on an anti-Israel vote by the UN security council. ..."
"... And Russia didn't turn, so hardly a clue that Kushner was pulling strings with any effect. What this clue does suggest however, is that Israel pressured/colluded with the Trump Team to undermine the Obama administrations policy towards a UN resolution on illegal settlements. The elephant in the room is Israels influence on US politics. ..."
"... In relation to the "lying" charge - In December, Flynn (in his role as incoming National Security Advisor) was told to talk to the Russians by Kushner (in his role as incoming special advisor). In these conversations, Flynn told the Russians to be patient regarding sanctions as things may change when Trump becomes President. All of this is totally legal and is what EVERY new adminstration does. Flynn had his phoned tapped by the FBI so they knew he had talked to the Russian about sanctions - they also knew the conversation was totally legal - but when they asked him about it, he said he didn't discuss sanctions. So Flynn is being charged about lying about something that was totally legal for him to do. That's it. ..."
"... All those thinking this is the beginning of the end of Trump are going to be disappointed. Just look at the charges so far. Manafort has been charged with money laundering and not registering as a foreign agent - however, both of those charges pre-date him working for Trump. Flynn has been charged with lying to the FBI about speaking to the Russians - even though him speaking to the Russians in his role as National Security Advisor to the President-elect was not only totally legal, it was the norm. And this took place in December, after the election. ..."
"... So the 2 main players have been charged with things that have nothing to do with the Trump campaign, and lets not forget the point of the investigation is to find out if Trump's campaign colluded with the Russians to win the election. Manafort's charges related to before working for the Trump campaign whilst Flynn's came after Trump won the Presidency, neither of which have anything to do with the election. As much as I wish Trump wasn't President, don't get your hopes up that this is going anywhere ..."
"... Gross hypocrisy on the US governments side. They have, since WW2 interfered with other countries elections, invaded, and killed millions worldwide, and are still doing so. Where were the FBI investigations then? Non existent. US politicians and the military hierarchy are completely immune from any prosecutions when it comes down to overseas illegal interference. ..."
"... America like all governments are narcissistic, they will cheat, steal, kill, if it benefits them. It's called national interest, and it's number one on any leader's job list. Watch fog of war with Robert McNamara, fantastic and terrifying to see how it works. ..."
"... The US has also been meddling in other countries elections for years, and doubtless most Americans neither know or care about that! So it's perhaps it's best to simply term them a 'rival', most people should be able to agree on that ..."
"... Gallup have been polling Americans for the past couple of decades on this. The last time I read about it a couple of years ago 70% of Americans had unfavourable views of Russia, ranging from those who saw them as an enemy (a smaller amount) through to those who saw them as a threat. ..."
Dec 13, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

polpont , 4 Dec 2017 08:32

Mueller will have to thread very carefully because he is maneuvering on a very politically charged terrain. And one cannot refrain from comparing the current situation with the many free passes the democrats were handed over by the FBI, the Department of Justice and the media which make the US look like a banana republic.

The mind blowing fact that Clinton sat with the Attorney General on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport "to chit-chat" and not to discuss the investigation on Clinton's very wife that was being overseen by the same AG, leaves one flabbergasted.

And the fact that Comey essentially said that Clinton's behaviour, tantamount in his own words to extreme recklessness, did not warrant prosecution was just inconceivable.

Don't forget that Trump has nearly 50 M gun-toting followers on Tweeter and that he would not hesitate to appeal to them were he to feel threatened by what he could conceive as a judicial Coup d'Etat. The respect for the institutions in the USA has never been so low.

ID1456161 -> Canadiman , 4 Dec 2017 08:30

...a judge would decide if the evidence was sufficient to warrant a trial.

Actually, in the U.S. a grand jury would decide if the evidence was sufficient to warrant formal charges leading to a trial. There is also the possibility that Mueller has uncovered both Federal and NY State offenses, so charges could be brought against Kushner at either level. Mueller has been sharing information from his investigation with the NY Attorney General's Office. Trump could pardon a federal offense, but has no jurisdiction to pardon charges brought against Kushner by the State of NY.

Anna Bramwell -> etrang , 4 Dec 2017 08:28
I watched RT for 24 months before the US election. They favoured Bernie Saunders strongly before he lost to Hilary. Then they ran hustings for the smaller US parties, eg Greens, and the Libertarians , which could definitely be seen as an interference in the US election, but which as far as I know, was never mentioned in the US. They were anti Hilary but not pro Trump. And indeed, their strong anti capitalist bias would have made such support unlikely.
EduardStreltsovGhost -> JonShone , 4 Dec 2017 08:28
What's he lying about? More like he's denying the story peddled by the Democrats in some vain attempt at reducing his legitimacy over smashing Hillary in the elections.

Obama and Hillary met hundreds of foreign officials. Were they colluding as well?

pretzelattack -> Atticus_Finch , 4 Dec 2017 08:28
What is he going to prison for, again? Colluding with Israel?
oddballs -> Taf1980uk , 4 Dec 2017 08:26
The most anger in the media against the POTUS seems to be directed against Russia gate. Time and energy is wasted on conjecture, most 'probables will not stand in a court of law. This media hysteria deflects from the destruction of the affordable healthcare act and the tax changes good for the rich against the many. I think the people are being played.
Krautolivier , 4 Dec 2017 08:21
In the 1990s and 2000s a large section of the American establishment was effectively bought off by people like Prince Bandar. These are the ones that are determined that the anti-Russian policy then instigated be continued, even at the cost of slandering the current President's son-in-law. The irony is that in the meantime an effective regime change has taken place in Saudi and Bandar's bandits are mostly locked up behind bars.
It's all too funny.
zerohoursuni -> damientrollope , 4 Dec 2017 08:19
True, and not just hypocrisy either. This has to be seen in the context of a war, cold for now, on Russia - with China, via Iran and NK, next in line. Dangerous times, as a militarily formidable empire in economic decline looks set to take us all out. For the few who think and resist the dominant narrative - and are thereby routinely called out as 'kremlin trolls' - it is dismaying how easily folk are manipulated.

Your points are valid but, alas, factual truths are routinely trumped (!) by powerful mythology. Fact is, despite an appalling record since WW2, Washington and its pet institutions - IMF/World Bank/WTO - are still seen as good guys. How? Because (a) all western states have traded foreign policy independence for favoured status in Washington, (b) English as global lingua franca means American soft propaganda is lapped up across the world via its entertainment industry, and (c) all 'our' media are owned by billionaire corps or as with BBC/Graun, subject to government intimidation/market forces.

Truth is, DRT is not some horrifically new entity. (Let's not forget how HRC's 'no fly zone' for Syria promised to take us into WW3, nor her demented "we came, we saw, he died - ha ha" response to Gaddafi's sodomisation by knife blade, and more importantly to Libya's descent into hell.) As John Pilger noted, "the obsession with Trump the man – not Trump as symptom and caricature of an enduring system – beckons great danger for all of us".

cookcounty , 4 Dec 2017 08:15
I missed Jill Abramson's column about all the meetings the Obama administration held -- quite openly -- with foreign governments during the transition period between his election and his first inauguration.

But since she's been demonstrably and laughably wrong about predicting future political events in the USA (see her entire body of work during the 2016 election campaign), why should she start making sense now?

It's completely possible, of course, that some as-yet-to-be-revealed piece of evidence will prove collusion -- before the election and by candidate Trump -- with the Russians. But the Flynn testimony certainly isn't it. All the heavy breathing and hysteria is simply a sign of how the media, yet again, always gravitates toward the news it wishes were true, rather than what really is true. If all Meuller has is Flynn and the Russians during the transition period, he's got nothing.

themandibleclaw -> SteveMilesworthy , 4 Dec 2017 08:12
Flynn was charged with far more serious crimes which were all dropped and he was left with a charge that if he spends any time in prison, it will be about 6 months. Now, you could say for him to agree to that, he must have some juicy info - and he probably does - but what that juicy info is is just speculation. And if we are speculating, then maybe what he traded it for was nothing to do with Trump? After all, one of the charges against him was failing to register as a foreign agent on behalf of Turkey.

It's alleged that Turkey wanted Flynn to extradite Gullen for his alleged involvement in Turkey's failed coup. Just this weekend, Turkey have issued an arrest warrant for a former CIA officer in relation to the failed coup. So, IF the CIA were behind the failed coup and Flynn knows this - well, a good way to silence him would be to charge him with some serious crimes and then offer to drop them in return for his silence. But, like your theory, it's just speculation.

WallyWillage , 4 Dec 2017 08:05
Still no evidence of Russian collusion in Trump campaign BEFORE the election...... whatever happened after being president elect is not impeachable unless it would be after taking office.

The secret deep state security forces haven't been this diminished since Carter cleared the stables in the 70's - they fought back and stopped his second term ...

EduardStreltsovGhost -> CitizenOfTinyBlue , 4 Dec 2017 08:03

You can easily impeach Trump for bombing Syria's military airfield, which is by UN definition war crime of war aggression

if that were the case, Clinton, Bush and Obama would be sitting in jail right now.
oddballs -> Taf1980uk , 4 Dec 2017 07:58
Seeing how the case against Trump and Flynn is based on 'probable' and not hard proof its 'probable that the anti Trump campaign is directed from within the murky enclaves of the US intelligence community.

Trumps presidency could have the capability of galvanising a powerful resistance against the 2 party state for 'real change, like affordable healthcare and affordable education for ALL its people. But no its not happening, Trump is attacked on probables and undisclosed sources. A year has passed and nothing has been revealed.

Hatred against Trump deflects the anger, see the system works the US is still a democracy. Well it isn't, its a sick oligarchy run by the mega rich who own the media, 90% is owned by 5 corporations. Americans are fed the lie that their vast military empire with its 800 overseas bases are to defend US interests.

Well their not, their only function is, is to spend tax dollars that otherwise would be spent on education, health, infrastructure, things that would 'really' benefit America. Disagree, well go ahead and accuse me of being a conspiracy nut-job, in the meantime China is by peaceful means getting the mining rights in Africa, Australia, deals that matter.

The tax legislation for the few against the many is deflected by the anti-Trump hysteria based on conjecture and not proof.

EduardStreltsovGhost , 4 Dec 2017 07:52
Wow this is like becoming McCarthy Era 2.0. I'm just waiting for the show trials of all these so-called colluders.
RelaxAndChill -> Silgen , 4 Dec 2017 07:46
Crimea was and is Russian. Your mask is slipping, Vlad .

Your ignorance is showing. I have no connection to Russia what so ever. Crimea was legally ceded to Russia over 200 years ago, by the Ottomans to Catherine the Great. Russia has never relinquished control. What the criminal organization the USSR did under Ukrainian expat Khrushchev, is irrelevant. And as Putin said , any agreement about respecting Ukraine's territorial integrity was negated when the USA and the EU fomented and financed a rebellion and revolution.

StillAbstractImp , 4 Dec 2017 07:40
Decelerating Fascism - Is Kushner a Putin operative, too?
mikedow -> Karantino , 4 Dec 2017 07:35
Australia, Canada, and S. Africa supply the lion's share of gold bullion that London survives on. And the best uranium in the world. All sorts of other precious commodities as well. If you're not toeing the line on US foreign policies religiously, the Yanks will drop you.
themandibleclaw -> Toastface_Killah , 4 Dec 2017 07:34

You are selectively choosing to refer to this one instance, but even here Obama administration were still in charge - so not very legal, was it.

I am "selectively choosing to refer to this one instance" because that's all Flynn has been charged with. Oh, and it is totally legal for a member of the incoming administration to start talks with their foreign counterparts. Here's a quote from an op-ed piece in The Hill from a law professor at Washington University.

the interest of (Russian Ambassador) Kislyak in determining the position of the new administration on sanctions is not unheard of in Washington, or necessarily untoward to raise with one of the incoming national security advisers. Ambassadors are supposed to seek changes in policies and often seek to influence officials in the early stages of administrations before policies are established. Flynn's suggestion that the Russians wait as the Trump administration unfolded its new policies is a fairly standard response of an incoming official .

http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/362813-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-the-flynn-indictment

backstop -> EdwardFatherby , 4 Dec 2017 07:31
"The problem is charging Flynn for lying. A technicality. But not charging Hillary for email server. Another technicality. That's all the public will see if no collusion proved, and will ruin credibility of the FBI and the Dems"

It's not just collusion is it, what about the rampant, naked nepotism, last seen on this unashamed scale in ancient Rome?

BustedBoom , 4 Dec 2017 07:31

He then pushed Flynn hard to try to turn Russia around on an anti-Israel vote by the UN security council.

So he lobbied for Israel not Russia then? Whoops. How does the author even know where Mueller's probe is heading, and which way Flynn flipped? Flynn worked much longer for the Obama administration than for Trump's.
CitizenOfTinyBlue , 4 Dec 2017 07:26
You can easily impeach Trump for bombing Syria's military airfield, which is by UN definition war crime of war aggression, starting war without the Congress approval; and doing so by supporting false flag of AQ, is support of terrorists and so on

Oh you can't do it, of course, it was so - so presidential to bomb another country and it is just old habit and no war declaration, if country is too weak to bomb you back. And you love this exiting crazy balance of global nuclear annihilation too much, so you prefer screaming Russia, Russia to keep it hot, for wonderful military contracts.

Oh, and I have to be supporter of Putin's oligarchy with dreams of great tsars of Russia, if I care about humans survival on this planet and have very bad opinion about suicidal fools playing this stupid games.

ConCaruthers , 4 Dec 2017 07:25
If the US wanted to do itself a massive favour it should shine the spotlight on Robert Mueller, the man now in charge of investigating the President of these United States for "collusion" with Russia and possible "obstruction of justice" himself obstructed a congressional investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
moonsphere -> Hydro , 4 Dec 2017 07:24
Dealing with western backed coups on its own doorstep and being the only country actually to be legally fighting in Syria - a war that directly threatens its security - does not amount to global belligerence.
etrang -> CraftyRabbi , 4 Dec 2017 07:14

Mueller could charge/indict Kushner or Trump Jr under New York state criminal statutes

But not for crimes relating to federal elections or conspiring with Russia.

John Edwin -> OlivesNightie , 4 Dec 2017 07:13
Clinton lied under oath
John Edwin -> SoAmerican , 4 Dec 2017 07:11
The logan act is a dead law no one will be prosecuted for a act that has never been used... plus the president elect can talk to any foreign leader he or she wishes to use and even talk deals even if a current president for 2 months is still in office...
emiliofloris -> Sowester , 4 Dec 2017 07:08

I am not sure any level of scandal will make much difference to Trump or his supporters. They simply see this as an elitist conspiracy and not amount of evidence of wrongdoing will have an impact.

So far the level of scandal is below that of Whitewater/Lewinsky, and that was a very low level indeed. What "evidence of wrongdoing" is there? Nothing, that's why they charged Flynn with lying to investigators. It's important to keep in mind that the he did nor lie about actual crimes. Perhaps that's going to change as the investigation proceeds, but so far this is nothing more than a partisan lawfare fishing expedition.

Billsykesdoggy -> reinhardpolley , 4 Dec 2017 06:55
<blockquoteSpecifically, it prohibits citizens from negotiating with other nations on behalf of the United States without authorization.>

So Trump authorized Obama's talks with Macron last week?

Don't think so.

braciole -> Karantino , 4 Dec 2017 06:55

Because they attempted to covertly influence a general election in order to weaken the US.

And your evidence for this is what exactly? As for countries trying to influence elections in other countries, I'm all for it particularly when one of the candidates is murderous, arrogant and stupid.

BTW, in Honduras after supporting a coup against the democratically-elected president because he sought a referendum on allowing presidents to serve two terms, you'd think the United States would interfere when his non-democratically-elected replacement used a "packed" supreme court to change the constitution to allow presidents to serve more than one term to at least stop him stealing an election as he is now doing/has done. But they didn't and that hasn't stopped the United States whining that Evo Morales is being undemocratic by trying to extend the number of terms he can serve.

emiliofloris -> Karantino , 4 Dec 2017 06:53

Because they attempted to covertly influence a general election in order to weaken the US.

Should all countries which try to influence elections be treated as enemies? Where do you set the threshold? If we go by the actual evidence, Russia seems to have bought some Facebook ads and was allegedly involved in exposing HRC's meddling with the Democratic primaries. Compare that to the influence that countries like Israel and the Gulf Arabs exert on American politics and elections. Are you seriously claiming that Russia's influence is bigger or more decisive?

The goal of weakening the US is also highly debatable. Accepting for a moment that Russia tried to tip the balance in favor of Trump, would America be stronger if it were engaged more actively in Syria and Ukraine? Is there a specific example where Trump's administration weakened the American position to the advantage of Russia? And how is the sustained anti-Russian information warfare helping anyone but the Chinese?

technotherapy , 4 Dec 2017 06:46
The clues that Kushner has been pulling the strings on Russia are everywhere... He then pushed Flynn hard to try to turn Russia around on an anti-Israel vote by the UN security council.

And Russia didn't turn, so hardly a clue that Kushner was pulling strings with any effect. What this clue does suggest however, is that Israel pressured/colluded with the Trump Team to undermine the Obama administrations policy towards a UN resolution on illegal settlements. The elephant in the room is Israels influence on US politics.

themandibleclaw -> Simon Denham , 4 Dec 2017 06:44

Can someone please actually tell us what Flynn/Jared/Trump is supposed to have done.

In relation to the "lying" charge - In December, Flynn (in his role as incoming National Security Advisor) was told to talk to the Russians by Kushner (in his role as incoming special advisor). In these conversations, Flynn told the Russians to be patient regarding sanctions as things may change when Trump becomes President. All of this is totally legal and is what EVERY new adminstration does. Flynn had his phoned tapped by the FBI so they knew he had talked to the Russian about sanctions - they also knew the conversation was totally legal - but when they asked him about it, he said he didn't discuss sanctions. So Flynn is being charged about lying about something that was totally legal for him to do. That's it.

moonsphere -> SoAmerican , 4 Dec 2017 06:44
These days "US influence" seems to consist of bombing Middle Eastern countries back to the bronze age for reasons that defy easy logic. Anything that reduces that kind of influence would be welcome.
reinhardpolley -> Simon Denham , 4 Dec 2017 06:33
The Logan Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 953 [1948]) is a single federal statute making it a crime for a citizen to confer with foreign governments against the interests of the United States. Specifically, it prohibits citizens from negotiating with other nations on behalf of the United States without authorization.
https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Logan+Act
themandibleclaw , 4 Dec 2017 06:22
All those thinking this is the beginning of the end of Trump are going to be disappointed. Just look at the charges so far. Manafort has been charged with money laundering and not registering as a foreign agent - however, both of those charges pre-date him working for Trump. Flynn has been charged with lying to the FBI about speaking to the Russians - even though him speaking to the Russians in his role as National Security Advisor to the President-elect was not only totally legal, it was the norm. And this took place in December, after the election.

So the 2 main players have been charged with things that have nothing to do with the Trump campaign, and lets not forget the point of the investigation is to find out if Trump's campaign colluded with the Russians to win the election. Manafort's charges related to before working for the Trump campaign whilst Flynn's came after Trump won the Presidency, neither of which have anything to do with the election. As much as I wish Trump wasn't President, don't get your hopes up that this is going anywhere.

damientrollope , 4 Dec 2017 06:15
Gross hypocrisy on the US governments side. They have, since WW2 interfered with other countries elections, invaded, and killed millions worldwide, and are still doing so. Where were the FBI investigations then? Non existent. US politicians and the military hierarchy are completely immune from any prosecutions when it comes down to overseas illegal interference.

But now this Russian debacle, and at last they've woken up, because another country had the temerity to turn the tables on them. And I think if this was Bush or Obama we would never have heard a thing about it. Everybody hates the Dotard, because he's an obese dick with an IQ to match.

Boojay , 4 Dec 2017 06:15
Nothing will happen to Trump, It's all bollocks. You've all watched too many Spielberg films, bad guys win, and they win most of the time.
Trump is the real face of America, America like all governments are narcissistic, they will cheat, steal, kill, if it benefits them. It's called national interest, and it's number one on any leader's job list. Watch fog of war with Robert McNamara, fantastic and terrifying to see how it works.
formerathlete -> vacantspace , 4 Dec 2017 06:15

when American presidents were rational, well balanced with progressive views we had.... decent American healthcare? Equality of opportunity? Gun laws that made it safe to walk the streets?

Say who, what an a where now????????? Since when has the US EVER had any of the three things that you mentioned???

If ever, then it was a loooooong time before the pilgrim fathers ever landed.

Hugh Mad -> JonShone , 4 Dec 2017 06:10

The US has also been meddling in other countries elections for years, and doubtless most Americans neither know or care about that! So it's perhaps it's best to simply term them a 'rival', most people should be able to agree on that.

That is the bottom line, yes. People view the world through west = good and Russia = bad, while both make economic and political decisions that serve the interests of their people respectively. Ultimately, I think people are scared that the West's monopoly on global influence is slipping, to as you said, a rival.

JonShone -> Hugh Mad , 4 Dec 2017 06:06
You are right that calling Russia the US enemy needs justification, but these threads often deteriorate into arguments of the yes it is/no it isn't variety.

Gallup have been polling Americans for the past couple of decades on this. The last time I read about it a couple of years ago 70% of Americans had unfavourable views of Russia, ranging from those who saw them as an enemy (a smaller amount) through to those who saw them as a threat.

It's certain that their ideals and goals run counter to those generally held in the US in many ways. But let's not forget that the US' ideals are often, if not generally, divergent from their interests and US foreign policy since 1945 has been responsible for countless deaths, perhaps more than Russia's.

The US has also been meddling in other countries elections for years, and doubtless most Americans neither know or care about that! So it's perhaps it's best to simply term them a 'rival', most people should be able to agree on that.

RelaxAndChill , 4 Dec 2017 05:59
All the signs in the Russia probe point to ..

How the liberals and the Democrats don't give a damm about the USA or the world's political scene, just some endless 'sore loser' witch hunt. So much could be achieved by the improving of relations with Russia. Crimea was and is Russian. Let Trump have a go as POTUS and then judge him. He wants to befriend Putin and if done it would help solve Syrian, Nth Korean and other global problems.

variation31 -> Sowester , 4 Dec 2017 05:50

They simply see this as an elitist conspiracy and not amount of evidence of wrongdoing will have an impact

Whereas if it's a Democrat in the spotlight, these same dipshits see it as an élitist cover-up and no lack of evidence of wrongdoing will have an impact. If anything, lack of evidence is evidence of cover-up which is therefore proof of evidence.

These cynical games they play with veracity and human honesty are a very pure form of evil.

[Dec 13, 2017] The U.S. Media Suffered Its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages by Glenn Greenwald

Notable quotes:
"... publicly available ..."
"... Greenwald's lamenting of the US media's lack of transparency and accountability is touchingly high-minded, but it is also naive. These people are not in the business of informing their viewers; they are in the business of delivering their viewers to a preestablished agenda set by powerful and wealthy people. Until Mr. Greenwald understands this, he will continue to feel disappointment and dissonance. ..."
"... The massive deception operation that goes by the name of "US media" will continue so long as the audience tolerates it, which is probably indefinitely. Over and over again, I have showed members of that audience that they are being lied to. Their reaction is always the same: anger with me for discomforting them. The audience does not watch the US media in order to be informed, they watch the media in order to be comforted, and the media know this and exploit this. This show will run for a long, long time. ..."
"... Well put. Lying is not a special occasion for the US media. It's an everyday occurrence, whereas telling the truth is quite rare. As a person who was born and grew up in Ukraine and has lots of relatives and acquaintances all over that disintegrating country, I can testify that 80% of the reports in the US media about Ukraine since 2014 were blatant lies, whereas in the remaining 20% truth was twisted beyond recognition. ..."
"... There is a minute of breaking news. Then 3 minutes of ads. Then a minute of news. Then 3 minutes of ads. Then what news is up next for 2 minutes. Then 3 minutes of ads. Then a minute of news. ..."
Dec 09, 2017 | www.unz.com

FRIDAY WAS ONE of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time. The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, with countless pundits, commentators and operatives joining the party throughout the day. By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation's largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happened.

The spectacle began on Friday morning at 11 a.m. EST, when the Most Trusted Name in News™ spent 12 straight minutes on air flamboyantly hyping an exclusive bombshell report that seemed to prove that WikiLeaks, last September, had secretly offered the Trump campaign, even Donald Trump himself, special access to the DNC emails before they were published on the internet. As CNN sees the world, this would prove collusion between the Trump family and WikiLeaks and, more importantly, between Trump and Russia, since the U.S. intelligence community regards WikiLeaks as an "arm of Russian intelligence," and therefore , so does the U.S. media.

This entire revelation was based on an email which CNN strongly implied it had exclusively obtained and had in its possession. The email was sent by someone named "Michael J. Erickson" -- someone nobody had heard of previously and whom CNN could not identify -- to Donald Trump, Jr., offering a decryption key and access to DNC emails that WikiLeaks had "uploaded." The email was a smoking gun, in CNN's extremely excited mind, because it was dated September 4 -- 10 days before WikiLeaks began promoting access to those emails online -- and thus proved that the Trump family was being offered special, unique access to the DNC archive: likely by WikiLeaks and the Kremlin.

It's impossible to convey with words what a spectacularly devastating scoop CNN believed it had, so it's necessary to watch it for yourself to see the tone of excitement, breathlessness and gravity the network conveyed as they clearly believed they were delivering a near-fatal blow on the Trump/Russia collusion story:

There was just one small problem with this story: it was fundamentally false, in the most embarrassing way possible. Hours after CNN broadcast its story -- and then hyped it over and over and over -- the Washington Post reported that CNN got the key fact of the story wrong.

The email was not dated September 4, as CNN claimed, but rather September 14 -- which means it was sent after WikiLeaks had already published access to the DNC emails online. Thus, rather than offering some sort of special access to Trump, "Michael J. Erickson" was simply some random person from the public encouraging the Trump family to look at the publicly available DNC emails that WikiLeaks -- as everyone by then already knew -- had publicly promoted . In other words, the email was the exact opposite of what CNN presented it as being.

Read the Entire Article at The Intercept

Jim Christian , December 11, 2017 at 12:57 pm GMT

The real cartoon network if you ask me. Once people blow it, their public character becomes that of a cartoon character. Franken, Conyers, Hillary, Weinstein and the Weiners. Why is CNN and liberal media exempt? Oh. They aren't.
Almost Missouri , December 11, 2017 at 1:11 pm GMT
Kudos to Greenwald for calling the US media out on this occasion, but in reality the US media humiliates itself weekly, if not daily, if not hourly, with its false reports, poorly concealed agenda and generally propagandistic approach to everything.

Greenwald's lamenting of the US media's lack of transparency and accountability is touchingly high-minded, but it is also naive. These people are not in the business of informing their viewers; they are in the business of delivering their viewers to a preestablished agenda set by powerful and wealthy people. Until Mr. Greenwald understands this, he will continue to feel disappointment and dissonance.

The massive deception operation that goes by the name of "US media" will continue so long as the audience tolerates it, which is probably indefinitely. Over and over again, I have showed members of that audience that they are being lied to. Their reaction is always the same: anger with me for discomforting them. The audience does not watch the US media in order to be informed, they watch the media in order to be comforted, and the media know this and exploit this. This show will run for a long, long time.

anonymous , • Disclaimer December 11, 2017 at 2:50 pm GMT
@Almost Missouri

Yes. Most of our fellows are willfully ignorant cowards. I also believe that many cope by turning on Confederate statues, getting worked up over bathrooms, etc.

Svigor , December 11, 2017 at 4:01 pm GMT
Missouri, how the fuck anyone finds Big Media comforting is beyond me. Their contempt for America and Americans isn't hard to suss out.
Anon , • Disclaimer December 12, 2017 at 1:31 am GMT
@Almost Missouri

Well put. Lying is not a special occasion for the US media. It's an everyday occurrence, whereas telling the truth is quite rare. As a person who was born and grew up in Ukraine and has lots of relatives and acquaintances all over that disintegrating country, I can testify that 80% of the reports in the US media about Ukraine since 2014 were blatant lies, whereas in the remaining 20% truth was twisted beyond recognition.

anarchyst , December 12, 2017 at 1:43 pm GMT
The mainstream media has always been dishonest...

... ... ...

The media has become a "fifth column" of the government and is not to be trusted.

To our advantage, we now have the internet, which gives the ability for ordinary citizens to be real "journalists", quite often getting and reporting the story TRUTHFULLY before the mainstream media.

In fact, there are calls by "mainstream media" to "license" journalists, in an attempt to keep these "citizen journalists" out twenty years ago, any journalist suggesting such a scheme would have been thrown out, but nowadays

Alden , December 12, 2017 at 10:32 pm GMT
@Achmed E. Newman

But do they really watch the TV? The news shows are terrible for getting a coherent message across.

There is a minute of breaking news. Then 3 minutes of ads. Then a minute of news. Then 3 minutes of ads. Then what news is up next for 2 minutes. Then 3 minutes of ads. Then a minute of news.

In an hour of a news show its probably 15 minutes, broken into 1 minute segments of actual news. The rest is just flashing lights and ads and what news will be next. Except for PBS and NPR of course which are just liberal propaganda. Democracy Now, Charlie Rose, Travis Smiley have fewer ads, but who can listen to them or look at them? I'd like to smash Charley Rose' sanctimonious face. And Amy Goodman, why women shouldn't be allowed to vote or hold elected or appointed office.

It's so chopped up with ads and what's up next I don't see how anyone could have the patience to sit through it and figure out what they are blathering about.

Some White Guy , December 13, 2017 at 4:51 pm GMT
I'm sure everyone at CNN has completely forgotten about it by now.
jacques sheete , December 13, 2017 at 11:53 pm GMT
@Alden

It's so chopped up with ads and what's up next I don't see how anyone could have the patience to sit through it and figure out what they are blathering about.

I agree but I'm not sure it would take patience so much as total lack of self respect as well as a hopeless amount of gullibility.

Speaking of ads

for I knew nothing of the facts. I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to To Nathaniel Macon
Monticello, January 12, 1819

[Dec 13, 2017] FBI agent removed from Russia investigation called Trump an 'idiot' by Associated Press

Associated Press tried to hide the fact that Peter Strzok was involved with Steele dossier
Dec 13, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
Two FBI officials who would later be assigned to the special counsel's investigation into Donald Trump's presidential campaign described him as an "idiot" and "loathsome human" in a series of text messages last year, according to copies released on Tuesday.

One said in an election night text that the prospect of a Trump victory was "terrifying".

Peter Strzok, an FBI counterintelligence agent, was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller's team earlier this year following the discovery of text messages exchanged with Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer.

[Dec 12, 2017] When a weaker neoliberal state fights the dominant neoliberal state, the center of neoliberal empire, it faces economic sanctions and can t retaliate using principle eye for eye

Highly recommended!
Three years later Russia is still standing... Still to a neoliberal state and not to be a USA vassal is a pipe dream. The system is Washington-centric by design. but what is the alternative in unclear. Russia is still a neoliberal state and Putin is not eternal.
Contrary to Putin's vision, a neoliberal state can't be sovereign, it can only be a vassal of Washington. As soon as a neoliberal state shows some independence it became a "rogue state" and punishment via financial system (and for smaller states via military actions) will follow. Dominance in finance sphere gives the USA the ability to punish Russia to almost any extent they wish without significant possibilities of retaliation, unless formal block of Russia and China is created.\
Russia can only retaliate in selected carefully chosen "weak spots". NGOs, media, the USA food companies (Coca-cola, junk food, chickens, etc), financial and consulting firms (and first of all Big Three, closely connected with the USA government). Not so far nine got under Russian government knife.
Notable quotes:
"... Yep, how dare the Russkies retaliate, when they ought to come begging on their knees to be allowed to do what the grand master in DC wants them to do ..."
"... Russians are using "trade as a geopolitical tool," warns a Washington think tank. Russia engaging in trade war – How despicable! ..."
"... And next Russans claim that "Fruit shipments from the EU have recently contained Oriental fruit moths " ..."
"... "It's not unusual for Russia to find something wrong when they have a political reason to do so". ..."
"... No word on whether his tongue immediately turned black and started to smoke, then fell out of his mouth. It's not unusual for the United States to apply sanctions when they have a political reason to do so, and fuck-all else. ..."
"... I was wrong about Rosoboronexport. It is EXEMPT from the list of sanctions. No doubt some of the deals (titanium) are critical for the US's own MIC. ..."
"... The baying audience of FOX-friends might be stoked at the idea of economic war with Russia, but the cold-eyed businessmen are likely to be unenthused at best ..."
Jul 30, 2014 | marknesop.wordpress.com

colliemum, July 30, 2014 at 10:05 am

Found at zerohedge, a US reaction on Russia's reaction to the sanctions:

"Assuming that they take this action, it would be blatant protectionism," Clayton Yeutter, a U.S. Trade Representative under President Ronald Reagan, said in a phone interview. "There is little or no legitimacy to their complaints."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-30/us-will-feel-tangible-losses-russia-prepares-unleash-retaliatory-trade-wars

Yep, how dare the Russkies retaliate, when they ought to come begging on their knees to be allowed to do what the grand master in DC wants them to do

yalensis, July 30, 2014 at 3:31 pm
Russians are using "trade as a geopolitical tool," warns a Washington think tank. Russia engaging in trade war – How despicable!

First Russkies pretend to find antibiotics in McDonalds "cheese" products. But everybody knows the cheese cannot possibly contain antibiotics, because it's not even real cheese! (it's a kind of edible plastic substance )

And next Russans claim that "Fruit shipments from the EU have recently contained Oriental fruit moths "

That's a lie too.

Everybody knows that if you eat your Polish quinces with a runcible spoon, then they will not contain any measurable amounts of moth larvae.

ThatJ, July 30, 2014 at 3:39 pm
"Fedorov said consulting firms and audit firms will be the first to be targeted by the new bill. Next will be U.S. media, he said."

The US media helps in spreading liberasty. It should have been barred years ago.

colliemum, July 31, 2014 at 12:44 am
Above all else, Putin should throw out all Western NGOs – especially those with links to Soros.
marknesop, July 30, 2014 at 9:41 pm
"It's not unusual for Russia to find something wrong when they have a political reason to do so".

No word on whether his tongue immediately turned black and started to smoke, then fell out of his mouth. It's not unusual for the United States to apply sanctions when they have a political reason to do so, and fuck-all else.

cartman, July 30, 2014 at 10:21 am
I was wrong about Rosoboronexport. It is EXEMPT from the list of sanctions. No doubt some of the deals (titanium) are critical for the US's own MIC. Put Kadyrov or someone on the board and force Congress to slit Boeing's throat.
cartman, July 30, 2014 at 10:26 am
Or hire him to the company that produces rolled titanium alloys for Boeing and Airbus. A shot across the bow to say that Western leaders will have to be standing in front of their populations as they crash their economies. Russia won't do it for them.
marknesop, July 30, 2014 at 9:51 pm
Excellent reasoning. The baying audience of FOX-friends might be stoked at the idea of economic war with Russia, but the cold-eyed businessmen are likely to be unenthused at best. This is a great plan for achieving leverage cheaply and easily, and the U.S. government would be left 'splaining to Boeing that they had to lay off a couple of thousand workers because a bad man was appointed to the board of their major supplier.

The west is locked into its lame sanctions groove, and too proud to back down. This might be the big shootout from which only one currency will walk away.

[Dec 12, 2017] Possible link beween CrowdStrike DNC hack investigation and Steele dossier

the fact that Steele dossier was published by Buzzfeed gave this story a new interesting light.
Notable quotes:
"... The piece showed that the Democrats' two paid-for sources that have engendered belief in Russia-gate are at best shaky. First was former British spy Christopher Steele's largely unverified dossier of second- and third-hand opposition research portraying Donald Trump as something of a Russian Manchurian candidate. ..."
"... And the second was CrowdStrike, an anti-Putin private company, examining the DNC's computer server to dubiously claim discovery of a Russian "hack." CrowdStrike, it was later discovered, had used faulty software it was later forced to rewrite . The company was hired after the DNC refused to allow the FBI to look at the server. ..."
"... The Huffington Post published my piece on Nov. 5, 2016, that predicted three days before the election that if Clinton lost she'd blame Russia. My point was confirmed by the campaign-insider book Shattered, which revealed that immediately after Clinton's loss, senior campaign advisers decided to blame Russia for her defeat. ..."
"... I published another piece , which the Huffington Post editors promoted, called, "Blaming Russia To Overturn The Election Goes Into Overdrive." I argued that "Russia has been blamed in the U.S. for many things and though proof never seems to be supplied, it is widely believed anyway." ..."
"... BuzzFeed , of course, is the sensationalist outlet that irresponsibly published the Steele dossier in full, even though the accusations – not just about Donald Trump but also many other individuals – weren't verified. Then on Nov. 14, BuzzFeed reporter Jason Leopold wrote one of the most ludicrous of a long line of fantastic Russia-gate stories, reporting that the Russian foreign ministry had sent money to Russian consulates in the U.S. "to finance the election campaign of 2016." The scoop generated some screaming headlines before it became clear that the money was to pay for Russian citizens in the U.S. to vote in the 2016 Duma election. ..."
Dec 11, 2017 | www.unz.com

Under increasing pressure from a population angry about endless wars and the transfer of wealth to the one percent, American plutocrats are defending themselves by suppressing critical news in the corporate media they own. But as that news emerges on RT and dissident websites, they've resorted to the brazen move of censorship, which is rapidly spreading in the U.S. and Europe. I know because I was a victim of it.

At the end of October, I wrote an article for Consortium News about the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign paying for unvetted opposition research that became the basis for much of the disputed story about Russia allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

  1. The piece showed that the Democrats' two paid-for sources that have engendered belief in Russia-gate are at best shaky. First was former British spy Christopher Steele's largely unverified dossier of second- and third-hand opposition research portraying Donald Trump as something of a Russian Manchurian candidate.
  2. And the second was CrowdStrike, an anti-Putin private company, examining the DNC's computer server to dubiously claim discovery of a Russian "hack." CrowdStrike, it was later discovered, had used faulty software it was later forced to rewrite . The company was hired after the DNC refused to allow the FBI to look at the server.

My piece also described the dangerous consequences of partisan Democratic faith in Russia-gate: a sharp increase in geopolitical tensions between nuclear-armed Russia and the U.S., and a New McCarthyism that is spreading fear -- especially in academia, journalism and civil rights organizations -- about questioning the enforced orthodoxy of Russia's alleged guilt.

After the article appeared at Consortium News , I tried to penetrate the mainstream by then publishing a version of the article on the HuffPost, which was rebranded from the Huffington Post in April this year by new management. As a contributor to the site since February 2006, I am trusted by HuffPost editors to post my stories directly online. However, within 24 hours of publication on Nov. 4, HuffPost editors retracted the article without any explanation.

This broke with the earlier principles of journalism that the Web site espoused. For instance, in 2008, Arianna Huffington told radio host Don Debar that, "We welcome all opinions, except conspiracy theories." She said: "Facts are sacred. That's part of our philosophy of journalism."

But Huffington stepped down as editor in August 2016 and has nothing to do with the site now. It is run by Lydia Polgreen, a former New York Times reporter and editor, who evidently has very different ideas. In April, she completely redesigned the site and renamed it HuffPost.

Before the management change, I had published several articles on the Huffington Post about Russia without controversy. For instance, The Huffington Post published my piece on Nov. 5, 2016, that predicted three days before the election that if Clinton lost she'd blame Russia. My point was confirmed by the campaign-insider book Shattered, which revealed that immediately after Clinton's loss, senior campaign advisers decided to blame Russia for her defeat.

On Dec. 12, 2016, I published another piece , which the Huffington Post editors promoted, called, "Blaming Russia To Overturn The Election Goes Into Overdrive." I argued that "Russia has been blamed in the U.S. for many things and though proof never seems to be supplied, it is widely believed anyway."

After I posted an updated version of the Consortium News piece -- renamed "On the Origins of Russia-gate" -- I was informed 23 hours later by a Facebook friend that the piece had been retracted by HuffPost editors. As a reporter for mainstream media for more than a quarter century, I know that a newsroom rule is that before the serious decision is made to retract an article the writer is contacted to be allowed to defend the piece. This never happened. There was no due process. A HuffPost editor ignored my email asking why it was taken down.

Watchdogs & Media Defending Censorship

Despite this support from independent media, a senior official at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, I learned, declined to take up my cause because he believes in the Russia-gate story. I also learned that a senior officer at the American Civil Liberties Union rejected my case because he too believes in Russia-gate. Both of these serious organizations were set up precisely to defend individuals in such situations on principle, not preference.

In terms of their responsibilities for defending journalism and protecting civil liberties, their personal opinions about whether Russia-gate is real or not are irrelevant. The point is whether a journalist has the right to publish an article skeptical of it. I worry that amid the irrational fear spreading about Russia that concerns about careers and funding are behind these decisions.

One online publication decidedly took the HuffPost's side. Steven Perlberg, a media reporter for BuzzFeed, asked the HuffPost why they retracted my article. While ignoring me, the editors issued a statement to BuzzFeed saying that "Mr. Lauria's self-published" piece was "later flagged by readers, and after deciding that the post contained multiple factually inaccurate or misleading claims, our editors removed the post per our contributor terms of use." Those terms include retraction for "any reason," including, apparently, censorship.

Perlberg posted the HuffPost statement on Twitter. I asked him if he inquired of the editors what those "multiple" errors and "misleading claims" were. I asked him to contact me to get my side of the story. Perlberg totally ignored me. He wrote nothing about the matter. He apparently believed the HuffPost and that was that. In this way, he acquiesced with the censorship.

BuzzFeed , of course, is the sensationalist outlet that irresponsibly published the Steele dossier in full, even though the accusations – not just about Donald Trump but also many other individuals – weren't verified. Then on Nov. 14, BuzzFeed reporter Jason Leopold wrote one of the most ludicrous of a long line of fantastic Russia-gate stories, reporting that the Russian foreign ministry had sent money to Russian consulates in the U.S. "to finance the election campaign of 2016." The scoop generated some screaming headlines before it became clear that the money was to pay for Russian citizens in the U.S. to vote in the 2016 Duma election.

That Russia-gate has reached this point, based on faith and not fact, was further illustrated by a Facebook exchange I had with Gary Sick, an academic who served on the Ford and Carter national security staffs. When I pressed Sick for evidence of Russian interference, he eventually replied: "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck " When I told him that was a very low-bar for such serious accusations, he angrily cut off debate.

When belief in a story becomes faith-based or is driven by intense self-interest, honest skeptics are pushed aside and trampled. True-believers disdain facts that force them to think about what they believe. They won't waste time making a painstaking examination of the facts or engage in a detailed debate even on something as important and dangerous as a new Cold War with Russia.

This is the most likely explanation for the HuffPost 's censorship: a visceral reaction to having their Russia-gate faith challenged.

[Dec 12, 2017] With the 2018 midterms on the horizon, Moscow proposed a sweeping noninterference agreement with the United States, US officials tell BuzzFeed News. The Trump administration said no

Notable quotes:
"... "To test the possibility of a mutual agreement, Putin dispatched Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to Washington for a July 17 meeting with Under Secretary Tom Shannon, the No. 3 official at the State Department. The official US account of the meeting offered only a bland summary of conversations on "areas of mutual concern." But three US administration officials, including one inside the meeting, said Ryabkov handed over a document containing a bold proposal: A sweeping noninterference agreement between Moscow and Washington that would prohibit both governments from meddling in the other's domestic politics. ..."
"... After examining the proposal, which has not previously been reported, US officials told Moscow there would be no deal. ..."
"... "We said 'thank you very much but now is not the time for this,'" said a senior State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic discussions." ..."
Dec 12, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Lyttenburgh , December 10, 2017 at 5:59 pm

C for Chutzpah.

ButtFeed: How Secret Talks With Russia to Prevent Election Meddling Collapsed
With the 2018 midterms on the horizon, Moscow proposed a sweeping noninterference agreement with the United States, US officials tell BuzzFeed News. The Trump administration said no.

"To test the possibility of a mutual agreement, Putin dispatched Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to Washington for a July 17 meeting with Under Secretary Tom Shannon, the No. 3 official at the State Department. The official US account of the meeting offered only a bland summary of conversations on "areas of mutual concern." But three US administration officials, including one inside the meeting, said Ryabkov handed over a document containing a bold proposal: A sweeping noninterference agreement between Moscow and Washington that would prohibit both governments from meddling in the other's domestic politics.

After examining the proposal, which has not previously been reported, US officials told Moscow there would be no deal.

"We said 'thank you very much but now is not the time for this,'" said a senior State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic discussions."

Here you have it – a self-confession from the highest D.C. officials, that "democracy promotion = meddling in the elections"! Oh, but that's not all:

[Dec 12, 2017] The Acceleration of Censorship in America by Joe Lauria

Notable quotes:
"... BuzzFeed , of course, is the sensationalist outlet that irresponsibly published the Steele dossier in full, even though the accusations – not just about Donald Trump but also many other individuals – weren't verified. Then on Nov. 14, BuzzFeed reporter Jason Leopold wrote one of the most ludicrous of a long line of fantastic Russia-gate stories, reporting that the Russian foreign ministry had sent money to Russian consulates in the U.S. "to finance the election campaign of 2016." The scoop generated some screaming headlines before it became clear that the money was to pay for Russian citizens in the U.S. to vote in the 2016 Duma election. ..."
"... A lesson of the 2016 campaign was that growing numbers of Americans are fed up with three decades of neoliberal policies that have fabulously enriched the top tier of Americans and debased a huge majority of everyone else. The population has likewise grown tired of the elite's senseless wars to expand their own interests, which they to conflate with the entire country's interests. ..."
"... Careerist journalists readily acquiesce in this suppression of news to maintain their jobs, their status and their lifestyles. Meanwhile, a growing body of poorly paid freelancers compete for the few remaining decent-paying gigs for which they must report from the viewpoint of the mainstream news organizations and their wealthy owners. ..."
"... Their solution has been to brand the content of the Russian television network, RT, as "propaganda" since it presents facts and viewpoints that most Americans have been kept from hearing. ..."
"... Now, these American transgressions are projected exclusively onto Moscow. There's also a measure of self-reverence in this for "successful" people, like some journalists, with a stake in an establishment that underpins the elite, demonstrating how wonderfully democratic they are compared to those ogres in Russia. ..."
"... The Jan. 6 intelligence assessment on alleged Russian election meddling is a good example of this. A third of its content is an attack on RT for "undermining American democracy" by reporting on Occupy Wall Street, the protest over the Dakota pipeline and, of all things, holding a "third party candidate debates," at a time when 71% of American millennials say they want a third party. ..."
"... According to the Jan. 6 assessment, RT's offenses include reporting that "the US two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a 'sham.'" RT also "highlights criticism of alleged US shortcomings in democracy and civil liberties." In other words, reporting newsworthy events and giving third-party candidates a voice undermines democracy. ..."
"... The assessment also says all this amounts to "a Kremlin-directed campaign to undermine faith in the US Government and fuel political protest," but those protests by are against privileges of the wealthy and the well-connected, a status quo that the intelligence agencies were in essence created to protect. ..."
"... There are also deeper reasons why Russia is being targeted. The Russia-gate story fits neatly into a geopolitical strategy that long predates the 2016 election. Since Wall Street and the U.S. government lost the dominant position in Russia that existed under the pliable President Boris Yeltsin, the strategy has been to put pressure on getting rid of Putin to restore a U.S. friendly leader in Moscow. There is substance to Russia's concerns about American designs for "regime change" in the Kremlin. ..."
"... But the "deranking" isn't only aimed at Russian sites; Google algorithms also are taking aim at independent news sites that don't follow the mainstream herd – and thus are accused of spreading Russian or other "propaganda" if they question the dominant Western narratives on, say, the Ukraine crisis or the war in Syria. A number of alternative websites have begun reporting a sharp fall-off of traffic directed to their sites from Google's search engines. ..."
"... the European Union is spending €3.8 million to counter Russian "propaganda." It is targeting Eurosceptic politicians who repeat what they hear on Russian media. ..."
"... Less prominent figures are targeted too. John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent who blew the whistle on torture and was jailed for it, was kicked off a panel in Europe on Nov. 10 by a Bernie Sanders supporter who refused to appear with Kiriakou because he co-hosts a show on Radio Sputnik . ..."
"... At the end of November, Reporters Without Borders, an organization supposedly devoted to press freedom, tried to kick journalist Vanessa Beeley off a panel in Geneva to prevent her from presenting evidence that the White Helmets, a group that sells itself as a rescue organization inside rebel-controlled territory in Syria, has ties to Al Qaeda. The Swiss Press Club, which hosted the event, resisted the pressure and let Beeley speak. ..."
"... Much of this spreading mania and intensifying censorship traces back to Russia-gate. Yet, it remains remarkable that the corporate media has failed so far to prove any significant Russian interference in the U.S. election at all. Nor have the intelligence agencies, Congressional investigations and special prosecutor Robert Mueller. His criminal charges so far have been for financial crimes and lying to federal authorities on topics unrelated to any "collusion" between the Trump campaign and Russians to "hack" Democratic emails ..."
"... As journalist Yasha Levine tweeted: "So the country that influenced US policy through Michael Flynn is Israel, not Russia. But Flynn did try to influence Russia, not the other way around. Ha-ha. This is the smoking gun? What a farce." ..."
"... There's also the question of how significant the release of those emails was anyway. They did provide evidence that the DNC tilted the primary campaign in favor of Clinton over Sanders; they exposed the contents of Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street, which she was trying to hide from the voters; and they revealed some pay-to-play features of the Clinton Foundation and its foreign donations. But – even if the Russians were involved in providing that information to the American people – those issues were not considered decisive in the campaign. ..."
"... As for vaguer concerns about some Russian group "probably" buying $100,000 in ads, mostly after Americans had voted, as a factor in swaying a $6 billion election, it is too silly to contemplate. ..."
"... RT and Sputnik 's reach in the U.S. is minuscule compared to Fox News , which slammed Clinton throughout the campaign, or for that matter, MSNBC, CNN and other mainstream news outlets, which often expressed open disdain for Republican Donald Trump but also gave extensive coverage to issues such as the security concerns about Clinton's private email server. ..."
"... Without convincing evidence, I remain a Russia-gate skeptic. I am not defending Russia. Russia can defend itself. However, amid the growing censorship and the dangerous new McCarthyism, I am trying to defend America -- from itself. ..."
"... Lauria's article is an excellent review of the hydra-headed MSM perversion of political journalism in this era of the PATRIOT Act, with special focus on 2016-2017. With one small exception that still is worth noting. Namely the inclusion of "North Koreans" along with Palestinians, Russians and Iranians as those whose viewpoints are never represented in the Western media. ..."
"... Without factual support James calls Putin an organized criminal. US NGO staff who have actually dealt with Putin characterize him as a strict legalist. In fact, Putin's incorruptibility is what drives CIA up the wall. Ask any upper-echelon spook. Putin's cupidity deficit short-circuits CIA's go-to subversion method, massive bribes. Putin has an uneasy relationship with the kleptocrats CIA installed while their puppet Yeltsin staggered around blind drunk. But Putin has materially curbed kleptocratic corruption and subversion. Russians appreciate that. ..."
"... It seems to be the same in Germany. The German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, he died maybe a year ago, he worked long for the prestigious newspaper FAZ, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote a book about bought journalism. His explanation for the disappearence of discussion sites with newspapers is that the journalists discovered that the reactions got far more attention than the articles. Very annoying, of course. With us here, Follow The Money, and The Post Online behave as childish as German newspapers. ..."
"... And if that same central bank would give out loans -- that never get repaid -- to the same ethnic gangsters that would then would use those loans to buy up over 90% of the host nations MSM outlets to forever ensure that a steady drip, drip, drip of propaganda went into the host nation's residents, ever so slowly turning them into mindless sheep always bleating for more wars to help the ethnic gangsters steal their way to an Eretz state? ..."
"... Reminds me of a contemporary Russian joke: "Everything communists told us about socialism turned out to be a lie. However, everything they told us about capitalism is perfectly true". ..."
Dec 11, 2017 | www.unz.com

Under increasing pressure from a population angry about endless wars and the transfer of wealth to the one percent, American plutocrats are defending themselves by suppressing critical news in the corporate media they own. But as that news emerges on RT and dissident websites, they've resorted to the brazen move of censorship, which is rapidly spreading in the U.S. and Europe. I know because I was a victim of it.

At the end of October, I wrote an article for Consortium News about the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign paying for unvetted opposition research that became the basis for much of the disputed story about Russia allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

The piece showed that the Democrats' two paid-for sources that have engendered belief in Russia-gate are at best shaky. First was former British spy Christopher Steele's largely unverified dossier of second- and third-hand opposition research portraying Donald Trump as something of a Russian Manchurian candidate.

And the second was CrowdStrike, an anti-Putin private company, examining the DNC's computer server to dubiously claim discovery of a Russian "hack." CrowdStrike, it was later discovered, had used faulty software it was later forced to rewrite . The company was hired after the DNC refused to allow the FBI to look at the server.

My piece also described the dangerous consequences of partisan Democratic faith in Russia-gate: a sharp increase in geopolitical tensions between nuclear-armed Russia and the U.S., and a New McCarthyism that is spreading fear -- especially in academia, journalism and civil rights organizations -- about questioning the enforced orthodoxy of Russia's alleged guilt.

After the article appeared at Consortium News , I tried to penetrate the mainstream by then publishing a version of the article on the HuffPost, which was rebranded from the Huffington Post in April this year by new management. As a contributor to the site since February 2006, I am trusted by HuffPost editors to post my stories directly online. However, within 24 hours of publication on Nov. 4, HuffPost editors retracted the article without any explanation.

.... ... ...

Support from Independent Media

Like the word "fascism," "censorship" is an over-used and mis-used accusation, and I usually avoid using it. But without any explanation, I could only conclude that the decision to retract was political, not editorial.

I am non-partisan as I oppose both major parties for failing to represent millions of Americans' interests. I follow facts where they lead. In this case, the facts led to an understanding that the Jan. 6 FBI/NSA/CIA intelligence "assessment" on alleged Russian election interference, prepared by what then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called "hand-picked" analysts, was based substantially on unvetted opposition research and speculation, not serious intelligence work.

The assessment even made the point that the analysts were not asserting that the alleged Russian interference was a fact. The report contained this disclaimer: "Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents."

Under deadline pressure on Jan. 6, Scott Shane of The New York Times instinctively wrote what many readers of the report must have been thinking: "What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies' claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to 'trust us.'"

Yet, after the Jan. 6 report was published, leading Democrats asserted falsely that the "assessment" represented the consensus judgment of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies – not just the views of "hand-picked" analysts from three – and much of the U.S. mainstream media began treating the allegations of Russian "hacking" as fact, not as an uncertain conclusion denied by both the Russian government and WikiLeaks, which insists that it did not get the two batches of Democratic emails from the Russian government.

Yet, because of the oft-repeated "17 intelligence agencies" canard and the mainstream media's over-hyped reporting, the public impression has built up that the accusations against Russia are indisputable. If you ask a Russia-gate believer today what their faith is based on, they will invariably point to the Jan. 6 assessment and mock anyone who still expresses any doubt.

For instance, an unnamed former CIA officer told The Intercept last month, "You've got all these intelligence agencies saying the Russians did the hack. To deny that is like coming out with the theory that the Japanese didn't bomb Pearl Harbor."

That the supposedly dissident Intercept would use this quote is instructive about how unbalanced the media's reporting on Russia-gate has been. We have film of Japanese planes attacking Pearl Harbor and American ships burning – and we have eyewitness accounts of thousands of U.S. soldiers and sailors. Yet, on Russia-gate, we have only the opinions of "hand-picked" intelligence officials who themselves admit their opinions aren't fact. No serious editor would allow a self-interested and unnamed source to equate Russia-gate and Pearl Harbor in print.

In this atmosphere, it was easy for HuffPost editors to hear complaints from readers and blithely ban my story. But before it was pulled, 125 people had shared it. Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, then took up my cause, being the first to write about the HuffPost censorship on his blog. McGovern included a link to a .pdf file that I captured of the censored HuffPost story. It has since been republished on numerous other websites.

Journalist Max Blumenthal tweeted about it. British filmmaker and writer Tariq Ali posted it on his Facebook page. Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams interviewed me at length about the censorship on their TV program. ZeroHedge wrote a widely shared piece and someone actually took the time, 27 minutes and 13 seconds to be exact, to read the entire article on YouTube. I began a petition to HuffPost 's Polgreen to either explain the retraction or restore the article. It has gained more than 2,000 signatures so far. If a serious fact-check analysis was made of my article, it must exist and can and should be produced.

Watchdogs & Media Defending Censorship

Despite this support from independent media, a senior official at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, I learned, declined to take up my cause because he believes in the Russia-gate story. I also learned that a senior officer at the American Civil Liberties Union rejected my case because he too believes in Russia-gate. Both of these serious organizations were set up precisely to defend individuals in such situations on principle, not preference.

In terms of their responsibilities for defending journalism and protecting civil liberties, their personal opinions about whether Russia-gate is real or not are irrelevant. The point is whether a journalist has the right to publish an article skeptical of it. I worry that amid the irrational fear spreading about Russia that concerns about careers and funding are behind these decisions.

One online publication decidedly took the HuffPost's side. Steven Perlberg, a media reporter for BuzzFeed, asked the HuffPost why they retracted my article. While ignoring me, the editors issued a statement to BuzzFeed saying that "Mr. Lauria's self-published" piece was "later flagged by readers, and after deciding that the post contained multiple factually inaccurate or misleading claims, our editors removed the post per our contributor terms of use." Those terms include retraction for "any reason," including, apparently, censorship.

Perlberg posted the HuffPost statement on Twitter. I asked him if he inquired of the editors what those "multiple" errors and "misleading claims" were. I asked him to contact me to get my side of the story. Perlberg totally ignored me. He wrote nothing about the matter. He apparently believed the HuffPost and that was that. In this way, he acquiesced with the censorship.

BuzzFeed , of course, is the sensationalist outlet that irresponsibly published the Steele dossier in full, even though the accusations – not just about Donald Trump but also many other individuals – weren't verified. Then on Nov. 14, BuzzFeed reporter Jason Leopold wrote one of the most ludicrous of a long line of fantastic Russia-gate stories, reporting that the Russian foreign ministry had sent money to Russian consulates in the U.S. "to finance the election campaign of 2016." The scoop generated some screaming headlines before it became clear that the money was to pay for Russian citizens in the U.S. to vote in the 2016 Duma election.

That Russia-gate has reached this point, based on faith and not fact, was further illustrated by a Facebook exchange I had with Gary Sick, an academic who served on the Ford and Carter national security staffs. When I pressed Sick for evidence of Russian interference, he eventually replied: "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck " When I told him that was a very low-bar for such serious accusations, he angrily cut off debate.

When belief in a story becomes faith-based or is driven by intense self-interest, honest skeptics are pushed aside and trampled. True-believers disdain facts that force them to think about what they believe. They won't waste time making a painstaking examination of the facts or engage in a detailed debate even on something as important and dangerous as a new Cold War with Russia.

This is the most likely explanation for the HuffPost 's censorship: a visceral reaction to having their Russia-gate faith challenged.

Why Critical News is Suppressed

But the HuffPos t's action is hardly isolated. It is part of a rapidly growing landscape of censorship of news critical of American corporate and political leaders who are trying to defend themselves from an increasingly angry population. It's a story as old as civilization: a wealthy and powerful elite fending off popular unrest by trying to contain knowledge of how the elite gain at the others' expense, at home and abroad.

A lesson of the 2016 campaign was that growing numbers of Americans are fed up with three decades of neoliberal policies that have fabulously enriched the top tier of Americans and debased a huge majority of everyone else. The population has likewise grown tired of the elite's senseless wars to expand their own interests, which they to conflate with the entire country's interests.

America's bipartisan rulers are threatened by popular discontent from both left and right. They were alarmed by the Bernie Sanders insurgency and by Donald Trump's victory, even if Trump is now betraying the discontented masses who voted for him by advancing tax and health insurance plans designed to further crush them and benefit the rich.

Trump's false campaign promises will only make the rulers' problem of controlling a restless population more difficult. Americans are subjected to economic inequality greater than in the first Gilded Age. They are also subjected today to more war than in the first Gilded Age, which led to the launch of American overseas empire. Today American rulers are engaged in multiple conflicts following decades of post-World War II invasions and coups to expand their global interests.

People with wealth and power always seem to be nervous about losing both. So plutocrats use the concentrated media they own to suppress news critical of their wars and domestic repression. For example, almost nothing was reported about militarized police forces until the story broke out into the open in the Ferguson protests and now the story has been buried again.

Careerist journalists readily acquiesce in this suppression of news to maintain their jobs, their status and their lifestyles. Meanwhile, a growing body of poorly paid freelancers compete for the few remaining decent-paying gigs for which they must report from the viewpoint of the mainstream news organizations and their wealthy owners.

To operate in this media structure, most journalists know to excise out the historical context of America's wars of domination. They know to uncritically accept American officials' bromides about spreading democracy, while hiding the real war aims.

Examples abound: America's role in the Ukraine coup was denied or downplayed; a British parliamentary report exposing American lies that led to the destruction of Libya was suppressed ; and most infamously, the media promoted the WMD hoax and the fable of "bringing democracy" to Iraq, leading to the illegal invasion and devastation of that country. A recent example from November is a 60 Minutes report on the Saudi destruction of Yemen, conspicuously failing to mention America's crucial role in the carnage.

I've pitched numerous news stories critical of U.S. foreign policy to a major American newspaper that were rejected or changed in the editorial process. One example is the declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document of August 2012 that accurately predicted the rise of the Islamic State two years later.

The document, which I confirmed with a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. and its Turkish, European and Gulf Arab allies, were supporting the establishment of a Salafist principality in eastern Syria to put pressure on the Syrian government, but the document warned that this Salafist base could turn into an "Islamic State."

But such a story would undermine the U.S. government's "war on terrorism" narrative by revealing that the U.S.-backed strategy actually was risking the expansion of jihadist-held territory in Syria. The story was twice rejected by my editors and to my knowledge has never appeared in corporate media.

Another story rejected in June 2012, just a year into the Syrian war, was about Russia's motives in Syria being guided by a desire to defeat the growing jihadist threat there. Corporate media wanted to keep the myth of Russia's "imperial" aims in Syria alive. I had to publish the article outside the U.S., in a South African daily newspaper.

In September 2015 at the U.N. General Assembly, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed my story about Russia's motives in Syria to stop jihadists from taking over. Putin invited the U.S. to join this effort as Moscow was about to launch its military intervention at the invitation of the Syrian government. The Obama administration, still insisting on "regime change" in Syria, refused. And the U.S. corporate media continued promoting the myth that Russia intervened to recapture its "imperial glory."

It was much easier to promote the "imperial" narrative than report Putin's clear explanation to French TV channel TF1, which was not picked up by American media.

"Remember what Libya or Iraq looked like before these countries and their organizations were destroyed as states by our Western partners' forces?" Putin said. "These states showed no signs of terrorism. They were not a threat for Paris, for the Cote d'Azur, for Belgium, for Russia, or for the United States. Now, they are the source of terrorist threats. Our goal is to prevent the same from happening in Syria."

But don't take Putin's word for it. Then Secretary of State John Kerry knew why Russia intervened. In a leaked audio conversation with Syrian opposition figures in September 2016, Kerry said: "The reason Russia came in is because ISIL was getting stronger, Daesh was threatening the pos­sibility of going to Damascus, and that's why Russia came in because they didn't want a Daesh government and they supported Assad."

Kerry admitted that rather than seriously fight the Islamic State in Syria, the U.S. was ready to use its growing strength to pressure Assad to resign, just as the DIA document that I was unable to report said it would. "We know that this was growing, we were watching, we saw that Daesh was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened. We thought, how­ever, we could probably manage that Assad might then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him." Kerry's com­ment suggests that the U.S. was willing to risk the Islamic State and its jihadist allies gaining power in order to force out Assad.

Why Russia Is Targeted

Where are independent-minded Western journalists to turn if their stories critical of the U.S. government and corporations are suppressed? The imperative is to get these stories out – and Russian media has provided an opening. But this has presented a new problem for the plutocracy. The suppression of critical news in their corporate-owned media is no longer working if it's seeping out in Russian media and through dissident Western news sites.

Their solution has been to brand the content of the Russian television network, RT, as "propaganda" since it presents facts and viewpoints that most Americans have been kept from hearing.

As a Russian-government-financed English-language news channel, RT also gives a Russian perspective on the news, the way CNN and The New York Times give an American perspective and the BBC a British one. American mainstream journalists, from my experience, arrogantly deny suppressing news and believe they present a universal perspective, rather than a narrow American view of the world.

The viewpoints of Iranians, Palestinians, Russians, North Koreans and others are never fully reported in the Western media although the supposed mission of journalism is to help citizens understand a frighteningly complex world from multiple points of view. It's impossible to do so without those voices included. Routinely or systematically shutting them out also dehumanizes people in those countries, making it easier to gain popular support to go to war against them.

Russia is scapegoated by charging that RT or Sputnik are sowing divisions in the U.S. by focusing on issues like homelessness, racism, or out-of-control militarized police forces, as if these divisive issues didn't already exist. The U.S. mainstream media also seems to forget that the U.S. government has engaged in at least 70 years of interference in other countries' elections, foreign invasions, coups, planting stories in foreign media and cyber-warfare, which Russian media crucially points out.

Now, these American transgressions are projected exclusively onto Moscow. There's also a measure of self-reverence in this for "successful" people, like some journalists, with a stake in an establishment that underpins the elite, demonstrating how wonderfully democratic they are compared to those ogres in Russia.

The overriding point about the "Russian propaganda" complaint is that when America's democratic institutions, including the press and the electoral process, are crumbling under the weight of corruption that the American elites have created or maintained, someone else needs to be blamed.

The Jan. 6 intelligence assessment on alleged Russian election meddling is a good example of this. A third of its content is an attack on RT for "undermining American democracy" by reporting on Occupy Wall Street, the protest over the Dakota pipeline and, of all things, holding a "third party candidate debates," at a time when 71% of American millennials say they want a third party.

According to the Jan. 6 assessment, RT's offenses include reporting that "the US two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a 'sham.'" RT also "highlights criticism of alleged US shortcomings in democracy and civil liberties." In other words, reporting newsworthy events and giving third-party candidates a voice undermines democracy.

The assessment also says all this amounts to "a Kremlin-directed campaign to undermine faith in the US Government and fuel political protest," but those protests by are against privileges of the wealthy and the well-connected, a status quo that the intelligence agencies were in essence created to protect.

There are also deeper reasons why Russia is being targeted. The Russia-gate story fits neatly into a geopolitical strategy that long predates the 2016 election. Since Wall Street and the U.S. government lost the dominant position in Russia that existed under the pliable President Boris Yeltsin, the strategy has been to put pressure on getting rid of Putin to restore a U.S. friendly leader in Moscow. There is substance to Russia's concerns about American designs for "regime change" in the Kremlin.

Moscow sees an aggressive America expanding NATO and putting 30,000 NATO troops on its borders; trying to overthrow a secular ally in Syria with terrorists who threaten Russia itself; backing a coup in Ukraine as a possible prelude to moves against Russia; and using American NGOs to foment unrest inside Russia before they were forced to register as foreign agents.

Accelerated Censorship in the Private Sector

The Constitution prohibits government from prior-restraint, or censorship, though such tactics were imposed, largely unchallenged, during the two world wars. American newspapers voluntarily agreed to censor themselves in the Second World War before the government dictated it.

In the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur said he didn't "desire to reestablish wartime censorship" and instead asked the press for self-censorship. He largely got it until the papers began reporting American battlefield losses. On July 25, 1950, "the army ordered that reporters were not allowed to publish 'unwarranted' criticism of command decisions, and that the army would be 'the sole judge and jury' on what 'unwarranted' criticism entailed," according to a Yale University study on military censorship.

After excellent on-the-ground reporting from Vietnam brought the war home to America, the military reacted by instituting, initially in the first Gulf War, serious control of the press by "embedding" reporters from private media companies. They accepted the arrangement, much as World War II newspapers censored themselves.

It is important to realize that the First Amendment does not apply to private companies, including the media. It is not illegal for them to practice censorship. I never made a First Amendment argument against the HuffPost , for instance. However, under pressure from Washington, even in peacetime, media companies can do the government's dirty work to censor or limit free speech for the government.

In the past few weeks, we've seen an acceleration of attempts by corporations to inhibit Russian media in the U.S. Both Google and Facebook, which dominate the Web with more than 50 percent of ad revenue, were at first resistant to government pressure to censor "Russian propaganda." But they are coming around.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, Google's parent company, said on Nov. 18 that Google would "derank" articles from RT and Sputnik in the Google searches, making the stories harder for readers to find. The billionaire Schmidt claimed Russian information can be "repetitive, exploitative, false, [or] likely to have been weaponized," he said. That is how factual news critical of U.S. corporate and political leadership is seen by them: as a weapon threatening their rule.

"My own view is that these patterns can be detected, and that they can be taken down or deprioritized," Schmidt said. Though Google would essentially be hiding news produced by RT and Sputnik , Schmidt is sensitive to the charge of censorship, even though there's nothing legally to stop him. "We don't want to ban the sites. That's not how we operate," Schmidt said cynically. "I am strongly not in favor of censorship. I am very strongly in favor of ranking. It's what we do."

But the "deranking" isn't only aimed at Russian sites; Google algorithms also are taking aim at independent news sites that don't follow the mainstream herd – and thus are accused of spreading Russian or other "propaganda" if they question the dominant Western narratives on, say, the Ukraine crisis or the war in Syria. A number of alternative websites have begun reporting a sharp fall-off of traffic directed to their sites from Google's search engines.

Responding to a deadline from Congress to act, Facebook on Nov. 22 announced that it would inform users if they have been "targeted" by Russian "propaganda." Facebook's help center will tell users if they liked or shared ads allegedly from the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which supposedly bought $100,000 in ads over a two-year period, with more than half these ads coming after the 2016 U.S. election and many not related to politics.

The $100,000 sum over two years compares to Facebook's $27 billion in annual revenue. Plus, Facebook only says it "believes" or it's "likely" that the ads came from that firm, whose links to the Kremlin also have yet to be proved.

Facebook described the move as "part of our ongoing effort to protect our platforms and the people who use them from bad actors who try to undermine our democracy." Congress wants more from Facebook, so it will not be surprising if users will eventually be alerted to Russian media reports as "propaganda" in the future.

While the government can't openly shut down a news site, the Federal Communications Commission's upcoming vote on whether to deregulate the Internet by ending net neutrality will free private Internet companies in the U.S. to further marginalize Russian and dissident websites by slowing them down and thus discouraging readers from viewing them.

Likewise, as the U.S. government doesn't want to be openly seen shutting down RT operations, it is working around the edges to accomplish that.

After the Department of Justice forced, under threat of arrest, RT to register its employees as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act , State Department spokeswoman Heather Nuaert said that "FARA does not police the content of information disseminated, does not limit the publication of information or advocacy materials, and does not restrict an organization's ability to operate." She'd earlier said that registering would not "impact or affect the ability of them to report news and information. We just have them register. It's as simple as that."

The day after Nuaert spoke the Congressional press office stripped RT correspondents of their Capitol Hill press passes, citing the FARA registration. "The rules of the Galleries state clearly that news credentials may not be issued to any applicant employed 'by any foreign government or representative thereof.' Upon its registration as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), RT Network became ineligible to hold news credentials," read the letter to RT.

But Russia-gate faithful ignore these aggressive moves and issue calls for even harsher action. After forcing RT to register, Keir Giles, a Chatham House senior consulting fellow, acted as though it never happened. He said in a Council on Foreign Relations Cyber Brief on Nov. 27: "Although the Trump administration seems unlikely to pursue action against Russian information operations, there are steps the U.S. Congress and other governments should consider."

I commented on this development on RT America. It would also have been good to have the State Department's Nuaert answer for this discrepancy about the claim that forced FARA registrations would not affect news gathering when it already has. My criticism of RT is that they should be interviewing U.S. decision-makers to hold them accountable, rather than mostly guests outside the power structure. The decision-makers could be called out on air if they refuse to appear.

Growing McCarthyite Attacks

Western rulers' wariness about popular unrest can be seen in the extraordinary and scurrilous attack on the Canadian website globalresearch.ca . It began with a chilling study by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the relatively obscure website, followed by a vicious hit piece on Nov. 18 by the Globe and Mail, Canada's largest newspaper. The headline was: "How a Canadian website is being used to amplify the Kremlin's view of the world."

"What once appeared to be a relatively harmless online refuge for conspiracy theorists is now seen by NATO's information warfare specialists as a link in a concerted effort to undermine the credibility of mainstream Western media – as well as the North American and European public's trust in government and public institutions," the Globe and Mail reported.

"Global Research is viewed by NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence – or StratCom – as playing a key accelerant role in helping popularize articles with little basis in fact that also happen to fit the narratives being pushed by the Kremlin, in particular, and the Assad regime." The website never knew it had such powers. I've not agreed with everything I've read on the site. But it is a useful clearinghouse for alternative media. Numerous Consortium News articles are republished there, including a handful of mine. But the site's typical sharing and reposting on the Internet is seen by NATO as a plot to undermine the Free World.

"It uses that reach to push not only its own opinion pieces, but 'news' reports from little-known websites that regularly carry dubious or false information," the he Globe and Mail reported. " At times, the site's regular variety of international-affairs stories is replaced with a flurry of items that bolster dubious reportage with a series of opinion pieces, promoted on social media and retweeted and shared by active bots."

The newspaper continued, "'That way, they increase the Google ranking of the story and create the illusion of multi-source verification,' said Donara Barojan, who does digital forensic research for [StratCom]. But she said she did not yet have proof that Global Research is connected to any government."

This sort of smear is nothing more than a blatant attack on free speech by the most powerful military alliance in the world, based on the unfounded conviction that Russia is a fundamental force for evil and that anyone who has contacts with Russia or shares even a part of its multilateral world view is suspect.

Such tactics are spreading to Europe. La Repubblica newspaper in Italy wrote a similar hit piece against L'Antidiplomatico, a dissident website. And the European Union is spending €3.8 million to counter Russian "propaganda." It is targeting Eurosceptic politicians who repeat what they hear on Russian media.

High-profile individuals in the U.S. are also now in the crosshairs of the neo-McCarthyite witch hunt. On Nov. 25 The Washington Post ran a nasty hit piece on Washington Capitals' hockey player Alex Ovechkin, one of the most revered sports figures in the Washington area, simply because he, like 86 percent of other Russians , supports his president.

"Alex Ovechkin is one of Putin's biggest fans. The question is, why?" ran the headline. The story insidiously implied that Ovechkin was a dupe of his own president, being used to set up a media campaign to support Putin, who is under fierce and relentless attack in the United States where Ovechkin plays professional ice hockey.

"He has given an unwavering endorsement to a man who U.S. intelligence agencies say sanctioned Russian meddling in last year's presidential election," write the Post reporters, once again showing their gullibility to U.S. intelligence agencies that have provided no proof for their assertions (and even admit that they are not asserting their opinion as fact).

Less prominent figures are targeted too. John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent who blew the whistle on torture and was jailed for it, was kicked off a panel in Europe on Nov. 10 by a Bernie Sanders supporter who refused to appear with Kiriakou because he co-hosts a show on Radio Sputnik .

At the end of November, Reporters Without Borders, an organization supposedly devoted to press freedom, tried to kick journalist Vanessa Beeley off a panel in Geneva to prevent her from presenting evidence that the White Helmets, a group that sells itself as a rescue organization inside rebel-controlled territory in Syria, has ties to Al Qaeda. The Swiss Press Club, which hosted the event, resisted the pressure and let Beeley speak.

But as a consequence the club director said its funding was slashed from the Swiss government.

Russia-gate's Hurdles

Much of this spreading mania and intensifying censorship traces back to Russia-gate. Yet, it remains remarkable that the corporate media has failed so far to prove any significant Russian interference in the U.S. election at all. Nor have the intelligence agencies, Congressional investigations and special prosecutor Robert Mueller. His criminal charges so far have been for financial crimes and lying to federal authorities on topics unrelated to any "collusion" between the Trump campaign and Russians to "hack" Democratic emails.

There will likely be more indictments from Mueller, even perhaps a complaint about Trump committing obstruction of justice because he said on TV that he fired Comey, in part, because of the "Russia thing." But Trump's clumsy reaction to the "scandal," which he calls "fake news" and a "witch hunt," still is not proof that Putin and the Russians interfered in the U.S. election to achieve the unlikely outcome of Trump's victory.

The Russia-gate faithful assured us to wait for the indictment of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, briefly Trump's national security adviser. But again there was nothing about pre-election "collusion," only charges that Flynn had lied to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador regarding policy matters during the presidential transition, i.e., after the election.

One of Flynn's conversations was about trying unsuccessfully to comply with an Israeli request to get Russia to block a United Nations resolution censuring Israel's settlements on Palestinian land.

As journalist Yasha Levine tweeted: "So the country that influenced US policy through Michael Flynn is Israel, not Russia. But Flynn did try to influence Russia, not the other way around. Ha-ha. This is the smoking gun? What a farce."

The media is becoming a victim of its own mania. In its zeal to push this story reporters are making a huge number of amateurish mistakes on stories that are later corrected. Brian Ross of ABC News was suspended for erroneously reporting that Trump had told Flynn to contact the Russians before the election, and not after.

There remain a number of key hurdles to prove the Russia-gate story. First, convincing evidence is needed that the Russian government indeed did "hack" the Democratic emails, both those of the DNC and Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta – and gave them to WikiLeaks. Then it must be linked somehow to the Trump campaign. If it were a Russian hack it would have been an intelligence operation on a need-to-know basis, and no one in the Trump team needed to know. It's not clear how any campaign member could have even helped with an overseas hack or could have been an intermediary to WikiLeaks.

There's also the question of how significant the release of those emails was anyway. They did provide evidence that the DNC tilted the primary campaign in favor of Clinton over Sanders; they exposed the contents of Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street, which she was trying to hide from the voters; and they revealed some pay-to-play features of the Clinton Foundation and its foreign donations. But – even if the Russians were involved in providing that information to the American people – those issues were not considered decisive in the campaign.

Clinton principally pinned her loss on FBI Director James Comey for closing and then reopening the investigation into her improper use of a private email server while Secretary of State. She also spread the blame to Russia (repeating the canard about "seventeen [U.S. intelligence] agencies, all in agreement"), Bernie Sanders, the inept DNC and other factors.

As for vaguer concerns about some Russian group "probably" buying $100,000 in ads, mostly after Americans had voted, as a factor in swaying a $6 billion election, it is too silly to contemplate.

That RT and Sputnik ran pieces critical of Hillary Clinton was their right, and they were hardly alone. RT and Sputnik 's reach in the U.S. is minuscule compared to Fox News , which slammed Clinton throughout the campaign, or for that matter, MSNBC, CNN and other mainstream news outlets, which often expressed open disdain for Republican Donald Trump but also gave extensive coverage to issues such as the security concerns about Clinton's private email server.

Another vague Russia-gate suspicion stemming largely from Steele's opposition research is that somehow Russia bribed or blackmailed Trump because of past business with Russians. But there are evidentiary and logical problems with these theories, since some lucrative deals fell through (and presumably wouldn't have if Trump was being paid off).

Some have questioned how Trump could have supported detente with Russia without being beholden to Moscow in some way. But Jeffrey Sommers, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, wrote a convincing essay explaining adviser Steve Bannon's influence on Trump's thinking about Russia and the need for cooperation between the two powers to solve international problems.

Without convincing evidence, I remain a Russia-gate skeptic. I am not defending Russia. Russia can defend itself. However, amid the growing censorship and the dangerous new McCarthyism, I am trying to defend America -- from itself.

An earlier version of this story appeared on Consortium News .

Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist. He has written for the Boston Globe, the Sunday Times of London and the Wall Street Journal among other newspapers. He is the author of How I Lost By Hillary Clinton published by OR Books in June 2017. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter at @unjoe .

Carlton Meyer , Website December 11, 2017 at 5:49 am GMT

"Breaking News" – CNN's Fake News Exposed -- Again!

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-suffered-its-most-humiliating-debacle-in-ages-now-refuses-all-transparency-over-what-happened/

AndrewR , December 11, 2017 at 6:40 am GMT
People believe what they want to. Evidence, or lack thereof, has little to do with it, so censorship, or lack thereof, is largely pointless.
El Dato , December 11, 2017 at 6:53 am GMT

But Huffington stepped down as editor in August 2016 and has nothing to do with the site now. It is run by Lydia Polgreen, a former New York Times reporter and editor, who evidently has very different ideas. In April, she completely redesigned the site and renamed it HuffPost.

Ah, so HuffPo is now a NYT vehicle.

jilles dykstra , December 11, 2017 at 7:34 am GMT
" It's a story as old as civilization: a wealthy and powerful elite fending off popular unrest by trying to contain knowledge of how the elite gain at the others' expense, at home and abroad. "

This is exactly what Howard Zinn writes. Alas it is the same at this side of the Atlantic. The British newspaper Guardian was independent, Soros bought it. Dutch official 'news' is just government propaganda.

But also most Dutch dicussion sites are severely biased, criticism of Israel is next to impossible. And of course the words 'populist' and 'extreme right' are propaganda words, used for those who oppose mainstream politics: EU, euro, globalisation, unlimited immigration, etc.

Despite all these measures and censorship, including self censorship, dissident political parties grow stronger and stronger. One could see this in the French presidential elections, one sees it in Germany where AfD now is in parliament, the Reichstag, one sees it in Austria, where the nationalist party got about half the votes, one sees it in countries as Poland and Hungary, that want to keep their cultures. And of course there is Brexit 'we want our country back'.

In the Netherlands the in October 2016 founded party FvD, Forum for Democracy, got two seats in the last elections, but polls show that if now elections were held, it would have some fourteen seats in our parliament of 150. The present ruling coalition, led by Rutte, has very narrow margins, both in parliament and what here is called Eerste Kamer.
Parliament maybe can be seen as House, Eerste Kamer as Senate. There is a good chance that at the next Eerste Kamer elections FvD will be able to end the reign of Rutte, who is, in my opinion, just Chairman of the Advance Rutte Foundation, and of course a stiff supporter of Merkel and Brussels. Now that the end of Merkel is at the horizon, I'm curious how Rutte will manoevre.

Grandpa Charlie , December 11, 2017 at 7:42 am GMT

"The viewpoints of Iranians, Palestinians, Russians, North Koreans and others are never fully reported in the Western media although the supposed mission of journalism is to help citizens understand a frighteningly complex world from multiple points of view" -- Joe Lauria

Lauria's article is an excellent review of the hydra-headed MSM perversion of political journalism in this era of the PATRIOT Act, with special focus on 2016-2017. With one small exception that still is worth noting. Namely the inclusion of "North Koreans" along with Palestinians, Russians and Iranians as those whose viewpoints are never represented in the Western media.

It"s true, of course, that the viewpoints of North Koreans go unreported in MSM, but that's hardly the "whole truth and nothing but the truth." The problems confronting any journalist who might endeavor to report on public opinion in North Korea are incomparably more difficult than the problems confronting attempts to report on public opinion in Iran, in Russia or in Palestine. These three "theaters" -- so to speak –each with its own challenges, no doubt, should never be conflated with the severe realities of censorship and even forceful thought policing in North Korea.

Anonymous , Disclaimer December 11, 2017 at 9:32 am GMT

Despite this support from independent media, a senior official at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, I learned, declined to take up my cause because he believes in the Russia-gate story. I also learned that a senior officer at the American Civil Liberties Union rejected my case because he too believes in Russia-gate. Both of these serious organizations were set up precisely to defend individuals in such situations on principle, not preference.

I'm not even sure that they believe in Russia-gate. This could easily be cowardice or corruption. The globalists have poured untold millions into "fixing" the Internet wrongthink so it's only natural that we're seeing results. I'm seeing "grassroots" shilling everywhere, for instance.

This is not going to work for them. You can't force consent of the governed. The more you squeeze, the more sand slips through your fingers.

Vlad , December 11, 2017 at 10:12 am GMT
Thank you for your steadfastness, honesty, courage and determination.
cowardly troll , December 11, 2017 at 11:31 am GMT
It is worse than censorship. History, via web searches, are being deleted. Now, you have no hint what is missing. Example, in 1999 I read an article in a weekly tech newspaper – maybe Information Week – about university researchers who discovered that 64 bit encrypted phones were only using the first 56 bits and the last 8 were zeros. They suspected that the US government was responsible. Cannot find any reference to that online.
Jim Bob Lassiter , December 11, 2017 at 12:54 pm GMT
Joe Lauria may very well be a "victim", but certainly not one that I would parade around as some USDA table grade poster child victim of really egregious reprisals. He's a veteran in the establishment MSM milieu and certainly knew what kind of a shit bird operation it is that he chose to attempt to publish his piece in.

Oh, lest I forget to mention, he didn't lose his livelihood, get ejected from his gym, have his country club membership revoked, get banned from AirB&B ad nauseum.

Che Guava , December 11, 2017 at 2:19 pm GMT
It is an interesting article. I am curious about the '17 intellience agencies' thing, CIA, FBI, NSA, army and navy intel units, well that is making five or so. The latter two would likely having no connection with checking the 'Russia was hacking the election', likewise, air force sigint (which they obviously need and have). So, a list from a poster who is expert on the topic, what are the seventeen agencies which were agreeing on vicious Vlad having 'hacked' poor Hillary's campaign?

Is anybody knowing? This is a very real, good, and serious question, from me, and have not seeing it before. Can anybody producing a list of the seventeen agencies? Parodic replies welcome, but it would be of interest to many if somebody could making a list of the seventeen lurching about in Hillary's addled mind.

jack ryan , Website December 11, 2017 at 2:24 pm GMT
We're witnessing a huge closing of the American Liberal secular mind. There used to be secular liberal hard copy magazines like the Atlantic Magazine that published intelligent well written articles and commentary about foreign affairs, immigration, Islam from a principled secular, Liberal perspective – especially in the early 1990s. That's pretty much gone now as The Atlantic is mostly just a blog that puts out the party line. There are still, thankfully a few exceptions like

Graeme Wood's "What ISIS Really Wants" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

The Atlantic Magazine still allows a lot of free speech in the comment section, except in cases like articles written by the Ta-Nehisi Coates.

We try to use humor to deflate the humorless PC Lib Left thought police and the go alongs to get along in the Cuckservative, Conservative Inc.

Here's one of our/Farstar cartoons just noticing that too many people are just parroting CNN nonsense about Russian conspiracies.

http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2017/06/16/farstar-returns-parroting-the-tv-the-russians-are-behind-everything/jpg-parrot/

Ilyana_Rozumova , December 11, 2017 at 3:01 pm GMT
Bias MSM. Censorship. These are affirmative sins of insecurity eventually leading to desperation, resulting in dictatorship.
Joe Hide , December 11, 2017 at 4:06 pm GMT
Your article seemed otherwise good, but lacked any humor early on to keep me reading. After all, it is 6000 words! I have a job, family, obligations, other readings, and only so much thinking energy in a day. I think You might try shortening such articles to maybe 2000 – 3000 words? Like I said though, You did present some good ideas.
Julius n' Ethel , December 11, 2017 at 4:27 pm GMT
Mark James' modified limited hangout shows us the true purpose of his ICCPR-illegal statist war propaganda. James candidly jettisons Hillary, acknowledging the obvious, that she was the more repulsive choice in this duel of the titans. But James is still hanging on to the crucial residual message of the CIA line: Putin tripleplus bad.

Without factual support James calls Putin an organized criminal. US NGO staff who have actually dealt with Putin characterize him as a strict legalist. In fact, Putin's incorruptibility is what drives CIA up the wall. Ask any upper-echelon spook. Putin's cupidity deficit short-circuits CIA's go-to subversion method, massive bribes. Putin has an uneasy relationship with the kleptocrats CIA installed while their puppet Yeltsin staggered around blind drunk. But Putin has materially curbed kleptocratic corruption and subversion. Russians appreciate that.

James fantasizes that Putin is going to get ousted and murdered. However Putin has public approval that US politicians couldn't dream of. This is because Russia's government meets world human rights standards that the US fails to meet. The Russian government complies with the Paris Principles, world standard for institutionalized human rights protection under expert international review. The USA does not. The USA is simply not is Russia's league with respect to universally-acknowledged rights.

James can easily verify this by comparing the US human-rights deficiencies to corresponding Russian reviews, point-by-point, based on each article of the core human rights conventions.

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Indicators/Pages/HRIndicatorsIndex.aspx

Comprehensive international human rights review shows that the USA is not in Russia's league. Look at the maps if you can't be bothered to read the particulars – they put the US in an underdeveloped backwater with headchopping Arab princelings and a couple African presidents-for-life. CIA's INGSOC fixation on Putin is intended to divert your attention from the objectively superior human-rights performance of the Russian government as a whole, and the USA's failure and disgrace in public in Geneva, front of the whole world.

How did this happen? Turns out, dismantling the USSR did Russia a world of good. Now we see it's time to take the USA apart and do the same for America. That's the origin of the panic you can smell on the CIA regime.

Don Bacon , December 11, 2017 at 4:41 pm GMT
There is censorship on blogs.
> I have been banned from The Atlantic blog for correcting a noted anti-Iran blogger.
> I have been banned from the National Interest blog for highlighting Pentagon's acquisition problems.
> I have been banned by Facebook for declaring that females don't belong in the infantry. I "violated community standards" with my opinion which was based somewhat on my time in the infantry, which my PC critic probably lacked.
jilles dykstra , December 11, 2017 at 5:53 pm GMT
@Don Bacon

In hindsight I wish I would have made a list of sites where I was banned, some of them several times. In the USA Washpost and Christian Science Monitor, both sites were abolished, I suppose because censorship and banning became too expensive.

In UK War Without End was was one of the very few sites where was no censorship, UK laws forced the owner to close down. The site was near impossible to hack, the owner had a hand built interface in Linux between incoming messages and the site itself. At present there is not one more or less serious Dutch site where I can write.

On top of that, most Dutch sites no longer exist, especially those operated by newspapers.

It seems to be the same in Germany. The German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, he died maybe a year ago, he worked long for the prestigious newspaper FAZ, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote a book about bought journalism. His explanation for the disappearence of discussion sites with newspapers is that the journalists discovered that the reactions got far more attention than the articles. Very annoying, of course. With us here, Follow The Money, and The Post Online behave as childish as German newspapers.

Alden , December 11, 2017 at 5:57 pm GMT
@Jim Bob Lassiter

Your post is exactly what I wanted to write. Saved me the effort. I figured out the MSM was nothing but lies around 1966. I have no sympathy for any MSM journalist.

Greg Bacon , Website December 11, 2017 at 6:12 pm GMT
Wouldn't it be scary if a nation's central bank was controlled and run by a group pretending to be loyal to their host nation, but was actually in league with a nation that was trying to gobble up huge chunks of ME land, doing this by controlling the host nation's media outlets, and forever posting psyop stories and actual lies to support the land thefts?

And if that same central bank would give out loans -- that never get repaid -- to the same ethnic gangsters that would then would use those loans to buy up over 90% of the host nations MSM outlets to forever ensure that a steady drip, drip, drip of propaganda went into the host nation's residents, ever so slowly turning them into mindless sheep always bleating for more wars to help the ethnic gangsters steal their way to an Eretz state?

Yes, it would be scary to live in a tyrant state like that.

Anon , Disclaimer December 12, 2017 at 1:02 am GMT

Reminds me of a contemporary Russian joke: "Everything communists told us about socialism turned out to be a lie. However, everything they told us about capitalism is perfectly true".

[Dec 11, 2017] How Russia-gate Met the Magnitsky Myth by Robert Parry

Highly recommended!
Looks like Browder was connected to MI6. That means that intellignece agances participated in economic rape of Russia That's explains a lot, including his change of citizenship from US to UK. He wanted better protection.
Notable quotes:
"... The Russian lawyer, Natalie Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump Jr. and other advisers to Donald Trump Sr.'s campaign, represented a company that had run afoul of a U.S. investigation into money-laundering allegedly connected to the Magnitsky case and his death in a Russian prison in 2009. His death sparked a campaign spearheaded by Browder, who used his wealth and clout to lobby the U.S. Congress in 2012 to enact the Magnitsky Act to punish alleged human rights abusers in Russia. The law became what might be called the first shot in the New Cold War. ..."
"... Despite Russian denials – and the "dog ate my homework" quality of Browder's self-serving narrative – the dramatic tale became a cause celebre in the West. The story eventually attracted the attention of Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, a known critic of President Vladimir Putin. Nekrasov decided to produce a docu-drama that would present Browder's narrative to a wider public. Nekrasov even said he hoped that he might recruit Browder as the narrator of the tale. ..."
"... Nekrasov discovered that a woman working in Browder's company was the actual whistleblower and that Magnitsky – rather than a crusading lawyer – was an accountant who was implicated in the scheme. ..."
"... Ultimately, Nekrasov completes his extraordinary film – entitled "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes" – and it was set for a premiere at the European Parliament in Brussels in April 2016. However, at the last moment – faced with Browder's legal threats – the parliamentarians pulled the plug. Nekrasov encountered similar resistance in the United States, a situation that, in part, brought Natalie Veselnitskaya into this controversy. ..."
"... That was when she turned to promoter Rob Goldstone to set up a meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. To secure the sit-down on June 9, 2016, Goldstone dangled the prospect that Veselnitskaya had some derogatory financial information from the Russian government about Russians supporting the Democratic National Committee. Trump Jr. jumped at the possibility and brought senior Trump campaign advisers, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, along. ..."
"... By all accounts, Veselnitskaya had little or nothing to offer about the DNC and turned the conversation instead to the Magnitsky Act and Putin's retaliatory measure to the sanctions, canceling a program in which American parents adopted Russian children. One source told me that Veselnitskaya also wanted to enhance her stature in Russia with the boast that she had taken a meeting at Trump Tower with Trump's son. ..."
"... But another goal of Veselnitskaya's U.S. trip was to participate in an effort to give Americans a chance to see Nekrasov's blacklisted documentary. She traveled to Washington in the days after her Trump Tower meeting and attended a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, according to The Washington Post. ..."
"... There were hopes to show the documentary to members of Congress but the offer was rebuffed. Instead a room was rented at the Newseum near Capitol Hill. Browder's lawyers. who had successfully intimidated the European Parliament, also tried to strong arm the Newseum, but its officials responded that they were only renting out a room and that they had allowed other controversial presentations in the past. ..."
"... Their stand wasn't exactly a profile in courage. "We're not going to allow them not to show the film," said Scott Williams, the chief operating officer of the Newseum. "We often have people renting for events that other people would love not to have happen." ..."
"... So, Nekrasov's documentary got a one-time showing with Veselnitskaya reportedly in attendance and with a follow-up discussion moderated by journalist Seymour Hersh. However, except for that audience, the public of the United States and Europe has been essentially shielded from the documentary's discoveries, all the better for the Magnitsky myth to retain its power as a seminal propaganda moment of the New Cold War. ..."
"... Over the past year, we have seen a growing hysteria about "Russian propaganda" and "fake news" with The New York Times and other major news outlets eagerly awaiting algorithms that can be unleashed on the Internet to eradicate information that groups like Google's First Draft Coalition deem "false." ..."
"... First Draft consists of the Times, the Post, other mainstream outlets, and establishment-approved online news sites, such as Bellingcat with links to the pro-NATO think tank, Atlantic Council. First Draft's job will be to serve as a kind of Ministry of Truth and thus shield the public from information that is deemed propaganda or untrue. ..."
"... From searches that I did on Wednesday, Nekrasov's film was not available on Amazon although a pro-Magnitsky documentary was. I did find a streaming service that appeared to have the film available. ..."
"... Why are so many people–corporate executives, governments, journalists, politicians–afraid of William Browder? Why isn't Andrei Nekrasov's film available via digital versatile disk, for sale on line? Mr. Parry, why can't you find it? Oh, wait: You did! Heaven forbid we, your readers, should screen it. Since you, too, are helping keep that film a big fat secret at least give us a few clues as to where we can find it. Throw us a bone! Thank you. ..."
"... Hysterical agit-prop troll insists that world trembles in fear of "genuine American hero" William Browder. John McCain in 2012 was too busy trembling to notice that Browder had given up his US citizenship in 1998 in order to better profit from the Russian financial crisis. ..."
"... Abe – and to escape U.S. taxes. ..."
"... Excellent report and analysis. Thanks for timely reminder regarding the Magitsky story and the fascinating background regarding Andrei Nekrasov's film, in particular its metamorphosis and subsequent aggressive suppression. Both of those factors render the film a particular credibility and wish on my part to view it. ..."
"... I am beginning to feel more and more like the citizens of the old USSR, who, were to my recollection and understanding back in the 50's and 60's:. Longing to read and hear facts suppressed by the communist state, dependent upon the Voice of America and underground news sources within the Soviet Union for the truth. RU, Consortium news, et. al. seem somewhat a parallel, and 1984 not so distant. ..."
"... Last night, After watching Max Boot self destruct on Tucker Carlson, i was inspired to watch episode 2 of The Putin Interviews. I felt enlightened. If only the Establishment Media could turn from promoting its agenda of shaping and suppressing the news into accurately reporting it. ..."
"... Media corruption is not so new. Yellow journalism around the turn of the 19th century, took us into a progression of wars. The War to End All Wars didn't. Blame the munitions makers and the Military Industrial Complex if you will, but a corrupt medial, at the very least enabled a progression of wars over the last 120 or so years. ..."
"... Nekrasov, though he's a Putin critic, is a genuine hero in this instance. He ulitimately put his preconceptions aside and took the story where it truly led him. Nekrasov deserves boatloads of praise for his handling of Browder and his final documentary film product. ..."
"... "[Veselnitskaya] traveled to Washington in the days after her Trump Tower meeting and attended a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, according to The Washington Post." The other day I saw photos of her sitting right behind Amb. McFaul in some past hearing. How did she get a seat on the front row? ..."
"... "The approach taken by Brennan's task force in assessing Russia and its president seems eerily reminiscent of the analytical blinders that hampered the U.S. intelligence community when it came to assessing the objectives and intent of Saddam Hussein and his inner leadership regarding weapons of mass destruction. The Russia NIA notes, 'Many of the key judgments rely on a body of reporting from multiple sources that are consistent with our understanding of Russian behavior.' There is no better indication of a tendency toward 'group think' than that statement. ..."
"... "The acknowledged deficit on the part of the U.S. intelligence community of fact-driven insight into the specifics of Russian presidential decision-making, and the nature of Vladimir Putin as an individual in general, likewise seems problematic. The U.S. intelligence community was hard wired into pre-conceived notions about how and what Saddam Hussein would think and decide, and as such remained blind to the fact that he would order the totality of his weapons of mass destruction to be destroyed in the summer of 1991, or that he could be telling the truth when later declaring that Iraq was free of WMD. ..."
"... Magnitsky Act in Canada has been based on made-up `facts` as Globe & Mail reporting proves. Not news, but deepens my concern about Canada following the Cold War without examination. ..."
"... Bill Browder's grandfather was Earl Browder, leader of the CPUSA from the the late 30s to late 40s. His father was also a communist. Bill jr parlayed those connections with the Soviet apparatchiks to gain a foothold in looting Russia of its state assets during the 1990s. No he was not a communist but neither were the leaders of the Soviet Union at the time of its dissolution (in name yes, but in fact not). ..."
"... I've also heard that it was the Jewish commissars who, when the USSR fell apart, rushed off to grab everything they could (with the help of outside Jewish money) and became the Russian oligarchs we hear about today. This is probably what Britton is getting at: "His father has a communist past." You go from running the government to owning it. Anti-Putin because Putin put a stop to them. ..."
"... backwardsevolution: I worked with a Soviet emigre engineer – Jewish – on the same project in an Engineering design and construction company during early 1990's. He immigrated with his family around 1991. In Soviet Union, there being no private financial institutions or lawyers so to speak , many Jews went into science and engineering. A very interesting person, we were close work place friends. His elder brother had stayed behind back in Russia. His brother was in Moscow and involved in this plunder going on there. He used to tell me all these hair raising first hand stories about what was going on in Russia during that time. All the plunder flowed into the Western Countries. ..."
"... I have read all the comments up to yours you have told it like it was in Russia in those years. Browder was the king of the crooks looting Russia. ..."
"... I remember reading Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine," but I just could not get through the chapter on the USSR falling apart. I started reading it, but I didn't want to finish it (and I didn't) because it just made me angry. The West was too unfair! Russia was asking for help, but instead the West just looted. I'd say that Russia was very lucky to have someone like Putin clean it up. ..."
"... The Canadian Minister Chrysta Freeland met with William Brawder in Davos a few months ago " -- Birds of a feather flock together. Mrs. Chrystal Freeland has a very interesting background for which she is very proud of: her granddad was a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator denounced by Jewish investigators: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/27/a-nazi-skeleton-in-the-family-closet/ ..."
Jul 13, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Exclusive: A documentary debunking the Magnitsky myth, which was an opening salvo in the New Cold War, was largely blocked from viewing in the West but has now become a factor in Russia-gate, reports Robert Parry.

Near the center of the current furor over Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 is a documentary that almost no one in the West has been allowed to see, a film that flips the script on the story of the late Sergei Magnitsky and his employer, hedge-fund operator William Browder.

The Russian lawyer, Natalie Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump Jr. and other advisers to Donald Trump Sr.'s campaign, represented a company that had run afoul of a U.S. investigation into money-laundering allegedly connected to the Magnitsky case and his death in a Russian prison in 2009. His death sparked a campaign spearheaded by Browder, who used his wealth and clout to lobby the U.S. Congress in 2012 to enact the Magnitsky Act to punish alleged human rights abusers in Russia. The law became what might be called the first shot in the New Cold War.

According to Browder's narrative, companies ostensibly under his control had been hijacked by corrupt Russian officials in furtherance of a $230 million tax-fraud scheme; he then dispatched his "lawyer" Magnitsky to investigate and – after supposedly uncovering evidence of the fraud – Magnitsky blew the whistle only to be arrested by the same corrupt officials who then had him locked up in prison where he died of heart failure from physical abuse.

Despite Russian denials – and the "dog ate my homework" quality of Browder's self-serving narrative – the dramatic tale became a cause celebre in the West. The story eventually attracted the attention of Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, a known critic of President Vladimir Putin. Nekrasov decided to produce a docu-drama that would present Browder's narrative to a wider public. Nekrasov even said he hoped that he might recruit Browder as the narrator of the tale.

However, the project took an unexpected turn when Nekrasov's research kept turning up contradictions to Browder's storyline, which began to look more and more like a corporate cover story. Nekrasov discovered that a woman working in Browder's company was the actual whistleblower and that Magnitsky – rather than a crusading lawyer – was an accountant who was implicated in the scheme.

So, the planned docudrama suddenly was transformed into a documentary with a dramatic reversal as Nekrasov struggles with what he knows will be a dangerous decision to confront Browder with what appear to be deceptions. In the film, you see Browder go from a friendly collaborator into an angry adversary who tries to bully Nekrasov into backing down.

Blocked Premiere

Ultimately, Nekrasov completes his extraordinary film – entitled "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes" – and it was set for a premiere at the European Parliament in Brussels in April 2016. However, at the last moment – faced with Browder's legal threats – the parliamentarians pulled the plug. Nekrasov encountered similar resistance in the United States, a situation that, in part, brought Natalie Veselnitskaya into this controversy.

Film director Andrei Nekrasov, who produced "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes."

As a lawyer defending Prevezon, a real-estate company registered in Cyprus, on a money-laundering charge, she was dealing with U.S. prosecutors in New York City and, in that role, became an advocate for lifting the U.S. sanctions, The Washington Post reported.

That was when she turned to promoter Rob Goldstone to set up a meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. To secure the sit-down on June 9, 2016, Goldstone dangled the prospect that Veselnitskaya had some derogatory financial information from the Russian government about Russians supporting the Democratic National Committee. Trump Jr. jumped at the possibility and brought senior Trump campaign advisers, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, along.

By all accounts, Veselnitskaya had little or nothing to offer about the DNC and turned the conversation instead to the Magnitsky Act and Putin's retaliatory measure to the sanctions, canceling a program in which American parents adopted Russian children. One source told me that Veselnitskaya also wanted to enhance her stature in Russia with the boast that she had taken a meeting at Trump Tower with Trump's son.

But another goal of Veselnitskaya's U.S. trip was to participate in an effort to give Americans a chance to see Nekrasov's blacklisted documentary. She traveled to Washington in the days after her Trump Tower meeting and attended a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, according to The Washington Post.

There were hopes to show the documentary to members of Congress but the offer was rebuffed. Instead a room was rented at the Newseum near Capitol Hill. Browder's lawyers. who had successfully intimidated the European Parliament, also tried to strong arm the Newseum, but its officials responded that they were only renting out a room and that they had allowed other controversial presentations in the past.

Their stand wasn't exactly a profile in courage. "We're not going to allow them not to show the film," said Scott Williams, the chief operating officer of the Newseum. "We often have people renting for events that other people would love not to have happen."

In an article about the controversy in June 2016, The New York Times added that "A screening at the Newseum is especially controversial because it could attract lawmakers or their aides." Heaven forbid!

One-Time Showing

So, Nekrasov's documentary got a one-time showing with Veselnitskaya reportedly in attendance and with a follow-up discussion moderated by journalist Seymour Hersh. However, except for that audience, the public of the United States and Europe has been essentially shielded from the documentary's discoveries, all the better for the Magnitsky myth to retain its power as a seminal propaganda moment of the New Cold War.

Financier William Browder (right) with Magnitsky's widow and son, along with European parliamentarians.

After the Newseum presentation, a Washington Post editorial branded Nekrasov's documentary Russian "agit-prop" and sought to discredit Nekrasov without addressing his many documented examples of Browder's misrepresenting both big and small facts in the case. Instead, the Post accused Nekrasov of using "facts highly selectively" and insinuated that he was merely a pawn in the Kremlin's "campaign to discredit Mr. Browder and the Magnitsky Act."

The Post also misrepresented the structure of the film by noting that it mixed fictional scenes with real-life interviews and action, a point that was technically true but willfully misleading because the fictional scenes were from Nekrasov's original idea for a docu-drama that he shows as part of explaining his evolution from a believer in Browder's self-exculpatory story to a skeptic. But the Post's deception is something that almost no American would realize because almost no one got to see the film.

The Post concluded smugly: "The film won't grab a wide audience, but it offers yet another example of the Kremlin's increasingly sophisticated efforts to spread its illiberal values and mind-set abroad. In the European Parliament and on French and German television networks, showings were put off recently after questions were raised about the accuracy of the film, including by Magnitsky's family.

"We don't worry that Mr. Nekrasov's film was screened here, in an open society. But it is important that such slick spin be fully exposed for its twisted story and sly deceptions."

The Post's gleeful editorial had the feel of something you might read in a totalitarian society where the public only hears about dissent when the Official Organs of the State denounce some almost unknown person for saying something that almost no one heard.

New Paradigm

The Post's satisfaction that Nekrasov's documentary would not draw a large audience represents what is becoming a new paradigm in U.S. mainstream journalism, the idea that it is the media's duty to protect the American people from seeing divergent narratives on sensitive geopolitical issues.

Over the past year, we have seen a growing hysteria about "Russian propaganda" and "fake news" with The New York Times and other major news outlets eagerly awaiting algorithms that can be unleashed on the Internet to eradicate information that groups like Google's First Draft Coalition deem "false."

First Draft consists of the Times, the Post, other mainstream outlets, and establishment-approved online news sites, such as Bellingcat with links to the pro-NATO think tank, Atlantic Council. First Draft's job will be to serve as a kind of Ministry of Truth and thus shield the public from information that is deemed propaganda or untrue.

In the meantime, there is the ad hoc approach that was applied to Nekrasov's documentary. Having missed the Newseum showing, I was only able to view the film because I was given a special password to an online version.

From searches that I did on Wednesday, Nekrasov's film was not available on Amazon although a pro-Magnitsky documentary was. I did find a streaming service that appeared to have the film available.

But the Post's editors were right in their expectation that "The film won't grab a wide audience." Instead, it has become a good example of how political and legal pressure can effectively black out what we used to call "the other side of the story." The film now, however, has unexpectedly become a factor in the larger drama of Russia-gate and the drive to remove Donald Trump Sr. from the White House.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

Joseph A. Haran, Jr. , July 13, 2017 at 2:13 pm

Why are so many people–corporate executives, governments, journalists, politicians–afraid of William Browder? Why isn't Andrei Nekrasov's film available via digital versatile disk, for sale on line? Mr. Parry, why can't you find it? Oh, wait: You did! Heaven forbid we, your readers, should screen it. Since you, too, are helping keep that film a big fat secret at least give us a few clues as to where we can find it. Throw us a bone! Thank you.

Rob Roy , July 13, 2017 at 2:45 pm

Parry isn't keeping the film viewing a secret. He was given a private password and perhaps can get permission to let the readers here have it. It isn't up to Parry himself but rather to the person(s) who have the rights to the password. I've come across this problem before.

ToivoS , July 13, 2017 at 4:01 pm

Parry wrote: I did find a streaming service that appeared to have the film available.

Any link?? I am willing to buy it.

Lisa , July 13, 2017 at 6:28 pm

This may not be of much help, as the film is dubbed in Russian. If you want to look for the Russian versions on the internet, search for: "????? ?????? ????????? "????? ???????????. ?? ????????"

https://my.mail.ru/bk/n-osetrova/video/71/18682.html?time=155&from=videoplayer

I'll keep looking for the film with translation into some other language.

Lisa , July 13, 2017 at 6:31 pm

Sorry, the Russian text did not appear. Try with latin alphabet: Film Andreia Nekrasova "Zakon Magnitskogo. Za kulisami"

Lisa , July 13, 2017 at 6:45 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d1ylakLMNU

This is the same dubbed version, on youtube.

Abe , July 13, 2017 at 5:21 pm

Hysterical agit-prop troll insists that world trembles in fear of "genuine American hero" William Browder. John McCain in 2012 was too busy trembling to notice that Browder had given up his US citizenship in 1998 in order to better profit from the Russian financial crisis.

backwardsevolution , July 13, 2017 at 5:51 pm

Abe – and to escape U.S. taxes.

incontinent reader , July 13, 2017 at 6:24 pm

Well stated.

Vincent Castigliola , July 13, 2017 at 2:38 pm

Mr. Parry,

Excellent report and analysis. Thanks for timely reminder regarding the Magitsky story and the fascinating background regarding Andrei Nekrasov's film, in particular its metamorphosis and subsequent aggressive suppression. Both of those factors render the film a particular credibility and wish on my part to view it.

Is there any chance you can share information regarding a means of accessing the forbidden film?

I am beginning to feel more and more like the citizens of the old USSR, who, were to my recollection and understanding back in the 50's and 60's:. Longing to read and hear facts suppressed by the communist state, dependent upon the Voice of America and underground news sources within the Soviet Union for the truth. RU, Consortium news, et. al. seem somewhat a parallel, and 1984 not so distant.

Last night, After watching Max Boot self destruct on Tucker Carlson, i was inspired to watch episode 2 of The Putin Interviews. I felt enlightened. If only the Establishment Media could turn from promoting its agenda of shaping and suppressing the news into accurately reporting it.

Media corruption is not so new. Yellow journalism around the turn of the 19th century, took us into a progression of wars. The War to End All Wars didn't. Blame the munitions makers and the Military Industrial Complex if you will, but a corrupt medial, at the very least enabled a progression of wars over the last 120 or so years.

Demonizing other countries is bad enough, but wilfully ignoring the potential for a nuclear war to end not only war, but life as we know it, is appalling.

Anna , July 13, 2017 at 5:54 pm

"After watching Max Boot self destruct on Tucker Carlson "
Am I the only one who thinks that Max Boot should have been institutionalized for some time already? He is not well.

Vincent Castigliola , July 13, 2017 at 9:41 pm

Anna,
Perhaps Max can share a suite with John McCain. Sadly, the illness is widespread and sometimes seems to be in the majority. Neo con/lib both are adamant in finding enemies and imposing punishment.

Finding splinters, ignoring beams. Changing regimes everywhere. Making the world safe for Democracy. Unless a man they don't like get elected

Anna , July 14, 2017 at 9:31 am

Max Boot parents are Russain Jews who seemingly instilled in him a rabid hatred for everything Russian. The same is with Aperovitch, the CrowdStrike fraudster. The first Soviet (Bolshevik) government was 85% Jewish. Considering what happened to Russia under Bolsheviks, it seems that Russians are supremely tolerant people.

orwell , July 14, 2017 at 3:44 pm

Anna, Anti-Semitism will get you NOWHERE, and you should be ashamed of yourself for injecting such HATRED into the rational discussion here.

Cal , July 14, 2017 at 8:03 pm

Dear orwell

re Anna

Its not anti Semitic if its true .and its true he is a Russian Jew and its very obvious he hates Russia–as does the whole Jewish Zionist crowd in the US.

Kiza , July 15, 2017 at 1:02 am

orwell, I wonder why the truth always turns out to be so anti-semitic!?

Taras77 , July 13, 2017 at 11:17 pm

I hope you caught the preceding tucker interview with Ralph Peters, who says he is a retired us army LTC. He came off as completely deranged and hysterical. The two interviews back to back struck me as neo con desperation and panic. My respect for Tucker just went up for taking on these two wackos.

Zachary Smith , July 13, 2017 at 2:51 pm

The fact that the film is being suppressed by everybody is significant to me. I don't know a thing about the "facts" of the Magnitsky case, and a quick look at the results of a Google search suggests this film isn't going to be available to me unless I shell out some unknown amount of money.

If the producers want the film to be seen, perhaps they ought to release it for download to any interested parties for a nominal sum. This will mean they won't make any profit, but on the other hand they will be able to spit in the eyes of the censors.

Dan Mason , July 13, 2017 at 6:42 pm

I went searching the net for access to this film and found that I was blocked at every turn. I did find a few links which all seemed to go to the same destination which claimed to provide access once I registered with their site. I decided to avoid that route. I don't really have that much interest in the Magnitsky affair, but I do wonder why we are being denied access to information. Who has this kind of influence, and why are they so fearful. I'm really afraid that we already live in a largely hidden Orwellian world. Now where did I put that tin foil hat?

orwell , July 14, 2017 at 3:48 pm

The Orwellian World is NOT HIDDEN, it is clearly visible.

Drew Hunkins , July 13, 2017 at 2:53 pm

Nekrasov, though he's a Putin critic, is a genuine hero in this instance. He ulitimately put his preconceptions aside and took the story where it truly led him. Nekrasov deserves boatloads of praise for his handling of Browder and his final documentary film product.

backwardsevolution , July 13, 2017 at 3:30 pm

Drew – good comment. It's very hard to "turn", isn't it? I wonder if many people appreciate what it takes to do this. Easier to justify, turn a blind eye, but to actually stop, question, think, and then follow where the story leads you takes courage and strength.

BannanaBoat , July 13, 2017 at 6:12 pm

Especially when your bucking an aggressive billionaire.

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 1:49 am

BannanaBoat – that too!

Zim , July 13, 2017 at 3:11 pm

This is interesting:

"In December 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hillary Clinton opposed the Magnitsky Act while serving as secretary of state. Her opposition coincided with Bill Clinton giving a speech in Moscow for Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank! for which he was paid $500,000.

"Mr. Clinton also received a substantial payout in 2010 from Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank whose executives were at risk of being hurt by possible U.S. sanctions tied to a complex and controversial case of alleged corruption in Russia.

Members of Congress wrote to Mrs. Clinton in 2010 seeking to deny visas to people who had been implicated by Russian accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who was jailed and died in prison after he uncovered evidence of a large tax-refund fraud. William Browder, a foreign investor in Russia who had hired Mr. Magnitsky, alleged that the accountant had turned up evidence that Renaissance officials, among others, participated in the fraud."

The State Department opposed the sanctions bill at the time, as did the Russian government. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pushed Hillary Clinton to oppose the legislation during a meeting in St. Petersburg in June 2012, citing that U.S.-Russia relations would suffer as a result."

More: http://observer.com/2017/07/natalia-veselnitskaya-hillary-clinton-magnitsky-act/

Virginia , July 13, 2017 at 6:13 pm

Very interesting, Zim.

Bart in Virginia , July 13, 2017 at 3:15 pm

"[Veselnitskaya] traveled to Washington in the days after her Trump Tower meeting and attended a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, according to The Washington Post." The other day I saw photos of her sitting right behind Amb. McFaul in some past hearing. How did she get a seat on the front row?

Now I remember that Post editorial. I was one of only 20 commenters before they shut down comments. It was some heavy pearl clutching.

Cal , July 13, 2017 at 3:31 pm

WOW..excellent reporting.

BobH , July 13, 2017 at 3:35 pm

nice backgrounder for an ever evolving story censorship is censorship by any other name!

BobH , July 13, 2017 at 3:38 pm

afterthought couldn't the film be shown on RT America?

Kiza , July 15, 2017 at 1:11 am

Would that not enable Bowder's employees online to claim that this documentary is Russian state propaganda, which it obviously is not because it would have been made available for free everywhere already just like RT. I believe that Nekrasov does not like RT and RT probably still does not like Nekrasov. The point of RT has never been the truth then the alternative point of view, as they advertised: Audi alteram partem.

Abe , July 13, 2017 at 3:41 pm

"The approach taken by Brennan's task force in assessing Russia and its president seems eerily reminiscent of the analytical blinders that hampered the U.S. intelligence community when it came to assessing the objectives and intent of Saddam Hussein and his inner leadership regarding weapons of mass destruction. The Russia NIA notes, 'Many of the key judgments rely on a body of reporting from multiple sources that are consistent with our understanding of Russian behavior.' There is no better indication of a tendency toward 'group think' than that statement.

Moreover, when one reflects on the fact much of this 'body of reporting' was shoehorned after the fact into an analytical premise predicated on a single source of foreign-provided intelligence, that statement suddenly loses much of its impact.

"The acknowledged deficit on the part of the U.S. intelligence community of fact-driven insight into the specifics of Russian presidential decision-making, and the nature of Vladimir Putin as an individual in general, likewise seems problematic. The U.S. intelligence community was hard wired into pre-conceived notions about how and what Saddam Hussein would think and decide, and as such remained blind to the fact that he would order the totality of his weapons of mass destruction to be destroyed in the summer of 1991, or that he could be telling the truth when later declaring that Iraq was free of WMD.

'President Putin has repeatedly and vociferously denied any Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Those who cite the findings of the Russia NIA as indisputable proof to the contrary, however, dismiss this denial out of hand. And yet nowhere in the Russia NIA is there any evidence that those who prepared it conducted anything remotely resembling the kind of 'analysis of alternatives' mandated by the ODNI when it comes to analytic standards used to prepare intelligence community assessments and estimates. Nor is there any evidence that the CIA's vaunted 'Red Cell' was approached to provide counterintuitive assessments of premises such as 'What if President Putin is telling the truth?'

'Throughout its history, the NIC has dealt with sources of information that far exceeded any sensitivity that might attach to Brennan's foreign intelligence source. The NIC had two experts that it could have turned to oversee a project like the Russia NIA!the NIO for Cyber Issues, and the Mission Manager of the Russian and Eurasia Mission Center; logic dictates that both should have been called upon, given the subject matter overlap between cyber intrusion and Russian intent.

'The excuse that Brennan's source was simply too sensitive to be shared with these individuals, and the analysts assigned to them, is ludicrous!both the NIO for cyber issues and the CIA's mission manager for Russia and Eurasia are cleared to receive the most highly classified intelligence and, moreover, are specifically mandated to oversee projects such as an investigation into Russian meddling in the American electoral process.

'President Trump has come under repeated criticism for his perceived slighting of the U.S. intelligence community in repeatedly citing the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction intelligence failure when downplaying intelligence reports, including the Russia NIA, about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Adding insult to injury, the president's most recent comments were made on foreign soil (Poland), on the eve of his first meeting with President Putin, at the G-20 Conference in Hamburg, Germany, where the issue of Russian meddling was the first topic on the agenda.

"The politics of the wisdom of the timing and location of such observations aside, the specific content of the president's statements appear factually sound."

Throwing a Curveball at 'Intelligence Community Consensus' on Russia By Scott Ritter http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/did-17-intelligence-agencies-really-come-to-consensus-on-russia/

Joe Tedesky , July 13, 2017 at 4:13 pm

Thanks Abe once again, for providing us with news which will never be printed or aired in our MSM. Brennan may ignore the NIC, as Congress and the Executive Branch constantly avoid paying attention to the GAO. Why even have these agencies, if our leaders aren't going to listen them?

Virginia , July 13, 2017 at 6:16 pm

Abe, I'm always amazed at how much you know. Thank you for sharing. If you have your comments in article form or on a site where they can be shared, I'd really like to know about it. I've tried, but I garble the many points you make when trying to explain historical events you've told us about.

Skip Scott , July 14, 2017 at 9:08 am

Thanks Abe. You are a real asset to us here at CN.

John V. Walsh , July 13, 2017 at 3:54 pm

Very good article! The entire Magnitsky saga has become so convoluted and mired in controversy and propaganda that it is very hard to understand. I remember vaguely the controversy surrounding the showing of the film at the Newseum. it is especially impressive that Nekrasov changed his opinion as fcts unfolded.

I will now try to get the docudrama and watch it.
If anyone has suggestions on how to do this, please let me know via a response. here.
Thanks.

Roger Annis , July 13, 2017 at 4:02 pm

A 'Magnitsky Act' in Canada was approved by the (appointed) Senate several months ago and is now undergoing fine tuning in the House of Commons prior to a third and final vote of approval. The proposed law has the unanimous support of the parties in Parliament.

A column in today's Globe and Mail daily by the newspaper's 'chief political writer' tiptoes around the Magnitsky story, never once daring to admit that a contrary narrative exists to that of Bill Browder.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/when-it-comes-to-magnitsky-laws-its-clear-what-russia-is-looking-for/article35678618/

John-Albert Eadie , July 13, 2017 at 5:01 pm

Magnitsky Act in Canada has been based on made-up `facts` as Globe & Mail reporting proves. Not news, but deepens my concern about Canada following the Cold War without examination.

backwardsevolution , July 13, 2017 at 5:56 pm

Roger Annis – just little lemmings following the leader. Disgusting. I hope you posted a comment at the Globe and Mail, Roger, with a link to this article.

Britton , July 13, 2017 at 4:05 pm

Browder is a Communist Jew, his father has a Communist past according to his background so I know I can't trust anything he says. Hes just one of many shady interests undermining Putin I've seen over the years. His book Red Notice is just as shady. Good reporting Consortium News. Fox News promotes Browder like crazy every chance they get especially Fox Business channel.

Joe Average , July 13, 2017 at 5:06 pm

"Browder is a Communist " Hedge Fund managers are hardly Communist – that's an oxymoron.

ToivoS , July 13, 2017 at 6:02 pm

Bill Browder's grandfather was Earl Browder, leader of the CPUSA from the the late 30s to late 40s. His father was also a communist. Bill jr parlayed those connections with the Soviet apparatchiks to gain a foothold in looting Russia of its state assets during the 1990s. No he was not a communist but neither were the leaders of the Soviet Union at the time of its dissolution (in name yes, but in fact not).

Joe Average , July 13, 2017 at 6:34 pm

ToivoS,

thank you for this background information.

My main intention had been to straighten out the blurring of calling a hedge fund manager communist. Nowadays everything gets blurred by people misrepresenting political concepts. Either the people have been dumbed-down by misinformation or misrepresenting is done in order to keep neo-liberalism the dominant economical model. On many occasions I had read comments of people seemingly believing that Nationalsocialism had been some variant of socialism. Even the ideas of Bernie Sanders had been misrepresented as socialist instead of social democratic ones.

backwardsevolution , July 13, 2017 at 6:21 pm

Joe Average – Dave P. mentioned Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book entitled "Two Hundred Years Together" the other day. I've been reading a long synopsis of this book. What Britton says appears to be quite true. I don't know about Browder, but from what I've read the Jews were instrumental in the communist party, in the deaths of so many Russians. It wasn't just the Jews, but they played a big part. It's no wonder Solzhenitsyn's book has been "lost in translation", at least into English, for so many years.

I've also heard that it was the Jewish commissars who, when the USSR fell apart, rushed off to grab everything they could (with the help of outside Jewish money) and became the Russian oligarchs we hear about today. This is probably what Britton is getting at: "His father has a communist past." You go from running the government to owning it. Anti-Putin because Putin put a stop to them.

Dave P. , July 13, 2017 at 7:37 pm

backwardsevolution: I worked with a Soviet emigre engineer – Jewish – on the same project in an Engineering design and construction company during early 1990's. He immigrated with his family around 1991. In Soviet Union, there being no private financial institutions or lawyers so to speak , many Jews went into science and engineering. A very interesting person, we were close work place friends. His elder brother had stayed behind back in Russia. His brother was in Moscow and involved in this plunder going on there. He used to tell me all these hair raising first hand stories about what was going on in Russia during that time. All the plunder flowed into the Western Countries.

In recent history, no country went through this kind of plunder on a scale Russia went through during ten or fifteen years starting in 1992. Russia was a very badly ravaged country when Putin took over. Means of production, finance, all came to halt, and society itself had completely broken down. It appears that the West has all the intentions to do it again.

Bruce Walker , July 13, 2017 at 9:29 pm

I have read all the comments up to yours you have told it like it was in Russia in those years. Browder was the king of the crooks looting Russia. Then he got to John McCain with all his lies and bullshit and was responsible for the sanctions on Russia. All the comments aboutBrowders grandfather andCommunist party are all true but hardly important. Except that it probably was how Browder was able to get his fingers on the pie in Russia. And he sure did get his fingers in the pie BIG TIME.

I am a Canadian and am aware of Maginsky Act in Canada. Our Minister Chrystal Freeland met with William Brawder in Davos a few months ago both of these two you could say are not fans of Putin, I certainly don't know what they spoke about but other than lies from Browder there is no reason she should have been talking with him. I have made comments on other forums regarding these two meeting. Read Browders book and hopefully see the documentary that this article is about. When I read his book I knew instantly that he was a crook a charloten and a liar. Just the kind of folk John McCain and a lot of other folks in US politics love. You all have a nice Peacefull day

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 12:38 am

Joe Average – "I guess that this book puts blame for Communism entirely on the Jewish people and that this gave even further rise to antisemitism in the Germany of the 1930's."

No, it doesn't put the blame entirely on the Jews; it just spells out that they did play a large part. As one Jewish scholar said, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was too much of an academic, too intelligent to ever put the blame entirely on one group. But something like 40 – 60 million died – shot, taken out on boats with rocks around their necks and thrown overboard, starved, gassed in rail cars, poisoned, worked to death, froze, you name it. Every other human slaughter pales in comparison. Good old man, so civilized (sarc)!

But someone(s) has been instrumental in keeping this book from being translated into English (or so I've read many places online). Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" and his other books have been translated, but not this one. (Although I just found one site that has almost all of the chapters translated, but not all). Several people ordered the book off Amazon, only to find out that it was in the Russian language. LOL

Solzhenitsyn does say at one point in the book: "Communist rebellions in Germany post-WWI was a big reason for the revival of anti-Semitism (as there was no serious anti-Semitism in the imperial [Kaiser] Germany of 1870 – 1918)."

Lots of Jewish people made it into the upper levels of the Soviet government, academia, etc. (and lots of them were murdered too). I might skip reading these types of books until I get older. Too bleak. Hard enough reading about the day-to-day stuff here without going back in time for more fun!

I remember reading Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine," but I just could not get through the chapter on the USSR falling apart. I started reading it, but I didn't want to finish it (and I didn't) because it just made me angry. The West was too unfair! Russia was asking for help, but instead the West just looted. I'd say that Russia was very lucky to have someone like Putin clean it up.

Keep smiling, Joe.

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 12:58 am

Dave P. – I told you, you are a wealth of information, a walking encyclopedia. Interesting about your co-worker. Sounds like it was a free-for-all in Russia. Yes, I totally agree that Putin has done and is doing all he can to bring his country back up. Very difficult job he is doing, and I hope he is successful at keeping the West out as much as he can, at least until Russia is strong and sure enough to invite them in on their own terms.

Now go and tell your wife what I said about you being a "walking encyclopedia". She'll probably have a good laugh. (Not that you're not, but you know what she'll say: "Okay, smartie, now go and do the dishes.")

Chucky LeRoi , July 14, 2017 at 9:56 am

Just some small scale, local color kind of stuff, but living in the USA, west coast specifically, it was quite noticeable in the mid to late '90's how many Russians with money were suddenly appearing. No apparent skills or 'jobs', but seemingly able to pay for stuff. Expensive stuff.

A neighbor invited us to her 'place in the mountains', which turned out to be where a lumber company had almost terra-formed an area and was selling off the results. Her advice: When you go to the lake (i.e., the low area now gathering runoff, paddle boats rentals, concession stand) you will see a lot of men with huge stomachs and tiny Speedos. They will be very rude, pushy, confrontational. Ignore them, DO NOT comment on their rudeness or try to deal with their manners. They are Russians, and the amount of trouble it will stir up – and probable repercussions – are simply not worth it.

Back in town, the anecdotes start piling up quickly. I am talking crowbars through windows (for a perceived insult). A beating where the victim – who was probably trying something shady – was so pulped the emergency room staff couldn't tell if the implement used was a 2X4 or a baseball bat. When found he had with $3k in his pocket: robbery was not the motive. More traffic accidents involving guys with very nice cars and serious attitude problems. I could go on. More and more often somewhere in the relating of these incidents the phrase " this Russian guy " would come up. It was the increased use of this phrase that was so noticeable.

And now the disclaimer.

Before anybody goes off, I am not anti-Russian, Russo-phobic, what have you. I studied the Russian language in high school and college (admittedly decades ago). My tax guy is Russian. I love him. My day to day interactions have led me to this pop psychology observation: the extreme conditions that produced that people and culture produced extremes. When they are of the good, loving , caring, cultured, helpful sort, you could ask for no better friends. The generosity can be embarrassing. When they are of the materialistic, evil, self-centered don't f**k with me I am THE BADDEST ASS ON THE PLANET sort, the level of mania and self-importance is impossible to deal with, just get as far away as possible. It's worked for me.

Joe Average , July 13, 2017 at 8:10 pm

backwardsevolution,

thanks for the info. I'll add the book to the list of books onto my to-read list. As far as I know a Kibbutz could be described as a Communist microcosm. The whole idea of Communism itself is based on Marx (a Jew by birth). A while ago I had started reading "Mein Kampf". I've got to finish the book, in order to see if my assumption is correct. I guess that this book puts blame for Communism entirely on the Jewish people and that this gave even further rise to antisemitism in the Germany of the 1930's.

The most known Russian Oligarchs that I've heard of are mainly of Jewish origin, but as far as I know they had been too young to be commissars at the time of the demise of the USSR. At least one aspect I've read of many times is that a lot of them built their fortunes with the help of quite shady business dealings.

With regard to President Putin I've read that he made a deal with the oligarchs: they should pay their taxes, keep/invest their money in Russia and keep out of politics. In return he wouldn't dig too deep into their past. Right at the moment everybody in the West is against President Putin, because he stopped the looting of his country and its citizens and that's something our Western oligarchs and financial institutions don't like.

On a side note: Several years ago I had started to read several volumes about German history. Back then I didn't notice an important aspect that should attract my attention a few years later when reading about the rise of John D. Rockefeller. Charlemagne (Charles the Great) took over power from the Merovingians. Prior to becoming King of the Franks he had been Hausmeier (Mayor of the Palace) for the Merovingians. Mayor of the Palace was the title of the manager of the household, which seems to be similar to a procurator and/or accountant (bookkeeper). The similarity of the beginnings of both careers struck me. John D. Rockefeller started as a bookkeeper. If you look at Bill Gates you'll realize that he was smart enough to buy an operating system for a few dollars, improved it and sold it to IBM on a large scale. The widely celebrated Steve Jobs was basically the marketing guy, whilst the real brain behind (the product) Apple had been Steve Wozniak.

Another side note: If we're going down the path of neo-liberalism it will lead us straight back to feudalism – at least if the economy doesn't blow up (PCR, Michael Hudson, Mike Whitney, Mike Maloney, Jim Rogers, Richard D. Wolff, and many more economists make excellent points that our present Western economy can't go on forever and is kept alive artificially).

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 12:50 am

Joe Average – somehow my reply to you ended up above your post. What? How did that happen? You can find it there. Thanks for the interesting info about John D. Rockefeller, Gates, Jobs and Wozniak. Some are good managers, others good at sales, while others are the creative inventors.

Yes, Joe, I totally agree that we are headed back to feudalism. I don't think we'll have much choice as the oil is running out. We'll probably be okay, but our children? I worry about them. They'll notice a big change in their lifetimes. The discovery and capture of oil pulled forward a large population. As we scale back, we could be in trouble, food-wise. Or at least it looks that way.

Thanks, Joe.

Miranda Keefe , July 14, 2017 at 5:48 am

Charlemagne did not take over from the Merovingians. The Mayor of the Palace was not an accountant.

During the 7th Century the Mayor of the Place more and more became the actual ruler of the Franks. The office had existed for over a century and was basically the "prime minister" to the king. By the time Pepin of Herstal, a scion of a powerful Frankish family, took the position in 680, the king was ceremonial leader doing ritual and the Mayor ruled- like the relationship of the Emperor and the Shogun in Japan. In 687 Pepin's Austrasia conquered Neustria and Burgundy and he added "Duke of the Franks" to his titles. The office became hereditary.

When Pepin died in 714 there was some unrest as nobles from various parts of the joint kingdoms attempted to get different ones of his heirs in the office until his son Charles Martel took the reins in 718. This is the famous Charles Martel who defeated the Moors at Tours in 732. But that was not his only accomplishment as he basically extended the Frankish kingdom to include Saxony. Charles not only ruled but when the king died he picked which possible heir would become king. Finally near the end of his reign he didn't even bother replacing the king and the throne was empty.

When Charles Martel died in 741 he followed Frankish custom and divided his kingdom among his sons. By 747 his younger son, Pepin the Short, had consolidated his rule and with the support of the Pope, deposed the last Merovingian King and became the first Carolingian King in 751- the dynasty taking its name from Charles Martel. Thus Pepin reunited the two aspects of the Frankish ruler, combining the rule of the Mayor with the ceremonial reign of the King into the new Kingship.

Pepin expanded the kingdom beyond the Frankish lands even more and his son, Charlemagne, continued that. Charlemagne was 8 when his father took the title of King. Charlemagne never was the Mayor of the Palace, but grew up as the prince. He became King of the Franks in 768 ruling with his brother, sole King in 781, and then started becoming King of other countries until he united it all in 800 as the restored Western Roman Emperor.

When he died in 814 the Empire was divided into three Kingdoms and they never reunited again. The western one evolved into France. The eastern one evolved in the Holy Roman Empire and eventually Germany. The middle one never solidified but became the Low Countries, Switzerland, and the Italian states.

Anna , July 14, 2017 at 9:45 am

The Canadian Minister Chrysta Freeland met with William Brawder in Davos a few months ago " -- Birds of a feather flock together. Mrs. Chrystal Freeland has a very interesting background for which she is very proud of: her granddad was a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator denounced by Jewish investigators: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/27/a-nazi-skeleton-in-the-family-closet/

Since the inti-Russian tenor of the Canadian Minister Chrysta Freeland is in accord with the US ziocons anti-Russian policies (never mind all this fuss about WWII Jewish mass graves in Ukraine), "Chrysta" is totally approved by the US government.

Joe Average , July 14, 2017 at 11:32 pm

I'll reply to myself in order to send a response to backwardsevolution and Miranda Keefe.

For a change I'll be so bold to ignore gentleman style and reply in the order of the posts – instead of Ladies first.

backwardsevolution,

in my first paragraph I failed to make a clear distinction. I started with the remark that I'm adding the book "Two Hundred Years Together" to my to-read list and then mentioned that I'm right now reading "Mein Kampf". All remarks after mentioning the latter book are directed at this one – and not the one of Solzhenitsyn.

Miranda Keefe,

I'm aware that accountant isn't an exact characterization of the concept of a Mayor of the Palace. As a precaution I had added the phrase "seems to be similar". You're correct with the statement that Charlemagne was descendant Karl Martel. At first I intended to write that Karolinger (Carolings) took over from Merowinger (Merovingians), because those details are irrelevant to the point that I wanted to make. It would've been an information overload. My main point was the power of accountants and related fields such as sales and marketing. Neither John D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates nor Steve Jobs actually created their products from scratch.

Many of those who are listed as billionaires haven't been creators / inventors themselves. Completely decoupled from actual production is banking. Warren Buffet is started as an investment salesman, later stock broker and investor. Oversimplified you could describe this activity as accounting or sales. It's the same with George Soros and Carl Icahn. Without proper supervision money managers (or accountants) had and still do screw those who had hired them. One of those victims is former billionaire heiress Madeleine Schickedanz ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Schickedanz ). Generalized you could also say that BlackRock is your money manager accountant. If you've got some investment (that dates back before 2008), which promises you a higher interest rate after a term of lets say 20 years, the company with which you have the contract with may have invested your money with BlackRock. The financial crisis of 2008 has shown that finance (accountants / money managers) are taking over. Aren't investment bankers the ones who get paid large bonuses in case of success and don't face hardly any consequences in case of failure? Well, whatever turn future might take, one thing is for sure: whenever SHTF even the most colorful printed pieces of paper will not taste very well.

Cal , July 13, 2017 at 10:13 pm

History's Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks on

http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1nppst

History's Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks . EVER SINCE THE Emperor Constantine established the legal position of the church in the

Many Bolsheviks fled to Germany , taking with them some loot that enabled them to get established in Germany. Lots of invaluable art work also.

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 1:54 am

Cal – read about "History's Greatest Heist" on Amazon. Sounds interesting. Was one of the main reasons for the Czar's overthrow to steal and then flee? It's got to have been on some minds. A lot of people got killed, and they would have had wedding rings, gold, etc. That doesn't even include the wealth that could be stolen from the Czar. Was the theft just one of those things that happened through opportunism, or was it one of the main reasons for the overthrow in the first place, get some dough and run with it?

Cal , July 14, 2017 at 2:22 pm

@ backwards

" Was the theft just one of those things that happened through opportunism, or was it one of the main reasons for the overthrow"'

imo some of both. I am sure when they were selling off Russian valuables to finance their revolution a lot of them set aside some loot for themselves.

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 4:09 pm

Cal – thank you. Good books like this get us closer and closer to the truth. Thank goodness for these people.

Brad Owen , July 14, 2017 at 11:45 am

An autocratic oligarch would probably be a better description. He probably believes like other Synarchist financiers that they should rightfully rule the World, and see democratic processes as heresy against "The Natural Order for human society", or some such belief.

Brad Owen , July 14, 2017 at 12:13 pm

Looking up "A short definition of Synarchism (a Post-Napoleonic social phenomenon) by Lyndon LaRouche" would give much insight into what's going on. People from the intelligence community made sure a copy of a 1940 army intelligence dossier labelled something like "Synarchism:NAZI/Communist" got into Lyndon's hands. It speaks of the the Synarchist method of attacking a targeted society from both extreme (Right-Left) ends of the political spectrum. I guess this is dialectics? I suppose the existence of the one extreme legitimizes the harsh, anti-democratic/anti-human measures taken to exterminate it by the other extreme, actually destroying the targeted society in the process. America, USSR, and (Sun Yat Sen's old Republic of) China were the targeted societies in the pre-WWII/WWII yearsfor their "sins" of championing We The People against Oligarchy. FDR knew the Synarchist threat and sided with Russia and China against Germany and Japan. He knew that, after dealing with the battlefield NAZIs, the "Boardroom" NAZIs would have to be dealt with Post-War. That all changed with his death.The Synarchists are still at it today, hence all the rabid Russo-phobia, the Pacific Pivot, and the drive towards war. This is all being foiled with Trump's friendly, cooperative approach towards Russia and China.

mike k , July 13, 2017 at 4:11 pm

Big Brother at work – always protecting us from upsetting information. How nice of him to insure our comfort. No need for us to bother with all of this confusing stuff, he can do all that for us. The mainstream media will tell us all we need to know .. (Virginia – please notice my use of irony.)

Joe Tedesky , July 13, 2017 at 4:21 pm

Do you remember mike K when porn was censored, and there were two sides to every issue as compromise was always on the table? Now porn is accessible on cable TV, and there is only one side to every issue, and that's I'm right about everything and your not, what compromise with you?

Don't get me wrong, I don't really care how we deal with porn, but I am very concerned to why censorship is showing up whereas we can't see certain things, for certain reasons we know nothing about. Also, I find it unnerving that we as a society continue to stay so undivided. Sure, we can't all see the same things the same way, but maybe it's me, and I'm getting older by the minute, but where is our cooperation to at least try and work with each other?

Always like reading your comments mike K Joe

Joe Average , July 13, 2017 at 5:09 pm

Joe,

when it comes to the choice of watching porn and bodies torn apart (real war pictures), I prefer the first one, although we in the West should be confronted with the horrible pictures of what we're assisting/doing.

Joe Tedesky , July 13, 2017 at 5:27 pm

This is where the Two Joe's are alike.

mike k , July 13, 2017 at 6:07 pm

I do remember those days Joe. I am 86 now, so a lot has changed since 1931. With the 'greed is good' philosophy in vogue now, those who seek compromise are seen as suckers for the more single minded to take advantage of. Respect for rules of decency is just about gone, especially at the top of the wealth pyramid.

Cal , July 13, 2017 at 10:15 pm

Yep

BannanaBoat , July 13, 2017 at 6:36 pm

Distraction from critical thinking, excellent observation ( please forget the NeoCon Demos they are responsible for half of the nightmare USA society has become.

ranney , July 13, 2017 at 4:37 pm

Wow Robert, what a fascinating article! And how complicated things become "when first we practice to deceive".
Abe thank you for the link to Ritter's article; that's a really good one too!

John , July 13, 2017 at 4:40 pm

If we get into a shooting war with Russia and the human race somehow survives it Robert Parry' s name will one day appear in the history books as the person who most thoroughly documented the events leading up to that war. He will be considered to be a top historian as well as a top journalist.

Abe , July 13, 2017 at 7:01 pm

"Browder, who abjured his American citizenship in 1998 to become a British subject, reveals more about his own selective advocacy of democratic principles than about the film itself. He might recall that in his former homeland freedom of the press remains a cherished value."

A Response to William Browder
By Rachel Bauman
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/response-william-browder-16654

Abe , July 13, 2017 at 7:16 pm

William Browder is a "shareholder activist" the way Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a "human rights activist".

Both loudly bleat the "story" of their heroic "fight for justice" for billionaire Jewish oligarchs: themselves.

http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.686922.1447865981!/image/78952068.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_625/78952068.jpg

Abe , July 13, 2017 at 7:19 pm

"never driven by the money"
https://www.thejc.com/culture/books/be-careful-of-putin-he-is-a-true-enemy-of-jews-1.61745

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 2:50 am

Abe – "never driven by the money". No, he would never be that type of guy (sarc)!

"It's hard to know what Browder will do next. He rules out any government ambitions, instead saying he can achieve more by lobbying it.

This summer, he says he met "big Hollywood players" in a bid to turn his book into a major film.

"The most important next step in the campaign is to adapt the book into a Hollywood feature film," he says. "I have been approached by many film-makers and spent part of the summer in LA meeting with screenwriters, producers and directors to figure out what the best constellation of players will be on this.

"There are a lot of people looking at it. It's still difficult to say who we will end up choosing. There are many interesting options, but I'm not going to name any names."

What the ..? I can see it now, George Clooney in the lead role, Mr. White Helmets himself, with his twins in tow.

Kiza , July 15, 2017 at 1:56 am

Is it not impressive how money buys out reality in the modern world? This is why one can safely assume that whatever is told in the MSM is completely opposite to the truth. Would MSM have to push it if it were the truth? You may call this Kiza's Law if you like (modestly): " The truth is always opposite to what MSM say! " The 0.1% of situations where this is not the case is the margin of error.

Abe , July 13, 2017 at 7:39 pm

"no figure in this saga has a more tangled family relationship with the Kremlin than the London-based hedge fund manager Bill Browder [ ]

"there's a reticence in his Jewish narrative. One of his first jobs in London is with the investment operation of the publishing billionaire Robert Maxwell. As it happens, Maxwell was originally a Czech Jewish Holocaust survivor who fled and became a decorated British soldier, then helped in 1948 to set up the secret arms supply line to newly independent Israel from communist Czechoslovakia. He was also rumored to be a longtime Mossad agent. But you learn none of that from Browder's memoir.

"The silence is particularly striking because when Browder launches his own fund, he hires a former Israeli Mossad agent, Ariel, to set up his security operation, manned mainly by Israelis. Over time, Browder and Ariel become close. How did that connection come about? Was it through Maxwell? Wherever it started, the origin would add to the story. Why not tell it?

"When Browder sets up his own fund, Hermitage Capital Management -- named for the famed czarist-era St. Petersburg art museum, though that's not explained either -- his first investor is Beny Steinmetz, the Israeli diamond billionaire. Browder tells how Steinmetz introduced him to the Lebanese-Brazilian Jewish banking billionaire Edmond Safra, who invests and becomes not just a partner but also a mentor and friend.

"Safra is also internationally renowned as the dean of Sephardi Jewish philanthropy; the main backer of Israel's Shas party, the Sephardi Torah Guardians, and of New York's Holocaust memorial museum, and a megadonor to Yeshiva University, Hebrew University, the Weizmann Institute and much more. Browder must have known all that. Considering the closeness of the two, it's surprising that none of it gets mentioned.

"It's possible that Browder's reticence about his Jewish connections is simply another instance of the inarticulateness that seizes so many American Jews when they try to address their Jewishness."

http://forward.com/news/376788/the-secret-jewish-history-of-donald-trump-jrs-russia-scandal/

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 3:15 am

Abe – what a web. Money makes money, doesn't it? It's often what club you belong to and who you know. I remember a millionaire in my area long ago who went bankrupt. The wealthy simply chipped in, gave him some start-up money, and he was off to the races again. Simple as that. And I would think that the Jews are an even tighter group who invest with each other, are privy to inside information, get laws changed in favor of each other, pay people off when one gets in trouble. Browder seems a shifty sort. As the article says, he leaves a lot out.

Abe , July 14, 2017 at 11:37 pm

In 1988, Stanton Wheeler (Yale University – Law School), David L. Weisburd (Hebrew University of Jerusalem; George Mason University – The Department of Criminology, Law & Society; Hebrew University of Jerusalem – Faculty of Law). Elin Waring (Yale University – Law School), and Nancy Bode (Government of the State of Minnesota) published a major study on white collar crime in America.

Part of a larger program of research on white-collar crime supported by a grant from the United States Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice, the study included "the more special forms associated with the abuse of political power [ ] or abuse of financial power". The study was also published as a Hebrew University of Jerusalem Legal Research Paper

The research team noted that Jews were over-represented relative to their share of the U.S. population:

"With respect to religion, there is one clear finding. Although many in both white collar and common crime categories do not claim a particular religious faith [ ] It would be a fair summary of our. data to say that, demographically speaking, white collar offenders are predominantly middle-aged white males with an over-representation of Jews."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2632989

In 1991, David L. Weisburd published his study of Crimes of the Middle Classes: White-Collar Offenders in the Federal Courts, Weisburd found that although Jews comprised only around 2% of the United States population, they contributed at least 9% of lower category white-collar crimes (bank embezzlement, tax fraud and bank fraud), at least 15% of moderate category white-collar crimes (mail fraud, false claims, and bribery), and at least 33% of high category white-collar crimes (antitrust and securities fraud). Weisburg showed greater frequency of Jewish offenders at the top of the hierarchy of white collar crime. In Weisbug's sample of financial crime in America, Jews were responsible for 23.9%.

Kiza , July 15, 2017 at 2:26 am

What I find most interesting is how Putin handles the Jews.

It is obvious that he is the one who saved the country of Russia from the looting of the 90s by the Russian-American Jewish mafia. This is the most direct explanation for his demonisation in the West, his feat will never be forgiven, not even in history books (a demon forever). Even to this day, for example in Syria, Putin's main confrontation is not against US then against the Zionist Jews, whose principal tool is US. Yet, there is not a single anti-Semitic sentence that Putin ever uttered. Also, Putin let the Jewish oligarchs who plundered Russia keep their money if they accepted the authority of the Russian state, kept employing Russians and paying Russian taxes. But he openly confronted those who refused (Berezovsky, Khodorovsky etc). Furthermore, Putin lets Israel bomb Syria under his protection to abandon. Finally, Putin is known in Russia as a great supporter of Jews and Israel, almost a good friend of Nutty Yahoo.

Therefore, it appears to me that the Putin's principal strategy is to appeal to the honest Jewish majority to restrain the criminal Jewish minority (including the criminally insane), to divide them instead of confronting them all as a group, which is what the anti-Semitic Europeans have traditionally been doing. His judo-technique is in using Jewish power to restrain the Jews. I still do not know if his strategy will succeed in the long run, but it certainly is an interesting new approach (unless I do not know history enough) to an ancient problem. It is almost funny how so many US people think that the problem with the nefarious Jewish money power started with US, if they are even aware of it.

Cal , July 16, 2017 at 5:41 am

" His judo-technique is in using Jewish power to restrain the Jews. "

The Jews have no power without their uber Jew money men, most of whom are ardent Zionist.
And because they get some benefits from the lobbying heft of the Zionist control of congress they arent going to go against them.

Abe , July 15, 2017 at 5:11 pm

Bill Browder with American-Israeli interviewer Natasha Mozgovaya, TV host for Voice of America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbgNeQ_xINM

In this 2015 tirade, Browder declared "Someone has to punch Putin in the nose" and urged "supplying arms to the Ukrainians and putting troops, NATO troops, in all of the surrounding countries".

The choice of Mozgovaya as interviewer was significant to promote Browder with the Russian Jewish community abroad.

Born in the Soviet Union in 1979, Mozgovaya immigrated to Israel with her family in 1990. She became a correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth in 2000. Although working most of the time in Hebrew, her reports in Russian appeared in various publications in Russia.

Mozgovaya covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, including interviews with President Victor Yushenko and his partner-rival Yulia Timoshenko, as well as the Russian Mafia and Russian oligarchs. During the presidency of Vladimir Putin, Mozgovaya gave one of the last interviews with the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. She interviewed Garry Kasparov, Edward Limonov, Boris Berezovsky, Chechen exiles such as Ahmed Zakaev, and the widow of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko.

In 2008, Mozgovaya left Yedioth Ahronoth to become the Washington Bureau Chief for Haaretz newspaper in Washington, D.C.. She was a frequent lecturer on Israel and Middle Eastern affairs at U.S. think-tanks. In 2013, Mozgovaya started working at the Voice of America.

HIDE BEHIND , July 13, 2017 at 7:43 pm

Gramps was decended from an old Irish New England Yankee lineage and in my youth he always dragged me along when the town meetings were held, so my ideas of American DEmocracy stem from that background, one of open participation.
The local newspapers had more social chit chat than political news of international or for that mstter State or Federal shenanigansbut everu member in that far flung settled communit read them from front to back; ss a child I got to read the funny and sports pages until Gramps got finidhed reading the "News Section, always the news first yhen the lesser BS when time allowed,this habit instilled in me the sence of
priority.
Aftrr I had read his dection of paper he would talk with me,even being a yonker, in a serious but opinionated manner, of the Editorial section which had local commentary letterd to the editor as large as somtimes too pages.
I wonder today at which section of papersf at all, is read by american public, and at how manyadults discuss importsn news worthy tppics with their children.
At advent of TV we still had trustworthy journalist to finally be seen after years of but reading their columns or listening on radios,almost tottaly all males but men of honesty and character, and worthy of trust.
They wrre a part of all social stratas, had lived real lives and yes most eere well educated but not the elitist thinking jrrks who are no more than parrots repeating whatevrr a teleprompter or bias of their employers say to write.
Wrll back to Gramps and hid home spun wisdom: He alwsys ,and shoeed by example at those old and somrtimes boistrous town Halls, that first you askef a question, thought about the answer, and then questioned the answer.
This made the one being question responsible for the words he spoke.
So those who have doubts by a presumed independent journalist, damn right they should question his motives, which in reality begin to answer our unspoken questions we can no longer ask those boobs for bombs and political sychophants and their paymasters of popular media outlets.
As one who likes effeciency in prodution one monitors data to spot trends and sny aberations bring questions so yes I note this journalist deviation from the norms as well.
I can only question the why, by looking at data from surrounding trends in order to later be able to question his answers.

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 2:07 am

Hide Behind – sounds like you had a smart grandpa, and someone who cared enough about you to talk things over with you (even though he was opinionated). I try to talk things over with my kids, sometimes too much. They're known on occasion to say, "Okay, enough. We're full." I wait a few days, and then fill them up some more! Ha.

Joe Tedesky , July 13, 2017 at 10:53 pm

Here's a thought; will letting go of Trump Jr's infraction cancel out a guilty verdict of Hillary Clinton's transgressions?

I keep hearing Hillary references while people defend Donald Trump Jr over his meeting with Russian Natalia Veselnitskaya. My thinking started over how I keep hearing pundits speak to Trump Jr's 'intent'. Didn't Comey find Hillary impossible to prosecute due to her lack of 'intent'? Actually I always thought that to be prosecuted under espionage charges, the law didn't need to prove intent, but then again we are talking about Hillary here.

The more I keep hearing Trump defenders make mention of Hillary's deliberate mistakes, and the more I keep hearing Democrates point to Donald Jr's opportunistic failures, the more similarity I see between the two rivals, and the more I see an agreed upon truce ending up in a tie. Remember we live in a one party system with two wings.

Am I going down the wrong road here, or could forgiving Trump Jr allow Hillary to get a free get out of jail card?

F. G. Sanford , July 14, 2017 at 12:42 am

I've been saying all along, our government is just a big can of worms, and neither side can expose the other without opening it. But insiders on both sides are flashing their can openers like it's a game of chicken. My guess is, everybody is gonna get a free pass. I read somewhere that Preet Bharara had the goods on a whole bunch of bankers, but he sat on it clear up to the election. Then, he got fired. So much for draining the swamp. If they prosecute Hillary, it looks like a grudge match. If they prosecute Junior, it looks like revenge. If they prosecute Lynch, it looks like racism. When you deal with a government this corrupt, everybody looks innocent by comparison. I'm still betting nobody goes to jail, as long as the "deep state" thinks they have Trump under control.

Joe Tedesky , July 14, 2017 at 1:29 am

It's like we are sitting on the top of a hill looking down at a bunch of little armies attacking each other, or something.

I'm really screwy, I have contemplated to if Petraues dropped a dime on himself for having a extra martial affair, just to get out of the Benghazi mess. Just thought I'd tell you that for full disclosure.

When it comes to Hillary, does anyone remember how in the beginning of her email investigation she pointed to Colin Powell setting precedent to use a private computer? That little snitch Hillary is always the one when caught to start pointing the finger .she would never have lasted in the Mafia, but she's smart enough to know what works best in Washington DC.

I'm just starting to see the magic; get the goods on Trump Jr then make a deal with the new FBI director.

Okay go ahead and laugh, but before you do pass the popcorn, and let's see how this all plays out.

Believe half of what you hear, and nothing of what you see.

Joe

Lisa , July 14, 2017 at 4:22 am

"Believe half of what you hear, and nothing of what you see."

Joe, where does this quote originate? Or is it a paraphrase?
I once had an American lecturer (political science) at the university, and he stressed the idea that we should not believe anything we read or hear and only half of what we see. This was l-o-o-ng ago, in the 60's.

Joe Tedesky , July 14, 2017 at 10:59 am

The first time I ever heard that line, 'believe nothing of what you see', was a friend of mine said it after we watched Roberto Clemente throw a third base runner out going towards home plate, as Robert threw the ball without a bounce to the catcher who was standing up, from the deep right field corner of the field .oh those were the days.

Gregory Herr , July 14, 2017 at 9:12 pm

JT,
Clemente had an unbelievable arm! The consummate baseball player I have family in western PA, an uncle your age in fact who remembers Clemente well. Roberto also happened to be a great human being.

Joe Tedesky , July 14, 2017 at 9:56 pm

I got loss at Forbes Field. I was seven years old, it was 1957. I got separated from my older cousin, we got in for 50 cents to sit in the left field bleachers. Like I said I loss my older cousin so I walked, and walked, and just about the time I wanted my mum the most I saw daylight. I followed the daylight out of the big garage door, and I was standing within a foot of this long white foul line. All of a sudden this Black guy started yelling at me in somekind of broken English to, 'get off the field, get out of here'. Then I felt a field ushers hand grab my shoulder, and as I turned I saw my cousin standing on the fan side of the right field side of the field. The usher picked me up and threw me over to my cousin, with a warning for him to keep his eye on me. That Black baseball player was a young rookie who was recently just drafted from the then Brooklyn Dodgers .#21 Roberto Clemente.

Gregory Herr , July 14, 2017 at 10:12 pm

You were a charmed boy and now you are a charmed man. Great story life is a Field of Dreams sometimes.

Zachary Smith , July 15, 2017 at 9:00 pm

Believe half of what you hear, and nothing of what you see.

My introduction to this had the wording the other way around:

"Don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see."

This was because the workplace was saturated with rumors, and unfortunately there was a practice of management and union representatives "play-acting" for their audience. So what you "saw" was as likely as not a little theatrical production with no real meaning whatever. The two fellows shouting at each other might well be laughing about it over a cup of coffee an hour later.

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 2:01 am

Sanford – "But insiders on both sides are flashing their can openers " That's funny writing.

Gregory Herr , July 14, 2017 at 10:20 pm

yessir, love it

Kiza , July 15, 2017 at 2:41 am

Absolutely, one of the best political metaphors ever (unfortunately works in English language only).

Kiza , July 15, 2017 at 6:19 pm

BTW, they are flashing at each other not only can openers then also jail cells and grassy knolls these days. But the can openers would still be most scary.

Abe , July 14, 2017 at 2:13 am

Israeli banks have helped launder money for Russian oligarchs, while large-scale fraudulent industries, like binary options, have been allowed to flourish here.

A May 2009 diplomatic cable by the US ambassador to Israel warned that "many Russian oligarchs of Jewish origin and Jewish members of organized crime groups have received Israeli citizenship, or at least maintain residences in the country."

The United States estimated at the time that Russian crime groups had "laundered as much as $10 billion through Israeli holdings."

In 2009, then Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara charged 17 managers and employees of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims for defrauding Germany 42.5 million dollars by creating thousands of false benefit applications for people who had not suffered in the Holocaust.

The scam operated by creating phony applications with false birth dates and invented histories of persecution to process compensation claims. In some cases the recipients were born after World War II and at least one person was not even Jewish.

Among those charged was Semyon Domnitser, a former director of the conference. Many of the applicants were recruited from Brooklyn's Russian community. All those charged hail from Brooklyn.

When a phony applicant got a check, the scammers were given a cut, Bharara said. The fraud which has been going on for 16 years was related to the 400 million dollars which Germany pays out each year to Holocaust survivors.

Later, in November 2015, Bharara's office charged three Israeli men in a 23-count indictment that alleged that they ran a extensive computer hacking and fraud scheme that targeted JPMorgan Chase, The Wall Street Journal, and ten other companies.

According to prosecutors, the Israeli's operation generated "hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profit" and exposed the personal information of more than 100 million people.

Despite his service as a useful idiot propagating the Magnitsky Myth, Bharara discovered that for Russian Jewish oligarchs, criminals and scam artists, the motto is "Nikogda ne zabyt'!" Perhaps more recognizable by the German phrase: "Niemals vergessen!"

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 3:00 am

Abe – wow, what a story. I guess it's lucrative to "never forget"! Bandits.

Cal , July 14, 2017 at 2:14 pm

https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=6180

National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS)
NCJRS Abstract
The document referenced below is part of the NCJRS Library collection. To conduct further searches of the collection, visit the NCJRS Abstracts Database. See the Obtain Documents page for direction on how to access resources online, via mail, through interlibrary loans, or in a local library.

NCJ Number: NCJ 006180
Title: CRIMINALITY AMONG JEWS – AN OVERVIEW

United States of America
Journal: ISSUES IN CRIMINOLOGY Volume:6 Issue:2 Dated:(SUMMER 1971) Pages:1-39
Date Published: 1971
Page Count: 15
.
Abstract: THE CONCLUSION OF MOST STUDIES IS THAT JEWS HAVE A LOW CRIME RATE. IT IS LOWER THAN THAT OF NON-JEWS TAKEN AS A WHOLE, LOWER THAN THAT OF OTHER RELIGIOUS GROUPS,

HOWEVER, THE JEWISH CRIME RATE TENDS TO BE HIGHER THAN THAT OF NONJEWS AND OTHER RELIGIOUS GROUPS FOR WHITE-COLLAR OFFENSES,

THAT IS, COMMERCIAL OR COMMERCIALLY RELATED CRIMES, SUCH AS FRAUD, FRAUDULENT BANKRUPTCY, AND EMBEZZLEMENT.

Index Term(s): Behavioral and Social Sciences ; Adult offenders ; Minorities ; Behavioral science research ; Offender classification

Country: United States of America
Language: English

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 4:21 pm

Cal – that does not surprise me at all. Of course they would be where the money is, and once you have money, you get nothing but the best defense. "I've got time and money on my side. Go ahead and take me to court. I'll string this thing along and it'll cost you a fortune. So let's deal. I'm good with a fine."

A rap on the knuckles, a fine, and no court case, no discovery of the truth that the people can see. Of course they'd be there. That IS the only place to be if you want to be a true criminal.

Skip Scott , July 15, 2017 at 1:57 pm

Thanks again Abe, you are a wealth of information. I think you have to allow for anyone to make a mistake, and Bharara has done a lot of good.

BannanaBoat , July 14, 2017 at 10:45 am

USA justice for Oilygarchs; Ignore capital crimes and mass destruction ; concentrate on entertaining shenanigans.

Cal , July 13, 2017 at 11:39 pm

If Trump wants to survive he better let go of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Lets start here:

Trump's personal attorneys are reportedly fed up with Jared Kushner
http://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-trump-lawyers-donald-jr-emails-2017-7

Longtime Trump attorney Marc Kasowitz and his team have directed their grievance at Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior White House adviser.
Citing a person familiar with Trump's legal team, The Times said Kasowitz has bristled at Kushner's "whispering in the president's ear" about stories on the Russia investigation without telling Kasowitz and his team.
The Times' source said the attorneys, who were hired as private counsel to Trump in light of the Russia investigation, view Kushner "as an obstacle and a freelancer" motivated to protect himself over over Trump. The lawyers reportedly told colleagues the work environment among Trump's inner circle was untenable, The Times said, suggesting Kasowitz could resign

Second
Who thinks Jared works for Trump? I don't.
Jared works for his father Charles Kushner, the former jail bird who hired prostitutes to blackmail his brother in law into not testifying against him. Jared spent every weekend his father was in prison visiting him.,,they are inseparable.

Third
So what is Jared doing in his WH position to help his father and his failing RE empire?

Trying to get loans from China, Russia, Qatar,Qatar

And why Is Robert Mueller Probing Jared Kushner's Finances?

Because of this no doubt:..seeking a loan for the Kushners from a Russian bank.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/03/sergei-gorkov-russian-banker-jared-kushner

The White House and the bank have offered differing accounts of the Kushner-Gorkov sit-down. While the White House said Kushner met Gorkov and other foreign representatives as a transition official to "help advance the president's foreign policy goals." Vnesheconombank, also known as VEB, said it was part of talks with business leaders about the bank's development strategy.
It said Kushner was representing Kushner companies, his family real estate empire.

Jared Kushner 'tried and failed to get a $500m loan from Qatar before
http://www.independent.co.uk › News › World › Americas › US politics
2 days ago –
Jared Kushner tried and failed to secure a $500m loan from one of Qatar's richest businessmen, before pushing his father-in-law to toe a hard line with the country, it has been alleged. This intersection between Mr Kushner's real estate dealings and his father-in-law's

The Kushners are about to lose their shirts..unless one of those foreign country's banks gives them the money.

At Kushners' Flagship Building, Mounting Debt and a Foundered Deal
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/nyregion/kushner-companies-666-fifth-avenue.html
The Fifth Avenue skyscraper was supposed to be the Kushner Companies' flagship in the heart of Manhattan -- a record-setting $1.8 billion souvenir proclaiming that the New Jersey developers Charles Kushner and his son Jared were playing in the big leagues.
And while it has been a visible symbol of their status, it has also it has also been a financial headache almost from the start. On Wednesday, the Kushners announced that talks had broken off with a Chinese financial conglomerate for a deal worth billions to redevelop the 41-story tower, at 666 Fifth Avenue, into a flashy 80-story ultraluxury skyscraper comprising a chic retail mall, a hotel and high-priced condominiums"

Get these cockroaches out of the WH please.,,,Jared and his sister are running around the world trying to get money in exchange for giving them something from the Trump WH.

BannanaBoat , July 14, 2017 at 10:52 am

The NYC skyline displays 666 in really really really HUGE !!!! numbers. Perhaps the USA government as Cheney announced has gone to the very very very DARK side.

Cal , July 14, 2017 at 2:16 pm

Yea 666 probably isn't a coincidence .lol

Chris Kinder , July 14, 2017 at 12:15 am

What I think most comments overlook here is the following: the US is the primary imperialist aggressor in the world today, and Russia, though it is an imperialist competitor, is much weaker and is generally losing ground. Early on, the US promised that NATO would not be extended into Eastern Europe, but now look at what's happened: not only does the US have NATO allies and and missiles in Eastern Europe, but it also engineered a coup against a pro-Russian regime in Ukraine, and is now trying to drive Russia out of Eastern Ukraine, as in Crimea and the Donbass and other areas of Eastern Ukraine, which are basically Russian going back more than a century. Putin is pretty mild compered to the US' aggressive stance. That's number one.

Number two is that the current anti-Russian hysteria in the US is all about maintaining the same war-mongering stance against Russia that existed in the cold war, and also about washing clean the Democratic Party leadership's crimes in the last election. Did the Russians hack the election? Maybe they tried, but the point is that what was exposed–the emails etc–were true information! They show that the DNC worked to deprive Bernie Sanders of the nomination, and hide crimes of the Clintons'! These exposures, not any Russian connection to the exposures, are what really lost Hillary the election.

So, what is going on here? The Democrats are trying to hide their many transgressions behind an anti-Russian scare, why? Because it is working, and because it fits in with US imperialist anti-Russian aims which span the entire post-war period, and continue today. And because it might help get Trump impeached. I would not mind that result one bit, but the Democrats are no alternative: that has been shown to be true over and over again.

This is all part of the US attempt to be the dominant imperialist power in the world–something which it has pursued since the end of the last world war, and something which both Democrats and Republicans–ie, the US ruling class behind them–are committed to. Revolutionaries say: the main enemy is at home, and that is what I say now. That is no endorsement of Russian imperialism, but a rejection of all imperialism and the capitalist exploitative system that gives rise to it.

Thanks for your attention -- Chris Kinder

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 1:58 am

Chris – good post. Thanks.

mike k , July 14, 2017 at 11:35 am

Chris, I think most commenters here are aware of everything you summarized above, but we just don't put all that in each individual post.

Paranam Kid , July 14, 2017 at 6:40 am

It is ironic that Browder on his website describes himself as running a battle against corporate corruption in Russia, and there is a quote by Walter Isaacson: "Bill Browder is an amazing moral crusader". http://www.billbrowder.com/bio

HIDE BEHIND , July 14, 2017 at 10:02 am

One cannot talk of Russian monry laundering in US without exposing the Jewish Israeli and many AIPAC connections.
I studied not so much the Jewish Orthodoxy but mainly the evolution of noth their outlook upon G.. but also how those who do not believe in a G.. and still keep their cultural cohesiveness
The largest money laundering group in US is
both Jewish and Israeli, and while helping those of their cultural similarities, their ecpertise goes. Very deep in Eastern U.S. politics and especially strong in all commercial real estate, funding, setting up bribes to permitting officials,contractors and owners of construvtion firms.
Financials some quite large are within this Jew/Israel connections, as all they who offshore need those proper connections to do so. take bribes need the funding cleaned and
flow out through very large tax free Jewish Charity Orgd, the largest ones are those of Orthodox.
GOV Christie years ago headed the largest sting operation to try and uproot what at that time he believed was just statewide tax fraud and laundering operations, many odd cash flows into political party hacks running for evrry gov position electefd or appointed.
Catchng a member of one of the most influential Orthofox familys mrmbers, that member rolled on many many indivifuals of his own culture.
It was only when Vhristies investigative team began turning up far larger cases of laundering and political donations thst msinly centered in NY Stste and City, fid he then find out howuch power this grouping had.
Soon darn near every AIPAC aided elected politico from city state and rspecially Congress was warning him to end investigation.
Which he did.
His reward was for his fat ass to be funded for a run towards US Presidency, without any visibly open opposition by that cultural grouping.
No it is not odd for Jewery to charge goyim usury or to aid in political schemes that advance their groups aims.
One thing to remenber by the Bible thumpers who delay any talks of Israel ; Christian Zionist, is that to be of their culture one does not have to believe in G.
There are a few excellent books written about early days Jewish immigrant Pre Irish andblre Sicilian mafias.
The Jewish one remainst to this day but are as well orgNized as the untold history of what is known as "The Southern mafia.

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 1:55 pm

Hide Behind – fascinating! I guess if we ever knew half of what goes on behind the scenes, we'd be shocked. We only ever know things like this exist when people like you enlighten us, or when there's a blockbuster movie about it. Thanks.

Deborah Andrew , July 14, 2017 at 10:03 am

With great respect and appreciation for your writing about the current unsubstantiated conversations/writing about 'Russia-gate' I would ask if 'the other side of a story' is really what we want or, is it that we want all the facts. Analysis and opinions, that include the facts, may differ. However, it is the readers who will evaluate the varied analysis and opinions when they include all the facts known. I raise this question, as it seems to me that we have a binary approach to our thinking and decision making. Something is either good or bad, this or that. Sides are taken. Labels are added (such as conservative and progressive). Would we not be wiser and would our decision making not be wiser if it were based on a set of principles? My own preference: the precautionary principle and the principle of do no harm. I am suggesting that we abandon the phrase and notion of the 'other side of the story' and replace it with: based on the facts now known, or, based on all the facts revealed to date or, until more facts are revealed it appears

BannanaBoat , July 14, 2017 at 11:00 am

HEAR -- HEAR -- Excellent --

Zachary Smith , July 14, 2017 at 11:04 am

I would ask if 'the other side of a story' is really what we want or, is it that we want all the facts.

Replying to a question with another question isn't really good form, but given my knowledge level of this case I can see no alternative.

How do you propose to determine the "facts" when virtually none of the characters involved in the affair appear trustworthy? Also, there is a lot of evidence (displayed by Mr. Parry) that another set of "characters" we call the Mainstream Media are extremely biased and one-sided with their coverage of the story.

Again – Where am I going to find those "facts" you speak of?

Kiza , July 15, 2017 at 2:52 am

Spot on.

backwardsevolution , July 14, 2017 at 2:02 pm

Deborah Andrew – good comment, but the problem is that we never seem to get "the other side of the story" from the MSM. You are right in pointing out that "the other side of the story" probably isn't ALL there is (as nothing is completely black and white), but at least it's something. The only way we can ever get to the truth is to put the facts together and question them, but how are you going to do that when the facts are kept away from us?

It can be very frustrating, can't it, Deborah? Cheers.

Cal , July 14, 2017 at 8:52 pm

Nice comment.

None of us can know the exact truth of anything we ourselves haven't seen or been involved in. The best we can do is try to find trusted sources, be objective, analytical and compare different stories and known the backgrounds and possible agendas of the people involved in a issue or story.

We can use some clues to help us cull thru what we hear and read.

Twenty-Five Rules of Disinformation

Note: The first rule and last five (or six, depending on situation) rules are generally not directly within the ability of the traditional disinfo artist to apply. These rules are generally used more directly by those at the leadership, key players, or planning level of the criminal conspiracy or conspiracy to cover up.

1. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Regardless of what you know, don't discuss it -- especially if you are a public figure, news anchor, etc. If it's not reported, it didn't happen, and you never have to deal with the issues.

2. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the 'How dare you!' gambit.

3. Create rumor mongers. Avoid discussing issues by describing all charges, regardless of venue or evidence, as mere rumors and wild accusations. Other derogatory terms mutually exclusive of truth may work as well. This method which works especially well with a silent press, because the only way the public can learn of the facts are through such 'arguable rumors'. If you can associate the material with the Internet, use this fact to certify it a 'wild rumor' from a 'bunch of kids on the Internet' which can have no basis in fact.

4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent's argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.

5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary 'attack the messenger' ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as 'kooks', 'right-wing', 'liberal', 'left-wing', 'terrorists', 'conspiracy buffs', 'radicals', 'militia', 'racists', 'religious fanatics', 'sexual deviates', and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.

6. Hit and Run. In any public forum, make a brief attack of your opponent or the opponent position and then scamper off before an answer can be fielded, or simply ignore any answer. This works extremely well in Internet and letters-to-the-editor environments where a steady stream of new identities can be called upon without having to explain criticism, reasoning -- simply make an accusation or other attack, never discussing issues, and never answering any subsequent response, for that would dignify the opponent's viewpoint.

7. Question motives. Twist or amplify any fact which could be taken to imply that the opponent operates out of a hidden personal agenda or other bias. This avoids discussing issues and forces the accuser on the defensive.

8. Invoke authority. Claim for yourself or associate yourself with authority and present your argument with enough 'jargon' and 'minutia' to illustrate you are 'one who knows', and simply say it isn't so without discussing issues or demonstrating concretely why or citing sources.

9. Play Dumb. No matter what evidence or logical argument is offered, avoid discussing issues except with denials they have any credibility, make any sense, provide any proof, contain or make a point, have logic, or support a conclusion. Mix well for maximum effect.

10. Associate opponent charges with old news. A derivative of the straw man -- usually, in any large-scale matter of high visibility, someone will make charges early on which can be or were already easily dealt with – a kind of investment for the future should the matter not be so easily contained.) Where it can be foreseen, have your own side raise a straw man issue and have it dealt with early on as part of the initial contingency plans. Subsequent charges, regardless of validity or new ground uncovered, can usually then be associated with the original charge and dismissed as simply being a rehash without need to address current issues -- so much the better where the opponent is or was involved with the original source.

11. Establish and rely upon fall-back positions. Using a minor matter or element of the facts, take the 'high road' and 'confess' with candor that some innocent mistake, in hindsight, was made -- but that opponents have seized on the opportunity to blow it all out of proportion and imply greater criminalities which, 'just isn't so.' Others can reinforce this on your behalf, later, and even publicly 'call for an end to the nonsense' because you have already 'done the right thing.' Done properly, this can garner sympathy and respect for 'coming clean' and 'owning up' to your mistakes without addressing more serious issues.

12. Enigmas have no solution. Drawing upon the overall umbrella of events surrounding the crime and the multitude of players and events, paint the entire affair as too complex to solve. This causes those otherwise following the matter to begin to lose interest more quickly without having to address the actual issues.

13. Alice in Wonderland Logic. Avoid discussion of the issues by reasoning backwards or with an apparent deductive logic which forbears any actual material fact.

14. Demand complete solutions. Avoid the issues by requiring opponents to solve the crime at hand completely, a ploy which works best with issues qualifying for rule 10.

15. Fit the facts to alternate conclusions. This requires creative thinking unless the crime was planned with contingency conclusions in place.

16. Vanish evidence and witnesses. If it does not exist, it is not fact, and you won't have to address the issue.

17. Change the subject. Usually in connection with one of the other ploys listed here, find a way to side-track the discussion with abrasive or controversial comments in hopes of turning attention to a new, more manageable topic. This works especially well with companions who can 'argue' with you over the new topic and polarize the discussion arena in order to avoid discussing more key issues.

18. Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents. If you can't do anything else, chide and taunt your opponents and draw them into emotional responses which will tend to make them look foolish and overly motivated, and generally render their material somewhat less coherent. Not only will you avoid discussing the issues in the first instance, but even if their emotional response addresses the issue, you can further avoid the issues by then focusing on how 'sensitive they are to criticism.'

19. Ignore proof presented, demand impossible proofs. This is perhaps a variant of the 'play dumb' rule. Regardless of what material may be presented by an opponent in public forums, claim the material irrelevant and demand proof that is impossible for the opponent to come by (it may exist, but not be at his disposal, or it may be something which is known to be safely destroyed or withheld, such as a murder weapon.) In order to completely avoid discussing issues, it may be required that you to categorically deny and be critical of media or books as valid sources, deny that witnesses are acceptable, or even deny that statements made by government or other authorities have any meaning or relevance.

20. False evidence. Whenever possible, introduce new facts or clues designed and manufactured to conflict with opponent presentations -- as useful tools to neutralize sensitive issues or impede resolution. This works best when the crime was designed with contingencies for the purpose, and the facts cannot be easily separated from the fabrications.

21. Call a Grand Jury, Special Prosecutor, or other empowered investigative body. Subvert the (process) to your benefit and effectively neutralize all sensitive issues without open discussion. Once convened, the evidence and testimony are required to be secret when properly handled. For instance, if you own the prosecuting attorney, it can insure a Grand Jury hears no useful evidence and that the evidence is sealed and unavailable to subsequent investigators. Once a favorable verdict is achieved, the matter can be considered officially closed. Usually, this technique is applied to find the guilty innocent, but it can also be used to obtain charges when seeking to frame a victim.

22. Manufacture a new truth. Create your own expert(s), group(s), author(s), leader(s) or influence existing ones willing to forge new ground via scientific, investigative, or social research or testimony which concludes favorably. In this way, if you must actually address issues, you can do so authoritatively.

23. Create bigger distractions. If the above does not seem to be working to distract from sensitive issues, or to prevent unwanted media coverage of unstoppable events such as trials, create bigger news stories (or treat them as such) to distract the multitudes.

24. Silence critics. If the above methods do not prevail, consider removing opponents from circulation by some definitive solution so that the need to address issues is removed entirely. This can be by their death, arrest and detention, blackmail or destruction of theircharacter by release of blackmail information, or merely by destroying them financially, emotionally, or severely damaging their health.

25. Vanish. If you are a key holder of secrets or otherwise overly illuminated and you think the heat is getting too hot, to avoid the issues, vacate the kitchen. .

Note: There are other ways to attack truth, but these listed are the most common, and others are likely derivatives of these. In the end, you can usually spot the professional disinfo players by one or more of seven (now 8) distinct traits:

Eight Traits of the Disinformationalist
by H. Michael Sweeney
copyright (c) 1997, 2000 All rights reserved

(Revised April 2000 – formerly SEVEN Traits)

1) Avoidance. They never actually discuss issues head-on or provide constructive input, generally avoiding citation of references or credentials. Rather, they merely imply this, that, and the other. Virtually everything about their presentation implies their authority and expert knowledge in the matter without any further justification for credibility.

2) Selectivity. They tend to pick and choose opponents carefully, either applying the hit-and-run approach against mere commentators supportive of opponents, or focusing heavier attacks on key opponents who are known to directly address issues. .

3) Coincidental. They tend to surface suddenly and somewhat coincidentally with a new controversial topic with no clear prior record of participation in general discussions in the particular public arena involved. They likewise tend to vanish once the topic is no longer of general concern. They were likely directed or elected to be there for a reason, and vanish with the reason.

4) Teamwork. They tend to operate in self-congratulatory and complementary packs or teams. Of course, this can happen naturally in any public forum, but there will likely be an ongoing pattern of frequent exchanges of this sort where professionals are involved. Sometimes one of the players will infiltrate the opponent camp to become a source for straw man or other tactics designed to dilute opponent presentation strength.

5) Anti-conspiratorial. They almost always have disdain for 'conspiracy theorists' and, usually, for those who in any way believe JFK was not killed by LHO. Ask yourself why, if they hold such disdain for conspiracy theorists, do they focus on defending a single topic discussed in a NG focusing on conspiracies? One might think they would either be trying to make fools of everyone on every topic, or simply ignore the group they hold in such disdain.Or, one might more rightly conclude they have an ulterior motive for their actions in going out of their way to focus as they do.

6) Artificial Emotions. An odd kind of 'artificial' emotionalism and an unusually thick skin -- an ability to persevere and persist even in the face of overwhelming criticism and unacceptance. You might have outright rage and indignation one moment, ho-hum the next, and more anger later -- an emotional yo-yo. With respect to being thick-skinned, no amount of criticism will deter them from doing their job, and they will generally continue their old disinfo patterns without any adjustments to criticisms of how obvious it is that they play that game -- where a more rational individual who truly cares what others think might seek to improve their communications style, substance, and so forth, or simply give up.

7) Inconsistent. There is also a tendency to make mistakes which betray their true self/motives. This may stem from not really knowing their topic, or it may be somewhat 'freudian', so to speak, in that perhaps they really root for the side of truth deep within.

8) BONUS TRAIT: Time Constant. Wth respect to News Groups, is the response time factor. There are three ways this can be seen to work, especially when the government or other empowered player is involved in a cover up operation:
1) ANY NG posting by a targeted proponent for truth can result in an IMMEDIATE response. The government and other empowered players can afford to pay people to sit there and watch for an opportunity to do some damage. SINCE DISINFO IN A NG ONLY WORKS IF THE READER SEES IT – FAST RESPONSE IS CALLED FOR, or the visitor may be swayed towards truth.
2) When dealing in more direct ways with a disinformationalist, such as email, DELAY IS CALLED FOR – there will usually be a minimum of a 48-72 hour delay. This allows a sit-down team discussion on response strategy for best effect, and even enough time to 'get permission' or instruction from a formal chain of command.
3) In the NG example 1) above, it will often ALSO be seen that bigger guns are drawn and fired after the same 48-72 hours delay – the team approach in play. This is especially true when the targeted truth seeker or their comments are considered more important with respect to potential to reveal truth. Thus, a serious truth sayer will be attacked twice for the same sin.

Michael Kenny , July 14, 2017 at 11:22 am

I don't really see Mr Parry's point. The banning of Nekrasov's film isn't proof of the accuracy of its contents and even less does it prove that anything that runs counter to Nekrasov's argument is false. Nor does proving that a mainstream meida story is false prove that an internet story saying the opposite is true. "A calls B a liar. B proves that A is a liar. That proves that B is truthful." Not very logical! What seems to be established is that the lawyer in question represents a Russian-owned company, a money-laundering prosecution against which was settled last May on the basis of what the company called a "surprise" offer from prosecutors that was "too good to refuse". This "Russian government attorney" (dixit Goldstone) had information concerning illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee. Trump Jr jumped at it and it makes no difference whether he was tricked or even whether he actually got anything, his intent was clear. In addition DNC "dirt" did indeed appear on the internet via Wikileaks, just as "dirt" appeared in the French election. MacronLeaks proves Russiagate and "Juniorgate" confirms MacronLeaks. The question now is did Trump, as president, intervene to bring about this "too good to refuse" offer? That question cannot just be written off with the "no evidence" argument.

Skip Scott , July 14, 2017 at 1:40 pm

God, you are persistent if nothing else. Keep repeating the same lie until it is taken as true, just like the MSM. You say that Russia-gate, Macron leaks, etc can't be written off with the "no evidence" argument (how is that logical?), and then you trash a film you haven't even seen because it doesn't fit your narrative. Maybe some evidence is provided in the film, did you consider that possibility? That fact that Nekrasov started out to make a pro Broder film, and then switched sides, leads me to believe he found some disturbing evidence. And if you look into Nekrasov you will find that he is no fan of Putin, so one has to wonder what his motive is if he is lying.

I am wondering if you ever look back at previous posts, because you never reply to a rebuttal. If you did, you would see that you are almost universally seen by the commenters here as a troll. If you are being paid, I suppose it might not matter much to you. However, your employer should look for someone with more intelligent arguments. He is wasting his money on you.

Abe , July 14, 2017 at 9:27 pm

Propaganda trolls attempt to trash the information space by dismissing, distracting, diverting, denying, deceiving and distorting the facts.

The trolls aim at confusing rather than convincing the audience.

The tag team troll performance of "Michael Kenny" and "David" is accompanied by loud declarations that they have "logic" on their side and "evidence" somewhere. Then they shriek that they're being "censored".

Propaganda trolls target the comments section of independent investigative journalism sites like Consortium News, typically showing up when articles discuss the West's "regime change" wars and deception operations.

Pro-Israel Hasbara propaganda trolls also strive to discredit websites, articles, and videos critical of Israel and Zionism. Hasbara smear tactics have intensified due to increasing Israeli threats of military aggression, Israeli collusion with the United States in "regime change" projects from the Middle East to Eastern Europe, and Israeli links to international organized crime and terrorism in Syria.

Kiza , July 15, 2017 at 3:04 am

Gee Abe, you are a magician (and I thought that you only quote excellent articles). Short and sharp.

Abe , July 15, 2017 at 4:15 pm

When they have a hard time selling that they're being "censored" (after more than a dozen comments), trolls complain that they're being "dismissed" and "invalidated" by "hostile voices".

exiled off mainstreet , July 14, 2017 at 1:54 pm

Aaron Kesel, in Activistpost documents the links between Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS, the company engaged by the Clintons to prepare the defamatory Christopher Steele Dossier against Trump later used by Comey to help gin up the Russian influence conspiracy theory. In the article, it is true the GPS connection may have involved her lobbying efforts to overturn the Magnitsky law, not the dossier, but it is also interesting that she is on record as anti-Trump and having associations with Clinton democrats. Though it may have been part of the beginnings of a conspiracy, the conspiracy may have developed later and the meeting became something they related back to to bolster this fraudulent dangerous initiative.

mike k , July 14, 2017 at 2:01 pm

I think as you say Skip that most on this blog have seen through Michael Kenny's stuff. Nobody's buying it. He's harmless. If he's here on his own dime, if we don't feed him, he will get bored and go away. If he's being payed, he may persist, but so what. Sometimes I check the MSM just to see what the propaganda line is. Kenny is like that; his shallow arguments tell me what we must counter to wake people up.

Skip Scott , July 14, 2017 at 5:51 pm

Yeah mike k, I know you're right. I don't know why I let the guy get under my skin. Perhaps it's because he never responds to a rebuttal.

Kiza , July 15, 2017 at 3:14 am

Then you would have to waste more time rebutting the (equally empty) rebuttal.

The second thing is that many trolls suffer from DID, that is the Dissociative Identity Disorder, aka sock puppetry. There is a bit of similarity in argument between David and Michael and HAWKINS, only one of them rebuts quite often.

Philippe Lemoine , July 14, 2017 at 3:41 pm

Another excellent article! I wrote a very detailed blog post in which I methodically take apart the latest "revelation" about Donald Trump Jr.'s emails. I talk a lot about the Magnitsky Act, which is very relevant to this whole story.

Joe Tedesky , July 14, 2017 at 4:43 pm

I always like reading your articles Philippe, you have a real talent. Maybe read what I wrote above, but I'm sensing this Trump Jr affair will help Hillary more than anything, to give her a reprieve from any further FBI investigations. I mean somehow, I'm sure by Hillary's standards and desires, that this whole crazy investigation thing has to end. So, would it not seem reasonable to believe that by allowing Donald Jr to be taken off the hook, that Hillary likewise will enjoy the taste of forgiveness?

Tell me if you think this Donald Trump Jr scandal could lead to this Joe

PS if so this could be a good next article to write there I go telling the band what to play, but seriously if this Russian conclusion episode goes on much longer, could you not see a grand bargain and a deal being made?

Philippe Lemoine , July 14, 2017 at 5:14 pm

Thanks for the compliment, I'm glad you like the blog. I wasn't under the impression that Clinton was under any particular danger from the Justice Department, but even if she was, she doesn't have the power to stop this Trump/Russia collusion nonsense because it's pushed by a lot of people that have nothing to do with her except for the fact that they would have preferred her to win.

Abe , July 14, 2017 at 6:48 pm

Excellent summary and analysis, Philippe. Key observation:

"as even the New York Times admits, there is no evidence that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort for 20-30 minutes on 9 June 2016, provided any such information during that meeting. Donald Trump Jr. said that, although he asked her about it, she didn't give them anything on Clinton, but talked to him about the Magnitsky Act and Russia's decision to block adoption by American couples in retaliation. Of course, if we just had his word, we'd have no particularly good reason to believe him. But the fact remains that no documents of the sort described in Goldstone's ridiculous email ever surfaced during the campaign, which makes what he is saying about how the meeting went down pretty convincing, at least on this specific point. It should be noted that Donald Trump Jr. has offered to testify under oath about anything related to this meeting. Moreover, he also said during the interview he gave to Sean Hannity that there was no follow-up to this meeting, which is unlikely to be a lie since he must know that, given the hysteria about this meeting, it would come out. He may not be the brightest guy in the world, but surely he or at least the people who advised him before that interview are not that stupid."

Philippe Lemoine , July 14, 2017 at 10:27 pm

Thanks!

exiled off mainstreet , July 16, 2017 at 1:31 pm

Your own necpluribus article was one of the best I've seen summarising the whole controversy, and your exhaustive responses to the pro-deep state critics was edifying. I am now convinced that your view of Veselnitskaya's role in the affair and the nature her connections to the dossier drafting company GPS being based on their unrelated work on the magnitsky law is accurate.

Mike , July 14, 2017 at 9:36 pm

Pretty interesting:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-jr-russia-bill-browder-testify-senate-links-natalia-veselnitskaya-steele-dossier-a7840061.html

Big Tim , July 15, 2017 at 12:31 am

"Bill Browder, born into a notable Jewish family in Chicago, is the grandson of Earl Browder, the former leader of the Communist Party USA,[2] and the son of Eva (Tislowitz) and Felix Browder, a mathematician. He grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and attended the University of Chicago where he studied economics. He received an MBA from Stanford Business School[3] in 1989 where his classmates included Gary Kremen and Rich Kelley. In 1998, Browder gave up his US citizenship and became a British citizen.[4] Prior to setting up Hermitage, Browder worked in the Eastern European practice of the Boston Consulting Group[5] in London and managed the Russian proprietary investments desk at Salomon Brothers.[6]"

Rake , July 15, 2017 at 9:13 am

Successfully keeping a salient argument from being heard is scary, given the social media and alternative media players who are all ripe to uncover a bombshell. Sy Hersh needs to convince Nekrasov to get his documentary to WkiLeaks.

Anna , July 15, 2017 at 10:25 am

"Sy Hersh needs to convince Nekrasov to get his documentary to WkiLeaks."
Agree.

P. Clark , July 15, 2017 at 12:01 pm

When Trump suggested that a Mexican-American judge might be biased because of this ethnicity the media said this was racist. Yet these same outlets like the New York Times are now routinely questioning Russian-American loyalty because of their ethnicity. As usual a ridiculous double standard. Basically the assumption is all Russians are bad. We didn't even have this during the cold war.

Cal , July 15, 2017 at 8:10 pm

Yes indeed P. Clark .that kind or hypocrisy makes my head explode!

MichaelAngeloRaphaelo , July 15, 2017 at 12:17 pm

Enough's Enough
STOP DNC/DEMs
#CryBabyFakeNewsBS

Support Duly ELECTED
@POTUS @realDonaldTrump
#BoycottFakeNewsSponsors
#DrainTheSwamp
#MAGA

Roy G Biv , July 15, 2017 at 12:50 pm

CN article on 911 truthers:

https://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/011511.html

Finnish wonderer , July 15, 2017 at 1:19 pm

Wow, I just learned via this article that in US Nekrasov is labeled as "pro-Kremlin" by WaPo. That's just too funny. He's in a relationship with a Finnish MEP Heidi Hautala, who is very well known for her anti-Russia mentality. Nekrasov is defenetly anti-Kremlin if something. He was supposed to make an anti-Kremlin documentary, but the facts turned out to be different than he thought, but still finished his documentary.

Mark Dankof , July 15, 2017 at 3:21 pm

The lengths to which the Neo Conservative War Cabal will go to destroy freedom of speech and access to alternative news sources underscores that the United States is becoming an Orwellian agitation-propaganda police state equally dedicated to igniting World War III for Netanyahu, the Central Banks, our Wahhabic Petrodollar Partners, and a pipeline consortium or two. The Old American Republic is dead.

Roy G Biv , July 15, 2017 at 4:38 pm

Interesting to note that each and everyone of David's comments were bleached from this page. Looks like he was right about the censorship. Sad.

Abe , July 15, 2017 at 5:41 pm

Note "allegations that are unsupported by facts".

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/01/19/a-reminder-about-comment-rules-2/

David , July 16, 2017 at 3:51 pm

Duly noted Abe. But you should adhere to the first part of the statement that you somehow forgot to include:

From Editor Robert Parry: At Consortiumnews, we welcome substantive comments about our articles, but comments should avoid abusive language toward other commenters or our writers, racial or religious slurs (including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia), and allegations that are unsupported by facts.

Kiza , July 15, 2017 at 6:06 pm

My favorite was David's claim that he contributed to this zine whilst it was publishing articles not to his liking (/sarc). I kindly reminded him that people pay much more money to have publishing the way they like it – for example how much Bezos paid for Washington Post, or Omidyar to establish The Intercept.

Except for such funny component, David's comments were totally substance free and useless. Nothing lost with bleaching.

Roy G Biv , July 16, 2017 at 5:44 am

You're practicing disinformation. He actually said he contributed early on and had problems with the recent course of the CN trajectory. Censorship is cowardly.

Abe , July 16, 2017 at 1:53 pm

Consortium News welcomes substantive comments.

"David" was presenting allegations unsupported by facts and disrupting on-topic discussion.

Violations of CN comment policy are taken down by the moderator. Period. It has nothing to do with "censorship".

Stop practicing disinformation and spin, "Roy G Biv".

David , July 16, 2017 at 3:57 pm

I stopped contributing after the unintellectual dismissal of scientific 911 truthers. And it's easy for you to paint over my comments as they have been scrubbed. There was plenty of useful substance, it just ran against the tide. Sorry you didn't appreciate it the contrary viewpoint or have the curiosity to read the backstory.

Abe , July 16, 2017 at 5:02 pm

The cowardly claim of "censorship".

The typical troll whine is that their "contrary viewpoint" was "dismissed" merely because it "ran against the tide".

No. Your allegations were unsupported by facts. They still are.

Martyrdom is just another troll tactic.

dub , July 15, 2017 at 9:44 pm

torrent for the film?

Roy G Biv , July 16, 2017 at 5:56 am

Here is the pdf of the legal brief about the Magnitsky film submitted by Senator Grassly to Homeland Security Chief. Interesting read and casts doubt on the claims made in the film, refutes several claims actually. Skip past Chuck Grassly's first two page intro to get to the meat of it. If you are serious about a debate on the merits of the case, this is essential reading.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2017-04-04%20CEG%20to%20DHS%20(Akhmetshin%20Information)%20with%20attachment.pdf

Abe , July 16, 2017 at 1:16 pm

Yes, very interesting read. By all means, examine the brief.

But forget the spin from "Roy G Biv" because the brief actually refutes nothing about Andrei Nekrasov's film.

It simply notes that the Russian government was understandably concerned about "unscrupulous swindler" and "sleazy crook" William Browder.

After your finished reading the brief, try to remember any time when Congress dared to examine a lobbying campaign undertaken on behalf of Israeli (which is to say, predominantly Russian Jewish) interests, the circumstances surrounding a pro-Israel lobbying effort and the potential FARA violations involved. or the background of a Jewish "Russian immigrant".

Note on page 3 of the cover letter the CC to The Honorable Dianne Feinstein, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Feinstein was born Dianne Emiel Goldman in San Francisco, to Betty (née Rosenburg), a former model, and Leon Goldman, a surgeon. Feinstein's paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland. Her maternal grandparents, the Rosenburg family, were from Saint Petersburg, Russia. While they were of German-Jewish ancestry, they practiced the Russian Orthodox faith as was required for Jews residing in Saint Petersburg.

In 1980, Feinstein married Richard C. Blum, an investment banker. In 2003, Feinstein was ranked the fifth-wealthiest senator, with an estimated net worth of US$26 million. By 2005 her net worth had increased to between US$43 million and US$99 million.

Like the rest of Congress, Feinstein knows the "right way" to vote.

David , July 16, 2017 at 1:50 pm

So you're saying because a Jew Senator was CC'd it invalidates the information? Read the first page again. The Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is obligated to CC these submissions to the ranking member of the Committee, Jew heritage or not. Misinformation and disinformation from you Abe, or generously, maybe lazy reading. The italicized unscrupulous swindler and sleazy crook comments were quoting the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after the Washington screening of Nekrasov's film and demonstrating Russia's intentions to discredit Browder. You are practiced at the art of deception. Hopefully readers will simply look for themselves.

Abe , July 16, 2017 at 2:11 pm

Ah, comrade "David". We see you're back muttering about "disinformation" using your "own name".

My statements about Senator Feinstein are entirely supported by facts. You really should look into that.

Also, please note that quotation marks are not italics.

And please note that the Russian Foreign Minister is legally authorized to present the view of the Russian government.

Browder is pretty effective at discrediting himself. He simply has to open his mouth.

I encourage readers to look for themselves, and not simply take the word of one Browder's sockpuppets.

David , July 16, 2017 at 2:55 pm

It won't last papushka. Every post and pended moderated post was scrubbed yesterday, to the cheers of you and your mean spirited friends. But truth is truth and should be defended. So to the point, I reread the Judiciary Committee linked document, and the items you specified are in italics, because the report is quoting Lavrov's comments to a Moscow news paper and "another paper" as evidence of Russia's efforts to undermine the credibility and standing of Browder. This is hardly obscure. It's plain as day if you just read it.

David , July 16, 2017 at 2:59 pm

Also Abe, before I get deleted again, I don't question any of you geneological description of Feinstein. I merely pointed out that she is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and it is normal for the Chairman of the Committee (Republican) to CC the ranking member. Unless of course it is Devin Nunes, then fairness and tradition goes out the window.

Abe , July 16, 2017 at 4:01 pm

It's plain as day, "David" or whatever other name you're trolling under, that you're here to loudly "defend" the "credibility" and "standing" of William Browder.

Sorry, but you're going to have to "defend" Browder with something other than your usual innuendo, blather about 9-11, and slurs against RP.

Otherwise it will be recognized for what it is, repeated violation of CN comment policy, and taken down by the moderator again.

Good luck to any troll who wants to "defend" Browder's record.

But you're gonna have to earn your pay with something other than your signature unsupported allegations, 9-11 diversions, and the "non-Jewish Russian haters gonna hate" propaganda shtick.

David , July 16, 2017 at 5:07 pm

I wish you would stop with the name calling. I am not a troll. I have been trying to make simple rational points. You respond by calling me names and wholly ignoring and/or misrepresenting and obfuscating easily verifiable facts. I suspect you are the moderator of this page, and if so am surprised by your consistent negative references to Jews. I'm not Jewish but you're really over the top. Of course you have many friends here so you get little push back, but I really hope you are not Bob or Sam.

Anonymous , July 16, 2017 at 10:26 am

We can see that it was what can be considered to be a Complex situation, where it was said that someone had Dirt on Hillary Clinton, but there was No collusion and there was No attempted collusion, but there was Patriotism and Concern for Others during a Perplexing situation.

This is because of what is Known as Arkancide, and which is associated with some People who say they have Dirt on the Clintons.

The Obvious and Humane thing to do was to arrange to meet the Russian Lawyer, who it was Alleged to have Dirt on Hillary Clinton, regardless of any possible Alleged Electoral advantage against Hillary Clinton, and until further information, there may have been some National Security Concerns, because it was Known that Hillary Clinton committed Espionage with Top Secret Information on her Unauthorized, Clandestine, Secret Email Server, and the Obvious cover up by the Department of Justice and the FBI, and so it was with this background that this Complex situation had to be dealt with.

This is because there is Greater Protection for a Person who has Dirt or Alleged Dirt on the Clintons, if that Information is share with other People.

This is because it is a Complete Waste of time to go to the Authorities, because they will Not do anything against Clinton Crimes, and a former Haitian Government Official was found dead only days before he was to give Testimony regarding the Clinton Foundation.

We saw this with Seth Rich, where the Police Videos has been withheld, and we have seen the Obstruction in investigating that Crime.

The message to Leakers is that Seth Rich was taken to hospital and Treated and was on his way to Fully Recovering, but he died in hospital, and those who were thinking of Leaking Understood the message from that.

There was Also concern for Rob Goldstone, who Alleged that the Russian Lawyer had Dirt on the Clintons.

We Know that is is said Goldstone that he did Not want to hear what was said at the meeting.

This is because Goldstone wanted associates of Candidate Donald Trump to Know that he did Not know what was said at that meeting.

We now Know that the meeting was a set up to Improperly obtain a FISA Warrant, which was Requested in June of 2016, and that is same the month and the year as the meeting that the Russian Lawyer attended.

There was what was an Unusual granting of a Special Visa so that the Russian Lawyer could attend that set up, which was Improperly Used to Request a FISA Warrant in order to Improperly Spy on an Opposition Political Candidate in order to Improperly gain an Electoral advantage in an Undemocratic manner, because if anything wrong was intended by Associates of Candidate Donald Trump, then there were enough People in that meeting who were the Equivalent of Establishment Democrats and Establishment Republicans, because we Know that after that meeting, that the husband of the former Florida chair of the Trump campaign obtained a front row seat to a June 2016 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing for the Russian Lawyer.

There are Americans who consider that the 2 Major Political Party Tyranny has Betrayed the Constitution and the Principles of Democracy, because they oppose President Donald Trump's Election Integrity Commission, because they think that the Establishment Republicans and the Establishment Democrats are the Bribed and Corrupted Puppets of the Shadow Regime.

We Know from Senator Sanders, that if Americans want a Political Revolution, then they will need their own Political Party.

There are Americans who think that a Group of Democratic Party Voters and Republican Party Voters who have No association with the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, and that they may be named The Guardians of American Democracy.

These Guardians of American Democracy would be a numerous Group of People, and they would ask Republican Voters to Vote for the Democratic Party Representative instead of the Republican who is in Congress and who is seeking Reelection, in exchange for Democratic Party Voters to Vote for the Republican Party Candidate instead of the Democrat who is in Congress and who is seeking Reelection, and the same can be done for the Senate, because the American People have to Decide if it is they the Shadow Regime, or if it is We the People, and the Establishment Republicans and the Establishment Democrats are the Bribed and Corrupt Puppets of the Shadow Regime, and there would be equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats replaced in this manner, and so it will Not affect their numbers in the Congress or the Senate.

There could be People who think that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was Unacceptability Biased and Unacceptability Corrupt during the Democratic Party Primaries, and that if she wants a Democratic Party Candidate to be Elected in her Congressional District, then she Should announce that she will Not be contesting the next Election, and there could be People who think that Speaker Paul Ryan was Unacceptability Disloyal by insufficiently endorse the Republican Presidential nominee, and with other matters, and that if he wants a Republican Party Candidate to be Elected in his Congressional District, then he Should announce that he will Not be contesting the next Election, and then the Guardians of American Democracy can look at other Dinos and Rinos, including those in the Senate, because the Constitution says the words: We the People.

There are Many Americans who have Noticed that Criminal Elites escape Justice, and Corruption is the norm in American Politics.

There are those who Supported Senator Sanders who Realize that Senator Sanders would have been Impeached had he become President, and they Know that they Need President Donald Trump to prepare the Political Landscape so that someone like Senator Sanders could be President, without a Coup attempt that is being attempted on President Donald Trump, and while these People may not Vote for the Republicans, they can Refuse to Vote for the Democratic Party, until the conditions are there for a Constitutional Republic and a Constitutional Democracy, and they want the Illegal Mueller Team to recuse themselves from this pile of Vile and Putrid McCarthyist Lies Invented by their Shadow Regime Puppet Masters,

There are Many Americans who want Voter Identification and Paper Ballots for Elections, and they have seen how several States are Opposed to President Donald Trump's Commission on Election Integrity, because they want to Rig their Elections, and this is Why there are Many Americans who want America to be a Constitutional Republic and a Constitutional Democracy.

MillyBloom54 , July 16, 2017 at 12:31 pm

I just read this article in the Washington Monthly, and wish to read informed comments about this issue. There are suggestions that organized crime from Russian was heavily involved. This is a complicated mess of money, greed, etc.

http://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/07/10/trumps-inner-circle-met-with-no-ordinary-russian-lawyer/

Abe , July 16, 2017 at 1:32 pm

Yes, very interesting read. By all means, examine the article, which concludes:

"So, let's please stay focused on why this matters.

"And why was Preet Bharara fired again?"

Israeli banks have helped launder money for Russian oligarchs, while large-scale fraudulent industries have been allowed to flourish in Israel.

A May 2009 diplomatic cable by the US ambassador to Israel warned that "many Russian oligarchs of Jewish origin and Jewish members of organized crime groups have received Israeli citizenship, or at least maintain residences in the country."

The United States estimated at the time that Russian crime groups had "laundered as much as $10 billion through Israeli holdings."

In 2009, then Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara charged 17 managers and employees of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims for defrauding Germany 42.5 million dollars by creating thousands of false benefit applications for people who had not suffered in the Holocaust.

The scam operated by creating phony applications with false birth dates and invented histories of persecution to process compensation claims. In some cases the recipients were born after World War II and at least one person was not even Jewish.

Among those charged was Semyon Domnitser, a former director of the conference. Many of the applicants were recruited from Brooklyn's Russian community. All those charged hail from Brooklyn.

When a phony applicant got a check, the scammers were given a cut, Bharara said. The fraud which has been going on for 16 years was related to the 400 million dollars which Germany pays out each year to Holocaust survivors.

Later, in November 2015, Bharara's office charged three Israeli men in a 23-count indictment that alleged that they ran a extensive computer hacking and fraud scheme that targeted JPMorgan Chase, The Wall Street Journal, and ten other companies.

According to prosecutors, the Israeli's operation generated "hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profit" and exposed the personal information of more than 100 million people.

Why was Bharara fired?

Any real investigation of Russia-Gate will draw international attention towards Russian Jewish corruption in the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) sectors, and lead back to Israel.

Ain't gonna happen.

David , July 16, 2017 at 3:22 pm

Remember Milly that essentially one of the first things Trump did when he came into office was fire Preet, and just days before the long awaited trial. Then, Jeff Sessions settled the case for 6 million without any testimony on a 230 million dollar case, days after. Spectacular and brazen, and structured to hide the identities of which properties were bought by which investors. Hmmmm.

David , July 16, 2017 at 3:33 pm

By the way Milly, great summary article you have linked and one that everyone who is championing the Nekrasov film should read.

Abe , July 16, 2017 at 4:37 pm

The "great" article was not written by a journalist. It's an opinion piece written by Martin Longman, a blogger and Democratic Party political consultant.

From 2012 to 2013, Longman worked for Democracy for America (DFA) a political action committee, headquartered in South Burlington, Vermont, founded by former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.

Since March 2014, political animal Longman has managed the The Washington Monthly website and online magazine.

Although it claims to be "an independent voice", the Washington Monthly is funded by the Ford Foundation, JP Morgan Chase Foundation, and well-heeled corporate entities http://washingtonmonthly.com/about/

Longman's credentials as a "progressive" alarmist are well established. Since 2005, he has been the publisher of Booman Tribune. Longman admits that BooMan is related to the 'bogey man' (aka, bogy man, boogeyman), an evil imaginary character who harms children.

Vladimir Putin is the latest bogey man of the Democratic Party and its equally pro-Israel "opposition".

Neither party wants the conversation to involve Jewish Russian organized crime, because that leads to Israel and the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby that funds both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Very interesting.

[Dec 11, 2017] Strzok-Gate And The Mueller Cover-Up by Alexander Mercouris

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... If there were secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence such as might give rise to genuine concern that the national security of the United States might be compromised – for example because they were intended to swing the US election from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump – then the FBI would have a legitimate reason to investigate those contacts even if no actual crimes were committed during them. ..."
"... The point is however is that eighteen months after the start of the Russiagate investigation no evidence either of criminal acts or of secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence which might have placed the national security of the United States in jeopardy has come to light. ..."
"... There is no evidence of a criminal conspiracy by anyone in the Trump campaign involving the Russians. or the hacking of John Podesta's and the DNC's computers in order to steal emails from those computers and to have them published by Wikileaks; ..."
"... There is also no evidence of any secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the election which might have placed the national security of the United States in jeopardy. ..."
"... If no evidence either of a criminal conspiracy or of inappropriate secret contacts by the Trump campaign and the Russians has been found after eighteen months of intense investigation by the biggest and mightiest national security and intelligence community on the planet, then any reasonable person would conclude that that must be because no such evidence exists. ..."
"... Some months I expressed doubts that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would countenance fishing expeditions . It turns out I was wrong. On any objective assessment it is exactly such fishing expeditions that the Mueller investigation is now engaging in. ..."
"... Deutsche Bank is a German bank not a Russian bank. To insinuate that the Russians control Deutsche Bank – one of the world's leading international banks – because Deutsche Bank has had some previous financial dealings with various Russian banks and businesses is quite simply preposterous. I doubt that there is a single important bank in Germany or Austria of which that could not also be said. ..."
"... Which again begs the question why? Why are Mueller and the Justice Department resorting to these increasingly desperate actions in order to prove something which it ought to be obvious by now cannot be proved? ..."
"... My colleague Alex Christoforou has recently pointed out that the recent indictment of Michael Flynn seems to have been partly intended to shield Mueller from dismissal and to keep his Russiagate investigation alive. Some time ago I made exactly the same point about the indictments against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates and about the indictment against George Papadopoulos. ..."
"... Those indictments were issued directly after the Wall Street Journal published an editorial saying that Mueller should resign. ..."
"... It is the Wall Street Journal editorial which in fact provides the answer to Mueller's and Rosenstein's otherwise strange behaviour and to the way that Mueller has conducted the investigation up to now. The Wall Street Journal's editorial says that Mueller's past as the FBI's Director means that he is too close to the FBI to take an objective view of its actions. ..."
"... It is universally agreed that the FBI's then Director – Mueller's friend James Comey – broke protocols by the way he announced that Hillary Clinton had been cleared. ..."
"... By failing to bring charges against Hillary Clinton the FBI ensured that she would win the Democratic Party's nomination, and that she not Bernie Sanders would face off against Donald Trump in the election in the autumn. That is important because though the eventual – completely unexpected – election outcome was that Donald Trump won the election, which Hillary Clinton lost, every opinion poll which I have seen suggests that if the election had been between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump then Bernie Sanders would have won by a landslide. ..."
"... They played Sessions like a violin. Sessions recluses himself for a bullcrap Kisnyak speech, where he did not even meet him. Rosenstein then recommends Trump fire Comey -- who wanted to be fired so they would appoint a special prosecutor -- which Rosenstein does -- Mueller, to the acclamation of ALL of Con and the Senate-including Republicans. ..."
"... Trump was pissed because they removed his only defender from Mueller -- the head of the DOJ. He knew it was a setup, so went ballistic when he found out about Sessions recusing. ..."
"... Strzok was obviously at a VERY senior pay grade. It would be very surprising if HR had any jobs at Strzok's pay grade. ..."
"... once this special prosecutor is done, congress needs to rewrite the special prosecutor law to narrow their mandate to just the item allowed to be investigated - no fishing expeditions - enough of this stupidity - and maybe put a renewal clause in there so that it has to be renewed every 12 months... ..."
"... This is, and always has been a sideshow for the "true believers" in the Democrap party and all Hitlary supporters to accuse Trump of EXACTLY what Hitlary did ..."
Dec 10, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Alexander Mercouris via TheDuran.com,

Almost eighteen months after Obama's Justice Department and the FBI launched the Russiagate investigation, and seven months after Special Counsel Robert Mueller took the investigation over, the sum total of what it has achieved is as follows

(1) an indictment of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates which concerns entirely their prior financial dealings, and which makes no reference to the Russiagate collusion allegations;

(2) an indictment for lying to the FBI of George Papadopoulos, the junior volunteer staffer of the Trump campaign, who during the 2016 Presidential election had certain contacts with members of a Moscow based Russian NGO, which he sought to pass off – falsely and unsuccessfully – as more important than they really were, and which also does not touch on the Russiagate collusion allegations; and

(3) an indictment for lying to the FBI of Michael Flynn arising from his perfectly legitimate and entirely legal contacts with the Russian ambassador after the 2016 Presidential election, which also does not touch on the Russiagate collusion allegations, and which looks as if it was brought about by an act of entrapment .

Of actual evidence to substantiate the claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the election Mueller has so far come up with nothing.

Here I wish to say something briefly about the nature of "collusion".

There is no criminal offence of "collusion" known to US law, which has led some to make the point that Mueller is investigating a crime which does not exist.

There is some force to this point, but it is one which must be heavily qualified:

(1) Though there is no crime of "collusion" in US law, there most certainly is the crime of conspiracy to perform a criminal act.

Should it ever be established that members of the Trump campaign arranged with the Russians for the Russians to hack the DNC's and John Podesta's computers and to steal the emails from those computers so that they could be published by Wikileaks, then since hacking and theft are serious criminal acts a criminal conspiracy would be established, and it would be the entirely proper to do to bring criminal charges against those who were involved in it.

This is the central allegation which lies behind the whole Russiagate case, and is the crime which Mueller is supposed to be investigating.

(2) The FBI is not merely a police and law enforcement agency. It is also the US's counter-espionage agency.

If there were secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence such as might give rise to genuine concern that the national security of the United States might be compromised – for example because they were intended to swing the US election from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump – then the FBI would have a legitimate reason to investigate those contacts even if no actual crimes were committed during them.

Since impeachment is a purely political process and not a legal process, should it ever be established that there were such secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence which might have placed the national security of the United States in jeopardy, then I have no doubt that Congress would say that there were grounds for impeachment even if no criminal offences had been committed during them.

The point is however is that eighteen months after the start of the Russiagate investigation no evidence either of criminal acts or of secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence which might have placed the national security of the United States in jeopardy has come to light.

Specifically:

(1) There is no evidence of a criminal conspiracy by anyone in the Trump campaign involving the Russians. or the hacking of John Podesta's and the DNC's computers in order to steal emails from those computers and to have them published by Wikileaks; and

(2) There is also no evidence of any secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the election which might have placed the national security of the United States in jeopardy.

Such contacts as did take place between the Trump campaign and the Russians were limited and innocuous and had no effect on the outcome of the election. Specifically there is no evidence of any concerted action between the Trump campaign and the Russians to swing the election from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.

As I have previously discussed, the meeting between Donald Trump Junior and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya is not such evidence .

If no evidence either of a criminal conspiracy or of inappropriate secret contacts by the Trump campaign and the Russians has been found after eighteen months of intense investigation by the biggest and mightiest national security and intelligence community on the planet, then any reasonable person would conclude that that must be because no such evidence exists.

Why then is the investigation still continuing?

Some months I expressed doubts that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would countenance fishing expeditions. It turns out I was wrong. On any objective assessment it is exactly such fishing expeditions that the Mueller investigation is now engaging in.

How else to explain the strange decision to subpoena Deutsche Bank for information about loans granted by Deutsche Bank to Donald Trump and his businesses?

Deutsche Bank is a German bank not a Russian bank. To insinuate that the Russians control Deutsche Bank – one of the world's leading international banks – because Deutsche Bank has had some previous financial dealings with various Russian banks and businesses is quite simply preposterous. I doubt that there is a single important bank in Germany or Austria of which that could not also be said.

Yet in the desperation to find some connection between Donald Trump and Russia it is to these absurdities that Mueller is reduced to.

Which again begs the question why? Why are Mueller and the Justice Department resorting to these increasingly desperate actions in order to prove something which it ought to be obvious by now cannot be proved?

My colleague Alex Christoforou has recently pointed out that the recent indictment of Michael Flynn seems to have been partly intended to shield Mueller from dismissal and to keep his Russiagate investigation alive. Some time ago I made exactly the same point about the indictments against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates and about the indictment against George Papadopoulos.

Those indictments were issued directly after the Wall Street Journal published an editorial saying that Mueller should resign.

The indictment against Manafort and Gates looks sloppy and rushed. Perhaps I am wrong but there has to be at least a suspicion that the indictments were issued in a hurry to still criticism of Mueller of the kind that was now appearing in the Wall Street Journal.

Presumably the reason the indictment against Flynn was delayed was because his lawyers had just signaled Flynn's interest in a plea bargain, and it took a few more weeks of negotiating to work that out.

It is the Wall Street Journal editorial which in fact provides the answer to Mueller's and Rosenstein's otherwise strange behaviour and to the way that Mueller has conducted the investigation up to now. The Wall Street Journal's editorial says that Mueller's past as the FBI's Director means that he is too close to the FBI to take an objective view of its actions.

In fact the Wall Street Journal was more right than it perhaps realised. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the FBI's actions are open to very serious criticism to say the least, and that Mueller is simply not the person who can be trusted to take an objective view of those actions.

Over the course of the 2016 election the FBI cleared Hillary Clinton over her illegal use of a private server to route classified emails whilst she was Secretary of State though it is universally agreed that she broke the law by doing so.

The FBI does not seem to have even considered investigating Hillary Clinton for possible obstruction of justice after it also became known that she had actually destroyed thousands of her emails which passed through her private server, though that was an obvious thing to do.

It is universally agreed that the FBI's then Director – Mueller's friend James Comey – broke protocols by the way he announced that Hillary Clinton had been cleared.

By failing to bring charges against Hillary Clinton the FBI ensured that she would win the Democratic Party's nomination, and that she not Bernie Sanders would face off against Donald Trump in the election in the autumn. That is important because though the eventual – completely unexpected – election outcome was that Donald Trump won the election, which Hillary Clinton lost, every opinion poll which I have seen suggests that if the election had been between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump then Bernie Sanders would have won by a landslide.

In other words it was because of the FBI's actions in the first half of 2016 that Bernie Sanders is not now the President of the United States.

In addition instead of independently investigating the DNC's claims that the Russians had hacked the DNC's and John Podesta's computers, the FBI simply accepted the opinion of an expert – Crowdstrike – paid for by the DNC, which it is now known was partly funded and was entirely controlled by the Hillary Clinton campaign, that hacks of those computers had actually taken place and that the Russians were the perpetrators.

As a result Hillary Clinton was able to say during the election that the reason emails which had passed through those computers and which showed her and her campaign in a bad light were being published by Wikileaks was because the Russians had stolen the emails by hacking the computers in order to help Donald Trump.

It is now known that the FBI also met with Christopher Steele, the compiler of the Trump Dossier, who is now known to have been in the pay of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign. The first meeting apparently took place in early July 2016, shortly before the Russiagate investigation was launched.

Whilst there is some confusion about whether the FBI actually paid Steele for his information, it is now known that Steele was in contact with the FBI throughout the election and continued to be so after, and that the FBI gave credence to his work.

Recently it has also come to light that Steele was also directly in touch with Obama's Justice Department, a fact which was only disclosed recently.

The best account of this has been provided by Byron York writing for The Washington Examiner

The department's Bruce Ohr, a career official, served as associate deputy attorney general at the time of the campaign. That placed him just below the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, who ran the day-to-day operations of the department. In 2016, Ohr's office was just steps away from Yates, who was later fired for defying President Trump's initial travel ban executive order and still later became a prominent anti-Trump voice upon leaving the Justice Department.

Unbeknownst to investigators until recently, Ohr knew Steele and had repeated contacts with Steele when Steele was working on the dossier. Ohr also met after the election with Glenn Simpson, head of Fusion GPS, the opposition research company that was paid by the Clinton campaign to compile the dossier.

Word that Ohr met with Steele and Simpson, first reported by Fox News' James Rosen and Jake Gibson, was news to some current officials in the Justice Department. Shortly after learning it, they demoted Ohr, taking away his associate deputy attorney general title and moving him full time to another position running the department's organized crime drug enforcement task forces.

It is also now known that over the course of the election the FBI – on the basis of information in the Trump Dossier – obtained at least one warrant from the FISA court which made it possible for it to undertake surveillance during and after the election of persons belonging to involved the campaign team of Hillary Clinton's opponent Donald Trump.

In response to subpoenas issued at the instigation of the Congressman Devin Nunes the FBI has recently admitted that the Trump Dossier cannot be verified .

However the FBI and the Justice Department have so far failed to provide in response to these subpoenas information about the precise role of the Trump Dossier in triggering the Russiagate investigation.

The FBI's and the Justice Department's failure to provide this information recently provoked an angry exchange between FBI Director Christopher Wray and Congressman Jim Jordan during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.

During that hearing Jordan said to Wray the following

Let's remember a couple of things about the dossier. The Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, which we now know were one and the same, paid the law firm who paid Fusion GPS who paid Christopher Steele who then paid Russians to put together a report that we call a dossier full of all kinds of fake news, National Enquirer garbage and it's been reported that this dossier was all dressed up by the FBI, taken to the FISA court and presented as a legitimate intelligence document -- that it became the basis for a warrant to spy on Americans.

In response Wray refused to say officially whether or not the Trump Dossier played any role in the FBI obtaining the FISA warrants.

This was so even though officials of the FBI – including former FBI Director James Comey – have slipped out in earlier Congressional testimony that it did.

This is also despite the fact that this information is not classified and ought already to have been provided by the Justice Department and the FBI in response to Congressman Nunes's subpoenas.

There is now talk of FBI Director Christopher Wray and of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein being held in contempt of Congress because of the failure of the Justice Department and the FBI to comply with Congressman Nunes's subpoenas.

During the exchanges between Wray and Jordan at the hearing in the House Judiciary Committee Jordan also had this to say

Here's what I think -- I think Peter Strozk (sic) Mr. Super Agent at the FBI, I think he's the guy who took the application to the FISA court and if that happened, if this happened , if you have the FBI working with a campaign, the Democrats' campaign, taking opposition research, dressing it all up and turning it into an intelligence document so they can take it to the FISA court so they can spy on the other campaign, if that happened, that is as wrong as it gets

Peter Strzok is the senior FBI official who is now known to have had a leading role in both the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's misuse of her private server and in the Russiagate investigation.

Strzok is now also known to have been the person who changed the wording in Comey's statement clearing Hillary Clinton for her misuse of her private email server to say that Hillary Clinton had been "extremely careless'" as opposed to "grossly negligent".

Strzok – who was the FBI's deputy director for counter-intelligence – is now also known to have been the person who signed the document which launched the Russiagate investigation in July 2016.

Fox News has reported that Strzok was also the person who supervised the FBI's questioning of Michael Flynn. It is not clear whether this covers the FBI's interview with Flynn on 24th January 2017 during which Flynn lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. However it is likely that it does.

If so then this is potentially important given that it was Flynn's lying to the FBI during this interview which made up the case against him and to which he has now pleaded guilty. It is potentially even more important given the strong indications that Flynn's interview with the FBI on 24th January 2017 was a set-up intended to entrap him by tricking him into lying to the FBI.

As the FBI's deputy director of counter-intelligence it is also highly likely that it was Strozk who was the official within the FBI who supervised the FBI's contacts with Christopher Steele, and who would have been the official within the FBI who was provided by Steele with the Trump Dossier and who would have made the first assessment of the Trump Dossier.

Recently it has been disclosed that Special Counsel Mueller sacked Strzok from the Russiagate investigation supposedly after it was discovered that Strzok had been sending anti-Trump and pro-Hillary Clinton messages to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer with whom he was having an affair.

These messages were sent by Strzok to his lover during the election, but apparently only came to light in July this year, when Mueller supposedly sacked Strzok because of them.

It seems that since then Strzok has been working in the FBI's human resources department, an astonishing demotion for the FBI's former deputy director for counter-intelligence who was apparently previously considered the FBI's top expert on Russia.

Some people have questioned whether the sending of the messages could possibly be the true reason why Strzok was sacked. My colleague Alex Christoforou has reported on some of the bafflement that this extraordinary sacking and demotion has caused.

Business Insider reports the anguished comments of former FBI officials incredulous that Strzok could have been sacked for such a trivial reason. Here is what Business Insider reports one ex FBI official Mark Rossini as having said

It would be literally impossible for one human being to have the power to change or manipulate evidence or intelligence according to their own political preferences. FBI agents, like anyone else, are human beings. We are allowed to have our political beliefs. If anything, the overwhelming majority of agents are conservative Republicans.

This is obviously right. Though the ex-FBI officials questioned by Business Insider are clearly supporters of Strzok and critics of Donald Trump, the same point has been made from the other side of the political divide by Congressman Jim Jordan

If you get kicked off the Mueller team for being anti-Trump, there wouldn't be anybody left on the Mueller team. There has to be more

Adding to the mystery about Strzok's sacking is why the FBI took five months to confirm it.

Mueller apparently sacked Strzok from the Russiagate investigation in July and it was apparently then that Strzok was simultaneously sacked from his previous post of deputy director for counter-espionage and transferred to human resources. The FBI has however only disclosed his sacking now, five months later and only in response to demands for information from Congressional investigators.

There is in fact an obvious explanation for Strzok's sacking and the strange circumstances surrounding it, and I am sure that it is the one which Congressman Jordan had in mind during his angry exchanges with FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Recently the FBI has admitted to Congress that it has failed to verify the Trump Dossier.

I suspect that Congressman Jordan believes that the true reason why Strzok was sacked is that Strzok's credibility had become so tied to the Trump Dossier that when its credibility collapsed over the course of the summer when the FBI finally realised that it could not be verified his credibility collapsed with it.

If so then I am sure that Congressman Jordan is right.

We now know from a variety of sources but first and foremost from the testimony to Congress of Carter Page that the Trump Dossier provided the frame narrative for the Russiagate investigation until just a few months ago.

We also know that the Trump Dossier was included in an appendix to the January ODNI report about supposed Russian meddling in the 2016 election which was shown by the US intelligence chiefs to President elect Trump during their stormy meeting with him on 8th January 2017.

The fact that the Trump Dossier was included in an appendix to the January ODNI report shows that at the start of this year the top officials of the FBI and of the US intelligence community – Comey, Clapper, Brennan and the rest – believed in its truth.

The June 2017 article in the Washington Post (discussed by me here ) also all but confirms that it was the Trump Dossier that provided the information which the CIA sent to President Obama in August 2016 which supposedly 'proved' that the Russians were interfering in the election.

As the BBC has pointed out , it was also the Trump Dossier which Congressman Adam Schiff – the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Community, who appears to be very close to some of the FBI investigators involved in the Russiagate case – as well as the FBI's Russiagate investigators were using as the narrative frame when questioning witnesses about their supposed role in Russiagate.

These facts make it highly likely that it was indeed the Trump Dossier which provided the information which the FBI used to obtain all the surveillance warrants the FBI obtained from the FISA court during the 2016 election and afterwards.

Strzok's position as the FBI's deputy director for counter-intelligence makes it highly likely that he was the key official within the FBI who decided that the Trump Dossier should be given credence, whilst his known actions during the Hillary Clinton private server investigation and during the Russiagate investigation make it highly likely that it was he who was the official within the FBI who sought and obtained the FISA warrants.

Given Strzok's central role in the Russiagate investigation going back all the way to its start in July 2016, there also has to be a possibility that it was Strzok who was behind many of the leaks coming from the investigation which so destabilised the Trump administration at the start of the year.

This once again points to the true scandal of the 2016 election.

On the strength of a fake Dossier paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign the Justice Department, the FBI and the US intelligence community carried out surveillance during the election of US citizens who were members of the campaign team of Hillary Clinton's opponent Donald Trump.

Given the hugely embarrassing implications of this for the FBI, it is completely understandable why Strzok, if he was the person who was ultimately responsible for this debacle – as he very likely was – and if he was responsible for some of the leaks – as he very likely also was – was sacked and exiled to human resources when it was finally concluded that the Trump Dossier upon which all the FBI's actions were based could not be verified.

It would also explain why the FBI sought to keep Strzok's sacking secret, so that it was only disclosed five months after it happened and then only in response to questions from Congressional investigators, with a cover story about inappropriate anti-Trump messages being spread about in order to explain it.

This surely is also the reason why in defiance both of evidence and logic the Russiagate investigation continues.

Given the debacle the Justice Department, the FBI and the US intelligence community are facing, it is completely understandable why they should want to keep the Russiagate investigation alive in order to draw attention away from their own activities.

Put in this way it is Robert Mueller's investigation which is the cover-up, and the surveillance which is the wrongdoing that the cover up is trying to excuse or conceal, which is what I said nine months ago in March .

Congressman Jordan has again recently called for a second Special Counsel to be appointed .

When the suggestion of appointing a second Special Counsel was first floated last month the suggestion was that the focus of the second Special Counsel's investigation would be the Uranium One affair.

That always struck me as misconceived not because there may not be things to investigate in the Uranium One case but because the focus of any new investigation should be what happened during the 2016 election, not what happened during the Uranium one case.

Congressman Jordan has now correctly identified the surveillance of US citizens by the US national security bureaucracy during the election as the primary focus of the proposed investigation to be conducted by the second Special Counsel.

In truth there should be no second Special Counsel. Since there is no Russiagate collusion to investigate the Russiagate investigation – ie. the investigation headed by Mueller – should be wound up.

There should be only one Special Counsel tasked with looking into what is the real scandal of the 2016 election: the surveillance of US citizens carried out during the election by the US national security bureaucracy on the basis of the Trump Dossier.

I remain intensely skeptical that this will happen. However the fact that some members of Congress such as Congressman Nunes (recently cleared of charges that he acted inappropriately by disclosing details of the surveillance back in March) and Congressman Jordan are starting to demand it is a hopeful sign.

BennyBoy -> MozartIII , Dec 10, 2017 1:29 PM

Top Clinton Aides Face No Charges After Making False Statements To FBI

Neither of the Clinton associates, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, faced legal consequences for their misleading statements, which they made in interviews last year with former FBI section chief Peter Strzok.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/04/clinton-aides-went-unpunished-after-making-false-statements-to-anti-trump-fbi-supervisor/

zorba THE GREEK -> Cynicles II , Dec 10, 2017 12:53 PM

These are acts to overthrow the legitimate government of the USA and therefore constitute treason. Treason is still punishable by death. It is time for some public hangings. Trump should declare martial law. Put Patraeus and Flint in charge and drain the swamp like he promised...

Oldwood -> zorba THE GREEK , Dec 10, 2017 2:57 PM

Absolutely. This is not political, about justice or corruption or election coercion, this is about keeping the fires lit under Trump, no matter how lame or lying, in the hopes that something, anything, will arise that could be used to unseat Trump. Something that by itself would be controversial but ultimately a nothing-burger, but piled upon the months and years of lies used to build a false consensus of corruption, criminality and impropriety of Trump. Their goal has always been to undermine Trump by convincing the world that Trump is evil and unfit using nothing but lies, that without Trump's endless twitter counters would have buried him by now. While they know that can't convince a significant majority that these lies are true, what they can do is convince the majority that everyone else thinks it true, thereby in theory enabling them to unseat Trump with minimal resistance, assuming many will simply stand down in the face of a PERCEIVED overwhelming majority.

This is about constructing a false premise that they can use minimal FACTS to confirm. They are trying and testing every day this notion with continuing probes and jabs in hopes that something....anything, sticks.

Hikikomori -> zorba THE GREEK , Dec 10, 2017 3:26 PM

Just part of the War on Men. Trump is a man. He lost to It's Her Turn. Therefore he must be taken down.

robertsgt40 -> Cynicles II , Dec 10, 2017 1:03 PM

Solve the Seth Rich murder and we'll know who "hacked" the DNC emails. Paging John Podesta.

Lumberjack -> NoDebt , Dec 10, 2017 12:44 PM

More Clinton ties on Mueller team: One deputy attended Clinton party, another rep'd top aide

https://www.google.com/amp/www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/08/more-clin...

turbojarhead -> NoDebt , Dec 10, 2017 2:12 PM

I have a question, if someone could answer.

Mueller is a lot of things, but he is a politician, and skilled at that, as he has survived years in Washington.

So why choose KNOWN partisans for your investigation? He may not have known about Strzok, but he surely knew about Weitsmann's ties to HRC, about Rhee being Rhodes personal attorney,..so why put them on, knowing that the investigations credibility would be damaged? No way most of this would not come out, just due to the constant leaks from the FBI/DOJ.

What is the real goal, other than taking Trump down and covering up FBI/DOJ/Obama Admin malfeasance? These goons are all highly experienced swamp dwellers, so I think there is something that is being missed here..

MissCellany , Dec 10, 2017 1:03 PM

" The fact that the Trump Dossier was included in an appendix to the January ODNI report shows that at the start of this year the top officials of the FBI and of the US intelligence community – Comey, Clapper, Brennan and the rest – believed in its truth. "

Oh, bull crap. None of them believed a word of it, and at least some of them were in on the dossier's creation.

They just wanted to put over their impeach/resist/remove scam on us deplorables so they could hang on to power and maintain secrecy over all their years of criminal activity.

lester1 , Dec 10, 2017 1:33 PM

Obama weaponized the NSA and FBI to try and take out Trump.

Obama figured Hillary would win and everything would be swept under the rug.

Hopefully Trump fires Mueller over the Christmas weekend!

Reaper , Dec 10, 2017 1:34 PM

The FBI is a fraud on the sheeple. Indoctrinated sheeple believe FBI testimony. The M.O. of the FBI is entrapment of victims and entrapped witnesses against victims using their Form 302 interrogations. The FBI uses forensic evidence from which gullible juries trust the FBI financed reports. Power corrupts. The power to be believed because of indoctrination corrupts absolutely.

https://boingboing.net/2013/05/07/dont-ever-speak-to-the-fbi-w.html

https://www.nationofchange.org/2015/04/21/doj-admits-fbi-forensic-examin...

Trump as Chief Executive can end the FBI policy of interviews without recordings being used to entrap victims and witnesses.

thebigunit , Dec 10, 2017 1:34 PM

EXCELLENT ANALYSIS! A+++

Strzok-Gate And The Mueller Cover-Up

It makes perfect sense.

Stopdreaming -> loveyajimbo , Dec 10, 2017 1:54 PM

They have the goods on Sessions...he was blackmailed. No other logical explanation for his lack of fortitude.

thebigunit -> loveyajimbo , Dec 10, 2017 2:03 PM

Keep your powder dry. Hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes.

All this crap comes down to ONE THING: Sessions ... why he refuses to fire a mega-conflicted and corrupt POS Mueller...

Investigative reporter Sarah Carter hinted (last Friday?) that something big would be happening "probably within the next forty-eight hours". She related this specifically to a comment that Sessions had been virtually invisible.

I will make a prediction:

THE COMING WEEK WILL BE A TUMULTUOUS WEEK FOR THOSE OBSESSED BY THE "RUSSIA COLLUSION CONSPIRACY" .

First, Sessions will announce significant findings and actions which will directly attack the Trump-Russia-Collusion narrative.

And then, the Democrats/Media/Hillary Campaign will launch a hystierical, viscious, demented political counter attack in a final onslaught to take down Trump.

Expect to see Soros mobs in the streets.

Either Mueller goes, or Trump goes.

turbojarhead -> loveyajimbo , Dec 10, 2017 2:37 PM

They played Sessions like a violin. Sessions recluses himself for a bullcrap Kisnyak speech, where he did not even meet him. Rosenstein then recommends Trump fire Comey -- who wanted to be fired so they would appoint a special prosecutor -- which Rosenstein does -- Mueller, to the acclamation of ALL of Con and the Senate-including Republicans.

When Trump tries to get out of the trap by leaking he is thinking about firing Sessions, Lispin Lindsey goes on television to say that will not be allowed too happen. If he fires Sessions, Congress would not approve ANY of Trump's picks for DOJ-leaving Rosenstein in charge anyway.

Trump was pissed because they removed his only defender from Mueller -- the head of the DOJ. He knew it was a setup, so went ballistic when he found out about Sessions recusing.

thebigunit , Dec 10, 2017 1:40 PM

There is good reason for optimism: Trumpus Maximus is on the case.

I remain intensely skeptical that this will happen. However the fact that some members of Congress such as Congressman Nunes (recently cleared of charges that he acted inappropriately by disclosing details of the surveillance back in March) and Congressman Jordan are starting to demand it is a hopeful sign.

The design has been exposed. It is now fairly clear WHAT the conspirators did.

We now enter the neutralization and mop-up phase.

And, very likely, people who know things will be EAGER to talk:

FBI agents, like anyone else, are human beings. We are allowed to have our political beliefs. If anything, the overwhelming majority of agents are conservative Republicans.

ClowardPiven2016 , Dec 10, 2017 1:51 PM

Strozk demoted to HR...but his take home pay is probably the same

thebigunit -> ClowardPiven2016 , Dec 10, 2017 2:02 PM

EXACTLY!

Strozk demoted to HR...but his take home pay is probably the same

Strzok was obviously at a VERY senior pay grade. It would be very surprising if HR had any jobs at Strzok's pay grade.

Mzhen , Dec 10, 2017 1:57 PM

Bloomberg fed a fake leak that Mueller had subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank. Democrats (Schiff) on the House Intelligence Committee fed fake information about Don Jr. that was leaked to CNN. Leading to an embarrassing retraction. ABC's Brian Ross fed a fake leak about the Flynn indictment. Leading to an embarrassing retraction.

Maybe the operation that Sessions set up some time ago to catch leakers is bearing fruit after all. And Mueller should realize that the ice is breaking up all around him.

Angelo Misterioso , Dec 10, 2017 1:57 PM

once this special prosecutor is done, congress needs to rewrite the special prosecutor law to narrow their mandate to just the item allowed to be investigated - no fishing expeditions - enough of this stupidity - and maybe put a renewal clause in there so that it has to be renewed every 12 months...

Nunyadambizness , Dec 10, 2017 2:34 PM

This is, and always has been a sideshow for the "true believers" in the Democrap party and all Hitlary supporters to accuse Trump of EXACTLY what Hitlary did, in the classic method of diversion. Sideshow magicians have been doing it for millenia--"Look over there" while the real work is done elsewhere. The true believers don't want to believe that Hitlary and the Democrap party are complicit in the selling of Uranium One to the Ruskies for $145 million. No, no, that was something completely different and Hitlary is not guilty of selling out the interests of the US for money. Nope, Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election. Yep, that's it.

Mueller is now the official head of a shit show that's coming apart at the seams. He was too stupid to even bring on ANY non-Hitlary supporting leftists which could have given him a smidgen of equibility, instead he stacked the deck with sycophant libtard leftists who by their very nature take away ANY concept of impartiality, and any jury on the planet would see through the connivance like glass. My guess is he's far too stupid to stop, and I happily await the carnage of his actions as they decimate the Democrap party.

Show's on, who's bringing the chips?

[Dec 11, 2017] House committee grills FBI director: Did Trump–Russia dossier back a FISA warrant?

Notable quotes:
"... FBI Director Christopher Wray has declined to tell the House Judiciary Committee if he was prohibited from sharing documents that would show whether the notorious Steele dossier was used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. ..."
rt.com

FBI Director Christopher Wray has declined to tell the House Judiciary Committee if he was prohibited from sharing documents that would show whether the notorious Steele dossier was used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.

[Dec 11, 2017] Mueller interviewed Steele Dossier on Trump comes into focus

What exactly MI6 put in Steele dossier is true and what is lie is unclear. What is clear that Steele himself cant; collect information of this type and at this level. He is just a low level intelligence patsy. Even to invent all this staff he definitely relied on his MI6 source(s) which may have a specific agenda and might be guided form Washington. Brennan was a well known Hillary sympathizer has had huge influence on Obama and definitely capable of playing dirty tricks with Trump. What is interesting that in FBI the dossier was handled by counterintelligence official who by his job description should have very close contacts with CIA
Dec 11, 2017 | www.businessinsider.com
explosive memos alleging ties between President Donald Trump's campaign team and Russia, CNN reported on Thursday.

The revelation came one day after the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, told reporters that the committee had been working "backwards" to examine the memos as part of its separate but parallel investigation into Russia's election meddling.

The memos were compiled into a dossier by veteran British spy Christopher Steele, who was hired by a Washington, DC-based opposition research firm in June 2016 to investigate the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. The firm, Fusion GPS, was first hired by unspecified anti-Trump Republicans in late 2015. Democrats took over funding for the firm's work after Trump won the GOP nomination.

[Dec 11, 2017] WATCH LIVE FBI Director Wray VS. TREY GOWDY testifies before House Judiciary Committee on Russia

Some interesting notes from Gowdy on Strzok
Dec 11, 2017 | www.youtube.com

sharon shoop , 3 days ago

all talk and smoking guns. never one question answered. If we were on that stand we would have to answer not mumble and use legal jargon. sick of the whole mess.

[Dec 11, 2017] FINALLY! CONGRESS INITIATES LEGISLATION TO REMOVE BOB MUELLER OVER FBI BIAS TOWARDS TRUMP

Dec 11, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Published on Dec 8, 2017

FINALLY! CONGRESS INITIATES LEGISLATION TO REMOVE BOB MUELLER OVER FBI BIAS TOWARDS TRUMP

Thanks for watching, please subscribe here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFmY...

[Dec 11, 2017] Another Judge just stepped down from Mueller's team over Hillary Clinton connections

Dec 11, 2017 | www.youtube.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74uCzQB2DX4

Patricia Crowell , 1 day ago

Fuentes is right about Comey and his cohorts, and this shows how biased and criminal the FBI was operating in very big cases that are all connected. These false investigation being run by Mueller are all connected with Comey, but Mueller is heavily connected with Comey. Mueller was also passed over by President Trump for director of the FBI. Mueller wanted that position and didn't get it. Think he might be pissed? And now he's investigating President Trump. This smells bad.

Sandra White , 20 hours ago

FBI-SIS Comey the leaker and the Agents that play the game. The DNC Russia dossier is the ball that Comey pushed down the hill. Swamp needs to be drained.

Gerard Waters , 15 hours ago

So it is the fault of the president that the FBI reputation is in tatters . NO. It is the fault of the FBI. Here in Europe we are laughing at the FBI and their reputation. Drain your swamp which includes the FBI and CIA

THESHOMROM , 16 hours ago

I realized the FBI is corrupt when Comey testified before Congress. It is time to put all FBI employees to be given lie detector tests. DITTO the CIA, NSA and all US intelligence agencies. It might not be a bad idea to do the same for Pentagon and White House employees. Extreme, maybe, but something isn't Kosher here.

Dave Kay , 1 hour ago (edited)

Politics has truly become a children's game. Both sides are playing extremely biased opposing enemy positions. Both sides scream nonsense at one another, neither side will listen, and talking is out of the question. Both sides are shooting, but nobody gets shot. Everybody is playing, but nobody is doing anything. Everybody has been caught out, but they all keep playing. This is the never ending game with no rules except "hate Russia" that we call "hate Russia." What do we need to do...ring the dinner bell? Come on Trump, you've won, put them all in jail, and let's have pizza! Merry Christmas!

Jim Man , 5 hours ago

this government has gone way beyond investigations, it is infested with ...globalist cockroaches and needs an exterminator. we need a military take down of this government with Trump in command to deal with the infestation. with a take over they could then look at everyone in government and bring charges for their attempted coups and subversion of our duly elected president not to mention all the criminal deals and actions that made them millions, then can charge and punish them as their charges imply ... this is serious, the government is FUBAR...semper-fi..

D Chase , 9 hours ago

Someone needs to get their hand on all the documents and other materials Obama had taken out of the White House before he even left office. It was done under the guise that these documents were for his Library and were going to be stored until the "library was built. This is unprecedented and requires further journalistic scrutiny!

craxd1 , 14 hours ago (edited)

I would like to ask Tom Fuentes, (who is a regular on CNN), what are his thoughts about COINTELPRO? What about Mark Felt during Nixon? After all, he claims that the FBI was squeaky clean up to Comey. He's a lying douche bag.

[Dec 11, 2017] Top Mueller investigator Andrew Weissman under intense scrutiny by Allan Smith

Notable quotes:
"... He also oversaw the FBI's predawn raid in July of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's Virginia home. ..."
"... First came the email made public by Judicial Watch, where he wrote told Yates he was "so proud" and "in awe" of her decision not to defend Trump's initial travel ban. That was soon followed up by The Journal's revelation that he was in attendance at Clinton's election-night party. ..."
"... Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, asked , "How much more evidence do we need" that the Mueller team "has been irredeemably compromised by anti-Trump partisans" after his group published Weissmann's email. ..."
"... Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who has been leading the charge to have the Mueller investigation shut down, told Fox News that Trump was "being persecuted by Hillary Clinton's fan club." ..."
"... Democrats, however, said these latest attacks against the Mueller investigation, and individual investigators in particular, such as Weissmann, are just a sign of things to come with the probe reaching closer to the president. ..."
Dec 09, 2017 | www.businessinsider.com


The investigator dubbed as special counsel Robert Mueller's "pit bull" by The New York Times has come under fire for perceived bias against President Donald Trump.

That investigator, Andrew Weissmann, was reportedly in attendance at former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's election night party last year at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The revelation came days after the conservative group, Judicial Watch , published an email he sent to former acting Attorney General Sally Yates praising her for refusing to defend Trump's controversial travel ban in January.

"If it's true that Andrew Weissmann attended Hillary's victory party, this is getting out of hand," tweeted Ari Fleischer , who served as White House press secretary under President George W. Bush.

Weissmann is one of the most prominent investigators on Mueller's team. Considered to be an expert on flipping "defendants into collaborators -- with either tactical brilliance or overzealousness, depending on one's perspective," as The Times wrote in October, Weissmann is the investigation's "pounding heart, a bookish, legal pit bull with two Ivy League degrees, a weakness for gin martinis and classical music and a list of past enemies that includes professional killers and white-collar criminals."

The prosecutor made a name for himself in high-profile cases involving New York's mob bosses and at the turn of the century in the Enron scandal. He also oversaw the FBI's predawn raid in July of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's Virginia home.

"If there's something to find, he'll find it," Katya Jestin, who used to work with Weissmann in the US attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York, told The Times. "If there's nothing there, he's not going to cook something up."

Weissmann comes under fire

But following the revelation that one top investigator on Mueller's team, Peter Strzok, had been reassigned from the special counsel's team after he apparently sent anti-Trump text messages during the 2016 election, Republicans began taking aim at Weissmann as the latest example of an investigator biased against the president.

First came the email made public by Judicial Watch, where he wrote told Yates he was "so proud" and "in awe" of her decision not to defend Trump's initial travel ban. That was soon followed up by The Journal's revelation that he was in attendance at Clinton's election-night party.

In a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, during which FBI Director Christopher Wray was testifying, Republican Rep. Steve Chabot called "the depths of this anti-Trump bias on" the special counsel's team "absolutely shocking."

Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, asked , "How much more evidence do we need" that the Mueller team "has been irredeemably compromised by anti-Trump partisans" after his group published Weissmann's email.

"Shut it down," he said.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who has been leading the charge to have the Mueller investigation shut down, told Fox News that Trump was "being persecuted by Hillary Clinton's fan club."

Democrats, however, said these latest attacks against the Mueller investigation, and individual investigators in particular, such as Weissmann, are just a sign of things to come with the probe reaching closer to the president.

Already, Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, two of the most prominent members of Trump's campaign, have been charged as part of the Russia investigation. Manafort's associate, Rick Gates, was also charged, as was early Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos.

Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty to 12 counts including money laundering and conspiracy against the US, and Flynn pleaded guilty on December 1 to one count of making false statements to investigators about his contacts with Russians. Papadopoulos also pleaded guilty in July to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Russia-linked individuals.

"I predict that these attacks on the FBI will grow louder and more brazen as the special counsel does his work, and the walls close in around the president, and evidence of his obstruction and other misdeeds becomes more apparent," Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, recently promoted to ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said during Thursday's hearing.

[Dec 11, 2017] RUSSIA PROBE Another Judge just stepped down from Mueller's team over Hillary Clinton connections

Dec 11, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Patricia Crowell , 1 day ago

Fuentes is right about Comey and his cohorts, and this shows how biased and criminal the FBI was operating in very big cases that are all connected. These false investigation being run by Mueller are all connected with Comey, but Mueller is heavily connected with Comey. Mueller was also passed over by President Trump for director of the FBI. Mueller wanted that position and didn't get it. Think he might be pissed? And now he's investigating President Trump. This smells bad.

Ronnie D., Jr. D., Jr. , 1 day ago

Why do these guys continue to pretend that Rod Rosenstein is ever going to oppose anything involving Mueller or Comey, and why hasn't anyone removed that little criminal McCabe yet?

eric klekot , 1 day ago

No one is talking about the Regional offices of the FBI. I would imagine, 40-60 percent of ALL adult Americans, after watching James Comey lay out the crimes of Hillary Clinton, then say "OH, but we're not prosecuting her, because she didn't mean to do it". That is when Americans said "WTF!". Every Criminal says they didn't mean to do it. Think about it, next time you get ticketed for speeding, make sure to tell the Judge, there was no specific intent to speed, therefore you can't prosecute. Not only the above, but now you have Michael Flynn being bankrupted, and he pleads guilty because he ran out of money, and his family couldn't take it anymore. That's now a win in this country. Pleads to a lie during an ambush interview by an obviously bias'd white Knight FBI agent Peter Stroke. While Huma Abedin and Shirley Mills get immunity deals...

Nina Long , 1 day ago

These guys are so blind to their own bias and open only to their own ideology they can't see their own crimes. What a load of crap.

[Dec 11, 2017] BREAKING!! ROBERT MUELLER STEPS DOWN FOR DEVIN NUNES IN RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION PROBE

Dec 11, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Dec 9, 2017

Robert Mueller To Step Down For Devin Nunes in Russian investigation .thanks for watching. Please leave your comments below, like,share and comments

Ricky Pisano , 20 hours ago

LT. GEN. Flynn has his life ruined for being politically ambushed by the FBI and caught in a LIE. HILLARY lies to Congress, The FBI, The American People and is out signing books. A 5' 7" pile of dung!! Memo to President Trump.....Pardon GENERAL FLYNN.

Good Thing , 20 hours ago

There never was Russian collusion on the trump side, now we know the corruption of the FBI with the Obama and Clinton cabal. It's time to execute a lawful end to this mess. These people all thought Hillary was in and really messed up in trying to cover their tracks. It is all going to come out now. Some of these people will get executed and rightfully so.

Rose Garden , 9 hours ago

When you are up to arse in alligators, it's hard to remember your job is to DRAIN THE SWAMP. So many swamp creatures.

[Dec 11, 2017] Gregg Jarrett 'The Mueller Investigation Is Illegitimate and Corrupt'

Dec 11, 2017 | insider.foxnews.com

Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said Robert Mueller's probe into President Donald Trump is "illegitimate and corrupt."

Jarrett made the remarks citing revelations that FBI Agent Peter Strzok and attorney Andrew Weissmann may have demonstrated bias against Trump.

"Mueller has been using the FBI as a political weapon," he said. "The FBI has become America's secret police."

[Dec 10, 2017] blamePutin continues to be the media s dominant hashtag. Vladimir Putin finally confesses his entire responsibility for everything bad that has ever happened since the beginning of time

Highly recommended!
Guardian in Russia coverage acts as MI6 outlet. Magnitsky probably was MI6 operation, anyway.
Notable quotes:
"... The Observer fabricated a direct quote from the Russian president for their propaganda purposes without any regard to basic journalistic standards. They wanted to blame Putin personally for the suspicions of some Russian investigators, so they just invented an imaginary statement from him so they could conveniently do so. ..."
"... What is really going on here is the classic trope of demonisation propaganda in which the demonised leader is conflated with all officials of their government and with the targeted country itself, so as to simplify and personalise the narrative of the subsequent Two Minutes Hate to be unleashed against them. ..."
"... In the same article, the documents from Russian investigators naming Browder as a suspect in certain crimes are first "seen as" a frame-up (by the sympathetic chorus of completely anonymous observers yellow journalism can always call on when an unsupported claim needs a spurious bolstering) and then outright labelled as such (see quote above) as if this alleged frame-up is a proven fact. Which it isn't. ..."
"... No evidence is required down there in the Guardian/Observer journalistic gutter before unsupported claims against Russian officials can be treated as unquestionable pseudo-facts, just as opponents of Putin can commit no crime for the outlet's hate-befuddled hacks. ..."
Dec 10, 2017 | off-guardian.org

by VT

The decline of the falsely self-described "quality" media outlet The Guardian/Observer into a deranged fake news site pushing anti-Russian hate propaganda continues apace. Take a look at this gem :

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has accused prominent British businessman Bill Browder of being a "serial killer" – the latest extraordinary attempt by the Kremlin to frame one of its most high-profile public enemies.

But Putin has not been reported anywhere else as making any recent statement about Browder whatever, and the Observer article makes no further mention of Putin's supposed utterance or the circumstances in which it was supposedly made.

As the rest of the article makes clear, the suspicions against Browder were actually voiced by Russian police investigators and not by Putin at all.

The Observer fabricated a direct quote from the Russian president for their propaganda purposes without any regard to basic journalistic standards. They wanted to blame Putin personally for the suspicions of some Russian investigators, so they just invented an imaginary statement from him so they could conveniently do so.

What is really going on here is the classic trope of demonisation propaganda in which the demonised leader is conflated with all officials of their government and with the targeted country itself, so as to simplify and personalise the narrative of the subsequent Two Minutes Hate to be unleashed against them.

When, as in this case, the required substitution of the demonised leader for their country can't be wrung out of the facts even through the most vigorous twisting, a disreputable fake news site like The Guardian/Observer is free to simply make up new, alternative facts that better fit their disinformative agenda. Because facts aren't at all sacred when the official propaganda line demands lies.

In the same article, the documents from Russian investigators naming Browder as a suspect in certain crimes are first "seen as" a frame-up (by the sympathetic chorus of completely anonymous observers yellow journalism can always call on when an unsupported claim needs a spurious bolstering) and then outright labelled as such (see quote above) as if this alleged frame-up is a proven fact. Which it isn't.

No evidence is required down there in the Guardian/Observer journalistic gutter before unsupported claims against Russian officials can be treated as unquestionable pseudo-facts, just as opponents of Putin can commit no crime for the outlet's hate-befuddled hacks.

The above falsifications were brought to the attention of the Observer's so-called Readers Editor – the official at the Guardian/Observer responsible for "independently" defending the outlet's misdeeds against outraged readers – who did nothing. By now the article has rolled off the site's front page, rendering any possible future correction nugatory in any case.

Later in the same article Magnitsky is described as having been Browder's "tax lawyer" a standard trope of the Western propaganda narrative about the case. Magnitsky was actually an accountant .

A trifecta of fakery in one article! That makes crystal clear what the Guardian meant in this article , published at precisely the same moment as the disinformation cited above, when it said:

"We know what you are doing," Theresa May said of Russia. It's not enough to know. We need to do something about it.

By "doing something about it" they mean they're going to tell one hostile lie about Russia after another.


michaelk says November 26, 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/26/big-issue-who-will-step-in-after-bullies-have-silenced-dissenters

From the 'liberal' Guardian/Observer wing of the rightwing bourgeois press, spot the differences with the article in the Mail on Sunday by Nick Robinson?

michaelk says November 26, 2017
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-5117723/Nick-Robinson-Putin-using-fake-news-weaken-West.html

This thing seems to have been cobbled together by a guy called Nick Robinson. The same BBC Nick Robinson that hosts the Today Programme? I dunno, one feels really rather depressed at how low our media has sunk.

michaelk says November 23, 2017
I think huge swathes of the media, in the eyes of many people, have never really recovered from the ghastly debacle that was their dreadful coverage of the reasons for the illegal attack on Iraq.

The journalists want us to forget and move on, but many, many, people still remember. Nothing happened afterwards. There was no tribunal to examine the media's role in that massive international crime against humanity and things actually got worse post Iraq, which the attack on Libya and Syria illustrates.

rtj1211 says November 29, 2017
Exactly: in my opinion there should be life sentences banning scribblers who printed lies and bloodthirsty kill, kill, kill articles from ever working again in the media.

Better still, make them go fight right now in Yemen. Amazing how quickly truth will spread if journalists know they have a good chance of dying if they print lies and falsehoods ..

michaelk says November 23, 2017
At a time when the ruling elite, across virtually the entire western world, is losing it; it being, political legitimacy and the breakdown of any semblance of a social contract between the ruled and the rulers the Guardian lurches even further to the political right . amazing, though not really surprising. The Guardian's role appears to be to 'coral' radical and leftist ideas and opinions and 'groom' the educated middle class into accepting their own subjugation.

The Guardian's writers get so much, so wrong, so often it's staggering and nobody gets the boot, except for the people who allude to the incompetence at the heart of the Guardian. They fail dismally on Trump, Brexit and Corbyn and yet carry on as if everything is fine and dandy. Nothing to complain about here, mover along now.

I suppose it's because they are actually media aristocrats living in a world of privilege, and they, as members of the ruling elite, look after one another regardless of how poorly they actually perform. This is typical of an elite that's on the ropes and doomed. They choose to retreat from grubby reality into a parallel world where their own dogmas aren't challenged and they begin to believe their propaganda is real and not an artificial contruct. This is incredibly dangerous for a ruling elite because society becomes brittle and weaker by the day as the ruling dogmas become hollow and ritualized, but without traction in reality and real purpose.

The Guardian is a bit like the Tory government, lost and without any real ideas or ideals. The slow strangulation of the CIF symbolizes the crisis of confidence at the Guardian. A strong and confident ruling class welcomes criticism and is ready to brush it all off with a smile and a shrug. When they start running scared and pretending there is no dissent or opposition, well, this is a sign of decadence and profound weakness. They are losing the battle of ideas and the battle of solutions to our problems. All that really stands between them and a social revolution is a thin veneer of 'authority' and status, and that's really not enough anymore.

All our problems are pathetically and conviniently blamed on the Russians and their Demon King and his vast army of evil Trolls. It's like a political version of the Lord of the Rings.

WeatherEye says November 21, 2017
Don't expect the Guardian to cover the biggest military build-up (NATO) on Russia's borders since Hitler's 1941 invasion.

John Pilger has described the "respectable" liberal press (Guardian, NYT etc) as the most effective component of the propaganda system, precisely BECAUSE it is respectable and trusted. As to why the Guardian is so insistent in demonising Russia, I would propose that is integrates them further with a Brexit-ridden Tory government. Its Blairite columnists prefer May over Corbyn any day.

rtj1211 says November 29, 2017
The Guardian is now owned by Neocon Americans, that is why it is demonising Russia. Simple as that.
WeatherEye says November 29, 2017
Evidence?
Harry Stotle says November 21, 2017
The Guardian is trying to rescue citizens from 'dreadful dangers that we cannot see, or do not understand' – in other words they play a central role in 'the power of nightmares' https://www.youtube.com/embed/LlA8KutU2to
rtj1211 says November 21, 2017
So Russians cannot do business in America but Americans must be protected to do business in Russia?

If you look at Ukraine and how US corporations are benefitting from the US-funded coup, you ask what the US did in Russia in the 1990s and the effect it had on US business and ordinary Russian people. Were the two consistent with a common US template of economic imperialism?

In particular, you ask what Bill Browder was doing, his links to US spying organisations etc etc. You ask if he supported the rape of Russian State assets, turned a blind eye to the millions of Russians dying in the 1990s courtesy of catastrophic economic conditions. If he was killing people to stay alive, he would not have been the only one. More important is whether him making $100m+ in Russia needed conditions where tens of millions of Russians were starving .and whether he saw that as acceptable collateral damage ..he made a proactive choice, after all, to go live in Moscow. It is not like he was born there and had no chance to leave ..

I do not know the trurh about Bill Browder, but one thing I do know: very powerful Americans are capable of organising mass genocide to become rich, so there is no possible basis for painting all American businessmen as philanthropists and all Russians as murdering savages ..

michaelk says November 21, 2017
It's perfectly possible, in fact the norm historically, for people to believe passionately in the existence of invisible threats to their well-being, which, when examined calmly from another era, resemble a form of mass-hysteria or collective madness. For example; the religious faith/dogma that Satan, demons and witches were all around us. An invisible, parallel, world, by the side of our own that really existed and we were 'at war with.' Satan was our adversary, the great trickster and disseminator of 'fake news' opposed to the 'good news' provided by the Gospels.

What's remarkable, disturbing and frightening is how closely our media resemble a religious cult or the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. The journalists have taken on a role that's close to that of a priesthood. They function as a 'filtering' layer between us and the world around us. They are, supposedly, uniquely qualified to understand the difference between truth and lies, or what's right and wrong, real news and propaganda. The Guardian actually likes this role. They our the guardians of the truth in a chaotic world.

This reminds one of the role of the clergy. Their role was to stand between ordinary people and the 'complexities' of the Bible and separate the Truths it contained from wild and 'fake' interpretations, which could easily become dangerous and undermine the social order and fundamental power relationships.

The big challenge to the role of the Church happened when the printing press allowed the ordinary people to access the information themselves and worst still when the texts were translated into the common language and not just Latin. Suddenly people could access the texts, read and begin to interpret and understand for themselves. It's hard to imagine that people were actually burned alive in England for smuggling the Bible in English translation a few centuries ago. That's how dangerous the State regarded such a 'crime.'

One can compare the translation of the Bible and the challenge to the authority of the Church and the clergy as 'guardians of the truth' to what's happeing today with the rise of the Internet and something like Wikileaks, where texts and infromation are made available uncensored and raw and the role of the traditional 'media church' and the journalist priesthood is challenged.

We're seeing a kind of media counter-reformation. That's why the Guardian turned on Assange so disgracefully and what Wikileaks represented.

WeatherEye says November 21, 2017
A brilliant historical comparison. They're now on the legal offensive in censoring the internet of course, because in truth the filter system is wholly vulnerable. Alternative media has been operating freely, yet the majority have continued to rely on MSM as if it's their only source of (dis)information, utilizing our vast internet age to the pettiness of social media and prank videos. Marx was right: capitalist society alienates people from their own humanity. We're now aliens, deprived of our original being and floating in a vacuum of Darwinist competition and barbarism. And we wonder why climate change is happening?
tutisicecream says November 21, 2017
Apparently we are "living in disorientating times" according to Viner, she goes on to say that "championing the public interest is at the heart of the Guardian's mission".

Really? How is it possible for her to say that when many of the controversial articles which appear in the Guardian are not open for comment any more. They have adopted now a view that THEIR "opinion" should not be challenged, how is that in the public interest?

In the Observer on Sunday a piece also appeared smearing RT entitled: "MPs defend fees of up to Ł1,000 an hour to appear on 'Kremlin propaganda' channel." However they allowed comments which make interesting reading. Many commenter's saw through their ruse and although the most vociferous critics of the Graun have been banished, but even the mild mannered ones which remain appear not the buy into the idea that RT is any different than other media outlets. With many expressing support for the news and op-ed outlet for giving voice to those who the MSM ignore – including former Guardian writers from time to time.

Why Viner's words are so poisonous is that the Graun under her stewardship has become a agitprop outlet offering no balance. In the below linked cringe worthy article there is no mention of RT being under attack in the US and having to register itself and staff as foreign agents. NO DEFENCE OF ATTACKS ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS by the US state is mentioned.

Surely this issue is at the heart of championing public interest?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/18/mps-kremlin-propaganda-channel-rt#comments

The fact that it's not shows clearly the fake Guardian/Observer claim and their real agenda.

WE ARE DEFINITELY LIVING IN DISORIENTATION TIMES and the Guardian/Observer are leading the charge.

tutisicecream says November 21, 2017
Correction: DISORIENTATING TIMES
Peter says November 21, 2017
For the political/media/business elites (I suppose you could call them 'the Establishment') in the US and UK, the main problem with RT seems to be that a lot of people are watching it. I wonder how long it will be before access is cut. RT is launching a French-language channel next month. We are already being warned by the French MSM about how RT makes up fake news to further Putin's evil propaganda aims (unlike said MSM, we are told). Basically, elites just don't trust the people (this is certainly a constant in French political life).
Jim says November 21, 2017
It's not just that they don't allow comments on many of their articles, but even on the articles where CiF is enabled, they ban any accounts that disagree with their narrative. The end result is that Guardianistas get the false impression everyone shares their view and that they are in the majority. The Guardian moderators are like Scientology leaders who banish any outsiders for fear of influencing their cult members.
BigB says November 20, 2017
Everyone knows that Russia-gate is a feat of mass hypnosis, mesmerized from DNC financed lies. The Trump collusion myth is baseless and becoming dangerously hysterical: but conversely, the Clinton collusion scandal is not so easy to allay. Whilst it may turn out to be the greatest story never told: it looks substantive enough to me. HRC colluded with Russian oligarchy to the tune of $145m of "donations" into her slush fund. In return, Rosatom gained control of Uranium One.

A curious adjunct to this corruption: HRC opposed the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Given her subsequent rabid Russophobia: you'd have thought that if the Russians (as it has been spun) arrested a brave whistleblowing tax lawyer and murdered him in prison – she would have been quite vocal in her condemnation. No, she wanted to make Russia great again. It's amazing how $145m can focus ones attention away from ones natural instinct.

[Browder and Magnitsky were as corrupt as each other: the story that the Russians took over Browder's hedge fund and implicated them both in a $230m tax fraud and corruption scandal is as fantastical as the "Golden Shower" dossier. However, it seems to me Magnitsky's death was preventable (he died from complications of pancreatitis, for which it seems he was initially refused treatment ) ]

So if we turn the clock back to 2010-2013, it sure looks to me as though we have a Russian collusion scandal: only it's not one the Guardian will ever want to tell. Will it come out when the FBI 's "secret" informant (William D Cambell) testifies to Congress sometime this week? Not in the Guardian, because their precious Hillary Clinton is the real scandal here.

jag37777 says November 20, 2017
Browder is a spook.
susannapanevin says November 20, 2017
Reblogged this on Susanna Panevin .
Eric Blair says November 20, 2017
This "tactic" – a bold or outrageous claim made in the headline or in the first few sentences of a piece that is proven false in the very same article – is becoming depressingly common in the legacy media.

In other words, the so-called respectable media knowingly prints outright lies for propaganda and clickbait purposes.

labrebisgalloise says November 20, 2017
I dropped a line to a friend yesterday saying "only in a parallel universe would a businessman/shady dealer/tax evader such as Browder be described as an "anti-corruption campaigner."" Those not familiar with the history of Browder's grandfather, after whom a whole new "deviation" in leftist thinking was named, should look it up.
Eric Blair says November 20, 2017
Hey, MbS is also an "anti-corruption" campaigner! If the media says so it must be true!
Sav says November 20, 2017
Some months ago you saw tweets saying Russophobia had hit ridiculous levels. They hadn't seen anything yet. It's scary how easily people can be brainwashed.

The US are the masters of molesting other nations. It's not even a secret what they've been up to. Look at their budgets or the size of the intelligence buildings. Most journalists know full well of their programs, including those on social media, which they even reported on a few years back. The Guardian run stories by the CIA created and US state funded RFE/RL & then tell us with a straight face that RT is state propaganda which is destroying our democracy.

A Petherbridge says November 20, 2017
Well said – interesting to know what the Guardian is paid to run these stories funded by this arm of US state propaganda.
bevin says November 20, 2017
The madness spreads: today The Canary has/had an article 'proving' that the 'Russians' were responsible for Brexit, Trump, etc etc.

Then there is the neo-liberal 'President' of the EU charging that the extreme right wing and Russophobic warmongers in the Polish government are in fact, like the President of the USA, in Putin's pocket..

This outbreak is reaching the dimensions of the sort of mass hysteria that gave us St Vitus' dance. Oh and the 'sonic' terrorism practised against US diplomats in Havana, in which crickets working for the evil one (who he?) appear to have been responsible for a breach in diplomatic relations. It couldn't have happened to a nicer empire.

Admin says November 21, 2017
The Canary is publishing mainstream russophobia?

[Dec 10, 2017] When Washington Cheered the Jihadists Consortiumnews

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... William Roebuck, the American embassy's chargé d'affaires in Damascus, thus urged Washington in 2006 to coordinate with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to encourage Sunni Syrian fears of Shi'ite Iranian proselytizing even though such concerns are "often exaggerated." It was akin to playing up fears of Jewish dominance in the 1930s in coordination with Nazi Germany. ..."
"... A year later, former NATO commander Wesley Clark learned of a classified Defense Department memo stating that U.S. policy was now to "attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years," first Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. (Quote starts at 2:07 .) ..."
"... So the answer was not to oppose the Islamists, but to use them. Even though "the Islamist surge will not be a picnic for the Syrian people," Gambill said, "it has two important silver linings for US interests." One is that the jihadis "are simply more effective fighters than their secular counterparts" thanks to their skill with "suicide bombings and roadside bombs." ..."
"... The other is that a Sunni Islamist victory in Syria will result in "a full-blown strategic defeat" for Iran, thereby putting Washington at least part way toward fulfilling the seven-country demolition job discussed by Wesley Clark. ..."
"... The U.S. would settle with the jihadis only after the jihadis had settled with Assad. The good would ultimately outweigh the bad. This kind of self-centered moral calculus would not have mattered had Gambill only spoken for himself. But he didn't. Rather, he was expressing the viewpoint of Official Washington in general, which is why the ultra-respectable FP ran his piece in the first place. ..."
"... The parallels with the DIA are striking. "The west, gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition," the intelligence report declared, even though "the Salafist[s], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [i.e. Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency." ..."
"... ancien régime, ..."
"... With the Saudis footing the bill, the U.S. would exercise untrammeled sway. ..."
"... Has a forecast that ever gone more spectacularly wrong? Syria's Baathist government is hardly blameless in this affair. But thanks largely to the U.S.-backed sectarian offensive, 400,000 Syrians or more have died since Gambill's article appeared, with another 6.1 million displaced and an estimated 4.8 million fleeing abroad. ..."
"... So instead of advancing U.S. policy goals, Gambill helped do the opposite. The Middle East is more explosive than ever while U.S. influence has fallen to sub-basement levels. Iranian influence now extends from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean, while the country that now seems to be wobbling out of control is Saudi Arabia where Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is lurching from one self-induced crisis to another. The country that Gambill counted on to shore up the status quo turns out to be undermining it. ..."
"... It's not easy to screw things up so badly, but somehow Washington's bloated foreign-policy establishment has done it. Since helping to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Gambill has moved on to a post at the rightwing Middle East Forum where Daniel Pipes, the group's founder and chief, now inveighs against the same Sunni ethnic cleansing that his employee defended or at least apologized for. ..."
"... The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy ..."
"... I do not believe than anyone in the civil or military command ever believed that arming the jihadists would bring any sort of stability or peace to the region. I do not believe that peace was ever an interest of the US until it has once again gained hegemonic control of central Asia. This is a fight to retain US global domination – causalities do not matter. The US and its partners or co-rulers of the Empire the Saud family and the Zionist oligarchy will slaughter with impunity until someone stops them or their own corruption defeats them. ..."
"... The Empire can not exist without relentless ongoing slaughter it has been at it every day now for 73 years. It worked for them all that time but that time has run out. China has already set the date for when its currency will become fully freely exchanged, less than 5 years. ..."
"... Even the most stupid person on earth couldn't think that the US was using murdering, butchering head choppers in a bid to bring peace and stability to the middle East. The Neocons and the other criminals that infest Washington don't want peace at any price because its bad for business. ..."
"... It's the same GROTESQUE caricature of these wars that the mainstream media always presents: that the U.S. is on the side of good, and fights for good, even though every war INVARIABLY ends up in a bloodbath, with no one caring how many civilians have died, what state the country is left in, that civilian infrastructure and civilians were targeted, let alone whether war could have been prevented. For example, in 1991, shortly after the first Gulf War, Iraqis rose up against their regime, but George H. Bush allowed Saddam to fly his military helicopters (permission was needed due to the no-fly zones), and quell the rebellion in blood – tens of thousands were butchered! Bush said that when he told Iraqis to rebel, he meant the military generals, NOT the Iraqi people themselves. In other words, the U.S. wanted Saddam gone, but the same regime in place. The U.S. never cared about the people! ..."
"... The military-industrial-complex sicced Mueller on Trump because they despise his overtures towards rapprochement with the Kremlin. The military-industrial-complex MUST have a villain to justify the gigantic defense [sic] spending which permeates the entire U.S. politico-economic system. Putin and Russia were always the preferred demon because they easily fit the bill in the minds of an easily brainwashed American public. Of course saber rattling towards Moscow puts the world on the brink of nuclear war, but no matter, the careerism and fat contracts are all that matter to the MIC. Trump's rhetoric about making peace with the Kremlin has always mortified the MIC. ..."
"... This is a rare instance of our elites battling it out behind the scenes, both groups being reprehensible power hungry greed heads and sociopaths, it's hard to tell how this will end. ..."
"... Lets be clear: The military-industrial-complex wants plenty of low intensity conflict to fuel ever more fabulous weapons sales, not a really hot war where all those pretty expensive toys are falling out of the sky in droves. ..."
"... On 24 October 2017, the Intercept released an NSA document unearthed from leaked intelligence files provided by Edward Snowden which reveals that terrorist militants in Syria were under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the war which has now claimed half a million lives. ..."
"... The US intelligence memo is evidence of internal US government confirmation of the direct role that both the Saudi and US governments played in fueling attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, as well as military targets in pursuit of "regime change" in Syria. ..."
"... Israel's support for terrorist forces in Syria is well established. The Israelis and Saudis coordinate their activities. ..."
"... An August 2012 DIA report (written when the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist groups: "the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." The "deterioration of the situation" was predicted to have "dire consequences" for Iraq, which included the "grave danger" of a terrorist "Islamic state". Some of the "dire consequences" are blacked out but the DIA warned one such consequence would be the "renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena." ..."
"... The heavily redacted DIA memo specifically mentions "the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)." ..."
"... To clarify just who these "supporting powers" were, mentioned in the document who sought the creation of a "Salafist principality," the DIA memo explained: "The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime." ..."
"... The DIA memo clearly indicates when it was decided to transform US, Saudi, and Turkish-backed Al Qaeda affiliates into ISIS: the "Salafist" (Islamic) "principality" (State). NATO member state Turkey has been directly supporting terrorism in Syria, and specifically, supporting ISIS. In 2014, Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle's reported "'IS' supply channels through Turkey." DW exposed fleets of hundreds of trucks a day, passing unchallenged through Turkey's border crossings with Syria, clearly bound for the defacto ISIS capital of Raqqa. Starting in September 2015, Russian airpower in Syria successfully interdicted ISIS supply lines. ..."
"... The usual suspects in Western media launched a relentless propaganda campaign against Russian support for Syria. The Atlantic Council's Bellingcat disinformation operation started working overtime. ..."
"... The propaganda effort culminated in the 4 April 2017 Khan Shaykhun false flag chemical incident in Idlib. Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta have been paraded by "First Draft" coalition media "partners" in a vigorous effort to somehow implicate the Russians. ..."
"... In a January 2016 interview on Al Jazeera, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn admitted that he "paid very close attention" to the August 2012 DIA report predicting the rise of a "declared or undeclared Salafist Principality" in Syria. Flynn even asserts that the White House's sponsoring of terrorists (that would emerge as Al Nusra and ISIS) against the Syrian regime was "a willful decision." ..."
"... Flynn was interviewed by British journalist Mehdi Hasan for Al Jazeera's Head to Head program. Flynn made it clear that the policies that led to the "the rise of the Islamic State, the rise of terrorism" were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the result of conscious decision making ..."
"... General Flynn explained to Hersh that 'If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic.' Hersh's investigative report exposed a kind of intelligence schism between the Pentagon and CIA concerning the covert program in Syria. ..."
"... The article raises a very serious charge. Up till now it appeared that supplying weapons to Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria was just another example of Pentagon incompetence but the suggestion here is that it was a concerted policy and it's hard to believe that there was no one in the Pentagon that was privy to that policy who wouldn't raise an objection. ..."
"... That it conformed with Israeli, Saudi and CIA designs is not surprising, but that there was no dissension within the Pentagon is appalling (or that Obama didn't raise objections). Clark's comment should put him on the hot seat for a congressional investigation but, of course, there is no one in congress to run with it. The policy is so manifestly evil that it seems to dwarf even the reckless ignorance of preceding "interventions". ..."
"... The DIA report released by Gen. Flynn in 2012 predicted the Islamic State with alarm. That is why Flynn was fired as Director of DIA. He objected to the insane policy of supporting the CIA/Saudi madness and saw it as not only counter-productive but disastrous. His comments to AlJazeera in 2016 reinforced this position. Gen Flynn's faction of the American military has been consistent in its opposition to CIA support of terrorist forces. ..."
"... I see Gen. Flynn as a whistleblower. The 2012 report he circulated saw the rise of the Salafist Islamic state with alarm ..."
"... Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. ..."
"... Thank you. Gen Flynn also urged coordination with Russia against ISIS, so it doesn't take much to see why he was targeted. ..."
"... The use of Islamist proxy warriors to help achieve American geo-political ends goes back to at least 1979, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Libya, and Syria. One of the better books on 9/11 is Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's "The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism". The first section of that book – "The Geopolitics of Terrorism" – covers, across 150 well-sourced pages, the history and background of this involvement. It is highly recommended for anyone who wishes to be better informed on this topic. ..."
"... Jaycee, actually you have to go back much further than that to WW2. Hitler used the marginalized Turkic people in Russia and turned them into effective fighters to create internal factions within the Soviet Union. After Hitler lost and the Cold War began, the US, who had no understanding of the Soviets at the time radicalized and empowered Islamist including the Muslim Brotherhood to weaponize Islam against the Soviet Union. ..."
"... All these western imperial geostrategic planners are certifiably insane and have no business anywhere near the levers of government policy. They are the number one enemy of humanity. If we don't find a way to remove them from power, they may actually succeed in destroying life on Earth. ..."
"... There is a volume of evidence that the war criminals in our midst were arming and training "jihadists." See link below. http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/10/the-evidence-of-planning-of-wars.html ..."
"... Incompetence and stupidity are their only defense because if anyone acknowledged that trillions of dollars have been made by the usual suspects committing these crimes, the industrialists of war would face a justice symbolized by Nuremberg. ..."
"... The American groupthink rarely allows propaganda and disinformation disturb: endless wars and endless lies and criminality, have not disturbed this mindset. It is clever to manipulate people to think in a way opposite of truth so consistently. All the atrocities by the US have been surrounded by media propaganda and mastery of groupthink techniques go down well. Mention something unusual or real news and you might get heavily criticized for daring to think outside the box and doubt what are (supposedly) "religious truths". Tell a lie long enough and it becomes the truth. ..."
"... The CIA was a key force behind the creation of both al Qaeda and ISIS. Most major incidents of "Islamic Terrorism" have some kind of CIA backing behind them. See this large collection of links for compiled evidence: http://www.pearltrees.com/joshstern/government-supporting/id18814292 ..."
"... This journalist and other journalists writing on some of my favorite Russian propaganda news websites, have reported the US empire routinely makes "deals with the devil", the enemy of my enemy is my friend, if doing so furthers their goal of perpetual war and global hegemony. Yet, inexplicably, these journalists buy the US empire's 911 story without question, in the face of many unanswered questions ..."
"... Bin Laden (CIA staffer) and a handful of his men, all from close allied countries to the US, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, delivered the 2nd Pearl Harbor on 911. What a timely coincidence! We accept the US Empire provides weapons and military support to the same enemy, and worse, who attacked us on 911, but one is labeled a "conspiracy nut" if they believe that same US Empire would orchestrate 911 to justify their long planned global war. One thing about being a "conspiracy nut", if you live long enough, often you will see your beliefs vindicated ..."
"... So many questions, and so much left unanswered, but don't worry America may run out of money for domestic vital needs but the U.S. always has the money to go fight another war. It's a culture thing, and if you ain't into it then you just don't pay no attention to it. In fact if your life is better off from all of these U.S. led invasions, then your probably not posting any comments here, either. ..."
"... From the October 1973 Yom Kippur War onward, the United States had no foreign policy in the Middle East other than Israel's. Daniel Lazare should read "A clean break: a new strategy for the Realm". ..."
"... For the majority of amoral opportunists of the US, money=power=virtue and they will attack all who disagree. ..."
"... I am stunned that anyone could be so foolish as to think that the US military machine, US imperialism, does things "naively", bumbling like a helpless giant into wars that destroy entire nations with no end in sight. One need not be a "conspiracy theorist" to understand that the Pentagon does not control the world with an ever-expanding war budget equal to the next 10 countries combined, that it does this just because it is stuck on the wrong path. No! US imperialism develops these "big guns" to use them, to overpower, take over and dominate the world for the sake of profits and protection of the right to exploit for private profit. ..."
"... Daniel Pipes, from what I've read of him, is among those who counsel the U.S. government to use its military power to support the losing side in any civil wars fought within Israel's enemy states, so that the wars will continue, sparing Israel the threat of unified enemy states. What normal human beings consider a humanitarian disaster, repeated in Iraq, Syria and Libya, would be reckoned a success according to this way of thinking. The thinking would appear to lead to similar treatment of Iran, with even more catastrophic consequences. ..."
"... I think this pattern of using Salafists for regime change started already in Afghanistan, with Brzezinski plotting with Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan to pay and train Osama bin Laden to attack the pro Russia regime and trying to get the USSR involved in it, also trying to blame the USSR for its agression, like they did in Syri"r? ..."
"... Yes, the Brzezinski/Reagan support of fanatic insurgencies began in AfPak and was revived for the zionists. Russia happened to be on the side more or less tending to progress in both cases, so it had to be opposed. The warmongers are always the US MIC/intel, allied with the anti-American zionist fascists for Mideast wars. ..."
"... Sheldon Adelson, Soros, Saban all wanted carving up of Arabic states into small sectarian pieces (No Nasseric pan-Arabic states, a threat to Israël). And protracted wars of total destruction. Easy. ..."
"... Of course, they were told (by whom?) that the jihadists were 'democratic rebels' and 'freedom fighters' who just wanted to 'bring democracy' to Syria, and get rid of the 'tyrant Assad.' 5 years later, so much of the nonsense about "local councils" and "white helmets" has been exposed for what it was. Yet many 'free thinking' people bought the propaganda. Just like they do on Russiagate. Who needs an "alt-right" when America's "left" is a total disgrace? ..."
Dec 10, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

When a Department of Defense intelligence report about the Syrian rebel movement became public in May 2015, lots of people didn't know what to make of it. After all, what the report said was unthinkable – not only that Al Qaeda had dominated the so-called democratic revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for years, but that the West continued to support the jihadis regardless, even to the point of backing their goal of creating a Sunni Salafist principality in the eastern deserts.

Journalist James Foley shortly before he was executed by an Islamic State operative in August 2014.

The United States lining up behind Sunni terrorism – how could this be? How could a nice liberal like Barack Obama team up with the same people who had brought down the World Trade Center?

It was impossible, which perhaps explains why the report remained a non-story long after it was released courtesy of a Judicial Watch freedom-of-information lawsuit . The New York Times didn't mention it until six months later while the Washington Post waited more than a year before dismissing it as "loopy" and "relatively unimportant." With ISIS rampaging across much of Syria and Iraq, no one wanted to admit that U.S. attitudes were ever anything other than hostile.

But three years earlier, when the Defense Intelligence Agency was compiling the report, attitudes were different. Jihadis were heroes rather than terrorists, and all the experts agreed that they were a low-risk, high-yield way of removing Assad from office.

After spending five days with a Syrian rebel unit, for instance, New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers wrote that the group "mixes paramilitary discipline, civilian policing, Islamic law, and the harsh demands of necessity with battlefield coldness and outright cunning."

Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, assured the Washington Post that "al Qaeda is a fringe element" among the rebels, while, not to be outdone, the gossip site Buzzfeed published a pin-up of a "ridiculously photogenic" jihadi toting an RPG.

"Hey girl," said the subhead. "Nothing sexier than fighting the oppression of tyranny."

And then there was Foreign Policy, the magazine founded by neocon guru Samuel P. Huntington, which was most enthusiastic of all. Gary Gambill's " Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists ," which ran on the FP web site just a couple of weeks after the DIA report was completed, didn't distort the facts or make stuff up in any obvious way. Nonetheless, it is a classic of U.S. propaganda. Its subhead glibly observed: "So the rebels aren't secular Jeffersonians. As far as America is concerned, it doesn't much matter."

Assessing the Damage

Five years later, it's worth a second look to see how Washington uses self-serving logic to reduce an entire nation to rubble.

First a bit of background. After displacing France and Britain as the region's prime imperial overlord during the 1956 Suez Crisis and then breaking with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser a few years later, the United States committed itself to the goal of defeating Arab nationalism and Soviet Communism, two sides of the same coin as far as Washington was concerned. Over the next half-century, this would mean steering Egypt to the right with assistance from the Saudis, isolating Libyan strong man Muammar Gaddafi, and doing what it could to undermine the Syrian Baathist regime as well.

William Roebuck, the American embassy's chargé d'affaires in Damascus, thus urged Washington in 2006 to coordinate with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to encourage Sunni Syrian fears of Shi'ite Iranian proselytizing even though such concerns are "often exaggerated." It was akin to playing up fears of Jewish dominance in the 1930s in coordination with Nazi Germany.

A year later, former NATO commander Wesley Clark learned of a classified Defense Department memo stating that U.S. policy was now to "attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years," first Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. (Quote starts at 2:07 .)

Since the United States didn't like what such governments were doing, the solution was to install more pliable ones in their place. Hence Washington's joy when the Arab Spring struck Syria in March 2011 and it appeared that protesters would soon topple the Baathists on their own.

Even when lofty democratic rhetoric gave way to ominous sectarian chants of "Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the coffin," U.S. enthusiasm remained strong. With Sunnis accounting for perhaps 60 percent of the population, strategists figured that there was no way Assad could hold out against religious outrage welling up from below.

Enter Gambill and the FP. The big news, his article began, is that secularists are no longer in command of the burgeoning Syrian rebel movement and that Sunni Islamists are taking the lead instead. As unfortunate as this might seem, he argued that such a development was both unavoidable and far from entirely negative.

"Islamist political ascendancy is inevitable in a majority Sunni Muslim country brutalized for more than four decades by a secular minoritarian dictatorship," he wrote in reference to the Baathists. "Moreover, enormous financial resources are pouring in from the Arab-Islamic world to promote explicitly Islamist resistance to Assad's Alawite-dominated, Iranian-backed regime."

So the answer was not to oppose the Islamists, but to use them. Even though "the Islamist surge will not be a picnic for the Syrian people," Gambill said, "it has two important silver linings for US interests." One is that the jihadis "are simply more effective fighters than their secular counterparts" thanks to their skill with "suicide bombings and roadside bombs."

The other is that a Sunni Islamist victory in Syria will result in "a full-blown strategic defeat" for Iran, thereby putting Washington at least part way toward fulfilling the seven-country demolition job discussed by Wesley Clark.

"So long as Syrian jihadis are committed to fighting Iran and its Arab proxies," the article concluded, "we should quietly root for them – while keeping our distance from a conflict that is going to get very ugly before the smoke clears. There will be plenty of time to tame the beast after Iran's regional hegemonic ambitions have gone down in flames."

Deals with the Devil

The U.S. would settle with the jihadis only after the jihadis had settled with Assad. The good would ultimately outweigh the bad. This kind of self-centered moral calculus would not have mattered had Gambill only spoken for himself. But he didn't. Rather, he was expressing the viewpoint of Official Washington in general, which is why the ultra-respectable FP ran his piece in the first place.The Islamists were something America could employ to their advantage and then throw away like a squeezed lemon. A few Syrians would suffer, but America would win, and that's all that counts.

The parallels with the DIA are striking. "The west, gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition," the intelligence report declared, even though "the Salafist[s], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [i.e. Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency."

Where Gambill predicted that "Assad and his minions will likely retreat to northwestern Syria," the DIA speculated that the jihadis might establish "a declared or undeclared Salafist principality" at the other end of the country near cities like Hasaka and Der Zor (also known as Deir ez-Zor).

Where the FP said that the ultimate aim was to roll back Iranian influence and undermine Shi'ite rule, the DIA said that a Salafist principality "is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)."

Bottle up the Shi'ites in northwestern Syria, in other words, while encouraging Sunni extremists to establish a base in the east so as to put pressure on Shi'ite-influenced Iraq and Shi'ite-ruled Iran.

As Gambill put it: "Whatever misfortunes Sunni Islamists may visit upon the Syrian people, any government they form will be strategically preferable to the Assad regime, for three reasons: A new government in Damascus will find continuing the alliance with Tehran unthinkable, it won't have to distract Syrians from its minority status with foreign policy adventurism like the ancien régime, and it will be flush with petrodollars from Arab Gulf states (relatively) friendly to Washington."

With the Saudis footing the bill, the U.S. would exercise untrammeled sway.

Disastrous Thinking

Has a forecast that ever gone more spectacularly wrong? Syria's Baathist government is hardly blameless in this affair. But thanks largely to the U.S.-backed sectarian offensive, 400,000 Syrians or more have died since Gambill's article appeared, with another 6.1 million displaced and an estimated 4.8 million fleeing abroad.

U.S.-backed Syrian "moderate" rebels smile as they prepare to behead a 12-year-old boy (left), whose severed head is held aloft triumphantly in a later part of the video. [Screenshot from the YouTube video] War-time destruction totals around $250 billion , according to U.N. estimates, a staggering sum for a country of 18.8 million people where per-capita income prior to the outbreak of violence was under $3,000. From Syria, the specter of sectarian violence has spread across Asia and Africa and into Europe and North America as well. Political leaders throughout the advanced industrial world are still struggling to contain the populist fury that the Middle East refugee crisis, the result of U.S.-instituted regime change, helped set off.

So instead of advancing U.S. policy goals, Gambill helped do the opposite. The Middle East is more explosive than ever while U.S. influence has fallen to sub-basement levels. Iranian influence now extends from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean, while the country that now seems to be wobbling out of control is Saudi Arabia where Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is lurching from one self-induced crisis to another. The country that Gambill counted on to shore up the status quo turns out to be undermining it.

It's not easy to screw things up so badly, but somehow Washington's bloated foreign-policy establishment has done it. Since helping to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Gambill has moved on to a post at the rightwing Middle East Forum where Daniel Pipes, the group's founder and chief, now inveighs against the same Sunni ethnic cleansing that his employee defended or at least apologized for.

The forum is particularly well known for its Campus Watch program, which targets academic critics of Israel, Islamists, and – despite Gambill's kind words about "suicide bombings and roadside bombs" – anyone it considers the least bit apologetic about Islamic terrorism.

Double your standard, double the fun. Terrorism, it seems, is only terrorism when others do it to the U.S., not when the U.S. does it to others.

Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).

Babyl-on , December 8, 2017 at 5:26 pm

I do not believe than anyone in the civil or military command ever believed that arming the jihadists would bring any sort of stability or peace to the region. I do not believe that peace was ever an interest of the US until it has once again gained hegemonic control of central Asia. This is a fight to retain US global domination – causalities do not matter. The US and its partners or co-rulers of the Empire the Saud family and the Zionist oligarchy will slaughter with impunity until someone stops them or their own corruption defeats them.

The Empire can not exist without relentless ongoing slaughter it has been at it every day now for 73 years. It worked for them all that time but that time has run out. China has already set the date for when its currency will become fully freely exchanged, less than 5 years. When that happens the world will return to the gold standard + Bitcoin possibly and US dollar hegemony will end. After that the trillion dollar a year military and the 20 trillion debt take on a different meaning. Before that slaughter non-stop will continue.

john wilson , December 9, 2017 at 6:31 am

Really, Baby-lon, your first short paragraph sums this piece by Lazare perfectly and makes the rest of his blog seem rather pointless. Even the most stupid person on earth couldn't think that the US was using murdering, butchering head choppers in a bid to bring peace and stability to the middle East. The Neocons and the other criminals that infest Washington don't want peace at any price because its bad for business.

Jerald Davidson , December 9, 2017 at 11:53 am

Babyl-on and John Wilson: you have nailed it. The last thing the US (gov't.) wants is peace. War is big business; casualties are of no concern (3 million Koreans died in the Korean War; 3 million Vietnamese in that war; 100's of thousands in Iraq [including Clinton's sanctions] and Afghanistan). The US has used jihadi proxies since the mujahedeen in 1980's Afghanistan and Contras in Nicaragua. To the US (gov't.), a Salafist dictatorship (such as Saudi Arabia) is highly preferable to a secular, nationalist ruler (such as Egypt's Nasser, Libya's Gaddafi, Syria's Assad).
So the cover story of the jjihadi's has changed – first they are freedom fighters, then terrorists. What does not change is that in either case they are pawns of the US (gov't.) goal of hegemony.
(Incidentally, Drew Hunkins must be responding to a different article.)

BannanaBoat , December 9, 2017 at 4:31 pm

Exactly Baby right on, Either USA strategists are extremely ignorant or they are attempting to create chaos, probably both. Perhaps not continuously but surely frequently the USA has promoted war prior to the last 73 years. Native Genocide , Mexican Wars, Spanish War, WWI ( USA banker repayment war)

Richard , December 9, 2017 at 5:24 pm

Exactly Babylon! Looks like consortiumnews is turning into another propaganda rag. Assad was allied with Russia and Iran – that's why the U.S. wanted him removed. Israel said that they would preferred ISIS in power over Assad. The U.S. would have happily wiped out 90% of the population using its terrorist proxies if it thought it could have got what it wanted.

Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 8:50 am

CN tends to make moderate statements so as to communicate with those most in need of them. One must start with the understandings of the audience and show them that the evidence leads further.

Richard , December 10, 2017 at 10:27 am

Sam F, no, it's a DELIBERATE lie in support of U.S. foreign policy. The guy wrote: "the NAIVE belief that jihadist proxies could be used to TRANSFORM THE REGION FOR THE BETTER." It could have been written as: "the stated justification by the president that he wanted to transform the region for the better, even though there are often ulterior motives."

It's the same GROTESQUE caricature of these wars that the mainstream media always presents: that the U.S. is on the side of good, and fights for good, even though every war INVARIABLY ends up in a bloodbath, with no one caring how many civilians have died, what state the country is left in, that civilian infrastructure and civilians were targeted, let alone whether war could have been prevented. For example, in 1991, shortly after the first Gulf War, Iraqis rose up against their regime, but George H. Bush allowed Saddam to fly his military helicopters (permission was needed due to the no-fly zones), and quell the rebellion in blood – tens of thousands were butchered! Bush said that when he told Iraqis to rebel, he meant the military generals, NOT the Iraqi people themselves. In other words, the U.S. wanted Saddam gone, but the same regime in place. The U.S. never cared about the people!

Either Robert Parry or the author wrote that introduction. I suspect Mr Parry – he always portrays the president as having a heart of gold, but, always, sadly, misinformed; being a professional journalist, he knows full well that people often only read the start and end of an article.

Drew Hunkins , December 8, 2017 at 5:31 pm

What we have occurring right now in the United States is a rare divergence of interests within our ruling class. The elites are currently made up of Zionist-militarists. What we're now witnessing is a rare conflict between the two factions. This particular internecine battle has reared its head in the past, the Dubai armaments deal comes to mind off the top of my head.

Trump started the Jerusalem imbroglio because he's concerned about Mueller's witch hunt.

The military-industrial-complex sicced Mueller on Trump because they despise his overtures towards rapprochement with the Kremlin. The military-industrial-complex MUST have a villain to justify the gigantic defense [sic] spending which permeates the entire U.S. politico-economic system. Putin and Russia were always the preferred demon because they easily fit the bill in the minds of an easily brainwashed American public. Of course saber rattling towards Moscow puts the world on the brink of nuclear war, but no matter, the careerism and fat contracts are all that matter to the MIC. Trump's rhetoric about making peace with the Kremlin has always mortified the MIC.

Since Trump's concerned about 1.) Mueller's witch hunt (he definitely should be deeply concerned, this is an out of control prosecutor on mission creep), and 2.) the almost total negative coverage the press has given him over the last two years, he's made a deal with the Zionist Power Configuration; Trump, effectively saying to them: "I'll give you Jerusalem, you use your immense influence in the American mass media to tamp down the relentlessly hostile coverage toward me, and perhaps smear Mueller's witch hunt a bit ".

This is a rare instance of our elites battling it out behind the scenes, both groups being reprehensible power hungry greed heads and sociopaths, it's hard to tell how this will end.

How this all eventually plays out is anyone's guess indeed. Let's just make sure it doesn't end with mushroom clouds over Tehran, Saint Petersburg, Paris, Chicago, London, NYC, Washington and Berlin.

Abe , December 8, 2017 at 7:57 pm

Trump's purported deviation from foreign policy orthodoxy regarding both Russia and Israel was a propaganda scam engineered by the pro-Israel Lobby from the very beginning. As Russia-gate fiction is progressively deconstructed, the Israel-gate reality becomes ever more despicably obvious.

The shamelessly Israel-pandering Trump received the "Liberty Award" for his contributions to US-Israel relations at a 3 February 2015 gala hosted by The Algemeiner Journal, a New York-based newspaper, covering American and international Jewish and Israel-related news.

"We love Israel. We will fight for Israel 100 percent, 1000 percent." VIDEO minutes 2:15-8:06 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiwBwBw7R-U

After the event, Trump did not renew his television contract for The Apprentice, which raised speculation about a Trump bid for the presidency. Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015.

Trump's purported break with GOP orthodoxy, questioning of Israel's commitment to peace, calls for even treatment in Israeli-Palestinian deal-making, and refusal to call for Jerusalem to be Israel's undivided capital, were all stage-managed for the campaign.

Cheap theatrics notwithstanding, the Netanyahu regime in Israel has "1000 percent" support from the Trump regime.

Drew Hunkins , December 8, 2017 at 8:10 pm

If Trump were totally and completely subservient to Netanyahu he would have bombed Damascus to remove Assad and would have bombed Tehran to obliterate Iran. Of course thus far he has done neither. Don't get me wrong, Trump is essentially part and parcel of the Zionist cabal, but I don't quite think he's 1,000% under their thumb (not yet?).

I don't think the Zionist Power Configuration concocted Trump's policy of relative peace with the Kremlin. Yes, the ZPC is extremely powerful in America, but Trump's position of detente with Moscow seemed to be genuine. He caught way too much heat from the mass media for it to be a stunt, it's almost torpedoed his presidency, and may eventually do just that. It was actually one of the very few things Trump got right; peace with Russia, cordial relations with the Kremlin are a no-brainer. A no-brainer to everyone but the military-industrial-complex.

Abe , December 8, 2017 at 10:59 pm

Russian. Missiles. Lets be clear: The military-industrial-complex wants plenty of low intensity conflict to fuel ever more fabulous weapons sales, not a really hot war where all those pretty expensive toys are falling out of the sky in droves.

Whether it was "bird strike" or something more technological that recently grounded the "mighty" Israeli F-35I, it's clear that America isn't eager to have those "Inherent Resolve" jets, so busily not bombing ISIS, painted with Russian SAM radar.

Russia made it clear that Trump's Tomahawk Tweet in April 2017 was not only under totally false pretenses. It had posed a threat to Russian troops and Moscow took extra measures to protect them.

Russian deployment of the advanced S-400 system on the Syrian coast in Latakia also impacts Israel's regional air superiority. The S-400 can track and shoot down targets some 400 kilometers (250 miles) away. That range encompasses half of Israel's airspace, including Ben Gurion International Airport. In addition to surface-to-air missiles installations, Russian aircraft in Syria are equipped with air-to-air missiles. Those weapons are part of an calculus of Israeli aggression in the region.

Of course, there's much more to say about this subject.

WC , December 9, 2017 at 3:44 pm

Here's a good one from Hedges (for what little good it will do). https://www.truthdig.com/articles/zero-hour-palestine/

john wilson , December 9, 2017 at 6:34 am

Surely, Drew, even the brain washed sheep otherwise known as the American public can't seriously believe that their government armed head choppers in a bid to bring peace to the region, can they?

Drew Hunkins , December 9, 2017 at 1:34 pm

Yup Mr. Wilson. It's too much cognitive dissonance for them to process. After all, we're the exceptional nation, the beacon on the hill, the country that ONLY intervenes abroad when there is a 'right to protect!' or it's a 'humanitarian intervention.' As Ken Burns would say: Washington only acts "with good intentions. They're just sometimes misplaced." That's all. The biggest global empire the world has ever seen is completely out of the picture.

mike k , December 8, 2017 at 5:34 pm

When evil people with evil intentions set out to do something in the world, the result is evil. Like Libya, or Iraq, or Syria. Why do I call these people who killed millions for their own selfish greed for power evil? If you have to ask that, then you just don't understand what evil is – and you have a lot of company, because many people believe that evil does not even exist! Such sheeple become the perfect victims of the evil ones, who are destroying our world.

john wilson , December 9, 2017 at 6:36 am

Correction, Mike. The public do believe that evil exists but they sincerely think that Putin and Russia are the evil ones'

mike k , December 9, 2017 at 5:41 pm

One of the ways to avoid recognizing evil is to ascribe it to inappropriate, incorrect sources usually as a result of believing misleading propaganda. Another common maneuver is to deny evil's presence in oneself, and believe it is always "out there". Or one can feel that "evil" is an outmoded religious concept that is only used to hit at those one does not like.

Mild - ly Facetious , December 8, 2017 at 6:22 pm

Oh Jerusalem: Requiem for the two-state solution (Gas masks required)

https://electronicintifada.net/content/oh-jerusalem-requiem-two-state-solution/22521

Abe , December 8, 2017 at 6:24 pm

On 24 October 2017, the Intercept released an NSA document unearthed from leaked intelligence files provided by Edward Snowden which reveals that terrorist militants in Syria were under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the war which has now claimed half a million lives.

https://theintercept.com/2017/10/24/syria-rebels-nsa-saudi-prince-assad/

Marked "Top Secret" the NSA memo focuses on events that unfolded outside Damascus in March of 2013.

The US intelligence memo is evidence of internal US government confirmation of the direct role that both the Saudi and US governments played in fueling attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, as well as military targets in pursuit of "regime change" in Syria.

Israel's support for terrorist forces in Syria is well established. The Israelis and Saudis coordinate their activities.

Abe , December 8, 2017 at 6:27 pm

An August 2012 DIA report (written when the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist groups: "the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." The "deterioration of the situation" was predicted to have "dire consequences" for Iraq, which included the "grave danger" of a terrorist "Islamic state". Some of the "dire consequences" are blacked out but the DIA warned one such consequence would be the "renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena."

The heavily redacted DIA memo specifically mentions "the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)."

http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf

To clarify just who these "supporting powers" were, mentioned in the document who sought the creation of a "Salafist principality," the DIA memo explained: "The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime."

The DIA memo clearly indicates when it was decided to transform US, Saudi, and Turkish-backed Al Qaeda affiliates into ISIS: the "Salafist" (Islamic) "principality" (State). NATO member state Turkey has been directly supporting terrorism in Syria, and specifically, supporting ISIS. In 2014, Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle's reported "'IS' supply channels through Turkey." DW exposed fleets of hundreds of trucks a day, passing unchallenged through Turkey's border crossings with Syria, clearly bound for the defacto ISIS capital of Raqqa. Starting in September 2015, Russian airpower in Syria successfully interdicted ISIS supply lines.

The usual suspects in Western media launched a relentless propaganda campaign against Russian support for Syria. The Atlantic Council's Bellingcat disinformation operation started working overtime.

The propaganda effort culminated in the 4 April 2017 Khan Shaykhun false flag chemical incident in Idlib. Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta have been paraded by "First Draft" coalition media "partners" in a vigorous effort to somehow implicate the Russians.

Abe , December 9, 2017 at 12:26 pm

In a January 2016 interview on Al Jazeera, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn admitted that he "paid very close attention" to the August 2012 DIA report predicting the rise of a "declared or undeclared Salafist Principality" in Syria. Flynn even asserts that the White House's sponsoring of terrorists (that would emerge as Al Nusra and ISIS) against the Syrian regime was "a willful decision."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Y274U7QIs

Flynn was interviewed by British journalist Mehdi Hasan for Al Jazeera's Head to Head program. Flynn made it clear that the policies that led to the "the rise of the Islamic State, the rise of terrorism" were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the result of conscious decision making:

Hasan: "You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn't listening?"

Flynn: "I think the administration."

Hasan: "So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?"

Flynn: "I don't know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision."

Hasan: "A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?"

Flynn: "It was a willful decision to do what they're doing."

Holding up a paper copy of the 2012 DIA report declassified through FOIA, Hasan read aloud key passages such as, "there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime."

Rather than downplay the importance of the document and these startling passages, as did the State Department soon after its release, Flynn did the opposite: he confirmed that while acting DIA chief he "paid very close attention" to this report in particular and later added that "the intelligence was very clear."

Lt. Gen. Flynn, speaking safely from retirement, is the highest ranking intelligence official to go on record saying the United States and other state sponsors of rebels in Syria knowingly gave political backing and shipped weapons to Al-Qaeda in order to put pressure on the Syrian regime:

Hasan: "In 2012 the U.S. was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups [Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda in Iraq], why did you not stop that if you're worried about the rise of quote-unquote Islamic extremists?"

Flynn: "I hate to say it's not my job but that my job was to was to to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be."

Flynn unambiguously confirmed that the 2012 DIA document served as source material in his own discussions over Syria policy with the White House. Flynn served as Director of Intelligence for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) during a time when its prime global mission was dismantling Al-Qaeda.

Flynn's admission that the White House was in fact arming and bolstering Al-Qaeda linked groups in Syria is especially shocking given his stature. The Pentagon's former highest ranking intelligence officer in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden confessed that the United States directly aided the Al Qaeda terrorist legions of Ayman al-Zawahiri beginning in at least 2012 in Syria.

Abe , December 9, 2017 at 12:44 pm

Mehdi Hasan goes Head to Head with Michael Flynn, former head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Full Transcript: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2016/01/transcript-michael-flynn-160104174144334.html

Abe , December 9, 2017 at 2:11 pm

"Flynn would later tell the New York Times that this 2012 intelligence report in particular was seen at the White House where it was 'disregarded' because it 'didn't meet the narrative' on the war in Syria. He would further confirm to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that Defense Department (DoD) officials and DIA intelligence in particular, were loudly warning the administration that jihadists were leading the opposition in Syria -- warnings which were met with 'enormous pushback.' Instead of walking back his Al Jazeera comments, General Flynn explained to Hersh that 'If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic.' Hersh's investigative report exposed a kind of intelligence schism between the Pentagon and CIA concerning the covert program in Syria.

"In a personal exchange on his blog Sic Semper Tyrannis, legendary DoD intelligence officer and former presidential briefer Pat Lang explained [ ] that the DIA memo was used as a 'warning shot across the [administration's] bow.' Lang has elsewhere stated that DIA Director Flynn had 'tried to persuade people in the Obama Administration not to provide assistance to the Nusra group.' It must be remembered that in 2012 what would eventually emerge as distinct 'ISIS' and 'Nusra' (AQ in Syria) groups was at that time a singular entity desiring a unified 'Islamic State.' The nascent ISIS organization (referenced in the memo as 'ISI' or Islamic State in Iraq) was still one among many insurgent groups fighting to topple Assad.

"In fact, only one year after the DIA memo was produced (dated August 12, 2012) a coalition of rebels fighting under the US-backed Revolutionary Military Council of Aleppo were busy celebrating their most strategic victory to date, which served to open an opposition corridor in Northern Syria. The seizure of the Syrian government's Menagh Airbase in August 2013 was only accomplished with the military prowess of fighters identifying themselves in front of cameras and to reporters on the ground as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

"Public embarrassment came for Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford who reluctantly confirmed that in fact, yes, the US-funded and supplied FSA commander on the ground had personally led ISIS and Nusra fighters in the attack (Ford himself was previously filmed alongside the commander). This after the New York Times publicized unambiguous video proof of the fact. Even the future high commander of Islamic State's military operations, Omar al-Shishani, himself played a leading role in the US sponsored FSA operation."

Obama and the DIA 'Islamic State' Memo: What Trump Gets Right
By Brad Hoff
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/07/01/obama-and-the-dia-islamic-state-memo-what-trump-gets-right/

Abe , December 9, 2017 at 3:08 pm

"one first needs to understand what has happened in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries in recent years. The original plan of the US and Saudi Arabia (behind whom stood an invisible Israel) was the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad and his replacement with Islamic fundamentalists or takfiris (Daesh, al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra).

"The plan involved the following steps:

"It was an ambitious plan, and the Israelis were completely convinced that the United States would provide all the necessary resources to see it through. But the Syrian government has survived thanks to military intervention by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. Daesh is almost defeated and Iran and Hezbollah are so firmly entrenched in Syria that it has driven the Israelis into a state of fear bordering on panic. Lebanon remains stable, and even the recent attempt by the Saudis to abduct Prime Minister Saad Hariri failed.

"As a result, Saudi Arabia and Israel have developed a new plan: force the US to attack Iran. To this end, the 'axis of good"' (USA-Israel-Saudi Arabia) was created, although this is nothing new. Saudi Arabia and the other Arab States in the Persian Gulf have in the past spoken in favor of intervention in Syria. It is well known that the Saudis invaded Bahrain, are occupying it de facto, and are now at war in Yemen.

"The Israelis will participate in any plan that will finally split the Sunnis and Shiites, turning the region into rubble. It was not by chance that, having failed in Lebanon, they are now trying to do the same in Yemen after the murder of Ali Abdullah Saleh.

"For the Saudis and Israelis, the problem lies in the fact that they have rather weak armed forces; expensive and high-tech, but when it comes to full-scale hostilities, especially against a really strong opponent such as the Iranians or Hezbollah, the 'Israel/Wahhabis' have no chance and they know it, even if they do not admit it. So, one simply needs to think up some kind of plan to force the Shiites to pay a high price.

"So they developed a new plan. Firstly, the goal is now not the defeat of Hezbollah or Iran. For all their rhetoric, the Israelis know that neither they nor especially the Saudis are able to seriously threaten Iran or even Hezbollah. Their plan is much more basic: initiate a serious conflict and then force the US to intervene. Only today, the armed forces of the United States have no way of winning a war with Iran, and this may be a problem. The US military knows this and they are doing everything to tell the neo-cons 'sorry, we just can't.' This is the only reason why a US attack on Iran has not already taken place. From the Israeli point of view this is totally unacceptable and the solution is simple: just force the US to participate in a war they do not really need. As for the Iranians, the Israeli goal of provoking an attack on Iran by the US is not to defeat Iran, but just to bring about destruction – a lot of destruction [ ]

"You would need to be crazy to attack Iran. The problem, however, is that the Saudis and the Israelis are close to this state. And they have proved it many times. So it just remains to hope that Israel and the KSA are 'crazy', but 'not that crazy'."

The Likelihood of War with Iran By Petr Lvov https://journal-neo.org/2017/12/09/the-likelihood-of-war-with-iran/

BobH, December 8, 2017 at 7:13 pm

The article raises a very serious charge. Up till now it appeared that supplying weapons to Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria was just another example of Pentagon incompetence but the suggestion here is that it was a concerted policy and it's hard to believe that there was no one in the Pentagon that was privy to that policy who wouldn't raise an objection.

That it conformed with Israeli, Saudi and CIA designs is not surprising, but that there was no dissension within the Pentagon is appalling (or that Obama didn't raise objections). Clark's comment should put him on the hot seat for a congressional investigation but, of course, there is no one in congress to run with it. The policy is so manifestly evil that it seems to dwarf even the reckless ignorance of preceding "interventions".

Linda Wood , December 8, 2017 at 10:24 pm

There WAS dissension within the Pentagon, not only about being in a coalition with the Gulf States and Turkey in support of terrorist forces, but about allowing ISIS to invade Ramadi, which CENTCOM exposed by making public that US forces watched it happen and did nothing. In addition, CENTCOM and SOCOM publicly opposed switching sides in Yemen.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/4/17/us-generals-think-saudi-strikes-in-yemen-a-bad-idea.html

A senior commander at Central Command (CENTCOM), speaking on condition of anonymity, scoffed at that argument. "The reason the Saudis didn't inform us of their plans," he said, "is because they knew we would have told them exactly what we think -- that it was a bad idea.

Military sources said that a number of regional special forces officers and officers at U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) argued strenuously against supporting the Saudi-led intervention because the target of the intervention, the Shia Houthi movement -- which has taken over much of Yemen and which Riyadh accuses of being a proxy for Tehran -- has been an effective counter to Al-Qaeda.

The DIA report released by Gen. Flynn in 2012 predicted the Islamic State with alarm. That is why Flynn was fired as Director of DIA. He objected to the insane policy of supporting the CIA/Saudi madness and saw it as not only counter-productive but disastrous. His comments to AlJazeera in 2016 reinforced this position. Gen Flynn's faction of the American military has been consistent in its opposition to CIA support of terrorist forces.

BobH , December 8, 2017 at 10:55 pm

Thanks, I never read anything about it in the MSM (perhaps Aljazeera was an exception?). However, this doesn't explain Gen. Flynn's tight relationship with Turkey's Erdogan who clearly backed the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels to the point of shooting down a Russian jet over Syria.

Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 8:57 am

The fighter shoot-down incident was before Erdogan's reversals in Syria policy.

Linda Wood , December 8, 2017 at 10:28 pm

I see Gen. Flynn as a whistleblower. The 2012 report he circulated saw the rise of the Salafist Islamic state with alarm.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf

B. THE SALAFIST, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA.

C. THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY SUPPORT THE OPPOSITION; WHILE RUSSIA, CHINA, AND IRAN SUPPORT THE REGIME.

C. IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN).

D. THE DETERIORATION OF THE SITUATION HAS DIRE CONSEQUENCES ON THE IRAQI SITUATION AND ARE AS FOLLOWS:

–1. THIS CREATES THE IDEAL ATMOSPHERE FOR AQI TO RETURN TO ITS OLD POCKETS IN MOSUL AND RAMADI, AND WILL PROVIDE A RENEWED MOMENTUM UNDER THE PRESUMPTION OF UNIFYING THE JIHAD AMONG SUNNI IRAQ AND SYRIA ISI COULD ALSO DECLARE AN ISLAMIC STATE THROUGH ITS UNION WITH OTHER TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS IN IRAQ AND SYRIA, WHICH WILL CREATE GRAVE DANGER IN REGARDS TO UNIFYING IRAQ AND THE PROTECTION OF ITS TERRITORY

https://geopolitics.co/2015/12/22/dempseys-pentagon-aided-assad-with-military-intelligence-hersh/
London Review of Books Vol. 38 No. 1 · 7 January 2016
Military to Military: US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war
Seymour M. Hersh

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn't doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. 'If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,' Flynn told me. 'We understood Isis's long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.' The DIA's reporting, he said, 'got enormous pushback' from the Obama administration. 'I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.'

j. D. D. , December 9, 2017 at 8:33 am

Thank you. Gen Flynn also urged coordination with Russia against ISIS, so it doesn't take much to see why he was targeted. Ironically, the MSM is now going bananas over his support for nuclear power in the region, which he had tied to desalination of sea water, toward alleviating that crucial source of conflict in the area.

Abbybwood , December 9, 2017 at 11:24 pm

I believe Wesley Clark told Amy Goodman that he was handed the classified memo regarding the U.S. overthrowing seven countries in five years starting with Iraq and ending with Iran, in 2001, not 2006. He said it was right after 9/11 when he visited the Pentagon and Joint Chief of Staff's office and was handed the memo.

jaycee , December 8, 2017 at 7:19 pm

The use of Islamist proxy warriors to help achieve American geo-political ends goes back to at least 1979, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Libya, and Syria. One of the better books on 9/11 is Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's "The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism". The first section of that book – "The Geopolitics of Terrorism" – covers, across 150 well-sourced pages, the history and background of this involvement. It is highly recommended for anyone who wishes to be better informed on this topic.

One disturbing common feature across the years have been US sponsored airlifts of Islamist fighters facing defeat, as seen in Afghanistan in late 2001 and just recently in eastern Syria. In 2001, some of those fighters were relocated to North Africa, specifically Mali – the roots of the Islamist insurgency which has destabilized that country over the past few years. Where exactly the ISIS rebels assisted some weeks ago were relocated is yet unknown.

turk151 , December 9, 2017 at 10:03 pm

Jaycee, actually you have to go back much further than that to WW2. Hitler used the marginalized Turkic people in Russia and turned them into effective fighters to create internal factions within the Soviet Union. After Hitler lost and the Cold War began, the US, who had no understanding of the Soviets at the time radicalized and empowered Islamist including the Muslim Brotherhood to weaponize Islam against the Soviet Union.

Hence the birth of the Mujaheddin and Bin Laden, the rest is history.

j. D. D. , December 8, 2017 at 7:57 pm

The article does not support the sub-headline. There is no evidence provided, nor is there any evidence to be found, that Washington's policy in the region was motivated by anything other than geopolitical objectives.

David G , December 9, 2017 at 7:25 am

I think that phrasing may point to the hand of editor Robert Parry. The incredible value of CN notwithstanding, Parry in his own pieces (erroneously in my eyes) maintains a belief that Obama somehow meant well. Hence the imputation of some "naïve" but ultimately benevolent motive on the part of the U.S. genocidaires, as the whole Syria catastrophe got going on Obama's watch.

Anon , December 9, 2017 at 9:14 am

The imputation of naivete works to avoid accusation of a specific strategy without sufficient evidence.

Skip Scott , December 9, 2017 at 9:45 am

Although I am no fan of Obama, and most especially the continuation of the warmongering for his 8 years, he did balk at the "Red line" when he found out he was being set up, and it wasn't Assad who used chemical weapons. I don't think he "meant well" so much as he knew the exact length of his leash. His bragging about going against "The Washington playbook" was of course laughable; just as his whole hopey/changey thing was laughable with Citigroup picking his cabinet.

Stephen , December 9, 2017 at 2:49 pm

Off topic but you can listen to some of Obama's banking handiwork here: https://sputniknews.com/radio_loud_and_clear/201712091059844562-looming-government-shutdown-will-democrats-fight-trumps-pro-rich-plan/ It starts at about minute 28:14. It explains the whole reaction by Obama and Holder to the banking fiasco in my mind. Sorry but I had to get it from the evil Rooski radio program.

Lois Gagnon , December 8, 2017 at 8:41 pm

All these western imperial geostrategic planners are certifiably insane and have no business anywhere near the levers of government policy. They are the number one enemy of humanity. If we don't find a way to remove them from power, they may actually succeed in destroying life on Earth.

Stephen J. , December 8, 2017 at 8:42 pm

There is a volume of evidence that the war criminals in our midst were arming and training "jihadists." See link below. http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/10/the-evidence-of-planning-of-wars.html

MarkU , December 8, 2017 at 10:00 pm

"Official Washington helped unleash hell on Syria and across the Mideast behind the naïve belief that jihadist proxies could be used to transform the region for the better, explains Daniel Lazare." What a load of old rubbish, naïve belief indeed. it is difficult to believe that anyone could write this stuff with a straight face.

Linda Wood , December 8, 2017 at 10:37 pm

Incompetence and stupidity are their only defense because if anyone acknowledged that trillions of dollars have been made by the usual suspects committing these crimes, the industrialists of war would face a justice symbolized by Nuremberg.

Zachary Smith , December 8, 2017 at 11:37 pm

That Gary Gambill character "outed" himself as a Zionist on September 4 of this year. He appears to have mastered the propaganda associated with the breed. At the link see if you can find any mention of the murders, thefts, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid of his adopted nation. Blaming the victim may be this fellow's specialty. Sample:

The well-intentioned flocked in droves to the belief that Israeli- Palestinian peace was achievable provided Israel made the requisite concessions, and that this would liberate the Arab-Islamic world from a host of other problems allegedly arising from it: bloated military budgets, intolerance of dissent, Islamic extremism, you name it.

Why tackle each of these problems head on when they can be alleviated all at once when Israel is brought to heel? Twenty years later, the Middle East is suffering the consequences of this conspiracy of silence.

Zachary Smith , December 8, 2017 at 11:37 pm

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-accidental-Zionist-504221

Gerry , December 9, 2017 at 4:51 am

The American groupthink rarely allows propaganda and disinformation disturb: endless wars and endless lies and criminality, have not disturbed this mindset. It is clever to manipulate people to think in a way opposite of truth so consistently. All the atrocities by the US have been surrounded by media propaganda and mastery of groupthink techniques go down well. Mention something unusual or real news and you might get heavily criticized for daring to think outside the box and doubt what are (supposedly) "religious truths". Tell a lie long enough and it becomes the truth.

It takes courage to go against the flow of course and one can only hope that the Americans are what they think they are: courageous and strong enough to hear their cherished truths smashed, allow the scales before their eyes to fall and practise free speech and free thought.

Theo , December 9, 2017 at 6:35 am

Thanks for this article and many others on this site.In Europe and in Germany you hardly hear,read or see any of these facts and their connections.It seems to be only of marginal interest.

Josh Stern , December 9, 2017 at 6:49 am

The CIA was a key force behind the creation of both al Qaeda and ISIS. Most major incidents of "Islamic Terrorism" have some kind of CIA backing behind them. See this large collection of links for compiled evidence: http://www.pearltrees.com/joshstern/government-supporting/id18814292

triekc , December 9, 2017 at 8:27 am

This journalist and other journalists writing on some of my favorite Russian propaganda news websites, have reported the US empire routinely makes "deals with the devil", the enemy of my enemy is my friend, if doing so furthers their goal of perpetual war and global hegemony. Yet, inexplicably, these journalists buy the US empire's 911 story without question, in the face of many unanswered questions.

Beginning in the 1990's, neocons who would become W's cabinet, wrote detailed plans of military regime change in Middle East, but stating they needed a "strong external shock to the United States -- a latter-day 'Pearl Harbor", to get US sheeple to support increased militarism and global war. Few months after W took office, and had appointed those war mongering neocons to positions of power, Bin Laden (CIA staffer) and a handful of his men, all from close allied countries to the US, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, delivered the 2nd Pearl Harbor on 911. What a timely coincidence! We accept the US Empire provides weapons and military support to the same enemy, and worse, who attacked us on 911, but one is labeled a "conspiracy nut" if they believe that same US Empire would orchestrate 911 to justify their long planned global war. One thing about being a "conspiracy nut", if you live long enough, often you will see your beliefs vindicated

Joe Tedesky , December 9, 2017 at 11:27 am

You commented on what I was thinking, and that was, 'remember when al Queda was our enemy on 911'? So now that bin Laden is dead, and his al Queda now fights on our side, shouldn't the war be over? And, just for the record who did attack us on 911?

So many questions, and so much left unanswered, but don't worry America may run out of money for domestic vital needs but the U.S. always has the money to go fight another war. It's a culture thing, and if you ain't into it then you just don't pay no attention to it. In fact if your life is better off from all of these U.S. led invasions, then your probably not posting any comments here, either.

Knowing the Pentagon mentality they probably have an 'al Queda combat medal' to pin on the terrorists chest. Sarcasm I know, but seriously is anything not within the realm of believable when it comes to this MIC establishment?

Christene Bartels , December 9, 2017 at 8:53 am

Great article and spot on as far as the author takes it. But the world is hurtling towards Armageddon so I'd like to back things up about one hundred years and get down to brass tacks.

The fact of the matter is, the M.E. has never been at total peace but it has been nothing but one colossal FUBAR since the Ottoman Empire was defeated after WWI and the Allied Forces got their grubby, greedy mitts on its M.E. territories and all of that luscious black gold. First up was the British Empire and France and then it really went nuclear (literally) in 1946 when Truman and the U.S. joined in the fun and decided to figure out how we could carve out that ancient prime piece of real estate and resurrect Israel. By 1948 ..violà ..there she was.

So now here we sit as the hundred year delusion that we knew what the hell we were doing comes crashing down around us. Seriously, whoever the people have been who thought that a country with the historical perspective of a toddler was going to be able to successfully manage and manipulate a region filled with people who are still tribal in perspective and are still holding grudges and settling scores from five thousand years ago were complete and total arrogant morons. Every single one of them. Up to the present moment.

Which gets me down to those brass tacks I alluded to at the beginning of my comment. Delusional crusades lead by arrogant morons always, always, always end up as ash heaps. So, I would suggest we all prepare for that rapidly approaching conclusion accordingly. For me, that means hitting my knees.

Gregory Herr , December 9, 2017 at 1:00 pm

Middle Eastern people are no more "tribal" or prone to holding grudges than any other people. Middle Eastern people have exhibited and practiced peaceful and tolerant living arrangements within several different contexts over the centuries. Iraq had a fairly thriving middle class and the Syrians are a cultured and educated people.

Gregory Herr , December 9, 2017 at 10:07 pm

Syrian society is constructed very much within the construct of close family ties and a sense of a Syrian homeland. It is solely the business of the Syrian people to decide whether the socialist Ba'ath government functions according to their own sense of realities and standards. Some of those realities may include aspects of a necessitated national security state (necessitated by CIA and Israeli subterfuge) that prompts shills to immediately characterize the Assad government as "an authoritarian regime" and of course that's all you need to know. Part of what pisses the West off about the Syrians is that they are so competent, and that includes their intelligence and security services. One of the other parts is the socialist example of government functioning in interests of the general population, not selling out to vultures.

It bothers me that Mr. Lazare wrote: "Syria's Baathist government is hardly blameless in this affair." Really? Well the Syrian government can hardly be blamed for the vile strategy of using terrorist mercenaries to take or destroy a people's homeland–killing horrific numbers of fathers, mothers, and children on the way to establish some kind of Wild West control over Damascus that can then be manipulated for the typical elite deviances. What was purposely planned and visited upon the Syrian people has had human consequences that were known and disregarded by the planners. It has been and continues to be a grave crime against our common humanity that should be raised to the roof of objection! People like Gambill should be excoriated for their crass appraisal of human costs .and for their contrived and twisted rationalizations and deceits. President Assad recently gave an interview to teleSUR that is worth a listen. He talks about human costs with understanding for what he is talking about. Gambill doesn't give a damn.

BASLE , December 9, 2017 at 10:46 am

From the October 1973 Yom Kippur War onward, the United States had no foreign policy in the Middle East other than Israel's. Daniel Lazare should read "A clean break: a new strategy for the Realm".

Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 9:08 am

Yes, Israel is the cut-out or fence for US politicians stealing campaign money from the federal budget. US policy is that of the bribery sources and nothing else. And it believes that to be professional competence. For the majority of amoral opportunists of the US, money=power=virtue and they will attack all who disagree.

Herman , December 9, 2017 at 10:47 am

"Official Washington helped unleash hell on Syria and across the Mideast behind the naïve belief that jihadist proxies could be used to transform the region for the better, explains Daniel Lazare."

Lazare makes the case very well about our amoral foreign policy but I think he errs in saying our aim was to "transform the region for the better." Recent history, going back to Afghanistan shows a very different goal, to defeat our enemies and the enemies of our allies with little concern for the aftermath. Just observing what has happened to the people where we supported extremists is evidence enough.

Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward men. We hope the conscience of our nation is bothered by our behavior but we know that is not true, and we sleep very well, thank you.

Marilyn Vogt-Downey , December 9, 2017 at 11:18 am

I am stunned that anyone could be so foolish as to think that the US military machine, US imperialism, does things "naively", bumbling like a helpless giant into wars that destroy entire nations with no end in sight. One need not be a "conspiracy theorist" to understand that the Pentagon does not control the world with an ever-expanding war budget equal to the next 10 countries combined, that it does this just because it is stuck on the wrong path. No! US imperialism develops these "big guns" to use them, to overpower, take over and dominate the world for the sake of profits and protection of the right to exploit for private profit.

There is ample evidence–see the Brookings Institute study among many others–that the Gulf monarchies–flunkies of US imperialism–who "host" dozens of US military bases in the region, some of them central to US war strategy–initiated and nourished and armed and financed the "jihadi armies" in Syria AND Libya AND elsewhere; they did not do this on their own. The US government–the executive committee of the US ruling class–does not naively support the Gulf monarchies because it doesn't know any better! Washington (following British imperialism) organized, established and backed these flunky regimes. They are autocratic, antediluvian regimes, allowing virtually civil rights, with no local proletariat to speak of, no popular base. They are no more than sheriffs for imperialism in that region of the world, along with the Zionist state of Israel, helping imperialism do the really dirty work.

I research this and gathered the evidence to support what I just asserted in a long study printed back in Dec. 2015 in Truthout. Here is the link: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34151-what-is-the-war-on-terror-and-how-to-fight-it

Look at the evidence. Stop the totally foolish assessment that the US government spends all this money on a war machine just to "naively" blunder into wars that level entire nations–and is not taking on destruction of the entire continent of Africa to eliminate any obstacles to its domination.

No! That is foolish and destructive. Unless we look in the face what is going on–the US government since its "secret" intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, has recruited, trained, armed, funded and relied on jihadi armies to unseat regimes and destabilize and destroy populations and regimes the US government wants to overthrow, and destroy, any that could potentially develop into an alternative model of nationalist, bourgeois industrial development on any level.

Wake up!!! The evidence is there. There is no reason to bumble and bungle along as if we are in the dark.

Randal Marlin , December 9, 2017 at 11:26 am

Daniel Pipes, from what I've read of him, is among those who counsel the U.S. government to use its military power to support the losing side in any civil wars fought within Israel's enemy states, so that the wars will continue, sparing Israel the threat of unified enemy states. What normal human beings consider a humanitarian disaster, repeated in Iraq, Syria and Libya, would be reckoned a success according to this way of thinking.
The thinking would appear to lead to similar treatment of Iran, with even more catastrophic consequences.

Behind all this is the thinking that the survival of Israel outweighs anything else in any global ethical calculus. Those who don't accept this moral premise but who believe in supporting the survival of Israel have their work cut out for them. This work would be made easier if the U.S. population saw clearly what was going on, instead of being preoccupied with salacious sexual misconduct stories or other distractions.

Zachary Smith , December 9, 2017 at 2:43 pm

A Russian interceptor has been scrambled to stop a rogue US fighter jet from actively interfering with an anti-terrorist operation, the Russian Defense Ministry said. It also accused the US of provoking close encounters with the Russian jets in Syria.

A US F-22 fighter was preventing two Russian Su-25 strike aircraft from bombing an Islamic State (IS, former ISIS) base to the west of the Euphrates November 23, according to the ministry. The ministry's spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov described the episode as yet another example of US aircraft attempts to prevent Russian forces from carrying out strikes against Islamic State.

"The F-22 launched decoy flares and used airbrakes while constantly maneuvering [near the Russian strike jets], imitating an air fight," Konashenkov said. He added that the US jet ceased its dangerous maneuvers only after a Russian Su-35S fighter jet joined the two strike planes.

If this story is true, then it illustrates a number of things. First, the US is still providing ISIS air cover. Second, either the F-22 pilot or his commander is dumber than dirt. The F-22 may be a fine airplane, but getting into a contest with an equally fine non-stealth airplane at eyeball distances means throwing away every advantage of the super-expensive stealth.

Zachary Smith , December 9, 2017 at 2:43 pm

https://www.rt.com/news/412590-russia-us-syria-air-force/

Pablo Diablo , December 9, 2017 at 2:53 pm

Gotta keep the War Machine well fed and insure Corporate control of markets and taking of resources.

Abe , December 9, 2017 at 2:54 pm

In October 1973, a nuclear armed rogue state almost triggered a global thermonuclear war.

Yom Kippur: Israel's 1973 nuclear alert
By Richard Sale
https://www.upi.com/Yom-Kippur-Israels-1973-nuclear-alert/64941032228992/

Israel obtained operational nuclear weapons capability by 1967, with the mass production of nuclear warheads occurring immediately after the Six-Day War. In addition to the Israeli nuclear arsenal, Israel has offensive chemical and biological warfare stockpiles.

Israel, the Middle East's sole nuclear power, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In 2015, the US-based Institute for Science and International Security estimated that Israel had 115 nuclear warheads. Outside estimates of Israel's nuclear arsenal range up to 400 nuclear weapons.

Israeli nuclear weapons delivery mechanisms include Jericho 3 missiles, with a range of 4,800 km to 6,500 km (though a 2004 source estimated its range at up to 11,500 km), as well as regional coverage from road mobile Jericho 2 IRBMs.

Additionally, Israel is believed to have an offshore nuclear capability using submarine-launched nuclear-capable cruise missiles, which can be launched from the Israeli Navy's Dolphin-class submarines.

The Israeli Air Force has F-15I and F-16I Sufa fighter aircraft are capable of delivering tactical and strategic nuclear weapons at long distances using conformal fuel tanks and supported by their aerial refueling fleet of modified Boeing 707's.

In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Dimona, fled to the United Kingdom and revealed to the media some evidence of Israel's nuclear program and explained the purposes of each building, also revealing a top-secret underground facility directly below the installation.

The Mossad, Israel's secret service, sent a female agent who lured Vanunu to Italy, where he was kidnapped by Mossad agents and smuggled to Israel aboard a freighter. An Israeli court then tried him in secret on charges of treason and espionage, and sentenced him to eighteen years imprisonment.

At the time of Vanunu's kidnapping, The Times reported that Israel had material for approximately 20 hydrogen bombs and 200 fission bombs by 1986. In the spring of 2004, Vanunu was released from prison, and placed under several strict restrictions, such as the denial of a passport, freedom of movement limitations and restrictions on communications with the press. Since his release, he has been rearrested and charged multiple times for violations of the terms of his release.

Safety concerns about this 40-year-old reactor have been reported. In 2004, as a preventive measure, Israeli authorities distributed potassium iodide anti-radiation tablets to thousands of residents living nearby. Local residents have raised concerns regarding serious threats to health from living near the reactor.

According to a lawsuit filed in Be'er Sheva Labor Tribunal, workers at the center were subjected to human experimentation in 1998. According to Julius Malick, the worker who submitted the lawsuit, they were given drinks containing uranium without medical supervision and without obtaining written consent or warning them about risks of side effects.

In April 2016 the U.S. National Security Archive declassified dozens of documents from 1960 to 1970, which detail what American intelligence viewed as Israel's attempts to obfuscate the purpose and details of its nuclear program. The Americans involved in discussions with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and other Israelis believed the country was providing "untruthful cover" about intentions to build nuclear weapons.

mike k , December 9, 2017 at 6:38 pm

The machinations of those seeking to gain advantages for themselves by hurting others, are truly appalling. If we fail to name evil for what it is, then we fail as human beings.Those who look the other way as their country engages in an organized reign of terror, are complicit in that enormous crime.

Den Lille Abe , December 9, 2017 at 8:54 pm

The path the US has chosen since the end of WWII has been over dead bodies. In the name of "security", bringing "Freedom" and "Democracy" and complete unconstrained greed it has trampled countless nations into piles of rubble. To say it is despised or loathed is an overwhelming understatement. It is almost universally hated in the third world. Rightly. Bringing this monstrosity to a halt is a difficult task, and probably cannot be done militarily without a nuclear war, economically could in the end have the same outcome, then how?

Easy! Ruin its population. This process has started, long ago. The decline in the US of health, general wealth, nutrition, production, education, equality, ethics and morals is already showing as cracks in the fabrics of the US.

A population of incarcerated, obese, low iQ zealot junkies, armed to teeth with guns, in a country with a crumbling infrastructure, full of environmental disasters is 21 st century for most Americans. In all the areas I mentioned the US is going backwards compared to most other countries. So the monster will come down.

turk151 , December 9, 2017 at 10:20 pm

I think you are being a little hard on the incarcerated, obese, low iQ zealot junkies, armed to teeth with guns

I am not sure who is more loathsome the evangelicals who were supporting the Bush / Cheney cabal murderous wars until the bitter end or the liberal intelligentsia careerist cheerleaders for Obama and Hilary's Wars in Iraq and Syria, who also dont give a damn about another Arab country being destroyed and sold into slavery as long as Hillary gets elected. At least with the former group, you can chalk it up to a lack of education.

Linda Wood , December 10, 2017 at 1:52 am

This is possibly the most intelligent and hopeful discussion I have read since 9/11. It says that at least some Americans do see that we have a fascist cell in our government. That is the first step in finding a way to unplug it. Best wishes to all of you who have written here. We will find a way to put war out of business.

Barbara van der Wal-Kylstra , December 10, 2017 at 2:46 am

I think this pattern of using Salafists for regime change started already in Afghanistan, with Brzezinski plotting with Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan to pay and train Osama bin Laden to attack the pro Russia regime and trying to get the USSR involved in it, also trying to blame the USSR for its agression, like they did in Syri"r?

Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 9:18 am

Yes, the Brzezinski/Reagan support of fanatic insurgencies began in AfPak and was revived for the zionists. Russia happened to be on the side more or less tending to progress in both cases, so it had to be opposed. The warmongers are always the US MIC/intel, allied with the anti-American zionist fascists for Mideast wars.

Luutzen , December 10, 2017 at 9:15 am

Sheldon Adelson, Soros, Saban all wanted carving up of Arabic states into small sectarian pieces (No Nasseric pan-Arabic states, a threat to Israël). And protracted wars of total destruction. Easy.

mike k , December 10, 2017 at 11:05 am

The US Military is part of the largest terrorist organization on Earth. For the super rich and powerful rulers of that US Mafia, the ignorant religious fanatics and other tools of Empire are just pawns in their game of world domination and universal slavery for all but themselves. These monsters of evil delight in profiting from the destruction of others; but their insatiable greed for more power will never be satisfied, and will become the cause of the annihilation of every living thing – including themselves. But like other sold out human addicts, at this point they don't really care, and will blindly pursue their nightmare quest to the very end – and perhaps they secretly hope that that final end of everything will at last quench their burning appetite for blood and gold.

Joe Tedesky , December 10, 2017 at 11:12 am

I'm leaving a link to a very long David Swanson article, where Mr Swanson goes into quite a lot of detail to how the U.S. wages war.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/12/76-years-pearl-harbor-lies.html

Brendan , December 10, 2017 at 12:09 pm

What's interesting of course is how not just Washington, but much of the 'left' also cheered on the jihadists.

Of course, they were told (by whom?) that the jihadists were 'democratic rebels' and 'freedom fighters' who just wanted to 'bring democracy' to Syria, and get rid of the 'tyrant Assad.' 5 years later, so much of the nonsense about "local councils" and "white helmets" has been exposed for what it was. Yet many 'free thinking' people bought the propaganda. Just like they do on Russiagate. Who needs an "alt-right" when America's "left" is a total disgrace?

[Dec 10, 2017] Russia-gate s Reach into Journalism by Dennis J Bernstein

Highly recommended!
When national security establishment is trying to undermine sitting President this is iether color revolution or coup d'état. In the USa it looks more like color revolution.
"Now you have this interesting dynamic where the national security establishment is effectively undermining a duly elected president of the United States. I recognize that Trump is vulnerable, but these types of investigations often become highly politicized."
Notable quotes:
"... The Credico subpoena, after he declined a request for a "voluntary" interview, underscores how the investigation is moving into areas of "guilt by association" and further isolating whistleblowers who defy the powers-that-be through unauthorized release of information to the public, a point made by National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake in an interview. ..."
"... Drake knows well what it means to blow the whistle on government misconduct and get prosecuted for it. A former senior NSA executive, Drake complained about a multi-billion-dollar fraud, waste, and widespread violation of the rights of civilians through secret mass surveillance programs. As a result, the Obama administration indicted Drake in 2010, "as the first whistleblower since Daniel Ellsberg charged with espionage," according to the Institute for Public Accuracy. ..."
"... In 2011, the government's case against him, which carried a potential 35 years in prison, collapsed. Drake went free in a plea deal and was awarded the 2011 Ridenhour Truth Telling Prize. ..."
"... In this hyper-inflated, politicized environment, it is extremely difficult to wade through the massive amount of disinformation on all sides. Hacking is something all modern nation-states engage in, including the United States, including Russia. The challenge here is trying to figure out who the players are, whose ox is being gored, and who is doing the goring. ..."
"... From all accounts, Trump was duly elected. Now you have the Mueller investigation and the House investigation. Where is this all leading? The US intelligence agency hasn't done itself any favors. The ICA provides no proof either, in terms of allegations that the Russians "hacked" the election. We do have the evidence disclosed by Reality Winner that maybe there was some interference. But the hyper-politicization is making it extraordinarily difficult. ..."
"... Well, if you consider the content of those emails .Certainly, the Clinton folks got rid of Bernie Sanders. ..."
"... The national security establishment was far more comfortable having Clinton as president. Someone central to my own case, General Michael Hayden, just a couple days ago went apoplectic because of a tweet from Trump taking on the mainstream media. Hayden got over 100,000 likes on his response. Well, Hayden was central to what we did in deep secrecy at the highest levels of government after 9/11, engaging in widespread surveillance and then justifying it as "raw executive authority." ..."
"... Now you have this interesting dynamic where the national security establishment is effectively undermining a duly elected president of the United States. I recognize that Trump is vulnerable, but these types of investigations often become highly politicized. I worry that what is really happening is being sacrificed on the altar of entertainment and the stage of political theater. ..."
"... What is happening to Randy is symptomatic of a larger trend. If you dare speak truth to power, you are going to pay the price. Is Randy that much of a threat, just because he is questioning authority? Are we afraid of the press? Are we afraid of having the uncomfortable conversations, of dealing with the inconvenient truths about ourselves? ..."
"... Yeah, it is definitely a way of describing the concept of fascism without using the word. The present Yankee regime seems to be quite far along that road, and the full-on types seem to be engaged in a coup to eliminate those they fear may not be as much in the fascist deep-state bag. ..."
"... How disgusting to have to live today in the society so accurately described by Orwell in 1984. It was a nice book to read, but not to live in! ..."
"... Truth is he enemy of coercive power. Lies and secrecy are essential in leading the sheeple to their slaughter. ..."
"... Perhaps the one good thing about Trumps election is that its shows democracy is still just about alive and breathing in the US, because as is pointed out in this article, Trump was never expected to win and those who lost are still in a state of shock and disbelief. ..."
"... One things for sure: the Neocons, the deep state, and all the rest of the skunks that infest Washington will make absolutely sure that future elections will go the way as planned, so perhaps we should celebrate Trump, because he may well be the last manifestation of the democracy in the US. ..."
"... In the end, what will bring this monstrously lumbering "Russia-gate" dog and pony show crashing down is that stupid, fake Fusion GPS dossier that was commissioned, paid for, and disseminated by Team Hillary and the DNC. Then, as with the sinking of the Titanic, all of the flotsam and jetsam floating within its radius of destruction will go down with it. What will left to pluck from the lifeboats afterwards is anyone's guess. All thanks to Hillary. ..."
Dec 10, 2017 | www.facebook.com

The investigation to somehow blame Russia for Donald Trump's election has now merged with another establishment goal of isolating and intimidating whistleblowers and other dissidents, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.

The Russia-gate investigation has reached into the ranks of journalism with the House Intelligence Committee's subpoena of Randy Credico, who produced a series about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for Pacifica Radio and apparently is suspected of having passed on early word about leaked Democratic emails to Donald Trump's supporter Roger Stone.

The Credico subpoena, after he declined a request for a "voluntary" interview, underscores how the investigation is moving into areas of "guilt by association" and further isolating whistleblowers who defy the powers-that-be through unauthorized release of information to the public, a point made by National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake in an interview.

Drake knows well what it means to blow the whistle on government misconduct and get prosecuted for it. A former senior NSA executive, Drake complained about a multi-billion-dollar fraud, waste, and widespread violation of the rights of civilians through secret mass surveillance programs. As a result, the Obama administration indicted Drake in 2010, "as the first whistleblower since Daniel Ellsberg charged with espionage," according to the Institute for Public Accuracy.

In 2011, the government's case against him, which carried a potential 35 years in prison, collapsed. Drake went free in a plea deal and was awarded the 2011 Ridenhour Truth Telling Prize.

I interviewed Drake about the significance of Credico's subpoena, which Credico believes resulted from his journalism about the persecution of Julian Assange for releasing information that powerful people would prefer kept hidden from the public. (I had a small role in Credico's 14-part radio series, Julian Assange: Countdown to Freedom . It was broadcast first as part of his Live on the Fly Series, over WBAI and later on KPFA and across the country on community radio.)

Credico got his start as a satirist and became a political candidate for mayor of New York City and later governor of New York, making mainstream politicians deal with issues they would rather not deal with.

I spoke to Thomas Drake by telephone on Nov. 30, 2017.

Dennis Bernstein: How do you look at Russiagate, based on what you know about what has already transpired in terms of the movement of information? How do you see Credico's role in this?

Thomas Drake: Information is the coin of the realm. It is the currency of power. Anyone who questions authority or is perceived as mocking authority -- as hanging out with "State enemies" -- had better be careful. But this latest development is quite troubling, I must say. This is the normalization of everything that has been going on since 9/11. Randy is a sort of 21st century Diogenes who is confronting authority and pointing out corruption. This subpoena sends a chilling message. It's a double whammy for Randy because, in the eyes of the US government, he is a media figure hanging out with the wrong media figure [Julian Assange].

Dennis Bernstein: Could you say a little bit about what your work was and what you tried to do with your expose?

Thomas Drake: My experience was quite telling, in terms of how far the government will go to try to destroy someone's life. The attempt by the government to silence me was extraordinary. They threw everything they had at me, all because I spoke the truth. I spoke up about abuse of power, I spoke up about the mass surveillance regime. My crime was that I made the choice to go to the media. And the government was not just coming after me, they were sending a really chilling message to the media: If you print this, you are also under the gun.

Dennis Bernstein: We have heard the charges again and again, that this was a Russian hack. What was the source? Let's trace it back as best we can.

Thomas Drake: In this hyper-inflated, politicized environment, it is extremely difficult to wade through the massive amount of disinformation on all sides. Hacking is something all modern nation-states engage in, including the United States, including Russia. The challenge here is trying to figure out who the players are, whose ox is being gored, and who is doing the goring.

From all accounts, Trump was duly elected. Now you have the Mueller investigation and the House investigation. Where is this all leading? The US intelligence agency hasn't done itself any favors. The ICA provides no proof either, in terms of allegations that the Russians "hacked" the election. We do have the evidence disclosed by Reality Winner that maybe there was some interference. But the hyper-politicization is making it extraordinarily difficult.

The advantage that intelligence has is that they can hide behind what they are doing. They don't actually have to tell the truth, they can shade it, they can influence it and shape it. This is where information can be politicized and used as a weapon. Randy has found himself caught up in these investigations by virtue of being a media figure and hanging out with "the wrong people."

Dennis Bernstein: It looks like the Russiagaters in Congress are trying to corner Randy. All his life he has spoken truth to power. But what do you think the role of the press should be?

Thomas Drake: The press amplifies just about everything they focus on, especially with today's 24-hour, in-your-face social media. Even the mainstream media is publishing directly to their webpages. You have to get behind the cacophony of all that noise and ask, "Why?" What are the intentions here?

I believe there are still enough independent journalists who are looking further and deeper. But clearly there are those who are hell-bent on making life as difficult as possible for the current president and those who are going to defend him to the hilt. I was not surprised at all that Trump won. A significant percentage of the American electorate were looking for something different.

Dennis Bernstein : Well, if you consider the content of those emails .Certainly, the Clinton folks got rid of Bernie Sanders.

Thomas Drake: That would have been an interesting race, to have Bernie vs. Trump. Sanders was appealing, especially to young audiences. He was raising legitimate issues.

Dennis Bernstein: In Clinton, they had a known quantity who supported the national security state.

Thomas Drake: The national security establishment was far more comfortable having Clinton as president. Someone central to my own case, General Michael Hayden, just a couple days ago went apoplectic because of a tweet from Trump taking on the mainstream media. Hayden got over 100,000 likes on his response. Well, Hayden was central to what we did in deep secrecy at the highest levels of government after 9/11, engaging in widespread surveillance and then justifying it as "raw executive authority."

Now you have this interesting dynamic where the national security establishment is effectively undermining a duly elected president of the United States. I recognize that Trump is vulnerable, but these types of investigations often become highly politicized. I worry that what is really happening is being sacrificed on the altar of entertainment and the stage of political theater.

What is happening to Randy is symptomatic of a larger trend. If you dare speak truth to power, you are going to pay the price. Is Randy that much of a threat, just because he is questioning authority? Are we afraid of the press? Are we afraid of having the uncomfortable conversations, of dealing with the inconvenient truths about ourselves?

Dennis J Bernstein is a host of "Flashpoints" on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom . You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net .

orwell

"Raw Executive Authority" means Totalitarianism/Fascism.

exiled off mainstreet , December 7, 2017 at 4:23 pm

Yeah, it is definitely a way of describing the concept of fascism without using the word. The present Yankee regime seems to be quite far along that road, and the full-on types seem to be engaged in a coup to eliminate those they fear may not be as much in the fascist deep-state bag.

Jerry Alatalo , December 7, 2017 at 3:34 pm

It is highly encouraging to know that a great many good and decent men and women Americans are 100% supportive of Mr, Randy Credico as he prepares for his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. Remember all those standing right there beside you, speak what rightly needs to be spoken, and make history Mr. Credico!

jaycee , December 7, 2017 at 3:56 pm

The intensification of panic/hysteria was obviously triggered by the shock election of Trump. Where this is all heading is on display in Australia, as the government is writing legislation to "criminalise covert and deceptive activities of foreign actors that fall short of espionage but are intended to interfere with our democratic systems and processes or support the intelligence activities of a foreign government." The legislation will apparently be accompanied by new requirements of public registration of those deemed "foreign agents". (see http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/07/auch-d07.html ).

This will be an attack on free speech, free thought, and political freedoms, justified by an orchestrated hysteria which ridiculously assumes a "pure" political realm (i.e. the "homeland") under assault by impure foreign agents and their dirty ideas. Yes, that is a fascist construct and the liberal establishment will see it through, not the alt-right blowhards.

mike k , December 7, 2017 at 5:49 pm

How disgusting to have to live today in the society so accurately described by Orwell in 1984. It was a nice book to read, but not to live in!

john wilson , December 8, 2017 at 5:48 am

Actually Mike, the book was a prophesy but you aren't seen nothing yet. You me and the rest of the posters here may well find ourselves going for a visit to room 101 yet.

fudmier , December 7, 2017 at 4:42 pm

Those who govern (527 of them) at the pleasure of the constitution are about to breach the contract that entitles them to govern. Limiting the scope of information allowed to those who are the governed, silencing the voices of those with concerns and serious doubts, policing every word uttered by those who are the governed, as well as abusing the constitutional privilege of force and judicial authority, to deny peaceful protests of the innocents is approaching the final straw.

The governors and their corporate sponsors have imposed on those the governors govern much concern. Exactly the condition that existed prior to July 4, 1776, which elicited the following:

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the Political bands which connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the laws of nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

I submit the actions and intentions of those who govern that are revealed and discussed in this article https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/07/russia-gates-reach-into-journalism/ should be among the list of impels that support the next declaration.

Al Pinto , December 7, 2017 at 5:23 pm

Those who govern (527 of them and the puppet master oligarch behind them) will make certain that there's no support for the next declaration. There's no respect to the opinions of the mankind, what matters is keeping the current status quo in place and further advance it by silencing the independent media.

Maybe when the next "Mother of all bubbles" come, there's an opportunity for the mankind to be heard, but it's doubtful. What has taken place during the last bubble is that the rich has gotten richer and the poor, well, you know the routine.

https://usawatchdog.com/mother-of-all-bubbles-too-big-to-pop-peter-schiff/

mike k , December 7, 2017 at 5:53 pm

Truth is he enemy of coercive power. Lies and secrecy are essential in leading the sheeple to their slaughter.

john wilson , December 8, 2017 at 5:44 am

Perhaps the one good thing about Trumps election is that its shows democracy is still just about alive and breathing in the US, because as is pointed out in this article, Trump was never expected to win and those who lost are still in a state of shock and disbelief.

Trump's election has also shown us in vivid technicolour, just what is really going on in the deep state. Absolutely none of this stuff would have come out had Clinton won and anything there was would have been covered up as though under the concrete foundation of a tower block. However, Trump still has four years left and as a British prime minister once said, "a week is a long time in politics". Well four more years of Trump is a hell of a lot longer so who knows what might happen in that time.

One things for sure: the Neocons, the deep state, and all the rest of the skunks that infest Washington will make absolutely sure that future elections will go the way as planned, so perhaps we should celebrate Trump, because he may well be the last manifestation of the democracy in the US.

Christene Bartels , December 8, 2017 at 9:57 am

In the end, what will bring this monstrously lumbering "Russia-gate" dog and pony show crashing down is that stupid, fake Fusion GPS dossier that was commissioned, paid for, and disseminated by Team Hillary and the DNC. Then, as with the sinking of the Titanic, all of the flotsam and jetsam floating within its radius of destruction will go down with it. What will left to pluck from the lifeboats afterwards is anyone's guess. All thanks to Hillary.

Apparently, Santa isn't the only one making a list and checking it twice this year. He's going to have to share the limelight with Karma.

[Dec 10, 2017] #blamePutin continues to be the media s dominant hashtag

Notable quotes:
"... The decline of the falsely self-described "quality" media outlet The Guardian/Observer into a deranged fake news site pushing anti-Russian hate propaganda continues apace. ..."
"... Later in the same article Magnitsky is described as having been Browder's "tax lawyer" a standard trope of the Western propaganda narrative about the case. Magnitsky was actually an accountant . ..."
"... By "doing something about it" they mean they're going to tell one hostile lie about Russia after another. ..."
"... I think huge swathes of the media, in the eyes of many people, have never really recovered from the ghastly debacle that was their dreadful coverage of the reasons for the illegal attack on Iraq. The journalists want us to forget and move on, but many, many, people still remember. ..."
"... At a time when the ruling elite, across virtually the entire western world, is losing it; it being, political legitimacy and the breakdown of any semblance of a social contract between the ruled and the rulers the Guardian lurches even further to the political right . Amazing, though not really surprising. The Guardian's role appears to be to 'coral' radical and leftist ideas and opinions and 'groom' the educated middle class into accepting their own subjugation. ..."
"... The Guardian is a bit like the Tory government, lost and without any real ideas or ideals. The slow strangulation of the CIF symbolizes the crisis of confidence at the Guardian. A strong and confident ruling class welcomes criticism and is ready to brush it all off with a smile and a shrug. When they start running scared and pretending there is no dissent or opposition, well, this is a sign of decadence and profound weakness. They are losing the battle of ideas and the battle of solutions to our problems. All that really stands between them and a social revolution is a thin veneer of 'authority' and status, and that's really not enough anymore. ..."
"... John Pilger has described the "respectable" liberal press (Guardian, NYT etc) as the most effective component of the propaganda system, precisely BECAUSE it is respectable and trusted. As to why the Guardian is so insistent in demonizing Russia, I would propose that is integrates them further with a Brexit-ridden Tory government. Its Blairite columnists prefer May over Corbyn any day. ..."
"... So Russians cannot do business in America but Americans must be protected to do business in Russia? If you look at Ukraine and how US corporations are benefitting from the US-funded coup, you ask what the US did in Russia in the 1990s and the effect it had on US business and ordinary Russian people. Were the two consistent with a common US template of economic imperialism? ..."
"... In particular, you ask what Bill Browder was doing, his links to US spying organisations etc etc. You ask if he supported the rape of Russian State assets, turned a blind eye to the millions of Russians dying in the 1990s courtesy of catastrophic economic conditions. If he was killing people to stay alive, he would not have been the only one. More important is whether him making $100m+ in Russia needed conditions where tens of millions of Russians were starving .and whether he saw that as acceptable collateral damage ..he made a proactive choice, after all, to go live in Moscow. It is not like he was born there and had no chance to leave. ..."
"... I do not know the truth about Bill Browder, but one thing I do know: very powerful Americans are capable of organizing mass genocide to become rich, so there is no possible basis for painting all American businessmen as philanthropists and all Russians as murdering savages ..."
"... Browder is a spook. ..."
"... This "tactic" – a bold or outrageous claim made in the headline or in the first few sentences of a piece that is proven false in the very same article – is becoming depressingly common in the legacy media. ..."
"... In other words, the so-called respectable media knowingly prints outright lies for propaganda and clickbait purposes ..."
"... I dropped a line to a friend yesterday saying "only in a parallel universe would a businessman/shady dealer/tax evader such as Browder be described as an "anti-corruption campaigner."" Those not familiar with the history of Browder's grandfather, after whom a whole new "deviation" in leftist thinking was named, should look it up. ..."
"... The US are the masters of molesting other nations. It's not even a secret what they've been up to. Look at their budgets or the size of the intelligence buildings. Most journalists know full well of their programs, including those on social media, which they even reported on a few years back. The Guardian run stories by the CIA created and US state funded RFE/RL & then tell us with a straight face that RT is state propaganda which is destroying our democracy. ..."
"... The madness spreads: today The Canary has/had an article 'proving' that the 'Russians' were responsible for Brexit, Trump, etc etc. Then there is the neo-liberal 'President' of the EU charging that the extreme right wing and Russophobic warmongers in the Polish government are in fact, like the President of the USA, in Putin's pocket.. ..."
"... The Canary is publishing mainstream russophobia? ..."
off-guardian.org

Vladimir Putin finally confesses his entire responsibility for everything bad that has ever happened since the beginning of time

The decline of the falsely self-described "quality" media outlet The Guardian/Observer into a deranged fake news site pushing anti-Russian hate propaganda continues apace. Take a look at this gem :

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has accused prominent British businessman Bill Browder of being a "serial killer" – the latest extraordinary attempt by the Kremlin to frame one of its most high-profile public enemies.

But Putin has not been reported anywhere else as making any recent statement about Browder whatever, and the Observer article makes no further mention of Putin's supposed utterance or the circumstances in which it was supposedly made.

As the rest of the article makes clear, the suspicions against Browder were actually voiced by Russian police investigators and not by Putin at all.

The Observer fabricated a direct quote from the Russian president for their propaganda purposes without any regard to basic journalistic standards. They wanted to blame Putin personally for the suspicions of some Russian investigators, so they just invented an imaginary statement from him so they could conveniently do so.

What is really going on here is the classic trope of demonisation propaganda in which the demonised leader is conflated with all officials of their government and with the targeted country itself, so as to simplify and personalise the narrative of the subsequent Two Minutes Hate to be unleashed against them.

When, as in this case, the required substitution of the demonised leader for their country can't be wrung out of the facts even through the most vigorous twisting, a disreputable fake news site like The Guardian/Observer is free to simply make up new, alternative facts that better fit their disinformative agenda. Because facts aren't at all sacred when the official propaganda line demands lies.

In the same article, the documents from Russian investigators naming Browder as a suspect in certain crimes are first "seen as" a frame-up (by the sympathetic chorus of completely anonymous observers yellow journalism can always call on when an unsupported claim needs a spurious bolstering) and then outright labelled as such (see quote above) as if this alleged frame-up is a proven fact. Which it isn't.

No evidence is required down there in the Guardian/Observer journalistic gutter before unsupported claims against Russian officials can be treated as unquestionable pseudo-facts, just as opponents of Putin can commit no crime for the outlet's hate-befuddled hacks.

The above falsifications were brought to the attention of the Observer's so-called Readers Editor – the official at the Guardian/Observer responsible for "independently" defending the outlet's misdeeds against outraged readers – who did nothing. By now the article has rolled off the site's front page, rendering any possible future correction nugatory in any case.

Later in the same article Magnitsky is described as having been Browder's "tax lawyer" a standard trope of the Western propaganda narrative about the case. Magnitsky was actually an accountant .

A trifecta of fakery in one article! That makes crystal clear what the Guardian meant in this article , published at precisely the same moment as the disinformation cited above, when it said:

"We know what you are doing," Theresa May said of Russia. It's not enough to know. We need to do something about it.

By "doing something about it" they mean they're going to tell one hostile lie about Russia after another.


michaelk says November 26, 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/26/big-issue-who-will-step-in-after-bullies-have-silenced-dissenters

From the 'liberal' Guardian/Observer wing of the rightwing bourgeois press, spot the differences with the article in the Mail on Sunday by Nick Robinson?

michaelk says November 26, 2017
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-5117723/Nick-Robinson-Putin-using-fake-news-weaken-West.html

This thing seems to have been cobbled together by a guy called Nick Robinson. The same BBC Nick Robinson that hosts the Today Programme? I dunno, one feels really rather depressed at how low our media has sunk.

michaelk says November 23, 2017
I think huge swathes of the media, in the eyes of many people, have never really recovered from the ghastly debacle that was their dreadful coverage of the reasons for the illegal attack on Iraq. The journalists want us to forget and move on, but many, many, people still remember.

Nothing happened afterwards. There was no tribunal to examine the media's role in that massive international crime against humanity and things actually got worse post Iraq, which the attack on Libya and Syria illustrates.

rtj1211 says November 29, 2017
Exactly: in my opinion there should be life sentences banning scribblers who printed lies and bloodthirsty kill, kill, kill articles from ever working again in the media. Better still, make them go fight right now in Yemen. Amazing how quickly truth will spread if journalists know they have a good chance of dying if they print lies and falsehoods ..
michaelk says November 23, 2017
At a time when the ruling elite, across virtually the entire western world, is losing it; it being, political legitimacy and the breakdown of any semblance of a social contract between the ruled and the rulers the Guardian lurches even further to the political right . Amazing, though not really surprising. The Guardian's role appears to be to 'coral' radical and leftist ideas and opinions and 'groom' the educated middle class into accepting their own subjugation.

The Guardian's writers get so much, so wrong, so often it's staggering and nobody gets the boot, except for the people who allude to the incompetence at the heart of the Guardian. They fail dismally on Trump, Brexit and Corbyn and yet carry on as if everything is fine and dandy. Nothing to complain about here, mover along now.

I suppose it's because they are actually media aristocrats living in a world of privilege, and they, as members of the ruling elite, look after one another regardless of how poorly they actually perform. This is typical of an elite that's on the ropes and doomed. They choose to retreat from grubby reality into a parallel world where their own dogmas aren't challenged and they begin to believe their propaganda is real and not an artificial contruct. This is incredibly dangerous for a ruling elite because society becomes brittle and weaker by the day as the ruling dogmas become hollow and ritualized, but without traction in reality and real purpose.

The Guardian is a bit like the Tory government, lost and without any real ideas or ideals. The slow strangulation of the CIF symbolizes the crisis of confidence at the Guardian. A strong and confident ruling class welcomes criticism and is ready to brush it all off with a smile and a shrug. When they start running scared and pretending there is no dissent or opposition, well, this is a sign of decadence and profound weakness. They are losing the battle of ideas and the battle of solutions to our problems. All that really stands between them and a social revolution is a thin veneer of 'authority' and status, and that's really not enough anymore.

All our problems are pathetically and conviniently blamed on the Russians and their Demon King and his vast army of evil Trolls. It's like a political version of the Lord of the Rings.

WeatherEye says November 21, 2017
Don't expect the Guardian to cover the biggest military build-up (NATO) on Russia's borders since Hitler's 1941 invasion.

John Pilger has described the "respectable" liberal press (Guardian, NYT etc) as the most effective component of the propaganda system, precisely BECAUSE it is respectable and trusted. As to why the Guardian is so insistent in demonizing Russia, I would propose that is integrates them further with a Brexit-ridden Tory government. Its Blairite columnists prefer May over Corbyn any day.

rtj1211 says November 29, 2017
The Guardian is now owned by Neocon Americans, that is why it is demonising Russia.

Simple as that.

WeatherEye says November 29, 2017
Evidence?
Harry Stotle says November 21, 2017
The Guardian is trying to rescue citizens from 'dreadful dangers that we cannot see, or do not underdstand' – in other words they play a central role in 'the power of nightmares'

https://www.youtube.com/embed/LlA8KutU2to?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

rtj1211 says November 21, 2017
So Russians cannot do business in America but Americans must be protected to do business in Russia? If you look at Ukraine and how US corporations are benefitting from the US-funded coup, you ask what the US did in Russia in the 1990s and the effect it had on US business and ordinary Russian people. Were the two consistent with a common US template of economic imperialism?

In particular, you ask what Bill Browder was doing, his links to US spying organisations etc etc. You ask if he supported the rape of Russian State assets, turned a blind eye to the millions of Russians dying in the 1990s courtesy of catastrophic economic conditions. If he was killing people to stay alive, he would not have been the only one. More important is whether him making $100m+ in Russia needed conditions where tens of millions of Russians were starving .and whether he saw that as acceptable collateral damage ..he made a proactive choice, after all, to go live in Moscow. It is not like he was born there and had no chance to leave.

I do not know the truth about Bill Browder, but one thing I do know: very powerful Americans are capable of organizing mass genocide to become rich, so there is no possible basis for painting all American businessmen as philanthropists and all Russians as murdering savages ..

michaelk says November 21, 2017
It's perfectly possible, in fact the norm historically, for people to believe passionately in the existence of invisible threats to their well-being, which, when examined calmly from another era, resemble a form of mass-hysteria or collective madness. For example; the religious faith/dogma that Satan, demons and witches were all around us. An invisible, parallel, world, by the side of our own that really existed and we were 'at war with.' Satan was our adversary, the great trickster and disseminator of 'fake news' opposed to the 'good news' provided by the Gospels.

What's remarkable, disturbing and frightening is how closely our media resemble a religious cult or the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. The journalists have taken on a role that's close to that of a priesthood. They function as a 'filtering' layer between us and the world around us. They are, supposedly, uniquely qualified to understand the difference between truth and lies, or what's right and wrong, real news and propaganda. The Guardian actually likes this role. They our the guardians of the truth in a chaotic world.

This reminds one of the role of the clergy. Their role was to stand between ordinary people and the 'complexities' of the Bible and seperate the Truths it containedf from wild and 'fake' interpretations, which could easily become dangerous and undermine the social order and fundamental power relationships.

The big challenge to the role of the Church happened when the printing press allowed the ordinary people to access the information themselves and worst still when the texts were translated into the common language and not just Latin. Suddenly people could access the texts, read and begin to interpret and understand for themselves. It's hard to imagine that pepeople were actually burned alive in England for smuggling the Bible in english translation a few centuries ago. That's how dangerous the State regarded such a 'crime.'

One can compare the translation of the Bible and the challenge to the authority of the Church and the clergy as 'guardians of the truth' to what's happeing today with the rise of the Internet and something like Wikileaks, where texts and infromation are made available uncensored and raw and the role of the traditional 'media church' and the journalist priesthood is challenged.

We're seeing a kind of media counter-reformation. That's why the Guardian turned on Assange so disgracefully and what Wikileaks represented.

WeatherEye says November 21, 2017
A brilliant historical comparison. They're now on the legal offensive in censoring the internet of course, because in truth the filter system is wholly vulnerable. Alternative media has been operating freely, yet the majority have continued to rely on MSM as if it's their only source of (dis)information, utilising our vast internet age to the pettiness of social media and prank videos. Marx was right: capitalist society alienates people from their own humanity. We're now aliens, deprived of our original being and floating in a vacuum of Darwinist competition and barbarism. And we wonder why climate change is happening?
pimatters says November 27, 2017
Yes, as the guy below says this is a great simile. Wikileaks is like the first English translations of the bible! Fantastic!
pimatters says November 27, 2017
above – not below
tutisicecream says November 21, 2017
Apparently we are "living in disorientating times" according to Viner, she goes on to say that "championing the public interest is at the heart of the Guardian's mission".

Really? How is it possible for her to say that when many of the controversial articles which appear in the Guardian are not open for comment any more. They have adopted now a view that THEIR "opinion" should not be challenged, how is that in the public interest?

In the Observer on Sunday a piece also appeared smearing RT entitled:
"MPs defend fees of up to Ł1,000 an hour to appear on 'Kremlin propaganda' channel"
However they allowed comments which make interesting reading. Many commenter's saw through their ruse and although the most vociferous critics of the Graun have been banished, but even the mild mannered ones which remain appear not the buy into the idea that RT is any different than other media outlets. With many expressing support for the news and op-ed outlet for giving voice to those who the MSM ignore – including former Guardian writers from time to time.

Why Viner's words are so poisonous is that the Graun under her stewardship has become a agitprop outlet offering no balance. In the below linked cringe worthy article there is no mention of RT being under attack in the US and having to register itself and staff as foreign agents. NO DEFENCE OF ATTACKS ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS by the US state is mentioned.

Surely this issue is at the heart of championing public interest?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/18/mps-kremlin-propaganda-channel-rt#comments

The fact that it's not shows clearly the fake Guardian/Observer claim and their real agenda.

WE ARE DEFINITELY LIVING IN DISORIENTATION TIMES and the Guardian/Observer are leading the charge.

tutisicecream says November 21, 2017
Correction: DISORIENTATING TIMES
Peter says November 21, 2017
For the political/media/business elites (I suppose you could call them 'the Establishment') in the US and UK, the main problem with RT seems to be that a lot of people are watching it. I wonder how long it will be before access is cut.

RT is launching a French-language channel next month. We are already being warned by the French MSM about how RT makes up fake news to further Putin's evil propaganda aims (unlike said MSM, we are told).

Basically, elites just don't trust the people (this is certainly a constant in French political life).

Jim says November 21, 2017
It's not just that they don't allow comments on many of their articles, but even on the articles where CiF is enabled, they ban any accounts that disagree with their narrative. The end result is that Guardianistas get the false impression everyone shares their view and that they are in the majority.
The Guardian moderators are like Scientology leaders who banish any outsiders for fear of influencing their cult members.
BigB says November 20, 2017
Everyone knows that Russia-gate is a feat of mass hypnosis, mesmerized from DNC financed lies. The Trump collusion myth is baseless and becoming dangerously hysterical: but conversely, the Clinton collusion scandal is not so easy to allay. Whilst it may turn out to be the greatest story never told: it looks substantive enough to me. HRC colluded with Russian oligarchy to the tune of $145m of "donations" into her slush fund. In return, Rosatom gained control of Uranium One.

A curious adjunct to this corruption: HRC opposed the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Given her subsequent rabid Russophobia: you'd have thought that if the Russians (as it has been spun) arrested a brave whistleblowing tax lawyer and murdered him in prison – she would have been quite vocal in her condemnation. No, she wanted to make Russia great again. It's amazing how $145m can focus ones attention away from ones natural instinct.

[Browder and Magnitsky were as corrupt as each other: the story that the Russians took over Browder's hedge fund and implicated them both in a $230m tax fraud and corruption scandal is as fantastical as the "Golden Shower" dossier. However, it seems to me Magnitsky's death was preventable (he died from complications of pancreatitis, for which it seems he was initially refused treatment ) ]

So if we turn the clock back to 2010-2013, it sure looks to me as though we have a Russian collusion scandal: only it's not one the Guardian will ever want to tell. Will it come out when the FBI 's "secret" informant (William D Cambell) testifies to Congress sometime this week? Not in the Guardian, because their precious Hillary Clinton is the real scandal here.

jag37777 says November 20, 2017
Browder is a spook.
susannapanevin says November 20, 2017
Reblogged this on Susanna Panevin .
Eric Blair says November 20, 2017
This "tactic" – a bold or outrageous claim made in the headline or in the first few sentences of a piece that is proven false in the very same article – is becoming depressingly common in the legacy media.

In other words, the so-called respectable media knowingly prints outright lies for propaganda and clickbait purposes.

labrebisgalloise says November 20, 2017
I dropped a line to a friend yesterday saying "only in a parallel universe would a businessman/shady dealer/tax evader such as Browder be described as an "anti-corruption campaigner."" Those not familiar with the history of Browder's grandfather, after whom a whole new "deviation" in leftist thinking was named, should look it up.
Eric Blair says November 20, 2017
Hey, MbS is also an "anti-corruption" campaigner! If the media says so it must be true!
Sav says November 20, 2017
Some months ago you saw tweets saying Russophobia had hit ridiculous levels. They hadn't seen anything yet. It's scary how easily people can be brainwashed.

The US are the masters of molesting other nations. It's not even a secret what they've been up to. Look at their budgets or the size of the intelligence buildings. Most journalists know full well of their programs, including those on social media, which they even reported on a few years back. The Guardian run stories by the CIA created and US state funded RFE/RL & then tell us with a straight face that RT is state propaganda which is destroying our democracy.

A Petherbridge says November 20, 2017
Well said – interesting to know what the Guardian is paid to run these stories funded by this arm of US state propaganda.
bevin says November 20, 2017
The madness spreads: today The Canary has/had an article 'proving' that the 'Russians' were responsible for Brexit, Trump, etc etc. Then there is the neo-liberal 'President' of the EU charging that the extreme right wing and Russophobic warmongers in the Polish government are in fact, like the President of the USA, in Putin's pocket..

This outbreak is reaching the dimensions of the sort of mass hysteria that gave us St Vitus' dance. Oh and the 'sonic' terrorism practised against US diplomats in Havana, in which crickets working for the evil one (who he?) appear to have been responsible for a breach in diplomatic relations. It couldn't have happened to a nicer empire.

Admin says November 21, 2017
The Canary is publishing mainstream russophobia?

[Dec 10, 2017] Strzok is the fellow who altered Comey's draft to read "extremely careless" instead of "grossly negligent", he interviewed HRC, Mills, Abedin (and gave the latter two immunity); he pushed for the continued payment of Steele in the amount of $50,000 for further Dossier research in the face of some resistance (cf James Rosen); he also interviewed Flynn

Dec 05, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

WJ , 05 December 2017 at 08:16 PM

Sir,

What is your take on this fellow Peter P. Strzok II? His back history is purportedly Georgetown, Army Intelligence (his father PP Strzok I is Army Corp of Engineers), and was until recently deputy director of counterintelligence at FBI with focus on Russia and China. He is the fellow who altered Comey's draft to read "extremely careless" instead of "grossly negligent", he interviewed HRC, Mills, Abedin (and gave the latter two immunity); he pushed for the continued payment of Steele in the amount of $50,000 for further Dossier research in the face of some resistance (cf James Rosen); he also interviewed Flynn, and for most of the first half of 2017 and for all of 2016 appears to have been the most important and influential agent working on the HRC-Trump-Russia nexus. James Rosen suggests he has CIA connections as well. The dude has also no internet presence. There is not much information out there on a person who seems to be pretty influential in DC / FBI / Foreign Intel circles. He screwed up, and a lawyer, sent texts, and now is gone. Does he strike you as fishy at all, or is this kind of stuff pretty common for people in his field and position.

[Dec 10, 2017] Peter Strzok Lisa Page 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

Dec 10, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Just one day after Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I.in the Russia investigation, reports have surfaced accusing a veteran investigator in the special probe of sending disparaging text messages regarding President Donald Trump. The investigator was removed from the probe a few month .....
#5FastFacts #News #BreakingNews

[Dec 10, 2017] Bret Baier and Trey Gowdy speak about Strzok - YouTube

Dec 10, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Patricia Barkley , 1 day ago

That damn Comey is the biggest liar and most corrupt person in the Hillary email investigation. Actually there was no investigation, because he had already determined how she had done nothing wrong. Pathetic. Also Mueller has set up his group of lawyers, who have all been connected to contributing to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The damn democrats will do anything to try to find something corrupt about President Trump. All they need to do is look in the mirror, if they are looking for corrupt.

Thesaurus , 1 day ago (edited)

Obviously Rosenstein didn't think the DoJ could do the job since he scrambled to appoint a special counsel at the first opportunity after Comey leaked the memo. Trey Gowdy is one of the most honest Congressmen in the HoR but he's seemingly a little naive at times. He wants to believe the best about his colleagues and friends. The facts have to be in his face before he sees the truth. He's only now beginning to see the light about Mueller, I think.

[Dec 10, 2017] JUST IN Bob Mueller deliberately hired Hillary Clinton linked agents and lawyers for Russia probe

Notable quotes:
"... Purple ties = Globalists! Christopher Wray, your true colors are showing! ..."
Dec 10, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Dawn Masters , 1 hour ago

Purple ties = Globalists! Christopher Wray, your true colors are showing!

M.D. , 21 minutes ago

the f.b.i. just like the i.r.s. the e.p.a. , homeland security and many more govt. organisations that at one time worked for the very citizens that pay them but now they are all politicized , even weaponized to be used as a tool against one's political rivals , thanks Obummer !! who did not start or do this all on his own but did carry the ball down the road further than any other before him

Eat em n Smile , 51 minutes ago

FBI your garbage thanks to the Clinton's. I hope to live for 30 more years and your shit to me. Now I understand why we need rights to guns . To fight you criminals in my government. I hate liberals but I know some conservatives are just as nasty . McCain is my top choice for Hillary bent .

fking deplorable , 1 hour ago

Mueller is discredited. He was Comey's mentor!!!! "WAKE UP IDIOTS"

Niki Ballou , 1 hour ago

I don't think there is an impartial person in the entire world... And I mean that literally... Everyone from England to Australia to Japan to South Africa is as passionate about this Trump issue as anyone here in the US.

Godavego gogo , 1 hour ago

If Casey and Muller are an example of NO FINER INSTITUTION AND NO FINER PEOPLE THAN THE FBI..." REALLY? so why are all the PROBER'S HILLARY DONATORS? -----> Wray is a deep state criminal just like Comey and Mueller

[Dec 10, 2017] TREASON! FIRED FBI AGENT COULD BE IN BIG TROUBLE...WATCH THIS

Dec 10, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Published on Dec 5, 2017

The FBI agent fired by Mueller for sending Anti-Trump text messages was IN charge of the Russia probe and even asked Micheal Flynn questions. So could it be that this was all a set up against Trump? More secrets keep unravelling in the Mueller probe, and we'll keep updating you on this story.

Thanks for watching, please subscribe here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFmY...

[Dec 10, 2017] FBI Agent Peter Strzok, Spun A Strange Web!

Dec 10, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Please open, and read the article attached in the link below. http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politic...

[Dec 10, 2017] TowerGate - Day 272 - Peter Strzok Exposed and Dumb-ass Of The Week

Dec 05, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Peter Strzok has been identified as one of the deep state rats that has been involved in great mischief at the FBI. Also, our dumb-ass of the week.

Mahat Mah jeebs , 4 days ago

Seeker, Mr. Strzok needs to have a prolonged interrogation done on him , until the lasi little tidbit of his machinations are wrung out of him until it is a sure bet that he has nothing left to give up. Stzrok has good friends who invented sure fire techniques that have guaranteed results. A Thousand Cuts comes to mind ! ! ! Of course that can not happen so let Hillary in on the scuttlebut that Stzrok is going to rat out everbody in order to save His behind. In no time flat Mr Stzrok will throw a JIMMY HOFFA ! ! ! ! ! That Hairy , Bull Dagger , Pussy Hat Wearin , P U S S Y P O S S E of Hillary's is Ruthless ! ! ! ! ! Thank You Seeker jeebs out

Oregon Outback , 5 days ago

Enjoyed you explanation of neocons. I realized, some years back, we need to change the Department of Defense to the Department of Offense. I suppose we could rename Homeland Security to Dept. of Defense, but they are actuating an offensive war on us and our freedoms. Maybe stop poking our noses in other peoples business and we could eliminate both departments. So ... what do we call a conservative that is hawkish on Peace? A normal, well balanced, human being? Haven't seen one of those hanging out around our capitol in a while.

[Dec 10, 2017] BREAKING Fox Exclusive - FBI official's role in Clinton email investigation under review - AR15.COM

Notable quotes:
"... The task will be exceedingly complex, given Strzok's consequential portfolio. He participated in the FBI's fateful interview with Hillary Clinton on July 2, 2016 – just days before then-FBI Director James Comey announced he was declining to recommend prosecution of Mrs. Clinton in connection with her use, as secretary of state, of a private email server. ..."
"... As deputy FBI director for counterintelligence, Strzok also enjoyed liaison with various agencies in the intelligence community, including the CIA, then led by Director John Brennan. ..."
"... The Justice Department maintained that the decision to clear Strzok for House interrogation had occurred a few hours prior to the appearance of the Times and Post stories. ..."
"... In addition, Rosenstein is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Dec. 13. ..."
"... A top House investigator asked: "If Mueller knew about the texts, what did he know about the dossier?" ..."
"... Carr declined to comment on the extent to which Mueller has examined the dossier and its relationship, if any, to the counterintelligence investigation that Strzok launched during the height of the campaign season. ..."
Dec 10, 2017 | www.ar15.com

EXCLUSIVE – Two senior Justice Department officials have confirmed to Fox News that the department's Office of Inspector General is reviewing the role played in the Hillary Clinton email investigation by Peter Stzrok, a former deputy director for counterintelligence at the FBI who was removed from the staff of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III earlier this year, after Mueller learned that Strzok had exchanged anti-Trump texts with a colleague.

A source close to the matter said the OIG probe, which will examine Strzok's roles in a number of other politically sensitive cases, should be completed by "very early next year."

The task will be exceedingly complex, given Strzok's consequential portfolio. He participated in the FBI's fateful interview with Hillary Clinton on July 2, 2016 – just days before then-FBI Director James Comey announced he was declining to recommend prosecution of Mrs. Clinton in connection with her use, as secretary of state, of a private email server.

As deputy FBI director for counterintelligence, Strzok also enjoyed liaison with various agencies in the intelligence community, including the CIA, then led by Director John Brennan.

House investigators told Fox News they have long regarded Stzrok as a key figure in the chain of events when the bureau, in 2016, received the infamous anti-Trump "dossier" and launched a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the election that ultimately came to encompass FISA surveillance of a Trump campaign associate.

The "dossier" was a compendium of salacious and largely unverified allegations about then-candidate Trump and others around him that was compiled by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. The firm's bank records, obtained by House investigators, revealed that the project was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, D-Calif., has sought documents and witnesses from the Department of Justice and FBI to determine what role, if any, the dossier played in the move to place a Trump campaign associate under foreign surveillance.

Strzok himself briefed the committee on Dec. 5, 2016, the sources said, but within months of that session House Intelligence Committee investigators were contacted by an informant suggesting that there was "documentary evidence" that Strzok was purportedly obstructing the House probe into the dossier.

In early October, Nunes personally asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – who has overseen the Trump-Russia probe since the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions – to make Strzok available to the committee for questioning, sources said.

While Strzok's removal from the Mueller team had been publicly reported in August, the Justice Department never disclosed the anti-Trump texts to the House investigators. The denial of access to Strzok was instead predicated, sources said, on broad "personnel" grounds.

When a month had elapsed, House investigators – having issued three subpoenas for various witnesses and documents – formally recommended to Nunes that DOJ and FBI be held in contempt of Congress. Nunes continued pressing DOJ, including a conversation with Rosenstein as recently as last Wednesday.

That turned out to be 12 days after DOJ and FBI had made Strzok available to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own parallel investigation into the allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Contempt citations?

Responding to the revelations about Strzok's texts on Saturday, Nunes said he has now directed his staff to draft contempt-of-Congress citations against Rosenstein and the new FBI director, Christopher Wray. Unless DOJ and FBI comply with all os his outstanding requests for documents and witnesses by the close of business on Monday, Nunes said, he would seek a resolution on the contempt citations before year's end.

"We now know why Strzok was dismissed, why the FBI and DOJ refused to provide us this explanation, and at least one reason why they previously refused to make [FBI] Deputy Director [Andrew] McCabe available to the Committee for an interview," Nunes said in a statement.

Early Saturday afternoon, after Strzok's texts were cited in published reports by the New York Times and the Washington Post – and Fox News had followed up with inquiries about the department's refusal to make Strzok available to House investigators – the Justice Department contacted the office of House Speaker Paul Ryan to establish a date for Strzok's appearance before House Intelligence Committee staff, along with two other witnesses long sought by the Nunes team.

Those witnesses are FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and the FBI officer said to have handled Christopher Steele, the British spy who used Russian sources to compile the dossier for Fusion GPS. The official said to be Steele's FBI handler has also appeared already before the Senate panel.

The Justice Department maintained that the decision to clear Strzok for House interrogation had occurred a few hours prior to the appearance of the Times and Post stories.

In addition, Rosenstein is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Dec. 13.

The Justice Department maintains that it has been very responsive to the House intel panel's demands, including private briefings for panel staff by senior DOJ and FBI personnel and the production of several hundred pages of classified materials available in a secure reading room at DOJ headquarters on Oct. 31.

Sources said Speaker Ryan has worked quietly behind the scenes to try to resolve the clash over dossier-related evidence and witnesses between the House intel panel on the one hand and DOJ and FBI on the other. In October, however, the speaker took the unusual step of saying publicly that the two agencies were "stonewalling" Congress.

All parties agree that some records being sought by the Nunes team belong to categories of documents that have historically never been shared with the committees that conduct oversight of the intelligence community.

Federal officials told Fox News the requested records include "highly sensitive raw intelligence," so sensitive that officials from foreign governments have emphasized to the U.S. the "potential danger and chilling effect" it could place on foreign intelligence sources.

Justice Department officials noted that Nunes did not appear for a document-review session that his committee's ranking Democrat, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., attended, and once rejected a briefing by an FBI official if the panel's Democratic members were permitted to attend.

Sources close to the various investigations agreed the discovery of Strzok's texts raised important questions about his work on the Clinton email case, the Trump-Russia probe, and the dossier matter.

"That's why the IG is looking into all of those things," a Justice Department official told Fox News on Saturday.

A top House investigator asked: "If Mueller knew about the texts, what did he know about the dossier?"

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel, said: "Immediately upon learning of the allegations, the Special Counsel's Office removed Peter Strzok from the investigation."

Carr declined to comment on the extent to which Mueller has examined the dossier and its relationship, if any, to the counterintelligence investigation that Strzok launched during the height of the campaign season.

[Dec 10, 2017] Trey Gowdy tears Mueller investigation a new one 'Really hard to defend' probe's integrity by Luis Miguel

Dec 10, 2017 | www.bizpacreview.com

The "Bull Dog" of the House has a grave warning for Robert Mueller.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), known for his tough "prosecutor" persona, sits on the House Intelligence Committee. The Committee on Saturday threatened to hold the FBI and Department of Justice in contempt of Congress for withholding information related to the removal of FBI agent Peter Strzok from Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

Rep. Gowdy told Fox News that the Special Counsel faces "integrity" problems after the revelation that Strzok's removal was due to exchanging anti-Trump text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page–with whom Strzok was having an extramarital affair.

"We met with the department of justice and they have to go through the texts," Gowdy said.

He then explained the Intelligence Committee's interest in the Strzok text messages.

"We are not entitled to them, nor do we have an interest in purely personal texts. We are very interested in both anti-Trump and/or pro-Clinton texts . Because, as he made reference to, he was a very important agent in her investigation, also in the ongoing Russian related investigation, perhaps the decision for Comey to change the wording in a statement."

Gowdy's remark about "wording in a statement" referred to reports that Strzok encouraged former FBI director James Comey to describe Hillary Clinton's private email server actions as "extremely careless" rather than "grossly negligent." The latter term carries legal weight with potential criminal penalties while the former does not.

Gowdy continued: "He is super important and people have a right to know whether agents are biased one way or another. The department is going to go through the texts been going to make them available to us as soon as they can." Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum then asked Gowdy if he still has confidence in the Mueller probe, to which the South Carolina lawmaker replied.

"I do, but I got to confess to you, and I understand people who think I'm wrong. I got an email last night from a friend back home saying, 'Look, Gowdy, let go of the prosecutor stuff.' I still think that Mueller can produce a product that we all have confidence in, but things like this, make it really difficult -- the perception is, is every bit as important as the reality, and if the perception is, you're employing people who are biased, it makes us really difficult for those of us that would like to defend the integrity of former prosecutors."

Gowdy's comments echo the sentiments of many Americans, who question the integrity of agents that have investigated two presidential campaigns, but apparently favor one over the other.

[Dec 10, 2017] FBI Agent Fired From Mueller Probe is Key Figure in Fusion GPS Dossier

Notable quotes:
"... The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, removed a top F.B.I. agent from his investigation into Russian election meddling after the Justice Department's inspector general began examining whether the agent had sent text messages that expressed anti-Trump political views, according to three people briefed on the matter. The agent, Peter Strzok, is considered one of the most experienced and trusted F.B.I. counterintelligence investigators. He helped lead the investigation into whether Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information on her private email account, and then played a major role in the investigation into links between President Trump's campaign and Russia. ..."
"... Two senior Justice Department officials have confirmed to Fox News that the department's Office of Inspector General is reviewing the role played in the Hillary Clinton email investigation by Peter Stzrok, a former deputy director for counterintelligence at the FBI who was removed from the staff of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III earlier this year, after Mueller learned that Strzok had exchanged anti-Trump texts with a colleague. ..."
"... House investigators told Fox News they have long regarded Strzok as a key figure in the chain of events when the bureau, in 2016, received the infamous anti-Trump "dossier" and launched a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the election that ultimately came to encompass FISA surveillance of a Trump campaign associate. ..."
"... The "dossier" was a compendium of salacious and largely unverified allegations about then-candidate Trump and others around him that was compiled by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. The firm's bank records, obtained by House investigators, revealed that the project was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. [ ] ..."
"... Strzok himself briefed the committee on Dec. 5, 2016, the sources said, but within months of that session House Intelligence Committee investigators were contacted by an informant suggesting that there was "documentary evidence" that Strzok was purportedly obstructing the House probe into the dossier. ..."
"... Fox News' James Rosen also reveals Strzok played a key role in agreeing to pay ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele $50,000 to find evidence to further support the dossier's explosive claims. FBI officials were uncomfortable with the validity of Steele's findings, yet they moved forward with FISA surveillance anyways. ..."
Dec 05, 2017 | www.shiftfrequency.com

Strzok Worked Zealously To Undermine Trump

Joshua Caplan – In yet another blow to Mueller's investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the special counsel was forced to fire a top FBI agent after possible anti-Trump text messages were discovered.

New York Times reports:

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, removed a top F.B.I. agent from his investigation into Russian election meddling after the Justice Department's inspector general began examining whether the agent had sent text messages that expressed anti-Trump political views, according to three people briefed on the matter. The agent, Peter Strzok, is considered one of the most experienced and trusted F.B.I. counterintelligence investigators. He helped lead the investigation into whether Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information on her private email account, and then played a major role in the investigation into links between President Trump's campaign and Russia.

In August, ABC News reported that Strzok quit Team Mueller for unknown reasons. "It's unclear why Strzok stepped away from Mueller's team of nearly two dozen lawyers, investigators and administrative staff. Strzok, who has spent much of his law enforcement career working counterintelligence cases and has been unanimously praised by government officials who spoke with ABC News, is now working for the FBI's human resources division," reported Mike Levine.

Late Saturday night, we learn the Department of Justice has launched a review of Peter Stzrok's role in the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Fox News reports:

Two senior Justice Department officials have confirmed to Fox News that the department's Office of Inspector General is reviewing the role played in the Hillary Clinton email investigation by Peter Stzrok, a former deputy director for counterintelligence at the FBI who was removed from the staff of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III earlier this year, after Mueller learned that Strzok had exchanged anti-Trump texts with a colleague.

Reacting to Strzok's 'anti-Trump,' texts, House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) said , "We now know why Strzok was dismissed, why the FBI and DOJ refused to provide us this explanation, and at least one reason why they previously refused to make [FBI] Deputy Director [Andrew] McCabe available to the Committee for an interview."

Strzok played a key role in analyzing the infamous 'Trump dossier,' supplied by shady research firm Fusion GPS. The now disgraced FBI agent used disproven elements of the dossier to spy on members of the Trump campaign.

Fox News report:

House investigators told Fox News they have long regarded Strzok as a key figure in the chain of events when the bureau, in 2016, received the infamous anti-Trump "dossier" and launched a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the election that ultimately came to encompass FISA surveillance of a Trump campaign associate.

The "dossier" was a compendium of salacious and largely unverified allegations about then-candidate Trump and others around him that was compiled by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. The firm's bank records, obtained by House investigators, revealed that the project was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. [ ]
Strzok himself briefed the committee on Dec. 5, 2016, the sources said, but within months of that session House Intelligence Committee investigators were contacted by an informant suggesting that there was "documentary evidence" that Strzok was purportedly obstructing the House probe into the dossier.

Fox News' James Rosen also reveals Strzok played a key role in agreeing to pay ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele $50,000 to find evidence to further support the dossier's explosive claims. FBI officials were uncomfortable with the validity of Steele's findings, yet they moved forward with FISA surveillance anyways.

SF Source The Gateway Pundit Dec 2017

[Dec 10, 2017] Flightcrew on Twitter @mitchellvii Peter Strzok Carried On An Affair With Andrew McCabe's Lawyer, Lisa Paget

Dec 10, 2017 | twitter.com

Peter Strzok Carried On An Affair With Andrew McCabe's Lawyer, Lisa Page, While Plotting The Downfall Of President Donald Trump (Lisa Page Seen Walking Behind McCabe.) Andrew McCabe Is The Acting FBI Director Who Said "First We F*ck Flynn, Then We F*ck Trump."

[Dec 10, 2017] DOJ Launches Review of 'Anti-Trump' FBI Official's Role in Clinton Email Investigation

Dec 02, 2017 | thegatewaypundit.com

New York Times reports:

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, removed a top F.B.I. agent from his investigation into Russian election meddling after the Justice Department's inspector general began examining whether the agent had sent text messages that expressed anti-Trump political views, according to three people briefed on the matter. The agent, Peter Strzok, is considered one of the most experienced and trusted F.B.I. counterintelligence investigators. He helped lead the investigation into whether Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information on her private email account, and then played a major role in the investigation into links between President Trump's campaign and Russia. But Mr. Strzok was reassigned this summer from Mr. Mueller's investigation to the F.B.I.'s human resources department, where he has been stationed since. The people briefed on the case said the transfer followed the discovery of text messages in which Mr. Strzok and a colleague reacted to news events, like presidential debates, in ways that could appear critical of Mr. Trump.

In a statement to the New York Times, Strzok lawyer said"we are aware of the allegation and are taking any and all appropriate steps."

In August, ABC News reported that Strzok quit Team Mueller for unknown reasons. "It's unclear why Strzok stepped away from Mueller's team of nearly two dozen lawyers, investigators and administrative staff. Strzok, who has spent much of his law enforcement career working counterintelligence cases and has been unanimously praised by government officials who spoke with ABC News, is now working for the FBI's human resources division," reported Mike Levine.

Now this

After new details emerged about Strzok's firing, the Washington Post revealed the Justice Department launched an investigation into "communications between certain individuals." Details of the mystery probe will be revealed "promptly upon completion of the review of them,' said the Justice Department. Late Saturday night, we learn the Department of Justice has launched a review of Peter Stzrok's role in the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Fox News reports:

Two senior Justice Department officials have confirmed to Fox News that the department's Office of Inspector General is reviewing the role played in the Hillary Clinton email investigation by Peter Stzrok, a former deputy director for counterintelligence at the FBI who was removed from the staff of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III earlier this year, after Mueller learned that Strzok had exchanged anti-Trump texts with a colleague.

A source close to the matter said the OIG probe, which will examine Strzok's roles in a number of other politically sensitive cases, should be completed by "very early next year." [ ] He participated in the FBI's fateful interview with Hillary Clinton on July 2, 2016 – just days before then-FBI Director James Comey announced he was declining to recommend prosecution of Mrs. Clinton in connection with her use, as secretary of state, of a private email server.

Reacting to Strzok's 'anti-Trump,' texts, House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) said , "We now know why Strzok was dismissed, why the FBI and DOJ refused to provide us this explanation, and at least one reason why they previously refused to make [FBI] Deputy Director [Andrew] McCabe available to the Committee for an interview."

Jim Smith , December 3, 2017 12:05 AM

This is huge. Read the thread below for the complete context. Peter Strzok was knee deep in the entire mess!
Hillary investigation, Hillary interview. Cheryl Mills interview and immunity deal. Weiner's laptop. Trump Dossier, and Russian collusion. All of these investigations are totally compromised.
https://www.citizenfreepres...

Texas Ranger Jim Smith , December 3, 2017 2:57 AM

All they did was their best to destroy evidence, bury evidence and deflect any kind of real investigation of Hilabeast and team....and everybody knows it on the Hill.
So what are you waiting for asleep at the wheel Sessionns.... ? and any other decent politician.....well....yeah, obviously those don't exist.....

Sim Jim Smith , December 3, 2017 8:19 AM

This is crazy how much more corrupt can this get WTF is Session & Wray doing. Then Mueller puts this guy on his team, as the Lead FBI , as if he didn't know he was a compromised dirtbag.

Like how Mueller hide it from everyone for 3 months why he was demoted, and they want to pretend they the honest brokers just looking for the truth and facts/s

Dirty cop Mueller and his team sycophants trying take down the President United States on some trumped up bull, turn this country into joke and do irreparable damage.

While he did nothing scratch his old balls while Hil & Obama sold out to the Russians.

RatkoUSA , December 3, 2017 12:17 AM

"'Review of' FBI Official's Role in Clinton Email Investigation"
Huh? The the entire thing "investigation" is and has been, from Day 1, nothing more than a no holds barred attack on not only the legally elected POTUS DJT, but equally against his supporters.

[Dec 10, 2017] Mueller, Comey, McCabe Peter Stroke ALL used abused female FBI agents for their own sexual gratification

Notable quotes:
"... Actually the CIA is well known among DC insiders to have a reputation for only hiring young, attractive interns. ..."
Dec 10, 2017 | www.reddit.com

royallypede 4 days ago (1 child)

If you recall the reason they went after Gen. Flynn in the first place was because he took the side of a woman who filed a complaint against McCabe.
Holmgeir 4 days ago (0 children)
https://www.circa.com/story/2017/06/27/nation/did-the-fbi-retaliate-against-michael-flynn-by-launching-russia-probe

Yup, great article by Circa. I'm not going to hold my breath for this True Pundit article though.

Sodors_Finest_Poster 4 days ago (1 child)
Cill Blinton here, how can I apply to the FBI?
Funqueybusiness 4 days ago (3 children)
Actually the CIA is well known among DC insiders to have a reputation for only hiring young, attractive interns.

Wouldn't be surprised if the FBI did it too.

Source : me. Used to work in Langley.

[Dec 09, 2017] Hyping the Russian Threat to Undermine Free Speech by Max Blumenthal

Highly recommended!
This is a simply a brilliant article. Probably the best written on the subject so far. Kudos to Max Blumenthal
Thinks tanks are really ideological tanks -- formidable weapon in propaganda wars that crush everything on its way. And taken together far right think tanks financed by defense sector or intelligence agencies are really a shadow far right political party with its own neocon agenda. Actually subverting the will of American people (who elected Trump) for more peaceful relations (aka detente) with Russia in favor of interest of weapon manufactures and the army of "national security parasites".
At a time when the ruling elite, across virtually the entire western world, is losing it; it being, political legitimacy and the breakdown of any semblance of a social contract between the ruled and the rulers those think tanks decides to create a fake narrative and blame Russians. Is not this a classic variant of projection ?
The slow strangulation of the US MSM means the crisis of confidence. A strong and confident ruling class welcomes criticism and is ready to brush it all off with a smile and a shrug. When they start running scared and pretending there is no dissent or opposition, well, this is a sign of of degradation of the ruling elite. They are losing the battle of ideas and the battle of solutions to social problems. All that really stands between them and a social revolution is a thin veneer of 'authority' and status, as well as intelligence agencies spying on everybody.
Now all those well paid ( and sometimes even talented) war propagandist intend to substitute the real crisis of neoliberalism in the USA demonstrated during the recent Presidential Elections for the artificial problem of Russian meddling. And they are succeeding in this unfair and evil substitution. The also manage to "poison the well" -- relation between two nations were now at the level probably lower then during Cold War (when many Russians were sympathetic to the USA). I think 70% of Democratic voters now are convinced the Russia was meddling in the USA election and about 30% of Republican voters also think so. For the creators of 'artificial reality" such numbers signify big success. A very big success to be exact.
Notable quotes:
"... In perhaps the most chilling moment of the hearings, and the most overlooked, Clint Watts, a former U.S. Army officer who had branded himself an expert on Russian meddling, appeared before a nearly empty Senate chamber. Watts conjured up a stark landscape of American carnage, with shadowy Russian operatives stage managing the chaos ..."
"... The spectacle perfectly illustrated the madness of Russiagate, with liberal lawmakers springboarding off the fear of Russian meddling to demand that Americans be forbidden from consuming the wrong kinds of media ..."
"... A former U.S. Army officer who spent years in obscurity at a defense industry funded think tank called the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), Watts has become a go-to source for cable news producers and print journalists on the subject of Russian bots, always available with a comment that reinforces the sense that America is under sustained cyborg attack. This September, his employers at FPRI hailed him as "the leading expert on developments related to Russian-backed efforts to not only influence the 2016 presidential election, but also to inflame racial and cultural divisions within the U.S. and across Europe." ..."
"... Watts boasts an impressive-looking bio that is replete with fancy sounding fellowships at national security-oriented outfits, including George Washington University's Center Cyber and Homeland Security. His bio also indicates that he served on an FBI Joint Terror Task Force. ..."
"... Though Watts is best known for his punditry on Russian interference, it's fair to say he is as much an expert on Russian affairs as Harvey Weinstein is a trusted voice on feminism. Indeed, Watts appears to speak no Russian, has no record of reporting or scholarship from inside Russia, and has produced little to no work of any discernible academic value on Russian affairs. ..."
"... Whether or not he has the substance to support his claims of expertise, Watts has proven a talented salesman, catering to popular fears about Russian interference while he plies credulous lawmakers with ease. ..."
"... In the widely publicized testimony, Watts explained to the panel of senators that he first noticed the pernicious presence of Russian social media bots after he co-authored an article in 2014 in Foreign Affairs titled, " The Good and The Bad of Ahrar al Sham ." The article urged the US to arm a group of Syrian Salafi insurgents known for its human rights abuses , sectarianism and off-and-on alliances with Al Qaeda. Watts and his co-authors insisted that Ahrar al-Sham was the best proxy force for wreaking havoc on the Syrian government weakening its allies in Iran and Russia. Right below the headline, Watts and his co-authors celebrated Ahrar al-Sham as "an Al Qaeda linked group worth befriending." ..."
"... Watts rehashed the same argument at FPRI a year later, urging the U.S. government to harness jihadist terror as a weapon against Russia. "The U.S. at a minimum, through covert or semi-covert platforms, should take advantage and amplify these free alternative [jihadist] narratives to provide Russia some payback for recent years' aggression," he wrote. In another paper, Watts asked , "Why shouldn't the U.S. redirect some of the jihadi hatred towards those with the dirtiest hands in the Syrian conflict: Russia and Iran?" Watts did not specify whether the theater of covert warfare should be limited to the Syrian battlefield, or if he sought to encourage jihadists to carry out terrorist acts inside Russia and Iran. ..."
"... Next, Watts introduced his signature theme, claiming that Russia manipulated civil rights protests to exploit divisions in American society. Declaring that "pro-Russian" outlets were spreading "chaos in Black Lives Matter protests" by deploying active measures, Watts did not bother to say what those measures were. ..."
"... Watts then moved to the main course of his testimony, focusing on how Trump employed Russian "active measures" to attack his opponents. Watts told the Senate panel that the Russian-backed news outlets RT and Sputnik had produced a false report on the U.S. airbase in Incirlik, Turkey being "overrun by terrorists." He presented the Russian stories as the anchor for a massive influence operation that featured swarms of Russian bots across social media. And he claimed that then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort invoked the incident to deflect from negative media coverage, suggesting that Trump was coordinating strategy with the Kremlin. In reality, it was Watts who was spreading the fake news. ..."
"... Watts has pushed his bogus narrative of RT and Sputnik's Incirlik coverage in numerous outlets, including Politico . Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen echoed Watts' false account on the Senate floor while arguing for legislation to force RT out of the U.S. market on political grounds. And Jim Rutenberg, the New York Times' media correspondent, reproduced Watts' distorted account in a major feature on RT and Sputnik's "new theory of war." Almost no one, not one major media organization or public figure, has bothered to fact check these false claims, and few have questioned the agenda behind them. ..."
"... The episode began during a Trump rally at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign, when Trump read out an email purportedly from longtime Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal (the father of this writer), hoping to embarrass Clinton over Benghazi. The text of the email turned out to be part of a column written by the pro-Clinton Newsweek columnist Kurt Eichenwald, not an email by Blumenthal. ..."
"... The source of Trump's falsehood appeared to have been a report by Bill Moran, then a reporter for Sputnik, the news service funded by the Russian government. Having confused Eichenwald's writing for a Blumenthal email, Moran scrubbed his erroneous article within 20 minutes. Somehow, Moran's retracted article had found its way onto the Trump campaign's radar, a not atypical event for a campaign that had relied on material from far-out sites like Infowars to undercut its opponents. ..."
"... In his column at Newsweek, Eichenwald framed Moran's honest mistake as the leading edge of a secret Russian influence operation. With help from pro-Clinton elements, Eichenwald's column went viral, earning him slots on CNN and MSNBC, where he howled about the nefarious Russian-Trump-Wikileaks plot he believed he had just exposed. (Glenn Greenwald was perhaps the only reporter with a national platform to highlight Eichenwald's falsifications .) Moran was fired as a result of the fallout, and would have to spend the next several months fighting to correct the record. ..."
"... When Moran appealed to Eichenwald for a public clarification, Eichenwald staunchly refused. Instead, he offered Moran a job at the New Republic in exchange for his silence and warned him, "If you go public, you'll regret it." (Eichenwald had no role at the New Republic or any clear ability to influence the magazine's hiring decisions.) Moran refused to cooperate, prompting Eichenwald to publish a follow-up piece painting himself as the victim of a Russian "active measures" campaign, and to cast Moran once again as a foreign agent. ..."
"... Representing himself in court, Moran elicited a settlement from Newsweek that forced the magazine to scrub all of Eichenwald's articles about him -- a tacit admission that they were false from top to bottom. This meant that the most consequential claim Watts made before the Senate was also a whopping lie. ..."
"... The day after Watts' deception-laden appearance, he was nevertheless transformed from an obscure national security into a cable news star, with invites from Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow, Meet the Press, and the liberal comedian Samantha Bee, among many others. His testimony received coverage from the gamut of major news outlets, and even earned him a fawning profile from CNN. From out of the blue, Watts had become the star witness of Russiagate, and one of corporate media's favorite pundits. ..."
"... Dr. Strangelove ..."
"... It was not until this summer, however, that the influence operation Watts helped establish reached critical capacity. He had approached one of Washington's most respected think tanks, the German Marshall Fund, and secured support for an initiative called the Alliance for Securing Democracy. The new initiative became responsible for a daily blacklist of subversive, "pro-Russian" media outlets, targeting them with the backing of a who's who of national security honchos, from Bill Kristol to former CIA director and ex-Hillary Clinton surrogate Michael Morrell, along with favorable promotion from some of the country's most respected news organizations. ..."
Nov 13, 2017 | www.truthdig.com

Nearly a year after the presidential election, the scandal over accusations of Russian political interference in the 2016 election has gone beyond Donald Trump and reached into the nebulous world of online media. On November 1, Congress held hearings on "Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online." The proceedings saw executives from Facebook, Twitter and Youtube subjected to tongue-lashings from lawmakers like Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who howled about Russian online trolls "spread[ing] stories about abuse of black Americans by law enforcement."

In perhaps the most chilling moment of the hearings, and the most overlooked, Clint Watts, a former U.S. Army officer who had branded himself an expert on Russian meddling, appeared before a nearly empty Senate chamber. Watts conjured up a stark landscape of American carnage, with shadowy Russian operatives stage managing the chaos.

"Civil wars don't start with gunshots, they start with words," he proclaimed. "America's war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America."

Next, Watts suggested a government-imposed campaign of media censorship: "Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced: silence the guns and the barrage will end."

The censorious overtone of Watts' testimony was unmistakable. He demanded that government news inquisitors drive dissident media off the internet and warned that Americans would spear one another with bayonets if they failed to act. And not one member of Congress rose to object. In fact, many echoed his call for media suppression in the House and Senate hearings, with Democrats like Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Jackie Speier agreeing the most vehemently. The spectacle perfectly illustrated the madness of Russiagate, with liberal lawmakers springboarding off the fear of Russian meddling to demand that Americans be forbidden from consuming the wrong kinds of media -- including content that amplified the message of progressive causes like Black Lives Matter.

Details of exactly what transpired vis a vis Russia and the U.S. in social media in 2016 are still emerging. This year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published a declassified version of the intelligence community's report on "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections," written by CIA, FBI and NSA, with its central conclusion that Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow's longstanding desire to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order."

To be sure, there is ample evidence that Russian-linked trolls have attempted to exploit wedge issues on social media platforms. But the impact of these schemes on real-world events appears to have been exaggerated. According to Facebook's data , 56 percent of Russian-linked ads appeared after the 2016 presidential election, and another 25 percent "were never shown to anyone." The ads were said to have "reached" over 100 million people, but that assumes that Facebook users did not scroll through or otherwise ignore them, as they do with most ads. Content emanating from "Russia-linked" sources on YouTube, meanwhile, managed to rack up hit totals in the hundreds , not exactly a viral smash.

Facebook posts traced to the infamous Internet Research Agency troll factory in Russia amounted to only 0.0004 percent of total content that appeared on the social network. (Some of these posts targeted "animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies," while another hawked an LGBT-themed " Buff Bernie coloring book for Berniacs.") According to its " deliberately broad" review , Twitter found that only 0.74 percent of its election-related tweets were "Russian-linked." Google, for its part, documented a grand total of $4,700 of "Russian-linked ad spending" during the 2016 election cycle. While some have argued that the Russian-linked ads were micro-targeted, and could have shifted key electoral voting blocs, these ads appeared in a media climate awash in a multi-billion dollar deluge of political ad spending from both established parties and dark money super PACs.

However, a blitz of feverish corporate media coverage and tension-filled congressional hearings has convinced a whopping 82 percent of Democrats that "Russian-backed" social media content played a central role in swinging the 2016 election. Russian meddling has even earned comparisons by lawmakers to Pearl Harbor, to "acts of war," and by Hillary Clinton to the attacks of 9/11 . And in an inadvertent way, these overblown comparisons were apt.

As during the aftermath of 9/11, the fallout from Russiagate has spawned a multimillion-dollar industry of pundits and self-styled experts eager to exploit the frenetic atmosphere for publicity and profits. Many of these figures have emerged out of the swamp that flowed from the war on terror and are gravitating toward the growing Russia fearmongering industrial complex in search of new opportunities. Few of these characters have become as prominent as Clint Watts.

So who is Watts, and how did he emerge seemingly from nowhere to become the star congressional witness on Russian meddling?

Dubious Expertise, Impressive Salesmanship

A former U.S. Army officer who spent years in obscurity at a defense industry funded think tank called the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), Watts has become a go-to source for cable news producers and print journalists on the subject of Russian bots, always available with a comment that reinforces the sense that America is under sustained cyborg attack. This September, his employers at FPRI hailed him as "the leading expert on developments related to Russian-backed efforts to not only influence the 2016 presidential election, but also to inflame racial and cultural divisions within the U.S. and across Europe."

Watts boasts an impressive-looking bio that is replete with fancy sounding fellowships at national security-oriented outfits, including George Washington University's Center Cyber and Homeland Security. His bio also indicates that he served on an FBI Joint Terror Task Force.

Though Watts is best known for his punditry on Russian interference, it's fair to say he is as much an expert on Russian affairs as Harvey Weinstein is a trusted voice on feminism. Indeed, Watts appears to speak no Russian, has no record of reporting or scholarship from inside Russia, and has produced little to no work of any discernible academic value on Russian affairs.

Whether or not he has the substance to support his claims of expertise, Watts has proven a talented salesman, catering to popular fears about Russian interference while he plies credulous lawmakers with ease.

Before Congress, a String of Deceptions

Back on March 30, as the narrative of Russian meddling gathered momentum, Watts made his first appearance before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.

Seated at the front of a hearing room packed with reporters, Watts introduced Congress to concepts of Russian meddling that were novel at the time, but which have become part of Beltway newspeak. His testimony turned out to be a signal moment in Russiagate, helping transition the narrative of the scandal from Russia-Trump collusion to the wider issue of online influence.

In the widely publicized testimony, Watts explained to the panel of senators that he first noticed the pernicious presence of Russian social media bots after he co-authored an article in 2014 in Foreign Affairs titled, " The Good and The Bad of Ahrar al Sham ." The article urged the US to arm a group of Syrian Salafi insurgents known for its human rights abuses , sectarianism and off-and-on alliances with Al Qaeda. Watts and his co-authors insisted that Ahrar al-Sham was the best proxy force for wreaking havoc on the Syrian government weakening its allies in Iran and Russia. Right below the headline, Watts and his co-authors celebrated Ahrar al-Sham as "an Al Qaeda linked group worth befriending."

Watts rehashed the same argument at FPRI a year later, urging the U.S. government to harness jihadist terror as a weapon against Russia. "The U.S. at a minimum, through covert or semi-covert platforms, should take advantage and amplify these free alternative [jihadist] narratives to provide Russia some payback for recent years' aggression," he wrote. In another paper, Watts asked , "Why shouldn't the U.S. redirect some of the jihadi hatred towards those with the dirtiest hands in the Syrian conflict: Russia and Iran?" Watts did not specify whether the theater of covert warfare should be limited to the Syrian battlefield, or if he sought to encourage jihadists to carry out terrorist acts inside Russia and Iran.

The premise of these op-eds should have raised serious concerns about Watts and his colleagues, and even questions about their sanity. They had marketed themselves as national security experts, yet they were lobbying the US to "befriend" the allies of Al Qaeda, the group that brought down the Twin Towers. (Ahrar al-Sham was founded by Abu Khalid al-Suri, a Madrid bombing suspect who was named by Spanish investigators as Osama bin-Laden's courier.) Anyone cynical enough to put such ideas into public circulation should have expected a backlash. But when the inevitable wave of criticism came, Watts dismissed it all as a Russian bot attack.

Addressing the Senate panel, Watts said that those who took to social media to mock and criticize his Foreign Affairs article were, in fact, Russian bots. He provided no evidence to support the claim, and a look at his single tweet promoting the article shows that he was criticized only once (by @Navsteva, a Twitter user known for defending the Syrian government against regime change proponents, not an automated bot). Nevertheless, Watts painted the incident as proof that Russia had revived a Cold War information warfare strategy of "Active Measures," which was supposedly aimed at "crumbl[ing] democracies from the inside out [by] creating political divisions."

Next, Watts introduced his signature theme, claiming that Russia manipulated civil rights protests to exploit divisions in American society. Declaring that "pro-Russian" outlets were spreading "chaos in Black Lives Matter protests" by deploying active measures, Watts did not bother to say what those measures were. In fact, the only piece of proof he offered (in a Daily Beast transcript of his testimony) was a single link to an RT article that factually documented a squabble between Black Lives Matter protesters and white supremacists -- an incident that had been widely covered by other outlets, from the Houston Chronicle to the Washington Post . Watts did not explain how this one report by RT sowed any chaos, or whether it had any effect at all on actual events.

Watts then moved to the main course of his testimony, focusing on how Trump employed Russian "active measures" to attack his opponents. Watts told the Senate panel that the Russian-backed news outlets RT and Sputnik had produced a false report on the U.S. airbase in Incirlik, Turkey being "overrun by terrorists." He presented the Russian stories as the anchor for a massive influence operation that featured swarms of Russian bots across social media. And he claimed that then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort invoked the incident to deflect from negative media coverage, suggesting that Trump was coordinating strategy with the Kremlin. In reality, it was Watts who was spreading the fake news.

In the articles cited by Watts during his testimony, neither RT nor Sputnik made any reference to "terrorists" taking over Incirlik Airbase. Rather, these outlets compiled tweets by Turkish activists and sourced their coverage to a report by Hurriyet, one of Turkey's largest mainstream papers. In fact, the incident was reported by virtually every major Turkish news organization ( here , here , here and here ). What's more, the events appeared to have taken place approximately as RT and Sputnik reported it, with protesters readying to protect the airbase from a coup while Turkish police sealed the base's entrances and exits. A look at RT's coverage shows the network even downplayed the severity of the event, citing a tweet by a U.S.-based national security analysis group stating, "We are not finding any evidence of a coup or takeover." This stands entirely at odds with Watts' claim that RT exaggerated the incident to spark chaos.

Watts has pushed his bogus narrative of RT and Sputnik's Incirlik coverage in numerous outlets, including Politico . Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen echoed Watts' false account on the Senate floor while arguing for legislation to force RT out of the U.S. market on political grounds. And Jim Rutenberg, the New York Times' media correspondent, reproduced Watts' distorted account in a major feature on RT and Sputnik's "new theory of war." Almost no one, not one major media organization or public figure, has bothered to fact check these false claims, and few have questioned the agenda behind them.

Questions emailed to Watts via his employers at FPRI received no reply.

Another Watts Deception, This Time Discredited in Court

During his Senate testimony, Watts introduced a second, and even more distorted claim of Trump employing Russian "active measures" to attack his political foes. The details of the story are complex and difficult for a passive audience to absorb, which is probably why Watts has been able to get away with pushing it for so long.

Watts' testimony was the culmination of a mainstream media deception that forced an aspiring reporter out of his job, drove him to contemplate suicide, and ultimately prompted him to take matters into his own hands by suing his antagonists.

The episode began during a Trump rally at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign, when Trump read out an email purportedly from longtime Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal (the father of this writer), hoping to embarrass Clinton over Benghazi. The text of the email turned out to be part of a column written by the pro-Clinton Newsweek columnist Kurt Eichenwald, not an email by Blumenthal.

The source of Trump's falsehood appeared to have been a report by Bill Moran, then a reporter for Sputnik, the news service funded by the Russian government. Having confused Eichenwald's writing for a Blumenthal email, Moran scrubbed his erroneous article within 20 minutes. Somehow, Moran's retracted article had found its way onto the Trump campaign's radar, a not atypical event for a campaign that had relied on material from far-out sites like Infowars to undercut its opponents.

In his column at Newsweek, Eichenwald framed Moran's honest mistake as the leading edge of a secret Russian influence operation. With help from pro-Clinton elements, Eichenwald's column went viral, earning him slots on CNN and MSNBC, where he howled about the nefarious Russian-Trump-Wikileaks plot he believed he had just exposed. (Glenn Greenwald was perhaps the only reporter with a national platform to highlight Eichenwald's falsifications .) Moran was fired as a result of the fallout, and would have to spend the next several months fighting to correct the record.

When Moran appealed to Eichenwald for a public clarification, Eichenwald staunchly refused. Instead, he offered Moran a job at the New Republic in exchange for his silence and warned him, "If you go public, you'll regret it." (Eichenwald had no role at the New Republic or any clear ability to influence the magazine's hiring decisions.) Moran refused to cooperate, prompting Eichenwald to publish a follow-up piece painting himself as the victim of a Russian "active measures" campaign, and to cast Moran once again as a foreign agent.

When Watts revived Eichenwald's bogus version of events in his Senate testimony, Moran began to spiral into the depths of depression. He even entertained thoughts of suicide. But he ultimately decided to fight, filing a lawsuit against Newsweek's parent company for defamation and libel.

Representing himself in court, Moran elicited a settlement from Newsweek that forced the magazine to scrub all of Eichenwald's articles about him -- a tacit admission that they were false from top to bottom. This meant that the most consequential claim Watts made before the Senate was also a whopping lie.

The day after Watts' deception-laden appearance, he was nevertheless transformed from an obscure national security into a cable news star, with invites from Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow, Meet the Press, and the liberal comedian Samantha Bee, among many others. His testimony received coverage from the gamut of major news outlets, and even earned him a fawning profile from CNN. From out of the blue, Watts had become the star witness of Russiagate, and one of corporate media's favorite pundits.

FPRI, a Pro-War Think Tank Founded by White Supremacist Eugenicists

Before he emerged in the spotlight of Russiagate, Watts languished at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, earning little name recognition outside the insular world of national security pundits. Based in Philadelphia, the FPRI has been described by journalist Mark Ames as "one of the looniest (and spookiest) extreme-right think tanks since the early Cold War days, promoting 'winnable' nuclear war, maximum confrontation with Russia, and attacking anti-colonialism as dangerously unworkable."

Daniel Pipes, the arch-Islamophobe pundit and former FPRI fellow, offered a similar characterization of the think tank, albeit from an alternately opposed angle. "Put most baldly, we have always advocated an activist U.S. foreign policy," Pipes said in a 1991 address to FPRI. He added that the think tank's staff "is not shy about the use of force; were we members of Congress in January 1991, all of us would not only have voted with President Bush and Operation Desert Storm, we would have led the charge."

FPRI was co-founded by Robert Strausz-Hupé, a far-right Austrian emigre, with help from conservative corporations and covert funding from the CIA From the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, Strausz-Hupé gathered a "Philadelphia School" of Cold War hardliners to develop a strategy for protracted war against the Soviet Union. His brain trust included FPRI co-founder Stefan Possony, an Austrian fascist who was a board member of the World Anti-Communist League, the international fascist organization described by journalists Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson as a network of "those responsible for death squads, apartheid, torture, and the extermination of European Jewry." True to his fascist roots, Possony co-authored a racialist tract, " The Geography of Intellect ," that argued that blacks were biologically inferior and that the people of the global South were "genetically unpromising." Strausz-Hupé seized on Possony's racialist theories to inveigh against anti-colonial movements led by "populations incapable of rational thought."

While clamoring for a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union -- and acknowledging that their preferred strategy would cause mass casualties in American cities -- Strausz-Hupé and his band of hawks developed a monomaniacal obsession with Russian propaganda. By the time of the Cuban missile crisis, they were stricken with paranoia, arguing on the pages of the New York Times that filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was a Soviet useful idiot whose film, Dr. Strangelove , advanced "the principal Communist objectives to drive a wedge between the American people and their military leaders."

Ultimately, Strausz-Hupé's fanaticism cost him an ambassadorship, as Sen. William Fulbright scuttled his appointment to serve in Morocco on the grounds that his "hard line, no compromise" approach to communism could shatter the delicate balance of diplomacy. Today, he is remembered fondly on FPRI's website as "an intellectual and intellectual impresario, administrator, statesman, and visionary." His militaristic legacy continues thanks to the prolific presence -- and bellicose politics -- of Watts.

The Paranoid Style

This year, FPRI dedicated its annual gala to honoring Watts' success in mainstreaming the narrative of Russian online meddling. Since I first transcribed a Soundcloud recording of Watts' keynote address, the file has been mysteriously scrubbed from the internet. It is unclear what prompted the removal, however, it is easy to understand why Watts would not want his comments examined by a critical listener. His speech offered a window into a paranoid mindset with a tendency for overblown, unverifiable claims about Russian influence.

While much of the speech was a rehash of Watts' Senate testimony, he spent an unusual amount of time describing the threat he believed Russian intelligence agents posed to his own security. "If you speak up too much, you'll get knocked down," Watts said, claiming that think tank fellows who had been too vocal about Russian meddling had seen their laptops "burned up by malware."

"If someone rises up in prominence, they will suddenly be -- whoof! -- swiped down out of nowhere by some crazy disclosure from their email," Watts added, referring to unspecified Russian retaliatory measures. As usual, he didn't produce concrete evidence or offer any examples.

"Anybody remember the reporters that were outed after the election? Or maybe they tossed up a question to the Clinton campaign and they were gone the next day?" he asked his audience. "That's how it goes."

It was unclear which reporters Watts was referring to, or what incident he could have possibly been alluding to. He offered no details, only innuendo about the state of siege Kremlin actors had supposedly imposed on him and his freedom-fighting colleagues. He even predicted he'd be "hacked and cyber attacked when this recording comes out."

According to Watts, Russian "active measures" had singlehandedly augmented Republican opinion in support of the Kremlin. "It is the greatest success in influence operations in the history of the world," Watts confidently proclaimed. He contrasted Russia's success with his own failures as an American agent of influence working for the U.S. military, a saga in his career that remains largely unexamined.

Domestic Agent of Influence

"I worked in influence operations in counter-terrorism for 15 years," Watts boasted to his audience at FPRI. "We didn't break one or two percent [increase in the approval rating of US foreign policy] in fifteen years and we spent billions a year in tax dollars doing it. I was paid off of those programs. We had almost no success throughout the Middle East."

By Watts' own admission, he had been part of a secret propaganda campaign aimed at manipulating the opinions of Middle Easterners in favor of the hostile American military operating in their midst. And he failed massively, wasting "billions a year in tax dollars."

Given his penchant for deception, this may have been yet another tall tale aimed at burnishing his image as an internet era James Bond. But if the story was even partially true, Watts had inadvertently exposed a severe scandal that, in a fairer world, might have triggered congressional hearings.

Whatever took place, it appears that Watts and his Cold Warrior colleagues are now waging another expensive influence operation, this time directed against the American public. By deploying deceptions, half-truths and hyperbole with the full consent of Congress and in collaboration with the mainstream press, they have managed to convince a majority of Americans that Russia is "trying to knock us down and take us over," as Watts remarked at the FPRI's gala.

In just a matter of months, public consent for an unprecedented array of hostile measures against Russia, from sanctions and consular raids to arbitrary crackdowns on Russian-backed news organizations, has been assiduously manufactured.

It was not until this summer, however, that the influence operation Watts helped establish reached critical capacity. He had approached one of Washington's most respected think tanks, the German Marshall Fund, and secured support for an initiative called the Alliance for Securing Democracy. The new initiative became responsible for a daily blacklist of subversive, "pro-Russian" media outlets, targeting them with the backing of a who's who of national security honchos, from Bill Kristol to former CIA director and ex-Hillary Clinton surrogate Michael Morrell, along with favorable promotion from some of the country's most respected news organizations.

In the next installment of this investigation, we will see how a collection of cranks, counter-terror retreads and online vigilantes overseen by the German Marshall Fund have waged a search-and-destroy mission against dissident media under the guise of combating Russian "active measures," and how the mainstream press has enabled their censorious agenda.

Read part two here .

Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning author of " Goliath ," " Republican Gomorrah ," and " The 51 Day War ." He is the co-host of the podcast, Moderate Rebels . Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal .

Related Articles

[Dec 09, 2017] The Mueller Investigation Is in Mortal Danger by Jonathan Chait

His alleged crime is a series of text messages criticizing Trump. Mueller removed Strzok from his team , but that is not enough for Trump's supporters, who are seizing on Strzok's role as a pretext to discredit and remove Mueller, too.
Notable quotes:
"... The newest pseudo-scandal fixates on the role of Peter Strzok, an FBI official who helped tweak the language Comey employed in his statement condemning Clinton's email carelessness and has also worked for Mueller. ..."
"... His alleged crime is a series of text messages criticizing Trump. Mueller removed Strzok from his team , but that is not enough for Trump's supporters, who are seizing on Strzok's role as a pretext to discredit and remove Mueller, too. ..."
"... When Mueller was appointed, legal scholars debated whether Trump had the technical authority to fire him, but even the majority who believed he did assumed such a power existed only in theory. Republicans in Congress, everyone believed, would never sit still for such a blatant cover-up ..."
"... In fact, the risk has swelled. Trump has publicly declared any investigation into his finances would constitute a red line, and that he reserves the option to fire Mueller if he investigates them. Earlier this month, it was reported that Mueller has subpoenaed records at Deutsche Bank , an institution favored both by Trump and the Russian spy network. ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
Dec 09, 2017 | nymag.com

The newest pseudo-scandal fixates on the role of Peter Strzok, an FBI official who helped tweak the language Comey employed in his statement condemning Clinton's email carelessness and has also worked for Mueller.

His alleged crime is a series of text messages criticizing Trump. Mueller removed Strzok from his team , but that is not enough for Trump's supporters, who are seizing on Strzok's role as a pretext to discredit and remove Mueller, too.

The notion that a law-enforcement official should be disqualified for privately expressing partisan views is a novel one, and certainly did not trouble Republicans last year, when Rudy Giuliani was boasting on television about his network of friendly agents. Yet in the conservative media, Mueller and Comey have assumed fiendish personae of almost Clintonian proportions.

When Mueller was appointed, legal scholars debated whether Trump had the technical authority to fire him, but even the majority who believed he did assumed such a power existed only in theory. Republicans in Congress, everyone believed, would never sit still for such a blatant cover-up .

Josh Blackman, a conservative lawyer, argued that Trump could remove the special counsel, but "make no mistake: Mueller's firing would likely accelerate the end of the Trump administration." Texas representative Mike McCaul declared in July, "If he fired Bob Mueller, I think you'd see a tremendous backlash, response from both Democrats but also House Republicans." Such a rash move "could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency," Senator Lindsey Graham proclaimed.

In August, members of both parties began drawing up legislation to prevent Trump from sacking Mueller. "The Mueller situation really gave rise to our thinking about how we can address the current situation," explained Republican senator Thom Tillis, a sponsor of one of the bills. By early autumn, the momentum behind the effort had slowed; by Thanksgiving, Republican interest had melted away. "I don't see any heightened kind of urgency, if you're talking about some of the reports around Flynn and others," Tillis said recently. "I don't see any great risk."

In fact, the risk has swelled. Trump has publicly declared any investigation into his finances would constitute a red line, and that he reserves the option to fire Mueller if he investigates them. Earlier this month, it was reported that Mueller has subpoenaed records at Deutsche Bank , an institution favored both by Trump and the Russian spy network.

John Dowd, a lawyer for Trump, recently floated the wildly expansive defense that a "president cannot obstruct justice, because he is the chief law-enforcement officer." Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett called the investigation "illegitimate and corrupt" and declared that "the FBI has become America's secret police." Graham is now calling for a special counsel to investigate "Clinton email scandal, Uranium One, role of Fusion GPS, and FBI and DOJ bias during 2016 campaign" -- i.e., every anti-Mueller conspiracy theory. And perhaps as ominously, Trump's allies have been surfacing fallback defenses. Yes, "some conspiratorial quid pro quo between somebody in the Trump campaign and somebody representing Vladimir Putin" is "possible," allowed Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins, but "we would be stupid not to understand that other countries have a stake in the outcome of our elections and, by omission or commission, try to advance their interests. This is reality." The notion of a criminal conspiracy by a hostile nation to intervene in the election in return for pliant foreign policy has gone from unthinkable to blasé, an offense only to naďve bourgeois morality.

It is almost a maxim of the Trump era that the bounds of the unthinkable continuously shrink. The capitulation to Moore was a dry run for the coming assault on the rule of law.

[Dec 09, 2017] The Year of the Headless [neo]Liberal Chicken by C.J. Hopkins

Notable quotes:
"... Fortunately, just in the nick of time, the ruling classes and their media mouthpieces rolled out the Russian Propaganda story. The Washington Post (whose owner's multimillion dollar deal with the CIA, of course, has absolutely no effect on the quality of its professional journalism) led the charge with this McCarthyite smear job , legitimizing the baseless allegations of some random website and a think tank staffed by charlatans like this "Russia expert," who appears not to speak a word of Russian or have any other "Russia expert" credentials, but is available both for television and Senate Intelligence Committee appearances. Numerous similar smear pieces followed. Liberals breathed a big sigh of relief that Hitler business had been getting kind of scary. How long can you go, after all, with Hitler stumbling around the White House before somebody has to go in there and shoot him? ..."
"... In any event, by January, the media were playing down the Hitler stuff and going balls-out on the "Russiagate" story. According to The Washington Post (which, let's remember, is a serious newspaper, as opposed to a propaganda organ of the so-called US "Intelligence Community"), not only had the Russians "hacked" the election, but they had hacked the Vermont power grid ! Editorialists at The New York Times were declaring that Trump " had been appointed by Putin ," and that the USA was now "at war" with Russia. This was also around the time when liberals first learned of the Trump-Russia Dossier , which detailed how Putin was blackmailing Trump with a video the FSB had shot of Trump and a bunch of Russian hookers peeing on a bed in a Moscow hotel in which Obama had allegedly slept. ..."
"... This nonsense was reported completely straight-faced, and thus liberals were forced to take it seriously. Imagine the cognitive dissonance they suffered. It was like that scene in 1984 when the Party abruptly switches enemies, and the war with Eurasia becomes the war with Eastasia. Suddenly, Trump wasn't Hitler anymore. Now he was a Russian sleeper agent who Putin had been blackmailing into destroying democracy with this incriminating "golden showers" video. ..."
"... C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org . ..."
Dec 09, 2017 | www.unz.com

First came the overwhelming shock of Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump, a repulsive, word salad-babbling buffoon with absolutely no political experience who the media had been portraying to liberals as the Second Coming of Adolf Hitler. This was a candidate, let's recall, who jabbered about building a "beautiful wall" to protect us from the hordes of "Mexican rapists" and other "bad hombres" who were invading America, and who had boasted about grabbing women "by the pussy" like a prepubescent 6th grade boy. While he had served as a perfect foil for Clinton, and had provided hours of entertainment in a comic book villain kind of way, the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency was inconceivable in the minds of liberals. So, when it happened, it was like the Martians had invaded.

Mass hysteria gripped the nation. There was beaucoup wailing and gnashing of teeth. Liberals began exhibiting irrational and, in some cases, rather disturbing behaviors. Many degenerated into dissociative states and just sat there with their phones for hours obsessively reloading the popular vote count, which Clinton had won, on FiveThirtyEight. Others festooned themselves with safety pins and went out looking for defenseless minorities who they could "demonstrate solidarity" with. Owen Jones flew in from London to join his colleague Steven Thrasher, who was organizing a guerilla force to resist " the normalization of Trump " and the global race war he was about to launch, which "not all of us were going to get out of alive."

In the weeks immediately following the election, the mainstream media inundated liberals with pronouncements of the advent of an " Age of Darkness " and the " Triumph of White Supremacy " over the beneficent values of Globalism. Yes, it was pretty much the end of everything . America was facing nothing less than a descent into " racial Orwellianism ," " Zionist anti-Semitism ," and " the bottomless pit of Fascism " itself. Liberals, who by then had dispensed with the safety pins, immediately set about terrorizing their children with visions of the impending holocaust , which would be carried out by the genocidal, racist monsters who had voted for Trump.

At that point, the media had been hammering hard on the Trump-is-Hitler narrative for months, so they had to stick with that for a while. It had only been a few weeks, after all, since The Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Guardian , and numerous other establishment publications , had explained how Trump was using special fascist code words like "global elites," "international banks," and "lobbyists" to signal his virulent hatred of the Jews to the millions of Americans who, according to the media, were secretly Hitler-loving fascists.

This initial post-election propaganda was understandably somewhat awkward, as the plan had been to be able to celebrate the "Triumph of Love over the Forces of Hate," and the demise of the latest Hitlerian bogeyman. But this was the risk the ruling classes took when they chose to go ahead and Hitlerize Trump, which they wouldn't have done if they'd thought for a moment that he had a chance of actually winning the election. That's the tricky thing about Hitlerizing people. You need to be able to kill them, eventually. If you don't, when they turn out not to be Hitler, your narrative kind of falls apart, and the people you've fear-mongered into a frenzy of frothing, self-righteous fake-Hitler-hatred end up feeling like a bunch of dupes who'll believe anything the government tells them. This is why, normally, you only Hitlerize foreign despots you can kill with impunity. This is Hitlerization 101 stuff, which the ruling classes ignored in this case, which the left poor liberals terrified that Trump was actually going to start building Trump-branded death camps and rounding up the Jews.

Fortunately, just in the nick of time, the ruling classes and their media mouthpieces rolled out the Russian Propaganda story. The Washington Post (whose owner's multimillion dollar deal with the CIA, of course, has absolutely no effect on the quality of its professional journalism) led the charge with this McCarthyite smear job , legitimizing the baseless allegations of some random website and a think tank staffed by charlatans like this "Russia expert," who appears not to speak a word of Russian or have any other "Russia expert" credentials, but is available both for television and Senate Intelligence Committee appearances. Numerous similar smear pieces followed. Liberals breathed a big sigh of relief that Hitler business had been getting kind of scary. How long can you go, after all, with Hitler stumbling around the White House before somebody has to go in there and shoot him?

In any event, by January, the media were playing down the Hitler stuff and going balls-out on the "Russiagate" story. According to The Washington Post (which, let's remember, is a serious newspaper, as opposed to a propaganda organ of the so-called US "Intelligence Community"), not only had the Russians "hacked" the election, but they had hacked the Vermont power grid ! Editorialists at The New York Times were declaring that Trump " had been appointed by Putin ," and that the USA was now "at war" with Russia. This was also around the time when liberals first learned of the Trump-Russia Dossier , which detailed how Putin was blackmailing Trump with a video the FSB had shot of Trump and a bunch of Russian hookers peeing on a bed in a Moscow hotel in which Obama had allegedly slept.

This nonsense was reported completely straight-faced, and thus liberals were forced to take it seriously. Imagine the cognitive dissonance they suffered. It was like that scene in 1984 when the Party abruptly switches enemies, and the war with Eurasia becomes the war with Eastasia. Suddenly, Trump wasn't Hitler anymore. Now he was a Russian sleeper agent who Putin had been blackmailing into destroying democracy with this incriminating "golden showers" video. Putin had presumably been "running" Trump since Trump's visit to Russia in 2013 to hobnob with "Russia-linked" Russian businessmen and attend the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. During the ensuing partying, Trump must have gotten loaded on Diet Coke and gotten carried away with those Russian hookers. Now, Putin had him by the short hairs and was forcing him to staff his Manchurian cabinet with corporate CEOs and Goldman Sachs guys, who probably had also been videotaped by the FSB in Moscow hotels paying hookers to pee on furniture, or performing whatever other type of seditious, perverted kink they were into.

Before the poor liberals had time to process this, the ruling classes launched "the Resistance." You remember the Pussyhat People , don't you? And the global corporate PR campaign which accompanied their historic "Womens' March" on Washington? Do you remember liberals like Michael Moore shrieking for the feds to arrest Donald Trump ? Or publications like The New York Times , Salon , and many others, and even State Satirist Stephen Colbert accusing Trump and anyone who supported him of treason a crime, let's recall, that is punishable by death? Do you remember folks like William Kristol and Rob "the Meathead" Reiner demanding that the "deep state" launch a coup against Trump to rescue America from the Russian infiltrators?

Ironically, the roll-out of this "Russiagate" hysteria was so successful that it peaked too soon, and prematurely backlashed all over itself. By March, when Trump had not been arrested, nor otherwise removed from office, liberals, who by that time the corporate media had teased into an incoherent, throbbing state of anticipation were well, rather disappointed. By April, they were exhibiting all the hallmark symptoms of clinical psychosis. This mental breakdown was due to the fact that the media pundits and government spooks who had been telling them that Trump was Hitler, and then a Russian sleeper agent, were now telling them that he wasn't so bad , because he'd pointlessly bombed a Syrian airstrip, and dropped a $314 million Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb on some alleged "terrorist caves" in Afghanistan.

As if liberals' poor brains weren't rattled enough, the corporate media then switched back to, first, the Russian Propaganda narrative (which they expanded into a global threat), then, the Hitler stuff again, but this time Trump wasn't actually Hitler, because Putin was Hitler, or at least he was fomenting Hitlerism throughout the West with his legions of fascist hacker bots who were "influencing" unsuspecting consumers with their blitzkrieg of divisive "fake news" stories. Oh, yeah, and now Putin had also done Brexit , or Trump and Robert Mercer had, but they were working for Putin, who had also hacked the French election that he hadn't hacked , or whatever this was no time to worry about what had or hadn't actually happened. The peace and prosperity President Obama had reestablished throughout the West by incessantly bombing the Greater Middle East and bailing out his pals at the Wall Street banks was being torn asunder by Vladimir Putin, who at some point had apparently metamorphosized from a ruthless, former KGB autocrat into a white supremacist megalomaniac.

Right on cue, on the weekend of August 11-12 in Charlottesville, Virginia, where there had never been any history of racism , a "national gathering" of approximately five hundred tiki torch-bearing neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan types, and other white supremacists, many of them barking Nazi slogans, marched into the pages of history. Never before have so few fascists owed so much to the mainstream media, which showered them with overwrought coverage, triggering a national Nazi panic. Liberals poured into the streets, tearing down Confederate monuments, and otherwise signaling their total intolerance of the racism they had tolerated until a few days earlier. People named after Robert E. Lee , and horses named after General Lee's horse , went into hiding to until the panic subsided. This was wise, as by then the so-called anti-fascists were showing up in force at anything resembling a right-wing rally and stomping the living Hitler out of Nazis, and Trump supporters, and journalists, and well, anyone they didn't think looked quite right. This totally preemptively self-defensive, non-violent type of violent behavior, naturally, shocked and horrified liberals, who are strongly opposed to all forms of violence that aren't carried out by the US military, or the police, or someone else wearing a uniform. Unsure as to whom they were supposed to condemn, the Nazis or the Antifa terrorists, they turned for guidance to the corporate ruling classes, who informed them it was time to censor the Internet .

This made about as much sense as any of the other nonsense they'd been spoonfed so far, so liberals decided to get behind it, or at least look the other way while it happened. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter (and all the other corporations that control the Internet, the media, Hollywood, the publishing industry, and every other means of representing "reality") surely have people's best interests at heart. Plus, they're only censoring the Nazis, and the terrorists, and the Russian "fake news" disseminators, and, OK, a lot of leftist publications, and award-winning journalists , and anyone else espousing "divisive," anti-American, or anti-corporate, "extremist" views.

Look, I know what you're probably thinking, but it isn't like liberals don't actually care about fundamental liberal values like freedom of the press and speech and all that. It's just that they desperately need the Democrats to take back the House and the Senate next year, so they can get on with impeaching Trump, and if they have to stand by while the corporations suppress a little leftist dissent, or, you know, transform the entire Internet into a massive, mind-numbing echo chamber of neo-McCarthyite corporate conformity well, sacrifices have to be made.

This can't go on forever, after all. This level of full-blown mass hysteria can only be sustained for so long. It's all fine and good to be able to whip people up into a frenzied mob, but at some point you need to have an endgame. The neoliberal ruling classes know this. Their endgame is actually fairly simple. Their plan is to (a) make an example of Trump to discourage any future billionaire idiots from screwing with their simulation of democracy, and (b) demonize anyone deviating from neoliberal ideology as a fascist, racist, or anti-Semite, or otherwise "abnormal" or "extremist." Their plan is not to incinerate the entire planet in a war with Russia. We're not on the brink of World War III, despite how many Twitter likes or Facebook shares it might get me to say that. Yes, eventually, they want to force Russia to return to the kind of "cooperation" it engaged in during the 1990s, when it was run by an incorrigible drunkard and the Goldman Sachs boys and their oligarch pals were looting the country for all it was worth but that has little to do with all this.

No, the corporate ruling classes' endgame here is to reestablish neoliberal "normality," so we can get back to the War on Terror (or whatever they'll be calling it by then), and put this neo-nationalist revolt against neoliberalism episode behind us. To do that, they will need to install some sort of hopey-changey, Obama-like messiah, or at least somebody who can play the part of POTUS like a normal person and not sit around the Oval Office gobbling McDonald's and retweeting racist memes by random British fascists.

The way things are going, that might take a while, but rest assured they'll get there eventually. Now that Robert Mueller has proved that Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin by obstructing an investigation by Comey into Michael Flynn's lying to the FBI about not colluding with the Russian ambassador on behalf of Israel at Kushner's behest, the dominoes are surely about to fall. Once they all have, and Donald Trump's head has been mounted on a spike on the White House lawn as a warning to any other potential usurpers, all this Russia and Nazi hysteria that has the poor liberals running around like headless chickens will disappear. Russia will go back to being Russia. The North American Nazi Menace, deprived of daily media coverage, will go back to being a fringe phenomenon. Liberals will go back to ignoring politics (except identity politics, naturally) and obediently serving the global capitalist ruling elites that are destroying the planet, and the lives of millions of human beings, in order to increase their profit margins. Sure, there'll be a brief emotional hangover, once the adrenaline rush wears off and they look back at their tweets and Facebook posts, which in hindsight might convey the impression that they spent the better part of a year parroting whatever insane propaganda the corporate media pumped out at them, and otherwise behaving like Good Americans but then, that's what the "delete" key is for.

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .

anonymous , Disclaimer December 9, 2017 at 8:51 am GMT

"The way things are going, that might take a while, but rest assured they'll get there eventually. Now that Robert Mueller has proved that Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin by obstructing an investigation by Comey into Michael Flynn's lying to the FBI about not colluding with the Russian ambassador on behalf of Israel at Kushner's behest, the dominoes are surely about to fall."

Thanks, now I understand where Judge Napolitano is coming from.

[Dec 08, 2017] Did the FBI, CIA and NSA conspired to destroy Donald Trump?

Notable quotes:
"... You are correct that there is no public source yet confirming the FBI paid Steele. However, the FBI's refusal to turn over relevant documents regarding their relationship with Steele tells me there was money paid. What is indisputable is that th information in the dossier was used as a predicate to seek permission from a FISA court to go after Trump and his team. That is outrageous. ..."
"... This is increasingly my take as well -- the FBI, CIA and NSA do seem to have "conspired" to destroy Donald Trump. I finger Brennan, Clapper, Susan Rice, Benjamin Rhodes, and maybe Samantha Power as being involved in the flood of illegal leaks earlier in the year that did so much to pave the way for Mueller's appointment. ..."
Dec 08, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Publius Tacitus -> sbjonez... , 06 December 2017 at 10:35 AM

You are correct that there is no public source yet confirming the FBI paid Steele. However, the FBI's refusal to turn over relevant documents regarding their relationship with Steele tells me there was money paid. What is indisputable is that th information in the dossier was used as a predicate to seek permission from a FISA court to go after Trump and his team. That is outrageous.

Sylvia 1 , 06 December 2017 at 12:48 PM

This is increasingly my take as well -- the FBI, CIA and NSA do seem to have "conspired" to destroy Donald Trump. I finger Brennan, Clapper, Susan Rice, Benjamin Rhodes, and maybe Samantha Power as being involved in the flood of illegal leaks earlier in the year that did so much to pave the way for Mueller's appointment.

What I fail to understand is why Democrats are sitting back and cheering as these agencies work together to destroy a duly elected President of the USA. Does anyone really believe that if these agencies get away with it this time they will stop with Trump?
All these agencies are out of control and are completely unaccountable.

blue peacock , 07 December 2017 at 12:18 AM
Publius Tacitus
The real story is that the FBI, the NSA and the CIA effectively conspired to try to destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump.

How can this conspiracy be investigated? Who could do it? Clearly not anyone from the DoJ, FBI, CIA and NSA as they are fully compromised.

[Dec 08, 2017] What is your take on this fellow Peter P. Strzok II. There is not much information out there on a person who seems to be pretty influential in DC / FBI / Foreign Intel circles.

Notable quotes:
"... What is your take on this fellow Peter P. Strzok II? His back history is purportedly Georgetown, Army Intelligence (his father PP Strzok I is Army Corp of Engineers), and was until recently deputy director of counterintelligence at FBI with focus on Russia and China. ..."
"... He is the fellow who altered Comey's draft to read "extremely careless" instead of "grossly negligent", he interviewed HRC, Mills, Abedin (and gave the latter two immunity); he pushed for the continued payment of Steele in the amount of $50,000 for further Dossier research in the face of some resistance (cf James Rosen); ..."
"... he also interviewed Flynn, and for most of the first half of 2017 and for all of 2016 appears to have been the most important and influential agent working on the HRC-Trump-Russia nexus. James Rosen suggests he has CIA connections as well. ..."
"... He certainly would have had CIA connections if he was involved in CI activities targeting Russian and China. ..."
Dec 08, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

WJ , 05 December 2017 at 08:16 PM

Sir,

What is your take on this fellow Peter P. Strzok II? His back history is purportedly Georgetown, Army Intelligence (his father PP Strzok I is Army Corp of Engineers), and was until recently deputy director of counterintelligence at FBI with focus on Russia and China.

He is the fellow who altered Comey's draft to read "extremely careless" instead of "grossly negligent", he interviewed HRC, Mills, Abedin (and gave the latter two immunity); he pushed for the continued payment of Steele in the amount of $50,000 for further Dossier research in the face of some resistance (cf James Rosen);

he also interviewed Flynn, and for most of the first half of 2017 and for all of 2016 appears to have been the most important and influential agent working on the HRC-Trump-Russia nexus. James Rosen suggests he has CIA connections as well.

The dude has also no internet presence. There is not much information out there on a person who seems to be pretty influential in DC / FBI / Foreign Intel circles.

He screwed up, and a lawyer, sent texts, and now is gone. Does he strike you as fishy at all, or is this kind of stuff pretty common for people in his field and position.

turcopolier , 05 December 2017 at 09:36 PM
WJ

I know nothing of him other than what is in the press but his partisan interference in investigations appears to be a blot on the honor of the FBI but then I am old fashioned. pl

fanto said in reply to WJ... , 05 December 2017 at 10:51 PM
WJ,
I first learned about this man from a comment of David Habakkuk (in an earlier post) and was curious to learn more about him. As you point out, ´internet is not your friend´ in his case. Your comment gives so far the most information about his doings. Thank you. According to David Habakkuk that surname is polish, but it possibly be other slavic origin as well ( possibly Jidish ?)
The Twisted Genius -> WJ... , 05 December 2017 at 11:27 PM
WJ,

Given Strzok's career, I wouldn't expect to find much, if anything, about him on the internet. If he spent his career working "in the shadows," he rightly would have stayed off the internet. He certainly would have had CIA connections if he was involved in CI activities targeting Russian and China. Anyone actively working in a classified environment would be grossly negligent to allow himself to be plastered all over the internet. Why do you think I still use a light cover of TTG just to post here years after retiring? It's just force of habit.

I was glad to hear that Mueller banished him to HR as soon as his anti-Trump emails were discovered. If he stayed, he would have cast an ugly shadow over the Mueller investigation. It's much like the partisan shadow extending over much of the NY FBI office. Their pro-Trump/anti-Clinton stance was notorious. I also think the FBI should review the entire Clinton email server file in light of this.

rjj said in reply to The Twisted Genius ... , 06 December 2017 at 12:20 PM
Don't know how bureaucracies work in DC. Remembering how placement in HR was a goal for activists. HR is obscure and unglamorous - how is it banishment for someone with an agenda who works in the shadows?

[Dec 08, 2017] Mueller Charges Against Flynn Exonerate Trump of Russian Collusion by Publius Tacitus

Notable quotes:
"... False Statements Regarding FLYNN's Request to the Russian Ambassador that Russia Refrain from Escalating the Situation in Response to U.S. Sanctions against Russia ..."
Dec 08, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

The news of Mike Flynn's plea agreement with special prosecutor Robert Mueller was trumpeted on the media as if Flynn had admitted to killing Kennedy or had unprotected sex with Vladimir Putin. But once I took time to read the actual agreement I realized, not surprisingly, the the media lynch mob was blinded by hatred and unwilling to think objectively or fairly about the matter. The evidence exonerates Donald Trump of having colluded with the Russians but does expose Michael Flynn as a man of terrible judgment when it comes to talking to the FBI. There was nothing that Flynn did with the Russians that was wrong or improper.

Here are the key details for you to judge for yourself:

STATEMENT OF THE OFFENSE ( link )

Pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11, the United States of America and the defendant, MICHAEL T. FLYNN, stipulate and agree that the following facts are true and accurate. These facts do not constitute all of the facts known to the parties concerning the charged offense; they are being submitted to demonstrate that sufficient facts exist that the defendant committed the offense to which he is pleading guilty.

1. The defendant, MICHAEL T. FLYNN, who served as a surrogate and national security advisor for the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump ("Campaign"), as a senior member of President-Elect Trump's Transition Team ("Presidential Transition Team"), and as the National Security Advisor to President Trump, made materially false statements and omissions during an interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") on January 24, 2017, in Washington, D.C. At the time of the interview, the FBI had an open investigation into the Government of Russia's ("Russia") efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, including the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Campaign and Russia, and whether there was any coordination between the Campaign and Russia's efforts.

2. FLYNN's false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact on the FBI's ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Campaign and Russia's efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

False Statements Regarding FLYNN's Request to the Russian Ambassador that Russia Refrain from Escalating the Situation in Response to U.S. Sanctions against Russia

[Dec 08, 2017] AMERICA-HYSTERICA

Notable quotes:
"... Pentagon "weaponised information" years ago: " Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media ".) ..."
"... The collapse of the Fusion GPS operation will unravel the whole construction. And it's coming . ( And don't forget Awan .) All this because the Dems fixed their nomination and then lost anyway. ..."
Dec 08, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

AMERICA-HYSTERICA I. It's not working. 52% believe it's better to have Russia on "our side" than not ; 76% of Republicans and 51% of independents agree but only 29% of Democrats. (I presume Dems find it easier to believe that Trump won because Putindunnit than that he beat their candidate fair and square). It's not working in Europe either: another poll show large majorities in Germany, Poland, France and UK would like better relations with Russia . But the effluent is still pumped out: " weaponised information ". (As a readers' guide to this sort of thing, you won't go wrong assuming that whatever US/NATO accuse Russia of doing, they are actually doing. For example, the Pentagon "weaponised information" years ago: " Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media ".)

AMERICA-HYSTERICA II. " FBI and Justice Department officials have told congressional investigators in recent days that they have not been able to verify or corroborate the substantive allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign outlined in the Trump dossier. " The collapse of the Fusion GPS operation will unravel the whole construction. And it's coming . ( And don't forget Awan .) All this because the Dems fixed their nomination and then lost anyway.

[Dec 08, 2017] Flynn's Sin Was Lying To Liars, Not Colluding With Russians by Ilana Mercer

Notable quotes:
"... An easy way for the government to create criminality where there is none is to make it a crime to lie to its agents, in this case the FBI, which is Deep State Central. The object of creating bogus categories of crime, naturally, is to leverage power over adversaries; to scare them. ..."
"... This kind of entrapment -- the criminalization of the act of lying to the government, in Flynn's case about a non-crime -- is facilitated under the unconstitutional Section 1001 of Title 18, in the United States Code. It makes it an offense to make " a materially false " statement to a federal official -- even when one is not under oath. ..."
"... He said, she said, he lied, she lied, dog barked, and cat miavd. Unless they prove that there was a money transfer from Russia or from Trump camp to Wiki leaks, all investigation is only waste of time, and waste of money. Actually this investigation is a crime against US Government, because it impedes the normal functioning of US government ..."
"... A weird country, the USA. Do not know of any other country that has a law against contacts with a specified other country, a law making it impossible to interfere with price settinng in the pharmaceutical industry, and a law permitting an invasion of the Netherlands, in case a USA citizen is held in The Hague for trial by the International Court, to liberate the accused. ..."
"... Flynn's sin was to think he could engage in ME diplomacy for Israel and not get caught. When he did, he got tossed under the bus so that the corrupt and savage MSM could keep screaming Russiagate while forgetting to mention that this affair is now IsraeliGate. ..."
"... That the FBI is a rogue Deep State entity and Michael Flynn is a self-aggrandizing Beltway war-monger (i.e., not decent) are not disjoint. ..."
"... Flynn only wanted to make nice with Russia as a process tactic for fueling more war in the Middle East, paid for of course by American taxpayers. Whether the FBI or the cabal of war-monger militarists whispering in Trump's ear – there are no "good guys". ..."
Dec 08, 2017 | www.unz.com

Retired US Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn's sin was lying to liars , not colluding with Russians.

When he spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, following Donald Trump's 2016 election, former National Security Advisor Flynn was discharging a perfectly legal and patriotic duty to the electorate.

In a fit of pique, then-President Barack Obama had expelled Russian diplomats from the United States. K. T. McFarland, Flynn's deputy in the Trump transition team, worried that Obama's expulsion of the diplomats was aimed at " boxing Trump in diplomatically, " making it impossible for the president to "improve relations with Russia," a promise he ran on. For her perspicacity, McFarland has since been forced to lawyer-up in fear for her freedom.

To defuse President Obama's spiteful maneuver, Flynn spoke to Ambassador Kislyak, the upshot of which was that Russia "retaliated" by inviting US diplomats and their families to the Kremlin for a New Year's bash.

A jolly good diplomatic success, wouldn't you say?

Present at the Kislyak meeting was Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law. Kushner likely instructed Flynn to ask Russia to disrupt or delay one of the UN Security Council's favorite pastimes: passing resolutions denouncing Israeli settlements. Kushner, however, is protected by Daddy and the First Daughter, so getting anything on Jared will be like frisking a seal.

One clue as to the extent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's violations, here, is that Flynn had committed no crime. Laying the cornerstone for the president-elect's promised foreign policy -- diplomacy with Russia -- is not illegal.

Perversely, however, lying to the US Federal Government's KGB (the FBI), a liar in its own right, is illegal.

The US Government enjoys a territorial monopoly over justice. If you doubt this, pray tell to which higher judicial authority can Flynn appeal to have his state-designated "criminal" label reconsidered or rescinded? Where can he go to recover his standing?

Nowhere.

By legislative fiat, the government has turned this decent man and many like him into common criminals.

An easy way for the government to create criminality where there is none is to make it a crime to lie to its agents, in this case the FBI, which is Deep State Central. The object of creating bogus categories of crime, naturally, is to leverage power over adversaries; to scare them.

Likewise was Martha Stewart imprisoned -- not for the offense of insider trading, but for lying to her inquisitors. During interrogation, the poor woman had been so intimidated, so scared of conviction -- wouldn't you? -- that she fibbed. The lead federal prosecutor in her case was the now-notorious James B. Comey. (See "Insider Trading Or Information Socialism?" )

This kind of entrapment -- the criminalization of the act of lying to the government, in Flynn's case about a non-crime -- is facilitated under the unconstitutional Section 1001 of Title 18, in the United States Code. It makes it an offense to make " a materially false " statement to a federal official -- even when one is not under oath.

It's perfectly fine, however, for said official to bait and bully a private citizen into fibbing. By such tactics, The State has created a category of crime from which a select few are exempt.

Is this equality under the law or inequality under the law?

Section 1001 neatly accommodates a plethora of due-process violations.

Yet another tool in the Deep State toolbox is to lean on family members in order to extract a confession. To get Flynn senior to confess, U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is purported to have threatened Mike Flynn junior with a legal kneecapping.

Ultimately, The State has overwhelming power when compared to the limited resources and power of an accused. The power differential between The State and an accused means he or she, as the compromised party, will cop a plea. The Flynn guilty plea bargain, if you will, is nothing more than a negotiated deal which subverts the very goal of justice: the search for truth.

In the process of hammering out an agreement that pacified a bloodthirsty prosecutor, Flynn's punishment for doing nothing wrong has been reduced. President Trump's former national security adviser will still have to sell his home to defray the costs of a federal onslaught. Is this the rule of law, or the law of rule? The question is a rhetorical one.

Ilyana_Rozumova , December 8, 2017 at 1:13 am GMT

He said, she said, he lied, she lied, dog barked, and cat miavd. Unless they prove that there was a money transfer from Russia or from Trump camp to Wiki leaks, all investigation is only waste of time, and waste of money. Actually this investigation is a crime against US Government, because it impedes the normal functioning of US government.
exiled off mainstreet , December 8, 2017 at 1:26 am GMT
I fully concur with the commentary. Once the Martha Stewart case went forward and this "law" was not challenged, my view, at that time and since, was that the yankee imperium had entered the post-rule of law era. This is amply shown by the use this "law" has been put to. In the end, it was creeping extra-legal fascism that destroyed the rule of law in the US, not creeping socialism as was feared by certain elements in the '60s. The existence and enforcement of this provision is an affront to basic decency and the rule of law, and the legitimacy of any state which upholds such an extra-legal provision is non-existent.
geokat62 , December 8, 2017 at 5:31 am GMT

Flynn's Sin Was Lying to Liars, Not Colluding with Russians

Why not write an article with the title, Kushner's Sin Was Colluding with Israelis, Not Lying to Liars ?

neutral , December 8, 2017 at 8:08 am GMT
@Ilyana_Rozumova

Unless they prove that there was a money transfer from Russia or from Trump camp to Wiki leaks

Even if this is the case, why should this be a big deal? It's hardly a secret that US politicians take bribes, ahem I meant political donations, from Israel, Saudi Arabia, China and probably many others. Before one takes this farce of selectively law enforcement seriously there needs to be a massive cleanup of root and branch of the entire US regime before any of this can be seen as legitimate.

Mark James , December 8, 2017 at 8:47 am GMT
Was this Ilana's piece? I could have sworn I was reading Alan Dershowitz. Which is not a good thing. Many observers feel Zionist Alan has gone round-the-bend in his analysis.

Anyone feeling sorry for the wayward General is wasting their psychic energy. First he's got exposure in several areas. Second, it's likely he made a great deal with Mueller. Third, he'll probably get a pardon soon (he's a great guy you know).

So the nonsense falls on deaf ears. Flynn didn't have to lie. He did it for a specific reason which we don't know yet. And he didn't have to deal. He could have depended on Trump whilst not rating-out his colleagues (like Manafort). Flynn as his lawyer made clear , "has a story to tell" because he's guilty.

So when Flynn was texting during Trump's inaugural address he was probably just tying up lose ends in various deals, all of which were legit (sure)? Like a potential kidnapping for his client Turkey? Maybe the FBI was complicit in compelling him to do that too. We shall see?

jilles dykstra , December 8, 2017 at 8:48 am GMT
A weird country, the USA. Do not know of any other country that has a law against contacts with a specified other country, a law making it impossible to interfere with price settinng in the pharmaceutical industry, and a law permitting an invasion of the Netherlands, in case a USA citizen is held in The Hague for trial by the International Court, to liberate the accused.
Greg Bacon , Website December 8, 2017 at 10:20 am GMT
Flynn's sin was to think he could engage in ME diplomacy for Israel and not get caught. When he did, he got tossed under the bus so that the corrupt and savage MSM could keep screaming Russiagate while forgetting to mention that this affair is now IsraeliGate.

Flynn broke no laws establishing relations with Russia for the incoming president. But when he started lobbying UN members on behalf of Israel, that's when he crossed the legal line.

He's lucky he only got charged with lying.

But this is how politics play out in the former USA, which is nothing more than a colony of Apartheid Israel, doing the bidding of our Israeli Masters, whether it be fighting endless wars so that Israel can steal more land and water or continually helping Israel commit crimes against humanity in Palestine.

Next stop, Tehran.

Wizard of Oz , December 8, 2017 at 11:14 am GMT
I am no fan of American criminal law or its enforcement. They hardly seem to be the kind of adjunct to the "demovracy" the US seeks to export that it will find helpful in the sales pitch. However I am amazed that sophisticated people questioned by the FBI don't use an equivalent to the Fifth Amendment by saying "I don't intend to lie to you but refuse to answer any of your questions unless I am immune to prosecution under Section 1001 of Title 18 [maybe adding 'except for denying an act which is itself a crime that I have been told is being investigated']".

By the way is it entirely clear that the Logan Act didn't make what Flynn was doing criminal, ridiculous though that would be?

Che Guava , December 8, 2017 at 1:47 pm GMT
Ilana,

I agree with much else you are saying here (though from memory, Martha Stewart's behaviour was clearly white-collar criminal, on top of the lie, unlike Flynn's stupid and inoccuous lie or simple misinterpretation).

ask Russia to disrupt or delay one of the UN Security Council's favorite pastimes: passing resolutions denouncing Israeli settlements.

That is wrong on so many levels.

i. Your bare-faced lie of saying 'Security Council' instead of 'General Assembly', when you are knowing very well that the U.S.A. is *always* vetoing anything critical of Israel in the SC, sole exception being when former Pres. Hopey-Changey Hussein was ordering an abstention on one late in his second term. One of his very few good acts as Pres.

ii. The implicit assumption that Israeli settlements are a good thing. I am sure that you would enjoying it if you were to live somewhere where maniacal strangers who hate you were trying to occupying all high positions, wandering about with automatic and semi-automatic rifles, destroying or seizing your neighbour's (and your) houses, destroying olive groves, and monopolising the water supply, etc.

Palestine used to have a proportionally large Christian population. In the early stages of their departure, Israeli jews were the main driver.

Disingenuous or what?

iii. Why should the main emphasis of any contact with Russia be illegal (under international law) jewish settlements! You cannot even say Israeli, because it is outside the borders of Israel.

SteveM , December 8, 2017 at 2:13 pm GMT

By legislative fiat, the government has turned this decent man [Flynn] and many like him into common criminals.

Daniel Larison of The American Spectator outlined Michael Flynn's "warped worldview" back in 2016:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/flynns-warped-worldview/

That the FBI is a rogue Deep State entity and Michael Flynn is a self-aggrandizing Beltway war-monger (i.e., not decent) are not disjoint.

Flynn only wanted to make nice with Russia as a process tactic for fueling more war in the Middle East, paid for of course by American taxpayers. Whether the FBI or the cabal of war-monger militarists whispering in Trump's ear – there are no "good guys".

Michael Kenny , December 8, 2017 at 2:20 pm GMT
The frantic tone of the article shows just how much damage Flynn's testimony has done to Trump. What Flynn tells us is that the initiative to contact the Russians came from Trump, not the Russians. That's absolutely damning for Trump. The evidence previously available suggested that the initiative had come from the Russians, pointing towards the possibility that the rather naive Trump team had been more or les set up by the Russians. Now we know that Trump solicited Russian intervention, which tends to prove that he is indeed Putin's stooge or, even worse, the stooge of the gangsters behind Putin. That may well be the deep, dark secret that Trump was afraid Putin would tell. The onus is now on Trump to prove that he isn't an agent of a foreign power and the only way he can do that is to get Putin out of Ukraine.
jacques sheete , December 8, 2017 at 2:56 pm GMT
@jilles dykstra

A weird country, the USA.

It's actually beyond weird; it's absolutely mind boggling. Utterly twisted. Everything of value has been twisted and perverted beyond anyone's imagination. One huge plastic garbage dump.

It's a huge corrupt cesspool, yet most people here see nothing but El Dorado and think it's the Savior of the World all rolled into one.

Trump as prez narrowly beating Hillary in a scam democracy-esque "election" and congress bowing and scraping to Netanyahu pretty much sums it all up perfectly.

The place is as full of morons as ignorant as they are arrogant, just like the goofy looking, sounding and acting clowns who rule them. It's utterly beyond redemption.

On another note, can you comment on and/or suggest some good sources for studying the bankers of Amsterdam of the 16th and 17th centuries, including the Dutch West India Co??

Thanks in advance.

jacques sheete , December 8, 2017 at 3:15 pm GMT
@Greg Bacon

But this is how politics play out in the former USA, which is nothing more than a colony of Apartheid Israel, doing the bidding of our Israeli Masters, whether it be fighting endless wars so that Israel can steal more land and water or continually helping Israel commit crimes against humanity in Palestine.

Yup. A nation of Zio-bankster cucks and that includes the vast majority of Jews as well as goyim.

Many warned us of it when they opposed the Federal Reserve and when the Zio-Bolshie banksters suckered the US into WW 1 & 2 on their behalf, but we never even know their names today, and we have next to nobody telling the truth today.

continually helping Israel commit crimes against humanity in Palestine.

And elsewhere. Wherever the banksters demand control, which is nearly everywhere.

Those damned cagaderos have turned the whole planet into one big one!!

jilles dykstra , December 8, 2017 at 3:20 pm GMT
@Michael Kenny

What is the problem of having contacts with Russia ? As to the Ukraine, USA, EU and NATO should leave there. We in Europe do not want the war NATO, USA and EU are seeking. We want normal relations with the country we had a lot of trade with, much of which has disappeared because of sanctions, made possible by the deaths of over 300 passengers aboard MH17.

My country, the Netherlands, objected most to sanctions, we exported a lot to Russia, on the day after the disaster objections had vanished. So it was very lucky for those who wanted to impose sanctions that a plane from Schiphol Amsterdam was hit. Despite that Russia just has disadvantages of the disaster, and the west advantages, the continuing investigation, that will never end, Peyton Place, does anything possible to continue stating vague accusations against Putin.

Suspect Ukraine has been permitted to take part in the investigations.

Ben Frank , December 8, 2017 at 3:24 pm GMT
Are we being asked to believe that China, with ten times Russia's economic strength, never tries to influence American politics?
Joe Hide , December 8, 2017 at 3:45 pm GMT
To Mercer,
Great great article. You've created a description of events that is so absorbing and brings up such deep anger in the reader towards the increasingly exposed psychopathic and psychotic, that we are collectively inspired to end the influence of these creeps. Thank You!
Anonymous , Disclaimer December 8, 2017 at 3:58 pm GMT
Flynn is DIA. He's an actor in this psyop. It's not the crime that counts, it's making a crime understandable by the audience.

Consider that Petraeus fornicated with one of his gun runners. Oh the crime! The US Treasury is an open vault to these elite assassins – there's no law here, but that's not a problem as far as the public will ever know. Neither is the carnage, which is all carefully hidden from view. Deliberately destroying civilian populations is never made obvious.

Occassionally, the FBI and the press will shame one of the royals in a carefully crafted stage production (or tennis match) as competition naturally heats up amongst members of the owner-ruler class. Press mockingbirds will disagree back and forth with one another only adding necessary fuel to the drama.

The "crime" is usually an overwrought, completely specious claim of dishonesty and sometimes a bedroom indiscretion to titillate American prurience. Taken very seriously by at least part of the press, but ridiculed by another. The leading figure nevertheless emerges tarnished. The CIA's Andrea Mitchell will shed a tear on NBC (as she did for hero mass murderer Petraeus). This is an instruction for a simple minded population, including any number of rote evangelicals.

Now Flynn's resume includes a prominent role in the post 9/11 war of terror. An environment that doesn't have anything to do with the American sheep's warped delusions of what the law even means. However, enourmous efforts are always made to indemnify criminal violence through legal mechanism.

The guilded cage for American mafia member Flynn meant he killed as many people as possible in the two major strategic theaters, started his own privateering operation once some of the shooting quieted down, looted and cashed in as a international contractor into imaginable wealth and is now playin himself in his own wrist slappin' psyop.

What's next is predictable. Go on to Wall Street to join an investment firm, accept academic honors, visiting professorships, write a book and maybe even join a "peace" movement to reduce violence – writing an op-ed for Tom's Dispatch. God speed Ó Floinn!

Anonymous , Disclaimer December 8, 2017 at 4:38 pm GMT
@jacques sheete

This doesn't impede the normal function of Government, whatever the fuck that is. Bread and circuses are what the Government delivers daily in darkness. Look at it this way, this investigation is a new product off the assembly line. It's not production in a simple sense, but the externalities are large enough that crisis and drama are a tenuous key to economic growth.

Think of the noise as a large ignot being forged in a factory filed with fire and noise. The end product is probably something you don't really need, so the need is created. It's Friday, let's see what the press sluice gate intends to drown your mind with next. Here we all are – tapping away at our keyboards and iphones in a factory with no pay. You could say we're volunteers for the Government, something it needs to function normally.

[Dec 08, 2017] Mike Flynn s Guilty Plea Gave Robert Mueller Some Badly-Needed Cover

Via Wilkipedia, coup deata is an "illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive."[1] ... In looser usage, as in "intelligence coup" or "boardroom coup", the term simply refers to gaining a sudden advantage on a rival.
Notable quotes:
"... Well, what if, instead of Flynn providing damning information against another member of Trump's inner circle, or against the president himself, Mueller's prosecution of Flynn is an insurance policy protecting him and his team from being dismissed by Trump? To wit, Bloomberg speculates that Flynn's guilty plea might just be the fodder the special counsel needed to protect his team from dismissal by the president. Given that calls for Trump to fire the hopelessly compromised special prosecutor have persisted since last spring, there's more than enough reason to believe that Flynn's prosecution is an end in itself. ..."
"... Equally as important, Flynn's prosecution, following so soon after the charges against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, also suggests that his investigation is making "progress" – though the logical end point of his crusade remains murky. ..."
"... "Any rational prosecutor would realize that in this political environment, laying down a few markers would be a good way of fending off criticism that the prosecutors are burning through money and not accomplishing anything," says Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor now at Duke Law School. ..."
"... The Flynn plea also makes it difficult for Trump to fire Mueller without inviting accusations of a cover-up and sparking a constitutional crisis, says Michael Weinstein, a former Department of Justice prosecutor now at the law firm Cole Schotz. "There would be a groundswell, it would look so objectionable, like the Saturday Night Massacre with Nixon," Weinstein says, referring to President Richard Nixon's attempt to derail the Watergate investigation in 1973 by firing special prosecutor Archibald Cox. ..."
"... Flynn's testimony might eventually help Mueller bring down Kushner or another top Trump aide, but it's hard to imagine how Flynn's word would be enough at this point. ..."
"... Flynn alone may not be enough to advance an obstruction or collusion case. Prosecutors would likely need evidence against other high-ranking Trump associates, including perhaps Jared Kushner. "Unless you've got them on tape, you're going to need a lot better witnesses than Flynn," says Raymond Banoun, a former federal prosecutor. ..."
"... Which leaves one option: Flynn's prosecution is simply an insurance policy. Flynn's guilty plea helped mollify angry Democrats who are demanding Trump's head on a platter. ..."
"... Ultimately, Mueller will be able to persevere – and the atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust he has helped foster in the West Wing will continue to hobble the Trump administration. ..."
"... Larry Nichols was the architect who said the basis of the Clinton crime family's power model is to own the prosecution if not the entire justice chain in the jurisdiction. Then it was Arkansas later DC. ..."
"... This was an attempted coup d'état as the most ex excellent Matt Bracken points out. ..."
"... After the donors (corporate kelptocrats) get their tax "reform", the mainstream Republicans will jump on the Mueller band wagon and join the Democrats in dumping Trump. National politicians are all crooks, and they are scared shitless to have an unpredictable loose cannon in the Oval Office, willing to call them out at anytime. ..."
"... This guy Bruce Ohr was recently demoted from Deputy Director of DOJ, and is suspected of having contacts early in the year with Fusion GPS and personally with Chris Steele, author of the DNC disinformation golden shower dossier. If government officials were involved in manufacturing that, then we really do have an anti-Trump deep state conspiracy. ..."
"... It is hard to know if Mueller has any good cards or not. I don't think a guilty plea over lying to FBI makes for a good witness in court, so I say you got nothing Mueller, time to call. ..."
"... I think at best he is going to pull a stunt by making his investigation public to smear Trump with rumor and innuendo ..."
"... His son was given immunity in exchange. Little Flynn was taking money in a similar pay to play that we saw with Clinton; most likely from Turkey. Michael is protecting his son. Whether there is more to the story, we will know in due time; I am betting that some interesting info will come out in the coming weeks. ..."
"... Mueller was a liar from the very beginning.Mueller lies to congress, commits perjury; Weapons of Mass Destruction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkF6WpWAxy8 ..."
"... I couldn't disagree more with the premise of this article. Flynn's son is caught in the crosshairs and he's trying to save him. And if you lie and they have you on record then of course you should admit it. ..."
"... This non-recording enables the FBI to entrap any witneses, relative, non-related person with false claims about what they said. Become their witness, or be prosecuted by what their agents say you said. ..."
Dec 08, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

... ... ...

Well, what if, instead of Flynn providing damning information against another member of Trump's inner circle, or against the president himself, Mueller's prosecution of Flynn is an insurance policy protecting him and his team from being dismissed by Trump? To wit, Bloomberg speculates that Flynn's guilty plea might just be the fodder the special counsel needed to protect his team from dismissal by the president. Given that calls for Trump to fire the hopelessly compromised special prosecutor have persisted since last spring, there's more than enough reason to believe that Flynn's prosecution is an end in itself.

By securing a guilty plea from Flynn, Mueller has effectively bought his team precious time to uncover the "smoking gun" that has eluded them thus far. Mueller's prosecution of Flynn is insurance against a presidential firing. At this stage, firing Mueller would lend credence to Democrats' accusations that the president obstructed justice when he asked former FBI Director James Comey to go easy on Flynn. Of course, Trump didn't do himself any favors when he tweeted that Flynn was fired because he lied to Vice President Mike Pence and the FBI (though Trump lawyer John Dowd later copped to writing the tweet, it certainly didn't help Trump's case for firing Mueller).

Equally as important, Flynn's prosecution, following so soon after the charges against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, also suggests that his investigation is making "progress" – though the logical end point of his crusade remains murky.

As Mueller's probe has gotten closer to Trump's inner orbit, speculation has risen over whether Trump might find a way to shut it down. The Flynn deal may make that harder. For one thing, it shows that Mueller is making progress.

"Any rational prosecutor would realize that in this political environment, laying down a few markers would be a good way of fending off criticism that the prosecutors are burning through money and not accomplishing anything," says Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor now at Duke Law School.

The Flynn plea also makes it difficult for Trump to fire Mueller without inviting accusations of a cover-up and sparking a constitutional crisis, says Michael Weinstein, a former Department of Justice prosecutor now at the law firm Cole Schotz. "There would be a groundswell, it would look so objectionable, like the Saturday Night Massacre with Nixon," Weinstein says, referring to President Richard Nixon's attempt to derail the Watergate investigation in 1973 by firing special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

Furthermore, as one legal expert told Bloomberg, it's difficult to see how Flynn's testimony will be enough to incriminate another member of Trump's inner circle. While Flynn's many alleged misdeeds have been chronicled in the press (most notoriously his alleged plan to kidnap Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen), given what's been reported so far, it's hard to see how Flynn's prosecution ties in to some broader narrative.

Flynn's testimony might eventually help Mueller bring down Kushner or another top Trump aide, but it's hard to imagine how Flynn's word would be enough at this point.

Flynn alone may not be enough to advance an obstruction or collusion case. Prosecutors would likely need evidence against other high-ranking Trump associates, including perhaps Jared Kushner. "Unless you've got them on tape, you're going to need a lot better witnesses than Flynn," says Raymond Banoun, a former federal prosecutor.

Some experts believe that Mueller's probe is now almost certain to reach a step beyond that. "Before this is wrapped up, Mueller's going to request an interview with the president, and he may even request it under oath," says Amy Sabrin, a Washington lawyer who worked for Bill Clinton on the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. "And then what is Trump going to do?"

Which leaves one option: Flynn's prosecution is simply an insurance policy. Flynn's guilty plea helped mollify angry Democrats who are demanding Trump's head on a platter. At the same time, it will allow Mueller and his team of hopelessly compromised Hillary Clinton supporters to fend off their critics, who've recently been emboldened by reports that Peter Strzok , an FBI agent who played an important role in the early stages of what became the Mueller investigation - and who also helped supervise the bureau's investigation into Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information – expressed anti-Trump sentiments in a series of text messages to his colleague/mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

Ultimately, Mueller will be able to persevere – and the atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust he has helped foster in the West Wing will continue to hobble the Trump administration.

It's a win-win.

TahoeBilly2012 -> wildbad , Dec 8, 2017 9:09 AM

Why are they looking for a fucking smoking gun, when there is no motive? What is the motive, illegal improved relations with Russia? Isn't that a Presidents job to use his mandate to change course?

Gimme some public hangings, come on, everyone wants it.

eclectic syncretist -> TahoeBilly2012 , Dec 8, 2017 9:11 AM

Kiss my fucking ass ZH and Bloomberg, who wrote the original article which is not credited here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-07/mueller-is-making-sur...

Mueller is the running man in this little episode in history. He's the cowboy in the trail swishing the branches across the tracks, and then stomping down false trails before cutting off sharply into the woods.

As old as he is, he only needs to keep running a few more years at most so that he can die free and not in prison.

you_are_cleared_hot -> eclectic syncretist , Dec 8, 2017 9:25 AM

I was going to say the same thing. I read the bloomberg article (linked on Drudge) like 20min ago...Tyler used the same pics as well. Is this what "Journalism" has come to? C'mon Tyler! don't get sloppy here.

wildbad -> JRobby , Dec 8, 2017 9:24 AM

mueller, comey, holder, clinton crime syndicate is a round robin circle jerk that has been operating since Arkansas days. Larry Nichols was the architect who said the basis of the Clinton crime family's power model is to own the prosecution if not the entire justice chain in the jurisdiction. Then it was Arkansas later DC.

This was an attempted coup d'état as the most ex excellent Matt Bracken points out. He rightly compares this to the plot to kill hitler which failed. The plotters were sure they had succeeded until they were lined up against the wall and shot.

trump is rounding up the firing squad now.

Paul Kersey -> JRobby , Dec 8, 2017 9:20 AM

After the donors (corporate kelptocrats) get their tax "reform", the mainstream Republicans will jump on the Mueller band wagon and join the Democrats in dumping Trump. National politicians are all crooks, and they are scared shitless to have an unpredictable loose cannon in the Oval Office, willing to call them out at anytime.

What they don't understand is that Trump may become even more dangerous to them if he is no longer in office. A Trump-Bannon media machine could do a lot of damage with nothing to restrain it. Look for Muller to tie Bannon into all of this, because Bannon now has a national platform and is too dangerous left on his own to say and do whatever he wants.

chubbar -> wildbad , Dec 8, 2017 9:56 AM

Apparently Mueller and the douche bag who wrote this article are the only people in the world who still believe this is a viable investigation. Mueller has zero chance of convicting anyone after what has been revealed about his investigators as well as his personal involvement in Uranium One. Not to mention, btw, that he is required by law to recuse himself because of his close relationship to one of the key witnesses/actors in this investigation, Comey. It's not even up for debate, it's mandatory and with that being written quite clearly, Mueller still didn't do it. Now it is revealed that Mueller sat with Trump in a job interview for acting head of the FBI while knowing he could very possibly (and was) be selected as a special prosecutor for an investigation into Trump/Russia collusion and he never told Trump. Apparently this is also an act requiring recusal.

Mueller will be lucky to not be sitting in jail after this fiasco. He's crooked as hell and his cover has been blown. Just a matter of time at this point as we are witnessing almost daily revelations of misconduct by his investigators as well as other high level FBI/DOJ officials.

otschelnik -> JoeTurner , Dec 8, 2017 11:03 AM

If this little jewel turns out to be true,

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-07/house-to-subpoena-jus...

This guy Bruce Ohr was recently demoted from Deputy Director of DOJ, and is suspected of having contacts early in the year with Fusion GPS and personally with Chris Steele, author of the DNC disinformation golden shower dossier. If government officials were involved in manufacturing that, then we really do have an anti-Trump deep state conspiracy.

Vilfredo Pareto , Dec 8, 2017 9:10 AM

Yeah. It is hard to know if Mueller has any good cards or not. I don't think a guilty plea over lying to FBI makes for a good witness in court, so I say you got nothing Mueller, time to call.

I think at best he is going to pull a stunt by making his investigation public to smear Trump with rumor and innuendo , but a cold hard analysis of fact will show that it is a case no prosecutor would ever take to court.

NotApplicable , Dec 8, 2017 9:11 AM

I wonder if Flynn plead guilty to this to avoid being brought up on other unrelated charges?

Vageling -> NotApplicable , Dec 8, 2017 9:22 AM

That's the exact thing the puzzles me. Watching details unfold. They screwed him. Set him up on this specific one. Why plead guilty? Flynn doesn't strike me as someone who doesn't know what he's doing.

Collectivism Killz -> NotApplicable , Dec 8, 2017 10:13 AM

His son was given immunity in exchange. Little Flynn was taking money in a similar pay to play that we saw with Clinton; most likely from Turkey. Michael is protecting his son. Whether there is more to the story, we will know in due time; I am betting that some interesting info will come out in the coming weeks.

Miss Expectations -> lester1 , Dec 8, 2017 10:08 AM

Mueller was a liar from the very beginning.Mueller lies to congress, commits perjury; Weapons of Mass Destruction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkF6WpWAxy8

Cloud9.5 , Dec 8, 2017 9:12 AM

Flynn's only criminal act was a misstatement. That is what they would have called it if Hillary had been caught up in the sting. This is the best they have been able to produce after this tedious attempt to construct a criminal plot that would take down Trump. What they have managed to do is focus a national spot light onto their own misdeeds. The middle management of the FBI better start looking after their own interest. The Agency has a litany of misdeeds in its dossier. If it plans on surviving the ongoing fire storm, those infected members within the Agency must be triaged.

xzandrax , Dec 8, 2017 9:18 AM

Maybe Mueller will not survive, if compromising leaks start leaking. One email or conversation between Strzok, Comey and Hillary/Lynch how to exonerate Hillary and to eavesdrop Trump and bring down Trump or people around him and Mueller is finished.

RagaMuffin , Dec 8, 2017 9:27 AM

So the Republican controlled Congress can't defund Mueller directly or indirectly? If they can are the never Trump Republicans hedging their bets?

sparklinggrapes , Dec 8, 2017 9:36 AM

I couldn't disagree more with the premise of this article. Flynn's son is caught in the crosshairs and he's trying to save him. And if you lie and they have you on record then of course you should admit it.

Oh wait, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin lied but they didn't admit it. I wonder if that's because the person that interviewed them was a biased Hillary supporter????

Reaper , Dec 8, 2017 9:43 AM

Trump as Chief Executive needs require the FBI to record all interviews with witnesses and suspects. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-reverses-longstanding-interview... This non-recording enables the FBI to entrap any witneses, relative, non-related person with false claims about what they said. Become their witness, or be prosecuted by what their agents say you said.

[Dec 07, 2017] Russiagate Becomes Israelgate by Philip Giraldi

Notable quotes:
"... "Israel Colluded with Incoming Trump Team to Subvert U.S. Foreign Policy," ..."
"... "FBI Entraps National Security Adviser." ..."
"... The first phone call to Kislyak, on December 22 nd , was made by Flynn at the direction of Jared Kushner, who in turn had been approached by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu had learned that the Obama Administrating was going to abstain on a United Nations vote condemning the Israeli settlements policy, meaning that for the first time in years a U.N. resolution critical of Israel would pass without drawing a U.S. veto. Kushner, acting for Netanyahu, asked Flynn to contact each delegate from the various countries on the Security Council to delay or kill the resolution. Flynn agreed to do so, which included a call to the Russians. Kislyak took the call but did not agree to veto Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed unanimously on December 23 rd . ..."
"... And just to demonstrate exactly how the story is shaped to protect Israel, here is a piece from the generally reliable The Hill written by Morgan Chalfant on 5 take-aways from Flynn's guilty plea . Israel is not even identified and, if one reads the two mentions of the U.N. vote connected to the first call, it appears to be deliberately omitted. The first citation reads "He also lied when he said he did not ask Kislyak to delay or defeat a vote on a pending U.N. Security Council resolution " and the second is "Prosecutors also say that a senior member of the transition team on Dec. 22 directed Flynn to contact officials from Russia and other governments about their stance on the U.N. resolution 'and to influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution.'" Does omitting Israel and emphasizing the Russian aspect of the story throughout the rest of the piece change what it says and how it is perceived? You betcha. ..."
"... Philip M. Giraldi, is a former CIA Operations officer who is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax exempt educational foundation that seeks a more interests based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address us P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville, VA 20132, and email address is [email protected] . ..."
"... The real issue is not Zionist influence in America but globalist influence in America. Is Trump pursuing a globalist agenda that will destroy America as a coherent nation state, or does he reject the Obama/Clinton project for the submergence of the American nation by a flood of settlers with a contempt for Americans, especially white, Chrisitan Americans. ..."
Dec 07, 2017 | www.unz.com

Reading the mainstream media headlines relating to the flipping of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to provide evidence relating to the allegations about Russian interference in America's last presidential election requires the suspension of one's cognitive processes. Ignoring completely what had actually occurred, the "Russian story" with its subset of "getting Trump" was on display all through the weekend, both in the print and on the live media.

Flynn's guilty plea is laconic, merely admitting that he had lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about what was said during two telephone conversations with then Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak, but there is considerable back story that emerged after the plea became public.

The two phone calls in question include absolutely nothing about possible collusion with Russia to change the outcome of the U.S. election, which allegedly was the raison d'etre behind the creation of Robert Mueller's Special Counsel office in the first place. Both took place more than a month after the election and both were initiated by the Americans involved. I am increasingly convinced that Mueller ain't got nuthin' but this process will grind out interminably and the press will be hot on the trail until there is nowhere else to go.

Based on the information revealed regarding the two conversations, and, unlike the highly nuance-sensitive editors working for the mainstream media, this is the headline that I would have written for a featured article based on what I consider to be important: "Israel Colluded with Incoming Trump Team to Subvert U.S. Foreign Policy," with a possible subheading "FBI Entraps National Security Adviser."

The first phone call to Kislyak, on December 22 nd , was made by Flynn at the direction of Jared Kushner, who in turn had been approached by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu had learned that the Obama Administrating was going to abstain on a United Nations vote condemning the Israeli settlements policy, meaning that for the first time in years a U.N. resolution critical of Israel would pass without drawing a U.S. veto. Kushner, acting for Netanyahu, asked Flynn to contact each delegate from the various countries on the Security Council to delay or kill the resolution. Flynn agreed to do so, which included a call to the Russians. Kislyak took the call but did not agree to veto Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed unanimously on December 23 rd .

The second phone call, made by Flynn on December 29 th from a beach in the Dominican Republic, where he was on vacation, may have been ordered by Trump himself. It was a response to an Obama move to expel Russian diplomats and close two Embassy buildings over allegations of Moscow's interfering in the 2016 election. Flynn asked the Russians not to reciprocate, making the point that there would be a new administration in place in three weeks and the relationship between the two countries might change for the better. Kislyak apparently convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin not to go tit-for-tat.

In taking the phone calls from a soon-to-be senior American official who would within weeks be part of a new administration in Washington, the Russians did nothing wrong. It would not be inappropriate to have some conversations with an incoming government team. Apart from holding off on retaliatory sanctions, Kislyak also did nothing that might be regarded as particularly responsive to Team Trump overtures. If it was an attempt to interfere in American politics, it certainly was low-keyed, and one might well describe it positively as a willingness to give the new Trump Administration a chance to improve relations.

The first phone call about Israel was not as benign as the second one about sanctions. Son-in-law Jared Kushner is Trump's point man on the Middle East. He and his family have extensive ties both to Israel and to Netanyahu personally, to include Netanyahu's staying at the Kushner family home in New York. The Kushner Family Foundation has funded some of Israel's illegal settlements and also a number of conservative political groups in that country. Jared has served as a director of that foundation and it is reported that he failed to disclose the relationship when he filled out his background investigation sheet for a security clearance. All of which suggests that if you are looking for possible foreign government collusion with the incoming Trumpsters, look no further.

And it should be observed that the Israelis were not exactly shy about their disapproval of Obama and their willingness to express their views to the incoming Trump. Netanyahu said that he would do so and Trump even responded with a tweet of his own expressing disagreement with the Obama decision to abstain on the vote, but the White House knew that the comment would be coming and there was no indication from the president-elect that he was actively trying to derail or undo it.

Kushner, however, goes far beyond merely disagreeing over an aspect of foreign policy as he was trying to clandestinely reverse a decision made by his own legally constituted government. His closeness to Netanyahu makes him, in intelligence terms, a quite likely Israeli government agent of influence, even if he doesn't quite see himself that way. He is currently working on a new peace plan for the Middle East which starts out with permanently demilitarizing the Palestinians. It will no doubt continue in the tradition of former plans which aggrandized Jewish power while stiffing the Arabs. And not to worry about the team that will be allegedly representing American interests. It is already being reported that they consist of "good, observant Jews" and will not be a problem, even though Israeli-American mega-fundraiser Haim Saban apparently described them on Sunday as "With all due respect, it's a bunch of Orthodox Jews who have no idea about anything."

What exactly did Kushner seek from Flynn? He asked the soon-to-be National Security Adviser to get the Russians to undermine and subvert what was being done by the still-in-power American government in Washington headed by President Barack Obama. In legal terms this does not quite equate to the Constitution's definition of treason since Israel is not technically an enemy, but it most certainly would be covered by the Logan Act of 1799, which bars private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on behalf of the United States and also could be construed as a "conspiracy against the United States" that the Mueller investigation has exploited against former Trump associate Paul Manafort. As Kushner is Jewish and certainly could be accused of dual loyalty in extremis , this part of the story obviously makes many in the U.S. Establishment and media uncomfortable, so it is being ignored and expunged from the record as quickly as possible. And don't expect Special Counsel Mueller to do anything about the Israel connection. As an experienced operator in the Washington swamp he knows full well that the Congressmen currently calling for blood in an investigation involving Russia will turn 180 degrees against him if he tries to go after Netanyahu.

And just to demonstrate exactly how the story is shaped to protect Israel, here is a piece from the generally reliable The Hill written by Morgan Chalfant on 5 take-aways from Flynn's guilty plea . Israel is not even identified and, if one reads the two mentions of the U.N. vote connected to the first call, it appears to be deliberately omitted. The first citation reads "He also lied when he said he did not ask Kislyak to delay or defeat a vote on a pending U.N. Security Council resolution " and the second is "Prosecutors also say that a senior member of the transition team on Dec. 22 directed Flynn to contact officials from Russia and other governments about their stance on the U.N. resolution 'and to influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution.'" Does omitting Israel and emphasizing the Russian aspect of the story throughout the rest of the piece change what it says and how it is perceived? You betcha.

For me, there was also a second take-away from the Flynn story apart from the collusion with Israel. It involves the use of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to set-up Flynn shortly after he had been installed as National Security Adviser. Insofar as I can determine, the FBI entrapment of Flynn has only been examined in a serious way in the media by Robert Parry at Consortium News.

Michael Flynn was actually interviewed by the FBI regarding his two phone conversations on January 24 th shortly after assumed office as National Security Adviser. During his interview, he was not made aware that the Bureau already had recordings and transcripts of his phone conversations, so, in a manner of speaking, he was being set-up to fail. Mis-remembering, forgetting or attempting to avoid implication of others in the administration would inevitably all be plausibly construed as lying since the FBI knew exactly what was said.

To be sure, many would agree that the sleazy Flynn deserves everything he gets, but the logic used to set-up the possible Flynn entrapment by the FBI, i.e. that there was unauthorized contact with a foreign official, is in itself curious as Flynn was a private citizen at the time and such contact is not in itself illegal. And it also opens the door to the Bureau's investigating other individuals who have committed no crime but who find that they cannot recall details of phone calls they were parties to that were being recorded by the government six months or a year before. That can easily be construed as "lying" or "perjury" with consequences that include possible prison time.

So there are two observations one might make about the Flynn saga as it currently stands. First, Israel, not Russia, was colluding with the Trump Administration prior to inauguration day to do something highly unethical and quite probably illegal, which should surprise no one. And second, record all your phone conversations with foreign government officials. The NSA and FBI will have a copy in any event, but you might want to retain your own records to make sure their transcript is accurate.

Philip M. Giraldi, is a former CIA Operations officer who is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax exempt educational foundation that seeks a more interests based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address us P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville, VA 20132, and email address is [email protected] .

CanSpeccy , Website December 5, 2017 at 5:52 am GMT

How is it that the FBI interrogates an agent of the President Elect on secret negotiations conducted on behalf of the President Elect?

And isn't that agent of the President Elect obliged, as a matter of national security, to conceal the details of those secret negotiations from anyone who attempts to extract them from him, lying as necessary to do so?

And anyhow, what was the point? Why the interrogation? The negotiations were made over the telephone, so the US Government, and presumably, therefore, the FBI, could obtain a transcript if they needed to know what was said.

The whole story seems nonsensical. But if anyone comes out of this looking good, maybe it will be Flynn. while it is the FBI and Robert Mueller who get their come uppance.

Kiza , December 5, 2017 at 5:53 am GMT
Nothing new, but a very clear summary of the situation, as one would expect from Mr Giraldi – including the customary warping of reality by the TPTB (substitution of "Israel" with "Russia").

Perhaps, the article is too tepid only on the legal entrapment combined with NSA recording of communications. Who says that this will be applied only to conversations with foreign nationals? I am sure that other statutes exist or will be quickly created to entrap anyone who does not remember word-for-word what was said in his communications with anyone else: thus lying to the Police etc. This is a magnificent self-awarded gift to the US regime which will only keep giving. I am waiting for the vassals to follow closely behind – the five-eyes and EU countries to develop similar entrapment resources.

What is the point of recording someone's communications if you cannot also put him in jail at will?

Anon , Disclaimer December 5, 2017 at 6:09 am GMT
I expect the Jewish media will get orders from Israel to back off if they try to target Kushner. He's a useful, pro-Israel link to Trump for Netanyahu, and too valuable to get rid of just because left-wing media Jews want to take down Trump. Trump is a lot more pro-Israel than the leftists, and Netanyahu knows it.

Over the years, Israel has paid Jewish-American reporters for writing pro-Israel puff pieces in US news, and Netanyahu could just threaten to cut off the lucre to bring them in line. Or, if he is really angry, he could send a few Mossad agents to have a talk with the Jewish reporters about how they're hurting Israel, and if that happens, then too bad because the Mossad will have to do something about them.

Anyway, it looks like Mueller's investigation will halt at Flynn. If Mueller tries to go farther, something 'interesting' may happen to him. If he does, I expect to see a full smackdown of his investigation from every direction with accusations against his honesty and probity, followed by his firing once enough public rage has been ginned up against him so that all liberal protests in his favor are drowned out by the fury of the lynch mob.

Cloak And Dagger , December 5, 2017 at 6:27 am GMT
Phil, this makes me feel even worse than I did before. I knew that RussiaGate was nonsense from the Hillary camp, however, the fact that Trump would bring his son-in-law into the WH and allow him to collude with Israel against the national interests of this country, fills me with dismay.

While I supported Trump mostly as an anti-Hillary stance and not because I saw him as someone who would bring about great positive change to our country (e.g. draining the swamp), I had hoped that his pandering to Israel during the election campaign was mostly political SOP. Since last November, however, he has gradually lost me. I am happy that he has not started new wars, but with the accelerated donkey-felating of Israel, I am not confident that we won't soon embark on more wars for Israel and more funds to that shitty country from our taxes.

Not a very merry Christmas.

Hank Rearden , December 5, 2017 at 6:45 am GMT
Michael Flynn was actually interviewed because he was stupid enough to talk to the police. Never talk to the police. Don't believe me, this is a detective who says don't talk to the police:

Don't Talk to Cops, Part 2
An experienced police officer tells you why you should never agree to be interviewed by the police.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE

Of course, nowadays if you assert your 5th Amendment right to not talk, street cops will construe that as mental illness, so it's acceptable to do as Kenny Suitter does. Remind them verbally that you're not talking to them by saying: "I don't answer questions."

How To Survive A Traffic Stop: "I Don't Answer Questions"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwYBshAScmE

Or better yet, shut your cakehole and hold a sign that says "I remain silent. No searches. I want my lawyer." Even works at Soviet no suspicion checkpoints in the USSA. Mostly.

Checkpoint: I REMAIN SILENT-NO SEARCHES-I WANT MY LAWYER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI8QiqH-R_I

Wally , Website December 5, 2017 at 7:29 am GMT
Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com is on this as well:

From 'Russia-Gate' to 'Israel-Gate'

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/12/03/russia-gate-israel-gate/

Jon Baptist , December 5, 2017 at 7:36 am GMT
Bravo to Phil Giraldi for calling out and writing about these treasonous bastards. Thanks to Unz for giving him the platform. Keep reporting and hopefully there will be enough people that will stand up and prevent this tyranny from developing further.
Mark James , December 5, 2017 at 7:43 am GMT
The Russian collusion story will flower eventually. I feel certain of that. But really, who among us did not feel that Kushner would be doing Israel's bidding, from back as far as the spring of 2016? Who thought that 'One President at a time' would apply to Jarad and the administration elect?

It has never been made clear why Flynn was the man as far as Jarad and Ivanka were concerned? Was it merely because they viewed him as a dupe for their plans?
Was Obama setting up the new administration with someone he knew was already criminally exposed–Flynn–and was the almost certain hire –because of Kushner– as well as because of the current president's strong objections?

Yes it seems like the term "duel loyalty" was almost made for Kushner. With Jarad's title of Ambassador without portfolio Israel didn't even have to effort a move of the US embassy to Jerusalem –it was a given– and as far as permission to attack Iran? I'm afraid that seems in the cards as well.
If Israel isn't mentioned–by US Media– it should be. While all calls are not recorded by NSA it is likely that those countries with the greatest presence in spy assets within the US (Rus/Isl) undoubtedly are. Yes Flynn lied to the FBI. I don't think there's much question Kushner will too.

jilles dykstra , December 5, 2017 at 8:13 am GMT
https://www.rt.com/news/411937-syria-intercepts-israeli-missiles/

I suppose here we have an important cause of Russiagate, Israel sees that Syria is not destabilised, just physically destroyed, thanks to Russian interference.
USA support is the only reason Israel still exists, good relations between USA and Russia may mean the end of Israel, in any case the end of Israeli power in the ME.
And if USA support ends, what about German support ?
Will Israel get another two billion submarine, for which the German taxpayer pays some 400 million ?
At the same time, I fear we see that no anti missile system is capable of destroying many missiles if they come at the same time.
When, I hope never, Russia fires most of its 1600 old fashioned ballistic missiles at the USA, some will het through, I suppose.

LondonBob , December 5, 2017 at 8:38 am GMT
Well I said if Mueller wants to make himself useful he could take down Kushner. Be interesting to see if we get any follow up on him, or if it quietly dies in the dark as you surmise, these things always seem to once they have the potential to impact negatively on Zionist interests. Will that kill the whole investigation, it certainly seems to be coming to a dead end anyway?
jacques sheete , December 5, 2017 at 12:12 pm GMT

First, Israel, not Russia, was colluding with the Trump Administration prior to inauguration day to do something highly unethical and quite probably illegal, which should surprise no one.

Well, it certainly doesn't surprise me and I'm (happily) a nobody. Anyway, at least the Ziocreeps are consistent.

Looks like Oncle Joey was right again.

"Blame others for your own sins."

J. V. Stalin, Anarchism Or Socialism ? December, 1906 -- January, 1907

Why does "Israel" seem to be at, or very near, the center of most major issues of the day once the curtain is lifted a bit, and why are they nearly always suspected of doing something unjust and shady if not downright criminal?

And what about the eternal victim image we dumb goyim are supposed to imbibe with our mammy's milk?

Anonymous , Disclaimer December 5, 2017 at 12:16 pm GMT
While I agree with Giraldi on Israel's outrageous influence on U.S. politics, I am much more concerned by how the FBI has become a thoroughly corrupt secret police for the Establishment and Deep State. And the Department of Just-Us is all part of it. It's so fucking Orwellian.

The FBI went into that interview with the plan to get Flynn. He never had a chance. Even if he had a transcript of his phone conversations, and provided answers from that, they would've manipulated him into a BS process crime.

I'm a former investigator and worked with a former S/A (not FBI) who told me about when he worked cases with the FBI. They will lie and fabricate stuff in order to set people up and then make threats on what people didn't say. If you're a target of the FBI it makes no difference how honest you are and how precise and accurate your answers are to their questions.

Apart from all that, I trust people with last name Kushner over people with the last name of Mueller or Strzok

Michael Kenny , December 5, 2017 at 1:55 pm GMT
Smoke screen! The spooks are more spooked than ever! What exactly did the US intelligence services get up to that they're now so scared of Russiagate? Mr Giraldi is in such a panic that he totally fails to make the point in the title. He essentially admits Russian interference but does not establish, nor even, in fact, claim, that there is any connection between Israel and Russian interference. Israel has no need to engage in undercover interference to influence US politics. It does so quite openly and has the Israel Lobby to support it. It certainly has no need of Russian help! One might also ask what disadvantage there would have been for Israel if Hillary was elected. Why would they feel the need to manipulate the election in Trump's favour? Thus, it's not an "either or" situation, as Mr Giraldi tries to present it. Regardless of whether or not there was also Israeli interference, Russian interference, with the help of American "associates", is well established and confirmed by an almost identical pattern of interference in the French presidential election. More interestingly, though, what has emerged from Flynn's testimony so far is that the initiative came from the Trump campaign, not the Russians. The evidence available up to that point suggested that the Russians had taken the initiative and more or less set up the naïve "bunch of Orthodox Jews". It's little wonder therefore that both Putin's American supporters and Trump's personal lawyer are running around in panic!
Rurik , December 5, 2017 at 3:47 pm GMT

Israel, not Russia, was colluding with the Trump Administration prior to inauguration day to do something highly unethical and quite probably illegal,

And don't expect Special Counsel Mueller to do anything about the Israel connection. As an experienced operator in the Washington swamp he knows full well that the Congressmen currently calling for blood in an investigation involving Russia will turn 180 degrees against him if he tries to go after Netanyahu.

Mueller was head of the FBI during the 9/11 "investigation"

you don't get anymore 'swamp creature' than that

more here:

Trump succeeded in convincing Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to order his UN delegation to delay the vote. Egypt then withdrew its sponsorship of 2334. However, four members of the Security Council -- Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela – counteracted Sisi's abandonment and brought the resolution to a Council vote. It passed and was enacted due to the American abstention. It is quite certain that the Obama administration sought the assistance of its intelligence and military ally, New Zealand, in bolstering Malaysia, Senegal, and Venezuela against furious backroom opposition from Israel and the Trump transition team. Trump and Kushner decided that just prior to Flynn's indictment, they would demonstrate their fealty to Israel by announcing that the United States was going to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Such actions, far from showing "collusion" with a foreign power, point to conflicted loyalty, at the very least.

Netanyahu told New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully that New Zealand's support for the resolution would be tantamount to a declaration of war against Israel,

when I read the above quote, it seemed too explosive not to have a link, so I 'Binged' it

https://www.bing.com/search?q=Netanyahu+told+New+Zealand+Foreign+Minister+Murray+McCully+that+New+Zealand%E2%80%99s+support+for+the+resolution+would+be+tantamount+to+a+declaration+of+war+against+Israel%2C&qs=n&form=QBLH&sp=-1&pq=netanyahu+told+new+zealand+foreign+minister+murray+mccully+that+new+zealand%E2%80%99s+support+for+the+resolution+would+be+tantamount+to+a+declaration+of+war+against+israel%2C&sc=0-164&sk=&cvid=A2DAF44977384BD69F64DB8790CDC672

from the first link:

Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told New Zealand's foreign minister that support for a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement-building in the occupied territories would be viewed as a "declaration of war".

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/28/netanyahu-told-new-zealand-backing-un-vote-would-be-declaration-of-war

anyways, more from the article

There has never been a successful prosecution under the Logan Act and likely there will never be one. However, those who possessed access to classified information – Trump, Kushner, Flynn, Haley, and others – who were simultaneously taking orders from Israel on matters of US national security, could be found guilty of violating the US Espionage Act .

too funny!

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/04/mueller-names-trump-foreign-colluding-power-israel.html

To be sure, many would agree that the sleazy Flynn deserves everything he gets,

if he was talking money from Turkey, to represent their interests- while masquerading as our National Security Advisor, then I wouldn't mind seeing him hanged by the neck until it snapped or until he stopped dancing.

but then that's how I feel about all acts of treason against my nation, and the scum who serve the interests of our deadliest enemy at the direct expense of this nation they swore a sacred oath to.

Svigor , December 5, 2017 at 3:48 pm GMT
I wonder how clean the Democrats' hands are, vis-a-vis the Logan Act? Has every incoming Democrat administration really been so squeaky clean in its dealings with foreign agents?

The two phone calls in question include absolutely nothing about possible collusion with Russia to change the outcome of the U.S. election, which allegedly was the raison d'etre behind the creation of Robert Mueller's Special Counsel office in the first place. Both took place more than a month after the election and both were initiated by the Americans involved. I am increasingly convinced that Mueller ain't got nuthin' but this process will grind out interminably and the press will be hot on the trail until there is nowhere else to go.

IANAL; does the old "fruit of the poison tree" apply to investigations/prosecutions as a whole, or just to evidence found/used therein? Because the fact that one of the interviewers, (((Strzok))) (caveat: (((echoes))) based on personal Jewdar only (facial phrenology, name, occupation, politics, corruption); was unable to confirm via Gewgle) has been ejected from Mueller's team seems germane. Maybe he'll only impact the trial, the way Fuhrman impacted OJ's trial?

It's interesting how central the Logan Act has been in all this, considering how it's never been used to prosecute anyone in its over 217 years of existence. The Jews and their lackeys are now reduced to using blue Laws; to return to the "mobs Jews stirred up that turned on them" motif, what if we started prosecuting Jews with blue laws against, say, sodomy?

The NYT has a new piece up, titled "Why the Trump Team should fear the Logan Act."

Why the Trump team should fear the Swamp's use of blue laws? Because the Swamp is totally corrupt and they hate Trump, that's why.

The Kushner Family Foundation has funded some of Israel's illegal settlements and also a number of conservative political groups in that country.

It would be interesting to know more about that; how much more worthy do the Kushners regard Israel as being of Conservative advocacy, compared to their ostensible homeland, the United States? Because they seem to be fairly leftist in their desires for the latter.

His closeness to Netanyahu makes him, in intelligence terms, a quite likely Israeli government agent of influence, even if he doesn't quite see himself that way.

How Jews see themselves is very often a study in rationalization and self-deception; eminently worthy of study, but never to be taken at face value.

I expect the Jewish media will get orders from Israel to back off if they try to target Kushner. He's a useful, pro-Israel link to Trump for Netanyahu, and too valuable to get rid of just because left-wing media Jews want to take down Trump. Trump is a lot more pro-Israel than the leftists, and Netanyahu knows it.

Trump may be marginally more pro-Zionist than the communist (AKA leftist) establishment, but it's not really possible for Trump to be "a lot more pro-Israel"; there isn't enough daylight available – the communists are too pro-Zionist for that.

And I doubt that margin is really worth the trouble; the Diaspora Wing of the Tribe hates Hates HATES Trump and wants him gone Gone GONE. It's harder to do business with the Swamp when it's mobilized to destroy the current administration; being seen as too cozy with the object of their hatred is counter-productive.

Over the years, Israel has paid Jewish-American reporters for writing pro-Israel puff pieces in US news, and Netanyahu could just threaten to cut off the lucre to bring them in line.

The money flow is very much in the opposite direction; from the Jewish diaspora to Israel, not the other way around.

Or better yet, shut your cakehole and hold a sign that says "I remain silent. No searches. I want my lawyer." Even works at Soviet no suspicion checkpoints in the USSA. Mostly.

It's also a good idea to keep asking cops if you can leave. They often have to wait on K-9 units, for which demand outstrips supply. And they have regulations as to how long they're allowed to keep you waiting before they conduct their search, and crucially don't have to volunteer the fact that they have limits on how long they're allowed to make you wait . But they do have to tell you if you're free to leave, if you're free to leave. So ask them every 5 minutes or so, "may I leave now?"

While I agree with Giraldi on Israel's outrageous influence on U.S. politics, I am much more concerned by how the FBI has become a thoroughly corrupt secret police for the Establishment and Deep State. And the Department of Just-Us is all part of it. It's so fucking Orwellian.

The upper ranks seem to be thick with Jews, too. Which should surprise no one who knows even a bit about Soviet history.

Corvinus , December 5, 2017 at 4:13 pm GMT
@Anonymous

"I'm a former investigator and worked with a former S/A (not FBI) who told me about when he worked cases with the FBI. They will lie and fabricate stuff in order to set people up and then make threats on what people didn't say."

Double Fake News Story.

You, as well as Girabaldi, really need to become educated as far as the Mueller investigation is concerned.

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Eagle Eye , December 5, 2017 at 4:39 pm GMT
@CanSpeccy

Who within the Administration allowed Flynn to be interviewed by the FBI on January 24, 2017?

It seems Flynn was intentionally set up by disloyal legal and other advisers on Trump's team, obviously to drive a wedge into the incoming administration.

No lawyer worth his salt would allow such an interview to proceed without serious preparation and safeguards. Having just assumed office, the White House had legitimate reasons to slow-walk any FBI requests. In particular, Team Trump should and could have waited until the FBI was cleansed of the worst hold-overs and swamp creatures (such as Deputy AG Rosenstein who later appointed Mueller).

Flynn was NOT obligated to allow an FBI interview at all, and could legitimately have argued that he was entitled to executive privilege. Of course, the MSM were out to get Trump from the outset, and no doubt coordinated their story with Comey and Mueller.

SolontoCroesus , December 5, 2017 at 4:58 pm GMT
@Jake

Buchanan's latest article, Is Flynn's Defection a Death Blow? , asks Why Why Why did Flynn lie to the FBI.

He committed the Martha Stewart offense. An ankle monitor is not that big a deal; Martha's still baking cupcakes in recycled soda cans and selling overpriced stuff.

So maybe Flynn is actually a patriot, and fell on a rubber sword on purpose, in order to expose the Israel connection that he perceived as getting out of hand??

One can dream.

Anon , Disclaimer December 5, 2017 at 5:57 pm GMT
Nothing new. Israel was meddling in the US political system even before it was created. But the deep state will summarily reject the truth and keep pushing its fairy tale about "evil Russia": after all, Israel is not a suitable bogeyman to justify totally insane "defense" budget, which now exceeds the sum total of defense budgets of the rest of the world. Russia, like the USSR before it, is used to justify shameless feeding frenzy of Pentagon contractors. They are destroying the US more effectively than any enemy could, but their greed blinds them to the fact.
CanSpeccy , Website December 5, 2017 at 6:21 pm GMT
@Eagle Eye

Flynn was NOT obligated to allow an FBI interview at all, and could legitimately have argued that he was entitled to executive privilege.

So by agreeing to an FBI interview, was Flynn setting up the swamp dwellers? For example, to demonstrate, in due course, that he was compelled to lie to protect national security from a lawless and out of control FBI.

Anon , Disclaimer December 5, 2017 at 6:34 pm GMT
@LondonBob

The former US Secretary of Defense William J. Perry:
"When the Cold War ended, I believed that we no longer had to take that risk [nuclear annihilation] During my period as the Secretary of Defense in the 90s, I oversaw the dismantlement of 8,000 nuclear weapons evenly divided between the United States and the former Soviet Union. And I thought then that we were well on our way to putting behind us this deadly existential threat, But that was not to be. Today, inexplicably to me, we're recreating the geopolitical hostility of the Cold War, and we're rebuilding the nuclear dangers. We are doing this without any serious public discussion or any real understanding of the consequences of these actions. We are sleepwalking into a new Cold War, and there's very real danger that we will blunder into a nuclear war." http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-03/former-us-defense-secretary-explains-why-nuclear-holocaust-now-likely

Paul Craig Roberts (the former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy): https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/12/05/walking-into-armageddon/
"The power of the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby, the two prime war-mongers of the 21st century, have immobilized the President of the United States. The real reason that the military/security complex is after Gen. Flynn is that he is the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and he said on a TV news show that the decision by the Obama regime to send ISIS to overthrow Syria was a "willful decision" that went against his recommendation . In other words, Flynn let the cat out of the bag that ISIS was not an independently formed organization but a tool of US policy. Private interests and agendas have control over the US government. Washington works by selling legislation to the interest groups in exchange for campaign contributions. The private interests that provide the money that elects politiicans get the laws that they want."

Anon , Disclaimer December 5, 2017 at 6:56 pm GMT
@Michael Kenny

"Panic." Yes – the panic is palpable in the Israelis'/Lobby' words and deeds in relation to Syria's sovereignty. The ziocon's mad irritation with the end of slaughter in Syria deprives them of reason. Thence the visceral, irrational, overwhelming hatred of Russians by the moral midgets that profess "Israel first." The supremacist fools would initiate a nuclear conflict to prevail in a fight with their Arab cousins. Could not you just leave the western civilization alone?

"The power of the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby, the two prime war-mongers of the 21st century" – so true! We are witnessing the end of your profitable "eternal victimhood."

Anon , Disclaimer December 5, 2017 at 7:06 pm GMT
@Sherman

And look where Kushner's "competence" has taken the investigation into Russiagate . Amazing, indeed.
Also, what could be more valuable for Israel (the only theocratic apartheid "democracy" in the Middle East) than the sweet and devoted friendship with the so upright and moral Saudis! And none other than the aspiring Jared has procured this special friendship. Jared is really good at clearing the fog of Israeli "democratic" morals.

Eagle Eye , December 5, 2017 at 7:29 pm GMT
@CanSpeccy

So by agreeing to an FBI interview, was Flynn setting up the swamp dwellers?

Not impossible but this sounds like too much 4D chess. Also, the public exposure of Flynn is immediate and harmful, whereas any gain against the Deep State is deferred and speculative.

Beckow , December 5, 2017 at 7:43 pm GMT
@CanSpeccy

Let's imagine this story if it happened in a different country:

An opposition leader wins a close election after a government uses all its power and media control to elect a selected successor. During the transition, the state police investigates the members of the incoming administration and puts them under surveillance. Street mobs that support the previous government are unleashed on the streets to intimidate the elected president and his supporters. After the opposition is sworn in, the old-regime loyalists immediately start investigating them and threaten them with removal from office.

Media who supported the previous administration goes on a hysterical witch-hunt. A special committee is formed to investigate the incoming president and any people connected to him. Eventually people are charged with talking to ' foreigners ' and ' lying ' about it when interrogated by the state police. The losing candidate openly disparages the legitimacy of the elected president. Media cheers it on and constantly predicts how very soon the interloper who somehow managed to win the elections will be removed.

If this happened in a different country, Washington would now be talking sanctions or worse.

renfro , December 5, 2017 at 7:50 pm GMT
@Rurik

Kennedy was the only president to go after Israel and the Jews US Fifth Column.
In addition to demanding Israel open their nuke facilities for inspection his adm and AG supported the 1963 Fulbright Senate hearings on the ZOA and its Jews in the US. The ZOA then became AIPAC under Johnson.

That's why they killed him.

DOJ orders the AZC to Register as a Foreign Agent

"Attached hereto is the entire file relating to the American Zionist Council and our efforts to obtain its registration under the terms of the Foreign Agents Registration Act "

Documents

In the early 1960′s Israel funneled $5 million (more than $35 million in today's dollars) into US propaganda and lobbying operations. The funds were channeled via the quasi governmental Jewish Agency's New York office into an Israel lobby umbrella group, the American Zionist Council. Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigations and hearings documented funding flows, propaganda, and public relations efforts and put them into the record. But the true fate of the American Zionist Council was never known, except that its major functions were visibly shut down and shifted over to a former AZC unit known as the "Kenen Committee," called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (or AIPAC) in the late 1960′s. The following chronology provides links to images of original Department of Justice case files released on June 10, 2008 under a Freedom of Information Act filing.

John F. Kennedy President, Robert F. Kennedy Attorney General

Document/File Date Contents
08/27/1962 AZC internal memo – Lenore Karp to Rabbi Jerome Unger about AZC Department of Public Information literature distribution.
Undated 1962-1963 AZC Public Relations Plan summary
10/31/1962 Assistant Attorney General and Director of the Internal Security Division J. Walter Yeagley notifies Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy " we are soliciting next week the registration of the American Zionist Council under the Foreign Agents Registration Act You may be aware that the American Zionist Council is composed of representatives of the various Zionist organizations in the United States including the Zionist Organization of America."
11/06/1962 Nathan B. Lenvin, head of the FARA section, memo to central files, about a meeting with Jewish Agency representative Maurice M. Boukstein who asks about FARA applicability to AZC. " in his view it was doubtful that any great protest would be made since in the discussions he has had with various officials connected both with the Zionist Council and the Jewish Agency he had made it clear in his view an agency relationship would result which may require registration.'"
11/14/1962 Edwin Guthman letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach about future AZC FARA registration order. "I doubt very much there will be any fuss. I don't think the American Zionist Council is in any position to do so the Council has compromised its position." OK'd by Robert F. Kennedy.
11/21/1962 DOJ orders AZC to register under FARA " receipt of such funds from the American Section of the Jewish Agency for Israel constitutes the Council an agent of a foreign principal the Council's registration is requested."
12/06/1962 AZC President Rabbi Irving Miller response to DOJ "The request for registration contained in your letter raises many questions of fact and of relationships which first must be resolved by us before compliance can be made. Therefore, it is requested that you be good enough to grant us a delay of 120 days "
01/02/1963
Archive Isaiah L. Kenen incorporates the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, DC
01/24/1963
DOJ draft file memo about 01/23/1963 DOJ meeting with AZC head legal counsel Simon H. Rifkind " he had advised his client to discontinue completely the agency relationship and cut off the receipt of any additional funds Mr. Lenvin pointed out specifically that the termination of the 'activities' on the part of AZC did not absolve it of its obligation to register "

01/25/1963 Article in the National Jewish Post, filed in FARA Section – "AZC Gives Up $ to Avoid Foreign Agent Registration"
02/01/1963 DOJ Executive Assistant Thomas Hall memo to Nathan Lenvin updating meeting notes "Mr. Hall emphasized that a contrary conclusion would not of course be reached during the course of this meeting and suggested that the subject submit a detailed argument as to why it was of the opinion it should not be required to register ."
02/08/1963 DOJ AZC January 23, 1963 meeting notes by Nathan Lenvin filed "discontinuance of receipt of such funds thus terminating the agency relationship did not absolve the Council of its obligation to register."
02/19/1963 American Council for Judaism (AJC) newsletter. "The American Zionist Council (coordinating political action arm of all U.S. Zionist organizations) was asked last month by the Justice Department to register as a 'foreign agent' of the State of Israel."
03/07/1963 New York Times reporter Tony Lewis calls FARA section to verify AZC foreign agent order state AJC press release.
3/23/1963 AZC Counsel "Memorandum of Law in support of our position that the American Zionist Council is not required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938."
04/01/1963 Nathan Lenvin file memo of DOJ AZC meeting on April 1, 1963- AZC Memorandum of Law rejected. " if necessary I would be willing to recommend, if the representatives of the Council insisted upon these points, that the matter be litigated."

continued

http://www.israellobby.org/forrel/default.asp

Anon , Disclaimer December 5, 2017 at 8:37 pm GMT
@Talha

Okay, makes more sense.

As far as tech goes Google (Brin at least) and Facebook were significantly Jewish at starting; Amazon is heavily reliant on investment capital and probably a significant portion of the early developers were Jewish; they were well represented in the 90s tech scene. Also the relationship between computing and finance, plus the emigration of Soviet Jews, was probably a factor.

nickels , December 5, 2017 at 9:51 pm GMT
@Cloak And Dagger

Honestly, impeachment would be a good thing, because it would throw the US into such chaos that it might be less able to wreak death and destruction around the world.
It also would finally lift the scales off the Trumpees eyes and make it clear that the whole thing is rotten to the core.

lavoisier , Website December 5, 2017 at 10:47 pm GMT
"Russiagate Becomes Israelgate."

Correction: Russiagate was ALWAYS Israelgate.

Cyrano , December 5, 2017 at 11:00 pm GMT
This site is full of Jewish conspiracy theorists. I am not one of them. The only Jewish "conspiracy" that I have ever been able to detect is that they "conspire" to be successful. As opposed to the rest of us, I guess – who conspire to be failures in life. Jews are opportunists, they take advantage of the rules that the stupid gentiles make. And good on them, they have shown remarkable skills doing that.

In the middle ages when the only way to be rich was to own a land, European countries forbade the Jews from owning land. Then when the center of economic activity switched to the cities – guess who was the best positioned to take full advantage of the situation – the Jews. They became merchants, lawyers, bankers and so on.

I guess the stupid Europeans should have foreseen this development and as soon as the cities became centers of wealth and economic activity – they should have gone Pol Pot on the Jews – banish them to the countryside to do some farming there. So stop bitching about the current situation in the US, it's not fault of the Jews, they are just taking advantage of the stupidity of the US gentile elites.

Anon , Disclaimer December 6, 2017 at 12:26 am GMT
Too many commenters cloud the issue by equating every Jew with a Zionist. This is just as wrong as counting every German as a Nazi. Many Jews are appalled by the aggressiveness of Israel and apartheid it practices.
CanSpeccy , Website December 6, 2017 at 12:44 am GMT
@Beckow

Agreed. The Lib-Dems and their corpo/media/Follywood allies are attempting to destroy the legitimacy of an elected president by means of fake news, fake indignation and fake charges of treason.

But Trump surely has deep state allies as well as opponents, and thus will have been aware before the inauguration of what he could expect, and would therefore likely have set traps for the opposition.

The fact that the Mueller probe is losing all credibility suggests that the opposition may yet come off worse than the President.

CanSpeccy , Website December 6, 2017 at 12:54 am GMT
@renfro

I suggest everyone who is fed up with Trump's Israel First betrayal of the US let him know .

Is Trump an Israel Firster, or simply a friend of Israel. Trump ran a nationalistic election campaign and appears to be following through on his commitment to restoring the border, restricting Muslim immigration, etc. Such policies are exactly in line with those of Israel. So why would Trump not be pro-Israel? And in fact, the stronger Israel becomes, the less the US need aid Israel or tolerate American Israeli firsters.

The real issue is not Zionist influence in America but globalist influence in America. Is Trump pursuing a globalist agenda that will destroy America as a coherent nation state, or does he reject the Obama/Clinton project for the submergence of the American nation by a flood of settlers with a contempt for Americans, especially white, Chrisitan Americans.

[Dec 06, 2017] Chuck Grassley Demands FBI Produce All Strzok Text Messages As Part Of Trump Anti-Bias Probe

Notable quotes:
"... an angry Senator Senator Grassley - who was previously stonewalled by the FBI and DOJ from getting requested information about Strzok's unexpected removal - has issued a letter demanding FBI documents in advance of an upcoming Senatorial interview with the anti-Trump FBI agent. ..."
"... The Committee has previously written to Mr. Strzok requesting an interview to discuss his knowledge of improper political influence or bias in Justice Department or FBI activities during either the previous or current administration, the removal of James Comey from his position as Director of the FBI, the DOJ's and FBI's activities related to Hillary Clinton, the DOJ's and FBI's activities related to Donald J. Trump and his associates, and the DOJ's and FBI's activities related to Russian interference in the 2016 election. To date, the Committee has received no letter in reply to that request. ..."
"... All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok regarding the decision to close the Clinton investigation without recommending any charges; ..."
"... I doubt that Strzok worked alone. ..."
"... This is one of the best re-caps of this whole sordid FBI obstruction/coverup situation: Strzok and Laufman had also interviewed Hillary. No recordings were made of the session. But Comey testified that it's a "crime to lie to us". Not for the Clintons and their associates. ..."
"... Hillary had told her interviewers that she hadn't received training on handling classified information, but she signed a document testifying that she had. Hillary claimed that she hadn't carried a second phone, but an aide, Justin Cooper, who made the server possible, testified that indeed she did . ..."
Dec 06, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Following this weekend's shocking disclosure that Peter Strzok was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia-Trump election (having previously handled the Clinton email server probe and interviewing Michael Flynn) after allegedly having exchanged anti-Trump and pro-Hillary Clinton text messages with his mistress (who was an FBI lawyer working for Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe), an angry Senator Senator Grassley - who was previously stonewalled by the FBI and DOJ from getting requested information about Strzok's unexpected removal - has issued a letter demanding FBI documents in advance of an upcoming Senatorial interview with the anti-Trump FBI agent.

In his letter to FBI director Christopher Wray, Grassley writes:

The Committee has previously written to Mr. Strzok requesting an interview to discuss his knowledge of improper political influence or bias in Justice Department or FBI activities during either the previous or current administration, the removal of James Comey from his position as Director of the FBI, the DOJ's and FBI's activities related to Hillary Clinton, the DOJ's and FBI's activities related to Donald J. Trump and his associates, and the DOJ's and FBI's activities related to Russian interference in the 2016 election. To date, the Committee has received no letter in reply to that request.

In advance of Mr. Strzok's interview, please provide the following communications, in the form of text messages or otherwise, to the Committee no later than December 11, 2017:

  1. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok related to then Director Comey's draft or final statement closing the Clinton investigation, including all records related to the change in the portion of the draft language describing Secretary Clinton's and her associates' conduct regarding classified information from "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless";
  2. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok regarding the decision to close the Clinton investigation without recommending any charges;
  3. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok related to opening the investigation into potential collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russian government, including any FBI electronic communication (EC) authored or authorized by Mr. Strzok and all records forming the basis for that EC;
  4. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok related to the FBI's interactions with Christopher Steele relating to the investigation into potential collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russian government, including any communications regarding potential or realized financial arrangements with Mr. Steele;
  5. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok related to any instance of the FBI relying on, or referring to, information in Mr. Steele's memoranda in the course of seeking any FISA warrants, other search warrants, or any other judicial process;
  6. All FD-302s of FBI interviews of Lt. Gen. Flynn at which Mr. Strzok was present, as well as all related 1A documents (including any contemporaneous handwritten notes); and
  7. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok containing unfavorable statements about Donald J. Trump or favorable statements about Hillary Clinton.

Since this will be the first - and so far only - glimpse inside the ideological motivations inside Mueller's prosecutorial team the public will be greatly interested in finding what they reveal, especially those which show any direct communication between Strzok and Comey.

Grassley's full letter below ( Link )

Whoa Dammit -> yaright , Dec 6, 2017 12:27 PM

Is it true that there is a statue of Saint Hillary Our Lady of the Van Toss in the foyer of the FBI's DC headquarters?

Chupacabra-322 -> Yes We Can. But Lets Not. , Dec 6, 2017 12:51 PM

@ yes,

"Whoa, and there's more on Peter Strzok. He exchanged anti-Trump texts with Lisa Page, another Mueller team member with whom he was having an affair. She's deputy to Andrew McCabe."

"Surprise – it was Hillary Clinton supporter Peter Strzok told Comey that there was no proof of "intent" – BEFORE he had interviewed HRC."

And of course, he was involved with the sketchy interview of Cheryl Mills

And Heather Samuelson

And voila, they were given immunity

He allowed Mills and Samuelson to attend the interview with Hillary

So Strzok exonerated Hillary, led the probe into Weiner's laptop that cleared Hillary, allowed major conflicts in the Clinton investigation, and then took control of the Steele dossier probe into Trump, all while being a rabid anti-Trump, pro-Clinton partisan in his personal life.

And when Mueller learned of this behavior he reassigned him instead of firing him, in order to prevent word getting out to the public.

https://www.citizenfreepress.com/breaking/breaking-boom-anti-trump-fbi-a...

Shitonya Serfs -> Whoa Dammit , Dec 6, 2017 12:35 PM

Grassy's demands won't be met, and nothing will happen to FUBI for not providing those communications.

chubbar -> Ghost of Porky , Dec 6, 2017 1:41 PM

Sessions is culpable in the obstruction of justice UNLESS there is something big going on behind the scenes. The FBI will not provide requested documentation. The choice is going to come down to reorganizing the FBI from outside that institution. I wouldn't have a clue about legality or process of doing that, but that is what it will come down to. You can't expect these criminals to do it on their own or to voluntarily place their heads in a noose with documentation.

buzzsaw99 , Dec 6, 2017 12:26 PM

it's ... sedition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seditious_conspiracy

Badsamm , Dec 6, 2017 12:25 PM

Seriously, how retarded are the people at the FBI? Do any of them have real life experience? So bush league

Bastiat -> Badsamm , Dec 6, 2017 12:32 PM

They hire agents directly out of law school (at least it used to be that way). The idea was they NOT have any life experience (or independent judgment). It's no accident.

Chupacabra-322 , Dec 6, 2017 12:48 PM

They're "going all in." Doesn't matter what Hand the Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Seditious Psychopaths at the Deep State & their cohorts have been dealt.

Win, stolen or lost. They were going & are going "all in" with the PsyOp, Scripted False Narrative of Russia hacking the Elections / Russia / Putin / Trump Propaganda gone full retard via the Deep States Opeatives in the Presstitute Media.

The misconception is that individuals believe we are dealing with normal, sane human beings. We're not. Far from it. What we are dealing with are sick, twisted, Pure Evil Criminal, Psychopathic, Satanic / Lucerferian elements from the CIA / Pentagram Temple of Set Scum literally making Hell on Earth.

What's at Stake is the Deep State Global network of MultiNational Central Banking, Espionage, Murder, War, Torture, Destabilization Campaigns, BlackMail, Extortion, Child / Human Trafficking, Drug / Gun Running, Money Laundering, Corruption, NSA spying, Media control & control of the 17 Intelligence Agencies.

Most importantly, The Deep State controls all the distribution lines of the aforementioned. Especially the Coaxial Cable Communication lines of Espionage spying & Surveillance State Apparatus / Infrastructure. Agencies all built on the British Model of Intelligence. Purely Evil & Highly Compartmentalized Levels which function as a Step Pyramid Model of Authority / Monarch Reign Pyramid Model of Authority.

That's what's at Stake. How this plays out is anyone's guess. The Pure Evil Criminal Psychopath Rogue elements of the Deep State will not go quietly. If not dealt with now, they'll disappear only to resurface at a later date with one objective:

Total Complete Full Spectrum World Domination they seek through Power & Control.

It's those Select Highly Compartmentalized Criminal Pure Evil Rogue Elements at the Deep State Top that have had control since the JFK Execution that have entrenched themselves for decades & refuse to relinquish Control.

This impure evil has been running the world since the time of the Pharoahs, it's ancient Babylonian mysticism/paganism and it is nothing more than the worship of Lucifer; it has never died out, it just re-emerges as something far more wicked, vile and sinister. They are all the sons and daughters of satan and do what he does - kill, steal and destroy.

It would be Nieve to think that hundreds of thousands of years of control over mankind be simply turned over by the Criminal Pure Evil Psychopathic Elite. The Deep State will always exist. However, the Pure Evil Criminal Psychopathic Highly Compartmentalized Rogue Levels of it are being delt with. Which is what the World is witnessing.

Yes We Can. But... , Dec 6, 2017 12:49 PM

I'd bet there is more to the Pete Strzok story. I don't think Mueller canned him, and tried to keep that on the down-low, based solely on Strzok's overt, naked partisanship. I'd bet that the content of Strzok's text messages, rather than the (partisan) tone , will be revealing. Things are heating up...

Consuelo -> NickPeeMe , Dec 6, 2017 1:09 PM

Ok, I'll bite...

How about a paragraph or 3 of detail, juxtaposing all of Trump's high crimes & misdemeanors against the Klinton machine? Keep in mind however, you must go back 30+ years, because there are documented incidents (not rumors, innuendo or hype) of criminality from the Klinton crime syndicate. Hopefully you have likewise documentation for Trump...

Freedom Lover -> NickPeeMe , Dec 6, 2017 1:50 PM

" Trumps Guilty" Guilty of what exactly? Mueller and the boys have been at it for almost a year now and coming up with a big nothing burger. The charges Flynn peaded guilty to have nothing to do with colusion with the Russians simply ommiting details of conversations with the Russian ambassador. Alan Dershowicz a prominate progressive and constitutional scholar and no friend of Trump has stated in an interview he sees no basis for an obstruction of justice charge.

Yes We Can. But... , Dec 6, 2017 1:05 PM

So satisfying to finally see the faces of a few goons attached to the notion of 'deep state'.

http://bit.ly/2AxQ6Q6

Sphincters tightening, and social media accounts being scrubbed, all across the DC metro region...

Miss Expectations , Dec 6, 2017 12:59 PM

I doubt that Strzok worked alone. He apparently headed up the Hillary Protection Team (HPT) at the FBI. How did he keep Hillary updated? Via Loretta Lynch?

This info request is limited...what about the Huma/Weiner computer?

johnwburns , Dec 6, 2017 1:12 PM

Why the "letter demanding" softball? Subpoena the wesals if you're serious.

gcjohns1971 , Dec 6, 2017 1:34 PM

The Senate smells blood in the water, but doesn't sense who will win, hence the cautious demand letter.

Pretty clear that FBI and much of DOJ have gone rogue, and no longer respond to the rest of the government.

This scandal will be so significant that it makes Watergate look like jaywalking.

You will know when the tide has turned when Democrat Senators go for DOJ blood (in order to distance themselves).

All of this will eventually be shown as something far more sinister than mere partisan agents. And those details will reveal a whole new pattern of illegal, immoral, and traitorous conduct.

Miss Expectations , Dec 6, 2017 1:44 PM

This is one of the best re-caps of this whole sordid FBI obstruction/coverup situation: Strzok and Laufman had also interviewed Hillary. No recordings were made of the session. But Comey testified that it's a "crime to lie to us". Not for the Clintons and their associates.

Hillary had told her interviewers that she hadn't received training on handling classified information, but she signed a document testifying that she had. Hillary claimed that she hadn't carried a second phone, but an aide, Justin Cooper, who made the server possible, testified that indeed she did .

Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills told the same lie. These are the kinds of misstep that Team Mueller would have used to hang a Trump associate. But Comey testified that Hillary Clinton did not lie. And that meant he was lying. Not only did Clinton's people lie to the FBI. But the head of the FBI had lied for them.

The fix had been in all along.

OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE WAS COMING FROM INSIDE THE FBI

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268631/obstruction-justice-was-coming-in...

Miss Expectations , Dec 6, 2017 2:27 PM

please provide the following communications, in the form of text messages or otherwise, to the Committee no later than December 11, 2017....

First few questions for Mr. Strzok:

If you wanted to have private, secure communication regarding your obstruction of justice activities, would you avoid using your office computer or cell phone?

Justapleb , Dec 6, 2017 2:30 PM

I remain skeptical. After 46% of Americans are informed of some wrongdoing, Trump discovers it too.

Silly me, thinking that Trump, as president and having every law enforcement/spy agency at his command, should be finding out long before me and I should be reading about what he DID, not what he is TWEETING.

Why isn't he personally confronting the principals? Remember "Your Fired"? I didn't and still don't watch TV, but I thought he was famous for calling the person directly accountable before him, not tweeting or writing a letter to the editor or a prayer request.

Trump didn't have this guy removed. His own people did, long ago. This is like the Mafia seeing a made man is so out of hand that the Mafia itself turns him in.

We should be keen on watching results, not the evidence of what abject morons we are as Americans to have a government so nakedly corrupt. I think the main problem is Americans, despite great genetics and being born into such wealthy conditions, are operating with effective IQ's below sub-saharan Africa. If you take in television news as information, that's all a critically thinking person needs to know about you. You're a three year old in terms of logic and reason.

I'm just too worn out with victory being right around the corner since at least as far back as Whitewater.

[Dec 05, 2017] 2014 was the yeat cold War 2 started in full force

Today we know that the stupid denigration of the Sochi Olympics in "western" propaganda media was part of the plan for the coup in Ukraine. On of distinct features of psychopaths is a lack of 'strategic empathy'. One one commenter noted: "for me personally, discussing and seeking ideas an alternatives to the financial oligarchy hiding underneath the us$ is worth it.. it has nothing to do with Putin, or only in so far as he represents an alternative - something that western countries are not offering.. i "
Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. is ill informed about and underestimating Russia. Therein lies the possibility of serious miscalculations. ..."
"... Born in Krym, I came to the US critical of USSR, but was astounded at the viciousness (and lies) of anti-Soviet propaganda. Nothing prepared me for that. After the fall, there seemed to be a short respite - but now it's full speed ahead - see if we can replicate the worst of the Cold War. Simply heart-breaking... how much better the planet would be if the two countries cooperated. ..."
"... for me personally, discussing and seeking ideas an alternatives to the financial oligarchy hiding underneath the us$ is worth it.. it has nothing to do with putin, or only in so far as he represents an alternative - something that western countries are not offering.. i ..."
"... it might not be any different in russia, but the financial demons that are pushing for global domination via the us$ are no friends of mine or of the planet ..."
"... 2015 is likely to be a dangerous year because the Empire is going for broke, as unpleasantly as possible. But the bloodiness of its intentions is now amplified by economic war; and cutthroat oil devaluation may backfire, leaving them to stumble down unpredictable paths; and it is obvious that the ruling class is exposed by its desperation , with a more fragile hold of the reins than they realize. Their confidence is just as puffed up as their hubris. ..."
"... I believe that using a given Olympics as a platform to advertise one's country to the world is utterly futile, because no Olympics are ever even going to come close to the 1936 Summer Olympics, because of how Leni Riefenstahl filmed them in Olympia. Rammstein have kindly selected the highlights of Riefenstahl's brilliant film and used them in the video of their cover of Depeche Mode's Stripped. ..."
"... It should be noted that at the climax of the video – a throng of women gymnasts gleefully and ecstatically swinging their arms in perfect synchrony – the video cuts to a flying American flag taking up the whole screen. This is the only footage that is in the Rammstein video that was not taken from Riefenstahl's film. The message is clear: America has replaced Germany as the seat of fascism. ..."
"... blind worship of anything or anyone capitalist and representing the ruling classes is something to be skeptical and distrustful of. The ruling class is mostly capitalists and populism is a tool for such folks and not typically a core belief. ..."
"... Anyway, I say so far so good. I love Putin for his 2014 actions in Syria or Ukraine, which blocked Western imperial wins and saved many innocent lives. ..."
"... The few Ukie/NATO trolls that habituate themselves here say the same things over and over. Its amazing to see how many ways they can find to say "Putin lover" over and over again in the same paragraph, and literally nothing else. ..."
"... In the end they often achieve their goal because when your shilling for a lie, muddying the waters is as good as a win. ..."
"... It is not a bug, it is a feature - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Libya .... ..."
"... Furthermore, the majority don't give a shit about history, other countries, or their history. ..."
"... It's not simply about the uneducated masses, the leaders are uniformly educated at conformist, grade-inflated Ivy League or Ivy League equivalent institutions where anyone, even George Bush Jr., can graduate with a B- average. ..."
"... Obama is disengaged, an affirmative action actor/spokesmodel who'd rather be smoking a joint at his Hawaii beach house. Biden and Bush are similar, but also morons. ..."
"... It is clear to me that 'b' overestimates the numerical strength and political power of the "non-poodle" components of Europe. ..."
"... It is clear to me that Germany in particular is a "poodle", as the saying goes, and in other words German political society is committed to being in alignment with the USA for good and for ill, for better and for worse. ..."
"... I expect him to remain a figurehead, but I expect the militias to continue to assert themselves. We'll see what comes of the prosecutions, that will be a tell. ..."
"... "It is therefore quite possible that Poroshenko is simply seeking to gain time and work on preparing the country for an all-out war, even though it is clear that people on all sides will suffer as a result. Or at the very least that he will be unable to stop the war drums even if he wishes to." ..."
Jan 05, 2015 | moonofalabama.org

The most moving event to me in 2014 was the closing ceremony (vid, best parts of opening start here) of the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Today we know that the stupid denigration of the Sochi Olympics in "western" propaganda media was part of the plan for the coup in Ukraine.

That illegal regime change was itself part of a bigger plan to restart a cold war, which will allow the U.S. to assert even more control over Europe, and eventually for regime change in Russia.

I am confident that in 2015 the non-poodle parts of Europe and Russia itself will assert themselves and block and counter the neo-imperial U.S. moves. As my Do Svidanya Sochi piece said:

The Russians will be very proud of these games. They will be grateful to their government and president for having delivered them. The internal and external message is understood: Russia has again found itself and it is stronger than ever.

The U.S. is ill informed about and underestimating Russia. Therein lies the possibility of serious miscalculations.

My hope for 2015 is that any miscalculations will be avoided and that peace will mostly prevail.

My very best wishes to all of you for a happy year 2015.

Posted by b at 12:19 PM | Comments (56)

KMF | Dec 31, 2014 12:50:24 PM | 2

Happy new year to you too.

On what you say: 'Today we know that the stupid denigration of the Sochi Olympics in "western" propaganda media was part of the plan for the coup in Ukraine.' This strikes me as placing too much emphasis on design as opposed to miscalculation, or perhaps, as this blogpost suggests, a lack of 'strategic empathy': http://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/the-need-for-strategic-empathy/

GoraDiva | Dec 31, 2014 1:33:23 PM | 6

Best to you and thanks for running a great blog!

Born in Krym, I came to the US critical of USSR, but was astounded at the viciousness (and lies) of anti-Soviet propaganda. Nothing prepared me for that. After the fall, there seemed to be a short respite - but now it's full speed ahead - see if we can replicate the worst of the Cold War. Simply heart-breaking... how much better the planet would be if the two countries cooperated.

Combining Russian knowledge and creativity with American ingenuity and entrepreneurship... - yes, one can only dream. All we have now is an unstoppable desire to dominate and a complete failure of imagination. But nothing lasts forever... so let's hope for a brighter and more honest future.

Oui | Dec 31, 2014 3:19:45 PM | 7

Great stuff!

Oliver Stone on the narrative USA In Ukraine. Always love those comments, 2,473 and counting. Links to Pepe Escobar's analysis "The new European 'arc of instability,'" which indicates growing turbulence in 2015, as the US cannot tolerate the idea of any rival economic entity.

james | Dec 31, 2014 6:56:35 PM | 17

hey sloth.. for me personally, discussing and seeking ideas an alternatives to the financial oligarchy hiding underneath the us$ is worth it.. it has nothing to do with putin, or only in so far as he represents an alternative - something that western countries are not offering.. i

live in canada and when i see the country being raped by corps that have only as much concern for the environment as our politicians will demand, i get discouraged. these same politicians don't represent me or ordinary canucks, but these same corps wanting to take the resources while giving few jobs in return..

it might not be any different in russia, but the financial demons that are pushing for global domination via the us$ are no friends of mine or of the planet..

they will switch to another whore when the us$ is no more.. this isn't about hero worship.. it's about recognizing how we in the west are being conned and lied to by financial interests who own the press and have nothing to do with my best interests.. no hero worship on my part.

you saying folks put putin on a pedestal is your own wishful thinking bullshit.

okie farmer | Dec 31, 2014 7:05:26 PM | 18

BBC World Service this morning said Moscow's riot police had dispersed Navalny's demonstrators keeping them off the sidewalks etc. I watched a live feed of the demonstration for hours, I counted about 80 demonstrators and about 20 police. Actually the demonstration was in a small plaza and no one was "dispersed". The police, however, were on the sidewalks watching the demonstrators in the plaza, which BBC turned on it's head for propaganda purposes.

Copeland | Dec 31, 2014 8:43:40 PM | 23

2015 is likely to be a dangerous year because the Empire is going for broke, as unpleasantly as possible. But the bloodiness of its intentions is now amplified by economic war; and cutthroat oil devaluation may backfire, leaving them to stumble down unpredictable paths; and it is obvious that the ruling class is exposed by its desperation , with a more fragile hold of the reins than they realize. Their confidence is just as puffed up as their hubris.

I go into the New Year cheering b, our host at this bar. And I feel so much respect for those among us who resist, who constantly refuse to capitulate to the Forces of Darkness; and so I believe the spirit that sustains us will be here in abundance, in 2015: solidarity, imagination and ingenuity, indignation and revolt, love and catharsis, all strength of character to encourage, and yes, an ample measure of good luck.

May we live to see a better year.

Demian | Dec 31, 2014 10:18:13 PM | 26

To address the matter of the Sochi Olympics. I had wondered about what the performances were like, and since I don't have a TV, b's linking to a video of the highlights was the first opportunity I had to see what the Russians had done in an apparent effort to represent Russia as a solid part of Europe. (This is what reports said was the purpose of putting so much effort into these Olympics. Warning: I am not into ballet.)

I believe that using a given Olympics as a platform to advertise one's country to the world is utterly futile, because no Olympics are ever even going to come close to the 1936 Summer Olympics, because of how Leni Riefenstahl filmed them in Olympia. Rammstein have kindly selected the highlights of Riefenstahl's brilliant film and used them in the video of their cover of Depeche Mode's Stripped.

This is some of the best film making I have ever seen. Every single scene in the Rammstein video is mind blowing. Particularly notable are the sequence with the girls swinging their arms in tandem and the women and men diving into water. As far as I know, there is nothing like that elsewhere in cinema. It is a war crime that with cinematography and editing like that, Riefenstahl wasn't permitted by the occupying powers to continue making films.

It should be noted that at the climax of the video – a throng of women gymnasts gleefully and ecstatically swinging their arms in perfect synchrony – the video cuts to a flying American flag taking up the whole screen. This is the only footage that is in the Rammstein video that was not taken from Riefenstahl's film. The message is clear: America has replaced Germany as the seat of fascism.

Compared to Olympia, what the Russians did with the Sochi Olympics is nothing but Kitsch.

jfl | Jan 1, 2015 12:23:07 AM | 27

And in addition to Saker himself and Paul Craig, there is the WHITE PAPER posted by the former and alluded to by the latter : The DOUBLE HELIX: CHINA-RUSSIA. Seems very solid.

And towards the end, the Larchmonter makes some interesting observations on North Korea, and so, obliquely on the 'Lost U.S. Credibility On Cyber Claims'.

fairleft | Jan 1, 2015 6:29:10 AM | 29

slothrop | Dec 31, 2014 6:08:50 PM | 14

I don't see b or this blog in that way, but blind worship of anything or anyone capitalist and representing the ruling classes is something to be skeptical and distrustful of. The ruling class is mostly capitalists and populism is a tool for such folks and not typically a core belief.

But Putin's actions show he _is_ a real Russian nationalist, and he has a real-world, non-imperialist understanding of what Russian nationalism covers and doesn't cover.

Anyway, I say so far so good. I love Putin for his 2014 actions in Syria or Ukraine, which blocked Western imperial wins and saved many innocent lives. I just wish he (and China) had woken up sooner, in 2013, and maybe the rape of Libya could've been prevented. So, Putin is a major actor in world affairs, he's on the anti-imperial side of history, and as far as I can tell he is on the side of all who fight the Western financial borg's world dominance and austerity crusade.

However, the next twenty years is about China and what it decides to do and who it decides ultimately to ally with. Maybe Putin fever can be cured a bit if we imagine him checking his every major move with Xi Jinping. Quiet Xi is the real man going forward. Not as much fun at parties, not as animated facial expressions, not as direct or as artful in expression as Putin, but he (and what he represents) is the real power.

And, if Xi and Putin remain allied, this may really turn out to be the Chinese century. Hope no feelings are hurt but I don't guess it will be known as the Eurasian Century.

That said, the only thing I remember from Sochi are Yu Na and the other beautiful Asian figure skaters.

Happy New Year everyone!

guest77 | Jan 1, 2015 2:37:36 PM | 33

Looks like the US is already playing its games in Cuba.

Here is an event presented in the New York Times: a "sweeping roundup of dissidents":

[A performance artist] was detained at her mother's home hours before the event and released Wednesday afternoon, along with several others.

That's a "sweeping roundup of dissidents" - briefly questioning someone at their mother's home.

Of course the job of the New York Times is to blow things out of proportion. How else to can the NYTimes present the enforcement of mundane laws in Cuba (laws which all countries have) to the American people, who see their police forces daily murder people? The NYTimes has a job to do (as does any propagandist): they have to convince the home population that they are living under the best conditions possible while giving the impression that life anywhere else is a dystopian nightmare. Truth be told - for a significant sector of the US population, as events in NYC and Ferguson have recently shown - the reality is exactly reversed!

Consider too, what she was briefly detained for - seeking to assemble without a permit - and ask yourself: what happens in the United States when people attempt to assemble without a permit in some of the most heavily trafficked areas of the US largest cities? What would occur, should, say, the New Black Panther Party attempted to set up a rally in Times Square unannounced? What happened, indeed, when the Obama Administration had enough of the Occupy Movement? The tear gassing, the pepper spraying, the ejection of people from a park where they had a right to be.

Face the facts. The US allows no public displays of dissent without the approval of the authorities. Yet what is presented in the US as "public order" is, in Cuba, portrayed as some sort of totalitarian repression. This is sheer hypocrisy from those who have an interest in smashing an independent government in Cuba, and convincing the American people that we live in a "free" society.

It sort of says it all that she chose the location of the memorial to the sunken Maine Battleship - the incident that brought the most recent wave of US Imperialism to Cuba.

"She then announced a news conference and public gathering on the Malecón, ...at the memorial to the Maine, the American battleship that sank in Havana Harbor in 1898."
guest77 | Jan 1, 2015 2:53:39 PM | 34
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Matthew 7:5

There is no statement more appropriate to present to those sitting in the US, smug in their conviction that their country is the righteous one, and that Russia and "evil" Putin are the aggressors.

The fact is, there is little in Russian behavior - at home or internationally - which one can point at negatively in which the United States doesn't out do them by a long stretch. From the military sphere, to the way it treats its smaller partners and neighbors, to the way it provides for its people at home.

May 2015 be the year hypocrisy faces consequences.

nomas | Jan 1, 2015 4:02:32 PM | 37

@ Oui @ 7

Yes that's great stuff. Cant say I enjoy reading the comments but over and over it becomes clear that the pro-US, pro NATO, pro IMF rah rah fools have NOTHING.

The most they can manage is "Putin lover" or "why don't you marry Putin if you love him so much"...etc., some turn it around and say instead "why don't you move to Russia if you hate America so much"..LOL.

The few Ukie/NATO trolls that habituate themselves here say the same things over and over. Its amazing to see how many ways they can find to say "Putin lover" over and over again in the same paragraph, and literally nothing else. When they do attempt to argue the extant facts they merely invert them and mimic the arguments of we anti imperialists, standing reality on its head. These are classic, textbook reactionary rhetorical "styles"...They cant argue facts because any facts they are willing to admit to almost never support their opinions. In the end they often achieve their goal because when your shilling for a lie, muddying the waters is as good as a win. The best way to deal with these trolls and shills ? Don't engage them directly at all, but address their nonsense obliquely and restate the true facts clearly and repeatedly .

Nana2007 | Jan 1, 2015 4:25:30 PM | 38

fairleft@29- Watching the 2008 Chinese Olympics opening ceremony I remember being bowled over by the precision and artistry. I remember thinking we in the US are truly screwed. With Sochi not so much -- kitschy as you would expect. However I think Russia's actions in 2014 were duly impressive. Your post made me think of Putin re Knut Rockne's quote: "One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than a hundred teaching it."

It 's funny I know next to nothing of Xi Jingping- I'll have to remedy that this year.

Happy new year everybody.

somebody | Jan 1, 2015 4:58:24 PM | 39

slothrop | Dec 31, 2014 6:08:50 PM | 14

I agree, it is not rational. But would you really say causing something like this is Putin's fault?

From the Washington Post

But now several of these units, especially those linked to oligarchs or the far right, are revealing a dark side. In recent months, they have threatened and kidnapped government officials, boasted that they will take power if Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko fails to defeat Russia, and they served as armed muscle in illegal attempts to take over businesses or seize local governments.

In August, members of the Dnepr-1 battalion kidnapped the head of Ukraine's state land fund to prevent him replacing an official deemed inimical to business interests. On Dec. 15, these volunteer units interdicted a humanitarian convoy destined for the Russia-controlled Donbas, where a major emergency is emerging.

On Dec. 23, the Azov brigade announced that it was taking control of order in the eastern port city of Mariupol, without official approval from local or national officials.

Government prosecutors have opened 38 criminal cases against members of the Aidar battalion alone.

A pattern of blatant disregard for the chain of command, lawlessness and racketeering is posing a growing threat to Ukraine's stability at a critical juncture. Concern about volunteer groupings is widely shared in the Poroshenko administration, which reportedly raised the question of dealing with these dangers at a meeting in November of his National Security and Defense Council.

Most alarming, however, is the role of Ukraine's interior minister, Arsen Avakov. Instead of reining in these fighters, conducting background checks on their records and reassigning those who pass muster, he instead has offered them new heavy weapons, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, and given them enhanced brigade status. Amazingly, in September he even named a leader of the neo-Nazi Azov brigade to head the police in the Kiev region.

Equally worrying is the activity of Ihor Kolomoyskyy, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Kolomoyskyy, who played a crucial and widely respected role in stabilizing his East Ukrainian region, is now flouting central authority by interdicting aid convoys headed to the Donbas and permitting brigades he finances to engage in activities that contravene the law.

What can be done? Poroshenko clearly wants this problem resolved but has been reluctant or unable to act. For him to succeed will likely require coordination with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who has also been slow to address the threat, possibly because Avakov is one of his key political allies.

Now, we all know that Yatseniuk is Victoria Nuland's guy - so the US support war lordism in Ukraine?

It is not a bug, it is a feature - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Libya ....

Demian | Jan 1, 2015 5:33:31 PM | 40

@somebody #39:

haha, here is how the author is described in that op-ed:

Adrian Karatnycky is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, where he co-directs the "Ukraine in Europe" initiative.
The author complains about "warlordism" in Ukraine, but it is the "Ukraine in Europe" "initiative" which has produced the warlordism. You really have to wonder how these people can live with themselves and keep on producing such pieces which studiously ignore the obvious.

brian | Jan 1, 2015 5:45:35 PM | 42

Today in Kiev, a torchlight parade honoring Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMZPV1MmrLo

MRW | Jan 1, 2015 8:27:59 PM | 44

GoraDiva | Dec 31, 2014 1:33:23 PM | @6

I couldn't agree with you more, GoraDiva. But you have to understand how badly educated we Americans are. Furthermore, the majority don't give a shit about history, other countries, or their history.

And, literally, no Americans know how well-educated Russians are who went to university under the USSR system; they have no idea of the rigor. None. No one. They think Putin is some KGB agent who studied at the equivalent of a Police Academy, and managed to get lucky and win a few elections, and view him as someone similar to a Brooklyn mafia don. They don't know about Putin's Master's and PhD degrees, or what they were in.

They don't know that Lavrov can run rings around Kerry intellectually, and speaks, what? Five or six languages fluently?

They regurgitate what the former house-painter Sean Hannity thinks of Putin, who regurgitates what he heard growing up on the streets of New York. These guys don't read.

MRW | Jan 1, 2015 11:43:57 PM | 45

slothrop | Dec 31, 2014 6:08:50 PM | @14

I really don't understand why this blog became a living monument to Putin. At times, I think that b's hatred of the US has something to do with the gutless murder of civilian Hamburgers by allied bombers. On the other hand, the Red Army raped and murdered countless thousands of German civilians. And rather unlike the Russians, the American occupation was colossally more favorable to Hamburgers that was to anyone living in the Soviet bloc.
Maybe reading some history will help.

A Serious Case of Mistaken Identity by Benjamin Schwarz, LA Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jun/22/local/me-43656

But the biggy is what Eisenhower did to German POWs just after the war. He killed a million, dumped lye on them, and ground them into the dirt. Story in Saturday Night, 1989. Make sure you scroll down to see the photos. Eisenhower made them live in hole in the ground.
Eisenhower's Death Camps-The Last Dirty Secret of World War Two by historian James Basque
http://www.whale.to/b/bacque1.html

fairleft | Jan 1, 2015 11:53:29 PM | 46

MRW | Jan 1, 2015 8:27:59 PM | 44

It's not simply about the uneducated masses, the leaders are uniformly educated at conformist, grade-inflated Ivy League or Ivy League equivalent institutions where anyone, even George Bush Jr., can graduate with a B- average.

And then the magic of connections and just doing what you're told can push an unqualified, uninterested dolt all the way to the top or near top.

Looking at Obama/Biden, Bush/Cheney, the only one who seemed smart and who knew and cared about what he was doing was the sociopath Cheney.

Obama is disengaged, an affirmative action actor/spokesmodel who'd rather be smoking a joint at his Hawaii beach house. Biden and Bush are similar, but also morons.

A Presidential candidate who is engaged, very smart and well-informed sticks out like a sore thumb and has a hard time earning the trust of the powers that be. Hillary Clinton in 2008 is a good example. (She's done a lot (of horrible things) since then to earn the PTB's trust, though.)

For the reason that being smart, engaged and well-read means you are potentially independent-minded in a sudden crisis. What if, for example, a sudden huge economic/mortgage crisis occurs and the extremely obvious thing to do is help homeowners directly, let the foolish banks who bankrupted themselves suffer the consequences, and pour money into public works and workers' pockets? In such a crisis, the PTB wants a bored, conformist, "don't give a shit" President who'll do exactly what Goldman Sachs tells him to do, not a smart, engaged, well-informed and potentially independent thinker/decider.

So the U.S. will continue to have an intellectual deficit at the top, and Russia will continue to win diplomatic and other battles with the U.S. even in situations where it's significantly 'outweighed'. Brains are too untrustworthy, they make the Wall Street boys nervous.

somebody | Jan 2, 2015 12:02:10 AM | 47

rufus magister | Jan 1, 2015 8:13:33 PM | 43

You have the same problem as b. The world is shades of grey not good and bad.

The "novorussian" side is fighting in the areas where Ukrainian/Russian oligarchs have interests who lost when Yanukovich was ousted. By withdrawing his own Russian nationalist fanatics Putin left the field to them. The non-destruction and shake down of Mariupol is a good case study of what is going on. Kolomoisky (Dnepopetrovsk) is in a take over fight with Akhmetov (Donbass).

There seems to be an agreement between Putin, Poroshenko and the EU (devolution and Donbass remaining part of Ukraine), just Poroshenko has not got the power (the security/military apparatus is in the hands of the Yatseniuk/Avakov/Kolomoisky faction backed by Victoria Nuland) to deal. Poroshenko's statements are devoid of any logic as he tries to cover the divide in his political coalition. At the same time obviously, he is in it for himself. On the other hand there is the issue of the funding of the Novorussian side. A lot of that will be a shake down of the oligarchs, too, and the genie probably has come out of the bottle there, too.

There is something intriguing about the Dniepopetrovsk private civilian and military airport run by Kolomoisky's airline. And there is a gap in the conspiracy theories of the usual Russian linked, Western left media outlets. Indian media is full of it, just google it.

According to reports in the media, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to take off at 1 PM from Frankfurt on his way back to India from Brazil where he had gone for a meeting of the leaders of the BRICS countries. His flight eventually took off at 1:22 PM. Had Modi's flight taken off at 1 PM as the earlier reports had indicated, it would have been in the vicinity of the shooting within six minutes of the Malaysian Airlines flight being shot down. ... What makes the claim that MH 17 was mistaken for an Ukrainian military plane a highly questionable one is that the plane was just 20 miles from the Russian border and the Ukrainian government would not dare provoke Russia by sending military planes to cross over into Russian airspace. It is unlikely that the anyone could have mistaken a plane headed for Russia as an Ukrainian military aircraft. ... Modi's election in May as the Indian Prime Minister caused a huge geopolitical earthquake, and any harm to him will have great ramifications around the world.

Actually, Modi was on his return from Brazil where BRICS had just voted on the founding of a BRICS development bank.

Now, this is a very good conspiracy theory with all the necessary ingredients. How come this has been restricted to India?

fairleft | Jan 2, 2015 12:46:21 AM | 49

Well happy bad new year, the Western media works harder to whitewash fascist/Nazi Bandera. An absolutely brilliant comment by 'Jack' below the AFP puff piece:

This US imperialist propaganda piece must be written by one of the staff comedians! Bandera is Che Guevara! Chocolate king Poroshenko fought on the barricades!

Notice the backhanded support to these n@zis? Our propaganda machine wants you to think that only "Moscow" says Bandera fought on the side of Hitler and the N@zis. Notice how the article tries to justify Bandera's fighting with the n@zis by blaming the 1930s famine -- but not mentioning the famine affected the whole USSR and was made worse by US economic embargo (just like today!)

These are the n@zis on whom our US government of hypocrites spent 5 billion of our tax dollars to bring to power and overthrow an elected government. These n@zis have attacked all media and parties in Ukraine that oppose the US puppet junta.

The people of the east are overwhelmingly Russian speaking working class people, miners and factory workers, who refused their appointed oligarch governors and declared their independence of the junta.

Our US government wants to turn Ukraine into a low wage colony and establish first-strike nuclear missile bases in Ukraine directed against Russia. The restoration of capitalism in Ukraine has brought disaster.

No surprise that some US politicians mingle with N@zis in Louisiana!

brian | Jan 2, 2015 2:08:01 AM | 52

the nonpoodle parts of europe will have to be aware of sedition from its own peoples as with the various Arab springs and Ukraine's Maidan, where locals serve to agitate for a foreign power while talking about 'freedom and democracy'

Mina | Jan 2, 2015 2:25:14 AM | 53

Fascism in Ukraine
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/9/119309/World/International/Thousands-of-Ukraine-nationalists-march-in-Kiev.aspx

And happy new year to all here!

Ghubar Shabih | Jan 2, 2015 3:20:03 PM | 54

Sergey Lavrov said on 15 Dec 2014: "We have overestimated the independence of the European Union [from the US]." http://itar-tass.com/en/russia/767282 . Lavrov made that comment in contemplation of the trade sanctions imposed by the EU on Russia last summer & autumn including particularly the manner in which the sanctions were discussed and not debated by EU political society.

It is clear to me that 'b' overestimates the numerical strength and political power of the "non-poodle" components of Europe. 'b' makes a bold declaration in his above post that "I am confident that in 2015 the non-poodle parts of Europe and Russia itself will assert themselves and block and counter the neo-imperial U.S. moves."

It is clear to me that Germany in particular is a "poodle", as the saying goes, and in other words German political society is committed to being in alignment with the USA for good and for ill, for better and for worse.

I repeat, the "non-poodle parts of Europe" have no teeth in Europe. You've seen that consistently in recent years, and you've no intelligent basis for supposing you're not going to be seeing it in 2015.

rufus magister | Jan 2, 2015 9:12:58 PM | 56

s'body @ 47 --

I'm sorry that I did not make my intent clear. I've been posting about the dangers posed by the militias and the rivalry btw. Poroshenko and Kolomoisky for a bit (good to see the WaPo has caught up, as you advise in 39 -- NYT is my MSM paper-of-record of choice, so I don't see the Post, thanks). I offered it as evidence of growing discord amongst the junta, not praise for Poroshenko's virtue. I expect him to remain a figurehead, but I expect the militias to continue to assert themselves. We'll see what comes of the prosecutions, that will be a tell.

I see the junta as shades of black -- midnight, charcoal, jet, ebony, etc. The Opposition Bloc is grey.

More grist for the mill -- nice pc. from Fort Russ, Is Poroshenko Preparing for Peace or War?. The whole pc. is worth reading, thorough consideration of Poroshenko's position, but here's the bottom line.

"It is therefore quite possible that Poroshenko is simply seeking to gain time and work on preparing the country for an all-out war, even though it is clear that people on all sides will suffer as a result. Or at the very least that he will be unable to stop the war drums even if he wishes to."

[Dec 05, 2017] Schizophrenic nonsense about Russia in Western MSM

So the anti-Russian campaign probably started after Sochi Olympics if nor earlier. Now we see just a new stage of it.
Notable quotes:
"... Western media, analysts and commentator spew the same inane nonsense regarding Russia. Either Putin is the new Hitler or he is just like Stalin or trying to become a new Tsar. Western experts accuse Putin of trying to revive the USSR one day only to accuse Putin re-establishing the Russian Empire the day afterwards. ..."
"... West media oscillates from Russia is about collapse to Russia is about to invade Europe and conquer the world! ..."
"... For nearly two hours, the Russian president reeled off a litany of resentments. The west had proclaimed victory in the cold war. It had cheated Moscow by expanding the EU and Nato right to Russia's borders. It had ignored international rules to pursue reckless policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. ..."
"... So far, the sanctions have acted as what one US official calls an "accelerant" to the unexpected plunge in oil prices, pushing Russia into a deep economic crisis. The rouble has tumbled, leaving Russia facing recession and spiralling inflation, challenging its ability to fund its costly stealth war in Ukraine (where the Kremlin insists there are no Russian soldiers on the ground, despite ample evidence to the contrary [Where is the evidence? Please state what the evidence is.]). ..."
"... I stopped reading the FT years ago . For the financial stuff it was quite good (!) and had a good level for people not accompli in such matters, but it always sucked ass * politically as it is generally to the far right of Ghengis Khan (my apologies to him as I am probably one of the descendents of the many beautiful ladies he porked – apparently 1 in 7 of us are). ..."
Jan 31, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren says:

Western media, analysts and commentator spew the same inane nonsense regarding Russia. Either Putin is the new Hitler or he is just like Stalin or trying to become a new Tsar. Western experts accuse Putin of trying to revive the USSR one day only to accuse Putin re-establishing the Russian Empire the day afterwards.

West media oscillates from Russia is about collapse to Russia is about to invade Europe and conquer the world!

Moscow Exile, February 3, 2015 at 11:02 am
From the above tweet kindly posted by Peter:

Extracts from the FT article: "Battle for Ukraine: How the west lost Putin"

It was past 10pm and the German chancellor was sitting in a Hilton hotel conference room in Brisbane, Australia. Her interlocutor was the implacable Vladimir Putin. For nearly two hours, the Russian president reeled off a litany of resentments. The west had proclaimed victory in the cold war. It had cheated Moscow by expanding the EU and Nato right to Russia's borders. It had ignored international rules to pursue reckless policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

The chancellor steered the conversation back to eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists were engaged in a bloody struggle against the western-backed government in Kiev, according to a person familiar with the meeting [WHO? No names, no pack drill?]. Since the crisis began, Ms Merkel [Why Ms? She is "Frau" and she is married. Does the journalist not know that? Does he think that Bundeskanzlerin Merkel wants to keep her marital status a secret? Fucking PC crap!] had worked hard to extract some sense from Mr Putin of what he wanted - something she could use to construct an agreement. When he finally offered a solution, she was shocked. Mr Putin declared Kiev should deal with the rebels the way he had dealt with Russia's breakaway Chechnya region: by buying them off with autonomy and money. A reasonable idea, perhaps, to an ex-KGB colonel. But for an East German pastor's daughter, with a deeply-ingrained sense of fairness, this was unacceptable.

Ms Merkel had asked her closest advisers to stay outside during the Brisbane meeting, on November 15 last year. "She wanted to be alone . . . to test whether she could get Putin to be more open about what he really wants",says someone briefed on the conversation [WHO?]. "But he wouldn't say what his strategy is, because he doesn't know".

For Moscow, too, something snapped. Weeks later, a Kremlin official [WHO?] dismissed the notion, often cited in diplomatic circles, that there had ever been a "special relationship" between the two leaders. "Putin and Merkel could never stand each other", he told the Financial Times. "Of course, they are professionals, so they tried to make the best of it for a long time. But that seems to have changed now."

The Merkel-Putin encounter in Australia marked a turning point. After a year of crisis, the west realised that it had been pursuing an illusion: for all its post-communist tribulations, Russia was always seen to be on an inexorable path of convergence with Europe and the west - what a senior German official [WHO?] calls the notion that "in the end, they'll all become like us".

So far, the sanctions have acted as what one US official calls an "accelerant" to the unexpected plunge in oil prices, pushing Russia into a deep economic crisis. The rouble has tumbled, leaving Russia facing recession and spiralling inflation, challenging its ability to fund its costly stealth war in Ukraine (where the Kremlin insists there are no Russian soldiers on the ground, despite ample evidence to the contrary [Where is the evidence? Please state what the evidence is.]).

According to a senior Washington official [WHO?], Mr Poroshenko, the oligarch elected Ukraine's president in May, was anxious to hold face-to-face meetings with Mr Putin. But he wanted other leaders in the room capable of holding Mr Putin to commitments. Ms Merkel was the obvious choice. "The administration's view is that she's the best interlocutor that we have in the west with Putin," says an ex-US diplomat [WHO?].

US President Barack Obama has held his own share of calls with Mr Putin, but he has largely taken a back seat. US insiders [WHO?] say the president feels Mr Putin was unresponsive to efforts to build a relationship. "Obama sees the world in win-win terms, Putin sees it in zero-sum terms", says the ex-diplomat. The two have a visible lack of chemistry. In Mr Obama's words, Mr Putin has a "kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom".

Diplomats suspect [WHICH DIPLOMATS?] Mr Putin is surrounded by yes-men afraid to give him the unvarnished truth. They suggest, for example, that he has been surprised by the strength of EU unity over sanctions.

She prepares meticulously, studying maps of eastern Ukraine and poring over them in meetings and phone calls with Mr Putin. "There are maps and charts, with roads and checkpoints", says a European diplomat [WHO?]. "She has these details. She knows about them."

In public, Ms Merkel has not said Mr Putin has lied, but she has in private [TO WHOM?]. "'He's lying', that's what she says to all the other leaders," says the EU diplomat.

A partygoer [WHO?] close to Ms Merkel recalls her saying little about the disaster. "The chancellor doesn't like to speak about something until she is sure of her facts. But she was shaken. It was horrendous."

"The Russians just weren't credible. They got beaten", says a senior Washington official [WHO?].

Asked why Mr Putin did not turn MH17 into an opportunity for reconciliation, a former senior Kremlin official [WHO?] said: "Because he was insulted. He acted emotionally. Because your side came out before anything was clear, accusing him of all sorts of things".

and on and on and on.

I've just got fed up of noting the unsubstantiated statements. And to make all this even more annoying,each time I cut and pasted, I received the following notification off FT:

"High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article."

High quality global journalism???

et Al , February 3, 2015 at 12:59 pm
I stopped reading the FT years ago. For the financial stuff it was quite good (!) and had a good level for people not accompli in such matters, but it always sucked ass* politically as it is generally to the far right of Ghengis Khan (my apologies to him as I am probably one of the descendents of the many beautiful ladies he porked – apparently 1 in 7 of us are).

The thing is, none of this should surprise us as established journalism has only got worse. Alternative media fortunately has grown on the back of this atrophy of the circle jerk club. What this goes to show is that the discerning news consumer now looks elsewhere for its news because the Pork Pie News Networks are so transparently bullshit in the extreme and even more unapologetic when they are caught with their pants down pretending to be milking grandma's cow in the middle of the night.

Fern, February 3, 2015 at 5:09 pm
If Putin became 'emotional' every time he was insulted by the west, he wouldn't have gotten out of bed since about 2003. Jeez, the crap these guys write.

[Dec 05, 2017] Conspiracy Theorists, Bloggers Compared To ISIS During Congressional Hearing by Paul Joseph Watson

So neo McCarthyism witch hunt that is rampant now is just more of the same.
Notable quotes:
"... The hearing, hosted by the House Foreign Relations Committee, was titled "Confronting Russia's Weaponization of Information," and accused Russian state broadcaster RT of weaponizing "conspiracy theories" to spread propaganda. ..."
"... One of the speakers giving testimony was former RT host Liz Wahl, who made a public spectacle of quitting Russian state media last year in an incident stage-managed by neo-con James Kirchick, himself a former employee of Radio Free Europe – a state media outlet. ..."
"... Remarking that the Internet provided a platform for "fringe voices and extremists," Wahl characterized people who challenge establishment narratives as a "cult". "They mobilize and they feel they're part of some enlightened fight against the establishment .they find a platform to voice their deranged views," said Wahl. ..."
"... Referring to comments made in January by US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) chief Andrew Lack, who characterized RT as a threat on the same level as ISIS and Boko Haram, Wahl said the comparison was justified. ..."
"... Peter Pomerantsev, of the London-based Legatum Institute, followed up by claiming that conspiracy theories were no longer "fringe" and were now driving the success of Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, before lamenting the fact that conspiracy theories were challenging the "global order" and threatening to undermine global institutions. ..."
"... All three individuals that gave testimony are staunch critics of Russia, leading Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to wish "we had at least one other person to balance out this in a way that perhaps could've compared our system to the Russian system, to find out where that truth is, just how bad that is." ..."
"... Without a doubt, RT puts out pro-Russian propaganda, but it also broadcasts truths about geopolitics and U.S. foreign policy that Americans will never see on mainstream corporate networks, precisely because those networks are also engaged in propaganda. ..."
"... As linguist Noam Chomsky said, "The idea that there should be a network reaching people, which does not repeat the US propaganda system, is intolerable" to the US establishment. ..."
"... I love it when .gov shows their hand. ..."
"... Let's not forget -- as reported here many times to the credit of ZH -- that the very term "conspiracy theorist" was coined by the CIA as a means of undermining anyone who would question the government. ..."
"... Websites of Mass Instruction (are internet sites that can educate and bring significant enlightenment to a large number of humans or cause great damage to the false government-scripted MSM narrativ ..."
"... Screw them, screw all of them. I am a blogger, I do my own analysis, and try to figure out what BS they are going to try and pull next based on the information I have available to me. It makes things so clear when they start speaking so hostilely about something you are involved in when you know are doing the right thing by speaking out. She is making it seem like there is some nefarious motive behind what we do. She is the one that is dangerous, not us. She is trying to curtail free speech for god sake. ..."
"... The US Propaganda Machine has just jumped the shark. ..."
"... It jumped the shark awhile ago. Like all corrupt governments, the government of the United States accuses others of behavior the US blatantly engages in itself. A few gems regarding our own "online troll army": http://www.wired.com/2011/07/darpa-wants-social-media-sensor-for-propaga... ..."
"... And let's not forget that the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 included a provision to repeal the ban on government propaganda being directed at American citizens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fisc... ..."
"... Turns out Uncle Sam is a sociopathic, hypocritical asshole. EDIT: Incidentally, folks, they always tell you what they're gonna do before they do it. This is a shot across the bow; they will be coming after the internet in one way or another at some point. It's too much of a threat for them to ignore it, and it's only a matter of time. ..."
"... The pejorative "conspiracy theorist" is meant to demean and ridicule skeptics of official stories. Most so-called "conspiracy theorists" are really skeptics, by definition. They're skeptical of what the government tells them. They're skeptical of the claim that drug companies are really only interested in helping humankind and have no desire to make money. They're skeptical that food corporations are telling them the truth about what's in their food. And they're also skeptical of anything coming out of Washington D.C., regardless of which party happens to be in power at the time. ..."
"... So let's get this straight... they believe that Russia is responsibility for ALLLLLLL the "conspiracy theories" on the Internet? LOL! How about the one where the NSA was spying on everyone and it turned out to be true? Is Russia responsible for that one too? ..."
"... Soon we will find out that Liz Wahl works for the CIA and was specifically planted at RT in order to create the current psyop. ..."
"... US propagandists are locked in a monologue mode, speaking to themselves and of themselves all the time. The Russians are simply a canvas on which US propagandists paint a projected picture of their inner selves. This is the US world order, wallowing in the denial of the most basic reality. Who could come with the fantasy that the US supports freedom of speech? ..."
Apr 16, 2015 | euobserver.com

Submitted by Paul Joseph Watson via PrisonPlanet.com,

Bloggers, conspiracy theorists and people who challenge establishment narratives on the Internet were all likened to ISIS terrorists during a chilling Congressional hearing which took place yesterday.

The hearing, hosted by the House Foreign Relations Committee, was titled "Confronting Russia's Weaponization of Information," and accused Russian state broadcaster RT of weaponizing "conspiracy theories" to spread propaganda.

One of the speakers giving testimony was former RT host Liz Wahl, who made a public spectacle of quitting Russian state media last year in an incident stage-managed by neo-con James Kirchick, himself a former employee of Radio Free Europe – a state media outlet.

Remarking that the Internet provided a platform for "fringe voices and extremists," Wahl characterized people who challenge establishment narratives as a "cult". "They mobilize and they feel they're part of some enlightened fight against the establishment .they find a platform to voice their deranged views," said Wahl.

Referring to comments made in January by US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) chief Andrew Lack, who characterized RT as a threat on the same level as ISIS and Boko Haram, Wahl said the comparison was justified.

"By using the Internet to mobilize people that feel displaced, that feel like they've been on the outskirts of society, and give them a place where they can find a sense of belonging, and maybe make a difference in their own way, and it's a problem," she said.

Wahl went on to bemoan the fact that conspiracy theorists were "shaping the discussion online, on message boards, on Twitter, on social media," before asserting that the web had become a beacon of "disinformation, false theories, people that are just trying to make a name for themselves, bloggers or whatever, that have absolutely no accountability for the truth, that are able to rile up a mass amount of people online."

Committee Chairman Ed Royce then proceeded to accuse people on YouTube of using "raw violence" to advance conspiracy theories.

Peter Pomerantsev, of the London-based Legatum Institute, followed up by claiming that conspiracy theories were no longer "fringe" and were now driving the success of Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, before lamenting the fact that conspiracy theories were challenging the "global order" and threatening to undermine global institutions.

All three individuals that gave testimony are staunch critics of Russia, leading Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to wish "we had at least one other person to balance out this in a way that perhaps could've compared our system to the Russian system, to find out where that truth is, just how bad that is."

Beyond the inflammatory rhetoric, the real story revolves around the fact that Washington was caught off guard by the rapid growth of RT, with Hillary Clinton and others having acknowledged the fact that the U.S. is "losing the information war," which is why they are now desperately trying to denigrate the Russian broadcaster.

Without a doubt, RT puts out pro-Russian propaganda, but it also broadcasts truths about geopolitics and U.S. foreign policy that Americans will never see on mainstream corporate networks, precisely because those networks are also engaged in propaganda.

There's no mystery behind why RT has become so big – telling the truth is popular – but because Washington finds it impossible to compete on that basis, it has been forced to resort to ad hominem attacks and ludicrous comparisons to ISIS in a desperate bid to level the playing field.

As linguist Noam Chomsky said, "The idea that there should be a network reaching people, which does not repeat the US propaganda system, is intolerable" to the US establishment.

_SILENCER

I love it when .gov shows their hand.

Fukushima Sam

You fucking bastards, you give me a version of events like "9/11" and the "Boston Marathon Bombing" that actually seem to jibe with reality and maybe then I'll stop being a "conspiracy theorist".

LetThemEatRand

Let's not forget -- as reported here many times to the credit of ZH -- that the very term "conspiracy theorist" was coined by the CIA as a means of undermining anyone who would question the government.

nmewn

It should also be pointed out that Bernanke is now "a blogger" at the Brookings Institute and one helluva "conspiracy theorist" in his own right...lol.

I guess some nutters are more equal than others ;-)

Supernova Born

Websites of Mass Instruction (are internet sites that can educate and bring significant enlightenment to a large number of humans or cause great damage to the false government-scripted MSM narrative)

clymer

Thanks RT for not thoroughly vetting that bitchy douche. Now if we could all go back to CNN like the nice little drones that we are... (Lauren Lyster ended up at CBS - WTF is with RT hand-picking these opportunists - reminds of ironically of Yuri Bezmenov speaking of hiring jouralists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLqHv0xgOlc -- they didn't learn from their own program)

Captain Debtcrash

Screw them, screw all of them. I am a blogger, I do my own analysis, and try to figure out what BS they are going to try and pull next based on the information I have available to me. It makes things so clear when they start speaking so hostilely about something you are involved in when you know are doing the right thing by speaking out. She is making it seem like there is some nefarious motive behind what we do. She is the one that is dangerous, not us. She is trying to curtail free speech for god sake.

http://www.debtcrash.report/

Bumpo

The US Propaganda Machine has just jumped the shark.

McMolotov

It jumped the shark awhile ago. Like all corrupt governments, the government of the United States accuses others of behavior the US blatantly engages in itself. A few gems regarding our own "online troll army": http://www.wired.com/2011/07/darpa-wants-social-media-sensor-for-propaga...

http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Social_Media_in_Strategic_Com...

And let's not forget that the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 included a provision to repeal the ban on government propaganda being directed at American citizens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fisc...

Turns out Uncle Sam is a sociopathic, hypocritical asshole. EDIT: Incidentally, folks, they always tell you what they're gonna do before they do it. This is a shot across the bow; they will be coming after the internet in one way or another at some point. It's too much of a threat for them to ignore it, and it's only a matter of time.

BLOTTO

I've post previously...but always a good read.

'What is a "conspiracy theorist?

The pejorative "conspiracy theorist" is meant to demean and ridicule skeptics of official stories. Most so-called "conspiracy theorists" are really skeptics, by definition. They're skeptical of what the government tells them. They're skeptical of the claim that drug companies are really only interested in helping humankind and have no desire to make money. They're skeptical that food corporations are telling them the truth about what's in their food. And they're also skeptical of anything coming out of Washington D.C., regardless of which party happens to be in power at the time.

People who are not skeptics of "official stories" tend to be dull-minded. To believe everything these institutions tell you is a sign of mental retardation. To ask questions, on the other hand, is a sign of higher intelligence and wisdom.'

http://www.naturalnews.com/045172_conspiracy_theories_rational_thought_c...

philipat

It's hilarious watching in the land of the free as they try to find a way around the First Amendment to ban RT.......

Gaius Frakkin

So let's get this straight... they believe that Russia is responsibility for ALLLLLLL the "conspiracy theories" on the Internet? LOL! How about the one where the NSA was spying on everyone and it turned out to be true? Is Russia responsible for that one too?

So who are the REAL paranoid, deranged, scared out of their wits about losing power, conspiracy theorists?

Element

Like glib acceptance of any flaky old crap that drifts into your transom, you mean?

oh ... that's completely different ...

Right?

--

If people buy into nonsense and BS stories of their own volition, this is hardly going to be changed at the stroke of a pen of a legislative chamber all agreeing on some policy of state action to ban or else accept some aspect of public discourse.

cro_maat

Soon we will find out that Liz Wahl works for the CIA and was specifically planted at RT in order to create the current psyop.

TheFourthStooge-ing

US propagandists are locked in a monologue mode, speaking to themselves and of themselves all the time. The Russians are simply a canvas on which US propagandists paint a projected picture of their inner selves. This is the US world order, wallowing in the denial of the most basic reality. Who could come with the fantasy that the US supports freedom of speech?

Sorry, US citizens, your propaganda techniques are too old by now. Most people know them. Especially the Russians:

http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/04/chronicles-of-collapse-info-battles...

The translator of this Russian article notes that America throwing more resources into the info war is a sign of Russia's victories and America's agony in this theater of operations.

[Dec 05, 2017] EU mulls response to Russia's information war

So the current anti RT campaign is not an aberration. It is continuation of long time efforts...
Jan 09, 2015 | https://euobserver.com/foreign/127135

EU Observer: EU mulls response to Russia's information war

The Netherlands is funding a study on how the EU can fight back against Russia's "information war", in one of several counter-propaganda initiatives.

The Dutch-sponsored study was launched in the New Year by the European Endowment for Democracy (EED), a Brussels-based foundation.

But little happened until the Netherlands stepped in with the EED grant after a passenger plane, flight MH17, was shot down over east Ukraine killing 193 Dutch nationals and 105 other people.

Evidence indicates Russia-controlled rebels caused the disaster using a Russia-supplied rocket system.

But Russian state media have tried to sow suspicion the Ukrainian air force did it in order to prompt Western intervention in the conflict

Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, and the UK are drafting an informal paper on how EU institutions and Nato can co-ordinate "strategic communications"

Its foreign ministry spokesman, Karlis Eihenbaums, told this website that around 15 EU states back the project and that the news broadcasts should be available in Russia if they can get past its "jamming system".

But Riga is trying to play down expectations of a quick result.

"I don't think we can come to an agreement among the 28 [EU leaders] to come up with a new TV station in Russian. Euronews is already doing news in Russian, so it'll be difficult to get an additional channel", Latvian PM Laimdota Straujuma told press in the Latvian capital on Wednesday (7 January).

Well-funded Russian broadcasters, such as RT, have hired big names, including former CNN anchor Larry King, and air programmes in English, French, German, and Spanish as well as Russian.

Their work is backed up by pseudo-NGOs.

Putting the Dutch grant in perspective, the British think-tank, Chatham House estimates the Russian "NGO" component alone is worth $100 million a year.

Western media have caught Russian media using fake pictures and fake witness accounts of alleged Ukrainian atrocities.

Eihenbaums noted that any EU news channel "must be attractive, but with accurate information it must not be a propaganda organ".

He cited RFE/RFL, a US-funded broadcaster, and the BBC as models because they do both Ukraine-critical and Russia-critical stories.
###

If you can't smell the excrement off that, then get thee to a medic!

Now, considering the piece above, try not to hold back a large guffaw for this one!

[Dec 05, 2017] One-Pager on Latest Developments in Russia (RF Sitrep 20150129)

Jan 31, 2015 | Russia Insider

HOW TO READ THE WESTERN MEDIA.

When they say Kiev forces have re-taken the airport, know that they have lost it.

When they say giving up South Stream was a defeat for Putin, know it was a brilliant counter-move.

When they say Russia is isolated (a stopped clock, here's The Economist in 1999!), know that it is expanding its influence and connections every day.

When they say Russians are turning against Putin, know that the opposite is true. When they speak of nation-building in the new Ukraine, know it's degenerating into armed thuggery (see video).

Know that when they speak of Kyrzbekistan, they're not just stenographers, they're incompetent stenographers.

Take what they say, turn it upside down, and you'll have a better take on reality.

THE MERKEL MYSTERY. I, like many, thought, when the Ukraine crisis began, that German Chancellor Merkel would prove to be key in settling it. This has not proved to be the case at all; in fact she often throws more fuel on the fire. I believe that Gilbert Doctorow may have the answer. In essence, he believes that Berlin dreams the "pre-WWI dream of Mitteleuropa" with cheap, docile workers in Poland, Ukraine and the others forever. Of course, it hasn't worked out very well, but that, he thinks, was the plan. There was no "End of History" after all; a rebirth of history it seems.

[Dec 04, 2017] Anti-Trump FBI Agent Changed Language Of Hillary Email Scandal From Grossly Negligent To Extremely Careless

Notable quotes:
"... the news of Strzok's direct role in the statement that ultimately cleared the former Democratic presidential candidate of criminal wrongdoing, now combined with the fact that he was dismissed from special counsel Robert Mueller's team after exchanging private messages with an FBI lawyer that could be seen as favoring Clinton politically, may give ammunition to those seeking ways to discredit Mueller's Russia investigation. ..."
Dec 04, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Over the weekend we noted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's top FBI investigator into 'Russian meddling', agent Peter Strzok, was removed from the probe due to the discovery of anti-Trump text messages exchanged with a colleague (a colleague whom he also happened to be having an extra-marital affair with).

Not surprisingly, the discovery prompted a visceral response from Trump via Twitter:

Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI "agent's role in Clinton probe under review." Led Clinton Email probe. @foxandfriends Clinton money going to wife of another FBI agent in charge.

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Report: "ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE" Now it all starts to make sense!

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Alas, as it turns out, Strzok, who was blatantly exposed as a political hack by his own wreckless text messages, also had a leading role in the Hillary email investigation. And wouldn't you know it, as CNN has apparently just discovered, Strzok not only held a leading role in that investigation but potentially single-handedly saved Hillary from prosecution by making the now-infamous change in Comey's final statement to describe her email abuses as "extremely careless" rather than the original language of "grossly negligent."

A former top counterintelligence expert at the FBI, now at the center of a political uproar for exchanging private messages that appeared to mock President Donald Trump, changed a key phrase in former FBI Director James Comey's description of how former secretary of state Hillary Clinton handled classified information, according to US officials familiar with the matter.

Electronic records show Peter Strzok, who led the investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server as the No. 2 official in the counterintelligence division, changed Comey's earlier draft language describing Clinton's actions as "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless," the source said. The drafting process was a team effort, CNN is told, with a handful of people reviewing the language as edits were made, according to another US official familiar with the matter.

But the news of Strzok's direct role in the statement that ultimately cleared the former Democratic presidential candidate of criminal wrongdoing, now combined with the fact that he was dismissed from special counsel Robert Mueller's team after exchanging private messages with an FBI lawyer that could be seen as favoring Clinton politically, may give ammunition to those seeking ways to discredit Mueller's Russia investigation.

The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment.

Of course, as we noted a month ago (see: First Comey Memo Concluded Hillary Was "Grossly Negligent," Punishable By Jail ), the change in language was significant since federal law states that "gross negligence" in handling the nation's intelligence can be punished criminally with prison time or fines whereas "extreme carelessness" has no such legal definition and/or ramifications.

In fact, Section 793 of federal law states that "gross negligence" with respect to the handling of national defense documents is punishable by a fine and up to 10 years in prison ...so you can see why that might present a problem for Hillary.

"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer -- shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."

And just like that, the farce that has heretofore been referred to as the "Russian meddling probe" has been exposed for what it really is...an extremely compromised political "witch hunt".

As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians!

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2017

Budnacho , Dec 4, 2017 5:32 PM

*sits down, makes popcorn*

junction -> Budnacho , Dec 4, 2017 5:34 PM

And from "extremely careless" to "good enough for government work."

The Alarmist -> junction , Dec 4, 2017 5:37 PM

Simple negligence on the part of the FBI agent ... nothing to see here.

Now, about that collusion with the Russians ....

shitshitshit -> The Alarmist , Dec 4, 2017 5:42 PM

dude looks like illegitimate offspring from alan greespan.

Is this the result of consanguinity at work?

chunga -> The Alarmist , Dec 4, 2017 5:41 PM

I think Lych wanted to call this a "matter", Comey said there was no intent, and the Phoenix tarmac talker needed to be "stemmed".

Russian fingerprints everywhere.

south40_dreams , Dec 4, 2017 5:44 PM

This is the Mueller-Comey FBI crime family at its finest. James Comey was an highly paid executive at Lockheed Martin just prior to being named FBI director, replacing his close buddy Mueller who was FBI director. LM was also a high contributor to the Clinton Foundation in its glory days, with suspicious ties to Comey's lawyer brother. Dickie Mueller seems to be the brains of the whole cabal.

Roots and tentacles in the swamp lead EVERYWHERE

Wilcox1 , Dec 4, 2017 5:47 PM

Where are the emails between this stork and the fbi page named kelly that he was having an interoffice affair with? Its been proved she hated OUR PRESIDENT TRUMP of US(A). This stork guy won't be getting the attention from this fbi page that he is in an interoffice relationship with unless he acts the way she wants. Seems like these emails should be easy to get by the lamestream wapo, failing nytimes, fakest of fake news cnn, etc.

enough of this , Dec 4, 2017 5:47 PM

When Strzok made the change, he provided incontrovertible proof of the FBI's obstruction of justice in the Clinton case, as this article clearly explains:

http://investmentwatchblog.com/extremely-careless-or-grossly-negligent-a...

MuffDiver69 , Dec 4, 2017 5:49 PM

Zero of this happens if the President hadn't been hammering in a public way for intelligence leaks to be plugged and calling out the FBI and Comey relentlessly.....I think it's a pretty good bet that one of the twenty seven leak investigations going on caught this idiot..No way an Inspector General just happened upon Storks texts...that takes some "wiretapping" or other counter measures..Now the dam has burst...Anyone defending the FBI and it's integrity at this point needs to be hung...

[Dec 03, 2017] Stephen Kotkin How Vladimir Putin Rules

Highly recommended!
This is two years old Foreign Affair article, which actually can be viewed as a precursor of the current anti-Russian witch hunt. Foreign Affairs firmly belong to the neocons swamp, so be prepared ;-). As usual for such publications as Foreign Affairs comments are more interesting that the article. BTW the resistance to the neoliberal empire led by the USA can probably be mentioned as a part of Russian national idea. In this sense Stanislav Belkovsky observation that "the search for Russia's national idea, which began after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is finally over. Now, it is evident that Russia's national idea is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin." Putin simply became expression of this resistance to neocolonial rule, much like Gandy became in India before.
The US neoliberal elite is fixated on the idea of destroying Russia much like Roman elite was fixated on the idea of destroying Carnage.
This analysis is from 2015 or two years from now. It Is interesting to compare it (along with comments) with he current situation and new developments...
Notable quotes:
"... "the search for Russia's national idea, which began after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is finally over. Now, it is evident that Russia's national idea is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin." ..."
"... Russia is classified as a high-income economy by the World Bank (having a per capita GDP exceeding $14,000). Its unemployment remains low (around five percent); until recently, consumer spending had been expanding at more than five percent annually; life expectancy has been rising; and Internet penetration exceeds that of some countries in the European Union. ..."
"... it is the predatory West's efforts to enslave people to the European weltanschauung. ..."
"... This is no World Order: it a man eat man world that has been created. ..."
"... Before America decided to KILL Gadhafi by indiscriminatingly arming gangsters to carry out their will, the incipient-unity state of Libya did not have the sectarian violence that we presently hear about. ..."
"... let us examine your assertion for a moment: Bush was a Moron but Saddam was a murderous dictator. By your logic we American must be the epitome of Moron-ness, for we ELECTED Bush; Iraqis must be a gentle and good people who were overpowered by the Saddam, the Murderous Dictator.. ..."
"... By the way, how many Iraqis did Saddam murder? And then, how many Iraqis were murdered, at the command of Bush? Since the Iraqis were killed/murdered at the command of Bush, and Americans elected Bush, Americans are responsible for the murders. We Americans have blood on our hands! ..."
"... My assertion is that America is responsible for 2'000'000 deaths in Iraq ..."
"... Dear Jamil: As an American citizen, I take my hat off to you for telling the exact truth -- that the terrorist state is the United States of America and our media's propaganda stream is now in overdrive, especially in regard to Russia, which is our latest target. ..."
"... The US State Department's Victoria Nuland and our CIA (+ Blackwater mercenaries) installed the puppet Yatsenyuk/Poroshenko govt. in Kiev (to do our bidding) and CIA Dir. James Brennan himself went to Kiev to launch the civil war against the Eastern provinces that Europeans, at least, are now trying to bring to a halt. The US does leave nothing but failed states behind it, and Western Ukraine will be the next failed state in a long list. Since the end of WWII, the best estimate is that the United States, in 67 military operations and countless covert CIA operations, has destroyed between 20 and 30 million people world-wide, largely in the interest of commandeering their resources or serving the interests of the banks to which they owe money--money they were usually cajoled into borrowing. ..."
"... I hold to my original point that Islamic terrorism has been created by unjustified Western interference. ..."
"... He advocates a world ruled by an elite (unspecified). ..."
"... You seem unable to differentiate between an imperialist and a "good Samaritan". You had earlier written that, as a street walker in Europe you had not seen any slaves, my response to that posting simply told you where you could go to see slavery. And specific reference to India was simply to help you find slavery most easily - with 14 million slaves India is the centre of Modern Slavery. However, in my conversations with Indians, especially the demi-literate ones, instead of admitting to the prevailing REALITY in India, they do not admit to seeing it. With their eyes open, the street walkers do not see it ..."
"... Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin... :)) Hmmm... oк, about Putin: Look at Putin's foreign agenda this past year: Latin America just as the sanctions came in - an intentional finger in Washington's eye, as I read it - then China, China again recently, Turkey more recently, India just now. He has not been to Iran, but there, as in all these other places, he has forged or reiterated promising relations. The deals cut are too numerous to list. A couple are worth mentioning. The twin gas deals with China, worth nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars, are historic all by themselves. In six years' time China will be buying more gas from Russia than the latter now sells to Europe. And do not miss this: My sources tell me that this gas can be priced such as to crowd the U.S. at least partially out of the Asian market. Other side of the world: Putin has just canceled a planned pipeline to southeastern Europe, the South Stream. This is the defeat Western media put it over as, surely: Russia loses some customers ..."
Mar 28, 2015 | Foreign Affairs
How did twenty-first-century Russia end up, yet again, in personal rule? An advanced industrial country of 142 million people, it has no enduring political parties that organize and respond to voter preferences.

The military is sprawling yet tame; the immense secret police are effectively in one man's pocket. The hydrocarbon sector is a personal bank, and indeed much of the economy is increasingly treated as an individual fiefdom. Mass media move more or less in lockstep with the commands of the presidential administration.

Competing interest groups abound, but there is no rival center of power. In late October 2014, after a top aide to Russia's president told the annual forum of the Valdai Discussion Club, which brings together Russian and foreign experts, that Russians understand "if there is no Putin, there is no Russia," the pundit Stanislav Belkovsky observed that "the search for Russia's national idea, which began after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is finally over. Now, it is evident that Russia's national idea is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin."

Russia is classified as a high-income economy by the World Bank (having a per capita GDP exceeding $14,000). Its unemployment remains low (around five percent); until recently, consumer spending had been expanding at more than five percent annually; life expectancy has been rising; and Internet penetration exceeds that of some countries in the European Union.

But Russia is now beset by economic stagnation alongside high inflation, its labor productivity remains dismally low, and its once-vaunted school system has deteriorated alarmingly. And it is astonishingly corrupt. Not only the bullying central authorities in Moscow but regional state bodies, too, have been systematically criminalizing revenue streams, while giant swaths of territory lack basic public services and local vigilante groups proliferate.

Across the country, officials who have purchased their positions for hefty sums team up with organized crime syndicates and use friendly prosecutors and judges to extort and expropriate rivals. President Vladimir Putin's vaunted "stability," in short, has turned into spoliation. But Putin has been in power for 15 years, and there is no end in sight. Stalin ruled for some three decades...

Jamil M Chaudri

Interesting but slanted and one-sided, myopic analysis. Why would the 1.6 billion Muslims spread over three continents, accept Mr Kotkin's concept of "World Order".

There is no World Order; it is the predatory West's efforts to enslave people to the European weltanschauung. It is an effort by the colonialists to prolong their hegemony over Muslim lands and people.

One of the biggest mistakes Pakia made was to join the West in destroying Soviet Russia. A bi-polar world was a better world than a unipolar world, where the west is destroying Muslim nations (one after the other).

This is no World Order: it a man eat man world that has been created.

Jamil M Chaudri -> JACK RICE

Before the invasion (and total destruction) of Afghanis there was no daily violence in Afghania. Before the invasion (and total destruction) of Iraqia, there is no daily violence in Iraqia. Before Pakia allied itself with America (leading to the further debasement of an evolving state) there were no (practically) daily suicide bombings in Pakia. Before America decided to aid Ethiopia (and joined it) in destroying Somalia, the state of Somalia had a pretty vibrant civil society, and no gangster precipitate violence.

Before America decided to KILL Gadhafi by indiscriminatingly arming gangsters to carry out their will, the incipient-unity state of Libya did not have the sectarian violence that we presently hear about. Before America decided to Destroy the Syrian State, by leading a crusade (guised as a push for, of all things, DEMOCRACY), Syria was a fast-developing state. ......... This list could be stretched back to the days of Pilgrim Fathers. But I am hoping you follow the drift.

If the hat fits, wear it! If the shoe fits, wear them!! From the top of the head to the sole of the shoes, everything is dyed deep in BLOOD.

At the moment with more than 2'000'000 deaths in Iraqia, and more than 250'000 deaths in Afgania and more than 10'000 deaths in Pakia,

Jamil M Chaudri -> BAKER ALLON

Take some smelling salts, and read what happened in North and South America, when whole nations were destroyed by the colonialists, and kept in RESERVATIONS; their children were taken to missions for conversion to Christianity, their dwellings were destroyed. Read about the Trail of Tears, when a whole nation was banished from their ancestral lands. Read about 2'000'000 deaths in Afghania. For you destruction of HUMAN LIFE is less important than destruction of statues? Shows the kind of person you are. There are many clips available on the internet showing the destruction of Human Life in most parts of Iraqia(including Mosel) by the blood thirsty invaders. Harping about statues and museums, and totally callus about human lives (millions of them) you are indeed a museum piece! Go back to the shelf you have come off.

Renee Barclay -> Jamil M Chaudri • 19 days ago

Bush was a moron but that doesn't change the fact that Saddam was a murderous dictator. And Saddam's sons were known rapists and murderers.
Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites turned on each other after Bush eliminated Saddam and that's the simple fact. And they're STILL killing each other to this day. Google it.

Jamil M Chaudri -> Renee Barclay

I do not have to Google such assertions. They are non sequitur, in nature. Even then, let us examine your assertion for a moment: Bush was a Moron but Saddam was a murderous dictator. By your logic we American must be the epitome of Moron-ness, for we ELECTED Bush; Iraqis must be a gentle and good people who were overpowered by the Saddam, the Murderous Dictator..

By the way, how many Iraqis did Saddam murder? And then, how many Iraqis were murdered, at the command of Bush? Since the Iraqis were killed/murdered at the command of Bush, and Americans elected Bush, Americans are responsible for the murders. We Americans have blood on our hands!

My assertion is that America is responsible for 2'000'000 deaths in Iraq.

On your non-sequitur. If a good man has evils sons, does the man become evil? Again, Sunnis turned against Shias; so what? About the American Civil War, Google says: Though the number of killed and wounded in the Civil War is not known precisely, most sources agree that the total number killed was between 640,000 and 700,000.

There was no civil war in Iraq before American Invasion and destruction of Iraqi State and Society. Thus, America is TOTALLY responsible for 2'000'000 deaths in Iraq.

Vivienne Perkins -> Jamil M Chaudri

Dear Jamil: As an American citizen, I take my hat off to you for telling the exact truth -- that the terrorist state is the United States of America and our media's propaganda stream is now in overdrive, especially in regard to Russia, which is our latest target.

The US State Department's Victoria Nuland and our CIA (+ Blackwater mercenaries) installed the puppet Yatsenyuk/Poroshenko govt. in Kiev (to do our bidding) and CIA Dir. James Brennan himself went to Kiev to launch the civil war against the Eastern provinces that Europeans, at least, are now trying to bring to a halt. The US does leave nothing but failed states behind it, and Western Ukraine will be the next failed state in a long list. Since the end of WWII, the best estimate is that the United States, in 67 military operations and countless covert CIA operations, has destroyed between 20 and 30 million people world-wide, largely in the interest of commandeering their resources or serving the interests of the banks to which they owe money--money they were usually cajoled into borrowing.

As for political corruption, I don't know much about Russian levels of corruption, but I know a lot about the total corruption of our system of government and the evisceration of all of our civil liberties, subsequent to the passage of the so-called and mis-named Patriot Act. By the provisions of the NDAA, any US citizen can be picked up and held in indefinite military detention without charge or trial. I wonder how much worse is Russia than that?

And since Citizens United, nearly every legislator in our Congress is absolutely bought and paid for. Maybe we should leave Russia alone and think about how to restore what we once thought of as a democratic system of governance h ere in the United States.

jlord37 -> Vivienne Perkins

One thing has nothing to do with the other. While I'm in agreement with you on the Ukrainian matter, lets not forget that Vladimir Putin's Russia also has a very big problem with Islamic extremists in their territories as does a number of countries around the world .

Vivienne Perkins -> jlord37

I'm not sure I get your point. Maybe we should think about why the West has trouble with Islamic extremists. Might it be because for over a hundred years the Western powers have chosen the dictatorial rulers of Muslim countries, drawn their boundaries, supported leaders or removed them at its own whim (as S. Hussein in Iraq, the Shah in Iran, Mubarak in Egypt, Khaddafi in Libya, etc.) and inserted Israel into Arab territory for its own reasons. Has it ever occurred to you that if Muslim nations had been allowed to develop according to their own preferences, we might possibly have a more rational and peaceful world today? I can't prove this obviously, but it does seem clear that the more the US attacks and interferes, the more hostile the Muslims become. As an American I would like to see my country behave in a more decent way and with less self-serving propaganda.

jlord37 -> Vivienne Perkins

And was America to blame for Jihadi activity thousands of years ago before its existence? Do you not realize that their actvity is given full sanction, and indeed commands them to go to war with the Kufar? Currently, there is Jihadi activity in countries stretching from India toChechnya and in several African countries. They all have to do with Islamic aggression against there neighbors and almost nothing to do with " western imperialism'

Vivienne Perkins -> jlord37

"Thousands of years ago" Islam did not exist. I hold to my original point that Islamic terrorism has been created by unjustified Western interference.

jlord37 -> Vivienne Perkins

Islam first appeared on the world stage in about the year 620 AD.

Vivienne Perkins -> jlord37

Which means it is now 1,395 years old (not thousands) and I doubt that it's legitimate to equate its idea that it was entitled to make forcible conversions to the present situation, which seems to me to have arisen fairly recently as a response to Western meddling in Arab lands.

Jamil M Chaudri -> jlord37

The answer to the one of your question is a LOWD Yes: It was the FIRST CRUSADES that brought religiosity into the GAME OF KINGS: enlarging kingdoms at the expense of neighbouring kingdoms. The First Crusade was indeed nearly a thousand years ago. The only differences between JIHAD and CRUSADE are:

1. CRUSADERS are more cruel, surreptitious, deceptive, etc.

2. Crusades have no moral component, the goal is political supremacy. Jihad is about moral supremacy, justice and equality.

Since you bring religion into the mix, try to re-read the bible (the new and the old, both of which) PRESCRIBE DEATH to heretics and non-believers. Here is a action in pursuance of such biblical dictate:

"A Spanish missionary, Bartolome de las Casas, described eye-witness accounts of mass murder, torture and rape. 2 Author Barry Lopez, summarizing Las Casas' report wrote:

"One day, in front of Las Casas, the Spanish dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 people. 'Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight,' he says, 'as no age can parallel....' The Spanish cut off the legs of children who ran from them. They poured people full of boiling soap. They made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. They loosed dogs that 'devoured an Indian like a hog, at first sight, in less than a moment.' They used nursing infants for dog food." 3

Currently there is CRUSADING MISSIONARY activity in all non-Christian lands by religious warrior-fanatics (wearing the piety hat of the Christian hue). Read about the recent reaction local Hindu population in India against such activity.

First the Western nations used the RELIGION hat to subdue MORALLY SUPPERIOR but less BLOOD-THURSTY peoples; When that strategy ceased to work they rolled out a second version called DEMOCRACY. The second is as much of a sham as the earlier attempt.

Even internal to American, the "down trodden" masses are beginning to cry foul. The prevailing poverty rate in America is staggering. See the figures in most authoritative publications.

Reading does bring enlightenment. That is why I read from diverse sources.

jlord37 -> Jamil M Chaudri

Yes that's why millions of people are seeking to emigrate by any means necessary., and not the reverse. I can assure the " impoverished masses" in the west are in a lot better shape than they are in your neck of the woods.

But I think your trying to deflect once again. That Christianity ad well as other religions has had a bloody past, is no revelation, band I for one am no big fan. But steps have been taken since than, to temper the extremism that brought on these acts. One does not read of to many beheadings and or sucide bombings in the name of Jesus, Buddha, or Shiva. This is not meant as a criticism of Muslim people per se, or a put down of that particular of the world, it is merely mea by as a critique of some of the problems that I, and countless others see in the Islamic faith. There's no question that the leadership in the west, can be very corrupt and rapacious at times, but I think the general trend is towards an attempt at understanding and accommodation. Now, I think it is time for the Muslim world to attempt some sort of inner dialogue where they take steps towards a dressing and correcting their own problems. I enjoyed our discussion, and I hope we will be able to part in civil terms. Best wishes.

Jamil M Chaudri -> jlord37

First of all let me disabuse your notion of "my neck of the woods". In one of my earlier posting I have clearly stated that I am a proud American Citizen, living in a well wooded and watered part of the US of A. But as my country has gone wayward (essentially in pursuit of the buck) from its charter I am trying to bring America back to its promise.

You have levied accusation against me of "deflecting" arguments. Let me tell you what your problem is: you want to levy unsubstantiated accusations against others, and when they, with references, confront your falsehoods and soothsaying, you accuse the other of "deflecting" or "hijacking" the discussion! Pot calling the kettle black? Man, it is you who is unable to stick to the argument – but then, as you have no argument, of course, you have nothing to stick to. Your statements are based on your penchant for name-calling, bad mouthing, others. Perhaps your mind-set suggests that with such strategies, you will be the last "man standing" (?).
.
In my first posing on Dr Kotkin's article, I simply wanted to repudiate the so called "World Order". By what right have Great Britain and France seats at the Security Council. By definition in a democratic set-up, every unit has equal rights. What Dr Kotkins calls a World Order is therefore a sham democracy, created to benefit the West.

Under the guise of bringing democracy to Iraqia, Afghania, Libya, the Yemen, etc. the west is simply trying to prolong its hegemony. It is a sham democracy they impose on weak nations. Pliant regimes are being installed, and millions of people being killed. Any voice that is raised against such pseudo-democracy is silenced by force, by the thugs installed as "democratic" regimes. This is western patronage.

Presently, you read about EXCESSES done by the lunatic fringes of the Muslim Society (these groups, by the way, were created by and operate with the support of CIA – so that organisations like HOMELAND Security can get more dollars), because 90% of the news buzz is created by American media.

The USA is a state trying to improve its democracy on a continuous basis. In 1777 did America treat all people the same way? When was the promulgation of freedom (of SLAVES) passed in America? When was the voting rights acts passed? Are the economic developments of the Whites and Blacks (call it Afro-American, if you like) even TODAY at the same level?

I wish you and your, the very best. May Allah have his mercy on us as a Nation, so that we can STANDING TOGETHER still sing the Star-Spangled Banner.

jlord37 -> Jamil M Chaudri

We currently have a black president, black attorney General, a black director of homeland security, and a black national security adviser. That's not to mention the various statutes and regulations on the books that are strictly enforced to prevent discrimination and instances of inequality. Are these details of such small consequence? With regards to your observations of so called regime change, I am in complete agreement with you . I against such interventions wether it is Cairo or Kiev. It is up to the indigenous population of that country to determine the course that their country should take, and not have to be subjected to outside interference. However, I have to ask the question, do you really think that the CIA bears the sole responsibility for the for the existence of these groups? Could it be that they're trying to co opt them and use them for their own purposes? Im almost certain that the CIA didn't create the leaders who take certain texts and use them for recruitment purposes. All I'm suggesting is that we need to hear more from the moderate elements, and that some sort of reformation May have to be undertaken, much in the way it occurred in other religions. ( Christianity for example )

Finally, Im not sure where you got the idea that I " have a penchant of bad mouthing others" but nevertheless, I sincerely apologize if I have offended you in anyway. You are a worthy opponent, and it's been an enlightening discussion to say the least.

Robert Munro -> Jamil M Chaudri

Stephen Kotkin is a Jewish shill for the oligarchy.

Jamil M Chaudri -> Robert Munro

I only knew Dr Kotkin's background as a historian; his religious affiliation did not concern me. The only part of his writing that offended me was the concept of "World Order". I do not accept nor do I want anybody else to be suppressed by the unbridled-capitalists.

Unfortunately, to exercise unbridled capitalism, the underpinning is provided by exercise of power over others. It is the RAPE OF NATIONS.

Robert Munro -> Jamil M Chaudri

I've read Kotkin before. He advocates a world ruled by an elite (unspecified). However, from his background and affiliations, it's very possible that his mind-set matches that of Baruch Levy, below..........

"The Jewish people as a whole will become its own Messiah. It will attain world domination by the dissolution of other races, by the abolition of frontiers, the annihilation of monarchy and by the establishment of a world republic in which the Jews will everywhere exercise the privilege of citizenship.

In this New World Order, the children of Israel will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition. The Governments of the different peoples forming the world republic will fall without difficulty into the hands of the
Jews. It will then be possible for the Jewish rulers to abolish private property and everywhere to make use of the
resources of the state.

Thus will the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, in which it is said that when the Messianic time is come, the Jews will have all the property of the whole world in their hands."

Baruch Levy, Letter to Karl Marx (1879), printed in La Revue de Paris, p. 574, June 1, 1928

Given the 3000 year history of Judaism, its religious writings, its possession of nuclear weapons and control of the American government/economy/media, it seems appropriate to take such claims very seriously.

Robert Munro -> BAKER ALLON

Here's some more "fantasy" about your barbaric cult............

http://www.haaretz.com/news/di...

http://www.richardsilverstein....

http://www.btselem.org/downloa...

BTW- All three of the links above are to Jewish web sites - civilized Jews.

Robert Munro -> BAKER ALLON

It is the cult for which you shill that is the disease.......for 3000 years you have been a malignant cancer trying to metastasize throughout our world.

Robert Munro -> BAKER ALLON

The disease that sickens and, hopefully, will kill your cult is truth...............

"To communicate anything with a Goy about our relations would be equal to the killing of all Jews, for if the Goyim knew what we teach about them, they would kill us openly." (found in both the Torah and Talmud)

Jamil M Chaudri -> ARJAN VELLEKOOP

Of course, of course. But then, there are even some people with eyes who do not see. For them it is a blessing, for they see no evil. It is really a mental condition due to aberrant eye. By the way, Yogi Berra is supposed to have said: "You can observe a lot just by watching". But perhaps street-walkers in Europe do not watch, because their game is different, and they are enjoying the benefits of their game.

I do not want to shatter your innocence, but slaves are not seen by street-walkers: Slaves are consigned to SLAVE QUARTERS. Present day, western world has built slave quarters in India, Pakistan, Sudan, Congo, etc. This is where the Western Worlds Slaves Live. If you want to read the whole report goto: http://www.globalslaveryindex....

India has the largest number of slaves in the world (14 million).

Mind you, A related concept is "wage slavery". To understand this concept requires sensibility.

Yet another but even more subtle concept is "mental slavery". A variation of this is known as the Stockholm Syndrome. Mental Slavery is a totally abject state where the person ceases to think eigenartig but assumes the likes and hates of the person/people who have programmed him/her.

From the last line in your post, I can only assume that deep programming has been done. Programmed consciousness is virtual reality.

ARJAN VELLEKOOP -> Jamil M Chaudri

So, now the west should care for what governments in other countries do with their citizens? I thought you hated imperialists! Your reference to India is just idiotic. Why should the west feel responsible for the condition India is in?! You are probably going to say the colonial past. Well, thats bullcrap since there are plenty of countries which have grown, since their liberty, into decent and reasonably wealthy states. The west is not responsible for India, India is responsible for itself.

Particularly the Middle Eastern countries have shown behaviour to shift the blame away from their own failures. Maybe it have to do with their Islamic background, in which so many actions are based/motivated from religious basis. And of course the prophet is never wrong, so it must be the fault of a imperialist outsider.

Get real. The countries which contain these so called slaves, can make their own choices. They dont have to be part of the capitalist terrible world order. They can make the better choice like you and other believe it. Sadly enough, that idea is, apparently, not that good. Because good ideas sell itself.

Jamil M Chaudri -> ARJAN VELLEKOOP

You seem unable to differentiate between an imperialist and a "good Samaritan". You had earlier written that, as a street walker in Europe you had not seen any slaves, my response to that posting simply told you where you could go to see slavery. And specific reference to India was simply to help you find slavery most easily - with 14 million slaves India is the centre of Modern Slavery. However, in my conversations with Indians, especially the demi-literate ones, instead of admitting to the prevailing REALITY in India, they do not admit to seeing it. With their eyes open, the street walkers do not see it.

There is absolutely no religious underpinning for State Government in any of the states where Muslims are in Majority. The Saudi Family are are there because of America; the present rule in Iran is a reaction to America (re-)installing the 2-cent "SHAH" to rule the Iranian Nation. The present excesses of the Iranian state are essentially defense postures against America intransigence, and mechanisms to harm (and if possible) destroy the Iranian Nation.

I experience reality every day. If you would just come out of your VIRTUAL REALITY, you might by just watching observe some. I know deprogramming is not easy, and self-deprogramming is even more difficult.

All the same, I suggest that you wake up and smell the Coffee; if not try some smelling salts.

Robert Munro -> ARJAN VELLEKOOP

And we have read the drivel of thousands of shills for the oligarchy and the Zionist/Fascist cult...............such as yourself.

Ivan Night Terrible

Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin... :)) Hmmm... oк, about Putin: Look at Putin's foreign agenda this past year: Latin America just as the sanctions came in - an intentional finger in Washington's eye, as I read it - then China, China again recently, Turkey more recently, India just now. He has not been to Iran, but there, as in all these other places, he has forged or reiterated promising relations. The deals cut are too numerous to list. A couple are worth mentioning. The twin gas deals with China, worth nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars, are historic all by themselves. In six years' time China will be buying more gas from Russia than the latter now sells to Europe. And do not miss this: My sources tell me that this gas can be priced such as to crowd the U.S. at least partially out of the Asian market. Other side of the world: Putin has just canceled a planned pipeline to southeastern Europe, the South Stream. This is the defeat Western media put it over as, surely: Russia loses some customers. But two points:

[Dec 03, 2017] Progress Report on the US-Russian war by The Saker

i think the Saker forgot that Russia is also a neoliberal country. The last time I checked Russia keeps its foreign reserves in US.
Notable quotes:
"... I am often asked if the US and Russia will go to war with each other. I always reply that they are already at war. Not a war like WWII, but a war nonetheless. This war is, at least for the time being, roughly 80% informational, 15% economic and 5% kinetic. But in political terms the outcome for the loser of this war will be no less dramatic than the outcome of WWII was for Germany: the losing country will not survive it, at least not in its present shape: either Russia will become a US colony again or the AngloZionist Empire will collapse. ..."
"... First, led by Obama, all the leaders of the West declared urbi et orbi and with immense confidence that Assad had no future, that he had to go, that he was already a political corpse and that he would have no role whatsoever to play in the future of Syria. ..."
"... Second, the Empire created a "coalition" of 59 (!) countries, which failed to achieve anything, anything at all: a gigantic multi-billion dollar " gang that could not shoot straight " led by CENTCOM and NATO, which only proved its most abject incompetence. In contrast, Russia never had more than 35 combat aircraft in Syria at any time and turned the course of the war (with a lot of Iranian and Hezbollah help on the ground). ..."
"... Finally, when the US realized that putting Daesh in power in Damascus was not going to happen, they first tried to break up Syria (Plan B) and then tried to create a Kurdish statelet in Iraq and Syria (Plan C). All these plans failed, Assad is in Russia giving hugs to Putin , while Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp Quds Force Commander General Soleimani is taking a stroll through the last Syrian city to be liberated from Daesh . ..."
"... This is becoming comical. The US media, especially CNN, cannot let a day go by without mentioning the evil Russians, the US Congress is engaged in mass hysteria trying to figure out which of the Republicans and the Democrats have had more contacts with the Russians, NATO commanders are crapping their pants in abject terror (or so they say!) every time the Russian military organizes any exercise, the US Navy and Air Force representatives regularly whine about Russian pilots making "unprofessional intercepts", the British Navy goes into full combat mode when a single (and rather modest) Russian aircraft carrier transits through the English Channel – but Russia is, supposedly, the "weak" country here. ..."
"... The truth is that the Russians are laughing. From the Kremlin, to the media, to the social media – they are even make hilarious sketches about how almighty they are and how they control everything. But mostly the Russians are laughing their heads off wondering what in the world the folks in the West are smoking to be so totally terrified ( at least officially ) by a non-existing threat. ..."
"... That western political leaders are seeking safety in numbers. Hence the ridiculously bloated "coalitions" and all the resolutions coming out of various European and trans-Atlantic bodies. Western politicians are like schoolyard nerds who, fearing the tough kid, huddle together to look bigger. Every Russian kid knows that seeking safety in numbers is a surefire sign of a scared wimp. In contrast, the Russians also remember how a tiny nation of less than 2 million people had the courage to declare war on Russia and how they fought the Russians hard, really hard. I am talking about the Chechens of course. Yeah, love them or hate them – but there is no denying that Chechens are courageous. Ditto for the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. The Russians were impressed. And even though the Nazis inflicted an unspeakable amount of suffering on the Russian people, the Russians never deny that the German soldiers and officers were skilled and courageous. There is even a Russian saying "I love/respect the courageous man in the Tatar/Mongol" (л юблю молодца и в татарине). So Russians have no problem seeing courage in their enemies. ..."
"... US: the US strategy is equally simple: Use the Russian "threat" to give a meaning and a purpose to the Empire, especially NATO. Continue and expand the "petty harassment" against Russia on all levels. Subvert and weaken as much as possible any country or politician showing any signs of independence or disobedience (including New Silk Road countries) ..."
"... It is important to stress here that in this struggle Russia is at a major disadvantage: whereas the Russians want to build something, the Americans only want to destroy it (examples include Syria, of course, but also the Ukraine or, for that matter, a united Europe). Another major disadvantage for Russia is that most governments out there as still afraid of antagonizing the Empire in any way, thus the deafening silence and supine submissiveness of the "concert of nations" when Uncle Sam goes on one of his usual rampages in total violation of international law and the UN Charter. This is probably changing, but very, very slowly. Most world politicians are just like US Congressmen: prostitutes (and cheap ones at that). ..."
"... The biggest advantage for Russia is that the US are internally falling apart economically, socially, politically – you name it. With every passing year the once most prosperous United States are starting to look more and more like some backwater Third World country. Oh sure, the US economy is still huge (but rapidly shrinking!), but that is meaningless when financial wealth and social wealth are conflated into one completely misleading index of pseudo-prosperity. This is sad, really, a country that ought to be prosperous and happy is being bled to death by the, shall we say, "imperial parasite" feeding on it. ..."
"... Amount of idiocy of current American authorities and society as whole is amazing. Looking in the past I can't see such desperate clowns as those on the top: McCains, Clintons, Haleys at last Trump! and hundreds of powerful people who can not distinguish between Austria and Australia, all of those stupid askin to punish Russia! So, I'd like to be mistaken, but I'm not optimistic about the future of our planet and I believe it is the "West" who can change something, not Russia, we are staying near the last red line and not gonna retreat. ..."
"... The financial dynasties which have ruled the western world for the last few centuries are evidently in the final stages of degeneration. Their ancestors were at least intelligent people whatever one might think about their ethics. So far as I am able to tell we are now being ruled by people who only have one notable characteristic, arrogance. They are to the western world what Caligula and Nero were to Rome, poison and delusion. I doubt very much that there will be a happy outcome. ..."
"... Inherited wealth on a massive scale is the problem, when individuals are born with enough wealth to confer political influence even over the wealthiest countries, then democracy can only be a sham. Bill Gates (of all people) was on the right track a few years ago when he declared that he was only going to pass down to his descendants enough money to live comfortably for one lifetime. Until some sort of sane cap is placed on inherited wealth then we will continue to be ruled by people with mediocre ability advised by second-rate intellectuals who are prepared to tell them what they want to hear. ..."
"... Lavrov, like Putin, has made a practice of dropping such truth-bombs on the US regime. And who can blame them, if the US regime insists on handing them the ammunition, time after time? ..."
"... I hope too, but currenly a ball is on your side of a field. We (Russians) actually can't retreat any more. If US will keep its "soft harrasment" the result could be extremly bad. And I see no reason to expect sane behaviour from US establishment. They are insane, what about a majority of american people ? I don't know. But its must "come from below" of US society, not from us, we already did. ..."
"... At that time (early 1990s) this was almost a consensus among many professionals on Russian side that this was possible. By 1999 it became clear that situation degenerated to such a degree that no compromise was possible anymore. Part of it was rooted in the nature of re-emerging genuine Russian state, the lion share, however, was in neocons completely subverting US foreign policy. ..."
"... First, there is no war. The real/unreal "war" continues because it serves the powers that be on both sides. On the US side, it serves as an excuse for an enormous "defense" spending that now exceeds defense spending of the rest of the world combined. This massive flow of taxpayers' money into the pockets of the few who feed at the Pentagon trough needs some "justification", and "evil Russia" serves admirably. ..."
"... On the Russian side, Putin's generally anti-US foreign policy, which is supported by the great majority of Russians, "justifies" his grip on power despite the fact that the internal policies of his government, which also enrich very few at the expense of the rest, are very unpopular. ..."
"... The US never wages a real war on anyone who has WMDs. North Korea is the most up-to-date example of this. The very fact of the US invasion of Iraq or bombing of Syria showed that the US was 100% sure that neither Saddam nor Assad have WMDs. The US elites, dumb and shortsighted though they are, understand deep down that they need to stay alive to enjoy their loot. As Ukrainian saying puts it, "coffins have no pockets". ..."
"... But there is a stiff competition: the US Empire is going downhill, like the British Empire a century ago, and the Chinese are happy to have Russia spearhead the resistance (which they quietly support in many ways). I doubt that Chinese domination would be any more benign than shameless and brutal US domination, but we'll see soon enough: in 20-30 years the US will be relegated to the position of a second-tier power. I am not even sure that Chinese domination would be in Russia's interests any more than the US domination, but US elites in their incredible stupidity forced Russia to ally with China and all anti-American forces in the world, as diverse as Iran and North Korea. ..."
"... The US is losing so fast due to blind greed and overall degradation of its elites, who keep biting off a lot more than they can chew and behaving like it's 1990. But the ultimate win would be more China's than Russia's, unless Russia manages to create a tri-polar world with China and India, which would be certainly better than any unipolar world can possibly be. ..."
"... Why? There is absolutely nothing about 'multipolar' that dictates three, or four 'hegemons', or even lists who would the 'multis' be. The idea is simply that most people, most of the time are better off left alone. ..."
"... Multipolar is just that – leave exercise of power and responsibility as close to the local situation as possible. Brussels telling Poland who should be a TV presenter, or Washington deciding what people in rural Hungary should read is idiotic. What's the point of all this busy-body behaviour? It is always justified by some slogans about preventing 'human rights violations'. Right. We have seen the results – a lot more people have died and suffered because of 'humanitarian' interventions than from anything else in the last 20+ years. ..."
"... I do find the current rapprochement between Russia and the major Moslem states amusing. It goes beyond Turkey and Iran, Moscow is working all of them, Egypt, Sudan, I suspect it is a clever attempt to beat US at its own game – US has spent about four decades arming and unleashing any Islamic force it could find against Russians (and Slavs in general), using methods that were beyond brutal and hypocrisy that eventually backfired. Maybe turning it around is a good strategy. It is inconsistent, but when you fight extreme stupidity, often the only thing that works is to use more stupidity ..."
"... "The white knight in shining armor" actually turned out to be a cowardly greedy coyote who unsuccessfully tried to fit into a stolen somewhere sheep skin. ..."
Dec 01, 2017 | www.unz.com

Report on the US-Russian War

I am often asked if the US and Russia will go to war with each other. I always reply that they are already at war. Not a war like WWII, but a war nonetheless. This war is, at least for the time being, roughly 80% informational, 15% economic and 5% kinetic. But in political terms the outcome for the loser of this war will be no less dramatic than the outcome of WWII was for Germany: the losing country will not survive it, at least not in its present shape: either Russia will become a US colony again or the AngloZionist Empire will collapse.

In my very first column for the Unz Review entitled " A Tale of Two World Orders " I described the kind of multipolar international system regulated by the rule of law that Russia, China and their allies and friends worldwide (whether overt or covert) are trying to build and how dramatically different it was from the single World Hegemony that the AngloZionists have attempted to establish (and almost successfully imposed upon our suffering planet!). In a way, the US imperial leaders are right , Russia does represent an existential threat, not for the United States as a country or for its people, but for the AngloZionist Empire, just as the latter represents an existential threat to Russia. Furthermore, Russia represents a fundamental civilizational challenge to what is normally called the "West" as she openly rejects its post-Christian (and, I would add, also viscerally anti-Islamic) values. This is why both sides are making an immense effort at prevailing in this struggle.

Last week the anti-imperial camp scored a major victory with the meeting between Presidents Putin, Rouhani and Erdogan in Sochi: they declared themselves the guarantors of a peace plan which will end the war against the Syrian people (the so-called "civil war", which this never was) and they did so without inviting the US to participate in the negotiations. Even worse, their final statement did not even mention the US, not once. The "indispensable nation" was seen as so irrelevant to even be mentioned.

To fully measure how offensive all this is we need to stress a number of points:

First, led by Obama, all the leaders of the West declared urbi et orbi and with immense confidence that Assad had no future, that he had to go, that he was already a political corpse and that he would have no role whatsoever to play in the future of Syria.

Second, the Empire created a "coalition" of 59 (!) countries, which failed to achieve anything, anything at all: a gigantic multi-billion dollar " gang that could not shoot straight " led by CENTCOM and NATO, which only proved its most abject incompetence. In contrast, Russia never had more than 35 combat aircraft in Syria at any time and turned the course of the war (with a lot of Iranian and Hezbollah help on the ground).

Next, the Empire decreed that Russia was "isolated" and her economy " in tatters " – all of which the Ziomedia parroted with total fidelity . Iran was, of course, part of the famous " Axis of Evil ," while Hezbollah was the " A-Team of terrorism ". As for Erdogan, the AngloZionists tried to overthrow and kill him. And now it is Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Turkey who defeated the terrorists and will call the shots in Syria.

Finally, when the US realized that putting Daesh in power in Damascus was not going to happen, they first tried to break up Syria (Plan B) and then tried to create a Kurdish statelet in Iraq and Syria (Plan C). All these plans failed, Assad is in Russia giving hugs to Putin , while Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp Quds Force Commander General Soleimani is taking a stroll through the last Syrian city to be liberated from Daesh .

Can you imagine how totally humiliated, ridiculed, and beaten the US leaders feel today? Being hated or resisted is one thing, but being totally ignored – now that hurts!

As for a strategy, the best they could come up with was what I would call a "petty harassment of Russia": making RT sign up as a foreign agent, stealing ancient art from Russia , stripping Russian athletes from medals en masse , trying to ban the Russian flag and anthem from the Olympics in Seoul or banning Russian military aircraft from the next Farnborough airshow. And all these efforts have achieved is making Putin even more popular, the West even more hated, and the Olympics even more boring (ditto for Farnborough – the MAKS and the Dubai Air Shows are so much 'sexier' anyway). Oh, I almost forgot, the "new Europeans" will continue their mini-war against old Soviet statues to their liberators. It's just like the US mini-war on the Russian representations in the US, a clear sign of weakness .

Speaking of weakness.

This is becoming comical. The US media, especially CNN, cannot let a day go by without mentioning the evil Russians, the US Congress is engaged in mass hysteria trying to figure out which of the Republicans and the Democrats have had more contacts with the Russians, NATO commanders are crapping their pants in abject terror (or so they say!) every time the Russian military organizes any exercise, the US Navy and Air Force representatives regularly whine about Russian pilots making "unprofessional intercepts", the British Navy goes into full combat mode when a single (and rather modest) Russian aircraft carrier transits through the English Channel – but Russia is, supposedly, the "weak" country here.

Does that make sense to you?

The truth is that the Russians are laughing. From the Kremlin, to the media, to the social media – they are even make hilarious sketches about how almighty they are and how they control everything. But mostly the Russians are laughing their heads off wondering what in the world the folks in the West are smoking to be so totally terrified ( at least officially ) by a non-existing threat.

You know what else they are seeing?

That western political leaders are seeking safety in numbers. Hence the ridiculously bloated "coalitions" and all the resolutions coming out of various European and trans-Atlantic bodies. Western politicians are like schoolyard nerds who, fearing the tough kid, huddle together to look bigger. Every Russian kid knows that seeking safety in numbers is a surefire sign of a scared wimp. In contrast, the Russians also remember how a tiny nation of less than 2 million people had the courage to declare war on Russia and how they fought the Russians hard, really hard. I am talking about the Chechens of course. Yeah, love them or hate them – but there is no denying that Chechens are courageous. Ditto for the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. The Russians were impressed. And even though the Nazis inflicted an unspeakable amount of suffering on the Russian people, the Russians never deny that the German soldiers and officers were skilled and courageous. There is even a Russian saying "I love/respect the courageous man in the Tatar/Mongol" (л юблю молодца и в татарине). So Russians have no problem seeing courage in their enemies.

... ... ...

Russia: the Russian strategy towards the Empire is simple:

Try to avoid as much as possible and for as long as possible any direct military confrontation with the US because Russia is still the weaker side (mostly in quantitative terms). That, and actively preparing for war under the ancient si vis pacem para bellum strategy. Try to cope as best can be with all the "petty harassment": the US still has infinitely more "soft power" than Russia and Russia simply does not have the means to strike back in kind. So she does the minimum to try to deter or weaken the effects of that kind of "petty harassment" but, in truth, there is not much she can do about it besides accepting it as a fact of life. Rather than trying to disengage from the AngloZionist controlled Empire (economically, financially, politically), Russia will very deliberately contribute to the gradual emergence of an alternative realm. A good example of that is the Chinese-promoted New Silk Road which is being built without any meaningful role for the Empire.

US: the US strategy is equally simple: Use the Russian "threat" to give a meaning and a purpose to the Empire, especially NATO. Continue and expand the "petty harassment" against Russia on all levels. Subvert and weaken as much as possible any country or politician showing any signs of independence or disobedience (including New Silk Road countries)

Both sides are using delaying tactics, but for diametrically opposite reasons: Russia, because time is on her side and the US, because they have run out of options.

It is important to stress here that in this struggle Russia is at a major disadvantage: whereas the Russians want to build something, the Americans only want to destroy it (examples include Syria, of course, but also the Ukraine or, for that matter, a united Europe). Another major disadvantage for Russia is that most governments out there as still afraid of antagonizing the Empire in any way, thus the deafening silence and supine submissiveness of the "concert of nations" when Uncle Sam goes on one of his usual rampages in total violation of international law and the UN Charter. This is probably changing, but very, very slowly. Most world politicians are just like US Congressmen: prostitutes (and cheap ones at that).

The biggest advantage for Russia is that the US are internally falling apart economically, socially, politically – you name it. With every passing year the once most prosperous United States are starting to look more and more like some backwater Third World country. Oh sure, the US economy is still huge (but rapidly shrinking!), but that is meaningless when financial wealth and social wealth are conflated into one completely misleading index of pseudo-prosperity. This is sad, really, a country that ought to be prosperous and happy is being bled to death by the, shall we say, "imperial parasite" feeding on it.

At the end of the day, political regimes can only survive by the consent of those they rule. In the United States this consent is clearly in the process of being withdrawn. In Russia it has never been stronger. This translates into a major fragility of the US and, therefore, the Empire (the US are by far the biggest host of the AngloZionist imperial parasite) and a major source of staying power for Russia.

All of the above applies only to political regimes, of course. The people of Russia and of the US have exactly the same interests: bringing down the Empire with the least amount of violence and suffering as possible. Like all Empires, the US Empire mostly abused others in its formative and peak years, but as any decaying Empire it is now mostly abusing its own people. It is therefore vital to always repeat that an "Empire-free US" would have no reason to see an enemy in Russia and vice-versa. In fact, Russia and the US could be ideal partners, but the "imperial parasites" will not allow that to happen. Thus we are all stuck in an absurd and dangerous situation which could result in a war which would completely destroy most of our planet.

For whatever it's worth, and in spite of the constant hysterical Russophobia in the US Ziomedia, I detect absolutely no sign whatsoever that this campaign is having any success with the people in the US. At most, some of them naively buy into the "the Russians tried to interfere in our elections" fairy tale, but even in this case this belief is mitigated by "no big deal, we also do that in other countries". I have yet to meet a American who would seriously believe that Russia is any kind of danger. I don't even detect superficial reactions of hostility when, for example, I speak Russian with my family in a public place. Typically, we are asked what language we are speaking and when we reply "Russian" the reaction normally is "cool!". Quite often I even hear "what do you think of Putin? I really like him". This is in severe contrast with the federal government whom the vast majority of Americans seem to hate with a passion.

To summarize it all, I would say that at this point in time of the US-Russian war, Russia is wining, the Empire is losing and the US is suffering. As for the EU it is "enjoying" a much deserved irrelevance while being mostly busy absorbing wave after wave of society-destroying refugees proving, yet again, the truth of the saying that if your head is in the sand, your ass is in the air.

This war is far from over, I don't even think that we have reach its peak yet and things are going to get worse before they get better again. But all in all, I am very optimistic that the Axis of Kindness will bite the dust in a relatively not too distant future.

yurivku , December 1, 2017 at 7:16 am GMT

Reading texts from Saker is a sip of fresh water in a rotten pool. His words "things are going to get worse before they get better again" could come true, but also could never happen cause current Cold War very likely may be converted to very hot one. And they will not get better. The common West doing everything for it.

Saker said "Russians laughing" – yes, we do sometimes, but when we hear last news from "soft harassment" like attacks on our sportsmen, diplomats or reporters we are clenching our fists. We do not feel bad on western people, but this is not the case when to talk about the country as whole, counry which being determinated by its tops. There is a limit to any patience.

Amount of idiocy of current American authorities and society as whole is amazing. Looking in the past I can't see such desperate clowns as those on the top: McCains, Clintons, Haleys at last Trump! and hundreds of powerful people who can not distinguish between Austria and Australia, all of those stupid askin to punish Russia!
So, I'd like to be mistaken, but I'm not optimistic about the future of our planet and I believe it is the "West" who can change something, not Russia, we are staying near the last red line and not gonna retreat.

MarkU , December 1, 2017 at 10:40 am GMT
The financial dynasties which have ruled the western world for the last few centuries are evidently in the final stages of degeneration. Their ancestors were at least intelligent people whatever one might think about their ethics. So far as I am able to tell we are now being ruled by people who only have one notable characteristic, arrogance. They are to the western world what Caligula and Nero were to Rome, poison and delusion. I doubt very much that there will be a happy outcome.

Inherited wealth on a massive scale is the problem, when individuals are born with enough wealth to confer political influence even over the wealthiest countries, then democracy can only be a sham. Bill Gates (of all people) was on the right track a few years ago when he declared that he was only going to pass down to his descendants enough money to live comfortably for one lifetime. Until some sort of sane cap is placed on inherited wealth then we will continue to be ruled by people with mediocre ability advised by second-rate intellectuals who are prepared to tell them what they want to hear.

The biggest threat to our continued existence is not the strength of the Russian federation but its weakness. Outspent and outnumbered hugely by the EU alone (whatever the paid liars in Washington say) their only credible defence in the event of open warfare is their nuclear arsenal, we can only hope they never need to use it.

Randal , December 1, 2017 at 10:53 am GMT

Can you imagine how totally humiliated, ridiculed, and beaten the US leaders feel today? Being hated or resisted is one thing, but being totally ignored – now that hurts!

Saker could have added to the list of self-inflicted defeats for the US regime and foreign policy elites their ongoing humiliation over North Korea, where they have endlessly tried to insist that the US has some kind of special right for its enemies not to be allowed even to possess weapons that could potentially attack them, and postured and menaced in response to the NK government's defiance, but have so far been forced to accept that they can do nothing about it, as Pat Buchanan discusses today . And as Pat points out, this is a situation entirely of the US regime's making – by operating a sustained policy of military aggressions, and especially of attacking those that foolishly rely upon submission to their demands (Gaddafi) and undermining any agreements they make (Iran), they created the situation in which going all out for a nuclear deterrent became the most rational course available for NK.

The US might yet choose to wage another war of aggression in order to avoid yet another self-inflicted humiliation, or an unintended war might start as a result of the US regime's irresponsible military buildup and provocations, but if either happens, the costs will be colossal and any gains trivial, "win" or lose.

But mostly the Russians are laughing their heads off wondering what in the world the folks in the West are smoking to be so totally terrified (at least officially) by a non-existing threat.

That's not the only gross absurdity in US sphere society that Russians are laughing at, apparently:

Russian TV defends men over sex pest claims

Nor is Russia resisting the opportunity to twist the knife on the US's Korean nightmare:

North Korea: Russia accuses US of goading Kim Jong-un

Lavrov, like Putin, has made a practice of dropping such truth-bombs on the US regime. And who can blame them, if the US regime insists on handing them the ammunition, time after time?

Over the past thirty years, at least, the US regime has ensured that the truth is anti-American.

The Scalpel , Website December 1, 2017 at 12:26 pm GMT
"US would have no reason to see an enemy in Russia and vice-versa. In fact, Russia and the US could be ideal partners"

This is the dream I had when the "wall" came down. But instead, I saw that my belief that the US government was a "white knight in shining armor" acting for "truth, justice, and the american way" and to "make the world safe for democracy" was only a dream, a foolish fantasy. I had been deceived. I had wanted to be an Army general and was a Distinguished Graduate of the USMA. Now I resigned my commission as an Army officer, took off my uniform, and extended my arm to stop the tanks.

I hope to live to see the day of a multipolar world in peace. It is possible, but it must come from below. An "American Spring" is essential. I hope my complacent countrymen will see this before it is too late.

yurivku , December 1, 2017 at 1:07 pm GMT
@The Scalpel

Now I resigned my commission as an Army officer, took off my uniform, and extended my arm to stop the tanks.

I took off the uniform of Soviet Army officer more than 30 years ago. Was an officer in anti aircraft division.

I hope to live to see the day of a multipolar world in peace. It is possible, but it must come from below.

I hope too, but currenly a ball is on your side of a field. We (Russians) actually can't retreat any more. If US will keep its "soft harrasment" the result could be extremly bad. And I see no reason to expect sane behaviour from US establishment. They are insane, what about a majority of american people ? I don't know. But its must "come from below" of US society, not from us, we already did.

Andrei Martyanov , Website December 1, 2017 at 2:05 pm GMT
@The Scalpel

This is the dream I had when the "wall" came down.

At that time (early 1990s) this was almost a consensus among many professionals on Russian side that this was possible. By 1999 it became clear that situation degenerated to such a degree that no compromise was possible anymore. Part of it was rooted in the nature of re-emerging genuine Russian state, the lion share, however, was in neocons completely subverting US foreign policy.

Andrei Martyanov , Website December 1, 2017 at 2:10 pm GMT
@MarkU

their only credible defence in the event of open warfare is their nuclear arsenal

Sir, don't repeat discredited propaganda memes. If you don't trust me, which is fine, read opinion on the man who has decades of working and serving with this very NATO, not to mention his deep knowledge on military-diplomatic terms of Russia.

https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/11/23/nato-a-dangerous-paper-tiger/

In fact, it is the United States who is the most likely user of its nuclear arsenal and it has nothing to do with Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing.

TomSchmidt , December 1, 2017 at 3:17 pm GMT
At the end of the day, political regimes can only survive by the consent of those they rule. In the United States this consent is clearly in the process of being withdrawn.

That really is the nub of the matter there. The elites are fumbling about, trying to save themselves in the USA and their unearned perquisites. As the Saker says, the imperial parasite is sucking dry what should be a wealthy and peaceful land.

nickels , December 1, 2017 at 7:01 pm GMT
Too much depends on China, and I don't trust them. The godless money grubbers may chose to ally with the (((Anglos))) and stab Russia in the back just like Russia allied with the (((Brits))) to stab Germany in the back. The world pivots on the Yellow Peril.
Andrei Martyanov , Website December 1, 2017 at 7:12 pm GMT
@Hank Rearden

except for the reference to Conchita Wurst, of which I'm unfamiliar. I was curious enough to google it, and now I can't unsee that. Dear God, I need a brainwash.

LOL, tell me about that – same here. I heard of IT (This, that, creature etc.) but at some point of time I took a look. Boy, was I sorry:))

Curmudgeon , December 1, 2017 at 7:45 pm GMT
@Priss Factor

America's Founding was also marked by this great contradiction. It was, in one sense, a universal republic committed to principles that rose above tribe or nation.

..

Given that the Naturalization Act of 1790 allowed for Whites only, the concept of a universal republic was, obviously, not entirely universal.

As for Anglo-Americans, their importation of large numbers of black Africans to toil as slaves and then huge numbers of 'ethnic' European immigrants -- especially the feisty and pushy Jews -- led to increasing pressure to transform America into a 'proposition'

There was already a steady supply of White slaves (indentured servants) coming from the UK. The importation of Africans was mainly in Jewish hands, as the (((reviled))) Tony Martin pointed out. This ramped up considerably after Anthony Johnson, a Black landowner who was a former indentured servant, sued and won the right to keep slaves for life. Ironically, his two white slaves were also included in the judgement. So much for White privilege.

Cyrano , December 1, 2017 at 8:06 pm GMT
At one point the US was so confident that they managed to "fix" the middle east, that they were talking about "pivot" to Asia, which was nothing more than a veiled threat to China that they are next on the list to be "fixed". So the pivot to Asia didn't really happen, as it turns out the middle east wasn't really "fixed", not the way the wanted it anyway. Then the fiasco in Ukraine happened where they had to turn their attention to Russia.

May I be so bold as to suggest few names for the new US policies towards Russia after 2014 – using "pivot to Asia" as a guidance? How about:

1. Somersault to Russia? Or,

2. Cartwheel to Russia? Or maybe,

3. Backflip to Russia?

Note that all 3 suggested choices try to point out to the acrobatic skills needed in order for the missions named after them to succeed.

Anon , Disclaimer December 1, 2017 at 8:14 pm GMT
First, there is no war. The real/unreal "war" continues because it serves the powers that be on both sides. On the US side, it serves as an excuse for an enormous "defense" spending that now exceeds defense spending of the rest of the world combined. This massive flow of taxpayers' money into the pockets of the few who feed at the Pentagon trough needs some "justification", and "evil Russia" serves admirably.

On the Russian side, Putin's generally anti-US foreign policy, which is supported by the great majority of Russians, "justifies" his grip on power despite the fact that the internal policies of his government, which also enrich very few at the expense of the rest, are very unpopular.

The US never wages a real war on anyone who has WMDs. North Korea is the most up-to-date example of this. The very fact of the US invasion of Iraq or bombing of Syria showed that the US was 100% sure that neither Saddam nor Assad have WMDs. The US elites, dumb and shortsighted though they are, understand deep down that they need to stay alive to enjoy their loot. As Ukrainian saying puts it, "coffins have no pockets".

But there is a stiff competition: the US Empire is going downhill, like the British Empire a century ago, and the Chinese are happy to have Russia spearhead the resistance (which they quietly support in many ways). I doubt that Chinese domination would be any more benign than shameless and brutal US domination, but we'll see soon enough: in 20-30 years the US will be relegated to the position of a second-tier power. I am not even sure that Chinese domination would be in Russia's interests any more than the US domination, but US elites in their incredible stupidity forced Russia to ally with China and all anti-American forces in the world, as diverse as Iran and North Korea.

The US is losing so fast due to blind greed and overall degradation of its elites, who keep biting off a lot more than they can chew and behaving like it's 1990. But the ultimate win would be more China's than Russia's, unless Russia manages to create a tri-polar world with China and India, which would be certainly better than any unipolar world can possibly be.

Andrei Martyanov , Website December 1, 2017 at 8:29 pm GMT

1. Somersault to Russia? Or,

2. Cartwheel to Russia? Or maybe,

3. Backflip to Russia?

Without jokes, but that is a perfect visual representation of a contemporary American foreign policy.

Erebus , December 2, 2017 at 2:51 am GMT
@Cyrano

1. Somersault to Russia? Or,
2. Cartwheel to Russia? Or maybe,
3. Backflip to Russia?

Note that all 3 suggested choices try to point out to the acrobatic skills needed in order for the missions named after them to succeed.

In the end, it will be a spastic lurch and a nosedive into the ditch on the road to Moscow.

Low Voltage , December 2, 2017 at 3:52 am GMT
Instead of AngloZionist Empire, I like just to call it the "Confederacy."

1. The Southern Generals strut around the globe like they own the place.
2. We're a resource-based economy with a free trade mantra.
3. Slave labor camps litter the Empire (though only in prisons in Confederate Homeland).
4. Hyper Police State.
5. Everyone defines themselves by their skin color.

Would anyone else care to add this list?

Beckow , December 2, 2017 at 4:19 am GMT
@peterAUS

"The same "hegemon with allies/vassals" as it is now, only in that case divided in three"

Why? There is absolutely nothing about 'multipolar' that dictates three, or four 'hegemons', or even lists who would the 'multis' be. The idea is simply that most people, most of the time are better off left alone.

Is that so hard to understand? Why should people in Washington (or Moscow, Beijing, Brussels, ) be intimately involved with how others live their lives, with their fights and alliances? Knowledge always dissipates with distance, and most of the 'masters of the universe' are not that smart to start with.

Multipolar is just that – leave exercise of power and responsibility as close to the local situation as possible. Brussels telling Poland who should be a TV presenter, or Washington deciding what people in rural Hungary should read is idiotic. What's the point of all this busy-body behaviour? It is always justified by some slogans about preventing 'human rights violations'. Right. We have seen the results – a lot more people have died and suffered because of 'humanitarian' interventions than from anything else in the last 20+ years.

I do find the current rapprochement between Russia and the major Moslem states amusing. It goes beyond Turkey and Iran, Moscow is working all of them, Egypt, Sudan, I suspect it is a clever attempt to beat US at its own game – US has spent about four decades arming and unleashing any Islamic force it could find against Russians (and Slavs in general), using methods that were beyond brutal and hypocrisy that eventually backfired. Maybe turning it around is a good strategy. It is inconsistent, but when you fight extreme stupidity, often the only thing that works is to use more stupidity

Erebus , December 2, 2017 at 8:48 am GMT
@Beckow

"The same "hegemon with allies/vassals" as it is now, only in that case divided in three"

Why? There is absolutely nothing about 'multipolar' that dictates three, or four 'hegemons', or even lists who would the 'multis' be. The idea is simply that most people, most of the time are better off left alone.

Peter's is the apocalyptic view made famous by Orwell. He may be right, it may all unravel and Oceania, Eurasia & Eastasia run a classic 3-power calculus of shifting alliances in a struggle for control of the "hinterlands". Not at all impossible, but certainly not what the proponents of the multipolar world want.

The idea is much more than the notion that most people want to "be left alone". The Multipolar world as it is actually being constructed by its proponents, from its monetary structures to its security, commercial and trade regimes, is precisely the attempt to prevent that Orwellian development in the face of Western decline. Their foundational tenet is that Globalization as a world-historical trend is here to stay (for at least the next few generations), and the "compartmentalization" of the world into alliances and hegemonies as historically occurred is no longer a viable option. The 3 Orwellian powers are all nuclear now, and the #1 priority is to mitigate the risk of war between them. Best to do that by dissolving them into a matrix of commercial and developmental programs that they'd be loathe to destroy.

EG: Though Russia considers both China and Iran "strategic partners", there is no formal alliance with either of them, and there won't be. Alliances cannot be "forbidden", but the countries that have signed onto the multipolar world program view alliances with suspicion.

As a introduction to the coming multipolar world, Kupchan's Western-centric analysis is a good place to start: https://www.amazon.com/No-Ones-World-Council-Relations/dp/0199325227

"Kupchan provides a detailed strategy for striking a bargain between the West and the rising rest by fashioning a new consensus on issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, and governance."

Assuming he even knows the least thing about what the multipolar world is trying to do, Peter's view is that their attempt will fail. Maybe so.
To "fashion a new consensus on issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, and governance" requires that the professional criminal class that grabbed the remains of Western power a decade and a half ago has been forced to let go. If not, the world indeed faces an abyss.

Orwell's vision is but one of the possibilities. Another is Armageddon. Yet another is a "(Failed) West and a multipolar Rest". The latter is what I think will actually happen in the near and medium term. Things being what they are, it may even be the best we can hope for.

Brzez , December 2, 2017 at 9:58 am GMT
@The Scalpel

"The white knight in shining armor" actually turned out to be a cowardly greedy coyote who unsuccessfully tried to fit into a stolen somewhere sheep skin.

Beckow , December 2, 2017 at 9:32 pm GMT
@peterAUS

"Russians shouldn't have raped all those German women"

Yeah, that's the problem – WWII was all about Russians raping. Not about Germans attacking east and murdering tens of millions. How many Russian women do you think Germans 'raped'? Or maybe they just killed them, 'ubermensch', right. It doesn't seem to bother you and that is sick.

Or this vignette:

The regime in Moscow has one and only one goal: own hold on power"

While, of course the 'regimes' in Washington or Berlin spend all their time worrying about the well-being of their citizens. You really cannot be that dumb, or can you?

I made mistake responding to you, you are hopeless.

Beckow , December 2, 2017 at 9:48 pm GMT
@Erebus

"(Failed) West and a multipolar Rest". The latter is what I think will actually happen in the near and medium term.

I think we already have it, except I don't think West has failed yet. Or it has in a way, the process of failing goes on, but the consequences have not been felt much in the West yet.

I don't see any other power than the West (=US) aspiring to 'manage the world'. Maybe some ISIS fanatics have the same dream, but they are not in a position to achieve it. West has 'managed' it very poorly: mindless interventions, wars, migrants, hypocrisy, threats and blackmail.

The other 'powers' have very modest, regional aspirations. Russia or China really don't care that much who wins the elections in Portugal, or what regional papers write in Hungary – US seems to be obsessed with it. And the only justification that Western defenders offer when pressed is that 'there would be a vacuum' and 'Russians would move in'. This is obvious nonsense and only elderly paranoid Cold Warrior types believe it (peterAUS?). What is really going on is that West has over-reached and can barely handle its own problems. So they scream 'Russians are coming' to distract, or to prolong the agony. Russians are not coming, they don't care in 2017, they can barely control their huge territory today. More you see squealing and lying in the Western media, more it shows that they have not much else to work with.

Beckow , December 2, 2017 at 10:49 pm GMT
@peterAUS

Is it possible to see BOTH as bad

You only mentioned one. You always only mention one, the same one.

To be fair, Germans started the war and killed a lot more people in the east. They deserved what they got.

how about ALL those regimes (Washington, Berlin, Moscow) first and foremost care about own survival and own success

You say that now because you got caught – again – with a one-sided biased view. If people have to remind you that rules should be applied equally, you are either too far gone or have issues with basic logic. Try to be objective to start with, not after you produce a biased rant and people point it out to you.

[Dec 03, 2017] Islamic Mindset Akin to Bolshevism by Srdja Trifkovic

Highly recommended!
Actually it was the West, especially the USA which created political Islam to fight Soviets. They essentially created Osama bin Laden as a political figure. The USA is also the main protector of Saudi Arabia were Wahhabism is the official religion. Then they tried to partition Russia by supporting Chechen islamists and financed the jihadist groups in Russia (especially in Dagestan).
Obama administration flirted with Muslim Brotherhood and unleashed the wars in Lybia and Siria were islamists were trying to take down the legitimate governments.
So Political Islam despite its anti-Western message used as a tool as a patsy for the destabilization of "unfriendly", the dogs that could be unleashed when weapons and money started to flow.
Now it looks like boomerang returns home.
Notable quotes:
"... I'd say that in modern times the main culprit was Zbigniew Brzezynski, who freely admitted in an interview with the French weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998 that he had this, as he called it, "brilliant idea" to let the Islamist genie out of the bottle to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan following the Soviet occupation in 1979. At that time he was President Carter's National Security Advisor. The transmission belt, from the CIA and various other U.S. agencies to the jihadists in Afghanistan, went via Pakistan. The ISI, the all-powerful military Inter-Service Intelligence-an institution which is pro-jihadist to boot-was used by the U.S. to arm elements which later morphed into al-Qaeda. The breeding ground for the modern, one might say postmodern form of jihadism, was Afghanistan-and it was made possible by U.S. policy inputs which helped its development. ..."
"... Instead of utter anarchy, I think we are more likely to see the ever more stringent control of the social media. The German government has already imposed on Google and Twitter which is based on the German draconian "hate speech" legislation, rather than on the universally accepted standards. On the whole we see everywhere in Europe that when you have a political party or a person trying to call a spade by its name, to call for a moratorium on immigration or for a fundamental change in the way of thinking, they will be demonized. ..."
"... The answer is fairly simple, but it would require a fundamental transformation of the mindset of the political decision-makers. It is to start treating Islamic activism not as "religious" but as an eminently political activity -- subversive political activity, in the same way as communist subversion was treated during the Cold War. ..."
"... To start with, every single potential U.S. citizen from the Islamic world needs to be interviewed in great detail about his or her beliefs and commitments. It is simply impossible for a believing Muslim to swear the oath of allegiance to the United States. None of them, if they are true believers, can regard the U.S. Constitution as superior to the Sharia-which is the law of God, while the U.S. Constitution is a man-made document. ..."
"... If there is to be a civil war in Europe, it would be pursued between the elite class which wants to continue pursuing multiculturalism and unlimited immigration --for example Germany, where over a million migrants from the Middle East, North Africa etc. were admitted in 2015 alone-and the majority of the population who have not been consulted, and who feel that their home country is being irretrievably lost. ..."
Feb 01, 2016 | chroniclesmagazine.org
View all posts from this blog

On January 23 Freedom and Prosperity Radio , Virginia's only syndicated political talk radio show, broadcast an interview with Srdja Trifkovic on the subject of Islam and the ongoing Muslim invasion of Europe. Here is the full transcript of the interview. ( Audio )

FPR: Your book The Sword of the Prophet was published back in 2002, yet here we are-15 years later-still scratching our heads over this problem. Defeating Jihad you wrote ten years ago, and yet we are still fumbling around in the dark. It seems like we don't have the ability to say what is right and what is wrong. We've lost the ability we had had during the Cold War to say out way is better than their way . . .

ST: I'm afraid the problem is deeper than that. It is in the unwillingness of the ruling elite in the Western world to come to grips with the nature of Islam-as-such. There is this constant tendency by the politicians, the media and the academia to treat jihadism as some sort of aberration which is alien to "true" Islam. We had an example of that in 2014, when President Obama went so far as to say that ISIS was "un-Islamic"! It is rather curious that the President of the United States assumes the authority of a theologian who can pass definite judgments on whether a certain phenomenon is "Islamic" or not. Likewise we have this constant repetition of the mantra of the "religion of peace and tolerance," which is simply not supported by 14 centuries of historical experience. What I've tried to emphasize in both those books you've mentioned, and in my various other writings and public appearances, is that the problem of Islam resides in the core texts, in the Kuran and the Hadith , the "Traditions" of the prophet of Islam, Muhammed. This is the source from which the historical practice has been derived ever since. The problem is not in the jihadists misinterpreting Islam, but rather in interpreting it all too well. This mythical "moderate Islam," for which everybody seems to be looking these days, is an exception and not the rule.

In answer to your question, I'd say that "scratching one's head" is-by now-only the phenomenon of those who refuse to face reality. Reasonable people who are capable of judging phenomena on their merits and on the basis of ample empirical evidence, are no longer in doubt. They see that the problem is not in the alleged misinterpretation of the Islamic teaching, but rather in its rigorous application and literal understanding. I'm afraid things will not get better, because with each and every new jihadist attack, such as the Charlie Hebdo slaughter in Paris a year ago, or again in Paris last November, or the New Year's Eve violence in Germany, we are witnessing-time and over again-the same problem. The Islamic mindset, the Islamic understanding of the world, the Muslim Weltanschauung , world outlook, is fundamentally incompatible with the Western value system and the Western way of life.

FPR: . . . It seems obvious, regarding Islam, that its "freedom of religion" is impacting other people, and it's dictated to do so-it must go out and fight the infidels. And that's where we have the disconnect. Maybe there is some traction to the statement, as you put it, that fundamentalism reflects a far more thorough following of Islam, and that it is simply incompatible with the Constitution?

ST: It is inevitable, because if you are an orthodox, practicing, mainstream Muslim, then you necessarily believe in the need to impose Sharia as the law of the land. Sharia is much more than a legal code. It is also a political program, it is a code of social behavior, it is the blueprint for the totality of human experience. That's why it is impossible to make Sharia compatible with the liberal principle of "live and let live": it is inherently aggressive to non-Islam. In the Islamic paradigm, the world is divided in the Manichean manner, black-and-white, into "the World of Faith," Dar al-Islam , literally "the world of submission," and "the World of War, Dar al-Harb .

It is the divine duty of each and every Muslim to seek the expansion of Dar al-Islam at the expense of Dar al-Harb until the one true faith is triumphant throughout the world. In this sense the Islamic mindset is very similar to Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks also believed that "the first country of Socialism" should expand its reach and control until the whole world has undergone the proletarian revolution and has become one in the march to the Utopia of communism. There is constant inner tension in the Islamic world, in the sense that for as long as non-Islam exists, it is inherently perceived as "the other," as an abomination. In that sense, Muslims perceive any concession made by the West-for instance in allowing mass immigration into Western Europe-not as a gesture of good will and multicultural tolerance, but as a sign of weakness that needs to be exploited and used as a means to an end.

FPR: The Roman Catholic Church has its Catechism which decides the issues of doctrine. Until there's an Islamic "catechism" which can say "no, this is no longer the right interpretation, this is not what it means any more"-and I don't think this would be a short-term thing, because you'd still have the splinter groups dissenting against the "traitors"-but is this the only way to go to the center of theological jurisprudence in the Islamic world?

ST: The problem is twofold. First of all, there is no "interpretation" of the Kuran . Classical Islamic sources are adamant that the Kuran needs to be taken at face value, literally. If it says in Sura 9, verse 5, "fight the infidels wherever you find them, and let them go if they convert," or if it says time and over again that the choice for a non-Muslim is to accept Islam, or to live as a second-class citizen-the dhimmi -under Islamic supremacy, or else to be killed it is very hard to imagine what sort of authority in the Islamic world would be capable of saying "now we are going to relativize and soften the message."

The second part of the problem is that there is no single authority in Islam. It is not organized in a hierarchical way like the Roman Catholic Church, where if the Pope speaks ex cathedra his pronouncements are obligatory for all Catholics everywhere. Islam is a diffused religion, with various centers of learning and various ullema who may or may not agree on certain peripheral details. Yet any any one of them who'd dare say "look, now we rally need to reinterpret the fundamental sources, the Kuran and the Hadith, so as to make it compatible with the pluralist society"-they'd immediately be condemned as heretics. We've seen attempts at reform in the past. In the end the orthodox interpretation always prevails, because it is-sadly-the right interpretation of the core texts. With neither the hierarchy capable of imposing a new form of teaching on the faithful, nor the existence of alternative core texts which would provide grounds for such reinterpretation, it is very hard to see how it could be done.

FPR: How do we go forward? . . . How does the end-game play out?

ST: I'd say that in modern times the main culprit was Zbigniew Brzezynski, who freely admitted in an interview with the French weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998 that he had this, as he called it, "brilliant idea" to let the Islamist genie out of the bottle to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan following the Soviet occupation in 1979. At that time he was President Carter's National Security Advisor. The transmission belt, from the CIA and various other U.S. agencies to the jihadists in Afghanistan, went via Pakistan. The ISI, the all-powerful military Inter-Service Intelligence-an institution which is pro-jihadist to boot-was used by the U.S. to arm elements which later morphed into al-Qaeda. The breeding ground for the modern, one might say postmodern form of jihadism, was Afghanistan-and it was made possible by U.S. policy inputs which helped its development.

But if we look at the past 14 centuries, time and over again we see the same phenomenon. The first time they tried to conquer Europe was across the Straits of Gibraltar and across the Iberian Peninsula, today's Spain. Then they crossed the Pyrinees and were only stopped at Poitiers by Charles Martel in 732AD. Then they were gradually being pushed back, and the Reconquista -- the reconquest of Spain-lasted 800 years, until 1492, when Cordoba finally fell to the Christian forces. Then came the second, Ottoman onslaught, in the XIVth century, which went across the Dardanelles into the Balkan Peninsula. The Turks were only finally stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Pushing Turkey out of Europe went all the way to 1912, to the First Balkan War.

So we may say that we are now witnessing the third Islamic conquest of Europe. This time it is not using armed janissaries, it is using so-called refugees. In fact most of them are healthy young men, and the whole process is obviously a strategic exercise -- a joint venture between Ankara and Riyadh, who are logistically and financially helping this mass transfer of people from the Turkish and Middle Eastern refugee camps to the heart of Europe. The effect may be the same, but this time it is far more dangerous because, on the European side-unlike in 732, or 1683-there is no political will and there is no moral strength to resist. This is happening because the migrants, the invaders, see Europe as the candy store with a busted lock and they are taking advantage of that fact.

FPR: When you see the horrors of rapes and sexual assaults that took place across Germany, and now we see the Germans' response . . . vigilantes on their streets . . . this is something that we either control politically and with leadership, or else it falls apart into anarchy, Prof. Trifkovic?

ST: Instead of anarchy I think we will have a form of postmodern totalitarianism. The elite class, the government of Germany etc, and the media, will demonize those who try to resist. In fact we already have the spectacle of the minister of the interior of one of the German states saying that "hate speech" on the social networks and websites was far worse than the "incidents" in Cologne. And the Mayor of Cologne-an ultra-feminist who is also a pro-immigration enthusiast-said that in order to prevent such events in the future women should observe a "code of conduct" and keep distance "at an arm's length" from men. It's a classic example of blaming the victim. The victims of Islamic violence should change their behavior in order to adapt themselves to the code of conduct and values of the invaders. This is truly unprecedented.

Instead of utter anarchy, I think we are more likely to see the ever more stringent control of the social media. The German government has already imposed on Google and Twitter which is based on the German draconian "hate speech" legislation, rather than on the universally accepted standards. On the whole we see everywhere in Europe that when you have a political party or a person trying to call a spade by its name, to call for a moratorium on immigration or for a fundamental change in the way of thinking, they will be demonized. The same applies to Marine Le Pen in France and to her party, the Front National , or to Geert Wilders in Holland, or to Strache in Austria. Whoever tries to articulate a coherent plan of action that includes a ban or limits on Islamic immigration is immediately demonized as a right-wing fanatic or a fascist. Instead of facing the reality of the situation, that you have a multi-million Islamic diaspora in Europe which is not assimilating, which refuses even to accept a code of conduct of the host population, the reaction is always the same: blame the victim, and demonize those who try to articulate some form of resistance.

FPR: Dr. Trifkovic, how does a country such as ours, the United States, fix this problem . . .

ST: The answer is fairly simple, but it would require a fundamental transformation of the mindset of the political decision-makers. It is to start treating Islamic activism not as "religious" but as an eminently political activity -- subversive political activity, in the same way as communist subversion was treated during the Cold War. In both cases we have a committed, highly motivated group of people who want to effect a fundamental transformation of the United States in a way that is contrary to the U.S. Constitution, to the American way of life, and to the American values. It is time to stop the Islamists from hiding behind the "freedom of religion" mantra. What they are seeking is not some "freedom of religion" but the freedom to organize in order to pursue political subversion. They do not accept the U.S. Constitution.

To start with, every single potential U.S. citizen from the Islamic world needs to be interviewed in great detail about his or her beliefs and commitments. It is simply impossible for a believing Muslim to swear the oath of allegiance to the United States. None of them, if they are true believers, can regard the U.S. Constitution as superior to the Sharia-which is the law of God, while the U.S. Constitution is a man-made document. I happen to know the oath because I am myself a naturalized U.S. citizen. They can do it "in good faith" from their point of view by practicing taqqiya . This is the Arab word for the art of dissimulation, when the Muslim lies to the infidel in order to protect the faith. For them to lie to investigators or to immigration officials about their beliefs and their objectives does not create any conflict of conscience. The prophet of Islam himself has mandated the use of taqqiya if it serves the objective of spreading the faith.

FPR: Can a civil war come out of this? Is it conceivable?

ST: If there is to be a civil war in Europe, it would be pursued between the elite class which wants to continue pursuing multiculturalism and unlimited immigration --for example Germany, where over a million migrants from the Middle East, North Africa etc. were admitted in 2015 alone-and the majority of the population who have not been consulted, and who feel that their home country is being irretrievably lost. I do not believe that there will be many people fighting on the side of the multiculturalists' suicide, but nevertheless we still have very effective forces of coercion and control on the government side which can be deployed to prevent the articulation of any long-term, coherent plan of resistance.

FPR: Where can people continue to read you writings, Dr. Trifkovic?

ST: On Chroniclesmagazine.org where I publish weekly online commentaries, and also in the print edition of Chronicles where I have my regular column.

[Dec 03, 2017] West has over-reached and can barely handle its own problems

The problem is that neoliberal ideology entered the state of the crisis in 2008 much like Bolshevik ideology entered the crisis after WWII. The USSR managed to survive for another 50 years after that.
Notable quotes:
"... Multipolar is just that – leave exercise of power and responsibility as close to the local situation as possible. Brussels telling Poland who should be a TV presenter, or Washington deciding what people in rural Hungary should read is idiotic. What's the point of all this busy-body behaviour? It is always justified by some slogans about preventing 'human rights violations'. Right. We have seen the results – a lot more people have died and suffered because of 'humanitarian' interventions than from anything else in the last 20+ years. ..."
"... I do find the current rapprochement between Russia and the major Moslem states amusing. It goes beyond Turkey and Iran, Moscow is working all of them, Egypt, Sudan, I suspect it is a clever attempt to beat US at its own game – US has spent about four decades arming and unleashing any Islamic force it could find against Russians (and Slavs in general), using methods that were beyond brutal and hypocrisy that eventually backfired. Maybe turning it around is a good strategy. It is inconsistent, but when you fight extreme stupidity, often the only thing that works is to use more stupidity ..."
"... Orwell's vision is but one of the possibilities. Another is Armageddon. Yet another is a "(Failed) West and a multipolar Rest". The latter is what I think will actually happen in the near and medium term. Things being what they are, it may even be the best we can hope for. ..."
"... I don't see any other power than the West (=US) aspiring to 'manage the world'. Maybe some ISIS fanatics have the same dream, but they are not in a position to achieve it. West has 'managed' it very poorly: mindless interventions, wars, migrants, hypocrisy, threats and blackmail. ..."
"... The other 'powers' have very modest, regional aspirations. Russia or China really don't care that much who wins the elections in Portugal, or what regional papers write in Hungary – US seems to be obsessed with it. And the only justification that Western defenders offer when pressed is that 'there would be a vacuum' and 'Russians would move in'. This is obvious nonsense and only elderly paranoid Cold Warrior types believe it ..."
"... Europeans have been invited to join the Eurasian Project, to create a continental market from "Lisbon to Vladivostok". Latent dreams of Hegemony hold at least some of their elites back. ..."
"... The West rode an ahistorical rogue wave of development to a point just short of Global Hegemony. That wave broke, and is now rolling back out into the world leaving the West just short of its civilizational resource requirements. No way to get back on a broken wave. In any case, China now holds the $$$ hammer, and Russia holds the military hammer, and they've now got the surfboard. Both of them, led by historically aware elites, know that Hegemony doesn't work, so will focus on keeping their neck of the woods as stable & prosperous as possible while hell blazes elsewhere. ..."
Dec 03, 2017 | www.unz.com

Beckow , December 2, 2017 at 4:19 am GMT

@peterAUS

"The same "hegemon with allies/vassals" as it is now, only in that case divided in three"

Why? There is absolutely nothing about 'multipolar' that dictates three, or four 'hegemons', or even lists who would the 'multis' be. The idea is simply that most people, most of the time are better off left alone.

Is that so hard to understand? Why should people in Washington (or Moscow, Beijing, Brussels, ) be intimately involved with how others live their lives, with their fights and alliances? Knowledge always dissipates with distance, and most of the 'masters of the universe' are not that smart to start with.

Multipolar is just that – leave exercise of power and responsibility as close to the local situation as possible. Brussels telling Poland who should be a TV presenter, or Washington deciding what people in rural Hungary should read is idiotic. What's the point of all this busy-body behaviour? It is always justified by some slogans about preventing 'human rights violations'. Right. We have seen the results – a lot more people have died and suffered because of 'humanitarian' interventions than from anything else in the last 20+ years.

I do find the current rapprochement between Russia and the major Moslem states amusing. It goes beyond Turkey and Iran, Moscow is working all of them, Egypt, Sudan, I suspect it is a clever attempt to beat US at its own game – US has spent about four decades arming and unleashing any Islamic force it could find against Russians (and Slavs in general), using methods that were beyond brutal and hypocrisy that eventually backfired. Maybe turning it around is a good strategy. It is inconsistent, but when you fight extreme stupidity, often the only thing that works is to use more stupidity

Erebus , December 2, 2017 at 8:48 am GMT
@Beckow

"The same "hegemon with allies/vassals" as it is now, only in that case divided in three"

Why? There is absolutely nothing about 'multipolar' that dictates three, or four 'hegemons', or even lists who would the 'multis' be. The idea is simply that most people, most of the time are better off left alone.

Peter's is the apocalyptic view made famous by Orwell. He may be right, it may all unravel and Oceania, Eurasia & Eastasia run a classic 3-power calculus of shifting alliances in a struggle for control of the "hinterlands". Not at all impossible, but certainly not what the proponents of the multipolar world want.

The idea is much more than the notion that most people want to "be left alone". The Multipolar world as it is actually being constructed by its proponents, from its monetary structures to its security, commercial and trade regimes, is precisely the attempt to prevent that Orwellian development in the face of Western decline. Their foundational tenet is that Globalization as a world-historical trend is here to stay (for at least the next few generations), and the "compartmentalization" of the world into alliances and hegemonies as historically occurred is no longer a viable option. The 3 Orwellian powers are all nuclear now, and the #1 priority is to mitigate the risk of war between them. Best to do that by dissolving them into a matrix of commercial and developmental programs that they'd be loathe to destroy.

EG: Though Russia considers both China and Iran "strategic partners", there is no formal alliance with either of them, and there won't be. Alliances cannot be "forbidden", but the countries that have signed onto the multipolar world program view alliances with suspicion.

As a introduction to the coming multipolar world, Kupchan's Western-centric analysis is a good place to start: https://www.amazon.com/No-Ones-World-Council-Relations/dp/0199325227
"Kupchan provides a detailed strategy for striking a bargain between the West and the rising rest by fashioning a new consensus on issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, and governance."

Assuming he even knows the least thing about what the multipolar world is trying to do, Peter's view is that their attempt will fail. Maybe so.
To "fashion a new consensus on issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, and governance" requires that the professional criminal class that grabbed the remains of Western power a decade and a half ago has been forced to let go. If not, the world indeed faces an abyss.

Orwell's vision is but one of the possibilities. Another is Armageddon. Yet another is a "(Failed) West and a multipolar Rest". The latter is what I think will actually happen in the near and medium term. Things being what they are, it may even be the best we can hope for.

Beckow , December 2, 2017 at 9:48 pm GMT
@Erebus

"(Failed) West and a multipolar Rest". The latter is what I think will actually happen in the near and medium term.

I think we already have it, except I don't think West has failed yet. Or it has in a way, the process of failing goes on, but the consequences have not been felt much in the West yet.

I don't see any other power than the West (=US) aspiring to 'manage the world'. Maybe some ISIS fanatics have the same dream, but they are not in a position to achieve it. West has 'managed' it very poorly: mindless interventions, wars, migrants, hypocrisy, threats and blackmail.

The other 'powers' have very modest, regional aspirations. Russia or China really don't care that much who wins the elections in Portugal, or what regional papers write in Hungary – US seems to be obsessed with it. And the only justification that Western defenders offer when pressed is that 'there would be a vacuum' and 'Russians would move in'. This is obvious nonsense and only elderly paranoid Cold Warrior types believe it (peterAUS?). What is really going on is that West has over-reached and can barely handle its own problems. So they scream 'Russians are coming' to distract, or to prolong the agony. Russians are not coming, they don't care in 2017, they can barely control their huge territory today. More you see squealing and lying in the Western media, more it shows that they have not much else to work with.

Erebus , Next New Comment December 3, 2017 at 7:18 am GMT
@Beckow

"(Failed) West and a multipolar Rest". The latter is what I think will actually happen in the near and medium term.

I think we already have it, except I don't think West has failed yet. Or it has in a way, the process of failing goes on, but the consequences have not been felt much in the West yet.

Well, exogenous events aside, "decline and fall" is necessarily a process. A series of steps and plateaus is typical. A major step occurred in 2007/8, when the money failed. The bankers, in a frankly heroic display of coordination, propped up the $$$ and the West got a decade long plateau. Things are going wobbly again, financially speaking and I suspect the next step function to occur rather soon. Stays of execution have been exhausted, so it'll be interesting how the West handles it, and how the RoW reacts.

Europeans have been invited to join the Eurasian Project, to create a continental market from "Lisbon to Vladivostok". Latent dreams of Hegemony hold at least some of their elites back. The USA has also been invited, but its dreams remain much more virile. That is, until Trump who's backers seem to read the writing on the wall better than the Straussians.

I don't see any other power than the West (=US) aspiring to 'manage the world' .
The other 'powers' have very modest, regional aspirations US seems to be obsessed with it.

The fact is that the rise of the West to global dominance is due to a historical anomaly. It was fuelled (literally) by the discovery and harnessing of the chemical energy embedded in coal (late 18thC) and then oil (late 19thC). The first doubled the population, and as first movers gave the West a running start. The second turned on the afterburners, and population grew >3.5 fold. Again the West led the way. To fuel that ahistorical step-function growth curve, control of resources on a global scale became its civilizational imperative.

That growth curve has plateaued, and the rest of the world has caught/is catching up developmentally. The resources the West needs aren't going to be available to it in the way they were 100 years ago. Them days is over, for everybody really, but especially for the West because it has depleted its own hi-ROI resources, and both of its means of control (IMF$ System & U$M) of what's left of everybody else's are failing simultaneously. So its plateau will not be flat, or not flat for long between increasingly violent steps.

The West rode an ahistorical rogue wave of development to a point just short of Global Hegemony. That wave broke, and is now rolling back out into the world leaving the West just short of its civilizational resource requirements. No way to get back on a broken wave. In any case, China now holds the $$$ hammer, and Russia holds the military hammer, and they've now got the surfboard. Both of them, led by historically aware elites, know that Hegemony doesn't work, so will focus on keeping their neck of the woods as stable & prosperous as possible while hell blazes elsewhere.

What is really going on is that West has over-reached and can barely handle its own problems.

IMHO, what's really going on is that the West's problems are simply symptomatic of what "decline and fall", if not "collapse" looks like from within a failing system. A long time ago I read the diary of a Roman nobleman who in the most matter-of-fact style wrote of exactly the same things Westerners complain about today. How this, that or the other thing no longer works the way it did. For all of his 60+ years, every day was infinitesimally worse than the day before, until finally he decides to pack up his Roman households and move to his estates in Spain. It took 170(iirc) more years of continuous decline until Alaric finally arrived at the Gates of Rome. If wholly due to internal causes, collapse is almost always a slow motion train wreck.

'there would be a vacuum' and 'Russians would move in'. This is obvious nonsense and only elderly paranoid Cold Warrior types believe it (peterAUS?).

Actually, it's just stupid. Cold Warrior or not, the view betrays a deep and abiding ignorance of both history and a large part of what drove the West's hegemonic successes. That both militate against anyone else ever even trying such a thing on a global scale can't be seen if you look at historical developments and the rest of the world through 10′ of 1″ pipe.

The idea that Russia wants/needs the Baltics is even more laughable than that it wants/needs the Ukraine or Poland. None of these tarbabies have anything to offer but trouble. Noisome flies on an elephant, it is only if they make themselves more troublesome as outsiders than they would be as vassals would Russia move.

Beckow , Next New Comment December 3, 2017 at 10:13 pm GMT
@Erebus

"Things are going wobbly again"

Why do you think so? I think we are about to enter an occasional plateau and things will be stable or even improve for a while. The Rome analogies are instructive, but they only take you so far. E.g. Rome was collapsing for about two centuries, on and off. Rome was also infinitely more brutal than today's West and the 'barbarians' were real barbarians, not aspiring migrants led by well-paid NGO comprador class. Why do you think it is getting wobbly?

[Dec 03, 2017] Is Washington the Most Corrupt Government in History by Paul Craig Roberts

Looks like the credibility of the US establishment might collapse under weight of all lies that it perpetuated.
Americans and Russians should be natural partners in a multipolar world to widespread benefit. The current situation dominated by neo-McCarthyism witch hunt is tragic. Looks like the current neoliberal elite is truly evil, so there is not much hope for a change there. The American people are overall decent and generous, but their abysmal lack of (or even interest) in history and ignorance of the current events might be their undoing, I'm afraid.
Notable quotes:
"... The presstitutes never investigate real events. The presstitutes never question inconsistencies in official stories. They never tie together loose ends. They simply read over and over the script handed to them until the official story that controls the explanation is driven into the public's head. ..."
Dec 03, 2017 | www.unz.com

Robert Mueller, a former director of the FBI who is working as a special prosecutor "investigating" a contrived hoax designed by the military/security complex and the DNC to destroy the Trump presidency, has yet to produce a scrap of evidence that Russiagate is anything but orchestrated fake news. As William Binney and other top experts have said, if there is evidence of Russiagate, the NSA would have it. No investigation would be necessary. So where is the evidence?

It is a revelation of how corrupt Washington is that a fake scandal is being investigated while a real scandal is not. The fake scandal is Trump's Russiagate. The real scandal is Hillary Clinton's uranium sale to Russia. No evidence for the former exists. Voluminous evidence for Hillary's scandal lies in plain view. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/10/25/hillary-clinton-and-real-russian-collusion.html

Why are the clearly false charges against Trump being investigated and the clearly true charges against Hillary not being investigated? The answer is that Hillary with her hostility toward Russia and her denunciation of Russian President Putin as the "New Hitler" is not a threat to the budget and power of the US military/security complex, while Trump's aim of normalizing relations with Russia would deprive the military/security complex of the "enemy" it requires to justify its massive budget and power.

Why hasn't President Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate Hillary? Is the answer that Trump is afraid the military/security complex will assassinate him? Why hasn't the Justice Department undertaken the investigation on its own? Is the answer that Trump's government is allied with his enemies?

How corrupt does Mueller have to be to agree to lead a fake investigation designed to overthrow the democratic election of the President of the United States? Why doesn't Trump have Mueller and Comey arrested for sedition and conspiring to overthrow the president of the United States?

Why instead is Mueller expanding his investigation beyond his mandate and bringing charges against Manafort and others for decade-old under-reporting of income? Why instead is Congress harassing journalist Randy Credico for interviewing Julian Assange? How does an interview become part of the House Intelligence (sic) Committee's investigation into "Russian active measures directed at the 2016 U.S. election?" There were no such active measures, but the uranium sale was real.

Why haven't the media conglomerates that have produced presstitutes instead of journalists been broken up? Why can presstitutes lie 24/7, but a man can't make a pass at a woman?

Once you begin asking questions, there is no end of them.

The failure of the US and European media is extreme.

The presstitutes never investigate real events. The presstitutes never question inconsistencies in official stories. They never tie together loose ends. They simply read over and over the script handed to them until the official story that controls the explanation is driven into the public's head.

Consider, for example, the Obama regime's claim to have murdered Osama bin Laden in his "compound" in Abbottabad, Pakistan, next to a Pakistani military base. The official story had to be changed several times. The Obama regime claim that Obama and top government officials had watched the raid via cameras on the SEALs' helmets had to be abandoned. There was no reason to withhold the filmed evidence, and of course there was no such evidence, so the initial claim to have watched the killing became a "miscommunication." The staged photo of the top government officials watching the alleged live filming was never explained. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382859/Osama-bin-Laden-dead-Photo-Obama-watching-Al-Qaeda-leader-die-live-TV.html

The entire story never made any sense: Osama, unarmed and defended only by his unarmed wife, was murdered in cold blood by a SEAL. What in the world for? Why murder rather than capture the "terrorist mastermind" from whom endless information could have been gained? Why forgo the political fanfare of parading Osama bin Laden before the world as a captive of the American superpower?

Why were no photographs taken? Why was Osama's body dumped in the ocean. In other words, why was all the evidence destroyed and nothing saved to back up the story?

Why the fake story of Osama being given a sea burial from an aircraft carrier? Why was no media interested that the ship's crew wrote home that no such burial took place?

Why was there no presstitute interest in the fact that the SEAL unit, from which the SEALs on the alleged raid on bin Laden's compound were drawn, was loaded against regulations in one 50-year old Vietnam era helicopter and shot down in Afghanistan, with all lives lost? Why was there no presstitute interest in the parents of the SEALs complaints about inappropriate procedures that cost their sons' lives and about fears expressed to them by sons that something was wrong and they felt endangered? http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/navy-seals-father-obama-sent-my-son-to-his-death/
and https://www.military1.com/navy/article/403494-navy-seals-parents-sue-biden-panetta-over-sons-deaths/ and http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/08/families-of-seal-team-6-to-reveal-why-they-think-the-govt-is-as-much-responsible-for-the-death-of-their-sons-as-the-taliban

Did the SEAL unit have to be wiped out because the members were asking one another, "who was on that raid?" "Were you on the bin Laden raid?" When in fact no one was on the raid.

Why wasn't Congress interested?

Why was the live Pakistani TV interview with an eye witness of the alleged raid on bin Laden's compound not reported in the US media? The witness contradicted every aspect of the official story. And this was immediately after the event. There was no time for anyone to concoct an elaborate counter-story or motive to do so. Here is the interview: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/11/15/pakistan-samaa-tv-interview-eyewitness-alleged-osama-bin-laden-killing/ and here is a verified translation that confirms the accuracy of the English subscripts: https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=Pakistan-TV-Report-Contrad-by-paul-craig-roberts-110806-879.html

Osama bin Laden had been dead for a decade prior to the false claim that Navy SEALs murdered him in Pakistan in May 2011. Here are the obituraries from December 2001: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/11/20/bin-ladens-obituary-notice/ and this one from Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2001/12/26/report-bin-laden-already-dead.html

Here is bin Laden's last confirmed interview. He says he had nothing to do with 9/11. Why would a terrorist leader who succeed in humiliating "the world's only superpower" fail to boost his movement by claiming credit?
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/11/26/the-osama-bin-laden-myth-2/

See also:

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/11/07/another-fake-bin-laden-story-paul-craig-roberts/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/pentagon-orders-purge-of-osama-bin-ladens-death-files-from-data-bank/5342055

http://themindrenewed.com/interviews/2013/334-int-32

https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=Creating-Evidence-Where-Th-by-paul-craig-roberts-110805-618.html

https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=Pakistan-TV-Report-Contrad

Think about this. The bin Laden story, including 9/11, is fake from start to finish, but it is inscribed into encyclopedias, history books, and the public's consciousness.

And this is just one example of the institutionalized mass lies concocted by Washington and the presstitutes and turned into truth. Washington's self-serving control over explanations has removed Americans from reality and made them slaves to fake news.

So, how does democracy function when voters have no reliable information and, instead, are led into the agendas of the rulers by orchestrated events and fake news?

Where is there any evidence that the United States is a functioning democracy?

[Dec 03, 2017] Stephen Kotkin How Vladimir Putin Rules

Highly recommended!
This is two years old Foreign Affair article, which actually can be viewed as a precursor of the current anti-Russian witch hunt. Foreign Affairs firmly belong to the neocons swamp, so be prepared ;-). As usual for such publications as Foreign Affairs comments are more interesting that the article. BTW the resistance to the neoliberal empire led by the USA can probably be mentioned as a part of Russian national idea. In this sense Stanislav Belkovsky observation that "the search for Russia's national idea, which began after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is finally over. Now, it is evident that Russia's national idea is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin." Putin simply became expression of this resistance to neocolonial rule, much like Gandy became in India before.
The US neoliberal elite is fixated on the idea of destroying Russia much like Roman elite was fixated on the idea of destroying Carnage.
This analysis is from 2015 or two years from now. It Is interesting to compare it (along with comments) with he current situation and new developments...
Notable quotes:
"... "the search for Russia's national idea, which began after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is finally over. Now, it is evident that Russia's national idea is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin." ..."
"... Russia is classified as a high-income economy by the World Bank (having a per capita GDP exceeding $14,000). Its unemployment remains low (around five percent); until recently, consumer spending had been expanding at more than five percent annually; life expectancy has been rising; and Internet penetration exceeds that of some countries in the European Union. ..."
"... it is the predatory West's efforts to enslave people to the European weltanschauung. ..."
"... This is no World Order: it a man eat man world that has been created. ..."
"... Before America decided to KILL Gadhafi by indiscriminatingly arming gangsters to carry out their will, the incipient-unity state of Libya did not have the sectarian violence that we presently hear about. ..."
"... let us examine your assertion for a moment: Bush was a Moron but Saddam was a murderous dictator. By your logic we American must be the epitome of Moron-ness, for we ELECTED Bush; Iraqis must be a gentle and good people who were overpowered by the Saddam, the Murderous Dictator.. ..."
"... By the way, how many Iraqis did Saddam murder? And then, how many Iraqis were murdered, at the command of Bush? Since the Iraqis were killed/murdered at the command of Bush, and Americans elected Bush, Americans are responsible for the murders. We Americans have blood on our hands! ..."
"... My assertion is that America is responsible for 2'000'000 deaths in Iraq ..."
"... Dear Jamil: As an American citizen, I take my hat off to you for telling the exact truth -- that the terrorist state is the United States of America and our media's propaganda stream is now in overdrive, especially in regard to Russia, which is our latest target. ..."
"... The US State Department's Victoria Nuland and our CIA (+ Blackwater mercenaries) installed the puppet Yatsenyuk/Poroshenko govt. in Kiev (to do our bidding) and CIA Dir. James Brennan himself went to Kiev to launch the civil war against the Eastern provinces that Europeans, at least, are now trying to bring to a halt. The US does leave nothing but failed states behind it, and Western Ukraine will be the next failed state in a long list. Since the end of WWII, the best estimate is that the United States, in 67 military operations and countless covert CIA operations, has destroyed between 20 and 30 million people world-wide, largely in the interest of commandeering their resources or serving the interests of the banks to which they owe money--money they were usually cajoled into borrowing. ..."
"... I hold to my original point that Islamic terrorism has been created by unjustified Western interference. ..."
"... He advocates a world ruled by an elite (unspecified). ..."
"... You seem unable to differentiate between an imperialist and a "good Samaritan". You had earlier written that, as a street walker in Europe you had not seen any slaves, my response to that posting simply told you where you could go to see slavery. And specific reference to India was simply to help you find slavery most easily - with 14 million slaves India is the centre of Modern Slavery. However, in my conversations with Indians, especially the demi-literate ones, instead of admitting to the prevailing REALITY in India, they do not admit to seeing it. With their eyes open, the street walkers do not see it ..."
"... Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin... :)) Hmmm... oк, about Putin: Look at Putin's foreign agenda this past year: Latin America just as the sanctions came in - an intentional finger in Washington's eye, as I read it - then China, China again recently, Turkey more recently, India just now. He has not been to Iran, but there, as in all these other places, he has forged or reiterated promising relations. The deals cut are too numerous to list. A couple are worth mentioning. The twin gas deals with China, worth nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars, are historic all by themselves. In six years' time China will be buying more gas from Russia than the latter now sells to Europe. And do not miss this: My sources tell me that this gas can be priced such as to crowd the U.S. at least partially out of the Asian market. Other side of the world: Putin has just canceled a planned pipeline to southeastern Europe, the South Stream. This is the defeat Western media put it over as, surely: Russia loses some customers ..."
Mar 28, 2015 | Foreign Affairs
How did twenty-first-century Russia end up, yet again, in personal rule? An advanced industrial country of 142 million people, it has no enduring political parties that organize and respond to voter preferences.

The military is sprawling yet tame; the immense secret police are effectively in one man's pocket. The hydrocarbon sector is a personal bank, and indeed much of the economy is increasingly treated as an individual fiefdom. Mass media move more or less in lockstep with the commands of the presidential administration.

Competing interest groups abound, but there is no rival center of power. In late October 2014, after a top aide to Russia's president told the annual forum of the Valdai Discussion Club, which brings together Russian and foreign experts, that Russians understand "if there is no Putin, there is no Russia," the pundit Stanislav Belkovsky observed that "the search for Russia's national idea, which began after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is finally over. Now, it is evident that Russia's national idea is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin."

Russia is classified as a high-income economy by the World Bank (having a per capita GDP exceeding $14,000). Its unemployment remains low (around five percent); until recently, consumer spending had been expanding at more than five percent annually; life expectancy has been rising; and Internet penetration exceeds that of some countries in the European Union.

But Russia is now beset by economic stagnation alongside high inflation, its labor productivity remains dismally low, and its once-vaunted school system has deteriorated alarmingly. And it is astonishingly corrupt. Not only the bullying central authorities in Moscow but regional state bodies, too, have been systematically criminalizing revenue streams, while giant swaths of territory lack basic public services and local vigilante groups proliferate.

Across the country, officials who have purchased their positions for hefty sums team up with organized crime syndicates and use friendly prosecutors and judges to extort and expropriate rivals. President Vladimir Putin's vaunted "stability," in short, has turned into spoliation. But Putin has been in power for 15 years, and there is no end in sight. Stalin ruled for some three decades...

Jamil M Chaudri

Interesting but slanted and one-sided, myopic analysis. Why would the 1.6 billion Muslims spread over three continents, accept Mr Kotkin's concept of "World Order".

There is no World Order; it is the predatory West's efforts to enslave people to the European weltanschauung. It is an effort by the colonialists to prolong their hegemony over Muslim lands and people.

One of the biggest mistakes Pakia made was to join the West in destroying Soviet Russia. A bi-polar world was a better world than a unipolar world, where the west is destroying Muslim nations (one after the other).

This is no World Order: it a man eat man world that has been created.

Jamil M Chaudri -> JACK RICE

Before the invasion (and total destruction) of Afghanis there was no daily violence in Afghania. Before the invasion (and total destruction) of Iraqia, there is no daily violence in Iraqia. Before Pakia allied itself with America (leading to the further debasement of an evolving state) there were no (practically) daily suicide bombings in Pakia. Before America decided to aid Ethiopia (and joined it) in destroying Somalia, the state of Somalia had a pretty vibrant civil society, and no gangster precipitate violence.

Before America decided to KILL Gadhafi by indiscriminatingly arming gangsters to carry out their will, the incipient-unity state of Libya did not have the sectarian violence that we presently hear about. Before America decided to Destroy the Syrian State, by leading a crusade (guised as a push for, of all things, DEMOCRACY), Syria was a fast-developing state. ......... This list could be stretched back to the days of Pilgrim Fathers. But I am hoping you follow the drift.

If the hat fits, wear it! If the shoe fits, wear them!! From the top of the head to the sole of the shoes, everything is dyed deep in BLOOD.

At the moment with more than 2'000'000 deaths in Iraqia, and more than 250'000 deaths in Afgania and more than 10'000 deaths in Pakia,

Jamil M Chaudri -> BAKER ALLON

Take some smelling salts, and read what happened in North and South America, when whole nations were destroyed by the colonialists, and kept in RESERVATIONS; their children were taken to missions for conversion to Christianity, their dwellings were destroyed. Read about the Trail of Tears, when a whole nation was banished from their ancestral lands. Read about 2'000'000 deaths in Afghania. For you destruction of HUMAN LIFE is less important than destruction of statues? Shows the kind of person you are. There are many clips available on the internet showing the destruction of Human Life in most parts of Iraqia(including Mosel) by the blood thirsty invaders. Harping about statues and museums, and totally callus about human lives (millions of them) you are indeed a museum piece! Go back to the shelf you have come off.

Renee Barclay -> Jamil M Chaudri • 19 days ago

Bush was a moron but that doesn't change the fact that Saddam was a murderous dictator. And Saddam's sons were known rapists and murderers.
Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites turned on each other after Bush eliminated Saddam and that's the simple fact. And they're STILL killing each other to this day. Google it.

Jamil M Chaudri -> Renee Barclay

I do not have to Google such assertions. They are non sequitur, in nature. Even then, let us examine your assertion for a moment: Bush was a Moron but Saddam was a murderous dictator. By your logic we American must be the epitome of Moron-ness, for we ELECTED Bush; Iraqis must be a gentle and good people who were overpowered by the Saddam, the Murderous Dictator..

By the way, how many Iraqis did Saddam murder? And then, how many Iraqis were murdered, at the command of Bush? Since the Iraqis were killed/murdered at the command of Bush, and Americans elected Bush, Americans are responsible for the murders. We Americans have blood on our hands!

My assertion is that America is responsible for 2'000'000 deaths in Iraq.

On your non-sequitur. If a good man has evils sons, does the man become evil? Again, Sunnis turned against Shias; so what? About the American Civil War, Google says: Though the number of killed and wounded in the Civil War is not known precisely, most sources agree that the total number killed was between 640,000 and 700,000.

There was no civil war in Iraq before American Invasion and destruction of Iraqi State and Society. Thus, America is TOTALLY responsible for 2'000'000 deaths in Iraq.

Vivienne Perkins -> Jamil M Chaudri

Dear Jamil: As an American citizen, I take my hat off to you for telling the exact truth -- that the terrorist state is the United States of America and our media's propaganda stream is now in overdrive, especially in regard to Russia, which is our latest target.

The US State Department's Victoria Nuland and our CIA (+ Blackwater mercenaries) installed the puppet Yatsenyuk/Poroshenko govt. in Kiev (to do our bidding) and CIA Dir. James Brennan himself went to Kiev to launch the civil war against the Eastern provinces that Europeans, at least, are now trying to bring to a halt. The US does leave nothing but failed states behind it, and Western Ukraine will be the next failed state in a long list. Since the end of WWII, the best estimate is that the United States, in 67 military operations and countless covert CIA operations, has destroyed between 20 and 30 million people world-wide, largely in the interest of commandeering their resources or serving the interests of the banks to which they owe money--money they were usually cajoled into borrowing.

As for political corruption, I don't know much about Russian levels of corruption, but I know a lot about the total corruption of our system of government and the evisceration of all of our civil liberties, subsequent to the passage of the so-called and mis-named Patriot Act. By the provisions of the NDAA, any US citizen can be picked up and held in indefinite military detention without charge or trial. I wonder how much worse is Russia than that?

And since Citizens United, nearly every legislator in our Congress is absolutely bought and paid for. Maybe we should leave Russia alone and think about how to restore what we once thought of as a democratic system of governance h ere in the United States.

jlord37 -> Vivienne Perkins

One thing has nothing to do with the other. While I'm in agreement with you on the Ukrainian matter, lets not forget that Vladimir Putin's Russia also has a very big problem with Islamic extremists in their territories as does a number of countries around the world .

Vivienne Perkins -> jlord37

I'm not sure I get your point. Maybe we should think about why the West has trouble with Islamic extremists. Might it be because for over a hundred years the Western powers have chosen the dictatorial rulers of Muslim countries, drawn their boundaries, supported leaders or removed them at its own whim (as S. Hussein in Iraq, the Shah in Iran, Mubarak in Egypt, Khaddafi in Libya, etc.) and inserted Israel into Arab territory for its own reasons. Has it ever occurred to you that if Muslim nations had been allowed to develop according to their own preferences, we might possibly have a more rational and peaceful world today? I can't prove this obviously, but it does seem clear that the more the US attacks and interferes, the more hostile the Muslims become. As an American I would like to see my country behave in a more decent way and with less self-serving propaganda.

jlord37 -> Vivienne Perkins

And was America to blame for Jihadi activity thousands of years ago before its existence? Do you not realize that their actvity is given full sanction, and indeed commands them to go to war with the Kufar? Currently, there is Jihadi activity in countries stretching from India toChechnya and in several African countries. They all have to do with Islamic aggression against there neighbors and almost nothing to do with " western imperialism'

Vivienne Perkins -> jlord37

"Thousands of years ago" Islam did not exist. I hold to my original point that Islamic terrorism has been created by unjustified Western interference.

jlord37 -> Vivienne Perkins

Islam first appeared on the world stage in about the year 620 AD.

Vivienne Perkins -> jlord37

Which means it is now 1,395 years old (not thousands) and I doubt that it's legitimate to equate its idea that it was entitled to make forcible conversions to the present situation, which seems to me to have arisen fairly recently as a response to Western meddling in Arab lands.

Jamil M Chaudri -> jlord37

The answer to the one of your question is a LOWD Yes: It was the FIRST CRUSADES that brought religiosity into the GAME OF KINGS: enlarging kingdoms at the expense of neighbouring kingdoms. The First Crusade was indeed nearly a thousand years ago. The only differences between JIHAD and CRUSADE are:

1. CRUSADERS are more cruel, surreptitious, deceptive, etc.

2. Crusades have no moral component, the goal is political supremacy. Jihad is about moral supremacy, justice and equality.

Since you bring religion into the mix, try to re-read the bible (the new and the old, both of which) PRESCRIBE DEATH to heretics and non-believers. Here is a action in pursuance of such biblical dictate:

"A Spanish missionary, Bartolome de las Casas, described eye-witness accounts of mass murder, torture and rape. 2 Author Barry Lopez, summarizing Las Casas' report wrote:

"One day, in front of Las Casas, the Spanish dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 people. 'Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight,' he says, 'as no age can parallel....' The Spanish cut off the legs of children who ran from them. They poured people full of boiling soap. They made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. They loosed dogs that 'devoured an Indian like a hog, at first sight, in less than a moment.' They used nursing infants for dog food." 3

Currently there is CRUSADING MISSIONARY activity in all non-Christian lands by religious warrior-fanatics (wearing the piety hat of the Christian hue). Read about the recent reaction local Hindu population in India against such activity.

First the Western nations used the RELIGION hat to subdue MORALLY SUPPERIOR but less BLOOD-THURSTY peoples; When that strategy ceased to work they rolled out a second version called DEMOCRACY. The second is as much of a sham as the earlier attempt.

Even internal to American, the "down trodden" masses are beginning to cry foul. The prevailing poverty rate in America is staggering. See the figures in most authoritative publications.

Reading does bring enlightenment. That is why I read from diverse sources.

jlord37 -> Jamil M Chaudri

Yes that's why millions of people are seeking to emigrate by any means necessary., and not the reverse. I can assure the " impoverished masses" in the west are in a lot better shape than they are in your neck of the woods.

But I think your trying to deflect once again. That Christianity ad well as other religions has had a bloody past, is no revelation, band I for one am no big fan. But steps have been taken since than, to temper the extremism that brought on these acts. One does not read of to many beheadings and or sucide bombings in the name of Jesus, Buddha, or Shiva. This is not meant as a criticism of Muslim people per se, or a put down of that particular of the world, it is merely mea by as a critique of some of the problems that I, and countless others see in the Islamic faith. There's no question that the leadership in the west, can be very corrupt and rapacious at times, but I think the general trend is towards an attempt at understanding and accommodation. Now, I think it is time for the Muslim world to attempt some sort of inner dialogue where they take steps towards a dressing and correcting their own problems. I enjoyed our discussion, and I hope we will be able to part in civil terms. Best wishes.

Jamil M Chaudri -> jlord37

First of all let me disabuse your notion of "my neck of the woods". In one of my earlier posting I have clearly stated that I am a proud American Citizen, living in a well wooded and watered part of the US of A. But as my country has gone wayward (essentially in pursuit of the buck) from its charter I am trying to bring America back to its promise.

You have levied accusation against me of "deflecting" arguments. Let me tell you what your problem is: you want to levy unsubstantiated accusations against others, and when they, with references, confront your falsehoods and soothsaying, you accuse the other of "deflecting" or "hijacking" the discussion! Pot calling the kettle black? Man, it is you who is unable to stick to the argument – but then, as you have no argument, of course, you have nothing to stick to. Your statements are based on your penchant for name-calling, bad mouthing, others. Perhaps your mind-set suggests that with such strategies, you will be the last "man standing" (?).
.
In my first posing on Dr Kotkin's article, I simply wanted to repudiate the so called "World Order". By what right have Great Britain and France seats at the Security Council. By definition in a democratic set-up, every unit has equal rights. What Dr Kotkins calls a World Order is therefore a sham democracy, created to benefit the West.

Under the guise of bringing democracy to Iraqia, Afghania, Libya, the Yemen, etc. the west is simply trying to prolong its hegemony. It is a sham democracy they impose on weak nations. Pliant regimes are being installed, and millions of people being killed. Any voice that is raised against such pseudo-democracy is silenced by force, by the thugs installed as "democratic" regimes. This is western patronage.

Presently, you read about EXCESSES done by the lunatic fringes of the Muslim Society (these groups, by the way, were created by and operate with the support of CIA – so that organisations like HOMELAND Security can get more dollars), because 90% of the news buzz is created by American media.

The USA is a state trying to improve its democracy on a continuous basis. In 1777 did America treat all people the same way? When was the promulgation of freedom (of SLAVES) passed in America? When was the voting rights acts passed? Are the economic developments of the Whites and Blacks (call it Afro-American, if you like) even TODAY at the same level?

I wish you and your, the very best. May Allah have his mercy on us as a Nation, so that we can STANDING TOGETHER still sing the Star-Spangled Banner.

jlord37 -> Jamil M Chaudri

We currently have a black president, black attorney General, a black director of homeland security, and a black national security adviser. That's not to mention the various statutes and regulations on the books that are strictly enforced to prevent discrimination and instances of inequality. Are these details of such small consequence? With regards to your observations of so called regime change, I am in complete agreement with you . I against such interventions wether it is Cairo or Kiev. It is up to the indigenous population of that country to determine the course that their country should take, and not have to be subjected to outside interference. However, I have to ask the question, do you really think that the CIA bears the sole responsibility for the for the existence of these groups? Could it be that they're trying to co opt them and use them for their own purposes? Im almost certain that the CIA didn't create the leaders who take certain texts and use them for recruitment purposes. All I'm suggesting is that we need to hear more from the moderate elements, and that some sort of reformation May have to be undertaken, much in the way it occurred in other religions. ( Christianity for example )

Finally, Im not sure where you got the idea that I " have a penchant of bad mouthing others" but nevertheless, I sincerely apologize if I have offended you in anyway. You are a worthy opponent, and it's been an enlightening discussion to say the least.

Robert Munro -> Jamil M Chaudri

Stephen Kotkin is a Jewish shill for the oligarchy.

Jamil M Chaudri -> Robert Munro

I only knew Dr Kotkin's background as a historian; his religious affiliation did not concern me. The only part of his writing that offended me was the concept of "World Order". I do not accept nor do I want anybody else to be suppressed by the unbridled-capitalists.

Unfortunately, to exercise unbridled capitalism, the underpinning is provided by exercise of power over others. It is the RAPE OF NATIONS.

Robert Munro -> Jamil M Chaudri

I've read Kotkin before. He advocates a world ruled by an elite (unspecified). However, from his background and affiliations, it's very possible that his mind-set matches that of Baruch Levy, below..........

"The Jewish people as a whole will become its own Messiah. It will attain world domination by the dissolution of other races, by the abolition of frontiers, the annihilation of monarchy and by the establishment of a world republic in which the Jews will everywhere exercise the privilege of citizenship.

In this New World Order, the children of Israel will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition. The Governments of the different peoples forming the world republic will fall without difficulty into the hands of the
Jews. It will then be possible for the Jewish rulers to abolish private property and everywhere to make use of the
resources of the state.

Thus will the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, in which it is said that when the Messianic time is come, the Jews will have all the property of the whole world in their hands."

Baruch Levy, Letter to Karl Marx (1879), printed in La Revue de Paris, p. 574, June 1, 1928

Given the 3000 year history of Judaism, its religious writings, its possession of nuclear weapons and control of the American government/economy/media, it seems appropriate to take such claims very seriously.

Robert Munro -> BAKER ALLON

Here's some more "fantasy" about your barbaric cult............

http://www.haaretz.com/news/di...

http://www.richardsilverstein....

http://www.btselem.org/downloa...

BTW- All three of the links above are to Jewish web sites - civilized Jews.

Robert Munro -> BAKER ALLON

It is the cult for which you shill that is the disease.......for 3000 years you have been a malignant cancer trying to metastasize throughout our world.

Robert Munro -> BAKER ALLON

The disease that sickens and, hopefully, will kill your cult is truth...............

"To communicate anything with a Goy about our relations would be equal to the killing of all Jews, for if the Goyim knew what we teach about them, they would kill us openly." (found in both the Torah and Talmud)

Jamil M Chaudri -> ARJAN VELLEKOOP

Of course, of course. But then, there are even some people with eyes who do not see. For them it is a blessing, for they see no evil. It is really a mental condition due to aberrant eye. By the way, Yogi Berra is supposed to have said: "You can observe a lot just by watching". But perhaps street-walkers in Europe do not watch, because their game is different, and they are enjoying the benefits of their game.

I do not want to shatter your innocence, but slaves are not seen by street-walkers: Slaves are consigned to SLAVE QUARTERS. Present day, western world has built slave quarters in India, Pakistan, Sudan, Congo, etc. This is where the Western Worlds Slaves Live. If you want to read the whole report goto: http://www.globalslaveryindex....

India has the largest number of slaves in the world (14 million).

Mind you, A related concept is "wage slavery". To understand this concept requires sensibility.

Yet another but even more subtle concept is "mental slavery". A variation of this is known as the Stockholm Syndrome. Mental Slavery is a totally abject state where the person ceases to think eigenartig but assumes the likes and hates of the person/people who have programmed him/her.

From the last line in your post, I can only assume that deep programming has been done. Programmed consciousness is virtual reality.

ARJAN VELLEKOOP -> Jamil M Chaudri

So, now the west should care for what governments in other countries do with their citizens? I thought you hated imperialists! Your reference to India is just idiotic. Why should the west feel responsible for the condition India is in?! You are probably going to say the colonial past. Well, thats bullcrap since there are plenty of countries which have grown, since their liberty, into decent and reasonably wealthy states. The west is not responsible for India, India is responsible for itself.

Particularly the Middle Eastern countries have shown behaviour to shift the blame away from their own failures. Maybe it have to do with their Islamic background, in which so many actions are based/motivated from religious basis. And of course the prophet is never wrong, so it must be the fault of a imperialist outsider.

Get real. The countries which contain these so called slaves, can make their own choices. They dont have to be part of the capitalist terrible world order. They can make the better choice like you and other believe it. Sadly enough, that idea is, apparently, not that good. Because good ideas sell itself.

Jamil M Chaudri -> ARJAN VELLEKOOP

You seem unable to differentiate between an imperialist and a "good Samaritan". You had earlier written that, as a street walker in Europe you had not seen any slaves, my response to that posting simply told you where you could go to see slavery. And specific reference to India was simply to help you find slavery most easily - with 14 million slaves India is the centre of Modern Slavery. However, in my conversations with Indians, especially the demi-literate ones, instead of admitting to the prevailing REALITY in India, they do not admit to seeing it. With their eyes open, the street walkers do not see it.

There is absolutely no religious underpinning for State Government in any of the states where Muslims are in Majority. The Saudi Family are are there because of America; the present rule in Iran is a reaction to America (re-)installing the 2-cent "SHAH" to rule the Iranian Nation. The present excesses of the Iranian state are essentially defense postures against America intransigence, and mechanisms to harm (and if possible) destroy the Iranian Nation.

I experience reality every day. If you would just come out of your VIRTUAL REALITY, you might by just watching observe some. I know deprogramming is not easy, and self-deprogramming is even more difficult.

All the same, I suggest that you wake up and smell the Coffee; if not try some smelling salts.

Robert Munro -> ARJAN VELLEKOOP

And we have read the drivel of thousands of shills for the oligarchy and the Zionist/Fascist cult...............such as yourself.

Ivan Night Terrible

Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin... :)) Hmmm... oк, about Putin: Look at Putin's foreign agenda this past year: Latin America just as the sanctions came in - an intentional finger in Washington's eye, as I read it - then China, China again recently, Turkey more recently, India just now. He has not been to Iran, but there, as in all these other places, he has forged or reiterated promising relations. The deals cut are too numerous to list. A couple are worth mentioning. The twin gas deals with China, worth nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars, are historic all by themselves. In six years' time China will be buying more gas from Russia than the latter now sells to Europe. And do not miss this: My sources tell me that this gas can be priced such as to crowd the U.S. at least partially out of the Asian market. Other side of the world: Putin has just canceled a planned pipeline to southeastern Europe, the South Stream. This is the defeat Western media put it over as, surely: Russia loses some customers. But two points:

[Dec 01, 2017] Neocon Chaos Promotion in the Mideast

Highly recommended!
It's interesting to reread this two years article by
Here is an extremely shred observation: "I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though, it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead, injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster.
Notable quotes:
"... how Paul Wolfowitz and his neoconservative co-conspirators implemented their sweeping plan to destabilize key Middle Eastern countries once it became clear that post-Soviet Russia "won't stop us." ..."
"... the neocons had been enabled by their assessment that -- after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Russia had become neutralized and posed no deterrent to U.S. military action in the Middle East. ..."
"... the significance of Clark's depiction of Wolfowitz in 1992 gloating over what he judged to be a major lesson learned from the Desert Storm attack on Iraq in 1991; namely, "the Soviets won't stop us." ..."
"... Would the neocons – widely known as "the crazies" at least among the remaining sane people of Washington – have been crazy enough to opt for war to re-arrange the Middle East if the Soviet Union had not fallen apart in 1991? ..."
"... The geopolitical vacuum that enabled the neocons to try out their "regime change" scheme in the Middle East may have been what Russian President Vladimir Putin was referring to in his state-of-the-nation address on April 25, 2005, when he called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [past] century." Putin's comment has been a favorite meme of those who seek to demonize Putin by portraying him as lusting to re-establish a powerful USSR through aggression in Europe. ..."
"... Putin seemed correct at least in how the neocons exploited the absence of the Russian counterweight to over-extend American power in ways that were harmful to the world, devastating to the people at the receiving end of the neocon interventions, and even detrimental to the United States. ..."
"... I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though, it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead, injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster. ..."
"... "We should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein. The truth is, one thing we did learn is that we can use our military in the Middle East and the Soviets won't stop us. We've got about five or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran (sic), Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us." ..."
"... the scene was surreal – funereal, even, with both Wolfowitz and Lieberman very much down-in-the-mouth, behaving as though they had just watched their favorite team lose the Super Bowl. ..."
"... In her article, entitled "Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria," Rudoren noted that the Israelis were arguing, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria's (then) 2 ˝-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, was no outcome: ..."
"... In September 2013, shortly after Rudoren's article, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad. ..."
"... "The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc," Oren said in an interview . "We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." He said this was the case even if the "bad guys" were affiliated with Al-Qaeda. ..."
"... In June 2014, Oren – then speaking as a former ambassador – said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. "From Israel's perspective, if there's got to be an evil that's got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail," Oren said. ..."
"... That Syria's main ally is Iran with which it has a mutual defense treaty plays a role in Israeli calculations. Accordingly, while some Western leaders would like to achieve a realistic if imperfect settlement of the Syrian civil war, others who enjoy considerable influence in Washington would just as soon see the Assad government and the entire region bleed out. ..."
"... As cynical and cruel as this strategy is, it isn't all that hard to understand. Yet, it seems to be one of those complicated, politically charged situations well above the pay-grade of the sophomores advising President Obama – who, sad to say, are no match for the neocons in the Washington Establishment. Not to mention the Netanyahu-mesmerized Congress. ..."
"... Speaking of Congress, a year after Rudoren's report, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, divulged some details about the military attack that had been planned against Syria, while lamenting that it was canceled. In doing so, Corker called Obama's abrupt change on Aug. 31, 2013, in opting for negotiations over open war on Syria, "the worst moment in U.S. foreign policy since I've been here." Following the neocon script, Corker blasted the deal (since fully implemented) with Putin and the Syrians to rid Syria of its chemical weapons. ..."
"... Wolfowitz, typically, has landed on his feet. He is now presidential hopeful Jeb Bush's foreign policy/defense adviser, no doubt outlining his preferred approach to the Middle East chessboard to his new boss. Does anyone know the plural of "bedlam? ..."
Apr 15, 2015 | antiwar.com
Former Washington insider and four-star General Wesley Clark spilled the beans several years ago on how Paul Wolfowitz and his neoconservative co-conspirators implemented their sweeping plan to destabilize key Middle Eastern countries once it became clear that post-Soviet Russia "won't stop us."

As I recently reviewed a YouTube eight-minute clip of General Clark's October 2007 speech, what leaped out at me was that the neocons had been enabled by their assessment that -- after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Russia had become neutralized and posed no deterrent to U.S. military action in the Middle East.

While Clark's public exposé largely escaped attention in the neocon-friendly "mainstream media" (surprise, surprise!), he recounted being told by a senior general at the Pentagon shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 about the Donald Rumsfeld/Paul Wolfowitz-led plan for "regime change" in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.

This was startling enough, I grant you, since officially the United States presents itself as a nation that respects international law, frowns upon other powerful nations overthrowing the governments of weaker states, and – in the aftermath of World War II – condemned past aggressions by Nazi Germany and decried Soviet "subversion" of pro-U.S. nations.

But what caught my eye this time was the significance of Clark's depiction of Wolfowitz in 1992 gloating over what he judged to be a major lesson learned from the Desert Storm attack on Iraq in 1991; namely, "the Soviets won't stop us."

That remark directly addresses a question that has troubled me since March 2003 when George W. Bush attacked Iraq. Would the neocons – widely known as "the crazies" at least among the remaining sane people of Washington – have been crazy enough to opt for war to re-arrange the Middle East if the Soviet Union had not fallen apart in 1991?

The question is not an idle one. Despite the debacle in Iraq and elsewhere, the neocon "crazies" still exercise huge influence in Establishment Washington. Thus, the question now becomes whether, with Russia far more stable and much stronger, the "crazies" are prepared to risk military escalation with Russia over Ukraine, what retired U.S. diplomat William R. Polk deemed a potentially dangerous nuclear confrontation, a "Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse."

Putin's Comment

The geopolitical vacuum that enabled the neocons to try out their "regime change" scheme in the Middle East may have been what Russian President Vladimir Putin was referring to in his state-of-the-nation address on April 25, 2005, when he called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [past] century." Putin's comment has been a favorite meme of those who seek to demonize Putin by portraying him as lusting to re-establish a powerful USSR through aggression in Europe.

But, commenting two years after the Iraq invasion, Putin seemed correct at least in how the neocons exploited the absence of the Russian counterweight to over-extend American power in ways that were harmful to the world, devastating to the people at the receiving end of the neocon interventions, and even detrimental to the United States.

If one takes a step back and attempts an unbiased look at the spread of violence in the Middle East over the past quarter-century, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Putin's comment was on the mark. With Russia a much-weakened military power in the 1990s and early 2000s, there was nothing to deter U.S. policymakers from the kind of adventurism at Russia's soft underbelly that, in earlier years, would have carried considerable risk of armed U.S.-USSR confrontation.

I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though, it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead, injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster.

Visiting Wolfowitz

In his 2007 speech, General Clark related how in early 1991 he dropped in on Paul Wolfowitz, then Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (and later, from 2001 to 2005, Deputy Secretary of Defense). It was just after a major Shia uprising in Iraq in March 1991. President George H.W. Bush's administration had provoked it, but then did nothing to rescue the Shia from brutal retaliation by Saddam Hussein, who had just survived his Persian Gulf defeat.

According to Clark, Wolfowitz said: "We should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein. The truth is, one thing we did learn is that we can use our military in the Middle East and the Soviets won't stop us. We've got about five or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran (sic), Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us."

It's now been more than 10 years, of course. But do not be deceived into thinking Wolfowitz and his neocon colleagues believe they have failed in any major way. The unrest they initiated keeps mounting – in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Lebanon – not to mention fresh violence now in full swing in Yemen and the crisis in Ukraine. Yet, the Teflon coating painted on the neocons continues to cover and protect them in the "mainstream media."

True, one neocon disappointment is Iran. It is more stable and less isolated than before; it is playing a sophisticated role in Iraq; and it is on the verge of concluding a major nuclear agreement with the West – barring the throwing of a neocon/Israeli monkey wrench into the works to thwart it, as has been done in the past.

An earlier setback for the neocons came at the end of August 2013 when President Barack Obama decided not to let himself be mouse-trapped by the neocons into ordering U.S. forces to attack Syria. Wolfowitz et al. were on the threshold of having the U.S. formally join the war against Bashar al-Assad's government of Syria when there was the proverbial slip between cup and lip. With the aid of the neocons' new devil-incarnate Vladimir Putin, Obama faced them down and avoided war.

A week after it became clear that the neocons were not going to get their war in Syria, I found myself at the main CNN studio in Washington together with Paul Wolfowitz and former Sen. Joe Lieberman, another important neocon. As I reported in "How War on Syria Lost Its Way," the scene was surreal – funereal, even, with both Wolfowitz and Lieberman very much down-in-the-mouth, behaving as though they had just watched their favorite team lose the Super Bowl.

Israeli/Neocon Preferences

But the neocons are nothing if not resilient. Despite their grotesque disasters, like the Iraq War, and their disappointments, like not getting their war on Syria, they neither learn lessons nor change goals. They just readjust their aim, shooting now at Putin over Ukraine as a way to clear the path again for "regime change" in Syria and Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Why Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia."]

The neocons also can take some solace from their "success" at enflaming the Middle East with Shia and Sunni now at each other's throats – a bad thing for many people of the world and certainly for the many innocent victims in the region, but not so bad for the neocons. After all, it is the view of Israeli leaders and their neocon bedfellows (and women) that the internecine wars among Muslims provide at least some short-term advantages for Israel as it consolidates control over the Palestinian West Bank.

In a Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity memorandum for President Obama on Sept. 6, 2013, we called attention to an uncommonly candid report about Israeli/neocon motivation, written by none other than the Israel-friendly New York Times Bureau Chief in Jerusalem Jodi Rudoren on Sept. 2, 2013, just two days after Obama took advantage of Putin's success in persuading the Syrians to allow their chemical weapons to be destroyed and called off the planned attack on Syria, causing consternation among neocons in Washington.

Rudoren can perhaps be excused for her naďve lack of "political correctness." She had been barely a year on the job, had very little prior experience with reporting on the Middle East, and – in the excitement about the almost-attack on Syria – she apparently forgot the strictures normally imposed on the Times' reporting from Jerusalem. In any case, Israel's priorities became crystal clear in what Rudoren wrote.

In her article, entitled "Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria," Rudoren noted that the Israelis were arguing, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria's (then) 2 ˝-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, was no outcome:

"For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad's government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.

"'This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don't want one to win - we'll settle for a tie,' said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. 'Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that's the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there's no real threat from Syria.'"

Clear enough? If this is the way Israel's leaders continue to regard the situation in Syria, then they look on deeper U.S. involvement – overt or covert – as likely to ensure that there is no early resolution of the conflict there. The longer Sunni and Shia are killing each other, not only in Syria but also across the region as a whole, the safer Tel Aviv's leaders calculate Israel is.

Favoring Jihadis

But Israeli leaders have also made clear that if one side must win, they would prefer the Sunni side, despite its bloody extremists from Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. In September 2013, shortly after Rudoren's article, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.

"The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc," Oren said in an interview. "We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." He said this was the case even if the "bad guys" were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

In June 2014, Oren – then speaking as a former ambassador – said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. "From Israel's perspective, if there's got to be an evil that's got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail," Oren said.

Netanyahu sounded a similar theme in his March 3, 2015 speech to the U.S. Congress in which he trivialized the threat from the Islamic State with its "butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube" when compared to Iran, which he accused of "gobbling up the nations" of the Middle East.

That Syria's main ally is Iran with which it has a mutual defense treaty plays a role in Israeli calculations. Accordingly, while some Western leaders would like to achieve a realistic if imperfect settlement of the Syrian civil war, others who enjoy considerable influence in Washington would just as soon see the Assad government and the entire region bleed out.

As cynical and cruel as this strategy is, it isn't all that hard to understand. Yet, it seems to be one of those complicated, politically charged situations well above the pay-grade of the sophomores advising President Obama – who, sad to say, are no match for the neocons in the Washington Establishment. Not to mention the Netanyahu-mesmerized Congress.

Corker Uncorked

Speaking of Congress, a year after Rudoren's report, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, divulged some details about the military attack that had been planned against Syria, while lamenting that it was canceled. In doing so, Corker called Obama's abrupt change on Aug. 31, 2013, in opting for negotiations over open war on Syria, "the worst moment in U.S. foreign policy since I've been here." Following the neocon script, Corker blasted the deal (since fully implemented) with Putin and the Syrians to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.

Corker complained, "In essence – I'm sorry to be slightly rhetorical – we jumped into Putin's lap." A big No-No, of course – especially in Congress – to "jump into Putin's lap" even though Obama was able to achieve the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons without the United States jumping into another Middle East war.

It would have been nice, of course, if General Clark had thought to share his inside-Pentagon information earlier with the rest of us. In no way should he be seen as a whistleblower.

At the time of his September 2007 speech, he was deep into his quixotic attempt to win the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. In other words, Clark broke the omerta code of silence observed by virtually all U.S. generals, even post-retirement, merely to put some distance between himself and the debacle in Iraq – and win some favor among anti-war Democrats. It didn't work, so he endorsed Hillary Clinton; that didn't work, so he endorsed Barack Obama.

Wolfowitz, typically, has landed on his feet. He is now presidential hopeful Jeb Bush's foreign policy/defense adviser, no doubt outlining his preferred approach to the Middle East chessboard to his new boss. Does anyone know the plural of "bedlam?"

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He is a 30-year veteran of the CIA and Army intelligence and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern served for considerable periods in all four of CIA's main directorates.

Reprinted with permission from Consortium News.

[Dec 01, 2017] JFK The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy by L. Fletcher Prouty, Oliver Stone, Jesse Ventura

Highly recommended!
The most important part of power elite in neoliberal society might not be financial oligarchy, but intelligence agencies elite. If you look at the role of Brennan in "Purple color revolution" against Trump that became clear that heads of the agencies are powerful political players with resources at hand, that are not available to other politicians.
Notable quotes:
"... Men in positions of great power have been forced to realize that their aspirations and responsibilities have exceeded the horizons of their own experience, knowledge, and capability. Yet, because they are in chargeof this high-technology society, they are compelled to do something. This overpowering necessity to do something -- although our leaders do not know precisely what to do or how to do it -- creates in the power elite an overbearing fear of the people. It is the fear not of you and me as individuals but of the smoldering threat of vast populations and of potential uprisings of the masses. ..."
"... This power elite is not easy to define; but the fact that it exists makes itself known from time to time. Concerning the power elite, R. Buckminster Fuller wrote of the "vastly ambitious individuals who [have] become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery." Fuller noted also, "Always their victories [are] in the name of some powerful sovereign-ruled country. The real power structures [are] always the invisible ones behind the visible sovereign powers." ..."
"... This report, as presented in the novel, avers that war is necessary to sustain society, the nation, and national sovereignty, a view that has existed for millennia. Through the ages, totally uncontrolled warfare -- the only kind of "real" war -- got bigger and "better" as time and technology churned on, finally culminating in World War II with the introduction of atomic bombs. ..."
"... This is why, even before the end of World War II, the newly structured bipolar confrontation between the world of Communism and the West resulted in the employment of enormous intelligence agencies that had the power, invisibly, to wage underground warfare, economic and well as military, anywhere -- including methods of warfare never before imagined. These conflicts had to be tactically designed to remain short of the utilization of the H-bomb by either side. There can never be victories in such wars, but tremendous loss of life could occur, and there is the much-desired consumption and attrition of trillions of dollars', and rubles', worth of war equipment. ..."
"... Since WWII, there has been an epidemic of murders at the highest level in many countries. Without question the most dynamic of these assassinations was the murder of President John F. Kennedy, but JFK was just one of many in a long list that includes bankers, corporate leaders, newsmen, rising political spokesmen, and religious leaders. ..."
"... The ever-present threat of assassination seriously limits the number of men who would normally attempt to strive for positions of leadership, if for no other reason than that they could be singled out for murder at any time. This is not a new tactic, but it is one that has become increasingly utilized in pressure spots around the world. ..."
"... Under totalitarian or highly centralized nondemocratic regimes, the intelligence organization is a political, secret service with police powers. It is designed primarily to provide personal security to those who control the authority of the state against all political opponents, foreign and domestic. These leaders are forced to depend upon these secret elite forces to remain alive and in power. Such an organization operates in deep secrecy and has the responsibility for carrying out espionage, counterespionage, and pseudoterrorism. This methodology is as true of Israel, Chile, or Jordan as it has been of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... The second category of intelligence organization is one whose agents are limited to the gathering and reporting of intelligence and who have no police functions or the power to arrest at home or abroad. This type of organization is what the CIA was created to be; however, it does not exist. ..."
"... Over the decades since the CIA was created, it has acquired more sinister functions. All intelligence agencies, in time, tend to develop along similar lines. The CIA today is a far cry hum the agency that was created in 1947 by the National Security Act. As President Harry S. Truman confided to close friends, the greatest mistake of his administration took place when he signed that National Security Act of 1947 into law. It was that act which, among other things it did, created the Central Intelligence Agency.3 ..."
Oct 08, 2017 | www.amazon.com

True existence of these multimegaton hydrogen bombs has so drastically changed the Grand Strategy of world powers that, today and for the future, that strategy is being carried out by the invisible forces of the CIA, what remains of the KGB, and their lesser counterparts around the world.

Men in positions of great power have been forced to realize that their aspirations and responsibilities have exceeded the horizons of their own experience, knowledge, and capability. Yet, because they are in chargeof this high-technology society, they are compelled to do something. This overpowering necessity to do something -- although our leaders do not know precisely what to do or how to do it -- creates in the power elite an overbearing fear of the people. It is the fear not of you and me as individuals but of the smoldering threat of vast populations and of potential uprisings of the masses.

This power elite is not easy to define; but the fact that it exists makes itself known from time to time. Concerning the power elite, R. Buckminster Fuller wrote of the "vastly ambitious individuals who [have] become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery." Fuller noted also, "Always their victories [are] in the name of some powerful sovereign-ruled country. The real power structures [are] always the invisible ones behind the visible sovereign powers."

The power elite is not a group from one nation or even of one alliance of nations. It operates throughout the world and no doubt has done so for many, many centuries.

... ... ...

From this point ot view, warfare, and the preparation tor war, is an absolute necessity for the welfare of the state and for control of population masses, as has been so ably documented in that remarkable novel by Leonard Lewin Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace and attributed by Lewin to "the Special Study Group in 1966," an organization whose existence was so highly classified that there is no record, to this day, of who the men in the group were or with what sectors of the government or private life they were connected.

This report, as presented in the novel, avers that war is necessary to sustain society, the nation, and national sovereignty, a view that has existed for millennia. Through the ages, totally uncontrolled warfare -- the only kind of "real" war -- got bigger and "better" as time and technology churned on, finally culminating in World War II with the introduction of atomic bombs.

Not long after that great war, the world leaders were faced suddenly with the reality of a great dilemma. At the root of this dilemma was the new fission-fusion-fission H-bomb. Is it some uncontrollable Manichean device, or is it truly a weapon of war?

... ... ...

Such knowledge is sufficient. The dilemma is now fact. There can no longer be a classic or traditional war, at least not the all-out, go-for-broke-type warfare there has been down through the ages, a war that leads to a meaningful victory for one side and abject defeat for the other.

Witness what has been called warfare in Korea, and Vietnam, and the later, more limited experiment with new weaponry called the Gulf War in Iraq.

... ... ...

This is why, even before the end of World War II, the newly structured bipolar confrontation between the world of Communism and the West resulted in the employment of enormous intelligence agencies that had the power, invisibly, to wage underground warfare, economic and well as military, anywhere -- including methods of warfare never before imagined. These conflicts had to be tactically designed to remain short of the utilization of the H-bomb by either side. There can never be victories in such wars, but tremendous loss of life could occur, and there is the much-desired consumption and attrition of trillions of dollars', and rubles', worth of war equipment.

One objective of this book is to discuss these new forces. It will present an insider's view of the CIA story and provide comparisons with the intelligence organizations -- those invisible forces -- of other countries. To be more realistic with the priorities of these agencies themselves, more will be said about operational matters than about actual intelligence gathering as a profession.

This subject cannot be explored fully without a discussion of assassination. Since WWII, there has been an epidemic of murders at the highest level in many countries. Without question the most dynamic of these assassinations was the murder of President John F. Kennedy, but JFK was just one of many in a long list that includes bankers, corporate leaders, newsmen, rising political spokesmen, and religious leaders.

The ever-present threat of assassination seriously limits the number of men who would normally attempt to strive for positions of leadership, if for no other reason than that they could be singled out for murder at any time. This is not a new tactic, but it is one that has become increasingly utilized in pressure spots around the world.

It is essential to note that there are two principal categories of intelligence organizations and that their functions are determined generally by the characteristics of the type of government they serve -- not by the citizens of the government, but by its leaders.

Under totalitarian or highly centralized nondemocratic regimes, the intelligence organization is a political, secret service with police powers. It is designed primarily to provide personal security to those who control the authority of the state against all political opponents, foreign and domestic. These leaders are forced to depend upon these secret elite forces to remain alive and in power. Such an organization operates in deep secrecy and has the responsibility for carrying out espionage, counterespionage, and pseudoterrorism. This methodology is as true of Israel, Chile, or Jordan as it has been of the Soviet Union.

The second category of intelligence organization is one whose agents are limited to the gathering and reporting of intelligence and who have no police functions or the power to arrest at home or abroad. This type of organization is what the CIA was created to be; however, it does not exist.

Over the decades since the CIA was created, it has acquired more sinister functions. All intelligence agencies, in time, tend to develop along similar lines. The CIA today is a far cry hum the agency that was created in 1947 by the National Security Act. As President Harry S. Truman confided to close friends, the greatest mistake of his administration took place when he signed that National Security Act of 1947 into law. It was that act which, among other things it did, created the Central Intelligence Agency.3

[Dec 01, 2017] Mueller investigation is patterned after the investigation of Bill Clinton

The idea is to create the crime -- if they pressure Trump long enough, then Trump may well make a mistake such as lying. Or they can dig out something really embarrassing. As the scope is deliberately very open and the pretext is fake, this is essentially Lavrentiy Beria method: shown me the man and I will find a crime
Notable quotes:
"... They're trying to manufacture an obstruction of justice charge. Without the independent prosecutor's investigation, there would be no opportunity for someone to lie, mislead, or inadvertently omit facts. ..."
"... The warrant's timing may also shed light on the FBI's relationship to the infamous " Steele dossier." That widely discredited dossier claiming ties between Russians and the Trump campaign was commissioned by left-leaning research firm Fusion GPS and developed by former British spy Christopher Steele -- who relied on Russian sources. ..."
"... But the Washington Post and others have reported that Mr. Steele was familiar to the FBI, had reached out to the agency about his work, and had even arranged a deal in 2016 to get paid by the FBI to continue his research. ..."
"... But Mr. Mueller is not investigating the FBI, and in any event his ties to the bureau and Mr. Comey make him too conflicted for such a job. Congress is charged with providing oversight of law enforcement and the FISA courts, and it has an obligation to investigate their role in 2016. The intelligence committees have subpoena authority and the ability to hold those who don't cooperate in contempt. ..."
"... No investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 campaign will be credible or complete without the facts about all Mr. Comey's wiretaps. ..."
"... And beyond delving into Comey's machinations, I think it high time to get former AG, Loretta Lynch under oath in front of a Congressional Committee to inquire after the real substance of her supposedly impromptu meeting with Slick Willy on the airport tarmac. ..."
"... If she needs to be compelled to answer through an offer of immunity, this would be a very clarifying moment, indeed. And if she still refuses, preferring being cited for contempt of Congress, well, that might be pretty interesting in its own right. And if she left any trail of evidence behind her like, say for instance, relating this information to one of her staff, the staffer could be questioned under similar terms. ..."
"... Also a good time to have a little chat with the guy from Crowdstrike, too. And on a related note, maybe a wee bit of inquiry with Mr. Comey on the logic of the FBI in not demanding access to the server ? ..."
"... Working my way through Gibbons' Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. There are ominous parallels to be observed between some of the events he recounts, and events of the present day. The Praetorian Guards and the legions more generally actively manipulated events to attain self-serving outcomes. Elements of our intelligence community seem to be treading a similar path; harrassing, crippling, and if felt necessary working toward the eviction of a legitimately chosen President are rather obviously in play. Not, as in the case of the Roman military, killing him, but effectively overturning the government seems to be the tactic, and all to serve their own ends, and the Constitutional order be damned. History, as has been said, may not repeat, but it sure as hell rhymes. ..."
"... Intel agencies secretly monitored conversations of members of Congress while the Obama administration negotiated the Iran nuclear deal. ..."
"... In 2014, the CIA got caught spying on Senate Intelligence committee staffers, though CIA Director John Brennan had explicitly denied that. ..."
"... I have spent more than two years litigating against the Department of Justice for the computer intrusions. Forensics have revealed dates, times and methods of some of the illegal activities. The software used was proprietary to a federal intel agency. The intruders deployed a keystroke monitoring program, accessed the CBS News corporate computer system, listened in on my conversations by activating the computer's microphone and used Skype to exfiltrate files. ..."
"... I was also curious to see what kind of crime would be committed under US law since anything the Russians did was just normal state-to-state competition. ..."
"... Manafort should sue the Federal Gov for violation of his rights against unlawful search and seizure. FISA is unconstitutional and should challenge the entire case on the basis that anything obtained was based on a FISA warrant. Force the courts and above all else the Supreme Court to address the issue finally. Manafort is by no means an angel, but he has rights and deserves a fair shake instead of the train ride he's on. ..."
"... With the world's 7th largest economy, what sane businessman would NOT want to cultivate relationships and develop the Russian market, particularly since it is virtually untapped by Western companies? ..."
"... According to Martha Stewart, a false statement to a federal officer need not be sworn. ..."
"... on't understand any of this. Unless Mr Steele was entirely off the leash, which is difficult to believe, there's evidence of our complicity in covert interference with the US Presidential elections. Then there's evidence of Israeli interference, and that overt. Also, although it's not directly relevant here, there's sufficient evidence that the US itself pulls strings in other countries' elections. ..."
"... The criminal laws in this country are sufficiently broad and far-reaching that an aggressive prosecutor can find a reason to imprison almost anyone, especially if the target is engaged in political or business matters of any sophistication. ..."
"... This is intentional. The laws are designed such that the people that the establishment wants to imprison are imprisoned when they do the things the establishment doesn't want, and those people that the establishment does not want imprisoned are not. ..."
"... This is why HRC can blatantly violate the Espionage Act and then spoliate evidence with no fear of prosecution. In fact, law enforcement twist themselves into knots to avoid conducting a serious investigation, as that might force them to act. After that farce, Comey publicly justified conduct that (as he admitted) would send a normie on a one-way trip to a SuperMax. ..."
"... Mueller will get some scalps. Guaranteed. ..."
Sep 21, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

It appears to me that the current dream/hope in the "resistance" is that Mueller will fish around enough to come up with "evidence" that DJT and some of the people in his campaign and administration have been witting or unwitting cultivated assets of the Russian state for some years. I do not really understand how that would be crime under US law unless espionage against US official secrets were involved but the political effect would be ruinous. pl

James , 20 September 2017 at 07:35 PM

Personally, I think this investigation is patterned after the independent prosecutor's investigation of Bill Clinton. Bill was brought down by a dalliance with an intern. If they pressure Trump long enough then Trump may well make a mistake such as lying. Or they can use their investigative powers to find something embarrassing (they get to question everyone they want under oath and those questioned have to answer the questions). Otherwise the investigation can just drag on forever.

I wish more people understood that this is not about Democats vs Republicans.

Les -> James ... , 21 September 2017 at 09:50 AM
They're trying to manufacture an obstruction of justice charge. Without the independent prosecutor's investigation, there would be no opportunity for someone to lie, mislead, or inadvertently omit facts.

I'm getting tired of seeing the same events trumpeted by the media and the independent prosecutor as if there was something new. How many times can you disclose you were wiretapping one of the persons of interest or that you raided their home for documents?

turcopolier , 20 September 2017 at 07:37 PM
All

I suppose that there could be a FARA violation if the person involved was involved in US foreign policy or if a false statement were made in something official and sworn. pl

Sam Peralta , 20 September 2017 at 07:37 PM
Col. Lang

In light of what you wrote about the FISA wiretaps, the WSJ has an editorial requesting Congress to investigate "Comey's wiretaps".

https://www.wsj.com/articles/all-mr-comeys-wiretaps-1505862793

The warrant's timing may also shed light on the FBI's relationship to the infamous " Steele dossier." That widely discredited dossier claiming ties between Russians and the Trump campaign was commissioned by left-leaning research firm Fusion GPS and developed by former British spy Christopher Steele -- who relied on Russian sources.

But the Washington Post and others have reported that Mr. Steele was familiar to the FBI, had reached out to the agency about his work, and had even arranged a deal in 2016 to get paid by the FBI to continue his research.

The FISA court sets a high bar for warrants on U.S. citizens, and presumably even higher for wiretapping a presidential campaign. Did Mr. Comey's FBI marshal the Steele dossier to persuade the court?

Russian meddling is a threat to democracy but so was the FBI if it relied on Russian disinformation to eavesdrop on a presidential campaign. The Justice Department and FBI have stonewalled Congressional requests for documents and interviews, citing the "integrity" of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

But Mr. Mueller is not investigating the FBI, and in any event his ties to the bureau and Mr. Comey make him too conflicted for such a job. Congress is charged with providing oversight of law enforcement and the FISA courts, and it has an obligation to investigate their role in 2016. The intelligence committees have subpoena authority and the ability to hold those who don't cooperate in contempt.

Mr. Comey investigated both leading presidential campaigns in an election year, playing the role of supposedly impartial legal authority. But his maneuvering to get Mr. Mueller appointed, and his leaks to the press, have shown that Mr. Comey is as political and self-serving as anyone in Washington.

No investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 campaign will be credible or complete without the facts about all Mr. Comey's wiretaps.

JerseyJeffersonian -> Sam Peralta... , 20 September 2017 at 10:30 PM
Sam Peralta,

Amen to that.

And beyond delving into Comey's machinations, I think it high time to get former AG, Loretta Lynch under oath in front of a Congressional Committee to inquire after the real substance of her supposedly impromptu meeting with Slick Willy on the airport tarmac.

If she needs to be compelled to answer through an offer of immunity, this would be a very clarifying moment, indeed. And if she still refuses, preferring being cited for contempt of Congress, well, that might be pretty interesting in its own right. And if she left any trail of evidence behind her like, say for instance, relating this information to one of her staff, the staffer could be questioned under similar terms.

I rather think no staffer would be operating under the delusion that they could survive thumbing their nose at Congress like their boss doubtless would. But then again, maybe Seth Rich's still unexplained death may serve as an incentive to them to clam up and weather whatever consequences might flow from that decision.

Also a good time to have a little chat with the guy from Crowdstrike, too. And on a related note, maybe a wee bit of inquiry with Mr. Comey on the logic of the FBI in not demanding access to the server ?

Probably none of this will happen however, this being arguably what we can expect from Imperial Politics; no longer are we to recognize this as the functioning of a Constitutional Republic, sad to say.

JerseyJeffersonian -> JerseyJeffersonian... , 21 September 2017 at 10:17 AM
Working my way through Gibbons' Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. There are ominous parallels to be observed between some of the events he recounts, and events of the present day. The Praetorian Guards and the legions more generally actively manipulated events to attain self-serving outcomes. Elements of our intelligence community seem to be treading a similar path; harrassing, crippling, and if felt necessary working toward the eviction of a legitimately chosen President are rather obviously in play. Not, as in the case of the Roman military, killing him, but effectively overturning the government seems to be the tactic, and all to serve their own ends, and the Constitutional order be damned. History, as has been said, may not repeat, but it sure as hell rhymes.

Oh, and in a not entirely dissimilar development, in Philadelphia, and in PA, it has emerged that legal immigrants, despite being ineligible, have registered and voted. The hend wavers at the Philadelphia Inquirer are trying to minimize this, of course. The thought arises, if it happened in PA, what about in CA? So maybe yet again, one of President Trump's charges is true? Cue our own crew of handwavers here at SST. Over to you, ladies and gentlemen...

Sam Peralta , 20 September 2017 at 08:05 PM
All

Have we crossed the rubicon to a totalitarian state?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-20/sharyl-attkisson-rages-looks-obama-spied-trump-just-he-did-me

Nobody wants our intel agencies to be used like the Stasi in East Germany; the secret police spying on its own citizens for political purposes. The prospect of our own NSA, CIA and FBI becoming politically weaponized has been shrouded by untruths, accusations and justifications.

You'll recall DNI Clapper falsely assured Congress in 2013 that the NSA was not collecting "any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans."

Intel agencies secretly monitored conversations of members of Congress while the Obama administration negotiated the Iran nuclear deal.

In 2014, the CIA got caught spying on Senate Intelligence committee staffers, though CIA Director John Brennan had explicitly denied that.

There were also wiretaps on then-Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) in 2011 under Obama.

The same happened under President George W. Bush to former Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-Calif.).

Journalists have been targeted, too. This internal email exposed by WikiLeaks should give everyone chills. It did me.

.....

I have spent more than two years litigating against the Department of Justice for the computer intrusions. Forensics have revealed dates, times and methods of some of the illegal activities. The software used was proprietary to a federal intel agency. The intruders deployed a keystroke monitoring program, accessed the CBS News corporate computer system, listened in on my conversations by activating the computer's microphone and used Skype to exfiltrate files.

We survived the government's latest attempt to dismiss my lawsuit. There's another hearing Friday. To date, the Trump Department of Justice -- like the Obama Department of Justice -- is fighting me in court and working to keep hidden the identities of those who accessed a government internet protocol address found in my computers.

Lars , 20 September 2017 at 08:19 PM
It is too early to say where this investigation is going, but there are indications that money laundering and shady real estate transactions are scrutinized. How far up that goes, nobody knows. If close associates of Donald Trump get indicted, he will have both legal and political problems.

Of course that is only one aspect. There may also be some serious conflict of interest problems. All of it is about to face a burst of sunshine and that will illuminate every thing, good or bad. It appears that Donald Trump is seriously bothered by all this activity and that in itself is interesting.

The Twisted Genius , 20 September 2017 at 09:01 PM
I was also curious to see what kind of crime would be committed under US law since anything the Russians did was just normal state-to-state competition.

That happens all the time and will continue to happen all the time. Seems that if anyone on the Trump team can be found soliciting help from a foreign source, it would be a violation of campaign finance laws. If anyone can be tied to the hacking and theft of data or the use of that hacked data (there was a lot of voter data taken in addition to the DNC and Podesta data), the crime would be engaging in a criminal conspiracy. Then, of course, there are the targets of opportunity associated with any cover up like witness intimidation, perjury, obstruction of justice, and the like.

Then there is the NYAG's investigation into Trump and his associates under NY RICO laws. That investigation is still very much alive.

All this makes me wonder who is concentrating on the Russian IO itself. There's no crime here, besides the hacks and theft of data, but that should be the crux of the investigation in my opinion. Perhaps Mueller is doing this. I would think he'd have to understand exactly what was done, how it was coordinated and how it was financed before he could look for any crimes related to this whole Russia thing.

LeaNder -> The Twisted Genius ... , 21 September 2017 at 05:31 AM
TTG, I am not following this closely enough but for whatever reason Manafort popped up on my mind. Maybe due to earlier curiosity concerning the Ukraine. Were would he fit in? And how?

Checking spelling of his name, I realized it made headlines again.

MGS , 20 September 2017 at 09:28 PM
Manafort should sue the Federal Gov for violation of his rights against unlawful search and seizure. FISA is unconstitutional and should challenge the entire case on the basis that anything obtained was based on a FISA warrant. Force the courts and above all else the Supreme Court to address the issue finally. Manafort is by no means an angel, but he has rights and deserves a fair shake instead of the train ride he's on.
JohnH , 20 September 2017 at 10:21 PM
With the world's 7th largest economy, what sane businessman would NOT want to cultivate relationships and develop the Russian market, particularly since it is virtually untapped by Western companies?

Exxon-Mobil certainly wanted to do that. And they don't strike me as unpatriotic dummies --

Will.2718 , 20 September 2017 at 10:21 PM
According to Martha Stewart, a false statement to a federal officer need not be sworn. The best response to an FBI agent or any federal officer is "Have a good day Sir/Maam -- " or Buenos Dias, I prefer to have counsel with me when answering questions.
English Outsider , 21 September 2017 at 05:29 AM
Don't understand any of this. Unless Mr Steele was entirely off the leash, which is difficult to believe, there's evidence of our complicity in covert interference with the US Presidential elections. Then there's evidence of Israeli interference, and that overt. Also, although it's not directly relevant here, there's sufficient evidence that the US itself pulls strings in other countries' elections.

So whatever the Russians did or didn't do messing around with another country's elections, they're pretty far back in the queue. I'm all for the greater readiness to investigate such matters that we see in the US; but why is the spotlight directed only into this little corner?

Sid Finster , 21 September 2017 at 11:14 AM
Google "three felonies a day" or contemplate the words attributed to Richelieu - "Give me but six words written by the most honorable of men, and I will find something therein to hang him with."

The criminal laws in this country are sufficiently broad and far-reaching that an aggressive prosecutor can find a reason to imprison almost anyone, especially if the target is engaged in political or business matters of any sophistication.

This is intentional. The laws are designed such that the people that the establishment wants to imprison are imprisoned when they do the things the establishment doesn't want, and those people that the establishment does not want imprisoned are not.

This is why HRC can blatantly violate the Espionage Act and then spoliate evidence with no fear of prosecution. In fact, law enforcement twist themselves into knots to avoid conducting a serious investigation, as that might force them to act. After that farce, Comey publicly justified conduct that (as he admitted) would send a normie on a one-way trip to a SuperMax.

Mueller will get some scalps. Guaranteed.

[Nov 30, 2017] Money Imperialism by Michael Hudson

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Since World War II the United States has used the Dollar Standard and its dominant role in the IMF and World Bank to steer trade and investment along lines benefiting its own economy. But now that the growth of China's mixed economy has outstripped all others while Russia finally is beginning to recover, countries have the option of borrowing from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and other non-U.S. consortia. ..."
"... The problem with surrendering is that this Washington Consensus is extractive and lives in the short run, laying the seeds of financial dependency, debt-leveraged bubbles and subsequent debt deflation and austerity. The financial business plan is to carve out opportunities for price gouging and corporate profits. Today's U.S.-sponsored trade and investment treaties would make governments pay fines equal to the amount that environmental and price regulations, laws protecting consumers and other social policies might reduce corporate profits. "Companies would be able to demand compensation from countries whose health, financial, environmental and other public interest policies they thought to be undermining their interests, and take governments before extrajudicial tribunals. These tribunals, organised under World Bank and UN rules, would have the power to order taxpayers to pay extensive compensation over legislation seen as undermining a company's 'expected future profits.' ..."
"... At the center of today's global split are the last few centuries of Western social and democratic reform. Seeking to follow the classical Western development path by retaining a mixed public/private economy, China, Russia and other nations find it easier to create new institutions such as the AIIB than to reform the dollar standard IMF and World Bank. Their choice is between short-term gains by dependency leading to austerity, or long-term development with independence and ultimate prosperity. ..."
"... The price of resistance involves risking military or covert overthrow. Long before the Ukraine crisis, the United States has dropped the pretense of backing democracies. The die was cast in 1953 with the coup against Iran's secular government, and the 1954 coup in Guatemala to oppose land reform. Support for client oligarchies and dictatorships in Latin America in the 1960 and '70s was highlighted by the overthrow of Allende in Chile and Operation Condor's assassination program throughout the continent. Under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the United States has claimed that America's status as the world's "indispensible nation" entitled it back the recent coups in Honduras and Ukraine, and to sponsor the NATO attack on Libya and Syria, leaving Europe to absorb the refugees. ..."
"... The trans-Atlantic financial bubble has left a legacy of austerity since 2008. Debt-ridden economies are being told to cope with their downturns by privatizing their public domain. ..."
"... The immediate question facing Germany and the rest of Western Europe is how long they will sacrifice their trade and investment opportunities with Russia, Iran and other economies by adhering to U.S.-sponsored sanctions. American intransigence threatens to force an either/or choice in what looms as a seismic geopolitical shift over the proper role of governments: Should their public sectors provide basic services and protect populations from predatory monopolies, rent extraction and financial polarization? ..."
"... Today's global financial crisis can be traced back to World War I and its aftermath. The principle that needed to be voiced was the right of sovereign nations not to be forced to sacrifice their economic survival on the altar of inter-government and private debt demands. The concept of nationhood embodied in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia based international law on the principle of parity of sovereign states and non-interference. Without a global alternative to letting debt dynamics polarize societies and tear economies apart, monetary imperialism by creditor nations is inevitable. ..."
"... The past century's global fracture between creditor and debtor economies has interrupted what seemed to be Europe's democratic destiny to empower governments to override financial and other rentier interests. Instead, the West is following U.S. diplomatic leadership back into the age when these interests ruled governments. This conflict between creditors and democracy, between oligarchy and economic growth (and indeed, survival) will remain the defining issue of our epoch over the next generation, and probably for the remainder of the 21 st century. ..."
"... wiki/Anglo-Persian Oil Company "In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite, negotiated an oil concession with Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia. He financed this with capital he had made from his shares in the highly profitable Mount Morgan mine in Queensland, Australia. D'Arcy assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Iran. In exchange the Shah received Ł20,000 (Ł2.0 million today),[1] an equal amount in shares of D'Arcy's company, and a promise of 16% of future profits." Note the 16% = ~1/6, the rest going off-shore. ..."
"... The Greens in Aus researched the resources sector in Aus, to find that it is 83% 'owned' by off-shore entities. Note that 83% = ~5/6, which goes off-shore. Coincidence? ..."
"... Note that in Aus, the democratically elected so-called 'leaders' not only allow exactly this sort of economic rape, they actively assist it by, say, crippling the central bank and pleading for FDI = selling our, we the people's interests, out. Those traitor-leaders are reversing 'Enlightenment' provisions, privatising whatever they can and, as Michael Hudson well points out the principles, running Aus into debt and austerity. ..."
"... US banking oligarchs will expend the last drop of our blood to prevent a such a linking, just as they were willing to sacrifice our blood and treasure in WW1 and 2, as is alluded to here.: ..."
"... The past century's global fracture between creditor and debtor economies has interrupted what seemed to be Europe's democratic destiny to empower governments to override financial and other rentier interests. Instead, the West is following U.S. diplomatic leadership back into the age when these interests ruled governments. This conflict between creditors and democracy, between oligarchy and economic growth (and indeed, survival) will remain the defining issue of our epoch over the next generation, and probably for the remainder of the 21st century. ..."
"... It's important to note that such interests have ruled (owned, actually) imperial Britain for centuries and the US since its inception, and the anti-federalists knew it. ..."
"... "After World War I the U.S. Government deviated from what had been traditional European policy – forgiving military support costs among the victors. U.S. officials demanded payment for the arms shipped to its Allies in the years before America entered the Great War in 1917. The Allies turned to Germany for reparations to pay these debts." The Yank banker, the Yankee Wall Street super rich, set off a process of greed that led to Hitler. ..."
"... But they didn't invent anything. They learned from their WASP forebears in the British Empire, whose banking back to Oliver Cromwell had become inextricably entangled with Jewish money and Jewish interests to the point that Jews per capita dominated it even at the height of the British Empire, when simpleton WASPs assume that WASPs truly ran everything, and that WASP power was for the good of even the poorest WASPs. ..."
"... The Berlin Baghdad railway was an important cause for WWI. ..."
"... Bingo. Stopping it was a huge factor. There was no way the banksters of the world were going to let that go forward, nor were they going to let Germany and Russia link up in any other ways. They certainly were not about to allow any threats to the Suez Canal nor any chance to let the oil fields slip from their control either. ..."
"... This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to evolve ..."
"... In fact, this is exactly how it was supposed to work. The wave of liberal democracies was precisely to overturn the monarchies, which were the last bulwark protecting the people from the full tyranny of the financiers, who were, by nature, one-world internationalists. ..."
"... The real problem with this is that any form of monetary arrangement involves an implied trusteeship, with obligations on, as well as benefits for, the trustee. The US is so abusing its trusteeship through the continual use of an irresponsible sanctions regime that it risks a good portion of the world economy abandoning its system for someone else's, which may be perceived to be run more responsibility. The disaster scenario would be the US having therefore in the future to access that other system to purchase oil or minerals, and having that system do to us what we previously did to them -- sanction us out. ..."
"... " Marx believed that capitalism was inherently built upon practices of usury and thus inevitably leading to the separation of society into two classes: one composed of those who produce value and the other, which feeds upon the first one. In "Theories of Surplus Value" (written 1862-1863), he states " that interest (in contrast to industrial profit) and rent (that is the form of landed property created by capitalist production itself) are superfetations (i.e., excessive accumulations) which are not essential to capitalist production and of which it can rid itself." ..."
Nov 30, 2017 | www.unz.com

Money Imperialism Introduction to the German Edition Michael Hudson November 29, 2017 3,500 Words 1 Comment Reply

In theory, the global financial system is supposed to help every country gain. Mainstream teaching of international finance, trade and "foreign aid" (defined simply as any government credit) depicts an almost utopian system uplifting all countries, not stripping their assets and imposing austerity. The reality since World War I is that the United States has taken the lead in shaping the international financial system to promote gains for its own bankers, farm exporters, its oil and gas sector, and buyers of foreign resources – and most of all, to collect on debts owed to it.

Each time this global system has broken down over the past century, the major destabilizing force has been American over-reach and the drive by its bankers and bondholders for short-term gains. The dollar-centered financial system is leaving more industrial as well as Third World countries debt-strapped. Its three institutional pillars – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organization – have imposed monetary, fiscal and financial dependency, most recently by the post-Soviet Baltics, Greece and the rest of southern Europe. The resulting strains are now reaching the point where they are breaking apart the arrangements put in place after World War II.

The most destructive fiction of international finance is that all debts can be paid, and indeed should be paid, even when this tears economies apart by forcing them into austerity – to save bondholders, not labor and industry. Yet European countries, and especially Germany, have shied from pressing for a more balanced global economy that would foster growth for all countries and avoid the current economic slowdown and debt deflation.

Imposing austerity on Germany after World War I

After World War I the U.S. Government deviated from what had been traditional European policy – forgiving military support costs among the victors. U.S. officials demanded payment for the arms shipped to its Allies in the years before America entered the Great War in 1917. The Allies turned to Germany for reparations to pay these debts. Headed by John Maynard Keynes, British diplomats sought to clean their hands of responsibility for the consequences by promising that all the money they received from Germany would simply be forwarded to the U.S. Treasury.

The sums were so unpayably high that Germany was driven into austerity and collapse. The nation suffered hyperinflation as the Reichsbank printed marks to throw onto the foreign exchange also were pushed into financial collapse. The debt deflation was much like that of Third World debtors a generation ago, and today's southern European PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain).

In a pretense that the reparations and Inter-Ally debt tangle could be made solvent, a triangular flow of payments was facilitated by a convoluted U.S. easy-money policy. American investors sought high returns by buying German local bonds; German municipalities turned over the dollars they received to the Reichsbank for domestic currency; and the Reichsbank used this foreign exchange to pay reparations to Britain and other Allies, enabling these countries to pay the United States what it demanded.

But solutions based on attempts to keep debts of such magnitude in place by lending debtors the money to pay can only be temporary. The U.S. Federal Reserve sustained this triangular flow by holding down U.S. interest rates. This made it attractive for American investors to buy German municipal bonds and other high-yielding debts. It also deterred Wall Street from drawing funds away from Britain, which would have driven its economy deeper into austerity after the General Strike of 1926. But domestically, low U.S. interest rates and easy credit spurred a real estate bubble, followed by a stock market bubble that burst in 1929. The triangular flow of payments broke down in 1931, leaving a legacy of debt deflation burdening the U.S. and European economies. The Great Depression lasted until outbreak of World War II in 1939.

Planning for the postwar period took shape as the war neared its end. U.S. diplomats had learned an important lesson. This time there would be no arms debts or reparations. The global financial system would be stabilized – on the basis of gold, and on creditor-oriented rules. By the end of the 1940s the United States held some 75 percent of the world's monetary gold stock. That established the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency, freely convertible into gold at the 1933 parity of $35 an ounce.

It also implied that once again, as in the 1920s, European balance-of-payments deficits would have to be financed mainly by the United States. Recycling of official government credit was to be filtered via the IMF and World Bank, in which U.S. diplomats alone had veto power to reject policies they found not to be in their national interest. International financial "stability" thus became a global control mechanism – to maintain creditor-oriented rules centered in the United States.

To obtain gold or dollars as backing for their own domestic monetary systems, other countries had to follow the trade and investment rules laid down by the United States. These rules called for relinquishing control over capital movements or restrictions on foreign takeovers of natural resources and the public domain as well as local industry and banking systems.

By 1950 the dollar-based global economic system had become increasingly untenable. Gold continued flowing to the United States, strengthening the dollar – until the Korean War reversed matters. From 1951 through 1971 the United States ran a deepening balance-of-payments deficit, which stemmed entirely from overseas military spending. (Private-sector trade and investment was steadily in balance.)

U.S. Treasury debt replaces the gold exchange standard

The foreign military spending that helped return American gold to Europe became a flood as the Vietnam War spread across Asia after 1962. The Treasury kept the dollar's exchange rate stable by selling gold via the London Gold Pool at $35 an ounce. Finally, in August 1971, President Nixon stopped the drain by closing the Gold Pool and halting gold convertibility of the dollar.

There was no plan for what would happen next. Most observers viewed cutting the dollar's link to gold as a defeat for the United States. It certainly ended the postwar financial order as designed in 1944. But what happened next was just the reverse of a defeat. No longer able to buy gold after 1971 (without inciting strong U.S. disapproval), central banks found only one asset in which to hold their balance-of-payments surpluses: U.S. Treasury debt. These securities no longer were "as good as gold." The United States issued them at will to finance soaring domestic budget deficits.

By shifting from gold to the dollars thrown off by the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit, the foundation of global monetary reserves came to be dominated by the U.S. military spending that continued to flood foreign central banks with surplus dollars. America's balance-of-payments deficit thus supplied the dollars that financed its domestic budget deficits and bank credit creation – via foreign central banks recycling U.S. foreign spending back to the U.S. Treasury.

In effect, foreign countries have been taxed without representation over how their loans to the U.S. Government are employed. European central banks were not yet prepared to create their own sovereign wealth funds to invest their dollar inflows in foreign stocks or direct ownership of businesses. They simply used their trade and payments surpluses to finance the U.S. budget deficit. This enabled the Treasury to cut domestic tax rates, above all on the highest income brackets.

U.S. monetary imperialism confronted European and Asian central banks with a dilemma that remains today: If they do not turn around and buy dollar assets, their currencies will rise against the dollar. Buying U.S. Treasury securities is the only practical way to stabilize their exchange rates – and in so doing, to prevent their exports from rising in dollar terms and being priced out of dollar-area markets.

The system may have developed without foresight, but quickly became deliberate. My book Super Imperialism sold best in the Washington DC area, and I was given a large contract through the Hudson Institute to explain to the Defense Department exactly how this extractive financial system worked. I was brought to the White House to explain it, and U.S. geostrategists used my book as a how-to-do-it manual (not my original intention).

Attention soon focused on the oil-exporting countries. After the U.S. quadrupled its grain export prices shortly after the 1971 gold suspension, the oil-exporting countries quadrupled their oil prices. I was informed at a White House meeting that U.S. diplomats had let Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries know that they could charge as much as they wanted for their oil, but that the United States would treat it as an act of war not to keep their oil proceeds in U.S. dollar assets.

This was the point at which the international financial system became explicitly extractive. But it took until 2009, for the first attempt to withdraw from this system to occur. A conference was convened at Yekaterinburg, Russia, by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The alliance comprised Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kirghizstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia. U.S. officials asked to attend as observers, but their request was rejected.

The U.S. response has been to extend the new Cold War into the financial sector, rewriting the rules of international finance to benefit the United States and its satellites – and to deter countries from seeking to break free from America's financial free ride.

The IMF changes its rules to isolate Russia and China

Aiming to isolate Russia and China, the Obama Administration's confrontational diplomacy has drawn the Bretton Woods institutions more tightly under US/NATO control. In so doing, it is disrupting the linkages put in place after World War II.

The U.S. plan was to hurt Russia's economy so much that it would be ripe for regime change ("color revolution"). But the effect was to drive it eastward, away from Western Europe to consolidate its long-term relations with China and Central Asia. Pressing Europe to shift its oil and gas purchases to U.S. allies, U.S. sanctions have disrupted German and other European trade and investment with Russia and China. It also has meant lost opportunities for European farmers, other exporters and investors – and a flood of refugees from failed post-Soviet states drawn into the NATO orbit, most recently Ukraine.

To U.S. strategists, what made changing IMF rules urgent was Ukraine's $3 billion debt falling due to Russia's National Wealth Fund in December 2015. The IMF had long withheld credit to countries refusing to pay other governments. This policy aimed primarily at protecting the financial claims of the U.S. Government, which usually played a lead role in consortia with other governments and U.S. banks. But under American pressure the IMF changed its rules in January 2015. Henceforth, it announced, it would indeed be willing to provide credit to countries in arrears other governments – implicitly headed by China (which U.S. geostrategists consider to be their main long-term adversary), Russia and others that U.S. financial warriors might want to isolate in order to force neoliberal privatization policies. [1] I provide the full background in "The IMF Changes its Rules to Isolate China and Russia," December 9, 2015, available on michael-hudson.com, Naked Capitalism , Counterpunch and Johnson's Russia List .

Article I of the IMF's 1944-45 founding charter prohibits it from lending to a member engaged in civil war or at war with another member state, or for military purposes generally. An obvious reason for this rule is that such a country is unlikely to earn the foreign exchange to pay its debt. Bombing Ukraine's own Donbass region in the East after its February 2014 coup d'état destroyed its export industry, mainly to Russia.

Withholding IMF credit could have been a lever to force adherence to the Minsk peace agreements, but U.S. diplomacy rejected that opportunity. When IMF head Christine Lagarde made a new loan to Ukraine in spring 2015, she merely expressed a verbal hope for peace. Ukrainian President Porochenko announced the next day that he would step up his civil war against the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine. One and a half-billion dollars of the IMF loan were given to banker Ihor Kolomoiski and disappeared offshore, while the oligarch used his domestic money to finance an anti-Donbass army. A million refugees were driven east into Russia; others fled west via Poland as the economy and Ukraine's currency plunged.

The IMF broke four of its rules by lending to Ukraine: (1) Not to lend to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan (the "No More Argentinas" rule, adopted after the IMF's disastrous 2001 loan to that country). (2) Not to lend to a country that repudiates its debt to official creditors (the rule originally intended to enforce payment to U.S.-based institutions). (3) Not to lend to a country at war – and indeed, destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan. Finally (4), not to lend to a country unlikely to impose the IMF's austerity "conditionalities." Ukraine did agree to override democratic opposition and cut back pensions, but its junta proved too unstable to impose the austerity terms on which the IMF insisted.

U.S. neoliberalism promotes privatization carve-ups of debtor countries

Since World War II the United States has used the Dollar Standard and its dominant role in the IMF and World Bank to steer trade and investment along lines benefiting its own economy. But now that the growth of China's mixed economy has outstripped all others while Russia finally is beginning to recover, countries have the option of borrowing from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and other non-U.S. consortia.

At stake is much more than just which nations will get the contracting and banking business. At issue is whether the philosophy of development will follow the classical path based on public infrastructure investment, or whether public sectors will be privatized and planning turned over to rent-seeking corporations.

What made the United States and Germany the leading industrial nations of the 20 th century – and more recently, China – has been public investment in economic infrastructure. The aim was to lower the price of living and doing business by providing basic services on a subsidized basis or freely. By contrast, U.S. privatizers have brought debt leverage to bear on Third World countries, post-Soviet economies and most recently on southern Europe to force selloffs. Current plans to cap neoliberal policy with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) go so far as to disable government planning power to the financial and corporate sector.

American strategists evidently hoped that the threat of isolating Russia, China and other countries would bring them to heel if they tried to denominate trade and investment in their own national currencies. Their choice would be either to suffer sanctions like those imposed on Cuba and Iran, or to avoid exclusion by acquiescing in the dollarized financial and trade system and its drives to financialize their economies under U.S. control.

The problem with surrendering is that this Washington Consensus is extractive and lives in the short run, laying the seeds of financial dependency, debt-leveraged bubbles and subsequent debt deflation and austerity. The financial business plan is to carve out opportunities for price gouging and corporate profits. Today's U.S.-sponsored trade and investment treaties would make governments pay fines equal to the amount that environmental and price regulations, laws protecting consumers and other social policies might reduce corporate profits. "Companies would be able to demand compensation from countries whose health, financial, environmental and other public interest policies they thought to be undermining their interests, and take governments before extrajudicial tribunals. These tribunals, organised under World Bank and UN rules, would have the power to order taxpayers to pay extensive compensation over legislation seen as undermining a company's 'expected future profits.' "

[2] Lori M. Wallach, "The corporation invasion," La Monde Diplomatique , December 2, 2013, http://mondediplo.com/2013/12/02tafta . She adds: "Some investors have a very broad conception of their rights. European companies have recently launched legal actions against the raising of the minimum wage in Egypt; Renco has fought anti-toxic emissions policy in Peru, using a free trade agreement between that country and the US to defend its right to pollute (6). US tobacco giant Philip Morris has launched cases against Uruguay and Australia over their anti-smoking legislation." See also Yves Smith, "Germany Bucking Toxic, Nation-State Eroding Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership," Naked Capitalism , July 17, 2014, and "Germany Turning Sour on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership," Naked Capitalism, October 30, 2014.

This policy threat is splitting the world into pro-U.S. satellites and economies maintaining public infrastructure investment and what used to be viewed as progressive capitalism. U.S.-sponsored neoliberalism supporting its own financial and corporate interests has driven Russia, China and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into an alliance to protect their economic self-sufficiency rather than becoming dependent on dollarized credit enmeshing them in foreign-currency debt.

At the center of today's global split are the last few centuries of Western social and democratic reform. Seeking to follow the classical Western development path by retaining a mixed public/private economy, China, Russia and other nations find it easier to create new institutions such as the AIIB than to reform the dollar standard IMF and World Bank. Their choice is between short-term gains by dependency leading to austerity, or long-term development with independence and ultimate prosperity.

The price of resistance involves risking military or covert overthrow. Long before the Ukraine crisis, the United States has dropped the pretense of backing democracies. The die was cast in 1953 with the coup against Iran's secular government, and the 1954 coup in Guatemala to oppose land reform. Support for client oligarchies and dictatorships in Latin America in the 1960 and '70s was highlighted by the overthrow of Allende in Chile and Operation Condor's assassination program throughout the continent. Under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the United States has claimed that America's status as the world's "indispensible nation" entitled it back the recent coups in Honduras and Ukraine, and to sponsor the NATO attack on Libya and Syria, leaving Europe to absorb the refugees.

Germany's choice

This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to evolve. The industrial takeoff of Germany and other European nations involved a long fight to free markets from the land rents and financial charges siphoned off by their landed aristocracies and bankers. That was the essence of classical 19 th -century political economy and 20 th -century social democracy. Most economists a century ago expected industrial capitalism to produce an economy of abundance, and democratic reforms to endorse public infrastructure investment and regulation to hold down the cost of living and doing business. But U.S. economic diplomacy now threatens to radically reverse this economic ideology by aiming to dismantle public regulatory power and impose a radical privatization agenda under the TTIP and TAFTA.

Textbook trade theory depicts trade and investment as helping poorer countries catch up, compelling them to survive by becoming more democratic to overcome their vested interests and oligarchies along the lines pioneered by European and North American industrial economies. Instead, the world is polarizing, not converging. The trans-Atlantic financial bubble has left a legacy of austerity since 2008. Debt-ridden economies are being told to cope with their downturns by privatizing their public domain.

The immediate question facing Germany and the rest of Western Europe is how long they will sacrifice their trade and investment opportunities with Russia, Iran and other economies by adhering to U.S.-sponsored sanctions. American intransigence threatens to force an either/or choice in what looms as a seismic geopolitical shift over the proper role of governments: Should their public sectors provide basic services and protect populations from predatory monopolies, rent extraction and financial polarization?

Today's global financial crisis can be traced back to World War I and its aftermath. The principle that needed to be voiced was the right of sovereign nations not to be forced to sacrifice their economic survival on the altar of inter-government and private debt demands. The concept of nationhood embodied in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia based international law on the principle of parity of sovereign states and non-interference. Without a global alternative to letting debt dynamics polarize societies and tear economies apart, monetary imperialism by creditor nations is inevitable.

The past century's global fracture between creditor and debtor economies has interrupted what seemed to be Europe's democratic destiny to empower governments to override financial and other rentier interests. Instead, the West is following U.S. diplomatic leadership back into the age when these interests ruled governments. This conflict between creditors and democracy, between oligarchy and economic growth (and indeed, survival) will remain the defining issue of our epoch over the next generation, and probably for the remainder of the 21 st century.

Endnotes

[1] I provide the full background in "The IMF Changes its Rules to Isolate China and Russia," December 9, 2015, available on michael-hudson.com, Naked Capitalism , Counterpunch and Johnson's Russia List .

[2] Lori M. Wallach, "The corporation invasion," La Monde Diplomatique , December 2, 2013, http://mondediplo.com/2013/12/02tafta . She adds: "Some investors have a very broad conception of their rights. European companies have recently launched legal actions against the raising of the minimum wage in Egypt; Renco has fought anti-toxic emissions policy in Peru, using a free trade agreement between that country and the US to defend its right to pollute ( 6 ). US tobacco giant Philip Morris has launched cases against Uruguay and Australia over their anti-smoking legislation." See also Yves Smith , " Germany Bucking Toxic, Nation-State Eroding Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership ," Naked Capitalism , July 17, 2014 , and " Germany Turning Sour on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership ," Naked Capitalism, October 30, 2014 .

Priss Factor , Website November 30, 2017 at 5:28 am GMT

More like Dollar Supremacism

The Alarmist , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 8:02 am GMT

"Austerity" is such a misused word these days. What the Allies did to Germany after Versailles was austerity, and everyone paid dearly for it.

What the IMF and the Western Banking Cartel do to third world countries is akin to a pusher hopping up addicts on debt and then taking it away while stripping them of their assets, pretty much hurting only the people of the third world country; certainly not the WBC, and almost certainly not the criminal elite who took the deal.

The Austerity everyone complains about in the developed world these days is a joke, hardly austerity, for it has never meant more than doing a little less deficit-spending than in prior periods, e.g. UK Labour whining about "Austerity" is a joke, as the UK debt has done nothing but grow, which in terms understandable to simple folk like me means they are spending more than they can afford to carry.

jilles dykstra , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 8:15 am GMT
" The immediate question facing Germany and the rest of Western Europe is how long they will sacrifice their trade and investment opportunities with Russia, Iran and other economies by adhering to U.S.-sponsored sanctions "

In the whole article not a word about the euro, also an instrument of imperialism, that mainly benefits Germany, the country that has to maintain a high level of exports, in order to feed the Germans, and import raw materials for Germany's industries.

Isolating China and Russia, with the other BRICS countries, S Africa, Brazil, India, dangerous game.
This effort forced China and Russia to close cooperation, the economic expression of this is the Peking Petersburg railway, with a hub in Khazakstan, where the containers are lifted from the Chinese to the Russian system, the width differs.
Four days for the trip.
The Berlin Baghdad railway was an important cause for WWI.
Let us hope that history does not repeat itself in the nuclear era.

Edward Mead Earle, Ph.D., 'Turkey, The Great Powers and The Bagdad Railway, A study in Imperialism', 1923, 1924, New York

jacques sheete , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 11:29 am GMT
Another excellent article.

The U.S. response has been to extend the new Cold War into the financial sector, rewriting the rules of international finance to benefit the United States and its satellites – and to deter countries from seeking t o break free from America's financial free ride .

Nah, the NY banksters wouldn't dream of doing such a thing; would they?

skrik , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 11:29 am GMT

This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to evolve

What I said, and beautifully put, the whole article.

World War I may well have been an important way-point, but the miserable mercantile modus operandi was well established long before.

An interesting A/B case:

a) wiki/Anglo-Persian Oil Company "In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite, negotiated an oil concession with Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia. He financed this with capital he had made from his shares in the highly profitable Mount Morgan mine in Queensland, Australia. D'Arcy assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Iran. In exchange the Shah received Ł20,000 (Ł2.0 million today),[1] an equal amount in shares of D'Arcy's company, and a promise of 16% of future profits." Note the 16% = ~1/6, the rest going off-shore.

b) The Greens in Aus researched the resources sector in Aus, to find that it is 83% 'owned' by off-shore entities. Note that 83% = ~5/6, which goes off-shore. Coincidence?

Then see what happened when the erstwhile APOC was nationalized; the US/UK perpetrated a coup against the democratically elected Mossadegh, eventual blow-back resulting in the 1979 revolution, basically taking Iran out of 'the West.'

Note that in Aus, the democratically elected so-called 'leaders' not only allow exactly this sort of economic rape, they actively assist it by, say, crippling the central bank and pleading for FDI = selling our, we the people's interests, out. Those traitor-leaders are reversing 'Enlightenment' provisions, privatising whatever they can and, as Michael Hudson well points out the principles, running Aus into debt and austerity.

We the people are powerless passengers, and to add insult to injury, the taxpayer-funded AusBC lies to us continually. Ho, hum; just like the mainly US/Z MSM and the BBC do – all corrupt and venal. Bah!

Now, cue the trolls: "But Russia/China are worse!"

jacques sheete , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 12:04 pm GMT

The immediate question facing Germany and the rest of Western Europe is how long they will sacrifice their trade and investment opportunities with Russia, Iran and other economies by adhering to U.S.-sponsored sanctions.

US banking oligarchs will expend the last drop of our blood to prevent a such a linking, just as they were willing to sacrifice our blood and treasure in WW1 and 2, as is alluded to here.:

Today's global financial crisis can be traced back to World War I and its aftermath.

Excellent.:

The principle that needed to be voiced was the right of sovereign nations not to be forced to sacrifice their economic survival on the altar of inter-government and private debt demands Without a global alternative to letting debt dynamics polarize societies and tear economies apart, monetary imperialism by creditor nations is inevitable.

This is a gem of a summary.:

The past century's global fracture between creditor and debtor economies has interrupted what seemed to be Europe's democratic destiny to empower governments to override financial and other rentier interests. Instead, the West is following U.S. diplomatic leadership back into the age when these interests ruled governments. This conflict between creditors and democracy, between oligarchy and economic growth (and indeed, survival) will remain the defining issue of our epoch over the next generation, and probably for the remainder of the 21st century.

Instead, the West is following U.S. diplomatic leadership back into the age when these interests ruled governments. It's important to note that such interests have ruled (owned, actually) imperial Britain for centuries and the US since its inception, and the anti-federalists knew it.

Here is a revolution as radical as that which separated us from Great Britain.

You will find all the strength of this country in the hands of your enemies [ ed comment: the money grubbers ]

Patrick Henry June 5 and 7, 1788―1788-1789 Petersburg, Virginia edition of the Debates and other Proceedings . . . Of the Virginia Convention of 1788

The Constitution had been laid down under unacceptable auspices; its history had been that of a coup d'état.

It had been drafted, in the first place, by men representing special economic interests. Four-fifths of them were public creditors, one-third were land speculators, and one-fifth represented interests in shipping, manufacturing, and merchandising. Most of them were lawyers. Not one of them represented the interest of production -- Vilescit origine tali.

- Albert Jay Nock [Excerpted from chapter 5 of Albert Jay Nock's Jefferson, published in 1926]

Biff , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 12:39 pm GMT
The golden rule is one thing. The paper rule is something else. May you live in interesting times.
Jake , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 2:09 pm GMT
"After World War I the U.S. Government deviated from what had been traditional European policy – forgiving military support costs among the victors. U.S. officials demanded payment for the arms shipped to its Allies in the years before America entered the Great War in 1917. The Allies turned to Germany for reparations to pay these debts." The Yank banker, the Yankee Wall Street super rich, set off a process of greed that led to Hitler.

But they didn't invent anything. They learned from their WASP forebears in the British Empire, whose banking back to Oliver Cromwell had become inextricably entangled with Jewish money and Jewish interests to the point that Jews per capita dominated it even at the height of the British Empire, when simpleton WASPs assume that WASPs truly ran everything, and that WASP power was for the good of even the poorest WASPs.

Joe Hide , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 2:12 pm GMT
To Michael Hudson,
Great article. Evidence based, factually argued, enjoyably readable.
Replacements for the dollar dominated financial system are well into development. Digital dollars, credit cards, paypal, stock and currency exchange online platforms, and perhaps most intriguing The exponential rise of Bitcoin and similar crypto-currencies.

The internet is also exponentially exposing the screwing we peasants have been getting by the psychopath, narcissistic, hedonistic, predatory lenders and controllers. Next comes the widespread, easily usable, and inexpensive cell phone apps, social media exposures, alternative websites (like Unz.com), and other technologies that will quickly identify every lying, evil, jerk so they can be neutrilized / avoided

The Alarmist , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 2:13 pm GMT

"Textbook trade theory depicts trade and investment as helping poorer countries catch up, compelling them to survive by becoming more democratic to overcome their vested interests and oligarchies along the lines pioneered by European and North American industrial economies."

I must be old; the economic textbooks I had did explain the benefits of freer trade among nations using Ricardo and Trade Indifference Curves, but didn't prescribe any one political system being fostered by or even necessary for the benefits of international trade to be reaped.

Astuteobservor II , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 2:26 pm GMT
to be honest, this way of running things only need to last for 10-20 more years before automation will replace 800 million jobs. then we will have a few trillionaire overlords unless true AI comes online. by that point nothing matters as we will become zoo animals.
jacques sheete , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 2:36 pm GMT
@The Alarmist

What the IMF and the Western Banking Cartel do to third world countries is akin to a pusher hopping up addicts on debt and then taking it away while stripping them of their assets, pretty much hurting only the people of the third world country; certainly not the WBC, and almost certainly not the criminal elite who took the deal.

That's true and the criminals do similar asset stripping to their own as well, through various means.

It's always the big criminals against the rest of us.

jacques sheete , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 2:48 pm GMT
@jilles dykstra

The Berlin Baghdad railway was an important cause for WWI.

Bingo. Stopping it was a huge factor. There was no way the banksters of the world were going to let that go forward, nor were they going to let Germany and Russia link up in any other ways. They certainly were not about to allow any threats to the Suez Canal nor any chance to let the oil fields slip from their control either.

The wars were also instigated to prevent either Germany or Russia having control of, and free access to warm water ports and the wars also were an excuse to steal vast amounts of wealth from both Germany and Russia through various means.

All pious and pompous pretexts aside, economics was the motive for (the) war (s), and the issues are not settled to this day. I.e., it's the same class of monstrously insatiable criminals who want everything for themselves who're causing the major troubles of the day.

Unfortunately, as long as we have SoB's who're eager to sacrifice our blood and treasure for their benfit, things will never change.

jacques sheete , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 2:51 pm GMT

The golden rule is one thing. The paper rule is something else.

May you live in interesting times.

The golden rule is for dreamers, unfortunately. Those who control paper money rule, and your wish has been granted; we live in times that are both interesting and fascinating, but are nevertheless the same old thing. Only the particular particulars have changed.

Michael Kenny , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 3:01 pm GMT
Essentially, the anti-EU and anti-euro line that Professor Hudson has being pushing for years, which has now morphed into a pro-Putin line as the anti-EU faction in the US have sought to use Putin as a "useful idiot" to destroy the EU. Since nobody in Europe reads these articles, Ii doesn't really matter and I certainly don't see any EU leader following the advice of someone who has never concealed his hostility to the EU's very existence: note the use of the racist slur "PIIGS" to refer to certain EU Member States. Thus, Professor Hudson is simply pushing the "let Putin win in Ukraine" line dressed up in fine-sounding economic jargon.
jacques sheete , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 3:54 pm GMT

Since nobody in Europe reads these articles, Ii doesn't really matter

None of it rally matters anyway, no matter how valid. To paraphrase Thucydides, the money grubbers do what they want and the rest of us are forced to suck it up and limp along.

and I certainly don't see any EU leader following the advice

I doubt that that's Hudson's intent in writing the article. I see it as his attempt to explain the situation to those of us who care about them even though our concern is pretty much useless.

I do thank him for taking the time to pen this stuff which I consider worthwhile and high quality.

Anonymous , Disclaimer Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 4:08 pm GMT
That sounds good but social media is the weapon of choice in the EU too. Lot's of kids know and love Hudson. Any half capable writer who empathetically explains why you're getting fucked is going to have some followers. Watering, nutrition, weeding. Before too long you'll be on the Eurail to your destination.
Wally , Website Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 4:23 pm GMT
@Jake

said: "The Yank banker, the Yankee Wall Street super rich, set off a process of greed that led to Hitler." If true, so what? That's a classic example of 'garbage in, garbage out'. http://www.codoh.com

nickels , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 4:48 pm GMT

This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to evolve

In fact, this is exactly how it was supposed to work. The wave of liberal democracies was precisely to overturn the monarchies, which were the last bulwark protecting the people from the full tyranny of the financiers, who were, by nature, one-world internationalists.

William McAdoo , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 5:08 pm GMT
The real problem with this is that any form of monetary arrangement involves an implied trusteeship, with obligations on, as well as benefits for, the trustee. The US is so abusing its trusteeship through the continual use of an irresponsible sanctions regime that it risks a good portion of the world economy abandoning its system for someone else's, which may be perceived to be run more responsibility. The disaster scenario would be the US having therefore in the future to access that other system to purchase oil or minerals, and having that system do to us what we previously did to them -- sanction us out.

The proper use by the US of its controlled system thus should be a defensive one -- mainly to act so fairly to all players that it, not someone else, remains in control of the dominant worldwide exchange system. This sensible course of conduct, unfortunately, is not being pursued by the US.

joe webb , Next New Comment November 30, 2017 at 10:11 pm GMT
there is fuzzy, and then there is very fuzzy, and then there is the fuzziness compounded many-fold. The latter is this article.

Here from wiki: "

" Marx believed that capitalism was inherently built upon practices of usury and thus inevitably leading to the separation of society into two classes: one composed of those who produce value and the other, which feeds upon the first one. In "Theories of Surplus Value" (written 1862-1863), he states " that interest (in contrast to industrial profit) and rent (that is the form of landed property created by capitalist production itself) are superfetations (i.e., excessive accumulations) which are not essential to capitalist production and of which it can rid itself."

Wiki goes on to identify "rentier" as used by Marx, to be the same thing as "capitalists." What the above quotation says is that capitalism CAN rid itself of genuine rent capital. First, the feudal rents that were extracted by landowners were NOT part of a free market system. Serfdom was only one part of unfree conditions. A general condition of anarchy in rules and laws by petty principalities characteristic of feudalism, both contained commerce and human beings. There was no freedom, political or economic.

The conflation (collapsing) of rents and interest is a Marxist error which expands into complete nonsense when a competitive economy has replaced feudal conditions. ON top of that, profits from a business, firm, or industrial enterprise are NOT rents.

Any marxist is a fool to pretend otherwise, and is just another ideological (False consciousness ) fanatic.

... ... ...

Wally, Next New Comment December 1, 2017 at 1:49 am GMT
@Michael Kenny

Indeed, Putin should be praised & supported. But where is the proof that 'Russia & Trump colluded to get Trump elected'? You also ignore the overwhelming Crimean support for returning to Russia. And you won't like this at all: Trump Declares "National Day for the Victims of Communism." https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/11/07/national-day-victims-communism Hence, the Liars of the scamming "Holocau$t Industry" go crazy: https://www.salon.com/2017/11/07/trumps-national-day-for-the-victims-of-communism-is-opposite-of-holocaust-statement/

ThreeCranes , December 1, 2017 at 3:34 am GMT
@jilles dykstra

Germany loans money back to the poorer nations who buy her exports just as China loans money to the United States (they purchase roughly a third of our Treasury bonds) so that Americans can continue to buy Chinese manufactured goods.

The role to be played by the USA in the "new world order" is that of being the farmer to the world. The meticulous Asians will make stuff.

The problem with this is that it is based on 19th century notions of manufacturing. Technique today is vastly more complicated than it was in the 1820′s and a nation must do everything in its power to protect and nurture its manufacturing and scientific excellence. In the United States we have been giving this away to our competitors. We educate their children at our taxpayer's expense and they take the knowledge gained back to their native countries where, with state subsidies, they build factories that put Americans out of work. We fall further and further behind.

[Nov 30, 2017] The people who worked in int l finance in the 90s (representing countries to the WB and IMF) knew about the criminal callousness of these institutions when pushing austerity or reform policies. Local elites sometimes were complacent and profited (those privatizations! those newly opened markets!), sometimes resisted, but the US and the multilateral system –financial or otherwise– are ruthless and very hard to resist.

Notable quotes:
"... "The World Wealth and Inequality project's latest white-paper, co-authored by Thomas "Capital in the 21st Century" Piketty, painstaking pieces together fragmentary data-sources to build up a detailed picture of wealth inequality in Russia in the pre-revolutionary period; during phases of the Soviet era; on the eve of the collapse of the USSR; and ever since. ..."
"... According to our benchmark estimates, top income shares are now similar to (or higher than) the levels observed in the United States. We also find that inequality has increased substantially more in Russia than in China and other ex-communist countries in Eastern Europe. We relate this finding to the specific transition strategy followed in Russia. According to our benchmark estimates, the wealth held offshore by rich Russians is about three times larger than official net foreign reserves, and is comparable in magnitude to total household financial assets held in Russia. ..."
"... For my money, Saker emphasises the supposed friendliness of the Western people towards Russia too much. It is not the Western people who want to attack Russia then the Western Anglozionist elite, but the Western people really do not care, as long as it is not the blood of their progeny and their own money paying for bringing Russia to heel. ..."
"... And if Russia is destroyed, just like Ukraine, then there could be some lucrative jobs when the Western Zio-elite starts dismembering the Russian corpse. And well paying jobs are in great demand in the bankrupt West. The unwritten contract that the Western people have with their Anglozionist elite says: find a way to destroy Russia without a global nuclear war, cheaply, without serious dying on our side and throw us a few bones and we will gladly hybernate our moral conscience. ..."
Nov 30, 2017 | www.unz.com

Anon , Disclaimer November 29, 2017 at 3:02 am GMT

The people who worked in int'l finance in the 90s (representing countries to the WB and IMF) knew about the criminal callousness of these institutions when pushing 'austerity' or 'reform' policies. Local elites sometimes were complacent and profited (those privatizations! those newly opened markets!), sometimes resisted, but the US and the multilateral system –financial or otherwise– are ruthless and very hard to resist.

Many countries suffered, not because they were Russian or Brazilian or Mexican, but because the opportunity for gain was there.

anon , Disclaimer November 29, 2017 at 4:51 am GMT
There's some common ground between the reds and whites in that the reds tapped into nationalist sentiments, hence the wars of national liberation around the world being supported by the communists: Korea, Vietnam, insurgencies in Latin America, Africa, etc. The script has flipped with the western countries now being the 'godless' ones who are trying to destroy religion, the family and traditional ways of life. The 1% were horrified that there was an ideology out there that advocated taking their loot away so they used all their resources in combatting it, even being willing to take the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon in doing so. They'd take the world down with them rather than lose their positions of power and money. Now that the ideology is no longer there it's just back to the business of robbing everyone weaker than them. All the hysteria about Putin is simply that he's built up the Russian state to where they can resist and that he's not a fellow slaveholder like them.

The intervention in Syria has unhinged parts of the west where they thought they could rob and kill anywhere they pleased but now have been successfully resisted. Political systems come and go but the people have endured for the past thousand years, something the fat cats of the west are trying to destroy to enlarge their slave plantation.

peterAUS , November 29, 2017 at 6:57 am GMT
@anon

he's not a fellow slaveholder like them .

Quick Google:
Inequality in Russia

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/apr/25/unequal-russia-is-anger-stirring-in-the-global-capital-of-inequality

" With the richest 10% owning 87% of all the country's wealth, Russia is rated the most unequal of the world's major economies. ."

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/wealth-inequality-in-russia-in-photos-2017-7?r=US&IR=T#/#li-mi-yan-photographed-this-series-in-moscow-1

" Russia has greater economic disparity than any other major global power. In 2016, Credit Suisse's Global Wealth Report found that the wealthiest 10% of people in Russia controlled 89% of the country's wealth ..

"The World Wealth and Inequality project's latest white-paper, co-authored by Thomas "Capital in the 21st Century" Piketty, painstaking pieces together fragmentary data-sources to build up a detailed picture of wealth inequality in Russia in the pre-revolutionary period; during phases of the Soviet era; on the eve of the collapse of the USSR; and ever since.

The headline findings: official Russian estimates drastically understate national inequality; Russia is as unequal as the USA or even moreso; Russian inequality is more intense than the inequality in other post-Soviet states and in post-Deng China.

This paper combines national accounts, survey, wealth and fiscal data (including recently released tax data on high-income taxpayers) in order to provide consistent series on the accumulation and distribution of income and wealth in Russia from the Soviet period until the present day. We find that official survey-based measures vastly under-estimate the rise of inequality since 1990. According to our benchmark estimates, top income shares are now similar to (or higher than) the levels observed in the United States. We also find that inequality has increased substantially more in Russia than in China and other ex-communist countries in Eastern Europe. We relate this finding to the specific transition strategy followed in Russia. According to our benchmark estimates, the wealth held offshore by rich Russians is about three times larger than official net foreign reserves, and is comparable in magnitude to total household financial assets held in Russia.

From Soviets to Oligarchs: Inequality and Property in Russia 1905-2016 [Filip Novokmet, Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman/World Wealth and Income Database]"

Etc

Cyrano , November 29, 2017 at 8:25 am GMT
@anon

People used to stage revolutions in order to bring communism to their countries. Plenty of examples for that: Russia, China, Cuba and many others. Of course, those people were deluded, right? Who would want to bring a system that preaches economic equality? It must be someone who is out of their mind. Has there ever been a capitalist revolution where someone took up arms trying to bring capitalism to their country? Must be because it's such a humane and desirable system. Also, a lot of people think that Islam is a backward religion. Really? Then how come it tolerates socialism (communism), better than Christianity ever did? Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan they were all socialist at some point. That's why the greatest democracy set their sights on them to destroy them. Because, you see, by their calculations, no matter how extremist and backward the Islam gets, it's still more progressive than socialism or communism. Helluva math there. The game has always been about preserving capitalism, and not the most benign version either. Which is too bad, because capitalism has been known to tolerate dictatorship, fascism, Nazism, slavery – pretty much the ugliest forms of government the sick human mind can come up with, but it can't tolerate little bit of socialism. Because you see, socialism is worse than any of those lovely political systems. Democracy (capitalism) is too pure for that, such a fragile and delicate thing that it is.

I am surprised Sweden hasn't been bombed yet, for their flirting with socialism, but the way the things are going over there, they don't have to be bombed. They did themselves in by following someone's stupid ideas about multiculturalism – which of course is also a form of socialism – racial one, instead the real deal – the economic socialism that the greatest democracy of them all is so afraid of.

Kiza , November 29, 2017 at 12:30 pm GMT
When the Serbians in different parts of Yugoslavia started being attacked by the West, I was constantly pointing out that in recent times, since WW1, an attack on Serbia has been a kind of introduction to an attack on Russia. In other words, I had no doubt that Russia was next.

But, there is one huge difference between Serbia and Russia. Whilst the Serbians killed very few of those Western Zionist military mercenaries who were killing Serbians directly or using their Croat, Muslim and Albanian proxies, if attacked the Russian military could kill hundreds of thousands of the Western mercenaries. This is why whilst the war on Serbia was real and bloody only on Serbians and the Bosnian Muslim proxies, the war on Russia would be totally disastrous for the Anglozionist Empire. This is the only reason a shooting war on Russia has not started already.

For my money, Saker emphasises the supposed friendliness of the Western people towards Russia too much. It is not the Western people who want to attack Russia then the Western Anglozionist elite, but the Western people really do not care, as long as it is not the blood of their progeny and their own money paying for bringing Russia to heel.

And if Russia is destroyed, just like Ukraine, then there could be some lucrative jobs when the Western Zio-elite starts dismembering the Russian corpse. And well paying jobs are in great demand in the bankrupt West. The unwritten contract that the Western people have with their Anglozionist elite says: find a way to destroy Russia without a global nuclear war, cheaply, without serious dying on our side and throw us a few bones and we will gladly hybernate our moral conscience.

yeah , November 29, 2017 at 3:31 pm GMT
@Quartermaster

Well, what evidence have you for asserting that Putin is a thug? You saw through the media's false reporting earlier as you admit, so how come you again swallow the load of marbles that they dish out?

And while Putin may or may not be feared by "near abroad" he certainly is feared by those who seek total dominance of the planet. The thing is, he is not an easy pushover and that is what is behind the thug claims. Many thinking people admire his intellect, statesmanship, and skill in dealing with major problems of our times. The media also hates him because he shows up the western leaders for the clowns that they are.

A principled US Government would have dealt very differently with Russia and Putin. There is no inherent conflict of interest with Russia once global dominance is discarded as the main policy objective.

Avery , November 29, 2017 at 3:59 pm GMT
@Quartermaster

{The only people that fear Putin is the near abroad, .}

Sure, if you say so, Bub.
Texas* is, of course, 'near aboard' .

[Russia has begun testing of its new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the RS-28 Sarmat. Sarmat can carry a payload of up to ten tons of nukes. The missile system is set to enter service in 2018.
The RS-28 Sarmat is the first entirely new Russian ICBM in decades. The heavyweight missile weighs 100 tons and can boost 10 tons. Russia claims the Sarmat can lift 10 heavyweight warheads, or 16 lighter ones, and Russian state media has described it as being able to wipe out an area the size of Texas or France.]

_______________________
*
[Russia's New ICBM Could "Wipe Out Texas"]

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23547/russias-new-icbm-could-wipe-out-texas/

disturbed_robot , November 29, 2017 at 4:20 pm GMT
@WorkingClass

Wow, this is the most refreshing and clear minded comment I've seen here in a while. Nice job WorkingClass, you've managed to keep your mind clear and not buy into the BS. You've given me some hope Thank you.

Anonymous , Disclaimer November 29, 2017 at 4:52 pm GMT
@peterAUS

Inequality in Russia

The supposed leaders of the West are busy trying to replace or at the very least water down their own populations with a totally different set of people from far away. Obviously these supposedly democratic leaders loathe what are supposed to be their own people but rather see all those below them as just so many replaceable units of labor, the mark of a "slaveholder". Putin has helped his people immensely. Life expectancies had plummeted into the 50′s and that's now been improved greatly as well as living standards. He's popular because he's done much for the people he identifies with, unlike Western leaders who hold their noses when anywhere near the citizenry. If the Russians like him then they must not be as worried about some issues as critics outside the country appear to be.

L.K , November 29, 2017 at 6:35 pm GMT
Very interesting interview with Professor McCoy:

On Contact: Decline of the American empire with Alfred McCoy

WorkingClass , November 29, 2017 at 7:03 pm GMT
@disturbed_robot

Thanks for the kind words.

Aedib , November 29, 2017 at 7:08 pm GMT
@James N. Kennett

It is hard to find people in the West who "hate the Russian people themselves"; but in place of hatred there is definitely fear – fear of Russia's military strength.

Disagree. The enormous propagandistic effort to demonize Russia in the West, not only reveals fear. It also reveals hate, at least on most of the elites. Most people are indifferent toward Russia but elites definitively have fear to the bear. You can test some people by simply naming "Russia" and you will see on their eyes a quite irrationala mix of hate and fear. I think this is result of an Orwellian propaganda effort aimed at injecting fear to "Eurasia".

This fear is exaggerated by the US military-industrial complex for its own purposes;

Agreed.

gwynedd1 , November 29, 2017 at 7:22 pm GMT
@WorkingClass

Given any two races or culture , what they are and what I think of them hardly matters. However pitted against each other it will cultivate and create good conditions for the scum of both of them and embroil the rest in the conflict. It is an against of chaos for a hostile order.

gwynedd1 , November 29, 2017 at 7:30 pm GMT
@Quartermaster

"Why should the west try to destroy Russia? They're doing a great job of it all by themselves"

How many times have you visited Russia?

Cyrano , November 29, 2017 at 7:41 pm GMT
@Philip Owen

Right. Those were capitalist revolutions. You are bang on. Capitalism is one of the most tolerant systems of all kinds of extremism, as I already mentioned. Capitalism has been known to tolerate monarchy, fascism, Nazism, various forms of dictatorships, slavery, pretty much everything. But they draw the line at tolerating socialism, like it's the worst extremism they have ever tolerated. My point is, capitalism is pretty robust system, it's not some delicate beauty that will fall apart if it comes in touch with socialism. Democracy is only a window dressing, it has never been about democracy, it has always been about capitalism.

AB_Anonymous , November 29, 2017 at 8:12 pm GMT
There's nothing easier nowadays than becoming a Kremlin (or any other kind of) Troll. Just start talking about things as they are and you're half way through. Keep talking that way a bit longer, and you'll forever become another precious source of income for the army of no-talent crooks with unlimited rights and zero oversee from those for whom they officially work. These guys are simply used to build their entire careers and financial well-beings by adjusting reality to their needs. They've been doing it for decades. Why not, as long as the true bosses are happy ? Why not, when the MSM will make population to swallow anything, no matter how idiotic and illogical it is ?

[Nov 30, 2017] The US Aristocracy's Smear-Russia Campaign Big Brother At Work

The USA has been honing an information age art of war -- through fake news, disinformation, leaks, and trolling -- for more than a decade. How can free societies protect themselves?"
Notable quotes:
"... These mere speculations, with slimy inferences of evil, with no real facts that back them up, were the front-cover 'news', in TIME. The facts were thin, but the speculations were thick, and the only thing really clear from it was that almost all of America's billionaires and centi-millionaires want Trump ousted, and want Vice President Mike Pence to become America's President as soon as possible -- before Trump's term is up. Democratic ones certainly do, and many of the Republican ones apparently do as well. Perhaps Trump isn't hostile enough toward Russia to suit their fancy. At least Pence would be predictable -- predictably horrible, in precisely the way that the controllers of the 'news'media overwhelmingly desire. ..."
Nov 30, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Billionaires, both liberal and conservative ones, own, and their corporations advertise in and their 'charities' donate to, America's mainstream (and also many 'alternative news') media.

They do this not so as to profit directly from the national 'news'media (a money-losing business, in itself), but so as to control the 'news' that the voting public (right and left) are exposed to and thus will accept as being "mainstream" and will reject all else as being "fringe" or even 'fake news', even if what's actually fake is, in fact, the billionaires' own mainstream 'news', such as their 'news'media had most famously 'reported' about 'Saddam's WMD' (but the'news'media never changed after that scandal -- even after having pumped uncritically that blatant lie to the public).

Have America's numerous foreign coups and outright military invasions (including Iraq 2003) been the result of fake-news that was published by the mainstream 'news'media, or only by some of the 'alternative news' sites that mirror what the mainstream ones have been 'reporting' (passing along the Government's lies just like the mainstream ones do)? Obviously, the catastrophic fake news -- the fake news that 'justified' America's invading and destroying Iraq, Libya, and many other countries -- was all published in the mainstream 'news'media. That's where to go for the really dangerous lies: it's the mainstream 'news'media. If those media, and their Government (whose lies they stenographically report to the public) will now censor the Internet, such as is increasingly happening not only in the US but in its allies including the European Union , then the only 'information' that the public will have access to, at all, will be the billionaires' lies. Have we already almost reached 1984 , finally, in 2017?

Two typical examples of this coordinated mass-deception-operation happened to be showing at the top of the magazine-pile at an office recently and struck my attention there, because of the ordinariness of the propaganda that was being pumped.

One of them was the cover of TIME magazine, dated "July 24, 2017" and with the cover headlined "RED HANDED: The Russia Scandal Hits Home" , overprinting onto the face of Donald Trump Jr., as their menacing-looking cover-image. That cover-story, as published inside, was titled "How Donald Trump Jr.'s Emails Have Cranked Up the Heat on His Family" , and it used such phrases as "potentially treasonous" and "Russia is the one country that could physically destroy America" (as if it weren't also the case that US is the one country that could physically destroy Russia, and very much the case also that possession of the weaponry isn't any indication of being evil, such as this particular propagandist was implicitly assuming). Hillary Clinton's V.P. running-mate was reported to be "saying that these fresh revelations move the Russia investigation into the realms of 'perjury, false statements and even, potentially, treason.'"

These mere speculations, with slimy inferences of evil, with no real facts that back them up, were the front-cover 'news', in TIME. The facts were thin, but the speculations were thick, and the only thing really clear from it was that almost all of America's billionaires and centi-millionaires want Trump ousted, and want Vice President Mike Pence to become America's President as soon as possible -- before Trump's term is up. Democratic ones certainly do, and many of the Republican ones apparently do as well. Perhaps Trump isn't hostile enough toward Russia to suit their fancy. At least Pence would be predictable -- predictably horrible, in precisely the way that the controllers of the 'news'media overwhelmingly desire.

The other example was the cover of The New Republic magazine, dated "December 2017" and it simply headlined in its center, "HOW TO ATTACK A DEMOCRACY ", and the opening page of the article inside was bannered "WEAKEN FROM WITHIN" and below that in the printed edition (the December physical issue of the magazine) was:

"Russian manipulation of American social media in the 2016 presidential election took the United States by surprise. But Moscow has been honing an information-age art of war -- through fake news, disinformation, leaks, and trolling -- for more than a decade. How can these societies protect themselves?"

The online version of that article (which was dated 2 November 2017) opened almost the same: "Moscow has been honing an information age art of war -- through fake news, disinformation, leaks, and trolling -- for more than a decade. How can free societies protect themselves?"

The unspoken assumption in this article is that the US CIA hasn't been doing the same thing -- and doing it even worse than the old (and thankfully expired) KGB ever did. (And the CIA, even after the end of communism as its supposed enemy until 1991, still does far worse to other countries than Russia's FSB does or ever did.)

Underlying both the TIME article and the TNR article are unstated speculations about the American situation, which are based upon thin facts such as that "at least $100,000 in ads purchased through 470 phony Facebook pages and accounts" were "using Facebook to incite anti-black hatred and anti-Muslim prejudice and fear while provoking extremism" , and that supposedly somehow (they never say how) such puny expenses threw the multi-billion-dollar 2017 US Presidential election to Trump. How is a case such as that, to be viewed by an intelligent reader as constituting anything but propaganda for the weapons-making firms such as Lockheed Martin, who benefit from such international anti-Russia hate-spewing to NATO countries, which are those firms' major markets (other than Saudi Arabia, and the other fundamentalist-Sunni kingdoms that together constitute the Gulf Cooperation Council or "GCC" nations, which hate Shiite Iran as much as the US regime hates Russia)?

Also among the underlying and unstated speculations in the background here is the older mass-media allegation about Russia's allegedly having spied and swayed the US election by 'hacking' it, which is likewise being pumped by Democrats and other opponents of Mr. Trump, alleging that 'Russia hacked the election' .

And, so, for an example of the flimsiness of those allegations, one of the two main 'authorities' who are the source of that, the Bush and Obama Administration's James Clapper, was headlined at Politico on 7 July 2017, "Clapper: No evidence others besides Russia hacked US election" . Mr. Clapper happens to be a military-industrial-complex revolving-door 'intelligence' 'professional' whom, on 10 February 2011, even Politico was reporting to be "backing away from comments he made Thursday calling Egypt's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement 'largely secular'," and who had also covered-up George W. Bush's lies about 'WMD in Iraq' so as to protect the liars. On 29 October 2003, the New York Times stenographically passed along his deception about the non-existent WMD by headlining, "WEAPONS SEARCH; Iraqis Removed Arms Material, US Aide Says" and reported, "The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material 'unquestionably' had been moved out of Iraq." No evidence ever existed that Saddam Hussein still had any WMD after the U.N. monitors (UNSCOM) destroyed the last of them in 1998; but Clapper 'unquestionably' 'knew' to the contrary -- though no evidence was ever made available to the contrary of UNSCOM's reports, and lots of evidence existed that Bush simply lied about the entire matter .

The other main source for the allegation that 'Russia hacked the election' is the Obama Administration's John Brennan, whom Glenn Greenwald exposed as a fraud back on 7 January 2013, headlining "John Brennan's extremism and dishonesty rewarded with CIA Director nomination" .

Both of the official 'experts' who are promoting the Russiagate charges, are longtime, and repeatedly, exposed liars - but that's the best they can do, always assuming that the public don't know that these people are propagandists for the military-industrial complex , not real 'public servants' at all.

This isn't to say that Trump isn't also a liar -- just that the 'news' in America is full of conflicting lies -- and that they constantly are coming from the fake 'news'media that are the mainstream ones who are now trying to censor out, and ultimately to obliterate, the few small news-operations (some of which, unlike any of the mainstream ones, actually are good, and authentic journalistic operations, no mere PR hackery) that are constantly exposing the fraudulence of the mainstream ones, which want to impose their dictatorship -- the mainstream lies -- even more rigorously than they already do. After all, the mainstream Western media still haven't yet reported US President Obama's bloody racist-fascist coup that in February 2014 replaced the democratically elected President of Ukraine (and his supporters in the legislature) by a racist-fascist or ideologically nazi regime that's rabidly hostile toward its neighboring nation of Russia . Even now -- nearly four years after the event. It's already solidly documented history , but the mainstream US-and-allied press still hasn't reported it.

The fake-news masters are certainly the mainstream 'news'media themselves - and they, and the billionaires and centi-millionaires who own and control them, are the real megaphones by which the US dictatorship constantly fools the American people (and the publics in its allied nations), to keep in line, for the aristocracy .

VWAndy , Nov 30, 2017 12:07 AM

The lies just keep getting bigger.

Skateboarder -> VWAndy , Nov 30, 2017 12:17 AM

"Us vs. them," the tune for the culling.

Slippery Slope -> Skateboarder , Nov 30, 2017 12:55 AM

Many of the Jewish Oligarchs in Russia and throughout the World, really hate Russia, I think it has to do with the Slavs conquest of the Khazars.

In that Putin rebuilt Russia and stopped them from thieving, irks them all the more.

jeff montanye -> Skateboarder , Nov 30, 2017 1:28 AM

if russia hacked the election why didn't the dnc ask, beg the fbi to examine the dnc email servers and prove it in detail? instead the dnc put forward the highly questionable crowdstrike and guccifer 2.0 materials.

why hasn't evidence from the vaunted national security agency, as shown by snowden to record everything, been presented to demonstrate russian hacking?

how can the fbi still maintain it never investigated the seth rich murder? even if seymour hersh is right and it wasn't connected to rich's very probable theft of dnc email data and its transmission to wikileaks, it certainly could have been and merited checking out. either the fbi is lying or incompetent (or both).

i sent a request to judicial watch (potentially explosive materials about the clinton lynch "tarmac" meeting to be released today) asking them to file freedom of information suits on the first and third paragraphs above. we must break out of the horrible zionist takeover of the u.s. that is explained in detail in chris bollyn's new book and video, the war on terror; the plot to rule the middle east . it is also the plot to rule the u.s.a.

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=chris+bollyn+war+on...

07564111 -> jeff montanye , Nov 30, 2017 1:38 AM

US Aristocracy = Joos In Charge

Kassandra -> jeff montanye , Nov 30, 2017 3:55 AM

Good on you.

In these days of internet, where we can actually know (or suspect) what is going on, why do the lies continue? When we all KNOW IT IS ALL A LIE!

Blue Steel 309 -> VWAndy , Nov 30, 2017 12:57 AM

The Soviets collapsed under the weight of their own lies, not the economy or cold war arms race.

We are next. Is this being orchestrated or just part of the sinusoidal process of this civilization?

[Nov 30, 2017] WaPo Reporter Caught On Hidden Camera Being A Bit Too Honest; Admits No Evidence Of Trump-Russia Collusion Zero Hedge

Notable quotes:
"... That said , what is explosive about this particular undercover sting is just how different Entous' private views on the Trump-Russia investigation are from the constant stream of narrative-building collusion headlines that flood the Washington Post's homepage each and every day. ..."
"... Of course, rather than focus on the blatant media bias that has once again been exposed by Project Veritas, the mainstream media rushed to the defense of the Washington Post by focusing instead on the foiled attempt of one of O'Keefe's journalists to plant a fake story at WaPo to see if they would simply run it with no questions asked or actually do their jobs. Apparently CNN thought the foiled plot had put O'Keefe "on the defensive"... ..."
Nov 30, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

WaPo Reporter Caught On Hidden Camera Being A Bit Too Honest; Admits "No Evidence" Of Trump-Russia Collusion Tyler Durden Nov 29, 2017 9:00 PM 0 SHARES CNN and New York Times , Project Veritas has now set their sights on the Washington Post. In a candid conversation with an undercover Project Veritas journalist, the Post's National Security Director, Adam Entous, put himself in danger of being a bit too honest, at least by his employer's standards, by admitting that "there's no evidence of [Trump-Russia collusion] that I've seen so far." Entous goes on to admit that "it's a fucking crap shoot" and that he has no idea how Mueller's investigation might turn out.

Entous : "Our reporting has not taken us to a plcae where I would be able to say with any confidence that the result of it is going to be the president being guilty of being in cahoots with the Russians. There's no evidence of that that I've seen so far."

PV Journalist : "There has to be something, right?"

Entous "Maybe, maybe not. It could just be lower-level people being manipulated or manipulating, but it's very hard to, it's really...It's a fucking black box."

"We've seen a lot of flirtation, if you will, between them but nothing that, in my opinion, would rank as actual collusion. Now that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, it just means we haven't found it yet. Or maybe it doesn't exist."

"I mean it's a fucking crap shoot. I literally have no prediction whatsoever as to what would happen, and I do all the stuff for the Post on this so..."

Today we show you our second undercover video within @washingtonpost this time exposing Nat'l Security Director Adam Entous who ADMITS that the Russia story is a "f*cking crap shoot" and "maybe it doesn't exist at all." pic.twitter.com/qeEfk9oCKA

-- James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 29, 2017

Of course, on the surface, Entous' opinions are not that explosive and likely mimic the views held by many Americans...namely that despite 1.5 years of investigations no one has presented any actual, tangible evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

That said , what is explosive about this particular undercover sting is just how different Entous' private views on the Trump-Russia investigation are from the constant stream of narrative-building collusion headlines that flood the Washington Post's homepage each and every day.

Like this one...

Or this one if you prefer...

Of course, rather than focus on the blatant media bias that has once again been exposed by Project Veritas, the mainstream media rushed to the defense of the Washington Post by focusing instead on the foiled attempt of one of O'Keefe's journalists to plant a fake story at WaPo to see if they would simply run it with no questions asked or actually do their jobs. Apparently CNN thought the foiled plot had put O'Keefe "on the defensive"...

...but O'Keefe seemed to not be all that defensive in his response below...which presumably means we'll all be treated to many more undercover stings in the years to come.

MSM want to destroy @Project_Veritas . They see us as their enemy. When we expose them, they are lose their power. We have a stone lodged between Goliath's eyes. They want me to kneel down & apologize. I will not. We will keep pushing, we will expose the truth. - @JamesOKeefeIII pic.twitter.com/vbBVxXtBD6

-- Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) November 29, 2017

Finally, here is the latest Project Veritas video for your viewing pleasure:

greenskeeper carl -> Bernie Madolf , Nov 29, 2017 9:12 PM

Apparently his WaPo thing didn't really work, but they can't all be winners. His exposing of those DNC operatives during the campaign was brilliant. To this day I do not understand why they were allowed to just get fired or resign from all their postings without an indictment.

nope-1004 -> greenskeeper carl , Nov 29, 2017 9:14 PM

Honest on hidden camera, full of shit in the MSM.

So it is with all .gov media outlets.

[Nov 30, 2017] State Department Condemns Designation Of Media As Foreign Agents (only applies to Russia)

State Department is actually has dual function -- one is to be an intelligence agency. And as such it is fully responsible for the current anti-Russian witch hunt. So the level of hypocrisy is simply staggering. But not surprising: way too many neocons infiltrated the agency under Hillary Clinton and her predecessor.
The problem with responding to this move is that the USA is still the global superpower and technological leader in many areas, including semiconductors. So Russians need to be very careful not to overstep the boundaries and slip into tip for tat mode.
The huge advantage of the USA is that it conducts its propaganda campaign against Russia mostly via private newspapers that have foreign correspondents in Russia as well as fifth column of Russian neoliberals and their news outlets. Which are closely working with the US sponsored NGO. Same is true for GB. Actually after reading Guardian correspondents coverage from Russia it is unclear whether Guardian is a branch on MI6 or not ;-). I don not remember the name of a person who was expelled from Russia for collecting information from the transmitter masked as a "stone" in Moscow park.
Some minor measures directly against "foreign financed" domestic new outlets actually could be more effective that sweeping registration of (mostly ineffective and unpopular) US government channels as "foreign agents".
Notable quotes:
"... Today the U.S. State Department hit the ball of hypocrisy out of the park. It remarked that "legislation that allows .. to label media outlets as 'foreign agents' ... presents yet another threat to free media". It noted that "freedom of expression -- including speech and media ... is a universal human rights obligation". ..."
"... The whole issue started with the notable liar James Clapper under the Obama administration. He and other 'intelligence' people found that RT ..."
"... The Russian government had warned several times that the application of FARA against RT ..."
"... "We could do with having a USIA on steroids to fight this information war [with Russia] a lot more aggressively than we're doing right now," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. ..."
"... "[Russia Today] was very active in promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights," he said. "Whatever crack, fissure they could find in our tapestry, they would exploit it," via the state-owned news network. ..."
"... Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Jan 6 2017 - Annex I, originally published on 11 December 2012 by the Open Source Center ..."
"... RT aired a documentary about the Occupy Wall Street movement on 1, 2, and 4 November. RT framed the movement as a fight against "the ruling class" and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations. ..."
"... RT's reports often characterize the United States as a "surveillance state" and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use. ..."
"... RT has also focused on criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the US national debt. ..."
"... RT is a leading media voice opposing Western intervention in the Syrian conflict and blaming the West for waging "information wars" against the Syrian Government. ..."
"... It is so embarrassing to live in a country where the government issues nothing but lies and hypocrisy. I realize that to the players it's all a game and maybe funny but to this citizen and probably others this game is putting our lives in danger,,, and we don't find that 'funny'. ..."
"... "And at that moment, we will have to repeat that the Iraqi people, the Syrian people, the Lebanese people, all the elites and all the leaders and peoples of the region should reflect, weigh and return to the question of the identity of the creators, supporters, advocates and promoters of ISIS, that enabled them to commit these terrorist massacres [US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar ], and the identity of those who have stood against ISIS, fought them, offered martyrs in this fight [Iran, Syria, Irak, Hezbollah, Russia] and inflicted a defeat on ISIS and all those who stand behind them. This is a discussion to be held with depth and strength so that the (Muslim) believers do not become victims twice of the same ills." ..."
"... After I have been writing about the fact that the Western hemisphere as a whole is no longer democratic and that the CIA and the NSA dictate the policies of the US regime and its vassals, my cell phone started to turn itself off and on frequently and now my Mac is turning itself on in the middle of the night and the hard drive indicator lights turn red - what they have never done before. Every option to "wake up on call" is disabled. For WiFi (turned off - no Wifi here) and Bluetooth. The Mac is only connected to the power outlet. ..."
"... The so called 'State Department' that has already a disturbing history of cooperation with Fascists throughout its existence, is now totally unhinged. It's actions make it clear beyond any doubt that the US is no longer and has likely not been since 2000 (or 1964, depending on view point) what goes for a 'democratic republic'. ..."
"... Illegal wars and toppling of democratically elected socialist governments for the Safety and Happiness of the American people? That must be it. ..."
"... Behind the persona, Trump may be far smarter than Obama or Clinton, and perhaps more dangerous as far as keeping the US empire alive, depending on which way he goes. I am starting think he won't create any new wars though, just let the neo-con establishment do their thing within a limit, to build up leverage and pressure against countries that he may well try and strike some sort of deal with in the future. ..."
"... Trump is difficult to fathom but has too much morgue to be a good leader. When compared to Putin or even Rouhani, he is far too impulsive. ..."
"... RT is reporting that US Congressional authorities have withdrawn RT Network accreditaton. RT correspondents have been directed to turn in their credentials to the Congressional authorities. This effectively blacklists RT reporters from covering Congress; without credentials, they can't attend hearings, press conferences, etc. ..."
"... Trump's persona is like an inversion layer in air or water. An inversion layer in air can create mirages, and in water, submarines can, or used to be able to hide under inversion layers. Pat Lang put in a comment at his blog, of a study of Trump that showed him change, or his public image change over the years, starting back in the eighties, as he developed the persona. He mentions Stallone in his book as somebody he respects as Stallone had the ability to deliver a product that a large percentage of Americans liked and wanted. I think the persona is somewhat based on Stallone's fictional characters. ..."
"... Maybe even worse, the US PTB seem to have ZERO faith/confidence/belief in the "rightness" and resilience of our own system (certainly with cause), which makes them twitchy (re unstable) as a whole. Like a loaded gun in a shaky hand pointed at humanity. ..."
"... To think there are so many people that watch TV for fake intrigue and ignore the real world machinations all around them.....sigh ..."
"... To be honest, with Americans I prefer the conservatives, red necks and all the other nutjobs over Clintonists because while some of the former are hypocrites, none of them are as sickeningly hypocritical as the Clintonists and their führer. ..."
"... Best analysis of USA policy since WW2. Monetary Imperialism by Michael Hudson If you think it is just about military weapons and bombings then you are seeing only the tip of the iceberg. There is a reason USA is initiating all those wars and coups. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/29/monetary-imperialism/ ..."
"... US and most of the west is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be. A good word for this is Orwellian. ..."
"... Truth has been sacrificed for Propaganda since Bernay showed in WWI that Americans are helpless against it. Some combination of Fear, Nationalism and a Calvinistic God is all you need to get support for War, as well as some way to control the MSM to stay online with the message ..."
"... It strikes me that Calvinism is not much different than Zionism and Islamism in terms of violence, intolerance and basically an unloving God so War Propaganda is just as effective in Israel and the Islamic world as in the West. ..."
"... I'm calling them the Worst Generation. Too early? Too late? Thanks b and all. Carthage must be rebuilt. ..."
"... i would think the land of the free and brave weren't such chicken shits when it came to info, but obviously i am wrong here and thus the chicken shit designation of the crumbling us empire... ..."
"... 1. US perfected propaganda to the extent Goebbels would be proud of them. Thousands of PhDs/psychologists craft fake news presentation and masses manipulation, and it works. Just ask most of the Westerners, who believe that Assad or Iranians are evil, that Russia is a threat to the Worlds Peace, etc. ..."
"... 2. If Russia doesn't respond, US thinks they got away without repercussions and escalate, and then escalate some more. They will do that anyway now, but at the same time harming their own interests. ..."
"... An anecdote I read one time. A Soviet journalist in the cold war era goes to the US for a while to work with US journalists. The actual story is a bit longer, but the ending is along these lines. The Soviet journalist says to the US journalists "It is very good. Americans believe your propaganda, whereas our people don't believe ours. ..."
"... Now the situation is reversed, where US propaganda is not believed, and all Russia has to do is print the facts or ensure US propaganda gets broadcast within Russia. Russia seems to be doing both and it is driving the US nuts. ..."
Nov 30, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
State Department Condemns* Designation Of Media As Foreign Agents (*only applies to Russia)

UPDATED below
---

Today the U.S. State Department hit the ball of hypocrisy out of the park. It remarked that "legislation that allows .. to label media outlets as 'foreign agents' ... presents yet another threat to free media". It noted that "freedom of expression -- including speech and media ... is a universal human rights obligation".

The remark came after the U.S. Department of Justice required the Russian outlet RT America to register as a 'foreign agent' under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). RT registered as ordered on November 13.

But the State Department statement was NOT in response to the DOJ requirement against RT . The State Department reacted to a new Russian law that was issued in response to the demand against RT . The new Russian law is a mirror to the U.S. FARA law. It demands that foreign media which are active in Russia register as 'foreign agents'. The EU poodles followed the State Department nonsense with an equally dumb statement.)

With its criticism of the Russian version of the FARA law while ignoring the U.S. FARA action against RT, the State Department confirmed the allegations of hypocrisy RT and other media have raised against the U.S. government.

The whole issue started with the notable liar James Clapper under the Obama administration. He and other 'intelligence' people found that RT was too truthful in its reporting to be allowed to inform the U.S. public. Publication of criticism of the U.S. government based on verifiable facts is seen as an unfriendly act which must be punished.

Congress and the U.S. Justice Department under the Trump administration followed up on that. FARA is originally NOT directed against foreign media. The Trump Justice Department circumvented the spirit of the law to apply it to RT .

The Russian government had warned several times that the application of FARA against RT would be followed up on with a similar requirement against U.S. media in Russia. The Trump administration ignored those warnings. It now condemns the Russian move.

Here is timeline of the relevant events:

Clapper calls for U.S. Information Agency 'on steroids' to counter Russian propaganda - Washington Times, Jan 5 2017

"We could do with having a USIA on steroids to fight this information war [with Russia] a lot more aggressively than we're doing right now," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
...
"[Russia Today] was very active in promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights," he said. "Whatever crack, fissure they could find in our tapestry, they would exploit it," via the state-owned news network.

Intelligence Report on Russian Hacking - Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Jan 6 2017 - Annex I, originally published on 11 December 2012 by the Open Source Center

RT America TV , a Kremlin-financed channel operated from within the United States, has substantially expanded its repertoire of programming that highlights criticism of alleged US shortcomings in democracy and civil liberties
...
RT aired a documentary about the Occupy Wall Street movement on 1, 2, and 4 November. RT framed the movement as a fight against "the ruling class" and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations.
...
RT's reports often characterize the United States as a "surveillance state" and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use.
...
RT has also focused on criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the US national debt.
...
RT is a leading media voice opposing Western intervention in the Syrian conflict and blaming the West for waging "information wars" against the Syrian Government.

Cicilline Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Close Russia Today Loophole - Congress, June 7 2017

U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (D-RI), who serves as co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC), and U.S. Congressman Matthew Gaetz (R-FL) today introduced legislation to close a loophole in foreign agent registration requirements that Russia Today exploited extensively during last year's presidential election.

Justice Dept Asks Russia's RT to Register as Foreign Agent - Newsmax, September 13 2017

RT said late Monday that the company that supplies all the services for its RT America channel was told by the DOJ in a letter that it is obligated to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act , an act aimed at lobbyists and lawyers representing foreign political interests.

...

FARA specifically exempts US and foreign news organizations, and the DOJ focus on the company that supplies services for RT might be a way around that stipulation.

Russia to amend law to classify U.S. media 'foreign agents' - Reuters, Nov 10 2017

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's parliament warned on Friday some U.S. and other foreign media could be declared "foreign agents" and obliged to regularly declare full details of their funding, finances and staffing.
...
Russian lawmakers said the move was retaliation for a demand by the U.S. Department of Justice that Kremlin-backed TV station RT register in the United States as a "foreign agent", something Moscow has said it regards as an unfriendly act.

Russia's RT America registers as 'foreign agent' in U.S. - Reuters, Nov 13 2017

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Kremlin-backed television station RT America registered Monday with the U.S. Department of Justice as a "foreign agent" in the United States, the outlet's editor in chief said and the Department of Justice confirmed later in the day.

Russia warns U.S. media of possible foreign agent status - AP, Nov 16 2017

MOSCOW – Russia's Justice Ministry has warned several U.S. government-funded news outlets they could be designated as foreign agents under a new bill that has yet to be fully approved.

The bill , endorsed by Russia's lower house on Wednesday, comes in response to U.S. demands that Russian state-funded RT TV register as a foreign agent. It needs to be approved by the upper house and signed by President Vladimir Putin to become law.

Russian president Putin signs foreign agent media law to match U.S. action - USA Today, Nov 25 2017

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law Saturday a new bill designating international media outlets as foreign agents in retaliation for a similar measure taken by the U.S. Department of Justice against the state-funded RT television

EU Criticizes Russia's 'Foreign Agents' Media Law - RFLRF, Nov 26 2017

BRUSSELS -- The European Union has criticized legislation signed by President Vladimir Putin that empowers Russia's government to designate media outlets receiving funding from abroad as "foreign agents" and impose sanctions against them.

...

Maja Kocijancic, the spokesperson of the European Commission for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, said in a November 26 statement that the "legislation goes against Russia's human rights obligations and commitments."

Russia's Restrictive Media-Focused Legislation - U.S. State Department - Nov 28 2017

New Russian legislation that allows the Ministry of Justice to label media outlets as "foreign agents" and to monitor or block certain internet activity presents yet another threat to free media in Russia. Freedom of expression -- including speech and media which a government may find inconvenient -- is a universal human rights obligation Russia has pledged to uphold.


link

With a few words less the statement by the State Department would have gained universality. It would have made perfect sense. See here for a corrected version:


bigger

Unfortunately the State Department's spokesperson added some verbose lamenting about one specific country. It thereby exposed itself to the very criticism the U.S. government strives to suppress.

---
UPDATE - Nov 30 0:50am

As consequence of the FARA designation of RT 's U.S. production company RT is now losing access to the Congressional Gallery. Congress Gallery access is in turn required to get White House press credentials. RT is now likely to lose those too.

Meanwhile a consultative Congress commission is pressing to designate the Chinese news-agency XINHUA as 'foreign agent'. It also wants all staff of XINHUA to register as such. That would make it nearly impossible for freelancer and others who work for multiple media to continue with their XINHUA gigs.

Posted by b on November 29, 2017 at 01:27 PM | Permalink

NewYorker | Nov 29, 2017 1:44:58 PM | 1

Yeah. Whatever. This is how Russia is supposed to respond. If the US does something, Russia is should respond immediately. Not several months or a year down the road. Stop waiting for the spoiled brat to get it. They never will.
ken | Nov 29, 2017 2:30:17 PM | 2
It is so embarrassing to live in a country where the government issues nothing but lies and hypocrisy. I realize that to the players it's all a game and maybe funny but to this citizen and probably others this game is putting our lives in danger,,, and we don't find that 'funny'.
james | Nov 29, 2017 2:32:14 PM | 3
thanks b... well, once again american hypocrisy is on public display... i guess someone is hoping that ignorance and a short memory will rule the day..
karlof1 | Nov 29, 2017 2:42:13 PM | 4
Ditto ken @2.

Speaking of hypocrisy, on 20 Nov 2017, one day after the Arab League Confab--which now ought to become known as the Zionist-Arab League -- Nasrallah gave a speech calling out all those nations that supported Daesh, particularly the Outlaw US Empire. Video of the speech in French with English subs and a very partial transcript are here, http://sayed7asan.blogspot.com/ with a longer partial transcript available at The Saker's blog.

Excerpt:

"Of course, we will also need real festivities to celebrate the victory because it will be a great victory, a victory against the organization representing the greatest danger (for all) that soiled more than anyone the religion of Muhammad b. Abdillah, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, since 1,400 years. This will be the victory of humanistic and moral values against horrific bestiality, cruelty and violence. A victory that will have a huge impact on the cultural, religious, humanitarian, military, security, political levels, as well as on the very image (of Islam and Muslims) and at all levels.

"And at that moment, we will have to repeat that the Iraqi people, the Syrian people, the Lebanese people, all the elites and all the leaders and peoples of the region should reflect, weigh and return to the question of the identity of the creators, supporters, advocates and promoters of ISIS, that enabled them to commit these terrorist massacres [US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar ], and the identity of those who have stood against ISIS, fought them, offered martyrs in this fight [Iran, Syria, Irak, Hezbollah, Russia] and inflicted a defeat on ISIS and all those who stand behind them. This is a discussion to be held with depth and strength so that the (Muslim) believers do not become victims twice of the same ills."

notheonly1 | Nov 29, 2017 3:08:39 PM | 5
Once again, how much longer will people deny that what was formerly know as US government has turned into a Fascist regime - with the dictating done by Plutocrats whose names are not even known, in spite of everybody being surveilled. Just not the owners of the Nazi Sicherheits Agentur.

After I have been writing about the fact that the Western hemisphere as a whole is no longer democratic and that the CIA and the NSA dictate the policies of the US regime and its vassals, my cell phone started to turn itself off and on frequently and now my Mac is turning itself on in the middle of the night and the hard drive indicator lights turn red - what they have never done before. Every option to "wake up on call" is disabled. For WiFi (turned off - no Wifi here) and Bluetooth. The Mac is only connected to the power outlet.

Please let me know if anybody else has the same experience with their hardware. Also, I can no longer send emails on all accounts, but I do receive junk.

------

The so called 'State Department' that has already a disturbing history of cooperation with Fascists throughout its existence, is now totally unhinged. It's actions make it clear beyond any doubt that the US is no longer and has likely not been since 2000 (or 1964, depending on view point) what goes for a 'democratic republic'.

The paymasters don't even bother any longer that the public is waking up based on their Fascist activities and actions. They don't give the proverbial F about people finding out and understanding what is actually happening in the Nazi High Five regimes. What are people going to do? Demonstrate against Fascism? Concerting a total consumer boycott - the antonym of 'go shopping'? Writing letters to misrepresentatives?

It certainly looks like the shit has piled up behind the fan like never before and the so called "happy holidays" seem to be the perfect time to flip the switch to "ON".

Sad, that through the incessant propaganda and Nationalism force fed to the lesser mentally gifted part of the population for centuries now, the people are no longer capable to do what the Declaration of Independence provides them to do (theoretically):

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The authors of these 'goddamn pieces of papers' must have already used Orwellian lingo, since it appears that this paragraph only refers to regime change in other Nations, just not in the US.

Illegal wars and toppling of democratically elected socialist governments for the Safety and Happiness of the American people? That must be it.

Maybe one can call in at the regime department and tell them about psychological projection? The number is 1-800-FUC-KYOU. Yes, it's almost the same number Obama had chosen for criticism of the ACA - 1-800-381-2596. That is what these parasites think about "the people".

Now what? Following the advice of some people to not only see the negative shit on Earth? Sure, the genocide on the Palestinians and the Yemenis (plus countless other 'obstacles') is actually a good thing, correct? Because those who are exterminated now, won't have to experience worse down the line.

Apologies for the sarcasm, but this is getting out of public hands faster than the Ludicrous Speed of the "We Brake For Nobody"-Imperial Starship.

karlof1 | Nov 29, 2017 3:13:20 PM | 6
Trump's as naked as the ape he actually is. Weird way to go about cultivating better relations with Russia. As with Obama previously, much of what Trump campaigned on is being reversed, the opposite of his orated intent being implemented instead. A commentator at Sputnik was shocked that I lumped Trump together with the criminals Clinton and Obama, wanting an explanation why I did so. Obviously, that person isn't paying attention, and I told him so.

Even supposedly impartial international organizations continue to abet the Outlaw US Empire's Big Lies: "A press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, has asked the Swiss Press Club to cancel a panel discussion on the 'true agenda' of the controversial White Helmets group. But the club's director won't budge, noting that such demands are typically made by oppressive regimes." Kudos for foreign agent RT for providing the report, https://www.rt.com/news/411116-reporters-white-helmets-censorship/ Activist Post tells us that the presentation's by Vanessa Beeley, with Bradon Turbeville adding this observation: "Rather than attend the event to ask questions and present its side of the argument, RWB responded with insults and hid away under the guise of boycotting the panel. Pouting in the corner and refusing to take part in the discussion, however, did not stop the discussion from taking place." Lots of additional info and many links here, https://www.activistpost.com/2017/11/despite-western-funded-ngos-boycott-vanessa-beeley-exposes-white-helmets-at-swiss-press-club.html

Peter AU 1 | Nov 29, 2017 3:56:48 PM | 7
karlof1 @6

Behind the persona, Trump may be far smarter than Obama or Clinton, and perhaps more dangerous as far as keeping the US empire alive, depending on which way he goes. I am starting think he won't create any new wars though, just let the neo-con establishment do their thing within a limit, to build up leverage and pressure against countries that he may well try and strike some sort of deal with in the future.

Tony B. | Nov 29, 2017 4:19:07 PM | 8
The state dept. is in its usual snit because Russia has just exposed the major CIA spy and pot stirring organs in Russia.
Perimetr | Nov 29, 2017 4:30:48 PM | 10
I don't give a damn what the Federal government wants me to see or hear, but obviously this is being done for the "benefit" of the majority of the public who will not look very far to get "informed" about current/world events. I don't see any end to this fascist process here in the "land of the free"; how long before they just shut down the net or limit it to approved websites?

Obviously this won't be one of them.

CarlD | Nov 29, 2017 4:39:12 PM | 11
@7

Beyond the personae and the relative intelligence of Clinton vs Obama vs Trump, one must admit that times are different. Both China and Russia are on the rise. China is now a formidable rival in economic terms and is rising militarily. And fast. Russia is recuperating from Gorbachev's treason and getting stronger by the day and is nowa World player to be reckoned with.

There is one thing that must be solved and that is the money exchange system through which gates most countries must pass to obtain their dues. China and Russia are working on it. Once this is complete, US sanctions will work no more. Even new internets are being created that will bypass the US controlled one.

There is not much anybody can do against the realignment of the globe. The Unipolar model is gone because the US could not manage it. Greed, U.S. greed, and exceptionalism killed it.

North Korea just proves that the US power and influence have limits. I presume, I may be wrong, that once KJU has a good enough number of warheads and rockets, he will want the US to vacate South Korea. Both the Russians and Chinese will love that. He will want sanctions lifted and see normal relations resume between NOKO and China and Russia.

There is no point for him to rock the boat if he does not pursue greater aims.

Trump is difficult to fathom but has too much morgue to be a good leader. When compared to Putin or even Rouhani, he is far too impulsive. But I guess deep down we would like the outcome to be better than the circumstances would lead us to expect. The US will remain a Zionist puppet for as long as Israel exists. If it is down to Israel's will, America will pass, but Zion will prevail. Jared is now the transmission belt in the Saudi, Israel, US triad. Which means that Israel has a personal ambassador to Trump. Because of the internal opposition to Trump, he must look for an external happening that will remove him from public scrutiny. He wont tackle Kim but he might believe Iran is gamer as he has allies in the endeavor.

Nobody will win this war but Israel may lose more than expected.

Ort | Nov 29, 2017 4:43:37 PM | 12
Another line just got crossed. I dislike the phrase "breaking news"-- it's a fraternal twin to "breaking wind"-- but RT is reporting that US Congressional authorities have withdrawn RT Network accreditaton. RT correspondents have been directed to turn in their credentials to the Congressional authorities. This effectively blacklists RT reporters from covering Congress; without credentials, they can't attend hearings, press conferences, etc.

Sorry to not provide a link, but this is so recent it isn't even on YouTube yet. It will be interesting to see whether the Western civil-liberties and "media-watchdog" organizations, including the ACLU, react to this draconian development, much less vociferously protest it. In any case, I doubt if we'll see the rest of the Congressional press corps stage a walkout in sympathy and solidarity with their silenced and censored RT colleagues.

Peter AU 1 | Nov 29, 2017 5:01:38 PM | 13
CarlD 11

Agree on China Russia ect, though I am starting to believe Trump is not impulsive, rather, he runs very well thought out stratagies. The impulsiveness is part of the persona. I run onto an analysis of how Trump opertes the persona within a narrow band, and he uses it to gain attention and then direct attention to where he wants it.
I think this video is worth watching - the first half deals mainly with Trump's persona. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWA5pOmSDgQ

Trump's persona is like an inversion layer in air or water. An inversion layer in air can create mirages, and in water, submarines can, or used to be able to hide under inversion layers. Pat Lang put in a comment at his blog, of a study of Trump that showed him change, or his public image change over the years, starting back in the eighties, as he developed the persona. He mentions Stallone in his book as somebody he respects as Stallone had the ability to deliver a product that a large percentage of Americans liked and wanted. I think the persona is somewhat based on Stallone's fictional characters.

james | Nov 29, 2017 5:11:42 PM | 17
rt reporting it now - https://www.rt.com/usa/411361-rt-congress-credentials-withdrawal/ the usa apparatus must be really freaking out that their is an alternative view on all of their bullshit~!
SlapHappy | Nov 29, 2017 5:19:49 PM | 18
Perimetr: Censoring the Internet is what the Net Neutrality debate is all about. If they repeal Net Neutrality, we can expect sites like Moon of Alabama to just spool and spool but never load, whereas CNN and Fox will load immediately.
Perimetr | Nov 29, 2017 5:59:24 PM | 19
RE SlapHappy. That makes sense. I already see that happening with RT on my iPhone. So now we will need Radio Free Russia to be set up in where, Mexico?
SPYRIDON POLITIS | Nov 29, 2017 6:29:44 PM | 20
There is not much new in the heavy-handed methods employed by the Empire - they have always employed intimidation, false flags, fake news, bribery and corruption, even assassination -but up till now went to some pains to cloak their actions in a mantle of morality. They usually attempted to swing public opinion behind their endeavours. What is frightening lately, is their brashness and total disregard for the public's opinion. Because they know that short of armed revolt, they have little to fear. The presstitute media shall whitewash their hypocrisy and all their crimes, and at election time they will once more own all the candidates.
notheonly1 | Nov 29, 2017 7:37:23 PM | 22
SlapHappy | Nov 29, 2017 5:19:49 PM | 18

Happening on google/youtube excessively. Stuff like the Jimmy Dore show, or any other critical outlet does not load, or takes forever respectively. Doggie videos and those showing stupid people doing stupid stuff - load instantly. It will be interesting to see, whence net neutrality is neutered, how the owners of the country will deal with the backlash of billions in lost revenue from online commerce.

Because people that can't get what they want when they don't shop, are unlikely to shop online any longer. The stench of censorship will keep those online consumers away - if not alone for endless loading times due to not being able to pay $ 800 per month for high speed internet.

khudre | Nov 29, 2017 7:47:01 PM | 24
First time US legalized targeting of media as "terrorists" thanks to neocon John Bolton and his zionist cohorts. Being labeled foreign agent is getting off easy http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/07/168921.html
ritzl | Nov 29, 2017 8:16:26 PM | 26
Are shortwave radios going to make a comeback? RT World Service?

It's tough to make out what the US endgame is in all this. It's probably even tougher to make out if the PTB in the US know what the endgame is. Open-ended, freestyle, ante-upping (by the US) devolution of any and all rational forms of coexistence, imo, with zero good outcomes.

Maybe even worse, the US PTB seem to have ZERO faith/confidence/belief in the "rightness" and resilience of our own system (certainly with cause), which makes them twitchy (re unstable) as a whole. Like a loaded gun in a shaky hand pointed at humanity.

Aw hell...

psychohistorian | Nov 29, 2017 8:48:23 PM | 29
@ b for his opening line

Today the U.S. State Department hit the ball of hypocrisy out of the park. After the park come the state/region/nation/world/universe. See how far yet they have to expand their hypocrisy.....why they are just getting warmed up......is China news next? To think there are so many people that watch TV for fake intrigue and ignore the real world machinations all around them.....sigh

Yeah, Right | Nov 29, 2017 9:08:25 PM | 31
Would be interesting to read the transcript of the next State Department Press Briefing, which the State spokesmodel must be dreading - talk about being handed an impossible brief......

Those briefings normally start with Matt Lee from Associated Press asking the first question, but I suspect that this time he'll start by turning to the RT reporter who is sitting in the back of the room and saying something along the lines of "No, please, you go first.....".

Ghost Ship | Nov 29, 2017 9:47:59 PM | 32
OT

While people are distracted by what is happening between Washington and Moscow, an election is being stolen and Clintonists will do nothing about it because Clinton and Obama made the thief, Juan Orlando Hernández, president of Honduras.

Back in 2009:

a cadre of military officers, businessmen, and right-wing politicians, including Hernández, overthrew the leftist President Manuel Zelaya
with encouragement and assistance from Hillary Clinton and the State Department.

Contrary to what the New Yorker goes on to say " after he vowed to run for re-election" Zelaya tried to organise a referendum to change the constitution to allow him to run a second time which many Clintonists attacked as being anti-democratic. Juan Orlando Hernández then packed the Supreme Court with his own supporters and had the constitution changed without a word of complaint from the State Department under Obama or any of the Clintonists who'd accused Zelaya of being anti-democratic.

Over the next few days I expect to see those same Clintonists accusing Trump of being anti-democratic for failing to object to Juan Orlando Hernández stealing the election but ignoring or excusing the responsibility Hillary Clinton has for what has happened just like they claim that Hillary Clinton has no responsibility for restoring slavery to Libya.

To be honest, with Americans I prefer the conservatives, red necks and all the other nutjobs over Clintonists because while some of the former are hypocrites, none of them are as sickeningly hypocritical as the Clintonists and their führer.

mauisurfer | Nov 29, 2017 10:49:48 PM | 39
Best analysis of USA policy since WW2. Monetary Imperialism by Michael Hudson If you think it is just about military weapons and bombings then you are seeing only the tip of the iceberg. There is a reason USA is initiating all those wars and coups. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/29/monetary-imperialism/
Pft | Nov 29, 2017 10:53:32 PM | 40
US and most of the west is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be. A good word for this is Orwellian.

Truth has been sacrificed for Propaganda since Bernay showed in WWI that Americans are helpless against it. Some combination of Fear, Nationalism and a Calvinistic God is all you need to get support for War, as well as some way to control the MSM to stay online with the message

It strikes me that Calvinism is not much different than Zionism and Islamism in terms of violence, intolerance and basically an unloving God so War Propaganda is just as effective in Israel and the Islamic world as in the West.

failure of imagination | Nov 29, 2017 11:03:32 PM | 42
Full Spectrum Quicksand. Grasping for national interests and not looking too confident. When I watch it on TV at other's places ( I just don't get TV...) I noticed it next to PornPerPay in the guide for a reason , tho not a fair one. They've had a CFR member on staff, so my Mockingbird tinfoil strainer gets going finer. I don't hear them being accused of wrong stories so, it's sour gripes. The couple of times RT came into a conversation was about Redacted Tonite.

I'm calling them the Worst Generation. Too early? Too late? Thanks b and all. Carthage must be rebuilt.

james | Nov 29, 2017 11:15:00 PM | 44
@41 forest.. thanks.. if that is what toivo thinks, then all i got to say to that is fascinating! i see it exactly the opposite.. it is the usa that is constantly lying... i would think the land of the free and brave weren't such chicken shits when it came to info, but obviously i am wrong here and thus the chicken shit designation of the crumbling us empire...
james | Nov 29, 2017 11:28:27 PM | 45
cluborlov - always fun! - why kremlin trolls always win!
http://cluborlov.blogspot.ca/2017/11/why-kremlin-trolls-always-win.html
b | Nov 30, 2017 1:01:45 AM | 51
@all - I updated the post with RT's loss of Congress Gallery credentials because it has now been put under FARA. Following from that RT will also lose White House credentials. Additionally a congress commission now wants to put The Chinese Xinhua agency under FARA and also all individually staff that works for Xinhua.
Anon | Nov 30, 2017 3:00:47 AM | 60
The hypocrisy is disgusting, meanwhhile the real censorship against media in Russia gets attacked in a campaing in the US. Russia Hysteria: US Congress Revokes RT's Capitol Hill Press Credentials https://www.reddit.com/r/TheNewsFeed/comments/7gh9eu/russia_hysteria_us_congress_revokes_rts_capitol/
Harry | Nov 30, 2017 3:37:25 AM | 62
Interesting times of the media war. US removed RT credentials to access Congress, I'm sure they will follow up with banning RT from the White House too. Russia will probably ban US media from Kremlin and other institutions in the mirror law. Whats next? US ban on Russian-linked media from US networks/satellites like they did with Iran? Will they dare to apply similar treatment to China? Interesting times indeed.

@ ToivoS | 34

why ban US propagated bullshit

Two reasons:

1. US perfected propaganda to the extent Goebbels would be proud of them. Thousands of PhDs/psychologists craft fake news presentation and masses manipulation, and it works. Just ask most of the Westerners, who believe that Assad or Iranians are evil, that Russia is a threat to the Worlds Peace, etc.

2. If Russia doesn't respond, US thinks they got away without repercussions and escalate, and then escalate some more. They will do that anyway now, but at the same time harming their own interests. How they will affect Russia's presidential elections, etc. if they are as confined as RT, but are losing even more because they have many more channels? They shot one bullet at Russia and got a ricochet of 10 bullets :)

Peter AU 1 | Nov 30, 2017 4:29:35 AM | 65
Harry | Nov 30, 2017 3:37:25 AM | 62

An anecdote I read one time. A Soviet journalist in the cold war era goes to the US for a while to work with US journalists. The actual story is a bit longer, but the ending is along these lines. The Soviet journalist says to the US journalists "It is very good. Americans believe your propaganda, whereas our people don't believe ours.

Now the situation is reversed, where US propaganda is not believed, and all Russia has to do is print the facts or ensure US propaganda gets broadcast within Russia. Russia seems to be doing both and it is driving the US nuts.

[Nov 30, 2017] WaPo Reporter Caught On Hidden Camera Being A Bit Too Honest; Admits No Evidence Of Trump-Russia Collusion Zero Hedge

Nov 30, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

WaPo Reporter Caught On Hidden Camera Being A Bit Too Honest; Admits "No Evidence" Of Trump-Russia Collusion Tyler Durden Nov 29, 2017 9:00 PM 0 SHARES CNN and New York Times , Project Veritas has now set their sights on the Washington Post. In a candid conversation with an undercover Project Veritas journalist, the Post's National Security Director, Adam Entous, put himself in danger of being a bit too honest, at least by his employer's standards, by admitting that "there's no evidence of [Trump-Russia collusion] that I've seen so far." Entous goes on to admit that "it's a fucking crap shoot" and that he has no idea how Mueller's investigation might turn out.

Entous : "Our reporting has not taken us to a plcae where I would be able to say with any confidence that the result of it is going to be the president being guilty of being in cahoots with the Russians. There's no evidence of that that I've seen so far."

PV Journalist : "There has to be something, right?"

Entous "Maybe, maybe not. It could just be lower-level people being manipulated or manipulating, but it's very hard to, it's really...It's a fucking black box."

"We've seen a lot of flirtation, if you will, between them but nothing that, in my opinion, would rank as actual collusion. Now that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, it just means we haven't found it yet. Or maybe it doesn't exist."

"I mean it's a fucking crap shoot. I literally have no prediction whatsoever as to what would happen, and I do all the stuff for the Post on this so..."

Today we show you our second undercover video within @washingtonpost this time exposing Nat'l Security Director Adam Entous who ADMITS that the Russia story is a "f*cking crap shoot" and "maybe it doesn't exist at all." pic.twitter.com/qeEfk9oCKA

-- James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 29, 2017

Of course, on the surface, Entous' opinions are not that explosive and likely mimic the views held by many Americans...namely that despite 1.5 years of investigations no one has presented any actual, tangible evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

That said , what is explosive about this particular undercover sting is just how different Entous' private views on the Trump-Russia investigation are from the constant stream of narrative-building collusion headlines that flood the Washington Post's homepage each and every day.

Like this one...

Or this one if you prefer...

Of course, rather than focus on the blatant media bias that has once again been exposed by Project Veritas, the mainstream media rushed to the defense of the Washington Post by focusing instead on the foiled attempt of one of O'Keefe's journalists to plant a fake story at WaPo to see if they would simply run it with no questions asked or actually do their jobs. Apparently CNN thought the foiled plot had put O'Keefe "on the defensive"...

...but O'Keefe seemed to not be all that defensive in his response below...which presumably means we'll all be treated to many more undercover stings in the years to come.

MSM want to destroy @Project_Veritas . They see us as their enemy. When we expose them, they are lose their power. We have a stone lodged between Goliath's eyes. They want me to kneel down & apologize. I will not. We will keep pushing, we will expose the truth. - @JamesOKeefeIII pic.twitter.com/vbBVxXtBD6

-- Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) November 29, 2017

Finally, here is the latest Project Veritas video for your viewing pleasure:

greenskeeper carl -> Bernie Madolf , Nov 29, 2017 9:12 PM

Apparently his WaPo thing didn't really work, but they can't all be winners. His exposing of those DNC operatives during the campaign was brilliant. To this day I do not understand why they were allowed to just get fired or resign from all their postings without an indictment.

nope-1004 -> greenskeeper carl , Nov 29, 2017 9:14 PM

Honest on hidden camera, full of shit in the MSM.

So it is with all .gov media outlets.

[Nov 30, 2017] The US Aristocracy's Smear-Russia Campaign Big Brother At Work

The USA has been honing an information age art of war -- through fake news, disinformation, leaks, and trolling -- for more than a decade. How can free societies protect themselves?"
Nov 30, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Billionaires, both liberal and conservative ones, own, and their corporations advertise in and their 'charities' donate to, America's mainstream (and also many 'alternative news') media.

They do this not so as to profit directly from the national 'news'media (a money-losing business, in itself), but so as to control the 'news' that the voting public (right and left) are exposed to and thus will accept as being "mainstream" and will reject all else as being "fringe" or even 'fake news', even if what's actually fake is, in fact, the billionaires' own mainstream 'news', such as their 'news'media had most famously 'reported' about 'Saddam's WMD' (but the'news'media never changed after that scandal -- even after having pumped uncritically that blatant lie to the public).

Have America's numerous foreign coups and outright military invasions (including Iraq 2003) been the result of fake-news that was published by the mainstream 'news'media, or only by some of the 'alternative news' sites that mirror what the mainstream ones have been 'reporting' (passing along the Government's lies just like the mainstream ones do)? Obviously, the catastrophic fake news -- the fake news that 'justified' America's invading and destroying Iraq, Libya, and many other countries -- was all published in the mainstream 'news'media. That's where to go for the really dangerous lies: it's the mainstream 'news'media. If those media, and their Government (whose lies they stenographically report to the public) will now censor the Internet, such as is increasingly happening not only in the US but in its allies including the European Union , then the only 'information' that the public will have access to, at all, will be the billionaires' lies. Have we already almost reached 1984 , finally, in 2017?

Two typical examples of this coordinated mass-deception-operation happened to be showing at the top of the magazine-pile at an office recently and struck my attention there, because of the ordinariness of the propaganda that was being pumped.

One of them was the cover of TIME magazine, dated "July 24, 2017" and with the cover headlined "RED HANDED: The Russia Scandal Hits Home" , overprinting onto the face of Donald Trump Jr., as their menacing-looking cover-image. That cover-story, as published inside, was titled "How Donald Trump Jr.'s Emails Have Cranked Up the Heat on His Family" , and it used such phrases as "potentially treasonous" and "Russia is the one country that could physically destroy America" (as if it weren't also the case that US is the one country that could physically destroy Russia, and very much the case also that possession of the weaponry isn't any indication of being evil, such as this particular propagandist was implicitly assuming). Hillary Clinton's V.P. running-mate was reported to be "saying that these fresh revelations move the Russia investigation into the realms of 'perjury, false statements and even, potentially, treason.'"

These mere speculations, with slimy inferences of evil, with no real facts that back them up, were the front-cover 'news', in TIME. The facts were thin, but the speculations were thick, and the only thing really clear from it was that almost all of America's billionaires and centi-millionaires want Trump ousted, and want Vice President Mike Pence to become America's President as soon as possible -- before Trump's term is up. Democratic ones certainly do, and many of the Republican ones apparently do as well. Perhaps Trump isn't hostile enough toward Russia to suit their fancy. At least Pence would be predictable -- predictably horrible, in precisely the way that the controllers of the 'news'media overwhelmingly desire.

The other example was the cover of The New Republic magazine, dated "December 2017" and it simply headlined in its center, "HOW TO ATTACK A DEMOCRACY ", and the opening page of the article inside was bannered "WEAKEN FROM WITHIN" and below that in the printed edition (the December physical issue of the magazine) was:

"Russian manipulation of American social media in the 2016 presidential election took the United States by surprise. But Moscow has been honing an information-age art of war -- through fake news, disinformation, leaks, and trolling -- for more than a decade. How can these societies protect themselves?"

The online version of that article (which was dated 2 November 2017) opened almost the same: "Moscow has been honing an information age art of war -- through fake news, disinformation, leaks, and trolling -- for more than a decade. How can free societies protect themselves?"

The unspoken assumption in this article is that the US CIA hasn't been doing the same thing -- and doing it even worse than the old (and thankfully expired) KGB ever did. (And the CIA, even after the end of communism as its supposed enemy until 1991, still does far worse to other countries than Russia's FSB does or ever did.)

Underlying both the TIME article and the TNR article are unstated speculations about the American situation, which are based upon thin facts such as that "at least $100,000 in ads purchased through 470 phony Facebook pages and accounts" were "using Facebook to incite anti-black hatred and anti-Muslim prejudice and fear while provoking extremism" , and that supposedly somehow (they never say how) such puny expenses threw the multi-billion-dollar 2017 US Presidential election to Trump. How is a case such as that, to be viewed by an intelligent reader as constituting anything but propaganda for the weapons-making firms such as Lockheed Martin, who benefit from such international anti-Russia hate-spewing to NATO countries, which are those firms' major markets (other than Saudi Arabia, and the other fundamentalist-Sunni kingdoms that together constitute the Gulf Cooperation Council or "GCC" nations, which hate Shiite Iran as much as the US regime hates Russia)?

Also among the underlying and unstated speculations in the background here is the older mass-media allegation about Russia's allegedly having spied and swayed the US election by 'hacking' it, which is likewise being pumped by Democrats and other opponents of Mr. Trump, alleging that 'Russia hacked the election' .

And, so, for an example of the flimsiness of those allegations, one of the two main 'authorities' who are the source of that, the Bush and Obama Administration's James Clapper, was headlined at Politico on 7 July 2017, "Clapper: No evidence others besides Russia hacked US election" . Mr. Clapper happens to be a military-industrial-complex revolving-door 'intelligence' 'professional' whom, on 10 February 2011, even Politico was reporting to be "backing away from comments he made Thursday calling Egypt's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement 'largely secular'," and who had also covered-up George W. Bush's lies about 'WMD in Iraq' so as to protect the liars. On 29 October 2003, the New York Times stenographically passed along his deception about the non-existent WMD by headlining, "WEAPONS SEARCH; Iraqis Removed Arms Material, US Aide Says" and reported, "The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material 'unquestionably' had been moved out of Iraq." No evidence ever existed that Saddam Hussein still had any WMD after the U.N. monitors (UNSCOM) destroyed the last of them in 1998; but Clapper 'unquestionably' 'knew' to the contrary -- though no evidence was ever made available to the contrary of UNSCOM's reports, and lots of evidence existed that Bush simply lied about the entire matter .

The other main source for the allegation that 'Russia hacked the election' is the Obama Administration's John Brennan, whom Glenn Greenwald exposed as a fraud back on 7 January 2013, headlining "John Brennan's extremism and dishonesty rewarded with CIA Director nomination" .

Both of the official 'experts' who are promoting the Russiagate charges, are longtime, and repeatedly, exposed liars - but that's the best they can do, always assuming that the public don't know that these people are propagandists for the military-industrial complex , not real 'public servants' at all.

This isn't to say that Trump isn't also a liar -- just that the 'news' in America is full of conflicting lies -- and that they constantly are coming from the fake 'news'media that are the mainstream ones who are now trying to censor out, and ultimately to obliterate, the few small news-operations (some of which, unlike any of the mainstream ones, actually are good, and authentic journalistic operations, no mere PR hackery) that are constantly exposing the fraudulence of the mainstream ones, which want to impose their dictatorship -- the mainstream lies -- even more rigorously than they already do. After all, the mainstream Western media still haven't yet reported US President Obama's bloody racist-fascist coup that in February 2014 replaced the democratically elected President of Ukraine (and his supporters in the legislature) by a racist-fascist or ideologically nazi regime that's rabidly hostile toward its neighboring nation of Russia . Even now -- nearly four years after the event. It's already solidly documented history , but the mainstream US-and-allied press still hasn't reported it.

The fake-news masters are certainly the mainstream 'news'media themselves - and they, and the billionaires and centi-millionaires who own and control them, are the real megaphones by which the US dictatorship constantly fools the American people (and the publics in its allied nations), to keep in line, for the aristocracy .

VWAndy , Nov 30, 2017 12:07 AM

The lies just keep getting bigger.

Skateboarder -> VWAndy , Nov 30, 2017 12:17 AM

"Us vs. them," the tune for the culling.

Slippery Slope -> Skateboarder , Nov 30, 2017 12:55 AM

Many of the Jewish Oligarchs in Russia and throughout the World, really hate Russia, I think it has to do with the Slavs conquest of the Khazars.

In that Putin rebuilt Russia and stopped them from thieving, irks them all the more.

jeff montanye -> Skateboarder , Nov 30, 2017 1:28 AM

if russia hacked the election why didn't the dnc ask, beg the fbi to examine the dnc email servers and prove it in detail? instead the dnc put forward the highly questionable crowdstrike and guccifer 2.0 materials.

why hasn't evidence from the vaunted national security agency, as shown by snowden to record everything, been presented to demonstrate russian hacking?

how can the fbi still maintain it never investigated the seth rich murder? even if seymour hersh is right and it wasn't connected to rich's very probable theft of dnc email data and its transmission to wikileaks, it certainly could have been and merited checking out. either the fbi is lying or incompetent (or both).

i sent a request to judicial watch (potentially explosive materials about the clinton lynch "tarmac" meeting to be released today) asking them to file freedom of information suits on the first and third paragraphs above. we must break out of the horrible zionist takeover of the u.s. that is explained in detail in chris bollyn's new book and video, the war on terror; the plot to rule the middle east . it is also the plot to rule the u.s.a.

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=chris+bollyn+war+on...

07564111 -> jeff montanye , Nov 30, 2017 1:38 AM

US Aristocracy = Joos In Charge

Kassandra -> jeff montanye , Nov 30, 2017 3:55 AM

Good on you.

In these days of internet, where we can actually know (or suspect) what is going on, why do the lies continue? When we all KNOW IT IS ALL A LIE!

Blue Steel 309 -> VWAndy , Nov 30, 2017 12:57 AM

The Soviets collapsed under the weight of their own lies, not the economy or cold war arms race.

We are next. Is this being orchestrated or just part of the sinusoidal process of this civilization?

[Nov 30, 2017] The people who worked in int'l finance in the 90s (representing countries to the WB and IMF) knew about the criminal callousness of these institutions when pushing 'austerity' or 'reform' policies. Local elites sometimes were complacent and profited (those privatizations! those newly opened markets!), sometimes resisted, but the US and the multilateral system –financial or otherwise– are ruthless and very hard to resist.

Nov 30, 2017 | www.unz.com

Anon , Disclaimer November 29, 2017 at 3:02 am GMT

The people who worked in int'l finance in the 90s (representing countries to the WB and IMF) knew about the criminal callousness of these institutions when pushing 'austerity' or 'reform' policies. Local elites sometimes were complacent and profited (those privatizations! those newly opened markets!), sometimes resisted, but the US and the multilateral system –financial or otherwise– are ruthless and very hard to resist.

Many countries suffered, not because they were Russian or Brazilian or Mexican, but because the opportunity for gain was there.

anon , Disclaimer November 29, 2017 at 4:51 am GMT
There's some common ground between the reds and whites in that the reds tapped into nationalist sentiments, hence the wars of national liberation around the world being supported by the communists: Korea, Vietnam, insurgencies in Latin America, Africa, etc. The script has flipped with the western countries now being the 'godless' ones who are trying to destroy religion, the family and traditional ways of life. The 1% were horrified that there was an ideology out there that advocated taking their loot away so they used all their resources in combatting it, even being willing to take the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon in doing so. They'd take the world down with them rather than lose their positions of power and money. Now that the ideology is no longer there it's just back to the business of robbing everyone weaker than them. All the hysteria about Putin is simply that he's built up the Russian state to where they can resist and that he's not a fellow slaveholder like them.

The intervention in Syria has unhinged parts of the west where they thought they could rob and kill anywhere they pleased but now have been successfully resisted. Political systems come and go but the people have endured for the past thousand years, something the fat cats of the west are trying to destroy to enlarge their slave plantation.

peterAUS , November 29, 2017 at 6:57 am GMT
@anon

he's not a fellow slaveholder like them .

Quick Google:
Inequality in Russia

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/apr/25/unequal-russia-is-anger-stirring-in-the-global-capital-of-inequality

" With the richest 10% owning 87% of all the country's wealth, Russia is rated the most unequal of the world's major economies. ."

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/wealth-inequality-in-russia-in-photos-2017-7?r=US&IR=T#/#li-mi-yan-photographed-this-series-in-moscow-1

" Russia has greater economic disparity than any other major global power. In 2016, Credit Suisse's Global Wealth Report found that the wealthiest 10% of people in Russia controlled 89% of the country's wealth ..

"The World Wealth and Inequality project's latest white-paper, co-authored by Thomas "Capital in the 21st Century" Piketty, painstaking pieces together fragmentary data-sources to build up a detailed picture of wealth inequality in Russia in the pre-revolutionary period; during phases of the Soviet era; on the eve of the collapse of the USSR; and ever since.

The headline findings: official Russian estimates drastically understate national inequality; Russia is as unequal as the USA or even moreso; Russian inequality is more intense than the inequality in other post-Soviet states and in post-Deng China.

This paper combines national accounts, survey, wealth and fiscal data (including recently released tax data on high-income taxpayers) in order to provide consistent series on the accumulation and distribution of income and wealth in Russia from the Soviet period until the present day. We find that official survey-based measures vastly under-estimate the rise of inequality since 1990. According to our benchmark estimates, top income shares are now similar to (or higher than) the levels observed in the United States. We also find that inequality has increased substantially more in Russia than in China and other ex-communist countries in Eastern Europe. We relate this finding to the specific transition strategy followed in Russia. According to our benchmark estimates, the wealth held offshore by rich Russians is about three times larger than official net foreign reserves, and is comparable in magnitude to total household financial assets held in Russia.

From Soviets to Oligarchs: Inequality and Property in Russia 1905-2016 [Filip Novokmet, Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman/World Wealth and Income Database]"

Etc

Cyrano , November 29, 2017 at 8:25 am GMT
@anon

People used to stage revolutions in order to bring communism to their countries. Plenty of examples for that: Russia, China, Cuba and many others. Of course, those people were deluded, right? Who would want to bring a system that preaches economic equality? It must be someone who is out of their mind. Has there ever been a capitalist revolution where someone took up arms trying to bring capitalism to their country? Must be because it's such a humane and desirable system. Also, a lot of people think that Islam is a backward religion. Really? Then how come it tolerates socialism (communism), better than Christianity ever did? Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan they were all socialist at some point. That's why the greatest democracy set their sights on them to destroy them. Because, you see, by their calculations, no matter how extremist and backward the Islam gets, it's still more progressive than socialism or communism. Helluva math there. The game has always been about preserving capitalism, and not the most benign version either. Which is too bad, because capitalism has been known to tolerate dictatorship, fascism, Nazism, slavery – pretty much the ugliest forms of government the sick human mind can come up with, but it can't tolerate little bit of socialism. Because you see, socialism is worse than any of those lovely political systems. Democracy (capitalism) is too pure for that, such a fragile and delicate thing that it is.

I am surprised Sweden hasn't been bombed yet, for their flirting with socialism, but the way the things are going over there, they don't have to be bombed. They did themselves in by following someone's stupid ideas about multiculturalism – which of course is also a form of socialism – racial one, instead the real deal – the economic socialism that the greatest democracy of them all is so afraid of.

Kiza , November 29, 2017 at 12:30 pm GMT
When the Serbians in different parts of Yugoslavia started being attacked by the West, I was constantly pointing out that in recent times, since WW1, an attack on Serbia has been a kind of introduction to an attack on Russia. In other words, I had no doubt that Russia was next.

But, there is one huge difference between Serbia and Russia. Whilst the Serbians killed very few of those Western Zionist military mercenaries who were killing Serbians directly or using their Croat, Muslim and Albanian proxies, if attacked the Russian military could kill hundreds of thousands of the Western mercenaries. This is why whilst the war on Serbia was real and bloody only on Serbians and the Bosnian Muslim proxies, the war on Russia would be totally disastrous for the Anglozionist Empire. This is the only reason a shooting war on Russia has not started already.

For my money, Saker emphasises the supposed friendliness of the Western people towards Russia too much. It is not the Western people who want to attack Russia then the Western Anglozionist elite, but the Western people really do not care, as long as it is not the blood of their progeny and their own money paying for bringing Russia to heel.

And if Russia is destroyed, just like Ukraine, then there could be some lucrative jobs when the Western Zio-elite starts dismembering the Russian corpse. And well paying jobs are in great demand in the bankrupt West. The unwritten contract that the Western people have with their Anglozionist elite says: find a way to destroy Russia without a global nuclear war, cheaply, without serious dying on our side and throw us a few bones and we will gladly hybernate our moral conscience.

yeah , November 29, 2017 at 3:31 pm GMT
@Quartermaster

Well, what evidence have you for asserting that Putin is a thug? You saw through the media's false reporting earlier as you admit, so how come you again swallow the load of marbles that they dish out?

And while Putin may or may not be feared by "near abroad" he certainly is feared by those who seek total dominance of the planet. The thing is, he is not an easy pushover and that is what is behind the thug claims. Many thinking people admire his intellect, statesmanship, and skill in dealing with major problems of our times. The media also hates him because he shows up the western leaders for the clowns that they are.

A principled US Government would have dealt very differently with Russia and Putin. There is no inherent conflict of interest with Russia once global dominance is discarded as the main policy objective.

Avery , November 29, 2017 at 3:59 pm GMT
@Quartermaster

{The only people that fear Putin is the near abroad, .}

Sure, if you say so, Bub.
Texas* is, of course, 'near aboard' .

[Russia has begun testing of its new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the RS-28 Sarmat. Sarmat can carry a payload of up to ten tons of nukes. The missile system is set to enter service in 2018.
The RS-28 Sarmat is the first entirely new Russian ICBM in decades. The heavyweight missile weighs 100 tons and can boost 10 tons. Russia claims the Sarmat can lift 10 heavyweight warheads, or 16 lighter ones, and Russian state media has described it as being able to wipe out an area the size of Texas or France.]

_______________________
*
[Russia's New ICBM Could "Wipe Out Texas"]

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23547/russias-new-icbm-could-wipe-out-texas/

disturbed_robot , November 29, 2017 at 4:20 pm GMT
@WorkingClass

Wow, this is the most refreshing and clear minded comment I've seen here in a while. Nice job WorkingClass, you've managed to keep your mind clear and not buy into the BS. You've given me some hope Thank you.

Anonymous , Disclaimer November 29, 2017 at 4:52 pm GMT
@peterAUS

Inequality in Russia

The supposed leaders of the West are busy trying to replace or at the very least water down their own populations with a totally different set of people from far away. Obviously these supposedly democratic leaders loathe what are supposed to be their own people but rather see all those below them as just so many replaceable units of labor, the mark of a "slaveholder". Putin has helped his people immensely. Life expectancies had plummeted into the 50′s and that's now been improved greatly as well as living standards. He's popular because he's done much for the people he identifies with, unlike Western leaders who hold their noses when anywhere near the citizenry. If the Russians like him then they must not be as worried about some issues as critics outside the country appear to be.

L.K , November 29, 2017 at 6:35 pm GMT
Very interesting interview with Professor McCoy:

On Contact: Decline of the American empire with Alfred McCoy

WorkingClass , November 29, 2017 at 7:03 pm GMT
@disturbed_robot

Thanks for the kind words.

Aedib , November 29, 2017 at 7:08 pm GMT
@James N. Kennett

It is hard to find people in the West who "hate the Russian people themselves"; but in place of hatred there is definitely fear – fear of Russia's military strength.

Disagree. The enormous propagandistic effort to demonize Russia in the West, not only reveals fear. It also reveals hate, at least on most of the elites. Most people are indifferent toward Russia but elites definitively have fear to the bear. You can test some people by simply naming "Russia" and you will see on their eyes a quite irrationala mix of hate and fear. I think this is result of an Orwellian propaganda effort aimed at injecting fear to "Eurasia".

This fear is exaggerated by the US military-industrial complex for its own purposes;

Agreed.

gwynedd1 , November 29, 2017 at 7:22 pm GMT
@WorkingClass

Given any two races or culture , what they are and what I think of them hardly matters. However pitted against each other it will cultivate and create good conditions for the scum of both of them and embroil the rest in the conflict. It is an against of chaos for a hostile order.

gwynedd1 , November 29, 2017 at 7:30 pm GMT
@Quartermaster

"Why should the west try to destroy Russia? They're doing a great job of it all by themselves"

How many times have you visited Russia?

Cyrano , November 29, 2017 at 7:41 pm GMT
@Philip Owen

Right. Those were capitalist revolutions. You are bang on. Capitalism is one of the most tolerant systems of all kinds of extremism, as I already mentioned. Capitalism has been known to tolerate monarchy, fascism, Nazism, various forms of dictatorships, slavery, pretty much everything. But they draw the line at tolerating socialism, like it's the worst extremism they have ever tolerated. My point is, capitalism is pretty robust system, it's not some delicate beauty that will fall apart if it comes in touch with socialism. Democracy is only a window dressing, it has never been about democracy, it has always been about capitalism.

AB_Anonymous , November 29, 2017 at 8:12 pm GMT
There's nothing easier nowadays than becoming a Kremlin (or any other kind of) Troll. Just start talking about things as they are and you're half way through. Keep talking that way a bit longer, and you'll forever become another precious source of income for the army of no-talent crooks with unlimited rights and zero oversee from those for whom they officially work. These guys are simply used to build their entire careers and financial well-beings by adjusting reality to their needs. They've been doing it for decades. Why not, as long as the true bosses are happy ? Why not, when the MSM will make population to swallow anything, no matter how idiotic and illogical it is ?

[Nov 29, 2017] The Russian Question by Niall Ferguson

Highly recommended!
This year old article written at the beginning of anti-Russian witch hunt makes it easier to understand the tribe of "national security parasites" to which Ferguson firmly belongs. Like many other members of the national security parasites tribe, he made a brilliant career pandering to right-wing think tanks.
The very simple message of this tribe is "Carnage should be destroyed" and argumentation is selectively produced to support this very idea. This is a dangerous level of political paranoia, or imperial sense of inferiority, if you wish. He is so incoherent and selective in his rendering of Russian history that he looks like a charlatan, not historian.
Note that the term "neoliberalism" and "US neoliberal empire" are not even mentioned by this "historian". The tribe prohibits using those terms.
Also not mentioned was an attempt by Clinton administration to subjugate Russia and convert it into vassal state which was instrumental in bringing Putin to power.
As for Ukraine he conveniently forgot the role of Victoria Nuland in Maydan events (aka Nulandgate). The idea to break China-Russia cooperation by dangling different carrots at both, the carrots the move then apart, is the replay of British strategy to prevent any possible alliance between Germany and and Russia. Nothing new here. It is a standard imperial policy to destroy any alliance that threaten the empire global domination.
Notable quotes:
"... Nevertheless, it is important to remember what exactly Putin said on that occasion. In remarks that seemed mainly directed at the Europeans in the room, he warned that a "unipolar world" - meaning one dominated by the United States - would prove "pernicious not only for all those within this system but also for the sovereign itself." America's "hyper use of force," Putin said, was "plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts." Speaking at a time when neither Iraq nor Afghanistan seemed especially good advertisements for U.S. military intervention, those words had a certain force, especially in German ears. ..."
"... If I look back on what I thought and wrote during the administration of George W. Bush, I would say that I underestimated the extent to which the expansion of both NATO and the European Union was antagonizing the Russians. ..."
"... Though notionally intended to detect and counter Iranian missiles, these installations were bound to be regarded by the Russians as directed at them. The subsequent deployment of Iskander short-range missiles to Kaliningrad was a predictable retaliation. ..."
"... The biggest miscalculation, however, was the willingness of the Bush administration to consider Ukraine for NATO membership and the later backing by the Obama administration of EU efforts to offer Ukraine an association agreement. ..."
"... This was despite an explicit warning from Putin's aide Sergei Glazyev, who attended the conference, that signing the EU association agreement would lead to "political and social unrest," a dramatic decline in living standards, and "chaos." ..."
"... "I don't really even need George Kennan right now," President Obama told the New Yorker ..."
"... It was foolish to expect Russians to view with equanimity the departure into the Western sphere of influence of the heartland of medieval Russia, the breadbasket of the tsarist empire, the setting for Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard ..."
"... One might have thought the events of 2014 would have taught U.S. policymakers a lesson. Yet the Obama administration has persisted in misreading Russia. It was arguably a mistake to leave Germany and France to handle the Ukraine crisis, when more direct U.S. involvement might have made the Minsk agreements effective. ..."
"... President Obama has been right in saying that Russia is a much weaker power than the United States. His failure has been to exploit that American advantage. ..."
"... After all, an economic system that prefers an oil price closer to $100 a barrel than $50 benefits more than most from escalating conflict in the Middle East and North Africa - preferably conflict that spills over into the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. ..."
"... However, if that is the goal of Russia's strategy, then it is hard to see for how much longer Beijing and Moscow will be able to cooperate in the Security Council. Beijing needs stability in oil production and low oil prices as much as Russia needs the opposite. Because of recent tensions with the United States, Russia has been acquiescent as the "One Belt, One Road" program extends China's economic influence into Central Asia, once a Russian domain. There is potential conflict of interest there, too. ..."
foreignpolicy.com

Moscow may no longer be a superpower, but its revanchist politics are unsettling the international order. How should Donald Trump deal with Vladimir Putin?

... ... ...

It did not have to be this way. Twenty-five years ago, the dissolution of the Soviet Union marked not only the end of the Cold War but also the beginning of what should have been a golden era of friendly relations between Russia and the West. With enthusiasm, it seemed, Russians embraced both capitalism and democracy. To an extent that was startling, Russian cities became Westernized. Empty shelves and po-faced propaganda gave way to abundance and dazzling advertisements.

Contrary to the fears of some, there was a new world order after 1991. The world became a markedly more peaceful place as the flows of money and arms that had turned so many regional disputes into proxy wars dried up. American economists rushed to advise Russian politicians. American multinationals hurried to invest.

Go back a quarter century to 1991 and imagine three more or less equally plausible futures. First, imagine that the coup by hard-liners in August of that year had been more competently executed and that the Soviet Union had been preserved. Second, imagine a much more violent dissolution of the Soviet system in which ethnic and regional tensions escalated much further, producing the kind of "super-Yugoslavia" Kissinger has occasionally warned about. Finally, imagine a happily-ever-after history, in which Russia's economy thrived on the basis of capitalism and globalization, growing at Asian rates.

Russia could have been deep-frozen. It could have disintegrated. It could have boomed. No one in 1991 knew which of these futures we would get. In fact, we got none of them. Russia has retained the democratic institutions that were established after 1991, but the rule of law has not taken root, and, under Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian nationalist form of government has established itself that is notably ruthless in its suppression of opposition and criticism. Despite centrifugal forces, most obviously in the Caucasus, the Russian Federation has held together. However, the economy has performed much less well than might have been hoped. Between 1992 and 2016, the real compound annual growth rate of Russian per capita GDP has been 1.5 percent. Compare that with equivalent figures for India (5.1 percent) and China (8.9 percent).

Today, the Russian economy accounts for just over 3 percent of global output, according to the International Monetary Fund's estimates based on purchasing power parity. The U.S. share is 16 percent. The Chinese share is 18 percent. Calculated on a current dollar basis, Russia's GDP is less than 7 percent of America's. The British economy is twice the size of Russia's.

Moreover, the reliance of the Russian economy on exported fossil fuels - as well as other primary products - is shocking. Nearly two-thirds of Russian exports are petroleum (63 percent), according the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

... ... ...

Nevertheless, it is important to remember what exactly Putin said on that occasion. In remarks that seemed mainly directed at the Europeans in the room, he warned that a "unipolar world" - meaning one dominated by the United States - would prove "pernicious not only for all those within this system but also for the sovereign itself." America's "hyper use of force," Putin said, was "plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts." Speaking at a time when neither Iraq nor Afghanistan seemed especially good advertisements for U.S. military intervention, those words had a certain force, especially in German ears.

Nearly 10 years later, even Putin's most splenetic critics would be well-advised to reflect for a moment on our own part in the deterioration of relations between Washington and Moscow. The Russian view that the fault lies partly with Western overreach deserves to be taken more seriously than it generally is.

Is the West to blame?

If I look back on what I thought and wrote during the administration of George W. Bush, I would say that I underestimated the extent to which the expansion of both NATO and the European Union was antagonizing the Russians.

Certain decisions still seem to me defensible. Given their experiences in the middle of the 20th century, the Poles and the Czechs deserved both the security afforded by NATO membership (from 1999, when they joined along with Hungary) and the economic opportunities offered by EU membership (from 2004). Yet the U.S. decision in March 2007 to build an anti-ballistic missile defense site in Poland along with a radar station in the Czech Republic seems, with hindsight, more questionable, as does the subsequent decision to deploy 10 two-stage missile interceptors and a battery of MIM-104 Patriot missiles in Poland. Though notionally intended to detect and counter Iranian missiles, these installations were bound to be regarded by the Russians as directed at them. The subsequent deployment of Iskander short-range missiles to Kaliningrad was a predictable retaliation.

A similar act of retaliation followed in 2008 when, with encouragement from some EU states, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. In response, Russia recognized rebels in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and invaded those parts of Georgia. From a Russian perspective, this was no different from what the West had done in Kosovo.

The biggest miscalculation, however, was the willingness of the Bush administration to consider Ukraine for NATO membership and the later backing by the Obama administration of EU efforts to offer Ukraine an association agreement. I well remember the giddy mood at a pro-European conference in Yalta in September 2013, when Western representatives almost unanimously exhorted Ukraine to follow the Polish path. Not nearly enough consideration was given to the very different way Russia regards Ukraine nor to the obvious West-East divisions within Ukraine itself. This was despite an explicit warning from Putin's aide Sergei Glazyev, who attended the conference, that signing the EU association agreement would lead to "political and social unrest," a dramatic decline in living standards, and "chaos."

This is not in any way to legitimize the Russian actions of 2014, which were in clear violation of international law and agreements. It is to criticize successive administrations for paying too little heed to Russia's sensitivities and likely reactions.

"I don't really even need George Kennan right now," President Obama told the New Yorker's David Remnick in early 2014. The very opposite was true. He and his predecessor badly needed advisors who understood Russia as well as Kennan did. As Kissinger has often remarked, history is to nations what character is to people. In recent years, American policymakers have tended to forget that and then to wax indignant when other states act in ways that a knowledge of history might have enabled them to anticipate. No country, it might be said, has had its character more conditioned by its history than Russia. It was foolish to expect Russians to view with equanimity the departure into the Western sphere of influence of the heartland of medieval Russia, the breadbasket of the tsarist empire, the setting for Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard, the crime scene of Joseph Stalin's man-made famine, and the main target of Adolf Hitler's Operation Barbarossa.

One might have thought the events of 2014 would have taught U.S. policymakers a lesson. Yet the Obama administration has persisted in misreading Russia. It was arguably a mistake to leave Germany and France to handle the Ukraine crisis, when more direct U.S. involvement might have made the Minsk agreements effective. It was certainly a disastrous blunder to give Putin an admission ticket into the Syrian conflict by leaving to him the (partial) removal of Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons. One of Kissinger's lasting achievements in the early 1970s was to squeeze the Soviets out of the Middle East. The Obama administration has undone that, with dire consequences. We see in Aleppo the Russian military for what it is: a master of the mid-20th-century tactic of winning victories through the indiscriminate bombing of cities.

Left: Free Syrian Army fighters fire an anti-aircraft weapon in Aleppo on Dec. 12. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images); Right: Far-right Ukrainian activists attack the office of the pro-Russian movement "Ukrainian Choice" in Kiev on Nov. 21. (Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images)

What price peace?

Yet I remain to be convinced that the correct response to these errors of American policy is to swing from underestimating Russia to overestimating it. Such an approach has the potential to be just another variation on the theme of misunderstanding.

It is not difficult to infer what Putin would like to get in any "great deal" between himself and Trump. Item No. 1 would be a lifting of sanctions. Item No. 2 would be an end to the war in Syria on Russia's terms - which would include the preservation of Assad in power for at least some "decent interval." Item No. 3 would be a de facto recognition of Russia's annexation of Crimea and some constitutional change designed to render the government in Kiev impotent by giving the country's eastern Donbass region a permanent pro-Russian veto power.

What is hard to understand is why the United States would want give Russia even a fraction of all this. What exactly would Russia be giving the United States in return for such concessions? That is the question that Trump's national security team needs to ask itself before he so much as takes a courtesy call from the Kremlin.

There is no question that the war in Syria needs to end, just as the frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine needs resolution. But the terms of peace can and must be very different from those that Putin has in mind. Any deal that pacified Syria by sacrificing Ukraine would be a grave mistake.

President Obama has been right in saying that Russia is a much weaker power than the United States. His failure has been to exploit that American advantage.

... ... ...

The Russian Question itself can be settled another day. But by reframing the international order on the basis of cooperation rather than deadlock in the Security Council, the United States at least poses the question in a new way. Will Russia learn to cooperate with the other great powers? Or will it continue to be the opponent of international order? Perhaps the latter is the option it will choose. After all, an economic system that prefers an oil price closer to $100 a barrel than $50 benefits more than most from escalating conflict in the Middle East and North Africa - preferably conflict that spills over into the oil fields of the Persian Gulf.

However, if that is the goal of Russia's strategy, then it is hard to see for how much longer Beijing and Moscow will be able to cooperate in the Security Council. Beijing needs stability in oil production and low oil prices as much as Russia needs the opposite. Because of recent tensions with the United States, Russia has been acquiescent as the "One Belt, One Road" program extends China's economic influence into Central Asia, once a Russian domain. There is potential conflict of interest there, too.

... ... ...

[Nov 29, 2017] Brennan and Clapper Elder Statesmen or Serial Fabricators by Mike Whitney

Brennan is probably one of the key figures in color revolution against Trump that was launched after the elections...
Looks like both Brennan and Clapper suffer from the acute case of Anti-Russian paranoia along with Full Spectrum Dominance hallucinations.
Notable quotes:
"... In other words, after an arduous 12 month-long investigation involving both Houses of Congress, a Special Counsel, and a small army of high-paid Washington attorneys, the only straw Brennan has found to hold on to, is a few innocuous advertisements posted on Facebook and Twitter that had no noticeable impact on the election at all. That's a very weak foundation upon which to build a case for foreign espionage or presidential collusion. It's hard not to conclude that the public has been seriously misled by the leaders of this campaign. ..."
"... The Intel bosses continue to believe that they can overcome the lack of evidence by repeating the same claims over and over again. The problem with this theory is that Brennan's claims don't match the findings of his own "Gold Standard" report, the so called Intelligence Community Assessment or ICA which was published on January 6, 2017 and which supposedly provides rock solid evidence of Russian meddling. The greatly over-hyped ICA proves nothing of the kind, in fact, the report features a sweeping disclaimer that cautions readers against drawing any rash conclusions from the analysts observations ..."
"... So, while Brennan continues to insist that the Kremlin was involved in the elections, his own analysts suggest that any such judgments should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Nothing is certain, information is "incomplete or fragmentary", and the entire report is based on what-amounts-to 'educated guesswork.' Is Brennan confused about the report's findings or is he deliberately trying to mislead the American people about its conclusions? ..."
"... There appears to be a significant discrepancy between Brennan's unshakable belief in Russian intervention and the findings of his own "hand picked" analysts who said with emphatic clarity: "Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact." ..."
"... Clapper played a key role in the bogus Iraq-WMD intelligence when he was head of the National Geo-spatial Agency and hid the fact that there was zero evidence in satellite imagery of any weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq invasion. When no WMDs were found, Clapper told the media that he thought they were shipped off to Syria. ..."
"... In 2013, Clapper perjured himself before Congress by denying NSA's unconstitutional blanket surveillance of Americans. After evidence emerged revealing the falsity of Clapper's testimony, he wrote a letter to Congress admitting, "My response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize." . ..."
"... Clapper also has demonstrated an ugly bias about Russians. On May 28, as a former DNI, Clapper explained Russian "interference" in the U.S. election to NBC's Chuck Todd on May 28 with a tutorial on what everyone should know about "the historical practices of the Russians." Clapper said, "the Russians, typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." ("Mocking Trump Doesn't Prove Russia's Guilt", Ray McGovern, Consortium News) ..."
"... So, Clapper concealed information that could have slowed or prevented the rush to war in Iraq. That's a significant failing on his part that suggests either poor judgment or moral weakness. Which is it? ..."
"... Brennan, as a Bush-era CIA official, had expressly endorsed Bush's programs of torture (other than waterboarding) and rendition and also was a vocal advocate of immunizing lawbreaking telecoms for their role in the illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping program ..."
"... So, Brennan supported kidnapping (rendition), torture (enhanced interrogation techniques) and targeted assassinations (drone attacks). And this is the man we are supposed to trust about Russia? Keep in mind, the jihadist militants that have been tearing apart Syria for the last six years were armed and trained by the CIA Brennan's CIA ..."
"... As we noted earlier, Brennan and Clapper are central figures in the Russia-gate story, but their records show we can't trust what they have to say. They are like the eyewitness in a murder trial whose testimony is 'thrown out' because he is exposed as a compulsive liar. The same rule applies to Clapper and Brennan, that is, when the main proponents of the Russia hacking story are shown to be untrustworthy, we must discount what they have to say. ..."
"... From the presented evidence: Serial Fabricators! I have much more confidence in the veracity of used car salesmen than that of Messrs. Brennan and Clapper. ..."
"... Becoming friends with Russia, the only potential enemy available, would destroy the MIC. A real possibility the Washington establishment will never allow to happen. ..."
"... What is that having to do with the content of Mr. Whitney's good article? Mr. Whitney, to me you are of the quarter or less of Counterpunch writers who are to making sense most of the time. . . . and am always liking your writing style. Trump could have been or be a great pres. of your nation, but between dropping advisors for no good reason, becoming frightened and drawing away from his desire for rapprochement with the Russian Federation, worst of all, from this distant perspective, to appointing his daughter and son-in-law as senior advisors. Both are overpriveleged morons. ..."
"... Clapper is a befuddled old fool and can be safely ignored. Brennan is something far more sinister. ..."
"... Pompeo should have reversed every single thing he did the minute he took office, starting with firing every CIA employee brought into the Agency by Brennan (this can be done – CIA employees have no Civil Service protection). That Brennan is still at large after his outrageous involvement in the phony Russia dossier is an indictment of Jeff Sessions, Trump, the DOJ and the FBI. He could be indicted on a host of Federal charges if somebody had the guts to do it. ..."
"... Professional liars. But, there was some question/doubt about this? ..."
"... As to the US spending $5 billion of US taxpayers money to 'destabilize Ukraine', we can prove that. Or at least we can take the word of a US official that this was true. Hillary's Assistant Secretary of State said this publicly at the National Press Club on Dec 13, 2013 . a few months before the violent coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine. ..."
Nov 27, 2017 | www.unz.com

Mike Whitney November 17, 2017

On Sunday, Former CIA Director John Brennan and Former National Intelligence Director (NID) James Clapper appeared on CNN's morning talk show, State of the Union, to discuss Donald Trump's brief meeting with Vladimir Putin in Vietnam. The two ex-Intel chiefs were sharply critical of Trump and wondered why the president did not "not acknowledge and embrace" the idea that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections. According to Brennan, Russia not only "poses a national security problem" for the US, but also "Putin is committed to undermining our system, our democracy, and our whole process."

Naturally, CNN anchor, Jake Tapper, never challenged Brennan or Clapper on any of the many claims they made regarding Russia nor did he interrupt either man while they made, what appeared to be, carefully scripted remarks about Trump, Putin and the ongoing investigation.

There were no surprise announcements during the interview and neither Brennan or Clapper added anything new to the list of allegations that have been repeated ad nauseam in the media for the last year. The only time Tapper veered off course at all was when he asked Brennan whether he thought "any laws were broken by the Trump campaign? Here's what Brennan said:

I'm just a former intelligence officer. I never had the responsibility for determining whether or not criminal actions were taken. But, since leaving office on the 20th of January, I think more and more of this iceberg is emerging above the surface of the water, some of the things that I knew about, but some of the things I didn't know about, in terms of some of the social media efforts that Russia employed. So, I think what Bob Mueller, who, again, is another quintessential public servant, is doing is trying to get to the bottom of this. And I think we're going to find out how large this iceberg really is.

In other words, after an arduous 12 month-long investigation involving both Houses of Congress, a Special Counsel, and a small army of high-paid Washington attorneys, the only straw Brennan has found to hold on to, is a few innocuous advertisements posted on Facebook and Twitter that had no noticeable impact on the election at all. That's a very weak foundation upon which to build a case for foreign espionage or presidential collusion. It's hard not to conclude that the public has been seriously misled by the leaders of this campaign.

The Intel bosses continue to believe that they can overcome the lack of evidence by repeating the same claims over and over again. The problem with this theory is that Brennan's claims don't match the findings of his own "Gold Standard" report, the so called Intelligence Community Assessment or ICA which was published on January 6, 2017 and which supposedly provides rock solid evidence of Russian meddling. The greatly over-hyped ICA proves nothing of the kind, in fact, the report features a sweeping disclaimer that cautions readers against drawing any rash conclusions from the analysts observations. Here's the money-quote from the report:

Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.

So, while Brennan continues to insist that the Kremlin was involved in the elections, his own analysts suggest that any such judgments should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Nothing is certain, information is "incomplete or fragmentary", and the entire report is based on what-amounts-to 'educated guesswork.' Is Brennan confused about the report's findings or is he deliberately trying to mislead the American people about its conclusions?

Here's Brennan again on Sunday:

I think Mr. Trump knows that the intelligence agencies, specifically CIA, NSA and FBI, the ones that really have responsibility for counterintelligence and looking at what Russia does, it's very clear that the Russians interfered in the election. And it's still puzzling as to why Mr. Trump does not acknowledge that and embrace it, and also push back hard against Mr. Putin. The Russian threat to our democracy and our democratic foundations is real.

There appears to be a significant discrepancy between Brennan's unshakable belief in Russian intervention and the findings of his own "hand picked" analysts who said with emphatic clarity: "Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact."

Why is it so hard for Brennan to wrap his mind around that simple, unambiguous statement? The reason Brennan's intelligence analysts admit that they have no proof, is because they have no proof. That might sound obvious, but we have to assume that it isn't given that both Houses of Congress and a Special Counsel are still bogged down in an investigation that has yet to provide even a solid lead let alone any compelling evidence.

We also have to assume that most people do not understand that there is not sufficient evidence to justify the massive investigations that are currently underway. (What probable cause?) Adds placed in Facebook do not constitute hard evidence of foreign espionage or election rigging. They indicate the desperation of the people who are leading the investigation. The fact that serious people are even talking about social media just underscores the fact that the search for proof has produced nothing.

These investigations are taking place because powerful elites want to vilify an emerging geopolitical rival (Russia) and prevent Trump from normalizing relations with Moscow, not because there is any evidence of criminal wrongdoing. As the Intel analysts themselves acknowledge, there is no proof of criminal wrongdoing or any other wrongdoing for that matter. What there is, is a political agenda to discredit Trump and demonize Russia. That's the fuel that is driving the present campaign.

Russia-gate is not about 'meddling', it's about politics. And Brennan and Clapper are critical players in the current drama. They're supposed to be the elder statesmen who selflessly defend the country from foreign threats. But are they or is this just role-playing that doesn't square with what we already know about the two men? Here's thumbnail sketch of Clapper written by former-CIA officer Ray McGovern that will help to clarify the point:

Clapper played a key role in the bogus Iraq-WMD intelligence when he was head of the National Geo-spatial Agency and hid the fact that there was zero evidence in satellite imagery of any weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq invasion. When no WMDs were found, Clapper told the media that he thought they were shipped off to Syria.

In 2013, Clapper perjured himself before Congress by denying NSA's unconstitutional blanket surveillance of Americans. After evidence emerged revealing the falsity of Clapper's testimony, he wrote a letter to Congress admitting, "My response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize." .

Clapper also has demonstrated an ugly bias about Russians. On May 28, as a former DNI, Clapper explained Russian "interference" in the U.S. election to NBC's Chuck Todd on May 28 with a tutorial on what everyone should know about "the historical practices of the Russians." Clapper said, "the Russians, typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." ("Mocking Trump Doesn't Prove Russia's Guilt", Ray McGovern, Consortium News)

So, Clapper concealed information that could have slowed or prevented the rush to war in Iraq. That's a significant failing on his part that suggests either poor judgment or moral weakness. Which is it?

He also lied about spying on the American people. Why? Why would he do that? And why should we trust someone who not only spied on us but also paved the way to war in Iraq?

And the rap-sheet on Brennan is even worse than Clapper's. Check out this blurb from Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian:

"Brennan, as a Bush-era CIA official, had expressly endorsed Bush's programs of torture (other than waterboarding) and rendition and also was a vocal advocate of immunizing lawbreaking telecoms for their role in the illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping program

Obama then appointed him as his top counter-terrorism adviser . In that position, Brennan last year got caught outright lying when he claimed Obama's drone program caused no civilian deaths in Pakistan over the prior year .

Brennan has also been in charge of many of Obama's most controversial and radical policies, including "signature strikes" in Yemen – targeting people without even knowing who they are – and generally seizing the power to determine who will be marked for execution without any due process, oversight or transparency .." ("John Brennan's extremism and dishonesty rewarded with CIA Director nomination", Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian)

So, Brennan supported kidnapping (rendition), torture (enhanced interrogation techniques) and targeted assassinations (drone attacks). And this is the man we are supposed to trust about Russia? Keep in mind, the jihadist militants that have been tearing apart Syria for the last six years were armed and trained by the CIA Brennan's CIA

These radical militias have been defeated largely due to Russian military intervention. Do you think that this defeat at the hands of Putin may have shaped Brennan's attitude towards Russia?

Of course, it has. Brennan never makes any attempt to conceal his hatred for Putin or Russia.

As we noted earlier, Brennan and Clapper are central figures in the Russia-gate story, but their records show we can't trust what they have to say. They are like the eyewitness in a murder trial whose testimony is 'thrown out' because he is exposed as a compulsive liar. The same rule applies to Clapper and Brennan, that is, when the main proponents of the Russia hacking story are shown to be untrustworthy, we must discount what they have to say.

Which is why the Russia-gate narrative is beginning to unravel.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] .

Curmudgeon , November 23, 2017 at 6:46 pm GMT

What!!!! Someone from the management of an intelligence agency lying? I'm shocked!
Dan Hayes , November 25, 2017 at 7:51 am GMT
From the presented evidence: Serial Fabricators! I have much more confidence in the veracity of used car salesmen than that of Messrs. Brennan and Clapper.
m___ , November 25, 2017 at 8:22 am GMT
Fake news, and stale news. By when an algorithm of Goolag to "clean" the internet of current house-hold garbage?
Carroll Price , November 25, 2017 at 1:24 pm GMT
Becoming friends with Russia, the only potential enemy available, would destroy the MIC. A real possibility the Washington establishment will never allow to happen.
Che Guava , November 25, 2017 at 1:58 pm GMT
@WorkingClass

What is that having to do with the content of Mr. Whitney's good article? Mr. Whitney, to me you are of the quarter or less of Counterpunch writers who are to making sense most of the time. . . . and am always liking your writing style. Trump could have been or be a great pres. of your nation, but between dropping advisors for no good reason, becoming frightened and drawing away from his desire for rapprochement with the Russian Federation, worst of all, from this distant perspective, to appointing his daughter and son-in-law as senior advisors. Both are overpriveleged morons.

Chris Bridges , November 25, 2017 at 2:54 pm GMT
Clapper is a befuddled old fool and can be safely ignored. Brennan is something far more sinister. He is an extreme leftist and there should be an investigation into how this wacko was allowed to join the CIA – he openly admits voting for CPUSA chief Gus Hall in 1976. Brennan is, besides, a resentful CIA failure.

He was denied entry to the elite Directorate of Operations (or couldn't cut the mustard and was banished from it) and spent his career stewing away in anger as a despised analyst at CIA headquarters.

Brennan spent his time at CIA attempting to undermine the organization.

Pompeo should have reversed every single thing he did the minute he took office, starting with firing every CIA employee brought into the Agency by Brennan (this can be done – CIA employees have no Civil Service protection). That Brennan is still at large after his outrageous involvement in the phony Russia dossier is an indictment of Jeff Sessions, Trump, the DOJ and the FBI. He could be indicted on a host of Federal charges if somebody had the guts to do it.

Michael Kenny , November 25, 2017 at 2:56 pm GMT
The umpteenth version of a now standard article.

We all know that the Russiagate narrative isn't starting to unravel and this and other (wholly untrustworthy) internet authors' claims are not proved by simply repeating them over and over again (to borrow a phrase!). In fact, Russiagate is expanding. It has gone from mere Russian interference in the election to dubious financial transactions between wealthy Americans, including Trump, and, to put it very politely, "dubious" Russians. It has also expanded to Europe.

What is emerging, therefore, is a collusion between wealthy Americans, no doubt with major investments in Russia, US internet sites, probably financed by the aforementioned wealthy Americans, dubious Russian financiers, Putin, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage and no doubt others to manipulate, perhaps rig, elections and referenda in the US and Europe. It's not about politics. It's about money and conflicts of interest.

We also get the now standard argument that Trump is just dying to "normalize" relations with Russia but is being held back by some dastardly group or other. As we all know, of course, "normalizing relations with Moscow" in Orwellian translates into English as "capitulating to Putin in Ukraine". Putin's frantic attempts to get Trump to let him win in Syria is why this old line is suddenly back on the table.

Finally, the idea of the Russian Federation as an emerging geopolitical rival is amusing. That country has existed as a sovereign state only for about 25 years and is merely the largest piece of wreckage from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In a world that is slowly being dominated by China, Russia is a very minor player.

Beefcake the Mighty , November 25, 2017 at 3:07 pm GMT
Professional liars. But, there was some question/doubt about this?
DESERT FOX , November 25, 2017 at 3:15 pm GMT
Brennan and Clapper are agent provocateurs for the Zionists who control the U.S. government and the 17 gestapo agencies which in fact are controlled by dual citizen Zionists ie ISRAEL.

Brennan and Clapper are under Zionist control and thus are traitors to the constitution of America and should be tried and sent to prison for life.

jacques sheete , November 25, 2017 at 5:25 pm GMT
@Michael Kenny

It's not about politics. It's about money and conflicts of interest.

And since when are the three not related?

It's too bad that good people, like MW, need to waste their time and energy investigating and publishing what's obviously state sponsored utter rubbish designed to support some of the money bag crowd in one way or another.

Why does it even need to be stated that most of what's supposed to be a big deal to us prols, peasants and piss ants is nothing but propaganda, and of a particularly transparent and low grade variety,even?

Clyde , November 25, 2017 at 5:30 pm GMT
@Chris Bridges

Clapper is a befuddled old fool and can be safely ignored. Brennan is something far more sinister.

Clapper told some whoppers while he was head of all our intelligence agencies under Obama. But you are correct that Brennan is far more toxic. He was this way under Obama and post-Obama. He has been one of the biggest Trump saboteurs. And most effective. One ugly customer!

Colleen Pater , November 25, 2017 at 5:31 pm GMT
@Curmudgeon

Why should we care if the russians spent billions on trying to exert their influence on us, we do it we have an alphabet soup of projects to do exactly that and god knows what else to every nation on earth.In fact we do it to our own people these social websites and "news" sites universities media etc are nothing but one huge propaganda machine intended to render democracy nothing more than a distraction so elites can go about doing what they want.

jilles dykstra , November 25, 2017 at 6:20 pm GMT
Long ago, when car radio's still had antennae long enough to receive long wave transmissions, I often listened to BBCW radio, 848 Mhz.
I still remember the statement 'you can always tell when a politician lies, he then moves his lips'.
jilles dykstra , November 25, 2017 at 6:34 pm GMT
@Michael Kenny

Capitulating to Putin in Ukraine. The assertion is that the CIA spent five billion dollar in Ukraine in order to overthrow the legitimate democratic government. Of course nobody can prove the assertion. What is crystal clear is that the members of EU parliament Verhofstadt, Van Baalen and Timmermans held speeches in Kiev urging the people to overthrow the government.
Their speeches could be seen live on tv, or were rebroadcast.

Timmermans held the crocodile tears speech at the UN about the MH17 victims. How, why, and through whom over 300 people were killed in Ukraine airspace we do not know until now. All there is is vague insinuations towards Russia, the country for which the disaster was a disaster, EU sanctions all of a sudden were possible.

That the political annexation by the west failed is best seen in E Ukraine, where the wealth is, in gas and oil. A son, and a son in law, of Biden, and Kerry were promised well paid jobs as CEO's of companies who were to exploit the E Ukrainian wealth, they are still waiting for the jobs.

Roger n Me , November 25, 2017 at 7:24 pm GMT
I remember when they actually prosecuted for someone for lying to Congress. Unfortunately, it was a former baseball player named Roger Clemons over the vitally important question of whether or not he had taken steroids. Obviously a vital question that every sports tabloid wants to know.
Cyrano , November 25, 2017 at 7:27 pm GMT
I just hope that the Russians realize that with enormous power comes enormous responsibility. I hope that they'll choose the next US president wisely.

There is real danger there is -- now that we know that the Russians can elect pretty much anyone in the US – that come the next elections, some charismatic, possibly independent candidate, might seduce the Russians with promises of improved ties, and after they elect him, he might turn to be a real wacko job who might end up not only worsening the ties between the superpowers, but he might end up destroying the world. Be cautious, Russians.

I.F. Stoned , November 25, 2017 at 7:36 pm GMT
If we want to talk about meddling in the election ..

Lets compare CNN giving hours and hours of free and very favorable air time to the Hillary campaign?

versus

A news website paying for a handful of thousand dollar adds on Twitter?

I remember studies that showed that during the crooked, corrupt and rigged Democratic Primaries, that there was a large disparity in favorable stories about Hillary versus the number that were favorable for Bernie. And CNN happily seemed to give lots of airtime to any Hillary surrogate who wanted to red bait and smear Bernie as a socialist.

We saw the same sort of disparity in the amount of favorable coverage of Trump vs Hillary. Likewise, any Hillary surrogate who wanted to spread the official campaign message that Trump was a racist, was a fascist, and said some rude things about women was always welcome on the CNN airwaves.

And, just recently, we had the web page editor for the NYT state publicly that they deliberately tilted their web page stories to convince voters to vote against Trump.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg if we want to talk about how the American corporate (aka mainstream) media tried very hard to tilt the whole election towards putting the Crooked Clintons back into the White House.

But, OMG, the story in the same corrupt media is that awful and evil RT spend a whole thousand dollars on an ad trying to promote their website.

Vikki , November 25, 2017 at 7:44 pm GMT
@jilles dykstra

As to the US spending $5 billion of US taxpayers money to 'destabilize Ukraine', we can prove that. Or at least we can take the word of a US official that this was true. Hillary's Assistant Secretary of State said this publicly at the National Press Club on Dec 13, 2013 . a few months before the violent coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine.

Bottom , November 25, 2017 at 7:55 pm GMT
@Colleen Pater

Hillary is the one who spend BILLIONS trying to become President. The only thing that so far has been traced to Russia is a few hundred thousand in Twitter Ads that otherwise served the legitimate purpose of trying to promote the web news sites. And most of those ads didn't concern political stories, but instead stories about cute puppies to draw clicks.

Adrian E. , November 25, 2017 at 8:57 pm GMT
The interesting development is that, after no proof for the "Russian hacking" allegations could be found, they turned to simple ads (for amounts that are extremely small compared to what the campaigns spent) and social media postings. This was accompanied by loosening the criteria, they did not even pretend any more that they had indications that these social media activities were connected to the Russian state, they just had to be "Russia-linked". In the case of Twitter, this includes anyone who has ever logged in from Russia, uses Cyrillic signs in the account metadata (that could also be connected with a number of other countries), logged in from a Russian IP address, paid something with a Russian credit card etc., and only one condition had to be fulfilled for an account to be counted as "Russia-linked".

Of course, with such a large country, there are certainly some social media activities that are "linked" with it. There can be many reasons – people who travel, migrants in both directions, or simply Russians with an interest in US politics. From what is known, the ads and postings were so diverse – some right-wing and pro-Trump, some leftwing or critical of Trump, and many not directly linked to the elections – and distributed over a large time with many after the elections that it does not seem too unlikely as a result of social media activities of random people who have some connection with Russia.

Of course, we may speculate in each case, why someone posted something or bought an ad. But before speculating, it would be necessary to have data about ads and social media postings linked to other countries. For example, it could be determined with the same criteria which ads and postings were Brazile-linked, Germany-linked, and Philippines-linked. Probably, there, a similar random collection would emerge. Only if there is something special about the Russia-linked ads and postings, it would even make sense to speculate about the reasons.

We don't know whether these "Russia-linked" ads and social media positings were just random activities by people related to Russia (e.g. about 2% of the US population have Russian as their native language, some may not have many contacts with Russia any more and don't travel there regularly, but others do) or whether a part of them was the result of an organized campaign, but in any case, from what was written in the media, the volume of these social media activities does not seem to be very large (but in order to judge that, social media activities linked to other countries with the same criteria would be needed).

What I find hilarious is how people sometimes try to insert a collusion angle even if it is not about hacking, but about social media ads and postings. This becomes completely absurd. Then, the idea is that Russians contacted the Trump campaign in order to find out which ads they should buy and what they should post on social media. Why should they do so? If the Trump campaign had ideas about what to post and what kind of ads to buy, why didn't they just do it themselves or via an American company? What would be the point of the Trump campaign spending $564 million on the campaign, but then do a small part of the campaign via Russians who then spent a few thousand dollars for buying ads and posting messages the Trump campaign had advised them to via "collusion"? After all, if they had done it themselves or via an American intermediary, there would be nothing nefarious or suspicious about this, this idea that for a very small part of their campaign, they colluded with Russians and told them what to post and which ads to buy almost sounds as if they deliberately wanted to behave in a strange way that could then fit a preconceived collusion narrative. And even if they had outsourced some small part of their campaign to a Russian company for some odd reasons, would that make it nefarious?

I think the Russiagate theorists should at least make sure that their theories don't violate basic principles of common sense. If they want to use the hacking story, the involvement of Russian secret services might theoretically make sense – it might not be so easy for the Trump campaign to hack servers themselves (though phishing is hardly something so sophisticated that only secret services can do it, we're not talking about something like Stuxnet), and something illegal would be involved. That is a theory that could in principle make sense, the only problem is, that no evidence for this is available (and the Russians are certainly not the only ones who might have had an interest in these mails, another plausible theory is that it was an insider who disliked how the Clinton campaign took over the DNC early on and created better conditions for Clinton than for Sanders, and it could have been any hacker who, for some reason disliked Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and Podesta). If the Russiagate theorists switch over to simple social media activity because there is no evidence for Russian secret services being responsible for giving e-mails to Wikileaks, they also have to sacrifice the whole "collusion" part of the story. It might be that some Russians used social media in an organized way, but to invent a story that the Trump campaign "colluded" with Russians for a small part of their social media election campaign hardly makes sense.

The only condition under which it might somehow make sense would be if someone thought Russians are intellectually vastly superior to Americans and know much better what potential voters care about, and their capabilities are even vastly above Cambridge Analytics. Then, it might somehow make sense for the Trump campaign to hand over a part of the social media activities to Russians, and this might somehow be seen as an unfair advantage – but again, if, with that assumption, the Russians are intellectually so vastly superior that can have a significant influence with very small amounts of money and works while the Trump and Clinton campaigns spend billions, why would they have to "collude" with the Trump campaign, people who would be intellectually so much below them according to that assumption? Maybe real genius for targeting potential voters only emerges when Americans and Russians with complementary abilities collaborate? In any case, it is already very difficult just to construct a version of that theory that does not violate basic principles of common sense.

Fred D , November 26, 2017 at 12:24 am GMT
Mind controlled Moron
WHAT , November 26, 2017 at 2:19 am GMT
@Michael Kenny

"Let him win in Syria"?

Dude, it`s like the first legit amusing line from you. Now bring another!

robt , November 26, 2017 at 3:11 am GMT
@Cyrano

Sarcasm is probably the only way to deal with it. I find myself all the time asking people if they are serious or joking. Sadly, many claim they are serious.
Currently it seems that peaceful and productive relations with a foreign power are Bad Things.
Mr Putin did amusingly say one time to a ditzy US 'journalist':
"Have you all lost your minds over there?"

Cyrano , November 26, 2017 at 3:54 am GMT
@robt

I really truly believe that the only way to force the stupids who came up with that ridiculous story about "Russia influencing the elections" – to drop it – is to make incessantly fun of them until they finally realize how really truly stupid they are.

exiled off mainstreet , November 26, 2017 at 5:03 am GMT
@DESERT FOX

The facts support this viewpoint, including the dual citizen element of it. By the way, I oppose the death penalty except if it is applied to major serial war criminals. I recognize that all legal systems are too corrupt to be given the power of life and death, and that this is particularly true of the US system, which sets the benchmark for corruption. The corruption of the US political system, meanwhile, is revealed by the fact that this absurd Russiagate story is still being peddled and is accepted as received wisdom despite the manifold evidence proving its absurd falsity. What the article shows is that Clapper and Brennan are serial war criminals and that their latest gambit threatens our very existence. We would be better off if the utopia of a legal system incorruptible enough to allow for the death penalty did exist in the US rather than the corrupt system allowing somebody like Mueller to act extra-legally on this absurd basis was continuing in operation. By the way, the Canadian satellite media is still publishing stories trying to resuscitate the Steele dossier paid by the DNC and the yankee government as factual. The whole thing would be comical if it were not deadly serious. Those still backing the story publicly are either dangerously deluded or criminal themselves.

Sarah Toga , November 26, 2017 at 5:10 am GMT
Does Brennan have that dark calloused spot on his forehead yet from use of his "prayer rug" ?
DESERT FOX , November 26, 2017 at 3:16 pm GMT
@exiled off mainstreet

The U.S. gov is a criminal organization ran by criminal for criminals and sexual perverts and pedophiles , if interested, read these two books , THE FRANKLIN COVERUP by the late John DeCamp and THE TRANCE FORMATIO of AMERICA by Cathy Obrien and see their interviews on YouTube, the books can be had on amazon.com.

The books reveal a shocking look at the top ones in the demonrat and republicon parties, and I do mean shocking.

Anon , Disclaimer November 26, 2017 at 6:40 pm GMT
@Carroll Price

The US, Russian Federation, and the Nuland-Kagan revolution in Kiev in 2014:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-truth-about-ukraine-italian-documentary-bombshell-evidence-kiev-euromaidan-snipers-kill-demonstrators/5619684

"The interviews with three snipers of Georgian nationality, conducted by the Italian journalist Gian Micalessin and aired as a breathtaking documentary on Milan-based Canale 5 (Matrix program) last week, still have not paved its way to the international mainstream media.

The documentary features Alexander Revazishvili, Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia, Georgian military officers They claim that on Jan 15, 2014 they landed in Kiev equipped with fake documents Having received 1000 USD each one and being promised to be paid 5000 USD after the "job is done", they were tasked to prepare sniper positions inside the buildings of Hotel Ukraine and Conservatory, dominant over the Maidan Square. Along with other snipers (some of them were Lithuanians) they were put under command of an American military operative Brian Christopher Boyenger. The coordinating team also included Mamulashvili and infamous Segrey Pashinsky, who was detained by protesters on Feb 18, 2017 with a sniper rifle in the boot of his car The weapons came on stage on February 18 and were distributed to the various Georgian and Lithuanian groups. "There were three or four weapons in each bag, there were Makarov guns, AKM guns, rifles, and a lot of cartridges." – witnesses Nergadze.

The following day, Mamulashvili and Pashinsky explained to snipers that they should shoot at the square and sow chaos.
"I listened to the screams," recalls Revazishvili. "There were many dead and injured downstairs. My first and only thought was to leave in a hurry before they caught up with me. Otherwise, they would tear me apart."

Four years later, Revazishvili and his two companions report they have not yet received the promised 5000 USD bills as a payment and have decided to tell the truth about those who "used and abandoned" them."

Well that was a clear picture of a sausage-making during the US-sponsored regime change in Ukraine. The neo-Nazi in the US-supported "government" in Kiev came about naturally.

Anon , Disclaimer November 26, 2017 at 6:43 pm GMT
@Carroll Price

An addition to the previous post.
The Maidan revolution and its neo-Nazi consequence makes an amazing monument to the Kagans' clan:

"Thousands of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists marched in Kiev, Thursday, celebrating the 106th birthday of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) leader Stepan Bandera [famous Nazis collaborator]. Among the main organisers were representatives of Right Sector and Svoboda." https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6a7_1420142767#gDHooVSL6b0yQ1SG.99

"Members of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov volunteer battalion and their ultranationalist civilian sympathizers have conducted a torchlit procession in the center of the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, held under the slogan "coming after you!" http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_72571.shtml

"A leader of Ukrainian Jewry condemned the hosting in Lviv of a festival celebrating a Nazi collaborator on the anniversary of a major pogrom against the city's Jews." http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Ukraine-city-to-hold-festival-in-honor-of-Nazi-collaborator-498159

The wide-spread desecration of Jewish cemetries by Ukrainian thugs (a post-Maidan phenomenon) has spilled to Poland: "Yet another case of vandalism by Ukrainian nationalists is on the record in Poland. This time, an old Jewish cemetery in Kraków became the target of thugs from the neighboring state. The graves of Polish Jews who died over a century ago were destroyed by those hot-blood Ukrainians." https://www.reddit.com/r/antisemitism/comments/5npnj5/ukrainian_nationalists_stand_behind_desecration/

"Vandals desecrated the Korinovskaya Jewish Cemetery in Kiev. They destroyed two entire sections: 27 and 28. These acts of vandalism are very systematic: every night they destroy one or two headstones. According to the elderly women who look after the place, these vandals are usually drunken youths who come there to wreak destruction. The Zaddik of Chernobyl is buried in this cemetery. These vandals destroyed his gravestone, smearing Satanic Cult symbols on it."

http://antisemitism.org.il/article/58386/ukraine-8211-desecration-jewish-cemetery-kiev

[Nov 29, 2017] Americas Dangerous Putin Panic Politics, Society, 2016 Elections

That's good: "What is disturbing with the "blame Putin" stance endorsed by serious Western politicians, analysts and news media outlets is that it makes the Russian leader appear omnipotent while making the rest of us seem impotent. "
Notable quotes:
"... The real problem is where the paranoia takes you. Western politicians and commentators are disturbingly eager to blame the impact of Russian propaganda or the manipulations of the Federal Security Service for the problems of our democracies. Mr. Putin obviously will benefit from Brexit, and may even have put a finger on the scale, but is that really the problem? And do we really believe that Mr. Trump's xenophobic appeal would collapse overnight if the Kremlin put its power behind Hillary Clinton? ..."
"... What is disturbing with the "blame Putin" stance endorsed by serious Western politicians, analysts and news media outlets is that it makes the Russian leader appear omnipotent while making the rest of us seem impotent. ..."
Dec 06, 2016 | brutalist.press

Brutalist

The real problem is where the paranoia takes you. Western politicians and commentators are disturbingly eager to blame the impact of Russian propaganda or the manipulations of the Federal Security Service for the problems of our democracies. Mr. Putin obviously will benefit from Brexit, and may even have put a finger on the scale, but is that really the problem? And do we really believe that Mr. Trump's xenophobic appeal would collapse overnight if the Kremlin put its power behind Hillary Clinton?

What is disturbing with the "blame Putin" stance endorsed by serious Western politicians, analysts and news media outlets is that it makes the Russian leader appear omnipotent while making the rest of us seem impotent.

Casting blame in Moscow's direction prevents us from productively discussing the grave problems we face as societies, and simplistically reduces the uncertainties and risks of an increasingly interdependent world to the great powers rivalry.

[Nov 28, 2017] The Duplicitous Superpower by Ted Galen Carpenter

Highly recommended!
At some point quantity of duplicity turns into quality. and affect international relations. Economic decline can speed this process up. The US elite has way too easy life since 1991. And that destroyed the tiny patina of self-restraint that it has during Cold War with negative (hugely negative) consequences first of all for the US population. Empire building is a costly project even if it supported by the dominance of neoliberal ideology and technological advances in computers and telecommunication. . The idea of "full spectrum dominance" was a disaster. But the realization of this came too late and at huge cost for the world and for the US population. Russia decimated its own elite twice in the last century. In might be the time for the USA to follow the Russia example and do it once in XXI century. If we thing about Hillary Clinton Jon McCain, Joe Biden, Niki Haley, as member of the US elite it is clear that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark).
Notable quotes:
"... How Washington's chronic deceit -- especially towards Russia -- has sabotaged U.S. foreign policy. ..."
"... Unfortunately, North Korean leaders have abundant reasons to be wary of such U.S. enticements. Trump's transparent attempt to renege on Washington's commitment to the deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- which the United States and other major powers signed in 2015 to curb Tehran's nuclear program -- certainly does not increase Pyongyang's incentive to sign a similar agreement. His decision to decertify Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, even when the United Nations confirms that Tehran is adhering to its obligations, appears more than a little disingenuous. ..."
"... There seems to be no limit to Washington's desire to crowd Russia. NATO has even added the Baltic republics, which had been part of the Soviet Union itself. In early 2008, President George W. Bush unsuccessfully tried to admit Georgia and Ukraine, which would have engineered yet another alliance move eastward. By that time, Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders were beyond furious. ..."
"... The timing of Bush's attempted ploy could scarcely have been worse. It came on the heels of Russia's resentment at another example of U.S. duplicity. In 1999, Moscow had reluctantly accepted a UN mandate to cover NATO's military intervention against Serbia, a long-standing Russian client. The alliance airstrikes and subsequent moves to detach and occupy Serbia's restless province of Kosovo for the ostensible reason of protecting innocent civilians from atrocities was the same "humanitarian" justification that the West would use subsequently in Libya. ..."
"... Nine years after the initial Kosovo intervention, the United States adopted an evasive policy move, showing utter contempt for Russia's wishes and interests in the process. Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own. ..."
"... Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns made that point explicitly in a February 2008 State Department briefing. Both the illogic and the hubris of that position were breathtaking. ..."
"... This -- in the context of the long history of US and EU deceit and duplicity in their dealings with Russia is why Russia is supporting Catalan separatism (e.g. RT en Espańol's constant attacks on Spain and promotion of the separatists). The US and the EU effectively gave Russia permission to do this back in the 1990s. We set a precedent for their actions in Catalonia -- and, more famously, in Ukraine. ..."
"... One could scarcely ask for a better summary of why the Cold War seems, sadly, to be reheating as well as why Democratic attempts to blame it on Russian meddling are a equally sad evasion of their share of bipartisan responsibility for creating this mess. Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer for, "the courage to change the things I can," is painfully appropriate. ..."
"... "No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard." ..."
"... Putin is a rationally calculating man. He has made his strategic objectives well known. They are economic. He sees Russia as the great linchpin of the pan-Eurasian One Belt/One Road (OB/OR) initiative proposed by China as well as the AIIB. In that construct, Europe and East Asia are Russia's customers and bilateral trading partners. Military conquest would wreck that vision and Putin knows it. ..."
"... He's been remarkably restrained when egged on by Big Mouth Nikki Haley, Mad Dog Mattis or that other Pentagon nutcase Phillip Breedlove (former Supreme Commander of NATO) who have gone out of their way to demonize Russia. Unfortunately, with those Pentagon hacks whispering in Trump's ear, too much war-mongering is never enough. ..."
"... U.S. foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. The War Machine Hammer wrecks everything that it touches while sending the befuddled taxpayers the bill. ..."
"... When you meet individual Americans, they are frequently so nice and level-headed that you are perplexed trying to imagine where their leaders come from. And while we're on that subject, America does not actually have a foreign policy, as such. Its foreign policy is to bend every other living soul on the planet to the service of America. ..."
Nov 28, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

How Washington's chronic deceit -- especially towards Russia -- has sabotaged U.S. foreign policy.

For any country, the foundation of successful diplomacy is a reputation for credibility and reliability. Governments are wary of concluding agreements with a negotiating partner that violates existing commitments and has a record of duplicity. Recent U.S. administrations have ignored that principle, and their actions have backfired majorly, damaging American foreign policy in the process.

The consequences of previous deceit are most evident in the ongoing effort to achieve a diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. During his recent trip to East Asia, President Trump urged Kim Jong-un's regime to "come to the negotiating table" and "do the right thing" -- relinquish the country's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Presumably, that concession would lead to a lifting (or at least an easing) of international economic sanctions and a more normal relationship between Pyongyang and the international community.

Unfortunately, North Korean leaders have abundant reasons to be wary of such U.S. enticements. Trump's transparent attempt to renege on Washington's commitment to the deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- which the United States and other major powers signed in 2015 to curb Tehran's nuclear program -- certainly does not increase Pyongyang's incentive to sign a similar agreement. His decision to decertify Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, even when the United Nations confirms that Tehran is adhering to its obligations, appears more than a little disingenuous.

North Korea is likely focused on another incident that raises even greater doubts about U.S. credibility. Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi capitulated on the nuclear issue in December of 2003, abandoning his country's nuclear program and reiterating a commitment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In exchange, the United States and its allies lifted economic sanctions and welcomed Libya back into the community of respectable nations. Barely seven years later, though, Washington and its NATO partners double-crossed Qaddafi, launching airstrikes and cruise missile attacks to assist rebels in their campaign to overthrow the Libyan strongman. North Korea and other powers took notice of Qaddafi's fate, making the already difficult task of getting a de-nuclearization agreement with Pyongyang nearly impossible.

The Libya intervention sullied America's reputation in another way. Washington and its NATO allies prevailed on the UN Security Council to pass a resolution endorsing a military intervention to protect innocent civilians. Russia and China refrained from vetoing that resolution after Washington's assurances that military action would be limited in scope and solely for humanitarian purposes. Once the assault began, it quickly became evident that the resolution was merely a fig leaf for another U.S.-led regime-change war.

Beijing, and especially Moscow, understandably felt duped. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates succinctly described Russia's reaction, both short-term and long-term:

The Russians later firmly believed they had been deceived on Libya. They had been persuaded to abstain at the UN on the grounds that the resolution provided for a humanitarian mission to prevent the slaughter of civilians. Yet as the list of bombing targets steadily grew, it became obvious that very few targets were off-limits, and that NATO was intent on getting rid of Qaddafi. Convinced they had been tricked, the Russians would subsequently block any such future resolutions, including against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

The Libya episode was hardly the first time the Russians concluded that U.S. leaders had cynically misled them . Moscow asserts that when East Germany unraveled in 1990, both U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and West German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher offered verbal assurances that, if Russia accepted a unified Germany within NATO, the alliance would not expand beyond Germany's eastern border. The official U.S. position that there was nothing in writing affirming such a limitation is correct -- and the clarity, extent, and duration of any verbal commitment to refrain from enlargement are certainly matters of intense controversy . But invoking a "you didn't get it in writing" dodge does not inspire another government's trust.

There seems to be no limit to Washington's desire to crowd Russia. NATO has even added the Baltic republics, which had been part of the Soviet Union itself. In early 2008, President George W. Bush unsuccessfully tried to admit Georgia and Ukraine, which would have engineered yet another alliance move eastward. By that time, Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders were beyond furious.

The timing of Bush's attempted ploy could scarcely have been worse. It came on the heels of Russia's resentment at another example of U.S. duplicity. In 1999, Moscow had reluctantly accepted a UN mandate to cover NATO's military intervention against Serbia, a long-standing Russian client. The alliance airstrikes and subsequent moves to detach and occupy Serbia's restless province of Kosovo for the ostensible reason of protecting innocent civilians from atrocities was the same "humanitarian" justification that the West would use subsequently in Libya.

Nine years after the initial Kosovo intervention, the United States adopted an evasive policy move, showing utter contempt for Russia's wishes and interests in the process. Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own.

Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns made that point explicitly in a February 2008 State Department briefing. Both the illogic and the hubris of that position were breathtaking.

It is painful for any American to admit that the United States has acquired a well-deserved reputation for duplicity in its foreign policy. But the evidence for that proposition is quite substantial. Indeed, disingenuous U.S. behavior regarding NATO expansion and the resolution of Kosovo's political status may be the single most important factor for the poisoned bilateral relationship with Moscow. The U.S. track record of duplicity and betrayal is one reason why prospects for resolving the North Korean nuclear issue through diplomacy are so bleak.

Actions have consequences, and Washington's reputation for disingenuous behavior has complicated America's own foreign policy objectives. This is a textbook example of a great power shooting itself in the foot.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 10 books, the contributing editor of 10 books, and the author of more than 700 articles and policy studies on international affairs.

Magdi , says: November 28, 2017 at 5:46 am

you are dead ON! I have been saying this since IRAQ
fiasco (not one Iraqi onboard on 9/11) we should have invaded egypt and saudi arabia. how the foolish american public(sheep) just buys the american propaganda is beyond me.. don't blame the Russians one spittle!!
Herbert Heebert , says: November 28, 2017 at 7:47 am
A few points:

1. I think North Korea might also be looking at the example of Ukraine, and Russia's clear violation of the Budapest Memorandum.

2. It's silly to put so much weight on Baker's verbal assurance re: NATO expansion.

3. I would suggest Mr. Carpenter make a list of Russia's betrayals. But I have the impression he is not interested.

Viriato , says: November 28, 2017 at 9:25 am
Excellent piece. The US really has destroyed its credibility over the years.

This points Ted Galen Carpenter makes in this piece go a long way toward explaining Russia's destabilizing behavior in recent years.

One point in particular jumped out at me:

"Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own. Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique."

This -- in the context of the long history of US and EU deceit and duplicity in their dealings with Russia is why Russia is supporting Catalan separatism (e.g. RT en Espańol's constant attacks on Spain and promotion of the separatists). The US and the EU effectively gave Russia permission to do this back in the 1990s. We set a precedent for their actions in Catalonia -- and, more famously, in Ukraine.

This

craigsummers , says: November 28, 2017 at 10:09 am
Mr. Carpenter

You have made a reasonable case that the US and Europe have not always been reliable, but the expansion of NATO is not one of them. No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard.

The idea of a "sphere of influence" is a cold war relic which Russia invoked with the Medvedev Doctrine in 2008. This is currently on display in Ukraine. Russia is aggressively denying Ukraine their sovereignty. Who could possibly blame former Soviet Block countries for hightailing it to NATO during a lull in Russian aggression?

DOD , says: November 28, 2017 at 10:23 am
One could scarcely ask for a better summary of why the Cold War seems, sadly, to be reheating as well as why Democratic attempts to blame it on Russian meddling are a equally sad evasion of their share of bipartisan responsibility for creating this mess. Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer for, "the courage to change the things I can," is painfully appropriate.
Michael Kenny , says: November 28, 2017 at 12:12 pm
The whole weakness of the author's argument is a classic American one: very few Americans seem to be able to get their heads around the fact that the Soviet Union ceased to exist 26 years ago! They are still totally locked into their cold war mentality. He thus unquestioningly accepts Putin's pre-1789 "sphere of influence" theory in which there are "superior" and "inferior" races, with only the superior races being entitled to have a sovereign state and the inferior races being forced to submit to being ruled by foreigners. Mr Carpenter really needs to put his cold war mentality aside and come into the 21st century!

Most seriously of all, Mr Carpenter offers no solution for improving relations between the US and Russia. Saying that past US actions were wrong, even if true, says nothing about the present and offers nothing for the future. At best, Mr Carpenter's article is empty moralising.

And the unspoken, but perfectly obvious, subtext, namely that the US should "atone for its sins" by capitulating to Putin, is morally reprehensible and politically unrealistic. Since, by Mr Carpenter's own account, the problem is caused by US wrongdoing, isn't it for the US to put things right (for example, by getting Putin out of Ukraine) and not simply make a mess in someone else's country and then run for home with its tail between its legs? Who gave Americans the right to give away other people's countries?

Will Harrington , says: November 28, 2017 at 12:58 pm
Herbert Heevert

The one problem with your argument if, you are an american as I am, is that Russia is not acting in our names. If the US government, supposedly a government of, by, and for the people breaks its word, then you and I are foresworn oathbreakers as well because the government is (theoretically, at least) acting on OUR authority.

Will Harrington , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:15 pm
Craig Summers

Really?! "Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard."

I think that if you look at a map or a globe, you will find that this is not a belief but a fact. How you could overlook this, I don't know.

"The idea of a "sphere of influence" is a cold war relic "

If you are going to try and use history to influence opinion, it is best to check your facts. This is a very old concept.What do you think the Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire in Central Asia was about? For that matter, what we call the Byzantine Commonwealth was a clearly attempt by the Romaoi to establish a political, cultural, and religious sphere of influence to support the power of the Empire, much as the United States has been doing over the past several decades.

NoldorElf , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:31 pm
You could make the case that Iraq too in 2003 is another reason why the Russians and the North Koreans distrust the US.

At this point, it is fairly certain that the Bush Administration knew that Saddam was not building nuclear weapons of mass destruction, which is what Bush strongly implied in his ramp up to the war.

One other takeaway that the North Koreans mag have from the 2003 Iraq invasion is that the US will lie any way to get what it wants.

Not saying that Russia or North Korea are perfect. Far from it. But the US needs to take a hard look in the mirror.

Jeeves , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:42 pm
What Craigsummers said.

And, Mr. Carpenter, when you have time off from your job as Russian apologist, learn the meaning of "verbal." It's not a synonym for "oral."

SteveM , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:49 pm
Re: craigsummers, "No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard."

Except both here and abroad, the Global Cop Elites in Washington shape the strategy space through propaganda, fear-mongering and subversion. Moreover, the Eastern European countries are happy to join NATO when it's the American taxpayers who foot a large percentage of the bill.

Standard U.S. MO: create the threat, inflate the threat, send in the War Machine at massive cost to sustain the threat.

Rather than being broadened, NATO should have been ratcheted back after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the U.S. military presence in Europe massively reduced. Then normalized relations between Europe and Russia would have been designed and developed by Europe and Russia. Not the 800 pound Gorilla Global Cop that is good at little more than breaking things. (And perversely, after flushing TRILLIONS of tax dollars down the toilet, duping Americans to wildly applaud the "Warrior-Heroes" for a job well done.)

b. , says: November 28, 2017 at 2:33 pm
The 2008 war between Georgia and Russia was, per observers at the time, in Russian word and thought directly linked to the Balkan 's precedent.

The subtext here – of nation states, sovereignty, separatism and secessionist movements – is even more relevant with respect to US-China relationships. Since WW2 and that brief, transient monopoly on nuclear weapons, US foreign policy has eroded the Peace of Westphalia while attempting to erect an "international order" of convenience on top if it.

Both China and Russia know that nothing will stop the expansionism of US "national interests". In response to the doctrinal aspirations of the Soviets, the US has committed itself to an ideology that is just a greedy and relentless. In retrospect, it is hard to tell how many decades ago the Cold War stopped being about opposition to Soviet ideology, and instead became about "projecting" – in every sense of the word – an equally globalist US ideology.

We are the redcoats now. Now wonder the neocons and neolibs are shouting "Russia!" at every opportunity.

Janek , says: November 28, 2017 at 2:45 pm
I am amazed how many masochistic conservatives are in USA conservative circles especially in the CATO institute. Mr. T. G. Carpenter, as is clear from not only this and other articles, is a staunch defender of Yalta and proponent of Yalta 2 after the Cold War ended. As far as I remember Libya was the hatchet job of the Europeans especially the French and British. B. Obama at first didn't want to attack Libya but gave in after lobbying by the French, British and the neoliberal/neo-conservative lobby and supporters of the Arab Spring in the USA. America lost credibility after and only since the conservatives neoliberals and neocons manipulated USA and the West's foreign politics for thirty plus years. USA is still a democratic country so it is easy to blame everything on the US. In today's Putin's Russia similar critics of the Russian politics wouldn't be so "easy".

The Central Europe doesn't want Russia's sphere of influence precisely because of centuries of Russian occupation and atrocities in there especially after WW2, brutal and bloody invasion of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Cuban Crisis, Afghanistan, Chechnya etc. Now you have infiltration by Russia of the American electoral process and political system and some conservatives still can't connect the dots and see what is going on. I wonder why the western conservatives and US in particular are such great supporters of Russia. If Russia should be allowed to keep her sphere of influence after the Cold War then what was the reason to fight the Cold War in the first place. Wouldn't it be easier to surrender to Russia right after WW2.

SteveM , says: November 28, 2017 at 2:45 pm
One other observation about Russia that should be made but isn't is that the Russia-phobes can't point to an actual motive for Russian military aggression. There is no "Putin Plan" for conquest and domination by Russia like in Das Kapital or Hitler's Mein Kampf . What strategic value would Russia see from overrunning Poland and then having to perpetually suppress 35 million resistors? Or retaking the Baltic states that have only minority ethnic Russian populations?

Putin is a rationally calculating man. He has made his strategic objectives well known. They are economic. He sees Russia as the great linchpin of the pan-Eurasian One Belt/One Road (OB/OR) initiative proposed by China as well as the AIIB. In that construct, Europe and East Asia are Russia's customers and bilateral trading partners. Military conquest would wreck that vision and Putin knows it.

In the gangster movies, a mob boss often says that he hates bloodshed because it's bad for business. That's Putin. He's been remarkably restrained when egged on by Big Mouth Nikki Haley, Mad Dog Mattis or that other Pentagon nutcase Phillip Breedlove (former Supreme Commander of NATO) who have gone out of their way to demonize Russia. Unfortunately, with those Pentagon hacks whispering in Trump's ear, too much war-mongering is never enough.

U.S. foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. The War Machine Hammer wrecks everything that it touches while sending the befuddled taxpayers the bill.

Mark , says: November 28, 2017 at 3:00 pm
"And, Mr. Carpenter, when you have time off from your job as Russian apologist, learn the meaning of "verbal." It's not a synonym for "oral."

I imagine you thought you were being funny; and you were, just not in the way you foresaw. In fact, verbal is a synonym for oral; to wit, "spoken rather than written; oral. "a verbal agreement". Synonyms: oral, spoken, stated, said, verbalized, expressed."

Of course anyone who attempts to portray the United States as duplicitous and sneaky (those are synonyms!)is immediately branded a "Russian apologist". As if there are certain countries which automatically have no rights, and can be assumed to be lying every time they speak. Except they're not, and the verbal agreement that NATO would not advance further east in exchange for Russian cooperation has been acknowledged by western principals who were present.

As SteveM implies, NATO's reason for being evaporated with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and was dead as a dodo with the breakup of the Soviet Union. Everything since has been a rationalization for keeping it going, including regular demonizations of imaginary enemies until they become real enemies. You can't just 'join NATO' because it's the in-crowd, you know. No, there are actually criteria, one of which is the premise that your acceptance materially enhances the security of the alliance. Pretty comical imagining Montenegro in that context, isn't it?

When you meet individual Americans, they are frequently so nice and level-headed that you are perplexed trying to imagine where their leaders come from. And while we're on that subject, America does not actually have a foreign policy, as such. Its foreign policy is to bend every other living soul on the planet to the service of America.

[Nov 28, 2017] Trump Wants Peace With Erdogan - The Military Wants To Sabotage It

Notable quotes:
"... "President Trump instructed [his generals] in a very open way that the YPG will no longer be given weapons. He openly said that this absurdity should have ended much earlier ," Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told reporters after the phone call. ..."
"... The YPG is the Syrian sister organization of the Turkish-Kurdish terror group PKK. Some weapons the U.S. had delivered to the YPK in Syria to fight the Islamic State have been recovered from PKK fighters in Turkey who were out to kill Turkish security personal. Despite that, supply for the YPG continued. In total over 3,500 truckloads were provided to it by the U.S. military. Only recently the YPK received some 120 armored Humvees , mine clearance vehicles and other equipment. ..."
"... The generals in the White House and other parts of the administration were caught flat-footed by the promise Trump has made. The Washington Post writes : "Initially, the administration's national security team appeared surprised by the Turks' announcement and uncertain what to say about it. The State Department referred questions to the White House, and hours passed with no confirmation from the National Security Council." ..."
"... The U.S. military uses the YPG as proxy power in Syria to justify and support its occupation of north-east Syria, The intent of the occupation is , for now, to press the Syrian government into agreeing to a U.S. controlled "regime change": ..."
"... When in 2014 the U.S. started to use Kurds in Syria as its foot-soldiers, it put the YPG under the mantle of the so called Syrian Democratic Forces and paid some Syrian Arabs to join and keep up the subterfuge. This helped to counter the Turkish argument that the U.S. was arming and supporting terrorists. But in May 2017 the U.S. announced to arm the YPG directly without the cover of the SDF. The alleged purpose was to eliminate the Islamic State from the city of Raqqa. ..."
"... A spokesperson of the SDF, the ethnic Turkman Talaf Silo, recently defected and went over to the Turkish side. The Turkish government is certainly well informed about the SDF and knows that its political and command structure is dominated by the YPK. The whole concept is a sham. ..."
"... Sometimes it's hard to see if Trump actually believed what he was saying about foreign policy on the campaign trail -- but either way it doesn't matter much as he seems incapable of navigating the labyrinth of the Deep State even if he had in independent thought in his head. I don't expect US weapons to stop making their way into Kurdish hands as they try to extend their mini-Israel-with-oil foothold in Syria. But it would certainly be a welcome sight if the US left Syria alone for once! ..."
"... Trump personally sent General Flynn to recruit back Erdogan and the Turks right before the election. Flynn wrote his now infamous editorial "Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support" and published in "The Hill". http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/305021-our-ally-turkey-is-in-crisis-and-needs-our-support ..."
"... But if you know the role he played for Trump in the campaign and then the post-election role as soon to be NSC advisor, you will see that Trump was sending him to bring Turkey back into the fold after the coup attempt by CIA, Gulen and Turkey's AF and US State Dept failed. ..."
"... Trump wanted to prevent the Turkish Stream. It was a huge rival to his LNG strategy. All these are why Flynn did what he did for Trump. Now Trump has to battle CIA and State, as well as the CENTCOM-Israeli plans for insurgencies in Syria. It's not just the Kurd issue or the other needs of NATO to hold the bases in Turkey. It's the whole southwest containment of Russian gas and Russian naval power, and the reality of sharing the Mediterranean as well as MENA with the Bear. ..."
"... Furthermore, I've always been suspicious of Erdogan's 'turn' toward Russia. Many have suspected that the attempted coup was staged by Erdogan (with CIA help?) so as to enable Erdogan to remain in office. IMO Erdogan joined the 'Assad must go!' effort not just because he benefited from the oil trade but because he leans toward Sunnis (Surely he was aware of the thinking that: the road to Tehran runs through Damascus .) ..."
Nov 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

President Trump is attempting to calm down the U.S. conflict with Turkey . The military junta in the White House has different plans. It now attempts to circumvent the decision the president communicated to his Turkish counterpart. The result will be more Turkish-U.S. acrimony.

Yesterday the Turkish foreign minister surprisingly announced a phone call President Trump had held with President Erdogan of Turkey.

United States President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke on the phone on Nov. 24 only days after a Russia-Turkey-Iran summit on Syria, with Ankara saying that Washington has pledged not to send weapons to the People's Protection Units (YPG) any more .

"President Trump instructed [his generals] in a very open way that the YPG will no longer be given weapons. He openly said that this absurdity should have ended much earlier ," Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told reporters after the phone call.

Trump had announced the call:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!
12:04 PM - 24 Nov 2017

During the phone call Trump must have escaped his minders for a moment and promptly tried to make, as announced, peace with Erdogan. The issue of arming the YPG is really difficult for Turkey to swallow. Ending that would probably make up for the recent NATO blunder of presenting the founder of modern Turkey Kemal Atatürk and Erdogan himself as enemies.

The YPG is the Syrian sister organization of the Turkish-Kurdish terror group PKK. Some weapons the U.S. had delivered to the YPK in Syria to fight the Islamic State have been recovered from PKK fighters in Turkey who were out to kill Turkish security personal. Despite that, supply for the YPG continued. In total over 3,500 truckloads were provided to it by the U.S. military. Only recently the YPK received some 120 armored Humvees , mine clearance vehicles and other equipment.

The generals in the White House and other parts of the administration were caught flat-footed by the promise Trump has made. The Washington Post writes : "Initially, the administration's national security team appeared surprised by the Turks' announcement and uncertain what to say about it. The State Department referred questions to the White House, and hours passed with no confirmation from the National Security Council."

The White House finally released what the Associated Press called :

a cryptic statement about the phone call that said Trump had informed the Turk of "pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria."

Neither a read-out of the call nor the statement AP refers to are currently available on the White House website.

The U.S. military uses the YPG as proxy power in Syria to justify and support its occupation of north-east Syria, The intent of the occupation is , for now, to press the Syrian government into agreeing to a U.S. controlled "regime change":

U.S. officials have said they plan to keep American troops in northern Syria -- and continue working with Kurdish fighters -- to pressure Assad to make concessions during peace talks brokered by the United Nations in Geneva, stalemated for three years now. "We're not going to just walk away right now," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said last week.

To solidify its position the U.S. needs to further build up and strengthen its YPG mercenary forces.

When in 2014 the U.S. started to use Kurds in Syria as its foot-soldiers, it put the YPG under the mantle of the so called Syrian Democratic Forces and paid some Syrian Arabs to join and keep up the subterfuge. This helped to counter the Turkish argument that the U.S. was arming and supporting terrorists. But in May 2017 the U.S. announced to arm the YPG directly without the cover of the SDF. The alleged purpose was to eliminate the Islamic State from the city of Raqqa.

The YPG had been unwilling to fight for the Arab city unless the U.S. would provide it with more money, military supplies and support. All were provided. The U.S. special forces, who control the YPG fighters, directed an immense amount of aerial and artillery ammunition against the city. Any potential enemy position was destroyed by large ammunition and intense bombing before the YPG infantry proceeded. In the end few YPG fighters died in the fight. The Islamic State was let go or eliminated from the city but so was the city of Raqqa . The intensity of the bombardment of the medium size city was at times ten times greater than the bombing in all of Afghanistan. Airwars reported :

Since June, an estimated 20,000 munitions were fired in support of Coalition operations at Raqqa . Images captured by journalists in the final days of the assault show a city in ruins

Several thousand civilians were killed in the indiscriminate onslaught.

The Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is defeated. It no longer holds any ground. There is no longer any justification to further arm and supply the YPG or the dummy organization SDF.

But the generals want to continue to do so to further their larger plans. They are laying grounds to circumvent their president's promise. The Wall Street Journal seems to be the only outlet to pick up on the subterfuge:

President Donald Trump's administration is preparing to stop sending weapons directly to Kurdish militants battling Islamic State in Syria, dealing a political blow to the U.S.'s most reliable ally in the civil war, officials said Friday.

...

The Turkish announcement came as a surprise in Washington, where military and political officials in Mr. Trump's administration appeared to be caught off-guard. U.S. military officials said they had received no new guidance about supplying weapons to the Kurdish forces. But they said there were no immediate plans to deliver any new weapons to the group. And the U.S. can continue to provide the Kurdish forces with arms via the umbrella Syrian militant coalition

The "military officials" talking to the WSJ have found a way to negate Trump's promise. A spokesperson of the SDF, the ethnic Turkman Talaf Silo, recently defected and went over to the Turkish side. The Turkish government is certainly well informed about the SDF and knows that its political and command structure is dominated by the YPK. The whole concept is a sham.

But the U.S. needs the YPG to keep control of north-east Syria. It has to continue to provide whatever the YPG demands, or it will have to give up its larger scheme against Syria.

The Turkish government will soon find out that the U.S. again tried to pull wool over its eyes. Erdogan will be furious when he discovers that the U.S. continues to supply war material to the YPG, even when those deliveries are covered up as supplies for the SDF.

The Turkish government released a photograph showing Erdogan and five of his aids taking Trump's phonecall. Such a release and the announcement of the call by the Turkish foreign minister are very unusual. Erdogan is taking prestige from the call and the public announcement is to make sure that Trump sticks to his promise.

This wide publication will also increase Erdogan's wrath when he finds out that he was again deceived.

Posted by b on November 25, 2017 at 12:14 PM | Permalink

WorldBLee | Nov 25, 2017 12:48:12 PM | 1

Sometimes it's hard to see if Trump actually believed what he was saying about foreign policy on the campaign trail -- but either way it doesn't matter much as he seems incapable of navigating the labyrinth of the Deep State even if he had in independent thought in his head. I don't expect US weapons to stop making their way into Kurdish hands as they try to extend their mini-Israel-with-oil foothold in Syria. But it would certainly be a welcome sight if the US left Syria alone for once!
Red Ryder | Nov 25, 2017 12:49:33 PM | 2
Trump personally sent General Flynn to recruit back Erdogan and the Turks right before the election. Flynn wrote his now infamous editorial "Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support" and published in "The Hill". http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/305021-our-ally-turkey-is-in-crisis-and-needs-our-support

Some interpret this act on Election eve as a pecuniary fulfillment by Flynn of a lobbying contract (which existed).

But if you know the role he played for Trump in the campaign and then the post-election role as soon to be NSC advisor, you will see that Trump was sending him to bring Turkey back into the fold after the coup attempt by CIA, Gulen and Turkey's AF and US State Dept failed.

Flynn understood the crucial need for US and NATO to hold Turkey and prevent the Russians from getting Erdogan as an ally for Syria and the Black Sea, the Balkans and Mediterranean as well as Iran, Qatar and Eurasia. Look at what has transpired between Turkey and Russia since. Gas will be flowing through the Turkish Stream and Erdogan conforms to Putin's wishes.

Trump wanted to prevent the Turkish Stream. It was a huge rival to his LNG strategy. All these are why Flynn did what he did for Trump. Now Trump has to battle CIA and State, as well as the CENTCOM-Israeli plans for insurgencies in Syria. It's not just the Kurd issue or the other needs of NATO to hold the bases in Turkey. It's the whole southwest containment of Russian gas and Russian naval power, and the reality of sharing the Mediterranean as well as MENA with the Bear.

Flynn was on it for Trump. And the IC and State want him prosecuted for defying their efforts to replace Erdogan with a stooge like Gulen. It looks like Mueller is pursuing that against the General.

Harry | Nov 25, 2017 1:18:07 PM | 3
Its not a problem for US to drop Kurds if they are no longer needed, BUT for now they are essential for US/Israel/Saudi goals, therefore you can bet 100% Kurds support will continue. Trump's order (he hasn't made it official either) will be easily circumvented.

The real question is, what Resistance will do with the backstabbing Kurds? It wont be easy to make a deal while Kurds maintain absurd demands and as long as they have full Axis of Terror support.

Go Iraq's way like they reclaimed Kirkuk? US might have sitten out that one, I doubt they'll allow this to happen in Syria as well, unless they get something in return.

alabaster | Nov 25, 2017 1:19:42 PM | 4
While America's standard duplicity of saying one thing while doing the opposite has been known for decades, they have been able to play games mainly because of the weakness of the other actors in the region.
The tables have turned now, but America still thinks it holds top dog position.
Wordplay, semantics and legal loopholes wont be tolerated for very long, and when hundreds of US boots return home in body bags a choice will have to be made - escalate, or run away.
Previous behavior dictates run away, but times have changed.
A cornered enemy is the most dangerous, and the USA has painted itself into a very small corner...
Jean | Nov 25, 2017 1:35:55 PM | 5
Gee. While reading B's article what got to my mind is: "Turkey is testing the ground". Whatever Trump said to Erdogan on the phone, it seems to me that the Turks are playing a card to see how the different actors in the US that seems to follow different agendas will react. If Turkey concludes that the US will continue to back YPG, it's split from the US and will be definitive.

Erdogan is shifting away from US/NATO. He even hinted today that he might talk to Assad. That's huge! I wouldn't be surprised if Turkey leaves NATO sooner than later. And if it's the case, it will be a major move of a tectonic amplitude.

Peter AU 1 | Nov 25, 2017 1:36:09 PM | 6
Trump.. "Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!"

General Wesley Clark - seven countries in five years with Iran last on the list = "Get it all done"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw

Jen | Nov 25, 2017 2:36:10 PM | 7
Surely by now Erdogan must realise that whatever the US President says and promises will be circumvented by the State Department, the Pentagon, the 17 US intel agencies (including the CIA and the NSA) and rogue individuals in these and other US government departments and agencies, and in Congress as well (Insane McCain comes to mind)? Not to mention the fact that the Israeli government and the pro-Israeli lobby on Capitol Hill exercise huge influence over sections of the US government.

If Erdogan hasn't figured out the schizoid behaviour of the US from past Turkish experience and the recent experience of Turkey's neighbours (and the Ukraine is one such neighbour), he must not be receiving good information.

Though as Jean says, perhaps Erdogan is giving the US one last chance to demonstrate that it has a coherent and reliable policy towards the Middle East.

Hausmeister | Nov 25, 2017 3:37:06 PM | 8
Jen | Nov 25, 2017 2:36:10 PM | 6

Well, the US policy has been coherent and reliable in the last years. It enhanced local conflicts, supported both sides at the same time but with different intensities. Whoever wins would be "our man". Old stuff since the Byzantine period. It always takes a lot of time to prove the single actions that were done. In most cases we learn about it years later. The delay is so big and unpleasant that quite a number of folks escapes to stupid narratives that explain everything in one step, and therefore nothing. By the way: is the interest of Kurds to remain under the umbrella of the Syrian state but not be governed by Baath type of Arabic nationalism illegitimate?

stonebird | Nov 25, 2017 3:44:32 PM | 9
How can Trump have his cake and eat it?

The Kurds (PKK basically) are only necessary to give a "face" to the force the US is trying to align in E. Syria. The "fighting" against ISIS (if there really was any) is coming to a close. The Chiefs of ISIS have been airlifted to somewhere nearby, and the foreign mercenary forces sent elsewhere by convoy. ALL the valuable personnel have now become "HTS2" with reversible vests. These, plus the US special forces are the basis of a new armed anti-Syrian force. (Note that one general let slip that there are 5'000 US forces in E-Syria - not the 500 spoken of in the MSM).
So Trump may well be correct in saying that the Kurds (specifically) will not get any more arms - because they have other demands and might make peace with the Syrian Government, to keep at least some part of their territorial gains. The ISIS "bretheren" and foreign mercenaries do not want any peaceful solution because it would mean their elimination.. So The CIA and Pentagon will probably continue arms supplies to "HTS2" - but not the Kurds.

(ex-ISIS members; Some are from Saudi Arabia, Qatar - the EU and the US, as well as parts of Russia and China. They are not farming types but will find themselves with some of the best arable land in Syria. Which belonged to Syrian-arabs-christians-Druzes-Yadzis etc. Who wil want their properties back.)

Note that the US forces at Tanf are deliberately not letting humanitarian help reach the nearby refugee camp. Starvation and deprivation will force many of the younger members to become US paid terrorists.

james | Nov 25, 2017 4:00:51 PM | 10
thanks b.. i tend to agree with @4 jean and @5 jen... the way i see it, there is either a real disconnect inside the usa where the president gets to say one thing, but another part of the establishment can do another, or trump has made his last lie to turkey here and turkey is going to say good bye to it's involvement with the usa in any way that can be trusted.. seems like some kind of internal usa conflict to me at this point, but maybe it is all smoke and mirrors to continue on with the same charade.. i mostly think internal usa conflict at this point..
A P | Nov 25, 2017 4:34:19 PM | 11
Odd that no one has mentioned the fact the US was behind the attempted coup, where Erdogan was on a plane with two rogue Syrian jets that stood down rather than execute the kill shot. I have read opinion that the fighter pilots were "lit up" by Russian missile batteries and informed by radio they would not survive unless they shut down their weapons targeting immediately. This is probably a favour Putin reminds Erdogan of on a regular basis, whenever Erdo tries to play Sultan. The attempted coup/asassination also shows Erdogan exactly how much he can trust the US/Zionists at any level.

And Edrogan must also know Syria was once at least partly in the US-orbit, as Syria was the destination for many well-documented US-ordered rendition/torture cases. It is probable Mossad (or their proxy thugs) killed Assad's father and older brother, so Erdo knows he's better relying on Putin than Trumpty Dumbdy.

Virgile | Nov 25, 2017 5:09:38 PM | 12
Erdogan is about to make a u-turn toward Syria. He is furious at Saudi Arabia for boycotting its ally Qatar, for talking about owning Sunni Islam and by the continuous support of Islamists and Sunni Kurds in Syria.
Erdogan is preparing the turkish public opinion to a shift away from the USA-Israeli axis. This may get him many points in the 2019 election if the war in Syria is stopped, most Syrian refugees are back, Turkish companies are involved in the reconstruction and the YPG neutralized. Erdogan has 1 year and half to make this to happen. For that he badly needs Bashar al Assad and his army on his side.

Therefore he is evaluating what is the next move and he needs to know where the USA is standing about Turkey and Syria. Until now the messages from the USA are contradictory yet Erdogan keeps telling his supporters that the USA is plotting against Turkey and against Islam. Erdogan's reputation also is been threatened by the outcome of Reza Zarrab's trial in the US where the corruption of his party may be exposed.

That is why Erdogan is making another check about the US intentions before Erdogan he starts the irreversible shift toward the Iran-Russia (+Qatar and Syria) axis.

dirtyoilandgas | Nov 25, 2017 6:13:37 PM | 13
missing in this analysis is oil gas ... producers, refiners, slavers, middle crooks, and the LNG crowd :Israel, Fracking, LNG and wall street... these are the underlying directing forces that will ultimately dictate when the outsiders have had enough fight against Assad over Assad's oil and Assad's refusal to allow outsiders to install their pipelines. Until then, gangland intelligence agencies will continue the divide, destroy and conquer strategies sufficient to keep the profits flowing. The politicians cannot move until the underlying corruptions resolve..
les7 | Nov 25, 2017 6:59:27 PM | 14
The word 'byzantine' has been used for centuries to describe the intricate and multi-leveled forms of agreement, betrayal, treachery and achievement among the shifting power brokers in the region. The US alone has three major and another three minor players at work - often fighting each other. If however, it thinks it can outplay people whose lives are steeped in such a living tradition, it is sadly deluded and will one day be in for a very rude surprise. Even the Russians have had difficulty navigating that maze.

When confronted with such a 'Gordian knot' of treachery and shifting alliances, Alexander the Great drew his sword and cut through it with a vision informed by the sage Socrates as taught by Aristotle.

Despite claiming to represent such a western heritage, the US has no such Socratic wisdom, no Aristotelian logic, and no visionary leadership that could enable it to do what Alexander did. Lacking this, it is destined to get lost in its' own hubris, and be consumed by our current version of that region's gordian knot.

flankerbandit | Nov 25, 2017 7:53:29 PM | 15
'Hausmaus' @7 says...
'...By the way: is the interest of Kurds to remain under the umbrella of the Syrian state but not be governed by Baath type of Arabic nationalism illegitimate?..'

...showing that he either knows only the crap spouted by wikipedia...or nothing at all about the Baath party...

...which happens to be a socialist and secular party interested in pan-Arab unity...not nationalism...[an obvious oxymoron to be pan-national and 'nationalist' at the same time...]

Of course there is always a 'better way'...right Hausmaus...?

The Baath socialism under Saddam in Iraq was no good for anyone we recall...especially women, students, sick people etc...

A 'better way' has since been installed and it is working beautifully...all can agree...

Same thing in Libya...where the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was no good for anyone...

Of course everyone wanted the 'Better Way'...all those doctoral graduates with free education and guaranteed jobs...a standard of living better than some European countries...etc...

Again...removing the 'socialist' Kadafi has worked out wonderfully...

We now have black African slaves sold in open air markets...where before they did all the broom pushing that was beneath the dignity of the Libyan Arabs...

...and were quite happy to stay there and have a job and paycheck...instead of now flooding the shores of Italy in anything that can float...

Oh yes...why would anyone in Syria want to be governed by the socialist Baath party...?

...especially the Kurds...who just over the border in Turkey are not even recognized as humans...never mind speaking their own language...

Oh yes yes yes...we all want the 'Better Way'...

It's a question of legitimacy you see...

Daniel | Nov 25, 2017 7:55:00 PM | 16
I'd really hoped that Donald Trump® would be the "outsider" that both the MSM and he have been insisting he is for the past couple of years. Other than the Reality TV Show faux conflicts with which the MSM entertains us nightly, I see no such "rogue" Administration.

This say one thing, and do the other has been US foreign policy forever.

Recall, for instance that on February 21, 2014, Obama's State Department issued a statement hailing Ukrainian President Yanukovych for signing an agreement with the "pro-democracy Maidan Protest" leaders in which he acquiesced to all of their demands.

Then, on February 22, 2014, the US State Department cheered the "peaceful and Constitutional" coup after neo-nazis stormed the Parliament.

A few months later, Secretary of State Kerry hailed the Minsk Treaty to end the war in Ukraine. Later that day, Vickie Nuland said there was no way her Ukies would stop shelling civilians, and sure enough they didn't (until they'd been on the retreat for weeks, and came whimpering back to the negotiations table).

A couple years later, Kerry announced that the US and Russia would coordinate aerial assaults in Syria. The next day, "Defense" Secretary Carter said, "no way," and within a week or so, we "accidentally" bombed Syrian forces at Deir ez Zoir for over an hour.

From my perspective, they keep us chasing the next squirrel, while bickering amongst each other about each squirrel. But the wolves are still devouring the lambs, with only the Bear preventing a complete extinction.

flankerbandit | Nov 25, 2017 8:16:50 PM | 17
Some good comments here with food for thought...

What we know with at least some level of confidence...

Dump is not the 'decider'...the junta is...he's just a cardboard cutout sitting behind the oval office desk...

And he's got no one to blame but himself...he came in talking a big game about cleaning house and got himself cleaned out of being an actual president...

This was inevitable from the moment he caved on Flynn...the only person he didn't need to vet with the senate...and a position that wields a lot of power...

This was his undoing on many levels...not only because he faced a hostile deep state and even his own party in congress with no one by his side [other than Flynn]...

...but because it showed that he had no balls and would not stand by his man...

This is not the stuff leaders are made of...

The same BS we see with Turkey is playing out with Russia on the Ukraine issue...

Now the junta and their enablers in congress want to start sending offensive arms to Ukraine...Dump and his platitudes to Putin...no matter how much he may mean it...mean nothing...he's not in charge...

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/410942-trump-putin-friendly-words/

Yeah, Right | Nov 25, 2017 9:44:37 PM | 18
I think that Jean @4 has the best take on this: Erdoğan went very public on Trump's "promise" in a classic put-up-or-shut-up challenge to the USA.

Either the word of a POTUS means something or it doesn't, and if it doesn't then Turkey is going to join Russia in concluding that the USA as simply not-agreement-capable.

Erdoğan will then say "enough!!!", give the USA the two-finger-salute, and then take Turkey out of NATO.

And the best thing about it will be that McMaster, Kelly and Mathis will be so obsessed with playing their petty little games that they won't see it coming.

ritzl | Nov 25, 2017 11:08:38 PM | 19
It's hard to tell what Erdoğan is doing or intending other than that he is navigating something - objective TBD. It'll be interesting to see if he constrains the use of Incirlik airbase should the US keep arming the YPG/PKK forces. Airpower is the enabler (sole enabler, IMO) of the/any Kurdish overreach inside Syria. Seems like Erdoğan holds the ace card in this muddle but has yet to play it.
Grieved | Nov 25, 2017 11:32:17 PM | 20
@18 ritzl

Seems like Turkey has more than one card to play. A commenter on another site mentioned recently that the US really doesn't want Erdogan to have that S-400 system from Russia. Got me thinking, could Russia have deliberately loaded Erdogan's hand with that additional card to help him negotiate with the US?

Turkey may well leave NATO and as others have pointed out, this would be a game changer far beyond the matter of the US's illegal presence in NE Syria. This possibility brings immense existential gravitas to Erdogan's position right now. He could ask for many concessions at this point, not to leave. And from the Eurasian point of view, it doesn't matter if he leaves or stays, while from the western view, it matters greatly.

Would the US give up Syria, in order to keep Turkey in NATO? It's a western dichotomy, not one that affects Asia. It would be simple to throw S-400 at that dynamic to watch it squirm.

Jackrabbit | Nov 25, 2017 11:42:26 PM | 21
The plays the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.

- Hamlet

As the endgame plays out, Erdogan's conscience may be revealed.

b has made the point that the partition that US-led proxy forces have carved out is unsustainable. But it would be sustainable if Erdogan can be convinced to allow trade via Turkey.

For that reason, I thought Trump's ceasing direct military aid to the Kurds made sense as it provided Erdogan with an excuse to allow land routes for trade/supply. Erdogan can argue that he wants to encourage such good behavior and doesn't want to make US an enemy (Turkey is still a NATO country).

Furthermore, I've always been suspicious of Erdogan's 'turn' toward Russia. Many have suspected that the attempted coup was staged by Erdogan (with CIA help?) so as to enable Erdogan to remain in office. IMO Erdogan joined the 'Assad must go!' effort not just because he benefited from the oil trade but because he leans toward Sunnis (Surely he was aware of the thinking that: the road to Tehran runs through Damascus .)

Hasn't Erdogan's vehement anti-Kurdish stance done R+6 a disservice? It seems to me that it has helped USA to convince Kurds to fight for them and has also been a convenient excuse for Erdogan to hold onto Idlib where al Queda forces have refuge. If Erdogan was really soooo angry with Washington, and soooo dependent on Moscow, then why not relax his anti-Kurdish stance so as to bring Kurds back into the Syrian orbit?

Seby | Nov 26, 2017 12:25:05 AM | 22
tRump just wants to hide the truth that he is castrated and with a tiny penis, like his hands.

Also just cares about money and soothing his narcissism. So f***'in American, in the worst sense!

Ian | Nov 26, 2017 12:29:05 AM | 23
Jackrabbit @20:
Erdogan may feel that if he relaxed his stance against the Syrian Kurds, it could embolden Turkish Kurds to further pursue their agenda. It would also make him appear weak towards his supporters.
Fernando Arauxo | Nov 26, 2017 1:45:51 AM | 24
Erdogan is NOT going to leave NATO. Why should he? It would be the stupidest chess move ever? He's in the club and they can't kick him out. He can cause all the trouble he wants and hobble that huge machine that is the western alliance. He will not get EU membership, but he has his NATO ID CARD and that ain't bad. Erdo now knows that the poor bastard Trumps is WORTHLESS that he is a toothless executive in name only. This is a wake up call, if I were Erdo, I would be very afraid of the USA and it's Syria, MENA policy. It is being run by LUNATICS and is a slow moving train wreak. So for now, Erdo must be looking at Moscow, admiring Putin for this is a man who has his shit together and truly knows how to run a country. Maybe even a sense of admiration and more respect for Putin is even present. If I were Erdo, I'd double down in my support for Russia's Syria policy.
Hausmeister | Nov 26, 2017 3:46:55 AM | 25
@ flankerbandit | Nov 25, 2017 7:53:29 PM | 14

You do not get it:
„...which happens to be a socialist and secular party interested in pan-Arab unity...not nationalism..."
According to this ideology the coherence of a society comes from where? And who is excluded if one applies it?
So your contribution is just a rant using rancidic rhetoric tools. But I will not call you „flunkerbandit". My advice is to move to this area and have a look into such a society from a more close position. Armchair type of vocal leadership does not help.

Anon | Nov 26, 2017 5:11:53 AM | 26
In the Obama years there was a:

Which policy is Trump really up against?

Jen | Nov 26, 2017 6:38:32 AM | 27
Anon @ 25: Tempted to say Trump is up against all of them plus NSA policy, FBI policy, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) policy and the policies of, what, 12 other intel agencies?
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/17-agencies-of-the-us-intelligence-community-2013-5?r=US&IR=T
Yeah, Right | Nov 26, 2017 7:27:43 AM | 28
@23 "Erdogan is NOT going to leave NATO. Why should he?"

I guess one possible reason would be this: as long as Turkey remains in NATO then he is obliged to allow a US military presence in his country, and that's just asking for another attempt at a military coup.

After all, wasn't Incirlik airbase a hotbed of coup-plotters during the last coup attempt?

arbetet | Nov 26, 2017 10:14:56 AM | 29
This came up:

SDF official: Kurds will join the Syrian Arab Army ranks!

Harry | Nov 26, 2017 10:33:01 AM | 30
@ arbetet | 29

"when the Syrian settlement is achieved, Syria's democratic forces will join the Syrian army."
"When the Syrian state stabilizes, we can say that the Americans did what they said, then withdraw as they did in Iraq and set a date for their departure and leave."

Nothing new here, nothing good either. Kurds so far are keeping up their demands of de-facto independence under fig-leaf of "we are part of federalised Syria" with weak central government and autonomous Kurds. Thats how US plan to castrate Syria. Russia offered cultural autonomy, Kurds rejected.

As for Americans "withdrawing" willfully, it never happened. Iraq had to kick them out, and then US used ISIS and Kurds to get back in.

As for Syria's stabilization part, US is doing everything in its power to prevent it.

dan of steele | Nov 26, 2017 11:00:06 AM | 31
@Yeah Right #26
Turkey is not obliged to keep foreign troops in their country to remain in NATO. De Gaulle invited the US to leave France in 1967 but is still a member of NATO
Yeah, Right | Nov 26, 2017 5:18:37 PM | 32
@31 France actually withdrew from NATO in 1966. It remained "committed" to the collective defence of western Europe, without being, you know, "committed" to it.

So, yeah, France kicked all the foreign troops out of France in 1967, precisely because its withdrawal from NATO's Integrated Military Command meant that the French were no longer under any obligation to allow NATO troops on its soil.

But France had to formally withdraw from that Command first, and the reason that de Gaulle gave for withdrawing were exactly that: remaining meant ceding sovereignty to a supra-national organization i.e. NATO Integrated Military Command.

That France retained "membership" of NATO's political organizations even after that withdrawal was little more than a fig-leaf.

After all, NATO's purpose isn't "political", it is "military".

fast freddy | Nov 26, 2017 6:21:33 PM | 33
"The Decider" is Trump's apparent self image. He can't be enjoying the Presidency and the controls exerted upon him by others among the "Deep State" (whom I suppose have effectively cowed him into behaving via serious threats).

If he already had money and power, as it appears that he had, he gained little by taking the crown. He has less power because he is now controlled by a number of forces (CIA, NSA, Media, MIC and etc.) as he remains under constant assault by his natural opposition.

Big mistake dumping Flynn.

Now you take another kind of asshole in the person of Obama - a guy that had nothing - you have a malleable character who enjoys the pomp and circumstance. Really didn't need any persuading to do anything required of him.

psychohistorian | Nov 26, 2017 11:30:16 PM | 34
Here is a recent report from the Turkish Prime Minister supporting Trump's "lie" about ending support for the Kurds....what will history show occured?

ISTANBUL, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Sunday that his country is expecting the United States to end its partnership with the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG).

"Since the very beginning, we have said that it is wrong for the U.S. to partner with PKK's cousin PYD and YPG in the fight against Daesh (Islamic State) terrorist group," Yildirim told the press in Istanbul prior to his departure for Britain.

Ankara sees the Kurdish groups as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighting against the Turkish government for over 30 years, while Washington regards them as a reliable ground force against the Islamic State (IS), also known as Daesh.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday spoke to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the phone, pledging not to provide weapons to the YPG any more, an irritant that has hurt bilateral ties, according to the Turkish side.

Yildirim noted that Washington has described it as an obligation rather than an option to support the Kurdish groups on the ground. "But since Daesh (IS) is now eliminated then this obligation has disappeared," he added.

Julian | Nov 27, 2017 12:47:45 AM | 35
It would be nice if Erdogan when withdrawing from NATO (Assuming he does this in the next 12-18 months) would say something like.
"We really like President Trump - and we trust his word implicitly. The problem is, although we trust his word, we know he is not in control so his word is useless and best ignored. Though of course - we still trust he means well."

That would be a nice backhander to hear from Erdopig.

Quentin | Nov 27, 2017 8:48:51 AM | 36
Speculation about Turkey leaving NATO seems farfetched. Turkey has NATO over a barrel. It has been a member for decades and what would it gain by leaving? Nothing. By staying it continues to influence and needle at the same time. Turkey will only leave when NATO throws it out, which isn't going to happen.
Willy2 | Nov 27, 2017 11:53:09 AM | 37
- According to Sibel Edmonds there're 2 coups being prepared. One against Trump and one against Erdogan.

[Nov 28, 2017] Blowback CNN Pushes Plan To Ban The Term 'Fake News' by Paul Joseph Watson

Notable quotes:
"... In a CNN opinion piece written by Hossein Derakhshan and Claire Wardle, who are affiliated with the globalist Council of Europe, the authors argue that the term "fake news" has "become meaningless" and lost its power because politicians (primarily Donald Trump) have hijacked it as a way to "undermine" the media establishment. ..."
"... The authors decry the fact that many people now believe the mainstream media peddles "fabricated stories" and that information monopolies are being challenged by the ability for "anyone in the world" to have a platform. ..."
"... Of course, the real reason media elites want to clamp down on the term "fake news" is because its original intention, to smear and discredit opponents of Hillary Clinton, right of center media outlets, and people who distrust the mainstream media, has completely backfired. ..."
"... This was illustrated yet again by Donald Trump's tweet earlier today when he suggested that a "fake news trophy" should be awarded to the network that has been responsible for the most inaccurate reporting. ..."
"... The Podesta emails also revealed how mainstream journalists were completely in bed with the Clinton campaign and even ran stories by them before publication. ..."
"... The "fake news" narrative has completely backfired on the political establishment and the media because it has acted as a boomerang, showing the mainstream media to be the most consistently dishonest entity of all. ..."
"... Is it any wonder therefore that the political class is now so keen to retire the term altogether? ..."
Nov 28, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via InfoWars.com

CNN is now pushing an effort to "ban the term fake news" after the slogan became synonymous with CNN itself thanks to President Donald Trump.

In a CNN opinion piece written by Hossein Derakhshan and Claire Wardle, who are affiliated with the globalist Council of Europe, the authors argue that the term "fake news" has "become meaningless" and lost its power because politicians (primarily Donald Trump) have hijacked it as a way to "undermine" the media establishment.

The authors decry the fact that many people now believe the mainstream media peddles "fabricated stories" and that information monopolies are being challenged by the ability for "anyone in the world" to have a platform.

Remember when the mainstream media & the Hillary campaign invented the term "fake news" in an effort to discredit alternative & right of center media outlets?

Yeah, that went well. pic.twitter.com/HJPpIQEr4j

-- Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 27, 2017

Complaining that "less powerful agents can harm large institutions or established individuals," Derakhshan and Wardle warn that trust in institutions is declining and that only through intervention at the level of "public education" (ie indoctrination) can this be reversed.

Of course, the real reason media elites want to clamp down on the term "fake news" is because its original intention, to smear and discredit opponents of Hillary Clinton, right of center media outlets, and people who distrust the mainstream media, has completely backfired.

This was illustrated yet again by Donald Trump's tweet earlier today when he suggested that a "fake news trophy" should be awarded to the network that has been responsible for the most inaccurate reporting.

We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY!

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2017

"Fake news" was one of many excuses trotted out after November last year to push the narrative that President Trump's election was somehow illegitimate.

In reality, a major Stanford University study found that "even the most widely circulated fake news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans," and that the most widely believed fake news stories were those that benefited Hillary Clinton.

Fake news had virtually no impact on the election, but the establishment media weaponized the term as part of an agenda to silence and censor voices of dissent, including media platforms, that had opposed Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

In addition, mainstream media news coverage in the weeks leading up to the election was 91% negative towards Trump, according to a study by the Media Research Center.

The Podesta emails also revealed how mainstream journalists were completely in bed with the Clinton campaign and even ran stories by them before publication.

The "fake news" narrative has completely backfired on the political establishment and the media because it has acted as a boomerang, showing the mainstream media to be the most consistently dishonest entity of all.

Is it any wonder therefore that the political class is now so keen to retire the term altogether?

[Nov 22, 2017] Israel, Saudi Arabia Setting Preconditions for War With Hezbollah, by The Saker - The Unz Review

Notable quotes:
"... The continuity of US policy persists no matter what party is in power. The US has been implacably hostile to the Iranian regime since the Shah was toppled and has tried everything including supporting Saddam Hussein's invasion back in the early days of the Iranian revolution. Now with the failure of the Syrian project there may be an idea afoot to double down in a now-or-never roll of the dice. We'll have to see what happens ..."
"... All the bluster from Nikky Haley at the UN is to find a legal loophole to legitimise the illegal presence of US troops (with surrogates) to remain in Syria. Russia was bitten once too often on Libya, and is far more alert to US duplicity. ..."
Nov 22, 2017 | www.unz.com

anonymous , Disclaimer November 17, 2017 at 11:53 pm GMT

But their plan is, I think, much cruder: to trigger a serious conflict and then force the US to intervene.

It could be the reverse, that it's the US that is orchestrating them to create a situation that the US can then claim a necessity to intervene. The continuity of US policy persists no matter what party is in power. The US has been implacably hostile to the Iranian regime since the Shah was toppled and has tried everything including supporting Saddam Hussein's invasion back in the early days of the Iranian revolution. Now with the failure of the Syrian project there may be an idea afoot to double down in a now-or-never roll of the dice. We'll have to see what happens . The internal politics of Saudi Arabia are rather opaque so what this internal power struggle is really about is hard to guess at particularly with the sort of media we have. It's interesting how the Saudi Arabian-Israeli alliance has become less covert these days and is now quite open.

Virgile , November 18, 2017 at 12:00 am GMT
Saudis are not used to receive missiles on their head. They panicked when the Yemeni missile fell on their airport. I doubt that the crazy kinglet will start a war with Iran. What he could do is a false flag that kills a few saudis ( chemical weapons) to call the USA to retaliate
Yet they are so stupid that they would need Israeli expertise to setup the false flag. Israel wont take the chance to be exposed.. so nothing will happen.
If they can't trigger US intervention they would just shut up and swallow their humilition, while Israel would be continue its attacks on Syria under the sacred principle of self protection.

Lots of noise for nothing..

Kiza , November 18, 2017 at 1:54 am GMT
@Mikel

Did this "penetration" make any military difference? The whole "civil war" in Syria has been started by Israel and its US and KSA proxies, by organising and supporting terrorists. Direct Israeli military action is nothing compared with unleashing terrorism crazies on the nearby country, and even that big one lost. If the Israeli military was so mighty why did it need the terrorists to fight on its behalf? Therefore, the Israeli bombing of Syria is insignificant and out of pure frustration at a loss.

But a question for you – how does the Israeli bombing of Syria stack up against Israel being presented as the ethereal victim in the US Ziomedia?

The ultimate irony of the situation is that Israeli effort to dominate and own the ME, by getting US to attack Iraq and by fomenting sectarianism and terrorism in Syria, has bounced back to make the situation much worse for Israel than before. My personal expectation was a little different, I must admit. I expected that the terrorists of The Coalition of the Lovers of Terrorism would win in Syria,but that the Takfiri crazies would then turn around and bite the Israeli hand that fed them. Then Israel would get US to occupy Syria on its behalf, to control the crazies that Israel unleashed. But Russia got involved unexpectedly and now the last Israeli resort is to get its puppets to bleed in an attack on Iran. Attacking and occupying Syria, just like Iraq, would have been cheaper for US than attacking Iran.

The almost suicidal US attack on Iran will be the ultimate test of Zionist control over US, and it could change the things in US quite a lot.

Kiza , November 18, 2017 at 3:33 am GMT
The Saker is really good when he stays away from the weapon systems and mine is bigger than yours. This strategic analysis of his is quite reasonable. Unlike what the trolls claim, Saker is not predicting an attack on Iran and neither am I. Simply, there is a struggle going on in US and EU, between the Zionist influence and the my-country-first resistance. The Zionists have been winning so far at a huge cost to the countries which were tools of their plans, they got away with the destruction of all five of the six countries targeted. But this "success" has solidified the resistance in the tool countries, united some Sunnis (Turkey) with the Shiites and, even worse, it has considerably strengthened the single remaining target country – Iran. In other words, the destruction of five out of six countries has been a very Pyrric victory of the Zionists.

My best guess are two possible outcomes – if the Zionists manage to get US to attack Iran through some false-flag or otherwise, this will probably lead to the final dismounting of US from the global stage and US will turn inward to political instability and even possible civil war. In other words, the Zionists will spend up and sacrifice their main source of blood and treasure.

The second possible outcome is a status quo with a lot of Israeli barking and strong resistance in the US to being dragged into an attack on Iran. The Zionists have already used up most of the credit that their Ziomedia had and no reasonably intelligent person in US trusts a single word coming out of those media. I just cannot imagine another successful 911 type event which could mobilise US dummies into a war on Iran. Yes, I feel that the Zionists have already used up all their aces and I just cannot imagine them inventing another original and powerful new war ace. I do not underestimate people's gullibility but US has been truly economically too depleted to march into another war. In other words, if internal resistance prevented attack on Iran in 2007, such attack is even less likely to pass in 2017 or later, regardless of how much President Swamp is an Israeli puppet or not.

Anon , Disclaimer November 18, 2017 at 5:19 am GMT
I'm not so certain that Trump intends to let the US get involved. The guy's a deal-maker and businessman, not a soldier. Trump is simply not a bloodthirsty guy, or he would have sicced every prosecutor he could get his hands on after the left for the way they're treating him. He trolls his opponents a lot on twitter, but he does nothing to them except toss snide words in their direction.

I think Trump sees his role in the Mideast as someone who sells the Israelis and Saudis lots of expensive weapons systems, shakes their hand and wishes them Godspeed, but he's going to let them get into trouble on their own. I don't see Trump as someone willing to go adventuring in the Mideast because he doesn't have to prove his masculinity to himself. He's already climbed to the top of the heap. He's president of the US. What else does he need to prove? Nothing, really. I also think he wants to avoid making stupid mistakes. Throwing money away into expensive quagmires is not his thing.

Cloak And Dagger , November 19, 2017 at 5:51 am GMT
@Mulegino1

Israeli military prowess and invincibility is a 100% Hollywood fable

I agree with your assessment. Armies are hardened in combat under battle conditions against equal or more powerful adversaries. In recent years, Hezbollah and the Syrian army have become hardened and formidable as an unintended consequence of US/Israeli mischief in Syria under the auspices of CIA/Mossad-created ISIS, and CIA-created Al Qaeda with its many facets and pseudonyms. Iran has been training continuously for the imminent attack by US and Zionist forces, and prevailed in the Iraq-Iran war of 1988, instigated by the US. Today, Iraq and Iran are on their way to becoming a unified alliance against zionist and imperialistic forces. The "Shia Crescent" is now a force worthy of awe and admiration.

Meanwhile, the much vaunted IDF has been battle-hardened (ha!) in combat with stone-throwing children and unarmed Palestinian farmers, with hi-tech expensive anti-missile defenses being used to bring down home made firecrackers from Hamas. As you point out, in 2006, just Hezbollah alone, without the aid of todays new found allies in Syria and Iraq (and of course, Iran), was able to rout both aerial and ground attacks by Israel and beat them back to run with their tails between their legs. 49 of Israel's Merkava tanks (self-declared God's Chariot) were left as smoldering metal in that action, demolished by hand-held anti-tank missiles.

Israel probably wants the Saudis to attack Hezbollah, certain to be defeated, and use that to draw the US into a war against Lebanon. I doubt that they will succeed this time. I think Netanyahu's precarious position with criminal indictments forthcoming will cause him to do something stupid like attacking Lebanon. This will prove to be a bridge too far.

We may be seeing the early stages of the destruction of Israel. They may not have 5 years left, certainly not 10. An unverified CIA memo informed former US President Bill Clinton that Israel would not exist beyond the year 2022. That is just 5 years away, and the ducks seem to be lining up in a row, regardless of whether such a memo was ever sent.

animalogic , November 19, 2017 at 10:11 am GMT
@Kiza

I hope you are right Kiza. However:
"I just cannot imagine another successful 911 type event which could mobilise US dummies into a war on Iran. " Sorry, I can. When anyone says "Ziomedia" they basically mean the MSM in its entirety. The US Executive & Legislature are also – still – in thrall to the Zionists. Does anyone (switched on ) actually think it isn't so ?
The only rays of hope i have – & they are not insignificant – is that the notion of actually attacking a State such as Iran, given its important, if no where near absolute – advantages should give (the Sane) pause to seriously reconsider. I hope that the US military still contains such sane individuals.
Short of direct US military intervention it becomes easier to imagine some barely plausible (but completely "spinable" , provocation by the Israelis: a series of escalating bombing raids on Iran for Israel's "security" ? A chemical warfare "site" ? A concentration of Republican guards threatening Israel ?
Poor Israel ! There-was-no-alternative !
And should Iran DARE defend itself ? well it would be all bets off.
So, like the Saker, its all specualtion & worth – whatever but, things tend to go along Ok -- until they don't.

Sergey Krieger , November 19, 2017 at 12:18 pm GMT
@whyamihere

I remember watching 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. On Israel part failure was multilevel from top of the military to the bottom. General staff led by air man. Concentration of almost all of land forces effort on small value prepared in advance target making fool of oneself wasting time and energy on this target, while bombing civilian targets. Inability to plan and take decisive deep moves to confront Hezbollah main forces defeating which would make far more military sense . Obviously IDF did not feel they could take losses associated with such course of actions and keep going and frankly I feel they knew they could not considering what we know now about performance of Israeli army at all levels. All in all israeli army got into the trap carefully prepared for them and got stuck there. Hezbollah pinned it there along the border and processed with hitting Israel proper showing complete failure of Israeli army and air force to achieve there goals. This is not performance of one if the best. Strategic and tactical failures were glaring and fighting spirit was poor as Israel could not do what was necessary to reverse the situation due to internal wariness and inability to take losses.

Anonymous , Disclaimer November 19, 2017 at 12:25 pm GMT
@Johnny Rico

The cruise-missile strike in Syria seemed more symbolic to get his detractors off his back.

It "seemed" like he was caving in to the will of the swamp. Luckily, someone was kind enough to inform him afterwards that only the swamp was applauding the event while his base, and many independents, felt betrayed. That "symbolic" strike, based on transparently false justifications, cost him a lot of domestic and international support.

Trump was at his strongest during the election. Every time WaPo or NYT tried to box him in he'd laugh in their faces and pushed in the opposite direction. His popularity among the voters surged whenever he refused to comply (or "get his detractors off his back").

Sergey Krieger , November 19, 2017 at 12:54 pm GMT
Regarding Israel. I am not holocaust denier but the course choosen by Israeli and jewish elites achieving own security and prosperity by denying it all to those who live next to them is nausetic. By causing directly or indirectly all that suffering in the region Israel completely forfeited what little justification it used to have to constantly cite Israeli security concerns.
Sergey Krieger , November 19, 2017 at 1:01 pm GMT
@Kiza

I would stay away from weapons system as I am not qualified. But when Sacker is not writing about Soviet past but concentrates on such strategic issues like in his previous article he produces very good pieces. While I do think his current piece is speculative on nature, I would never dismiss predictability of stupidity. They did it in Lebanon in 2006. They can do it again. Until those crazies from basement are completely removed along with their backers influence there is no relaxing. Strange world. It all reminds of chimps throwing feces at each other rather than intelligent species. We are wasting resources and brain power to kill each other instead of going beyond our planet limits and investing in This what we invest in war.

Anonymous , Disclaimer November 19, 2017 at 3:14 pm GMT
@MEexpert

"Tell that to your hysterical Prime Minster, Benjamin "Jack Ass" Netanyahu. He has been crying wolf about Iran's nuclear weapons for a decade."

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1108/Imminent-Iran-nuclear-threat-A-timeline-of-warnings-since-1979/US-joins-the-warnings-1992-97

1995: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be "uprooted by an international front headed by the US."

Michael Kenny , November 19, 2017 at 3:31 pm GMT
The latest version of the "Putin has won in Syria" argument, which is now being repeated so often that the "merchandise" obviously isn't selling! If Putin makes himself the protector of Iran as he has made himself the protector of Syria, so much the better! He irreversibly bogged in Syria (as in Ukraine) and if he now goes and bogs himself down in Iran as well then that's yet another nail in his coffin. We'll have to call him Vladimir Boggedownovitch!
Point 5 of the "Israeli" point of view is interesting. Israel and the US do indeed look like total idiots and have indeed no credibility left. Who caused that? Putin! Obvious solution: take out Putin! At that point, the problems in Ukraine, Syria, Iran and North Korea are solved in one swoop and the Russian Federation returns to the peaceful place at the European table that it was taking until somebody (American?) filled the little policeman's head with pipedreams of "Eurasian" glory.
By the way, I never trust people who conceal their identity: Southfront, Moon of Alabama. It usually means that the site is a front of some sort. Credibility zero, therefore.
War for Blair Mountain , November 19, 2017 at 4:06 pm GMT
@Kiza

Kiza

A bloody Civil War in the 2017 version of America will be a bloody Race War What could be more obvious?

Sergey Krieger , November 19, 2017 at 4:13 pm GMT
@Michael Kenny

You understanding of what it means to get bogged down is obviously confused and misplaced. If you want real definition of getting bogged down look no further than USA in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ilyana_Rozumova , November 19, 2017 at 5:38 pm GMT
Israel and the US look like total idiots and, even worse, as losers with no credibility left.

Yes that is obviously true.

But they were successful in Libya. The progress they have achieved there is amazing!!!!

Finally there is flourishing slave trade there.

(But then!
Who is buying the slaves?)

Andrei Martyanov , Website November 19, 2017 at 6:18 pm GMT
@Mikel

However, this is not preventing the Israelis from violating those air defenses on a constant basis and attacking from the air the very capital of Syria, as admitted by the Syrians themselves.

1. Stop obvious BS. Israeli DO NOT "violate" those air defense, since they do not attack (and they can't) ANY Russian targets which those air defenses are there to protect. Israel attacks SAA's targets. See the difference? Russia is not, at this stage, in the state of war with Israel, which would open legal and operational framework for shooting down Israel's AF assets.

2. Should Israel have had such an intention and attack Russian targets–we would be living in a very different world today. Russians do not take lightly attacks on their targets and the case of USS Liberty is impossible. The "argument" of Su-24 shot down by Turkish AF is not applicable here. Why, is a separate issue. Israel knows it and is also in a full hysteria mode as I type it and it is precisely because should the push comes to shove IDF's "plans" on Syria will not work anymore. Especially, since Russian VKS MAY at some point of time get the order to impose real no-fly zone. This is not to speak of the fact that Israelis DO inform Russian forces in Syria on their plans.

3. Do not conflate two very different issues. This is exactly what you did.

The facts that I never get an answer to this question

Did you get the answer now or do you need this issue to be explained even more in depth?

Look, I'm a simple civilian just trying to learn how these defenders of the Russian military technological supremacy explain the apparent paradox that I exposed.

You "exposed" absolutely nothing and there are many "simple civilians" even in this threat who have absolutely no difficulty in grasping key political, diplomatic and operational issues re: Russian forces in Syria.

L.K , November 19, 2017 at 6:26 pm GMT
@Mikel

" I don't believe that the Syrian civil war and the rest of the Arab uprisings were organized by any anglo-zionist conspiration.."

What you believe or don't ain't worthwhile but the Syrian war is not really a 'civil war' at all and the fact that it originates with a zionist-ZUSA-Saudi conspiracy is well established:

WikiLeaks: US, Israel, And Saudi Arabia Planned Overthrow Of Syrian Govt. In 2006
[...]Cables reveal that before the beginning of the Syrian revolt and civil war, the United States hoped to overthrow Assad and create strife between Shiite and Sunni Muslims

The United States and its allies in the Middle East, including Turkey and Israel, have been frequently accused of contributing to the ongoing destabilization of Syria in the wake of the uprising and subsequent civil war which began in 2011. But according to cables from the WikiLeaks archive, discussed in the Syria chapter of Assange's book, plans to deliberately destabilize the region go back at least five years further.[...]
WikiLeaks cables reveal that these plans came from the Israeli government, and show that the U.S. government intended to work with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Egypt to encourage the breakdown of the Assad regime as a way of also weakening Iran and Hezbollah.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/wikileaks-us-israel-and-saudi-arabia-planned-overthrow-of-syrian-govt-in-2006/221784/

L.K , November 19, 2017 at 6:39 pm GMT
@Mikel

" the Russian military technological supremacy explain the apparent paradox that I exposed."

You have exposed nothing, you are just a silly person.
Whether or not the Russian A.A systems are as good as advertised is another matter, but the reason that Syria is not trying to shoot down the israelis is mainly because it does not need further escalation at this time Syria has been fighting a very difficult war since 2011 and engaging the israelis now would not be a smart move, even more so as it could provide additional BS 'motives' for ZUSA to increase its illegal military footprint in the country.

The job is to eliminate the main threat which are the various Salafi/mercenary groups backed by the ZUSA coalition that have been plaguing the country since 2011.
That goal is getting closer & closer by the day. Isis nearly gone in Syria, after that; the Nusra coalition in Idlib.

patrick kwinten , November 19, 2017 at 6:41 pm GMT
smart of russia to extend us warfrontline by taking ukraine when iran is under attack?
James Speaks , November 19, 2017 at 6:53 pm GMT
@L.K

Calling the covert invasion of Syria a civil war is easy b/c we are conditioned to think of Arabs and Muslims as incapable of living peacefully.

Very often, a complaint or set of complaints against one individual or group is really aimed at another.

All the the anti-Muslim rhetoric is nothing more than a device to neuter the one group,
Arabs, who would be capable of disarming the mindless, pro-Israel lobby.

SolontoCroesus , November 19, 2017 at 7:07 pm GMT
Another piece of outstanding journalism by Gareth Porter

Israel's Ploy Selling a Syrian Nuke Strike
November 18, 2017

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/11/18/israels-ploy-selling-a-syrian-nuke-strike/

In September 2007, Israeli warplanes bombed a building in eastern Syria that the Israelis claimed held a covert nuclear reactor that had been built with North Korean assistance. . . .

But nothing about that alleged reactor in the Syrian desert turns out to be what it appeared at the time. The evidence now available shows that there was no such nuclear reactor, and that the Israelis had misled George W. Bush's administration into believing that it was in order to draw the United States into bombing missile storage sites in Syria . Other evidence now suggests, moreover, that the Syrian government had led the Israelis to believe wrongly that it was a key storage site for Hezbollah missiles and rockets

Ram , November 19, 2017 at 8:32 pm GMT
@L.K

All the bluster from Nikky Haley at the UN is to find a legal loophole to legitimise the illegal presence of US troops (with surrogates) to remain in Syria. Russia was bitten once too often on Libya, and is far more alert to US duplicity.

Art , November 20, 2017 at 3:29 am GMT
@utu

The bottom line is that Russia can't impose its will on Israel. If Israel decides to bomb Russia's allies like Syria or Hezbollah Russia looks the other way.

utu,

With Israel, war is all about air defense – can Russia build up Syrian air defenses – would it take a year or more – can it even be done?

On the other hand, Israel cannot change the situation on the ground with only air power.

The bad guys are Wahhabist Saudi and Zionist Israel – they want war. The first is incompetent, the second wants others to do it.

We the world, must tell them both to go to hell.

We can do that!

Think Peace -- - Art

Anon , Disclaimer November 20, 2017 at 4:21 pm GMT
@Anonymous

Agree.
Americans in Syria: https://www.globalresearch.ca/secretary-mattis-is-off-base-us-military-presence-in-syria-has-no-legal-grounds/5618997
"The establishment of the US base near the Syria-Jordan border [in the area of the Syrian town of al-Tanf] was publicly justified by the need to conduct operations against Islamic State. However, no information has been received about any US operations against the group conducted from this area. To the contrary, IS has been reported to operate freely in an area abutting the [US] base . On and off, militant groups supposedly trained by Americans in the area strike Syria government forces. The more US forces are in-theater in Syria, the greater the chance of conflict between them and Syrian troops."

[Nov 18, 2017] State Department's New Victoria Nuland...is Just Like the Old Victoria Nuland

Notable quotes:
"... American Interest ..."
Nov 18, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org

Yesterday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson swore into office a new Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. Dr. A. Wess Mitchell became the Trump Administration's top diplomat for Europe , "responsible for diplomatic relations with 50 countries in Europe and Eurasia, and with NATO, the EU and the OSCE."

Readers will recall that the position was most recently held during the Obama Administration by Kagan family neocon, Victoria Nuland, who was key catalyst and cookie provider for the US-backed coup overthrowing the elected government in Ukraine. Victoria Nuland's virulently anti-Russia position was a trademark of the neocon persuasion and she put ideology into action by " midwifing ," in her own words, an illegal change of government in Ukraine.

It was Nuland's coup that laid the groundwork for a precipitous decay in US/Russia relations, as Washington's neocons peddled the false line that "Russia invaded Ukraine" to cover up for the fact that it was the US government that had meddled in Ukrainian affairs. The coup was bloody and divisive , resulting in a de-facto split in the country that continues to the day. Ukraine did not flourish as a result of this neocon scheme, but has in fact been in economic free-fall since the US government installed its preferred politicians into positions of power.

You don't hear much about Ukraine these days because the neocons hate to talk about their failures. But the corruption of the US-installed government has crippled the country, extreme nationalist elements that make up the core of the post-coup elites have imposed a new education law so vicious toward an age-old Hungarian population stuck inside arbitrarily re-drawn post-WWI borders that the Hungarian government has blocked Ukraine's further integration into NATO, and a new "Maidan" protest has steadily gathered steam in Kiev despite Western cameras being uninterested this time.

Fortunately Donald Trump campaigned on and was elected to improve relations with Russia and end the Obama Administration's neocon-fueled launch of a new Cold War. He raised eyebrows when he directly challenged the neocon shibboleth -- amplified by the mainstream media -- that Russia was invading Ukraine. But candidate Trump really blew neocon minds -- and delighted voters -- when he said he was looking into ending US sanctions on Russia imposed by Obama and may recognize Crimea as Russian territory.

Which brings us back to Wess Mitchell. Certainly President Trump, seeing the destruction of Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Victoria Nuland's anti-Russia interventionism, would he finally restore a sane diplomat to the position vacated by the unmourned former Assistant Secretary. Would appoint someone in line with the rhetoric that landed him the Oval Office. Right?

Wrong!

If anything, Wess Mitchell may well prove to be Victoria Nuland on steroids. He was co-founder and CEO of the neocon-dominated Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Mitchell's CEPA is funded largely by the US government, NATO, neocon grant-making mega-foundations, and the military-industrial complex. The "think tank" does the bidding of its funders, finding a Russian threat under every rock that requires a NATO and defense industry response -- or we're doomed!

Mitchell's CEPA's recent greatest hits? " The Kremlin's 20 toxic tactics ," " Russian disinformation and anti-Western narratives in Romania: How to fight back? ," " Winning the Information War ," " Alliances and American greatness ," " Russia's historical distortions ," " What the Kremlin Fears Most ," and so on. You get the idea. The raison d'etre of the organization founded by the new Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia is to foment a new (and very profitable) Cold War (and more?) with Russia.

Last month, CEPA put on its big conference, the " CEPA Forum 2017 ." Speakers included central European heavy hitter politicos like the president of Latvia and also Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, Commanding General of U.S. Army Europe, who gave a talk on how "the unity of the NATO Alliance" is "what Russia fears the most." The grand event was funded, as might be expected, by war contractors Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin. But also, surprisingly, significant funding came from the Hungarian government of Viktor Orban, who is seen as somewhat of a maverick in central Europe for refusing to sign on to the intense Russia-hate seen in the Baltics and in Poland.

The no-doubt extraordinarily expensive conference was funded by no less than three Hungarian government entities: the Embassy of Hungary in Washington, DC, the Hungarian Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade , and the Hungarian Presidency of the Visegrad Group . Again, given Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's reputation for bucking neocon positions vis-a-vis Russia it is surprised to see the virulently anti-Russia CEPA conference so awash in Hungarian taxpayer money. Perhaps there is something to explore in the fact that the recently-fired Hungarian Ambassador to Washington,Réka Szemerkényi, was recently named executive vice president of CEPA. Hmmm. Makes you wonder.

But back to Mitchell. So he founded a neocon think tank funded by a NATO desperate for new missions and a military-industrial complex desperate for new wars. What about his own views? Surely he can't be as bad as Nuland. Right? Wrong! Fortunately Assistant Secretary Mitchell is a prolific writer, so it's easy to track his thinking. In a recent piece for neocon Francis Fukuyama's American Interest , titled "Predators on the Frontiers," Mitchell warns that, "From eastern Ukraine and the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea, large rivals of the United States are modernizing their military forces, grabbing strategic real estate, and threatening vulnerable US allies."

Mitchell continues, in a voice right out of the neocon canon, that:

By degrees, the world is entering the path to war. Not since the 1980s have the conditions been riper for a major international military crisis. Not since the 1930s has the world witnessed the emergence of multiple large, predatory states determined to revise the global order to their advantage -- if necessary by force.
We are on a path to war not seen since the 1930s! And why are our "enemies" so hell-bent on destroying us? Because we are just so isolationist!

Writes Mitchell: "Over the past few years, Russia, China, and, to a degree, Iran have sensed that the United States is retreating in their respective regions..."

We are "retreating"?

So what can we do? Mitchell again does the bidding of his paymasters in advising that the only thing we can do to save ourselves is...spend more on militarism:

The United States should therefore enhance its nuclear arsenal by maintaining and modernizing it. It needs to sustain a credible nuclear extended deterrent at a time when revisionist states are gradually pushing their spheres of influence and control closer to, if not against, U.S. allies. Moreover, it should use the limited tactical nuclear weapons at its disposal and seed them in a few of the most vulnerable and capable frontline states (Poland and Japan, for instance) under "nuclear sharing" agreements.
There is our new Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia. Our top diplomat for Europe. The only solution is a military solution. President Trump. Elected to end the endless wars, to forge better relations with Russia, to roll-back an "outdated" NATO. President Trump has replaced Victoria Nuland with something far more dangerous and frightening. Heckuva job, there, Mr. President!
Copyright © 2017 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
Please donate to the Ron Paul Institute

[Nov 18, 2017] MoA - NATO Adds To Turkeys Chagrin

See also Blood Borders A Proposal To Redraw A New Middle East - Brilliant Maps
Notable quotes:
"... Armed Forces Journal ..."
"... Daily Sabah ..."
Nov 18, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

NATO Adds To Turkey's Chagrin

There has long been speculation about a Turkish good-bye to NATO .

The U.S. and its military proxy organization in Europe are doing their best to further such a move:

The image of Atatürk was displayed as a target during the drill at NATO's Joint Warfare Center in Stavanger, Norway held between Nov. 8 and Nov. 17, while a NATO soldier posted defamatory words about Erdoğan on the social media.

Atatürk is the founder of the secular Turkey. He was designated as "target" during a desk-top drill. NATO's Joint Warfare Center is not a low level school but an elite officer training institution led by a Major-General. The 40 Turkish soldiers who attended the training course were immediately ordered back home.

Secularists in Turkey have long suspected NATO as promoting "moderate Islamists". That believe is not without factual ground. U.S. President Obama allied with the Muslim Brotherhood during the so called "Arab Spring". But the second incident at the very same NATO institution points to a more comprehensive anti-Turkish position:

A Kurdish-origin Norwegian officer signed up to a social networking website within NATO, using a fake account in the name of President Erdoğan and sharing posts against the organization.

To vilify the Turkish secularist hero Atatürk and its Islamist President Erdogan in related occasions is a comprehensive move against the whole country.

NATO's political spokesperson Jens Stoltenberg, a Norwegian politician, apologized for the incidents. It will soothe no one.

A comparable incident happened in 2006. U.S. Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters published a map with redrawn borders of Middle East in the Armed Forces Journal . The map showed a "Free Kurdistan" and Turkey cut to half its size.

The map was then presented by an American colonel at the NATO's Defense College in Rome while Turkish officers were attending. An uproar ensued and the U.S. had to apologize.

In July 2016 parts of the Turkish military attempted a coup against Erdogan. Turkish jets which attacked the capitol Ankara had launched from the U.S. and NATO base in Incirlik. When the attempt failed several NATO countries granted asylum to Turkish officers who did not want to return to their home country.

After the failed coup Turkey decided to buy Russian air defense systems. The move makes sense. The alternative U.S. systems are suspected to be ineffective against attacking U.S. planes and missiles. The Russian S-400 systems is designed to counter threats from U.S. weapons.

Turkey is a partner in the U.S. F-35 fighter jet program. It has plans to purchase one hundred of them. Now the U.S. Air Force suggests that the deal could be restricted:

If Turkey moves forward with its buy of a Russian air defense system, it will not be permitted to plug into NATO technology, and further action may be forthcoming that could affect the country's acquisition or operation of the F-35, a top Air Force official said Wednesday.
...
Analysts worry that Turkey operating both the S-400 and F-35 together could compromise the jet's security, as any data collected by the air defense system and obtained by Russia could help expose the joint strike fighter's vulnerabilities. For a platform like the F-35, whose major strengths are its stealth and data fusion capabilities, that would be a disaster.

[The deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for international affairs, Heidi] Grant, agreed that a S-400 acquisition creates issues for Turkey's use of the F-35.
...
Her comments echoed those of Gen. Petr Pavel, chairman of NATO's military committee. In October, Pavel said that Turkey is free, as a sovereign nation, to make its own decisions in regards to military procurement, but will face "consequences" if a S-400 buy goes through.

Buying a Russian air defense system is not unprecedented for a NATO state. In 1997 Cyprus bought Russian S-300 systems, ironically to defend against Turkish jets. The Cyprus Missile Crisis ensued and the weapons ended up in Greece where they also serve to keep the Turks away. Greece also flies U.S. made jets.

In Syria the U.S. is arming, training and fighting together with the YPK, a sister organization of the Kurdish PKK which is pursuing a guerilla campaign against the Turkish army and state.

The personal disparaging of Turkish politicians by NATO, U.S. involvement in a coup attempt, restrictions on weapon buys and U.S. cooperation with Turkey's enemy are amounting to an open affront.

It is obvious that NATO is no longer a reliable ally for Turkey. This view is independent of who holds the Turkish presidency. The strategic situation would not change if Erdogan would be replaced by some secular nationalist figure.

Turkey fields NATO's second biggest army. With more than 80 million people it is a large emerging military and economic power. It controls the Bosporus and thereby access to the Black Sea. It has influence in the Balkans as well as in the Central Asian "Stans". It is a crossing point for major energy pathways including the new Russian TurkStream pipeline which will deliver Russian gas to south-Europe.

The is little that hinders Turkey from leaving NATO and from joining a tacit alliance with Russia. Russian fighter jets are as good as the U.S. designed F-35. Even Turkey's economic interests seem to be better aligned with Russia's than with north-Europe or the United States. The voices in Turkey that demand a realignment are gaining ground. The editors of the Erdogan friendly Daily Sabah write :

The U.S. is not the enemy, but neither is it acting like a friend. Its actions are against Turkey's interests as well as its own. Now is the right time for Turkey to formulate its own independent regional policy.

Russia and Iran with their sounder anti-Daesh and counterterrorism policies need to be at the center of measures Turkey will implement from now on. After all that's happened, one thing is certain: The U.S. should definitely be kept out of Turkey's regional policy concerns.

The Zionist lobby in the U.S. has long argued to kick Turkey out of NATO. Such a separation may indeed come true. But it would be Turkey that would leave NATO and not the other way around. The effects would be quote different than those expected a decade ago.

Posted by b on November 17, 2017 at 02:22 PM | Permalink

shaw | Nov 17, 2017 2:49:14 PM | 1

More you Piss Off Turkey, more it goes East !!(Is this the Policy of US?) No Issues, Turkey and Erdogan have thumbed it's Nose to USA and is in Secret block of Russia, China & Pakistan. It will Seek it's Ottoman Glory with the "Stans" of Central Asia. Just gave Pakistan $1.45 million Line of Credit & full "Technology Transfer" of A129 Attack Helicopters to Pakistan. Russian M400 Missiles, etc etc. US keeps eyes closed, World is closing in Fast. And Mr Trump is losing faster. Disaster trip to Asia. China spun a great spell. US is going down.
Virgile | Nov 17, 2017 2:50:49 PM | 2
The US admnistration hates Erdogan and he hates them in return.
After it failed to kick Erdogan out with the 'amateurish' coup, opponents to Erdogan who are in NATO and in the US administration are doing all they can to undermine Erdogan, to put him in the defensive, to isolate him and to weaken him even more. They are working so he won't be elected president in 2019 and Turkey would be ripe for compromises on Palestine.

It is part of Trump's strategy to force an Israel-Palestinian peace plan worked out by Zionists advisors to Trump. The opponents to this plan, Syria,Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Hamas are been subjected to all sorts of assaults to destabilize them and make weaker so they have no choice than to bow.
Parallely Trump is also weakening Israel as he wants serious compromise that the jewish State is not ready to give. Therefore a campaign against Netanyahu is going on to weaken him or replace him.

We will therefore not see large attacks but relentless small attacks on these countries..
In the hands of Trump, Jared, MBS and Netanyahu, the 'plan' risks to make Iran Greater and Saudi Arabia and the USA Smaller!

somebody | Nov 17, 2017 3:10:58 PM | 3
Nato/coalition/US will have to decide if they are with the YPG in Syria or with Turkey.
somebody | Nov 17, 2017 3:13:34 PM | 4
add to 3

Looks like a campaign Time to kick Turkey out of NATO

frances | Nov 17, 2017 3:49:17 PM | 5
"The purchase...could help expose the joint strike fighter's vulnerabilities."
Hahahahah, good joke, the F-35 is a billion dollar deathtrap. To be prevented from purchasing them would be a godsend for Turkey.
C1ue | Nov 17, 2017 4:21:05 PM | 6
Turkey has long played the fan dance between East (Russia) and West (Western European powers). This time is no different. It was just a few years ago that Turkey was such a friend to the US and European interests. The failed coup, however, has changed that but still only time will tell if this is a structural change or just the latest flip flop.
Piotr Berman | Nov 17, 2017 4:22:29 PM | 7
The structural problem of "macro NATO" concept is that it puts together countries that have very little in common, or more precisely, with many seething mutual conflicts. That would matter little if there was a unifying threat, but nothing like that exists.

Supporting Turkey and "free Kurdistan" is an obvious hard case, but Turkey has checkered relationship with KSA+UAE -- while being close to Qatar, and with Greece. Greece and Bulgaria have no enmity toward Russia, although the current government seems to follow anti-Russian line.

Then there is an issue why countries far from Russia and lacking alternative "enemies" or post-colonial clients should strive to keep defense spending at NATO agreed level of 2% of GDP. And huge prices of NATO approved weapon systems. Lithuania increased military spending to the "required 2%" and it still cannot afford tanks (I did not check other Baltic states). Clearly, arms race is cheaper for Russia that has complete domestic military industry, lower costs and more cost aware process of weapon design, so the scheme to beggar Russia with arms race is good only for the overfed western arms producers.

Turkey has decent economy and good strategic position: key straits under control and complicated mountain ranges along problematic borders, so it should survive leaving NATO without loosing quiet sleep. At worst, they should improve relationship with neighbors and their own Kurds, and NATO is more hindrance than help in that respect.

Hausmeister | Nov 17, 2017 4:44:05 PM | 8
C1ue | Nov 17, 2017 4:21:05 PM | 6

„The failed coup, however, has changed that but still only time will tell if this is a structural change or just the latest flip flop."
Please be not that much sure about this coup. People who are better informed do not share the estimation that it was a Western-plotted thing, at least not in its final execution. Some people in Turkey call it a controlled coup. True is that this „moderate Islam" thing was supported by the West, including Saudi-Arabia, but Erdogan/AKP knew this, used its benefits until the very last moment and Erdogan himself welcomed the dirty tricks that his (Gülen-) police people used against his Kemalist opposition.

lysander | Nov 17, 2017 5:39:14 PM | 11
I can't help but notice that Turkey would have avoided all these problems entirely if they had refused to allow terrorists to attack Syria from its territory from the very beginning. Without Turkey, the war against Syria would have collapsed before it even started, saving everyone enormous heartache and pain.
fast freddy | Nov 17, 2017 7:18:08 PM | 15
NATO is a multi-purpose US/UK/Israel Proxy Force and a Figleaf for offensive Full Spectrum Dominance. Other member states are there because there are pictures of their leaders with their pants down.
Jackrabbit | Nov 17, 2017 7:26:58 PM | 16
Unbelievable. Why antagonize Turkey/Erdogan so directly?

No, really ... it's unbelievable. Such 'social proof' of a NATO-Turkish rift will no doubt cause Vlad to allow Erdogan certain liberties ... like remaining in Idlib and standing in the way of improved Kurdish-Syria relations.

karlof1 | Nov 17, 2017 7:34:45 PM | 17
Lysander @11--

An unavoidable truth being swept under the rug, most certainly! Erdogan is every bit as responsible for the deaths, mayhem and destruction as Obama and other facilitators. A trial followed by the gallows is what their fate ought to be. Erdogan may have changed his direction due to external factors, but his initial direction and the crimes he ordered to occur cannot be forgotten or forgiven.

Jackrabbit | Nov 17, 2017 7:44:52 PM | 18
@10 somebody's jewish paranoia has been triggered (again)

"Russia supported US Evangelical right wing" is almost as laughable as "Russia hacked the election" with $100k in facebook ads.

The evidence-free allegation in the first link ...

Russia's masters, whether political or ecclesiastical, have generally been skilled at cultivating friendships and tactical alliances ...
... is promptly contradicted by:
... there will always be limits to the relationship between the Russian Orthodox and America's evangelicals. Theologically, they are a long way apart.... [and US] Evangelicals tend to be philo-Semitic and pro-Israel [and] tend to be uncompromisingly anti-Islam, but conservative Russian Christians ... get along quite well with traditionalist Muslims ... And it is hard to argue that Russian society has anything to teach America about "family values"; rates of divorce and abortion are much higher in Russia than in America.

Then there is the issue of religious freedom in Russia. The meeting on Christian persecution that recently convened in Washington, DC, was originally scheduled to take place in Moscow; but the venue was changed after Russia passed a law that curbed evangelical missionary work, upsetting American Protestants.

terry thomas | Nov 17, 2017 8:02:26 PM | 19
the dog erdogan and his donmeh jewish corleone family have stripped syria bare. taken a billion dollars of plant based machinary helped destroy a world heritage site aleppo.
helped israel ant it's year zero oded yinon projects. turkey and israel are the nexus of one of the world largest live organ human shipping industries only out done by china.
without turkey and jordan the satanick warcrimes in syria could not of happened. as someone called billy hayes said above never trust a turk.

when you speak to the average turk they have zero knowledge of erdogans crimes and blame everyone else but themselves.

dog erdo gets upset at a photoshop image of himself as target, and does not blink at his israeli arts projects in syria for the zionist history erasures. the rape and destruction of an ancient place theft of billions of dollars of oil sold onto tel aviv.

this fella is a donmeh satanist a mason a tool who and should be kept at arms length assad and syria should never forgive the crimes of this pimp.

psychohistorian | Nov 17, 2017 10:08:57 PM | 21
...To the posting matter....Turkey is just part of the realignment of nations that is occurring before our eyes. I keep wanting to see a chart of the evolving multipolar world but the game is still in play so one must practice patience....
<

[Nov 18, 2017] How Americas Deep State Operates To Control The Message by Philip Giraldi

Notable quotes:
"... The recent exchanges over the Russia-US relationship exhibit perfectly how the Deep State operates to control the message. ..."
"... Beyond twisting narratives, Russiagate is also producing potentially dangerous collateral damage to free speech, as one of the objectives of those in the Deep State is to rein in the current internet driven relatively free access to information. In its most recent manifestations, an anonymous group produced a phony list of 200 websites that were "guilty" of serving up Russian propaganda, a George Soros funded think tank identified thousands of individuals who are alleged to be "useful idiots" for Moscow, and legitimate Russian media outlets will be required to register as foreign agents. ..."
"... Hegemonic Empire always attacks those nations who are perceived to be weaker than the Empire. ..."
"... Never in my long life have I ever seen such twistedness in the mainstream media. In the days of Nixon and Watergate, there was a media agenda. But it was based in truth. This crap we get now is complete Deep State party line. ..."
"... I wonder if there ever was a time in history where the media in a country was so full of fabrication and propaganda. If there was, I would be interested in hearing how they had a downfall. It seems the media in this country can be so completely covered in deceit and lies and false claims, yet somehow not be accountable for it. ..."
"... The whole Russiagate bullshite has once again destroyed the credibility of the intel agencies and the media. Really old idiots are in charge of these things. ..."
Nov 18, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation

It is not possible to overstate the power of certain constituencies and corporate lobbies in the United States.

These pressure groups, joined by powerful government agencies, many of which have secret agendas that focus on national security, constitute what is increasingly being recognized as "Deep State America." Deep State is the widespread belief that there exists in many countries an entrenched and largely hidden infrastructure that really controls the national narrative and runs things. It explains why, for example, a country like the United States is perpetually at war even though the wars have been disastrous failures ever since Korea and have not made the nation more secure.

To be sure, certain constituencies have benefitted from global instability and conflict, to include defense industries, big government in general, and the national security state . They all work together and hand-in-hand with the corporate media to sustain the narrative that the United States is perpetually under threat, even though it is not.

The recent exchanges over the Russia-US relationship exhibit perfectly how the Deep State operates to control the message. American President Donald Trump briefly met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vietnam. Putin reportedly told Trump that Russia "absolutely had not meddled" in the 2016 US election and Trump then told reporters that he believed the Russian leader meant what he said, "which is good." As détente with Russia is not considered desirable by the Deep State, there was an immediate explosion of a contrary narrative, namely that Trump believes a Russian "enemy" and does not trust what his own intelligence agencies have told him about 2016 because he is being "played" by Putin.

This story was repeated both on television news and in all the mainstream newspapers without exception, eventually forcing Trump to recant and say that he does believe in US intelligence.

Not a single major media outlet in the US reported that it just might be possible that Putin was telling the truth and that the intelligence community, which has been wrong many times over the past twenty years, might have to look again at what it considers to be evidence. No journalist had the courage to point out that the claims of the Washington national security team have been remarkably devoid of anything credible to support the conclusions about what the Russian government might or might not have been up to. That is what a good journalist is supposed to do and it has nothing to do with whether or not one admires or loathes either Putin or Trump.

That the relationship between Moscow and Washington should be regarded as important given the capability of either country to incinerate the planet would appear to be a given, but the Washington-New York Establishment, which is euphemism for Deep State, is actually more concerned with maintaining its own power by marginalizing Donald Trump and maintaining the perception that Vladimir Putin is the enemy head of state of a Russia that is out to cripple American democracy.

Beyond twisting narratives, Russiagate is also producing potentially dangerous collateral damage to free speech, as one of the objectives of those in the Deep State is to rein in the current internet driven relatively free access to information. In its most recent manifestations, an anonymous group produced a phony list of 200 websites that were "guilty" of serving up Russian propaganda, a George Soros funded think tank identified thousands of individuals who are alleged to be "useful idiots" for Moscow, and legitimate Russian media outlets will be required to register as foreign agents.

Driven by Russophobia over the 2016 election, a group of leading social media corporations including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have been experimenting with ways to self-censor their product to keep out foreign generated or "hate" content.

They even have a label for it: "cyberhate" . Congress is also toying with legislation that will make certain viewpoints unacceptable or even illegal, including a so-called Anti-Semitism Awareness Act that would potentially penalize anyone who criticizes Israel and could serve as a model for banning other undesirable speech. "Defamatory speech" could even eventually include any criticism of the government or political leaders, as is now the case in Turkey, which is the country where the "Deep State" was invented.

serotonindumptruck , Nov 17, 2017 8:14 PM

Fear is the order of the day. Be very, very afraid of that militarily-weak nation on the other side of the world, who poses no legitimate and imminent threat to the US. Hegemonic Empire always attacks those nations who are perceived to be weaker than the Empire. It represents the death knell of Empire, and is typically the final stage of economic and political collapse.

Publicus_Reanimated , Nov 17, 2017 9:07 PM

Howard Beale: "We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness. You maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion. So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!"

-- Network

If you are too young to have heard of this movie, now you know.

Cherubim , Nov 17, 2017 9:53 PM

Never in my long life have I ever seen such twistedness in the mainstream media. In the days of Nixon and Watergate, there was a media agenda. But it was based in truth. This crap we get now is complete Deep State party line.

I wonder if there ever was a time in history where the media in a country was so full of fabrication and propaganda. If there was, I would be interested in hearing how they had a downfall. It seems the media in this country can be so completely covered in deceit and lies and false claims, yet somehow not be accountable for it.

The only thing in history that I know that would compare to this is the Pravda in the old Soviet days of Brezhnev. And I'm not sure how that came finally tumbling down.

wide angle tree , Nov 17, 2017 9:55 PM

The whole Russiagate bullshite has once again destroyed the credibility of the intel agencies and the media. Really old idiots are in charge of these things.

[Nov 16, 2017] Is Donald Trump the New Mikhail Gorbachev

Perestroika and Trump_vs_deep_state has one important thing in common -- they arose out of deep crisis of the Soviet Society and the US neoliberal society, correspondingly
Notable quotes:
"... The reasoning of Gorbachev's program of perestroika -- as an attempt to both transcend tired Soviet orthodoxies while remaining loyal to the underlying assumptions of the regime -- also explains the attraction of Trump_vs_deep_state to many conservative intellectuals, voters, and activists. Trump_vs_deep_state gives its followers the allure of reckoning with the conservative movement's inadequacies while remaining faithful to its underlying assumptions about economics and the role of the state. ..."
"... For all its recklessness, it is this faction of Right that has indeed grappled with a nation whose poor- and lower-middle class face the erosion of both wages and a formerly rich institutional fabric ..."
"... When Bannon calls for Americans to understand themselves as citizens with "certain responsibilities and obligations," it's a subtle -- if incomplete and disingenuous -- recognition that the vocabulary of "liquid modernity" cannot rescue us from the very fruits it created. ..."
"... The Hayekian claim that any language of social justice commences a perilous journey towards serfdom was perhaps necessary to combat midcentury sirens of collectivism. But today it is more often representative of an age fearful of placing demanding claims upon our lives ..."
"... Someone else at TAC asked a similar question, and the answer is, no: Trump is no Gorbachev. If anything he is our Boris Yeltsin. And no, that is not intended as a compliment. MEOW , says: November 15, 2017 at 12:07 am Good points. Gorby was a realist like the Chinese. They could not depress a people's living standards with an inferior system of exchange, production, and distribution. The word was out about living standard differences. The one-world movement is very different. It means to disable all our traditions and differences (Happy Holidays for Merry Christmas – rewriting history etc) in order to allow a different cabal to prevail in this artificially created vacuum. Mac61 , says: November 15, 2017 at 6:46 am Gorbachev said we must set aside all ideology and look at all things through the light of morality. Trump is not capable of that. Bannon tried to ally Trump_vs_deep_state with Judeo-Christian morality. That project seems incomplete at the moment. Egypt Steve , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:26 am I suppose if you compare any two things, you can find some points of similarity somewhere. M1798 , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:32 am You ask for a more expansive welfare state, but didn't Make the case that our current welfare state does any public good. Food stamps and disability payments subsidize mothers to not keep the father around and fathers to not work to provide for their families. We have job training programs, yet you fail to make the case that they serve any long term good. And even our most popular welfare programs, social security and Medicare, are financially unsustainable. You wrote this article as if the GOP has legislated in the same way as their rhetoric, yet the we saw the failure to repeal Obamacare as proof that this isn't true. Dan Green , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:39 am I subscribe to what Hayek coined, the road to serfdom. Once The Social Democratic Welfare State is fully implemented , as we witness today, the state cannot make it work. Currently the model is subsidized with debt. John , says: November 15, 2017 at 10:49 am If there were an award in journalism for the hottest of takes, this might be a strong finalist for this year's. Otherwise LOL. vern , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:38 am Trump is none of the above. His only purpose in government was for his own ego gratification and to increase his wealth. He is a puppet for whoever is close enough for him to pull his strings. His favorite world leaders all happen to be autocrats who care little about civil liberties or human rights. He cares about wins and losses (ego) He is not religious, it is just a smoke screen he has put up so he can hide his worse tendencies and use it to block criticism. spite , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:57 am People that write these kind of articles just never get it (actually they probably do but cannot say these things openly). It has to do with race, whether you like this reason or not – this is the underlying fundamental issue at play here. Being replaced by another people is not going to sit well with some, one would think this is stating the obvious but it seems that the fear to broach this topic makes people come up with all kinds of reasonings that simply do not admit the truth of this. I know that anything to do with race causes so called conservatives to have abject fear (even this comment has a high chance of being censored), but you simply cannot ignore this anymore. Alex , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:59 am Oh, please. I am from the former Soviet Union. I know who Gorbachev was. He was a democrat, Trump is a dictator. Gorbachev was able to talk and listen to people, Trump is very good in insulting and blaming people. I can continue forever. They have nothing in common as human beings. connecticut farmer , says: November 15, 2017 at 12:34 pm " in which the state is again recognized as a limited but essential expression of our shared life together, where we are members not just of a market but a "great common enterprise" in which solidarity and justice are indeed tangible things." This phrase unfortunately constitutes a blemish on an otherwise fine and thoughtful article. Exactly what does the phrase "limited but essential expression of our shared life together" mean? "Limited" by what? What "great common enterprise"? What "solidarity"? Ours is a country where commonality of purpose–to the extent that it has ever existed in the first place– appears to be vanishing at an exponential level. Lots of questions. No answers. polistra , says: November 15, 2017 at 1:10 pm Obama is more like Gorbachev. The last attempt to rebrand the old system, hoping to make it more palatable. Trump may turn out to be more like Yeltsin if he starts doing SOMETHING. So far the fake image of "Trump" is causing all sorts of reactions and changes, but the actual Trump has done nothing at all. He just emits meaningless noises, handing his enemies free ammunition. ..."
Nov 16, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
TAC' s own Rod Dreher recently highlighted an American professor's exchange with an African diplomat, who compared Donald Trump to Mikhail Gorbachev. Just as the last Soviet premier unwittingly became "the man who destroyed a superpower," Trump in this view is recklessly squandering the United States' global position. But upon reflection, the analogy holds for another reason: Whatever Trump's own mixture of "irritable mental gestures," Trump_vs_deep_state -- as articulated by Steve Bannon, Laura Ingraham, Michael Anton & Company -- can be read as a sort of perestroika for the American Right.

A reader may naturally look warily at the comparison. Can one discern a link between the rhetoric of Breitbart and Gorbachev's exhortation, "to reject obedience to any dogma, to think independently, to submit one's thoughts and plans of action to the test of morality"? However reaching, the comparison may allow us to discern why debates over immigration and trade now capture the conservative imagination in a way not reducible to "white identity politics" or reflexive loyalty to the president.

The reasoning of Gorbachev's program of perestroika -- as an attempt to both transcend tired Soviet orthodoxies while remaining loyal to the underlying assumptions of the regime -- also explains the attraction of Trump_vs_deep_state to many conservative intellectuals, voters, and activists. Trump_vs_deep_state gives its followers the allure of reckoning with the conservative movement's inadequacies while remaining faithful to its underlying assumptions about economics and the role of the state. The appeal of nationalist rhetoric is not reducible to nativism, though it might be for some. Instead, Bannon's program offers conservatives a safe exit ramp from self-critical thinking, allowing them to both grapple with an erosion of work and community among America's economic losers, while maintaining most of an existing right-wing economic program.

In a 1987 message to the Communist Party's Central Committee, Gorbachev flaunted the Soviet order for its "conservative inclinations, inertia, and desire to brush aside everything that didn't fit into habitual patterns." This is the same critique offered by the Jacksonian Right of the conservative establishment. "The whole enterprise of Conservative Inc.," wrote Michael Anton in his famous "Flight 93 Election" essay, "reeks of failure. Its sole recent and ongoing success is its own self-preservation."

For all its recklessness, it is this faction of Right that has indeed grappled with a nation whose poor- and lower-middle class face the erosion of both wages and a formerly rich institutional fabric Laura Ingraham's description of "a working class hammered by globalization" would not seem foreign to readers of Our Kids, Hillbilly Elegy, or Janesville . At its most tone-deaf, the Right responds with incantations to "rekindle the rugged individualism of America's founding, frontiers, and Constitution." But even those on the center-right with sincere empathy frequently offer only small-ball politics. For all their merits , a modest increase of the Child Tax Credit, repeal of occupational licensing, vouchers for improved geographic mobility, and moral exhortations for coastal elites to escape their bubble do not match the gravity of the moment. In a certain way, the Bannonite call for the wall and ripping up trade agreements is a rebellion against a purely technocratic politics without boldness of purpose. When Bannon calls for Americans to understand themselves as citizens with "certain responsibilities and obligations," it's a subtle -- if incomplete and disingenuous -- recognition that the vocabulary of "liquid modernity" cannot rescue us from the very fruits it created.

Trade and immigration are becoming the signature benchmarks for this new movement. Yet the Jacksonian shift allows conservatives to still maintain their aversion to a strong, active welfare state, an institution all other Western center-right parties have come to terms with. Limiting the fluid movement of goods and people, in this view, will accomplish the same goals as a state modeled on social or Christian-democratic purposes: We do not need to expand child tax credits or pursue ambitious investments of retraining and vocational education. All our struggling labor markets demand is "stopping the importation of cheap labor." At the same time, we can press ahead to repeal Obamacare and the tentacles of the administrative state, for economic nationalism can ameliorate our social problems far better than any program arising out of the Washington cesspool. Perhaps this strategy explains why, according to Pew Research , the president maintains far more support among "Core Conservatives" than "Country First" and "Market Skeptic" Republicans. The Trump revolution is ultimately not a decisive schism from old-time William F. Buckley-style fusionism, no matter what both supporters and Never Trumpers allege.

Systematic free-marketers may point out accurately how Trump_vs_deep_state can be just as economically redistributive as any welfare program. This is all true, but to most conservative activists, all this subtle redistribution and subsidizing looks far more hidden than paid-family leave or public investments in early childhood or prenatal care. In other words, Trump_vs_deep_state's attraction derives not from its wholesale rejection of traditional American conservatism, but its potential to keep its core tenets of the right alive -- even as neoliberalism's inadequacies suggest what is needed is a more vigorous discussion of what conservatism means in the public sphere.

If Trump_vs_deep_state's fundamental attraction to most conservative writers and activists derives from its ability to revise but sustain their movement, it is difficult to see how it will be to evolve into a credible governing program. This is not because a more hawkish line on immigration and trade is a fundamental betrayal of the "liberal world order." Indeed, one need only read Paul Collier George Borjas Michael Lind , Peter Skerry , or Dani Rodrik to find sustained, reasonable critiques of the establishment consensus on these matters.

But none of these authors would present their heterodox dissents as singular solutions for restoring the American (or Western) social contract. Just as Gorbachev's ambition was not to revitalize Russia but the Soviet Union, so is Trump_vs_deep_state not a program to save the Republic, or even a more narrow "Middle America." Despite the Jacobin rhetoric, the Trump_vs_deep_state of Bannon, Anton, and Ingraham is ultimately a rearguard maneuver to preserve a conservative movement whose even devoted partisans recognize has not aged gracefully since 1989. To keep it alive, wrecking the "globalist" consensus on immigration and trade must be pursued, regardless of the absence of any discernible benefit for the white working class.

What would a true revolution for American conservatism look like? It should start with the (early) thought of George Will, who wrote in the New Republic that, "if conservatism is to engage itself with the way we live now, it must address government's graver purposes with an affirmative doctrine of the welfare state." Conservatives must "come to terms with a social reality more complex than their slogans," where equality of opportunity is assumed as given. The Hayekian claim that any language of social justice commences a perilous journey towards serfdom was perhaps necessary to combat midcentury sirens of collectivism. But today it is more often representative of an age fearful of placing demanding claims upon our lives .

The Right must again recover the wisdom held by Disraeli, Churchill, and the (early) domestic neoconservatives, in which the state is again recognized as a limited but essential expression of our shared life together, where we are members not just of a market but a "great common enterprise" in which solidarity and justice are indeed tangible things. Accepting this truth will be a harder project than tightening the border and combating Chinese mercantilism, worthy though such things may be. But it will be far more revolutionary, even historic, than anything the present Trumpian revolution offers.

David Jimenez, a recent graduate of Bowdoin College and a Fulbright Scholar in Romania, works on campus outreach at a Washington think-tank.

EngineerScotty , says: November 14, 2017 at 11:22 pm

Someone else at TAC asked a similar question, and the answer is, no: Trump is no Gorbachev. If anything he is our Boris Yeltsin.

And no, that is not intended as a compliment.

MEOW , says: November 15, 2017 at 12:07 am
Good points. Gorby was a realist like the Chinese. They could not depress a people's living standards with an inferior system of exchange, production, and distribution. The word was out about living standard differences. The one-world movement is very different. It means to disable all our traditions and differences (Happy Holidays for Merry Christmas – rewriting history etc) in order to allow a different cabal to prevail in this artificially created vacuum.
Mac61 , says: November 15, 2017 at 6:46 am
Gorbachev said we must set aside all ideology and look at all things through the light of morality. Trump is not capable of that. Bannon tried to ally Trump_vs_deep_state with Judeo-Christian morality. That project seems incomplete at the moment.
Egypt Steve , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:26 am
I suppose if you compare any two things, you can find some points of similarity somewhere.
M1798 , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:32 am
You ask for a more expansive welfare state, but didn't Make the case that our current welfare state does any public good. Food stamps and disability payments subsidize mothers to not keep the father around and fathers to not work to provide for their families. We have job training programs, yet you fail to make the case that they serve any long term good. And even our most popular welfare programs, social security and Medicare, are financially unsustainable. You wrote this article as if the GOP has legislated in the same way as their rhetoric, yet the we saw the failure to repeal Obamacare as proof that this isn't true.
Dan Green , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:39 am
I subscribe to what Hayek coined, the road to serfdom. Once The Social Democratic Welfare State is fully implemented , as we witness today, the state cannot make it work. Currently the model is subsidized with debt.
John , says: November 15, 2017 at 10:49 am
If there were an award in journalism for the hottest of takes, this might be a strong finalist for this year's. Otherwise LOL.
vern , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:38 am
Trump is none of the above. His only purpose in government was for his own ego gratification and to increase his wealth.

He is a puppet for whoever is close enough for him to pull his strings. His favorite world leaders all happen to be autocrats who care little about civil liberties or human rights.

He cares about wins and losses (ego) He is not religious, it is just a smoke screen he has put up so he can hide his worse tendencies and use it to block criticism.

spite , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:57 am
People that write these kind of articles just never get it (actually they probably do but cannot say these things openly). It has to do with race, whether you like this reason or not – this is the underlying fundamental issue at play here. Being replaced by another people is not going to sit well with some, one would think this is stating the obvious but it seems that the fear to broach this topic makes people come up with all kinds of reasonings that simply do not admit the truth of this. I know that anything to do with race causes so called conservatives to have abject fear (even this comment has a high chance of being censored), but you simply cannot ignore this anymore.
Alex , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:59 am
Oh, please. I am from the former Soviet Union. I know who Gorbachev was. He was a democrat, Trump is a dictator. Gorbachev was able to talk and listen to people, Trump is very good in insulting and blaming people. I can continue forever. They have nothing in common as human beings.
connecticut farmer , says: November 15, 2017 at 12:34 pm
" in which the state is again recognized as a limited but essential expression of our shared life together, where we are members not just of a market but a "great common enterprise" in which solidarity and justice are indeed tangible things."

This phrase unfortunately constitutes a blemish on an otherwise fine and thoughtful article. Exactly what does the phrase "limited but essential expression of our shared life together" mean? "Limited" by what? What "great common enterprise"? What "solidarity"? Ours is a country where commonality of purpose–to the extent that it has ever existed in the first place– appears to be vanishing at an exponential level.

Lots of questions. No answers.

polistra , says: November 15, 2017 at 1:10 pm
Obama is more like Gorbachev. The last attempt to rebrand the old system, hoping to make it more palatable. Trump may turn out to be more like Yeltsin if he starts doing SOMETHING. So far the fake image of "Trump" is causing all sorts of reactions and changes, but the actual Trump has done nothing at all. He just emits meaningless noises, handing his enemies free ammunition.
grumpy realist , says: November 15, 2017 at 2:30 pm
Gorbachev had brains. Trump has none, and is very easily manipulated by anyone who points a camera at him and tells him how great he is.

If you don't believe me, look at how the Chinese manipulated Trump on this last trip to Asia.

Ken Zaretzke , says: November 15, 2017 at 6:22 pm
"For all its recklessness, it is this faction of Right that has indeed grappled with a nation whose poor- and lower-middle class face the erosion of both wages and a formerly rich institutional fabric."

But Trump might already be betraying it, as this article on banking (de)regulation suggests. It doesn't bode will for what the tax reform bill would mean for the 80% in the bottom quintiles of the population.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/business/bank-regulation.html

S T Lakshmikumar , says: November 15, 2017 at 8:36 pm
Unfortunately the entrenched social democratic welfare state will not lead to serfdom but to a dysfunctional society. This is the lesson from independent india which has no political party representing individualistic policies. The current Hindu nationalist party in power caters to Hindu sentiments but a redistributive economic policy. As an outsider i see USA following the same path with islands of functionality sustaining barely, the rest. Hopefully the author would join in a length discussion with me on this

[Nov 16, 2017] Russian Interference Now Being Blamed For Swaying Vote In Favor Of Brexit

Nov 16, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Was Brexit also Putin's fault?

The simmering anti-Russia hysteria that has emerged in the UK recently has finally boiled over, and it appears last night's story in the Times of London claiming that a swarm of Twitter bots reportedly created by a troll farm possibly linked to Russian intelligene (sound familiar?) posted more than 45,000 messages about Brexit in 48 hours during last year's referendum to try and "so discord" among the public was the grain of rice that tipped the scale.

Details that will sound familiar to anybody who's been following the ongoing hysteria surrounding the multiple investigations into Russian influence in the US election, the suspicious twitter accounts shared messages that promoted both the 'Remain' and 'Leave' campaigns, purportedly a "sophisticated" ploy to confuse and bewilder voters.

Most of the tweets seen by this newspaper encouraged people to vote for Brexit, an outcome which Russia would have regarded as destabilising for the European Union. A number were pro-Remain, however, suggesting that the Russian goal may have been simply to sow division.

"This is the most significant evidence yet of interference by Russian-backed social media accounts around the Brexit referendum," said Damian Collins, the Tory MP who chairs the digital, culture, media and sport select committee.

"The content published and promoted by these accounts is clearly designed to increase tensions throughout the country and undermine our democratic process. I fear that this may well be just the tip of the iceberg."

According to the Times, more than 150,000 accounts based in Russia, which had previously confined their posts to subjects such as the Ukrainian conflict, switched attention to Brexit in the days leading up to last year's vote, according to research for an upcoming paper by data scientists at Swansea University and the University of California, Berkeley.

In other words, after months of tweeting about pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, these bots started firing off messages amplifying the voice of the 'Leave' campaign into the void.

The researchers said Russian activity spiked on June 23, the day of the referendum, and on June 24 when the result was announced. From posting fewer than 1,000 tweets a day before June 13, the suspicious accounts posted 39,000 tweets on June 24 before dropping off almost entirely.

The Swansea and Berkeley paper says that a "massive number of Russian-related tweets was created a few days before the voting day, reached its peak during the voting and the result and then dropped immediately afterwards". Tho Pham, one of the paper's authors, said that "the main conclusion is that bots were used on purpose and had influence".

Of course, the Times report neglected to explain the Swansea researchers methodology. Facebook, Twitter and Google used the inadequate standard of having one's browser language set to Russian. It's unclear whether these researchers something that, like browser language, can be easily changed or mimicked by other groups.

On Monday, Theresa May accused Moscow of using fake news to "sow discord" and of meddling directly in elections. Her remarks followed a brief, impromptu meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at an Asian economic summit in Vietnam.

In what appeared to be an attempt to deflect attention away from a challenge to her leadership, UK Prime Minister Theresa May blasted Russia Monday evening, using her speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet to accuse them of interfering in foreign elections.

May accused Moscow of attempting to "weaponize information" as part of a "sustained campaign of cyberespionage and disruption." Russia's actions were "threatening the international order," she said.

"We know what you are doing. And you will not succeed. Because you underestimate the resilience of our democracies, the enduring attraction of free and open societies, and the commitment of Western nations to the alliances that bind us," May said.

May listed off a litany of ills she ascribed to Russia since its annexation of Crimea, including fomenting conflict in eastern Ukraine, violating the airspace of European countries, and hacking the Danish ministry of defense and the German Parliament. Russia has also been accused of interfering in elections in the US, the Brexit referendum in the UK, and the independence vote in Catalonia.

Following May's speech, reports emerged that individuals working on behalf of the Kremlin tried to set up meetings with conservative MPs, including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

Last night, one of the UK's cyber-defense chiefs adding to the anti-Russia sentiment by accusing Russian intelligence of attacking Britain's media, telecommunications and energy sectors over the past year.

Ciaran Martin, chief executive of GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), echoed May's claim that Russia was "seeking to undermine the international system."

Of course, there were at least two prominent British polls who decided to question the dubious accusations of interference.

Jeremy Corbyn wants to "see more evidence" that Russia is trying to undermine Western democracy, his spokesman said Wednesday.

And of course, as we noted yesterday, Nigel Farage pointed out during a speech at the European Parliament that financier George Soros has spent billions of dollars to push his political agenda across Europe, the US and the UK.

"How many of you have taken money from Open Society?" He asked his peers, referring to Soros's Open Society foundation.

While the Russian hysteria has been raging for a year in the US now, in the UK, it's only just beginning. In time, we will see of May's government will continue to use Vladimir Putin as a boogeyman on which they can blame their failure to successfully negotiate amenable Brexit terms for the UK.

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MusicIsYou , Nov 16, 2017 3:34 AM

Britain never was part of the EU. But most people are too concerned about Iphones and big dicks to think about much else.

Billy the Poet -> MusicIsYou , Nov 16, 2017 3:36 AM

If the premise is that Putin is the greatest living proponent of national sovereignty and individual liberty then what's the problem?

Shemp 4 Victory -> Billy the Poet , Nov 16, 2017 3:56 AM

"Russian Interference" Now Being Blamed For Democracy

Dank fur Kopf , Nov 16, 2017 3:35 AM

They might as well come out with alfoil hats while claiming 'Russia did it'.

That's how we're all seeing it.

Billy the Poet -> Dank fur Kopf , Nov 16, 2017 3:39 AM

They say "Putin ate my homework," with all the earnestness of a recalcitrant second grade scholar.

Lore , Nov 16, 2017 3:38 AM

This is bloody ridiculous. FOR GOD'S SAKE, GROW UP.

MusicIsYou , Nov 16, 2017 3:38 AM

The only Brits really care about is tea time, big dicks, and making sure their socialist buddies don't one up them.

JDLLDJ -> MusicIsYou , Nov 16, 2017 3:48 AM

I can see you are not English... You need to add orderly queue to that list haha

JDLLDJ , Nov 16, 2017 3:42 AM

I wondered when this would get to our shores... I think that governments are totally undermining themselves with the Russian hacking lies.. They are essentially saying that a few bots can control a country entirely.. Its totally stupid to think they could.

I dont have twitter, facebook or any of the other false realities some people choose to live in.. But yet i voted out.. So who influenced me? Nobody, we are an island culture, we will always lean towards independence.

Oh well, let them blame who they want, it changes little. Just makes politicians seem uneeded, lets replace them with bots!!

OutaTime43 , Nov 16, 2017 3:48 AM

Putin is the master spy. He controls the world. Really getting sick of this crap. They can't admit that their people are turning to nationalism and sovereignty over globalism.

JPMorgan , Nov 16, 2017 3:50 AM

Total BS.

The city areas like London voted to stay, and a good number of rural Britain and pensioners voted to leave.

No Russian conspiracy.

Bondosaurus Rex , Nov 16, 2017 3:52 AM

Brexit was about protecting the City Of London tax haven. Nothing more.

Britain is still turning into a third world shithole just like Europe is.

The Square Mile did not want Eurocretins encroaching. Putin is merely a distraction.

Volaille de Bresse , Nov 16, 2017 3:53 AM

I couldn't get a hard-on last night... Must be THE RUSSIANS!!

[Nov 16, 2017] McCarthyism Redux: Attacks on the Russian Media by John Wight

Notable quotes:
"... In 2017 we are witnessing the rebirth of McCarthyism across the West in response to Russia's recovery from the demise of the Soviet Union and the failed attempt to turn the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington via the imposition of free market economic shock treatment thereafter. ..."
Nov 16, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

In 2017 we are witnessing the rebirth of McCarthyism across the West in response to Russia's recovery from the demise of the Soviet Union and the failed attempt to turn the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington via the imposition of free market economic shock treatment thereafter.

In the process critical thinking and reason has been sacrificed on the altar of Pavlovian conditioning and unreason, resulting in the embrace of hysterical Russophobic nostrums by a liberal political and media class for whom Russia can only ever exist as a vanquished foe or a foe that needs to be vanquished. More

[Nov 16, 2017] Russia Names The 9 US News Outlets It Will Retaliate Against Zero Hedge

Notable quotes:
"... When America's elite decided to takeover America at the end of the 90's, they took full controll of the media and started dumbing down America. ..."
Nov 16, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

After hinting that retaliation was imminent, Russian lawmakers in the Duma - Russia's lower house of Parliament - have approved a law that would require nine US news outlets to be labeled "foreign agents" in response to Washington's decision to require Russia Today to register as a foreign agent last week, a decision that Moscow has slammed as hypocritical and infringing on free speech.

Reuters reports that Russia's lower house of Parliament has approved the law - which allows Moscow to force foreign media to brand news they provide to Russians as the work of "foreign agents" and to disclose the source of their funding.

The law must now pass the upper house, which is likely to happen next week. Once President Vladimir Putin signs it, it will become law. The path to passage looks relatively straightforward, and it's likely the bill will become a law. The Russian Justice Ministry on Thursday published a list of the news outlets that it said could be affected by the law.

Meanwhile, the outlets are the US-government-sponsored Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE), otherwise known as Radio Liberty, radio channels, along with seven separate Russian or local-language news outlets run by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

One of the seven outlets provides news on Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, one on Siberia, and one on the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region. Another covers provincial Russia, one is an online TV station, another covers the mostly Muslim region of Tatarstan, and the other is a news portal that fact-checks the statements of Russian officials.

Gaius Frakkin' ... -> Raffie , Nov 16, 2017 6:43 PM

Voice of America is pure distilled CIA propaganda last time I knew.

Mustafa Kemal -> Gaius Frakkin' Baltar , Nov 16, 2017 6:56 PM

"Voice of America is pure distilled CIA propaganda last time I knew."

Radio Free Europe, Stars and Stripes -been CIA for a long, long time.

HRClinton -> Robert Trip , Nov 16, 2017 6:42 PM

VOA and Radio Free Europe is 100% CIA + State Dept.

That's "porn" of a different sort: Oral porn.

johngaltfla -> Proctologist , Nov 16, 2017 7:04 PM

LOL, Putin wimps out. He should have added the AP and CNN to the list. What a pussy.

44magnum , Nov 16, 2017 6:36 PM

"the station remains committed to providing independent news to global audiences." Hmm like RT if independent includes government financing

RumpleShitzkin -> 44magnum , Nov 16, 2017 6:41 PM

All ours get funding. Both white and black budget.

Dickweed Wang -> 44magnum , Nov 16, 2017 7:08 PM

I've been watching RT for years and as far as providing somewhat of a balanced take on things they are far superior to any "news" outlet in the USA or the UK. Everyone watching RT knows going in they are funded by the Russian government. On the other hand we have so-called "news" organizations in the USA that are really nothing more than propaganda arms of the US government and they continually lie about that issue.

Is RT's coverage slanted towards a Russian view of things? Of course they are but the fact is they will talk about issues on RT you will NEVER see mentioned on any US media outlet. There are several things I have a beef with RT on including; their anti-2nd amendment stance, their promoting some really leftist views on things ("Redacted Tonight" is a prime example) and their going along with the "deep state" take on things like the authority's versions of events like Vegas and the Orlando shootings. In the end though you are much better off watching RT than anything produced in the US.

Sudden Debt Nov 16, 2017 6:46 PM

When America's elite decided to takeover America at the end of the 90's, they took full controll of the media and started dumbing down America.

25 years later and overall IQ's have drop to the low 80's is people would still be tested like they where in the 70's

and now they've even leveled EQ's since they took over the internet.

Free media has always been the weapons of freedom and the weapons of mass destruction of tyrants

untill they just ban it all together.

Dickweed Wang -> Yes We Can. But Lets Not. •Nov 16, 2017 7:20 PM

I've been watching RT for years and never once has it been on a regular TV. Their news program is streamed online 24/7. Go to:

https://www.rt.com/on-air/

PressTV out of Iran also has some good stuff you never see on American "news" networks. Go to:

http://www.presstv.com/Default/Live

Moribundus Nov 16, 2017 7:20 PM

This is 2nd towel in ring by USA. 1st was pull out ambasador who specialize on color revolutions. With RT USA expected that Russia will retaliate, but they calculate that while RT is popular, American propaganda is seen as crap and Putin will get 80% votes anyway so there was nothing to lose anyway

Nobodys Home -> JoeTurner Nov 16, 2017 7:27 PM

Was it Iceland that threw out all dual citizens in government? We should too! Declare your allegiance! So The Pledge of Allegiance is wrong huh?

[Nov 16, 2017] 'I'm not a Russian troll I'm a security guard from Glasgow'

Nov 16, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile , November 15, 2017 at 11:28 am

Cortes rumbled?

'I'm not a Russian troll – I'm a security guard from Glasgow'

"The whole issue of anonymous trolls, false personas and automated Twitter accounts is fraught with difficulty, but thanks to the work of James Patrick (among a few others) the public is now becoming aware of the problem of online propaganda, some of it clearly directed (via payments) by Putin's government " -- Peter Jukes, CEO of ByLine, told The Scotsman

"Byline" claims to be the most visited crowdfunded journalism website in the UK.

Moscow Exile , November 15, 2017 at 11:34 am
See: Scot to be kidding: 'Russian troll' turns out to be Glasgow security guard

Reminds me of when years back some smart-arse on the laughable "Comment Is Free" in the Grauniad, having repeatedly stated that I was a Russian troll, congratulated me on my use of English, saying it was quite good for a Russian.

Jen , November 15, 2017 at 3:56 pm
Apparently not the firsht time a Scot was convincing in the role of a Rooshian:

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/tomclancy/images/c/cc/Sean_Connery_The_Hunt_for_Red_October.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150714000007

[Nov 16, 2017] McCarthyism Inc: Introducing the Counter-Terror 'Experts' Hyping Russian Threats and Undermining Our Civil Liberties

Nov 16, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al , November 15, 2017 at 12:11 pm

Alernet via Antiwar.com: McCarthyism Inc: Introducing the Counter-Terror 'Experts' Hyping Russian Threats and Undermining Our Civil Liberties

Revelations about Russia's use of social media in the 2016 elections are being used as a pretext for suppressing dissent by some dubious characters.

By Max Blumenthal / AlterNet

November 10, 2017, 2:26 PM GMT

However, an investigation by AlterNet's Grayzone Project has yielded a series of disturbing findings at odds with the established depiction. The researchers behind the ASD's "dashboard" are no Russia experts, but rather a collection of cranks, counterterror retreads, online harassers and paranoiacs operating with support from some of the most prominent figures operating within the American national security apparatus .
####

Plenty more at the link.

Northern Star , November 15, 2017 at 3:54 pm
So why does this fuckin' cnt not have to register as an agent of a Foreign government???

"II. What, Exactly, Does FARA Require / Prohibit?
It's complicated. But in a nutshell, FARA requires individuals acting within the United States as agents of "foreign principals" to, in plain English, "register with the Department of Justice and file forms outlining its agreements with, income from, and expenditures on behalf of the foreign principal. These forms are public records and must be supplemented every six months." An "agent of a foreign principal," in turn, is defined as

any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal, and who directly or through any other person -- (i) engages within the United States in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal; (ii) acts within the United States as a public relations counsel, publicity agent, information-service employee or political consultant for or in the interests of such foreign principal; (iii) within the United States solicits, collects, disburses, or dispenses contributions, loans, money, or other things of value for or in the interest of such foreign principal; or (iv) within the United States represents the interests of such foreign principal before any agency or official of the Government of the United States. . . .
Moreover, the statute defines "foreign principal" not just to include a foreign government itself, but also foreign political parties, a person or organization outside the United States (except U.S. citizens), and any entity organized under the laws of a foreign country or having its principal place of business in a foreign country. So, in a world in which individuals were receiving financial or other enticements from Russian corporations, oligarchs, or the Russian government itself, in order to "engage[] within the United States in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal," that seems to fall within the heartland of what FARA covers."

Indeed, a separate statute, 18 U.S.C. § 219, goes one important step further, making it a crime for any individual who is an "officer or employee or person acting for or on behalf of the United States, or any department, agency, or branch of Government thereof, including the District of Columbia, in any official function," to be or to act as an agent of a foreign principal under FARA.

******In other words, for a private citizen, FARA's entire impact is in requiring disclosure. But for public officials, § 219 actually prohibits such individuals from acting as foreign agents." *****

Thus, whereas a private citizen need only apprise the Justice Department if they are receiving funds from foreign principals to influence U.S. policy, public officials may not receive such funds, period–and face felony charges if they do. (N.B.: There's an interesting question about whether transition officials might qualify as "public officials" for purposes of § 219. I'm skeptical, but at least in Flynn's case, there's still the issue of whether he was continuing to serve as an agent of a foreign power on and after January 20, when he became the National Security Advisor.)

https://www.justsecurity.org/39493/primer-foreign-agents-registration-act/

Northern Star , November 15, 2017 at 3:59 pm
As for AIPAC itself..in case you are wondering:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/should-aipac-register-as-a-foreign-agent/5601653

[Nov 15, 2017] >How We Can Be Certain That Mueller Won't Prove Trump-Russia Collusion Zero Hedge

Nov 15, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

How We Can Be Certain That Mueller Won't Prove Trump-Russia Collusion? Tyler Durden Nov 15, 2017 7:30 PM 0 SHARES Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

Dear America. Stop trying to make Russiagate happen. It's not going to happen. Deus ex Mueller isn't coming. You're going to have to solve your country's problems yourselves, America. He may dig up evidence of corruption, but Robert Mueller's investigation will never – ever – find proof that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election using hackers and propaganda. If you attribute all your problems to Trump, you're guaranteeing more Trumps after him, because you're not addressing the disease which created him, you're just addressing the symptom.

A while back I figured out a trick for using Twitter as a tool to find out what sorts of things establishment loyalists really don't want me saying. Once I discover a really hot button, I write an article that bangs on that button as hard as possible. One of those buttons is expressing my certainty that Robert Mueller's investigation will never, ever find any proof that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election using hackers and propaganda.

We are not allowed to say such things. If you debate a Russiagater for any length of time and you know how to debunk their assertions, they always, always, always wind up resorting to a "just you wait until Mueller finishes his investigation" declaration, which from my point of view is the same as debating a fundamentalist Christian whose argument boils down to "Well I'll be proven right when you die and God sends you to Hell!"

You can always feel right if you kick the can around some corner in the future that can't be seen and analyzed critically. Luckily for us, we've got information that we can look at right now which does not require any religious faith ...

Anonymous Leaks to the WashPost About the CIA's Russia Beliefs Are No Substitute for Evidence https://t.co/OB33Xbb49V

-- Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 10, 2016

U.S. Officials: Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack https://t.co/339F3GnbRQ

-- AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) December 15, 2016

NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers. Think it takes a warrant? Nope, just somebody willing to do it. https://t.co/AW2UYitHzb

-- WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 9, 2017

How to tell if the CIA is listening to your Samsung Smart TV: The blue light on the back of the TV is still on. https://t.co/NRlye8j4c2

-- WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 22, 2017

RELEASE: CIA 'ELSA' malware can geolocate your Windows laptop or desktop by listening to surrounding WiFi signals https://t.co/XjyyXIqXAz pic.twitter.com/WCw6dgF9ql

-- WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 28, 2017

We know from the Snowden leaks on the NSA, the CIA files released by WikiLeaks, and the ongoing controversies regarding FBI surveillance that the US intelligence community has the most expansive, most sophisticated and most intrusive surveillance network in the history of human civilization

Following the presidential election last year, anonymous sources from within the intelligence community were hemorrhaging leaks to the press on a regular basis that were damaging to the incoming administration.

If there was any evidence to be found that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election using hackers and propaganda, the US intelligence community would have found it and leaked it to the New York Times or the Washington Post last year.

Mueller isn't going to find anything in 2017 that these vast, sprawling networks wouldn't have found in 2016. He's not going to find anything by "following the money" that couldn't be found infinitely more efficaciously via Orwellian espionage. The factions within the intelligence community that were working to sabotage the incoming administration last year would have leaked proof of collusion if they'd had it. They did not have it then, and they do not have it now. Mueller will continue finding evidence of corruption throughout his investigation, since corruption is to DC insiders as water is to fish, but he will not find evidence of collusion to win the 2016 election that will lead to Trump's impeachment. It will not happen.

This sits on top of all the many , many , many reasons to be extremely suspicious of the Russiagate narrative in the first place

Russia-gate's Shaky Doundation - The Russia-gate hysteria now routinely includes rhetoric about the U.S. being at "war" with nuclear-armed Russia, but the shaky factual foundation continues to show more cracks, as historian Daniel Herman describes.

Russigate Is More Fiction Than Fact - From accusations of Trump campaign collusion to Russian Facebook ad buys, the media has substituted hype for evidence.

The Big Fat Compendium Of Russiagate Debunkery - Russiagate is like a mirage: from a distance it looks like something, but once you move in for a closer look, there's nothing there. Nothing. Nothing solid, nothing substantial, nothing you can point at and say, "Here it is."

Humans are storytelling creatures.

The most significant and most underappreciated facet of our existence is how much of our interface with the world consists not of our direct experience of it, but of our mental stories about it. Combine that fact with the century of research and development that has gone into refining propaganda tactics and the US plutocracy's stranglehold on mainstream media , and you get a nation lost in establishment narratives. People forming their worldviews based on phantasms of the mind instead of concrete facts.

I've noticed a strange uptick in establishment loyalists speaking to me as though Trump-Russia collusion is already an established fact, and that I'm simply not well-informed. There is still the same amount of publicly available evidence for this collusion as there ever was (zero), so this tells me that the only thing which has changed is the narrative. Pundits/propagandists are increasingly speaking as though this is something that has already been established, and the people who consume that propaganda go out and circulate it as though it's an established fact. When you're not plugged into that echo chamber , though, it looks very weird.

This is why Russiagaters find my certainty that collusion will never be proven so intensely abrasive. Their entire worldview consists of pure narrative? -- ?literally nothing other than authoritative assertions from pundits who speak in a confident tone of voice? -- ?so when they encounter someone doing the same thing but with hard facts, it causes psychological discomfort. This discomfort is called cognitive dissonance. It's what being wrong feels like.

The Only People Who Still Believe In Russiagate Are Those Who Desperately Need To...

I mean, I get it. Really, I do. When I stop listening to the narratives of both his supporters and his detractors and just look at the hard facts, from my point of view Trump is doing some really shitty things and doesn't seem much different from his neoliberal neocon predecessors. Republicans are horrible, and he seems pretty much like a garden variety Republican who says rude things on Twitter. If I look at those hard facts, then add in two years of psychological brutalization by the corporate media telling Americans that Trump is an evil Nazi who will turn the country into a smouldering crater, I can understand why people would be in a hurry to get him out of office.

And when I converse with Russiagaters, that's generally what this boils down to. "Impeach Trump" is a punishment in search of a crime. They've been whipped into a frenzied state of fear by establishment psyops, and they want Mueller to pull a deus ex machina and save them from the evil orange monster. They believe Mueller will get Trump impeached for Russian collusion because they badly want to.

It's not going to happen, though. Deus ex Mueller isn't coming. You're going to have to solve your country's problems yourselves, America.

And this is actually a good thing, because Trump is not the source of your country's problems. Believing that a Trump impeachment will fix any of America's major ills is like believing cough suppressants cure pneumonia. What do you get when you have pneumonia and you take cough suppressants instead of antibiotics? You get wrong-sounding Muppets, that's what.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/4JFkHuIUwF0

[Nov 13, 2017] Why Robert Mueller Was Selected To Be The Special Prosecutor

It might well be that Chrystal night in KSA can be a serious blow to fouces which want to depose President Trump. People arrested, especally prince Bandar know way too much. I wonder what will happen if Trump manage to get from Mohammed bin Salman protocols of interrogation of Price Bandarr on interesting to him topics.
Notable quotes:
"... The Saudis were also shielded from Washington's foreign-policy bureaucracy. A government expert on Saudi affairs told me that Prince Bandar dealt exclusively with the men at the top, and never met with desk officers and the like. "Only a tiny handful of people inside the government are familiar with U.S.-Saudi relations," he explained. "And that is purposeful. ..."
"... Both Mueller and Comey were high enough "at the top" so as to know what the people below them needed to hide in order to succeed in their careers ..."
"... William Perry, who was the United States Secretary of Defense at the time that this bombing happened, said in an interview in June 2007 that "he now believes al-Qaida rather than Iran was behind a 1996 truck bombing at an American military base."[25] ..."
"... Although they'd been aware of each other for years, sharing their similar orbits, Comey and Mueller were first brought together professionally by then-FBI director Louis Freeh in the opening days of the Bush administration. As the Bush administration took office in 2001, Freeh asked Bob Mueller, who was acting as John Ashcroft's deputy attorney general, to transfer the [Khobar] case to Comey. ..."
"... So, Comey and Mueller were brought in by Freeh because Freeh was about to retire and he wanted successors who would be committed to the theory of the case, that Freeh had gotten from Prince Bandar. If Comey and Mueller wouldn't go along with that torture-extracted 'testimony' as 'evidence', then their ability to become appointed head the FBI would have been zero. Freeh, Comey, and Mueller are a team - a team that serves the Bushes and the Sauds . But not the American public. ..."
"... CLOSING NOTE: This article had been submitted to, and rejected by, the 39 publications listed here at the bottom, sent to each as an exclusive, but since they all rejected it without comment, I now am sending it not just to them but to the entire U.S. newsmedia, on a non-exclusive and free-of-charge basis to publish. ..."
Nov 12, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

It all began with the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers apartment complex in the Saudi city of Khobar, which killed 19 U.S. military, who worked at the Dharan air base three miles away.

That incident became the lynchpin of the accusation by the Saudi royal family, the U.S. State Department , and the CIA , that Iran is the foremost state sponsor of terrorism .

Both Robert Mueller and his longtime ally James Comey (the latter of whose firing as the FBI chief, by U.S. President Trump, had sparked the appointment of Mueller to become the Special Counsel investigating the U.S. President) performed crucial roles in establishing that the Khobar Towers bombing had been a Hezbollah operation run by the Iranian Government - and, starting upon this basis, in helping to develop the case that Iran "is the foremost state sponsor of terrorism."

However, as has been made clear by several great independent investigative journalists, on the basis of far more-solid documentation than the official account, the Khobar Towers bombing was instead entirely a fundamentalist-Sunni operation, specifically perpetrated by Al Qaeda, which hates Shia and which also hates America's military presence in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden's claim of the bombing's having been done by Al Qaeda, was, in fact, entirely honest and accurate.

America's "Deep State," which extends to Saudi Arabia and to a number of other Governments - it's an international network - is deeply committed to supporting the fundamentalist-Sunni war to conquer and destroy Shia Islam, and not merely to conquer the leading Shia nation, which is Iran. The U.S. Government has intensely taken a side in the Sunni-Shia religious war. That war is comparable in some respects to the 30 Years' War (1618-1648) between Catholics and Protestants , which killed an estimated eight million Europeans; and, both the United States and Israel have clearly joined with the fundamentalist-Sunni leaders, against Iran, and against Shia generally.

The reasons behind the prevailing lies about this matter will also be documented here. Discrepancies between the official story and the solidly documented facts, need to be explained, in order for a reader to be able to understand truthfully why Mueller (who cooperated with Comey in order to rig the official account of the bombing, so as to condemn Iran and Hezbollah instead of Al Qaeda) received his appointment. This is also important in order to understand why Trump, though rabidly anti-Iranian himself, is nonetheless insufficiently anti-Iranian to satisfy the Sauds, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or the rest of the U.S.-and-allied Deep State.

Before proceeding further here, however, the statistical falseness of the allegation that Iran is the foremost state-sponsor of terrorism has to be clearly recognized as being the ultimate fact ; because, if this entire question - to which Mueller and Comey contributed so importantly to answering by their identifying Iran (and Shia generally) as being precisely that ('the foremost state sponsor of terrorism') -- can be assessed at all objectively, then the statistical answer to it would certainly be the objective one.

Wikipedia's article on "Iran and state-sponsored terrorism" says: "According to the Global Terrorism Database , the majority of deaths, more than 94% attributed to Islamic terrorism since 2001, were perpetrated by Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State , al-Qaeda and others. [3] [4] ." Only 6% were Shiites, at all -- from any country. Similarly, my own independent study of 54 especially prominent global instances of Islamic terrorism was headlined (and reported that) "All Islamic Terrorism Is Perpetrated by Fundamentalist Sunnis, Except Terrorism Against Israel." (The anti-Israel terrorist instances might constitute the "6%" which was referred to in the Wikipedia article, but that article provided no good link to its source for the "6%" figure.)

So: the basic allegation is false, that Iran is the foremost state-sponsor of terrorism; the general allegation isn't anywhere near to being true. It's a lie.

More specifically, now, regarding the Khobar Towers incident, which triggered the start of this fraudulent generalization:

The Saudi royal family asserted, immediately after the bombing, that the attack had been perpetrated by jihadists who had returned from Afghanistan and who were now fighting to overthrow Saudi Arabia's Government (the royal Saud family).

For example, on 15 August 1996, the New York Times headlined "Saudi Rebels Are Main Suspects In June Bombing of a U.S. Base" , and reported that, "The Government of Saudi Arabia now believes that native Saudi Islamic militants, including many veterans of the Afghan war, carried out the June 25 bombing that killed 19 American servicemen at a base in Dhahran, Saudi officials said today." However, the "mujahideen" who had fought in Afghanistan were paid and backed both by the Sauds and by the U.S. Government, For example, as early as 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski flew into Pakistan and exhorted the Taliban there to become mujahideen in Afghanistan because "That land over there is yours; you'll go back to it one day, because your fight will prevail, and you will have your homes and your mosques back again, because your cause is right and God is on your side."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/A9RCFZnWGE0

Then, starting in 1980, "From the Pakistani border, bin Laden raises funds and provides the mujahedeen with logistical and humanitarian aid." So, the Sauds' allegation that the Khobar bombers had been "veterans of the Afghan war" would have meant that they had been foot-soldiers for the U.S.-Saudi operation in Afghanistan. Both the U.S. Government and the Saud family (who own the Saudi Government) hate Shia and especially hate Iran. Hezbollah are Shia, and they are extremely pro-Iran. How likely is it that Hezbollah, anywhere, would have been fighting under the command of Al Qaeda, or of any other fundamentalist-Sunni jihadist organization that calls all Shia "infidels"? So, the Sauds' account of the Khobar Towers bombing is fishy, at best.

Furthermore, a Google-search for the phrase "Hezbollah in Afghanistan" turns up only "6 results," and all of them say nothing about any "Hezbollah in Afghanistan." No report comes up about such a thing, for any year, or any period. The only countries where Hezbollah was reported to exist were Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. One of the links in that Google search was globally comprehensive for the year 2007, the Center on International Cooperation's "Annual Review of Global Peace Operations -- 2007" . It included reports on wars during that year, in 26 countries, and the chapter for Afghanistan (pages 52-58) doesn't mention Hezbollah even once. However, a search for the phrase "Hezbollah Afghanistan" does bring up "Syria's Other Foreign Fighters: Iran's Afghan and Pakistani Mercenaries" , at the neoconservative (and thus favoring not only the American aristocracy but its allied aristocracies -- especially in Saudi Arabia and Israel) The National Interest, dated 20 November 2015. That article says, "The liwa' fatimiyun (Fatimiyun Brigade) is composed exclusively of Afghans and fights under the auspices of Hezbollah Afghanistan," based in Syria. Other supposed foreign Shiites trying to overthrow Syria's Government are mentioned, as being supposedly "Pakistanis fighting in Syria under the Hezbollah flag." However, if these allegations are true, then those men would be opponents of Syria's secular government, which is headed by the secular Shiite Bashar al-Assad, who is being attacked by fundamentalist Sunnis -- including both ISIS and Al Qaeda there -- who are trying to kill Hezbollah in Syria, who are, in fact, defending Assad. (Such illogical 'historical' accounts as that, are normal in neoconservative publications -- counterfactuality is entirely acceptable to them.) Either that, or else the alleged Shiite Pakistanis who are fighting in Syria to overthrow the Shiite Assad and replace him with a fundamentalist Sunni regime, would be -- not actually members of Hezbollah, but instead -- Shiites from Pakistan who came to Syria in order to help actually not to overthrow the Government but to defend it against its rabidly anti-Shia attackers. That's the opposite of the assumption that The National Interest made, but it conceivably could be the case. A Pew survey scientifically randomly sampled 1,512 Pakistanis, and found that 1,450 of them declared themselves to be "Muslim," which is 96%. It also found that 94% of Pakistanis (of any or no faith) say that religion is "very important" in their lives, and found that 81% of the Muslims said they were "Sunni," 6% said they were "Shiite," and 12% said they were "Just a Muslim." So, only 6% of Pakistanis identify themselves specifically as "Shia." That is such a small percentage of Shiites in Pakistan, as to make unlikely any significant contribution that Pakistanis would be providing to the defense of Syria, which is at least 1,800 miles or 2,900 kilometers, away -- not even in the same general region. But, in any case, that neoconservative magazine's assumptions regarding the entire matter are clearly false.

Clearly, then, the logical feasibility of the U.S. Government's case against Iran is so tiny as to constitute almost an absolute impossibility of that case being true.

Now, then, let's consider the specifics of the case

The great investigative journalist Greg Palast, in his 2003 The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (pages 101-102), wrote:

True-blue Democrats may want to skip the next paragraphs. If President Bush put the kibosh on investigations of Saudi funding of terror and nuclear bomb programs, this was merely taking a policy of Bill Clinton one step further.

Following the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, Clinton hunted Osama with a passion -- but a passion circumscribed by the desire to protect the sheikdom sitting atop our oil lifeline. In 1994, a Saudi diplomat defected to the United States with 14,000 pages of documents from the kingdom's sealed file cabinets. This mother lode of intelligence included evidence of plans for the assassination of Saudi opponents living in the West and, tantalizingly, details of the $7 billion the Saudis gave to Saddam Hussein for his nuclear program -- the first attempt to build an Islamic bomb. The Saudi government, according to the defector, Mohammed Al Khilewi, slipped Saddam the nuclear loot during the Reagan and Bush Sr. years when our government still thought Saddam too marvelous for words [because he was trying to slaughter Shiite Iran]. The thought was that he would only use the bomb to vaporize Iranians [which the rulers of both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia -- and of Israel -- would love].

Clinton granted the Saudi defector asylum, but barred the FBI from looking at the documents. Al Khilewi's New York lawyer, Michael Wildes, told me he was stunned. Wildes handles some of America's most security-sensitive asylum cases. "We said (to the FBI), 'Here, take the documents! Go get some bad guys with them! We'll even pay for the photocopying!" But the agents who came to his office had been ordered not to accept evidence of Saudi criminal activity, even on U.S. soil.

In 1997, the Canadians caught and extradited to America one of the [Saudi-Government-alleged] Khobar Towers attackers. In 1999, Vernon Jordan's law firm stepped in and -- poof! -- the [Saudi-alleged] killer was shipped back to Saudi Arabia before he could reveal all he knew about Al Qaeda (valuable) and the Saudis (embarrassing). I reviewed but was not permitted to take notes on, the alleged [finally, Palast is getting that right] terrorist's debriefing by the FBI. To my admittedly inexpert eyes, there was enough on Al Qaeda to make him a source on terrorists worth holding on to. Not that he was set free -- he's in one of the kingdom's dungeons [likelier dead soon after arriving back in Saudi Arabia] -- but his info is sealed up with him. The terrorist's extradition was "Clinton's." "Clinton's parting kiss to the Saudis," as one insider put it.

Another great investigative journalist is Seymour Hersh, who in the 22 October 2001 issue of the New Yorker, headlined "King's Ransom" and he opened:

Since 1994 or earlier, the National Security Agency has been collecting electronic intercepts of conversations between members of the Saudi Arabian royal family, which is headed by King Fahd. The intercepts depict a regime increasingly corrupt, alienated from the country's religious rank and file, and so weakened and frightened that it has brokered its future by channelling hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to protection money to fundamentalist groups that wish to overthrow it.

The intercepts have demonstrated to analysts that by 1996 Saudi money was supporting Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and other extremist groups in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Central Asia, and throughout the Persian Gulf region. "Ninety-six is the key year," one American intelligence official told me. "Bin Laden hooked up to all the bad guys -- it's like the Grand Alliance -- and had a capability for conducting large-scale operations." The Saudi regime, he said, had "gone to the dark side."

Subsequently, he noted:

In 1994, Mohammed al-Khilewi, the first secretary at the Saudi Mission to the United Nations, defected and sought political asylum in the United States. He brought with him, according to his New York lawyer, Michael J. Wildes, some fourteen thousand internal government documents depicting the Saudi royal family's corruption, human-rights abuses, and financial support for terrorists.

He claimed to have evidence that the Saudis had given financial and technical support to Hamas, the extremist Islamic group whose target is Israel. There was a meeting at the lawyer's office with two F.B.I. agents and an Assistant United States Attorney. "We gave them a sampling of the documents and put them on the table," Wildes told me last week. "But the agents refused to accept them." He and his client heard nothing further from federal authorities. Al-Khilewi, who was granted asylum, is now living under cover.

The Saudis were also shielded from Washington's foreign-policy bureaucracy. A government expert on Saudi affairs told me that Prince Bandar dealt exclusively with the men at the top, and never met with desk officers and the like. "Only a tiny handful of people inside the government are familiar with U.S.-Saudi relations," he explained. "And that is purposeful."

Both Mueller and Comey were high enough "at the top" so as to know what the people below them needed to hide in order to succeed in their careers.

The New York Times's report , on 15 August 1996, quoted a leading Saudi dissident in London as asserting that, "As far as I know, Prince Nayef is keeping the Americans away from all the details at this point." This report went on: "In a statement responding to the earlier reports of confessions, Prince Nayef said Saudi Arabia would make an announcement as soon as the investigation is completed. His comments were also viewed as refuting earlier suggestions by Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, who had said that Saudi investigations might point to an Iranian connection." In other words, at that time (as of August 15th), the U.S. official was suggesting "an Iranian connection" but the Saudi official wasn't -- at least, not yet -- and the expectation was that "confessions" would be providing the decisive 'evidence'. However, these 'confessions', in Saudi cases are typically 'information' extracted under torture, and, where that fails to obtain the 'information' that's desired by the Government, then threats to destroy the person's immediate family are applied; so, the Sauds famously usually do get exactly the 'information' that they want (regardless of whether it's true).

The Wikipedia article "Khobar Towers bombing" summarizes the 'findings' by the U.S. FBI and courts, and ignores the Sauds' 'investigation(s)', because nothing was ever made public from the Sauds' Government or officials or anyone there, about what they 'found' (other than 'found' by torture). Wikipedia's article, which is based entirely upon the U.S. Government (the first party to broach publicly the possibility of "an Iranian connection") states flatly, right up front, "Perpetrators: Hezbollah Al-Hejaz (English: Party of God in the Hijaz)." In common parlance, that's Hezbollah, an "Iranian connection" -- exactly what the U.S. Government wanted.

Here's what that article asserts regarding the operations of the alleged mastermind:

In June 2001, an indictment was issued in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, Virginia charging the following people with murder, conspiracy, and other charges related to the bombing:[18]

Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Mughassil

Al-Mughassil disappeared from the 'news' after the Sauds announced his capture in 2015, but Wikipedia on 6 November 2017 closed its bizarre article about him by saying, without comment, "Al-Mughassil was believed to be living in Iran.[1][2]" That footnote [1] linked to Front Page mag. in 2005, which actually said nothing of the sort ; footnote [2] linked to FDD in 2006, which actually said nothing of the sort . The obvious likeliest explanation for Wikipedia's blatant falsehoods there is Wikipedia's being edited by the CIA , which serves the Sauds, just like the rest of America's federal Government does.

The Wikipedia article then continued by listing the other alleged defendants:

In July 2001, Saudi Arabia said that eleven of the people indicted in the US were in custody in Saudi prisons, and were to be tried in Saudi court, as the country refused to extradite any of them to the United States to stand trial.[19] The government has not since made public the outcome of the trial or the whereabouts of the prisoners.

All six of the named persons there were Shiites in Saudi Arabia. The respective Wikipedia articles on each provide no evidence that any of them was at all involved in the bombing. However, the article on Hani al-Sayegh , who was living in Canada, is extraordinarily honest: it indicates that he said he had had nothing whatsoever to do with any bombings, nor any terrorism at all, and that the U.S. Government tried to get him to confess to something on the basis of which he could be tried and convicted in the U.S., but that he continued to resist all plea-offers, and to maintain that they were seeking to get him to lie, which he would not do. So, since the U.S. would not torture him on U.S. soil, the U.S. deported him "to Saudi Arabia on October 10, 1999 where it was assumed he would be executed upon arrival.[3][12]." But the Saudi regime never announced anything about any of the men they were charging in the Khobar Towers bombing.

The FBI issued charges against al-Sayegh and 12 others (all allegedly Hezbollah) on 21 June 2001 , for the bombing; and, since that time, the only publication of their names has been in regards to the mere presumption that they were guilty. Their indictments in the U.S. (without evidence), and (since the Saudi Government wouldn't say anything about them -- not even whether they were in prison or free there) the charge in U.S. courts that Iran had helped them to do it, were 100% based upon that 'evidence'. Therefore, Iran was declared guilty in U.S. courts, and fined, again , and again , over $500 million in all, without any reliable evidence, at all, that Iran had anything to do with the Khobar Towers bombing. And, not a cent of those fines was paid; but the U.S. Government's purpose was served nonetheless: getting Iran's 'guilt' onto the official record, such that Wikipedia, for example could say "Perpetrators: Hezbollah Al-Hejaz (English: Party of God in the Hijaz)."

The Wikipedia article on the Khobar Towers bombing closed, however, by saying:

William Perry, who was the United States Secretary of Defense at the time that this bombing happened, said in an interview in June 2007 that "he now believes al-Qaida rather than Iran was behind a 1996 truck bombing at an American military base."[25]

On December 22, 2006, federal judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that Iran and Hezbollah were responsible for the attack, stating that the leading experts on Hezbollah presented "overwhelming" evidence of the group's involvement and that six captured Hezbollah members detailed the role of Iranian officials in providing money, plans, and maps.[4] This decision was reached as a default judgment, however, in which the Iranian government was not represented in court, and had no opportunity to challenge the allegations.

People who trust the U.S. Government's honesty will interpret the outcome as displaying legal and judicial incompetency, not as displaying political and propagandistic competency.

William Perry announced his opinion only after the 2006 court 'finding' of Iran's 'guilt' in the case. The UPI article on this opened and closed as follows:

Perry: U.S. eyed Iran attack after bombing

Published: June 6, 2007 at 4:25 PM

WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) -- A former U.S. defense secretary says he now believes al-Qaida rather than Iran was behind a 1996 truck bombing at an American military base.

Former Defense Secretary William Perry said he had a contingency plan to attack Iran if the link had been proven, but evidence was not to either his nor President Bill Clinton's satisfaction.

The attack would have struck "at a number of their military facilities that would have weakened -- substantially weakened ... the Iranian navy and air force," he said in New York Tuesday during a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

"I believe that the Khobar Tower bombing was probably masterminded by Osama bin Laden," Perry said. "I can't be sure of that, but in retrospect, that's what I believe. At the time, he was not a suspect. At the time ... all of the evidence was pointing to Iran."

He said al-Qaida did not emerge as a major threat until Clinton's second term.

"We probably should have been more concerned about it at the time than we were but in the first term we did not see Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida as a major factor, or one that we were concerned with," he said.

In 2001, the U.S. Justice Department announced a 46-count indictment against 13 Saudis and one Lebanese man in the bombing. All were allegedly connected to Hezbollah, a terrorist group the United States believes is linked to Iran.

Perry said the FBI strongly believed at the time the bombing was ordered by Iran, but Saudi officials tried to discourage that theory.

"They feared what action we would take. They rightly feared it. In fact, I had a contingency plan for a strike on Iran, if it had been if it had been clearly established. But it was never clearly established, and so we never did that," Perry said.

So, although Wikipedia started by alleging "Perpetrators: Hezbollah Al-Hejaz (English: Party of God in the Hijaz)" -- and in plain language, that's Hezbollah -- it ended by kaboshing that very theory of the case, which the Wikipedia article had been 'documenting' (with bad logic and some false 'facts').

Subsequently, the fine investigative journalist Gareth Porter explained how Perry had come to think that Iran and Hezbollah had been the culprit. Perry had trusted the head of the FBI, Louis Freeh. Perry didn't know that, behind the scenes, Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud (who was his family's U.S. Ambassador) had told Freeh that Iran and Hezbollah did it. Furthermore, the Sauds had actually blocked the FBI's own investigators from having access to the site or to any of the evidence (other than by providing Freeh himself access to the torture-extracted 'confessions'). Initially, in fact, the Sauds even started bulldozing the site.

The first part of Porter's five-part report was titled "EXCLUSIVE -- PART 1: Al Qaeda Excluded from the Suspects List" . It said: "The Saudi bulldozing stopped only after Scott Erskine, the supervisory FBI special agent for international terrorism investigations, threatened that Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who happened to be in Saudi Arabia when the bomb exploded, would intervene personally on the matter." It said there was: "a systematic effort by the Saudis to obstruct any U.S. investigation of the bombing and to deceive the United States about who was responsible for the bombing. The Saudi regime steered the FBI investigation toward Iran and its Saudi Shi'a allies with the apparent intention of keeping U.S. officials away from a trail of evidence that would have led to Osama bin Laden and a complex set of ties between the regime and the Saudi terrorist organiser."

The second part was titled "EXCLUSIVE -- PART 2: Saudi Account of Khobar Bore Telltale Signs of Fraud" .

The third part was titled "EXCLUSIVE -- PART 3: U.S. Officials Leaked a False Story Blaming Iran" .

The fourth part was titled "EXCLUSIVE -- PART 4: FBI Ignored Compelling Evidence of bin Laden Role" . It noted that, " In October 1996, after having issued yet another fatwa calling on Muslims to drive U.S. soldiers out of the Kingdom, bin Laden was quoted in al Quds al Arabi, the Palestinian daily published in London, as saying, 'The crusader army was shattered when we bombed Khobar.'"

The fifth part was titled "EXCLUSIVE -- PART 5: Freeh Became "Defence Lawyer" for Saudis on Khobar" . This part had the most hair-raising details:

The key to the success of the Saudi deception was FBI director Louis Freeh, who took personal charge of the FBI investigation, letting it be known within the Bureau that he was the "case officer" for the probe, according to former FBI officials. Freeh allowed Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan to convince him that Iran was involved in the bombing, and that President Bill Clinton, for whom he had formed a visceral dislike, "had no interest in confronting the fact that Iran had blown up the towers," as Freeh wrote in his memoirs.

The Khobar Towers investigation soon became Freeh's vendetta against Clinton. "Freeh was pursuing this for his own personal agenda," says former FBI agent Jack Cloonan.

A former high-ranking FBI official recalls that Freeh "was always meeting with Bandar". And many of the meetings were not in Freeh's office but at Bandar's 38-room home in McLean, Virginia. Meanwhile, the Saudis were refusing the most basic FBI requests for cooperation. Freeh quickly made Iranian and Saudi Shi'a responsibility for the bombing the official premise of the investigation, excluding from the inquiry the hypothesis that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organisation had carried out the Khobar Towers bombing.

The CIA's bin Laden unit, which had only been established in early 1996, was also excluded by CIA leadership from that Agency's work on the bombing.

Finally, in order to bring his exhaustive investigation up-to-date, Porter headlined on 1 September 2015, "Who Bombed Khobar Towers? Anatomy of a Crooked Terrorism Investigation" . Here's one particularly forceful portion of it:

In order to build a legal case against Iran and Shi'a Saudis, Freeh had to get access to the Shi'a detainees who had confessed. But the Saudis never agreed to allow FBI officials to interview them. In early November 1998, Freeh sent an FBI team to observe Saudi secret police officials asking eight Shi'a detainees the FBI's questions from behind a one-way mirror at the Riyadh detention center.

By then Saudi secret police had already had two and half years to coach the detainees on what to say, under the threat of more torture. But Freeh didn't care. "For Louis, if they would let us in the room, that was the important thing," a senior FBI official involved in the Khobar investigation told me. "We would have gone over there and gotten the answers even if they had been propped up."

But the Justice Department refused to go ahead with an indictment based on the information the FBI team brought back. Department lawyers knew the Shi'a detainees had been subject to torture, so they have ruled that the confessions were not valid.

In other words: the head of the FBI believed torture-extracted 'confessions' as if such would meet U.S. rules of evidence -- which they don't. And coaching of witnesses is likewise prohibited -- under U.S. laws.

On 30 May 2013, The Washingtonian headlined "Forged Under Fire -- Bob Mueller and Jim Comey's Unusual Friendship" and Garrett M. Graff reported:

Although they'd been aware of each other for years, sharing their similar orbits, Comey and Mueller were first brought together professionally by then-FBI director Louis Freeh in the opening days of the Bush administration. As the Bush administration took office in 2001, Freeh asked Bob Mueller, who was acting as John Ashcroft's deputy attorney general, to transfer the [Khobar] case to Comey.

When he finally did so, Mueller called Comey with a warning: "Wilma Lewis is going to be so pissed." Indeed, Lewis blasted the decision, as well as both Freeh and Mueller personally, in a press release, saying the move was "ill-conceived and ill-considered." But Freeh's gambit paid off.

Within weeks, Comey had pulled together the indictment. During a National Security Council briefing at the White House, under the watchful gaze of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Comey presented overwhelming evidence of Iran's involvement.

On the eve of the expiration of the statute of limitations, fourteen individuals were indicted for the attack. Freeh, who stepped down the next day, said the indictment was "a major step."

So, Comey and Mueller were brought in by Freeh because Freeh was about to retire and he wanted successors who would be committed to the theory of the case, that Freeh had gotten from Prince Bandar. If Comey and Mueller wouldn't go along with that torture-extracted 'testimony' as 'evidence', then their ability to become appointed head the FBI would have been zero. Freeh, Comey, and Mueller are a team - a team that serves the Bushes and the Sauds . But not the American public.

Our continuing war against Iran is due entirely to their crucial assistance. The Deep State appoints such individuals.

* * *

CLOSING NOTE: This article had been submitted to, and rejected by, the 39 publications listed here at the bottom, sent to each as an exclusive, but since they all rejected it without comment, I now am sending it not just to them but to the entire U.S. newsmedia, on a non-exclusive and free-of-charge basis to publish. Since none of them will pay me for publishing it, I shall be happy if any publish it without charge, even small 'alternative news' sites online, because - and especially if a mainstream newsmedium relents and decides to publish it - then perhaps the embargo against the truth of such important matters being published in the United States and its vassal nations, will come to be broken , and the 'news'media in America and in those other countries, might then terminate being actually the U.S-regime's propaganda-media, and might finally begin to pay penance for their all having helped the U.S. Government to deceive the American (and allied-nations') public into supporting the regime's entirely lie-based invasions of Afghanistan in 2001, of Iraq in 2003, of Libya in 2012, of Syria since 2012, of U.S. coups elsewhere (such as in Ukraine ), and, now, potentially repeating it yet again with invasions or coups against Iran or other countries that the U.S. elite want to grab and add to their growing U.S. empire.

If Iran becomes invaded, or another U.S. coup becomes perpetrated there (such as in 1953 ), then perhaps Russia's only realistic response -- as being the ultimate U.S. target -- will be a blitz nuclear attack to destroy the United States, in recognition of the U.S. Government's fanatical reach to control a total global empire -- total global strangulation of freedom and of peace, everywhere. After all, if Russia waits till after a U.S. lie-based invasion of Iran, then it will be simply waiting for a blitz nuclear attack by the U.S. and its NATO alliance against Russia itself, which would be even worse for the world than Russia's striking first -- though the world would end, either way. The U.S. Government now seems to be an out-of-control spreading cancer, a terminal threat to the world in every regard. It's already recognized throughout the world as being "the greatest threat to peace in the world today" . And its 'news'media have helped to keep it that way.

Here is the list of 39 publications that this article had been submitted to as an exclusive (and, of course, it's now being submitted to them, too, yet again, but this time on a non-exclusive, non-fee, basis, along with being submitted to all the rest of the regime's press, including broadcast media):

McClatchy newspapers, New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Harper's, TIME, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, Mother Jones, The Nation, Progressive, National Review, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Business Week, Forbes, Politico, thedailybeast, huffingtonpost, slate, bloomberg, businessinsider, newsweek, theintercept, breitbart, alternet, newsbud, spiked-online, vice, mintpressnews, truthdig, truth-out, Independent, Guardian, Daily Mail, Spectator, London Review of Books, New Statesman, Spiegel.

* * *

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .

[Nov 12, 2017] Trump is not the brightest bulb and he is not well informed. I dislike nearly all of his policies.

There is some important to note "cognitive dissonance" here: if Trump is as stupid as appears from his current policies why in the past he was insightful enough to understand important events in proper light? Something here does not compute...
Notable quotes:
"... Trump was bright enough to build up a billion dollar business empire, to win the Republican nomination against the wishes of most the the Republican establishment, and to win the election over the Clinton/Establishment machine. ..."
"... He was bright enough to note immediately after the 9/11 false flag the absurdity of aspects of what became the official narrative; ..."
"... And his anti-NWO strong emphasis on national sovereignty, and upon taking office his immediate repudiation of the nation-state disempowering and democracy-defeating TPP, are imo evidence of combining bright and gutsy. ..."
"... And he has been bright and gutsy enough to directly take on mass media bs and to call out, as no other promenent person has, the 'fake news', the mass media propaganda system; and playfully, and rather brightly, offers his direct line to the public via twitter. ..."
"... And along with Putin, Trump has earned more mass media and establishment invective, attacks, and condemnation than just about anyone in my living memory. So he must be doing something right. ..."
"... When someone is referred to as "not the brightest bulb", this is a cliché way of denoting stupidity in someone else, but it is a often a somewhat perilous joust, suggesting a suspect self-inflation. As far as not being well informed, that of course depends on what specific matters are being referred to. It has been said that a bunch of highly intelligent people with access to all sorts of information bombed Indochina mercilessly for years; for. as the highly intelligent and overflowing with information Dr. Kissinger noted, basically nothing. ..."
"... I listened to Trump carefully during his campaign speeches. He'd deliver a long "stream of consciousness" sentence that seemed to go all over the place. But when he'd finished the sentence you realised he'd in fact covered all the points he needed to make. And had done so while at the same time picking up and factoring in the audience response. I think he may be very bright indeed and quick on his feet. ..."
"... His policies? I think we have to accept one unpalatable fact. An American politician who doesn't ostentatiously support Israel doesn't get to be an American politician, if that's not a circular way of saying it. Since that to a lesser extent is the case in England as well - you saw the trouble Corbyn got into recently - one either has to isolate oneself from political discussion or just accept that most politicians of any importance here or in the States will be defective in that respect. That sounds heartless, given what the Palestinians are going through, and given what Israel's neighbours are going through; but ceasing to strive for a little because we cannot have more is even less acceptable. ..."
"... One final point. You've seen the re-election in Germany of Mrs Merkel - no idea how since none of the people I meet in Germany would have dreamed of voting for her, but she's still there. You've seen a dead-beat government elected in the UK as well. And in France you've seen the election of Macron! In America that pattern was broken. I think it might have been a fluke - I have relatives in the States who are dyed in the wool Democrats but who just couldn't stomach the candidate they put up, and it seems there were many like them. But fluke or not they now have a President who, judging by the way they attack him, is an opponent of the type of policies that have led us to our present pass. He seems to have pretty well the entire American establishment and the media against him so he may not get that far. But surely a slim chance of getting out of the hopeless mess that is our politics in the West at present is better that the certainly of sinking further into it? ..."
Nov 12, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Trump was bright enough to build up a billion dollar business empire, to win the Republican nomination against the wishes of most the the Republican establishment, and to win the election over the Clinton/Establishment machine.

He was bright enough to note immediately after the 9/11 false flag the absurdity of aspects of what became the official narrative; and for example to question the safety of the deluge of vaccines that kids especially are being subjected to, while simultaneously there is an unprecedented 'epidemic' of autism and asthma in children.

And his anti-NWO strong emphasis on national sovereignty, and upon taking office his immediate repudiation of the nation-state disempowering and democracy-defeating TPP, are imo evidence of combining bright and gutsy.

And he has been bright and gutsy enough to directly take on mass media bs and to call out, as no other promenent person has, the 'fake news', the mass media propaganda system; and playfully, and rather brightly, offers his direct line to the public via twitter.

And along with Putin, Trump has earned more mass media and establishment invective, attacks, and condemnation than just about anyone in my living memory. So he must be doing something right.

When someone is referred to as "not the brightest bulb", this is a cliché way of denoting stupidity in someone else, but it is a often a somewhat perilous joust, suggesting a suspect self-inflation. As far as not being well informed, that of course depends on what specific matters are being referred to. It has been said that a bunch of highly intelligent people with access to all sorts of information bombed Indochina mercilessly for years; for. as the highly intelligent and overflowing with information Dr. Kissinger noted, basically nothing.

EnglishOutsider | Nov 11, 2017 7:15:21 PM | 26
"Trump is not the brightest bulb and he is not well informed. I dislike nearly all of his policies."

"b" - I listened to Trump carefully during his campaign speeches. He'd deliver a long "stream of consciousness" sentence that seemed to go all over the place. But when he'd finished the sentence you realised he'd in fact covered all the points he needed to make. And had done so while at the same time picking up and factoring in the audience response. I think he may be very bright indeed and quick on his feet.

Not well informed? I can't argue with that, not after Khan Shaykhun, but the same blanket of misinformation that covers almost all of us in Europe or the States will presumably cover New York property developers. In the echo chamber that is Washington DC I doubt there's much chance of remedying that. I speak to responsible well-educated people regularly whose knowledge of what is happening abroad you would condemn as pitifully inadequate. Rightfully so. Those of you who have a more accurate idea of the facts are few, and those of us who hear you are also in a tiny minority. That's a fact of life and we can no more condemn Trump for being ill-informed than we can the most of your and my neighbours.

I pin my hopes on the fact that he does have a good intuition and is, as I say, quick on his feet. With such a person reality has a better chance of getting through than it would with the usual tunnel vision politician.

His policies? I think we have to accept one unpalatable fact. An American politician who doesn't ostentatiously support Israel doesn't get to be an American politician, if that's not a circular way of saying it. Since that to a lesser extent is the case in England as well - you saw the trouble Corbyn got into recently - one either has to isolate oneself from political discussion or just accept that most politicians of any importance here or in the States will be defective in that respect. That sounds heartless, given what the Palestinians are going through, and given what Israel's neighbours are going through; but ceasing to strive for a little because we cannot have more is even less acceptable.

His other policies? You do not write on the economy on your site. The European economies, that of the UK in particular, and the American economy, are in a bad way. Urgently so. I can therefore only put forward as a view that the solutions proposed by Trump in 2016 offered the only chance, if a slim one, of turning that round.

One final point. You've seen the re-election in Germany of Mrs Merkel - no idea how since none of the people I meet in Germany would have dreamed of voting for her, but she's still there. You've seen a dead-beat government elected in the UK as well. And in France you've seen the election of Macron! In America that pattern was broken. I think it might have been a fluke - I have relatives in the States who are dyed in the wool Democrats but who just couldn't stomach the candidate they put up, and it seems there were many like them. But fluke or not they now have a President who, judging by the way they attack him, is an opponent of the type of policies that have led us to our present pass. He seems to have pretty well the entire American establishment and the media against him so he may not get that far. But surely a slim chance of getting out of the hopeless mess that is our politics in the West at present is better that the certainly of sinking further into it?

Peter AU 1 | Nov 11, 2017 6:37:08 PM | 23
karlof1 20

If by chance Trump or anyone is genuine about taking down the deep state, they cannot do it by running around in a pathetic attempt trying to fix small issues.

They would have to leave the machine to carry on as normal and go for its foundations. I thought about this months ago, and now looking at the latest events, this could be what is happening.

[Nov 12, 2017] The Russia hoax might not survive

When a particular MSN outlet call Intelligence assessment the work of "intelligence community" and not a handful of analysis picked by Brannan and Clapper from just three agencies (NSA, CIA and FBI) it ia fair to say it spreads propaganda in best Josef Gebbels tradition: "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play." ― Joseph Goebbels
"That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result. It is not propaganda's task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success." ― Joseph Goebbels
Notable quotes:
"... CIA Director Mike Pompeo recently met -- at the urging of President Donald Trump -- with one of the principal deniers of Russian interference in the US election, according to multiple intelligence sources. ..."
"... The CIA responded to CNN's inquiry about the meeting by saying that Pompeo "stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment" that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election ..."
Nov 12, 2017 | www.wsj.com

This here is The Wall Street Journal on the Steele Dossier .

This is utterly untrue. In British court documents Mr. Steele has acknowledged he briefed U.S. reporters about the dossier in September 2016. Those briefed included journalists from the New York Times , the Washington Post, Yahoo News and others. Mr. Steele, by his own admission (in an interview with Mother Jones), also gave his dossier in July 2016 to the FBI.

... ... ...

To that point, it is fair to ask if the entire Trump-Russia narrative -- which has played a central role in our political discourse for a year, and is now resulting in a special counsel issuing unrelated indictments -- is based on nothing more than a political smear document. Is there any reason to believe the FBI was probing a Trump-Russia angle before the dossier? Is there any collusion allegation that doesn't come in some form from the dossier?

The idea that the federal government and a special counsel were mobilized -- that American citizens were monitored and continue to be investigated -- based on a campaign-funded hit document is extraordinary. Especially given that to this day no one has publicly produced a single piece of evidence to support any of the dossier's substantive allegations about Trump team members.

And CNN CIA director met with DNC hack conspiracy theorist at Trump's urging - CNNPolitics

CIA Director Mike Pompeo recently met -- at the urging of President Donald Trump -- with one of the principal deniers of Russian interference in the US election, according to multiple intelligence sources. Trump apparently made the highly unusual request that Pompeo meet with the former National Security Agency employee and look into a theory that the leak of Democratic Party emails last year was an inside job rather than a cyberattack by Russian hackers.

William Binney, the former NSA employee-turned-whistleblower who circulated the conspiracy theory, confirmed to CNN that he met with Pompeo for about an hour on October 24 -- despite the fact the intelligence community concluded early this year that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The meeting was first reported by The Intercept.

The CIA responded to CNN's inquiry about the meeting by saying that Pompeo "stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment" that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

[Nov 12, 2017] Hillary Clinton, DNC - and One Republican - Paid for Russia Dossier Report - Breitbart

Notable quotes:
"... Mark Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research. ..."
"... Before that agreement, Fusion GPS's research into Trump was funded by a still unknown Republican client during the GOP primary ..."
"... The "Russian dossier," whose contents Trump has denied and which has been widely discredited, is believed to have led the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign and several Trump associates. ..."
"... Until now, Fusion GPS has continued to refuse to cooperate with congressional panels investigating Russian attempts to intervene in the election, and how the Obama administration probed those efforts. Democrats have also protected the company. ..."
Nov 12, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee paid opposition research firm Fusion GPS to compile the "Russian dossier" that triggered an FBI investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government, according to a report Tuesday by the Washington Post .

A Republican had contracted first with Fusion GPS, and Clinton and the DNC continued to fund Fusion GPS's work, the report says.

According to the Post :

Mark Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.

After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community

Before that agreement, Fusion GPS's research into Trump was funded by a still unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.

The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through the law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS's research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day.

The "Russian dossier," whose contents Trump has denied and which has been widely discredited, is believed to have led the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign and several Trump associates.

Until now, Fusion GPS has continued to refuse to cooperate with congressional panels investigating Russian attempts to intervene in the election, and how the Obama administration probed those efforts. Democrats have also protected the company.

The revelation that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee were involved in procuring the salacious accusations against Trump that fed their own later accusations of Russian interference in the election lends credence to those who, like Trump himself, have regarded the Russia accusations as conspiracy theories.

Last week, Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal observed :

The Washington narrative is focused on special counsel Robert Mueller's probe. But the ferocious pushback and unseemly tactics from Democrats suggest they are growing worried. Maybe the real story is that Democrats worked with an opposition-research firm that has some alarming ties to Russia and potentially facilitated a disinformation campaign during a presidential election.

On the heels of revelations that the FBI was investigating Russian attempts to influence Hillary Clinton to approve a controversial uranium deal, Democrats will have more questions to answer about possible collusion with Russia. The FBI, too, will face additional scrutiny from Congress -- especially as it agreed to pay Steele after the election for additional research into Trump's potential Russia ties.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the " most influential " people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution , is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak .

[Nov 11, 2017] Brennan was a strong-arm facilitator for the foreign policy establishment which includes leaders from Big Oil, Wall Street, and the giant weapons manufacturers

Notable quotes:
"... as Russiagate widens, it's becoming clear that some part of the US intelligence community and part of the US financial elite were involved in the manipulation of the 2016 election. ..."
"... The spooks have been trying (and failing!) for years to break up the EU ..."
"... As for the gangsters, nobody could compete with the thug (felon) Avigdor Lieberman in the Knesset and the neo-Nazi activists in Kevan government. Don't forget that Mr. Kolomojsky, an Israeli citizen and big-time criminal and financier of the neo-Nazi battalion Azov, is also a pillar of Jewish Community in Ukraine (and a darling of the Wall Street Journal) and that Mr. D. Alperovitch, the Russophobe who conducted the fraudulent analysis of the data with his fraudulent CrowdStrike, is from a ziocon company of Atlantic Council. The Tokyo Rose has been, of course, documented in a company of neo-Nazis. ..."
"... Oh? And what evidence would that be? The CrowdStrike report? The Steele dossier? James Comey's say-so? Or perhaps that of some other DNC contractor or Obama administration flunkee? Do come back and enlighten us when they find some real evidence–i.e., something that might actually stand an outside chance of winning a conviction in court. ..."
"... Precisely. Thanks for highlighting this succinct explanation. Those who point to intel agencies or career bureaucrats as Deep State are identifying the puppets, not the masters. Kudos to Whitney for getting it right. ..."
Nov 11, 2017 | www.unz.com

Michael Kenny, November 11, 2017 at 2:23 pm GMT • 300 Words

Russiagate still scaring the daylights out of some people! The distinction between "Hillary paid for it" and "Hillary fabricated it" has already been made umpteen times. The reason, I think, why this author is trying to tie Hillary to the intelligence agencies and the millionaires is because, as Russiagate widens, it's becoming clear that some part of the US intelligence community and part of the US financial elite were involved in the manipulation of the 2016 election.

A part of the US financial elite have invested heavily (and for the most part, legally) in Russia but have thereby done business with some very dubious characters, some probably linked to the Russian Mafia. Having installed their stooge in the Kremlin, the gangsters took the logical next step and tried to install a stooge in the White House. The US elite was happy to let the Russians have a slice of the cake but by manipulating the election, the gangsters were in practice making a grab for the whole cake. The US elite wasn't willing to accept that. Hence the current fight.

The spooks have been trying (and failing!) for years to break up the EU and what both the US elite and the Russian gangsters had in mind was to carve up Europe between them ("spheres of influence"). The two projects came together in Ukraine. In other words, all of this has very little to do with politics or international relations and a great deal to do with dirty money.

Trying to pin that on Hillary is a rather flat-footed attempt to divert attention away from the links between the Russian gangsters, the spooks and the Trump's entourage.

Anon , Disclaimer November 11, 2017 at 3:36 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny

"Trying to pin that on Hillary is a rather flat-footed attempt to divert attention away from the links between the Russian gangsters, the spooks and the Trump's entourage."

We understand your frustration with the events in Syria. The ziocons' vicious hatred towards Russians for the "loss" of Syria to the Syrian citizens (instead the US/Israel/SA-sponsored ISIS) is evident.

As for the gangsters, nobody could compete with the thug (felon) Avigdor Lieberman in the Knesset and the neo-Nazi activists in Kevan government. Don't forget that Mr. Kolomojsky, an Israeli citizen and big-time criminal and financier of the neo-Nazi battalion Azov, is also a pillar of Jewish Community in Ukraine (and a darling of the Wall Street Journal) and that Mr. D. Alperovitch, the Russophobe who conducted the fraudulent analysis of the data with his fraudulent CrowdStrike, is from a ziocon company of Atlantic Council. The Tokyo Rose has been, of course, documented in a company of neo-Nazis.

Mike Whitney' paper has a hall mark of a courageous and principled person, whereas your Russophobic insinuations have been Russophobic insinuations and nothing more.

You do protest too much.

DaveE , November 11, 2017 at 5:27 pm GMT
Yeah, yeah. Poor, prosecuted Hillary is just a victim. Like all the rest of the poor, prosecuted leftist sore losers. Or rather, losers, sore or otherwise.

Hillary has a long, long career playing in the sandbox with Murder Inc, Political Division.

DaveE , November 11, 2017 at 5:39 pm GMT
@DaveE

Of course, she will take the fall for failure. Mobsters whack other mobsters quite frequently if they "fail"or are disloyal. And of course, glory-seekers like Hillary set themselves up for complete humiliation, at minimum, when things don't go so well.

Seamus Padraig , November 11, 2017 at 5:45 pm GMT
@Dr. Crow

And yet and yet there is evidence that the Trump campaign was in contact with various Russians all during the campaign.

Oh? And what evidence would that be? The CrowdStrike report? The Steele dossier? James Comey's say-so? Or perhaps that of some other DNC contractor or Obama administration flunkee? Do come back and enlighten us when they find some real evidence–i.e., something that might actually stand an outside chance of winning a conviction in court.

And they too were looking for "dirt" -on Clinton.

Well that isn't too hard to find, is it! No need to go to the black market for that.

The question now is: to what extent was the Trump campaign conspiring with Russia to subvert our election process? If they were involved in such a conspiracy, then the Trump organization has violated Federal laws and should be held to account, each and every one who so conspired.

Opposition research is not a crime. Nor is talking about US politics with foreign nationals; if it were, I'd be guilty of treason on a weekly basis, since I now live in Europe.

Although you may not like the source of the information nor its underlying purposes, if it exposes criminal actions by anyone than it served a good cause.

This is hilarious! I can remember using almost exactly those same words with Hillbots every time one of her corrupt schemes came to light. For example, isn't interceding with the Attorney General on your wife's behalf to head off an investigation in to her before an election a crime known as 'obstruction of justice'? Riddle me that, Batman.

RobinG , November 11, 2017 at 6:59 pm GMT
@Anon

Precisely. Thanks for highlighting this succinct explanation. Those who point to intel agencies or career bureaucrats as Deep State are identifying the puppets, not the masters. Kudos to Whitney for getting it right.

[Nov 11, 2017] There are some indications that McCain was the one who hired the company which created the infamous Steele dossier

This is from July, 2017, before the most recent revelations...
Notable quotes:
"... Azerbaijan's Silk Way Airlines transported hundreds of tons of weapons under diplomatic cover to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan Congo ..."
"... the weapons and ammunition are usual from east Europe (Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Ukraine ...) ..."
"... the contracts are with U.S. companies themselves hired by the CIA and/or Pentagon as well as with Saudi and Israeli companies ..."
"... offloading during unusual "fueling stops" allowed to disguise the real addressee of the loads ..."
"... With lots of details from obtained emails. Ten thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition to al-Qaeda and other Takfiris in Syria also came first from Libya by ship, then on at least 160 big cargo flights via Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Turkey and during the last years by various ships under U.S. contracts from mostly east-European countries. ..."
"... A British spy. An Arizona senator. And one inflammatory dossier on Donald Trump. The connection between them is starting to unravel... ..."
"... there are indications that McCain was the one who hired the company which created the infamous Steele dossier. ..."
"... there is evidences that he distributed it to the CIA, FBI and to the media. ..."
"... the "Reason" article is complete nonsense. I've covered the details the last two weeks. The "dodgy dossier" was shared by Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, with the British MI6 and the FBI starting in August 2016. That's why I claim it's not RussiaGate but IC-Gate. A complot by the Intelligence Community of the UK and US. McCain is just a distraction of the true effort to dump Trump. ..."
"... Christopher Steele and Sir Andrew Wood worked in a British spy nest in Moscow during the Yeltsin years of the 90s. ..."
"... Is RussiaGate Really IC-Gate Did MI6/CIA Collude with Chris Steele to Entrap Trump? ..."
Jul 23, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Murder, Spies And Weapons - Three Fascinating 'Deep State' Stories

350 "diplomatic" flights transporting weapons for terrorists - Trud

Azerbaijan's Silk Way Airlines transported hundreds of tons of weapons under diplomatic cover to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan Congo

With lots of details from obtained emails. Ten thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition to al-Qaeda and other Takfiris in Syria also came first from Libya by ship, then on at least 160 big cargo flights via Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Turkey and during the last years by various ships under U.S. contracts from mostly east-European countries.

---

With all the Trump-Russia nonsense flowing around one person's involvement in the creation of the issue deserves more scrutiny:

McCain and the Trump-Russia Dossier: What Did He Know, and When? - Reason

A British spy. An Arizona senator. And one inflammatory dossier on Donald Trump. The connection between them is starting to unravel...

likklemore | Jul 21, 2017 12:56:46 PM | 5
McCain and the Trump-Russia Dossier. The third time is the Charm. I am reminded. McCain can do no wrong:

His service to his country (it's alleged, by aiding the enemy); The Keating Five; (I dindu nuttin wrong) The Trump-Russia Dossier (by political treason stabbing the nominee of his own Party; ignoring the words of Reagan). McCain, once again, will be excused and forgiven. His actions were due to illness – the most aggressive cancer of the brain. How is that so?

james | Jul 21, 2017 1:00:13 PM | 8
@5 likklemore ... in an exceptional country, there is no accountability... according to obama, you have to move on and not dwell on the past, lol...
ben | Jul 21, 2017 1:07:44 PM | 9
Thanks b, the mountain of evidence you provide daily, as proof of the corporate empire's malignancy, is therapeutic and empowering, but, until this information reaches the bulk of the U$A's masses we're all just treading water here.
WorldBLee | Jul 21, 2017 1:11:43 PM | 10
@2: The last thing McCain has to worry about is prosecution or even criticism for fomenting war crimes. The cancer is real and he will be lauded for his courage and lionized if he dies. But should he survive he will carry on as usual with no apologies and no criticism.
Oui | Jul 21, 2017 2:29:43 PM | 12
Sorry b .... the "Reason" article is complete nonsense. I've covered the details the last two weeks. The "dodgy dossier" was shared by Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, with the British MI6 and the FBI starting in August 2016. That's why I claim it's not RussiaGate but IC-Gate. A complot by the Intelligence Community of the UK and US. McCain is just a distraction of the true effort to dump Trump.
McCain and the Trump-Russia Dossier: What Did He Know, and When? - Reason

A British spy. An Arizona senator. And one inflammatory dossier on Donald Trump. The connection between them is starting to unravel...

  • there are indications that McCain was the one who hired the company which created the infamous Steele dossier.
  • there is evidences that he distributed it to the CIA, FBI and to the media.
  • the issue is now in front of a British court.

Christopher Steele and Sir Andrew Wood worked in a British spy nest in Moscow during the Yeltsin years of the 90s.

Hoarsewhisperer | Jul 21, 2017 3:02:30 PM | 13
Thanks, b. Love the lede...
350 "diplomatic" flights transporting weapons for ter'rists - Trud

What a slimy little cur John McCain (Satan's Mini-Me) turns out to be. Guess how surprised I'm not that the little skunk is up to his eyeballs in weapons proliferation & profiteering, not to mention that old Yankee favourite Gun-barrel "Diplomacy".

I suspected during the Prez Campaign that Trump had McCain well and truly scoped when he said (of Satan's Mini-Me) "I like my war "heroes" not to get captured."

This story says a lot for China & Russia's approach to long-term Strategic Diplomacy. I imagine that they both know all this stuff and a helluva lot more, but they go to all the summits, prattle about Our AmeriKKKan Friends, and then presumably laugh their asses off when the summit is over. Xi & Putin seem to truly believe that the blowback from all this Yankee Duplicity will eventually do as much harm to the American Dream as an Ru/Cn Military Solution.

likklemore | Jul 21, 2017 4:52:05 PM | 18
@james 8
[Reported by Independent.co.uk, New York Post and the Guardian.co.uk] McCain admitted he handed the dossier to Comey."

NYPost: McCain "I gave Russia blackmail dossier on Trump to the FBI"

Senator John McCain passed documents to the FBI director, James Comey, last month alleging secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow and that Russian intelligence had personally compromising material on the president-elect himself

New York Post
http://nypost.com/2017/01/11/john-mccain-i-gave-russia-blackmail-dossier-on-trump-to-fbi/

Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier-by-john-mccain-alleging-secret-trump-russia-contacts

Yes, there will be no accountability in the U.S. for the exceptional ones. However, the British courts setting aside "special relationships" may take a different view that McCain has a case to answer.


@kpax 17

Did I mis-read? McCain's cerebral?

fast freddy | Jul 21, 2017 8:20:34 PM | 29
Craven McCain has been teflon for his entire political career and he was teflon when he wrecked airplanes in the navy. McCain is just a teflon guy. Untouchable. Probably has "dossiers" on anybody that can damage him.
Yeah, Right | Jul 22, 2017 6:40:44 AM | 45
@2 I have no doubt that McCain's medical condition is real. I well remember the news stories in early June when McCain put up a bizarre performance during testimony by James Comey - asking questions that simply didn't make any sense whatsoever and leaving everyone utterly gob-smacked regarding McCain's mental state.

So, yeah, brain tumour.

[Nov 11, 2017] Trump Points To Falsehoods In Russian Hacking Claims - Media Still Ignore Them

Possibly all of the Russia-gate allegations, which have been taken on faith by Democratic partisans and members of the anti-Trump Resistance, trace back to claims paid for or generated by Democrats. If for a moment one could remove the often justified hatred many people feel toward Trump, it would be impossible to avoid the impression that the scandal may have been devised by the DNC and the Clinton camp in league with Obama's intelligence chiefs to serve political and geopolitical aims. In other words this is a sophisticated false flag operation.
Even more alarmingly (what really smells like a part on intelligence agencies coup d'état against Trump ) is the basis for much of the Jan. 6 intelligence "assessment" by those "hand-picked" analysts from three U.S. intelligence agencies - the CIA, the FBI and the NSA - not all 17 agencies that Hillary Clinton continues to insist were involved. (Obama's intelligence chiefs, DNI Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, publicly admitted that only three agencies took part and The New York Times printed a correction saving so.)
Notable quotes:
"... Well its three . And one is Brennan . And one is whatever. I mean, give me a break. They're political hacks . So you look at it, and then you have Brennan, you have Clapper and you have Comey . Comey's proven now to be a liar and he's proven to be a leaker. So you look at that. ..."
"... Trump gets it. He knows the weak points of the propaganda claims of "Russian hacking": Podesta and the fake Steele dossier, the DNC server, the lack of any FBI investigation of the alleged hack, the NYT's long false insistence on the '17 agencies' assessment, the "political hacks" who fitted their claims to the Obama/Clinton narrative. ..."
"... But neither the Washington Post nor the NY Times or others mention the crucial points Trump spelled out in their write-ups of the gaggle. There is no word on the DNC servers in them. Instead they create a claim of "Putin says and Trump just believes him". The do not name the facts and questions Trump listed to support his position. Taking up the valid questions Trump asked would of course require the news outlets to finally delve into them. We can't have that. ..."
"... Trump is not the brightest bulb and he is not well informed. I dislike nearly all of his policies. But he understands that the "Russian hacking" narrative is false and is carried by lunatic political hacks who want to push the U.S. back into a cold, or maybe even hot war with Russia, China, Iran and probably everyone else. ..."
"... I guess it could be that the DNC really was hacked, but maybe they faked the hack story, fed the story to Crowdstrike, then paid Crowdstrike a lot of money to fabricate a fairytale about Russian hacking... ..."
"... This Russian fairytale would be the bedrock of Hillary's campaign, and it gave her a reason to badmouth trump who intended to get along with Putin, which deeply offended the neocon Bolsheviks who've been running things since 9/11 ..."
"... If the hacking really happened, it's maybe more likely to have been the US NSA that did the hacking... that might explain why the DNC and Hillary were not alarmed by the hacking --if it happened-- and did nothing about it, and continued to write incriminating emails... ..."
"... Russia gate is Really Hillary Gate... And that's just the beginning as we consider the DNC lid coming off via Donna Brazile and the Uranium scandal. Mueller has been gatekeeper for the Deep State for OKC bombing, 911,...other False Flag...and now today's Intrigues. ..."
"... Back when Trump looked like he was in the running in the US presidential election, I wondered how one man, even if he was genuine, could without the backing of US intelligence, take down the deepstate/borg/whatever. Putin pulled Russia out of the nineties with key backing from patriotic intelligence and military leadership, but Trump even if genuine would be on his own. Just ordered 'Art of the deal' to try and understand Trump a bit more. Looks like he has just destroyed a big chunk of deep state financing so will be interesting to see how long he can stay alive. ..."
"... well, Mueller declined to find 9/11 evidence against bin laden... or maybe we should say, "he declined to manufacture evidence"... for some unkown reason... ..."
"... Can we just face the facts here that there is a coordinated effort by these elite to get Trump dethroned? What reason for this? Simple...he's a threat. ..."
"... Mike Whitney posted a great piece this week suggesting Brennan, Obama's political 'hack', is behind this mess - "Brennan spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign from the get-go. As early as August 2016, Brennan was providing classified briefings to ranking members of Congress expressing his conviction that Moscow was helping Trump to win the election. The former Director offered no proof to back up his claims nor has he since then. It was also Brennan who gradually persuaded Clapper, Comey and Morrell to join his anti-Russia jihad, although all were reluctant participants at first. Were they won over by compelling secret evidence that has been been withheld from the public?" - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48172.htm ..."
"... These are but a few sources digging and reporting on these bogus charges against Putin. I'd like to believe the majority of the U.S. electorate isn't being fooled by the nonsense. I can't speak for those who choose to remain inside the brainwashing corporate media bubble, but for those of us who divorced ourselves from their propaganda long ago ain't buying nor ever did buy into the muh Russia crap. ..."
"... Meanwhile, USG declares RT and Sputnik to be foreign agents and must register as such -- and Trump had nothing to do with that?!? ..."
"... The media is now now in permanent psy op mode, colonizing the public's mind and jamming people's ability to reason, think critically and even tell fact from fiction. It is only a matter of time before overt repression becomes widespread (to protect our freedoms of course) and the last remnants of democracy give way to an Orwellian/Huxleyite dystopia. ..."
"... CNN covers the Binney/Pompeo meeting, and describes Binney in the headline as a "conspiracy theorist": http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/politics/mike-pompeo-william-binney-meeting/index.html ..."
Nov 11, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Trump Points To Falsehoods In "Russian Hacking" Claims - Media Still Ignore Them

During the flight of his recent Asia tour U.S. President Donal Trump held a press gaggle on board of the plane. Part of it were questions and answers about the alleged "Russian hacking" of the U.S. election.

There is no public transcript available yet but the Washington Post's Mark Berman provided a screenshot of some relevant parts:

Mark Berman @markberman - 6:20 AM - 11 Nov 2017

Full comment from @realDonaldTrump again questioning the US intel community conclusion that Russia meddled last year

In the attached transcript Trump talks about his very short encounter with the Russian President Putin in Hanoi:

Q: When did you bring up the issue of election meddling? Did you ask him a question?

A: Every time he sees me he says he didn't do that and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. But he says, I didn't do that. I think he is very insulted by it, ...
...
He says that very strongly and he really seems to be insulted by it he says he didn't do it.

Q: Even if he didn't bring it up one-on-one, do you believe him?

A: I think that he is very, very strong on the fact that didn't do it. And then you look and you look what's going on with Podesta , and you look at what's going on with the server from the DNC and why didn't the FBI take it ? Why did they leave it? Why did a third party look at the server and not the FBI ? You look at all of this stuff, and you say, what's going on here? And you hear it's 17 agencies. Well its three . And one is Brennan . And one is whatever. I mean, give me a break. They're political hacks . So you look at it, and then you have Brennan, you have Clapper and you have Comey . Comey's proven now to be a liar and he's proven to be a leaker. So you look at that. And you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently say he has nothing to do with that. Now, you are not going to get into an argument, you are going to start talking about Syria and the Ukraine.

Trump gets it. He knows the weak points of the propaganda claims of "Russian hacking": Podesta and the fake Steele dossier, the DNC server, the lack of any FBI investigation of the alleged hack, the NYT's long false insistence on the '17 agencies' assessment, the "political hacks" who fitted their claims to the Obama/Clinton narrative.

But neither the Washington Post nor the NY Times or others mention the crucial points Trump spelled out in their write-ups of the gaggle. There is no word on the DNC servers in them. Instead they create a claim of "Putin says and Trump just believes him". The do not name the facts and questions Trump listed to support his position. Taking up the valid questions Trump asked would of course require the news outlets to finally delve into them. We can't have that.

Instead we get more "Russian influence" claptrap. Like this from the once honorable Wired which headlines:

Here's the first evidence Russia used Twitter to influence Brexit

Russian interference in Brexit through targeted social media propaganda can be revealed for the first time. A cache of posts from 2016, seen by WIRED, shows how a coordinated network of Russian-based Twitter accounts spread racial hatred in an attempt to disrupt politics in the UK and Europe.

Interesting, enthralling, complicate and sensational ...
... until you get down to paragraph 14(!):

Surprisingly, all the posts around Brexit in this small snapshot were posted after the June vote

"Russian agents" influenced the U.S. election by buying mostly irrelevant Facebook ads - 25% of which were never seen by anyone and 56% of which were posted AFTER the election

"Russian-based Twitter accounts" influenced the Brexit vote in the UK by tweeting affirmative AFTER the vote happened

Trump is not the brightest bulb and he is not well informed. I dislike nearly all of his policies. But he understands that the "Russian hacking" narrative is false and is carried by lunatic political hacks who want to push the U.S. back into a cold, or maybe even hot war with Russia, China, Iran and probably everyone else.

Tannenhouser | Nov 11, 2017 2:15:01 PM | 1

"Trump is not the brightest bulb and he is not well informed. I dislike nearly all of his policies. But he understands that the "Russian hacking" narrative is false and is carried by lunatic political hacks who want to push the U.S. back into a cold, or maybe even hot war with Russia, China, Iran and probably everyone else."

I couldn't agree more B. The distraction to cover up the DNC crimes and the 'pay to play' antics during HRC's tenure at SECState are part of this nonsense as well.

james | Nov 11, 2017 2:21:31 PM | 2
thanks b.. i 2nd @1 tannenhousers comment above..
wadosy | Nov 11, 2017 2:31:10 PM | 3
the term "hacked" implies that someone came in on the internet, right?

I guess it could be that the DNC really was hacked, but maybe they faked the hack story, fed the story to Crowdstrike, then paid Crowdstrike a lot of money to fabricate a fairytale about Russian hacking...

This Russian fairytale would be the bedrock of Hillary's campaign, and it gave her a reason to badmouth trump who intended to get along with Putin, which deeply offended the neocon Bolsheviks who've been running things since 9/11

If the hacking really happened, it's maybe more likely to have been the US NSA that did the hacking... that might explain why the DNC and Hillary were not alarmed by the hacking --if it happened-- and did nothing about it, and continued to write incriminating emails...

...they assumed the hackers were on their side

OK, then, if the hacking was a fairytale, made up by Debbie and Hillary, and reinforced by Crowdstrike, then what? Maybe it doesn't make any difference in the long run, if the DNC was hacked or not

Whatever happened, the emails got out, Assange strongly hints that Seth Rich was the leak, Seth Rich was murdered, and his murder was intended to be a warning to people like Donna Brazile, who, after Seth was murdered, started drawing her office blinds because she didn't want to be sniped... presumably by the people who murdered Seth Rich

broders | Nov 11, 2017 2:33:17 PM | 4
the real question is : what is j.sessions doing ? and if nothing , why trump doesn't fire him ?
Brad | Nov 11, 2017 2:55:42 PM | 5
Russia gate is Really Hillary Gate... And that's just the beginning as we consider the DNC lid coming off via Donna Brazile and the Uranium scandal. Mueller has been gatekeeper for the Deep State for OKC bombing, 911,...other False Flag...and now today's Intrigues.

Will Podesta and Hillary escape?...or get Prison? John McCain with ISIS and photo opp,.. Evil in your face 24. If certain people are not in Prison....Mueller could wear the label Satan's guardian. ..and it wouldn't be exaggeration

Peter AU 1 | Nov 11, 2017 3:00:44 PM | 6
Back when Trump looked like he was in the running in the US presidential election, I wondered how one man, even if he was genuine, could without the backing of US intelligence, take down the deepstate/borg/whatever. Putin pulled Russia out of the nineties with key backing from patriotic intelligence and military leadership, but Trump even if genuine would be on his own. Just ordered 'Art of the deal' to try and understand Trump a bit more. Looks like he has just destroyed a big chunk of deep state financing so will be interesting to see how long he can stay alive.
wadosy | Nov 11, 2017 3:05:39 PM | 7

well, Mueller declined to find 9/11 evidence against bin laden... or maybe we should say, "he declined to manufacture evidence"... for some unkown reason...

whatever, if seth rich's murder was an attempt to terrorize politicians and the media into parroting the party line --like the anthrax letters did after 9/11-- it worked

donna is still saying, "the Russians dun it".

NemesisCalling | Nov 11, 2017 3:07:36 PM | 8
b, it is so funny that everytime you allude to Trump being in the right against the teeming hordes or globalist, anti-Russia elites, you always offer the caveat: "but...he's a bastard and I hate him."

Can we just face the facts here that there is a coordinated effort by these elite to get Trump dethroned? What reason for this? Simple...he's a threat.

Enemy of my enemy anyone?

P.s. I view him as an opportunist. a chameleon. At the very least, perhaps he realizes the absolute absurdity of trying to keep the house of cards aloft in the ME. So far, no wars, and a de-escalation in Syria. Pundits are talking about 3+% growth in US for first time in decade. I dont't know...perhaps Donald can cut and run in time to salvage some of the US prosperity.

PavewayIV | Nov 11, 2017 3:22:45 PM | 9
I'm almost inclined to think Trump is letting this Russian hack thing play out on purpose despite his Tweets to the contrary. Preventing the feds from 'investigating' it wouldn't make it go away, it would just cement the notion of guilt and a cover-up into the anti-Trump, anti-Russian segment of the public. More importantly, the similarly-inclined political/government leaders (pro-Hillary, DNC, politicized FBI and intel, neocons, deep state, whatever...) and MSM slowly expose themselves for what they are. They get too confident in the big lie actually working and go into a feeding frenzy. Trump trolls them on Twitter and they go insane.

When you want to catch sharks, you don't chase them around the ocean to hunt them. You chum the waters and wait for them to come to you. Trump isn't the one chumming the waters here - he's letting the sharks do that themselves.

I scratched my head like everyone else trying to figure out Trump's earlier incomprehensible hiring/firing volley his first few months. Maybe that was just a bit of theatre. Trump might not understand the 'little people' too much, but he does understand his opponent psychopaths (corporate, banking or government/intel) and how to use their basic flaws against them. 'Draining the swamp' sells well, but letting his opponents stick their necks out far enough before Trump's own Night of the Long Knives would (to me) be a far more effective strategy towards his ends. And probably much safer for him than Kennedy's approach.

Kind of worrying that one has to rely on outsider psychopaths to cull other psychopath's well-entrenched herds within the US government. Does that ever turn out well?

Laguerre | Nov 11, 2017 3:30:12 PM | 10
Was anything Trump did really illegal? It hasn't been demonstrated yet. The US does much the same in Russia.
h | Nov 11, 2017 3:31:16 PM | 11
Only the most strident partisans hold tightly to the Russian interference nonsense.

Those who simply want to deal in facts bother ourselves to self inform using multiple sources who have been trying to make sense of the dastardly twists and turns in this muh Russia whodunit scandal. The DNC emails, dossier, collusion the whole escapade, from the beginning, could be seen as being built on nothing more than quicksand.

Mike Whitney posted a great piece this week suggesting Brennan, Obama's political 'hack', is behind this mess - "Brennan spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign from the get-go. As early as August 2016, Brennan was providing classified briefings to ranking members of Congress expressing his conviction that Moscow was helping Trump to win the election. The former Director offered no proof to back up his claims nor has he since then. It was also Brennan who gradually persuaded Clapper, Comey and Morrell to join his anti-Russia jihad, although all were reluctant participants at first. Were they won over by compelling secret evidence that has been been withheld from the public?" - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48172.htm

Then you have Joe Lauria's outstanding piece which lived less than 24 hours at HuffPo before being disappeared - http://raymcgovern.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CLEANOn-The-Origins-of-Russia-gate-_-HuffPost.pdf

And then you have the Intercept's piece on Binney's meeting with CIA's Pompeo with Ray McGovern providing a lot more detail and an interview with his favorite news outlet RT - http://raymcgovern.com/

Oh, and about Binney's meeting with Pompeo? Trump requested Pompeo meet with him. He did. But Pompeo, as of today, remains steadfast in supporting the ICA crap report Obama's political intel hacks put out.

These are but a few sources digging and reporting on these bogus charges against Putin. I'd like to believe the majority of the U.S. electorate isn't being fooled by the nonsense. I can't speak for those who choose to remain inside the brainwashing corporate media bubble, but for those of us who divorced ourselves from their propaganda long ago ain't buying nor ever did buy into the muh Russia crap.

wadosy | Nov 11, 2017 3:36:47 PM | 12
we got to wonder why donna brazile made such a fuss about Seth Rich. She's being way too cagey for comfort but even if we leave seth rich out of it, none of it make any sense

... ... ...

Muslim Dude | Nov 11, 2017 3:42:36 PM | 13
According to journalist, Liz Crokin and others online, Trump is pulling the biggest sting operation in history.

https://www.lizcrokin.com/hillaryclinton/mueller-president-trump-pulling-biggest-sting-history/

Also from a Youtube video I saw earlier there are claims this is what is happening.

1. Obama regime was chronically corrupt including sell of Uranium to Russia for bribes. Elements of the US military and intelligence were disgusted by this and approached Trump BEFORE the elections as a figure who could help them.

2. Trump decided to work with them and during his election campaign he deliberately made constant exaggerated claims of his supposed friendship with Putin, this was bait for the Democrats to smear him as a Putin-lover, Putin puppet.

3. Once elected, the whole "Trump is a Putin puppet" was allowed to run so that a huge demand for some sort of investigation in to Trump and his Russia links could be built. Only this investigation would in fact be used to target the Democrats and Clinton including for their corruption over the Uranium sales with the Russians.

4. This was apparently (according to these claims) the game plan from the beginning and Mueller is apparently going to work to convict Hillary Clinton and other senior Democrats.

I don't know how true this is, but it does answer a lot of questions and anomalies and also ties in with B's thesis that we are essentially seeing a quasi-military government in D.C. under Trump.

psychohistorian | Nov 11, 2017 3:49:19 PM | 14
@ PavewayIV who ended his comment with: "Kind of worrying that one has to rely on outsider psychopaths to cull other psychopath's well-entrenched herds within the US government. Does that ever turn out well? "

Yep! And we add our textual white noise to the rearranging of the deck chairs on the top deck of the good ship Humanity as it careens over the falls/into the shoals/pick-your-metaphor

PavewayIV | Nov 11, 2017 4:30:10 PM | 15
psychohistorian@14 - Captain to crew: "I will not have this ship go down looking like a garbage scow. Deck chairs will be arranged in a neat and orderly manner at all times!"
Augustin L | Nov 11, 2017 4:32:46 PM | 16
The orange Chump is using diversionary tactics. Will the mafia Front goy thief disclose his extensive exposure/links to Russian and foreign banks ?

The same media you're decrying here is also ignoring this week's paradise papers revelations about Wilbur Ross, Trump's commerce secretary and business links with Russian Israeli mobsters and oligarchs like Mogilevich. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMhzkvWuXEM

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what is not true. The other is to refuse to believe what is true. Can't fix stupid sociopathy. I pity deplorable goyims, They deserve their plight...

renfro | Nov 11, 2017 5:10:26 PM | 17
Please someone end this idiot circus! Russia hacked THE ELECTION ...hacked THE ELECTION ??? For the love of gawd..the ELECTION, meaning the voting was hacked.....it was NOT. Nothing has focused on Russian 'hacking' of VOTES. Russia 'if' they hacked, at best hacked some emails and info used to expose Hillary. And posted negative info on the net. So, so what? How many leakers weren't doing that?

I have had it with the Dems, they have IQs somewhere below that of cabbages. But I guess there are a certain number of citizens that will believe anything if it is repeated enough by their herd leaders.

notheonly1 | Nov 11, 2017 5:31:12 PM | 18
All this pathetic, lousy street theater resembling staging can only serve one important reason: Distraction. What is it that people need to be distracted from? That the US has turned openly into a military dictatorship? That the extermination proceedings are speeding up?

Hitler used gas chambers, as did the US after the war. While the first was a psychopathic dictator, the latter is a psychopathic society. It has spend trillions in research and design of lethal weapons and systems to exterminate any 'enemy'.

With all the technological progress, people do no longer need to be dragged to a gas chamber. The gas chamber will come to them. Sprayed into the atmosphere and making its way into earth's life systems.

Trump, Dump, Busch, Koch, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon - plutocratic hand puppets. It is not the people who decide where and when the ship sinks. It will be sunken for them - with all the useless eaters on board.

Jack Oliver | Nov 11, 2017 6:03:23 PM | 19
Trump is too stupid to realize that the very reason the election was rigged in his favour was - the derailment of ANY ZIO/US/Russia relations !! Their top priority ( as always) has been to keep Russia and Germany apart ! Russia's 'resources' and German 'innovation' is a match made in heaven - would spell the end of the US economy !
karlof1 | Nov 11, 2017 6:27:43 PM | 20
Not only did the Propaganda System refuse to correctly report as b details, but nowhere has it mentioned the defeat of Daesh, as Pepe Escobar discloses: "This is History in the making.

"And right on cue, VIRTUALLY NOTHING about this REAL ON THE GROUND VICTORY OF A REAL WAR ON TERROR is being covered by Western corporate media.

"No wonder. Because this was the work of Damascus, Russia, Hezbollah, Iran advisers, Baghdad and the PMUs – actually the "4+1" - and not the US-led "coalition" that includes Wahhabi mongrels House of Saud and UAE - that totally smashes to bits the monochord Washington narrative.

"So History in the making must be silenced." [Emphasis in original.] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48186.htm

Meanwhile, USG declares RT and Sputnik to be foreign agents and must register as such -- and Trump had nothing to do with that?!?

Temporarily Sane | Nov 11, 2017 6:30:23 PM | 21
The war on Syria and the Russian "hacking" debacle has corrupted the entire western media. Not that it was ever squeaky clean - far from it - but it was at least somewhat independent from the dominant establishment. There were pauses between the outrageous lies and blatant fact twisting and it did not overtly shill for neoliberal political parties and work overtime pushing massive amounts of propaganda on the public 24/7/365 and relentlessly demonize, in the most crude fashion imaginable, the leaders of some of the the world's most powerful countries and any sovereign nation that values its independence and freedom from Western exploitation.

The media is now now in permanent psy op mode, colonizing the public's mind and jamming people's ability to reason, think critically and even tell fact from fiction. It is only a matter of time before overt repression becomes widespread (to protect our freedoms of course) and the last remnants of democracy give way to an Orwellian/Huxleyite dystopia.

jayc | Nov 11, 2017 6:32:58 PM | 22
CNN covers the Binney/Pompeo meeting, and describes Binney in the headline as a "conspiracy theorist": http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/politics/mike-pompeo-william-binney-meeting/index.html
Peter AU 1 | Nov 11, 2017 6:37:08 PM | 23
karlof1 20

If by chance Trump or anyone is genuine about taking down the deep state, they cannot do it by running around in a pathetic attempt trying to fix small issues. They would have to leave the machine to carry on as normal and go for its foundations. I thought about this months ago, and now looking at the latest events, this could be what is happening.

gut bugs galore | Nov 11, 2017 6:52:35 PM | 24
Meanwhile a revolution threatening the federation of Australia is taking place in Canberra utilizing a formless and compliant press corps and a fake issue of dual citizenship. Chaos is a disease agent which has jumped out of the Middle Eastern laboratory into all western nations.
Krollchem | Nov 11, 2017 7:13:34 PM | 25
Educational Youtube videos on how the world works at "Rules for rulers"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU

[Nov 11, 2017] Saudi Crown Prince Consolidates Power With Anti-Corruption Arrests

Charge in corruption is a standard instrument in regime change effort. Most widely used in in color revolutions. So this is a pretty old way tested in xUSSR republics.
Nov 10, 2017 | angrybearblog.com

Everybody is against corruption, so it has become the new cool way to concentrate power in dictatorial societies to engage in an anti-corruption drive, as Putin and Xi Jinping have done. Actually corrupt people may well be arrested, but somehow included in the set of those arrested are rivals of the leader who are conveniently disposed of.

likbez , November 10, 2017 8:53 pm

Barkley,

You should probably think in a wider framework of color revolution, not in the narrow framework of (possibly inflated) corruption charges. This is about de-legitimization, not about the corruption per se.

BTW the charge in corruption is a standard tool used in color revolutions. So it is far from only "the new cool way to concentrate power in dictatorial societies". It is more of an old way to induce "regime change".

It is perfectly applicable to political struggle in neoliberal societies as well as we see now with Trump. Probably even more, as "greed is good" morale imperative implies. Also provides opponents of Trump high moral ground to attach him and his entourage.

We can start analysis from Trump campaign against Hillary. If it would be more interesting to analyze the current anti-Trump campaign from this angle. Especially recent Robert Mueller's indictments. We can view then as a kind of attempt to "import" color revolution methods of "regime change" into the USA in order to depose Trump.

In other words boomerang eventually returns.

Several listed in from https://www.sott.net/article/334026-SOTT-Exclusive-A-Purple-Color-revolution-in-the-US-Learn-the-signs-of-color-revolutions ) tell-tell signs of regime change is probably applicable to anti-Trump campaign.

== quote ==

The Chinese pastor Leung has outlined the 12 steps of regime change.

The key difference is that this time it is not the U.S. making regime change overseas, but in America itself to serve the powers that be. The 12 steps are:

1.Dispatch CIA, MI6 and other intelligence officers as students, tourists, volunteers, businessmen, reporters to the target country

2.Set up Non Governmental Organizations (NGO's) under the guise of humanitarianism to fight for "democracy" and "human rights" in order to attract advocates of freedom and ideals

3.Attract local traitors, especially academics, politicians, reporters, soldiers etc. through bribery or threaten those who have some stain in their life

4.If the target country has unions, bribe them

5.Pick a catchy theme or color for the revolution. Examples include the Praque spring (1968), Velvet Revolution (Eastern Europe, 1989), Rose Revolution (Georgia, 2003), Cedar Revolution (Lebanon, 2005), Orange Revolution (Ukraine 2004), Green Revolution (Iran), Jasmine Revolution, Arab Spring and even Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution

6.Start protests for whatever reasons to kick off the revolution. It could be human rights, democracy, government corruption or electoral fraud. Evidence isn't necessary; an excuse will do.

7.Write protest signs and banners in English to let Americans see and get Americans politicians and civilians involved

8.Let those corrupted politicians, intellectuals and union leaders join the protests and call upon all people with grievances to join

9.The US and European mainstream media help by continuously emphasizing that the revolution is caused by injustice and thereby gaining the support of the majority

10.When the whole world is watching stage a false-flag action. The target government will soon be destabilized and lose support among its people

11.Add in violent agent provocateurs to provoke the police to use force. This will cause the target government to lose the support of other countries and become "delegitimized" by the international community

12.Send politicians to the US, EU, the UN to petition so that the target government will face the threat of economic sanctions, no-fly zones and even airstrikes and an armed rebel uprising.

Barkley Rosser , November 10, 2017 11:34 pm

Oh, I don't think so, Likbez. The really big numbers of arrests for corruption as part of a power grab have not been in color revolution nations, but in long estabilished regimes. So in China Xi Joinping has arrested about 1.4 million people in the CPC on anti-corruption charges since he took power. No wonder nobody was voting against him at the recent party congress.

Then we have Erdogan in Turkkey, who has arrested something like 70,000. Now a lot of those have been busted for supposedly being part of the Gulenist copu attempt, but many have been buseed for couurption. Yeah, color places do it, but these are the places with the reallyi big numbers.

Oh, and the numbers arrested in Saudi Arabia apparently now exceed 200, and that is not coloar revolution, nor is what has gone on in the US.

likbez , November 11, 2017 9:32 pm

"Oh, I don't think so, Likbez. The really big numbers of arrests for corruption as part of a power grab have not been in color revolution nations, but in long estabilished regimes."

Not true. After Ukrainian Maidan color revolution (2014) there were wide purges on corruption charges of supporters of ousted President Yanukovich.

The current "Russiagate" color revolution against Trump recently started to concentrate on corruption charges too (Mueller's first indictments). They are definitely not wide. But they send a message to Trump and serve classic for color revolution de-legitimization purpose. In the context of the USA they probably do not actually need them to be wide as they can be amplified 100 or 1000 times by anti-Trump MSM.

See https://www.amazon.com/Power-Struggle-Politics-Nonviolent-Action/dp/087558070X/

In both cases there is a strong support within the intelligence agencies of the actions that can help to depose elected President (Brennan, Clapper, possibly Comey in case of the USA). Along with the goal to froze the possibility of détente with Russia. Which was achieved to the delight of all neocons.

There are also some discussions about the possibility that DNC hack was a false flag operation in classic color revolutions fashion. See

[Nov 11, 2017] On The Origins of Russia-gate by Joe Lauria

Notable quotes:
"... As Russia-gate continues to buffet the Trump administration, we now know that the "scandal" started with Democrats funding the original dubious allegations of Russian interference, notes Joe Lauria. ..."
"... Voice of America reported ..."
"... How I Lost By Hillary Clinton ..."
Nov 11, 2017 | kickthemallout.com

As Russia-gate continues to buffet the Trump administration, we now know that the "scandal" started with Democrats funding the original dubious allegations of Russian interference, notes Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria

The two sources that originated the allegations claiming that Russia meddled in the 2016 election -- without providing convincing evidence -- were both paid for by the Democratic National Committee, and in one instance also by the Clinton campaign: the Steele dossier and the CrowdStrike analysis of the DNC servers. Think about that for a minute.

We have long known that the DNC did not allow the FBI to examine its computer server for clues about who may have hacked it – or even if it was hacked – and instead turned to CrowdStrike, a private company co-founded by a virulently anti-Putin Russian. Within a day, CrowdStrike blamed Russia on dubious evidence.

And, it has now been disclosed that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid for opposition research memos written by former British MI6 intelligence agent Christopher Steele using hearsay accusations from anonymous Russian sources to claim that the Russian government was blackmailing and bribing Donald Trump in a scheme that presupposed that Russian President Vladimir Putin foresaw Trump's presidency years ago when no one else did.

Since then, the U.S. intelligence community has struggled to corroborate Steele's allegations, but those suspicions still colored the thinking of President Obama's intelligence chiefs who, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, "hand-picked" the analysts who produced the Jan. 6 "assessment" claiming that Russia interfered in the U.S. election.

In other words, possibly all of the Russia-gate allegations, which have been taken on faith by Democratic partisans and members of the anti-Trump Resistance, trace back to claims paid for or generated by Democrats.

If for a moment one could remove the sometimes justified hatred that many people feel toward Trump, it would be impossible to avoid the impression that the scandal may have been cooked up by the DNC and the Clinton camp in league with Obama's intelligence chiefs to serve political and geopolitical aims.

Absent new evidence based on forensic or documentary proof, we could be looking at a partisan concoction devised in the midst of a bitter general election campaign, a manufactured "scandal" that also has fueled a dangerous New Cold War against Russia; a case of a dirty political "oppo" serving American ruling interests in reestablishing the dominance over Russia that they enjoyed in the 1990s, as well as feeding the voracious budgetary appetite of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Though lacking independent evidence of the core Russia-gate allegations, the "scandal" continues to expand into wild exaggerations about the impact of a tiny number of social media pages suspected of having links to Russia but that apparently carried very few specific campaign messages. ( Some pages reportedly were devoted to photos of puppies. )

'Cash for Trash'

Based on what is now known, Wall Street buccaneer Paul Singer paid for GPS Fusion, a Washington-based research firm, to do opposition research on Trump during the Republican primaries, but dropped the effort in May 2016 when it became clear Trump would be the GOP nominee. GPS Fusion has strongly denied that it hired Steele for this work or that the research had anything to do with Russia.

Then, in April 2016 the DNC and the Clinton campaign paid its Washington lawyer Marc Elias to hire Fusion GPS to unearth dirt connecting Trump to Russia. This was three months before the DNC blamed Russia for hacking its computers and supposedly giving its stolen emails to WikiLeaks to help Trump win the election.

"The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee retained Fusion GPS to research any possible connections between Mr. Trump, his businesses, his campaign team and Russia, court filings revealed this week," The New York Times reported on Friday night.

So, linking Trump to Moscow as a way to bring Russia into the election story was the Democrats' aim from the start.

Fusion GPS then hired ex-MI6 intelligence agent Steele, it says for the first time, to dig up that dirt in Russia for the Democrats. Steele produced classic opposition research, not an intelligence assessment or conclusion, although it was written in a style and formatted to look like one.

It's important to realize that Steele was no longer working for an official intelligence agency, which would have imposed strict standards on his work and possibly disciplined him for injecting false information into the government's decision-making. Instead, he was working for a political party and a presidential candidate looking for dirt that would hurt their opponent, what the Clintons used to call "cash for trash" when they were the targets.

Had Steele been doing legitimate intelligence work for his government, he would have taken a far different approach. Intelligence professionals are not supposed to just give their bosses what their bosses want to hear. So, Steele would have verified his information. And it would have gone through a process of further verification by other intelligence analysts in his and perhaps other intelligence agencies. For instance, in the U.S., a National Intelligence Estimate requires vetting by all 17 intelligence agencies and incorporates dissenting opinions.

Instead Steele was producing a piece of purely political research and had different motivations. The first might well have been money, as he was being paid specifically for this project, not as part of his work on a government salary presumably serving all of society. Secondly, to continue being paid for each subsequent memo that he produced he would have been incentivized to please his clients or at least give them enough so they would come back for more.

Dubious Stuff

Opposition research is about getting dirt to be used in a mud-slinging political campaign, in which wild charges against candidates are the norm. This "oppo" is full of unvetted rumor and innuendo with enough facts mixed in to make it seem credible. There was so much dubious stuff in Steele's memos that the FBI was unable to confirm its most salacious allegations and apparently refuted several key points.

Perhaps more significantly, the corporate news media, which was largely partial to Clinton, did not report the fantastic allegations after people close to the Clinton campaign began circulating the lurid stories before the election with the hope that the material would pop up in the news. To their credit, established media outlets recognized this as ammunition against a political opponent, not a serious document.

Despite this circumspection, the Steele dossier was shared with the FBI at some point in the summer of 2016 and apparently became the basis for the FBI to seek Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against members of Trump's campaign. More alarmingly, it may have formed the basis for much of the Jan. 6 intelligence "assessment" by those "hand-picked" analysts from three U.S. intelligence agencies – the CIA, the FBI and the NSA – not all 17 agencies that Hillary Clinton continues to insist were involved. (Obama's intelligence chiefs, DNI Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, publicly admitted that only three agencies took part and The New York Times printed a correction saying so.)

If in fact the Steele memos were a primary basis for the Russia collusion allegations against Trump, then there may be no credible evidence at all. It could be that because the three agencies knew the dossier was dodgy that there was no substantive proof in the Jan. 6 "assessment." Even so, a summary of the Steele allegations were included in a secret appendix that then-FBI Director James Comey described to then-President-elect Trump just two weeks before his inauguration.

Five days later, after the fact of Comey's briefing was leaked to the press, the Steele dossier was published in full by the sensationalist website BuzzFeed behind the excuse that the allegations' inclusion in the classified annex of a U.S. intelligence report justified the dossier's publication regardless of doubts about its accuracy.

Russian Fingerprints

The other source of blame about Russian meddling came from the private company CrowdStrike because the DNC blocked the FBI from examining its server after a suspected hack. Within a day, CrowdStrike claimed to find Russian "fingerprints" in the metadata of a DNC opposition research document, which had been revealed by an Internet site called DCLeaks, showing Cyrillic letters and the name of the first Soviet intelligence chief. That supposedly implicated Russia.

CrowdStrike also claimed that the alleged Russian intelligence operation was extremely sophisticated and skilled in concealing its external penetration of the server. But CrowdStrike's conclusion about Russian "fingerprints" resulted from clues that would have been left behind by extremely sloppy hackers or inserted intentionally to implicate the Russians.

CrowdStrike's credibility was further undermined when Voice of America reported on March 23, 2017, that the same software the company says it used to blame Russia for the hack wrongly concluded that Moscow also had hacked Ukrainian government howitzers on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine.

"An influential British think tank and Ukraine's military are disputing a report that the U.S. cyber-security firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election," VOA reported. Dimitri Alperovitch, a CrowdStrike co-founder, is also a senior fellow at the anti-Russian Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.

More speculation about the alleged election hack was raised with WikiLeaks' Vault 7 release, which revealed that the CIA is not beyond covering up its own hacks by leaving clues implicating others. Plus, there's the fact that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has declared again and again that WikiLeaks did not get the Democratic emails from the Russians. Buttressing Assange's denials of a Russian role, WikiLeaks associate Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said he met a person connected to the leak during a trip to Washington last year.

And, William Binney, maybe the best mathematician to ever work at the National Security Agency, and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern have published a technical analysis of one set of Democratic email metadata showing that a transatlantic "hack" would have been impossible and that the evidence points to a likely leak by a disgruntled Democratic insider. Binney has further stated that if it were a "hack," the NSA would have been able to detect it and make the evidence known.

Fueling Neo-McCarthyism

Despite these doubts, which the U.S. mainstream media has largely ignored, Russia-gate has grown into something much more than an election story. It has unleashed a neo-McCarthyite attack on Americans who are accused of being dupes of Russia if they dare question the evidence of the Kremlin's guilt.

Just weeks after last November's election, The Washington Post published a front-page story touting a blacklist from an anonymous group, called PropOrNot, that alleged that 200 news sites, including Consortiumnews.com and other leading independent news sources, were either willful Russian propagandists or "useful idiots."

Last week, a new list emerged with the names of over 2,000 people, mostly Westerners, who have appeared on RT, the Russian government-financed English-language news channel. The list was part of a report entitled, "The Kremlin's Platform for 'Useful Idiots' in the West," put out by an outfit called European Values, with a long list of European funders.

Included on the list of "useful idiots" absurdly are CIA-friendly Washington Post columnist David Ignatius; David Brock, Hillary Clinton's opposition research chief; and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

The report stated: "Many people in Europe and the US, including politicians and other persons of influence, continue to exhibit troubling naďveté about RT's political agenda, buying into the network's marketing ploy that it is simply an outlet for independent voices marginalised by the mainstream Western press. These 'useful idiots' remain oblivious to RT's intentions and boost its legitimacy by granting interviews on its shows and newscasts."

The intent of these lists is clear: to shut down dissenting voices who question Western foreign policy and who are usually excluded from Western corporate media. RT is often willing to provide a platform for a wider range of viewpoints, both from the left and right. American ruling interests fend off critical viewpoints by first suppressing them in corporate media and now condemning them as propaganda when they emerge on RT.

Geopolitical Risks

More ominously, the anti-Russia mania has increased chances of direct conflict between the two nuclear superpowers. The Russia-bashing rhetoric not only served the Clinton campaign, though ultimately to ill effect, but it has pushed a longstanding U.S.-led geopolitical agenda to regain control over Russia, an advantage that the U.S. enjoyed during the Yeltsin years in the 1990s.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Wall Street rushed in behind Boris Yeltsin and Russian oligarchs to asset strip virtually the entire country, impoverishing the population. Amid widespread accounts of this grotesque corruption, Washington intervened in Russian politics to help get Yeltsin re-elected in 1996. The political rise of Vladimir Putin after Yeltsin resigned on New Year's Eve 1999 reversed this course, restoring Russian sovereignty over its economy and politics.

That inflamed Hillary Clinton and other American hawks whose desire was to install another Yeltsin-like figure and resume U.S. exploitation of Russia's vast natural and financial resources. To advance that cause, U.S. presidents have supported the eastward expansion of NATO and have deployed 30,000 troops on Russia's border.

In 2014, the Obama administration helped orchestrate a coup that toppled the elected government of Ukraine and installed a fiercely anti-Russian regime. The U.S. also undertook the risky policy of aiding jihadists to overthrow a secular Russian ally in Syria. The consequences have brought the world closer to nuclear annihilation than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

In this context, the Democratic Party-led Russia-gate offensive was intended not only to explain away Clinton's defeat but to stop Trump -- possibly via impeachment or by inflicting severe political damage -- because he had talked, insincerely it is turning out, about detente with Russia. That did not fit in well with the plan at all.

Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist. He has written for the Boston Globe, the Sunday Times of London and the Wall Street Journal among other newspapers. He is the author of How I Lost By Hillary Clinton published by OR Books in June 2017. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter at @unjoe .

[Nov 11, 2017] Is Hillary Just the "Fall Guy" for the Intel Agencies and their Moneybags Bosses by Mike Whitney

See Wikipedia article CIA influence on public opinion . The role on Brennan probably deserves a special prosecutor and/or a Congressional commettee similar to Church Committee
The question arise: "Was hacking DNC another CIA false flag operation with the specific goal to poison US-Russian relations and using Hillary Clinton as a patsy?"
According fo church committee report: "Approximately 50 of the [Agency] assets are individual American journalists or employees of U.S. media organizations. Of these, fewer than half are "accredited" by U.S. media organizations ... The remaining individuals are non-accredited freelance contributors and media representatives abroad ... More than a dozen United States news organizations and commercial publishing houses formerly provided cover for CIA agents abroad. A few of these organizations were unaware that they provided this cover. [7] "
"Journalist Carl Bernstein , writing in an October 1977 article in the magazine Rolling Stone , claims that the Church Committee report "covered up" CIA relations with news media, and names a number of journalists whom he says worked with the CIA [10] Like the Church Committee report, however, Bernstein does not refer to any Operation Mockingbird."
Notable quotes:
"... "Russian meddling" became the perfect rallying cry for the CIA's broader information operation (IO) that was designed to poison public opinion against "Russian aggression" and to reign in Trump's plans to normalize relations with Moscow. ..."
"... Clinton became the "fall guy" in a darker, deep-state propaganda campaign for which she is only partially responsible. ..."
"... the Steele dossier was shared with the FBI at some point in the summer of 2016 and apparently became the basis for the FBI to seek Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against members of Trump's campaign. ..."
"... More alarmingly, it may have formed the basis for much of the Jan. 6 intelligence "assessment" by those "hand-picked" analysts from three U.S. intelligence agencies -- the CIA, the FBI and the NSA -- not all 17 agencies that Hillary Clinton continues to insist were involved ..."
"... The article proves that the nation's premier law enforcement agency was using parts of a discredited "raw intelligence" report that was paid for by the DNC and was clearly commissioned as a part of a smear campaign -- to spy on members of the opposition party. Clearly, one could easily make the case that the FBI was abusing its extraordinary police-state powers to subvert the democratic process. ..."
"... The FBI, under James Comey, also attempted to use agent Steele for future research but abandoned the idea after parts of the dossier began to surface in the media making it politically impossible to maintain the relationship. ..."
"... The fact that the FBI was willing to build its investigation on the sensational and unverified claims in the DNC-bought-and-paid-for dossier, suggests that the real motive was not to reveal collusion between Trump and Moscow or even to uncover evidence related to the hacking claims. The real goal was to vilify Russia and derail Trump's efforts at détente. ..."
"... Steele's July report helped to prop up the threadbare "hacking" storyline that was further reinforced by the dubious cyber-forensic analysis of DNC servers performed by CrowdStrike, "a private company co-founded by a virulently anti-Putin Russian." ..."
"... Russia-gate is entirely a Democratic Party invention. Both sources of information (Crowdstrike and Steele) were chosen by members of the Democratic hierarchy (through their intermediaries) to create stories that coincided with their political objectives. Due to the obvious bias of the people who funded the operations, neither the methods nor the information can be trusted. But that's just part of the story. The bigger story relates to the role played by the nation's premier intelligence and law enforcement agencies. And that's where we see signs of institutional corruption on a truly colossal scale. ..."
"... Nov. 18: Arizona Sen. John McCain and a former assistant, David Kramer, are told about the existence of the dossier by an associate of Steele's, former British diplomat Sir Andrew Wood. Kramer travels to London later that month to meet with Steele and find out more about the dossier. Steele forwards a copy of the dossier to Fusion, Kramer and McCain. ..."
"... This is a damning admission that the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that was released on January 6, and was supposed to provide rock-solid proof of Russia hacking and collusion, was built (at least, in part) on the thin gruel and specious allegations found in the sketchy "Trump dossier". Former CIA Director John Brennan has refuted this claim, but there's significant circumstantial evidence to suggest that it is true. ..."
"... On December 9, 2016, The Washington Post reported that the CIA determined that Russian hacking was conducted to boost Trump and hurt Clinton during the presidential campaign. This same theory that was propounded in the ICA report just a month later. It appears that Brennan and his "hand-picked" intelligence analysts decided to carefully comb the dossier cherry-picking the most credible allegations to weave into their dubious intelligence Assessment. So even though large sections of the dossier were scrapped, the report itself was used as the foundation for the ICA. ..."
"... It's clear that Brennan had no "information or intelligence" that would lead a reasonable man to think that anyone in Trump's entourage was colluding with Russian officials or agents. The whole story is spun from whole cloth. The disturbing implication however is that Brennan, who was an outspoken supporter of Hillary and equally harsh critic of Trump, was using the CIA's intrusive surveillance powers to spy on a rival political party in the heat of a presidential campaign. If that is not a flagrant example of subverting democracy, then what is? ..."
"... It all started with Brennan, he's the ringleader in this dodgy caper. But Brennan was not operating as a free agent pursuing his own malign political agenda, but as a strong-arm facilitator for the powerful foreign policy establishment which includes leaders from Big Oil, Wall Street, and the giant weapons manufacturers. These are the corporate mandarins who pull Brennan's chain and give Brennan his marching orders. This is how power trickles down in America. ..."
"... So while the moneytrail may lead back to the DNC and Hillary's Campaign, the roots of Russia-gate extend far beyond the politicians to the highest-ranking members of the permanent state. ..."
Nov 11, 2017 | www.unz.com

For nearly a year, Hillary Clinton failed to admit that her campaign and the Democratic National Committee had provided funding for the notorious dossier that alleged Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. Then, two weeks ago, the Washington Post published a blockbuster article that proved that Clinton had been misleading the public about her Campaign's role in producing the report.

Following the article's publication, Clinton went into hiding for more than a week during which time she huddled with her political advisors to settle on a strategy for dealing with the crisis.

"Russian meddling" became the perfect rallying cry for the CIA's broader information operation (IO) that was designed to poison public opinion against "Russian aggression" and to reign in Trump's plans to normalize relations with Moscow.

The fact that the CIA had essentially extracted a credible narrative from sections of the notorious dossier, left Hillary with no other option except to play-along even after the votes had been counted. As a result, Clinton became the "fall guy" in a darker, deep-state propaganda campaign for which she is only partially responsible. Here's a little background from Joe Lauria's "must read" article "The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate":

" the Steele dossier was shared with the FBI at some point in the summer of 2016 and apparently became the basis for the FBI to seek Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against members of Trump's campaign.

More alarmingly, it may have formed the basis for much of the Jan. 6 intelligence "assessment" by those "hand-picked" analysts from three U.S. intelligence agencies -- the CIA, the FBI and the NSA -- not all 17 agencies that Hillary Clinton continues to insist were involved .

If in fact the Steele memos were a primary basis for the Russia collusion allegations against Trump, then there may be no credible evidence at all." (Consortium News)

So, were "the Steele memos the primary basis for the Russia collusion allegations against Trump"? This is the pivotal question that still remains largely unanswered. As Lauria notes, the FBI did in fact use the "salacious and unverified" dossier to obtain at least one FISA warrant. This is from The Hill:

"The FBI used the dossier alleging Russian ties to President Trump's campaign associates to help convince a judge to grant a warrant to secretly monitor former campaign aide Carter Page, CNN reports.

FBI Director James Comey has cited the dossier in some of his briefings with lawmakers in recent weeks as one of the information sources used by his bureau to bolster its probe, U.S. officials briefed on the investigation told CNN." ("FBI used Trump dossier to help get warrant to monitor ex-aide: report", The Hill)

The article proves that the nation's premier law enforcement agency was using parts of a discredited "raw intelligence" report that was paid for by the DNC and was clearly commissioned as a part of a smear campaign -- to spy on members of the opposition party. Clearly, one could easily make the case that the FBI was abusing its extraordinary police-state powers to subvert the democratic process.

The FBI, under James Comey, also attempted to use agent Steele for future research but abandoned the idea after parts of the dossier began to surface in the media making it politically impossible to maintain the relationship. This is from a February article in the Washington Post:

"The former British spy who authored a controversial dossier on behalf of Donald Trump's political opponents alleging ties between Trump and Russia reached an agreement with the FBI a few weeks before the election for the bureau to pay him to continue his work, according to several people familiar with the arrangement. The agreement to compensate former MI6 agent Christopher Steele came as U.S. intelligence agencies reached a consensus that the Russians had interfered in the presidential election by orchestrating hacks of Democratic Party email accounts ..

Ultimately, the FBI did not pay Steele. Communications between the bureau and the former spy were interrupted as Steele's now-famous dossier became the subject of news stories, congressional inquiries and presidential denials, according to the people familiar with the arrangement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter." ("FBI once planned to pay former British spy who authored controversial Trump dossier", Washington Post)

The fact that the FBI was willing to build its investigation on the sensational and unverified claims in the DNC-bought-and-paid-for dossier, suggests that the real motive was not to reveal collusion between Trump and Moscow or even to uncover evidence related to the hacking claims. The real goal was to vilify Russia and derail Trump's efforts at détente.

It's also worth noting , that Steele's earliest report implausibly alleges that the "Russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting US presidential candidate Trump for at least 5 years." (No one had any idea that Trump would run for president 5 years ago.) The report also details perverted sexual acts involving Trump and urinating prostitutes in a hotel in Moscow. (All fake, of course) The point we are trying to make, is that Steele's first report focused on corruption, perversion and blackmail, whereas, his second installment completely changed direction to cyber-espionage operations on foreign targets.

Why?

It was because, on July 22, 2016, just days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks published 20,000 emails hacked from DNC computers revealing the corrupt inner-workings of the Democratic establishment. In response, Steele decided to craft a story that would support the Dems plan to blame the Russians for the moral cesspit they-alone had created. In other words, his report was a way of "passing the buck".

Steele's July report helped to prop up the threadbare "hacking" storyline that was further reinforced by the dubious cyber-forensic analysis of DNC servers performed by CrowdStrike, "a private company co-founded by a virulently anti-Putin Russian."

The hacking theme was also aided by the deluge of unsourced, evidence-lite articles cropping up in the media, like this gem in the Washington Post:

"Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.

The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC's system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts.

The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies " ("Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump", Washington Post)

What's remarkable about the above excerpt is that it follows the same basic approach to propaganda as nearly all the other pieces on the topic. Unlike the lead-up to the Iraq War, where journalists at the New York Times made every effort to create a believable storyline that included references to aluminum tubes, Niger uranium, mobile weapons labs, etc. The media no longer tries to support their narrative with evidence or eyewitnesses. The major media now simply tells people what they want them to think and leave it at that. Even so, it doesn't require much critical thinking to see the holes in the Russia hacking story. One merely needs to suspend judgment long enough to see that main claims all emerge from (Democratic) sources who have every reason to mislead the public. Here's an excerpt from Joe Lauria's article that sums it up perfectly:

"The two sources that originated the allegations claiming that Russia meddled in the 2016 election were both paid for by the Democratic National Committee, and in one instance also by the Clinton campaign: the Steele dossier and the CrowdStrike analysis of the DNC servers.

Think about that for a minute .

In other words, possibly all of the Russia-gate allegations, which have been taken on faith by Democratic partisans and members of the anti-Trump Resistance, trace back to claims paid for or generated by Democrats.

If for a moment one could remove the sometimes justified hatred that many people feel toward Trump, it would be impossible to avoid the impression that the scandal may have been cooked up by the DNC and the Clinton camp in league with Obama's intelligence chiefs to serve political and geopolitical aims." ("The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate", Consortium News)

Russia-gate is entirely a Democratic Party invention. Both sources of information (Crowdstrike and Steele) were chosen by members of the Democratic hierarchy (through their intermediaries) to create stories that coincided with their political objectives. Due to the obvious bias of the people who funded the operations, neither the methods nor the information can be trusted. But that's just part of the story. The bigger story relates to the role played by the nation's premier intelligence and law enforcement agencies. And that's where we see signs of institutional corruption on a truly colossal scale.

As we noted earlier, the Clinton smear campaign would probably have ended after the votes were counted had not the intel agencies, particularly the CIA, decided the hacking story could be used to inflict more damage on Russia. It wasn't Clinton's decision to gather more information for the dossier, but others whose motives have remained largely concealed. Who are they?

According to a timeline in the Daily Caller:

November: The contract between the Democrats, Fusion and Steele ends along with the presidential campaign.

Nov. 18: Arizona Sen. John McCain and a former assistant, David Kramer, are told about the existence of the dossier by an associate of Steele's, former British diplomat Sir Andrew Wood. Kramer travels to London later that month to meet with Steele and find out more about the dossier. Steele forwards a copy of the dossier to Fusion, Kramer and McCain.

Dec. 9: McCain provides a copy of the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey during a meeting at the latter's office.

Dec. 13: Steele writes the final memo of the dossier. It alleges that a Russian tech executive used his companies to hack into the DNC's email systems. The executive, Aleksej Gubarev, denied the allegations after the dossier was published by BuzzFeed on Jan. 10, 2017. He is suing both BuzzFeed and Steele.

Jan. 6: Comey and other intelligence community officials brief then-President-elect Trump on some of the allegations made in the dossier.

Jan. 10: CNN reports that the briefing of Trump took place four days earlier. Citing that reporting as justification, BuzzFeed publishes the dossier. (The Daily Mail)

John McCain? Is that who we're talking about? Was it McCain who paid former M16 agent Christopher Steele to add another report to the dossier? Why?

Is it that hard to imagine that a Russophobic foreign policy wonk like McCain -- who has expressed his vehement hatred for Vladimir Putin on the floor of the senate -- would hire a mud-slinging free agent like Steele to craft a story that would further demonize Russia, discourage Trump from normalizing relations with Moscow, and reinforce the theory that the Kremlin meddled in the 2016 elections?

Does that mean that McCain may have told Steele (or his intermediaries) precisely what he wanted the final draft to say? It certainly seems probable. And here's something else to mull over. This is from the Business Insider:

Steele gave the dossier to Republican Sen. John McCain. McCain then gave it to the FBI director at the time, James Comey. Comey, along with the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, briefed both President Barack Obama and then-President elect Trump on the dossier's allegations in January.

Intelligence officials purposefully omitted the dossier from the public intelligence report they released in January about Russia's election interference because they didn't want to reveal which details they had corroborated, according to CNN." ("Mueller reportedly interviewed the author of the Trump-Russia dossier -- here's what it alleges, and how it aligned with reality", Business Insider)

This is a damning admission that the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that was released on January 6, and was supposed to provide rock-solid proof of Russia hacking and collusion, was built (at least, in part) on the thin gruel and specious allegations found in the sketchy "Trump dossier". Former CIA Director John Brennan has refuted this claim, but there's significant circumstantial evidence to suggest that it is true.

On December 9, 2016, The Washington Post reported that the CIA determined that Russian hacking was conducted to boost Trump and hurt Clinton during the presidential campaign. This same theory that was propounded in the ICA report just a month later. It appears that Brennan and his "hand-picked" intelligence analysts decided to carefully comb the dossier cherry-picking the most credible allegations to weave into their dubious intelligence Assessment. So even though large sections of the dossier were scrapped, the report itself was used as the foundation for the ICA.

Brennan spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign from the get-go. As early as August 2016, Brennan was providing classified briefings to ranking members of Congress expressing his conviction that Moscow was helping Trump to win the election. The former Director offered no proof to back up his claims nor has he since then. It was also Brennan who gradually persuaded Clapper, Comey and Morrell to join his anti-Russia jihad, although all were reluctant participants at first. Were they won over by compelling secret evidence that has been been withheld from the public?

Not likely. It's more probable that Brennan was merely able to convince them that the powerful foreign policy establishment required their cooperation on an issue that would have grave impact on Washington's imperial plan for Syria, Ukraine, Central Asia and beyond?

Some readers might remember when Brennan testified before Congress way-back on May 23 and boldly stated:

BRENNAN: "I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals and it raised questions in my mind, again, whether or not the Russians were able to gain the cooperation of those individuals."

It's clear that Brennan had no "information or intelligence" that would lead a reasonable man to think that anyone in Trump's entourage was colluding with Russian officials or agents. The whole story is spun from whole cloth. The disturbing implication however is that Brennan, who was an outspoken supporter of Hillary and equally harsh critic of Trump, was using the CIA's intrusive surveillance powers to spy on a rival political party in the heat of a presidential campaign. If that is not a flagrant example of subverting democracy, then what is? Here's a clip from the Washington Times:

"It was then-CIA Director John O. Brennan, a close confidant of Mr. Obama's, who provided the information -- what he termed the "basis" -- for the FBI to start the counterintelligence investigation last summer .Mr. Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 that the intelligence community was picking up tidbits on Trump associates making contacts with Russians

But he said he believed the contacts were numerous enough to alert the FBI, which began its probe into Trump associates that same July, according to previous congressional testimony from then-FBI director James B. Comey." (The Washington Times)

It all started with Brennan, he's the ringleader in this dodgy caper. But Brennan was not operating as a free agent pursuing his own malign political agenda, but as a strong-arm facilitator for the powerful foreign policy establishment which includes leaders from Big Oil, Wall Street, and the giant weapons manufacturers. These are the corporate mandarins who pull Brennan's chain and give Brennan his marching orders. This is how power trickles down in America.

So while the moneytrail may lead back to the DNC and Hillary's Campaign, the roots of Russia-gate extend far beyond the politicians to the highest-ranking members of the permanent state.

[Nov 10, 2017] We don't use private lawyers to cooperate with US -- Russian Prosecutor General's Office to RT

Nov 10, 2017 | www.rt.com

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has explained to RT how an "efficient mechanism" of information sharing with the US works.

No private lawyers are involved in the process, the agency official said, denying allegations that it has played a part in any meeting between Donald Trump Jr. with lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

[Nov 10, 2017] Steve Keen How I Sold Out To The Putin-Soros-Murdoch Conspiracy To Destroy Western Civilization Zero Hedge

Nov 10, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Nov 9, 2017 6:36 PM 0 SHARES Authored by Steve Keen via RT.com,

I was delighted to find myself in the Top Ten (alright; top 15) of the European Values list of 2,326 "Useful Idiots" appearing regularly on RT shows, and thus legitimizing Vladimir Putin's attempt to destroy Western civilization as we know it.

Why delighted? Because it completes the set of conspiracies to which I can now be accused of belonging. They include:

[Nov 08, 2017] The Plot to Scapegoat Russia How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin by Dan Kovalik

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Kovalik's historical excursion takes in the Soviet Union. Clearly, many of the U. S. military interventions described in this valuable book wouldn't have occurred if the Soviet Union still existed. Beyond that, Kovalik says, "the Soviet Union, did wield sizable political and ideological influence in the world for some time, due to the appeal of its socialist message as well as its critical role in winning [World War] II." ..."
"... Ultimately, Kovalik sides with Martin Luther King, who remarked that, 'The US is on the wrong side of the world-wide revolution' – and with Daniel Ellsberg's clarification: 'The US is not on the wrong side; it is the wrong side.'" ..."
Jun 09, 2017 | www.amazon.com

Review " A powerful contradiction to the present US narrative of the world . . . As shown here, fake news is thriving in Washington, DC."-- Oliver Stone , Academy Award winning director and screenwriter

" The Plot to Scapegoat Russia is a beautifully written, uncommonly coherent, and very compelling treatise on the issues facing America today... a troubling indictment of where we've been and where we're headed. Moreover, this book is profoundly important , and a timely retrospective review of American foreign policy misadventures since the advent of the Cold War." -- Phillip F. Nelson , author of LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination and LBJ: From Mastermind to "The Colossus"

" The Plot to Scapegoat Russia underscores how the CIA's infiltration and shaping of the media, which began in the 1950s, successfully continues today. A very worthwhile account for anyone who wants to understand how 'reality' is manufactured, while 'real truth' is murdered and buried." -- Peter Janney , author of Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace

"At a time when the U.S. military budget is again soaring to enrich the oligarchs, this timely and thought-provoking book turns Orwellian 'double-think' on its head in a cogent analysis of what's really behind all the saber-rattling against Russia. In a scholarly but also deeply personal and fluidly written work , Dan Kovalik pulls no punches in dissecting the history of how America has justified its own imperialistic aims through the Cold War era and right up to the current anti-Putin hysteria." -- Dick Russell , New York Times bestselling author of Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Men Who Are Destroying Life on Earth and What It Means to Our Children

" The Plot to Scapegoat Russia confronts the timeliest of subjects, the effort to resuscitate the Cold War by blaming Russian president Vladimir Putin for interfering in the 2016 presidential campaign on behalf of Donald Trump, an effort pursued by CIA and the Democratic Party working in tandem. Kovalik establishes... that not a scintilla of evidence has emerged to grant credibility to this self-serving fantasy... [and he] deftly eviscerates the mainstream press . Reading [this book] will be salutary, illuminating and more than instructive ." -- Joan Mellen , author of Faustian Bargains: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace in the Robber Baron Culture of Texas

William T. Whitney Jr on May 28, 2017

Review of "The Plot to Scapegoat Russia"

Beating up on Russia; history tells why
By William T. Whitney Jr. .

Lawyer and human rights activist Dan Kovalik has written a valuable book. He looked at a recent U. S. political development in terms of history and then skewered it. His new book, "The Plot to Scapegoat Russia," looks at mounting assaults against Russia that increased during the Obama administration and that spokespersons for the Democratic Party, among others, are promoting.

The CIA, he claims, without going into specifics, is engaged in anti-Russian activities. For Kovalik, "the CIA is a nefarious, criminal organization which often misleads the American public and government into wars and misadventures."

Kovalik devotes much of his book to what he regards as precedents for the current dark turn in U.S. – Russian relations. Toward that end, he surveys the history of U.S. foreign interventions since World War II. He confirms that the United States government is indeed habituated to aggressive adventurism abroad. That's something many readers already know, but Kovalik contributes significantly by establishing that U.S. hostility against Russia ranks as a chapter in that long story.

But what's the motivation for military assaults and destabilizing projects? And, generally, why all the wars? The author's historical survey provides answers. He finds that the scenarios he describes are connected. Treating them as a whole, he gives them weight and thus provides an intellectual weapon for the anti-imperialist cause. Kovalik, putting history to work, moves from the issue of U.S.-Russian antagonism to the more over-arching problem of threats to human survival. That's his major contribution.

His highly-recommended book offers facts and analyses so encompassing as to belie its small size. The writing is clear, evocative, and eminently readable; his narrative is that of a story – teller. Along the way, as a side benefit, Kovalik recalls the causes and outrage that fired up activists who were his contemporaries.

He testifies to a new Cold War. Doing so, he argues that the anti-communist rational for the earlier Cold War was a cover for something else, a pretext. In his words: "the Cold War, at least from the vantage point of the US, had little to do with fighting 'Communism,' and more to do with making the world safe for corporate plunder." Once more Russia is an enemy of the United States, but now it's a capitalist country.

That's mysterious; explanation is in order. Readers, however, may be hungry to know about the "plot" advertised in the book's title. We recommend patience. History and its recurring patterns come first for this author. They enable him to account for U. S. – Russian relations that are contradictory and, most importantly, for the U.S. propensity for war-making. After that he tells about a plot.

Kovalik describes how, very early, reports of CIA machinations from former agents of the spy organization expanded his political awareness, as did a trip to Nicaragua. There he gained first-hand knowledge of CIA atrocities, of deaths and destruction at the hands of the Contras, anti- Sandinista paramilitaries backed by the CIA His book goes on fully and dramatically to describe murders and chaos orchestrated by the United States and/or the CIA in El Salvador, Colombia, and in the South America of Operation Condor. Kovalic discusses the U.S. war in Vietnam, occupation and war in Korea, nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear testing and dying in the Marshall Islands, and the CIA's recruitment of the anti-Soviet Mujahedeen in Afghan¬istan. He recounts U. S. - instigated coups in Iran, 1953; Guatemala, 1954; and Chile, 1973.

These projects were about keeping "the world safe from the threat of Soviet totalitarianism" – in other words, anti-communism. But then the USSR disappeared, and the search was on for a new pretext. The Clinton administration evoked "humanitarian intervention," and continued the intrusions: in Ruanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo (on behalf of "US mining interests"), Yugoslavia, and Libya.

In Kovalik's telling, the U. S. government eventually settled upon the notion of "American exceptionalism," that is to say, "the belief that the US is a uniquely benign actor in the world, spreading peace and democracy." Thus armed, the U. S. military exported terror to Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen (via its Saudi Arabian proxy), and Honduras, through a U. S. facilitated military coup. The book catalogues other episodes, other places. Along the way on his excursion, Kovalik contrasts U. S. pretensions and brutal deeds with the relatively benign nature of alleged Russian outrages.

Good relations with Russia, he says, would be "simply bad for business, in particular the business of war which so profoundly undergirds the US economy As of 2015, the US had at least 800 military bases in over 70 nations, while Britain, France and Russia had only 30 military bases combined." And, "under Obama alone, the US had Special Forces deployed in about 138 countries." Further, "The US's outsized military exists not only to ensure the US's quite unjust share of the world's riches, but also to ensure that those riches are not shared with the poor huddled masses in this country."

Kovalik highlights the disaster that overwhelmed Russia as a fledgling capitalist nation: life expectancy plummeted, the poverty rate was 75 percent, and investments fell by 80 percent. National pride was in the cellar, the more so after the United States backed away from Secretary of State Baker's 1991 promise that NATO would never move east, after the United States attacked Russia's ally Serbia, and after the United States, rejecting Russian priorities, attacked Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011.

The author rebuts U. S. claims that Russian democracy has failed and that Putin over-reached in Ukraine. He praises Putin's attempts to cooperate with the United States in Syria. The United States has abused peoples the world over, he insists, and suffers from a "severe democracy deficit."

By the time he is discussing current U. S. – Russian relations, readers have been primed never to expect U.S. imperialism to give Russia a break. The author's instructional course has taken effect, or should have done so. If readers aren't aware of what the U. S. government has been up to, the author is not to blame.

Kovalik condemns the Obama administration and particularly Secretary of State Hilary Clinton for intensifying the U. S. campaign against Russia. He extends his criticism to the Democratic Party and the media. The theme of anti – Russian scheming by the CIA comes up briefly in the book in connection with hacking attributed to Russia and with WikiLeaks revelations about the Democratic Party. Nothing is said about possible interaction between personnel of the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

Kovalik's historical excursion takes in the Soviet Union. Clearly, many of the U. S. military interventions described in this valuable book wouldn't have occurred if the Soviet Union still existed. Beyond that, Kovalik says, "the Soviet Union, did wield sizable political and ideological influence in the world for some time, due to the appeal of its socialist message as well as its critical role in winning [World War] II."

Kovalik acknowledges "periods of great repression." He adds, however, that "the Russian Revolution and the USSR delivered on many of their promises, and against great odds. . In any case, the goals of the Russian Revolution-equality, worker control of the economy, universal health care and social security- were laudable ones." And, "One of the reasons that the West continues to dance on the grave of the Soviet Union, and to emphasize the worst parts of that society and downplay its achievements, is to make sure that, as the world-wide economy worsens, and as the suffering of work¬ing people around the world deepens, they don't get any notions in their head to organize some new socialist revolution with such ideals."

Ultimately, Kovalik sides with Martin Luther King, who remarked that, 'The US is on the wrong side of the world-wide revolution' – and with Daniel Ellsberg's clarification: 'The US is not on the wrong side; it is the wrong side.'"

Drew Hunkins on May 30, 2017

Dissects the dangerous nonsense

The most important non-fiction work thus far of 2017 is upon us. Finally the book has arrived that cuts through all the hype, deceit, misinformation and disconcerting groupthink.

Kovalik structures TPTSR by starting at the most logical place -- the history of unilateral Washington aggression across the globe, from the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran through the Washington intell agencies' orchestrated coups and proxy wars in Latin America.

This exposition of historical Washington empire building provides a solid foundation when he ultimately addresses why the predatory military-industrial-media-complex is incessantly fomenting this dangerous contemporary Russophobic campaign. The book nails it by presenting in a crystal clear manner the two exact reasons why the demonization of Moscow never seems to subside: 1.) The corporate and Washington military empire builders are deeply threatened by the potential loss of certain markets and a sovereign Russia that desires a say over the diplomatic and military maneuvers on its borders, especially its Western region. 2.) Most importantly, the MIC/national-security state absolutely MUST HAVE a villain (real or imagined, it doesn't matter) in order to justify the trillion dollar budget and careerism that seeps into every pore of the U.S. politico-economic system. This Pentagon system of pseudo economic Keynesianism could potentially lead to nuclear war. The giant house of cards could doom us all.

D. Gordon on June 1, 2017

This book is an amazing contribution. A veritable primer on U

This book is an amazing contribution. A veritable primer on U.S. foreign policy, this book is part memoir, part history, and part analysis of current events. Kovalik makes a compelling case that U.S. policies--not Russia--are the biggest danger to world peace and human rights. The book traces Kovalik's own awakening and transformation from his conservative religious-minded youth to one of our most trenchant critics of U.S. foreign policy writing today. And he does it in his own inimitable, witty, readable, and humane style.

[Nov 08, 2017] Learning to Love McCarthyism by Robert Parry

Highly recommended!
Russiagate witch hunt is destroying CIA franchise in Facebook and Twitter, which were used by many Russians and Eastern Europeans in general.
One telling sign of the national security state is "demonizing enemies of the state" including using neo-McCarthyism methods, typically for Russiagate.
In the beginning, "Russiagate" was about alleged actions by Russian secret services. Evidence for these allegations has never emerged, and it seems that the Russiagate conspiracy theorists largely gave up on this part (they still sometimes write about it as if it was an established fact, but since the only thing in support of it they can adduce is the canard about the 17 intelligence services, it probably is not that interesting any more).
Now, they have dropped the mask, and the object of their hatred are openly all Russian people, as the new Undermensch. If these people and US MSM recognized the reality that they are now a particularly rabid part of the xenophobic far right in the United States
Notable quotes:
"... Buried in the story's "jump" is the acknowledgement that Milner's "companies sold those holdings several years ago." But such is the anti-Russia madness gripping the Establishment of Washington and New York that any contact with any Russian constitutes a scandal worthy of front-page coverage. On Monday, The Washington Post published a page-one article entitled, "9 in Trump's orbit had contacts with Russians." ..."
"... The anti-Russian madness has reached such extremes that even when you say something that's obviously true – but that RT, the Russian television network, also reported – you are attacked for spreading "Russian propaganda." ..."
"... We saw that when former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile disclosed in her new book that she considered the possibility of replacing Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket after Clinton's public fainting spell and worries about her health. ..."
"... In other words, the go-to excuse for everything these days is to blame the Russians and smear anyone who says anything – no matter how true – if it also was reported on RT. ..."
"... The CIA has an entire bureaucracy dedicated to propaganda and disinformation, with some of those efforts farmed out to newer entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) or paid for by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). NATO has a special command in Latvia that undertakes "strategic communications." ..."
"... Israel is another skilled player in this field, tapping into its supporters around the world to harass people who criticize the Zionist project. Indeed, since the 1980s, Israel has pioneered many of the tactics of computer spying and sabotage that were adopted and expanded by America's National Security Agency, explaining why the Obama administration teamed up with Israel in a scheme to plant malicious code into Iranian centrifuges to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. ..."
"... And, if you're really concerned about foreign interference in U.S. elections and policies, there's the remarkable influence of Israel and its perceived ability to effect the defeat of almost any politician who deviates from what the Israeli government wants, going back at least to the 1980s when Sen. Chuck Percy and Rep. Paul Findley were among the political casualties after pursuing contacts with the Palestinians. ..."
"... The answer seems to be the widespread hatred for President Trump combined with vested interests in favor of whipping up the New Cold War. That is a goal valued by both the Military-Industrial Complex, which sees trillions of dollars in strategic weapons systems in the future, and the neoconservatives, who view Russia as a threat to their "regime change" agendas for Syria and Iran. ..."
"... After all, if Russia and its independent-minded President Putin can be beaten back and beaten down, then a big obstacle to the neocon/Israeli goal of expanding the Mideast wars will be removed. ..."
"... Right now, the neocons are openly lusting for a "regime change" in Moscow despite the obvious risks that such turmoil in a nuclear-armed country might create, including the possibility that Putin would be succeeded not by some compliant Western client like the late Boris Yeltsin but by an extreme nationalist who might consider launching a nuclear strike to protect the honor of Mother Russia. ..."
"... The likely outcome from the anti-Russian show trials on Capitol Hill is that technology giants will bow to the bipartisan demand for new algorithms and other methods for stigmatizing, marginalizing and eliminating information that challenges the mainstream storylines in the cause of fighting "Russian propaganda." ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
"... witch hunt by congressional Democrats, working with the intelligence agencies and leading media outlets, to legitimize censorship and attack free speech on the Internet. ..."
"... The aim of this campaign is to claim that social conflict within the United States arises not from the scale of social inequality in America, greater than in any other country in the developed world, but rather from the actions of "outside agitators" working in the service of the Kremlin. ..."
"... The McCarthyite witch hunts of the 1950s sought to suppress left-wing thought and label all forms of dissent as illegitimate and treasonous. Those who led them worked to purge left-wing opinion from Hollywood, the trade unions and the universities. ..."
"... Likewise, the new McCarthyism is aimed at creating a political climate in which left-wing organizations and figures are demonized as agents of the Kremlin who are essentially engaged in treasonous activity deserving of criminal prosecution. ..."
"... Danny there was a time not to long ago, I would have said of how we are 'moving towards' to us becoming a police state, well instead replace that prediction of 'moving towards' to the stark reality to be described as 'that now we are', and there you will have it that we have finally arrived to becoming a full blown 'police state'. ..."
"... Thanks to Mr. Parry for this very fair and complete review of the latest attempts to generate a fake foreign enemy. The tyrant over a democracy must generate fake foreign enemies to pose falsely as a protector, so as to demand domestic power and accuse his opponents of disloyalty, as Aristotle and Plato warned thousands of years ago. ..."
"... The insanity of the entire "Russian hacking" narrative has been revealed over and over, including this past weekend when +/-100 Clinton loyalists published a screed on Medium saying Donna Brazile had been taken in by Russian propaganda. ..."
"... I have come to expect just about anything when it comes to Russia-Gate, but I was taken aback by the Hillary bots' accusation that videos of Hillary stumbling and others showing her apparently having a fit of some kind and also needing to be helped up the steps to someone's house -- which were taken by Americans and shown by Americans and seen by millions of shocked Americans -- were driven by Russia-Gate. ..."
"... Now, since the extremist xenophobic idea that contact with *any* Russians is a scandal has taken hold in the United States, people are probably not too eager to mention these contacts in these atmosphere of extreme xenophobic anti-Russian hatred in today's United States. Furthermore, people who have contact with large numbers of people probably really have difficulties remembering and listing these all. ..."
"... Their contacts are with Russian business and maybe the Russian mob, not the Russian state. There is really not question that Trump and his cronies are crooks, but they are crooks in the US and in all the other countries where they do business, not just Russia. I'm sure Mueller will be able to tie Trump directly to some of the sleeze. But there is no evidence that the Russian government is involved in any of it. "Russia-gate" implies Russian government involvement, not just random Russians. There is no evidence of that and moreover the logic is against. ..."
"... Mr. Cash . I think George Papadopoulis, Trump's young Aide, was an inside mole for neocon pro-Israel interests. Those interests needed to knock the unreliable President Trump out of the way to get the "system" back where it belonged – in their pocket. Papadopoulis, on his own, was rummaging around making Trump/Russian connections that finally ended with the the William (Richard?) Browder (well-known Washington DC neocon)/Natalia Veselnitskaya/Donald Trump, Jr. fiasco. The Trumps knew nothing of those negotiations, and young Trump left when he realized Natalia was only interested in Americans being allowed to adopt Russian children again and had no dirt on Hillary. ..."
"... It was never my impression that Cold War liberals opposed McCarthy or the anti-Communist witch hunt. Where they didn't gleefully join in, they watched quietly from the sidelines while the American left was eviscerated, jailed, driven from public life. Then the liberals stepped in when it was clear things were going a little too far and just as the steam had run out of McCarthy's slander machine. ..."
"... At that point figures like Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy found the path clear for their brand of political stagecraft. They were imperialists to a man, something they proved abundantly when given the chance. Liberals supplanted the left in U.S. life- in the unions, the teaching profession, publishing and every other field where criticism of the Cold War and the enduring prevalence of worker solidarity across international lines threatened the new order. ..."
"... The book concludes that by equating dissent with disloyalty, promoting guilt by association, and personally commanding loyalty programs, ""Truman and his advisors employed all the political and programmatic techniques that in later years were to become associated with the broad phenomenon of McCarthyism."" ..."
"... Formed by Google in June 2015 with Eliot Higgins of the Atlantic Council's Bellingcat as a founding member, the "First Draft" coalition includes all the usual mainstream media "partners" in "regime change" war propaganda: the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, the UK Guardian and Telegraph, BBC News, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Research Lab and Kiev-based Stopfake. ..."
"... In the beginning, "Russiagate" was about alleged actions by Russian secret services. Evidence for these allegations has never emerged, and it seems that the Russiagate conspiracy theorists largely gave up on this part (they still sometimes write about it as if it was an established fact, but since the only thing in support of it they can adduce is the canard about the 17 intelligence services, it probably is not that interesting any more) ..."
"... Now, they have dropped the mask, and the object of their hatred are openly all Russian people, anyone who is "Russian linked" by ever having logged in to social networks from Russia or using Cyrillic letters. If these people and their media at least recognized the reality that they are now a particularly rabid part of the xenophobic far right in the United States ..."
"... The interview of Roger Waters on RT is one of the best I have seen in a long while. I wish some other artists get the courage to raise their voices. The link to the Roger Waters interview is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jcvfbLoIA This Roger Waters interview is worth watching. ..."
"... It would seem that everyone on the US telivision , newspaper and internet news has mastered the art of hand over mouth , gasp and looking horrified every time Russia is mentioned. It looks to me that the US is in the middle of another of it´s mid life crises. Panic reigns supreme every where. If it was not so sad it would be funny. i was born in the 1940s and remember the McCarthy witch hunts and the daily shower of people jumping out of windows as a result of it. ..."
"... In The Fifties (1993), American journalist and historian David Halberstam addressed the noxious effect of McCarthyism: "McCarthy's carnival like four year spree of accusation charges, and threats touched something deep in the American body politic, something that lasted long after his own recklessness, carelessness and boozing ended his career in shame." (page 53) ..."
"... Halberstam specifically discussed how readily the so-called "free" press acquiesced to McCarthy's masquerading: "The real scandal in all this was the behavior of the members of the Washington press corps, who, more often than not, knew better. They were delighted to be a part of his traveling road show, chronicling each charge and then moving on to the next town, instead of bothering to stay behind and follow up. They had little interest in reporting how careless McCarthy was or how little it all meant to him." (page 55) ..."
"... Why have they not investigated James Comey? Why has the MSM instead created a Russian Boogeyman? Why was he invited to testify about the Russian connection but never cross examined about his own influence? Why is the clearest reason for election meddling by James Comey not even spoken of by the MSM? This is because the MSM does not want to cover events as they happened but wants to recreate a alternate reality suitable to themselves which serves their interests and convinces us that the MSM has no part at all in downplaying the involvement of themselves in the election but wants to create a foreign enemy to blame. ..."
Nov 08, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Special Report: Many American liberals who once denounced McCarthyism as evil are now learning to love the ugly tactic when it can be used to advance the Russia-gate "scandal" and silence dissent, reports Robert Parry.

The New York Times has finally detected some modern-day McCarthyism, but not in the anti-Russia hysteria that the newspaper has fueled for several years amid the smearing of American skeptics as "useful idiots" and the like. No, the Times editors are accusing a Long Island Republican of McCarthyism for linking his Democratic rival to "New York City special interest groups." As the Times laments, "It's the old guilt by association."

Yet, the Times sees no McCarthyism in the frenzy of Russia-bashing and guilt by association for any American who can be linked even indirectly to any Russian who might have some ill-defined links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On Monday, in the same edition that expressed editorial outrage over that Long Island political ad's McCarthyism, the Times ran two front-page articles under the headline: "A Complex Paper Trail: Blurring Kremlin's Ties to Key U.S. Businesses."

The two subheads read: " Shipping Firm Links Commerce Chief to Putin 'Cronies' " and " Millions in Facebook Shares Rooted in Russian Cash ." The latter story, which meshes nicely with the current U.S. political pressure on Facebook and Twitter to get in line behind the New Cold War against Russia, cites investments by Russian Yuri Milner that date back to the start of the decade.

Buried in the story's "jump" is the acknowledgement that Milner's "companies sold those holdings several years ago." But such is the anti-Russia madness gripping the Establishment of Washington and New York that any contact with any Russian constitutes a scandal worthy of front-page coverage. On Monday, The Washington Post published a page-one article entitled, "9 in Trump's orbit had contacts with Russians."

The anti-Russian madness has reached such extremes that even when you say something that's obviously true – but that RT, the Russian television network, also reported – you are attacked for spreading "Russian propaganda."

We saw that when former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile disclosed in her new book that she considered the possibility of replacing Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket after Clinton's public fainting spell and worries about her health.

Though there was a video of Clinton's collapse on Sept. 11, 2016, followed by her departure from the campaign trail to fight pneumonia – not to mention her earlier scare with blood clots – the response from a group of 100 Clinton supporters was to question Brazile's patriotism: "It is particularly troubling and puzzling that she would seemingly buy into false Russian-fueled propaganda, spread by both the Russians and our opponents about our candidate's health."

In other words, the go-to excuse for everything these days is to blame the Russians and smear anyone who says anything – no matter how true – if it also was reported on RT.

Pressing the Tech Companies

Just as Sen. Joe McCarthy liked to haul suspected "communists" and "fellow-travelers" before his committee in the 1950s, the New McCarthyism has its own witch-hunt hearings, such as last week's Senate grilling of executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google for supposedly allowing Russians to have input into the Internet's social networks. Executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google hauled before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism on Oct. 31, 2017. Trying to appease Congress and fend off threats of government regulation, the rich tech companies displayed their eagerness to eradicate any Russian taint.

Twitter's general counsel Sean J. Edgett told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism that Twitter adopted an "expansive approach to defining what qualifies as a Russian-linked account."

Edgett said the criteria included "whether the account was created in Russia, whether the user registered the account with a Russian phone carrier or a Russian email address, whether the user's display name contains Cyrillic characters, whether the user frequently Tweets in Russian, and whether the user has logged in from any Russian IP address, even a single time. We considered an account to be Russian-linked if it had even one of the relevant criteria."

The trouble with Twitter's methodology was that none of those criteria would connect an account to the Russian government, let alone Russian intelligence or some Kremlin-controlled "troll farm." But the criteria could capture individual Russians with no link to the Kremlin as well as people who weren't Russian at all, including, say, American or European visitors to Russia who logged onto Twitter through a Moscow hotel.

Also left unsaid is that Russians are not the only national group that uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It is considered a standard script for writing in Belarus, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbo-Croatia and Ukraine. So, for instance, a Ukrainian using the Cyrillic alphabet could end up falling into the category of "Russian-linked" even if he or she hated Putin.

Twitter's attorney also said the company conducted a separate analysis from information provided by unidentified "third party sources" who pointed toward accounts supposedly controlled by the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA), totaling 2,752 accounts. The IRA is typically described in the U.S. press as a "troll farm" which employs tech-savvy employees who combat news and opinions that are hostile to Russia and the Russian government. But exactly how those specific accounts were traced back to this organization was not made clear.

And, to put that number in some perspective, Twitter claims 330 million active monthly users, which makes the 2,752 accounts less than 0.001 percent of the total.

The Trouble with 'Trolling'

While the Russia-gate investigation has sought to portray the IRA effort as exotic and somehow unique to Russia, the strategy is followed by any number of governments, political movements and corporations – sometimes using enthusiastic volunteers but often employing professionals skilled at challenging critical information or at least muddying the waters.

Those of us who operate on the Internet are familiar with harassment from "trolls" who may use access to "comment" sections to inject propaganda and disinformation to sow confusion, to cause disruption, or to discredit the site by promoting ugly opinions and nutty conspiracy theories.

As annoying as this "trolling" is, it's just a modern version of more traditional strategies used by powerful entities for generations – hiring public-relations specialists, lobbyists, lawyers and supposedly impartial "activists" to burnish images, fend off negative news and intimidate nosy investigators. In this competition, modern Russia is both a late-comer and a piker.

The U.S. government fields legions of publicists, propagandists, paid journalists, psy-ops specialists , contractors and non-governmental organizations to promote Washington's positions and undermine rivals through information warfare.

The CIA has an entire bureaucracy dedicated to propaganda and disinformation, with some of those efforts farmed out to newer entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) or paid for by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). NATO has a special command in Latvia that undertakes "strategic communications."

Israel is another skilled player in this field, tapping into its supporters around the world to harass people who criticize the Zionist project. Indeed, since the 1980s, Israel has pioneered many of the tactics of computer spying and sabotage that were adopted and expanded by America's National Security Agency, explaining why the Obama administration teamed up with Israel in a scheme to plant malicious code into Iranian centrifuges to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.

It's also ironic that the U.S. government touted social media as a great benefit in advancing so-called "color revolutions" aimed at "regime change" in troublesome countries. For instance, when the "green revolution" was underway in Iran in 2009 after the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Obama administration asked Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance so the street protesters could continue using the platform to organize against Ahmadinejad and to distribute their side of the story to the outside world.

During the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, Facebook, Twitter and Skype won praise as a means of organizing mass demonstrations to destabilize governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. Back then, the U.S. government denounced any attempts to throttle these social media platforms and the free flow of information that they permitted as proof of dictatorship.

Social media also was a favorite of the U.S. government in Ukraine in 2013-14 when the Maidan protests exploited these platforms to help destabilize and ultimately overthrow the elected government of Ukraine, the key event that launched the New Cold War with Russia.

Swinging the Social Media Club

The truth is that, in those instances, the U.S. governments and its agencies were eagerly exploiting the platforms to advance Washington's geopolitical agenda by disseminating American propaganda and deploying U.S.-funded non-governmental organizations, which taught activists how to use social media to advance "regime change" scenarios.

A White Helmets volunteer pointing to the aftermath of a military attack.

While these uprisings were sold to Western audiences as genuine outpourings of public anger – and there surely was some of that – the protests also benefited from U.S. funding and expertise. In particular, NED and USAID provided money, equipment and training for anti-government operatives challenging regimes in U.S. disfavor.

One of the most successful of these propaganda operations occurred in Syria where anti-government rebels operating in areas controlled by Al Qaeda and its fellow Islamic militants used social media to get their messaging to Western mainstream journalists who couldn't enter those sectors without fear of beheading.

Since the rebels' goal of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad meshed with the objectives of the U.S. government and its allies in Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Western journalists uncritically accepted the words and images provided by Al Qaeda's collaborators.

The success of this propaganda was so extraordinary that the White Helmets, a "civil defense" group that worked in Al Qaeda territory, became the go-to source for dramatic video and even was awarded the short-documentary Oscar for an info-mercial produced for Netflix – despite evidence that the White Helmets were staging some of the scenes for propaganda purposes.

Indeed, one argument for believing that Putin and the Kremlin might have "meddled" in last year's U.S. election is that they could have felt it was time to give the United States a taste of its own medicine.

After all, the United States intervened in the 1996 Russian election to ensure the continued rule of the corrupt and pliable Boris Yeltsin. And there were the U.S.-backed street protests in Moscow against the 2011 and 2012 elections in which Putin strengthened his political mandate. Those protests earned the "color" designation the "snow revolution."

However, whatever Russia may or may not have done before last year's U.S. election, the Russia-gate investigations have always sought to exaggerate the impact of that alleged "meddling" and molded the narrative to whatever weak evidence was available.

The original storyline was that Putin authorized the "hacking" of Democratic emails as part of a "disinformation" operation to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy and to help elect Donald Trump – although no hard evidence has been presented to establish that Putin gave such an order or that Russia "hacked" the emails. WikiLeaks has repeatedly denied getting the emails from Russia, which also denies any meddling.

Further, the emails were not "disinformation"; they were both real and, in many cases, newsworthy. The DNC emails provided evidence that the DNC unethically tilted the playing field in favor of Clinton and against Sen. Bernie Sanders, a point that Brazile also discovered in reviewing staffing and financing relationships that Clinton had with the DNC under the prior chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The purloined emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta revealed the contents of Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street (information that she was trying to hide from voters) and pay-to-play features of the Clinton Foundation.

A Manchurian Candidate?

Still, the original narrative was that Putin wanted his Manchurian Candidate (Trump) in the White House and took the extraordinary risk of infuriating the odds-on favorite (Clinton) by releasing the emails even though they appeared unlikely to prevent Clinton's victory. So, there was always that logical gap in the Russia-gate theory.

Since then, however, the U.S. mainstream narrative has shifted, in part, because the evidence of Russian election "meddling" was so shaky. Under intense congressional pressure to find something, Facebook reported $100,000 in allegedly "Russian-linked" ads purchased in 2015-17, but noted that only 44 percent were bought before the election. So, not only was the "Russian-linked" pebble tiny – compared to Facebook's annual revenue of $27 billion – but more than half of the pebble was tossed into this very large lake after Clinton had already lost.

So, the storyline was transformed into some vague Russian scheme to exacerbate social tensions in the United States by taking different sides of hot-button issues, such as police brutality against blacks. The New York Times reported that one of these "Russian-linked" pages featured photos of cute puppies , which the Times speculated must have had some evil purpose although it was hard to fathom. (Oh, those devious Russians!).

The estimate of how many Americans may have seen one of these "Russian-linked" ads also keeps growing, now up to as many as 126 million or about one-third of the U.S. population. Of course, the way the Internet works – with any item possibly going viral – you might as well say the ads could have reached billions of people.

Whenever I write an article or send out a Tweet, I too could be reaching 126 million or even billions of people, but the reality is that I'd be lucky if the number were in the thousands. But amid the Russia-gate frenzy, no exaggeration is too outlandish or too extreme.

Another odd element of Russia-gate is that the intensity of this investigation is disproportionate to the lack of interest shown toward far better documented cases of actual foreign-government interference in American elections and policymaking.

For instance, the major U.S. media long ignored the extremely well-documented case of Richard Nixon colluding with South Vietnamese officials to sabotage President Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam War peace talks to gain an advantage for Nixon in the 1968 election. That important chapter of history only gained The New York Times' seal of approval earlier this year after the Times had dismissed the earlier volumes of evidence as "rumors."

In the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan's team – especially his campaign director William Casey in collaboration with Israel and Iran – appeared to have gone behind President Jimmy Carter's back to undercut Carter's negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran and essentially doom Carter's reelection hopes.

There were a couple of dozen witnesses to that scheme who spoke with me and other investigative journalists – as well as documentary evidence showing that President Reagan did authorize secret arms shipments to Iran via Israel shortly after the hostages were freed during Reagan's inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981.

However, since Vice President (later President) George H.W. Bush, who was implicated in the scheme, was well-liked on both sides of the aisle and because Reagan had become a Republican icon, the October Surprise case of 1980 was pooh-poohed by the major media and dismissed by a congressional investigation in the early 1990s. Despite the extraordinary number of witnesses and supporting documents, Wikipedia listed the scandal as a "conspiracy theory."

Israeli Influence

And, if you're really concerned about foreign interference in U.S. elections and policies, there's the remarkable influence of Israel and its perceived ability to effect the defeat of almost any politician who deviates from what the Israeli government wants, going back at least to the 1980s when Sen. Chuck Percy and Rep. Paul Findley were among the political casualties after pursuing contacts with the Palestinians.

If anyone doubts how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to pull the strings of U.S. politicians, just watch one of his record-tying three addresses to joint sessions of Congress and count how often Republicans and Democrats jump to their feet in enthusiastic applause. (The only other foreign leader to get the joint-session honor three times was Great Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill.)

So, what makes Russia-gate different from the other cases? Did Putin conspire with Trump to extend a bloody war as Nixon did with the South Vietnamese leaders? Did Putin lengthen the captivity of U.S. hostages to give Trump a political edge? Did Putin manipulate U.S. policy in the Middle East to entice President George W. Bush to invade Iraq and set the region ablaze, as Israel's Netanyahu did? Is Putin even now pushing for wider Mideast wars, as Netanyahu is?

Indeed, one point that's never addressed in any serious way is why is the U.S. so angry with Russia while these other cases, in which U.S. interests were clearly damaged and American democracy compromised, were treated largely as non-stories.

Why is Russia-gate a big deal while the other cases weren't? Why are opposite rules in play now – with Democrats, many Republicans and the major news media flogging fragile "links," needling what little evidence there is, and assuming the worst rather than insisting that only perfect evidence and perfect witnesses be accepted as in the earlier cases?

The answer seems to be the widespread hatred for President Trump combined with vested interests in favor of whipping up the New Cold War. That is a goal valued by both the Military-Industrial Complex, which sees trillions of dollars in strategic weapons systems in the future, and the neoconservatives, who view Russia as a threat to their "regime change" agendas for Syria and Iran.

After all, if Russia and its independent-minded President Putin can be beaten back and beaten down, then a big obstacle to the neocon/Israeli goal of expanding the Mideast wars will be removed.

Right now, the neocons are openly lusting for a "regime change" in Moscow despite the obvious risks that such turmoil in a nuclear-armed country might create, including the possibility that Putin would be succeeded not by some compliant Western client like the late Boris Yeltsin but by an extreme nationalist who might consider launching a nuclear strike to protect the honor of Mother Russia.

The Democrats, the liberals and even many progressives justify their collusion with the neocons by the need to remove Trump by any means necessary and "stop fascism." But their contempt for Trump and their exaggeration of the "Hitler" threat that this incompetent buffoon supposedly poses have blinded them to the extraordinary risks attendant to their course of action and how they are playing into the hands of the war-hungry neocons.

A Smokescreen for Repression

There also seems to be little or no concern that the Establishment is using Russia-gate as a smokescreen for clamping down on independent media sites on the Internet. Traditional supporters of civil liberties have looked the other way as the rights of people associated with the Trump campaign have been trampled and journalists who simply question the State Department's narratives on, say, Syria and Ukraine are denounced as "Moscow stooges" and "useful idiots."

The likely outcome from the anti-Russian show trials on Capitol Hill is that technology giants will bow to the bipartisan demand for new algorithms and other methods for stigmatizing, marginalizing and eliminating information that challenges the mainstream storylines in the cause of fighting "Russian propaganda."

The warning from powerful senators was crystal clear. "I don't think you get it," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, warned social media executives last week. "You bear this responsibility. You created these platforms, and now they are being misused. And you have to be the ones who do something about it. Or we will."

As this authoritarian if not totalitarian future looms and as the dangers of nuclear annihilation from an intentional or unintentional nuclear war with Russia grow, many people who should know better are caught up in the Russia-gate frenzy.

I used to think that liberals and progressives opposed McCarthyism because they regarded it as a grave threat to freedom of thought and to genuine democracy, but now it appears that they have learned to love McCarthyism except, of course, when it rears its ugly head in some Long Island political ad criticizing New York City.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

Joe Tedesky , November 6, 2017 at 3:12 pm

I watched the C-Span 'Russian/2016 Election Investigation Hearings' in horror, as each congressperson grilled the Hi-Tech executives in a way to suggest that our First Amendment Rights are now on life support, and our Congress is ready to pull the plug at any moment. I thought, of how this wasn't the America I was brought up to believe in. So as I have reached the age in life where nothing should surprise me, I realize now how fragile our Rights are, in this warring nation that calls itself America.

When it comes to Israel I have two names, Jonathan Pollard & the USS Liberty, and with that, that is enough said.

Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:33 pm

This week's congressional hearings on "extremist content" on the Internet mark a new stage in the McCarthyite witch hunt by congressional Democrats, working with the intelligence agencies and leading media outlets, to legitimize censorship and attack free speech on the Internet.

One after another, congressmen and senators goaded representatives of Google, Twitter and Facebook to admit that their platforms were used to sow "social divisions" and "extremist" political opinions. The aim of this campaign is to claim that social conflict within the United States arises not from the scale of social inequality in America, greater than in any other country in the developed world, but rather from the actions of "outside agitators" working in the service of the Kremlin.

The hearings revolved around claims that Russia sought to "weaponize" the Internet by harnessing social anger within the United States. "Russia," said Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, promoted "discord in the US by inflaming passions on a range of divisive issues." It sought to "mobilize real Americans to sign online petitions and join rallies and protests."

The McCarthyite witch hunts of the 1950s sought to suppress left-wing thought and label all forms of dissent as illegitimate and treasonous. Those who led them worked to purge left-wing opinion from Hollywood, the trade unions and the universities.

Likewise, the new McCarthyism is aimed at creating a political climate in which left-wing organizations and figures are demonized as agents of the Kremlin who are essentially engaged in treasonous activity deserving of criminal prosecution.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/11/03/pers-n03.html

Joe Tedesky , November 7, 2017 at 12:32 am

Thanks for the informative link Danny.

Watching this Orwellian tragedy play out in our American society, where our Congress is insisting that disclaimers and restrictions be placed upon suspicious adbuys and editorial essays, is counterintuitive to what we Americans were brought up to belief. Why, all my life teachers, and adults, would warn us students of reading the news to not to believe everything we read as pure fact, but to research a subject before coming to a conclusion toward your accepting an opinion to wit. And with these warnings of avoiding us being suckered into a wrong belief, we were told that this was the price we were required to pay for having a free press society. This freedom of speech was, and has always been the bedrock of our hopes and wishes for our belief in the American Dream.

Danny there was a time not to long ago, I would have said of how we are 'moving towards' to us becoming a police state, well instead replace that prediction of 'moving towards' to the stark reality to be described as 'that now we are', and there you will have it that we have finally arrived to becoming a full blown 'police state'. Little by little, and especially since 911 one by one our civil liberties were taken away. Here again our freedom of speech is being destroyed, and with this America is now where Germany had been in the mid-thirties. America's own guilty conscience is rapidly doing some physiological projections onto their imaginary villain Russia.

All I keep hearing is my dear sweet mother lecturing me on how one lie always leads to another lie until the truth will finally jump up and bite you in the ass, and think to myself of how wise my mother had been with her young girl Southside philosophy. May you Rest In Peace Mum.

Martin , November 7, 2017 at 3:21 pm

Yankees chicks are coming home to roost. So many peoples rights and lives had to be extinguished for Americans to have the illusion of pursuing their happiness, well, what goes around comes around.

Gregory Herr , November 7, 2017 at 8:39 pm

Gee wiz Adam Schiff you make it sound as if signing petitions and rallying to causes and civil protests are unamerican or something. And Russians on the internet are harnessing social anger! Pathetic. These jerks who would have us believe they are interested in "saving" democracy or stopping fascism have sure got it backward.

Geoffrey de Galles , November 8, 2017 at 12:33 pm

Joe, Allow me please, respectfully, to add Mordecai Vanunu -- Israel's own Daniel Ellsberg -- to your two names.

Erik G , November 6, 2017 at 3:55 pm

Thanks to Mr. Parry for this very fair and complete review of the latest attempts to generate a fake foreign enemy. The tyrant over a democracy must generate fake foreign enemies to pose falsely as a protector, so as to demand domestic power and accuse his opponents of disloyalty, as Aristotle and Plato warned thousands of years ago.

It is especially significant that the zionists are the sole beneficiaries of this scam as well as the primary sponsors of the DNC, hoping to attack Russia and Iran to support Israeli land thefts in the Mideast. It is well established that zionists control US mass media, which never examine the central issue of our times, the corruption of democracy by the zionist/MIC/WallSt influence upon the US government and mass media. Russia-gate is in fact a coverup for Israel-gate.

Those who would like to petition the NYT to make Robert Parry their senior editor may do so here:
https://www.change.org/p/new-york-times-bring-a-new-editor-to-the-new-york-times?recruiter=72650402&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
While Mr. Parry may prefer independence, and we all know the NYT ownership makes it unlikely, and the NYT may try to ignore it, it is instructive to them that intelligent readers know better journalism when they see it. A petition demonstrates the concerns of a far larger number of potential or lost subscribers.

mike k , November 6, 2017 at 4:10 pm

Why did we ever believe that the democrat party was a defender of free speech? These bought and paid for tools of the economic elites are only interested in serving their masters with slavish devotion. Selfishness and immorality are their stock in trade; betraying the public their real intention.

Cratylus , November 6, 2017 at 4:11 pm

Great essay.

But one disagreement. I may agree with Trump on very, very few things, among them getting rid of the horrible TPP, one cornerstone of Hillary's pivot; meeting with Putin in Hamburg; the Lavrov-Tillerson arranged cease-fire in SE Syria; the termination of the CIA's support for anti-Assad jihadis in Syria; a second meeting with Putin at the ASEAN conference this week; and in general the idea of "getting along with Russia" (a biggie) which Russia-gate is slowing to a crawl as designed by the neocons.

But Trump as an "incompetent buffoon" is a stretch albeit de rigueur on the pages of the NYT, the programs of NPR and in all "respectable" precincts. Trump won the presidency for god's sake – something that eluded the 17 other GOP primary candidates, some of them considered very"smart" and Bernie and Jill, and in the past, Ralph Nader and Ron Paul – and the supposedly "very smart" Hillary for which we should be eternally grateful. "Incompetent" hardly seems accurate. The respectable commentariat has continually underestimated Trump. We should heed Putin who marveled at Trump's seemingly impossible victory.

Bill Cash , November 6, 2017 at 4:13 pm

How do you explain all the connections between Trump acolytes and Russia and their lying about it. I think they've all lied about their contacts. Why would they do that?I lived through the real McCarthyism and, so far, this isn't close to what happened then.

Bill , November 6, 2017 at 4:40 pm

Probably because they are corruptly involved. Thing is, the higher priority is to avoid another decades-long cold war risking nuclear war. Do you remember how many close calls we had in the last one?

I'm more suspicious of Trump than most here, but even I think we need some priorities. Far more extensive corruption of a similar variety keeps occurring and no one cares, as Mr. Parry points out here yet again.

As for McCarthyism, whatever the current severity, the result is unfolding as a new campaign against dissenting voices on the internet. That's supremely not-okay with me.

Gregory Herr , November 7, 2017 at 8:46 pm

Right. Just because we don't yet have another fulll-fledged HUAC happening doesn't mean severe perils aren't attached to this new McCarthyism. Censorship of dissent is supremely not-okay with me as well.

Elizabeth Burton , November 6, 2017 at 4:58 pm

That class of people lie as a matter of course; it's standard procedure. If you exacerbate it by adding on the anti-Russia hysteria that was spewed out by the Democrats before the ink was dry on the ballots, what possible reason would they have for being truthful?

The insanity of the entire "Russian hacking" narrative has been revealed over and over, including this past weekend when +/-100 Clinton loyalists published a screed on Medium saying Donna Brazile had been taken in by Russian propaganda.

Litchfield , November 6, 2017 at 7:10 pm

I have come to expect just about anything when it comes to Russia-Gate, but I was taken aback by the Hillary bots' accusation that videos of Hillary stumbling and others showing her apparently having a fit of some kind and also needing to be helped up the steps to someone's house -- which were taken by Americans and shown by Americans and seen by millions of shocked Americans -- were driven by Russia-Gate.

Obviously, Brazile, like millions of voters, saw these films and made appropriate inferences: that Hillary's basic health and stamina were a question mark. Of course, Hillary also offered Americans nothing in her campaign rhetoric. She came across as the mother-in-law from hell.

Was it also a Russia-Gate initiative when Hillary hid from her supporters on election night and let Podesta face the screaming sobbing supporters? Too much spiked vodka or something? Our political stage in the USA is a madhouse.

Adrian Engler , November 6, 2017 at 6:20 pm

These people probably have "connections" with a relatively large number of people, and only very small fraction of the people they have contact with are probably Russians. Now, since the extremist xenophobic idea that contact with *any* Russians is a scandal has taken hold in the United States, people are probably not too eager to mention these contacts in these atmosphere of extreme xenophobic anti-Russian hatred in today's United States. Furthermore, people who have contact with large numbers of people probably really have difficulties remembering and listing these all.

Today's political atmosphere in the United States probably has a lot in common with the Soviet Union. There, people got in trouble if they had contacts with people from Western, capitalist countries – and if they were asked and did not mention these contacts in order to avoid problems, they could get in trouble even more.

I think it is absolutely clear that no one who takes part in this hateful anti-Russian campaign can pretend to be liberal or progressive. The kind of society these xenophobes who detest pluralism and accuse everyone who has opinions outside the mainstream of being a foreign agent is absolutely abhorrent, in my view.

Leslie F , November 6, 2017 at 6:40 pm

Their contacts are with Russian business and maybe the Russian mob, not the Russian state. There is really not question that Trump and his cronies are crooks, but they are crooks in the US and in all the other countries where they do business, not just Russia. I'm sure Mueller will be able to tie Trump directly to some of the sleeze. But there is no evidence that the Russian government is involved in any of it. "Russia-gate" implies Russian government involvement, not just random Russians. There is no evidence of that and moreover the logic is against.

occupy on , November 7, 2017 at 12:47 am

Mr. Cash . I think George Papadopoulis, Trump's young Aide, was an inside mole for neocon pro-Israel interests. Those interests needed to knock the unreliable President Trump out of the way to get the "system" back where it belonged – in their pocket. Papadopoulis, on his own, was rummaging around making Trump/Russian connections that finally ended with the the William (Richard?) Browder (well-known Washington DC neocon)/Natalia Veselnitskaya/Donald Trump, Jr. fiasco. The Trumps knew nothing of those negotiations, and young Trump left when he realized Natalia was only interested in Americans being allowed to adopt Russian children again and had no dirt on Hillary.

In the meantime, Trump Jr. was connected with an evil Russian (Natalia), William Browder was able to link the neocon-hated Trump Sr with neocon-hated, evil Russians (who currently have a warrant out for Browder's arrest on a 15 [or 50?] million dollar tax evasion charge), and neocons have a good chance of claiming victory out of chaos (as is their style and was their intent for the Middle East [not Washington DC!] in the neocon Project For a New American Century – 1998). Clinton may have lost power in Washington DC, but Clinton-supporting neocons may not have – thanks to George Papadopoulis. We shall see. Something tells me the best is yet to come out of the Mueller Investigations.

Roy G Biv , November 7, 2017 at 2:03 pm

You are seeing it clearly Bill. This site was once a go-to-source for investigative journalism. Now it is a place for opinion screeds, mostly with head buried in the sand about the blatant Russian manipulation of the 2016 election. The dominant gang of posters here squash any dissent and dissenting comments usually get deleted within a day. I don't understand why and how it came to be so, but the hysterical labeling of Comey/Mueller investigations as McCarthyism by Parry has ruined his sterling reputation for me.

Stygg , November 7, 2017 at 2:24 pm

If this "Russian manipulation" was as blatant as everyone keeps telling me, how come it's all based on ridiculous BS instead of evidence? Where's the beef?

anon , November 7, 2017 at 3:22 pm

Unable to substantiate anything you say nor argue against anything said here, you disgrace yourself. Do you think anyone is fooled by your repeated lie that you are a disaffected former supporter of this site? And you made the "Stygg" reply above.

Tom Hall , November 6, 2017 at 4:46 pm

It was never my impression that Cold War liberals opposed McCarthy or the anti-Communist witch hunt. Where they didn't gleefully join in, they watched quietly from the sidelines while the American left was eviscerated, jailed, driven from public life. Then the liberals stepped in when it was clear things were going a little too far and just as the steam had run out of McCarthy's slander machine.

At that point figures like Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy found the path clear for their brand of political stagecraft. They were imperialists to a man, something they proved abundantly when given the chance. Liberals supplanted the left in U.S. life- in the unions, the teaching profession, publishing and every other field where criticism of the Cold War and the enduring prevalence of worker solidarity across international lines threatened the new order.

So it's no surprise that liberalism is the rallying point for a new wave of repression. The dangerous buffoon currently occupying the White House stands as a perfect foil to the phony indignation of the liberal leadership- Schumer, Pelosi et al.. The jerk was made to order, and they mean to dump him as their ideological forebears unloaded old Tail Gunner Joe. In fact, Trump is so odious, the Democrats, their media colleagues and major elements of the national security state believe that bringing down the bozo can be made to look like a triumph of democracy. Of course, by then dissent will have been stamped out far more efficiently than Trump and his half-assed cohorts could have achieved. And it will be done in the name of restoring sanity, honoring the constitution, and protecting everyone from the Russians. I was born in the fifties, and it looks like I'm going to die in the fifties.

Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:37 pm

Truman started it. And he used it very well.

THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE AND ORIGINS OF ""McCARTHYISM
By Richard M. Freeland

This book argues that Truman used anti-Communist scare tactics to force Congress to implement his plans for multilateral free trade and specifically to pass the Marshall Plan. This is a sound emphasis, but other elements of postwar anti-Communist campaigns are neglected, especially anti-labor legislation; and Freeland attributes to Truman a ""go-soft"" attitude toward the Soviets, which is certainly not proven by the fact that he restrained the ultras Forrestal, Kennan, and Byrnes -- indeed, some of Freeland's own citations confirm Truman's violent anti-Soviet spirit.

The book concludes that by equating dissent with disloyalty, promoting guilt by association, and personally commanding loyalty programs, ""Truman and his advisors employed all the political and programmatic techniques that in later years were to become associated with the broad phenomenon of McCarthyism."" Freeland's revisionism is confined and conservative: he deems the Soviets most responsible for the Cold War and implies that ""subversion"" was in fact a menace.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/richard-m-freeland/the-truman-doctrine-and-origins-of-mccarthyism/

Howard Mettee , November 6, 2017 at 4:50 pm

Bob,

You are one of the very few critical journalists today willing to print objective measures of the truth, while the MSM spins out of control under the guise of "protecting America" (and their vital sources), while at the same time actually undermining the very principles of a working democracy they sanctimoniously pretend to defend. It makes me nostalgic for the McCarthy era, when we could safely satirize the Army-McCarthy Hearings (unless you were a witness!). I offer the following as a retrospective of a lost era.:

Top-Ten Criteria for being a Putin Stooge, and a Chance at Winning A One Way Lottery Ticket:to the Gala Gitmo Hotel:
:
(1) Reading Consortium News, Truth Dig, The Real News Network, RT and Al Jeziera
(2) Drinking Starbucks and vodka at the Russian Tea Room with Russian tourists (with an embedded FSS agent) in NYC.
(3) Meeting suspicious tour guides in Red Square who accept dollars for their historical jokes.
(4) Claiming to catch a cell phone photo of the Putin limousine passing through the Kremlin Tower gate.
(4) Starting a joint venture with a Russian trading partner who sells grain to feed Putin's stable of stallions. .
(5) Catching the flu while being sneezed upon in Niagara Falls by a Russian violinist.
(6) Finding the hidden jewels in the Twelfth Chair were nothing but cut glass.
(7) Reading War and Peace on the Brighton Beach ferry.
(8) Playing the iPod version of Rachmaninoff's "Vespers" through ear buds while attending mass in Dallas, TX..
(9) Water skiing on the Potomac flying a pennant saying "Wasn't Boris Good Enough?"
(10) Having audibly chuckled even once at items (1) – (9). Thanks Bob, Please don't let up!

Lisa , November 6, 2017 at 7:47 pm

Howard,

I chuckled loudly more than once – but luckily, no one heard me! No witnesses! So you are acquainted with the masterpiece "12 chairs"? Very suspicious.

David G , November 6, 2017 at 8:42 pm

I've heard that's Mel Brooks favorite among his own movies.

David G , November 6, 2017 at 8:48 pm

I always find it exasperating when I have to remind the waiter at the diner to bring Russian dressing along with the reuben sandwich, but these days I wonder if my loyalty is being tested.

Dave P. , November 6, 2017 at 10:27 pm

David G –

They will change the name of dressing very soon. Remember 2003 when French refused to endorse the invasion of Iraq. I think they unofficially changed the name of "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries".

It is just the start. The whole History is being rewritten – in compliance with Zionist Ideology. Those evil Russkies will be shown as they are!

Elizabeth Burton , November 6, 2017 at 4:53 pm

Clearly, since I've published one book by a Russian, one by a now-deceased US ex-pat living in Russia, and have our catalog made available in Russia via our international distributor, I am a traitor to the US. If you add in my staunch resistance to the whole Russiagate narrative AND the fact I post links to stories in RT America, I'm doomed.

I wish I could think I'm being wholly sarcastic.

Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:38 pm

You are not alone. Many of us live outside the open air prison and feel the same way

Abe , November 6, 2017 at 5:29 pm

Robert Parry has described "the New McCarthyism" having "its own witch-hunt hearings". In fact "last week's Senate grilling of executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google" was merely an exercise in political theatre because all three entities already belong to the "First Draft" coalition:

http://fortune.com/2016/09/13/facebook-twitter-join-first-draft-coalition/

Formed by Google in June 2015 with Eliot Higgins of the Atlantic Council's Bellingcat as a founding member, the "First Draft" coalition includes all the usual mainstream media "partners" in "regime change" war propaganda: the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, the UK Guardian and Telegraph, BBC News, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Research Lab and Kiev-based Stopfake.

In a remarkable post-truth declaration, the "First Draft" coalition insists that members will "work together to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the verification process".

In the "post-truth" regime of US and NATO hybrid warfare, the deliberate distortion of truth and facts is called "verification".

The Washington Post / PropOrNot imbroglio, and "First Draft" coalition "partner" organizations' zeal to "verify" US intelligence-backed fake news claims about Russian hacking of the US presidential election, reveal the "post-truth" mission of this new Google-backed hybrid war propaganda alliance.

Abe , November 6, 2017 at 5:45 pm

The Russia-gate "witch-hunt" has graduated from McCarthyism to full Monty Pythonism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3jt5ibfRzw

Dan Kuhn , November 6, 2017 at 6:41 pm

You get the gold star for best comment today.

Abe , November 7, 2017 at 1:57 pm

Hysterical demonization of Russia escalated dramatically after Russia thwarted the Israeli-Saudi-US plan to dismember the Syrian state.

With the rollback of ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorist proxy forces in Syria, and the failure of Kurdish separatist efforts in Iraq, Israel plans to launch military attacks against southern Lebanon and Syria.

South Front has presented a cogent and fairly detailed analysis of Israel's upcoming war in southern Lebanon.

Conspicuously absent from the South Front analysis is any discussion of the Israeli planned assault on Syria, or possible responses to the conflict from the United States or Russia.

Israeli propaganda preparations for attack are already in high gear. Unfortunately, sober heads are in perilously short supply in Israel and the U.S., so the prognosis can hardly be optimistic.

"Scenarios for the Third Lebanon War

Over time, IDF's military effectiveness had declined. [ ] In the Second Lebanon War of 2006 due to the overwhelming numerical superiority in men and equipment the IDF managed to occupy key strong points but failed to inflict a decisive defeat on Hezbollah. The frequency of attacks in Israeli territory was not reduced; the units of the IDF became bogged down in the fighting in the settlements and suffered significant losses. There now exists considerable political pressure to reassert IDF's lost military dominance and, despite the complexity and unpredictability of the situation we may assume the future conflict will feature only two sides, IDF and Hezbollah. Based on the bellicose statements of the leadership of the Jewish state, the fighting will be initiated by Israel.

"The operation will begin with a massive evacuation of residents from the settlements in the north and centre of Israel. Since Hezbollah has agents within the IDF, it will not be possible to keep secret the concentration of troops on the border and a mass evacuation of civilians. Hezbollah units will will be ordered to occupy a prepared defensive position and simultaneously open fire on places were IDF units are concentrated. The civilian population of southern Lebanon will most likely be evacuated. IDF will launch massive bombing causing great damage to the social infrastructure and some damage to Hezbollah's military infrastructure, but without destroying the carefully protected and camouflaged rocket launchers and launch sites.

"Hezbollah control and communications systems have elements of redundancy. Consequently, regardless of the use of specialized precision-guided munitions, the command posts and electronic warfare systems will not be paralysed, maintaining communications including through the use of fibre-optic communications means. IDF discovered that the movement has such equipment during the 2006 war. Smaller units will operate independently, working with open communication channels, using the pre-defined call signs and codes.

"Israeli troops will then cross the border of Lebanon, despite the presence of the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, beginning a ground operation with the involvement of a greater number of units than in the 2006 war. The IDF troops will occupy commanding heights and begin to prepare for assaults on settlements and actions in the tunnels. The Israelis do not score a quick victory as they suffer heavy losses in built-up areas. The need to secure occupied territory with patrols and checkpoints will cause further losses.

"The fact that Israel itself started the war and caused damage to the civilian infrastructure, allows the leadership of the movement to use its missile arsenal on Israeli cities. While Israel's missile defence systems can successfully intercept the launched missiles, there are not enough of them to blunt the bombardment. The civilian evacuation paralyzes life in the country. As soon IDF's Iron Dome and other medium-range systems are spent on short-range Hezbollah rockets, the bombardment of Israel with long-range missiles may commence. Hezbollah's Iranian solid-fuel rockets do not require much time to prepare for launch and may target the entire territory of Israel, causing further losses.

"It is difficult to assess the duration of actions of this war. One thing that seems certain is that Israel shouldn't count on its rapid conclusion, similar to last September's exercises. Hezbollah units are stronger and more capable than during the 2006 war, despite the fact that they are fighting in Syria and suffered losses there.

"Conclusions

"The combination of large-scale exercises and bellicose rhetoric is intended to muster Israeli public support for the aggression against Hezbollah by convincing the public the victory would be swift and bloodless. Instead of restraint based on a sober assessment of relative capabilities, Israeli leaders appear to be in a state of blood lust. In contrast, the Hezbollah has thus far demonstrated restraint and diplomacy.

"Underestimating the adversary is always the first step towards a defeat. Such mistakes are paid for with soldiers' blood and commanders' careers. The latest IDF exercises suggest Israeli leaders underestimate the opponent and, more importantly, consider them to be quite dumb. In reality, Hezbollah units will not cross the border. There is no need to provoke the already too nervous neighbor and to suffer losses solely to plant a flag and photograph it for their leader. For Hezbollah, it is easier and safer when the Israeli soldiers come to them. According to the IDF soldiers who served in Gaza and southern Lebanon, it is easier to operate on the plains of Gaza than the mountainous terrain of southern Lebanon. This is a problem for armoured vehicles fighting for control of heights, tunnels, and settlements, where they are exposed to anti-armor weapons.

"While the Israeli establishment is in a state of patriotic frenzy, it would be a good time for them to turn to the wisdom of their ancestors. After all, as the old Jewish proverb says: 'War is a big swamp, easy to go into but hard to get out'."

Israeli Defense Forces: Military Capabilities, Scenarios for the Third Lebanon War
https://southfront.org/israeli-defense-forces-military-capabilities-scenarios-for-the-third-lebanon-war/

Realist , November 6, 2017 at 5:36 pm

Yes, the latest "big fish" outed yesterday as an agent of the Kremlin was the U.S. Secretary of Commerce (Wilbur Ross) who was discovered to hold stock in a shipping company that does business with a Russian petrochemical company (Sibur) whose owners include Vladimir Putin's son-in-law (Kirill Shamalov). Obviously the orders flow directly from Putin to Shamalov to Sibur to the shipping company to Ross to Trump, all to the detriment of American citizens.

From RT (another tainted source!): "US Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. has a stake in a shipping firm that receives millions of dollars a year in revenue from a company whose key owners include Russian President Vladimir Putin's son-in-law and a Russian tycoon sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as a member of Putin's inner circle," says the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the main publisher of the Paradise Papers. After the report was published, some US lawmakers accused Ross of misleading Congress during his confirmation hearings." Don't go mistaking the "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for "Consortium News." These guys are dedicated witch hunters, searching for anyone with six degrees of separation to Vladimir Putin and his grand plan to thwart the United States and effect regime change within its borders.

In a clear attempt to weasel out of his traitorous transgression, Ross stated "In a separate interview with CNBC, that Sibur [which is NOT the company he owned stock in] was not subject to US sanctions." 'A company not under sanction is just like any other company, period. It was a normal commercial relationship and one that I had nothing to do with the creation of, and do not know the shareholders who were apparently sanctioned at some later point in time,' he said." Since when can we start allowing excuses like that? Not knowing that someone holds stock in a company that does business with a company in which you own stock may at some later point in time become sanctioned by the all-wise and all-good American federal government?

I can't wait till they make the first Ben Stiller comedy based on this fiasco twenty years from now. It will be hilarious slap-stick, maybe titled "Can You Believe these Mother Fockers?" President Chelea Clinton of our great and noble idiocracy will throw out the first witch on opening day of the movie.

Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:27 pm

Let's be honest. Most Americans think McCarthy is a retail store. No education. And they think Russia is the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Trump is in Japan to start war with N. Korea to hide the blemishes or the canker on his ass. America is rapidly collapsing.

Adrian Engler , November 6, 2017 at 6:34 pm

In the beginning, "Russiagate" was about alleged actions by Russian secret services. Evidence for these allegations has never emerged, and it seems that the Russiagate conspiracy theorists largely gave up on this part (they still sometimes write about it as if it was an established fact, but since the only thing in support of it they can adduce is the canard about the 17 intelligence services, it probably is not that interesting any more).

Now, they have dropped the mask, and the object of their hatred are openly all Russian people, anyone who is "Russian linked" by ever having logged in to social networks from Russia or using Cyrillic letters. If these people and their media at least recognized the reality that they are now a particularly rabid part of the xenophobic far right in the United States

But when people daily spew hate against anything and anyone "Russia linked" and still don't recognize that they have gone over to the far right and even claim they are liberal or progressive, this is completely absurd.

McCarthyism, as terrible as it was, at least originally was motivated by hatred against a certain political ideology that also had its bad sides. But today's Russiagate peddlers clearly are motivated by hatred against a certain ethnicity, a certain country, and a certain language. I don't think there is any way to avoid the conclusion that with their hatred against anyone who is "Russia linked", they have become right-wing extremists.

Litchfield , November 6, 2017 at 6:46 pm

"Israel is another skilled player in this field, tapping into its supporters around the world to harass people who criticize the Zionist project."

Yes, very well organized.
In fact virtually every synagogue is a center for organizing people to harass others who are exercising their First Amendment rights to diseminate information about Israel's occupation of Palestine. The link below is to a protest and really, personal attack, against a Unitarian minister in Marblehead, Mass., for daring to screen the film ""The Occupation of the American Mind, Israel's Public Relations War in the United States." In other words, for daring to provide an dissenting opinion and, simply, to tell the truth. Ironic is that the protesters' comment actually reinforce the basic message of the film.
No other views on Israel will be allowed to enter the public for a good airing and discussion and debate. The truth about the illegal Israeli occupation will be shouted down, and those who try to provide information to the public on this subject will be vilified as "anti-semites." Kudos to this minister for screening the film.

http://www.salemnews.com/news/local_news/screening-of-film-sparks-protest-in-marblehead/article_0b075cbc-c2ae-5d46-916a-24eed79d30cd.html

http://cdn.field59.com/SALEMNEWS/ebb60114f782c4213f068bf0a39a4a46451ed871_fl9-360p.mp4

Abe , November 7, 2017 at 1:03 am

The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in the United States (2016) examines pro-Israel Hasbara propaganda efforts within the U.S.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD7mOyfclIk

This important documentary, narrated by Roger waters, exposes how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel Lobby join forces to shape American media coverage in Israel's favor.

Documentary producer Sut Jhally is professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, and a leading scholar on advertising, public relations, and political propaganda. He is also the founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation, a documentary film company that looks at issues related to U.S. media and public attitudes.

Jhally is the producer and director of dozens of documentaries about U.S. politics and media culture, including Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict.

The Occupation of the American Mind provides a sweeping analysis of Israel's decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people – a battle that has only intensified over the past few years in the face of widening international condemnation of Israel's increasingly right-wing policies.

Dave P. , November 7, 2017 at 2:45 am

Abe –

The interview of Roger Waters on RT is one of the best I have seen in a long while. I wish some other artists get the courage to raise their voices. The link to the Roger Waters interview is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jcvfbLoIA This Roger Waters interview is worth watching.

Dan Kuhn , November 6, 2017 at 6:57 pm

It would seem that everyone on the US telivision , newspaper and internet news has mastered the art of hand over mouth , gasp and looking horrified every time Russia is mentioned. It looks to me that the US is in the middle of another of it´s mid life crises. Panic reigns supreme every where. If it was not so sad it would be funny. i was born in the 1940s and remember the McCarthy witch hunts and the daily shower of people jumping out of windows as a result of it.

As a Canadian I could not get over, even though I was just a teenager back then, just how a people in a supposedly advanced country could be so collectively paniced. I think back then it was just a scam to get rid of unions and any kind of collective action against the owners of the country, and this time around I think it is just a continuation of that scam, to frighten people into subservience to the police state. I heard a women on TV today commenting on the Texas masscre, she said " The devil never sleeps", well in the USA the 1/10 of 1% never sleeps when it comes to more control, more pwoer and more wealth, in fact I think they are after the very last shekle still left in the pockets of the bottom 99.9 % of the population. Those evil Russians are just a ploy in the scam.

Litchfield , November 6, 2017 at 6:58 pm

"The Democrats, the liberals and even many progressives justify their collusion with the neocons by the need to remove Trump by any means necessary and "stop fascism." But their contempt for Trump and their exaggeration of the "Hitler" threat that this incompetent buffoon supposedly poses have blinded them to the extraordinary risks attendant to their course of action and how they are playing into the hands of the war-hungry neocons."

And they are driving more and more actual and potential Dem Party members away in droves, further weakening the party and depriving it of its most intelligent members. Any non-senile person knows that this is all BS and these people are not only turning their backs on the Dem Party but I think many of them are being driven to the right by their disgust with this circus and the exposure of the party's critical weaknesses and derangement.

Paolo , November 6, 2017 at 6:59 pm

You correctly write that "the United States intervened in the 1996 Russian election to ensure the continued rule of the corrupt and pliable Boris Yeltsin". The irony is that a few years later Yeltsin chose Putin as his successor, and presumably the 'mericans gave him a hand to win his first term.
How extremely sad it is to see the USA going totally nuts.

Abe , November 6, 2017 at 9:00 pm

In The Fifties (1993), American journalist and historian David Halberstam addressed the noxious effect of McCarthyism: "McCarthy's carnival like four year spree of accusation charges, and threats touched something deep in the American body politic, something that lasted long after his own recklessness, carelessness and boozing ended his career in shame." (page 53)

Halberstam specifically discussed how readily the so-called "free" press acquiesced to McCarthy's masquerading: "The real scandal in all this was the behavior of the members of the Washington press corps, who, more often than not, knew better. They were delighted to be a part of his traveling road show, chronicling each charge and then moving on to the next town, instead of bothering to stay behind and follow up. They had little interest in reporting how careless McCarthy was or how little it all meant to him." (page 55)

Abe , November 6, 2017 at 9:15 pm

On March 9, 1954, Edward R. Murrow and a news team at CBS produced a half-hour See It Now special titled "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy".

Murrow interspersed his own comments and clarifications into a damaging series of film clips from McCarthy's speeches. He ended the broadcast with a warning:

"As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves–as indeed we are–the defenders of freedom, what's left of it, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies, and whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create the situation of fear; he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.'"

CBS reported that of the 12,000 phone calls received within 24 hours of the broadcast, positive responses to the program outnumbered negative 15 to 1. McCarthy's favorable rating in the Gallup Poll dropped and was never to rise again.

Gary , November 6, 2017 at 11:34 pm

Sad to see so many hypocrites here espousing freedom from McCarthyism while they continue to vote for capitalist candidates year in year out. Think about the fact that in 2010 when Citizens United managed to get the Supreme Court to certify corporations as people the fear among many was that this would open US company subsidiaries to be infiltrated by foreign money. I guess it is happening in spades with collusion between Russian money & Trump's organization along with Facebook, Twitter & many others. How Mr. Parry can maintain that this parallels the 1950s anti-communist crusade is quite ingenuous. When libertarians, the likes of Bannon, Mercer, Trump et al, with their "destruction of the administrative state" credo are compared to the US communists of the 50s we know progressives have become about as disoriented as can be.

geeyp , November 7, 2017 at 3:30 am

I guess these "Paradise Papers" were released just yesterday, i.e., Sunday the 5th. Somehow I didn't get to it.

john wilson , November 7, 2017 at 6:01 am

So it looks like Hillary will be crossing Putin off her Xmas card list this year! I sometimes wonder if all we posters on here and other similar sites are on a list somewhere and when the day of reckoning comes, the list will be produced and we will have to account for our treasonous behaviour? Of course, one man's treason is another man's truth. I suppose in the end it boils down to the power thing. If you have a perceived enemy you can claim the need for an army. If you have an army you have power and with that power you can dispose of anyone who disagrees with you simply by calling them the enemy.

Lisa , November 7, 2017 at 9:38 am

John, your post made me wonder whether I would be on a list of traitors. I've written three posts, starting yesterday, and tried to explain something about the background of Yuri Milner, mentioned in the article. After "your comment has been posted, thank you" nothing has appeared on this thread.
Well, once more: Milner is known to me as a well-educated physicist from Moscow State University, and the co-founder and financier of The Breakthrough Prize, handing out yearly awards to promising scientists, with a much larger sum than the humble Nobel Prize. The awarding ceremony is held in December in Silicon Valley.

john wilson , November 7, 2017 at 12:34 pm

Hi Lisa, I have just looked up Milner on Wiki and he appears to be into everything including investment in internet companies. He is the co-founder of the "break through prize" that you mention and seems to have backed face book and twitter in their start up. I don't see why you posts haven't appeared as anyone can look Milner up on Wiki and elsewhere in great detail. You don't say where you have tried to post, but I would have thought on this site you would have no trouble whatever. If you have watched the last episode of 'cross talk' on RT you will see that anyone who as ever mentioned Russia in a public place is regarded as some kind of traitor. I guess you and me are due for rendition anytime now!! LOL

Lisa , November 7, 2017 at 1:49 pm

Hi John,
Naturally I had been trying to post on this site. First I tried three times in the comment space below all other posts, and they never went through. Only when I posted a reply to someone else's comment, my reply appeared. Maybe some technical problem on the site.

My motive was to show that Milner is doing worthwhile things with his millions, even if he is an "evil Russian oligarch". The mentioned prize has its own website: breakthroughprize.org. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) is a board member.

The prize is certainly a "Putin conspiracy", as it has links to Russia. (sarc)

Zachary Smith , November 7, 2017 at 8:05 pm

Maybe some technical problem on the site.

Possibly that's the case. Disappearing-forever posts happen to me from time to time. For at least a while afterwards I cut/paste what I'm about to attempt to "post" to a WORD file before hitting the "post comment" button.

In any event, avoid links whenever possible. By cut/pasting the exact title of the piece you're using as a reference, others can quickly locate it themselves without a link.

K , November 7, 2017 at 9:44 am

I'm a lifelong Democrat. I was a Bernie supporter. But logic dictates my thinking. The Russia nonsense is cover for Hillary's loss and a convenient hammer with which to attack Trump. Not biting. Bill Maher is fixated on this. The Rob Reiner crowd is an embarrassment. The whole thing is embarrassing. The media is inept. Very bizarre times.

Patricia Schaefer , November 7, 2017 at 10:14 am

Excellent article which should shed light on the misunderstandings manifested to manipulate and censor Americans. Personally, it's ludicrous to imply that Russia was the primary reason I could not vote for Hillary. My interest in Twitter peaked when Sidney Blumenthal's name popped up selling arms in Libya. He was on The Clinton Foundation's Payroll for $120K, while the Obama Administration specifically told HRC Sidney Blumenthal was not to work for the State Department.

Further research showed Chris Stevens had no knowledge of Sidney Blumenthal selling arms in Libya. Hillary NEVER even gave Chris Stevens, a candidate with an outstanding background for diplomatic relations in the Middle East, her email. Chris Stevens possessed a Law Degree in International Trade, and had previously worked for Senator Lugar (R). Senator Lugar had warned HRC not to co-mingle State Department business with The Clinton Foundation.

To add salt to the wound Hillary choose to put a third rate security firm in Libya, changing firms a couple of short weeks before the bombing. I think she anticipated the bombing, remarking "What difference does it make? " at the congressional hearings.

If you remember Guccifer (that hacker) he said he'd hacked both Hillary and Sidney Blumenthal. He also said he found Sidney Blumenthal's account more interesting.

That's just one reason why I started surfing the internet. Sidney Blumenthal was a name that hung in the cobwebs of my memory, and I wanted to know what this scum-job of a journalist was doing!

Then there was Clinton Cash, BoysonTheTracks, Clinton Chronicles, the outrageous audacity of the Democrats Superdelegates voting before a single primary ballot had been cast, MSM bias to Hillary, Kathy Shelton's video "I thought you should know." and maybe around September 2016, wondering what dirty things Hillary had done with Russia since 1993?

So I guess it's true. In the end after witnessing what has transpired since the election I would not vote for Hillary because she'd rather risk WWIII, than have the TRUTH come out why she lost.

Gary , November 7, 2017 at 3:16 pm

After living in Europe much of the last three years we've recently returned to the U.S. I must say that life here feels very much like I'm living within a strange Absurdist theatre play of some sort (not that Europe is vastly better). Truth, meaning, rationality, mean absolutely nothing at this juncture here in the United States. Reality has been turned on its head. The only difference between our political parties runs along identity politics lines: "do you prefer your drone strikes, illegal invasions, regime change black-ops, economic warfare and massive government spying 'with' or 'without' gender specific bathrooms?" MSM refer to this situation as "democracy" while of course any thinking person knows we are actually living within a totalitarian nightmare. Theatre of the Absurd as a way of life. I must admit it feels pretty creepy being home again.

Realist , November 7, 2017 at 4:09 pm

Should this give us hope? https://sputniknews.com/us/201711071058899018-trump-cia-meet-whistleblower-russian-hacking/ Trump ordered Pompeo to meet with Binney of VIPS re "Russian hacking." Is it time for the absurd Russia-gate narrative to finally be publicly deconstructed? Or is that asking too much?

Skip Scott , November 8, 2017 at 9:04 am

I wish it wasn't asking too much, but I suspect it is. If the NYT was reporting it, I'd feel better about our chances. But the Deep State controls the narrative, and thus controls Pompeo, Trump's order notwithstanding. I hope I'm wrong.

Dave P. , November 7, 2017 at 4:17 pm

Yes Joe. It is rather painful to watch as you said this Orwellian Tragedy playing out in the Country which has just about become a police state. For those of us who grew up admiring the Western Civilization starting with the Greeks and Romans, and then for its institutions enshrining Individual Rights; and its scientific, literary, and cultural achievements, it is as if it still happening in some dream, though it has been coming for some time now – more than two decades now at least. The System was not perfect but I think that it was good as it could get. The system had been in decline for four decades or so now.

From Robert Parry's article:

"The warning from powerful senators was crystal clear. "I don't think you get it," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, warned social media executives last week. "You bear this responsibility. You created these platforms, and now they are being misused. And you have to be the ones who do something about it. Or we will."

Diane Feinstein's multi-billionaire husband was implicated in those Loan and Savings scandals of Reagan and G.H.W. Bush Era and in many other financial scandals later on but Law did not touch him. He has a dual residency in Israel. These are very corrupt people.

Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Perle, Nulad-Kagan clan, Kristol, Gaffney . . . the list goes on; add Netanyahu to it. In the Hollywood Harvey Weinstein, Rob Reiner. and the rest . . . In Finance and wall Street characters like Sandy Weiss and the gang. The Media and TV is directly or indirectly owned and controlled by "The Chosen People". So, where would you put the blame for all what is going on in this country, and all this chaos, death, and destruction going on in ME and many countries in Africa.

Any body who points out their role in it or utters a word of criticism of Israel is immediately called an anti-semite. Just to tell my own connections, my wife youngest sister is married to person who is Jewish (non-practicing). In all the relatives we have, they are closest to us for more than thirty five years now. They are those transgender common restroom liberals, but we have many common views and interests. In life, I have never differentiated people based on their ethnic or racial backgrounds; you look at the principles they stand for.

As I see it, this era of Russia-Gate and witch hunt is hundred times worse than McCarthy era. It seems irreversible. There is no one in the political establishment or elsewhere in Media or academia left for regeneration of the "Body Politic". In fact, what we are witnessing here is much worse than it was in the Soviet Union. It is complete degeneration of political leadership in this country. It extends to Media and other institutions as well. People in Soviet Union did not believe the lies they were told by the government there. And there arose writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Soviet Union. What is left here now except are these few websites?

Maedhros , November 7, 2017 at 4:27 pm

If there is evidence, you should be able to provide some so that readers can analyze and discuss it. Exactly what evidence has been provided that the Russian government manipulated the 2016 election?

CitizenOne , November 7, 2017 at 10:42 pm

Robert Parry You Nailed It!!!

I need to do a little research to see how far back you used the term "New McCarthyism" to describe the next cold war with Russia. It was about the same time the first allegations of a Trump-Russia conspiracy was floated by the MSM. I do not pretend to know how much airtime they spent covering their coverup for all that the MSM did to profit from SuperPacs. They have webed a weave that conspires to conceive to the tunes of billions of dollars spent to reprieve their intent to deceive us and distract us away from their investment in Donald Trump which was the real influence in the public spaces to gain mega profits from extorting the SuperPacs into spending their dollars to defeat the trumped up candidate they created and boosted. One has to look no further than the Main Stream Press (MSM) to find the guilty party with motive and opportunity to cash in on a candidacy which if not for the money motive would not pass any test of journalistic integrity but would make money for the Media.

The Russian Boogeyman was created shortly after the election and is an obvious attempt to shield and defend the actions of the MSM which was the real fake news covered in the nightly news leading up to the election which sought to get money rather than present the facts.

This is an example of how much power and influence the MSM has on us all to be able to upend a National election and turn around and blame some foreign Devil for the results of an election.

The Russians had little to do with Trumps election. The MSM had everything to do with it. They cast blame on the Russians and in so doing create a new Cold War which suits the power establishment and suitably diverts all of our attention away from their machinations to influence the last presidential election.

Win Win. More Nuclear Weapons and more money for the MIC and more money for all of the corporations who would profit from a new Cold War.

Profit in times of deceit make more money from those who cheat.

CitizenOne , November 7, 2017 at 11:25 pm

Things not talked about:

1. James Comey and his very real influence on the election has never entered the media space for an instant. It has gone down the collective memory hole. That silence has been deafening because he was the person who against DOJ advice reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton and the Servergate investigation after it had been closed by the FBI just days before the election.

The silence of the media on the influence on the election by the reopening of James Comey's Servergate investigation and how the mass media press coverage implicating Hillary Clinton (again) in supposed crimes (which never resulted in an indictment) influenced the National Election in ways that have never been examined by the MSM is a nail in the coffin of media impartiality.

Why have they not investigated James Comey? Why has the MSM instead created a Russian Boogeyman? Why was he invited to testify about the Russian connection but never cross examined about his own influence? Why is the clearest reason for election meddling by James Comey not even spoken of by the MSM? This is because the MSM does not want to cover events as they happened but wants to recreate a alternate reality suitable to themselves which serves their interests and convinces us that the MSM has no part at all in downplaying the involvement of themselves in the election but wants to create a foreign enemy to blame.

It serves many interests. The MSM lies to all of us for the benefit of the MIC. It serves to support White House which will deliver maximum investments in the Defense Industry. It does this by creating a foreign enemy which they create for us to fear and be afraid of.

It is obvious to everyone with a clear eyed history of how the last election went down and how the MSM and the government later played upon our fears to grab more cash have cashed in under the present administration.

It is up to us to elect leaders who will reject this manipulation by the media and who will not be cowed by the establishment. We have the power enshrined in our Constitution to elect leaders who will pave the path forward to a better future.

Those future leaders will have to do battle with a media infrastructure that serves the power structure and conspires to deceive us all.

Jessica K , November 8, 2017 at 9:43 am

Clear critical thinking must accompany free speech, however, and irrationality seems to have beset Americans, too stuck in the mud of identity politics. Can they get out? I have hopes that a push is coming from the new multipolar world Xi and Putin are advocating, as well as others (but not the George Soros NWO variety). The big bully American government, actually ruled by oligarchy, has not been serving its regular folks well, so things are falling apart. Seems like the sex scandals, political scandals especially of the Democrat brand, money scandals are unraveling to expose underlying societal sickness in the Disunited States of America.

It is interesting that this purge shakeup in Saudi Arabia is happening in 2017, one hundred years since the shakeup in Russia, the Bolshevik Revolution. So shake-ups are happening everywhere. I think a pattern is emerging of major changes in world events. Just yesterday I read that because "Russia-gate" isn't working well, senators are looking to start a "China-gate", for evidence of Trump collusion with Chinese oligarchs. Ludicrous. As Seer once said, "The Empire in panic mode".

Patricia, thanks for the info on Sid Blumenthal, HRC and the selling of arms from Libya to ME jihadists, which seems to exonerate Chris Stevens from those dirty deeds and lays blame squarely at Blumenthal's and Clinton's doorstep; changes my thinking. And thanks to Robert Parry for continuing to push back at the participation of MSM and government players in the Orwellian masquerade being pulled on the sheeple.

Truther , November 8, 2017 at 12:54 pm

Just the facts for those of you who have minds still open. suggest you bookmark it quickly as the moderator will delete it within the hour.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/a-timeline-of-the-trump-russia-scandal-w511067

[Nov 08, 2017] More 'Fake News,' Alas, From the New York Times The American Conservative by Andrew J. Bacevich

Notable quotes:
"... Third, Manafort's efforts mattered bigly. In 2010, he helped Victor F. Yanukovych become president of Ukraine. An unquestionably nasty piece of work, Yanukovych was, according to Farkas, "Putin's man in Kiev." Yet like it or not, he came to power as the result of democratic election. In 2013, Yanukovych opted against joining the EU, which along with NATO, had, in Farkas's words, "experienced a burst of membership expansion" right up to Russia's own borders. ..."
"... In response to Yanukovych's action, "the Ukrainian people," that is, the enlightened ones, "took to the streets," forcing him to flee the country. Rather than bowing to the expressed will of the people, however, Russia's Vladimir Putin "instigated a separatist movement" in eastern Ukraine, thereby triggering "a war between Russia and Ukraine that continues to this day." ..."
"... To accept Farkas's account as truthful, one would necessarily conclude that as Manafort was hijacking history, the United States remained quietly on the sidelines, an innocent bystander sending prayers heavenward in hopes that freedom and democracy might everywhere prevail ..."
"... Furthermore, Russia was not alone in its meddling. The United States has been equally guilty. When "the Ukrainian people took to the streets," as Farkas puts it, the State Department and CIA were behind the scenes vigorously pulling strings. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland believed it was incumbent upon the United States to decide who should govern Ukraine. ("Yats is the guy," she said on a leaked call). Nuland would brook no interference from allies slow to follow Washington's lead. ("F–k the EU," she told the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.) ..."
"... That Ukraine is, as Farkas correctly states, a torn country, did not give Nuland pause. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. policymakers have assigned to themselves a magical ability to repair such tears and to make broken countries whole. The results of their labors are amply on display everywhere from Somalia and Haiti to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Now add Ukraine to that sorry list. ..."
"... Even so, can't we at least assume Nuland's motives were morally superior to Putin's? After all, President Putin is clearly a thug whereas Nuland is an estimable product of the American foreign policy establishment. She's married to Robert Kagan, for heaven's sake. ..."
"... This is why we should disband politically oriented NGO's. In essence, a country is only a democracy if it is pro-U.S. Resistance is futile. Meddling at this level will only bring about more conflict, instability and military obligations will follow. It is good to be king but it is also quite expensive and ultimately ruinous. ..."
"... Imperialism rules other peoples against their will, necessitating for its survival the lessening of democratic accountability at home, too, since it lessens the importance of citizens' own concerns, also requiring for its warmaking security keeping voters in the dark. ..."
"... Make that, More 'Fake News,' Of Course From the New York Times. Saturated with Fake News of various manifestations, the NY Times and its rancid analog Washington Post on the other end of the Crony-Elite NY-DC axis are unreadable. ..."
"... Given a ham-fisted EU run by Elite hacks in Brussels that is white washing Europe's Christian legacy, mandating overbearing economic and social controls and absorbing millions of net negative migrants, the Czechs, Poles, Hungarians and Balts seem to be having second thoughts. BTW, The Russians will not and do not want to invade those countries. As the EU spins out of control and the One Belt One Road initiative develops, Russia only needs to ask them what direction they want to face in the future. ..."
"... So, having said that, on foreign policy they, all newspapers and the vast majority of magazines, are war-peddling neo-con supporters. ..."
"... Do not buy any major newspaper. Let them wither away and, it wasn't fake spun 'news' we have been getting only this year: fake agenda driven bull has been going on for decades. Go to the internet and overseas for news think what I said over and you will see ..."
"... All this social, economic and political mess is the result of deregulation in the economic, social, political spheres. The effects of those deregulations are now quite obvious in: economy, society, morality and politics that are already corrupted to the core, but the corruption is not stopping there, it is consuming everything else on its way. There is no end to it, and what is even more surprising is that people want even more of all kinds of deregulations etc. ..."
"... Wouldn't it be more logical to bring back responsibility, moral standards and decency to politics, society and economy etc? What I now see in media is the total lack of any ideas on how to correct the obvious, but instead everybody is spinning his/her lies to make them more believable to the yet unconverted. This is pure relativism and sophistry and it destroys not only the USA, but the West as well. ..."
"... If an opinion piece in NYT or other MSM blatantly distorts the facts, then it belongs to the category of "fake news." Which should probably be called "malicious rumors." So the defense of some commenters that you can blatantly lie in opinion pieces (the right NYT exercised to the full extent in this particular example and for which Bacevich criticized them) is wrong. Anti-Russian witch hunt in NYT and other MSM destroys the credibility of the USA version of neoliberalism as well as the USA foreign policy. Along with Trump election, I view it as a symptom of the crisis of neoliberalism for which the US elite is unable to find a more suitable answer than scapegoating. Also the fact that Nuland is married to neocon warmonger Kagan is a material fact. ..."
Nov 08, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Disregarding President Trump's insistent claim that the establishment press propagates "fake news" requires a constant effort -- especially when a prestigious outlet like the New York Times allows itself to be used for blatantly fraudulent purposes.

I cherish the First Amendment. Mark me down as favoring journalism that is loud, lively, and confrontational. When members of the media snooze -- falling for fictitious claims about Saddam's WMD program or Gaddafi's genocidal intentions, for example -- we all lose.

So the recent decision by Times editors to publish an op-ed regarding Paul Manafort's involvement in Ukraine is disturbing. That the Times is keen to bring down Donald Trump is no doubt the case. Yet if efforts to do so entail grotesque distortions of U.S. policy before Trump, then we are courting real trouble. Put simply, ousting Trump should not come at the cost of whitewashing the follies that contributed to Trump's rise in the first place.

The offending Times op-ed, the handiwork of Evelyn N. Farkas, appears under the title "With Manafort, It Really Is About Russia, Not Ukraine." During the Obama administration, Farkas served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, and Mess Kit Repair. Okay, I added that last bit, but it does seem like quite an expansive charter for a mere deputy assistant secretary.

The story Farkas tells goes like this.

First, from the moment it achieved independence in 1991, Ukraine was a divided nation, "torn between Western Europe and Russia." Ukrainians in the country's western precincts wanted to join the European Union and NATO. Those further to east "oriented themselves toward Russia, which exerted maximum influence to keep Ukraine closely aligned." In one camp were enlightened Ukrainians. In the other camp, the unenlightened.

Second, Manafort's involvement in this intra-Ukrainian dispute was -- shockingly -- never about "advanc[ing] the interests of democracy, Western Europe or the United States." Manafort's motives were strictly venal. In what Farkas describes as a "standoff between democracy and autocracy," he threw in with the autocrats, thereby raking in millions.

Third, Manafort's efforts mattered bigly. In 2010, he helped Victor F. Yanukovych become president of Ukraine. An unquestionably nasty piece of work, Yanukovych was, according to Farkas, "Putin's man in Kiev." Yet like it or not, he came to power as the result of democratic election. In 2013, Yanukovych opted against joining the EU, which along with NATO, had, in Farkas's words, "experienced a burst of membership expansion" right up to Russia's own borders.

In response to Yanukovych's action, "the Ukrainian people," that is, the enlightened ones, "took to the streets," forcing him to flee the country. Rather than bowing to the expressed will of the people, however, Russia's Vladimir Putin "instigated a separatist movement" in eastern Ukraine, thereby triggering "a war between Russia and Ukraine that continues to this day."

To accept Farkas's account as truthful, one would necessarily conclude that as Manafort was hijacking history, the United States remained quietly on the sidelines, an innocent bystander sending prayers heavenward in hopes that freedom and democracy might everywhere prevail .

Such was hardly the case, however. One need not be a Putin apologist to note that the United States was itself engaged in a program of instigation, one that ultimately induced a hostile -- but arguably defensive -- Russian response.

In the wake of the Cold War, the EU and NATO did not experience a "burst" of expansion, a formulation suggesting joyous spontaneity. Rather, with Washington's enthusiastic support, the West embarked upon a deliberate eastward march at the Kremlin's expense, an undertaking made possible by (and intended to exploit) Russia's weakened state. In football, it's called piling on.

That this project worked to the benefit of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, the Baltic Republics, and others is very much the case. On that score, it is to be applauded.

That at some point a resentful Russia would push back was all but certain. Indeed, more than a few Western observers had warned against such a response.

The proposed incorporation of Ukraine into NATO brought matters to a head. For Putin, this was an unacceptable prospect. He acted as would any U.S. president contemplating the absorption of a near neighbor into hostile bloc of nations. Indeed, he acted much as had Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy when they assessed the implications of Cuba joining the Soviet bloc.

That doesn't justify or excuse Putin's meddling in Ukraine. Yet it suggests an explanation for Russian behavior other than the bitterness of an ex-KGB colonel still with his shorts in a knot over losing the Cold War. Russia has an obvious and compelling interest in who controls Ukraine, even if few in Washington or in the editorial offices of the New York Times will acknowledge that reality.

Furthermore, Russia was not alone in its meddling. The United States has been equally guilty. When "the Ukrainian people took to the streets," as Farkas puts it, the State Department and CIA were behind the scenes vigorously pulling strings. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland believed it was incumbent upon the United States to decide who should govern Ukraine. ("Yats is the guy," she said on a leaked call). Nuland would brook no interference from allies slow to follow Washington's lead. ("F–k the EU," she told the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.)

That Ukraine is, as Farkas correctly states, a torn country, did not give Nuland pause. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. policymakers have assigned to themselves a magical ability to repair such tears and to make broken countries whole. The results of their labors are amply on display everywhere from Somalia and Haiti to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Now add Ukraine to that sorry list.

Even so, can't we at least assume Nuland's motives were morally superior to Putin's? After all, President Putin is clearly a thug whereas Nuland is an estimable product of the American foreign policy establishment. She's married to Robert Kagan, for heaven's sake.

Persuade yourself that the United States is all about democracy promotion, as Farkas appears to believe, and the answer to that question is clearly yes. Alas, the record of American statecraft stretching over decades provides an abundance of contrary evidence. In practice, the United States supports democracy only when it finds it convenient to do so. Should circumstances require, it unhesitatingly befriends despots, especially rich ones that pay cash while purchasing American weaponry.

Yanukovych was Putin's man, "and therefore, indirectly, so was Mr. Manafort," Farkas concludes. All that now remains is to determine "the extent to which Mr. Manafort was Putin's man in Washington." For Farkas, the self-evident answer to that question cannot come too soon.

As to whether Russia -- or any other great power -- might have legitimate security interests that the United States would do well to respect, that's not a matter worth bothering about. Thus does the imperative of ousting Trump eclipse the need to confront the pretensions and the hubris that helped make Trump possible.

Andrew Bacevich is writer-at-large at The American Conservative

John Fargo , says: November 7, 2017 at 11:17 pm

This is why the term "fake news" is so harmful and should not be used by media outlets. The use of "bad journalism" would be much more useful as it forces the claimants to justify their reasons for doing so.
"Fake news" is just a dog whistle.
William Dalton , says: November 8, 2017 at 12:02 am
Has it not occurred to the foreign policy establishment in Washington that it is more in America's national interests for Ukraine to remain in Moscow's orbit, so as to strengthen U.S.-Russian relations, not exacerbate tensions, rather than to pull them into the EU, or, God forbid, NATO? Isn't this what any of the seasoned experts at Foggy Bottom would tell you? Why aren't they doing so?
Tiktaalik , says: November 8, 2017 at 2:49 am
Two comments in order

1) Yanukovich won in 2004 as well and the election results were hijacked by 'Maidan'

2) Yanukovich wasn't Putin man back in 2010. As a matter of fact, he and his party actively promoted EU integration deal, until they read its actual conditions. After that they backtracked and rushed to Putin for a support.

So it was classical case of sitting on two chairs simultaneously.

JonB , says: November 8, 2017 at 5:39 am
Completely agree with John Fargo. "Fake News" should be reserved for deliberate falsehoods published knowingly. This NYT op-ed amounts to "an interpretation of history Bacevich doesn't agree with." I may not agree with it either – but it's not like claiming that the Vegas shooter was anti-Trump, or creating a Facebook account for a non-existent person or organization.
Nolan , says: November 8, 2017 at 6:42 am
Mr Fargo: Disagree. "Bad journalism" implies the author is lazy yet innocent in their way. "Fake news" is more about narrative control and manipulation of the reader through reinvention or exaggeration, et cetera. Calling articles and outlets fake news is more accurate and levies much more weight against the lies and deceit than simply accusing someone or thing of bad journalism.
Christian Chuba , says: November 8, 2017 at 6:54 am
This is why we should disband politically oriented NGO's. In essence, a country is only a democracy if it is pro-U.S. Resistance is futile. Meddling at this level will only bring about more conflict, instability and military obligations will follow. It is good to be king but it is also quite expensive and ultimately ruinous.
Fran Macadam , says: November 8, 2017 at 7:30 am
If it were all about democracy promotion, they wouldn't also be so anxious to negate an election here at home. Imperialism rules other peoples against their will, necessitating for its survival the lessening of democratic accountability at home, too, since it lessens the importance of citizens' own concerns, also requiring for its warmaking security keeping voters in the dark.
SteveM , says: November 8, 2017 at 7:36 am
Re: "More 'Fake News,' Alas, From the New York Times"

Make that, More 'Fake News,' Of Course From the New York Times. Saturated with Fake News of various manifestations, the NY Times and its rancid analog Washington Post on the other end of the Crony-Elite NY-DC axis are unreadable.

Re: "That this project worked to the benefit of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, the Baltic Republics, and others is very much the case. On that score, it is to be applauded."

Given a ham-fisted EU run by Elite hacks in Brussels that is white washing Europe's Christian legacy, mandating overbearing economic and social controls and absorbing millions of net negative migrants, the Czechs, Poles, Hungarians and Balts seem to be having second thoughts. BTW, The Russians will not and do not want to invade those countries. As the EU spins out of control and the One Belt One Road initiative develops, Russia only needs to ask them what direction they want to face in the future.

Dee , says: November 8, 2017 at 8:08 am
How is it someone's "opinion" constitutes "fake News"? Trump did not win by policy issues, he rode the right-wing outrage at all things clinton/libtard better than anyone else. His policy positions were mostly promise everything to everyone, but his campaign was about Lock her up/ build the wall! After bashing Goldman Sachs during the election, once he won he promptly filled his cabinet with them and other mega donor types.
Mario Diana , says: November 8, 2017 at 9:30 am
@John Fargo – I'm in almost complete sympathy with Mr. Bacevich's essay, but you make an excellent point. "Bad journalism" is the better term. In fact, the only criticism I can make of your statement is that "dog whistle" is the wrong term. Everyone associates the term "fake news" with Donald Trump. (If it were possible, he no doubt would have trademarked it.) Using the term alienates the very people who need to hear criticisms like those in Mr. Bacevich's essay. They hear it, too; and upon hearing it, they stop listening.
Egypt Steve , says: November 8, 2017 at 11:34 am
Look, elite and non-elite self-delusion about the purity of U.S. motives abroad dates back to the Roosevelt administration at least -- and I mean the Teddy Roosevelt administration. I don't see how any of this amounts to a defense of charges of money-laundering against Manafort.
Janek , says: November 8, 2017 at 11:37 am
I disagree with John Fargo. The news that NYT, Washington Post, and other media outlets (not only liberal ) "produce" is the "Fake News". "Bad journalism" should be reserved and used in the sense Nolan explains. Besides the "Fake News" on the so called "left" in American politics in general is the problem of "double speak" and speaking with the "forked tongues". American "right" is the camp of the white flag.
Tom , says: November 8, 2017 at 12:20 pm
The op-ed page is for opinion pieces of writing and that is what this was an opinion. It isn't fake news because it isn't news.
SteveM , says: November 8, 2017 at 12:43 pm
Re: Janek:

Besides the "Fake News" on the so called "left" in American politics in general is the problem of "double speak" and speaking with the "forked tongues". American "right" is the camp of the white flag.

I've mentioned the various "flavors" of Fake News before. There is (1) the obvious – what is claimed as true is actually false. But also (2), what is claimed as important, actually isn't. And (3) what is important, is weakly or not reported at all.

An example of Type 2 is the WaPost reporting on its front page before the 2016 that Jared Kushner may have been greased into the Harvard MBA program. As if Ivy League greasing by monied Elites is unheard of. How was that front page news? And how about the acceptances of Chelsea Clinton (Stanford) and Malia Obama (Harvard)?

The cases of Type 3 Fake News are much more egregious. For example, the reasoned arguments and analysis by retired American intelligence officers and academics that the Syrian forces "chemical weapon attack" in April was almost certainly a false flag with staged recovery activity.

The NY Times and WaPost have consistently refused to acknowledge that those arguments and analysis even exist.

The linking of Russia to the DNC email leaks as factual by the Times, Post and NPR without a scintilla of published hard evidence is another example.

There are many more examples of Type 3 Fake News that could be demonstrated. Much of what claims to be journalism by the MSM is now Fake News trash.

Siarlys Jenkins , says: November 8, 2017 at 1:09 pm
Disregarding President Trump's insistent claim that the establishment press propagates "fake news" requires a constant effort -- especially when a prestigious outlet like the New York Times allows itself to be used for blatantly fraudulent purposes.

I agree in principal, although I note that President Trump and his team are as guilty of fake news as anyone, and the president himself appears to be positively delusional. I might at times disagree with Bacevich as to which news is fake.

I would also agree that there has been a great deal of "fake news" out of Ukraine, and what is really going on their is a former SSR with a bitterly divided population that each has about equal numbers, proponderance in some territories compared to others, and equally opportunistic leadership showing no great commitment to anything recognizable as "democracy."

Fayez Abedaziz , says: November 8, 2017 at 3:22 pm
Say, can we refrain from using the word 'journalism' when we refer to the American media? We should.

The internet and sources overseas, such as the Independent News paper/site out of Britain, have news that is not purposely spun as is by the neo-con American news papers and magazines. Not as much, anyway. Several points here, for example of what bad news (pun intended) the joke of American media is:

1- quit calling the main stream media liberal or left. They are liberal in a 'social issues sense,' that is, to be politically correct.

2- So, having said that, on foreign policy they, all newspapers and the vast majority of magazines, are war-peddling neo-con supporters.

3-They have agendas. Do we not remember how they, at the new york times, peddled the war against Iraq and how, when you look at the editorial page you feel that these people and the guests opinion writers are soulless people that have no concern for America's 'flyover' country?

4- Yeah, isn't that ironic that these people look down on America's middle class, blue collar workers and yes, it's troops, by that constant bashing of nations here and there and pushing for aggressive stands or even military attacks? Let the people at the major newspapers like this n.y.times rag tell us when they served in the U.S. military or their when their offspring did or when they're gonna join and volunteer for combat duty. Never mind, I've got the answer-none of 'em.

Do not buy any major newspaper. Let them wither away and, it wasn't fake spun 'news' we have been getting only this year: fake agenda driven bull has been going on for decades. Go to the internet and overseas for news think what I said over and you will see

Janek , says: November 8, 2017 at 3:39 pm
@SteveM

Not everybody has the time to analyze the deluge of all the "Fake News" and categorize it into classes and/or sub-classes you or somebody else proposes. Where all that leads? Soon we will have new sociopolitical discipline and experts on "fake-newsology" that will introduce another layer of pseudo-information that will have to be translated to the uninitiated and unwashed.

All this social, economic and political mess is the result of deregulation in the economic, social, political spheres. The effects of those deregulations are now quite obvious in: economy, society, morality and politics that are already corrupted to the core, but the corruption is not stopping there, it is consuming everything else on its way. There is no end to it, and what is even more surprising is that people want even more of all kinds of deregulations etc.

Wouldn't it be more logical to bring back responsibility, moral standards and decency to politics, society and economy etc? What I now see in media is the total lack of any ideas on how to correct the obvious, but instead everybody is spinning his/her lies to make them more believable to the yet unconverted. This is pure relativism and sophistry and it destroys not only the USA, but the West as well.

nikbez

If an opinion piece in NYT or other MSM blatantly distorts the facts, then it belongs to the category of "fake news." Which should probably be called "malicious rumors."

So the defense of some commenters that you can blatantly lie in opinion pieces (the right NYT exercised to the full extent in this particular example and for which Bacevich criticized them) is wrong.

Anti-Russian witch hunt in NYT and other MSM destroys the credibility of the USA version of neoliberalism as well as the USA foreign policy. Along with Trump election, I view it as a symptom of the crisis of neoliberalism for which the US elite is unable to find a more suitable answer than scapegoating.

Also the fact that Nuland is married to neocon warmonger Kagan is a material fact.

[Nov 08, 2017] Can Putin Survive by George Friedman

It is interesting to access George Friedman after two and half years since it was made. Looks like he is a bad forcaster.
The Us plot to move Ukraine to the "Baltic states model" was the major geopolitical victory of the Obama administration. and the EU has similar goals, so we can talk about joint invasion into traditional Russian geopolitical space by the USA and EU.
Notable quotes:
"... This week, we revisit a Geopolitical Weekly first published in July 2014 that explored whether Russian President Vladimir Putin could hold on to power despite his miscalculations in Ukraine, a topic that returned to prominence with his recent temporary absence from public view . While Putin has since reappeared, the issues highlighted by his disappearing act persist. ..."
"... Ukraine is, of course, the place to start. The country is vital to Russia as a buffer against the West and as a route for delivering energy to Europe, which is the foundation of the Russian economy. ..."
"... Part of the reason Putin had replaced Boris Yeltsin in 2000 was Yeltsin's performance during the Kosovo war. Russia was allied with the Serbs and had not wanted NATO to launch a war against Serbia. Russian wishes were disregarded. The Russian views simply didn't matter to the West. Still, when the air war failed to force Belgrade's capitulation, the Russians negotiated a settlement that allowed U.S. and other NATO troops to enter and administer Kosovo. As part of that settlement, Russian troops were promised a significant part in peacekeeping in Kosovo. But the Russians were never allowed to take up that role, and Yeltsin proved unable to respond to the insult. ..."
"... Putin also replaced Yeltsin because of the disastrous state of the Russian economy. Though Russia had always been poor, there was a pervasive sense that it been a force to be reckoned with in international affairs. Under Yeltsin, however, Russia had become even poorer and was now held in contempt in international affairs. Putin had to deal with both issues. ..."
"... The breaking point came in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution of 2004. Yanukovich was elected president that year under dubious circumstances, but demonstrators forced him to submit to a second election. He lost, and a pro-Western government took office. At that time, Putin accused the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies of having organized the demonstrations. Fairly publicly, this was the point when Putin became convinced that the West intended to destroy the Russian Federation, sending it the way of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... The Ukrainian crisis has made things worse. Capital flight from Russia in the first six months stood at $76 billion, compared to $63 billion for all of 2013. Foreign direct investment fell 50 percent in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013. And all this happened in spite of oil prices remaining higher than $100 per barrel. ..."
"... The Politburo model is designed for a leader to build coalitions among factions. Putin has been very good at doing that, but then he has been very successful at all the things he has done until now. His ability to hold things together declines as trust in his abilities declines and various factions concerned about the consequences of remaining closely tied to a failing leader start to maneuver. Like Khrushchev, who was failing in economic and foreign policy, Putin could have his colleagues remove him. ..."
"... Ultimately, politicians who miscalculate and mismanage tend not to survive. Putin miscalculated in Ukraine, failing to anticipate the fall of an ally, failing to respond effectively and then stumbling badly in trying to recoup. His management of the economy has not been exemplary of late either, to say the least. He has colleagues who believe they could do a better job, and now there are important people in Europe who would be glad to see him go. He must reverse this tide rapidly, or he may be replaced. ..."
Mar 24, 2015 | Stratfor
Editor's Note: This week, we revisit a Geopolitical Weekly first published in July 2014 that explored whether Russian President Vladimir Putin could hold on to power despite his miscalculations in Ukraine, a topic that returned to prominence with his recent temporary absence from public view. While Putin has since reappeared, the issues highlighted by his disappearing act persist.

There is a general view that Vladimir Putin governs the Russian Federation as a dictator, that he has defeated and intimidated his opponents and that he has marshaled a powerful threat to surrounding countries. This is a reasonable view, but perhaps it should be re-evaluated in the context of recent events.

Ukraine and the Bid to Reverse Russia's Decline

Ukraine is, of course, the place to start. The country is vital to Russia as a buffer against the West and as a route for delivering energy to Europe, which is the foundation of the Russian economy. On Jan. 1, Ukraine's president was Viktor Yanukovich, generally regarded as favorably inclined to Russia. Given the complexity of Ukrainian society and politics, it would be unreasonable to say Ukraine under him was merely a Russian puppet. But it is fair to say that under Yanukovich and his supporters, fundamental Russian interests in Ukraine were secure.

This was extremely important to Putin. Part of the reason Putin had replaced Boris Yeltsin in 2000 was Yeltsin's performance during the Kosovo war. Russia was allied with the Serbs and had not wanted NATO to launch a war against Serbia. Russian wishes were disregarded. The Russian views simply didn't matter to the West. Still, when the air war failed to force Belgrade's capitulation, the Russians negotiated a settlement that allowed U.S. and other NATO troops to enter and administer Kosovo. As part of that settlement, Russian troops were promised a significant part in peacekeeping in Kosovo. But the Russians were never allowed to take up that role, and Yeltsin proved unable to respond to the insult.

Putin also replaced Yeltsin because of the disastrous state of the Russian economy. Though Russia had always been poor, there was a pervasive sense that it been a force to be reckoned with in international affairs. Under Yeltsin, however, Russia had become even poorer and was now held in contempt in international affairs. Putin had to deal with both issues. He took a long time before moving to recreate Russian power, though he said early on that the fall of the Soviet Union had been the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. This did not mean he wanted to resurrect the Soviet Union in its failed form, but rather that he wanted Russian power to be taken seriously again, and he wanted to protect and enhance Russian national interests.

The breaking point came in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution of 2004. Yanukovich was elected president that year under dubious circumstances, but demonstrators forced him to submit to a second election. He lost, and a pro-Western government took office. At that time, Putin accused the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies of having organized the demonstrations. Fairly publicly, this was the point when Putin became convinced that the West intended to destroy the Russian Federation, sending it the way of the Soviet Union. For him, Ukraine's importance to Russia was self-evident. He therefore believed that the CIA organized the demonstration to put Russia in a dangerous position, and that the only reason for this was the overarching desire to cripple or destroy Russia. Following the Kosovo affair, Putin publicly moved from suspicion to hostility to the West.

The Russians worked from 2004 to 2010 to undo the Orange Revolution. They worked to rebuild the Russian military, focus their intelligence apparatus and use whatever economic influence they had to reshape their relationship with Ukraine. If they couldn't control Ukraine, they did not want it to be controlled by the United States and Europe. This was, of course, not their only international interest, but it was the pivotal one.

Russia's invasion of Georgia had more to do with Ukraine than it had to do with the Caucasus. At the time, the United States was still bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. While Washington had no formal obligation to Georgia, there were close ties and implicit guarantees. The invasion of Georgia was designed to do two things. The first was to show the region that the Russian military, which had been in shambles in 2000, was able to act decisively in 2008. The second was to demonstrate to the region, and particularly to Kiev, that American guarantees, explicit or implicit, had no value. In 2010, Yanukovich was elected president of Ukraine, reversing the Orange Revolution and limiting Western influence in the country.

Recognizing the rift that was developing with Russia and the general trend against the United States in the region, the Obama administration tried to recreate older models of relationships when Hillary Clinton presented Putin with a "reset" button in 2009. But Washington wanted to restore the relationship in place during what Putin regarded as the "bad old days." He naturally had no interest in such a reset. Instead, he saw the United States as having adopted a defensive posture, and he intended to exploit his advantage.

One place he did so was in Europe, using EU dependence on Russian energy to grow closer to the Continent, particularly Germany. But his high point came during the Syrian affair, when the Obama administration threatened airstrikes after Damascus used chemical weapons only to back off from its threat. The Russians aggressively opposed Obama's move, proposing a process of negotiations instead. The Russians emerged from the crisis appearing decisive and capable, the United States indecisive and feckless. Russian power accordingly appeared on the rise, and in spite of a weakening economy, this boosted Putin's standing.

The Tide Turns Against Putin

Events in Ukraine this year, by contrast, have proved devastating to Putin. In January, Russia dominated Ukraine. By February, Yanukovich had fled the country and a pro-Western government had taken power. The general uprising against Kiev that Putin had been expecting in eastern Ukraine after Yanukovich's ouster never happened. Meanwhile, the Kiev government, with Western advisers, implanted itself more firmly. By July, the Russians controlled only small parts of Ukraine. These included Crimea, where the Russians had always held overwhelming military force by virtue of treaty, and a triangle of territory from Donetsk to Luhansk to Severodonetsk, where a small number of insurgents apparently supported by Russian special operations forces controlled a dozen or so towns.

If no Ukrainian uprising occurred, Putin's strategy was to allow the government in Kiev to unravel of its own accord and to split the United States from Europe by exploiting Russia's strong trade and energy ties with the Continent. And this is where the crash of the Malaysia Airlines jet is crucial. If it turns out - as appears to be the case - that Russia supplied air defense systems to the separatists and sent crews to man them (since operating those systems requires extensive training), Russia could be held responsible for shooting down the plane. And this means Moscow's ability to divide the Europeans from the Americans would decline. Putin then moves from being an effective, sophisticated ruler who ruthlessly uses power to being a dangerous incompetent supporting a hopeless insurrection with wholly inappropriate weapons. And the West, no matter how opposed some countries might be to a split with Putin, must come to grips with how effective and rational he really is.

Meanwhile, Putin must consider the fate of his predecessors. Nikita Khrushchev returned from vacation in October 1964 to find himself replaced by his protege, Leonid Brezhnev, and facing charges of, among other things, "harebrained scheming." Khrushchev had recently been humiliated in the Cuban missile crisis. This plus his failure to move the economy forward after about a decade in power saw his closest colleagues "retire" him. A massive setback in foreign affairs and economic failures had resulted in an apparently unassailable figure being deposed.

Russia's economic situation is nowhere near as catastrophic as it was under Khrushchev or Yeltsin, but it has deteriorated substantially recently, and perhaps more important, has failed to meet expectations. After recovering from the 2008 crisis, Russia has seen several years of declining gross domestic product growth rates, and its central bank is forecasting zero growth this year. Given current pressures, we would guess the Russian economy will slide into recession sometime in 2014. The debt levels of regional governments have doubled in the past four years, and several regions are close to bankruptcy. Moreover, some metals and mining firms are facing bankruptcy. The Ukrainian crisis has made things worse. Capital flight from Russia in the first six months stood at $76 billion, compared to $63 billion for all of 2013. Foreign direct investment fell 50 percent in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013. And all this happened in spite of oil prices remaining higher than $100 per barrel.

Putin's popularity at home soared after the successful Sochi Winter Olympics and after the Western media made him look like the aggressor in Crimea. He has, after all, built his reputation on being tough and aggressive. But as the reality of the situation in Ukraine becomes more obvious, the great victory will be seen as covering a retreat coming at a time of serious economic problems. For many leaders, the events in Ukraine would not represent such an immense challenge. But Putin has built his image on a tough foreign policy, and the economy meant his ratings were not very high before Ukraine.

Imagining Russia After Putin

In the sort of regime that Putin has helped craft, the democratic process may not be the key to understanding what will happen next. Putin has restored Soviet elements to the structure of the government, even using the term "Politburo" for his inner Cabinets. These are all men of his choosing, of course, and so one might assume they would be loyal to him. But in the Soviet-style Politburo, close colleagues were frequently the most feared.

The Politburo model is designed for a leader to build coalitions among factions. Putin has been very good at doing that, but then he has been very successful at all the things he has done until now. His ability to hold things together declines as trust in his abilities declines and various factions concerned about the consequences of remaining closely tied to a failing leader start to maneuver. Like Khrushchev, who was failing in economic and foreign policy, Putin could have his colleagues remove him.

It is difficult to know how a succession crisis would play out, given that the constitutional process of succession exists alongside the informal government Putin has created. From a democratic standpoint, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin are as popular as Putin is, and I suspect they both will become more popular in time. In a Soviet-style struggle, Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov and Security Council Chief Nicolai Patryushev would be possible contenders. But there are others. Who, after all, expected the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev?

Ultimately, politicians who miscalculate and mismanage tend not to survive. Putin miscalculated in Ukraine, failing to anticipate the fall of an ally, failing to respond effectively and then stumbling badly in trying to recoup. His management of the economy has not been exemplary of late either, to say the least. He has colleagues who believe they could do a better job, and now there are important people in Europe who would be glad to see him go. He must reverse this tide rapidly, or he may be replaced.

Putin is far from finished. But he has governed for 14 years counting the time Dmitri Medvedev was officially in charge, and that is a long time. He may well regain his footing, but as things stand at the moment, I would expect quiet thoughts to be stirring in his colleagues' minds. Putin himself must be re-examining his options daily. Retreating in the face of the West and accepting the status quo in Ukraine would be difficult, given that the Kosovo issue that helped propel him to power and given what he has said about Ukraine over the years. But the current situation cannot sustain itself. The wild card in this situation is that if Putin finds himself in serious political trouble, he might become more rather than less aggressive. Whether Putin is in real trouble is not something I can be certain of, but too many things have gone wrong for him lately for me not to consider the possibility. And as in any political crisis, more and more extreme options are contemplated if the situation deteriorates.

Those who think that Putin is both the most repressive and aggressive Russian leader imaginable should bear in mind that this is far from the case. Lenin, for example, was fearsome. But Stalin was much worse. There may similarly come a time when the world looks at the Putin era as a time of liberality. For if the struggle by Putin to survive, and by his challengers to displace him, becomes more intense, the willingness of all to become more brutal might well increase.

[Nov 07, 2017] Mueller is going after money laundering, which unsurprisingly leads to Ukraine. It's one of the oldest known tricks in the book keep in mind, Al Capone fell due to tax evasion.

Manafort can expose Nulandgate dirty kitchen. That's a danger for Mueller and for all Russiagate sponsors (including Podesta) ... So this possibility needs to be neutralized.
Notable quotes:
"... I suspect most here would find little to disagree with in the premise that Washington loves the elegance of 'the deal', in which it pressures an individual or organization or nation into caving in against his/its best interests, knowing it is getting the shitty end of the stick but unable to resist the relentless pressure. The USA calls it 'soft power', and it used to mean something quite different. Now it's like the difference between pulled pork and fast food. Both are satisfying, but one takes a long time to achieve. Instant gratification is all the rage these days, and Washington would much rather bring about an overnight coup than a decade-long transformation. ..."
"... But Yanukovych is still very much alive, and that was not likely in the script. I daresay he has a tale or two to tell about the terms he was offered and the deals he was encouraged to make, which is likely why no western journalists have ever sought permission to interview him in Russia. It's still surprising, because western analysts could have chimed in that he's pro-Russian, what did you expect but lies, if they didn't like what he said. ..."
"... I think what Washington wants is to strike a deal with Manafort which will avoid a trial and testimony which might introduce uncomfortable facts and avenues which might prove uncomfortable to explore. Consider; Manafort was right at the heart of the regime-change effort, and he must have seen and heard quite a few things that Washington would not like made public. It is just crazy to get at Russia and will absorb considerable risk to reach that goal, but a public trial of Manafort might be more of a liability than a show of western jurisprudence. ..."
"... Hence the hilarity. Those who wanted this probe have two bad option: defend Manafort, and thus be part of the corruption that Trump denounces; allow Manafort to fall and take Podesta with him. And to think that it all started in Ukraine. Every Zrada turns into Peremoga, even in DC. ..."
"... History will one day review this period as a mass hysteria equaled only by the Dreyfus Affair. Critical thinking is dead, and a significant group – if not a majority – simply accepts whatever pap it is fed by the popular media. ..."
"... Alexander makes an excellent point – what kind of incredible leverage must Russia possess, that a covert campaign of which no evidence exists to this day to sway public opinion in favour of leaving the EU prevailed over a very public and extremely overt effort by the United States and some European leaders to influence the vote for "Stay"? Further, how could such a feat be accomplished by an international pariah which is friendless and isolated? ..."
Nov 07, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

ucgsblog , November 6, 2017 at 11:36 am

Mueller is going after money laundering, which unsurprisingly leads to Ukraine. It's one of the oldest known tricks in the book – keep in mind, Al Capone fell due to tax evasion. In this case, money laundering can replace tax evasion. Also, anyone surprised that there have been links to Ukraine and the UK, but no links to Russia?
marknesop , November 6, 2017 at 12:06 pm
I suspect most here would find little to disagree with in the premise that Washington loves the elegance of 'the deal', in which it pressures an individual or organization or nation into caving in against his/its best interests, knowing it is getting the shitty end of the stick but unable to resist the relentless pressure. The USA calls it 'soft power', and it used to mean something quite different. Now it's like the difference between pulled pork and fast food. Both are satisfying, but one takes a long time to achieve. Instant gratification is all the rage these days, and Washington would much rather bring about an overnight coup than a decade-long transformation.

I imagine the pressure is on Manafort to agree to this sort of 'deal' to escape prison. And the narrative is shaping up to be that he was a lobbyist for the PRO-RUSSIAN PRESIDENT, Viktor Yanukovych. There's your Russian connection. Even though Putin did not care for Yanukovych, and Yanukovych only went to Moscow when he had come up against a stone wall with the EU, which obviously wanted Ukraine for free and could not have cared less for the economic damage forcing it to change its loyalties wholesale would have brought about. Still, according to the narrative, Yanukovych was pro-Russian.

But Yanukovych is still very much alive, and that was not likely in the script. I daresay he has a tale or two to tell about the terms he was offered and the deals he was encouraged to make, which is likely why no western journalists have ever sought permission to interview him in Russia. It's still surprising, because western analysts could have chimed in that he's pro-Russian, what did you expect but lies, if they didn't like what he said.

I think what Washington wants is to strike a deal with Manafort which will avoid a trial and testimony which might introduce uncomfortable facts and avenues which might prove uncomfortable to explore. Consider; Manafort was right at the heart of the regime-change effort, and he must have seen and heard quite a few things that Washington would not like made public. It is just crazy to get at Russia and will absorb considerable risk to reach that goal, but a public trial of Manafort might be more of a liability than a show of western jurisprudence.

ucgsblog , November 6, 2017 at 2:30 pm
There are several issues with that. First, the Judicial System is supposed to be beyond reproach. The DNC played that Russia Card, and have suffered as a result, because Americans responded with the "I Don't Give a Shit" card, and the RNC quickly pounced on that. I doubt that Mueller would sacrifice his career for political gains.

The problem that politicians face with the probe, is that he's leading a bipartisan effort. Yanukovich being pro-Russian isn't going to be enough, considering that most Americans know that the FSA was pro-American, and most don't support the FSA. So Mueller won't mind if Manafort spills the beans.

The problem is with the system. While Mueller might not mind, quite a few lobbyists will. The Russia bashing has given Mueller the chance to clean house from the major lobbyists. This means that the pro-Clinton people will be forced to defend Manafort, in an irony of ironies, because when it comes to money laundering, they're probably in on it. Instead of hitting Russia, they hit the "Drain the Swamp" button, which coincidentally happened to be Trump's slogan, which he is sure to take credit for.

Hence the hilarity. Those who wanted this probe have two bad option: defend Manafort, and thus be part of the corruption that Trump denounces; allow Manafort to fall and take Podesta with him. And to think that it all started in Ukraine. Every Zrada turns into Peremoga, even in DC.

ucgsblog , November 6, 2017 at 2:31 pm
It's neither chickenshit nor drunk; I was talking about the campaign managers for Trump and Clinton.
Cortes , November 5, 2017 at 4:55 am
The unseen [¿?] Kremlin hand:

http://theduran.com/putin-behind-brexit-russiagate-hysteria-spreads-britain/

The comment by "Ancient Briton" is priceless.

marknesop , November 5, 2017 at 9:43 am
History will one day review this period as a mass hysteria equaled only by the Dreyfus Affair. Critical thinking is dead, and a significant group – if not a majority – simply accepts whatever pap it is fed by the popular media.

Alexander makes an excellent point – what kind of incredible leverage must Russia possess, that a covert campaign of which no evidence exists to this day to sway public opinion in favour of leaving the EU prevailed over a very public and extremely overt effort by the United States and some European leaders to influence the vote for "Stay"? Further, how could such a feat be accomplished by an international pariah which is friendless and isolated?

The west would be wise to give over before its spiteful efforts do it irreparable damage. It will not, of course, wisdom being in short supply while idiocy is going spare.

kirill , November 5, 2017 at 7:01 am
http://russia-insider.com/en/nato-blogger-takes-sarin-bucket-challenge-raise-awareness-about-harmless-nerve-agent/ri21488

When you snooker them with facts, they just make shit up to wiggle their way out. Galeotti, Higgins and the rest of the NATzO bootlick slime.

[Nov 07, 2017] Dem Pundits Spent Yesterday Lying About DNC Primary Rigging Document by Caitlin Johnstone

Notable quotes:
"... Their argument, if you can call it that, rests on the claim that a document which unquestionably shows inappropriate bias and collusion does not show inappropriate bias and collusion because it contains a paragraph which says the document should not be construed as containing inappropriate bias and collusion. This is really boring and stupid, but since the Clinton cult is circulating this nonsense all over social media I figure I should probably write something for people to refute it with. ..."
Nov 07, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

Christopher H. Reply , November 07, 2017 at 11:20 AM

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/dem-pundits-spent-yesterday-lying-about-dnc-primary-rigging-document-d60019c59c3e

Nov 4

Dem Pundits Spent Yesterday Lying About DNC Primary Rigging Document

The establishment liberal spin machine has been working overtime the last 24 hours to make it seem as though former acting DNC chair Donna Brazile had not admitted what she'd admitted in an excerpt from her book published by Politico on Thursday.

Their argument, if you can call it that, rests on the claim that a document which unquestionably shows inappropriate bias and collusion does not show inappropriate bias and collusion because it contains a paragraph which says the document should not be construed as containing inappropriate bias and collusion. This is really boring and stupid, but since the Clinton cult is circulating this nonsense all over social media I figure I should probably write something for people to refute it with.

...

[Nov 07, 2017] Donna Brazile, the Rigged Democratic Primary, and Relitigating 2016 naked capitalism

Notable quotes:
"... By Lambert Strether of Corrente ..."
"... The agreement -- signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to [DNC lawyer] Marc Elias -- specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings. ..."
"... A second difference in substance: Let's remember that for Clinton, the JFA enabled her campaign to circumvent contribution limits for large donors (Brazile: "Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400"). The Sanders campaign , by contrast, had no issue with maxed out donors: "During fall '15, 99.8% of Bernie donors could give again" (because it's awful hard to max out $27 at a time). ..."
"... That's pretty amazing, isn't it? Personnel is policy, as they say, and the Clinton campaign has made sure that the DNC's Communications Director and new hires in the senior staff in the communications, technology, and research departments will be acceptable to it. The Clinton campaign will also review all mass email and communcations (which explains why Brazile, as interim DNC chair, couldn't send out a press release without checking with Brooklyn. Since the notorious debate schedule was already controlled by Wasserman Schultz, there was no point messing about with it, I assume.) There is one place in this passage where the general election is mentioned, so let's look at it: ..."
"... Second, the DNC itself does not ..."
"... But I'd like to know how far up the editorial totem poles the fix went and how it was achieved. ..."
"... It has been a while since I handled a criminal defense case, but I am not sure that the agreement is not in fact, criminal. When the Sanders for President campaign signed an agreement and paid money in consideration of getting access to the voter file and when the state parties agreed to merge their fundraising efforts with the DNC and HFA, the commercial fraud laws applied to that relationship. Since the fundraising was done using interstate phone calls, letters, and emails and the voter file access was provided by electronic transmissions from servers in DC to end users in Burlington, Vermont that includes 18 USC 1341, 1343 and 1346 (mail, wire and honest services fraud). These laws do not just ban outright lying, but also the concealment of material facts that one has a duty to disclose. ..."
"... The DNC got into the position of selling themselves to the Clintons as they were $20 million in debt, right? I have read that the major reason for these debts was that the DNC had not shrunk itself since the last campaign and was paying out a ton of money for consultants doing Christ knows what. In fact, Obama also used the DNC to support a stack of his consultants as well as grifters gotta grift, right? ..."
"... My question is whether this was a deliberate ploy on Obama and the Clinton factions to put the DNC into such a vulnerable position before 2016 came along that when the time came, they had to take up an offer that they could not refuse. I have not heard if Obama has made any comments on this fiasco that took place on his watch and it seems nobody wants to call him out on it. In the Brazile case, it is not a matter of following the money but following the lack of money. ..."
"... "Both sides in the Democratic Party's current faction fight, as I see it, are in denial about the true nature and scope of the problem "Both responses are essentially utopian: They rest on the premise that the Democratic Party is still a functioning political organization and that the United States is still a functioning democracy." ..."
Nov 07, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Donna Brazile, the "Rigged" Democratic Primary, and Relitigating 2016 Posted on November 6, 2017 by Lambert Strether By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Long-time Democratic[1] operative Donna Brazile, interim chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) after Debbie Wasserman Schultz was defenestrated[2], has, like two other participants in the 2016 Presidential election and at least one set of observers , written a book, Hacked , and published a long excerpt from it four days ago, in Politico . Here is the key passage, in which Brazile paraphrases and quotes a conversation with Gary Gensler, former of Goldman Sachs and the CFTC, and then the chief financial officer of the Clinton campaign:

[Gensler] described the party as fully under the control of Hillary's campaign , which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party's national committee.

Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund -- that figure represented $10,000 to each of the 32 states' parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement -- $320,000 -- and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.

Yes, you read that right. Although the Hillary Victory Fund was billed as aiding the states, in fact the states were simply pass-throughs, and the money went to the Clinton campaign. (This is not news; Politico covered the Victory Fun in 2016 : "The Democratic front-runner says she's raising big checks to help state committees, but they've gotten to keep only 1 percent of the $60 million raised.")

"Wait," I said. "That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You're telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?"

Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.

"That was the deal that Robby struck with Debbie," he explained, referring to campaign manager Robby Mook. "It was to sustain the DNC. We sent the party nearly $20 million from September until the convention, and more to prepare for the election."

After some research, Brazile finds a document ("the agreement") that spells out what "fully under the control of Hillary's campaign" meant operationally:

The agreement -- signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to [DNC lawyer] Marc Elias -- specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

I had been wondering why it was that I couldn't write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.

(Importantly, Gensler has not disputed this account, of which, assuming he's not vacationing Antarctica, he must have been aware of, given the media uproar. We can therefore assume its accurate). Note two aspects of this passage, which I'm quoting at such length to ensure we know what Brazile actually charged. I've helpfully underlined them: (1) Brazile leads with the money; that is, the Clinton Victory Fund, and (2) Brazile describes the DNC as "fully under the control" of the Clinton campaign.

Predictably, an enormous controversy erupted, much of it over the weekend just passed, but I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow of the talking points. (Glenn Greenwald provides an excellent media critique in "Four Viral Claims Spread by Journalists on Twitter in the Last Week Alone That Are False "; all four have to do with this controversy[3].) I think the following three quotes are key, the first two being oft-repeated talking points by Clinton loyalists:

First, from the current DNC chair, Tom Perez :

"The joint fundraising agreements were the same for each campaign except for the treasurer, and our understanding was that the DNC offered all of the presidential campaigns the opportunity to set up a JFA and work with the DNC to coordinate on how those funds were used to best prepare for the general election."

Question: Were the agreements "the same" for each campaign? (Perez focuses only on the JFA, but that omits a separate Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the DNC and the Clinton campaign, as we shall see below.)

Second, from 2005-9 DNC chair Howard Dean:

Question: Did the agreement apply only to the general election, and not the primary? (Dean says "this memo," but he also omits the distinction between the MOU and the JFA.)

Third, from Elizabeth Warren. CNN :

"We learned today from the former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile that the Clinton campaign, in her view, did rig the presidential nominating process by entering into an agreement to control day-to-day operations at the DNC," Tapper said, continuing on to describe specific arms of the DNC the Clinton camp had a say over, including strategy and staffing, noting that the agreement was "entered into in August of 2015," months before Clinton won the nomination .

Tapper then asked, "Do you agree with the notion that it was rigged?" And Warren responded simply: "Yes."

Question: Can we say that the 2016 Democratic primary was rigged? (Tapper uses the word "rigged," and Warren adopts it, but a careful reading of Brazile's article shows that although she uses the word, she does not actually make the claim.[4])

In this post, I'm going to answer each of these three questions by looking at the documents, plural, in question (Spoiler: My answers are "No," "No," and "Yes," respectively.) Here is a timeline of the documents:

In summary, the Clinton JFA set up the Hillary Victory Fund scam , the MOU gave Clinton control of (much of) the DNC apparatus, and ( according to Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver ) the Sanders JFA bought their campaign access to the DNC voter list, and was never used for fundraising because the DNC never asked the campaign to do any. So to answer the our first question, we'll look at the JFA. To answer the second, we'll look at the MOU. And to answer the third, we'll see how all the evidence balances out.

Were the Agreements "the Same" for Each Campaign?

Perez is wrong. The agreements were not at all the same, either formally or substantively.

Formally, the agreements were not the same because the Clinton JFA had an MOU (the "side deal") and the Sanders JFA did not. ABC :

[T]he Clinton campaign Friday afternoon confirmed the existence of a memo between the DNC and their campaign, which specifically outlines an expanded scope and interpretation of their funding agreement . [R]epresentatives from Sanders' former campaign say they only signed a basic, formulaic fundraising agreement that did not include any additional language about joint messaging or staffing decision-making [as does the MOU].

Substantively, the agreements weren't the same either. The substance of the JFA was a scheme enable the Hillary Victory Fund to collect "big checks" (as Politico puts it), supposedly behalf of the state parties, but in reality treating them as conduits to the coffers of the Clinton campaign. Page 3:

From time to time and in compliance with FECA, after expenses have been deducted from the gross proceeds, the Victory Fund will transfer the net proceeds to the Committees according to the Allocation Formula, as modified by any reallocation required.

"[T]he Committees" being the state party political committees, into whose accounts the contributions were deposited, only to be immediately removed and transferred to the Clinton campaign (at least for the states that signed entered into the agreement; a few did not).

However, the Sanders campaign wasn't in the business of collecting "big checks," being small-donor driven. Hence the substance of the agreement could not have been the same. ABC once more :

Former Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told ABC News Friday night that the campaign entered the agreement with the party in November 2015 to facilitate the campaign's access to the party's voter rolls. Weaver claims the DNC offered to credit any fundraising the senator did for the party against the costs of access to the party's data costs, priced at $250,000. But, Weaver continued, the party did not follow up about fundraising appearances for the independent senator.

Instead, the Sanders campaign raised the $250,000 from small donors. WaPo :

Weaver said the Sanders campaign decided early on to ignore the joint fundraising program and raise small dollars on its own to pay for access to the voter file. "Who are the wealthy people Bernie was going to bring to a fundraiser?" Weaver asked. "We had to buy the voter file right before the primaries."

A second difference in substance: Let's remember that for Clinton, the JFA enabled her campaign to circumvent contribution limits for large donors (Brazile: "Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400"). The Sanders campaign , by contrast, had no issue with maxed out donors: "During fall '15, 99.8% of Bernie donors could give again" (because it's awful hard to max out $27 at a time).

Suppose you were comparing two mortgages on different houses: One mortgage has a side deal attached, the other does not. One is for a lavish facility and demands a complex financing arrangement involving a third party. The other is for a fixer-upper and a lump sum is paid in cash. Would you say those two mortgages are "the same," or not? Even if they both had the word "Mortage" at the top of page one?

Did the Agreement Apply Only to the General Election, and not the Primary?

We now turn our attention to the MOU. Howard Dean, sadly , is wrong. The MOU contains two key passages; the first describes the relationship between Hillary for America (HFA; the Clinton campaign) and the DNC (Brazile: "fully under the control of Hillary's campaign"), and the second is language on the general election. Let's take each in turn. On control, pages 1 and 2:

With respect to the hiring of a DNC Communications Director , the DNC agrees that no later than September 11, 2015 it will hire one of two candidates previously identified as acceptable to HFA.

2. With respect to the hiring of future DNC senior staff in the communications, technology, and research departments , in the case of vacancy, the DNC will maintain the authority to make the final decision as between candidates acceptable to HFA. 3. Agreement by the DNC that HFA personnel will be consulted and have joint authority over strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research. The DNC will provide HFA advance opportunity to review on-line or mass email, communications that features a particular Democratic primary candidate . This does not include any communications related to primary debates – which will be exclusively controlled by the DNC. The DNC will alert HFA in advance of mailing any direct mail communications that features a particular Democratic primary candidate or his or her signature .

That's pretty amazing, isn't it? Personnel is policy, as they say, and the Clinton campaign has made sure that the DNC's Communications Director and new hires in the senior staff in the communications, technology, and research departments will be acceptable to it. The Clinton campaign will also review all mass email and communcations (which explains why Brazile, as interim DNC chair, couldn't send out a press release without checking with Brooklyn. Since the notorious debate schedule was already controlled by Wasserman Schultz, there was no point messing about with it, I assume.) There is one place in this passage where the general election is mentioned, so let's look at it:

Agreement by the DNC that HFA personnel will be consulted and have joint authority over strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election[-]related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research.

At the most generous reading, the Clinton campaign has "joint authority" with the DNC over "strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures." At the narrowest reading, given that the "general-election[-]related qualifier applies only to "communications," the joint authority applies to "strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and data, technology, analytics, and research." And given that the Clinton campaign is writing the checks that keep the DNC afloat, who do you think will have the whip hand in that "joint authority" relationship?

Now to the clause that supposedly says the agreement (JFA + MOU) applies only to the general election. Here it is, from page 3:

Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC's obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary. Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with other candidates

(Pause for hollow laughter, given Wasserman Schultz's defenestration, Brazile passing debate questions to the Clinton campaign, etc.). First, even though Hoho seems to think it's exculpatory, the clause is an obvious fig leaf. Glenn Greenwald explains :

DNC and Clinton allies pointed to the fact that the agreement contained self-justifying lawyer language claiming that it is "focused exclusively on preparations for the General," but as Fischer noted that passage "is contradicted by the rest of the agreement." This would be like creating a contract to explicitly bribe an elected official ("A will pay Politician B to vote YES on Bill X"), then adding a throwaway paragraph with a legalistic disclaimer that "nothing in this agreement is intended to constitute a bribe," and then have journalists cite that paragraph to proclaim that no bribe happened even though the agreement on its face explicitly says the opposite.

Second, the DNC itself does not believe that it has any "obligation of impartiality and neutrality" whatever. From Wilding et al. v. DNC Services Corporation, D/B/A Democratic National Committee and Deborah "Debbie" Wasserman Schultz (as cited in Naked Capitalism here ), the DNC's lawyer, Mr. Spiva:

MR. SPIVA: [W}here you have a party that's saying, We're gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we're gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have -- and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way . That's not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the Court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions.

Third, look at the institutional realities from point one on control. The Clinton campaign had control over the Communications Director slot and major strategic decisions from the moment the agreement was signed. Are we really to believe that they were behaving as neutral parties? (One obvious way to have shown that would have been to release the MOU either when it was signed.)

Can We Say that the 2016 Democratic Primary Was Rigged?

Brazile herself says no . She says, of "rigging":

I found no evidence, none whatsoever. 'The only thing I found, which I said, I've found the cancer but I'm not killing the patient,' was this memorandum that prevented the DNC from running its own operation," Brazile added

I think Brazile is either overly charitable, or overly legalistic (perhaps confusing "rigged" with "fixed," where only in the latter case is the outcome absolutely determined). I also think she's wrong. The dictionary definition of rigged is:

to manipulate fraudulently

There's ample evidence of rigging in both the JFA and the MOU. The JFA enabled the Hillary Victory Fund, which was a fraudulent scheme to allow big donors to contribute to the Clinton campaign by using the states as passthroughs. And the MOU enabled to Clinton campaign to fraudulently manipulate the public and the press into the belief that the DNC was an independent entity, when in fact it was a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the Clinton campaign.

Conclusion

I know we're not supposed to "relitigate" the 2016 campaign ; we're supposed to look forward and not back. However, the demand not to "relitigate" assumes that the case is closed; as Brazile shows, we're hardly through with the depositions, let alone prepared to render judgment. So, when you hear "relitigate," think "silencing tactic," and ask yourself who and what silence serves. And perhaps this post will provide a basis for further discussion. 119 comments

Moocao , November 6, 2017 at 2:16 pm

Another reason why it will be a long time until I can vote Democrat again. The betrayal of trust is enormous.

David, by the lake , November 6, 2017 at 2:53 pm

Likewise, confirms my decision to wash my hands of the party. If, by some miracle, a candidate acceptable to my priorities is nominated, I will still vote for him/her, but the party isn't getting any default support or any $.

Elizabeth Burton , November 6, 2017 at 2:55 pm

People need to stop conflating the DNC with the Democratic Party. I realized I was doing so and stopped.

The DNC is an organization for raising money to support Democratic Party candidates for US President; its subsidiaries are, of course, the DCCC and the DSCC. The only reason they have power to dictate to the actual party is because they hold the purse strings. That Bernie and others have run successful campaigns, to one degree or another, without their "help" is one of the reasons they're fighting so hard to maintain the status quo. If they're shown to be redundant, the power of those who currently run it evaporates.

Saying "I'll never vote Democrat again" is, as my sainted mother used to say, cutting off your nose to spite your face. Right now, if we're going to at least slow down the rocketing juggernaut that is GOP/plutocratic ownership of our governments, we need to elect progressive candidates. There's no time to create a third party that can compete, so we need to vote for the candidates who are advancing a non-neoliberal/neocon agenda whatever party they run under. It's mostly Democrats, at the moment, but a social media acquaintance spoke of a clearly progressive candidate running for a local office as a Republican because that's how she's registered.

One of the ways the GOP was so successful in conning the working people and small business owners and others into buying their hogwash was by demonizing "the Democrats." Now, their message that "Democrats" are nothing but crazy-headed hippies who want to take their money and give it to other people is so deeply ingrained it's a hard row to how convincing them just how big a lie it is. Indeed, I suspect I shocked a raging right-winger the other day when I told him we agreed about Obama and Clinton, because his Fox-muddled mind firmly believes a Democrat thinks Obama rules the heavens.

If we don't "vote Democrat" in the upcoming primaries, then the establishment local and state parties are going to throw more New Democrats against the GOP and lose. That can't happen.

Vatch , November 6, 2017 at 3:38 pm

Yes, thank you! People need to vote for the progressive candidates in the Democratic primaries. If they don't, then the establishment candidates will easily win, and the national government will continue to be dominated by both Republican and Democratic lap dogs of the billionaires. And if there are a few progressive Republicans out there, sure, vote for them, too.

I often wonder whether some of the people who admonish us to stop voting for Democrats are really employed by one of the many Koch brothers organizations. Not all of them, of course, and I'm not making an accusation against anyone who is commenting here. But if people don't vote for progressive Democrats, the billionaires and the corporate advocates of financialization will win.

nippersmom , November 6, 2017 at 5:09 pm

You're presupposing the presence of "progressive democrats". In many races, they don't exist.

animalogic , November 6, 2017 at 10:53 pm

Of course, appearances can be deceptive: Obama ran as a progressive candidate . As a quick ready-reckoner -- the more a candidate bloviates on Identity issues, the less likely they are (should they be elected) to be "progressive" on issues of substance: the economy, tax, war/imperialism

ArcadiaMommy , November 6, 2017 at 11:51 pm

Right! Where are these progressive democrats? I would love to support one other than Bernie Sanders (yes I know he is not perfect and he is too old). But they don't seem to exist at the national level. There seem to be mayoral and other municipal candidates on the right track – just have no idea how to move those ideas onto the state or national level. Maybe I am just cranky and pessimistic right now.

BoycottAmazon , November 7, 2017 at 6:16 am

Here, here!

TYT did several interviews of "Justice Democrats", newbies running on a progressive platform. Some of the interviews you could see Cenk Uynger almost cringing, and the usually voluble Jimmy Dore very quiet as the candidates lacked public speaking skills, and demonstrating a probable lack of political smarts necessary to maneuver any bureaucracy.

Without trial by fire at lower levels, learning how to run a government and get results, then there is no way to judge the candidates.

Unless candidates like Roza Calderon a faster learn that is apparent at this point, they the Justice Democrats can only win when "anyone but him/her" applies ,

witters , November 6, 2017 at 5:18 pm

Progressive Democrats. Square Circle. 2+2=5. "We Can Make it Happen!" All we need? "The Audacity of Hope".

witters , November 7, 2017 at 12:10 am

So it was our apathy that did it. It was our moral failure. "Really," says Algernon, in The Importance of Being Earnest, "if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility."

bronco , November 6, 2017 at 3:59 pm

no your democratic party is also a party of plutocrats . That's why it needs to be burned to the ground.

annenigma , November 6, 2017 at 4:52 pm

There's an important difference between being and voting Democrat. Actually, we already have a defacto 3rd party, Independents/Unaffiliated, a larger block of voters than either Republicans or Democrats.

With even greater numbers of Independents/Unaffiliated, we could be a force to be reckoned with. Actually, we should recognize and own our power right now because we could decimate the ranks of the Duopoly and make room for an actual third party. We can still vote for Democrats of course, but they'll realize that they can't continue to take our votes for granted.

There's actually no good reason to remain a registered Democrat. You can still vote for Democrats as an Independent/Unaffiliated voter. It's only for some presidential primaries and caucuses that party registration is a limitation. If you live in one of those states, you can temporarily register as a Democrat to vote, then revert to independent/unaffiliated afterwards. Other than that, all other elections are open without regard to affiliation.

The Democrats and Republicans are two wings of the same bird of prey, and we're the prey only because we haven't yet learned to fly to escape their talons. If we start owning our power as free agents/Independent voters, that can change. While deep pocketed donors may have the power to make the wheels turn for the Duopoly, those wheels can't go anywhere without our votes. Since we don't have the power of money, we can at least exercise our political power to stay out of their talons.

Independence is the way to fly. It's not just leverage, it's also the only way to clear more space and demand for official third parties. Since the Duopoly refuses to change their ways and repair the rigged system they created to keep only themselves in power, we can and should abandon them in droves.

Let's spread our wings and fly.

mrsyk , November 6, 2017 at 6:41 pm

In order to vote in the New York State Democrat party primary you must be a registered Democrat. In NY the primary is where most seats are won and lost. Being registered as a Democrat is a necessary evil in some cases.

Lambert Strether Post author , November 7, 2017 at 3:53 am

It has never been clear to me why a hostile takeover of the Democrats, followed by a management purge and seizure of its assets, should be framed as "saving" the Democrat Party. I think that's what a lot of Sanders people would like to do. It's also not clear to me why people think the Democrats can simply be by-passed , and don't need to be assaulted, and if from the inside, all the better.

As readers know, my experience with the Greens was poor (as it has been with others I have talked to). This is especially sad since the GP in Maine had seemed to be viable. So, my fear of the Greens is not fear of the un known, but fear of the known ; I worked at dysfunctional non-profits before, and I don't need to do it again. Others, especially CP activists, may differ in their experience, but that's mine. (Note that I was reinforced in my priors by Stein's lawyer adopting the "Russian hacking" meme in Stein's post-election lawsuits.)

Vatch , November 7, 2017 at 10:04 am

if Bernie's primary campaign and support had been transferred to the Green Party, he would have been a very serious contender,

I agree. But Sanders couldn't join the Green ticket, because he made a promise to support the Democratic candidate, and unlike some politicians, he tries to keep his promises. So what did the Greens do? Instead of actively trying to gain the support of Sanders primary voters, they nominated ideological purist Ajamu Baraka as their Vice Presidential candidate, and he would not back down from unrealistic insulting criticism of Sanders. In effect, the Greens chose to fail.

todde , November 7, 2017 at 10:20 am

I am not interested in keeping the two party system. Either the country breaks apart, or we will have regional parties that can compete with the Democrats and the Republicans.

Audacity of Hope , November 6, 2017 at 6:25 pm

How many clowns can dance on the head of a pin? Debating whether it feels better to have a donkey or an elephant standing on your neck is a fools errand. Neither the Democrat or Republican party is democratic or representative of any more than a handful of families from the Billionaires Club. While they may favor different individuals in the ruling class, neither faux-party has the slightest interest in the rabble who don't line their pockets and provide protection against electoral defeat.

Elections are a stage managed charade in our kleptocracy. Expecting them to change anything that matters, or alter the course of the Warfare State is pure delusion. First we must have Collapse, then Chaos before we can have Change that we can believe in.

animalogic , November 6, 2017 at 11:07 pm

"First we must have Collapse, then Chaos before we can have Change that we can believe in." You are right -- although hopefully mere "crisis" will be sufficient for radical change rather than complete collapse & chaos . Collapse & chaos may void any chance of organised positive change. Having said that the signs are not good: see https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/06/the-ecosystem-is-breaking-down/ for the less than cheery news on ecosystem breakdown. Both parties must be revealed unambiguously to the whole public as the completely morally bankrupt, treasonous & vicious entities that socialists & progressives have known them to be for decades.

zapster , November 6, 2017 at 9:03 pm

The big problem with the Democrats is that they just kicked all the Progressives out and actively oppose them. Voting for blue dogs doesn't get us anywhere.

Vatch , November 6, 2017 at 9:36 pm

Yes, that's a genuine problem. Here are some possible solutions:

https://www.ourrevolution.com/candidates/

https://now.justicedemocrats.com/candidates

http://brandnewcongress.org/candidates/

Vatch , November 7, 2017 at 10:07 am

You are correct about Carter. Zbigniew Brzezinski was a creature of the Rockefellers, and he was Carter's Special Assistant for National Security. Prior to becoming President, Carter was a member of the Trilateral Commission.

sharonsj , November 6, 2017 at 2:27 pm

The rigging was obvious from the start. When nearly all the super delegates declared for Clinton before a single primary was held, I read numerous reports that said the reason was quid pro quo. The super delegates were to be given campaign money in exchange for their support. The agreement proves it.

That, and what the DNC did to Bernie supporters during the convention, made me swear I'd never give them a penny. I have only donated to specific candidates directly. Meanwhile, the Dem establishment stubbornly remains clueless as to why it cannot regain the House and Senate.

Lambert Strether Post author , November 6, 2017 at 4:38 pm

I have seen portions of the agreement (not sure if JFA or MOU) characterized as a "slush fund" for consultants. Naturally, of course, but one might also wonder if that slush fund was used to purchase any superdelegate votes. Pure speculation I didn't have time to run down, so I left it on the cutting room floor.

SpringTexan , November 6, 2017 at 11:06 pm

G, a lot happened to Sanders supporters at the convention, too much to recap but you can probably find stories about it. Many walked out but their seats were filled by paid seat-fillers so the hall didn't look empty, also from what I understand paid seat-fillers sometimes didn't let them take their seats. Signs were blocked, white noise was used to muffle boos, etc.

Before the convention, many of the primaries had a lot of funny business (not all, I know of no problems here in Texas). But California, Arizona, New York, Puerto Rico, Nevada and others all had SERIOUS problems with things such as efforts to prevent Sanders supporters from voting, questionable vote counting (such as at Nevada caucuses), efforts to make voting difficult by having few poll places, etc., etc.

nonclassical , November 7, 2017 at 12:32 am

..actually, while all you intone is accurate, we did clearly hear the boos from Senator Sanders supporters of which I was one.

Vatch , November 7, 2017 at 10:12 am

I think there were irregularities in Illinois, too. I recall that 6 counties did not have enough Democratic ballots, and the Democratic Attorney General, a Clinton supporter, sued to prevent voters in those counties from voting after election day. In Massachusetts, Bill Clinton illegally electioneered near or in a polling place. But the authorities let him get away with it.

Steve from CT , November 6, 2017 at 2:29 pm

Great article Lambert. TheGreenwald article was helpful but yours is the icing on the cake. Hopefully many will read this so that they do not get confused with all of the Clintonista response to Brazile. Howard Dean must be suffering from early Alzheimer's to write such a lie. But he has done it before.

Fiery Hunt , November 6, 2017 at 2:48 pm

It's hard for me to believe anyone can, with a straight face, suggest the 2 agreements are equal.How can you have more than one agreement giving "the authority to make the final decision " ??!! Final means last, no? #corruptlosers

ChrisAtRU , November 6, 2017 at 2:58 pm

From no less than Joy Ann Reid w.r.t. "DNC Collusion":

"YOU CAN'T TRICK PEOPLE INTO VOTING FOR WHO THEY VOTED FOR"

I wonder if this type of logic can and should be applied to #Russian Collusion/Interference ;-)

#ProbablyNotCoolByMSNBC

hemeantwell , November 6, 2017 at 2:58 pm

I know we're not supposed to "relitigate" the 2016 campaign; we're supposed to look forward and not back. However, the demand not to "relitigate" assumes that the case is closed; as Brazile shows, we're hardly through with the depositions, let alone prepared to render judgment. So, when you hear "relitigate," think "silencing tactic," and ask yourself who and what silence serves.

Well said. Regular contact with the centrist MSM recently is like being subjected to hypnotism routines from 50s movies. "You are thinking forward, forward, forward. When I snap my fingers you will feel fresh, eager to believe in the promises of the party of Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama."

Elizabeth Burton , November 6, 2017 at 5:50 pm

A case could be made that the party of FDR is not the same one as the party of Barack Obama. :-)

nonclassical , November 7, 2017 at 12:43 am

and yet FDR stood by while his own "Senator Sanders" – Henry Wallace was sidetracked from his vice-presidency and legacy as FDR's successor (to the chagrin of Eleanor, among many) by corporate dems James Byrnes, stooge for big oil and U.S. steel, who replaced Wallace with Truman at 1944 dem convention

However, there certainly is no comparison, as you note, between obama's complete lack of "transparency, oversight, accountability" regarding bush-cheney war crimes, Wall Street frauds, destabilization of entire Middle-East, leading to republican trump administration, and FDR

Most authors-historicans I have encountered believe FDR had no real idea how ill he was

jsba , November 6, 2017 at 3:04 pm

A while ago, I read a story about the DNC's misuse of unpaid interns. The story itself was barfy enough, but what really shocked me was an aside asserting that even official elected DNC members were barred from viewing the DNC's budget. ( http://paydayreport.com/unpaidinternsatdnc/ )

"Surely that can't be true," I said to myself. But it is! I looked up the DNC's charter and bylaws and the standing budget committee is specifically exempted from article 9 section 12, which says that all official meetings of the DNC and its committees must be open to the public and cannot involve voting by secret ballot. http://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.democrats.org/Downloads/DNC_Charter__Bylaws_9.17.15.pdf

"WTF kind of an organization is this?!" I thought. How on earth is that even legal?

Well, after the Brazile disclosure of the Clinton MOU, I went back to look at the DNC charter/bylaws. You'll note on the first page the date the current version was adopted–2 days after the MOU was signed!

Anyone wanna take a bet that the budget committee carveout was one of things that was changed?

Anonymous , November 6, 2017 at 4:40 pm

jsba, suggest you use the Wayback machine or another internet archive and look at prior historical copies of DNC charter/bylaws, to identify the changes. Could be very illuminating as to (possible) criminal intent?

jsba , November 6, 2017 at 5:46 pm

I did find a 2009 dated version ( https://www.demrulz.org/wp-content/files/DNC_Charter__Bylaws_9.11.2009.pdf ).

I was wrong about the budget committee carveout–it's in this version as well (still completely insane!).

The fact that it was amended 2 days after the MOU is, obviously, still extremely suspicious. I don't have time to, but the 2009 version would be useful to identify possible changes.

Di Modica's Dumb Steer , November 6, 2017 at 3:09 pm

As much as I'd like to switch parties (hah) so as to add to the greater numbers of fleeing formerly party faithful, I'm in one of those 'closed primary' states. My vote is already nearly worthless (though I exercise my right every chance I get); to switch to a third party would make sure I'm both excluded from the more interesting local party contests AND drowned out in national contests. Lose/lose. Maybe if something like Maine's (currently under attack) Ranked Choice Voting existed all over, I'd be less sour about the whole thing.

Donald , November 6, 2017 at 9:04 pm

Yeah, you need people like Lambert willing to do the work. It is exhausting keeping up with the truths, half truths and lies promulgated in the press and trying to figure out what is true and what isn't.

EricT , November 6, 2017 at 3:17 pm

I find it interesting that the agreement involved control of the IT/data infrastructure of the DNC. Doesn't the DNC administer the democratic party registry? And with that observation, wasn't there a lot of illegal party switching that caused a problem for some Democrats voting in party restricted primaries that had their registration switched, so that they couldn't take part in the primaries. Wouldn't it be interesting if the switched parties were on the DNC record as donating to Bernie's campaign? Fixed, indeed.

Lambert Strether Post author , November 7, 2017 at 1:13 am

I'm not sure I understand your scenario, but the DNC "voter file" and the state's list of registered voters are two different things.

JCC , November 6, 2017 at 3:18 pm

It just goes to show you

Skip in DC , November 6, 2017 at 3:27 pm

Manipulations of the deplorable superdelegate system, with its covert quid pro quo payoffs after the Clintons take power, was part of a seamless fix. Premature coronation by media and party wigs after primary victories in red states no Democrat would win in the general election helped ice it.

Perhaps revelations will turn up on mainstream media, from the Sabbath Gasbags to NPR, knifing Bernie with Hillary talking points at every opportunity, when he wasn't being ignored. Thomas Frank wrote persuasively on WaPo's bias in Swat Team in Harper's, and there have been tidbits on off-record Clinton media cocktail parties and such. But I'd like to know how far up the editorial totem poles the fix went and how it was achieved. Certainly Jeff Bezos has a Washington wish list. I marveled at how many journalists suddenly sounded like breathless valley girl propagandists. And still do. What faster way to tank journalism's credibility than that perception?

I guess that's why after catching headlines more of my reading time shifts to alternative offerings such as those presented here.

Mark P. , November 6, 2017 at 4:00 pm

But I'd like to know how far up the editorial totem poles the fix went and how it was achieved.

I worked as a journalist in America for over a decade. I cannot stress enough how unnecessary such a literal fix would be. (Though doubtless words were and are exchanged between concerned parties when needed.)

The hive-mind position of most U.S. journalists -- and especially of editors, who tend to be the most compliant with the power-structure and often the stupidest people in the room -- was (and is) an automatical default to unquestioning support -- even worship -- of the Democratic Party, its elite, and Clintonite neoliberalism.

I once wrote a long feature that got a crush-letter from Joe Lieberman's office. The editors at the magazine in question were ecstatic and printed that letter as its own separate feature in the next issue. Personally, I thought Leiberman was scum, but kept my qualms to myself and was glad I used a byline.

Samuel Conner , November 6, 2017 at 3:28 pm

It seems to me that the HRC campaign's JFA was expressly designed to -- and succeeded in its design -- circumvent the statutory $2700 limit on direct campaign contributions. Yet I have not seen commentary that suggests any laws were violated. What am I missing?

AnnieB , November 6, 2017 at 3:30 pm

To me, it seemed that the Democratic Party had already decided for clinton before the primaries, as at my local caucus the party had planted each neighborhood group with a party faithful, not from the neighborhood, who would argue for clinton and fear monger about Trump. I know this because I talked to the plant in my group, asked her where she lived, and discovered it was not in my neighborhood; it was a different town. Others reported the same.

Also, a Dem party leader came up to me and said "Sanders is not going to be the nominee" and "When this is over (meaning the primary), then you'll be supporting Hillary, right?" I told her to never assume anything.

So, thanks to Brazile, no matter her motivation, for providing proof of what we already knew.

Richard , November 6, 2017 at 9:33 pm

I think you don't see that skill set very much in party leaders because they so rarely need for the party to win elections. They do need to be able to maintain control over their parties, so they're great at being cutthroat and cheating. But apart from certain important individual elections, the success of the party as a whole isn't a big priority for them. There are spoils to divide either way.

nonclassical , November 7, 2017 at 12:49 am

fyi, Lambert, the two political parties, while both far too corrupt, are different-your own false-equivalencies aside

Sam Adams , November 6, 2017 at 5:37 pm

I worked on the Sanders primary campaign in my city. I watched as the state/regional leadership consistently tanked the gotv and other Sanders ground outreach while a few local leaders working in smaller areas worked their hearts out on the ground. Surprisingly (or not) the state/ regional leadership bailed to work on the HRC campaign within hours of closing the primary office.

Nancy Sutton , November 6, 2017 at 3:31 pm

I swear, in one of her interviews on the past weekend, Brazile made a quick, underbreath, reference to 'poor Seth Rich' in recounting the death threats aimed at her. Glad someone has not forgotten that connection.

jalrin , November 6, 2017 at 3:43 pm

It has been a while since I handled a criminal defense case, but I am not sure that the agreement is not in fact, criminal. When the Sanders for President campaign signed an agreement and paid money in consideration of getting access to the voter file and when the state parties agreed to merge their fundraising efforts with the DNC and HFA, the commercial fraud laws applied to that relationship. Since the fundraising was done using interstate phone calls, letters, and emails and the voter file access was provided by electronic transmissions from servers in DC to end users in Burlington, Vermont that includes 18 USC 1341, 1343 and 1346 (mail, wire and honest services fraud). These laws do not just ban outright lying, but also the concealment of material facts that one has a duty to disclose.

Considering the importance of voter file access, it is impossible to imagine that your chief competitor having joint authority over hiring the people who handle all your customer service and monitor your compliance with voter file contract is not a material fact. If, under DC contract law or FTC commerical regulations, these kinds of conflicts of interest are mandatorily disclosable (I do not practice in DC but I doubt DC applies caveat emptor to that degree), then 18 USC 1343 was broken and Jeff Sessions could indict everyone involved.

It is even worse for the state parties agreement. The DNC arguably has a duty of loyalty to its state affiliates which makes agreeing to encourage them all to sign up even though it is concealing its knowledge that the money will be allocated in a way that will be bad for at least some of them seem utterly inconsistent with the honest services provisions of 1346. All in all, it is probably a good thing for the DNC that the Sessions aides I went to law school with paid less attention in criminal law that I did.

Jeff W , November 6, 2017 at 6:48 pm

Thanks!

It seemed to me that the nondisclosure of material facts and of conflicts of interest might, arguably, constitute some type of criminal activity and that Donna Brazile's characterization of the agreement as "not a criminal act" was, perhaps, a bit too facile but I did not know the specific statutes or claims that might be involved. I really appreciate your detailed observations here.

a different chris , November 6, 2017 at 9:41 pm

>that the Sessions aides I went to law school with paid less attention in criminal law

Did they? Does it really make sense to destroy the Democratic Party and open up space for something new and dangerous? I would just make popcorn.

PS: thanks for the excellent post, btw.

Oregoncharles , November 7, 2017 at 2:13 am

"Not a dime's worth of difference."
When it comes to politics, it isn't Russians we need to worry about, it's Americans. That's where the collusion is – between the parties.

It was the Republicans' turn, period. Jeff Sessions doubtless knows that.

dk , November 6, 2017 at 3:53 pm

Rigged, fixed, defrauded I like "compromised".

Just want to point out that the state-party=>DNC pass-through is not at all new. Has been active in some form and proportion in every presidential campaign since 1992 (mainly, or at least nominally due to changes in FEC regulation), but really ramped up in and after 2008.

Pushback by states has decreased over time, as state party executive directors are now almost always (even in off-cycle years) routed in from DC, instead of staffing from the local pool of operatives.

One of the important impacts is on state legislatures. Gutted of necessary funding, and discouraged (and sometimes contractually inhibited) from soliciting further funds on the national level, state parties have little left in their coffers to support their legislative candidates and committees (and forget about the bottom of the ticket).

So this kind of money hoovering is a significant factor in the national net loss of Dem seats in state houses in non-"battleground" states.

Lambert Strether Post author , November 6, 2017 at 4:30 pm

> the state-party=>DNC pass-through is not at all new

I believe the amounts are new. Campaign Legal Center :

During oral arguments in McCutcheon v. FEC three years ago, Justice Samuel Alito dismissed the Campaign Legal Center's analysis showing how, absent limits on the total amount that donors could give to multiple political committees, candidates could use joint fundraising schemes to raise huge, potentially corrupting contributions.

These scenarios, Justice Alito claimed, are "wild hypotheticals that are not obviously plausible." Hillary Clinton, though, is proving that the Campaign Legal Center was right all along.

I'm not at all a campaign finance expert. Perhaps readers will weigh in?

dk , November 6, 2017 at 5:49 pm

Yes, the amounts are new. Just saying this was the direction things were going for a while already. Good will between DNC and state parties already at a low ebb, DWS a big part of that.

Kris Alman , November 6, 2017 at 7:58 pm

As we know, the Citizens United Supreme Court decision allows corporations, individuals and labor unions to make unlimited contributions to independent organizations that use the money to support or defeat a candidate. Rules prohibit coordination between a candidate committee and an individual or organization making "independent expenditures."

Clearly this was not the arrangement between the HVF, State Democratic Central Committees participating in the PAC and the DNC. Hillary was pulling the strings at the DNC. But I'm just now appreciating that the Hillary Victory Fund is not a Super PAC.

https://www.fec.gov/updates/joint-fundraising-2/

Joint fundraising is fundraising conducted jointly by a political committee and one or more other political committees or unregistered organizations. Joint fundraising rules apply to:

Party committees;
Party organizations not registered as political committees;
Federal and/or nonfederal candidate committees;
Nonparty, unauthorized political committees (nonconnected PACs); and
Unregistered nonparty organizations. 11 CFR 102.17(a)(1)(i) and (2).

The HVF was the first joint fundraising committee between a presidential candidate and the Democratic party since the 2014 U.S. Supreme Court decision McCutcheon v FEC. A horrible precedent at that!

McCutcheon declared a total limit on how much an individual can give federal candidates and parties in a two-year cycle unconstitutional. Chief Justice Roberts opined, "The existing aggregate limits may in fact encourage the movement of money away from entities subject to disclosure."

Right!

The HVF demonstrates how rechanneling dark money from super PACs toward candidates and parties doesn't stop unethical and undemocratic processes.

That the HVF was needed to balance the Obama debt is one thing. That the HVF can pass through money from State committees to the DNC and then coordinate activities there while passing off as a joint fundraising committee is another thing.

The rechanneling of hundreds of millions of dollars donated by rich D elites to bypass individual contribution limits was a brilliant financial engineering feat–one that the Rs will surely emulate.

Before conducting a joint fundraiser, all participants must enter into a written agreement that identifies the JFR and states the allocation formula -- the amount or percentage that the participants agree to use for allocating proceeds and expenses. 11 CFR 102.17(c)(1).

What was the allocation formula of the joint fundraising committee?

As the HVF fairy tale plays out, Clinton is the witch who lures Hansel and Gretel to the forest with a castle of confections, with the intention to eat them.

Are Democrats capable of outsmarting the witches that want to cannibalize the party?

Down2Long , November 6, 2017 at 10:02 pm

Thanks Lambert for this. As usual, you have seen around corners and cleared the mud from the water. Thank God you like crawling through this sh*t, so that I at least don't have to.

Our local radio host Warren Olney, on KCRW who started his show "To The Point" (which is syndicated nationally on Public Radio International) during the 2000 Bush v Gore Supreme Court crowning of Bush fiasco is doing a week long retrospective of the disintegration of Americans' faith in "our" institutions (ha!) before he goes to a once a week podcast.

I have listened to him for 17 years and I don't know how he could stomach covering U.S. society, politics, and culture during those years of non-ending sh*t show. He was fair to all guests including some right wing loonies, but you never got the feeling he was going for "balance." He always seemed to get the truth. Gonna sorely miss him.

So glad you are still on the case, and loving it. You have my gratitude, and soon, a contribution.

Edward , November 6, 2017 at 4:33 pm

How much of the $250,000 the Sanders campaign paid for the DNC voter list went to the Clinton campaign? I am still wondering if this kind of thing has occurred in other elections?

Deadl E Cheese , November 6, 2017 at 5:08 pm

As far as relitigating the primary goes, we should've had that fight back, if not in 2000, then definitely in 2004. After Team Clinton, people who justified their sellouts and perfidy with 'we must never have another McGovern or Carter', gave the GOP a gift of a unified government that should have been the permanent end of their credibility. Because while McGovern, Carter, and Mondale went down in flames they didn't so thoroughly destroy the anti-reactionary institutions as badly as the Third Way did.

The endless 2016 primary is our punishment for giving these centrist vipers a second chance.

Hana M , November 6, 2017 at 5:29 pm

I appreciate Lambert going through these documents and laying out the timeline. One of the things that this read sparked for me was the realization the Joe Biden was elbowed out just as much as Bernie Sanders. I didn't follow the Biden decision-making process at the time but checking back on the timeline it seems like Clinton pre-empted any attempt by dear old Joe to actually decide to run. Correct me if I'm wrong (as I may well be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden#2016_presidential_race

Jen , November 7, 2017 at 4:51 am

It doesn't take much elbowing to oust someone who was polling in single digits in his home state. I donated to O'Malley's campaign before Bernie got in, and, regrettably, am still on his mailing list.

Altandmain , November 6, 2017 at 5:32 pm

The bottom line is that the political system is owned by the ruling oligarchy and that the Democratic Establishment is in bed with them. If a serious candidate from the left poses a challenge, they will rig the Primary against that candidate.

The Democratic Establishment is pretty much paid to lose and to make the consultant class rich. Equally as importantly, they exist to co-opt the left.

Sure there are a few voices talking that make sense like Tulsi Gabbard. They are the exception to a very corrupt party.

A big part of why the middle class has declined is because of the total betrayal of the Democratic Party from the ideas behind the New Deal.

The Rev Kev , November 6, 2017 at 5:48 pm

The DNC got into the position of selling themselves to the Clintons as they were $20 million in debt, right? I have read that the major reason for these debts was that the DNC had not shrunk itself since the last campaign and was paying out a ton of money for consultants doing Christ knows what. In fact, Obama also used the DNC to support a stack of his consultants as well as grifters gotta grift, right?

My question is whether this was a deliberate ploy on Obama and the Clinton factions to put the DNC into such a vulnerable position before 2016 came along that when the time came, they had to take up an offer that they could not refuse. I have not heard if Obama has made any comments on this fiasco that took place on his watch and it seems nobody wants to call him out on it. In the Brazile case, it is not a matter of following the money but following the lack of money.

Summer , November 6, 2017 at 6:23 pm

https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/demo-catastrophe-it-was-worse-we-thought-and-bigger-bernie-vs-hillary/
By Andrew O'Hehir / Salon

O'Hehir flails around until he nails it:

"Both sides in the Democratic Party's current faction fight, as I see it, are in denial about the true nature and scope of the problem "Both responses are essentially utopian: They rest on the premise that the Democratic Party is still a functioning political organization and that the United States is still a functioning democracy."

VietnamVet , November 6, 2017 at 7:01 pm

Thanks. This was plain and simple money laundering to get around the Federal Election Commission rules and regulations. That no one has been brought to justice shows how corrupt the American political process is. It would great if you could post how you would reform it. I would start with paper ballots counted in public and halt corporations from buying elections.

Lambert Strether Post author , November 7, 2017 at 4:03 am

> This was plain and simple money laundering

If I understand the law correctly, this really wasn't money laundering, since laundered money becomes dirty by virtue of its being the result of a crime (like drug dealers depositing cash at HSBC (IIRC)). Handling money in a complex and obfuscated way is not, in itself, money laundering. I'm not sure what the word is, though.

John k , November 7, 2017 at 1:15 pm

Violating campaign laws is a crime. Circumventing can often be shown to be violating. Need a prosecutor willing to prosecute white collar crime, a rare breed for at least the last decade. But trump has been attacked by Clintons, and he has DOJ but nothing is happening.

makedoanmend , November 7, 2017 at 5:23 am

Some very good points are made here. Carping about the inequities of the Democrat Party establishment isn't going to change their behaviour. Too much lucre. One needs to change the people running the party. From the ground up and with concrete regulatory features. Full stop.

However, one might look to the UK Labour party to see how it reacted when J. Corbyn, a lifelong member and activist, became leader of the party through grandee miscalculation. The Thatcherist Blairites went ballastic and basically decided to destroy the party rather than let a fairly mild democratic socialist offer an alternative to their beloved neoliberal economic policies. Too much lucre. They almost destroyed Labour in Scotland and were intent on defenestrating Labour in England, whilst retaining some feeble structure as a mock substitute, so that the Tories would, in fact, become the one and only alternative.

The forces aligned against the democratic tendencies of ordinary citizens are formidable and reach into every nook and cranny of our lives. They have the money, technological reach and hence the power of capital and its persuasive abilities.

Ain't going to be easy. Never is.

pretzelattack , November 7, 2017 at 9:46 am

i dont think a campaign had owned the dnc like that before. i think it had nothing to do with hilary being a good team player, and everything to do with money and juicy consulting/lobbying jobs. and pointing this out is not "sulking". know your enemy, and don't excuse their crimes and predations by an argument that "that's just the way things are".

audrey jr , November 6, 2017 at 8:26 pm

I am a Bernie supporter. He was pushed to the side by the Dem's – a party to which I belonged for forty years – in a total panic when it was shown to the Dem's that Bernie was able to reach disaffected party members as myself by raising a large amount of money through individual small donors.
That Bernie accomplished this feat was a huge factor, IMO, in why and how my former party felt it necessary to malign and derail Bernie and his supporters before, during and after the Democratic -meh – Nominating Convention.
The Dem's should have just named the Hillary for America Fund the Hillary for Hillary Fund.
Hillary cares only for and about Hillary. She's the reason Trump is POTUS today.
My family has been Democrat for many generations. Most of my family members have, unfortunately, BTFD on this one. I used to find them to be reasonable folk. Trump derangement syndrome has infected them all. This is a common complaint these days.

nonclassical , November 7, 2017 at 12:57 am

truth of trump actions-legislation, appointees, is not "trump derangement syndrome" trump has succeeded in swamping the drain

and yes, it is obama's fault HC opted for a losing, "more of same" campaign policy

audrey jr , November 6, 2017 at 8:34 pm

Forgot to thank Lambert for all of his great care and hard work in putting this together for us. Thank you, Lambert.
In Brazile's account I do believe I remember reading that my home state, CA, did not sign off on the agreement with regard to the HFV fund. But I seem to remember that Naked Capitalism, or perhaps in the commentariat here, did state that the Dem's here in CA were in an uproar over Hillary Victory Fund taking all of the state party monies. Am I having a flashback or did I actually remember this wrong? Anyone know?

JTFaraday , November 6, 2017 at 10:23 pm

I thought the most interesting thing about Brazile's comments to date was that Obama left the DNC indebted and therefore more vulnerable to the highest bidder. Not easy to bail that out on $27 donations. So typical of these Goldmanite administrations, this use of finance as a political weapon.

MLS , November 7, 2017 at 9:29 am

a feature not a bug? Is it completely implausible that Obama deliberately left the party in shambles just so Clinton could ride to the "rescue"?

[Nov 06, 2017] Early Comey Memo Accused Hillary Of Gross Negligence, Punishable By Jail

Notable quotes:
"... An early draft of former FBI Director James Comey's statement closing out the Hillary Clinton email case accused the former Secretary of State of having been 'grossly negligent" in handling classified information, new memos to Congress show. ..."
"... "There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified information," reads the statement, one of Comey's earliest drafts. ..."
"... Of course, Comey's final statement, while critical of Hillary's email usage, alleged that no prosecutor would pursue charges against actions which he described only as "extremely careless." ..."
"... Meanwhile, Section 793 of federal law states that "gross negligence" with respect to the handling of national defense documents is punishable by a fine and up to 10 years in prison ...so you can see why that might present a problem for Hillary. ..."
"... ...that said, we're going to go out on a limb and question whether it just might have had something to do with that infamous meeting between Bill Clinton and then Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Comey's boss, that happened just 6 days before Comey made his statement? ..."
Nov 06, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

The Hill , early drafts of former FBI Director James Comey's statement on Hillary Clinton's email case accused the former Secretary of State of "gross negligence" in her handling of classified information as opposed to the "extremely careless" phrase that made its way into the final statement.

As The Hill further points out, the change in language is significant since federal law states that "gross negligence" in handling the nation's intelligence can be punished criminally with prison time or fines whereas "extreme carelessness" has no such legal definition and/or ramifications.

An early draft of former FBI Director James Comey's statement closing out the Hillary Clinton email case accused the former Secretary of State of having been 'grossly negligent" in handling classified information, new memos to Congress show.

The tough language was changed to the much softer accusation that Clinton had been "extremely careless" in her handling of classified information when Comey announced in July 2016 there would be no charges against her.

The draft, written weeks before the announcement of no charges, was described by multiple sources who saw the document both before and after it was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee this past weekend.

"There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified information," reads the statement, one of Comey's earliest drafts.

Those sources said the draft statement was subsequently changed in red-line edits to conclude that the handling of 110 emails containing classified information that were transmitted by Clinton and her aides over her insecure personal email server was "extremely careless."

Of course, Comey's final statement, while critical of Hillary's email usage, alleged that no prosecutor would pursue charges against actions which he described only as "extremely careless."

"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of the classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."

"There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton's position or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about the matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation."

Meanwhile, Section 793 of federal law states that "gross negligence" with respect to the handling of national defense documents is punishable by a fine and up to 10 years in prison ...so you can see why that might present a problem for Hillary.

"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer -- shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."

Unfortunately, The Hill's sources couldn't confirm the most important detail behind this bombshell new revelation, namely who made the call to the change the language...

The sources, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the memos show that at least three top FBI officials were involved in helping Comey fashion and edit the statement, including Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, General Counsel James Baker and Chief of Staff Jim Rybicki.

The documents turned over to Congress do not indicate who recommended the key wording changes, the sources said. The Senate Judiciary Committee is likely to demand the FBI identify who made the changes and why, the sources said.

...that said, we're going to go out on a limb and question whether it just might have had something to do with that infamous meeting between Bill Clinton and then Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Comey's boss, that happened just 6 days before Comey made his statement?

NoVa -> hedgeless_horseman , Nov 6, 2017 3:53 PM

That memo was obviously written before Bill talked with Lynch on the Phoenix tarmac (about 115 degress) to discuss golf and their grandchildren...

NoVa

CuttingEdge -> GUS100CORRINA , Nov 6, 2017 4:12 PM

Ships deserting a sinking rat

Bastiat -> CuttingEdge , Nov 6, 2017 4:19 PM

Seems like Comey must have got zapped with a cattle prod no matter which way he went. Serves him right for giving up his soul for power.

pods -> GUS100CORRINA , Nov 6, 2017 4:16 PM

The mere presence of a private server that sent/received classified information is THE EVIDENCE that she intended to mishandle classified information. Jesus H. Christ on a cracker what are these people smoking? That's like saying that just because you were drunk and decided to drive that you didn't intend to drive drunk.

pods

2ndamendment , Nov 6, 2017 3:52 PM

And yet STILL no charges. Shocking, I know.

Christopher Steele must have some serious dirt on Comey that this has all been swept under the rug.

moneybots , Nov 6, 2017 4:20 PM

" ...early drafts of former FBI Director James Comey's statement on Hillary Clinton's email case accused the former Secretary of State of "gross negligence" in her handling of classified information as opposed to the "extremely careless" phrase that made its way into the final statement."

Extremely careless = gross negligence.

[Nov 05, 2017] US sent troops to Lebanon in 1958

Notable quotes:
"... The United States spends $600 billion, not counting veteran's benefits, on war every year. This expense is approved unanimously by the Congress, elected representatives of the people. The "Defense" budget is not even mentioned in the national political debate raging over taxes, health care, etc. ..."
"... Obviously, this expense is intended to create an American Empire. To put it extremely mildly, it has and will fail. The death throes are going to threaten the existence of mankind. All because some religious, slave-holding lunatics were expelled from England, England forsooth, in the 17th century. OMG. ..."
"... Do these moves in Lebanon stem from US & Israeli demands that Iranian forces leave Syria? Or is that an excuse? When US & Israel refer to "Iranian forces" is that meant to include Hezbollah? Should we see these developments in Lebanon as primarily anti-Iranian (degrade Hezbollah forces) or anti-Assad (i.e. a second front)? ..."
"... Best comment above: that the Hegemon is merciless. It looks like the plan is to draw Hezbollah out of Syria. This will force Iran to commit more to Syria. That, in turn, will justify stronger measures by Israel, Saudi Arabia, the US, etc.. Syria's worst sufferings, as it seems, have yet to begin. ..."
Nov 05, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

xxx

US sent troops to Lebanon in 1958 - 59 years ago.

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

I wrote about tit-for-tat Cold War symbolism earlier this year .

Trump fired 59 missiles into Syria. Trump's missile volley came 7 months after Russia's first volley of 26 Kalibr cruise missiles (Putin's candles") on Putin's birthday in October 2015.

26 years before (November 1989) was the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the Cold War. Russians were told that NATO would not advance "one inch" eastward.

Also: when US-led Coalition attacked Deir Ezzor in September 2016 the Russians were put on hold for 27 minutes - possibly also referring back to 1989 (an 'answer' to the Russian reference) .

In November 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev issued the Western powers an ultimatum to withdraw from Berlin within six months and make it a free, demilitarised city. This ultimately led to the Berlin Crisis of 1961. The term "strategic patience" comes from this period.

If 59 missiles was a reference to 1958, what could be the import?

- foreshadowing an intervention in Lebanon?

- warning Putin not to demand that US leave Syria?

- a signal that US would be resolute? or stand by allies?

- a symbolic request for Russian to practice strategic patience because Trump's missile volley was forced by Saudi Arabia?

dapoopa | Nov 4, 2017 12:16:21 PM | 7
Given the signs of at least a modicum of detente between Saudi and Russia following the King's visit to Moscow last month, the threatening statements by Thamer and the resignation of Hariri are indeed alarming. My understanding is that Russia generally has a 'hands off' stance vis a vis Hezbullah so as not to antagonize Israel, but this also necessitates a delicate balancing act with regard to relations with Syria and Iran. Which raises the question: was the Saudi delegation's visit to Moscow really just a diversion tactic?
WorldBLee | Nov 4, 2017 12:17:41 PM | 8
There is no mercy from the US/Saudi/Israeli axis, unfortunately. After all Lebanon has been through, the last thing it needs is Wahhabist terrorists invading its territory to cause more misery.
psychohistorian | Nov 4, 2017 12:33:24 PM | 11 Burt | Nov 4, 2017 12:35:05 PM | 12
The United States spends $600 billion, not counting veteran's benefits, on war every year. This expense is approved unanimously by the Congress, elected representatives of the people. The "Defense" budget is not even mentioned in the national political debate raging over taxes, health care, etc.

Obviously, this expense is intended to create an American Empire. To put it extremely mildly, it has and will fail. The death throes are going to threaten the existence of mankind. All because some religious, slave-holding lunatics were expelled from England, England forsooth, in the 17th century. OMG.

Jackrabbit | Nov 4, 2017 1:10:23 PM | 16
Questions

Do these moves in Lebanon stem from US & Israeli demands that Iranian forces leave Syria? Or is that an excuse? When US & Israel refer to "Iranian forces" is that meant to include Hezbollah? Should we see these developments in Lebanon as primarily anti-Iranian (degrade Hezbollah forces) or anti-Assad (i.e. a second front)?

AriusArmenian | Nov 4, 2017 1:19:50 PM | 17
As if the people of Lebanon have not suffered enough.

To hell with the moronic warmongering of the US/Saudi/Israeli Axis.

paul | Nov 4, 2017 2:42:01 PM | 32
Best comment above: that the Hegemon is merciless. It looks like the plan is to draw Hezbollah out of Syria. This will force Iran to commit more to Syria. That, in turn, will justify stronger measures by Israel, Saudi Arabia, the US, etc.. Syria's worst sufferings, as it seems, have yet to begin.

[Nov 05, 2017] Donna Brazile says critics of Hillary Clinton revelations can go to hell by Martin Pengelly

Presstitutes from guardian have no shame. Look, for example, at the following statement "The former Clinton staffers – among them high-profile figures such as Huma Abedin, Jennifer Palmieri and campaign manager Robby Mook, the target of stringent criticism from Brazile – wrote: "It is particularly troubling and puzzling that she would seemingly buy into false Russian-fueled propaganda, spread by both the Russians and our opponent , about our candidate's health."
It is widely suspected that Hillary Clinton has second stage of Parkinson or some other serious neurological diseases?
It is telling that Guardian is afraid to open comments on this article.
Notable quotes:
"... Regarding the primary, in which Sanders – a Vermont independent – mounted a surprisingly strong challenge, Brazile writes in her book that a joint fundraising agreement between Clinton and the DNC "looked unethical" and she felt Clinton had too much influence on the party. ..."
Nov 05, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

She also said she "got sick and tired of people trying to tell me how to spend money" as DNC chair, when she "wasn't getting a salary. I was basically volunteering my time".

"I'm not Patsey the slave," Brazile said, referring to a character in the Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave.

In her book, Brazile writes that she did not ultimately try to make the change of candidate because: "I thought of Hillary, and all the women in the country who were so proud of and excited about her. I could not do this to them."

On ABC, she admitted she had not had the power to make the change but said: "I had to put in on the the table because I was under tremendous pressure after Secretary Clinton fainted to have a quote-unquote plan B. I didn't want a plan B. Plan A was great for me. I supported Hillary and I wanted her to win. But we were under pressure."

Brazile writes that on 12 September 2016, Biden's chief of staff called saying the vice-president wanted to speak with her. Her thought, she writes, was: "Gee, I wonder what he wanted to talk to me about?"

On ABC, she said she did not mention the possible switch. "I mean, look, everybody was called in to see, do you know anything? How is she doing? And of course my job at the time was to reassure people, not just the vice-president but also reassure the Democratic party, the members of the party, that Hillary was doing fine and that she would resume her campaign the following week."

It is unclear if Biden was ever willing to step into the race. The former vice-president, who many believe could a run for the presidency in 2020, made no immediate comment.

Asked if she still thinks a Biden-Booker ticket could have won, Brazile equivocated, saying: "Well, you know, I had a lot of other combinations. This was something you play out in your mind."

Regarding the primary, in which Sanders – a Vermont independent – mounted a surprisingly strong challenge, Brazile writes in her book that a joint fundraising agreement between Clinton and the DNC "looked unethical" and she felt Clinton had too much influence on the party.

[Nov 05, 2017] Trump, Papadopoulous and the Russia Connection by Daniel McCarthy

Nov 02, 2017 | nationalinterest.org
Evidence that goes far beyond Manafort's general shadiness will be needed to fulfill the dreams of those who imagine President Trump to be some sort of Manchurian Candidate.

The first charges to be filed in Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian involvement in last year's election fit a typical pattern: a federal prosecutor in a big political case goes after small fry and easy targets, slamming them for lying to investigators, even as evidence for the grand conspiracy he's meant to be investigating remains virtually nonexistent.

The easy target in this instance is Paul Manafort , who was briefly and rather unsuccessfully Donald Trump's campaign manager in the stretch between his sealing the nomination and the Republican convention. Manafort's extensive ties to disreputable foreign governments were already the subject of headlines over eighteen months ago. In April 2016, when Manafort was a "newly installed senior campaign adviser," the Guardian noted that his clients amounted to "a who's who of authoritarian leaders and scandal-plagued businessmen in Ukraine , Russia, the Philippines and more." The whiff of corruption that swirls around Manafort was already with him long before he hooked up with the Trump campaign. (Even so, it's highly unusual for a someone to be charged, as Manafort has been, with failing to register as a foreign agent: strict enforcement of the law would send a great many richly compensated D.C. operators to jail.)

Manafort would be the most brazen spy in the history of humanity if his purpose in the Trump campaign had been to coordinate with the Kremlin. We do live in extraordinary times, but evidence that goes far beyond Manafort's general shadiness will be needed to fulfill the dreams of those who imagine President Trump to be some sort of Manchurian Candidate. Hiring Manafort was certainly reckless on the part of the Trump campaign, and in a normal political season that would have been scandal enough. But neither Manafort's obvious vices nor his questionable competence (the GOP convention came close to succumbing to revolt) proved to be enough to derail Trump's locomotive to the White House.

The indictments against Manafort and his associate Rick Gates are fodder for partisan sensationalism, but they do not appear to pose great peril to Trump. Pundits who looked more closely at Mueller's first moves were more intrigued, however, by what they saw in the case of the small fry: that is, the case of George Papadopoulous, a low-level foreign-policy adviser to Trump's campaign. According to documents that Mueller had made public, Papadopoulous has already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a certain "professor" who claimed to have access through Russian sources to "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. (The professor has been identified in the press as the Maltese academic Josef Mifsud, based in Scotland at the University of Sterling.)

Papadopoulos, just twenty-eight years old at the time, came to the Trump campaign after a stint as an adviser to the Ben Carson campaign during the early contests last year. Trump was in desperate need of staff -- indeed, people close to the campaign told me even months later, in July 2016, that it was barely an organized campaign at all -- so Papadopoulos was taken on and soon named among the campaign's foreign-policy advisers by Trump himself in a March 2016 interview with the Washington Post . Papadopoulos appeared in photos next to important campaign figures such as Jeff Sessions, and he could have been an influential part of the campaign himself. But he probably wasn't: the fact that he might appear in a photo with Jeff Sessions says at least as much about the then Alabama senator's standing as it does about Papadopoulos. The campaign was not a conventional campaign, and it had only the most shambolic organizational chart.

Did Mifsud in fact have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, in the form of pilfered emails obtained by the Russians? This was the impression he apparently gave Papadopoulos, who passed the tale to more senior campaign staff and was given permission to continue his contacts with Mifsud. There was nothing illegal about this: what Papadopoulos has been charged with is not looking into whether a Maltese academic and his Russian friends -- in particular a young woman introduced to Papadopoulos as "Putin's niece" -- had Clinton or DNC email; rather, he has been charged with lying to investigators. Watergate lore would have it that "it's not the crime, it's the coverup" that brings down high officials implicated in wrongdoing. But in fact, federal prosecutors and investigators routinely pounce on misstatements and minor falsehoods to make cases that otherwise would go nowhere. That's standard operating procedure for special counsels and special prosecutors. Going after the small fry and hitting them with harsh charges for misstatements that may not otherwise seem terribly serious serves at least two purposes. Yes, such charges put pressure on what may be the weakest links in a chain leading to proof of corruption in high office. But they also keep a fishing expedition going by suggesting that if you can catch a few minnows, maybe you can land Moby-Dick, too. Prosecutors are unavoidably political figures, and high-stakes investigations of public officials, above all the president, inevitably have the character of PR campaigns as much as legal proceedings.

Everything we know so far suggests not a passionate love affair between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin but a series of awkward first dates between amateurs whose espionage credentials would make Boris and Natasha look like James Jesus Angleton. The Russians did not lack for motive to screw with America's election and to vex Hillary Clinton in particular. But nothing indicates that they had effective lines of communication (let alone control) into the upper echelons of the Trump campaign, to the extent that the Trump campaign was even organized enough to have echelons. There's something paradoxical in the same pundits who bemoan Donald Trump's absolute unpredictability and incorrigibility as president also believing that the Trump campaign and the Kremlin could work together smoothly to subvert American democracy. The Trump campaign couldn't even work together smoothly with itself, which is one thing Paul Manafort can prove. Daniel McCarthy is editor at large of The American Conservative

[Nov 04, 2017] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Leads US President Trump to War with Iran by Prof. James Petras

Highly recommended!
I am not sure the tail is wagging the dog in Middle East. The USA has Carter doctrine in place which means that they need to dominate all petro states. That might explain high level of animosity toward Iran, which is not a puppet regime as Carter doctrine requires. In this sense Israel interests are probably highly congruent with the USA interests. Otherwise Netanyahu would not be a prime minister. He proved to be greedy and reckless. The US intelligence agencies probably have enough material to remove him without much noise.
Notable quotes:
"... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Presidents of the 52 Major Jewish American Organizations are leading President Trump , like a puppy on a leash, into a major war with Iran. The hysterical '52 Presidents' and 'Bibi' Netanyahu are busy manufacturing Holocaust-level predictions that a non-nuclear Iran is preparing to 'vaporize' Israel, , The buffoonish US President Trump has swallowed this fantasy wholesale and is pushing our nation toward war for the sake of Israel and its US-based supporters and agents. We will cite ten recent examples of Israeli-authored policies, implemented by Trump in his march to war (there are scores of others). ..."
"... Trump's total reliance on his pro-Israel advisers, embedded in his regime, at the expense of US military intelligence, has led to the construction of a parallel government, pitting the President and his Zionist-advisers against his generals . This certainly exposes the total hypocrisy of Trump's presidential campaign promise to ' Make America Great Again' . His practice and policy of promoting war with Iran for the sake of Israel are placing US national interest and the advice of the US generals last and will never restore American prestige. ..."
Oct 26, 2017 | www.defenddemocracy.press

Can Generals James Mattis (US Secretary of Defense) and John Hyten (Head of US Strategic Command) Prevent a Disaster?

Introduction

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Presidents of the 52 Major Jewish American Organizations are leading President Trump , like a puppy on a leash, into a major war with Iran. The hysterical '52 Presidents' and 'Bibi' Netanyahu are busy manufacturing Holocaust-level predictions that a non-nuclear Iran is preparing to 'vaporize' Israel, , The buffoonish US President Trump has swallowed this fantasy wholesale and is pushing our nation toward war for the sake of Israel and its US-based supporters and agents. We will cite ten recent examples of Israeli-authored policies, implemented by Trump in his march to war (there are scores of others).

  1. After many years, Israel and 'the 52 President' finally made the US withdraw from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because of its detailed documentation of Israeli crimes against Palestinian people. Trump complied with their demands.
  2. Tel Aviv demanded a Zionist fanatic and backer of the illegal Jewish settler occupation of Palestinian lands, the bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman , be appointed US Ambassador to Israel. Trump complied, despite the ambassador's overt conflict of interest.
  3. Israel launched waves of savage bombings against Syrian government troops and facilities engaged in a war against ISIS-mercenary terrorists. Israel, which had backed the terrorists in its ambition to break-up of the secular Syrian state, demanded US support. Trump complied, and sent more US arms to the anti-government terrorists.
  4. Israel denounced the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal Framework and Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action , signed by 6 major states and UN Security Council Members, (US, France, UK, Germany, China and Russia). A furious Netanyahu demanded that President Trump follow Tel Aviv and abrogate the multiparty agreement signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama . Trump complied and the US is at risk of openly violating its international agreement.

    Trump parrots Netanyahu's falsehoods to the letter: He raves that Iran, while technically in compliance, has violated ' the spirit of the agreement' without citing a single instance of actual violation. The 5 other signers of the ' Framework', the US military and the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency have repeatedly certified Iran's strict compliance with the accord. Trump rejects the evidence of countless experts among US allies and 'his own generals' while embracing the hysterical lies from Israel and the ' 52' . Who would have thought the 'hard-nosed' businessman Trump would be so ' spiritual' when it came to honoring and breaking treaties and agreements!

  5. Israel and the ' 52' have demanded that Washington imprison and fine US citizens who have exercised their constitutional First Amendment Right of free speech by supporting the international boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) campaign, which is designed to end the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and crimes against Palestinians. Trump complied. Americans may soon face over a decade in prison and complete economic ruin for supporting a peaceful economic boycott of Israeli settler products. This will represent an unprecedented violation of the US Constitution. At present, US public employees, like teachers in certain US states, are facing job loss for refusing to sign a 'loyalty oath' not to boycott products from Israel's illegal settlements. Desperate American victims of the floods and natural disasters in Texas are being denied access to public US taxpayer relief funds unless they sign similar loyalty oaths in support of Israel.
  6. Israel demanded that the US appoint Zionist fanatic real estate attorney, Jason Greenblatt and real estate speculator, Jared Kushner as Middle East peace negotiators. Trump appointed South Carolina businesswoman Nikki Haley as US Ambassador to the United Nations. Israel pushed for Ms. Haley, the first US governor to criminalize support for the peaceful BDS movement.
  7. Trump went against the advice of ' his Generals' in his own cabinet regarding Iran's compliance with the nuclear agreement, and chose to comply with Netanyahu's demands.
  8. Trump supports the long-standing Israeli project to maneuver a Kurdish takeover of Northern Iraq, grabbing the oil-rich Kirkuk province and permanently divide the once secular, nationalist Iraqi nation. Trump has sent arms and military advisers to the Kurds in war-torn Syria as they attempt to grab territory for a separate 'Kurdistan'. This is part of an Israeli plan to subdivide the Middle East into impotent tribal 'statelets'.
  9. Trump rejected the Turkish government's demand to extradite CIA-Israeli-backed Fethullah Gulen , self-exiled in the US since 1999, for his leadership role in the failed 2016 military coup d'etat.
  10. Like all his predecessors, Trump is completely submissive to Israeli-directed ' lobbies' (like AIPAC), which operate on behalf of a foreign power, in violation of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act. Trump chose his Orthodox Zionist son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a callow real estate investor and prominent supporter for war against Iran, as his chief foreign policy adviser.

President Trump's irresponsible pandering to Israel and its American-Jewish agents has caused deep unease among the Generals in his cabinet, as well as among active duty and retired US military officers, who are skeptical about Tel Aviv's push for open-ended US wars in the Middle East.

Ten Reasons Why Military Officers support America's Nuclear Accord with Iran

The Netanyahu-Israel First power configuration in Washington succeeded in convincing Trump to tear-up the nuclear accord with Iran. This went against the advice and wishes of the top US generals in the White House and active duty officers in the field who support the agreement and recognize Iran's cooperation.

The Generals have ten solid reasons for rejecting the Netanyahu-Trump push to shred the accord:

  1. The agreement is working. By all reliable, independent and official observers, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the US intelligence community and the US Secretary of State – Iran is complying with its side of the agreement.
  2. If Trump violates the agreement, co-signed by the 6 members of the UN Security Council, in order to truckle to the whims of Israel and its gang of ' 52', the US government will lose all credibility among its allies. The US military will be equally tainted in its current and future dealings with NATO and other military 'partners'.
  3. Violation of the agreement will force the Iranians to restart their nuclear, as well as advanced defensive, weapons programs, increasing the risk of an Israeli-Trump instigated military confrontation. Any US war with Iran will be prolonged, costing the lives of tens of thousands of US troops, its land bases in the Gulf States, and warships in the Persian Gulf. Full-scale war with Iran, a large and well-armed country, would be a disaster for the entire region.
  4. US generals know from their earlier experiences under the George W. Bush Administration that Zionist officials in Washington, in close collaboration with Israeli handlers, worked tirelessly to engineer the US invasion of Iraq and the prolonged war in Afghanistan. This led to the death and injury of hundreds of thousands of US military personnel as well as millions of civilian casualties in the invaded countries. The ensuing chaos created the huge refugee crises now threatening the stability of Europe. The Generals view the Israel-Firsters as irresponsible armchair warmongers and media propagandists, who have no 'skin in the game' through any service in the US Armed Forces. They are correctly seen as agents for a foreign entity.
  5. US generals learned the lesson of the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Somalia – where disastrous interventions led to defeats and loss of potential important regional allies.
  6. US generals, who are working with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to negotiate an agreement with North Korea, know that Trump's breaking a negotiated agreement with Iran, only reinforces North Korea's distrust of the US and will harden its opposition to a diplomatic settlement on the Korean Peninsula. It is clear that a full-scale war with nuclear-armed North Korea could wipe out tens of thousands of US troops and allies throughout the region and kill or displace hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of civilians.
  7. US generals are deeply disturbed by the notion that their Commander in Chief, the elected President of the United States, is taking his orders from Israel and its US proxies. They dislike committing American blood and treasure for a foreign power whose policies have only degraded US influence in the Middle East. The generals want to act for and in defense of US national interests – and not Tel Aviv's.
  8. US military officials resent the fact that Israel receives the most advanced US military weapons and technology, which have been subsidized by the US taxpayers. In some cases, Israelis receive advanced US weapons before US troops even have them. They also are aware that Israeli intelligence agents (and American citizens) have spied on the US and received confidential military information in order to preempt US policy. Israel operates within the United States with total impunity!
  9. US generals are concerned about negotiating accords with China over strategic military issues of global importance. The constant catering and groveling to Israel, an insignificant global economic entity, has reduced US prestige and status, as well as China's trust in the validity of any military agreements with the Americans.
  10. Trump's total reliance on his pro-Israel advisers, embedded in his regime, at the expense of US military intelligence, has led to the construction of a parallel government, pitting the President and his Zionist-advisers against his generals . This certainly exposes the total hypocrisy of Trump's presidential campaign promise to ' Make America Great Again' . His practice and policy of promoting war with Iran for the sake of Israel are placing US national interest and the advice of the US generals last and will never restore American prestige.

Trump's decision not to certify Iran's compliance with the accord and his handing the ultimate decision on an international agreement signed by the six members of the UN Security Council over to the US Congress is ominous: He has effectively given potential war making powers to a corrupt legislature, often derided as 'Israeli occupied territory', which has always sided with Israeli and US Zionist war mongers. Trump is snubbing ' his' State Department, the Pentagon and the various US Intelligence agencies while giving into the demands of such Zionist zealots as New York Senator Charles Schumer , Netanyahu's alter ego in the US Senate and a huge booster for war with Iran.

Conclusion

Trump's refusal to certify Iran's compliance with nuclear accord reflects the overwhelming power of Israel within the US Presidency. Trump's rebuke of his generals and Secretary of State Tillerson, the UN Security Council and the 5 major cosigners of the 2015 accord with Iran, exposes the advanced degradation of the US Presidency and the US role in global politics.

All previous US Presidents have been influenced by the billionaire and millionaire die-hard Israel-Firsters, who funded their electoral campaigns. But occasionally, some ' Commanders in Chief' have decided to pursue policies favoring US national interest over Israel's bellicose ambitions. Avoiding a catastrophic war in the Middle East is such a case: Obama chose to negotiate and sign a nuclear accord with Iran. Tel Aviv's useful fool, Donald Trump, intends to break the agreement and drag this nation further into the hell of regional war.

In this regard, international opinion has sided with America's generals. Only Israel and its US acolytes on Wall Street and Hollywood applaud the blustering, bellicose Trump!

* James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York.He is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet. He has a long history of commitment to social justice, working in particular with the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement for 11 years. In 1973-76 he was a member of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Repression in Latin America

Read also: They prepare new Iraq in Syria - Danger of Nuclear War

[Nov 04, 2017] Who's Afraid of Corporate COINTELPRO by C. J. Hopkins

Highly recommended!
These tactics do not just suppress information. They enforce conformity at much deeper level.
Notable quotes:
"... I am using the Orwellian verb "unperson" playfully, but I'm also trying to be precise. What's happening isn't censorship, technically, at least not in the majority of cases. While there are examples of classic censorship (e.g., in the UK, France, and Germany), apart from so-called "terrorist content," most governments aren't formally banning expressions of anti-corporatist dissent. This isn't Czechoslovakia, after all. This is global capitalism, where the repression of dissent is a little more subtle. The point of Google unpersoning CounterPunch (and probably many other publications) and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists like Hedges is not to prevent them from publishing their work or otherwise render them invisible to readers. The goal is to delegitmize them, and thus decrease traffic to their websites and articles, and ultimately drive them out of business, if possible. ..."
"... Another objective of this non-censorship censorship is discouraging writers like myself from contributing to publications like CounterPunch, Truthdig, Alternet, Global Research, and any other publications the corporatocracy deems "illegitimate." Google unpersoning a writer like Hedges is a message to other non-ball-playing writers. The message is, "this could happen to you." This message is meant for other journalists, primarily, but it's also aimed at writers like myself who are making a living (to whatever degree) writing and selling what we think of as "literature." ..."
"... These tactics do not just suppress information. They enforce conformity at much deeper level. ..."
"... Chomsky explains how this system operates in What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream . It isn't a question of censorship the system operates on rewards and punishments, financial and emotional coercion, and subtler forms of intimidation. Making examples of non-cooperators is a particularly effective tactic. Ask any one of the countless women whose careers have been destroyed by Harvey Weinstein, or anyone who's been to graduate school, or worked at a major corporation. ..."
"... C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org . ..."
Nov 04, 2017 | www.unz.com

On November 30, 2016, presumably right at the stroke of midnight, Google Inc. unpersoned CounterPunch. They didn't send out a press release or anything. They just quietly removed it from the Google News aggregator. Not very many people noticed. This happened just as the "fake news" hysteria was being unleashed by the corporate media, right around the time The Washington Post ran this neo-McCarthyite smear piece vicariously accusing CounterPunch, and a number of other publications, of being "peddlers of Russian propaganda." As I'm sure you'll recall, that astounding piece of "journalism" (which The Post was promptly forced to disavow with an absurd disclaimer but has refused to retract) was based on the claims of an anonymous website apparently staffed by a couple of teenagers and a formerly rabidly anti-Communist, now rabidly anti-Putin think tank. Little did most people know at the time that these were just the opening salvos in what has turned out to be an all-out crackdown on any and all forms of vocal opposition to the global corporate ruling classes and their attempts to quash the ongoing nationalist backlash against their neoliberal agenda.

Almost a year later, things are much clearer. If you haven't been following this story closely, and you care at all about freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and that kind of stuff, you may want to take an hour or two and catch up a bit on what's been happening. I offered a few examples of some of the measures governments and corporations have been taking to stifle expressions of dissent in my latest piece in CounterPunch , and there are many more detailed articles online, like this one by Andre Damon from July, and this follow-up he published last week (which reports that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Chris Hedges has also been unpersoned). Or, if you're the type of soul who only believes what corporations tell you, and who automatically dismisses anything published by a Trotskyist website, here's one from last December in The Guardian , and an op-ed in The New York Times , both of which at least report what Google, Twitter, and Facebook are up to. Or you could read this piece by Robert Parry , who also has "legitimate" (i.e., corporate) credentials, and who hasn't been unpersoned just yet, although I'm sure they'll get around to him eventually.

I am using the Orwellian verb "unperson" playfully, but I'm also trying to be precise. What's happening isn't censorship, technically, at least not in the majority of cases. While there are examples of classic censorship (e.g., in the UK, France, and Germany), apart from so-called "terrorist content," most governments aren't formally banning expressions of anti-corporatist dissent. This isn't Czechoslovakia, after all. This is global capitalism, where the repression of dissent is a little more subtle. The point of Google unpersoning CounterPunch (and probably many other publications) and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists like Hedges is not to prevent them from publishing their work or otherwise render them invisible to readers. The goal is to delegitmize them, and thus decrease traffic to their websites and articles, and ultimately drive them out of business, if possible.

Another objective of this non-censorship censorship is discouraging writers like myself from contributing to publications like CounterPunch, Truthdig, Alternet, Global Research, and any other publications the corporatocracy deems "illegitimate." Google unpersoning a writer like Hedges is a message to other non-ball-playing writers. The message is, "this could happen to you." This message is meant for other journalists, primarily, but it's also aimed at writers like myself who are making a living (to whatever degree) writing and selling what we think of as "literature."

Yes, as you've probably guessed by now, in addition to writing political satire, I am, as rogue journalist Caitlin Johnstone so aptly put it once, an "elitist wanker." I've spent the majority of my adult life writing stage plays and working in the theater, and it doesn't get any more elitist than that. My plays are published by "establishment" publishers, have won a few awards, and have been produced internationally. I recently published my "debut novel" (which is what you call it if you're an elitist wanker) and am currently trying to promote and sell it. I mention this, not to blow my little horn, but to the set the stage to try to illustrate how these post-Orwellian intimidation tactics (i.e., unpersoning people from the Internet) work. These tactics do not just suppress information. They enforce conformity at much deeper level.

The depressing fact of the matter is, in our brave new Internet-dominated world, corporations like Google, Twitter, and Facebook (not to mention Amazon), are, for elitist wankers like me, in the immortal words of Colonel Kurz, "either friends or they are truly enemies to be feared." If you are in the elitist wanker business, regardless of whether you're Jonathan Franzen, Garth Risk Hallberg, Margaret Atwood, or some "mid-list" or "emerging" author, there is no getting around these corporations. So it's kind of foolish, professionally speaking, to write a bunch of essays that will piss them off, and then publish these essays in CounterPunch. Literary agents advise against this. Other elitist literary wankers, once they discover what you've been doing, will avoid you like the bubonic plague. Although it's perfectly fine to write books and movies about fictional evil corporations, writing about how real corporations are using their power to mold societies into self-policing virtual prisons of politically-correct, authoritarian consumers is well, it's something that is just not done in professional elitist wanker circles.

Normally, all this goes without saying, as these days most elitist wankers are trained how to write, and read, and think, in MFA conformity factories, where they screen out any unstable weirdos with unhealthy interests in political matters. This is to avoid embarrassing episodes like Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize lecture (which, if you haven't read it, you probably should), and is why so much of contemporary literature is so well-behaved and instantly forgettable. This institutionalized screening system is also why the majority of journalists employed by mainstream media outlets understand, without having to be told, what they are, and are not, allowed to report. Chomsky explains how this system operates in What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream . It isn't a question of censorship the system operates on rewards and punishments, financial and emotional coercion, and subtler forms of intimidation. Making examples of non-cooperators is a particularly effective tactic. Ask any one of the countless women whose careers have been destroyed by Harvey Weinstein, or anyone who's been to graduate school, or worked at a major corporation.

Or let me provide you with a personal example.

A couple weeks ago, I googled myself (which we elitist wankers are wont to do), and noticed that two of my published books had disappeared from the "Knowledge Panel" that appears in the upper right of the search results. I also noticed that the people "People Also Search For" in the panel had changed. For years, consistently, the people you saw there had been a variety of other elitist literary wankers and leftist types. Suddenly, they were all rather right-wing types, people like Ilana Mercer and John Derbyshire, and other VDARE writers. So that was a little disconcerting.

I set out to contact the Google Search specialists to inquire about this mysterious development, and was directed to a series of unhelpful web pages directing me to other unhelpful pages with little boxes where you can write and submit a complaint to Google, which they will completely ignore. Being an elitist literary wanker, I also wrote to Google Books, and exchanged a number of cordial emails with an entity (let's call her Ms. O'Brien) who explained that, for "a variety of reasons," the "visibility" of my books (which had been consistently visible for many years) was subject to change from day to day, and that, regrettably, she couldn't assist me further, and that sending her additional cordial emails was probably a pointless waste of time. Ms. O'Brien was also pleased to report that my books had been restored to "visibility," which, of course, when I checked, they hadn't.

"Whatever," I told myself, "this is silly. It's probably just some IT thing, maybe Google Books updating its records, or something." However, I was still perplexed by the "People Also Search For" switcheroo, because it's kind of misleading to link my writing to that of a bunch of serious right-wingers. Imagine, if you were a dystopian sci-fi fan, and you googled me to check out my book and see what else I had written, and so on, and my Google "Knowledge Panel" popped up and displayed all these far-right VDARE folks. Unless you're a far-right VDARE type yourself, that might be a little bit of a turn-off.

At that point, I wondered if I was getting paranoid. Because Google Search runs on algorithms, right? And my political satire and commentary is published, not only in CounterPunch, but also in The Unz Review, where these far-right-wing types are also published. Moreover, my pieces are often reposted by what appear to be "Russia-linked" websites, and everyone knows that the Russians are all a bunch of white supremacists, right? On top of which, it's not like I'm Stephen King here. I am hardly famous enough to warrant the attention of any post-Orwellian corporate conspiracy to stigmatize anti-establishment dissent by manipulating how authors are displayed on Google (i.e., subtly linking them to white supremacists, anti-Semites, and others of that ilk).

So, okay, I reasoned, what probably happened was over the course of twenty-four hours, for no logical reason whatsoever, all the folks who had been googling me (along with other leftist and literary figures) suddenly stopped googling me, all at once, while, more or less at the exact same time, hundreds of right-wingers started googling me (along with those white supremacist types they had, theoretically, already been googling). That kind of makes sense when you think about it, right? I mean, Google couldn't be doing this intentionally. It must have been some sort of algorithm that detected this sudden, seismic shift in the demographic of people googling me.

Or, I don't know, does that possibly sound like a desperate attempt to rationalize the malicious behavior of an unaccountable, more or less god-like, global corporation that wields the power of life and death over my book sales and profile on the Internet (a more or less god-like global corporation that could do a lot of additional damage to my sales and reputation with complete impunity once the piece you're reading is published)? Or am I simply getting paranoid, and, in fact, I've developed a secret white supremacist fan base without my knowledge? Only Google knows for sure.

Such are the conundrums elitist literary wankers have to face these days that is, those of us wankers who haven't learned to keep our fucking mouths shut yet. Probably the safest course of action, regardless of whether I'm being paranoid or Google does have me on some kind of list, is to lay off the anti-corporatist essays, and definitely stop contributing to CounterPunch, not to mention The Unz Review, and probably also give up the whole dystopian satire novel thing, and ensure that my second novel conforms to the "normal" elitist wanker rules (which every literary wanker knows, but which, technically, do not exist). Who knows, if I play my cards right, maybe I can even sell the rights to Miramax, or okay, some other corporation.

Once that happens, I assume that Google will want to restore me to normal personhood, and return my books to visibility, and I will ride off into the Hollywood sunset with the Clintons, Clooneys, and Pichais, and maybe even Barack Obama himself, if he isn't off jet skiing with Richard Branson, or having dinner with Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos, who just happen to live right down the street, or hawking the TPP on television. By that time, CounterPunch and all those other "illegitimate" publications will have been forced onto the dark web anyway, so I won't be giving up all that much. I know, that sounds pretty cold and cynical, but my liberal friends will understand I just hope all my new white supremacist fans will find it in their hearts to forgive me.

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .

anonymous , • Disclaimer November 3, 2017 at 12:15 pm GMT

Thank you for mustering the courage and then taking the time to spell out these outrages in a straightforward, unemotional way. I've appreciated the humor that centers your other essays, but there's not a damned thing funny about this.

But why are things as they are? With billions aplenty, our rulers must be driven by their libido dominandi. We're left to wonder only whether they get off more on ostracizing the Hopkinses, on buying the politicians, or on herding the sheep from bathrooms to statues to flags.

[Nov 04, 2017] 13 Shocking Facts About Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller by George Washington

Mueller is the member of ruling neoliberal elite... That's for sure.
Nov 02, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Talking heads act like Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is fair, impartial and unbiased. But the facts are a wee bit different ... Failure to Aggressively Prosecute the BCCI Scandal

The BBC noted :

[Mueller] is also known for leading the probe into the 1991 collapse of the Luxembourg-registered Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

Williams Safire wrote in the New York Times:

The B.C.C.I. scandal involves the laundering of drug money, the illicit financing of terrorism and of arms to Iraq, the easy purchase of respectability and the corruption of the world banking system.

For more than a decade, the biggest banking swindle in history worked beautifully. Between $5 billion and $15 billion was bilked from governments and individual depositors to be put to the most evil of purposes -- while lawmen and regulators slept.

Now the fight among investigators is coming out into the open. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who gave impetus to long-contained probes, told a Senate subcommittee headed by Senator John Kerry that he is getting no cooperation from the Thornburgh Justice Department.

Justice's Criminal Division chief, Robert Mueller, tells me he will have a hatchet-burying session with the independent-minded D.A. next week, and vehemently denies having told British intelligence to stop cooperating with the Manhattan grand jury.

Mueller's handling of the BCCI scandal as the point man for the Justice Department was widely criticized. As noted by a Senate report written by Senators Kerry and Brown:

Over the past two years, the Justice Department's handling of BCCI has been criticized in numerous editorials in major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, reflecting similar criticism on the part of several Congressmen, including the chairman of the Subcommittee, Senator Kerry; the chief Customs undercover officer who handled the BCCI drug-money laundering sting, Robert Mazur; his superior at Customs, Commissioner William von Raab; New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau; former Senate investigator Jack Blum, and, within the Justice Department itself, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Dexter Lehtinen.

Typical editorials criticized Justice's prosecution of BCCI as "sluggish," "conspicuously slow," "inattentive," and "lethargic." Several editorials noted that there had been "poor cooperation" by Justice with other agencies. One stated that "the Justice Department seems to have been holding up information that should have been passed on" to regulators and others. Another that "the Justice Department's secretive conduct in dealing with BCCI requires a better explanation than any so far offered.

***

Under Assistant Attorney General Mueller, the Department assigned nearly three dozen attorneys to the case. During 1992, the Department brought several indictments, which remained narrower, less detailed and, at times, seemingly in response to the efforts of District Attorney Robert Morgenthau of New York, the Federal Reserve, or both

***

Suddenly, on August 22, Dennis Saylor, chief assistant to Assistant Attorney General Mueller, called Lehtinen and, according to the US Attorney, "indicated to me that I was directed not to return the indictment."

The Senate Report also noted :

While the Justice Department's handling of BCCI has received substantial criticism, the office of Robert Morgenthau, District Attorney of New York, has generally received credit for breaking open the BCCI investigation.

***

In going after BCCI, Morgenthau's office quickly found that in addition to fighting off the bank, it would receive resistance from almost every other institution or entity connected to BCCI , including at various times, BCCI's multitude of prominent and politically well-connected lawyers, BCCI's accountants, BCCI's shareholders, the Bank of England, the British Serious Fraud Office, and the U.S. Department of Justice

Squashing Warning Signs that May Have Stopped 9/11

Larry Klayman writes :

Robert Mueller first hit my radar ... just months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.

***

I came to meet and later represent FBI Special Agents Robert Wright and John Vincent, of the agency's Chicago Counter-Terrorism Field Office. During our meeting, both Special Agents Wright and Vincent revealed to me that they had been conducting a counterterrorism investigation of Saudi money laundering into and in the United States, and they both believed that a massive terrorist attack was imminent.

In the course of this investigation, both special agents had asked a fellow FBI agent who was undercover, one of Muslim descent, to be wired to turn up further evidence of this terrorist operation. The Muslim agent refused, indignantly telling both Wright and Vincent that Muslims don't spy and rat on other Muslims. In shock, my soon-to-be clients reported this to their supervisors at the FBI, but no action was taken. To make matters worse, Wright's and Vincent's FBI supervisors quashed their investigation. They both believed that the order to kill the investigation came from the highest reaches of the FBI, and, upset it not outraged by this cover-up, Wright then decided to write a book detailing this breach of FBI honor.

The only way I could explain this cover-up was that then-FBI Director Robert Mueller was sensitive to the ties between the family of President George W. Bush and the Saudi royal family.

***

Director Mueller, along with his "yes men" supervisors at the agency, not only quashed my clients' investigation and ignored the disloyalty of the Muslim undercover agent, but then missed the warning signs leading up to September 11 – the biggest intelligence failure in American history, even surpassing Pearl Harbor.

But shamelessly, despite this historic intelligence failure and the World Trade Center terrorist attacks that ensued, Mueller later led an effort to drum both Special Agents Wright and Vincent out of the FBI, in part by attempting to remove their security clearances, as a "reward" for their candor.

FBI special agent – and a 2002 Time Person of the Year – Colleen Rowley points out :

The FBI and all the other officials claimed that there were no clues, that they had no warning [about 9/11] etc., and that was not the case. There had been all kinds of memos and intelligence coming in.

But overwhelming evidence shows that 9/11 was foreseeable . Indeed, Al Qaeda crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was itself foreseeable . Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable .

Mueller was one of the people who dropped the ball and let 9/11 happen.

Allowing Escape of Saudi Persons Connected to Bin Laden

Right after 9/11, American airspace was closed down. Yet Mueller was one of the people who allowed relatives of Bin Laden and other persons of interest fly back to Saudi Arabia.

Entrapping Innocent People for P.R. Purposes

After dropping the ball, Mueller then went on to entrap innocent people for P.R. purposes.

And Rowley notes :

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the " post 9/11 round-up " of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI "progress" in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists .

9/11 Cover Up

Rowley says :

TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a " bombshell memo " to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller's having so misled everyone after 9/11.

In addition, Rowley says that the FBI sent Soviet-style "minders" to her interviews with the Joint Intelligence Committee investigation of 9/11, to make sure that she didn't say anything the FBI didn't like. The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 confirmed that government "minders" obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this ).

Mueller's FBI also obstructed the 9/11 investigation in many other ways. For example, an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location. See this and this .

Harper's notes :

Bob Graham, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told me recently that Robert Mueller, then the FBI director (and now the special counsel investigating connections between Russia and the Trump campaign) made "the strongest objections" to Jacobson and his colleagues visiting San Diego.

Graham and his team defied Mueller's efforts, and Jacobson flew west. There he discovered that his hunch was correct. The FBI files in California were replete with extraordinary and damning details

***

Nevertheless, Mueller adamantly refused their demands to interview him, even when backed by a congressional subpoena, and removed Shaikh to an undisclosed location 'for his own safety.'

Graham also wrote that the FBI also "insisted that we could not, even in the most sanitized manner, tell the American people that an FBI informant had a relationship with two of the hijackers."

And Kristen Breitweiser - one of the four 9/11 widows instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks - points out :

Mueller and other FBI officials had purposely tried to keep any incriminating information specifically surrounding the Saudis out of the Inquiry's investigative hands. To repeat, there was a concerted effort by the FBI and the Bush Administration to keep incriminating Saudi evidence out of the Inquiry's investigation. And for the exception of the 29 full pages, they succeeded in their effort.

Iraq War

Rowley notes :

When you had the lead-up to the Iraq War Mueller and, of course, the CIA and all the other directors, saluted smartly and went along with what Bush wanted, which was to gin up the intelligence to make a pretext for the Iraq War. For instance, in the case of the FBI, they actually had a receipt, and other documentary proof, that one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had not been in Prague, as Dick Cheney was alleging. And yet those directors more or less kept quiet. That included CIA, FBI, Mueller, and it included also the deputy attorney general at the time, James Comey.

Torture

Rowley also points out :

Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any "war crimes files" were made to disappear. Not only did "collect it all" surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller's (and then Comey's) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.

Anthrax Frame-Up

Mueller also presided over the incredibly flawed anthrax investigation.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office says the FBI's investigation was "flawed and inaccurate" . The investigation was so bogus that a senator called for an "independent review and assessment of how the FBI handled its investigation in the anthrax case."

The head of the FBI's anthrax investigation says the whole thing was a sham . He says that the FBI higher-ups "greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation", that there were "politically motivated communication embargoes from FBI Headquarters".

The FBI's anthrax investigation head said that the FBI framed scientist Bruce Ivins. On July 6, 2006, he filed a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI's Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303, which noted:

(j) the FBI's fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer ; and, (k) the FBI's subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence

Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ and FBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins' guilt . These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions

In other words, Mueller presided over the attempt to frame an innocent man (and see this ).

Unsure If Government Can Assassinate U.S. Citizens Living On U.S. Soil

Rather than saying "of course not!", Mueller said that he wasn't sure whether Obama had the right to assassinate Americans living on American soil .

Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley commented at the time:

One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.

***

He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: "Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution."

Crippled Investigations of Financial Fraud ... Helping to Allow the Great Recession

In a 2013 piece entitled " Mueller: I Crippled FBI Effort v. White-Collar Crime ", the country's top white collar crime expert, William Black – who put over 1,000 top S&L executives in jail for fraud, and is a professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri - wrote :

The FBI never developed "an intelligence operation" "to analyze threats" of even epidemic fraud.

***

White-collar crime investigations and prosecutions are massive money makers that reduce the deficit, but Mueller , Holder, and Obama refuse to make these points and refuse to prosecute the elite bank fraudsters. On substantive and political grounds their actions are either inexplicable or all too explicable and support my readers' belief that the FBI leadership no longer wants to investigate and prosecute the elite bank frauds.

This is important because:

[Nov 02, 2017] The Democratic Law Firm Behind the Russian Collusion Narrative by Scott Ritter

The real question is so much Russian influence as the US intelligence agencies influence on 2016 presidential elections. Brennan in particular. He bet of Hillary Clinton and lost. After that he was instrumental in launching "color revolution" against Trump. In which the the critical step was to appoint "special prosecutor".
Notable quotes:
"... But even more is emerging that could take the Russia story in a totally new direction -- namely that the infamous dossier compiled by former British Secret Intelligence Service officer Christopher Steele was bought and paid for by a law firm , Perkins Coie, working on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). ..."
"... The extent to which the Steele Dossier influenced the intelligence underpinning Mueller's probe has yet to be determined with any certainty. In January, the U.S. intelligence community published the unclassified ICA, which was derived from a compilation of intelligence reports and assessments conducted by the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Many of the allegations made in the ICA mirror reporting contained in the Steele Dossier. So striking are the similarities that there are real concerns among some senior Republican lawmakers that the ICA merely reflects "echoes" of the Steele Dossier reported back via liaison with foreign intelligence services who had access to it (namely the British Secret Intelligence Service) or whose own sources were also utilized by Steele. ..."
"... An examination of the nexus between the dossier and the publication of the Russian ICA, however, shows that Litt was less than truthful in his denials. Material from the Steele Dossier was, in fact, shared with the FBI and U.S. intelligence community in July of 2016, and seems to have been the driving force behind the intelligence briefings provided to the so-called Gang of Eight who served as the initial impetus for an investigation into Russian meddling that eventually morphed into the 2017 Russian ICA. ..."
"... Moreover, while Perkins Coie had its hands all over the dossier, it was also massaging the Russian hack narrative for mainstream media primetime. ..."
"... The political law practice of Perkins Coie was started in 1981 under the leadership of Bob Bauer , who went on to become the White House Counsel to President Barack Obama. Today, the practice is headed by Marc Elias , who has been described as "the Democrats' go-to attorney an indispensable figure in the party." Elias oversees the work of 18 attorneys representing nearly every Democratic senator, as well as the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and Hillary for America, which oversaw the Clinton campaign. ..."
"... Sussman, after coordinating with Wasserman-Schultz, approached the FBI and tried to get them to publicly attribute the intrusion to Russia. ..."
"... When the FBI refused, citing a need to gain access to the DNC servers before it could make that call, Sussman balked and, again with the full support of the DNC, instead coordinated a massive publicity effort intended to link Russia to the DNC breach through an exclusive to the Washington Pos t ..."
"... According to the Washington Post , in early August 2016, the CIA director John Brennan came into possession of "sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin's direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race." This intelligence was briefed to the Gang of Eight. Almost immediately, information derived from this briefing began to leak to the media. "Russia's hacking appeared aimed at helping Mr. Trump win the November election," officials with knowledge of Brennan's intelligence told the New York Times . The intelligence, referred to as "bombshell," allegedly "captured Putin's specific instructions on the operation's audacious objectives -- defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump." ..."
"... The question is was the investigation supposed to uncover whatever it uncovere, or was it supposed to fabricate the discovery? If it was fabrication, yes, they should be condemned. ..."
"... My best guess is that some part of the US intelligence community is involved in the election manipulation. Overthrowing foreign governments or undermining the EU is one thing, colluding with a foreign power to manipulate the US election is quite another. Note, by the way, the absence of any reference to George Papadopulous or Viktor Yanukovych. ..."
"... But it is obvious that most of the Beltway including the spook world badly wants a proxy war with Russia, Iran, and Syria. As usual we are killing people overseas under Presidents of both parties and as usual the United States of narcissism can only complain about what dastardly foreigners allegedly did to us. ..."
"... Someone help me out here. If Clinton (or her very close associates) pay huge bucks to Russians to get dirt (even if it is made up dirt) on Trump, that is good, because it hurts Trump. But if Trump associates simply have conversations with Russians, full stop (cf. Michael Flynn, or anyone else who spoke with the Russian ambassador), that is criminal. Is this not sort of a double standard? ..."
"... We're expected to believe Crowdstrike's report on Russian hacking but we can't examine the evidence. We're expected to believe that Perkins Coie went rogue and decided to spend $12 million without informing any of its clients. ..."
"... What a bunch of hogwash. There's a cover up here, but it's not what the complicit media is portraying. The cover up is of the past 8 years of misdeeds by the Deep State, the Clintons and the Obama Administration. ..."
"... I think the story is even more obvious than this. They wanted to spy on aspects of the Trump campaign but they legally couldn't. The FBI told them they needed a reason to tap the phones and read the mail. They paid a guy to put together a dossier that would allow them to get FISA warrants to do the spying they wanted to do illegally. They just needed the dossier to say certain things to get it past a FISA judge. They did this and tapped his phones and read his emails and texts for the purpose of beating him in the election. It is really that simple of a story. ..."
"... Given Hillary's past pay to play lobbying and her disregard for national security, it would seem appropriate to have investigate if members of the Clinton campaign had contacts with the Russian Ambassador or Russian "operatives. We now know that the dossier relied on collaboration with Russian officials. ..."
"... In my opinion, Mueller has disgraced his former and present positions by collaborating in this conjured affair that obfuscates the real crimes occurring during the Obama administration. ..."
"... Crooked Hillary and her klan never thought for a second they wouldn't be able to cover up democrat crimes. The Clinton Crime Family is in full panic mode. No one seems to remember why Mueller quit as director of the FBI. He was disgusted by the Obama administration covering up lawlessness. ..."
"... Why didn't the FBI insist on examining the DNC servers? Something's not right. ..."
"... I voted for Clinton, but as the lesser evil on various issues, chiefly domestic and environmental. Clinton is not in Putin's pocket. She is in the pocket of Netanyahu, and the Saudis. Trump doesn't really seem to be in Putin's pocket -- he has neocons and others working hard to ensure that he gets into a confrontation with Iran. Basically he too is in the pocket of the Israelis and the Saudis. ..."
"... The mainstream ignores this. The countries with real influence on our policies don't have to favor one party over the other. They have them both in their pocket. ..."
"... As time goes on, I don't think Russia "meddled" in US elections as much as US politicians of both parties corruptly attempted to rig the elections. Seems to me that the demonization of Russia is bi-partisan because the US military industrial complex needs a "bogey man" to justify its billions$$$$ and just about ALL politicians need that money to stay in power. ..."
Oct 31, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The Democratic Law Firm Behind the Russian Collusion Narrative How a high-powered practice contracted oppo-research on Trump -- and then pushed a hack story.

Credit: Shutterstock/ Mark Van Scyoc The ongoing investigation headed by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller into alleged collusion between the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump and the Russian government has moved into a new phase, with a focus on purported money laundering. On Monday, indictments were filed against former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime associate Rick Gates.

But even more is emerging that could take the Russia story in a totally new direction -- namely that the infamous dossier compiled by former British Secret Intelligence Service officer Christopher Steele was bought and paid for by a law firm , Perkins Coie, working on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

The current controversy isn't so much over the contents of the dossier -- despite some of the reporting, none of the relevant claims contained within have been verified. Rather, the issue in question is how opposition research derived from foreign intelligence sources and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC ended up influencing the decision to prepare the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, the contents of that assessment, and the subsequent investigations by the U.S. Congress and a special prosecutor.

The extent to which the Steele Dossier influenced the intelligence underpinning Mueller's probe has yet to be determined with any certainty. In January, the U.S. intelligence community published the unclassified ICA, which was derived from a compilation of intelligence reports and assessments conducted by the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Many of the allegations made in the ICA mirror reporting contained in the Steele Dossier. So striking are the similarities that there are real concerns among some senior Republican lawmakers that the ICA merely reflects "echoes" of the Steele Dossier reported back via liaison with foreign intelligence services who had access to it (namely the British Secret Intelligence Service) or whose own sources were also utilized by Steele.

According to Robert Litt , who served as general counsel to former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, this mirroring was nothing more than coincidence. "The dossier itself," Litt wrote in a recent Lawfare blog , "played absolutely no role in the coordinated intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in our election. That assessment, which was released in unclassified form in January but which contained much more detail in the classified version that has been briefed to Congress, was based entirely on other sources and analysis."

Moreover, Litt noted, the decision in December 2016 to brief President-elect Trump on the existence of the Steele Dossier and provide him with a two-page summary of that document, was not a reflection that "the Intelligence Community had relied on it in any way, or even made any determination that the information it contained was reliable and accurate." It was rather, Litt said, a need to share with Trump the fact that the document existed and was being passed around Congress and the media.

An examination of the nexus between the dossier and the publication of the Russian ICA, however, shows that Litt was less than truthful in his denials. Material from the Steele Dossier was, in fact, shared with the FBI and U.S. intelligence community in July of 2016, and seems to have been the driving force behind the intelligence briefings provided to the so-called Gang of Eight who served as the initial impetus for an investigation into Russian meddling that eventually morphed into the 2017 Russian ICA.

Moreover, while Perkins Coie had its hands all over the dossier, it was also massaging the Russian hack narrative for mainstream media primetime.

The political law practice of Perkins Coie was started in 1981 under the leadership of Bob Bauer , who went on to become the White House Counsel to President Barack Obama. Today, the practice is headed by Marc Elias , who has been described as "the Democrats' go-to attorney an indispensable figure in the party." Elias oversees the work of 18 attorneys representing nearly every Democratic senator, as well as the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and Hillary for America, which oversaw the Clinton campaign.

It was in the latter two roles that Elias, acting on behalf of his clients, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington, D.C.-based company that, according to its website , "provides premium research, strategic intelligence, and due diligence services." Fusion GPS had previously been contracted by the Washington Free Beacon "to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary." However, when it became clear that Trump was going to secure the Republican Party nomination, the contract with Fusion GPS was terminated. According to a letter sent by Perkins Coie to Fusion GPS sometime in March 2016, Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, met with Elias and lobbied for the job of conducting opposition research on behalf of the Clinton campaign. In April 2016, Simpson's company was retained by the firm through the end of the election cycle.

Perkins Coie is also home to Michael Sussman , a partner in the firm's Privacy and Data Security Practice, who was retained by the DNC to respond to the cyber-penetration of their server in the spring of 2016. When, in late April 2016, the DNC discovered that its servers had been breached, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, then chairwoman of the DNC, turned to Perkins Coie and Sussman for help. Sussman chaired the meetings at the DNC regarding the breach, and, on May 4, 2016, he reached out to Shawn Henry , a former FBI agent who headed the incident response unit for the private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, for assistance in mitigating the fallout from the breach. According to CrowdStrike, it was immediately able to detect the presence of hostile malware that it identified as Russian in origin. Sussman, after coordinating with Wasserman-Schultz, approached the FBI and tried to get them to publicly attribute the intrusion to Russia.

When the FBI refused, citing a need to gain access to the DNC servers before it could make that call, Sussman balked and, again with the full support of the DNC, instead coordinated a massive publicity effort intended to link Russia to the DNC breach through an exclusive to the Washington Pos t , which was published in concert with a dramatic CrowdStrike technical report detailing the intrusion, ominously named "Bears in the Midst."

This public relations campaign started the media frenzy over the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC server, enabling every facet of the story that followed to be painted with a Russian brush -- normally with a spokesperson from either the DNC or Hillary for America taking the lead in promulgating the story.

It was about this same time that Elias decided to expand the scope of Fusion GPS's opposition research against Trump, going beyond the simple mining of open-source information that had been the hallmark of the firm's work up until that time, and instead delving into the active collection of information using methodologies more akin to the work of spy agencies. The person Fusion GPS turned to for this task was Steele

Key persons within the Clinton campaign and the DNC denied any knowledge of either the decision by Perkins Coie to hire Fusion GPS for the purpose of gathering opposition research, or to tap Steele to conduct this task. Elias reportedly made use of money already paid to the firm by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to fund the work of Fusion GPS, creating the conditions for deniability on the part of his clients. This decision meant that Perkins Coie, as a firm, had ownership of the Steele Dossier; expenditures of firm assets require the approval of either the management or executive committee of the firm (Elias sits on the executive committee).

But as far as intelligence products go, the Steele Dossier is as sketchy as it gets. It's an amalgam of poorly written "reports" cobbled together from what Vanity Fair called "angry émigrés," "wheeling and dealing oligarchs," and "political dissidents with well-honed axes to grind." These are precisely the kind of sources intelligence professionals operating in Russia in the early 1990s -- Steele was assigned to Moscow from 1990 to 1993 -- would have had access to. Such sources also produce information that professional analysts normally treat with more than a modicum of skepticism when preparing national-level intelligence products.

The very first report produced by Steele, dated June 20, 2016, was chock full of the kind of salacious details justifying its explosive title, "Republican Candidate Donald Trump's Activities in Russia and Compromising Relationship with the Kremlin." The substantive charges leveled in the report centered on three unnamed sources -- a senior Foreign Ministry official, a former top-level Russian intelligence officer, and a senior Russian financial official -- whom Steele accessed through a "trusted compatriot." The report alleged that Russia had been feeding the Trump campaign "valuable intelligence" on Clinton, and that this effort was supported and directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. A second report, dated June 26, 2016, focused exclusively on "Russian State Sponsored and Other Cyber Offensive (Criminal) Operations."

These reports were delivered to Elias at a critical time -- on July 22, when Wikileaks released thousands of emails believed to have been sources from the DNC hack . These emails detailed the internal deliberations of the DNC that proved to be embarrassing to both Clinton and the DNC leadership -- Wasserman-Schultz was compelled to resign due to the revelations set forth in these emails. This leak took place on the eve of the Democratic National Convention when Clinton was to be selected as the Democrats' candidate for president. The Clinton campaign blamed Russia. "Russian state actors," Robby Mook, the Clinton campaign manager told the press , "were feeding the email to hackers for the purpose of helping Donald Trump."

If Elias thought the publication of the DNC emails would spur the U.S. intelligence community to join both the DNC and the Clinton campaign in pointing an accusatory finger at Russia, he would be disappointed. When questioned by CNN's Jim Sciutto at the 2016 Aspen Security Forum as to whether or not the DNI shared the White House's view that there was no doubt Russia was behind the hack of the DNC emails, Clapper responded, "I don't think we are quite ready to make a call on attribution I don't think we are ready to make a public call on that yet." Noting that there was still some uncertainty about exactly who was behind the DNC cyber-penetration, Clapper stated that he was taken aback by the media's "hyperventilation" over the DNC email issue, pointing out that the intelligence community did not "know enough to ascribe motivation" at that time.

According to the Washington Post , in early August 2016, the CIA director John Brennan came into possession of "sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin's direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race." This intelligence was briefed to the Gang of Eight. Almost immediately, information derived from this briefing began to leak to the media. "Russia's hacking appeared aimed at helping Mr. Trump win the November election," officials with knowledge of Brennan's intelligence told the New York Times . The intelligence, referred to as "bombshell," allegedly "captured Putin's specific instructions on the operation's audacious objectives -- defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump."

This intelligence, allegedly from a "human source" linked to a foreign intelligence service, is at the center of the current spate of Russian meddling investigations. Was this source a product of the CIA's own efforts, as DNI General Counsel Litt contends, or was this an "echo" of the work done by Steele? The answer may lie in the actions of both Elias and Steele, who in the aftermath of the Democratic National Convention, and on the heels of the statement by DNI Clapper that he wasn't ready to commit to Russian attribution, shared the first two reports with both the FBI and members of the intelligence community. Steele also sat down with U.S. officials to discuss the details of these reports , which presumably included the sourcing that was used.

The parallels between the information contained in the initial report filed by Steele and the "bombshell" intelligence that prompted Brennan's decision to brief the Gang of Eight are too close to be casually dismissed. Of particular note is Steele's "Source C," a senior Russian "financial official" who had "overheard Putin talking" on at least two occasions. Was this the source that Brennan cited when it came to Putin's "specific instructions"? The cause and effect relationship between the decision by Marc Elias to brief U.S. intelligence officials on the aspects of the Steele Dossier, and Brennan's coming into possession of intelligence that virtually mirrors the reporting by Steele, cannot be dismissed out of hand.

The future of the Trump presidency will be determined by the various investigations currently underway. Those efforts have been influenced, in one way or another, by reporting sourced to Perkins Coie, including the designation of Russia as the responsible party behind the DNC cyber-breach and the Steele Dossier. These investigations are linked in their unquestioning embrace of the conclusions set forth in the 2017 Russia Intelligence Community Assessment that Russia was, in fact, meddling in the election. However, the genesis of that finding, both in terms of Russian involvement in the DNC hack and the "bombshell" intelligence introduced by Brennan in August 2016, has gone largely unquestioned by the investigators.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West's Road to War (Clarity Press, 2017). MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

Youknowho , says: October 30, 2017 at 11:09 pm

The question is was the investigation supposed to uncover whatever it uncovere, or was it supposed to fabricate the discovery? If it was fabrication, yes, they should be condemned. But if it was a question of "tell us what you find, good, bad, or indifferent" then uncovering what might be treasonable activity would be called a patriotic act.
SpecialAgentA , says: October 31, 2017 at 9:00 am
Was it a 'leak' or a 'hack'? Both terms are used here, almost interchangeably, but isn't that an essential issue to explain and clarify?
balconesfault , says: October 31, 2017 at 9:35 am
All of this and not one mention of how much of the controversy Donald Trump could defuse by simply releasing his tax returns and allowing more transparency into his financial relationships with the Russian oligarchy.
Bob Salsa , says: October 31, 2017 at 10:48 am
Ritter's underlying 'logic' here extended would have us believe Alan Turin's breaking of the Enigma Machine was done in collusion with Nazi U-boat commanders.
Michael Kenny , says: October 31, 2017 at 11:28 am
The spooks are still scared silly of Russiagate. "Hillary paid" doesn't mean "Hillary fabricated". That Mr Ritter is reduced to such a manifestly silly argument shows just how spooked the spooks are. My best guess is that some part of the US intelligence community is involved in the election manipulation. Overthrowing foreign governments or undermining the EU is one thing, colluding with a foreign power to manipulate the US election is quite another. Note, by the way, the absence of any reference to George Papadopulous or Viktor Yanukovych.
David G. , says: October 31, 2017 at 12:26 pm
Given that Russia's insiders (not to mention former-officials) are no more lined up with Putin than US counterparts and political actors are behind any current US administration or opponent, within and without the party in power, there are presumably Russian actors who would like to undermine Putin.

To the extent "the Russians" may be behind particular efforts – including information/disinformation – related to the 2016 US election, might they not have sought to undermine foreign and (Russian) domestic proponents of US-Russian detente?

Donald (the left leaning one) , says: October 31, 2017 at 12:42 pm
" Overthrowing foreign governments or undermining the EU is one thing, colluding with a foreign power to manipulate the US election is quite another. "

This is a joke. I have no concern one way or the other about whether Trump colluded with Russia – if laws were broken, prosecute the lot of them. But it is obvious that most of the Beltway including the spook world badly wants a proxy war with Russia, Iran, and Syria. As usual we are killing people overseas under Presidents of both parties and as usual the United States of narcissism can only complain about what dastardly foreigners allegedly did to us.

In DC we have a vicious fight between the McCain-Clinton forces and the Trump forces. It's a choice between warmongers.

m , says: October 31, 2017 at 1:16 pm
Donald (the left leaning one), I agree with your concluding comment that we are left with a choice between two warmongers, no question about that. However if you look at the corruption in the deep state in the Uranium One deal, how it was approved and now nobody, I mean nobody knows anything about FBI informant and gag order on him for the last 8 years it is just mind boggling. Oh well after all these years I think the African dictators have more integrity than our elected officials.
a person who once spoke to a Russian but regrets it now , says: October 31, 2017 at 1:58 pm
Someone help me out here. If Clinton (or her very close associates) pay huge bucks to Russians to get dirt (even if it is made up dirt) on Trump, that is good, because it hurts Trump. But if Trump associates simply have conversations with Russians, full stop (cf. Michael Flynn, or anyone else who spoke with the Russian ambassador), that is criminal. Is this not sort of a double standard?
Laramie , says: October 31, 2017 at 3:12 pm
I've worked at large law firms, been a partner at several and litigated against Perkins Coie, so I know a bit about them. Knowing the industry and this firm in particular, I can say without reservation that this statement is ridiculous: "Elias reportedly made use of money already paid to the firm by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to fund the work of Fusion GPS, creating the conditions for deniability on the part of his clients." That does not and would not happen with a $12 million expense.

Mr. Ritter does not come out and say it, but there's a plausible explanation for all of this Russia nonsense we've been hearing about for the past year. Until the day after the election, 99.9% of Democrats were convinced that Hillary Clinton would win. Once enshrined in office, all of the misdeeds that they'd been getting away with for the past decade -- the Clinton Foundation, Uranium One, the Pay-to-Play politics, etc. -- would be swept under the rug.

November came, and that didn't happen. Democrats were both floored and caught with their pants down. Now, all of their dirty laundry was going to come out into the open. It was only a matter of time.

So, what did they do? The same thing Democrats always do. The best defense is an offense. 'Always accuse your opponents of doing whatever wrong you've committed.' All of the sudden, it wasn't just that 'Russians hacked the election.' It became, 'the Trump campaign secretly colluded with the Russians.' The Steele dossier was leaked, the FBI was briefed which in turn briefed Obama, the Gang of Eight and Trump. Next, a Special Prosecutor had to be appointed to investigate.

But, where does it all lead? Back to Hillary, through Perkins Coie, and through many of the same Deep State players who were complicit in the misdeeds.

We now learn that Comey, Mueller and Rosenstein all knew about Russians attempting to buy influence through donations to the Clinton "charity," but they turned a blind eye when Uranium One was up for approval.

We now learn that Clinton and the DNC paid for the Steele dossier then fed it to Comey, who leaked it.

We're expected to believe Crowdstrike's report on Russian hacking but we can't examine the evidence. We're expected to believe that Perkins Coie went rogue and decided to spend $12 million without informing any of its clients.

What a bunch of hogwash. There's a cover up here, but it's not what the complicit media is portraying. The cover up is of the past 8 years of misdeeds by the Deep State, the Clintons and the Obama Administration.

Carolinatarheel , says: October 31, 2017 at 3:35 pm
I find it curious that Crooked Mueller charged two republicans just as Crooked Hillary and the DNC were identified for paying Russians for smear documents! America First!
Nick , says: October 31, 2017 at 4:06 pm
I love how the origins of the project (Free Beacon/Paul Singer) are merely a footnote in this terribly written piece.
Jake , says: October 31, 2017 at 4:14 pm
How is it not true? Reports indicate that Mr. Steele did indeed use paid sources within Russia to compile the "dossier" on Trump. Steele used money paid by the Clinton campaign labeled as "legal fees". There is a reason Hillary, DWS, Podesta and the others have all lied.
Quek , says: October 31, 2017 at 4:40 pm
I think the story is even more obvious than this. They wanted to spy on aspects of the Trump campaign but they legally couldn't. The FBI told them they needed a reason to tap the phones and read the mail. They paid a guy to put together a dossier that would allow them to get FISA warrants to do the spying they wanted to do illegally. They just needed the dossier to say certain things to get it past a FISA judge. They did this and tapped his phones and read his emails and texts for the purpose of beating him in the election. It is really that simple of a story.
Cjones1 , says: October 31, 2017 at 4:51 pm
Did Obama's White House Counsel Bauer and Perkins Coie's Elias engage in a conspiracy to smear Trump and benefit the Clinton campaign?

Did they orchestrate a campaign trick, using the Fusion GPS dossier and an insider leaking DNC emails to Wikileaks,that falsely smeared the Trump team?

Hillary and Fusion GPS both lobbied against business restrictions proposed and imposed by the Magnitsky legislation and both received bonuses and payments from Russian entities with ties to the Putin gang.

Given Hillary's past pay to play lobbying and her disregard for national security, it would seem appropriate to have investigate if members of the Clinton campaign had contacts with the Russian Ambassador or Russian "operatives. We now know that the dossier relied on collaboration with Russian officials.

Given that several levels under the 17 intelligence heads of the Obama administration, including former FBI Director Mueller, participated in suppressing known Russian bribery, obfuscated and obstructed the investigation into Hillary's national security violations & pay to play schemes, and apparently conspired using a dossier, containing Russian supplied information, to throw the last Presidential election, it is time to bring the Obama political appointees and Clinton campaign officials to justice and stop the interference affecting the Trump administration.

In my opinion, Mueller has disgraced his former and present positions by collaborating in this conjured affair that obfuscates the real crimes occurring during the Obama administration.

Zardoz , says: October 31, 2017 at 5:13 pm
The Russian SVR RF was no doubt inside the DNC's server, just as it was no doubt inside of Hillary Clinton's private unsecured email server on which she did all of her State Department business.

But that does not necessarily mean that the SVR RF released the damning evidence about the corruption of the DNC & its machinations to influence the outcome of the Election to Wikileaks. I believe Seth Rich was the source of that damning evidence.

Since there was allegedly some evidence of the Russian hacking, the DNC conveniently blamed the Wikileaks story on them.

But the fact the Democrats refused to turn over the supposedly hacked DNC server to the FBI suggests there is something seriously wrong with the Democ"rats" story.

Don Juan , says: October 31, 2017 at 5:23 pm
Crooked Hillary and her klan never thought for a second they wouldn't be able to cover up democrat crimes. The Clinton Crime Family is in full panic mode. No one seems to remember why Mueller quit as director of the FBI. He was disgusted by the Obama administration covering up lawlessness.
CapitalistRoader , says: October 31, 2017 at 5:49 pm
All of this and not one mention of how much of the controversy Hillary Clinton could defuse by simply releasing all of the government emails she kept on a private server in order to keep them away from FOIA requests and allowing more transparency into her financial relationships with the Russian oligarchy.
swb , says: October 31, 2017 at 5:57 pm
Nice try at deflection, but it is not likely to stop Muller because he has an actual brain. On the other hand, the comments indicate that the conspiracy types are on board. Now I have it on good authority that there are ties between Steele and Benghazi as well so it is time to wrap this all up together into a unified story.
Virginia Farmer , says: October 31, 2017 at 6:08 pm
Since most of the posters here seem to be partisan I'm sure that no one will like my preference: Lock both Trump and HRC up and put them in the same cell to save us money. They are both crooked and any attempt to accuse one and defend the other is futile.
MM , says: October 31, 2017 at 6:38 pm
Karen Finney, formerly of the Clinton 2016 campaign, on October 29th:

"I think what's important, though, is less who funded it than what was in the dossier."

In the same interview:

"We also learned this week that Cambridge Analytica, the company that was basically the data company for the [Trump] campaign, reached out to Julian Assange of Wikileaks."

Did everybody catch that?

In today's Democratic Party, it is perfectly acceptable to pay foreign sources for dirt, fabricated or not, on your domestic political opponent.

But it is totally unacceptable to reach out to Wikileaks, with no money involved, for dirt on your domestic political opponent. I'll note that Wikileaks has relied on whistle-blower sources and has not been shown to have published any false information in its entire 10-year existence.

Absolutely gorgeous

Zardoz , says: October 31, 2017 at 7:01 pm
The Russian SVR RF was likely inside the DNC's server, just as it was likely inside of Hillary Clinton's private unsecured email server on which she did all of her State Department business.

But that does not necessarily mean that the SVR RF released the evidence about the rotten corruption of the DNC & its machinations to influence the outcome of the Election to Wikileaks. I believe Seth Rich was the source of that evidence.

Since there was allegedly some evidence of the Russian hacking, the DNC conveniently blamed the Wikileaks story on them.

But the fact the Democrats refused to turn over the supposedly hacked DNC server to the FBI suggests that there is something seriously wrong with the Democ"rats" story.

Lenny , says: October 31, 2017 at 7:10 pm
To all of those who think that paying a foreign informant money to give you info is the same thing as accepting help from a foreign government, you have some screws lose.

Furthermore, the help that Trump received was in the form of emails that have been stolen from an American citizen, a federal offence.

The whole Uranium one non story is based on a book that his own author admitted he has no evidence of malfeasance by HRC , and who was paid for his effort by the Mercers.

Also, the Uranium cannot be exported outside the USA anyway, because the law prevents it, no matter who owns the company

JR , says: October 31, 2017 at 7:31 pm
To all those who think what Hillary campaign did is the same thing as what Trump campaign did: Can you with a straight face think that Hillary is in Putin's pocket? I don't think so. The issue, if you're being honest, is that a lot of people on the other side can easily see Trump being in Putin's pocket. And so far he (Trump) has done nothing to disprove that. Remember the Glee that the neocons had when Trump ordered a few missiles at Syria..guess what nothing came off it and Assad is still very much in power and no one cares anymore (an outcome that I am fine with). You think things would have been the same if Hillary was in power?

But at the end of the day, we're left to wonder whether Trump is doing Putin's bidding Just because so far he has done nothing that has been antagonistic towards Russian interests (Iran notwithstanding because nothing is going to come off it, all it is going to do is make US look impotent, which will be fine by Putin).

jlee67 , says: October 31, 2017 at 8:46 pm
Why didn't the FBI insist on examining the DNC servers? Something's not right.
b. , says: October 31, 2017 at 9:21 pm
If only Sanders had ever exclaimed something like "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn Russians!"

If there is any kind of actual evidence of state actors in the various efforts to force transparency on the Clinton campaign and the DNC, it is now tainted by the association with Steele, Simpson, Elias, which appear to have repeatedly acted against client privileges and privacy – peddling results paid for by one client to another, leaking information paid for by clients to the press, Congress, the FBI – or have acted with client permission, while a former "spy" is accessing and potentially endangering networks maintained by his former employer, a foreign intelligence service known for its ability to find yellowcake.

Only the Democrats can show such staggering ineptitude.

The plot needs some new, exciting turn at this point. Let us speculate that the Steele Dossier was in fact a false flag operation, allowing "Russians" to discredit not one, but two presidential campaigns, not one, but two presidential candidates, a twofer that makes whomever becomes President look like an idiot. One of the most ridiculous propositions of this whole affair has been the claim that Putin would seriously care which incompetent and corrupt American gets to prosecute the self-inflicted ruin of this blighted nation for the next four years.

It's morons all the way down.

Central Virginia Cantor Ejector! , October 31, 2017 at 11:16 pm
@Virginia Farmer : "Lock both Trump and HRC up and put them in the same cell to save us money. They are both crooked and any attempt to accuse one and defend the other is futile."

Right on! "Virginia Farmer" for President!

Donald ( the left leaning one) , says: November 1, 2017 at 12:09 am
"To all those who think what Hillary campaign did is the same thing as what Trump campaign did: Can you with a straight face think that Hillary is in Putin's pocket?"

I'm not very partisan. I voted for Clinton, but as the lesser evil on various issues, chiefly domestic and environmental. Clinton is not in Putin's pocket. She is in the pocket of Netanyahu, and the Saudis. Trump doesn't really seem to be in Putin's pocket -- he has neocons and others working hard to ensure that he gets into a confrontation with Iran. Basically he too is in the pocket of the Israelis and the Saudis.

The mainstream ignores this. The countries with real influence on our policies don't have to favor one party over the other. They have them both in their pocket.

Donald ( the left leaning one) , says: November 1, 2017 at 12:14 am
M --

Yeah, I can't keep up with all the twists and turns. I read just enough to see both sides ( the partisan ones) live in closed cognitive universes. I suspect there is plenty of corruption and dishonesty to go around, even if we restricted ourselves to real or alleged Russian ties. But I wonder what would turn up if we really looked into how our foreign policy sausage is made?

VikingLS , says: November 1, 2017 at 1:14 pm
@Donald ( the left leaning one)

In my annoyance I overstated it a little, but this thread is a good example of what I was saying about a lot of the liberal commenters on TAC. I don't read a lot of these comments and see people who are giving the article much thought.

BTW I was about to write the exact same thing to JR you did regarding the Saudis and the Israelis.

Cynthia McLean , says: November 1, 2017 at 1:17 pm
As time goes on, I don't think Russia "meddled" in US elections as much as US politicians of both parties corruptly attempted to rig the elections. Seems to me that the demonization of Russia is bi-partisan because the US military industrial complex needs a "bogey man" to justify its billions$$$$ and just about ALL politicians need that money to stay in power.

[Nov 02, 2017] Twitter Admits It Buried Podesta Email, DNC Tweets Ahead Of The Presidential Election Zero Hedge

Nov 02, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

It was approximately one year ago, when angry tweeters alleged that Jack Dorsey et al., were purposefully censoring and "suppressing" certain content on Twitter, namely anything to do with the leaked DNC and John Podesta emails , as well as hashtags critical of Hillary Clinton while "shadow-banning" pro-Donald Trump content. We can now confirm that at least one part of the above was true, because during today's Senate hearing, Twitter admitted it "buried", which is another word for censored, significant portions of tweets related to hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in the months heading into the 2016 presidential campaign.

As Daily Caller's Peter Hasson reports, Twitter's systems hid 48 percent of tweets using the #DNCLeak hashtag and 25 percent of tweets using #PodestaEmails , Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett said in his written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Before the election, we also detected and took action on activity relating to hashtags that have since been reported as manifestations of efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. For example, our automated spam detection systems helped mitigate the impact of automated Tweets promoting the #PodestaEmails hashtag , which originated with Wikileaks' publication of thousands of emails from the Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's Gmail account.

The core of the hashtag was propagated by Wikileaks, whose account sent out a series of 118 original Tweets containing variants on the hashtag #PodestaEmails referencing the daily installments of the emails released on the Wikileaks website. In the two months preceding the election, around 57,000 users posted approximately 426,000 unique Tweets containing variations of the #PodestaEmails hashtag.

Approximately one quarter (25%) of those Tweets received internal tags from our automation detection systems that hid them from searches.

As described in greater detail below, our systems detected and hid just under half (48%) of the Tweets relating to variants of another notable hashtag, #DNCLeak, which concerned the disclosure of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee

And yet, this glaring act of censorship was not aimed at the sources of the alleged propaganda, but the content: Just 2% of the tweets using the #DNCLeak hashtag came from "potentially Russian-linked accounts," Edgett said.

He also explained that Twitter hid the tweets as " part of our general efforts at the time to fight automation and spam on our platform across all areas.

...And Hillary still lost?

Just over a year ago, on the same day that Donald Trump's "grab them by the pussy tape" was released, WikiLeaks dumped over 30,000 hacked Podesta emails, which were damaging to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, throughout the election. A prior Wikileak of DNC emails, which revealed party officials secretly aided Hillary Clinton during her primary battle against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders , eventually cost then-DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz her job. The leaks also exposed supposedly "neutral" journalists as pro-Clinton partisans.

The U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russian operatives were behind the original hacking of both the DNC and Podesta emails, which were part of Russian influence operations meant to disrupt the American electoral system.

* * * A question emerges: did Jack Dorsey, with his arbitrary decision to censor specific content damaging to Democrats, interfere with the election, and a funnier question: if Hillary lost with Twitter censoring anti-Hillary content, what would the outcome have been if Twitter actually respected the First Amendment?

nmewn -> fightapathy , Nov 1, 2017 9:25 PM

LMAO!...funny ain't it?

I mean, just how bad does a candidate have TO REALLY SUCK when, they have the establishment media panting on their every word, they're outspending the opponent 2:1 and they've got the intelligence apparatus of a world superpower spying on the opponent for them ...and she still loses?...lol.

And...

Hillary-Will-Never-Ever-Be-President...Ever.

Thats gotta suck ;-)

Nekoti , Nov 1, 2017 9:27 PM

Orwell should have named the book,2016.

SweetDoug , Nov 1, 2017 10:28 PM

Wow... Just plain ol' fuggin' wow... And this is EXACTLY the reason we can't allow these organizations, FB, Twitter, Google, to control everything on the net. This is so fucking dangerous to our freedom and the new media, that these pricks are creating and then censuring. And what the fuck do we do?

Google is getting a 1000 journanalists together to start 'creating' news. What do we do when this monster starts to bury alternative, unwanted thought. The snowflakes will be in charge.

Fire up the ovens! 'Cause that's where people like you and me are gonna end up if we don't stop this, somehow.

OJO

V-V

Pernicious Gold... -> SweetDoug , Nov 1, 2017 10:39 PM

They already control everything on the Web. Fuckbook and Goolag filter everything, preventing you from finding and seeing what you want. They only allow you to see what they want you to see.

Atomizer , Nov 1, 2017 10:54 PM

Desperation Has Set In, The Cabal Is Pushing All Agendas - Episode ...

Atomizer , Nov 1, 2017 10:54 PM

The Demonisation of the Elderly (and the exaltation of the young ) - YouTube

TeraByte , Nov 1, 2017 11:07 PM

I have found from many observations that our liberals are incapable of allowing anyone to have his own convictions and immediately answer their opponent with abuse or something worse. FEYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY, THE IDIOT (1868)

Vlad the Inhaler , Nov 1, 2017 11:17 PM

The government doesn't need to squash the 1st Amendment, their crony capitalist tech monopolies will do it for them in exchange for not being regulated.

moorewasthebestbond -> Vlad the Inhaler , Nov 1, 2017 11:18 PM

Hookers, blow, and immunity from prosecution... second only to Wall Street.

CalifornianSeven , Nov 1, 2017 11:38 PM

Did they wipe those tweets....like with a cloth...?

[Nov 01, 2017] NATO Criticism of Russias Ukraine Policy Is Answered by Putin by Eric ZUESSE

Notable quotes:
"... What about Ukraine? From the European point of view, the ball is firmly in the court of Russia. It has turned into a semi-frozen conflict; the sanctions that were meant to be dynamic have become semi-permanent. What does Russia intend to do about this? ..."
"... Well, we think the ball is in Europe's court, because due to the completely unconstructive – I am choosing my words so as not to appear rude – position of the former members of the European Commission, the situation went as far as a coup. ..."
"... There were riots backed by the United States – both financially, politically and in the media – and all of Europe. ..."
"... They supported the unconstitutional seizure of power, a bloody one at that, with casualties, and took things as far as a war in southeastern Ukraine. Crimea declared its independence and its reunification with Russia, and now you think that we are to blame for that? Was it us who brought about the anti-constitutional coup? The current situation is the result of the unconstitutional armed seizure of power in Ukraine, and Europe is to blame, because it backed it. ..."
"... What could have been easier than to say back then: "You staged a coup, and after all, we are the guarantors." As guarantors, the foreign ministers of Poland, France and Germany signed a document, an agreement between President Yanukovych and the opposition. Three days later, it was trampled upon, and where were the guarantors? Ask them where these guarantors were? Why did they not say, "Please, put things as they were. Get Yanukovych back in office and hold constitutional democratic elections." They had every chance of winning, 100 percent, no doubt. No, they had to do it through an armed coup instead. Well, we were confronted with this fact, accepted it and signed the Minsk agreements. ..."
"... However, the current Ukrainian leadership is sabotaging every paragraph of these agreements, and everyone can see it perfectly well. Those who are involved in the negotiation process are fully aware of it, I assure you. Not a single step has been made towards implementing the Minsk agreements. Still everyone is saying, "Sanctions will not be lifted until Russia complies with the Minsk agreements." ..."
"... Everyone has long since realised that the current leadership of Ukraine is not in a position to comply with them. Now that the situation in that country has hit rock bottom both in terms of the economy and domestic policy, and the police are using gas against protesters, expecting the President of Ukraine to take at least a small step towards implementing the Minsk agreements is an exercise in futility. I am not sure how he can accomplish this. But there is no alternative to it, unfortunately. Therefore, we will keep the Normandy format in place as long as our colleagues like, and we will strive to implement these Minsk agreements that you mentioned. ..."
"... It is not enough only to appeal to Russia; it is also necessary to influence Kiev's position. Now they have made a decision on the language, essentially prohibiting the use of ethnic minority languages in school. Hungary and Romania raised objections. Poland also made some comments in this regard. However, the European Union as a whole is silent. Why are they not condemning this? There is silence. ..."
"... Now they have erected a monument to Petlyura. He was a man with Nazi views, an anti-Semite who killed Jews during the war. Except for the Zionist Jewish Congress, everyone else is silent. Are you afraid of hurting your clients in Kiev, is that it? This is not being done by the Ukrainian people; this is being done at the prompting of the relevant ruling authorities. But why are you keeping silent? ..."
"... I hope that this realisation will eventually come. I can see our partners' interest, primarily our European partners' interest in resolving this conflict. I can see real interest. Angela Merkel is doing a great deal, putting the time in, becoming deeply involved in these matters. Both the former president of France and President Macron are also paying attention. They are really working on this. However, it is necessary to work not just technically and technologically but politically. It is essential to exert some influence on the Kiev authorities, get them to do at least something. Ultimately, Ukraine itself has a stake in normalising our relations. ..."
"... Now they went and imposed sanctions on us, as the EU did. We responded in kind. The president asks me, "Why did you do this?" I say, "Listen, you introduced sanctions against us." This is just amazing! ..."
"... I believe that it is becoming obvious and most importantly, it is becoming obvious to the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian citizens. We like Ukraine and I really regard the Ukrainian people as a brotherly nation if not just one nation, part of the Russian nation. ..."
"... Even though Russian nationalists do not like this and Ukrainian nationalists do not like this either, this is my position, my point of view. Sooner or later, it will happen – reunification, not on an interstate level but in terms of restoring our relations. ..."
"... On Ukraine and the conflict phase there, I was, uh, it was during my last years of government when this crisis emerged in Ukraine. I and my close colleagues in my government and foreign policy and security issues convened, and we met. I told them that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the independent states, Ukraine was one of the closest countries to Russia, in ethnic relations and economic relations, and in cultural relations, and in terms of the value that Ukraine holds for Russia. So my approach was one of sentiment and sensitivity, but, keeping the Russian sentiment in mind, keeping the Russian sensitivity in this region in mind. Look at it this way: if Russia went and tried to turn Canada into an ally of the Warsaw Pact against America, what would America do? They would act more aggressively than what Russia did. On Crimea: to the extent that I understand, Crimea was given to Ukraine in 1957, is that true? 1954. So it was part of Russian territory. ..."
"... You have just mentioned the crisis in Ukraine. But we did not bring this to a coup in Ukraine. Have we done this? No. Especially our American partners do not hide that to a large extent they stood behind this, funded a radical opposition, brought to an unconstitutional way of changing power, although it could be done quite differently. Former President Yanukovych signed all the requirements and was ready to hold early elections. Instead, they contributed to a coup d'état. What for? ..."
"... And when we are forced to emphasize this, we were compelled to protect the Russian-speaking population in the Donbass, were compelled to respond to the aspirations of people living in the Crimea, to return to the Russian Federation, and immediately began to untwist a new flywheel of anti-Russian policy and the imposition of sanctions. ..."
"... You have just said about the Minsk agreements. But we are not sabotaging them, the implementation of the Minsk agreements. ..."
"... President Yanukovych decided to postpone the signing and hold additional talks. What came next? A coup d'état. No matter what you choose to call it, a revolution or something else. It's a coup d'état with the use of violence and militant forces. Who′s on whose side now? Who is using which tools from the past or the future? ..."
"... It′s imperative to be very careful with regard to public institutions of emerging nations because if you are not things may slide into chaos, which is exactly what happened in Ukraine. The civil war and chaos are there already. Who benefits from it? Why would they do it, if Yanukovych agreed to everything? They had to go to the voting stations instead, and the same people would be in power now, only legally. We, like idiots, would be paying them the $15 billion that we promised, keeping gas prices low for them and continuing to subsidise their economy ..."
"... Let's face it. We are all adults here, right? Intelligent and educated people. The West supported the unconstitutional coup d'état. It did in fact, didn′t it? Not only by way of the infamous cakes, but through informational and political support and what not. Why did it do so? ..."
"... All right. And now you think that it′s all our fault? We proposed a dialogue and were denied it. What's next? The last time I was in Brussels we agreed to keep this dialogue alive. That was before the coup. Mr Ulyukayev (he is sitting there across from me), a man of respect, speaks decent English, has absolutely market-driven brains, one of our top specialists in the economy, went for consultations. Ask him about it after the session is over. I won′t dwell on it now. But there were no consultations. Nothing but slogans. ..."
"... What's next? They made a coup and don′t want to speak with us. What are we supposed to think? The next step will take Ukraine into NATO. They never ask us about our opinion, and we have found out over the past two decades that there′s never any dialogue on this issue. All that they ever tell us is, ″It′s none of your business, none of your concern.″ We tell them, ″A military infrastructure is approaching our borders.″ ″Don′t worry, it's not aimed against you.″ So, tomorrow Ukraine may end up being a NATO member, and the next thing you know, it will have a US missile defence complex stationed on its territory. No one ever talks to us on this subject, either. They just tell us, ″It′s not against you, and it′s none of your concern.″ ..."
"... if we did not do what we did in Crimea, Crimea would have it much worse than Odessa where people were burned alive. And there are no explanations, no real condemnations by anyone. It′s still not even clear who did it, I mean the tragedy in Odessa. ..."
Oct 30, 2017 | www.strategic-culture.org

A NATO supporter criticized Russia's President Vladimir Putin for Russia's Ukraine policy, on October 19th, at the Valdai Discussion Club's annual meeting in Sochi, and Putin fired back with his most detailed statement to-date, describing the overthrow in February 2014 of Ukraine's democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, as having been a "coup" by the West, especially by the EU (which he blamed for it, rather than blame the US).

Asle Toje, a Norwegian supporter of the NATO anti-Russian military alliance, had raised this subject when he asked Putin :

What about Ukraine? From the European point of view, the ball is firmly in the court of Russia. It has turned into a semi-frozen conflict; the sanctions that were meant to be dynamic have become semi-permanent. What does Russia intend to do about this?

Putin replied:

Well, we think the ball is in Europe's court, because due to the completely unconstructive – I am choosing my words so as not to appear rude – position of the former members of the European Commission, the situation went as far as a coup.

On 4 February 2014 the agent whom US President Barack Obama had tasked to plan the coup, Hillary Clinton's longtime friend Victoria Nuland, instructed the US Ambassador in Ukraine whom to appoint to run Ukraine as soon as the coup would be culminated, which occurred 23 days later, on 27 February: "Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience the governing experience he's the" person to appoint , she told the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt.

And "Yats" Yatsenyuk got the post, which was the appointment as Prime Minister, because Obama wanted the rabidly anti-Russian Yulia Tymoshenko to win Ukraine's Presidency in an election, so as to be able to describe the change-of-government as being 'democratic' i.e., 'elected', not imposed (as was the appointment of "Yats"). However, Tymoshenko had too much of a public reputation as being a US agent (and grifter ), for her to win; and, so, Petro Poroshenko won the 'election' instead.

It was an 'election' in all of the majority Ukrainian-speaking areas of Ukraine, but without allowing to vote the populations in many of the majority Russian-speaking regions, where the man whom Obama overthrew, Yanukovych, had won by over 75% of the votes, in the last democratic election in Ukraine, which was the Presidential election in 2010 -- the final election in which Ukrainians in all parts of the country voted. Although Poroshenko was anti-Russian, he wasn't nearly as anti-Russian as was Tymoshenko. Yatsenyuk was Tymoshenko's subordinate, and he had been selected by Nuland because the Obama Administration were thinking that after the Presidential election, Yats would hand off the government to Tymoshenko, who led Yats's Party.

Putin blamed the EU for the coup, though (in fact) when the EU's Foreign Minister, Catherine Ashton, learned, on February 26th of 2014, that this overthrow had been a coup instead of a democratic revolution, she expressed shock and disappointment but went right on carrying out the Obama Administration's plan for the integration of the formerly Russia-allied Ukraine into the EU, and, ultimately, as was expected, into NATO, so that US nuclear missiles will be able to be installed there, on Russia's border, as close to Moscow as possible, for a blitz-attack against Russia, to conquer Russia .

Furthermore, in Nuland's instruction to the Ambassador in Kiev, she said "F -- k the EU" , because the EU aristocracies weren't nearly as eager to conquer Russia as the US aristocracy are; the EU aristocracies had wanted Vitaly Klitschko to head Ukraine; Klitschko wasn't rabidly anti-Russian , like Tymoshenko and Yatsenyuk were. Putin knew this -- he knew that the coup was done by the US, not by the EU.

Putin then described the coup as follows:

There were riots backed by the United States – both financially, politically and in the media – and all of Europe.

They supported the unconstitutional seizure of power, a bloody one at that, with casualties, and took things as far as a war in southeastern Ukraine. Crimea declared its independence and its reunification with Russia, and now you think that we are to blame for that? Was it us who brought about the anti-constitutional coup? The current situation is the result of the unconstitutional armed seizure of power in Ukraine, and Europe is to blame, because it backed it.

What could have been easier than to say back then: "You staged a coup, and after all, we are the guarantors." As guarantors, the foreign ministers of Poland, France and Germany signed a document, an agreement between President Yanukovych and the opposition. Three days later, it was trampled upon, and where were the guarantors? Ask them where these guarantors were? Why did they not say, "Please, put things as they were. Get Yanukovych back in office and hold constitutional democratic elections." They had every chance of winning, 100 percent, no doubt. No, they had to do it through an armed coup instead. Well, we were confronted with this fact, accepted it and signed the Minsk agreements.

However, the current Ukrainian leadership is sabotaging every paragraph of these agreements, and everyone can see it perfectly well. Those who are involved in the negotiation process are fully aware of it, I assure you. Not a single step has been made towards implementing the Minsk agreements. Still everyone is saying, "Sanctions will not be lifted until Russia complies with the Minsk agreements."

Everyone has long since realised that the current leadership of Ukraine is not in a position to comply with them. Now that the situation in that country has hit rock bottom both in terms of the economy and domestic policy, and the police are using gas against protesters, expecting the President of Ukraine to take at least a small step towards implementing the Minsk agreements is an exercise in futility. I am not sure how he can accomplish this. But there is no alternative to it, unfortunately. Therefore, we will keep the Normandy format in place as long as our colleagues like, and we will strive to implement these Minsk agreements that you mentioned.

Nowhere has Putin ever blamed the US Government for that coup, but he knows at least as much about it as did the head of the "private CIA" firm Stratfor when Stratfor's head described it as "the most blatant coup in history" because it had been so well documented via leaked phone-conversations and other solid evidences. There was no doubt that the US State Department had run it, and, ultimately, evidence became public that Google and the US State Department were already preparing the operation as early as in 2011 .

Putin continued his response:

It is not enough only to appeal to Russia; it is also necessary to influence Kiev's position. Now they have made a decision on the language, essentially prohibiting the use of ethnic minority languages in school. Hungary and Romania raised objections. Poland also made some comments in this regard. However, the European Union as a whole is silent. Why are they not condemning this? There is silence.

Now they have erected a monument to Petlyura. He was a man with Nazi views, an anti-Semite who killed Jews during the war. Except for the Zionist Jewish Congress, everyone else is silent. Are you afraid of hurting your clients in Kiev, is that it? This is not being done by the Ukrainian people; this is being done at the prompting of the relevant ruling authorities. But why are you keeping silent?

Putin was appealing for the EU to become neutral on the Ukrainian matter, not for the US Government to do so, because Putin recognized that the US Government wants to conquer Russia and took Ukraine in order to advance that goal, whereas many in the EU want instead to have peace and trade with Russia and aren't so eager to invade. Putin has given up on America, whose Government is -- along with Ukraine and Canada -- the only defender of nazism (i.e., of racist fascism), at the U.N. But he knows that if he blames the coup on the US Government, this would make more difficult any possible efforts by the EU to move away from the US toward neutrality, because such an accusation against the US Government would only unify NATO, not break it up. He might be able to pick off a few EU members, to move toward neutrality and away from the NATO goal of ultimately invading Russia, but this can work only if he plays down the real power-contest, the contest between the US Government, whose goal is to conquer Russia , versus the Russian Government, whose goal is to remain a free and independent nation -- to protect its national sovereignty. The reason Putin blames the EU instead of the US is thus tactical. Especially interesting is that he says "This is not being done by the Ukrainian people; this is being done at the prompting of the relevant ruling authorities. But why are you keeping silent?" He is there making his appeal to anti-nazi Europeans, for them to break away from today's pro-nazi US regime. He is saying: Speak out against it; publicly separate yourselves from it. Then, he said:

I hope that this realisation will eventually come. I can see our partners' interest, primarily our European partners' interest in resolving this conflict. I can see real interest. Angela Merkel is doing a great deal, putting the time in, becoming deeply involved in these matters. Both the former president of France and President Macron are also paying attention. They are really working on this. However, it is necessary to work not just technically and technologically but politically. It is essential to exert some influence on the Kiev authorities, get them to do at least something. Ultimately, Ukraine itself has a stake in normalising our relations.

Now they went and imposed sanctions on us, as the EU did. We responded in kind. The president asks me, "Why did you do this?" I say, "Listen, you introduced sanctions against us." This is just amazing!

He refers there to "the Kiev authorities," instead of to the Washington authorities, because he knows that the Europeans he's addressing are aware that Ukraine is now a vassal-nation of the US He knows that they know what he knows, on this. Then, he really does address, not the rulers of Ukraine, but instead the people of Ukraine, when he says:

I believe that it is becoming obvious and most importantly, it is becoming obvious to the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian citizens. We like Ukraine and I really regard the Ukrainian people as a brotherly nation if not just one nation, part of the Russian nation.

Even though Russian nationalists do not like this and Ukrainian nationalists do not like this either, this is my position, my point of view. Sooner or later, it will happen – reunification, not on an interstate level but in terms of restoring our relations.

Numerous polls have shown that many Ukrainians do feel "brotherly" toward Russians; he is trying to appeal to these people, to seek a restoration of that previous alliance: Russia with Ukraine's anti -nazis, instead of America with Ukraine's pro -nazis.

The pro-NATO Asle Toje could have interjected a retort to what Putin was saying, but kept entirely quiet, perhaps because he knew that if he objected to any of what Putin said there, then Putin would have had a terrific opportunity to respond by hinting at the real role that NATO (i.e., the US) was playing in Ukraine, the nazi role there, such as by perhaps alluding to the nazi American Victoria Nuland's famous "F -- k the EU!" statement, which she said when she gave the instruction, on 4 February 2014, for the next Government of Ukraine to be led by Ukraine's rabidly anti-Russian nazis .

Hamid Karzai, the former ruler of Afghanistan (or at least of Kabul), was also one of the participants at this conference, and he spoke about his country's long history of being a pawn in the ancient aristocratic "Great Game" of aristocracies waging wars of conquest in order to establish international empires and grab lands from each other. Then, he commented specifically about the role that America's seizure of Ukraine in 2014 had played in the latest stage of the Great Game:

On Ukraine and the conflict phase there, I was, uh, it was during my last years of government when this crisis emerged in Ukraine. I and my close colleagues in my government and foreign policy and security issues convened, and we met. I told them that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the independent states, Ukraine was one of the closest countries to Russia, in ethnic relations and economic relations, and in cultural relations, and in terms of the value that Ukraine holds for Russia. So my approach was one of sentiment and sensitivity, but, keeping the Russian sentiment in mind, keeping the Russian sensitivity in this region in mind. Look at it this way: if Russia went and tried to turn Canada into an ally of the Warsaw Pact against America, what would America do? They would act more aggressively than what Russia did. On Crimea: to the extent that I understand, Crimea was given to Ukraine in 1957, is that true? 1954. So it was part of Russian territory.

His point about "if Russia went and tried to turn Canada into an ally of the Warsaw Pact against America, what would America do?" was merely rhetorical, because in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the US already had shown what the US would do if Russia were to place missiles on or near America's borders: the US would launch a nuclear war against Russia. For some reason, Americans felt that that response -- threatening World War III -- was justified, by America, then, in 1962, but somehow don't feel that it would be a justified response, by Russia, now, when the shoe is on the other foot and even more so than it had been back in 1962 (because Ukraine is right on Russia's border). But, of course, it would be justified even more in the present instance, because conquest of Russia became, in 2006, America's all-but-official strategic-policy goal, replacing the former reliance (by both sides) upon the strategic-policy peace-maintenance goal, "Mutually Assured Destruction" (or "MAD") , which was nuclear weapons being maintained in order to avoid a WW III, instead of to 'win' a WW III (such as it has been for the US ever since 2006). Russia still believes in MAD, but America is now 'going for the gold', of 'victory'. This was implicitly the US and NATO policy ever since 24 February 1990 , but it became, since 2006, overtly the US and NATO objective, called "Nuclear Primacy," meaning the ability of the US to win a nuclear conflict against Russia -- to conquer Russia.

The recent (October 19th) statement by Putin was the most extensive that he has yet presented on the Ukrainian matter, but it's not the only statement he has made on this subject:

A year earlier than this latest Valdi discussion, Putin had said, on 12 October 2016 , at the 8th annual investment forum VTB Capital "Russia is Calling!" seeking foreign investments in Russia:

You have just mentioned the crisis in Ukraine. But we did not bring this to a coup in Ukraine. Have we done this? No. Especially our American partners do not hide that to a large extent they stood behind this, funded a radical opposition, brought to an unconstitutional way of changing power, although it could be done quite differently. Former President Yanukovych signed all the requirements and was ready to hold early elections. Instead, they contributed to a coup d'état. What for?

And when we are forced to emphasize this, we were compelled to protect the Russian-speaking population in the Donbass, were compelled to respond to the aspirations of people living in the Crimea, to return to the Russian Federation, and immediately began to untwist a new flywheel of anti-Russian policy and the imposition of sanctions.

You have just said about the Minsk agreements. But we are not sabotaging them, the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

On that occasion, because he was responding then to a question which had been raised by Rick Boucher, a former member of the US Congress, and now a partner in a law firm, Putin had been more direct, by his saying, "We did not bring this to a coup in Ukraine. Have we done this? No. Especially our American partners do not hide that to a large extent they stood behind this, funded a radical opposition, brought to an unconstitutional way of changing power." But he was ambiguous as regards whether America simply "stood behind this," or instead actually "brought [the situation in Ukraine] to an unconstitutional way of changing power [i.e., to a coup there]." In any case, Boucher, too, had no response recorded there, to Putin's statement.

Vagueness in political speech is the norm; it's seen everywhere; and wherever it is encountered, tactical reasons are commonly being exemplified.

Still earlier, on 23 May 2014, just a few months after America's coup, Putin took part in the plenary session of the 18th St Petersburg International Economic Forum, and said in response to a question from CNBC's Geoff Cutmore:

President Yanukovych decided to postpone the signing and hold additional talks. What came next? A coup d'état. No matter what you choose to call it, a revolution or something else. It's a coup d'état with the use of violence and militant forces. Who′s on whose side now? Who is using which tools from the past or the future?

It′s imperative to be very careful with regard to public institutions of emerging nations because if you are not things may slide into chaos, which is exactly what happened in Ukraine. The civil war and chaos are there already. Who benefits from it? Why would they do it, if Yanukovych agreed to everything? They had to go to the voting stations instead, and the same people would be in power now, only legally. We, like idiots, would be paying them the $15 billion that we promised, keeping gas prices low for them and continuing to subsidise their economy

Let's face it. We are all adults here, right? Intelligent and educated people. The West supported the unconstitutional coup d'état. It did in fact, didn′t it? Not only by way of the infamous cakes, but through informational and political support and what not. Why did it do so?

All right. And now you think that it′s all our fault? We proposed a dialogue and were denied it. What's next? The last time I was in Brussels we agreed to keep this dialogue alive. That was before the coup. Mr Ulyukayev (he is sitting there across from me), a man of respect, speaks decent English, has absolutely market-driven brains, one of our top specialists in the economy, went for consultations. Ask him about it after the session is over. I won′t dwell on it now. But there were no consultations. Nothing but slogans.

What's next? They made a coup and don′t want to speak with us. What are we supposed to think? The next step will take Ukraine into NATO. They never ask us about our opinion, and we have found out over the past two decades that there′s never any dialogue on this issue. All that they ever tell us is, ″It′s none of your business, none of your concern.″ We tell them, ″A military infrastructure is approaching our borders.″ ″Don′t worry, it's not aimed against you.″ So, tomorrow Ukraine may end up being a NATO member, and the next thing you know, it will have a US missile defence complex stationed on its territory. No one ever talks to us on this subject, either. They just tell us, ″It′s not against you, and it′s none of your concern.″

if we did not do what we did in Crimea, Crimea would have it much worse than Odessa where people were burned alive. And there are no explanations, no real condemnations by anyone. It′s still not even clear who did it, I mean the tragedy in Odessa.

He said this, against "The West," after the clear evidence that it had actually been the US regime that did the coup, and that had hired local Ukrainian nazis to carry it out, was already public knowledge, outside "The West."

On the front page of the New York Times on 23 October 2017 was a news-report about the efforts by Republicans in the US Congress to focus on something else than the alleged Russiagate manipulation of the 2016 US election, and about the efforts by congressional Democrats to focus only on those allegations, and this front-page NYT story casually employed the phrase "the extraordinary efforts of a hostile power to disrupt American democracy", as if that were already a proven fact, instead of being the Democratic Party's incessant propaganda-line in order to 'explain' Hillary Clinton's electoral defeat.

The US propaganda-media do things such as that, in order to whip up, to the maximum, their audience's hatred of Russians, and especially of the Russian Government, and so to promote the 'case' for war against Russia. Putin knows what the source of this march toward World War III is, and that it's not in Europe.

He knows that they've had more than their fills of wars, but that Americans are more malleable on this matter, more controlled by the aristocracy who own the nation's "military-industrial complex."

Tags: Ukraine Putin

[Nov 01, 2017] Over the course of four hours, senators argued that "foreign infiltration" is the root of social opposition within the United States, in order to justify the censorship of oppositional viewpoints

Can those senatord spell "the crisis of neoliberalism?" I believe they can, but the need a smoke screen to obscure this from public.
Facebook can influence the US politics. but is is controlled and systematically mined/monitored by intelligence agencies, not by Russians. It is actually a great source of intelligence as many foreigners uses it (I think number of foreign users of Facebook exceeds the number of US users, so number of exhibitionists, narcissists (which actually might perefer Twitter ;-) and clueless in security people oversees is much higher the in the USA.
There are probably some "very serious people" standing behind boyish face of Mark Zuckerberg ( Onion has a great satire playing this theme , 2011) . Facebook is such a great intelligence resource... No person with even cursory of understanding of computer security would use it. It's like installing spy camera in your dining room and enjoying it.
Notable quotes:
"... Following concerns over 'Russian meddling' in the 2016 US election through the use of social media platforms, John Sweeney looks at the role of Facebook and other tech firms as a means of influencing politics. ..."
Nov 01, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Northern Star ,

November 1, 2017 at 9:23 am
"Over the course of four hours, senators argued that "foreign infiltration" is the root of social opposition within the United States, in order to justify the censorship of oppositional viewpoints."
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/11/01/goog-n01.html

In other words these zipperhead dumbfucks think that all Americans are subject to be manipulated and programmed by TPTB.

Throughout the entirety of the 'Cold war' (1945-1990), no one claimed that the profound societal upheavals in the wake of the race based Civil Rights followed by the Women's Rights movements were a result of "foreign infiltration".

Warren , November 1, 2017 at 11:31 am

BBC Newsnight
Published on 31 Oct 2017
SUBSCRIBE 159K
Following concerns over 'Russian meddling' in the 2016 US election through the use of social media platforms, John Sweeney looks at the role of Facebook and other tech firms as a means of influencing politics.

Newsnight is the BBC's flagship news and current affairs TV programme – with analysis, debate, exclusives, and robust interviews.

[Nov 01, 2017] Guardians of the Magnitsky Myth by Robert Parry

It would be interesting to explore possible connection of Browder and MI6. Why he changed his citizenship to British as the scandal unfolded?
Notable quotes:
"... For those who believe in a meaningful democracy, those tactics may be troubling enough, but the Magnitsky case, an opening shot in the New Cold War with Russia, has demonstrated how aggressively the Western powers-that-be behave toward even well-reported investigative projects that unearth inconvenient truth. ..."
"... The documentary – "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes" – was produced by filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, who is known as a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin but who in this instance found the West's widely accepted, anti-Russian Magnitsky storyline to be a lie. ..."
"... However, instead of welcoming Nekrasov's discoveries as an important part of the debate over the West's policies toward Russia, the European Parliament pulled the plug on a premiere in Brussels and – except for a one-time showing at the Newseum in Washington – very few Americans have been allowed to see the documentary. ..."
"... This summer, Browder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and argued that people involved in arranging the one-time showing of Nekrasov's documentary should be prosecuted for violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), which carries a five-year prison term. ..."
"... Yet, the Times article bows to Browder as the ultimate truth-teller, including repetition of his assertion that Sergei Magnitsky was a whistleblowing "tax lawyer," rather than one of Browder's accountants implicated in the tax fraud. ..."
"... While Magnitsky's profession may seem like a small detail, it gets to the heart of the mainstream media's acceptance of Browder's depiction of Magnitsky – as a crusading lawyer who died of medical neglect in a Russian prison – despite overwhelming evidence that Magnitsky was really a clever accountant caught up in the scheme. ..."
"... The "lawyer" falsehood – so eagerly swallowed by the Times and other mainstream outlets – also bears on Browder's overall credibility: If he is lying about Magnitsky's profession, why should anyone believe his other self-serving claims? ..."
"... In that adversarial setting, when Browder was asked if Magnitsky had a law degree, Browder said, "I'm not aware that he did." When asked if Magnitsky had gone to law school, Browder answered: "No." ..."
"... Yet, the Times and the rest of the mainstream media accept that Magnitsky was a "lawyer," all the better to mislead the American public regarding his alleged role as a whistleblower. ..."
"... From my book, "The Killing of William Browder," suppressed by Amazon courtesy of Browder's lawyer Jonathan Winer (Amazon obliged, no questions asked): ..."
"... Mr. Cymrot: When you told people Mr. Magnitsky's a lawyer, did you also tell them he never went to law school and never had a law license? Browder: I'm sorry. I Mr. Cymrot: When you tell – how many times have you said, "Mr. Magnitsky is a lawyer?" Browder: I don't know. Mr. Cymrot: 50? 100? 200? Browder: I don't know. Mr. Cymrot: Many, many times, right? Browder: Yes Mr. Cymrot: Have you ever told anybody that he didn't go to law school and didn't have a law degree? Browder: No. ..."
"... The fact that anyone who does scratch the surface, like yourself, is immediately attacked shows that Browder is serving the oligarchy. They wish very much to return to the rape, pillage, and plunder of Russia that they enjoyed under Yeltsin. Just like Russia-gate, they seek to control the narrative. The MSM carries their water, and people have to go to sites like this one to find the truth. Thank you very much for your work. ..."
"... Natalia Veselnitskaya herself has ties to Fusion GPS, and was given visas with the knowledge of the FBI. The whole affair smells of an FBI sting against the Trump campaign, ..."
Oct 28, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Guardians of the Magnitsky Myth

Exclusive: In pursuit of Russia-gate, the U.S. mainstream media embraces any attack on Russia and works to ensure that Americans don't hear the other side of the story, as with the Magnitsky myth, reports Robert Parry.

As Russia-gate becomes the go-to excuse to marginalize and suppress independent and dissident media in the United States, a warning of what the future holds is the blacklisting of a documentary that debunks the so-called Magnitsky case.

The emerging outlines of the broader suppression are now apparent in moves by major technology companies – under intense political pressure – to unleash algorithms that will hunt down what major media outlets and mainstream "fact-checkers" (with their own checkered histories of getting facts wrong) deem to be "false" and then stigmatize that information with pop-up "warnings" or simply make finding it difficult for readers using major search engines.

For those who believe in a meaningful democracy, those tactics may be troubling enough, but the Magnitsky case, an opening shot in the New Cold War with Russia, has demonstrated how aggressively the Western powers-that-be behave toward even well-reported investigative projects that unearth inconvenient truth.

Throughout the U.S. and Europe, there has been determined effort to prevent the American and European publics from seeing this detailed documentary that dissects the fraudulent claims at the heart of the Magnitsky story.

The documentary – "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes" – was produced by filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, who is known as a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin but who in this instance found the West's widely accepted, anti-Russian Magnitsky storyline to be a lie.

However, instead of welcoming Nekrasov's discoveries as an important part of the debate over the West's policies toward Russia, the European Parliament pulled the plug on a premiere in Brussels and – except for a one-time showing at the Newseum in Washington – very few Americans have been allowed to see the documentary.

Instead, we're fed a steady diet of the frothy myth whipped up by hedge-fund investor William Browder and sold to the U.S. and European governments as the basis for sanctioning Russian officials. For years now, Browder has been given a free hand to spin his dog-ate-my-homework explanation about how some of his firms got involved a $230 million tax fraud in Russia.

Browder insists that some "corrupt" Russian police officers stole his companies' corporate seals and masterminded a convoluted conspiracy. But why anyone would trust a hedge-fund operator who got rich exploiting Russia's loose business standards is hard to comprehend.

The answer is that Browder has used his money and political influence to scare off and silence anyone who dares point to the glaring contradictions and logical gaps in his elaborate confection.

So, the hedge-fund guy who renounced his U.S. citizenship in favor of a British passport gets the royal treatment whenever he runs to Congress. His narrative just fits so neatly into the demonization of Russia and the frenzy over stopping "Russian propaganda and disinformation" by whatever means necessary.

This summer, Browder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and argued that people involved in arranging the one-time showing of Nekrasov's documentary should be prosecuted for violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), which carries a five-year prison term.

Meanwhile, the U.S. mainstream media helps reinforce Browder's dubious tale by smearing anyone who dares question it as a "Moscow stooge" or a "useful idiot."

Magnitsky and Russia-gate

The Magnitsky controversy now has merged with the Russia-gate affair because Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who traveled to America to challenge Browder's account, arranged a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign advisers in June 2016 to present this other side of the story.

Though nothing apparently came from that meeting, The New York Times, which always treats Browder's account as flat fact, led its Saturday editions with a breathless story entitled, " A Kremlin Link to a Memo Taken to Trump Tower ," citing similarities between Veselnitskaya's memo on the Magnitsky case and an account prepared by "one of Russia's most powerful officials, the prosecutor general Yuri Y. Chaika." Cue the spooky music as the Times challenges Veselnitskaya's honesty.

Yet, the Times article bows to Browder as the ultimate truth-teller, including repetition of his assertion that Sergei Magnitsky was a whistleblowing "tax lawyer," rather than one of Browder's accountants implicated in the tax fraud.

While Magnitsky's profession may seem like a small detail, it gets to the heart of the mainstream media's acceptance of Browder's depiction of Magnitsky – as a crusading lawyer who died of medical neglect in a Russian prison – despite overwhelming evidence that Magnitsky was really a clever accountant caught up in the scheme.

The "lawyer" falsehood – so eagerly swallowed by the Times and other mainstream outlets – also bears on Browder's overall credibility: If he is lying about Magnitsky's profession, why should anyone believe his other self-serving claims?

As investigative reporter Lucy Komisar noted in a recent article on the case, Browder offered a different description when he testified under oath in a New York court deposition in a related criminal case.

In that adversarial setting, when Browder was asked if Magnitsky had a law degree, Browder said, "I'm not aware that he did." When asked if Magnitsky had gone to law school, Browder answered: "No."

Yet, the Times and the rest of the mainstream media accept that Magnitsky was a "lawyer," all the better to mislead the American public regarding his alleged role as a whistleblower.

The rest of Browder's story stretches credulity even more as he offers a convoluted explanation of how he wasn't responsible for bogus claims made by his companies to fraudulently sneak away with $230 million in refunded taxes.

Rather than show any skepticism toward this smarmy hedge-fund operator and his claims of victimhood, the U.S. Congress and mainstream media just take him at his word because, of course, his story fits the ever-present "Russia bad" narrative.Plus, these influential people have repeated the falsehoods so often and suppressed contrary evidence with such arrogance that they apparently feel that they get to define reality, which – in many ways – is what they want to do in the future by exploiting the Russia-gate hysteria to restore their undisputed role as the "gatekeepers" on "approved" information.

Which is why Americans and Europeans should demand the right to see the Nekrasov documentary and make their own judgments, possibly with Browder given a chance after the show to rebut the overwhelming evidence of his deceptions.

Instead, Browder has used his wealth and connections to make sure that almost no one gets to see the deconstruction of his fable. And The New York Times is okay with that.

[For details on the Nekrasov documentary, see Consortiumnews.com's " A Blacklisted Film and the New Cold War. "]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

BobH , October 28, 2017 at 9:48 pm

It seems the neo-liberal establishment in the West is ready to take in any Russian dissident seeking refuge while the victims of Western aggression are denied asylum.
http://en.rfi.fr/culture/20171019-russian-artist-detained-over-paris-bank-blaze

Sam F , October 29, 2017 at 9:10 am

Yes, Congress measures human worth in bribes: more from rich immigrants than from poor refugees. We are fortunate to have Mr. Parry expose the corruption of oligarchy and its control of mass media and elections.

Those who would like to petition the NYT to make Robert Parry their senior editor may do so here:
https://www.change.org/p/new-york-times-bring-a-new-editor-to-the-new-york-times?recruiter=72650402&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
While Mr. Parry may prefer independence, and we all know the NYT ownership makes it unlikely, and the NYT may try to ignore it, it is instructive to them that intelligent readers know better journalism when they see it. A petition demonstrates the concerns of a far larger number of potential or lost subscribers.

BobH , October 29, 2017 at 11:54 am

Yes, Sam F, I signed on to that one some time ago I'm sure the NYT has a waste basket somewhere that is full of "Russian trolls".

orayates5454 , October 28, 2017 at 11:01 pm

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Sendero Santos , October 30, 2017 at 3:25 am

Spam a lot.

Abe , October 28, 2017 at 11:07 pm

"no figure in this saga has a more tangled family relationship with the Kremlin than the London-based hedge fund manager Bill Browder [ ]

"there's a reticence in his Jewish narrative. One of his first jobs in London is with the investment operation of the publishing billionaire Robert Maxwell. As it happens, Maxwell was originally a Czech Jewish Holocaust survivor who fled and became a decorated British soldier, then helped in 1948 to set up the secret arms supply line to newly independent Israel from communist Czechoslovakia. He was also rumored to be a longtime Mossad agent. But you learn none of that from Browder's memoir.

"The silence is particularly striking because when Browder launches his own fund, he hires a former Israeli Mossad agent, Ariel, to set up his security operation, manned mainly by Israelis. Over time, Browder and Ariel become close. How did that connection come about? Was it through Maxwell? Wherever it started, the origin would add to the story. Why not tell it?

"When Browder sets up his own fund, Hermitage Capital Management -- named for the famed czarist-era St. Petersburg art museum, though that's not explained either -- his first investor is Beny Steinmetz, the Israeli diamond billionaire. Browder tells how Steinmetz introduced him to the Lebanese-Brazilian Jewish banking billionaire Edmond Safra, who invests and becomes not just a partner but also a mentor and friend.

"Safra is also internationally renowned as the dean of Sephardi Jewish philanthropy; the main backer of Israel's Shas party, the Sephardi Torah Guardians, and of New York's Holocaust memorial museum, and a megadonor to Yeshiva University, Hebrew University, the Weizmann Institute and much more. Browder must have known all that. Considering the closeness of the two, it's surprising that none of it gets mentioned.

"It's possible that Browder's reticence about his Jewish connections is simply another instance of the inarticulateness that seizes so many American Jews when they try to address their Jewishness."

http://forward.com/news/376788/the-secret-jewish-history-of-donald-trump-jrs-russia-scandal/

Abe , October 28, 2017 at 11:09 pm

Bill Browder with American-Israeli interviewer Natasha Mozgovaya, TV host for Voice of America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbgNeQ_xINM

In this 2015 tirade, Browder declared "Someone has to punch Putin in the nose" and urged "supplying arms to the Ukrainians and putting troops, NATO troops, in all of the surrounding countries".

The choice of Mozgovaya as interviewer was significant to promote Browder with the Russian Jewish community abroad.

Born in the Soviet Union in 1979, Mozgovaya immigrated to Israel with her family in 1990. She became a correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth in 2000. Although working most of the time in Hebrew, her reports in Russian appeared in various publications in Russia.

Mozgovaya covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, including interviews with President Victor Yushenko and his partner-rival Yulia Timoshenko, as well as the Russian Mafia and Russian oligarchs. During the presidency of Vladimir Putin, Mozgovaya gave one of the last interviews with the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. She interviewed Garry Kasparov, Edward Limonov, Boris Berezovsky, Chechen exiles such as Ahmed Zakaev, and the widow of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko.

In 2008, Mozgovaya left Yedioth Ahronoth to become the Washington Bureau Chief for Haaretz newspaper in Washington, D.C.. She was a frequent lecturer on Israel and Middle Eastern affairs at U.S. think-tanks. In 2013, Mozgovaya started working at the Voice of America.

Abe , October 28, 2017 at 11:11 pm

Israeli banks have helped launder money for Russian oligarchs, while large-scale fraudulent industries, like binary options, have been allowed to flourish here.

A May 2009 diplomatic cable by the US ambassador to Israel warned that "many Russian oligarchs of Jewish origin and Jewish members of organized crime groups have received Israeli citizenship, or at least maintain residences in the country."

The United States estimated at the time that Russian crime groups had "laundered as much as $10 billion through Israeli holdings."

In 2009, then Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara charged 17 managers and employees of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims for defrauding Germany 42.5 million dollars by creating thousands of false benefit applications for people who had not suffered in the Holocaust.

The scam operated by creating phony applications with false birth dates and invented histories of persecution to process compensation claims. In some cases the recipients were born after World War II and at least one person was not even Jewish.

Among those charged was Semyon Domnitser, a former director of the conference. Many of the applicants were recruited from Brooklyn's Russian community. All those charged hail from Brooklyn.

When a phony applicant got a check, the scammers were given a cut, Bharara said. The fraud which has been going on for 16 years was related to the 400 million dollars which Germany pays out each year to Holocaust survivors.

Later, in November 2015, Bharara's office charged three Israeli men in a 23-count indictment that alleged that they ran a extensive computer hacking and fraud scheme that targeted JPMorgan Chase, The Wall Street Journal, and ten other companies.

According to prosecutors, the Israeli's operation generated "hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profit" and exposed the personal information of more than 100 million people.

Despite his service as a useful idiot propagating the Magnitsky Myth, Bharara discovered that for Russian Jewish oligarchs, criminals and scam artists, the motto is "Nikogda ne zabyt'!" Perhaps more recognizable by the German phrase: "Niemals vergessen!"

Abe , October 28, 2017 at 11:19 pm

William Browder is a "shareholder activist" the way Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a "human rights activist".

Both loudly bleat the "story" of their heroic "fight for justice" for billionaire Jewish oligarchs: themselves.

http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.686922.1447865981!/image/78952068.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_625/78952068.jpg

Any real investigation of Russia-Gate will draw international attention towards Russian Jewish corruption in the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) sectors, and lead back to Israel.

Anna , October 29, 2017 at 7:58 am

Thank you. Who would expect all these crimes and lies from a progeny of a Jewish communist Browder!

This is priceless: "The United States estimated at the time that Russian crime groups had "laundered as much as $10 billion through Israeli holdings." In 2009, then Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara charged 17 managers and employees of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims for defrauding Germany 42.5 million dollars by creating thousands of false benefit applications for people who had not suffered in the Holocaust."

Lois Gagnon , October 29, 2017 at 2:56 pm

Good info, but not surprising. Covering up the syndicate's global crime spree is priority #1. If we view all events through this lens, it all makes perfect sense.

MrK , October 29, 2017 at 12:06 am

More on Beny and Danny Steinmetz and Dany Gertler here:

Chloe's Blood Diamonds
http://www.globalresearch.ca/chloe-s-blood-diamond/7423

BobH , October 29, 2017 at 12:35 pm

Interesting link, thanks, MrK

BobH , October 29, 2017 at 12:05 pm

Abe, thanks for the informative backgrounder. The Goldberg link is also interesting, although I note he signs on to the Russian Hacking myth and the "Magnitsky murder" theory.

Abe , October 29, 2017 at 12:20 pm

"First they went after "

In video interview featured on Mikhail Khodorkovsky's website, Browder compared Khodorkovsky and himself to victims of the Nazi regime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=0KvFQHLIvWI [minutes 4:10-4:50

Abe , October 29, 2017 at 12:50 pm

Leading pro-Israel senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman were key promoters of the Magnitsky Act, which was signed into law in 2012.

Browder then published a book, Red Notice, leading to a string of TV appearances.

Outside the Daily Show's studios in New York on 3 February 2015, Browder was served a subpoena.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryVavTF6hR0

Browder tried to refuse to accept the subpoena and fled.

United States Federal Judge, Thomas Griesa of the Southern District of New York issued a ruling that compels Browder to travel to New York for a deposition.

Browder's lawyer, Randy Mastro, a partner at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP said Browder "does not have to consent to a deposition." He claimed that Browder is living and working in England and is currently carrying a British passport. Browder is a former U.S. citizen.

In his ruling, Judge Griesa emphasized that Browder must comply with the subpoena in New York because he conducts his business in the city on a "reasonably regular basis."

Browder's lawyer argued that the hedge fund manager was unable to attend in a deposition because there are "credible threats" to his personal safety. In response, the judge pointed out that the threats did not prevent Browder from going to different cable news networks to promote his book.

The federal court's order for Browder was connected to the civil case filed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan against Russian businessman Denis Katsyv.

Browder had urged prosecutors to file lawsuits against Katsyv, who denied the allegations against him. The lawyer representing Katsyv repeatedly tried to serve subpoenas to Browder as the primary source of information in the complaint against the Russian businessman.

Browder opted to run away instead of complying with the subpoena.

Taras 77 , October 29, 2017 at 9:23 pm

Carden, the senator from AIPAC was and is a key supporter!

Thanks, Abe, for your informative posts. The stench on this one takes the Israeli lapdogs in congress to new lows. Congress is either willfully uninformed or totally ignorant on the facts in this case, maybe a distinction without a difference.

Abe , October 30, 2017 at 5:19 pm

Congress is either willfully uninformed nor totally ignorant

They're bought and paid for by the pro-Israel Lobby.

falcemartello , October 30, 2017 at 11:40 pm

@Abe its called the Kosher Nostra. Exceeds anything the Neapolitans or Sicilians have managed. Most people relate syndicated crime to Southern Italians . We can thank Hollywood for that and that says it all . Lansky and Co have been running the mob for years but it's we southern Italians that get the label of mobster. Russian jewish mobsters are behind most of the crimes of graft ,drugs and prostitution ,human trafficking, organ trafficking . You name it. They came to the forefront starting from the deliberate Balkanising of the FDRY Yugoslavia and the implosion of the USSR under Yeltsin they grew exponentially. The Godfather of this international Ashkenazi judaic crime organisation is Semion Mogilevich born in the Ukraine in the 40's. This guy makes Capone and Lucky Luciano look like choir boys., but everybody relates mobsters to these southern Italians how bizarre that the truth is always something else.

Zachary Smith , October 29, 2017 at 12:29 am

Held for 11 months without trial,[4] he was, as reported by The Telegraph, "denied visits from his family" and "forced into increasingly squalid cells." He developed gall stones, pancreatitis and calculous cholecystitis, for which he was given inadequate medical treatment during his incarceration. Surgery was ordered in June, but never performed; detention center chief Ivan P. Prokopenko later said that he " did not consider Magnitsky sick Prisoners often try to pass themselves off as sick, in order to get better conditions."

In prison without a trial. Worsening medical condition ignored. As the year time-limit approached, Magnitsky was badly beaten – probably in a last ditch attempt to force the State's wishes on him.

Whether guilty or innocent, this shouldn't happen to a dog. But it happened with him, and is happening this very moment all over the fine nation we call wonderful, Exceptional, and all that. Privatized prisons who won't waste more than an aspirin tablet on an inmate. Low paid goons who get away with darned near anything they want, even if THEY beat a prisoner to death. Or kill him by choking him. Or by denying him water.

Nobody cares what goes on overseas – unless they can turn an individual gross miscarriage of justice into another attack on Russia. Nobody cares here, either. I still recall my shock and disgust at people who posed as "liberals" daydreaming about Carl Rove being put in the same cell with the sex-starved pervert "Big Bubba".

Exceptional my ***!

tina , October 29, 2017 at 4:20 am

and meanwhile, in Milwaukee , Wisconsin, USA another innocent person died in the county jail. Count that on five fingers, 5 people
dead in Milwaukee County Jail is as many months. GO USA MAGA

Lex , October 29, 2017 at 4:37 am

There is actually no credible evidence the accused accountant was beaten, this is just part of Browder's big story to avoid paying taxes – like he has done his entire life. Even so, the people working at the prison were all punished in Russia, yet somehow Russia is still the villain – when was the last time you heard of US prison staff being punished for negligence or abuse? I've read a book (also censored) about this whole affair, and it includes a lengthy section about the financial crimes visited on Russia in the 90s by people like Browder, and it amounts to crimes against humanity. Browder should be in a Russian prison, but instead his lies have caused both the US and Canada to pass punitive sanctions against an entire nation – and lead the world down a path towards war between the two largest nuclear powers. Spread the word – Browder is a charlatan and a crook, and Magnitsky was likely thrown to the wolves by him.

Anna , October 29, 2017 at 11:24 am

"Browder is a charlatan and a crook" – True. And here is a documentary to read, "The Killing of William Browder:"
https://archive.org/stream/TheKillingOfWilliamBrowderPrintLayout6x91/TheKillingOfWilliamBrowder_PrintLayout_6x9-1#page/n3/mode/1up

And, by the way, here is a real persecution, in the US: "The Persecution of Norman Finkelstein"
https://www.change.org/p/janet-difiore-chief-judge-of-the-state-of-new-york-norman-g-finkelstein-must-walk-free

Anna , October 29, 2017 at 8:02 am

You really believe in each word of the well-known Jewish fraudster Browder?

Sam F , October 29, 2017 at 8:57 am

It does seem most likely that Magnitsky simply lied about medical conditions; I have known zionists to do that all their lives in yet another fake plea for special privileges. If the prison manager really did not believe him, it is poetic justice in action.

US prisoners are in general the poor. Magnitsky was imprisoned for robbing the poor, a different matter altogether. The Magnitsky Act proves that the US Congress cares for no one, but will take bribes to pretend to care for the rich. Tell them that he was cheating zionists and they will repeal the act.

Putin Apologist , October 29, 2017 at 1:47 am

Alex Krainer's book "The Killing of William Browder: Bill Browder's Dangerous Deception" does a good job of exposing William Browder's fraud. It's a quick read about 200 pages. Amazon has banned the book but eBay has it, for now.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Killing-of-William-Browder-Deconstructing-Bill-Browders-Dangerous-Deceptio/311966014830?hash=item48a29f9d6e:g:GNMAAOSwE9RZxce5

Here's Browder running, in an attempt to avoid being served with a subpoena outside the Daily Show's studios in New York. What a f***ing coward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryVavTF6hR0

Joe Tedesky , October 29, 2017 at 2:18 am

Why does it even matter what we Americans think of Browder's dealings with said Russian officials? Not to sound uncaring of human strive or anything like that, but shouldn't we Americans allow the Russians the right of their own laws and sovereignty to settle their own affairs? Shouldn't we Americans be more concerned with how many to a few had died in our own American prisons last year, and why does our land of the free America have such a huge prison population?

This Browder Road is Road we Americans should not go down. There is no reason we should, and Browder's story is too controversial by the poor credibility of his own accusations. There is a oligarchical fist fight going on over there in Russia, and it's former satellites, and America should let that region iron out their own differences. Read Phil Butler over at New Eastern Onion, and the Saker, these guys like Robert Parry are on to this Zionist intrusion.

tina , October 29, 2017 at 4:15 am

Hi joe,
I know you guys are a bit older than I , but growing up in Munich, Germany in the 70's and 80's , was a lot different from you guys in the 60's. Afghanistan 1977, Tehran, Iran 1979, The usa did so much damage, 1953 the brits and usa overthrew a democratically elected leader in Iran. Why should anyone like or welcome American troops? Since ww2, they have done nothing but wreak hatred in the world. I wish I could like this country, but I just can't

Joe Tedesky , October 29, 2017 at 5:45 am

Well let me tell ya my young friend tina, the best of America isn't being portrayed at this moment by our media to well these days. In the land of the free, are a lot of nice people tina, but they like you are in the midst these days of being pulled apart from the top down. Most of this tearing apart has been accomplished by the politicians misuse of holding up identity civil rights issues as cover for their own selfish gains. This identity issue is used, since returning to the days of the FDR New Deal is an improbable campaign promise, all because both political parties have done a fine job of destroying that very political uplifting program set in place some eighty years ago.

So tina you don't need to love the current government in the U.S., but to be patient a little while longer and then you may try and learn to like, or love if you will, the American individual, whoever that individual is you are fortunate enough to meet. On the other hand you could just go to Holland. Joe

Skip Scott , October 29, 2017 at 12:08 pm

Tina-

I am wondering why anyone anywhere would ever welcome any foreign troops in their own country. I am certain that one thing that would be a bi-partisan agreement for US citizens is that no foreign troops are welcome here, especially to "show" us how to run our country. I find it very strange that so few Americans seem to be able to make the logical jump to assume the same of other countries' citizens.

Jessica K , October 29, 2017 at 7:15 am

Browder is a sleaze, and the fact that he can be called a "human rights activist" in the US shows how low oligarchy and its congressional minions can go. He can't stand that Putin and the Duma went after him, among other oligarchs and big money crooks, when the US tried to scavenge Russia (which they still want to do).

Thank you for that information, Abe, on Browder's past and present shady connections. And Lex, please tell me what is the book you read on the case? And who can we get to show this film in this age of suppressed truth?

Anna , October 29, 2017 at 11:27 am

The book about Browder: https://archive.org/stream/TheKillingOfWilliamBrowderPrintLayout6x91/TheKillingOfWilliamBrowder_PrintLayout_6x9-1#page/n3/mode/1up

Herman , October 29, 2017 at 7:21 am

When you read articles in CN and those of the commentators the evidence against their targets seems so one sided, that the truth must be somewhere in between. But then, for example, you read works by people like Pappe' on Israel and recently Stephen Cohen on our distortions of events and so many others and you come to understand that what these folks are saying is true and then you wonder how can it change for the better when all the usual avenues of expression are guarded by the deciders. Perhaps why we have become so tortured by this reality is that we better understand it because of the information revolution, that what is always was. And perhaps we will all be saved by those who have decided we are not getting the right information. Perhaps if their algorythyms(sp?) succeed, we will all feel better, less conflicted. We will all come to understand that shock and awe in Iraq was not a human tragedy but wonderful entertainment.

anon , October 29, 2017 at 8:42 am

algorithms. Yes, the truth of control of US mass media and elections by oligarchy is unpleasant but essential medicine.

GMC , October 29, 2017 at 7:26 am

In the interview of Magnitsky's mother, she was asked when her son graduated from Law school. She stated that he never went to Law school – he's an accountant . Even his Mother knew he was not honest – LOL So, what can we expect from a US government when they will kill Our President , cover it up, and hide it from those that believe in them ? Nothing ! And for the record – Putin claimed that 80% of those in control before the break-up of the Soviet Union – were Zionists and jewish oligarchs. Guess who is running the US government and has already stolen most of the public funds as Soc. Sec. etc. ? oo dah chee !

Realist , October 29, 2017 at 8:00 am

Yeah, apparently Congress and two presidents can't handle the truth, and figure that you can't either.

The folks in Washington would classify the laws of physics if that were possible.

Anna , October 29, 2017 at 8:23 am

"Their" "journalists:"
"The choice of Mozgovaya as interviewer was significant to promote Browder with the Russian Jewish community abroad. Born in the Soviet Union in 1979, Mozgovaya immigrated to Israel with her family in 1990. She became a correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth in 2000. In 2008, Mozgovaya left Yedioth Ahronoth to become the Washington Bureau Chief for Haaretz newspaper in Washington, D.C.. She was a frequent lecturer on Israel and Middle Eastern affairs at U.S. think-tanks. In 2013, Mozgovaya started working at the Voice of America."

Is Mozgovaya so naive and pure that she has no idea that Browder was and is a Malicious Fraud? The tribal solidarity makes Mozgovaya an eager coolaborator with the Jewish moneyed filth, the journalistic integrity is of no concern for her. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/boss-of-slain-russian-whistleblower-to-haaretz-obama-administration-trying-to-appease-putin-1.440511
"The Staggering Cost of Israel to Americans:" https://www.veteranstodaynews.com/2013/05/19/223756-the-staggering-cost-of-israel-to-americans/

Realist , October 29, 2017 at 5:55 pm

I am impressed with the knowledge many readers of CN have of these events. You almost qualify as bone fide "Putin Puppets" under federal statute. I, myself, am only aware of the basic outline of the story, but most Americans, I am sure, have never even heard of Magnitsky or Browder. To them, "Browder" probably means an American actor. Most of Congress probably believes Magnitsky was one Putin's many "political enemies" he had "assassinated" by exotic means. Can you imagine how deep this would all be buried, and yet exploited to the hilt to punish Russia, if Hillary now sat in the White House? Facts and narratives, entirely two different things. One you are denied, the other you are force fed in Amerika.

David G , October 29, 2017 at 9:22 am

"The folks in Washington would classify the laws of physics if that were possible."

It's been tried.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik

mike k , October 29, 2017 at 10:54 am

"The folks in Washington would classify the laws of physics if that were possible." Wonderful comment – that sums it all up exactly. Those who are the master criminals in our society seek to operate in complete secrecy, so that they can do whatever they wish to their unsuspecting victims, and cloak themselves in an aura of righteousness. Those who seek to expose the truth of their machinations become their most feared and hated enemies.

Gary , October 29, 2017 at 9:58 am

We Americans didn't want to hear the truth when our own government assassinated the Kennedys and MLK in the 1960, or when we were "secretly" saturation bombing Cambodia, or overthrowing democracy in Chile, or creating Islamic terrorists and funding them with drugs in Afghanistan, or running drugs for gun in Iran-Contra, or training our deaths squads in Guatemala and El Salvador, or killing a half million Iraqi children, because, well, "Saddam is a dictator" – the list is virtually endless of truths we Americans simply didn't and/or don't want to know. Collectively we're like some grotesque ugly monster that looks into our very special magic mirror (corporate media) which rather then tell us the truth, instead tells us we are so beautiful and so exceptional and so indispensable to the world, and above all the laws that apply to mere mortals. And now more and more any attempts to remove the mirror and let the truth seep through must be endlessly suppressed by the power structure. Another example of this is the recent suppression of the English language version of the German book "Bought Journalists," which looks at the corruption and manipulation of media in Europe by the CIA

https://www.globalresearch.ca/english-translation-of-udo-ulfkottes-bought-journalists-suppressed/5601857

This level of censorship suggests a rather fragile system trying desperately to maintain control.

Stefan , October 29, 2017 at 10:07 am

Jessica K. I think the book you are looking for is "The Killing of william browder" (Lower case intentional) by Alex Krainer . Do not waste your time going to amazon.

Lisa , October 29, 2017 at 11:29 am

This book can be downloaded free. Search for the book name and you should get the website among the first hits on google. (archive org.)

I'll give the complete link below (as the links may delay the comment publication).

Lisa , October 29, 2017 at 11:31 am

Here is the link: https://archive.org/details/TheKillingOfWilliamBrowderPrintLayout6x91

I've downloaded it but haven't gotten very far. There is so much to read and investigate every day – and a life needs to be lived at the same time

Riva Enteen , October 29, 2017 at 12:09 pm

I recently asked an anti-Putin Ukrainian how she would define oligarch. She said somebody with lots of money who uses it for political influence. What you call lobbyists.

Skip Scott , October 29, 2017 at 12:15 pm

Browder is such an obvious scumbag. How anyone could watch this youtube of him attempting to dodge a subpoena in NYC, and not see him for what he is is beyond me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryVavTF6hR0

Jerry Alatalo , October 29, 2017 at 1:43 pm

Can men and women who read this able to arrange interviews (via print, radio or video) of Sergei Nekrasov for the purpose of fully informing the American people on the hugely important Magnitsky controversy please do so quickly? Thank you. Peace.

Abe , October 29, 2017 at 4:47 pm

For the purpose of fully informing the American people, it's important to interview Andrei Nekrasov.

Not so important to interview retired Russian athlete Sergei N.

Jerry Alatalo , October 29, 2017 at 10:26 pm

Abe,

Thank you very much for the correction, in that our comment mis-named the film's director as "Sergei" instead of correctly as Andrei. Thank you as well for the many insightful comments you make here, alongside the many other men and women followers who've been contributing through excellent comments at Consortium News. Thank you, again. Peace.

Elizabeth Burton , October 29, 2017 at 2:31 pm

From the NYT piece cited: "The matching messages point to a synchronized information campaign."

I've come to the conclusion that one of the best indicators of a propaganda campaign is when the participants are completely void of any sense of irony.

ranney , October 29, 2017 at 5:57 pm

Robert, as always, you provide a clear presentation of the subject. I would indeed like to protest the censorship of this film as I'm sure lots of others would after reading your articles on the subject – but how does one do that???
Who should we protest to? Is there a petition going 'round? Or is there any other way to protest? Is there a person or government agency we can protest to who has the power to get the film shown? Is there a film agency to write to? Is the film seriously banned – or is it just that people in the film industry are scared to death of some payback? If that is the case, what sort of threat is held over them?
In any case, you can understand that those of us who would like to protest have no idea where to start. Have you any suggestions?

Alex Krainer , October 30, 2017 at 6:04 am

There's a serious problem somewhere in the legal framework, possibly in most western countries. A lawyer petitions a publisher to suppress some materials and threatens lawsuits and the publishers oblige. In my book's case they claimed defamatory content but have no obligation to prove anything. The claim is sufficient. Then Amazon instructed me to work it out with Browder and his lawyers. The really scary implication of thsi is that if you ar lawyered-up elite you can effectively control what may be said and written about you and censor any content that challenges your own narrative. For most people by far fighting for their right of freedom of expression in court is prohibitive and impossible. As author, I'm forced to wrangle this right throught the legal system against far more powerful player. In effect, freedom of expression has been voided in the west, sadly.

Skip Folden , October 29, 2017 at 7:36 pm

"The killing of William Crowder", Alex Krainer, 2017, (a critique of Crowder's Red Notice, was also almost immediately de-listed by Amazon due to Crowder Attorneys

Taras 77 , October 29, 2017 at 9:41 pm

This is a link to an article summarizing Browder's criminal activities:

https://100r.org/2017/10/master-of-reinvention/

(I know next to nothing about the org "100 Reporters )

Summary might even be a tad understated but that is fine-we get enough of the clutch pearls hysteria from "the other sources."

Alex Krainer , October 30, 2017 at 5:58 am

From my book, "The Killing of William Browder," suppressed by Amazon courtesy of Browder's lawyer Jonathan Winer (Amazon obliged, no questions asked):

Browder's deposition in the Prevezon case in Dec. 2015:

Mr. Cymrot: When you told people Mr. Magnitsky's a lawyer, did you also tell them he never went to law school and never had a law license?
Browder: I'm sorry. I
Mr. Cymrot: When you tell – how many times have you said, "Mr. Magnitsky is a lawyer?"
Browder: I don't know.
Mr. Cymrot: 50? 100? 200?
Browder: I don't know.
Mr. Cymrot: Many, many times, right?
Browder: Yes
Mr. Cymrot: Have you ever told anybody that he didn't go to law school and didn't have a law degree?
Browder: No.

There's so much more. Scratch the surface and Browder's hoax is hysterically childish like a high school punk contrived it.

Skip Scott , October 31, 2017 at 12:41 pm

The fact that anyone who does scratch the surface, like yourself, is immediately attacked shows that Browder is serving the oligarchy. They wish very much to return to the rape, pillage, and plunder of Russia that they enjoyed under Yeltsin. Just like Russia-gate, they seek to control the narrative. The MSM carries their water, and people have to go to sites like this one to find the truth. Thank you very much for your work.

j. D. D. , October 30, 2017 at 7:06 pm

Natalia Veselnitskaya herself has ties to Fusion GPS, and was given visas with the knowledge of the FBI. The whole affair smells of an FBI sting against the Trump campaign,

GoMovies , October 30, 2017 at 10:44 pm

There has been determined effort to prevent the American and European publics from seeing this detailed documentary that dissects the fraudulent claims at the heart of the Magnitsky story.

[Nov 01, 2017] Natalia Veselnitskaya herself has ties to Fusion GPS, and was given visas with the knowledge of the FBI

Notable quotes:
"... Natalia Veselnitskaya herself has ties to Fusion GPS, and was given visas with the knowledge of the FBI. The whole affair smells of an FBI sting against the Trump campaign, ..."
Nov 01, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

j. D. D. , October 30, 2017 at 7:06 pm

Natalia Veselnitskaya herself has ties to Fusion GPS, and was given visas with the knowledge of the FBI. The whole affair smells of an FBI sting against the Trump campaign,

[Nov 01, 2017] Apparently Manifort and Gates have been denied Attorney Client Privilege (not entirely unprecedented, but shall we say in this case dubious, scary) in a financial crimes case

In 1985, Judge Sol Wachtler told a reporter that prosecutors had such influence over grand juries they could convince them to "indict a ham sandwich."
Nov 01, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Susan Sunflower October 31, 2017 at 8:48 pm

be scared .. from Slate/Dahlia Litwick apparently Manifort and Gates have been denied Attorney Client Privilege (not entirely unprecedented, but shall we say in this case dubious, scary) -- this is a financial crimes case no exigent circumstances, not "criminal" as in "violent criminality" or imminent danger to anyone (I suspect they are "afraid" of being out-lawyered, out-maneuvered)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/10/why_a_judge_ruled_paul_manafort_isn_t_entitled_to_attorney_client_privilege.html

[Oct 31, 2017] Here is What I Saw at the Valdai Club Conference by Anatol Lieven

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Putin made a strong statement on the need for the United States to observe existing nuclear disarmament agreements. ..."
"... One particularly interesting discussion centered around the impact of automation and computerization on jobs, and what measures -- if any -- could be taken to limit the impact or to ameliorate the immense growth of unemployment and inequality that will likely result from that automation. Another discussion took a hard look at migration from the Muslim world and Africa to Europe. The conversation revealed the complete witlessness of the existing Brussels elites when it comes to meeting -- or even thinking -- about the migration challenge ..."
Oct 31, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

The conference contained no important developments or revelations, but it did raise some very interesting questions. One of those questions centered around the quality of leadership in Western democracies -- specifically in a state that does not hold up well in comparison with the leadership of Russia or China. The West has maintained its leadership role through the legitimacy of its democratic institutions. In both the United States and Europe, however, those institutions appear to be crumbling as a result of deepening -- and perhaps irreconcilable -- cultural, racial and class differences, and a failure to address the issue of migration.

... ... ...

When one participant remarked that European leaders see the "ball in Russia's court" when it comes to seeking a resolution of the Ukraine conflict under the terms of the Minsk agreement, Putin remarked that Russia sees the situation differently. Russia believes the ball is in the West's court when it comes to bringing the government in Kiev to negotiate an agreement on autonomy with the Donbas, he said. Putin expressed no optimism about the situation and he noted that the Ukrainian government was probably too weak and internally threatened to make a deal.

... ... ...

On North Korea, Putin said that "we should not drive North Korea into a corner, threaten force, stoop to unabashed rudeness or invective. Whether someone likes or dislikes the North Korean regime, we must not forget that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a sovereign state."

Putin made a strong statement on the need for the United States to observe existing nuclear disarmament agreements. He went into considerable detail when accusing successive U.S. administrations of violating the terms of both the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement and the U.S.-Russian Highly Enriched Uranium Purchase Agreement of 1993. He also noted that the United States, unlike Russia, had yet to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty. It was clear from his remarks that the Russian leadership is determined to maintain rough nuclear parity with the United States and respond to whatever it sees as violations of those agreements by the U.S. side.

In some ways, the most interesting thing about the conference regarding Russian-Western relations was that most of the discussion was not about Russian-Western relations. Instead, conference attendees focused on climate change, social inequality, technological change, genetic engineering, globalization, migration and national identity. One particularly interesting discussion centered around the impact of automation and computerization on jobs, and what measures -- if any -- could be taken to limit the impact or to ameliorate the immense growth of unemployment and inequality that will likely result from that automation. Another discussion took a hard look at migration from the Muslim world and Africa to Europe. The conversation revealed the complete witlessness of the existing Brussels elites when it comes to meeting -- or even thinking -- about the migration challenge

As a number of participants (including myself) pointed out, compared with these existential threats to existing states, the issues currently dividing Russia and the West are likely to seem to the historians of the future (if there are any) so minor as to be almost insignificant. One hundred years from now, our descendants are likely to look back on disputes over Crimea, the Donbas and Syria with the same combination of incomprehension and contempt with which we regard the European elites who went to war over geopolitical issues in 1914. They, too, failed to see that the real threats to their comfortable, civilized world came from within their own societies.

Anatol Lieven is a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC. He is author among other books of Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry .

[Oct 31, 2017] Sorting Out the Russia Mess by Robert Parry

Muller just sinks credibility of the US government to a new low exposing the internal fight between CIA/FBI and Pentagon for the control of the government. All this dirt digging is so highly selective, that the whole purpose if his investigation can be defined as "Discrediting of the US government and its institutions". The role of FBI now (notwisting nik in twitter is very similar to the role of CIA in JFK assassination: suspected kingmaker, which tried to control Trump campaign and was ready top pay Steele. Excluding DNC officiels form probe mean selective search for truth, which is a search for lies.
There are also serious questions about Papadopoulos's credibility. So far he emerges as a young, reckless and clueless political huckster. And where was General Flynt with his experience intelligence operations. He should understand that all Trump operation is under the microaope of Obmam-fireldly officiels in the administration including such a powerful figure as Brennan.
Also why the heck we have Papadopoulos as a source, when we have NSA and clear evidence that key Trump officials were all wiretapped.
Notable quotes:
"... However, Mifsud told The Washington Post in an email last August that he had "absolutely no contact with the Russian government" and described his ties to Russia as strictly in academic fields. ..."
"... In an interview with the U.K. Daily Telegraph after Monday's disclosures, Mifsud acknowledged meeting with Papadopoulos but disputed the contents of the conversations as cited in the court papers. Specifically, he denied knowing anything about emails containing "dirt" on Clinton and called the claim that he introduced Papadopoulos to a "female Russian national" as a "laughingstock." ..."
"... The absence of supporting evidence that Papadopoulos conveyed his hot news on the emails to campaign officials and Mifsud's insistence that he knew nothing about the emails would normally raise serious questions about Papadopoulos's credibility on this most crucial point. ..."
"... At least for now, those gaps represent major holes in the storyline. But Official Washington has been so desperate for "proof" about the alleged Russian "election meddling" for so long, that professional skepticism has been unwelcome in most media outlets. ..."
"... But the source said the more perplexing question was whether the Kremlin then ordered release of the data, something that Russian intelligence is usually loath to do and something that in this case would have risked retaliation from the expected winner of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... But such questions and doubts are clearly not welcome in the U.S. mainstream media, most of which has embraced Mueller's acceptance of Papadopoulos's story as the long-awaited "smoking gun" of Russia-gate. ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
"... Where are Podesta brothers? http://theduran.com/category/latest/ They both are extremely relevant and, unlike the petty story on the hapless chap Papadopolous, Podesta brothers' involvement into lobbying for Russia and Ukraine is well documented. The involvement had been substantial. Also, why no news about Awan-Wasserman affai, the greatest breach in national cybersecurity ever? ..."
"... Where is Mueller on the death of Seth Rich? The Dems have never provided any reward for finding the murderers of Seth (Assange did), but the Dems found money & legal help to protect Awan & Debbie Wasseman. As you wrote, "once again," the deciders are on a side of murderers, perverts, and thieves (see Clinton foundation and the $6 trillion "lost" by the Pentagon). ..."
"... No, I believe the whole Russiagate brouhaha is a sham, and if Russia did meddle in our politics, it is hypocritical of us who are far worse. I think the article I read recently by Stephen Cohen that we have meddled in over a hundred countries and continue to do so while appearing shocked that someone would do that to us, in the event that is what happened. ..."
"... In October 2016, Wikileaks released emails that revealed Donna Brazile tipped off the Clinton Campaign to debate questions and forwarded a plan she obtained from the Bernie Sanders campaign to the Clinton Campaign. CNN fired Brazile after the revelation, but the DNC has continued employing Brazile as a consultant." You see, DNC continues employing Brazile as a consultant in crime. ..."
"... There are no good players in any of this. I don't even think this quarrel has anything to do with the average American. This is a fight going on inside of a declining American government. The Empire is collapsing all around these greedy fools who call themselves leaders, and when the dollar does become just another piece of worthless paper, it won't be the fault of anyone other than the current leaders who now run the USofA. ..."
"... The "crucial gap" in evidence relates to allegation that the DNC hack was an inside job by a disillusioned Bernie Sanders supporter. However, the revelations about Seth Rich provide damning (if hearsay) evidence that the DNC ordered his execution. ..."
"... Murder of Seth Rich? Podesta brothers popping up at each step of the investigation as the lobbyists "colluding" with both Russia and Ukraine? Clinton Foundation and the lethal weaponry sales to Saudis? The CIA-arranged delivery of weapons to ISIS on Clinton's watch? http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-america-armed-terrorists-in-syria/ https://www.globalresearch.ca/logistics-101-where-does-isis-get-its-guns/5454726 The Uranium deal with Russia? – Including the $500.000 "speech fee" for the promiscuous Bill – remember Lolita Island, Dershowitz, and Epstein? ..."
"... The U.S. has been openly invading and destroying countries, involved in overthrowing elected leaders – sometimes have them murdered – engaged in destabilizing the countries for regime changes, interfering in their elections, for seven decades now. Have they forgotten what they did in 1996 Russia election and to Russia during 1990's. And here we are discussing a thirty year old Papadopoulos meeting some obscure professor discussing Russia or whatever; and we are endlessly discussing Hillary- Podesta and DNC emails – who leaked it? How low this country has come down to? Can't we see it? ..."
"... It is a shameful spectacle we are witnessing in this Country. One feels feels sick reading and hearing about about this whole trivial nonsense. Yet the whole Political Establishment and Media are drenched in this sewage for over a year now. No words can describe the complete moral collapse of the Country; collapse of integrity of institutions of law and justice – whatever was left of it. There is no honesty, truth or dignity left – in Journalists and others in Media, Politicians, and other high government functionaries. ..."
"... We are beginning to see the disgust for the people running the US government by many citizens like yourself. ..."
"... George Papadopoulos is directly connected to the pro-Israel Lobby, right wing Israeli political interests, and Israeli government efforts to control regional energy resources. ..."
"... The "online investigations" propaganda operation at Bellingcat site very much includes the comments section of the site. Don't expect Bellingcat to perform any actual journalism or substantive investigation. The function of the Atlantic Council's Bellingcat site is to serve as a propaganda channel for "fake news" and "alternative facts". ..."
"... Paul Manafort was indicted for supposedly establishing a relationship with a foreign government that was not covered by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). ..."
"... Speaking of FARA, when is someone in the US government or the totally corrupted and bought-off US Congress going to demand that Israel and AIPAC be registered under FARA? And then: When will investigations begin into some of the truly treasonous acts and legislation shepherded by this foreign agent called AIPAC: -- like its interference with Free Speech protections in the US Bill of Rights, and this latest: Something about residents of some town in Texas forced to sign a loyalty pledge in support of Israel in order to receive funds to rebuild their stricken landscape ??? Is Israel putting up the money for disaster relief projects in America? If so, how did this come about? ..."
Oct 31, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Exclusive: The U.S. mainstream media finally has its "smoking gun" on Russia-gate -- incriminating information from a junior Trump campaign adviser -- but a closer look reveals serious problems with the "evidence," writes Robert Parry.

Russia-gate special prosecutor Robert Mueller has turned up the heat on President Trump with the indictment of Trump's former campaign manager for unrelated financial crimes and the disclosure of a guilty plea from a low-level foreign policy adviser for lying to the FBI.

While longtime Republican fixer Paul Manafort, who helped guide Trump's campaign to the GOP nomination in summer 2016, was the big name in the news on Monday, the mainstream media focused more on court documents related to George Papadopoulos, a 30-year-old campaign aide who claims to have heard about Russia possessing Hillary Clinton's emails before they became public on the Internet, mostly via WikiLeaks.

While that would seem to bolster the Russia-gate narrative – that Russian intelligence "hacked" Democratic emails and President Vladimir Putin ordered the emails be made public to undermine Clinton's campaign – the evidentiary thread that runs through Papadopoulos's account remains tenuous.

That's in part because his credibility has already been undermined by his guilty plea for lying to the FBI and by the fact that he now has a motive to provide something the prosecutors might want in exchange for leniency. Plus, there is the hearsay and contested quality of Papadopoulos's supposed information, some of which already has turned out to be false.

According to the court documents, Papadopoulos got to know a professor of international relations who claimed to have "substantial connections with Russian government officials," with the professor identified in press reports as Joseph Mifsud, a little-known academic associated with the University of Stirling in Scotland.

The first contact supposedly occurred in mid-March 2016 in Italy, with a second meeting in London on March 24 when the professor purportedly introduced Papadopoulos to a Russian woman whom the young campaign aide believed to be Putin's niece, an assertion that Mueller's investigators determined wasn't true.

Trump, who then was under pressure for not having a foreign policy team, included Papadopoulos as part of a list drawn up to fill that gap, and Papadopoulos participated in a campaign meeting on March 31 in Washington at which he suggested a meeting between Trump and Putin, a prospect that other senior aides reportedly slapped down.

The 'Email' Breakfast

But Papadopoulos continued his outreach to Russia , according to the court documents, which depict the most explosive meeting as an April 26 breakfast in London with the professor (Mifsud) supposedly saying he had been in Moscow and "learned that the Russians had obtained 'dirt' on then-candidate Clinton" and possessed "thousands of emails." Mainstream press accounts concluded that Mifsud must have been referring to the later-released emails.

However, Mifsud told The Washington Post in an email last August that he had "absolutely no contact with the Russian government" and described his ties to Russia as strictly in academic fields.

In an interview with the U.K. Daily Telegraph after Monday's disclosures, Mifsud acknowledged meeting with Papadopoulos but disputed the contents of the conversations as cited in the court papers. Specifically, he denied knowing anything about emails containing "dirt" on Clinton and called the claim that he introduced Papadopoulos to a "female Russian national" as a "laughingstock."

According to the Telegraph interview , Mifsud said he tried to put Papadopoulos in touch with experts on the European Union and introduced him to the director of a Russian think tank, the Russian International Affairs Council.

It was the latter contact that the court papers presumably referred to in saying that on May 4, the Russian contact with ties to the foreign ministry wrote to Papadopoulos and Mifsud, reporting that ministry officials were "open for cooperation," a message that Papadopoulos forwarded to a senior campaign official, asking whether the contacts were "something we want to move forward with."

However, even an article in The New York Times, which has aggressively pushed the Russia-gate "scandal" from the beginning, noted the evidentiary holes that followed from that point.

The Times' Scott Shane wrote : "A crucial detail is still missing: Whether and when Mr. Papadopoulos told senior Trump campaign officials about Russia's possession of hacked emails. And it appears that the young aide's quest for a deeper connection with Russian officials, while he aggressively pursued it, led nowhere."

Shane added, "the court documents describe in detail how Mr. Papadopoulos continued to report to senior campaign officials on his efforts to arrange meetings with Russian officials, the documents do not say explicitly whether, and to whom, he passed on his most explosive discovery – that the Russians had what they considered compromising emails on Mr. Trump's opponent.

"J.D. Gordon, a former Pentagon official who worked for the Trump campaign as a national security adviser and helped arrange the March 31 foreign policy meeting, said he had known nothing about Mr. Papadopoulos' discovery that Russia had obtained Democratic emails or of his prolonged pursuit of meetings with Russians."

Reasons to Doubt

If prosecutor Mueller had direct evidence that Papadopoulos had informed the Trump campaign about the Clinton emails, you would assume that the proof would have been included in Monday's disclosures. Further, since Papadopoulos was flooding the campaign with news about his Russian outreach, you might have expected that he would say something about how helpful the Russians had been in publicizing the Democratic emails.

The absence of supporting evidence that Papadopoulos conveyed his hot news on the emails to campaign officials and Mifsud's insistence that he knew nothing about the emails would normally raise serious questions about Papadopoulos's credibility on this most crucial point.

At least for now, those gaps represent major holes in the storyline. But Official Washington has been so desperate for "proof" about the alleged Russian "election meddling" for so long, that professional skepticism has been unwelcome in most media outlets.

There is also another side of the story that rarely gets mentioned in the U.S. mainstream media: that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has repeatedly denied that he received the two batches of purloined Democratic emails – one about the Democratic National Committee and one about Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta – from the Russians. While it is surely possible that the Russians might have used cutouts to pass on the emails, Assange and associates have suggested that at least the DNC emails came from a disgruntled insider.

Also, former U.S. intelligence experts have questioned whether at least one batch of disclosed emails could have come from an overseas "hack" because the rapid download speed is more typical of copying files locally onto a memory stick or thumb drive.

What I was told by an intelligence source several months ago was that Russian intelligence did engage in hacking efforts to uncover sensitive information, much as U.S. and other nations' intelligence services do, and that Democratic targets were included in the Russian effort.

But the source said the more perplexing question was whether the Kremlin then ordered release of the data, something that Russian intelligence is usually loath to do and something that in this case would have risked retaliation from the expected winner of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton.

But such questions and doubts are clearly not welcome in the U.S. mainstream media, most of which has embraced Mueller's acceptance of Papadopoulos's story as the long-awaited "smoking gun" of Russia-gate.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

Herman , October 31, 2017 at 12:57 pm

Once again. Trump voluntarily jumps into the hot seat by trying to discredit or dismiss the importance of someone who worked for him. This tactic may appeal to his committed supporters but only sets himself up since his claims and statements about the irrelevance of Papadopolous can be disproved. What he should be after is the truth about the emails

It is amazing how often people get charged with lying by being made to believe that not doing so would get them in trouble. The thing they lie about is very often not his crime but the lying. , .

Anna , October 31, 2017 at 1:21 pm

Where are Podesta brothers? http://theduran.com/category/latest/ They both are extremely relevant and, unlike the petty story on the hapless chap Papadopolous, Podesta brothers' involvement into lobbying for Russia and Ukraine is well documented. The involvement had been substantial.
Also, why no news about Awan-Wasserman affai, the greatest breach in national cybersecurity ever?

Where is Mueller on the death of Seth Rich? The Dems have never provided any reward for finding the murderers of Seth (Assange did), but the Dems found money & legal help to protect Awan & Debbie Wasseman. As you wrote, "once again," the deciders are on a side of murderers, perverts, and thieves (see Clinton foundation and the $6 trillion "lost" by the Pentagon).

What we see currently in DC is an attack of the Dulles' CIA against whatever has left of a rule of law in this country. The RussiaGate is a dangerous play (not even a game) by the spoiled and incompetent "deciders" who found Trump unpalatable.

Back in the USSR , October 31, 2017 at 1:33 pm

Herman If the Clinton Campaign and the DNC can claim that they have no memory of how the Fusion GPS opposition research was funded, for millions of dollars, then why isn't it just as plausible that Trump had little or no contact or interaction with a low level staffer like Papadopoulos? Last week we heard that it does not matter who funded Fusion GPS because it is normal for campaigns to do opposition research even if it was from Russia. Yet, when Trump Jr. took a meeting to do the same, it was labeled Treason. I imagine these idiosyncrasies don't phase the average liberal MSM consumer, but they are a problem for Trump supporters and a good reason why they voted him into the White House.

Herman , October 31, 2017 at 5:52 pm

I agree with you, it's just that I think Trump is wrong in attacking members of his staff or cabinet. Let someone else do that. Discrediting people has worked but with Trump the immediate response is focus on him and it doesn't help by attacking your own.

No, I believe the whole Russiagate brouhaha is a sham, and if Russia did meddle in our politics, it is hypocritical of us who are far worse. I think the article I read recently by Stephen Cohen that we have meddled in over a hundred countries and continue to do so while appearing shocked that someone would do that to us, in the event that is what happened.

BobH , October 31, 2017 at 1:34 pm

Herman,
"It is amazing how often people get charged with lying by being made to believe that not doing so would get them in trouble. The thing they lie about is very often not his crime but the lying. ",,,very true, Bill Clinton's meaning of the word "is" comes to mind. As far as the source of "Russian hacking" is concerned it appears that it may come down to academic gossip.

Anna , October 31, 2017 at 1:55 pm

Embracing criminality to minute details: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=20340
"Despite calls for unity from DNC Chair Tom Perez, his DNC appointments heavily favored lobbyists and Clinton supporters. No Sanders supporter was appointed to the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee

In October 2016, Wikileaks released emails that revealed Donna Brazile tipped off the Clinton Campaign to debate questions and forwarded a plan she obtained from the Bernie Sanders campaign to the Clinton Campaign. CNN fired Brazile after the revelation, but the DNC has continued employing Brazile as a consultant." You see, DNC continues employing Brazile as a consultant in crime.

Anna , October 31, 2017 at 1:38 pm

To take your attention away from the small fish: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-31/pat-buchanan-exposes-other-plot-bring-down-trump
Enjoy:
"The narrative begins in October 2015.

Then it was that the Washington Free Beacon, a neocon website, engaged a firm of researchers called Fusion GPS to do deep dirt-diving into Trump's personal and professional life -- and take him out. A spinoff of Bill Kristol's The Weekly Standard, the Beacon is run by his son-in-law. And its Daddy Warbucks is the GOP oligarch and hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer.

From October 2015 to May 2016, Fusion GPS dug up dirt for the neocons and never-Trumpers. By May, however, Trump had routed all rivals and was the certain Republican nominee. So the Beacon bailed, and Fusion GPS found two new cash cows to finance its dirt-diving -- the DNC and the Clinton campaign. To keep the sordid business at arm's length, both engaged the party's law firm of Perkins Coie. Paid $12.4 million by the DNC and Clinton campaign, Perkins used part of this cash hoard to pay Fusion GPS.

Here is where it begins to get interesting.

In June 2016, Fusion GPS engaged a British spy, Christopher Steele, who had headed up the Russia desk at MI6, to ferret out any connections between Trump and Russia. Steele began contacting old acquaintances in the FSB, the Russian intelligence service. And the Russians began to feed him astonishing dirt on Trump that could, if substantiated, kill his candidacy. Among the allegations was that Trump had consorted with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel, that the Kremlin was blackmailing him, that there was provable collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In memos from June to October 2016, Steele passed this on to Fusion GPS, which passed it on to major U.S. newspapers. But as the press was unable to verify it, they declined to publish it. Steele's final product, a 35-page dossier, has been described as full of "unsubstantiated and salacious allegations." Steele's research, however, had also made its way to James Comey's FBI, which was apparently so taken with it that the bureau considered paying Steele to continue his work.

About this "astonishing" development, columnist Byron York of the Washington Examiner quotes Sen. Chuck Grassley:

"The idea that the FBI and associates of the Clinton campaign would pay Mr. Steele to investigate the Republican nominee for president in the run-up to the election raises questions about the FBI's independence from politics, as well as the Obama administration's use of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political ends."

The questions begin to pile up. What was the FBI's relationship with the British spy who was so wired into Russian intelligence?

Did the FBI use the information Steele dug up to expand its own investigation of Russia-Trump "collusion"? Did the FBI pass what Steele unearthed to the White House and the National Security Council?

Did the Obama administration use the information from the Steele dossier to justify unmasking the names of Trump officials that had been picked up on legitimate electronic intercepts?

In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed they did not know that Perkins Coie had enlisted Fusion GPS or the British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. Yet, when Podesta testified, the lawyer sitting beside him in the committee room was Marc Elias of Perkins Coie, who had engaged Fusion GPS and received the fruits of Steele's undercover work."

One more time: "Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed they did not know that Perkins Coie had enlisted Fusion GPS or the British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. Yet, when Podesta testified, the lawyer sitting beside him in the committee room was Marc Elias of Perkins Coie, who had engaged Fusion GPS and received the fruits of Steele's undercover work."

Is not this look much more compromising than an alleged involvement something the clueless Papadopolous?

Podesta brothers and H. Clinton are criminals; there are mounds of evidence -- not "alleged" and "perhaps" and "with high degree of confidence" -- but the hard evidence of their criminal activities.

Dave P. , October 31, 2017 at 3:06 pm

Anna – Excellent comments. Very accurate conclusions.

BobH , October 31, 2017 at 3:44 pm

Anna, all your points are well taken,,,nice job of connecting the dots!

Joe Tedesky , October 31, 2017 at 4:18 pm

Anna you write it better than most reporters do, and yes it is amazing to how these allegations in the Russia-Gate affair trumps the hard evidence found in the Hillary and Bill pay for play kick back collusion with the Russians. Although, if you keep the channel dial on CNN or MSNBC you may be put under the spell that Trump is a traitor, and guilty as charged of treason in the court of public opinion which holds court on the 45th president nightly if you care to watch. On the other hand if you watch FOX you will certainly start screaming 'lock her up'. I personally find Hillary and Bill guilty of bribery in regard to their Uranium One dealings, and I find her security breach inexcusable for what she did with her private computer servers. I also can't get over how Crowd Strike took preference over the FBI to examine Hillary's bleached hard drives in her illegally used computers. Then we have the Trump people looking like a celebrity autograph hound standing at the wrong stage door exit waiting to get their play program signed, only to miss their favorite celebrity, because of course they were waiting at the wrong door. In fact the more that comes out about how Trump's people tried to get something on Hillary from the Russians, the more foolish they look for even trying.

There are no good players in any of this. I don't even think this quarrel has anything to do with the average American. This is a fight going on inside of a declining American government. The Empire is collapsing all around these greedy fools who call themselves leaders, and when the dollar does become just another piece of worthless paper, it won't be the fault of anyone other than the current leaders who now run the USofA.

Skip Edwards , October 31, 2017 at 8:29 pm

Yes, the goods are in and you called it like it is; our government is, and has been, corrupt over many many Presidential Administrations and Congresses. The UNITED STATES is a failed experiment in democracy and we have but ourselves to blame. A citizenry who takes no interest or responsibility for Tha actions of its government deserves to die. The funeral is not far off if anyone is remaining to attend, and this time learn from history. In the meantime let's put all these people in jail; starting with the Clinton's.

Kalen , October 31, 2017 at 5:02 pm

Also and most importantly he should be after what was in those emails which describe criminal acts, collusion, coercion and overall corruption in DNC for which many heads already rolled after they were politically guillotined. Selective search for truth is a search for lies.

John Kirsch , October 31, 2017 at 1:12 pm

Excellent article.

Danny Weil , October 31, 2017 at 1:23 pm

This gets dirtier and dirtier everyday.

As an attorney, I can tell you that eyewitness testimony is the worst testimony you can have, for various reasons:

1. People often mistake what they see (Watch 12 Angry Men from 1959, this is a good example)

2. People lie for their own self interests

Without corroborating evidence, in the form of either circumstantial or direct, it is hard to believe what is being put out.

But it is important to note that all good critical thinking requires an openness to new evidence.

This being said, flipping the young aide is not enough.

irina , October 31, 2017 at 5:14 pm

Critical thinking is in short supply these days. I just dropped a class (supposedly) on Circumpolar Social Issues,
because the professor told me that 'the class was geared to young adults' and she did not expect them to engage
in critical thinking, what she was actually looking for was 'condensed regurgitation of the text'. (She used those
exact words, which I had used previously to call her out on her abysmally awful exam). Yikes ! I had no idea there
was an age requirement for critical thinking ! (I found my young kids to be quite good at it, and kept them out of
school so they wouldn't lose that capacity.)

When people end up in social media bubbles, they are engaging with a 'mirror-feedback effect', which disallows
the openness to new evidence required for critical thinking. What we used to call a Catch-22 of sorts . . .

Dave P. , October 31, 2017 at 8:12 pm

Danny Weil –

Yes. We watched 12 Angry Men starring Henry Fonda just two weeks ago. Both, one and two of your comments, very true and relevant in this case.

irina , October 31, 2017 at 9:38 pm

We performed that play in high school in about 1970 (the 12 Angry Women version, as there were lots more
females than males interested in being in it). With simple staging, we were able to take it to other area high
schools for performance. Would be a good play to resurrect ! (With a name change to 12 Angry Citizens).

Michael , October 31, 2017 at 1:29 pm

Robert, you have done so much excellent reporting. And you are of course right to be skeptical -- and you raise good questions. But man, doubt should be a screen not a hammer. You write like a defense attorney rather than pursuer of the truth.

Might the Russia/Trump case be overstated? Yes. But it is getting harder and harder to dismiss it.

with respect,

mike k , October 31, 2017 at 3:02 pm

It wasn't hard for any truthful person to refute the shabby russiagate lies. Why at you having a problem doing that Michael?

Jonathan Marshall , October 31, 2017 at 1:30 pm

The "crucial gap" in evidence relates to alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. However, the revelations about Papadopolous provide damning (if hearsay) evidence that Russia was behind the email hacking.

Back in the USSR , October 31, 2017 at 1:41 pm

/The "crucial gap" in evidence relates to alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. However, the revelations about Papadopolous provide damning (if hearsay) evidence that Russia was behind the email hacking./

Er, hmm, okay

The "crucial gap" in evidence relates to allegation that the DNC hack was an inside job by a disillusioned Bernie Sanders supporter. However, the revelations about Seth Rich provide damning (if hearsay) evidence that the DNC ordered his execution.

lol

Anna , October 31, 2017 at 2:05 pm

Murder of Seth Rich? Podesta brothers popping up at each step of the investigation as the lobbyists "colluding" with both Russia and Ukraine? Clinton Foundation and the lethal weaponry sales to Saudis? The CIA-arranged delivery of weapons to ISIS on Clinton's watch? http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-america-armed-terrorists-in-syria/ https://www.globalresearch.ca/logistics-101-where-does-isis-get-its-guns/5454726 The Uranium deal with Russia? – Including the $500.000 "speech fee" for the promiscuous Bill – remember Lolita Island, Dershowitz, and Epstein?

mike k , October 31, 2017 at 3:07 pm

Please take your "damning (hearsay) evidence somewhere else. There is NO evidence whatever of Russia hacking anything that has been presented – just slurs and innuendos. This site puts a premium on real EVIDENCE.

Dave P. , October 31, 2017 at 3:43 pm

Jonathan Marshall –

The U.S. has been openly invading and destroying countries, involved in overthrowing elected leaders – sometimes have them murdered – engaged in destabilizing the countries for regime changes, interfering in their elections, for seven decades now. Have they forgotten what they did in 1996 Russia election and to Russia during 1990's. And here we are discussing a thirty year old Papadopoulos meeting some obscure professor discussing Russia or whatever; and we are endlessly discussing Hillary- Podesta and DNC emails – who leaked it? How low this country has come down to? Can't we see it?

It is a shameful spectacle we are witnessing in this Country. One feels feels sick reading and hearing about about this whole trivial nonsense. Yet the whole Political Establishment and Media are drenched in this sewage for over a year now. No words can describe the complete moral collapse of the Country; collapse of integrity of institutions of law and justice – whatever was left of it. There is no honesty, truth or dignity left – in Journalists and others in Media, Politicians, and other high government functionaries.

Andrew M , October 31, 2017 at 5:15 pm

Dave P, I like and share this big picture view. I do value sites like this (and quality of comment like this) to show it up. The hollowness of the mainstream shell game is being seen by more and more people. The good news is that if we see that the shell game is a losing game we're outside of it. Those "outsiders" are free, if the can grasp hold of it.

irina , October 31, 2017 at 5:16 pm

Judy Woodruff is among the worst offenders. I can't stand to watch/listen to her anymore. Is it true that she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations ? I read that somewhere.

Skip Edwards , October 31, 2017 at 8:40 pm

We are beginning to see the disgust for the people running the US government by many citizens like yourself. Can "we" salvage enough to keep "our" country whole; or, does this have to be an end but with a new beginning. Maybe a court of law prosecuting the entire bunch, Democrats and Republicans, for crimes against humanity, aka war crimes, and crimes against its citizenry, aka embezzlement, can save "us." The other two branches have certainly failed"us."

Abe , October 31, 2017 at 1:49 pm

George Papadopoulos is directly connected to the pro-Israel Lobby, right wing Israeli political interests, and Israeli government efforts to control regional energy resources.

Papadopoulos' LinkedIn page lists his association with the right wing Hudson Institute. The Washington, D.C.-based think tank part of pro-Israel Lobby web of militaristic security policy institutes that promote Israel-centric U.S. foreign policy.

The Hudson Institute confirmed that Papadopoulos was an intern who left the neoconservative think tank in 2014. In 2014, Papadopoulos authored op-ed pieces in Israeli publications. In an op-ed published in Arutz Sheva, media organ of the right wing Religionist Zionist movement embraced by the Israeli "settler" movement, Papadopoulos argued that the U.S. should focus on its "stalwart allies" Israel, Greece, and Cyprus to "contain the newly emergent Russian fleet".

In another op-ed published in Ha'aretz, Papadopoulos contended that Israel should exploit its natural gas resources in partnership with Cyprus and Greece rather than Turkey.

In November 2015, Papadapalous participated in a conference in Tel Aviv, discussing the export of natural gas from Israel with a panel of current and past Israeli government officials including Ron Adam, a representative of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Eran Lerman, a former Israeli Deputy National Security Adviser.

Israel's coming planned military assault on Lebanon and Syria has a lot to do with natural gas resources, both offshore from Gaza and on land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights region.

Among its numerous violations of United Nations Resolution 242, Israel annexed the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981.

Geopolitical researcher F. William Engdahl has discussed the energy resources in the Golan Heights, Israel, and Trump
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO30Mar2017.php

Engdahl notes "we might find ourselves in another war for oil in of all places the Golan Heights, this one a war involving Syria, Russia, Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah on one side and Israel and Rex Tillerson's 68 nation 'anti-ISIS coalition' on the other side, another senseless war over control of oil."

Abe , October 31, 2017 at 2:06 pm

"US policymakers have stated multiple times that before war with Iran can be pursued directly, both Syria and Hezbollah must be weakened first. A war with Lebanon thus could be a means to either directly lead into direct conflict with Tehran, or as a means of preparing for one in the near or intermediate future.

"Immediate Peace and Stability vs. Constant and Perpetual War

"What is clear is that the 2015 Russian intervention in Syria along with Iran's growing influence in the region has rolled back attempts by the US and its partners to reassert control over the Middle East they have sought since the Cold War. With a new multipolar coalition of emerging regional and global powers, US dreams of hegemony will be increasingly more difficult to achieve [ ]

"Lebanon has been a battlefield in the past the US has used as a vector toward greater regional conflict. Its ability or inability to create conflict there again, directly or through Israel, and that conflict's ability or inability to drag Iran, Syria and other players in directly, will determine the outlook for America's wider agenda in the region."

Lebanon Next in US War on Middle East
By Ulson Gunnar
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2017/10/lebanon-next-in-us-war-on-middle-east.html

Abe , October 31, 2017 at 4:28 pm

The fake "citizen investigative journalists" team at Bellingcat are busy on the case with more of their signature "creative Googling".

This time it's a photograph of Papadopoulos in London
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2017/10/31/new-george-papadopoulos-photograph-actually-years-old/

The "online investigations" propaganda operation at Bellingcat site very much includes the comments section of the site. Don't expect Bellingcat to perform any actual journalism or substantive investigation. The function of the Atlantic Council's Bellingcat site is to serve as a propaganda channel for "fake news" and "alternative facts".

Knomore , October 31, 2017 at 2:20 pm

A sardine is hauled in and the big fish swim away. This story seems to suggest either massive chutzpah on the part of the Clinton campaign or stupidity fueled by desperation. That they would allow Mueller's investigation to go forward when they were sitting on a mountain of graft, collusion and other malfeasance (i.e., uranium sold to Russia for among other things half a million straight into Billl's pocket) all of it, really quite amazing.

We got two uniformly bad candidates in the 2016 elections, both of whom were/are ardent supporters of Israel. How did that happen? And Paul Manafort was indicted for supposedly establishing a relationship with a foreign government that was not covered by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Speaking of FARA, when is someone in the US government or the totally corrupted and bought-off US Congress going to demand that Israel and AIPAC be registered under FARA? And then: When will investigations begin into some of the truly treasonous acts and legislation shepherded by this foreign agent called AIPAC: -- like its interference with Free Speech protections in the US Bill of Rights, and this latest: Something about residents of some town in Texas forced to sign a loyalty pledge in support of Israel in order to receive funds to rebuild their stricken landscape ??? Is Israel putting up the money for disaster relief projects in America? If so, how did this come about?

BobH , October 31, 2017 at 3:58 pm

Knomore, "A sardine is hauled in and the big fish swim away" I think you are anticipating what's likely to happen if/when it does Wikileaks could well drop the other shoe, but Mueller needs to finish his investigation even if it's headed in a bogus direction.

"Speaking of FARA, when is someone in the US government or the totally corrupted and bought-off US Congress going to demand that Israel and AIPAC be registered under FARA?" excellent point and Saudi Arabia should register under FARA as well, for its sinister funding of American think tanks.

Danny Weil , October 31, 2017 at 2:23 pm

From the World Socialist Web Site:"

31 October 2017
Three months ago, the World Socialist Web Site published its first exposé documenting Google's blacklisting of the WSWS and other left-wing websites. It warned that Google's actions were part of a sweeping campaign, coordinated with the US government, media and intelligence agencies, to censor the Internet.

The period since this initial exposure has seen this campaign develop with extraordinary speed, as the Democratic Party, working with major media outlets, uses unsubstantiated allegations of Russian "hacking" of the 2016 election to mount a drive to criminalize political opposition within the United States. What is involved is nothing less than the greatest attack on the First Amendment since the Second World War

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/10/31/pers-o31.html

mike k , October 31, 2017 at 3:12 pm

Yes, Our freedom of speech is under serious attack by the oligarchic fascist oppressors within America. They fear truth more than anything.

Drew Hunkins , October 31, 2017 at 2:24 pm

It's mind blowing to see my liberal friends fall for all the Russophobic nonsense. Mueller's indeed on a witch hunt. Try telling that to your Maddow brainwashed liberal colleagues, sheesh.

Go after Trump for the right reasons! Not for phony baloney that puts the world on nuclear brinkmanship!

Dmitri , October 31, 2017 at 3:10 pm

Trump provided them a very good reason to impeach him when last April he ordered an attack on Syria in violation of both international law (an attack on a sovereign country that posed no threat to the US) and the US law (a use of military force without Congress authorization). But no, they all approved this illegal action!

mike k , October 31, 2017 at 3:13 pm

Exactly right Drew.

Stephen , October 31, 2017 at 3:48 pm

It appears that this whole thing is the Democrats version of the "birther" claims some Republicans hung onto for years. I suppose I could be wrong but if they had solid evidence you would see it thirty times a day like when they showed the twin towers falling thirty times a day.
The Puerto Rico disaster is good enough reason to go after Trump but I suppose the lily white Democratic elites don't care about Puerto Ricans anymore than does Trump.

Dave P. , October 31, 2017 at 3:55 pm

Drew Hunkins – Yes. Very true.

Andrew , October 31, 2017 at 2:43 pm

I think there is a clear evidence that Trump's camp reached out to Russia. Whether the Russians did anything to help Trump (e.g., DNC hack) is a different story. More than likely not.

mike k , October 31, 2017 at 3:15 pm

Since when was "reaching out to Russia" a crime? This is just Orwellian word demonizing BS.

Andrew , October 31, 2017 at 3:32 pm

Lying to federal investigator is. Contrary to a popular belief, stupid is a crime.

witters , October 31, 2017 at 9:29 pm

Andrew, how long did you get?

Drew Hunkins , October 31, 2017 at 4:37 pm

Exactly mike k. Right now we need doves in Washington (if there are any left) trying their damnedest to have a dialogue with Moscow. Just very recently the imbecilic Pence was at a nuclear launch site in Minot ND pontificating to media and personnel who were present about how they should be fully prepared to launch! This is preposterous and dangerous lunacy.

Washington has been virtually taken over by a militaristic-Zionist cabal and its currently dead set on destabilizing relationships among nuclear powers. The demonization towards the Kremlin at a time when the major media are fomenting a witch hunt atmosphere is breathtaking to behold.

That liberals -- in their hatred of the big bad Trumpenstein -- are going along with this terrifying group think is one of the more irrational and incredible dynamics I've ever witnessed in my decades of following the politico-economic scene.

Hate Trump for the right reasons. Don't fall for a Paul Singer, Bill Kristol, et. al., orchestrated propaganda campaign.

Fitzgerald said the mark of a true intellectual is to hold two opposing views in one's mind at the simultaneously and maintain the ability to function.

Drew Hunkins , October 31, 2017 at 4:49 pm

Whoops garbled my last paragraph:

hold two opposing views in one's mind simultaneously and maintain the ability to function.

The editor regrets the error.

Mark Thomason , October 31, 2017 at 2:48 pm

The statement of charge does not set out meetings of the sort that need to be proved.

It does suggest that the guy has been cooperating against others, "proactive" about it too as in wearing a wire.

It tells us to expect more, of a particular sort. That is the real importance, not what it spells out.

fudmier , October 31, 2017 at 3:00 pm

Russia gate: another Divide and Conquer (D&C) staged propaganda bit. Here we go again! Good report.
Look @ well researched https://isgp-studies.com/ explains how massively embedded criminal networks use the awesome powers and resources of salaried government to deprive the non salaried governed 99% (basically the video entranced barnyard hosted citizens) of their quality of life and peace of mind. Suggest to study the ISGP site carefully; refer to it often as it reveals a wealth of organized criminal activities and demonstrates just how difficult it promises to be to maintain a human rights oriented integrity in government. Unless the government is audited by the governed, and state secrets of any kind for any reason are eliminated progress will never happen.

____Abe's citation of Engdahl => "we might find ourselves in another war for oil in of all places the Golan Heights, this one a war involving Syria, Russia, Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah on one side and Israel and Rex Tillerson's 68 nation 'anti-ISIS coalition' on the other side, another senseless war over control of oil."" suggest Tillerson s\b taken seriously, as should the looming anticipation that the anti-Assad (Syrian belligerent invaders) still plan to use false flag poison gas ops to bring down Assad, and to destroy Syria, this time it seems to be in USA backed occupied Allepo, Syria ( see. https://friendsofsyria.wordpress.com/ ). Its all about oil and gas; take a look at the LNG oil and gas seaports' in America. then ask yourselves .. who, where, why and when and what happens to 100 trillion private dollar investment if the LNG business plan fails? ). Nothing will change until the video entranced barnyard humanity is allowed to see the facts outside of false narrative propaganda. Could the solution to better government and the elimination of war be as simple as being sure everyone in the world has easy, accurately translated, access to unbiased, reliable news and information? probably not, some means to get the barnyard critters to understand it would be needed.

michael lacey , October 31, 2017 at 3:02 pm

How long is this BS going to continue! Maybe we could produce a narrative on how the United States interfere in elections globally; we do not have to dig that deep!
As usual good article

mike k , October 31, 2017 at 3:17 pm

The BS will continue until we find enough ways to stop it. This site is one way. Truth is the antidote to lies.

Jay , October 31, 2017 at 3:21 pm

"George Papadopoulos, a 30-year-old campaign aide who claims to have heard about Russia possessing Hillary Clinton's emails before they became public on the Internet, mostly via WikiLeaks."

Respectfully: No one but Benghazi "gate" pushers care about Hillary Clinton's emails.

The leaked DNC emails and the very likely leaked Podesta emails on the other hand are of grave concern, since they show the DNC conspiring against the Sanders nomination.

In short: Who cares what Papadopoulos has to say about Hillary emails, they're not really the subject the "Russian hacking" claims.

Susan Sunflower , October 31, 2017 at 5:04 pm

Since "they" (Papadopoulos) never saw the e-mails (or any e-mails) it's impossible to know which tranche of e-mails was (allegedly) offered and there are several known collections/leaks/hacks, as well as possibly still unknown collections . making it even more murky.

As needs to be remembered, even if an "insider" downloaded and leaked e-mails, that does not preclude a hack and a hack does not preclude a leak (or multiple leaks or hacks).

Caitlin Johnson does some nice unpacking of the -- often faulty -- assumptions about meeting dates as they relate to published e-mails https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/why-george-papadopoulos-is-as-insignificant-as-paul-manafort-b964ff3d3d37

She also reminds us that the first big WikiLeaks "Clinton e-mails" dump was the result of FOIA request

the mind reels a bit (given the apparent insignificance of these dumps/leaks on public opinion) but:

But there's no reason to believe that the emails in question, if they existed at all, would have been the documents WikiLeaks ended up releasing in October of 2016. Firstly, they could have been not emails from Podesta, but from Hillary Clinton herself. Remember, there were numerous indications that Clinton's server was insecure and may have been hacked by multiple foreign governments, any of which could have gotten them to the Kremlin for use as blackmail following what was at the time believed to be Hillary's inevitable election. Maybe it was the infamous 30,000 emails she deleted, who knows, or any number of possible ways incriminating information can appear in email format. None of these fit into the official Russia/WikiLeaks narrative, however, so Litman made it about Podesta emails.

It would be interesting if the phantom e-mails allegedly offered by "Russians" in February/March were the same "dirt" allegedly offered in that August meeting

The stupidity of those still beating-a-dead-horse wrt Trump's "joke" about the Russians maybe locating / hacking to find the 35,000 Clinton e-mails is beyond all endurance and yet it persists.

Stephen J. , October 31, 2017 at 3:28 pm

I believe if there really was "law and order" in America, there would be massive arrests of those in power and their allies, (Past and present) for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Unfortunately what we are seeing is: The "Posturing of Evil"
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
September 24, 2017
The Posturing of Evil

The posturing of evil is a sight to behold
Purveyors of war crimes that need to be told
Clad in expensive suits, are these well dressed war criminals
Men and women without any morals or principles

So called "leaders" of the human race
They really are a bloody disgrace
Invaders of countries in illegal wars
They are yesterday and today's warmongering whores

Millions are dead because of their atrocious war crimes
Millions are refugees because of their dirty pastime
Creating wars is what these war perverts do
Paid for by compulsory taxes from me and you

Financiers and supporters of terrorists as well
These treasonous villains create more hell
They are hypocrites that talk of, 'the rule of law"
Their lying words should stick in your craw

Countries are destroyed and civil wars rage
This is how the corporate cannibals get paid
Supplying the weapons of death and disaster
Killing innocent victims very much faster

Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and other countries too
Are hell holes of destruction caused by this unholy crew
They parade on the world stage and give unctuous talks
When really most of these criminals should be in the dock

On trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity
Instead they are free and spreading their insanity
They have caused death and destruction and massive upheaval
How much more will people take of this posturing of evil?

[more info at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/09/the-posturing-of-evil.html

mike k , October 31, 2017 at 5:04 pm

Your poems pack a punch Stephen. They are a treat for truth lovers.

Drew Hunkins , October 31, 2017 at 5:21 pm

The careerism of the "respected" mass media commentators, journalists and talking heads could lead the world to nuclear war. Many of these whores know exactly what they're doing. Many of them know there was no attempt by the Kremlin to "hack" the election or otherwise interfere in the election but they feed the public repetitive nonsense over and over and over again.

That otherwise liberal minded, intelligent people are buying into this dangerous group think is one of the more incredible things I've ever witnessed.

People's critical thinking faculties have left them. Otherwise intelligent people are bereft of critical thinking skills when it comes to the big bad Trumpenstein and it's horrifying to see this all play out.

Attack Trump for the right reasons, NOT because he desire rapprochement with Moscow and dared to suggest the Washington empire should be reined in a bit.

Bill , October 31, 2017 at 5:29 pm

*Trump gets caught on tape discussing the hacking of the DNC with Putin himself, and laughing about how they were going to get Trump the presidency together.*

Robert Parry, probably: "While this would seem to bolster the Russiagate narrative, the media's blowing it out of proportion, and what if it's a fake tape? And what about Hillary!?"

You're truly a stand up guy dude, and I appreciate your journalism, but I think you're kinda biased on this one.

That's not to say you're not correct about MSM intolerance of debate and skepticism. That's absolutely true. Still, I think it's pretty clear what happened here, and that the DNC was indeed hacked. Might not ever get legally proven, but let's be real. That's exactly what this looks like.

Leslie F , October 31, 2017 at 5:42 pm

"Russia-gate special prosecutor Robert Mueller has turned up the heat on President Trump with the indictment of Trump's former campaign manager for unrelated financial crimes and the disclosure of a guilty plea from a low-level foreign policy adviser for lying to the FBI."

Well, there is a conspiracy against the United States charge against Manafort which could mean almost anything like conspiracy to evade taxes which would fit with the money laundering or it could be an attempt to tie him to the dubious Papadapoulos narrative. Papadapoulas has only with charged with lying to the FBI, not with anything that could be called "collusion". Maybe that was the plea agreement or maybe they know the case isn't really there.

ADL , October 31, 2017 at 6:02 pm

Ahh yes Parry's weekly comical defense of the 'man with a plan'. Kinda disappointed tho – I mean usually his columns are headlined with COUP COUP COUP.
Let's see now. Robert Mueller is a hack, won't let poor Parry into his inner circle, and amazingly does not leak or publicize exactly who and what he is investigating. And everything he has learned during such. And Parry takes his weekly shots. Pretty pathetic.

"credibility has already been undermined by his guilty plea' ??????? That is pretty comical yes?

Parry's defense of Papa is incredibly amateurish – he should start screenwriting TV Drama's. According to Parry Mueller should lay out every piece of evidence he has, should try his whole case in his indictment and in the public theater. And have all the evidence within 30 days of investigation or give up. Or better yet just include Parry on his Prosecutor team. But that would not work – from day one Parry has been Trump's #1 defender. Hell, it took Trump praising the KKK in Charlottesville to even get a whimper of outrage out of Parry.

This continual drivel plays out like a desperate person who is completely out of the loop, or better yet a man with a pathological grudge – almost always against NYT and WAPO.
I have no issues with calling out any person, and media. But Parry reads like Hannity or Trump himself. It's embarrassing and not worth the paper written on.

Anon , October 31, 2017 at 7:38 pm

Zionist alert – ADL is the only truth in the comment.

Realist , October 31, 2017 at 6:06 pm

This whole special investigation is like something out of Kafka. It starts with unsubstantiated politically-driven accusations by the opposition party, progresses to a witch hunt to desperately find any evidence against the prime target (Trump), and when that hole proves dry it slouches toward trying to trick and trap peripheral witnesses (Papadopoulos) into making contradictory statements for which they can be indicted for "lying" to federal agents. Or else political or business associates of the target (Manafort) can be pressured and indicted on unrelated offenses. That indictment can then be used as leverage to get the indicted person to turn evidence (whether any exists or not) against the primary target in return for reduced sentences or even pardons. If this useful tool lies further in trying to please his new masters, who cares? Mission accomplished. Before this is over, there will be more kangaroos at large in American courts than on the Australian continent. America is truly a beacon of freedom, democracy and, above all, JUSTICE for the entire world to admire. How utterly exceptional! A country where even its elected president can be railroaded like a common street criminal if it suits those ruling from the shadows. Behold the coup d'etat thrown together with nothing more than smoke and mirrors, vague accusations and strong-arm tactics against witnesses. Sure, Trump is a dumb arrogant jerk, but the characters after his hide are trying to steal the remnant shards we still possess of our constitutional "democracy," republic or whatever you might have called it.

Susan Sunflower , October 31, 2017 at 6:08 pm

This has now moved beyond questions of "the hack" and Russia-gate to the meta issues of who will be indicted next and for what they're moving quickly into "it's not the alleged crime (conspiracy**), it's the cover-up" territory which would suggest Flynn is next which would/could be a game changer.

As Clintoni was not impeached because he had sex with Lewinsky, but that he lied during a deposition . Trump could be brought down if multiple aides are willing to testify that he "participated" in the "alleged conspiracy"

** Mentioned recently was that the word/term "collusion" is not a legal one Collusion is not a crime, almost any communication "might" be collusions -- a conspiracy to commit a crime can be/is (though usually it is the crime that is prosecuted, rather than the conspiracy -- see also terrorism prosecutions based on, for example, a person's preparations to travel to X country to fight for jihad, or various "material support" convictions for piddling "support" , waterproof socks anyone?)

Remember also that it's been floated that the FBI's investigation is winding down in advance of being closed -- and that the congressional investigations will likely be hampered by indictments and the legal advice that will be brought to bear.

I'm rather doubtful that Manafort (savvy businessman) would have involved / intermingled his business dealings with reckless and sleazy Donald Trump even if he did buy a condo in Trump tower.

Manafort was brought in to handle the delegates at the convention, to prevent a revolt or other embarrassment from the Never Trump faction(s). He did that, with his long-standing top echelon GOP ties and god knows what else. I'm relatively doubtful he has any smoking gun to trade in a plea bargain and I suspect he has elite friends and backers who will ensure that he (and family) will be taken care of if he's convicted, and -- given the nature of elite prosecutions -- he may have a conviction reversed on appeal and/or be allowed -- once he has solidly refused to be "turned -- to pay massive fines in exchange for a guilty plea.

Susan Sunflower , October 31, 2017 at 6:32 pm

note also that as outlined so far, Team Trump never solicited dirt from the Russians -- rather it was either volunteered or dangled wrt the August meeting, possibly as bait in order to "win" a meeting and the offered "gift" of dirt was never either accepted or received

I'm unsure if there is any reality to the implication of some legal responsibility to report such an "offer" of dirt . and yes, the "hypocrisy" of Steele solicitiing and paying for Kremlin dirt may result in another "investigation" again of "collusion"

Anonymot , October 31, 2017 at 6:19 pm

The the U.S. mainstream media opposes Trump, which is very understandable, but it is hard to comprehend why they are so totally unbalanced and unquestioning. Of course, there is a minute number like Fox, but sources that rest on their laurels as center and center left (by US definition) have abandoned any objectivity. Realists are reduced to you and Intercept are all that are left. Even Truthout and RSN, Buzzfeed, and most others act as though Hillary will still be President – or maybe is. I read the Guardia daily, but it just mirrors the NYT. Also Le Monde that is more European centered, but one sees Clintonian America in much of its coverage.

I'm at a loss to understand the why & how the MSM turned to propaganda machines.

Realist , October 31, 2017 at 6:53 pm

I was watching the BBC world news on cable tonight. They are completely in the bag on this rubbish that Putin's Troll factory or somebody (the last of the Bolsheviks, perhaps) posting a piddling number of ads on facebook from allegedly Russian IP addresses (possibly CIA, if you ask me) poisoned the minds of well over a hundred million Americans–probably convincing every one of them to vote for Trump putatively against their self-interests and good judgement. Formerly respectable journalists, IT experts and academics are lending their images and reputations to this idiotic narrative. Apparently, the whole nation got schooled in Putin's treachery before the Congress this afternoon. So, sayeth the expert witnesses. This is Group Think like I've never seen before in my 70 years on this planet. Very distressing that 90+% of Americans can be so mind-controlled and deluded, even those with relevant expertise and an inside track to the facts.

D.H. Fabian , October 31, 2017 at 6:24 pm

Yes, and from the very start, the Clintonites began spinning this situation into the anti-Russian Tale. Most likely, it will be years before the excessive propaganda and counter-propaganda of 2017 is sorted out.

Susan Sunflower , October 31, 2017 at 7:03 pm

I have to wonder about a Nuland/Kagan Ukranian foundation as I began to wonder in the last few days if the existing (quite likely partisan) investigations of Manafort going back years, were used to piggyback the sliming of Trump last summer the rejoicing when Manafort resigned was rather disproportionate (given he'd only been in the job for 3 months), possibly vindictive (but wrt what?) particularly given the varied Biden and McCain and Podesta interests in that same small Ukrainian pond (Crimea, Crimea, Crimea!!!!!)

Doubt Clinton wrote all those Russian/Trump talking points by herself and the mythos of Putin as militarily aggressive/existential threat also arises and is referred back to the Ukraine (because Syria really isn't some credible base of power/sphere of influence, while the treat to nato countries is "golden" and "evergreen").

Seriously impressive how the wishes of the people of Crimea (and Eastern Ukraine) are discounted, erased ..

Susan Sunflower , October 31, 2017 at 7:19 pm

Fwiw, my thought at the time, was that Clinton was "priming the pump" (manufacturing consent) for an extremely assertive out-of-the gate foreign policy assault on Russia/Putin (now that pokey cowardly Obama was out of the way)

In any event, yes, Clinton's anti-Putin/Russia campaign and Trump/Russian money ties -- iirc -- began long before the alleged DNC hack piggybacking reweaving the "narrative"?

Susan Sunflower , October 31, 2017 at 8:01 pm

seriously .honest I have zero Russian "connection" but just discovered Lavrov, per RT, is suggesting that Mueller probe Manifort's Ukraine connections

https://www.rt.com/news/408371-lavrov-ukrainian-trace-us-investigation/

It's always been curious how many of Manifort's "Russian connections" weren't "Russian" Ukraine, Khazikstan, other ex-USSR satellites with oligarchs of their own

It should be noted the Manifort is a despicable human being who (very successfully and for a lot of money) does PR work for "bad people" while the USA officially, successfully, compellingly, does the same for financial and other favors (KSA, Duerte, even Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran)

Jessejean , October 31, 2017 at 8:24 pm

Susan–I totally agree with you. I thought the same thing last Nov. and was sure the effing First Woman President would have us in a shooting war with Russia before Christmas if she were elected. I'd love to see Robert The Great do a complete analysis of Russia gate, starting with Lybia, Syria, Ukraine (and Nuland), including the Sons Podesta just to see what the web looks like objectively. Put Killery and Saudi Arabia in the middle of that web and hey presto, we could fire Mueller with no loss of the truth.

Susan Sunflower , October 31, 2017 at 9:46 pm

Not so funny -- but -- I largely accepted that Hilary Clinton would be the next president that the failure of some upsurge of resistance to Obama suggested that "Democrats" were going to ratify Obama (as devastatingly disappointing as he was) and kick-it-up-a-notch being more interventionalist, more in-your-face aggressive.

Never occurred to me that Sanders was anything more than a sheepdog, keeping those adorably idealistic Obama army "kids" in their blue shirts, keeping them from defecting from the Blue Team.

The lack of polling is becoming conspicuous, imho. Slavoj Zizek has become a punchline (at least in the USA/UK universe) because (imho) he raises uncomfortable issues wrt to reconciling long-standing ideals with realities (political and physical) While "we" have our differences, I am appalled by the wide-spread de-platforming that (unlike Facebook and Twitter demographics) is un-graphed and ignored . that censorship by neglect, indifference, silent lack of regard .. erosion of even the intellectual pretence of curiosity and/or open mindedness.

Lois Gagnon , October 31, 2017 at 7:48 pm

Don't ask me why, but I suspect this insanity is going to drag on for another 3 years. If we live that long. I wouldn't mind if I thought it would keep the insiders from doing their worst damage to us and everyone else on the planet, but I'm sure they'll use the distraction to get away with as much criminal behavior as they can. Collapsing Empire is not a pretty sight.

Susan Sunflower , October 31, 2017 at 8:48 pm

be scared .. from Slate/Dahlia Litwick apparently Manifort and Gates have been denied Attorney Client Privilege (not entirely unprecedented, but shall we say in this case dubious, scary) -- this is a financial crimes case no exigent circumstances, not "criminal" as in "violent criminality" or imminent danger to anyone (I suspect they are "afraid" of being out-lawyered, out-maneuvered)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/10/why_a_judge_ruled_paul_manafort_isn_t_entitled_to_attorney_client_privilege.html

[Oct 31, 2017] DemocRAT Ezra Klain celebrates Mueller achievements

Notable quotes:
"... At the very least, it seems that they would have to prove that Russia committed some sort of crime, and Trump was somehow complicit in that. Based on what has been publicly revealed, I have doubts that they would be prove anything related to what has been alleged. The more likely outcome, if they're going to get Trump, is that some other unrelated crimes surface during the course of the investigation. Given the scope of his business enterprises, that wouldn't be all that surprising. ..."
Oct 31, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

lyman alpha blob , October 31, 2017 at 6:10 pm

Fun new game created by Ezra Klein –

Two things are true about the indictments unsealed by special counsel Bob Mueller Monday:

-They don't provide a "smoking gun" proving collusion between Donald Trump's operation and Russia.
-They make it almost impossible to believe that there wasn't collusion between Trump's operation and Russia.

The trick is you can replace the first bullet point with anything and it still works if you're a DemocRAT.

Let's try –

They don't provide a smoking gun proving that aliens built the pyramids out of gorgonzola cheese, but they make it almost impossible to believe there wasn't collusion between Trump's operation and Russia.

Fun for the whole family! And way to go Ezra Klein – it's like a new 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.

voteforno6 , October 31, 2017 at 6:31 pm

I've been wondering – what do they think that they can actually prove in court? What crime(s) do they believe Trump committed? At the very least, it seems that they would have to prove that Russia committed some sort of crime, and Trump was somehow complicit in that. Based on what has been publicly revealed, I have doubts that they would be prove anything related to what has been alleged. The more likely outcome, if they're going to get Trump, is that some other unrelated crimes surface during the course of the investigation. Given the scope of his business enterprises, that wouldn't be all that surprising.

[Oct 31, 2017] That Other Plot -- to Bring Down Trump by Patrick Buchanan

Thus we have Free Beacon neocons, never-Trump Republicans, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC, a British spy and comrades in Russian intelligence, and perhaps the FBI, all working with secret money and seedy individuals to destroy a candidate they could not defeat in a free election.
Notable quotes:
"... What was the FBI's relationship with the British spy who was so wired into Russian intelligence? ..."
"... Thus we have Free Beacon neocons, never-Trump Republicans, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC, a British spy and comrades in Russian intelligence, and perhaps the FBI, all working with secret money and seedy individuals to destroy a candidate they could not defeat in a free election. ..."
Oct 31, 2017 | www.realclearpolitics.com

Well over a year after the FBI began investigating "collusion" between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has brought in his first major indictment.

Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has been charged with a series of crimes dating back years, though none is tied directly to President Donald Trump or 2016.

With a leak to CNN that indictments were coming, Mueller's office stole the weekend headlines. This blanketed the explosive news on a separate front, as the dots began to be connected on a bipartisan plot to bring down Trump that began two years ago.

And like "Murder of the Orient Express," it seems almost everyone on the train had a hand in the plot.

The narrative begins in October 2015.

Then it was that the Washington Free Beacon, a neocon website, engaged a firm of researchers called Fusion GPS to do deep dirt-diving into Trump's personal and professional life -- and take him out.

A spinoff of Bill Kristol's The Weekly Standard, the Beacon is run by his son-in-law. And its Daddy Warbucks is the GOP oligarch and hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer.

From October 2015 to May 2016, Fusion GPS dug up dirt for the neocons and never-Trumpers. By May, however, Trump had routed all rivals and was the certain Republican nominee.

So the Beacon bailed, and Fusion GPS found two new cash cows to finance its dirt-diving -- the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

To keep the sordid business at arm's length, both engaged the party's law firm of Perkins Coie. Paid $12.4 million by the DNC and Clinton campaign, Perkins used part of this cash hoard to pay Fusion GPS.

Here is where it begins to get interesting.

In June 2016, Fusion GPS engaged a British spy, Christopher Steele, who had headed up the Russia desk at MI6, to ferret out any connections between Trump and Russia.

Steele began contacting old acquaintances in the FSB, the Russian intelligence service. And the Russians began to feed him astonishing dirt on Trump that could, if substantiated, kill his candidacy.

Among the allegations was that Trump had consorted with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel, that the Kremlin was blackmailing him, that there was provable collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In memos from June to October 2016, Steele passed this on to Fusion GPS, which passed it on to major U.S. newspapers. But as the press was unable to verify it, they declined to publish it.

Steele's final product, a 35-page dossier, has been described as full of "unsubstantiated and salacious allegations."

Steele's research, however, had also made its way to James Comey's FBI, which was apparently so taken with it that the bureau considered paying Steele to continue his work. About this "astonishing" development, columnist Byron York of the Washington Examiner quotes Sen. Chuck Grassley:

"The idea that the FBI and associates of the Clinton campaign would pay Mr. Steele to investigate the Republican nominee for president in the run-up to the election raises ... questions about the FBI's independence from politics, as well as the Obama administration's use of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political ends."

The questions begin to pile up. What was the FBI's relationship with the British spy who was so wired into Russian intelligence?

Did the FBI use the information Steele dug up to expand its own investigation of Russia-Trump "collusion"? Did the FBI pass what Steele unearthed to the White House and the National Security Council?

Did the Obama administration use the information from the Steele dossier to justify unmasking the names of Trump officials that had been picked up on legitimate electronic intercepts?

In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed they did not know that Perkins Coie had enlisted Fusion GPA or the British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. Yet, when Podesta testified, the lawyer sitting beside him in the committee room was Marc Elias of Perkins Coie, who had engaged Fusion GPS and received the fruits of Steele's undercover work. Here one is tempted to cite Bismarck that, if you wish to enjoy politics or sausages, you should not inquire too closely how they are made.

Thus we have Free Beacon neocons, never-Trump Republicans, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC, a British spy and comrades in Russian intelligence, and perhaps the FBI, all working with secret money and seedy individuals to destroy a candidate they could not defeat in a free election.

If future revelations demonstrate that this is what went down, it is not only the White House that has major problems.

If you wish to know why Americans detest politics and hate the "swamp" that has been made of their capital city, follow this story all the way to its inevitable end. It will be months of unfolding.

The real indictment here is of the American political system, and the true tragedy is the decline of the Old Republic.

[Oct 31, 2017] Tony Podesta stepping down from lobbying giant amid Mueller probe. The threat of serving hard time for failing to disclose foreign lobbying work is rattling Washingtons multi-billion dollar influence industry

Oct 31, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

New Cold War

A sampler of punditry:

"Thus we have Free Beacon neocons, never-Trump Republicans, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC, a British spy and comrades in Russian intelligence, and perhaps the FBI, all working with secret money and seedy individuals to destroy a candidate they could not defeat in a free election" [Patrick Buchanan, Real Clear Politics ].

"It sure looks like there was collusion between the Trump operation and Russia" [Ezra Klein, Vox ]. "Two things are true about the indictments unsealed by special counsel Bob Mueller Monday: They don't provide a "smoking gun" proving collusion between Donald Trump's operation and Russia. They make it almost impossible to believe that there wasn't collusion between Trump's operation and Russia."

"Hillary Clinton Shouldn't Go Away. She Should Embrace Her Role as Trump's Nemesis." [Jeet Heer, The New Republic ]. "With the Mueller investigation now besieging Trump, there's no better time for Clinton to deploy her special gift of enraging Trump. More than any other politician, she can speak to the legitimacy crisis in his government, and the success of her bestselling memoir What Happened proves that there is a vast audience eager to listen." Please kill me now.

"It is surely a scandal, and not just in the political sense, when the former chairman of a presidential campaign is indicted for work related to a corrupt foreign government. At the same time, it's important to remember that Paul Manafort's indictment is not evidence that President Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election" [Editorial Board, Bloomberg ].

* * *

"How Manafort lost $600,000 in a shell company the government now says was used for money laundering" [Francine McKenna, MarketWatch ]. The shell company was Lilred. "Lilred is an investment vehicle that was set up by Manafort to invest in a strategy that involved stripping the interest payments from a group of high-yield Ginnie Mae insured mortgages to create a collateralized mortgage obligation. Investors could buy those CMO securities, on margin, and use the high-yield interest payments to service the debt and capture a positive difference between the interest rates, or spread." They call it an investment vehicle because it's designed to drive off with your money

"Tony Podesta stepping down from lobbying giant amid Mueller probe" [ Politico ] Whoopsie. That was fast.

"Washington's Legions Of Lobbyists See Danger In Special Counsel's Indictment Of Manafort" [ Buzzfeed ]. "The threat of serving hard time for failing to disclose foreign lobbying work is rattling Washington's multi-billion dollar influence industry following Monday's 12-count indictment against Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates. And although the charges have largely been seen as a blow to the White House, Monday's actions by special prosecutor Robert Mueller also sent shivers down the spines of Washington's lobbyists, both Democrats and Repulicans."

The mysterious (and 30-year-old) Papadopoulos: "[C]ourt documents unsealed by the special counsel's office on Monday show that he was in communication with the highest-ranking officials on the campaign" [ RealClearPolitics ]. "Papadopoulos came to the Trump campaign in March of 2016 with little experience in the foreign policy realm compared to advisers on more traditional campaigns. Trump's unconventional campaign did not attract the high-level foreign policy experts typically drawn to presidential contenders . [T[he lack of a substantial foreign policy team created risks, some that might be coming back to bite him." And: "[I]t's the final footnote of the special counsel's now-unsealed document on Papadopoulos that has all sides interested, and likely concerned: 'Following his arrest, defendant PAPADOPOULOS met with the Government on numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions.'"

Realignment and Legitimacy

"Autopsy: The​ ​Democratic​ ​Party​ ​in​ ​Crisis" (PDF) [ Karen Bernal, Pia Gallegos, Sam McCann, Norman Solomon ]. Fun stuff, especially since the DCCC buried theirs . (This comes from a Nation article , but you might as well just read the real thing.)

[Oct 31, 2017] What Do Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Dick Cheney, Oprah Winfrey, Erin Brockovich, Stephen Hawking, Harrison Ford, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Jon Krakauer, Michelle Obama, Dan Rathers, Malcolm Gladwell, and Yours Truly Have in Common? Smeared by a Soros-Funded Think Tank for Appearing on RT

Acute case of projection
Notable quotes:
"... But the point of the McCarthyism more than anything has been to scare respectable people away from so much as appearing on RT. It's worked, because our spooks know that Americans with media ambitions are easily frightened by anything that can hurt their social capital. ..."
"... Apparently everybody seemed to know about Harvey's perversion proclivities for decades, why expose him and others of their preying ilk now? ..."
"... So that leaves Russia only entity in the world (that can) can justify the supercarriers at $10B a pop . that white elephant called the F35 revamping the nuclear arsenal (and the list goes on). Can't justify those things because of al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram or al-Shabaab ..."
"... There is a Russian joke that goes something like this: "We learned that everything Pravda told us about the Soviet Union was a lie. And that everything they told us about the West was true." ..."
"... The world is awash with petty tyrants and compromised magicians. The hordes of invented organizations, reliably do the opposite (contrary) of what their name says. Thus "European Values" really means "North Korean Police State Hellhole". ..."
"... The biggest thing that struck me though, was an assumption that was so pervasive throughout that it was never explicitly stated: Criticism of an entity makes that entity weaker. This strikes me as both profoundly unscientific and undemocratic. Any think tank advancing arguments on this basis is advertising itself as an instrument of propaganda over critical thinking and rigorous analysis. ..."
Oct 31, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

The New McCarthyite program of demonizing anyone and anything associated with Russia continues apace. A Soros-funded think tank called European Values has put out a screed (no exaggeration, read the hyperventilating tone of the "report") which has as its major aim chilling the participation of guest speakers on RT, per its title, The Kremlin's Platform for 'Useful Idiots' in the West .

This self-styled think tank posted a list of people who had appeared on RT on a series of its shows since 2013. Despite its claims of being comprehensive, the former producer of the RT show Boom Bust, Ed Harrison, quickly identified some names that were missing, and I am sure if he thought further, he could come up with more.

The list is so lengthy and includes so many highly respected people that I doubt including will hurt them in any way. But some were mighty annoyed anyhow:

I didn't read the list as carefully as I could (see this spreadsheet , and notice it has lots of categories), plus my selection was admittedly personal. These names caught my eye:

The irony here is that I appear to have been picked up for what were my last appearances on RT, mainly on Ed Harrison's Boom Bust show. As much as I like Ed and enjoyed that the interviews were six to ten minutes (leisurely by TV standards), I quit doing pretty much all TV (save Bill Moyers' show) because it was a lot of work for little payoff. First, they tend to ask you to appear the same day and spout off, which never works for me (I am too time stressed to drop everything and fit an appearance into my schedule). Second, you have to do some research perp. Third, for the level of TV I was invited to do, I would have to go to a remote studio. That means you do your own hair and makeup. Women have to use specialized makeup for high def camera (different foundations, more like paint primer, requires use of bronzers and blush, and hooker level eye liner). It takes 20 minutes to do it if you don't screw up the liner. Even in studios (where the makeup artists do it and they know the lighting, so they know were they can do less v. more), it's a bare minimum of ten minutes for them, more like 15-20. Fourth, you have to transit time to and from the studio and you need to get there at least 15 minutes before the "hit time".

So it's a minimum of a three hour time sink all in, which is longer than it takes to do a post. And while readers liked seeing me on TV, I didn't get new readers this way. The audiences for the shows to which I'd be invited were not all that large and overlapped heavily with my existing audience.

And as for the productiveness of this attack on RT, which no matter what you think of RT, is an attack on the First Amendment. On one level, it won't dent any of the reputations of the individuals named, since with so many prestigious names across such a wide range of positions, being on this list is in practice meaningless. But it will still have a chilling effect on RT's ability to attract guests, at least in the US. As Ed Harrison pointed out:

Even if we expose this move for the McCarthyism it is, the blacklist will still have its intended impact by putting a chill on RT's ability to get guests. EVERYONE will think twice before appearing on the network. The damage has been done.

And as Mark Ames confirmed:

But the point of the McCarthyism more than anything has been to scare respectable people away from so much as appearing on RT. It's worked, because our spooks know that Americans with media ambitions are easily frightened by anything that can hurt their social capital.

But the perverse bit is, that as John Helmer pointed out in previous reporting, and the the think tank study confirmed, RT's audience in puny. So why should anyone care if it has no real reach? From Helmer via e-mail, who has been blacklisted by RT for reporting on how it exaggerated the size of its audience:

Rag picking is a sorry task, but occasionally there are gems to be salvaged [the screenshots are from the think tank report]:

In short, this is evidence, again, of the self-sucking icecream. RT is an audience failure. In order to earn its budget from the Kremlin, it used to rely on trickery in Nielsen and other survey manipulation, fabricated data, bots, etc. For example, Nielsen told me in 2009, when I investigated, that because RT places its service on hotel room televisions, the audience count includes every guest who turns on the TV set in the hotel room. It apparently didn't occur this moron to speak to Nielsen.

When I ran this story in Asia Times – http://johnhelmer.net/black-hole-television-how-the-little-pigs-lie-to-the-big-bad-wolf/ – [RT editor-in-chief Margarita] Simonyan issued a lawfirm libel threat until AT agreed to give her a large interview space in which to damn everything I had done. Peter Lavelle, now the "anchor" for RT's John McLaughlin-mimic show, telephoned because he was terrified Simonyan would realize I had been talking to him by telephone and by email.

Nowadays, no trickery is needed. The USG, the US media, Pomerantz, Edward Lucas et al., all do the job of promotion for RT – so Putin is convinced, and [Press Secretary Dmitry] Peskov grows rich. Simonyan too.

So while this little hit piece on potential RT guests will probably be effective, at least in the US, in hurting RT's ability to produce credible content, it will increase its appearance of effectiveness and hence its funding. So this may not net out to be a negative and could still over time be a net plus for RT.

And that's before we get to the fact that some individuals who don't like intimidation campaigns, such as Russell Brand and Nicholas Nassim Taleb, having some sport with this, particularly since many of the people on this list have much bigger megaphones than the think tank shooting at them.

Put it another way: this sort of report is not the product of a confident ruling class. It's far too easy to blame a legitimacy crisis on outside agents when the fault lies in decades of neglecting the most fundamental responsibility of leadership: that of making a serious effort to assure the welfare of ordinary people. Even if one were to believe the barmy thesis that RT has damaged the US body politic, it's because the the rot is so widespread that takes only a minuscule dose of PR to further weaken the foundations.

Wukchumni , October 31, 2017 at 7:22 am

Then: Useful Idiots

Now: Useful Vidiots

I grew up in the era of Pravda/Tass, and you got used to the Soviet Premier winning with 99.43% of the vote, and it was certainly news to me that the Russians had invented baseball, as they claimed.

But that was the game then-the communists lied all the time, stupid fabrications not for the audience beyond it's borders, it was strictly for domestic consumption. Hitting people over the head with the same tales enough so it sunk in, so as to be truth.

Here in the west, we were by no means saintly, but by mostly being open about things, we were leagues more truthful, in yet another aspect of the Bizarro World existence capitalism & communism had with one another.

But that was then and this is now, and Fox seems to have taken the Pravda angle and gussied it up so as to appeal to the masses, and despite so many other media outlets available to the public (unlike in the USSR) their model worked to a charm, and now our Premier gets his news from them and often repeats it verbatim.

We're in obviously an odd time, and a which hunt atmosphere is taking hold, witness the all of the sudden issue with sexual harassment that's gone as far as including a President in his 90's in a wheelchair as the perps, along with the usual Hollywood types. Apparently everybody seemed to know about Harvey's perversion proclivities for decades, why expose him and others of their preying ilk now?

Arizona Slim , October 31, 2017 at 9:29 am

Why expose them now? Because it distracts the rubes from the root cause of the elites' legitimacy crisis.

Thank you, Yves, for identifying that root cause.

Wukchumni , October 31, 2017 at 10:14 am

In the Soviet Union, the 'tell' when something happened they wanted to squelch news of, was a steady diet of classical music on the radio airwaves.

urdsama , October 31, 2017 at 1:38 pm

I'm confused; how does the Weinstein matter have anything to do with Yves' post?

I'd like to think that reports of women being assaulted and raped by a powerful Hollywood figure, (and now male teenagers with the Spacey revelations) would be an important matter to report on and bring to light.

To imply that such actions are being taken "Because it distracts the rubes from the root cause of the elites' legitimacy crisis" seems flawed when the person being called out is considered one of those elites.

Should those women continue to suffer in silence because the timing is inconvenient?

flora , October 31, 2017 at 2:43 pm

Just my opinion, but I think the point is to get everyone panic running, by whatever interest point/shocking story might get them running. Once everyone is panic running, for whatever reason, they can all be "herded" into the preferred corral/poltical conclusion by careful MSM media manipulation – which has been used to get them running in the first place. imo.
Sexual harrasment/abuse is a serious issue, but it's not a new issue.

djrichard , October 31, 2017 at 10:35 am

Apparently everybody seemed to know about Harvey's perversion proclivities for decades, why expose him and others of their preying ilk now?

I'm assuming it's because one can't throw rocks in glass houses. Or flip that around. Rather they are throwing rocks in glass houses and to show their even handedness, they're taking aim at themselves as well. I guess it establishes their bonafides when it comes to throwing rocks.

More importantly, I think it re-enforces their bonafides for being the arbiter of what's "normal". See CJ Hopkins on this theme: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/20/tomorrow-belongs-to-the-corporatocracy/ .

This also manifests itself when language is invoked about various parties being irredeemable: see Clinton's comments on deplorables. Or various parties not being repentant: see media comments on John Kelly regarding his comments on Wilson.

urdsama , October 31, 2017 at 1:31 pm

"Apparently everybody seemed to know about Harvey's perversion proclivities for decades, why expose him and others of their preying ilk now?"

This would be the reason:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2017/10/jodi_kantor_on_how_she_broke_the_harvey_weinstein_story.html

That and social media.

While long overdue, I'm not sure why this being exposed now is an issue.

wellclosed , October 31, 2017 at 7:44 am

Geezis F.C. Guantanamo is going to have to be updated and expanded to the whole state of North Dakota to accommodate the quarantine of those thusly infected – while the crack PropOrNot Medical Unit develops its GetYourMindRight vaccine.

dearieme , October 31, 2017 at 7:56 am

I must say that I wouldn't care to be associated with a Cheney or a Kennedy. But I wouldn't mind being associated with Tulsi Gabbard (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

But seriously, this hysterical anti-Russian stuff reminds me that many Americans must be completely indifferent to the rest of the world thinking them crooks and fools.

The Rev Kev , October 31, 2017 at 8:04 am

Boris Johnson must be part of this mob as he too has attacked people that appeared on RT. He attacked Labour MPs for appearing on this program recently ( https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4709175/boris-johnson-slams-rt-then-finds-out-his-dad-went-on-air/ ) only to discover too late that not only were several Tory MPs also on this program but also recently his dad as well – do'h!
For those unaware of who Boris Johnson is and what he looks like, imagine Donald Trump but with unkempt hair instead of styled hair.

Nervous, north of 49th. , October 31, 2017 at 8:26 am

The corporate funded Democrats and Republicans are playing a two-man con game against the American people. One runs up the deficits with tax cuts to the rich, the other cuts social spending to balance the books, and both are in favour of endless war.

When people start to take notice – "Look! Over there! A Russian conspiracy!!"

divadab , October 31, 2017 at 9:01 am

My approach is simple – look at who is ginning up this anti-Russia hysteria, and know that they are the enemy. Corrupt scum who lie as a matter of habit.

flora , October 31, 2017 at 9:28 am

Soros has a list, right there in his pocket .

But what I heard is that Soros is trying to distract everyone while he prepares to short the Euro.* /s

On a more serious note I think Harrison and Ames are right.

-- -- -- –
*This is a snark based on history.
https://priceonomics.com/the-trade-of-the-century-when-george-soros-broke/

Arizona Slim , October 31, 2017 at 9:31 am

At long last, Mr. Soros, have you no sense of decency?

annenigma , October 31, 2017 at 10:05 am

I use a cheap digital antenna to get free, over-the-air television broadcasts which includes RT along with about 40 other channels. No one is counting us as viewers. But shhh, don't tell the Gov't many of us are enjoying these RT programs, I mean Russian propaganda, or they'll shut it down.

RT may have a small audience, but however small, that audience is still bigger for people like Ralph Nader, Chris Hedges, et. al. than what corporate media provides them. Many have been blacked out and blackballed.

The above list includes people who, for the most part, have not been blacked out and have other avenues besides RT to reach the masses on tv. Sadly, for many of our most outspoken patriots who dare speak truth to power, RT is the last refuge for those scoundrels.

Arizona Slim , October 31, 2017 at 11:57 am

I watch Lee Camp's Redacted Tonight show on YouTube. It's an RT show.

I also enjoy Al Jazeera.

ex-PFC Chuck , October 31, 2017 at 2:46 pm

If you have a Kodi video streaming system you can get an RT app for it. The software is downloadable for free and can run on an older computer if the latter is capable of handling it. Or you can get a Raspberry Pi 3 for less than a Franklin and run it on that with the also free LibreELEC operating system, which is a stripped down Linux for Kodi.

diptherio , October 31, 2017 at 10:39 am

I always knew there was something off about Jeremy Irons

HotFlash , October 31, 2017 at 11:30 am

He killed Simba's father!

sinbad66 , October 31, 2017 at 10:48 am

This whole Russia goes to the fact that only 4 countries on this Earth can give 'murica the middle finger and get away with it: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Now, of these, only China and Russia are a real threat. However, you can scratch China off the list because they are our "frenemy with benefits". They are the spouse that, if you divorce them, you will pay dearly (make a lot of our stuff, holds a lot of our debt). So, as Johnnie Taylor had sung "its cheaper to keep her".

So that leaves Russia. They are they only entity in the world where you can justify the Gerald Ford supercarriers at $10B a pop. Justify that white elephant called the F35 (with $180 billion in cost overruns and counting). Spend billions revamping the nuclear arsenal (and the list goes on). Can't justify those things because of al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram or al-Shabaab. But you can with Russia

Yes, Virginia, this is why you can't have nice things because of those darn Rooskies!

polecat , October 31, 2017 at 11:38 am

Anyone notice how the billionairgasbags (on BOTH sides of the libricon aisle) are suddenly dialing the Trump blame-cannons to 11+

"He's CRAZYYY !!" "Has LAUNCH-CODES !!" "Must IMPEACH, NOWWW !!!" "Oh, and would you please you sign this petition ??"

I should've grown popcorn this season ..

Mark P. , October 31, 2017 at 2:38 pm

So that leaves Russia only entity in the world (that can) can justify the supercarriers at $10B a pop . that white elephant called the F35 revamping the nuclear arsenal (and the list goes on). Can't justify those things because of al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram or al-Shabaab

Exactly so.

Presidential candidates who were recipients of defense industry money, and how much they received --

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?ind=D&recipdetail=P&sortorder=U&mem=N&cycle=2016

Oregoncharles , October 31, 2017 at 3:11 pm

you forgot Bolivia. I used to think Venezuela was another, but that was before Chavez died and the price of oil plummeted.

FiddlerHill , October 31, 2017 at 11:23 am

I teach journalism as an adjunct professor, and one of my former students is now an on-camera newscaster at RT. When she was first offered the job, she phoned me with some vague concern about RT being funded by the Russian government. I told her not to hesitate, to take the job. I said simply judge the organization by its content -- and the content then as now is entirely in-line with the power-confronting material seen on this website, The Intercept, the Jimmy Dore Show and dozens of other progressive news sources in the US.

Now Neo–McCarthyism has set in. She emailed me a few weeks ago -- horrified that the State Department was now insisting that she and all RT reporters register as foreign lobbyists. I couldn't get over the hypocrisy and irony of it: the US government -- beneficiary of a massive sycophantic domestic corporate media empire -- going after one small voice in the wilderness, hammer and tong, because of its source of funding, not because of the nature of its reporting. I know from regular contact with my former student that RT's "agenda" isn't dictated from the Kremlin. There's no need whatever for that. A vast corrupt and self-serving American political class provides any semi-conscious journalist with more than enough stories to pursue every day of the week.

Arizona Slim , October 31, 2017 at 11:59 am

She should register as a foreign agent, but do all sorts of stupid things on the registration form.

Y'know, like leaving things blank, entering contradictory information, and misspelling words. Call it being a cheerful saboteur.

sd , October 31, 2017 at 12:38 pm

Does the same apply to any of the other state funded foreign media in the United States? For instance, BBC. Anyone know?

Elizabeth Burton , October 31, 2017 at 2:50 pm

So far as I know, the BBC hasn't been officially designated a foreign propaganda mouthpiece, which (albeit in more "legal" phrasing) RT America has. The truly scary part is the same piece of "legalness" is so vaguely worded with regard to what defines a foreign propaganda mouthpiece any alternative medium could acquire the same label.

It's like the FBI now labeling any African American who dares protest a "Black identity extremist."

Mel , October 31, 2017 at 1:43 pm

the State Department was now insisting that she and all RT reporters register as foreign lobbyists

To be way too blunt, this kind of pushing local interests in restraint of foreign trade is just the reason ISDS courts are required. When local sovereignty is being applied unfairly, even local courts can't be trusted.
It's also why Canadians can be so antsy about foreign content in media.

Chauncey Gardiner , October 31, 2017 at 1:43 pm

Do you know whether the State Department will require past guests on RT from the list above to register as foreign lobbyists, as well? That possibility brings a smile to my face.

Alex Morfesis , October 31, 2017 at 12:12 pm

The browder plague grandson tells us the Russians are bad, grandpa helped crazy joe McCarthy make the argument that talking to Russia was bad, by his wondrous service as mister communist party usa

Gottlacht

Carolinian , October 31, 2017 at 12:28 pm

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/28/guardians-of-the-magnitsky-myth/

As for RT and censorship, Gilbert Doctorow has been talking about how Russia's neocon and other opponents are frequent guests on Russian television because their outlandish claims are considered good entertainment. Maybe Russians, those snowbound chess masters, are just smarter than Americans. Next to Trump Putin seems like some sort of Einstein.

Kim Kaufman , October 31, 2017 at 12:59 pm

Thanks, Yves, for this important post. Last night a friend emailed me this discussion on RNN between Aaron Mate and Max Blumenthal about it
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=20309
but I didn't take it very seriously. Seeing the George Soros connection in your post, now I do take this very seriously.

Joel , October 31, 2017 at 1:01 pm

Is the RT hostility payback for Russian resistance to American media such as VoA?

Mel , October 31, 2017 at 1:47 pm

Maybe. Twenty-six years late.

Erelis , October 31, 2017 at 1:44 pm

There is a Russian joke that goes something like this: "We learned that everything Pravda told us about the Soviet Union was a lie. And that everything they told us about the West was true."

What the Soviets said about the Civil Rights movement.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/07/09/civil_rights_coverage_how_the_soviets_used_evidence_of_racial_strife_against.html

Dikaios Logos , October 31, 2017 at 2:23 pm

re: RT audience size

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I had a run-in with Ed Harrison a few years ago that shows how small RT's audience likely is. During a time I was spending too much time on finance twitter, I noticed a very familiar face from a twitter avatar walking down a very quiet residential street early one morning. As I got closer I felt the need to confirm this, since I was worried I was seeing things (happens when you're a neurotic insomniac!). Turns it out it was Ed and he was, it seemed to me, very unaccustomed to being recognized on the street and almost certainly took my curiosity to be hostile. People who are recognized on the street have ways of dealing with it, Ed really seemed to not have figured those out, suggesting to me that being on RT didn't interfere with his being anonymous! So much for 'Russian propaganda'!

clarky90 , October 31, 2017 at 3:15 pm

"A Soros-funded think tank called European Values. This is what we are up against; Ass-backwards, widderschynnes, black magic. Harvey Weinstein at the January 2017 Women's March in Park City, Utah.

"At least he went with a gray beanie instead of the de rigeur head wear."

The world is awash with petty tyrants and compromised magicians. The hordes of invented organizations, reliably do the opposite (contrary) of what their name says. Thus "European Values" really means "North Korean Police State Hellhole".

I learned this simple rule of thumb from the NC Commentariat. The "truth" is often merely the diametric opposite; hiding in plain sight. Turn upside down and inside out, and the pig-Latin code is easily deciphered! Voilŕ!

ChrisPacific , October 31, 2017 at 5:21 pm

I had a skim through the article. Overall it strikes me as a particularly acute case of projection. There also seems to be a significant lack of good faith (as you'd expect).

The biggest thing that struck me though, was an assumption that was so pervasive throughout that it was never explicitly stated: Criticism of an entity makes that entity weaker. This strikes me as both profoundly unscientific and undemocratic. Any think tank advancing arguments on this basis is advertising itself as an instrument of propaganda over critical thinking and rigorous analysis.

[Oct 31, 2017] Obama Quietly Signs The Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act Into Law

Oct 31, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Late on Friday, with the US population embracing the upcoming holidays and oblivious of most news emerging from the administration, Obama quietly signed into law the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which authorizes $611 billion for the military in 2017.

In a statement, Obama said that :

Today, I have signed into law S. 2943, the "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017." This Act authorizes fiscal year 2017 appropriations principally for the Department of Defense and for Department of Energy national security programs, provides vital benefits for military personnel and their families, and includes authorities to facilitate ongoing operations around the globe. It continues many critical authorizations necessary to ensure that we are able to sustain our momentum in countering the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and to reassure our European allies, as well as many new authorizations that, among other things, provide the Departments of Defense and Energy more flexibility in countering cyber-attacks and our adversaries' use of unmanned aerial vehicles."

Much of the balance of Obama's statement blamed the GOP for Guantanamo's continued operation and warned that "unless the Congress changes course, it will be judged harshly by history," Obama said. Obama also said Congress failed to use the bill to reduce wasteful overhead (like perhaps massive F-35 cost overruns?) or modernize military health care, which he said would exacerbate budget pressures facing the military in the years ahead.

But while the passage of the NDAA - and the funding of the US military - was hardly a surprise, the biggest news is what was buried deep inside the provisions of the Defense Authortization Act.

Recall that as we reported in early June , "a bill to implement the U.S.' very own de facto Ministry of Truth had been quietly introduced in Congress . As with any legislation attempting to dodge the public spotlight the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 marks a further curtailment of press freedom and another avenue to stultify avenues of accurate information. Introduced by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Ted Lieu, H.R. 5181 seeks a "whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions" to counter "foreign disinformation and manipulation," which they believe threaten the world's "security and stability."

Also called the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 (S. 2692), when introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman, the legislation represents a dramatic return to Cold War-era government propaganda battles. "These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key audiences and populations," Portman explained, adding that while the U.S. spends a relatively small amount on its Voice of America, the Kremlin provides enormous funding for its news organization, RT.

"Surprisingly," Portman continued, "there is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department charged with the national level development, integration and synchronization of whole-of-government strategies to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation."

Long before the "fake news" meme became a daily topic of extensive conversation on such discredited mainstream portals as CNN and WaPo, H.R. 5181 would task the Secretary of State with coordinating the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to "establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response," which will pinpoint sources of disinformation, analyze data, and -- in true dystopic manner -- 'develop and disseminate' " fact-based narratives " to counter effrontery propaganda.

In short, long before "fake news" became a major media topic, the US government was already planning its legally-backed crackdown on anything it would eventually label "fake news."

* * *

Fast forward to December 8, when the " Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act " passed in the Senate, quietly inserted inside the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report.

And now, following Friday's Obama signing of the NDAA on Friday evening, the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is now law.

* * *

Here is the full statement issued by the generously funded Senator Rob Portman (R- Ohio) on the singing into law of a bill that further chips away at press liberties in the US, and which sets the stage for future which hunts and website shutdowns, purely as a result of an accusation that any one media outlet or site is considered as a source of "disinformation and propaganda" and is shut down by the government.

President Signs Portman-Murphy Counter-Propaganda Bill into Law

Portman-Murphy Bill Promotes Coordinated Strategy to Defend America, Allies Against Propaganda and Disinformation from Russia, China & Others

U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) today announced that their Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act – legislation designed to help American allies counter foreign government propaganda from Russia, China, and other nations has been signed into law as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. The bipartisan bill, which was introduced by Senators Portman and Murphy in March, will improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation from our enemies by establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government. To support these efforts, the bill also creates a grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and other experts outside government who are engaged in counter-propaganda related work. This will better leverage existing expertise and empower our allies overseas to defend themselves from foreign manipulation. It will also help foster a free and vibrant press and civil society overseas, which is critical to ensuring our allies have access to truthful information and inoculating people against foreign propaganda campaigns.

"Our enemies are using foreign propaganda and disinformation against us and our allies, and so far the U.S. government has been asleep at the wheel," Portman said. "But today, the United States has taken a critical step towards confronting the extensive, and destabilizing, foreign propaganda and disinformation operations being waged against us by our enemies overseas. With this bill now law, we are finally signaling that enough is enough; the United States will no longer sit on the sidelines. We are going to confront this threat head-on. I am confident that, with the help of this bipartisan bill, the disinformation and propaganda used against us, our allies, and our interests will fail."

" The use of propaganda to undermine democracy has hit a new low. But now we are finally in a position to confront this threat head on and get out the truth. By building up independent, objective journalism in places like eastern Europe, we can start to fight back by exposing these fake narratives and empowering local communities to protect themselves," said Murphy. "I'm proud that our bill was signed into law, and I look forward to working with Senator Portman to make sure these tools and new resources are effectively used to get out the truth."

NOTE: The bipartisan Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is organized around two main priorities to help achieve the goal of combatting the constantly evolving threat of foreign disinformation from our enemies:

[Oct 30, 2017] Honeypot Was The Trump Camp's Meeting With Russian Lawyer All A Clinton Set-Up

Oct 30, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Oct 30, 2017 9:40 PM 0 SHARES Authored by Tyler O'Neil via PJMedia.ocom,

This week's bombshell - that the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign financed former British spy Christopher Steele's salacious dossier allegedly connecting Donald Trump and Russia - may suggest something even more devious. The dossier was compiled by the notorious firm Fusion GPS, which also worked for Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, the very woman who met with Donald Trump Jr. in a meeting deemed pivotal to the case for Trump-Russia "collusion."

The Fusion GPS connection raises a supremely interesting question: Did the Clinton campaign actually orchestrate the meeting between Trump campaign officials and Veselnitskaya? Is the entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative the result of a Clinton set-up?

After PJ Media's Liz Sheld suggested the idea to this reporter, it seemed increasingly plausible. Not only does the timeline work out, but Clinton attacked Trump as Putin's puppet and Clinton's connections to Russia had been powerfully reported in 2015. What better way to distract from Clinton's ties to Russia than proving "collusion" on Trump's part?

When Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort on June 9, 2016, she pressed them on the adoption issue, part of the Russian efforts to undermine the Magnitsky Act . The act - signed by President Barack Obama in December 2012 - imposed sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who unearthed massive fraud within the Russian government and was imprisoned, tortured, and killed for it in 2009. Hermitage Capital Management CEO Bill Browder testified that the sanctions "personally" affect Russian President Vladimir Putin's wealth.

Putin retaliated by banning the adoption of Russian orphans by American families. Previously, Russia had allowed Americans to adopt sick Russian children, and they adopted kids suffering with HIV, Down Syndrome, and other ailments. Due to this retaliation for the Magnitsky Act, Browder testified, these sick children now languish in Russian orphanages and many will die before their 18th birthdays.

As it turns out, Veselnitskaya hired Fusion GPS to lobby the U.S. government on this very issue, one extremely pivotal to Putin's monetary interests.

In July, Browder testified that "Veselnitskaya, through Baker Hostetler, hired Glenn Simpson of the firm Fusion GPS to conduct a smear campaign against me and Sergei Magnitsky in advance of congressional hearings on the Global Magnitsky Act." This alleged smear campaign took place in 2014, two years before the presidential election. Through this business, Veselnitskaya made friends with Fusion GPS.

In April 2016, two months before Veselnitskaya's meeting with Trump campaign officials, the law firm Perkins Coie, as part of its representation of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, hired Fusion GPS for research into Trump, The Washington Post revealed this past week. In a letter to Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie general counsel Matthew Gehringer noted that his law firm revealed its role in hiring Fusion GPS in order to help keep Fusion GPS's list of clients confidential. What is the opposition research firm trying to hide?

In March 2016, Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie to see if it its clients would be interested in paying the firm "to continue research regarding then-presidential candidate Donald Trump." Through Perkins Coie, the DNC and the Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to perform research that led to the infamous dossier written by former British spy Christopher Steele.

On Friday, it was revealed that the Washington Free Beacon was the original source paying Fusion GPS to investigate Trump. The conservative news outlet insisted that none of the research it paid for was included in the infamous Steele dossier, however. The Post reported that Fusion GPS hired Steele after the Democratic funding began, supporting the Free Beacon's version of events.

To recap: Veselnitskaya hired Fusion GPS to undermine Magnitsky's reputation in 2014. The Clinton campaign and the DNC hired Fusion GPS to compile the Trump dossier in April 2016. Two months later, Donald Trump Jr. received an email inviting him to meet with Veselnitskaya ostensibly to gather opposition research on Clinton -- but at the meeting Veselnitskaya tried to push the Trump campaign to oppose the Magnitsky Act.

Then, as the DNC and the Clinton campaign pinned the DNC hack to Russia and Trump cited emails leaked by WikiLeaks, Hillary Clinton began attacking Trump as "Putin's puppet." At the third presidential debate, Clinton argued that Putin supported Trump because he "would rather have a puppet as president of the United States."

Clinton never brought up the Trump campaign's meeting with Veselniskaya during the election, but she certainly suggested Trump was in bed with the Russians.

It is plausible that the Clinton campaign and the DNC, working through Fusion GPS, suggested to Veselnitskaya that she should meet with the Trump campaign. This would have given the Democrats a clear link between Trump and the Russians, and it would have given Veselnitskaya an opportunity to further her work on Putin's behalf, with one of the two leading presidential campaigns. Furthermore, Fusion GPS's role as an intermediary would have given both plausible deniability.

According to a recent FEC complaint , the Clinton campaign and the DNC obfuscated their hiring of Fusion GPS by listing payments to the law firm Perkins Coie as being for "legal services." This violated the law, as the money really went to opposition research. The decision to work through Perkins Coie -- and to mislead the FEC about the nature of services -- suggests the Clinton campaign and the DNC were hiding something.

Clinton also would have had an incentive to try and manufacture connections between Trump and Russia. Throughout 2015 and into early 2016, Trump was the Republican frontrunner, and he had praised Putin many times , suggesting he would "get along well" with the Russian president. The Russia angle made sense for Clinton to develop, and it would have been a perfect way to distract from her own troubling Russia connections.

If Clinton wanted to convince Americans that Trump is Putin's real puppet, her campaign would need more evidence than a few positive comments. After all, Trump was not the candidate who helped approve a 2010 deal giving Russian company Rosatom 20 percent of U.S. uranium -- right at the time when that very Russian company was under FBI investigation . The FBI kept the investigation secret, just when it would have been most important.

In 2015, Peter Schweitzer had published the blistering story in The New York Times uncovering Clinton's connections to and benefits from the 2010 Uranium One purchase. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had been paid $500,000 for a speech -- at a Russian bank promoting Uranium One stock.

According to an anonymous witness threatened by the Obama administration, the FBI investigation into Rosatom also uncovered documents and an eyewitness account rather inconvenient for the Clintons. This evidence corroborated earlier reports that Russian officials had routed millions of dollars into the U.S. to benefit the Clinton Foundation just as Hillary Clinton served on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which endorsed the Uranium One deal. This past Wednesday night, the Department of Justice finally authorized the informant to disclose his information and documents.

At the same time as the FBI kept its Rosatom investigation secret, the agency acted fast to bust a Russian spy ring because it got too close to Hillary Clinton

All that makes sense, but why try to manufacture connections between Russia and the Trump campaign -- when Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort had worked for Ukraine's Party of Regions , a group backed by Putin?

This past week, Special Counsel Robert Mueller announced that his investigation into Manafort had extended to cover Tony Podesta -- a Clinton campaign bundler who co-founded the Podesta Group with his brother, Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta. Both Manafort and Podesta may have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), an allegation PJ Media reported last April . Emphasizing Manafort might have revealed Podesta and his connections to Clinton.

If Clinton secretly orchestrated the meeting between Veselnitskaya and the Trump campaign, why did that news not come up in the campaign?

First, the meeting only lasted about 20 minutes, according to Donald Trump Jr. If the Clinton campaign orchestrated the meeting -- hoping for either proof of Trump-Russia collusion or to start a long-term relationship between Veselnitskaya and the Trump campaign to use as a weapon later -- they would have been disappointed to hear the meeting went nowhere.

Expecting to triumph on November 8, Hillary Clinton might have decided not to release the news of this event, deeming it unnecessary for her victory.

Even so, there is no evidence that the Clinton campaign did actually orchestrate the Veselnitskaya meeting. Questions like this make it very important for the list of Fusion GPS clients to become public. If Fusion GPS was still working for Veselnitskaya, or was in contact with her in the lead-up to the meeting with Trump Jr., that might suggest the entire Trump-Russia "collusion" narrative was created by Democrats or the Clinton campaign.

It is already ironic enough that Robert Mueller, the man leading the investigation into Trump-Russia connections, is the same man who led the FBI when it covered up the investigation into Rosatom right when it was convenient for Hillary Clinton. Unless some very damning evidence finally comes out against Trump, this investigation seems likely to get worse and worse for Clinton and the Democrats.

Bes -> TeethVillage88s , Oct 30, 2017 9:56 PM

the global power structure (USA too) is an orgy of:

honeypots

patsies

smoke

mirrors

crosses

double crosses

double agents

deep throats

and kabuki

-------

proceed with caution

enjoy

J S Bach -> TeethVillage88s , Oct 30, 2017 10:07 PM

Hollywood, with all of its depravity can't write a script with characters more sinister and immoral than the Clintons and their minions.

May this horror movie end soon.

overbet -> J S Bach , Oct 30, 2017 10:09 PM

this sure smells

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b53883210c395d5d8fd751b216845d208ac...

Manthong -> overbet , Oct 30, 2017 10:15 PM

"Honeypot: Was The Trump Camp's Meeting With Russian Lawyer All A Clinton Set-Up?"

Omigosh .

How could anyone think such deviousness would emanate from the Saint Hillary Congregation and the Democrats?

Bernie will attest to their purity.

Paul Kersey -> TeethVillage88s , Oct 30, 2017 10:00 PM

"Was The Trump Camp's Meeting With Russian Lawyer All A Clinton Set-Up?"

If that empty plus-size pants suit wasn't smart enough to pass the bar exam, she wasn't nearly smart enough to pull something like that off. Podesta is so fucking dumb, that he got nailed by a high school phishing scam, and his brother was already up to his nostrils in Viktor Yanukovych shit, just like Manafort. As for Billy Bob, late stage syphilis has finally taken it's toll his lizard brain. But let's face it, the Trump sons won't be shattering any IQ test records, either. Those idiots set themselves up.

nmewn , Oct 30, 2017 9:50 PM

Why was a DNC operative meeting with Ukrainians, in the Ukrainian embassy , in Washington DC?

Is this "collusion" with a foreign power during an election? ;-)

Sizzurp , Oct 30, 2017 9:58 PM

It almost certainly was all a set-up. Trump's campaign, and later his transition team, was under surveillance by the Obama administration and they needed justification to continue the spying. This whole thing was orchestrated dirty tricks by corrupt Obama and his paid enforcers. Now Mueller is continuing the abuse of power as the media circus laughs and applauds. We have serious problems.

I am a Man I am... , Oct 30, 2017 9:57 PM

Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS AND Crowdstrike, cyber security firm that claimed Russia hacked DNC servers that FBI didn't give enough of a fuck to look at.

TeethVillage88s , Oct 30, 2017 9:57 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypots_in_espionage_fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_ (computing) https://listverse.com/2016/03/08/10-real-honeypot-operations-that-played... http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/03/12/the-history-of-the-honey-trap/ https://sofrep.com/51201/avoiding-the-honey-pot/ http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/feature/Honeypot-technology-How-hon... https://www.sans.edu/cyber-research/security-laboratory/article/honeypot... https://www.wired.com/2012/04/anna-chapman-cabinet/ https://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2016/09/11/israeli-black-operations-in-t... https://trapx.com/dynamic-deception-operations-its-not-your-daddys-honey... https://www.computerworld.com/article/2573345/security0/honeypots--the-s... http://berlinstartupjobs.com/operations/coo-honeypot/ https://www.first.org/resources/papers/tc-oct2005/barlow-james-slides.pdf http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Analysis-Hamas-honeypot-opera...

oops wiki shows no results for operation honeymoon... censored!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Jewels_ (Central_Intelligence_Agency)

Chupacabra-322 , Oct 30, 2017 10:02 PM

What people don't understand is, that the Russian PsyOp / False Narrative Script by the Deep State & Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Psychopath Hillary Clinton Globalist was the game plan all long.

Win, stolen or lost. They were going & are going "all in" with the PsyOp, Scripted False Narrative of Russia hacking the Elections / Russia / Putin / Trump Propaganda gone full retard via the Deep States Opeatives in the Presstitute Media.

Plausible Deniability is the name of the game. If the Deep State could of pulled off the False Narrative PsyOp of Russia influencing our Elections the Deep State could & will hack into Russia's National Elections next March. Call it pay back.

The Deep State's destabilization campaign in Ukraine especially Crimea was part of the ZioNeoConFascist Agenda to destabilize Russia during their upcoming elections.

Putin countered by expelling all Geroge Sorros NGO's from Russia. However, rest assured those destabilization cells are in place to ready to be activated come Russia's next election cycle.

dwboston , Oct 30, 2017 10:16 PM

I don't think "ironic" is the right word to use for Mueller's involvement in both brooming any investigation of Hillary and Uranium One then and now leading the fake collusion witch humt. I might choose "convenient", "suspicious", or "planned".

beijing expat , Oct 30, 2017 10:17 PM

Clearly there was a criminal conspiracy.

Another point, the last pages of the Pissgate dossier were added after the election. They said Cohen went to Prague to meet with Russian agents about payment to the hackers. This was used as cause for a FISA warrant to spy on Trump. What was McCains involvement, and the FBIs.

[Oct 30, 2017] Could Papadopoulos case be an entrapment ? This "Russian professor" looks exactly like the heroes of Nigerian spam letters

Entrapment is as old as civilization. "In criminal law, entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit a criminal offence that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit. [1] It "is the conception and planning of an offence by an officer, and his procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion or fraud of the officer." [2] "
Previously I thought that members of Hillary entourage were complete idiots both as for computer security and generally security wise. Now it looks like Trump entourage have has the same problem: many of they were idiots.
In "After Snowden" world anybody who wants to communicate with a unknown foreign person via Facebook of Twitter on issues of any political significance is an idiot. Because chances of hoax, provocation of in case of Trump team "false flag operation" are nearly 100%. This way you can implicate anybody in Russian ties: hire a hoaxer and ask him to pretend that he is Russian. To simp0lify the matter ask him to use Skype to communicate with the target. Send a couple of incriminating emails. Any of Nigerian spammers can be used for this purpose. They are already trained. Rinse and repeat.
So how we can be sure that this idiot Papadopoulos was not set up? BTW he ws born in 1987 -- so he just out of the college (graduated in 2009). What does he know about foreign policy?He never has been an ambassador to an important country, words in State Depertment, or servers as a senior fellow in some research institution which study those issues. (he was "unpaid intern" in Hudson institute" in 2011) What foreign policy advisor role for such a guy ? He looks like a huckster to me.
Of cause Kieren McCarth in her joy over the development is unable to contemplate this question.
Notable quotes:
"... Papadopoulos has been assisting Mueller's special inquiry for several months, but word of this cooperation only emerged today when his guilty plea to making false statements to the FBI was unsealed. ..."
"... he used Facebook Messenger and Skype to communicate with a Russian government agent, called "the Professor," who promised to provide damaging information on the Clinton campaign. Emails, no less. ..."
"... the Professor showed interest in defendant PAPADOPOULOS only after learning of his role." ..."
"... And then there is extensive evidence -- confirmed by Papadopoulos -- that he acted as a go-between for the Trump campaign and the Russian government, including being supplied with damaging information on the Clinton campaign. ..."
"... There are also emails from other Trump campaign staff -- so far unnamed -- that show explicit efforts to work with Russians in gathering damaging information on the real-estate tycoon's political rival. In other words, efforts to engage a foreign power to swing a US presidential election. ..."
"... For one, using Facebook to carry out highly dubious and potentially illegal activity is not a good idea. This is a social network that periodically changes account settings to keep up the pretense that it's not gathering and selling every snippet of information it can get out of you. Anything you say on Facebook may go straight down a pipe to the NSA and a database searchable by the FBI. It's called Section 702 . ..."
Oct 30, 2017 | www.theregister.co.uk
Originally from: Manafort, Stone, Trump, Papadopoulos, Kushner, Mueller, Russia All the tech angles in one place • The Register By Kieren McCarthy

Former Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos -- no, not that one -- has been turned by ex-FBI director Robert Mueller as part of the latter's investigation into Trump campaign team members. Mueller is probing allegations of obstruction of justice, money laundering and other financial crimes, and collusion with Russian government agents seeking to meddle with last year's US presidential election.

Papadopoulos has been assisting Mueller's special inquiry for several months, but word of this cooperation only emerged today when his guilty plea to making false statements to the FBI was unsealed.

Coincidentally, Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort surrendered himself this morning to Mueller at his nearest FBI office, as requested, to answer allegations ranging from making false statements to acting as a foreign agent.

Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates, also accused of conspiracy and money laundering, handed himself in today, too. The indictment against the pair is here , and both deny any wrongdoing.

Among the wealth of details in Papadopoulos' 14-page statement [PDF] is the fact that he used Facebook Messenger and Skype to communicate with a Russian government agent, called "the Professor," who promised to provide damaging information on the Clinton campaign. Emails, no less.

"This isn't like he [the Professor]'s messaging me while I'm in April with Trump," Papadopoulos told the FBI. "I wasn't even on the Trump team." Except he was on the team in April 2016. The Feds noted in their court paperwork: "Defendant PAPADOPOULOS met the Professor for the first time on or about March 14, 2016, after defendant PAPADOPOULOS had already learned he would be a foreign policy advisor for the Campaign; the Professor showed interest in defendant PAPADOPOULOS only after learning of his role."

And then there is extensive evidence -- confirmed by Papadopoulos -- that he acted as a go-between for the Trump campaign and the Russian government, including being supplied with damaging information on the Clinton campaign.

There are also emails from other Trump campaign staff -- so far unnamed -- that show explicit efforts to work with Russians in gathering damaging information on the real-estate tycoon's political rival. In other words, efforts to engage a foreign power to swing a US presidential election.

But let's take a quick look at Facebook.

For one, using Facebook to carry out highly dubious and potentially illegal activity is not a good idea. This is a social network that periodically changes account settings to keep up the pretense that it's not gathering and selling every snippet of information it can get out of you. Anything you say on Facebook may go straight down a pipe to the NSA and a database searchable by the FBI. It's called Section 702 .

Papadopoulos is obviously not a man well versed in spy craft. Something that becomes more apparent when it's revealed the day after he was pulled in for questioning, he deleted his entire Facebook account and started a new one. He also tried changing his phone number to sidestep the Feds.

You can just imagine Mueller's team at their morning meeting: so how did the Papadopoulos interview go yesterday? Well, this morning he deleted his Facebook account. Great, now we know where to look.
... ... ...

[Oct 30, 2017] Indicting Manafort for acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government (in this case, Ukraine) probably can be used to a half the Beltway, but never mind by Lambert Strether

Notable quotes:
"... By Lambert Strether of Corrente . ..."
Oct 30, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Originally from: 200PM Water Cooler 10-30-2017 naked capitalism By Lambert Strether of Corrente .

Politics

2017

"Virginia Governor – Gillespie vs. Northam" [ RealClearPolitics ]. The average of all polls: Northam 3.3% (Yesterday: 2.8%). Quinnipiac weighs in, with Northam +17 (!!).

"Sanders, who gained his national following by running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has refused to endorse the Democratic candidate, Ralph Northam, a mainstream progressive. This signals the left-winger's determination to set ideological litmus tests for Democrats" [ Bloomberg ]. "Bannon, the former top strategist for President Donald Trump, is on a mission to destroy the Republican Party establishment. In Virginia, he's helped pressure Republican Ed Gillespie, a quintessential establishment figure, to embrace immigrant-bashing and race-baiting."

New Cold War

It's Manafort. And Papadopoulos. Two (2) documents were unsealed: Manafort's indictment, and Papadopoulos's plea deal. Here they are:

1) Manafort: United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort and Richard W. Gates, III ( PDF ). (The PDF, via DK, is a searchable PDF as opposed to a scan.)

2) Papadopoulos: United States of American v. George Papadoplous ( PDF ).

As readers know, I haven't been following the ins and outs of all this with complete attention, but as best I can tell, the Manafort indictment is designed to get Manafort to flip, and the Papadopoulos plea signals the inducement for him to do so.

Taking Manafort first, the indictment looks like an especially florid scheme to evade Federal taxes on consulting fees paid to entities controlled by Manafort by Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions , by laundering it through nominees in Cyprus into real estate (and rugs). There's nothing in the indictment about election "meddling," and the Russians appear only at a second remove (as the ultimate backers of the Party of Regions). The Feds are also indicting Manafort for acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government (in this case, Ukraine) which would probably apply to half the Beltway, but never mind that.

Papadopoulos is juicier, from the Russki standpoint. Here is the salient paragraph, in which Papadopoulos is charged with making false statements (rather a warning shot to the rest of the players in this affair):

Now, the details of the Papadopoulos story are almost clownishly stupid -- a Russian "professor," Putin's "niece," Papadopoulos communicating with his Russki interlocutor via Skype (!) -- so it's hard to know how serious an attempt this was. And if what the Russian professor says is true (we don't know that), we don't know which email is at issue. Still, some Russians could have been doing some "meddling," and some person in the Trump campaign knew about it. Who else knew? Manafort? During the four months he headed Trump's campaign? Presumably, Mueller can follow up the food chain. All this is, of course, very far from Clinton's original claim that Trump is a Russian "puppet," a claim which moreover had and has the ultimate goal of treating as treason advocacy for a policy that is surely not prima facie crazed: That is, the idea that a Clintonite cold war with Russia, or a hot proxy war in the Ukraine, might not be the best idea in the world. Nevertheless, this was not a good day for the Trump administration.

"How to Interpret Robert Mueller's Charges Against Paul Manafort in the Russia Investigation" [ WIRED ]. This is excellent (and recommended by emptywheel , who I would link to except I'm getting CloudFlare errors from her site). This:

For all the talk of Russian collusion, there isn't really a federal crime that matches what the press, critics, and Capitol Hill lawmakers have been calling collusion, a word that refers legally to a narrow segment of antitrust law. And there's almost zero chance anyone will be charged with treason, a charge that's only available to use against enemies in a declared war.

In other words, we can forget about the frothing and stamping of the parties which I can say relieves me no end. And if readers with experience in complex Federal criminal prosecutions want to chime in, great! Musical interlude .

UPDATE Reading the Manafort indictment again, I noticed several mentions of the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, for whom Manafort was a lobbyist. It turns out they gave the Podesta Group $900,000 over two years (including 2012?). "However, the source of the funding remains unclear since ECFMU listed its budget for the financial year ending in November 2012 as only 10,000 euros." Here's a handy chart of the ECMU's connections, from Muckety .

Always good to see bipartisanship!

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , October 30, 2017 at 4:40 pm

From Corey Lewandowski, via the Guardian:

If the public reports are true, and there was a time where Paul Manafort was under a FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978] warrant before coming to the Trump campaign, why is it the FBI never reached out to me as the campaign manager, never reached out to Donald Trump and said "look, you might want to pause for a second and take a look before you bring this guy on board as a volunteer to hunt delegates for you."

They never did that. He was under a FISA warrant, supposedly, both before and after his tenure at the campaign and the FBI never notified the leading presidential candidate for a major Republican Party race? Never notified him of a potential problem? This is a problem with the FBI if you ask me.

I don't know if the FBI was required to do so.

Should they have informed a presidential candidate?

IowanX , October 30, 2017 at 7:53 pm

Hoping Tony Podesta loses a shoe close to whenever Midnight hits as this goes forward. I'm told John is "ok". Tony, not so much. But the Podesta firm has always been thought of as a Democratic shop, so the "both sides do it meme" may actually be proven out We'll see how this rolls. That fact that this is all Ukraine right now makes me think we'll *never* figure out what really happened. Which I guess (JFK ongoing redactions) goes without saying.

Byron the Light Bulb , October 30, 2017 at 2:54 pm

So, the question, begs, "Does Manafort as a bag man earn his fees?"
Because the reviews from his previous clients seem mixed, at best. Asking for a friend.

George Phillies , October 30, 2017 at 3:46 pm

" treason, a charge that's only available to use against enemies in a declared war " Ummh, no. Contemplate the Jefferson Administration.

With respect to the alleged thousands of emails, several choices here

Some people will believe anything. Papadopolous was hoaxed.
DNC emails, some to be obtained later
The Podesta emails

Emails lifted from the Clinton server, raising that issue from the dead.

other

Vatch , October 30, 2017 at 4:05 pm

From Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution:

1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Giving aid and comfort to the nation's enemies does not require a declaration of war. It's also disturbingly vague.

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , October 30, 2017 at 4:33 pm

From US Code:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(2)(J), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)

What are their enemies?

North Koreans?

todde , October 30, 2017 at 5:09 pm

there hasn't been a case that I am aware of that didn't involve taking arms up against the United States (Brown or the Whiskey Rebellion) or aiding a country we were at war with (Tokyo rose).

No one is going to get convicted of treason, conspiracy against the United States is not treason, and probably stems from his tax evasion charge.

Vatch , October 30, 2017 at 6:09 pm

Oddly, there are also state laws against treason. Either the Illinois or the Missouri law was used against Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon denomination.

todde , October 30, 2017 at 6:43 pm

I believe that was Missouri.

The good people of Illinois just ran him out of the state if my class field trip memory serves me still.

DJG , October 30, 2017 at 4:11 pm

The McGuffin in the Papadopolous indictment is the Clinton e-mail messages. And what if they emerge?

The article from Wired is enlightening because it takes a broad view of the FBI's goals and the slowness of the U.S. criminal process. Emptywheel seems to think that it is all over, although she admits that Papadopolous is a plain idiot. I fear that she is moving too fast. But then the Watergate burglars were idiots, too.

All in all, I'd say let the indictments fall down like rain.

But I also recall that the Nixon saga was saved by clever old foxes like Sam Ervin and Judge John Sirica, both of whom were highly underestimated by those in the know, you know. Yet I don't see a Sam Ervin on the horizon. Enjoy the continuing constitutional crisis.

Byron the Light Bulb , October 30, 2017 at 5:40 pm

Mueller: Y'all know me. Know how I earn a livin'. I'll catch this bird for you, but it ain't gonna be easy. Bad fish! Not like going down to the pond and chasing bluegills and tommycods. This shark, swallow ya whole. Little shakin', little tenderizin', down you go. And we gotta do it quick, that'll bring back the tourists, that'll put all your businesses on a payin' basis.
–The campaign doorkeeper is next. The son-in-law with no power. Just for being mishpokhe, poor sob.

John D , October 30, 2017 at 8:25 pm

"All over"?

So there's no hope that, just like a scene from the Old Republic of Livy's first decade, Mueller will round things up with the case for his own indictment ?

allan , October 30, 2017 at 6:50 pm

Fair and balanced:

The veteran judge former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates will appear in front of Monday afternoon has presided over a list of big-name defendants and has experienced the criminal justice system firsthand -- when her son was convicted of dealing heroin.

The case will then be handed over to an Obama-appointed judge who donated $1,000 to former President Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.

Find it yourself. Just Google "Roger Ailes casting couch News Corp phone hacking".

Heliopause , October 30, 2017 at 7:11 pm

"we don't know which email is at issue."

The logical inference is that "the Professor" was claiming to have the lost private server emails, since that's what was on everybody's minds at the time. Unfortunately, the internet is abuzz with wild speculation at the moment that this somehow proves foreknowledge of the DNC leaks, but as the quoted passage shows there is nothing in the language of the plea to support that conclusion. Nevertheless, expect it to be somberly reported across mainstream platforms as the "smoking gun" that it isn't.

Papadopoulos does not currently stand accused of doing anything wrong other than lying to the FBI. He might have a more interesting story to tell but it's just speculation at this point. Reading through the plea it looks like this may be nothing more than a dumbass who got taken in by a couple of charlatans and then lied about it, Sure, he may have some deeper dirt, or not, I guess we'll find out.

Dave's Not Here , October 30, 2017 at 8:12 pm

Isn't it ironic that the Ukraine pops up here, aka the USGOV's favorite Ukronazis and erstwhile cat's paw vs Russia? It's as stupid as blaming Iran (Shia) for Al Qaeda and ISIS (Sunni). I look forward to seeing the convolutions that the MSM will go through to prove Ukraine = Russia. Hmmm, what other US politicians are known for their ties to the Ukraine?

Watt4Bob , October 30, 2017 at 8:15 pm

So, fill in the blank with any one of 'our' elected representatives in D.C.

"_____________ faces a long list of charges that includes conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, false statements, acting as an unregistered agent as a foreign principal, making misleading statements in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and seven counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. That's a dozen in all.

Name one, come on, name a member of the House, or Senate who hasn't made them selves relatively rich off lying and laundering, and influence peddling?

The total number of our elected 'leaders' that pass the smell test could fit in your average mini van.

My Mom used to ask, "If everyone jumped off the bridge, would you do it?"

Anyone who knows me even the least bit knows I'm not making excuses for Trump Inc., I'm just emphasizing how truly f*cked we are as concerns the mean level of ethics extant in our capital city.

[Oct 30, 2017] Lavrentiy Beria principle in "show me a man and I will find you a crime" in action

Finally reports about three successes in Mueller fishing expedition. If charges are proved, Manafort is yet another corrupt player in Washington DC. Who milked the best friend of Joe Biden. But the problem is that probably half of Washington lobbyists can be indicted on similar charges.
Oct 30, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

After the indictment of Manafort and Gates was revealed on Monday morning, Trump tweeted : "Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????"

The president added: "...Also, there is NO COLLUSION!"

Later, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, played down the connection between the three men and the Trump campaign. She said of Manafort and Gates's indictment: "Today's announcement has nothing to do with the president, presidential campaigns or any campaign activity."

Sanders played down the role of Manafort, who joined the Trump campaign in March 2017 as convention manager, focusing on winning delegates at the 2016 Republican convention, and was promoted to campaign manager in June 2016 before resigning in August over his links to Ukraine. She said: "Paul Manafort was brought in to lead the delegate process, which he did, and was dismissed not too long after that."

She also insisted Papadopoulos's lies to the FBI about his contacts with Russia on behalf of the Trump campaign had "nothing to do with the activities of the campaign", and repeatedly dismissed Papadopoulos as "a volunteer member on an advisory council".

... ... ...

The charges allege the two men worked extensively for political figures and parties in Ukraine and laundered millions of dollars in payment for that work by channelling it through a web of companies, mostly in the US and Cyprus. They are accused of constructing elaborate schemes to hide their earnings from the US government, and failing to register the foreign interests for which they were lobbying.

The indictment alleges $75m in payments flowed through offshore accounts, of which Manafort laundered more than $18m to buy property, goods and services in the US, hiding the income from the government. It says Gates transferred $3m from the offshore accounts to other accounts he controlled.
... ... ...

Yanukovych, whose rule was marked by rampant corruption in his inner circle, fled to Russia during the Maidan revolution in February 2014. In August last year, an alleged "black ledger" surfaced in Kiev that appeared to show millions of dollars of under-the-table payments to numerous Yanukovych allies, including Manafort.

Ukraine's National Anticorruption Bureau posted 22 payments to Manafort between 2007 and 2012 with various vague descriptions such as "sociology" or "services". The payments totalled $12.7m. Manafort said he never received any illegal payments but the scandal prompted him to resign from Trump's campaign.

... ... ...

Although Manafort did not formally assume control of the Trump campaign until 20 June, when campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was fired, Lewandowski said after his ejection: "Paul Manafort has been in operational control of the campaign since 7 April. That's a fact."

Manafort also played the decisive role in ensuring that Trump picked the Indiana governor, Mike Pence, to be his running mate.

[Oct 30, 2017] The decision to press charges against Manafort and one of his aides might be intended to distract attention from the revelations and to regain control of the Russiagate narrative, which has been increasingly falling apart. What reinforces this suspicion is that news of the indictment was leaked disgracefully to the media over the weekend even though the indictment had been sealed by a Federal Judge

Oct 30, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 | Oct 30, 2017 3:23:15 PM | 17

Anon @6--

Mercouris weighs in on the Manafort indictment, wherein I agree with his initial assessment:

"It comes after what was in all other respects a disastrous two weeks for the true believers in the Russiagate conspiracy with the revelation that the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign financed the 'research' which resulted in the Trump Dossier, and with mounting claims that (as I had previously suspected) the now notorious meeting between Donald Trump Junior and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was indeed a sting set up by Fusion GPS, the intermediary company used by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign to fund the Trump Dossier.

"In light of this there has to be some suspicion that the decision to press charges against Manafort and one of his aides now was intended at least in part to distract attention from the revelations and to regain control of the Russiagate narrative, which has been increasingly falling apart.

"What reinforces this suspicion is that news of the indictment was leaked – disgracefully – to the media over the weekend even though the indictment had been sealed by a Federal Judge." http://theduran.com/manafort-indictment-muellers-first-last-shot/

All the while Mueller spins his wheels, the really big criminals in this fiasco remain the Clintons, Obamas, and staff that worked abetting their crimes.

[Oct 30, 2017] Paul Manafort Indicted On 12 Counts In Mueller Probe, Surrenders To FBI Zero Hedge

Might be a wwya put swipe under the table Steele dociier. Also what is interesting is that Bill and Hillary Clinton, The Bonnie and Clyde of US polit , walk free, Manafort, being a small fish in a large pond of international corruption, was caught in the net and is under arrest... They want him to talk. Manafort will be under a lot of pressure to produce evidence of any Trump/Putin connection.
Oct 30, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

The special counsel's office considers Manafort a flight risk, and lawyers in Mueller's office argued before Judge Deborah Robinson on Monday afternoon, citing the seriousness of the charges and the extent of Manafort's ties abroad. The FBI took possession of Manafort's passport yesterday. In a statement to reporters following the hearing, Manafort's lawyer, Kevin Downing, called the charges against his client "ridiculous."

"There is no evidence that Mr. Manafort or the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government," Downing told reporters after Manafort's court appearance.

"Mr. Manafort represented pro-European Union campaigns for the Ukrainians. And in that, he was seeking to further democracy, and to help the Ukraine come closer to the United States and the EU."

"The claim that maintaining offshore accounts to bring all your funds into the United States as a scheme to conceal from the United States government is ridiculous," he continued.

Downing called Mueller's prosecution of Manafort using the Foreign Agents Registration Act "a very novel theory," point out that the government has only brought charges under the law six times since 1966.

According to the Hill , Manafort retained Downing, a former Department of Justice official, in August. Downing is known for his work representing clients facing complex financial investigations.

* * *

Update: Democrat Adam Schiff, the ranking member on the House Intelligence committee, said the indictments open up "new lines of inquiry" in the Russia probe, even after reports surfaced earlier this week that many Republican members of Schiff's committee are trying to wind it down.

Today's indictments of Manafort and Gates, and Papadopoulos' guilty plea are key developments in Russia probe. Here's why: pic.twitter.com/ELNg3LPoe3

-- Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) October 30, 2017

Update: Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has confirmed that the White House has no intention of firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller. She added that the role of George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser during the campaign who pleaded guilty to obstruction earlier this month, was "extremely limited."

Sanders reiterated that the Manafort indictment has "nothing to do with us," noting that his alleged criminal activities took place before he joined the campaign. When asked if the president now regrets hiring Manafort, she said she hadn't asked him about his feelings on the matter. She also played down Papadopoulos's involvement with the campaign was minimal, saying he met with a group of foreign policy advisers one time, and had his named included on a list of advisers given to the Washington Post.

Sanders added that Manafort was hired to lead the campaign's delegate push ahead of the convention, and was let go shortly after.

IH8OBAMA -> CuttingEdge , Oct 30, 2017 12:29 PM

Did the FBI screw up in their search of Manafort's home?

"...we were immediately drawn to the revelation that evidence was collected that may not have been covered by the warrant. That's a serious development, and one that Manafort's attorneys will no doubt seize upon. But, is it necessarily illegal? Did the agents do anything wrong? It's not clear. It certainly could raise some serious constitutional issues that could taint the investigation."

https://lawnewz.com/high-profile/mueller-teams-apparent-mistake-could-re...

IH8OBAMA -> 3LockBox , Oct 30, 2017 10:09 AM

Manafort was told not too long ago that he was going to be indicted. This is really nothing new and has zero involvement with Trump.

Let's get to the bottom of the Hillary, Obama, Lynch, Holder, IRS and other illegalities. Bring those indictments.

boattrash -> chunga , Oct 30, 2017 10:29 AM

Keep this fucker in mind too...Neil Kornze. Below is an excerpt from his Bio...

Before coming the Bureau of Land Management, Kornze worked as a Senior Advisor to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. In his work for Senator Reid, which spanned from early 2003 to early 2011, he worked on a variety of public lands issues, including renewable energy development, mining, water, outdoor recreation, rural development, and wildlife. Kornze has also served as an international election observer in Macedonia, the Ukraine, and Georgia and is co-author of an article in The Oxford Companion to American Law.

Tangled webs and pieces of shit. Ya think Mueller will be charging this bastard? No, me either..

chunga -> boattrash , Oct 30, 2017 10:44 AM

Mueller won't, my opinion on him is he's nothing more than a hatchet man to chop Trump. Sessions should though. Some people still like the guy but I just don't trust him with the shit he's done so far, like coming out and praising this Myhre. I know you read Redoubt News but I wish more people did because they're doing a good job.

US Attorney Myhre Sinks Deep in the Swamp

https://redoubtnews.com/2017/10/us-attorney-myhre-sinks-deep-swamp/

In a surprising ruling, Judge Navarro allowed disgraced BLM agent Dan Love to be questioned for a full day on Monday. Love was obviously upset at the officials in the * DOJ overriding his authority as the Incident Commander.

*bold emphasis mine

Lumberjack -> chunga , Oct 30, 2017 11:10 AM

"The primary responsibility of the special counsel" is " to investigate Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election "

Furthermore, Mannafort and even Trump himself had no idea he would be running for president 5 years ago.

Um, the Special Council is way off target...by miles and years. Mannafort et.al. should get what they deserve but the collusion is all Podesta/Hillary/Fusion GPS/Crowdstrike et.al..

The Special Council needs to get crackin...and back on track

Cloud9.5 -> 3LockBox , Oct 30, 2017 11:46 AM

A pardon shuts down Mueller's investigation. This is a witch hunt and like all witch hunts guilt is ascribed to the suspect by simply being named. So there is no justice here. This is all partisan politics. The simple fact is that there are so many laws on the books that honest people unwittingly break the law every day. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/you-break-the-law-every-day-without-even-knowing-it.html

This is a labyrinth that has no end. This is a fishing expedition and Muller is casting a net far and wide and he will find a number of people who inadvertently broke the law. People like Martha Stewart come to mind. James B. Comey burned Martha Stewart at the stake of self-righteousness for lying to the FBI, but this same moral crusader found no wrong doing in Hillary Clinton's email scandal. Clearly as far as the FBI is concerned, Martha was a real paragon of evil while Hillary is the most altruistic person on the planet. Either the Republicans get behind Trump and pull the trigger on the Clinton crime syndicate or they lose the next election.

Creative_Destruct -> Gaius Frakkin' Baltar , Oct 30, 2017 10:13 AM

" In August 2016, Manafort's connections to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions drew national attention in the USA, where it was reported that Manafort may have illegally received $12.7 million in off-the-books funds from the Party of Regions. [29] On August 17, 2016, Donald Trump received his first security briefing. [30] Also, on August 17, 2016, the New York Times reported on an internal staff memorandum from Manafort stating that Manafort would "remain the campaign chairman and chief strategist, providing the big-picture, long-range campaign vision". [31] However, two days later, Trump announced his acceptance of Manafort's resignation from the campaign after Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway took on senior leadership roles within that campaign. [32] [33] "

So a scumbag lobbyist got caught laundering money over many years BEFORE (and continuing during and apparently unrelated to) Trump's campaign... and then exited the campaign. Unless there is direct evidence of the Trump campaign using Manafort as a conduit for collusion with the Russians (and I know of no evidence for that) this is irrelevant to charges of Trump campaign Russian collusion.

But those facts will NOT be emphasized by the MSM.

AND speculation will persist that Mueller will use his Manafort leverage to drop more shoes...for YEARS.

chestergimli -> Creative_Destruct , Oct 30, 2017 10:26 AM

I just wonder if this little charade of Mueller's isn't revenge for the fact that Yanukovich turned on the US and sided with Russia. Boy the deep state and the Pentagon sure must have wanted Crimea really bad. Manafort seems to be the point guy.

L Bean -> chestergimli , Oct 30, 2017 10:40 AM

BINGO.

CONCEPTPOLITICO -> chestergimli , Oct 30, 2017 1:32 PM

Less the point guy and more the scapegoat. TPTB are pissed off at Lil Yanu for turning coat on them and siding with Putin and they are pissed at Trump for getting elected. So they figure they can try to ameliorate their frustration at these two disses with one scapegoat. Ala Manafort. Look up Manaforts history. He has been doing this slimly kind of lobbyist for 3rd world and former Soviet satellite state strong men for three decades and for that same period of time he has not been paying his taxes on there earnings (i.e. money laundering). But so has the likes of the Podesta Brothers, Clinton, Pat Robertson and the like. Unfortunetely for Manafort he step into the scapegoat pit for as the TPTB was eager to display its anger throgh a ritual cutting of a political head sacrifice when he stepped in to help Trump's campaign gather delegates.

Giant Meteor -> Creative_Destruct , Oct 30, 2017 10:54 AM

Manafort is a string, to be pulled ..

However, what is evident, or what should become evident, there are king makers, and there are bag men, and they are employed by ALL swamp creatures with equal zeal. The point here is, this shit goes way beyond what is stated, as always. These snakes slither in the same swamp, and not one among them has clean hands ...

Not one ..

Manafort, Podesta, Bush, Obama, Clinton, Trump ...

So for all these dirty little charades, these stage props of "justice", the "collusion" has been a collusion, and direct assault against the very interests of the American people, for many, many moons ..

Teja -> Creative_Destruct , Oct 30, 2017 12:51 PM

Yanukovych was democratically elected. He would be deeply shocked that he worked together with a "scumbag lobbyist". Same for Trump, who would never have assumed Manaford had a shady history. Never. Who could have known this? Not Nobody! Not No How!

/s

No Time for Fishing -> Gaius Frakkin' Baltar , Oct 30, 2017 10:29 AM

The answer here is not everyone else does it why single out him, but instead time for partisan Mueller's team to start investigating all the Republican Swamp rats and hold them all to the same standards, except for those members of Mueller's team starting with Mueller who are guilty themselves. Appoint a second equally viscous Republican Partison to investigate and prosecute Hillary, Bill, Obama, Holder, DWS, Pelosi and the rest of the Democrat Swamp Rats. We will probably need to appoint some additonal Federal Judges because the courts are going to be very busy and swift justice is the best justice.

WillyGroper -> Gaius Frakkin' Baltar , Oct 30, 2017 11:18 AM

absolutely!

and speaking of looting Ukraine...nooodullman?

dopey me, doesn't apply to duals.

Michigander -> CuttingEdge , Oct 30, 2017 9:48 AM

I listen to the opposition (PBS) in the morning for an hour while showering and getting to work. Still talking Trump Russia collusion every other story and not a fucking word about Hildebeasts and Muellers Uranium dealings.

L Bean -> Haus-Targaryen , Oct 30, 2017 10:51 AM

All of that is just red meat for the plebs. It's not hard to spend that much on fine rugs. And every fine home in Georgetown and the UES is stuffed to the gills with them.

They also get quite a laugh getting Joe Schmoe worked up about how much someone's haircut cost. Nearly a million in clothes? A vintage Patek Phillipe watch and 2 tailored suits and you're there. Or for the woman, a fews enormous pearl necklaces and a Chanel suit.

CuttingEdge -> Michigander , Oct 30, 2017 10:09 AM

The collusion by the MSM to keep this story from the public conscious is truly stunning. Any MSM source other than Fox on this issue in the USA and you are a mushroom.

And international. Nothing in the UK in the past ten days since the dossier funding and the Uranium-1 informant (who is going to personally buttfuck Mueller from every angle) stories broke. The Telegraph's* last Hillary story was a fucking HRC through the ages fashion piece.

And all the usual insidious cunts like Podesta, HRC and DWS sharing a houseboat on a river in Egypt.

*I would personally like to inform any journo working for the DT that you are a spineless worm. A piece of morally corrupted parasitic shit. Every single motherfucking one of you. Scum assisting in making 1984 a reality.

Kayman -> CuttingEdge , Oct 30, 2017 10:11 AM

No Grand Jury to look at the Clintons ! No Grand Jury indictment for the Podestas ! Mueller is doing his job- destroying evidence.

Endgame Napoleon -> El Vaquero , Oct 30, 2017 11:34 AM

Taxpayers need to cover the cost of security for Swampians in an era of increased publicity and fast-paced communications. But Swampians of all types need to be banned from lobbying and other money-making activities in foreign countries related to their time in office, such as profitable not for profits with political donors in foreign countries, sales of bomb-making material to foreign countries and accepting six-figure-to-multi-million-dollar speechmaking fees from foreign interests that are interwoven with governments. These are opportunities spawned by their time in office. All they have to do to make it legal is to disclose it; it is just fine for government officials and their associates to make enormous amounts of money off of catering to foreign interests unless they fail to disclose.

Short of a sea change in the way money is made due to automation, globalism is going to keep sinking The Republic, with elite working families saying they are doing all of it for average working families in America. Sell it with a fake-feminist, mommy-baby-concern theme, and you can do any nefarious thing you want, whether in high or low places. Visit a local, $10-per-hour, crony-mom call center or a momma-gang corporate back office for the rougher, downscale version.

I am beginning to root for the robots. It is probably the only way we will see any real change. Advances in technology in the pre-automation age let these elites operate businesses and other institutions more easily around the globe to the detriment of The Republic and their own country's widespread prosperity.

Maybe, a global, robotic workforce will return us to elected governments, where the voters' interests are actually represented, rather than lobbyist-fed, elected representatives representing the interests of American and foreign elites who are invested in near-slave production around the globe, so-called emerging markets, war clean-up or lucrative NGOs.

Maybe, we we will see less lucrative-for-elites intervention in foreign countries under the brand of helping mommies and babies around the globe that is government/corporate-financed, with many of the financiers being global dictators.

Maybe, further advances in technology will nullify these globalist pathways to riches for political elites, making it easier for the Founders' values to resurface. When robots are doing most of the work, these near-slave labor and consumer markets abroad will be less tantalizing, leaving only things like land, uranium deposits, oil and other geographic gems to attract elite attention away from building up the USA.

pods -> Sean7k , Oct 30, 2017 10:19 AM

Wells Fargo was opening up accounts for people without knowledge. Punishment? A fine, and state we won't do it again.

This indictment was top story on the radio on the way into work. I was hoping to hear about the actual shocking story (Uranium one deal) but crickets.

There is no hope for actual justice. Just more vendettas by warring sides.

I say fuck it, burn the whole thing to the ground. It would be cheaper.

pods

two hoots -> Sean7k , Oct 30, 2017 10:50 AM

Where was I? I plead dementia.

I'm generic and any corruption that gets weeded out is fine by me. Yes, there is plenty more but I will take whatever, from wherever as long as it is rooted out.

It must be autumn harverst time for sexual perverts and corrupt assholes. They seem to be all coming out/forced out? Put them all in the same cells.

Chupacabra-322 -> gmrpeabody , Oct 30, 2017 9:14 AM

ATTN: Forward the following everyone & their mothers.

Published on Oct 24, 2017FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds exposes Special Counsel Robert Mueller's conflict of interest in pursuing General Michael Flynn's case due to his direct involvement as former FBI Director and his role in covering up and protecting Gulen Networks' criminal operations within the United States, and demands that he steps down.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DvFCAIRkvWU&sns=tw

xavi1951 -> JRobby , Oct 30, 2017 9:48 AM

Mueller was supposed to investigate Russian Collusion. Instead, he and his team of Hillary supporters, looked at everything that everyone on the Trump team did at any time, even before they were connected to Trump. The whole thing has set a new precident for Special Counsels. Don't investigate a crime, find a crime, any crime.

I think they should be turned loose on Congress. There would have to be special elections across the country to fill the vacant seats.

xavi1951 -> JRobby , Oct 30, 2017 9:48 AM

Mueller was supposed to investigate Russian Collusion. Instead, he and his team of Hillary supporters, looked at everything that everyone on the Trump team did at any time, even before they were connected to Trump. The whole thing has set a new precident for Special Counsels. Don't investigate a crime, find a crime, any crime.

I think they should be turned loose on Congress. There would have to be special elections across the country to fill the vacant seats.

lester1 , Oct 30, 2017 8:20 AM

It's Manafort for not filing his taxes properly. But no charges related to "Russia election meddling". 6 months into this fake investigation Mueller has got nothing related to that..

Mueller is a deep state swamp creature and dishonest. He will now push Manafort to roll on the President and manufacture a bogus crime. Watch.

Meanwhile, Hillary skates despite an mountain of evidence of actual crimes!

justin423 -> lester1 , Oct 30, 2017 8:30 AM

They are using the other crimes to get Manafort to flip.

duh.

Gates is the real prize here. Look at his biography. He is the collusion link. I'll bet he has an intreresting story to tell.

66Mustanggirl , Oct 30, 2017 8:18 AM

This is priceless. So the Buzzfeed scoop was actually legit? Manafort and thirteen "suspicious" wire transfers? That were already looked at by the F.B.I.?? Five YEARS ago??? THIS is the BOMBSHELL BREAKING NEWS coming from the great Russian Collusion investigation??? I thought for sure the story was either a diversion or a bad joke. Dear lord. To call this farce of an investigation a dog and pony show would be to cast dispersions upon all the legitimate dog and pony shows throughout history. This is like a bad SNL skit. From the 90's. With Jim Breuer as Goat Boy.

Dems.....you have been soooooo played! L.O.L. But PLEASE....please, please PLEASE.....keep waiting for that silver bullet that will take down Trump to magically appear. That will ensure you are COMPLETELY irrelevant in 2018.

Hammer of Light , Oct 30, 2017 8:19 AM

How about we pin the execution on the Mueller for his cover up role in 9/11? He was acting director of the inside deep state attack on the US that the FBI was clearly involved with as well as the CIA and co.

Mueller belongs with his Bush and Cheney cohorts and all who were absolutely involved in the 3 towers demolition destruction and mass murder of Americans.

The US no longer exists people, the government is completely over run and if you think you still have a country... find yourself laughing at yourself in the mirror!

It's all a circus of madness now! Babylon will laughably fall, it's already begun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idsxgLjGXGI&ytbChannel=Thrifty032781

This 16 second clip says it all about our US Special Prosecutors and those in control of all of DC.

Hundreds of millions to have a 9/11 actor serve justice in finding a Russian collusion where NONE exists. I hope Manafort shoves their noses in a big steaming pile of Dick Cheney's steaming shit.

Everybodys All ... , Oct 30, 2017 8:22 AM

The real action is just beginning because they (Mueller and his party) think Manafort will "flip" on Trump in order to get out of his problem with this indictment. Of course every little retard liberal will think this is about Russian influence on the election even though it clearly will not be. Half of this country is living in an alternate reality and that will not end well for all of us.

jamesmmu , Oct 30, 2017 8:25 AM

According to the left, Trump is about to go to prison. According to the right, Hillary is about to go to prison. I feel like very few are aware of both possibilities.

http://investmentwatchblog.com/according-to-the-left-trump-is-about-to-g...

Smilygladhands , Oct 30, 2017 8:26 AM

I see news networks saying Manafort could turn on others to implicate them. However it seems to me, if that was the case, wouldnt they have already offered that deal to him before charging him?

[Oct 29, 2017] Whose Bright Idea Was RussiaGate by Paul Craig Roberts

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The answer to the question in the title of this article is that Russiagate was created by CIA director John Brennan.The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia. The CIA and the military/security complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia has been assigned that role. The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary and to have him impeached. I don't think the Democrats have considered the consequence of further worsening the relations between the US and Russia. ..."
"... Russia bashing became more intense when Washington's coup in Ukraine failed to deliver Crimea. Washington had intended for the new Ukrainian regime to evict the Russians from their naval base on the Black Sea. This goal was frustrated when Crimea voted to rejoin Russia. ..."
"... The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony requires the principal goal of US foreign policy to be to prevent the rise of other countries that can serve as a restraint on US unilateralism. This is the main basis for the hostility of US foreign policy toward Russia, and of course there also is the material interests of the military/security complex. ..."
"... Washington is fully aware that there was no Russian interference in the presidential election or in the state elections. The military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Democratic Party are merely using the accusations to serve their own agendas. ..."
Oct 03, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org

The answer to the question in the title of this article is that Russiagate was created by CIA director John Brennan.The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia. The CIA and the military/security complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia has been assigned that role. The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary and to have him impeached. I don't think the Democrats have considered the consequence of further worsening the relations between the US and Russia.

Public Russia bashing pre-dates Trump. It has been going on privately in neoconservative circles for years, but appeared publicly during the Obama regime when Russia blocked Washington's plans to invade Syria and to bomb Iran.

Russia bashing became more intense when Washington's coup in Ukraine failed to deliver Crimea. Washington had intended for the new Ukrainian regime to evict the Russians from their naval base on the Black Sea. This goal was frustrated when Crimea voted to rejoin Russia.

The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony requires the principal goal of US foreign policy to be to prevent the rise of other countries that can serve as a restraint on US unilateralism. This is the main basis for the hostility of US foreign policy toward Russia, and of course there also is the material interests of the military/security complex.

Russia bashing is much larger than merely Russiagate. The danger lies in Washington convincing Russia that Washington is planning a surprise attack on Russia. With US and NATO bases on Russia's borders, efforts to arm Ukraine and to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO provide more evidence that Washington is surrounding Russia for attack. There is nothing more reckless and irresponsible than convincing a nuclear power that you are going to attack.

Washington is fully aware that there was no Russian interference in the presidential election or in the state elections. The military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Democratic Party are merely using the accusations to serve their own agendas.

These selfish agendas are a dire threat to life on earth.

Reprinted with permission from PaulCraigRoberts.org .

[Oct 29, 2017] US senator wants former DNC head, Clinton campaign manager to testify on Trump-Russia dossier

Notable quotes:
"... "absolutely need to be recalled." ..."
"... "It's difficult to imagine that a campaign chairman, that the head of the DNC would not know of an expenditure of this magnitude and significance. But perhaps there's something more going on here. But certainly it's worth additional questioning of those two witnesses," ..."
"... "more than anyone." ..."
"... On the same day, Elias' law firm, Perkins Coie, which represented the Clinton campaign and the DNC, confirmed it had hired Fusion GPS in April 2016. The funding arrangement brokered in the spring of 2016 lasted until right before the election, AP reported earlier this week, citing sources familiar with the matter. ..."
"... The document, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, alleged a compromising relationship between Trump and the Kremlin. It was finalized in December 2016, and published online by BuzzFeed in January. It contained unsubstantiated claims of links and allegations of deals between Moscow and the Trump campaign. ..."
"... It was funded initially by a Republican-funded journalism website, The Washington Free Beacon. However, the website insisted the enquiry had no Russian angle at that time. The alleged collusion between Trump and Russia became the focal point of the research after it was taken over by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). ..."
"... The Clinton campaign paid more than $5.6 million to Perkins Coie, recording the expenditures as "legal services," ..."
"... "legal and compliance consulting" ..."
"... "fake dossier," ..."
"... "Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier," ..."
"... "so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out." ..."
"... "commonly agreed" ..."
Oct 29, 2017 | www.rt.com

Several top Democrats should be summoned to testify before the US Senate Intelligence Committee on the infamous Trump-Russia dossier, US Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has said. Her remarks were prompted by new revelations linking the file to the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, Collins, who is a member of the Senate's Intelligence Committee, was emphatic that Hillary Clinton's election campaign manager, John Podesta, and the former head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Debbie Wasserman Schultz, "absolutely need to be recalled."

She added that they were most likely aware of the Democrats role in the preparation of this document.

"It's difficult to imagine that a campaign chairman, that the head of the DNC would not know of an expenditure of this magnitude and significance. But perhaps there's something more going on here. But certainly it's worth additional questioning of those two witnesses," she told CBS' Face the Nation.

Read more © Alex Edelman / Global Look Press Senate to examine financial records of firm behind notorious Trump-Russia dossier

She said further that Marc Elias, a lawyer representing Hillary for America and the DNC, should be questioned "more than anyone." On Tuesday, the Washington Post alleged that Elias retained research firm Fusion GPS in April 2016 to continue research into Trump's alleged coordination with Russia; and which later became known as the Steele dossier.

On the same day, Elias' law firm, Perkins Coie, which represented the Clinton campaign and the DNC, confirmed it had hired Fusion GPS in April 2016. The funding arrangement brokered in the spring of 2016 lasted until right before the election, AP reported earlier this week, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The document, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, alleged a compromising relationship between Trump and the Kremlin. It was finalized in December 2016, and published online by BuzzFeed in January. It contained unsubstantiated claims of links and allegations of deals between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

It was funded initially by a Republican-funded journalism website, The Washington Free Beacon. However, the website insisted the enquiry had no Russian angle at that time. The alleged collusion between Trump and Russia became the focal point of the research after it was taken over by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

The Clinton campaign paid more than $5.6 million to Perkins Coie, recording the expenditures as "legal services," according to the Federal Election Commission. The DNC paid the law firm more than $2.9 million for "legal and compliance consulting" and reported $66,500 for research consulting.

Clinton/DNC paid for the Trump-Russia dossier - DETAILS https://t.co/dPBsSDfOIf

-- RT (@RT_com) October 25, 2017

Taking note of the recent revelations concerning the dossier, the US House Intelligence Committee has been granted access to Fusion GPS bank account records as part of its investigation into the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

On Sunday, Donald Trump lashed out in a series of tweets at the dossier and said something should be done about Hillary Clinton's links to the "fake dossier," as the US president put it.

"Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier," he wrote, later adding, that there is "so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out."

Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?),....

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017

Earlier this week, Trump said it is "commonly agreed" that there was no collusion between his presidential bid and the Russian government, and accused Clinton of being the one who really colluded with Russia.

[Oct 29, 2017] Trump Heralds GOP Anger, Unity As WSJ Warns Dems The Russian Dossier Dam Is Breaking

Notable quotes:
"... May the example catch on. Journalists who investigated the Trump dossier now say their Democratic sources lied to them. That's already a start. Please, Democrats, release journalists from their confidentiality agreements so they can tell us more about your lying. ..."
"... The revelations provide new context for Harry Reid's "October surprise," his attempt 10 days before Election Day to lever the dossier's allegations into the press with a public letter to then-FBI Director James Comey accusing him of withholding "explosive information." ..."
"... This is a completely novel tactic in U.S. politics, applying to a hostile foreign power for lurid stories about a domestic opponent. Mr. Reid, please tell us more about your role. ..."
"... He failed to mention, though, that the Trump dossier was manufactured by Democrats paying a D.C. law firm to pay a D.C. "research" firm to pay a retired British spook to pay unknown, unidentified Russians to tell stories about Mr. Trump, in reckless disregard for whether the stories were true. ..."
"... Even so, journalists are presumed to know their sources, not to have paid a long chain of surrogates to elicit sensational claims from perfect strangers, let alone anonymous agents of a foreign regime with a known habit of disinformation. It is impossible to exaggerate how reckless Democrats have been under this standard. If they found the Trump dossier on the sidewalk, they'd be in a better ethical position now. Let's hear what Mr. Schiff knew and when he knew it. ..."
"... In closed hearings, he reportedly acknowledged that his intervention in the Hillary Clinton email case was prompted by what is now understood to have been planted, fake Russian intelligence. The fake Russian intelligence purported to discuss a nonexistent email between then-DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz and George Soros-employed activist Leonard Benardo. ..."
Oct 29, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
In a series if tweets this morning , President Trump has exposed some of the narratives that much of the mainstream media seems loathed to touch...

Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?), the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more.

And while Democrats and their mouthpieces continues to try and focus attention on the unverified frivolous claims within the dossier - as opposed to the illegalities of the dossier's production, collusion, and exhibition - The Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins warns then that the Trump Dossier dam is breaking ...

A U.S. political party applied to a hostile power for lurid stories about a domestic opponent.

'Tis the season of tossing out nondisclosure agreements. Victims and employees of Harvey Weinstein clamor to be released from their NDAs so they can talk about his abuse. Perkins Coie, the Washington law firm for the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign, showed the way by voluntarily releasing Fusion GPS from its duty to remain mum on Democrats who funded the notorious Trump dossier.

May the example catch on. Journalists who investigated the Trump dossier now say their Democratic sources lied to them. That's already a start. Please, Democrats, release journalists from their confidentiality agreements so they can tell us more about your lying.

The revelations provide new context for Harry Reid's "October surprise," his attempt 10 days before Election Day to lever the dossier's allegations into the press with a public letter to then-FBI Director James Comey accusing him of withholding "explosive information."

Mr. Reid knows how the responsible press works. Implausible, scurrilous and unsupported allegations are not reportable, but a government official making public reference to such allegations is reportable.

Mr. Reid, though, failed to mention his party's role in concocting the allegations, much less that the manner of its doing so left him no reason to suppose the charges were anything but tall tales spun by Russian intelligence officials in response to danglings of Democratic money.

This is a completely novel tactic in U.S. politics, applying to a hostile foreign power for lurid stories about a domestic opponent. Mr. Reid, please tell us more about your role.

Let's also hear from Adam Schiff, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. He claimed on TV to have "circumstantial" and "more than circumstantial" evidence of Trump collusion with Russia. In the event, what he delivered in a committee hearing was a litany of routine, innocuous business and diplomatic contacts between Trump associates and Russian citizens, interspersed with claims from the Trump dossier.

He failed to mention, though, that the Trump dossier was manufactured by Democrats paying a D.C. law firm to pay a D.C. "research" firm to pay a retired British spook to pay unknown, unidentified Russians to tell stories about Mr. Trump, in reckless disregard for whether the stories were true.

Mr. Schiff, a Harvard Law graduate, will know the phrase is not our coinage. "Reckless disregard" is the standard by which the Supreme Court says, even in a country that bends over backward to protect the press at the expense of public figures, the press can be held liable for defamatory untruths about a public figure.

Even so, journalists are presumed to know their sources, not to have paid a long chain of surrogates to elicit sensational claims from perfect strangers, let alone anonymous agents of a foreign regime with a known habit of disinformation. It is impossible to exaggerate how reckless Democrats have been under this standard. If they found the Trump dossier on the sidewalk, they'd be in a better ethical position now. Let's hear what Mr. Schiff knew and when he knew it.

Finally, let us hear from James Comey.

The Trump dossier was reckless and irresponsible in the extreme, but only consequential after Election Day. It didn't prevent Mr. Trump from becoming president.

In the new spirit of non-non-disclosure, it's time for Mr. Comey to tell us about the Russian intelligence scam that may really have changed the election outcome.

In closed hearings, he reportedly acknowledged that his intervention in the Hillary Clinton email case was prompted by what is now understood to have been planted, fake Russian intelligence. The fake Russian intelligence purported to discuss a nonexistent email between then-DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz and George Soros-employed activist Leonard Benardo.

This led directly to Mr. Comey's second intervention, reopening the case 11 days before Election Day, a shocking development that appears now to have moved enough votes into Mr. Trump's column to account for his win.

At the time, the press was all too happy to blame Bill Clinton for his wife's loss when Mr. Comey, for nonclassified consumption, cited Mr. Clinton's tarmac meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch as the reason for his intervention.

The press is silent now.

The new story satisfies nobody's agenda, and only makes the FBI look foolish. Mr. Trump is not eager to hear his victory portrayed as an FBI-precipitated accident. Democrats cling to their increasingly washed-out theory of Trump-Russia collusion.

And yet, if Mr. Comey's antic intervention in response to Russian disinformation inadvertently led to Mr. Trump becoming president, this was the most consequential outcome by far.

* * *

President Trump has the final word however, asking (and answering a key question) - All of this "Russia" talk right when the Republicans are making their big push for historic Tax Cuts & Reform. Is this coincidental? NOT!

All of this "Russia" talk right when the Republicans are making their big push for historic Tax Cuts & Reform. Is this coincidental? NOT!

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017

[Oct 29, 2017] Details Of Suspicious Manafort Wire Transfers Leaked From FBI Probe

Manafort dealing with Yanukovich were long before 2016 elections. So this is king of "overextension" of Muller mandate (which was never completely defined anyway to allow digging durt)
Notable quotes:
"... Just in case there's someone here who's relatively new to the party, please be advised that Viktor Yanukovych was an American lackey whose campaign was orchestrated and staffed by ex-Clinton staffers. ..."
"... Obviously Manafort failed to establish a charitable foundation to launder funds or label these funds "speaking fees" before receiving them. It is good to know that 23 attorneys and millions of dollars in a tax-payer-funded investigation have discovered potential tax violations that may have shorted the U.S. Treasury of a few hundred thousand dollars. ..."
Oct 29, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
As speculation mounts that Paul Manafort might be the target of the sealed indictments reportedly approved by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's grand jury, Buzzfeed is reporting new details of Mueller's probe into Manafort, seemingly a hint that he will in fact be one of, if not the only, target taken into custody tomorrow.

The FBI's investigation of Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, includes a keen focus on a series of suspicious wire transfers in which offshore companies linked to Manafort moved more than $3 million all over the globe between 2012 and 2013.Much of the money came into the United States.

HockeyFool -> Theta_Burn , Oct 29, 2017 3:51 PM

So back in 2012 Manafort was working for the Podesta group. Not Trump. And that assclown Robert Muller has spent far more than $3 million on this political witch hunt. What a fucking joke. Is that the best they got?

MisterMousePotato -> HockeyFool , Oct 29, 2017 5:16 PM

" ... notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was supported by the Kremlin ... ."

Just in case there's someone here who's relatively new to the party, please be advised that Viktor Yanukovych was an American lackey whose campaign was orchestrated and staffed by ex-Clinton staffers.

Unfortunately for Messr. Yanukovych and the people of Ukaraine, he decided not to do America's bidding after all, but instead to sensibly seek trade relations with Russia, which made sense financially, geographically, and socially.

At which point (need I say?), he fell out of favor with his American backers and was replaced in an American-funded coup by American backed Nazis.

nachochan -> MisterMousePotato , Oct 29, 2017 6:23 PM

Good point. Also please be advised that Manafort was likely a Clinton plant in the Trump camp for reasons yet to be seen.

AlexCharting -> HockeyFool , Oct 29, 2017 5:55 PM

Just watch "Get me Roger Stone". Manafort was a major swamp monster

Thomas Paine -> HockeyFool , Oct 29, 2017 7:12 PM

Manafort is too close to the Podesta Group. Mueller is despicable and desperate...now to bait a trap for the President. Kushner, a couple of russian flunkirs...and daddy's girl are the best cheese.

nmewn -> Thomas Paine , Oct 29, 2017 8:23 PM

Yeah, same ole shit, bring an indictment against someone for something that happened YEARS BEFORE the 2016 election (which is not within the scope of Grand Inquisitor Muellers purview) in the hopes he can get Manafort to lie/impugn or otherwise implicate Trump on "Russian collusion". So, they got nuffin and this proves it.

Time for Mueller to be fired.

Or better yet , put the hapless Mueller's sorry ass on the stand and question him about why he stopped investigating the Uranium One deal after getting some low-grade actors and what exactly were the circumstances of him being used as "a bagman" for stolen uranium ;-)

AlaricBalth -> Theta_Burn , Oct 29, 2017 4:14 PM

Tony Podesta and Paul Manefort had close ties. This rabbit hole runs deep and wide, and will prove that the concept of an American bilateral political system is a false narrative designed to divide and rule.

"The Podesta Group was one of several firms that worked on a Manafort-led campaign for a nonprofit called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU). The campaign promoted Ukraine's image in the West and was reportedly backed by the Party of Regions, a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine that was previously led by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych"

Creative_Destruct -> AlaricBalth , Oct 29, 2017 6:12 PM

BLOW BACK onto the Dems and Clintonistas.... let's hope. AND the entirety of Congress, and ALL the Ukranian meddlers if all the suspicious transfers are investigated.

land_of_the_few -> Creative_Destruct , Oct 29, 2017 7:10 PM

Absolutely, if they are interested in 2016 US election meddling by Ukrainians, then there is no point looking at Yanukovych or the formerly ruling Party of Regions. Long gone by then, banned from Parliament by their political opponents.

dead hobo -> So Close , Oct 29, 2017 2:44 PM

If after 5 months this is all they have ... a 4 year old wire transfer for something ... thw WSJ will print on Tuesday "IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE???" Expect Mueller crucifiction shortly afterward.

BlindMonkey -> dead hobo , Oct 29, 2017 3:05 PM

If you gave Vickie "Cookie" Nuland a dollar for every transfer looting the Ukrainian treasury, she would be a rich woman.

espirit -> TahoeBilly2012 , Oct 29, 2017 3:48 PM

Manafort is the poptop on the can of suspicious transfer worms about to be opened. 3 mil is chicken feed, but the precedence is priceless. Lots of loose bowels tomorrow. lol

Paul Kersey -> dead hobo , Oct 29, 2017 3:16 PM

It hardly makes sense to investigate incidents between 2012 and 2013, in an investigation focusing on the year 2016. However, there are some other possibilities. If they know they have Manafort nailed for these charges, this could give Muelller leverage to make a deal with Manafort for dirty info he may have on Trump.

Trump, of course, could pardon Manafort, but, as the article stated, the State of NY is also going after Manafort. Trump can't pardon a state case. Additionally, NY State is also in discovery for the Trump emoluments case with Judge George Daniels (Obama appointee), and Trump will be unable to pardon any possible witnesses or alleged co-defendants (friends and family).

No question about it, this is a fishing expedition, and the Special Prosecutor is sending his fleet of fishing trawlers from sea to shining sea.

Bay of Pigs -> Kayman , Oct 29, 2017 3:13 PM

Yes. Manafort is the distraction and the fall guy for those two whether he committed a money laundering crime or not.

This is all to hide the treasonous crimes of HRC, Podesta, Lynch, Comey, etc...because they all lead back to the DOJ and FBI.

Bay of Pigs -> Kayman , Oct 29, 2017 3:13 PM

Yes. Manafort is the distraction and the fall guy for those two whether he committed a money laundering crime or not.

This is all to hide the treasonous crimes of HRC, Podesta, Lynch, Comey, etc...because they all lead back to the DOJ and FBI.

RumpleShitzkin -> curbjob , Oct 29, 2017 4:01 PM

The same fuckers sitting on a copy of Anthony's laptop? NY AG's are chickenshit. This is all pure chickenshit.

AurorusBorealus , Oct 29, 2017 4:10 PM

Obviously Manafort failed to establish a charitable foundation to launder funds or label these funds "speaking fees" before receiving them. It is good to know that 23 attorneys and millions of dollars in a tax-payer-funded investigation have discovered potential tax violations that may have shorted the U.S. Treasury of a few hundred thousand dollars.

Anunnaki , Oct 29, 2017 7:14 PM

Manafort, Flynn, Don Jr, Jared Kushner. All going to be indicted

[Oct 29, 2017] The Russiagate Scandal Descends into Total Absurdity by Alexander Mercouris

Notable quotes:
"... Since then there has been nothing, a clear sign that the search of Manafort's house has come up with nothing, and that the pressure to get Manafort to talk by dangling threats of indictment in front of him have resulted in nothing. ..."
Oct 14, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org
Even as the Trump administration disintegrates – with the President publicly quarrelling with his Secretary of State, and his Chief of Staff forced to deny he is about to resign – the scandal which more than anything else has defined this Presidency has disintegrated into total lunacy.

Consider these facts:

1) The Mueller investigation

Just a few weeks ago the media was full of reports of how Special Counsel Mueller's investigation was "closing in" on the President and his campaign team. The focus of media interest was on an early morning search in July of the house of Paul Manafort, the campaign professional who at one time acted as the Trump campaign's chairman, with lurid headlines that he was about to be indicted, though it was never made clear for what.

Since then there has been nothing, a clear sign that the search of Manafort's house has come up with nothing, and that the pressure to get Manafort to talk by dangling threats of indictment in front of him have resulted in nothing.

In all other respects a curtain of silence has fallen on Mueller's investigation, a strong sign that after its failure to "break" Manafort it no longer has a clear strategy of what to do.

... ... ...

Reprinted with permission from The Duran .

[Oct 28, 2017] Former CIA Officer 'Russiagate' Was Manufactured By The Clinton Campaign by Philip Giraldi

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... At roughly the same time the Clinton campaign began a major effort to connect Trump with Russia as a way to discredit him and his campaign and to deflect the revelations of her own campaign malfeasance coming from WikiLeaks. In late August, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wrote to FBI head James Comey and demanded that the "connections between the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign" be investigated. In September Senator Diane Feinstein and Representative Adam Schiff of the Senate and House intelligence committees respectively publicly accused the Russians of meddling in the election "based on briefings we have received." ..."
"... The linkage between the dossier and the timing of the Democratic Party attempt to tie Trump to Moscow is significant given what has been revealed over the past several days. As it turns out, it has been confirmed that Steele's firm Fusion GPS was indeed paid not only by the DNC, but also by the Clinton Campaign itself. A Washington lawyer named Marc Elias, whose firm Perkins Coie worked for both the DNC and Hillary, was the go-between on the arrangement, which began in April 2016 and continued until the election. ..."
"... As a former intelligence officer who has seen numerous overseas investigations done for clients, I can say with some confidence that the Steele Dossier is a composite of some fact, a lot of speculation, and even occasional fiction. Some indisputable and confirmable information is inevitably used to provide credibility for a lot of speculation and false stories that were intended to sow doubt and confusion. Gossip and rumors are reported as fact, with the whole product being put together in such a fashion as to appear credible to satisfy a client interested in exploitable information rather than the truth. Including some proper names, which the dossier does occasionally, provides credibility and the FBI's ability to confirm some of the dates and places regarding travel and meetings provided bona fides ..."
"... The dossier was designed to dig up "dirt" on Trump and his associates, but, more to the point, it was clearly intended from the start to do so by manufacturing and nurturing a Russian angle. It sought to discredit Donald Trump and to deceive the public, which suggests that Trump has been right all along regarding something like a conspiracy against him which included the active participation of the FBI and possibly other national security agencies. ..."
"... Perspectives expressed in op-eds are not those of The Daily Caller. ..."
Oct 25, 2017 | dailycaller.com

The central mystery involving what has become known as Russiagate is the lack of any real understanding of what exactly took place. It is alleged in some circles that Moscow somehow interfered in the 2016 Presidential election and might even have tilted the result in favor of candidate Donald Trump. Others suspect that the tale is politically motivated in an attempt to exonerate Hillary Clinton and find Donald Trump or his associates guilty of collusion with an unfriendly foreign government.

Caught in between are those who are not completely convinced by either narrative and are demanding evidence to confirm that there was a sequence of events involving Russia and various American individuals that demonstrates both intent and actual steps taken which would lend credibility to such a hypothesis. So far, in spite of a year and a half of highly intrusive investigation, there has been remarkably little evidence of anything apart from the unchallengeable fact that someone took files from John Podesta as well as the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers and the stolen information wound up at WikiLeaks.

One of the most damaging revelations made regarding Donald Trump consisted of the so-called "Dossier," which had been compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Initial reports suggested that Steele's investigation was commissioned initially by a Republican opponent of Trump, possibly Jeb Bush, and later it was possibly continued by someone connected to the Democratic Party. This genesis of the document was widely reported at the time but no "names" were attached to the claims even though the identities of those who had commissioned the work were known to some journalists who had uncovered additional details relating to the investigation.

The drafts of some parts of the document itself began to make the rounds in Washington during the summer of 2016, though the entire text was not surfaced in the media until January. The dossier was reportedly still being worked on in June by Steele and by one account was turned over to the FBI in Rome by him in July . It later was passed to John McCain in November and was presented to FBI Director James Comey for verification, which he agreed to do.

The Steele Dossier contained serious but largely unsubstantiated allegations about Trump's connection to the Vladimir Putin regime as a businessman who sought and obtained significant, and possibly illegal, favors on real estate transactions from the Russian government. On a more personal level, it also included accounts of some bizarre sexual escapades with prostitutes at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow. Few of the allegations could be verified as the report relied on mostly unnamed, unidentifiable sources. On a more serious note, the dossier concluded with an assessment that Donald Trump was compromised by the Russian intelligence services and could be blackmailed.

At roughly the same time the Clinton campaign began a major effort to connect Trump with Russia as a way to discredit him and his campaign and to deflect the revelations of her own campaign malfeasance coming from WikiLeaks. In late August, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wrote to FBI head James Comey and demanded that the "connections between the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign" be investigated. In September Senator Diane Feinstein and Representative Adam Schiff of the Senate and House intelligence committees respectively publicly accused the Russians of meddling in the election "based on briefings we have received."

The linkage between the dossier and the timing of the Democratic Party attempt to tie Trump to Moscow is significant given what has been revealed over the past several days. As it turns out, it has been confirmed that Steele's firm Fusion GPS was indeed paid not only by the DNC, but also by the Clinton Campaign itself. A Washington lawyer named Marc Elias, whose firm Perkins Coie worked for both the DNC and Hillary, was the go-between on the arrangement, which began in April 2016 and continued until the election.

As a former intelligence officer who has seen numerous overseas investigations done for clients, I can say with some confidence that the Steele Dossier is a composite of some fact, a lot of speculation, and even occasional fiction. Some indisputable and confirmable information is inevitably used to provide credibility for a lot of speculation and false stories that were intended to sow doubt and confusion. Gossip and rumors are reported as fact, with the whole product being put together in such a fashion as to appear credible to satisfy a client interested in exploitable information rather than the truth. Including some proper names, which the dossier does occasionally, provides credibility and the FBI's ability to confirm some of the dates and places regarding travel and meetings provided bona fides for the entire document and resulted in the launching of a top-level law enforcement investigation.

The dossier was designed to dig up "dirt" on Trump and his associates, but, more to the point, it was clearly intended from the start to do so by manufacturing and nurturing a Russian angle. It sought to discredit Donald Trump and to deceive the public, which suggests that Trump has been right all along regarding something like a conspiracy against him which included the active participation of the FBI and possibly other national security agencies.

The president also comes across as credible vis-à-vis his critics because of what has become evident since the dossier was surfaced. The clearly politically motivated multiple investigations carried out so far in which no rock has been unturned have come up with absolutely nothing, either in the form of criminal charges or in terms of actual collusion with a foreign government. And, one might add, there has been little in the way of evidence to sustain the charge that Russia sought to influence the election and might even have succeeded in doing so. But there is one thing new that we do know now: Russiagate began within the Clinton Campaign headquarters.

Phil Giraldi is a former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer who spent 20 years overseas in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism cases.


Perspectives expressed in op-eds are not those of The Daily Caller.

[Oct 28, 2017] Analysis 5 Possible Outcomes of First Mueller Indictments by John T. Bennett

BTW this is yet another leak. Now about grand jury deliberations. And of cause it comes from CNN
What is interesting is that in view of troubles for Hillary with DNC financing of Steele dossier it looks like the deep state switched to the counterattack mode. And Mueller task was and is to dig dirt, that's why 2013 events are now coming to the focus. How they are related to Presidential elections is unclear.
But fishing expeditions against officials are typically successful. As Lavrentiy Beria used to say "Show Me The Man, And I'll Show You The Crime"
Notable quotes:
"... "I'd like to see it end. Look, the whole Russian thing was an excuse (by the Democrats)," he said. "So that was just an excuse for the Democrats losing an election that, frankly, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. ... So there has been absolutely no collusion. ... They ought to get to the end of it because I think the American public is sick of it." ..."
"... (Note: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her top two deputies were asked to respond to the CNN report. None of the senior White House officials responded by time of publication.) ..."
Oct 28, 2017 | www.rollcall.com

The uncharacteristically quiet day at the White House was upended Friday evening by a report that the first indictments in the Justice Department's Russia probe are imminent.

A Washington, D.C., federal grand jury has approved a set of initial charges stemming from the Robert S. Mueller III-led investigation into Russia's meddling into the 2016 U.S. presidential election. CNN was the first to report that the former FBI director turned special counsel could take the first individuals into custody as soon as Monday.

While all indications are that President Donald Trump has yet to be interviewed by Mueller, there's a list of his top 2016 campaign aides, current and former White House aides and longtime confidants who could be rounded up by Mueller's team early next week.

Here are five [possible] indictments and related outcomes that are possible then:

Paul Manafort is indicted. We know that the former Trump campaign chairman has plenty of ties to Russia and other former clients in the region, including former senior Ukrainian leaders.

Most recently, reports surfaced of alleged business dealings totaling $60 million over the past decade between Manafort and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Manafort worked for Deripaska from 2005 to 2009, The Associated Press reported.

Mueller has reportedly warned Manafort -- who is said to have supplied the Putin-connected Deripaska with briefings on the 2016 campaign -- that he likely would be indicted.

Michael Flynn is indicted. The retired Army three-star general was once a well-respected military intelligence officer. He rose through the ranks to lead the Pentagon's top espionage entity, the Defense Intelligence Agency. Then, former aides and confidants have told NPR and other outlets, something changed.

Flynn became enamored with the kind of conservative conspiracy theories that helped power Trump to the White House. The longtime soldier, who had gone into the consulting world after being fired from the DIA by President Barack Obama , became a leading national security and foreign policy adviser to candidate Trump.

But Flynn brought to the campaign a list of questionable decisions, many involving his ties to Russian officials, as a general turned consultant. Flynn served just 24 days as Trump's first White House national security adviser before being fired for misleading Vice President Mike Pence .

House Democrats have pressed for their Republican counterparts to subpoena the White House for documents they allege will show Flynn's "egregious conflicts of interest" due to his business dealings with foreign governments. One is Turkey. Another is Russia.

"We believe this paper trail must be pursued to answer the gravest question of all: Did Gen. Flynn seek to change the course of our country's national security to benefit the same private interests he previously promoted, whether by advising President Trump, interacting with foreign officials, or influencing other members of the Trump administration?" House Oversight ranking member Elijah E. Cummings wrote in a recent letter to panel Chairman Trey Gowdy that featured nearly 20 other Democratic signatures.

Carter Page is indicted. The Trump-connected energy consultant came under scrutiny in 2016 for alleged questionable ties to Putin's government while he was part of the Trump campaign.

Though Page has denied any nefarious links to Russian officials, he has informed the Senate Intelligence Committee that he plans to plead the Fifth if called to testify in that panel's Russia probe. He is slated to appear before the House Intelligence Committee next week but has given no indication if he will be cooperative in that investigation.

The long shots

Jared Kushner or Donald Trump Jr. is indicted. The latter is the president's eldest son and the former is his son-in-law and a senior White House adviser. Both were present during a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer who allegedly came with dirt on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton .

After nearly three hours of testimony before Senate Intelligence staffers on July 24, Kushner stood outside the White House and denied colluding with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign, saying all of his actions were both legal and proper.

Trump's son-in-law defended himself during rare public remarks, saying: " I did not collude with Russia, nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so ."

"I had no improper contacts" during the campaign and transition period, Kushner said, adding, "I have not relied on Russian funds for my business."

He has said he left the Trump Tower meeting with the Kremlin-linked lawyer after concluding she had nothing of value for his father-in-law's campaign.

Steven Hall, the CIA's former chief of Russia operations, on Friday took to Twitter to summarize what might have Trump Jr. in legal hot water when it comes to that June 2016 meeting: "Don Jr took a mtg to get info Russians wanted to give."

But an email exchange surfaced this summer with a former Russian business partner of his father that shows Trump Jr. enthusiastically accepting the man's offer to pass the alleged Kremlin-provided dirt on Clinton to the Trump campaign.

"If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer," Trump Jr. wrote during the email exchange with Rob Goldstone, a British-born entertainment publicist who met his father when he was trying to do business in Russia. Their email exchange began on June 3, 2016, about a month and a half before Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination.

If Mueller is targeting the commander in chief, going after his son or son-in-law this early would be a way of getting Trump's attention.

Trump fires Mueller. Remember, Trump already ousted FBI Director James B. Comey , who has said the president asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn.

"No, not at all," Trump told reporters during an impromptu Oct. 16 Rose Garden press conference when asked if he was considering firing Mueller from the special counsel post.

But that was before the president, who values and rewards loyalty, was facing the first wave of indictments in the Russia probe. And Trump made his disgust clear that day about the ongoing DOJ investigation.

"I'd like to see it end. Look, the whole Russian thing was an excuse (by the Democrats)," he said. "So that was just an excuse for the Democrats losing an election that, frankly, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. ... So there has been absolutely no collusion. ... They ought to get to the end of it because I think the American public is sick of it."

There is a modern precedent, though controversial and presidency-ending, for such a move.

The modern standard bearer is Richard Nixon, the president whom Trump's critics often cite when pointing to his rhetoric and missteps. The so-called Saturday Night Massacre in 1973 went down after Nixon's insistence that the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate cover-up be fired and ended with the top two Justice Department officials quitting. Nixon eventually resigned in 1974 after the House Judiciary Committee reported articles of impeachment but before the full House could vote.

(Note: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her top two deputies were asked to respond to the CNN report. None of the senior White House officials responded by time of publication.)

[Oct 28, 2017] After revelation on Steele dossier Clinton clan decided to couterattack

Notable quotes:
"... Mueller is authorized to investigate "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation," according to Rosenstein's order. ..."
"... The special counsel's investigation has focused on potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as obstruction of justice by the President, who might have tried to impede the investigation. CNN reported that investigators are scrutinizing Trump and his associates' financial ties to Russia. ..."
Oct 28, 2017 | www.cnn.com

Original title Exclusive First charges filed in Mueller investigation - CNNPolitics

Washington (CNN) A federal grand jury in Washington on Friday approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to sources briefed on the matter.

The charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said. It is unclear what the charges are. A spokesman for the special counsel's office declined to comment. The White House also had no comment, a senior administration official said Saturday morning. Mueller was appointed in May to lead the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Under the regulations governing special counsel investigations, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has oversight over the Russia investigation, would have been made aware of any charges before they were taken before the grand jury for approval, according to people familiar with the matter. Little chance Congress can kill Mueller's funding On Friday, top lawyers who are helping to lead the Mueller probe, including veteran prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, were seen entering the court room at the DC federal court where the grand jury meets to hear testimony in the Russia investigation. Reporters present saw a flurry of activity at the grand jury room, but officials made no announcements. Shortly after President Donald Trump abruptly fired then-FBI Director James Comey, Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel. Mueller took the reins of a federal investigation that Comey first opened in July 2016 in the middle of the presidential campaign. Mueller is authorized to investigate "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation," according to Rosenstein's order. The special counsel's investigation has focused on potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as obstruction of justice by the President, who might have tried to impede the investigation. CNN reported that investigators are scrutinizing Trump and his associates' financial ties to Russia. Mueller's team has also examined foreign lobbying conducted by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and others. His team has issued subpoenas for documents and testimony to a handful of figures, including some people close to Manafort, and others involved in the Trump Tower meeting between Russians and campaign officials. Last year, the Comey-led investigation secured approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to monitor the communications of Manafort, as well as former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, as part of the investigation into Russian meddling. In addition to Mueller's probe, three committees on Capitol Hill are conducting their own investigations.

CNN's Marshall Cohen, Mary Kay Mallonee, Laura Robinson and Ryan Nobles contributed to this report.

[Oct 28, 2017] All the faux media wind about Russians hacking the crooked DNC, nothing about the deep states surveillance of Hillary's opposition.

Notable quotes:
"... all the faux media wind about Russians hacking the crooked DNC, nothing about the deep states surveillance of Hillary's opposition. First the NKVD came for GOPsters........ Stop whining about fascist threats. DNC neoliberal gestapo is working ..."
"... The dems' failed coup the demise of their partisan deep state surveillance. The US cannot afford to allow the crooked democrat party to abide. ..."
Feb 20, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
ilsm : February 19, 2017 at 04:06 AM
all the faux media wind about Russians hacking the crooked DNC, nothing about the deep states surveillance of Hillary's opposition. First the NKVD came for GOPsters........ Stop whining about fascist threats. DNC neoliberal gestapo is working
ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs..., February 19, 2017 at 07:23 AM
The dems' failed coup the demise of their partisan deep state surveillance. The US cannot afford to allow the crooked democrat party to abide.

[Oct 28, 2017] MSM beat impeachment drum again

Notable quotes:
"... Nutbag "journalist" John Nichols is writing for The Progressive and pushing "The Case For Impeachment" by citing Congressman Brad Sherman: ""But we must move forward as quickly as possible to ensure a competent government that respects the Constitution and the rule of law . . . " ..."
"... Pardon me, but I could say the same thing about every presidential administration since Truman, but most particularly about Clinton, Bush, and Obama--the trend going ever more incompetent, unlawful and unconstitutional, with millions of innocents dead as a result. ..."
Jul 27, 2017 | progressive.org

karlof1 | Jul 27, 2017 3:40:40 PM | 117

Nutbag "journalist" John Nichols is writing for The Progressive and pushing "The Case For Impeachment" by citing Congressman Brad Sherman: ""But we must move forward as quickly as possible to ensure a competent government that respects the Constitution and the rule of law . . . "

Pardon me, but I could say the same thing about every presidential administration since Truman, but most particularly about Clinton, Bush, and Obama--the trend going ever more incompetent, unlawful and unconstitutional, with millions of innocents dead as a result.

Yes, Trump's following that same road, although Trump's very far from "the most irresponsible and lawless President in American history," as Nichols alleges--his three immediate predecessors though certainly rate that condemnation. http://progressive.org/magazine/the-case-for-impeachment/

I wish I could just laugh like crazy at the absurdity of our current dilemma, but far too many people are dying as a result for it to be anything but humorous.

[Oct 28, 2017] Mueller Files First Charges Over Russia The Daily Caller

Oct 28, 2017 | dailycaller.com

CNN reported Friday night that Mueller has filed charges in sealed indictments. It is currently not known what the charges are or who they have been filed against, but CNN reported that multiple people could be facing charges.

Those affected by the indictments reportedly may be taken into custody by as early as Monday.

The news comes as a number of Republicans have been skeptical of Mueller's ability to be impartial in the investigation. Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona told Fox News Friday that "the federal code could not be clearer – Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey."

The indictments could affect former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. In September, a report from the New York Times alleged that Mueller told Manafort that he would be indicted. However, there is no indication Manafort is involved yet.

[Oct 27, 2017] Hillary Clinton's campaign accused of election law violation - Washington Times

Oct 27, 2017 | www.washingtontimes.com

Hillary Clinton 's presidential campaign was accused of breaking election rules Wednesday as she and fellow Democrats faced fallout from the disclosure that her campaign and party operatives paid for research used in a salacious anti- Trump dossier.

President Trump called the revelation "a disgrace," and the head of the House investigative committee said he wants to know whether the FBI relied on the dossier in its counterintelligence work.

"It's very sad what they've done with this fake dossier," Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House. "The Democrats always denied it. Hillary Clinton always denied it. I think it's a disgrace. It's a very sad commentary on politics in this country."


SEE ALSO: Trump says Clinton, Democrats were 'disgrace' to pay for dossier


The dossier, first reported on late in the presidential campaign and eventually published in its entirety by BuzzFeed after the election, contained a series of unsubstantiated and often salacious accusations against Mr. Trump , including supposed contacts between his associates and Russian officials.

The 35-page document was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was hired by research firm Fusion GPS.

Law firm Perkins Coie, which handled legal work for the Clinton campaign, admitted Tuesday that it paid Fusion "to perform a variety of research services" as part of its work for Mrs. Clinton .

... ... ...

Operatives for Mr. Trump 's chief opponents during the Republican primary have denied involvement in the dossier, but Mr. Trump said it was a possibility.

"Yes, it might have started with the Republicans early on in the primaries. I think I would know, but let's find out who it is," he told reporters. "If I were to guess, I have one name in mind."

But given the revelations about Democrats' involvement and fresh investigations into a uranium deal with a Russian firm approved by the Obama administration, Mr. Trump said the Russia controversy has "turned around" on the Democrats.

"This was the Democrats coming up with an excuse for losing an election. They lost it very badly," he said. "They didn't know what to say, so they made up the whole Russia hoax. Now it's turning out that the whole hoax is turned around."

... ... ...

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, accused the executive branch of stonewalling Congress from obtaining documents related to the Trump dossier. He said the FBI and Justice Department have not complied with requests from congressional members for documents related to the dossier.

[Oct 27, 2017] British Involvement In Trump Dossier Needs Further Investigation

Notable quotes:
"... Michael Sussmann, a lawyer from the same firm that hired Fusion GPS on order of Democrats, hired the Crowdstrike cyber-outlet to investigate the leak of DNC emails. Crowdstrike and the DNC denied the FBI access to the relevant servers but asserted that "Russian hacking" was the source of the leak. ..."
"... The "Trump dossier" was opposition research ordered up and paid for by the Clinton/DNC mafia. Most of its content was obviously fake or patched together from publicly known facts. But it took up to now for U.S. media to point that out. The fake dossier, paid for by the Democrats, was used by the FBI under Obama to get FISA warrants to spy on Republican party operatives. ..."
"... We noted in January that the dossier was additionally used by the British and American deep state to sabotage Trump's plans for better relations with Russia (see original for source quotes): ..."
"... Steele then decided to hand the papers to the FBI and to talk to its agents hoping they would start an official investigation. He cleared his move (or was ordered to proceed?) at the highest level of the British government ..."
"... When Steele's first move with the FBI in October did note deliver the hoped for results an attempt to stove pipe them through Senator John McCain was launched. A "former" British ambassador to Moscow arranged the hand over ..."
"... The MI6 is well known for launching fakes on behalf of the British government. ..."
"... After Trump unexpectedly won the election a new effort was launched to publish the smears. The Director of National Intelligence decided (or was ordered to) "brief" the President, the President elect and Congress on the obviously dubious accusations ..."
"... After the election the Democrats stopped paying for new Steele reports. But by then efforts to make the fake Steele reports public and to thereby sabotage Trump policies turned into high gear. McCain had already been involved in distributing the report and it was he or the Brits who who paid for the last fake report Steele delivered: ..."
"... What I want to know is why the Washington Post has switched sides and is publishing something approaching the truth. Do they know a whole lot more malfeasance by the Clintons is about to be uncovered and are doing their best to protect their "journalistic" "reputation?" ..."
"... In the WaPo link, it was pretty specific. The political lobbies hire law firms to subcontract intelligence in order to maintain "confidentiality agreements". If the confidentiality agreement legitimizes defying the laws and orders of not only the legislative branch, but the collective government, it becomes clear the corporations regulate government, not the other way around. ..."
"... Yikes. I recall reading that Steele's contacts were 'Eastern Europeans', this doesn't rule out Ukrainians. Okay, maybe there really are some Russians looking for a quick buck. The point is that we are not even close to establishing ties to 'the Kremlin' but this doesn't stop MSM commentators from going there, a lot. ..."
"... When considered in conjunction with the increasing awareness of the close relationship between Western intelligence agencies and terrorism, a big part of why Russia is the bogeyman du juor in both the US and UK is revealed. The continued rapacious plunder of Western societies for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many requires an external threat to justify eternal war, police state tactics such as surveillance and militarization of police forces, the reduction of civil liberties, and expanded austerity measures in the name of "security". ..."
"... For the Dem lackeys at CNN attacking Trump with false charges was "news," their hero Obama's farewell speech was not. ..."
"... When the agency //MI6// was plunged into panic over the poisoning of its agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, the then chief, Sir John Scarlett, needed a trusted senior officer to plot a way through the minefield ahead – so he turned to Steele. It was Steele, sources say, who correctly and quickly realised that Litvinenko's death was a Russian state "hit". ..... ;) ..."
"... Reading a large part of the Podesta e-mails showed how completely terminally incompetent and out of touch the whole Dem. apparatus is. One usually likes to think that crooks and Mafia types are wily beasts who figure the angles and have several pots boiling and are good at juggling different scenarios and disculpating themselves. Your dem leader can be dumb as a brick, corrupt to the bone, a high-level sadist, all no problem - even adulation awaits. ..."
"... I recall the strenuous effort put forth to sell the "Magic Bullet" verdict of the Warren Commission, which allows me to repeat what Russia's Foreign Ministry said about the USA's trustworthiness: "They lie without shame," lying that began in earnest in 1945, escalating ever since. http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2920164 ..."
"... Why did Clapper and Brennan peddle so hard the Russians colluded with Trump meme? Why did they fear Trump so much? ..."
"... Yes, the big question why did the top officials in the intelligence agencies in the US and UK try so hard to take down Trump? ..."
"... I think it's because Donald Trump fired them. Nothing like dropping a deuce in the room on the way out. ..."
"... IMO, the cash flow to MIC on both sides of the Atlantic. No bogeyman, no wars, no new toys and no treats. War is a money racket. ..."
"... Trump campaigned on America First; rebuild factories and infrastructure, less foreign wars, detente with Russia. These promises were taken seriously and Russiagate was unwrapped. See how quickly, after his taking the oath of office, he fell in line with the junta? Really, do you think he selected his cabinet people? ..."
"... I take it to mean Trump was a threat to the establishment, or at least a majority of the establishment that controls MSM and CIA (then again it is more likely the CIA control the establiushment and media). The threat has now passed and the Trump Putin meme is being wound back. A few scapegoats from the swamp may lose their heads but thats about it. ..."
"... The secret world has always shielded incompetence. The Wilderness of Mirrors is the only place where you can generate the myth of quality through withholding the facts of your actions. One suspects that the CIA is saturated with incompetence. Part of the reason that it hated to see it in the Brits. ..."
"... The dossier is a US fabrication, merely using the lackeys du jour . All useful analysis will flow from this. ..."
Oct 27, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

We noted back in July that the only relevant "collusion with the Russians" during the 2016 election cycle was the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton smear campaign against Donald Trump:

Hillary Clinton campaign cut-out hires the (former?) British intelligence agent Steele to pay money to (former?) Russian intelligence agents and high-level Kremlin employees for dirt about Donald Trump. They deliver some fairy tales. The resulting dossier is peddled far and wide throughout Washington DC with the intent of damaging Trump.

There was never evidence that Steele indeed talked to any Russian, or really had contact with his claimed sources. He has been for years persona non grata in Moscow and could not visit the country.

Yesterday, our assertion that Clinton campaign cut-outs paid for the dossier, was finally confirmed: Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier

Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.
..,
After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Told ya so ...

Michael Sussmann, a lawyer from the same firm that hired Fusion GPS on order of Democrats, hired the Crowdstrike cyber-outlet to investigate the leak of DNC emails. Crowdstrike and the DNC denied the FBI access to the relevant servers but asserted that "Russian hacking" was the source of the leak.

The "Trump dossier" was opposition research ordered up and paid for by the Clinton/DNC mafia. Most of its content was obviously fake or patched together from publicly known facts. But it took up to now for U.S. media to point that out. The fake dossier, paid for by the Democrats, was used by the FBI under Obama to get FISA warrants to spy on Republican party operatives.

We noted in January that the dossier was additionally used by the British and American deep state to sabotage Trump's plans for better relations with Russia (see original for source quotes):

The "former" desk officer for Russia in the British MI6 Christopher Steele was the one who prepared the 35 pages of obviously false claims about Russian connections with and kompromat against Trump. There are so many inconsistencies in these pages that anyone knowledgeable about the workings in Moscow could immediately identify it as fake .
...
Steele spread the fakes throughout the press corps in Washington DC but no media published them because these were obviously false accusations.

Steele then decided to hand the papers to the FBI and to talk to its agents hoping they would start an official investigation. He cleared his move (or was ordered to proceed?) at the highest level of the British government :
...
When Steele's first move with the FBI in October did note deliver the hoped for results an attempt to stove pipe them through Senator John McCain was launched. A "former" British ambassador to Moscow arranged the hand over :
...
The MI6 is well known for launching fakes on behalf of the British government.

Even the second, more official handover to the FBI still did not result in the hoped for publication of the allegations. But by that time Clinton was widely expect to win the election anyway so no further steps were taken.

After Trump unexpectedly won the election a new effort was launched to publish the smears. The Director of National Intelligence decided (or was ordered to) "brief" the President, the President elect and Congress on the obviously dubious accusations.

It was this decision that made sure that the papers would eventually be published. As the NYT noted :
...
Only after Clapper or others leaked to CNN about the briefing of Obama, Trump and Congress, did CNN publish about the 35 pages :
...
The attack was a deep state attempt to stage a coup against Trump :

After the election the Democrats stopped paying for new Steele reports. But by then efforts to make the fake Steele reports public and to thereby sabotage Trump policies turned into high gear. McCain had already been involved in distributing the report and it was he or the Brits who who paid for the last fake report Steele delivered:

Let me remind you of the basic facts about the Dossier--It consists of 13 separate reports. The first is dated 20 June 2016. That date is important because it shows that it took a little more than two months [after the Democrats started paying] for Fusion GPS to generate its first report on Trump's alleged Russian activities. If Fusion GPS already had something in the can then I would expect them to have put something out in early May. Eleven more reports were generated between 26 July and 19 October 2016. That tracks with the letter from Perkins Coie that the engagement by the Clinton Campaign ended at the end of October.

But there is a big problem and unanswered question--The Dossier includes a final report that is dated 13 December 2016. Who paid for this? Was it John McCain?

The purpose of the final fake report Steele added to the dossier was to provide "evidence" that Trump was involved in the "Russian hacking" of the DNC:

Cont. reading: British Involvement In "Trump Dossier" Needs Further Investigation

03:26 AM | Comments (62)

johnf | Oct 26, 2017 3:36:08 AM | 1

What I want to know is why the Washington Post has switched sides and is publishing something approaching the truth. Do they know a whole lot more malfeasance by the Clintons is about to be uncovered and are doing their best to protect their "journalistic" "reputation?"
same as it ever was | Oct 26, 2017 3:37:37 AM | 2
Wake me when someone actually goes to gaol for any of this... yawn...
The protected class has been the protected class for centuries, and shall, without drastic beyond planetary intervention, remain the protected class for centuries more.
Mina | Oct 26, 2017 3:43:12 AM | 3
The "special relation" at its best! Will Trump take it personally and let the Brits down in their latest going solo adventure?
x | Oct 26, 2017 4:15:28 AM | 5
Seems HMSS Agent '.007' didn't quite deliver to "Q" this time... sad state of affairs that the former once somewhat 'great' Britain has fallen so low in the IQ stakes that they would even think such contrived rubbish would work. Hubris or desperation? What a laugh! Judging by the MSM emissions I'd suggest we have a whole generation of policy cretins in 'da service'. Pure Putin Envy, I suspect: gone blind with geopolitical onanism.

And, can we now assume, as this DC delicacy boils in the cauldron for a few weeks, that we will soon see Julian Assange make his prison break? He must have enough material in encrypted dead-man locks on the Clinton Gang et al to get a free pass from diplomatic 'jail' AND gift his kind South American hosts some diplomatic credits to cash-in down London Town.

Anon | Oct 26, 2017 4:44:31 AM | 6
....and instantly the anti trump msm leak that a person close to Trump have once contacted Wikileaks. Sigh.
The clinton paid for dossier is so implacting, or should be, because the media wont cover it as they should, they will bury it.

The western msm is done, its so corrupt and propagandistic its amazing that not more people take note of this.

falcemartello | Oct 26, 2017 6:25:33 AM | 7
The sad thing is just like you said you brought this up last year. This was being said throughout last year prior to the POTUS election and had all good investigative reporting behind it. Now that the court case comes out the msm along with all their pupp[ets are spouting out this stuff. Everybody with a scintilla of grey matter since mid 2016 new full well that the whole xenophobic narrative was total BS.Just like the Syrian civil war narrative was all BS or Benghazi /Qadaffi slaughtering his people. To this day the sheeple are in this Orwellian stupor. It is dangerous and troubling. We are living like zombies with no critical thinking or capacity to cal out BS and lies . For heavens sake will the people wake up and stop supporting this BS and start voting with our brains. Political system is dead the economy is dead society is sick so we being the 99 percent by shear numbers should be able to demand and garner change.
Stryker | Oct 26, 2017 7:08:32 AM | 8
You ever notice how everybody can deny it all except for the few unfortunate souls who have to go into hiding?

My thought is the intelligence community includes the US, UK and Russia, and that's just a short list. They're all collaborating, and they are the immortal institutions we identify as "corporations" and "think tanks" regulating government. The idea "the people" have influence is absurd until one considers all those institutions consist of communities of people.

In the WaPo link, it was pretty specific. The political lobbies hire law firms to subcontract intelligence in order to maintain "confidentiality agreements". If the confidentiality agreement legitimizes defying the laws and orders of not only the legislative branch, but the collective government, it becomes clear the corporations regulate government, not the other way around.

Babarian | Oct 26, 2017 7:37:26 AM | 9
Stryker, you might need to elaborate your claim that Russia is in some way in cahoots with the CIA I find it preposterous to make that link.
Ghostship | Oct 26, 2017 7:42:09 AM | 10
What is it about Prague that non-existant meetings are held there:
Michael Cohen[, President Donald Trump's longtime personal lawyer,] held a secret meeting in Prague
Back in 2001 :
The alleged Prague connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda came through an alleged meeting between September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraqi consulate Ahmad Samir al-Ani in April 2001.

Has someone been watching too many "Cold War" spy movies or is the Czech counterintelligence service's head stuck so far up Washington's arse they can't see anything. If they'd said it was Prague, OK perhaps it would have had a bit more credibility.

Christian Chuba | Oct 26, 2017 8:00:22 AM | 12
Russians behind dossier: Anyone else notice that as this story is being reported that Russia (the victim) is being blamed for the Dossier? In its most blatant form it goes like this ... 'HRC colluded with the Kremlin against Trump'. The way they connect the dots; HRC -> DNC -> Steele -> 'alleged Russian contacts' = Kremlin.

Yikes. I recall reading that Steele's contacts were 'Eastern Europeans', this doesn't rule out Ukrainians. Okay, maybe there really are some Russians looking for a quick buck. The point is that we are not even close to establishing ties to 'the Kremlin' but this doesn't stop MSM commentators from going there, a lot.

somebody | Oct 26, 2017 9:48:32 AM | 14
If you google Britain and Russia you find the whole - recent - campaign. This here is targeted at the labour party .
This government is not spending enough to meet the risks, threats, nor the opportunities identified in its own National Defence and Security Strategy.

Politicians go where the power - the money - is. Clinton/Democrats decided to ride the wave they did not start it. It does get very silly with Boris Johnson as the top clown .

str8arrow62 | Oct 26, 2017 10:06:58 AM | 15
"If that bastard gets elected. we'll all hang from nooses"...Hildabeast

Who's up for a public hanging?

SlapHappy | Oct 26, 2017 10:26:34 AM | 16
Anyone who threatens to challenge the status quo of the ruling establishment with a move to the left will be discredited, and in the event they can't have their character assassinated, their person will be assassinated instead. See Paul Wellstone, Dr. David Kelly, Pat Tillman, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, JFK, RFK, etc, almost ad infinitum.

When considered in conjunction with the increasing awareness of the close relationship between Western intelligence agencies and terrorism, a big part of why Russia is the bogeyman du juor in both the US and UK is revealed. The continued rapacious plunder of Western societies for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many requires an external threat to justify eternal war, police state tactics such as surveillance and militarization of police forces, the reduction of civil liberties, and expanded austerity measures in the name of "security".

Both Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party and what should have been Bernie Sanders' Democratic Party were threatening to turn back the clock on the Neoliberal/Neoconservative (see: Zionist) strategy of consolidating both capital and power through divisive politics, unfettered predatory capitalism, and war; all enabled by a well-orchestrated campaign of fear, xenophobia, and state-sponsored terror.

Until we root out the Zionist menace from our governments, industries, media, and - in a hat-tip to psychohistorian - our treasuries, we will continue to toil in an artificially divided society wherein we work for the benefit of a self-proclaimed chosen few, all the while being tricked into fighting their wars which are of no benefit to us and then being given the bill for those wars.

Don Bacon | Oct 26, 2017 10:43:43 AM | 17
I haven't owned a teevee in years, but I happened to be in a motel room the night that Obama gave his farewell speech a year or so ago.
After the conclusion of the speech, FoxNews thoroughly critiqued the speech. Switching over to CNN, Trump's "fake news" network, the speech wasn't covered at all. Instead they covered the dossier in depth, with several "journalists" droning on and on about all the collusion evidence.
Which just goes to prove that Trump was correct (again). For the Dem lackeys at CNN attacking Trump with false charges was "news," their hero Obama's farewell speech was not.
Piotr Berman | Oct 26, 2017 10:56:33 AM | 20
Posted by: somebody | Oct 26, 2017 9:48:32 AM | 14

The link in that post requires utmost caution, and should not be opened if your mental health can be compromised by an excessive dollop of nonsense. Finding two consecutive sentences with a consistent thread of though is pretty hard. Look at this:

We should consider renewing attempts to expand the UN Security Council to include India, Brazil, Germany and Japan, and to promote the idea of a rapid reaction force under its control, however difficult this might prove to be. Our two new aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales along with the French carrier in production could play a leading role in a naval version.

So, "we need" to expand UNSC and the navy. What is the connection? New council members do not seem useful for the naval expansion (why do not postulate a Brazilian aircraft carrier?!), and vice versa. And where those aircraft carriers are supposed to go? A new Crimean war? If you seriously want to address threats to democracy and everything we find good and dear, we should target Tuvalu, but for that it suffices to have a ship that has, say, 20 berths for marine infantry, and, most importantly, resolve -- sadly lacking.

This belongs to a genre of political analysis that is boldly nonsensical. Typically, there is a call for clarity followed by mental spaghetti. And/or a call for boldness followed by verbiage that is offensive only in its lack of content. But what makes this article somewhat unique is the sheer number of sentences that come without explanation and go absolutely nowhere. Why suddenly UNSC expansion? What would improve with two new aircraft carriers owned by European powers? The threats that have to be addressed are cyber attacks, Islamic terrorism and Russia undermining the growth of democracy in Ukraine.

The author also mentions his childhood in Nigerian countryside together with the British need to prevent any single power dominating over continental Europe. The latter would suggest the need to reduce American influence, the former ????

Noirette | Oct 26, 2017 11:24:05 AM | 21
C. Steele. Guardian, Jan 2017:

When the agency //MI6// was plunged into panic over the poisoning of its agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, the then chief, Sir John Scarlett, needed a trusted senior officer to plot a way through the minefield ahead – so he turned to Steele. It was Steele, sources say, who correctly and quickly realised that Litvinenko's death was a Russian state "hit". ..... ;)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/12/intelligence-sources-vouch-credibility-donald-trump-russia-dossier-author

Steele quit MI6 (wiki) in 2009 and tried to monetize his 'knowledge' and 'subservience' in private cos., > hack to the highest bidder type.

The relations between Fusion GPS and Orbis https://orbisbi.com - see the symbolic images (Steele a co-founder) remain murky imho but there you go, such private cos. can make money off paying hubris-deluded clients who require! this or that.

Reading a large part of the Podesta e-mails showed how completely terminally incompetent and out of touch the whole Dem. apparatus is. One usually likes to think that crooks and Mafia types are wily beasts who figure the angles and have several pots boiling and are good at juggling different scenarios and disculpating themselves. Your dem leader can be dumb as a brick, corrupt to the bone, a high-level sadist, all no problem - even adulation awaits.

WorldBLee | Oct 26, 2017 11:40:16 AM | 22
The media have to keep running Russia stories--so much so that it seems they ultimately come round to the point where they're biting the hand that fed them.
dh | Oct 26, 2017 12:03:41 PM | 23
@22 From KGB agent to new-Stalin to Tsar. The man is unstoppable. We definitely need more aircraft carriers.
dh | Oct 26, 2017 12:04:14 PM | 24
@23 Link https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21730645-world-marks-centenary-october-revolution-russia-once-again-under-rule?hl=1&noRedirect=1
Anon | Oct 26, 2017 12:05:14 PM | 25
Twitter just banned RT and Sputnik from having ads! Freedom of speech folks, its not worth anything these days. Twitter is nothing but a deep state empire tool.
karlof1 | Oct 26, 2017 12:28:48 PM | 27
Anon @25--

And there's absolutely zero evidence for them to use as a basis for the bans.

james | Oct 26, 2017 1:06:36 PM | 28
@27 karlof1.. but the optics look good for the continued smear of russia... man, this endless msm story gets very boring.. all it tells me is how decrepit the western msm is at this point groveling in the ditch 24/7...
Virgile | Oct 26, 2017 1:36:09 PM | 29
Movie Producers are fighting to get another blockbuster "based a true story"
Who will publish the script first of " A Kink in Moscow"? the UK or the USA?
Anon | Oct 26, 2017 1:52:31 PM | 30
karlof1

"And there's absolutely zero evidence for them to use as a basis for the bans."

Indeed, will Twitter now ban western msm on their respective reporting of Russia? No of course not, what a friggin joke. In fact its not a joke its pretty damn scary this censorship and masshysteria against Russia and these days clearly tells us who spread propaganda in our soceity and who enable it (Twitter). Its nothing but a tool of CIA/FBI now. No doubt about that.

Sick McCarthyism is alive 2017, who would have thought? Apparently the western establishment thought that he was more than right.

Ghostship | Oct 26, 2017 1:54:28 PM | 31
>>>> Ian | Oct 26, 2017 12:28:48 PM | 26
To be clear on my part, my opinion is that all major turmoil, wars and financial crises lead to the Rothchilds.

Do you do PR for Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan? I only ask 'cos Rothschilds ain't what they used to be by a few million miles and if anyone is responsible for all major turmoil, wars and financial crises, it's Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Stop with the dumb conspiracy theories, there is enough real shit in the world to be bothered about for many, many lifetimes.

james | Oct 26, 2017 2:15:17 PM | 34
@30 anon.. fully agree.. twitter is nothing more then a tool of the cia/fbi - deep state at this point.. same deal facebook and google.. pathetic...
Ort | Oct 26, 2017 2:24:42 PM | 35
When a Big Lie is exposed, or simply goes flat like an automobile tire with multiple pinhole-prick slow leaks, the Big Liars have a damage control strategy: Go Bigger!

This may be a semantic quibble, but to me even blithely characterizing the Steele dossier as "opposition research" is a mendacious euphemism.

There's a well-known, and perhaps apocryphal, story that Lyndon Johnson once directed his aides to spread the rumor that his opponent in a Texas election enjoyed physical relations with barnyard animals. When his staffers allegedly objected that this assertion could never be proved, Johnson supposedly replied "I know that. I just want to hear him deny it."

By present-day standards, LBJ's ploy would be characterized as perfectly legitimate "opposition research".

Judging from preliminary indications, the deluded or desperate anti-Trump resistance and Democratic Party Establishment may double down and, incredibly, "own" the scurrilous smear. Not just by dignifying the dirty trick as "normal", i.e. nominally routine, "ethical" opposition research, but by implying that the fabrications it contains are indeed a "smoking gun" that ought to be sufficient to fatally undermine Trump's presidency after all.

As I've been remarking more and more lately, a literary committee composed of Jonathan Swift, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Joseph Heller, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Kurt Vonnegut couldn't create a more surrealistic and bizarre political landscape.

c1ue | Oct 26, 2017 2:34:20 PM | 36
@Christian Chuba #12
"Eastern Europeans" -> think Ukraine, or more specifically the SBU (Ukraine CIA). The link with McCain and the Democratic party becomes more clear then (Nuland).
Ian | Oct 26, 2017 2:39:36 PM | 37
to Ghostship: Have a read "Web of Debt" by Ellen Hodgson Brown and "Beyond Banksters" by Joyce Helson. The references they provide will get you started. Another excellent reference is "Secrets of the Federal Reserve" by Eustace Mullins.

When you start researching the issue of the crippling financial debts that characterize western countries then it comes evident the primary cause is a predatory private banking system. Private money manufactures financial crises and wars to coerce governments to impose local and foreign policies that promote only the interests of private money and which only has destructive and negative consequences for the 99%. You may not like it hear it and but all money leads to the House of Rothschild and it's net worth reported to be several hundred TRILLION!

nottheonly1 | Oct 26, 2017 3:15:56 PM | 38
@same as it ever was #2

An undeniable truth. But what do we know about those?

The so called "Democratic Party" is the equivalent of the grand old NSDAP. As with the original, its followers are as die hard Fascists, as were the good Germans looking the other way when the truth became obvious.

While I don't believe it will go on for centuries, the callousness and gullibility of the American people makes them perfect Fascists.

Sieg Heil is the only greeting missing when addressing The Führer. Well, actually the person's soaking wet dream has always been to be the first Führerin of all times. Thatcher sucked at it, so the position is still vacant.
The question is, when will we hear the equivalent of "Sieg Heil meine Führerin"?

karlof1 | Oct 26, 2017 3:24:34 PM | 39
I recall the strenuous effort put forth to sell the "Magic Bullet" verdict of the Warren Commission, which allows me to repeat what Russia's Foreign Ministry said about the USA's trustworthiness: "They lie without shame," lying that began in earnest in 1945, escalating ever since. http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2920164

Given what Congress just approved of, the mid-term elections ought to be very entertaining, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/10/26/216-gop-house-members-just-voted-destroy-safety-net-and-deliver-trillion-dollar-tax

Trump declares opioid epidemic a National Emergency. Guess he needs to sanction the CIA's opium growing project in Afghanistan along with that organization's top officers. After all, that's what he did to Venezuela for far lesser offences.

Anon | Oct 26, 2017 3:40:01 PM | 40
Also funny how quickly western msm buried this:

Ukraine's collusion with Hillary Clinton to meddle in US elections
http://theduran.com/ukraines-collusion-with-hillary-clinton-to-meddle-in-us-elections-now-exposed/

somebody | Oct 26, 2017 4:25:36 PM | 41
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Oct 26, 2017 10:56:33 AM | 20

Of course. I suppose it is empire phantom pain. Which presumably is what Brexit was about.

dh | Oct 26, 2017 4:47:35 PM | 42
@41 There may be some in the UK who yearn for the days of empire. I think most would just settle for some kind of guaranteed nationality.
Don Bacon | Oct 26, 2017 5:31:41 PM | 43
I'll try this again w/o link
--from The Saker:
Re-visiting Russian counter-propaganda methods
What I propose to do today is to share with you a few recent examples of what Russian households are regularly exposed to.
By now, you must have heard about the CNN report about how the evil Russkies used Pokemon to destabilize and subvert the USA. If not, here it is: (video)

In Russia this report was in instant mega-success: the video was translated and rebroadcasted on every single TV channel. Margarita Simonian, the brilliant director of Russia Today, was asked during a live show "be truthful and confess – what is your relationship with Pokemon, do they work for you?" to which she replied "I feed them" – the audience burst in laughter.

The Russian Pokemon was just the latest in a long series of absolutely insane, terminally paranoid and rabidly russophobic reports released by the western Ziomedia, all of which were instantly translated into Russian and rebroadcasted by the Russian media.

One of the techniques regularly used on Russian talkshows is to show a short report about the latest crazy nonsense coming out of the United States or Europe and then ask a pro-US guests to react to it. The "liberals" (in the Russian political meaning of this word, that is a hopelessly naïve pro-western person who loves to trash everything Russian and who hates Putin and those who support him) are intensely embarrassed and usually either simply admit that this is crazy nonsense or try to find some crazy nonsense in the Russian media (and there is plenty of that too) to show that "we are just as bad". Needless to say, no matter what escape route is chosen, the "liberal" ends up looking like a total idiot or a traitor.

ab initio | Oct 26, 2017 7:46:15 PM | 51
Why did Clapper and Brennan peddle so hard the Russians colluded with Trump meme? Why did they fear Trump so much?

The FISA warrant to intercept Trump campaign officials was issued on the basis of the fake Steele dossier smear. And then Susan Rice used her position to unmask all the participants in those intercepts.

Yes, the big question why did the top officials in the intelligence agencies in the US and UK try so hard to take down Trump?

wendy davis | Oct 26, 2017 8:04:06 PM | 52
as far as i've been able to tell, no one has linked to this TRNN interview w/ marcy wheeler, a.k.a. "emptywheel" on the subject. if the transcript was close to correct, her rant was totally illogical, even w/ aaron maté pushing back pretty hard.

'Democrats Funded the Steele Dossier that Fueled Russiagate'; After months of obfuscation, the Washington Post reveals that the Clinton campaign and the DNC funded the infamous Steele dossier at the heart of Russiagate. Empty Wheel's Marcy Wheeler and TRNN's Aaron Mate discuss

http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20304:Democrats-Funded-the-Steele-Dossier-that-Fueled-Russiagate

while understanding that TRNN is a 'progressive' (whatever that means any more: librul?) site in general, at least the comments below reflected how anti-roosian, anti-putin emptywheel is. and illogical.

Stryker | Oct 26, 2017 8:29:51 PM | 53
In reply to ab initio | Oct 26, 2017 7:46:15 PM | 51

I think it's because Donald Trump fired them. Nothing like dropping a deuce in the room on the way out.

"...why did the top officials in the intelligence agencies in the US and UK try so hard to take down Trump?"

Russia too I say. It may not have been a take down so much as an (failed)attempt to become his handlers. The "dossier" became useless once it was opened to the public. Who are Donald Trump's handlers? Do we have a puppet, or do we have a puppeteer in Donald Trump?

ben | Oct 26, 2017 8:30:23 PM | 54
Oh boy, the superfluous BS continues(yawn), meanwhile, the rape and plundering of the workers wealth continues here in the U$A.
likklemore | Oct 26, 2017 8:33:30 PM | 55
ab initio | Oct 26, 2017 7:46:15 PM | 51

IMO, the cash flow to MIC on both sides of the Atlantic. No bogeyman, no wars, no new toys and no treats. War is a money racket.

Trump campaigned on America First; rebuild factories and infrastructure, less foreign wars, detente with Russia. These promises were taken seriously and Russiagate was unwrapped. See how quickly, after his taking the oath of office, he fell in line with the junta? Really, do you think he selected his cabinet people?

A day of reckoning abides HRC, CF, Mueller, Clapper, Brennan and cohorts. When you dig a hole for your enemy make sure you also dig one for yourself.

In 2010, Uranium One was labelled a conspiracy theory. Interesting times ahead. Now WSJ, Wapo, are all over it. At least NYT wrote on the deal and money flow in April 2015 noting HRC's wish to be president, Very detailed article but who would believe? Read up on details: timelines, the Canadian connection and the money flow..

NYT: Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal

LINK

ben | Oct 26, 2017 8:44:31 PM | 56
Apologies for OT, but a case in point about my 54 post.. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-arbitration-rule-senate-20171024-story.html
Ghostship | Oct 26, 2017 8:46:00 PM | 57
>>>> Ian | Oct 26, 2017 2:39:36 PM | 37
Have a read "Web of Debt" by Ellen Hodgson Brown and "Beyond Banksters" by Joyce Helson. The references they provide will get you started. Another excellent reference is "Secrets of the Federal Reserve" by Eustace Mullins.

I don't need to as I previously worked for a number of financial institutions in the City of London and I'm well aware of all the shit that banks and bankers get up to.

You may not like it hear it and but all money leads to the House of Rothschild and it's net worth reported to be several hundred TRILLION!

Go on believing that crap if you want to but I'd be interested to know exactly what you mean by the "House of Rothschild" other than a 1934 film. Also exactly who is reporting that it's worth several hundred trillion although I notice you don't say what currency their fortune is in but if it's Zimbabwean dollars that'd mean they're worth less than five dollars bearing in mind that all Zimbabweans were almost certainly undecillionaires back in 2009.

Peter AU 1 | Oct 26, 2017 8:52:28 PM | 58
ab initio | Oct 26, 2017 7:46:15 PM | 51 "Yes, the big question why did the top officials in the intelligence agencies in the US and UK try so hard to take down Trump?"

I take it to mean Trump was a threat to the establishment, or at least a majority of the establishment that controls MSM and CIA (then again it is more likely the CIA control the establiushment and media). The threat has now passed and the Trump Putin meme is being wound back. A few scapegoats from the swamp may lose their heads but thats about it.

Tillerson now treading the straight and narrow and fully on board for regime change ...

No role for Assad in Syria's future: Tillerson
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-tillerson/no-role-for-assad-in-syrias-
future-tillerson-idUSKBN1CV2GY

Debsisdead | Oct 26, 2017 9:09:54 PM | 59
Since by all indications it took Romans a coupla centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire to accept they were no longer top dog, eg the so-called 'dark ages' when the rule of roman law disintegrated took a few hundred years to really kick off, we shouldn't be surprised that many englanders struggle to accept their role of just being another beta in the pack. However what interests me more is the group so well described by recently dubbed Aotearoan deputy PM Winston Peters, as 'waka jumpers'. (a waka being the te reo name for a canoe).

Peters coined the term back in 1999 when the coalition government between the conservative National Party and the Peters' formed New Zealand First Party, broke down and the government lacked the numbers to guarantee supply etc. Some NZF MP's jumped ship over to the Natz ignoring the policies under which the public gave them their electoral mandate.

Instead they took up bullshit cabinet positions which gave them increased salaries, all sorts of travel perks for them and their families as well as the title 'Right Honourable' etc. Needless to say there was no power attached to these new roles - nobody is gonna trust a traitor - apart from which the Natz Party would have been deep in the doo-doo if they gave actual power to outsiders while so many hacks 'n whores queued up dutifully in the National Party waiting for their turn at copping a decent earner. That government limped along for about 18 months before Helen Clark's Labour mob arseholed them.

Now the term waka jumpers shouldn't just be hung around the necks of the obvious target, politicians - not when there are low lifes such as Rupert Murdoch, who swap nationalities about as often as some change their underwear.

Murdoch kicked off existence as an australian then became an englander when he wanted to dominate english TV and print media - that got him through quite a few british parliamentary inquiries into media ownership. By the time he was ready to set up Fox and still enjoy his print media ownership in amerika, Murdoch became an amerikan citizens. That didn't affect his brit holdings cos once his buyouts had been approved there was no mechanism for taking ownership back again.

The amerikan citizenship wasn't intended to be permanent, I have no doubt his marriage to a NewsCorp executive based in Hongkong who 'just by chance' had PRC citizenship was the beginning of a switch to a Chinese passport for old Rupe. However it rapidly became obvious that such a move would cost fox big with its looney toons audience, so instead he set about solving the expansion into China another way.
Murdoch got Star TV, plus China based web portals up and running without having to swap nationality again - presumably by way of the 'three B's - bullying, blackmailing and bribing.
That allowed him to give the Chinese missus the flick, so then he decided to do some PR damage limitation in england & amerika by hooking up with Jaggers seconds, the Anglo Amerikan Jerry Hall.

Many waka jumpers don't have to swap passports they follow the money eschewing any regard for their compatriots in the process, and are the biggest obstacle to the notion of one world that there is.

I reckon there would be nothing better than getting rid of borders and the associated tyranny over individuals, except there are just too many arsehats out there who would twist everything up, squirm thru loopholes and screw the rest of us over, so before that happens more power must be devolved downwards and equality of education, opportunity etc must be much more robustly organised. Then it makes sense, but any shift before that point and the usual arseholes are gonna pull their usual strokes.

In this case most brits would be appalled that their establishment got so heavily involved in another nation's electoral process, but no one asked them. Typically just as happens in amerika, the call to take a side was made by a self-interested shadow state which has entirely too much, too poorly defined power.

Issues of nationalism should be put to one side where that is possible, while all of us ordinary human beings work together to flush the parasites outta their hidey holes.

psychohistorian | Oct 26, 2017 9:37:25 PM | 60
@ Debsisdead who wrote:
Issues of nationalism should be put to one side where that is possible, while all of us ordinary human beings work together to flush the parasites outta their hidey holes.

I agree! The cry for nationalism is a cry for further control by playing countries off each other.....divide and conquer.

I would hope we can evolve to working terms for anthropological groupings of our species that transcends nationalism but can be agreed upon as representing cultural significance and cohesive regional identity.

Or maybe Trump will evolve the world to be a proper empire with galactic uniforms and badges and stuff for all the MIC....to fit with the game show meme....

Grieved | Oct 26, 2017 9:44:14 PM | 61
Interesting thread. Rich with turmoil. But very real, I think, and exploring ground that is not that firm.

We know the Brits have been the "Step'n Fetchit" guy for the US spooks for a long time. We gather that several decades ago, Langley used to be impressed by the English insouciance, until the moles that tore holes in the UK fabric - Burgess, MacLean, Blunt etc. - destroyed that old colonial myth of "effortless superiority", and revealed the worst quality of all, incompetence.

The secret world has always shielded incompetence. The Wilderness of Mirrors is the only place where you can generate the myth of quality through withholding the facts of your actions. One suspects that the CIA is saturated with incompetence. Part of the reason that it hated to see it in the Brits.

But the SAS could do things for the CIA that didn't need to get reported to the legislatures of either country. So Britain could do a few hit jobs and earn a few points, a few shekels. And MI6 must surely have been yearning to crawl back under the US intel umbrella for a long, long time, until it regained trust somehow - probably from actions of unspeakable subservience. So it's apparent that the relationship - at this point in history - between the two spook enterprises is master and servant, US > UK.

A Le Carre fan could tell you all this, and plenty of analyses in the public sphere could confirm it. So, in sum, there's absolutely no mystery why, or in what hierarchy of relationship, the UK spooks would work for the US spooks.

The dossier is a US fabrication, merely using the lackeys du jour . All useful analysis will flow from this.

[Oct 27, 2017] Deep State Gone Wild Comey Asserts Unprecedented FBI Supremacy

Comey is actually a politician. And he definitely wanted to keep Russiagate hot, and probably was instrumental in creating it ... As this situation suits him political desire for higher autonomy from Justice Department
Notable quotes:
"... James Comey asserted in his extraordinary testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is authorized to override Justice Department oversight procedures, a questionable claim which if true would raise serious questions about long-standing rules aimed at preventing abuses by federal law enforcement officials. ..."
"... The former head of the FBI told the Senate panel that he believed he had received a direction from the president in February that the FBI end its investigation of Michael Flynn's alleged involvement with Russia -- a direction with which he and his kitchen-cabinet of "FBI senior leadership" unilaterally decided not to comply. The Comey cabinet then decided that it would not report the receipt of this direction to Attorney General Jeff Sessions or any other Justice Department superior. ..."
"... Rosenstein criticized Comey's decision to act without consultation from the Department of Justice as usurping the Attorney General's authority and an attempt to "supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department. Comey had violated a "well-established process" for how to deal with situations where to Attorney General faces a conflict of interest, according to Rosenstein. ..."
"... "The Director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General's authority on July 5, 2016," Rosenstein wrote. "The Director now defends his decision by asserting that he believed attorney General Loretta Lynch had a conflict. But the FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department . ..."
"... Comey's assertion that the FBI can override standard protocols could endanger that independence, according to a former high-ranking federal law enforcement official. ..."
"... "Mr. Comey is describing an FBI director who essentially answers to no one. But the police powers of the government are awesome and often abused, and the only way to prevent or correct abuses is to report to elected officials who are accountable to voters. A director must resist intervention to obstruct an investigation, but he and the agency must be politically accountable or risk becoming the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover," the Wall Street Journal wrote . ..."
"... A 2005 report from the FBI's Office of Inspector General on the Department of Justice's guidelines for FBI investigations stated, "Attorneys General and FBI leadership have uniformly agreed that the Attorney General Guidelines are necessary and desirable, and they have referred to the FBI's adherence to the Attorney General Guidelines as the reason why the FBI should not be subjected to a general legislative charter or to statutory control over the exercise of some of its most intrusive authorities. " ..."
Jun 08, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

James Comey asserted in his extraordinary testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is authorized to override Justice Department oversight procedures, a questionable claim which if true would raise serious questions about long-standing rules aimed at preventing abuses by federal law enforcement officials.

The former head of the FBI told the Senate panel that he believed he had received a direction from the president in February that the FBI end its investigation of Michael Flynn's alleged involvement with Russia -- a direction with which he and his kitchen-cabinet of "FBI senior leadership" unilaterally decided not to comply. The Comey cabinet then decided that it would not report the receipt of this direction to Attorney General Jeff Sessions or any other Justice Department superior.

The group decided that it could override standard FBI protocol and possibly legal obligations to report the incident because of its expectations that Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia matter, although that recusal would not come until weeks later. The Comey cabinet also decided that it wasn't obligated to approach the acting Deputy Attorney General because he would likely be replaced soon.

"We concluded it made little sense to report it to Attorney General Sessions, who we expected would likely recuse himself from involvement in Russia-related investigations. (He did so two weeks later.) The Deputy Attorney General's role was then filled in an acting capacity by a United States Attorney, who would also not be long in the role," Comey said. "After discussing the matter, we decided to keep it very closely held, resolving to figure out what to do with it down the road as our investigation progressed."

According to three different former federal law enforcement officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, there is no precedent for the director of the FBI to refuse to inform a Deputy Attorney General of a matter because of his or her "acting" status nor to use the expectation of a recusal as a basis for withholding information.

"This is an extraordinary usurpation of power. Not something you'd expect from the supposedly by-the-books guys at the top of the FBI," one of those officials told Breitbart News.

The closest precedent to the Comey cabinet's decision to conceal information from Justice Department superiors is likely Comey's widely criticized earlier decision to go public about the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails. That decision received a sharp rebuke in the May 9 memo by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that formed the basis for Comey's firing by Trump.

Rosenstein criticized Comey's decision to act without consultation from the Department of Justice as usurping the Attorney General's authority and an attempt to "supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department. Comey had violated a "well-established process" for how to deal with situations where to Attorney General faces a conflict of interest, according to Rosenstein.

"The Director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General's authority on July 5, 2016," Rosenstein wrote. "The Director now defends his decision by asserting that he believed attorney General Loretta Lynch had a conflict. But the FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department . There is a well-established process for other officials to step in when a conflict requires the recusal of the Attorney General. On July 5, however, the Director announced his own conclusions about the nation's most sensitive criminal investigation, without the authorization of duly appointed Justice Department leaders."

Comey's testimony on Thursday seemed to double-down on this defense, which amounts to a claim that the FBI's top agents can act outside of the ordinary processes intended to establish oversight and accountability at the nation's top law enforcement agency.

The FBI's adherence to Department of Justice guidelines and instructions from Attorneys General has been a centerpiece of its ongoing independence, often cited by officials as a reason why the FBI does not need a general legislative charter that would restrict or control by statute its authority. Comey's assertion that the FBI can override standard protocols could endanger that independence, according to a former high-ranking federal law enforcement official.

"He's not only put the credibility of the bureau in doubt, he's now putting the entire basis for our independence in jeopardy," the official said.

The official pointed to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal as explaining the dangers of an FBI that decides not to inform the Department of Justice of its activities.

"Mr. Comey is describing an FBI director who essentially answers to no one. But the police powers of the government are awesome and often abused, and the only way to prevent or correct abuses is to report to elected officials who are accountable to voters. A director must resist intervention to obstruct an investigation, but he and the agency must be politically accountable or risk becoming the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover," the Wall Street Journal wrote .

A 2005 report from the FBI's Office of Inspector General on the Department of Justice's guidelines for FBI investigations stated, "Attorneys General and FBI leadership have uniformly agreed that the Attorney General Guidelines are necessary and desirable, and they have referred to the FBI's adherence to the Attorney General Guidelines as the reason why the FBI should not be subjected to a general legislative charter or to statutory control over the exercise of some of its most intrusive authorities. "

[Oct 27, 2017] Donald Trumps truce with spy agencies breaks down over Russia dossier US news by Spencer Ackerman

This is an interesting old article by guardian which suggest that Trump thought the Steele memo was a blatant attempt to blackmail him launched against him by intelligence agencies. He proved to be half-right. FBI was involved with Steele dossier and probably paid some money. It is unclear if MI6 was involved but Steele would be really reckless if he did his job without consulting the agency. This is not a regular report -- that was a direct interference into US election. The paper hint that Steele source might be Ukrainians, not Russians.
Unverified and blighted with factual errors damaging rumor/insinuation was picked up by media to damage Trump. This is so "color regulation style" that it hurts.
Notable quotes:
"... Shift from measured tone to 'hysterical hostility' at press conference could destroy relationship with agencies Trump likened to Nazi Germany ..."
"... Clapper had denounced "the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated". ..."
"... Before CNN reported that aspects of the dossier, acquired by the FBI in December from the Arizona Republican senator John McCain, ..."
"... Trump had previously referred to an intelligence " as the witch-hunt " and threw the CIA's fatefully erroneous 2002 assessment that Iraq possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction back in the agency's face. ..."
"... You know what? It could be others also. ..."
Jan 12, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

Donald Trump's truce with spy agencies breaks down over Russia dossier Shift from measured tone to 'hysterical hostility' at press conference could destroy relationship with agencies Trump likened to Nazi Germany, experts say -> Trump attacks media and intelligence community, and addresses Russia's alleged involvement in election hacking -> Donald Trump Donald Trump's truce with spy agencies breaks down over Russia dossier

Shift from measured tone to 'hysterical hostility' at press conference could destroy relationship with agencies Trump likened to Nazi Germany , experts say

A shaky detente between Donald Trump and the intelligence agencies he will soon control has broken down, as Trump wrongly accused US intelligence of leaking an unverified, salacious document to damage his nascent presidency.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Trump said that "who knows, but maybe the intelligence agencies" were responsible for the document, which he said would be "a tremendous blot on their record".

Earlier, Trump likened the intelligence agencies to " Nazi Germany", in a tweet, saying they "never should have allowed this fake news to 'leak' to the public. One last shot at me".

... ... ...

James Clapper, US director of national intelligence, said he told Trump on Wednesday evening that the [US] intelligence community had not been responsible for the leaking of the documents.

"I emphasized that this document is not a US intelligence community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC," Clapper said in a statement. Trump referred to the call in a tweet first thing on Thursday morning, which said Clapper had denounced "the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated".

Before CNN reported that aspects of the dossier, acquired by the FBI in December from the Arizona Republican senator John McCain, were briefed to Barack Obama and Trump, no news organization had published the accusations, which purport to reveal compromising information Russia possesses on Trump. Trump has denied them, and NBC later reported that the material was prepared for the Trump briefing, but not discussed.

Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee and a consistent critic of spycraft excesses, told the Guardian it was "profoundly dangerous" for Trump to continue his feud with the agencies.

"The president is responsible for vital decisions about national security, including decisions about whether to go to war, which depend on the broad collection activities and reasoned analysis of the intelligence community. A scenario in which the president dismisses the intelligence community, or worse, accuses it of treachery, is profoundly dangerous," Wyden said.

... ... ...

Trump's outburst was a departure from the moderated tone he had taken on the intelligence agencies since Friday, when he met with the director of national intelligence, James Clapper; FBI director James Comey; NSA director Mike Rogers and CIA director John Brennan to discuss their joint conclusion that Russia had intervened extensively in the 2016 election to benefit Trump.

Trump had previously referred to an intelligence " as the witch-hunt " and threw the CIA's fatefully erroneous 2002 assessment that Iraq possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction back in the agency's face. Clapper and Rogers had warned of plummeting morale within the intelligence community ahead of Trump's presidency. After the meeting, Trump spoke of his "tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community".

At his press conference on Wednesday, Trump simultaneously accepted and diminished the intelligence assessment that Russia was responsible for the Democratic National Committee hack, saying "I think it was Russia" and later adding the caveat: " You know what? It could be others also. "...

... ... ...

See also:

[Oct 26, 2017] Co-Founder Of Trump-Russia Dossier Firm Cancels Testimony While Lynch Claims Ignorance

Notable quotes:
"... After it was revealed that Rob Goldstone - the man who arranged the now infamous Trump Jr. " setup " with a shady Russian attorney, is associated with Fusion GPS - the firm behind the largely discredited 35 page Trump-Russia dossier, the co-founder of Fusion GPS abruptly canceled his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week to testify in the ongoing probe into Russian influence in the 2016 election, according to Politico . ..."
Jul 14, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Co-Founder Of Trump-Russia Dossier Firm Cancels Testimony While Lynch Claims Ignorance

The ongoing efforts to bring down Donald Trump are unraveling at an accelerating pace...

Glenn Simpson, Fusion GPS Co-Founder

After it was revealed that Rob Goldstone - the man who arranged the now infamous Trump Jr. " setup " with a shady Russian attorney, is associated with Fusion GPS - the firm behind the largely discredited 35 page Trump-Russia dossier, the co-founder of Fusion GPS abruptly canceled his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week to testify in the ongoing probe into Russian influence in the 2016 election, according to Politico .

The committee announced Wednesday that Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS was scheduled to voluntarily appear on July 19.

During the 2016 US election, Simpson's firm hired former British spy Christopher Steele to produce the 35 page dossier, accusing then-candidate Donald Trump of all sorts of salacious dealings with Russians. When Steele couldn't verify it's claims, the FBI refused to pay him $50,000 for the report - which didn't stop John McCain from hand-delivering it to former FBI director James Comey, or the Obama Administration from using it to start spying on Trump associate Carter Page .

That's two attempts to take down President Trump involving Fusion GPS.

As the Independent reported on Monday:

A spokesman for the President's legal team told The Independent they now believed Ms Veselnitskaya and her colleagues had misrepresented who they were and who they worked for.

"Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the President and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier ." -Mark Corallo

Perhaps sensing he's totally screwed and now a huge liability to the deep state, Simpson canceled his testimony next week.

Loretta Lynch Knows Nothing

After it The Hill at a press conference during his visit to France, stating "She [Veselnitskaya] was here because of Lynch, following up with "Nothing happened from the meeting... Zero happened from the meeting, and honestly I think the press made a big deal over something that many people would do."

Lynch distanced herself in a Thursday statement, with a spokesperson claiming that the former Attorney General "does not have any personal knowledge of Ms. Veselnitskaya's travel."

The spokesperson did not go into detail about Veselnitskaya's case, but followed up by saying "The State Department issues visas, and the Department of Homeland Security oversees entry to the United States at airports."

After Lynch's DOJ allowed Veselnitskaya into the country to participate in a lawsuit and nothing more , she had the now infamous meeting at Trump tower, met with current and former lawmakers from both parties, and was spotted in primo front-row seating at a House Foreign Affairs committee hearing on Russia.

What an interesting trip for Ms. Veselnitskaya...

cheech_wizard , Jul 14, 2017 8:34 PM

Lynch claims ignorance?

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/341788-exclusive-doj-let-russ...

The Moscow lawyer had been turned down for a visa to enter the U.S. lawfully but then was granted special immigration parole by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch for the limited purpose of helping a company owned by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, her client, defend itself against a Justice Department asset forfeiture case in federal court in New York City.

During a court hearing in early January 2016, as Veselnitskaya's permission to stay in the country was about to expire, federal prosecutors described how rare the grant of parole immigration was as Veselnitskaya pleaded for more time to remain in the United States.

"In October the government bypassed ?the normal visa process and gave a type of extraordinary ?permission to enter the country called immigration parole," Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni explained to the judge during a hearing on Jan. 6, 2016.

Standard Disclaimer: Lynch should be in jail...

AntiMatter , Jul 14, 2017 3:03 PM

VT had it right all along – ISIS weapons supplied by the West

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2017/07/12/western-states-largest-suppliers...

theprofromdover , Jul 14, 2017 2:57 PM

".. Lynch distanced herself in a Thursday statement, with a spokesperson claiming that the former Attorney General "does not have any personal knowledge of Ms. Veselnitskaya's travel."...

I suspect Loretta got some coachin' from Slippery Bill on the tarmac, how to say something that only a fool would believe means anything.

" I do not have any personal knowledge of Ms Veselnitskaya's .... breakfast plans" what does that mean?

rwe2late , Jul 14, 2017 2:56 PM

Lynch claims ignorance.

Well, who can dispute that?

pparalegal , Jul 14, 2017 2:40 PM

The drunk on DNC propaganda religious MSNBC ultra left watchers are going to get very agitated screaming "show trials" when their heroes start doing the orange jumpsuit frog march. That is when it will get ugly in the streets and on the DC mall. Cheer up comrades, it is going to get a lot worse.

Harry Paranockus , Jul 14, 2017 12:02 PM

This whole shit storm will be over soon, because if they peel back the final layer to this story, they will find that the entire apparatus of Washington, DC is on the take.

Sandmann , Jul 14, 2017 11:07 AM

and Veselnitskaya is linked to the Bill Browder/Edmund Safra Hermitage Capital Hedge Fund through her work for people affected by Magnitsky Act........this swamp is certainly deep but it is hard to know who is a swamp monster and who is being dragged in

alg0rhythm -> VideoEng_NC , Jul 14, 2017 10:48 AM

Sessions settles Magnitsky case for 6 million- pennies on the dollar.... no, nothing to see here..... lawyer- this same lady

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-was-russian-money-laundering-case-dis...

PeterLong -> alg0rhythm , Jul 14, 2017 2:36 PM

How is $ 6 million "pennies on the dollar"? If the U.S. was at one time seeking $ 12 million, is a settlement for half that amount unusual as pre-trial settlements go?

Jim in MN -> moneybots , Jul 14, 2017 10:00 AM

Also how she now insists that it's State and DHS that handle this stuff, while in filed court briefs in January, DOJ was all breathless about what an extraordinary, rare exemption Ms. V received, direct from the AG.

Someone is lying. But then, lawyers are involved so I guess it's inevitable.

[Oct 26, 2017] BuzzFeed's Golden Showers debacle is classic yellow press fake

Notable quotes:
"... When I first read the memos, I knew none of the backstory, and looked forward to the salacious content to bring this clown down, particularly any facts showing that the Trump people had prior knowledge of the Russian hacks - a Watergate-sized story, if true, even if the effects of the hacks on the election are being overblown. But with nearly 40 years of investigative experience, mostly on international issues, the wording of the memos quickly caused me to slam on the breaks, because they were worded in such a way as to make confirmation of the charges impossible. The rule involved in making professional judgments on these kinds of things is simple: you look for information that can be proven either true or false, and from that factual template, you then build out one incontrovertible fact at a time. These memoranda had no such facts, with the possible exception of Cohen's trip to Prague, which the FBI told the WSJ was false. ..."
washingtonbabylon.com

From: BuzzFeed's Golden Showers Washington Babylon

... think it was wrong for BuzzFeed to publish it and the media company bears responsibility for this debacle, which has made the entire profession look even worse and generated sympathy for, of all people, Donald Trump.

Simpson's firm is being berated at the moment but there are a lot of companies in Washington who do the same thing - namely produce political and business intelligence for paying clients - and they operate openly and everyone, including journalists, know who they are. In terms of political intelligence, there are firms who work for Democrats and firms that work for Republicans, and some who work for both. The Democrats don't have a monopoly on these firms as one might imagine from the current hysteria.

... ... ...

As has been widely reported, the Trump dossier had circulated for many months - at least as far back as August - and even though there was a fever on the part of the media to get anti-Trump stories into print, everyone with the exception of David Corn of Mother Jones declined to write about the "dossier," and even he only referred to parts of it. The fact that dozens of journalists reviewed these documents and declined to use them, on the grounds that their allegations could not be verified shows that the information contained within them was very shaky.

I read the documents online and it's clear that they are thinly sourced and there were apparently serious errors in them, for example the bit about Trump's attorney's trip to Prague...

... ... ...

Whatever you think of Trump, he won this embarrassing election under the rules of the game. (And yes, Hillary won the popular vote and in a serious democracy she would have been declared the winner, but we are stuck for the time being with the Electoral College.) The Golden Showers story is quite a sensational accusation to make given that he was about 10 days out from inauguration. If Hillary had won the election would Buzzfeed have posted an unproven dossier on her that alleged she had hired prostitutes during an overseas trip to Ukraine? I seriously doubt it, especially given Buzzfeed's notable pro-Hillary tilt during the campaign.

... ... ...

When Chuck Todd accused Smith of publishing "fake news," he suggested that BuzzFeed was just being a good Internet news organization and not letting the media and political elite keep information from the public. This would be easier to take more seriously if BuzzFeed is not so obviously a part of the media elite and doesn't fraternize so comfortably with the political elite like most other news outlets. BuzzFeed was chasing clicks and that's fine, but dressing this up as public service doesn't cut it and especially given the political calculations involved.

BuzzFeed's other excuse was that the documents were already being talked about and were referred to in the Intelligence Community's very dubious report on Trump. But the documents appear to have been given to various agencies by political figures seeking to burn Trump, which BuzzFeed was only too happy to help out with. So it appears that Trump's political enemies and media enemies were working together to get this information out before the inauguration.

I'd also note here one peculiar, and possibly unethical, thing about the New York Times' behavior here. The Times, like everyone but BuzzFeed, didn't publish the report but they wrote quite a bit about it. In an early story it said that they would not identify the research firm behind the leaked memos because of "a confidential source agreement with The New York Times." Then it revealed the firm's name in a later story and edited the earlier one to take out the line about their confidential source agreement.

So it looks like the Times violated a confidentiality agreement, which is pretty troubling...

... ... ...

Note: I'd strongly urge anyone following this story to friend long-time investigative journalist and researcher Craig Pyes on Facebook. ....

Here is an excerpt:

When I first read the memos, I knew none of the backstory, and looked forward to the salacious content to bring this clown down, particularly any facts showing that the Trump people had prior knowledge of the Russian hacks - a Watergate-sized story, if true, even if the effects of the hacks on the election are being overblown. But with nearly 40 years of investigative experience, mostly on international issues, the wording of the memos quickly caused me to slam on the breaks, because they were worded in such a way as to make confirmation of the charges impossible. The rule involved in making professional judgments on these kinds of things is simple: you look for information that can be proven either true or false, and from that factual template, you then build out one incontrovertible fact at a time. These memoranda had no such facts, with the possible exception of Cohen's trip to Prague, which the FBI told the WSJ was false.

[Oct 26, 2017] Putin Warns Of Soft Coup Against Trump; Calls Golden Shower Dossier Creators Worse Than Prostitutes

Notable quotes:
"... Warning that a "soft coup" is being waged against Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he sees attempts in the United States to "delegitimize" US President-elect Donald Trump using "Maidan-style" methods previously used in Ukraine, where readers will recall president Yanukovich was ousted in 2014 following a violent coup, which many suspect was conducted under the auspices of the US State Department and assorted US intelligence operations. ..."
"... Putin said he doesn't believe that Donald Trump met with prostitutes in Russia, calling the accusations part of a campaign to undermine the election result, and suggested that an internal political struggle is underway in the United States despite the fact that the presidential election is over, and added that reports of alleged Russian dossier on Trump are fake as "our security services do not chase every US billionaire." ..."
Jan 17, 2017 | www.thedailysheeple.com
Warning that a "soft coup" is being waged against Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he sees attempts in the United States to "delegitimize" US President-elect Donald Trump using "Maidan-style" methods previously used in Ukraine, where readers will recall president Yanukovich was ousted in 2014 following a violent coup, which many suspect was conducted under the auspices of the US State Department and assorted US intelligence operations.

Putin said he doesn't believe that Donald Trump met with prostitutes in Russia, calling the accusations part of a campaign to undermine the election result, and suggested that an internal political struggle is underway in the United States despite the fact that the presidential election is over, and added that reports of alleged Russian dossier on Trump are fake as "our security services do not chase every US billionaire."

Unsubstantiated allegations made against Trump are "obvious fabrications," Putin told reporters in the Kremlin on Tuesday. "People who order fakes of the type now circulating against the U.S. president-elect, who concoct them and use them in a political battle, are worse than prostitutes because they don't have any moral boundaries at all," he said.

The Russian president, cited by BBG, said that Trump wasn't a politician when he visited Moscow in the past and Russian officials weren't aware that he held any political ambitions.

[Oct 26, 2017] John Helmer Parsing the Dossier on Trumps Alleged Russian Bedroom Antics naked capitalism

Notable quotes:
"... As Lambert has remarked, this is not the behavior of a confident elite. ..."
"... Trump has responded that Steele is a "failed spy". That is not an impetuous tweet. It's the assessment of both US and British intelligence agencies, including MI6, for which Steele worked undercover in Moscow between 1994 and 1996. His cover was blown; he was evacuated; and as British intelligence sources report this week, Steele has been unable to enter Russia for a decade. "No Russian with official links and knowledge would risk communicating with Steele for fear of being detected by Russian counter-intelligence," said an intelligence source in London, Said another: "I met [Steele] a couple of times and thought that for a relatively undistinguished man who never made very senior rank he was a smug, arrogant s.o.b. So I don't work with him. The description of his being the top expert on Russia in MI6 is bollocks. " ..."
"... The Steele dossier contains 35 pages, commencing on June 20, 2016, and ending on December 13, 2016. The published form can be read here . It comprises 17 reports. But the file numbering from 2016/ 080 to 2016/166 implies there were 86 such reports altogether, so only one in five has become public. What was in the remaining 67 reports is unknown. Unknown, too, is whether it's possible that over six months Steele was producing reports on Russia at the rate of 11 per month, 3 per week, one every two days. ..."
"... A London newspaper claims Steele was paid Ł200,000 for his job. The newspaper also claims that a friend of Steele "who does not want to be named, says he sold them in instalments at $15,000 (Ł12,300) a time every three weeks to anti-Trump Republicans looking for dirt on the tycoon in the run-up to the presidential nomination." This means there were no other reports in the series; the numbering was intended to mislead. That's not all. ..."
"... Steele's career in Russian intelligence at MI6 had hit the rocks in 2006, and never recovered. That was the year in which the Russian Security Service (FSB) publicly exposed an MI6 operation in Moscow. Russian informants recruited by the British were passed messages and money, and dropped their information in containers fabricated to look like fake rocks in a public park. Steele was on the MI6 desk in London when the operation was blown. Although the FSB announcement was denied in London at the time, the British prime ministry confirmed its veracity in 2012. Read more on Steele's fake rock operation here , and the attempt by the Financial Times to cover it up by blaming Putin for fabricating the story. ..."
Jan 19, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Posted on January 18, 2017 by Yves Smith ... ... ...

As Lambert has remarked, this is not the behavior of a confident elite.

By John Helmer , the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

Almost everyone goes to bed at night. Some get up to urinate. The older, less continent ones can't get up easily, so they urinate on themselves. If properly cared for, they do so in what is known in the geriatric product market as roll-ups.

A small minority arrange to be urinated upon by others, though not usually on the bed they aim to sleep in. This may be an erotic pleasure for you, a perversion to the next man. The name for it is Golden Showers. If conducted between consenting adults, it's not a crime. Paying for it may be a crime, depending on the local law on procuring. In the Russian criminal code it's not a felony but a misdemeanour with a fine so small it usually isn't enforced by the police; certainly not in expensive big-city hotels.

A claim is being widely reported in the US media which supported Hillary Clinton for president that President-elect Donald Trump paid for at least two ladies to urinate on the bed in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel of Moscow. A former British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) agent named Christopher Steele has reported the episode in a memorandum dated June 20, 2016, because he was paid by a US client to do it; and also because he was paid to speculate that the Russian Security Service (FSB) filmed it, and has been blackmailing Trump ever since.

Trump has responded that Steele is a "failed spy". That is not an impetuous tweet. It's the assessment of both US and British intelligence agencies, including MI6, for which Steele worked undercover in Moscow between 1994 and 1996. His cover was blown; he was evacuated; and as British intelligence sources report this week, Steele has been unable to enter Russia for a decade. "No Russian with official links and knowledge would risk communicating with Steele for fear of being detected by Russian counter-intelligence," said an intelligence source in London, Said another: "I met [Steele] a couple of times and thought that for a relatively undistinguished man who never made very senior rank he was a smug, arrogant s.o.b. So I don't work with him. The description of his being the top expert on Russia in MI6 is bollocks. "

The story of the Obama-Trump bed, according to Steele, comes from 2013. Another story, the one of the Putin bed on which Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had sex with a prostitute in Rome, dates from 2009. The true part has been verified with a tape the lady made of Berlusconi boasting about the source of the bed as he exercised himself on it. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Putin then and now, says the Trump-Obama bed story is "a complete fake. It's total nonsense." But about the Putin-Berlusconi bed, he said at the time: "We reject this information. I am not in a position to explain." In short, that bedtime story may be true .

The Steele dossier contains 35 pages, commencing on June 20, 2016, and ending on December 13, 2016. The published form can be read here . It comprises 17 reports. But the file numbering from 2016/ 080 to 2016/166 implies there were 86 such reports altogether, so only one in five has become public. What was in the remaining 67 reports is unknown. Unknown, too, is whether it's possible that over six months Steele was producing reports on Russia at the rate of 11 per month, 3 per week, one every two days.

A London newspaper claims Steele was paid Ł200,000 for his job. The newspaper also claims that a friend of Steele "who does not want to be named, says he sold them in instalments at $15,000 (Ł12,300) a time every three weeks to anti-Trump Republicans looking for dirt on the tycoon in the run-up to the presidential nomination." This means there were no other reports in the series; the numbering was intended to mislead. That's not all.

The Guardian newspaper, the Financial Times and US newspapers claim the dossier has been circulating "for months and acquired a kind of legendary status among journalists, lawmakers, and intelligence officials who have seen them", according to one reporter. According to Financial Times reporter Courtney Weaver, she "investigated some of the allegations contained in the report but was unable to confirm them." She has published them, nonetheless. For more on Weaver's record for veracity in Moscow, read this .

A source at a London due diligence firm which is larger and better known than Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd. says "standard due diligence means getting to the truth. It's confidential to the client, and not leaked. There are also black jobs, white jobs, and red jobs. Black means the client wants you to dig up dirt on the target, and make it look credible for publishing in the press. White means the client wants you to clear him of the wrongdoing which he's being accused of in the media or the marketplace; it's also leaked to the press. A red job is where the client pays the due diligence firm to hire a journalist to find out what he knows and what he's likely to publish, in order to bribe or stop him. The Steele dossier on Trump is an obvious black job. Too obvious."

Steele's career in Russian intelligence at MI6 had hit the rocks in 2006, and never recovered. That was the year in which the Russian Security Service (FSB) publicly exposed an MI6 operation in Moscow. Russian informants recruited by the British were passed messages and money, and dropped their information in containers fabricated to look like fake rocks in a public park. Steele was on the MI6 desk in London when the operation was blown. Although the FSB announcement was denied in London at the time, the British prime ministry confirmed its veracity in 2012. Read more on Steele's fake rock operation here , and the attempt by the Financial Times to cover it up by blaming Putin for fabricating the story.

The wet bed story, as Steele reported it to his client who then leaked it to the media, looks like this:

The bedroom, the bed and a piece of 19 th century soft porn on the wall look like this:
Source: http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/hotels/europe/moscow/rooms-suites/the-ritz-carlton-suite

The June 20, 2016, memo, which started the wet bed story, reports seven sources, identified as Source A through G. No other report in the dossier has as many sources; some of the original seven reappear in the series. Look carefully to detect what the Clinton media have missed.

Source D isn't Russian at all. He is American; Steele reports him as a "close associate of Trump who organized and managed his trips to Moscow". D claims to have been "present"; there is a bedside armchair in the Ritz Carlton photograph, so "present" is possible.

Source E's identity has been blacked out in the first memo, but he is identified elsewhere in the series as another American – a "Russian émigré figure close to Trump's campaign team" – not to Trump himself. Within the space of a paragraph, however, he turns into an "émigré associate of Trump". Several memos and weeks later, on August 10, this source has become "the ethnic Russian associate of Trump".

The others reported by Steele to have been in on the wet bed story include Source F, "a female staffer at the hotel when Trump stayed there". From the dossier it appears she told her story to an American who was an "ethnic Russian operative" of the company run by Source E, the émigré. So Source F isn't a direct or independent source at all. If this is beginning to bewilder you, it should. The only sources for the wet bed story turn out to be Americans, not Russians at all.

Just how difficult it was for Steele to pinpoint Trump's sexual activities in Russia, as well as his business, is indicated by the September 14 memo in the file. This claims to report Trump's visits to St. Petersburg. No dates have been given. One source, termed as a Russian from the "local services and tourist industry", reportedly told "a trusted Russian compatriot", three years after the event, that Trump had "participated in sex parties in the city". How many people make a sex party isn't reported; two may have sufficed. The memo reports no trace because "all direct witnesses had recently been 'silenced', i.e., bribed or coerced to disappear".

Trump posed for this photograph during the Miss Universe pageant, one of his business affairs in Moscow in November 2013. Source: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/donald-trump-russia-moscow-miss-universe-223173 In a European newspaper published on January 15, Trump confirmed this was the occasion for the wet bed story. Trump said: "I just got a letter from people that went to Russia with me - did you see that letter - very rich people, they went with me, they said you were with us, I was with them, I wasn't even here when they said such false stuff. I left, I wasn't even there . . . I was there for the Miss Universe contest, got up, got my stuff and I left - I wasn't even there - it's all." .

The same report by Steele admits it was "hard to prove" what business, if any, Trump had done in St. Petersburg. The allegation that, in order to make no reportable real estate transactions, Trump had "paid bribes to further his interests through affiliated companies", is presented in the dossier as evidence of Trump's corruption. Steele was taking Ł12,000 to portray the businessman as someone so inexperienced as to pay bribes before he had a deal, not during or after completion.

Steele's only Russian sources have no reported knowledge of Trump's sexual conduct. They include two people reported as serving government officials – Source A, a "senior Foreign Ministry figure"; and Source G, a "senior Kremlin official". One is a retiree – a "former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin"; and one is "an official close to the Presidential Administration head [Sergei] Ivanov". That makes four who British intelligence sources are certain had no contact at all with Steele, his company, or foreigners. A source with direct knowledge of operations says: "Basic rule [of MI6] is that you are probably identified after a couple of jobs. Then in any other visit you might infect anyone you associate with." Second rule, according to this source, is that by the time his cover was blown in 1996 Steele had "infected everyone he had been associated with in Moscow." Since then all he has been able to collect is hearsay three or four times removed from its origin.

Among Steele's kibitzers, he names a businessman, a "senior Russian financial officer"; "two well-placed and established Kremlin sources", a "Kremlin insider", a "well-placed Russian figure", and a "close associate of Rosneft President and Putin ally Igor Sechin". The duo claims that Peskov, the presidential spokesman, had "botched" his role in the military coup in Turkey on July 15, 2016, and was in trouble with chief of staff Ivanov, the Russian intelligence agencies and Putin. Steele's sources provided "no further details" so they didn't know what Peskov had done.

Steele failed to check the record. Had he done so, he would have discovered that Peskov made a public denial of Middle East press reports claiming Russian military intelligence had warned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the plot against him, enabling him to survive. ""I don't have such information and I don't know the sources, to which the news agency Fars is referring," Peskov declared . This was either a less than convincing denial of the truth, or an incredulous falsehood. Either way, no Russian source, civilian or military, has suggested Peskov had done anything remarkable. "If Peskov botched that one," said a source in a position to know, "he does the same all the time. What's news about that?"

The "Kremlin insider" – not an official, not a retiree, possibly a journalist – is presented by Steele in a memo of October 19, 2016, as his only source for reporting that Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, had met secretly with Kremlin officials "in the attempt to prevent the full details of Trump's relationship with Russia being exposed." The "insider" had revealed what he knew "speaking in confidence to a longstanding compatriot friend". However, between the two of them they didn't know which Kremlin officials Cohen had met; where; when; or what had been discussed. The "insider" did confide that Ivanov's replacement as chief of the presidential staff by his deputy, Anton Vaino, on August 12, 2016, and Sergei Kirienko's transfer from the state nuclear power holding Rosatom to deputy chief of the staff at the Kremlin on October 5 were both connected to the same thing – the "need to cover up Kremlin's Trump support operation".


Ivanov, extreme left, has remained an active member of the National Security Council, as this council session of January 13 shows . Russian gossip and speculation on the reasons for Ivanov's exit from the chief of staff post were voluminous at the time, including as many personal as policy and political reasons. Steele selected the story his client asked for with a blind attribution in a crowd; added the adjective "Kremlin"; and submitted a fresh invoice for Ł12,000.

The source "close" to Sechin was reported as saying that during a visit to Moscow in July 2016, Carter Page, a sometime advisor to Trump, had met Sechin, and been told that Sechin "continued to believe that Trump could win the US presidency". Sechin reportedly also told Page that if Trump lifted US sanctions on Rosneft, he would offer "Page/Trump's associates the brokerage [sic] of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft in return." This was reported on October 18. On December 12 Carter, back in Moscow, told Russian reporters he had revisited Rosneft: "I had the opportunity to meet with some of the top managers of the company Rosneft. The recent Rosneft deal, in which the Qatar Fund and Glencore could take part is unfortunately a good example of how American private companies are limited to a great degree due to the influence of sanctions." Page added : "The most classic example [of fake news] was of course the claims of my contacts with Igor Ivanovich [Sechin] which would have been a great honor but nevertheless did not take place."

That Sechin and his associates at Rosneft had been scouring the global markets for a formula to privatize a 19.5% stake in Rosneft had been well-known for months. No news either was Page's personal interest in Russian deal-making to support his one-man business, Global Energy Capital LLC . Steele has run the two stories together for a client who knew neither, and for reporters at the Clinton media who didn't check. Page's comments in Moscow reveal he has failed to understand the "privatization" Sechin was intending. For details, read this .

If Steele's operations were as well-known to the Russian services as the fake rock caper, the Russians were capable of planting disinformation intended to confuse or mislead Steele and his clientele, as well as the long line of Americans arriving in Moscow to advertise themselves as Trump advisors. "Intelligence is not evidence, and Steele would have known, better than anyone, that the information he was gathering was not fact and could be wrong", the Guardian has reported . In Moscow Russian sources say Page has made a record of wishful thinking and hustling for a job in the new administration; in Washington Trump's announcement of one has yet to be made.

Russian and western intelligence sources say there is one point the Steele dossier reports more accurately than the report issued on January 6 by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence. That's entitled "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections". Although Air Force Lieutenant-General James Clapper, the departing Director of National Intelligence (below, left), and his subordinates, who authored this paper, refer to "Russia's intelligence services" – plural – they claim the operations against civilian targets were conducted by just one, the military intelligence organization, GRU.

Watch carefully as the Clapper group slips from what it knows about military cyber warfare (signals interception, weapons jamming) into civilian email hacking. "We assess with high confidence that the GRU used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and Wikileaks to release victim data obtained in cyber operations We assess with high confidence that the GRU relayed material it acquired from the DNC [Democratic National Committee] and senior Democratic officials to Wikileaks."

Steele's dossier reports that the Russian information campaign was run very differently, and from several different sources. In overall command, next to Putin, was his chief of staff until August, Ivanov. Surveillance of Americans in Russia, including electronic and photographic, was the responsibility of the FSB. The Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) was in charge of "targeting foreign, especially western governments, penetrating leading foreign business corporations, especially banks."

Peskov's role was to arrange for media publication of kompromat on Clinton and "black PR", collected by the FSB and SVR. According to a "former intelligence officer, the FSB was the lead organization within the Russian state apparatus for cyber operations." Not a word about the GRU.

The FSB, according to Steele, was reportedly in charge of "using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data, and conduct 'altering operations' against the Democratic party leadership. There is no mention of GRU. In Clapper's version, "Romanian hackers" were GRU agents. In Steele's version they were "paid by both Trump's team and the Kremlin, though their orders and ultimate loyalty lay with Ivanov as Head of the PA [Presidential Administration]."

The Steele memo No. 095 of July 2016 even admits there were "Trump moles" and "agents/facilitators within the Democratic Party structure itself" who leaked internal Clinton campaign emails. The Trump team, it is also reported, provided the Russians with the information that was their highest priority – "the activities of [Russian] business oligarchs and their families' activities and assets in the US." Memo no. 097 of July 30 repeats that "Putin's priority requirement had been for intelligence on the activities, business and otherwise, in the US of leading Russian oligarchs and their families." This didn't come from a Russian source. According to Steele, the source was an American, who was also a Russian émigré, and who was "speaking in confidence to a trusted [American] associate."

Both the Clapper and Steele dossiers depend on a great deal of speaking in confidence to trusted associates, but they can't both be right about which Russian agency was in charge of which US operation. A London associate of Steele's, who doesn't trust him, comments: "I am sure in this case he left no stone unturned in his search for the truth. Steele and his associates became so fixated on the import of what he had on his hands, he lost track of the fact that these are compelling STORIES. Being plausible is vitally important, but that doesn't make the stories true. And if not true, well they are dust. "

"There may have been only one Trump bed, but there are so many fleas."

ambrit , January 18, 2017 at 6:38 am

As I commented about Mr. Steele several days ago, he must be a relative of the famous Remington Steele. In true family tradition, both Steeles are products of falsehood. They bring a "little joy into (peoples) humdrum lives," and "feel (their) hard work ain't been in vain for nuthin," to paraphrase that shining star in the firmament, Lina Lamont. All that's missing here is the obligatory disclaimer; "This product sold for entertainment purposes only." That the "product" is being bruited about as "real" and of consequence is the basic deception intended.
What should be of worry here is the fact that what passes for journalism today is actually "disinfotainment." The Paris Revue it ain't.

tegnost , January 18, 2017 at 9:48 am

I'm thinking maxwelll smart or austin powers

Carolinian , January 18, 2017 at 8:21 am

Thanks for the debunking although Golden Showers Gate is so last week. Perhaps come Friday the looney sitzkrieg period will finally be over and our famously free press can start reporting some real stuff.

Yves Smith Post author , January 18, 2017 at 9:55 am

I know but I thought readers would still appreciate the fine detail, particularly regarding Steele, since the later efforts to prop up the story revolved around finding some folks to vouch for him.

Ancient1 , January 18, 2017 at 11:53 am

Yes, thank you. It might be last week's hot news, but the detail in this artticle is most revelant.

olga , January 18, 2017 at 11:58 am

Plus – if a patently fake (although plausible) story is not completely debunked, the problem is that its after-effects linger on in people's consciousness for a long time

craazyboy , January 18, 2017 at 3:12 pm

I put the odds at 99% that in 2020 we are still seeing polls indicating 50% of Americans believe Russia hacks or influences America. 75% of Ds and 25% of Rs. In 2021, depending on election outcome, the ratios may switch, or stay the same. Assuming we didn't have WW3 before then.

DarkMatters , January 18, 2017 at 3:13 pm

By all means, thank you. Helmer always shines light from unusual directions, and the perspective shown by looking in formerly unexamined nooks and crannies is always, well, illuminating.

RenoDino , January 18, 2017 at 9:52 am

It can't be hacking because Pedestal gave whomever his password. And it can't be espionage because the DNC is a private organization. It can't be subversion because all the information that was released was true, unlike the top secret smear campaign on Trump. Can't wait for Trump's summary of hacking.

RUKidding , January 18, 2017 at 10:21 am

I only skimmed through this but thanks. Have had a couple of conversations with people about this, uh, situation. People who despise Trump really really want to believe it from the bottom of their hearts, and the fact that Mr. Steele is former MI6 just adds to their fervent belief in this legend.

A buncha hooey, if ya ask me. From the get-go, Steele seemed desparate to me. He hasn't been in Russia in quite a long time. I fail to see him as a credible source.

As "b" at Moon of Alabama has said, there's plenty of concerns about Trump, and we should all be vigilent in witnessing what he does and responding accordingly. This crap is just more distraction from actually paying attention to Trump's cabinet picks and their vetting process. How much time has been wasted hyperventilating about golden showers, while some of these cabinet weasels slip through the congressional vetting process without even having their ethics reviews completed? Where's the outrage over that? As usual: crickets.

I'm so DONE with the Democratic party and their antics. They're appear to me to be signalling that they're not intending to really play hard ball with Trump and, you know, actually do the job that we are paying them to do. Rather they'd prefer to waste time, money and other resources by trying to play "gotcha" with Trump overy stupid stuff.

FluffytheObeseCat , January 18, 2017 at 12:12 pm

This. Is the real point. The media is splashing around noisily like swimmers in a bidet while some very nasty pieces of work are being installed in the highest office in the federal bureaucracy. And then there's the new congress. You've got to be scouring the news every day to catch word of the bills they are writing. As if nothing has changed, and the impact on our lives will remain small and distant.

jrs , January 18, 2017 at 2:50 pm

+1 yes and also the new Congress Maybe Trump is just a big fat DISTRACTION (although that remains to be seen of course, I have no absolute certainty on what he will do after Jan 20, but perhaps it really is all distraction even if unplanned).

And maybe Congress (and the appointees) hold the real power (and they are a piece of work!!! And people bother protesting Trump and yet by the lack of such go around normalizing these horrible, possibly even worse than Trump, Republicans that aren't Trump – people like Paul Ryan).

Ivy , January 18, 2017 at 10:35 am

Steele reminds me of a character in The Tailor of Panama , by John Le Carré. That book also could be used relative to Curveball , who featured in our recent Iraq adventures.

There is an obvious demand for more books that allow us to predict the future.

Vatch , January 18, 2017 at 11:50 am

I still think Trump has gold plated bathroom plumbing fixtures. So when he takes a shower,

craazyboy , January 18, 2017 at 3:15 pm

.his shower mates wet the shower bed?

This is a step backwards from The Jacuzzi.

Scott , January 18, 2017 at 1:34 pm

I did want to find a true fact. Didn't ever believe the Golden Shower story. We know that the Trump organization sold real estate in NYC to Russian Oligarchs. We can believe that Putin would have motives to discover who of his orbits bought what & for how much.
Black, White, Red categories of jobs is of use to a fiction spy story writer.

Yves Smith Post author , January 18, 2017 at 6:19 pm

Every big residential real estate developer in NYC sells condos to Russians. Selling real estate to someone does not give them a hold over you. Let us not forget that the Chinese are yuuge real estate buyers too but Trump has been rattling China's cage.

Barry Egan , January 18, 2017 at 1:52 pm

The link to the fake rock story, and apparently all the other links to Helmer's website. Appear to be broken. Or his site is down. I was interested in that, seems like some real Spy vs. Spy type stuff.

Yves Smith Post author , January 18, 2017 at 6:20 pm

I clicked just now and it opened for me: http://johnhelmer.net/?p=6622

[Oct 26, 2017] Trump Denounces Phony Spies, Sleazebag Political Operatives

Notable quotes:
"... "It now turns out that the phony allegations against me were put together by my political opponents and a failed spy afraid of being sued," Trump wrote on Twitter Friday morning, adding , "Totally made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both Democrats and Republicans – FAKE NEWS!" ..."
"... According to the New York Times , a wealthy Republican donor funded political opposition group Fusion GPS to investigate Trump. The investigation was continued by Hillary Clinton's Democratic supporters, and the group hired Steele to investigate Trump. ..."
Jan 14, 2017 | www.breitbart.com
President-elect Donald Trump continued excoriating the forces behind the published document of unsubstantiated accusations of compromising behavior, accusing his political rivals for leaking the document prepared by a private investigator.

"It now turns out that the phony allegations against me were put together by my political opponents and a failed spy afraid of being sued," Trump wrote on Twitter Friday morning, adding , "Totally made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both Democrats and Republicans – FAKE NEWS!"

The Wall Street Journal reported that former British spy Christopher Steele, now the director of a private investigation firm, prepared the document.

According to the New York Times , a wealthy Republican donor funded political opposition group Fusion GPS to investigate Trump. The investigation was continued by Hillary Clinton's Democratic supporters, and the group hired Steele to investigate Trump.

Trump again pointed to Russian denials of possessing information on him and suggested "intelligence" sources released it.

[Oct 26, 2017] The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer by Glenn Greenwald

Notable quotes:
"... This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as "Fake News." ..."
"... Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party , seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing - eager ..."
"... What's with the USIC vs. Trump infowar? One way to look at it: The United States Intelligence community on the one hand, and Trump, Inc. on the other, are two feuding organized crime families. ..."
"... Are the elites fighting for the pieces of the shrinking pie? We trapped in the valley are the Greek peasant watching the frivolities and the infighting of the Olympian Gods and Goddesses atop the mountain permanently occupied by those heavenly celebrities reincarnated as the 1% . ..."
"... The "Trump Memo" furor is an example of how the controlled media manufactures fake news by using a devious technique known as "leading with rebuttal"- whereby defamatory, unproved, and unprovable allegations can be publicized without fear of legal action, a former journalist with one of the large media corporations has revealed. read the rest at the link ..."
"... It's interesting that this "#SteeleGate" scandal hit the MSM just after the announcement of the appointment of RFK, Jr. to a new commission on vaccines and scientific rigor in Big Pharma (it's not that rigorous). "I'm a germophobe", said the teetotalling never-vaccinated President-elect. ..."
"... Widely-disliked by MSM victims, which I admit is most everyone. The MSM and their owners declared war against Donald Trump a long time ago, and they're not going to let a little thing like losing a presidential election get in the way. ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | www.unz.com
Glenn Greenwald • The Intercept • January 11, 2017 • 20 Comments Reply

IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction's power even further.

This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as "Fake News."

Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party , seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing - eager - to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.

The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.

But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth - despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie - is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.

Verymuchalive , January 12, 2017 at 8:38 pm GMT

All very vague. No mention of Neocons, Zionists, AIPAC, the ADL, Jews
I wonder why?

@Kyle a
He knew you would fill in the blanks. This is The Unz Review comment section after all.
Agent76 , January 12, 2017 at 9:03 pm GMT • 100 Words

January 11, 2017 "Their ability to falsify is unlimited": Douglas Valentine provides background for understanding "USIC v Trump"

What's with the USIC vs. Trump infowar? One way to look at it: The United States Intelligence community on the one hand, and Trump, Inc. on the other, are two feuding organized crime families.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2017/01/11/falsify/

@KA
Are the elites fighting for the pieces of the shrinking pie? We trapped in the valley are the Greek peasant watching the frivolities and the infighting of the Olympian Gods and Goddesses atop the mountain permanently occupied by those heavenly celebrities reincarnated as the 1% .
Ivy , January 12, 2017 at 9:27 pm GMT • 100 Words

Here is an article outlining a journalistic technique getting some more notoriety these days:

The "Trump Memo" furor is an example of how the controlled media manufactures fake news by using a devious technique known as "leading with rebuttal"- whereby defamatory, unproved, and unprovable allegations can be publicized without fear of legal action, a former journalist with one of the large media corporations has revealed. read the rest at the link

http://newobserveronline.com/trump-memo-media-technique-revealed/

Randal , January 12, 2017 at 9:44 pm GMT • 100 Words

If any of the significant claims in this "dossier" turn out to be provably false - such as Cohen's trip to Prague - many people will conclude, with Trump's encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying "Fake News" to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit - render impotent - future journalistic exposés

LOL! The horse is long gone from that stable, I think.

Plenty to dislike about Greenwald, but he is certainly very intelligent and competent, and almost always makes good points well, in his writings. In some ways, he clearly is more genuinely principled than most on the left who make loud noises about supposed principles that they never adhere to when it's inconvenient to do so.

anon , Show Comment Next New Comment January 12, 2017 at 9:54 pm GMT

If Christopher Steele's body is found in mysterious circumstances, say with a ricin pellet or polonium poisoning, then I think we have to worry something is afoot.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/12/509493584/ex-spy-who-reportedly-assembled-trump-dossier-appears-to-be-in-hiding

@Anonymous Nephew
"If Christopher Steele's body is found in mysterious circumstances, say with a ricin pellet or polonium poisoning, then I think we have to worry something is afoot."

If the CIA have indeed declared war on DJT, Steele's in more danger from them than from the FSB. After all , a death like that would 'prove' Steele correct.

@Ivy
Here is an article outlining a journalistic technique getting some more notoriety these days:

The "Trump Memo" furor is an example of how the controlled media manufactures fake news by using a devious technique known as "leading with rebuttal"- whereby defamatory, unproved, and unprovable allegations can be publicized without fear of legal action, a former journalist with one of the large media corporations has revealed. read the rest at the link

http://newobserveronline.com/trump-memo-media-technique-revealed/

NYTimes follows the script word for word, doubles down:

TODAY's HEADLINES:

How a Sensational, Unverified Dossier Became a Crisis for Donald Trump
By SCOTT SHANE, NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MATTHEW ROSENBERG
"The consequences of the dossier, put together by a former British spy named Christopher Steele, are incalculable and will play out long past Inauguration Day."

http://tinyurl.com/ztkodcj

– one question, tho: I thought public figures could not initiate libel suits ???

@Eustace Tilley (not)
Carlos Slim's Blog (CSB = the NYT) calls Steele "respected". By whom? Typical journalistic sleight-of-hand.

It's interesting that this "#SteeleGate" scandal hit the MSM just after the announcement of the appointment of RFK, Jr. to a new commission on vaccines and scientific rigor in Big Pharma (it's not that rigorous). "I'm a germophobe", said the teetotalling never-vaccinated President-elect.

@Anonymous
NYTimes follows the script word for word, doubles down:


TODAY's HEADLINES:


How a Sensational, Unverified Dossier Became a Crisis for Donald Trump
By SCOTT SHANE, NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MATTHEW ROSENBERG
"The consequences of the dossier, put together by a former British spy named Christopher Steele, are incalculable and will play out long past Inauguration Day."

http://tinyurl.com/ztkodcj

-- one question, tho: I thought public figures could not initiate libel suits ???

Carlos Slim's Blog (CSB = the NYT) calls Steele "respected". By whom? Typical journalistic sleight-of-hand.

It's interesting that this "#SteeleGate" scandal hit the MSM just after the announcement of the appointment of RFK, Jr. to a new commission on vaccines and scientific rigor in Big Pharma (it's not that rigorous). "I'm a germophobe", said the teetotalling never-vaccinated President-elect.

Andrew Nichols , Show Comment Next New Comment January 13, 2017 at 12:15 am GMT

Totally outstanding piece. Greenwald Fisk, Cockburn, Cook and Pilger. So few against so much BS.

Kyle McKenna , Show Comment Next New Comment January 13, 2017 at 1:40 am GMT

open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect

Widely-disliked by MSM victims, which I admit is most everyone. The MSM and their owners declared war against Donald Trump a long time ago, and they're not going to let a little thing like losing a presidential election get in the way.

It's going to be like this for a while, I daresay. Dig in for a long fight. But don't give up. Never give up.

@in the middle
Lets support our soon to be President! To hell with the rubbish from the MSM. I don't watch them, don't have cable,(I give a better use to the savings, take the family out at least once a month), and my window to the world is the Internet!
@Agent76
January 11, 2017 "Their ability to falsify is unlimited": Douglas Valentine provides background for understanding "USIC v Trump"

What's with the USIC vs. Trump infowar? One way to look at it: The United States Intelligence community on the one hand, and Trump, Inc. on the other, are two feuding organized crime families.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2017/01/11/falsify/

Are the elites fighting for the pieces of the shrinking pie? We trapped in the valley are the Greek peasant watching the frivolities and the infighting of the Olympian Gods and Goddesses atop the mountain permanently occupied by those heavenly celebrities reincarnated as the 1% .

WorkingClass , Show Comment Next New Comment January 13, 2017 at 5:09 am GMT

The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest.

It would be helpful if you could be more specific. What is it that Trump is going to do that has people so upset?

@Kyle McKenna
open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect
Widely-disliked by MSM victims, which I admit is most everyone. The MSM and their owners declared war against Donald Trump a long time ago, and they're not going to let a little thing like losing a presidential election get in the way.

It's going to be like this for a while, I daresay. Dig in for a long fight. But don't give up. Never give up.

Lets support our soon to be President! To hell with the rubbish from the MSM. I don't watch them, don't have cable,(I give a better use to the savings, take the family out at least once a month), and my window to the world is the Internet!

Auntie Analogue , Show Comment Next New Comment January 13, 2017 at 10:03 am GMT • 100 Words

This "dossier" is what Steve Sailer calls, of social justice warrior bully tactics, a "hate hoax."

And we all know how irresistible hate hoaxes are and how valuable as propaganda hate hoaxes are to the Invade The World / Invite The World E$tabli$hment $ellout schmucks who hold the Megaphone – the same schmucks who bury their follow-up reports that admit that they were wrong about the "truth" of such "incidents" that are, of course, the usual series of hate hoaxes.

The same schmucks whose Megaphone told us that Saddam's nonexistent WMD's and yellowcake formed a genuine casus belli , that Trayvon Martin was a cute innocent juvenile murdered deliberately by a "White Hispanic," that "Hands Up, Don't Shoot!" were all gospel truth.

@Verymuchalive
All very vague. No mention of Neocons, Zionists, AIPAC, the ADL, Jews......
I wonder why?

He knew you would fill in the blanks. This is The Unz Review comment section after all.

Old fogey , January 13, 2017 at 5:08 pm GMT

What is actually going on that we are not supposed to be noticing because of all this nonsense? That's what really scares me. . .

@anon
If Christopher Steele's body is found in mysterious circumstances, say with a ricin pellet or polonium poisoning, then I think we have to worry something is afoot.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/12/509493584/ex-spy-who-reportedly-assembled-trump-dossier-appears-to-be-in-hiding

"If Christopher Steele's body is found in mysterious circumstances, say with a ricin pellet or polonium poisoning, then I think we have to worry something is afoot."

If the CIA have indeed declared war on DJT, Steele's in more danger from them than from the FSB. After all , a death like that would 'prove' Steele correct.

Renoman , January 13, 2017 at 7:04 pm GMT

The Deeps State better mind their manners lest DT send a busload of Hillbilly's over to get midevil on their skinny asses. Don't think they won't know where to look or how to get er done. Heads will be on pikes if they don't watch themselves.

Intertiller , January 13, 2017 at 7:20 pm GMT • 100 Words

"The deep state was responsible for Trump" – remember how convincing that sounded a month ago? What happened? Not much at all. The 'show', as it were, goes on. Now we're to suspect the "deep state was for Trump before they were again' Trump." Entertained yet? They hope so. A great fear of the dictorial oligarchy is that the average rube will doubt the presentation of team sports via the courtesans in elected office and their whore/megaphones in the ministry of truth. The show must go on. Alternatively, Americans can decide they're no longer interested. Look out!

Peripatetic commenter , January 13, 2017 at 7:39 pm GMT

In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit - render impotent - future journalistic exposés

What about past journalistic exposes?

Robert Magill , January 13, 2017 at 7:54 pm GMT • 100 Words

I would hesitate to credit the 1% as lead instigators in this orgy of chaos; they are mainly above the fray. I would look to their minions who appear terrified the boat may leave and their tickets canceled. But it is a splendid display of puerility; we are truly shameless. Imagine this country faced with a real crisis; no don't. We still must pretend we are sane and nobody around the world is listening and watching the show. Altogether now: WE'RE NUMBER ONE!

http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

[Oct 25, 2017] FEC Complaint Alleges Hillary, DNC Broke Election Law By Not Disclosing Trump-Russia Dossier Funding

Oct 25, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Today the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign committee violated campaign finance law by failing to accurately disclose the purpose and recipient of payments for the dossier of research alleging connections between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia. The CLC's complaint asserts that by effectively hiding these payments from public scrutiny the DNC and Clinton "undermined the vital public information role of campaign disclosures."

On October 24, The Washington Post revealed that the DNC and Hillary for America paid opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig into Trump's Russia ties, but routed the money through the law firm Perkins Coie and described the purpose as "legal services" on their FEC reports rather than research. By law, campaign and party committees must disclose the reason money is spent and its recipient.

"By filing misleading reports, the DNC and Clinton campaign undermined the vital public information role of campaign disclosures," said Adav Noti, senior director, trial litigation and strategy at CLC, who previously served as the FEC's Associate General Counsel for Policy. "Voters need campaign disclosure laws to be enforced so they can hold candidates accountable for how they raise and spend money. The FEC must investigate this apparent violation and take appropriate action."

"Questions about who paid for this dossier are the subject of intense public interest, and this is precisely the information that FEC reports are supposed to provide," said Brendan Fischer, director, federal and FEC reform at CLC. "Payments by a campaign or party committee to an opposition research firm are legal, as long as those payments are accurately disclosed. But describing payments for opposition research as 'legal services' is entirely misleading and subverts the reporting requirements."

While details of the payment arrangements remain scarce, FEC records indicate that the Hillary campaign and the DNC paid a total of $12 million to Perkins Coie for "legal services." Marc Elias, a Perkins partner and general counsel for Hillary's campaign, then used some portion of those funds to turn around and hire Fusion GPS who then contracted with a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to compile the now-infamous dossier. Per the Daily Caller :

It was revealed on Tuesday that the Clinton campaign and DNC began paying Fusion GPS, the research firm that commissioned the dossier, last April to continue research it was conducting on Trump. The Washington Post reported that Fusion approached lawyers at Perkins Coie, the firm that represented the campaign and DNC, offering to sell its investigative services.

Marc Elias, a Perkins Coie partner, and the general counsel for the campaign and DNC, oversaw the operation, according to The Post.

It is not clear how much Democrats, through Perkins Coie, paid Fusion for the project, which lasted until early November. Federal Election Commission records show that the campaign and DNC paid the law firm $12 million during the election cycle.

Ironically, most of the sources listed in the dossier were based in Russia and include a "senior Kremlin official" as well as other "close associates of Vladimir Putin." Moreover, as CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell notes, it's h ighly likely that some portion of the $12 million paid to Perkins Coie by the DNC and Hillary campaign made it's way into the pockets of those "senior Kremlin officials" as compensation for the services.

In the dossier, Steele cites numerous anonymous sources, many of which work in the upper echelons of the Russian government.

The first two sources cited in the dossier's first memo, dated June 20, 2016, are "a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure" and "a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin."

A third source is referred to as "a senior Russian financial official." Other sources in the dossier are described as "a senior Kremlin official" and sources close to Igor Sechin, the head of Russian oil giant Rosneft and a close associate of Vladimir Putin's.

To summarize, after a full year of mainstream media hysteria over alleged Trump-Russia collusion, it now appears as though the Hillary campaign may have been the only one to funnel cash to "Kremlin operatives" in return for political dirt...

Of course, we have no doubt that Hillary was in the dark about all of these arrangements.

Here is the full complaint filed by CLC :

NugginFuts -> ejmoosa , Oct 25, 2017 5:04 PM

Is she still "Good people" or can we lock her up now?

aelfheld -> NugginFuts , Oct 25, 2017 5:06 PM

Was she ever, really, 'good people'?

NugginFuts -> aelfheld , Oct 25, 2017 5:09 PM

Ask The Donald.

earleflorida -> NugginFuts , Oct 25, 2017 5:44 PM

hillery self-destruct wanting war with russia...

trump will closely (hillery's undoing) follow suit as a 'Protest far greater than the final days of the Vietnam Era' sweep the country....--- wanting war with NK (China & Russia).

sad!

JSBach1 -> secretargentman , Oct 25, 2017 6:01 PM

The long-help suspicions that Andrew McCabe is intimately involved in this dossier procurement are gaining traction:

"...FBI insiders say fired FBI Director James Comey and Andrew McCabe , deputy FBI director, used Bureau funds to underwrite the controversial dossier on President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, sources confirm.

And the deal to dig dirt on a presidential candidate was put together with the help of Sen. John McCain, sources said.

These new revelations in fact might be the worst kept secrets in Washington, D.C. but now rank-and-file FBI agents want the Bureau to come clean on its relationship with the author of the problematic Trump dossier, former British spy Christopher Steele..."

https://truepundit.com/fbi-paid-100k-for-concocted-trump-dossier-during-...

"...Senate investigators are demanding to see records of communications between Fusion GPS and the FBI and the Justice Department, including any contacts with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch , now under congressional investigation for possibly obstructing the Hillary Clinton email probe, and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe , who is under investigation by the Senate and the Justice inspector general for failing to recuse himself despite financial and political connections to the Clinton campaign through his Democratic activist wife. Senate investigators have singled out McCabe as the FBI official who negotiated with Steele..."

"...Steele hadn't worked in Moscow since the 1990s and didn't actually travel there to gather intelligence on Trump firsthand. He relied on third-hand "friend of friend" sourcing. In fact, most of his claimed Russian sources spoke not directly to him but "in confidence to a trusted compatriot" who, in turn, spoke to Steele -- and always anonymously.

But his main source may have been Google. Most of the information branded as "intelligence" was merely rehashed from news headlines or cut and pasted -- replete with errors -- from Wikipedia.

In fact, much of the seemingly cloak-and-dagger information connecting Trump and his campaign advisers to Russia had already been reported in the media at the time Steele wrote his monthly reports..."

http://nypost.com/2017/06/24/inside-the-shadowy-intelligence-firm-behind...

"... Mr. McCabe's appearance of a partisan conflict of interest relating to Clinton associates only magnifies the importance of those questions. That is particularly true if Mr. McCabe was involved in approving or establishing the FBI's reported arrangement with Mr. Steele, or if Mr. McCabe vouched for or otherwise relied on the politically-funded dossier in the course of the investigation. Simply put, the American people should know if the FBI's second-in-command relied on Democrat-funded opposition research to justify an investigation of the Republican presidential campaign...."

https://founderscode.com/2nd-charge-fbi-mccabe-investigation/

[Oct 25, 2017] Why Did BuzzFeed Publish the Trump Dossier

Now it is clear that Steele dossier was clearly a British intelligence services fake ordered and paid by DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign... And now we know who paid for it. and we know who tried to "spread the news". Atlantic tried to embellish actions of DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign but there were clearly against the law.
Not that different from Iraq WMD and uranium purchase story
Notable quotes:
"... Other reporting, including from my colleague Rosie Gray , has already begun to poke holes in the assertions contained in the dossier. Trump denied the report on Twitter, writing, "FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!" Now that the documents are in the public domain, the work under way within some news organizations to suss out what is true in the report will likely accelerate. ..."
"... Lawfare ..."
"... That raises a range of potential objections. First, it unfairly forces a public figure -- Trump, in this case -- to respond to a set of allegations that might or might not be entirely scurrilous; the reporters, by their own admission, do not know. ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | www.theatlantic.com

Late Tuesday afternoon, CNN published a story reporting that intelligence officials had given Trump, President Obama, and eight top members of Congress a two-page memo, summarizing allegations that Russian agents claimed they had compromising information on Trump. (If you're finding this chain difficult to follow, you're not alone; I tried to parse the story in some detail here .) CNN said officials had given no indication that they believed the material in the memo to be accurate. That memo, in turn, was based on 35 pages of materials gathered by a former British intelligence operative who had gathered them while conducting opposition research for various Trump opponents, both Republicans and Democrats.

The story left many questions unanswered -- most importantly, whether the claims were accurate, but also just what the claims were; CNN said it was withholding the contents of the memo because it could not independently verify the allegations.

The second question was answered in short order, when BuzzFeed posted a PDF of the 35-page dossier a little after 6 p.m. Even in their posting, BuzzFeed acknowledged some misgivings about the document, admitting that it was full of unverified claims. "It is not just unconfirmed: It includes some clear errors," the story noted. Verified or not, the claims were highly explosive, and in some cases quite graphic. Because they are not verified, I will not summarize them here, though they can be read at BuzzFeed or in any other number of places.

Other reporting, including from my colleague Rosie Gray , has already begun to poke holes in the assertions contained in the dossier. Trump denied the report on Twitter, writing, "FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!" Now that the documents are in the public domain, the work under way within some news organizations to suss out what is true in the report will likely accelerate.

Sensing that the decision to publish would be controversial, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith wrote a memo to staff explaining the thinking, and then posted it on Twitter .

"Our presumption is to be transparent in our journalism and to share what we have with our readers. We have always erred on the side of publishing. In this case, the document was in wide circulation at the highest levels of American government and media," Smith wrote. "Publishing this document was not an easy or simple call, and people of good will may disagree with our choice. But publishing the dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017."

Smith alluded to the document's wide circulation, a nod to the fact that many outlets have either acquired or been offered the chance to view it -- a group that includes CNN, Politico ( whose Ken Vogel said he'd chased the story ), and Lawfare . David Corn of Mother Jones also published a story based on information collected by the British intelligence operative in October.

Smith's reasoning is sincere and considered, but the conclusion is highly dubious. Even more perturbing was the reasoning in the published story. "Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government," the story stated.

That raises a range of potential objections. First, it unfairly forces a public figure -- Trump, in this case -- to respond to a set of allegations that might or might not be entirely scurrilous; the reporters, by their own admission, do not know. Second, the appeal to "transparency" notwithstanding, this represents an abdication of the basic responsibility of journalism. The reporter's job is not to simply dump as much information as possible into the public domain, though that can at times be useful too, as some of WikiLeaks' revelations have shown. It is to gather information, sift through it, and determine what is true and what is not. The point of a professional journalist corps is to have people whose job it is to do that work on behalf of society, and who can cultivate sources and expertise to help them adjudicate it. A pluralistic press corps is necessary to avoid monolithic thinking among reporters, but transparent transmission of misinformation is no more helpful or clarifying than no information at all.

[Oct 25, 2017] Did John McCain Launder Dodgy Trump Intel Dossier

Looks like the US Senate is a real can of worms...
Notable quotes:
"... One involved the media, which in October were given and encouraged to publish the "report" by the authors of the report (or their sponsors), purportedly a former British intelligence officer working for a private intelligence company ..."
"... Remember, we have a dubious report constructed for the purpose of discrediting Donald Trump, which was first commissioned by one of his Republican primary rivals and later completed under the patronage of someone in Hillary's camp. ..."
"... Enter John McCain. According to media reports, the dossier was handed to Sen. McCain -- again, a strong Trump opponent and proponent of conflict with Russia -- by a former UK ambassador (who presumably received it from the source, a former British intelligence officer). ..."
"... Senator McCain is the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one of the most powerful members of the US Senate. Consider the impact of being handed a strange report by some private intelligence-firm-for-hire or a media outlet versus being handed a report by one of the most powerful men in the US government. McCain's involving himself in the case gave the report a sense of legitimacy that it would not otherwise have had. Was this "laundering" intentional on his part? We do not know, but given his position on Trump and Russia that possibility must be considered. ..."
"... So great was the pressure on McCain to come clean on his decision to meet privately with the FBI Director to hand over this report that he released a statement earlier today portraying himself as nothing more than a good citizen, passing information to the proper authorities for them to act on if they see fit. ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org

We all know what money laundering is. When you need to hide the fact that the money in your possession comes by way of nefarious sources, you transfer it through legitimate sources and it appears clean on the other end. It's standard practice among thieves, extortionists, drug dealers, and the like.

The same practice can even be used to "clean" intelligence that comes by dubious sources, and sometimes even US Senators may involve themselves in such dark activities. Case in point US Senator John McCain (R-AZ), whose virulent opposition to Donald Trump is outmatched only by his total dedication to fomenting a new cold (or hot?) war with Russia.

While the world was caught up in the more salacious passages from a purported opposition research report on Donald Trump showing all manner of collusion with Putin's Russia -- and Russia's possession of blackmail-able kompromat on Trump -- something very interesting was revealed about the custody of the information. The "dossier" on Trump seemed to follow two chains of custody. One involved the media, which in October were given and encouraged to publish the "report" by the authors of the report (or their sponsors), purportedly a former British intelligence officer working for a private intelligence company. Only David Corn of Mother Jones bit, and his resulting story picked over the report to construct a mess of innuendo on Trump's relation to Russia that was short on any evidence.

The other chain of custody is what interests us. Remember, we have a dubious report constructed for the purpose of discrediting Donald Trump, which was first commissioned by one of his Republican primary rivals and later completed under the patronage of someone in Hillary's camp. It was created for a specific political purpose, which may have tainted its reception among more objective governmental sources had that been known.

Enter John McCain. According to media reports, the dossier was handed to Sen. McCain -- again, a strong Trump opponent and proponent of conflict with Russia -- by a former UK ambassador (who presumably received it from the source, a former British intelligence officer).

Senator McCain then felt duty-bound to bring this "intelligence report" directly (and privately) to the personal attention of FBI Director James Comey. From this hand-off to Comey, the report then became part of the Intelligence Community's assessment of Russian interference in the US presidential election.

Senator McCain is the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one of the most powerful members of the US Senate. Consider the impact of being handed a strange report by some private intelligence-firm-for-hire or a media outlet versus being handed a report by one of the most powerful men in the US government. McCain's involving himself in the case gave the report a sense of legitimacy that it would not otherwise have had. Was this "laundering" intentional on his part? We do not know, but given his position on Trump and Russia that possibility must be considered.

So great was the pressure on McCain to come clean on his decision to meet privately with the FBI Director to hand over this report that he released a statement earlier today portraying himself as nothing more than a good citizen, passing information to the proper authorities for them to act on if they see fit.

Do you believe the Senator from Arizona?


Copyright © 2017 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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[Oct 25, 2017] The Definitive Demise of the Debunked Dodgy Dossier on The Donald

Notable quotes:
"... For Donald Trump, all attempts to gain a foothold in the USSR and then in Russia in 30 years of travel and negotiations failed. Moscow did not have a Trump Tower of its own, although Trump boasted every time that he had met the most important people and was just about to invest hundreds of millions in a project that would undoubtedly be successful. ..."
"... Trumps' largest business success in Russia was the presentation of a Trump Vodka at the Millionaire Fair 2007 in Moscow. This project was also a cleansing; In 2009 the sale of Trump Vodka was discontinued. ..."
"... puts his name on stuff ..."
"... (2) Zhirinovsky Is The Very Last Person Putin Would Use For A Proxy ..."
"... Such a delicate plan – to reach the election of a President of the US by means of Zhirinovsky – ensures a skeptical smile for every Russian at best. He is already seventy and has been at the head of a party with a misleading name for nearly thirty years. The Liberal Democratic Party is neither liberal nor democratic. If their policies are somehow characterized, then as right-wing populism. Zhirinovsky is known for shrill statements; He threatened, for example, to destroy the US by means of "gravitational weapons". ..."
"... Why Would Russian Intelligence Agencies Sources Have Talked to Steele? ..."
"... But the report, published on the BuzzFeed Internet portal, is full of inconsistencies and contradictions. The problem is not even that there are a lot of false facts. Even the assumption that agents of the Russian secret services are discussing the details with a former secretary of a hostile secret service in the midst of a highly secret operation by which a future President of the US is to be discredited appears strange. ..."
"... Exactly. For the intelligence community and Democrat reliance on Steele's dossier to be plausible, you have to assume 10-foot tall Russkis (1) with incredibly sophisticated strategic, operational, and technical capabilities, who have (2) performed the greatest intelligence feat of the 21st and ..."
"... Donald Trump went on Howard Stern for, like, decades. The stuff that's right out there for whoever wants to roll those tapes is just as "compromising" as anything in the dodgy dossier, or the "grab her by the pussy" tape, for that matter. As Kowaljow points out, none of it was mortally wounding to Trump; after all, if you're a volatility voter who wants to kick over the table in a rigged game, you don't care about the niceties. ..."
"... transition ..."
"... And that's before we get to ObamaCare, financial regulation, gutting or owning the CIA (which Trump needs to do, and fast), trade policy, NATO, China, and a myriad of other stories, all rich with human interest, powerful narratives, and plenty of potential for scandal. Any one of them worthy of A1 coverage, just like the Inaugural crowd size dogpile that's been going on for days. ..."
"... Instead, the press seems to be reproducing the last gasps of the Clinton campaign, which were all about the evils of Trump, the man. That tactic failed the Clinton campaign, again because volatility voters weren't concerned with the niceties. And the same tactic is failing the press now. ..."
Jan 23, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
by Lambert Strether of Corrente .

In the midst of the hysteria about Russian interference in the 2016 election - 52% of Democrat voters believe it's definitely or probably true that "Russia tampered with vote tallies" , a view for which there is no evidence whatever, and which is a depressing testimony to the power of propaganda to produce epistemic closure in liberals as well as conservatives - came Buzzfeed's 35-page "dodgy dossier" on Donald Trump, oppo that the researcher, Christopher Steele , peddled during the election proper, but was unable to sell, not even to an easy mark like Jebbie. (There's a useful debunking of Steele's report in the New York Review of Books , of all places.) Remember the piss jokes? So two-weeks ago Amazingly, or not, a two-page summary to Steele's product had been included in a briefing given to Trump (and Obama). A weary Obama was no doubt well accustomed to the intelligence community's little ways, but the briefing must have been quite a revelation to Trump. I mean, Trump is a man who knows shoddy when he sees it, right?

In any case, a link to the following story in Hamburg's ridiculously sober-sided Die Zeit came over the transom: So schockiert von Trump wie alle anderen ("So shocked by Trump like everyone else"). The reporter is Alexej Kowaljow , a Russian journalist based in Moscow. Before anyone goes "ZOMG! The dude is Russian !", everything Kowaljow writes is based on open sources or common-sense information presumably available to citizens of any nation. The bottom line for me is that if the world is coming to believe that Americans are idiots, it's not necessarily because Americans elected Trump as President.

I'm going to lay out two claims and two questions from Kowaljow's piece. In each case, I'll quote the conventional, Steele and intelligence community-derived wisdom in our famously free press, and then I'll quote Kowaljow. I think Kowaljow wins each time. Easily. I don't think Google Translate handles irony well, but I sense that Kowaljow is deploying it freely.

(1) Trump's Supposed Business Dealings in Russia Are Commercial Puffery

Here's the section on Russia in Time's article on Trump's business dealings; it's representative. I'm going to quote it all so you can savor it. Read it carefully.

Donald Trump's Many, Many Business Dealings in 1 Map

Russia

"For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia," Trump tweeted in July, one day before he called on the country to "find" a batch of emails deleted from Hillary Clinton's private server. Nonetheless, Russia's extraordinary meddling in the 2016 U.S. election-a declassified report released by U.S. intelligence agencies in January disclosed that intercepted conversations captured senior Russian officials celebrating Trump's win-as well as Trump's complimentary remarks about Russian President have stirred widespread questions about the President-elect's pursuit of closer ties with Moscow. Several members of Trump's inner circle have business links to Russia, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who consulted for pro-Russia politicians in the Ukraine. Former foreign policy adviser Carter Page worked in Russia and maintains ties there.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's incoming national security adviser, has been a regular guest on Russia's English-language propaganda network, RT , and even dined with Putin at a banquet.

During the presidential transition, former Georgia Congressman and Trump campaign surrogate Jack Kingston told a gathering of businessmen in Moscow that the President-elect could lift U.S. sanctions.

According to his own son, Trump has long relied on Russian customers as a source of income. "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Donald Trump Jr. told a Manhattan real estate conference in 2008 , according to an account posted on the website of trade publication eTurboNews. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." Back to map .

Read that again, if you can stand it. Do you see the name of an actual business, owned by Trump? Do you see the name of any businessperson who closed a deal with Trump? Do you, in fact, see any reporting at all? At most, you see commercial puffery by Trump the Younger: "Russians [in Russia?] make up a pretty [qualifier] disproportionate [whatever that means] cross-section [whatever that means] of a lot of [qualifier] our assets."

Now Kowaljow (via Google Translate, so forgive any solecisms):

For Donald Trump, all attempts to gain a foothold in the USSR and then in Russia in 30 years of travel and negotiations failed. Moscow did not have a Trump Tower of its own, although Trump boasted every time that he had met the most important people and was just about to invest hundreds of millions in a project that would undoubtedly be successful.

Trumps' largest business success in Russia was the presentation of a Trump Vodka at the Millionaire Fair 2007 in Moscow. This project was also a cleansing; In 2009 the sale of Trump Vodka was discontinued.

Because think about it: Trump puts his name on stuff . Towers in Manhattan, hotels, casinos, golf courses, steaks. Anything in Russia with Trump's name on it? Besides the failed vodka venture? No? Case closed, then.

(2) Zhirinovsky Is The Very Last Person Putin Would Use For A Proxy

From The Hill's summary of Russian "interference" in the 2016 election:

Five reasons intel community believes Russia interfered in election

The attacks dovetailed with other Russian disinformation campaigns

The report covers more than just the hacking effort. It also contains a detailed list account of information warfare against the United States from Russia through other means.

Political party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who the report lists as a "pro-Kremlin proxy," said before the election that, if Trump won, Russia would 'drink champagne' to celebrate their new ability to advance in Syria and Ukraine.

Now Kowaljow:

The report of the American intelligence services on the Russian interference in the US elections, published at the beginning of January, was notoriously neglected by Russians, because the name of Vladimir Zhirinovsky was mentioned among the "propaganda activities of Russia", which had announced that in the event of an election victory of Trump champagne to want to drink.

Such a delicate plan – to reach the election of a President of the US by means of Zhirinovsky – ensures a skeptical smile for every Russian at best. He is already seventy and has been at the head of a party with a misleading name for nearly thirty years. The Liberal Democratic Party is neither liberal nor democratic. If their policies are somehow characterized, then as right-wing populism. Zhirinovsky is known for shrill statements; He threatened, for example, to destroy the US by means of "gravitational weapons".

If, therefore, the Kremlin had indeed had the treacherous plan of helping Trump to power, it would scarcely have been made known about Zhirinovsky.

The American equivalent would be. Give me a moment to think of an American politician who's both so delusional and such a laughingstock that no American President could possibly consider using them as a proxy in a devilishly complex informational warfare campaign Sara Palin? Anthony Weiner? Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Na ga happen.

And now to the two questions.

(3) Why Would Russian Intelligence Agencies Sources Have Talked to Steele?

Kowaljow:

But the report, published on the BuzzFeed Internet portal, is full of inconsistencies and contradictions. The problem is not even that there are a lot of false facts. Even the assumption that agents of the Russian secret services are discussing the details with a former secretary of a hostile secret service in the midst of a highly secret operation by which a future President of the US is to be discredited appears strange.

Exactly. For the intelligence community and Democrat reliance on Steele's dossier to be plausible, you have to assume 10-foot tall Russkis (1) with incredibly sophisticated strategic, operational, and technical capabilities, who have (2) performed the greatest intelligence feat of the 21st and 20th centuries, suborning the President of the United States, and whose intelligence agencies are (3) leakly like a sieve. Does that make sense? (Of course, the devilish Russkis could have fed Steele bad data, knowing he'd then feed it to the American intelligence agencies, who would lap it up, but that's another narrative.)

(4) How Do You Compromise the Uncompromisable?

Funny how suddenly the word kompromat was everywhere, wasn't it? So sophisticated. Everybody loves to learn a new word! Regarding the "Golden Showers" - more sophistication! - Kowaljow writes:

But even if such a compromise should exist, what sense should it have, since the most piquant details have long been publicly discussed in public, and had no effect on the votes of the elected president? Like all the other scandals trumps, which passed through the election campaign, they also remained unresolved, including those who were concerned about sex.

This also includes what is known as a compromise, compromising material, that is, video shots of the unsightly nature, which can destroy both the political career and the life of a person. The word Kompromat shines today – as in the past Perestroika – in all headlines; It was not invented in Russia, of course. But in Russia in the Yeltsin era, when the great clans in the power gave bitter fights and intensively used the media, works of this kind have ended more than just a brilliant career. General Prosecutor Jurij Skuratov was dismissed after a video had been shown in the country-wide television channels: There, a person "who looks like the prosecutor's office" had sex with two prostitutes.

Donald Trump went on Howard Stern for, like, decades. The stuff that's right out there for whoever wants to roll those tapes is just as "compromising" as anything in the dodgy dossier, or the "grab her by the pussy" tape, for that matter. As Kowaljow points out, none of it was mortally wounding to Trump; after all, if you're a volatility voter who wants to kick over the table in a rigged game, you don't care about the niceties.

Conclusion

It would be nice, wouldn't it, if our famously free press was actually covering the Trump transition , instead of acting like their newsrooms are mountain redoubts for an irrendentist Clinton campaign. It would be nice, for example, to know:

  1. The content and impact of Trump's Executive Orders.
  2. Ditto, regulations.
  3. Personnel decisions below the Cabinet level. Who are the Flexians?
  4. Obama policies that will remain in place, because both party establishments support them. Charters, for example.
  5. Republican inroads in Silicon Valley.
  6. The future of the IRS, since Republicans have an axe to grind with it.
  7. Mismatch between State expectations for infrastructure and Trump's implementation

And that's before we get to ObamaCare, financial regulation, gutting or owning the CIA (which Trump needs to do, and fast), trade policy, NATO, China, and a myriad of other stories, all rich with human interest, powerful narratives, and plenty of potential for scandal. Any one of them worthy of A1 coverage, just like the Inaugural crowd size dogpile that's been going on for days.

Instead, the press seems to be reproducing the last gasps of the Clinton campaign, which were all about the evils of Trump, the man. That tactic failed the Clinton campaign, again because volatility voters weren't concerned with the niceties. And the same tactic is failing the press now. Failing unless, of course, you're the sort of sleaze merchant who downsizes the newsroom because, hey, it's all about the clicks.

[Oct 25, 2017] Ex-MI6 officer Christopher Steele in hiding after Trump dossier

Notable quotes:
"... BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said Mr Steele had previously been an intelligence officer - rather than agent - in MI6, who would have run a team of agents as an intelligence gatherer. ..."
"... Intelligence agencies considered the claims relevant enough to brief both Mr Trump and President Obama last week. ..."
"... But the allegations have not been independently substantiated or verified and some details have been challenged as incorrect by those who are mentioned. ..."
"... Mr Trump himself was briefed about the existence of the allegations by the US intelligence community last week but has since described them as fake news, accusing the US intelligence services of leaking the dossier. ..."
Jan 12, 2017 | www.bbc.com

An ex-MI6 officer who is believed to have prepared memos claiming Russia has compromising material on US President-elect Donald Trump is now in hiding, the BBC understands.

Christopher Steele, who runs a London-based intelligence firm, is believed to have left his home this week.

The memos contain unsubstantiated claims that Russian security officials have compromising material on Mr Trump.

The US president-elect said the claims were "fake news" and "phoney stuff".

Mr Steele has been widely named as the author of a series of memos - which have been published as a dossier in some US media - containing extensive allegations about Mr Trump's personal life and his campaign's relationship with the Russian state.

... ... ...

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said Mr Steele had previously been an intelligence officer - rather than agent - in MI6, who would have run a team of agents as an intelligence gatherer.

However, as Mr Steele was now working in the private sector, our correspondent said, there was "probably a fair bit of money involved" in the commissioning of the reports.

He said there was no evidence to substantiate the allegations and it was still possible the dossier had been based on what "people had said" about Mr Trump "without any proof".

Donald J. Tump Twit

@realDonaldTrump

James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated. Made up, phony facts. Too bad!

... ... ...

Obama briefing

The 35-page dossier on Mr Trump - which is believed to have been commissioned initially by Republicans opposed to Mr Trump - has been circulating in Washington for some time.

Media organisations, uncertain of its credibility, initially held back from publication. However, the entire series of reports has now been posted online, with Mr Steele named as the author.

Intelligence agencies considered the claims relevant enough to brief both Mr Trump and President Obama last week.

But the allegations have not been independently substantiated or verified and some details have been challenged as incorrect by those who are mentioned.

Mr Trump himself was briefed about the existence of the allegations by the US intelligence community last week but has since described them as fake news, accusing the US intelligence services of leaking the dossier.

[Oct 25, 2017] Former MI6 agent behind Trump dossier returns to work by Luke Harding and Nick Hopkins

So guardian clearly supports Steele dossier. Nice... So the guy clearly tried to influence the US election and Guardian neoliberal honchos and their Russophobic presstitutes (like Luke Harding) are OK with it. They just complain about Russian influence. British elite hypocrisy in action...
Notable quotes:
"... Published in January by BuzzFeed , the dossier suggested that Donald Trump's team had colluded with Russian intelligence before the US election to sabotage Hillary Clinton's campaign. Citing unidentified sources, it said Trump had been "compromised" by Russia's FSB spy agency during a trip to Moscow in 2013. ..."
"... Trump dismissed the dossier as fake news and said Steele was a "failed spy". Vladimir Putin also rejected the dossier. His spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed Russia did not collect kompromat – compromising material – on Trump or anyone else. ..."
"... As head of MI6's Russia desk, Steele led the inquiry into Litvinenko's polonium poisoning, quickly concluding that this was a Russian state plot. He did not meet Litvinenko and was not his case officer, friends said. ..."
Mar 07, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

Christopher Steele speaks publicly for first time since the file was revealed and thanks supporters for 'kind messages'

The former MI6 agent behind the controversial Trump dossier has returned to work, nearly two months after its publication caused an international scandal and furious denials from Washington and Moscow.

Christopher Steele posed for a photograph outside the office of his business intelligence company Orbis in Victoria, London on Tuesday. Speaking for the first time since his dossier was revealed , Steele said he had received messages of support.

"I'm now going to be focusing my efforts on supporting the broader interests of our company here," he told the Press Association. "I'd like to say a warm thank you to everyone who sent me kind messages and support over the last few weeks."

Steele, who left British intelligence in 2009 and co-founded Orbis with an MI6 colleague, said he would not comment substantively on the contents of the dossier: "Just to add, I won't be making any further statements or comments at this time."

Published in January by BuzzFeed , the dossier suggested that Donald Trump's team had colluded with Russian intelligence before the US election to sabotage Hillary Clinton's campaign. Citing unidentified sources, it said Trump had been "compromised" by Russia's FSB spy agency during a trip to Moscow in 2013.

It alleged that Trump was secretly videoed with Russian prostitutes in a suite in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Moscow. The prostitutes allegedly urinated on the bed used by Barack Obama during a presidential visit.

Trump dismissed the dossier as fake news and said Steele was a "failed spy". Vladimir Putin also rejected the dossier. His spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed Russia did not collect kompromat – compromising material – on Trump or anyone else.

Steele's friends say he has been keen to go back to work for some weeks. They insist he has not been in hiding but has been keeping a low profile to avoid paparazzi who have been camped outside his family home in Surrey.

Several of the lurid stories about him that have appeared in the press have been wrong, said friends. The stories include claims that Steele met Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian dissident who was murdered in 2006 with a radioactive cup of tea, probably on Putin's orders .

As head of MI6's Russia desk, Steele led the inquiry into Litvinenko's polonium poisoning, quickly concluding that this was a Russian state plot. He did not meet Litvinenko and was not his case officer, friends said.

[Oct 25, 2017] There is a Coup Underway Against President Trump by Harley Schlanger

Notable quotes:
"... Despite more than twelve months of non-stop charges against the Russians, and claims of Trump's collusion with Russia, not a shred of hard evidence has yet been presented to back these allegations, which are at the heart of the coup plot being run against the President. ..."
"... Brennan set up a task force to look into the Russian meddling charges after a former British Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Andrew Wood, delivered a fraudulent dossier, prepared by an "ex"-MI6 operative, to Brennan, through anti-Trump Senator John McCain. ..."
Oct 08, 2017 | steemit.com

, LaRouchePac, SGTreport.com:

In a desperate attempt to defend its collapsing "Russiagate" narrative, the Washington Post launched an attack on The Nation magazine for its August 9 article by Patrick Lawrence, "A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack." Lawrence's article, in the most prestigious left/progressive magazine in the U.S., broke the attempted media blackout of the memo sent by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) on July 24 to President Trump, which effectively refutes the claims of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, allegedly through "hacking" Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails and releasing them to Wikileaks.

Despite more than twelve months of non-stop charges against the Russians, and claims of Trump's collusion with Russia, not a shred of hard evidence has yet been presented to back these allegations, which are at the heart of the coup plot being run against the President.

The Nation article was followed by a prominent story in Bloomberg News and one in Salon magazine, which both reported on the Nation article, and the VIPS memo, and how it challenges the narrative that Trump owes his election victory to Putin and Russia. That story was concocted by leading figures in British intelligence, and leaked to the U.S. media by corrupt elements of Obama's intelligence team, led by the trio of Brennan, Clapper and Comey, as part of the "regime change" against Trump they launched after his November 2016 election victory.

Brennan set up a task force to look into the Russian meddling charges after a former British Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Andrew Wood, delivered a fraudulent dossier, prepared by an "ex"-MI6 operative, to Brennan, through anti-Trump Senator John McCain.

The attack on The Nation was posted on the Post's "Eric Wemple Blog" on August 15, and is a blatant attempt to force The Nation's editors to not merely repudiate the Lawrence article, but to join the campaign against Trump's desire for cooperation with Russia. Wemple's attempt to dismiss the authoritative report of the VIPS has no substance, and is written to bludgeon the magazine's editors to adopt the talking points of the coup plotters. As such, it presents the same weak, sophistical argument presented by the DNC, which released a statement on the VIPS memo which simply reasserted the conclusion reached by "U.S. intelligence agencies" of Russian interference, adding, "Any suggestion otherwise is false, and is just another conspiracy theory like those pushed by Trump and his administration."

Such dangerous silliness was countered by Salon's Danielle Ryan, who wrote on August 15,

"For the media and mainstream liberals to dismiss information presented in The Nation as lacking in evidence would be breathtakingly ironic, given how little evidence they required to build a narrative" against Trump and Putin. She concluded that if the VIPS memo is right, "those who pushed the Russia hacking narrative with little evidence have a lot to answer for."

[Oct 25, 2017] The Final Truth about the Trump Dossier, Part Three by Accuracy In Media

May 03, 2017 | www.aim.org
A Special Report from the Accuracy in Media Center for Investigative Journalism; Cliff Kincaid, Director

The Role of the CIA's John Brennan

In its lengthy feature article on FBI Director James Comey, The New York Times disingenuously evades the new evidence from the British press that nails former President Barack Obama's CIA Director John Brennan for using the "Trump dossier" as weaponized fake intelligence, which he wielded to spearhead an interagency task force to investigate Trump during and after the election campaign. The Times article's sole mention of Brennan suppresses any mention of its own reporting by three of the same reporters on January 19 about the six-agency, anti-Trump task force or working group (and naturally there is no investigative reporting to dig into the task force's scandalous operations).

But, of course, that was the same New York Times article, in its January 20 print edition, that headlined the " Wiretapped Trump Aides ." The Times wants to forget all about that, now that President Trump has made the Obama "wire tapping" an issue.

The timing and use of the "Trump dossier" suggests that Hillary's agents during the campaign panicked when Julian Assange announced on June 12 , 2016, that he would soon release emails from within the Hillary campaign -- unauthorized and uncensored -- not official State Department releases redacted to protect Hillary.

It seems as if Hillary's backers hired someone to throw together any sleazy garbage that they could use to blunt the impact, or even nullify the potentially disastrous effects of the Hillary/DNC emails, which as far as they knew could come out any day or any minute from WikiLeaks. The first Christopher Steele report in the "dossier," with the vilest allegations of all, was rushed out in record time, dated barely a week later, on June 20 .

From their perspective of defending Hillary, it had to be something on Trump so foul, so disgusting, that no one would pay any attention to what the WikiLeaks emails from Hillary said or disclosed. Hence, the first "Trump dossier" report concocted on or before June 20 tried to claim Trump hired prostitutes to "golden shower" (urinate on) the former Obama bed in the Moscow hotel (or as we have seen, "someone" said "someone else" said Trump "may" have done so, and it "may" have been taped, maybe in "some year" or other, etc. Our words in quotes). The Hillary funders evidently did not count on the "Trump dossier" being so repulsive that even the most hate-filled major media, such as The New York Times and CNN, could not stomach publishing it or risking lawsuits from a billionaire like Trump. So they simply drew attention to the document without reproducing it, at first only by veiled allusion.

As the election approached, the increasingly frantic media began leaking out more and more from the sickening "dossier." ( NYT , July 29; Yahoo News September 23; Mother Jones October 31; Washington Post November 1, Newsweek November 4, Salon November 4, etc.)

In addition to Comey, who took the bait, we have evidence that Obama's CIA director John Brennan was involved in spreading the allegations, briefing Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) (who turned around and lambasted Comey), and using it and illegal NSA-GCHQ wiretap data to set up an interagency task force to investigate Trump. Such CIA-led actions were in violation of the CIA charter forbidding them from carrying out any law enforcement, police or internal security functions (50 U.S. Code 3036(d)(1)). (AIM Special Report , April 17)

Trying to make something out of nothing, the illegal intelligence agency leaks suggest that the CIA has found some minor "aspects" in the "dossier" that are " corroborated " by intercepted wiretap communications. But these turned out to be pseudo-corroborations of long-known matters of public knowledge (such as alleged Trump adviser Carter Page's "secret" visit to Moscow, actually openly reported in the press on July 7).

In fact, essentially the same story indicating that a few business meetings in the "dossier" were "confirmed" by intercepted communications -- but not important facts -- ran in Yahoo News on September 23, 2016.

So this is old fake news, designed to magnify and exaggerate trivia to suggest the opposite of what was actually known, which was that nothing incriminating or wrongful about Trump associate's business activities with Russia had been found -- no "smoking gun." ( AIM , Febrary 20 and April 17 , 2017; cf. Washington Post November 1, 2016; and CNN )

[Oct 25, 2017] Susan Rice admits that she spied on Donald Trump

Notable quotes:
"... Until now, Susan Rice had always denied spying on Donald Trump and his team both in the transition period and also in the run up to the presidential elections. There have been several times when President Trump has denounced the illegal tappings that the Obama Administration had authorized against him, which the Press in the United States had qualified as completely fabricated. ..."
"... President Richard Nixon had been forced to resign for spying on the Democratic Party's electoral headquarters. However, in the case of Susan Rice, the Congressmen have not "acquired a conviction" that she had committed a federal crime and that she had tried to cover it up. ..."
"... In contrast, President Obama's team is presenting the tappings ordered by Susan Rice as wholly legitimate in the context of an investigation into possible Russian interferences. Furthermore, it is a fact that the United Arab Emirates has organized at the same time, a meeting in the Seychelles, between someone close to President Putin and Erik Prince (former director of Blackwater, military advisor to the Emirates and brother of the current Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos). ..."
Sep 18, 2017 | www.voltairenet.org

Susan Rice, the former National Security Advisor, has admitted before the House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee that during the transition period, she had spied on Donald Trump and his team when they were in Trump Tower, New York. She also admitted that she had had the names of Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon deleted from summaries of the tappings.

Mrs Rice has guaranteed that her intention was not to find out the secret plans of the Team Trump. She just was trying to figure out what the United Arab Emirates was up to, and was hoping to gather relevant information from the content of an interview that the President Elect was supposed to have given to the Prince and heir to the throne of Abu Dhabi.

Until now, Susan Rice had always denied spying on Donald Trump and his team both in the transition period and also in the run up to the presidential elections. There have been several times when President Trump has denounced the illegal tappings that the Obama Administration had authorized against him, which the Press in the United States had qualified as completely fabricated.

President Richard Nixon had been forced to resign for spying on the Democratic Party's electoral headquarters. However, in the case of Susan Rice, the Congressmen have not "acquired a conviction" that she had committed a federal crime and that she had tried to cover it up.

In contrast, President Obama's team is presenting the tappings ordered by Susan Rice as wholly legitimate in the context of an investigation into possible Russian interferences. Furthermore, it is a fact that the United Arab Emirates has organized at the same time, a meeting in the Seychelles, between someone close to President Putin and Erik Prince (former director of Blackwater, military advisor to the Emirates and brother of the current Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos).

https://www.youtube.com/embed/b6edWWMlbWQ

[Oct 25, 2017] EXCLUSIVE Six U.S. Agencies Conspired to Illegally Wiretap Trump; British Intel Used as Front to Spy on Campaign for NSA

Notable quotes:
"... Federal law enforcement sources said Bharara was simply following the orders of Attorney General Lynch, who lobbied the State Department to issue the disavowed Russian a B1/B2 non-immigrant visa. This permitted Veselnitskaya entry into the United States for the sole purpose of entrapping Trump associates to use as fuel to commission wiretaps, federal sources said. ..."
"... Veselnitskaya may have been paid as well by the U.S. government, FBI sources said. It was reported last week that Steele, who compiled the Trump dossier was paid at least $100,000 from FBI funds as well. But that came later, after the wiretapping was well underway. ..."
"... Federal sources said the wiretaps on Trump insiders began in late 2015, almost a year before the 2016 election. The targets then were Flynn and Page, sources confirmed. When no smoking gun was recovered from those initial taps, U.S. intelligence agencies moved to broaden the scope through their newly-formed alliance. ..."
"... Intelligence garnered from the British eavesdropping, which again was merely a front for the NSA, was then used in August 2016 to secure a legitimate FISA warrant on Manafort, Trump Jr. and Kushner. That warrant was issued on or about September, 2016, federal sources confirm. ..."
Sep 20, 2017 | www.washingtonpost.com
And none of it was very legal. In fact, most of it was very illegal, according to federal law enforcement sources who are blowing the whistle on a sweeping scheme to undermine the Executive branch and the electorate's choice for president of the United States. And according to high ranking FBI sources, the Bureau played a definitive role in plotting this sweeping privacy breach. But the FBI had much help from the NSA, CIA, the Office of of the Director of National Intelligence, Treasury financial crimes division under DHS, and the Justice Department, federal law enforcement sources confirmed. The Deep State caretakers involved are familiar names: James Comey (FBI), John Brennan (CIA), James Clapper (ODNI), Loretta Lynch (DOJ), Jeh Johnson (DHS), Admiral Michael Rogers (NSA). And then-director of GCHQ Robert Hannigan who has since resigned from the esteemed British spy agency.

President Barack Obama's White House too could be implicated, sources said. But while evidence certainly points to involvement of the Obama administration, sources said they did not have access to definitive intelligence proving such a link.

Here is what we now know, per intelligence gleaned form federal law enforcement sources with insider knowledge of what amounts to a plot by U.S. intelligence agencies to secure back door and illegal wiretaps of President Trump's associates:

  • Six U.S. agencies created a stealth task force, spearhead by CIA's Brennan, to run domestic surveillance on Trump associates and possibly Trump himself.
  • To feign ignorance and to seemingly operate within U.S. laws, the agencies freelanced the wiretapping of Trump associates to the British spy agency GCHQ.
  • The decision to insert GCHQ as a back door to eavesdrop was sparked by the denial of two FISA Court warrant applications filed by the FBI to seek wiretaps of Trump associates.
  • GCHQ did not work from London or the UK. In fact the spy agency worked from NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, MD with direct NSA supervision and guidance to conduct sweeping surveillance on Trump associates.
  • The illegal wiretaps were initiated months before the controversial Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
  • The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump's associates appear compromised.
  • Following the Trump Tower sit down, GCHQ began digitally wiretapping Manafort, Trump Jr., and Kushner.
  • After the concocted meeting by the Deep State, the British spy agency could officially justify wiretapping Trump associates as an intelligence front for NSA because the Russian lawyer at the meeting Natalia Veselnitskaya was considered an international security risk and prior to the June sit down was not even allowed entry into the United States or the UK, federal sources said.
  • By using GCHQ, the NSA and its intelligence partners had carved out a loophole to wiretap Trump without a warrant. While it is illegal for U.S. agencies to monitor phones and emails of U.S. citizens inside the United States absent a warrant, it is not illegal for British intelligence to do so. Even if the GCHQ was tapping Trump on U.S. soil at Fort Meade.
  • The wiretaps, secured through illicit scheming, have been used by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election, even though the evidence is considered "poisoned fruit."
Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who spearheaded the Trump Tower meeting with the Trump campaign trio, was previously barred from entering the United Sates due to her alleged connections to the Russian FSB (the modern replacement of the cold-war-era KGB).

Yet mere days before the June meeting, Veselnitskaya was granted a rare visa to enter the United States from Preet Bharara, the then U.S. Attorney for the southern district of New York. Bharara could not be reached for comment and did not respond the a Twitter inquiry on the Russian's visa by True Pundit.

Federal law enforcement sources said Bharara was simply following the orders of Attorney General Lynch, who lobbied the State Department to issue the disavowed Russian a B1/B2 non-immigrant visa. This permitted Veselnitskaya entry into the United States for the sole purpose of entrapping Trump associates to use as fuel to commission wiretaps, federal sources said.

Veselnitskaya may have been paid as well by the U.S. government, FBI sources said. It was reported last week that Steele, who compiled the Trump dossier was paid at least $100,000 from FBI funds as well. But that came later, after the wiretapping was well underway.

The illegal eavesdropping started long before Steele's dossier. Federal sources said the wiretaps on Trump insiders began in late 2015, almost a year before the 2016 election. The targets then were Flynn and Page, sources confirmed. When no smoking gun was recovered from those initial taps, U.S. intelligence agencies moved to broaden the scope through their newly-formed alliance.

Intelligence garnered from the British eavesdropping, which again was merely a front for the NSA, was then used in August 2016 to secure a legitimate FISA warrant on Manafort, Trump Jr. and Kushner. That warrant was issued on or about September, 2016, federal sources confirm.

It was the third time the cabal of U.S. intelligence agencies sought a FISA warrant for the Trump associates and this time it was approved.

FBI sources said finally obtaining the FISA warrant was important because it provided the agencies cover for previous illegal wiretapping which they believed would never be discovered.

"This would make for an incredible string of Senate hearings," one federal law enforcement source said. "I don't think they ever thought he (Trump) would win and information would come out about how they manipulated evidence."

~~~♥♥Baby Doll♥♥~~~ 6 hours ago

The level of corruption is too deep and people in the FBI/DOJ are complicit, they are covering up the Elite crimes, they won't do their job, nothing is going to happen, no one is going to jail.

Trickster ~~~Baby Doll~~~ 18 minutes ago

And Trump can fire everyone of them who won't to their jobs. Those so called elites no longer have cover now that Trump is President see more

Elizabeth Raynor Short oh god an hour ago

Yeah. This is who the Russian economist close to Putin was talking about when he sid they aren't worried about Nazis in the Ukraine, that they are worried about the Nazis in Washington.

S. Juliette 4 hours ago

Trump knew about this because Mike Rogers tipped him off Nov. 17 in an unannounced meeting at Trump Towers. The next day campaign operations moved to New Jersey and Clapper sent a letter to Obama demanding Rogers be fired.

Baharra was fired...Comey was fired...Harrington resigned Jan 23...Rogers still has his job. see more

Trickster S. Juliette 18 minutes ago

Can't wait till Clapper is in jail for lying to Congress.

[Oct 25, 2017] Why the FBI wiretap on former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is a big deal by Randall D. Eliason

Neocons still dream of Trump impeachment. Neutering him is not enough... the number of potentially illegal wiretaps of Trump associates suggests that threr was a plan to derail plan in three letter agencies headquarters (with blessing of Obama). Plan of interfere with the US election to be exact.
Notable quotes:
"... Reports that the FBI wiretapped former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort are a further sign of the seriousness of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation. But there's still a great deal we don't know about the implications, if any, for the broader inquiry into possible Russian ties to the Trump campaign. ..."
"... The other import of this news involves the possible implications if Manafort is charged. The New York Times reported Monday that when Manafort's home was searched in July, investigators told him he should expect to be indicted. ..."
"... A typical white-collar investigation often proceeds by building cases against lower-level participants in a scheme -- the little fish -- and then persuading them to cooperate in the investigation of the bigger fish. Trump and his associates therefore may have reason to be concerned about what Manafort could tell investigators, if he were indicted and chose to cooperate. ..."
"... Again, much of this is speculation. Due to grand jury secrecy and the secrecy surrounding the FISA process, we don't know many of the details. And given the typical pace of these investigations, whatever happens likely will not happen quickly. ..."
Sep 19, 2017 | washingtonpost.com

Then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort at the Republican National Convention. (Matt Rourke/Associated Press)

Reports that the FBI wiretapped former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort are a further sign of the seriousness of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation. But there's still a great deal we don't know about the implications, if any, for the broader inquiry into possible Russian ties to the Trump campaign.

CNN reported Monday night that the FBI obtained a warrant to listen in on Manafort's phone calls back in 2014. The warrant was part of an investigation into U.S. firms that may have performed undisclosed work for the Ukrainian government. The surveillance reportedly lapsed for a time but was begun again last year when the FBI learned about possible ties between Russian operatives and Trump associates.

This news is a big deal primarily because of what it takes to obtain such a wiretap order. The warrant reportedly was issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A FISA warrant requires investigators to demonstrate to the FISA court that there is probable cause to believe the target may be acting as an unlawful foreign agent.

When news broke last month that Mueller was using a grand jury to conduct his investigation, many reported it with unnecessary breathlessness. Although a grand jury investigation is certainly significant, a prosecutor does not need court approval or a finding of probable cause to issue a grand jury subpoena, and Mueller's use of a grand jury was not unexpected .

A FISA warrant is another matter. It means investigators have demonstrated probable cause to an independent judicial authority. Obtaining a warrant actually says much more about the strength of the underlying allegations than issuing a grand jury subpoena.

That's also why the search warrant executed at Manafort's home in July was such a significant step in the investigation. Unlike a grand jury subpoena, the search warrant required Mueller's team to demonstrate to a judge that a crime probably had been committed.

But it's important not to get too far in front of the story. The FBI surveillance of Manafort reportedly began in 2014, long before he was working as Trump's campaign manager. So the initial allegations, at least, appear to have involved potential crimes having nothing to do with the Trump campaign. And most or all of the surveillance apparently took place before Mueller was even appointed and was not at his direction.

Mueller's involvement now does suggest that the current focus relates to Manafort's role in the Trump campaign. But we don't know exactly how, if at all, any alleged crimes by Manafort relate to his work in that role. And we don't know whether any other individuals involved in the campaign are potentially implicated.

We also don't know what evidence was obtained as a result of the surveillance. The fact that warrants were issued does not mean any evidence of criminal conduct was actually found.

The other import of this news involves the possible implications if Manafort is charged. The New York Times reported Monday that when Manafort's home was searched in July, investigators told him he should expect to be indicted. Even if Mueller were to indict Manafort for crimes not directly related to the Trump campaign, it would be a significant development. A typical white-collar investigation often proceeds by building cases against lower-level participants in a scheme -- the little fish -- and then persuading them to cooperate in the investigation of the bigger fish. Trump and his associates therefore may have reason to be concerned about what Manafort could tell investigators, if he were indicted and chose to cooperate.

Again, much of this is speculation. Due to grand jury secrecy and the secrecy surrounding the FISA process, we don't know many of the details. And given the typical pace of these investigations, whatever happens likely will not happen quickly.

But news of the FISA surveillance is the latest evidence that Mueller's investigation is serious, aggressive and will be with us for some time.

Randall D. Eliason teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School.

[Oct 24, 2017] Western competitors are doing their best to disrupt the Russia-Slovakia deal on Tigr supplies in order to sell Slovaks their own military equipment

Oct 24, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Patient Observer , October 21, 2017 at 10:26 am

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201710211058428894-russia-slovakia-talks-tigr-vehicle/

He{Suvorov, Russian press secretary) pointed out that when picking the right car for their country's Interior Ministry, Slovaks are "reasonably guided by its characteristics and advantages over other analogues in the market."

"And it turns out that the Russian-made Tigr is safer, more reliable and cheaper than American, German, French and Swiss armored cars," he said.

Suvorov added that Western competitors are doing their best to disrupt the Russia-Slovakia deal on Tigr supplies in order to sell Slovaks their own military equipment. They refer to various arguments, including "the factor of [anti-Russian] sanctions," according to Suvorov.

A major purpose of the sanctions appears to be an effort to protect Western markets and not just "punishment" of Russia. With the availability of highly competitive Russian civil aircraft, it would be easy to surmise that the sanctions have an overt commercial goal.

kirill , October 22, 2017 at 6:28 am
The west is all about free trade as long as they have the advantage. When faced with a serious competitor making superior products it throws a tantrum and puts up trade barriers. I guess the WTO does nothing to protect Russia's interests.
marknesop , October 22, 2017 at 11:27 am
The west is great with free trade so long as it gets to make the rules but not follow them. Trump's current hard line at the NAFTA talks is exemplary – he wants to increase American content in everything and create more opportunity for American business without any quid pro quo whatever. Really he figures he is in a no-lose situation; he is opposed to NAFTA anyway, as a businessman, and so he figures he will drive such a hard bargain that if Mexico and Canada walk away in disgust, he got what he wanted. If they capitulate, there will still be NAFTA but the deck will be so stacked in America's favour that the other two parties will basically just be draining their resources into the USA.

[Oct 24, 2017] House Launches Probe Into Comeys Handling Of Clinton Email Investigation

The neoliberal "the new class" to which Clintons belong like nomenklatura in the USSR are above the law.
Notable quotes:
"... After months of inexplicable delays, the chairman of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), announced moments ago a joint investigation into how the Justice Department handled last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. ..."
"... Oh goody, Trey Gowdy doing another investigation. Isn't he 0 for many on his investigations. 0 as in zero, nada, nill, squat, zippo. He is another political empty suit with a bad haircut. ..."
"... Well said. The Clinton network leads to the real money in this game. Any real investigation would expose many of the primary players. It would also expose the network for what it is, that being a mechanism to scam both the American people and the people of the world. ..."
"... Perhaps a real investigation will now only be done from outside the system (as the U.S. political system seems utterly incapable of investigating or policing itself). ..."
"... You're probably right, but there's a chance this whole thing could go sidewise on Hillary in a hurry, Weinstein-style. ..."
"... We already know Honest Hill'rey's other IT guy (Bryan Pagliano) ignored subpoenas from congress...twice. ..."
"... Another classic case of "the Boy that cried wolf" for the Trumpettes to believe justice is coming to the Clintons. The House Judiciary and Oversight committees, will turn up nothing, apart from some procedural mistakes. A complete waste of time and tax payer money. Only the Goldfish will be happy over another charade. Killary is immune from normal laws. ..."
"... Potemkin Justice. Not a damn thing will come of it unless they find that one of Hillary's aides parked in a handicapped spot. ..."
"... The TV showed me Trump saying, "She's been through enough" and "They're good people" when referring to Hillary and Bill Clinton. ..."
"... Stopped reading at "they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status." ..."
Oct 24, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Hillary's former IT consultant Paul Combetta who admitted to deleting Hillary's emails despite the existence of a Congressional subpoena, it seems as though James Comey has just had his very own "oh shit" moment.

After months of inexplicable delays, the chairman of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), announced moments ago a joint investigation into how the Justice Department handled last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server.

Among other things, Goodlatte and Gowdy said that the FBI must answer for why it chose to provide public updates in the Clinton investigation but not in the Trump investigation and why the FBI decided to " appropriate full decision making in respect to charging or not charging Secretary Clinton," a power typically left to the DOJ.

"Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status. The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic and our fellow citizens must have confidence in its objectivity, independence, and evenhandedness. The law is the most equalizing force in this country. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight.

"Decisions made by the Department of Justice in 2016 have led to a host of outstanding questions that must be answered. These include, but are not limited to:

  • FBI's decision to publicly announce the investigation into Secretary Clinton's handling of classified information but not to publicly announce the investigation into campaign associates of then-candidate Donald Trump;
  • FBI's decision to notify Congress by formal letter of the status of the investigation both in October and November of 2016;
  • FBI's decision to appropriate full decision making in respect to charging or not charging Secretary Clinton to the FBI rather than the DOJ;
  • FBI's timeline in respect to charging decisions.
  • 'The Committees will review these decisions and others to better understand the reasoning behind how certain conclusions were drawn. Congress has a constitutional duty to preserve the integrity of our justice system by ensuring transparency and accountability of actions taken."

???? #BREAKING : @RepGoodlatte & @TGowdySC to investigate #DOJ decisions made in 2016 to ensure transparency and accountability at the agency. pic.twitter.com/EOm4pnHbTG

-- House Judiciary ? (@HouseJudiciary) October 24, 2017

Of course, this comes just one day after Comey revealed his secret Twitter account which led the internet to wildly speculate that he may be running for a political office...which, these days, being under investigation by multiple Congressional committees might just mean he has a good shot.

Finally, we leave you with one artist's depiction of how the Comey 'investigation' of Hillary's email scandal played out...

AlaricBalth -> Creepy_Azz_Crackaah , Oct 24, 2017 1:03 PM

"Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status. The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic..."

Spewed coffee after reading this quote.

Ghost of PartysOver -> AlaricBalth , Oct 24, 2017 1:10 PM

Oh goody, Trey Gowdy doing another investigation. Isn't he 0 for many on his investigations. 0 as in zero, nada, nill, squat, zippo. He is another political empty suit with a bad haircut.

nope-1004 -> Ghost of PartysOver , Oct 24, 2017 1:12 PM

LAMP POST!

Live stream for all to witness.

macholatte -> nope-1004 , Oct 24, 2017 1:17 PM

It's nice publicity to hear that the Congress is "investigating". It's NOT nice to know that the DOJ is doing nothing. Probably 50 top level people at the FBI need to be fired as well as another 50 at DOJ to get the ball rolling toward a Grand Jury. Until then, it's all eyewash and BULLSHIT!

Thought Processor -> Chupacabra-322 , Oct 24, 2017 2:11 PM

Well said. The Clinton network leads to the real money in this game. Any real investigation would expose many of the primary players. It would also expose the network for what it is, that being a mechanism to scam both the American people and the people of the world.

Perhaps a real investigation will now only be done from outside the system (as the U.S. political system seems utterly incapable of investigating or policing itself). Though in time all information will surface, as good players leak the info of the bad players into the open. Which of course is why the corrupt players go after the leakers, as it is one key way they can be taken down. Also remember that they need the good players in any organization to be used as cover (as those not in the know can be used to work on legit projects). Once the good players catch on to the ruse and corruption it is, beyond a certain tipping point, all over, as the leaked information goes from drop to flood. There will simply be no way to deny it.

Ikiru -> Creepy_Azz_Crackaah , Oct 24, 2017 2:02 PM

You're probably right, but there's a chance this whole thing could go sidewise on Hillary in a hurry, Weinstein-style. If the criminal stench surrounding her gets strong enough, the rats will begin to jump ship. People will stop taking orders and doing her dirty work. She's wounded right now, if there was ever a time to finish her, it would be now. Where the fuck is the big-talking Jeff Sessions? I think they got to him--he even LOOKS scared shitless.

jimmy c korn -> Richard Chesler , Oct 24, 2017 1:28 PM

a blind-folded woman with a hand in their pockets.

chunga -> Max Cynical , Oct 24, 2017 1:00 PM

It's just not possible to have any respect for these politician people.

We already know Honest Hill'rey's other IT guy (Bryan Pagliano) ignored subpoenas from congress...twice. Remember Chaffetz "subpoenas are not suggestions"? Yeah, well they are. Chaffetz turned around and sent a letter about this to "attorney general" jeff sessions and he's done exactly shit about about it. (Look it up, that's a true story)

Then we've got president maverick outsider simply ignoring Julian Assange and Wikileaks while he squeals daily about fake news. Wikileaks has exposed more fraud than Congress ever has.

shovelhead -> DirtySanchez , Oct 24, 2017 12:57 PM

First we need to get a US Attorney. Our last one seems to have gone AWOL.

DirtySanchez -> shovelhead , Oct 24, 2017 1:05 PM

Sessions is the Attorney General. Give the man some credit. He recused himself from the Russia/Trump collusion, and this decision may very well save the republic.

If Sessions was actively involved, half the nation would never accept the findings, no matter the outcome. With Sessions voluntarily sidelined, the truth will eventually expose the criminal conspirators; all the way to the top.

Wikileaks and Assange have documented proof of criminal behavior from Obama, Lynch, Holder, Hillary, W. Bush, and more. This will be the biggest scandal to hit the world stage. Ever.

waterwitch -> DirtySanchez , Oct 24, 2017 1:18 PM

Bigger than the Awan Spy ring in Congress?

IronForge , Oct 24, 2017 12:36 PM

About Fracking Time. Toss that Evidence Eraser into Black Sites hot during the Summer and Cold during the Winter Months.

To Hell In A Ha... , Oct 24, 2017 12:40 PM

lol Another classic case of "the Boy that cried wolf" for the Trumpettes to believe justice is coming to the Clintons. The House Judiciary and Oversight committees, will turn up nothing, apart from some procedural mistakes. A complete waste of time and tax payer money. Only the Goldfish will be happy over another charade. Killary is immune from normal laws.

E.F. Mutton , Oct 24, 2017 12:37 PM

Potemkin Justice. Not a damn thing will come of it unless they find that one of Hillary's aides parked in a handicapped spot.

ToSoft4Truth , Oct 24, 2017 12:38 PM

The TV said Comey will be running for president in 2020.

Akzed -> ToSoft4Truth , Oct 24, 2017 12:39 PM

Well then it must be true.

ToSoft4Truth -> Akzed , Oct 24, 2017 12:51 PM

The TV showed me Trump saying, "She's been through enough" and "They're good people" when referring to Hillary and Bill Clinton. Holograms?

E.F. Mutton -> Gerry Fletcher , Oct 24, 2017 12:57 PM

The Blind Justice Lady is real, she just has a .45 at the back of her head held by Hillary. And don't even ask where Bill's finger is

mc888 -> BigWillyStyle887 , Oct 24, 2017 1:24 PM

Congress can't do shit without DOJ and FBI, which are both compromised and corrupt to the core.

That should have been Sessions' first order of business.

He can still get it rolling by firing Rosenstein and replacing him with someone that will do the job.They can strike down the Comey immunity deals and arrest people for violating Congressional subpeona.

They can also assemble a Grand Jury to indict Rosenstein and Mueller for the Russian collusion conspiracy to commit Espionage and Sabotage of our National Security resources. Half of Mueller's staff will then be indicted, along with Clinton, Obama, Lynch, Holder, and Comey.

Replacement of Rosenstein is the crucial first step.

Dead Indiana Sky , Oct 24, 2017 12:43 PM

Stopped reading at "they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status."

[Oct 24, 2017] Hillary Clinton Lied, Paid For Trump Dossier

Is this CIA against Hillary Clinton. Did she cross some red line ? Why this revelation happened now? What changed in deep state to allow such a revelation to surface.
Notable quotes:
"... Though neither the DNC nor the Clinton campaign worked directly with former British spy Christopher Steele as he compiled the document, the fact that Democrats funded the dossier – which includes information primarily gleaned from sources in Russia – ironically suggests the Democrats indirectly leveraged Russian sources to try and spread information of dubious veracity about a political opponent to try and sway an election ..."
"... Even though the scandalous accusations contained within the dossier weren't made public until after the vote, presumably waiting to see what foot the shoe would end up on, this would've provided serious grist for the collusion narrative, which we imagine would've been stretched to include the entire Republican establishment as accomplices. ..."
"... While it's impossible to determine exactly how much money was spent on the dossier, the Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie – the law firm of Clinton superattorney Marc Elias - $5.6 million in legal fees from June 2015 to December 2016, according to campaign finance records, and the DNC paid the firm $3.6 million in "legal and compliance consulting'' since Nov. 2015. Some of that money was presumably used to pay for the dossier. ..."
"... Steele previously worked in Russia for British intelligence. The dossier, which was primarily compiled in Moscow, is a compilation of reports Steele prepared for Fusion. Allegations contained in the dossier included claims the Russian government collected compromising information about Trump and the Kremlin was engaged in an active effort to assist his campaign for president. ..."
"... House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Dunes has tried to compel Fusion's founders to disclose who paid for the dossier, but all three of them pled the fifth during public testimony last week. Nunes has also tried subpoenaing the firm's bank records. ..."
"... The most salacious accusations contained in the dossier have not been verified, and may never be. Still, after the election, the FBI agreed to pay Steele to continue gathering intelligence about Trump and Russia, but the bureau pulled out of the arrangement after Steele was publicly identified in news reports ..."
Oct 24, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign jointly financed the creation of the infamous "Trump dossier," which helped inspire the launch of the floundering investigations into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians.

Though neither the DNC nor the Clinton campaign worked directly with former British spy Christopher Steele as he compiled the document, the fact that Democrats funded the dossier – which includes information primarily gleaned from sources in Russia – ironically suggests the Democrats indirectly leveraged Russian sources to try and spread information of dubious veracity about a political opponent to try and sway an election.

Sound familiar?

Even though the scandalous accusations contained within the dossier weren't made public until after the vote, presumably waiting to see what foot the shoe would end up on, this would've provided serious grist for the collusion narrative, which we imagine would've been stretched to include the entire Republican establishment as accomplices.

While it's impossible to determine exactly how much money was spent on the dossier, the Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie – the law firm of Clinton superattorney Marc Elias - $5.6 million in legal fees from June 2015 to December 2016, according to campaign finance records, and the DNC paid the firm $3.6 million in "legal and compliance consulting'' since Nov. 2015. Some of that money was presumably used to pay for the dossier.

Fusion GPS's work researching Trump began during the Republican presidential primaries when an unidentified GOP donor reportedly hired the firm to dig into Trump's background. The Republicans who were involved in the early stages of Fusion's efforts have not yet been identified. Fusion GPS did not start off looking at Trump's Russia ties, but quickly realized that those relationships would be a fruitful place to start, WaPo reported.

Steele previously worked in Russia for British intelligence. The dossier, which was primarily compiled in Moscow, is a compilation of reports Steele prepared for Fusion. Allegations contained in the dossier included claims the Russian government collected compromising information about Trump and the Kremlin was engaged in an active effort to assist his campaign for president.

Fusion turned over Steele's reports and other research documents to Elias, and it's unclear how much of it he shared with the campaign.

The revelation about who funded the dossier comes just days after Trump tweeted that the FBI and DOJ should publicly reveal who hired Fusion GPS. And lo and behold, that information has now been made public.

Officials behind the now discredited "Dossier" plead the Fifth. Justice Department and/or FBI should immediately release who paid for it.

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2017

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Dunes has tried to compel Fusion's founders to disclose who paid for the dossier, but all three of them pled the fifth during public testimony last week. Nunes has also tried subpoenaing the firm's bank records.

The most salacious accusations contained in the dossier have not been verified, and may never be. Still, after the election, the FBI agreed to pay Steele to continue gathering intelligence about Trump and Russia, but the bureau pulled out of the arrangement after Steele was publicly identified in news reports. Officials also decided to withhold information from the dossier in an intelligence community report published in January alleging that Russian entities had tried to sway the US election on behalf of the Russian government.

Of course, we still don't know who leaked the dossier to Buzzfeed and CNN back in January. John McCain – one of the primary suspects – has repeatedly denied it, and Fusion GPS has said in court documents that it didn't share the document with Buzzfeed. However, we do known that in early January, then-FBI Director James B. Comey presented a two-page summary of Steele's dossier to President Barack Obama and President-elect Trump.

It therefore strongly suggests that it was the FBI that was instrumental in spreading the dossier to the media, most of which was too embarrassed to publish it until Buzzfeed came along and did it... for the clicks.

So to summarize:

  • Hillary Clinton and the DNC paid to uncover and package dirt, whether factual or not, on Trump which eventually found its way in the Trump dossier
  • In doing so, the Clintons and the DNC were effectively collaborating with "deep" sources, both among the UK spy apparatus and inside Russia
  • Once Trump won, the FBI was instrumental in "leaking" the dossier to the mainstream media and select still unknown recipients (the same way Comey "leaked" his personal notebooks just a few months later, following his termination, to launch a probe of Trump).
  • The former head of the FBI who was supposed to probe Clinton's State Department - and the Clinton Foundation - for a bribery and kickback scheme involving Russia's U.S. nuclear business, is now investigating Trump for Russia collusion instead
  • But wait, it gets better: as Ken Vogel, formerly the chief investigative reporter at Politico and currently at the NY Times just reported, " When I tried to report this story, Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back vigorously, saying "You (or your sources) are wrong."

    When I tried to report this story, Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back vigorously, saying "You (or your sources) are wrong." https://t.co/B5BZwoaNhI

    -- Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) October 24, 2017

    Another NYT reporter, Maggie Haberman, confirmed as much saying " Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year ", and by folks she ultimately means Hillary Clinton herself.

    Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year https://t.co/vXKRV1wRJc

    -- Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 24, 2017

    Which in light of the latest news suggests that Clinton was lying, which is not surprising, especially when considering the recent "revelations" that the Clintons may themselves have been involved in collusion with Russia over the infamous uranium deal.

    Which brings us to the questionable role played by the FBI in all of this, and ultimately, the role still being played by Robert Mueller. Here is the WSJ ,

    Let's give plausible accounts of the known facts, then explain why demands that Robert Mueller recuse himself from the Russia investigation may not be the fanciful partisan grandstanding you imagine.

    Here's a story consistent with what has been reported in the press -- how reliably reported is uncertain. Democratic political opponents of Donald Trump financed a British former spook who spread money among contacts in Russia, who in turn over drinks solicited stories from their supposedly "connected" sources in Moscow. If these people were really connected in any meaningful sense, then they made sure the stories they spun were consistent with the interests of the regime, if not actually scripted by the regime. The resulting Trump dossier then became a factor in Obama administration decisions to launch an FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign , and after the election to trumpet suspicions of Trump collusion with Russia.

    We know of a second, possibly even more consequential way the FBI was effectively a vehicle for Russian meddling in U.S. politics. Authoritative news reports say FBI chief James Comey's intervention in the Hillary Clinton email matter was prompted by a Russian intelligence document that his colleagues suspected was a Russian plant.

    OK, Mr. Mueller was a former close colleague and leader but no longer part of the FBI when these events occurred. This may or may not make him a questionable person to lead a Russia-meddling investigation in which the FBI's own actions are necessarily a concern. But now we come to the Rosatom disclosures last week in The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress.

    Here's another story as plausible as we can make it based on credible reporting. After the Cold War, in its own interest, the U.S. wanted to build bridges to the Russian nuclear establishment. The Putin government, for national or commercial purposes, agreed and sought to expand its nuclear business in the U.S.

    Ah yes, the Clinton's own Russia collusion narrative which recently emerged to the surface and which as of today is being investigated by the House :

    The purchase and consolidation of certain assets were facilitated by Canadian entrepreneurs who gave large sums to the Clinton Foundation, and perhaps arranged a Bill Clinton speech in Moscow for $500,000. A key transaction had to be approved by Hillary Clinton's State Department.

    Now we learn that, before and during these transactions, the FBI had uncovered a bribery and kickback scheme involving Russia's U.S. nuclear business, and also received reports of Russian officials seeking to curry favor through donations to the Clinton Foundation

    This criminal activity was apparently not disclosed to agencies vetting the 2010 transfer of U.S. commercial nuclear assets to Russia . The FBI made no move to break up the scheme until long after the transaction closed. Only five years later, the Justice Department, in 2015, disclosed a plea deal with the Russian perpetrator so quietly that its significance was missed until The Hill reported on the FBI investigation last week.

    As the WSJ correctly notes, " for anyone who cares to look, the real problem here is that the FBI itself is so thoroughly implicated in the Russia meddling story ."

    Which then shifts the focus to the person who was, and again is, in charge of it all: former FBI director, and current special prosecutor Robert Mueller:

    The agency, when Mr. Mueller headed it, soft-pedaled an investigation highly embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton as well as the Obama Russia reset policy . More recently, if just one of two things is true -- Russia sponsored the Trump Dossier, or Russian fake intelligence prompted Mr. Comey's email intervention -- then Russian operations, via their impact on the FBI, influenced and continue to influence our politics in a way far more consequential than any Facebook ad, the preoccupation of John McCain, who apparently cannot behold a mountain if there's a molehill anywhere nearby.

    Which means that Mr. Mueller has the means, motive and opportunity to obfuscate and distract from matters embarrassing to the FBI, while pleasing a large part of the political spectrum. He need only confine his focus to the flimsy, disingenuous but popular (with the media) accusation that the shambolic Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.

    Mr. Mueller's tenure may not have bridged the two investigations, but James Comey's, Rod Rosenstein's , Andrew Weissmann's , and Andrew McCabe's did. Mr. Rosenstein appointed Mr. Mueller as special counsel. Mr. Weissmann now serves on Mr. Mueller's team. Mr. McCabe remains deputy FBI director. All were involved in the nuclear racketeering matter and the Russia meddling matter.

    The punchline: it's not the Clintons that should be looked at, at least not at first - their time will come. It's the FBI:

    By any normal evidentiary, probative or journalistic measure, the big story here is the FBI -- its politicized handling of Russian matters, and not competently so. To put it bluntly, whatever its hip-pocket rationales along the way, the FBI would not have so much to cover up now if it had not helped give us Mrs. Clinton as Democratic nominee and then, in all likelihood, inadvertently helped Mr. Trump to the presidency

    We eagerly look forward to Trump's furious tweetstorm once he learns of all of this... and how long before he fires Mueller, in this case with cause.

[Oct 24, 2017] Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier

Another day, another scandal in Washington, DC. Simultaneous opening of inquires that are designed to hurt Hillary and Bill were complete surprise.
Why now? There was some change on deep state level that is now reflected in this news. Suddenly Uranium 1 scandal comes into the forfront. And along with Steele dossier it is damaging to Clinton. Were Clintons "Weinsteinalized"? Should be expect "50 women" phenomena to be replayed.
There is some storm hitting the US "deep state". The reasons for this storm remains hidden. But attempt of Clintons to preserve their leadership in Democratic Party after Hillary fiasco in 2016 now are again became questionable.>
Notable quotes:
"... Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier - The Washington Post The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump's connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said. ..."
"... After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ..."
"... Fusion GPS gave Steele's reports and other research documents to Elias, the people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear how or how much of that information was shared with the campaign and the DNC and who in those organizations was aware of the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele ..."
Oct 24, 2017 | www.washingtonpost.com

Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier - The Washington Post The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump's connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.

Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.

After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS's research into Trump was funded by an unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.

The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through the law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS's research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day.

Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele compiled the dossier on President Trump's alleged ties to Russia. (Victoria Jones/AP)

Fusion GPS gave Steele's reports and other research documents to Elias, the people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear how or how much of that information was shared with the campaign and the DNC and who in those organizations was aware of the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele. One person close to the matter said the campaign and the DNC were not informed by the law firm of Fusion GPS's role.

[Oct 24, 2017] Republican-led House committees to investigate Clintons emails again by Associated Press

Why they decided to resume investigation now ? What new facts were uncovered? What hidden storm hit "deep state" so the for stability they need to sacrifice Hillary Clinton
How this correlates with the discovery that DNC paid for Steele dossier? Judging from John Sipher a is a former member of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service attempt to defend Steele dossier in his Slate article (Sept, 2017), just a month before current revelations. As retied CIA agents usually avoid public spotlight it might well be that he was "adviced" to write his evaluation and, if this is the case, then CIA and may be personally Brennan were also involved in "Steele dossier" fiasco.
Notable quotes:
"... The ousted FBI director James Comey and the former attorney general Loretta Lynch spoke at length to Congress about that investigation last year, and it is the subject of a continuing review by the justice department's inspector general. ..."
"... Nunes has separately signed off on subpoenas that sought the banking records of Fusion GPS, the political research company behind a dossier of allegations about Trump's connections to Russia. A lawyer for the company said in a statement Tuesday the subpoena was "overly broad" and without any legitimate purposes ..."
Oct 24, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

The Republican leaders of the House judiciary and oversight panels said in a statement they were opening investigations into the FBI's handling of the Clinton email investigation and the decision not to prosecute her – the subject of hours-long congressional hearings last year.

The Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, Devin Nunes, also announced a separate investigation into a uranium deal brokered during Barack Obama's tenure as president.

The House judiciary committee chairman, Robert Goodlatte of Virginia, and the oversight committee chairman, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, said the inquiry would be aimed at the FBI and its decisions in the Clinton investigation . The ousted FBI director James Comey and the former attorney general Loretta Lynch spoke at length to Congress about that investigation last year, and it is the subject of a continuing review by the justice department's inspector general.

The two panels have declined to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 elections, leaving those inquiries to Senate committees and the House intelligence committee.

Nunes has separately signed off on subpoenas that sought the banking records of Fusion GPS, the political research company behind a dossier of allegations about Trump's connections to Russia. A lawyer for the company said in a statement Tuesday the subpoena was "overly broad" and without any legitimate purposes.

[Oct 24, 2017] US and Western propaganda against Russia is inconsistent and contradictory

Notable quotes:
"... Russia cannot be a poor, weak, regional power at best, that doesn't make anything, a gas station masquerading as a country and simultaneously pose an existential threat to the United States, and has the wherewithal and guile to decide US presidential elections. ..."
"... US and Western propaganda fails miserably, because it is so inconsistent and anyone with a modicum basic knowledge of history and has an attention span longer than that of a goldfish is immune to it. ..."
Oct 24, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren , October 24, 2017 at 4:38 pm

The US and their European Atlanticist minions are trapped by their own propaganda and ideological prejudices.

Russia cannot be a poor, weak, regional power at best, that doesn't make anything, a gas station masquerading as a country and simultaneously pose an existential threat to the United States, and has the wherewithal and guile to decide US presidential elections.

US and Western propaganda is so inconsistent and contradictory. However, Americans and their European Atlanticist minions are so myopic – they don't notice it!

It's hilarious, US and Western propaganda fails miserably, because it is so inconsistent and anyone with a modicum basic knowledge of history and has an attention span longer than that of a goldfish is immune to it.

[Oct 24, 2017] US authorities have revoked financier William Browder's visa

Oct 24, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile , October 22, 2017 at 9:12 pm

Власти США аннулировали визу финансиста Уильяма Браудера

23.10.2017, 06:46
US authorities have revoked financier William Browder's visa

Hear the little piggies squeal on Twitter:

marknesop , October 23, 2017 at 10:55 am
I loved the first comment on the Twitter feed: "They're not even trying to hide their involvement with Russia. They don't care if we know. Why is that?" Yes indeed; the USA which is digging in its heels to stop Europe from sliding away from it, while maintaining unified western sanctions against Russia for something it didn't do and threatening to fine Europe for violating the policy, is in bed with Putin. You just have to shake your head in amazement. It's as if Russia never had a better best friend than the USA.
marknesop , October 23, 2017 at 11:05 am
Hilariously hilarious. All that's missing is a Tweet from Bana: "Dear World, it's better to start #World War Three than let Putin have his way".
Warren , October 23, 2017 at 11:13 am
Mouthy and greedy idiot shouldn't have renounced his US citizenship! lol
Jen , October 23, 2017 at 2:41 pm
Seen on Michael McFaul's Twitter feed some way down:

Julia Ioffe‏
– It could be because Browder rescinded US citizenship for tax reasons,

saskydisc , October 23, 2017 at 4:09 pm
CBC , BBC, Reuters and Bloomberg had the story today; the Guardian was pushing it two days ago. It is fake news, as befits Browder.

[Oct 24, 2017] The Strange World of Russian Trolls by William Blum

There are some data that Facebook is strategically important, as it can capable of influences election by influencing younger, more stupid and more democratic-leaning part of electorate (older people usually hate Fecebook with it voyeurism and exhibitionism tendencies and culture) . The question is how many operative are imbedded in this company by intelligence services of, say, the USA, GB, Russia and China. If we assume that Fecebook was partially US intelligence services project, or at least widely used by NSA and may be other intelligence agencies (Snowden revelations) then the answer is clear. And as it's really tremendously more convent to work with Facebook accounts then to catch transmission at ISP level then discovering Russian trolls was done long ago and BTW not by Facebook security department.
Notable quotes:
"... Russia "causing divisiveness" is a common theme of American politicians and media. Never explained is WHY? What does Russia have to gain by Americans being divided? Do they think the Russians are so juvenile? Or are the Americans the childish ones? ..."
"... CNN on Oct. 12 claimed that Russia uses YouTube, Tumblr and the Pokemon Go mobile game "to exploit racial tensions and sow discord among Americans," while the Washington Post ..."
"... At one point the Post ..."
"... However, at other times the Post ..."
"... We've been told, moreover, that Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos's team "had searched extensively for evidence of foreign purchases of political advertising but had come up short." ..."
"... Politico, a Democratic-Party-leaning journal, reports that Russian-funded Facebook ads backed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Democrat Bernie Sanders, and Republican Donald Trump. ..."
"... More fun and games: the Department of Homeland Security in September notified Virginia and 20 other states about Russian efforts to hack their election systems in 2016. ..."
"... Earlier this year, U.K. Foreign Minister Boris Johnson declared, apparently without embarrassment: "We have no evidence the Russians are actually involved in trying to undermine our democratic processes at the moment. We don't actually have that evidence. But what we do have is plenty of evidence that the Russians are capable of doing that." ..."
"... Perhaps the main reason for questioning charges of Russian interference in the 2016 US election is that Russian President Putin would have been risking that the expected winner, Hillary Clinton, would have been handed a personal reason to take revenge on him and his country. But that's just being logical and rational, two qualities Cold War II has no more use for than Cold War I did. ..."
"... "Moscow seeks to promote a multi-polar world predicated on the principles of respect for state sovereignty and non-interference in other states' internal affairs, the primacy of the United Nations, and a careful balance of power preventing one state or group of states from dominating the international order. To support these great power ambitions, Moscow has sought to build a robust military able to project power, add credibility to Russian diplomacy, and ensure that Russian interests can no longer be summarily dismissed without consequence. Russia also has a deep and abiding distrust of U.S. efforts to promote democracy around the world and what it perceives as a U.S. campaign to impose a single set of global values." ..."
"... Great power aspirations, indeed. How dare those Russkis promote a multi-polar world, respect for state sovereignty, non-interference, the United Nations, and balance of power? It's all straight out of Lenin's playbook, 100th anniversary edition. ..."
"... As to the U.S. promoting democracy around the world Oh right, that's what the Pentagon calls Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, the Philippines, Honduras, Turkey, et al. ..."
Oct 22, 2017 | consortiumnews.com
A big part of the Russia-gate hysteria is to accuse Russia of spreading U.S. dissension via Internet "trolling," but that's just one more wild exaggeration among many, as William Blum describes at Anti-Empire Report.

Webster's dictionary: troll – verb: To fish by running a baited line behind a moving boat; noun: A supernatural creature of Scandinavian folklore.

Russian Internet trolls are trying to stir up even more controversy over National Football League players crouching on one knee ("taking a "knee") during the national anthem, said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), warning that the United States should expect such divisive efforts to escalate in the next election.

"We watched even this weekend," Lankford said, "the Russians and their troll farms, and their Internet folks, start hash-tagging out 'take a knee' and also hash-tagging out 'Boycott NFL'." The Russians' goal, he said, was "to try to raise the noise level in America to try to make a big issue, an even bigger issue as they're trying to just push divisiveness in the country. We've continued to be able to see that. We will see that again in our election time."

Russia "causing divisiveness" is a common theme of American politicians and media. Never explained is WHY? What does Russia have to gain by Americans being divided? Do they think the Russians are so juvenile? Or are the Americans the childish ones?

CNN on Oct. 12 claimed that Russia uses YouTube, Tumblr and the Pokemon Go mobile game "to exploit racial tensions and sow discord among Americans," while the Washington Post (Oct. 12) reported that "content generated by Russian operatives was not aimed only at influencing the election. Many of the posts and ads intended to divide Americans over hot-button issues such as immigration or race."

Russia! Russia! Russia!

Imagine the American public being divided over immigration and race How could that be possible without Russian trolls?

The Post (Oct. 9) reported that the Russian trolling operation resides "in a large gray building north of the St. Petersburg city center There, young people work 12-hour shifts and make between $800 and $1,000 a month, "an attractive wage for former students and young people. It is impossible to get inside the building, and there are multiple entrances, making it hard to tell who is a troll and who is not."

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are amongst the many Internet sites that we are told have been overrun by Russian trolls. The last named is a site that specializes in home decor, fashion and recipes. Have the Russians gone mad? Or are the American accusations the kind of stuff that is usually called – dare I say it? – "propaganda"?

"How much the trolls affected the outcome of the U.S. election is unclear," the Post had to admit. "But their omnipresence is evident on Twitter and in the comments section of publications like the Washington Post , where trolls can be found criticizing news stories, lambasting other posters and accusing one another of being trolls." Are you starting to chuckle?

At one point the Post reported that Facebook "identified more than 3000 advertisements purchased in a Russian-orchestrated campaign to influence the American public's views and exploit divisions around contentious issues." And Congressional investigators said that some of the Facebook ad purchases had "obvious Russian fingerprints, including Russian addresses and payments made in rubles," and that "accounts traced to a shadowy Russian Internet company had purchased at least $100,000 in ads during the 2016 election season."

However, at other times the Post told us that Facebook had pointed out that "most of the ads made no explicit reference in favor of Trump or Clinton," and that some ads were purchased after the election.

We've been told, moreover, that Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos's team "had searched extensively for evidence of foreign purchases of political advertising but had come up short."

In any event, we have to wonder: What political savvy concerning American elections and voters do the Russians have that the Democratic and Republican parties don't have?

I have read numerous references to these ads but have yet to come across a single one that quotes the exact wording of even one advertisement. Is that not odd?

To add to the oddness, in yet another Washington Post article (Sept. 28) we are informed that "some of the ads promoted African American rights groups, including Black Lives Matter, while others suggested those same groups posed a growing political threat, according to people familiar with the material."

Politico, a Democratic-Party-leaning journal, reports that Russian-funded Facebook ads backed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Democrat Bernie Sanders, and Republican Donald Trump.

Who and what is behind these peculiar goings-on?

More fun and games: the Department of Homeland Security in September notified Virginia and 20 other states about Russian efforts to hack their election systems in 2016.

Earlier this year, U.K. Foreign Minister Boris Johnson declared, apparently without embarrassment: "We have no evidence the Russians are actually involved in trying to undermine our democratic processes at the moment. We don't actually have that evidence. But what we do have is plenty of evidence that the Russians are capable of doing that."

At a Sept. 27 Congressional hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray joined this proud chorus, testifying: "One of the things we know is that the Russians and Russian state actors are trying to influence other elections in other countries." Mr. Wray forgot to name any of the other countries and the assembled Congressmembers forgot to ask him for any names.

Perhaps the main reason for questioning charges of Russian interference in the 2016 US election is that Russian President Putin would have been risking that the expected winner, Hillary Clinton, would have been handed a personal reason to take revenge on him and his country. But that's just being logical and rational, two qualities Cold War II has no more use for than Cold War I did.

Know Thine Enemy

The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency issued a report in June entitled "Russia: Military Power: Building a military to support great power aspirations." Here's an excerpt:

"Moscow seeks to promote a multi-polar world predicated on the principles of respect for state sovereignty and non-interference in other states' internal affairs, the primacy of the United Nations, and a careful balance of power preventing one state or group of states from dominating the international order. To support these great power ambitions, Moscow has sought to build a robust military able to project power, add credibility to Russian diplomacy, and ensure that Russian interests can no longer be summarily dismissed without consequence. Russia also has a deep and abiding distrust of U.S. efforts to promote democracy around the world and what it perceives as a U.S. campaign to impose a single set of global values."

Great power aspirations, indeed. How dare those Russkis promote a multi-polar world, respect for state sovereignty, non-interference, the United Nations, and balance of power? It's all straight out of Lenin's playbook, 100th anniversary edition.

As to the U.S. promoting democracy around the world Oh right, that's what the Pentagon calls Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, the Philippines, Honduras, Turkey, et al.

William Blum is an author, historian, and renowned critic of U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower , among others. [This article originally appeared at the Anti-Empire Report, https://williamblum.org/ .]

[Oct 22, 2017] The Political Theory of Trump_vs_deep_state by Corey Robin

This is great comment: " One fairly obvious point -- in response to your original post, not the article itself -- is surely that the general consensus which united conservatives and liberals, that neoliberal economics works, that war against weak countries can be waged on the cheap, and that the local working class will always eat whatever excrement is put on their plates, has started to break down. "
Notable quotes:
"... The Reactionary Mind ..."
"... The Art of the Deal ..."
"... TRUMP IS BY NO MEANS the first man of the right to reach that conclusion about capitalism, though he may be the first President to do so, at least since Teddy Roosevelt. A great many neoconservatives found themselves stranded on the same beach after the end of the cold war, as had many conservatives before that. But they always found a redeeming vision in the state. Not the welfare state or the "nanny state," but the State of high politics, national greatness, imperial leadership, and war; the state of Churchill and Bismarck. Given the menace of Trump's rhetoric, his fetish for pomp and love of grandeur, this state, too, would seem the natural terminus of his predilections. As his adviser Steve Bannon has said, "A country's more than an economy. We're a civic society." Yet on closer inspection, Trump's vision of the state looks less like the State than the deals he's not sure add up to much. ..."
"... Trump_vs_deep_state's inconsistency, lack of coherence and cult of personality brings to mind Juan Peron and Evita. ..."
"... The desire to make Trump anti-Semitic, and a fascist is a lot easier than recognizing he's a talented media manipulator devoid and any real convictions. The idea that 60 million Americans voted to elect a man who secretly wants to end elections is absurd on every level. He doesn't need to end elections, because elections are the ultimate ratings game. He brags endlessly that he beat all the professional politicians as a neophyte. ..."
"... When folks assert that Trump is all about surfaces, they say that as if it's a bad thing. The republican base supporting Trump, we have clearly learned, maintains no fidelity to the theologies expounded at the NRO and the AEI. Trump's inability to think about challenges in ways approved of by his critics confounds experts precisely because he's so effective. I can't believe he has less heft and gravitas than the light-bulb salesman Americans elected twice. He is simply the right guy with the right message for a specific time and place. He may morph into evil personified and I get the sense at times that some of his critics are keen to see just that. ..."
"... That Trump lacks much knowledge of public policy was clear during the campaign, and since being inaugurated he has remained uninterested in and ignorant of (sometimes amazingly so) the details of policy. One wonders if he even reads the exec orders he has been signing. Your support of someone so manifestly unsuited to be president, by virtue of his vast ignorance if nothing else, was puzzling during the campaign and remains so. Btw, what "great society experiments" are you talking about? Have you heard of the '96 welfare 'reform' law? ..."
"... Trump has defended an isolationist foreign policy, attacking Nafta, Nato, the WTO etc. Given his erratic behavior, he has not followed through on this (yet?) but the departure with the previous mainstream consensus is radical. The mainstream left and right, at least since two decades, had been very much internationalist. ..."
"... During the campaign Trump has defended some form of social welfare state and more government intervention in the economy: e.g. his defense of Social Security, or even maternity leave, and his support for infrastructure. I do not think he really cares about this stuff and so he is probably not going to follow through. ..."
"... It's also very anti-historical. Inasmuch as conservatism is, among other things, a defense of hierarchy , it can (and did, at one time) appeal to millennia of precedent. ..."
"... Something can be deeply wrong, i.e. immoral, without being the product of a cognitive abnormality, and people can commit evil acts and hold evil beliefs without being mentally or psychologically impaired. To attribute all retrograde political acts and beliefs to an individual's deficient "theory of mind" (whatever that means exactly) is sociologically naive, psychologically untenable, and historically invalid. ..."
"... One fairly obvious point -- in response to your original post, not the article itself -- is surely that the general consensus which united conservatives and liberals, that neoliberal economics works, that war against weak countries can be waged on the cheap, and that the local working class will always eat whatever excrement is put on their plates, has started to break down. ..."
"... Trump is a right-wing bullshitter, Clinton is a liberal bullshitter; there's nothing really new about that (much the same sort of thing happened with those who continued to support the consensus during the Great Depression). ..."
"... When Obama failed to embody the forward-looking ideals he campaigned on, some people checked out, but you can trace clear lines of mass disillusionment and radicalization from 2008 to Occupy and BLM to the Sanders campaign. ..."
"... The question was never if there was an appetite for real leftism in the American electorate (Clinton and Trump's unconvincing plagiarism of Sanders talking points are telling here, I think), but whether the Democratic party, mired as it's been in institutional rot and complacency, would ever tolerate true economic leftism when the "social liberalism" of identity and representation seemed to work well enough and was so much less threatening to the moneyed interests that financed the party's rightward swing. ..."
"... For decades, the left wing of the Democratic party has been cajoled into voting for "liberal" candidates that resemble nothing so much as the old aristocratic Whigs who used to discuss ways to help the less fortunate over claret and cigars down at the gentlemen's club. ..."
"... I don't think there's any going back to the neocon/neolib era and I think even a lot of moderate Republicans (who used to rely on friendly financiers like Romney to keep the rabid right on-leash) are beginning to realize it. After all, what's the point of selling out if it doesn't buy you anything? ..."
"... The neo-cons are out: Bill Kristol, Max Boot and company are sworn enemies of the administration. Democratic party neocons like HRC can longer launch democracy-building projects in the middle east. Long may this continue. ..."
"... Calling 60 million Trump voters racist and/or fascist might feel good, but as Mark Lilla sensibly observes, identity politics is Reagan's trickle-down economics for liberals, self-delusion for folks out of answers. The 'solutions' for poor, black families in crisis on this thread illustrate clearly why so many black voters in Michigan and elsewhere stayed home. Folks without work, safe schools, and much hope want solutions – not 'this study says' or 'but, Republicans.'' ..."
"... Donald Trump is president because the Democratic party abandoned the poorest, white and black, not because 60 million Americans are actually fascists. ..."
"... It's the sort of completely insane projection that falls apart at the most cursory examination, to wit: the entire notion of destroying a public, universal service like secondary (and post-secondary, in many cases) education in order to hand the system over to unscrupulous profiteers is [extremely Zizek voice]PURE NEOLIBERALISM[/extremely Zizek voice]. ..."
"... What we have, and what Trump_vs_deep_state is merely one symptom of, is a massive crisis in public governance. In large part, the people who are responsible for said governance brought it on themselves. ..."
"... Race is one the primary axes of American politics, and our reluctance to fund basic public goods cannot be understood without acknowledging this basic fact. ..."
"... there's absolutely no daylight whatsoever between "mainstream" Republicans and Trump when it comes to the lust for war: ..."
"... Having discovered this fact which so many slogans obscure, we might well wonder whether it is quite correct to look upon capitalism as a social form sui generis or, in fact, as anything else but the last stage of the decomposition of what we have called feudalism. ..."
"... The thing is, Trump is an owner who's there because he's finished with that political crap. At this point, we probably have to hope that some general has the spine to tell Trump no, the US army really is not a very good military force for anything that involves taking casualties, which means it is fairly useless for actually conquering anything, as opposed to laying waste in endless campaigns. But the spirit of West Point, the school of treason that produced many, many, many more fighters against America than the CPUSA ever did, still rules. I'm not very hopeful. ..."
"... This is a legitimacy crisis. It is not as if Clinton partisans did not call Trump's electoral legitimacy into question. Half the country think Russian "meddling" determined the result, when it is not clear any "meddling" happened. ..."
"... Yes, Americans have lost their collective mind, politically. I know several elderly people (not much more elderly than me, truth to tell) who consume anti-Trump screeds from Seth Meyers or Rachel Maddow on a daily basis. It is entertainment I suppose, but it does not inform them or improve their critical thinking skills. One, a transplanted Englishman, described Maddow to me the other day as "erudite". ..."
"... The relentless flood tide of propaganda in American politics makes it exceedingly hard to talk with any American realistically about what is going on, because so much of what is going is exists not as objective and verified facts, but as shared, tendentious narratives. The actual Trump seems to me to be a bit of a personal mess and an authoritarian in the same mode as the blowhards who hang out at the barbershop; the Trump constructed by, say, Maddow's televised narratives is something else, something more imagined than real. The imagined Trump has to be bigger, to be fitted with cheap hyperbole. ..."
"... An essential element of the propaganda narrative is the "distance" to the other. The "base of Trump supporters" is a prop. Wondering what "they" could be thinking but not waiting for an answer before launching scorn and ridicule on the way to slander is a method. ..."
"... No Layman, there is plenty of irrefutable evidence that Clinton is a militarist who strongly believes in force and the threat of force, especially when it comes to the ME – and this plays just fine with the Democratic party establishment, actually it's a necessity considering the donor base. Clinton's stance towards Iran and the nuclear deal is a matter of record. Next time don't nominate a warmonger who voted for the Iraq war if you want to prevent someone like Trump – and hey, maybe young people will trust you again. ..."
"... There is no "real" Trump narrative; narratives are imagined stories, constructed according to principles of dramatic art to create meaning and morality. With effort, it is possible to anchor a narrative to facts, and to do so by methods that limit violence to the objectivity of facts. Whether a well-anchored narrative is persuasive may be important to such enterprises as the operation of law or even the progress of science. ..."
"... Our famously free press (spoken sarcastically) is thought to provide a check; fact-check columns proliferate at times, but mostly prove how weak an instrument of the public interest, a Media run by massive corporations and financially dependent on corporate business advertising is. ..."
"... A common practice now is to lead with counterfactuals: narratives in which the place of facts is taken by theory and theory's constructions. "Because the whole thing is basically a fantasy, nothing will disprove it." ..."
"... My political theory of Trump_vs_deep_state is that this is what conservative politics unchecked, unopposed and not responsible to any mass constituency produces. Trump says anything. But, it has been twenty years since anyone in politics has been held to account for anything said, except for "gotcha" moments of mostly fake outrage. Not that we would have a gotcha moment for Bush's war crimes. But that is my point. Holding Clinton up as a standard of normalcy in politics runs into exactly this same problem: she talks in the political code words, takes no responsibility for policy consequences and shows every sign of greed and irresponsibility, but the counterfactual of her normalcy is still set forward, with no awareness that it is a groundless narrative. This is not a point about Clinton or Trump, but it is a point about a political process that produces a lot of stupid and Trump is a bonus. ..."
"... Through the book, he traces the many potential problems that the 'personalization' of media might bring. Most germane to this discussion, he raised the point that if every one of the billion News Feeds is different, how can anyone understand what other people are seeing and responding to? 'The most serious political problem posed by filter bubbles is that they make it increasingly difficult to have a public argument.' " ..."
"... I stand by my belief that Trump built a public persona as a race-baiting, loudmouth buffoon that carried him straight into the WH despite a fervent, well-funded bi-partisan effort to unseat him from the time he declared up right to the present. Studying the buffoon tells us practically nothing about the individual. He's ordinary, capable, ambitious, avaricious, and mired in the world of the senses rather than the mind. There are worse traits and places to be. ..."
"... what I always find grotesque about the accusations of Russian meddling is the full ticket obliviousness to all the meddling the US used to perform in Russian elections, and in fact in many other elections worldwide. It's quite a sorry sight to see people like you make a fuss about very minor activities (if there's even evidence of any), without as much as a shred of self awareness. ..."
"... If people want a sane non- militaristic foreign policy it's going to take more than just opposition to Trump. You are also going to have to oppose some of Trump's opponents in both parties. The one time Trump received positive feedback and praise from many in the Beltway was when he bombed Syria. ..."
"... Why are people talking about Hillary here, on a thread about Trump and conservatism? Because a plausible argument can be made that Hillary is more of conservative than Trump, at least in terms of neo-conservative politics. She has, after all, two neo-con wars under her belt already and enjoys good relations with all the really wrong people. Her avarice and willingness to tell tales are at least comparable to Trump's. But perhaps the best reason Hillary belongs here is because many believe that had a less conservative Democrat than Hillary run (Bernie, for example), Dems would have won and Donald Trump would be yesterday's news. ..."
Oct 22, 2017 | crookedtimber.org

October 12, 2017 The magazine n+1 is running an excerpt from the second edition of The Reactionary Mind , which comes out next week but is available for purchase now . The n+1 piece is titled "The Triumph of the Shill: The political theory of Trump_vs_deep_state." It's my most considered reflection on what Trump_vs_deep_state represents, based on a close reading of The Art of the Deal (yes, I know he didn't write it, but it's far more revelatory of the man and what he thinks than even its ghostwriter realized) and some of his other writings and speeches, as well as the record of Trump's first six months in office.

Here are some excerpts from the excerpt, but I hope you'll buy the book, too. It's got a lot of new material, particularly about the economic ideas of the right. And a long, long chapter on Trump and Trump_vs_deep_state.

... ... ...

This is what makes Trump's economic philosophy, such as it is, so peculiar and of its moment. An older generation of economic Darwinists, from William Graham Sumner to Ayn Rand, believed without reservation in the secular miracle of the market. It wasn't just the contest that was glorious; the outcome was, too. That conviction burned in them like a holy fire. Trump, by contrast, subscribes and unsubscribes to that vision. The market is a moment of truth  --  and an eternity of lies. It reveals; it hides. It is everything; it is nothing. Rand grounded her vision of capitalism in A is A; Trump grounds his in A is not A.

TRUMP IS BY NO MEANS the first man of the right to reach that conclusion about capitalism, though he may be the first President to do so, at least since Teddy Roosevelt. A great many neoconservatives found themselves stranded on the same beach after the end of the cold war, as had many conservatives before that. But they always found a redeeming vision in the state. Not the welfare state or the "nanny state," but the State of high politics, national greatness, imperial leadership, and war; the state of Churchill and Bismarck. Given the menace of Trump's rhetoric, his fetish for pomp and love of grandeur, this state, too, would seem the natural terminus of his predilections. As his adviser Steve Bannon has said, "A country's more than an economy. We're a civic society." Yet on closer inspection, Trump's vision of the state looks less like the State than the deals he's not sure add up to much.

Again, read the whole excerpt here , and then buy the book !

I'll be doing a bunch of interviews about the book, including one with our very own Henry, so keep an eye out at my blog for more information on that.

Dr. Hilarius 10.12.17 at 4:54 am (no link)

Trump_vs_deep_state's inconsistency, lack of coherence and cult of personality brings to mind Juan Peron and Evita.
kidneystones 10.12.17 at 2:19 pm (no link)
@12 The desire to make Trump anti-Semitic, and a fascist is a lot easier than recognizing he's a talented media manipulator devoid and any real convictions. The idea that 60 million Americans voted to elect a man who secretly wants to end elections is absurd on every level. He doesn't need to end elections, because elections are the ultimate ratings game. He brags endlessly that he beat all the professional politicians as a neophyte.

He looks certain at this point to thread the needle for 2020 at the expense of both Republicans and Democrats. He may very well simplify the tax code and get rather more done in his second year in office. His first year has and will be devoted to pure survival – defending his corner and maintaining his base. Trump supporters, myself included, are anti-politician, and unsympathetic to faction and ideology, which is part of the reason I really do question Corey's efforts to make Trump part of a conservative movement.

When folks assert that Trump is all about surfaces, they say that as if it's a bad thing. The republican base supporting Trump, we have clearly learned, maintains no fidelity to the theologies expounded at the NRO and the AEI. Trump's inability to think about challenges in ways approved of by his critics confounds experts precisely because he's so effective. I can't believe he has less heft and gravitas than the light-bulb salesman Americans elected twice. He is simply the right guy with the right message for a specific time and place. He may morph into evil personified and I get the sense at times that some of his critics are keen to see just that.

Every time Hillary Clinton opens her mouth to utter another blatant falsehood, I feel better about the results of 2016. There is, as Corey notes, an emptiness at the heart of the conservative movement. The same can be said of liberals who are, if anything, in even greater disarray than conservatives. The great society experiments yield, in 2016, appalling failure rates among America's African-American youth to follow decades of failure as the African-American family unit dis-integrates. Liberals are all out of answers, as are theological conservatives. Perhaps the reality is that ordinary Americans, and others across the globe, are actually far less polarized than the pundits tell us.

We might very well go down some ugly path to war and disaster, but is seems to me just as likely that life will actually go on much as it has, only with fewer wars and slightly more charity towards each other. Cause just yammering about the blah-blah-blah is getting mighty old.

LFC 10.12.17 at 5:03 pm (no link)
kidneystones @15
That Trump lacks much knowledge of public policy was clear during the campaign, and since being inaugurated he has remained uninterested in and ignorant of (sometimes amazingly so) the details of policy. One wonders if he even reads the exec orders he has been signing. Your support of someone so manifestly unsuited to be president, by virtue of his vast ignorance if nothing else, was puzzling during the campaign and remains so. Btw, what "great society experiments" are you talking about? Have you heard of the '96 welfare 'reform' law?
LFC 10.12.17 at 5:10 pm (no link)
p.s. In terms of ignorant presidents in recent memory, Reagan and G.W. Bush come close to Trump, but Trump outdoes them. (Though in a competition on that score between Reagan and Trump, it might be close to a tie.)
Tom 10.13.17 at 1:41 am ( 32 )
As far as I can tell, your claim so far (in this and other posts) is that Trump should be seen first of all as a conservative: those who see him as a radical break from US conservatism have an idealized version of what the GOP and the right have actually been throughout their history.* I tend to agree with this (e.g. the GOP has been very racist since many decades) but with two important qualifications that I have never seen you make:

a) Trump has defended an isolationist foreign policy, attacking Nafta, Nato, the WTO etc. Given his erratic behavior, he has not followed through on this (yet?) but the departure with the previous mainstream consensus is radical. The mainstream left and right, at least since two decades, had been very much internationalist.

b) During the campaign Trump has defended some form of social welfare state and more government intervention in the economy: e.g. his defense of Social Security, or even maternity leave, and his support for infrastructure. I do not think he really cares about this stuff and so he is probably not going to follow through. Given his general cluelessness, he is also captured by the various randians who populate the GOP ranks. But, differently from many politicians on the right, in primis the randians, Trump has some sense for what people want. And in the campaign he said it, possibly opening up the field for future Keynesians republicans.

*You hedge this view a bit in this post, by considering Trump's view of the market.

LFC 10.13.17 at 2:22 am ( 34 )
Collin Street thinks that conservatism is some kind of organic affliction, that conservatives all have something wrong with their brain chemistry or biology, that they are all cognitively abnormal. This is absurd.

It's also very anti-historical. Inasmuch as conservatism is, among other things, a defense of hierarchy , it can (and did, at one time) appeal to millennia of precedent. Were the believers in the divine right of monarchs mentally abnormal? Were those who believed (and continue to believe) that employers have a right to exploit their workers mentally ill? Were, to take an even starker example, proponents of slavery psychologically impaired? If so, how to account for the fact that slavery was close to universal among human societies until fairly recently in the history of the species? Were the vast majority of humans all psychologically impaired until some date of enlightenment (pick your date or century)?

Something can be deeply wrong, i.e. immoral, without being the product of a cognitive abnormality, and people can commit evil acts and hold evil beliefs without being mentally or psychologically impaired. To attribute all retrograde political acts and beliefs to an individual's deficient "theory of mind" (whatever that means exactly) is sociologically naive, psychologically untenable, and historically invalid.

MFB 10.13.17 at 6:50 am ( 42 )
One fairly obvious point -- in response to your original post, not the article itself -- is surely that the general consensus which united conservatives and liberals, that neoliberal economics works, that war against weak countries can be waged on the cheap, and that the local working class will always eat whatever excrement is put on their plates, has started to break down.

The alternatives seem to be to change the consensus, or spread bullshit that the consensus is OK but just needs to be tweaked a bit. Trump is a right-wing bullshitter, Clinton is a liberal bullshitter; there's nothing really new about that (much the same sort of thing happened with those who continued to support the consensus during the Great Depression).

Fake Dave 10.13.17 at 10:31 am ( 47 )
This excerpt seems to take a fairly dim view of the left and what it's had to offer in recent years, and I can't say I really disagree, but I think Corey is underestimating the extent to which a leftist resurgence is already underway. I still think 2008 was a turning point, not because Obama himself really represented a new view of American liberalism (frankly, I think a hypothetical Gore or Kerry administration would have been extremely similar to what we got from Obama), but because the energy people invested in Obama's vision of America has never really dissipated. I think liberals are liberals in large part because they prefer futurism to nostalgia, so it shouldn't have been surprising that the candidate of "hope and change" beat a candidate whose political persona is frozen in the mid-90s.

When Obama failed to embody the forward-looking ideals he campaigned on, some people checked out, but you can trace clear lines of mass disillusionment and radicalization from 2008 to Occupy and BLM to the Sanders campaign.

The question was never if there was an appetite for real leftism in the American electorate (Clinton and Trump's unconvincing plagiarism of Sanders talking points are telling here, I think), but whether the Democratic party, mired as it's been in institutional rot and complacency, would ever tolerate true economic leftism when the "social liberalism" of identity and representation seemed to work well enough and was so much less threatening to the moneyed interests that financed the party's rightward swing.

For decades, the left wing of the Democratic party has been cajoled into voting for "liberal" candidates that resemble nothing so much as the old aristocratic Whigs who used to discuss ways to help the less fortunate over claret and cigars down at the gentlemen's club. We put up with it because we were told that was the only way to keep Republican robber barons from reinstating white male supremacy, criminalizing poverty, and declaring war on human decency. Trump was the embodiment of that venal reactionary bogeyman and Clinton was supposed to be the bullwark of reason and common sense -- the "electable" candidate -- that kept the far right at bay. George W. Bush was a decent-seeming guy whose dad was president. Losing to him was tolerable if frustrating, but Clinton losing feels like a broken promise, like the deal with the devil we made back in '92 is now null and void and it's time for something new.

I don't think there's any going back to the neocon/neolib era and I think even a lot of moderate Republicans (who used to rely on friendly financiers like Romney to keep the rabid right on-leash) are beginning to realize it. After all, what's the point of selling out if it doesn't buy you anything?

kidneystones 10.13.17 at 11:33 am ( 51 )

... ... ...

"We came, we saw, he died – ha-ha-ha" is not president, and African-Americans are no longer chained to the ineffective policies of the Democratic party and teachers unions. The neo-cons are out: Bill Kristol, Max Boot and company are sworn enemies of the administration. Democratic party neocons like HRC can longer launch democracy-building projects in the middle east. Long may this continue.

And let the dogs bark.

Collin Street 10.13.17 at 12:15 pm ( 52 )
@b9n10nt 10.12.17 at 11:57 pm

A sociopath can be very good at reading and manipulating others. Having a theory of mind is quite distinct from having empathy, and having empathy is quite distinct from using it pervasively to guide personal/social/political life.

There's a few simple tricks, is the only word that works, I think, that you can do without needing any insight into how people work. Stuff like being silent and letting people run their mouth out, or being vague so that you can redefine what you meant post-facto and claiming success, or the gish-gallop technique or a few other rhetorical tricks that can be used to confuse/blindside people in various ways.

Power-sales techniques and what-have-you.

"Tricks", because if they work they work by mechanical rule-following and if people know enough to recognise them they don't work at all. You don't need particular insight to use any of these, you just need an audience that doesn't recognise them and isn't told about them. A lot of the communication ones, in particular, rely on abuse of normal discourse structures/pragmatics, which means that they're actually things that people with autism-spectrum conditions -- that severely disrupt normal pragmatic structures -- might stumble into by, literally, accident.

With a drive to succeed and a handful of these tricks you can -- with luck, and we only hear about the successes: there's an old technique for building a reputation that starts by sending out 1024 letters that A will happen, and another 1024 saying the exact opposite -- build a small fortune. But if you run into more-experienced players who can recognise the tricks you're using, then you're not going to succeed against them, and it might go badly for you. Or they might give you a half-million in fuck-off money just to get you out of their way, and you'd probably think yourself awesome for getting it.

Collin Street 10.13.17 at 1:21 pm ( 55 )
But since I haven't read a lot of Burke I need to decide, provisionally, whether to go with the view that e.g. Reflections on the Revolution in France is a manifestation of "autism" or whether to go with the view that it's a statement and elaboration of the author's political convictions.

I can't exactly see how the two descriptions you've provided are incompatible; can you explain why you feel you need to decide, why do you feel that they can't both be true?

kidneystones 10.13.17 at 1:22 pm ( 56 )

... ... ...

Calling 60 million Trump voters racist and/or fascist might feel good, but as Mark Lilla sensibly observes, identity politics is Reagan's trickle-down economics for liberals, self-delusion for folks out of answers. The 'solutions' for poor, black families in crisis on this thread illustrate clearly why so many black voters in Michigan and elsewhere stayed home. Folks without work, safe schools, and much hope want solutions – not 'this study says' or 'but, Republicans.''

America's cities are under Democratic control, for the most part, and the studies, the plans, and the programs, and the teachers' unions haven't got the job done, unless creating a cycle of failure and illiteracy qualifies as some form of progress, or success.

Donald Trump is president because the Democratic party abandoned the poorest, white and black, not because 60 million Americans are actually fascists.

If Democrats can't provide solutions for ordinary people at the state, local and national level the party is going to continue to keep losing elections.

JRLRC 10.13.17 at 4:15 pm ( 61 )
"Both Left and Right concurred in the very shallow notion that National Socialism was merely a version of Conservatism". Orwell in his review of "Mein Kampf".
Jerry Vinokurov 10.13.17 at 4:36 pm ( 65 )
Ah, there it is, the good shit, the barely-warmed-over Manhattan Institute talking points that the conservative lie machine has been pushing for ages.

It's the sort of completely insane projection that falls apart at the most cursory examination, to wit: the entire notion of destroying a public, universal service like secondary (and post-secondary, in many cases) education in order to hand the system over to unscrupulous profiteers is [extremely Zizek voice]PURE NEOLIBERALISM[/extremely Zizek voice].

It is exactly the kind of short-sighted maneuver that Democrats have been pulling for decades now, trying to get "moderate" Republicans in the suburbs to vote for them, and its only effect has been to undermine the concept of public education entirely. Some of the most vigorous advocates of charter schools and union-busting have been Democrats, for fuck's sake! A nonexhaustive list: Joel Klein, Arne Duncan, Rahm Emmanuel, and these are just the first three I could think of off the top of my head; I guarantee that I could find you an list as long as your arm if I tried. Top Democratic donors such as those from Silicon Valley and Wall Street are gung-ho about charter schools and other similar scams like "online education." In the meantime, the actual research shows that at best, charter schools are a wash in terms of performance and at worst they are basically a fraud perpetrated upon both taxpayers and students in order to shovel money to people like DeVos.

What we have, and what Trump_vs_deep_state is merely one symptom of, is a massive crisis in public governance. In large part, the people who are responsible for said governance brought it on themselves. On the right-wing side, a propaganda machine has existed since the 1950s to sell people various poisonous ideas (regulation is bad! the "free market" is good!) dressed up, in the best of times, in quasi-academic language, and in the worst of times as just plain racism. The retreat from public services that took place in the South once those services would have to be integrated is a great tell; wealthy Virginians literally closed the entire state's public school system rather than have to attend school with black children. On the center-left, the entire New Democrat generation drank the idiot Kool-Aid that demanded we turn over anything and everything to market forces but! with a slightly more advanced degree of wokeness. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the CTU, under a predominantly black and Latino leadership, has been at the forefront (PDF) of fighting privatization and the attendant segregation that follows it, demanding resources from the austerity-mad Emmanuel administration so they can actually do their jobs. Said fight, I should add, taking place with the support of the predominantly African-American communities that are currently being brutalized by Rahm, so maybe if you care about black agency as much as you claim you do (hahahaha) you might take that into account.

The Democratic party has not been nearly as good to the African-American community as the latter's loyalty to the former (or, really, as basic justice) would seem to require, but the failure has not been "too much Great Society programs" or "too many unionized teachers." That's tendentious, ahistorical horseshit. The real failure has been the Democratic willingness to cast its most solid coalition partner again and again into a racist market system in which they have to fight uphill battles every step of the way. That Democrats are still a preferable alternative to the open eliminationism of Trump supporters is not particularly to their credit, not when entire Democratic administrations have failed to protect African-Americans from predatory lending or housing and workplace discrimination or being killed by police officers or even do so much as keep them from being forced to drink lead-tainted water.

Race is one the primary axes of American politics, and our reluctance to fund basic public goods cannot be understood without acknowledging this basic fact. Lots of white people, but especially the petit bourgeoisie that constitutes the core of Republican voters (who are, shock of shocks, also the core of Trump voters), would rather eat dirt if it means that a black person somewhere will have to eat shit, and unfortunately for all of us, the idiotic electoral system we inherited from the slavers played to their advantage in this electoral cycle. Now Trump is going to decertify the Iran deal so go take your "hurrrr neocons out" nonsense and shove it up your ass, because all the same fucking lunatics who want to turn the Middle East into glass are still in charge everywhere and a literally demented person holds the nuclear codes because showing the libs whatfor is the only ideal that white middle America is even capable of processing anymore.

TM 10.13.17 at 6:29 pm ( 67 )
JRLRC 61 Thanks for some historical perspective. Reading this thread makes me give up hope for the American Republic. Your leader misses no opportunity to exhibit contempt for democracy, contempt for the rule of law, contempt for international treaty obligations, contempt for the UN world order, contempt for diplomacy, contempt for truth, contempt for science, a guy who in real time threatens to start a nuclear world war (remember CR wrote a whole post dismissing the idea that Trump was reckless), and you people explain him away as just another conservative? Have you really no sense of history? Frankly you must be out of your minds.
Jerry Vinokurov 10.13.17 at 6:51 pm ( 71 )
Since the link was disemvoweled along with my admittedly petty insult, please allow me to relink it again, if for no other purpose than to demonstrate that there's absolutely no daylight whatsoever between "mainstream" Republicans and Trump when it comes to the lust for war: https://www.buzzfeed.com/johnhudson/trumps-boldest-move-today-wasnt-decertifying-the-iran-deal?utm_term=.pb5YARWbz#.svmyK02Lz
Lee A. Arnold 10.13.17 at 7:00 pm ( 72 )
"We have seen that the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on This social function is already losing importance and is bound to lose it at an accelerating rate in the future even if the economic process itself of which entrepreneurship was the prime mover went on unabated. economic progress tends to become depersonalized and automatized. (p.132)

"Of old, roughly up to and including the Napoleonic Wars, generalship meant leadership and success meant the personal success of the man in command who earned corresponding "profits" in terms of social prestige This is no longer so. Rationalized and specialized office work will eventually blot out personality, the calculable result, the "vision." The leading man no longer has the opportunity to fling himself into the fray. He is becoming just another office worker -- and one who is not always difficult to replace. in the last analysis the same social process -- undermines the role and, along with the role, the social position of the capitalist entrepreneur. His role, though less glamorous than that of medieval warlords, great or small, also is or was just another form of individual leadership acting by virtue of personal force and personal responsibility for success (p.133)

" contrasting the figure of the industrialist or merchant with that of the medieval lord. The latter's "profession" not only qualified him admirably for the defense of his own class interest -- he was not only able to fight for it physically -- but it also cast a halo around him and made of him a ruler of men Of the industrialist and merchant the opposite is true. There is surely no trace of any mystic glamour about him which is what counts in the ruling of men. The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail. We have seen that the industrialist and merchant, as far as they are entrepreneurs, also fill a function of leadership. But economic leadership of this type does not readily expand, like the medieval lord's military leadership, into the leadership of nations. On the contrary, the ledger and the cost calculation absorb and confine He can only use rationalist and unheroic means to defend his position or to bend a nation to his will. He can impress by what people may expect from his economic performance, he can argue his case, he can promise to pay out money or threaten to withhold it, he can hire the treacherous services of a condottiere or politician or journalist. But that is all and all of it is greatly overrated as to its political value the bourgeois class is ill equipped to face the problems, both domestic and international, that have normally to be faced by a country of any importance. (pp.137-8)

" capitalist policies wrought destruction much beyond what was unavoidable. They attacked the artisan in reservations in which he could have survived for an indefinite time. They forced upon the peasant all the blessings of early liberalism -- the free and unsheltered holding and all the individualist rope he needed in order to hang himself In breaking down the pre-capitalist framework of society, capitalism thus broke not only barriers that impeded its progress but also flying buttresses that prevented its collapse. That process, impressive in its relentless necessity, was not merely a matter of removing institutional deadwood, but of removing partners of the capitalist stratum, symbiosis with whom was an essential element of the capitalist schema. Having discovered this fact which so many slogans obscure, we might well wonder whether it is quite correct to look upon capitalism as a social form sui generis or, in fact, as anything else but the last stage of the decomposition of what we have called feudalism." (p.139)

Schumpeter, from Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, ch. 7

Ben 10.13.17 at 8:05 pm ( 75 )
The terrorist designation linked by Jerry Vinokurov really is a big deal that'll take awhile to play out along multiple economic, military and diplomatic fronts https://www.law360.com/articles/908829/how-terror-group-label-for-irgc-could-impact-iran-deal
steven t johnson 10.13.17 at 8:50 pm ( 77 )
Jerry Vinokurov@71 writes "there's absolutely no daylight whatsoever between 'mainstream' Republicans and Trump when it comes to the lust for war "

This is overly optimistic in a way, yet overly pessimistic in another. For the first, there's no daylight between Trump and "mainstream" Democrats when it comes to a lust for war.

For the second? It's clear both parties would support Trump if he ordered a decapitation strike on North Korea, and it's likely both parties would support Trump if it failed and turned into an all-out conflagration, no matter the fallout. But, the last president apt to such unilateral war-making was Richard Nixon, and he was impeached for also discarding the two-party deal (a no no on par with a Mexican President taking a second term.) Before the fact, however, there are straws in the wind about impeachment, from the Washington Post op-ed, columnists Rubin and Waldman, and "rumors" reported in Vanity Fair. Not a bright prospect, to be sure, no daylight at all?

The thing is, Trump is an owner who's there because he's finished with that political crap. At this point, we probably have to hope that some general has the spine to tell Trump no, the US army really is not a very good military force for anything that involves taking casualties, which means it is fairly useless for actually conquering anything, as opposed to laying waste in endless campaigns. But the spirit of West Point, the school of treason that produced many, many, many more fighters against America than the CPUSA ever did, still rules. I'm not very hopeful.

I recall a story that Nixon boasted that after he was finished, they'd never make things like they were again. That's the political theory of Trump_vs_deep_state. Today, when people will seriously argue that Nixon was a liberal president, there is no ruling class appetite for democracy, old style or bourgeois or what have you.

b9n10nt @68 links to Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates knows perfectly well that if the black voters had turned out in larger numbers, Clinton would have won the Electoral College as well. People trying to normalize Trump are not alone, Every single black voter who didn't see any difference between Clinton and Trump agrees. Clinton tried to make the campaign about a symbolic endorsement of anti-racism and anti-sexism, as opposed to the deplorables. Millions of black voters proved they were having none of it. They stayed home.

Stephen 10.13.17 at 9:04 pm ( 78 )
OP: "conservatives have breached norms, flouted decorum, assailed elites, and shattered orthodoxy throughout the ages." But is that not also exactly what anti-conservatives – progressives, revolutionaries – have done? Or is it the wrong sort of breaching, flouting, assailing, shattering when conservatives, not your friends, do it; but SOP when your friends do it?

Or are you maintaining that respectable norm-adhering, decorum-maintaining, elite-sustaining, deeply orthodox left-wingers have always been the vast majority of anti-conservatives?

On further thought: elite-sustaining, yes, maybe, if you regard the nomenklatura as elite. Orthodox also, for their own kind of orthodoxy.

None of this is intended to imply support for the remarkable Trump.

bruce wilder 10.14.17 at 2:36 pm ( 97 )
JQ @60, J-D @ 79

I wonder if that qualifies as push-polling? Is asking the question propaganda? This is a legitimacy crisis. It is not as if Clinton partisans did not call Trump's electoral legitimacy into question. Half the country think Russian "meddling" determined the result, when it is not clear any "meddling" happened.

nastywoman

Yes, Americans have lost their collective mind, politically. I know several elderly people (not much more elderly than me, truth to tell) who consume anti-Trump screeds from Seth Meyers or Rachel Maddow on a daily basis. It is entertainment I suppose, but it does not inform them or improve their critical thinking skills. One, a transplanted Englishman, described Maddow to me the other day as "erudite".

The relentless flood tide of propaganda in American politics makes it exceedingly hard to talk with any American realistically about what is going on, because so much of what is going is exists not as objective and verified facts, but as shared, tendentious narratives. The actual Trump seems to me to be a bit of a personal mess and an authoritarian in the same mode as the blowhards who hang out at the barbershop; the Trump constructed by, say, Maddow's televised narratives is something else, something more imagined than real. The imagined Trump has to be bigger, to be fitted with cheap hyperbole.

An essential element of the propaganda narrative is the "distance" to the other. The "base of Trump supporters" is a prop. Wondering what "they" could be thinking but not waiting for an answer before launching scorn and ridicule on the way to slander is a method.

novakant 10.14.17 at 3:24 pm ( 99 )
No Layman, there is plenty of irrefutable evidence that Clinton is a militarist who strongly believes in force and the threat of force, especially when it comes to the ME – and this plays just fine with the Democratic party establishment, actually it's a necessity considering the donor base. Clinton's stance towards Iran and the nuclear deal is a matter of record. Next time don't nominate a warmonger who voted for the Iraq war if you want to prevent someone like Trump – and hey, maybe young people will trust you again.
bruce wilder 10.14.17 at 5:50 pm ( 102 )
There is no "real" Trump narrative; narratives are imagined stories, constructed according to principles of dramatic art to create meaning and morality. With effort, it is possible to anchor a narrative to facts, and to do so by methods that limit violence to the objectivity of facts. Whether a well-anchored narrative is persuasive may be important to such enterprises as the operation of law or even the progress of science.

In politics, the absence of the restraints imposed by institutions of law or science (which often fail their purposes even in those domains) invite the practice of dark arts of propaganda and mass manipulation. Our famously free press (spoken sarcastically) is thought to provide a check; fact-check columns proliferate at times, but mostly prove how weak an instrument of the public interest, a Media run by massive corporations and financially dependent on corporate business advertising is.

A common practice now is to lead with counterfactuals: narratives in which the place of facts is taken by theory and theory's constructions. "Because the whole thing is basically a fantasy, nothing will disprove it."

Last week's New Yorker has a profile of Rachel Maddow.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/rachel-maddow-trumps-tv-nemesis
Janet Malcolm is full of praise for Maddow. For what she identifies, correctly, as entertainment. She does not comment on whether political comment as entertainment makes for a healthy politics. I think not.

My political theory of Trump_vs_deep_state is that this is what conservative politics unchecked, unopposed and not responsible to any mass constituency produces. Trump says anything. But, it has been twenty years since anyone in politics has been held to account for anything said, except for "gotcha" moments of mostly fake outrage. Not that we would have a gotcha moment for Bush's war crimes. But that is my point. Holding Clinton up as a standard of normalcy in politics runs into exactly this same problem: she talks in the political code words, takes no responsibility for policy consequences and shows every sign of greed and irresponsibility, but the counterfactual of her normalcy is still set forward, with no awareness that it is a groundless narrative. This is not a point about Clinton or Trump, but it is a point about a political process that produces a lot of stupid and Trump is a bonus.

bruce wilder 10.15.17 at 2:49 am ( 111 )
J-D @ 110

I was not intending to distinguish actual from real, if that was a question. I was intending to distinguish objectively factual statements or descriptive observation from arguments taking the form of narratives, particularly projective or counterfactual narratives that seem distant from or untethered in the main from verifiable fact.

I think it is possible to make value judgments closely related to factual observation, without projecting a narrative into the future or into an alternate reality.

Whether my statements characterizing Trump constitute a narrative or rely on narrative to justify value judgments is a fine point I do not see the point in arguing at this time. I would not defend my observations and judgment as constituting the one "true story".

kidneystones 10.15.17 at 6:17 am ( 113 )
@97 This is very good. For those interested in how we're learning less about each other and the world we share, here's a timely piece by informed sources from the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502/

"Eli Pariser's The Filter Bubble became the most widely cited distillation of the effects Facebook and other internet platforms could have on public discourse. Pariser began the book research when he noticed conservative people, whom he'd befriended on the platform despite his left-leaning politics, had disappeared from his News Feed. "I was still clicking my progressive friends' links more than my conservative friends' -- and links to the latest Lady Gaga videos more than either," he wrote. 'So no conservative links for me.'

Through the book, he traces the many potential problems that the 'personalization' of media might bring. Most germane to this discussion, he raised the point that if every one of the billion News Feeds is different, how can anyone understand what other people are seeing and responding to? 'The most serious political problem posed by filter bubbles is that they make it increasingly difficult to have a public argument.' "

I think everyone here agrees we have problems to address. If the solutions I supported most of my life were working in places such as California, I wouldn't feel the need for radical change. Had the Democratic candidate not supported the Iraq war, alongside Biden, McCain et al, and then 'learned' her lesson by violent regime-change in Libya (described by Obama as a 'shit-show'), and then embarked upon program of cash collection from the powerful and secrecy towards her coronation, I might have wavered back towards the Dems. Bernie would have drawn me like a magnet. But given the choice between the devil I know and the one I don't I choose the latter. Trump may yet screw things up and people are free to disagree about his skills and solutions.

It's pretty easy today to forget that both Bill and Hillary attended Trump's (most recent) wedding. Their daughter Chelsea is/was a good friend of Ivanka Trump (a convert to Judaism) and her husband. The criticism of bedrock conservatives repeatedly loudly and publicly even today, is that Trump is more of a Democrat than a conservative.

I stand by my belief that Trump built a public persona as a race-baiting, loudmouth buffoon that carried him straight into the WH despite a fervent, well-funded bi-partisan effort to unseat him from the time he declared up right to the present. Studying the buffoon tells us practically nothing about the individual. He's ordinary, capable, ambitious, avaricious, and mired in the world of the senses rather than the mind. There are worse traits and places to be.

kidneystones 10.15.17 at 6:31 am ( 114 )
Just re-read the longish article linked above.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502/

Corey, it's a must read, especially for those in your field and for anyone interested in how information is being manufactured, filtered, distributed, and internalized.

Hint: we don't know whattf others are reading and thinking, and won't be finding out anytime soon.

Donald Johnson 10.15.17 at 1:07 pm ( 125 )
I don't think Clinton would have cancelled the Iran agreement because it leaves the US exposed as the one clearly breaking its word, annoying its allies. I think she would have found cleverer ways to be bellicose. For instance, her supporter Michael Morell told Charlie Rose we should be covertly killing Iranians and Russians in Syria so that they would know we did it. He didn't spell it out, but by saying "covert" he meant we would deny it publicly. Clinton also wanted protected zones for refugees, which in practice would mean massive air strikes and ground forces and in a sanctuary for rebels to use as they strike at the Syrians and Russians and Iranians and Hezbollah.
Donald Johnson 10.15.17 at 1:11 pm ( 126 )
Before someone objects to irrelevant Clinton bashing, there is a larger point. Trump is awful and I favor removing him via the 25th Amendment because I think he might start a war with N Korea. But a great many of Trump's opponents are opposed to him because he is an incompetent boob and not because they oppose American warmongering. They favor it, but don't trust Trump to do it correctly.
kidneystones 10.15.17 at 1:29 pm ( 127 )
@122 I'm going to respectfully leave that for you to figure out on your own. I'll close all further communication with you by suggesting that your aggressive and uniformly uncharitable reading of the remarks of others may complicate your understanding of relatively simple statements.

@123 I enjoy your comments very much, generally. And 123 is entirely fair.

I find very little in Trump's first term that is remarkable, or revolutionary. He seems to understand that he can't go to war with a Republican party he's ostensibly supposed to lead. Corey and others are correct, I believe, in asserting that Trump is fundamentally uninterested in governing, and entirely wrapped up in frequent external validations. I'll add that he thrives on conflict and perhaps instinctively knows how and when to rally his base. I've certainly seen him switch gears/targets during rallies when he senses he's losing the crowd.

Unlike you, and probably many others, I don't take anything any politician says seriously, especially Trump. Actions, rather than words, matter far more. Trump might like to get credit for a decapitation strike on NK and I think you nailed it when you noted that such a strike would win him bi-partisan support. He's more interested, imho, in getting credit for a golden economic age however fanciful that notion may be.

Overall, I still defer to Scott Adams and look forward to his new book (any day)
"Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter." By all means buy Corey's Book, but keep Adams in the back of your mind for light reading.

Trump may well blow us all up, but I've been told that could happen pretty much every day since I can recall. What I can say, re: Kim, is that I was here in Japan when Bill Clinton started looking seriously at removing Kim and all the Americans I knew here were crapping themselves. Can't see it happening simply because nobody wants to see downtown Seoul and Tokyo vaporized, one of which is a near-certainty, and that's if the conflict remains contained. The 1 percent in China, the US, Korea, Russia, and Japan aren't about to let anybody risk a regional conflagration.

And that really is it for me.

Donald Johnson 10.15.17 at 4:03 pm ( 131 )
Michael Morell is a former CI A director and I saw speculation that he was a likely member of a Clinton Administration. About the same time that he appeared on Charlie Rose he had also published an op ed endorsing Clinton for President.

But you also ignored my other points. Clinton favored a safe zone in Syria, which is tantamount to an invasion of Syria and armed conflict with their government and its allies. And Clinton herself was and is representative of a large number of Very Serious People who thought Obama had botched Syria by not intervening on a large enough scale. There is a big constituency for more vigorous action against Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. ( There is also a constituency for more intervention in the Ukraine.). Clinton was clearly part of that. She also told AIPAC that we needed to take our relationship with Israel to the next level, and the only comment I recall reading about her regarding Yemen was about Iranian intervention, but to be honest I would need to look that up to be sure.

Clinton pushed for the Libyan intervention.

Again, she is irrelevant now, but she was part of the group who wanted yet more American military intervention in the Middle East. That group is still around. Your response was to avoid all my points and to pretend Morrell is just some random supporter.

Donald Johnson 10.15.17 at 4:06 pm ( 132 )
I keep misspelling his name. Morell. Forgot to mention he was working for a Clinton aide.

http://gawker.com/i-ran-the-c-i-a-now-i-work-for-a-longtime-clinton-ally-1784871887

Donald Johnson 10.15.17 at 4:12 pm ( 133 )
Last comment of the day. But I googled and found something I didn't know. Morell was one of her advisors last fall and said we should be stopping and boarding Iranian ships to prevent them from sending weapons to the Houthis.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/clinton-adviser-lets-attack-iran-to-aid-saudis-in-yemen.html

Jake Sullivan is also portrayed as something of an anti Iran militarist.

And again, Clinton is irrelevant now, I think. But these other people are still around.

bruce wilder 10.16.17 at 7:40 am ( 149 )
J-D 'Can you explain how the construction of Trump in an (illustrative example) imagined narrative differs from an objective description of Trump?'

Here is a quote from a Vox article dated Oct 13: ". . . obviously, there's Donald Trump, who has dispensed with one democratic norm after another. He's fired an FBI director in order to undercut an investigation into his campaign's possible collusion with Moscow . . ."

The article is not about Trump. Sean Illing, the author, is using Trump as an illustration. Or, rather he is using a narrative about Trump where Trump colluded with the Russian state to win election by foul means. If you accept the donnée of Trump's collusion with Russia, then it follows that Trump fired Comey in what practically amounts to obstruction of justice. And, a considerable volume of reporting has supported that narrative. One set of reports had Comey fired right after he made a budget request to fund an expanded investigation. A dossier put together by a British spy implied that Trump was being blackmailed by Russians. A meeting of arranged by one of Trump's sons with a Russian lawyer was supposedly baited with an offer of dirt on Clinton and this meeting has been interpreted as confirming the Trump campaign's willingness to collude. There has been a lot of speculation in the Media in support of this narrative is my point. At the time Comey was fired, there was a great volume of speculation centered on what Trump said in his letter dismissing Comey, calling into question the claim by Trump that Comey had assured Trump on three occasions that Trump himself was not under investigation. In support of the narrative that Trump had obstructed justice, Comey's character and positive reputation were touted by some journalists.

But, despite the tremendous volume of journalistic speculation structured around this narrative of collusion, there are no confirmed and unambiguous facts to support it. So, Illing must qualify his use of the narrative as an example of bad behavior with the insertion of the weasel words, "possible collusion".

In a better world than the one we are living in, responsible journalists are careful and judicious in both verifying facts and grounding the narratives they use with facts. The facts that can be ascertained and verified become constraints on the story, on the choice of narrative. That does not necessarily happen. Sometimes, journalists go with a "good story" that resonates with readers and attracts clicks or viewers. And, they construe such facts as there are in ways that support the chosen narrative without exercising judgment or attempting verification. The story -- the choice of narrative script -- becomes a constraint on the facts and their interpretation.

I think the balance of available factual evidence suggests pretty strongly that Trump did not collude with the Russian state to defeat Clinton. An honest and balanced "objective" description of factors affecting the electoral outcome and Trump's conduct do not support the idea that there was collusion or even that the Russians did much of anything to affect the election beyond openly funding a cable news channel. The dossier peddled by the British ex-spy was pretty ridiculous on its face. The Comey budget request was a pure invention. Responsible journalists would have attempted to verify details in the dossier or reported on how absurd many parts of it were. Journalists assessing Comey's character might have taken a more critical perspective.

If the factual basis for "possible collusion" is taken away, the obstruction of justice charge evaporates. Trump becomes a President who does not want to be dogged by a groundless investigation, fishing for a blue dress until it finds one. Trump the President finds he does not want to have the hack, Comey hanging out. Useful when he was tripping up his opponent, not so attractive as a companion.

Trump viewed plainly is still a fairly alarming figure to have in a powerful office, but a narrative of traitorous collusion with a national enemy, titillating as it may be as news entertainment, is not descriptively accurate given the available evidence and appropriately balanced methods of evaluating that evidence. (During the campaign, Trump called on Russia to disclose the emails Clinton claimed to have deleted. I suppose one could take that as a joke or a call for collusion with Boris and Natasha. I think joke is the better, more natural interpretation.)

Donald Johnson 10.16.17 at 12:01 pm ( 157 )
You did it again, layman. I refuted what you said to me even if you take it in the narrowest possible way. You objected to my reference to Morell's statement, implying that he was just some random Clinton supporter using some silly argument about. " Donald Johnson supporter" who drowns kittens. I showed that this argument was wrong and Morell was one of Clinton's advisors. If you want to stick to issues, then stick to them and don't make silly arguments and get them wrong.

The larger point is that in Washington the fight between Trump and many ( obviously not all) of his critics is a fight between two groups of militarists.. It would be good if people acknowledged this. In a way it is three groups of militarists,, since Trump's personal incoherence makes him a group unto himself. But on Iran there is an important disagreement between those who want to dump the nuclear agreement and those who want to adhere to it, but are otherwise hardliners who badly want more confrontation.

On your main point, when you aren't trivializing mine, yes, Trump is worse than Clinton because he is not only an arrogant militarist (a trait he shares with Clinton and many others), but ignorant and irrational.

bruce wilder 10.16.17 at 4:59 pm ( 166 )
Layman, small differences between Clinton and Trump do not dominate Clinton's very large political defects. You had an argument for relentlessly focusing on differences to the exclusion of appreciating the whole reality, maybe, when there was a choice on an upcoming ballot. Now, we live in the shadow of Clinton's defects: her defects gave us Trump. And, those defects are not so much the qualities of an individual person -- Clinton or Trump -- as they are the persistent institutional personalities of large political factions and institutional actors: the Democratic Party establishment, the Deep State intelligence agencies and military-industrial complex, the Foreign Policy Blob, the corporate Media, et cetera.

Bullying others in comments over such fine points as whether Clinton would have respected certain forms of the Iran nuclear deal is not contributing much to the discussion. We can see that Trump is hostile to that agreement and is cynically manipulating the forms in ways likely to make the agreement come apart. What relevance a counterfactual projection of Clinton's behavior might have is not clear; asserting that acceptance of such a counterfactual as "true" should be a dispositive criteria for rationality borders on the bizarre.

The relevant fact is not some putative small differences between Trump and Clinton (and the factions and interests and institutionalized views she sought to represent as a fully paid-up member of the Foreign Policy Blob), but the near-absence in American politics of a countervailing force to the consensus of views and interests promoting a palsied, nearly mindless imperial aggression. Morell's views are relevant to showing just how extreme and reckless is this "center" that Clinton represented, and understanding how and why the "center" is not doing much to restrain the Trump. Some powerful forces cultivated by the Democratic establishment have always been hostile to Iran, supportive of Saudi Arabia and so on.

TM, the idea that CR is minimizing Trump seems bizarre to me. If anyone understands the incoherent viciousness of conservatism as the impulse to dominate in a hierarchical polity, it is our gracious host. Trump is expressing conservative ideas and impulses that have always been there. He is not new. That bit of narrative hyperbole -- that Trump is different from all those nice responsible conservatives of the past -- is a dangerous deception. What is different in our political moment is the collapse of effective opposition from the left and centre-left. Trump is so scary because so little stands in his way, so little compels him (or the various factions enjoying the power associated with the authority of office under his aegis, including the practical military junta at the core of his Administration) to moderate his policies, let alone his rhetoric.

Mario 10.16.17 at 9:15 pm ( 174 )
@Layman

what I always find grotesque about the accusations of Russian meddling is the full ticket obliviousness to all the meddling the US used to perform in Russian elections, and in fact in many other elections worldwide. It's quite a sorry sight to see people like you make a fuss about very minor activities (if there's even evidence of any), without as much as a shred of self awareness.

Also, too: I've said I think she's bad on militarism. I'm not interested in, and don't, defend the other side of that argument. I just don't have any patience for the sort of nonsense that wants to paint her as an eater of babies. She's a bog-standard, mainstream adherent of the global diplomatic, economic and military order. That's not good, but it ain't Satan either.

The global diplomatic, economic and military order is downright evil and full-scale babyeating. Ask around in Yemen, Syria, Lybia, etc. So yes, she has that Satan streak. That that's bog-standard and mainstream is horrific, but I grant you that's the world we live in.

Note, BTW, that she was directly involved in at least some of these actions. She has, even now, more blood on her hands than Trump.

Donald Johnson 10.16.17 at 11:50 pm ( 176 )
Faustusnotes --

The evidence that Morell was one of Clinton's advisors was in the link I provided, where it says Morell was one of Clinton's advisors.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/clinton-adviser-lets-attack-iran-to-aid-saudis-in-yemen.html

This is tiresome. I provide links and people demand the evidence that is in the links.

Donald Johnson 10.17.17 at 12:13 am ( 177 )
Layman, this is the third time your response is frustratingly beside the point and after this I am giving up, because you are just going to continue doing it. I didn't just quote other people. I said Clinton supported intervention in Syria, that she supported the Libyan intervention and of course she voted for the Iraq War. She is also a standard AIPAC panderer. Do your own googling if you actually care about this rather than try to save face in some internet thread. It's well known Clinton is a hawk.

My point was that yes, she is a bog standard militarist and one of the points I was making is that even if she is no longer relevant, the people who are militaristic in their attitudes still are. You are the one between the two of us who wants to make it mainly about Clinton, but since you brought up baby eating, that is you once again trivializing the consequences of bog standard US militarism.

Here is a link specifically on Clinton

http://fpif.org/hillary-clintons-support-iraq-war-no-fluke/

There are others, easily found, and I am not wasting further time on this.

Suzanne 10.17.17 at 12:35 am ( 178 )
@174: Trump has lifted the Obama Administration's restraints on the military, resulting in a rapid rise in civilian casualties:

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-has-already-killed-more-civilians-obama-us-fight-against-isis-653564

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/us/politics/trump-drone-strikes-commando-raids-rules.html

As the Amnesty International spokesman points out in the NYT piece, the Obama Administration's constraints fell far short of what is needed.

On the home front, Trump is rescinding the Obama-era limits imposed on Pentagon handouts to cops:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/politics/trump-police-military-surplus-equipment.html

'Police departments will now have access to military surplus equipment typically used in warfare, including grenade launchers, armored vehicles and bayonets, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Monday, describing it as "lifesaving gear."'

All of the foregoing actions could have been predicted during the campaign.

It is quite true that the U.S. has interfered in the elections of other nations, with disastrous consequences for many of those nations. Why this should tie hands now is not clear to me. Highly unlikely the Russians were engaged in righteous retribution for Mossadegh. I suspect some would be taking a less dismissive tone had, say, the Chinese interfered on behalf of Clinton the bloodthirsty.

Orange Watch 10.17.17 at 1:39 am ( 179 )
Layman@159 :
Based on this and your prior comment, you're asking for counterfactuals, because of course Clinton-the-non-President is not capable of being even as bad as let alone worse than Trump-the-President. However, based on your comments elsewhere in the thread, you're dismissing any counterfactuals out of hand. Taken together, this is not a tack taken by someone who is interested in a serious dialogue, or really, any dialogue. Can we dispense with that sort of horseshit?

Either Clinton has no relevance at all, in which case you can forgo with the pedantic lectures about how she's vastly superior in all ways to Trump ( @95 ) and we can hopefully resume forgetting that she exists, or the comparison of a hypothetical Clinton presidency to the current administration has some value in the conversation even when someone other than you is making it ( @96 ). Until and unless you're willing and able to unravel the fundamental contradiction between these perfectly incompatible stances – which have infected every exchange you've made downthread of the them – there's no point at all in trying to discuss this with you in any detail, and there's certainly no reason for us to run and fetch answers for you in response to your ever-changing standards.

Donald Johnson 10.17.17 at 4:13 am ( 182 )
I didn't go back to see who first mentioned Clinton, but the point made by at least a few of us is that Clinton is only important at this point as a representative of a broad segment of the Beltway crowd that is constantly pushing for more military intervention, either directly or by proxy, and that some of the opposition to Trump doesn't come from antiwar types, but from people who don't trust him to warmonger in a competent way.

If people want a sane non- militaristic foreign policy it's going to take more than just opposition to Trump. You are also going to have to oppose some of Trump's opponents in both parties. The one time Trump received positive feedback and praise from many in the Beltway was when he bombed Syria.

bruce wilder 10.17.17 at 6:19 am ( 186 )
Lee A. Arnold @ 166

If XYZ does not exist, it doesn't exist. If it does exist, it exists. I agree that in our present state of political disorganization among the broad mass, most people do not know much about constitutes a political issue. And, they don't know what they want politically.

nastywoman @ 175

"Such "thinking" is as "Alien" as blaming the kid who was mauled by a Pit Bull the other day – "because so little stood in the Pit Bulls way and so little did "compel him".

"What type of person – what type of people can think like that?!"

The kind of person who thinks dogs should be kept on a leash. The type of person who can think like that is highly intelligent, suave and debonair.

kidneystones 10.17.17 at 11:30 am ( 194 )
Why are people still talking about Clinton? In general, because Clinton won't shut up. She's as hungry for a microphone and the spotlight as the conservative in question. Which is ironic considering that her aversion to the press and the public as a candidate helped cost her the election. Now, she can't stop talking. Bannon would willingly bankroll the book tour and undoubtedly wants her to remain in the spotlight through 2018. Indeed, Bannon is banking on making Hillary a key part of Trump's re-election in 2020, as role she looks all too eager to fill. Chew on that as you gaze into the future.

Why are people talking about Hillary here, on a thread about Trump and conservatism? Because a plausible argument can be made that Hillary is more of conservative than Trump, at least in terms of neo-conservative politics. She has, after all, two neo-con wars under her belt already and enjoys good relations with all the really wrong people. Her avarice and willingness to tell tales are at least comparable to Trump's. But perhaps the best reason Hillary belongs here is because many believe that had a less conservative Democrat than Hillary run (Bernie, for example), Dems would have won and Donald Trump would be yesterday's news.

To get a sense of what the Democratic future looks like, here's a very recent interview with Hillary which I think is illustrative of the level of disconnect between supporters (like me) who felt strongly enough about her candidacy in 2008 to endure accusations of racism from Obama supporters, yet turned from her to Trump by 2015, and those who still support her for reasons that make a great deal of sense (to them).

The interview with Hillary about Hillary runs 45 minutes on Australian TV with a transcript. Take away – Trump figures bigly and in the most unflattering terms, so much for graciousness in defeat. The Access Hollywood tape is discussed in great detail, as is Comey, and the Russians. The words Wall St; Goldman Sachs, Libya, and Syria are never mentioned. In Hillary-world Michigan, Wisconsin, and Bernie Sanders merit a mention each and only in a very specific context. We get David Duke, the Klu Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists; pizzas – and pure deflection when the discussion turns to Bill, Chelsea, gifts; and cash. In short, she hasn't much of a good word to say about anyone.

Here's a sampling for the still faithful.

" Russians actually paid in rubles for running ads in ah Facebook and on Twitter making all kinds of accusations against me, working to suppress voters which is a really important part of the equation " (suppress voters, or decrease turnout? The latter fits better, imho.)

Interviewer: "Is it, is it the case that you missed the fundamentally angry sentiment in the US last year against globalisation?

HILLARY CLINTON: I didn't miss it "

Interviewer: "Was it in some ways your links to big money politics that made it difficult for you to be the representative of that anger ?

HILLARY CLINTON: No, not at all! You know, when I was in the primary, Bernie Sanders couldn't explain his programs. I was the one who was saying here's what we're going to do to the banks "

One mere mention of Wisconsin: "we know is that the false information was aimed at Wisconsin and Michigan and parts of Pennsylvania "

And folks wonder how she lost.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/hillary-clinton:-the-interview/9055256

[Oct 22, 2017] Reason FBI Denied Access DNC Server

Youtube video
Jun 22, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Integrity Now , 3 months ago

We need Y'all at #UNRIG . Stop the deep state and two party tyranny. Unite and #UNRIG

Thomas Rocco , 3 months ago

Savage is the best

[Oct 22, 2017] CNN EXPOSED IN UNDERCOVER STING - Russia-Trump Story Admitted FAKE NEWS - Driving to Bohemian Grove

Oct 22, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Five Star Productions , 3 months ago

CNN is toast. Everyone (anyone) with a brain knows this. I feel badly for the professional reporters there that can't get out to a new location ..... they will be ruined also.

[Oct 22, 2017] Clinton, Assange and the War on Truth by John Pilger

Notable quotes:
"... This high-profile journalist made no mention of Clinton's own "clear and present danger" to the people of Iran whom she once threatened to "obliterate totally," and the 40,000 Libyans who died in the attack on Libya in 2011 that Clinton orchestrated. Flushed with excitement, the Secretary of State rejoiced at the gruesome murder of the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi. ..."
"... "Libya was Hillary Clinton's war," Julian Assange said in a filmed interview with me last year. "Barack Obama initially opposed it. Who was the person championing it? Hillary Clinton. That's documented throughout her emails there's more than 1,700 emails out of the 33,000 Hillary Clinton emails that we've published, just about Libya. It's not that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state -- something that she would use in her run-up to the general election for President. ..."
"... "Not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people fleeing Syria, the destabilization of other African countries as a result of arms flows, but the Libyan state itself was no longer able to control the movement of people through it." ..."
"... In a tweet from London, Assange cited the ABC's own Code of Practice, which states: "Where allegations are made about a person or organisation, make reasonable efforts in the circumstances to provide a fair opportunity to respond." ..."
"... Following the ABC broadcast, Ferguson's executive producer, Sally Neighbour, re-tweeted the following: "Assange is Putin's bitch. We all know it!" The slander, since deleted, was even used as a link to the ABC interview captioned 'Assange is Putins (sic) b****. We all know it!' ..."
"... Today, Assange remains a political refugee from the war-making dark state of which Donald Trump is a caricature and Hillary Clinton the embodiment. His resilience and courage are astonishing. Unlike him, his tormentors are cowards. ..."
Oct 22, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Drivel such as this, trivializing women's struggles, marks the media hagiographies of Hillary Clinton. Her political extremism and warmongering are of no consequence. Her problem, wrote Trainster, was a "damaging infatuation with the email story." The truth, in other words.

The leaked emails of Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, revealed a direct connection between Clinton and the foundation and funding of organized jihadism in the Middle East and Islamic State (known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh). The ultimate source of most Islamic terrorism, Saudi Arabia, was central to her career.

One email, in 2014, sent by Clinton to Podesta soon after she stepped down as U.S. Secretary of State, discloses that Islamic State is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Clinton accepted huge donations from both governments for the Clinton Foundation.

As Secretary of State, she approved the world's biggest ever arms sale to her benefactors in Saudi Arabia, worth more than $80 billion. Thanks to her, U.S. arms sales to the world – for use in stricken countries like Yemen – doubled.

This was revealed by WikiLeaks and published by The New York Times. No one doubts the emails are authentic. The subsequent campaign to smear WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, as "agents of Russia," has grown into a spectacular fantasy known as "Russiagate." The "plot" is said to have been signed off on by Vladimir Putin himself. There is not a shred of public evidence.

Smear and Omission

The ABC Australia interview with Clinton is an outstanding example of smear and censorship by omission. I would say it is a model.

"No one," the interviewer, Sarah Ferguson, says to Clinton, "could fail to be moved by the pain on your face at that moment [of the inauguration of Trump] Do you remember how visceral it was for you?"

Having established Clinton's visceral suffering, Ferguson asks about "Russia's role."

CLINTON: I think Russia affected the perceptions and views of millions of voters, we now know. I think that their intention coming from the very top with Putin was to hurt me and to help Trump.

FERGUSON: How much of that was a personal vendetta by Vladimir Putin against you?

CLINTON: I mean he wants to destabilize democracy. He wants to undermine America, he wants to go after the Atlantic Alliance and we consider Australia kind of a an extension of that

(The opposite is true. It is a combination of Western armies massing on Russia's border for the first time since the Russian Revolution 100 years ago.)

FERGUSON: How much damage did [Julian Assange] do personally to you?

CLINTON: Well, I had a lot of history with him because I was Secretary of State when, ah, WikiLeaks published a lot of very sensitive, ah, information from our State Department and our Defense Department.

(What Clinton fails to say – and her interviewer fails to remind her – is that in 2010, WikiLeaks revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had ordered a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the United Nations leadership, including the Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon and the permanent Security Council representatives from China, Russia, France and the U.K. A classified directive, signed by Clinton, was issued to U.S. diplomats in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top U.N. officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks. This was known as Cablegate. It was lawless spying.)

CLINTON: He [Assange] is very clearly a tool of Russian intelligence. And, ah, he has done their bidding.

(Clinton offered no evidence to back up this serious accusation, nor did Ferguson challenge her.)

CLINTON: You don't see damaging negative information coming out about the Kremlin on WikiLeaks. You didn't see any of that published.

(This was false. WikiLeaks has published a massive number of documents on Russia – more than 800,000, most of them critical, many of them used in books and as evidence in court cases.)

A 'Nihilistic Opportunist'

CLINTON: So I think Assange has become a kind of nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator.

FERGUSON: Lots of people, including in Australia, think that Assange is a martyr for free speech and freedom of information. How would you describe him? Well, you've just described him as a nihilist.

CLINTON: Yeah, well, and a tool. I mean he's a tool of Russian intelligence. And if he's such, ah, you know, martyr of free speech, why doesn't WikiLeaks ever publish anything coming out of Russia?

(Again, Ferguson said nothing to challenge this or correct her.)

CLINTON: There was a concerted operation between WikiLeaks and Russia and most likely people in the United States to weaponize that information, to make up stories to help Trump.

FERGUSON: Now, along with some of those outlandish stories, there was information that was revealed about the Clinton Foundation that at least in some of the voters' minds seemed to associate you .

CLINTON: Yeah, but it was false!

FERGUSON: with the peddling of information

CLINTON: It was false! It was totally false! ..

FERGUSON: Do you understand how difficult it was for some voters to understand the amounts of money that the [Clinton] Foundation is raising, the confusion with the consultancy that was also raising money, getting gifts and travel and so on for Bill Clinton that even Chelsea had some issues with?

CLINTON: Well you know, I'm sorry, Sarah, I mean I, I know the facts .

Generational 'Icon'

The ABC interviewer lauded Clinton as "the icon of your generation." She asked her nothing about the enormous sums she creamed off from Wall Street, such as the $675,000 for speaking to Goldman Sachs, one of the banks at the center of the 2008 crash. Clinton's greed deeply upset the kind of voters she abused as "deplorables."

Clearly looking for a cheap headline in the Australian press, Ferguson asked her if Trump was "a clear and present danger to Australia" and got her predictable response.

This high-profile journalist made no mention of Clinton's own "clear and present danger" to the people of Iran whom she once threatened to "obliterate totally," and the 40,000 Libyans who died in the attack on Libya in 2011 that Clinton orchestrated. Flushed with excitement, the Secretary of State rejoiced at the gruesome murder of the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi.

"Libya was Hillary Clinton's war," Julian Assange said in a filmed interview with me last year. "Barack Obama initially opposed it. Who was the person championing it? Hillary Clinton. That's documented throughout her emails there's more than 1,700 emails out of the 33,000 Hillary Clinton emails that we've published, just about Libya. It's not that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state -- something that she would use in her run-up to the general election for President.

"So in late 2011 there is an internal document called the Libya Tick Tock that was produced for Hillary Clinton, and it's the chronological description of how she was the central figure in the destruction of the Libyan state, which resulted in around 40,000 deaths within Libya; jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in, leading to the European refugee and migrant crisis.

"Not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people fleeing Syria, the destabilization of other African countries as a result of arms flows, but the Libyan state itself was no longer able to control the movement of people through it."

This – not Clinton's "visceral" pain in losing to Trump nor the rest of the self-serving scuttlebutt in her ABC interview – was the story. Clinton shared responsibility for massively de-stabilizing the Middle East, which led to the death, suffering and flight of thousands of women, men and children.

Ferguson raised not a word of it. Clinton repeatedly defamed Assange, who was neither defended nor offered a right of reply on his own country's state broadcaster.

In a tweet from London, Assange cited the ABC's own Code of Practice, which states: "Where allegations are made about a person or organisation, make reasonable efforts in the circumstances to provide a fair opportunity to respond."

'Putin's Bitch'

Following the ABC broadcast, Ferguson's executive producer, Sally Neighbour, re-tweeted the following: "Assange is Putin's bitch. We all know it!" The slander, since deleted, was even used as a link to the ABC interview captioned 'Assange is Putins (sic) b****. We all know it!'

In the years I have known Julian Assange, I have watched a vituperative personal campaign try to stop him and WikiLeaks. It has been a frontal assault on whistleblowing, on free speech and free journalism, all of which are now under sustained attack from governments and corporate Internet controllers.

The first serious attacks on Assange came from the Guardian, which, like a spurned lover, turned on its besieged former source, having hugely profited from WikiLeaks' disclosures. With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, a Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal. Assange was portrayed as "callous" and a "damaged personality."

It was as if a rampant jealousy could not accept that his remarkable achievements stood in marked contrast to that of his detractors in the "mainstream" media. It is like watching the guardians of the status quo, regardless of age, struggling to silence real dissent and prevent the emergence of the new and hopeful.

Today, Assange remains a political refugee from the war-making dark state of which Donald Trump is a caricature and Hillary Clinton the embodiment. His resilience and courage are astonishing. Unlike him, his tormentors are cowards.

John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist based in London. Pilger's Web site is: www.johnpilger.com . His new film, "The Coming War on China," is available in the U.S. from www.bullfrogfilms.com

[Oct 21, 2017] Washington Funds Foreign Think Tanks That Blacklist Opponents of Neocon Foreign Policy by Ron Paul

I admired Ron Paul foright policy views for a along time. and this time he also did not disappointed his reader.
Soviet labeled anybody who dissented from communist propaganda line or did not believe in Communist dogma as "agents of imperialism". Neocons similarly bland and-war activists and people who question this war mongering as peddlers of "Russian propaganda". This is what often happen with victors in wars: they acquired worst features of their defeated enemies. for example to defeat the USSR the USA create powerful network of intelligence agencies. Which promptly went out of civil control in 1963, much like KGB in the USSR and became state within the state. In a way now it in now now unfeasible that the Soviet Union posthumously have won the Cold War, as it is more and more difficult to distinguish Soviet propaganda and the US government propaganda.
So the fact that the US government allocate large sums of money for the propaganda against another neoliberal state -- Russia, which represent regional threat to the US hegemonic ambitions -- tells a lot about neoliberalism as a social system. Hostilities among neoliberal states, much like hostilities between communist states are not only possible, they are the reality.
Notable quotes:
"... So what is the "European Values" think tank? A bunch of kooks? Well perhaps, but they are well-funded kooks. In fact they are funded by American taxpayers to defame other Americans who appear on media outlets that are out of favor with Washington's elites. Among the top donors to the "European Values" think tank is the United States Embassy in Prague. Other top funders include George Soros' "Open Society Foundation," the European Commission, and the European Parliament. They are also funded by other US government funded think tanks such as the Prague-based "League of Human Rights." ..."
"... How ironic that such a Soviet-style attack on political dissent in the United States was launched from Prague, which for decades suffered under the Štátna bezpečnosť -- ..."
"... "I am not here to defend RT," I said on the program tonight. I am here to defend the marketplace of ideas that is critical to a free society. I am here to defend the right of US citizens to dissent from the foreign policy of their government without being attacked by their own government -- or by foreign think tanks funded by their government. ..."
"... This should infuriate us: The US government defines anyone who dissents from its foreign policy of endless wars and a global military empire as peddlers of "Russian propaganda" and then Congress appropriates tens of million dollars to "counter Russian propaganda." ..."
"... That means the US Congress is appropriating tens of millions of our dollars to silence our objection to Washington's trillion dollar global military empire. What a scam! How anti-American! Is that not a declaration of war on the rest of us? Is that not an act of tyranny? ..."
Oct 21, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org

Dear Friends of the Ron Paul Institute:

I just finished an interview on RT.

Someday soon, perhaps, anyone writing the above sentence will land in some sort of gulag, as once did East Europeans found to have appeared on a foreign broadcast questioning the historical inevitability of the worldwide communist revolution.

In my case, I was asked to comment on a new report (see above pic) from a Czech " think tank " exposing 2,327 American "useful idiots" who dared appear on the Russian government-funded RT television network.

Among the "Kremlin stooges" listed in the report of the "European Values" think tank? Alongside critics of US foreign policy like Ron Paul, the Czech "European Values" think tank listed Sen. Lindsay Graham, Joe Lieberman, Dick Cheney, US Rep. Adam Schiff, former acting CIA director Michael Morrell, former CIA director Michael Hayden, and hundreds more prominent Americans who have been notably hostile to Russia and its government.

I said: "Wow! this conspiracy is even deeper than we thought! Even the virulently anti-Russian neocons and Russia-hating CIA bigwigs are in fact Putin's poodles!"

It's funny but it's not. This is when the neo-McCarthyism lately in fashion across the ideological divide descends into the absurd. This is when the mask slips from the witch trials, when the naked emperor can no longer expect to not be noticed.

So what is the "European Values" think tank? A bunch of kooks? Well perhaps, but they are well-funded kooks. In fact they are funded by American taxpayers to defame other Americans who appear on media outlets that are out of favor with Washington's elites. Among the top donors to the "European Values" think tank is the United States Embassy in Prague. Other top funders include George Soros' "Open Society Foundation," the European Commission, and the European Parliament. They are also funded by other US government funded think tanks such as the Prague-based "League of Human Rights."

Since when did "European values" come to be defined as government-funded lists of political "enemies" who dare question US foreign policy on television networks despised by neocons and Washington interventionists? How ironic that such a Soviet-style attack on political dissent in the United States was launched from Prague, which for decades suffered under the Štátna bezpečnosť -- the communist secret police -- that took exactly the same view of those who deviated from the Soviet party line as does the modern Czech "European Values" think tank.

Anyone questioning our one trillion dollar global military empire is automatically considered to be in the pay of hostile foreign governments. How patriotic is that?

"I am not here to defend RT," I said on the program tonight. I am here to defend the marketplace of ideas that is critical to a free society. I am here to defend the right of US citizens to dissent from the foreign policy of their government without being attacked by their own government -- or by foreign think tanks funded by their government.

This should infuriate us: The US government defines anyone who dissents from its foreign policy of endless wars and a global military empire as peddlers of "Russian propaganda" and then Congress appropriates tens of million dollars to "counter Russian propaganda."

That means the US Congress is appropriating tens of millions of our dollars to silence our objection to Washington's trillion dollar global military empire. What a scam! How anti-American! Is that not a declaration of war on the rest of us? Is that not an act of tyranny?

The noose is tightening around us. Yet we must continue to fight for what we believe in! We must continue to fight for the prosperity that comes from a peaceful foreign policy. Your generous support for the Ron Paul Institute helps us continue to be your voice in the fight for free expression and a peaceful foreign policy.

[Oct 21, 2017] Socialism, Land and Banking 2017 compared to 1917 by Michael Hudson

Notable quotes:
"... Socialism a century ago seemed to be the wave of the future. There were various schools of socialism, but the common ideal was to guarantee support for basic needs, and for state ownership to free society from landlords, predatory banking and monopolies. In the West these hopes are now much further away than they seemed in 1917. Land and natural resources, basic infrastructure monopolies, health care and pensions have been increasingly privatized and financialized. ..."
"... Instead of Germany and other advanced industrial nations leading the way as expected, Russia's October 1917 Revolution made the greatest leap. But the failures of Stalinism became an argument against Marxism – guilt-by-association with Soviet bureaucracy. European parties calling themselves socialist or "labour" since the 1980s have supported neoliberal policies that are the opposite of socialist policy. Russia itself has chosen neoliberalism. ..."
"... Few socialist parties or theorists have dealt with the rise of the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector that now accounts for most increase in wealth. Instead of evolving into socialism, Western capitalism is being overcome by predatory finance and rent extraction imposing debt deflation and austerity on industry as well as on labor. ..."
"... Failure of Western economies to recover from the 2008 crisis is leading to a revival of Marxist advocacy. The alternative to socialist reform is stagnation and a relapse into neofeudal financial and monopoly privileges. ..."
"... Russia's Revolution ended after 74 years, leaving the Soviet Union so dispirited that it ended in collapse. The contrast between the low living standards of Russian consumers and what seemed to be Western success became increasingly pronounced. ..."
"... When the Soviet Union dissolved itself in 1991, its leaders took neoliberal advice from its major adversary, the United States, in hope that this would set it on a capitalist road to prosperity. But turning its economies into viable industrial powers was the last thing U.S. advisors wanted to teach Russia. [3] Their aim was to turn it and its former satellites into raw-materials colonies of Wall Street, the City of London and Frankfurt – victims of capitalism, not rival producers. ..."
"... It should not be surprising that banks became the economy's main control centers, as in the West's bubble economies. Instead of the promised prosperity, a new class of billionaires was endowed, headed by the notorious Seven Bankers who appropriated the formerly state-owned oil and gas, nickel and platinum, electricity and aluminum production, as well as real estate, electric utilities and other public enterprises. It was the largest giveaway in modern history. The Soviet nomenklatura became the new lords in outright seizure that Marx would have characterized as "primitive accumulation." ..."
"... The American advisors knew the obvious: Russian savings had been wiped out by the polst-1991 hyperinflation, so the new owners could only cash out by selling shares to Western buyers. The kleptocrats cashed out as expected, by dumping their shares to foreign investors so quickly at such giveaway prices that Russia's stock market became the world's top performer for Western investors in 1994-96. ..."
"... The basic neoliberal idea of prosperity is financial gain based on turning rent extraction into a flow of interest payments by buyers-on-credit. This policy favors financial engineering over industrial investment, reversing the Progressive Era's industrial capitalism that Marx anticipated would be a transition stage leading to socialism. Russia adopted the West's anti-socialist rollback toward neofeudalism. ..."
"... Russia joined the dollar standard. Buying Treasury bonds meant lending to the U.S. Government. The central bank bought U.S. Treasury securities to back its domestic currency. These purchases helped finance Cold War escalation in countries around Russia. Russia paid 100% annual interest in the mid-1990s, creating a bonanza for U.S. investors. On balance, this neoliberal policy lay Russia's economy open to looting by financial institutions seeking natural resource rent, land rent and monopoly rent for themselves. Instead of targeting such rents, Russia imposed taxes mainly on labor via a regressive flat tax – too right wing to be adopted even in the United States! ..."
"... Theories of Surplus Value ..."
"... This Western financial advice became a textbook example of how not ..."
"... By 1991, when the Soviet Union's leaders decided to take the "Western" path, the Western economies themselves were reaching a terminus. Appearances were saved by a wave of unproductive credit and debt creation to sustain the bubble economy that finally crashed in 2008. ..."
"... The same debt overgrowth occurred in the industrial sector, where bank and bondholder credit since the 1980s has been increasingly for corporate takeovers and raiding, stock buybacks and even to pay dividends. Industry has become a vehicle for financial engineering to increase stock prices and strip assets, not to increase the means of production. The result is that capitalism has fallen prey to resurgent rentier ..."
"... Theories of Surplus Value ..."
"... American Journal of Economics and Sociology ..."
"... Super-Imperialism ..."
"... The Great Credit Crash ..."
"... The Contradictions of Austerity: The Socio-Economic Costs of the Neoliberal Baltic Model ..."
"... Journal of Economic Issues ..."
Oct 20, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org
Socialism a century ago seemed to be the wave of the future. There were various schools of socialism, but the common ideal was to guarantee support for basic needs, and for state ownership to free society from landlords, predatory banking and monopolies. In the West these hopes are now much further away than they seemed in 1917. Land and natural resources, basic infrastructure monopolies, health care and pensions have been increasingly privatized and financialized.

Instead of Germany and other advanced industrial nations leading the way as expected, Russia's October 1917 Revolution made the greatest leap. But the failures of Stalinism became an argument against Marxism – guilt-by-association with Soviet bureaucracy. European parties calling themselves socialist or "labour" since the 1980s have supported neoliberal policies that are the opposite of socialist policy. Russia itself has chosen neoliberalism.

Few socialist parties or theorists have dealt with the rise of the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector that now accounts for most increase in wealth. Instead of evolving into socialism, Western capitalism is being overcome by predatory finance and rent extraction imposing debt deflation and austerity on industry as well as on labor.

Failure of Western economies to recover from the 2008 crisis is leading to a revival of Marxist advocacy. The alternative to socialist reform is stagnation and a relapse into neofeudal financial and monopoly privileges.

Socialism flowered in the 19 th century as a program to reform capitalism by raising labor's status and living standards, with a widening range of public services and subsidies to make economies more efficient. Reformers hoped to promote this evolution by extending voting rights to the working population at large.

Ricardo's discussion of land rent led early industrial capitalists to oppose Europe's hereditary landlord class. But despite democratic political reform, the world has un-taxed land rent and is still grappling with the problem of how to keep housing affordable instead of siphoning off rent to a landlord class – more recently transmuted into mortgage interest paid to banks by owners who pledge the rental value for loans. Most bank lending today is for real estate mortgages. The effect is to bid up land prices toward the point where the entire rental value is paid as interest. This threatens to be a problem for socialist China as well as for capitalist economies.

Landlords, banks and the cost of living

The classical economists sought to make their nations more competitive by keeping down the price of labor so as to undersell competitors. The main cost of living was food; today it is housing. Housing and food prices are determined not by the material costs of production, but by land rent – the rising market price for land.

In the era of the French Physiocrats, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, this land rent accrued to Europe's hereditary landlord class. Today, the land's rent is paid mainly to bankers – because families need credit to buy a home. Or, if they rent, their landlords use the property rent to pay interest to the banks.

The land issue was central to Russia's October Revolution, as it was for European politics. But the discussion of land rent and taxation has lost much of the clarity (and passion) that guided the 19 th century when it dominated classical political economy, liberal reform, and indeed most early socialist politics.

In 1909/10 Britain experienced a constitutional crisis when the democratically elected House of Commons passed a land tax, only to be overridden by the House of Lords, governed by the old aristocracy. The ensuing political crisis was settled by a rule that the Lords never again could overrule a revenue bill passed by the House of Commons. But that was Britain's last real opportunity to tax away the economic rents of landlords and natural resource owners. The liberal drive to tax the land faltered, and never again would gain serious chance of passage.

The democratization of home ownership during the 20 th century led middle-class voters to oppose property taxes – including taxes on commercial sites and natural resources. Tax policy in general has become pro- rentier and anti-labor – the regressive opposite of 19 th -century liberalism as developed by "Ricardian socialists" such as John Stuart Mill and Henry George. Today's economic individualism has lost the early class consciousness that sought to tax economic rent and socialize banking.

The United States enacted an income tax in 1913, falling mainly on rentier income, not on the working population. Capital gains (the main source of rising wealth today) were taxed at the same rate as other income. But the vested interests campaigned to reverse this spirit, slashing capital gains taxes and making tax policy much more regressive. The result is that today, most wealth is not gained by capital investment for profits. Instead, asset-price gains have been financed by a debt-leveraged inflation of real estate, stock and bond prices.

Many middle-class families owe most of their net worth to rising prices for their homes. But by far the lion's share of the real estate and stock market gains have accrued to just One Percent of the population. And while bank credit has enabled buyers to bid up housing prices, the price has been to siphon off more and more of labor's income to pay mortgage loans or rents. As a result, finance today is what is has been throughout history: the main force polarizing economies between debtors and creditors.

Global oil and mining companies created flags of convenience to make themselves tax-exempt, by pretending to make all their production and distribution profits in tax-free trans-shipping havens such as Liberia and Panama (which use U.S. dollars instead of being real countries with their own currency and tax systems).

The fact that absentee-owned real estate and natural resource extraction are practically free of income taxation shows that democratic political reform has not been a sufficient guarantee of socialist success. Tax rules and public regulation have been captured by the rentiers , dashing the hopes of 19 th -century classical reformers that progressive tax policy would produce the same effect as direct public ownership of the means of production, while leaving "the market" as an individualistic alternative to government regulation or planning.

In practice, planning and resource allocation has passed to the banking and financial sector. Many observers hoped that this would evolve into state planning, or at least work in conjunction with it as in Germany. But liberal "Ricardian socialist" failed, as did German-style "state socialism" publicly financing transportation and other basic infrastructure, pensions and similar "external" costs of living and doing business that industrial employers otherwise would have to bear. Attempts at "half-way" socialism via tax and regulatory policy against monopolies and banking have faltered repeatedly. As long as major economic or political choke points are left in private hands, they will serve s springboards to subvert real reform policies. That is why Marxist policy went beyond these would-be socialist reforms.

To Marx, the historical task of capitalism was to prepare the way for socializing the means of production by clearing away feudalism's legacy: a hereditary landlord class, predatory banking, and the monopolies that financial interests had pried away from governments. The path of least resistance was to start by socializing land and basic infrastructure. This drive to free society from economic overhead in the form of hereditary privilege and unearned income by the "idle rich" was a step toward socialist management, by minimizing rentier costs (" faux frais of production").

Proto-socialist reform in the leading industrial nations

Marx was by no means alone in expecting a widening range of economic activity to be shifted away from the market to the public sector. State socialism (basically, state-sponsored capitalism) subsidized pensions and public health, education and other basic needs so as to save industrial enterprise from having to bear these charges.

In the United States, Simon Patten – the first economics professor at the new Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania – defined public infrastructure as a "fourth factor of production" alongside labor, capital and land. The aim of public investment was not to make a profit, but to lower the cost of living and doing business so as to minimize industry's wage and infrastructure bill. Public health, pensions, roads and other transportation, education, research and development were subsidized or provided freely. [1]

The most advanced industrial economies seemed to be evolving toward some kind of socialism. Marx shared a Progressive Era optimism that expected industrial capitalism to evolve in the most logical way, by freeing economies from the landlordship and predatory banking inherited from Europe's feudal era. That was above all the classical reform program of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and the intellectual mainstream.

But the aftermath of World War I saw the vested interests mount a Counter-Enlightenment. Banking throughout the Western world find its major market in real estate mortgage lending, natural resource extraction and monopolies – the Anglo-American model, not that of German industrial banking that had seemed to be capitalism's financial future in the late 19 th century.

Since 1980 the Western nations have reversed early optimistic hopes to reform market economies. Instead of the classical dream of taxing away the land rent that had supported Europe's hereditary landed aristocracies, commercial real estate has been made virtually exempt from income taxation. Absentee owners avoid tax by a combination of tax-deductibility for interest payments (as if it is a necessary business expense) and fictitious over-depreciation tax credits that pretend that buildings and properties are losing value even when market prices for their land are soaring.

These tax breaks have made real estate the largest bank customers. The effect has been to financialize property rents into interest payments. Likewise in the industrial sphere, regulatory capture by lobbyists for the major monopolies has disabled public attempts to keep prices in line with the cost of production and prevent fraud by breaking up or regulating monopolies. These too have become major bank clients.

The beginning and end of Russian socialism

Most Marxists expected socialism to emerge first in Germany as the most advanced capitalist economy. After its October 1917 Revolution, Russia seemed to jump ahead, the first nation to free itself from rent and interest charges inherited from feudalism. By taking land, industry and finance into state control, Soviet Russia's October Revolution created an economy without private landlords and bankers. Russian urban planning did not take account of the natural rent-of-location, nor did it charge for the use of money created by the state bank. The state bank created money and credit, so there was no need to rely on a wealthy financial class. And as property owner, the state did not seek to charge land rent or monopoly rent.

By freeing society from the post-feudal rentier class of landlords, bankers and predatory finance, the Soviet regime was much more than a bourgeois revolution. The Revolution's early leaders sought to free wage labor from exploitation by taking industry into the public domain. State companies provided labor with free lunches, education, sports and leisure activity, and modest housing.

Agricultural land tenure was a problem. Given its centralized marketing role, the state could have reallocated land to build up a rural peasantry and helped it invest in modernization. The state could have manipulated crop prices to siphon off agricultural gains, much like Cargill does in the United States. Instead, Stalin's collectivization program waged a war against the kulaks. This political shock led to famine. It was a steep price to pay for avoiding rent was paid to a landlord class or peasantry.

Marx had said nothing about the military dimension of the transition from progressive industrial capitalism to socialism. But Russia's Revolution – like that of China three decades later – showed that the attempt to create a socialist economy had a military dimension that absorbed the lion's share of the economic surplus. Military aggression by a half dozen leading capitalist nations seeking to overthrow the Bolshevik government obliged Russia to adopt War Communism. For over half a century the Soviet Union devoted most of capital to military investment, not provide sufficient housing or consumer goods for its population beyond spreading literacy, education and public health.

Despite this military overhead, the fact that the Soviet Union was free of a rentier class of financiers and absentee landlords should have made the Soviet Union the world's most competitive low-cost economy in theory. In 1945 the United States certainly feared the efficiency of socialist planning. Its diplomats opposed Soviet membership on the ground that state enterprise and pricing would enable such economies to undersell capitalist countries. [2] So socialist countries were kept out of the IMF, World Bank and the planned World Trade Organization, explicitly on the ground that they were free of land rent, natural resource rent, monopoly rent and financial charges.

Capitalist economies are now privatizing and financializing their basic needs and infrastructure. Every activity is being forced into "the market," at prices that need to cover not only the technological costs of production but also interest, ancillary financial fees and pension set-asides. The cost of living and doing business is further privatized as financial interests pry roads, health care, water, communications and other public utilities away from the public sector, while driving housing and commercial real estate deeply into debt.

The Cold War has shown that capitalist countries plan to continue fighting socialist economies, forcing them to militarize in self-defense. The resulting oppressive military overhead is then blamed on socialist bureaucracy and inefficiency.

The collapse of Russian Stalinism

Russia's Revolution ended after 74 years, leaving the Soviet Union so dispirited that it ended in collapse. The contrast between the low living standards of Russian consumers and what seemed to be Western success became increasingly pronounced. In contrast to China's housing construction policy, the Soviet regime insisted that families double up. Clothing and other consumer goods had only drab designs, needlessly suppressing variety. To cap matters, public opposition to Russia's military personnel losses in Afghanistan caused popular resentment.

When the Soviet Union dissolved itself in 1991, its leaders took neoliberal advice from its major adversary, the United States, in hope that this would set it on a capitalist road to prosperity. But turning its economies into viable industrial powers was the last thing U.S. advisors wanted to teach Russia. [3] Their aim was to turn it and its former satellites into raw-materials colonies of Wall Street, the City of London and Frankfurt – victims of capitalism, not rival producers.

Russia has gone to the furthest anti-socialist extreme by adopting a flat tax that fails to distinguish wages and profits of labor and capital from unearned rental income. By also having to pay a value-added tax (VAT) on consumer goods (with no tax on trading in financial assets), labor is taxed much higher than the wealthy.

Most Western "wealth creation" is achieved by debt-leveraged price increases for real estate, stocks and bonds, and by privatizing the public domain. The latter process has gained momentum since the early 1980s in Margaret Thatcher's Britain and Ronald Reagan's America, followed by Third World countries acting under World Bank tutelage. The pretense is that privatization will maximize technological efficiency and prosperity for the economy as a whole.

Following this advice, Russian leaders agreed that the major sources of economic rent – natural resource wealth, real estate and state companies – should be transferred to private owners (often to themselves and associated insiders). The "magic of the marketplace" was supposed to lead the new owners to make the economy more efficient as a byproduct of making money in the quickest way possible.

Each Russian worker got a "voucher" worth about $25. Most were sold off simply to obtain money to buy food and other needs as many companies stopped paying wages. Russia had wiped out domestic savings with hyperinflation after 1991.

It should not be surprising that banks became the economy's main control centers, as in the West's bubble economies. Instead of the promised prosperity, a new class of billionaires was endowed, headed by the notorious Seven Bankers who appropriated the formerly state-owned oil and gas, nickel and platinum, electricity and aluminum production, as well as real estate, electric utilities and other public enterprises. It was the largest giveaway in modern history. The Soviet nomenklatura became the new lords in outright seizure that Marx would have characterized as "primitive accumulation."

The American advisors knew the obvious: Russian savings had been wiped out by the polst-1991 hyperinflation, so the new owners could only cash out by selling shares to Western buyers. The kleptocrats cashed out as expected, by dumping their shares to foreign investors so quickly at such giveaway prices that Russia's stock market became the world's top performer for Western investors in 1994-96.

The Russian oligarchs kept most of their sales proceeds abroad in British and other banks, beyond the reach of Russian authorities to recapture. Much was spent on London real estate, sports teams and luxury estates in the world's flight-capital havens. Almost none was invested in Russian industry. Wage arrears often mounted up half a year behind. Living standards shrank, along with the population as birth rates plunged throughout the former Soviet economies. Skilled labor emigrated.

The basic neoliberal idea of prosperity is financial gain based on turning rent extraction into a flow of interest payments by buyers-on-credit. This policy favors financial engineering over industrial investment, reversing the Progressive Era's industrial capitalism that Marx anticipated would be a transition stage leading to socialism. Russia adopted the West's anti-socialist rollback toward neofeudalism.

Russian officials failed to understand the State Theory of money that is the basis of Modern Monetary Theory: States can create their own money, giving it value by accepting it in payment of taxes. The Soviet government financed its economy for seventy years without any need to back the ruble with foreign exchange. But Russia's central bank was persuaded that "sound money" required it to back its domestic ruble currency with U.S. Treasury bonds in order to prevent inflation. Russian leaders did not realize that dollars or other foreign currencies were only needed to finance balance-of-payments deficits, not domestic spending except as this money was spent on imports.

Russia joined the dollar standard. Buying Treasury bonds meant lending to the U.S. Government. The central bank bought U.S. Treasury securities to back its domestic currency. These purchases helped finance Cold War escalation in countries around Russia. Russia paid 100% annual interest in the mid-1990s, creating a bonanza for U.S. investors. On balance, this neoliberal policy lay Russia's economy open to looting by financial institutions seeking natural resource rent, land rent and monopoly rent for themselves. Instead of targeting such rents, Russia imposed taxes mainly on labor via a regressive flat tax – too right wing to be adopted even in the United States!

When the Soviet Union dissolved itself, its officials showed no apprehension of how quickly their economies would be de-industrialized as a result of accepting U.S. advice to privatize state enterprises, natural resources and basic infrastructure. Whatever knowledge of Marx's analysis of capitalism had existed (perhaps in Nicolai Bukharin's time) was long gone. It is as if no Russian official had read Volumes II and III of Marx's Capital (or Theories of Surplus Value ) where he reviewed the laws of economic rent and interest-bearing debt.

The inability of Russia, the Baltics and other post-Soviet countries to understand the FIRE sector and its financial dynamics provides an object lesson for other countries as to what to avoid. Reversing the principles of Russia's October 1917 Revolution, the post-Soviet kleptocracy was akin to the feudal epoch's "primitive accumulation" of the land and commons. They adopted the neoliberal business plan: to establish monopolies, first and most easily by privatizing the public infrastructure that had been built up, extracting economic rents and them paying out the resulting as interest and dividends.

This Western financial advice became a textbook example of how not to organize an economy. [4] Having rejoined the global economy free of debt in 1991, Russia's population, companies and government quickly ran up debts as a result of its man-made disaster. Families could have been given their homes freely, just as corporate managers were given their entire companies virtually for free. But Russian managers were as anti-labor as they were greedy to grab their own assets from the public domain. Soaring housing prices quickly plagued Russian's economy with one of the world's highest-priced living and business costs. That prevented any thought of industrial competitiveness with the United States or Europe. What passed for Soviet Marxism lacked an understanding of how economic rents and the ensuing high labor costs affected international prices, or how debt service and capital flight affected the currency's exchange rate.

Adversaries of socialism pronounced Marxist theory dead, as if the Soviet dissolution meant the end of Marxism. But today, less than three decades later, the leading Western economies are themselves succumbing to an overgrowth of debt and shrinking prosperity. Russia failed to recognize that just as its own economy was expiring, so was the West's. Industrial capitalism is succumbing to a predatory finance capitalism that is leaving Western economies debt-ridden. [5] The underlying causes were clear already a century ago: unchecked financial rentiers , absentee ownership and monopolies.

The post-Soviet collapse in the 1990s was not a failure of Marxism, but of the anti-socialist ideology that is plunging Western economies under domination by the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector's symbiosis of the three forms of rent extraction: land and natural resource rent, monopoly rent, and interest (financial rent). This is precisely the fate from which 19 th -century socialism, Marxism and even state capitalism sought to save the industrial economies.

A silver lining to the Soviet "final" stage has been to free Marxist analysis from Russian Marxology. Its focus of Soviet Marxology was not an analysis of how the capitalist nations were becoming financialized neo- rentier economies, but was mainly propagandistic, ossifying into a stereotyped identity politics appealing to labor and oppressed minorities. Today's revival of Marxist scholarship has begun to show how the U.S.-centered global economy is entering a period of chronic austerity, debt deflation, and polarization between creditors and debtors.

Financialization and privatization are submerging capitalism in debt deflation

By 1991, when the Soviet Union's leaders decided to take the "Western" path, the Western economies themselves were reaching a terminus. Appearances were saved by a wave of unproductive credit and debt creation to sustain the bubble economy that finally crashed in 2008.

The pitfalls of this financial dynamic were not apparent in the early years after World War II, largely because economies emerged with their private sectors free of debt. The ensuing boom endowed the middle class in the United States and other countries, but was debt financed, first for home ownership and commercial real estate, then by consumer credit to purchase of automobiles and appliances, and finally by credit-card debt just to meet living expenses.

The same debt overgrowth occurred in the industrial sector, where bank and bondholder credit since the 1980s has been increasingly for corporate takeovers and raiding, stock buybacks and even to pay dividends. Industry has become a vehicle for financial engineering to increase stock prices and strip assets, not to increase the means of production. The result is that capitalism has fallen prey to resurgent rentier interests instead of liberating economies from absentee landlords, predatory banking and monopolies. Banks and bondholders have found their most lucrative market not in the manufacturing sector but in real estate and natural resource extraction.

These vested interests have translated their takings into the political power to shed taxes and dismantle regulations on wealth. The resulting political Counter-Reformation has inverted the idea of "free market" to mean an economy free for rent extractors, not free from landlords, monopolists and financial exploitation as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and other classical economists had envisioned. The word "reform" as used by today's neoliberal media means undoing Progressive Era reforms, dismantling public regulation and government power – except for control by finance and its allied vested interests.

All this is the opposite of socialism, which has now sunk to its nadir through the Western World. The past four decades have seen most of the European and North American parties calling themselves "socialist" make an about-face to follow Tony Blair's New Labour, the French socialists-in-name and the Clinton's New Democrats. They support privatization, financialization and a shift away from progressive taxation to a value-added tax (VAT) falling on consumers, not on finance or real estate.

China's socialist diplomacy in today's hostile world

Now that Western finance capitalism is stagnating, it is fighting even harder to prevent the post-2008 crisis from leading to socialist reforms that would re-socialize infrastructure that has been privatized and put a public banking system in place. Depicting the contrast between socialist and finance-capitalist economies as a clash of civilizations, U.S.-centered "Western" diplomacy is using military and political subversion to prevent a transition from capitalism into socialism.

China is the leading example of socialist success in a mixed economy. Unlike the Soviet Union, it has not proselytized its economic system or sought to promote revolution abroad to emulate its economic doctrine. Just the opposite: To avert attack, China has given foreign investors a stake in its economic growth. The aim has been to mobilize U.S. and other foreign interests as allies, willing customers for China's exports, and suppliers of modern production facilities in China.

This is the opposite of the antagonism that confronted Russia. The risk is that it involves financial investment. But China has protected its autonomy by requiring majority Chinese ownership in most sectors. The main danger is domestic, in the form of financial dynamics and private rent extraction. The great economic choice facing China today concerns the degree to which land and natural resources should be taxed.

The state owns the land, but does fully tax its rising valuation or rent-of-location that has made many families rich. Letting the resulting real-estate and financialized wealth dominate its economic growth poses two dangers: First, it increases the price that new buyers must pay for their home. Second, rising housing prices force these families to borrow – at interest. This turns the rental value of land – value created by society and public infrastructure investment – into a flow of interest to the banks. They end up receiving more over time than the sellers, while increasing the cost of living and doing business. That is a fate which a socialist economy must avoid at all costs.

At issue is how China can best manage credit and natural resource rent in a way that best meets the needs of its population. Now that China has built up a prosperous industry and real estate, its main challenge is to avoid the financial dynamics that are subjecting the West to debt deflation and burying Western economies. To avoid these dynamics, China must curtail the proliferation of unproductive debt created merely to transfer property on credit, inflating asset prices in the process.

Socialism is incompatible with a rentier class of landlords, natural resource owners and monopolists – the preferred clients of banks hoping to turn economic rent into interest charges. As a vehicle to allocate resources "the market" reflects the status quo of property ownership and credit-creation privileges at any given moment of time, without consideration for what is fair and efficient or predatory. Vested interests claim that such a market is an immutable force of nature, whose course cannot be altered by government "interference." This rhetoric of political passivity aims to deter politicians and voters from regulating economies, leaving the wealthy free to extract as much economic rent and interest as markets can bear by privatizing real estate, natural resources, banking and other monopolies.

Such rent seeking is antithetical to socialism's aim to take these assets into the public domain. That is why the financial sector, oil and mineral extractors and monopolists fight so passionately to dismantle state regulatory power and public banking. That is the diplomacy of finance capital, aiming to consolidate American hegemony over a unipolar world. It backs this strategy with a neoliberal academic curriculum that depicts predatory financial and rentier gains as if they add to national income, not simply transfer it into the hands of the rentier classes. This misleading picture of economic reality poses a danger for China sending its students to study economics at American and European universities.

The century that has elapsed since Russia's October 1917 Revolution has produced a substantial Marxist literature describing how finance capitalism has overpowered industrial capitalism. Its dynamics occupied Marx in Volumes II and III of Capital (and also his Theories of Surplus Value ). Like most observers of his era, Marx expected capitalism to make a substantial step toward socialism by overcoming the dynamics of parasitic capital, above all the tendency for debt to keep on expanding at compound interest until it produces a financial crash.

The only way to control banks and their allied rentier sectors is outright socialization. The past century has shown that if society does not control the banks and financial sector, they will control society. Their strategy is to block government money creation so that economies will be forced to rely on banks and bondholders. Regulatory authority to limit such financial aggression and the monopoly pricing and rent extraction it supports has been crippled in the West by "regulatory capture" by the rentier oligarchy.

Attempts to tax away rental income (the liberal alternative to taking real estate and natural resources directly into the public domain) is prone to lobbying for loopholes and evasion, most notoriously via offshore banking centers in tax-avoidance enclaves and the "flags of convenience" sponsored by the global oil and mining companies. This leaves the only way to save society from the financial power to convert rent into interest to be a policy of nationalizing natural resources, fully taxing land rent (where land and minerals are not taken directly into the public domain), and de-privatizing infrastructure and other key sectors.

Conclusion

Markets have not recovered for the products of American industry and labor since 2008. Industrial capitalism has been sacrificed to a form of finance capitalism that is looking more pre-capitalist (or simply oligarchic and neofeudal) with each passing year. The resulting polarization forces every economy – including China – to choose between saving its bankers and other creditors or freeing debtors and lowering the economy's cost structure. Will the government enforce bank and bondholder claims, or will it give priority to the economy and its people? That is an eternal political question spanning pre-capitalist, capitalist and post-capitalist economies.

Marx described the mathematics of compound interest expanding to absorb the entire economy as age-old, long predating industrial capitalism. He characterized the ancient mode of production as dominated by slavery and usury, and medieval banking as predatory. These financial dynamics exist in socialist economies just as they did in medieval and ancient economies. The way in which governments manage the dynamics of credit and debt thus are the dominant force in every era, and should receive the most pressing attention today as China shapes its socialist future.

Notes.

[1] I give the details in "Simon Patten on Public Infrastructure and Economic Rent Capture," American Journal of Economics and Sociology 70 (October 2011):873-903.

[2] My book Super-Imperialism (1972; new ed. 2002) reviews this discussion during 1944-46.

[3] I discuss the IMF and World Bank plan to wipe out Russian savings with hyperinflation and make manufacturing investment uneconomic in "How Neoliberal Tax and Financial Policy Impoverishes Russia – Needlessly," Mir Peremen (The World of Transformations), 2012 (3):49-64 (in Russian). МИР ПЕРЕМЕН 3/2012 (ISSN 2073-3038) Mir peremen М. ХАДСОН, Неолиберальная налоговая и финансовая политика приводит к обнищанию России, 49-64.

[4] I give details in "How Neoliberals Bankrupted 'New Europe': Latvia in the Global Credit Crisis," (with Jeffrey Sommers), in Martijn Konings, ed., The Great Credit Crash (Verso: London and New York, 2010), pp. 244-63, and "Stockholm Syndrome in the Baltics: Latvia's neoliberal war against labor and industry," in Jeffrey Sommers and Charles Woolfson , eds., The Contradictions of Austerity: The Socio-Economic Costs of the Neoliberal Baltic Model (Routledge 2014), pp. 44-63.

[5] For more analysis see Dirk Bezemer and Michael Hudson, " Finance is Not the Economy: Reviving the Conceptual Distinction ," Journal of Economic Issues , 50 (2016: #3), pp. 745-768.

[Oct 21, 2017] Re-Visiting Russian Counter-Propaganda Methods by Saker

Notable quotes:
"... "You can't handle the truth" – was the famous line from the movie "A few good men". Many people believe that this is the main purpose of propaganda – to tell people something that they can "handle" – which usually is a sugar coated lie. ..."
"... The real purpose of propaganda in the US actually is slightly different. The reason why the US government prefers to tell their subjects lies – i.e. propaganda is not because the people can't handle the truth, it's because the US government wouldn't be able to handle its citizens if they dared to tell them the truth. ..."
"... I don't know, tbh I can't really think of any other country whose political culture is as bizarrely warped as that of the US. I personally don't really approve of Russia's actions in Ukraine (though I can understand the reasons for them), and certainly there is quite a bit of jingoistic sentiment in Russia as well – but at least its goals are limited, and its underlying perception of reality (Russia confronted by a hostile West) isn't totally irrational. Many Americans have this weird view of their country as a global redeemer nation, a force for good against a world of darkness ("the last best hope of humanity" etc.). And then there's the bizarre paranoia constantly cultivated in American culture (both in popular culture like television series, but also in serious political statements) there's always some foreign evil-doer supposedly plotting against virtuous America. I find this immensely irritating given how the US has one of the most secure geopolitical positions on earth and suffered minimal trauma (compared to all other combatants) even during the catastrophes of the world wars. According to that logic the US apparently can't ever be secure unless there is permanent American global hegemony. Which of course will inevitably lead to conflict. ..."
Oct 21, 2017 | www.unz.com

Cyrano , October 20, 2017 at 6:29 am GMT

"You can't handle the truth" – was the famous line from the movie "A few good men". Many people believe that this is the main purpose of propaganda – to tell people something that they can "handle" – which usually is a sugar coated lie.

The real purpose of propaganda in the US actually is slightly different. The reason why the US government prefers to tell their subjects lies – i.e. propaganda is not because the people can't handle the truth, it's because the US government wouldn't be able to handle its citizens if they dared to tell them the truth.

Thus the purpose of propaganda in the US is to make their population more manageable. I think that there is also a cultural difference between US and Russia in how they see the purpose of propaganda.

The Americans see propaganda as useful tool, which when applied skillfully on the domestic population removes the need to oppress them – which they would have to do to their population if they tell them the truth and don't like the reaction of the population after they've been told the truth.

This is called "democracy" – avoid telling them the truth and remove the need to oppress them, which you will have to do if you tell your people a truth that they can't "handle".

The Russians have different approach – which is deeply rooted in their history and culture. The Russian government is less uncomfortable with their population knowing the truth, because if the Russian people don't like the truth, and react to that, the Russian government is more inclined to resort to some kind of oppression on their population – if they think it's in the interest of the Russian state.

Me personally – I like the Russian approach better, I hate lies even if they are told in the name of "democracy". It's better to tell the truth and face the music than be deceitful.

Randal , October 20, 2017 at 9:14 am GMT
Good piece.

Clearly important truths, for anyone wanting to understand both the recent past and the present that developed out of it:

As for the Soviet propaganda in the West, it did have a measurable effect (just look at the influence of various Communist Parties in Europe during the Cold War), but never enough to beat the base appeal to hedonism and consumerism promoted by the best and most effective branch of the western propaganda apparatus: Hollywood.

and:

Third, outrageous, over the top and disgusting as some of the clown shown on Russian TV are, they do not misrepresent the reality of the AngloZionist Empire. Yes, sure, true Russophobes are a tiny minority in the West at least where the people are concerned (especially in southern Europe and the US), but practically the regimes in power in the West controlled by Russophobes or by their puppets. As for the western Ziomedia, it is wall-to-wall russophobic to such a degree that I would call it unambiguously racist.

Randal , October 20, 2017 at 9:30 am GMT

For one thing, the European elites are very very slowly, by tiny steps, waking up to the reality that their abject and total subservience to the US has put them in an extremely uncomfortable situation.

This is one reason why, as I have noted before, the current drive by many of the usual suspects and the rest of the war lobbies in the US to overturn the Iran deal is not necessarily something to be feared. Indeed for those recognising the problems of US interventionism as among the most urgent facing the world, it's probably a win-win situation. Fail, and the US/Israeli/Saudi warmongers have suffered a defeat. Succeed, and they have probably set themselves up for an even more costly defeat.

The Iran deal is widely popular in Europe, even amongst business and other elites, as having halted the necessity for complying with and paying lip-service to the transparently irrational and/or dishonest US nonsense about Iran, and the economically costly and intellectually insupportable sanctions used by the US to wage economic war on that country in the interests of Israel and Saudi Arabia.

If the deal is breached by the US regime, the said regime will massively lose credibility worldwide. There will then be a struggle wherein the US tries to coerce its European and British client states to return to waging economic war against Iran. That risks an open refusal, which will seriously damage US control and quite possibly bring it to an end. Russia and China have already started to develop economic and financial structures beyond the reach of Washington. The door will be open for European businesses and governments to walk through it, to the new world beyond.

If it doesn't itself trigger such final breaks, the process of imposing Washington's will will create huge resentment and set the scene for such breaks in the near future.

The Alarmist , October 20, 2017 at 11:01 am GMT
The average US American's experience with Russians in the past forty years has come from Rambo films and Red Dawn (the first one). Long gone are the days when films like The Russians are Coming exposed Americans to Russians as human beings rather than as killing machines of an evil state. When Putin or Lavrov appear on American TV, which is not very often, it is only in very tightly scripted sound bites that fit the narrative blathering from the talking head telling the viewer what to think about the Russians and their "misdeeds." Perhaps the only friend the Russians have in American media these days is Rush Limbaugh mull that over.

You can get RT on a few cable providers in the US. In my hometown, you have to pay for the "Russian Package" to get it, though I found RT America once on basic cable in Dallas. I doubt many Americans even know RT exists, much less seek it out. I get the European version via U.K. FTA satellite, and wonder how long it will be before it is knocked off the air by Ofcom.

If I want the truth about the US and U.K., I generally can count on getting it, albeit a bit spun, from RT. If I want the truth about Russia, I generally have to ask one of my Russian friends, though RT, to its credit, does occasionally take a pole at the best. If I want to hear what Putin and Lavrov are actually saying, I rarely get that in any Western Media, but RT will let them go on without significant editorial.

What I find amusing is that during the Cold War, American media elites were falling all over one another to kiss Soviet A ** , but even though many of these same elites accuse Putin of being a closeted commie, they portray him as evil personified; I guess he isn't Communist enough for them.

German_reader , October 20, 2017 at 12:08 pm GMT
@Randal

Yes, sure, true russophobes are a tiny minority in the West at least where the people are concerned (especially in southern Europe and the US )

I don't know, does that really sound plausible to you given the "Russia stole our election" hysteria in the US?
More generally, I think people outside of the US need to get beyond the idea that the problem with America is just its government, the military-industrial complex, influential lobbies etc., and that the average American is totally blameless. An awful lot of Americans do support aggressive interventionism abroad, and this includes many, many Trump supporters (one need only look at the readers' comments on a Breitbart piece about North Korea or the Iran deal these people's ideas of national greatness have militarism and armed interventions – "showing who's boss, who's Number one" – as key ingredients). I don't think the kind of anti-interventionists commenting here at Unz review are that representative on the whole.

The Alarmist , October 20, 2017 at 12:27 pm GMT
@The Alarmist

Gotta love auto-correct "pole at the best" should be "poke at the bear."

Randal , October 20, 2017 at 1:33 pm GMT
@German_reader

I don't know, does that really sound plausible to you given the "Russia stole our election" hysteria in the US?

I think Saker is probably not including the general mass of ignorant propaganda victims as "true Russophobes".

US popular opinion on Russia seems pretty mixed, albeit there are certainly plenty of gormless victims of the wall to wall Russophobic propaganda (that's – in its recent guise – mostly partisan anti-Trump in motivation, in truth) in the US. Here's a recent poll (July);

But on the broader issue of relations with Russia, Americans don't appear to be in a bellicose mood. Asked whether it's better for the U.S. to build relationships with Russia or treat Russia as a threat, 59 percent said they want to build relationships, compared to 31 percent who want to treat Russia as a threat.

Registered Democrats were more interested in treating Russia as a threat than Republicans, but 46 percent of them preferred building relationships, 2 percent more than those who favored taking a more aggressive stance. Republicans were far more interested in building relationships, with 67 percent in support.

The poll also asked Americans whether Trump's goal of improving relations with Russia was good or bad for the U.S. While a five percent plurality favored the goal, there was again a sharp partisan divide. 70 percent of Democrats said Trump's goal of improving relations with Russia was bad for the U.S., and 75 percent of Republicans consider it good.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/americans-mixed-feelings-trump-russia-new-poll-shows

More generally, I think people outside of the US need to get beyond the idea that the problem with America is just its government, the military-industrial complex, influential lobbies etc., and that the average American is totally blameless. An awful lot of Americans do support aggressive interventionism abroad, and this includes many, many Trump supporters (one need only look at the readers' comments on a Breitbart piece about North Korea or the Iran deal these people's ideas of national greatness have militarism and armed interventions – "showing who's boss, who's Number one" – as key ingredients). I don't think the kind of anti-interventionists commenting here at Unz review are that representative on the whole.

Yes, I agree with this, for sure.

It's true that ordinary Americans are deluged in interventionist and militarist propaganda from the cradle to the grave, and that is perhaps some explanation if not excuse, but the fact does remain that Americans re-elected Clinton, Bush II and Obama (though admittedly they were hardly provided with decent alternatives, but that again shows how they are prepared to vote for warmongers in primaries), and elect and re-elect warmongering interventionist scum like John McCain to Congress time after time after time.

There is clearly a problem in American culture and their political structure that makes them particularly open to manipulation in this area (which is not to say the same isn't true of other countries, mind you).

Arioch , October 20, 2017 at 2:35 pm GMT
> There is no Russian equivalent of the Pokemon story

Half true.

When Pokemon Go was announced, it was widely speculated that this technology may be used to both hoard unexpecting game addicts into some places (like, moving nazi and antifa crowds together, where their firght would be imminent; or nazi and aggressive ethnic minority; or competing sport teams fans, etc) or background surveillance and spying (by placing pokemons in the places, game operator wants to see in photo).

This was quite a hot topic, and i think those potential dangers are real. Just looking how pseudo-private companies like Facebook engage in swept political censorship makes one ask "how Pokemon company is different?".

There indeed was no allegation that US Gov't actually utilizes this already, but there definitely was a lot of debate about laying frameworks and public habits to start doing it.

Not only Russia but many other states and companies limited Pokemon Go at their premises.

Now, what we see is CNN merely combining the real fears about Po-Go embedded capabilities (which, i repeat, were shared by many Russians) with the typical "Putin is under your bed because all the patriots say so" fundamentalists claim.

Arioch , October 20, 2017 at 2:42 pm GMT
@Cyrano

You have also account for Russia being here an underdog. Russia's information outlets are much weaker than USA's and globalists' ones. Russia has only RT and Sputnik against CNN/Fox/WaPo/MSNBC/PB/BBC/DW/AFP and what not

Russia just can not engage in symmetric warfare and win by overwhelming force, Russia only has overwhelming weakness here.

So, Russia has to take truth into allies, not because it likes it that much more, but because it does not have a chance to fight symmetrically, lies with lies and fires with fires.

German_reader , October 20, 2017 at 4:15 pm GMT
@Randal

which is not to say the same isn't true of other countries, mind you

I don't know, tbh I can't really think of any other country whose political culture is as bizarrely warped as that of the US. I personally don't really approve of Russia's actions in Ukraine (though I can understand the reasons for them), and certainly there is quite a bit of jingoistic sentiment in Russia as well – but at least its goals are limited, and its underlying perception of reality (Russia confronted by a hostile West) isn't totally irrational. Many Americans have this weird view of their country as a global redeemer nation, a force for good against a world of darkness ("the last best hope of humanity" etc.). And then there's the bizarre paranoia constantly cultivated in American culture (both in popular culture like television series, but also in serious political statements) there's always some foreign evil-doer supposedly plotting against virtuous America. I find this immensely irritating given how the US has one of the most secure geopolitical positions on earth and suffered minimal trauma (compared to all other combatants) even during the catastrophes of the world wars. According to that logic the US apparently can't ever be secure unless there is permanent American global hegemony. Which of course will inevitably lead to conflict.

Anatoly Karlin , Website October 20, 2017 at 6:35 pm GMT
This is a good, accurate article.

Another great example of this is the entire Inosmi phenomenon, which translates Western MSM texts into Russian. As one my acquaintances pointed out, it was a "machine that turned naive, simple-minded, West-loving normies into hardcore ultranationalists."

Sergey Krieger , October 20, 2017 at 10:15 pm GMT
Truth is the best weapon. By trying to close Soviet union to western news Soviet leadership made things worse. Soviet people than refused to believe even truth about the West believing everything transmitted by those voices. And that despite USSR being in most areas in far better shape than modern Russia. Current Russian propaganda and international policy is head and shoulders above what was passing for those back then managing to achieve excellent results for little expense. Way to go.
Issac , October 21, 2017 at 1:17 am GMT
Much of Europe is presently jailing its citizenry over reactionary tweets and facebook posts. I wouldn't think it accurate to describe them as unwilling to use oppression. In point of fact, I think they're far more willing to directly undermine political reactionaries than the Americans. The American Establishment seems content to stick with propaganda, bureaucratic scheming, and judicial subterfuge.
NoseytheDuke , October 21, 2017 at 2:47 am GMT
@Arioch

I have access to almost all of the sources that you mentioned and a few more. All have their faults but some are so bad that I cannot watch them. RT is definitely one of the best.

Only today I watched RT showing Hillary Clinton being interviewed with RT simultaneously showing screenshots from other media exposing and refuting Clinton's blatant lies. The same technique is used with others such as government (US and EU) spokespersons and officials. It is very effective, in my opinion.

Mathias , October 21, 2017 at 4:07 am GMT
Average Finnish experience about Russia is sadly still from era of Leonid Breznev, cheap vodka and real socialist bar girls of late 1970′s and 1980′s. However hundreds of thousands of people who have visited in Sankt Petersburg and Vyborg during the last 10 years have noticed huge gap between western propaganda and real progress and development in real life Russia.
anonymous , Disclaimer October 21, 2017 at 1:39 pm GMT
@German_reader

the average American is totally blameless.

It's something of a top-down situation. After all, America is where the art of PR was refined and is a large industry, pushing everything from consumer goodies to whatever cultural/political ideas are being sponsored at the moment. American is a big island and most in it grow up in something of a bubble. They are tone-deaf in understanding other countries. Middle-class people I know with decent educational track records seem competent at carrying out the functions of their job but transform into embarrassing babbling fools when giving their opinions on anything foreign. Another thing to keep in mind is that half of the population is mentally average or below average and so what they think about anything beyond their range of experience is pretty much worthless. Of the various commenters giving their opinion on different websites about the Iran nuclear deal how many have actually read it? Mostly they know zero about it. That's pretty much it, Americans know very little so when dealing with them one has to act as one does with a simple-minded neighbor and humor them: yes, you're the fairest one of them all!

Issac , October 21, 2017 at 6:08 pm GMT
"Middle-class people I know with decent educational track records seem competent at carrying out the functions of their job but transform into embarrassing babbling fools when giving their opinions on anything foreign."

In fairness to the American proles, their country is equivalent in approximate size the European continent. Few proles know anything of politics outside their continental bubble on either side of the Atlantic. Jingoism on either continent is equivalent and opposite from my experience as a third party to both. Americans prefer their jingoism to be patriotic and feign ignorance about Europe as unimportant. Europeans prefer their jingoism to be passive-aggressive and feign understanding about American politics that they do not have. Israelis tend to split the difference by taking a great deal of interest in both and claiming their largely uninformed opinions are unimportant.

Anon , Disclaimer October 21, 2017 at 7:44 pm GMT
To conclude, from the analysis of 1 program, that Russia's whole political communication strategy is super professional and way more sophisticated than "the West's" seems a clear overstretch. The conclusion may be true, but it does not follow from the evidence presented.

In fact, the program's general recipe (use of opponent's egregious examples, a bit of humor, giving air time to 'extreme' spokespersons and basic knowledge of audience nature) is what Sailer does.

Putin does have going for him, however, the fact that he is governing with Russia's best interests at heart. Or can credibly hold that position. For propaganda purposes, half the battle (legitimacy and support of the governed) is won right there.

Another good chunk can be won by claiming the defensive: " we are attacked by anti-Russian forces". The use of a common threat (real or perceived) to rally the people is well known in politics, whether campaigning or governing. What does not strike me as Putinesque is to underestimate the adversary, as the author does.

Philip Owen , October 21, 2017 at 8:53 pm GMT
Russia Today was a worthy channel that put the Russian point of view and posted positive stories about Russia. Decades of positive stories are what Russia needs. But it is boring work to do.

RT has become a ridiculous parody that barely comments on Russia (perhaps another channel is needed). It is designed to attract conspiracy theorists and obsessives. It uses editing tricks at two levels. Some obvious heady handed edit to distract analytical attention from a deeper level. That's very good production to be sure.

RT is anti US. THERE IS NO STATION OUT THERE PUTTING A POSITIVE VIEW OF RUSSIA. THIS IS A HUGE LONG TERM ERROR.

[Oct 21, 2017] John Brennan's Police State USA - The Unz Review

Notable quotes:
"... Keep in mind that everything you do will be manipulated by the media which will cancel out the real (positive) effects of your work ..."
"... They promised that we'd "come home in body bags" not only diplomatic representatives but also the Secretary of Defense ..."
"... The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result, that is, persuading the American people that "evil" Putin is trying to sabotage our pristine democracy and that Donald Trump is not only the country's lousiest president ever, but also a Russian agent. ..."
"... That's not to say, that Brennan's psyops has not been successful. It has been, amazingly successful. According to a recent CBS Poll, a majority of Americans (57%) now believe that "Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election." In contrast, only 34 percent of Americans don't believe there was any Russian interference in the 2016 elections. ..."
"... What the numbers don't explain, however, is how one's own political ideology shapes the results. For example, 71 percent of Democrats believe that Russia interfered, while a mere 18 percent of Republicans agree. In other words, one's own prejudices (about Trump and Russia) have a much greater impact on one's opinion than either facts or evidence. Propaganda campaigns try to exploit public bias to effectively manipulate perceptions. The CBS polling data shows that they have succeeded in that regard. ..."
"... lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] . ..."
Oct 21, 2017 | www.unz.com

Did the United States warn Russia to stay out of Syria?

Yes, they did.

Did they tell the Russians that if they joined the war against ISIS and helped Bashar al Assad the US would make them pay a heavy price?

Yes.

Did US agents and diplomats warn their Russian counterparts that Russian troops would "come home in body bags" and that the western media would launch a propaganda campaign against them?

Yes, again.

Did US officials say the western media would concoct a phony story about "Russian hacking" that would be used to persuade the American people that Russia was a dangerous enemy that had to be reigned in with harsh economic sanctions, provocative military maneuvers, and threats of violence?

No, but it's not hard to imagine a scenario in which the CIA would pursue such a strategy. After all, the Intel agencies, the media and the entire political establishment have been hammering on Russia for over two years now. Isn't it possible that elements of these three factions decided to pool their resources in order to poison the public's perception Russia? Hasn't the US government dabbled in these type of psychological operations (PSYOPS) many time before?

Of course, they have. And in prior incidents, the facts were fixed to fit the policy just as they have been in this case. For example, the Bush administration had already decided to topple Saddam long-before they cooked up their fake stories about mobile weapons labs, Niger uranium, aluminum tubes and "Curveball". Doesn't the same rule apply here? Haven't the "facts" about collusion, Pokémon Go and Facebook all been concocted after-the-fact to support the original thesis, that Russia meddled in the election?

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. What we know is that high-ranking members of the US State Department and Pentagon threatened Moscow prior to Russia's military intervention in October, 2015. US diplomats made it clear that if Russia helped the Syrian government, Washington would use the media and its other assets to retaliate. According to Russia's Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, Maria Zakharova:

We were asked to pass on to you the most serious warnings that Russia will be hurt by its actions.. We will make sure that Russia really knows what pain is Keep in mind that everything you do will be manipulated by the media which will cancel out the real (positive) effects of your work . ..You are going to fight terrorists, but you will be made to look like the bad guy.

These threats were delivered to us many times in 2015 as part of the discussions with the Russia's Representative of Foreign Affairs and his international counterparts. (During Kerry-Lavrov meetings)

We're talking about the world's elite who told us these things.

When we told them exactly what targets we planned to strike, they launched a disinformation media campaign against us. Officials from the White House and State Department directly threatened to hurt us. They promised that we'd "come home in body bags" not only diplomatic representatives but also the Secretary of Defense ..The US showed us that the strongest military has unlimited rights to create evil in the world."

(See the whole interview on YouTube .

Zakharova's admission is interesting for many reasons. First, it confirms that the US did not want to see the jihadist extremists defeated by Russia. These mainly-Sunni militias served as Washington's proxy-army conducting an ambitious regime change operation which coincided with US strategic ambitions.

Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can't say. When Zakharova says, "everything you do will be manipulated by the media", she is tacitly acknowledging that the MSM works in concert with the US government shaping a message that best achieves US imperial objectives. In this case, the obvious goal is the removal of Bashar al Assad and the partitioning of the state consistent with US plans to redraw the map of the Middle East. Russian intervention derailed that plan which is why Russia is despised.

Third, Zakharova's comments suggest a motive for the Russia hacking campaign. Russia has become an insurmountable obstacle to Washington's plans for global hegemony. It has blocked US progress in Ukraine and rolled backed US proxy-forces in Syria. Additionally, Russia has united the countries in Central Asia (EEU) and threatens to economically integrate Europe and Asia into the world's biggest free trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Here's a quote from Putin that explains what's going on:

"Russia is an inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and European civilization. Our citizens think of themselves as Europeans That's why Russia proposes moving towards the creation of a common economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a community referred to by Russian experts as 'the Union of Europe' which will strengthen Russia's potential in its economic pivot toward the 'new Asia.'"

Putin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical landbridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington.

The US wants to retaliate for the defeat of its proxy army in Syria but it's not prepared for a military clash. Not yet, at least. And, keep in mind, Washington's Sunni proxies were not a division of the Pentagon; they were entirely a CIA confection: CIA recruited, CIA-armed, CIA-funded and CIA-trained. The defeat is not a loss for the US Military, but a blot on the record of CIA Director John Brennan, the architect and main proponent of the failed project to remove Assad. Brennan's whole scheme has gone down in flames.

Why is that important?

Because it suggests that Brennan had a strong motive to strike back at Moscow. He had "a dog in the fight", and his dog lost. And since he couldn't win on the battlefield, his only choice was to launch an asymmetrical attack via the media. Isn't this where the Russia hacking idea originated?

If it did, then there should be footprints that lead back to Brennan himself, the primary source of the psyops. Check out this excerpt from The Washington Times:

What caused the Barack Obama administration to begin investigating the Donald Trump campaign last summer has come into clearer focus following a string of congressional hearings on Russian interference in the presidential election.

It was then-CIA Director John O. Brennan, a close confidant of Mr. Obama's, who provided the information -- what he termed the "basis" -- for the FBI to start the counterintelligence investigation last summer. Mr. Brennan served on the former president's 2008 presidential campaign and in his White House.

Mr. Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 that the intelligence community was picking up tidbits on Trump associates making contacts with Russians. Mr. Brennan did not name either the Russians or the Trump people. He indicated he did not know what was said.

But he said he believed the contacts were numerous enough to alert the FBI, which began its probe into Trump associates that same July, according to previous congressional testimony from then-FBI director James B. Comey.

("Obama loyalist Brennan drove FBI to begin investigating Trump associates last summer", The Washington Times)

So it all started with Brennan, the resentful Intel chief who got his nose bloodied by Putin in Syria and decided to seek his revenge. But then Brennan needed to conceal his lead-role in the drama by drawing other agencies into the loop, so he included the FBI, the NSA and DIA. The strategy helped to obfuscate the real braintrust in the hacking affair, John Brennan.

According to Mother Jones, it was not the FBI that initiated the "Trump-Russia connection".. but .."Former CIA Director John Brennan says he was the one who got the ball rolling."

Indeed. Brennan appears to be the central figure in this political fiasco, the source from which many of the spurious accusations originated. It was Brennan who first intimated that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian agents prior to the 2016 elections.

"I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred," Brennan stated in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in May.

This is a deliberate mischaracterization of what Brennan was actually doing. He was spying on the members of the rival party to gain a political advantage. This is how police state operates. How is it that no one in the media or on Capital Hill has condemned this egregious attack on the democratic process?

So far, none of the four investigations on Capital Hill have produced even a shred of evidence supporting Brennan's claims. Just last week, during a press conference with the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr bluntly stated,

"The committee continues to look into all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I'm not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven't any."

There's no proof of collusion at all. So what's Brennan's real motive here? What's driving this silly propaganda campaign that has failed to produce any verifiable evidence after a massive 10-month, no-holds-barred investigation involving both Houses of Congress, the establishment media, four intelligence agencies and an Independent Counsel?

The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result, that is, persuading the American people that "evil" Putin is trying to sabotage our pristine democracy and that Donald Trump is not only the country's lousiest president ever, but also a Russian agent.

That's not to say, that Brennan's psyops has not been successful. It has been, amazingly successful. According to a recent CBS Poll, a majority of Americans (57%) now believe that "Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election." In contrast, only 34 percent of Americans don't believe there was any Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

What the numbers don't explain, however, is how one's own political ideology shapes the results. For example, 71 percent of Democrats believe that Russia interfered, while a mere 18 percent of Republicans agree. In other words, one's own prejudices (about Trump and Russia) have a much greater impact on one's opinion than either facts or evidence. Propaganda campaigns try to exploit public bias to effectively manipulate perceptions. The CBS polling data shows that they have succeeded in that regard.

The US government has a long history of (as Robert Parry says) "cherry-picking or manufacturing evidence to undermine adversaries and to solidify U.S. public support for Washington's policies." That is certainly the case here. Most of the so-called 'evidence' is nothing more than baseless accusations that appear momentarily in the headlines only to vanish a week or so later. Brennan and Co. appear to be exploring new frontiers in state propaganda, propaganda that relies less on semi-credible events or evidence than on incessant repetition of far-fetched allegations (Facebook, Google, Pokémon Go) that reiterate the same underlying claim of Russian meddling. The difference between the fabrications that led up to the war in Iraq (mobile weapons labs, Niger uranium, shadowy connections to al Qaida and aluminum tubes) and those of Russian hacking suggests that the perpetrators of this charade are convinced that frequency trumps credibility. The American people are being carpet-bombed with dodgy, almost-comical disinformation to see if it has the intended effect. Recent surveys indicate the plan is working.

The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda (In 2013, Obama gutted the Smith Mundt Act "unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts." (Foreign Policy Magazine) In 2016, Obama paved the way for more domestic propaganda by passing the Orwellian-named "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" as part of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. Ostensibly, the bill lays the groundwork for responding to "fake news" overseas, but in reality, it marks "a further curtailment of press freedom" and an ambitious attempt to suppress accurate, independent information.) The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda coupled with the extraordinary advances in surveillance technology, create the perfect conditions for the full implementation of an American police state. But what is more concerning, is that the primary levers of state power are no longer controlled by elected officials but by factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people. That can only lead to trouble.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] . (Republished by permission of author or representative)

Fran Macadam , October 20, 2017 at 3:08 pm GMT

A credible reading of the diverse facts, Mike.
Kirk Elarbee , October 20, 2017 at 8:27 pm GMT
Sadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/10/everyone-hacked-everyone-hacked-everyone-spy-spin-fuels-anti-kaspersky-campaign.html

[Oct 21, 2017] Washington Funds Foreign Think Tanks That Blacklist Opponents of Neocon Foreign Policy by Ron Paul

I admired Ron Paul foright policy views for a along time. and this time he also did not disappointed his reader.
Soviet labeled anybody who dissented from communist propaganda line or did not believe in Communist dogma as "agents of imperialism". Neocons similarly bland and-war activists and people who question this war mongering as peddlers of "Russian propaganda". This is what often happen with victors in wars: they acquired worst features of their defeated enemies. for example to defeat the USSR the USA create powerful network of intelligence agencies. Which promptly went out of civil control in 1963, much like KGB in the USSR and became state within the state. In a way now it in now now unfeasible that the Soviet Union posthumously have won the Cold War, as it is more and more difficult to distinguish Soviet propaganda and the US government propaganda.
So the fact that the US government allocate large sums of money for the propaganda against another neoliberal state -- Russia, which represent regional threat to the US hegemonic ambitions -- tells a lot about neoliberalism as a social system. Hostilities among neoliberal states, much like hostilities between communist states are not only possible, they are the reality.
Notable quotes:
"... So what is the "European Values" think tank? A bunch of kooks? Well perhaps, but they are well-funded kooks. In fact they are funded by American taxpayers to defame other Americans who appear on media outlets that are out of favor with Washington's elites. Among the top donors to the "European Values" think tank is the United States Embassy in Prague. Other top funders include George Soros' "Open Society Foundation," the European Commission, and the European Parliament. They are also funded by other US government funded think tanks such as the Prague-based "League of Human Rights." ..."
"... How ironic that such a Soviet-style attack on political dissent in the United States was launched from Prague, which for decades suffered under the Štátna bezpečnosť -- ..."
"... "I am not here to defend RT," I said on the program tonight. I am here to defend the marketplace of ideas that is critical to a free society. I am here to defend the right of US citizens to dissent from the foreign policy of their government without being attacked by their own government -- or by foreign think tanks funded by their government. ..."
"... This should infuriate us: The US government defines anyone who dissents from its foreign policy of endless wars and a global military empire as peddlers of "Russian propaganda" and then Congress appropriates tens of million dollars to "counter Russian propaganda." ..."
"... That means the US Congress is appropriating tens of millions of our dollars to silence our objection to Washington's trillion dollar global military empire. What a scam! How anti-American! Is that not a declaration of war on the rest of us? Is that not an act of tyranny? ..."
Oct 21, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org

Dear Friends of the Ron Paul Institute:

I just finished an interview on RT.

Someday soon, perhaps, anyone writing the above sentence will land in some sort of gulag, as once did East Europeans found to have appeared on a foreign broadcast questioning the historical inevitability of the worldwide communist revolution.

In my case, I was asked to comment on a new report (see above pic) from a Czech " think tank " exposing 2,327 American "useful idiots" who dared appear on the Russian government-funded RT television network.

Among the "Kremlin stooges" listed in the report of the "European Values" think tank? Alongside critics of US foreign policy like Ron Paul, the Czech "European Values" think tank listed Sen. Lindsay Graham, Joe Lieberman, Dick Cheney, US Rep. Adam Schiff, former acting CIA director Michael Morrell, former CIA director Michael Hayden, and hundreds more prominent Americans who have been notably hostile to Russia and its government.

I said: "Wow! this conspiracy is even deeper than we thought! Even the virulently anti-Russian neocons and Russia-hating CIA bigwigs are in fact Putin's poodles!"

It's funny but it's not. This is when the neo-McCarthyism lately in fashion across the ideological divide descends into the absurd. This is when the mask slips from the witch trials, when the naked emperor can no longer expect to not be noticed.

So what is the "European Values" think tank? A bunch of kooks? Well perhaps, but they are well-funded kooks. In fact they are funded by American taxpayers to defame other Americans who appear on media outlets that are out of favor with Washington's elites. Among the top donors to the "European Values" think tank is the United States Embassy in Prague. Other top funders include George Soros' "Open Society Foundation," the European Commission, and the European Parliament. They are also funded by other US government funded think tanks such as the Prague-based "League of Human Rights."

Since when did "European values" come to be defined as government-funded lists of political "enemies" who dare question US foreign policy on television networks despised by neocons and Washington interventionists? How ironic that such a Soviet-style attack on political dissent in the United States was launched from Prague, which for decades suffered under the Štátna bezpečnosť -- the communist secret police -- that took exactly the same view of those who deviated from the Soviet party line as does the modern Czech "European Values" think tank.

Anyone questioning our one trillion dollar global military empire is automatically considered to be in the pay of hostile foreign governments. How patriotic is that?

"I am not here to defend RT," I said on the program tonight. I am here to defend the marketplace of ideas that is critical to a free society. I am here to defend the right of US citizens to dissent from the foreign policy of their government without being attacked by their own government -- or by foreign think tanks funded by their government.

This should infuriate us: The US government defines anyone who dissents from its foreign policy of endless wars and a global military empire as peddlers of "Russian propaganda" and then Congress appropriates tens of million dollars to "counter Russian propaganda."

That means the US Congress is appropriating tens of millions of our dollars to silence our objection to Washington's trillion dollar global military empire. What a scam! How anti-American! Is that not a declaration of war on the rest of us? Is that not an act of tyranny?

The noose is tightening around us. Yet we must continue to fight for what we believe in! We must continue to fight for the prosperity that comes from a peaceful foreign policy. Your generous support for the Ron Paul Institute helps us continue to be your voice in the fight for free expression and a peaceful foreign policy.

[Oct 20, 2017] Blaming Russia for the Internet 'Sewer' by Robert Parry

Notable quotes:
"... With the U.S. government offering tens of millions of dollars to combat Russian "propaganda and disinformation," it's perhaps not surprising that we see "researchers" such as Jonathan Albright of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University making the absurd accusation that the Russians have "basically turned [the Internet] into a sewer." ..."
"... I've been operating on the Internet since 1995 and I can assure you that the Internet has always been "a sewer" -- in that it has been home to crazy conspiracy theories, ugly personal insults, click-bait tabloid "news," and pretty much every vile prejudice you can think of. Whatever some Russians may or may not have done in buying $100,000 in ads on Facebook (compared to its $27 billion in annual revenue) or opening 201 Twitter accounts (out of Twitter's 328 million monthly users), the Russians are not responsible for the sewage coursing through the Internet. ..."
"... Even former Clinton political strategist Mark Penn has acknowledged the absurdity of thinking that such piddling amounts could have any impact on a $2.4 billion presidential campaign, plus all the billions of dollars worth of free-media attention to the conventions, debates, etc. Based on what's known about the Facebook ads, Penn calculated that "the actual electioneering [in battleground states] amounts to about $6,500." ..."
"... In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday, Penn added, "I have 40 years of experience in politics, and this Russian ad buy mostly after the election anyway, simply does not add up to a carefully targeted campaign to move voters. It takes tens of millions of dollars to deliver meaningful messages to the contested portion of the electorate." ..."
"... Occasionally, the U.S. mainstream media even acknowledges that fact. For instance, last November, The New York Times, which was then flogging the Russia-linked "fake news" theme , ran a relatively responsible article about a leading "fake news" Web site that the Times tracked down. It turned out to be an entrepreneurial effort by an unemployed Georgian student using a Web site in Tbilisi to make some money by promoting pro-Trump stories, whether true or not. ..."
"... The owner of the Web site, 22-year-old Beqa Latsabidse, said he had initially tried to push stories favorable to Hillary Clinton but that proved unprofitable so he switched to publishing anti-Clinton and pro-Trump articles, including made-up stories. In other words, the Times found no Russian connection. ..."
"... But the even larger Internet problem is that many "reputable" news sites, such as AOL, lure readers into clicking on some sensationalistic or misleading headline, which takes readers to a story that is often tabloid trash or an extreme exaggeration of what the headline promised. ..."
"... This reality about the Internet should be the larger context in which the Russia-gate story plays out, the miniscule nature of this Russian "meddling" even if these "suspected links to Russia" – as the Times initially described the 470 Facebook pages – turn out to be true. ..."
"... And, there is the issue of who decides what's true. PolitiFact continues to defend its false claim that Hillary Clinton was speaking the truth when – in referencing leaked Democratic emails last October – she claimed that the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies "have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election." ..."
"... That claim was always untrue because a reference to a consensus of the 17 intelligence agencies suggests a National Intelligence Estimate or similar product that seeks the judgments of the entire intelligence community. No NIE or community-wide study was ever done on this topic. ..."
"... Only later – in January 2017 – did a small subset of the intelligence community, what Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described as "hand-picked" analysts from three agencies – the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation – issue an "assessment" blaming the Russians while acknowledging a lack of actual evidence . ..."
"... In other words, the Jan. 6 "assessment" was comparable to the "stovepiped" intelligence that influenced many of the mistaken judgments of President George W. Bush's administration. In "stovepiped" intelligence, a selected group of analysts is closeted away and develops judgments without the benefit of other experts who might offer contradictory evidence or question the groupthink. ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
Oct 18, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Exclusive: As the Russia-gate hysteria spirals down from the implausible to the absurd, almost every bad thing is blamed on the Russians, even how they turned the previously pristine Internet into a "sewer," reports Robert Parry.

With the U.S. government offering tens of millions of dollars to combat Russian "propaganda and disinformation," it's perhaps not surprising that we see "researchers" such as Jonathan Albright of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University making the absurd accusation that the Russians have "basically turned [the Internet] into a sewer."

I've been operating on the Internet since 1995 and I can assure you that the Internet has always been "a sewer" -- in that it has been home to crazy conspiracy theories, ugly personal insults, click-bait tabloid "news," and pretty much every vile prejudice you can think of. Whatever some Russians may or may not have done in buying $100,000 in ads on Facebook (compared to its $27 billion in annual revenue) or opening 201 Twitter accounts (out of Twitter's 328 million monthly users), the Russians are not responsible for the sewage coursing through the Internet.

Americans, Europeans, Asians, Africans and pretty much every other segment of the world's population didn't need Russian help to turn the Internet into an informational "sewer." But, of course, fairness and proportionality have no place in today's Russia-gate frenzy.

After all, your "non-governmental organization" or your scholarly "think tank" is not likely to get a piece of the $160 million that the U.S. government authorized last December to counter primarily Russian "propaganda and disinformation" if you explain that the Russians are at most responsible for a tiny trickle of "sewage" compared to the vast rivers of "sewage" coming from many other sources.

If you put the Russia-gate controversy in context, you also are not likely to have your "research" cited by The Washington Post as Albright did on Thursday because he supposedly found some links at the home-décor/fashion site Pinterest to a few articles that derived from a few of the 470 Facebook accounts and pages that Facebook suspects of having a link to Russia and shut them down. (To put that 470 number into perspective, Facebook has about two billion monthly users.)

Albright's full quote about the Russians allegedly exploiting various social media platforms on the Internet was: "They've gone to every possible medium and basically turned it into a sewer."

But let's look at the facts. According to Facebook, the suspected "Russian-linked" accounts purchased $100,000 in ads from 2015 to 2017 (compared to Facebook's annual revenue of about $27 billion), with only 44 percent of those ads appearing before the 2016 election and many having little or nothing to do with politics, which is curious if the Kremlin's goal was to help elect Donald Trump and defeat Hillary Clinton.

Even former Clinton political strategist Mark Penn has acknowledged the absurdity of thinking that such piddling amounts could have any impact on a $2.4 billion presidential campaign, plus all the billions of dollars worth of free-media attention to the conventions, debates, etc. Based on what's known about the Facebook ads, Penn calculated that "the actual electioneering [in battleground states] amounts to about $6,500."

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday, Penn added, "I have 40 years of experience in politics, and this Russian ad buy mostly after the election anyway, simply does not add up to a carefully targeted campaign to move voters. It takes tens of millions of dollars to deliver meaningful messages to the contested portion of the electorate."

Puppies and Pokemon

And, then there is the curious content. According to The New York Times, one of these "Russian-linked" Facebook groups was dedicated to photos of "adorable puppies." Of course, the Times tried hard to detect some sinister motive behind the "puppies" page.

Similarly, CNN went wild over its own "discovery" that one of the "Russian-linked" pages offered Amazon gift cards to people who found "Pokémon Go" sites near scenes where police shot unarmed black men -- if you would name the Pokémon after the victims.

"It's unclear what the people behind the contest hoped to accomplish, though it may have been to remind people living near places where these incidents had taken place of what had happened and to upset or anger them," CNN mused, adding:

"CNN has not found any evidence that any Pokémon Go users attempted to enter the contest, or whether any of the Amazon Gift Cards that were promised were ever awarded -- or, indeed, whether the people who designed the contest ever had any intention of awarding the prizes."

So, these dastardly Russians are exploiting "adorable puppies" and want to "remind people" about unarmed victims of police violence, clearly a masterful strategy to undermine American democracy or – according to the original Russia-gate narrative – to elect Donald Trump.

A New York Times article on Wednesday acknowledged another inconvenient truth that unintentionally added more perspective to the Russia-gate hysteria.

It turns out that some of the mainstream media's favorite "fact-checking" organizations are home to Google ads that look like news items and lead readers to phony sites dressed up to resemble People, Vogue or other legitimate content providers.

"None of the stories were true," the Times reported. "Yet as recently as late last week, they were being promoted with prominent ads served by Google on PolitiFact and Snopes, fact-checking sites created precisely to dispel such falsehoods."

There is obvious irony in PolitiFact and Snopes profiting off "fake news" by taking money for these Google ads. But this reality also underscores the larger reality that fabricated news articles – whether peddling lies about Melania Trump or a hot new celebrity or outlandish Russian plots – are driven principally by the profit motive.

The Truth About Fake News

Occasionally, the U.S. mainstream media even acknowledges that fact. For instance, last November, The New York Times, which was then flogging the Russia-linked "fake news" theme , ran a relatively responsible article about a leading "fake news" Web site that the Times tracked down. It turned out to be an entrepreneurial effort by an unemployed Georgian student using a Web site in Tbilisi to make some money by promoting pro-Trump stories, whether true or not.

The owner of the Web site, 22-year-old Beqa Latsabidse, said he had initially tried to push stories favorable to Hillary Clinton but that proved unprofitable so he switched to publishing anti-Clinton and pro-Trump articles, including made-up stories. In other words, the Times found no Russian connection.

The Times article on Wednesday revealed the additional problem of Google ads placed on mainstream Internet sites leading readers to bogus news sites to get clicks and thus advertising dollars. And, it turns out that PolitiFact and Snopes were at least unwittingly profiting off these entrepreneurial ventures by running their ads. Again, there was no claim here of Russian "links." It was all about good ole American greed.

But the even larger Internet problem is that many "reputable" news sites, such as AOL, lure readers into clicking on some sensationalistic or misleading headline, which takes readers to a story that is often tabloid trash or an extreme exaggeration of what the headline promised.

This reality about the Internet should be the larger context in which the Russia-gate story plays out, the miniscule nature of this Russian "meddling" even if these "suspected links to Russia" – as the Times initially described the 470 Facebook pages – turn out to be true.

But there are no lucrative grants going to "researchers" who would put the trickle of alleged Russian "sewage" into the context of the vast flow of Internet "sewage" that is even flowing through the esteemed "fact-checking" sites of PolitiFact and Snopes.

There are also higher newspaper sales and better TV ratings if the mainstream media keeps turning up new angles on Russia-gate, even as some of the old ones fall away as inconsequential or meaningless (such as the Senate Intelligence Committee dismissing earlier controversies over Sen. Jeff Sessions's brief meeting with the Russian ambassador at the Mayflower Hotel and minor changes in the Republican platform).

Saying 'False' Is 'True'

And, there is the issue of who decides what's true. PolitiFact continues to defend its false claim that Hillary Clinton was speaking the truth when – in referencing leaked Democratic emails last October – she claimed that the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies "have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election."

That claim was always untrue because a reference to a consensus of the 17 intelligence agencies suggests a National Intelligence Estimate or similar product that seeks the judgments of the entire intelligence community. No NIE or community-wide study was ever done on this topic.

Only later – in January 2017 – did a small subset of the intelligence community, what Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described as "hand-picked" analysts from three agencies – the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation – issue an "assessment" blaming the Russians while acknowledging a lack of actual evidence .

In other words, the Jan. 6 "assessment" was comparable to the "stovepiped" intelligence that influenced many of the mistaken judgments of President George W. Bush's administration. In "stovepiped" intelligence, a selected group of analysts is closeted away and develops judgments without the benefit of other experts who might offer contradictory evidence or question the groupthink.

So, in many ways, Clinton's statement was the opposite of true both when she said it in 2016 and later in 2017 when she repeated it in direct reference to the Jan. 6 assessment. If PolitiFact really cared about facts, it would have corrected its earlier claim that Clinton was telling the truth, but the fact-checking organization wouldn't budge -- even after The New York Times and The Associated Press ran corrections.

In this context, PolitiFact showed its contempt even for conclusive evidence – testimony from former DNI Clapper (corroborated by former CIA Director John Brennan) that the 17-agency claim was false. Instead, PolitiFact was determined to protect Clinton's false statement from being described for what it was: false.

Of course, maybe PolitiFact is suffering from the arrogance of its elite status as an arbiter of truth with its position on Google's First Draft coalition, a collection of mainstream news outlets and fact-checkers which gets to decide what information is true and what is not true -- for algorithms that then will exclude or downplay what's deemed "false."

So, if PolitiFact says something is true – even if it's false – it becomes "true." Thus, it's perhaps not entirely ironic that PolitiFact would collect money from Google ads placed on its site by advertisers of fake news.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

David G , October 18, 2017 at 5:57 pm

I bet the Russians are responsible for all the naked lady internet pictures as well. Damn you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, for polluting our purity.

TS , October 19, 2017 at 5:43 am

Two-thirds of a century ago, Arthur C. Clarke, who besides being a famous SF author, conceived the concept of the communications satellite, published a short story in which the Chinese use satellite broadcasting to flood the USA with porn in order spread moral degeneracy. Wadya think?

Mr. Mueller! Mr. Mueller! Investigate who the owners of YouPorn are!
It's all a Chinese plot, not a Russian one!

Broompilot , October 19, 2017 at 1:55 pm

I second the motion!

Antiwar7 , October 19, 2017 at 7:48 pm

"Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure-grain alcohol?"

richard vajs , October 20, 2017 at 7:50 am

And Vladimir keeps tempting me with offers of money that he found abandoned in Nigerian banks and mysteriously bequeathed to me.

Paul Fretheim , October 18, 2017 at 6:11 pm

This sounds eerily similar to newspeak described by George Orwell "1984" in

Sam F , October 18, 2017 at 7:20 pm

The failure of Russia bashers to rank all nations on FB ads and accounts, proves that they know they are lying. Random Russians (about 2% of the world population) may have spent 100K on mostly apolitical ads on FB (about 0.0004%) and may have 470 accounts on FB (about 0.000025%). So Russians have far fewer FB ads and accounts per capita than the average nation. Probably most developed nations have a higher per capita usage of FB, and many individuals and companies may have a higher total usage of FB.

The fact that 160 million is spent to dig up phony evidence of Russian influence (totaling about 0.13% of the investigation cost), proves that such "researchers" are paid liars; they are the ones who should be prosecuted for subversion of democracy for personal gain.

The fact that all views may be found on internet does not make it a "sewer" because one can view only what is useful. The Dems and Repubs regard the People as a sewer, because they believe that power=virtue=money no matter how unethically they get it, to rationalize oligarchy. They keep the most abusive and implausible ads out of mass media only because no advertiser wants them, but of course they don't want the truth either.

JWalters , October 18, 2017 at 9:03 pm

Add MSNBC to the sources of sewage on the internet. I checked out MSNBC today, and they are full-throttle on any kind of Russia-phobia. For those who read somewhat widely, it is obvious they are not even trying to present a balanced picture of the actual evidence. It is completely one-sided, and includes the trashiest trash of that one side. Their absolute lack of integrity matches Fox on its worst days.

As someone who formerly watched MSNBC regularly, I am sickened at the obvious capituation to the criminal Zionists who own the network. Have these people no decency? Apparently not. Historians will judge them harshly.

Dave P. , October 19, 2017 at 11:28 am

JWalters –

Yes. I completely agree with you. I am beginning to wonder if these people who are spitting out this trashiest trash at MSNBC from their mouths every day for over a year now are really sane people. I believe that along with politicians like Adam Schiff, these talk show hosts have slid into complete madness. The way it is going now, I am afraid that If these people are not removed, there is a danger of the whole country sliding into some form of madness.

anonymous , October 20, 2017 at 2:12 pm

"Historians will judge them harshly."

The western civilisation galloped to worldly success on the twin horses of Greed and Psychopathy. This also provided them the opportunity to write history as they wished.

Are historians judging them harshly now? They are themselves whores to whichever society they belong to.

Anna , October 19, 2017 at 5:32 pm

Jonathan Albright, the Research Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, [email protected] . https://towcenter.org/about/who-we-are/
Mr. Albright is preparing for himself a feathered nest among other presstitutes swarming the many ziocons' "think tanks," like the viciously russophobic (and unprofessional) Atlantic Council that employs the ignoramus Eliot Higgins (a former salesman of ladies' underwear and college dropout) and Dmitry Alperovitch of CrowdStrike fame, a Russophobe and threat to the US national security
One can be sure that Jonathan Albright knows already all the answers (similar to Judy Miller) and he is not interested in any proven expertise like the one provided by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/
.

Dan Kuhn , October 18, 2017 at 6:17 pm

Can anyone out there please supply me with a couple of Russian hit pieces that crippled Hillary´s campaigne. Just askin, because I have never seen one.

Michael K Rohde , October 18, 2017 at 8:29 pm

You obviously haven't looked hard enough. I just finished the book "Shattered" and she had no problem blaming the Russians when the emails of Podesta came out in the summer. It took her a day or 2 to figure out that she couldn't blame the Arabs so the Russians were next up. How could you have missed it?

Sam F , October 18, 2017 at 9:38 pm

He is likely asking for ads from Russia that actually could have served as "hit pieces" against Clinton, versus her accusations.

Elizabeth Burton , October 18, 2017 at 6:21 pm

I fear we must set aside our sarcasm and understand that this entire Russian narrative has the ultimate goal of silencing any oppositional news sources to the corporate media. When we hear that Facebook is seeking to hire people with national security clearances, which is made to sound as if it's a good, responsible reaction to the "Russian ads" and is cheered on by people who should know better, we need to get our tongues out of our cheeks and stay alert.

A good friend, who is an activist battling the fracking industry in Colorado and blogging about it, was urging people this week to sign petitions demanding more censorship on Facebook to "prevent Russian propaganda." When I pointed out that, based on the Jan. 6 "report," which condemned RT America for "criticizing the fracking industry" as proof it was a propaganda organ, her blog is Russian propaganda. Did that change her mind? Nope. Her response was in the category of "Better safe."

So, it appears Russia is not replacing "Muslim terrorists" as the "great danger" our beloved and benevolent government must ask us to hand over our rights to combat. And people who can't seem to get it through their heads the government is NOT their friend are marching in lock-step to agree because it never occurs to them they, too, are a target.

Sam F , October 18, 2017 at 7:39 pm

Yes, the purpose of Russia bashing is to distract from the revelations of DNC corruption by oligarchy (top ten Clinton donors all zionists), attack leakers as opponents of oligarchy, and attack Russia in hope of benefits to the zionists in the Mideast.

Perhaps you meant to say that "Russia is [not] replacing "Muslim terrorists" as the 'great danger' our beloved and benevolent government must ask us to hand over our rights to combat." Or perhaps you meant that the Russia-gate gambit is not working.

Abe , October 18, 2017 at 8:32 pm

American psychologist Gustave Gilbert interviewed high-ranking Nazi leaders during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. In 1947, Gilbert published part of his diary, consisting of observations taken during interviews, interrogations, "eavesdropping" and conversations with German prisoners, under the title Nuremberg Diary.

Hermann Goering, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, was founder of the Gestapo and Head of the Luftwaffe.

From an 18 April 1946 interview with Gilbert in Goering's jail cell:

Hermann Goering: "Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

Gilbert: "There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

Hermann Goering: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Dave P. , October 19, 2017 at 12:44 am

Abe –

Good post. Yes, from all the wars initiated during the last half century what Hermann Goring said is very true of U.S. The opposition to the Vietnam War later on was largely because of the draft.

Bertrand Russell in his autobiography describes in length how they prepared the U.K. public with outrageously false propaganda for War – World War I – against Germany in 1914. Bertrand Russell was vehemently against the War with Germany and spent some time in Jail for his activities to oppose the war.

Brad Owen , October 19, 2017 at 3:58 am

Based on what I have read about him, in his own words,on EIR, he was probably opposed to war with Germany because he was already looking ahead to a revival of the "Imperial Rome" situation we have in the Trans-Atlantic Community today, with its near-global Empire (enforced by America), working on breaking up the last holdout:the Eurasian Quarter with Russia, China, India, Iran, etc.

Dave P. , October 20, 2017 at 2:21 am

Yes Brad, Bertrand Russell did love England and was very proud of English Civilization and it's contributions to the World. Considering his very aristocratic background, his contributions to mathematics and Philosophy are laudable. And he was very much involved in World peace and nuclear disarmament movements.

BobH , October 19, 2017 at 9:47 am

(Goering quote) ahh yes, sometimes it takes a cynical scoundrel to tell the truth!

T.Walsh , October 20, 2017 at 11:09 am

the major war criminals' trial ended in 1946, with the execution of the 10 major war criminals taking place on October 16, 1946.

Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 8:48 pm

Elizabeth for the mere fact you are on this site may possibly be your reason for your escape from the MSM as it is a propaganda tool, to be used by the Shadow Government to guide your thought processes. (See YouTube Kevin Shipp for explanation for Shadow Government and Deep State) other than that I think it safe to say we are living in an Orwellian predicted state of mass communications, and for sure we are now living in a police state to accompany our censored news. Joe

Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 10:02 pm

Here is something I feel may ring your bell when it comes to our maintaining a free press. Read this .

"From the PR perspective, releasing one anti-Russia story after another helps cement a narrative far better than an all-at-once approach to controlling the news cycle. The public is now getting maximum effect from what I believe is a singular and cohesive effort to lay the groundwork for global legislation to eradicate any dissent and particular dissent that is pro-Russia or pro-Putin. The way the news cycle works, a campaign is best leveled across two weeks, a month, or more, so that the desired audience is thoroughly indoctrinated with an idea or a product. In this case, the product is an Orwellian eradication of freedom of speech across the swath of the world's most used social media platforms. This is a direct result of traditional media and the deep state having failed to defeat independents across these platforms. People unwilling to bow to the CNN, BBC and the controlled media message, more or less beat the globalist scheme online. So, the only choice and chance for the anti-Russia message to succeed is with the complete takeover of ALL channels. As further proof of a collective effort, listen to this Bloomberg interview the other day with Microsoft CEO Brad Smith on the same "legislation" issues. Smith's rhetoric, syntax, and the flow of his narrative mirror almost precisely the other social CEOs, the US legislators, and especially the UK Government dialogue. All these technocrats feign concern over privacy protection and free speech/free press issues, but their real agenda is the main story."

Here is the link for the rest of the essay to Phil Butler's important news story ..

https://journal-neo.org/2017/10/18/globalist-counterpunch-going-for-the-media-knockout/

Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 10:20 pm

Here is a great example of American politicians colluding with the Russians.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-18/fbi-informant-says-he-was-threatened-after-offering-details-linking-clinton-foundati

When you read this keep in mind that the Russians weren't doing any backroom illegal deals, because the Russians thought that they were dealing on the upside with the Obama White House State Department. Where you may question this, is where our Obama State Department side stepped the law to make money for those couple of Americans who fronted this deal. This is the epitome of hypocrisy of the worst kind.

Disclaimer; please Clinton and Trump supporters try and attempt to see this scandal for what it is. This fudging of the law to make a path for questionable donations is not a party platform issue. It is an issue of integrity and honesty. Yes Trump is the worst, but after you dig into the above link I provided, please don't come back at me screaming partisan politics. This scandal doesn't deserve a two sided political debate, as much as it deserves our attention, and what we do all should do about it.

Dave P. , October 19, 2017 at 2:56 pm

Joe Tedesky –

Reading about this Russian Bribery case in buying interest in "Uranium One" reminds me that Russians came a century or two late into this Capitalist Game. And they must be novices and rather crude in this business of bribing. This Russia bribery case is just a puddle in this vast Sea of Corruption to sell weapons, fighter jets, commercial airplanes, and other things by U.S., U.K., French, Swedes or other Western Nations to the Third World countries like India, Egypt, Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria etc. To make a sale of three or four billion dollars they would bribe the ministers and other officials in those countries probably with a 100 million dollars easily. Those of us who belong to the two worlds know it much better. The Indian Newspapers used to be always full of it, whenever I visited.

And the bribe money stays in the Western banks with which those ministers and officials sons and daughters buy extensive properties in these countries. In fact, these kind of issues are the topic of conversation at these Ethnic parties of rather prosperous people to which we do get invited once in a year or so – which minister or official bought what property and where with this kind or other type of corruption money. There used to be stories about Egyptian Presidents Sadat and Mubarak's sons playing around in U.S. having bought extensive properties with the bribe money. For Indian Ministers and Officials U.S., Canada, Australia, U.K., and New Zealand are the preferred destinations to buy the properties.

And as we know with the corruption money, rich Russians are buying all these homes and other properties in Spain, U.S., U.K. and other Western Countries. It seems like Putin and his team have stopped most of big time corruption but it is very hard to stop the other corruption in this globalized free market economy, especially in countries where corruption is the norm.

Same is true of these IMF loans to those Third World Countries. Most of the money ends up in these Western Countries. The working class of those countries end up in paying back the high interest loans.

This is the World we are trying to defend with these endless wars and Russia-Gate.

Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 11:20 pm

Dave I concur that even the Russians are not beyond corruption, but we are not talking about the bad habits of the Russians, no we are talking about U.S. officials possibly breaking the law. I'll bet Dave if I had taken you on a vandalizing spree when we were young bad ass little hoodlums, and we got caught, that your father wouldn't have come after me, as much as he would come after you, as he would have given you a well deserved good spanking for your bad actions. So with that frame of mind I am keeping my focus with this Clinton escapade right here at home.

I like that you did point out to how the Russians maybe new to this capitalistic new world they suddenly find themselves in, but I would not doubt that even an old Soviet Commissar would have reached under the table for a kickback of somekind to enrich himself, if the occasion had arisen to do so. You know this Dave, that bribery has no political philosophy, nor does it have a democratic or communist ideology to prevent the corrupted from being corrupt.

I am not getting my hopes up that justice will be served with this FBI investigation into Hillary and Bill's uranium finagling. Although I'm surmising this whole thing will get turned around as a Sessions Trump attack upon the Clintons, and with that this episode of selling off American assets for personal wealth benefits, will instead fade away from our news cycles altogether. Just like the torture stuff went missing, and where did that go?

Dave I always look forward to hearing from you, because I think that you and I often have many a good conversation. Joe

Dave P. , October 20, 2017 at 2:07 am

Yes Joe. I agree with you. The reason I wrote my comments was to make a point that Russian businessmen are not the only one who are in the bribery business, the businessmen of other Western Nations are doing the same thing. Yesterday on the Fox News the "Uranium One" bribery case was the main News. Shawn Hannity was twisting his words to make it look like that it is Putin who did it, and that it is Putin who gave all this 140 million as bribery to Clinton Foundation. Actually , I think the 140 millions was given to the Clinton Foundation by the trustees of the Company in Canada. And Russian officials probably greased the hands of a few of them too.

Of course Clintons are directly involved in this case. Considering how Hillary Clinton has been perpetuating this Russia-Gate hysteria, I hope some truth comes out to show that she may be the real center of this Russia-Gate affair. But way the things in Washington are now, probably they are going to whitewash the Hillary Clinton's role in this bribery scandal.

Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 10:55 pm

While my one comment i wanted for you to read is being moderated, and it is an important comment, read how the Israeli's handle unwanted news broadcasting. When you read this think of the Kristallnacht episode, and then wonder why the Israeli's would do such a terrible thing similar to what they had encountered under Hitler's reign.

http://theduran.com/rt-provider-off-air-palestine-israeli-regime-takes-palestinian-broadcasters/

Be sure to see my comment I left above, which is being moderated. In the meantime go to NEO New Eastern Outlook and read Phil Butler's shocking story, 'Globalist Counterpunch: Going for the Media Knockout'.

backwardsevolution , October 19, 2017 at 3:41 am

Joe Tedesky – the Zionists had been working (long before Hitler) on getting the Jews into Palestine. Read up on the Balfour Declaration. Hitler was helping them get out to Palestine. During World War II, one of the top German officials (can't remember which one right now) went to Palestine to have discussions with the Zionists. The Zionists basically said to him: "Look, you're sending us lazy Jews. These guys aren't interested in construction. Can't you raise more hell so that the harder-working Jews will want to leave Germany and come to Palestine?"

I think if we ever find out the truth about what happened, we will be shocked.

Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 9:11 am

Edmund de Rothschild who was a big financier of Zionism in 1934 on the subject of Palestine had said, "the struggle to put an end to the Wandering Jew, could not have as its result, the creation of the Wandering Arab."

I personally can't see the legality of the 'Balfour Declaration', but before Zionist trolls attack me, I must admit I'm no legal scholar.

I'll need to research that episode you speak of about the Germans meeting the Zionist. It's not an easy part of the Zionist history to study. Unless, you backwardsevolution can provide some references that would help to learn more about this fuzzy history.

Good to see you posting, for awhile your absence gave me concern that you are doing okay. Joe

Skip Scott , October 19, 2017 at 8:38 am

Thanks for the links Joe. Both great articles.

Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 9:14 am

Your welcome Skip I'll apologize for my posting all these links, but I kind of went nuts getting into the subject we are all talking about here, and more. Joe

Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 11:21 pm

Although this article by the Saker talks about the U.S. being prepared for war against Iran it speaks to the bigger problem of who is America's puppet master.

http://thesaker.is/trump-goes-full-shabbos-goy/

Tannenhouser , October 19, 2017 at 9:40 pm

Joe start with a book called The Transfer Agreement by Edwin Black

Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 11:25 pm

I put it on my next book to read. Thanks Tannerhouser appreciate your recommendation. Joe

dfc , October 18, 2017 at 8:55 pm

Elizabeth: Tell your good friend that once they get rid of the Russian propaganda on Facebook they will coming after those that oppose the Fracking Industry next:

How Hillary Clinton's State Department Sold Fracking to the World

h**p://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/hillary-clinton-fracking-shale-state-department-chevron/

Why Obama's top scientist just called keeping fossil fuels in the ground 'unrealistic'

h**ps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/07/12/why-obamas-top-scientist-just-called-keeping-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground-unrealistic/

Protesting the Dakota pipeline is not cut and dried

h**ps://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/protesting-the-dakota-pipeline-is-not-cut-and-dried/2016/11/06/2872e228-a207-11e6-8832-23a007c77bb4_story.html

Sorry, but how naive or deeply in the bubble can one be? lol :(

Beverly Voelkelt , October 19, 2017 at 2:50 am

I agree Elizabeth. The ultimate objective is censorship and control, using the pretext of keeping America safe from external meddling just like they enacted the Patroit Act to protect us from the terrists they created.

Daniel , October 19, 2017 at 5:04 am

Thank you Elizabeth. Shutting down alternative voices is clearly the end game here.

David G , October 18, 2017 at 6:25 pm

I'm not crazy about Robert Parry's phrase, "the mistaken judgments of President George W. Bush's administration".

The lying, murdering bastards were lying. It's their parents that made the mistake.

But I'll let it slide.

Tayo , October 18, 2017 at 6:29 pm

I've said this before and I'll say it again: I suggest Mueller focuses on Tinder too. I'm betting there's something on there. Russians have been known to use honey pot plots.

D.H. Fabian , October 18, 2017 at 6:40 pm

Ah, but who is better at it -- Russia or the US? (And dare we even consider the power of China to infiltrate political powers and the media?)

anon , October 18, 2017 at 7:46 pm

So do Martians and every other national, religious, and ethnic group on the planet, with the US out in front. You will not trick more careful thinkers by attacking the target du jour.

D.H. Fabian , October 18, 2017 at 6:38 pm

Yes, and over the past week or two, it appears that work is being redirected into holding the vast military behemoth (?), Israel, accountable for our own political/policy choices. Either way, the US is clearly in its post-reality era.

anon , October 18, 2017 at 7:49 pm

zio-alert

Abe , October 18, 2017 at 10:06 pm

The naked gun of post-reality Hasbara propaganda:

When Israeli influence on US foreign policy choices may be discussed, Hasbara troll "D.H. Fabian" pops up to insist:

"Please disperse! There's nothing for you to see here. Keep moving!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSjK2Oqrgic

WC , October 19, 2017 at 12:05 am

And what do you want to discuss Abe? That there is undue influence from Israel on the US government? Maybe, but you could say the same thing about the pharmaceuticals, the MIC, big oil and the bankers, just to begin the list.

If you and others wish to focus in on a single culprit (defined as anyone fighting for their own self interests), fine. But there are opposing views that believe the picture is bigger than the one you would like to paint.

Curious , October 19, 2017 at 1:26 am

WC, I don't want to speak for Abe, but I am wondering about your use of the word "maybe". Since the last count of US politicians was 13 Senators, and 27 House Reps who are dual citizens of Israel, does that not imply a conflict of interest just in those stats alone? Israel doesn't allow dual citizenship in their political system as it is a security risk, so why do we? I will wait for your reply.

WC , October 19, 2017 at 4:23 am

Curious.

I can't speak for the legalities that led to allowing dual citizenship in the House and Senate, nor why Israel doesn't allow dual citizenship in their political system. Like a lot of laws it is probably serving someone's best interests. ;)

As for the word "maybe" and how it relates to your overall question. Just because there are dual citizen reps in government, does that automatically say they all vote in the interests of Israel exclusively? And even if that were the case what makes them any different from the rep sold out to the MIC, big oil, pharmaceuticals, bankers, etc., or combination of? We'd then need to do a study of all of the sold-out politicians and chart the percentage of each to the various interests they sold out to. At what percentage does Israel come into the big picture?

No one is denying Israel has a certain influence on the US government, but given all of the vested interests involved, the US also has a big stake in what happens in the region. I also don't know what the overall game plan is, not just for the middle east but all of the sordid shit going on everywhere. If old George is right about "The Big Club", I'm assuming some group or combination of groups have some master plan for us all, so I am not ready to label any group, country or entity good or bad at this stage of the game. If this somehow leaves out the moral question, I am not idealistic enough to believe morality and Geo-politics often work hand in hand. :)

Brad Owen , October 19, 2017 at 4:41 am

WCs point is valid and correct. The picture is MUCH bigger than a tiny desert country of a few million Semites ruling the World. The actual picture is the outgrowth of the several, world-wide, European Empires having united into one, gigantic "Roman Empire" (under Synarchist directorship) and CAPTURED America, post WWII, to be its enforcer, working to break the last holdout: the Eurasian Quarter including Iran, into a truly global Empire. Israel was a strategy of the British Empire to preclude any revival of a Muslim Empire, threatening its MENA holdings. The enemy is still the British Empire of the 1%er oligarchs in City-of-London and Wall Street. The fact that NOBODY pays attention to this situation, and obsesses over Israel, guarantees the success of the Plan.

anon , October 19, 2017 at 7:29 am

No, the problem of Mideast policy and oligarchy control of mass media is entirely due to zionist influence, including all top ten donors to Clinton 2016. Ukraine and the entire problem of surrounding and opposing Russia is due primarily to zionist influence, due to their intervention in the Mideast, although the MIC is happy to join the corruption for war anywhere. The others on your list "pharmaceuticals, big oil and the bankers" are involved in other problems.

WC seeks to divert discussion from zionist influence by changing the subject.

anon , October 19, 2017 at 7:33 am

Brad, you will have a hard time explaining why US wars in the Mideast and surrounding Russia are always for the benefit of Israel, if you think that ancient Venetians and British aristocracy are running the show. Looks like a diversionary attack to me.

Abe , October 20, 2017 at 2:05 am

The naked solo of "D.H. Fabian" has surged into a Hasbara chorus. Where to begin.

Let's start with "Curious", who definitely does not speak for me.

The "dual citizens" canard is a stellar example of Inverted Hasbara (false flag "anti-Israel", "anti-Zionist", frequently "anti-Jewish" or "anti-Semitic") propaganda that gets ramped up whenever needed, but particularly Israel rains bombs on the neighborhood.

Like Conventional Hasbara (overtly pro-Israel or pro-Zionist) propaganda, the primary purpose of Inverted Hasbara false flag propaganda is to divert attention from Israeli military and government actions, and to provide cover for Israel Lobby activities

The Inverted Hasbara canard inserted by "Curious" came into prominence after the Israel-initiated war Lebanon in 2006. Israel's shaky military performance, flooding of south Lebanon cluster munitions, use of white phosphorus in civilian areas brought censure. Further Israeli attacks on Gaza brought increasing pressure on the neocon-infested Bush administration for its backing of Israel.

A Facebook post titled, "List of Politicians with Israeli Dual Citizenship," started circulating. The post mentioned "U.S. government appointees who hold powerful positions and who are dual American-Israeli citizens."

With the change of US administration in 2008, new versions of the post appeared with headlines such as "Israeli Dual Citizens in the U.S. Congress and the Obama Administration." Common versions included 22 officials currently or previously with the Obama administration, 27 House members and 13 senators.

The posts were false for a variety of reasons, not least of which was the misrepresentation of Israeli nationality law. Israel does allow its citizens to hold dual (or multiple) citizenship. A dual national is considered an Israeli citizen for all purposes, and is entitled to enter Israel without a visa, stay in Israel according to his own desire, engage in any profession and work with any employer according to Israeli law. An exception is that under an additional law added to the Basic Law: the Knesset (Article 16A) according to which Knesset members cannot pledge allegiance unless their foreign citizenship has been revoked, if possible, under the laws of that country.

The Law of Return grants all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel and almost automatic Israeli citizenship upon arrival in Israel. In the 1970s the Law of Return was expanded to grant the same rights to the spouse of a Jew, the children of a Jew and their spouses, and the grandchildren of a Jew and their spouses, provided that the Jew did not practice a religion other than Judaism willingly. In 1999, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that Jews or the descendants of Jews that actively practice a religion other than Judaism are not entitled to immigrate to Israel as they would no longer be considered Jews under the Law of Return, irrespective of their status under halacha (Jewish religious law).

Israeli law distinguishes between the Law of Return, which allows for Jews and their descendants to immigrate to Israel, and Israel's nationality law, which formally grants Israeli citizenship. In other words, the Law of Return does not itself determine Israeli citizenship; it merely allows for Jews and their eligible descendants to permanently live in Israel. Israel does, however, grant citizenship to those who immigrated under the Law of Return if the applicant so desires.

A non-Israeli Jew or an eligible descendant of a non-Israeli Jew needs to request approval to immigrate to Israel, a request which can be denied for a variety of reasons including (but not limited to) possession of a criminal record, currently infected with a contagious disease, or otherwise viewed as a threat to Israeli society. Within three months of arriving in Israel under the Law of Return, immigrants automatically receive Israeli citizenship unless they explicitly request not to.

In short, knowingly or not, "Curious" is spouting Inverted Hasbara propaganda.

Conventional Hasbara (pro-Israel, pro-Zionist) propagandists constantly attempt to portray Israeli military threats against its neighbors, Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, Zionist claims of an "unconditional land grant covenant" for Israel, or the manipulations of the Israel Lobby, as somehow all based on "the way the world really works".

"WC" slithered into the CN comments srael's land grab "solution" was under scrutiny here:
Israel's Stall-Forever 'Peace' Plan (September 23, 2017)
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/23/israels-stall-forever-peace-plan/

"WC" has repeatedly promoted a loony "realism" in the CN comments, claiming for example that "The Jews aren't doing anything different than the rest have done since the beginning of time."

The Conventional Hasbara troll refrain is that whatever Israel does "ain't no big thing".

"D.H. Fabian", "WC" and others are not Hasbara trolls because we somehow "disagree". They are Hasbara trolls because they promote propaganda for Israel.

Fellow travellers round out the Hasbara chorus.

Commenter anon discourses in absolutes such as "entirely due to zionist influence" and "always for the benefit of Israel".

Commenter Brad Owen just can't understand why everyone "obsesses" over that "tiny desert country" when "the Plan" outlined by LaRouche is sooo much more interesting.

Dave P. , October 20, 2017 at 11:55 am

Abe – An excellent analysis – very penetrating. Yes, I understand it very clearly.

I am one of those who does not have the background in this area. However, reading the largely British view oriented newspapers since I was fourteen , in a different land where at that time during 1950's and early 60's, all viewpoints were discussed including the communist Russian/Soviet side, and the Communist Chinese side too, one develops a balanced outlook on the World events.

Reading your comments on Israel's citizenship laws, is very eye opening for me. Israel is a very Racist State, which is kind of the opposite of what Jewish Writers write books in this country about America being the melting pot. Some of us have already melted here. I sometimes wonder, Jewish writers are writing all these books, but why don't they melt! Are they special chosen people?

WC , October 20, 2017 at 4:59 pm

Let me first dispel the notion that I am trying to change the subject, as "anon" would like to imply. What I am after is a proper perspective as opposed to something blown out of proportion.

When it comes to the subject of Israel, Jews and Zionism, Abe would appear to be well versed on the subject. He certainly cleared up "Curious"s question on dual citizenship!

With Abe and others on this site, Zionism is the big daddy culprit in the world today. I, on the other hand, see it as simply one part of a bigger picture, which I am still trying to get my head around, but I am quite certain it goes far beyond just a regional issue. In reading what Abe has to say on this subject over the past few months, he may very well be right about Zionist influence and a take no prisoners-type of resolve in pursuing their aims (whatever that may be). But none of this has yet to convince me they are entirely wrong either.

Which brings us to the subject of morality. Take a second look at what Abe has chosen to cherry pick from what he sees as the "Hasbara chorus" – all pointing to "trolls" who (he thinks) are in support of an all powerful and heartless sect. This is what is known as being overly dramatic and speaks volumes about what Abe (and others on this site) view as the most objectionable of all – the moral wrongs being committed. For the sake of clarification "morality" is defined as "principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior". Most of us who are not suffering from a mental disorder can agree on what constitutes right and wrong at its purist level, but thrown into a world filled with crime, corruption, greed, graft, hate, lust, sociopaths and psychopaths vying for power, sectarian violence, a collapsing economy, inner city decay, and all of the vested special interests jockeying to save their piece of the pie, what is right and wrong becomes far more convoluted and mired in mud. Simply throwing perfect world idealism at the problem will not fix it. In fact, it will get you as far as the miles of crucified Christians that lined the road to Rome. Which is a hell of a way to prove you are so right in a world filled with so much wrong.

Since the day I "slithered in" here, I have asked the same question over and over – what are your REAL world solutions to REAL world problems? So far, the chorus of the Church Of The Perfect World has offered up nothing. :)

Abe , October 20, 2017 at 6:07 pm

Making the same statements over and over again, "WC" is clearly "after" a Hasbara "proper perspective" on Israel.

For example, in the CN comments on How Syria's Victory Reshapes Mideast (September 30, 2017), "WC" advanced three key Hasbara propaganda talking points concerning the illegal 50-year military occupation of Palestinian territory seized by Israel during the 1967 War:
– Spurious claims about "what realistically (not idealistically) can be done"
– Insistence that "Israel is not going to go back to the 1948 borders"
– Claims that the US "depends on a strong Israeli presence"

A leading canard of Hasbara propaganda and the Israeli right wing Neo-Zionist settlement movement is the notion of an "unconditional land grant covenant" entitlement for Israel.

Land ownership was far more widespread than depicted in the fictions of Israeli propaganda. In reality, the Israeli government knowingly confiscated privately owned Palestinian land and construct a network of outposts and settlements.

Israel's many illegal activities in occupied Palestinian territory encompass Neo-Zionist settlements, so-called "outposts" and declared "state land".

The United Nations has repeatedly upheld the view that Israel's construction of settlements constitutes a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention (which provides humanitarian protections for civilians in a war zone).
The 1967 "border" of Israel refers to the Green Line or 1949 Armistice demarcation line set out in the Armistice Agreements between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

The Green Line was intended as a demarcation line rather than a permanent border. The 1949 Armistice Agreements were clear (at Arab insistence) that they were not creating permanent borders. The Egyptian–Israeli agreement, for example, stated that "the Armistice Demarcation Line is not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary, and is delineated without prejudice to rights, claims and positions of either Party to the Armistice as regards ultimate settlement of the Palestine question."

Similar provisions are contained in the Armistice Agreements with Jordan and Syria. The Agreement with Lebanon contained no such provisions, and was treated as the international border between Israel and Lebanon, stipulating only that forces would be withdrawn to the Israel–Lebanon border.

United Nations General Assembly Resolutions and statements by many international bodies refer to the "pre-1967 borders" or the "1967 borders" of Israel and neighboring countries.

According to international humanitarian law, the establishment of Israeli communities inside the occupied Palestinian territories – settlements and outposts alike – is forbidden. Despite this prohibition, Israel began building settlements in the West Bank almost immediately following its occupation of the area in 1967.

Defenders of Israel's settlement policies, like David Friedman, the current United States Ambassador to Israel, argue that the controversy over Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory is overblown.

The Israeli government and Israel Lobby advocates like Ambassador Friedman claim the built-up area of settlements comprises only around 2% of the West Bank.

This Hasbara "2%" argument is at best ignorant, and at worst deliberately disingenuous.

The "2%" figure is misleading because it refers restrictively to the amount of land Israeli settlers have built on, but does not account for the multiple ways these settlements create a massive, paralytic footprint in the illegally occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank.

Since 1967, Israel has taken control of around 50% of the land of the West Bank. And almost all of that land has been given to the settlers or used for their benefit. Israel has given almost 10% of the West Bank to settlers – by including it in the "municipal area" of settlements. And it has given almost 34% of the West Bank to settlers – by placing it under the jurisdiction of the Settlement "Regional Councils."

In addition, Israel has taken hundreds of kilometers of the West Bank to build infrastructure to serve the settlements, including a network of roads that crisscross the entire West Bank, dividing Palestinian cities and towns from each other, and imposing various barriers to Palestinian movement and access, all for the benefit of the settlements.

Israel has used various means to do this, included by declaring much of the West Bank to be "state land," taking over additional land for security purposes, and making it nearly impossible for Palestinians to register claims of ownership to their own land.

The Israeli Supreme Court has repeatedly used the term "belligerent occupation" to describe Israel's rule over the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the question of a previous sovereign claim to the West Bank and Gaza is irrelevant to whether international laws relating to occupied territories should apply there.

Rather, the proper question – according to Israel's highest court – is one of effective military control. In the words of the Supreme Court decision, "as long as the military force exercises control over the territory, the laws of war will apply to it." (see: HCJ 785/87, Afo v. Commander of IDF Forces in the West Bank).

The Palestinian territories were conquered by Israeli armed forces in the 1967 war. Whether Israel claims that the war was forced upon it is irrelevant. The Palestinian territory has been controlled and governed by the Israeli military ever since.

Who claimed the territories before they were occupied is immaterial. What is material is that before 1967, Israel did not claim the territories.

Ariel Sharon, one of the principal architects of Israel's settlement building policy in the West Bank and Gaza, recognized this reality. On May 26, 2003, then Israeli Prime Minister Sharon told fellow Likud Party members: "You may not like the word, but what's happening is occupation [using the Hebrew word "kibush," which is only used to mean "occupation"]. Holding 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation is a bad thing for Israel, for the Palestinians and for the Israeli economy."

Whether one believes that these territories are legally occupied or not does not change the basic facts: Israel is ruling over a population of millions of Palestinians who are not Israeli citizens. Demographic projections indicate that Jews will soon be a minority in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

Real world solutions:

An end to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

An end to apartheid government and the beginning of real democracy in Israel.

What can be done now?

United States government sanctions against Israel for its 50-year military occupation of Palestine, its apartheid social regime, and its arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The United States can require Israel to withdraw its forces to the 1967 line, and honor the right of return to Palestinians who fled their homeland as a result of Israel's multiple ethnic cleansing operations.

In addition, the United States can demand that immediately surrender its destabilizing nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons arsenal or face severe U.S. action.

Hasbara trolls will keep trying to change the subject, continue muttering about "opposing views" and some "bigger picture" picture", and repeatedly insist that an Israel armed with weapons of mass destruction routinely attacking its neighbors "ain't no big thing".

Tannenhouser , October 20, 2017 at 10:30 am

Most of the ones in control of "pharmaceuticals, the MIC, big oil and the bankers" are Israel firsters as well. Round and round we go eh?

Paul E. Merrell, J.D. , October 19, 2017 at 4:31 am

This is probably as good a place as any to point out that it isn't just Russophobia at work; Congress is hard at work to protect Israel's abominable human rights record from public criticism as well. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act is squarely aimed at criminalizing advocates of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement and has 50 co-sponsors in the Senate. See https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/720?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22israel+anti-boycott+act%22%5D%7D&r=2

The Act is squarely aimed at our First Amendment right to boycott and to advocate for boycotts. See https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/first-amendment-protects-right-boycott-israel?redirect=blog/speak-freely/first-amendment-protects-right-boycott-israel

dahoit , October 19, 2017 at 12:33 pm

wapo says Hamas disarm because us and israel want them to.israel won't disarm though.Boy.

Curious , October 18, 2017 at 6:44 pm

Thank you Mr Parry for actually taking the time to read the NYT or WaPo for your readers, so we don't have to. There is only so much disinformation one can cram into our 'cranium soft drives' regarding journalists with no ethics nor moral rudders.
It reminds me of watching Jon Stewarts Daily Show to check out the perverse drivel on Fox News since to watch Fox myself would have damaged me beyond repair. Many of my friends are already Humpty-Dumptied by the volume of fragmented info leeching into their bloodstreams by 140 character news.
Thank you for your fortitude in trying to debunk the news and 'outing' those editors who feel they are insulated from critical analysis.

dahoit , October 19, 2017 at 12:36 pm

jon stewart?WTF?

Curious , October 19, 2017 at 8:56 pm

Well dahoit,
Just chalk it up to a historical reference as that is around the time I stopped watching TV, having worked in the biz for some 30 years. I don't miss it either. Jon gave us a lot of humor and a lot of clever, surreptitious info, and the way they captured the talking points of the politicians by the use of their fast cuts was remarkable. There was a lot of political content in a show meant to just be humorous. Sorry you feel otherwise.

fudmier , October 18, 2017 at 6:59 pm

EITHER OR, INC. (EOI) a secret subsidiary of Deep Sewer Election Manipulators, Inc (DSEMI), a fraudulent make believe Russia company, that changes election outcomes, in foreign countries, to conform the leadership of the foreign country with Russia foreign policy, studied the most recent USA candidates and concluded Russia could not have found persons more suited to Russian foreign policy than the candidates the USA had selected for its American governed, to vote on. The case is not yet closed, EOI is still trying to decide if there is or was a difference between the candidates..

Charles Misfeldt , October 18, 2017 at 7:44 pm

Our election process is so completely corrupted I doubt that a few thousand dollars of Facebook ads that no one pays any attention to could sway the vote, I am much more concerned about bribery, Israel, American Zionists, racists, corporations, evangelicals, dominionists, white nationalists, anarchist's, conservatives, war profiteers, gerrymanders, vote purges, vote repressors, voting machine hackers, seems like Russian's are pretty far down the list.

Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 8:52 pm

Now you talking, let's get to the real stuff. Good one Charles. Joe

Peter Loeb , October 19, 2017 at 6:08 am

I don't have "FACEBOOK". Or any other "social media (whatever that may be.)
I don't "tweet" and the technology which we were once told would save
the world, has left me behind. I don't text. I have no smart phone
or cell.

I no longer have a TV of any description. Or cable with millions of things
you don't want to see anyway.

Only my mind is left. For some more years.

(J.M. Keynes: " in the long run we will all be dead."

Perhaps one has to have "social media" to be born in
this generation. Do you need it to exit?

Please accept my thoughts with my "asocial" [media]
appologies.

-- -Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA

My "tweet"/message is only my fear that the NY Yankees
will be in the World Series where I can hate them with complete
impunity. (I was created a fan of the Washington Senators,
morphed into a Brooklyn Dodgers fan so the usually failing
Boston Red Sox fits me well. Being for that so-called "dodgers"
team on the west coast is a forced marriage at best.

Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 9:27 am

Peter screw Facebook and all the rest of that High Tech Big Brother Inc industry, and the garbage they are promoting.

Also Peter do you have a little Walter Francis O'Malley voodoo doll to stick pins in it? I also haven't followed baseball since Roberto Clemente died.

We kids use to skip school to go watch Clemente play. In fact in 1957 a young ball player who the Pirates had acquired in somekind of trade with the Brooklyn Dodgers chased my seven year old little butt out of right field when I wandered all confused onto the field. That young rookie who chased my loss little being off the field, was none other than the great number 21 Roberto Clemente.

Actually the only thing you left out Peter was the Braves moving to Atlanta. Take care Peter, and let's play more ball in the daylight, and let's make it more affordable game to watch again. Play ball & BDS. Joe

Thomas Phillips , October 19, 2017 at 12:30 pm

I'm envious now Joe. Roberto Clemente was one of my favorite baseball players. My no. 1 favorite, though, was Willie Mays. And speaking of the Braves moving to Atlanta, my father took my brother and I there the first year the team was in Atlanta. The Giants were there for a series with the Braves, and I got to see Mays play (my first and only time). I would have loved to have been able to skip school and watch Clemente play.

On the subject of concern here, The Hill has a couple of stories on the zerohedge.com story you referenced above. From what I read, it appears to me that if this is still an open case with the FBI, Ms. Clinton (and Obama?) could possibly face criminal charges in this matter. We can only hope. To Peter – I do have an old 1992 console TV, but no cable; so I have no television to speak of. I have a VHS and DVD player though and watch old movies and such on the old TV.

Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 2:42 pm

Thomas how cool. My buddies and I would purchase the left field bleacher seats for I think fifty cents or maybe it was a dollar. Then around the third inning we would boogie on over into the right field stands overlooking the great Roberto, and yell 'hey Roberto'. From right field we kids would eye up the empty box seats off of third base. Somewhere about the sixth or seventh inning we would sneakily slide into those empty box seats along third base side, where you could see into the Pirate dugout along first. Now the Pirate dugout is along third. The box seat ushers would back then justbsimply tell us kids to be good, and that they got a pat on the back from management for filling up those empty box seats, because the television cameras would pick that up. The best part was, we little hooky players did all of this on our school lunch money.

About that FBI thing with Hillary I'm hoping this doesn't get written off as just another Trump attack, and that this doesn't turn into another entertaining Benghazi hearing for Hillary to elevate her status among her identity groupies. Joe

mark , October 18, 2017 at 7:46 pm

All this nonsense will soon die an evidence-free natural death, but rather than admit to the lies the MSM will divert the Deplorables with some convenient scandal like the Weinstein affair.

The effect of all this will be to hammer the final nails in the coffin of the political establishment and its servile MSM. This process began with the Iraqi WMD lies, and now 6% of the population believes what it sees in the MSM.

Skip Scott , October 19, 2017 at 8:47 am

mark-

I wish you were right, but with all the money being thrown around, and scumbag Mueller in the mix, how this will end is anybody's guess. I'm also curious where you got the 6% figure. Sounds like wishful thinking to me.

Stephen J. , October 18, 2017 at 7:49 pm

We have sewer rats in our depraved "democracy."
More info at link below:
October 18, 2017
Is This The "Democracy" of the Depraved?
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/10/is-this-democracy-of-depraved.html

falcemartello , October 18, 2017 at 7:54 pm

Great take Mr Parry
Smoke and mirrors to distract we the sheeple of this dying paradigm. Fascism alive and well in the land of the free. The sheeple r now entering the critical stage, they have hit 20 percent. Dangerous times for the western masters of the universe. Get ready for more false flags to keep the sheeple blinded from reality. The recent events globally with regards to Iran, Syria and the DPRK are all their for distractions add the Russians ate my homework and viola distraction heaven. But like I said more and more people in the US and the west are turning off 1/5 to be exact and that spells trouble for the masters. They want war at all costs 600 percent debt is not a sustainable economic system . IMF warning just the other day that all it will take is one major European bank to crash and viola. So dangerous and interesting times we r living. Is it by design in order to get their way.?I would say yes to that.

Sam F , October 18, 2017 at 9:44 pm

Good notes. Incidentally you may intend the French "voila" rather than the musical instrument "viola."

Skip Scott , October 20, 2017 at 3:37 pm

Voila, viola. Didn't Curly of the three stooges do a bit on that?

Michael K Rohde , October 18, 2017 at 8:27 pm

Should I say it? Shocker. NYT and HIllary are a potent team. Add on Google and CNN and you have a formidable propaganda organization that is going to influence millions of American. Plus Face Book and you have most of America covered without a dissenting voice. I used to be one of their customers, reading and believing everything they put out until Judith Miller was exposed with W and Scooter. I confess to a jaundiced eye since then. Unfortunately there isn't a whole lot out there if you like to read good writers of relevant material. We have a problem, Houston.

Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 9:07 pm

If it is possible to consider Russia helped throw the 2016 presidential election with 100k spent over a three year period, then why not suspect and investigate the American MSM, who gave Donald Trump 4.9 billion dollars worth of free media coverage? Surely you all may recall the wall to wall commercial free cable network coverage Trump used to receive during the way too long of a presidential campaign? Now we are being led to believe that a few haphazard placed Russian adbuys on FB stool the election from 'it's my turn now boys' Hillary. Here I must admit that as much as I would love to have a woman President, I would choose almost any qualified women other than Hillary. But yeah, this Russia-gate nonsense is a creation of the Shadow Government, who wants so badly to see Putin get thrown out of office, that they would risk starting WWIII doing it.

Larry Gates , October 18, 2017 at 9:44 pm

A single person started all this nonsense: Hillary Clinton.

Jessica K , October 18, 2017 at 9:46 pm

No need for America to be influenced to turn the internet into a sewer, America is doing just fine on that with no help at all. The Russians are just mocking us over there, which is perfectly understandable. In fact, from what I read, Russians are actually more religious and concerned about immorality than Americans.

This whole thing is a joke, we know it, it's an attempt to control people, and I for one am pretty sick of it and don't mind telling anyone just that. Let them sputter, stomp their feet, or whatever. Keep it up, United States, and you'll be playing in the schoolyard all by yourself!

Stephen J. , October 18, 2017 at 10:04 pm

Was the article below in corporate media? Link below:
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Thousands of govt docs found on laptop of sex offender married to top Clinton adviser
Published time: 18 Oct, 2017 16:45Edited time: 18 Oct, 2017 18:37
https://www.rt.com/usa/407120-fbi-found-3k-docs-weiner/

Sam , October 19, 2017 at 12:10 am

It's amazing how the "mainstream media" has pushed this Russian collusion nonsense. What's more amazing is how every time an article is published my these outlets claiming some new evidence of Russian collusion, within 24 hours there's evidence to the contrary. I think the whole Pokemon and Facebook claims are the lowest point in this Russian collusion nonsense. The worst part is we won't see it end anytime soon

Sam F , October 19, 2017 at 7:38 am

Good points, Sam. There are many named "Sam" so please distinguish your pen name from mine, perhaps with an initial. Thanks!

Drew Hunkins , October 19, 2017 at 12:46 am

Absolutely crucial and outstanding piece by Mr. Parry. His well thought out dissection of Politifact is invigorating.

backwardsevolution , October 19, 2017 at 12:52 am

Peter Schweizer, author of "Clinton Cash", has been talking about the biggest Russian bribe of all, the one no one wants to talk about – Uranium One. This deal may have been the reason why $145 million ended up in Clinton Foundation coffers, all while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

Here is Peter Schweizer today on Tucker Carlson's program talking about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNTdlyx7EMQ

Daniel , October 19, 2017 at 5:21 am

Her emails showed that HRC's internal polling proved her greatest vulnerability with her supporters was when they were told the details of her uranium deal.

Skip Scott , October 19, 2017 at 9:03 am

Thanks for the link. Great interview. The real Russia-gate!

flip diving , October 19, 2017 at 12:54 am

Your site has a lot of useful information for myself. I visit regularly. Hope to have more quality items.

Dave P. , October 19, 2017 at 1:33 am

Joe – I never had interest in conspiracy type stories and narratives like that. However, after reading the zerohedge article in the link in your post, I am beginning to seriously doubt the Seth Rich murder investigation findings by the Washington DC police – I had some misgivings before about it too. I think there was not any significant involvement by FBI in the case. And the Justice department under Loretta Lynch did not pursue the investigation.

Knowing all kind of stories in the news about Clintons friend Vince Foster's death during 1990's , and many other episodes in Bill and Hillary Clinton's political life, I wonder about the power and reach of this couple. And now this article and no investigation of this bribery and corruption scandal during Obama's presidency. It all smells fishy.

Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 1:58 am

Dave not only as what you had mentioned, but the Seth Rich story seems to have become taboo in our news. I realize what the Rich family requested, but when did ever a request from the family ever get honored by the big media ever before? I'm not suggesting anything more, than why is the Seth Rich murder appearing to be off limits, and further more with Seth's death being in question and implicated to the Wikileaks 'Hillary Exposures' being Seth one of those 'leakers', then take responsibility DNC and ask the same questions, or at least answer the questions asked. I hope that made sense, because somehow it made sense to me.

The suggestion of any alternative to the establish narrative gets tossed to the wind. I think this drip, drip, flood, of Russia collusion into the gears of American Government is a way of America's Establishment, who is now in charge, way of going out with a bang. The world is starting to realize it doesn't need the U.S., and the U.S. is doing everything in it's power to help further that multi-polar world's growing realization that it doesn't.

Okay Dave. Joe

Dave P. , October 19, 2017 at 2:57 am

Joe, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has the power to initiate investigations into these cases. However, it seems to me that the Ruling Elite/Deep State does not want to wash the dirty linen in front of the whole World. It would be very embarrassing; it will show the true picture of this whole sewage/swamp it is. Jeff Sessions or others in high places, have no independence at all, even if they want to pursue their own course – which they rarely do.

It seems like that all these investigations are a kind of smoke screen to hide the real issues. During 1950's or 60's , people in this country mostly trusted the leaders and elected officials. And majority of the leaders, whatever their policies or sides they took on issues, had some integrity, depth, solidity and dignity about them. But it seems to me that these days politicians do not have any of it. The same is true of the Media. This constant mindless Russia-Gate hysteria being perpetuated by the elected leaders, Media, and pundits without any thought or decorum is not worthy of a civilized country. Also, it is not good for the Country or the World.

Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 9:34 am

Yes Dave the quality of accountability and responsibility in DC is sorely lacking of concern to be honest, and do the right thing by its citizens. This is another reason why it's good to talk these things over with you, and many of the others who post comments here. Joe

BobH , October 19, 2017 at 10:08 am

Joe,Dave, glad you bring it up Russiagate seems to be providing a full eclipse of any investigation into the Seth Rich murder and just whatever happened to his laptop?

Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 10:45 am

I think Bob the Rich investigation got filed under 'conspiracy theory do not touch' file. Joe

backwardsevolution , October 19, 2017 at 1:39 am

Hours ago:

"Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley asked the attorney of a former FBI informant Wednesday to allow her client to testify before his committee regarding the FBI's investigation regarding kickbacks and bribery by the Russian state controlled nuclear company that was approved to purchase twenty percent of United States uranium supply in 2010, Circa has learned.

In a formal letter, Grassley, an Iowa Republican, asked Victoria Toensing, the lawyer representing the former FBI informant, to allow her client, who says he worked as a voluntary informant for the FBI, to be allowed to testify about the "crucial" eyewitness testimony he provided to the FBI regarding members of the Russian subsidiary and other connected players from 2009 until the FBI's prosecution of the defendants in 2014. [ ]

FBI officials told Circa the investigation could have prevented the sale of Uranium One, which controlled 20 percent of U.S. uranium supply under U.S. law. The deal which required approval by CFIUS, an inter-agency committee who reviews transactions that leads to a change of control of a U.S. business to a foreign person or entity that may have an impact on the national security of the United States. At the time of the Uranium One deal the panel was chaired by then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and included then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-Attorney General Eric Holder."

https://www.circa.com/story/2017/10/18/judiciary-committee-calls-on-former-fbi-informant-to-testify-about-uranium-one

This FBI informant was apparently gagged from speaking to Congress by either Loretta Lynch or Eric Holder (I've heard both names). Why would they have done this?

Sven , October 19, 2017 at 1:44 am

Very well written article

Lee Francis , October 19, 2017 at 2:41 am

The whole Russia-Gate brouhaha has become a monumental bore. How anyone with a modicum of intelligence and moral integrity can believe this garbage is beyond me. I salute Mr Parry for his fortitude in clearing the Augean stables of this filth; it reminds of the old Bonnie Raitt song, to wit – 'It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it." personally I can't be bothered reading it anymore.

backwardsevolution , October 19, 2017 at 2:51 am

Stefan Molyneux does a great job in this 25-minute video where he outlines the absolute corruption going on in the Banana Republic of Americastan on both the left and right.

He ends up by saying that all of the same actors (Rosenstein, McCabe, Mueller, Comey, Lynch, Clinton) who were part of covering up Hillary's unsecured servers and Uranium One are the very same people who are involved with going after Trump and his supposed collusion with Russia. Same people. And the media seem to find no end of things to say about the latter, while virtually ignoring the former.

https://www.sgtreport.com/articles/2017/10/18/shocking-fbi-corruption-exposed-true-news

Dave P. , October 19, 2017 at 3:39 am

backwardsevolution –

Yes, Media ignores the other scandal while beating up 24/7 on Russian inference/collusion in the Presidential Election. It is the same with the Foreign News. There was this more than 10,000 strong torchlit Neo-Nazi March in Kiev last Saturday. The pictures in the Sputnik News of these neo-Nazis in the march were very threatening. I think that most of the Russians have probably left West Ukraine. There was not even a mention of this March in the Los Angeles Times.

However, a week before Alexander Navalny had this protest – 500 figure as given the Western media – in Moscow. The picture was splashed across the entire page of Los Angeles Times with a half page article, mostly beating up on Putin.

I rarely watch TV shows. However, this Tuesday, because of the some work going on our house, I was home most of the day. My wife was watching TV starting in the afternoon well into the evening – MSNBC, CNN, PBS newshour; Wolg Blitzer, Lawrence O'Donnell, Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow, and others with all these so called experts invited to the shows. Just about most of it was about beating up on Trump and Russia as if it is the only news in the Country and in the World to report. It was really pathetic to hear all these nonsensical lies and garbage coming out the mouths of these talk show hosts and experts. It is becoming Banana Republic of Americanistan as you wrote.

backwardsevolution , October 19, 2017 at 4:04 am

Hi, Dave P. Yeah, I swear they have things on the shelf that are ready-to-go stories whenever there's a lull in the Trump/Russia collusion nonsense. This last week they pulled Harvey Weinstein off the shelf and crucified the guy (not that he shouldn't have been). If this Uranium One deal gets legs, watch for some huge false flag to coincidentally appear to take our minds off of it.

The biggest thing separating a "first world" country from a "third world" country is the rule of law. Without it, you might as well hoist up a flag with a big yellow banana on it and call it a day. Bananastan has a nice ring to it.

Cheers, Dave.

Lee Francis , October 19, 2017 at 8:10 am

"There was this more than 10,000 strong torchlit Neo-Nazi March in Kiev last Saturday." It never happened, well according to the Washington Post (aka Pravda on the Potomac) or New York Times (aka The Manhattan Beobachter) who, like the rest of the establishment media lie by omission. Other things that didn't happen – the Odessa fire where 42 anti-Maidan demonstrators were incinerated by the Banderist mob who actually applauded as the Union Building went up like a torch with those unfortunate people not only trapped inside with the entrances barricaded, but those who jumped out of windows to escape the flames (a bit like 9/11 in New York) were clubbed to death as they lie injured on the ground. The film is on youtube if you can bear to watch it, I could only bear to watch it once. According to the website of Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh, it was "another bright day in our national history." A Svoboda parliamentary deputy added, "Bravo, Odessa . Let the Devils burn in hell." These people are our allies, along of course with Jihadis in the middle east.

In his the British playwright Harold Pinter's last valediction nailed the propaganda methodology of the western media with the phrase, 'even while it was happening it wasn't happening.'

Dave P. , October 20, 2017 at 2:31 am

Lee Francis –

yes. The words : 'even while it was happening it wasn't happening.' It is from his Nobel lecture. I read the text of Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter at that time – very passionate lecture. Pinter had terminal throat cancer, he could not go to Sweden. I think he sent his video of the Nobel lecture to be played.

Jessica K , October 19, 2017 at 7:14 am

It will be interesting to see how the so-called left leaning media like MSNBC and CNN spin the Uranium One/Obama-Clinton State Department story. The right, especially Hannity on Fox, are on it, also Tucker Carlson who is moderate mostly. When these pundits say "Russia", they seem to imply "Putin" but that may not be the case. And they always want to imply the US is beyond corrupt business deals, which is a joke. It's about time the Clinton case is cracked, but with corruption rampant, who knows?

JeffS , October 19, 2017 at 9:34 am

The targeting of Pokemon Go users was especially nefarious because aren't about half of those people below voting age? But when they finally are old enough to vote we can say that they were influenced by Russia! And this is always reported in a serious tone and with a straight face. I find the aftermath of the 2016 election to be 'Hillary'ous. The obviously phony from the get-go Russia story was invented out of whole cloth to allow stunned Democrat voters to engage in some sort extended online group therapy session. After a year many are still working through the various stages of the grieving process, and some may actually reach the final stage -- Acceptance (of the 2016 Election results)

mike k , October 19, 2017 at 1:07 pm

Good one!

Jamila Malluf , October 19, 2017 at 12:36 pm

Excellent Report! Consortium needs a video outlet somebody to give these reports. There are many places other than YouTube you could use and I could become one of your Amateur video editor :)

mike k , October 19, 2017 at 1:10 pm

The Rulers fear the internet.

Liam , October 19, 2017 at 3:01 pm

#MeToo – A Course In Deductive Reasoning: Separating Fact From Fiction Through The Child Exploitation Of 8 Year Old Bana Alabed

https://clarityofsignal.com/2017/10/19/metoo-a-course-in-deductive-reasoning-separating-fact-from-fiction-through-the-child-exploitation-of-8-year-old-bana-alabed/

rosemerry , October 19, 2017 at 4:17 pm

I was glad to see that when H Clinton was in England, the RT ads all around were making fun of the blame game. Someone needs to lighten up and stop the ludicrous nonsensical year-long concentration on blaming Russia for the deep defects in almost all aspects of US presence in our world. Observe Pres. Putin and nearly every other real leader getting on with negotiations, agreements, constructive trade deals, ignoring the sinking ship led by the Trumpet and the Republican Party, while the Dems slide down with them.

Realist , October 19, 2017 at 7:20 pm

I think the "Powers that be" in America actually believed it when Karl Rove announced to the world that the U.S. government had the godlike power to create any reality of its own choosing, the facts be damned, and the entire world would come to accept it and live by it, like it or not. They've been incessantly trying to pound this square peg of a governing philosophy into holes of a wide spectrum of geometric shapes ever since, believing that mere proclamation made it so. Russia, China, Iran and any other country that does business with this troika are evil. Moreover, any country that does not kowtow to Israel, or objects to its extermination campaign against the Palestinian people, is evil. Even simply pursuing an independent foreign policy not approved by Washington, as Iraq, Libya and Syria felt entitled to do, is evil. Why? Because we say so. That should suffice for a reason. Disagree with us at your peril. We have slaughtered millions of "evil-doers" in Middle Eastern Islamic states who dared to disagree, and we have economically strapped our own "allies" in Europe to put the screws to Russia. The key to escape from this predicament is how much more blowback, in terms of displaced peoples, violated human rights, abridged sovereignty and shattered economies, is Europe willing to tolerate in the wake of Washington's megalomaniacal dictates before it stands up to the bully and stops supporting the madness. When does Macron, Merkel and May (assuming they are the leaders whom others will follow in Europe) say "enough" and start making demands on Washington, and not just on Washington's declared "enemies?"

And, if the internet has indeed become the world's "cloaca maxima," I'd say first look to its inventors, founders, chief administrators and major users of the service, all of which reside in the United States. In terms of volume, Russia is but a small-time user of the service. If the object is to re-create a society such as described in the novel "1984," it is certainly possible to censor the damned thing to the point where its just a tool of tyranny. The "distinguished" men and corporations basically running the internet planetwide have already conferred such authority to the Chinese government. Anything they don't want their people to see is filtered out, compliments of Microsoft, Google, Facebook and the other heavy hitters. Just looking at trends, rhetoric and the fact that the infrastructure is mostly privately-owned, I can see the same thing coming to the West, unless the users demand otherwise, vociferously and en masse.

Tannenhouser , October 20, 2017 at 4:19 pm

Trump is running point on the distraction op currently being run, to distract from the actual crimes committed by the Blue section of the ruling political party. So far he played his part brilliantly, knowingly or unknowingly, matters not.

Jerry Alatalo , October 19, 2017 at 4:29 pm

Readers of Consortium News come from around the world, from very small towns with populations in the few 1,000's to major cities with populations in the millions, and everything size category in between. In each of those categories of population size, the power is controlled by those possessing the greatest wealth inside that particular population, whether small town, medium, semi-large or major city. One can describe each category of population center as pyramidal in power structure, with those at the top of the pyramid the wealthiest few who "pull the strings" of societies, and, as relates to war and peace, the people who literally fire the first shots.

Identify those at the top of the world category pyramid, call them out for their war crimes, and then humanity has a fighting chance for peace.

Curious , October 19, 2017 at 7:56 pm

For WC,
Thank you for your answer to my question. The 'reply' tab is gone on the thread so I will reply here.
I believe I was trying to figure out the difference between "lawmakers" and the corporate entities you mentioned. Obviously the lawmakers are heavily influenced by the money and the lobbyists from the large corps which muddies the waters and makes it even more difficult to find clarity between politicians and the big money players. When the US sends our military into sovereign countries against international law, it's fair to ask whether it is at the behest of corporate interests, or even Israels' geopolitical agenda, especially in the Middle East.
The large corps you mentioned don't have the legal authority to send our military to foreign lands and perform duties that have nothing to do with US defense (or do they?) and that is why I try to understand the distinction between 40 dual citizens of Israel within the 'lawmakers' of our country and large corporations. When Israels 'allowance' from US tax payers goes remarkably up in value, one has to wonder how and why that occurs when our own country is suffering. That's all I wonder about. I won't distract any more from Mr. Parrys' article.

GM , October 19, 2017 at 9:31 pm

If I recall correctly, Politifact is owned by the majority owners of the St Petersburg times, which family is a major big Clinton donor.

Kevin Beck , October 20, 2017 at 9:01 am

I am curious whether Russia is really able to employ all these "marketing geniuses" to affect elections throughout the world. If so, then America's greatest ad agencies need to look to Moscow for new recruits, instead of within our business schools.

Riikka Söyring , October 20, 2017 at 6:00 pm

Maybe Politifact declares it? stance is based on an alternative fact?

But greetings from Finland. In here is in full swing a MSM war against so called fake media, never mind the fact that many are the stories in fake media that have turned out to be the truth -- or that we are supposed to be a civilized country with free speech.

Our government with the support of the MSM is using a term hatespeech to silence all tongues telling a different tale; some convictions have been given even though our law does not recognise hatespeech as a crime. The police nor the courts can not define exactly what hatespeech is -- so it is what they want it to be.

[Oct 17, 2017] The Lobby British Style by Philip M. Giraldi

Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though!
Notable quotes:
"... casus belli ..."
"... To be sure, my observations are neither new nor unique. Former Congressmen Paul Findley indicted the careful crafting of a pro-Israel narrative by American Jews in his seminal book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby , written in 1989. Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy said much the same thing nine years ago and discussions of Jewish power do emerge occasionally, even in the mainstream media. In the Jewish media Jewish power is openly discussed and is generally applauded as a well-deserved reward bestowed both by God and by mankind due to the significant accomplishments attributed to Jews throughout history. ..."
"... That many groups and well-positioned individuals work hand-in-hand with the Israeli government to advance Israeli interests should not be in dispute after all these years of watching it in action. Several high level Jewish officials, including Richard Perle , associated with the George W. Bush Pentagon, had questionable relationships with Israeli Embassy officials and were only able to receive security clearances after political pressure was applied to "godfather" approvals for them. Former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, referred to as Israel's Congressman and Senator, while current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has described himself as Israel's "shomer" or guardian in the U.S. Senate. ..."
"... The documentary reveals that local Jewish groups, particularly at universities and within the political parties, do indeed work closely with the Israeli Embassy to promote policies supported by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ..."
"... That's the money shot, Phil. I'm okay with Jews, okay with the existence of Israel, all that, but I think we were massively had by Iraq II. When Valerie Plame spoke in my area, she talked disgustedly about a plan to establish American military power throughout the Middle East. She used the euphemism "neocons" for the plan's authors, and seemed about to burst with anger. ..."
"... I recall the basic idea was for the U. S. to do Israel's dirty work at U. S. expense and without a U. S. benefit, and I think there was the usual "God talk" cover in it about "democratization", "development", blah-blah. ..."
"... I'd also add Adlai E. Stevenson III and John Glenn. Stevenson was crucial in getting compensation -- paltry sum though it was– payed to "Liberty" families for their loss. The Israelis had been holding out. Something for which the Il Senator was never forgiven (especially by The Lobby). ..."
"... Netanyahu should not have been allowed to address the joint session. No foreign leader should be speaking in opposition to any sitting President (in this case Obama). It only showed the power of "The Lobby." Netanyahu who knew that Iran didn't have the weapons the Bush Adm. had claimed, was treated like a trusted ally. He shouldn't have been. ..."
"... Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though! ..."
"... And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less carried out in the open. ..."
"... All embassies try to further their national interest through political machinations and all people in politics tend to use hyperbolic language to describe what they are doing. I don't know if your shock is just for show or you are just a bit dim. The same applies to Buzzfeed's 'expose' of Bannon and the gasps the article let out at his use of terms like #War. ..."
"... The British government attitude was that everything was fine because the Israeli government "apologised" and the "rogue individual" responsible was taken out of the country, and the British media mostly ignored the story after an initial brief scandal. Indeed the main substantive response was the Ofcom fishing expedition against Al Jazeera looking for ways to use the disclosure of these uncomfortable truths as a pretext for shutting that company's operations down. ..."
"... The supreme irony behind all this is that Trump has been prevented by his own personal and family/adviser bias from using the one certain way of removing all the laughably vague "Russian influence" nonsense that has been used against him so persistently. All he had to do was to, at every opportunity, tie criticism and investigation of Russian "influence" to criticism and investigation of Israel Lobby influence under the general rubric of "foreign influence", and almost all of the high level backing for the charges would in due course have quietly evaporated. ..."
"... WASP culture has always been philo-Semitic. That cannot be stated too much. WASP culture is inherently philo-Semtic. WASP culture was born of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, which was a Judaizing heresy. ..."
"... You cannot solve 'the Jewish problem' unless you also solve 'the WASP problem.' ..."
"... The Israeli lobby is more powerful throughout the Anglosphere than the Saudi/Arabic lobby, but the Saudi lobby is equally detestable and probably even a more grave threat to the very existence of Western man. ..."
"... That the intelligence services of many countries engage in such conduct is not really news. Indeed, you could say that it's part of their normal job. They usually don't get caught and when accused of anything they shout "no evidence!" (now, where have I heard that recently?) Of course, if the Israelis engage in such conduct, then, logically, other countries' services do so too. ..."
"... Not surprising that the Jewish public gets gamed by Israeli political elites, just as the American public keeps getting gamed by our own cabal of bought politicians. Trying to fool enough of the people, enough of the time, contra Lincoln (who was not exactly a friend of critical dissent against war either .) ..."
Oct 17, 2017 | www.unz.com

One month ago, I initiated here at Unz.com a discussion of the role of American Jews in the crafting of United States foreign policy. I observed that a politically powerful and well-funded cabal consisting of both Jewish individuals and organizations has been effective at engaging the U.S. in a series of wars in the Middle East and North Africa that benefit only Israel and are, in fact, damaging to actual American interests. This misdirection of policy has not taken place because of some misguided belief that Israeli and U.S. national security interests are identical, which is a canard that is frequently floated in the mainstream media. It is instead a deliberate program that studiously misrepresents facts-on-the ground relating to Israel and its neighbors and creates casus belli involving the United States even when no threat to American vital interests exists. It punishes critics by damaging both their careers and reputations while its cynical manipulation of the media and gross corruption of the national political process has already produced the disastrous war against Iraq, the destruction of Libya and the ongoing chaos in Syria. It now threatens to initiate a catastrophic war with Iran.

To be sure, my observations are neither new nor unique. Former Congressmen Paul Findley indicted the careful crafting of a pro-Israel narrative by American Jews in his seminal book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby , written in 1989. Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy said much the same thing nine years ago and discussions of Jewish power do emerge occasionally, even in the mainstream media. In the Jewish media Jewish power is openly discussed and is generally applauded as a well-deserved reward bestowed both by God and by mankind due to the significant accomplishments attributed to Jews throughout history.

There is undeniably a complicated web of relationships and networks that define Israel's friends. The expression "Israel Lobby" itself has considerable currency, so much so that the expression "The Lobby" is widely used and understood to represent the most powerful foreign policy advocacy group in Washington without needing to include the "Israel" part. That the monstrous Benjamin Netanyahu receives 26 standing ovations from Congress and a wealthy Israel has a guaranteed income from the U.S. Treasury derives directly from the power and money of an easily identifiable cluster of groups and oligarchs – Paul Singer, Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus, Haim Saban – who in turn fund a plethora of foundations and institutes whose principal function is to keep the cash and political support flowing in Israel's direction. No American national interest, apart from the completely phony contention that Israel is some kind of valuable ally, would justify the taxpayers' largesse. In reality, Israel is a liability to the United States and always has been.

And I do understand at the same time that a clear majority of American Jews, leaning strongly towards the liberal side of the political spectrum, are supportive of the nuclear agreement with Iran and do not favor a new Middle Eastern war involving that country. I also believe that many American Jews are likely appalled by Israeli behavior, but, unfortunately, there is a tendency on their part to look the other way and neither protest such actions nor support groups like Jewish Voice for Peace that are themselves openly critical of Israel. This de facto gives Israel a free pass and validates its assertion that it represents all Jews since no one important in the diaspora community apart from minority groups which can safely be ignored is pushing back against that claim.

That many groups and well-positioned individuals work hand-in-hand with the Israeli government to advance Israeli interests should not be in dispute after all these years of watching it in action. Several high level Jewish officials, including Richard Perle , associated with the George W. Bush Pentagon, had questionable relationships with Israeli Embassy officials and were only able to receive security clearances after political pressure was applied to "godfather" approvals for them. Former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, referred to as Israel's Congressman and Senator, while current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has described himself as Israel's "shomer" or guardian in the U.S. Senate.

A recent regulatory decision from the United Kingdom relates to a bit of investigative journalism that sought to reveal precisely how the promotion of Israel by some local diaspora Jews operates, to include how critics are targeted and criticized as well as what is done to destroy their careers and reputations.

Last year, al-Jazeera Media Network used an undercover reporter to infiltrate some U.K. pro-Israel groups that were working closely with the Israeli Embassy to counter criticisms coming from British citizens regarding the treatment of the Palestinians. In particular, the Embassy and its friends were seeking to counter the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which has become increasingly effective in Europe. The four-part documentary released late in 2016 that al-Jazeera produced is well worth watching as it consists mostly of secretly filmed meetings and discussions.

The documentary reveals that local Jewish groups, particularly at universities and within the political parties, do indeed work closely with the Israeli Embassy to promote policies supported by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It also confirms that tagging someone as an anti-Semite has become the principal offensive weapon used to stifle any discussion, particularly in a country like Britain which embraces concepts like the criminalization of "hate speech." At one point, two British Jews discussed whether "being made to feel uncomfortable" by people asking what Israel intends to do with the Palestinians is anti-Semitic. They agreed that it might be.

The documentary also describes how the Embassy and local groups working together targeted government officials who were not considered to be friendly to Israel to "be taken down," removed from office or otherwise discredited. One government official in particular who was to be attacked was Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan.

Britain, unlike the U.S., has a powerful regulatory agency that oversees communications, to include the media. It is referred to as Ofcom. When the al-Jazeera documentary was broadcast, Israeli Embassy political officer Shai Masot, who reportedly was a Ministry of Strategic Affairs official working under cover, was forced to resign and the Israeli Ambassador offered an apology. Masot was filmed discussing British politicians who might be "taken down" before speaking with a government official who plotted a "a little scandal" to bring about the downfall of Duncan. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is the first head of a political party in Britain to express pro-Palestinian views, had called for an investigation of Masot after the recording of the "take down" demand relating to Duncan was revealed. Several Jewish groups (the Jewish Labour Movement, the Union of Jewish Students and We Believe in Israel) then counterattacked with a complaint that the documentary had violated British broadcast regulations, including the specific charge that the undercover investigation was anti-Semitic in nature.

On October 9 th , Ofcom ruled in favor of al-Jazeera, stating that its investigation had done nothing improper, but it should be noted that the media outlet had to jump through numerous hoops to arrive at the successful conclusion. It had to turn over all its raw footage and communications to the investigators, undergoing what one source described as an "editorial colonoscopy," to prove that its documentary was "factually accurate" and that it had not "unfairly edited" or "with bias" prepared its story. One of plaintiffs, who had called for critics of Israel to "die in a hole" and had personally offered to "take down" a Labour Party official, responded bitterly. She said that the Ofcom judgment would serve as a "precedent for the infringement of privacy of any Jewish person involved in public life."

The United States does not yet have a government agency to regulate news stories, though that may be coming, but the British tale has an interesting post script. Al-Jazeera also had a second undercover reporter inserted in the Israel Lobby in the United States, apparently a British intern named James Anthony Kleinfeld, who had volunteered his services to The Israel Project, which is involved in promoting Israel's global image. He also had contact with at least ten other Jewish organizations and with officials at the Israeli Embassy,

Now that the British account of "The Lobby" has cleared a regulatory hurdle the American version will reportedly soon be released. Al-Jazeera's head of investigative reporting Clayton Swisher commented "With this U.K. verdict and vindication past us, we can soon reveal how the Israel lobby in America works through the eyes of an undercover reporter. I hear the U.S. is having problems with foreign interference these days, so I see no reason why the U.S. establishment won't take our findings in America as seriously as the British did, unless of course Israel is somehow off limits from that debate."

Americans who follow such matters already know that groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) swarm over Capitol Hill and have accomplices in nearly every media outlet. Back in 2005-6 AIPAC Officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman were actually tried under the Espionage Act of 1918 in a case involving obtaining classified intelligence from government official Lawrence Franklin to pass on to the Israeli Embassy. Rosen had once boasted that, representing AIPAC and Israel, he could get the signatures of 70 senators on a napkin agreeing to anything if he sought to do so. The charges against the two men were, unfortunately, eventually dropped "because court rulings had made the case unwinnable and the trial would disclose classified information."

And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less carried out in the open. And ask Congressmen like Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, William Fulbright, Charles Percy and, most recently, Cynthia McKinney, what happens to your career when you appear to be critical of Israel. And the point is that while Israel calls the shots in terms of what it wants, it is a cabal of diaspora American Jews who actually pull the trigger. With that in mind, it will be very interesting to watch the al-Jazeera documentary on The Lobby in America.

Rurik , October 17, 2017 at 4:29 am GMT

Philip Giraldi is a rare American treasure. A voice of integrity and character in a sea of moral cowardice and corruption. If there is any hope for this nation, it will be due specifically to the integrity of men like Mr. Giraldi to keep speaking truth to power.
googlecensors , October 17, 2017 at 5:00 am GMT
One is unable to open the documentary – all 4 parts – on YouTube suggesting that google/YouTube are censoring it and have caved into the Jewish Lobby
Malla , October 17, 2017 at 5:03 am GMT
When the Jewish Messiah comes, all of us goyim (Black, White, Yellow, brown or Red) will be living like today's Palestinians. Our slave descendant will be scurrying around in their ghettos afraid of the Greater Israeli Army military andriod drones in the sky.

But if I was a Westerner, I would support Israel any day. Because if the Israeli state were to be ever dismantled, all of them Israelis would go to the West. Why would you want that?

Frankie P , October 17, 2017 at 5:42 am GMT
@Rurik

He has been set free by the truth, proving the old maxim.

wayfarer , October 17, 2017 at 5:43 am GMT
Understand a Spoiled Child, and You Will Understand Israel. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiled_child

Discipline the Spoiled Child, and Boycott Israel. source: https://bdsmovement.net/

Israel Anti-Boycott Act – An Attack on Free Speech?

Dan Hayes , October 17, 2017 at 5:48 am GMT
Philip,

My admittedly subjective impression is that your UR reports are becoming more open/unbounded after your release from the constraints of the American Conservative . In other word, you're now being enabled to let it all hang out. In my book that's all to the good.

Of course your work and those of the other UR writers are enabled by the beneficence of its patron, Ron!

Uebersetzer , October 17, 2017 at 6:14 am GMT
There may be limits to their power in Britain. Jeremy Corbyn is hated by them, and stories are regularly run in the MSM, in Britain and also (of course!) in the New York Times claiming that under Corbyn Labour is a haven of anti-Semitism. Corbyn actually gained millions of votes in the last election. Perhaps they will nail him somewhere down the road but they have failed so far.
JackOH , October 17, 2017 at 6:59 am GMT
" . . . [W]ars in the Middle East and North Africa that benefit only Israel and are, in fact, damaging to actual American interests (emphases mine).

That's the money shot, Phil. I'm okay with Jews, okay with the existence of Israel, all that, but I think we were massively had by Iraq II. When Valerie Plame spoke in my area, she talked disgustedly about a plan to establish American military power throughout the Middle East. She used the euphemism "neocons" for the plan's authors, and seemed about to burst with anger. I looked up the plan, but don't recall the catch phrase for it.

I recall the basic idea was for the U. S. to do Israel's dirty work at U. S. expense and without a U. S. benefit, and I think there was the usual "God talk" cover in it about "democratization", "development", blah-blah.

Cloak And Dagger , October 17, 2017 at 7:43 am GMT
I remain skeptical that the Al-Jazeera undercover story in the US will be able to be viewed. I anticipate a hoard of Israel-firster congress critters to crawl out from under their respective rocks and deem Al-Jazeera to be antisemitic and call for it being banned as a foreign propaganda apparatus, much as is being done with RT and Sputnik.

I fear that we are long past the point of being redeemed as a nation. We can only watch with sorrow as this great nation crumbles under the might of Jewish power – impotent in our ability to arrest its fall.

Mark James , October 17, 2017 at 9:32 am GMT
ask Congressmen like Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, William Fulbright, Charles Percy

I'd also add Adlai E. Stevenson III and John Glenn. Stevenson was crucial in getting compensation -- paltry sum though it was– payed to "Liberty" families for their loss. The Israelis had been holding out. Something for which the Il Senator was never forgiven (especially by The Lobby).

Netanyahu should not have been allowed to address the joint session. No foreign leader should be speaking in opposition to any sitting President (in this case Obama). It only showed the power of "The Lobby." Netanyahu who knew that Iran didn't have the weapons the Bush Adm. had claimed, was treated like a trusted ally. He shouldn't have been.

Kevin , October 17, 2017 at 9:37 am GMT
And the point is that while Israel calls the shots in terms of what it wants, it is a cabal of diaspora American Jews who actually pull the trigger. With that in mind, it will be very interesting to watch the al-Jazeera documentary on The Lobby in America.

Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though!

Tyrion , October 17, 2017 at 9:53 am GMT

And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less carried out in the open.

London's Mayor, Sadiq Khan, actually went to America to campaign for Hillary. Numerous European leaders endorsed her, while practically all denounced Trump. Exactly the same can be said of the Muslim world, only more so.

The problem with criticism of Israel is not that it lacks basis in truth. It is that it is removed from the context of the rest of the world. Israel's actions do not make Israel an outlier. Israel fits very much within the norm. Even with the recording this is the case.

All embassies try to further their national interest through political machinations and all people in politics tend to use hyperbolic language to describe what they are doing. I don't know if your shock is just for show or you are just a bit dim. The same applies to Buzzfeed's 'expose' of Bannon and the gasps the article let out at his use of terms like #War.

Unfortunately, contemporary idiots of all stripes seem to specialise in removing context so that they can further their specious arguments.

Randal , October 17, 2017 at 9:58 am GMT

"so I see no reason why the U.S. establishment won't take our findings in America as seriously as the British did"

Sadly, Clayton Swisher is probably correct that the US establishment will take their findings in America just as "seriously" as the British media and political establishment, and government, did.

The British government attitude was that everything was fine because the Israeli government "apologised" and the "rogue individual" responsible was taken out of the country, and the British media mostly ignored the story after an initial brief scandal. Indeed the main substantive response was the Ofcom fishing expedition against Al Jazeera looking for ways to use the disclosure of these uncomfortable truths as a pretext for shutting that company's operations down.

But there's no "undue influence" or bias involved, and if you say there might be then you are an anti-Semite and a hater.

The supreme irony behind all this is that Trump has been prevented by his own personal and family/adviser bias from using the one certain way of removing all the laughably vague "Russian influence" nonsense that has been used against him so persistently. All he had to do was to, at every opportunity, tie criticism and investigation of Russian "influence" to criticism and investigation of Israel Lobby influence under the general rubric of "foreign influence", and almost all of the high level backing for the charges would in due course have quietly evaporated.

geokat62 , October 17, 2017 at 9:59 am GMT
@Rurik

Philip Giraldi is a rare American treasure.

Rare, indeed, Rurik.

And in this rare company I would place former congressman, Ron Paul.

Here's an excerpt from his latest article, President Trump Beats War Drums for Iran :

Let's be clear here: President Trump did not just announce that he was "de-certifying" Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal. He announced that Iran was from now on going to be in the bullseye of the US military. Will Americans allow themselves to be lied into another Middle East war?

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/october/16/president-trump-beats-war-drums-for-iran/

animalogic , October 17, 2017 at 10:54 am GMT
This state of affairs, where the Zionist tail wags -- thrashes -- the US dog is bizarre to the point of laughter. Absent familiarity with the facts, who could believe it all? Is there a historical parallel ? I can't think of one that approaches the sheer profundity of the toxic embrace the Zionists have cover the US & west generally.
The Alarmist , October 17, 2017 at 11:01 am GMT
So how is using money we give them as foreign aid (it's fungible by any definition of the US Treasury and Justice Department) to lobby our legislators not a form of money laundering? Somebody ought to tell Mnuchin to get FINCEN on this yeah, I know, it sounded naive as I typed it. FINCEN is only there to harass little people like you and me.
Bardon Kaldian , October 17, 2017 at 11:05 am GMT
@googlecensors

Not true.

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:15 am GMT
@Malla

Abby Martin is amazingly sharp. Many of the things she says can be confirmed by Uri Avnery, both his books and articles.

Here's a link to his weekly columns.

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery

Incredible stuff there; thanks for posting it.

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:21 am GMT
@Malla

Our slave descendant will be scurrying around in their ghettos afraid of the Greater Israeli Army military andriod drones in the sky.

According to the first vid, those drones will be built by the goyim.

Maybe there's a message there for us.

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:32 am GMT
@Cloak And Dagger

I fear that we are long past the point of being redeemed as a nation. We can only watch with sorrow as this great nation crumbles

We are long past that point.

I myself am watching with joy, because this supposedly "great nation" was corrupt to the core from its inception.

For evidence, all one has to do is read the arguments of the anti-federalists who opposed the ratification of the constitution* such as Patrick Henry, Robert Yates and Luther Martin. Their predictions about the results have come true. Even the labels, "federalist" and "anti-federalist" are misleading and no doubt intentionally so.

Those who spoke out against the formation of the federal reserve bank* scheme were also correct.

The only thing great about the US in a moral sense are the high sounding pretenses upon which it was built. As a nation we have never adhered to them.

*Please note that I intentionally refrain from capitalizing those words since I refuse to show even that much deference to those instruments of corruption.

ISmellBagels , October 17, 2017 at 11:45 am GMT
Philip, glad to see you undaunted after the recent attacks on you. We can maybe take solace in the fact that their desire for MORE will finally pass a critical point, and dumbass Americans will finally wake up.
jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:47 am GMT

"She said that the Ofcom judgment would serve as a "precedent for the infringement of privacy of any Jewish person involved in public life."

I have news for that twister of words.

In my opinion, if you choose to put yourself in the limelight, you have no private life. That is especially true for those who think they're entitled to a position of power.

In other words, if you think you're special, then you get judged by stricter standards than the rest of us.

It's called accountability.

BTW, speaking of Netanyahu, why do we hear so little about the scandal involving the theft of nuclear triggers from the US?

"The Israeli press is picking up Grant Smith's revelation from FBI documents that Benjamin Netanyahu was part of an Israeli smuggling ring that spirited nuclear triggers out of the U.S. in the 80s and 90s."

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/netanyahu-implicated-in-nuclear-smuggling-from-u-s-big-story-in-israel.html

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:58 am GMT
Thank you Mr Giraldi. You covered an amazing number of issues in such a well written and compact article.

Thanks also to Mr Unz for publishing these sorts of things.

ISmellBagels , October 17, 2017 at 12:30 pm GMT
@jacques sheete

What she really meant by that was HOLOCAUST ALERT HOLOCAUST ALERT!!

Anon , Disclaimer October 17, 2017 at 12:42 pm GMT
@Malla

When you listen to Abby Martin describe her experience regarding this brutal apartheid system in Israel and the genocide of the Palestinian people, remember, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic , was a prison guard in the Israeli Defense Forces guarding the West Bank death camp. And David Brooks, political and cultural commentator for The New York Times and former op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal , has a son in the Israel Defense Forces helping to perpetuate this holocaust of the Palestinian people. I hope I live to see the day when some Palestinian Simon Wiesenthal hunts these monsters down and brings them to trial in The Hague.

iffen , October 17, 2017 at 12:47 pm GMT
NPR Morning Edition 10/17/17

Rachel Martin talks to Vahil Ali, the communications director for the Kurdish president.

In which she tries to steer him into calling for armed American intervention in Kurdistan to resist the Iranian sponsored militia.

LondonBob , October 17, 2017 at 12:58 pm GMT
The lobby is not as powerful in Britain as it is the US, we can talk about it and someone like Peter Oborne is still a prominent journalist, but I don't see that it makes that much difference. We seem to end up in the same places the US does.
Sherman , October 17, 2017 at 1:15 pm GMT
I had my meeting with the Rothschilds, Goldman Sachs and the Israeli Department of Hasbara last week and we discussed how our plan to suppress both the US and British governments is progressing.

Apparently we are meeting our targets and everything is going according to plan.

Thanks for update Phil!

ChuckOrloski , October 17, 2017 at 1:25 pm GMT
@geokat62

Hey geokat62,

Speaking about how greatly rare a treasure are the P.G.'s words, below is linked a deliberately rare letter written by Congressman Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of the AZC.

http://www.israellobby.org/azcdoj/congress/defaultZAC .

Also, re, "Will Americans allow themselves to be lied into another M.E. war?"

(Sigh)

History shows that, in order for ZUSA to start M.E. wars, Americans are routinely fed Executive Branch / Corporate Media-sauteed lies. Such deceit is par-for-the-course.

At present, it would be foolish for me to not realize there is a False Flag Pentagon plan "on the table" & ready for a war with Iran.

Jake , October 17, 2017 at 1:27 pm GMT
What is playing out in the UK, and is in early stages in America, is the fight between the two side of Victorian WASP pro-Semtiism.

WASP culture has always been philo-Semitic. That cannot be stated too much. WASP culture is inherently philo-Semtic. WASP culture was born of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, which was a Judaizing heresy. Judaizing heresy naturally and inevitably produces pro-Jewish culture. No less than Oliver Cromwell made the deal to get Jewish money so he could wage culture war to destroy British Isles natives were not WASPs.

WASP culture has always been allied with Jews to destroy white Christians who are not WASPs. You cannot solve 'the Jewish problem' unless you also solve 'the WASP problem.'

By the beginning of the Victorian era, virtually all WASP Elites in the Empire – who then had a truly globalist perspective – were divided into two pro-Semitic camps. The larger one was pro-Jewish. It would give the world the Balfour Declaration and the state of Israel.

The smaller and growing one was pro-Arabic and pro-Islamic. It would give the world the people who backed Lawrence of Arabia and came to prop up the House of Saud.

Each of these philo-Semitic WASP Elites groups was more than happy to keep the foot on the pedal to destroy non-WASP European cultures while spending fortunes propping up its favorite group of Semites.

And while each of those camps was thrilled to ally to keep up the war against historic Christendom and the peoples who naturally would gravitate to any hope of a revival of Christendom, they also squabbled endlessly. Each wished, and always will wish, to be the A-#1 pro-Semitic son of daddy WASP. Each will play any dirty trick, make any deal with the Devil himself, to get what he wants.

The Israeli lobby is more powerful throughout the Anglosphere than the Saudi/Arabic lobby, but the Saudi lobby is equally detestable and probably even a more grave threat to the very existence of Western man.

It is impossible to take care of a serious problem without knowing its source and acting to sanitize and/or cauterize and/or cut out that source. The source of this problem is WASP culture.

Michael Kenny , October 17, 2017 at 1:31 pm GMT
That the intelligence services of many countries engage in such conduct is not really news. Indeed, you could say that it's part of their normal job. They usually don't get caught and when accused of anything they shout "no evidence!" (now, where have I heard that recently?) Of course, if the Israelis engage in such conduct, then, logically, other countries' services do so too.

Thus, Mr Giraldi's argument lends credibility to the claims that Russia interfered in the US election and to the proposition that US intelligence agents are seeking to undermine the EU.

Since those two operations are part of the same transaction, i.e. maintain US global hegemony by breaking the EU up into its constituent Member States or even into the regional components of the larger Member States, using Putin as a battering ram and a bogeyman to frighten the resulting plethora of small and largely defenseless statelets back under cold war-era American protection, could it be that US and Russian intelligence services collaborated to manipulate Trump into the White House? If that were true, it would be quite a scandal! Overthrowing foreign governments is one thing, collaborating with a foreign power to manipulate your own country's politics is quite another! But of course, there's "no evidence"

Fran Macadam , Website October 17, 2017 at 1:32 pm GMT
Not surprising that the Jewish public gets gamed by Israeli political elites, just as the American public keeps getting gamed by our own cabal of bought politicians. Trying to fool enough of the people, enough of the time, contra Lincoln (who was not exactly a friend of critical dissent against war either .)
Anon , Disclaimer October 17, 2017 at 1:53 pm GMT
@wayfarer

Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed both local thieves and the CIA-Azerbaijan cooperation in supplying ISIS with arms:

https://www.rt.com/news/406963-assange-reward-caruana-galizia-death/ https://www.newsbud.com/2017/10/16/breaking-gladio-b-assassinates-journalist-with-car-bomb/

"Azerbaijan considers Malta to be "one of its provinces": https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2017/09/azerbaijan-considers-malta-one-provinces/
The Middle Eastern wars have repercussion .

[Oct 17, 2017] The Lobby British Style by Philip M. Giraldi

Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though!
Notable quotes:
"... casus belli ..."
"... To be sure, my observations are neither new nor unique. Former Congressmen Paul Findley indicted the careful crafting of a pro-Israel narrative by American Jews in his seminal book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby , written in 1989. Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy said much the same thing nine years ago and discussions of Jewish power do emerge occasionally, even in the mainstream media. In the Jewish media Jewish power is openly discussed and is generally applauded as a well-deserved reward bestowed both by God and by mankind due to the significant accomplishments attributed to Jews throughout history. ..."
"... That many groups and well-positioned individuals work hand-in-hand with the Israeli government to advance Israeli interests should not be in dispute after all these years of watching it in action. Several high level Jewish officials, including Richard Perle , associated with the George W. Bush Pentagon, had questionable relationships with Israeli Embassy officials and were only able to receive security clearances after political pressure was applied to "godfather" approvals for them. Former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, referred to as Israel's Congressman and Senator, while current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has described himself as Israel's "shomer" or guardian in the U.S. Senate. ..."
"... The documentary reveals that local Jewish groups, particularly at universities and within the political parties, do indeed work closely with the Israeli Embassy to promote policies supported by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ..."
"... That's the money shot, Phil. I'm okay with Jews, okay with the existence of Israel, all that, but I think we were massively had by Iraq II. When Valerie Plame spoke in my area, she talked disgustedly about a plan to establish American military power throughout the Middle East. She used the euphemism "neocons" for the plan's authors, and seemed about to burst with anger. ..."
"... I recall the basic idea was for the U. S. to do Israel's dirty work at U. S. expense and without a U. S. benefit, and I think there was the usual "God talk" cover in it about "democratization", "development", blah-blah. ..."
"... I'd also add Adlai E. Stevenson III and John Glenn. Stevenson was crucial in getting compensation -- paltry sum though it was– payed to "Liberty" families for their loss. The Israelis had been holding out. Something for which the Il Senator was never forgiven (especially by The Lobby). ..."
"... Netanyahu should not have been allowed to address the joint session. No foreign leader should be speaking in opposition to any sitting President (in this case Obama). It only showed the power of "The Lobby." Netanyahu who knew that Iran didn't have the weapons the Bush Adm. had claimed, was treated like a trusted ally. He shouldn't have been. ..."
"... Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though! ..."
"... And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less carried out in the open. ..."
"... All embassies try to further their national interest through political machinations and all people in politics tend to use hyperbolic language to describe what they are doing. I don't know if your shock is just for show or you are just a bit dim. The same applies to Buzzfeed's 'expose' of Bannon and the gasps the article let out at his use of terms like #War. ..."
"... The British government attitude was that everything was fine because the Israeli government "apologised" and the "rogue individual" responsible was taken out of the country, and the British media mostly ignored the story after an initial brief scandal. Indeed the main substantive response was the Ofcom fishing expedition against Al Jazeera looking for ways to use the disclosure of these uncomfortable truths as a pretext for shutting that company's operations down. ..."
"... The supreme irony behind all this is that Trump has been prevented by his own personal and family/adviser bias from using the one certain way of removing all the laughably vague "Russian influence" nonsense that has been used against him so persistently. All he had to do was to, at every opportunity, tie criticism and investigation of Russian "influence" to criticism and investigation of Israel Lobby influence under the general rubric of "foreign influence", and almost all of the high level backing for the charges would in due course have quietly evaporated. ..."
"... WASP culture has always been philo-Semitic. That cannot be stated too much. WASP culture is inherently philo-Semtic. WASP culture was born of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, which was a Judaizing heresy. ..."
"... You cannot solve 'the Jewish problem' unless you also solve 'the WASP problem.' ..."
"... The Israeli lobby is more powerful throughout the Anglosphere than the Saudi/Arabic lobby, but the Saudi lobby is equally detestable and probably even a more grave threat to the very existence of Western man. ..."
"... That the intelligence services of many countries engage in such conduct is not really news. Indeed, you could say that it's part of their normal job. They usually don't get caught and when accused of anything they shout "no evidence!" (now, where have I heard that recently?) Of course, if the Israelis engage in such conduct, then, logically, other countries' services do so too. ..."
"... Not surprising that the Jewish public gets gamed by Israeli political elites, just as the American public keeps getting gamed by our own cabal of bought politicians. Trying to fool enough of the people, enough of the time, contra Lincoln (who was not exactly a friend of critical dissent against war either .) ..."
Oct 17, 2017 | www.unz.com

One month ago, I initiated here at Unz.com a discussion of the role of American Jews in the crafting of United States foreign policy. I observed that a politically powerful and well-funded cabal consisting of both Jewish individuals and organizations has been effective at engaging the U.S. in a series of wars in the Middle East and North Africa that benefit only Israel and are, in fact, damaging to actual American interests. This misdirection of policy has not taken place because of some misguided belief that Israeli and U.S. national security interests are identical, which is a canard that is frequently floated in the mainstream media. It is instead a deliberate program that studiously misrepresents facts-on-the ground relating to Israel and its neighbors and creates casus belli involving the United States even when no threat to American vital interests exists. It punishes critics by damaging both their careers and reputations while its cynical manipulation of the media and gross corruption of the national political process has already produced the disastrous war against Iraq, the destruction of Libya and the ongoing chaos in Syria. It now threatens to initiate a catastrophic war with Iran.

To be sure, my observations are neither new nor unique. Former Congressmen Paul Findley indicted the careful crafting of a pro-Israel narrative by American Jews in his seminal book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby , written in 1989. Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy said much the same thing nine years ago and discussions of Jewish power do emerge occasionally, even in the mainstream media. In the Jewish media Jewish power is openly discussed and is generally applauded as a well-deserved reward bestowed both by God and by mankind due to the significant accomplishments attributed to Jews throughout history.

There is undeniably a complicated web of relationships and networks that define Israel's friends. The expression "Israel Lobby" itself has considerable currency, so much so that the expression "The Lobby" is widely used and understood to represent the most powerful foreign policy advocacy group in Washington without needing to include the "Israel" part. That the monstrous Benjamin Netanyahu receives 26 standing ovations from Congress and a wealthy Israel has a guaranteed income from the U.S. Treasury derives directly from the power and money of an easily identifiable cluster of groups and oligarchs – Paul Singer, Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus, Haim Saban – who in turn fund a plethora of foundations and institutes whose principal function is to keep the cash and political support flowing in Israel's direction. No American national interest, apart from the completely phony contention that Israel is some kind of valuable ally, would justify the taxpayers' largesse. In reality, Israel is a liability to the United States and always has been.

And I do understand at the same time that a clear majority of American Jews, leaning strongly towards the liberal side of the political spectrum, are supportive of the nuclear agreement with Iran and do not favor a new Middle Eastern war involving that country. I also believe that many American Jews are likely appalled by Israeli behavior, but, unfortunately, there is a tendency on their part to look the other way and neither protest such actions nor support groups like Jewish Voice for Peace that are themselves openly critical of Israel. This de facto gives Israel a free pass and validates its assertion that it represents all Jews since no one important in the diaspora community apart from minority groups which can safely be ignored is pushing back against that claim.

That many groups and well-positioned individuals work hand-in-hand with the Israeli government to advance Israeli interests should not be in dispute after all these years of watching it in action. Several high level Jewish officials, including Richard Perle , associated with the George W. Bush Pentagon, had questionable relationships with Israeli Embassy officials and were only able to receive security clearances after political pressure was applied to "godfather" approvals for them. Former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, referred to as Israel's Congressman and Senator, while current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has described himself as Israel's "shomer" or guardian in the U.S. Senate.

A recent regulatory decision from the United Kingdom relates to a bit of investigative journalism that sought to reveal precisely how the promotion of Israel by some local diaspora Jews operates, to include how critics are targeted and criticized as well as what is done to destroy their careers and reputations.

Last year, al-Jazeera Media Network used an undercover reporter to infiltrate some U.K. pro-Israel groups that were working closely with the Israeli Embassy to counter criticisms coming from British citizens regarding the treatment of the Palestinians. In particular, the Embassy and its friends were seeking to counter the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which has become increasingly effective in Europe. The four-part documentary released late in 2016 that al-Jazeera produced is well worth watching as it consists mostly of secretly filmed meetings and discussions.

The documentary reveals that local Jewish groups, particularly at universities and within the political parties, do indeed work closely with the Israeli Embassy to promote policies supported by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It also confirms that tagging someone as an anti-Semite has become the principal offensive weapon used to stifle any discussion, particularly in a country like Britain which embraces concepts like the criminalization of "hate speech." At one point, two British Jews discussed whether "being made to feel uncomfortable" by people asking what Israel intends to do with the Palestinians is anti-Semitic. They agreed that it might be.

The documentary also describes how the Embassy and local groups working together targeted government officials who were not considered to be friendly to Israel to "be taken down," removed from office or otherwise discredited. One government official in particular who was to be attacked was Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan.

Britain, unlike the U.S., has a powerful regulatory agency that oversees communications, to include the media. It is referred to as Ofcom. When the al-Jazeera documentary was broadcast, Israeli Embassy political officer Shai Masot, who reportedly was a Ministry of Strategic Affairs official working under cover, was forced to resign and the Israeli Ambassador offered an apology. Masot was filmed discussing British politicians who might be "taken down" before speaking with a government official who plotted a "a little scandal" to bring about the downfall of Duncan. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is the first head of a political party in Britain to express pro-Palestinian views, had called for an investigation of Masot after the recording of the "take down" demand relating to Duncan was revealed. Several Jewish groups (the Jewish Labour Movement, the Union of Jewish Students and We Believe in Israel) then counterattacked with a complaint that the documentary had violated British broadcast regulations, including the specific charge that the undercover investigation was anti-Semitic in nature.

On October 9 th , Ofcom ruled in favor of al-Jazeera, stating that its investigation had done nothing improper, but it should be noted that the media outlet had to jump through numerous hoops to arrive at the successful conclusion. It had to turn over all its raw footage and communications to the investigators, undergoing what one source described as an "editorial colonoscopy," to prove that its documentary was "factually accurate" and that it had not "unfairly edited" or "with bias" prepared its story. One of plaintiffs, who had called for critics of Israel to "die in a hole" and had personally offered to "take down" a Labour Party official, responded bitterly. She said that the Ofcom judgment would serve as a "precedent for the infringement of privacy of any Jewish person involved in public life."

The United States does not yet have a government agency to regulate news stories, though that may be coming, but the British tale has an interesting post script. Al-Jazeera also had a second undercover reporter inserted in the Israel Lobby in the United States, apparently a British intern named James Anthony Kleinfeld, who had volunteered his services to The Israel Project, which is involved in promoting Israel's global image. He also had contact with at least ten other Jewish organizations and with officials at the Israeli Embassy,

Now that the British account of "The Lobby" has cleared a regulatory hurdle the American version will reportedly soon be released. Al-Jazeera's head of investigative reporting Clayton Swisher commented "With this U.K. verdict and vindication past us, we can soon reveal how the Israel lobby in America works through the eyes of an undercover reporter. I hear the U.S. is having problems with foreign interference these days, so I see no reason why the U.S. establishment won't take our findings in America as seriously as the British did, unless of course Israel is somehow off limits from that debate."

Americans who follow such matters already know that groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) swarm over Capitol Hill and have accomplices in nearly every media outlet. Back in 2005-6 AIPAC Officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman were actually tried under the Espionage Act of 1918 in a case involving obtaining classified intelligence from government official Lawrence Franklin to pass on to the Israeli Embassy. Rosen had once boasted that, representing AIPAC and Israel, he could get the signatures of 70 senators on a napkin agreeing to anything if he sought to do so. The charges against the two men were, unfortunately, eventually dropped "because court rulings had made the case unwinnable and the trial would disclose classified information."

And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less carried out in the open. And ask Congressmen like Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, William Fulbright, Charles Percy and, most recently, Cynthia McKinney, what happens to your career when you appear to be critical of Israel. And the point is that while Israel calls the shots in terms of what it wants, it is a cabal of diaspora American Jews who actually pull the trigger. With that in mind, it will be very interesting to watch the al-Jazeera documentary on The Lobby in America.

Rurik , October 17, 2017 at 4:29 am GMT

Philip Giraldi is a rare American treasure. A voice of integrity and character in a sea of moral cowardice and corruption. If there is any hope for this nation, it will be due specifically to the integrity of men like Mr. Giraldi to keep speaking truth to power.
googlecensors , October 17, 2017 at 5:00 am GMT
One is unable to open the documentary – all 4 parts – on YouTube suggesting that google/YouTube are censoring it and have caved into the Jewish Lobby
Malla , October 17, 2017 at 5:03 am GMT
When the Jewish Messiah comes, all of us goyim (Black, White, Yellow, brown or Red) will be living like today's Palestinians. Our slave descendant will be scurrying around in their ghettos afraid of the Greater Israeli Army military andriod drones in the sky.

But if I was a Westerner, I would support Israel any day. Because if the Israeli state were to be ever dismantled, all of them Israelis would go to the West. Why would you want that?

Frankie P , October 17, 2017 at 5:42 am GMT
@Rurik

He has been set free by the truth, proving the old maxim.

wayfarer , October 17, 2017 at 5:43 am GMT
Understand a Spoiled Child, and You Will Understand Israel. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiled_child

Discipline the Spoiled Child, and Boycott Israel. source: https://bdsmovement.net/

Israel Anti-Boycott Act – An Attack on Free Speech?

Dan Hayes , October 17, 2017 at 5:48 am GMT
Philip,

My admittedly subjective impression is that your UR reports are becoming more open/unbounded after your release from the constraints of the American Conservative . In other word, you're now being enabled to let it all hang out. In my book that's all to the good.

Of course your work and those of the other UR writers are enabled by the beneficence of its patron, Ron!

Uebersetzer , October 17, 2017 at 6:14 am GMT
There may be limits to their power in Britain. Jeremy Corbyn is hated by them, and stories are regularly run in the MSM, in Britain and also (of course!) in the New York Times claiming that under Corbyn Labour is a haven of anti-Semitism. Corbyn actually gained millions of votes in the last election. Perhaps they will nail him somewhere down the road but they have failed so far.
JackOH , October 17, 2017 at 6:59 am GMT
" . . . [W]ars in the Middle East and North Africa that benefit only Israel and are, in fact, damaging to actual American interests (emphases mine).

That's the money shot, Phil. I'm okay with Jews, okay with the existence of Israel, all that, but I think we were massively had by Iraq II. When Valerie Plame spoke in my area, she talked disgustedly about a plan to establish American military power throughout the Middle East. She used the euphemism "neocons" for the plan's authors, and seemed about to burst with anger. I looked up the plan, but don't recall the catch phrase for it.

I recall the basic idea was for the U. S. to do Israel's dirty work at U. S. expense and without a U. S. benefit, and I think there was the usual "God talk" cover in it about "democratization", "development", blah-blah.

Cloak And Dagger , October 17, 2017 at 7:43 am GMT
I remain skeptical that the Al-Jazeera undercover story in the US will be able to be viewed. I anticipate a hoard of Israel-firster congress critters to crawl out from under their respective rocks and deem Al-Jazeera to be antisemitic and call for it being banned as a foreign propaganda apparatus, much as is being done with RT and Sputnik.

I fear that we are long past the point of being redeemed as a nation. We can only watch with sorrow as this great nation crumbles under the might of Jewish power – impotent in our ability to arrest its fall.

Mark James , October 17, 2017 at 9:32 am GMT
ask Congressmen like Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, William Fulbright, Charles Percy

I'd also add Adlai E. Stevenson III and John Glenn. Stevenson was crucial in getting compensation -- paltry sum though it was– payed to "Liberty" families for their loss. The Israelis had been holding out. Something for which the Il Senator was never forgiven (especially by The Lobby).

Netanyahu should not have been allowed to address the joint session. No foreign leader should be speaking in opposition to any sitting President (in this case Obama). It only showed the power of "The Lobby." Netanyahu who knew that Iran didn't have the weapons the Bush Adm. had claimed, was treated like a trusted ally. He shouldn't have been.

Kevin , October 17, 2017 at 9:37 am GMT
And the point is that while Israel calls the shots in terms of what it wants, it is a cabal of diaspora American Jews who actually pull the trigger. With that in mind, it will be very interesting to watch the al-Jazeera documentary on The Lobby in America.

Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though!

Tyrion , October 17, 2017 at 9:53 am GMT

And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less carried out in the open.

London's Mayor, Sadiq Khan, actually went to America to campaign for Hillary. Numerous European leaders endorsed her, while practically all denounced Trump. Exactly the same can be said of the Muslim world, only more so.

The problem with criticism of Israel is not that it lacks basis in truth. It is that it is removed from the context of the rest of the world. Israel's actions do not make Israel an outlier. Israel fits very much within the norm. Even with the recording this is the case.

All embassies try to further their national interest through political machinations and all people in politics tend to use hyperbolic language to describe what they are doing. I don't know if your shock is just for show or you are just a bit dim. The same applies to Buzzfeed's 'expose' of Bannon and the gasps the article let out at his use of terms like #War.

Unfortunately, contemporary idiots of all stripes seem to specialise in removing context so that they can further their specious arguments.

Randal , October 17, 2017 at 9:58 am GMT

"so I see no reason why the U.S. establishment won't take our findings in America as seriously as the British did"

Sadly, Clayton Swisher is probably correct that the US establishment will take their findings in America just as "seriously" as the British media and political establishment, and government, did.

The British government attitude was that everything was fine because the Israeli government "apologised" and the "rogue individual" responsible was taken out of the country, and the British media mostly ignored the story after an initial brief scandal. Indeed the main substantive response was the Ofcom fishing expedition against Al Jazeera looking for ways to use the disclosure of these uncomfortable truths as a pretext for shutting that company's operations down.

But there's no "undue influence" or bias involved, and if you say there might be then you are an anti-Semite and a hater.

The supreme irony behind all this is that Trump has been prevented by his own personal and family/adviser bias from using the one certain way of removing all the laughably vague "Russian influence" nonsense that has been used against him so persistently. All he had to do was to, at every opportunity, tie criticism and investigation of Russian "influence" to criticism and investigation of Israel Lobby influence under the general rubric of "foreign influence", and almost all of the high level backing for the charges would in due course have quietly evaporated.

geokat62 , October 17, 2017 at 9:59 am GMT
@Rurik

Philip Giraldi is a rare American treasure.

Rare, indeed, Rurik.

And in this rare company I would place former congressman, Ron Paul.

Here's an excerpt from his latest article, President Trump Beats War Drums for Iran :

Let's be clear here: President Trump did not just announce that he was "de-certifying" Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal. He announced that Iran was from now on going to be in the bullseye of the US military. Will Americans allow themselves to be lied into another Middle East war?

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/october/16/president-trump-beats-war-drums-for-iran/

animalogic , October 17, 2017 at 10:54 am GMT
This state of affairs, where the Zionist tail wags -- thrashes -- the US dog is bizarre to the point of laughter. Absent familiarity with the facts, who could believe it all? Is there a historical parallel ? I can't think of one that approaches the sheer profundity of the toxic embrace the Zionists have cover the US & west generally.
The Alarmist , October 17, 2017 at 11:01 am GMT
So how is using money we give them as foreign aid (it's fungible by any definition of the US Treasury and Justice Department) to lobby our legislators not a form of money laundering? Somebody ought to tell Mnuchin to get FINCEN on this yeah, I know, it sounded naive as I typed it. FINCEN is only there to harass little people like you and me.
Bardon Kaldian , October 17, 2017 at 11:05 am GMT
@googlecensors

Not true.

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:15 am GMT
@Malla

Abby Martin is amazingly sharp. Many of the things she says can be confirmed by Uri Avnery, both his books and articles.

Here's a link to his weekly columns.

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery

Incredible stuff there; thanks for posting it.

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:21 am GMT
@Malla

Our slave descendant will be scurrying around in their ghettos afraid of the Greater Israeli Army military andriod drones in the sky.

According to the first vid, those drones will be built by the goyim.

Maybe there's a message there for us.

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:32 am GMT
@Cloak And Dagger

I fear that we are long past the point of being redeemed as a nation. We can only watch with sorrow as this great nation crumbles

We are long past that point.

I myself am watching with joy, because this supposedly "great nation" was corrupt to the core from its inception.

For evidence, all one has to do is read the arguments of the anti-federalists who opposed the ratification of the constitution* such as Patrick Henry, Robert Yates and Luther Martin. Their predictions about the results have come true. Even the labels, "federalist" and "anti-federalist" are misleading and no doubt intentionally so.

Those who spoke out against the formation of the federal reserve bank* scheme were also correct.

The only thing great about the US in a moral sense are the high sounding pretenses upon which it was built. As a nation we have never adhered to them.

*Please note that I intentionally refrain from capitalizing those words since I refuse to show even that much deference to those instruments of corruption.

ISmellBagels , October 17, 2017 at 11:45 am GMT
Philip, glad to see you undaunted after the recent attacks on you. We can maybe take solace in the fact that their desire for MORE will finally pass a critical point, and dumbass Americans will finally wake up.
jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:47 am GMT

"She said that the Ofcom judgment would serve as a "precedent for the infringement of privacy of any Jewish person involved in public life."

I have news for that twister of words.

In my opinion, if you choose to put yourself in the limelight, you have no private life. That is especially true for those who think they're entitled to a position of power.

In other words, if you think you're special, then you get judged by stricter standards than the rest of us.

It's called accountability.

BTW, speaking of Netanyahu, why do we hear so little about the scandal involving the theft of nuclear triggers from the US?

"The Israeli press is picking up Grant Smith's revelation from FBI documents that Benjamin Netanyahu was part of an Israeli smuggling ring that spirited nuclear triggers out of the U.S. in the 80s and 90s."

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/netanyahu-implicated-in-nuclear-smuggling-from-u-s-big-story-in-israel.html

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:58 am GMT
Thank you Mr Giraldi. You covered an amazing number of issues in such a well written and compact article.

Thanks also to Mr Unz for publishing these sorts of things.

ISmellBagels , October 17, 2017 at 12:30 pm GMT
@jacques sheete

What she really meant by that was HOLOCAUST ALERT HOLOCAUST ALERT!!

Anon , Disclaimer October 17, 2017 at 12:42 pm GMT
@Malla

When you listen to Abby Martin describe her experience regarding this brutal apartheid system in Israel and the genocide of the Palestinian people, remember, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic , was a prison guard in the Israeli Defense Forces guarding the West Bank death camp. And David Brooks, political and cultural commentator for The New York Times and former op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal , has a son in the Israel Defense Forces helping to perpetuate this holocaust of the Palestinian people. I hope I live to see the day when some Palestinian Simon Wiesenthal hunts these monsters down and brings them to trial in The Hague.

iffen , October 17, 2017 at 12:47 pm GMT
NPR Morning Edition 10/17/17

Rachel Martin talks to Vahil Ali, the communications director for the Kurdish president.

In which she tries to steer him into calling for armed American intervention in Kurdistan to resist the Iranian sponsored militia.

LondonBob , October 17, 2017 at 12:58 pm GMT
The lobby is not as powerful in Britain as it is the US, we can talk about it and someone like Peter Oborne is still a prominent journalist, but I don't see that it makes that much difference. We seem to end up in the same places the US does.
Sherman , October 17, 2017 at 1:15 pm GMT
I had my meeting with the Rothschilds, Goldman Sachs and the Israeli Department of Hasbara last week and we discussed how our plan to suppress both the US and British governments is progressing.

Apparently we are meeting our targets and everything is going according to plan.

Thanks for update Phil!

ChuckOrloski , October 17, 2017 at 1:25 pm GMT
@geokat62

Hey geokat62,

Speaking about how greatly rare a treasure are the P.G.'s words, below is linked a deliberately rare letter written by Congressman Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of the AZC.

http://www.israellobby.org/azcdoj/congress/defaultZAC .

Also, re, "Will Americans allow themselves to be lied into another M.E. war?"

(Sigh)

History shows that, in order for ZUSA to start M.E. wars, Americans are routinely fed Executive Branch / Corporate Media-sauteed lies. Such deceit is par-for-the-course.

At present, it would be foolish for me to not realize there is a False Flag Pentagon plan "on the table" & ready for a war with Iran.

Jake , October 17, 2017 at 1:27 pm GMT
What is playing out in the UK, and is in early stages in America, is the fight between the two side of Victorian WASP pro-Semtiism.

WASP culture has always been philo-Semitic. That cannot be stated too much. WASP culture is inherently philo-Semtic. WASP culture was born of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, which was a Judaizing heresy. Judaizing heresy naturally and inevitably produces pro-Jewish culture. No less than Oliver Cromwell made the deal to get Jewish money so he could wage culture war to destroy British Isles natives were not WASPs.

WASP culture has always been allied with Jews to destroy white Christians who are not WASPs. You cannot solve 'the Jewish problem' unless you also solve 'the WASP problem.'

By the beginning of the Victorian era, virtually all WASP Elites in the Empire – who then had a truly globalist perspective – were divided into two pro-Semitic camps. The larger one was pro-Jewish. It would give the world the Balfour Declaration and the state of Israel.

The smaller and growing one was pro-Arabic and pro-Islamic. It would give the world the people who backed Lawrence of Arabia and came to prop up the House of Saud.

Each of these philo-Semitic WASP Elites groups was more than happy to keep the foot on the pedal to destroy non-WASP European cultures while spending fortunes propping up its favorite group of Semites.

And while each of those camps was thrilled to ally to keep up the war against historic Christendom and the peoples who naturally would gravitate to any hope of a revival of Christendom, they also squabbled endlessly. Each wished, and always will wish, to be the A-#1 pro-Semitic son of daddy WASP. Each will play any dirty trick, make any deal with the Devil himself, to get what he wants.

The Israeli lobby is more powerful throughout the Anglosphere than the Saudi/Arabic lobby, but the Saudi lobby is equally detestable and probably even a more grave threat to the very existence of Western man.

It is impossible to take care of a serious problem without knowing its source and acting to sanitize and/or cauterize and/or cut out that source. The source of this problem is WASP culture.

Michael Kenny , October 17, 2017 at 1:31 pm GMT
That the intelligence services of many countries engage in such conduct is not really news. Indeed, you could say that it's part of their normal job. They usually don't get caught and when accused of anything they shout "no evidence!" (now, where have I heard that recently?) Of course, if the Israelis engage in such conduct, then, logically, other countries' services do so too.

Thus, Mr Giraldi's argument lends credibility to the claims that Russia interfered in the US election and to the proposition that US intelligence agents are seeking to undermine the EU.

Since those two operations are part of the same transaction, i.e. maintain US global hegemony by breaking the EU up into its constituent Member States or even into the regional components of the larger Member States, using Putin as a battering ram and a bogeyman to frighten the resulting plethora of small and largely defenseless statelets back under cold war-era American protection, could it be that US and Russian intelligence services collaborated to manipulate Trump into the White House? If that were true, it would be quite a scandal! Overthrowing foreign governments is one thing, collaborating with a foreign power to manipulate your own country's politics is quite another! But of course, there's "no evidence"

Fran Macadam , Website October 17, 2017 at 1:32 pm GMT
Not surprising that the Jewish public gets gamed by Israeli political elites, just as the American public keeps getting gamed by our own cabal of bought politicians. Trying to fool enough of the people, enough of the time, contra Lincoln (who was not exactly a friend of critical dissent against war either .)
Anon , Disclaimer October 17, 2017 at 1:53 pm GMT
@wayfarer

Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed both local thieves and the CIA-Azerbaijan cooperation in supplying ISIS with arms:

https://www.rt.com/news/406963-assange-reward-caruana-galizia-death/ https://www.newsbud.com/2017/10/16/breaking-gladio-b-assassinates-journalist-with-car-bomb/

"Azerbaijan considers Malta to be "one of its provinces": https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2017/09/azerbaijan-considers-malta-one-provinces/
The Middle Eastern wars have repercussion .

[Oct 17, 2017] Trump Decertifies Iran Deal, Vows New Sanctions by Jason Ditz

The immediate costs of decertification for the USl include the loss of the trust of allies, increased tensions with Iran, and much greater skepticism from all other governments. It also create additional difficulties the next time America wants to negotiate a major international agreement as some countries will view the USA as a rogue nation which is unable to keep its word. If decertification leads to the U.S. breaching its obligations under the nuclear deal, as seems likely, that the costs will increase even more, and so will the chances of war with Iran.
It might well be that Trump made a step increasing the probability of his removal from the current position by cabinet members.
Looks like Trump focus on appeasing a bunch of foreigners in the form of the Israel and Saudi lobbies.
Pretty damn grim.
Oct 13, 2017 | news.antiwar.com

President Trump started his long-anticipated anti-Iran speech by complaining about the 1979 hostage situation. What followed was an increasingly fantastical and absurd accounting of Iran's history, before finally announcing he is decertifying the nuclear deal for "violations," and announcing new sanctions.

The allegations against Iran went from things that happened a generation ago to treating things like the specious "Iranian plot" to attack a DC restaurant as not only the government's fault, but absolute established fact. Beyond that, he blamed Iran for the ISIS wars in Iraq and Syria, repeatedly accused them of supporting al-Qaeda, and claimed Iran was supporting the 9/11 attackers.

The allegations were so far-fetched by the end, that even President Trump appeared cognizant that many won't be taken seriously. Later in his speech, he insisted that the claims were "factual."

When addressing "violations" of the P5+1 nuclear deal, Trump similarly played fast and loose with the facts, citing heavy water claims that are really more the international community's violation than Iran's (Iran was guaranteed an international market for the water, but after Congress got mad the US has refused to buy any more, meaning Iran's totally non-dangerous stock grew), and accusing them of "intimidating" inspectors, insinuating that was the reason there aren't investigations at Iranian military sites.

In reality, Iranian military sites are only subject to investigation in the case of a substantiated suspicion of nuclear activities, and there simply are none. The IAEA has in recent days clarified multiple times that they don't need or want to visit any military sites right now. The only allegations about the sites are from the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which has been the source of repeated false accusations in the past.

And while this was supposed to be a speech about the nuclear deal, Trump closed it off with comments that very much sound like his goal is regime change, saying Iran's people want to be able to interact with their neighbors (despite Iran being on very good terms with most of its neighbors already), and suggesting that whatever he's going to do will lead to "peace and stability" across the Middle East.

[Oct 16, 2017] Don't Be Afraid of Steve Bannon by David Atkins

Economic nationalism in key ideas is close to Mussolini version of corporatism. It is about the alliance of state with large corporation but of less favorable to large corporations terms then under neoliberalism, which is a flavor of corporatism as well, but extremely favorable to the interests of transactionals.
So grossly simplifying, this is Mussolini version of corporatism (Make Italy Great Again), minus foreign wars, minus ethnic component (replacing it with more modern "cultural nationalism" agenda).
Bannon is definitely overrated. It is jobs that matter and he has no real plan. Relying on tax cutting and deregulation is not a plan. In this sense, yes, he is a paper tiger. And not a real nationalist, but some kind of castrated variety.
One thing that plays into Bannon hands in the DemoRats (neoliberal Democrats led by Hillary Clinton) were completely discredited during the last elections.
Notable quotes:
"... But his statements show that it's all bluster and no real strategy. Democrats seem poised to take back Congress precisely because of Republican extremism, not because institutional Republicans are inadequately racist and nationalist. ..."
"... Like Karl Rove before him, Steven Bannon is a paper tiger. ..."
Oct 16, 2017 | washingtonmonthly.com

There is a tendency on the left to overestimate the abilities of conservative campaign gurus and spinmeisters after a bitter defeat. In the aughts, Karl Rove was seen as the Svengali mastermind of Republican politics, a nefarious force smarter and more cunning than all the left's braintrust put together. It turned out not to be true. Karl Rove didn't have "the math" and never really did: Rove mostly got lucky by a combination of butterfly ballots in Florida, and happening to hold power during a terrorist attack that saw Democrats cowed into submission rather than holding the president and his team accountable for their failure to protect the country.

Steve Bannon is taking on a similar mystique for some. But Bannon is no more special than Rove...

... ... ...

Bannon is going to war " with the GOP establishment, even going so far as to countermand Trump's own endorsement in the Alabama Senate race and force the president to back a loser.

But his statements show that it's all bluster and no real strategy. Democrats seem poised to take back Congress precisely because of Republican extremism, not because institutional Republicans are inadequately racist and nationalist.

And his prediction to the Values Voter Summit that Trump will win 400 electoral votes in 2020 is simply preposterous on its face. It's no better than even odds that Trump will even finish out his term, much less sweep to a Reaganesque landslide in three years. During the same speech, Bannon quipped a line destined to be fodder for the inevitable 2018 campaign commercials accusing Trump of actively blowing up the ACA exchanges and driving up premiums in a bid to kill the program.

Like Karl Rove before him, Steven Bannon is a paper tiger. Democrats need only muster courage, conviction and hard work to teach him the same lesson they taught Rove in 2006.

David Atkins is a writer, activist and research professional living in Santa Barbara. He is a contributor to the Washington Monthly's Political Animal and president of The Pollux Group, a qualitative research firm.

[Oct 16, 2017] Trump Looks Set to Start Blowing Up the Iran Deal by Eli Clifton

Notable quotes:
"... Despite the potential pitfalls of Cotton and Netanyahu's plan, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley embraced the approach. Haley, a possible replacement for embattled Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, tweeted yesterday, "[Sen. Tom Cotton] has clear understanding of the Iranian regime & flaws in the nuclear deal. His [CFR] speech is worth reading." ..."
"... The United States must cease all appeasement, conciliation, and concessions towards Iran, starting with the sham nuclear negotiations. Certain voices call for congressional restraint, urging Congress not to act now lest Iran walk away from the negotiating table, undermining the fabled yet always absent moderates in Iran. But, the end of these negotiations isn't an unintended consequence of Congressional action, it is very much an intended consequence. A feature, not a bug, so to speak." ..."
"... Any agreement that advances our interests must by necessity compromise Iran's -- doubly so since they are a third-rate power, far from an equal to the United States. The ayatollahs shouldn't be happy with any deal; they should've felt compelled to accept a deal of our choosing lest they face economic devastation and military destruction of their nuclear infrastructure. That Iran welcomes this agreement is both troubling and telling. ..."
"... Ben Armbruster, writing for LobeLog last week, detailed the ways in which Mark Dubowitz , CEO of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies , pushes for a so-called "better deal" while explicitly calling for regime change in Tehran. ..."
"... But perhaps a bigger pressure on Trump to de-certify comes from three of his biggest political donors : Sheldon Adelson , Paul Singer , and Bernard Marcus . All three have funded groups that sought to thwart the negotiations leading to the JCPOA, including Dubowitz's FDD, and have given generously to Trump. ..."
"... Adelson has also financed Israel's largest circulation daily newspaper, whose support for Netanyahu and his right-wing government earned it the nickname "Bibiton." ..."
Oct 16, 2017 | fpif.org

The Post credits Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) with this "fix it or nix it" approach to U.S. compliance with the JCPOA. Indeed, Cotton laid out essentially this very strategy in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in which he proposed that the president should decertify Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal based on Iran's actions in unrelated areas and toughen key components of the agreement, arguing that the deal fails to serve U.S. national security interests.

This plan has a low likelihood of success because Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif says that the JCPOA will not be renegotiated and European governments have urged Trump to stick with the pact.

Despite the potential pitfalls of Cotton and Netanyahu's plan, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley embraced the approach. Haley, a possible replacement for embattled Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, tweeted yesterday, "[Sen. Tom Cotton] has clear understanding of the Iranian regime & flaws in the nuclear deal. His [CFR] speech is worth reading."

But Cotton has been clear that renegotiating the nuclear deal isn't his actual intention. In 2015, he made no secret of his desire to blow up diplomacy with Iran, saying :

The United States must cease all appeasement, conciliation, and concessions towards Iran, starting with the sham nuclear negotiations. Certain voices call for congressional restraint, urging Congress not to act now lest Iran walk away from the negotiating table, undermining the fabled yet always absent moderates in Iran. But, the end of these negotiations isn't an unintended consequence of Congressional action, it is very much an intended consequence. A feature, not a bug, so to speak."

Later that same year, Cotton explained his terms for any agreement with Iran, qualities that more closely resemble a surrender document than anything the Iranians would agree to in a negotiation. Cotton said :

Any agreement that advances our interests must by necessity compromise Iran's -- doubly so since they are a third-rate power, far from an equal to the United States. The ayatollahs shouldn't be happy with any deal; they should've felt compelled to accept a deal of our choosing lest they face economic devastation and military destruction of their nuclear infrastructure. That Iran welcomes this agreement is both troubling and telling.

Indeed, Cotton and his fellow proponents of the president de-certifying Iranian compliance, despite all indications that Iran is complying with the JCPOA, have a not-so-thinly-veiled goal of regime change in Tehran, a position in which the JCPOA and any negotiations with Iran pose a serious threat. Ben Armbruster, writing for LobeLog last week, detailed the ways in which Mark Dubowitz , CEO of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies , pushes for a so-called "better deal" while explicitly calling for regime change in Tehran.

But perhaps a bigger pressure on Trump to de-certify comes from three of his biggest political donors : Sheldon Adelson , Paul Singer , and Bernard Marcus . All three have funded groups that sought to thwart the negotiations leading to the JCPOA, including Dubowitz's FDD, and have given generously to Trump.

"I think that Iran is the devil," said Marcus in a 2015 Fox Business interview . Adelson told a Yeshiva University audience in 2013 that U.S. negotiators should launch a nuclear weapon at Iran as a negotiating tactic. Adelson may hold radical views about the prudence of a nuclear attack on Iran, but he appears to enjoy easy access to Trump. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who were Trump's biggest financial supporters by far during his presidential run, met with the president at Adelson's headquarters in Las Vegas recently, ostensibly to discuss the recent mass shooting there.

But Andy Abboud, senior vice president Government Relations for Adelson's Sands Corporation, told the Adelson-owned Las Vegas Review Journal that the meeting was "pre-arranged and set to discuss policy," according to the paper .

Adelson has also financed Israel's largest circulation daily newspaper, whose support for Netanyahu and his right-wing government earned it the nickname "Bibiton."

Eli Clifton reports on money in politics and U.S. foreign policy. He's previously reported for the American Independent News Network, ThinkProgress, and Inter Press Service.

[Oct 16, 2017] Intelligence Assessment of Russian Hacking or Collusion by Mike Whitney

Notable quotes:
"... If the Senate can 'assess,' so can I! I assess that Hollywood hottie Jenifer Lawrence is secretly in love with me! Although I can't prove this, all of my assessments point to this as being fact. ..."
Oct 14, 2017 | www.unz.com

Greg Bacon, Website October 14, 2017 at 9:59 am GMT

If the Senate can 'assess,' so can I! I assess that Hollywood hottie Jenifer Lawrence is secretly in love with me! Although I can't prove this, all of my assessments point to this as being fact.

liveload , October 13, 2017 7:07 PM

It just occurred to me that the perfect Halloween decoration this year would be a Russian flag. That is, unless someone comes out with a Zombie Putin, or Dracula Putin...

[Oct 16, 2017] Instead of blaming herself for selling herself to Wall Street and converting into yet another warmonger Hillary is still acusing the Kremlin. What a pathetic loser

It is so convenient to blame Russians ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... "We know Russian agents used Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and even Pinterest to place targeted attack ads and negative stories intended not to hurt just me but to fan the flames of division in our society. Russians posed as Americans pretending to be LGBT and gun rights activists, even Muslims, saying things they knew would cause distress." ..."
"... She said some of the basics of the Russian interference in the 2016 election had been known, but "we were in the dark about the weaponisation of social media". She cited new research from Columbia University showing that attack ads on Facebook paid for in roubles were seen by 10 million people in crucial swing states and had been shared up to 340m times. ..."
"... Clinton said the matter of whether Trump's campaign cooperated with Russian interference was a subject for congressional investigation. But she called for anyone found guilty of such cooperation with Moscow to be subject to civil and criminal law. "The Russians are still playing on anything and everything they can to turn Americans against each other," she said. ..."
"... "In addition to hacking our elections, they are hacking our discourse and our unity. We are in the middle of a global struggle between liberal democracy and a rising tide of illiberalism and authoritarianism. This is a kind of new cold war and it is just getting starting." ..."
Oct 16, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

Originally from: Cyber cold war is just getting started, claims Hillary Clinton

This power hungry woman are just plain vanilla incompetent: "The Russian campaign was leading to nationalism in Europe, democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland, and a loss of faith in democracy, she said."

Democrats had urged her to be silent after her defeat to Trump but she was not going to go away, said Clinton. She vowed to play her part in an attempt to win back Democratic seats in the forthcoming midterm elections. She admitted she "just collapsed with real grief and disappointment" after her election defeat.

Clinton, who is touring the country to promote What Happened – her memoir reflecting on the election defeat, told the BBC's Andrew Marr: "Looking at the Brexit vote now, it was a precursor to some extent of what happened to us in the United States."

She decried the amount of fabricated information voters were given: "You know, the big lie is a very potent tool and we've somewhat kept it at bay in western democracies, partly because of the freedom of the press. There has to be some basic level of fact and evidence in all parts of our society."

She urged Britain to be cautious about striking a trade deal with Trump, saying he did not believe in free trade.

In other comments during the Cheltenham literary festival, she accused the Kremlin of waging an information war throughout the 2016 US election process. The tactics "were a clear and present danger to western democracy and it is right out of the Putin playbook", she said.

"We know Russian agents used Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and even Pinterest to place targeted attack ads and negative stories intended not to hurt just me but to fan the flames of division in our society. Russians posed as Americans pretending to be LGBT and gun rights activists, even Muslims, saying things they knew would cause distress."

She said some of the basics of the Russian interference in the 2016 election had been known, but "we were in the dark about the weaponisation of social media". She cited new research from Columbia University showing that attack ads on Facebook paid for in roubles were seen by 10 million people in crucial swing states and had been shared up to 340m times.

Clinton said the matter of whether Trump's campaign cooperated with Russian interference was a subject for congressional investigation. But she called for anyone found guilty of such cooperation with Moscow to be subject to civil and criminal law. "The Russians are still playing on anything and everything they can to turn Americans against each other," she said.

"In addition to hacking our elections, they are hacking our discourse and our unity. We are in the middle of a global struggle between liberal democracy and a rising tide of illiberalism and authoritarianism. This is a kind of new cold war and it is just getting starting."

The Russian campaign was leading to nationalism in Europe, democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland, and a loss of faith in democracy, she said.

[Oct 16, 2017] Assange: It is not just her constant lying. It is not just that she throws off menacing glares and seethes thwarted entitlement. Something much darker rides along with it. A cold creepiness rarely seen

Lady Makbeth of the USA?
Oct 16, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
In an interview with the ABC's Four Corners program, to air on Monday night, Clinton alleges that Assange cooperated with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin , to disrupt the US election and damage her campaign for president.

"WikiLeaks is unfortunately now practically a fully owned subsidiary of Russian intelligence," Clinton told the ABC's Sarah Ferguson .

Describing Putin as a "dictator", Clinton said the damaging email leaks that crippled her 2016 candidacy were part of a coordinated operation against her, directed by the Russian government.

Our intelligence community and other observers of Russia and Putin have said he held a grudge against me because as secretary of state, I stood up against some of his actions, his authoritarianism," Clinton told the ABC.

"But it's much bigger than that. He wants to destabilise democracy, he wants to undermine America, he wants to go after the Atlantic alliance, and we consider Australia an extension of that."

WikiLeaks received thousands of hacked emails from accounts connected to the Democratic campaign allegedly stolen by Russian operatives. The emails were released during a four-month period in the lead-up to the US election.

Emails from the Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta, were leaked on the same day – 7 October 2016 – the director of national intelligence and the secretary of homeland security released a statement concluding the Russian government had been attempting to interfere in the election.

It was also the day the Washington Post published the 2005 Access Hollywood recording of Donald Trump's lewd comments about sexually harassing women .

Clinton told the ABC she believed the email leak was coordinated to disrupt the influence of the Access Hollywood tape.

"WikiLeaks, which in the world in which we find ourselves promised hidden information, promised some kind of secret that might be of influence, was a very clever, diabolical response to the Hollywood Access tape," she said. "And I've no doubt in my mind that there was some communication if not coordination to drop those the first time in response to the Hollywood Access tape."

Clinton is promoting her election memoir, What Happened, in which she details her thoughts on her unsuccessful campaign for president .

In September she told David Remnick from the New Yorker that she believed the Australian founder of WikiLeaks may be "on the payroll of the Kremlin" .

"I think he is part nihilist, part anarchist, part exhibitionist, part opportunist, who is either actually on the payroll of the Kremlin or in some way supporting their propaganda objectives, because of his resentment toward the United States, toward Europe," she said.

"He's like a lot of the voices that we're hearing now, which are expressing appreciation for the macho authoritarianism of a Putin. And they claim to be acting in furtherance of transparency, except they never go after the Kremlin or people on that side of the political ledger."

Assange has denied the emails came from the Russian government or any other "state parties".

In response to Clinton's comments, Assange said on Twitter there was "something wrong with Hillary Clinton".

"It is not just her constant lying," he wrote. "It is not just that she throws off menacing glares and seethes thwarted entitlement.

"Something much darker rides along with it. A cold creepiness rarely seen."

Julian Assange 🔹 (@JulianAssange)

There's something wrong with Hillary Clinton. It is not just her constant lying. It is not just that she throws off menacing glares and seethes thwarted entitlement. Watch closely. Something much darker rides along with it. A cold creepiness rarely seen. https://t.co/JNw2dkXgdu

October 15, 2017

[Oct 15, 2017] Russiagate And The Decline Of Journalism – Ron Paul interviews Robert Parry

Oct 15, 2017 | www.antiwar.com

Nathan abu Nevada , October 12, 2017 11:00 PM

500 People shot in Las Vegas and 500 People missing in California fires at the same time all seems pretty bland compared to Stephanie Leigh Ruhle American combat journalist, and her highly captivating conspiracy theories that those Russian Thugs could possibly have had some how colluded with that Man Trump to defeat the First Woman US President in history Hillary.

This is not the death of the media, just the US media. RT is fantastic and does not make me yell violent obscenities at the TV like the CFR programming.

Watosh Nathan abu Nevada , October 14, 2017 8:45 AM

I watch RTon the internet every day and used to watch it on TV before Time warner dropped it, and I found it very reliable and objective. I recall when one of the top journalists there abby Martin severely criticized and denounced the Russian government for accepting Crimea back into Russia, yet she was not fired even though she often criticized that action.

Many programs had American journalists. And news involving Russia, while generally non-critical, usually was confined to presenting the Russian view on something, which is a legitimate thing to do if you are informing people.

I never heard anyone on RT who spread rumors or made unfounded accusations like I hear on MSNBC every day. and no one on RT denied that they were founded by the Russian government, they did not hide this from their listeners. Americans I believe are the most propagandized people on the earth because they believe the news they get is factually reported by an independent "free" press.

My fellow Americans while they brag about their independence nevertheless are easily stampeded into becoming a lynch mob.

Dennis Boylon Watosh , October 14, 2017 9:16 AM

Modern propaganda was invented in the US by Edward Bernays. It was copied by the Nazi's Joseph Goebbels who had every book Bernays ever wrote in his library.

liveload , October 13, 2017 7:07 PM

It just occurred to me that the perfect Halloween decoration this year would be a Russian flag. That is, unless someone comes out with a Zombie Putin, or Dracula Putin...

[Oct 15, 2017] Fake News and the New McCarthyism by John Buell

Dec 22, 2016 | www.commondreams.org

One of the most potent worries about the coming Trump presidency is concern about free speech. Trump's willingness to tolerate or even encourage violence against nonviolent critics of his agenda and personnel choices is alarming. The Washington Post recently carried a chilling cautionary tale about the fate of a young woman who challenged Trump's record on women's issues. Parallels with banana republic dictators tacitly encouraging or at least tolerating paramilitary forces seem not far- fetched. Though it is easy for the Washington Post to call attention to and criticize Trump's incitement to violence, the Post now practices its own more subtle efforts to police speech.

Behind the façade of a concern about fake news, the Post featured an article by Craig Timberg that cited -- without challenge -- an anonymous website, PropOrNot, listing numerous other sites purported to be purveyors of fake news. As Max Blumenthal reported for AlterNet , "the anonymous website argued that all of the named sites should be investigated by the federal government and potentially prosecuted under the Espionage Act as Russian spies. They were accused for wittingly or unwittingly spreading Russian propaganda."

This story especially caught my attention because one of the fingered websites -- Naked Capitalism -- has long been one of my favorite sources. In addition to meticulous coverage of finance, the site provides in depth analysis of both mainstream economics and contemporary and historic alternatives. All those upon whom economics 101 is being inflicted should consult entries by Philip Mirowski and Philip Pilkingotn. You will never think the same about simple supply and demand. Designating this site as a purveyor of fake -- even Russian supplied-- news while providing no evidence for the claim is surely libelous. Charges of Russian interference in our election -- thus far without any specific evidence beyond agency assertions -- should be investigated but ought not to become an occasion to harass domestic critics of US policy.

In any case, as numerous contributors to some of these libeled sites point out, the Post 's action is the digital equivalent of a McCarthyite blacklist. The Washington Post, which has "apologized" only by saying that it takes no responsibility for the factual accuracy of the claims made in Timberg's piece, is owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, who also does contractual work for the CIA

At the same time as this was happening, Congressional Democrats were getting involved in the blame Russia game. Norman Solomon reports:

A week ago, when the House approved by a 390-30 margin and sent to the Senate the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal 2017, Schiff praised "important provisions aimed at countering Russia's destabilizing efforts -- including those targeting our elections." One of those "important provisions," Section 501 , sets up in the executive branch "an interagency committee to counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence.

While lacking public accountability, the committee is mandated to ferret out such ambiguous phenomena as Russian "media manipulation" and "disinformation." Along the way, the committee could target an array of activists, political opponents or irksome journalists. In any event, its power to fulfill "such other duties as the president may designate" would be ready-made for abuse.

What seems to be a common thread among many of the blacklisted groups is antagonism toward those critics of neoliberalism or of Obama/Clinton foreign policy who are seen as derailing the Clinton campaign. Solomon rightly makes a Cold War analogy, citing Democratic President Truman's issuing a loyalty act in order to toss a bone to the emerging Cold Warriors only to have it blow up into the full fledged fury of McCarthyism. I would, however, add another historical angle. As such International Relations scholars as David Campbell and James DerDerian have argued, the rhetoric of foreign affairs serves to discipline and support domestic identity as much as to fend off actual military threat. The Cold War was born as much of domestic anxiety as of Soviet military threat. The end of World War II saw contentious efforts by unions and liberals to establish a full employment politics coupled with a wave of strikes almost unprecedented in our history. Even key national security documents at the height of the Cold War indicated more worry about the political appeal of communism than its military might. That a cadre of Democratic centrists would strive to establish a top-secret surveillance committee targeting Russian links to dissident movements is an effort to escape blame for a failed campaign. Seen in broader perspective, however, it is also an effort to validate a badly wounded neoliberal agenda by tying left opponents of that agenda to a reviled foreign power.

Fake news is a real problem as is the violence it can incite. At the very least such violence should be identified and its perpetrators punished. Libel laws should be enforced with regard to innocents targeted by such mega giants as Bezos and his journalistic toy. The problems of fake news are not going to be resolved by establishing a private corporate cop or censor for the internet nor by establishing one more secretive watchdog. The Washington Post and the CIA are both propagators of fake news. This is one more argument for both net neutrality and a more robust anti-trust enforcement. The best answer to fake news is a more diverse media. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License John Buell lives in Southwest Harbor, Maine and writes on labor and environmental issues. His most recent book, published by Palgrave in August 2011, is "Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age" . He may be reached at [email protected] .

[Oct 15, 2017] New McCarthyism Targets Trump by John V. Walsh

I thought the same way as John in January 2017. We both were definitely wrong. As were many people who voted for Trump in a hope to block ascendance of neocon warmonger Hillary Clinton to power. Now it is unclear whether Hillary Clinton would be so disastrous in foreign policy as Trump or slightly less so.
The period when Trump was at least formally ant-war is firmly in the past now and probably ended with inauguration. In April Trump folded to neocons and destroyed his anti-war credentials with Tomahawk salvo in Syria. Instead of fighting "the Washington swap" as he promised to his voters, he became a part of the swamp. In August Trump himself emerged as a bona-fide warmonger stoking the tension with North Korea. And in October he decertified Iran deal.
Notable quotes:
"... The implications of this move are, arguably, breathtaking. Trump treated Putin as his ally, not as a hated adversary. And he treated Obama and the bipartisan foreign policy elite of Washington as his adversaries, not his allies -- a move that makes perfect sense if Trump's desire is to rein in the War Party's New Cold War and to strive for a New Détente with Russia. ..."
"... If the main enemy is those who are stoking the New Cold War and risking worse, then Trump has placed himself squarely against these war hawks. And stop to consider for a moment who these folks are. Besides President Obama and Hillary Clinton, they represent a full-blown armchair army: neocons, liberal interventionists, the mainstream media, various Soros-funded "non-governmental organizations," virtually all the important think tanks, the leadership of both major parties, and the CIA and the other U.S. intelligence agencies. This array of Official Washington's power elite has been working 24/7 at demonizing Putin and stoking tensions with nuclear-armed Russia. Trump took on all of them on with his tweet! ..."
"... As Trump looks for new allies in pursuit of a New Détente and a relaxation of U.S.-Russian tensions, Putin is foremost among them. Thus, in the struggle for peace, Trump has drawn new lines, and they cross national borders. Not since Ronald Reagan embraced Mikhail Gorbachev or Richard Nixon went to China have we seen a development like this. In this new battle to reduce tensions between nuclear powers, Trump has shown considerable courage, taking on a wide range of attackers. ..."
Jan 04, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

... ... ...

When President Obama expelled Russian diplomats over the hysterical and unproven accusation of Russia "hacking the election," Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to be drawn into a petty squabble, saying he would delay any response until Donald Trump assumed office. Instead Putin invited American diplomats and their families in Moscow to join the official holiday celebrations in the Kremlin.

Then came the shock that shook Official Washington: President-elect Trump, in the form of a tweet heard round the world, wrote: "Great move on delay (by V. Putin) -- I always knew he was very smart!"

And just to be sure that everyone saw it, Trump "pinned" the tweet which means it is the first thing seen by viewers of his account. This was a first use of "pinning" for Trump. And to be doubly sure, he posted it on Instagram as well. This was no spontaneous midnight outburst but a very deliberate action taken on Friday noon, Dec. 30, the day after Obama had issued his retaliation order.

The implications of this move are, arguably, breathtaking. Trump treated Putin as his ally, not as a hated adversary. And he treated Obama and the bipartisan foreign policy elite of Washington as his adversaries, not his allies -- a move that makes perfect sense if Trump's desire is to rein in the War Party's New Cold War and to strive for a New Détente with Russia.

If the main enemy is those who are stoking the New Cold War and risking worse, then Trump has placed himself squarely against these war hawks. And stop to consider for a moment who these folks are. Besides President Obama and Hillary Clinton, they represent a full-blown armchair army: neocons, liberal interventionists, the mainstream media, various Soros-funded "non-governmental organizations," virtually all the important think tanks, the leadership of both major parties, and the CIA and the other U.S. intelligence agencies. This array of Official Washington's power elite has been working 24/7 at demonizing Putin and stoking tensions with nuclear-armed Russia. Trump took on all of them on with his tweet!

Putin as Ally Against the War Party

As Trump looks for new allies in pursuit of a New Détente and a relaxation of U.S.-Russian tensions, Putin is foremost among them. Thus, in the struggle for peace, Trump has drawn new lines, and they cross national borders. Not since Ronald Reagan embraced Mikhail Gorbachev or Richard Nixon went to China have we seen a development like this. In this new battle to reduce tensions between nuclear powers, Trump has shown considerable courage, taking on a wide range of attackers.

Later that afternoon, Maya Kosoff writing for Vanity Fair put out an article entitled "Twitter Melts Down over 'Treason' After Trump Praises Putin." The first batch of such tweets came from "journalists and other foreign policy experts," the next from Evan McMullin, the former CIA officer who tried to draw off Republican votes from Trump in the general election, who tweeted: "To be clear, @realDonaldTrump is siding with America's greatest adversary even as it attacks our democracy. Never grow desensitized to this."

Finally came the predictable rash of tweets calling Trump's words "treasonous" or "seditious." In response, Team Trump refused to issue a "clarification," saying instead that Trump's words spoke for themselves.

As stunning as Trump's tweet was in many ways, it was in other ways entirely predictable. Despite the mainstream media's scorn and Hillary Clinton's mocking him as Putin's "puppet," Trump has held firm to his promise that he will seek peace with Russia and look for areas of cooperation such as fighting terrorism.

So, even when Trump's Russia comments appeared to cost him politically, he stuck with them, suggesting that he believes that this détente is important. The rule of thumb is that if a politician says something that will win votes, you do not know whether it is conviction or opportunism. But if a politician says something that should lose her or him votes, then you can bet it is heartfelt.

Trump was bashed over his resistance to the New Cold War both during the Republican primaries when many GOP leaders were extremely hawkish on Russia and during the general election when the Clinton campaign sought to paint him as some sort of Manchurian Candidate. Even his vice presidential candidate Mike Pence staked out a more hawkish position than Trump.

Trump stood by his more dovish attitude though it presented few electoral advantages and many negatives. By that test, he appears to be sincere. So, his latest opening to Putin was entirely predictable.

A Choice of Peace or War

What is troubling, however, is that some Americans who favor peace hate Trump so much that they recoil from speaking out in his defense over his "treasonous" tweet though they may privately agree with it. Some progressives are uncomfortable with the mainstream's descent into crude McCarthyism but don't want to say anything favorable about Trump.

After all, a vote for President is either thumbs up or thumbs down -- nothing in between -- though voters may like or dislike some policy prescriptions of one candidate and other positions of another candidate. And progressives could list many reasons to not vote for Trump.

But a presidential administration is multi-issued -- not all or none. One can disagree with a president on some issues and agree on others. For instance, many progressives are outraged over Trump's harsh immigration policies but agree with him on scrapping the TPP trade deal.

In other words, there is no reason why those who claim to be for peace should not back Trump on his more peaceful approach toward Putin and Russia, even if they disdain his tough talk about fighting terrorism. That is the reality of politics.

What I've discovered is that many progressives -- as well as many on the Right -- who oppose endless war and disdain empire will tell you in whispers that they do support Trump's attempt at Détente 2.0, though they doubt he will succeed. In the meantime, they are keeping their heads down and staying quiet.

But clearly Trump's success depends on how much support he gets -- as weighed against how much grief he gets. By lacking the courage to defend Trump's "treasonous tweet," those who want to rein in the warmongers may be missing a rare opportunity. If those who agree with Trump on this issue stay silent, it may be a lost opportunity as well.

John V. Walsh, an anti-war activist, can be reached at [email protected]

[Oct 15, 2017] A New McCarthyism in Hollywood by Stephen Galloway

Notable quotes:
"... Seventy years ago this week -- on March 21, 1947, to be exact -- President Truman issued an executive order that caught some of his most die-hard supporters by surprise. ..."
"... The order, wrote Robert Justin Goldstein in Prologue ..."
"... their summons sent waves of fear coursing through the industry, enough to paralyze even liberal supporters such as Humphrey Bogart, and certainly more conservative ones such as Gary Cooper. ..."
"... By the end of the hearings, 10 of the witnesses had been cited for contempt of court, and soon some of the top movie executives issued what became known as the Waldorf Statement, a two-page press release vowing that "We will forthwith discharge or suspend without compensation those in our employ, and we will not re-employ any of the ten until such time as he is acquitted or has purged himself of contempt and declares under oath that he is not a Communist." ..."
"... The Hollywood Ten would serve time in prison and emerge to find themselves banished from the studios, forced to scrimp and scrape and use "fronts" just to survive. More than a decade would pass before they were able to work freely again. ..."
"... I've often wondered whether McCarthyism could ever find a foothold in Hollywood or America again. I didn't think so, until now. That possibility was always present in the minds of the blacklisted, some of whom I came to know when I arrived in Los Angeles in the 1980s, among them Martin Ritt, the director of such pictures as Hud, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Norma Rae. ..."
"... Marty was blacklisted for several years and later made a movie about the experience, 1976's comedy-drama The Front ..."
"... Edge of the City ..."
"... Tom, Dick and Harry ..."
"... More than careers were hurt: friendships were sundered, relationships broken, families destroyed, lives ruined. Even those who weren't victims of the blacklist lived in constant fear that they might become victims, too. ..."
"... Because fear is the most contagious of diseases. It spreads with a will of its own, infecting innocent and guilty alike, poisoning the oppressor as well as the oppressed. Those who instill fear are often afraid. And the more they inflict fear on others, the more likely they are to feel it themselves. ..."
Mar 20, 2017 | www.hollywoodreporter.com
It's been 70 years since President Truman ordered his loyalty tests. Now Hollywood has a loyalty test of its own.

Seventy years ago this week -- on March 21, 1947, to be exact -- President Truman issued an executive order that caught some of his most die-hard supporters by surprise.

The order, wrote Robert Justin Goldstein in Prologue magazine, "required that all federal civil service employees be screened for 'loyalty.' [It] specified that one criterion would be a finding of 'membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association' with any organization determined by the attorney general to be 'totalitarian, Fascist, Communist or subversive' or advocating or approving the forceful denial of constitutional rights to other persons or seeking 'to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means.'"

Two and a half years before Sen. Joseph McCarthy raised his ugly head and alleged massive Communist infiltration of the government, the "red scare" was underway. It would have a devastating impact on Hollywood.

Months after Truman's order, several dozen members of the film industry were summoned to appear as witnesses before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Nineteen of them, known as the "Unfriendly Nineteen" -- a term coined by the then-red-baiting Hollywood Reporter -- were left-wingers, hostile to the committee. Billy Wilder mordantly quipped that "only two of them have talent. The rest are just unfriendly." But their summons sent waves of fear coursing through the industry, enough to paralyze even liberal supporters such as Humphrey Bogart, and certainly more conservative ones such as Gary Cooper.

By the end of the hearings, 10 of the witnesses had been cited for contempt of court, and soon some of the top movie executives issued what became known as the Waldorf Statement, a two-page press release vowing that "We will forthwith discharge or suspend without compensation those in our employ, and we will not re-employ any of the ten until such time as he is acquitted or has purged himself of contempt and declares under oath that he is not a Communist."

The Hollywood Ten would serve time in prison and emerge to find themselves banished from the studios, forced to scrimp and scrape and use "fronts" just to survive. More than a decade would pass before they were able to work freely again.

***

I've often wondered whether McCarthyism could ever find a foothold in Hollywood or America again. I didn't think so, until now. That possibility was always present in the minds of the blacklisted, some of whom I came to know when I arrived in Los Angeles in the 1980s, among them Martin Ritt, the director of such pictures as Hud, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Norma Rae.

Marty was blacklisted for several years and later made a movie about the experience, 1976's comedy-drama The Front , starring Woody Allen and Zero Mostel. He was a man of enormous integrity, who was blackballed without explanation, though he insisted he had never been a member of the Communist Party. Overnight, his work dried up and he was forced to return to his roots in the theater -- along with the racetrack, where he made his real money. He could have named names to get himself off the hook, but he didn't, in contrast to his close friend Elia Kazan, whose betrayal stung him to the quick.

Ritt was relatively lucky; he was allowed back into the Hollywood fold sooner than most, when he got to direct the low-budget feature Edge of the City (1957), the first of the 20-plus films he would make over the following three decades. Others were less fortunate. Paul Jarrico, a writer whom I also was privileged to meet and who'd been Oscar-nominated in his mid-20s for Tom, Dick and Harry (1941), fled to Paris, his career never to bounce back to the heights it had reached before.

More than careers were hurt: friendships were sundered, relationships broken, families destroyed, lives ruined. Even those who weren't victims of the blacklist lived in constant fear that they might become victims, too.

Because fear is the most contagious of diseases. It spreads with a will of its own, infecting innocent and guilty alike, poisoning the oppressor as well as the oppressed. Those who instill fear are often afraid. And the more they inflict fear on others, the more likely they are to feel it themselves.

[Oct 15, 2017] The New McCarthyism by Michael Rivero

Notable quotes:
"... in actuality the US Government was concerned that Hollywood was no longer as blindly supportive of government policy as it had been only a few years earlier at the height of WW2. In particular, J. Edgar Hoover had long held the opinion that the entertainment industry should be the propaganda arm for the government in peace time as well as war. ..."
"... However, as WW2 had ended, the defense establishment had lobbied for the creation of a "Cold" war against the Soviet Union, a war not actually to be fought, but constantly to be prepared for at huge cost to the taxpayers. This cost was the visible manifestation of the "Military Industrial Complex" President Eisenhower referred to in his farewell address, and many in Hollywood openly wondered just why so much more money had to be thrown into the war machine during a time of peace, and more to the point, just why we were supposed to be so afraid of the communists. ..."
"... In later years, FBI informants became permanent fixtures at movie studios, and spied for the FBI. ..."
"... While Senator Joseph McCarthy grabbed headlines with his shouts of "Communist", Hoover set about his self-appointed task of purging Hollywood of any he viewed as "disloyal" to the United States, which meant anyone unwilling to make the movies they were told to make, when and how they were told to make them. ..."
"... Stars such as Larry Parks were destroyed because they refused to "name names" of other actors who were party members. Actor Philip Loeb committed suicide. Edward G. Robinson, never a communist, was put on a "grey list," and spent the rest of his life making B movies (except for his final role opposite Charlton Heston in "Soylent Green"). Sam Jaffe, formerly a well-known actor and Oscar winner in 1950 was registered on the black list because he refused to cooperate with the committee. He spent the next 6 years working as a math teacher and living at his sister's until he was able to return to films in 1957. ..."
"... Of course, what was really involved was money. War is good for business. Business had been great during WW2 and the newly created "Cold War" was just a way to keep business good. The Military Industrial Complex NEEDED Hollywood to demonize the Soviets. Otherwise, too many people were going to ask why we were being told to be so afraid of them, and few in the government had a really convincing answer for that question. So, in order to perpetuate the Cold War, those in Hollywood who might sympathize with the designated villains had to be removed; their ruined lives a small price to pay for unending access to the taxpayers' wallets. ..."
"... But the Soviet Union has gone out of business. The word "communist" doesn't carry the same psychological impact it used to, so the war hawk smear squad has come up with a new one, "Anti-Semite." Like "Communist", "Anti-Semite" is used to ruin the lives of people who have not actually done anything wrong other than to challenge the war profiteers. It is a new word for an old trick, and I am amazed that they are still playing the same old game, but I guess the FBI can always find some dumb-assed idiot to fall for it and do their dirty work of wrecking a career for them. ..."
"... Charles Lindbergh the famous aviator commented in a speech in Des Moines in 1941... ..."
"... Our theaters soon became filled with plays portraying the glory of war. Newsreels lost all semblance of objectivity. Newspapers and magazines began to lose advertising if they carried anti-war articles. A smear campaign was instituted against individuals who opposed intervention. The terms "fifth columnist," "traitor," "Nazi," "anti-Semitic" were thrown ceaselessly at any one who dared to suggest that it was not to the best interests of the United States to enter the war. Men lost their jobs if they were frankly anti-war. Many others dared no longer speak. ..."
"... If there is a difference today it is that the American people are better educated. No longer dependent on the state schools, or controlled media, the public understands the tactics used to silence those who speak out. As a result, those who speak out are more and more not only accorded the sympathetic ear that their message deserves, but the effects of the smearing are far less ruinous than in times past. ..."
"... While people like Charlie Sheen, Willie Nelson, Sean Penn, and Marion Cotillard (and to step out of entertainment, former President Jimmy Carter) will be remembered and honored for their courage, history will lump the smear artists together with Stalin's "Useful idiots", little more than no-talent opportunists for whom ratting out someone was the fastest path to advancement. ..."
Oct 15, 2017 | www.whatreallyhappened.com

Back in the year 1947, the House Select Committee began an investigation into the Motion Picture Industry. Ostensibly the goal was to ferret out communists working in the film industry. But in actuality the US Government was concerned that Hollywood was no longer as blindly supportive of government policy as it had been only a few years earlier at the height of WW2. In particular, J. Edgar Hoover had long held the opinion that the entertainment industry should be the propaganda arm for the government in peace time as well as war.

However, as WW2 had ended, the defense establishment had lobbied for the creation of a "Cold" war against the Soviet Union, a war not actually to be fought, but constantly to be prepared for at huge cost to the taxpayers. This cost was the visible manifestation of the "Military Industrial Complex" President Eisenhower referred to in his farewell address, and many in Hollywood openly wondered just why so much more money had to be thrown into the war machine during a time of peace, and more to the point, just why we were supposed to be so afraid of the communists.

Hoover's desire to remake Hollywood into a gigantic propaganda machine had started at the end of WW1 when Hoover tried to persuade Charlie Chaplin to cease making films that portrayed authority figures as oafish buffoons. Chaplin refused, laughed at Hoover. Years later, as head of the FBI, Hoover was instrumental in having Charlie Chaplin's citizenship revoked in retaliation.

Hoover's mania with Hollywood was a seldom reported but constant factor in show business. The 1959 film, "The FBI Story" starring Air Force General Jimmy Stewart was reportedly directed by Mervyn LeRoy, but in actuality J. Edgar Hoover was personally supervising the film (and briefly appears in it, shown only from the back) to make certain the "correct" image of the FBI was shown.

In later years, FBI informants became permanent fixtures at movie studios, and spied for the FBI. When Disney Studios made "That Darned Cat", a pre-production copy of the screenplay "somehow" made its way to the FBI, which promptly sent Disney a memo expressing concern at how the FBI was to be portrayed.

[That Darned Cat]Click for full sized page. [That Darned Cat]Click for full sized page.

Likewise, when Paramount Pictures produced, "Skidoo", starring Jackie Gleason, it featured a single scene in which Gleason's character is seen fleeing a building marked, "FBI" carrying a file cabinet on his back. That one single scene prompted the following four page memo.

[Skidoo page 1]Click for full sized page. [Skidoo page 2]Click for full sized page.
[Skidoo page 3]Click for full sized page. [Skidoo page 4]Click for full sized page.

Along with "nudging" the film studios to portray certain things certain ways, the FBI did not hesitate to wreck the careers of those people it felt posed a dangerous threat to the government's public image. During the height of the FBI's COINTELPRO program, the FBI destroyed the career of actress Jean Seberg

Jean Seberg was considered a threat to the US Government because of her public support for civil rights at a time when the Civil Rights movement was starting to point out the racial bias in the draft system that placed a disproportionate percentage of black kids on the front lines of Vietnam. Seberg was also a supporter of the Black Panthers in their pre-militant days when their agenda was breakfasts for the ghetto kids, local control of school curriculum, and ending the draft.

Jean Seberg, a well known actress in the 60s, became pregnant and the FBI sent out letters to the gossip columnists identifying the baby's father as a Black Panther, in order to cheapen Seberg's image. Keep in mind that the 60s was an era in which sexual relations between blacks and whites was still considered taboo by most Americans.

The scans below are of the official FBI letter from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. asking permission for the scam.

[Seberg Letter Page 1]letter requesting permission for the smearing of Jean Seberg.

[Seberg Letter Page 2]page two of request for permission to smear of Jean Seberg

The text of the letter:

"Bureau permission is requested to publicize the pregnancy of Jean Seberg, well-known movie actress by (name deleted) Black Panther (BPP) (deleted) by advising Hollywood "Gossip-Columnists" in the Los Angeles area of the situation. It is felt that the possible publication of Seberg's plight could cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image with the general public.

" 'It is proposed that the following letter from a fictitious person be sent to local columnists:

"I was just thinking about you and remembered I still owe you a favor. So ---- I was in Paris last week and ran into Jean Seberg, who was heavy with baby. I thought she and Romaine [sic] had gotten together again, but she confided the child belonged to (deleted) of the Black Panthers, one (deleted). The dear girl is getting around!

" 'Anyway, I thought you might get a scoop on the others. Be good and I'll see you soon.

'Love,
" 'Sol.,

"Usual precautions would be taken by the Los Angeles Division to preclude identification of the Bureau as the source of the letter if approval is granted."

Permission to use the fake letter was granted, but with the suggestion that the smear be delayed until Jean Seberg's pregnancy was in a very obvious condition.

[Seberg Letter Page 1] letter granting permission for the smearing of Jean Seberg.

The story was then run by Los Angeles Times propagandist Joyce Haber.

[Seberg Letter Page 2]Click for full size picture of the Haber Article that launched the smear.

The story was picked up by Newsweek and the international press. The shock of the story was so severe that Jean Seberg suffered a miscarriage. The funeral for the child was held with an open casket, so that the lie stood revealed in its most tragic form. Jean Seberg, her baby dead and her career shattered by this outright lie, attempted suicide several times, finally succeeding in a French Hotel.

[Seberg Letter Page 1] memo that accompanied copy of the Haber story sent to FBI files.

(The name which was redacted from the memo during the FOIA process is thought by many to have been Raymond Hewit, a Black Panther leader. His "outright lie" was far more direct. The FBI typed up a letter on official FBI stationary identifying Hewit as an informant and planted it where other Black Panthers would find it in the hopes that Hewit would then be killed.)

Following Seberg's death, the Los Angeles Times, the key instrument of her torment, issued a statement by the FBI.

"The days when the FBI used derogatory information to combat advocates of unpopular causes have long since passed. We are out of that business forever."

The Senate committee that looked into COINTELPRO disagreed, however.

"Cointelpro activities may continue today under the rubric of 'investigation.'

Finally, no single celebrity filled the government with more fear than did ex-Beatle John Lennon. Lennon's popularity, and hence his ability to influence popular opinion, coupled with his strong anti-war stance, made him a real threat in the event the United States decided it had to go to war. For this reason, Lennon was one of the most watched celebrities, and according to Lennon's youngest son, the victim of a government assassination plot.

[Lennon 1]Click for full sized page. [Lennon 2]Click for full sized page.
[Lennon 3]Click for full sized page. [Lennon 4]Click for full sized page.
[Lennon 5]Click for full sized page. [Lennon 6]Click for full sized page.
[Lennon 7]Click for full sized page. [Lennon 8]Click for full sized page.
[Lennon 9]Click for full sized page. [Lennon 10]Click for full sized page.

Having documented the FBI's willingness to destroy anyone they feel represents a threat to the government, let us return to the days of the House Select Committee on UnAmerican Activities.

While Senator Joseph McCarthy grabbed headlines with his shouts of "Communist", Hoover set about his self-appointed task of purging Hollywood of any he viewed as "disloyal" to the United States, which meant anyone unwilling to make the movies they were told to make, when and how they were told to make them. Senator McCarthy's screed of "Communist" provided Hoover with a bludgeon he could and did use with impunity on Hollywood's creative talents. Careers were ruined. Some 400 people, mostly innocent of any actual wrongdoing, were destroyed. Some, like Jean Seberg would later do, committed suicide. Ten men (the famous Hollywood Ten), Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, Dalton Trumbo, and eminent director Edward Dmytryk were jailed for contempt of Congress.

Others punished for refusing to cooperate included Larry Adler, Stella Adler, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Joseph Bromberg, Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Hanns Eisler, Carl Foreman, John Garfield, Howard Da Silva, Dashiell Hammett, E. Y. Harburg, Lillian Hellman, Burl Ives, Arthur Miller, Dorothy Parker, Philip Loeb, Joseph Losey, Anne Revere, Pete Seeger, Gale Sondergaard, Louis Untermeyer, Josh White, Clifford Odets, Michael Wilson, Paul Jarrico, Jeff Corey, John Randolph, Canada Lee, Orson Welles, Paul Green, Sidney Kingsley, Paul Robeson, Richard Wright and Abraham Polonsky. Lee Grant was registered on the black list because she refused to give evidence against her husband Arnold Manoff.

Stars such as Larry Parks were destroyed because they refused to "name names" of other actors who were party members. Actor Philip Loeb committed suicide. Edward G. Robinson, never a communist, was put on a "grey list," and spent the rest of his life making B movies (except for his final role opposite Charlton Heston in "Soylent Green"). Sam Jaffe, formerly a well-known actor and Oscar winner in 1950 was registered on the black list because he refused to cooperate with the committee. He spent the next 6 years working as a math teacher and living at his sister's until he was able to return to films in 1957.

Of course, what was really involved was money. War is good for business. Business had been great during WW2 and the newly created "Cold War" was just a way to keep business good. The Military Industrial Complex NEEDED Hollywood to demonize the Soviets. Otherwise, too many people were going to ask why we were being told to be so afraid of them, and few in the government had a really convincing answer for that question. So, in order to perpetuate the Cold War, those in Hollywood who might sympathize with the designated villains had to be removed; their ruined lives a small price to pay for unending access to the taxpayers' wallets.

But that was then and this is now.

Once again vast sums of money are being spent on a war, this time a hot one and getting hotter. Once again parties with a vested interest are out to smear and destroy anyone who dares ask if the wars are worth the sacrifice of our young people (not to mention the money), indeed if there really is any point at all to the wars aside from justifying the flow of money to defense contractors.

But the Soviet Union has gone out of business. The word "communist" doesn't carry the same psychological impact it used to, so the war hawk smear squad has come up with a new one, "Anti-Semite." Like "Communist", "Anti-Semite" is used to ruin the lives of people who have not actually done anything wrong other than to challenge the war profiteers. It is a new word for an old trick, and I am amazed that they are still playing the same old game, but I guess the FBI can always find some dumb-assed idiot to fall for it and do their dirty work of wrecking a career for them.

Of course, it really isn't that new a word. Oddly enough, Charles Lindbergh the famous aviator commented in a speech in Des Moines in 1941...

Our theaters soon became filled with plays portraying the glory of war. Newsreels lost all semblance of objectivity. Newspapers and magazines began to lose advertising if they carried anti-war articles. A smear campaign was instituted against individuals who opposed intervention. The terms "fifth columnist," "traitor," "Nazi," "anti-Semitic" were thrown ceaselessly at any one who dared to suggest that it was not to the best interests of the United States to enter the war. Men lost their jobs if they were frankly anti-war. Many others dared no longer speak.

Today we are seeing once again the heavy hand of the war profiteers trying to reshape the film industry into a tool to propagandize the public into a high war-fever such that they will gladly trade their own blood for gold to line the pockets of the defense establishment. And those individuals who have the courage to speak out are attacked, and once again they are smeared to silence them. In the 1940s it was "Communist", today it is "Anti-Semite", but aside from the particular label used, the methods, goals, and morality are little changed from the days of Joseph McCarthy.

If there is a difference today it is that the American people are better educated. No longer dependent on the state schools, or controlled media, the public understands the tactics used to silence those who speak out. As a result, those who speak out are more and more not only accorded the sympathetic ear that their message deserves, but the effects of the smearing are far less ruinous than in times past.

Thus, when we see people like Willie Nelson, Sean Penn, and Marion Cotillard speak out and survive, or when people like Tom Shadyac (or myself) voluntarily walk away from Hollywood because speaking the truth matters more to them, it sends a message that it is now permissible, indeed imperative to speak out. This is not to say that there are not risks. Rosie O'Donnell lost her spot on "The View", but the majority of Americans understand exactly why, and understand that Rosie sacrificed a great deal trying to get the truth out. Rosie is and will be remembered as a hero for truth long after her co-hosts on "The View" are properly forgotten.

In contrast, of course, we look back at those who aided the "Commie" witch-hunts of the 1940s with deserved contempt. No doubt many aided Hoover purely to rid themselves of competition, and then tried to lull themselves to sleep with the idea that in some way they had actually done something good for the nation by wrecking their neighbors' careers. I have no doubt strong liquor played a role in this grossest of self-deception. But if the informants and smear artists of the 1940s are remembered in a poor light, that should serve as a reminder to the informants and smear artists of today. It does not matter what you do with the rest of your life, aiding the new version of McCarthyism is how history will remember you. While people like Charlie Sheen, Willie Nelson, Sean Penn, and Marion Cotillard (and to step out of entertainment, former President Jimmy Carter) will be remembered and honored for their courage, history will lump the smear artists together with Stalin's "Useful idiots", little more than no-talent opportunists for whom ratting out someone was the fastest path to advancement.

They say that history repeats itself, and indeed that is the major thing wrong with history. We are seeing history repeat itself again. We have been down this path before, in the 1940s. Whether the word is "Communist" or "Anti-Semite", Hollywood is making the same mistake all over again. And Hollywood will have to live with that image in the coming decades.

[Oct 15, 2017] Could we reverse a hacked presidential election by Vinay Nayak and Samuel Breidbart

Those two "propaganda solders" from Yale release outright lies about "stealing information from 90,000 voting records in the state of Illinois alone. " as it this is a fact. Looks like those students learned quickly from their Yale "color revolution" teachers ;-)
The USA perfected election interference technique in dozen of color revolution in xUSSR republics and other areas of the globe. Actually the first color revolution was organized in 1974.
Now DemoRats (neoliberal Democrats of Clinton wing of the party) and elements of intelligence agencies and MS who support them simply can not quit... Now quitting involved potential significant PR damage... McCarthyism has its own internal dynamics. The danger for DemoRats (neoliberal Democrats of Clinton wing of the party) now is that if Russian were investigated why Israelis and Saudies (along with other Gulf monarchies) were not.
Please note that Yale is the main US educational institution that teaches foreign students color revolution theory and practice... See, for example Sott.net and Kerry Re-writes History of U.S. Support for Color Revolutions
Notable quotes:
"... Setting Trump aside, what if a foreign government succeeds in the future in electing an American president through active vote manipulation? ..."
Oct 15, 2017 | www.msn.com

In the past few weeks, we have learned that the Russian government reached more than 10 million Americans with a misinformation campaign on Facebook, and that hackers targeted 21 state election systems , stealing information from 90,000 voting records in the state of Illinois alone. These are just the latest of many revelations about Russia's unprecedented interference in the election.

It is cold comfort that we have no evidence so far that Moscow actually manipulated vote tallies to change the election's outcome.

But what if it emerges that Russian operatives were successful on that front as well? Setting Trump aside, what if a foreign government succeeds in the future in electing an American president through active vote manipulation?

The Constitution offers no clear way to remedy such a disaster.

Any evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia raises its own set of important issues -- now being assiduously investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller. But the disturbing scenario in which hackers manipulate election results, conceivably rendering the true vote tally unrecoverable, would pose a unique threat to a foundational principle of our democracy: rule by the consent of the governed. We would in no sense have a government "by the people."

Although such a constitutional crisis now seems all too plausible, we have yet to seriously consider provisions that might protect our democracy -- measures that could allow us to reverse such a result.

... ... ...

Vinay Nayak and Samuel Breidbart are students at Yale Law School.

[Oct 15, 2017] The Mysterious World of Social Media Manipulation by Samuel Earle

When people stop to trust MSM, rumor mill emerges as a substitute. Neoliberal MSM lost people trust. Now what ?
Notable quotes:
"... But social media manipulation did not begin or end with the election. As early as 2011, the US government hired a public relations firm to develop a " persona management tool " that would develop and control fake profiles on social media for political purposes. ..."
"... The British parent company of Cambridge Analytica, Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL), has been a client of the government for years, working with the Department of Defense, and The Washington Post ..."
"... There is also growing awareness of hundreds of thousands of so-called "sleeper" bots: Accounts that have tweeted only once or twice for Trump, and which now sit silently, waiting for a trigger -- a key political moment -- to spread disinformation and drown out opposing views. ..."
Oct 15, 2017 | www.msn.com

Now the focus is less on Trump's extensive personal social media following and more on the roles that Facebook and Twitter may have played in alleged Russian interference in the election. Congress is calling on Facebook and Twitter to disclose details about how they may have been used by Russia-linked entities to try to influence the election in favor of Trump.

But despite the much-publicized case in the U.S., the pervasiveness of these political strategies on social media, from the distribution of disinformation to organized attacks on opponents, the tactics remain largely unknown to the public, as invisible as they are invasive. Citizens are exposed to them the world over, often without ever realizing it.

Drawing on two recent reports by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and independent research, Newsweek has outlined the covert ways in which states and other political actors use social media to manipulate public opinion around the world, focusing on six illustrative examples: the U.S., Azerbaijan, Israel, China, Russia and the U.K.

It reveals how "Cyber-troops" -- the name given to this new political force by the OII -- are enlisted by states, militaries and parties to secure power and undermine opponents, through a combination of public funding, private contracts and volunteers, and how bots -- fake accounts that purport to be real people -- can produce as many as 1,000 social media posts a day.

By generating an illusion of support for an idea or candidate in this way, bots drive up actual support by sparking a bandwagon effect -- making something or someone seem normal and like a palatable, common-sense option. As the director of the OII, Philip Howard, argues : "If you use enough of them, of bots and people, and cleverly link them together, you are what's legitimate. You are creating truth."

On social media, the consensus goes to whoever has the strongest set of resources to make it.

The U.S.: Rise of the bots

America sees a wider range of actors attempting to shape and manipulate public opinion online than any country -- with governments, political parties, and individual organizations all involved.

In its report, the OII describes 2016's Trump vs. Hillary Clinton presidential contest as a " watershed moment " when social media manipulation was "at an all-time high."

Many of the forces at play have been well-reported: whether the hundreds of thousands of bots or the right-wing sites like Breitbart distributing divisive stories. In Michigan, in the days before the election, fake news was shared as widely as professional journalism . Meanwhile firms like Cambridge Analytica, self-described specialists in "election management," worked for Trump to target swing voters, mainly on Facebook.

While Hillary Clinton's campaign also engaged in such tactics, with big-data and pro-Clinton bots multiplying in number as her campaign progressed, Trump's team proved the most effective. Overall, pro-Trump bots generated five times as much activity at key moments of the campaign as pro-Clinton ones. These Twitter bots -- which often had zero followers -- copied each other's messages and sent out advertisements alongside political content. They regularly retweeted Dan Scavino, Trump's social media director.

One high-ranking Republican Party figure told OII that campaigning on social media was like "the Wild West." "Anything goes as long as your candidate is getting the most attention," he said. And it worked: A Harvard study concluded that overall Trump received 15 percent more media coverage than Clinton.

Targeted advertising to specific demographics was also central to Trump's strategy. Clinton spent two and a half times more than Trump on television adverts and had a 73% share of nationally focused digital ads.

But Trump's team, led by Cambridge Analytica for the final months, focused on sub-groups. In one famous example, an anti-Clinton ad that repeated her notorious speech from 1996 describing so-called "super-predators" was shown exclusively to African-American voters on Facebook in areas where the Republicans hoped to suppress the Democrat vote -- and again, it worked.

"It's well known that President Obama's campaign pioneered the use of microtargeting in 2012," a spokesperson for Cambridge Analytica tells Newsweek . "But big data and new ad tech are now revolutionizing communications and marketing, and Cambridge Analytica is at the forefront of this paradigm shift."

"Communication enhances democracy, not endangers it. We enable voters to have their concerns heard, and we help political candidates communicate their policy positions."

The firm argues that its partnership with American right-wing candidates -- first Ted Cruz and then Trump -- is purely circumstantial. "We work in politics, but we're not political," the spokesperson said.

The company is part-owned by the family of Robert Mercer, which was one of Trump's major donors, while Stephen K. Bannon sat on the company's board until he was appointed White House chief strategist (he was dismissed from his post seven months later). According to Bannon's March federal financial disclosure, he held shares worth as much as $5 million in the company . On October 11, it was also revealed that the House Intelligence Committee has asked the company to provide information for its ongoing probe into Russian interference.

But social media manipulation did not begin or end with the election. As early as 2011, the US government hired a public relations firm to develop a " persona management tool " that would develop and control fake profiles on social media for political purposes.

The British parent company of Cambridge Analytica, Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL), has been a client of the government for years, working with the Department of Defense, and The Washington Post reports that it recently secured work with the State Department.

There is also growing awareness of hundreds of thousands of so-called "sleeper" bots: Accounts that have tweeted only once or twice for Trump, and which now sit silently, waiting for a trigger -- a key political moment -- to spread disinformation and drown out opposing views.

Emilio Ferrara, an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Southern California Computer Science department, even suggests the possibility of "a black-market for reusable political disinformation bots," ready to be utilitized wherever they are needed, the world over. These fears appeared to be confirmed by reports that the same bots used to back Trump were then deployed against eventual winner Emmanuel Macron in this year's French presidential election.

[Oct 15, 2017] Is Trump the Heir to Reagan? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Bastard neoliberalism by Trump (and Bannon) are inconsistent. You can't be half pregnant -- to be a neoliberal (promote deregulation, regressive taxes) and be anti-immigration and anti-globalist. In this sense words Trump is doomed: neoliberal are determined to get rid of him.
Reagan was a former governor of California before becoming the President. hardly a complete outsider. Trump was an outsider more similar to Barak Obama in a sense that he has no political record and can ride on backlash against neoliberal globalization, especially outsourcing and offshoring and unlimited immigration, as well as ride anti-globalism sentiments and popular protest against foreign wars. Only quickly betraying those promised afterward. Much like king of "bait and switch" Obama .
Notable quotes:
"... Among the signature issues of Trumpian populism is economic nationalism, a new trade policy designed to prosper Americans first. ..."
"... Reagan preached free trade, but when Harley-Davidson was in danger of going under because of Japanese dumping of big bikes, he slammed a 50 percent tariff on Japanese motorcycles. Though a free trader by philosophy, Reagan was at heart an economic patriot. ..."
"... He accepted an amnesty written by Congress for 3 million people in the country illegally, but Reagan also warned prophetically that a country that can't control its borders isn't really a country any more. ..."
"... Reagan and Trump both embraced the Eisenhower doctrine of "peace through strength." And, like Ike, both built up the military. ..."
"... Both also believed in cutting tax rates to stimulate the economy and balance the federal budget through rising revenues rather than cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security. ..."
"... Both believed in engaging with the superpower rival of the day -- the Soviet Union in Reagan's day, Russia and China in Trump's time. ..."
"... As Ingraham writes, Trump_vs_deep_state is rooted as much in the populist-nationalist campaigns of the 1990s, and post-Cold War issues as economic patriotism, border security, immigration control and "America First," as it is in the Reaganite issues of the 1980s. ..."
"... Coming up on one year since his election, Trump is besieged by a hostile press and united Democratic Party. This city hates him. While his executive actions are impressive, his legislative accomplishments are not. His approval ratings have lingered in the mid-30s. He has lost half a dozen senior members of his original White House staff, clashed openly with his own Cabinet and is at war with GOP leaders on the Hill. ..."
"... And both are fans of the tinkle-down theory of economics, where the govt cuts taxes on the rich and increases them on the poor and middle class, since the rich will do a better job of spreading around the extra money they get to keep, thereby stoking the economy, supposedly. Or as 'Poppy' Bush called it, "voodoo economics." ..."
"... It's a failed regressive tax program that only creates more billionaires while the number of poor swells, due to an influx of the steadily declining middle-class. ..."
"... Bizarrely, comically ignorant of reality. Though the really bizarre thing is the degree to which the same obtusely ignorant world-view permeates the establishment media and the political establishment. ..."
"... There is arguably a fundamental difference here, that in Reagan's day there was a clear ideological threat from the Soviet Union, which was still (albeit increasingly nominally) in the grip of an aggressively destabilising universalist ideology, communism. Reagan's opposition to the Soviet Union was very much bound up in resistance to that ideology, even if that resistance was often as much a pretext as a real motive. ..."
"... Today neither Russia nor China subscribes to any such universalist ideology. It is the US, today, that seeks to impose its liberal democratic political correctness ideologies and its manufactured taboos upon the world and which harasses and menaces any country that tries to live differently. ..."
"... As for Trump supposedly being wrapped up in "America First", that's particularly comical this week as he demonstrates that his idea of "America First" is acting as Israel's bitch, and as he makes ever louder noises about undermining the Iran deal – a policy as clearly counterproductive to any interest plausibly attributable to the American nation (as opposed to the identity lobbies that run the US government politics and media) as it is self-evidently in the self-perceived interests of the Israel Lobby and the foreign country that lobby serves. ..."
"... Trump is an egotistical jackass, nothing else. A liar from the git-go, and a completely ineffective leader, ideologue and President. He's not going to last much longer. I will take note that he did, temporarily, save us from the madness of the Hillary moiety. But, he has molted into a complete fuckup. ..."
"... Goodbye, good riddance. Let's get ready to deal with the next wacko -- Pence. ..."
"... you're forgetting that Trump wasn't a war monger while on the campaign trail, far from it. Which is the only reason he won the election. In other words he fooled just enough people (like you and me) long enough to get elected. Same thing happened with peace candidate, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Hussein Obama. It's clearly a rigged process. ..."
Oct 15, 2017 | www.unz.com

... ... ...

Both men were outsiders, and neither a career politician. Raised Democratic, Reagan had been a Hollywood actor, union leader and voice of GE, before running for governor of California.

Trump is out of Queens, a builder-businessman in a Democratic city whose Republican credentials were suspect at best when he rode down that elevator at Trump Tower. Both took on the Republican establishment of their day, and humiliated it.

Among the signature issues of Trumpian populism is economic nationalism, a new trade policy designed to prosper Americans first.

Reagan preached free trade, but when Harley-Davidson was in danger of going under because of Japanese dumping of big bikes, he slammed a 50 percent tariff on Japanese motorcycles. Though a free trader by philosophy, Reagan was at heart an economic patriot.

He accepted an amnesty written by Congress for 3 million people in the country illegally, but Reagan also warned prophetically that a country that can't control its borders isn't really a country any more.

Reagan and Trump both embraced the Eisenhower doctrine of "peace through strength." And, like Ike, both built up the military.

Both also believed in cutting tax rates to stimulate the economy and balance the federal budget through rising revenues rather than cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Both believed in engaging with the superpower rival of the day -- the Soviet Union in Reagan's day, Russia and China in Trump's time.

And both were regarded in this capital city with a cosmopolitan condescension bordering on contempt. "An amiable dunce" said a Great Society Democrat of Reagan.

The awesome victories Reagan rolled up, a 44-state landslide in 1980 and a 49-state landslide in 1984, induced some second thoughts among Beltway elites about whether they truly spoke for America. Trump's sweep of the primaries and startling triumph in the Electoral College caused the same consternation.

However, as the Great Depression, New Deal and World War II represented a continental divide in history between what came before and what came after, so, too, did the end of the Cold War and the Reagan era.

As Ingraham writes, Trump_vs_deep_state is rooted as much in the populist-nationalist campaigns of the 1990s, and post-Cold War issues as economic patriotism, border security, immigration control and "America First," as it is in the Reaganite issues of the 1980s.

Which bring us to the present, with our billionaire president, indeed, at the barricades.

The differences between Trump in his first year and Reagan in 1981 are stark. Reagan had won a landslide. The attempt on his life in April and the grace with which he conducted himself had earned him a place in the hearts of his countrymen. He not only showed spine in giving the air traffic controllers 48 hours to get back to work, and then discharging them when they defied him, he enacted the largest tax cut in U.S. history with the aid of boll weevil Democrats in the House.

Coming up on one year since his election, Trump is besieged by a hostile press and united Democratic Party. This city hates him. While his executive actions are impressive, his legislative accomplishments are not. His approval ratings have lingered in the mid-30s. He has lost half a dozen senior members of his original White House staff, clashed openly with his own Cabinet and is at war with GOP leaders on the Hill.

Greg Bacon , Website October 13, 2017 at 10:24 am GMT

And both are fans of the tinkle-down theory of economics, where the govt cuts taxes on the rich and increases them on the poor and middle class, since the rich will do a better job of spreading around the extra money they get to keep, thereby stoking the economy, supposedly. Or as 'Poppy' Bush called it, "voodoo economics."

It's a failed regressive tax program that only creates more billionaires while the number of poor swells, due to an influx of the steadily declining middle-class.

The only parts of the economy it helps are the builders of luxury mansions, antique and pricey art dealers, and the makers of luxury autos and private jets.

Randal , October 13, 2017 at 12:24 pm GMT
@Mark James

when the US Government is trying to prevent alien forces from interfering in our electoral process

Bizarrely, comically ignorant of reality. Though the really bizarre thing is the degree to which the same obtusely ignorant world-view permeates the establishment media and the political establishment.

Two pieces here at Unz you ought to read, and fully take on board the implications of, if you want to even begin the process of grasping reality, rather than living in the manufactured fantasy you appear to inhabit at the moment:

Randal , October 13, 2017 at 12:53 pm GMT

Both believed in engaging with the superpower rival of the day -- the Soviet Union in Reagan's day, Russia and China in Trump's time.

There is arguably a fundamental difference here, that in Reagan's day there was a clear ideological threat from the Soviet Union, which was still (albeit increasingly nominally) in the grip of an aggressively destabilising universalist ideology, communism. Reagan's opposition to the Soviet Union was very much bound up in resistance to that ideology, even if that resistance was often as much a pretext as a real motive.

Today neither Russia nor China subscribes to any such universalist ideology. It is the US, today, that seeks to impose its liberal democratic political correctness ideologies and its manufactured taboos upon the world and which harasses and menaces any country that tries to live differently.

As for Trump supposedly being wrapped up in "America First", that's particularly comical this week as he demonstrates that his idea of "America First" is acting as Israel's bitch, and as he makes ever louder noises about undermining the Iran deal – a policy as clearly counterproductive to any interest plausibly attributable to the American nation (as opposed to the identity lobbies that run the US government politics and media) as it is self-evidently in the self-perceived interests of the Israel Lobby and the foreign country that lobby serves.

Here's the German government being unusually blunt yesterday about the stupidity of the Trump regime's seeming plans in this regard:

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Thursday said that any move by US President Donald Trump's administration to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal would drive a wedge between Europe and the US.

"It's imperative that Europe sticks together on this issue," Gabriel told Germany's RND newspaper group. "We also have to tell the Americans that their behavior on the Iran issue will drive us Europeans into a common position with Russia and China against the USA."

http://www.dw.com/en/germany-warns-donald-trump-against-decertifying-iran-deal/a-40933703

It's difficult to know whether the likes of Gabriel actually believe all the boilerplate nonsense they talk about a supposed Iranian nuclear program – the real reason the European nations want the deal to continue is that it stopped them having to pretend to believe all the outright lies the US told about Iran, and having to kowtow t0 costly and counterproductive sanctions against Iran that did immense general harm for the benefit only of Israel and Saudi Arabia and their US stooges.

The US pulling out of the deal would at least bring that issue of US dishonesty on Iran and past European appeasement of it to a head, I suppose.

John Jeremiah Smith , October 13, 2017 at 4:10 pm GMT
Trump is an egotistical jackass, nothing else. A liar from the git-go, and a completely ineffective leader, ideologue and President. He's not going to last much longer. I will take note that he did, temporarily, save us from the madness of the Hillary moiety. But, he has molted into a complete fuckup.

Goodbye, good riddance. Let's get ready to deal with the next wacko -- Pence. Assuming they won't kill Pence with the same bomb.

YetAnotherAnon , October 13, 2017 at 4:40 pm GMT
@Mark James

"As for Trump I think it's crystal clear his campaign involved the Russians in our election. "

It's crystal clear that some people will believe any crap that The Media Formerly Known As Hillary's broadcast.

reiner Tor , October 13, 2017 at 4:48 pm GMT
@John Jeremiah Smith

I will take note that he did, temporarily, save us from the madness of the Hillary moiety.

Often I feel like it'd be better if Hillary did the same insane policies. It's always worse when our guy does something wrong, and better when the hated enemy does it.

Hillary was a danger that she would start WW3 in Syria, but I don't think we can be certain she'd have started it. Given how risk-averse women are in general, I think the only issue was whether the Russians could've made it clear that shooting at Russian soldiers would mean war with Russia. And I think even Hillary's advisers would've blinked.

On the other hand, I don't think Hillary would be nearly as insane on North Korea or Iran. As a bonus, she would be accelerating the demise of the US, by introducing ever more insane domestic policies, things like gay, transsexual and female quotas in US Special Forces. This would ultimately be a good thing, destroying or weakening US power which is currently only used to evil ends in the world.

reiner Tor , October 13, 2017 at 5:07 pm GMT
@Randal

Unfortunately I can see Orbán and the Poles torpedoing a common EU stance. I'm sure that will be the price for Netanyahu's meeting with the V4 leaders a few months ago.

reiner Tor , October 13, 2017 at 5:15 pm GMT
I think one good thing would be if US conservatives stopped their Reagan worship. He was certainly not a bad person, but he allowed the amnesty to happen, couldn't stop the sanctions on Apartheid South Africa, didn't (or couldn't?) do anything against the MLK cult becoming a state religion, and started the free trade and tax cuts cults, he's also responsible for promoting the neocons to positions of power. So overall he was a mixed bag from a nationalist conservative viewpoint.
Chris Mallory , October 13, 2017 at 5:19 pm GMT
@Mark James

Private citizens are forbidden to ask for help from a foreign country, when the US Government is trying to prevent alien forces from interfering in our electoral process.

You forgot the Clintons, Bush, McCain, Romney, and Obama. China and Israel worked on behalf of all five of them, even though three of them lost

Randal , October 13, 2017 at 5:33 pm GMT
@reiner Tor

Yes, that's quite possible, but a common EU stance is not really all that important. What really matters is how far the Germans, and to a lesser extent the less relevant but still big European nations such as France and Italy and the more subservient US tool, the UK, are prepared to continue to kowtow to US and Israeli dishonesty on Iran.

All the signs seem to be that repudiating the deal and trying to return to the days of the aggressive and counter-productive US-imposed sanctions will be a step too far for many of those players.

As a bonus, she would be accelerating the demise of the US, by introducing ever more insane domestic policies, things like gay, transsexual and female quotas in US Special Forces. This would ultimately be a good thing, destroying or weakening US power which is currently only used to evil ends in the world.

Actually I suspect that repudiating the JCPOA, whether openly or by de facto breach, will go immensely farther, and much faster, towards destroying practical US influence and therefore power globally than any of those domestic policies, at least in the short run.

You can see that Trump is at least dimly aware of that likelihood from the way he keeps bottling and postponing the decision, despite his clearly evident and desperate desire to please his pro-Israeli and anti-Iranian advisers and instincts.

John Jeremiah Smith , October 13, 2017 at 6:13 pm GMT
@reiner Tor

On the other hand, I don't think Hillary would be nearly as insane on North Korea or Iran.

An election of Hillary meant open borders. That is official, rapid and deliberate national suicide. All foreign policy issues pale before such a horror.

reiner Tor , October 13, 2017 at 6:43 pm GMT
@John Jeremiah Smith

1) There's a chance foreign policy insanity starts a nuclear war, in which case all domestic policy issues will pale before such horror.

2) The US already has de facto open borders. Why does it matter if it becomes majority nonwhite in 30 or just 20 years?

3) For non-American whites, it's better the earlier the US sphere disintegrates. I bet you it's better for American whites as well. As long as this political/cultural center holds, the rot cannot be stopped.

The Alarmist , October 13, 2017 at 6:55 pm GMT
I watched the movie Independence Day last night: Can we have that guy for President after Trump, or do we have to have an obligatory Democrat (Chelsea Clinton?) President for the next 8 years?
German_reader , October 13, 2017 at 6:57 pm GMT
@John Jeremiah Smith

An election of Hillary meant open borders. That is official, rapid and deliberate national suicide. All foreign policy issues pale before such a horror.

That's understandable, but obviously the calculation must be somewhat different from a non-US perspective. Given how strongly many white Americans are in favor of pro-war policies and mindless Israel worship (how many US blacks or Hispanics care about Israel or confronting Iran?), I'm not even sure nationalists in Europe should really lament the Hispanicization of the US. It might at least have a positive effect in restricting US interventionism and eroding US power. The sooner the US is unable to continue with its self-appointed role as a global redeemer nation, the better.

RadicalCenter , October 13, 2017 at 8:36 pm GMT
@Mark James

Glad you think it's "crystal clear." How about evidence?

nsa , October 13, 2017 at 9:10 pm GMT
History repeats first as tragedy (crushing the spoiled unionized mostly white air traffic controllers), then as farce (crushing the spoiled unionized mostly afro NFL jocks). Reagan was at least an American Firster. Trumpenstein is an obvious traitorous Izzie Firster, with little concern for the so-called deplorables except to convert them into deployables at the service of his jooie sponsors. Maybe Paddy should have titled his screed "Heir to Begin, not Reagan"?
Aren Haich , October 13, 2017 at 9:12 pm GMT
Pat Buchanan points out that " it is far more likely that a major war would do for the Trump presidency and his place in history what it did for Presidents Wilson, Truman, LBJ and George W. Bush."

As for President Trump; Let us hope that war DOES NOT BECOME "The Last Refuge Of This Scoundrel"!

John Gruskos , October 13, 2017 at 9:37 pm GMT
@reiner Tor

Orban has been critical of regime change wars.

John Gruskos , October 13, 2017 at 9:43 pm GMT
@German_reader

Rubio was far more of a war-monger than Trump, and he won the primaries in the majority non-White jurisdictions (Washington DC, Puerto Rico).

If only non-White votes were counted, Hillary Clinton would have been elected unanimously by the electoral college, and Hillary is more of a war-monger than Trump is.

The few reliable voices for foreign policy sanity in congress, such as Senator Rand Paul and Congressmen Walter Jones, John Duncan, Thomas Massie, and Justin Amash, represent overwhelmingly White, Protestant, old-stock American districts.

German_reader , October 13, 2017 at 10:39 pm GMT
@John Gruskos

Rubio was far more of a war-monger than Trump, and he won the primaries in the majority non-White jurisdictions (Washington DC, Puerto Rico).

Maybe, but is there any data indicating many blacks in Washington DC actually voted in the Republican primaries? Why would they when most of them are a solid Democrat voting block? I'd guess Rubio got his votes from white elites in DC.
As for Puerto Rico, I didn't know they actually have primaries, seems odd given they don't vote in US presidential elections.

Hillary is more of a war-monger than Trump is.

Hillary was horrible all around, and I agree she might well have been disastrous as president given her dangerous proposals for no-fly zones in Syria, and the potential of conflict with Russia this entailed. But I'm no longer sure Trump is really better regarding foreign policy. His behaviour on the North Korea issue is irresponsible imo, and his willingness to wreck the nuclear deal with Iran at the behest of neoconservatives and Zionist donors like Sheldon Adelson is a big fat minus in my view. Sorry, but I think you guys who hoped for something different have all been (neo-)conned.

Jonathan Mason , October 13, 2017 at 11:42 pm GMT
Reagan said: My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.

Trump said: We will totally destroy North Korea if the United States is forced to defend itself or its allies.

Reagan was a joker, Trump is a wildcard.

Carroll Price , October 14, 2017 at 1:51 am GMT
The only similarities I see between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump is that both live (lived) in a sort of la-la land, totally out of touch with reality. The only difference between them is that Reagan had sensible people around him (like Pat Buchannan) who wrote good speeches and make good decisions which he took full credit for. Trump, on the other hand delivers abbreviated, one-sentence speeches via Twitter while surrounded by mental midgets with military minds.
Carroll Price , October 14, 2017 at 2:08 am GMT
@Randal

There is arguably a fundamental difference here, that in Reagan's day there was a clear ideological threat from the Soviet Union, which was still (albeit increasingly nominally) in the grip of an aggressively destabilising universalist ideology, communism

Not really Randal. The Cold War was an invented war like the War on Terror that replaced just in the nick of time, and for the same purpose, which is to justify unlimited defense budgets necessary to sustain a bloated MIC that would not otherwise exist.

Carroll Price , October 14, 2017 at 2:35 am GMT
@John Gruskos

Rubio was far more of a war-monger than Trump, and he won the primaries in the majority non-White jurisdictions (Washington DC, Puerto Rico).

but you're forgetting that Trump wasn't a war monger while on the campaign trail, far from it. Which is the only reason he won the election. In other words he fooled just enough people (like you and me) long enough to get elected. Same thing happened with peace candidate, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Hussein Obama. It's clearly a rigged process.

Randal , October 14, 2017 at 7:48 am GMT
@Carroll Price

Not really Randal. The Cold War was an invented war like the War on Terror that replaced just in the nick of time, and for the same purpose, which is to justify unlimited defense budgets necessary to sustain a bloated MIC that would not otherwise exist.

Well, yes and no. In both cases. It really is more complicated than that.

KA , October 14, 2017 at 11:18 am GMT
Reagan didn't undo Arab Israel Camp David Peace Treaty He didn't keep the Israeli side and undo the Egyptian side of the American obligation . He kept both.

Trump is dangerous malevolent anti-American and anti- anything that hurts his ego or pocket . He has malcontent displaced sycophants as inner circle supporters who want a piece in the pie denied to them by the establishment .

Here is a quote from antiwar -"In other words, it's all about the war that Trump and his still-loyal lieutenant Steve Bannon, assisted by UN ambassador Nikki Haley, have declared on the "deep state."

Also, Trump and Bannon aren't really interested in draining the foreign policy swamp in DC. They simply want to install their own cronies who will ensure that war and globalization benefit them rather than Kissinger and his ilk. It's a shell game designed to fool Trump's base, but the rest of the world has kept its eye on the ball." http://original.antiwar.com/feffer/2017/10/13/trump-signaling-unprecedented-right-turn-foreign-policy/

This war between elites have been predicted by a CT professor in an article in 2016 , to get more serious and dangerous by 2020 . The fights among elites are not new but another pathway an empire takes additionally to the final fate of the destruction from within

KA , October 14, 2017 at 11:49 am GMT
@KA

"A large class of disgruntled elite-wannabes, often well-educated and highly capable, has been denied access to elite positions."

Another visible sign of increasing intra-elite competition and political polarization is the fragmentation of political parties

cliodynamic research on past societies demonstrates that elite overproduction is by far the most important of the three main historical drivers of social instability and political violence (see Secular Cycles for this analysis).

But the other two factors in the model, popular immiseration (the stagnation and decline of living standards) and declining fiscal health of the state (resulting from falling state revenues and rising expenses) are also important contributors.

: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-social-instability-lies.html#jCp

polskijoe , October 14, 2017 at 1:04 pm GMT
@reiner Tor

Ideally Europe would be strong together, without US and more sane policies on morals and immigration.

Yes v4 is connected to CC, Neocon, Zios.

While Polands stance on immigration, and trying to hold on to old values is good, problem is depending on US too much, and being stuck between Russia and Germany which would isolate it from Europe in some ways. Obviously Poles are not uniform, views on US, Russia, Germany, Ukraine are all over the place. I wish Poland was just European (in politics) but the US-EU connection is still strong.

polskijoe , October 14, 2017 at 1:16 pm GMT
Commenting on US presidents. Presidents are puppets. All of them. Modern leaders in Western world are unlikable. Reagan at least had some balance, had some Catholic and Paleocon involvement. It wasnt all Neocons and Zios. Im quite sure Reagan (and his dad), people like Buchanan had connections to groups like Knights Malta or Knights Colombus. Cant prove it though. Kennedy was KC.

Today Neocon/Zionist influence is even stronger. Trump policies on NK and Iran are nuts. At best a war is avoided.

On the other side you have Clintons, Obamas. They would destroy the US, and have similar policies because again they are puppets. Clinton would likely be involved in Syria, just like Obama was.

German_reader , October 14, 2017 at 3:02 pm GMT
@polskijoe

While Polands stance on immigration, and trying to hold on to old values is good, problem is depending on US too much

Yes, that's a problem, and I think Polish national conservatives are somewhat in denial about what the modern US stands for the "values" pushed by the US establishment today are incompatible with the Polish right's vision for Poland (e.g. conservative values in sexual morality – no homo-lobbyism and transgender nonsense -, strong public role of Catholicism, restrictive and selective immigration policies that keep out Muslims).

I can understand to some degree why the Polish right is so pro-US, given history and apprehensions about Germany and Russia, but they should at least be aware that alliance with the US could have a rather pernicious influence on Poland itself.

[Oct 14, 2017] The Russiagate Scandal Descends Into Total Absurdity

Oct 14, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
A reasonable person would also conclude that the tiny number of these advertisements and comments – unearthed after frantic and relentless searches by the social media platforms after they were put under intense pressure from the politicians to come up with something – their vague and contradictory material, and their nebulous connection to Russia, in fact proves that there was NO sinister Russian plot to swing last year's election to Donald Trump by using social media, or even a Russian plot via social media to create doubts about it.

There is however nothing remotely reasonable about the true believers of the Russiagate scandal. On the contrary they have latched onto this material – whose lack of substance in fact proves the absurdity of their claims – not as disproving their claims but rather as vindication that what they have been saying all along about "Russian meddling in the election" has now been proved to be true. A whole stream of strange articles (see for example this one in the Financial Times) has appeared in the establishment media which all but say this.

To which one can only say that when evidence of the non-existence of a conspiracy is taken as proof of its existence it becomes clear that all connection to reality and indeed to sanity has been lost.

(4) Attempted Russian hacking of state voting systems

In some ways this was the most bizarre recent claim of all. It has been thoroughly discussed by Glenn Greenwald and to his commentary I have little to add.

What makes this episode bizarre is that the claim that the Russians hacked or attempted to hack the voting systems of US states is one which has been made repeatedly over the course of the scandal, only to be invariably and repeatedly proved to be false.

The latest iteration of this claim was in an article in USA Today sourced from the Department of Homeland Security which claimed that the Russians had attempted to hack the voting systems of 21 states.

Needless to say the claim was immediately picked up and repeated with enthusiasm by all sorts of people until two of the states involved – Wisconsin and California – categorically denied it, upon which the Department of Homeland Security was forced to issue a retraction.

To which one can only ask: how often does this story have to be refuted before it is accepted as false?

* * *

Overall one senses a scandalous story of nefarious collusion and double-dealing between the Trump campaign and Russia which now rests on nothing but hot air as all attempts to prove it true fail one by one.

In the meantime the American public and even parts of the media are losing interest, as shown by the fact that the scandal hardly comes up in White House news conferences any more.

Serious damage however continues to be done.

The scandal has paralysed the foreign policy of the US government as Donald Trump's signature policy upon which he was elected – rapprochement with Russia – has been blocked because of a concocted scandal with no substance behind it.

The result unsurprisingly is an angry President, resentful at how his signature policy has been blocked, who having no clear idea what to do, is hitting out in all directions, sometimes by behaving spitefully towards his own staff.

Moreover, as the disintegration of the scandal makes it all but impossible for the President to be removed from office through his impeachment (the original intention of those who concocted it), this chaotic and unhappy state of affairs looks likely to continue indefinitely.

* * *

But then - Just when you thought the Hillary Clinton concocted 'Russia election meddling' story could not get any more stupid, CNN outdoes itself.

(5) CNN Claims Russia Used 'Pokemon Go' To Meddle In US Election

via Alex Christoforou ,

Putin has weaponized Pokemon to subvert US democracy.

Never mind Russia dismantling America's democratic system with only $100,000 in Facebook ads , which did not even discuss the US election, Russia has now weaponized Pokemon.

We can now expect to see Pokemon characters subpoenaed to testify in front of Congress.

Exclusive: Russian-linked meddling effort extended to YouTube, Tumblr and even Pokémon Go https://t.co/Tw6WATNizC pic.twitter.com/bCvVYPKIki

-- CNN (@CNN) October 12, 2017

Via The Gateway Pundit

CNN broke an 'exclusive' story on Thursday in their desperate attempt to publish anything with the word 'Russians' in the title. CNN is now claiming the Russians meddled in the 2016 presidential election through Pokemon Go.

How did we go from Trump colluded with the Kremlin to Pokemon ads?

your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

vortmax , Oct 13, 2017 6:58 PM

"The scandal which more than anything else has defined his Presidency"

Stopped reading there.

GUS100CORRINA -> vortmax , Oct 13, 2017 7:00 PM

The Russiagate Scandal Descends Into Total Absurdity

My response : So is Mueller fired???? Inquiring minds want to know.

TGDavis -> GUS100CORRINA , Oct 13, 2017 7:05 PM

No, Mueller will continue until someone commits a crime.

Rapunzal -> TGDavis , Oct 13, 2017 7:13 PM

It was from day 1 absurd. But they keep the story running because the goal of the parasitic elites is to control the narrative on the news channels. They will get even more aggressive the closer we will get to the final economic collapse. They need to overload us with any BS they can find to completely kill our senses for what is real and what not. They don't even care we find out about all the false flags and hoaxes because tomorrow will be a new one. It's called information overload.

MozartIII -> Rapunzal , Oct 13, 2017 7:42 PM

They got nothing. Fucking Maroons!!!

loebster -> MozartIII , Oct 13, 2017 8:05 PM

Russiagate is the Joowitch elite's way of keeping Trump on track with WW3.

http://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-truth-about-the-c...

JohnG -> loebster , Oct 13, 2017 8:51 PM

" Even as the Trump administration disintegrates – with the President publicly quarrelling with his Secretary of State......"

Here we go with anti-Trump Tyler again. Trump is doing JUST FUCKING FINE, and sez you, MF'er.

Kelly was clearly fucking with the press when he "denied" he was about to resign.

Fuck You fella, gal, whatever xe you tend to be today.......

SafelyGraze -> JohnG , Oct 14, 2017 12:28 AM

cnn has jumped the covfefe

Manthong -> SafelyGraze , Oct 14, 2017 10:05 AM

The Russians hacking Pac-Man to influence a Trump win has to be the looniest story.

Oh, it wasn't Pac-Man?

Well, that one is next.

[Oct 14, 2017] The people who came up with the Russian hacking story were not stupid. The logical weakness of the claim was never relevant. Unlike Dubya in Iraq, they got what they wanted. Mission accomplished by Mike Whitney

Anybody who subscript of NYT, or WaPo after this fiasco is simply paying money for state propaganda.
Notable quotes:
"... Committee Chairman Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.) admitted as much in a press conference last Wednesday when he said: "We feel very confident that the ICA's accuracy is going to be supported by our committee. " ..."
"... Burr's statement is an example of "confirmation bias" which is the tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms one's own preexisting beliefs. In this case, Burr and his co-chair, Senator Mark Warner have already accepted the findings of a hastily slapped-together Intelligence report that was the work of "hand-picked" analysts who were likely chosen to produce conclusions that jibed with a particular political agenda. ..."
"... This is the basic claim of Russia meddling that has yet to be proved. As you can see, the charge is mixed with liberal doses of mind-reading mumbo-jumbo that reveal the authors' lack of objectivity. There's a considerable amount of speculation about Putin's motives and preferences which are based on pure conjecture. It's a bit shocking that professional analysts -- who are charged with providing our leaders with rock-solid intelligence related to matters of national security -- would indulge in this type of opinionated blather and psycho-babble. ..."
"... The ICA reads more like the text from a morning talk show than an Intelligence report. And what is it about this report that Burr finds so persuasive? It's beyond me. The report's greatest strength seems to be that no one has ever read it. If they had, they'd realize that it's nonsense. ..."
"... How can the committee conduct "100 interviews, comprising 250 hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of transcripts" without producing a shred of evidence that Russia meddled in the elections? How is that possible? The Committee's job is to prove its case not to merely pour over the minutia related to the investigation. No one really cares how many people testified or how much paperwork was involved. What people want is proof that Russia interfered with the elections or that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow. That's the whole point of this exercise. And, on the collusion matter, at least we have something new to report. In a rare moment of candor, Burr blurted out this gem: "There are concerns that we continue to pursue. Collusion? The committee continues to look into all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I'm not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven't any." ..."
"... Let's cut to the chase: The committee is not getting to the bottom of the Russia hacking matter, because they don't want to get to the bottom of it. It's that simple. ..."
"... Brennan not only helped select the hand-picked analysts who authored the ICA, he also clearly has an animus towards Russia due to his frustrated attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al Assad which was thwarted by Putin. In other words, Brennan has a motive to mislead the Committee. He's biased. He has an ax to grind. In contrast, Assange has firsthand knowledge of what actually transpired with the DNC emails because he was the recipient of those emails. Has Assange been contacted by the Committee or asked to testify via Skype? ..."
"... It should be obvious by now that the real intention of the briefing was not to provide the public with more information, facts or evidence of Russian hacking, but to use the prestigious setting as a platform for disseminating more disinformation aimed at vilifying an emerging rival (Russia) that has blocked Washington's aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and threatens to unite the most populous and prosperous region in the world (Eurasia) into one massive free trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Reasonable people must now consider the possibility that the Russia hacking narrative is an Information Operation (IO) devoid of any real substance which is designed to poison the publics perception of Russia. It is a domestic propaganda campaign that fits perfectly with the "Full Spectrum Dominance" theory of weaponizing media in a way that best achieves one's geopolitical objectives. The American people are again being manipulated so that powerful elites can lead the country to war. ..."
"... If the Senate can 'assess,' so can I! I assess that Hollywood hottie Jenifer Lawrence is secretly in love with me! Although I can't prove this, all of my assessments point to this as being fact. ..."
"... This report is as bogus as the "9/11 Commission Report". Both commissions members were hand-picked by those guys that have a vested interest in the right outcome. ..."
"... In the end, Robert Mueller, an Obama/Clinton/Comey/Brennan stooge, will produce some "evidence" about so-called Russian meddling as far-fetched this may be. And the fawning media will go for it. The American public will get the report, which it deserves. ..."
"... But what is missing is that this "Russian Hacking" story was not nonsense, it worked. After Trump was elected, the establishment panicked and went into full attack mode. The headlines were screaming, thought went out the window, it looked like Trump was going to be hounded out of office by force majeure. Then Trump buckled, and shot those missiles at the Syrian air base, and we are back on track throwing away trillions of dollars on endless pointless winless foreign wars in places of zero strategic interest to us. ..."
"... Having served its purpose, the Russian 'hacking' stories are tapering off, being continued more out of momentum and habit than true focused intent. Oh sure, the corporate press still publicly despises Trump, but the intensity is gone. They are just going through the motions, it is no longer important, just political theater. ..."
"... The people who came up with the Russian hacking story were not stupid. The logical weakness of the claim was never relevant. Unlike Dubya in Iraq, they got what they wanted. Mission accomplished. ..."
"... The inaptly named Intelligence Community just never busts out. However much it has gotten flat out wrong and however much it has flat out missed over the years, however much its blunders and mistakes have cost us and our victims in treasure and blood, it just never busts out. There is always an excuse. The closest the Borg ever came to any gesture towards accountability was the Church committee post Watergate, ancient history, lessons purposefully buried and lost to the legions of bureaucrats blundering their way through the last 40 years. ..."
"... Good article on something everyone who is well researched and truth seeking already knows; the Russian Collusion story is a hatchet job by incompetent political hacks. The only power they USED to have is an obsessive never give up faith in the power of lying. ..."
"... So what ? Truth is no longer an issue in USA politics: Christopher Lasch, 'The Culture of Narcissism, American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations', 1979, 1980, London ..."
"... Even today there was another AP hit piece about those 201 Russian Twitter handles, and zero perspective about the kind of math that renders 201 out of 24 billion a speck of dust. You really have to depend on a dumbed down population to get them to buy this stuff. ..."
"... If all we hear are endless allusions to what are just opinions, meetings, plans, criticism, etc what is being investigated? This is literally suggesting that some in Washington and US media are not mature enough, smart enough, or sane enough to be taken seriously. How are they planning to recover the basic level of rationality after this fiasco? ..."
Oct 14, 2017 | www.unz.com

Originally from: The Senate Intelligence Committee Finds No Evidence of Russian Hacking or Collusion

The Senate Intelligence Committee has made it clear that it is not conducting an open and independent investigation of alleged Russian hacking, but making a determined effort to support a theory that was presented in the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. Committee Chairman Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.) admitted as much in a press conference last Wednesday when he said: "We feel very confident that the ICA's accuracy is going to be supported by our committee. "

Burr's statement is an example of "confirmation bias" which is the tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms one's own preexisting beliefs. In this case, Burr and his co-chair, Senator Mark Warner have already accepted the findings of a hastily slapped-together Intelligence report that was the work of "hand-picked" analysts who were likely chosen to produce conclusions that jibed with a particular political agenda. In other words, the intelligence was fixed to fit the policy. Burr of course has tried to conceal his prejudice by pointing to the number of witnesses the Committee has interviewed and the volume of work that's been produced. This is from an article at The Nation:

Since January 23, the committee and its staff have conducted more than 100 interviews, comprising 250 hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of transcripts, and reviewed more than 100,000 documents relevant to Russiagate. The staff, said Warner, has collectively spent a total of 57 hours per day, seven days a week, since the committee opened its inquiry, going through documents and transcripts, interviewing witnesses, and analyzing both classified and unclassified material.

It all sounds very impressive, but if the goal is merely to lend credibility to unverified assumptions, then what's the point? Let's take a look at a few excerpts from the report and see whether Burr and Warner are justified in "feeling confident" in the ICA's accuracy. From the Intelligence Community Assessment:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.

This is the basic claim of Russia meddling that has yet to be proved. As you can see, the charge is mixed with liberal doses of mind-reading mumbo-jumbo that reveal the authors' lack of objectivity. There's a considerable amount of speculation about Putin's motives and preferences which are based on pure conjecture. It's a bit shocking that professional analysts -- who are charged with providing our leaders with rock-solid intelligence related to matters of national security -- would indulge in this type of opinionated blather and psycho-babble. It's also shocking that Burr and Warner think this gibberish should be taken seriously.

Here's more from the ICA:

Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.

More mind-reading, more groundless speculation, more guessing what Putin thinks or doesn't think. The ICA reads more like the text from a morning talk show than an Intelligence report. And what is it about this report that Burr finds so persuasive? It's beyond me. The report's greatest strength seems to be that no one has ever read it. If they had, they'd realize that it's nonsense. Also, it would have been better if the ICA's authors had avoided the amateur psychoanalysis and stuck to the point, Russia hacking. Dabbling in the former seriously impacts the report's credibility.

To their credit, however, Burr and Warner have questioned all of the analysts who contributed to the report. Check out this excerpt from The Nation:

"We have interviewed everybody who had a hand or a voice in the creation of the ICA," said Burr. "We've spent nine times the amount of time that the IC [intelligence community] spent putting the ICA together. We have reviewed all the supporting evidence that went into it and, in addition to that, the things that went on the cutting-room floor that they may not have found appropriate for the ICA, but we may have found relevant to our investigation." Burr added that the committee's review included "highly classified intelligence reporting," and they've interviewed every official in the Obama administration who had anything to do with putting it together. ("Democrats and Republicans in Congress Agree: Russia Did It", The Nation)

That's great, but where' the beef? How can the committee conduct "100 interviews, comprising 250 hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of transcripts" without producing a shred of evidence that Russia meddled in the elections? How is that possible? The Committee's job is to prove its case not to merely pour over the minutia related to the investigation. No one really cares how many people testified or how much paperwork was involved. What people want is proof that Russia interfered with the elections or that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow. That's the whole point of this exercise. And, on the collusion matter, at least we have something new to report. In a rare moment of candor, Burr blurted out this gem: "There are concerns that we continue to pursue. Collusion? The committee continues to look into all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I'm not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven't any."

Think about that. After "100 interviews, 250 hours of testimony, and 4000 transcript pages" there's not the slightest hint of collusion. It's mindboggling. Why isn't this front page news? Why haven't the New York Times or Washington Post run this in their headlines, after all, they've hyped every other part of this story?

Could it be that Burr's admission doesn't mesh with the media's "Russia did it" narrative so they decided to scrub the story altogether?

But it's not just collusion we're talking about here, there's also the broader issue of Russia meddling. And what was striking about the press conference is that –after all the interviews, all the testimony, and all the stacks of transcripts– the Committee has come up with nothing; no eyewitness testimony supporting the original claims, no smoking gun, no proof of domestic espionage, no evidence of Russian complicity, nothing. One big goose egg.

So here's a question for critical minded readers:

If the Senate Intelligence Committee has not found any proof that Russia hacked the 2016 elections, then why do senators' Burr and Warner still believe the ICA is reliable? It doesn't really make sense, does it? Don't they require evidence to draw their conclusions? And doesn't the burden of truth fall on the prosecution (or the investigators in this case)? Isn't a man innocent until proven guilty or doesn't that rule apply to Russia?

Let's cut to the chase: The committee is not getting to the bottom of the Russia hacking matter, because they don't want to get to the bottom of it. It's that simple. That's why they have excluded any witnesses that may upset their preconceived theory of what happened. Why, for example, would the committee chose to interview former CIA Director John Brennan rather than WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange? Brennan not only helped select the hand-picked analysts who authored the ICA, he also clearly has an animus towards Russia due to his frustrated attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al Assad which was thwarted by Putin. In other words, Brennan has a motive to mislead the Committee. He's biased. He has an ax to grind. In contrast, Assange has firsthand knowledge of what actually transpired with the DNC emails because he was the recipient of those emails. Has Assange been contacted by the Committee or asked to testify via Skype?

Don't bet on it.

What about former UK ambassador Craig Murray, a WikiLeaks colleague, who has repeatedly admitted that he knows the source of the DNC emails. Murray hasn't been asked to testify nor has he even been contacted by the FBI on the matter. Apparently, the FBI has no interest in a credible witness who can disprove the politically-motivated theory expounded in the ICA.

Then there's 30-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern and his group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern has done extensive research on the topic and has produced solid evidence that the DNC emails were "leaked" by an insider, not "hacked" by a foreign government. McGovern's work squares with Assange and Murray's claim that Russia did not hack the 2016 elections. Has McGovern been invited to testify?

How about Skip Folden, retired IBM Program Manager and Information Technology expert, whose excellent report titled "Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge" also disproves the hacking theory, as does The Nation's Patrick Lawrence whose riveting article at The Nation titled "A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack" which thoroughly obliterates the central claims of the ICA.

Finally, there's California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher who met with Assange in August at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and who was assured that Assange would provide hard evidence (in the form of "a computer drive or other data-storage device") that the Russians were not involved in the DNC email scandal.

Wouldn't you think that senate investigators would want to talk to a trusted colleague and credible witness like Rohrabacher who said he could produce solid proof that the scandal, that has dominated the headlines and roiled Washington for the better part of a year, was bogus?

Apparently not. Apparently Burr and his colleagues would rather avoid any witness or evidence that conflicts with their increasingly-threadbare thesis.

So what conclusions can we draw from the Committee's behavior? Are Burr and Warner really conducting an open and independent investigation of alleged Russia hacking or is this just a witch hunt?

It should be obvious by now that the real intention of the briefing was not to provide the public with more information, facts or evidence of Russian hacking, but to use the prestigious setting as a platform for disseminating more disinformation aimed at vilifying an emerging rival (Russia) that has blocked Washington's aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and threatens to unite the most populous and prosperous region in the world (Eurasia) into one massive free trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Reasonable people must now consider the possibility that the Russia hacking narrative is an Information Operation (IO) devoid of any real substance which is designed to poison the publics perception of Russia. It is a domestic propaganda campaign that fits perfectly with the "Full Spectrum Dominance" theory of weaponizing media in a way that best achieves one's geopolitical objectives. The American people are again being manipulated so that powerful elites can lead the country to war.

Beckow > , October 13, 2017 at 11:00 pm GMT

Where is this going? At some point in the next few years there will be a 'damning' report that will regurgitate what has already been endlessly publicised: VIP's meet each other (the horror!), somehow DNC emails got published, Facebook sold ads to 'Russia-linked' users, and Pokemon Go, whatever. That will be described in sinister terms and RT will be thrown in. How dare RT not to have the same views as CNN?

But what then? Let's even say that Trump is removed – he is at this point so emasculated that keeping him in the White House is the most stabilising thing the establishment could do. Is Congress going to declare a war on Russia? Or more sanctions? Are they going to ban RT? Break diplomatic relations? None of that makes sense because any of those moves would be more costly than beneficial, some dramatically so. Therefore nothing will happen.

All that will remain is permanent bitterness towards Russia, and vice-versa. And much reduced ability to do what the West has done for 75 years: heavy interference and media campaigns inside foreign countries to influence elections. If 'meddling' is so bad, the biggest meddlers – by far – will be less able to meddle. So how is this hysteria helping?

Sanity in public life is a precious thing. Once abandoned, all kinds of strange things start happening. Yeah, Pokemon GO – Putin was personally naming the characters to 'sow division'. It sounds like something Stalin would accuse his 'cosmopolitan' enemies of doing. This is really embarrassing.

utu > , October 14, 2017 at 4:35 am GMT

Incorrect parsing of reality. It was not about getting Trump but it was about making Trump administration to severe relations with Russia. It began with having Gen. Flynn fired. This mission was accomplished. We have now worse relations with Russia than at the end of Obama administration.

Greg Bacon > , Website October 14, 2017 at 9:59 am GMT

If the Senate can 'assess,' so can I! I assess that Hollywood hottie Jenifer Lawrence is secretly in love with me! Although I can't prove this, all of my assessments point to this as being fact.

jacques sheete > , October 14, 2017 at 11:45 am GMT

@Johnny Rico

I have been convinced of the ridiculousness of the Russian-hacking/collusion narrative/scandal since it was created in 2016.

I, too, smelled a rat and figured that it was all BS right from the get go. So much so that I haven't followed it a bit. In fact it's so ridiculous on its face, that I have not and probably will not, waste time reading the article even though MW is a good guy, an unimpeachable source, a true journalist, and a fine writer.

Bless you, Mr Whitney, for having the energy to document what is no doubt a pack of lies from the usual suspects.

I stumbled on this yesterday, and it suggests, to no one's surprise, that it's always deja vu all over again. You'd think our "high IQ" masters would show a little originality once in a while, and that we, "Low IQ" as we are, would finally learn that it's all BS from the get-go.

Note the date.:

THESE books all belong to that literature of Katzenjammer which now flourishes so amazingly in the United States t hey all embody attempts to find out what is the matter with the Republic. I wish I could add that one or another of them solves the problem, or at least contributes something to its illumination , but that would be going somewhat beyond the facts.

-H.L. Mencken, Autopsy (4 Reviews), , September 1927 , pp. 123-125 – PDF

http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1927sep-00123

jacques sheete > , October 14, 2017 at 12:21 pm GMT

@Thorfinnsson

This makes me suspect that Mike Whitney is a censorious coward on the model of Razib Khan (thankfully expelled from unz.com) or even worse Paul Craig Roberts (who prohibits comments entirely).

While I agree with you about the latter two, and have written them off accordingly, along with Mercer, who I suspect "edits" (really, "purges" ) her comments too, I highly doubt that MW falls into the same categories as those mentioned. At least MW doesn't use the word, "insouciant" 3 or 4 times in every article!

If I am wrong and this article is simply strangely unpopular please let me know and I will apologize.

The article isn't so much unpopular as the subject is wearying. It's the same crud all over again,obviously false, and I suspect virtually everyone knows it. It's utterly boring and I give MW a lot of credit for having the persistence to even face the mindless mess, let alone think and write about it. He really is to be admired for that.

I've always thought it was a distraction as usual from other much more more important things but utu has a better take on it.

it was about making Trump administration to severe relations with Russia. It began with having Gen. Flynn fired. This mission was accomplished. We have now worse relations with Russia than at the end of Obama administration. [ed note:And Flynn is gone too.]

I think that's a "Bingo!" and I also think you better formulate an apology and plan on getting on yer knees to deliver it!

PS: I'm curious as to why you think this is of much interest at all. (Aside from utu's take.)

Michael Kenny > , October 14, 2017 at 1:24 pm GMT

We don't know who this author really is but, once again, what's interesting is that so many people are still so scared of an investigation which is supposedly producing "no evidence" (leaving aside Trump Junior's evidence, of course). If all this was a load of nonsense, why make such a fuss about it? If there's nothing to this, an "effort to support a theory", however "determined" will come up with nothing. The frantic attempts to kill off Russiagate suggest that those who are making such attempts know, or believe, that there actually is something to it which has not yet come to light. Probably something pretty dirty by the sound of it. What if some part of the US intelligence services took part in the manipulation of the election, either in collusion with the Russians or posing as Russians, and Putin can prove it? That would certainly explain the plethora of retired intelligence agents who are so assiduously defending a foreign government. If Putin really is innocent, the common sense way to prove it is to let Russiagate take its natural course.

Captain Nemo > , October 14, 2017 at 1:30 pm GMT

Reasonable people must now consider the possibility that the Russia hacking narrative is an Information Operation (IO) devoid of any real substance which is designed to poison the publics perception of Russia.

Really? Only "now"?! I thought it was pretty much clear from the beginning.

Ludwig Watzal > , Website October 14, 2017 at 1:59 pm GMT

This report is as bogus as the "9/11 Commission Report". Both commissions members were hand-picked by those guys that have a vested interest in the right outcome.

In the end, Robert Mueller, an Obama/Clinton/Comey/Brennan stooge, will produce some "evidence" about so-called Russian meddling as far-fetched this may be. And the fawning media will go for it. The American public will get the report, which it deserves.

TG > , October 14, 2017 at 2:33 pm GMT

Indeed, well said. But what is missing is that this "Russian Hacking" story was not nonsense, it worked. After Trump was elected, the establishment panicked and went into full attack mode. The headlines were screaming, thought went out the window, it looked like Trump was going to be hounded out of office by force majeure. Then Trump buckled, and shot those missiles at the Syrian air base, and we are back on track throwing away trillions of dollars on endless pointless winless foreign wars in places of zero strategic interest to us.

Having served its purpose, the Russian 'hacking' stories are tapering off, being continued more out of momentum and habit than true focused intent. Oh sure, the corporate press still publicly despises Trump, but the intensity is gone. They are just going through the motions, it is no longer important, just political theater.

The people who came up with the Russian hacking story were not stupid. The logical weakness of the claim was never relevant. Unlike Dubya in Iraq, they got what they wanted. Mission accomplished.

Flavius > , October 14, 2017 at 2:37 pm GMT

Mike – good article. The inaptly named Intelligence Community just never busts out. However much it has gotten flat out wrong and however much it has flat out missed over the years, however much its blunders and mistakes have cost us and our victims in treasure and blood, it just never busts out. There is always an excuse. The closest the Borg ever came to any gesture towards accountability was the Church committee post Watergate, ancient history, lessons purposefully buried and lost to the legions of bureaucrats blundering their way through the last 40 years.

If it can be gotten wrong, the Borg will get it wrong; it will be gotten wrong at the worst possible time; it will move on to get it wrong again. These are three things that you can absolutely count on.

Joe Hide > , October 14, 2017 at 2:47 pm GMT

Good article on something everyone who is well researched and truth seeking already knows; the Russian Collusion story is a hatchet job by incompetent political hacks. The only power they USED to have is an obsessive never give up faith in the power of lying.

jilles dykstra > , October 14, 2017 at 3:15 pm GMT

So what ? Truth is no longer an issue in USA politics: Christopher Lasch, 'The Culture of Narcissism, American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations', 1979, 1980, London

Pericles > , October 14, 2017 at 6:42 pm GMT

@Mike Whitney Russia collusion does lack credibility, but you're still doing us a great service by following the twists and turns of this beheaded snake. The details are worth reading about, even if there isn't much to argue about regarding the conclusion. So thanks for that.

Biff > , October 14, 2017 at 7:36 pm GMT

Even today there was another AP hit piece about those 201 Russian Twitter handles, and zero perspective about the kind of math that renders 201 out of 24 billion a speck of dust. You really have to depend on a dumbed down population to get them to buy this stuff.

Beckow > , October 14, 2017 at 7:49 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny

"If Putin really is innocent, the common sense way to prove it is to let Russiagate take its natural course."

Innocent of what? What is it exactly that Russia supposedly did? Let me list a few things that are still perfectly legal in our world (that would include US, I hope):

  • having an opinion, even if that opinion is not the same as NY Times/CNN/US State Dept
  • expressing this opinion publicly, even spending money to spread that opinion
  • supporting the side in an election that you prefer – even in other countries (everybody does this all the time, Obama flew to UK to campaign against Brexit)
  • publishing negative stuff about those you dislike (or who dislike you), e.g. their emails, accounts, etc
  • spending money to spread your views – even on 'US-owned' platforms that are otherwise operating all over the world, e.g. Facebook has 700 million active users, they cannot all be in US
  • laughing or celebrating if what you preferred won (champagne for Trump)
  • meeting with foreigners from a country not in a state of war with you, or – God forbid! – meeting with their ambassador.

None of the above is either unusual or illegal. It might not look good to some people, but it is what international life has consisted for at least 200 years. If you call that 'meddling', you just might be too naive for the world as it is.

What is the 'natural course' for the investigation? If all we hear are endless allusions to what are just opinions, meetings, plans, criticism, etc what is being investigated? This is literally suggesting that some in Washington and US media are not mature enough, smart enough, or sane enough to be taken seriously. How are they planning to recover the basic level of rationality after this fiasco?

Putin named Pokemon GO characters after BLM victims to stir up racial hatreds in US. How does one answer that? Where would you even start dealing with people who are capable of this level of nonsense?

[Oct 13, 2017] The Middle East Pivot by James Petras

Oct 13, 2017 | www.unz.com

Introduction

Multiple wars ravage the Middle East. Turkey has inserted itself into the middle of most of these regional conflicts and ended up a loser.

Under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has intervened and formed alliances with a rogue's gallery of imperial warlords, terrorists-mercenaries, Zionist expansionists, feudal potentates and obscure tribal chiefs, with disastrous economic, political and military consequences for the Turkish nation.

In this paper we will discuss Turkey's domestic and foreign policies and behavior over the past decade. We will conclude with lessons for middle range powers, which might help in future decisions

President Erdogan's Domestic Disasters

Throughout the early decade of the 21st century, Erdoğan made a strategic alliance with an influential semi-clandestine organization led by a cult-leading cleric, Fethullah Gülen, who was conveniently self-exiled in the US and under the protection of the US intelligence apparatus. This marriage of convenience was formed in order to weaken the leftist, secular and Ataturk nationalist influenced opposition. Armed with the Gülenists' treasure trove of forged documents, Erdoğan purged the military of its Ataturk nationalist leadership. He proceeded to marginalize the secular Republican Party and repressed leftist trade union, social movements and prominent academics, journalists, writers and student activists. With support from the Gülenists movement, 'Hizmet' , Erdoğan celebrated his successes and won multiple election and re-election victories!

Initially, Erdoğan failed to recognize that the Gülenists/Hizmet operated as a subversive political organization, which permeated the state apparatus through a dense network of bureaucratic, military, judicial, police, and civil society organizations, with ties to the US military/CIA and friendly relations with Israeli policy makers.

By 2013, Erdoğan felt intense pressure from the Gülenists/Hizmet which sought to discredit and oust his regime by revealing multi-million dollar corrupt practices involving him and his family in a 'Turquoise Color Revolution' – remake of other 'regime changes'.

Having discovered his internal vulnerability, Erdoğan moved to curtail the power and reach of the Gülenists/Hizmet controlled media. He was not yet prepared to deal with the immense scope and depth of the elite links to Gülenists/Hizmet. A Gülenists-led military coup was launched in July 2016, with the tacit support of the US military stationed in Turkey. This was foiled by a major popular mobilization with the support of the armed forces.

Erdoğan then moved to thoroughly purge the followers of Hizmet from the military, public administration, schools, business, the press and public and private institutions. He extended his purge to include secular and nationalist political leaders who had always opposed the Gülenists and their attempted coup d'état.

As a result of the coup attempt and the subsequent purge, Erdoğan weakened and fractured every aspect of the state and civil society. Erdoğan ended up securing control of a weakened state with a degraded business, educational and cultural world.

The Gülenists coup was authored and led by its supremo Fethullah Gülen, ensconced in his 'secret' private estate in the United States. Clearly the US was implicated in the coup and they rejected Erdoğan's demands to extradite him.

Erdoğan's subservience to the US/NATO leadership have undermined his attempts to strike at the roots of the coup and its internal and external power structure. The US/NATO military bases still operate in Turkey and retain influence over its military.

In the aftermath of the coup, the decline of Gülenist influence in the economy contributed to economic reversals in investments and growth. The purge of the military and civil society reduced Turkey's military preparedness and alienated the democratic electorate. Erdoğan had already nearly lost his bid to the presidency after his earlier purges in 2014.

Erdoğan's Foreign Policy Disasters

Perversity is when a ruler weakens its military and represses its citizens and launches a series of risky foreign adventures: This is exactly what Erdoğan has done over the past several years.

First Erdoğan backed a terrorist uprising in Syria, providing arms, recruiting overseas 'volunteers' and providing them with unrestricted passage across the Turkish border. Many of the terrorists proceeded to join forces with Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish Kurds in establishing military bases on Ankara's borders.

Secondly, Erdoğan ran a scurrilous electoral campaign among the millions of ethnic Turks living in Germany – violating that powerful nation's sovereignty. As a result, Erdoğan increased tensions and animosity with what had been its closest ally in its quest for EU membership – effectively terminating the process.

Thirdly, Erdoğan backed NATO's invasion and bombing of Libya, killing President Gadhafi, who had been an independent voice, capable of serving as a possible ally against imperial intervention in North Africa.

Fourthly, Erdoğan backed the brief government of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood after its electoral victory in 2012 following the 'Arab Spring' uprising in Egypt of 2011. He backed a formula similar to his own Turkish policy of excluding the secular, democratic opposition. This led to a bloody US-backed military coup led by General Abdel Sisi in July 2013 – a lesson not lost on Erdoğan.

Fifth, Erdoğan's de facto friendly relations with Israel – despite verbal criticism – in the face of Tel Aviv's assassination of nine non-violent Turkish protestors trying to break the starvation blockade of Gaza – undermined relations with the pro-Palestine Arab world and nationalists in Turkey.

Sixth, Erdoğan developed lucrative ties with Iraqi Kurd dictator-warlord, Masoud Barzani, facilitating the flow of oil to Israel. Erdoğan's own illicit oil deals with Barzani strengthened the cause of Kurdish separatism and exposed the widespread corruption of Erdoğan's family dealings.

Seventh, Erdoğan provoked military tensions with Russia by shooting down a warplane in Syria. This led to an economic boycott, which reduced export earnings, devastated the tourism sector and added Moscow to his list of adversaries, (Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, US, Germany, Hezbollah and Iran).

Eighth, Erdoğan backed the tiny oil-state of Qatar, sending supplies and soldiers to oppose a threat from Saudi Arabia, the other royal oil statelets and Egypt, US allies and followers.

Despite his many disastrous domestic and foreign policies, Erdoğan learned nothing and forgot nothing. When the Israelis backed the Iraqi Kurds in organizing an independence 'referendum' aiming to ultimately annex the rich oil fields of Northern Iraq, Erdoğan took no action despite this threat to Turkish national security. He merely made verbal threats to cut off the Kurd's access to Ankara's oil pipelines. He took no concrete steps. Erdoğan preferred to pocket transit taxes from the oil, antagonizing Iraq and Syria and strengthening the links between Kurdish Iraq and its secessionist counterparts in Syria and Turkey.

Because of Erdoğan failure to close down the US military base following its support of the Gülenist-led coup, the Turkish army is still heavily under US influence, opening the possibility of another uprising.

Erdoğan's lip-service to 'nationalism' has served mainly as a political tool to repress domestic democratic political parties and trade unions and the Kurdish and Alevi communities. Erdoğan's initial support and subsequent opposition to the jihadi terrorist groups seeking to oust the secular-nationalist government in Damascus has caused 'blowback' – with ISIS terrorist cells bombing civilian targets Istanbul and Ankara with mass casualties.

Conclusion

Erdoğan's unprincipled, opportunistic and pro-imperialist NATO alliance demonstrates the inability of an aspiring regional power to find a niche in the US Empire. Erdoğan believed that being a loyal 'ally' of the US would protect Turkey from a coup d'état. He failed to realize that he had become a disposable pawn in US plans to instill more servile rulers (like the Gülenist) in the Middle East.

Erdoğan's belief that Turkey's collaboration with the US to overthrow Syria's President Bashar Assad would lead to a successful territorial grab of Northern Syria: instead Erdoğan ended up serving the US-backed Syrian Kurds tied to the Turkish Kurds .By working to break up Syria and destroy its state and government, Erdoğan strengthened Kurdish cross border expansionism.

Erdoğan failed to recognize the most basic rule of imperial policy: There are no permanent allies there are only permanent interests. Erdoğan thought Turkey would be 'rewarded' by acting as a US surrogate with a share of power, wealth and territory in the Middle East. Instead, as a 'normal' imperial power, the US used Turkey when it was convenient and would then dispose of Erdoğan – like a used condom.

Anti-imperialism is not just an ideal and moral/ethical principle – it is a realistic approach to safeguarding sovereignty, democratic politics and meaningful alliances. (Republished from The James Petras Website by permission of author or representative)

[Oct 13, 2017] Sympathy for the Corporatocracy by C. J. Hopkins

Highly recommended!
Biting satire...
Notable quotes:
"... The Tonight Show ..."
"... Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything, or the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and replaced with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which is merely a simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because exchange value is its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their eviscerated cultural values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer brands as they hunch together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on Facebook. ..."
"... No, this discontent with the political establishment, corporate elites, and the mainstream media has nothing to do with any of that. It's not like global Capitalism, following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. (its last external ideological adversary), has been restructuring the entire planet in accordance with its geopolitical interests, or doing away with national sovereignty, and other nationalistic concepts that no longer serve a useful purpose in a world where a single ideological system (one backed by the most fearsome military in history) reigns completely unopposed. If that were the case, well, it might behoove us to question whether this outbreak of Nazism, racism, and other forms of "hate," was somehow connected to that historical development and maybe even try to articulate some sort of leftist analysis of that. ..."
"... a world where a single ideology rules the planet unopposed from without ..."
"... Brexit is about Britons who want their country back, a movement indeed getting stronger and stronger in EU member states, but ignored by the ruling 'elites'. ..."
"... A lot of these so called "revolutions" are fomented by the elite only to be subverted and perverted by them in the end. They've had a lot of practice co-opting revolutions and independence movements. ..."
"... "Independence" is now so fashionable (as was Communism among the "elite" back in the '30s), that they are even teaching and fostering independence to kids in kindergarten here in the US. That strikes me as most amusing. Imagine "learning" independence in state run brainwashing factories. ..."
Oct 13, 2017 | www.unz.com

Well all right, let's review what happened, or at least the official version of what happened. Not Hillary Clinton's version of what happened, which Jeffrey St. Clair so incisively skewered , but the Corporatocracy's version of what happened, which overlaps with but is even more ridiculous than Clinton's ridiculous version. To do that, we need to harken back to the peaceful Summer of 2016, (a/k/a the "Summer of Fear" ), when the United States of America was still a shiny city upon a hill whose beacon light guided freedom-loving people, the Nazis were still just a bunch of ass clowns meeting in each other's mother's garages, and Russia was, well Russia was Russia.

Back then, as I'm sure you'll recall, Western democracy, was still primarily being menaced by the lone wolf terrorists, for absolutely no conceivable reason, apart from the terrorists' fanatical desire to brutally murder all non-believers. The global Russo-Nazi Axis had not yet reared its ugly head. President Obama, who, during his tenure, had single-handedly restored America to the peaceful, prosperous, progressive paradise it had been before George W. Bush screwed it up, was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon slow jamming home the TPP . The Wall Street banks had risen from the ashes of the 2008 financial crisis, and were buying back all the foreclosed homes of the people they had fleeced with subprime mortgages. American workers were enjoying the freedom and flexibility of the new gig economy. Electioneering in the United States was underway, but it was early days. It was already clear that Donald Trump was literally the Second Coming of Hitler , but no one was terribly worried about him yet. The Republican Party was in a shambles. Neither Trump nor any of the other contenders had any chance of winning in November. Nor did Sanders, who had been defeated, fair and square, in the Democratic primaries, mostly because of his racist statements and crazy, quasi-Communist ideas. Basically, everything was hunky dory. Yes, it was going to be terribly sad to have to bid farewell to Obama, who had bailed out all those bankrupt Americans the Wall Street banks had taken to the cleaners, ended all of Bush and Cheney's wars, closed down Guantanamo, and just generally served as a multicultural messiah figure to affluent consumers throughout the free world, but Hope-and-Change was going to continue. The talking heads were all in agreement Hillary Clinton was going to be President, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Little did we know at the time that an epidemic of Russo-Nazism had been festering just beneath the surface of freedom-loving Western societies like some neo-fascist sebaceous cyst. Apparently, millions of theretofore more or less normal citizens throughout the West had been infected with a virulent strain of Russo-Nazi-engineered virus, because they simultaneously began exhibiting the hallmark symptoms of what we now know as White Supremacist Behavioral Disorder, or Fascist Oppositional Disorder (the folks who update the DSM are still arguing over the official name). It started with the Brexit referendum, spread to America with the election of Trump, and there have been a rash of outbreaks in Europe, like the one we're currently experiencing in Germany . These fascistic symptoms have mostly manifest as people refusing to vote as instructed, and expressing oppressive views on the Internet, but there have also been more serious crimes, including several assaults and murders perpetrated by white supremacists (which, of course, never happened when Obama was President, because the Nazis hadn't been "emboldened" yet).

Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything, or the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and replaced with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which is merely a simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because exchange value is its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their eviscerated cultural values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer brands as they hunch together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on Facebook.

No, this discontent with the political establishment, corporate elites, and the mainstream media has nothing to do with any of that. It's not like global Capitalism, following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. (its last external ideological adversary), has been restructuring the entire planet in accordance with its geopolitical interests, or doing away with national sovereignty, and other nationalistic concepts that no longer serve a useful purpose in a world where a single ideological system (one backed by the most fearsome military in history) reigns completely unopposed. If that were the case, well, it might behoove us to question whether this outbreak of Nazism, racism, and other forms of "hate," was somehow connected to that historical development and maybe even try to articulate some sort of leftist analysis of that.

This hypothetical leftist analysis might want to focus on how Capitalism is fundamentally opposed to Despotism, and is essentially a value-decoding machine which renders everything and everyone it touches essentially valueless interchangeable commodities whose worth is determined by market forces, rather than by societies and cultures, or religions, or other despotic systems (wherein values are established and enforced arbitrarily, by the despot, the church, or the ruling party, or by a group of people who share an affinity and decide they want to live a certain way). This is where it would get sort of tricky, because it (i.e., this hypothetical analysis) would have to delve into the history of Capitalism, and how it evolved out of medieval Despotism, and how it has been decoding despotic values for something like five hundred years. This historical delving (which would probably be too long for people to read on their phones) would demonstrate how Capitalism has been an essentially progressive force in terms of getting us out of Despotism (which, for most folks, wasn't very much fun) by fomenting bourgeois revolutions and imposing some semblance of democracy on societies. It would follow Capitalism's inexorable advance all the way up to the Twentieth Century, in which its final external ideological adversary, fake Communism, suddenly imploded, delivering us to the world we now live in a world where a single ideology rules the planet unopposed from without , and where any opposition to that global ideology can only be internal, or insurgent, in nature (e.g, terrorism, extremism, and so on). Being a hypothetical leftist analysis, it would, at this point, need to stress that, despite the fact that Capitalism helped deliver us from Despotism, and improved the state of society generally (compared to most societies that preceded it), we nonetheless would like to transcend it, or evolve out of it toward some type of society where people, and everything else, including the biosphere we live in, are not interchangeable, valueless commodities exchanged by members of a global corporatocracy who have no essential values, or beliefs, or principles, other than the worship of money. After having covered all that, we might want to offer more a nuanced view of the current neo-nationalist reaction to the Corporatocracy's ongoing efforts to restructure and privatize the rest of the planet. Not that we would support this reaction, or in any way refrain from calling neo-nationalism what it is (i.e., reactionary, despotic, and doomed), but this nuanced view we'd hypothetically offer, by analyzing the larger sociopolitical and historical forces at play, might help us to see the way forward more clearly, and who knows, maybe eventually propose some kind of credible leftist alternative to the "global neoliberalism vs. neo-nationalism" double bind we appear to be hopelessly stuck in at the moment.

Luckily, we don't have to do that (i.e., articulate such a leftist analysis of any such larger historical forces). Because there is no corporatocracy not really. That's just a fake word the Russians made up and are spreading around on the Internet to distract us while the Nazis take over. No, the logical explanation for Trump, Brexit, and anything else that threatens the expansion of global Capitalism, and the freedom, democracy, and prosperity it offers, is that millions of people across the world, all at once, for no apparent reason, woke up one day full-blown fascists and started looking around for repulsive demagogues to swear fanatical allegiance to. Yes, that makes a lot more sense than all that complicated stuff about history and hegemonic ideological systems, which is probably just Russian propaganda anyway, in which case there is absolutely no reason to read any boring year-old pieces, like this one in The European Financial Review , or this report by Corporate Watch , from way back in the year 2000, about the rise of global corporate power.

So, apologies for wasting your time with all that pseudo-Marxian gobbledygook. Let's just pretend this never happened, and get back to more important matters, like statistically proving that Donald Trump got elected President because of racism, misogyny, transphobia, xenophobia, or some other type of behavioral disorder, and pulling down Confederate statues, or kneeling during the National Anthem, or whatever happens to be trending this week. Oh, yeah, and debating punching Nazis, or people wearing MAGA hats. We definitely need to sort all that out before we can move ahead with helping the Corporatocracy remove Trump from office, or at least ensure he remains surrounded by their loyal generals, CEOs, and Goldman Sachs guys until the next election. Whatever we do, let's not get distracted by that stuff I just distracted you with. I know, it's tempting, but, given what's at stake, we need to maintain our laser focus on issues related to identity politics, or else well, you know, the Nazis win.

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .

jilles dykstra, October 13, 2017 at 3:15 pm GMT

Yesterday evening on RT a USA lady, as usual forgot the name, spoke about the USA. In a matter of fact tone she said things like 'they (Deep State) have got him (Trump) in the box'.

They, Deep State again, are now wondering if they will continue to try to control the world, or if they should stop the attempt, and retreat into the USA.
Also as matter of fact she said 'the CIA has always been the instrument of Deep State, from Kenndy to Nine Eleven'.

Another statement was 'no president ever was in control'.

How USA citizens continue to believe they live in a democracy, I cannot understand.

Yesterday the intentions of the new Dutch government were made public, alas most Dutch also dot not see that the Netherlands since 2005 no longer is a democracy, just a province of Brussels.

You can fool all people .

Che Guava, October 13, 2017 at 4:22 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

Jilles,

I am thinking you take the article too literally.

jacques sheete, October 13, 2017 at 4:30 pm GMT

Brexit is about Britons who want their country back, a movement indeed getting stronger and stronger in EU member states, but ignored by the ruling 'elites'.

No doubt many do want their country back, but what concerns me is that all of a sudden we have the concept of "independence" plastered all over the place. Such concepts don't get promoted unless the ruling elites see ways to turn those sentiments to their favor.

A lot of these so called "revolutions" are fomented by the elite only to be subverted and perverted by them in the end. They've had a lot of practice co-opting revolutions and independence movements. (And everything else.)

"Independence" is now so fashionable (as was Communism among the "elite" back in the '30s), that they are even teaching and fostering independence to kids in kindergarten here in the US. That strikes me as most amusing. Imagine "learning" independence in state run brainwashing factories.

Does anyone else smell a rat or two?

Anon-og , October 13, 2017 at 5:16 pm GMT

"Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything, or the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and replaced with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which is merely a simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because exchange value is its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their eviscerated cultural values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer brands as they hunch together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on Facebook."

Very impressed with this article, never really paid attention to CJ's articles but that is now changing!

[Oct 13, 2017] Lunatic Russia-Hating in Washington Is 70 Years Old by John Helmer

Why he calls its lunatic. It's pretty rations. Russia now represent an obstacle for global neoliberal empire and being the weakest link in Russia-China alliance it is only logical to attack it first
Notable quotes:
"... Russia-hating was an American upper-class phenomenon, cultivated in the offices, cocktail parties, clubs, and mansions of the deep state, as it emerged out of World War II. It needed a new enemy to thrive; it fastened on Russia (aka the Soviet Union) as the enemy. ..."
"... McCarthyism was an American lower-class phenomenon. It focused on the loyalty or disloyalty of the upper-class deep-staters. That wasn't the same thing as Russia-hating; Wall Street bankers, Boston lawyers, homosexuals, Jews, communists, were all the enemy. As the Senator from Wisconsin characterized it himself in 1952, "McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled." He implied – without a middle-class tie; certainly not an upper-class bow-tie. ..."
"... In covering the period from 1946 to 1975, Herken's research does repeat much of the history of the Cold War which has been told elsewhere. It starts on February 22, 1946, the date of the "Long Telegram", No. 511 -- Kennan's despatch from the US Embassy in Moscow to the State Department, setting out his strategy of so-called containment and much more besides. Read it in the declassified original . Most of the war-fighting and other war crimes which the telegram set in motion under Kennan's 1948 rubrics, "organized political warfare" and "preventive direct action", are reported in Herken's book; so too are Kennan's frequent funks, failures of conviction, reversals of judgment, and pleas for help. ..."
"... "Interestingly enough, the term "Russophobia" was first used by Fyodor Tyutchev (1803 -- 1873), famous Russian poet, diplomat and politician in reference to growing Western hostilities against Russia on the "eve" of the Crimean War (1854-56) between the Russian Empire and an alliance of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia. ..."
"... Historians elaborate that the so-called "Russophobia campaign" actually started as early as the 1820s -- instigated by Britain -- following Russia's glorious victory over Napoleonic France in 1812-13. ..."
"... "British hostility towards Russia had recurred periodically ever since the late eighteenth century. In had become increasingly apparent, albeit in a gradual and evolutionary fashion, in the years after Waterloo Fear of Russia's aims in Europe and Asia surfaced as early as 1817," American historian Edward M. Spiers wrote in his book "Radical General: Sir George de Lacy Evans, 1787-1870." ..."
Oct 12, 2017 | russia-insider.com
Joseph Alsop (lead image, centre) and George Kennan (right) started the kind of Russia-hating in Washington which, today, President Vladimir Putin, like the businessmen around him, think of as a novelty that cannot last for long.

Alsop was a fake news fabricator, and such a narcissist as to give the bow-ties he wore a bad name. Kennan was a psychopath who alternated bouts of aggression to prove himself with bouts of depression over his cowardice. For them, Russia was a suitable target. The Washington Post was the newspaper which gave their lunacy public asylum. This, according to a fresh history by a university professor from California, started in 1947, long before the arrival in Washington of the anti-communist phobia known after the name of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Russia-hating was an American upper-class phenomenon, cultivated in the offices, cocktail parties, clubs, and mansions of the deep state, as it emerged out of World War II. It needed a new enemy to thrive; it fastened on Russia (aka the Soviet Union) as the enemy.

McCarthyism was an American lower-class phenomenon. It focused on the loyalty or disloyalty of the upper-class deep-staters. That wasn't the same thing as Russia-hating; Wall Street bankers, Boston lawyers, homosexuals, Jews, communists, were all the enemy. As the Senator from Wisconsin characterized it himself in 1952, "McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled." He implied – without a middle-class tie; certainly not an upper-class bow-tie.

Russia was not an enemy which united the two American lunacies, for they hated each other much more than they hated the Russians. The Soviet Politburo understood this better then than the Kremlin does now.

Gregg Herken's The Georgetown Set , is so named because it records the activities of Alsop, Kennan and several other State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and White House officials who lived as neighbours in the Georgetown district of the capital city, together with Katharine (Kay) and Philip Graham, proprietor managers of the Washington Post. The district – once a chartered city of Maryland and river port, which was absorbed into the federal District of Columbia in 1871 -- was expensive, relatively speaking then; more so now. The richest of the set, including Alsop, had town houses in Georgetown, and rural retreats in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.

They were a set because because, as Herken said succinctly to an interviewer , "they got together every Sunday for supper and, basically, they ran the country from those meetings." As the book elaborates, they thought they were running the world. With a longer time lapse in which to view the evidence, they were also losing it.

Newspapers exposed in the book for collaborating in all the deceits, failures and war crimes of the history have reacted by calling Herken's effort a "provincial corner". The New Yorker opined that the Russia-hating and Russia war-making which Herken retells are dead and gone. "The guests at the Sunday soirées no doubt felt that they were in the cockpit of history. But the United States is a democracy, not a Wasp Ascendancy There was once an atmosphere of willingness that made a system of bribes and information exchanges seem, to the people involved, simply a way of working together for a common cause in a climate of public opinion that, unfortunately, required secrecy. No one got rich from the arrangement. People just lost track of what was inside their bubble and what was outside, as people tend to do. Vietnam was the reality check. 'I've Seen the Best of It' was the title Alsop gave to his memoirs. Things hadn't been the same since, he felt. He was right about that, and we should be thankful." In the New York media business these days it's possible to publish a selfie of pulling your own leg.

The Washington Post has deflected the indictment against itself by describing Herken's work as "a very strange book (A) a rehash of the history of the Cold War as experienced in certain Washington circles and (B) an almost obsessive recapitulation of the life and journalism of Joseph Alsop." Alsop is dismissed as unworthy of a history at all because he was "utterly repellent: arrogant, patronizing, imperious, uninterested in anyone except himself."

That's the truth about Alsop. The truth about the Washington Post is buried in this line by the Post's books editor about the hand that fed him: "it must be very hard for people who did not live through the '50s and '60s to understand how obsessed the American people were with the threat from Moscow." That line appeared in print on November 7, 2014. It was already history, that's to say, a misjudgment. How monumentally mistaken is obvious now.

In covering the period from 1946 to 1975, Herken's research does repeat much of the history of the Cold War which has been told elsewhere. It starts on February 22, 1946, the date of the "Long Telegram", No. 511 -- Kennan's despatch from the US Embassy in Moscow to the State Department, setting out his strategy of so-called containment and much more besides. Read it in the declassified original . Most of the war-fighting and other war crimes which the telegram set in motion under Kennan's 1948 rubrics, "organized political warfare" and "preventive direct action", are reported in Herken's book; so too are Kennan's frequent funks, failures of conviction, reversals of judgment, and pleas for help.

The book ends on December 30, 1974, the date of Alsop's last column. Alsop concluded with the line: "I have never known the American people to be really badly wrong, if only they were correctly and fully informed."

Herken shows how self-deluded and professionally delusional that was -- not because of Alsop's character but because of his sources. Herken documents that they ran upwards from foot-soldiers (also lubricious sailors) to presidents and cabinet secretaries. Herken doesn't think the same of Kennan, who gets to walk off stage, aged 101, sounding more sceptical of overthrowing Saddam Hussein than he ever was in his prime and in power to direct schemes of what we call state terrorism today.


Left to right: Kennan died in 2005, aged 101; Alsop died in 1989 aged 78; Frank Wisner died in 1965 aged 56. The deeper Herken gets into the private papers, the more he refers to his subjects by their diminutives and nicknames – Joe, Oppie, Beetle, Dickie, the Crocodile, Wig, Jack, Wiz, Soozle, Vangie, et al.

What is fresh about the sources is that Herken has had access to the private notes, letters and diaries of the Alsop family; the Kennan diaries and letters; and the private papers of Frank Wisner, the first director of covert operations against Russia. Wisner went mad and killed himself, as did Graham. There's no doubt about the suicide outcome of their madness.

In the case of the mad ex-Defence Secretary James Forrestal his fatal jump from the window of the Navy hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, in May 1949 might have been a homicidal push. Herken concludes that Forrestal's death was "the first senior-ranking American casualty of the Cold War." Herken thinks of their madness as anomalies. The history shows they were normalities.

Missing from this history is any reference to official documents, now declassified; press reporting of the time; or interviews with veterans of the same events but on other sides – Russian and Soviet; British; German; French; Polish; Vietnamese; Chinese. This isn't so much a fatal flaw in Herken's (right) book as the reason why his history is repeating itself today. Call this a variation on Karl's Marx's apothegm that history starts as tragedy and repeats itself as farce. Herken's blindness to this is as revealing as the Washington Post's madness, not yet as suicidal as its former proprietor's, today.

So mesmerized is Herken by the moneyed backgrounds of his subjects and sources, and by the amount of black cash from the US Government they spent on operations, he forgets to report what they did to fill their own pockets. The claim by the New Yorker that "no one got rich from the arrangement" – Alsop's fake news fabrications – is false, but Herken touches only in passing on how they made (or kept) their money. Alsop's column, for example, was sold to 200 newspapers, and at one time claimed a readership of 25 million. His family inheritance is recorded, but not its annual revenue value. Alsop's payola included silk shirts from Alfred Kohlberg, a textile importer from China who backed Chiang Kai-shek against Mao Tse-tung, as did Alsop. Alsop's patrons included Convair (General Dynamics), the company building the US Air Force Atlas missile for procurement of which Alsop reported fictions about Soviet missile strength.

In the US power which Alsop, Kennan and Wisner believed without hesitation, Herken is not less a believer. "Anything could be achieved", Herken quotes a New York Times reporter quoting Wisner. When the US force multiple changed, however, and US allies or agents were outgunned, outspent, outnumbered, or outwitted, they were unable to acknowledge miscalculation, attributing defeat instead to the superior force or guile of their adversaries, especially the Russians.

This is madness, and there is good reason for recognizing the symptoms again. In 1958, when Herken says Wisner's paranoid manias were becoming obvious to his friends and colleagues, "Frank put forward a theory that the careless comment which had gotten George Kennan kicked out of the Soviet Union was evidence the Soviets had succeeded in an area where the CIA's own scientists had failed: mind control. Some agency hands alleged that Wisner attributed his own increasingly bizarre behaviour to the Kremlin's sly manipulation."

A cell from the comic "Is This Tomorrow? America Under Communism"(1947). Test your mind, read more: https://archive.org/details/IsThisTomorrowAmericaUnderCommunismCatecheticalGuild

From Washington in 1958, fast forward to Washington in 2017; for mind control and sly manipulation, read Russian hacking and cyber warfare. From Wisner's and Kennan's balloon drops of leaflets and broadcasts by Radio Free Europe, fast forward to Russia Today Television and Russian infiltrations of Twitter, Google, the Democratic National Committee, and the Trump organization.

It stands to reason (ahem!) that if you think what the US Government and its journalists were doing then was mad, you are might conclude that what they is doing now is just as mad – and not very different. When the incumbent president and his Secretary of State publicly call for IQ tests on each other, all reason has failed. "The nation," as Alsop had written, "had simply taken leave of all sense of proportion." That was in March 1954.

If you fast forward to now, there's one difference. Today the lunatic Russia warfighters don't retire. They also don't fade away. Today's sleek successors to mad Wisner and mad Graham sleep easily in their beds a-nights. For what they've done and do, they wouldn't dream of taking shotguns to their heads.

Herken retells the story of the campaign Alsop waged against McCarthyism at the State Department, against McCarthy himself, and the vulnerability Alsop himself presented until the Boston lawyer Joseph Welch put an end to McCarthy on June 9, 1954 : "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" Welch famously said. "Have you left no sense of decency?" The recurring history reveals why, even if there are plenty of people to say the same thing today to the Washington Post, New York Times, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the madness will continue repeating itself.

Source: Dances With Bears

Tommy Jensen , October 12, 2017 8:47 AM

..and what happened exactly 70 years ago? You said it, not me.....you said Israel!

Slick Tommy Jensen , October 12, 2017 6:52 PM

Wisner has a son named Frank, who is a pro-Kosovo Albanian/anti-Serb/anti-Russian fiend. Kennan later became a responsibly more calming voice on Russia. Concerning the Capitol Hill establishment -

https://www.strategic-cultu...

Be hard pressed to find a better article on the subject.

Carlo - , October 12, 2017 11:18 AM

Nonetheless, I remember that Kennan was a strong opponent against NATO expansion in the 90's, after the collapse of the USSR. I think there were good reasons to make an alliance against the spread of communism, but after this ended in Europe, of course, NATO should have dissolved just like the Warsaw Pact.

Kjell Hasthi Edward Mercer , October 13, 2017 2:35 PM

Wages are low in Estonia compared to Sweden. So the Swedish corporations will move some factories to Estonia to make more money. That is the "powerhouse". The Estonians will not see much to the money. But they get what is wages in Estonia of course.

Koroviev,Behemoth&Woland LLP , October 13, 2017 8:39 AM

Why did the Warburg Brothers and Jacob Schiff finance the Bolsheviks when the rest of America was instructed to hate the Russians?

Just another one of those unexplained oddities of history.

Gonzogal , October 12, 2017 4:25 PM

It is MUCH older than 70 years!

"The Cold War, I would remind readers, started in November 1917 when the Bolsheviks took power in Russia Undiscouraged and terrified of a socialist revolution in Russia, the so-called Entente [Great Britain and France] tossed fat rolls of banknotes to anyone who said he would fight the Soviets. The Entente sent its own forces to the four distant corners of Russia to do the job themselves. This was the 'Allied' intervention which continued until the beginning of 1921 in the west and until 1922 in Eastern Siberia," ~ Professor Michael Jabara Carley of the University of Montreal

"Interestingly enough, the term "Russophobia" was first used by Fyodor Tyutchev (1803 -- 1873), famous Russian poet, diplomat and politician in reference to growing Western hostilities against Russia on the "eve" of the Crimean War (1854-56) between the Russian Empire and an alliance of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia.

Historians elaborate that the so-called "Russophobia campaign" actually started as early as the 1820s -- instigated by Britain -- following Russia's glorious victory over Napoleonic France in 1812-13.

"British hostility towards Russia had recurred periodically ever since the late eighteenth century. In had become increasingly apparent, albeit in a gradual and evolutionary fashion, in the years after Waterloo Fear of Russia's aims in Europe and Asia surfaced as early as 1817," American historian Edward M. Spiers wrote in his book "Radical General: Sir George de Lacy Evans, 1787-1870."

"Britons were especially concerned about their dominance in Central Asia and the "Russian threat" to their hegemonic ambitions in the region. According British diplomat Sir Martin Ewans, in the 1820s-30s London deemed that it would be "unwise" to allow the Russian Empire to extend its influence over Caucasus, Persia and Afghanistan. "That Russophobia existed is undeniable," Sir Ewans remarked in his book "Conflict in Afghanistan: Studies in Asymmetric Warfare."

"Remarkably, in the 1860s, Russian ethnologist, philosopher and historian Nikolai Danilevsky slammed the Western propaganda machine for spreading distorted information and blatant lies about the "Russian threat" and imaginary "expansionist ambitions" of the Russian Empire in his book "Russia and Europe." https://sputniknews.com/pol...

Tommy Jensen Gonzogal , October 13, 2017 5:05 AM

Its incredible one country can sit half the planet away "not allowing" another country "to spread its influence" to its neighbours. When this is the case, this country´s culture is pervercy and sick.

[Oct 12, 2017] The House of Saud Bows to the House of Putin by Pepe Escobar

Oct 12, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

The deal may certainly be seen as a purely strategic/economic measure to stabilize the oil market – with no geopolitical overtones. And yet OPEC is geared to become a brand new animal – with Russia and Saudi Arabia de facto deciding where the global oil markets go, and then telling the other OPEC players. It's open to question what Iran, Algeria, Nigeria, Venezuela, among others, will have to say about this. The barely disguised aim is to bring oil prices up to a band of $60-75 a barrel by the middle of next year. Certainly a good deal for the Aramco IPO.

There were a rash of other deals clinched in Moscow – such as Aramco and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) $1 billion fund for oil-services projects in Russia, plus another $1 billion for a technology fund.

[Oct 12, 2017] Wheres the Beef The Senate Intel Committee and Russia by Mike Whitney

Neocons already poisoned the well of US-Russian cooperation. They already unleashes witch hunt in best McCarthyism traditions. What else do they want ? Why they continue to waive this dead chicken?
Notable quotes:
"... people want is proof that Russia interfered with the elections or that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow. That's the whole point of this exercise. And, on the collusion matter, at least we have something new to report. In a rare moment of candor, Burr blurted out this gem: ..."
"... Think about that. After "100 interviews, 250 hours of testimony, and 4000 transcript pages" there's not the slightest hint of collusion. It's mindboggling. Why isn't this front page news? Why haven't the New York Times or Washington Post run this in their headlines, after all, they've hyped every other part of this story? ..."
"... Let's cut to the chase: The committee is not getting to the bottom of the Russia hacking matter, because they don't want to get to the bottom of it. It's that simple. ..."
"... That's why they have excluded any witnesses that may upset their preconceived theory of what happened. Why, for example, would the committee chose to interview former CIA Director John Brennan rather than WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange? Brennan not only helped select the hand-picked analysts who authored the ICA, he also clearly has an animus towards Russia due to his frustrated attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al Assad which was thwarted by Putin. In other words, Brennan has a motive to mislead the Committee. He's biased. He has an ax to grind. In contrast, Assange has firsthand knowledge of what actually transpired with the DNC emails because he was the recipient of those emails. Has Assange been contacted by the Committee or asked to testify via Skype? ..."
"... It should be obvious by now that the real intention of the briefing was not to provide the public with more information, facts or evidence of Russian hacking, but to use the prestigious setting as a platform for disseminating more disinformation aimed at vilifying an emerging rival (Russia) that has blocked Washington's aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and threatens to unite the most populous and prosperous region in the world (Eurasia) into one massive free trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok. ..."
"... Reasonable people must now consider the possibility that the Russia hacking narrative is an Information Operation (IO) devoid of any real substance which is designed to poison the publics perception of Russia. It is a domestic propaganda campaign that fits perfectly with the "Full Spectrum Dominance" theory of weaponizing media in a way that best achieves one's geopolitical objectives. The American people are again being manipulated so that powerful elites can lead the country to war. ..."
Oct 12, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org
The Senate Intelligence Committee has made it clear that it is not conducting an open and independent investigation of alleged Russian hacking, but making a determined effort to support a theory that was presented in the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. Committee Chairman Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.) admitted as much in a press conference last Wednesday when he said:

We feel very confident that the ICA's accuracy is going to be supported by our committee.

Burr's statement is an example of "confirmation bias" which is the tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms one's own preexisting beliefs. In this case, Burr and his co-chair, Senator Mark Warner have already accepted the findings of a hastily slapped-together Intelligence report that was the work of "hand-picked" analysts who were likely chosen to produce conclusions that jibed with a particular political agenda. In other words, the intelligence was fixed to fit the policy. Burr of course has tried to conceal his prejudice by pointing to the number of witnesses the Committee has interviewed and the volume of work that's been produced. This is from an article at The Nation:

Since January 23, the committee and its staff have conducted more than 100 interviews, comprising 250 hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of transcripts, and reviewed more than 100,000 documents relevant to Russiagate. The staff, said Warner, has collectively spent a total of 57 hours per day, seven days a week, since the committee opened its inquiry, going through documents and transcripts, interviewing witnesses, and analyzing both classified and unclassified material.

It all sounds very impressive, but if the goal is merely to lend credibility to unverified assumptions, then what's the point?

Let's take a look at a few excerpts from the report and see whether Burr and Warner are justified in "feeling confident" in the ICA's accuracy.

From the Intelligence Community Assessment:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.

This is the basic claim of Russia meddling that has yet to be proved. As you can see, the charge is mixed with liberal doses of mind-reading mumbo-jumbo that reveal the authors' lack of objectivity. There's a considerable amount of speculation about Putin's motives and preferences which are based on pure conjecture. It's a bit shocking that professional analysts– who are charged with providing our leaders with rock-solid intelligence related to matters of national security– would indulge in this type of opinionated blather and psycho-babble. It's also shocking that Burr and Warner think this gibberish should be taken seriously.

Here's more from the ICA:

Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.

More mind-reading, more groundless speculation, more guessing what Putin thinks or doesn't think. The ICA reads more like the text from a morning talk show than an Intelligence report. And what is it about this report that Burr finds so persuasive? It's beyond me. The report's greatest strength seems to be that no one has ever read it. If they had, they'd realize that it's nonsense. Also, it would have been better if the ICA's authors had avoided the amateur psychoanalysis and stuck to the point, Russia hacking. Dabbling in the former seriously impacts the report's credibility.

To their credit, however, Burr and Warner have questioned all of the analysts who contributed to the report. Check out this excerpt from The Nation:

"We have interviewed everybody who had a hand or a voice in the creation of the ICA," said Burr. "We've spent nine times the amount of time that the IC [intelligence community] spent putting the ICA together. We have reviewed all the supporting evidence that went into it and, in addition to that, the things that went on the cutting-room floor that they may not have found appropriate for the ICA, but we may have found relevant to our investigation." Burr added that the committee's review included "highly classified intelligence reporting," and they've interviewed every official in the Obama administration who had anything to do with putting it together. ("Democrats and Republicans in Congress Agree: Russia Did It", The Nation)

That's great, but where' the beef? How can the committee conduct "100 interviews, comprising 250 hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of transcripts" without producing a shred of evidence that Russia meddled in the elections? How is that possible? The Committee's job is to prove its case not to merely pour over the minutia related to the investigation. No one really cares how many people testified or how much paperwork was involved. What people want is proof that Russia interfered with the elections or that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow. That's the whole point of this exercise. And, on the collusion matter, at least we have something new to report. In a rare moment of candor, Burr blurted out this gem:

"There are concerns that we continue to pursue. Collusion? The committee continues to look into all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I'm not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven't any."

Think about that. After "100 interviews, 250 hours of testimony, and 4000 transcript pages" there's not the slightest hint of collusion. It's mindboggling. Why isn't this front page news? Why haven't the New York Times or Washington Post run this in their headlines, after all, they've hyped every other part of this story?

Could it be that Burr's admission doesn't mesh with the media's "Russia did it" narrative so they decided to scrub the story altogether?

But it's not just collusion we're talking about here, there's also the broader issue of Russia meddling. And what was striking about the press conference is that –after all the interviews, all the testimony, and all the stacks of transcripts– the Committee has come up with nothing; no eyewitness testimony supporting the original claims, no smoking gun, no proof of domestic espionage, no evidence of Russian complicity, nothing. One big goose egg.

So here's a question for critical minded readers:

If the Senate Intelligence Committee has not found any proof that Russia hacked the 2016 elections, then why do senators' Burr and Warner still believe the ICA is reliable? It doesn't really make sense, does it? Don't they require evidence to draw their conclusions? And doesn't the burden of truth fall on the prosecution (or the investigators in this case)? Isn't a man innocent until proven guilty or doesn't that rule apply to Russia?

Let's cut to the chase: The committee is not getting to the bottom of the Russia hacking matter, because they don't want to get to the bottom of it. It's that simple.

That's why they have excluded any witnesses that may upset their preconceived theory of what happened. Why, for example, would the committee chose to interview former CIA Director John Brennan rather than WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange? Brennan not only helped select the hand-picked analysts who authored the ICA, he also clearly has an animus towards Russia due to his frustrated attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al Assad which was thwarted by Putin. In other words, Brennan has a motive to mislead the Committee. He's biased. He has an ax to grind. In contrast, Assange has firsthand knowledge of what actually transpired with the DNC emails because he was the recipient of those emails. Has Assange been contacted by the Committee or asked to testify via Skype?

Don't bet on it.

What about former UK ambassador Craig Murray, a WikiLeaks colleague, who has repeatedly admitted that he knows the source of the DNC emails. Murray hasn't been asked to testify nor has he even been contacted by the FBI on the matter. Apparently, the FBI has no interest in a credible witness who can disprove the politically-motivated theory expounded in the ICA.

Then there's 30-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern and his group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern has done extensive research on the topic and has produced solid evidence that the DNC emails were "leaked" by an insider, not "hacked" by a foreign government. McGovern's work squares with Assange and Murray's claim that Russia did not hack the 2016 elections. Has McGovern been invited to testify?

How about Skip Folden, retired IBM Program Manager and Information Technology expert, whose excellent report titled "Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge" also disproves the hacking theory, as does The Nation's Patrick Lawrence whose riveting article at The Nation titled "A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack" which thoroughly obliterates the central claims of the ICA.

Finally, there's California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher who met with Assange in August at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and who was assured that Assange would provide hard evidence (in the form of "a computer drive or other data-storage device") that the Russians were not involved in the DNC email scandal.

Wouldn't you think that senate investigators would want to talk to a trusted colleague and credible witness like Rohrabacher who said he could produce solid proof that the scandal, that has dominated the headlines and roiled Washington for the better part of a year, was bogus?

Apparently not. Apparently Burr and his colleagues would rather avoid any witness or evidence that conflicts with their increasingly-threadbare thesis.

So what conclusions can we draw from the Committee's behavior? Are Burr and Warner really conducting an open and independent investigation of alleged Russia hacking or is this just a witch hunt?

It should be obvious by now that the real intention of the briefing was not to provide the public with more information, facts or evidence of Russian hacking, but to use the prestigious setting as a platform for disseminating more disinformation aimed at vilifying an emerging rival (Russia) that has blocked Washington's aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and threatens to unite the most populous and prosperous region in the world (Eurasia) into one massive free trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok.

Reasonable people must now consider the possibility that the Russia hacking narrative is an Information Operation (IO) devoid of any real substance which is designed to poison the publics perception of Russia. It is a domestic propaganda campaign that fits perfectly with the "Full Spectrum Dominance" theory of weaponizing media in a way that best achieves one's geopolitical objectives. The American people are again being manipulated so that powerful elites can lead the country to war.

[Oct 11, 2017] Russia may demand U.S. cut diplomatic staff in Russia to 300 or below RIA by Maria Kiselyova

Oct 11, 2017 | www.msn.com

Russia's Foreign Ministry does not rule out ordering the United States to cut its diplomatic staff in Russia to 300 people or below, the RIA news agency cited Georgy Borisenko, the head of the ministry's North America Department, as saying on Wednesday.

In July, Moscow ordered the United States to cut the number of its diplomatic and technical staff working in Russia by around 60 percent, to 455, part of a diplomatic row.

The figure of 455 was meant to mirror the total number of Russian diplomats working in the United States, but also included Russian nationals working at the United Nations in New York, Borisenko told the agency.

"The fact that in the summer we took into account the people working for Russia's mission at the UN, this was good will," Borisenko told RIA.

"If they haven't appreciated this, we have the full right to reduce ... the number of U.S. diplomats," he said, saying Moscow could stop taking Russian U.N. staff into account when calculating what parity between the two countries meant.

"In this case, the number of American personnel in Russia should decline to a level of 300 or below."

(Reporting ; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

[Oct 11, 2017] Russia witch hunt is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working class

Highly recommended!
Chris Hedges, who is doubtless a courageous journalist and an intelligent commentator, suggests that if we are to discuss the anti-Russia campaign realistically, as baseless in fact, and as contrived for an effect and to further/protect some particular interests, we can hardly avoid the question: Who or what interest is served by the anti-Russia campaign?
An interesting observation "The Democratic Party doesn't actually function as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out."
The other relevant observation is that there is no American left. It was destroyed as a political movement. The USA is a right wing country.
Notable quotes:
"... This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. ..."
"... It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country. ..."
"... The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions. ..."
"... Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. ..."
"... The Democratic Party doesn't actually function as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater. ..."
"... These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes. ..."
"... The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced. ..."
"... The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the "left." ..."
"... Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left -- not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease. ..."
"... For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so that Cold War "liberals" equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch. ..."
"... The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down. ..."
"... The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't win prizes. You won't get grants. ..."
"... The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison! ..."
"... Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors. ..."
Oct 11, 2017 | www.unz.com

Originally from: The elites "have no credibility left" by Chris Hedges

But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It's really premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn't make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party.

This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country.

Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive.

The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions.

Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn't actually function as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater.

These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes.

... ... ...

DN: Let's come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation of this?

CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on "Celebrity Apprentice," has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque.

I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can't go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie.

The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced.

DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who pitch it to them.

CH: It's not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA The CIA wasn't buying the "weapons of mass destruction" hysteria.

DN: It goes the other way too?

CH: Sure. Because if you're trying to have access to a senior official, you'll constantly be putting in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see you, it's usually because they have something to sell you.

DN: The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the "left."

CH: Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left -- not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease.

If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this cartoonish vision of politics.

The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the "Red Scares" in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so that Cold War "liberals" equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch.

I've battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they're kind of poster children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down.

So Trump's not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with people who consider themselves part of the left.

The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't win prizes. You won't get grants. The New York Times , if they review your book, will turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it -- as he did with my last book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison!

Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors.

[Oct 11, 2017] The Sordid Double Life of Washingtons Most Powerful Ambassador

Something about real foreign influence in Washington corridors of power ... Bankrolling think tanks is pretty slick idea.
Notable quotes:
"... Close with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and other top national security officials, Otaiba has bankrolled nearly every major think tank in Washington. ..."
"... The diplomat has worked tirelessly for nearly two decades to push Washington's defense and foreign policy establishment to adopt MBZ's hawkish ideas on Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other contentious policy areas. Otaiba has been a leading voice in Washington for the war in Yemen, where the UAE operates torture warehouses and funds death squads. The conflict has left more than 10,000 dead and countless more starving and stricken with a cholera epidemic of historic proportions. ..."
Oct 11, 2017 | theintercept.com

Otaiba has become one of the most powerful and well-connected men in Washington, reportedly in touch with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser, on a weekly basis. His spending on galas, hospital wings, dinner parties, and birthday bashes has become legendary. Close with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and other top national security officials, Otaiba has bankrolled nearly every major think tank in Washington.

The Emirati envoy's cachet stems in part from his close relationship with Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who is widely considered to be the effective ruler of the UAE. The crown prince of Abu Dhabi, he is known in the region and in Washington by his initials MBZ. Since 2000, Otaiba has reported directly to MBZ as his head of international affairs, and then as the ambassador in Washington. "Before I was introduced to him, the way he was described to me was the guy MBZ trusts most on foreign issues and one of the smartest people in the UAE," said Kristofer Harrison, a former Bush administration official who worked closely with Otaiba.

The diplomat has worked tirelessly for nearly two decades to push Washington's defense and foreign policy establishment to adopt MBZ's hawkish ideas on Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other contentious policy areas. Otaiba has been a leading voice in Washington for the war in Yemen, where the UAE operates torture warehouses and funds death squads. The conflict has left more than 10,000 dead and countless more starving and stricken with a cholera epidemic of historic proportions.

A fixture among Washington society, Otaiba spent much of the last decade carefully constructing the image of an enlightened Persian Gulf diplomat -- forward-thinking on women's rights, secularism, and embracing the modern world. On International Women's Day this year, he published an open letter to his young daughter to drive the point home.

Otaiba's homeland, meanwhile, does not often live up to such values. The UAE has some of the most draconian sex crime laws of any place in the world. Just last week, a man and a woman were arrested for having a conversation in a car while being unrelated and unmarried. This week, two defendants were spared prison time for the crime of " indecent attire ," but fined and deported nonetheless.

[Oct 11, 2017] An Al Jazeera Reporter Went Undercover with the Pro-Israel Lobby In Washington

Oct 11, 2017 | theintercept.com

Swisher wouldn't confirm or deny the identity of the American operative, but he said that with the American political class focused on foreign intervention in the affairs of the United States, now is an appropriate time to run the follow-up investigation. "I hear the U.S. is having problems with foreign interference these days, so I see no reason why the U.S. establishment won't take our findings in America as seriously as the British did, unless of course Israel is somehow off limits from that debate," he said.

[Oct 11, 2017] A documentary focused on Israeli influence in the US, the existence of which has previously been suspected but had yet to be made public.

Notable quotes:
"... Is not all this noise about Rooskies has one and only one goal – to divert attention from the "gorilla" and her "struggle for survival" in the Middle East and in the US Congress? https://theintercept.com/2017/10/09/an-al-jazeera-reporter-went-undercover-with-the-pro-israel-lobby-in-washington/ ..."
Oct 11, 2017 | www.unz.com

Anon , Disclaimer October 11, 2017 at 4:33 pm GMT

@Johnny F. Ive

They need Russia to be an enemy to justify their actions and the Europeans want to use the US to threaten Russia. Its a shame this can't be generalized against all foreign agents of influence. The US Mainstream Media is basically an arm of the Hasbara. Their guest from think tanks are foreign agents of influence. Its not fun watching a bunch of foreigners and their domestic owned Americans run the US Empire into the ground.

Is not all this noise about Rooskies has one and only one goal – to divert attention from the "gorilla" and her "struggle for survival" in the Middle East and in the US Congress? https://theintercept.com/2017/10/09/an-al-jazeera-reporter-went-undercover-with-the-pro-israel-lobby-in-washington/

" a documentary focused on Israeli influence in the U.S., the existence of which has previously been suspected but had yet to be made public. The four-part series, "The Lobby," dug into the Israeli embassy in London, as well as several other pro-Israel lobby groups, and their campaign to "take down" British Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan.

The investigation led to the resignation of a top Israeli official in London, as well as a high-profile complaint that Al Jazeera had broken broadcasting regulations in the United Kingdom. One of the complaints charged the investigation with anti-Semitism, but the government board ruled that imputing such a motive to a film critical of Israel would be akin to calling a series on gang violence racist.

Ofcom received complaints about the series from pro-Israel British activists and a former Israel embassy employee. It dismissed all charges, which included anti-Semitism, bias, unfair editing, and the infringement of privacy. It ruled that as per the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's guidance: "It did not consider that such a critical analysis of the actions of a foreign state constituted anti-Semitism, particularly as the overall focus of the programme was to examine whether the State of Israel was acting in a manner that would be expected of other democratic nations."

[Oct 10, 2017] OKeefe Strikes Again, Catches NYT Editors On Hidden Camera Targeting Trumps Businesses, His Dumb Fk Of A Son

See also Project Veritas Video On New York Times The Daily Caller
Notable quotes:
"... "I'd target his businesses, his dumb fuck of a son, Donald Jr., and Eric... ..."
"... "Target that. Get people to boycott going to his hotels. Boycott... So a lot of the Trump brands, if you can ruin the Trump brand and you put pressure on his business and you start investigating his business and you start shutting it down, or they're hacking or other things. He cares about his business more than he cares about being President. He would resign. Or he'd lash out and do something incredibly illegal, which he would have to." ..."
"... When the undercover journalist asks Dudich if he could make sure that the anti-Trump stories make it to the front, he replied, "Oh, we always do." ..."
Oct 10, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

In the latest of a series of undercover operations targeting mainstream media bias, James O'Keefe has just dropped a new undercover video which takes direct aim at the New York Times' Audience Strategy Editor, Nick Dudich, who admits repeatedly to promoting content that intentionally seeks to, among other things, damage President Trump's businesses as a means towards forcing his resignation.

Here is a brief intro from Project Veritas :

While talking about being objective at the Times, Dudich replies candidly, "No I'm not, that's why I'm here."

Dudich considers himself an important player at the New York Times, telling the Project Veritas Journalist "my voice is on... my imprint is on every video we do."

Dudich goes on to explain what he might do to target President Trump:

"I'd target his businesses, his dumb fuck of a son, Donald Jr., and Eric...

"Target that. Get people to boycott going to his hotels. Boycott... So a lot of the Trump brands, if you can ruin the Trump brand and you put pressure on his business and you start investigating his business and you start shutting it down, or they're hacking or other things. He cares about his business more than he cares about being President. He would resign. Or he'd lash out and do something incredibly illegal, which he would have to."

When the undercover journalist asks Dudich if he could make sure that the anti-Trump stories make it to the front, he replied, "Oh, we always do."

Is @nicholasdudich an isolated incident, or does the #NYTimes employ a culture of bias, in direct conflict with their ethical handbook? pic.twitter.com/oxAenS7aob

-- Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) October 10, 2017

To our complete 'shock', O'Keefe also learned the Dudich worked for Hillary's 2016 presidential campaign and Obama's campaign in both 2008 and 2012...

In 2016, he was recruited to work for the Clinton campaign:

"So I have that background, so when Clinton in 2016... they needed a volunteer strategist to do video ... well, they needed someone to help them do video, and how to make it heartfelt, for Clinton."

He even had to quit his job in journalism in order to work for the Clinton campaign: "I had to leave my job at Fusion ABC to then take a job at Upworthy where I wasn't deemed a journalist anymore to be able to work for the Clinton campaign."

Dudich explains how his activism motivated him to re-engage in the news business: "Like, after the Clinton campaign, I'm like, no I need to get back into news and keep doing shit because, like, this isn't going to change."

Exactly what kind of people does @nytimes allow to be a video gatekeeper? #AmericanPravda #NYTimes #NYT pic.twitter.com/6uGVsRFpc7

-- James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 10, 2017

Bizarrely, Dudich also claims to have joined the Antifa movement as an undercover agent for the FBI...a request which he originally said came from his godfather, James Comey, even though he subsequently retracted that statement.

Nicholas Dudich also told the undercover journalist bizarre stories about his personal connection to the FBI and his previous excitement as part of Anti-Fa. "Yeah, I used to be an Anti-Fa punk once upon a time." he told the undercover journalist. "So, I had fun. They'd start s**t, I'm like, I get to hit you. I'm so excited."

He also claims that James Comey, former Director of the FBI, asked him to join Anti-Fa: "I joined that stuff for them [the FBI]. I was an asset... So it was intelligence gathering, seeing if they were [sic], what their agenda was, whether they're a threat or not." "How'd you meet Comey?" asked the Project Veritas journalist. "He's my godfather," Dudich explained. "My dad and mom knew him and his wife for a really long time." "Well the Comey hearing, I should have recused myself, but I'm not ever telling anybody there [at the Times] that I have a tie with that or else I don't know if they can keep me on."

tmosley -> Blank Reg , Oct 10, 2017 12:41 PM

One wonders if this qualifies as sedition. Imagine if someone had done something like this to a previous president. If some group was on record trying to bankrupt Washington's Mt Vernon, or Teddy Roosevelt's family members, with the full intent of subverting the government.

JimmyJones -> TheDude1224 , Oct 10, 2017 12:50 PM

So he said he was working as an informant for the FBI and joined ANTIFA, was that a lie? What type of a small minded fool lies about being a "special agent" working for the Gov't? Well this type. Fox news "fair and balanced" , NY Times "Fairly Biased". But don't worry the Liberals will still view the NY Times as the Paper of Record. Looney

hedgeless_horseman -> JimmyJones , Oct 10, 2017 12:52 PM Omen IV -> hedgeless_horseman , Oct 10, 2017 1:51 PM

so is Comey the GodFather of the guy in the 32nd floor of the Mandalay and did he have him planted? I would easily easily believe that

Chupacabra-322 -> hedgeless_horseman , Oct 10, 2017 1:59 PM

Smith Mundt Act. The Presstitute appendage's of the Criminal Deep State can Propagandandize / Gas Light the masses with Impunity. And, in their sick, twisted, perverted minds, it's all Legal.

JRobby -> JimmyJones , Oct 10, 2017 1:24 PM

Yes, this is pretty much "bombshell" category considering Dudich's position, his title, a fancy word play on Propagandist. MSM will never mention it. Not one aspect of it.

Oldwood -> Cognitive Dissonance , Oct 10, 2017 1:39 PM

But would be worrying if it were the French rather than the Russians "interfering" with our sainted elections?

AS is seen, it is not corruption that is perceived as the problem, it is WHO's corruption that is the problem.

Who owns the NYTs and does anyone care? Carlos Slim? Why would we care if the owner is the resident of one of the most violent and corrupt countries in the world, one emmersed in a socialist bankrupt ideology for a hundred years?

I do find it strange that we started the last century so aware and afraid of the socialist/communist virus, but as was predicted, we have embraced every last tenet of it's ideology under the mantle of "progressivism". Note that communism is no longer a threat, just another alternative increasingly openly embraced by the media and colleges....just like they said they would.

And it is TRUMP who is now the threat, not communist collectivist dependency. Interesting.

Snípéir_Ag_Obair -> tmosley , Oct 10, 2017 2:42 PM

if it is sedition it looks like we can all count on Sessioms to not do a fucking thing about it. Why haven't Comey, Lynch, Clinton, Rice and Obama been indicted? Or lying-under-oath master Clapper?

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Sedition

I think you can certainly argue that the Dem/Spook/Media effort to create the Russiahoax stuff, all as the feds never even examined the dnc server, or interviewed Assange, is quite literally conspiracy and sedition.

Sessions isn't indicting, nor being directed to, nor fired. It's a big club...

Endgame Napoleon -> SILVERGEDDON , Oct 10, 2017 1:06 PM

What about the lack of professional decorum and a paper that regards itself as a premier publication? All of these connected-up people at the top expect us to regard them as -- unquestionably -- deserving of high positions, but they feel free to let loose with unprofessional behavior any time they want if it serves 1) their own careerist means or 2) the careerist goals of their cronies.

Doom Porn Star , Oct 10, 2017 12:22 PM

"Nicholas Dudich also told the undercover journalist bizarre stories about his personal connection to the FBI and his previous excitement as part of Anti-Fa.

"Yeah, I used to be an Anti-Fa punk once upon a time." he told the undercover journalist. "So, I had fun. They'd start s**t, I'm like, I get to hit you. I'm so excited."

He also claims that James Comey, former Director of the FBI, asked him to join Anti-Fa: "I joined that stuff for them [the FBI]. I was an asset... So it was intelligence gathering, seeing if they were [sic], what their agenda was, whether they're a threat or not."

"How'd you meet Comey?" asked the Project Veritas journalist. "He's my godfather," Dudich explained. "My dad and mom knew him and his wife for a really long time." "

Doesn't he make it sound a lot like he's just another 'made' chucklehead in the Mob?

That's because he is.

Felix da Kat , Oct 10, 2017 1:26 PM

Dudich is a poster child for the new millenial way of thinking. In their view lying is perfectly okay so long as it serves one's arch-purpose. In this case it is to prevent Trump's agenda and his 2020 bid (yet to be announced) for re-election. The tactic has been adopted by many of the NYTimes reporters. It is the same with the other major media outlets (not Fox/WSJ so much). For instance, if you write a comment in the WaPo online, if it does not conform to their liberal agenda, it gets deleted and that is dishonest (mine were deleted several times. I have since banished them). The media is very devious in how it is attempting to take over political contol of America. They are a shameless and crooked bunch, making it very difficult to fight back. The real revolution in America begins when the true conservative soul of America says, "No more". Until that happens, further social decay will be the norm.

Aireannpure , Oct 10, 2017 2:31 PM

Too damn many English majors with serious emotional problems. Get Science and Engineering background folks in there and all this non sense would end. This kid is a punk and worthy of a good daddy belt beat down. Who raised this crap?

[Oct 10, 2017] Sputnik and RT are too small, especially Sputnik. They are forced to be on the defensive all the time and have no ability to created successful memes or "fake news" that would put the western MSM on the defensive

Notable quotes:
"... According to SimilarWeb, it only gets a total of 2.5 million monthly visitors from the US. That's almost an Unz.com like level of visitorship even though Ron's budget and attention of social media/advertising crap is many orders of magnitude lower than Sputniks. Russian taxpayers don't deserve this. ..."
"... What was made clear by Mr. Lincoln and his Civil War was that the WASP Elites, the Yankee rich and powerful, saw the 1st Amendment as meaning all speech they supported would be actively promoted by Government while all speech they opposed would be shut down. ..."
"... It is also hypocritical in that countries like Israel that interfere regularly in American politics are exempt from FARA registration because no one dares to take such a step, while Russia is fair game. ..."
"... Without Russia the US Army would have no real reason to exist, ..."
"... the US Army is a large political force with many bases, half a million people, and a huge budget. ..."
"... The big corps are using their bought government to eliminate competition to their concentrated domestic media oligarchy. They can buy up all the domestic outlets, those outside have to be banned. It is ludicrous to blame foreigners for all your ills, when the vast majority of your country is itself made up of foreigners and their descendants, except for the tiny remainder of American Indians. Which identifies properly another way to identify the enemy destroying your nation: look in the mirror first. ..."
"... I think the big issue is that money runs the show. Big media, which is where many people still get their information is just rotten at the core. How to fix it? I don't know – maybe the internet (which is still relatively young) will be the new frontier for bring truth to the masses. ..."
"... "Russiagate" has been a farce from the very beginning, an attempt by that fat-ass witch to divert attention from the 30K emails–which is where the REAL scandal lies!! And where do we stand on that issue anyway? I won't hold my breath waiting. ..."
"... Propaganda? Our political class is going to protect us from Propaganda? Our bureaucracies, the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, are going to protect us from Propaganda? If it doesn't jibe with what our media organs of record are putting out, they're going to stamp it Propaganda? Don't make me laugh! The Propaganda is that those clowns wouldn't call a pig a duck for a dime's worth of advantage. ..."
"... This action on the part of the Sessions DOJ is hypocritical in light of the fact that we routinely undermine governments and institutions in Ukraine and Russia via our NGO's and in any nation whose foreign policy is deemed an impediment to the goals Israel and their American vassal state. ..."
"... Every banned political speech has always been banned because it was deemed 'subversive' or 'divisive'. Or the new 20th century term 'propaganda'. This has been the case for thousands of years, the censors always say that. No censor ever just banned free expression or said that it has to be banned because it is true. The banning is also often done by admin harassment, 'foreign agent' label, cutting access, etc.. ..."
"... So the latest hysteria about banning RT/Sputnik is squarely in the mainstream of censorship. It meets all the usual criteria: foreign influence, trying to stir up discord, undermining the system (that would be 'democracy' in US). And the methods are also the usual one: registration, harassment, restriction on distribution, etc ..."
Oct 10, 2017 | www.unz.com

Anatoly Karlin , Website October 10, 2017 at 1:00 pm GMT

To be quite frank I hope that the US declares RT/Sputnik foreign agents (or bans them outright).

1. They are more interested in Putin hagiography and idiotic conspiracy theories than intelligent propaganda anyway.

2. They are ineffective, especially Sputnik. According to SimilarWeb, it only gets a total of 2.5 million monthly visitors from the US. That's almost an Unz.com like level of visitorship even though Ron's budget and attention of social media/advertising crap is many orders of magnitude lower than Sputniks. Russian taxpayers don't deserve this.

3. Gives Russia a great excuse to kick out dishonest Western journalists (about 75% of them).

Andrei Martyanov , Website October 10, 2017 at 1:08 pm GMT

@Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften

The Europeans don't want to have American military bases there.

Not true. Some Europeans may not want that, but many others are perfectly content with the state of the affairs. As per Eastern Europe–majority of them want US military bases.

Jake , October 10, 2017 at 1:10 pm GMT

What was made clear by Mr. Lincoln and his Civil War was that the WASP Elites, the Yankee rich and powerful, saw the 1st Amendment as meaning all speech they supported would be actively promoted by Government while all speech they opposed would be shut down.

That was in keeping with the culture's source: Anglo-Saxon Puritanism. Puritans spouted Free Speech all day and all of the night, and if you dared speak against Cromwell or the Revolution, you paid dearly.

Hypocrisy about free speech is deep in the WASP DNA.

Angles and Saxons were Germanic tribes. WASP culture is Germanic. Germanics have always seen Slavs as inferior peoples they should war against perpetually, to steal their best land and make serfs of the survivors. This obsession with screwing with Russia is simply the contemporary manifestation of that part of the problem of unrestrained Germanic culture.

iffen , October 10, 2017 at 1:17 pm GMT

we are allowed to air views that are essentially banned on the mainstream media to include critique of maladroit policies in places like Syria and Afghanistan and biting critiques of the war on terror.

It is also hypocritical in that countries like Israel that interfere regularly in American politics are exempt from FARA registration because no one dares to take such a step, while Russia is fair game.

Almost! Almost made it!

Jake , October 10, 2017 at 1:20 pm GMT

@Anonymous

I don't trust Russia any more than you do. I have even less, much less, trust, for the UK, Germany, France, the EU, as well as America's Democrats and Neocons.

JoaoAlfaiate , October 10, 2017 at 1:22 pm GMT

Russia: White and Christian, sounds like an ideal ally for the United States.

John Fitzgerald , October 10, 2017 at 1:40 pm GMT

If the Feds are going to make RT register as a foreign agent due to foreign funding, where does it stop? On the same basis, all nationally owned news outlets must be forced to register, e.g., BBC, Al Jezeera, etc. And what about nominally non-government owned news entities that a home government renders financial assistance, eg, the London Times, if it needed government loans to survive? Would it be a British foreign agent?

And what about the New York Times, which in its perilous financial state appears to be substantially supported by loans from a Mexican National, Carlos Slim who in turn must be assumed to work hand-in-hand with the Mexican government, since most of his wealth comes from Mexican government-granted franchises.

Should the New York Times be registered as a Mexican foreign agent (its news coverage and editorials regarding immigration certainly would be evidence it is acting in that capacity)?

Wade , October 10, 2017 at 2:04 pm GMT

OT If anyone wants to catch a nice laid back interview with Phil Geraldi they can do so here:

A lengthy discussion about his sacking at TAC and AIPAC is had with Ryan Dawson. Both put in nice plugs for unz.com. I was really happy to see Phil being interviewed by Ryan. I hope they do this again sometime.

I came to Unz for Steve Sailer but Geraldi is slowly becoming my favorite author here. Thanks for sticking with things Phil. You're doing great work.

Sam Shama , October 10, 2017 at 2:05 pm GMT

@Priss Factor Priss, your comments are really funny. "Clown Streicher is a 'gypsy nazi'" Is Anglin a violent fruitboy like Streicher?

SolontoCroesus , October 10, 2017 at 2:12 pm GMT

@Jake

That was in keeping with the culture's source: Anglo-Saxon Puritanism. Puritans spouted Free Speech all dan and all of the night, and if you dared speak against Cromwell or the Revolution, you paid dearly.

Hypocrisy about free speech is deep in the WASP DNA.

Angles and Saxons were Germanic tribes. WASP culture is Germanic. Germanics have always seen Slavs as inferior peoples they should war against perpetually, to steal their best land and make serfs of the survivors. This obsession with screwing with Russia is simply the contemporary manifestation of that part of the problem of unrestrained Germanic culture.

What of King Arthur? How did Britain go from Arthur to Cromwell? What role Henry VIII, and Dutch banking/ Bank of England?

How did Russia go from Tolstoy to Trotsky? What role Jacob Schiff and atheist Bolshevism/Communism?

How did Germany go from Wagner to Merkel( after a brief Hitler Interruptus )? What role Rothschild, Marx/Zinoviev and Zionism?

FDR and Churchill were determined to keep organizationally strong Germany and resource-rich Russia -- Christian Russia -- from uniting; Cromwell's England and Morgenthau's USA wanted to control German skill and Russian resources; their heirs want the same today.

Arthur's Britain and Wagner's Germany are natural allies of Tolstoy's Russia (and also of Virgil's Italy and Ferdowsi's Persia, btw).

Toss over this White nonsense, it tells no story, moves no souls.

... ... ...

RobinG , October 10, 2017 at 2:21 pm GMT

"Sputnik ..has been under investigation due to the accusations made by a fired broadcaster named Andrew Feinberg."

The amazing thing is that Feinberg ever had the job. In this painful interview, he readily admits to little knowledge and less interest in the particulars of Ukrainian/Crimean/Russian history, politics and recent events. Despite this inadequacy, he's managed to use his dismissal for self-promotion.

Talking to ex-Sputnik employee Andrew Feinberg about "Russian propaganda"

anon , Disclaimer October 10, 2017 at 2:36 pm GMT

And on the flip side maybe all the Jewish/Israeli news organizations will register too, maybe even AIPAC. Foreign is foreign and fighting wars for foreign interests is no virtue.

It's no wonder we are able to make so many new frands and they just moving into the west everywhere. Spending taxpayer money in foreign countries is helping the US taxpayer. I guess moving a quarter of the population that said foreign country can't take care of and dumping them on the US taxpayer and their children is our gift. Then give them jobs here too.

This lovely idea was signed initially during the Clinton admin with the UN, and put into place during the Bush admin. Dems just hate corps except when they are their own. (Hegelian Dialectic at play everywhere) 20 Rillion in Debt. Millennium Challenge Corporation

  • "MCC is a prime example of smart U.S. Government assistance in action, benefiting both developing countries and U.S. taxpayers through:
  • Competitive selection: Before a country can become eligible to receive assistance, MCC's Board examines its performance on independent and transparent policy indicators and selects compact-eligible countries based on policy performance.
  • Country-led solutions: MCC requires selected countries to identify their priorities for achieving sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction. Countries develop their MCC proposals in broad consultation within their society. MCC teams then work in close partnership to help countries refine a program.
  • Country-led implementation: MCC administers the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). When a country is awarded a compact, it sets up its own local MCA accountable entity to manage and oversee all aspects of implementation. Monitoring of funds is rigorous and transparent, often through independent fiscal agents.

MCC forms partnerships with some of the world's poorest countries, but only those committed to: good governance, economic freedom, and investments in their citizens."

https://www.mcc.gov/about

Anon , Disclaimer October 10, 2017 at 2:41 pm GMT

@Wade Interesting interview. Kind of disappointed not to see any evidence of Christianity in Giraldi's home, or at least not in that camera shot. Maybe his naïveté in approaching the issue, which brought on the artillary barrage, is due to his being oblivious to the larger spiritual, civilizational, battle going on. Forest/trees.

"Accumulating knowledge is a form of avarice and lends itself to another version of the Midas story man is so avid for knowledge that everything that he touches turns to facts; his faith becomes theology; his love becomes lechery; his wisdom becomes science; pursuing meaning, he ignores truth." -Malcolm Muggeridge

Don Bacon , October 10, 2017 at 2:46 pm GMT

@Johnny F. Ive

Without Russia the US Army would have no real reason to exist, Canada and Mexico being benign, because we all know that the US taxpayers are on the hook to defend Europe against the nasty powerful Russians which (mainly) defeated Germany in the last big one, and the US Army is a large political force with many bases, half a million people, and a huge budget.

Talha , October 10, 2017 at 2:47 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov

As per Eastern Europe–majority of them want US military bases.

"Let's you and him fight!" Peace.

Fran Macadam , October 10, 2017 at 3:17 pm GMT

The big corps are using their bought government to eliminate competition to their concentrated domestic media oligarchy. They can buy up all the domestic outlets, those outside have to be banned. It is ludicrous to blame foreigners for all your ills, when the vast majority of your country is itself made up of foreigners and their descendants, except for the tiny remainder of American Indians. Which identifies properly another way to identify the enemy destroying your nation: look in the mirror first.

RobinG , October 10, 2017 at 3:25 pm GMT

@Wade Thank you for posting. Not only is this a great interview with Phil, it's (for me) a much appreciated introduction to Ryan Dawson.

Fran Macadam , Website October 10, 2017 at 3:28 pm GMT

@Anatoly Karlin What you hope for is not in the interest of those of us who believe in free and unfettered discourse, which principle is one of the core reasons to believe in ideals that are supposed to define America.

It's fine to question foreign funded media, but it's against everything we are supposed to stand for to ban them.

As the famous jurist wrote, the answer to bad speech is more speech.

Let's debate what's said by foreigners, and their advocates, whether Russian, British, Israeli or any other. Our own government is not famous for truthfulness to the public, either. Let our own government answer them, if they question it, and let us determine where the truth lies, instead of being lied to.

John Jeremiah Smith , October 10, 2017 at 3:42 pm GMT

I watch programs on RT fairly frequently, and moreso with the arrival of the current crop of sitcoms, mindlessly insane 'dramas', firemen and cops shows, etc. Lotsa good stuff on RT. If you read the credits, you will find that most of the specials and magazines are not Russian productions. It's a good place to learn that much of the rest of world journalism bears no resemblance to the propaganda machines of the US networks.

US TV and radio production is a vast web of fabrications designed for social control, to manipulate public opinion, and to reinforce the will of the wealthy and powerful. The US government is corrupt throughout; the purpose of US media is to turn the public eye away from that corruption.

The Alarmist , October 10, 2017 at 3:49 pm GMT

@Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften A decade or so ago, when we still had a number of US bases in Germany, my German colleagues and neighbors used to ask why most of the GIs never left the base and only used Dollars for most of their commerce, again mostly on base, though a few merchants took Dollars on a rather good exchange basis that a local could arbitrage if he was paying attention. I experienced some of that a few decades ago myself when on TDY in Europe. The US might want bases there, but a non-trivial number of the troops can't be bothered to wander outside the gates very often, and may as well be in Nebraska or South Dakota for all their interest in being there.

As for the Europeans, a lot of the local merchants did want the bases there, and a lot of the locals welcomed the Amis. There were also places where the Amis represented a big payoff for the smallest things; you would be surprised how productive egg-layers Portuguese chickens were after you ran over one and found yourself compensating the farmer for all the eggs it would have laid in its life.

Anon , Disclaimer October 10, 2017 at 3:55 pm GMT

I'm not sure why it is but we always seem to be on the Muslims side, everywhere to the detriment of our own societies.

"Russia may be tightening its grip on Crimea, with little resistance to date, but they have yet to face the Crimean Tatar factor.

There are 266,000 Crimean Tatars in Crimea, over 13% of the local population. They are Sunni Muslim, traditionally pro-Ukrainian, and much better organized than the local Ukrainians, who make up 23% of the population."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/05/tartar-ukraine-sunni-muslims-threat-russian-rule-crimea

"For more than a year, Chechens, Muslims from southwestern Russia, have been fighting on both sides of Ukraine's struggle against Russian occupation.

The undeniably frank reason one anti-Russia militiaman recently gave The New York Times? "We always fight the Russians."

The Chechens have had a long and tense relationship with Russia's central government, alternatively fighting for independence and courting special favor from the rulers in Moscow. When Russia annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in March 2014, it once again gave Chechens a reason to push back against Russian overreach"

http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/22/russian-muslims-traveling-to-fight-against-russias-ukraine-invasion/

We have plenty of Muslims in Congress to represent their people. I'm sure our alphabet agencies have plenty too. According to Wikipedia almost no one likes Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Russian_sentiment

"Widespread ethnic cleansing accompanied the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–95), as large numbers of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and Bosnian Croats were forced to flee their homes and were expelled by Bosnian Serbs;[1] and some Bosnian Croats also carried out similar campaign against Bosniaks and Serbs. Also, Bosnian Muslims conducted similar acts against Croats, especially in Central Bosnia.[2]"

https://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=crmas&p=ethnic+cleansing+in+bosnia

Fought for these in Afghanistan. Ex president made a home at the UN.
"The Afghan Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (Persian: جبهه متحد اسلامی ملی برای نجات افغانستان‎‎ Jabha-yi Muttahid-i Islāmi-yi Millī barāyi Nijāt-i Afghānistān), was a military front that came to formation in late 1996 after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) took over Kabul. The United Front was assembled by key leaders of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, particularly president Burhanuddin Rabbani and former Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud. Initially it included mostly Tajiks but by 2000, leaders of other ethnic groups had joined the Northern Alliance. This included Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mohammad Mohaqiq, Abdul Qadir, Asif Mohseni and others."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Alliance

"The Afghan-Bosnian Mujahideen Network in Europe By Evan F. Kohlman" http://www.aina.org/reports/tabmnie.pdf Wow it just goes on.

Talha , October 10, 2017 at 4:01 pm GMT

@Fran Macadam

Hey Fran,

I like what you're bringing to the table here. I think the big issue is that money runs the show. Big media, which is where many people still get their information is just rotten at the core. How to fix it? I don't know – maybe the internet (which is still relatively young) will be the new frontier for bring truth to the masses.

But that is also a big IF – since there is so much on the internet which is just trash and lacks any sort of serious vetting. Peace.

Paranam Kid , October 10, 2017 at 4:03 pm GMT

@animalogic

The huge lumbering predator, as it's strength slowly, slowly fades lashes out at the flies & mozzies that encircle it .

That is a nice succinct way of describing the failing Empire

anonymous , Disclaimer October 10, 2017 at 4:16 pm GMT

"Russiagate" has been a farce from the very beginning, an attempt by that fat-ass witch to divert attention from the 30K emails–which is where the REAL scandal lies!! And where do we stand on that issue anyway? I won't hold my breath waiting.

iffen , October 10, 2017 at 4:23 pm GMT

@Talha will be the new frontier for bring truth to the masses

Whose truth?

Plus, there is a difference between discourse and propaganda.

The 88s here are not confounded so much by not being allowed free discourse as they are whinging about the fact that their propaganda and motivated opinion pieces are not carried 24/7 by every available outlet.

RobinG , October 10, 2017 at 4:37 pm GMT

@Talha Hi Talha,

Here's an articulate source. Until the web gets outright censored, beyond the select eliminating and demonetizing that's happening now. See also Ryan Dawson's interview of Phil at comment #28.

War for Oil? (((Whose oil?)))

RobinG , October 10, 2017 at 4:42 pm GMT

@iffen Thanks for volunteering to give us a review. I just watched a minute. (((Don't know how I missed this.)))

Decades of Deception

Reality Checker , October 10, 2017 at 4:51 pm GMT

@Anonymous I don't trust Russia one bit . . .

And why is that? Because your government and their MSM sycophants have brainwashed you to think that way? It's time people like you that have this inherent distrust of Russia get a grip and start using some critical thinking skills. I know that's really hard but give it a try, o.k.?

Talha , October 10, 2017 at 5:01 pm GMT

@iffen will be the new frontier for bring truth to the masses

Whose truth? Plus, there is a difference between discourse and propaganda. The 88s here are not confounded so much by not being allowed free discourse as they are whinging about the fact that their propaganda and motivated opinion pieces are not carried 24/7 by every available outlet.

Whose truth?

I'll just be happy to get facts at this point. Most can't be bothered to get that part straight. The MSM dropped the baton big time. Now people all over the internet are picking it up – the problem I see is information glut. How does one sift through the incredible amount of information.

Peace.

Sloopyjoe , October 10, 2017 at 5:58 pm GMT

Sputnik and RT are targeted in order to keep the "Boogey Man" alive by the following parties:

1) Globalist Banksters – They desperately need continued wars to distract the global peasants from the banker-caused multi-hundred trillion $ coming derivatives time-bomb and to keep their drug wash flow going. Also, its getting more and more difficult to keep under wraps the Dual-Financing of the "Official" Govts and "Deep State (SSP)" Govts. "Gotta keep those Kabbalistic Blood Sacrifices going or our Invisible Sky Daddy will be mad at us and won't let us on the Space Ship".

2) Big Pharma Slime (Vaccines/Viruses), GMO Sickos, Trans-Humanist Psychos, and Fascist Neo-Cons – "Just trying to get that Agenda21 Borg World going". 500 million micro-chipped global population is the goal.

3) The MIC – "We need more wars so we can keep force feeding our over-priced pieces of crap to our satellite colonies" and multi-trillion $ financial redirect to the SSP.

4) Israel – Russia and Iran (Persia) are the perennial enemies of the Talmudic Terrorists for kicking the Fake Jewish Khazarians/AshkeNAZIs out of their Western Asian homelands around 1250 AD. The psychotic and retarded (613 Talmudic Commandments, REALLY?) Clan Circumcision has a thing for blood feuds. Did you lose another Dolphin-Class Submarine?

5) The dying USSA Empire of Tampons and associated prostitute Politicos – Former colonies are fleeing East faster than Barry from his wife Michael er, I meant Michelle. Petro-Dollar going poof. USSA economy heading for the big flush regardless of the jiggered Plunge Protection Team numbers. "Must keep distracting our willfully-gullible peasant masses with more False Flags and Wars else they wise up and HANG US ALL".

And lastly

6) Hillawi Bin-Gazi Dykehar – Former candidate with continued delusional desires for Puppet Pres. of the USSA and current Jihadi commandante of Al-Shiksa. Al-Shiksa was last seen campaigning at Costco. This terrorist group is populated by fat ill-tempered donut-bumping Psycho Wenches and Cucked Eunuchs. Their battle cry is rumored to be "We love chocolate cake!!!" or "Damn those Weiner Tapes!!!". Sorry, my Shiksanese is not up to speed.

Did I miss anybody? Thanks for viewing.

polskijoe , October 10, 2017 at 6:15 pm GMT

RT talks about mass immigration problems, shows more inside of Israel including their nasty policies, questions neocons and liberals. For an English speaking forum that is rare. The comment section.. sometimes its okay, sometimes bad.

You will find conservative/traditional posters majority. Go to BBC, CNN, etc its liberal/"progressive" dominated. In the West Neocons and Liberals dominate the media. RT obviously has an agenda, probably divide. Sometimes comments get deleted.

nsa , October 10, 2017 at 6:22 pm GMT

A "reporter" named Feinberg turns out to be a traitorous rat actually working for the DOJ (Dept of Joostice). Who woulda thunk?

Flavius , October 10, 2017 at 7:01 pm GMT

Propaganda? Our political class is going to protect us from Propaganda? Our bureaucracies, the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, are going to protect us from Propaganda? If it doesn't jibe with what our media organs of record are putting out, they're going to stamp it Propaganda? Don't make me laugh! The Propaganda is that those clowns wouldn't call a pig a duck for a dime's worth of advantage.

"The Russians tried to influence our election" taken at face value and removed from the context of 65 years of American Foreign Policy is probably the most pernicious little bit of self serving swamp propaganda that I've ever seen. It appears to be the factoid that the Uniparty and its legions have chosen upon which to make their last stand and to hell with the American people.

utu , October 10, 2017 at 7:15 pm GMT

@Anatoly Karlin

To be quite frank I hope that the US declares RT/Sputnik foreign agents (or bans them outright). – I hope you wrote this thoughtlessly because you were exasperated or upset or something. You should perhaps take it back. There is no question that Russia is better off with RT and Sputnik than w/o them. Any child understands it.

Vidi , October 10, 2017 at 9:02 pm GMT

This assault on the First Amendment shows that the driving force behind the neocons is not American. A real American would tend to value the Constitution more.

KenH , October 10, 2017 at 9:09 pm GMT

As Priss Factor mentioned, RT and Sputnik do tend to be left of center on many issues, but they do appear to be sincere and independent leftists in contrast to the American prog establishment which has become just a dog and pony show controlled and directed by Jewish billionaires like Soros. RT especially is no friend of white nationalism although they have given figures on the racialist right air time on occasion.

I do find they are more objective in foreign policy matters whereas the U.S. media , including, FOX, all sing from the same song sheet on foreign policy matters and only differ slightly in degree. But they rarely seem to criticize Israel.

This action on the part of the Sessions DOJ is hypocritical in light of the fact that we routinely undermine governments and institutions in Ukraine and Russia via our NGO's and in any nation whose foreign policy is deemed an impediment to the goals Israel and their American vassal state.

Beckow , October 10, 2017 at 9:32 pm GMT

Every banned political speech has always been banned because it was deemed 'subversive' or 'divisive'. Or the new 20th century term 'propaganda'. This has been the case for thousands of years, the censors always say that. No censor ever just banned free expression or said that it has to be banned because it is true. The banning is also often done by admin harassment, 'foreign agent' label, cutting access, etc..

So the latest hysteria about banning RT/Sputnik is squarely in the mainstream of censorship. It meets all the usual criteria: foreign influence, trying to stir up discord, undermining the system (that would be 'democracy' in US). And the methods are also the usual one: registration, harassment, restriction on distribution, etc

It is a minor issue and mainly matters symbolically. But it is going to give US democracy and freedom of speech reputation a black eye. How does recover once speech is banned because it is causing 'division in the society'? The problem is that the ruling class simply doesn't understand what classical liberal values are – they talk a lot, they 'lawyer' a lot, but have no understanding of what a free society looks like.

Priss Factor , Website October 10, 2017 at 10:17 pm GMT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5854-qAqkM

Vinteuil , October 10, 2017 at 11:12 pm GMT

@Anatoly Karlin Never even knew Sputnik existed. RT I knew about – but it's got about the same profile as Al Jazeera in the USA: i.e., next to none.

Avery , October 10, 2017 at 11:45 pm GMT

@Anatoly Karlin

{3. Gives Russia a great excuse to kick out dishonest Western journalists (about 75% of them).}

Interesting perspective.

Seamus Padraig , October 10, 2017 at 11:55 pm GMT

At least the Russians have a sense of humor about the whole thing. Here's their new ad campaign for RT UK: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1438856412889207&set=a.117074591734069.21731.100002945854869&type=3&theater

[Oct 10, 2017] Sputnik and RT Under Investigation

FARA was a powerful tool against attempts to stage a color revolution in the particular county. But it can't save decaying neolineraim. which by now probably exceeed useful shelf life. The only thing that is keeping it afoot is there is no political force capable to provide viable alternative. That's it. Bastard neoliberalism of Trump is essentially the acceptance of the defeat.
The charge "Intended to discredit the United States government and its institutions" is too broad change and if applied indiscriminately no other entity other then government controlled press can operate in the country.
As a short term measure it definitely will be effective (although it increase popularity of RT.uk or RT.ca) as this essentially shut down both in the USA. RT can operate much like Guardian . But in a longer term, blacklisting RT (Sputnik is not that important) is a sign of weakness, not strength.
But eventually the boomerang might return and not necessary for entities like "Voice of America" (which after the collapse of the USA became a zombie for the xUSSR audiences). While influence of Voice of America on foreign audience now is minuscule and this is mostly money wasted due to decline of neoliberal ideology (and with it prestige and influence of the USA) , they can now be shut down with impunity, by any foreign government inclined to do so.
So in a way, the US actions engager crown jewels of its propaganda machine. also any such action is a sign of weakness not strength by definition. It just signify that the tratment of neoliberalism in RT can't be fought by directly.
And not only Voice of America but also similar, potentially more effective propaganda entities. In effect that is the acceptable of the fact that neoliberal MSM are losing grip on the population and require coercive measures against competitors.
Notable quotes:
"... The apparent line of inquiry that the Bureau is pursuing is that both are agencies of the Russian government and that both have been spreading disinformation ..."
"... This alleged action would make them, in the DOJ view, a propaganda arm of a foreign government rather than a news service. It also makes them subject to Department of the Treasury oversight under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. ..."
"... Feinberg, the former Sputnik White House correspondent, reportedly took with him a thumb drive containing some thousands of internal business files when he left his office. ..."
"... News organizations are normally considered to be exempt from the requirements of FARA. ..."
"... The DOJ is in effect saying that RT and Sputnik are nothing more than propaganda organs and do not qualify as journalism. I would have to disagree if one goes by the standards of contemporary journalism in the United States. ..."
"... they have been as often as not leading propaganda organs for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, pushing a particular agenda and denigrating Donald Trump. They differ little from the admittedly biased television news reporting provided by Fox News and MSNBC. ..."
"... Regarding Sputnik, Feinberg claimed inter alia ..."
"... Voice of America ..."
Oct 10, 2017 | www.unz.com

Somehow everything keeps coming back around to Russia. In one of its recent initiatives, the Justice Department (DOJ) appears to be attacking the First Amendment as part of the apparent bipartisan program to make Vladimir Putin the fall guy for everything that goes wrong in Washington. In the past month, the DOJ has revealed that the FBI is investigating Russian owned news outlets Sputnik News and RT International and has sent letters to the latter demanding that one of its business affiliates register as a foreign agent by October 17 th . The apparent line of inquiry that the Bureau is pursuing is that both are agencies of the Russian government and that both have been spreading disinformation that is intended to discredit the United States government and its institutions.

This alleged action would make them, in the DOJ view, a propaganda arm of a foreign government rather than a news service. It also makes them subject to Department of the Treasury oversight under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.

Sputnik , which is owned by a Russian government media group headed by Putin consigliere Dimitri Kiselyov, has been under investigation due to the accusations made by a fired broadcaster named Andrew Feinberg. Feinberg, the former Sputnik White House correspondent, reportedly took with him a thumb drive containing some thousands of internal business files when he left his office. He has been interviewed by the FBI, has turned over his documents, and has claimed that much of the direction over what the network covered came from Moscow.

RT America , more television oriented than Sputnik, operates through two business entities : RTTV America and RTTV Studios. The Department of Justice has refused to identify which of the businesses has been targeted by a letter calling for registration under FARA, but it is believed to be RTTV America, which provides both operational support of the broadcasting as well as the production facilities. Both companies are actually owned by Russian-American businessman Alex Yazlovsky, though the funding for them presumably comes from the Russian government.

I have noticed very little pushback in the U.S. mainstream and alternative media regarding the Department of Justice moves, presumably because there is a broad consensus that the Russians have been interfering in our "democracy" and have had it coming. If that assumption on my part is correct, the silence over the issue reflects a certain naïvete while also constituting a near perfect example of a pervasive tunnel vision that obscures the significant collateral damage that might be forthcoming.

News organizations are normally considered to be exempt from the requirements of FARA. The Department of Justice action against the two Russian major media outlets is unprecedented insofar as I could determine. Even Qatar owned al-Jazeera, which was so vilified during the early stages of the Afghan War that it had its Kabul offices bombed by the U.S., did not have to register under FARA, was permitted to operate freely, and was even allowed to buy a television channel license for its American operations.

The DOJ is in effect saying that RT and Sputnik are nothing more than propaganda organs and do not qualify as journalism. I would have to disagree if one goes by the standards of contemporary journalism in the United States. America's self-described "newspapers of record" the New York Times and the Washington Post pretend that they have a lock on stories that are "true." The Post has adopted the slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness" while the Times proclaims "The truth is more important now than ever," but anyone who has read either paper regularly for the past year knows perfectly well that they have been as often as not leading propaganda organs for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, pushing a particular agenda and denigrating Donald Trump. They differ little from the admittedly biased television news reporting provided by Fox News and MSNBC.

What exactly did the Russians do? According to last January's report signed off on by the FBI, CIA and NSA, which may have motivated the DOJ to take action, RT and Sputnik "consistently cast President-elect Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional U.S. media outlets that they claimed were subservient to a corrupt political establishment." Well, they certainly got that one right and did better in their reporting of what was going on among the American public than either the Washington Post or New York Times .

Regarding Sputnik, Feinberg claimed inter alia that he was "pushed" to ask questions at White House press briefings suggesting that Syria's Bashar al-Assad was not responsible for some of the chemical attacks that had taken place. One wonders at Feinberg's reluctance as Sputnik and RT were not the only ones expressing skepticism over the claims of Syrian involvement, which have been widely debunked. And why is expressing a credible alternative view on an event in Syria even regarded as propaganda damaging to the American public?

There is a difficult to distinguish line between FARA restricted "trying to influence opinion" using what is regarded a fake news and propaganda and legitimate journalism reporting stories where the "facts" have been challenged. Even real journalists choose to cover stories selectively, inevitably producing a certain narrative for the viewer, listener or reader. All news services do that to a greater or lesser extent.

I have considerable personal experience of RT in particular and, to a lesser extent, with Sputnik. I also know many others who have been interviewed by one or both. No one who has done so has ever been coached or urged to follow a particular line or support a specific position insofar as I know. Nor do I know anyone who has actually been paid to appear. Most of us who are interviewed are appreciative of the fact that we are allowed to air views that are essentially banned on the mainstream media to include critique of maladroit policies in places like Syria and Afghanistan and biting critiques of the war on terror.

Sputnik, in my opinion, does, however, lean heavily towards stories that are critical of the United States and its policies, while RT has a global reach and is much more balanced in what it covers. For sure, it too criticizes U.S. policies and is protective of the Russian government, but it does not substantially differ from other national news services that I have had done interviews for. I find as much uniquely generated negative reporting about the U.S. (usually linked to violence or guns) on BBC World News, France24 and Deutsche Welle as I do on RT International . To describe it as part of an "influence campaign" driven by a "state-run propaganda machine" has a kernel of truth but it is nevertheless a bit of a stretch since one could make the same claims about any government financed news service, including Voice of America . Governments only get into broadcasting to promote their points of view, not to inform the public.

There is a serious problem in the threats to use FARA as it could advance the ongoing erosion of freedom of the press in the United States by establishing the precedent that a foreign news services that is critical of the U.S. will no longer be tolerated. It is also hypocritical in that countries like Israel that interfere regularly in American politics are exempt from FARA registration because no one dares to take such a step, while Russia is fair game.

Going after news outlets also invites retaliation against U.S. media operating in Russia and, eventually, elsewhere. Currently Western media reports from Russia pretty much without being censored or pressured to avoid certain stories. I would note a recent series that appeared on CBS featuring the repulsive Stephen Colbert spending a week in Russia which mercilessly lampooned both the country and its government. No one arrested him or made him stop filming. No one claimed that he was trying to undermine the Russian government or discredit the country's institutions, even though that is precisely what he was doing.

And then there is the issue of the "threat" posed by news media outlets like RT and Sputnik. Even combined the two services have limited access to the U.S. market, with a 2014 study suggesting that they have only 2.8 million actual weekly viewers . RT did not make the cut and is not included on the list of 100 most popular television channels in the U.S. and it has far less market penetration than other foreign news services like the BBC. It can be found on only a limited number of cable networks in a few, mostly urban areas. It does better in Europe, but its profile in the U.S. market is miniscule. As even bad news is good news in terms of selling a product, it probably did receive higher ratings when the intelligence agency report slamming it came out on it in January. Everyone probably wanted to learn what RT was all about.

So it seems to me that the United States' moves against RT and Sputnik are little more than lashing out at a problem that is not really a problem in a bid to again promote the Russian "threat" to explain the ongoing dysfunction that prevails in America's democratic process. One keeps reading or hearing how the American government has "indisputable" proof of Moscow's intentions to subvert democracy in the U.S. as well as in Europe but the actual evidence is still elusive. Will Russiagate end with a bang or a whimper? No one seems to know.

Priss Factor > , Website October 10, 2017 at 4:52 am GMT

The irony is RT news is pretty much dominated by Progs and Leftists. It's not Russian Nationalist or Conservative. But it features the kinds of Progs who do question and challenge Globalist Oligarchs of the West.

Johnny F. Ive > , October 10, 2017 at 5:43 am GMT

They need Russia to be an enemy to justify their actions and the Europeans want to use the US to threaten Russia. Its a shame this can't be generalized against all foreign agents of influence. The US Mainstream Media is basically an arm of the Hasbara. Their guest from think tanks are foreign agents of influence. Its not fun watching a bunch of foreigners and their domestic owned Americans run the US Empire into the ground.

Backwoods Bob > , October 10, 2017 at 5:59 am GMT

As psychopaths lose their grip over the target, they change from cool, calm, lie-to-your face con men to pathetic, shrieking cartoons of themselves.

The shredders were working overtime, bleach bit, hammers, cell phones wiped, people bumped off, closing up all of the criminal gangster operations of the government before Trump got in.

They can't get rid of him, not suing for re-counts, not getting him declared incompetent, not stage-managed riots of Soros stooges, not a fake dossier with Russian whores peeing on the Donald's bed, not screeching about Russia

Eventually, if our Republic is worth a shit at all, these crimes will finally be acknowledged and the hysteria over Russia will subside.

Ronald Thomas West > , Website October 10, 2017 at 6:26 am GMT

What the Russians appear to have clearly recognized is how to take advantage of the corrupt nature of the western 'mainstream' press, an institution which has been co-opted by western intelligence agencies for a very long time.

The Russian method? It could not be more simple; report the actual facts in the geopolitical contest and when this is inconvenient, practice lies by omission

Depending on the geopolitical reality of the day, for instance whether the paranoid ego-maniac Sultan Erdogan of Turkey is behaving well or not, the stories by western dissident journalists that will withstand a close scrutiny are run in Russian or Russia friendly media outlets. The result? Odds are 100:1 you'll get more reliable information from Russian state TV or Russian sponsored websites than from ABC, CBS, CNN or NBC

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2016/12/03/propaganda-spy-vs-spy/

My take from 10 or so months ago. I don't really think much has changed except for the 'Russia hacked the election' story is clearly more false than ever; with narcissism queen Julian Assange holding the story hostage:

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2017/09/16/incompetent-espionage-wikileaks-iii/

Verymuchalive > , October 10, 2017 at 6:46 am GMT

Russia has been remarkably restrained in its counteractions. But retaliate fully it will. China is getting its retaliation in first, with plans for an oil futures market, trading in yuan, in Shanghai already near completion. The days of the Petro-dollar seem numbered. Will American hegemony collapse with a bang or a whimper? No one seems to know.
Either way, ten years from now, " Russiagate ", a fake scandal, will be almost completely forgotten, rather like major real scandals earlier this century like Enron. The latter seems to have been pushed right down the memory hole.

exiled off mainstreet > , October 10, 2017 at 7:51 am GMT

This is further evidence that the yankee regime walks and talks like a fascist duck. Its deep state and its media acolytes, Carlos Slim's New York Times, CIA contractor Bezos' Washington Post, PBS, the corporate parasite broadcast system, CNN, the Clinton News Network, NBC, home of professional lesbian deepstate lackey Rachel Maddow, CBS and ABC (along with government owned satellite state medias like BBC, CBC and Australia's ABC are quintessential propaganda outlets. While the Russian outlets are naturally pro-Russian, they are less openly propagandistic than the US-controlled propaganda press, which is on the side of barbarism in its attitudes toward the middle east and NATO issues.

LondonBob > , October 10, 2017 at 8:10 am GMT

I actually find the quality of guests on RT to be far superior to what the British news channels offer, embarrassingly so really as these guests seem easy enough to find whilst the likes of the BBC believe the ill informed opinions of journalists is only of interest. RT UK is also a lot more politically balanced with most of the media seemingly having ditched the old ethos that they should at least make some vague attempt at balance. RT's coverage of the migrant crisis was in stark contrast to the British media's cheer leading. In addition in the past few years Palestine has completely disappeared from British screens however RT still covers the occupation as well as matters such as the USS Liberty.

Anyway this does seem like part and parcel of the attempt to increasingly suppress the press and free speech in the West, whether that is driven by lefty ideologues, zionists, an unthinking security apparatus or a military with no purpose.

[Oct 10, 2017] MoA - Russia Interfered! - By Purchasing Anti-Trump Ads

Notable quotes:
"... Russia is for and against Trump, and is thus destroying American democracy! We have always been at war with Eurasia! Freedom is slavery! ..."
"... The dangerous projection from the US elites where anyone and anything can be turned into something "evil" through the mere suggestion of any connection to Russia is no longer shocking--but that makes it no less disturbing and insidious. ..."
"... the whole thing is quite laughable, if it wasn't taken so seriously by so many doorknobs... ..."
"... b you are right to continue to focus on this issue. The Russia hysteria is beginning to burn itself out. However the msn and the Democrats are now beginning to focus on Google, Twitter and Facebook instead. Hillary last week gave a talk at Stanford calling for those companies to censure false news reports. If her plan was put into effect one of its targets would obviously be MoA along with hundreds of other outlets on both the left and the right that challenge the usual deep state "news" promoted by the mainstream news monopolies. ..."
"... Identifying all of the ways in which it was rigged is still open to debate, but we know for sure that during the primary the DNC manipulated the schedule for "Super Tuesday" so as to pad Clinton's lead with meaningless red states which would never turn out for her in the general, that numerous states also executed suspect purges of their voter roles in precincts leaning heavily toward Bernie Sanders, and that Clinton fraudulently secured the electoral votes of some 400 so-called "super delegates" in order to create the illusion she had popular support. ..."
"... Furthermore, we know that the DNC itself promoted Trump because they wrongly believed that he would be easier to beat in the general election. If anyone really adulterated our democracy during this election, it was the DNC and, as usual, the corporate media apparatus. But as with any large-scale CYA operation, the first order of business is to distract attention away from the domestic perpetrators by hyping up an external threat and projecting all manner of crimes to this shadowy enemy. ..."
"... If one looks at the recent history of which bills pass in congress, and how close the votes lie, it is very easy to see the BIG LIE that these people represent anything other than the corporate interests that pay them the most money. ..."
"... Trump is a symptom, not the disease. Hillary was the same, and I fully expect the next bunch of politicians to show even more stark symptoms. To expect the MSM to do other than purvey the lies and obfuscate and distract is simply an illogical and fallacious expectation - an expectation that money will never allow to be met. ..."
"... This entire Russiagate thing is a distraction, canard, red herring - pick your noun for falsity. It's purpose is to obfuscate other things the corporations and governments are doing elsewhere. Caveat emptor ..."
Oct 10, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

After the ludicrous "Russian hacking" claims have died down for lack of evidence, the attention was moved to even more ludicrous claims of "Russian ads influenced the elections". Some readers are upset that continue to debunk the nonsense the media spreads around this. But lies should not stand without response. If only to blame the reporters and media who push this dreck.

As evidence is also lacking for any "Russian interference" claims the media outlets have started to push deceiving headlines. These make claims that are not covered at all by the content of the related pieces. The headlines are effective because less than 20% of the viewers ever read beyond them.

On the NYT Homepage today we find another one of these: Google Finds Russia Bought Ads to Interfere in Election .

Google has found no ads that "Russia", the state or nation, has bought. There is also no evidence that the ads in question interfered in any way with the election. There is evidence that any of the ads in questions aimed to achieve that. The opener of the piece repeats the false headline claims. But now we have "Russian agents", not "Russia", which allegedly did something.

Google has found evidence that Russian agents bought ads on its wide-ranging networks in an effort to interfere with the 2016 presidential campaign.

The term "Russian agents" is not defined at all. Where these "secret agents" or Public Relation professionals in Washington DC hired by some Russian entity?

Using accounts believed to be connected to the Russian government, the agents purchased $4,700 worth of search ads and more traditional display ads, according to a person familiar with the company's inquiry ...

"Accounts believed to be connected to the Russian government." Believed by whom? And how is "connected" defined? Isn't any citizen "connected" to his or her government?

Those believed , connected accounts bought a whopping $4,700 of ads? Googles 2016 revenue was $89,000,000,000. The total campaign expenditures in 2016 were some $6,000,000,000. The Clinton campaign spent some $480,000 on social network ads alone. But something "Russian" spending $4,700 was "interference"?

But wait. There is more:

Google found a separate $53,000 worth of ads with political material that were purchased from Russian internet addresses, building addresses or with Russian currency. It is not clear whether any of those were connected to the Russian government, and they may have been purchased by Russian citizens, the person said.

So now we are on to something. A full $53,000 worth of ads. But ....

The messages of those ads spanned the political spectrum. One account spent $7,000 on ads to promote a documentary called "You've Been Trumped," a film about Donald J. Trump's efforts to build a golf course in Scotland along an environmentally sensitive coastline. Another spent $36,000 on ads questioning whether President Barack Obama needed to resign. Yet another bought ads to promote political merchandise for Mr. Obama.

The film is anti-Trump. Obama not resigning would have been anti-Trump. Selling Obama merchandise may have been good business, but is certainly not pro-Trump. So at least $43,000 of a total of $53,000 mentioned above was spent by believed , connected "Russians" on ads that promoted anti-Trump material. How does that fit with the claims that "Russia" wished to get Trump elected? Putin pushed the wrong button?

The allegedly "Russian" Facebook ads were just a click-bait scheme by some people trying to make money. The allegedly "Russian" Goggle ads were of a volume that is unlikely to have made any difference in anything. They were also anti-Trump.

Clinton lost because people on all sides had learned to dislike her policies throughout the years. She was unelectable. Her party was and is acting against the interest of the common people. No claim of anything "Russian" can change those facts.

Yul | Oct 10, 2017 11:59:10 AM | 1

But, But, But
It is OK when the US of A ( via NED, USAID aka CIA covert ops) does it in Iran, some African countries, South American and even in Western Europe circa the '60's, to elect puppets
steven t johnson | Oct 10, 2017 12:24:54 PM | 2
Clinton won the election. Trump winning the Electoral College doesn't change that. If anybody has been repudiated by popular vote, it is Trump. It wasn't a huge win because the Democratic Party platform of how great the economy is is not going to win big for the good and simply reason it's BS. And black voters weren't going to turn out for a white candidate. If winning the election is a moral endorsement and losing is conviction of sin, then it is Clinton who was the angel and Trump who was the devil in the judgment of the American people. Seeing Clinton supporters as demons serving evil just means you hate the American people.

Either the Trumpists are getting exactly what they wanted, which exposes them as shameful. Or they got blindly picked the biggest liar because, stupid. It's a lose/lose situation. Since the Electoral College has made the election moot, what is the point of savaging Clinton except a desperate effort to apologize for Trump?

WorldBLee | Oct 10, 2017 12:33:02 PM | 3
Russia is for and against Trump, and is thus destroying American democracy! We have always been at war with Eurasia! Freedom is slavery!

The dangerous projection from the US elites where anyone and anything can be turned into something "evil" through the mere suggestion of any connection to Russia is no longer shocking--but that makes it no less disturbing and insidious.

anon | Oct 10, 2017 12:40:38 PM | 4
if the Dems wanted to campaign for the NEXT election rather than the LAST one, they could try opposing Trump on an actual issue... but I don't see Clinton doing squat for Puerto Rico, EPA standards, Black Lives, health care, Yemen, education, etc. The truth is, she and her party don't oppose Trump on anything except who won the last election and which country to threaten next.

I stopped listening to Amy Goodman over a year ago when I got sick of hearing nothing but this partisan BS, though once in a while I turn it on for a few minutes, and Goodman is STILL going on and on about Trump v Clinton! but today I got to hear Julian Assange tell her off, so it was worth it.

james | Oct 10, 2017 12:41:08 PM | 5
thanks b.. this highlights the pettiness of the american press, and people like steven @2 as well..

the whole thing is quite laughable, if it wasn't taken so seriously by so many doorknobs...

ToivoS | Oct 10, 2017 1:07:57 PM | 6
b you are right to continue to focus on this issue. The Russia hysteria is beginning to burn itself out. However the msn and the Democrats are now beginning to focus on Google, Twitter and Facebook instead. Hillary last week gave a talk at Stanford calling for those companies to censure false news reports. If her plan was put into effect one of its targets would obviously be MoA along with hundreds of other outlets on both the left and the right that challenge the usual deep state "news" promoted by the mainstream news monopolies.

Johnson #2. You obviously do not understand the US constitution. It was crafted to distribute political power to all of the States, not to just those with the largest populations. That was done deliberately and carefully in order to get the 13 former colonies to agree to joining a united states. That is why we have the electoral college and why each of the states have exactly two US senators irrespective of their population. So you want to abolish the electoral college? Well then change the US constitution. Of course keep in mind that the constitution has a rule for that process too -- it requires that 2/3 of the states agree. Good luck with trying that! Well you loyal Hillary sycophants should just go back and continue to cry in your beers like the pathetic losers that you all are.

SlapHappy | Oct 10, 2017 1:12:19 PM | 7
The 2016 election, as with every federal election since at least 2000, was rigged.

Identifying all of the ways in which it was rigged is still open to debate, but we know for sure that during the primary the DNC manipulated the schedule for "Super Tuesday" so as to pad Clinton's lead with meaningless red states which would never turn out for her in the general, that numerous states also executed suspect purges of their voter roles in precincts leaning heavily toward Bernie Sanders, and that Clinton fraudulently secured the electoral votes of some 400 so-called "super delegates" in order to create the illusion she had popular support.

Furthermore, we know that the DNC itself promoted Trump because they wrongly believed that he would be easier to beat in the general election. If anyone really adulterated our democracy during this election, it was the DNC and, as usual, the corporate media apparatus. But as with any large-scale CYA operation, the first order of business is to distract attention away from the domestic perpetrators by hyping up an external threat and projecting all manner of crimes to this shadowy enemy.

It's been the same tired song and dance in this country since forever, and I don't think it'll ever change, especially not with almost universal control of the government, media, finance, and industry by the money-printing fifth column.

/div
/div
Oilman2 | Oct 10, 2017 1:50:54 PM | 9
If one looks at the recent history of which bills pass in congress, and how close the votes lie, it is very easy to see the BIG LIE that these people represent anything other than the corporate interests that pay them the most money.

The 'differences' they postulate and promulgate across media are of things inconsequential, or of things that can never be wholly resolved with laws and regulations. When important things arise, they are locked away in committee or alleged 'deadlock'. What bills do pass are always, not sometimes, but always those that enrich their own pockets in some way.

Those that believe in either cause, Democrat or Republican, are avoiding the truth staring them in the face. They prefer the old reality we lived in where news could be controlled via 5 or 6 media outlets. They prefer The Matrix to the reality of where we exist today.

The truth is slowly oozing out, even as these parasitic creatures shovel and shove it back under rocks and into overflowing waste bins. The result of this is apathy in extremis. This will continue until a disaster or collapse of some part of the existing system forces people to act for change.

Trump is a symptom, not the disease. Hillary was the same, and I fully expect the next bunch of politicians to show even more stark symptoms. To expect the MSM to do other than purvey the lies and obfuscate and distract is simply an illogical and fallacious expectation - an expectation that money will never allow to be met.

This entire Russiagate thing is a distraction, canard, red herring - pick your noun for falsity. It's purpose is to obfuscate other things the corporations and governments are doing elsewhere. Caveat emptor

[Oct 10, 2017] DECAMERON NEO-CON RESET

Oct 10, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Last week saw the Senate Intelligence Committee going after Russia's influence in the "free market places of ideas": Twitter, Facebook, etc. Senators fulminated over Twitter's failure to appreciate the magnitude of the danger of Russia's interference in free elections. Cartoonists lampooned Russia with caricatures of the famous Russian military parades showing the Facebook and Twitter logos as displays in the parade along with tanks and missiles.

Suddenly the Senate was all atwitter over, well, Twitter. Who's feeding this sudden awareness?

The recently created Alliance for Securing Democracy, housed (at least for now) at the German Marshall Fund--USA is one of the core anti-Putin, anti-Russia operations that merits keeping an eye on, especially as it impacts Congressional hearings, resolutions, and media. It's an alliance of hard core neo-cons who were in the thick of promoting the 2003 Iraq war and the "axis of evil" attacks on Iran-Iraq-North Korea during Bush 43 administration, with the hillary-cons.

They're determined to turn up the heat against Moscow, not just in the United States, but to spread the Cold War mania to Europe through its GMF network.

For now, the Alliance's money seems to be limited, but it is a clear move to migrate the "Never Trump" Republicans into alliance with the Democratic Party, even further polluting and destroying that party on the foreign policy front.

With a network of some 2 dozen operatives in the USA and Europe (including former Assistant Secretary of Defense under Obama, Derek Chollet) the Alliance for Securing Democray blog is churning out steady stream of articles about Russian interference in elections (including big focus on the latest German elections) and demanding that Congress take action to further investigate/stop Russian interference in said elections. They claim to be monitoring 600 Russian twitter accounts that they think are threatening democracy.

A significant part of the apparatus comes from the group, Foreign Policy Initiative which went belly up in August, 2017, when it ceased operations. According to The Nation, FPI's demise was largely due to the dropping off of funds in 2017 after the Trump election. The FPI was led by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. These "never Trump'ers" were apparently an albatross after the 2016 elections for some Republican and conservative deep pockets who always want to keep a path open to the White House, no matter who they preferred.

Now Kristol has a new home on the Advisory Board of the Alliance for Securing Democracy along with Michael Chertoff, and the anti-Putin ex-Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul. Also on the Board is Jake Sullivan, a top Hillary operative at the State Dept. Chertoff recently landed a Wall Street Journal article on September 6 th , headlined, Congress Can Help Prevent Election Hacking. I expect there will be a lot of Congressional action on this front if the "Alliance for Securing Democracy" has its way.

Securing democracy? The crowd that brought us Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011?

Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald did an impressive first expose of this outfit in July of this year, identifying the alliance between the war party neo-cons and the Democratic Party, but there's a lot more to watch in its continuing operations to promote its Cold War agenda, especially in Congress.

james , 08 October 2017 at 07:13 PM

these neo con bloodsuckers are becoming irrelevant.. sure, they continue to suck on the blood of a number of countries, but it is going to come to an end. if fact, it looks like the end is in motion at present.. they want their war where-ever, and the corporations are all in tow on this.. meanwhile ordinary people can see it for what it is..

i saw an article in fox news from kagan.. what was interesting were the comments in response to his drivel... it gave me hope that people who are crazy enough to even read something on fox news, can see bullshit when they see it and are willing to call it as such.. people aren't beholden to the western msm as much as some would like to think..

tpcelt , 08 October 2017 at 09:40 PM
How can ordinary people, like me, be informed and make sound decisions? Common sense with a strong bu****t meter helps. But there's so much going on and cross currents.
1664RM , 08 October 2017 at 10:03 PM
Are sure you have the title correct? 'Reset'

- Personally I don't think there has ever been a 'reset'.

It's the same as it ever was - they are still there operating in plain sight & pulling the strings & levers of power in both the US Senate & Congress, of course the influence of the AIPAC 'bloc' cannot be overlooked.

HRC was their candidate, as was BHO, as was Bush the younger, as was WJC et al.

PNAC is alive & well, the plan is still to destroy any nation which can independently produce/supply hydrocarbons outside of the control of the US/Saudi hydrocarbon cartel, or act as a third party transit corridor to China or Europe.

These nations typically fall foul of 'coloured revolutions', or ethinc minorities within them - normally Sunni Muslims suddenly become the victims of 'ethnic cleansing' by State Govt forces, no proof of this (pictures, moving images etc is ever provided by the MSM). The issue is presented to the world as an 'uman rights issue. Often local Sunni extremists (sometime in neighbouring states) then wage 'Jihad' & thus the state in question is totally destroyed & 'Balkanised in the process.

Coupled with this is the ongoing operation to isolate Russian geopolitical & economic influence over Festung Europa whilst drawing an ever more 'Balkanized 'Europa' into more reliance on US influenced sources of hydrocarbons.

Simultaneous to this is the encirclement of Russia on 3 sides with THAAD style weapons & conventional military forces to create a preemptive Nuclear/Conventional Strike Scenario a reality.

In the Asia Pacific region its also a similar plan directed against China.

All of this is directly linked to maintaining the economic hegemony of the US 'Empire' into the 21st Century.

Its not that simple to work out or follow.

Just my vacant ramblings this fine Monday morning 'downunder' feel free to rip it apart as you wish.

Linda , 08 October 2017 at 11:08 PM
And now Possibly Iran in 2017
1664RM -> Linda... , 09 October 2017 at 10:16 AM
Myanmar - shaping up to become a new hydrocarbon overland transit route from the Gulf for China (avoiding the Malacca Straights maritime chokepoint) in exchange for an invitation into the OBOR Project - Well it was until -

All of a sudden the Royhingas have been murdered en masse & driven into exile into neighbouring Bangladesh (incidentally has anybody actually seen ANY pictorial moving footage evidence of ANY of this?)

Bangladesh ... where the 'jihad' to avenge the Royhinga pogrom will be launched into Myanmar ... has just 'accepted' an offer from the Kingdom of Saudi to construct hundreds of new Mosques & Madrassas ... the perfect breeding ground to hatch a new generation of Jihadis in SE Asia. Bangladesh will be in a perfect geographic position to threaten neighbouring Indian provinces too. India has the largest Muslim population outside of the Muslim world. There several million Bangladeshi migrant workers inside The Gulf states working for a pittance ... who knows what some of them are up too.

Catlonia ... is/was setting itself up as a major LNG entry point into the EU from North Africa ... primarily Algeria, since the predicted US 'Shale Boom' has not actually materialised in sufficient volume to 'wean' the EU away from Russian Gas supplies.

Syria & now the likely formation of this quasi Kurdish state straddling the Shia Crescent ... it really IS all about the Gas ... how can the Syrian state access its hydrocarbons & move them abroad to the foreign market if somebody else has been encouraged to create a quasi state right on top of them?

The Phillipines ... the southern half of the Island chain is predominantly Muslim & since Duterte began making friendly overtures to regional players i.e. China they now have a full blown 'insurgency' in the south despite plenty of US Military hardware in the very local region (or is id direcly BECAUSE of the proximity of US Military forces?).

The Ukraine ... I could go on ....

Pacifica Advocate -> 1664RM ... , 09 October 2017 at 12:36 PM
>>>The Ukraine ... I could go on ....

Nah. You couldn't've, because you were running on empty why you started your screed.

>>>The Phillipines ... the southern half of the Island chain is predominantly Muslim & since Duterte began making friendly overtures to regional players i.e. China they now have a full blown 'insurgency' in the south ...

A) Mindanao is the locus of the insurgency, and it has been that way ever since Spain annexed it into its "The Philippines" administrative region.

B) The Muslim population of Mindanao is hardly the "southern half" of the Philippines; at best, they are the "Southern sixteenth."

C) The Muslim portion of the "Southern Half of the Island Chain" makes up a total of about 6% of the total population of the Philippines. How you jump from there to "the southern half of the Island chain is predominantly Muslim" is beyond me. That's simply factually false.

D) Duterte's overtures towards China have been overwhelmingly supported by the local population, a vast number of whom have relatives who are overseas laborers working in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canton/Guangdong, etc. In fact, the local Muslims in Mindanao were trained by the US, and those currently financed by the Saudis (and, in the 70s, trained by the U.S.) are staunchly opposed to Duterte's campaign to open up the Philippines to Chinese investment.

Long-story-short: you're wrong on pretty much everything I am in a position to criticize you on, and I suspect the rest of your screed can be similarly debunked.

Serge -> Pacifica Advocate... , 09 October 2017 at 11:15 PM

Pacifica Advocate,

Yep, the usual economic determinism mumbo jumbo from this guy, an epidemic in amateur and professional poli sci circles conducting analysis on US geopolitical actions since 2003. Cast aside the wide scope of history into the dustbin and focus on the US as some omnipotent robot machine that runs on plundered oil. If the Colonel is reading this, what got me hooked on SST was a comment of his back in 2014 in which he shot down that economic determinism crap as it related to Iraq

Tim B. , 08 October 2017 at 11:24 PM
This is a great read from the left wing Nation magazine. https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-is-more-fiction-than-fact/
The Porkchop Express , 09 October 2017 at 01:00 AM
It is just beyond belief that the majority of these clowns continue to be treated as if they have a shred of credibility left or that their ideas carry ANY weight when it comes to their outrageously incompetent foreign policy decisions/actions. That their ideological ideas have any value at all, particularly when there has been no admission of a mistake or a reorientation of their ideas, is just astounding. To be wrong so repeatedly and so publicly should have engendered a least some, however small, sense of shame or humility.

On the other hand, it says something about our polity, too, that we continue to tolerate this bullshit.

semiconscious -> The Porkchop Express... , 09 October 2017 at 09:20 AM
'On the other hand, it says something about our polity, too, that we continue to tolerate this bullshit.'

absolutely. that these clowns, along with the various members of the pundit class (friedman, krugman) who, after being repeatedly wrong about any number of things, continue to be provided their bully pulpits tells you all you really need to know...

Yeah, Right , 09 October 2017 at 06:50 AM
Every time I read about William Kristol's latest career move I am reminded of those old Hammer Horror movies with Christopher Lee.

The dude comes to a grisly end in every movie, yet there he is in the next one, back from the grave and - inevitably - none the wiser for the experience.

Ol' Dracula never once stops to think: Ya' know what, these always end badly. Maybe I should sit this one out?

Neither does Kristol, apparently.

LeaNder , 09 October 2017 at 08:57 AM
Good article by Glenn, he is one of the best.
Matthew , 09 October 2017 at 09:42 AM
I just finished Simon Montefiore's two books on Stalin (Young Stalin and The Court of the Red Czar).

With every passing day, the Neo-Cons and their fellow travelers are introducing the Soviet method into American politics: Denunciations, Conspiracies, and the Never-Ending Search for Wreckers.

LeaNder , 09 October 2017 at 11:37 AM
Jacob Heilbrunn, via, I know, I know, the NYT. But, Heilbrunn, JULY 5, 2014

WASHINGTON -- AFTER nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama, not the movement's interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.

Does anyone remember the curious renaissance of the neocons? Quite a time before the election officially started or heated up?

Iraq, looked at in hindsight with the appropriate and needed distance in time, may not have been that wrong after all? At least once there was someone else to blame? The appropriate public period of repentance seemed to be over. New servants available, that might escape the probling public eye?

Now the Americans may not have chosen the right "cherry blossom king" (Tyler) in their opinion, or backed the right horse in the race. But does that matter? Strictly, hadn't the winner delivered the new meme variant quite dutifully?

One has to keep open to twists of fate, seize the day, I would assume Trump knows that too. Let's see. ...

******

Yes, now I remember a tale in Boccaccio's The Decameron, Sixth Day, Tenth Tale, Friar Cipolla and a Feather of the Angel Gabriel. Which might fit. One of my favorites really.

http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/boccaccio/boc-6-10.html

SmoothieX12 , 09 October 2017 at 04:29 PM
I just finished Simon Montefiore's two books on Stalin (Young Stalin and The Court of the Red Czar).

Judging by the "level" of Western historic narrative (granted with some notable exceptions) on Russian/Soviet history of the 20th Century, I would be very cautious when reading anything from Great Britain, especially from people with Montefiore's background. Not to mention people who praise him--from WSJ, NYT etc. Western awareness of actual, real Russian history is extremely low.

Joseph Moroco , 09 October 2017 at 05:43 PM
This is the first I've heard of the German Marshall Fund other than on The Ministry of Information, I mean NPR, they are occasionally mentioned as providing money for some of the propaganda uh, programming. I thought it was a fund to thank us for lending Les Boches a helping hand after we were done bombing them to smithereens.

Here is a link to Der Spiegel that is a tribute to the founder, but is also a history of the GMF. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/founder-of-german-marshall-fund-guido-goldman-retires-a-834696.html

It appears to be Neocon safe space. Can there be too many.

Virginia Slim , 09 October 2017 at 05:43 PM
Forgive me, but "Alliance for Securing Democracy" sounds like a Münzenberg-era front organization.

[Oct 10, 2017] Facebook must 'follow the money' to uncover extent of Russian meddling by Diana Pilipenko

Oct 10, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

Robzview2 -> BaronVonAmericano , 9 Oct 2017 21:51

100% with you my rational thinking brother. I have another post here somewhere, Facebook excecs had to be asked 3 times before they "found" these alleged Russian election changing ads- just writing that makes me laugh- and stated that approximately 56% of these ads only ran after the election. I mean we no those evil Russians are ultra cunning and highly sophisticated but even so that takes some doing.
Principleagentprob -> Cato1836 , 9 Oct 2017 19:50
And the NSA, GCHQ, CIA does not have trolls apparently despite their massive budgets? Bear in mind lefty news outlets are favourite covers for western security services. An example of this is Kim Philby who while ostensibly working for MI6 was posted to the middle east working for the Sunday edition. You know before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed the wall to wall anti-Russian propaganda and the extremely close relationship between the Clinton campaign and the US media indicates the trolls are running mainstream media in the US and the UK.
It's the sense of entitlement that gets me, candidates throw as much questionable campaign contributions at an election (such as Singer) and believe the electorate has a duty to vote for them, and if the dont then the it must of been because of the opposition corruption and the stupidity of the lower orders rather than incompetence or policy failure such as representing wall St. rather than main St. on their part.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/28/kim-philby-david-astor-observer

Robzview2 -> Cato1836 , 9 Oct 2017 18:49
I'll do that English course when I have time, at the moment - and for the foreseeable- future I'm flat out ridiculing the Russia-gate nonsense and the fools who are eager to champion any old nonsense, no matter how ludicrous and continue to do so even when it is comprehensively demolished.
anonym101 , 9 Oct 2017 18:48
There is tonnes of more proof that refugee numbers in Europe and the illegal bombing of Libya and arming of 'rebels' in Syria are connected, yet everyone avoids that question.
There is also video proof that McCain and Nuland had incited the violent overthrow of the elected government in Ukraine a few years ago. Before accusing me of being a Russian troll, I am Hungarian.
multilis , 9 Oct 2017 18:45
Hilary Clinton election spending $581m. Donald Trump election spending $340 million according to https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/09/trump-and-clintons-final-campaign-spending-revealed

Facebook spending by "russia" $100,000, unclear that was russian government.

Presidential salary of Bill Clinton $400,000/year. Clinton's at start had little net worth according to them, now they have estimated net worth of $110 million+, much of it comes from speeches, including to groups in places like Saudi Arabia.

Clinton foundation charity received donations from foreign governments and individuals, including millions from some in saudi arabia. Not possible to see exact amounts.

US spending in ukraine over 20 years according to politfacts.com: About $2.4 billion went to programs promoting peace and security, which could include military assistance, border security, human trafficking issues, international narcotics abatement and law enforcement interdiction, Thompson said. More money went to categories with the objectives of "governing justly and democratically" ($800 million), "investing in people" ($400 million), economic growth ($1.1 billion), and humanitarian assistance ($300 million).... of course not all money by CIA may be disclosed here.

I suspect Russia, US, and many other countries do spend on influencing other countries, small potatoes though compared to how much Hillary and Trump spent, and those hundreds of millions of dollars given to Hillary and Trump were probably partially to influence/bribe them for later government decisions.

Principleagentprob , 9 Oct 2017 18:41
Are you not embarrassed writing this?
McCarthy is dead, the 50s are over, the Soviet Union no longer exists, The Billion Dollar Brain and Dr Strangelove was not advice on how to run a successful US foreign policy, nobody believes this nonsense anymore.

Quite honestly it is articles like this make me wish the Guardian would hurry up and go bankrupt, although I hope your more reputable Journalists (such as Larry Elliot) continue their journalism in another form. You are dragging a paper with a proud history from Manchester radicalism into the mud and besmirching real journalists trying to carry out real journalism.

To quote another 'article' in the Guardian (I use the word loosely) that does not have comments "Russian operatives spent thousands of dollars on Google ads, source claims". Really $1000s of Dollars, there are pet food ad campaigns that spend more than this.
Is the Guardian world news just run out of somebody else's office?

Yes, lets follow the money, using facts who made campaign contributions to the Democratic and Republican party.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaign-finance /

Hilary Clinton campaign $1.4Bn
Trump $957.6 M

And who contributed a little more than $1000s to the democratic campaign?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/superpac-donors-2016 /

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/top-presidential-donors-campaign-money.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wall-street-is-putting-money-behind-these-presidential-candidates_us_55b143e7e4b08f57d5d414ad

Yes, there is a conspiracy all right, it's the old one of the plutocrats conspiring against the poor. To ensure their man or woman would represent wall street not the electorate such as by ensuring Sanders was blocked by the super delegates. Then trying to ensure the more finance friendly candidate became president, such as by google working closely with the Clinton campaign. And no this is not misogyny as Bill Clinton was Americas worst domestic president in history. 3 strikes and you're out, workfare mass incarceration of black people, deregulation of finance. George W gets the crown as worst US president in foreign affairs due to Iraq.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/31/the-podesta-emails-show-who-runs-america-and-how-they-do-it

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/04/08/hillary-clinton-hires-google-executive-to-be-chief-technology-officer /

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-was-paid-millions-by-tech-industry-for-speeches/2015/05/18/f149d598-fd86-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/08/zuckerberg-hires-clintons-chief-strategist

Yes, lets follow the money.

And the Russians according to evidence free speculation spent $1000s and were successful? You are aware that $1.4bn is larger than $1000s? The US are obviously not very good at advertising or capatalism or democracy, and if you want a cost-effective ad campaign go to Russia, as nobody in history has run such a cost effective ad campaign where 1000s can be more effective than Bns.

Quite frankly I am insulted this article is being presented in what used to be a reputable newspaper.

Robzview2 , 9 Oct 2017 18:31
For a good laugh go to Consotiumnews. com, read the article headed The mystery of the Russiagate puppies. There is a lot there but essentially Clinton's desperate losers would have us believe that a page set up for puppy lovers was Trojan horse to start slipping in anti Clinton stuff. Those evil evil Rooskies, is there no end to their perfidy! puppies! is nothing sacred?! A line that got a laugh for me is:' if some fact, like the puppies page doesn't seem to fit the sinister conspiracy theory you simply pound it into place until it does
technotherapy , 9 Oct 2017 18:25
If we can only fully understand something by following the money Diana, why does your organisation, the Center for American Progress Action Fund - which Politico says 'openly runs political advocacy campaigns, and plays a central role in the Democratic Party's infrastructure' - refuse to disclose who its donors are?
Robzview2 -> Sutir Comed , 9 Oct 2017 18:17
There's a mountain of pig flop, most of the alleged "evidence" has collapsed under relatively mild scrutiny. Remember the "hacked" voting machines and electric utility computer system? not only not the evil Russians, just didn't happen at all and there are other tissue thin bits of "evidence". No convincing any of Clinton's sore loser bleaters of course but I assume you are aware that 25% of the alleged Russian ads were not viewed by anyone and that many were not run til AFTER the election. Is there no end to those devilish Rooskies that they can impact an election result AFTERWARDS!
GriseldaLamington -> Sutir Comed , 9 Oct 2017 17:51
It wasn't the entire US intelligence community - it was hand picked representatives from four agencies. By the way, how are you going with all those weapons of mass destruction that the entire US intelligence community was so sure of?
GriseldaLamington , 9 Oct 2017 16:45
Let me get this straight. The USA, which holds the modern record for interfering in other people's elections, for engineering coups, for doing dodgy deals with cocaine and heroin merchants to fund death squads, which BOASTED (on the front cover of Time no less) of fixing the 1996 election in Russia, has now got it's tits in a tangle because some maybe, might be, could possibly be if you hold them edge on against a red light, Russians bought some Facebook ads. Seriously?

Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad

Robert Furst , 9 Oct 2017 16:36
In previous elections China has been linked to helping Democrats I don't see anyone complaining, perhaps because the Democrats won. The USA, under a Democratic Preisdent spent nearly $100 million dollars on an attempt to affect the election of an ally Israel in a vain attempt to get rid of Netanyahu as Prime Minister. Welcome to politics.
freeandfair -> Landish , 9 Oct 2017 16:20
> So, it's not Facebook's problem that they are aiding and abetting treason?

So, if the let's say an entity connected to the US government pays for an article/ advert that could be linked to some protests or a controversial issue in a foreign country, then the entity who sold the media space is guilty of treason?
Be careful what you wish for.

The reason you don't even see how wrong you points to the fact that the US is a semi-totalitarian state already.

jackrousseau , 9 Oct 2017 16:14
So wait, I'm trying to follow the logic of continuing to beat the Russia drum after it's so clearly jumped the shark. Let me see if I understand...

What you're now telling me is that Clinton and her cadre of policy wonks and election experts had the entire media behind them (including the owners of Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and spent $1,200,000,000 to win the election.

Nevertheless, they still lost against *Donald Trump*. ...Because...because the Russians "hacked the election" with $150,000 and a few online trolls. Is this what it's come to? Say it ain't so.

Also, why isn't the actual content of these election-changing ads being disclosed? What did they say? What propaganda did "The Russians" use that was so effective on the American public?

So far I've only seen that the Russians supported BLM and created various "blacktivist", feminist, and LGBTI accounts promoting the same brand of identity politics peddled by The Guardian for clicks. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/30/blacktivist-facebook-account-russia-us-election

I mean, did "The Russians" promote any ideas that were actually *more* offensive than what the Guardian publishes on a daily basis? I'd like to see the Russian identity politics ads to compare...

BaronVonAmericano -> Durangotang , 9 Oct 2017 16:08
The only trolls are the ones claiming that unproven allegations of Russians buying a handful of ads on facebook are somehow more important than the fact that both our political parties are owned and operated by private corporate interests.
freeandfair , 9 Oct 2017 16:05
> Only through this method can we fully understand the Russian corporate hydra behind the ad buys

Lol. I am here with my popcorn to be entertained. Bring it on.

American politicians spend billions on their campaigns , but, sure, facebook has to investigate those few allegedly Russian linked ads. They are just a drop in a sea of political propagandizing and manipulation that goes on daily.

Also, how does this align with the freedom of speech? The way I look at it - as long as information is truthful, it doesn't matter what source it is coming from, friendly or unfriendly. Going after the source just because you don't like what being said seems to be the old method of killing the messenger.

And who is the author of this article? "Diana Pilipenko is a principal investigator for the Moscow Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund."

It figures. Someone who works for whatever "Center for American Progress Action Fund" is. She is basically a lobbyist.

furryandrew -> Gunsarecivilrights , 9 Oct 2017 15:55
Whats truly laughable is this whole "was Russia involved" witch-hunt particularly in light of all the US involvement in swinging Latin American elections etc for DECADES! We are basically encouraging the people who live in glass houses to throw as many stones as possible and get away with it!

Much as I don't like Trump that whole "was Russia involved in the Hillary-wikileaks" was also purely a diversionary tactic. Don't talk about the content talk about who might have provided it. Personally I don't care whether it was North Korea who dug it up, what should have been THE story was the appalling corrupt stuff that was in those shocking leaks, and it surely would have been front-page news for months had the target been Sanders or Trump and not Wall Streets chosen favourite! IMHO we the public are being taken for mugs!

WalterCronkiteBot , 9 Oct 2017 15:03
During the Cold War you had "Team B" looking for non-existent nefarious Russian schemes. It was staffed by the now infamous Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

At least they looked into matters of import such as nuclear missiles and submarines, this is more like "Team Z".

Ironically the people devoting the most effort to investigating Russiagate are Wolofowitz/Rumsfeld's brothers in arms from the Iraq days, like Bill Kristol.

TheWindsOfWinter93 -> EAlbee , 9 Oct 2017 14:32
The FSB chief and Putin must be having a right laugh. Western journos who are still sore over HRC losing the American Presidential Election are making for the best unpaid shills to extol Russian intelligence and political power.
TheWindsOfWinter93 , 9 Oct 2017 14:30
It seems to me that pundits like the one that wrote this risible article are doing far more to promote KGB and Russian propaganda around the world and in the West than the Russians themselves, through their screaming of "BIG BAD RUSSIAN BEAR!!!!!" from every soap box they can find.

Putin should invite them to the Kremlin and decorate them for service to the Motherland. Even CIA couldn't dream of such mythologising by the mass media.

kasprowy , 9 Oct 2017 14:12
"Some have argued that $150,000 is an insignificant fraction of the total spent on political ads in 2016 ..."

0.00153% to be exact. Same proportion of total voters who voted for anybody would be 2000 people. Or 0.115 cents per voter. Yeah, this is a big news story.

I cannot resist another analogy. A Super Bowl commercial (and we all know what big fans of the NFL the Left is) goes for $5 million per 30 seconds. The amount mentioned in this article would buy a 900 millisecond ad (that's 0.9 seconds for those who missed it). Need some good subliminal flash advertising to get your money's worth.

Pete green , 9 Oct 2017 13:53
Let me know when the investigation reveals that the $150,000 spent on Facebook ads by the Russians starts to be significant compared to the $9.8 billion spent on the campaign adverts.

Clinton vastly outspent Trump and still lost because she was a deplorable candidate.

http://adage.com/article/media/2016-political-broadcast-tv-spend-20-cable-52/307346 /

Romka Stomka -> Supermind , 9 Oct 2017 13:48
The ads could have been easily paid by pro-Ukrainians living in Russia,to try and put Russia in the spotlight.
LiviaDrusilla , 9 Oct 2017 13:30

Some have argued that $150,000 is an insignificant fraction of the total spent on political ads

And they would be correct. Out of the $7 billion or so spent on the American elections, it's a piddling amount. However, you are clinging to it for dear life because, almost a year on, you can't accept that Clinton was a horrible candidate, so much so that even someone as obscene as Trump could beat her (and yes I know she got more votes thank you very much).

You're really coming across as desperate now. Not a good look.

Supermind , 9 Oct 2017 13:29
Most of these ads look more like click bait than any kind active measures campaign. As usual, there is no evidence that the ads are in anyway connected to the Russian government. Even if they were, $150,000 worth of ads are insignificant in an election where over $1billion was spent on digital advertising. American elites should spend more time pondering how their policy failures contributed to Trump's election and less chasing the chimera of Russian interference.
JJ139 , 9 Oct 2017 13:22
This whole Russian meddling is getting more and more absurd. Clinton spent billions on advertising and lost. Some supposed Russian investors spent thousands on puppy photo sites as part of a cunning plan to suck Americans in. Russia is behind black lives matter, Russia is behind taking the knee at american football matches, Russia is behind the Catalan referendum, Russia is behind Brexit, Russia is probably behind the Dove advert. And anyone who finds the whole farrago of mudslinging at Russia is obviously a Putinbot from a troll farm somewhere in St Petersburg. The lunatics have very definitely taken over the asylum in America.
Laplace_Transforms , 9 Oct 2017 13:12
Roy Greenslade wrote an excellent column today on fake news. The hysteria regarding Russian involvement in US politics could well be a prime example of which Roy writes. The Nation, in an article titled Russiagate Is More Fiction Than Fact details exactly how this tale of innuendo, supposition but very little evidence has been pushed. The Nation examines in detail the Facebook accusations, and records:

Then there is Facebook's disclosure that fake accounts "likely operated out of Russia" paid $100,000 for 3,000 ads starting in June 2015. The New York Times editorial board described it as "further evidence of what amounted to unprecedented foreign invasion of American democracy." A $100,000 Facebook ad buy seems unlikely to have had much impact in a $6.8 billion election. According to Facebook, "the vast majority of ads didn't specifically reference the US presidential election, voting or a particular candidate" but rather focused "on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum -- touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights." Facebook also says the majority of ads, 56 percent, were seen "after the election." The ads have not been released publicly. But by all indications, if they were used to try to elect Trump, their sponsors took a very curious route.

The ads are commonly described as "Russian disinformation," but in the most extensive reporting on the story to date, The Washington Post adds multiple qualifiers in noting that the ads "appear to have come from accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency," itself a Kremlin-linked firm (emphasis added).

The Post also reveals that an initial Facebook review of the suspected Russian accounts found that they "had clear financial motives, which suggested that they weren't working for a foreign government." Furthermore, "the security team did not find clear evidence of Russian disinformation or ad purchases by Russian-linked accounts." But Russiagate logic requires a unique response to absent evidence: "The sophistication of the Russian tactics caught Facebook off-guard."

Would it be too much to ask for actual evidence of Russian interference, rather than this leap to conviction?

[Oct 09, 2017] A Visit to Russia Can Relations Be Improved

The official US doctrine is and has been containment of Russia. that excludes any friendship. The best that can be done is to avoid WWIII. And due to Putin patience that might be possible. After Putin is gone, who knows. If nationalist come to power, the neocon might really feel the depth of Russian anger at the US imperial policies.
Bunch of neocons travel to Moscow to test waters for rapprochement. After then pissed Russia and launched neo-McCarthyism campaign for the last two years... such a great diplomats.
Those neocons completely poisoned the well and now want to drink clean water. No way.
Notable quotes:
"... President Vladimir Putin's recent hint that the Kremlin could cut another 155 people from the number permitted to work at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. ..."
"... because Mr. Putin does not seem to feel real pressure from U.S. sanctions, he is unlikely to be disposed to offer major concessions to the United States simply to reach agreement, especially in the runup to Russia's 2018 presidential elections ..."
"... Keep pretending that Russia has hacked your elections. There is zero interest from the US side in improving relations and we know this quite well here. There is no question that the fat defense and intelligence budgets and all the extra power that the spooks now got is a direct outcome of destroyed Russia-US relations. The democrats sour grapes and election rigging cover up with Russiagate is also undeniable. Keep living the lie ..."
"... It is sad that the media, the Democratic party, and the "deep state" are all working together to try to keep the phony Trump-Russia collusion story alive - but it has almost run its course and less and less people believe it. ..."
"... The US doctrine is and has been containment of Russia. That is a very foolish and self defeating way in the 21st century. The West would have been better off when the bankers did not have such controls and the American congress grew real courage and paid down the national debt. ..."
"... I don't know to what degree the author of this article and those he went with have real influence on either side, but we, the American public, have yet to be presented with any real proof that Russia (and specifically its government, directly) actually did anything significant with regard to the election. To the degree that we've been shown any evidence, it appears completely inconsequential, extremely minor dabbling at most. The latest is that "Russia" (nebulously defined) spent $100,000 on Facebook ads... Meanwhile the Clinton campaign spent $1 BILLION. This is a joke. ..."
"... The situation in Ukraine is a million times more of a significant obstacle to improved relations. ..."
"... Russia and US have all the reasons to be adversaries. Because US seeks global domination but will never be able to achieve it as long as Russia exists as subject of global politics. US invests huge resources into making harm to Russia in every possible way. And it been this way at least since Truman administration. ..."
"... NATO cannot save a non-existent failed state. There are at least three different and geographically separate Ukraines. Catholic Galicia has nothing to do with the rest of the country. And the East wants to separate. It is another case of former Yugoslavia. ..."
"... trump was given a choice by the deep state of you either work with us or else... so he has become a puppet of the swamp ..."
"... Swamp Puppet! That's catchy! ..."
www.theamericanconservative.com
Russian officials were largely dismissive of U.S. and European economic sanctions, which some indirectly credit with significantly strengthening Russia's agricultural sector -- to such an extent that they claimed Russian products may fiercely compete in Europe if and when the European Union eases it sanctions and Russia lifts its protectionist counter-sanctions. Indeed, the U.S. Department of State itself asserted in 2016 that a loss of "at most 1 percent of GDP can be potentially explained by sanctions" as opposed to declining global energy prices. The combination of "at most" and "potentially" in this sentence suggests that there is little empirical evidence that sanctions have caused real damage to Russia's economy. Moreover, since U.S. sanctions could account for only a small part of this -- because Europe's economic relationship with Russia is far larger than America's -- there is no reason to think that new U.S. sanctions, which have yet to be fully implemented, will make a material difference at the macroeconomic level. (The State Department did find that sanctioned companies appeared to lose significant revenue and assets.) Still, some officials did privately admit that the sanctions undermine Russia's investment climate, especially among foreign investors.

At the same time, however, some officials reacted quite strongly to the Trump administration's decision to close Russia's consulate in San Francisco, the latest move in an escalating diplomatic spat that began with the Obama administration's expulsion of thirty-five Russian diplomats and seizure of two diplomatic properties in December, following a widely publicized intelligence community report on Russia's election interference.

Even in this area, however, our interlocutors seemed to prefer curtailing the dispute over extending it -- notwithstanding President Vladimir Putin's recent hint that the Kremlin could cut another 155 people from the number permitted to work at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

Yet containing this battle between the State Department and Russian Foreign Ministry bureaucracies may well be the easiest step in working toward a functional U.S.-Russia relationship. Far more important and more challenging will be addressing Russia's election interference, which has poisoned the relationship to an extent that Russian officials -- who describe the matter strictly as a U.S. partisan slugfest brought on by sour-grapes Democrats -- did not seem to appreciate....

... Russia's diplomatic, economic, military and security officials will each seek to pursue their own objectives, sometimes contradicting one another. Also, because Mr. Putin does not seem to feel real pressure from U.S. sanctions, he is unlikely to be disposed to offer major concessions to the United States simply to reach agreement, especially in the runup to Russia's 2018 presidential elections .

Thus "getting to yes" on these or other issues will take persistence and creativity.

Paul J. Saunders, associate publisher of the National Interest, is executive director of the Center for the National Interest.

pavel , October 7, 2017 3:36 AM

Keep pretending that Russia has hacked your elections. There is zero interest from the US side in improving relations and we know this quite well here. There is no question that the fat defense and intelligence budgets and all the extra power that the spooks now got is a direct outcome of destroyed Russia-US relations. The democrats sour grapes and election rigging cover up with Russiagate is also undeniable. Keep living the lie

dannyboy116 -> pavel , October 7, 2017 9:52 AM

I agree with you that Russia probably did not hack the US elections. Julian Assange, head of WikiLeaks, has made it quite clear that he received the Clinton campaign emails from elsewhere. (and he has a 100% history of being truthful with regard to what he releases) But I would say to Russia to not give up on better relations with America. It is true that the "deep state" and the Military Industrial Complex make a lot of money from "bad relations" with Russia, but I think Trump understands that improving relations will be good for both sides and potentially save a lot of money for America's citizens. Give it some time.....

sergey_hv -> dannyboy116 , October 7, 2017 2:34 PM

It's not the time he needs, but an adequate congress and fewer idiots of Russophobes who rule the US foreign policy, twisting Trump's hands.

pavel -> dannyboy116 , October 7, 2017 3:49 PM

Wow, good to hear a sober voice! I have felt some backlash personally in the commercial world, and it really feels nasty (basically just like racism), especially since I feel like 1/2 American, having lived in the US for 11 years. So this has gone very deep even in private sector.

Not too sure about good prospects coming up soon. I'm following both the foreign and domestic policies of the current government in Washington and its a bit scary - Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, NK, China, Iran - all are becoming enemies, sanctions reintroduced, and all the ultra-right wing stuff home like getting rid of health insurance, removing all regulations, now 20% poverty rate in CA, I don't recognize the country I used to live a couple decades ago!

dannyboy116 -> pavel , October 9, 2017 7:38 PM

It is sad that the media, the Democratic party, and the "deep state" are all working together to try to keep the phony Trump-Russia collusion story alive - but it has almost run its course and less and less people believe it. It is now looking like it was the Obama Admin's justice department that actually paid for the phony "Trump Dossier" that was used as an excuse to wiretap the Trump campaign. Once that story blows up (Senator Grassley has subpoenaed the background docs) I think you will see a rapid improvement in relations.

KlingOn2K -> pavel , October 8, 2017 9:46 PM

pavel , Russia made its choices. The onus is not on the US to pacify Russia with any standard of proof that it may find convincing. Its up to the US authorities to interpret the Russian actions as being either confrontational or friendly. Russia has no say over it.

cvxxx -> KlingOn2K , October 9, 2017 3:38 PM

The US doctrine is and has been containment of Russia. That is a very foolish and self defeating way in the 21st century. The West would have been better off when the bankers did not have such controls and the American congress grew real courage and paid down the national debt.

bscook111 , October 7, 2017 10:57 AM

It is testimony to the gross malfeasance of American media and pols (both sides but especially Ds like both idiotic Clintons) that America has no working relationship with Russia. The good news, once again in time Trump will be proved right.

JoeS54 , October 7, 2017 10:09 PM

I don't know to what degree the author of this article and those he went with have real influence on either side, but we, the American public, have yet to be presented with any real proof that Russia (and specifically its government, directly) actually did anything significant with regard to the election. To the degree that we've been shown any evidence, it appears completely inconsequential, extremely minor dabbling at most. The latest is that "Russia" (nebulously defined) spent $100,000 on Facebook ads... Meanwhile the Clinton campaign spent $1 BILLION. This is a joke.

But apparently this group went over there and acted as if the American people are outraged. No, dishonest Democrat hacks and never-Trump Republicans inside the Beltway are obsessed with it, because they hate the outcome of the election and want to discredit Trump. But they've been fishing for a year and a half and can't find anything, despite furiously leaking every innuendo they can, that turns out to be a false smear against Trump and completely falls apart on inspection.

The situation in Ukraine is a million times more of a significant obstacle to improved relations.

... ... ...

Stalinist -> JoeS54 , October 7, 2017 10:31 PM

"If Russia can't be trusted to respect the borders of its neighbors, we can't have good relations."

Says who? Citizen of a country which invaded 100+ countries since 1890, including Russia twice? Learn how to respect borders and sovereignity or others yourself. Otherwise it is not going to end well for you.

JoeS54 -> Stalinist , October 7, 2017 10:41 PM

Given your namesake, I'm not sure what point you think you're making. My point is that now, today, the US and Russia have no reason to be adversaries. The past is the past. This is just practical reality. We have allies in Europe who are worried about Russian expansionism. Again, because of your namesake. If Russia makes moves to its west, relations cannot improve.

Stalinist -> JoeS54 , October 7, 2017 10:52 PM

"My point is that now, today, the US and Russia have no reason to be adversaries."

Russia and US have all the reasons to be adversaries. Because US seeks global domination but will never be able to achieve it as long as Russia exists as subject of global politics. US invests huge resources into making harm to Russia in every possible way. And it been this way at least since Truman administration.

'This is just practical reality."

Exactly. And reality is that US stirs up troubles all over the world, including sphere of vital interests of Russia like Ukraine.

"We have allies in Europe who are worried about Russian expansionism."

Russian expansionism? Oh please, there never was any at all. Its been EXACTLY Europe which hundreds of times tried to expand into Russia. The only way Russia expanded over centuries was by defeating and absorbing those who tried to conquer Russia first. If western degenerate elites will not learn this important lesson, of cource Russia will defeat and absorb the west. It will be civilizational self defense.
You better leave Russia alone, and stop meddling in its business.

" If Russia makes moves to its west, relations cannot improve."

Russia does not need any improvement in relations with the west. At all. Over centuries we learned that force is only language you barbarians do understand. You can not be reasoned with. That is why we will always keep you at the gunpoint. And out gun will always be bigger than yours.

JoeS54 -> Stalinist , October 7, 2017 10:59 PM

If you are, presumably, Russian, it doesn't sound as if your government shares your mindset. Which is good. I can tell you that the American people do not "seek global domination". And European nations basically have no military to speak of, so the idea that they would expand into Russia is ridiculous. You are very much stuck far in the past. In the modern world, with the threat of Islamic terrorism and the rising economic power of China, the US and Russia, as allies, would be an insurmountable bulwark. To the extent there would be "global domination", it would be mutual.

Stalinist -> JoeS54 , October 7, 2017 11:20 PM

"government shares your mindset."

As imperfect as our goverment is, it still orders of magnitude more intelligent and competent than yours. Especialy when it comes to geopolitics. Russia always plays chess, while your nations can`t handle checkers nowadays.

"American people do not "seek global domination""

Every people has government which it deserves. So do not try to shift blame to your government as if you are not responsible for it. You gave them mandate.

"European nations basically have no military to speak of"

Nice excuse to expand NATO east it was, wasn`t it? So much for this "Russian expansionism" B-S.

"so the idea that they would expand into Russia is ridiculous"

Sorry, but we are not buying that. NATO heavily expanded east breaking all past promises. NATO now tries to sиck in even Ukraine. So please, we are not going to just sit idle and watch how your goverments loom another 1812 or 1941.

" You are very much stuck far in the past"

Because we have memory. Do not take us for idlots who was born yesterday.

" In the modern world, with the threat of Islamic terrorism "

Which your goverment created and keeps massively supporting. Oh yes we know that better than you can imagine.

"rising economic power of China"

Nothing wrong with rising economic power of China.

", the US and Russia, as allies,"

US and Russia are not allies.

"To the extent the would be "global domination", it would be mutual."

Russia seeks no global domination. It just wants to be left completely alone on its backyard and mainland which has size of a planet.

JoeS54 -> Stalinist , October 7, 2017 11:24 PM

You have plenty of knowledge of history, but no wisdom. I did not say the US is blameless in the continued conflicts. What I said is that both governments have shown short sightedness, and are stuck in the past - and you provide an extreme example of someone stuck in the past.

You have also said numerous things that are not true, but it's not worth the time to argue. You should go out for a walk, breathe some fresh air and relax.

Stalinist -> JoeS54 , October 7, 2017 11:28 PM

"both governments have shown short sightedness"

Yes. Our government used to be naive enough to trust west and expect it to live up their promises. And yours by poking the Bear in every possible way. When you poking sleeping Bear with a short sight and shorter stick, do not complain whole situation exploding into your face.

"and are stuck in the past "

No. Only your government stuck in its past, past dreams about "the end of history" and unrestrained global domination. Russia exactly learned from the past and moved on, that is why your elites are panicking trying to hold on to their sweet illusions.

JoeS54 -> Stalinist , October 7, 2017 11:34 PM

If you had more wisdom and less hostility, you would see that what I'm saying is more favorable to you than you think. The ideal outcome, ultimately, would be for Russia to join NATO. Putin has voiced that idea himself, as have past US presidents. But the continual back and forth of spats been the US, Europe and Russia prevents it. I'm talking about a bigger, more positive vision of the future, and you can only see small bitterness about the past.

Sane people want peace and prosperity. You do not seem to be one of them.

Stalinist -> JoeS54 , October 7, 2017 11:40 PM

"The ideal outcome, ultimately, world be for Russia to join NATO."

The ideal outcome, ultimately, would be for NATO to join Russia. Perfectly without Russia making it the hard way.

"Putin has voiced that idea himself, as have past US presidents. "

Look up what does sarcasm means.

"more positive vision of the future"

Russia has only two allies, its army and fleet. - Tsar Alexander III.

Today its also RuASF and SRF. We do not need any more allies than that. You choose if you want to be or enemy. It was not Russia who started all this mess.

JoeS54 -> Stalinist , October 7, 2017 11:43 PM

I've seen Putin talk about this, on video. He was not being sarcastic. You are an extreme example of the mindset I'm criticizing, on both sides. The people of both of our countries are not served by it, at all. It's a useless waste of energy and resources.

Stalinist -> JoeS54 , October 7, 2017 11:47 PM

" He was not being sarcastic."

For any native Russian speaker who has even slightest idea on what happening during historic period he was talking about his sarcasm was clear and transparent. The very idea of "Russia joining NATO" is an insult.

" The people of both of our countries are not served by it, at all."

We had no choice but to arm ourselves. You however always had. Russia and the USSR used to lend you a hand with an olive branch many times. You choosen to spit on it.

JoeS54 Stalinist , October 7, 2017 11:49 PM

What is the ultimate outcome of your mindset? Nuclear war, wiping out both countries? You can't see any better solution?

Your namesake was a mass murderer, of his own people. I'm not sure why I'm arguing with you. If you actually cared about the Russian people, you would not use that name.

Stalinist -> JoeS54 , October 7, 2017 11:55 PM

" Nuclear war, wiping out both countries? "

We will not fire it first, but if it will ever come to this, Russia has all means it needs to win it.

"You can't see any better solution?"

Yes, accept the idea that we are simply not interested in playing your ball. And we are against you playing your ball on our lawn too. So figuratively speaking, we need you to get lost from our horizon and never come back without an invitation. Your "civilization" reminds me of jehovah`s whitness preachers annoying everybody with their nonsense. With the difference that you tend to kill those who not agree to listen to your gospel.

"Your namesake was a mass murderer, of his own people."

See? Jehova's whitness mode on again. Sorry but he was not any kind of mass murderer, he is ultimate hero for us Russians, and we do not need you to lecture us on our own history. We can figure it out ourselves.

JoeS54 -> KlingOn2K , October 9, 2017 12:35 AM

" Russia is attempting to subvert the process that stands at the very heart of the US democratic system"

Still waiting for any real evidence, much less actual proof. As the calendar flips by.

What we've been told so far is that Hillary's $1B campaign was apparently helpless against a few internet memes, which we're told were sponsored by the Russian government, without any proof.

WTF -> JoeS54 , October 9, 2017 12:51 AM

Proof? Its too inconvenient. Get on with the times. We don't need proof in the 21st century.

MAGA Big League , October 7, 2017 11:43 AM

Russia is not going to unilaterally apologize for perceived influence in the US election. Quite the contrary. Their tiny amount of influence will simply continue with tiny Facebook purchases and commenters as well as RT coverage etc. becoming a permanent fixture of US politics (if it wasn't before, which it likely was, but as long as Democrats were winning no one in the media cared).

It shouldn't be hard for a US politician to win an election going up against this small degree of influence which is probably less influential than that of other foreign countries in America (Israel, Saudi and China come to mind). Hillary Clinton, however, was just that awful of a candidate that she needed the whole system rigged for her just to get close. If even one world power center was against her she couldn't win. One wasn't and she didn't.

Meanwhile Donald Trump's foreign policy is dangerous without Russian rapprochement. We are antagonizing other rivals that in the past we have had to keep isolated from cooperating with Russia (Iran, China).

This is what the Russians are waiting for Washington to realize. No current American policy goal in the world can be achieved cheaply (less than an Iraq War level of engagement and cost) without a working relationship with Russia. Our strategy becomes a binary trade off- do we sacrifice our interests everywhere but Europe (Russia) or do we sacrifice them in Europe for everywhere else?

My sense is that the Trump policy is a natural consequence of the Asian continent becoming equal to Europe in economic might by 2020 (it already nearly is). We can no longer treat the rest of the globe as ancillary to our objectives in Europe (although that is certainly our habit now).

Whoever follows Trump will fall into this same strategic trap. Hemming in Russia is now quite painful for Washington to accomplish. Ham fisted half measures don't work and bringing to bear the full measure of our influence entails great sacrifice in areas equally or more important.

Primavera Allie Youpe , October 9, 2017 3:41 AM

None of the recent terror attacks in Europe and US have been traced to Iran. Please stop beating the war drum against this country, chances are you will lose again.

siberiankitten Allie Youpe , October 9, 2017 7:09 PM

Iran is a #1 perceived threat to Israel, and a sponsor to Hezbollah. Beyond Hezbollah support there is nothing that qualifies Iran as a sponsor of terrorism

VadimKharichkov Allie Youpe , October 9, 2017 4:11 AM

Allie, is your worldview formed solely by mainstream media? Have you tried independent media? You sure you get the other side's story? You know, you can't really claim you comprehend the situation without hearing both sides?

Edward Easterling Allie Youpe , October 8, 2017 2:26 PM

How is the Syrian government a "genocidal regime"?

Edward Easterling Allie Youpe , October 8, 2017 9:24 PM

I can't recall which one it was, but one of the chemical attacks has been proven to be carried out by rebels. Also, a chemical attack has been proven to be a hoax. Like I said, I can't recall all the details. If you are interested you are free to look them up.

Primavera Edward Easterling , October 9, 2017 3:42 AM

Ghouta attack I think

siberiankitten Primavera , October 9, 2017 7:11 PM

Read what Seymour Hersh and Theodore Postol had to say about this attack

Sascha Gruss , October 9, 2017 4:15 PM

Russia will never support the imperial ambitions of the USA. The current situation is a result of a long chain of anti-Russian decisions by the US. The USA tries to assault the Russian economy, its harming the people, destroying families and futures. No Russian citizen should forget that.

enoch arden -> timmay timmy , October 8, 2017 9:43 AM

NATO cannot save a non-existent failed state. There are at least three different and geographically separate Ukraines. Catholic Galicia has nothing to do with the rest of the country. And the East wants to separate. It is another case of former Yugoslavia.

Stalinist -> timmay timmy , October 7, 2017 11:17 PM

"We have American and NATO boots on the Ground. "

I have bad news for ya http://freetexthost.com/m6b ... NATO can not stop Russia from doing whatever it wants.

" Our NATO training base we are setting up in Ukraine will ensure the Russians do not encroach. "

Adolf Hitler told something like that around 1944 when the Red Army was steam rolling his goons and his Ostwall. You are even more deluded than him if you believe that few twirpy little bases where your deуenerate men will get drunk and do local рrostitutes can scare RussiaLOL

"Any drain on the Russian economy such as supporting the Crimea is less money for the military."

Russian economy is booming since 2014. Russian reserves are growing. And Russian average living standards are higher than US has it. But whatever makes you sleep at nights, keep dwelling in russophrenic fantasies induced by your elites.

CB -> Stalinist , October 8, 2017 7:06 PM

You are deluded if you think living standards in Russia are higher than the USA. It's not even close. I guess you are spoon fed a steady diet of propaganda. The USA is by far the most professional military in the world, and this military constantly foils Russian plans at expansion.

Stalinist -> CB , October 8, 2017 7:17 PM

"You are deluded if you think living standards in Russia are higher than the USA. "

No, i just well informed. http://freetexthost.com/nyy...

"The USA is by far the most professional military in the world"

US has most expensive military in the world. And most inept. US never won any major war at all and can not even deal with cave dwellers in Afganistan for 16 long years.

"and this military constantly foils Russian plans at expansion."

Russia has no plans for expansion. And if it ever will get one, nobody on this planet can stop Russia from successfuly completing it.

CB -> Stalinist , October 9, 2017 9:19 AM

Misinformed. Not a verifiable source. The USA has won plenty of wars, including the war to topple the taliban in Afghanistan. Saying otherwise is nothing more than a talking point of Russian propaganda. I've seen you say in other posts Russia will eventually reclaim Kiev Rus, so which one is it? Try not contradicting yourself when debating educated people. You will lose credibility. Russia literally just expanded to take the Crimea. They tried to expand into Afghanistan, so you'd think you would have more respect for the USA effort there. Hightailed it out of there after those goat herders whooped that @ss huh?

WTF -> CB , October 9, 2017 12:08 PM

You won over the all powerful state of Grenada. Give you that.

Whooped the Taliban? After 16 years you're still stuck there and Trump adding more troops to America's longest war to date. How long more to beat the goat herders, in your honest opinion?

CB -> WTF , October 9, 2017 6:21 PM

Stuck there? We could leave anytime we wanted. If the taliban took control of the country again we could topple them again. Reconstructing a tribal society is not the same as fighting a war. The war was over before it started. Unfortunately some people from our side are benefiting from the status quo, and so allow it to persist. It is a drain on the country, but not to the point that I'd call it losing a war. Not even close. Would you rather be in some skyscraper in NYC or some cave in Baluchistan?

JoeS54 timmay timmy , October 7, 2017 11:08 PM

This guy is a nut. His name is proof enough. You shouldn't assume he speaks for Russia.

bakbaklazhan , October 7, 2017 9:30 AM

"President Donald Trump will succeed in overcoming political opposition"

trump was given a choice by the deep state of you either work with us or else... so he has become a puppet of the swamp

ScratInTheHat bakbaklazhan , October 7, 2017 9:51 AM

Swamp Puppet! That's catchy!

enoch arden -> PERICLES--- , October 7, 2017 4:18 PM

The development and production of new weapon systems is the most efficient way to advance the technology and, in this way, the economic productivity. All the technological breakthroughs which provided the current prosperity were financed by the governments with absolutely non-commercial purpose. Therefore, the fact that Russia finally started developing new weapon systems is quite promising for its future economic progress.

PERICLES--- enoch arden , October 7, 2017 4:47 PM

They are spending about 5% of GDP on their military, not counting intelligence agencies and secret police and the money going towards the "rebels" in Ukraine. For a nation with the domestic issues of Russia, it's quite a lot. Russia's oligarchs aren't spending that money because it's a good use of the budget, they're doing it because they need the military to distract the Russian public abroad and crush opposition at home. It's a sign of weakness, not strength.

enoch arden -> PERICLES--- , October 7, 2017 5:15 PM

You don't seem to disagree with my point. Developing new weapon system is much more useful for the economic development than production of consumer goods.

PERICLES--- enoch arden , October 7, 2017 6:07 PM

Who's buying? Russia's list of allies is small, many of their new weapon systems are quite pricey, and that's all technology the US had years ago. And when it comes to low quality, high quantity guns they are now competing with China.

enoch arden -> PERICLES--- , October 7, 2017 7:14 PM

I don't think you understand what you are talking about. Technological development is a strategic project, it is ridiculous to discuss it commercially. Private business would have never paid for the development of jet engines, laser, computer, nuclear reactor and internet. They are parasites using the technology developed on the taxpayers money for commercial purpose.

Concerning the customers: the US are still buying the Russian rockets. The Saudis and Turkey have recently bought anti-aircraft defence systems. Avoid discussing what is beyond you competence scope.

PERICLES--- enoch arden , October 7, 2017 8:06 PM

My, my, someone is feeling tense. Technological development is certainly helpful. It's less helpful, however, if your competitors are there a few years before you. No enterprise exists in a vacuum. If the primary strategic objective in Russia's development of technology is in order to sell it, they will have to arrive there ahead of the US and others. Given Russia's current situation, that seems... unlikely.

VadimKharichkov PERICLES--- , October 9, 2017 4:19 AM

Hmm... I once read a Stratfor's report on the subject I actually know - it was about business development in Islamic republics of Russia, and at the time I was one of the analysts in Investment Promotion Agency of Bashkortostan.

The report was strait idiotic - a crazy mince of facts and fiction. I'm pretty sure now these dudes are in business of making propaganda and have nothing to do with the truth but to turn it into half-truths.

bakbaklazhan -> KlingOn2K , October 7, 2017 9:30 AM

"Hacking the US elections was way below the belt and will not be readily forgotten."

ahahaha. any solid proof of that?

dannyboy116 -> bakbaklazhan , October 7, 2017 9:55 AM

There is no proof because it didn't happen. The US media was heavily invested in trying to get Hillary elected (they were even sending her debate questions in advance) - and needed a scapegoat (the terrible Russians) for her loss. I think the truth will eventually come out.

pavel -> dannyboy116 , October 7, 2017 3:58 PM

The truth has come out - besides having zero evidence of Russian government involvement, there was no internet transfer of data from the DNC servers, its was a local leak. As you probably know, DNC didn't allow FBI access to the servers, and instead hired a private firm to conclude that it was Russian hacking (the zero-evidence conclusions of this private firm were later used in intelligence agencie's reports). But nobody is listening to this, because Russiagate is just so beneficial to so many actors.

Drinas -> KlingOn2K , October 7, 2017 3:48 AM

"Hacking the election". Could you define what that means and present a single shred of evidence of it? Or we simply follow the Goebelsian "A lie you keep repeating becomes the truth.."

SurfaceUnits -> Drinas , October 7, 2017 12:01 PM

In the mid 70s, Vladimir Putin and the Russians began the systematic depopulation of Detroit so that 40 years later Donald J Trump would win Michigan. It's true, ask a Dimocrat.

KlingOn2K -> Drinas , October 8, 2017 2:36 AM

Maybe you might want to take a gander at this: https://www.nytimes.com/201...
But I guess when you're in total denial, any amount of "proof" will be insufficient. All I'd say to the Russians is, keep it going.

Drinas -> KlingOn2K , October 8, 2017 3:48 AM

bahaha That's the proof?! That's the best you can come up with? You fail to see that it is people like you because of your toxic hatred and dogmatism that jump on any crazy theory to support your hacking claims. The most probable underlying reason-excluding racist russophobia? You just can't fathom why Trump won. That's the side-effect of reading the coastal elites narratives instead of focusing on what has been happening on "fly-over country" for a couple of decades. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

CB -> Drinas , October 8, 2017 7:23 PM

Are you serious? You ask for proof, it is provided, and then you just go on pretending it wasn't? You do realize that with all the resources and technology at the disposal of our government, the notion of tracking the origins of certain content on the web is not at all far fetched. And why would any American patriot not be alarmed at the fact that the Russian government, the offspring of the USSR, our rival from the Cold War period, was involved in a concerted effort to target voters with information that was proven to be false. This is information warfare, and you would respond by rewarding the culprit. I hope you don't have kids. Maybe you Greeks ought to learn how to run your country before commenting on international affairs.

Drinas -> CB , October 9, 2017 3:56 AM

"You ask for proof, it is provided" Ahh..No, it wasn't. The only thing provided was a report by US intelligence services-the last entity one could call a neutral party to this-that basically said, "Trust us, we tell you the truth".

Again, until a shred of evidence is provided, the whole "russiagate" is BS of the first order. A fact that even mainstream commentators in the US reluctantly begin to accept. e.g.- "Russiagate Is More Fiction Than Fact" https://www.thenation.com/a...

As for Greece, thank you for your advice considering us running our country. If you adhered to the same principle of not being involved in the affairs of our nation-you helped install a junta in Greece in 1967, you still interfere in our politics-we would refrain from criticising your foreign policy that has a bad habit of sticking its dirty fingers everywhere.

CB -> Drinas , October 9, 2017 9:26 AM

I see you buy into the conspiracy theories. In terms of global development, peace and prosperity, Russia is not on the same page as the USA. One simply has more credibility than the other. This is for historical reasons which you needlessly discard. Either way, it is not just an intelligence report. Try browsing the web a bit. Finding Russian misinformation is not difficult at all. Facebook, a private entity with no dog in this fight, has verified Russian interference.

I'm sorry about the junta. A part of history I'm not familiar enough with. My understanding was this was part of the fight against communism. The ends don't justify the means, but our interests must be protected. Sometimes that means others go under the boot. We are able to do that because our house is in order, and we are the most powerful country there ever was. You may hate the fact, but it's the simple truth. No other nation has the same ability to project power. Intelligent minds wouldn't disagree.

Drinas -> CB , October 9, 2017 4:07 PM

Lol..You simply cherish raw power-just like the naz.s did for that matter. Of course the US is powerful, the most powerful country in terms of power projection. But being powerful does not make one right. Your founding fathers remembered that but you have long forgotten it, corrupted by power.
You actually believe your own megalomanic and delusional propaganda about being morally "exceptional" with a mandate to do as you like. You are as exceptional as the other empires before you were and headed to the same direction-decline and fall.

We Greeks have been around for a few millennia. We had our fair share of fights and helped destroy some empires as well-the Persians, the Ottomans. We also had the distinction of having our own empire twice-a feat very very few people can claim.

Today on your struggle with Russia no matter what the power balance might look (and it keeps shifting on Russia's favor), Russia is morally right. But even excluding morality and Russia and what not, and looking at the raw facts the fate of your Empire seems sealed.

A favorite metric of your money-obsessed society is GDP. In 1945 the US GDP was equal to almost 50% of the World GDP. In 1990 it was about 25%. Today it is close to 16% and in relation to the World GDP it keeps falling. Your military is in need of modernization but more importantly it simply cannot bare the costs of maintaining a global presence, much less engage in numerous conflicts.

But I think you already know those facts, that is why you shield your argument behind the "we are the most powerful blah, blah, blah".

As I said, all this is not knew, even the creation of scapegoats-Russia, N.Korea, Iran ,China etc are typical of every failing Empire, we 've seen this before.

I have a nice Greek term for you, it is a fundamental pillar of our way of viewing the world. It's called Hubris and the US is so full of it it can't see past its own nose.

CB -> Drinas , October 9, 2017 7:54 PM

I don't cherish power, just understand and respect it. And the USA is full of it, and admittedly full of hubris too. I wouldn't be quite so certain that the empire is over, but agreed overstretched. Adjustments are being made, though only time will tell if it is too little too late. Your reading of history is accurate, but history doesn't predict the future. It simply provides proper context for discussion. Your entire comment seems more ideological than logical. Where did I claim exceptionalism? I apologized about the junta, said it wasn't justified, but acknowledged the underlying dynamics. Your response was to compare me to the nazis? Wow. I will say this. You think Russia is "right". Good for you. I think it's quite a bit more complicated. I certainly think the socioeconomic and political systems in be USA are far superior to that of Russia, not inherently, but because of the institutions that have been created. Russia has chosen to emphasize nationalism versus the USA where individualism is still the prevailing ideological force. Nationalism was what the nazis promoted. Luckily I don't share your assessment about the global balance of power. The USA, land of the free and home of the brave, will continue to promote its interests abroad for quite some time to come.

Drinas -> KlingOn2K , October 8, 2017 4:34 PM

I don't know about "us Russians" because no matter how unfathomable it might seem to you, not everyone even mildly supportive of Russia is a Russian. I am Greek and I consider Russia a friendly state, with ties going back 1000 years, a state which is wrongfully demonized by the Western elites. You claim that everyone speaking vs Putin is targeted somehow. Obivously you have never been to Russia or spoke to Russians or have the vaguest clue of public discourse in Russia both online and on the street.

Oh, and in case you missed it, I asked for a single proof of "Russia hacking the election". Or anyone "hacking the election" for that matter. I did not ask any proof about Russia's internal politics or whether it conforms to your hypocritical and selective notions of democracy, ones that you care not apply to a host of tyranical nations you openly support.

Drinas -> KlingOn2K , October 7, 2017 9:34 AM

Oh, what a brilliant idea you got there..The one accused being responsible for providing evidence of his innocence while the accuser having no need to present evidence to support his case. Just relying on-"but it's Russia! It's evil and all that s..t!"

And neither Putin nor any Russian official ever made such an admission. Hillary lost because she was a terrible candidate whose own actions fueled a populist backlash against her and the Washington consensus policies she espoused.

kelly bako -> KlingOn2K , October 7, 2017 9:38 AM

So, you presume that russia is guilty because you don't have any proof of its innocence or culpability when it comes to assert if there were any interference in America's elections?

Andrew -> KlingOn2K , October 7, 2017 10:20 AM

When was it caught, doing what?

Mrm Penumathy -> KlingOn2K , October 7, 2017 1:02 PM

KingOn2K your assertion and the greatest press in the universe repeating continuously that Russians did it without providing any shred of evidence after more than one and half year of investigations (Sorry I forgot, they the press do mention that our $100 Billion + intelligence agencies say so the same guys who got us in the mess in Iraq good luck believing these guys). In the meanwhile we have an opioid epidemic and crumbling infrastructure.

KlingOn2K -> Mrm Penumathy , October 8, 2017 11:12 PM

Mrm Penumathy maybe, just maybe, it might dawn on Russia that the US is not in any way hinged to Russia. The status quo would do just fine. Apart from denials and raising a non-sequitur like Iraq the arguments for a reset don't look convincing. It is always amusing to see arguments on relative economic strengths coming from Russians when 68% of their exports come from oil !!

SurfaceUnits -> KlingOn2K , October 7, 2017 12:24 PM

The reason Hillarity was stumbling and falling during the campaign is because Vladimir Putin and the Russians spiked her GERITOL(R)(TM). It's true, ask a Dimocrat.

Midnight -> KlingOn2K , October 7, 2017 4:59 AM

In order to become a successful economy as the US needs to have 20 trillion foreign debt? The Russian economy is not so dependent on oil as it is told on CNN ..

Russia is not bad at earning rocket engines for the USA (rd180) and delivering American astronauts to the ISS ;) Economy of Russia - GDP rank 12th (nominal) / 6th (PPP) (2017) https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

[Oct 09, 2017] After Nine Months, Only Stale Crumbs in Russia Inquiry by Scott Ritter

Highly recommended!
US Congress allowed to drag itself into this propaganda swamp by politized Intelligence community, which became a major political player, that can dictate Congress what to do and what not to do. Now it is not that easy to get out of this "intelligence swamp"
Notable quotes:
"... The 2017 ICA on Russia was conceived in an atmosphere of despair and denial, birthed by Democrats and Republicans alike who were stunned by Trump's surprise electoral victory in November 2016. To say that this issue was a political event would be a gross understatement; the 2017 Russian ICA will go down in history as one of the most politicized intelligence documents ever, regardless of the degree of accuracy eventually afforded its contents. The very fact that the document is given the sobriquet "Intelligence Community" is itself a political act, designed to impart a degree of scrutiny and community consensus that simply did not exist when it came to the production of that document, or the classified reports that it was derived from. ..."
"... This was a report prepared by handpicked analysts ..."
"... iven the firestorm of political intrigue and controversy initiated by the publication of this document, the notion of a "general consensus" regarding the level of trust imparted to it by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee does not engender confidence. ..."
"... It was this document that spawned the issue of "collusion." While Sens. Burr and Warner can state that "collusion" is still an open issue, the fact of the matter is that, in this regard, Trump and his campaign advisors have already been found guilty in the court of public opinion, especially among those members of the public and the media who were vehemently opposed to his candidacy and ultimate victory. ..."
"... One need only review the comments of the various Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee, their counterparts serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the various experts and pundits in the media, to underscore the degree to which prejudice has "worked its evil" when it comes to the issue of collusion and the Trump campaign in this regard. ..."
"... purchase of advertisements on various social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, by the Russians or their proxies. With regard to these advertisements, Senator Burr painted a dire picture. "It seems," he declared, "that the overall theme of the Russian involvement in the US elections was to create chaos at every level." ..."
"... No one wants to be told that they have been victims of a con; this is especially true when dealing with the sacred trust imparted to the American citizenry by the Constitution of the United States regarding the free and fair election of those who will represent us in higher office. American politics, for better or worse, is about the personal connection a given candidate has with the voter, a gut feeling that this person shares common values and beliefs. ..."
"... the percentage of Americans that participate in national elections is low. Those that do tend to be people who care enough about one or more issues to actually get out and vote. To categorize these dedicated citizens as brain-dead dupes who are susceptible to social media-based click advertisements is an insult to American democracy. ..."
"... There is a world of difference between Russian intelligence services allegedly hacking politically sensitive emails and selectively releasing them for the sole purpose of undermining a given Presidential candidate's electoral prospects, and mimicking social media-based advertisements addressing issues that are already at play in an election. The Russians didn't invent the ongoing debate in the United States over gun control (i.e., the "Second Amendment" issue), race relations (the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri) or immigration ("The Wall"). ..."
"... These were, and remain, core issues that are at the heart of the American domestic political discourse, regardless of where one stands. You either know the issues, or you don't; it is an insult to the American voter to suggest that they are so malleable that $100,000 of targeted social media-based advertisements can swing their vote, even if 10 million of them viewed it. ..."
Oct 09, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The 'briefing' is just another exercise in preferred narrative boosting.

The co-chairmen of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a press briefing Thursday on the status of their ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the American electoral process. Content-wise, the press briefing and the question and answer session were an exercise in information futility -- they provided little substance and nothing new. The investigation was still ongoing, the senators explained, and there was still work to be done.

Nine months into the Committee's work, the best Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), could offer was that there was "general consensus" among committee members and their staff that they trust the findings of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of January 2017, which gave high confidence to the charge that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election. The issue of possible collusion between Russia and members of the campaign of Donald Trump, however, "is still open."

Frankly speaking, this isn't good enough.

The 2017 ICA on Russia was conceived in an atmosphere of despair and denial, birthed by Democrats and Republicans alike who were stunned by Trump's surprise electoral victory in November 2016. To say that this issue was a political event would be a gross understatement; the 2017 Russian ICA will go down in history as one of the most politicized intelligence documents ever, regardless of the degree of accuracy eventually afforded its contents. The very fact that the document is given the sobriquet "Intelligence Community" is itself a political act, designed to impart a degree of scrutiny and community consensus that simply did not exist when it came to the production of that document, or the classified reports that it was derived from.

This was a report prepared by handpicked analysts from three of the Intelligence Community's sixteen agencies (the CIA, NSA, and FBI) who operated outside of the National Intelligence Council (the venue for the production of Intelligence Community products such as the Russian ICA), and void of the direction and supervision of a dedicated National Intelligence Officer. Overcoming this deficient family tree represents a high hurdle, even before the issue of the credibility of the sources and methods used to underpin the ICA's findings are discussed. Given the firestorm of political intrigue and controversy initiated by the publication of this document, the notion of a "general consensus" regarding the level of trust imparted to it by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee does not engender confidence.

It was this document that spawned the issue of "collusion." While Sens. Burr and Warner can state that "collusion" is still an open issue, the fact of the matter is that, in this regard, Trump and his campaign advisors have already been found guilty in the court of public opinion, especially among those members of the public and the media who were vehemently opposed to his candidacy and ultimate victory. Insofar as the committee's investigation serves as a legitimate search for truth, it does so as a post-conviction appeal. However, as the distinguished Supreme Court Justice Joseph McKenna noted in his opinion in Berger v. United States (1921):

The remedy by appeal is inadequate. It comes after the trial, and, if prejudice exist, it has worked its evil and a judgment of it in a reviewing tribunal is precarious. It goes there fortified by presumptions, and nothing can be more elusive of estimate or decision than a disposition of a mind in which there is a personal ingredient.

One need only review the comments of the various Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee, their counterparts serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the various experts and pundits in the media, to underscore the degree to which prejudice has "worked its evil" when it comes to the issue of collusion and the Trump campaign in this regard.

The two senators proceeded to touch on a new angle recently introduced into their investigation, that of the purchase of advertisements on various social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, by the Russians or their proxies. With regard to these advertisements, Senator Burr painted a dire picture. "It seems," he declared, "that the overall theme of the Russian involvement in the US elections was to create chaos at every level."

No one wants to be told that they have been victims of a con; this is especially true when dealing with the sacred trust imparted to the American citizenry by the Constitution of the United States regarding the free and fair election of those who will represent us in higher office. American politics, for better or worse, is about the personal connection a given candidate has with the voter, a gut feeling that this person shares common values and beliefs.

Nevertheless, the percentage of Americans that participate in national elections is low. Those that do tend to be people who care enough about one or more issues to actually get out and vote. To categorize these dedicated citizens as brain-dead dupes who are susceptible to social media-based click advertisements is an insult to American democracy.

There is a world of difference between Russian intelligence services allegedly hacking politically sensitive emails and selectively releasing them for the sole purpose of undermining a given Presidential candidate's electoral prospects, and mimicking social media-based advertisements addressing issues that are already at play in an election. The Russians didn't invent the ongoing debate in the United States over gun control (i.e., the "Second Amendment" issue), race relations (the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri) or immigration ("The Wall").

These were, and remain, core issues that are at the heart of the American domestic political discourse, regardless of where one stands. You either know the issues, or you don't; it is an insult to the American voter to suggest that they are so malleable that $100,000 of targeted social media-based advertisements can swing their vote, even if 10 million of them viewed it.

The take away from the press briefing given by Senator's Burr and Warner was two-fold: One, the Russians meddled, and two, we don't know if Trump colluded with the Russians. The fact that America is nine months into this investigation with little more to show now than what could have been said at the start is, in and of itself, an American political tragedy. The Trump administration has been hobbled by the inertia of this and other investigations derived from the question of Russian meddling. That this process may yet vindicate President Trump isn't justification for the process itself; in such a case the delay will have hurt more than the truth. As William Penn, the founder of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, so eloquently noted:

Delays have been more injurious than direct Injustice. They too often starve those they dare not deny. The very Winner is made a Loser, because he pays twice for his own; like those who purchase Estates Mortgaged before to the full value.

Our law says that to delay Justice is Injustice. Not to have a Right, and not to come of it, differs little. Refuse or Dispatch is the Duty of a Good Officer.

Senators Burr and Warner, together with their fellow members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and their respective staffs, would do well to heed those words.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of "Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West's Road to War" (Clarity Press, 2017).

[Oct 09, 2017] SHOCKING!!! Google discovers ads placed on its site from Russia, proving America's democracy was hacked by

Oct 09, 2017 | theduran.com

It was only a matter of time before Google and its subsidiaries (most notably
YouTube) would jump on the "Russia hacked the election" narrative concocted by

Hillary Clinton and John Podesta.

Executive Chairman of Alphabet, Inc., (Google's parent company), Eric Schmidt
was after all advising the Hillary Clinton campaign.

What took Schmidt and Google execs so long to join in on the never ending
litigation of the US presidential election, that Hillary lost almost one year ago?

Via The Daily Caller...

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google's parent company
Alphabet, wanted to be "head outside advisor" to the Hillary
Clinton campaign, according to Clinton campaign chairman
John Podesta in an email released by WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks has continued to reveal Schmidt's cozy relationship with
the Clinton campaign. In a previously leaked email,
a memo showed that Schmidt was working directly with the Clinton
campaign on setting up various backend features to their website.

[Oct 09, 2017] Russiagate Is More Fiction Than Fact by Aaron Maté

Oct 06, 2017 | www.thenation.com

From accusations of Trump campaign collusion to Russian Facebook ad buys, the media has substituted hype for evidence.

Since Election Day, the controversy over alleged Russian meddling and Trump campaign collusion has consumed Washington and the national media. Yet nearly one year later there is still no concrete evidence of its central allegations. There are claims by US intelligence officials that the Russian government hacked e-mails and used social media to help elect Donald Trump, but there has yet to be any corroboration. Although the oft-cited January intelligence report "uses the strongest language and offers the most detailed assessment yet," The Atlantic observed that "it does not or cannot provide evidence for its assertions." Noting the "absence of any proof" and "hard evidence to back up the agencies' claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack," The New York Times concluded that the intelligence community's message "essentially amounts to 'trust us.'" That remains the case today.

The same holds for the question of collusion. Officials acknowledged to Reuters in May that "they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion between the campaign and Russia in the communications reviewed so far." Well-placed critics of Trump -- including former DNI chief James Clapper, former CIA director Michael Morrell, Representative Maxine Waters, and Senator Dianne Feinstein -- concur to date.

Recognizing this absence of evidence helps examine what has been substituted in its place. Shattered, the insider account of the Clinton campaign, reports that "in the days after the election, Hillary declined to take responsibility for her own loss." Instead, one source recounted, aides were ordered "to make sure all these narratives get spun the right way." Within 24 hours of Clinton's concession speech, top officials gathered "to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument."

But the focus on Russia has utility far beyond the Clinton camp. It dovetails with elements of state power that oppose Trump's call for improved relations with Moscow and who are willing to deploy a familiar playbook of Cold War fearmongering to block any developments on that front. The multiple investigations and anonymous leaks are also a tool to pacify an erratic president whose anti-interventionist rhetoric -- by all indications, a ruse -- alarmed foreign-policy elites during the campaign. Corporate media outlets driven by clicks and ratings are inexorably drawn to the scandal. The public is presented with a real-life spy thriller, which for some carries the added appeal of possibly undoing a reviled president and his improbable victory.

These imperatives have incentivized a compromised set of journalistic and evidentiary standards. In Russiagate, unverified claims are reported with little to no skepticism. Comporting developments are cherry-picked and overhyped, while countervailing ones are minimized or ignored. Front-page headlines advertise explosive and incriminating developments, only to often be undermined by the article's content, or retracted entirely. Qualified language -- likely, suspected, apparent -- appears next to "Russians" to account for the absence of concrete links. As a result, Russiagate has enlarged into a storm of innuendo that engulfs issues far beyond its original scope.

The latest two stories about alleged Trump campaign collusion were initially received as smoking guns. But upon further examination, they may actually undermine that narrative. One was news that Trump had signed a non-binding letter of intent to license his name for a proposed building in Moscow as he ran for the White House. Russian-born developer Felix Sater predicted to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen that the deal would help Trump win the presidency. "I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected," Sater wrote, believing that voters would be impressed that Trump could make a real-estate deal with the United States' "most difficult adversary." The New York Times describes the outcome:

There is no evidence in the emails that Mr. Sater delivered on his promises, and one email suggests that Mr. Sater overstated his Russian ties. In January 2016, Mr. Cohen wrote to Mr. Putin's spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, asking for help restarting the Trump Tower project, which had stalled. But Mr. Cohen did not appear to have Mr. Peskov's direct email, and instead wrote to a general inbox for press inquiries.

The project never got government permits or financing, and died weeks later.

Peskov has confirmed he ended up seeing the e-mail from Cohen, but did not bother to respond. The story does raise a potential conflict of interest: Trump pursued a Moscow deal as he praised Putin on the campaign trial. But it is hard to see how a deal that never got off the ground is of more importance than actual deals Trump made in places like Turkey, the Philippines, and the Persian Gulf. If anything, the story should introduce skepticism into whether any collusion took place: The deal failed, and Trump's lawyer did not even have an e-mail address for his Russian counterparts.

The revelation of Sater's e-mails to Cohen followed the earlier controversy of Rob Goldstone offering Donald Trump Jr. incriminating information on Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." Goldstone's e-mail was more fruitful than Sater's in that it yielded a meeting, albeit one that Trump Jr. claims he abandoned after 20 minutes. Those who deem the Sater-Goldstone e-mail chains incriminating or even treasonous should be reminded of their provenance: Sater is known as " a canny operator and a colorful bullshitter " who has " launched a host of crudely named websites -- including IAmAFaggot.com and VaginaBoy.com to attack a former business partner." Meanwhile, Goldstone is a British tabloid journalist turned music publicist. One does not have to be an intelligence expert to doubt that they are Kremlin cut-outs.

[Oct 09, 2017] Imran Awan's Wife Accuses Him of Fraud

Oct 09, 2017 | dailycaller.com

The indicted husband-and-wife team of former IT aides to Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz sat directly across from each other at the defendants' table in federal court Friday in Washington, D.C., but refused to look at each other.

Even as they are co-defendants in a U.S. case, Imran Awan's own wife, Hina Alvi, has become the latest person to accuse him of fraud, filing papers against him in Pakistani court, according to Pakistani news channel ARY.

The couple were in U.S. court to face bank fraud charges related to sending money to Pakistan around the time they learned they were under investigation for abuses related to their work managing IT for members of Congress. Awan was arrested at Dulles Airport in July attempting to board a flight to Pakistan.

Wasserman Schultz, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, and other House Democrats have vigorously defended Awan, claiming the Capitol Police might be drumming up charges out of Islamaphobia .

Alvi was arraigned Friday on four felony counts, and Awan, who has already been arraigned, requested that his GPS monitoring bracelet be taken off -- citing the fact that his wife was in America as the reason he was not a flight risk.

Yet the couple entered and left the court separately, have different lawyers, and Awan's lawyer told the judge that the husband and wife are staying "in a one-bedroom apartment and then also a house."

Pakistani legal papers published by the news channel show Alvi recently accused Awan of illegally marrying another woman, and of fraud. "My husband Imran Awan son of Muhammad Ashraf Awan, committed fraud along with offence of polygamy," she charges in the papers.

Hina's U.S. lawyer, Nikki Lotze, did not dispute the account. "I don't see how that's newsworthy," Lotze told The Daily Caller News Foundation. The Pakistani legal petition named as the second wife is a woman who records show told Virginia police she felt like Awan was keeping her "like a slave."

Awan, his wife and two brothers -- all previously on the payroll of House Democrats -- became subjects of a Capitol Police investigation last year after investigators concluded they were submitting falsified invoices for equipment and had transferred "massive" data off a House server. After he was banned from the House network, Awan left a laptop with the username RepDWS in a Capitol Hill phone booth.

Although The Washington Post has reported that investigators found that Awan and his relatives made unauthorized access to a congressional server 5,400 times, Wasserman Schultz has said concern about the matter was the stuff of the "right-wing media circus fringe."

Awan and Alvi have been charged with bank fraud involving moving money to Pakistan, but they have not been charged with crimes related to their work, and the other family members have not been charged at all. Awan's attorney used Friday's hearing to argue that he "very strongly" wanted to block prosecutors from using evidence they found in the Capitol Hill phone booth.

The Pakistani legal motion filed by Alvi states: "A few months ago I got apprised of the fact that my husband has contracted second marriage secretly, fraudulently and without my consent with Mst. Sumaira Shehzadi Alias Sumaira Siddique Daughter of Muhammad Akram r/o Township, Lahore. The second marriage of my husband is illegal, unlawful and without justification."

"The court has recorded the testimonies of the applicant and other witnesses," the Pakistani news outlet reported.

... ... ...

The Awan family had access to the full digital files of 45 House members and their staffs, but Democrats have said they don't believe he would abuse that access, despite a host of financial red flags, including financial ties to an Iranian fugitive and money sent to a Pakistani police officer.

In a civil case this year, Awan's stepmother Samina Gilani accused Abid Awan, who was also on the House payroll, of stealing a $50,000 life insurance policy, and said Awan used his employment in Congress to intimidate people.

"Imran Awan introduces himself as someone from US Congress or someone from federal agencies," she charged. He "threatened that he is very powerful and if I ever call the police [he] will do harm to me and my family members back in Pakistan and one of my cousins here in Baltimore."

[Oct 09, 2017] SHOCKING!!! Google discovers ads placed on its site from Russia, proving America s democracy was hacked

Oct 09, 2017 | theduran.com

Menu

[Oct 08, 2017] The Dark History of Fear, Inc

Notable quotes:
"... None of this qualifies as your typical run-of-the-mill lunacy (scented candles cause cancer), over-the-top tripe (the recent solar eclipse marks the beginning of the apocalypse), or unbelievable baloney (that man-made pyramids have been discovered in Antarctica). Rather, the paranoid style is rooted in pernicious, but believable, political fears: that the nation is under threat from people or movements plotting to do it harm and is teetering, teetering, teetering on the edge of an abyss. The problem is not that this is patently false (The Germans! The Japanese! The Russians!), but that it's often exaggerated -- and, sometimes, purposely so. Then too, as Hofstadter implied, preying on these fears for political gain not only isn't new, it's tried, tested, and often successful. Scaring the dickens out of voters is as American as the 4th of July. ..."
"... The claims now are not only as breathless as anything the CIA said about East Germany in the 1980s, they're as suspect: Mexico is "on the verge of collapse" -- a claim made by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly -- that Russia is providing arms to the Taliban (retold by the recently retired commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson, Jr., and, just the other day by James Mattis), that the U.S. military will be "outranged and outgunned by many potential adversaries in the future" (noted by national security adviser H.R. McMaster prior to his service at the White House) and that, as Donald Trump himself said during his address to the United Nations, large parts of the world " are in conflict and some, in fact, are going to hell ." ..."
"... The problem with the claims is that those who are asked to dismiss them are required to defend the opposite -- that Mexico is economically healthy (it isn't, but it's hardly on the verge of collapse), that Russian weapons haven't shown up in Afghanistan (they have, though not simply in the hands of the Taliban), that Russia and China aren't developing new and more sophisticated weapons (they are, but so what?), or that it's ridiculous not to believe that "major portions of the world are in conflict" (that's always been true). The other problem with disproving the claims is that doing so contains a whiff of weakness, or naiveté: that the skeptic favors open borders, supports Afghan terrorism, doesn't support a strong military, or is hopelessly misinformed. In fact, however, each of these claims have been made before -- and refuted by expert testimony. ..."
"... The same holds true for each of the other claims. Following Gen. Nicholson's statement that Russia was providing arms to the Taliban, his claim was given short shrift by both the Defense Intelligence Agency and by Jens Stoltenberg, the General Secretary of NATO. Stoltenberg acknowledged that he'd seen the reports, adding that the only thing they lacked was proof. ..."
"... That Russia is an antagonist is now widely accepted, and it is trivially true that Moscow's nuclear arsenal (with or without the help of China) could lay waste to the U.S. But outgunning us? Russia spends a fraction of what the U.S. spends on its military establishment (some 14 percent of what we spend, in fact) and so must pick and choose what weapons it will develop. ..."
"... So, yes, we're in deep, deep trouble -- just as we were when witches danced in Ipswich, when Samuel Morse claimed we were being subverted by papists, when Joe McCarthy saw a communist under every State Department memo -- and when the Russians were producing missiles like sausages. ..."
Oct 08, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Back in 1835, Samuel F.B. Morse (who went on to invent the telegraph and the Morse Code), wrote a book about a plot to overthrow the American republic. The conspiracy, Morse wrote, was well-funded, highly secretive, and hatched in Vienna by members of the The St. Leopold Foundation, which had dispatched cells of Jesuit missionaries to the U.S. to forcibly convert the nation to Roman Catholicism. This was no small intrigue: The plot's leaders, as Morse meticulously catalogued, were Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich, Ferdinand V of Hungary, and (of course) Pope Gregory XVI. "It is high time that we awakened to the apprehension of danger," Morse wrote .

What is shocking about this nonsense is not that Morse actually believed it, but that millions of other Americans did too. Morse's book seeded the rise of the nativist "Know-Nothing" party , whose goal was to curb immigration, root out Catholicism, and return America to its protestant ideals. In essence, they were the America-firsters of the nineteenth century. The Know-Nothings swept into office in Chicago, were strong in Massachusetts and, in 1856, nominated a national ticket (Millard Fillmore and Andrew Donelson), for the presidency; they tallied nearly 900,000 votes, one-quarter of those cast. "I know nothing but my country, my whole country and nothing but my country," they chanted.

Historians have since excavated the Morse plot with relish, if only as a way to better understand a nation that, from time to time, enjoys being scared witless.

Before the Know-Nothings there were the Anti-Masons, a political movement that warned of a takeover by secretive apron-wearing do-gooders who met for god-knows-why. And before that Americans were warned about witches named Dorothy, Rebecca, Martha, and Rachel, dancing in New England's forests. Some 120 years after Morse, in 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter dubbed this "the paranoid style in American politics" -- a paradigm-shifting essay that catalogued a raft of intrigues peopled by witches, Illuminati, Masons, Jesuits, Mormons, Jewish bankers, Bilderbergers and, in Hofstadter's time, communist dupes doing Moscow's bidding. America's enemies might be unseen, but they were everywhere.

"In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship," Hofstadter wrote, "is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it managed to survive at all."

None of this qualifies as your typical run-of-the-mill lunacy (scented candles cause cancer), over-the-top tripe (the recent solar eclipse marks the beginning of the apocalypse), or unbelievable baloney (that man-made pyramids have been discovered in Antarctica). Rather, the paranoid style is rooted in pernicious, but believable, political fears: that the nation is under threat from people or movements plotting to do it harm and is teetering, teetering, teetering on the edge of an abyss. The problem is not that this is patently false (The Germans! The Japanese! The Russians!), but that it's often exaggerated -- and, sometimes, purposely so. Then too, as Hofstadter implied, preying on these fears for political gain not only isn't new, it's tried, tested, and often successful. Scaring the dickens out of voters is as American as the 4th of July.

The historical "for instance" in this is well-documented: during the 1960 presidential campaign, John Kennedy insisted that the Soviet Union had outstripped the U.S. in ballistic missile production. There was a growing and dangerous "missile gap" Kennedy claimed, placing the nation in great peril. Dwight Eisenhower, he said, had been derelict in not acknowledging the threat. An independent study commission issued a report that confirmed the fear and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave it credence: We are "turning out missiles like sausages," he claimed. As it turns out, Kennedy was right: there was a missile gap, but not in a way that he thought -- we had plenty, while they had none (a later CIA report speculated that, actually, they might have had three, maybe). Years later, Kennedy's claim looked downright foolish: the problem for the Russians wasn't that they couldn't make missiles (they eventually did, and plenty of them), but that they couldn't make sausages -- which cost them their empire. The same kinds of claims were retailed by U.S. intelligence services about Russia's allies: a 1987 CIA fact book said that East Germany's GDP per capita was higher than West Germany's, a claim so ludicrous that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan dismissed it to a panel of CIA officers with a legendary quip: "I know a Berlin taxi driver who could have told you that wasn't true."

The claims now are not only as breathless as anything the CIA said about East Germany in the 1980s, they're as suspect: Mexico is "on the verge of collapse" -- a claim made by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly -- that Russia is providing arms to the Taliban (retold by the recently retired commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson, Jr., and, just the other day by James Mattis), that the U.S. military will be "outranged and outgunned by many potential adversaries in the future" (noted by national security adviser H.R. McMaster prior to his service at the White House) and that, as Donald Trump himself said during his address to the United Nations, large parts of the world " are in conflict and some, in fact, are going to hell ."

The problem with the claims is that those who are asked to dismiss them are required to defend the opposite -- that Mexico is economically healthy (it isn't, but it's hardly on the verge of collapse), that Russian weapons haven't shown up in Afghanistan (they have, though not simply in the hands of the Taliban), that Russia and China aren't developing new and more sophisticated weapons (they are, but so what?), or that it's ridiculous not to believe that "major portions of the world are in conflict" (that's always been true). The other problem with disproving the claims is that doing so contains a whiff of weakness, or naiveté: that the skeptic favors open borders, supports Afghan terrorism, doesn't support a strong military, or is hopelessly misinformed. In fact, however, each of these claims have been made before -- and refuted by expert testimony.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey said that Mexico was in a state of collapse back in 2009, a claim contradicted by then-Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair. More recently, and before the recent earthquake shook Mexico City, the collapsing Mexican government offered to help provide aid to Texans victimized by Hurricane Harvey. It's a wonder they would think of us as the walls were coming down around them. Then too, if Mexico is really on the verge of collapse, shouldn't the administration be doing something about it -- perhaps we should appeal to the international community to provide the Mexican government with low interest loans, or maybe we should deploy a U.S. aircraft carrier group to the Gulf of Mexico. Or perhaps, just perhaps, the claim is Morse-like: designed to frighten us, perhaps, into building a wall as a barrier to keep immigrants who are not pouring over the border from pouring over the border.

The same holds true for each of the other claims. Following Gen. Nicholson's statement that Russia was providing arms to the Taliban, his claim was given short shrift by both the Defense Intelligence Agency and by Jens Stoltenberg, the General Secretary of NATO. Stoltenberg acknowledged that he'd seen the reports, adding that the only thing they lacked was proof. But Stoltenberg went further, inviting Russia to be a part of the Afghanistan peace process -- a strange request to a nation that a top U.S. general claims is helping the enemy. Even so, the claim was repeated just this last week by Defense Secretary James Mattis, who added Iran to the growing list of Taliban allies. Of course, Nicholson and Mattis might be absolutely right, but they're saying so doesn't make it so. Then too (we shuffle our feet, look at our shoes, mumble to ourselves), the Taliban's best friend in Afghanistan isn't Russia or Iran, it's Pakistan -- our friend.

That Russia is an antagonist is now widely accepted, and it is trivially true that Moscow's nuclear arsenal (with or without the help of China) could lay waste to the U.S. But outgunning us? Russia spends a fraction of what the U.S. spends on its military establishment (some 14 percent of what we spend, in fact) and so must pick and choose what weapons it will develop. The result is that the Russian Federation continues technological advances in some weapons systems, but lacks significant technological depth elsewhere. During its 2015 May Day military parade, Russia showed off its new state-of-the-art T-14 main battle tank, complete with a new-fangled APS (active protection system) designed to defeat anti-armor weapons. Onlookers ogled the tank, oohing and ahhing at its shiny exterior, its impressive armament. But then, just as it was about to exit Red Square it broke down -- and had to be towed. Is Russia a threat? Sure, it's a threat. But Russia has many of the same problems now that it had at the end of the Cold War. It ranks 53rd in per capita GDP -- just behind Panama.

The world has problems, big problems but it is not going to hell. Here's what going to hell looks like. In the autumn of 1941, Europe was under the domination of a genocidal regime that had extended its murderous policies through all of Europe and whose armies were headed towards Moscow. In Asia, large swathes of China and all of Southeast Asia were occupied by Japanese militarists. The two, with Italy, had formed an axis and controlled significant portions of the globe. Their enemies were teetering on the edge of defeat. The world was going to hell, alright, but the U.S. had yet to get into the war.

But that's not the worst of it. During the early morning hours of September 26, 1983, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov was notified by his computer system that the U.S. had launched five intercontinental ballistic missiles at Russia. Petrov sat there for a moment, when he should have been on the telephone to his superiors. After several moments he concluded that the warning just didn't make sense. Why would the U.S. launch only five missiles at Russia, when everyone in the Soviet military supposed they would launch a barrage. "The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds," he later told the BBC, "staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word 'launch' on it." Petrov ignored the warning -- and may well have prevented a nuclear holocaust.

So, yes, we're in deep, deep trouble -- just as we were when witches danced in Ipswich, when Samuel Morse claimed we were being subverted by papists, when Joe McCarthy saw a communist under every State Department memo -- and when the Russians were producing missiles like sausages.

Now, as then, we have two choices: we can either embrace our fears and shake in our boots, or we can tell the sky-is-falling crowd what Samuel F.B. Morse's friends told him all the way back in 1835.

Get a grip.

Mark Perry is a foreign policy analyst and the author of The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur. His next book, The Pentagon's Wars, will be released in October. He tweets @markperrydc

[Oct 05, 2017] Tillerson Summoned to White House Amid Presidential Fury

MSm stil trying to sing Trump, and it looks like he is helping them. Campaign of well times and damaging leaks continue.
Notable quotes:
"... Additional reporting from Peter Alexander, Hallie Jackson and Vivian Salama. ..."
Oct 05, 2017 | www.msn.com
Additional reporting from Peter Alexander, Hallie Jackson and Vivian Salama.

WASHINGTON -- John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, abruptly scrapped plans to travel with President Donald Trump on Wednesday so he could try to contain his boss's fury and manage the fallout from new revelations about tensions between the president and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, according to six senior administration officials.

Kelly summoned Tillerson, and their ally Defense Secretary James Mattis, to the White House, where the three of them huddled to discuss a path forward, according to three administration officials. The White House downplayed Kelly's decision to stay in Washington, saying he did so to manage day-to-day operations.

Vice President Mike Pence, meanwhile, was fuming in Phoenix, where he was traveling, seven officials told NBC News. He and Tillerson spoke on the phone before the secretary's public appearance on Wednesday morning.

Pence was incensed upon learning from the NBC report that Tillerson's top spokesman had said he once privately questioned the value of Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Officials said the spokesman, R.C. Hammond, fabricated an anecdote that Pence had asked Tillerson in a meeting whether Haley, who is seen as a possible successor if Tillerson, is helpful or harmful to the administration.

NBC reported Wednesday that Tillerson had threatened to resign in July after a series of clashes with the president, at one point venting his frustrations among his colleagues by calling the president a "moron," according to multiple senior administration officials who were aware of the matter at the time.

Four senior administration officials said Trump first learned on Wednesday that Tillerson had disparaged him after a July 20 national security meeting at the Pentagon. Trump vented to Kelly Wednesday morning, leading Kelly to scrap plans to travel with the president to Las Vegas to meet with victims and first responders in Sunday's mass shooting.

Trump was furious when he saw the NBC News report, which was published shortly before 6 a.m. Wednesday. For the next two hours the president fumed inside the White House, venting to Kelly, officials said. He left for Las Vegas shortly after 8 a.m., 20 minutes behind schedule. Tillerson scrambled to pull together a statement, while his spokesman publicly apologized for his comments about Pence and Haley, saying he "spoke out of line about conversations I wasn't privy to."

Tillerson delivered a statement praising Trump and insisting he never considered resigning, but it's what he didn't say that further enraged Trump, officials said.

The secretary's refusal to deny that he had called the president a "moron" in his opening statement and in his responses to questions from reporters stoked Trump's anger and widened the rift between the two men, officials said. After watching the secretary's response Wednesday, one White House official said, "When Tillerson didn't deny it, I assumed it was true." Hammond is seen by the White House, particularly Pence's office, as untrustworthy, officials said. It's unclear if he will remain in his post, according to three administration officials.

Pence was "very annoyed anyone would misrepresent anything he said, particularly in private meetings," one White House official said. On Wednesday, this source said, White House officials spoke to State Department officials to make it clear that Hammond's comment was "false" and needed to be corrected. The revelations followed Trump's frustrations over the weekend after Tillerson said the U.S. would talk to North Korea.

State Department officials tried to reach Tillerson on his government aircraft during his flight from Beijing to Japan, but they couldn't reach him, sources said. The secretary and his team didn't want to issue a clarification, further stoking tensions with the White House, on administration official said.

Trump took to Twitter, telling Tillerson not to waste his time trying to negotiate with the North Korean regime.

Related:

[Oct 04, 2017] The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Whose Bright Idea Was RussiaGate by Paul Craig Roberts

Notable quotes:
"... The answer to the question in the title of this article is that Russiagate was created by CIA director John Brennan. The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia. The CIA and the military/security complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia has been assigned that role. The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary and to have him impeached. I don't think the Democrats have considered the consequence of further worsening the relations between the US and Russia. ..."
"... The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony requires the principal goal of US foreign policy to be to prevent the rise of other countries that can serve as a restraint on US unilateralism. This is the main basis for the hostility of US foreign policy toward Russia, and of course there also is the material interests of the military/security complex. ..."
"... Washington is fully aware that there was no Russian interference in the presidential election or in the state elections. The military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Democratic Party are merely using the accusations to serve their own agendas. ..."
"... These selfish agendas are a dire threat to life on earth ..."
"... Reprinted with permission from PaulCraigRoberts.org . ..."
Oct 03, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org

The answer to the question in the title of this article is that Russiagate was created by CIA director John Brennan. The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia. The CIA and the military/security complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia has been assigned that role. The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary and to have him impeached. I don't think the Democrats have considered the consequence of further worsening the relations between the US and Russia.

Public Russia bashing pre-dates Trump. It has been going on privately in neoconservative circles for years, but appeared publicly during the Obama regime when Russia blocked Washington's plans to invade Syria and to bomb Iran.

Russia bashing became more intense when Washington's coup in Ukraine failed to deliver Crimea. Washington had intended for the new Ukrainian regime to evict the Russians from their naval base on the Black Sea. This goal was frustrated when Crimea voted to rejoin Russia.

The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony requires the principal goal of US foreign policy to be to prevent the rise of other countries that can serve as a restraint on US unilateralism. This is the main basis for the hostility of US foreign policy toward Russia, and of course there also is the material interests of the military/security complex.

Russia bashing is much larger than merely Russiagate. The danger lies in Washington convincing Russia that Washington is planning a surprise attack on Russia. With US and NATO bases on Russia's borders, efforts to arm Ukraine and to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO provide more evidence that Washington is surrounding Russia for attack. There is nothing more reckless and irresponsible than convincing a nuclear power that you are going to attack.

Washington is fully aware that there was no Russian interference in the presidential election or in the state elections. The military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Democratic Party are merely using the accusations to serve their own agendas.

These selfish agendas are a dire threat to life on earth .

Reprinted with permission from PaulCraigRoberts.org .

[Oct 03, 2017] Russian Ads On Facebook A Click-Bait Campaign

Highly recommended!
This is particular dirty campaign to implicate Trump and delegitimize his victory is a part of color revolution against Trump.
The other noble purpose is to find a scapegoat for the current problems, especially in Democratic Party, and to preserve Clinton neoliberals rule over the party for a few more futile years.
Notable quotes:
"... Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Trump. ..."
"... The mini-ads were bought to promote click-bait pages and sites. These pages and sites were created and then promoted to sell further advertisement. The media though, has still not understood the issue. ..."
"... A few thousand users will come and look at a page. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or the rant against LGBT and further spread the page. Some will click the promoted Google ads. Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can automatize, rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scale-able and parts of it can be automatized. ..."
"... This is, in essence, the same business model traditional media publishers use. One creates "news" and controversies to attract readers. The attention of the readers is then sold to advertisers. The business is no longer a limited to a few rich oligarchic. One no longer needs reporters or a printing press to join in. Anyone can now take part in it. ..."
"... We learned after the election that some youths in Macedonia created whole "news"-websites filled with highly attractive but fake partisan stories. They were not interested in the veracity or political direction of their content. Their only interest was to attract viewers. They made thousands of dollars by selling advertisements on their sites: ..."
"... The teen said his monthly revenue was in the four figures, a considerable sum in a country where the average monthly pay is 360 euros ($383). As he navigated his site's statistics, he dropped nuggets of journalism advice. ..."
"... After the mystery of "Russian" $3 ads for "adorable puppies" pages on Facebook has been solved, Congress and the New York Times will have to move on. There next subject is probably the "Russian influence campaign" on Youtube. ..."
"... Russian Car Crash Compilations have for years attracted millions of viewers. The "Russians" want to increase road rage on U.S. highways. This again will - according to expert Clinton Watts - "amplify divisive political issues across the political spectrum". ..."
"... "Russian interference" in Western faux democracies is just more Fake News that distracts from the real issues. And all those real issues come down to this: the need to reign in the oligarchs. This is very easy to do via progressive taxation (with no loopholes). ..."
"... The two words that the establishment fears most: Progressive Taxation . ..."
"... Great article. I especially like the tactful way that modern clickbait farming is obliquely tied to the MSM business model. Facebook and Google have a lot to answer for. ..."
"... Russia gate, since it is unnecessarily mentally exhausting and intellectually futile, it is namely pure provocation and as such it should be ignored and not proliferated even in its criticism making a fakes news a real news by sole fact of mentioning it on the respectable independent sites. ..."
"... The whole digital media and ad business that have built the Google and Facebook media juggernauts is all a giant scam. Smart advertisers like P&G are recognizing it for what it is and will slowly pullback. It is only a matter of time before others catch on and these companies will bleed ad revenues. ..."
Oct 03, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Trump.

It now turns out that these Facebook ads had nothing to do with the election. The mini-ads were bought to promote click-bait pages and sites. These pages and sites were created and then promoted to sell further advertisement. The media though, has still not understood the issue.

On September 6 the NYT asserted :

Providing new evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Facebook disclosed on Wednesday that it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin.
...
The disclosure adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign, which American intelligence agencies concluded was designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election.

Like any Congress investigation the current one concerned with Facebook ads is leaking like a sieve. What oozes out makes little sense.

If "Russia" aimed to make Congress and U.S. media a laughing stock it surely achieved that.

Today the NYT says that the ads were posted "in disguise" by "the Russians" to promote variously themed Facebook pages:

There was "Defend the 2nd," a Facebook page for gun-rights supporters, festooned with firearms and tough rhetoric. There was a rainbow-hued page for gay rights activists, "LGBT United." There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads

No one has explained how these pages are supposed to be connected to a Russian "influence" campaign. It is unexplained how these are supposed to connected to the 2016 election. That is simply asserted because Facebook said, for unknown reasons, that these ads may have come from some Russian agency. How Facebook has determined that is not known.

With each detail that leaks from the "Russian ads" investigation the propaganda framework of "election manipulation" falls further apart:

Late Monday, Facebook said in a post that about 10 million people had seen the ads in question. About 44 percent of the ads were seen before the 2016 election and the rest after, the company said

The original story propagandized that "Russia" intended to influence the election in favor of Trump. But why then was the majority of the ads in questions run later after November 9? And how would an animal-lovers page with adorable puppy pictures help to achieve Trumps election victory?

More details via the Wall Street Journal:

Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. That's because advertising auctions are designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as a result.
...
For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent.

Of the 3,000 ads Facebook originally claimed were "Russian" only 2,200 were ever viewed. Most of the advertisements were mini-ads which, for the price of a coffee, promoted private pages related to hobbies and a wide spectrum of controversial issues. The majority of the ads ran after the election.

All that "adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign ... designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election"?

No.

But the NYT still finds "experts" who believe in the "Russian influence" nonsense and find the most stupid reasons to justify their claims:

Clinton Watts, a former F.B.I. agent now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, said Russia had been entrepreneurial in trying to develop diverse channels of influence. Some, like the dogs page, may have been created without a specific goal and held in reserve for future use.

Puppy pictures for "future use"? Nonsense. Lunacy! The pages described and the ads leading to them are typical click-bait, not a political influence op.

The for-profit scheme runs as follows: One builds pages with "hot" stuff that attracts lots of viewers. One creates ad-space on these pages and fills it with Google ads. One promotes the spiked pages by buying $3 Facebook mini-ads for them.

A few thousand users will come and look at a page. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or the rant against LGBT and further spread the page. Some will click the promoted Google ads. Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can automatize, rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scale-able and parts of it can be automatized.

This is, in essence, the same business model traditional media publishers use. One creates "news" and controversies to attract readers. The attention of the readers is then sold to advertisers. The business is no longer a limited to a few rich oligarchic. One no longer needs reporters or a printing press to join in. Anyone can now take part in it.

We learned after the election that some youths in Macedonia created whole "news"-websites filled with highly attractive but fake partisan stories. They were not interested in the veracity or political direction of their content. Their only interest was to attract viewers. They made thousands of dollars by selling advertisements on their sites:

The teen said his monthly revenue was in the four figures, a considerable sum in a country where the average monthly pay is 360 euros ($383). As he navigated his site's statistics, he dropped nuggets of journalism advice.

"You have to write what people want to see, not what you want to show," he said, scrolling through The Political Insider's stories as a large banner read "ARREST HILLARY NOW."

The 3,000 Facebook ads Congress is investigating are part of a similar scheme. The mini-ads promoted pages with hot button issues and click-bait puppy pictures. These pages were themselves created to generate ad-clicks and revenue. As Facebook claims that "Russia" is behind them, we will likely find some Russian teens who simply repeated the scheme their Macedonian friends were running on.

With its "Russian influence" scare campaign the NYT follows the same business model. It is producing fake news which attracts viewers and readers who's attention is then sold to advertisers. Facebook is also profiting from this. Its current piecemeal release of vague information keeps its name in the news.

After the mystery of "Russian" $3 ads for "adorable puppies" pages on Facebook has been solved, Congress and the New York Times will have to move on. There next subject is probably the "Russian influence campaign" on Youtube.

Russian Car Crash Compilations have for years attracted millions of viewers. The "Russians" want to increase road rage on U.S. highways. This again will - according to expert Clinton Watts - "amplify divisive political issues across the political spectrum".

The car crash compilations, like the puppy pages, are another sign that Russia is waging war against the people of the United States!

You don't believe that? You should. Trust your experienced politician!

Samantha Power @SamanthaJPower - 3:45 PM - 3 Oct 2017

This gets more chilling daily : now we learn Russia targeted Americans on Facebook by "demographics, geography, gender & interests," across websites & devices, reached millions, kept going after Nov. An attack on all Americans, not just HRC campaign washingtonpost.com/business/econo

It indeed gets more chilling. It's fall. It also generates ad revenue.

Posted by b on October 3, 2017 at 02:09 PM | Permalink

nmb | Oct 3, 2017 2:20:52 PM | 1

As Shock Therapy failed miserably in the 90s, the neocon dynasty seeks now direct confrontation with Russia
Jackrabbit | Oct 3, 2017 2:32:24 PM | 2
"Russian interference" in Western faux democracies is just more Fake News that distracts from the real issues. And all those real issues come down to this: the need to reign in the oligarchs. This is very easy to do via progressive taxation (with no loopholes).

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

The two words that the establishment fears most: Progressive Taxation .

Taxi | Oct 3, 2017 2:32:34 PM | 3
Oh dear intrepidus, why are you still talking about MSM's favorite weapon of mass distraction?

Even though you make a fine point or two, at this stage, you're actually adding to the whirling stupidity by indulging it it yourself, methinks.

I'm so very, very over Russiagate and it's non-existent tentacles. Pfft!

Grieved | Oct 3, 2017 2:49:24 PM | 4
Thanks, b.

You're presenting a very good concept/meme to understand: Fake news is click bait for gain.

The same can be said for any sensationalism or shocking event - like the Kurdish referendum, like the Catalonia referendum, like the Vegas shooting - or like confrontational or dogmatic comments in threads about those events.

Everywhere we turn someone is trying to game us for some kind of gain. What matters is to step back from the front lines where our sense is accosted and offended, to step back from the automatic reflex, and to remember that someone triggered that reflex, deliberately, for their gain, not ours.

We have to reside in reason and equanimity, because the moment we indulge in our righteous anger or our strong convictions, the odds are extremely good that someone is playing us.

It's a wicked world, but in fact we live in an age when we can see its meta characteristics like never before.

Anon | Oct 3, 2017 2:49:39 PM | 5
Jesus Christ, every friggin day we hear about Russians and then the next the lies falls apart, STILL the stupid dumb liberal media keep coming up with new conspiracies spread them as fact, and then try justify them even when they get debunked!
These people are indeed lunatic.

What we see is the biggest psyop., propaganda disinformation campaig ever in the western media, far more powerful than "nuclear Iraq" of 2003.
Still, and this should be a warning, majority of people in EU/US believe this nonsense.

the pair | Oct 3, 2017 3:07:19 PM | 6
$3 ads on facebook seen by nobody:

"russian meddling! their puppies hate our freedom!"

pharmaceutical ads on every evening news show and boeing/lockheed sponsoring the "p"bs news hour?"

"nothing to see here! take off your tin foil hat you f_cking alex jones putinbot!!!!"

you'd think by now most americans would realize the actual threat is other americans. the rest of the world realized it long ago.

sejomoje | Oct 3, 2017 3:08:47 PM | 7
I lol'd. But seriously the next step is a false flag implicating Russia. They're getting nowhere assassinating Russian diplomats and shooting down Russian aircraft, both military and civilian. Even overthrowing governments who are Russia-friendly hasn't seem to provoke a response.

But I consider the domestic Russia buzz to be performance art, and I imagine it's become even grating to some of its participants. How could it not be, unless everyone is heavily medicated(a lot certainly are)? Anyway it's by design that the western media and the political classes they serve need a script, they're incapable of discussing actual issues. Independence has been made quaint.

karlof1 | Oct 3, 2017 3:10:42 PM | 8
Hi Grieved--

I posted this link at the Vegas thread, but the item's contents are valid here too, and speaks to the content of your above comment, https://sputniknews.com/viral/201710031057912410-google-facebook-youtube-vegas-fake-news/

somebody | Oct 3, 2017 3:11:44 PM | 9
The line between politics and product marketing has gone.

But no matter if "the Russians" influenced the US election or not - after all that is what most countries do to each other - the FBI is correct that to be able to target audiences according to demographics and individual traits is a powerful tool.

Like the double hoax of " The War of Worlds broadcast ".

The newspapers had a clear agenda. An editorial in The New York Times, headlined In the Terror by Radio, was used to censure the relatively new medium of radio, which was becoming a serious competitor in providing news and advertising. "Radio is new but it has adult responsibilities. It has not mastered itself or the material it uses," said the editorial leader comment on November 1 1938. In an excellent piece in Slate magazine in 2013, Jefferson Pooley (associate professor of media and communication at Muhlenberg College) and Michael J Socolow (associate professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine) looked at the continuing popularity of the myth of mass panic and they took to task NPR's Radiolab programme about the incident and the Radiolab assertion that "The United States experienced a kind of mass hysteria that we've never seen before." Pooley and Socolow wrote: "How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame America's newspapers. ... AND IT'S NOT A GOOD IDEA TO COPY ORSON WELLES . . . In February 1949, Leonardo Paez and Eduardo Alcaraz produced a Spanish-language version of Welles's 1938 script for Radio Quito in Ecuador. The broadcast set off panic. Quito police and fire brigades rushed out of town to fight the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. The riot resulted in at least seven deaths, including those of Paez's girlfriend and nephew. The offices Radio Quito, and El Comercio, a local newspaper that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of unidentified flying objects in the days preceding the broadcast, were both burned to the ground.
ashley albanese | Oct 3, 2017 3:13:06 PM | 10
Jackrabbit 2
No - the two words the Capital system fears the most are SURPLUS VALUE , the control of the 'profit principle' for social not private ends .
Lea | Oct 3, 2017 3:42:35 PM | 11
Jesus Christ, every friggin day we hear about Russians and then the next the lies falls apart, STILL the stupid dumb liberal media keep coming up with new conspiracies spread them as fact, and then try justify them even when they get debunked!
These people are indeed lunatic.

The "Russiadunnit" thingy has turned into a business in the US. And when a new market is launched in the US, as people depend on it for their living and careers, it generally doesn't go away.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/28/the-slimy-business-of-russia-gate/

OJS | Oct 3, 2017 3:45:59 PM | 12
god bless amerika

somebody | Oct 3, 2017 3:11:44 PM | 9
The American panic was a myth, the Equadorian panic in 1949 not so much. I listened to this Radiolab podcast about same ... the details of how they pulled it off in a one-radio station country pre-internet are interesting and valuable (they widely advertised a very popular music program which was then "interrupted" by the hoax to ensure near-universal audience (including the police and other authorities). Very very fews were "in on the joke" and it wasn't a joke. whole page on WooW: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91622-war-of-the-worlds/

specific could it happen again? http://www.radiolab.org/story/91624-could-it-happen-again-and-again/

c1ue | Oct 3, 2017 3:58:38 PM | 14
Great article. I especially like the tactful way that modern clickbait farming is obliquely tied to the MSM business model. Facebook and Google have a lot to answer for.
Christian Chuba | Oct 3, 2017 3:58:49 PM | 15
Russian Trolls outed as kids from Oregon: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-latest-fake-news-panic-appears-to-be-fake-news-w506396
"Lankford shocked the world this week by revealing that "Russian Internet trolls" were stoking the NFL kneeling debate. ... Conservative outlets like Breitbart and Newsmax and Fox played up the "Russians stoked the kneeling controversy" angle because it was in their interest to suggest that domestic support for kneeling protests is less than what it appears....

The Post reported that Lankford's office had cited one of "Boston Antifa's" tweets. But the example offered read suspiciously like a young net-savvy American goofing on antifa stereotypes "More gender inclusivity with NFL fans and gluten free options at stadiums We're liking the new NFL #NewNFL #TakeAKnee #TakeTheKnee." ...

The group was most likely a pair of yahoos from Oregon named Alexis Esteb and Brandon Krebs. "

Christian Chuba | Oct 3, 2017 4:00:46 PM | 16
Pity Rolling Stone got caught up in that fake college rape allegation, they have actually done some solid reporting. Every MSM outlet has had multiple fake stories, so should RS be shunned for life for one bad story?
Kalen | Oct 3, 2017 4:03:18 PM | 17
It is time that sane part of independent media understood that there is no more need to rationally respond to psychotic delusions of Deep State puppets in Russia gate, since it is unnecessarily mentally exhausting and intellectually futile, it is namely pure provocation and as such it should be ignored and not proliferated even in its criticism making a fakes news a real news by sole fact of mentioning it on the respectable independent sites.

There are only two effective responses to provocation namely silence or violence, anything else plays the book of provocateurs.

Susan Sunflower | Oct 3, 2017 4:13:28 PM | 18
Now they're seriously undermining their claims of intentionality ... as well as their wildly inflated claims effect on outcome or even effective "undermining" ... again, compared to Citizens United and the long-count of 2000 ... negligible....

And still insisting that Hillary Clinton is Russia's Darth Vader against whom unlimited resources are marshalled because she must be stopped ... even though she damn near won... and the reasons she lost seems unrelated to such vagaries as the DNC e-mails or facebook campaigns (unless you believe she had a god-given right to each and every vote)

Don Bacon | Oct 3, 2017 4:13:47 PM | 19

Lucky for us that television "news" doesn't use this business model. /s
Pnyx | Oct 3, 2017 5:02:54 PM | 20
Why do you think this is important enough to make the effort to write another blog entry B? Everyone who wants to know that this is all fantasy knows by now.
Mina | Oct 3, 2017 5:05:12 PM | 21
https://mobile.twitter.com/dgaytandzhieva/status/913545591757697024
brian | Oct 3, 2017 5:09:39 PM | 22
'Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Trump.

This is the same US congress that regularly marches off to Israel to receive orders

https://www.amazon.com/They-Dare-Speak-Out-Institutions/dp/155652482X

those who dont obey orders: http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/how-i-got-fired/

Susan Sunflower | Oct 3, 2017 5:36:59 PM | 23
@ Posted by: Pnyx | Oct 3, 2017 5:02:54 PM | 20

This isn't about the "truth" (or lies) wrt Russian involvement, it's about the increasingly rapid failure of the Government/Establishment's narrative ...

Increasingly they can't even keep their accusations "alive" for more than a few days ... and some of their accusations (like the one here, that some "Russian" sites were created and not used, but to be held for use at some future date) become fairly ridiculous ... and the "remedy" to "Russians" creating clickbait sites for some future nefarious use, I think can only be banning all Russians from creating sites ... or maybe using facebook altogether ... all with no evidence of evil-doers actually doing evil...

It's rather like Jared Kushner's now THIRD previously undisclosed private e-mail account ... fool me once versus how disorganized/dumb/arrogant/crooked is this guy?

Lochearn | Oct 3, 2017 6:43:01 PM | 24
Sorry to be off topic but yesterday the Saker of the Vineyard published a couple of articles about Catalonia. The first was a diatribe, a nasty hatchet job on the Catalan people which included the following referring to the Catalan people:

"The Problems they have because with their corruption, inefficiency, mismanagement, inability and sometimes the simplest stupidity, are always the fault of others (read Spaniards here) which gives them "carte blanche" to keep going on with it."

"... They (the independistas) are NATIONAL SOCIALIST (aka NAZI) in their Ideology"

Then Saker published an article by Peter Koenig that was reasonable and what we have come to expect. Then he forbade all comments on either of the two articles. My comment was banned, which simply said in my opinion from working for fourteen years in Spain that the Catalans were extremely efficient in comparison with their Madrid counterparts.

ToivoS | Oct 3, 2017 7:32:04 PM | 25
I must admit that I became a fan of watching those Russian car crashes that were captured by the cams many russian drivers keep on their dash boards. Some of these were very funny. I was not aware that made me a victim of Putin propaganda. In any case, they are not that interesting anymore once they were commercialized. That was about 10 years ago.
Susan Sunflower | Oct 3, 2017 7:43:29 PM | 26
I'm waiting for the expose of the Russian mail-order bride business (Do they still exist?)
ab initio | Oct 3, 2017 8:29:04 PM | 27
Very good analysis.

The whole digital media and ad business that have built the Google and Facebook media juggernauts is all a giant scam. Smart advertisers like P&G are recognizing it for what it is and will slowly pullback. It is only a matter of time before others catch on and these companies will bleed ad revenues.

ben | Oct 3, 2017 8:30:46 PM | 28
Jackrabbit @ 2: Yep!!

And here is another part to the puzzle:

http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19516:Empire-Files%3A-The-Hidden-Purging-of-Millions-of-Voters

Chipnik | Oct 3, 2017 8:42:54 PM | 29
Your answer can be found ...right ...here:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yc7kskox
james | Oct 3, 2017 8:44:05 PM | 30
OT - more from comedy central - daily USA press briefing from today...

"QUESTION: On Iran, would you and the State Department say, as Secretary Mattis said today, that staying in the JCPOA would be in the U.S. national interest?

MS NAUERT: Yeah.

QUESTION: Is this a position you share?

MS NAUERT: So I'm certainly familiar with what Secretary Mattis said on Capitol Hill today. Secretary Mattis, of course, one of many people who is providing expertise and counsel to the President on the issue of Iran and the JCPOA. The President is getting lots of information on that. We have about 12 days or so, I think, to make our determination for the next JCPOA guideline.

The administration looks at JCPOA as – the fault in the JCPOA as not looking at the totality of Iran's bad behavior. Secretary Tillerson talked about that at length at the UN General Assembly. So did the President as well. We know that Iran is responsible for terror attacks. We know that Iran arms the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which leads to a more miserable failed state, awful situation in Yemen, for example. We know what they're doing in Syria. Where you find the Iranian Government, you can often find terrible things happening in the world. This administration is very clear about highlighting that and will look at Iran in sort of its totality of all of its bad behaviors, not just the nuclear deal.

I don't want to get ahead of the discussions that are ongoing with this – within the administration, as it pertains to Iran. The President has said he's made he's decision, and so I don't want to speak on behalf of the President, and he'll just have to make that determination when he's ready to do so."

https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2017/10/274592.htm

[Oct 03, 2017] Are You Ready to Die by Paul Craig Roberts

Notable quotes:
"... Greenwald explains that the US media is so conditioned by the National Security State to see Russian President Putin lurking behind and masterminding attacks on America that it is "now religious dogma" -- a requirement -- to find Russian perfidy everywhere. The result Greenwald correctly says is that "an incredibly reckless, anything-goes climate prevails when it comes to claims about Russia. Media outlets will publish literally any official assertion as Truth without the slightest regard for evidentiary standards." ..."
"... In other words, the United States no longer has a media . It has a propaganda ministry for the military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Israel Lobby. And the idiot Americans sit in front of the TV and absorb the propaganda, and they read the New York Times and think that they are sophisticated and in the know. ..."
"... Russia knows that Washington knows that the accusations against Russia are false. ..."
"... This is a serious question, not only for Russia but for the entire world. All previous false accusations from the Clinton regime criminals, the Bush/Cheney regime criminals, and the Obama regime criminals ended in military attacks on the falsely demonized targets. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea would be within reason to wonder if the false news propaganda attack on them is a prelude to military attack. ..."
"... What is the point of US security agencies such as Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA constantly filling the propaganda machine known as the American Media with lies about Russia? Russia must wonder as well. Russia knows that they are lies. Russia knows that it does no good to refute the lies because the West has a Propaganda Ministry instead of a media. Russia knows that Washington told lies about the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad, Iran. What does Russia conclude from the constant stream of lies about Russia that flow out of Washington and are presented as truth by the Western presstitutes? ..."
"... I have written many times that provoking nuclear powers such as Russia and China is the most extreme form of recklessness and irresponsibility. ..."
Oct 02, 2017 | www.unz.com

Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept exposes the fake news put out by the US Department of Homeland Security (an euphemistic name for a Big Brother operation that spies on US citizens) that Russia hacked 21 US state elections, news that was instantly spread around the world by the presstitute media. The propagandists running Homeland Security were contradicted by the state governments, forcing Homeland Security to retract its fake news claims. https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia-story-falls-apart-is-skepticism-permissible-yet/

The unasked/unanswered question is why did Homeland Security put out a FAKE NEWS story?

Greenwald explains that the US media is so conditioned by the National Security State to see Russian President Putin lurking behind and masterminding attacks on America that it is "now religious dogma" -- a requirement -- to find Russian perfidy everywhere. The result Greenwald correctly says is that "an incredibly reckless, anything-goes climate prevails when it comes to claims about Russia. Media outlets will publish literally any official assertion as Truth without the slightest regard for evidentiary standards."

In other words, the United States no longer has a media . It has a propaganda ministry for the military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Israel Lobby. And the idiot Americans sit in front of the TV and absorb the propaganda, and they read the New York Times and think that they are sophisticated and in the know.

What Greenwald doesn't address is the effect of the massive amount of fake news on Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Russia knows that Washington knows that the accusations against Russia are false. So why is Washington making false accusations against Russia?

This is a serious question, not only for Russia but for the entire world. All previous false accusations from the Clinton regime criminals, the Bush/Cheney regime criminals, and the Obama regime criminals ended in military attacks on the falsely demonized targets. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea would be within reason to wonder if the false news propaganda attack on them is a prelude to military attack.

Iran and North Korea cannot attack the US and its European vassals, but Russia and China can. I have written about the Operational Command of the Russian armed forces conclusion that Washington is preparing a surprise nuclear attack on Russia. Instead of reassuring the Russians that no such planning is in the works, Washington has instead pushed further the fake news Russiagate story with the false report that Russia had hacked the elections of 21 states.

What is the point of US security agencies such as Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA constantly filling the propaganda machine known as the American Media with lies about Russia? Russia must wonder as well. Russia knows that they are lies. Russia knows that it does no good to refute the lies because the West has a Propaganda Ministry instead of a media. Russia knows that Washington told lies about the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad, Iran. What does Russia conclude from the constant stream of lies about Russia that flow out of Washington and are presented as truth by the Western presstitutes?

If you were the Russian government, would you conclude that your country was the next to be attacked militarily by Washington? If you were the Russian government, you would know that Washington/NATO cannot possibly attack Russia except by surprise nuclear strike. Knowing this, if you were the Russian government, would you sit there and wait on the strike? Imagine yourself the Russian government listening day in, day out, to endless wild improbable charges against Russia. What can Russia possibly conclude other than this is preparation of Western peoples for a nuclear attack on Russia?

Russia is not going to be hung like Saddan Hussein or murdered like Gaddafi.

I have written many times that provoking nuclear powers such as Russia and China is the most extreme form of recklessness and irresponsibility. The crazed morons in Washington are risking the life of the planet. The presstitutes are worse than the whores that they are. They never question the path to war; they only amplify it. Washington's craven, cowardly, moronic vassal states in UK, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, and the rest of the EU/NATO idiots are, by their cooperation with Washington, begging for their own destruction.

Nowhere in the West is there a sign of intelligence.

Will Washington follow Adolf Hitler's folly and march into Russia?

[Oct 02, 2017] John Helmer Washington Post Misses Manafort's Real Crimes

Notable quotes:
"... For the next three years, the court papers claim, Deripaska tried to get Manafort to provide accounting reports of what he had done with the money, but received nothing. "The Petitioner has not been provided with these audit reports nor is it aware whether any further audits were performed in respect of the Partnership." There is no trace or sign in these records, or in the New York Times excerpts of the Cyprus cutout loan accounts, that any Ukrainian asset had been purchased. If Deripaska's court claim is to be believed, Manafort had legged it with the cash – Deripaska had been hustled. ..."
"... The years 2008 and 2009 turned out to go badly for Deripaska in the US, particularly as he had set his heart on a German and Russian Government-financed buyout of General Motors' Opel car division. ..."
Sep 25, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

The second half of 2008 was a very bad time for Deripaska, as the Russian aluminium and other businesses on which he depended, collapsed into insolvency with accumulated debts at one point of about $20 billion. Deripaska told the Cayman Island court: "By mid-summer 2008, there were clear indications of the oncoming world financial crisis, and at this time the Petitioner was the only limited partner in the Partnership which had made only one investment (BSC [Black Sea Cable]). In September 2008 the Petitioner [Deripaska] informed the GP [Manafort] that it was suspending further investment into the Partnership."

For the next three years, the court papers claim, Deripaska tried to get Manafort to provide accounting reports of what he had done with the money, but received nothing. "The Petitioner has not been provided with these audit reports nor is it aware whether any further audits were performed in respect of the Partnership." There is no trace or sign in these records, or in the New York Times excerpts of the Cyprus cutout loan accounts, that any Ukrainian asset had been purchased. If Deripaska's court claim is to be believed, Manafort had legged it with the cash – Deripaska had been hustled.

A few weeks ago Kurochkina refused to tell the New York Times whether Deripaska is continuing to pursue Manafort's $18 million debt. That newspaper claimed "Mr. Deripaska appears to have stopped pursuing his court action against Mr. Manafort and his former investment partners, Rick Gates and Rick Davis, in late 2015." The newspaper reporters didn't ask, and Kurochkina didn't explain, what services Manafort had invoiced Deripaska for which $7.3 million was paid out. Noone has asked Deripaska whether he thinks Manafort kept the money for himself.

The years 2008 and 2009 turned out to go badly for Deripaska in the US, particularly as he had set his heart on a German and Russian Government-financed buyout of General Motors' Opel car division. The lobbying in Washington which Deripaska paid for, as well his reason to believe then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supported his Opel deal, were reported here . But Clinton, the US Treasury and other Obama Administration officials broke their word, and cancelled the Opel sale. If Deripaska had been content to leave Manafort holding $26,288,400 of the Russian oligarch's cash through the 2008 crisis and the General Motors negotiations in 2009, his patience had run out by November 2009, when the cancellation of the Opel sale became public.

On November 5, 2009, then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced after his cabinet ministers had discussed the Opel deal, "it shows that our American partners have a very original culture when dealing with counterparties. We will have to take into account this style of dealing with partners in the future, though this scornful approach toward partners mainly affects the Europeans, not us. GM did not warn anyone, did not speak to anyone despite all the agreements reached and documents signed. Well, I think it is a good lesson."

These days, according to the media leaks, US Government investigators of Manafort are pursuing a different lesson. This is that Manafort took Deripaska's money for the purpose of subverting the US presidential election of 2016. The court evidence indicates that Manafort was paid for Ukrainian assets which didn't materialize, and kept the money for himself through a period when the US government first decided to sell a multi-billion dollar part of then-bankrupt General Motors to Derripaska, and then, quite suddenly, decided not to.

Watt4Bob , September 25, 2017 at 10:43 am

Considering the following, (follow the link) that stretch thingie starts making more and more sense.

The lobbying in Washington which Deripaska paid for, as well his reason to believe then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supported his Opel deal, were reported here . But Clinton, the US Treasury and other Obama Administration officials broke their word, and cancelled the Opel sale.

From the linked article;

When Hillary Clinton (lead, left) was US Secretary of State in 2009, she proved she could lie to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel; keep secret her hostility towards Russia even in her secret staff emails; and take money in her back pocket for an $8 billion deal between the US, Germany and Russia recommended by her subordinates. The record, recently revealed in US investigations of Clinton's emails and donations to the Clinton Foundation, shows why the Kremlin assessment of Clinton is hostile and blunt – Clinton invites and takes bribes, but can't be relied on to keep her bargains

A lot of people remember being screw*d out of a $million, even 5 or 10 years after the fact.

Watt4Bob , September 25, 2017 at 10:56 am

The way I read this post, and the embedded history of Hillary's double-cross of Deripaska, is that there is an unstated agreement among our current ruling class, that it's ok to double-cross and provoke Russia/Russians for profit, but not to make actual deals because that would be collaboration at least, and maybe treason.

justanotherprogressive , September 25, 2017 at 11:04 am

Or maybe the US's "elite" don't consider the Russian oligarchs "sophisticated" and are therefore ripe for plucking. After all, "it's just business"!

doug , September 25, 2017 at 11:10 am

The US Elite don't consider any of us 'sophisticated', and therefore ripe for the picking.

Fool , September 25, 2017 at 1:21 pm

I thought these Russian bad boys played a more brass knuckled style of business. How does one steal $19 million from Deripaska and get away with it?

Barry Fay , September 27, 2017 at 2:10 pm

I thought the same thing. Does Manafort have stock in Blackwater or what? The blithe narration of unmitigated corruption says all one needs to know of the times we live in.

shinola , September 25, 2017 at 1:23 pm

Apparently, the Russians still believed in that old saw about "honor among thieves".

Suckers!

St Jacques , September 27, 2017 at 5:33 am

Probably makes sense in Russia, where a lack of honour can soon turn you into bear meat.

[Oct 02, 2017] US Congressman says Julian Assange has absolute proof Russia did not meddle in US elections (Video)

Oct 02, 2017 | theduran.com

US Congressman says Julian Assange "has absolute proof" Russia did not meddle in US elections (Video) Julian Assange can prove hacks were not by Russia with 100% certainty.

by Alex Christoforou October 2, 2017, 11:50 1.2k Views Comments

[Oct 01, 2017] Republican civil war looms as Steve Bannon takes aim at the establishment

Notable quotes:
"... Bardella said Bannon had helped villainise McConnell, making him a toxic symbol of the Republican establishment and an albatross around the necks of vulnerable Republicans such as Jeff Flake of Arizona and Dean Heller of Nevada. A seat in Tennessee following Senator Bob Corker's announcement that he would not seek re-election in 2018 could also be a target. ..."
"... Among the "establishment" donors likely to oppose Bannon in a series of running battles are the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Bannon himself has admitted there is not "a deep bench" of viable candidates to represent his agenda. ..."
"... "The floodgates are open. You'll see a lot of this, one after another, and Steve Bannon's going to be at the centre of it. He's one for one. It'll be a civil war; it has been for quite some time." ..."
"... Andrew Surabian, a political strategist who worked under Bannon at the White House, told USA Today: "Bannon is plotting a strategy to launch an all-out assault on the Republican establishment. I think it's fair to say that if you're tied to Mitch McConnell, any of his henchmen in the consulting class, or were a Never-Trumper during the campaign, you're not safe from a primary challenge." ..."
"... Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino and Ben Jacobs ..."
Oct 01, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

Already Bannon is touring the country and meeting with candidates who will carry forward such an agenda. He told the Bloomberg agency: "The populist-nationalist movement proved in Alabama that a candidate with the right ideas and a grassroots organization can win big. Now, our focus is on recruiting candidates to take over the Republican party."

The election eve rally in Alabama was a reunion of sorts of those in Bannon's political orbit. Two potential candidates, Chris McDaniel of Mississippi and Mark Green of Tennessee, attended along with Paul Nehlen, a primary challenger last year to the House speaker, Paul Ryan, whose campaign was heavily promoted by Breitbart.

McDaniel described Moore's win as "incredibly inspiring" for his own challenge to Senator Roger Wicker in 2018. "We know Mitch McConnell was rejected tonight and Roger Wicker is just another part of Mitch McConnell's leadership apparatus," McDaniel told the Associated Press.

"We supported Donald Trump because he was an agent of change, and he's still an agent of change. In this instance, he must have been given bad advice to retain this particular swamp creature."

On Thursday, Bannon spent two hours with Tom Tancredo, who worked on Nehlan's behalf and is considering a run for Colorado governor next year. Tancredo, a former congressman, told the Guardian: "He was encouraged by what happened in Alabama and was certainly hoping he can replicate it.

"He's trying to establish an awareness of the fact the Republican party should be standing for the values he and others have tried to articulate over the years. It's a hugely difficult undertaking when you consider the power of the establishment and the swamp. He just kept reiterating: 'I need to try to save the country.'"

Asked about the prospect of a Republican civil war, Tancredo replied: "A good philosophic blood letting is not necessarily a bad thing."

... ... ...

Bardella said Bannon had helped villainise McConnell, making him a toxic symbol of the Republican establishment and an albatross around the necks of vulnerable Republicans such as Jeff Flake of Arizona and Dean Heller of Nevada. A seat in Tennessee following Senator Bob Corker's announcement that he would not seek re-election in 2018 could also be a target.

"Every dollar that is spent on a candidate by Mitch McConnell and the Republican party is a dollar spent against them," Bardella added. "And that's because it plays right into the theme that they're bought and paid for by the establishment."

Among the "establishment" donors likely to oppose Bannon in a series of running battles are the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Bannon himself has admitted there is not "a deep bench" of viable candidates to represent his agenda.

But he can expect at least tacit backing from Trump, who was said to be furious about having backed the wrong horse in Alabama: the president even deleted three tweets that endorsed Strange. Bannon also has powerful benefactors in the shape of the billionaire hedge fund investor Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer. The New York Times reported that Bannon and Robert Mercer began working out a rough outline for a "shadow party" that would advance Trump's nationalist agenda during a five-hour meeting last month at the family's Long Island estate.

Bannon has also been consulting with Henry Kissinger and other foreign policy veterans, Bloomberg reported, and is preparing make the threat posed by China a central cause. "If we don't get our situation sorted with China, we'll be destroyed economically," he said.

Rick Tyler, a political analyst and former campaign spokesman for the Texas senator Ted Cruz, said: "Roy Moore has demonstrated that the establishment and all its money can be beaten. You can only spend so much money in Alabama before it becomes irritating: you can only stuff so much in people's mailboxes or run so many ads on TV.

"The floodgates are open. You'll see a lot of this, one after another, and Steve Bannon's going to be at the centre of it. He's one for one. It'll be a civil war; it has been for quite some time."

Republican memories are still raw from 2014, when the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, was beaten in a primary contest by Dave Brat, a little-known professor backed by the Tea Party. But Bannon could make the establishment versus Tea Party battle look like a mere skirmish.

Andrew Surabian, a political strategist who worked under Bannon at the White House, told USA Today: "Bannon is plotting a strategy to launch an all-out assault on the Republican establishment. I think it's fair to say that if you're tied to Mitch McConnell, any of his henchmen in the consulting class, or were a Never-Trumper during the campaign, you're not safe from a primary challenge."

Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino and Ben Jacobs

[Oct 01, 2017] Tea Party Patriots against Neoliberalism by Bhaskar Sunkara

Notable quotes:
"... The Tea Party recognizes that "one of the primary sort of marks of the triumph of neoliberalism in the US is a very high tolerance of illegal immigration, and that illegal immigration is the kind of one plus ultra of the labor mobility that neoliberalism requires." The rise of illegal immigration represents a new form of capitalism, as opposed to the old "meritorious" capitalism of the post-war period. When right-wing ideologues attack "communism," the argument goes, they are actually conceptualizing neoliberalism. ..."
"... Michaels concedes that the Tea Party is a disproportionately upper middle class movement, but argues that even segments of the top twenty percentile of Americans by income have been hit hard in recent decades. ..."
"... The top one percent have been the big winners of the neoliberal era, while the other 19 percent in that bracket anxiously see their position falter in comparison. ..."
"... people in the Tea Party movement have a problem that is realer than "White male status anxiety," that the economic shifts that are taking place, the more and more extreme inequality, the more and more going to the top, no doubt some people may be unhappy because of loss of status, but many millions more are going to be unhappy because of the loss of actual money. ..."
Oct 01, 2017 | www.jacobinmag.com

Ideas spread in all sorts of directions. I've heard Christian right "intellectuals" haphazardly invoke Gramsci and counter-hegemony and I myself have spent more of my youth than I'm willing to admit reading back issues of National Review . It's probably less of a stretch that some Tea Partiers have favorably nodded toward the ideas on their movement that our friend Walter Benn Michaels expresses in his interview in the inaugural Jacobin .

Here's my summary of Michaels's argument on the Tea Party and immigration, which brings up the question, a question that shouldn't really be a question at all, about the left and open borders. (My thoughts on the over-hyped and over-exposed Tea Party can be found over at New Politics .)

Michaels identifies the Tea Party as a reaction against neoliberalism. He doesn't view the challenge as a serious one, but also stresses that the movement, "is not simply a reaction against neoliberalism from the old racist right." Michaels contests the American left's desire to summarily reduce the Tea Party to racists: "They're thrilled when some Nazis come out and say 'Yeah, we support the Tea Party' or some member of the Tea Party says something racist, which is frequently enough." Michaels finds the subversive content of their political program in an opposition to illegal immigration.

The Tea Party recognizes that "one of the primary sort of marks of the triumph of neoliberalism in the US is a very high tolerance of illegal immigration, and that illegal immigration is the kind of one plus ultra of the labor mobility that neoliberalism requires." The rise of illegal immigration represents a new form of capitalism, as opposed to the old "meritorious" capitalism of the post-war period. When right-wing ideologues attack "communism," the argument goes, they are actually conceptualizing neoliberalism.

Michaels concedes that the Tea Party is a disproportionately upper middle class movement, but argues that even segments of the top twenty percentile of Americans by income have been hit hard in recent decades.

The top one percent have been the big winners of the neoliberal era, while the other 19 percent in that bracket anxiously see their position falter in comparison. Responding to those who place the roots of this angst in the growing diversification of the elite, Michaels says:

. . . people in the Tea Party movement have a problem that is realer than "White male status anxiety," that the economic shifts that are taking place, the more and more extreme inequality, the more and more going to the top, no doubt some people may be unhappy because of loss of status, but many millions more are going to be unhappy because of the loss of actual money. So my point isn't really to deny the phenomenon of status anxiety, it's just to point out the extraordinary eagerness of American liberals to identify racism as the problem, so that anti-racism (rather than anti-capitalism) can be the solution.

Michaels's conclusion is, in sum, that students of Friedrich Hayek and exalters of Ayn Rand are the most visible source of resistance to neoliberalism on the American scene. Such a view, I believe, is as contradictory as it appears...

Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin .

[Oct 01, 2017] Google rumored to replace 2-factor with 'Advanced Protection' keys

www.theguardian.com

Last year's DNC hack that took over via the Gmail account of campaign chairman John Podesta provided a clear example of how important added protections are, but many people don't take advantage because they can seem complicated to setup. Just a few months many users were bombarded with a Google Drive-hosted phishing attack, and that won't be the last one.

[Oct 01, 2017] Podesta emails showed Facebook colluded with Clinton, Assange reminds

Sep 29, 2017 | www.legitgov.org

Originally from Podesta emails showed Facebook colluded with Clinton, Assange reminds | 29 Sept 2017

As US lawmakers demand social media companies show how their platforms were allegedly used by Russia to meddle in the 2016 election, WikiLeaks co-founder tweeted emails that show Facebook executives in direct communication with one candidate's team.

Beginning on October 7 last year, WikiLeaks published hundreds of emails from the private account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. The daily drops continued for a couple days after the November 8 election.

On Thursday, as US media were speculating about "Russian" meddling on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, Julian Assange tweeted some of the Podesta emails with a reminder that the social network's leading lights were Clinton fans.

[Oct 01, 2017] The Bombs Are Still Falling - MSNBC Urges Government Censorship Of Social Media To Protect Democracy

An interesting slide of opinions in this comment thread. Nobody mentions the term McCarthyism though.
Oct 01, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

The segment started off with Geist introducing the latest reporting on the topic:

GEIST: Twitter says it has shut down more than two-hundred accounts that were tied to the same Russian operatives who bought political ads on Facebook. Of the 450 accounts released by Facebook as part of its investigation, Twitter was able to match 22 of them to its own site. The disclosure by Twitter followed a briefing by company officials to staffers of the Senate and House Intel committees yesterday. Following that meeting, the top Democrat on the Senate committee, Mark Warner, slammed Twitter for its presentation.

SEN. MARK WARNER [D-VA]: [playing clip] The presentation that the Twitter team made to the Senate Intel staff today was deeply disappointing. The notion that their work was basically derivative based upon accounts that Facebook had identified showed enormous lack of understanding from the Twitter team of how serious this issue is, the threat it poses to democratic institutions, and, again, begs many more questions than they offered.

(...)

GEIST: The top Democrat on the House Intel Committee, Adam Schiff, also weighed in on Twitters briefing to his committee, releasing a statement that read, in part: "... it is clear that Twitter has significant forensic work to do to understand the depth and breadth of Russian activity during the campaign. This additional analysis will require far more robust investigation into how Russian actors used their platform as a part of their active measures campaign..."

Without any perceptible degree of skepticism about the Democratic Congressmen's claims, Geist then teed up Nicolle Wallace, host of the MSNBC afternoon show Deadline: White House , to talk about social media and the 2016 election more generally:

GEIST: You do get the sense, Nicolle, that Facebook, Twitter, social media was totally clueless about what was happening on their sites during the 2016 campaign.

WALLACE: It's worse than that [...]. The social media companies are sort of like the worst stereotype of a Republican political organization. They're reactive, theyre opaque, they're defensive, they are very slow to understand the value of transparency. They're totally lawyered up, lobbied up. And they are as a culture, the hubris of thinking that they're all about the public good, when if you take a low-tech analogy, its basically like someone got mugged in your backyard and their position is: well, it's not our problem, I mean, we just bought the lot on which the house was built, not our problem.

Giant Meteor , Sep 30, 2017 7:01 PM

Lordy, it's a cookbook !

overbet -> Giant Meteor , Sep 30, 2017 7:06 PM

How about $10m fine for citing anonymous sources.

AlaricBalth -> overbet , Sep 30, 2017 7:30 PM

The MSM does not report news. They provide entertainment for their demographic base of couch riding spectators. Controversy, salaciousness and division increase the amount of eyeballs, which allow these channels of distraction to charge exorbitant fees to advertisers who are selling crap most don't need or want. It's all just "chewing gum" for the eyes.

AtATrESICI -> AlaricBalth , Sep 30, 2017 7:37 PM

But, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. OMG! What happened?

This shit is a sad fucking joke...

AtATrESICI -> AtATrESICI , Sep 30, 2017 7:51 PM

One more thing. Folks that are Russian hack the election people, believe the .gov story on 911 to the letter. That does not wash with me.

Paul Kersey -> AlaricBalth , Sep 30, 2017 7:41 PM

"This isn't new, this is the Kremlin playbook. They have been exacerbating racial tensions in the US [for years]... "

So it's the Russians that have caused racial tensions in the U.S., who knew? Racial voting patterns in this country are almost the same today as they were before the Civil War. In any Presidential election, for instance, 95% of blacks vote Democrat, regardless of who is running, and over 80% of Christian Fundamentalists vote Republican, regardless of who is running.

During this last Presidential election, if you flipped the State of Virginia with the State of Pennsylvania, the election turned on the Mason-Dixon line. Unless the Russians can be blamed for the racism this nation was born into, it's probably absurd to blame today's racial tensions on them.

Skeero , Sep 30, 2017 7:04 PM

"Black Lives Matter and targeting, specifically, ethnic groups [...] and allowing people to target, not only for Russian influence, but also target housing ads, employment ads."

Shame on them for trying to get people to get a job!

Blankone , Sep 30, 2017 7:07 PM

How long until they declare antifa is a Russian sponsored terrorist org.? I know it is not time yet but once the violence of antifa generates general rejection by the middle class due to fear - perhaps then they will throw them under the bus. And use antifa as justification for oppressive policies/laws.

Dickweed Wang , Sep 30, 2017 7:11 PM

Who the fuck watches shit like this anyway?

AriusArmenian , Sep 30, 2017 7:41 PM

Instead of America taking responsibility for its racial tensions it tries to find some foreign demon to make responsible.

Everything negative in America is now the fault of Russia, Iran, or others.

Very convenient.

Just destroy Russia, Iran, etc., then America will be perfect.

Destroy the world and everything will then be perfect.

If this is what is operating in the American unconscious psyche then the world is screwed.

xrxs , Sep 30, 2017 7:42 PM

Thinking about Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent really opened my eyes to what democratization of the media could do. Why are we having this conversation about 2016, and not 2008 or 2012? I have a number of theories about this. I think the endgame here is to create a Great Firewall for major social media platforms to keep people from finding out certain truths (I think you won't be hearing from Wikileaks, for example). It's a dark time, and I'm sad we're here.

GreatUncle , Sep 30, 2017 7:44 PM

Yaaaaaaaaawwwwwwn ... I don't do social media full stop.

So any government control mechanism actually fails and if anything with all the proactive advertising, fake news and now mostly junk content I know people who are dumping it prefering alternative forms of communication ... like talking to real people.

I never knew ... me dear old mum well retired now curses google and facebook with all the shit they come out with.

Mwhahahahaha ... it's spreading.

To the point just refuse to talk to people who use social media, let them keep their dumbed down universe to themselves.

Hikikomori , Sep 30, 2017 7:47 PM

Clearly, we have to destroy our democracy to save it.

TomGa , Sep 30, 2017 7:52 PM

MSNBC is a network of wackos. So are the ideas they promote as well as the usual suspects they interview. No one takes this network or the nonsense they spew seriously.

Disgruntled Goat , Sep 30, 2017 8:01 PM

Sure, lets invent another huge government bureaucracy in order to maintain the monopoly of a dying, legacy media dinosaur !!!!

Through censorship no less

Its fucking both pathetic and laughable.... the MSM is a Dead Media Walking....

You think Bezos wanted to buy WaPo to enhance its journalistic character? No fucking chance... he took it over in order to save a mouthpiece of the elite that was ready to go TU..... for a huge Qid Pro Quo I might add ( to wit, you may recall that shortly after Bezos took over WaPo, Amazon was suddenly given the ok to accept EBT, with not a peep of protest or a question from Congress. So now, we have welfare queens ordering online and getting wildly expensive Amazon Fresh deliveries IN THE FUCKING GHETTO.... ISNT THIS COUNTRY GREAT !!!!)

What cannot be controlled or co-opted by these fucks must somehow be "regulated" or eliminated.

WELL FUCK THAT!!! Keep stacking pms, lead and brass

[Sep 30, 2017] Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet by Glenn Greenwald

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... But what it does demonstrate is that an incredibly reckless, anything-goes climate prevails when it comes to claims about Russia. Media outlets will publish literally any official assertion as Truth without the slightest regard for evidentiary standards. ..."
"... Seeing Putin lurking behind and masterminding every western problem is now religious dogma – it explains otherwise-confounding developments, provides certainty to a complex world, and alleviates numerous factions of responsibility – so media outlets and their journalists are lavishly rewarded any time they publish accusatory stories about Russia (especially ones involving the U.S. election), even if they end up being debunked. ..."
"... A highly touted story yesterday from the New York Times – claiming that Russians used Twitter more widely known than before to manipulate U.S. politics – demonstrates this recklessness. The story is based on the claims of a new group formed just two months ago by a union of neocons and Democratic national security officials, led by long-time liars and propagandists such as Bill Kristol, former acting CIA chief Mike Morell, and Bush Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff. I reported on the founding of this group, calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy, when it was unveiled (this is not to be confused with the latest new Russia group unveiled last week by Rob Reiner and David Frum and featuring a different former national security state official (former DNI James Clapper) – calling itself InvestigateRussia.org – featuring a video declaring that the U.S. is now "at war with Russia"). ..."
"... The Kristol/Morell/Chertoff group on which the Times based its article has a very simple tactic: they secretly decide which Twitter accounts are "Russia bots," meaning accounts that disseminate an "anti-American message" and are controlled by the Kremlin. They refuse to tell anyone which Twitter accounts they decided are Kremlin-loyal, nor will they identify their methodology for creating their lists or determining what constitutes "anti-Americanism." ..."
"... That's how the Russia narrative is constantly "reported," and it's the reason so many of the biggest stories have embarrassingly collapsed. It's because the Russia story of 2017 – not unlike the Iraq discourse of 2002 – is now driven by religious-like faith rather than rational faculties. ..."
"... No questioning of official claims is allowed. The evidentiary threshold which an assertion must overcome before being accepted is so low as to be non-existent. ..."
"... Regardless of your views on Russia, Trump and the rest, nobody can possibly regard this climate as healthy. ..."
Sep 28, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Last Friday, most major media outlets touted a major story about Russian attempts to hack into U.S. voting systems, based exclusively on claims made by the Department of Homeland Security. "Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states in the run-up to last year's presidential election, officials said Friday," began the USA Today story, similar to how most other outlets presented this extraordinary claim.

This official story was explosive for obvious reasons, and predictably triggered instant decrees – that of course went viral – declaring that the legitimacy of the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election is now in doubt.

Virginia's Democratic Congressman Don Beyer, referring to the 21 targeted states, announced that this shows "Russia tried to hack their election":

MSNBC's Paul Revere for all matters relating to the Kremlin take-over, Rachel Maddow, was indignant that this wasn't told to us earlier and that we still aren't getting all the details. "What we have now figured out," Maddow gravely intoned as she showed the multi-colored maps she made, is that "Homeland Security knew at least by June that 21 states had been targeted by Russian hackers during the election. . .targeting their election infrastructure."

They were one small step away from demanding that the election results be nullified, indulging the sentiment expressed by #Resistance icon Carl Reiner the other day: "Is there anything more exciting that [sic] the possibility of Trump's election being invalidated & Hillary rightfully installed as our President?"

So what was wrong with this story? Just one small thing: it was false. The story began to fall apart yesterday when Associated Press reported that Wisconsin – one of the states included in the original report that, for obvious reasons, caused the most excitement – did not, in fact, have its election systems targeted by Russian hackers:

The spokesman for Homeland Security then tried to walk back that reversal, insisting that there was still evidence that some computer networks had been targeted, but could not say that they had anything to do with elections or voting. And, as AP noted: "Wisconsin's chief elections administrator, Michael Haas, had repeatedly said that Homeland Security assured the state it had not been targeted."

Then the story collapsed completely last night. The Secretary of State for another one of the named states, California, issued a scathing statement repudiating the claimed report:

Sometimes stories end up debunked. There's nothing particularly shocking about that. If this were an isolated incident, one could chalk it up to basic human error that has no broader meaning.

But this is no isolated incident. Quite the contrary: this has happened over and over and over again. Inflammatory claims about Russia get mindlessly hyped by media outlets, almost always based on nothing more than evidence-free claims from government officials, only to collapse under the slightest scrutiny, because they are entirely lacking in evidence.

The examples of such debacles when it comes to claims about Russia are too numerous to comprehensively chronicle. I wrote about this phenomenon many times and listed many of the examples, the last time in June when 3 CNN journalists "resigned" over a completely false story linking Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci to investigations into a Russian investment fund which the network was forced to retract:

Remember that time the Washington Post claimed that Russia had hacked the U.S. electricity grid, causing politicians to denounce Putin for trying to deny heat to Americans in winter, only to have to issue multiple retractions because none of that ever happened? Or the time that the Post had to publish a massive editor's note after its reporters made claims about Russian infiltration of the internet and spreading of "Fake News" based on an anonymous group's McCarthyite blacklist that counted sites like the Drudge Report and various left-wing outlets as Kremlin agents?

Or that time when Slate claimed that Trump had created a secret server with a Russian bank, all based on evidence that every other media outlet which looked at it were too embarrassed to get near? Or the time the Guardian was forced to retract its report by Ben Jacobs – which went viral – that casually asserted that WikiLeaks has a long relationship with the Kremlin? Or the time that Fortune retracted suggestions that RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN's network? And then there's the huge market that was created – led by leading Democrats – that blindly ingested every conspiratorial, unhinged claim about Russia churned out by an army of crazed conspiracists such as Louise Mensch and Claude "TrueFactsStated" Taylor?

And now we have the Russia-hacked-the-voting-systems-of-21-states to add to this trash heap. Each time the stories go viral; each time they further shape the narrative; each time those who spread them say little to nothing when it is debunked.

None of this means that every Russia claim is false, nor does it disprove the accusation that Putin ordered the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta's email inboxes (a claim for which, just by the way, still no evidence has been presented by the U.S. government). Perhaps there were some states that were targeted, even though the key claims of this story, that attracted the most attention, have now been repudiated.

But what it does demonstrate is that an incredibly reckless, anything-goes climate prevails when it comes to claims about Russia. Media outlets will publish literally any official assertion as Truth without the slightest regard for evidentiary standards.

Seeing Putin lurking behind and masterminding every western problem is now religious dogma – it explains otherwise-confounding developments, provides certainty to a complex world, and alleviates numerous factions of responsibility – so media outlets and their journalists are lavishly rewarded any time they publish accusatory stories about Russia (especially ones involving the U.S. election), even if they end up being debunked.

A highly touted story yesterday from the New York Times – claiming that Russians used Twitter more widely known than before to manipulate U.S. politics – demonstrates this recklessness. The story is based on the claims of a new group formed just two months ago by a union of neocons and Democratic national security officials, led by long-time liars and propagandists such as Bill Kristol, former acting CIA chief Mike Morell, and Bush Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff. I reported on the founding of this group, calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy, when it was unveiled (this is not to be confused with the latest new Russia group unveiled last week by Rob Reiner and David Frum and featuring a different former national security state official (former DNI James Clapper) – calling itself InvestigateRussia.org – featuring a video declaring that the U.S. is now "at war with Russia").

The Kristol/Morell/Chertoff group on which the Times based its article has a very simple tactic: they secretly decide which Twitter accounts are "Russia bots," meaning accounts that disseminate an "anti-American message" and are controlled by the Kremlin. They refuse to tell anyone which Twitter accounts they decided are Kremlin-loyal, nor will they identify their methodology for creating their lists or determining what constitutes "anti-Americanism."

They do it all in secret, and you're just supposed to trust them: Bill Kristol, Mike Chertoff and their national security state friends. And the New York Times is apparently fine with this demand, as evidenced by its uncritical acceptance yesterday of the claims of this group – a group formed by the nation's least trustworthy sources.

But no matter. It's a claim about nefarious Russian control. So it's instantly vested with credibility and authority, published by leading news outlets, and then blindly accepted as fact in most elite circles. From now on, it will simply be Fact – based on the New York Times article – that the Kremlin aggressively and effectively weaponized Twitter to manipulate public opinion and sow divisions during the election, even though the evidence for this new story is the secret, unverifiable assertions of a group filled with the most craven neocons and national security state liars.

That's how the Russia narrative is constantly "reported," and it's the reason so many of the biggest stories have embarrassingly collapsed. It's because the Russia story of 2017 – not unlike the Iraq discourse of 2002 – is now driven by religious-like faith rather than rational faculties.

No questioning of official claims is allowed. The evidentiary threshold which an assertion must overcome before being accepted is so low as to be non-existent. And the penalty for desiring to see evidence for official claims, or questioning the validity and persuasiveness of the evidence that is proffered, are accusations that impugn one's patriotism and loyalty (simply wanting to see evidence for official claims about Russia is proof, in many quarters, that one is a Kremlin agent or at least adores Putin – just as wanting to see evidence in 2002, or questioning the evidence presented for claims about Saddam, was viewed as proof that one harbored sympathy for the Iraqi dictator).

Regardless of your views on Russia, Trump and the rest, nobody can possibly regard this climate as healthy. Just look at how many major, incredibly inflammatory stories, from major media outlets, have collapsed. Is it not clear that there is something very wrong with how we are discussing and reporting on relations between these two nuclear-armed powers?

[Sep 30, 2017] The Slimy Business of Russia-gate Comments to the article at Consortiumnews

Notable quotes:
"... Is it possible that the left is being played? Is it possible that the media who almost exclusively report what the establishment wants are being told to report BS? Is it disinfo campaign aimed at ruining the lefts chances of coming back to power? I know the public can easily be made to have their collective heads explode over anything but are journalists that brainwashed too? I'm starting to see a birther parallel here. ouch. Is that ironic or what? ..."
"... The influence on the election from the Russians to me is absurd to the naked eye. Israel has far more influence on American elections through AIPAC. Saudi Arabia has influence through money Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers have much more influence on American elections And the prime minister of Israel comes to our country and addresses Congress to criticize the presidents policy in Iran at the time – thats pretty outrageous. ..."
"... Our country is very much in the grip of a dictator: The dictator is money, the military-industrial-complex. ..."
"... This Democratic voters resentment against all this blame Russia nonsense is going to annihilate any chances the party of the people will have had to capturing the majority of seats in our governments congress, not to mention regaining the office of the presidency. ..."
"... It does not make an iota of difference which party is in power. The party of the People was in power, when Obama took office. Look what happened. They started more wars, finished off Libya as a Nation, started the destruction of Syria, started extermination in Yemen . . . . Obama set up more U.S. bases in Africa – the land of his ancestors to bring them back under control. And don't forget the Drone Wars of Obama. ..."
"... All this Russia Gate mess was started by Obama, and largely fueled by The Party of the People. If they come to power, they are going to double up on it. Dont we watch the likes of Adam Schiff On TV every day spitting out their lies and and hatred towards Russia! The party of Bill and Hillary are clamoring for more action – like setting up no Fly Zones – in Syria. They want to subjugate Russia. ..."
"... Mike K. in his post yesterday under Rise of New McCarthyism had this link to an interesting article on the Neocons. ..."
Sep 30, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

SteveK9 , September 28, 2017 at 5:30 pm

At some point, you would like to believe that this stuff is so over the top, it would be self-defeating. Are there any accurate polls of what the general public thinks of all this? If it weren't for the threat of a thermonuclear Armageddon, it would only mean more resources wasted on the war party and less for social security, etc. Russia is not going anywhere, and I believe is beyond our ability to harm it, unless said nuclear holocaust ensues. Our attempts to isolate Russia are doomed to fail.

Sam F , September 28, 2017 at 9:41 pm

Yes, the charade is doomed to fail to persuade, let alone hurt Russia, but will succeed in creating the foreign monster needed by tyrants to demand domestic power. In our modern witch hunts we all know that there are no witches – the whole performance is a declaration of tyranny over public information, a statement to the common man that he must follow his master the mass media, he must avow that he is the slave of the rich, and pretend that the declared enemy is his own. He must praise the flag betrayed by his masters the oligarchy.

hatedbyu , September 29, 2017 at 11:08 am

Is it possible that the left is being played? Is it possible that the media who almost exclusively report what the establishment wants are being told to report BS? Is it disinfo campaign aimed at ruining the lefts chances of coming back to power? I know the public can easily be made to have their collective heads explode over anything but are journalists that brainwashed too? I'm starting to see a birther parallel here. ouch. Is that ironic or what?

Abe , September 29, 2017 at 11:26 pm

During a discussion with The Nation concerning the documentary series The Putin Interviews, first broadcast in June 2017, Academy Award winning film producer Oliver Stone addressed the hacking allegations and questions of influence on the American election:

The influence on the election from the Russians to me is absurd to the naked eye. Israel has far more influence on American elections through AIPAC. Saudi Arabia has influence through money Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers have much more influence on American elections And the prime minister of Israel comes to our country and addresses Congress to criticize the presidents policy in Iran at the time – thats pretty outrageous.

Our country is very much in the grip of a dictator: The dictator is money, the military-industrial-complex. Its beyond absurd to have this kind of expenditure every year on military.

https://www.thenation.com/article/oliver-stone-talks-to-the-nation-about-his-new-documentary-the-putin-interviews/

Joe Tedesky , September 28, 2017 at 5:36 pm

If there is any comfort to be found in any of this, all this blaming Russia on everything and anything is getting all to outrageous as each day goes by. In other words the MSM overkill on this Russia-Gate silliness, is losing its credibility, with all this nonsense and coverage saying so.

eole , September 29, 2017 at 6:34 am

I wish you were right. Unfortunately, here in Europe, there are still a lot of countries which blindly follow whatever the USA think or do, particularly with NATO which would so like to step by mistake of course across the Baltic and Polish borders.

I must say that I admire the strength of Putins nerves. How long will it last? Also there are elections next year, and we can observe that Washington is arleady trying to plant seeds of revolution. I dont think it'll work. According to Xavier Moreau a French political observer living in Moscow, Putin enjoys a popularity that lots of foreign politicians would be envy!

Joe Tedesky , September 29, 2017 at 9:22 am

I wish eole, likeminded Europeans and us in the U.S. were to band together to protest, and petition, our governments to stop with all this warring madness. From the Donbass, to Deir Ezzor, and all the way across the globe to Seoul Korea, we the people for peace should stand arm and arm to defy this ugly monster whos only goal is to marginalize us citizens with their ultimate military strength towards having their ownership over all of the worlds precious natural resources. All this to make a few bankers rich. Joe

mike k , September 28, 2017 at 5:46 pm

Money controls everything. ETHICS DOESNT STAND A CHANCE IN COMPETITION WITH MONEY. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ WELCOME TO THE WONDERLAND OF Capitalism, where you can have anything you want, if only you have the MOOLA! Souls for sale here – CHEAP!
Just sign here in blood, and have we got a deal for you….

Leslie F , September 28, 2017 at 7:51 pm

The only poll I know about was an internal Democratic Party poll showing that rank and file Democrats resented the incessant Russia did it mantra as not responsive to their concerns. I don't remember whether people believed it or not but they definitely through it was getting too much attention from Democratic leaders at the expense of more important issues.

Joe Tedesky , September 28, 2017 at 9:23 pm

This Democratic voters resentment against all this blame Russia nonsense is going to annihilate any chances the party of the people will have had to capturing the majority of seats in our governments congress, not to mention regaining the office of the presidency. It will serve the Democrates well, for allowing themselves for being used as a tool for the Shadow Government.

Dave P. , September 29, 2017 at 4:07 am

Joe – This Democratic voters resentment against all this blame Russia nonsense is going to annihilate any chances the party of the people will have had to capturing the majority of seats in our governments congress, not to mention regaining the office of the presidency.

It does not make an iota of difference which party is in power. The party of the People was in power, when Obama took office. Look what happened. They started more wars, finished off Libya as a Nation, started the destruction of Syria, started extermination in Yemen . . . . Obama set up more U.S. bases in Africa – the land of his ancestors to bring them back under control. And don't forget the Drone Wars of Obama.

All this Russia Gate mess was started by Obama, and largely fueled by The Party of the People. If they come to power, they are going to double up on it. Dont we watch the likes of Adam Schiff On TV every day spitting out their lies and and hatred towards Russia! The party of Bill and Hillary are clamoring for more action – like setting up no Fly Zones – in Syria. They want to subjugate Russia.

The way the things are in the country, of all the bad options available, Trump probably is the best to have – he can not make the case for more wars effectively, like the slick politician Obama did.

Mike K. in his post yesterday under Rise of New McCarthyism had this link to an interesting article on the Neocons.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article178638.html

Joe Tedesky , September 29, 2017 at 9:40 am

Dave you are right. The reason I mentioned the Democrates was because they were the last party that I can recall who did once stand for the we the people. My memory also can recall how even when at their best the Democrates weren't all that great to living up to their overrated motto. So what I was referring too in many ways doesnt exist, and some would say never did. These presidents we all find fault with, in my mind are only front people for our Shadow Government (look up YouTube of Kevin Shipp). In fact watching Trump turn over his staff, and his redo of his campaign promises, is like seeing the Shadow Government take over in real time. You and I Dave are most definitely living inside of the matrix. Thanks Dave for moving this conversation along in the right direction. Joe

Dave P. , September 29, 2017 at 11:53 am

Yes Joe. There was lot of good in that old Democratic Party of the 1960s and 70s – my wife and I took part in the McGoverns campaign. And in those days, in old main street type conservative Republicans, I found lot of good too. In fact, when I came to this country during mid 1960s, the city council of Ann Arbor was Republican, and they were good people. And now the city council of Ann Arbor is in Democratic Party hands – all Hillary supporters, and Russia bashers too.

I wonder what they are teaching in these schools now. This is what this very effective propaganda machine of this new age Edward Bernays is doing to the young minds and to the public at large.

Joe Tedesky , September 29, 2017 at 12:24 pm

Dave you bring up the 1972 McGovern presidential run, and the way that all went down. I quit voting after that all took a turn for the worst, and for the following next twenty years I stayed away from the voting booth. That no doubt wasnt a smart way of dealing with my disappointment, but at that time I thought it appropriate because I could see then that I didnt necessarily agree with the majority of my fellow countrymen and woman. No big deal, I just did what needed done to get my family food on the table. To be honest Dave, I still dont know why I vote. Although you are right the Democrates arent in anyway much better than the Republicans, and with that we all suffer. Joe

Laninya , September 28, 2017 at 5:57 pm

Quote: And right now, tens of millions of dollars are flowing to non-governmental organizations if they will buttress the thesis of Russian meddling in the U.S. democratic process no matter how sloppy the research or how absurd the findings.

Ha!ha! You know whats funny about this? Its that all the money poured into the NGOs in Russia in the past quarter century that was intended to, not just meddle in, but to shape the Russian political, social, and economic realities has, under Putins wise and delicate rule, been squeezed into an ineffectual state of presence. And because their attempts on the ground in real life have failed over there, a theatrical inversion of reality has to be created over here.

Ah!ha!ha! This is SUCH an amazing movie. And, better when wearing 3-D glasses! Cant wait to see how it ends.

Joe Tedesky , September 28, 2017 at 6:19 pm

Your right, Putin seems to out smart these clever American instigators every step of the way. I will now take a knee for injustices committed against Blacks, and Native-Americans (remember Dakota Access), and stay down on my knee a little while longer with the hope that my beloved USA may come to its senses, and that my country will finally wise up.

laninya , September 29, 2017 at 12:44 am

Joe,

I appreciate your taking a knee for injustices committed against certain of those who share this continent with us English-speaking peoples (who seem to have have claimed it as our own), as I have long appreciated the tone and substance of your comments on this site.

So, Im gonna quibble (in a friendly way) with you on the idea that Putin out smarts American instigators at every step. Ive been spying on that guy for about three years, now, and Id say its just that hes playing a different game. One the American players dont understand, and dont believe even exists or maybe theyve heard rumours of such a game, but they think its mythical.

See: our people -- yours and mine: your beloved USA and my Canada, heirs of the British Empire -- our people make war for fun and profit. Always have done. We rule the waves, and privateering is our game.

Putins people, on the other hand, have occupied the crossroads at the centre of the major overland trade routes (north-south as well as east-west) since ancient times, and, due to the geography and the demographics, have been fighting off invaders from all direction the whole time. Its a whole different game.

And, its a game VV Putin takes seriously, cause he has no other choice. After perestroika, after the Harvard boys [did] Russia ( ref: https://www.thenation.com/article/harvard-boys-do-russia/ ), that huge nation (11 time zones!) was on the brink of total collapse and dismemberment. For the stability, security and prosperity of (what was left of) his people and the 1000-year history of the nation, he just couldnt afford to make any mistakes or false steps.

For him and his team (Putin doesnt work alone by any stretch of the imagination), this isnt a pissing contest. Its the life of their nation.

Whole different game.

I hope our countries wise up, too. Were really blowing it.

Joe Tedesky , September 29, 2017 at 1:46 am

There are two things here I see as interesting, and possibly crucial, laninya.

One, is the U.S. and Canada by the standards of a countrys age are fairly young. In fact Russia got our countries beat by, probably would you say 4 fold? Anyway, our time at bat as being an Empire of somekind would even be shorter by the standards of empire time. So for America being stupid and young enough to be excused for at least this kind of uncontrolled blind patriotism we have seen of late in the U.S., added to the total absence of attentioned paid to all these American instigated wars, why us Americans are like distracted children in a playground, so our youth is our only plead. I could be wrong, but this collective mindset in our society here, makes me believe we need to do a lot of growing up in this nation, and the world will be happy to throw the U.S. a coming of age party if peace is the prize.

The second matter is, is that I agree that Russia by having a defense oriented military strategy is in better shape than like the U.S. having ourselves stretched out all over the global network we have wove. You see I dont trust big, and Im leery of to much technology as wellbut thats me. In fact, if a body existed like the UN who had some real juice were to laid down some enforceable laws, I would then hedge towards them making nations have their militaries situated more like the Russian Federation does.defensive. With the NFL in the news so much these days this Good Defense thinking should make sense to no matter who stands or kneels.

Lastly, the U.S. has already over spent itself on war, now the U.S. only needs to go on a frantic rampage of somekind.lets hope it just boils down to rhetorical saber rattlings, and the world laughs with us. Kim looks to be having a ball. I shouldnt have said that, but sometimes a little humor lightens the reality.oh its very American to laugh when we should be worried, but I digress..

Big isnt always better. You may look better in a $1,000. 00 suit than I do in my $10,000.00 suit, and oh by the way these clothes we have on are still suits.

Nice conversation laninya. Joe

Dave P. , September 29, 2017 at 4:19 am

Ianinya – An excellent analysis. Right on the mark. Putin is not a dictator as they malign him in the Media in The West. He is leading a team – very astute and shrewd team. For Russia it is an existential struggle – a fight they can not lose. They have been subjected to it during their entire History as you pointed out.

Americans – even our politicians and experts – do not have much understanding of other peoples history – they do not understand Russia.

laninya , September 29, 2017 at 12:48 pm

Dave,

Well, its interesting what a person can learn these days just sitting in a chair, poking at a few buttons on a keyboard. Never in the history of the world have ordinary people had so many resources at their disposal and so much information at their fingertips. Yet, your last sentence still seems accurate.

Why is that? In the US and Canada, we do have experts who are very knowledgable about other peoples history and culture, including Russias. But, for some reason or another, there are times when we just collectively choose to sideline and ignore them. In the US you have Stephen F. Cohen Jack Matlock, and Sharon Tennison, among others, who can speak intelligently about Russia. In Canada we have the voices of Patrick Armstrong, Paul Robinson, and the blogger Mark Chapman (The Kremlin Stooge). Armstrong and Robinson both come from a military background, both also publish easily accessible blogs.

I believe it was thanks to a commenter over at the Kremlin Stooge that I discovered a book, then newly available in English translation, titled Russia and Europe / The Slavic Worlds Political and Cultural Relations with the Gremanic-Roman West by Nikolai Danilevskii, originally published c.1868.

Let me show you a quote from that book. A hundred and fifty years ago, Danilevskii wrote this:
It is still in fashion among us to attribute everything to our unfamiliarity with Europe, and to its ignorance concerning Russia. Our press says nothing, at least until recently, but our enemies slander us. How would poor Europe learn the truth? It is shrouded in fog and befuddled. Risum teneatis, amici; or, as we say in Russian, it would make a chicken laugh, my friends. How could Europe -- which knows everything from the Sanskrit language to the Iroquois dialects, from the laws of motion of complex solar systems to the structures of microscopic organisms -- not know a thing about Russia? Such excuses -- ignorance, naivety, and gullibility, as if we are talking about an innocent schoolgirl -- are laughable coming from Europe, shrewd as a serpent.

Funny, eh?

Dave P. , September 29, 2017 at 8:37 pm

My comments have been in moderation for couple of hours, may be due to links to The Saker I put in. I am posting it again without the links.

laninya,

The last paragraph in your comments, quotation from Danilevsky is very interesting. Yes, you are right. There are quite a few people in academia and outside, like Stephen Cohen, Matlock, and others. Matlock has been trying to calm the waters with his appearances on RT, and a few other places, and also at the Valdai International discussion club forum. But these people have no power.

Just about all the power – finance, media, TV, entertainment industry, foreign policy, and to a large extent defense policy, in the U.S. is in the hands of the NeoCons, mostly Zionists, in complicity with Israel.

You wrote about the Harvard Boys doing all this financial engineering on Russia during 1990s under that charlatan Yeltsin, who was in U.S. hands. I really thought The West has finally finished Russia off – and that Russia can not recover in hundred years , as the media was proclaiming here. Putin and his team has resurrected Russia once again – it is almost a miracle. They – Russia – are not in good shape yet, but it seems like they can defend themselves.

As you wrote, Russia, being at the cross roads, has faced invasions, and dangers throughout its history – Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, under Tatar yoke for two centuries, nomads from the steppes and Central Asia, Turks from the South, and from Caucasus warrior tribes. From the West – Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, and France.

Russia has been under constant existential threat through out its history, and so is today under threat form U.S., and the rest of The West. Wests intervention in Syria for regime change, and then Iran as target is all aimed at Russia. Russia had no other recourse but help Syria against the Jihadis, armed and supported by The West.

But Syria still is not out of danger. There are some articles in the Saker today related to it and Kurdistan issue. In Syria , it seems like U.S., SDF, and ISIS are working in tandem to stop the advance of Syrian Army supported by Russia.

Laninya , September 30, 2017 at 12:15 am

Hey Dave,

Glad you tweaked to the Danilevskii quote. When I read it, I thought: wow! has time stood still?

Let me address what you said about power, though. You wrote:

But these people have no power. Just about all the power – finance, media, TV, entertainment industry, foreign policy, and to a large extent defense policy, in the U.S. is in the hands of the NeoCons, mostly Zionists, in complicity with Israel.

See, I dont go along with that cop out. The population at large has the power to make or break any of the entities listed above. If Neocons have power, its because people are buying what theyre selling. Stephen Cohen and Jack Matlock do not because few want to hear what they have to say right now.

As I said above, our Western economy was built on privateering. We know what butters our bread (plunder), yet we also want to present ourselves as being on the side of the angels. So we give power to the murders and thieves among us and then pretend were not responsible for what they do. I read that as being the shrewd as a serpent part of what Danilevskii was talking about.

As for the Saker, I frequent the Vineyard myself.

Thanks for the conversation.

Karl Sanchez , September 28, 2017 at 6:04 pm

Essentially, in other words, the CIAs having another recruiting drive to further undermine what little remains of honest, deeply investigative journalism within the Outlaw US Empire. The Big Black Hole gets dug deeper daily. The success of CIA brainwashing can be seen by the number of people denouncing those Taking a Knee.

MaDarby , September 28, 2017 at 7:56 pm

Clearly propaganda works. People rage against the empire and then swallow whole its fear mongering and demonizing of Russia ultimately siding with the Empire.

There are so many people journalists and persons loved by the left who have clearly now sided with the Empire big names who just cave in and say oh just one more election in our wonderful democracy please its pathetic. There is no such thing as democracy in an Empire.

Adrian Engler , September 29, 2017 at 9:14 am

what has been revealed by Republican government officials to be facts, like the intrusion of voting machines in 21 states

One should be very careful about such facts – much of it has been retracted, and usually the retraction receives much less attention than the original allegation. As far as Wisconsin is concerned, the allegations have already been retracted: https://www.apnews.com/10a0080e8fcb4908ae4a852e8c03194d Based on our external analysis, the WI IP address affected belongs to the WI Department of Workforce Development, not the Elections Commission, said the email from Juan Figueroa, with Homeland Securitys Office of Infrastructure Protection. So, while the attribution of the source of the probing to the Russian state is speculative, in the case of Wisconsin, the target was not even the elections commission, but the department of workforce development.

Of course, not everything has explicitly been retracted, but when we look at this pattern of allegations about Russia (like that they hacked the electric grid in Vermont) that are later retracted, that should rather lead people to be skeptical about all these allegations.

Constantine , September 29, 2017 at 1:44 pm

Your very mention of hacked e-mails reveals your extreme bias on the issue. In your view, it would be impossible to expect one or more individuals with integrity in the IT department of the DNC being horrified by the revelations and the dealings these revealed about the pre-selected candidate Clinton. Some people may have been genuinely outraged by the attempt of the DNC establishment hacks to undermine Sanders in violation of the partys own rules and proceed to leak this sensitive info to Wikileaks. But for people like you it had to be Russia.

If anything, the pitiful arguments and non-facts used to promote the fake Russia-gate scandal further reinforce the certainty that this was concocted to attack Trumps presidency. And what people like you fail to understand is that had a leftist candidate won the elections, one who would be sincerely interested to change the course of the US in numerous aspects of domestic and foreign policy, such an individual would face the same implacable hostility by the neoliberal establishment.

And it is the servile mentality of a large number of the US/western citizenry – to which part you obviously belong – that allows the same people who have spewing lies and fantastic narratives that serve the countrys corporate oligarchy to get away again and again and proceed to do so in every occasion it is required of them. There are no consequences for deliberately spreading falsehoods and it always works.

As for the threat of an armageddon, if you honestly believe that penalizing diplomacy with Russia (a fantastic achievement that was not seen during the Cold War) doesnt carry any dangers, you have an extremely limited perception of international politics.

Rob Roy , September 29, 2017 at 2:57 pm

Mr. Goldman, your comments on this site are entertaining and obfuscating at once. You say, as though speaking truth, …it did appear that the hacked e-mails and Trumps closing arguments in the election, were coordinated. What hacked emails? There were no hacked emails, though, like you, newspapers repeat that phrase to establish it as a given in peoples minds, cementing the propaganda at which point it is no longer questioned. Seeit worked with you. Hacking and leaking are entirely different processes. The emails were LEAKED from the DNC to Julian Assange/Wikileaks. Period. Provable. Fact. Ground zero is the leaked emailsproving Hilary wanted to discredit Sanders as an opponent, move forward on war with Iran and Russia (both would be as illegal as all our other wars in the past 70 years), strengthen her connections with the banking world, and become president. Since you say you want facts to prevail, let them.

Zachary Smith , September 28, 2017 at 7:15 pm

To say there is no proof of mischief is a conclusion that defies logic and fact. Firstly we have every right to investigate this issue, and secondly Trump operatives and Russian behavior created this investigation, not the other way around, and the evidence appears to be growing.

I think this person is a True Believer in what is the logical extension of the Cheney Doctrine. <and here I've been saying that the BushBots were all gone!) From the wiki:

If theres a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. Its not about our analysis Its about our response.

In other words, the Bushies were going to do what they damned well pleased. Fast Forward to 2017. From the essay above:

The Times article also might have mentioned that Twitter has 974 million accounts. So, this alarm over 600 accounts is a bit disproportionate for a front-page story in the Times, dont you think?

As Mr. Golden says, it defies logic not to treat this as a genuine Threat To American Democracy. Approximately 1/10,000th of 1% of Twitter accounts are in on this scheme – Mr. Parry is clearly being a contrary stick-in-the-mud for denying evidence which is perfectly obvious to the most casual observer.

Seer , September 29, 2017 at 8:29 am

Do you type with a straight face? From your previous post: Trump operatives and Russian behavior created this investigation

anon , September 28, 2017 at 7:35 pm

More propaganda from the zionist scammer Golden:
1. The professional investigators did any usable internet tracing in 2016: routers do not have second thoughts; the investigators made serious and amateurish mistakes and false statements recently;
2. An abundance of caution was allowed in 2016 and is propaganda now;
3. It is absurd to say that statements of the lack of evidence defy logic and fact and then be unable to cite a single bit of evidence;
4. More zionist lies pretending that the US Mideast policy is not dictated by Israeli bribes;
5. More zionist lies that Russia and the US have conflicting, geo-political interests in the Middle East, that have nothing to do with Israel
6. Spare us the fantasy and stick to the facts or go preach to your zionist paymasters.

D5-5 , September 28, 2017 at 6:27 pm

right track wrong track polling with current sept figures

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/right_direction_wrong_track_25

right track wrong track polling shows similar to above a year ago

https://realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/direction_of_country-902.html

D5-5 , September 28, 2017 at 6:42 pm

Right track wrong track polling, links now waiting moderation, show in the 60 percentiles America on the wrong track in successive years. In pursuing this type of polling I find in similar sources, consistent over the past year, discontent with the government spending time on the Russia conspiracy instead of getting after health care and other issues considered more important. I also find 84% currently support the NFL athletes right to protest, but only 39% think taking a knee is acceptable. Also found a somewhat amusing reference to the Lingerie Football League, which Id never heard of, females playing football in skimpy outfits, and this (should I say body) states that the flag is too sacred to be protested. Well, the Russkies didnt get to these lingerie football players yet, I am relieved to report.

I found results in duck duck go under right track wrong track polling and do Americans believe in Russia-gate and do Americans support NFL players protesting.

Robert Golden , September 28, 2017 at 7:38 pm

I think 12% of Americans favored the R health care plan. They have spent 9 months on it, and havent given up. Two years pitching Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi as a complete fabrication, so what is your point again? Further, check your data on the Russian investigation again. I dont know anyone who doesnt support the investigation and Rachael Maddow is now #1 on cable news (from 3rd), and thats all she talks about.

D5-5 , September 28, 2017 at 8:12 pm

This comment appears to be typical of your thinking, Robert, and Im sorry to say it does no credit. You have taken what I said and twisted it. According to poll reports I was looking at earlier, and some of these are now waiting moderation 65% of Americans felt the emphasis on Russia-gate overdone and want the government to spend time on more important matters, such as health care, which you dismiss here as outright incorrect. In your previous reply to me you revealed what your certainty about fact rests on: in your own words that is hunch. Well, hunch wont do it for the critical thinking youre calling for, Robert, which I respectfully suggest you do more of. Your cred here is pretty low at the moment. I mean no malice by saying so.

Rob Roy , September 29, 2017 at 3:35 pm

R. Golden, Here are some facts: Healthcare for all citizens in this country would be half the cost for twice the care. Period. Read T.R. Reids book, investigating other countries with free health care for all. It is amusing that Fidel Castro once pointed out the Cuban education and health care systems compared to the US.
All citizens want healthcare for all, except those few who are made wealthy keeping the status quo (pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, those doctors in the AMA who are paid off for supporting certain markets in the medical fields and encouraging use of certain drugs, and paid-off politicians who lobby for these thieves and get funding for their elections). Why should those handful of money hungry men control our health system? You may be interested to learn that the people in the medical field who actually care about patients, the vast majority, want Medicare from birth forward.

Rob Roy , September 29, 2017 at 3:51 pm

R. Golden, Rachael Maddow has lost her creditability with her rants about Russia and pro-militarism, neither stance defendable. If shes now ranked 3rd, that is indicative of the low level of intelligence and critical thinking in the country. After all, Russia/Putin is innocent until proven otherwise (not by guesses, hunches, innuendos, suggestions, quotes by unnamed officials, and outright lies). After all, ALL our wars since WWII have been illegal and against international law, and are engaged with false flags. Should we support soldiers who are sent into battle to murder innocent civilians in sovereign lands? No. That would be insanity.

WC , September 28, 2017 at 6:53 pm

Bad enough on my safe space that I have Paul Craig Roberts harping on these same issues, now Parry joins the fray. I need to be reassured that there is no profit in a nuclear wasteland and even political sociopaths and the bankers that own them have an instinct for survival. In the back of my head I keep hearing George C. Scotts character in Strangelove saying, http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0003295/quotes

floyd gardner , September 28, 2017 at 8:26 pm

WaterCloset, a courtesy flush please?

WC , September 29, 2017 at 1:55 pm

Good one. :) But you cant flush the level of BS that has been fed to the public over the past number of years. Thats why Trump the plumber was elected, to drain the swamp etc.

So now what happens? 20+ trillion in debt with 100+ trillion in unfunded liabilities, let alone off-shoring all those jobs is a fairly good indicator the shit is backed up to the ceiling. If we are to believe Trump actually makes any decisions, what are his choices? QE4? Austerity to piss people off even more? Or start another war someplace to take peoples minds off the collapsing economy?

To quote Bachman Turner Overdrive – You Aint Seen Nothing Yet.

Danny Weil , September 28, 2017 at 7:17 pm

America is stumbling into a diystopic future with a clueless public and a corporate fascist government.

Zachary Smith , September 28, 2017 at 7:30 pm

The motivation of the neocon NYT is worth speculating about. Yes, they've been wanting to smash Muslim nations for israel for ages. What other possible motives might there be?

Why are these billionaires doubling down on Israeli Investments?

What do Bill Gates, Carlos Slim Helu, Mark Cuban, Donald Trump, and Warren Buffett all have in common?

Speculation – it might be as simple as money. Remember, Israel OWNS the US Congress, and has managed to put the fear of God into every last one of them. This unprecedented influence could easily be translated into some enormous financial benefits for those Rich Guys who suck up in the proper and approved manner. It would be as simple as slipping in some innocent-looking phrases into some of the boring legislation hardly anybody reads. You can bet that it would pass, and you can also bet that the Corporate Media will keep their yaps shut about it.

So thats another theory – plain and simple corruption midwifed by the thieving and murdering little shithole of an apartheid nation.

Zachary Smith , September 28, 2017 at 7:31 pm

http://blog.ourcrowd.com/why-are-these-billionaires-doubling-down-on-israeli-investments/

Zachary Smith , September 28, 2017 at 7:34 pm

I seem to have forgotten to mention that Carlos Slim is supposed to be a major stockholder of the neocon NYT.

Robert Golden , September 28, 2017 at 7:48 pm

Please do some reading. Your first stop should be the Koch Bros who own the largest track of Canadian Tar Sands, and are potentially going to be twice as rich, after Trump approved the Keystone Pipeline, from Canada through the middle of America all the way to the flooded and toxic plains, to Houston (final destination Asia). Youll find they already own most of the global warming denying Congress (not Israel), and their next extraction site will probably be the Grand Canyon. After you have read up on the Kochs, check out the Mercers.

Zachary Smith , September 28, 2017 at 8:24 pm

koch Bros
Canadian Tar Sands
Keystone Pipeline

Mercers

The connection of these places and people to the BS peddling by the NYT isnt entirely clear to me.

Brad Owen , September 29, 2017 at 9:21 am

The connection is that this modern Roman Empire is very big: the inheritors of the Roman Empire (France, Britain, Netherlands, Belgium, and so on) have been wanting to smash Muslim Empires for 1500 years, having lost their M.E. and N. African Provinces to them. Since the Zion project was hatched by Cecil Rhodes RoundTable Group in the19th century, the Israel Project is a project of the British Province of the modern Roman Empire, which ALSO commands considerable influence in its Western Provinces Canada and USA, hence: Koch Bros.,Canadian Tar Sands, Keystone Pipeline, Mercers. Of course Im talking about the integrated community of 1%er Oligarchs, NOT The People of these Provinces. Corbyn and Sanders (and whoever the Canadian and Israeli equivalents would be) can throw a gigantic Monkey Wrench into these imperial shenanigans

Brad Owen , September 29, 2017 at 9:26 am

Israel is a way of continuing the smashing process of Muslim Empires by the modern Roman Empire, and I forgot to say that Germany is also a very big part of the modern Roman Empire, which carried the name Holy Roman Empire up to Napoleonic times (which, BTW, ole Nappie himself became their model for a modern Fascist Roman Emperor, as his Generals and extremely regressive factions within the Catholic Church hatched the Synarchy Internationale Project mid-19th century).

hatedbyu , September 29, 2017 at 11:59 am

ok, you brought it up, so i will run with it..

bringing it around full circle.

modern roman empire. yes. agreement . but

only british monarchy. with allies, not partners. why is this important? if one looks at the history of the royal institute for international affairs, one can see that the crown had to figure out how to maintain control of their assets. fast forward to the american branch. its called the council on foreign relations. the number of members in our government over years and years is staggering. just keep that in mind.

there is ample evidence of british involvement in the us war of northern aggression. and not just because they traded with the south. did you know that the monarchys cousins, the russian crown, sent warships to california in defense of the union?

its my opinion that this act is what sealed the fate of the romanovs in 1917. payback. for whatever reason the british crown holds grudges. im irish. not sure what my ancestors did to piss them off but they havent let off on our people in a thousand years…

this anti russia thing started before obama although it was not as overt.

the orange color revolution happened in (wait for it….) ukraine under bush. and while not reported as a cia supported venture, i think we know what happened.

does anyone remember 8/8/08? opening day of the olympics in china. but a mini war was started in south ossetia. american media initially reported that russians had attacked un soldiers there.

the present anti russian hysteria started when putin checkmated the neo libs/neo cons when their attempt to destabilize syria failed. thats when i observed the overt media attacks begin.

funny thing. i have actually been to russia and ukraine. in 1979. it was the first time in my life that i had been outside of the usa. the government propaganda of the previous 60 years had made me think of all russians as evil bond villians. it was eye opening to finally meet real russians. understand they were just people like me. i was 16 and it was the first time i had the blinders lifted. a real learning moment.

so, i guess that makes me guilty of collusion. sorry to you hillary supporters.

Brad Owen , September 29, 2017 at 2:21 pm

Yes, hated, I agree with you on all points. Czar Alexander II was killed (he was Lincolns Ally against British and French plans to join battle with Davis against Lincoln. Lincoln was killed for the Greenback maneuver around British monetary control (a Venetian style of Empire via monetary control & manipulation). Lincolns war of agression was a war against the superpower British Empire and its puppet the Confederacy (Planter Oligarchs), Wall Street assets (J.P. Morgan & Co., money handlers for the Planters), and the Essex Country Junto (New England Blue Bloods in shipping for the Empires slave and Opium trade). The Planter oligarchy was crushed. The Wall Streeters lived on (Essex County Junto bluebloods tooour Axis of Evil against the Republic, and Independence from Empire). Lincolns GreenBacks was a typical example of the American Credit System of Political Economy (control of economy by a Sovereign Nation-States Government in the hands of We The People via House of Representatives, a deadly threat to the British-Style of Empire via a Venetian Monetary System manipulated & controlled by oligarchs. Russia always supported USA Revolution as a counter-balance to British Empire designs on Russia (enemy of my enemy is my friend),(and French Empire and Ottoman Empire too, as evidenced by Crimean War 1856).

Brad Owen , September 29, 2017 at 2:25 pm

British Crown is Princeps? (First among Equals)

Brad Owen , September 29, 2017 at 4:15 pm

Im of Welsh-Irish ancestry (Irish on my mothers side). Her grand father came over as a stow-a-way to flee the potato famine (neo liberal economics at its purestancestor of TINA Thatcherism and austerities, deficits, balanced budgets and suchlike wicked gaming with peoples lives (but Banks and MIIC are too big to fail of course). Lincoln would have just GreenBacked his way out of Depression and imminent economic collapse (a Credit System recognizing it is LABOR upon raw materials that is the SOURCE of ALL wealth, NOT Venetian Fondi in an oligarchs off-shore piggy bank). The grudge against the Celtic Fringe (Welsh and Scotts too) comes from the fact that we were on the the Islands first, by many Centuries before the Angels, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians showed up. This is just flawed human nature in action. I suppose the Picts can claim the same grievance against us Celts; American Indians too. The enemy is Oligarchy. It s class warfare, not Tribal warfare, and THEY are masters at divide-to-conquer, seeking out all useful flaws and weaknesses.

Nancy Gillard-Bartels , September 28, 2017 at 7:37 pm

As the rest of the world also sees the US fabrications, American may one day find itself under fire from many directions. No one likes a dirty player.

Louise , September 28, 2017 at 7:47 pm

While it may appear to become a nuisance after more than a year, it may also become very dangerous. It could be a serious effort to get the populace to condone an illegal war in Syria involving Russia. People dont pay much attention to Assad and the Syrians, but the Russians are already complaining about US forces working with ISIS. If those reports are true the plausible deniability will work if the people are preconditioned to disbelieve whatever comes from the Kremlin.

Common Tater , September 28, 2017 at 8:43 pm

Washington accuses others of nefarious tactics it employs itself. Now Washington accuses the Syrian Arab Army of colluding with the wahabist militants bent on genocide in Syria. This accusation alone informs the audience that Washington is in collusion with the wahabist militant gangs operating across the globe.
In the link you will see how the SDF seems to cut through wahabist gang territory like a hot knife through butter. Easily securing the region north of Deir es-Zor, and are currently cutting west across the desert as fast as those ubiquitous toyota trucks can carry them without showing any evidence of fighting, according to Russian surveillance.

Eva , September 28, 2017 at 8:32 pm

Slimy business has been going on too long….To anyone with an open ear, the door closes on 9/30/2017…

Sam F , September 29, 2017 at 7:18 am

Which door closes and why then? Q3 financials?

Gary Severson , September 28, 2017 at 9:14 pm

Russia is all about protecting its buffer zone & rightly so. The West plays the Great Game while an unwitting public buys the rationale for standing up to Russia, China, Iran etc. Why wouldnt the Russians use the Trump admin to shore up its borders to protect them from NATO expansion? Trump is surely engaged in laundering the Russian oligarchs money. How else could it be after the US did everyting it could to cause the collapse of the Soviet Union & let it be taken over by industries privatized by Yeltzin as a schill for America. As Putin has pointed out, the collapse of the SU was the worst thing that happened in the 20th cent.

Adrian Engler , September 29, 2017 at 10:17 am

As far as I know, Putin did not say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst thing that happened (to Russia?) in the 20th century. That would hardly be plausible – even if the 90es were very bad for Russia, the Holocaust and Nazi Germanys attack on the Soviet Union with about 20 million Soviet victims was almost certainly worse. Also the crimes of Stalinism are certainly on a larger scale than the collapse of the Soviet Union.

What Putin said was: Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.

a major geopolitical disaster of the century does not necessaily mean the greatest geopolitical disaster of the century

As with some other statements (for example the canard that Putin allegedly praised Trump as a genius in December 2015), the basis of the claim is a translation problem. This question is discussed here: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/10457/what-is-the-basis-for-putin-describing-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union-as-the/10549 Putin used a superlative form krupneyshaya. The meaning of this form is similar to the Italian grandissima and means very big. But it does not necessarily mean the biggest, although it could in some contexts.

hatedbyu , September 29, 2017 at 12:06 pm

i like your comment. well researched.

Constantine , September 29, 2017 at 2:02 pm

The crimes of Stalin did not leave the country – USSR or Russia – a moribund state. The population was increasing in the end of the 30s and the country was an industrialized power that could not be easily threatened by other forces, short of being hit by the most powerful army in the world (which is what happened). Russia by the late 90s was a post-apocalyptic gangland with a fast decreasing population and a swiftly unraveling state and society. That was a product of the collapse of the USSR and the ensuing neoliberal shock treatment.

Since the countrys descent into the abyss was stopped by Putin & Co, it goes without saying that this was the cause of the recent outburst of Putinophobia.

Lois Gagnon , September 28, 2017 at 9:39 pm

It all reeks of desperation on the part of the Empires power trippers. They know in the back of their minds that their criminal racket is faltering. Russiagate is the duct tape holding the house of cards together. At least until they can finish looting every last drop of profit from as many colonies (including this one) as they can.

Joe Tedesky , September 29, 2017 at 9:52 am

Well put.

aletho , September 28, 2017 at 10:26 pm

Sorry to say, the same phenomenon has been at work in climate science for quite some time.

Apparently its all about providing fodder for propaganda outlets and requiring conformity on the part of the white collar set.

Whether or not its convincing to the masses is not an issue.

Russiagate will be easier to fudge over the long term, and short of an upset in the power structure may prevail for some decades until revision finally takes place.

Hide Behind , September 28, 2017 at 11:46 pm

The original inveztigation was begun by a man since fired, N. Y. STAtes attorney General, and it had to do nothing at all about election interference by Russia proper,:It was about Trumps illegally laundering Russian Oligarchs stolen funds from Russia.
Trail led to and thru AGI bank of Germany and off shore banking in Bahamas. Same facilitys Clinton Foundation uses.
This got into a cluster fu.. when Feds and Congress intervened. As the Investigation also uncovered many a counts to politicly connected elected and appointed officials who like as Russia showed Mc Cains letters Doing for contributions from high ranking Russians during his run for Prez.
Same formula as used clear back to Arizona 5s embezzlement of Fed HUD and FHA funds and
original Clintons when in Arkansas of same embezzlement that got sidetracked into a Lie about a BJ in white house by girl.
Smoke and mirrors have hid many many a prominent and financial miscreants deeds in US.
Yet the brain washed still a t as if they live in a
Democracy, And like Little Ikemens salute the flag and let children never learn difference of indoctrinated Nationalism from Ideals of
patriotism.
Dumb As Rocks Spout, Support The Troop, But Not The War, As the volunteer troop slaughter hundreds of thousands and displace millions.
into eternal poverty by just following orders.
Go watch your military recruitment indoctrination and show your loyalty to permanent warfare as millions of Americans suffer from your as S ki

Hide Behind , September 29, 2017 at 1:47 am

I would like to recommend George Orwells collection of essays, All art is propaganda, it is not so much of a heavy read as it is time consuming as so many essays when finished invade ones mind that one pauses to assimilate and judge the content fully before beginning next.
As for slime:
It is said that government began in Mespotamia and it was quite a model for each following social order; That is until the Greeks invented politics and since them chaos reigns.
Politics defy treason and logic as well as natural physical laws.
For unlike in natures scheme of things pond slime sinks to the bottom. Whereas in politics the slime raises to the top.
Not of Orwell s caliber of writing, just my own observation of USA politi Al system.

Realist , September 29, 2017 at 2:53 am

This Spanish Inquisition being run by the Congress is getting to the point of absurdity. They ought to be prosecuted for trying to deliberately deceive the public, and simply for insulting the intelligence of everyone on the planet earth.

RT reports the following, they are usually spot on accurate with their reporting since Washington is always trying to debunk them:

Earlier this month, Facebook said that it had identified up to $150,000 in advertising, purchased between June 2015 and May 2017, that was connected to roughly 470 inauthentic accounts and pages that were likely operated out of Russia, Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos wrote. Stamos admitted that the vast majority of ads run by these accounts had nothing to do with the election, voting, or a particular candidate.

Google said it had failed to unearth any facts that would implicate Moscow in exploiting advertising to manipulate the election. Were always monitoring for abuse or violations of our policies and weve seen no evidence this type of ad campaign was run on our platforms, Google said last week, according to Reuters.

During the 2016 election, Twitter said they deleted thousands of tweets and accounts that attempted to suppress or otherwise interfere with the exercise of voting rights, including the right to have a vote counted, by circulating intentionally misleading information. This included tweets that told users they could cast their ballots by text or tweet, which is not true. Twitter also said that they shared the content of deleted tweets with investigators on Thursday. The company however noted that they did not find any of those accounts had obvious Russian origin. All these things were presented before Congress on Thursday.

So, Facebook, Google and Twitter all provide scant evidence, if any, that Russia or Russians directed any disinformation at the American voter to try to sabotage our democracy. If anything of the sort got through, it was certainly like a single tear drop in the deluge of mud-slinging that the American candidates and their two parties constantly cast at one another. Any sane person would realise nothing consequential was or really could be attempted against that torrent of genuine American-made bullcrap, so there was zero motive to do so, and we know that Putin is no fool to waste his time or resources. Yet, Adam Schiff presents his hideous visage, peanut brain and deceptive words on American network television yesterday and claims that its certain fact that the Russian government sabotaged our election by purchasing ads on Facebook and tweeting mean things about Hillary Clinton on Twitter. For good measure, he says Russia is also guilty of stirring up the whole Black lives matter campaign and the bruhaha about taking a knee during the national anthem played at sporting events. They wouldnt try making this stuff up even in Alices Wonderland. It would fail to get a laugh in the Onion, even on April 1st. These people are a national embarrassment for being so blatantly and shamelessly dishonest. These are the same knuckleheads who thought Baghdad Bob was the propaganda parody to end them all, and theyve gone him one better far better.

I eagerly hope to see examples of the handful of ads and tweets that the conspiracy freaks in the Congress have made the centerpiece of their case against Russia. But if they are nothing more than blurbs advertising their media productions (like watch Larry King, Ed Schultz or Tom Hartmann), I doubt we will ever will. Or, maybe they said something extremely provocative like watch RT and evaluate the facts for yourself. Wow, that would be tantamount to an act of war (in the minds of neocons), but still not enough to warrant a viewing by the American public which still might harbor some sane individuals.

GMC , September 29, 2017 at 3:50 am

Trust me – as an Amerikanska in Russia – I think some Russians are hating me when they hear me speak some English while from the other side –America – I no longer get e-mails from -- Anyone. I understand where the Russians are coming from because I see the demonization of their country coming from the Americans and their axis, but to see the Americans get sooo programmed in propaganda that they cant even listen to someone theyve known for decades -- is pretty disgusting , especially when some of them are/ used to be – rather intelligent. Spacibo Mr. Parry and commenters.

mike k , September 29, 2017 at 6:51 am

Why Americans ever put any stock in the self-serving propaganda put out by the wealthy owners of the major media is a mystery, until you consider all the false ideas about America that have already been shoveled into their heads by their long public education brainwashing and numbing experience. The basic idea promoted by our culture is just shut up and accept whatever garbage you are told, and you will get along fine (conform). Start asking a lot of challenging questions, and you are in for a lot of trouble. I know this from personal experience, I was always in a lot of trouble with the self-satisfied authorities in my life, including my parents and teachers. I am forever grateful that I stubbornly persisted in questioning authority, in spite of all the difficulties it has caused me.

mike k , September 29, 2017 at 7:03 am

The football players who are taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem, are experiencing the fury of those who clutch their societal group-think like a precious security blanket. Our public opinion manipulator in chief D. Trump is making it clear why it was said that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. Score one propaganda ploy for the scoundrel in chief.

Joe Tedesky , September 29, 2017 at 9:59 am

Yes all this nonsense while at the same time, once again I might add, the 1st Amendment takes a backseat to Private Ownership.now stand up damn it.

Sam F , September 29, 2017 at 10:19 am

Yes, the groupthink of mass media is accepted by most for personal security.
Mass media tell them the oligarchy line as what other people think so they dare not disagree.
Mass media say that all are unethical so why pay a price to be good citizens.
But it is very significant that the football players refused to display nationalism.

D5-5 , September 29, 2017 at 12:12 pm

It is also significant in signaling automatic (pavlovian) behavior, no questions asked, and right in line with my country right or wrong and blind obedience, attitudes historically is associated with autocracy and repression. I have yet to see any commentary on what the flag means, or possible contexts of meaning, including that it stands for the current governing system, as well as for historical considerations. Sorry to harp on this, but the scantily dressed females of the Lingerie Football League in stating the flag is too sacred evidently found no inconsistency in their salutes with serious faces while scantily clad. This seems to me akin to going to church in a bikini and somehow contradictory to sacred. But sacred in itself hearkens back to the 1690s and the Salem witch trials before separation of church and state became understood as more rational. Any kind of worship can be taken too far into mindlessness, which is contradictory to the ideals this country was founded on in terms of equality and the first amendment. Beware of the scoundrels indeed.

Lee , September 29, 2017 at 6:35 am

I have always wondered why you seldom get reflections of the illness in American society, after reading articles like this. Trump is mad, Hillary is evil, the MS media is corrupt and dishonest. But its American culture that is responsible for thisthese arent accidents or untypical. Self-honesty is the least common of all American characteristics. Hunting for excuses and boogeymen, one of the most common.

mike k , September 29, 2017 at 10:25 am

The tacit belief in our exceptionalism makes us immune to self-criticism. Another name for American Hubris. Our belief that we are Gods chosen ones explains in part our strange affinity with Israel.

Brad Owen , September 29, 2017 at 11:39 am

The American Culture was concocted with Malice Afore Thought by the Congress of Cultural Freedom (CCF) starting in the Post-War years: from EIR search box; Congress of cultural freedom; making the world safe for fascism, also from search box; Synarchy against America.

Clif , September 29, 2017 at 8:36 am

NPR is complicit, giving Mark Jacobson of Georgetown a platform on Sept. 28 All Things Considered to pontificate about how Americans are falling prey to Russian disinformation. This entire sequence has drained me of any faith in American Intelligence operations, and MSM.

napier , September 29, 2017 at 8:36 am

The researchers defined junk news as propaganda and ideologically extreme, hyperpartisan, or *conspiratorial political news and information*.

I face-palmed when I read this. The lack of self-awareness on the part of the researchers is truly amazing.

Adrian Engler , September 29, 2017 at 8:36 am

Often with such propagandistic allegations – be it WMD in Iraq or Russian meddling -, there are problems that go beyond the lack of evidence. People without access to secret information could not know, of course, whether these was a good basis for the allegations about WMD. Certainly, people should have demanded that some of the evidence is made public, but even if someone accepts that some things must remain secret, it simply did not make sense to use the presentation of Colin Powell before the UN as a basis for starting a war. It could have been a basis for intensifying the inspections – and at that time, after some pressure, the Iraqi government allowed inspections everywhere -, but it certainly was no basis for stopping the inspections and starting a war of aggression.

Similarly, it is clear that those who put forward allegations about Russian meddling (some are regularly retracted, some arent and their status remain unclear) have the burden of proof. But the problem is not just that evidence is lacking, but many of these allegations are not very plausible and make little sense.

The first problem is that many statements in US media presuppose a worldview of international politics as a kind of zero sum game and dont even ask the question whether such a worldview is appropriate and whether it is common in Russia. It is just assumed that Russia and the United States are enemies and that anything that is bad for the United States is good for Russia and anything that is bad for Russia is good for the United States. Of course, there are areas in international politics where the United States have conflicting positions, but such a worldview based on a zero-sum game is far from obvious. What exactly should be the advantage for Russia when internal divisions in the United States are increased? Is it plausible that the United States is more likely to take the Russian perspective more seriously or be ready for compromises if it has more severe internal divisions? Not necessarily, I would even think that the opposite is more likely. Probably, the proponents of this theory could come up with a story why in that case it would make sense for Russia to increase internal divisions in the United States, but mostly, this question is not even asked, and these stories look more like an ad-hoc justification for a preconceived story.

Then, ignoring the doubts whether it would really make sense from a strategic point of view for Russia to exacerbate internal divisions in the United States for a moment, what would someone who, indeed, has the goal to increase internal divisions in the United States do? At first sight, it might seem that supporting both sides in existing conflicts (e.g. for and against BLM, for and against gun rights, for and against NFL players kneeling down etc.) may make sense. But the problem is that such a line of reasoning ignores the question of effectiveness. As far as these matters are concerned, there are already many US citizens who passionately support one of the two sides, and there are US donors who are ready to support one of these sides. If, in addition to those passionate supporters of one side, someone who is interested in increasing the divisions also supports both sides, the effect relative to the resources that are needed is relatively small. This may not be a strong counter-argument if we were talking about a large rich country attempting to meddle in a small poor one, but that is hardly an adequate description of the relationship of Russia to the United States. Certainly, on the whole, the Russian state still has quite a lot of resources, but if it had the goal to increase internal divisions in the United States, adding a bit more to both sides of existing conflicts about which many Americans are so passionate that they are ready to use time and in some cases money to support one of the two sides would probably so ineffective that it would hardly make sense. Attempting to create new conflicts could theoretically make sense – then, we should see ads and social media campaigns about conflicts that are not very prominent in public discourse (I dont know about any evidence or even indications that this is actually done) -, but when there are just ads and social media messages from fake accounts for both sides of common existing conflicts, other explanations are more plausible. For instance, it can be that it only seems that they come from a common source because of some superficial features, but are in fact from opposing sides (i.e. people who want to support one of the sides in the conflict, not to increase the conflict by supporting both sides), or it could be that there is a common source, but that the common source is a commercial entity that conducts campaigns for both sides for money (and maybe there are some people who use Russian language settings or some parts of that business are in Russia).

mike k , September 29, 2017 at 10:29 am

To expect most American citizens to think rationally is to expect the impossible. Not only were they not taught to think critically; they were taught not to do that.

mike k , September 29, 2017 at 10:35 am

And because of that deficiency in the public, if we wish to effect some change in their thinking, we are reduced to employing the same emotion based methods that have proven so successful for the establishment and its propagandists. The simple truth has zero effect on the typical American Zombie – he is too dead sure that his conditioning trumps reality.

D5-5 , September 29, 2017 at 11:37 am

It is almost amusing, as with this mainstream analysis from CNN (Sept 26), that states the FB ads were meant to sew divisions and chaos in the electorate, with many of the messages at cross-purposes.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/26/media/facebook-russia-ads/index.html

The apparent goal of the ads, the sources who spoke with CNN said, was to amplify political discord and fuel an atmosphere of incivility and chaos around the 2016 presidential campaign, not necessarily to promote one candidate or cause over another.

This assessment is spoken with great seriousness and a recommendation that these ads be made accessible to the public. This MSM report also assumes that the Russia-bought accounts stem from official Russia or the Kremlin, with no further discussion. A CNN poll claims 54% of Americans believe Russia interfered via these FB ads. Further breakdown in that polling indicates the lions share comes from whites who believe this.

But as you point out, Adrian, the body politic is (and was during the election period) already riven and in a state of incivility (another claim of the purpose of these FB ads) as we could see by reviewing behaviors in the election itself, to include Trumps statements at his rallies and Hillary Clintons actions in consort with a corrupted DNC. Common sense would indicate these widely exposed rogue behaviors at the time would out-do a mere 100,000 spent on FB, as has already been pointed out, so the CNN report is in danger of desperate exaggeration.

As far back as 2014 surveys of that time indicates the American publics trust in MSM had plummeted to something like 40%, and although I cannot find current figures on this (in 2016 RT found that only 6% of Americans trust MSM, but thats RT) but especially given the fiasco of the 2016 election, plausibly, that sense of trust is not increasing much. So that, given the already fractious and uncivil state of the country in many respects what were seeing is a continuation of desperate efforts to use the Russia did it meme for various political and opportunistic purposes. Further, MSM besides in the employ of special interests, has a naturally in-built bias toward presentation of dramatic, simplistic viewpoints that incite emotionalism and nationalism.

As I noted yesterday, the NFL controversy currently includes, with a straight face, scantily dressed female football players of the Lingerie Football League claiming that the flag is too sacred to be protested as they stand there with their booties exposed in the wind clutching their chests with straight faces. This sort of high drama is surely could for MSM audiences and ratings.

As to why a lot of Americans dont think critically about these matters there are, again, the problems of survival, job-holding, paying rent, dealing with an outrageous health care scheme which treats them as profit opportunities, increasing police management, and rising inflation, let alone the morbidity and turn-off that considering politics has become.

Methinks the MSM furor now turning to FB in its puny weight to be taken seriously is getting more and more desperate–and ridiculous.

Dave P. , September 29, 2017 at 12:01 pm

D5-5 –

Your comments: As to why a lot of Americans dont think critically about these matters there are, again, the problems of survival, job-holding, paying rent, dealing with an outrageous health care scheme which treats them as profit opportunities, increasing police management, and rising inflation, let alone the morbidity and turn-off that considering politics has become.

You have summed up the state in which an average person lives here now.

hatedbyu , September 29, 2017 at 12:24 pm

ok, i have to say it.

everybody is stupid. all over the world. and yet.everybody is a genius. even though i partake in this complaining about how
stupid people are sometimes. its really not true. people are smart. just easily led.

i find that americans are just used to being propagandized. its a habit. that only some of us are starting to come out of. if the workings of propaganda and advertising were taught in school, at a young age, the world would be a better place. i think most of the commenters here at consortium news have probably made that jump from believing the media blindly. but we are still a minority. and to be honest, some views i see repeated here still seem to reflect this instinctive belief in doctrines put forth in the media. remember that its only been about 8 generations of people since we threw off the monarchy here. talk about indoctrination…thats really not a long time. the history of kings/queens as rulers takes up a much larger part of the history of human existence. one could even say its in our genes..epi-genetics…

modern propaganda is only 100 years old or so.

so a modern antidote should be thought of.

well hopefully figure it out.

D5-5 , September 29, 2017 at 12:31 pm

Dave, Im privileged in being able to spend so much time here in this forum and do some thinking. But out on the street I find a different situation than what were discussing here so often with (including myself) the tendency to talk of the American sheeple and stupidity and such. I find people in supermarket parking lots in a state of despair, asking me for a quarter, their misery plain on their faces. Im told 45 million Americans are on the verge of poverty and in poverty. Where I go, too, I find my community members trying to be civil, most of them, and theres not a whole lot of political talk at the cashier stands in the grocery stores. I despair that this beautiful country, which still has a great deal going for it, is knuckled under to the worst political system Ive seen in my lifetime going back decades. I do not understand that an opposition party could become so inept and corrupted into incompetence, and the ruling party in a state of incoherence and stupidity. And yet I can give all this sort of thing time and thinking, but how many can? I love this country and the people, and am very saddened at the travesty, and where we now stand in world opinion.

Stephen J. , September 29, 2017 at 1:32 pm

January 10, 2017
Blame It On Putin

There is endless wars and devastation around the world
Western war criminals have their war banners unfurled
Millions dead and many millions uprooted
And the financial system is corrupted and looted
Blame it on Putin

The war criminals are free and spreading bloody terror
And their dirty propaganda says Putin is an aggressor
These evil plotters of death and destruction
Should be in jail for their abominable actions
But, Blame it on Putin.

The American election is won by Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton loses and gets politically dumped
The media is frenzied and foaming at their mouths
They are crying and lying, these corporate louts
They Blame it on Putin

Hollywood, too, is getting in on the act
The B.S. merchants are able to twist facts
In their fantasy world of channel changers
They do not approve of a political stranger
They Blame it on Putin

The spymasters and their grovelling politicians
All agree that their democracy is lost in transmission
Their comfortable and controlled system is now in danger
And these powerful parasites are filled with anger
They Blame it on Putin

One loose canon talks and babbles of an act of war
Could nuclear hell be started by a warmongering whore?
If the madmen of the establishment get their way
Could we all be liquidated in the nuclear fray?
Blame it on Putin

There is no doubt that the ruling class
Are all worried about saving their ass
Could there be huge changes and still more coming?
Is the sick and depraved society finally crumbling?
Hey, Blame it on Putin
[more info at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/01/blame-it-on-putin.html

Stephen J. , September 29, 2017 at 1:39 pm

March 3, 2017
Is Blaming Russia a Diversion, Designed to Hide the Treachery of Western War Criminals?
[much more info at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/03/is-blaming-russia-diversion-designed-to.html

Dominic Pukallus , September 29, 2017 at 6:52 pm

Having just watched the episode of Oliver Stones excellent Untold History of the United States which deals with the earliest historical political period which I can remember from first hand experience, I found the revisiting of Ronald Reagan bald-faced lies delivered with absolute seeming sincerity to be truly frightening. He was either a truly underestimated first-rate actor, a complete psychopath, or he really was just a carefully picked figurehead. Perhaps it really was as intimated in the episode that it was more a Bush II/Cheney sort of thing, the first two options sort of meld into each other if the lies he repeated were done so knowingly and he just didnt seem to have the intellectual capacity for much of anything arduous like being an actual Machiavellian.

The most important thing about this was just how easy it was, at the time, to just take the edifice of lies at face value. I was in my teens at the time, but I did consider myself to be of a rather independent mindset and much of what was bandied by these Republican Party Reptiles (not a funny proposition at all really in the end despite ORourkess seductiveness) rang false. That did not stop them from acquiring the patina of Truth, albeit ever so superficial, due to the hypnotic authoritative method of their delivery. Im glad I properly discovered the work of Robert Parry even if it is belatedly, due to my own Sleep of Reason because of this saturation of falsehoods despite his tireless work along with other similar-minded people. I can sense some frustration here in his phrasing with the seeming lack of difference this tireless work seems to be making to the general perception but I am grateful for his lucidity, which contributes to mine. How long will such lucidity be allowed to be disseminated, one can only wonder.

Michael Eremia , September 29, 2017 at 7:12 pm

Another home-run by Robert Parry.

[Sep 30, 2017] Exposing The Slimy Business Of 'Russia-Gate' (What The Mainstream Media Doesn't Want You To Know) Zero Hedge

Notable quotes:
"... And right now, tens of millions of dollars are flowing to non-governmental organizations if they will buttress the thesis of Russian meddling in the U.S. democratic process no matter how sloppy the research or how absurd the findings. ..."
"... And, if you think the pillars of the U.S. mainstream media – The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and others – will apply some quality controls, you havent been paying attention for the past year or so. The MSM is just as unethical as the NGOs are. ..."
"... So, we are now in a phase of Russia-gate in which NGO scholars produce deeply biased reports and their nonsense is treated as front-page news and items for serious discussion across the MSM. ..."
"... The story, which fits neatly into the current U.S. propaganda meme that the Russian government somehow is undermining American democracy by stirring up dissent inside the U.S., quickly spread to other news outlets and became the latest proof of a Russian war against America. ..."
"... The vague wording doesn't even say the Russian government was involved but rather presents an unsupported claim that some Twitter accounts are suspected of being part of some network and that this network may have some ill-defined connection – or links – to Russia, a country of 144 million people. ..."
Sep 30, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

As the U.S. government doles out tens of millions of dollars to 'combat Russian propaganda', one result is a slew of new 'studies' by 'scholars' and 'researchers' auditioning for the loot ...

The Field of Dreams slogan for Americas NGOs should be: If you pay for it, we will come.

And right now, tens of millions of dollars are flowing to non-governmental organizations if they will buttress the thesis of Russian meddling in the U.S. democratic process no matter how sloppy the research or how absurd the findings.

And, if you think the pillars of the U.S. mainstream media – The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and others – will apply some quality controls, you havent been paying attention for the past year or so. The MSM is just as unethical as the NGOs are.

So, we are now in a phase of Russia-gate in which NGO scholars produce deeply biased reports and their nonsense is treated as front-page news and items for serious discussion across the MSM.

Yet, there's even an implicit confession about how pathetic some of this scholarship is in the hazy phrasing that gets applied to the findings, although the weasel words will slip past most unsuspecting Americans and will be dropped for more definitive language when the narrative is summarized in the next days newspaper or in a cable-news crawl.

For example, a Times front-page story on Thursday reported that a network of Twitter accounts suspected of links to Russia seized on both sides of the [NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem] issue with hashtags, such as #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee.

The story, which fits neatly into the current U.S. propaganda meme that the Russian government somehow is undermining American democracy by stirring up dissent inside the U.S., quickly spread to other news outlets and became the latest proof of a Russian war against America.

However, before we empty the nuclear silos and exterminate life on the planet, we might take a second to look at the Times phrasing a network of Twitter accounts suspected of links to Russia.

The vague wording doesn't even say the Russian government was involved but rather presents an unsupported claim that some Twitter accounts are suspected of being part of some network and that this network may have some ill-defined connection – or links – to Russia, a country of 144 million people.

Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon

Its like the old game of six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Yes, perhaps we are all linked to Kevin Bacon somehow but that doesnt prove that we know Kevin Bacon or are part of a Kevin Bacon network that is executing a grand conspiracy to sow discontent by taking opposite sides of issues and then tweeting.

Yet that is the underlying absurdity of the Times article by Daisuke Wakabayashi and Scott Shane. Still, as silly as the article may be that doesn't mean its not dangerous. The Times high-profile treatment of these gauzy allegations represents a grave danger to the world by fueling a growing hysteria inside the United States about being at war with nuclear-armed Russia. At some point, someone might begin to take this alarmist rhetoric seriously.

Yes, I understand that lots of people hate President Trump and see Russia-gate as the golden ticket to his impeachment. But that doesnt justify making serious allegations with next to no proof, especially when the outcome could be thermonuclear war.

However, with all those millions of dollars sloshing around the NGO world and Western academia – all looking for some study to fund that makes Russia look bad – you are sure to get plenty of takers. And, we should now expect that new findings like these will fill in for the so-far evidence-free suspicions about Russia and Trump colluding to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton.

If you read more deeply into the Times story, you get a taste of where Russia-gate is headed next and a clue as to who is behind it:

Since last month, researchers at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan initiative of the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, have been publicly tracking 600 Twitter accounts -- human users and suspected bots alike -- they have linked to Russian influence operations. Those were the accounts pushing the opposing messages on the N.F.L. and the national anthem.

Of 80 news stories promoted last week by those accounts, more than 25 percent had a primary theme of anti-Americanism, the researchers found. About 15 percent were critical of Hillary Clinton, falsely accusing her of funding left-wing antifa -- short for anti-fascist -- protesters, tying her to the lethal terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and discussing her daughter Chelseas use of Twitter. Eleven percent focused on wiretapping in the federal investigation into Paul Manafort, President Trumps former campaign chairman, with most of them treated the news as a vindication for President Trumps earlier wiretapping claims.

The Neocons, Again!

So, lets stop and unpack this Times reporting.

First, this Alliance for Securing Democracy is not some neutral truth-seeking organization but a neoconservative-dominated outfit that includes on its advisory board such neocon luminaries as Mike Chertoff, Bill Kristol and former Freedom House president David Kramer along with other anti-Russia hardliners such as former deputy CIA director Michael Morell and former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers.

Neoconservative pundit William Kristol. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

How many of these guys, do you think, were assuring us that Iraq was hiding WMDs back in 2003?

This group clearly has an ax to grind, a record of deception, and plenty of patrons in the Military-Industrial Complex who stand to make billions of dollars from the New Cold War.

The neocons also have been targeting Russia for regime change for years because they see Russian President Vladimir Putin as the chief obstacle to their goal of helping Israel achieve its desire for regime change in Syria and a chance to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran. Russia-gate has served the neocons well as a very convenient way to pull Democrats, liberals and even progressives into the neocon agenda because Russia-gate is sold as a powerful weapon for the anti-Trump Resistance.

The Times article also might have mentioned that Twitter has 974 million accounts. So, this alarm over 600 accounts is a bit disproportionate for a front-page story in the Times, dont you think?

And, theres the definitional problem of what constitutes anti-Americanism in a news article. And what does it mean to be linked to Russian influence operations? Does that include Americans who may not march in lockstep to the one-sided State Department narratives on the crises in Ukraine and Syria? Any deviation from Official Washingtons groupthink makes you a Moscow stooge.

And, is it a crime to be critical of Hillary Clinton or to note that the U.S. mainstream media was dismissive of Trumps claims about being wiretapped only for us to find out later that the FBI apparently was wiretapping his campaign manager?

However, such questions arent going to be asked amid what has become a massive Russia-gate groupthink, dominating not just Official Washington, but across much of Americas political landscape and throughout the European Union.

Why the Bias?

Beyond the obvious political motivations for this bias, we also have had the introduction of vast sums of money pouring in from the U.S. government, NATO and European institutions to support the business of combatting Russian propaganda.

President Obama in the Oval Office.

For example, last December, President Obama signed into law a $160 million funding mechanism entitled the Combating Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act. But that amounts to only a drop in the bucket considering already existing Western propaganda projects targeting Russia.

So, a scramble is on to develop seemingly academic models to prove what Western authorities want proven: that Russia is at fault for pretty much every bad thing that happens in the world, particularly the alienation of many working-class people from the Washington-Brussels elites.

The truth cannot be that establishment policies have led to massive income inequality and left the working class struggling to survive and thus are to blame for ugly political manifestations – from Trump to Brexit to the surprising support for Germanys far-right AfD party. No, it must be Russia! Russia! Russia! And theres a lot of money on the bed to prove that point.

Theres also the fact that the major Western news media is deeply invested in bashing Russia as well as in the related contempt for Trump and his followers. Those twin prejudices have annihilated all professional standards that would normally be applied to news judgments regarding these flawed studies.

On Thursday, The Washington Post ran its own banner-headlined story drawn from the same loose accusations made by that neocon-led Alliance for Securing Democracy, but instead the Post sourced the claims to Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma. The headline read: Russian trolls are stoking NFL controversy, senator says.

The evidence cited by Lankfords office was one Twitter account calling itself Boston Antifa that gives its geolocation as Vladivostok, Russia, the Post reported.

By Thursday, Twitter had suspended the Boston Antifa account, so I couldnt send it a question, but earlier this month, Dan Glaun, a reporter for Masslive.com, reported that the people behind Boston Antifa were a pair of anti-leftist pranksters from Oregon who started Boston Antifa as a parody of actual anti-fascist groups.

In an email to me on Thursday, Glaun cited an interview that the Boston Antifa pranksters had done with right-wing radio talk show host Gavin McInnes last April.

And, by the way, there are apps that let you manipulate your geolocation data on Twitter. Or, you can choose to believe that the highly professional Russian intelligence agencies didnt notice that they were telegraphing their location as Vladivostok.

Mindless Russia Bashing

Another example of this mindless Russia bashing appeared just below the Posts story on Lankfords remarks. The Post sidebar cited a study from researchers at Oxford Universitys Project on Computational Propaganda asserting that junk news on Twitter flowed more heavily in a dozen [U.S.] battleground states than in the nation overall in the days immediately before and after the 2016 presidential election, suggesting that a coordinated effort targeted the most pivotal voters. Cue the spooky Boris and Natasha music!

Boris and Natasha, the evil spies from the Rocky and Bullwinkle shows.

Of course, any Americans living in battleground states could tell you that they are inundated with all kinds of election-related junk, including negative TV advertising, nasty radio messages, alarmist emails and annoying robo-calls at dinner time. Thats why theyre called battleground states, Sherlock.

But whats particularly offensive about this study is that it implies that the powers-that-be must do more to eliminate what these experts deem propaganda and junk news. If you read deeper into the story, you discover that the researchers applied a very subjective definition of what constitutes junk news, i.e., information that the researchers dont like even if it is truthful and newsworthy.

The Post article by Craig Timberg, who apparently is using Russia-gate to work himself off the business pages and onto the national staff, states that The researchers defined junk news as propaganda and ideologically extreme, hyperpartisan, or conspiratorial political news and information.

The researchers also categorized reports from Russia and ones from WikiLeaks – which published embarrassing posts about Democrat Hillary Clinton based on a hack of her campaign chairmans emails – as polarizing political content for the purpose of the analysis.

So, this study lumped together junk news with accurate and newsworthy information, i.e., WikiLeaks disclosure of genuine emails that contained such valid news as the contents of Clintons speeches to Wall Street banks (which she was trying to hide from voters) as well as evidence of the unethical tactics used by the Democratic National Committee to sabotage Sen. Bernie Sanderss campaign.

Also dumped into the researchers bin of vile disinformation were reports from Russia, as if everything that comes out of Russia is, ipso facto, junk news.

And, what, pray tell, is conspiratorial political news? I would argue that the past year of evidence-lite allegations about Russian meddling in the U.S. election accompanied by unsupported suspicions about collusion with the Trump campaign would constitute conspiratorial political news. Indeed, I would say that this Oxford research constitutes conspiratorial political news and that Timbergs article qualifies as junk news.

Predictable Outcome

Given the built-in ideological bias of this research, it probably wont surprise you that the reports author, Philip N. Howard, concludes that junk news originates from three main sources that the Oxford group has been tracking: Russian operatives, Trump supporters and activists part of the alt-right, according to the Post.

The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Washington Post)

I suppose that since part of the methodology was to define reports from Russia as junk news, the appearance of Russian operatives shouldnt be much of a surprise, but the whole process reeks of political bias.

Further skewing the results, the report separated out information from professional news organizations [and] political parties from some junk news source, according to the Post. In other words, the researchers believe that professional news organizations are inherently reliable and that outside-the-mainstream news is junk – despite the MSMs long record of getting major stories wrong.

The real junk is this sort of academic or NGO research that starts with a conclusion and packs a study in such a way as to guarantee the preordained conclusion. Or as the old saying goes, garbage in, garbage out.

Yet, its also clear that if you generate research that feeds the hungry beast of Russia-gate, you will find eager patrons doling out dollars and a very receptive audience in the mainstream media.

In a place like Washington, there are scores if not hundreds of reports generated every day and only a tiny fraction get the attention of the Times, Post, CNN, etc., let alone result in published articles. But studies that reinforce todays anti-Russia narrative are sure winners.

So, if youre setting up a new NGO or youre an obscure academic angling for a lucrative government grant as well as some flattering coverage in the MSM, the smart play is to join the new gold rush in decrying Russian propaganda.

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    HopefulCynical , Sep 29, 2017 11:45 PM

    tl;dr - the usual suspects are looting the country...

    ...at some point, we really need to have had enough of this.

    Slippery Slope -> HopefulCynical , Sep 30, 2017 12:04 AM

    Every notice that the worst Russia-phobes are Jewish-Russian-Americans?

    People like Julia Iouffe, Leonid Bershidsky, Bill Browder, Garry Kasparov, Marsha Gessen?

    These useful Russian idiots really hate the idea of a strong Russia, with a growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Christians.

    Cabreado , Sep 29, 2017 11:45 PM

    1) This is the rise of the Self-Absorbed -- the Narcissist and Sociopath -- to a critical mass of places of influence and control.

    2) Pay attention to and denounce your more local/regional media -- they are in Control mode, operating in stealth mode, enabling the narrative, in self-preservation.

    3) The People are failing. There's no way to recover from that.

    Taras Bulba , Sep 29, 2017 11:46 PM

    The neo cons again!

    They are like termites, they just never go away, but why worry, none of them will ever be held accountable-meanwhile, they are in the game, making tons. what is not to like.

    Some are also citizens of israel, chertoff for example. I believe he also has a large security consulting firm;

    "heh, here is my card, please call if you are worried about the iranian nuclear capability."

    quasi_verbatim , Sep 29, 2017 11:48 PM

    America is the failed false flag and Russia the new shining lamppost on the dunghill. Get over it.

    dark pools of soros , Sep 29, 2017 11:52 PM

    throw kristol into a vat of acid

    runswithscissors -> dark pools of soros , Sep 30, 2017 12:18 AM

    The dumbmasses will not be able to follow whatever bullshit narrative the deep state invents to "prove" Russian collusion-hacking-global warming or whatever.

[Sep 30, 2017] The Rise of the New McCarthyism by Robert Parry

Notable quotes:
"... A difference, however, from the McCarthyism of the 1950s is that this New McCarthyism has enlisted Democrats, liberals and even progressives in the cause because of their disgust with President Trump; the 1950s version was driven by Republicans and the Right with much of the Left on the receiving end, maligned by the likes of Sen. Joe McCarthy as un-American and as Communisms fellow travelers. ..."
"... The real winners in this New McCarthyism appear to be the neoconservatives who have leveraged the Democratic/liberal hatred of Trump to draw much of the Left into the political hysteria that sees the controversy over alleged Russian political meddling as an opportunity to get Trump. ..."
"... Already, under the guise of combating Russian propaganda and fake news, Google, Facebook and other tech giants have begun introducing algorithms to hunt down and marginalize news that challenges official U.S. government narratives on hot-button issues such as Ukraine and Syria. Again, no evidence is required, just the fact that Putin may have said something similar. ..."
"... The New McCarthyism with its Orwellian-style algorithms might seem like a clever way to neutralize (or maybe even help oust) Trump, but – long after Trump is gone – a structure for letting the neocons and the mainstream media monopolize American political debate might be a far greater threat to both democracy and peace. ..."
"... Americas Stolen Narrative, ..."
Sep 30, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Special Report: As the New McCarthyism takes hold in America, the neocon Washington Post makes Russia the villain in virtually every bad thing that happens, with U.S. dissidents treated as fellow-travelers, writes Robert Parry.

Make no mistake about it: the United States has entered an era of a New McCarthyism that blames nearly every political problem on Russia and has begun targeting American citizens who dont go along with this New Cold War propaganda.

A difference, however, from the McCarthyism of the 1950s is that this New McCarthyism has enlisted Democrats, liberals and even progressives in the cause because of their disgust with President Trump; the 1950s version was driven by Republicans and the Right with much of the Left on the receiving end, maligned by the likes of Sen. Joe McCarthy as un-American and as Communisms fellow travelers.

The real winners in this New McCarthyism appear to be the neoconservatives who have leveraged the Democratic/liberal hatred of Trump to draw much of the Left into the political hysteria that sees the controversy over alleged Russian political meddling as an opportunity to get Trump.

Already, the neocons and their allies have exploited the anti-Russian frenzy to extract tens of millions of dollars more from the taxpayers for programs to combat Russian propaganda, i.e., funding of non-governmental organizations and scholars who target dissident Americans for challenging the justifications for this New Cold War.

The Washington Post, which for years has served as the flagship for neocon propaganda, is again charting the new course for America, much as it did in rallying U.S. public backing for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and in building sympathy for abortive regime change projects aimed at Syria and Iran. The Post has begun blaming almost every unpleasant development in the world on Russia! Russia! Russia!

For instance, a Post editorial on Tuesday shifted the blame for the anemic victory of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the surprising strength of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) from Merkels austerity policies, which have caused hardship for much of the working class, or from her open door for Mideast refugees, which has destabilized some working-class neighborhoods, to – you guessed it – Russia!

The evidence, as usual, is vague and self-interested, but sure to be swallowed by many Democrats and liberals, who hate Russia because they blame it for Trump, and by lots of Republicans and conservatives, who have a residual hatred for Russia left over from the Old Cold War.

The Post cited the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab, which has been pushing much of the hysteria about alleged Russian activities on the Internet. The Atlantic Council essentially is NATOs think tank and is financed with money from the U.S. government, Gulf oil states, military contractors, global financial institutions and many other sources which stand to gain directly or indirectly from the expanding U.S. military budget and NATO interventions.

Blaming Russia

In this New Cold War, the Russians get blamed for not only disrupting some neocon regime change projects, such as the proxy war in Syria, but also political developments in the West, such as Donald Trumps election and AfDs rise in Germany.

Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)

The Atlantic Councils digital lab claimed, according to the Post editorial, that In the final hours of the [German] campaign, online supporters of the AfD began warning their base of possible election fraud, and the online alarms were driven by anonymous troll accounts and boosted by a Russian-language bot-net."

Of course, the Post evinces no evidence tying any of this to the Russian government or to President Vladimir Putin. It is the nature of McCarthyism that actual evidence is not required, just heavy breathing and dark suspicions. For those of us who operate Web sites, trolls – some volunteers and some professionals – have become a common annoyance and they represent many political outlooks, not just Russian.

Plus, it is standard procedure these days for campaigns to issue last-minute alarms to their supporters about possible election fraud to raise doubts about the results should the outcome be disappointing.

The U.S. government has engaged in precisely this strategy around the world, having pro-U.S. parties not only complain about election fraud but to take to the streets in violent protests to impugn the legitimacy of election outcomes. That U.S. strategy has been applied to places such as Ukraine (the Orange Revolution in 2004); Iran (the Green Revolution in 2009); Russia (the Snow Revolution in 2011); and many other locations.

Pre-election alerts also have become a feature in U.S. elections, even in 2016 when both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton raised questions about the legitimacy of the balloting, albeit for different reasons.

Yet, instead of seeing the AfD maneuver as a typical ploy by a relatively minor party – and the German election outcome as an understandable reflection of voter discontent and weariness over Merkels three terms as Chancellor – the Atlantic Council and the Post see Russians under every bed and particularly Putin.

Loving to Hate Putin

In the world of neocon propaganda, Putin has become the great bête noire, since he has frustrated a variety of neocon schemes. He helped head off a major U.S. military strike against Syria in 2013; he aided President Obama in achieving the Iran nuclear agreement in 2014-15; Putin opposed and – to a degree – frustrated the neocon-supported coup in Ukraine in 2014; and he ultimately supplied the air power that defeated neocon-backed rebel forces in Syria in 2015-17.

President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice listens at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

So, the Post and the neocons want Putin gone – and they have used gauzy allegations about Russian meddling in the U.S. and other elections as the new propaganda theme to justify destabilizing Russia with economic sanctions and, if possible, engineering another regime change project in Moscow.

None of this is even secret. Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, publicly proclaimed the goal of ousting Putin in an op-ed in The Washington Post, writing: The United States has the power to contain and defeat this danger. The issue is whether we can summon the will to do so.

But the way neocon propaganda works is that the U.S. and its allies are always the victims of some nefarious enemy who must be thwarted to protect all that is good in the world. In other words, even as NED and other U.S.-funded operations take aim at Putin and Russia, Russia and Putin must be transformed into the aggressors.

Mr. Putin would like nothing better than to generate doubts, fog, cracks and uncertainty around the German pillar of Europe, the Post editorial said. He relishes infiltrating chaos and mischief into open societies. In this case, supporting the far-right AfD is extraordinarily cynical, given how many millions of Russians died to defeat the fascists seven decades ago.

Not to belabor the point but there is no credible evidence that Putin did any of this. There is a claim by the virulently anti-Russian Atlantic Council that some anonymous troll accounts promoted some AfD complaint about possible voter fraud and that it was picked up by a Russian-language bot-net. Even if that is true – and the Atlantic Council is far from an objective source – where is the link to Putin?

Not everything that happens in Russia, a nation of 144 million people, is ordered by Putin. But the Post would have you believe that it is. It is the centerpiece of this neocon conspiracy theory.

Silencing Dissent

Similarly, any American who questions this propaganda immediately is dismissed as a Kremlin stooge or a Russian propagandist, another ugly campaign spearheaded by the Post and the neocons. Again, no evidence is required, just some analysis that what youre saying somehow parallels something Putin has said.

The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Washington Post)

On Tuesday, in what amounted to a companion piece for the editorial, a Post article again pushed the unproven suspicions about Russian operatives buying $100,000 in Facebook ads from 2015 into 2017 to supposedly influence U.S. politics. Once again, no evidence required.

In the article, the Post also reminds its readers that Moscow has a history of focusing on social inequities in the U.S., which gets us back to the comparisons between the Old McCarthyism and the new.

Yes, its true that the Soviet Union denounced Americas racial segregation and cited that ugly feature of U.S. society in expressing solidarity with the American civil rights movement and national liberation struggles in Africa. Its also true that American Communists collaborated with the domestic civil rights movement to promote racial integration.

That was a key reason why J. Edgar Hoovers FBI targeted Martin Luther King Jr. and other African-American leaders – because of their association with known or suspected Communists. (Similarly, the Reagan administration resisted support for Nelson Mandela because his African National Congress accepted Communist support in its battle against South Africas Apartheid white-supremacist regime.)

Interestingly, one of the arguments from liberal national Democrats in opposing segregation in the 1960s was that the repression of American blacks undercut U.S. diplomatic efforts to develop allies in Africa. In other words, Soviet and Communist criticism of Americas segregation actually helped bring about the demise of that offensive system.

Yet, Kings association with alleged Communists remained a talking point of die-hard segregationists even after his assassination when they opposed creating a national holiday in his honor in the 1980s.

These parallels between the Old McCarthyism and the New McCarthyism are implicitly acknowledged in the Posts news article on Tuesday, which cites Putins criticism of police killings of unarmed American blacks as evidence that he is meddling in U.S. politics.

Since taking office, Putin has on occasion sought to spotlight racial tensions in the United States as a means of shaping perceptions of American society, the article states. Putin injected himself in 2014 into the race debate after protests broke out in Ferguson, Mo., over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an African American, by a white police officer.

'Do you believe that everything is perfect now from the point of view of democracy in the United States? Putin told CBSs 60 Minutes program. If everything was perfect, there wouldnt be the problem of Ferguson. There would be no abuse by the police. But our task is to see all these problems and respond properly."

The Posts speculative point seems to be that Putins response included having Russian operatives buy some ads on Facebook to exploit these racial tensions, but there is no evidence to support that conspiracy theory.

However, as this anti-Russia hysteria spreads, we may soon see Americans who also protest the police killing of unarmed black men denounced as Putins fellow-travelers, much as King and other civil rights leaders were smeared as Communist dupes.

Ignoring Reality

So, instead of Democrats and Chancellor Merkel looking in the mirror and seeing the real reasons why many white working-class voters are turning toward populist and extremist alternatives, they can simply blame Putin and continue a crackdown on Internet-based dissent as the work of Russian operatives.

Already, under the guise of combating Russian propaganda and fake news, Google, Facebook and other tech giants have begun introducing algorithms to hunt down and marginalize news that challenges official U.S. government narratives on hot-button issues such as Ukraine and Syria. Again, no evidence is required, just the fact that Putin may have said something similar.

As Democrats, liberals and even some progressives join in this Russia-gate hysteria – driven by their hatred of Donald Trump and his supposedly fascistic tendencies – they might want to consider whom theyve climbed into bed with and what these neocons have in mind for the future.

Arguably, if fascism or totalitarianism comes to the United States, it is more likely to arrive in the guise of protecting democracy from Russia or another foreign adversary than from a reality-TV clown like Donald Trump.

The New McCarthyism with its Orwellian-style algorithms might seem like a clever way to neutralize (or maybe even help oust) Trump, but – long after Trump is gone – a structure for letting the neocons and the mainstream media monopolize American political debate might be a far greater threat to both democracy and peace.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, Americas Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

SteveK9 , September 26, 2017 at 5:46 pm

Its been going on since the arrival of the national security state after World War II. At least for decades there really was a contest between Capitalism and Communism, not that it excuses the lying and killing of millions. Now, its just a we rule the World habit. Is it really getting worse? Perhaps so.

Erik G , September 26, 2017 at 7:17 pm

I would say that the dominance of economic power over democratic institutions has been completely consolidated since WWII, accelerated under Reagan and after the collapse of the USSR, and has been completed since 911. The articles conclusion that letting mainstream media monopolize American political debate is a greater threat than Trump is quite an understatement, appropriate to new readers.

Those who would like to petition the NYT to make Robert Parry their senior editor may do so here:
https://www.change.org/p/new-york-times-bring-a-new-editor-to-the-new-york-times?recruiter=72650402&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
While Mr. Parry may prefer independence, and we all know the NYT ownership makes it unlikely, and the NYT may try to ignore it, it is instructive to them that intelligent readers know better journalism when they see it. A petition demonstrates the concerns of a far larger number of potential or lost subscribers.

SteveK9 , September 26, 2017 at 7:49 pm

More even than economic power (banks?) it is the intelligence agencies (all revolving around the CIA) and the military-industrial complex. We could make progress in a lot of areas if we could simply stop waging war, overt or covert, but it doesnt seem possible, partly because the Deep State has become smart enough not to wage a war that requires a draft or kills too many Americans. Its OK to spend trillions though, especially since having the Worlds reserve currency allows us to create as much as we need.

Dave P. , September 27, 2017 at 11:41 am

SteveK9 – Your comments: Its OK to spend trillions though, especially since having the Worlds reserve currency allows us to create as much as we need.

That is how we suck the blood of the people of the World beyond the Wests borders – by printing unlimited money, using cheap labor, taking over and exploiting their resources.

The oppressed have also to pay to the oppressor for their own subjugation. That is how we maintain our grand life style – as they boast every day on TV channels and elsewhere – for the top 10%.

During the Soviet days, USSR was a hindrance to this Western Imperialism. And now again some how it turns out that Russia is again becoming the protector of the Oppressed – though they have themselves a kind of makeshift type of Capitalism at this stage.

Sam F , September 27, 2017 at 5:50 pm

The complete economic power of oligarchy (zionists/MIC/WallSt/corporations) over Congress, judiciary, federal agencies, and mass media, results in thedeep state structure. Doubtless there is further deep state gangsterism.

The US has been dominated by the economic power that arose in the 19th century, because the emerging middle class failed to see that this would corrupt democratic institutions if not severely regulated, and of course oligarchy soon controlled the press and excluded the issue from public debate.

Kiza , September 26, 2017 at 9:09 pm

I find it truly fascinating that the US Deep State has changed the narrative through its liberal MSM mouthpieces, since Zuckcrook $100K ad saga, that the Russian goal was not so much to elect President Swamp then to saw chaos and discord in US. Let us look at the hidden meaning of this:
1) the Deep State feels confident that President Swamp has been brought under control; only the quasi-liberal wing of the Deep State still wants to impeach him (fat chance now that he is well under control, if he ever was not yet another faux agent of change – YAFAOC)
2) the rulers are truly concerned about the forthcoming challenge to their rule, which would begin as unrest, chaos and possibly a civil war; ironically they are delivering a very powerful tool to Putin by establishing parallels between US sedition and Putins words; this means that, if he wanted, Putin could just state some obvious criticisms, a sore point of the US/Global system and this becomes a point of oppression in US; such oppression can ultimately have only one outcome for the oppressors.

In brief, it is always useful to monitor the official statements to deduce what is on the rulers minds. They do not appear terribly self confident with their Putin ate my homework stories. Putin is both the leader of the hated Eurasia and Putins face is morphing into the face of the internal enemy Emanuel Goldstein .

Peter Loeb , September 27, 2017 at 7:22 am

STEVEK9

An excellent comment, Stevek9.

To continue responding is to play by the McCarthyist rules. Do I want
to circulate Robert Parrys excellent article (for the most part)? There
would be a collective reply that :the Russians are coming and a
groupthink diversions from WHAT the issues really are (oppression of
blacks in the US -- the real point of the NFL -- discussions usually hidden
under Do you like Trump?Do you hate Russia?And thus not
addressed or an article in Consortium yesterday on the Palestine/
Israeli conflict which was responded to mainly in terms of what
the Russians are doing etc. etc.

I remember the McCarthy era. My Dad had to sign a loyalty
oath. There were other forms such as the Harry Trumans
the Attorney Generals list, The Truman Doctrine, domino
theories etc.

The late historian Gabriel Kolko discussed this in the subsection
Violence and Social Control of his major work MAIN CURRENTS
IN MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY (part of Chapter 5 of that work).

No one is talking about the raw courage of so many black players
(mostly) who suddenly step away from their roles as entertainers
of the American society to remind us all that the US is considering
the murder of unarmed blacks as patriotic…heroic.

Instead, the issue is President Donald Trump and I can guess
that , like Hitler and Mussolini, he loves it with a passion.

What a dirty shame that in the US blacks demonstrating for
justice, for life, are attacked by police funded by the US
via private organizations such as those of Israel which provide
their particular expertise in how to oppress minorities --
accompanied by junkets for US law enforcement officials
for training in the Israeli efficiency in murder, oppression,
and inhuman treatment of those Zionists consider inferior
if human at all.

Dont read the above if you fear that its all the
fault of the Russians.

In French one once said Le revolution se mange..
(The revolution eats itself (se))

-- –Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA

Susan Sunflower , September 27, 2017 at 12:12 pm

Yes, I think the Woodrow Wilson 14-point plan legacy of helping to keep most of Europe from going communist or trying to do so is overlooked For all of Wilsons lies, deals and broken promises, I think his inclusive idealistic promise to ordinary people that is still felt today (and may provide some of the origin of American accepted world leadership in anti-communism). European democratic socialism arose to quell the unrest, expectations and dissatisfaction of those same people after the fall of the empires. Remember all those Frank Capra movies in which Americanism was a non-communist path to egalitarian future. (yes, Capra was an anti-communist)

Counterpunch has an article -- link next comment

Susan Sunflower , September 27, 2017 at 12:12 pm

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/26/world-war-i-continues-to-haunt-america/

Susan Sunflower , September 26, 2017 at 6:18 pm

Heres a fun fact

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reversed course Tuesday and told Wisconsin officials that the Russian government did not scan the states voter registration system.

Homeland Security told state elections officials on Friday that Wisconsin was one of 21 states targeted by the Russians, raising concerns about the safety and security of the states election systems even though no data had been compromised. But in an email to the states deputy elections administrator that was provided to reporters at the Wisconsin Elections Commission meeting on Tuesday, Homeland Security said that initial notice was in error.

Based on our external analysis, the WI IP address affected belongs to the WI Department of Workforce Development, not the Elections Commission, said the email from Juan Figueroa, with Homeland Securitys Office of Infrastructure Protection.

It wasnt immediately known if Homeland Security made similar mistakes with any of the other 20 states. Figueroa did not immediately reply to an email seeking an explanation of how the mistake was made.

Dr. Ip , September 26, 2017 at 6:28 pm

Ive lived in Germany for over 30 years now, and what has been clear since the infamous Agenda 2010 introduced during the reign of the SPD government under Schroeder, and the reforms introduced by pseudo-Socialist governments in France, is that the same right wing forces that have captured the US, Poland, Hungary and are threatening France and Spain, have their roots (and subtle support) from the neoliberals preoccupied with wealth creation for the few and the destruction of the social net for the many.

Endless war – a perpetuum mobile cash machine – and the attempt to actually own the whole world, has led to a situation that is an updated version of the corporatist fascism of the 30s and 40s. Destruction of the Left is acceptable because it clears a path toward endless profit, and arousal of the Right is seen as profit-beneficial because the uneducated masses that comprise this sector are in love with the illusion of one day belonging to a group that will allow them to achieve wealth and power. Of course it never will. But the unleashing of their anger and violence against all those perceived as superior, especially in intelligence, allows them a catharsis of blood and death which eventually consumes them.

There is a wonderful drawing by Paul Weber entitled Deutsches Verhängnis 1931/1932 which illustrates this point superbly.
( http://www.weber-museum.de/werk/widerstand/ )

Annie , September 26, 2017 at 7:15 pm

People who are registered democrats often see the party as liberal, when in fact it is not. Under Bill Clintons administration the party was pushed even further to the right. I know many democrats who define themselves as progressive or liberals, and have bought into the nonsense that Russia rigged the US election. I never perceived these people as progressive, or liberal and most kept their mouths shut throughout the Obama administration, although he engaged in policies, and practices that no real progressive, or liberal would, or should find acceptable. If they were liberal or progressive in their thinking why would they be so vulnerable to propaganda? Why would they be so easily manipulated if they were truly progressive in their thinking, or not be able to see things from a broader perspective? To me many democrats simply hate Trump, and cant accept that their whining, war candidate lost. And how can you define yourself as progressive when you supported Hillary Clinton in the first place? We should be careful how we use the word liberal, or progressive. It was under the Obama administration that the new cold war really got underway.

Realist , September 27, 2017 at 8:43 am

What you are saying is so true, Annie, but far too many people allow these truths to be obscured by the stereotypes they would rather cling to. I look at Obama as the great betrayer of liberal or progressive causes. He was about as progressive as a Wall Street banker investing his yearly bonus on choice foreclosed properties, or Mitt Romney picking the bones of companies he buys to strip of assets.

Susan Sunflower , September 26, 2017 at 7:18 pm

Recommend Richard Wolfe on fire on RT tonight -- are we at the end of capitalism . cant find a link to youtube.. but while this new mccarthyism hysteria probably (not) the sort of death-throes ravings what one might hope for the reality is that we are past pablum, nostrums, teaks and fixes -- none of which are still operative
Wolfe here is in fine form .

D5-5 , September 26, 2017 at 7:50 pm

b who runs the Moon of Alabama site has a similar view to Parrys on the WAPOs view of the German election (and as always comments recommended):

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/09/the-russian-influence-story-falls-apart-a-new-fairy-tale-is-needed.html

[Sep 28, 2017] The Russia-Blamers Think Youre Stupid by Thomas L. Knapp

Notable quotes:
"... Lets assume for a moment that the basic claim is true, although so far the actual evidence indicates a tiny propaganda operation in the scale of things. If its true, the conclusion it points to is: American voters are morons who can be gamed into doing anything by anyone with the ability to buy ads on Facebook and Twitter. ..."
"... I didnt say that. Russian hackers didnt say that, at least in public. Thats what the propagators of the new Red Scare are claiming. ..."
"... If the American electorate is really as abjectly stupid as the blame the Russians crowd insists, it seems to me that instead of blaming the Russians, they should get to work on either making the electorate smarter or coming up with a system that doesnt leave important political decisions in the hands of the gullible. Just sayin ..."
Sep 28, 2017 | www.antiwar.com

Russian operatives used Facebook ads to exploit Americas racial and religious divisions, the Washington Post claims in a September 25 headline .

Over at The Daily Beast , Dean Obeidallah explains How Russian Hackers Used My Face to Sabotage Our Politics and Elect Trump.

And US Senator James Lankford (R-OK) thinks that the Russians and their troll farms (as opposed to Donald Trump and professional football players) are behind the current take a knee kerfuffle between Donald Trump and professional football players.

Because, you know, Americans never had rowdy disagreements with each other over race and religion until last year, and wouldnt be having them now if not for those dirty, no-good Russian hackers who stole the 2016 presidential election from the second most hated candidate in history, on behalf of the most hated candidate in history, operating through subterfuge to achieve the outcome that some of us predicted months in advance, long before anyone mentioned Russian hackers. *

Evidence? Who needs evidence? The people who hated the outcome and have been railing against it for nearly a year now have told us what happened, and why, and whodunit, and theyd never lie to us about something like that, would they? They lied about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction, and about illegal wiretapping by the NSA, and about a thousand other things, but THIS is DIFFERENT.

Keep in mind that when all the most wild and baseless accusations (e.g. that !THEM RUSSIANS! hacked the voting machines) are discarded, the basic claim remaining is this: By spreading fake news through social media, !THEM RUSSIANS! fooled a bunch of Americans into voting the wrong way.

Lets assume for a moment that the basic claim is true, although so far the actual evidence indicates a tiny propaganda operation in the scale of things. If its true, the conclusion it points to is: American voters are morons who can be gamed into doing anything by anyone with the ability to buy ads on Facebook and Twitter.

I didnt say that. Russian hackers didnt say that, at least in public. Thats what the propagators of the new Red Scare are claiming.

If the American electorate is really as abjectly stupid as the blame the Russians crowd insists, it seems to me that instead of blaming the Russians, they should get to work on either making the electorate smarter or coming up with a system that doesnt leave important political decisions in the hands of the gullible. Just sayin

*In May of 2016, I predicted that Donald Trump would carry every state Mitt Romney carried in 2012, plus Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. I didnt predict Wisconsin and Iowa, but 48 of 50 states from six months out aint too shabby, is it?

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism . He lives and works in north central Florida. This article is reprinted with permission from William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

[Sep 27, 2017] Sanctions and counter-sanctions cost the EU US 3.2 billion a month; the Russian economy has lost US 55 billion in total. He calculates the total cost to both at US 155 billion

US Empire is essentially a variation of British empire. Kind of British Empire, version 2
Sep 27, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

SANCTIONS. According to the UN rapporteur , sanctions and counter-sanctions cost the EU US$3.2 billion a month; the Russian economy has lost US$55 billion in total. He calculates the total cost to both at US$155 billion.

In short, he agrees that Europe has been hit much harder than Russia and certainly much more than the USA. Perhaps that was the real point: Washington's " overriding strategic objective is the prevention of a German-Russian alliance ".

[Sep 27, 2017] Moore Victory Shows Populist Movement Bigger Than Trump by James Kirkpatrick

Notable quotes:
"... If Only The God-Emperor Knew: Using Trump_vs_deep_state Against The Trump Administration" ..."
"... Republican Sen. Corker announces he won't seek re-election ..."
"... Associated Press, ..."
"... Corker's departure is widely being interpreted as a sign of the Establishment's inability to control the GOP base, as the election of President Trump, the rise of nationalism and the emergence of alternative media outlets (such as Breitbart and VDARE.com) make it harder for cuckservatives to Republican primary voters in line [ Sen. Bob Corker's retirement is notable for when it's happening ..."
"... Washington Post, ..."
"... And now, we have the ultimate proof in Alabama. Judge Roy Moore, one of the most persistent targets of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is now the Republican nominee for the Senate. And he defeated incumbent Senator Luther Strange despite Strange being endorsed by President Donald J. Trump himself. ..."
"... Of course, Strange didn't just have Trump in his corner. He also had Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell using his PAC to run negative ads against Moore, ads which conservative websites called "defamatory" and which cost many millions of dollars [ McConnell's Super PAC accused of 'defaming ' Roy Moore ..."
"... McConnell's mortal enemy might soon be in his caucus ..."
"... Alabama rally: Trump campaigns in last-ditch effort for Senate candidate Luther Strange ..."
"... President Trump admits he doesn't 'know that much' about Alabama Senate contender Roy Moore, gets his name wrong in interview ..."
"... New York Daily News, ..."
"... During a debate with Strange, Moore suggested President Trump was being "redirected" by Mitch McConnell and others who "will not support his [Trump's] agenda" [ Alabama Senate debate erupts over whether McConnell is manipulating Trump ..."
"... Brexit Hero Farage in Alabama: Judge Roy Moore 'Not Going To Be Sucked Into The Swamp' ..."
"... Sarah Palin endorses Judge Roy Moore for US Senate ..."
"... Western Journalism, ..."
"... Ben Carson Splits With Trump, Basically Endorses Roy Moore in Alabama ..."
"... Talking Points Memo, ..."
"... Gorka: Trump Was Pressured to Endorse 'Swamp Dweller' Strange ..."
"... , Fox News, ..."
"... The Breitbart Universe Unites For Roy Moore ..."
"... The Atlantic, ..."
"... Trump's advisors seem to know this. In the Fox News ..."
"... Roy Moore Wins Senate G.O.P. Runoff in Alabama ..."
"... How Alabama Senate Election Results Could Trigger Trump's Impeachment ..."
"... Trump supports Strange, but says it may be "mistake," ..."
"... Washington Post, ..."
"... Roy Moore: 'I can't wait' for Trump to 'campaign like hell' for me ..."
"... Washington Examiner, ..."
"... Chamber of Commerce: 'Shut Down' Roy Moore & 'Remind Bannon Who's In Charge' ..."
"... Trump should seize on the narrative of his supposed opponents. He is unquestionably being given objectively poor political counsel by his aides!not surprising how utterly incompetent the Republican Establishment is when it comes to political strategy. [ Steve Bannon: We Need A Review After This Alabama Race To See How Trump Came To Endorse Someone Like Luther Strange ..."
"... Trump's N.F.L. Critique a Calculated Attempt to Shore Up His Base ..."
"... New York Times, ..."
"... Today, those who defeated Trump in the Republican army are still proclaiming their loyalty to their Commander-in-Chief. But Donald Trump, memes aside, is not a sovereign or just a symbol. He is a man who created a political movement!and that movement expects results. The movement he created, and which put him in office, is desperate for him to lead on an America First agenda. ..."
"... If Trump does not give it results, the movement will eventually find a new leader. Roy Moore is almost certainly not that leader on a national scale. But in Alabama tonight, Moore proved he is stronger than the president himself. ..."
"... James Kirkpatrick [ Email him] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc. ..."
Sep 27, 2017 | www.unz.com

[See: If Only The God-Emperor Knew: Using Trump_vs_deep_state Against The Trump Administration" by James Kirkpatrick]

He must have known what was coming. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, a pillar of the cowardly GOP Establishment , announced he would not be running for re-election on Tuesday [ Republican Sen. Corker announces he won't seek re-election , by Richard Lardner and Erik Schelzig, Associated Press, September 26, 2017]. Corker's departure is widely being interpreted as a sign of the Establishment's inability to control the GOP base, as the election of President Trump, the rise of nationalism and the emergence of alternative media outlets (such as Breitbart and VDARE.com) make it harder for cuckservatives to Republican primary voters in line [ Sen. Bob Corker's retirement is notable for when it's happening , by Amber Phillips, Washington Post, September 26, 2017]

And now, we have the ultimate proof in Alabama. Judge Roy Moore, one of the most persistent targets of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is now the Republican nominee for the Senate. And he defeated incumbent Senator Luther Strange despite Strange being endorsed by President Donald J. Trump himself.

Of course, Strange didn't just have Trump in his corner. He also had Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell using his PAC to run negative ads against Moore, ads which conservative websites called "defamatory" and which cost many millions of dollars [ McConnell's Super PAC accused of 'defaming ' Roy Moore , by Bob Unruh, WND, August 3, 2017] As a result, Judge Moore openly campaigned against his party's own Senate leader during the primary, claiming a victory for him would mean the end of McConnell's hapless leadership. [ McConnell's mortal enemy might soon be in his caucus , by Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim, Politico, September 18, 2017]

However, and significantly, Moore never campaigned against President Trump himself. Yet Trump certainly gave Moore ample cause. He openly campaigned for Luther Strange, speaking with the incumbent Senator at a major rally, with Strange sporting a red MAGA hat [ Alabama rally: Trump campaigns in last-ditch effort for Senate candidate Luther Strange , by Alex Pappas, Fox News, September 22, 2017]. Trump also said Moore would have a hard time beating the Democrats because they would pour in so much money. He even called Moore by the wrong first name [ President Trump admits he doesn't 'know that much' about Alabama Senate contender Roy Moore, gets his name wrong in interview , by Jason Silverstein, New York Daily News, September 25, 2017]

And yet, revealingly, Moore and his allies framed their insurgency against Trump's wishes as an act of loyalty.

During a debate with Strange, Moore suggested President Trump was being "redirected" by Mitch McConnell and others who "will not support his [Trump's] agenda" [ Alabama Senate debate erupts over whether McConnell is manipulating Trump , by Alex Isenstadt and Daniel Strauss, Politico, September 21, 2017]

UKIP's former leader Nigel Farage said "absolutely" that "the point is to help the president" by electing Roy Moore and suggested The Judge would help deliver on President Trump's agenda [ Brexit Hero Farage in Alabama: Judge Roy Moore 'Not Going To Be Sucked Into The Swamp' by Ian Mason, Breitbart, September 25, 2017]

Sarah Palin channeled Trump's rhetoric by saying Moore would take on "DC's swamp monsters" and "help Make America Great Again" [ Sarah Palin endorses Judge Roy Moore for US Senate , by Randy DeSoto, Western Journalism, August 24, 2017]

Some of President Trump's best-known advisors also backed Moore.

Ben Carson, one of President Trump's own Cabinet secretaries, essentially endorsed Moore, saying he was "delighted" he was running and that he "wished him well" [ Ben Carson Splits With Trump, Basically Endorses Roy Moore in Alabama , by Cameron Joseph, Talking Points Memo, September 22, 2017]. Sebastian Gorka endorsed Moore, hinted the president was pressured into backing Strange, and said it would be a "very great day" for Trump if Strange was defeated [ Gorka: Trump Was Pressured to Endorse 'Swamp Dweller' Strange , Fox News, September 23, 2017]. And of course, Breitbart's Steve Bannon endorsed Moore, but said "we did not come here to defy Donald Trump, we came here to praise and honor him" [ The Breitbart Universe Unites For Roy Moore , by Rosie Gray, The Atlantic, September 26, 2017]

Even before Trump's inauguration, when there were troubling signs the new President was surrounding himself with the Republican Establishment, it was clear that the President's supporters would need to rise against Trump in his own name . The victory of Roy Moore is the best example so far of how this insurgency will play out.

And most importantly, it shows how the populist and nationalist movement is larger than Trump himself.

Trump's advisors seem to know this. In the Fox News interview referenced above, Dr. Gorka claimed "no one voted for Trump, we voted for his agenda." And during his speech in support of Moore, Bannon referenced Jeff Sessions, not Trump, as the "spiritual father of the populist and nationalist movement."

But does Trump himself know this? Already, the Main Stream Media is trying to present this as a devastating defeat for the president personally. The New York Times kvetched about Moore's social views and sneered that his victory "demonstrated in stark terms the limits of Mr. Trump's clout" [ Roy Moore Wins Senate G.O.P. Runoff in Alabama , by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, September 26, 2017]. Jason Le Miere at Newsweek suggested Trump had suffered his first major political defeat at the ballot box and hinted his political weakness could trigger his impeachment. [ How Alabama Senate Election Results Could Trigger Trump's Impeachment , September 26, 2017]

This wildly overstates the case. Trump had hedged his bets, suggesting at one point he made a "mistake" in endorsing Strange [ Trump supports Strange, but says it may be "mistake," Washington Post, September 25, 2017]. He also said he would "campaign like hell" for Moore if Moore won [ Roy Moore: 'I can't wait' for Trump to 'campaign like hell' for me , by Sean Langille, Washington Examiner, September 25, 2017].

It's hardly a devastating defeat for President Trump when his supposed enemies are fanatically loyal to him and his "allies" can't wait to stab him in the back.

But there is still a lesson for Trump. The Chamber of Commerce and Republican Establishment picked this fight to "shut down" Moore and show populists who was in charge. [ Chamber of Commerce: 'Shut Down' Roy Moore & 'Remind Bannon Who's In Charge' by Joel Pollak, Breitbart, September 24, 2017] They just got their answer. It's not them.

Trump should seize on the narrative of his supposed opponents. He is unquestionably being given objectively poor political counsel by his aides!not surprising how utterly incompetent the Republican Establishment is when it comes to political strategy. [ Steve Bannon: We Need A Review After This Alabama Race To See How Trump Came To Endorse Someone Like Luther Strange , by Allahpundit, Hot Air, September 26, 2017]

Tellingly, Trump in his messy intuitive way is already embarking on a movement to shore up his base by taking on the pro-Black Lives Matter and anti-American antics of the National Football League [ Trump's N.F.L. Critique a Calculated Attempt to Shore Up His Base , by Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, New York Times, September 25, 2017]. But such symbolic fights are meaningless unless they are coupled with real action on trade and immigration policy.

Today, those who defeated Trump in the Republican army are still proclaiming their loyalty to their Commander-in-Chief. But Donald Trump, memes aside, is not a sovereign or just a symbol. He is a man who created a political movement!and that movement expects results. The movement he created, and which put him in office, is desperate for him to lead on an America First agenda.

If Trump does not give it results, the movement will eventually find a new leader. Roy Moore is almost certainly not that leader on a national scale. But in Alabama tonight, Moore proved he is stronger than the president himself.

Trump has given the Establishment Republicans their chance and they have failed him. It's time for him to return to the people who have supported him from the very beginning.

James Kirkpatrick [ Email him] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc.

Parsifal > , September 27, 2017 at 7:44 am GMT

Look people, it's time to grasp some basic politics. The heart might have said Roy Moore but a leader can not think with his heart alone. Whatever happened in the GOP primary, Luther Strange was going to remain in the Senate until January. There are big, important votes coming up in Congress and Trump's margin of error in the Senate is virtually non-existent. What sense does it make to alienate, even slight, a sitting Senator that has always voted your way and has never trashed you in public?

Realist > , September 27, 2017 at 8:13 am GMT

Moore's victory means nothing. If Moore is elected it will change nothing. The Deep State rules .they will eat Moore for lunch.

"Trump has given the Establishment Republicans their chance and they have failed him."

Trump has caved to the Establishment Republicans. He will never return.

Randal > , September 27, 2017 at 9:20 am GMT

All seems pretty much directly on target.

It's hardly a devastating defeat for President Trump when his supposed enemies are fanatically loyal to him and his "allies" can't wait to stab him in the back.

As a man who supposedly highly values personal loyalty, does Trump really not understand that the men who pushed him to support Strange are also the men who will be first in line to vote for impeachment the moment it looks as though the leftist establishment has found a pretext that will succeed?

Greg Bacon > , Website September 27, 2017 at 9:28 am GMT

Like Bannon said, the Trump people voted for is gone. If he was ever around, or just being smart enough to know what to say to get votes.

President Kushner, er Trump will not be draining any Swamp anytime soon, not until he drags himself out of the Swamp and back onto sane, dry land.

WhiteWolf > , September 27, 2017 at 9:41 am GMT

The movement better start paying attention to the thoughtcrime laws being passed right now under the banner of "hatespeech". The first amendment isn't just a nice concept. People in other countries are jailed for speaking their mind in the way Americans take for granted.

[Sep 27, 2017] Bannon Roy Moore Is a Bannonite on Foreign Policy Too by Curt Mills

Notable quotes:
"... We should not be entangled in foreign wars merely at the whim and caprice of a President, Moore writes on his site. We must treat sovereign nations as we would want to be treated. ..."
"... It's too early to tell whether the nationalist hawks will be more or less interventionist overall than the internationalist, neocon hawks were, Daniel McCarthy, editor-at-large at the American Conservative ..."
Sep 27, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

...Steve Bannon told me Wednesday afternoon that he and Moore, who defeated Sen. Luther Strange (whom President Trump had backed) for the Republican primary nomination in Alabama on Tuesday, see eye to eye on global affairs, as well, and that, yes, he is every bit the Bannonite on foreign policy.

Moore, the twice-ousted Alabama Chief Justice, is likely headed to the United States Senate. Bannon and the Trump movement have often been depicted as essentially non-interventionist. My recent reporting indicates a caveat to that, however. While Bannon and his cohort might differ with the blob on confronting Kim Jong Un in North Korea or Bashar al-Assad in Syria or Vladimir Putin in Russia, they are much more suspicious of the government of Iran. ...

... ... ...

The judges website, Roymoore.org, features such language. We should not be entangled in foreign wars merely at the whim and caprice of a President, Moore writes on his site. We must treat sovereign nations as we would want to be treated.

But there are notable divergences from the paleocons. Like Bannon, Moore is a hawk for Israel. We should pass the Taylor Force Act and move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. His writing that the U.S. should not rely on nuclear reduction treaties which leave us vulnerable to foreign powers and that it should reject agreements or policies that undermine Israel's security clearly alludes to the Iran deal. The pair would part company with Buchanan on that.

And like President Trump, Moore, a graduate of West Point, wants a bigger military. More funding should be available to develop a missile defense system and to provide our Navy, Air Force, Army, Marines, and Coast Guard with the most modern technology including weapon systems. Respect for our strength is the best defense. Walk softly and carry a big stick is and should be our guide.

... ... ...

It's too early to tell whether the nationalist hawks will be more or less interventionist overall than the internationalist, neocon hawks were, Daniel McCarthy, editor-at-large at the American Conservative , tells me. My guess is that while the nationalists will speak more provocatively, abort diplomatic agreements, and ramp up `political warfare, they'll engage in fewer large-scale, nation-building interventions. McCarthy adds that religion is important here, as well. Moore and Bannon are both on record as deeply religious. Neoconservative foreign policy is sold as a scheme for secular salvation, bringing the blessings of liberalism and democracy and human rights to a world that eagerly awaits them, says McCarthy. Moore's religious convictions might help to immunize him against a belief in worldly salvation through American arms and advisers...

Curt Mills is a foreign-affairs reporter at the National Interest. Follow him on Twitter: @CurtMills.

[Sep 26, 2017] Is Foreign Propaganda Even Effective by Leon Hadar

Highly recommended!
I think the key to collapse of Soviet society and its satellites was the victory of neoliberal ideology over communism. It was pure luck for neoliberalism was that its triumphal march over the globe coincide with deep crisis of both communist ideology and the Soviet elite (nomenklatura) in the USSR. Hapless, mediocre Gorbachov, a third rate politician who became the leader of the USSR is a telling example here. Propaganda, especially "big troika" (BBC, Deutsche Welle and Voice of America), also played a very important role in this. Especially in Baltic countries and Ukraine.
Domestic fake new industry always has huge advantage over foreign one in the USA and other Western countries, because of general cultural dominance of the West.
The loss of effectiveness of neoliberal propaganda now is the same as the reason for loss of effectiveness of communist propaganda since 60th. In the first case it was the crisis of communist ideology, in the second is the crisis of neoliberal ideology. Everybody now understands that the neoliberal promises were fake, and "bait and switch" manuver that enriched the tiny percentage of population (top 1% and even more 0.01%).
When the society experience the crisis of ideology it became inoculated toward official propaganda -- it simply loses its bite.
Notable quotes:
"... As the The Economist notes, a 2015 survey of the top 94 cable channels in America by the research firm Nielsen found that RT did not even make it into the rankings, capturing only 0.04 percent of viewers, according to the Broadcast Audience Research Board. ..."
"... RT has claimed dominance on YouTube, an assertion that apparently caught the attention of the U.S. intelligence community, which noted that RT videos get 1 million views a day, far surpassing other outlets. ..."
"... Or as media-effects theorists explain the communication process, the intentions of the producer (Soviet Union) and the conventions of the content (communist propaganda) were interwoven in a strategy aimed at influencing the receiver (the American audience). But the majority of Americans, with the exception of a few hard-core ideologues, interpreted the content of the message as pitiful Soviet propaganda, assuming they even paid attention to it. ..."
"... There is no doubt that Moscow, which regarded President Harry Truman as its leading American political nemesis, was hoping that Progressive presidential candidate Henry Wallace would win the 1948 election -- and had tailored its propaganda effort in accordance with that goal. That pro-Wallace campaign took place at a time when the American Communist Party still maintained some influence in the United States, where many Americans still sympathized with the former World War II ally and a large number of Soviet spies were operating in the country. But then Wallace's Progressives ended up winning 2.5 percent of the vote, less than Strom Thurmond's Southern segregationist ticket. ..."
"... Yet we are supposed to believe that by employing RT, Sputnik, Facebook, Twitter, and a bunch of hackers, the Russians could help their American candidate "steal" the 2016 presidential election. Is there any evidence that those white blue-collar workers and rural voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan -- the people who provided Trump with his margin of victory -- were even exposed to the reports distributed by RT and Sputnik, or by the memes constructed by Russian trolls or their posts on Facebook? ("Hey, did you watch RT last night?") ..."
"... Yet the assertion that a "silver bullet shot from a media gun" in the form of Russian propaganda was able "to penetrate a hapless audience" in the United States has been gaining more adherents in Washington and elsewhere. This conspiracy seems to correlate the intent of the Russian government and the content of their messages with the voting behavior of Americans. ..."
"... In a strange irony, those who are promoting this fallacious assertion may -- unlike their Russian scapegoat -- actually succeed in penetrating a hapless American audience. ..."
Sep 26, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The Russians can dish it out, but don't expect Americans to swallow everything.

During the Cold War, it became an article of faith among Western policymakers and journalists: One of the most effective ways to discredit the leaders of Communist countries would be to provide their citizens with information from the West. It was a view that was shared by Soviet Bloc regimes who were worried that listening to the Voice of America (VOA) or watching Western television shows would induce their people to take political action against the rulers.

So it was not surprising that government officials in East Germany, anxious that many TV stations from West Germany could be viewed by their citizens, employed numerous means!such as jamming the airwaves and even damaging TV antennas that were pointing west!in order to prevent the so-called "subversive" western broadcasts from reaching audiences over the wall.

After the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989, communication researchers studying public attitudes in former East German areas assumed that they would discover that those who had access to West German television!and were therefore exposed to the West's political freedom and economic prosperity!were more politically energized and willing to challenge the communist regime than those who couldn't watch Western television.

But as Evgeny Morozov recalled in his Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom , a study conducted between 1966 and 1990 about incipient protests in the so-called "Valley of the Clueless"!an area in East Germany where the government successfully blocked Western television signals!raised questions about this conventional wisdom.

As it turns out, having access to West German television actually made life in East Germany more endurable. Far from radicalizing its citizens, it seemed to have made them more politically compliant. As one East German dissident quoted by Morozov lamented, "The whole people could leave the country and move to the West as a man at 8pm, via television."

Meanwhile, East German citizens who did not have access to Western German television were actually more critical of their regime, and more politically restless.

The study concluded that "in an ironic twist for Marxism, capitalist television seems to have performed the same narcotizing function in communist East Germany that Karl Marx had attributed to religious beliefs in capitalist society when he condemned religion as the 'opium of the people.'"

Morozov refers to the results of these and other studies to raise an interesting idea: Western politicians and pundits have predicted that the rise of the Internet, which provides free access to information to residents of the global village, would galvanize citizens in Russia and other countries to challenge their authoritarian regimes. In reality, Morozov contends that exposure to the Internet may have distracted Russian users from their political problems. The young men who should be leading the revolution are instead staying at home and watching online pornography. Trotsky, as we know, didn't tweet.

Yet the assumption that the content of the message is a "silver bullet shot from a media gun to penetrate a hapless audience," as communication theorists James Arthur Anderson and Timothy P. Meyer put it, remains popular among politicians and pundits today, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

Hence the common assertion that a presidential candidate who has raised a lots of money and can spend it on buying a lots of television commercials, has a clear advantage over rivals who cannot afford to dominate the media environment. But the loser in the 2016 presidential race spent about $141.7 million on ads, compared with $58.8 million for winner's campaign, according to NBC News . Candidate Trump also spent a fraction of what his Republican rivals had during the Republican primaries that he won.

Communication researchers like Anderson and Meyers are not suggesting that media messages don't have any effect on target audiences, but that it is quite difficult to sell ice to Eskimos. To put it in simple terms, media audiences are not hapless and passive. Although you can flood them with messages that are in line with your views and interests, audiences actively participate in the communication process. They will construct their own meaning from the content they consume, and in some cases they might actually disregard your message.

Imagine a multi-billionaire who decides to produce thousands of commercials celebrating the legacy of ISIS, runs them on primetime American television, and floods social media with messages praising the murderous terrorist group. If that happened, would Americans be rallying behind the flag of ISIS? One can imagine that the response from audiences would range from anger to dismissal to laughter.

In 2013 Al Jazeera Media Network purchased Current TV , which was once partially owned by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, and launched an American news channel. Critics expressed concerns that the network, which is owned by the government of Qatar and has been critical of U.S. policies in the Middle East, would try to manipulate American audiences with their anti-Washington message.

Three years later, after hiring many star journalists and producing mostly straight news shows, Al Jazeera America CEO Al Anstey announced that the network would cease operations. Anstey cited the "economic landscape" which was another way of saying that its ratings were distressingly low. The relatively small number of viewers who watched Al Jazeera America 's programs considered them not anti-American but just, well, boring.

You don't have to be a marketing genius to figure out that in the age of the 24/7 media environment, foreign networks face prohibitive competition from American cable news networks like CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, social media, not to mention Netflix and yes, those online porno sites. Thus the chances that a foreign news organization would be able to attract large American audiences, and have any serious impact on their political views, remain very low.

That, indeed, has been the experience of not only the defunct Al Jazeera America , but also of other foreign news outlets that have tried to imitate the Qatar-based network by launching operations targeting American audiences. These networks have included CGTN (China Global Television Network), the English-language news channel run by Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television ; PressTV, a 24-hour English language news and documentary network affiliated with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting ; or RT (formerly Russia Today), a Russian international television network funded by the Russian government that operates cable and satellite television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia.

After all, unless you are getting to paid to watch CTGN, PressTV, or RT -- or you are a news junkie with a lot of time on your hands -- why in the world would you be spending even one hour of the day watching these foreign networks?

Yet if you have been following the coverage and public debate over the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, you get the impression that RT and another Russian media outlet, Sputnik (a news agency and radio broadcast service established by the Russian government-controlled news agency Rossiya Segodnya ), were central players in a conspiracy between the Trump presidential campaign and the Kremlin to deny the presidency to Hillary Clinton.

In fact, more than half of the much-cited January report on the Russian electoral interference released by U.S. intelligence agencies was devoted to warning of RT's growing influence in the United States and across the world, referring to the "rapid expansion" of the network's operations and budget to about $300 million a year, and citing the supposedly impressive audience numbers listed on the RT website.

According to America's spooks, the coordinated activities of RT and the online-media properties and social-media accounts that made up "Russia's state-run propaganda machine" have been employed by the Russian government to "undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order."

And in a long cover story in The New York Times Magazine this month, with the headline, " RT, Sputnik and Russia's New Theory of War, " Jim Rutenberg suggested that the Kremlin has "built one of the most powerful information weapons of the 21st century" and that it "may be impossible to stop."

But as the British Economist magazine reported early this year, while RT claims to reach 550 million people worldwide, with America and Britain supposedly being its most successful markets, its "audience" of 550 million refers to "the number of people who can access its channel, not those who actually watch it."

As the The Economist notes, a 2015 survey of the top 94 cable channels in America by the research firm Nielsen found that RT did not even make it into the rankings, capturing only 0.04 percent of viewers, according to the Broadcast Audience Research Board.

The Times' s Rutenberg argues that the RT's ratings "are almost beside the point." RT might not have amassed an audience that remotely rivals CNN's in conventional terms, "but in the new, 'democratized' media landscape, it doesn't need to" since "the network has come to form the hub of a new kind of state media operation: one that travels through the same diffuse online channels, chasing the same viral hits and memes, as the rest of the Twitter-and-Facebook-age media."

Traveling "through the same diffuse online channels" and "chasing the same viral hits and memes" sounds quite impressive. Indeed, RT has claimed dominance on YouTube, an assertion that apparently caught the attention of the U.S. intelligence community, which noted that RT videos get 1 million views a day, far surpassing other outlets.

But as The Economist points out, when it comes to Twitter and Facebook, RT's reach is narrower than that of other news networks. Its claim of YouTube success is mostly down to the network's practice of buying the rights to sensational footage -- for instance, Japan's 2011 tsunami -- and repackaging it with the company logo. It's not clear, however, how the dissemination of a footage of a natural disaster or of a dog playing the piano helps efforts to "undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order."

It is obvious that the Russian leaders have been investing a lot of resources in RT, Sputnik, and other media outlets, and that they employ them as propaganda tools aimed at promoting their government's viewpoints and interests around the world. From that perspective, these Russian media executives are heirs to the communist officials who had been in charge of the propaganda empire of the Soviet Union and its satellites during much of the 20th Century.

The worldwide communist propaganda machine did prove to be quite effective during the Great Depression and World War II, when it succeeded in tapping into the economic and social anxieties and anti-Nazi sentiments in the West and helped strengthen the power of the communist parties in Europe and, to some extent, in the United States.

But in the same way that Western German television programs failed to politically energize East Germans during the Cold War, much of the Soviet propaganda distributed by the Soviet Union at that time had very little impact on the American public and its political attitudes, as symbolized by the shrinking membership of the American Communist Party.

Or as media-effects theorists explain the communication process, the intentions of the producer (Soviet Union) and the conventions of the content (communist propaganda) were interwoven in a strategy aimed at influencing the receiver (the American audience). But the majority of Americans, with the exception of a few hard-core ideologues, interpreted the content of the message as pitiful Soviet propaganda, assuming they even paid attention to it.

Soviet propaganda may have scored limited success during the Cold War when it came to members of the large communist parties in France, Italy, and Japan, as well as exploited anti-American sentiments in some third-world countries. In these cases, the intentions of the producer and the convention of the message seemed to be in line with the interpretations of the receivers.

There is no doubt that Moscow, which regarded President Harry Truman as its leading American political nemesis, was hoping that Progressive presidential candidate Henry Wallace would win the 1948 election -- and had tailored its propaganda effort in accordance with that goal. That pro-Wallace campaign took place at a time when the American Communist Party still maintained some influence in the United States, where many Americans still sympathized with the former World War II ally and a large number of Soviet spies were operating in the country. But then Wallace's Progressives ended up winning 2.5 percent of the vote, less than Strom Thurmond's Southern segregationist ticket.

Yet we are supposed to believe that by employing RT, Sputnik, Facebook, Twitter, and a bunch of hackers, the Russians could help their American candidate "steal" the 2016 presidential election. Is there any evidence that those white blue-collar workers and rural voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan -- the people who provided Trump with his margin of victory -- were even exposed to the reports distributed by RT and Sputnik, or by the memes constructed by Russian trolls or their posts on Facebook? ("Hey, did you watch RT last night?")

Yet the assertion that a "silver bullet shot from a media gun" in the form of Russian propaganda was able "to penetrate a hapless audience" in the United States has been gaining more adherents in Washington and elsewhere. This conspiracy seems to correlate the intent of the Russian government and the content of their messages with the voting behavior of Americans.

In a strange irony, those who are promoting this fallacious assertion may -- unlike their Russian scapegoat -- actually succeed in penetrating a hapless American audience.

Leon Hadar is a writer and author of the books Quagmire: America in the Middle East and Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Washington Times, The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the National Interest.

The Color of Celery , says: September 26, 2017 at 1:20 am

For an example of the success of propaganda, look at Breitbart. The messages online during the 2016 election were pervasive and insidious. I think this post underestimates the threat by focusing on traditional media instead of social interaction.

RT covered Assange during the election better than other outlets.

It's easy to see everything from a personal perspective and forget that we are very diverse. We don't live in an ABC, CBS, and NBC world anymore, with information controlled. Changes in thought and belief happen online now, in many, many different venues.

polistra , says: September 26, 2017 at 3:39 am
A government that has confidence in its own support doesn't need to fight foreign information. In the '30s and '40s the US government encouraged shortwave listening, and manufacturers made money by adding SW bands to their radios. We were going through a depression and then a war, but our government was CONFIDENT enough to encourage us to understand the world.

Since 1950 the government has been narrowing the focus of external input because it knows that it no longer has the natural consent of the governed. TV and the Web are intentional forms of jamming, filling our eyes and ears with internally produced nonsense to crowd out the external info.

Meddlesome , says: September 26, 2017 at 7:44 am
The ones you have to worry about are those much closer to home – "inside the tent".

Friends in the UK, Canada, and Europe are appalled at the distorting effect Israeli propaganda has on American news sources, and how unaware of it typical Americans seem to be.

Indeed, it is odd and more than a little worrying that all the concern about "foreign meddling" has so far failed to engage with Israel, which is hands down the best funded, most sophisticated and successful foreign meddler.

The FBI annually reports that Israel spies on us at the same level as Russia and China. But we have yet to fully register that Israeli spying includes systematic efforts to influence American elections and policies, efforts that dwarf those of Putin's Russia both in scale and impact.

Fran Macadam , says: September 26, 2017 at 9:24 am
I think that the corporate masters of propaganda media and politics in these United States, have, in the words of Edward G. Robinson's Rico in Little Caesar, "gotten to where you can dish it out, but you can't take it anymore."

It's counterfactual to conflate Soviet propaganda with the perspective of Russians today, unless Communism never really was the real point. In fact, it's our own leaders in media and politics who now increasingly issue dogmatic and insulting derogatory language, sounding more and more like late Soviet propagandists themselves.

Pelayo Viriato , says: September 26, 2017 at 10:20 am
@The Color of Celery:

So what? What's wrong with people being exposed to a broad array of points of view, trying to better understand the world and constantly challenging, refining, and reshaping their worldview in the process?

You're coming perilously close to suggesting that Americans who are critical of their government are dupes of hostile foreign powers ! an unfair, unhelpful, and undemocratic assertion.

ZGler , says: September 26, 2017 at 11:45 am
The problem with Russian trolls is that people don't know they are Russian trolls. They think they are their fellow Americans and neighbors on Facebook. The influence of foreign propaganda on Americans is not due to transparent media like Al Jazeera. It's due to propaganda disguised as your neighbor's opinion.
Mike Johnson , says: September 26, 2017 at 3:33 pm
this conversation cant be taken serious without a serious discussion on Israel, who by the way provides the perfect case and point of how effective foreign propaganda can be. They work through our media, school systems and even our churches. Just look at what happened to McGraw Hill for daring to show before and after maps of the Palestine over the years.

[Sep 26, 2017] More on Imran Awan by Philip Giraldi

Notable quotes:
"... There are many questions regarding the Awan case. One might reasonably ask how foreign-born IT specialists are selected and vetted prior to being significantly overpaid and allowed to work on computers in congressional offices. And the ability of those same individuals to keep working even after the relevant congressmen have been warned that their employee was under investigation has to be explained beyond Wasserman-Schultz's comment that Awan had not committed any crime, which may have been true but one would expect congressmen to err on the side of caution over an issue that could easily have national security ramifications. And how does a recently bankrupt and unemployed Imran Awan wind up with a high-priced Clinton-connected lawyer to defend himself? ..."
"... As the story involves possible espionage, fraud and even something new to consider regarding the theft of information from the DNC server, one might have expected the Fourth Estate to wake from its slumber and take notice. But perhaps not surprisingly there has been astonishingly little follow-up in the mainstream media about the Awan family, possibly because it involves some leading Democrats, though the Daily Caller ..."
"... In a surprise development, investigative journalists have also determined that Imran Awan retained as of the end of August a still-active secret, numeric email account on the House of Representatives server. E-mail accounts in Congress normally are labeled using the holder's name, so all active accounts are identity-linked as a security measure. In this case the numeric account was linked to the actual account of a House staffer who works on national security issues for Andre Carson, a Democrat from Indiana. Imran Awan clearly has been using the anonymous House of Representatives address as it was cited in a suit filed by a landlord seeking unpaid rent on an apartment rented for his second wife in Alexandria. ..."
"... The most significant recent development in the Awan case is, however, the decision made by Imran's wife Alvi to return to the United States at the end of this month. She has been charged as a co-conspirator relating to the bank fraud that her husband was also involved in, which potentially could result in some jail time. There are, however, reports that she has been interviewed several times in Pakistan by FBI agents and has apparently agreed to a plea bargain to tell all she knows about what went on with the Awan family. Some on Capitol Hill believe that what she knows could prove to be explosive, not only regarding the lax security practices in Congress but also in terms of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's negligence in providing access to the DNC server. The actual whereabouts of the large quantity of stolen government documents might also be resolved. ..."
"... Something about this is strange. It is as if Imran Awan and his group were not really hired for IT purposes.It is perhaps noteworthy that Pakistani spooks have been intertwined with American events for years. For example, there was a Pakistani connection to 9/11. ..."
"... how can one leverage content in this day and age if there is no thorough knowledge of the tools behind any information system. Put congressmen and women to the test, how many have questions as use of data protocol, firewall, ports, delegated to "specialist", and loyal (the accent on loyal) collaborators without a notion of what they even delegate. If living in an area of specialization, the notion of minimal knowledge and comprehension might be at least a thorough understanding of man – machine correlations. ..."
"... Hillarious Hillary neither, did have a notion of any technicalities of tools applied to bid her interests. ..."
"... The phenomenon will worsen, the glue will thicken into further layers of ignorance. The Moore law? The more complex society, the bigger the ignorance of the elites. ..."
"... This is big. I would like to know, what are Awans credentials that qualified him for the IT position and who hired him? Someone had to vouchsafe for Awan and who is that person? Who approved his salary and why was there no review or audit? Apparently, someone, or some organization wanted to control a large block of the Congress. ..."
"... Audacity and chutzpah of Imran Awan's operation right away made me think of post-military service Israeli youth running various scams and intelligence gathering errands all over the world. ..."
Sep 26, 2017 | www.unz.com

I wrote an article on the strange case of Imran Awan about two months ago. To summarize it briefly, Awan, his two brothers and wife, naturalized U.S. citizens born in Pakistan living in the Washington DC area, found employment as IT administrators in the House of Representatives working for as many as 80 Democratic Party congressmen . Even though they may have had little actual training in IT, they insinuated themselves into the system and were paid in excess of $5 million over the course of ten years, chief-of-staff level pay, while frequently not even showing up for work. They even brought into the arrangement a frequent no-show Pakistani friend whose prior work history consisted of getting recently fired by McDonald's .

Along the way, their security files were never reviewed. They were involved in bankruptcies, bank fraud and other criminal activity, but their troublesome behavior was never noticed. They were on bad terms with their father and step-mother, which including forging a document to cheat their step-mother of an insurance payment and even holding her "captive" so she could not see their dying father. Their father even changed his last name to dissociate himself from them.

Imran Awan, the leader of the group, worked particularly for Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who was, at the time, also the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Though he had no clearance and was not supposed to work with classified material, he and his family obtained password access to congressional files and Imran himself was able to enter Wasserman-Schultz's own personal iPad computer which linked to the server used by the Democratic National Committee.

As of February 2016, the Awans came under suspicion by the Capitol Hill Police for having set up an operation involving double billing as well as the possible theft and reselling of government owned computer equipment. It was also believed that they had somehow obtained entry to much of the House of Representatives' computer network as well as to other information in the individual offices' separate computer systems that they were in theory not allowed to access. It was also believed that Imran sent "massive" quantities of stolen government files to a remote personal server . It may have been located in his former residence in Lorton, Virginia. The police began an investigation and quietly alerted the congressmen involved that there might be a problem. Most stopped employing the Awan family members and associates, but Wasserman-Schultz kept Imran on the payroll until the day after he was actually arrested.

Imran was arrested on July 25 th at Dulles Airport as he was flying to Pakistan to join his wife Alvi, who had left the country with their children and many of their possessions in March. In January, they had also wired to Pakistan $283,000 that they had obtained fraudulently from the Congressional credit union. After his arrest, Imran was defended by lawyer Chris Gowen , a high-priced $1,000 an hour Washington attorney who has worked for the Clintons personally, the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative.

There are many questions regarding the Awan case. One might reasonably ask how foreign-born IT specialists are selected and vetted prior to being significantly overpaid and allowed to work on computers in congressional offices. And the ability of those same individuals to keep working even after the relevant congressmen have been warned that their employee was under investigation has to be explained beyond Wasserman-Schultz's comment that Awan had not committed any crime, which may have been true but one would expect congressmen to err on the side of caution over an issue that could easily have national security ramifications. And how does a recently bankrupt and unemployed Imran Awan wind up with a high-priced Clinton-connected lawyer to defend himself?

As the story involves possible espionage, fraud and even something new to consider regarding the theft of information from the DNC server, one might have expected the Fourth Estate to wake from its slumber and take notice. But perhaps not surprisingly there has been astonishingly little follow-up in the mainstream media about the Awan family, possibly because it involves some leading Democrats, though the Daily Caller and some other conservative sites have stayed on top of developments.

Since his arrest Imran Awan has had his passports confiscated by the court and has been released on bail on condition that he wear an ankle monitor at all times and not travel more than 50 miles from the Virginia home where he is staying with a relative. In early September, he sought to have the monitor removed and his passports returned so he could travel to Pakistan and visit his children. His plea was rejected. He is not yet scheduled for trial on the allegations of bank fraud and is apparently still under investigation by the Bureau relating to other possible charges, including possible espionage. His four accomplices are also still under investigation but have not been charged. They are on a watch list and will not be allowed to leave the United States while the inquiry is continuing.

It has also been learned that Imran had been on the receiving end of complaints filed with the Fairfax County Virginia police in 2015-6 by two women who resided in separate apartments in Alexandria that are reportedly paid for by Imran Awan. Both of the women complained of abuse and one is believed to be a "second wife" for Imran Awan, legal in Pakistan but illegal in the United States. Imran reportedly divorced his second wife shortly after his arrest.

In a surprise development, investigative journalists have also determined that Imran Awan retained as of the end of August a still-active secret, numeric email account on the House of Representatives server. E-mail accounts in Congress normally are labeled using the holder's name, so all active accounts are identity-linked as a security measure. In this case the numeric account was linked to the actual account of a House staffer who works on national security issues for Andre Carson, a Democrat from Indiana. Imran Awan clearly has been using the anonymous House of Representatives address as it was cited in a suit filed by a landlord seeking unpaid rent on an apartment rented for his second wife in Alexandria.

The most significant recent development in the Awan case is, however, the decision made by Imran's wife Alvi to return to the United States at the end of this month. She has been charged as a co-conspirator relating to the bank fraud that her husband was also involved in, which potentially could result in some jail time. There are, however, reports that she has been interviewed several times in Pakistan by FBI agents and has apparently agreed to a plea bargain to tell all she knows about what went on with the Awan family. Some on Capitol Hill believe that what she knows could prove to be explosive, not only regarding the lax security practices in Congress but also in terms of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's negligence in providing access to the DNC server. The actual whereabouts of the large quantity of stolen government documents might also be resolved.

This story, which is still unfolding, continues to have the potential to blow wide open the complacent culture on Capitol Hill and it also might ruin the reputations of a number of leading Democrats. Stay tuned!

Buzz Mohawk > , September 26, 2017 at 5:35 am GMT

Something about this is strange. It is as if Imran Awan and his group were not really hired for IT purposes.It is perhaps noteworthy that Pakistani spooks have been intertwined with American events for years. For example, there was a Pakistani connection to 9/11.

There is a Pakistani connection to CIA and related sorts of things. One wonders what kind of work these Pakistanis were really doing for Wasserman-Schultz and others involved ! and what kind of things Debbie and the Americans she is connected to are involved in.

Ludwig Watzal > , Website September 26, 2017 at 8:48 am GMT

Of course, it could have the potential of a massive scandal, but If the inner circles of the Dems, especially the criminal machinations of the Clintons and their stooges are concerned, the mainstream media will keep mum. So far, they have always covered up their dubious and dirty tricks. The American political system within the Beltway is so rotten and corrupt that everybody will be affected if the slightest connection comes to the fore. Take the so-called Russian hacking as a case in point. It's all bogus, but the investigation continues by the Clinton stooge named Robert Mueller.

The Alarmist > , September 26, 2017 at 11:01 am GMT

@Ludwig Watzal

Mueller is not a Clinton stooge He's the stooge of the Clintons' puppet master.

Kiza > , September 26, 2017 at 1:01 pm GMT

The US establishment reminds me of a poorly knitted jumper with many threads sticking out. So it desperately prevents, using the intelligence services, the police and the media it controls, any investigation because if one would pull one thread successfully the whole thing would unravel in its full perverted glory of deprevity (the whole Demopublican establishment that is).

m___ > , September 26, 2017 at 7:54 am GMT

No surprises, the quality of politicians worldwide is embedded in the system. The question asked: how can a meritocracy apply extended family, friend and sex-mates, to the selection system consequently. Another, how can one leverage content in this day and age if there is no thorough knowledge of the tools behind any information system. Put congressmen and women to the test, how many have questions as use of data protocol, firewall, ports, delegated to "specialist", and loyal (the accent on loyal) collaborators without a notion of what they even delegate. If living in an area of specialization, the notion of minimal knowledge and comprehension might be at least a thorough understanding of man – machine correlations.

Hillarious Hillary neither, did have a notion of any technicalities of tools applied to bid her interests. "Boom", "Boom", "oBama", was using computers to play "drone of doom".

Politicians dress, groom, prepare and travel to public moments of extroversion, and that's it. Very busy critters, highly un-focused beyond anything deeper then egocentric looks and sway of an actor. It works, there is a public, "deplorable", "gens de rien" ignorance carrying them, complicit media and scientists, sustaining them. The phenomenon will worsen, the glue will thicken into further layers of ignorance. The Moore law? The more complex society, the bigger the ignorance of the elites.

A suggestive test: time employment over years in office would uproot the sterling conclusion that politicians, administrators of public affairs have simply no time and energy left to analyze anything beyond their public person's direct interests. Systemic, in all branches, our elites are simply not up to par. And that "works", in occurrence the state of affairs worldwide, in the long term, in depth.

Anon > , Disclaimer September 26, 2017 at 6:16 pm GMT

For those who are unfamiliar with US involvement in South Asia: Pakistan's military and intelligences services are funded by America (just as Egypt's are). Pakistani intelligence and army has long been a CIA stooge and that goes since the 80s and even before that. It was Pakistanis who were training the mujahideen to fight Russia in Afghanistan during the cold war. So no one is surprised when Pakistani ISI chief is here in US during the execution of 9/11. Throughout much of the world, 9/11 is seen as a plot of American government.

By the way, do you seriously think Pakistani army which survives on American funding would bite the hand that feeds it by secretly giving refuge to Osama Bin Laden? If that was truly the case, as government said during their s0-called raid in Pakistan that supposedly killed Osama, would the US government still be giving billions to Pakistan's army? Pakistan's army, like Egypt's army and Turkey's army, are supported by America as a way of subverting democracy in those countries. Unfotunately American public's general knowledge of what America funds and how it conducts itself with other countries is so low that it is impossible for the majority to have any kind of reality based understanding of what their taxes are paying for and how it does not support "freedom" but the opposite of it throughout the world

Boris M Garsky > , September 26, 2017 at 7:11 pm GMT

This is big. I would like to know, what are Awans credentials that qualified him for the IT position and who hired him? Someone had to vouchsafe for Awan and who is that person? Who approved his salary and why was there no review or audit? Apparently, someone, or some organization wanted to control a large block of the Congress. Was it Clinton, was it Intelligence, the Mossad, Rothschilds, Russia?

I would imagine that her calls were being monitored and her involvement known.

utu > , September 26, 2017 at 9:09 pm GMT

Audacity and chutzpah of Imran Awan's operation right away made me think of post-military service Israeli youth running various scams and intelligence gathering errands all over the world. Only people with a strong awareness of being the untouchable sacred cows and/or somebody with a strong back up of security services can behave like this.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidyin/2013/12/19/out-of-israel-into-the-world/#247ca203367d

Each year, 75,000 soldiers are discharged from the Israel Defense Force. A third of them then travel across Asia and South America, supporting businesses at home and abroad.

There are recruitment offices in Israel and job placement websites specifically for that. A lot of them."

[Sep 26, 2017] Neocons and Hollywood Liberals Go to War on Russia

Notable quotes:
"... Anyway, the whole Russiagate thing will either explode into nothing or drift off into nothing. Why? Because there's no "there" there. ALL just fabricated hype. Too many people fall prey to surmises and suggestions and baseless conclusions. ..."
"... Read Robert Parry, and, please, interview him and others from consortiumnews.com , my best go to source for truth. Thanks for this interview with Max, a man I greatly admire. ..."
"... Fabricated hype yes, but for what reason? The last thing the 'elites' want is Trump making friends with Russia, they are scared it would expose their NATO scam. No enemies = no money for MIC! ..."
"... Neocons make military war while neoliberals make economic war. Neither group makes any sense and both groups are destroying the human race with synthetic ideologies based on nothing but greed, fear, hatred and greed. Both groups represent extreme wealth and the project to enslave and impoverish the whole world. It's them or us and so far we're clueless ..."
"... Right on, and well said Max! Now then, we know who the neocons are, nastiness is embedded in their DNA and makeup. I could go and on to an eternity, using a plethora of adjectives to describe their repugnant ideas and beliefs; but I won't. ..."
"... SCAM is the correct word. Now after failing to get a Russian "hack" dismissed by former CIA & NSA experts and Wikileaks (Never lied yet to my knowledge) NOW we get Russian FB accounts ( most of which have nothing to do with clinton). ..."
Sep 22, 2017 | therealnews.com

The promotional video of the Committee to Investigate Russia features actor Morgan Freeman in what is 'probably his worst role since Driving Miss Daisy,' says AlterNet's Max Blumenthal

Outside the government, there's a lot of going on, too. Media outlets and liberal organizations have devoted extensive time and energy to Russiagate. This week, a new group joined the fray. It's called the Committee to Investigate Russia. Its board includes Rob Reiner, the well-known actor, producer, and liberal activist, and several right-wing pundits, including David Frum, the man who coined George W. Bush's infamous phrase, the 'axis of evil.'

The committee's kickoff video features the actor Morgan Freeman.

MORGAN FREEMAN: We have been attacked. We are at war. We need our president to speak directly to us and tell us the truth. We need him to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office and say, "My fellow Americans, during this past election, we came under attack by the Russian government. I've called on the Congress and our intelligence community to use every resource available to conduct a thorough investigation to determine exactly how this happened. The free world is counting on us for leadership. For 241 years, our democracy has been a shining example to the world of what we can all aspire to, and we owe it to the brave people who have fought and died to protect this great nation and save democracy, and we owe it to our future generations, to continue the fight."

VOICEOVER: Join the Committee to Investigate Russia. Join the fight.

AARON MATE: Joining me is Max Blumenthal, bestselling author, journalist, senior editor of AlterNet's Grayzone Project, and cohost of the new podcast Moderate Rebels. Max, welcome. I'm going to predict that you're not joining this fight.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: This is sad. It's sad for Morgan Freeman, and I think whatever you think about Russia, you can agree with me that this is probably his worst role since Driving Miss Daisy. Now he's driving, basically, the PNAC train, Project for a New American Century, driving the neocons. This is highly unusual for me, maybe I'm wrong here, to hear a black American say that America has been a shining example of democracy for 241 years. It sounds like something a neocon would write in a script and put for Morgan Freeman in a teleprompter. 200 years ago, or longer, he would have been scrubbing Thomas Jefferson's chamberpot, so this is just deeply disturbing American exceptionalism.

Beyond that, Morgan Freeman has basically been brought into this by Rob Reiner, who's been brought in by a cast of neocons, not just unindicted Iraq War criminal David Frum, who crafted the axis of evil phrase, which has helped spread instability and death around the world, but Max Boot, the neoconservative pundit and self-styled historian who's never met a war he didn't like. We also have James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence and NSA director affiliated with this group, the Committee to Investigate Russia. Max Boot is a fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, which is run by Kimberly Kagan, who's part of the neoconservative Kagan dynasty. The Institute for the Study of War is funded primarily by the arms industry and surveillance industry, and their job is basically to gin up wars and consult for generals, and make a windfall profit in the process.

That's what the Committee to Investigate Russia is about. It brings this Hollywood element to it. Rob Reiner's involvement helps get David Frum on CNN and a host of radio and MSNBC programs. It almost makes a neocon like him seem likable, although he and Max Boot were welcomed with open arms by the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, so in many ways we're experiencing still the toxic alluvia of the Clinton camp with this bizarre initiative.

We have to first ask, what is the Committee to Investigate Russia? It reminds me of the Committee on the Present Danger, which was a Cold War collection of neoconservatives, as well as the Project for a New American Century, which was a larger conglomeration of neoconservatives looking to take advantage of the post-Cold War atmosphere to gin up a war on terror. What they said in their initial document was that, "Short of a catalyzing event, we won't be able to realize our goals." Three years later, 9/11 happened, and that was the catalyzing event.

They are attempting to manufacture a catalyzing event through the narrative of Trump-Russia collusion in order to ramp up hostilities with Russia, not just in Russia's near abroad in Ukraine, but also in Syria and across the world. This is an incredibly dangerous prospect.

AARON MATE: There was a piece today in the Daily Beast picking up on this Facebook story, which you and I haven't discussed yet on the Real News, but it's gotten a lot of attention. A few weeks ago, Facebook disclosed that some $100,000 was spent on Facebook ads by suspected Russian accounts that may be tied to the Kremlin. It was a bit ambiguous. Most of the ads were in 2015, a year before the election, and most of the ads, Facebook said, were not even directly to do with the election but about divisive social issues. This was taken as another new level of Russian influence in the U.S.

Just today, on the Daily Beast, which has been all over this story, there's an exclusive story written by four reporters. A team of four reporters writes, "Exclusive. Russians appear to use Facebook to push Trump rallies in 17 U.S. cities." Subheading is, "Being Patriotic, a Facebook group uncovered by the Daily Beast, is the first evidence of suspected Russian provocateurs explicitly mobilizing Trump supporters in real life."

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Maybe it's true. Maybe these four reporters found something that might be true, but if you read into the ninth paragraph of that article, like so many articles about Russiagate, these four reporters, the finest minds of the Daily Beast, including Spencer Ackerman, who wrote the foreword to Russiagate huckster Malcolm Nance's book on how the election was stolen, and I think his book might have come out before the election was decided, if you read into the ninth paragraph that the story is not confirmed, that Facebook explicitly states that it cannot confirm that any of these accounts are Russian accounts. Throughout the article, the authors are forced to refer to them as suspected Russian accounts. I don't know how this got past an editor, except that there is so much zeal at the Daily Beast to keep up the Trump-Russia collusion narrative that generates clicks.

That's the same, I would assume, mentality that prevails among the producers among Rachel Maddow's show, which you wrote about really clearly and effectively. I think it's not just the narrative that's driven by political zeal but also the desire for ratings and clicks. At no point in this piece do they ever establish that these are Russian accounts. It is possible that this Facebook accounting question, was a Facebook account turned to a Russian bot farm, that's what a lot of accounts do. They pay some bot farm to boost their profile on Facebook. One of the things that bot farms do is they'll direct users to political ads, political hot button issues, because that's what gets people engaged.

Again, there's no evidence here. What I found really interesting about this article, and this is true for the previous Daily Beast article that Spencer Ackerman published about Facebook suspected, alleged, possible Russian bots, is that he turns to a fake Russia expert named Clint Watts, who's a former FBI agent. If you actually look at Clint Watts's work, and you're just remotely informed about politics in the U.S., I think you'll realize that character is a complete crank. If we actually lived in an actual meritocracy that relied on real experts, he would be out with a metal detector looking for loose change on the beach or in some public park, but instead, he was testifying before Congress.

He testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Clint Watts, that the chaos of Black Lives Matter was spawned by RT and Sputnik. He links to an RT article about Black Lives Matter as his evidence. Along with the Bundy ranch chaos. This too was a Russian active measure. Yeah, the Bundy ranch. Russia had a huge hand in that. This is someone testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Even worse, he goes on to talk about an article he wrote with Will McCants and Mike Doran, who are these Beltway think tankers presented as terror experts. He wrote it in Foreign Affairs, which is the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. It was an article lobbying the U.S. government, the Obama administration, to send arms to Ahrar Al-Sham, which is a Salafi jihadist rebel group in Syria. The teaser of this article, it's unbelievable, is, "An Al Qaeda-linked group we can be friends with."

The article comes out. Clinton Watts gets mocked heavily on Twitter. I think I might have been among the people mocking him, but again, I'm a Russian bot. [Inaudible]. I'm malfunctioning right now. No, actually, real people mocked Clint Watts on Twitter justifiably. He was calling for supporting an Al Qaeda alliance in Syria. He goes before the Senate and says that, "This is when I noticed that there were Russian active measures and an influence campaign, because I was being mocked on Twitter for this article." He doesn't say what the article is. He covers up the content.

This testimony elucidates the kind of Russia experts that are being relied on to prove that there's this vast information warfare campaign, this Gerasimov doctrine, employed by Russia. Clint Watts is part of a larger initiative spun out of the failed Clinton campaign. It includes people like Laura Rosenberger, who was a former policy advisor of Hillary Clinton. This should scare anyone. Consider that these people would have been involved in foreign policy decisions. Andrew Weisberg I think is another, and then there's J.M. Berger, who's part of the terror jihadology industry. He never really established himself as much of a major expert there, but now the hype is all around Russia, so he's rebranded himself as a Russia expert.

They have an initiative called the Alliance for Securing Democracy. If you go on the Alliance for Securing Democracy's website, it's almost as entertaining as the Committee to Investigate Russia. They have a chart that shows the Russia information threat matrix. They're addressing all of the different websites, including the National Review, maybe they'll name the Real News today, that are echoing Kremlin propaganda. How do they determine what the Kremlin's propaganda is? They not only look at RT and Sputnik, they have a list that they've refused to release of 600 Russian bots or Russian-controlled social media accounts. As I said, they refuse to name what these social media accounts are.

Scott Shane, the New York Times reporter, he published another one of these exposes that exposes nothing, and by the ninth paragraph, you realize the whole thing is unconfirmed and it's based on suspicions and speculation. He determined that a lot of these supposed Russian bots he was supposed to be looking at were actually real people, one you can look it is Marcel Sardo, real people who just simply don't believe in a unipolar world, and they support Russia as a counterhegemonic force. I know this is impossible for Beltway insiders and coastal elites to believe, but there are people who actually think that way and are on Twitter.

You're basically looking at a gigantic scam. Scams are bad as they are. Amway's bad. It rips a lot of people off and makes money for right-wingers. This is a pro-war scam that has effectively deep-sixed diplomacy with Russia, which could have been effective in establishing stability in certain areas. 1.4 million people are displaced in Ukraine. Syria's a complete mess. The U.S. has to work with Russia there to defeat ISIS. This is just dangerous on a global scale, and so it's important to call out these scam initiatives and to completely scrutinize and hound the fraudmeisters and neocons behind it.

AARON MATE: All right, that's going to wrap part one of this discussion with Max Blumenthal. Stay tuned for part two.

Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath, Republican Gomorrah, and The 51 Day War. He is the co-host of the podcast, Moderate Rebels. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.

Rob Roy 4 days ago

Why isn't Max Blumenthal's great book, "The 51 Day War," listed above? Its omission seems odd and deliberate. Also, "Driving Miss Daisy" was not a bad role for Morgan. It was an excellent snap shot of the south at the time and the reduction of two representatives of that era into real people. Never mind.

Anyway, the whole Russiagate thing will either explode into nothing or drift off into nothing. Why? Because there's no "there" there. ALL just fabricated hype. Too many people fall prey to surmises and suggestions and baseless conclusions.

Read Robert Parry, and, please, interview him and others from consortiumnews.com , my best go to source for truth. Thanks for this interview with Max, a man I greatly admire. see more

kober Rob Roy 7 hours ago

Agreement on Parry, a bit verbose but cuts Reagan and GHW Bush to bite size pieces over Iran gate! see more

ollo10 Rob Roy 3 days ago

Fabricated hype yes, but for what reason? The last thing the 'elites' want is Trump making friends with Russia, they are scared it would expose their NATO scam. No enemies = no money for MIC!

Now the dollar is starting to collapse, note each nation America are at loggerheads with, have all stopped using or want to stop using the dollar. So, yes, they fabricated the hype and move onto N Korea, because Russia wouldn't play ball and fire the first shot!

Perhaps Kim Jung-Un can be tricked into this move? It also throws a spanner in the works against the Chinese One Belt One Road [Eurasian Union] that also threatens American hegemony & dollar. see more

Palimpsestuous 4 days ago

Neocons make military war while neoliberals make economic war. Neither group makes any sense and both groups are destroying the human race with synthetic ideologies based on nothing but greed, fear, hatred and greed. Both groups represent extreme wealth and the project to enslave and impoverish the whole world. It's them or us and so far we're clueless.

Maria M Cummings 4 days ago

Right on, and well said Max! Now then, we know who the neocons are, nastiness is embedded in their DNA and makeup. I could go and on to an eternity, using a plethora of adjectives to describe their repugnant ideas and beliefs; but I won't.

On the other hand, here we have the "liberals" of the West coast. Bad losers! Alas, Hillary, "the queen of chaos" lost, and the Hollywood crowd "lost their mind."
And regarding Morgan Freeman, highly disappointing and utterly pathetic.

truthynesslover 4 days ago

Democrats and Neo-CONs want WW3...

Seer 4 days ago

Morgan is a "natural character actor"- while I enjoy some of his movies, he could easily be "Morgan Freeman" in each role. I understand his desire to work and perhaps make more money-he is a paid spokesman I presume. Morgan possesses mo particular geopolitical or economic expertise that I am aware of: enough about Morgan.

SCAM is the correct word. Now after failing to get a Russian "hack" dismissed by former CIA & NSA experts and Wikileaks (Never lied yet to my knowledge) NOW we get Russian FB accounts ( most of which have nothing to do with clinton).

Why won't Clinton go away?- she is just Not personable enough to get elected against someone more personable. This is why Trump and Obama won.

I believe she could have beat Jeb and some other GOP hopefuls who also are not as personable. This DEM meme is all about trying to set itself up for 2018 elections and perhaps to try to bring Trump down before he does some AWFUL things such as: Open up a truly independent 911 investigation; release the JFK files "unclassified" (The CIA would probably not comply)

Incidentally the CIA was never Congressionally approved -- Trump could eliminate them with an executive order; of course then we would see direct evidence of the shadow governments power. What concerns me is that we do not see: Bill Binney, Ray McGovern, Kevin Shipp, Robert Steele, Stephen Cohen in RN interviews? Is RN reporting its funding sources on its site?

Donatella • 4 days ago

A sign of the Democrat party's desperation is its embrace of the always-wrong warmongering neocons. Hillary embraced them during her campaign assuming that it would bring her Republican votes as Chuck Schumer seemed to think. Max Boot is part of this joint Democrat/Neocon propaganda "Committee to Investigate Russia", there is an excellent interview of him at the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[Sep 26, 2017] US Lawmakers Accuse Russian Outlet of Time Travel

www.moonofalabama.org

Lawmakers want the FCC to investigate the Russia-backed Sputnik Radio for using "U.S. airwaves to influence the 2016 presidential election," apparently not realizing that Sputnik wasn't on the radio until July 2017, says Max Blumenthal

[Sep 26, 2017] The Russian Influence Story Falls Apart - A New Fairy Tale Is Needed

Notable quotes:
"... It is of course idiotic to believe that 3,000 ads for which some $100,000 was spent over two years would somehow effect a U.S. election. In a U.S. presidential election more than $2 billion is spend on advertising. Facebook's ad revenue per year is some $27 billion. ..."
"... The whole ugly mess would be a farce through and through if not for the suffering of innocents and the endless, meaningless attempted destruction of everything noble in the human spirit. ..."
"... "The lack of objectivity and journalistic integrity is a greater threat to western democracy than any "Russian influence" could ever be." ..."
"... Whats most outrageous about this is that same western liberal media daily could whine about Russian propaganda, meanwhile themselves could write propaganda everyday! These people are brainwashed, and unfortunately they fool a lot of westerners. ..."
"... There is no end to this, these liberals wont stop until Trump declare war on Russia, they are sick in their heads, racist against Russians, no other way to define their irrational hatred. ..."
"... Ah Ha! The Bezos Bozo strikes again! The only real way to hurt that man is in his Amazon.com pocketbook. Boycott the disgusting online retailer and urge everyone to, explaining that Bezos is a far bigger threat to peace and democracy than Russia, China, and DPRK combined. ..."
Sep 26, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

The Obama White House and some Democratic officials pressed Facebook to find evidence for alleged "Russian interference" in the U.S. election. When Facebook found none, the pressure increased. Facebook went back, again found nothing and political pressure increase further. Congress threatened to investigate. Senator Warner flew to California and demanded the "right" results. Eventually Facebook gave in:

By early August, Facebook had identified more than 3,000 ads addressing social and political issues that ran in the United States between 2015 and 2017 and that appear to have come from accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency.

All hailed Facebook - finally there was something they could build their anti-Russian campaign on.

It is of course idiotic to believe that 3,000 ads for which some $100,000 was spent over two years would somehow effect a U.S. election. In a U.S. presidential election more than $2 billion is spend on advertising. Facebook's ad revenue per year is some $27 billion.

Moreover - as it now turns out these 3,000 advertisements which "appeared" to be "associated" with something "Russian" were not anti-Clinton or pro-Trump but were a mix of pro- and contra ads on various social issues:

The batch of more than 3,000 Russian-bought ads that Facebook is preparing to turn over to Congress shows a deep understanding of social divides in American society, with s ome ads promoting African American rights groups, including Black Lives Matter, and others suggesting that these same groups pose a rising political threat , say people familiar with the covert influence campaign.

The Russian campaign ! taking advantage of Facebook's ability to send contrary messages to different groups of users based on their political and demographic characteristics ! also sought to sow discord among religious groups. Other ads highlighted support for Democrat Hillary Clinton among Muslim women.

(Note again - there is no evidence that any of the ads were "Russian bought" or part of a "Russian campaign". Those are mere assertions by the Washington Post authors.)

As we now learn that these ads were not, as earlier assumed, pro-Trump and anti-Clinton, the narrative has to change. Earlier it was claimed that the alleged Russian aim was to get Trump elected. That no longer holds:

"Their aim was to sow chaos," said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "In many ­cases, it was more about voter suppression rather than increasing turnout."

How pro- and anti-Black Lives Matter ads might have suppressed voter turnout will stay Senator Warner's secret.

Instead of "Russia helped Trump" we now get an even more implausible "Russia wanted to sow discord" narrative. As if Donald Trump's campaign style had not been enough to cause controversies.

The Washington Post has been the major outlet to push the "Russian influence" baloney . It has long left all journalistic standards behind. Today it goes even further. An editorial now claims that Russia interfered in the German elections by pushing the right-wing AfD vote through last minute tweets from some Twitter bots:

The party was buoyed by social-media campaigns of the kind Russia has used elsewhere ! faceless bots that multiply messages over and over. Once again, the Kremlin's quest to disrupt democracy, divide the West and erode the rules-based liberal international order may have found a toehold.

No evidence is presented that any online activity "buoyed" the AfD. No evidence is presented that anything Russian was involved. Here is the sole point the editorial builds on:

In the final hours of the campaign, online supporters of the AfD began warning their base of possible election fraud, and the online alarms were "driven by anonymous troll accounts and boosted by a Russian-language botnet," according to the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab.

The Atlantic Council is financed by foreign (Middle East) interest, NATO and the oil- and weapon industry. It has been a major driver of the anti-Russian new Cold War narrative. Its "Digital Forensic Research Lab" indeed claims to have found a few Twitter accounts which have their names written in Cyrillic(!) letters. Only Russian influence accounts would ever do that! It even found one tweet warning about election fraud that was retweeted 500(!) times. That MUST have helped the AfD to receive more than 12% of the 47 million cast votes in Germany - (not!).

Election fraud in the German pen and paper balloting is nearly impossible. No one will take vague claims thereof as serious. It is simply not an issue in Germany and any such claim would not effect the vote. German officials have found no sign of "Russian" election hacking or of voting fraud.

What the Washington Post editors and the Atlantic Council have missed in their search for undue election influence in the German election is the large support of a islamophobic US megadonor for the rightwing Germany AfD party:

[O]ne of the major publishers of online content friendly to the far-right [German] party is an American website financed in large part and lead by Jewish philanthropist Nina Rosenwald.

Rosenwald's site, the Gatestone Institute, publishes a steady flow of inflammatory content about the German election, focused on stoking fears about immigrants and Muslims.

The fake news stories by the Zionist agitators were translated into German and disseminated to support the AfD.

Allegations of "Russian influence" in U.S., French and German elections is made up from hot air. No evidence is or ever was presented to support these claims. Massive election interference by other foreign interests, like large Saudi donations to the Clinton Foundation, or Zionist Jewish financier support for extremist positions in Germany and France is ignored.

The story about "Russian influence" was made up by the Democrats to explain Clinton's loss of the election and to avoid looking at her personal responsibility for it. It also helps to push the new cold war narrative and to sell weapons. As no evidence was ever found to support the "Russian influence" campaign, Facebook and others come under pressure to deliver the "evidence" the U.S. intelligence services could not produce. The now resulting story of "sowing chaos" is something out of la-la-land.

If there is something to learn from this sad story it is this: The lack of objectivity and journalistic integrity is a greater threat to western democracy than any "Russian influence" could ever be.

Posted by b on September 26, 2017 at 01:50 PM | Permalink

bc | Sep 26, 2017 2:10:09 PM | 1

Once again, the Kremlin's quest to disrupt democracy, divide the West and erode the rules-based liberal international order may have found a toehold.

O, it hurts. The irony, it hurts. Repeating myself from the end of the last thread: The whole ugly mess would be a farce through and through if not for the suffering of innocents and the endless, meaningless attempted destruction of everything noble in the human spirit.

ralphieboy | Sep 26, 2017 2:11:56 PM | 2
There is nothing illegal about attempting to influence another nation's elections. However, in most countries, it is illegal for citizens to actively work with foreign governments to do so.
Peter AU 1 | Sep 26, 2017 2:28:05 PM | 3
"The lack of objectivity and journalistic integrity is a greater threat to western democracy than any "Russian influence" could ever be."

Without journalistic integrity, there is no democracy as the average voter cannot make an informed choice. The threat won some time ago.

Anon | Sep 26, 2017 2:32:34 PM | 4
Whats most outrageous about this is that same western liberal media daily could whine about Russian propaganda, meanwhile themselves could write propaganda everyday! These people are brainwashed, and unfortunately they fool a lot of westerners.

Not sure what illegal thing there is with political ads to begin with? Again there is no logic to the brainwashed liberal.

Anon | Sep 26, 2017 2:47:31 PM | 5
There is no end to this, these liberals wont stop until Trump declare war on Russia, they are sick in their heads, racist against Russians, no other way to define their irrational hatred.

'Where are the Russians?': No sign of Russian meddling reported during ongoing German elections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCYpfV_XLNk

somebody | Sep 26, 2017 2:50:53 PM | 6
Re: 2

That is news to me. I think you have to label it ' treason ' and the country concerned 'enemy' to get anywhere in law. Or some illegality has to be involved. Is Russia America's Enemy?

ralphieboy | Sep 26, 2017 3:12:48 PM | 7
From http://www.businessinsider.de/collusion-russia-trump-crime-2017-6?r=US&IR=T

"James Gardner, an election law expert at SUNY Buffalo Law School, said the answer to whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia "depends on what specific actions formed the basis of collusion." Political historian Allan Lichtman agreed, saying indictments and prosecutions would depend upon the particular circumstances of a case and interpretations of the law that are not always clear.

Both Lichtman and Gardner said the federal statute criminalizing treason could apply. But putting aside treason, "there are numerous laws" that could be implicated by collusion with any foreign government, Lichtman said.

Those include the Logan Act, which forbids dealings by private individuals with foreign governments involved in disputes with the US; the Stored Communications Act, which creates Fourth Amendment-like privacy protections for email and other digital communications; and the Espionage Act.

John Coates, an election law expert at Harvard University Law School, pointed to relevant federal statutes that could apply, including at least two federal statutes governing campaign contributions and donations by foreign nationals and two governing fraud and conspiracy offenses."

karlof1 | Sep 26, 2017 3:13:08 PM | 8
Ah Ha! The Bezos Bozo strikes again! The only real way to hurt that man is in his Amazon.com pocketbook. Boycott the disgusting online retailer and urge everyone to, explaining that Bezos is a far bigger threat to peace and democracy than Russia, China, and DPRK combined.
Mr. Unpopular | Sep 26, 2017 3:23:50 PM | 9
@4 and 5

@b - the US papers were bought out at least as early as 1915 in the run up WWI.

Nothing here Cicero couldn't have commented on.

And so it goes.

Mr. Unpopular | Sep 26, 2017 3:24:45 PM | 10
@ 4 and 5 f'reals this time...

What the hell does liberal have to do with any of this? It's all neo-con, eh?

Anon | Sep 26, 2017 3:32:49 PM | 11
Mr Unpopular

Are you joking or perhaps a liberal yourself? The russian conspiracy bs is spread by liberal media companies.

AriusArmenian | Sep 26, 2017 3:36:22 PM | 12
I usually can't miss by always first assuming that reports by officials or media in the West are disinformation narratives.

I also am usually right to assume that they project on some other what these vermin in the West are in themselves. They tell us what they are planning or already doing right out of their mouths if you listen carefully.

likklemore | Sep 26, 2017 3:36:44 PM | 13
@ Karlofi 8
"The only real way to hurt that man is in his Amazon.com pocketbook."

Untouchable he is. In addition to being well subsidized on every shipment by the taxpayers, he is owned by that famous 3-letter agency. Look up the contract.

Oilman2 | Sep 26, 2017 3:41:48 PM | 14
@ Anon 11...

AND... endlessly parroted at need by the neocons. This entire thing really isn't a left/right or red/blue deal - it's pro-war and pro-intervention propaganda from the elite rich of both sides in the US.

james | Sep 26, 2017 3:53:50 PM | 15
if only hillary clinton could have spent 100,000 over the course of 2 years to influence the election, LOLOL...
james | Sep 26, 2017 3:59:25 PM | 16
in other related news, hillary clinton has influenced her good friends in saudi arabia to let women drive.... for all the money they gave her to lose the election, that was the least she could do for the women of saudi arabia!
scottindallas | Sep 26, 2017 4:08:58 PM | 17
there is no liberal foreign paper, you're confusing their domestic narrative with the foreign one
somebody | Sep 26, 2017 4:12:54 PM | 18
7

Sounds like they would have to stretch that a lot. But that is what lawyers are for.

The Logan Act does not seem to apply as influencing an election is not "negotiating with foreign governments".

They are basically doing to Trump what Republicans did to Clinton with the Libyan investigation - keep going on and on to accidentally uncover something relevant in the end.

financial matters | Sep 26, 2017 4:15:13 PM | 19
My iphone gives me a news feed that is often from CNN, Washington Post, NY Times, ABC/NBC news. It is constant Trump bashing. No useful news if any at all on such things as Syria, economic issues (other than the DOW), health care (other than insurance friendly Congressional nonsense). All useful news has to be found on alternative media of which this site is definitely one of the best on Syria.
steven t johnson | Sep 26, 2017 4:16:23 PM | 20
Look, if Whitewater, Vince Flynn's murder, Benghazi, Clinton Cash, Pizzagate don't need evidence that leads somewhere, neither does Russian hacking. Pussies whining because their loser boy Trump doesn't have the prestige actually winning the election would give him is stupid, useless and boring. Go cry in the Electoral College.

Puting favored Trump. Tough shit if jingo xenophobia is dogmatically acceptable to conservatives. That's going to be an embarrassment.

It's true that Putin was a gigantic fool for favoring Trump, but that's his shame to bear.

zeke | Sep 26, 2017 4:36:24 PM | 21
20

Stop being emotional, of Course Trump is better than Hillary on Russia.

Gareth | Sep 26, 2017 4:36:44 PM | 22
And another alleged Russki conspiracy bites the dust!

In reversal, feds say Russian hacking attempt didn't hit Wisconsin election systems

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/in-reversal-feds-say-russian-hacking-attempt-didn-t-hit/article_c75959b6-3fb5-5c93-91c8-f8ae3fa9c10a.html

frances | Sep 26, 2017 4:40:16 PM | 23
Posted by: financial matters | Sep 26, 2017 4:15:13 PM | 19
I backed Bernie and several Dem candidates back when that seemed to matter. Because of that I get about 50 plus emails a day asking for money. ALL without exception begin with a Trump bashing statement, each more strident than the last (probably because I am not giving them anything).
As you noted, there is nothing about Syria, loads about Russians, vague invasion hysteria regarding Ukraine,endless black/white nonsense and don't get me started on the latest flag/NFL rants.
I've protested in person and in writing just about every military adventure the US was ever involved in during my life time and until the last few years it was a fairly lonely process. But now, the level of information on and rejection of the Syrian war appears to be as high as it was at the end of the Vietnam war. So we are getting somewhere, maybe. What is that number, is it 13 percent of a population that is needed to create real change?
sejomoje | Sep 26, 2017 4:57:45 PM | 24
Bezos is nothing more than an apparatchik of the new USSA. Amazon is the company store. There is no "boycotting" the company store. And anyway it's too late for that. You WILL read the company newsletter, you WILL watch those writings being reinforced on the Company Channel Network, you WILL shop at the company store, you WILL be surveilled by the company in order to maintain company supremacy and ever-increasing profits.

As long as the company 'owns' the water you drink and the land you live on at least. And it's not Bezos who owns the company, he's just on the board.

somebody | Sep 26, 2017 5:25:59 PM | 25
21 :-))

Trump is not my Bride, Putin says

"It's hard to deal with people who confuse Austria and Australia, but there's nothing you can do about this," he said, probably referring generally to Washington foreign policy circles, though the original gaffe is attributed to former President George W. Bush. "Apparently, this is the level of political culture within a certain part of the U.S. establishment."
nonsense factory | Sep 26, 2017 5:30:20 PM | 26
The Russian conspiracy claim is just the corporate Democrats excuse for losing the election to a blowhard reality TV star and real estate hustler who had to be bailed out from several bankruptcies by the Saudis and the US government. Despite having almost every media outlet and government bureaucrat on her side, Hillary Clinton lost.

Where'd she lose? In the Rust Belt states that have been hit hardest by neoliberal trade policies that have wrecked the local economies in those states.

The whole Russia thing really doesn't even involve the Republican Party - its mostly internal Democratic Party politics, with Sanders Democrats trying to use Clinton's loss to unseat the corporate Wall Street crowd, and the Clintonites fighting to stay in power by claiming that their loss wasn't due to their crappy policies and incompetence, but rather to a massive Russian conspiracy.

Don't forget, the American oligarchs who control the media were really hoping for a Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton election, and despite pushing hard for that, it almost came up as a Bernie Sanders vs. Donald Trump election. Indicating a loss of control by the plutocracy - that's the take home message. They're still struggling to re-establish control, which is what flogging the Russia hype is all about.

Truth is, America would be better off with someone like Putin in the executive office, someone who wouldn't be afraid to imprison at least a few leading Wall Street financiers for their role in the 2008 economic collapse.

Christian Chuba | Sep 26, 2017 5:30:26 PM | 27
That story in the Washington Post was pathetic. It reminds me of a saying, 'if you torture the data, it will eventually confess'
karlof1 | Sep 26, 2017 5:37:11 PM | 28
sejomoje @24--

Fortunately, it's not that bad--yet. But it will probably need to get close to that before the disparate US citizenry arises in an attempt to overcome it all.

james | Sep 26, 2017 5:39:17 PM | 29
take the iphone, amazon, wapo and etc. etc. and flush them down the toilet.... alternatively - take a ride into the toilet, lol..

[Sep 25, 2017] I am presently reading the book JFK and the Unspeakable by James W.Douglass and it is exactly why Kennedy was assassinated by the very same group that desperately wants to see Trump gone and the rapprochement with Russia squashed

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Although I voted for Trump, only because he was a slightly smaller POS than Hillary, it's hard to have any sympathy for him. ..."
"... The Democrats and the Deep State should have accused Israel of interfering in US elections. That would have been a credible complaint. ..."
"... Felix, Except that Israel and her deep state puppets were interfering on behalf of the democrats. ..."
"... What is happening in the U.S. is the same MO the CIA has developed over the past 64 years to create turmoil within a nation to overthrow a ruler that would not comply with the dictates of Wall Street. ..."
"... I am presently reading the book " JFK and the Unspeakable" by James W.Douglass and it is exactly why Kennedy was assassinated by the very same group that desperately wants to see Trump gone and the rapprochement with Russia squashed. ..."
"... Russia-gate - Just another weapon of mass distraction, brought to you by the liars in charge. ..."
"... David Stockman's excellent analysis makes clear that Trump doesn't know what he's doing and has appointed poor advisors, many of whom have been working against him from the start. Yet, per Stockman, "he doesn't need to be the passive object of a witch hunt." He could have and should have exposed the crimes of his accusers from the beginning, while he still had 100% support from the anti-war Right, which put him in office in the first place. He should have ignored the hysteria emanating from his enemies, and made peace with Vladimir Putin as a first order of business. Millions would have supported him. ..."
"... But, after his provocations in Syria and against Russia, which really resulted because he gave control of military decisions to uber hawk and Russia-phobic Mad Dog Mattis, his support from the anti-war crowd has all but evaporated and is unlikely to return. In other words, although he has been treated extremely unfairly by the corporate media, ultimately he has no one to blame but himself. Trump, with his endless stupid tweeting, has become a sad caricature of himself. ..."
"... When an outsider (like Trump) is elected POTUS and promises to do harm to the Pentagon, against the will of the Deep State -- the battle is on. A coup was planned against him, even before he took the oath of office. And, BTW--against the will of the people ..."
"... The Deep State bureaucracy will never let him have full control. Apparently, Obomber and Killery are running a Shadow White House, with all major decisions coming from the Deep State actors thereof. ..."
"... Killery still has her security clearance, by which she knew where the US Military would strike in Syria before Trump had any idea what was going on ..."
"... The Pentagon has seized power and does not recognize any elected or appointed power of the US government. Trump's 'power' is non-existent. If this 'soft coup' becomes a hard one, I predict all hell breaking loose in America ..."
"... "In a word, the Little Putsch in Kiev is now begetting a Great Big Coup in the Imperial City." Interesting point of view from David Stockman. Whatever happens in Washington, one can be sure there will come another provocation against Russia. ..."
"... This will probably be the Joint Investigation Team's final word on the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, not long after the little putsch in Kiev. The Joint Investigation Team relies on the Dutch Safety Board's Final Report on Flight MH17. With this report, the Dutch Safety Board has given the world a classic snow job, which I have pointed out in my critique on it. Please read it on my website at www.show-the-house.com/id119.html and share it with your elected representatives. Maybe a collective effort can head this off . ..."
"... Not the first time! "US Power Elite, at war among themselves?" https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/us-powe... ..."
"... Watching from Australia what passes for domestic politics in the US within the media, reminds me of a primitive tribe reacting to a solar eclipse. They run around in hysterical fear gnashing their teeth thinking the great evil spirit has come to steal their corn, carry off their daughters, and destroy their village. ..."
Jun 26, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

Jenny G · 3 days ago

Although I voted for Trump, only because he was a slightly smaller POS than Hillary, it's hard to have any sympathy for him.

Every time he walks out on a stage clapping his hands, encouraging applause, like a daytime TV game show host, I want to puke.

I honestly don't think Trump really expected to win the presidency. And when he did, he was clueless. His "Mission Accomplished" party at the White House for a bill which would never pass the senate, was pure Dubya Bush. The orange haired POS is an embarrassment to the country.

Felix · 4 days ago
The Democrats and the Deep State should have accused Israel of interfering in US elections. That would have been a credible complaint.
follyofwar · 3 days ago
Felix, Except that Israel and her deep state puppets were interfering on behalf of the democrats.
olde reb · 3 days ago
What is happening in the U.S. is the same MO the CIA has developed over the past 64 years to create turmoil within a nation to overthrow a ruler that would not comply with the dictates of Wall Street.

Detailed in --. http://farmwars.info/?p=15338 . A FACE FOR THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT

The "ultimate goal" (according to internal memos), is to collect on the fraudulent $20 trillion national debt which will result in Wall Street owning the United States. Hello, Greece.

Guysth · 3 days ago
I am presently reading the book " JFK and the Unspeakable" by James W.Douglass and it is exactly why Kennedy was assassinated by the very same group that desperately wants to see Trump gone and the rapprochement with Russia squashed.

Peace is not in their books,war is. John Kennedy had an epiphany and was wanting to make peace with the USSR at the time, after the Cuban crisis, and this could not be allowed to happen .

Same $hit different pile.

doray · 3 days ago
Russia-gate - Just another weapon of mass distraction, brought to you by the liars in charge.
astraeaisabella · 3 days ago
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2011/10/25... This may seem relevant, but considering Trump's visit to SAudi Arabia and then immediately "Israel", you might find it interesting.
follyofwar · 3 days ago

David Stockman's excellent analysis makes clear that Trump doesn't know what he's doing and has appointed poor advisors, many of whom have been working against him from the start. Yet, per Stockman, "he doesn't need to be the passive object of a witch hunt." He could have and should have exposed the crimes of his accusers from the beginning, while he still had 100% support from the anti-war Right, which put him in office in the first place. He should have ignored the hysteria emanating from his enemies, and made peace with Vladimir Putin as a first order of business. Millions would have supported him.

But, after his provocations in Syria and against Russia, which really resulted because he gave control of military decisions to uber hawk and Russia-phobic Mad Dog Mattis, his support from the anti-war crowd has all but evaporated and is unlikely to return. In other words, although he has been treated extremely unfairly by the corporate media, ultimately he has no one to blame but himself. Trump, with his endless stupid tweeting, has become a sad caricature of himself.

RedRubies · 3 days ago
Stockman has only been a Congressman. They are allowed more leeway.

When an outsider (like Trump) is elected POTUS and promises to do harm to the Pentagon, against the will of the Deep State -- the battle is on. A coup was planned against him, even before he took the oath of office. And, BTW--against the will of the people, themselves.

The Deep State bureaucracy will never let him have full control. Apparently, Obomber and Killery are running a Shadow White House, with all major decisions coming from the Deep State actors thereof.

Killery still has her security clearance, by which she knew where the US Military would strike in Syria before Trump had any idea what was going on (http://headlinebits.com/2017-06-21/deep-state-hillary-clinton-staffers-still-have-security-clearances-access-to-sensitive-governmen.AlsHBgBSVVwAV1FWVwdSAwBWAg8HXQYE.html) .

You can't write an article about a 'soft coup' and NOT mention her name in connection with it!

The Pentagon has seized power and does not recognize any elected or appointed power of the US government. Trump's 'power' is non-existent. If this 'soft coup' becomes a hard one, I predict all hell breaking loose in America.

Stephen M. St. John · 3 days ago

"In a word, the Little Putsch in Kiev is now begetting a Great Big Coup in the Imperial City." Interesting point of view from David Stockman. Whatever happens in Washington, one can be sure there will come another provocation against Russia.

This will probably be the Joint Investigation Team's final word on the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, not long after the little putsch in Kiev. The Joint Investigation Team relies on the Dutch Safety Board's Final Report on Flight MH17. With this report, the Dutch Safety Board has given the world a classic snow job, which I have pointed out in my critique on it. Please read it on my website at www.show-the-house.com/id119.html and share it with your elected representatives. Maybe a collective effort can head this off .

Schlüter 91p · 3 days ago
Not the first time! "US Power Elite, at war among themselves?" https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/us-powe...
Dick · 3 days ago
Watching from Australia what passes for domestic politics in the US within the media, reminds me of a primitive tribe reacting to a solar eclipse. They run around in hysterical fear gnashing their teeth thinking the great evil spirit has come to steal their corn, carry off their daughters, and destroy their village.

Emotional ignorance and blindness to the rational reality will only lead to more tears.

[Sep 25, 2017] Russophobia - Symptom Of US Implosion by Finian Cunningham

Implosion or not, it is definitely an attempt to internal problems including the collapse of neoliberal ideology by unleashing a witch hunt in best Senator McCarthy style. One motivation might be suppressing any critique of neoliberalism by equating it to pro-Russian propaganda. This is very much in best USSR traditions, where propaganda was preoccupied with foreign enemies which were constantly trying to undermine the state...
So far it proved to be a very effective tool for marginalizing the dissent. As in 1984: "Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia."
Mar 24, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Finian Cunningham, via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

There was a time when Russophobia served as an effective form of population control – used by the American ruling class in particular to command the general US population into patriotic loyalty. Not any longer. Now, Russophobia is a sign of weakness, of desperate implosion among the US ruling class from their own rotten, internal decay.

This propaganda technique worked adequately well during the Cold War decades when the former Soviet Union could be easily demonized as "godless communism" and an "evil empire". Such stereotypes, no matter how false, could be sustained largely because of the monopoly control of Western media by governments and official regulators.

The Soviet Union passed away more than a quarter of a century ago, but Russophobia among the US political class is more virulent than ever.

This week it was evident from Congressional hearings in Washington into alleged Russian interference in US politics that large sections of American government and establishment media are fixated by Russophobia and a belief that Russia is a malign foreign adversary.

However, the power of the Russophobia propaganda technique over the wider population seems to have greatly diminished from its Cold War heyday. This is partly due to more diverse global communications which challenge the previous Western monopoly for controlling narrative and perception. Contemporary Russophobia – demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin or Russian military forces – does not have the same potency for scaring the Western public. Indeed, due to greater diversity in global news media sources, it is fair to say that "official" Western depictions of Russia as an enemy, for example allegedly about to invade Europe or allegedly interfering in electoral politics, are met with a healthy skepticism – if not ridicule by many Western citizens.

What is increasingly apparent here is a gaping chasm between the political class and the wider public on the matter of Russophobia. This is true for Western countries generally, but especially in the US. The political class – the lawmakers in Washington and the mainstream news media – are frenzied by claims that Russia interfered in the US presidential elections and that Russia has some kind of sinister leverage on the presidency of Donald Trump.

But this frenzy of Russophobia is not reflected among the wider public of ordinary American citizens. Rabid accusations that Russia hacked the computers of Trump's Democrat rival Hillary Clinton to spread damaging information about her; that this alleged sabotage of American democracy was an "act of war"; that President Trump is guilty of "treason" by "colluding" with a "Russian influence campaign" – all of these sensational claims seem to be only a preoccupation of the privileged political class . Most ordinary Americans, concerned about making a living in a crumbling society, either don't buy the claims or view them as idle chatter.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week dismissed the Congressional hearings into alleged Russian interference in US politics. He aptly said that US lawmakers and the corporate media have become "entangled" in their own fabrications. "They are trying to find evidence for conclusions that they have already made", said Peskov.

Other suitable imagery is that the US political class are tilting at windmills, chasing their own tails, or running from their own shadows. There seems to be a collective delusional mindset.

Unable to accept the reality that the governing structure of the US has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people, that the people rebelled by electing an outsider in the form of business mogul-turned-politician Donald Trump, that the collapse of American traditional politics is due to the atrophy of its bankrupt capitalist economy over several decades – the ruling class have fabricated their own excuse for demise by blaming it all on Russia.

The American ruling class cannot accept, or come to terms, with the fact of systemic failure in their own political system. The election of Trump is a symptom of this failure and the widespread disillusionment among voters towards the two-party train wreck of Republicans and Democrats. That is why the specter of Russian interference in the US political system had to be conjured up, by necessity, as a way of "explaining" the abject failure and the ensuing popular revolt.

Russophobia was rehabilitated from the Cold War closet by the American political establishment to distract from the glaring internal collapse of American politics.

The corrosive, self-destruction seems to know no bounds. James Comey, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told Congress this week that the White House is being probed for illicit contacts with Russia. This dramatic notice served by Comey was greeted with general approval by political opponents of the Trump administration, as well as by news media outlets.

The New York Times said the FBI was in effect holding a "criminal investigation at the doorstep of the White House".

Other news outlets are openly airing discussions on the probability of President Trump being impeached from office.

The toxic political atmosphere of Russophobia in Washington is unprecedented. The Trump administration is being crippled at every turn from conducting normal political business under a toxic cloud of suspicion that it is guilty of treason from colluding with Russia.

President Trump has run afoul with Republicans in Congress over his planned healthcare reforms because many Republicans are taking issue instead over the vaunted Russian probe.

When Trump's Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was reported to be skipping a NATO summit next month but was planning to visit Moscow later in the same month, the itinerary was interpreted as a sign of untoward Russian influence.

What makes the spectacle of political infighting so unprecedented is that there is such little evidence to back up allegations of Trump-Russia collusion. It is preponderantly based on innuendo and anonymous leaks to the media, which are then recycled as "evidence".

Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said earlier this week that he has seen no actual evidence among classified documents indicating any collusion between the Trump campaign team and the Russian government.

Even former senior intelligence officials, James Clapper and Michael Morell who are no friends of Trump, have lately admitted in media interviews that there is no such evidence.

Yet, FBI chief James Comey told Congress that his agency was pursuing a potentially criminal investigation into the Trump administration, while at the same time not confirming or denying the existence of any evidence.

And, as already noted, this declaration of open-ended snooping by Comey on the White House was met with avid approval by political opponents of Trump, both on Capitol Hill and in the corporate media.

Let's just assume for a moment that the whole Trump-Russia collusion story is indeed fake. That it is groundless, a figment of imagination. There are solid reasons to believe that is the case. But let's just assume here that it is fake for the sake of argument.

That then means that the Washington seat of government and the US presidency are tearing themselves apart in a futile civil war.

The real war here is a power struggle within the US in the context of ruling parties no longer having legitimacy to govern.

This is an American implosion. An historic Made-in-America meltdown. And Russophobia is but a symptom of the internal decay at the heart of US politics.

trulz4lulz -> Logan 5 •Mar 24, 2017 9:15 PM

I've been MSM-free for so long now, I forgot who I'm supposed to be hating this week!! I see the effects in sooo many of my friends though, more so on the left, than the right. Which is odd....? Or maybe it isn't, due to their mental retardation. Ohh well...game on.
stizazz -> trulz4lulz •Mar 24, 2017 9:44 PM

Russophobia has been ongoing since W Bush. They just want to keep Trump on the World War 3 track.

http://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-truth-about-the-c...

oncemore -> Logan 5 •Mar 25, 2017 5:11 AM

Bolsevism, apart being a russian word, is at home in US, originated in US, was nurtured by US money and was, still is, the main US export (topic: imperial US wars).

hoyeru (not verified) •Mar 24, 2017 9:17 PM

Whether the Soviet Union exists or not has nothing to do with it. USA MUST always have an enemy to divert the sheeple's attention that their so called American dream is really a nightmare.

Besides, USA's empire is failing and Russia is getting stronger. of course USA will be pissed off about it.

daveO -> hoyeru •Mar 24, 2017 9:34 PM

"Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia."

I'm glad to have lived to see them almost fail. When I first read this in 1984, by coincidence, there seemed to be no end in sight.

As soon as the USSR failed they replaced it with terrorism(Eastasia)...

MEFOBILLS -> daveO •Mar 25, 2017 3:31 AM

Oceania is always against a land power arising, including Eurasia.

Another wrinkle that is important: Feminized Western Societies. Russia is now a traditional masculine society, while the west has been feminized. (Judaized and Feminized are similar - both operate with deception)

http://www.heretical.com/sgs-2014/fem-war.html

Femine societies lash out, don't forgive, make dubious alliances, and fight underhanded.

The table at the bottom of link above describes the differences in wartime behavior between the two types of societies.

Since Trump is masculine, he naturally will be more instinctively in alignment with Putin and Russia.

nmewn •Mar 24, 2017 9:22 PM

Isn't it interesting that Russian government officials simply say "Veee don't comment on state spying activities" while in American government officials simply pass it directly to their media cronies who are quoted in newspapers and on TeeeVeee?

Anonymously...of course ;-)

DuneCreature •Mar 24, 2017 9:31 PM

Did we declare war on Russia while I was taking a nap?

What is the hell is going on with the raving Russian hacker meltdown horseshit? ... Bill Gates and the NSA camps out on my network every time I turn it on? .. Do I get to declare war and run to the UN for sanctions on Ft Meade?

Will Insane McCain get charged for fraternizing with ISIS Big Bagdaddy?
... ... ...

Cabreado •Mar 24, 2017 9:49 PM

"This is an American implosion. An historic Made-in-America meltdown. And Russophobia is but a symptom of the internal decay at the heart of US politics."

More importantly, it is a decay in the electorate and how it relates to the elected (isn't that the real heart of US politics?)

And so the elected, naturally, have become a corrupt mass of opportunists. This is why they ("We") invented Rule of Law. We just have to give a damn like We mean it.

francis scott f... •Mar 24, 2017 10:14 PM

Russophobia - Symptom Of US Implosion ? may be Symptom of Deep State implosion

dark_matter •Mar 24, 2017 10:36 PM

The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American's hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners. Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life. ~Eric Hoffer in True Believer

Escapeclaws -> dark_matter •Mar 25, 2017 2:49 AM

That book was written eons ago in "historical time". Now Americans, being ever more stomped upon and ground down are identifying with the victims of totalitarian ideologies, like the Russians under Bolshevism. We have our our own Bolsheviks. Like the Bolsheviks, they will kill millions of their fellow citizens if all goes according to plan (20 Million in Russia under the Bolsheviks). History doesn't rhyme, it repeats. THE NEOCONS--THEY WANT YOU DEAD!

Batman11 •Mar 25, 2017 3:37 AM

Look at US inequality:

http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/557ef766ecad04fe50a257cd-960/screen shot 2015-06-15 at 11.28.56 am.png

A picture paints a thousand words. American philanthropists sponsor right wing think-tanks to make people believe those at the top need more.
Look behind Trump when he talks from one of his residences, not everything is covered in gold leaf. He does need more. The US is being ransacked by its own elite and who are not going to take any responsibility for their own greed, so they are blaming the Russians.

Looking on the bright side. A nation with military bases in almost every nation on Earth is ransacked by its own elite, a source of great amusement for generations to come (outside the US). American exceptionalism – exceptionally stupid.

Batman11 -> Batman11 •Mar 25, 2017 4:03 AM

Add it to the list of things that will last forever: The British Empire, The Thousand Year Reich, American exceptionalism

krage_man •Mar 25, 2017 5:02 AM

Russophobia is just the result of the clash of 2 irreconcilable things. The first one is about USA being the superpower, controlling world affairs. The second one is that Russia's economy, influence, military power and state management by Putin government actually prevent USA from dominating Russia and its affairs.

It is internal conflict in the mind of Deep State figures. The only way is to either prove that the USA status by dominating Russia, or to adjust self vision as the only superpower and accept the changing world. Trump was elected to follow the later, but the deep state/establishment is unable to see anything other that the former as the way forward. So Russophobia is to keep all society following the way of dominance and to prevent Trump adopting more rational way of agreeing on sphere of influence with Russia.

BritBob •Mar 25, 2017 6:15 AM

Can Russia be trusted?

Russia tells Britain give back Gibraltar & Falklands before telling US what to do.
RUSSIA has told Britain it should "clean its conscience" and give back Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands before it criticises them over their involvement in Ukraine.

Moscow's ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin made the shocking remarks when responding to his British counterpart Matthew Rycroft at a UN security council meeting in New York. (Daily Express 4 Feb 2017)

Do the Spanish have a claim to the Rock? Gibraltar - Some Relevant International Law: https://www.academia.edu/10575180/Gibraltar_-_Some_Relevant_Internationa...

Perhaps not.

Funny thing to say when Argentina has never legally owned the Falklands. So how can they 'be returned' ?

Falklands- Never Belonged to Argentina:

https://www.academia.edu/31111843/Falklands_Never_Belonged_to_Argentina

brushhog -> BritBob •Mar 25, 2017 7:42 AM

No, of course Russia cannot be "trusted". Their governmen is no better than anyone elses.

Mimir -> BritBob •Mar 25, 2017 9:44 AM

Spain is continuously claiming the return of Gibraltar to Spain. (Was conquered in 1704)

When it comes to Falkland Islands, according to all International maritime agreements and especially United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, it is very difficult to argue that the Falkland Islands is part of the UK. It would be for the International Court of Justice to solve the dispute.

I think Russia has a point.

d edwards -> Last of the Middle Class •Mar 25, 2017 8:12 AM

Seems the only one's with Russophobia are the f ing neomarxist dems who need a scapegoat for their loses over the last eight years under 0dumbo.

brushhog •Mar 25, 2017 7:40 AM

Its very simple, those in charge need an outside enemy to blame and to try to unite the people against. The worse things get, the louder they will cry wolf and the more threatening they will become towards Russia.

The global elitists would rather end the world in a nuclear holocaust then let go of power and admit they're to blame.

Beans •Mar 25, 2017 7:53 AM

The whole Russophobia gimmick in the West is purely a Zionist fiction created to punish the White Christian Russians for daring to assert themselves. Connect the dots between Jewish political/business interests in Ukraine, Russia and the US Congress/Executive branch/Governmental agencies and you quickly see how everything falls into place. Free yourselves, White Christian Americans.

Faeriedust -> Beans •Mar 25, 2017 1:38 PM

Not all Jews are Bankers. Not all Bankers are Jewish. There is, however, a significant overlap.

Beans -> Faeriedust •Mar 25, 2017 4:16 PM

Yeah sure, you're absolutely right. Another way of putting it is by saying; 'Not all Jews were Bolsheviks. Not all Bolsheviks were Jews'... The historically indisputable fact however, is that about 85 to 90% of the members of the first Bolshevik government of 'Soviet' Russia was indeed Jewish ;)

Faeriedust -> StopBeingParanoid •Mar 25, 2017 12:51 PM

Of course they try to influence our elections. Now step back. Ever heard the name Victoria Nuland? Phillip of Makedon? Or perhaps The Great Game? In point of fact, major players in world domination ALWAYS try to influence both rivals and all the bit players who have something they want. And the Russians play hardball, no question about that. But generally, with their OWN dissidents, not other people's. Ask Trotsky's ghost. Politics is a full-contact sport. The only exception is when all the players belong to the same League, and the League bans anyone who breaks the rules. Right now, there IS no league. So yes, Putin plays hard. The CIA does, too.

aloha_snakbar •Mar 25, 2017 9:44 AM

However, the power of the Russophobia propaganda technique over the wider population seems to have greatly diminished from its Cold War heyday.

Im hiding under a desk... I cant hear you...

VW Nerd •Mar 25, 2017 10:46 AM

Commiey is a stooge of the deep state. Someone has some serious dirt on him.

Caleb Abell -> VW Nerd •Mar 25, 2017 11:01 AM

Along those lines, Comey may have derailed Clinton because elements of the deep state wanted her gone, and they were willing to accept Trump on a temporary basis. Now that Clinton is out of the picture, they can work on replacing Trump (one way or the other) with the much more compliant Pence.

CRM114 •Mar 25, 2017 12:31 PM

This article would have an even stronger case if it weren't based on a false premise. The Soviet Union WAS a threat to the West; that wasn't propaganda. Now Russia isn't a threat and it is propaganda.

Thus it is even more obvious that the US/Western elite are hunting for a way to demonize Russia, and we need look no further than Russia/China's efforts to escape the World banking structure for the reason.

Faeriedust -> CRM114 •Mar 25, 2017 12:42 PM

That's really debateable. Remember, the Soviet Union was our ALLY in WWII. Stalin was a batshit thug, and we (not to mention the Russians) were well rid of him. BUT -- immediately after his death the USSR was taken over by a committee of Experienced Old Men who were willing and able to be pragmatic.

Try to remember that when the Bolshevik Revolution started, both the English and the Americans weren't sure whether to support it or oppose it. Then Lenin and Trotsky decided to default on the Russian war debt -- which they had NO way of paying. Suddenly they became the world's greatest evil. Many high-ranking foreign service specialists in Britain even supported Hitler, initially, with the idea that they would turn him loose against the Russians and sit back to watch the fireworks. Of course, that was before Hitler repudiated Germany's WWI war debt. Do you see a pattern yet?

The issue was ALWAYS the wealth, profit, and survival of the banks. ALWAYS.

CRM114 -> Faeriedust •Mar 25, 2017 1:12 PM

I suggest you read some more history. You are making links for which there is only circumstantial evidence, whereas the alternatives have an abundance of evidence. I am vehently against the current role of the bankers, but...

Now, the bankers sought to exploit all of this and make a profit, immoral or otherwise, but they didn't start it,and they couldn't have stopped it.

I am prepared to consider the idea that they now can exert such a high level of influence, and are doing so, but this was not true in the past.

Faeriedust •Mar 25, 2017 12:35 PM

Washington has had a problem with groupthink for a long time, but now it's become obvious to the entire world, not to mention the mythical Average American. Neither Millenials nor Boomers were ever likely to fall for McCarthyism 2.0. Instead, they see the political leadership for what it is -- a senile elite that has entirely lost its grip on reality. This is common in dying empires; in fact it's the fundamental reason why empires collapse.

Yes, running through all your resources, hollowing out your military, and destroying international goodwill aren't exactly the way to Win Friends And Influence People. But they happen, because the 1% at the top of the totem pole become so divorced from what life is like for the other 99%, that they lose the ability to make intelligent or rational decisions.

It's like an oil tanker trying to thread its way through a gap in a reef -- with good steering and a willing crew, it can be done. But if the captain's passed out drunk and the Exec is high on meth, with half the crew already taking off in the lifeboats against orders . . . it takes a miracle to avoid the rocks.

[Sep 24, 2017] Trump allies see vindication in reports on Manafort wiretapping

Obama did spied on his political opponents... He really was a well connected to intelligence agencies wolf in sheep's clothing.
Notable quotes:
"... For some of President Trump's staunchest allies, reports that former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was under U.S. surveillance are nothing short of vindication of the president's widely-dismissed claims that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. ..."
"... Surveillance experts are skeptical of that suggestion. For one thing, it is illegal for investigators to "reverse target" a U.S. person by spying on a person with whom they know their true target to be in communication. ..."
Sep 24, 2017 | www.msn.com

For some of President Trump's staunchest allies, reports that former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was under U.S. surveillance are nothing short of vindication of the president's widely-dismissed claims that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.

... ... ...

Longtime advisor Roger Stone has gleefully circulated a segment from Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News in which the host says "all those patronizing assurances that nobody is spying on political campaigns were false" and "it looks like Trump's tweet may have been right."

... ... ...

A spokesperson for Manafort, Jason Maloni, has characterized the court orders as an abuse of power by the Obama administration, which he says wanted to spy on a political opponent.

"It's unclear if Paul Manafort was the objective," Maloni told The Journal. "Perhaps the real objective was Donald Trump."

Surveillance experts are skeptical of that suggestion. For one thing, it is illegal for investigators to "reverse target" a U.S. person by spying on a person with whom they know their true target to be in communication.

If the president were in fact the oblique target of government surveillance - either as a candidate or as the president-elect - both Eddington and Shedd say, it would have been so explosive that it would have almost certainly been leaked to the press.

... ... ...

The disclosure of the warrants targeting Manafort have drawn legitimate scrutiny as a violation of Manafort's civil liberties and a possible criminal leak - the mere existence of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrant is classified.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who first raised alarm about the practice of "unmasking" the names of Americans caught up in government surveillance, is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly exposing classified information when he disclosed his findings to reporters.

[Sep 24, 2017] Mark Ames When Mother Jones Was Investigated for Spreading Kremlin Disinformation by Mark Ames

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Adam Hochschild, the founding editor of Mother Jones (and author of some great books including King Leopold's Ghost), responded publicly to the threats coming out of the Senate in the early Reagan years. In a New York Times op-ed published in late 1981, "Dis-(Mis-?)Information", Hochschild wrote about a Republican Senate mailer sent out to 290 radio stations that accused Mother Jones of being Kremlin disinformation dupes. ..."
"... "In it, the writer Arnaud de Borchgrave accuses Mother Jones, the Village Voice, the Soho News, the Progressive magazine of serving as disseminators of K.G.B. 'disinformation' – the planting of false or misleading items in news media. "Mr. de Borchgrave provided no specific examples of facts or articles. But, then, the trouble with the K.G.B. is that you don't know what disinformation it is feeding you because you don't know who its myriad agents are. So the only safe thing is to distrust any author or magazine too critical of the United States. Because anyone who is against, say, the MX or the B-1 bomber could be working for the Russians." ..."
"... The communist/leftist imagery is there for a reason. In case you haven't noticed, Clinton supporters have waged a crude PR campaign to blame their candidate's loss on leftists, whom they equate with neo-Nazis and Trump. I've been smeared as "alt-left" by a Vanity Fair columnist, who equated me with Breitbart and other far-right journalists, for the crime of not sufficiently supporting Hillary Clinton. The larger goal of this crude PR effort is to equate opposition to Hillary Clinton with treason and Nazism. Which was exactly the goal of Reagan's "Kremlin disinformation" hysteria - the whole point was to smear critics of Reagan and his right-wing politics as pro-Kremlin traitors, whether they knew it or not. ..."
"... Even the words and the terminology are plagiarized from the Reagan Right witch-hunting campaign - "Kremlin active measures"; "Kremlin disinformation"; "Kremlin dupes" - terms introduced by right-wing novelists and intelligence hucksters, and repeated ad nauseam until they transformed into something plausible, giving quasi-academic cover to some very old-fashioned state repression, harassment, surveillance . . . and a lot of ruined lives. That's what happened last time, and if history is any guide, it's how this one will end up too. ..."
"... The Reagan Era kicked off with a lot of dark fear-mongering about the Kremlin using disinformation and active measures to destroy our way of life. Everything that the conservative Establishment loathed about 1970s - defeat in Vietnam, Church Committee hearings gutting the CIA and FBI, the cult of Woodward & Bernstein & Hersh, peace marchers, minority rights radicals - was an "active measures" treason conspiracy. ..."
"... The image at the top of this article comes from a lead article in Columbia University's student newspaper, the Spectator, published a few weeks after Reagan took office, on SST committee's assault on Mother Jones. The headline read: The New McCarthyism / Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been and the the full-page article begins, If you subscribe to Mother Jones, give money to the American Civil Liberties Union, or support the Institute for Policy Studies, Senator Jeremiah Denton's new Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism may be interested in you. ..."
"... It describes how in the 1970s Americans finally got rid of HUAC and the Senate Internal Security Committee, the Red Scare witch-hunting Congressional committees - only to have them revived one election cycle later in the Reagan Revolution. ..."
"... Sexual immorality -- it's a common theme in all the Russia panics of the past 100 years-whether the sexually liberated Emma Goldmans of the Red Scare, the homosexual-panic of the McCarthy witch-hunts, the hippie orgies of Denton's nightmares, or Trump's supposed golden shower fetish with immoral Russian prostitutes in our current panic. . . . ..."
"... To fight the Kremlin disinformation demons, Denton set up the Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism (SST), with two other young Republican senators-Orrin Hatch, who's still haunting Capitol Hill today; and John East of North Carolina, a Jesse Helms protege who later did his country a great service by committing suicide in his North Carolina garage, before the end of his first term in office in 1986. ..."
"... Sen. East's staffers leaned Nazi-ward, like their boss. One Sen. East staffer was Samuel Francis - now famous as the godfather of the alt-Right, but who in 1981 was known as the guru behind the Senate's "Russia disinformation" witch hunt. Funny how that works - today's #Resistance takes its core idea, that America is under the control of hostile Kremlin disinformation sorcerers - is culturally appropriated from the alt-Right's guru. ..."
"... Another staffer for Sen. East was John Rees, one of the most loathsome professional snitches of the post-McCarthy era, who collected files on suspected leftists, labor activists and liberal donors. I'll have to save John Rees for another post - he really belongs in a category by himself, proof of Schopenhauer's maxim that this world is run by demons. ..."
"... These were the people who first cooked up the "disinformation" panic. You can't separate the Sam Francises, Orrin Hatches, John Easts et al from today's panic-mongering over disinformation - you can only try to make sense of why, what is it about our culture's ruling factions that brings them together on this sort of xenophobic witch-hunt, even when they see themselves as so diametrically opposed on so many other issues. ..."
"... The subversion scare and moral panic were crucial in resetting the culture for the Reagan counter-revolution. Those who opposed Reagan's plans, domestically and overseas, would be labeled "dupes" of Kremlin "active measures" and "disinformation" conspiracies, acting on behalf of Moscow whether they knew it or not. The panic incubated in Denton's subcommittee investigations provided political cover for vast new powers given to the CIA, FBI, NSA and other spy and police agencies to spy on Americans. Fighting Russian "active measures" grew over the years into a massive surveillance program against Americans, particularly anyone involved in opposing Reagan's dirty wars in Central America, anyone opposing nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants, and anyone involved in providing sanctuary to refugees from south of the border. The "active measures" panic even led to FBI secret investigations into liberal members of Congress, some of whom wound up in a secret "FBI terrorist photo album". ..."
"... 'Russia is a bigger threat to America than Islamic State.' is almost certainly true. If one insists, as the US has done, on standing at the border of the bears lair and poking it with a very short stick, then there may well be consequences. On the other hand, Islamic State is no threat to the US in any way, shape or form. ..."
"... The Cold War is over, so now the US can reveal its truly feral nature. ..."
"... American slogan Violence R Us. Not judging, just being honest. We were no more interested in the common good of the Vietnamese back then, any more than we are interested in the common good of the Syrians today. ..."
"... It's always 'Russia this, Russia that', how we're going to bring democracy to some other part of the world, how some country's leader is a dictator. These are excuses we can do reverse Robin Hood wherever we can and enrich the 1%. ..."
"... It's my duty to point out that the glaring similarities in this brand of cold war Russophobia with that of pre-WW2 anti-Comintern material coming out of Nazi Germany (or even the anti-Semitic material from the early 1900s) are no coincidence. ..."
"... Among the Nazi intelligence officers and scientists we spirited away before the Russians could get their hands on them [ Operation Paperclip ] were a few sly operators who immediately started filling our elected leaders' ears with stories of Reds under the bed. One of these reps was Senator Joe McCarthy and the rest, as they say ..."
"... American-produced historical documentaries tell it like we were united as a country in support of Stalin against Hitler. This reluctance is usually credited to not wanting to get into another bloodbath like WW1 but let's be straight- about half the country (proto-deplorables?) wanted nothing to do with helping the commies beat the Nazis and actually thought the Germans weren't the bad guys. Anti-communism, big brother to anti-unionism and first cousin to anti-Semitism, was all the rage before we helped Uncle Joe beat Hitler, making it all the easier to revive after the war was over and it looked like the only threat to US world domination was a war-weakened Soviet Union. ..."
"... A few years ago, with the advent of internet freeness, I'd added MJ ..."
"... It is sensible but really too polite to say that NATO expanded because "that is what bureaucracies do and it became a way for U.S. presidents to show their 'toughness.'" To expand a bureaucracy by subversion of Ukraine and false reports of Russian aggression, to show toughness by aggression rather than defense, requires the mad power grasping of tyrants in the military, the intel agencies, the NSC, the administration, Congress. and the mass media. ..."
"... They are joined in a tyranny of inventing foreign monsters, to pose falsely as protectors, and to accuse their moral superiors of disloyalty, as Aristotle warned. This is the domestic political power grab of tyrants, a far greater danger. ..."
"... Apart from NATO and a few other treaties, the US would have no constitutional power to wage foreign wars, just to repel invasions and suppress insurrections, and that is the way it should be. Any treaty becomes part of the Supreme Law of the land, and must be rigorously restricted to defense, with provisions for international resolution of conflicts. NATO has been nothing but an excuse for warmongering since 1989. ..."
"... I think this is much closer to the mark than the association of the anti-russia fearmongering with sincere xenophobia. Russia is the go-to foreign enemy because there is such a huge and convenient stockpile of propaganda material lying around in stockpiles, but left unused because of the tragic and abrupt end of Cold War 1.0. And Russia is a great target because it is distant, and has a weird alphabet. Anyone who knows enough about Russia to contradict the disinformation (like by mentioning that they are not commies, but US-style authoritarian oligarchs) is suspicious ipso facto ..."
"... Both parties being pro wall street deficit and war hawks differing in perhaps degree .with the Demos supporting a more generous portion of calf's foot jelly being distributed to peasants of more varied hue as they also support privatization, more subtle tax cuts and deregulation for the rich, R2P wars, and globalization's race to the bottom. People seem to inhabit their own Plato's Cave each opposing their own particular artfully projected phantom menace. ..."
"... Brilliant, as Ames usually is. Especially the point that this is a manifestation of consistent anti-left sentiment within the establishment whether R or D. The confounding of Putin's Russia with some imagined communist threat always amazes me. D's got to keep up the hippie-punching at all times though! ..."
"... The Russophobia is stuck on an endless loop. I wish they'd at least come up with new lies or some fresh enemy for us all to fear. ..."
"... Without defending Trump, it is wrong of the Dems to push this stuff when Ukrainians helped Clinton's campaign and Clinton approved Uranium One getting 20% of US uranium when they gave $100 million to the Foundation. ..."
Jun 03, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

By Mark Ames, founding editor of the Moscow satirical paper The eXile and co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast with Gary Brecher (aka John Dolan). Subscribe here. Originally published at The eXiled

Mother Jones recently announced it's "redoubling our Russia reporting"-in the words of editor Clara Jeffery. Ain't that rich. What passes for "Russia reporting" at Mother Jones is mostly just glorified InfoWars paranoia for progressive marks - a cataract of xenophobic conspiracy theories about inscrutable Russian barbarians hellbent on subverting our way of life, spreading chaos, destroying freedom & democracy & tolerance wherever they once flourished. . . . because they hate us, because we're free.

Western reporting on Russia has always been garbage, But the so-called "Russia reporting" of the last year has taken the usual malpractice to unimagined depths - whether it's from Mother Jones or MSNBC, or the Washington Post or Resistance hero Louise Mensch.

But of all the liberal media, Mother Jones should be most ashamed for fueling the moral panic about Russian "disinformation". It wasn't too long ago that the Reagan Right attacked Mother Jones for spreading "Kremlin disinformation" and subverting America. There were threats and leaks to the media about a possible Senate investigation into Mother Jones serving as a Kremlin disinformation dupe, a threat that hung over the magazine throughout the early Reagan years. A new Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism (SST for short) was set up in 1981 to investigate Kremlin "disinformation" and "active measures" in America, and the American "dupes" who helped Moscow subvert our way of life. That subcommittee was created to harass and repress leftist anti-imperial dissent in America, using "terrorism" as the main threat, and "disinformation" as terrorism's fellow traveller. The way the the SST committee put it, "terrorism" and "Kremlin disinformation" were one and the same, a meta-conspiracy run out of Moscow to weaken America.

And Mother Jones was one of the first American media outlets in the SST committee's sites.

Adam Hochschild, the founding editor of Mother Jones (and author of some great books including King Leopold's Ghost), responded publicly to the threats coming out of the Senate in the early Reagan years. In a New York Times op-ed published in late 1981, "Dis-(Mis-?)Information", Hochschild wrote about a Republican Senate mailer sent out to 290 radio stations that accused Mother Jones of being Kremlin disinformation dupes. The mailer, on Senate letterhead, featured a tape recording of an interview between the chairman of the SST subcommittee, Sen. Jeremiah Denton of Alabama, and a committee witness- a "disinformation expert" named Arnaud de Borchgrave, author of a bestselling spy novel called "The Spike" - about a fictional Kremlin plot to subvert the West with disinformation, and thereby rule the world.

Here's how Hochschild described the Republican Senate mailer in his NYTimes piece:

"In it, the writer Arnaud de Borchgrave accuses Mother Jones, the Village Voice, the Soho News, the Progressive magazine of serving as disseminators of K.G.B. 'disinformation' – the planting of false or misleading items in news media. "Mr. de Borchgrave provided no specific examples of facts or articles. But, then, the trouble with the K.G.B. is that you don't know what disinformation it is feeding you because you don't know who its myriad agents are. So the only safe thing is to distrust any author or magazine too critical of the United States. Because anyone who is against, say, the MX or the B-1 bomber could be working for the Russians."

Here, the Mother Jones founder describes the menacing logic of pursuing the "Kremlin disinformation" conspiracy: any American critical of US military power, police power, corporate power, overseas power . . . anyone critical of anything that powerful Americans do, is a Kremlin disinformation dupe whether they know it or not. That leaves only the appointed accusers to decide who is and who isn't a Kremlin agent.

Hochschild called this panic over Kremlin disinformation another "Red Scare", warning,

"[T]o accuse critical American journalists of serving as its unwitting dupes makes as little sense as Russians accusing rebellious Poles of being unwitting agents of American imperialism. When Mr. de Borchgrave accuses skeptical journalists of being unwitting purveyors of disinformation, the accusation is more slippery, less easy to definitively disprove, and less subject to libel law than if he were to accuse them of being conscious Communist agents.

" Although if you believe the K.G.B. is successfully infiltrating America's news media, then anything must seem possible."

It's a damn shame today's editorial staff at Mother Jones aren't aware of their own magazine's history.

Then again, who am I fooling? Mother Jones wouldn't care if you shoved their faces in their own recent history - they're way too donor-deep invested in pushing this "active measures" conspiracy. Trump has been a goldmine of donor cash for anyone willing to carry the #Resistance water.

PutinTrump was a project set up last fall by tech plutocrat Rob Glaser, CEO and founder of RealNetworks, to scare voters into believing that voting for Trump is treason. God knows I can't stand Trump or his politics, but of all the inane campaign ideas to run on - this?

One would've thought that the smart people would learn their lesson from the election, that running against a Kremlin conspiracy theory is a loser. But instead, they seem to think the problem is they didn't fear-monger enough, so they're "redoubling" on the Russophobia. Donor money is driving this - donor cash is quite literally driving Mother Jones' editorial focus. And it really is this crude.

Take for example a PutinTrump section titled "Russian Expansion" - the scary Red imagery and language are lifted straight out of the Reagan Cold War playbook from the early-mid 80s, when, it so happens, Mother Jones was targeted as a Kremlin dupe. Featuring a lot of shadowy red-colored alien soldiers over an outline of Crimea, Mother Jones' donor-partner promotes a classic Cold War propaganda line about Russian/Soviet expansionism-a lie that has been the basis for so many wars launched to "stop" this alleged "expansionism" in the past, wars that Mother Jones is supposed to oppose. Here's what MJ's partner writes now:

RUSSIAN EXPANSION

Through unknowing manipulation, or by direct support, Trump will become an accessory to the continual expansionism committed by Putin. Might does not equal right-and it never has for Americans-but Putin's Russia plays by different rules. Or maybe no rules at all.

The communist/leftist imagery is there for a reason. In case you haven't noticed, Clinton supporters have waged a crude PR campaign to blame their candidate's loss on leftists, whom they equate with neo-Nazis and Trump. I've been smeared as "alt-left" by a Vanity Fair columnist, who equated me with Breitbart and other far-right journalists, for the crime of not sufficiently supporting Hillary Clinton. The larger goal of this crude PR effort is to equate opposition to Hillary Clinton with treason and Nazism. Which was exactly the goal of Reagan's "Kremlin disinformation" hysteria - the whole point was to smear critics of Reagan and his right-wing politics as pro-Kremlin traitors, whether they knew it or not.

* * *

What's kind of shocking to me as someone who was alive in the Reagan scare is how unoriginal this current one is. Even the words and the terminology are plagiarized from the Reagan Right witch-hunting campaign - "Kremlin active measures"; "Kremlin disinformation"; "Kremlin dupes" - terms introduced by right-wing novelists and intelligence hucksters, and repeated ad nauseam until they transformed into something plausible, giving quasi-academic cover to some very old-fashioned state repression, harassment, surveillance . . . and a lot of ruined lives. That's what happened last time, and if history is any guide, it's how this one will end up too.

Today we're supposed to remember how cheerful and optimistic the Reagan Era was. But that's now how I remember it, it's not how it looked to Mother Jones at the time - and it's not how it looks when you go back through the original source material again and relive it. The Reagan Era kicked off with a lot of dark fear-mongering about the Kremlin using disinformation and active measures to destroy our way of life. Everything that the conservative Establishment loathed about 1970s - defeat in Vietnam, Church Committee hearings gutting the CIA and FBI, the cult of Woodward & Bernstein & Hersh, peace marchers, minority rights radicals - was an "active measures" treason conspiracy.

As soon as the new Republican majority in the Senate took power in 1981, they set up a new subcommittee to investigate Kremlin disinformation dupes, called the Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism. Staffers leaked to the media they intended to investigate Mother Jones. Panic spread across the progressive media world, and suddenly all those cool Ivy League kids who invested everything in becoming the next Woodward-Bernsteins - the cultural heroes at the time - got scared. The image at the top of this article comes from a lead article in Columbia University's student newspaper, the Spectator, published a few weeks after Reagan took office, on SST committee's assault on Mother Jones. The headline read: The New McCarthyism / Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been and the the full-page article begins, If you subscribe to Mother Jones, give money to the American Civil Liberties Union, or support the Institute for Policy Studies, Senator Jeremiah Denton's new Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism may be interested in you.

It describes how in the 1970s Americans finally got rid of HUAC and the Senate Internal Security Committee, the Red Scare witch-hunting Congressional committees - only to have them revived one election cycle later in the Reagan Revolution.

By the end of Reagan's first year in office, there was still no formal investigation into Mother Jones, but the harassment was there and it wasn't subtle at all - such as the Republican Senate mailer accusing the magazine of being KGB disinformation dupes. At the end of 1981, MJ editor/founder Adam Hochschild announced he was stepping aside, and in his final note to readers and the public, he wrote:

To Senator Jeremiah Denton, chair of the Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism: If your committee investigates Mother Jones, a plan hinted at some months ago, I demand to be subpoenaed. I would not want to miss telling off today's new McCarthyites.

So here we are a few decades later, and Mother Jones' editor Clara Jeffery is denouncing WikiLeaks - yesterday's journalism stars, today's traitors - as "Russia['s] willing dupes and propagandists" while Mother Jones magazine turned itself into a mouthpiece for America's spies peddling the same warmed-over conspiracy theories that once targeted Mother Jones.

* * *

Jeremiah Denton - the New Right senator from Alabama who led the SST committee investigation into Kremlin "disinformation" and its dupes like Mother Jones - believed that America was being weakened from within and had only a few years left at most to turn it around. As Denton saw it, the two most dangerous threats to America's survival were a) hippie sex, and b) Kremlin disinformation. The two were inseparable in his mind, linked to the larger "global terrorism" plot masterminded by Moscow.

To fight hippie sex and teen promiscuity, the freshman senator introduced a "Chastity Bill" funding federal programs that promoted the joys of chastity to Americans armies of bored, teen suburban long-hairs. A lot of clever people laughed at that, because at the time the belief in linear historical progress was strong, and this represented something so atavistic that it was like a curiosity more than anything - Pauly Shore's "Alabama Man" unfrozen after 10,000 years and unleashed on the halls of Congress.

Less funny were Denton's calls for death penalty for adulterers, and laws he pushed restricting women's right to abortion.

Jeremiah Denton was once a big name in this country. Americans have since forgotten Denton, because John McCain pretty much stole his act. But back in the 70s and early 80s, Denton was America's most famous Vietnam War hero/POW. Like McCain, Denton was a Navy pilot shot down over Vietnam and taken prisoner. Denton spent 1965-1973 in North Vietnamese POW camps-two years longer than McCain-and he was America's most famous POW. His most famous moment was when his North Vietnamese captors hauled him before the cameras to acknowledge his crimes, and instead Denton famously blinked out a Morse code message: "T-O-R-T-U-R-E".

In the 1973 POW exchange deal between Hanoi and Nixon, "Operation Homecoming," it was Denton who was the first American POW to come off the plane and speak to the American tv crews (McCain was on the same flight, but not nearly as prominent as Denton). I keep referring back to McCain here because not only were they both famous Navy pilot POWs, but they both wind up becoming the most pathologically obsessive Russophobes in the Senate. Just a few days ago, McCain said that Russia is a bigger threat to America than Islamic State. Something real bad must've happened in those Hanoi Hiltons, worse than anything they told us about, because those guys really, really hate Russians - and they reallywant the rest of us to hate Russians too.

Everything they loathed about America, everything that was wrong with America, had to be the fault of a hostile alien culture. There was no other explanation for what happened in the 1970s. The America that Denton came home to in 1973 was under some kind of hostile power, an alien-controlled replica of the America he last saw in 1965. Popular morality had been turned on its head: Hollywood blockbusters with bare naked bodies and gutter language! Children against their parents! Homosexuals on waterskis! Sex and treason! Patriots were the enemy, while America-haters were heroes! Denton re-appeared like some reactionary Rip Van Winkle who went to sleep in the safe feather-bed world of J Edgar Hoover's America - only to wake up eight years later on Bernadine Dohrn's futon, soaked in Bill Ayers' bodily fluids. For Denton, the post-60s cultural shock came on all at once - as sudden and as jarring as, well, the shock so many Blue State Americans experienced when Donald Trump won the election last November.

Sex, immorality & military defeat-these were inseparable in Denton's mind, and in a lot of reactionaries' minds. Attributing all of America's social convulsions of the previous 15 years to immorality and a Kremlin disinformation plot was a neat way of avoiding the complex and painful realities - then, as now.

"No nation can survive long unless it can encourage its young to withhold indulgence in their sexual appetites until marriage." - Jeremiah Denton

What hit Denton hardest was all the hippie sex and the pop culture glorification of hippie sex. It's hard to convey just how deeply all that smug hippie sex wounded tens of millions of Americans. It's a hate wound that's still raw, still burns to the touch. A wound that fueled so much reactionary political fire over the past 50 years, and it doesn't look like it'll burn out any time soon.

Back in 1980, Denton blamed all that pop culture sex on Russian active measures, and he did his best to not just outlaw it, but to demonize sex as something along the lines of treason.

Just as so many people today cannot accept the idea that Trump_vs_deep_state is Made In America-so Denton and his Reagan Right constituents believed there had to be some alien force to explain why Americans had changed so drastically, seeming to adopt values that were the antithesis of Middle America's values in 1965. It had to be the fault of an alien voodoo beam! It had to be a Russian plot!

And so, therefore, it was a Russian plot.

A 1981 Time magazine profile of the freshman Senator begins, Denton believes that America is being destroyed by sexual immorality and Soviet-sponsored political 'disinformation'-and that both are being promoted by dupes, or worse, in the media. By the mid-1980s, he warns, "we will have less national security than we had proportionately when George Washington's troops were walking around barefoot at Valley Forge."

Sexual immorality -- it's a common theme in all the Russia panics of the past 100 years-whether the sexually liberated Emma Goldmans of the Red Scare, the homosexual-panic of the McCarthy witch-hunts, the hippie orgies of Denton's nightmares, or Trump's supposed golden shower fetish with immoral Russian prostitutes in our current panic. . . .

To fight the Kremlin disinformation demons, Denton set up the Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism (SST), with two other young Republican senators-Orrin Hatch, who's still haunting Capitol Hill today; and John East of North Carolina, a Jesse Helms protege who later did his country a great service by committing suicide in his North Carolina garage, before the end of his first term in office in 1986.

Sen. East's staffers leaned Nazi-ward, like their boss. One Sen. East staffer was Samuel Francis - now famous as the godfather of the alt-Right, but who in 1981 was known as the guru behind the Senate's "Russia disinformation" witch hunt. Funny how that works - today's #Resistance takes its core idea, that America is under the control of hostile Kremlin disinformation sorcerers - is culturally appropriated from the alt-Right's guru.

Another staffer for Sen. East was John Rees, one of the most loathsome professional snitches of the post-McCarthy era, who collected files on suspected leftists, labor activists and liberal donors. I'll have to save John Rees for another post - he really belongs in a category by himself, proof of Schopenhauer's maxim that this world is run by demons.

These were the people who first cooked up the "disinformation" panic. You can't separate the Sam Francises, Orrin Hatches, John Easts et al from today's panic-mongering over disinformation - you can only try to make sense of why, what is it about our culture's ruling factions that brings them together on this sort of xenophobic witch-hunt, even when they see themselves as so diametrically opposed on so many other issues. I don't think this is something as simple as hypocrisy - it's actually quite consistent: Establishment faction wakes up to a world it doesn't recognize and loathes and feels threatened by, and blames it not on themselves or anything domestic, but rather on the most plausible alien conspiracy they can reach for: Russian barbarians. Anti-Russian xenophobia is burned into the Establishment culture's DNA; it's a xenophobia that both dominant factions, liberal or conservative, view as an acceptable xenophobia. When poorer "white working class" Americans feel threatened and panic, their xenophobia tends to be aimed at other ethnics - Latinos and Muslims these days - a xenophobia that the Establishment views as completely immoral and unacceptable, completely beyond the pale. The thought never occurs to them that perhaps all forms of xenophobia are bad, all bring with them a lot of violence and danger, it just depends on who's threatened and who's doing the threatening

The subversion scare and moral panic were crucial in resetting the culture for the Reagan counter-revolution. Those who opposed Reagan's plans, domestically and overseas, would be labeled "dupes" of Kremlin "active measures" and "disinformation" conspiracies, acting on behalf of Moscow whether they knew it or not. The panic incubated in Denton's subcommittee investigations provided political cover for vast new powers given to the CIA, FBI, NSA and other spy and police agencies to spy on Americans. Fighting Russian "active measures" grew over the years into a massive surveillance program against Americans, particularly anyone involved in opposing Reagan's dirty wars in Central America, anyone opposing nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants, and anyone involved in providing sanctuary to refugees from south of the border. The "active measures" panic even led to FBI secret investigations into liberal members of Congress, some of whom wound up in a secret "FBI terrorist photo album".

I'll get to that "FBI Terrorist Photo Album" story later. There's a lot of recent "Kremlin disinformation" history to recover, since it seems every last memory cell has been zapped out of existence.

After Reagan's inauguration (the most expensive, lavish inauguration ball in White House history), Senator Denton sent a chill through the liberal and independent media world with all the talk coming out of his committee about targeting activists, civil rights lawyers and journalists. Denton tried to come off as reasonable some of the times; other times, he came right out and said it: "disinformation" is terrorism: When I speak of a threat, I do not just mean that an organization is, or is about to be, engaged in violent criminal activity. I believe many share the view that support groups that produce propaganda, disinformation or legal assistance may be even more dangerous than those who actually throw the bombs.

Congratulations Mother Jones, you've come a long way, baby! Next post, I'll recover some of the early committee hearings, and the rightwing hucksters, creeps and spooks who fed Denton's committee.

glmmph , June 3, 2017 at 7:00 am

I think that John McCain may well be correct, if for the wrong reasons. 'Russia is a bigger threat to America than Islamic State.' is almost certainly true. If one insists, as the US has done, on standing at the border of the bears lair and poking it with a very short stick, then there may well be consequences. On the other hand, Islamic State is no threat to the US in any way, shape or form.

Disturbed Voter , June 3, 2017 at 7:23 am

This is now, that was then. There is no comparison. The Cold War is over, so now the US can reveal its truly feral nature. It seems both parties are struggling to bring back the 1960s with Cold War 2.0. We need to pull out of the Middle East, and invade Vietnam, again ;-( And yes, probably even back then, Mother Jones was controlled opposition. They just don't bother hiding it anymore.

John Zelnicker , June 3, 2017 at 3:18 pm

@Disturbed Voter – Dontcha know. We just signed deals with Viet Nam that will bring "billions of dollars" to the U.S. Trump said so last week after meeting with the Vietnamese Prime Minister, so it must be true. They're safe for now. :-)

witters , June 3, 2017 at 7:29 am

"Might does not equal right-and it never has for Americans-" Is there a Darwin Award for this?

Disturbed Voter , June 3, 2017 at 9:30 am

American slogan Violence R Us. Not judging, just being honest. We were no more interested in the common good of the Vietnamese back then, any more than we are interested in the common good of the Syrians today.

oh , June 3, 2017 at 3:18 pm

Our nation worries about other countries' problems but we never care about ours! It's always 'Russia this, Russia that', how we're going to bring democracy to some other part of the world, how some country's leader is a dictator. These are excuses we can do reverse Robin Hood wherever we can and enrich the 1%.

Magazines (tabloids) and (fake)news organization are cheer leaders to this effort because they cash in on the chant du jour.

Baby Gerald , June 3, 2017 at 8:16 am

Thank you so much for exposing in such great detail the hypocrisy regarding MJ s recent neo-Red Scare leanings. If only the editorial staff at dear MJ would educate themselves not only about their own organization's history, but history in general, they might avoid looking like complete fools and enemies to their own institution's founding principles when we collectively reminisce on this bizarre era at some point in the future.

It's my duty to point out that the glaring similarities in this brand of cold war Russophobia with that of pre-WW2 anti-Comintern material coming out of Nazi Germany (or even the anti-Semitic material from the early 1900s) are no coincidence.

Among the Nazi intelligence officers and scientists we spirited away before the Russians could get their hands on them [ Operation Paperclip ] were a few sly operators who immediately started filling our elected leaders' ears with stories of Reds under the bed. One of these reps was Senator Joe McCarthy and the rest, as they say

American-produced historical documentaries tell it like we were united as a country in support of Stalin against Hitler. This reluctance is usually credited to not wanting to get into another bloodbath like WW1 but let's be straight- about half the country (proto-deplorables?) wanted nothing to do with helping the commies beat the Nazis and actually thought the Germans weren't the bad guys. Anti-communism, big brother to anti-unionism and first cousin to anti-Semitism, was all the rage before we helped Uncle Joe beat Hitler, making it all the easier to revive after the war was over and it looked like the only threat to US world domination was a war-weakened Soviet Union.

As a kid in the 80s I remember MJ being singled out as a leftist commie rag by Reaganites of the day. Through college this was about all I knew about the magazine– as an epithet for what hippie commie liberals read before trying to ruin our country. Despite it leaning to my political inclinations, I never paid it any attention.

A few years ago, with the advent of internet freeness, I'd added MJ to my news stream. Once Sanders- then later Trump- started looking like an actual threat to the Clinton campaign, their headlines started turning snippy and trite toward her opposition. I turned them off my feed last year, so the only exposure to their drivel is thanks to the links here at NC . Now with the advent of twitter, their staff have taken the extra step of proving how twisted their personal Russophobian views really are. Between just Corn and Jeffery, there's enough material to make any McCarthyite proud.*

[* – I was going to close with ' and make Adam Hochschild roll in his grave' but then I googled him and discovered that he's still alive. Wonder what he thinks about this current turn at the magazine he co-founded?]

Damson , June 3, 2017 at 8:40 am

Reposting a comment that IMV, snapshots the reality of Russophobia far better than Ames (it was in response to a Ray McGovern article on Trump's visit to NATO HQ) :

"Ray has written well to the general audience, bridging the information gap for those heavily propagandized. He has properly shown the expansion of NATO as an act of calculated betrayal, a policy of aggression in the face of zero threat.

It is sensible but really too polite to say that NATO expanded because "that is what bureaucracies do and it became a way for U.S. presidents to show their 'toughness.'" To expand a bureaucracy by subversion of Ukraine and false reports of Russian aggression, to show toughness by aggression rather than defense, requires the mad power grasping of tyrants in the military, the intel agencies, the NSC, the administration, Congress. and the mass media.

They are joined in a tyranny of inventing foreign monsters, to pose falsely as protectors, and to accuse their moral superiors of disloyalty, as Aristotle warned. This is the domestic political power grab of tyrants, a far greater danger.

Tyranny is a subculture, a groupthink of bullies who tyrannize each other and compete for the most radical propositions of nonexistent foreign threats. They fully well know that they are lying to the people of the United States to serve a personal and factional agenda that involves the murder of millions of innocents, the diversion of a very large fraction of their own and other nations' budgets from essential needs, and they have not an ounce of humanity or moral restraint among them. Those who waver are cast aside, and the worst of the bullies rise to the top. This is why the nation's founders opposed a standing military, and they were right.

Apart from NATO and a few other treaties, the US would have no constitutional power to wage foreign wars, just to repel invasions and suppress insurrections, and that is the way it should be. Any treaty becomes part of the Supreme Law of the land, and must be rigorously restricted to defense, with provisions for international resolution of conflicts. NATO has been nothing but an excuse for warmongering since 1989.

Let us hope that Trump pulls the plug on NATO interventionism, accidentally or otherwise. The Dem leaders have now joined the Reps in their love of bribes for genocide, but at the least the Reps still don't like paying for it. Perhaps the last duopoly imitation of civilization."

nowhere , June 3, 2017 at 11:26 am

Hmm "but at the least the Reps still don't like paying for it." I strongly disagree. War is the only thing Rs don't mind openly supporting.

Ptolemy Philopater , June 3, 2017 at 3:15 pm

One can not repeat often enough: War Crimes Tribunals! How to disincentivize the madness.

Skip Intro , June 4, 2017 at 2:14 am

I think this is much closer to the mark than the association of the anti-russia fearmongering with sincere xenophobia. Russia is the go-to foreign enemy because there is such a huge and convenient stockpile of propaganda material lying around in stockpiles, but left unused because of the tragic and abrupt end of Cold War 1.0. And Russia is a great target because it is distant, and has a weird alphabet. Anyone who knows enough about Russia to contradict the disinformation (like by mentioning that they are not commies, but US-style authoritarian oligarchs) is suspicious ipso facto .

Mary Wehrhein , June 3, 2017 at 9:40 am

Having lived in Kansas for 60 some years which is the poster-child for trickle-down necromancy and a land heavily infused with rural, German-Catholic sensibilities, I can vouch for the deeply felt attitudes towards sex as a primary issue. "Family Values" being the code word for the whole sex and reproductive moral prism.

Like Cuba with its 50s autos, the conservatives have never given up their 60s conception of the Democrats as the party of free love, peace-nicks (soft on commies hard on guns) and tax and spend bleeding hearts coddling dependent malingerers.

The GOP here campaigns against a democrat party that no longer exists (if it ever did). They seem oblivious to the fact that the democrats have become the moderate republicans of yore. Both parties being pro wall street deficit and war hawks differing in perhaps degree .with the Demos supporting a more generous portion of calf's foot jelly being distributed to peasants of more varied hue as they also support privatization, more subtle tax cuts and deregulation for the rich, R2P wars, and globalization's race to the bottom. People seem to inhabit their own Plato's Cave each opposing their own particular artfully projected phantom menace.

GERMO , June 3, 2017 at 9:42 am

Brilliant, as Ames usually is. Especially the point that this is a manifestation of consistent anti-left sentiment within the establishment whether R or D. The confounding of Putin's Russia with some imagined communist threat always amazes me. D's got to keep up the hippie-punching at all times though!

Pespi , June 3, 2017 at 10:33 am

This is a great piece. The Russophobia is stuck on an endless loop. I wish they'd at least come up with new lies or some fresh enemy for us all to fear. Tell me about why South African dupes are causing all the problems in society, tell me that the people of the Maldives each own a nuclear capable artillery piece and are burning American flags.

Susan the other , June 3, 2017 at 11:25 am

Thanks for this post down memory lane. I assumed MJ was liberal. And Jane Fonda was a conservative. And by 1981 I was completely confused about where the media stood on any given issue. And now finally the mask is coming off and we can see (Phillip K. Dick style) that left is right and right is left. And we are all fascists. Will the real Atilla please stand up? #Resistance is a little over the top and so is putintrump. But what looks like actual progress is the fact that Bernie was not completely destroyed by the state paranoia. There has to be a certain bed-rock decency that can rise above this eternal crap. Just a note of interest on the young Orrin Hatch being on the SST as a freshman senator. Orrin was the subject of local rumors that claimed he had been put in the senate by the mafia (some mormon-mafia connection in las vegas) and the fact that they did use entrapment with a hooker to disgrace his opponent was mafia-enough to make the story convincing. The story died out fast. But we should all remember that the mafia was involved in its own anti-commie terrorist tactics for decades.

Susan the other , June 3, 2017 at 2:28 pm

file under Too Weird: 15 minutes after I posted the above I got a call from Orrin Hatch's robo-computer inviting me to a local discussion call me paranoid.

John Zelnicker , June 3, 2017 at 2:45 pm

@Susan the other – It's not paranoia if someone really is out to get you. Or, to get all of us. Or, demonstrates that they have the ability to do so at will.

REDPILLED , June 3, 2017 at 11:39 am

Only 16% of people surveyed are very worried about climate change.

Corporate news is consumed with covering the Trump/Russia affair, but whatever the truth of all this turns out to be, it pales in significance to the real existential threat that is upon us. Largely due to a lack of coverage by corporate television news, there is a dangerous lack of public awareness of it.

Susan the other , June 3, 2017 at 11:42 am

land of the free and home of the brave you have to be brave to live in this free-for-all. Just want to pass on this killer quote from Discover Magazine: "It is sometimes argued that the illusion of free will arises from the fact that we can't adequately judge all possible moves with the result that our choices are based on imperfect or impoverished information." what a nightmare world.

mpalomar , June 3, 2017 at 9:43 pm

"It is sometimes argued that the illusion of free will arises from the fact that we can't adequately judge all possible moves with the result that our choices are based on imperfect or impoverished information."

Accepting that premise does not rule out the possibility of free will, it only suggests that our free will is likely mired in a blind stumbling, darkness of unknowing.
Hallelujah.

sunny129 , June 3, 2017 at 1:57 pm

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. George Orwell. Every one has that 'right', right or wrong! But it is your right & duty to develop 'critical' thinking to DISCERN the difference

Darn , June 4, 2017 at 4:48 am

Without defending Trump, it is wrong of the Dems to push this stuff when Ukrainians helped Clinton's campaign and Clinton approved Uranium One getting 20% of US uranium when they gave $100 million to the Foundation. The book "Shattered" says her campaign did internal polling which found Uranium One was the most damaging line to use against Clinton so she decided to get her retaliation in first and use the Russia charge at every opportunity. And on election night when they realised they had been defeated they decided to blame Russia again. What has Trump done for Russia so far? He's kept up sanctions and bombed their client state Syria. Whereas Clinton had a pattern of arms sales to Foundation donors. Prefer Clinton? Fine, but not over this.

[Sep 24, 2017] They only picked Manaforts lock as a professional courtesy; thousands of average Americans have been awakened to their doors being smashed in, a couple flash-bangs tossed in, dogs being shot, etc. As Trump might have tweeted before the Deep State gained control of him, Sad!

Sep 24, 2017 | www.unz.com

The Alarmist, September 23, 2017 at 8:27 am GMT

" pick their locks and force entry to their bedrooms in predawn mist as they did to Paul Manafort. This Gestapo-style terror knocked the wind out of Trump's sails."

Wasn't the Gestapo known for at least knocking on the door in the middle of the night before dragging their quarry to the building that no-one stops to watch? NKVD too, now that I think about it. They only picked Manafort's lock as a professional courtesy; thousands of average Americans have been awakened to their doors being smashed in, a couple flash-bangs tossed in, dogs being shot, etc. As Trump might have tweeted before the Deep State gained control of him, "Sad!"

Bannon was right to some extent that there is no military solution to this the piece he was missing was the qualifier, " for sane people who have a conscience."

The fact that we repeatedly use the starvation of millions of innocent civilians in undeclared wars on their leaders shows the lack of conscience on the part of ours, because that route is more disingenuous to our values than making outright war against their nations, albeit not by much. I'm not qualified to render a diagnosis of insanity, but I think I have enough information to inform my opinion.

[Sep 23, 2017] Russia's foreign minister said Friday the downturn in relations with the United States began with the Obama administration's "small-hearted" and "revengeful" actions and has plummeted further because of "Russo-phobic hysteria."

Notable quotes:
"... Russia's top diplomat said he can't believe this because "first and foremost the United States has all the information leaking all the time." And he said with so many people involved in hearings and investigations related to the alleged Russian meddling, "it cannot be that not a single fact has leaked. It would have leaked." ..."
"... But he said relations are suffering because former president Barack Obama's administration "put this time bomb in U.S.-Russian relations. "I did not expect that from a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but he did manifest himself and we can still see the ramifications," he said. ..."
"... Today, Lavrov said, "our relations are contracting due to Russo-phobic hysteria." As a result, "the immense potential of our bilateral relations" isn't being realized and international issues aren't being solved because the U.S. and Russia cannot coordinate, he said. ..."
"... He said a lot of U.S. politicians say "Russia has to do this and that on Syria," and Russia has to solve the North Korea nuclear problem, and other global crises. But the U.S. military has "a ban on cooperating with Russia," Lavrov said. "Why? Because legislators who find it important not to solve issues in different parts of the world, and not to develop beneficial relations with Russia. Such legislators need to have these political signals. They did it, and that's the reality we live in." ..."
"... "We have to calm down the hotheads," and this requires contacts between the Trump administration and Kim's government, he said. Lavrov said Russia would welcome any efforts at mediation, saying "the mediators could be one of the neutral European countries." He added that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has talked about mediation and said if he received such a request "he would try to fulfill that." ..."
"... If the Iran nuclear deal falls apart, he said, "then North Korea would say, 'why do I need to negotiate with you if you do not carry out your promises?'" ..."
Sep 23, 2017 | www.yahoo.com

UNITED NATIONS (AP) ! Russia's foreign minister said Friday the downturn in relations with the United States began with the Obama administration's "small-hearted" and "revengeful" actions and has plummeted further because of "Russo-phobic hysteria."

Sergey Lavrov told a news conference there has been a lengthy campaign claiming Russia interfered in the U.S. election to ensure victory for President Donald Trump ! "but we do not see any facts."

When he asked U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson how Russia could confirm his words that Moscow interfered in the American election process, Lavrov said Tillerson replied: "I cannot show you anything because this is confidential information.'"

Russia's top diplomat said he can't believe this because "first and foremost the United States has all the information leaking all the time." And he said with so many people involved in hearings and investigations related to the alleged Russian meddling, "it cannot be that not a single fact has leaked. It would have leaked."

Lavrov recalled World War II when the United States and Russia fought as allies against Nazi Germany.

But he said relations are suffering because former president Barack Obama's administration "put this time bomb in U.S.-Russian relations. "I did not expect that from a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but he did manifest himself and we can still see the ramifications," he said.

Today, Lavrov said, "our relations are contracting due to Russo-phobic hysteria." As a result, "the immense potential of our bilateral relations" isn't being realized and international issues aren't being solved because the U.S. and Russia cannot coordinate, he said. The U.S. and Russian militaries maintain contact to prevent accidents or confrontations between their forces fighting in Syria, but Lavrov said "in order to eliminate terrorists we need not only de-confliction, we need coordination."

He said a lot of U.S. politicians say "Russia has to do this and that on Syria," and Russia has to solve the North Korea nuclear problem, and other global crises. But the U.S. military has "a ban on cooperating with Russia," Lavrov said. "Why? Because legislators who find it important not to solve issues in different parts of the world, and not to develop beneficial relations with Russia. Such legislators need to have these political signals. They did it, and that's the reality we live in."

He was asked about Trump's combative speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday in which the American president threatened "to totally destroy North Korea" if the U.S. is forced to defend itself or its allies and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un responded calling Trump "deranged" and saying he will "pay dearly" for his threats.

Calling the exchange of threats "quite bad," Lavrov said "it is unacceptable to simply sit back and to look at the nuclear and military gambles of North Korea, but it is also unacceptable to start war on the peninsula."

"We have to calm down the hotheads," and this requires contacts between the Trump administration and Kim's government, he said. Lavrov said Russia would welcome any efforts at mediation, saying "the mediators could be one of the neutral European countries." He added that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has talked about mediation and said if he received such a request "he would try to fulfill that."

The Russian minister said he had no new initiatives to bring the two sides together, explaining that he believes "the potential" for the Russian-Chinese freeze-for-freeze proposal "is not yet exhausted." It would halt North Korean nuclear and missile tests in exchange for the U.S. and South Korea stopping their joint military exercises, but the Trump administration has rejected it.

Lavrov was asked whether he saw a link between the crisis in North Korea and Trump's threat to pull out of the 2015 agreement to cap Iran's nuclear program. He stressed that all other parties to the deal, including Russia, support the agreement and don't want it reopened. "Right now, North Korea is being told, renounce nuclear weapons and we will lift the sanctions," Lavrov said.

If the Iran nuclear deal falls apart, he said, "then North Korea would say, 'why do I need to negotiate with you if you do not carry out your promises?'"

[Sep 23, 2017] The Exit Strategy of Empire by Wendy McElro

Highly recommended!
Garrett 's book The People's Pottage The Revolution Was-Ex America-Rise of Empire i ncludes a timeless quote on U.S. foreign policy. "You are imperialistic all the same, whether you realize it or not... You are trying to make the kind of world you want. You are trying to impose the American way of life on other people, whether they want it or not." The "Rise of Empire" opens with the sentence "We have crossed the boundary between Republic and Empire." It contains a critical view of President Truman's usurpation of Congress' power to declare war. Some of the "distinguishing marks" of an empire taken from history were "Domestic policy becomes subordinate to foreign policy" and " A system of satellite nations". I think most of us are would be familiar with those two in modern context. His labeling of this policy as the "Empire of the Bottomless Purse" was historically accurate.
The book was printed in 1953. What's amazing is how little some political ideology has changed since then. Take this quote; "And the mere thought of 'America First', associated as that term is with 'isolationism', has become a liability so extreme that politicians feel obliged to deny ever having entertained it." Think back to Ron Paul's 2008 campaign and how he was labeled an "isolationist" for similar views of nationalism.
Notable quotes:
"... These are not sequential stages of Empire but occur in conjunction with one another and reinforce each other. That means that an attempt to reverse Empire in the direction of a Republic can begin with weakening any of the five characteristics in any order. ..."
"... Deconstructing these executive props, one by one, weakens the Empire. When all five components are deconstructing, the process presents a possible path to dissolving Empire itself. ..."
"... That was why Garrett does not deal with how to reverse the process of Empire. Once an empire is established, he argues, it becomes a "prisoner of history" in a trap of its own making. He writes, "A Republic may change its course, or reverse it, and that will be its own business. But the history of Empire is a world history and belongs to many people. A Republic is not obliged to act upon the world, either to change it or instruct it. Empire, on the other hand, must put forth its power." ..."
"... Collective security and fear are intimately connected concepts. It is no coincidence that the sixth component of Empire -- imprisonment -- comes directly after the two components of "a system of satellite nations" and, "a complex of vaunting and fear." ..."
"... An empire thinks that satellites are necessary for its collective security. Satellites think the empire is necessary for territorial and economic survival; but they are willing to defect if an empire with a better deal beckons. America knows this and scrambles to satisfy satellites that could become fickle. Garrett quotes Harry Truman, who created America's modern system of satellites. "We must make sure that our friends and allies overseas continue to get the help they need to make their full contribution to security and progress for the whole free world. This means not only military aid -- though that is vital -- it also means real programs of economic and technical assistance." ..."
"... Garrett also emphasizes how domestic pressure imprisons Empire. One of the most powerful domestic pressures is fear. An atmosphere of fear -- real or created -- drives public support of foreign policy and makes it more difficult for Empire to retreat from those policies. ..."
"... Empire has "'less control over its own fate than a republic,' he [Garrett] commented because it was a 'prisoner of history', ruled by fear. Fear of what? 'Fear of the barbarian.'" ..."
"... It does not matter whether the enemy is actually a barbarian. What matters is that citizens of Empire believe in the enemy's savagery and support a military posture toward him. Domestic fear drives the constant politics of satellite nations, protective treaties, police actions, and war. Foreign entanglements lead to increased global involvement and deeper commitments. The two reinforce each other. ..."
"... The fifth characteristic of Empire is not merely fear but also "vaunting." Vaunting means boasting about or praising something excessively -- for example, to laud and exaggerate America's role in the world. Fear provides the emotional impetus for conquest; vaunting provides the moral justification for acting upon the fear. The moral duty is variously phrased: leadership, a balance of power, peace, democracy, the preservation of civilization, humanitarianism. From this point, it is a small leap to conclude that the ends sanctify the means. Garrett observes that "there is soon a point from which there is no turning back .The argument for going on is well known. As Woodrow Wilson once asked, 'Shall we break the heart of the world?' So now many are saying, 'We cannot let the free world down'. Moral leadership of the world is not a role you step into and out of as you like." ..."
Sep 23, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org
The Exit Strategy of Empire Written y Friday September 22, 2017
The Roman Empire never doubted that it was the defender of civilization. Its good intentions were peace, law and order. The Spanish Empire added salvation. The British Empire added the noble myth of the white man's burden. We have added freedom and democracy.

-- Garet Garrett, Rise of Empire

The first step in creating Empire is to morally justify the invasion and occupation of another nation even if it poses no credible or substantial threat. But if that's the entering strategy, what is the exit one?

One approach to answering is to explore how Empire has arisen through history and whether the process can be reversed. Another is to conclude that no exit is possible; an Empire inevitably self-destructs under the increasing weight of what it is -- a nation exercising ultimate authority over an array of satellite states. Empires are vulnerable to overreach, rebellion, war, domestic turmoil, financial exhaustion, and competition for dominance.

In his monograph Rise of Empire, the libertarian journalist Garet Garrett (1878–1954), lays out a blueprint for how Empire could possibly be reversed as well as the reason he believes reversal would not occur. Garrett was in a unique position to comment insightfully on the American empire because he'd had a front-row seat to events that cemented its status: World War II and the Cold War. World War II America already had a history of conquest and occupation, of course, but, during the mid to late 20th century, the nation became a self-consciously and unapologetic empire with a self-granted mandate to spread its ideology around the world.

A path to reversing Empire

Garrett identifies the first five components of Empire:

  • The dominance of executive power: the White House reigns over Congress and the judiciary.
  • The subordination of domestic concerns to foreign policy: civil and economic liberties give way to military needs.
  • The rise of a military mentality: aggressive patriotism and obedience are exalted.
  • A system of satellite nations (vassals) in the name of collective security ;
  • A zeitgeist of both zealous patriotism and fear : bellicosity is mixed with and sustained by panic.
These are not sequential stages of Empire but occur in conjunction with one another and reinforce each other. That means that an attempt to reverse Empire in the direction of a Republic can begin with weakening any of the five characteristics in any order.

Garrett did not directly address the strategy of undoing Empire, but his description of its creation can be used to good advantage. The first step is to break down each component of Empire into more manageable chunks. For example, the executive branch accumulates power in various ways. They include:

  • By delegation -- Congress transfers its constitutional powers to the president.
  • By reinterpretation of the Constitution by a sympathetic Supreme Court.
  • Through innovation by which the president assumes powers that are not constitutionally forbidden because the Framers never considered them.
  • By administrative agencies that issue regulations with the force of law.
  • Through usurpation -- the president confronts Congress with a fait accompli that cannot easily be repudiated.Entanglement in foreign affairs makes presidential power swell because, both by tradition and the Constitution, foreign affairs are his authority.
Deconstructing these executive props, one by one, weakens the Empire. When all five components are deconstructing, the process presents a possible path to dissolving Empire itself.

A sixth component of Empire

But in Rise of Empire, Garet Garrett offers a chilling assessment based on his sixth component of Empire. There is no path out. A judgment that renders prevention all the more essential.

That was why Garrett does not deal with how to reverse the process of Empire. Once an empire is established, he argues, it becomes a "prisoner of history" in a trap of its own making. He writes, "A Republic may change its course, or reverse it, and that will be its own business. But the history of Empire is a world history and belongs to many people. A Republic is not obliged to act upon the world, either to change it or instruct it. Empire, on the other hand, must put forth its power."

In his book For A New Liberty, Murray Rothbard expands on Garrett's point: "[The] United States, like previous empires, feel[s] itself to be 'a prisoner of history.' For beyond fear lies 'collective security,' and the playing of the supposedly destined American role upon the world stage."

Collective security and fear are intimately connected concepts. It is no coincidence that the sixth component of Empire -- imprisonment -- comes directly after the two components of "a system of satellite nations" and, "a complex of vaunting and fear."

Satellite nations

"We speak of our own satellites as allies and friends or as freedom loving nations," Garrett wrote. "Nevertheless, satellite is the right word. The meaning of it is the hired guard." Why hired? Although men of Empire speak of losing China [or] Europe [how] could we lose China or Europe, since they never belonged to us? What they mean is that we may lose a following of dependent people who act as an outer guard."

An empire thinks that satellites are necessary for its collective security. Satellites think the empire is necessary for territorial and economic survival; but they are willing to defect if an empire with a better deal beckons. America knows this and scrambles to satisfy satellites that could become fickle. Garrett quotes Harry Truman, who created America's modern system of satellites. "We must make sure that our friends and allies overseas continue to get the help they need to make their full contribution to security and progress for the whole free world. This means not only military aid -- though that is vital -- it also means real programs of economic and technical assistance."

In contrast to a Republic, Empire is both a master and a servant because foreign pressure cements it into the military and economic support of satellite nations around the globe, all of which have their own agendas.

Garrett also emphasizes how domestic pressure imprisons Empire. One of the most powerful domestic pressures is fear. An atmosphere of fear -- real or created -- drives public support of foreign policy and makes it more difficult for Empire to retreat from those policies. In his introduction to Garrett's book Ex America, Bruce Ramsey addresses Garrett's point. Ramsey writes, Empire has "'less control over its own fate than a republic,' he [Garrett] commented because it was a 'prisoner of history', ruled by fear. Fear of what? 'Fear of the barbarian.'"

It does not matter whether the enemy is actually a barbarian. What matters is that citizens of Empire believe in the enemy's savagery and support a military posture toward him. Domestic fear drives the constant politics of satellite nations, protective treaties, police actions, and war. Foreign entanglements lead to increased global involvement and deeper commitments. The two reinforce each other.

The fifth characteristic of Empire is not merely fear but also "vaunting." Vaunting means boasting about or praising something excessively -- for example, to laud and exaggerate America's role in the world. Fear provides the emotional impetus for conquest; vaunting provides the moral justification for acting upon the fear. The moral duty is variously phrased: leadership, a balance of power, peace, democracy, the preservation of civilization, humanitarianism. From this point, it is a small leap to conclude that the ends sanctify the means. Garrett observes that "there is soon a point from which there is no turning back .The argument for going on is well known. As Woodrow Wilson once asked, 'Shall we break the heart of the world?' So now many are saying, 'We cannot let the free world down'. Moral leadership of the world is not a role you step into and out of as you like."

Conclusion

In this manner, Garrett believed, Empire imprisons itself in the trap of a perpetual war for peace and stability, which are always stated goals. Yet, as Garrett concluded, the reality is war and instability.

It is not clear whether he was correct that Empire could not be reversed. Whether or not he was, it is at its creation that Empire is best opposed.

Reprinted with permission from the Future of Freedom Foundation .


Related

[Sep 23, 2017] The Crazy Imbalance of Russia-gate by Robert Parry

Notable quotes:
"... In response to this political pressure – at a time when Facebook is fending off possible anti-trust legislation – its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg added that he is expanding the investigation to include "additional Russian groups and other former Soviet states." ..."
"... But why stop there? If the concern is that American political campaigns are being influenced by foreign governments whose interests may diverge from what's best for America, why not look at countries that have caused the United States far more harm recently than Russia? ..."
"... After all, Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Wahabbi leaders have been pulling the U.S. government into their sectarian wars with the Shiites, including conflicts in Yemen and Syria that have contributed to anti-Americanism in the region, to the growth of Al Qaeda, and to a disruptive flow of refugees into Europe. ..."
"... Although the military disaster in Iraq threw a wrench into those plans, the Israeli/neocon agenda never changed. Along with Israel's new regional ally, Saudi Arabia , a proxy war was fashioned to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. ..."
"... Israel's influence over U.S. politicians is so blatant that presidential contenders queue up every year to grovel before the Israel Lobby's conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. In 2016, Donald Trump showed up and announced that he was not there to "pander" and then pandered his pants off. ..."
"... And, if you want a historical review, throw in the British and German propaganda around the two world wars; include how the South Vietnamese government collaborated with Richard Nixon in 1968 to sabotage President Lyndon Johnson's Paris peace talks; take a serious look at the collusion between Ronald Reagan's campaign and Iran thwarting President Jimmy Carter's efforts to free 52 American hostages in Tehran in 1980; open the books on Turkey's covert investments in U.S. politicians and policymakers; and examine how authoritarian regimes of all stripes have funded important Washington think tanks and law firms. ..."
"... But the Russia-gate investigation is not about fairness and balance; it's a reckless scapegoating of a nuclear-armed country to explain away – and possibly do away with – Donald Trump's presidency. Rather than putting everything in context and applying a sense of proportion, Russia-gate is relying on wild exaggerations of factually dubious or relatively isolated incidents as an opportunistic means to a political end. ..."
"... As reckless as President Trump has been, the supposedly wise men and wise women of Washington are at least his match. ..."
Sep 23, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

The core absurdity of the Russia-gate frenzy is its complete lack of proportionality. Indeed, the hysteria is reminiscent of Sen. Joe McCarthy warning that "one communist in the faculty of one university is one communist too many" or Donald Trump's highlighting a few "bad hombres" raping white American women.

It's not that there were no Americans who espoused communist views at universities and elsewhere or that there are no "bad hombre" rapists; it's that these rare exceptions were used to generate a dangerous overreaction in service of a propagandistic agenda. Historically, we have seen this technique used often when demagogues seize on an isolated event and exploit it emotionally to mislead populations to war.

Today, we have The New York Times and The Washington Post repeatedly publishing front-page articles about allegations that some Russians with "links" to the Kremlin bought $100,000 in Facebook ads to promote some issues deemed hurtful to Hillary Clinton's campaign although some of the ads ran after the election.

Initially, Facebook could find no evidence of even that small effort but was pressured in May by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia. The Washington Post reported that Warner, who is spearheading the Russia-gate investigation in the Senate Intelligence Committee, flew to Silicon Valley and urged Facebook executives to take another look at possible ad buys.

Facebook responded to this congressional pressure by scouring its billions of monthly users and announced that it had located 470 suspect accounts associated with ads totaling $100,000 – out of Facebook's $27 billion in annual revenue.

Here is how the Times described those findings: "Facebook officials disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign." (It sometimes appears that every Russian -- all 144 million of them -- is somehow "linked" to the Kremlin.)

Last week, congressional investigators urged Facebook to expand its review into "troll farms" supposedly based in Belarus, Macedonia and Estonia – although Estonia is by no means a Russian ally; it joined NATO in 2004.

"Warner and his Democratic counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, have been increasingly vocal in recent days about their frustrations with Facebook," the Post reported

Facebook Complies

So, on Thursday, Facebook succumbed to demands that it turn over to Congress copies of the ads, a move that has only justified more alarmist front-page stories about Russia! Russia! Russia!

In response to this political pressure – at a time when Facebook is fending off possible anti-trust legislation – its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg added that he is expanding the investigation to include "additional Russian groups and other former Soviet states."

So, it appears that not only are all Russians "linked" to the Kremlin, but all former Soviet states as well.

But why stop there? If the concern is that American political campaigns are being influenced by foreign governments whose interests may diverge from what's best for America, why not look at countries that have caused the United States far more harm recently than Russia?

After all, Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Wahabbi leaders have been pulling the U.S. government into their sectarian wars with the Shiites, including conflicts in Yemen and Syria that have contributed to anti-Americanism in the region, to the growth of Al Qaeda, and to a disruptive flow of refugees into Europe.

And, let's not forget the 8,000-pound gorilla in the room: Israel. Does anyone think that whatever Russia may or may not have done in trying to influence U.S. politics compares even in the slightest to what Israel does all the time?

Which government used its pressure and that of its American agents (i.e., the neocons) to push the United States into the disastrous war in Iraq? It wasn't Russia, which was among the countries urging the U.S. not to invade; it was Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Indeed, the plans for "regime change" in Iraq and Syria can be traced back to the work of key American neoconservatives employed by Netanyahu's political campaign in 1996. At that time, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and other leading neocons unveiled a seminal document entitled " A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm ," which proposed casting aside negotiations with Arabs in favor of simply replacing the region's anti-Israeli governments.

However, to make that happen required drawing in the powerful U.S. military, so after the 9/11 attacks, the neocons inside President George W. Bush's administration set in motion a deception campaign to justify invading Iraq, a war which was to be followed by more "regime changes" in Syria and Iran.

A Wrench in the Plans

Although the military disaster in Iraq threw a wrench into those plans, the Israeli/neocon agenda never changed. Along with Israel's new regional ally, Saudi Arabia , a proxy war was fashioned to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

As Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren explained , the goal was to shatter the Shiite "strategic arc" running from Iran through Syria to Lebanon and Israel's Hezbollah enemies.

How smashing this Shiite "arc" was in the interests of the American people – or even within their consciousness – is never explained. But it was what Israel wanted and thus it was what the U.S. government enlisted to do, even to the point of letting sophisticated U.S. weaponry fall into the hands of Syria's Al Qaeda affiliate.

Israel's influence over U.S. politicians is so blatant that presidential contenders queue up every year to grovel before the Israel Lobby's conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. In 2016, Donald Trump showed up and announced that he was not there to "pander" and then pandered his pants off.

And, whenever Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to show off his power, he is invited to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress at which Republicans and Democrats compete to see how many times and how quickly they can leap to their feet in standing ovations. (Netanyahu holds the record for the number of times a foreign leader has addressed joint sessions with three such appearances, tied with Winston Churchill.)

Yet, Israeli influence is so engrained in the U.S. political process that even the mention of the existence of an "Israel Lobby" brings accusations of anti-Semitism. "Israel Lobby" is a forbidden phrase in Washington.

However, pretty much whenever Israel targets a U.S. politician for defeat, that politician goes down, a muscle that Israel flexed in the early 1980s in taking out Rep. Paul Findley and Sen. Charles Percy , two moderate Republicans whose crime was to suggest talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

So, if the concern is the purity of the American democratic process and the need to protect it from outside manipulation, let's have at it. Why not a full-scale review of who is doing what and how? Does anyone think that Israel's influence over U.S. politics is limited to a few hundred Facebook accounts and $100,000 in ads?

A Historical Perspective

And, if you want a historical review, throw in the British and German propaganda around the two world wars; include how the South Vietnamese government collaborated with Richard Nixon in 1968 to sabotage President Lyndon Johnson's Paris peace talks; take a serious look at the collusion between Ronald Reagan's campaign and Iran thwarting President Jimmy Carter's efforts to free 52 American hostages in Tehran in 1980; open the books on Turkey's covert investments in U.S. politicians and policymakers; and examine how authoritarian regimes of all stripes have funded important Washington think tanks and law firms.

If such an effort were ever proposed, you would get a sense of how sensitive this topic is in Official Washington, where foreign money and its influence are rampant. There would be accusations of anti-Semitism in connection with Israel and charges of conspiracy theory even in well-documented cases of collaboration between U.S. politicians and foreign interests.

So, instead of a balanced and comprehensive assessment of this problem, the powers-that-be concentrate on the infinitesimal case of Russian "meddling" as the excuse for Hillary Clinton's shocking defeat. But the key reasons for Clinton's dismal campaign had virtually nothing to do with Russia, even if you believe all the evidence-lite accusations about Russian "meddling."

The Russians did not tell Clinton to vote for the disastrous Iraq War and play endless footsy with the neocons ; the Russians didn't advise her to set up a private server to handle her State Department emails and potentially expose classified information; the Russians didn't lure Clinton and the U.S. into the Libyan fiasco nor suggest her ghastly joke in response to Muammar Gaddafi's lynching ("We came, we saw, he died"); the Russians had nothing to do with her greedy decision to accept millions of dollars in Wall Street speaking fees and then try to keep the speech contents secret from the voters; the Russians didn't encourage her husband to become a serial philanderer and make a mockery of their marriage; nor did the Russians suggest to Anthony Weiner, the husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, that he send lewd photos to a teen-ager on a laptop also used by his wife, a development that led FBI Director James Comey to reopen the Clinton-email investigation just 11 days before the election; the Russians weren't responsible for Clinton's decision not to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan; the Russians didn't stop her from offering a coherent message about how she would help the struggling white working class; and on and on.

But the Russia-gate investigation is not about fairness and balance; it's a reckless scapegoating of a nuclear-armed country to explain away – and possibly do away with – Donald Trump's presidency. Rather than putting everything in context and applying a sense of proportion, Russia-gate is relying on wild exaggerations of factually dubious or relatively isolated incidents as an opportunistic means to a political end.

As reckless as President Trump has been, the supposedly wise men and wise women of Washington are at least his match.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

This article was first published by Consortium News

[Sep 23, 2017] Would Putin Make a Better President Than Obama by Mike Whitney

Notable quotes:
"... Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible. ..."
"... We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state's legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this? ..."
"... Can you see why Washington gave up on Putin? The speech identifies the United States reckless behavior as the single greatest threat to global security today. Putin says that the unipolar world-model which operates from "one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making" is unacceptable, has no "moral foundation", and "plunges the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts." The speech is a straightforward repudiation of Washington's lunatic ambition to rule the world, which is why Putin is presently on America's list of enemies. ..."
"... Putin's domestic vision also conflicts with US policy, which is dominated by neoliberal, trickle-down, austerity-crazed, deficit hawkery that transfers the nations wealth to the 1 percent plutocrats at the top of the economic foodchain. The Russian president has made great strides in reducing poverty, eliminating illiteracy, improving healthcare, and raising the standard of living for millions of working people. Here's an excerpt from a speech by Putin that outlines his domestic priorities: ..."
"... "Russia is a social welfare state .Social policy has many objectives and many dimensions. It entails providing support for the poor and those who are unable to earn a living for valid reasons. It means implementing social mobility and providing a level playing field for every person on the basis of his or her capabilities and talents. The effectiveness of social policy is measured by whether popular opinion believes the society we live in is a just one or not. ..."
"... The glaring income disparity is unacceptably high. Every eighth Russian citizen still lives below the official poverty line . ..."
"... People, primarily the "middle class," well-educated and well-paid individuals, are dissatisfied with the level of social services on the whole. The quality of education and healthcare is still quite low, despite higher budgetary allocations. Services that you have to pay for in these areas are still rife. The goal of creating a comfortable living environment is still a long way off ..."
"... The decline in the national workforce and an increasingly ageing population means the efficiency of social spending has to be increased. We simply have no choice, if we want to preserve and improve the situation . ..."
"... Every country looks upon its teachers, doctors, scientists and cultural workers as the backbone of the "creative class", as the people who contribute to the sustained development of society and serve as the pillar of public morality . ..."
"... I believe that healthcare and education reforms are only possible when they guarantee decent pay for public sector professionals. A doctor, teacher or professor should be able to earn enough on their basic jobs not to have to seek outside earnings. If we fail to fulfill this condition our efforts to change the organisation of the economic mechanisms and renew the material base of these sectors will come to nothing . ..."
"... Starting on September 1, we will raise the pay of lecturers in state educational establishments – up to the average salary for the region. In the course of 2013-2018, the average salary of professors and lecturers will be gradually increased twofold to double the average in the economy .In the case of doctors and researchers, the target for 2018 is the same as for higher school lecturers – 200% of the average pay across the region .. ..."
"... Together with the trade unions we have to consider legislation to broaden the participation of workers in the management of enterprises. This kind of participation is practiced, for example, in Germany in the form of what are known as works councils . ..."
"... In the next few years, we must create a system to help every disabled person who is able and willing to learn and work find their educational and professional niche in life: from specialised educational programmes to jobs adapted to an individual's specific requirements . ..."
"... While incomes are growing, the gap between the richest and the poorest population groups is decreasing too slowly. Income disparity in Russia is comparable to that in the Untied States but is considerably higher than in Western Europe. A certain degree of income differentiation is logical for a mature market economy, but too large a gap can be seen as inequality and can fuel social tensions. Hence our priority is to reduce material inequality by making social policy more targeted and effective, but above all by giving people an opportunity to earn enough to ensure a desirable level of income ..This will allow us to perceive Russia as a more equitable country where everyone earns his or her income with their own labour and talent . ..."
"... And the government will provide targeted assistance to those who cannot earn an income or are too young to work . ..."
"... The government is taking measures to support families' desire to have two or more children . ..."
"... It is absolutely unacceptable for the birth of a child to bring a family to the edge of poverty. A national goal for the next three or four years is to make this totally impossible. Today the regional governments approve the size of most child benefits, and it should be said that they are scandalously small in many regions .However, such assistance should not be provided to families with high incomes (Read the whole speech here: http://premier.gov.ru/eng/events/news/18071/ ..."
"... Sure, it's a political speech, but when was the last time you heard Obama talk about "social mobility" or "support for the poor" or "glaring income disparity" or "healthcare and education reforms" (that didn't involve privatization) or "decent pay for public sector professionals" or strengthening unions or doubling the "salary of professors and lecturers" or increasing "child benefits and education" or "creating a system to help every disabled person" or "providing targeted assistance to those who cannot earn an income or are too young to work" etc etc etc. On every issue, Putin's platform is more progressive than Obama's, and yet, idiot Americans still think President Hopium is working for them. Right. ..."
"... Putin's motto is: "Each rouble spent in the social sphere must 'produce justice.'" That alone proves that he'd make a better president than Obama. ..."
"... MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion . He can be reached at [email protected] ..."
Jul 20, 2012 | www.unz.com

"Every rouble spent in the social sphere should 'generate justice.' An equitable social and economic system is the main requirement for ensuring our sustained development during these years."

– Russian President Vladimir Putin

Is Vladimir Putin really the "KGB thug" the US media makes him out to be?

Take a look at this except from a book review in the New York Times and see what you think.

"A decade ago it was possible to imagine two inner Putins wrestling for his soul: the K.G.B. thug versus the modernizer. Sadly, events since then suggest that the inflexible misanthrope we see is the only Putin we get

Even the most casual Putin-watcher has marveled at his narcissism, manifested in his odd habit of inviting cameras to record him bare-chested on horseback, swimming the butterfly stroke in a Siberian river, scuba diving and collecting skin samples from whales, among other stunts. Gessen traces his self-absorption back to his youth.

Putin's childhood ambition was to be a spy in the K.G.B., but Gessen reveals that his actual experience was more Walter Mitty than James Bond. He was basically a paper-pusher, collecting press clippings in Dresden while the East German Stasi did the real dirty work of recruiting informers and policing dissent .Putin soon hitched himself to the first of a series of flawed, small-d democrats, who would propel him to power." ("Reclaiming the Kremlin", Bill Keller, New York Times)

Read enough?

Okay, so according to the Times, Putin is an ass-kissing, paper-pushing, self-adsorbed, autocratic thug who has dreams of greatness. Did we miss something? Oh yeah, he's also a misanthropic slacker who let's everyone else do the heavy lifting.

Is that what they call objective journalism at the NYT? Its worth noting that this laughable bit of propaganda was written by the Times editor himself, Bill Keller! Can you believe it? I mean, wouldn't you think that the editor of the nation's number 1 newspaper would make some effort to hide his bias?

But, no, when it comes to serving the folks in power, Keller is just as willing to run his credibility through the mud as the next guy. And, so he has, but what does that tell us about Putin?

It tells us that Putin is despised by powerful members of the US policy establishment. That's what it tells us. After all, it's their views that are reflected in the mainstream media via propagandists like Keller.

But, why? Putin is not a fiery leftist like Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. He's a right-of-center nationalist who's not particularly ideological, confrontational, or unreasonable. so, what's the problem? Besides, Putin has bent over backwards to accommodate the US on everything from nuclear disarmament to the War on Terror. So why the hostility?

It's because Putin wants to be a partner on global issues, particularly security issues. But the US doesn't want partners; it wants lackeys and puppets who will follow orders. And that's why the NY Times and the others in the moron media are ganging up on him, because–in Washington's eyes–if your not a lackey, your the enemy. It's that simple.

If you want to know why Russian-US relations have steadily deteriorated, you might want to read this excerpt from an article by Pat Buchanan who asks "Doesn't Putin Have a Point?"

"Though the Red Army had picked up and gone home from Eastern Europe voluntarily, and Moscow felt it had an understanding we would not move NATO eastward, we exploited our moment. Not only did we bring Poland into NATO, we brought in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and virtually the whole Warsaw Pact, planting NATO right on Mother Russia's front porch. Now, there is a scheme afoot to bring in Ukraine and Georgia in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin.

Second, America backed a pipeline to deliver Caspian Sea oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, to bypass Russia.

Third, though Putin gave us a green light to use bases in the old Soviet republics for the liberation of Afghanistan, we now seem hell-bent on making those bases in Central Asia permanent.

Fourth, though Bush sold missile defense as directed at rogue states like North Korea, we now learn we are going to put anti-missile systems into Eastern Europe. And against whom are they directed?

Fifth, through the National Endowment for Democracy, its GOP and Democratic auxiliaries, and tax-exempt think tanks, foundations, and "human rights" institutes such as Freedom House, headed by ex-CIA director James Woolsey, we have been fomenting regime change in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics, and Russia herself.

U.S.-backed revolutions have succeeded in Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, but failed in Belarus. Moscow has now legislated restrictions on the foreign agencies that it sees, not without justification, as subversive of pro-Moscow regimes.

Sixth, America conducted 78 days of bombing of Serbia for the crime of fighting to hold on to her rebellious province, Kosovo, and for refusing to grant NATO marching rights through her territory to take over that province. Mother Russia has always had a maternal interest in the Orthodox states of the Balkans.

These are Putin's grievances. Does he not have a small point?"

There it is in a nutshell. The world's biggest troublemaker (guess who?) has broken its promises, surrounded Russia with military bases, put NGOs on the ground to incite revolution in all the former Soviet states (and Russia), and now wants to situate nuclear missile sites a few hundred miles from Moscow. This is how Washington strengthens ties with its former adversaries, by poking a thumb in their eye at every opportunity.

The Obama administration has assured Putin that its anti-ballistic missile defense system, which will be deployed in former Warsaw pact countries in E Europe, is strictly defensive and will only be aimed at Iran. But it isn't true. In fact, the system will be aimed at Russia and poses a direct threat to Russian national security. Everyone knows this, even though the media continues to soft-peddle the dangers of the proposed system. The Washington Post even characterized it as "a small missile defense system" which has set off "waves of paranoia about domestic and foreign opponents".

Sure, what's a few nuclear weapons among friends?

Naturally, Putin has seen through this ruse and protested. Here's what he at a press conference 6 years ago:

"Once the missile defense system is put in place it will work automatically with the entire nuclear capability of the United States. It will be an integral part of the US nuclear capability.

"For the first time in history there will be elements of the US nuclear capability on the European continent. It simply changes the whole configuration of international security ..Of course, we have to respond to that."

Putin is right. The "so-called" defense system is actually an expansion (and integration) of America's existing nuclear weapons system which will now function as one unit. The dangers of this are obvious.

The US (under Bush and Obama) wants to achieve what Nuclear weapons specialist, Francis A. Boyle, calls the "longstanding US policy of nuclear first-strike against Russia". That's what missile defense is all about.

In Boyle's article "US Missiles in Europe: Beyond Deterrence to First Strike Threat" he states:

"By means of a US first strike about 99%+ of Russian nuclear forces would be taken out. Namely, the United States Government believes that with the deployment of a facially successful first strike capability, they can move beyond deterrence and into "compellence."

By "compellence" Boyle means that first strike capability will allow the US to force Moscow to meet its demands or face certain annihilation.

So what should Putin do? Should he sit back on his haunches and wait for the US to come to its senses or threaten to remove the new installations by force? The issue remains unresolved.

As for the US NGOs, it's long been known that they're up to no good, and that they function as the civilian component of a larger military strategy to rule the world. There was an interesting piece by Paul Craig Roberts in CounterPunch on Thursday which fleshes out the activities of these groups and their real purpose. Here's an excerpt from the article:

"The Russian government has finally caught on that its political opposition is being financed by the US taxpayer-funded National Endowment for Democracy and other CIA/State Department fronts in an attempt to subvert the Russian government and install an American puppet state in the geographically largest country on earth, the one country with a nuclear arsenal sufficient to deter Washington's aggression ..

Much of the Russian political opposition consists of foreign-paid agents .. The Itar-Tass News Agency reported on July 3 that there are about 1,000 organizations in Russia that are funded from abroad and engaged in political activity .

The Washington-funded Russian political opposition masquerades behind "human rights" and says it works to "open Russia." What the disloyal and treasonous Washington-funded Russian "political opposition" means by "open Russia" is to open Russia for brainwashing by Western propaganda, to open Russia to economic plunder by the West, and to open Russia to having its domestic and foreign policies determined by Washington."

That sums it up pretty well, doesn't it? Of course, any action taken by Putin to impede the the activities of foreign spies (and agents for global capital) is denounced in the media as an attack on civil liberties and democracy.

Talk about hypocrisy? Do we really need to hear the world's biggest civil rights abuser scold Russia for defending itself from foreign invasion? When was the last time Putin bombed a wedding party in Pakistan or blew up one of its own citizens in a drone attack or incarcerated and tortured mere "suspects" without charging them with a crime? Isn't this the pot calling the kettle black?

Did you know that the Bush administration thought they could co-opt Putin and bring him into the imperial fold like America's other puppets around the world?

It's true. Bush actually liked Putin and tried to get him to fall in line. But then something happened at a Conference on Security Policy in Munich in February 2007, where all the top brass in the administration and the far-right think tanks realized that Putin couldn't be co-opted; that he was ferociously nationalistic and would not do their bidding. So the entire strategy was scrapped and the demonisation began. Here's a clip from the speech that Putin gave in Munich that turned things around. It's a rather long because I wanted you to get a sense of the man, his sincerity, his earnestness, and his genuine desire for fundamental change in US-Russian relations:

"Only two decades ago the world was ideologically and economically divided and it was the huge strategic potential of two superpowers that ensured global security.

This global stand-off pushed the sharpest economic and social problems to the margins of the international community's and the world's agenda. And, just like any war, the Cold War left us with live ammunition, figuratively speaking. I am referring to ideological stereotypes, double standards and other typical aspects of Cold War bloc thinking.

The unipolar world that had been proposed after the Cold War did not take place.

The history of humanity certainly has gone through unipolar periods and seen aspirations to world supremacy. And what hasn't happened in world history?

However, what is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making.

It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.

And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.

Incidentally, Russia – we – are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.

I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today's world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in today's – and precisely in today's – world, then the military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation.

Along with this, what is happening in today's world – and we just started to discuss this – is a tentative to introduce precisely this concept into international affairs, the concept of a unipolar world.

And what have the results been?

Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centres of tension. Judge for yourselves: wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. And no less people perish in these conflicts – even more are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!

Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.

We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state's legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?

In international relations we increasingly see the desire to resolve a given question according to so-called issues of political expediency, based on the current political climate.

And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasise this ! no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.

The force's dominance inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, significantly new threats – though they were also well-known before – have appeared, and today threats such as terrorism have taken on a global character.

I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security." (Russian President Vladimir Putin, Conference on Security Policy in Munich in February 2007)

Can you see why Washington gave up on Putin? The speech identifies the United States reckless behavior as the single greatest threat to global security today. Putin says that the unipolar world-model which operates from "one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making" is unacceptable, has no "moral foundation", and "plunges the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts." The speech is a straightforward repudiation of Washington's lunatic ambition to rule the world, which is why Putin is presently on America's list of enemies.

Putin's domestic vision also conflicts with US policy, which is dominated by neoliberal, trickle-down, austerity-crazed, deficit hawkery that transfers the nations wealth to the 1 percent plutocrats at the top of the economic foodchain. The Russian president has made great strides in reducing poverty, eliminating illiteracy, improving healthcare, and raising the standard of living for millions of working people. Here's an excerpt from a speech by Putin that outlines his domestic priorities:

"Russia is a social welfare state .Social policy has many objectives and many dimensions. It entails providing support for the poor and those who are unable to earn a living for valid reasons. It means implementing social mobility and providing a level playing field for every person on the basis of his or her capabilities and talents. The effectiveness of social policy is measured by whether popular opinion believes the society we live in is a just one or not.

The glaring income disparity is unacceptably high. Every eighth Russian citizen still lives below the official poverty line .

People, primarily the "middle class," well-educated and well-paid individuals, are dissatisfied with the level of social services on the whole. The quality of education and healthcare is still quite low, despite higher budgetary allocations. Services that you have to pay for in these areas are still rife. The goal of creating a comfortable living environment is still a long way off

The decline in the national workforce and an increasingly ageing population means the efficiency of social spending has to be increased. We simply have no choice, if we want to preserve and improve the situation .

Every country looks upon its teachers, doctors, scientists and cultural workers as the backbone of the "creative class", as the people who contribute to the sustained development of society and serve as the pillar of public morality .

I believe that healthcare and education reforms are only possible when they guarantee decent pay for public sector professionals. A doctor, teacher or professor should be able to earn enough on their basic jobs not to have to seek outside earnings. If we fail to fulfill this condition our efforts to change the organisation of the economic mechanisms and renew the material base of these sectors will come to nothing .

Starting on September 1, we will raise the pay of lecturers in state educational establishments – up to the average salary for the region. In the course of 2013-2018, the average salary of professors and lecturers will be gradually increased twofold to double the average in the economy .In the case of doctors and researchers, the target for 2018 is the same as for higher school lecturers – 200% of the average pay across the region ..

Together with the trade unions we have to consider legislation to broaden the participation of workers in the management of enterprises. This kind of participation is practiced, for example, in Germany in the form of what are known as works councils .

In the next few years, we must create a system to help every disabled person who is able and willing to learn and work find their educational and professional niche in life: from specialised educational programmes to jobs adapted to an individual's specific requirements .

While incomes are growing, the gap between the richest and the poorest population groups is decreasing too slowly. Income disparity in Russia is comparable to that in the Untied States but is considerably higher than in Western Europe. A certain degree of income differentiation is logical for a mature market economy, but too large a gap can be seen as inequality and can fuel social tensions. Hence our priority is to reduce material inequality by making social policy more targeted and effective, but above all by giving people an opportunity to earn enough to ensure a desirable level of income ..This will allow us to perceive Russia as a more equitable country where everyone earns his or her income with their own labour and talent .

And the government will provide targeted assistance to those who cannot earn an income or are too young to work .

The government is taking measures to support families' desire to have two or more children .

It is absolutely unacceptable for the birth of a child to bring a family to the edge of poverty. A national goal for the next three or four years is to make this totally impossible. Today the regional governments approve the size of most child benefits, and it should be said that they are scandalously small in many regions .However, such assistance should not be provided to families with high incomes (Read the whole speech here: http://premier.gov.ru/eng/events/news/18071/

Sure, it's a political speech, but when was the last time you heard Obama talk about "social mobility" or "support for the poor" or "glaring income disparity" or "healthcare and education reforms" (that didn't involve privatization) or "decent pay for public sector professionals" or strengthening unions or doubling the "salary of professors and lecturers" or increasing "child benefits and education" or "creating a system to help every disabled person" or "providing targeted assistance to those who cannot earn an income or are too young to work" etc etc etc. On every issue, Putin's platform is more progressive than Obama's, and yet, idiot Americans still think President Hopium is working for them. Right.

Putin's motto is: "Each rouble spent in the social sphere must 'produce justice.'" That alone proves that he'd make a better president than Obama.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion . He can be reached at [email protected]

[Sep 23, 2017] Spinning by NYT can and will form the base of a conspiracy. NYT is lying . But this lies can help build the necessary platform for future wars

Notable quotes:
"... Spinning by NYT can and will form the base of a conspiracy. ..."
"... NYT is lying . But this lies can help build the necessary platform for future wars . Another Sarin gas? Another Harriri death? Another picture of beheadings ? Another story of North Korean supplying nukes ? Wrongful consequences from falsehood will not cost NYT excepting a correction years later somehere in the 5 th page. A conspiracy to hatch is something that has no consequences for the plotters . ..."
"... NYT will be there claiming for the right to crow – how it has prepared the ground. All are done openly. When resistance is mounted, Bernie Sander supporters are sent home with flowers and a reminder to vote for Clinton because in this age all over the world America is the exception that has heard them. With that satisfaction they can go home and vote as expected. They are not allowed to know how the campaign marginalized Sander's chances from the get go. ..."
www.unz.com
KA , September 5, 2016 at 5:19 pm GMT

"HANGZHOU, China : The image of a 5-year-old Syrian boy, dazed and bloodied after being rescued from an airstrike on rebel-held Aleppo, reverberated around the world last month, a harrowing reminder that five years after civil war broke out there, Syria remains a charnel house.

But the reaction was more muted in Washington, where Syria has become a distant disaster rather than an urgent crisis. President Obama's policy toward Syria has barely budged in the last year and shows no sign of change for the remainder of his term. The White House has faced little pressure over the issue,

That frustrates many analysts because they believe that a shift in policy will come only when Mr. Obama has left office. "Given the tone of this campaign, I doubt the electorate will be presented with realistic and intelligible options, with respect to Syria," said Frederic C. Hof, a former adviser on Syria in the administration."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/world/middleeast/obama-syria-foreign-policy.html

Spinning by NYT can and will form the base of a conspiracy.

The world we see are not festooned with the morbid pictures and the world has not one echo chamber among its 7 billions that are reverberating with his sad cry .
No American taxpayer is piling pressure on Obama.

Tone of the election doesn't and shouldn't provide option on Syria . Electorates are not asking to know what America should do.

Next president will introduce something that he wont share w and making them known before the voters will destroy his chances. Someone shared and was evisecrated by NYT and other as Putin's Trojan horse .

NYT is lying . But this lies can help build the necessary platform for future wars . Another Sarin gas? Another Harriri death? Another picture of beheadings ? Another story of North Korean supplying nukes ? Wrongful consequences from falsehood will not cost NYT excepting a correction years later somehere in the 5 th page. A conspiracy to hatch is something that has no consequences for the plotters .

If Dulles were hanged for role in all the illegal things he had done in Guatemala and Iran, may be Kennedy would have survived. But his earlier political escapades were also built on something that were way earlier . Conspiracy keeps on coming back begging for one more round ,for one more time .

NYT will be there claiming for the right to crow – how it has prepared the ground. All are done openly. When resistance is mounted, Bernie Sander supporters are sent home with flowers and a reminder to vote for Clinton because in this age all over the world America is the exception that has heard them. With that satisfaction they can go home and vote as expected. They are not allowed to know how the campaign marginalized Sander's chances from the get go.

Neither NYT explains how reckless Trump with nuclear code will start a nuclear war with Putin's Russia despite being his co conspirator .

Chalabi s daughter exclaimed in early part of 2004 – We are heroes in mistakes. She won't say it now . Conspirators would love to get the credit and be recognized . It all depends on the success . First Iraq war, if went bad from beginning, Lantos wouldn't have been reelected . But again who knows what media can deliver. They delivered Joe Liberman .

[Sep 23, 2017] Possible entrapment of Trump with the help of FBI

Notable quotes:
"... Republican Senator Chuck Grassley's office said on Thursday he wrote to Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray asking whether the agency provided "defensive briefings" to Trump's team given its ongoing investigation of Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager. ..."
Sep 23, 2017 | www.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has asked the FBI whether it warned Donald Trump's presidential campaign about alleged attempts by Russia to infiltrate the campaign.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley's office said on Thursday he wrote to Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray asking whether the agency provided "defensive briefings" to Trump's team given its ongoing investigation of Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager.

Related Searches Trump Campaign Manager Trump Russia Investigation

"If the FBI did provide a defensive briefing or similar warning to the campaign, then that would raise important questions about how the Trump campaign responded," Grassley wrote in the letter dated Sept. 20.

If the FBI did not alert the campaign, Grassley said, that would raise "serious questions about what factors contributed to its decision and why it appears to have been handled differently in a very similar circumstance involving a previous campaign."

The senator said that according to press reports, U.S. intelligence had raised similar concerns with John McCain during the Republican senator's 2008 presidential campaign.

[Sep 23, 2017] Sensational Report Is Russiagate a Hoax Ordered by Vladimir Putin

Notable quotes:
"... One possible explanation would simply be that they have all gone nuts. But since this cannot possibly be the case, this leaves just one other explanation: Russiagate itself is a clever but sinister hoax intended to make it look like our political and media class have lost their marbles, therefore undermining our democracy, our values and our way of life ..."
Sep 23, 2017 | russia-insider.com

The Russians may have developed the capability to create elaborate hoaxes that turn the US into a laughing stock in the eyes of outsiders Russell O'Phobe 90

For almost a year, Russia's meddling in last year's election, along with collusion with the Trump campaign, have dominated the political and media landscape. But an explosive new classified report produced by US intelligence may be about to blow apart the narrative, and reveal an even bigger story that has been missed in all the commentary so far.

The report was set up to try to answer two questions: firstly, why is it that after nearly a year, there still hasn't been a single piece of hard evidence to prove either the hacking or the collusion? And secondly, given this lack of credible evidence, how is it that the US media and political classes have been talking about nothing else for months and months without any sign of letting it go, to the point of giving the impression of being obsessed with the issue?

The report, which was signed off by all 17 agencies ! that's the DIA, CIA, FBI and NSA ! reaches a conclusion which is nothing short of sensational:

"If there hasn't actually been any hard evidence presented of meddling or collusion, we must ask the question of how and why the entire political and media class have been talking about nothing else for months.

One possible explanation would simply be that they have all gone nuts. But since this cannot possibly be the case, this leaves just one other explanation: Russiagate itself is a clever but sinister hoax intended to make it look like our political and media class have lost their marbles, therefore undermining our democracy, our values and our way of life."

... ... ...

[Sep 23, 2017] A conspiracy theory is a theory based on facts but without MSM backing. Theres no better recent example of this than when the DNC emails were released by wikileaks during their convention. The story put forth was that Russian hackers were responsible, and were trying to throw the election to their buddy Trump. The evidence for this? Zero. And yet it became a plausible explanation in the media, overnight.

Notable quotes:
"... So, a conspiracy theory is a theory without media backing. There's no better recent example of this than when the DNC emails were released by wikileaks during their convention. The story put forth was that Russian hackers were responsible, and were trying to throw the election to their buddy Trump. The evidence for this? Zero. And yet it became a plausible explanation in the media, overnight. ..."
"... People need to remember than by definition, the ratio of what you don't know to what you do know is infinity to one. Be more open minded. "They shall find it difficult, they who have taken authority as truth rather than truth for authority". ..."
www.unz.com
LondonBob > , September 6, 2016 at 5:39 pm GMT

@Paul Jolliffe Mr. Unz,

Here is a link to Carl Bernstein's definitive 1977 Rolling Stone article "CIA and the Media" in which he addresses - and confirms - your worst fears. You are very right, and no less a figure than Bernstein has said so for nearly four decades . . .

http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php No coincidence that all the CIA agents involved in the JFK assassination are known to be experts in 'black ops' and news media specialists. Jim Angleton, Cord Meyer, David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt, who confessed his involvement, all made their names in black propaganda or news management.

Abraham > , September 6, 2016 at 6:28 pm GMT

@Lot Given how easy it is to create a conspiracy theory, most of them will be crazy.

Another problem with elite conspiracies is that elites usually do not have to act in secret because they already are in control. For Kennedy, a centrist cold warrior, his views already reflected those of elites, maybe even more so than Johnson.

The other problem is that actual criminal conspiracies by elites quite often are discovered, such as Watergate and Iran Contra. Given how easy it is to create a conspiracy theory, most of them will be crazy.

A statement that appears straight out of the CIA's playbook.

Another problem with elite conspiracies is that elites usually do not have to act in secret because they already are in control.

Such control does not imply they have nothing to hide, particularly when exposure of the deed would have damaging repercussions for them.

For Kennedy, a centrist cold warrior, his views already reflected those of elites, maybe even more so than Johnson.

It didn't reflect that of Israel's elites. After JFK's assassination, American foreign policy vis a vis Israel was completely reversed under Johnson, who hung the crew of the USS Liberty out to dry.

The other problem is that actual criminal conspiracies by elites quite often are discovered, such as Watergate and Iran Contra.

How is this a problem?

WorkingClass > , September 6, 2016 at 9:12 pm GMT

The CIA is the presidents private secret army. Nothing it does is legal.

Ron Unz > , September 6, 2016 at 9:53 pm GMT

For those without convenient access to a copy of the deHaven-Smith book, I've discovered there are some lengthy extracts available on the web:

https://off-guardian.org/2016/09/04/are-you-a-mind-controlled-cia-stooge/

Boris > , September 6, 2016 at 10:48 pm GMT

@biz

He is really very good.

He has a book https://www.amazon.com/Guilt-Association-Deception-Self-Deceit-America/product-reviews/098213150X/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_btm?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=recent

anti_republocrat > , September 7, 2016 at 1:48 am GMT

@Chief Seattle So, a conspiracy theory is a theory without media backing. There's no better recent example of this than when the DNC emails were released by wikileaks during their convention. The story put forth was that Russian hackers were responsible, and were trying to throw the election to their buddy Trump. The evidence for this? Zero. And yet it became a plausible explanation in the media, overnight.

Maybe it's true, maybe not, but if the roles had been reversed, the media would be telling its proponents to take off their tin foil hats. Note also that the allegations immediately become "fact" because they were reported by someone else. As Business Insider reported, "Amid mounting evidence of Russia's involvement in the hack of the Democratic National Committee ," without any specificity whatsoever as to what that "mounting evidence" was (most likely multiple reports in other media) never mind that the article goes on to quote James Clapper, " we are not quite ready yet to make a call on attribution." WTF! Here, read it yourself: http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-dnc-hack-black-propaganda-2016-7

Totally mindless. So not only is Russia hacking, but we know it's intention is to influence US elections!!! And now their hacking voter DBs and will likely hack our vote tabulating machines. You can't make this s ** t up.

Nathan Hale > , September 7, 2016 at 4:12 am GMT

@Jason Liu

...In the corporate world, it often seems that upper management spends a bulk of their time conspiring against one another or entering into secret talks to sell the company to a rival, unbeknownst to the employees or shareholders.

NoseytheDuke > , September 7, 2016 at 4:32 am GMT

@Alfred1860 I find it quite amusing how, in an article supporting of the existence of conspiracy theories, so many comments consist of hurling insults at people making skeptical comments about what are obviously very sacred cows.

People need to remember than by definition, the ratio of what you don't know to what you do know is infinity to one. Be more open minded. "They shall find it difficult, they who have taken authority as truth rather than truth for authority".

Gerald Massey

Ed Rankin > , Website September 7, 2016 at 8:42 pm GMT

In Dispatch 1035-960 mailed to station chiefs on April 1, 1967, the CIA laid out a series of "talking points" in its memo addressing the "conspiracy theorists" who were questioning the Warren Commission's findings on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. They include the following:

  • Claim that it "would be impossible to conceal" such a large-scale conspiracy.
  • Claim that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition.
  • Claim that "no significant new evidence has emerged"
  • Accuse theorists of falling in love with their theories.
  • Claimed conspiracy theorists are wedded to their theories before the evidence was in.
  • Accuse theorists of being politically motivated.
  • Accuse theorists of being financially motivated.

I have found numerous examples of these exact points being made in televised news segments, newspapers, magazines and even some academic articles and scholarly books.

Additionally, some of the most influential and frequently-cited authors who are the most critical of "conspiracy theorists", both academic and lay people, have very direct ties to government, foundations and other institutions of authority.

While we can't know if the CIA was primarily responsible for the creation of the pejorative, but what we do know from the Church Committee hearings, was that the Agency did have paid operatives working inside major media organizations as late as the 1970s. In fact, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper has acknowledged ties to the CIA

With recent lifting of restrictions on the government's use of domestic propaganda with the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, which passed as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, I think reasonable people would expect this type of pejorative construction to resume if in fact, it ever ceased.

Bill Jones > , September 7, 2016 at 9:47 pm GMT

A nice little piece on one of the players in the big conspiracy: https://www.corbettreport.com/911-suspects-philip-zelikow/

Marie > , September 8, 2016 at 4:01 am GMT

Literally every article I've ever read about conservatives and/or the conservative movement within the pages of the New Yorker – and I've read going back decades, unfortunately – has judiciously referenced 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics'.

I mean, EVERY SINGLE article regarding Republicans, conservatives and/or opposition to leftism has the Hofstadter quote somewhere – it must be a staple on the J-School syllabi.

It seems Prof. Hofstadter was something of an adherent to the Frankfurt School nonsense – Marxism-meets-dime-store-Freud being every New Yorker writer's stock in trade, of course

Hippopotamusdrome > , September 9, 2016 at 8:21 am GMT

@biz Actually, there is no symmetry in conspiracy theories as you imply.

The definition of a conspiracy theory is an explanation of events that traces them to a secret network, and when presented with contradictory evidence, simply enlarges the network of supposed conspirators rather than modifying the explanation.

... ... ...

[Sep 22, 2017] Samantha Power sought to unmask Americans on almost daily basis, sources say

Notable quotes:
"... Two sources, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said the requests to identify Americans whose names surfaced in foreign intelligence reporting, known as unmasking, exceeded 260 last year. One source indicated this occurred in the final days of the Obama White House. ..."
Sep 20, 2017 | www.foxnews.com

Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was 'unmasking' at such a rapid pace in the final months of the Obama administration that she averaged more than one request for every working day in 2016 - and even sought information in the days leading up to President Trump's inauguration, multiple sources close to the matter told Fox News.

Two sources, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said the requests to identify Americans whose names surfaced in foreign intelligence reporting, known as unmasking, exceeded 260 last year. One source indicated this occurred in the final days of the Obama White House.

[Sep 22, 2017] The remarkable inactivity of the FBI: for example The FBI has never questioned Assange [he confirms that] or Murray and neither has it ever looked at the DNC servers.

Notable quotes:
"... Nonetheless, every time you think the hysteria has gone as far as it can, it goes a bit farther ..."

AMERICA-HYSTERICA. All the reasons why the Russia-election-interference story is bunkum.

Not least of which is the remarkable inactivity of the FBI: for example "The FBI has never questioned Assange [he confirms that] or Murray" and neither has it ever looked at the DNC servers.

Nonetheless, every time you think the hysteria has gone as far as it can, it goes a bit farther: Morgan Freeland joins the circus.

Bershidsky trashes the latest nonsense. One can hope that it's finally jumped the shark.

[Sep 21, 2017] Emails Hillary Clinton Sought Russian Officials For Pay-To-Play Scheme

Sep 21, 2017 | www.mintpressnews.com

Although Hillary Clinton has blamed numerous factors and people for her loss to Donald Trump in last year's election, no one has received as much blame as the Russian government. In an effort to avoid blaming the candidate herself by turning the election results into a national scandal, accusations of Kremlin-directed meddling soon surfaced. While such accusations have largely been discredited by both computer analysts and award-winning journalists like Seymour Hersh, they continue to be repeated as the investigation into Donald Trump's alleged collusion with the Russian government picks up steam.

However, newly released Clinton emails suggest that that the former secretary of state's disdain for the Russian government is a relatively new development. The emails, obtained by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, show that the Russian government was included in invitations to exclusive Clinton Foundation galas that began less than two months after Clinton became the top official at the U.S. State Department.

In March of 2009, Amitabh Desai, then-Clinton Foundation director of foreign policy, sent invitations to numerous world leaders, which included Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. Desai's emails were cc'd to Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro and later forwarded to top Clinton aide Jake Sullivan.

The Clinton Foundation's activities during Hillary's tenure as secretary of state have been central to the accusations that the Clinton family used their "charitable" foundation as a means of enriching themselves via a massive "Pay to Play" scheme. Emails leaked by Wikileaks, particularly the Podesta emails , offered ample evidence connecting foreign donations to the Clintons and their foundation with preferential treatment by the U.S. State Department.

[Sep 21, 2017] Trump's UN Speech A Neocon Dream by Daniel McAdams

Please listen to the audio at the link...
Sep 21, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org
President Trump's speech yesterday at the United Nations got rave reviews from neocons like John Bolton and Elliot Abrams. The US president threatened North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. At the same time he claimed that the US is the one country to lead by example rather than by violating the sovereignty of others. Are the neocons on a roll as they push for more war? Have they "won" Trump?

[Sep 21, 2017] More Holes in Russia-gate Narrative By William Binney and Ray McGovern

Sep 21, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

More Holes in Russia-gate

Narrative

Exclusive: New tests support the skepticism of U.S. intelligence veterans that Russia "hacked" the DNC's computers, pointing instead to a download of emails by an insider, write ex-NSA official William Binney and ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

September 21, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - It is no secret that our July 24 VIPS Memorandum for the President, entitled " Was the 'Russian Hack' an Inside Job? ," gave rise to some questioning and controversy – nor was it a surprise that it was met with almost total silence in the mainstream media.

The ongoing U.S. media campaign against Russia has been so effective that otherwise intelligent people have been unable even to entertain the notion that they may have been totally misled by the intelligence community. The last time this happened in 2003, after a year of such propaganda, the U.S. attacked Iraq on fraudulent – not "mistaken" – intelligence.

Anticipating resistance from those allergic to rethinking "what everybody knows" about Russian "meddling," we based our VIPS analysis on forensic investigations that, oddly, the FBI had bent over backwards to avoid. In other words, we relied on the principles of physics and the known capability of the Internet in early July 2016.

We stand by our main conclusion that the data from the intrusion of July 5, 2016, into the Democratic National Committee's computers, an intrusion blamed on "Russian hacking," was not a hack but rather a download/copy onto an external storage device by someone with physical access to the DNC.

That principal finding relied heavily on the speed with which the copy took place – a speed much faster than a hack over the Internet could have achieved at the time – or, it seems clear, even now. Challenged on that conclusion – often by those conducting experiments within the confines of a laboratory – we have conducted and documented additional tests to determine the speeds that can be achieved now, more than a year later.

To remind: We noted in the VIPS memo that on July 5, 2016, a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 megabytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device. That yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second.

Recent Tests

Over the last few weeks, we ran three tests to determine how quickly data could be exfiltrated from the U.S. across the Atlantic to Europe.

–First, we used a 100 megabits-per-second (mbps) line to pull data from a one-gigabyte file to Amsterdam. The peak transfer speed was .8 MBps.

–Second, we used a commercial DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) to send the same one-gigabyte file to a commercial DSL in Amsterdam. The peak transfer speed was 1.8 MBps.

–Third, we pushed the same one-gigabyte file from a data center in New Jersey to a data center in the UK. The peak transfer speed was 12 MBps.

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None of these attempts achieve anything close to the average rate of 22.7 megabytes per second evident in the July 5, 2016 download/copy associated with the DNC. In fact, this happens to be the speed typical of a transfer to a USB-2 external storage device. We do not think this pure coincidence; rather, it is additional evidence of a local download.

We are preparing further trans-Atlantic testing over the next few weeks.

Some researchers have noted that some partitioning of the data might have occurred in the U.S., allowing for a transfer to be made at the measured speed over the Internet, and that this could have made possible a hack from the other side of the Atlantic. One of our associate investigators has found a way to achieve this kind of data partitioning and later transfer.

In theory, this would be one possible way to achieve such a large-data transfer, but we have no evidence that anything like this actually occurred. More important, in such a scenario, the National Security Agency would have chapter and verse on it, because such a hack would have to include software to execute the partitioning and subsequent data transfer. NSA gives the highest priority to collection on "execution software."

Must Americans, apparently including President Donald Trump, remain in a Russia-did-it-or-could-have-maybe-might-have-done-it subjunctive mood on this important issue – one that has been used to inject Cold War ice into relations with Russia? The answer is absolutely not. Rather, definitive answers are at hand.

How can we be so confident? Because NSA alumni now active in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) are intimately familiar with NSA's capabilities and practice with respect to bulk capture and storage of fiber-optic communications. Two of us actually devised the systems still in use, and Edward Snowden's revelations filled in remaining gaps. Today's NSA is in position to clear up any and all questions about intrusions into the DNC.

In sum, we are certain that the truth of what actually happened – or didn't happen – can be found in the databases of NSA. We tried to explain this to President Barack Obama in a VIPS Memorandum of Jan. 17, just three days before he left office, noting that NSA's known programs are fully capable of capturing – and together with liaison intelligence services do capture – all electronic transfers of data.

Our Jan. 17 Memorandum included this admonition: "We strongly suggest that you ask NSA for any evidence it may have indicating that the results of Russian hacking were given to WikiLeaks." "If NSA cannot give you that information – and quickly – this would probably mean it does not have any."

We also appealed to Obama in his final days in office to order the chiefs of the NSA, FBI and CIA to the White House and have them lay all their cards on the table about "Russian hacking," and show him what tangible evidence they might have – not simply their "assessments." We added, "We assume you would not wish to hobble your successor with charges that cannot withstand close scrutiny." Having said this, we already were reaching the assumption that there was no real evidence to back the "assessments" up.

FBI: Not Leaning Forward

The FBI could still redeem itself by doing what it should have done as soon as the DNC claimed to have been "hacked." For reasons best known to former FBI Director James Comey, the Bureau failed to get whatever warrant was needed to confiscate the DNC servers and computers to properly examine them.

In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee six months ago, Comey conceded "best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves." And yet he chose not to. And his decision came amid frenzied charges by senior U.S. officials that Russia had committed "an act of war."

But is it not already too late for such an investigation? We hope that, at this point, it is crystal clear that the answer is: No, it is not too late. All the data the FBI needs to do a proper job is in NSA databases – including data going across the Internet to the DNC server and then included in their network logs.

If President Trump wants to know the truth, he can order the FBI to do its job and NSA to cooperate. Whether the two and the CIA would obey such orders is an open question, given how heavily invested all three agencies are in their evidence-impoverished narrative about "Russian hacking."

Let us close with the obvious. All three agencies have been aware all along that NSA has the data. One wonders why it should require a Presidential order for them to delve into that data and come up with conclusions based on fact, as opposed to "assessing."

William Binney ( [email protected] ) worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems still used by NSA. Ray McGovern ( [email protected] ) was a CIA analyst for 27 years; from 1981 to 1985 he briefed the President's Daily Brief one-on-one to President Reagan's most senior national security officials.

This article was first published by Consortium News -

[Sep 21, 2017] Hysteria in America -- Congress Filled With Totalitarians Who Oppose

Notable quotes:
"... Indeed, American legislators have published a bill that could potentially block Russian broadcasters from being shown in the US. It could allow US content providers to break their contracts, leaving Russian channels without any legal recourse. ..."
"... "prohibit multichannel video programming distributors from being required to carry certain video content that is owned or controlled by the Government of the Russian Federation" ..."
"... Why the focus on Russia, in what's supposed to be an annual defense spending bill? ..."
"... As we mentioned, various foreign governments fund TV channels in America, but only Russia gets a mention in this bill. Is that a case of double-standards? Should the attention just solely be on Russia? ..."
"... Does it look like this measure has been deliberately buried in a huge defense bill to avoid scrutiny? Or do you expect debate on this? ..."
"... 'Investigate Russia' ..."
"... Reprinted with permission from RT . ..."
Sep 21, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org

'Free Market of Ideas' by RT

There are members of Congress who don't want anyone on TV saying America's foreign policy is a disaster and it costs a fortune, Daniel McAdams, executive director, Ron Paul Institute, told RT.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the fiscal year 2018, which passed the US Senate earlier this week, carries some added provisions that have little in common with the military.

Indeed, American legislators have published a bill that could potentially block Russian broadcasters from being shown in the US. It could allow US content providers to break their contracts, leaving Russian channels without any legal recourse.

The plan is buried inside a tiny amendment of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The part about Russia is summarized in just a few lines, between details on funding of the US military.

Amendment No 1096 , which aims to "prohibit multichannel video programming distributors from being required to carry certain video content that is owned or controlled by the Government of the Russian Federation" .

RT: Why the focus on Russia, in what's supposed to be an annual defense spending bill?

Daniel McAdams: There is an obsession on Capitol Hill and within the mainstream media with RT because RT is effective and RT is watched. But also, and this is very important because RT carries perspectives that are not available in the mainstream media. Commentators on RT that I know would say the same thing that they say on RT if they were invited by any of the mainstream media, but they won't. The matter of fact is that John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the people who were behind this amendment, the Atlantic Council and the others are trying to silence RT. They are the totalitarians, they are the enemies of free speech; they're the enemies of the First Amendment; they don't want anyone coming on television saying that America's foreign policy is a disaster; it is broken; it is making us more vulnerable to attack, and it's costing a fortune. It cannot stand competition in the area of ideas.

RT: As we mentioned, various foreign governments fund TV channels in America, but only Russia gets a mention in this bill. Is that a case of double-standards? Should the attention just solely be on Russia?

DM: The attention should be on none of these stations. It should be viewer beware. If you're watching RT and you know that it is funded, or its funding comes from the Russian government, you take that into consideration just as any intelligent person would do. When I watch France 24, when I watch the BBC, I know that that takes the perspectives of the British government into consideration, because it is funded by that.

This is a free market of ideas; this is what this is all about. But the people on Capitol Hill are again totalitarians – they don't want a free market in ideas. They want to control the debate. They don't want Americans to wake up and see that the foreign policy that they are pushing is resulting in a charred Earth and a disaster that is coming home to roost.

RT: Does it look like this measure has been deliberately buried in a huge defense bill to avoid scrutiny? Or do you expect debate on this?

DM: This is how it's done, absolutely. I have read a million defense spending bills in my 15 years on the Hill. This is called planting a seed – you plant this kernel, and it starts to grow. If someone objects, later on, you can say – this is already passed in the defense bill; you've already voted on this; this is already part of the law; this is just suggesting, clarifying, or going further. This is how they do things: you bury it in a huge bill like this; you plant a seed and you watch it grow.

I don't know the exact language in the bill; I am sure Russia is not only the flavor of the month, it is the flavor of the year. There is the 'Investigate Russia' committee , where a bunch of Hollywood liberals got together with a bunch of neocons and are finding reds under our beds. There is a hysteria going on in America. I still would like to believe that the average American thinks it's absolutely nuts; I hope it stays that way. Hopefully, this will blow over at some point, and not blow up .

Hollywood was once on the receiving end of McCarthyism in the 50s, and now it looks like they want to dish out McCarthyism on everyone else.

Reprinted with permission from RT .


Related

[Sep 20, 2017] Manafort News a Blockbuster or Nothingburger

To what extent Natalia Veselnitskaya represented Russian state and to what extent interests of certain Russian oligarchs is unclear. The obvious guess is that she did not. She is an oligarchs lawyer. But she could pretend that he did.
Notable quotes:
"... On the night of the election, most anchors reacted in shock. Rachel Maddow appeared aghast. They were stunned at their own failure to predict this outcome and were obliged to seek excuses for the unexpected, unfortunate outcome. The Comey announcement was of course the first explanation deployed, but soon a far more useful one appeared: Russia had rigged the election by providing stolen DNC emails to Wikileaks, using them to discredit Hillary. (It's rarely mentioned how, precisely, they had done that, by showing that the DNC under Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders.) ..."
"... Obama requested a quick intelligence report, to justify immediate harsh sanctions. He got it, expelled over 700 Russian diplomats, and closed down consulates and recreational facilities owned by the Russian state. These follow the sanctions applied in 2014 in response to events in Ukraine, which caused Russia to retaliate, among other things, by ending the program through which Americans adopt Russian children. ..."
"... News anchors keep referring to Manafort as "Trump's campaign manager," elevating his significance. Recall that Trump had Corey Lewandowski as his campaign chairman from January to June; Manafort from June to August; and Stephen Bannon from August to November. Why not say, "Bannon, the second out of three Trump campaign chiefs"? And why not add: " who resigned when it was disclosed that he had been paid huge sums as a consultant for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych?" ..."
"... And then mention that Yanukovych had been democratically elected in 2010, and that Manafort, who had advised U.S. presidential candidates Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Ferdinand Marcos, Mobuto Sese Seko, and Jonas Savimbi. And that there's probably nothing illegal about that. ..."
"... But why this term, "operative"? What is a "Russian operative," such as the Trump campaign may have met? As opposed to a Russian businessman, politician, lawyer, journalist, priest? The term is tendentious, implying that every Russian operates on behalf of the Russian state and Vladimir Putin. Russophobic language infects the relentless coverage of this issue, which!as Van Jones suggested!has been a nothingburger. ..."
Sep 20, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

Flipping the channel to U.S. cable news, the lead story is Paul Manafort's imminent indictment, apparently for his business dealings. Presented as a BLOCKBUSTER, it's got all the talking heads smelling blood in the water. Here, they hope, is the smoking gun. Their eyes are bright with hope, if not for Trump's impeachment, for his forced embrace of continued confrontation with Moscow.

On the night of the election, most anchors reacted in shock. Rachel Maddow appeared aghast. They were stunned at their own failure to predict this outcome and were obliged to seek excuses for the unexpected, unfortunate outcome. The Comey announcement was of course the first explanation deployed, but soon a far more useful one appeared: Russia had rigged the election by providing stolen DNC emails to Wikileaks, using them to discredit Hillary. (It's rarely mentioned how, precisely, they had done that, by showing that the DNC under Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders.)

Obama requested a quick intelligence report, to justify immediate harsh sanctions. He got it, expelled over 700 Russian diplomats, and closed down consulates and recreational facilities owned by the Russian state. These follow the sanctions applied in 2014 in response to events in Ukraine, which caused Russia to retaliate, among other things, by ending the program through which Americans adopt Russian children.

"Russian Interference"

The meeting between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in Trump Tower in June 2016, including Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, Manafort, Rinat Akhmetshin and publicist Rob Goldstone appears to have included three elements: withdrawal of sanctions under a Trump administration, restitution of the adoption program (with which Veselnitskaya has indeed been involved) as one action in return, and the issue which drew Don Jr. to the gathering: and possibly the promise of info on Hillary. So if Don Jr. and Jared say it was about adoption they might be telling the partial truth.

Hadn't Junior been told that there were documents that "would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father," and hadn't he said "I love it"? It is just possible that this meeting resulted in Russian hacking of the DNC and the leaking of the documents by Wikileaks (although Julian Assange and colleague Craig Murray strongly deny this).

On July 22, Wikileaks released its first batch of DNC emails. Wasserman-Schultz and half a dozen others had to resign, and DNC sincerely apologized to Sanders for Wasserman-Schultz's comment that it would be "silly" to imagine a Sanders victory.

On July 27 Trump speaking to a news conference in Doral, Florida said this:

"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing [from Clinton's emails] I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."

On Nov. 7, Wikileaks released a second batch of documents, including a email written by Hillary's own campaign chairman John Podesta in January, saying: "I'm down. Our team is all tactics and has no idea of how to lift her up." Very embarrassing just before the election. But the provenance of the leaked documents is in fact unclear, and contested.

This BLOCKBUSTER news about Manafort reportedly involves financial transactions. The idea may be to trade leniency for financial wrongdoing for information on the alleged "collusion" between the Trump campaign and Moscow. But what if there is none?

News anchors keep referring to Manafort as "Trump's campaign manager," elevating his significance. Recall that Trump had Corey Lewandowski as his campaign chairman from January to June; Manafort from June to August; and Stephen Bannon from August to November. Why not say, "Bannon, the second out of three Trump campaign chiefs"? And why not add: " who resigned when it was disclosed that he had been paid huge sums as a consultant for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych?"

And then mention that Yanukovych had been democratically elected in 2010, and that Manafort, who had advised U.S. presidential candidates Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Ferdinand Marcos, Mobuto Sese Seko, and Jonas Savimbi. And that there's probably nothing illegal about that.

Why All the Fuss?

Why all this fuss about Manafort in Ukraine? Because he's accused of developing ties with Russians while there, which is hardly surprising, considering that he's a mercenary opportunist and businessman, and Russia and Ukraine have numerous historical, cultural, economic and business ties. Yanukovich's party (Party of Regions) is described by the U.S. as "pro-Russian" although that is simplistic and reflects ignorance of the ethnic mix in Ukraine and the relationship to both Russia and the EU. (Victoria Nuland, Obama's assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, promoted that view and declared the U.S.'s support for "the Ukrainian people's European aspirations.")

Yanukovich could have introduced Manafort to lots of Russians. But that was all over in 2014 before Trump announced his campaign.

We now know that Manafort came under investigation by the FBI soon after the U.S.-backed putsch in February 2014 and is ongoing. But it didn't start as an investigation into Russian election meddling. And it will very possibly not find any evidence for that. It may find, for example, an email in which Manafort supports the withdrawal of the party plank in July 2015 advocating lethal arms to the current government. (This is another of the very few "facts" cited establish "Russian interference." But it seems to me a lot of Republicans don't want to provoke Russia in Russia's backyard. Since when does mere reason constitute "collusion"?) But it would be a stretch to assume he's the key villain interlocutor between "Russian operatives" and the Trump campaign.

But why this term, "operative"? What is a "Russian operative," such as the Trump campaign may have met? As opposed to a Russian businessman, politician, lawyer, journalist, priest? The term is tendentious, implying that every Russian operates on behalf of the Russian state and Vladimir Putin. Russophobic language infects the relentless coverage of this issue, which!as Van Jones suggested!has been a nothingburger.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan ; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan ; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900 . He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion , (AK Press). He can be reached at: [email protected]

[Sep 20, 2017] Foreign Policy Realists Hit Nerve With Establishment Elite by Andrew J. Bacevich

The problem with neocon chickenhawks is that they all want money from MIC. So their jingoism is a king of prostitution...
Notable quotes:
"... "Saving Realism" is the handiwork of Hal Brands and Peter Feaver, well-connected scholars employed by elite institutions. Brands teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and, according to his bio, has "consulted with a range of government offices and agencies in the intelligence and national security communities." Feaver teaches at Duke University. During the George W. Bush administration, he served on the staff of the National Security Council. They are classic policy intellectuals, one foot planted in academe, the other in the corridors of power. ..."
"... Especially since the end of the Cold War, reality itself is impinging on the prerogatives to which members of the American foreign-policy establishment have grown accustomed and to the arrangements that sustain those prerogatives. It therefore becomes incumbent upon scholars who serve that establishment to deflect such threats. They do so by contriving a "reality" conducive to affirming existing prerogatives and arrangements. ..."
"... The only past that matters is the Cold War, carefully curated as a narrative of American triumphalism. Anything that happened before the Cold War qualifies as irrelevant. Cold War episodes that turned out to be less than triumphal!Vietnam, for example!receive the barest acknowledgment. As for misfortunes that may have befallen the United States since the Cold War ended almost three decades ago, Brands and Feaver shrug them off as insignificant. Sure, "the invasion and occupation of Iraq did prove far costlier than expected." But so what? Stuff happens! ..."
"... Stripped to its essentials, their argument reduces to a brazen tautology: Approaches to policy that worked during the Cold War will work today because they worked during the Cold War. Of course, the argument presumes that the world in which we live today is more or less comparable to the world that existed back in the Forties and Fifties. As to how the supple, nuanced doctrine advanced by realists during that Golden Age yielded such dubious propositions as bipolarity, the domino theory, and the bogus enterprise known as nuclear strategy, Brands and Feaver are conveniently silent. ..."
Sep 20, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

In the September issue of Commentary, a magazine of distinguished lineage, there appears an essay bearing the title "Saving Realism from the So-Called Realists." Once upon a time, essays published by Commentary , penned by such eminences as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Hans Morgenthau, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Robert C. Tucker, shaped the debate over U.S. foreign policy. Those days have long since passed. If "Saving Realism" serves any purpose, it is to expose the intellectual exhaustion of the foreign-policy establishment. Those who fancy themselves the source of policy-relevant ideas have given up on actually thinking.

"Saving Realism" is the handiwork of Hal Brands and Peter Feaver, well-connected scholars employed by elite institutions. Brands teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and, according to his bio, has "consulted with a range of government offices and agencies in the intelligence and national security communities." Feaver teaches at Duke University. During the George W. Bush administration, he served on the staff of the National Security Council. They are classic policy intellectuals, one foot planted in academe, the other in the corridors of power.

The chief purpose their essay is to mount a frontal assault on a group of individuals they deride as "academic realists." Of course, when not occupying positions on the fringes of power, Brands and Feaver are themselves academics. Here, however, their use of the term drips with ridicule and condescension. "Academic" becomes a synonym for naďve or wooly-headed or simply irresponsible.

To their credit, Brands and Feaver do not balk at naming names, fingering Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, Barry Posen, and Christopher Layne, prominent political scientists, as dangerous proponents of academic realism.

Take the claims made by Brands and Feaver at face value and this Gang of Four poses a direct threat not only to U.S. national security but to the very possibility to creating a decent global order. "Today's academic realists essentially argue," they write, "that the United States should dismantle the global architecture that has undergirded the international order" ever since World War II. Academic realists seek "the deliberate destruction of arrangements that have fostered international stability and prosperity for decades." They are intent on tearing down "the pillars of a peaceful and prosperous world." They are, in short, a wrecking crew.

Brands and Feaver do not explain what motivates Walt et al., to undertake this nefarious plot, merely hinting that personal pique is probably a factor. "Having lost policy arguments that they thought they should have won," on issues such as NATO expansion and invading Iraq, "academic realists decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater." They are, in effect, soreheads.

For this reason alone, their critique of U.S. policy, suggesting that since the end of the Cold War the United States has squandered a uniquely advantageous position, is without merit. So too with their complaint that in recent decades the United States has misused its military power. What academic realists are actually proposing, Brands and Feaver charge, is to "stake everything on a leap into the unknown." Their calls for greater restraint amount to little more than a pose. In reality, they advocate unvarnished recklessness.

Worse still, Brands and Feaver see worrisome signs that the Gang of Four is making headway. In Donald Trump's White House academic realism "seems to be finding a sympathetic hearing." Indeed, they write, "One of the least academic presidents in American history may, ironically, be buying into some of the most misguided doctrines of the ivory tower."

This is pretty wild stuff. Let me acknowledge that I know each member of this Gang of Four and hold them in high regard. That said, whether individually or collectively, they wield about as much clout in present-day Washington as Karl Marx.

Indeed, the reader will search "Saving Realism" in vain for evidence actually linking the Gang of Four to President Trump. To my knowledge none of the four are Trump supporters. I am unaware of any of them having endorsed the policies of the Trump administration. As for Trump himself, my bet is that he could care less about anything Walt, Mearsheimer, Posen, and Layne have to say. If our president has absorbed the Gang of Four's policy perspective, he must be doing it by osmosis.

In short, the case presented by Brands and Feaver comes precariously close to being a McCarthyite smear!guilt by association without even establishing that any association actually exists.

To which the average American citizen, tested by the trials of everyday life, might well respond: Who cares? An intramural tiff among privileged members of the professoriate might merit a panel at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. But should it qualify as a matter of general interest?

In one specific sense, perhaps it ought to. While it may not be their intended purpose, by mounting their overheated attack on "academic realism," Brands and Feaver succeed in demonstrating why genuine realism rarely receives a serious hearing inside the Beltway. The answer is simply this: Especially since the end of the Cold War, reality itself is impinging on the prerogatives to which members of the American foreign-policy establishment have grown accustomed and to the arrangements that sustain those prerogatives. It therefore becomes incumbent upon scholars who serve that establishment to deflect such threats. They do so by contriving a "reality" conducive to affirming existing prerogatives and arrangements.

Brands and Feaver do their very best to conjure up such a "reality." Having established to their own satisfaction that Trump and the Gang of Four are somehow colluding with each other, they offer their own prescription for a "reformed realism" to be built on "seven bedrock insights."

The seven insights share this common quality: They are unflaggingly banal. Yet the last of the seven manages to be both banal and immensely instructive: Realism, Brands and Feaver write, "requires not throwing away what has worked in the past."

Here we come to the heart of the matter. What exactly is the "the past" that remains relevant to the present and that provides the basis for their version of authentic (as opposed to academic) realism?

On this point, Brands and Feaver, are admirably candid. The only past that matters is the Cold War, carefully curated as a narrative of American triumphalism. Anything that happened before the Cold War qualifies as irrelevant. Cold War episodes that turned out to be less than triumphal!Vietnam, for example!receive the barest acknowledgment. As for misfortunes that may have befallen the United States since the Cold War ended almost three decades ago, Brands and Feaver shrug them off as insignificant. Sure, "the invasion and occupation of Iraq did prove far costlier than expected." But so what? Stuff happens!

Rather than get hung up on Iraq or Afghanistan or the ongoing debacle of U.S. interventionism in the Islamic world, Brands and Feaver keep their focus on the early Cold War, which they depict as a veritable Golden Age of realism and by extension of American statecraft. Peppering their account are favorable references to "Cold War-era realism" and "Cold War realists." After World War II, "realist thinkers understood that America was uniquely capable of stabilizing the international order and containing Soviet power." Back then, serious realists!in contrast to today's academic types!were the very inverse of wooly-headed. "Cold War realists were willing to see the world as it was," according to Brands and Feaver. "During the Cold War, then, realism was a supple, nuanced doctrine."

Stripped to its essentials, their argument reduces to a brazen tautology: Approaches to policy that worked during the Cold War will work today because they worked during the Cold War. Of course, the argument presumes that the world in which we live today is more or less comparable to the world that existed back in the Forties and Fifties. As to how the supple, nuanced doctrine advanced by realists during that Golden Age yielded such dubious propositions as bipolarity, the domino theory, and the bogus enterprise known as nuclear strategy, Brands and Feaver are conveniently silent.

"Contemporary academic realists," Brands and Feaver charge, "sit atop a pyramid of faulty assumptions." They themselves require no such pyramid. Their version of realism rests on just a single assumption: That history is a menu from which Americans can pick and choose. To escape from currently bothersome predicaments, in no small part the product of our folly, Brands and Feaver would have the United States choose from that menu only those bits that we find congenial. The rest we can simply ignore.

Come to think of it, that's an approach that might find favor with Donald Trump himself.


Andrew J. Bacevich is The American Conservative 's writer-at-large.

[Sep 20, 2017] The Politics of Military Ascendancy by James Petras

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... In this paper we will discuss the advantages that the military elite accumulate from the war agenda and the reasons why ' the Generals' have been able to impose their definition of international realities. ..."
"... We will discuss the military's ascendancy over Trump's civilian regime as a result of the relentless degradation of his presidency by his political opposition. ..."
"... The massive US-led bombing and destruction of Libya, the overthrow of the Gadhafi government and the failure of the Obama-Clinton administration to impose a puppet regime, underlined the limitations of US air power and the ineffectiveness of US political-military intervention. The Presidency blundered in its foreign policy in North Africa and demonstrated its military ineptness. ..."
"... The invasion of Syria by US-funded mercenaries and terrorists committed the US to an unreliable ally in a losing war. This led to a reduction in the military budget and encouraged the Generals to view their direct control of overseas wars and foreign policy as the only guarantee of their positions. ..."
"... The Obama-Clinton engineered coup and power grab in the Ukraine brought a corrupt incompetent military junta to power in Kiev and provoked the secession of the Crimea (to Russia) and Eastern Ukraine (allied with Russia). The Generals were sidelined and found that they had tied themselves to Ukrainian kleptocrats while dangerously increasing political tensions with Russia. The Obama regime dictated economic sanctions against Moscow, designed to compensate for their ignominious military-political failures. ..."
"... The Obama-Clinton legacy facing Trump was built around a three-legged stool: an international order based on military aggression and confrontation with Russia; a ' pivot to Asia' defined as the military encirclement and economic isolation of China – via bellicose threats and economic sanctions against North Korea; and the use of the military as the praetorian guards of free trade agreements in Asia excluding China. ..."
"... After only 8 months in office President Trump helplessly gave into the firings, resignations and humiliation of each and every one of his civilian appointees, especially those who were committed to reverse Obama's 'international order'. ..."
"... Trump was elected to replace wars, sanctions and interventions with economic deals beneficial to the American working and middle class. This would include withdrawing the military from its long-term commitments to budget-busting 'nation-building' (occupation) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and other Obama-designated endless war zones. ..."
"... The Generals provide a veneer of legitimacy to the Trump regime (especially for the warmongering Obama Democrats and the mass media). However, handing presidential powers over to ' Mad Dog' Mattis and his cohort will come with a heavy price. ..."
"... While the military junta may protect Trump's foreign policy flank, it does not lessen the attacks on his domestic agenda. Moreover, Trump's proposed budget compromise with the Democrats has enraged his own Party's leaders. ..."
"... The military junta is pressuring China against North Korea with the goal of isolating the ruling regime in Pyongyang and increasing the US military encirclement of Beijing. Mad Dog has partially succeeded in turning China against North Korea while securing its advanced THADD anti-missile installations in South Korea, which will be directed against Beijing. ..."
"... Mad Dog's military build-up, especially in Afghanistan and in the Middle East, will not intimidate Iran nor add to any military successes. They entail high costs and low returns, as Obama realized after the better part of a decade of his defeats, fiascos and multi-billion dollar losses. ..."
"... The militarization of US foreign policy provides some important lessons: ..."
"... the escalation from threats to war does not succeed in disarming adversaries who possess the capacity to retaliate. ..."
"... Low intensity multi-lateral war maneuvers reinforce US-led alliances, but they also convince opponents to increase their military preparedness. Mid-level intense wars against non-nuclear adversaries can seize capital cities, as in Iraq, but the occupier faces long-term costly wars of attrition that can undermine military morale, provoke domestic unrest and heighten budget deficits. And they create millions of refugees. ..."
"... Threats and intimidation succeed only against conciliatory adversaries. Undiplomatic verbal thuggery can arouse the spirit of the bully and some of its allies, but it has little chance of convincing its adversaries to capitulate. The US policy of worldwide militarization over-extends the US armed forces and has not led to any permanent military gains. ..."
"... Are there any voices among clear-thinking US military leaders, those not bedazzled by their stars and idiotic admirers in the US media, who could push for more global accommodation and mutual respect among nations? The US Congress and the corrupt media are demonstrably incapable of evaluating past disasters, let alone forging an effective response to new global realities. ..."
"... American actions in Europe, Asia and the middle east appear increasingly irrational to many international observers. Their policy thrusts are excused as containment of evildoers or punishment of peoples who think and act differently. ..."
"... They will drive into a new detente such incompatible parties as Russia and Iran, or China and many countries. America risks losing its way in the world and free peoples see a flickering beacon that once shone brighter. ..."
"... How about this comic book tough guy quote: "I'm pleading with you with tears in my eyes: if you fuck with me, I'll kill you all" notice the first person used repetitively as he talks down to hapless unarmed tribesman in some distant land. A real egomaniacal narcissistic coward. Any of you with military experience would immediately recognize the type ... ..."
"... It seems that the inevitable has happened. Feckless civilians have used military adventures to advance their careers , ensure re- elections, capturr lucrative position as speaker, have a place as member of think tank or lobbying firm or consultant . Now being as stupidly greedy and impatient as these guys are, they have failed to see that neither the policies nor the militaries can succeed against enemies that are generated from the action and the policy itself ..."
Sep 15, 2017 | www.unz.com

Introduction

Clearly the US has escalated the pivotal role of the military in the making of foreign and, by extension, domestic policy. The rise of ' the Generals' to strategic positions in the Trump regime is evident, deepening its role as a highly autonomous force determining US strategic policy agendas.

In this paper we will discuss the advantages that the military elite accumulate from the war agenda and the reasons why ' the Generals' have been able to impose their definition of international realities.

We will discuss the military's ascendancy over Trump's civilian regime as a result of the relentless degradation of his presidency by his political opposition.

The Prelude to Militarization: Obama's Multi-War Strategy and Its Aftermath

The central role of the military in deciding US foreign policy has its roots in the strategic decisions taken during the Obama-Clinton Presidency. Several policies were decisive in the rise of unprecedented military-political power.

The massive increase of US troops in Afghanistan and their subsequent failures and retreat weakened the Obama-Clinton regime and increased animosity between the military and the Obama's Administration. As a result of his failures, Obama downgraded the military and weakened Presidential authority. The massive US-led bombing and destruction of Libya, the overthrow of the Gadhafi government and the failure of the Obama-Clinton administration to impose a puppet regime, underlined the limitations of US air power and the ineffectiveness of US political-military intervention. The Presidency blundered in its foreign policy in North Africa and demonstrated its military ineptness. The invasion of Syria by US-funded mercenaries and terrorists committed the US to an unreliable ally in a losing war. This led to a reduction in the military budget and encouraged the Generals to view their direct control of overseas wars and foreign policy as the only guarantee of their positions. The US military intervention in Iraq was only a secondary contributing factor in the defeat of ISIS; the major actors and beneficiaries were Iran and the allied Iraqi Shia militias. The Obama-Clinton engineered coup and power grab in the Ukraine brought a corrupt incompetent military junta to power in Kiev and provoked the secession of the Crimea (to Russia) and Eastern Ukraine (allied with Russia). The Generals were sidelined and found that they had tied themselves to Ukrainian kleptocrats while dangerously increasing political tensions with Russia. The Obama regime dictated economic sanctions against Moscow, designed to compensate for their ignominious military-political failures.

The Obama-Clinton legacy facing Trump was built around a three-legged stool: an international order based on military aggression and confrontation with Russia; a ' pivot to Asia' defined as the military encirclement and economic isolation of China – via bellicose threats and economic sanctions against North Korea; and the use of the military as the praetorian guards of free trade agreements in Asia excluding China.

The Obama 'legacy' consists of an international order of globalized capital and multiple wars. The continuity of Obama's 'glorious legacy' initially depended on the election of Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump's presidential campaign, for its part, promised to dismantle or drastically revise the Obama Doctrine of an international order based on multiple wars , neo-colonial 'nation' building and free trade. A furious Obama 'informed' (threatened) the newly-elected President Trump that he would face the combined hostility of the entire State apparatus, Wall Street and the mass media if he proceeded to fulfill his election promises of economic nationalism and thus undermine the US-centered global order.

Trump's bid to shift from Obama's sanctions and military confrontation to economic reconciliation with Russia was countered by a hornet's nest of accusations about a Trump-Russian electoral conspiracy, darkly hinting at treason and show trials against his close allies and even family members.

The concoction of a Trump-Russia plot was only the first step toward a total war on the new president, but it succeeded in undermining Trump's economic nationalist agenda and his efforts to change Obama's global order.

Trump Under Obama's International Order

After only 8 months in office President Trump helplessly gave into the firings, resignations and humiliation of each and every one of his civilian appointees, especially those who were committed to reverse Obama's 'international order'.

Trump was elected to replace wars, sanctions and interventions with economic deals beneficial to the American working and middle class. This would include withdrawing the military from its long-term commitments to budget-busting 'nation-building' (occupation) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and other Obama-designated endless war zones.

Trump's military priorities were supposed to focus on strengthening domestic frontiers and overseas markets. He started by demanding that NATO partners pay for their own military defense responsibilities. Obama's globalists in both political parties were aghast that the US might lose it overwhelming control of NATO; they united and moved immediately to strip Trump of his economic nationalist allies and their programs.

Trump quickly capitulated and fell into line with Obama's international order, except for one proviso – he would select the Cabinet to implement the old/new international order.

A hamstrung Trump chose a military cohort of Generals, led by General James Mattis (famously nicknamed ' Mad Dog' ) as Defense Secretary.

The Generals effectively took over the Presidency. Trump abdicated his responsibilities as President.

General Mattis: The Militarization of America

General Mattis took up the Obama legacy of global militarization and added his own nuances, including the 'psychological-warfare' embedded in Trump's emotional ejaculations on 'Twitter'.

The ' Mattis Doctrine' combined high-risk threats with aggressive provocations, bringing the US (and the world) to the brink of nuclear war.

General Mattis has adopted the targets and fields of operations, defined by the previous Obama administration as it has sought to re-enforce the existing imperialist international order.

The junta's policies relied on provocations and threats against Russia, with expanded economic sanctions. Mattis threw more fuel on the US mass media's already hysterical anti-Russian bonfire. The General promoted a strategy of low intensity diplomatic thuggery, including the unprecedented seizure and invasion of Russian diplomatic offices and the short-notice expulsion of diplomats and consular staff.

These military threats and acts of diplomatic intimidation signified that the Generals' Administration under the Puppet President Trump was ready to sunder diplomatic relations with a major world nuclear power and indeed push the world to direct nuclear confrontation.

What Mattis seeks in these mad fits of aggression is nothing less than capitulation on the part of the Russian government regarding long held US military objectives – namely the partition of Syria (which started under Obama), harsh starvation sanctions on North Korea (which began under Clinton) and the disarmament of Iran (Tel Aviv's main goal) in preparation for its dismemberment.

The Mattis junta occupying the Trump White House heightened its threats against a North Korea, which (in Vladimir Putin's words) ' would rather eat grass than disarm' . The US mass media-military megaphones portrayed the North Korean victims of US sanctions and provocations as an 'existential' threat to the US mainland.

Sanctions have intensified. The stationing of nuclear weapons on South Korea is being pushed. Massive joint military exercises are planned and ongoing in the air, sea and land around North Korea. Mattis twisted Chinese arms (mainly business comprador-linked bureaucrats) and secured their UN Security Council vote on increased sanctions. Russia joined the Mattis-led anti-Pyongyang chorus, even as Putin warned of sanctions ineffectiveness! (As if General ' Mad Dog' Mattis would ever take Putin's advice seriously, especially after Russia voted for the sanctions!)

Mattis further militarized the Persian Gulf, following Obama's policy of partial sanctions and bellicose provocation against Iran.

When he worked for Obama, Mattis increased US arms shipments to the US's Syrian terrorists and Ukrainian puppets, ensuring the US would be able to scuttle any ' negotiated settlements' .

Militarization: An Evaluation

Trump's resort to ' his Generals' is supposed to counter any attacks from members of his own party and Congressional Democrats about his foreign policy. Trump's appointment of ' Mad Dog' Mattis, a notorious Russophobe and warmonger, has somewhat pacified the opposition in Congress and undercut any 'finding' of an election conspiracy between Trump and Moscow dug up by the Special Investigator Robert Mueller. Trump's maintains a role as nominal President by adapting to what Obama warned him was ' their international order' – now directed by an unelected military junta composed of Obama holdovers!

The Generals provide a veneer of legitimacy to the Trump regime (especially for the warmongering Obama Democrats and the mass media). However, handing presidential powers over to ' Mad Dog' Mattis and his cohort will come with a heavy price.

While the military junta may protect Trump's foreign policy flank, it does not lessen the attacks on his domestic agenda. Moreover, Trump's proposed budget compromise with the Democrats has enraged his own Party's leaders.

In sum, under a weakened President Trump, the militarization of the White House benefits the military junta and enlarges their power. The ' Mad Dog' Mattis program has had mixed results, at least in its initial phase: The junta's threats to launch a pre-emptive (possibly nuclear) war against North Korea have strengthened Pyongyang's commitment to develop and refine its long and medium range ballistic missile capability and nuclear weapons. Brinksmanship failed to intimidate North Korea. Mattis cannot impose the Clinton-Bush-Obama doctrine of disarming countries (like Libya and Iraq) of their advanced defensive weapons systems as a prelude to a US 'regime change' invasion.

Any US attack against North Korea will lead to massive retaliatory strikes costing tens of thousands of US military lives and will kill and maim millions of civilians in South Korea and Japan.

At most, ' Mad Dog' managed to intimidate Chinese and Russian officials (and their export business billionaire buddies) to agree to more economic sanctions against North Korea. Mattis and his allies in the UN and White House, the loony Nikki Hailey and a miniaturized President Trump, may bellow war – yet they cannot apply the so-called 'military option' without threatening the US military forces stationed throughout the Asia Pacific region.

The Mad Dog Mattis assault on the Russian embassy did not materially weaken Russia, but it has revealed the uselessness of Moscow's conciliatory diplomacy toward their so-called 'partners' in the Trump regime.

The end-result might lead to a formal break in diplomatic ties, which would increase the danger of a military confrontation and a global nuclear holocaust.

The military junta is pressuring China against North Korea with the goal of isolating the ruling regime in Pyongyang and increasing the US military encirclement of Beijing. Mad Dog has partially succeeded in turning China against North Korea while securing its advanced THADD anti-missile installations in South Korea, which will be directed against Beijing. These are Mattis' short-term gains over the excessively pliant Chinese bureaucrats. However, if Mad Dog intensifies direct military threats against China, Beijing can retaliate by dumping tens of billions of US Treasury notes, cutting trade ties, sowing chaos in the US economy and setting Wall Street against the Pentagon.

Mad Dog's military build-up, especially in Afghanistan and in the Middle East, will not intimidate Iran nor add to any military successes. They entail high costs and low returns, as Obama realized after the better part of a decade of his defeats, fiascos and multi-billion dollar losses.

Conclusion

The militarization of US foreign policy, the establishment of a military junta within the Trump Administration, and the resort to nuclear brinksmanship has not changed the global balance of power.

Domestically Trump's nominal Presidency relies on militarists, like General Mattis. Mattis has tightened the US control over NATO allies, and even rounded up stray European outliers, like Sweden, to join in a military crusade against Russia. Mattis has played on the media's passion for bellicose headlines and its adulation of Four Star Generals.

But for all that – North Korea remains undaunted because it can retaliate. Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons and remains a counterweight to a US-dominated globe. China owns the US Treasury and its unimpressed, despite the presence of an increasingly collision-prone US Navy swarming throughout the South China Sea.

Mad Dog laps up the media attention, with well dressed, scrupulously manicured journalists hanging on his every bloodthirsty pronouncement. War contractors flock to him, like flies to carrion. The Four Star General 'Mad Dog' Mattis has attained Presidential status without winning any election victory (fake or otherwise). No doubt when he steps down, Mattis will be the most eagerly courted board member or senior consultant for giant military contractors in US history, receiving lucrative fees for half hour 'pep-talks' and ensuring the fat perks of nepotism for his family's next three generations. Mad Dog may even run for office, as Senator or even President for whatever Party.

The militarization of US foreign policy provides some important lessons:

First of all, the escalation from threats to war does not succeed in disarming adversaries who possess the capacity to retaliate. Intimidation via sanctions can succeed in imposing significant economic pain on oil export-dependent regimes, but not on hardened, self-sufficient or highly diversified economies.

Low intensity multi-lateral war maneuvers reinforce US-led alliances, but they also convince opponents to increase their military preparedness. Mid-level intense wars against non-nuclear adversaries can seize capital cities, as in Iraq, but the occupier faces long-term costly wars of attrition that can undermine military morale, provoke domestic unrest and heighten budget deficits. And they create millions of refugees.

High intensity military brinksmanship carries major risk of massive losses in lives, allies, territory and piles of radiated ashes – a pyrrhic victory!

In sum:

Threats and intimidation succeed only against conciliatory adversaries. Undiplomatic verbal thuggery can arouse the spirit of the bully and some of its allies, but it has little chance of convincing its adversaries to capitulate. The US policy of worldwide militarization over-extends the US armed forces and has not led to any permanent military gains.

Are there any voices among clear-thinking US military leaders, those not bedazzled by their stars and idiotic admirers in the US media, who could push for more global accommodation and mutual respect among nations? The US Congress and the corrupt media are demonstrably incapable of evaluating past disasters, let alone forging an effective response to new global realities.

Raffler, September 15, 2017 at 2:25 pm GMT

American actions in Europe, Asia and the middle east appear increasingly irrational to many international observers. Their policy thrusts are excused as containment of evildoers or punishment of peoples who think and act differently. Those policy thrusts will accomplish the opposite of the stated intention.

They will drive into a new detente such incompatible parties as Russia and Iran, or China and many countries. America risks losing its way in the world and free peoples see a flickering beacon that once shone brighter.

nsa, September 16, 2017 at 4:03 am GMT

Anyone with military experience recognizes the likes of Mad Poodle Mattis arrogant, belligerent, exceptionally dull, and mainly an inveterate suck-up (mil motto: kiss up and kick down).

Every VFW lounge is filled with these boozy ridiculous blowhards and they are insufferable. The media and public, raised on ZioVision and JooieWood pablum, worship these cartoonish bloodletters even though they haven't won a war in 72 years .not one.

How about this comic book tough guy quote: "I'm pleading with you with tears in my eyes: if you fuck with me, I'll kill you all" notice the first person used repetitively as he talks down to hapless unarmed tribesman in some distant land. A real egomaniacal narcissistic coward. Any of you with military experience would immediately recognize the type ...

KA, September 16, 2017 at 3:24 pm GMT

It seems that the inevitable has happened. Feckless civilians have used military adventures to advance their careers , ensure re- elections, capturr lucrative position as speaker, have a place as member of think tank or lobbying firm or consultant . Now being as stupidly greedy and impatient as these guys are, they have failed to see that neither the policies nor the militaries can succeed against enemies that are generated from the action and the policy itself .

Now military has decided to reverse the roles . At least the military leaders don't have to campaign for re employment . But very soon the forces that corrupt and abuse the civilian power structure will do same to military .

The Alarmist, September 19, 2017 at 3:27 pm GMT

Never met him at any of the parties I attended in the '70s and '80s, so I don't know much about Mad Dog, but I can say that only in America can the former commander of a recruiting station grow up to pull the strings of the President.

[Sep 20, 2017] Manafort News a Blockbuster or Nothingburger

To what extent Natalia Veselnitskaya represented Russian state and to what extent interests of certain Russian oligarchs is unclear. The obvious guess is that she did not. She is an oligarchs lawyer. But she could pretend that he did.
Notable quotes:
"... On the night of the election, most anchors reacted in shock. Rachel Maddow appeared aghast. They were stunned at their own failure to predict this outcome and were obliged to seek excuses for the unexpected, unfortunate outcome. The Comey announcement was of course the first explanation deployed, but soon a far more useful one appeared: Russia had rigged the election by providing stolen DNC emails to Wikileaks, using them to discredit Hillary. (It's rarely mentioned how, precisely, they had done that, by showing that the DNC under Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders.) ..."
"... Obama requested a quick intelligence report, to justify immediate harsh sanctions. He got it, expelled over 700 Russian diplomats, and closed down consulates and recreational facilities owned by the Russian state. These follow the sanctions applied in 2014 in response to events in Ukraine, which caused Russia to retaliate, among other things, by ending the program through which Americans adopt Russian children. ..."
"... News anchors keep referring to Manafort as "Trump's campaign manager," elevating his significance. Recall that Trump had Corey Lewandowski as his campaign chairman from January to June; Manafort from June to August; and Stephen Bannon from August to November. Why not say, "Bannon, the second out of three Trump campaign chiefs"? And why not add: " who resigned when it was disclosed that he had been paid huge sums as a consultant for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych?" ..."
"... And then mention that Yanukovych had been democratically elected in 2010, and that Manafort, who had advised U.S. presidential candidates Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Ferdinand Marcos, Mobuto Sese Seko, and Jonas Savimbi. And that there's probably nothing illegal about that. ..."
"... But why this term, "operative"? What is a "Russian operative," such as the Trump campaign may have met? As opposed to a Russian businessman, politician, lawyer, journalist, priest? The term is tendentious, implying that every Russian operates on behalf of the Russian state and Vladimir Putin. Russophobic language infects the relentless coverage of this issue, which!as Van Jones suggested!has been a nothingburger. ..."
Sep 20, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

Flipping the channel to U.S. cable news, the lead story is Paul Manafort's imminent indictment, apparently for his business dealings. Presented as a BLOCKBUSTER, it's got all the talking heads smelling blood in the water. Here, they hope, is the smoking gun. Their eyes are bright with hope, if not for Trump's impeachment, for his forced embrace of continued confrontation with Moscow.

On the night of the election, most anchors reacted in shock. Rachel Maddow appeared aghast. They were stunned at their own failure to predict this outcome and were obliged to seek excuses for the unexpected, unfortunate outcome. The Comey announcement was of course the first explanation deployed, but soon a far more useful one appeared: Russia had rigged the election by providing stolen DNC emails to Wikileaks, using them to discredit Hillary. (It's rarely mentioned how, precisely, they had done that, by showing that the DNC under Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders.)

Obama requested a quick intelligence report, to justify immediate harsh sanctions. He got it, expelled over 700 Russian diplomats, and closed down consulates and recreational facilities owned by the Russian state. These follow the sanctions applied in 2014 in response to events in Ukraine, which caused Russia to retaliate, among other things, by ending the program through which Americans adopt Russian children.

"Russian Interference"

The meeting between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in Trump Tower in June 2016, including Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, Manafort, Rinat Akhmetshin and publicist Rob Goldstone appears to have included three elements: withdrawal of sanctions under a Trump administration, restitution of the adoption program (with which Veselnitskaya has indeed been involved) as one action in return, and the issue which drew Don Jr. to the gathering: and possibly the promise of info on Hillary. So if Don Jr. and Jared say it was about adoption they might be telling the partial truth.

Hadn't Junior been told that there were documents that "would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father," and hadn't he said "I love it"? It is just possible that this meeting resulted in Russian hacking of the DNC and the leaking of the documents by Wikileaks (although Julian Assange and colleague Craig Murray strongly deny this).

On July 22, Wikileaks released its first batch of DNC emails. Wasserman-Schultz and half a dozen others had to resign, and DNC sincerely apologized to Sanders for Wasserman-Schultz's comment that it would be "silly" to imagine a Sanders victory.

On July 27 Trump speaking to a news conference in Doral, Florida said this:

"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing [from Clinton's emails] I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."

On Nov. 7, Wikileaks released a second batch of documents, including a email written by Hillary's own campaign chairman John Podesta in January, saying: "I'm down. Our team is all tactics and has no idea of how to lift her up." Very embarrassing just before the election. But the provenance of the leaked documents is in fact unclear, and contested.

This BLOCKBUSTER news about Manafort reportedly involves financial transactions. The idea may be to trade leniency for financial wrongdoing for information on the alleged "collusion" between the Trump campaign and Moscow. But what if there is none?

News anchors keep referring to Manafort as "Trump's campaign manager," elevating his significance. Recall that Trump had Corey Lewandowski as his campaign chairman from January to June; Manafort from June to August; and Stephen Bannon from August to November. Why not say, "Bannon, the second out of three Trump campaign chiefs"? And why not add: " who resigned when it was disclosed that he had been paid huge sums as a consultant for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych?"

And then mention that Yanukovych had been democratically elected in 2010, and that Manafort, who had advised U.S. presidential candidates Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Ferdinand Marcos, Mobuto Sese Seko, and Jonas Savimbi. And that there's probably nothing illegal about that.

Why All the Fuss?

Why all this fuss about Manafort in Ukraine? Because he's accused of developing ties with Russians while there, which is hardly surprising, considering that he's a mercenary opportunist and businessman, and Russia and Ukraine have numerous historical, cultural, economic and business ties. Yanukovich's party (Party of Regions) is described by the U.S. as "pro-Russian" although that is simplistic and reflects ignorance of the ethnic mix in Ukraine and the relationship to both Russia and the EU. (Victoria Nuland, Obama's assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, promoted that view and declared the U.S.'s support for "the Ukrainian people's European aspirations.")

Yanukovich could have introduced Manafort to lots of Russians. But that was all over in 2014 before Trump announced his campaign.

We now know that Manafort came under investigation by the FBI soon after the U.S.-backed putsch in February 2014 and is ongoing. But it didn't start as an investigation into Russian election meddling. And it will very possibly not find any evidence for that. It may find, for example, an email in which Manafort supports the withdrawal of the party plank in July 2015 advocating lethal arms to the current government. (This is another of the very few "facts" cited establish "Russian interference." But it seems to me a lot of Republicans don't want to provoke Russia in Russia's backyard. Since when does mere reason constitute "collusion"?) But it would be a stretch to assume he's the key villain interlocutor between "Russian operatives" and the Trump campaign.

But why this term, "operative"? What is a "Russian operative," such as the Trump campaign may have met? As opposed to a Russian businessman, politician, lawyer, journalist, priest? The term is tendentious, implying that every Russian operates on behalf of the Russian state and Vladimir Putin. Russophobic language infects the relentless coverage of this issue, which!as Van Jones suggested!has been a nothingburger.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan ; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan ; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900 . He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion , (AK Press). He can be reached at: [email protected]

[Sep 20, 2017] Sovereign Nations Is Main Theme Of Trump's UN Speech

Sovereignty is oppose of neoliberal globalization, so in a way this is an some kind of affirmation of Trump election position. How serious it is is not clear. Probably not much as Imperial faction now controls Trump, making him more of a marionette that a political leader of the USA.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump labeled the Syrian government "the criminal regime of Bashar al Assad." The "problem in Venezuela", he said, is "that socialism has been faithfully implemented." He called Iran "an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violent, bloodshed and chaos." He forgot to mention pistachios . The aim of such language and threats is usually to goad the other party into some overt act that can than be used as justification for "retaliation". But none of the countries Trump mentioned is prone to such behavior. They will react calmly - if at all. ..."
"... The stressing of sovereignty and the nation state in part one was the point where Trump indeed differed from his interventionist predecessors. But its still difficult to judge if that it is something he genuinely believes in. ..."
"... There is no emphasis on sovereignty b. Trump says that Russia's and China' threat to the sovereignty of countries is bad but the sovereignty of small countries the US does not like is somehow threatened by these countries themselves. Which I interpret as a threat - "you endanger yourself if you don't do as told". ..."
"... "The stressing of sovereignty and the nation state in part one was the point where Trump indeed differed from his interventionist predecessors. But its still difficult to judge if that it is something he genuinely believes in" ..."
"... The word sovereignty has taken on different and sinister implications with the UN Responsibility to Protect Act in 2005. The US pushed for this and it squeaked by and they used it to justify the invasion of Libya in 2011. I think Libya was a major turning point. I don't think Russia and Iran are going to back off easily. (I originally posted this in 2015 at another site) The US also seems to have pretty much lost what humanitarian clout they may have had. ..."
"... He talks about the period from 1989 when we had the Panama invasion and collapse of the Soviet Union as leading to an unleashing of US military power leading to the Iraq War in 2003. This war serious dented the image of the US as being a humanitarian actor and the US pushed for the UN Responsibility to Protect Act in 2005 which was used to justify the Libya invasion. ..."
"... Prashad sees the results of that invasion and what is going on now in Syria as reflecting that the period 2011-2015 is seeing the end of this US unipolarism that lasted from 1989 to 2011. ..."
"... How can Trump believe in defending Westphalia Treaty principles, sovereignty and the nation state, when US policy in the Arab world consists in destroying all these? This is rather like Warren Buffett lamenting that American billionaires are so rich, and pay less taxes than their secretaries. They are just laughing at us in our faces. ..."
"... Sound more or less like Hussein Obomo address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 24, 2013 - America is exceptional ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT5BjNDg5W0 No wonder Putin and Xi did not care to attend. Anyway Putin winning in Syria and Xi gaining in economic, science and technology ..."
"... I agree with other commenters about the Orwellian nature of the speech. Sovereignty is an interesting word to abuse and I expect we will see more abuse of it. How can the US ever be a sovereign nation when it does not own its own financial system? But in the interim all other aspects of sovereignty will be examined but not global private finance.....unless the China/Russia axis hand is forced into the open. ..."
"... Trump - the Republican Obama ..."
"... "The sanction game is over. It's only the dying empire of the Federal Reserve, ECB, Wall Street, City of London and their military strong arm operating in the Pentagon that have yet to accept this new reality. ..."
"... The days of bullying nations and simply bombing them into submission is over as well. Russia and China have made it very clear this is no longer acceptable and Russia has all but shut down the operations in Syria. The "ISIS" boogeyman is surrounded and fleeing into Asia and recently showed up in the Philippines. The fact that a group of desert dwellers acquired an ocean going vessel should be enough evidence to even the most brain-dead these desert dwellers are supported by outside forces – like the CIA Otherwise, from where did the ship(s) materialize?" ..."
"... it seems to me with Trump an era of so-called globalization has come to its end. ..."
"... Of course countries subjected to senseless US sanctions, like Russia, are concerned with sovereignty. They are ..."
"... baseless economic attacks by the country that controls world banking. ..."
"... In conclusion, what I take away from this speech is a sense of relief for the rest of the planet and a sense of real worry for the USA. Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and made him what is colloquially referred to as their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a virtual standstill. ..."
Sep 20, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Today the President of the United States Donald Trump spoke (rush transcript) to the United Nations General Assembly. The speech's main the me was sovereignty. The word occurs 18(!) times. It emphasized Westphalian principles .

[W]e do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties, to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation

All leaders of countries should always put their countries first, he said, and "the nation state remains the best vehicle for elevating the human condition ."


The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, 15 May 1648 - bigger

Sovereignty was the core message of his speech. It rhymed well with his somewhat isolationist emphasis of "America first" during his campaign. The second part of the speech the first by threatened the sovereignty of several countries the U.S. ruling class traditionally dislikes. This year's "axis of evil" included North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Syria and Cuba:

The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary."

Many people will criticize that as an outrageous and irresponsible use of words. It is. But there is nothing new to it. In fact the U.S., acting on behalf of the UN, totally destroyed Korea in the 1950s. The last U.S. president made the same threat Trump made today:

President Barack Obama delivered a stern warning to North Korea on Tuesday, reminding its "erratic" and "irresponsible" leader that America's nuclear arsenal could "destroy" his country.

The South Korean military sounds equally belligerent :

A military source told the Yonhap news agency every part of Pyongyang "will be completely destroyed by ballistic missiles and high-explosives shells". ... The city, the source said, "will be reduced to ashes and removed from the map".

Trump labeled the Syrian government "the criminal regime of Bashar al Assad." The "problem in Venezuela", he said, is "that socialism has been faithfully implemented." He called Iran "an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violent, bloodshed and chaos." He forgot to mention pistachios . The aim of such language and threats is usually to goad the other party into some overt act that can than be used as justification for "retaliation". But none of the countries Trump mentioned is prone to such behavior. They will react calmly - if at all. There was essentially nothing in Trump's threats than the claptrap the last two U.S. presidents also delivered. Trump may be crazy, but the speech today is not a sign of that.

The stressing of sovereignty and the nation state in part one was the point where Trump indeed differed from his interventionist predecessors. But its still difficult to judge if that it is something he genuinely believes in.

Posted by b on September 19, 2017 at 01:05 PM | Permalink

somebody | Sep 19, 2017 1:32:33 PM | 2
There is no emphasis on sovereignty b. Trump says that Russia's and China' threat to the sovereignty of countries is bad but the sovereignty of small countries the US does not like is somehow threatened by these countries themselves. Which I interpret as a threat - "you endanger yourself if you don't do as told".
If we desire to lift up our citizens, if we aspire to the approval of history, then we must fulfill our sovereign duties to the people we faithfully represent. We must protect our nations, their interests and their futures. We must reject threats to sovereignty from the Ukraine to the South China Sea. We must uphold respect for law, respect for borders, and respect for culture, and the peaceful engagement these allow.

And just as the founders of this body intended, we must work together and confront together those who threatens us with chaos, turmoil, and terror. The score of our planet today is small regimes that violate every principle that the United Nations is based. They respect neither their own citizens nor the sovereign rights of their countries. If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph. When decent people and nations become bystanders to history, the forces of destruction only gather power and strength.

b | Sep 19, 2017 1:51:10 PM | 3
@1 somebody - thanks - link corrected.

@2 somebody - yes, unaimed hostile prose from the speechwriter. Such is in the speech of every U.S. president. But it is not the general theme of the Trump speech when one reads it as one piece. The weight is put in the other direction (though the media will likely point to the threats instead of reading the more extraordinary parts where Trump pushes national sovereignty.)

Luther Blissett | Sep 19, 2017 1:53:43 PM | 4
  • "sovereign nation" = a country that obeys the US over its own interests
  • "rogue nation" = a country that has actual sovereignty

If there is more to this than the usual US double-speak, I don't see it.

james | Sep 19, 2017 1:57:07 PM | 5
thanks b... ''the criminal regime of donald trump'' is much more on target....
Perimetr | Sep 19, 2017 2:02:47 PM | 6
"The stressing of sovereignty and the nation state in part one was the point where Trump indeed differed from his interventionist predecessors. But its still difficult to judge if that it is something he genuinely believes in"

It appears that his generals are instructing him what to "believe in". At least, he certainly doesn't seem to "believe in" most of his campaign promises, not unlike his recent predecessors. The whole "democracy and freedom" thing in the US is just a charade, as far as I am concerned.

financial matters | Sep 19, 2017 2:22:58 PM | 7
The word sovereignty has taken on different and sinister implications with the UN Responsibility to Protect Act in 2005. The US pushed for this and it squeaked by and they used it to justify the invasion of Libya in 2011. I think Libya was a major turning point. I don't think Russia and Iran are going to back off easily. (I originally posted this in 2015 at another site) The US also seems to have pretty much lost what humanitarian clout they may have had.

I think this was a very good interview of Vijay Prashadby by Chris Hedges

Prashad

He talks about the period from 1989 when we had the Panama invasion and collapse of the Soviet Union as leading to an unleashing of US military power leading to the Iraq War in 2003. This war serious dented the image of the US as being a humanitarian actor and the US pushed for the UN Responsibility to Protect Act in 2005 which was used to justify the Libya invasion.

Prashad sees the results of that invasion and what is going on now in Syria as reflecting that the period 2011-2015 is seeing the end of this US unipolarism that lasted from 1989 to 2011.

--------

The good news is that Syria is turning out much different than Libya. Would be great to see the US cooperate with the China/Russia etc economic goals rather than stirring up trouble in the Phillippines, Myanmar etc. The first test will be to see if Trump can deliver single payer health care to the US. :) ie start to back off on the anti socialism rhetoric

Jeff Kaye | Sep 19, 2017 2:24:19 PM | 8
The "nation state" brought us the millions slaughtered in World War 1. The nation states threatened by the internationalist communist ideology of the USSR (in its early days) ultimately brought us World War 2. The hypertrophied nation state that is the United States of America will bring us World War 3 in its drive to secure its total supremacy. Luckily for us, there will be no World War 4.
Christophe Douté | Sep 19, 2017 2:27:49 PM | 9
How can a country A be "forced to defend itself" by a country B so weak comparatively to country A it can actually be "totally destroyed" by country A?

How can Trump believe in defending Westphalia Treaty principles, sovereignty and the nation state, when US policy in the Arab world consists in destroying all these? This is rather like Warren Buffett lamenting that American billionaires are so rich, and pay less taxes than their secretaries. They are just laughing at us in our faces.

Robert Beal | Sep 19, 2017 2:34:28 PM | 10
beyond hypocrisy, refined doublespeak
OJS | Sep 19, 2017 2:40:10 PM | 11
Sound more or less like Hussein Obomo address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 24, 2013 - America is exceptional ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT5BjNDg5W0 No wonder Putin and Xi did not care to attend. Anyway Putin winning in Syria and Xi gaining in economic, science and technology
Don Bacon | Sep 19, 2017 2:43:24 PM | 12
The United Nations is based upon the equal sovereignty of nations.
--from the UN Charter --
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations
Krollchem | Sep 19, 2017 2:46:18 PM | 13
Trump's speech seemed to represent an ignorant mouthy bully with a big stick who is threatening any nation he is told to hate. I have to agree with Paveway IV that Trump is just the announcer. The "national sovereignty" comments were just for internal consumption for his base of supporters.

The "Trump world: appears to be getting very crazy given the agendas of the people who handle Trump:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_77417.shtml
http://www.unz.com/jpetras/who-rules-america-2/

To a major extent Trump's focus on the "great leader" of countries opposed to the US helps simplify the hate for the "little people" in the US. They have not noticed that the US (as in most other Western countries) has many mini "great leaders" who work toward the same goals while distracting the "little people" with political theatre.

Linda O | Sep 19, 2017 3:05:11 PM | 14
I really don't know what the purpose of this rambling threat to the rest of the world was supposed to accomplish.

Yes, it really was nothing new. The fundamental material of the speech was the very same garbage written by the same Washington establishment of previous administrations - essentially the nuclear armed US regime is 'special' and reserves the right to attack and destroy any country it chooses to.

While the Trump speech is rightly being both ridiculed around the world, what is very scary is the humiliated Trump base is seizing on it.

The Trump base is begging for their failed 'God Emperor' to attack someone to feel better about their own humiliation.

Very, very scary.

Don Bacon | Sep 19, 2017 3:10:41 PM | 15
Sovereignty is also an excuse for US intervention, get it? . . .Trump does....
America stands with every person living under a brutal regime. Our respect for sovereignty is also a call for action. All people deserve a government that cares for their safety, their interests, and their well-being, including their prosperity.
duplicitousdemocracy | Sep 19, 2017 3:27:35 PM | 16
His speechwriters deserve to be fired and the text size on both teleprompters should have been increased. Alternatively, he should wear glasses (along with a more suitably fitted toupee). Sarah Palin would seem like Einstein at the side of this clown.
Ort | Sep 19, 2017 3:32:27 PM | 17
Trump's speech is Orwellian! Not just generally-- it is arguably an elaboration of a close paraphase of an Orwell quote, to wit: "All nations are sovereign, but some nations are more sovereign than others."

I have a strongly ambivalent reaction to Trump's UN appearance-- although I confess that I can only stand to watch and listen to him for brief time periods. It's appalling and embarrassing to watch any of the US's seemingly inexhaustible supply of lizard-brained degenerates at the UN. But part of me thinks it's better to have the quintessential Ugly Amerikan beating his chest and engaging in rhetorical feces-flinging. At least the rest of the world won't be bamboozled, the way they might be by a smooth, silver-tongued liar.

likklemore | Sep 19, 2017 3:50:54 PM | 18
@OJS 11

Putin, Xi and other leaders did not attend this year's UN gathering. They are busy attending the affairs of their citizens.

We are being distracted from the game changer ahead – de-dollarization now on the fast track.
While the toothless dog barks,

Putin orders to end trade in US dollars at Russian seaports

https://www.rt.com/business/403804-russian-sea-ports-ruble-settlements/

This is on the heels of Trump's threatening to exclude China from use of SWIFT (the USD) and China's gold yuan oil futures contract coming mid October as opposed to USD. The petro-yuan is a game changer; hitting the petro-dollar hegemony that keeps the dollar in worldwide demand.

The toothless dog has only his bark. Are Americans prepared for hyper-inflation?

psychohistorian | Sep 19, 2017 4:08:53 PM | 19
I agree with other commenters about the Orwellian nature of the speech. Sovereignty is an interesting word to abuse and I expect we will see more abuse of it. How can the US ever be a sovereign nation when it does not own its own financial system? But in the interim all other aspects of sovereignty will be examined but not global private finance.....unless the China/Russia axis hand is forced into the open.

The abuse of the term sovereignty by Trump is part of a crafted Big Lie message. Just like Trump linking to the poster of him, with a rope over his shoulder, dragging a barge of companies back to America......the internationalism genie will never go completely back into the bottle and is counterproductive to all.

Christian Chuba | Sep 19, 2017 4:46:02 PM | 20
John Bolton and the moron, Sean Hannity, love the speech. That should be all anyone needs to know. It was Orwellian, super-villain, double-speak.
If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph.
Madman. How has Iran violated the U.N. charter? They were invited into Iraq and Syria by the UN recognized govts. Okay, they make veiled threats against Israel, they get a demerit for that. Even if you argue that they are 'predicting' rather can 'threatening to cause' Israel's demise, I'd take that as a veiled threat. But Israel makes equally hostile comments towards Iran albeit, in a passive / aggressive manner. Netanyahu, 'We recognize Iran's right to exist but truth be told the planet, no wait, the entire universe itself would be better off if they disappeared'.
Jackrabbit | Sep 19, 2017 5:02:50 PM | 21
Trump - the Republican Obama
Jackrabbit | Sep 19, 2017 5:12:32 PM | 22
If you like your sovereignty, you can keep your sovereignty.
Andy | Sep 19, 2017 5:12:41 PM | 23
Well, it has finally arrived at the U.N. speech. Trump is showing his real colors, whether they are forced or were originally his own. It doesn't matter. He is spouting the same nonsenze as the neocons and the rest of them. He has crossed over - he maybe never knew the way through, but was only parroting other's views. He is clearly a chameleon, willing to change his stripes on a dime. The man is darkly lost in the woods, or is it the swamp?
chet380 | Sep 19, 2017 5:26:05 PM | 24
Sorry, somewhat off-topic --

While there have been hints that the Rohingya "rebels" are receiving funds from expatriates in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, is there anything concrete that connects the CIA to the rebels?

Laguerre | Sep 19, 2017 5:42:58 PM | 25
Frankly Trump is a big mouth, but there's no evidence that he's more than that. If he wanted war, we'd already be there. It's different from Saddam in the old days, who went to war within a year of becoming leader, or the Saudi crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, who launched the war against Yemen.

59 Tomahawks, that's the style. I haven't seen different from then.

Taxi | Sep 19, 2017 5:46:38 PM | 26
Hypocrisy - huuuge hypocrisy, believe me it was tremendous hypocrisy!
mcohen | Sep 19, 2017 5:47:45 PM | 27
trump is mr thunder thump
Bart in VA | Sep 19, 2017 5:50:25 PM | 28
He called Iran "an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violent, bloodshed and chaos."

Like the pundits who shadow him, he really has no understanding of irony.

Bart in VA | Sep 19, 2017 5:52:58 PM | 29
#4 - "Failed State" - A country too poor for us to exploit.
Lochearn | Sep 19, 2017 6:01:13 PM | 30
The advantage of having Trump around is that he seems to diffuse energy. He is not building a case against N. Korea like Bush did with Iraq, but instead he is big on bluster. There is no appeal to the emotions of people and their fears and as such he is not marketing it, something he knows a lot about. In his own way I believe he is defusing the situation by talking big but remebering Bannon's comments when he left. And as a consummate player at the table of power (unlike the novice Obama) he has his status.

What interests me is Tillerson and the State Department and its attitude to Israel. Syria is where Israel met its match and was soundly thrashed. The world will never be the same again, And the State Department is recognizing this reality. I think there is a recognition in certain powerful quarters that whole neocon-Zionist shit has got America nowhere. As Talking Heads said, "We're on the road to nowhere."

Extra | Sep 19, 2017 6:12:58 PM | 31
Andy@23
It's the swamp. Sounds like Pete Seeger's 'Waist deep in the Big Muddy' all over again.
Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 6:15:58 PM | 32
The speech (it reminds me on movie The Kings Speech https://youtu.be/PPLIw64rLJc TERRIBLE MOVIE) is for internal the US purpose, for Amerikkaans. Majority of them, according to the Gov. media outlets, support military action against DPRK and mostly likely against Iran (the most hatred nation by far) as well. Amerikkaans will support any crime anywhere and probably destruction of whole planet Earth.

In the same time his words and deeds are the most irrelevant of any US presidents. I bet he never heard of that word "sovereignty" before nor for "nation state". This morning when Trump woke up some member of National Security Council put sheet of paper with the speech on his desk and tell him "Read this!". Just as they did to Obama in many occasions, one of example is this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/may/04/obama-drinks-flint-water-video

There some people in the US who knows what is going on:

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/redefining-winning-afghanistan-22176

For all the very considerable expense, however, the American military does not have a very impressive record of achieving victory. It has won no wars since 1945!especially if victory is defined as achieving an objective at acceptable cost!except against enemy forces that essentially didn't exist.
james | Sep 19, 2017 6:24:49 PM | 33
@7 financial matters.. good comment and relevant.. i agree with you.. unipolar no more.. however, not quite multipolar yet either... we are still in a transitional place.. syria is no libya fortunately.. but causing this kind of shit around the globe is what the usa is known for.. they will continue to make war projects, especially if you believe as b notes a couple of threads ago - trump is no longer calling the shots.. it is military guys full on..
Lochearn | Sep 19, 2017 6:26:51 PM | 34
@ 52

I rather liked the film "The King's Speech because it was about speech. Your English is fucking awful Chancey, not good enough for this forum. Get some lessons and come back.

Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 6:28:50 PM | 35
@Lochearn | Sep 19, 2017 6:26:51 PM | 34

Read this Nazi. https://www.sprottmoney.com/Blog/actions-of-a-bully-child-or-dying-empire-sanctions-and-threats-rory-hall.html

"The sanction game is over. It's only the dying empire of the Federal Reserve, ECB, Wall Street, City of London and their military strong arm operating in the Pentagon that have yet to accept this new reality.

The days of bullying nations and simply bombing them into submission is over as well. Russia and China have made it very clear this is no longer acceptable and Russia has all but shut down the operations in Syria. The "ISIS" boogeyman is surrounded and fleeing into Asia and recently showed up in the Philippines. The fact that a group of desert dwellers acquired an ocean going vessel should be enough evidence to even the most brain-dead these desert dwellers are supported by outside forces – like the CIA Otherwise, from where did the ship(s) materialize?"

Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 6:29:56 PM | 36
Lochearn | Sep 19, 2017 6:26:51 PM | 34

You like a movie. Of course, it is for morons.

Lozion | Sep 19, 2017 6:38:33 PM | 37
Comment @4 is spot on..
Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 6:39:43 PM | 38
@Lochearn aka Nazi

I recognize you from before, but how do you like these links?

https://www.sprottmoney.com/Blog/actions-of-a-bully-child-or-dying-empire-sanctions-and-threats-rory-hall.html

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/redefining-winning-afghanistan-22176

Where have you raised, under rock or in cave?

Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 6:51:12 PM | 39
For a Nazi. A question, do you believe in science? Here is one. But does one need to be scientist to figure this out?"The Rise of Incivility and Bullying in America"

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201207/the-rise-incivility-and-bullying-in-america

you are lost case anyway but here is good text from fellow Amerikkaan. But "Rise" from where? I would argue not from Zero but from 60 on scale of 100.

Agree?

karlof1 | Sep 19, 2017 6:56:49 PM | 40
Violating the sovereign sanctity of nations is what the Outlaw US Empire has done without parallel since the United Nation's formation. One of those nations was Vietnam, and a somewhat respected documentary film maker looks like he's going to try--again--to pull wool over the eyes of his intended audience by trying to legitimate the Big Lie that provided the rationale for the Outlaw US Empire's illegal war against Vietnam. The detailed argument regarding Ken Burns's effort to "correct" the actual historical record can be read here, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/19/getting-the-gulf-of-tonkin-wrong-are-ken-burns-and-lynn-novick-telling-stories-about-the-central-events-used-to-legitimize-the-us-attack-against-vietnam/ and it is probably the sort of history Trump would enjoy since he doesn't seem to know any better.
Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 7:09:16 PM | 41
@Lochearn aka Nazi

How many nick/names do you have? You may hide under this and that stupid but your associations are still here. You stay stupid. I know, I know the truth hurts. You Amerikkaans are not used to it. Go and watch a porn, before de-dollarization is in full swing. Than you are going to stave to death, no more credit cards and quantitative easing. That's is Trump's speech for.

https://www.opednews.com/articles/What-Happened-to-All-Those-by-Jim-Hightower-Banksters_Homeownership_Housing-170819-119.html

Wall Street bought them -- and is now leasing them out and driving up rents.

Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 7:13:05 PM | 42
Oh my terrible English. Forgive me, would you?

Instead "stave" should be "starve".

All this has to do with shitty Europe, Germany first and foremost.

MadMax2 | Sep 19, 2017 7:14:02 PM | 43
Posted by: financial matters | Sep 19, 2017 2:22:58 PM | 7
Nice interview from a couple of years back. Prashad's worldview is worthy of reposting. Enjoyable. Cheers.

US Americans might have proved themselves very adept at destroying both nation states and the English language, though it will be Syria who restores true meaning to the word 'sovereign' - with some collective help of course.

The almost failed state will emerge from this steeled with a sense of identity, pride and purpose. The minnow that refused to buckle.

The Don putting together some performances that finally warrant the unified, rabid reaction from the press....

Oilman2 | Sep 19, 2017 7:42:50 PM | 44
"But its still difficult to judge if that it is something he genuinely believes in."

Are you serious? Everything coming out of DC is still the same - sanctions against other sovereign countries who do not tow the line the US demands, cruise missiles for the little guys, disavowing and de-legitimizing the JCPOA, unrelenting 'freedom of navigation' patrols, threats to cut nations off from the SWIFT system, every word out of Nikki Haleys' mouth... It's really easy to go on and on, and his first year isn't even done.

The amount of disrespect for other sovereign nations by the USA is mind boggling, and that is only the official stuff. Throw in CIA ops and NGO ops and there you have an entire other level of the failure to recognize sovereignty.

Can you send me some of what you are smoking? Because it obviously makes you oblivious to the obvious, and that may help my mood...

Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 7:48:40 PM | 45
Obviously, the UN has became an arena of the one country show and that country puppets. Zionist PM, the West most "faithful ally" on Middle East, and his speech. Mix of infantilism, rhetoric and implicit racism of "God Chosen People". And sea of self-congratulating lies.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47844.htm

In par with Trump's speech.

Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 7:56:52 PM | 46
Oilman2!

is that you?

Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 8:05:13 PM | 47
What is Trump's speech for?

Senate backs massive increase in military spending
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-congress/senate-backs-massive-increase-in-military-spending-idUSKCN1BT2PV

V. Arnold | Sep 19, 2017 8:12:32 PM | 48
karlof1 | Sep 19, 2017 6:56:49 PM | 40

Great comment re: Vietnam. The Ken Burns documentary is just one more fairy tale of the U.S. involvement/war in Vietnam.
Among the many myths, foremost is that Ho Chi Minh was a communist; he most assuredly was not. Yes, he was a member of the party in France, but it is irrelevent to history (Ho was a nationalist).
Did you know he tried to engage FDR?
Below is a remarkable interview with John Pilger on the real history of the U.S. and Vietnam; it ain't pretty. Even Mao tried to engage the U.S., which the U.S. duly ignored.

https://www.rt.com/shows/watching-the-hawks/403760-nuclear-standoff-crisis-china/

PavewayIV | Sep 19, 2017 8:12:34 PM | 49
Why is everyone hating on Trump? Be realistic: sometimes you have to genocide 25 million people to save them. We're the God damn hero here - you bastards should be thanking the USA.

Well, I guess we're really not trying to save the North Koreans at all. But they refuse to leave the buffer zone (all of North Korea) that is protecting the world from red Chinese expansion south. Worse than that, the North Koreans insist on protecting themselves BY FORCE from the US. How evil is that?

Reminds me of those evil Syrians and Iraqis who refuse to vacate the buffer zone protecting Israel from Iran. The nerve!

Only US lapdog nations have the right to defend themselves - as long as its with US-made weapons and they're protecting themselves from anybody except the US. And we get to build US bases on their soil. Who wouldn't want that? Because the US is... what did Trump say... RIGHTEOUS. You know:

"...good, virtuous, upright, upstanding, decent; ethical, principled, moral, high-minded, law-abiding, honest, honorable, blameless, irreproachable, noble; saintly, angelic, pure..."

Tell me which one of those synonyms DOES NOT apply to the US? I prefer 'angelic'.

The first thing psychopaths do when they attain any measure of power and control is to redefine evil as anything that threatens their power and control. Then constantly hammer that threat into the minds of the little people so the little people don't think too hard about stringing them up from the lamp posts.

Everything the US has done in my lifetime has been about preserving and protecting the US government no matter how corrupt, evil or immoral it acts. Protecting the people is only given lip service when it can be used to justify further protections for the state. Creation of the Department of Homeland Security Stazi is probably the end stage for full-spectrum dominance over the little people - it is slowly morphing (as planned) into a federal armed force to protect the US government FROM the little people. I guess the FBI wasn't up to the task.

"The government you elect is the government you deserve" Thomas Jefferson, Founding Terrorist.

V. Arnold | Sep 19, 2017 8:14:56 PM | 50
PavewayIV | Sep 19, 2017 8:12:34 PM | 49

Spot on...

Krollchem | Sep 19, 2017 8:26:44 PM | 51
Chauncey Gardiner@ 32

Do you agree that to point of National Interest article seem to be that the US is not capable of invading and controlling non-European countries?

I did find the Cato Institute author to be very poorly informed about the US invasions of Granada and Panama, the Balkan wars, the Kosovo invasion and the Syrian war.

As for ISIS, the author does not know anything about the incubation of ISIS by the US administrations and the Libyan war (Hillary/Obama/Sarkozy) connection . He also does not discuss the billions in military hardware that the US allowed ISIS to capture in Iraq.

As for the US efforts they are more about preventing the formation of an integrated economic sphere between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanese Republic. The war efforts by the US in fighting ISIS are minimal compared to the Syrian and Russian efforts, yet he lies by omission to pump up the US efforts. At least he didn't attempt to praise Turkey (sic) for their efforts in cutting off aid to ISIS and Al Qaeda (under all its names).

Remember that the Cato Institute is another flavor of the NGO spider supporting the deep state!

Please understand that this is not a personal attack as I am here to learn and share.

John Gilberts | Sep 19, 2017 8:44:57 PM | 52
Canada's Trudeau will follow Trump at the UN on Thursday. Today he received an award from the Atlantic Council: 'Worldwide the long established international order is being tested..' And obviously the sexy northern selfie-king knows his place in it...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Kp49TFRMR8g
Don Bacon | Sep 19, 2017 8:51:24 PM | 53
@ 49
Yes, to save the 25 million North Koreans the US must destroy them!

"No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the wellbeing of their own people than the depraved regime in North Korea. It is responsible for the starvation deaths of millions of North Koreans, and for the imprisonment, torture, killing, and oppression of countless more."
. ..but there are limits. . .

"The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."

So give me that "no more contempt" line again, Donald? (Personally, I can't imagine Hillary doing any less. So much for elections.)

Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 8:56:49 PM | 54
"Why is everyone hating on Trump?" Preposterous. You give him too much importance. He is rather the object of ridicule.

"The word occurs 18(!) times."

While the word Sovereignty

Maybe by accident maybe not just conspicuous coincidence. But it seems to me with Trump an era of so-called globalization has come to its end. With self-inflicted wounds ($20T Gov. debt) and new president who is (initially) inward looking, it is time to talk about old stuff. As if the US statehood has been in question for a moment. Old trick of capitalist class.

Chauncey Gardiner | Sep 19, 2017 9:04:30 PM | 55
I was looking for Putin and Sovereignty and I've found this: http://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-uses-putins-arguments-to-undermine-the-world
nonsense factory | Sep 19, 2017 9:21:01 PM | 56
File under "propaganda for domestic consumption"

Targeting Iran was never about nuclear weapons (the U.S. let Pakistan expand its nuclear weapons program without interfering, despite knowing all about the AQ Khan network, because Pakistan was cooperating with the U.S. agenda in Afghanistan and elsewhere), it was about the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline (during the GW Bush era) and the expansion of economic ties with Syria (during the Obama era).

Now, with the easing of sanctions, Iran's pipeline deals have been revived, such as Iran-Pakistan, or Iran-India (undersea) , Iran-Europe, with China and Russia and Turkey as potential partners. Meanwhile, the proposed TAPI pipeline backed by the Clinton, Bush & Obama State Departments, as well as Chevron and Exxon, from Turkmenistan to the Indian Ocean, is still held up due to instability in Afghanistan (i.e. the Taliban would immediately blow it up). Obama's 30,000 troop surge to 100,000 couldn't solve that, and the recent Trump troop surge (much smaller) will have little effect on that either.
TAPI pipe dreams continue, Sep 17 2017

There's no way Trump or Tillerson would ever be honest about this in an international forum, any more than Obama and Clinton would, or Bush and Condi Rice, but it's the same old "great game" for Central Asian oil and gas that's dominated U.S. regional foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.

Don Bacon | Sep 19, 2017 9:26:11 PM | 57
@ 54/55
Of course countries subjected to senseless US sanctions, like Russia, are concerned with sovereignty. They are subject to baseless economic attacks by the country that controls world banking.
b4real | Sep 19, 2017 10:12:08 PM | 59
[throws meat to the lions] Orlov has a great read up
Debsisdead | Sep 19, 2017 10:16:10 PM | 60
It is foolish to consider the trumpet's lunatic ravings in isolation, according to that organ of empire foreign policy dot com , the amerikan airforce is ready and rearing to go and blast the bejeezuz outta North Korea.
Sure it may be bluster when they come out with seeming tosh like:
""We're ready to fight tonight," Gen. Robin Rand, commander of the Air Force's Global Strike Command, told reporters at an Air Force conference in Washington on Monday. "We don't have to spin up, we're ready.""

Because everyone knows that a manned tactical airforce is on the way out, that bombing a population has only ever served to strengthen resolve within that population, but the first point that the airforce of jocks n fighters is verging on obsolescence, might just drive the generals of middle management, concerned that their career is about to hit a brick wall, to go for one last roll of the dice. Blow some shit up, create a few heroes and maybe the inevitable can be staved off for long enough for their scum to rise to the surface, jag a great gig with a contractor, then retire in luxury. I mean to say it's gotta be worth a shot right? The alternative of layoffs and all the sexy fighting stuff being done by unsexy drones, is just too awful to consider.

So what if Guam gets wasted, a good memorial at Arlington will balance that shit and when it is all said and done, most of the people who will get nuked by DPRK aren't amerikans - but here's the best bit, we can sell them to the idjits just like they were, while we build the anger and bloodlust, then backpedal on that when it comes down to lawsuits, compensation or whatever it is those whale-fuckers whine about - right?

A pre-emptive attack based on the possibility that DPRK hasn't yet developed nuke tech sufficiently, but will do so "if we continue to sit on our asses" would be an easy sell to an orange derp whose access to alternative points of view has been cut off.
The only real question is whether the rest of the military (the non-airforce parts) go for it.
The navy likely will because they are in the same boat (pun intended) as the airforce when it comes down to usefulness as a front line conflict agent and they too will likely get a role to play in the destruction of North Korea - at the very least as a weapons platform (just like with the mindless Syria aggression) and may even get to be the forward C&C base since South Korea isn't mobile and may cop a fair amount of DPRK reaction.

Only the army for whom a pre emptive attack on the people of North Korea has little upside, but lots of downside, may oppose this insane butchery. The army will be tasked with neutralising a population whose innate loathing of all things amerikan has just been raised by about ten notches. So soon after the Iraq debacle, they may see an attack as all negative in that once again they will cop the blame and even worse the old enemies - the airforce and navy - will come out smelling like roses. It is true that the bulk of the yellow monkey's 'advisors' are army types, so under normal circumstances they would obstruct any such bullshit grabs for the brass ring by the navy & airforce upstarts - but there is a high probability that the army leadership will do no such thing.
The reason for that is as old as humanity itself and I was sad to see that it copped little mention in the last thread about the 'soft' coup at the whitehouse.

Many people were cheering the takeover by the military doubtless the same people who imagine that "amerika could be great again - if only we go back to the way it was in the 1950's and 60's". What they miss is that everything is fluid; nothing is held in stasis as a proof that perfection has been reached. The 'eisenhower/johnson years were merely steps on the path, the world was never gonna stay in white bourgeois contentment no matter whether unwhites kicked up or not. There are diverse reasons for that from ambitious careerism forcing change so a lucky few can ascend one more rung on the ladder, to the reality that it is impossible for all humans to be content all the time -some groups will be disadvantaged, advertise that then be 'adopted' by careerists as an excuse for forcing change. That is inevitable - as inevitable as the reality that once the military gained power, their next move would be to consolidate it and to try ensure that they kept it for ever.

In other words the initial coup may have been largely bloodless (altho several million dead mid easterners would strongly disagree if they could) but any study of human behavior reveals that it is the need to hold on to power which is what really incites oppression violence and mass murder.
The Pennsylvania Avenue generals understand that the simplest way of retaining control is gonna be if the orange 'whipped* gains re-election. If the orange chunder is gonna win the next one he needs to hit some home runs and have a lot less ties or outright defeats.

At this stage it doesn't matter what turkey kicked up the Korea bizzo, or even it it has any moral dimension at all, what matters is that the trumpet has made it a major issue and if he doesn't 'prevail' in the short-term, the odds of him retaining support much less gaining more support, are gone - very likely for the duration of the tangerine prezdency. It's not as if the ME situation offers the slightest chink of light at the end of the tunnel. Syria is history now and that Iran thing has a good chance of dividing europe from amerika, just as climate change has. I reckon that the junta who, individually & institutionally have a big investment in Nato, will be looking to steer the orange nit away from inciting a confrontation over the nuke deal. Korea could be the alternate shiny thing the junta draws trumpet's attention to in order to distract the dingbat.

So even though it is a total cleft stick that the junta is in, I reckon it is extremely probable that the army branch of the amerikan government will allow the airforce and possibly the navy as well, their moment in the sun.

The way this fuckwittery is shaping up, people of Korea are more likely to be enduring Predators up their jacksies than not, before the end of "the summer of '18'

*anyone who doesn't see that the trumpet displays all the signs (boasting of alleged performance, number of 'conquests' size of penis etc) of a man who is unable to have his voice heard above the demands of the women around him, doesn't comprehend the nature of inter-gender relationships (doncha love 'inter-gender' it sounds exactly like the type of pallid word the identity-ists would use heheh).

Forest | Sep 19, 2017 10:45:08 PM | 61
Ah sovereignty vs. solvency.

There's the rub.

V. Arnold | Sep 19, 2017 10:47:15 PM | 62
Debsisdead | Sep 19, 2017 10:16:10 PM | 60

The main problem I have with your post is China. You do not say anything about China. The Chinese made it clear that if the U.S. pre-emptively attacks the DPRK; China will get involved; and I should think Russia will be somehow involved as well. Moon Jae-In has told the U.S. it (SK) will be the one to decide on an attack, as it should.

But, I do get your drift; I just hope the U.S. will not act...for once. That said; I do think the U.S. lost its tether decades ago...

V. Arnold | Sep 19, 2017 11:00:10 PM | 63
The other possiblity the U.S. won't attack DPRK is that the U.S., cowardly as it is; hasn't attacked a country of any military consequence since WWII.
Don Bacon | Sep 19, 2017 11:36:48 PM | 64
There's one little factor about getting it on with DPRK, besides the ones mentioned, and that is that SecDef Gates several years ago declared that Korea was safe enough to allow it to be an accompanied tour, i.e. soldiers could have their families join them in the Land of the Morning Calm. This coincided with the consolidation of US bases, with a ten billion dollar expansion of Camp Humphreys about seventy miles south of the DMZ. So now we have high-rise apartments with wives, kids, pets, etc. in this "safe" place, now 35,000 strong including all. They practice evacuation. From a recent report --

The noncombatant evacuation operations, or NEO, are aimed at making sure everybody knows their roles in the event of a noncombatant evacuation, which may be ordered in the event of war, political or civil unrest, or a natural or man-made disaster. "I liken the NEO operation to being a scaffolding. It's not a fully fleshed out plan because it's preparing for a million different worst-case scenarios," 1st Lt. Katelyn Radack, a spokeswoman for the 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade, told Stars and Stripes. ... Brandy Madrigal, 32, was participating in her third NEO -- so she knew exactly what to pack when she got the call to report to the Assembly Point at the main gym at Camp Humphreys on June 5. She ticked off the list -- clothes, food for the kids, documents, phone, toiletries -- before driving with her two children from their first-floor apartment to the base to be processed.

Imagine that -- all those people assembling in one place for "processing." They'd get processed, all right. So the US Army won't be red-hot for the mighty US Air Force to (again) conduct its aerial murder in North Korea, with their loved ones being in rocket range of a counter-attack. That's in addition to any feelings people have for the ten million plus South Koreans in Seoul, close to the border.

Stumpy | Sep 19, 2017 11:54:05 PM | 65
Karlof @ 40

re: Ken Burns Viet Nam -- one only has to look at the sponsors. Burns will cleave to the line only more so. Darling of the aristocratic charities. Somehow reaching the glory 50 years later. Now that Agent Orange has nearly completed the harvest.

Action against Iran and NK, could it really be termed "war", anymore?

ben | Sep 20, 2017 12:16:54 AM | 66
Luther Blissett @ 4 said:"sovereign nation" = a country that obeys the US over its own interests

"rogue nation" = a country that has actual sovereignty

Succinct but true..

The fucking hypocrisy in that UN speech takes my breath away. Trump and his mannerisms sure do remind me of "il Duce".

Debsisdead | Sep 20, 2017 12:19:55 AM | 67
@ V Arnold # 62

I deliberately left China outta the equation because the conflict with DPRK will be engineered to be kicked off with a provocation allegedly committed by DRPK, amerika will 'respond' andthe war will quickly escalate. Yes PRC may become involved, but getting into a war with amerika right now is not great for the PRC either, if the most vital concern is the proximity of amerikan troops to the China border, amerika can give an agreement signed in blood that amerikan military will pull back behind the 38th parallel once the 'regime has been changed' and that only Korean men and equipment will remain.

Of course China would be smart to distrust that but sold correctly with incentives and maybe even the use of some mutually trusted referee, China might decide that is a superior option to kicking off ww3.

As for the enlisted mens families somehow I doubt that the military cares any more about them than it does the men and women they have in their forces - so not very much - smart officer class types will be considering the need to 'further their children's education back home' right now, whether or not the trump decides to go for broke. As I pointed out before, the plan will require that DRPK feels trapped into committing some type of really egregious provocation, or false flagging such a provocation.

Imagine Guam got nuked and all initial evidence pointed to DRPK, China is in a tough spot plus most amerikans will be of the opinion that protecting the families in South Korean barracks comes second to vengeance. That would be an easy sell on fox and msnbc.

Amerika seemingly being attacked is also gonna end msnbc & the rest's potshots at the orange derp, just as 911 halted just about all reference to the view shrub stole the election from Gore in the MSM.

Linda O | Sep 20, 2017 12:20:32 AM | 68
Ignoring Trump.

What scares me the most about the US regime's threats to attack and destroy North Korea is I had naively assumed that all the talk was just the standard game theory back and forth. There never was any real threat beyond the occasional minor incident like there have been in the past few decades.

And I didn't understand why China would so openly and absolutely support North Korea with any sort of attack by the US regime.

But then I read some of the neocon online postings or writings about North Korea and it was a sickening shock to realize that I had been so foolish to believe the Korean crisis was not about Korea, but China.

Getting the US regime's military directly on the Chinese border is something the neocons are perfectly willing, and most likely gleefully happy, to trade millions to tens of millions of North and South Korean lives for.

I can't imagine the revulsion and horror the rest of the world must be feeling towards the United States right now.

Nuff Sed | Sep 20, 2017 12:33:07 AM | 69
Talking of Westphalia... Here is an excerpt from an article of mine which which appeared in the Vineyard of the Saker's site earlier this year:
https://thesaker.is/sacred-communities-and-the-emergent-multipolar-landscape/

The German philosopher and sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855 – 1936) distinguished between two types of social groupings. Gemeinschaft (often translated as community or left untranslated) and Gesellschaft (often translated as society). Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft describe the crucial distinction between community and "Civil Society"; community being characterized by a dispensationalist consensus or a sacred communal consensus on a dispensation sent down from on high, and the latter being characterized as a consensus to "agree to disagree" and to agree that a consensus in any meaningful form can no longer be reached, paving the way to a "conventional" polity (agreed to by secular-humanist convention). This "agreement to disagree" which crystalized between the Peace of Augsburg (1555) and the Peace of Westphalia (1644 – 1648) was, in effect, the West's long and excruciating decision to throw out the baby of Community with the bathwater of the Church's malfeasance in the revolutionary fervor of the Reformation and the "Enlightenment" that followed in its wake. But whereas the integrality of church and state was lost with the Peace of Westphalia circa 1648 whereat pre-Westphalian communities gave way to the Westphalian order of "Civil Societies", the Islamic Revolution of 1979 restored community to the Moslem nation of Iran.

psychohistorian | Sep 20, 2017 12:49:38 AM | 70
I posted this comment over in the latest Syria summary thread but then thought that it belongs here as an example of the craven duplicity of empire about Syria sovereignty.

The following is a link and article quote from China news that says Russia is accusing the US of chickenshit (my term) tactics in Syria

"He said the advancing Syrian government troops supported by the Russian Air Force managed to break the fierce resistance and liberate
more than 60 square km of territory on the left bank of the Euphrates River in the last 24 hours.

But their advance was hampered by a sudden rise of the water level in the Euphrates and a two-fold increase of the speed of its current
after the government troops started crossing the river, Konashenkov said.

In the absence of precipitation, the only source of such changes in the water level could be a man-made discharge of water at the dams
north of the Euphrates, which are held by the opposition formations controlled by the international coalition led by the United States, he said.
"

Russia accuses U.S., opposition of hampering Syrian gov't troops' advance

ProPeace | Sep 20, 2017 1:02:39 AM | 71
What's worries me the most in Trumps speech, sounds actually ominously, is the phrases "dead Poles, fighting [???!!!] French, strong[!] English" ... Is this what's planned for the near future? I'm not liking it a bit.

What about Syria's sovereignty? VoltaireNet predicts launching a big campaign to carve out AnloZio run "Kurdistan" (a la Kosovo) from her right after illegal Sep 25th referendum organized by the Barzani mob. Was the speech (written by Jewish ) hinting to POTUS support for that? Meyssan says that Trump could go both ways. I concur, confusing the enemy has been the name of his game so far.

Orwellian "two minutes of hate" against Trump in the lame-scream media does it stop either:

Situation in the US is getting worse, seems that this Fall big changes are coming, and no lies can hide the truth: LIES, LIES & OMG MORE LIES Who is the enemy? Some names can be found here (and in a recent Eric Zuesse piece):

Southern Poverty Law Center Transfers Millions in Cash to Offshore Entities

ProPeace | Sep 20, 2017 1:08:39 AM | 72
Hitlary Killton just can't go away:

Hillary Clinton May Challenge Legitimacy of Presidential Election

The Borg, the AngloZio pedo-satanic cabal of the City of London Crown Corporation, the web of merchants of death and corporate oligarchy have been doing whatever possible to help her stay relevant and expand information war, blame Russia:

Amazon Censor Bad Reviews of Hillary Clinton's New Book

Why Is Google Hiring 1,000 Journalists To Flood Newsrooms Around America?

Hysterical US Lawmakers Breach Time and Space Limits in Fight With Radio Sputnik

james | Sep 20, 2017 1:43:12 AM | 73
@59 b4real.. thanks.. great article.. here it is again for anyone interested..

http://cluborlov.blogspot.ca/2017/09/military-defeat-as-financial-collapse.html

psychohistorian | Sep 20, 2017 3:10:44 AM | 74
@ james #72 with Orlov link

Nice summary but I disagree with the dedollarization part. To me, ending the US dollar as reserve Currency is just a part of the issue. If that occurs American paper money becomes worthless as the article states. While this bankrupts the US, what will it do to the global world of private finance, BIS, SWIFT, IMF, etc.? Does private finance, private property and inheritance all get dealt with in this adjustment? How long will the adjustment period take?

What is clear though now is that there are two factions that are moving in "opposite" directions and the implications will lock up global commerce at some point....fairly soon (weeks/months)......and hopefully adults from all sides will work things out peacefully.

dirka dirka | Sep 20, 2017 4:15:13 AM | 75
Pistachio imperialism -- Bring it on --
john | Sep 20, 2017 5:25:11 AM | 76
these 16 years of bin laden wars constitute the most concerted assault on sovereignty since time out of mind. conspicuously in the cradle of civilization...cultural harmonies undermined and religious sects set at each others throats, tribes ripped from their roots, their facilities and systems desecrated, their families ravaged by rack and ruin and displacement, an alien scourge unleashed on their landscape.

but as someone upstream suggested, the window on these destructive incursions might be closing, what with Russia and China being unconquerable and all.

of course there are other dark forces gnawing at sovereignty , possibly even more stealthily treacherous ones...

like the alien scourge of mass tourism.

b | Sep 20, 2017 5:35:41 AM | 77
Others pointing out the "sovereignty" contradictions: Obama lover and liberal (zionist) interventionist Peter Beinart:

A Radical Rebuke of Barack Obama's Foreign Policy Legacy - Donald Trump used his first address at the United Nations to redefine the idea of sovereignty.

On the one hand, Trump defended sovereignty as a universal ideal. On the other, he demanded that America's enemies stop mistreating their people. The result was gobbledygook.
...
to make his incoherence even more explicit, Trump declared that "our respect for sovereignty is also a call for action. All people deserve a government that cares for their safety, their interests and their well-being." That's like saying that my respect for your right to do whatever you want in your garden should be a call to action for you to stop growing weed.
...
For Trump, by contrast, sovereignty means both that no one can tell the United States what to do inside its borders and that the United States can do exactly that to the countries it doesn't like. That's not the liberal internationalism that Obama espoused. Nor is it the realism of some of Obama's most trenchant critics. It is imperialism. General Pershing, in the Philippines, would have approved.

The Saker at UNZ: Listening to the Donald at the UN

In conclusion, what I take away from this speech is a sense of relief for the rest of the planet and a sense of real worry for the USA. Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and made him what is colloquially referred to as their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a virtual standstill. Sure, the Americans talk a lot, but at least they are doing nothing. That paralysis, which is a direct consequence of the internal infighting, is a blessing for the rest of the planet because it allows everybody else to get things done.
ashley albanese | Sep 20, 2017 5:57:26 AM | 78
Pressure will be intense on U S business in east coast China to refrain from converting their 'yuan' profits into gold .
What a contradictory set of pressures much
ashley albanese | Sep 20, 2017 5:59:47 AM | 79
what a contradictory set of pressures much U S business will be under . That's the nature of Capitalism , isn't it ?
anonymus | Sep 20, 2017 6:49:13 AM | 80
Wtf? Actor Morgan Freeman featuring in cold war warmongering propaganda campaign directed against Russia and Putin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz9PNoecNxU
notlurking | Sep 20, 2017 7:10:22 AM | 81
anonymus | Sep 20, 2017 6:49:13 AM | 79

I would think that most of Hollywood is neolib heavy on foreign policy.....

Linda O | Sep 20, 2017 8:03:48 AM | 82
My god... That Morgan Freeman video is bizarre and sickening. I see that dimwitted lowlife Rob Reiner was one of the people who funded that garbage.

[Sep 19, 2017] I had shared with you my opinion that the anti-Iran bluster was just that, given that Russia is Iran's strategic partner.

Sep 19, 2017 | www.unz.com

Anon > , Disclaimer September 19, 2017 at 3:05 pm GMT

I had emailed the following comment to a friend just a few hours ago. It seems germane, so I'm taking the liberty of just pasting it here, in the context of the Iran policy discussion :

!

As you know I had high hopes of Trump, based mostly on my wishful thinking about his dog-whistles. Now I am mostly inclined to view him in terms appropriate to the sell-out to the Judaic world order detailed by Petras in his recent article on Who Rules America.

The main serious person I know of who continues to harbour hopes about Trump's hidden agenda is Mark Glenn of The Ugly Truth.

I had shared with you my opinion that the anti-Iran bluster was just that, given that Russia is Iran's strategic partner. But lately I concluded that it was probably just dangerous Judaic policy. A recent editorial essay in Rothschild's Economist has given me pause. The article strongly opposes taking on the nuclear pact with Iran. So what are the mega-Jews concerned about? Maybe Trump intends to lever Iran into nuclear status. Their leadership says that's what will happen. Trump, like Bannon with his absurd affirmations of allegiance to Judeo-Christian civilisation, might be loving the Jews to death. A nuclear armed Iran might very well be what humanity needs. And America as well. Just a thought.

https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21728896-it-right-worry-about-irans-growing-influence-trump-administration-may-be-about

I know this will not convince you. That's okay. It's just a possibility. But keep it tucked away in a recess of your head for future reference.

!

If Iran gives every indication of proceeding with nuclear arming, once the US leaves it no alternative, it would require a nuclear umbrella until such time as it could defend itself. That might come from Russian or Chinese nukes under the rubric of SCO. Like American nukes in Turkey and Germany, these could be put at the disposal of the Iranis without violating the Non-Proliferarion Treaty, or at least no more than the American nukes under foreign control do.

[Sep 19, 2017] Since the initial strike in April, the Trump administration has deliberately attacked regime or allied forces an additional five times

Notable quotes:
"... Anyone could tell by that point that Assad isn't going to be overthrown. The aim now is to limit the Assad regime's territorial gains as much as possible, and the "rebels" proved they were useless at doing that when Shia militia reached the Iraqi border at al-Tanf, and cut them off from reaching Deir ez-Zor back in May (which was what one of the attacks mentioned above was about). ..."
Sep 19, 2017 | www.unz.com

matt > , September 19, 2017 at 5:07 pm GMT

@WJ Outside of an almost symbolic launch of cruise missiles into Syria in April, how has Trump been a warmonger?

I remember the debate between Pence and the hideous Tim Kaine where the Democrat vowed that there would be No Fly Zone over Syria which would certainly have allowed the head chopping rebels to gain a stronger foothold.

In addition to all that, Trump has also cut off aid to the Syrian rebels. His Afghanistan policy /escalation is also symbolic. US troops won't be in direct combat and there will only be 15000 there anyway.

Outside of an almost symbolic launch of cruise missiles into Syria in April, how has Trump been a warmonger?

You haven't been paying attention. Since the initial strike in April, the Trump administration has deliberately attacked regime or allied forces an additional five times. ( one , two , three , four , five ).

Including the Tomahawks in April, that's a total of 6 deliberate attacks on the Syrian Arab Republic or its allies (so far), which is already 6 more than Obama carried out during his entire presidency. And it's not like this is the end of Trump's tenure, either; it's the 9th goddamn month since he's been in office. I'm sure the war hawks in Wahington are quite pleased with his progress, as they should be.

In addition to all that, Trump has also cut off aid to the Syrian rebels. His Afghanistan policy /escalation is also symbolic.

Anyone could tell by that point that Assad isn't going to be overthrown. The aim now is to limit the Assad regime's territorial gains as much as possible, and the "rebels" proved they were useless at doing that when Shia militia reached the Iraqi border at al-Tanf, and cut them off from reaching Deir ez-Zor back in May (which was what one of the attacks mentioned above was about).

After that, the Trump administration put all its eggs in the "Syrian Democratic Forces/People's Protection Units (SDF/YPG) basket, the mainly Kurdish (with some Arab fighters) militia that the US has been using to fight ISIS since 2015 (it's also, ironically, a hard left socialist organization. Think Kurdish Antifa. Though I doubt Trump knows or cares or could do anything about it even if he did). Trump has given the SDF <a title="" https://sputniknews.com/amp/middleeast/201709141057402885-america-weaponry-deir-ez-zor/&quot ; https://sputniknews.com/amp/middleeast/201709141057402885-america-weaponry-deir-ez-zor/&quot ;heavy weaponry with the aim of confronting Assad and limiting his territorial gains. They've also been pressuring the rebel groups they formerly supported to join the SDF.

I have sympathy for the SDF/YPG and the Syrian Kurds, and it made sense to support them when they were under direct assault from ISIS (though US motives were hardly altruistic even then). But ISIS is all but beaten now, and this is a dangerous game the US is playing, which could readily lead to a military confrontation betweeen the US and Russia and/or Iran. In fact, just a few days ago, the SDF seized part of Deir ez-Zor after SAA forces reached the city, and the Pentagon is now accusing Russia (which has in the past at least had good relations with the SDF/YPG), of deliberately bombing SDF fighters, in close proximity to American special forces.

US troops won't be in direct combat and there will only be 15000 there anyway.

Only 15,000! I guess you wouldn't mind, then, if they Taliban, or the Afghan Army for that matter, or any other country, put 15,000 troops on American soil, as a "symbolic" gesture.

Trump has also accelerated US collaboration in the sadistic torture of Yemen by the Saudis, past the levels under even Obama, which was already shameful.

And again, we should also keep in mind that it's only been 9 months. For his next act, Trump might be thinking about ending the Iran deal in October.

[Sep 18, 2017] Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish partnerships with military contractors like SAIC, Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.

Notable quotes:
"... In addition to funding Bellingcat and joint ventures with the CIA, Brin's Google is heavily invested in Crowdstrike, an American cybersecurity technology firm based in Irvine, California. ..."
"... Crowdstrike is the main "source" of the "Russians hacked the DNC" story. ..."
"... Allegations of Russian perfidy are routinely issued by private companies with lucrative US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. The companies claiming to protect the nation against "threats" have the ability to manufacture "threats". ..."
"... US offensive cyber operations have emphasized political coercion and opinion shaping, shifting public perception in NATO countries as well as globally in ways favorable to the US, and to create a sense of unease and distrust among perceived adversaries such as Russia and China. ..."
"... The Snowden revelations made it clear that US offensive cyber capabilities can and have been directed both domestically and internationally. The notion that US and NATO cyber operations are purely defensive is a myth. ..."
"... The perception that a foreign attacker may have infiltrated US networks, is monitoring communications, and perhaps considering even more damaging actions, can have a disorienting effect. ..."
"... In the world of US "hybrid warfare" against Russia, offensive cyber operations work in tandem with NATO propaganda efforts, perhaps best exemplified by the "online investigation" antics of the Atlantic Council's Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat disinformation site. ..."
Sep 18, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Abe , September 16, 2017 at 1:31 pm

Yellow journalism now employs "open source and social media investigation" scams foisted by Eliot Higgins and the Bellingcat disinformation site.

Bellingcat is allied with the New York Times and the Washington Post, the two principal mainstream media organs for "regime change" propaganda, via the First Draft Coalition "partner network".

In a triumph of Orwellian Newspeak, this Google-sponsored "post-Truth" Propaganda 3.0 coalition declares that member organizations will "work together to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the verification process".

The New York Times routinely hacks up Bellingcat "reports" and pretends they're "verification"

Malachy Browne, "Senior Story Producer" at the New York Times, cited Bellingcat to embellish the media "story" about the Khan Shaykhun chemical incident in Idlib Syria.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/insider/the-times-uses-forensic-mapping-to-verify-a-syrian-chemical-attack.html

Before joining the Times, Browne was an editor at "social news and marketing agency" Storyful and at Reported. ly, the "social reporting" arm of Pierre Omidyar's First Look Media.

Browne generously "supplemented" his "reporting" on the Khan Shaykun incident with "videos gathered by the journalist Eliot Higgins and the social media news agency Storyful".

Browne encouraged Times readers to participate in the Bellingcat-style "verification" charade: "Find a computer, get on Google Earth and match what you see in the video to the streets and buildings"

Browne of Storyful and Higgins of Bellingcat are founding members of the Google-funded "First Draft" coalition.

Browne demonstrates how the NYT and other "First Draft" coalition media outlets use video to "strengthen" their "storytelling".

In 2016, the NYT video department hired Browne and Andrew Glazer. a senior producer on the team that launched VICE News, to help "enhance" the "reporting" at the Times.

Browne represents the Times' effort to package its dubious "reporting" using the Storyful marketing strategy of "building trust, loyalty, and revenue with insight and emotionally driven content" wedded with Bellingcat style "digital forensics" scams.

In other words, we should expect the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, UK Guardian, and all the other "First Draft" coalition media "partners" to barrage us more Bellingcat / Atlantic Council-style Facebook and YouTube video mashups, crazy fun with Google Earth, and Twitter campaigns.

Abe , September 16, 2017 at 7:00 pm

There is no reason to assume that the trollish rants of "Voytenko" are from some outraged flag-waving "patriot" in Kiev. There are plenty of other "useful idiots" ready, willing and able to make mischief.

For example, about a million Jews emigrated to Israel ("made Aliyah") from the post-Soviet states during the 1990s. Some 266,300 were Ukrainian Jews. A large number of Ukrainian Jews also emigrated to the United States during this period. For example, out of an estimated 400 thousand Russian-speaking Jews in Metro New York, the largest number (thirty-six percent) hail from Ukraine. Needless to say, many among them are not so well disposed toward the nations of Russia or Ukraine, and quite capable of all manner of mischief.

A particularly "useful idiot" making mischief the days is Sergey Brin of Google. Brin's parents were graduates of Moscow State University who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1979 when their son was five years old.

Google, the company that runs the most visited website in the world, the company that owns YouTube, is very snugly in bed with the US military-industrial-surveillance complex.

In fact, Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish "partnerships" with military contractors like SAIC, Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.

Google's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful".

In a 2004 letter prior to their initial public offering, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin explained their "Don't be evil" culture required objectivity and an absence of bias: "We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see."

The corporate giant appears to have replaced the original motto altogether. A carefully reworded version appears in the Google Code of Conduct: "You can make money without doing evil".

This new gospel allows Google and its "partners" to make money promoting propaganda and engaging in surveillance, and somehow manage to not "be evil". That's "post-truth" logic for you.

Google has been enthusiastically promoting Eliot Higgins "arm chair analytics" since 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbWhcWizSFY

Indeed, a very cozy cross-promotion is happening between Google and Bellingcat.

In November 2014, Google Ideas and Google For Media, partnered the George Soros-funded Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) to host an "Investigathon" in New York City. Google Ideas promoted Higgins' "War and Pieces: Social Media Investigations" song and dance via their YouTube page.

Higgins constantly insists that Bellingcat "findings" are "reaffirmed" by accessing imagery in Google Earth.

Google Earth, originally called EarthViewer 3D, was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funded company acquired by Google in 2004. Google Earth uses satellite images provided by the company Digital Globe, a supplier of the US Department of Defense (DoD) with deep connections to both the military and intelligence communities.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is both a combat support agency under the United States Department of Defense, and an intelligence agency of the United States Intelligence Community. Robert T. Cardillo, director of the NGA, lavishly praised Digital Globe as "a true mission partner in every sense of the word". Examination of the Board of Directors of Digital Globe reveals intimate connections to DoD and CIA

Google has quite the history of malicious behavior. In what became known as the "Wi-Spy" scandal, it was revealed that Google had been collecting hundreds of gigabytes of payload data, including personal and sensitive information. First names, email addresses, physical addresses, and a conversation between two married individuals planning an extra-marital affair were all cited by the FCC. In a 2012 settlement, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Google will pay $22.5 million for overriding privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser. Though it was the largest civil penalty the Federal Trade Commission had ever imposed for violating one of its orders, the penalty as little more than symbolic for a company that had $2.8 billion in earnings the previous quarter.

Google is a joint venture partner with the CIA In 2009, Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel invested "under $10 million each" into Recorded Future shortly after the company was founded. The company developed technology that strips information from web pages, blogs, and Twitter accounts.

In addition to funding Bellingcat and joint ventures with the CIA, Brin's Google is heavily invested in Crowdstrike, an American cybersecurity technology firm based in Irvine, California.

Crowdstrike is the main "source" of the "Russians hacked the DNC" story.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council "regime change" think tank. Alperovitz said that Crowdstrike has "high confidence" it was "Russian hackers". "But we don't have hard evidence," Alperovitch admitted in a June 16, 2016 Washington Post interview.

Allegations of Russian perfidy are routinely issued by private companies with lucrative US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. The companies claiming to protect the nation against "threats" have the ability to manufacture "threats".

The US and UK possess elite cyber capabilities for both cyberspace espionage and offensive operations.

Both the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are intelligence agencies with a long history of supporting military operations. US military cyber operations are the responsibility of US Cyber Command, whose commander is also the head of the NSA.

US offensive cyber operations have emphasized political coercion and opinion shaping, shifting public perception in NATO countries as well as globally in ways favorable to the US, and to create a sense of unease and distrust among perceived adversaries such as Russia and China.

The Snowden revelations made it clear that US offensive cyber capabilities can and have been directed both domestically and internationally. The notion that US and NATO cyber operations are purely defensive is a myth.

Recent US domestic cyber operations have been used for coercive effect, creating uncertainty and concern within the American government and population.

The perception that a foreign attacker may have infiltrated US networks, is monitoring communications, and perhaps considering even more damaging actions, can have a disorienting effect.

In the world of US "hybrid warfare" against Russia, offensive cyber operations work in tandem with NATO propaganda efforts, perhaps best exemplified by the "online investigation" antics of the Atlantic Council's Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat disinformation site.

Abe , September 16, 2017 at 1:58 pm

Higgins and Bellingcat receives direct funding from the Open Society Foundations (OSF) founded by business magnate George Soros, and from Google's Digital News Initiatives (DNI).

Google's 2017 DNI Fund Annual Report describes Higgins as "a world–leading expert in news verification".

Higgins claims the DNI funding "allowed us to push this to the next level".
https://digitalnewsinitiative.com/news/case-study-codifying-social-conflict-data/

In their zeal to propagate the story of Higgins as a courageous former "unemployed man" now busy independently "Codifying social conflict data", Google neglects to mention Higgins' role as a "research fellow" for the NATO-funded Atlantic Council "regime change" think tank.

Despite their claims of "independent journalism", Eliot Higgins and the team of disinformation operatives at Bellingcat depend on the Atlantic Council to promote their "online investigations".

The Atlantic Council donors list includes:

– US government and military entities: US State Department, US Air Force, US Army, US Marines.

– The NATO military alliance

– Large corporations and major military contractors: Chevron, Google, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BP, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Northrup Grumman, SAIC, ConocoPhillips, and Dow Chemical

– Foreign governments: United Arab Emirates (UAE; which gives the think tank at least $1 million), Kingdom of Bahrain, City of London, Ministry of Defense of Finland, Embassy of Latvia, Estonian Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Defense of Georgia

– Other think tanks and think tankers: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Nicolas Veron of Bruegel (formerly at PIIE), Anne-Marie Slaughter (head of New America Foundation), Michele Flournoy (head of Center for a New American Security), Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution.

Higgins is a Research Associate of the Department of War Studies at King's College, and was principal co-author of the Atlantic Council "reports" on Ukraine and Syria.

Damon Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programs and Strategy at the Atlantic Council, a co-author with Higgins of the report, effusively praised Higgins' effort to bolster anti-Russian propaganda:

Wilson stated, "We make this case using only open source, all unclassified material. And none of it provided by government sources. And it's thanks to works, the work that's been pioneered by human rights defenders and our partner Eliot Higgins, uh, we've been able to use social media forensics and geolocation to back this up." (see Atlantic Council video presentation minutes 35:10-36:30)

However, the Atlantic Council claim that "none" of Higgins' material was provided by government sources is an obvious lie.

Higgins' primary "pieces of evidence" are a video depicting a Buk missile launcher and a set of geolocation coordinates that were supplied by the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) and the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior via the Facebook page of senior-level Ukrainian government official Arsen Avakov, the Minister of Internal Affairs.

Higgins and the Atlantic Council are working in support of the Pentagon and Western intelligence's "hybrid war" against Russia.

The laudatory bio of Higgins on the Kings College website specifically acknowledges his service to the Atlantic Council:

"an award winning investigative journalist and publishes the work of an international alliance of fellow investigators using freely available online information. He has helped inaugurate open-source and social media investigations by trawling through vast amounts of data uploaded constantly on to the web and social media sites. His inquiries have revealed extraordinary findings, including linking the Buk used to down flight MH17 to Russia, uncovering details about the August 21st 2013 Sarin attacks in Damascus, and evidencing the involvement of the Russian military in the Ukrainian conflict. Recently he has worked with the Atlantic Council on the report "Hiding in Plain Sight", which used open source information to detail Russia's military involvement in the crisis in Ukraine."

While it honors Higgins' enthusiastic "trawling", King's College curiously neglects to mention that Higgins' "findings" on the Syian sarin attacks were thoroughly debunked.

King's College also curiously neglects to mention the fact that Higgins, now listed as a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council's "Future Europe Initiative", was principal co-author of the April 2016 Atlantic Council "report" on Syria.

The report's other key author was John E. Herbst, United States Ambassador to Ukraine from September 2003 to May 2006 (the period that became known as the Orange Revolution) and Director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.

Other report authors include Frederic C. Hof, who served as Special Adviser on Syrian political transition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012. Hof was previously the Special Coordinator for Regional Affairs in the US Department of State's Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, where he advised Special Envoy George Mitchel. Hof had been a Resident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East since November 2012, and assumed the position as Director in May 2016.

There is no daylight between the "online investigations" of Higgins and Bellingcat and the "regime change" efforts of the NATO-backed Atlantic Council.

Thanks to the Atlantic Council, Soros, and Google, it's a pretty well-funded gig for fake "citizen investigative journalist" Higgins.

[Sep 18, 2017] How The Military Defeated Trumps Insurgency

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Trump was seen as a presidential candidate who would possibly move towards a less interventionist foreign policy. That hope is gone. The insurgency that brought Trump to the top was defeated by a counter-insurgency campaign waged by the U.S. military. ..."
"... The military has taken control of the White House process and it is now taking control of its policies. ..."
"... a president who arrived at the White House with no experience in the military or government and brought with him advisers deeply skeptical of what they labeled the "globalist" worldview. In coordinated efforts and quiet conversations, some of Trump's aides have worked for months to counter that view, hoping the president can be persuaded to maintain -- if not expand -- the American footprint and influence abroad ..."
"... It is indisputable that the generals are now ruling in Washington DC. They came to power over decades by shaping culture through their sponsorship of Hollywood, by manipulating the media through "embedded" reporting and by forming and maintaining the countries infrastructure through the Army Corps of Engineers. The military, through the NSA as well as through its purchasing power , controls the information flow on the internet. Until recently the military establishment only ruled from behind the scene. The other parts of the power triangle , the corporation executives and the political establishment, were more visible and significant. But during the 2016 election the military bet on Trump and is now, after he unexpectedly won, collecting its price. ..."
"... Trump's success as the "Not-Hillary" candidate was based on an anti-establishment insurgency. Representatives of that insurgency, Flynn, Bannon and the MAGA voters, drove him through his first months in office. An intense media campaign was launched to counter them and the military took control of the White House. The anti-establishment insurgents were fired. Trump is now reduced to public figure head of a stratocracy - a military junta which nominally follows the rule of law. ..."
"... It is no great surprise that Trump has been drawn into the foreign policy mainstream; the same happened to President Obama early in his presidency. More ominous is that Trump has turned much of his power over to generals. Worst of all, many Americans find this reassuring. They are so disgusted by the corruption and shortsightedness of our political class that they turn to soldiers as an alternative. It is a dangerous temptation. ..."
"... This is no longer a Coup Waiting to Happen The coup has happened with few noticing it and ever fewer concerned about it. Everything of importance now passes through the Junta's hands: ..."
"... Thus we get a continuation of a failed Afghanistan policy and will soon get a militarily aggressive policy towards Iran . ..."
"... Asked whether he was predicting war [with North Korea], [former defence minister of Japan, Satoshi] Morimoto said: "I think Washington has not decided ... The final decision-maker is [US Defence Secretary] Mr Mattis ... Not the president." ..."
"... Nationalistic indoctrination, already at abnormal heights in the U.S. society, will further increase. Military control will creep into ever extending fields of once staunchly civilian areas of policy. (Witness the increasing militarization of the police.) ..."
"... It is only way to sustain the empire. ..."
"... It is doubtful that Trump will be able to resist the policies imposed on him. Any flicker of resistance will be smashed. The outside insurgency which enabled his election is left without a figurehead, It will likely disperse. The system won. ..."
"... The U$A corporate empire is driven by, and according to, the dictates of the mega-corporate desires. The Generals dance to their tune. ..."
"... I would argue that Mattis, McMaster, Kelly, and their line reports don't represent "the US military", or even its generals per se. They represent themselves as people financially beholden to major investment banks for their retirement funds; people fearful of being blackmailed and destroyed by the NSA and CIA and Mossad; people who rose to senior posts during prior administrations because they were flunkies to the establishment . ..."
"... Trump's wealth (at least in the high hundreds of millions $) and his election victory say he's no moron. He probably knows what he is doing. He's either a guy who gave up the struggle after getting the proverbial political hell beaten out of him in the first months of his administration, or he willingly misled his electoral base when campaigning. Perhaps a little of both. He's known for being a BS merchant. Myself, I think he lied outright to the voters during his run for president. It's not a wild idea: so did Obama, Bush, and Clinton. Bigly. ..."
"... Trump made the decisions that we criticse so much. Trump decided to let the Obama holdovers stay in the administration. He decided to hire Goldman Sachs flunkies. He decided to send cruise missiles to strike Shayrat. He decided to approve US assistance to Saudi Arabia in Yemen. H decided to let his zionist son-in-law, who is indebted to George Soros, into the White House. He decided to fire Bannon almost as soon as Bannon came out publicly against war with North Korea. (Possibly a deliberate, desperate attempt at a 'spoiler' tactic on Bannon's part, to prevent conflict.) Trump decided to renege on his promises to the electorate about immigration. He decided to sign an unprecedented, unconstitutional law that bound his hands and imposed sanctions on Russia. He decided to go along with the Russian hacking lie by saying that Russia could, maybe, have hacked the DNC and HRC and whoever else (probably including Disney, the Shriners, and my mother). He decided to employ Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus, Scaramucchi and everyone else. He approved all of those things. ..."
"... It is not especially clear to me (being an outsider to US politics) which of the groups (or combination of groups) seems to have come out on top and have their guys as the gate-keeping, information-vetting guys doing the briefing of Trump. My feel of it is that the Pentagon has gained while JSOC, the black ops contractors, and black-on-black ops contractors have lost. The CIA seems to have broken even. Is this a fair read? ..."
"... Is the possibility of Trump as controlled opposition so far-fetched? Do you think the "power elite's political wing" only runs one candidate? Have you heard of "illusion of choice"? Do you think sheepdog Bernie was a real candidate? ..."
"... Obama and Trump both gained greater apparent legitimacy by: 1) beating the establishment candidate; and 2) being besieged by bat-shit crazy critics (birthers; anti-Russians & antifa). ..."
"... As soon as you choose a side, you are trapped. Two sides of the same coin. Minted in hell. ..."
Sep 18, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Trump was seen as a presidential candidate who would possibly move towards a less interventionist foreign policy. That hope is gone. The insurgency that brought Trump to the top was defeated by a counter-insurgency campaign waged by the U.S. military. (Historically its first successful one). The military has taken control of the White House process and it is now taking control of its policies.

It is schooling Trump on globalism and its "indispensable" role in it. Trump was insufficiently supportive of their desires and thus had to undergo reeducation:

When briefed on the diplomatic, military and intelligence posts, the new president would often cast doubt on the need for all the resources. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson organized the July 20 session to lay out the case for maintaining far-flung outposts -- and to present it, using charts and maps, in a way the businessman-turned-politician would appreciate

Trump was hauled into a Pentagon basement 'tank' and indoctrinated by the glittering four-star generals he admired since he was a kid:

The session was, in effect, American Power 101 and the student was the man working the levers. It was part of the ongoing education of a president who arrived at the White House with no experience in the military or government and brought with him advisers deeply skeptical of what they labeled the "globalist" worldview. In coordinated efforts and quiet conversations, some of Trump's aides have worked for months to counter that view, hoping the president can be persuaded to maintain -- if not expand -- the American footprint and influence abroad

Trump was sold the establishment policies he originally despised. No alternative view was presented to him.

It is indisputable that the generals are now ruling in Washington DC. They came to power over decades by shaping culture through their sponsorship of Hollywood, by manipulating the media through "embedded" reporting and by forming and maintaining the countries infrastructure through the Army Corps of Engineers. The military, through the NSA as well as through its purchasing power , controls the information flow on the internet. Until recently the military establishment only ruled from behind the scene. The other parts of the power triangle , the corporation executives and the political establishment, were more visible and significant. But during the 2016 election the military bet on Trump and is now, after he unexpectedly won, collecting its price.

Trump's success as the "Not-Hillary" candidate was based on an anti-establishment insurgency. Representatives of that insurgency, Flynn, Bannon and the MAGA voters, drove him through his first months in office. An intense media campaign was launched to counter them and the military took control of the White House. The anti-establishment insurgents were fired. Trump is now reduced to public figure head of a stratocracy - a military junta which nominally follows the rule of law.

Stephen Kinzer describes this as America's slow-motion military coup:
Ultimate power to shape American foreign and security policy has fallen into the hands of three military men [...]
...
Being ruled by generals seems preferable to the alternative. It isn't.
...
[It] leads toward a distorted set of national priorities, with military "needs" always rated more important than domestic ones.
...
It is no great surprise that Trump has been drawn into the foreign policy mainstream; the same happened to President Obama early in his presidency. More ominous is that Trump has turned much of his power over to generals. Worst of all, many Americans find this reassuring. They are so disgusted by the corruption and shortsightedness of our political class that they turn to soldiers as an alternative. It is a dangerous temptation.

The country has fallen to that temptation even on social-economic issues:

In the wake of the deadly racial violence in Charlottesville this month, five of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were hailed as moral authorities for condemning hate in less equivocal terms than the commander in chief did.
...
On social policy, military leaders have been voices for moderation.

The junta is bigger than its three well known leaders:

Kelly, Mattis and McMaster are not the only military figures serving at high levels in the Trump administration. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke each served in various branches of the military, and Trump recently tapped former Army general Mark S. Inch to lead the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
...
the National Security Council [..] counts two other generals on the senior staff.

This is no longer a Coup Waiting to Happen The coup has happened with few noticing it and ever fewer concerned about it. Everything of importance now passes through the Junta's hands:

[Chief of staff John] Kelly initiated a new policymaking process in which just he and one other aide [...] will review all documents that cross the Resolute desk.
...
The new system [..] is designed to ensure that the president won't see any external policy documents, internal policy memos, agency reports and even news articles that haven't been vetted.

To control Trump the junta filters his information input and eliminates any potentially alternative view:

Staff who oppose [policy xyz] no longer have unfettered access to Trump, and nor do allies on the outside [.. .] Kelly now has real control over the most important input: the flow of human and paper advice into the Oval Office. For a man as obsessed about his self image as Trump, a new flow of inputs can make the world of difference.

The Trump insurgency against the establishment was marked by a mostly informal information and decision process. That has been destroyed and replaced:

Worried that Trump would end existing US spending/policies (largely, still geared to cold war priorities), the senior military staff running the Trump administration launched a counter-insurgency against the insurgency.
...
General Kelly, Trump's Chief of Staff, has put Trump on a establishment-only media diet.
...
In short, by controlling Trump's information flow with social media/networks, the generals smashed the insurgency's OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act). Deprived of this connection, Trump is now weathervaning to cater to the needs of the establishment ...

The Junta members dictate their policies to Trump by only proposing to him certain alternatives. The one that is most preferable to them will be presented as the only desirable one. "There are no alternatives," Trump will be told again and again.

Thus we get a continuation of a failed Afghanistan policy and will soon get a militarily aggressive policy towards Iran.

Other countries noticed how the game has changed. The real decisions are made by the generals, Trump is ignored as a mere figurehead:

Asked whether he was predicting war [with North Korea], [former defence minister of Japan, Satoshi] Morimoto said: "I think Washington has not decided ... The final decision-maker is [US Defence Secretary] Mr Mattis ... Not the president."

Climate change, its local catastrophes and the infrastructure problems it creates within the U.S. will further extend the military role in shaping domestic U.S. policy.

Nationalistic indoctrination, already at abnormal heights in the U.S. society, will further increase. Military control will creep into ever extending fields of once staunchly civilian areas of policy. (Witness the increasing militarization of the police.)

It is only way to sustain the empire.

It is doubtful that Trump will be able to resist the policies imposed on him. Any flicker of resistance will be smashed. The outside insurgency which enabled his election is left without a figurehead, It will likely disperse. The system won.

Posted by b on September 18, 2017 at 11:20 AM | Permalink

Stephen | Sep18, 2017 11:32:00 AM | 1

Only good news: The mask has been torn off US elections. They simply don't matter. Waste of time and money. US has become Saddam's Iraq, Sisi's Egypt, Mugabe's Zimbabwe etc....expect to see Trump win 90% of vote in 2020....hahaha...
Hogwash | Sep18, 2017 11:32:04 AM | 2
Hogwash - The SAA just crossed the Euphrates. If the neocons were really in control, WW3 would start before dawn tomorrow. Otherwise, Assad will get his biggest oil field back from ISIS.

The Russians are hinting that the SDF isn't really fighting ISIS but just pretending to while ISIS soldiers switch uniforms. If that's true, it means the neocons may still be in charge, but what are they going to do about the Syrian Army blocking them now?

Ken Nari | Sep18, 2017 11:46:59 AM | 3
Interesting, and certainly a possible explanation of what's going on. Still, if the military is running the show, why the growth of private mercenary businesses? (A new meaning for "corporate warriors."). My own feeling, based on nothing except decades of experience working with the military, is that the generals don't mind a few little wars, but they well know the risks of a big one.

For that reason, the military leadership seems to be trying to cool things down -- that the U.S. didn't go to war with Iran, Russia, China or North Korea (yet) may be due to the influence of the top brass.

b: It is doubtful that Trump will be able to resist the policies imposed on him.

hmmm...I'm not sure there's any pressure at all on Trump. Since Kennedy was removed the president has little real power and is mostly to provide the trappings of democracy and keep the proles entertained. Over 100 years ago T. Roosevelt noticed the lack of presidential freedom to act -- the bully pulpit and all that.

financial matters | Sep18, 2017 11:47:33 AM | 4
One of the main reasons I was pleased to see Trump get elected was that he wanted to get us out of Syria. Somewhat amazingly I'd say, that has pretty much happened.

Russia, Iran and China have shown themselves to be responsible players and have the strength to back that up.

So, I think in reality the US military will be forced by facts on the ground, as well as a weakening of their propaganda, to go along with Trump's original more accommodating posture.

Don Bacon | Sep18, 2017 12:06:26 PM | 5
It's probably inevitable that the military would rule in the twilight of US world dominance.

Back in the true USA#1 days it was different. A couple of President Truman quotes: "It's the fellows who go to West Point and are trained to think they're gods in uniform that I plan to take apart". . ."I didn't fire him [General MacArthur] because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three quarters of them would be in jail."

The main problem with generals is that most (not all) of them got to where they are by sucking up to higher authority, or "go along to get along." Then couple that with all the perks they get including fine housing, enlisted servants and a fat $250K pension for full generals, and they look at themselves in the mirror with all their fancy ribbons and medals and naturally adopt Harry Truman's "gods in uniform" opinion of themselves, forgetting that they have become successful in an isolated military milieu that favors appearance and disregards lack of accomplishment. And the current crop of generals certainly lacks accomplishment.

Lemur | Sep18, 2017 12:19:50 PM | 6
"Nationalistic indoctrination, already at abnormal heights in the U.S. society, will further increase."

If that were true, why is the historic American nation being replaced by mystery meats from the global south? The Washington machine certainly produces oodles of propaganda, but it is virulently opposed to ethnocentrism at home and abroad, because that might lead to groups with the solidarity to stand up to a degenerate empire.

The indoctrination taking place here is militaristic globalism. And everyone is invited.

ben | Sep18, 2017 12:27:31 PM | 7
b said:"Trump was seen as a presidential candidate who would possibly move towards a less interventionist foreign policy."

Only by those who don't fully understand the TRUE American system, and those who dream of a system that actually provides " truth, liberty and justice for all".

The better liar won the "election".

The swamp (sewer) in Washington getting muddier each day

Posted by: OJS | Sep18, 2017 12:44:21 PM | 8

The swamp (sewer) in Washington getting muddier each day
ben | Sep18, 2017 12:48:52 PM | 9
P.S...The U$A corporate empire is driven by, and according to, the dictates of the mega-corporate desires. The Generals dance to their tune.

"It's just business" Trump has NEVER intended to be anything but what the elites wanted him to be....A wealthy puppet..

Michael McNulty | Sep18, 2017 12:49:32 PM | 10
I think the US is weak militarily for two deep and fundamental reasons, both of which have US politicians to blame.

First, the US has not had able generals and admirals since WWII because politicians today[especially since 9/11] cannot take criticism. Therefore men like MacArthur and Kimmel, who would tell them a war can't be won like that or this strategy is a bad idea, no longer get the promotions. Yes-men get promoted over more able men.

Second, this promotion of yes-men allows politicians to take over the planning of a war. Whereas MacArthur would have shut the door on the neo-cons and told them he'll let him know when his plan is ready, today politicians use political strategy to try and defeat the war strategy of an opponent. For example, Rumsfeld should have been told that if he wanted to steal Iraq he'd need half a million men - but the generals tried to do the impossible and steal Iraq with a third that number because more was politically sensitive.

If politicians are going to have a war, leave it to able generals to plan it. Or lose.

karlof1 | Sep18, 2017 12:50:31 PM | 11
There's no saving the Unipolar attempt to establish Full Spectrum Dominance -- not even nuclear war -- and I think the generals and their minders actually know this, although they seem to be keeping up appearances. Escobar's latest from last Friday details why this is so, http://www.atimes.com/article/iran-turns-art-deal-upside/

Even the Brazilian regime change project is becoming a loser as the massive corruption scandal is about to devour the neocon favorite Temer, while Lula is rising like the Phoenix. The latest leak scandal over the meeting between Rohrabacher and Kelly regarding Russiagate and the status of Julian Assange reveals more than the leak itself, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47818.htm

And finally, we have another great op/ed by Finian Cunningham who's on a roll of late at the Outlaw US Empire's expense, https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201709161057451619-us-alien-peace/

likklemore | Sep18, 2017 12:54:41 PM | 12

Always follow the money. There is only so far a $1 will go. Shrinkflation. The USD, as reserve currency, allowed the US to fund wars, everyday essentials and live high on the hog at the expense of the rest of the world. This exceptional privilege is coming to an end.

When the US declared war; [excluded Iran from use of SWIFT/ the USD] that was the shot heard far and wide. Putin and Xi noted, we could be next and put in place CHIPS.

Lately, Russia and then China has been threatened with sanctions; latest folly of Mnuchin, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. The petro-Yuan Exchange for gold was announced and less than 005% of Americans realize the impact of bypassing the USD.

USA has met its comeuppance. Russia and China need not fire a shot. Prosperity of the exceptional ones is an illusion built on hundreds of trillions of debt. We are kept diverted from de-dollarization by the focus on unschooled Trump. Eight+ months after the selection, it's "Russiagate" – Putin did it; are angels male or female? What happened?

sleepy | Sep18, 2017 1:35:10 PM | 13
Thus we get a continuation of a failed Afghanistan policy and will soon get a militarily aggressive policy towards Iran.

As a candidate way before any junta was installed, Trump always vowed to rip up the Iran nuclear deal. Now why on earth would North Korea trust that any nuclear agreement it made with the US would not similarly be ripped up and shredded a couple years down the road?

Oilman2 | Sep18, 2017 1:35:11 PM | 14
If the handling of "local catastrophes" such as Harvey and Irma are any indication of the power of this junta, then I am not very much worried. The FEMA folks, Red Cross and many others showed their ineffectiveness in spades here in Houston. What's even more revealing is just how quickly they dashed out of here to remain in the news when Irma hit Florida.

I met two ATF guys driving down here after Harvey - and they had no idea why they were coming here. Couldn't articulate a thing to me except to say, repeatedly, "We are ATF and coming to assist." They had ZERO specifics on what they were going to do to help anyone. But they were very much enjoying wearing their ATF t-shirts and sporting their pistols on hip. But it's Texas, and that just made me smile and shake my head. Made me realize that whatever happens here in America, DC and the central government are so incredibly out of touch and living "in the bubble" that they are of very limited use for locals (those outside the East Coast) in any way.

The Feds plan for national, not local catastrophes - and their primary issue is COG, period. They are much more concerned about maintaining government and their own little fiefdoms than in assisting people far away from the DC/NYC corridor.

Further, the math just doesn't work for the junta doing much more than controlling foreign policy (who we next attack) - to try that same thing across America would result in rapid expulsion and failure, as we outnumber them most significantly.

When the pain they cause becomes enough, then things will change. Unfortunately, it seems that change via the national elections has now been abrogated. Something else is likely to ensue, eventually.

Permafrost | Sep18, 2017 1:36:52 PM | 15
The outside insurgency which enabled his election is left without a figurehead, It will likely disperse. The system won.

The problem here ie that the cost for the system to win keeps rising, and the law of diminishing returns remains valid. So for how long? not long.

NemesisCalling | Sep18, 2017 2:34:52 PM | 16
I just don't understand how people can fall for the line that "nationalism" somehow equates to an undesirable movement akin to the rise of nazism. The media has been blitzing this as of late and rallying cries around the antifa demonstrations have been taking this buzzword and running with it, equating proponents of it to racist KKK members in some silly way or another. Even here, b, you seem to be eating right out of the hands of these pagemasters who dictate what words mean.

I'm sorry, but there is a glaring doublestandard when you praise the policy of say Venezuela which "nationalized" their oil industry and condemn all of us Americans who are begging to disassociate from global mechanisms which are crippling fair-spending of tax dollars here in the state. It is fair to assume that military junta historically use the energy of nationalism's lexicon to promote their agenda, but in this case, as you point out, the junta and the status quo of globalism's iron hand seem to fit together nicely. I read that as nationalism never even taking flight here.

I get your trepidation with this terminology considering the history of your country, but America IS different and we deserve an attempt to put America first...shocking, I know.

Kalen | Sep18, 2017 2:49:10 PM | 17
B fell pray of partisan propaganda, Trump - the coup d'etat enabler DNC MANTRA.. So please inform me when generals were not in executive charge of the US government. On behave of oligarchic ruling elite ? Where were those civilian rulers during documented 250 conflicts or war US was engaged during 228 years of existence

The first president was a general and since then US generals executed basic US imperial economic model of aggression and exploitation, military land grab from Indians and Mexicans to suppression of workers strikes by shelling their families at home in US as well in its conquered colonies in CA and Caribbean we have proof thanks to Gen. Butler.

It was a Gen. Eisenhower who warned us the junta refused to disarm after WWII and constitutes coear and present danger to even a facade of republican order.

Anybody who believe that imperial US is run by civilians is SIMPLY gullible since no emporia were ever run by civilians by definition. Roman Empire was run over last 200 year explicitly by generals COMMANDING armies of foreign mercenaries like US today in NATO and ASEAN .

What has changed is that veil of deceit has failed and with Trump those warmongering cockroaches came out of WH woodwork to see a light and tookbopenly control f what they already controlled clandestinely.

Peter AU 1 | Sep18, 2017 2:49:47 PM | 18
16
If you think US is different to nazi it might be worth reading saker's piece on it. If you think US nationalism is any different to Nazi Germany in aggression then think again. The US population, and much of the so called west, is swamped in propaganda while the US attacks country after country.
NemesisCalling | Sep18, 2017 3:06:17 PM | 19
@18 Peter

But once again, many here think that Europe is already one big vassal state of the global/US empire. So if anything, we are all already under the jack boot of empire. To dislodge one piece (US), indeed, the central piece, seems to me that the world would be in recovery mode from "the global reich." Please correct if I'm wrong, but your logic does not compute. Furthermore, I don't think a reeling US economy and population, freshly liberated, is going to be convinced any time soon to wage wars abroad for precious metals and the like. "Helping" the world would probably take a back seat.

Hoarsewhisperer | Sep18, 2017 3:39:20 PM | 20
...
"I didn't fire him [General MacArthur] because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three quarters of them would be in jail."
...
Posted by: Don Bacon | Sep18, 2017 12:06:26 PM | 5

And, despite the fact that Trump rubbed shoulders with dozens of these wannabe Generals at Military Academy, and was exposed to the same claptrap, it seems safe to assume that he realised that a Life spent in the US Military would be pointless, unimaginative and frustrating.

WithAllWindsAhead | Sep18, 2017 3:40:39 PM | 21
Re. Ben #7:

To be fair he did put an end to Timber Sycamore. The deep state wouldn't have pushed so hard on the Russian angle if there weren't a real upheaval. IMO, it went beyond simply covering for the DNC leaks. The whole establishment dog piled the Russian angle. It was for a time the principal means of disrupting Trump's agenda. I think Trump's token strike on the Syrian airbase is evidence of all of this. It was the absolute minimum he could have done in the face of a tidal wave of internal war pressures. And, they certainly could have gotten away with way more of the "trump is a Nazi angle," but they appear to have stopped after they got Bannon out.

Prescribing Trump, a monster though he is, as being at least the lesser war candidate holds IMO. What his presidency has illuminated above all else is the wild degree to which US is first and foremost of war. It is perhaps the most ubiquitous force that charges the US system.

That all said, we are going to find out real soon what the military is after. The SDF and SAA meeting in Deir Ezor is going to tell us a lot. This is perhaps their last chance at balkanization of Syria. A glimmer of hope still resides however in the supposed Pentagon revolt that took place over Obama's red line in the sand, as reported by Sy Hersh and others. As evil as the US military is, they dont seem to actually want war with Russia, unlike the intelligence complex. I, personally, am still hopeful at least about Syria.

somebody | Sep18, 2017 4:17:08 PM | 24
16 - let Putin explain it to you
The Russian leader expressed confidence that "one of the key components of our self-consciousness, one of the values and ideas is patriotism." Putin recalled the words of outstanding Soviet Russian scholar Dmitry Likhachev that patriotism drastically differs from nationalism. "Nationalism is hatred of other peoples, while patriotism is love for your motherland," Putin cited his words.
somebody | Sep18, 2017 4:38:26 PM | 25
add to 24

Or more historical: "Patriotism" was coined in Europe by the French revolution, forming a common state of citizens open to all who can identify with common values and culture. But American Patriots came before that and that is probably where the French got the word.

As a group, Patriots represented a wide array of social, economic and ethnic backgrounds.

"Nationalism" was a 19th century reaction to the export of the French revolution when European kingdoms tried a legitimization of borders based on language and genetics. It was all war from there to the Second World War and Auschwitz. If you want to sink the US in an internal Civil War try nationalism.

Jackrabbit | Sep18, 2017 4:42:09 PM | 26
I think there is some hyperventilating here. Was Trump 'turned'? Was his administration 'taken over' or was he always a figurehead? I decided several months ago that it was the latter:
> How Things Work: Betrayal by Faux Populist Leaders

> Taken In: Fake News Distracts Us from Fake Election

During his campaign Trump was vocally pro-military.

PS Hillary has always been pro-military also.

broders | Sep18, 2017 5:09:57 PM | 27
well, the system cannot "win"... dialectics... every steps it takes to control and secure "things", brings it closer to its end, and this, inevitably. no one wins, ever. no one looses even. the only way to fight and defeat evil is a decisive progress in goodness, to ignore it... the reality on the ground allows us to think that way, to set up concerts in the ruins, for good. thank you russia (as for the us military, they need 5 or 6 years to just cath up with last year's stand... but they still can agitate their little arms, so they do).
Christian Chuba | Sep18, 2017 5:40:56 PM | 28
Location, location, location
I am in shock and awe of our Pentagon (and CIA)'s ability to market themselves. I am convinced that this is their core area of competency as I read the slick consultant generated talking points on how $600B equals a dilapidated military instead of one that needs a purge. If we really have a readiness problem, heads should roll before they get more money but instead we cry for the incompetents.

The vaunted sea lanes and free trade

I used for fall for this nonsensical argument, that we needed 20 carrier groups to patrol the oceans to ensure free trade. Really? All we need is an international system of Coast Guards augmented by a few missile boats if there are some countries that don't have the budget for a coast guard to prevent piracy. We don't need aircraft carriers for that. Why do we assume that we need 24x7 aircraft coverage in the Pacific, Persian Gulf and Mediterranean? I have a vague memory of the 80's where it was a big deal that we 'sent our fleet' to the Mediterranean for some occasions. It wasn't assumed that we had a task force parked there 100% of the time.

I don't see why we can't get by with 6 or at most 8 carrier groups with the understanding that we would never deploy more than 2 for special occasions so that they can rotate assignments.

I don't want to think of one | Sep18, 2017 5:41:53 PM | 29
Disappointed in your post, b. Expected better.

"The insurgency that brought Trump to the top was defeated by a counter-insurgency campaign waged by the U.S. military. (Historically its first successful one)"

The USA was on the winning side for the Boxer Rebellion, the 1899-1902 Philippine Insurrection, and a lot of other counter-insurgency operations. Basic military history. Just wanted to mention that to set the correct tone, because your blog post started out factually incorrect and carried on that way until the end.

Basic reasoning test, b:

i) Do you think Trump has been defeated by 'the US military', or ii) do you think a small number of senior military men have thwarted Trump? Because the two are very different things.

I would argue that Mattis, McMaster, Kelly, and their line reports don't represent "the US military", or even its generals per se. They represent themselves as people financially beholden to major investment banks for their retirement funds; people fearful of being blackmailed and destroyed by the NSA and CIA and Mossad; people who rose to senior posts during prior administrations because they were flunkies to the establishment .

Do you think Trump is a weak-minded cretin? Because that's what your theory requires. That the guy can't remember his oft-repeated positions and statements after some briefings and a few months. I say that nobody loses their wits that fast, and nobody does a 180 on so many core policies without knowing that they're doing it.

Trump's wealth (at least in the high hundreds of millions $) and his election victory say he's no moron. He probably knows what he is doing. He's either a guy who gave up the struggle after getting the proverbial political hell beaten out of him in the first months of his administration, or he willingly misled his electoral base when campaigning. Perhaps a little of both. He's known for being a BS merchant. Myself, I think he lied outright to the voters during his run for president. It's not a wild idea: so did Obama, Bush, and Clinton. Bigly.

Trump made the decisions that we criticse so much. Trump decided to let the Obama holdovers stay in the administration. He decided to hire Goldman Sachs flunkies. He decided to send cruise missiles to strike Shayrat. He decided to approve US assistance to Saudi Arabia in Yemen. H decided to let his zionist son-in-law, who is indebted to George Soros, into the White House. He decided to fire Bannon almost as soon as Bannon came out publicly against war with North Korea. (Possibly a deliberate, desperate attempt at a 'spoiler' tactic on Bannon's part, to prevent conflict.) Trump decided to renege on his promises to the electorate about immigration. He decided to sign an unprecedented, unconstitutional law that bound his hands and imposed sanctions on Russia. He decided to go along with the Russian hacking lie by saying that Russia could, maybe, have hacked the DNC and HRC and whoever else (probably including Disney, the Shriners, and my mother). He decided to employ Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus, Scaramucchi and everyone else. He approved all of those things.

"It is indisputable that the generals are now ruling in Washington DC."
Yeah, nah. Pretty sure that's still the Wall St lobby, the Israel lobby, the CFR and the usual mob. Generals are just hired thugs, as Smedley Butler put it. Or as Kissinger put it, the US military is made up of "Military men" who "are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns."

What you've done, b, is to pull together some half-formed thoughts and mashed them all together. It sounds badass as a righteously indignant blog post, and I bet the Huffpost crowd would love it – but it fails as logic.

NemesisCalling | Sep18, 2017 5:58:47 PM | 30
@25 somebody

Nice play of semantics. But it still sounds like "patriotism" is a nice euphemism for nationalism. Why else would Putin be the scourge of the west? Reminds me too of how Putin played nice all through the Syrian War calling the US their "partner." Another euphemism. Seems like Putin likes to sound like the better man (and he is) but part of his strategy has always been to underplay his hand in the mix.

Don Bacon | Sep18, 2017 6:09:44 PM | 31
@CC #28
re: aircraft carriers

New carriers cost about $12B each, plus the cost of the 5,000 crew-members and aircraft, plus the cost of the accompanying fleet that goes with every carrier. Carriers have been mainly used in the last decade in the Gulf area to launch aircraft to bomb third world countries. Most carriers are in port most of the time because they require a lot of maintenance, which adds a lot more to expense. They are also used to sail near enemy countries, Washington believing that they are useful to scare third world countries into thinking that they may be bombed, which might make some sense except the results are questionable. As you indicate, the main threat to world shipping is piracy for which carrier fleets are useless. The good thing about having a carrier in the Persian Gulf much of the time is that it ensures that Iran would not be attacked; it would be a sitting duck.

The current location of the eleven US carriers is below taken from here . There is a new addition to the fleet, CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford.
1 - Persian Gulf
1 - hurricane duty
1 - off Carolina coast
1- off Japan coast
7 - port

les7 | Sep18, 2017 6:22:59 PM | 32
There are generals and then there are generals... Just which ones are taking over? The Neo-con backed guys? The Pro-pentagon guys? The CIA/JSOC guys? The Black Ops Guys? or the Black on Black Ops guys? The reason I ask is that at one time they were all fighting each other in N.Syria.

It is not especially clear to me (being an outsider to US politics) which of the groups (or combination of groups) seems to have come out on top and have their guys as the gate-keeping, information-vetting guys doing the briefing of Trump. My feel of it is that the Pentagon has gained while JSOC, the black ops contractors, and black-on-black ops contractors have lost. The CIA seems to have broken even. Is this a fair read?

If so... I think it is overall a good thing (the beso of an bunch of bad) because the Pentagon have shown themselves to be a lot more sane when it comes to creating conflict zones. They tend to be less covert, a lot more overt and a lot less likely to forment war for the sake of some corporation or political subset of the ruling elite.

thoughts anyone?

Don Bacon | Sep18, 2017 6:24:14 PM | 33
#29
You're wrong. It's obvious who's in charge in Washington currently. There is no doubt that, politically speaking, the insurgency that brought Trump to the top was defeated by a counter-insurgency campaign waged by the U.S. military. Generals Mattis, McMaster and Kelly are paramount in the new administration. Mattis has been given decision power on war, which Trump had promised to curtail.

McMaster, with no diplomatic experience, is national security and Kelly manages Trump's office.

The whole administration has taken a new tack with these generals and their military cohorts -- they do no stand alone, they are part of an institution -- managing US foreign policy. Concomitant to this are other factors including the cut in the State Department budget, the appointment of neophyte and hawkish Haley at the UN and Trump's romance with Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Palloy | Sep18, 2017 6:45:10 PM | 34
Politics is always complex and messy and no one ever "rules" in the way being assumed. The military have always had a big say - how else did they get such a huge budget for years on end? CIA have always played a big part, likewise FBI, NSA, Wall St., CFR, Fed, IMF and so on. Three, maybe six , Generals now have a bigger influence. Bannon has gone, so less influence for the deplorables. That is only a subtle change in the big scheme of things.

And now we are going to have a military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on 4th of July, http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-18/day-fire-and-fury-trump-considers-military-parade-down-pennsylvania-avenue (sorry -don't know what you want for links), just like that other fat person with a funny hair-cut, inexperienced, erratic and unpredictable, nuclear-armed and dangerous.

This is the just the death throes of an empire that is meeting the Limits to Growth. Expect MUCH MUCH worse to come. I think it will be SO horrible, many people will take the suicide option.

Linda O | Sep18, 2017 7:22:25 PM | 35
Obviously any 1000 or so word article is going to woefully simplified compared to the decades of historical and political research that will dissect the Trump presidency in the finest detail, I will say that this article has one glaring flaw that significantly lessens its value. Trump has rolled over for EVERYTHING and EVERYONE in Washington. There really is nothing special about the military's ease with which they captured and neutered Trump.

I don't think there is a single area of his campaign platform that he has given up on or flip-flopped on. I don't think there is any other president who has been a comparable ACROSS THE BOARD FAILURE like Trump.

No one has ever been surprised that the wacky, inane, or divorced from reality promises presidents made to get themselves elected never were followed through on. But every single president before Trump at the very least had a core set of priorities they immediately set in motion.

The failure of the Trump presidency should for once and for all put to rest the silly and juvinille dream of the lone super man heading off to Washington to FINALLY TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS and show those sleazy career politicians who things are done in the real world.

Trump walked into the White House with absolutely no governing apparatus ready to go on day one like every other presidential candidate has in the past.

Presidential candidates spend decades building up a vast network of people ready to hit the ground running and know how Washington works from the moment the election is over.

One has to wonder if Trump really ever expected to win. Or just has a complete lack of interest in the massive network o loyal and knowledgeable people needed to setup a brand new presidential administration.

And there is no check on how badly the Trump administration can fail. His base appears to be currled up in fetal position on Breitbart collectively chanting 'this is not happening, this is not happening.'

I don't think I've ever felt more joy than seeing that ABSOLUTE FILTH Hillary Clinton get here murderous and vile ass get handed to her by a TV personality.

Never in my dreams did I think Trump wouldn't accomplish ANYTHING.

So Trump fans, keep posting those MEMES and WINNING --

VietnamVet | Sep18, 2017 7:30:08 PM | 36
b's analysis rings true. The establishment has reined in Donald Trump. On their return from Florida, it appeared that Melania Trump is well aware of the history of the House of Bourbon. One does not become a Four-star General in the establishment today without an instinctive understanding of the needs of the organ grinder. The end stage of an Empire is everybody for themselves. The open source insurrection is over until it isn't anymore. Periodic combat takeoffs from Joint Base Andrews are not reassuring. The desire to stay alive is the only brake on the rush to a nuclear war with North Korea or the heating up of the Cold War with Russia.
Madmen | Sep18, 2017 7:58:27 PM | 38
A great follow-up article to an UNZ article early this year which stated:

During the election campaign the power elite's military faction under Trump confounded all political pundits by outflanking and decisively defeating the power elite's political faction. In fact by capturing the Republican nomination and overwhelmingly defeating the Democratic establishment, Trump and the military faction not just shattered the power elites' political faction, within both the Democratic and Republican parties, but simultaneously ended both the Clinton and Bush dynasties.

During the election campaign the power elite's corporate faction realised, far too late, that Trump was a direct threat to their power base, and turned the full force of their corporate media against Trump's military faction, while Trump using social media bypassed and eviscerated the corporate media causing them to lose all remaining credibility.

http://www.unz.com/article/political-sciences-theory-of-everything-on-the-2016-us-election/

PavewayIV | Sep18, 2017 8:15:14 PM | 39
I respectfully disagree with everyone. There is nobody in charge in Washington DC and hasn't been for a long time.

There are psychopathic oligarchs, warlords, fiefdoms and secret cabals milking their power and authority for a variety of self-serving interests with varying degrees of success and failure. The entire government has mutated to an arena where the above powers spar for more control and more money day after day. There is no real oversight. It's too complex and secretive for any one person or group to be 'in charge'.

The announcer is not 'in charge'. He's just the announcer, nothing more. And the little people are just spectators, nothing more.

MadMax2 | Sep18, 2017 8:23:13 PM | 40
@34 Palloy

Couldn't agree more re: Limits to Growth. And no prizes for guessing which major economies have gone about insulating themselves against the pitfalls of cowboy economics... nothing was fixed, repaired, refitted or replaced after 2008...crazy that any chance of sensible, sustainable capitalism in the west might be lost to the cannibals need of rampant consumerism. I'll side with the nations that keep an interest in public banking systems rather than the one's that encourage it citizens ro eat the face off one another.

It's not all dark though, The Tale of The Don is really a romantic one... Of the wild west never ending... Of the railroad tycoons that never really died.

Jackrabbit gets more right with every passing day... there is no such thing as an outsider the moment you win.

Don Bacon | Sep18, 2017 8:27:27 PM | 41
@ 38
Yes, the power elite's military faction. Not: "I would argue that Mattis, McMaster, Kelly, and their line reports don't represent "the US military", or even its generals per se. They represent themselves as people financially beholden to major investment banks. . ."

Outsiders don't appreciate the power of the strengthening military-industrial complex that Eisenhower cautioned about in his farewell address.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Don Bacon | Sep18, 2017 8:31:06 PM | 42
from "The Hill": Overnight Defense: Senate passes $700B defense bill | 3,000 US troops heading to Afghanistan | Two more Navy officials fired over ship collisions
V. Arnold | Sep18, 2017 8:34:04 PM | 43
A Chinese fire drill best describes what passes for the U.S.'s present level of policy. Most of the world watches; aghast at the spectacle, while cowering with fear at the hubris...
Jackrabbit | Sep18, 2017 8:38:28 PM | 44
@spudski

But other commenters have also been critical, though less colorful.

@Madmen

Is the possibility of Trump as controlled opposition so far-fetched? Do you think the "power elite's political wing" only runs one candidate? Have you heard of "illusion of choice"? Do you think sheepdog Bernie was a real candidate?

Obama and Trump both gained greater apparent legitimacy by: 1) beating the establishment candidate; and 2) being besieged by bat-shit crazy critics (birthers; anti-Russians & antifa).

As soon as you choose a side, you are trapped. Two sides of the same coin. Minted in hell.

V. Arnold | Sep18, 2017 9:00:19 PM | 45
Jackrabbit @ Sep18, 2017 8:38:28 PM | 44

As soon as you choose a side, you are trapped. Two sides of the same coin. Minted in hell.

Nice, I like it...

spudski | Sep18, 2017 9:01:53 PM | 46
@Jackrabbit

Agreed. I had no problem with the substance, in fact I like the fact that there are diverse opinions here and I learn a lot from the discussions. I just didn't need the gratuitous insults to b given how much effort he puts in here.

[Sep 18, 2017] The NYT's Yellow Journalism on Russia by Rober Parry

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The New York Times is prepping the American people for what could become World War III. The daily message is that you must learn to hate Russia and its President Vladimir Putin so much that, first, you should support vast new spending on America's Military-Industrial Complex and, second, you'll be ginned up for nuclear war if it comes to that. ..."
"... At this stage, the Times doesn't even try for a cosmetic appearance of objective journalism. Look at how the Times has twisted the history of the Ukraine crisis, treating it simply as a case of "Russian aggression" or a "Russian invasion." The Times routinely ignores what actually happened in Ukraine in late 2013 and early 2014 when the U.S. government aided and abetted a violent coup that overthrew Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych after he had been demonized in the Western media. ..."
"... The Times and much of the U.S. mainstream media refuses even to acknowledge that there is another side to the Ukraine story. Anyone who mentions this reality is deemed a "Kremlin stooge" in much the same way that people who questioned the mainstream certainty about Iraq's WMD in 2002-03 were called "Saddam apologists." ..."
"... Many liberals came to view the dubious claims of Russian "meddling" in the 2016 election as the golden ticket to remove Trump from the White House. So, amid that frenzy, all standards of proof were jettisoned to make Russia-gate the new Watergate. ..."
"... For one, even if the U.S. government were to succeed in destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia sufficiently to force out President Putin, the neocon dream of another malleable Boris Yeltsin in the Kremlin is far less likely than the emergence of an extreme Russian nationalist who might be ready to push the nuclear button rather than accept further humiliation of Mother Russia. ..."
"... The truth is that the world has much less to fear from the calculating Vladimir Putin than from the guy who might follow a deposed Vladimir Putin amid economic desperation and political chaos in Russia. But the possibility of nuclear Armageddon doesn't seem to bother the neocon/liberal-interventionist New York Times. Nor apparently does the principle of fair and honest journalism. ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
"... The Trans-Atlantic Empire of banking cartels rest upon enmity with the only other Great Powers in the World: Russia and China, while keeping USA thoroughly within their orbit, relying on our Great Power as the engine that powers this Western Bankers' Empire (the steering room lies in City-of-London, who has LONG maneuvered, via their Wall Street assets, to bring us into Empire). Should peaceful, cooperative and productive relations break out between USA, Russia, and China, this would undermine everything the Western Empire has worked to build. ..."
"... THIS is why the phony Russiagate issue is flogged to get rid of Trump (who seeks cooperation with Russia and China), AND keeping Russia as "The Enemy", keeping the MIC, Intel community, various police-state ops, in high demand for "National Security" reasons (also positioned to foil any democratic uprisings, should they see past the progs daily curtain and see their plight). ..."
"... The funny thing about living through the 'fake news' era, is that now everyone thinks that their news source is the correct news source. Many believe that outside of the individual everyone else reads or listens too 'fake news'. It's like all of a sudden no one has credibility, yet everyone may have it, depending on what news source you subscribe to. I mean there's almost no way of knowing what the truth is, because everyone is claiming that they are getting their news from reputable news outlets, but some or many aren't, and who are the reputable news sources, if you don't mind my asking you this just for the record? ..."
"... To learn how to deal with this 'fake news', I would suggest you start studying the JFK assassination, or any other ill defined tragic event, and then you might learn how to decipher the 'fake news' matrix of confusion to learn what you so desire to learn. I chose this route, because when was the last time the Establishment brokered the truth in regard to a happening such as the JFK assassination? Upon learning of what a few well written books has to say, you will then need to rely on your own brain to at least give you enough satisfaction to allow you to believe that you pretty well got it right, and there go you. In other words, the truth is out there, hiding in plain sight, and if you are persistent enough you just might find it. Good luck. ..."
Sep 18, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

The NYT's Yellow Journalism on Russia September 15, 2017

Exclusive: The New York Times' descent into yellow journalism over Russia recalls the sensationalism of Hearst and Pulitzer leading to the Spanish-American War, but the risks to humanity are much greater now, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Reading The New York Times these days is like getting a daily dose of the "Two Minutes Hate" as envisioned in George Orwell's 1984, except applied to America's new/old enemy Russia. Even routine international behavior, such as Russia using fictitious names for potential adversaries during a military drill, is transformed into something weird and evil.

In the snide and alarmist style that the Times now always applies to Russia, reporter Andrew Higgins wrote – referring to a fictitious war-game "enemy" – "The country does not exist, so it has neither an army nor any real citizens, though it has acquired a feisty following of would-be patriots online. Starting on Thursday, however, the fictional state, Veishnoriya, a distillation of the Kremlin's darkest fears about the West, becomes the target of the combined military might of Russia and its ally Belarus."

This snarky front-page story in Thursday's print editions also played into the Times' larger narrative about Russia as a disseminator of "fake news." You see the Russkies are even inventing "fictional" enemies to bully. Hah-hah-hah -- The article was entitled, "Russia's War Games With Fake Enemies Cause Real Alarm."

Of course, the U.S. and its allies also conduct war games against fictitious enemies, but you wouldn't know that from reading the Times. For instance, U.S. war games in 2015 substituted five made-up states – Ariana, Atropia, Donovia, Gorgas and Limaria – for nations near the Caucasus mountains along the borders of Russia and Iran.

In earlier war games, the U.S. used both fictitious names and colors in place of actual countries. For instance, in 1981, the Reagan administration conducted "Ocean Venture" with that war-game scenario focused on a group of islands called "Amber and the Amberdines," obvious stand-ins for Grenada and the Grenadines, with "Orange" used to represent Cuba.

In those cases, the maneuvers by the powerful U.S. military were clearly intended to intimidate far weaker countries. Yet, the U.S. mainstream media did not treat those war rehearsals for what they were, implicit aggression, but rather mocked protests from the obvious targets as paranoia since we all know the U.S. would never violate international law and invade some weak country -- (As it turned out, Ocean Venture '81 was a dress rehearsal for the actual U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983.)

Yet, as far as the Times and its many imitators in the major media are concerned, there's one standard for "us" and another for Russia and other countries that "we" don't like.

Yellow Journalism

But the Times' behavior over the past several years suggests something even more sinister than biased reporting. The "newspaper of record" has slid into yellow journalism, the practice of two earlier New York newspapers – William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's New York World – that in the 1890s manipulated facts about the crisis in Cuba to push the United States into war with Spain, a conflict that many historians say marked the beginning of America's global empire.

Except in today's instance, The New York Times is prepping the American people for what could become World War III. The daily message is that you must learn to hate Russia and its President Vladimir Putin so much that, first, you should support vast new spending on America's Military-Industrial Complex and, second, you'll be ginned up for nuclear war if it comes to that.

At this stage, the Times doesn't even try for a cosmetic appearance of objective journalism. Look at how the Times has twisted the history of the Ukraine crisis, treating it simply as a case of "Russian aggression" or a "Russian invasion." The Times routinely ignores what actually happened in Ukraine in late 2013 and early 2014 when the U.S. government aided and abetted a violent coup that overthrew Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych after he had been demonized in the Western media.

Even as neo-Nazi and ultranationalist protesters hurled Molotov cocktails at police, Yanukovych signaled a willingness to compromise and ordered his police to avoid worsening violence. But compromise wasn't good enough for U.S. neocons – such as Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland; Sen. John McCain; and National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman. They had invested too much in moving Ukraine away from Russia.

Nuland put the U.S. spending at $5 billion and was caught discussing with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt who should be in the new government and how to "glue" or "midwife this thing"; McCain appeared on stage urging on far-right militants; and Gershman was overseeing scores of NED projects inside Ukraine, which he had deemed the "biggest prize" and an important step in achieving an even bigger regime change in Russia, or as he put it: "Ukraine's choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself."

The Putsch

So, on Feb. 20, 2014, instead of seeking peace , a sniper firing from a building controlled by anti-Yanukovych forces killed both police and protesters, touching off a day of carnage. Immediately, the Western media blamed Yanukovych. Sen. John McCain appearing with Ukrainian rightists of the Svoboda party at a pre-coup rally in Kiev.

Shaken by the violence, Yanukovych again tried to pacify matters by reaching a compromise -- guaranteed by France, Germany and Poland -- to relinquish some of his powers and move up an election so he could be voted out of office peacefully. He also pulled back the police.

At that juncture, the neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists spearheaded a violent putsch on Feb. 22, 2014, forcing Yanukovych and other officials to flee for their lives. Ignoring the agreement guaranteed by the three European nations, Nuland and the U.S. State Department quickly deemed the coup regime "legitimate."

However, ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, which represented Yanukovych's electoral base, resisted the coup and turned to Russia for protection. Contrary to the Times' narrative, there was no "Russian invasion" of Crimea because Russian troops were already there as part of an agreement for its Sevastopol naval base. That's why you've never seen photos of Russian troops crashing across Ukraine's borders in tanks or splashing ashore in Crimea with an amphibious landing or descending by parachute. They were already inside Crimea.

The Crimean autonomous government also voted to undertake a referendum on whether to leave the failed Ukrainian state and to rejoin Russia, which had governed Crimea since the Eighteenth Century. In that referendum, Crimean citizens voted by some 96 percent to exit Ukraine and seek reunion with Russia, a democratic and voluntary process that the Times always calls "annexation."

The Times and much of the U.S. mainstream media refuses even to acknowledge that there is another side to the Ukraine story. Anyone who mentions this reality is deemed a "Kremlin stooge" in much the same way that people who questioned the mainstream certainty about Iraq's WMD in 2002-03 were called "Saddam apologists."

But what is particularly remarkable about the endless Russia-bashing is that – because it started under President Obama – it sucked in many American liberals and even some progressives. That process grew even worse when the contempt for Russia merged with the Left's revulsion over Donald Trump's election.

Many liberals came to view the dubious claims of Russian "meddling" in the 2016 election as the golden ticket to remove Trump from the White House. So, amid that frenzy, all standards of proof were jettisoned to make Russia-gate the new Watergate.

The Times, The Washington Post and pretty much the entire U.S. news media joined the "resistance" to Trump's presidency and embraced the neocon "regime change" goal for Putin's Russia. Very few people care about the enormous risks that this "strategy" entails.

For one, even if the U.S. government were to succeed in destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia sufficiently to force out President Putin, the neocon dream of another malleable Boris Yeltsin in the Kremlin is far less likely than the emergence of an extreme Russian nationalist who might be ready to push the nuclear button rather than accept further humiliation of Mother Russia.

The truth is that the world has much less to fear from the calculating Vladimir Putin than from the guy who might follow a deposed Vladimir Putin amid economic desperation and political chaos in Russia. But the possibility of nuclear Armageddon doesn't seem to bother the neocon/liberal-interventionist New York Times. Nor apparently does the principle of fair and honest journalism.

The Times and rest of the mainstream media are just having too much fun hating Russia and Putin to worry about the possible extermination of life on planet Earth.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

jo6pac , September 15, 2017 at 4:51 pm

Amerikas way of bring the big D to your nation. Death

http://www.globalresearch.ca/unknown-snipers-and-western-backed-regime-change/27904

Thanks RP for reading the times so I don't have to not that would.

Common Tater , September 16, 2017 at 2:05 pm

Thanks for the link, I knew about the use of snipers in Venezuela '02, did not realize there were so many more.

BayouCoyote , September 18, 2017 at 11:13 am

Kinda reminds me of what our only "Ally in the ME" did to our Marines in Iraq.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIiGfUjZnbU

JWalters , September 16, 2017 at 7:29 pm

Bingo -- In a surely related story, the mainstream press is equally relentless in AVOIDING telling Americans the facts about Israel, and especially about its control over the American press.
"Israel lobby is never a story (for media that is in bed with the lobby)"
http://mondoweiss.net/2017/09/israel-lobby-never/

Virtually everything average Americans have been told about Israel has been, amazingly, an absolute lie. Israel was NOT victimized by powerful Arab armies. Israel overpowered and victimized a defenseless, civilian Arab population. Military analysts knew the Arab armies were in poor shape and would be unable to resist the zionist army. Muslim "citizens" of Israel do NOT have all the same rights as Jews. Israelis are NOT under threat from the indigineous Palestinians, but Palestinians are under constant threats of theft and death from the Israelis. Israel does NOT share America's most fundamental values, which rest on the principle of equal human rights for all.

How has this gigantic package of outright lies has been foisted upon the American public for so long? And how long can it continue? It turns out they did not foresee the internet, and the facts are leaking out everywhere. So it appears they're desperately coercing facebook and google to rig their rankings, trying to hide the facts. But one day soon there will be a 'snap' in the collective mind, and everybody will know that everybody knows.

For readers who haven't seen it yet,
"War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror"
http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com

Common Tater , September 17, 2017 at 3:48 am

JWalters
I can tell you are angry. I too was angry when I figured it out.
Long before I figured it out, I was a soldier. Our unit was prepared for an exercise and we were all sleeping at the regiment compound, the buses would arrive at zero-dark thirty. I was reading a book about the ME(this was shortly after 9-11). A friend, came up and asked what I was reading. I told him I was reading about the Balfour paper and how that had a significant effect on the ME. He began explaining to me how the zionist movement had used the idea that no one lived on that land, to force the people from that land, out of that land.
I quickly responded that Israel had defended that land against 5 Arab armies and managed to hold on to that land. I informed him he was mistaken.
He agreed to disagree, and walked away.
This happened way back in 2002 if only I could pick his mind now. How did he know about this, way back before the internet was in any shape to wake people up?
There is hope still that guys who are young as i was, will say "Fuck You I defend this line and no further."
Without their compliance, there can be no wars.

Bernard Fisher , September 17, 2017 at 8:57 am

CommonTater your story parallels mine -- I was in the military, went to Vietnam to 'defend our nation against communism', felt horror at the Zionist stories of how Palestinians rocketed them, was told by senior officer about what Zionism is really about and I, like you, disbelieved him. That was in 1974 -- -- Now, with all the troubles in the world I won't read the MSP but look towards the alternative news sources. They make more sense. But as I try to educate others on what I have learned I am as disappointed as my senior officer must have been back them. Articles such as this one reproduced by ICH are gems: I save and print them in a compendium detailing ongoing war crimes.

Common Tater , September 17, 2017 at 2:35 pm

Bernard Fisher
Thanks for your response.
Good Idea to save and print these "gems" on consortiumnews.
Hopefully they wake more Americans.
Cheers

michael fish , September 15, 2017 at 5:44 pm

Thanks Mr. Parry,
You are a voice in the hurricane of hatred and lies propagated by the richest people on the planet.
Eventually some moron who believes this new York Times garbage will actually unleash the bomb and we will all be smoke.
That has always been the result of such successful propaganda. And it is very successful. It has almost occluded any truth for the vast majority of westerners .
Michael Fish

Yomamama , September 16, 2017 at 1:58 am

Agreed. I wish this clear and comprehensive article could be stapled on every American voter's door (wanted to say forehead but violence is bad). Many would toss it in the trash. Many would not agree even with full comprehension because of their own horrid beliefs. But maybe a few would read it and have an epiphany. It's very hard work to find an avenue to change the minds of millions of people who've been inculcated by nationalist propaganda since birth. Since 4 years old seeing the wonderful National Anthem and jets fly over the stadium of their favorite sports team. Since required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in school.

I refused to stand for or recite the Pledge when I was seven or eight years old. I was sent to detention. My awesome mom though intervened and afterwards I could remain seated while most or all other kids stood up to do the ritual. I refuse to stand up and place hand-on-heart and remove cap during any sporting contests when the Anthem is played. I've been threatened with physical violence by many strangers around me.

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-documents-expose-direct-us-military-intelligence-influence-on-1-800-movies-and-tv-shows-36433107c307

Thanks Mr. Parry, your voice is appreciated, your articles and logic are top-notch. Very valuable stuff, available for the curious, the skeptical. Well, until Google monopolizes search algorithms and calls this a Russian fake news site, perhaps or Congress the same

Virginia , September 16, 2017 at 1:49 pm

Excellent link, Yomamama.

Common Tater , September 16, 2017 at 2:20 pm

My hat is off to you sir, I have not been to any sporting events since I woke up, but I imagine it would be very difficult to remain seated and hatted during the opening affirmation of nationalism. My waking up coincides with a drastic drop in sports viewing. I used to be an NFL fan, rooted for the Niners (started watching NFL in the late eighties), the last full season I followed was the 2013-14 season.

It was the Ukraine coup that woke me up. It started when watching videos on youtube of guys stomping on riot cops, using a fire hose on them like a reverse water cannon. Then I realized these guys were the peaceful protesters being talked about on t.v. It was like a thread hanging in front of me, I began pulling and pulling until the veil in front of my eyes came apart. It was during this time I discovered consortiumnews.com.

Thomas Dickinson , September 16, 2017 at 3:03 pm

Mr Common Tater–just appreciating reading that someone else "woke up". That is the way it has felt to me. For me it was Oct 2002 and Bush's speech that was clearly heading us to war in Iraq. The "election" (appointment) of Bush in 2000 though was the first alarm clock that I started to hear. Most recent wake up is connected to Mr Parry's relentless (I hope) and necessary debunking of the myth of Russian nastiness and corresponding myth of US rectitude. Been watching The Untold History of the United States and have been dealing with the real bedrock truth that my government invented and invents enemies as a tactic in a game–ie. it's a bunch of boys thinking foreign relationship building is first and foremost a game. It has been hard to wash away all this greasy insidious smut from my life.

Common Tater , September 16, 2017 at 4:28 pm

Thomas Dickinson

It sucks to wake up, in a way. Once one gets past the denial, Tom Clancy novel type movies lose some of it's fun, although still entertaining. One secretly knows the audience in the cinema is just eating it all up and loving it. The American hero yells "yippie kayay mother f -- -r" as he defeats the post-Soviet Russian villain in Russia blowing up buildings, and destroying s–t as he saves the world for democracy. The Russian authorities amount to some guy in Soviet peaked hat, and long coat, begging for a bribe.

Oliver Stone's series is really good, it turns history on his head and shakes all the pennies out his pockets. Another good reporter is John Pilger, he has a long list of docs he has done over several decades.

Cheers

Homer Jay , September 16, 2017 at 5:44 pm

I have been watching that same series, about 3 episodes in. The most mind blowing part to think about is how the establishment consipired to block the nomination of the progressive Henry Wallace as a repeat VP for Roosevelt, leading instead to Harry Truman's nomination as VP, and then you know the rest of the story.

Funny how history repeated itself with the nomination of Clinton instead of Sanders. Btw, after Sanders mistakenly jumped on the Russia bashing bandwagon he was one of the few who voted against the recent sanctions being imposed against Russia, Iran, and North Korea. So yeah, I'd feel alot better with a Sanders president at this point.

Mulga Mumblebrain , September 16, 2017 at 5:21 pm

Apart from the obvious Exceptionalist and Zionazi imperative to destroy Russia and China in order that God's Kingdom of 'Full Spectrum Dominance' be established across His world by his various 'Chosen People', the USA always needs an enemy. Now, more than ever, as the country crumbles into disrepair and unprecedented inequality, poverty and elite arrogance, the proles must be led to blame their plight on some Evil foreign daemon.

Only this time its no Saddam or Gaddaffi or Assad that can be easily bombed back to that Stone Age that all the non-Chosen must inhabit. This time the bullying thugs will get a, thermo-nuclear, bloody nose if they do not back off. Regretably, their egos refuse to withdraw, even in the interest of self-survival.

Paranam Kid , September 16, 2017 at 6:13 am

" It has almost occluded any truth for the vast majority of westerners."

You are so right about that, I notice it every day on other forums on which I discuss current affairs with others: the US views are the accepted ones, and I get a lot of stick for stating different views. It is actually frightening to see how few people can think for themselves.

mike k , September 15, 2017 at 5:47 pm

The American people are being systematically lied to, and they don't have a clue that it is happening. There is no awake and intelligent public to prevent what is unfolding. The worst kind of criminals are in charge of our government, media, and military. The sleeping masses are making their way down the dark mountain to the hellish outcome that awaits them.

"These grand and fatal movements toward death: the grandeur
of the mass
Makes pity a fool, the tearing pity
For the atoms of the mass, the persons, the victims, makes it
seem monstrous
To admire the tragic beauty they build.
It is beautiful as a river flowing or a slowly gathering
Glacier on a high mountain rock-face,
Bound to plow down a forest, or as frost in November,
The gold and flaming death-dance for leaves,
Or a girl in the night of her spent maidenhood, bleeding and
kissing.
I would burn my right hand in a slow fire
To change the future I should do foolishly. The beauty
of modern
Man is not in the persons but in the
Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and mobile masses, the dance of the
Dream-led masses down the dark mountain."

Robinson Jeffers

HopeLB , September 15, 2017 at 10:36 pm

Great, Dark and Accurate poem -- Thank You -- Think I'll send it to Rachel Maddow, Wapo and the NYTimes.Might do them some good. Wouldn't that be lovely.

Patrick Lucius , September 16, 2017 at 12:42 am

Which poem is that? Not Shine, perishing Republic, is it?

Thomas Dickinson , September 16, 2017 at 3:22 pm

Rearmament by Robinson Jeffers. I liked that a lot, too, so looked it up. https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rearmament/

Jeff Davis , September 18, 2017 at 11:35 am

Fabulous reply. Back atcha:

Dulce et Decorum Est
BY WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas -- GAS -- Quick, boys -- -- An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. --
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

******************************

And this, from Bob Dylan's "Jokerman" .

Freedom just around the corner for you
But with the truth so far off, what good will it do?

******************************

I love life and am by nature a cockeyed optimist, but I find myself intermittently gloomy, my optimism overwhelmed by cynicism, when I see the abundance of moronic belligerence so passionately snarled out in the comments sections across the internet. Clearly, humans are cursed with an addiction to violence For my part, I am old and will die soon and have no children, plus I live in a quiet backwater far away from the nuclear blast zone. Humanity seems on course for a major "culling". Insane and sad.

Mike Morrison , September 15, 2017 at 5:48 pm

Over three years now the war in Donbass, Ukraine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BoKj39HKls

Dr. Ando Arike , September 15, 2017 at 5:49 pm

I'd like to see more investigative reporting on the NYT's and other major media outlets' links to the CIA and other Deep State info-war bureaus. What the Times is doing now is reminiscent of the Michael Gordon-Judith Miller propaganda in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Operation Mockingbird, uncovered during the mid-70s Church Hearings, is an ongoing effort, it would seem. Revealing hard links to CIA information ops would be a great service to humanity.

SteveK9 , September 15, 2017 at 7:22 pm

After 'Michael Gordon-Judith Miller' I stopped reading the Times.

Beard681 , September 18, 2017 at 11:52 am

I am amazed at how many conspiracy types there are who want to see some sort of oligarch, capitalist, zionist or deep state cabal behind it all. (That is a REALLY optimistic view of the human propensity for violent conflict.) It is just a bunch of corporate shills pushing for war (hopefully cold) because war sells newspapers.

Rich Rubenstein , September 15, 2017 at 5:53 pm

Robert Parry has gotten this exactly right -- I'm a regular NYTimes subscriber /-have been for years -- and I have NEVER read anything about Russia that has not been written by professional Russia-haters like Higgins. Frankly, I don't get it. What accounts for this weird and dangerous bias?

mike k , September 15, 2017 at 6:03 pm

Have you looked into who owns the NYT?

Paranam Kid , September 16, 2017 at 6:32 am

Why do you keep reading the NYT? Not only the Russia stories are heavily biased, but all their stories are. Most op-ed's about Israel/Palestine are written by zealous pro-Israel/pro-Zionists, against very few pro-Palestine people.

Brad Owen , September 16, 2017 at 8:07 am

The Trans-Atlantic Empire of banking cartels rest upon enmity with the only other Great Powers in the World: Russia and China, while keeping USA thoroughly within their orbit, relying on our Great Power as the engine that powers this Western Bankers' Empire (the steering room lies in City-of-London, who has LONG maneuvered, via their Wall Street assets, to bring us into Empire). Should peaceful, cooperative and productive relations break out between USA, Russia, and China, this would undermine everything the Western Empire has worked to build.

THIS is why the phony Russiagate issue is flogged to get rid of Trump (who seeks cooperation with Russia and China), AND keeping Russia as "The Enemy", keeping the MIC, Intel community, various police-state ops, in high demand for "National Security" reasons (also positioned to foil any democratic uprisings, should they see past the progs daily curtain and see their plight).

Brad Owen , September 16, 2017 at 8:08 am

Progs=propaganda stupid iPad.

Mulga Mumblebrain , September 16, 2017 at 5:30 pm

Here in Aust-failure I read the papers for many years until they became TOO repulsive, particularly the Murdoch hate and fear-mongering rags. I also, and still do, masochistically listen to the Government ABC and SBS. In all those years I really cannot recall any articles or programs that reported on Russia or China in a positive manner, save when Yeltsin, a true hero to all our fakestream media, was in charge. That sort of uniformity of opinion, over generations, is almost admirable. And the necessity to ALWAYS follow the Imperial US ('Our great and powerful friend') line leads to some deficiencies in the quality of the personnel employed, as I one again reflected upon the other day when one hackette referred to (The Evil, of course)Kim Jong-un as 'President Un', several times.

Jeff Davis , September 18, 2017 at 12:31 pm

"What accounts for this weird and dangerous bias?"

Several points:

The Russian -- formerly Commie -- -- boogieman is a profit center for the military, their industrial suppliers, and the political class. That's the major factor. But also, the Zionist project requires a bulked up US military "tasked" with "full spectrum" military dominance -- the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the American jackboot on the world's throat forever -- to insure the eternal protection of Israel. Largely unseen in this Israeli/Zionist factor is the thousand-year-old blood feud between the Jews and Russians. They are ancient enemies since the founding of Czarist Russia. No amount of time or modernity can diminish the passion of that animus. (I suspect that the Zionist aim to "destroy" Russia will eventually backfire and lead instead to the destruction of Israel, but really, we shouldn't talk about that.)

mike k , September 15, 2017 at 6:26 pm

The richest man in the world has the controlling interest in the NYT. Draw your own conclusions.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/mexican-billionaire-carlos-slim-becomes-top-owner-of-new-york-times/

Brad Owen , September 16, 2017 at 8:36 am

Mexico, ground zero for the world fascist movement in the 20s and 30s (going by name Synarchy Internationale still does) throuout Ibero-America, centered in PAN. The Spanish-speaking World had to contend with Franco, and Salazar being in power so long in the respective "Mother Countries" of the Iberian Peninsula. This was the main trail for the ratlines to travel.

I saw a dead coyote on the side of the road the other day. I know you know what that means to me, Mike. Omens are a lost art in these modern times, and I have no expertise in these matters, but it struck my attention hard. It was on the right side of the road: trouble for Trump coming from The Right? They are more potent than the ineffective Left, so this might be the way Trump is pulled down.

Sfomarco , September 16, 2017 at 3:37 pm

Carlos Slim (f/k/a Salim)

Mulga Mumblebrain , September 16, 2017 at 5:31 pm

Yes, but who bankrolls Slim?

Stiv , September 15, 2017 at 6:51 pm

I wouldn't even need to read this to know what's going to be said. After the last article from Parry, which was very good and interesting .plowing new ground for him he's back to rehashing the same old shit. Not that it's necessarily wrong, only been said about a hundred times. Yawn

D.H. Fabian , September 16, 2017 at 2:46 am

After months of so many people pointing out how and why the "Russia stole the election" claim is false, it came roaring back (in liberal media) in recent days. It demands a response.

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 7:26 am

No one is required to read anything on CN.

Virginia , September 16, 2017 at 1:58 pm

RP brought lots of new things into play in his article and showed how they mesh together and support one another "against Trump." I almost skipped it because so familiar with the topic, but RP brought new light to the subject, in my humble opinion.

Common Tater , September 16, 2017 at 2:40 pm

I do not need to read or watch established "news" media to know what's going to be said. After the last b.s. story from the usual talking heads which was low brow and insulting to the intelligence of the audience, they are back at it again same ol'shit by the same talking heads. It is most definitely wrong, and it needs to be countered as much as possible not yawning.

Gregory Herr , September 16, 2017 at 8:18 pm

That's what struck me just how absurdly insulting will the Times get?

And I think the point that trying to destabilize the Russian Federation may very well bring about a more militant hardline Russia is important to stress.

anon , September 17, 2017 at 9:02 am

"Stiv" is a troll who makes this junk comment every time. Better to ignore him.

Colin , September 18, 2017 at 11:54 am

Were you planning to contribute anything useful to the discussion?

SteveK9 , September 15, 2017 at 7:19 pm

I always wonder what motivation the accusers believe you have when they call you a 'Putin stooge'. Why would you be one? Are you getting paid? Of course not, so this is just a judgment on your part. They could call you a fool, but accuse you of 'carrying water for the Kremlin' as I heard that execrable creature, Adam Schiff say to Tucker Carlson? That just makes no sense. Of course, none of it is rational.

Mulga Mumblebrain , September 16, 2017 at 5:38 pm

They're insane. A crumbling Empire which was supposed to rule the world forever, 'Under God' through Full Spectrum Dominance, but which, in fact, is disintegrating under its own moral, intellectual and spiritual rottenness, is bound to produce hate-crazed zealots looking for foreign scape-goats. Add the rage of the Clintonbots whose propaganda had told then for months that the She-Devil would crush the carnival-huckster, and her vicious post-defeat campaign to drive for war with Russia (what a truly Evil creature she is)and you get this hysteria. Interestingly, 'hysteria' is the word used to describe Bibi Nutty-yahoo, the USA's de facto 'capo di tutti capi', in Sochi recently when Putin refused to follow orders.

David Grace , September 15, 2017 at 7:30 pm

I have another theory I'd like to get reviewed. These are corporate wars, and not aimed at the stability of nations. It is claimed that in 1991, at the fall of the Soviet Union, the oligarchs were created by the massive purchasing of the assets of the collapsing nation. The CIA was said to have put together a 'bond issue' worth some $480 Billion, and it was used to buy farms, factories, mineral rights and other formerly common holdings of the USSR. This 'bond issue' was never repaid to the US taxpayers, and the deeds are in the hands of various oligarchs. Not all of the oligarchs are tied to the CIA, as there were other wells of purchasers of the country, but the ties to Trump are actually ties to dirty CIA or other organized crime entities.

The NY Times may be trying to capture certain assets for certain clients, and their editorial policy reflects this.

I'd appreciate feedback on this.

Thanks,
David

David Grace , September 15, 2017 at 7:33 pm

There are many on-line videos on this theme. Searching 'Black Eagle Trust' is one form. Here is one link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhBZJEqoe0A

stephen sivonda , September 15, 2017 at 9:51 pm

David Grace . what have we here, a thinking man? I like your premise, and I haven't even watched the link you supplied. That being said, I'll sign off and investigate that link.

D.H. Fabian , September 16, 2017 at 2:39 am

Conspiracy theories upon conspiracy theories, ensuring that the public will never be able to root out the facts. People still argue about the Kennedy assassination 54 years later.

Mulga Mumblebrain , September 16, 2017 at 5:39 pm

There is no rational 'argument' about what really happened to JFK.

Zhu Bajie , September 17, 2017 at 7:12 pm

Most conspiracy theories are fantasy fiction. If you have real evidence, based on verifiable facts, then it's not a theory any more. But most of the conspiracy theories popular in the USA just serve popular vanity. We never have to accept our mistakes, our crimes against humanity, etc. It's always THEIR fault.

We Americans over all are like small children, always making excuses.

mark , September 16, 2017 at 5:23 pm

Some of the material on the Black Eagle Trust are suspect. It gives figures for stolen Japanese war loot, for example, that are simply ludicrous. Figures of so many thousand tons of gold, for example, when the references should probably be to OUNCES of gold.

RBHoughton , September 15, 2017 at 8:03 pm

One sniper in Ukraine overthrew the democratic government. Previously one sniper in Dallas overthrew another democratic government. Are there any other examples?

Is our infatuation with democracy just a propaganda thing – to fool citizens into supposing they have value beyond their labour?

AshenLight , September 15, 2017 at 10:13 pm

> Is our infatuation with democracy just a propaganda thing – to fool citizens into supposing they have value beyond their labour?

It's about control -- those who know they are slaves will resist and fight, but those who mistakenly believe they are free will not (and if you give them even just a little comfort, they'll tenaciously defend their own enslavement). It turns out this "inverted totalitarianism" thing works a lot better than the old-fashioned kind.

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 7:19 am

Indeed. Gurdjieff told the tale of a farmer whose sheep were always wandering off due to his being unable to afford fences to keep them in. Then he had an idea, and called them all together. He told some of them they were eagles, and others lions etc. They were now so proud of their new identities that it never occurred to them anymore to escape from their master's small domain.

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 7:23 am

MLK is another example, as is Robert Kennedy.

Anna , September 16, 2017 at 12:53 pm

The American patriots are coming out: "CIA Agent Whistleblower Risks All To Expose The Shadow Government" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHbrOg092G That would be the end of the Lobby, mega oilmen and the FedReserve criminals

mark , September 16, 2017 at 5:30 pm

Yes, snipers on rooftops in Deraa, southern Syria, in 2011. These mysterious figures fired into crowds, deliberately targeting women and young children to inflame the crowd. At the same time the same snipers killed 7 police officers. Unarmed police had been sent in to deal with unrest without bloodshed. These police officers were armed only with batons.

This is a standard page from the CIA playbook. The mysterious snipers in Maidan Square in 2014 are believed to have been Yugoslavian mercenaries hired by the CIA

Zhu Bajie , September 17, 2017 at 7:14 pm

The US has had oligarchy since 1789.

BobH , September 15, 2017 at 8:06 pm

We all have some kind of a bias but fortunately most of us here know the difference between bias and propaganda. Bias based on facts and our own values is often constructive but the N.Y. Times(like most msm) has descended into disseminating insidious propaganda. Unfortunately the search for truth requires a bit more research and time than most people are willing to invest. Thankfully, Robert Parry continues his quest but the dragons are not easy to slay. My own quest for truth once led to a philosophical essay. The cartoon at the bottom(SH Chambers) sums it up.
https://crivellistreetchronicle.blogspot.com/2016/07/truth-elusive-concept.html

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 7:13 am

I put a comment on your blog.

BobH , September 16, 2017 at 11:15 am

Mike, thanks so much, I'll look forward to reading it(so far, I don't see it Moderation?)

Virginia , September 16, 2017 at 2:20 pm

If we have a bias towards honesty, that helps. It keeps one's mind more open and provides a willingness to entertain various points of view. It's not naivete, however, but thoughtful consideration coupled with awareness and that protects one from being easily manipulated. But then, oppositely, there's a human tendency to want to be popular which inclines one towards groupthink. But why that so entrenches itself, making people impervious to truth, is a conundrum -- Maybe if the "why" can be answered, the "how" will become apparent -- how to reach individuals with the truth as so oft told, though hard on the ears, at CN.

Jacob Leyva , September 15, 2017 at 10:12 pm

So what do you think of the Russia-Facebook dealings? When will we get an article on that?

Fuzzy , September 18, 2017 at 7:19 am

Really? You think this is important?

http://davidswanson.org/warlist/?link_id=3&can_id=ed31bf4cbc8f991980718b21b49ca26d&source=email-how-outlawing-war-changed-the-world-in-1928-2&email_referrer=email_232560&email_subject=how-outlawing-war-changed-the-world-in-1928

John , September 15, 2017 at 10:47 pm

The Russian /Iranian vs the Ashkenazi has been going on for many, many years ..The USA is to a large extent controlled by the Ashkenazi / Zionist agenda which literally owns most of the MSM outlets .Agendas must be announced through propaganda to sway the sleeping public toward conformity .The only baffling question that remains is why do Americans allow Zionist to control such a large part of their great republic ?

Art , September 16, 2017 at 1:43 am

Robert, you come from intelligence. Why don't you look at Russia-gate from all possible angles?
I suggest the following. Putin is an American spy. Russia-gate is created to make him a winner, a hero.
And the specious confrontation is a good cover for Putin.
This is in a nutshell.
I can obviously say mu-uch more.

D.H. Fabian , September 16, 2017 at 2:33 am

Throughout 2017, we've seen a surge of efforts by both parties -- via the media that serve them -- to build support for a final nuclear war. The focus jumps from rattling war sabers at China (via Korea, at the moment) to rattling them at Russia, two nuclear-armed world powers. This has been working to bring Russia and China together, resolving their years of conflict in view of a potential world threat -- the US. Whatever their delusions, and regardless of their ideology, our political leaders are setting the stage for the deaths of millions of us, and the utter destruction of the US.

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 6:59 am

Our political leaders have betrayed us.

Mulga Mumblebrain , September 16, 2017 at 5:42 pm

Thermo-nuclear war would cause human extinction, not just billions of casualties.

Jim Glover , September 16, 2017 at 3:15 am

It is the same now with North Korea and China. So what would happen if those nations were destabilized by Sanctions or worse Russia, China Iran and more would support Kim. How to make peace?

Dennis Rodman has the guts to suggest call and talk with Kim or "Try it you might like it better than total mutual destruction". Think Love and Peace it can't hurt like all the war, hate and fear the media keeps pushing for advertising profits. War and Fear is the biggest racket on the planet. What can I do? Fighting a losing battle but it is fun tryin' to win.

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 6:57 am

We may be losing now, but who knows? It ain't over till it's over. Hang in there.

GMC , September 16, 2017 at 3:20 am

Great article- again . I used to live in the US, I used to live in Alaska, I used to live in Crimea, Ukraine but now I live in Crimea, Russia and Smolensk, Ru. I watched this all go down but it took awhile to see the entire picture. I seldom get any more emails from the states – even my brother doesn't get it. They think I'm now a " commie" , I guess. I see it as the last big gasp of hot, dangerous air from an Empire -- Exposed. Unfortunately, its not over yet and maybe we/you will have more bad times ahead. Crimea this summer is doing well with much work going on – from the badly needed new infrastructure to the new bridge, the people are much better off than in Ukraine. They made the right choice in returning to Mother Russia even though it was a no-brainer for them. The world is lucky to have free writers like, Parry, Roberts, Vltchek, Pepe', the Saker and the intelligent commenters are as important as the writers in spreading the Pravda. Spacibo Mr. Parry

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 6:54 am

Thanks for sharing with us GMC. And good luck to you.

ranney , September 16, 2017 at 4:22 am

YES -- -- -- -- -- Yes to all that you wrote Robert -- Thank you again for writing clearly and saying what obviously needs to be said, but no one else will. We've been down this road before -i.e. the media pulling us into wars of Empire – first the Spanish- American one, then a bunch of others working up to Viet Nam, and then Iraq. Each one gets worse and now we're reaching for a nuclear one. Keep writing; your voice gives some of us hope that just maybe others will join in and stop the media from their constant "messages of hate" and the urging of the public to a suicidal conflagration.

Joe Tedesky , September 16, 2017 at 8:55 am

The funny thing about living through the 'fake news' era, is that now everyone thinks that their news source is the correct news source. Many believe that outside of the individual everyone else reads or listens too 'fake news'. It's like all of a sudden no one has credibility, yet everyone may have it, depending on what news source you subscribe to. I mean there's almost no way of knowing what the truth is, because everyone is claiming that they are getting their news from reputable news outlets, but some or many aren't, and who are the reputable news sources, if you don't mind my asking you this just for the record?

Come to think of it, the 'fake news' theme is brilliant considering that now we have no bench mark for what the truth is, and by not having that bench mark for the truth we all go our separate ways believing what we believe, because certainly my news source is the only truthful one, and your news source is beyond questionable of how the news should be reported.

People read headlines, but hardly do they ever read the article. Many hear news sound bites, but never do they do the research required, in order to verify the stories accuracy. Hear say works even more to rain in the clouds of mass deception. Then there are those who sort of buy whatever it is the established news outlets are selling based on their belief that it doesn't much matter anyway, because 'the establishment' lies to us all the time as a rule, so what's the big deal to keep up on the news, because it's all obviously one big lie isn't it? So not only do we have irresponsible news journalist, we also have a very large number of a monopolized unqualified news gatherers who must accept what the various news agencies report, regardless of what the truth may be. It's better the Establishment keep it this way, because then the Establishment has better control over the 'mob grabbing the pitchforks and sickles' and crying out justice for somebody's head. It's kind of like job security for the Establishment, but in their case it's more like a 'keeping your elitist head' security, if you know what I mean.

To learn how to deal with this 'fake news', I would suggest you start studying the JFK assassination, or any other ill defined tragic event, and then you might learn how to decipher the 'fake news' matrix of confusion to learn what you so desire to learn. I chose this route, because when was the last time the Establishment brokered the truth in regard to a happening such as the JFK assassination? Upon learning of what a few well written books has to say, you will then need to rely on your own brain to at least give you enough satisfaction to allow you to believe that you pretty well got it right, and there go you. In other words, the truth is out there, hiding in plain sight, and if you are persistent enough you just might find it. Good luck.

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 11:29 am

The truth has never been that easy to find Joe. Actually all the beyond obvious propaganda on the MSM might wake some people up to do the searching necessary to get closer to what is really happening in their world. Maybe the liars have finally overplayed their hand? Or are we the people really that dumb? (I am scared to hear the answer to that one -- )

Joe Tedesky , September 16, 2017 at 12:04 pm

I could be a wise guy, and say to you 'or so you say' in reply to your kind comment, but then that would make me a troll.

All I'm saying mike is that in this era of 'fake news' we are all running about on different levels, and never shall the two of us meet. That is unless you and I get our news from the same source, but what are the odds of all of us getting the same news? It's impossible, and I'm not quite that sure that that would be what we want either. Still without an objective, and honest large media to set the correct narrative we end up in this place, where you might find yourself doing a spread sheet study to come to some conclusion of what is true, and what isn't.

Case in point, read about Russia-Gate here on consortiumnews, and then go listen to Rachel Maddow report on the same thing. Two different sets of stories. Just try and reconcile what you read on sites like this one concerning Ukraine, then go watch MSNBC or CNN. Never a match. So you mike read consortiumnews, and your in laws read the NYT and watch CNN, and there you go, a controversy arises between you and the in laws and with that life goes on, but where is the correct news to be found to settle the score?

Once upon a time the established news agencies such as CNN, and the NYT, were the hallmark of the news, and sites such as this one were the ones on the edge, now I'm convinced this conviction has reversed itself.

Thanks mike for the reply. Joe

Joe Tedesky , September 17, 2017 at 9:07 am

Wouldn't it be hilarious mike, if the dumbed down people attacked the Bastille under false pretense? Especially if the lie had been concocted by the blinded by their own hubris sitting powers to be. Talk about poetic justice, and well placed irony. Priceless --

Virginia , September 16, 2017 at 2:38 pm

Joe, Apparently people take the easy way out. And that's just it -- "the way out." Extinction -- Maybe they haven't learned there's something worth learning about and living for. I'm gonna concentrate on that. Open eyes that they might see

Joe Tedesky , September 17, 2017 at 8:08 am

You are right Virginia, it is probably 'a way out', and God bless them for it. My late Mother was like that, but I'll tell you why. When my Mother was growing up in a family of eleven children, her father would rent out their street level basement to the voting polls. A block away my uncle who was quite older than my Mother owned a corner saloon. Now on Election Day my Mother said how the men in suits would pull up in their big expensive cars, and they would descend upon my uncles corner bar. Soon after one by one drunks would come out of the tavern wearing Republican buttons then they would go into grandpap's basement voting booth, and vote. Not long after my Mom said, the same drunks would come pouring out of my uncles tavern and this time they were wearing Democratic buttons, and they would go vote once or as many times as it would take to thank the big guys in the suits for the free drinks. My Mom said this went on all day. She said a lot dead people voted whether they knew it or not, and that's the truth. She would follow up by saying, 'yeah a lot of politicians won on the drunk vote'.

So Virginia some can't take the decept and lying, and with that they give up. I myself don't feel this way, but then there are the times I can't help but think of how my dear sweet Mother probably did have it right for the sake of living your life in the most upright and honest way. Sadly, there is no virtue in politics, or so it seems.

Oh yeah, that uncle who owned the corner saloon, he did go into politics holding nominee appointed positions, until he got wise and got a honest job, as he would jokingly say.

For the record my Mother did vote, but she was the lady standing in line who looked reluctant and pissed off to be there, but never the less my Mum was a voter. Oh, the candidate my Mother loved the most was JFK. John F Kennedy's was the only presidential picture my Mother ever hung in our humble home.

My message here, was only meant to give some cover, and an explanation for those who shy away from politics, and not an excuse to stay uninvolved. For even my non political Mum did at least in the end break down, and do the right thing. We should all at least try, and keep up on the events of our time, and vote with the best intentions we can muster up.

Okay, I'm sorry for the length of my reply, but you are always worth taking time for me to give a reasonable answer to. I also hope I'm entertaining with these stories I seem to tell from time to time. Take care Virginia. Joe

Tannenhouser , September 17, 2017 at 7:28 pm

Humans are approximately 90% water, give or take depending on evaporation (Age). Water always takes the path of least resistance. Oh I wish and hope for the day when most realize they are much more than 'just' water:)

Mulga Mumblebrain , September 16, 2017 at 5:47 pm

The fakestream media lies incessantly, and has for generations. Chomsky and Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent' outlines the propaganda role of the 'mass media', and is twenty-five years old, in which period things have gotten MUCH worse (just look at the fate of the UK 'Guardian' for an example). Yet the fakestream presstitutes STILL have the unmitigated gall to call others 'fake' and demand that we believe their unbelievable narratives. That's real chutzpah.

Joe Tedesky , September 17, 2017 at 8:26 am

You know Mulga you are correct, many generations have listened to many, many, lies upon their way to the voting booths. It goes without saying, how the aristocrats when they find it necessary, as they often do find it necessary, they lie to their flock for a whole host of reasons. Why we could pick anytime in history, and find out where lies have paved the way to a leaders greater conquest, or a leaders said greater conquest if not met with defeat, but never the less the public was used to propel some leaders wishes onward and upward whether for the good or the bad.

But here we are Mulga, you and the rest of us here, straddling on the fence over what might be right to what possibly could be wrong. Without a responsible press you and us Mulga need to learn from each other. Like when comment posters leave links, that's always been something good for me to follow through on.

We live in a unique time, but a time not that unique, as much as it is our time. Our great, great, grandparents were straddling the same fence, and I'm guessing they too relied on each other to navigate there way through the twisting maze of politics, and basically what they all wanted, was a little peace on earth. So Mulga I also guess that you and we the people are just carrying on a tradition that us common folk have been assigned too continue.

Like reading your comments Mulga, good to see you here. Joe

Zhu Bajie , September 17, 2017 at 7:44 pm

Fake news has always been common. Critical thinking has never been popular because Occam's Razor might slice your favorite story to shreds. Personally, I give full credence to few things in life, but suspect many more, to some degree. I trust my own experiences more than what I read in the media and try to reject conventional wisdom as much as possible.

Herman , September 16, 2017 at 9:39 am

Observing Putin's behavior, you have to be impressed with his continue willingness to extend the olive branch and to seek a reasonable settlement of differences. His language always leaves open the possibility of détente with the understanding that Russia is not going to lay down to be run over. On the contrary, the language of Obama and Trump, and their representatives is consistently take it or leave and engaging in school yard insults of Russia, Putin, Lavrov and others. We have consistently played the bully in the school yard encouraging others to join in the bullying. We talk about the corrosive discourse at home, but observe the discourse in foreign affairs. Trump and his associates are guilty, but slick talking Obama and his subordinates was often worse. .As has so often been said, we have only two arrows in our foreign affairs quiver, war and sanctions. We lack the imagination and will to actually engage in civil discussions with those on our enemies' list.

Parry is of course correct in his opinion of the New York Times but it doesn't stop there, only that the New York Times undeservedly is the "newspaper of record." His citing of Orwell is on the mark. Just turn your TV on for the news and see for yourself.

Dave P. , September 16, 2017 at 8:27 pm

Very well said, Herman. Very true.

Patricia Victour , September 16, 2017 at 9:54 am

I don't subscribe to the NYT for this reason, and it is galling to me that our local rag, "The Santa Fe New Mexican," while featuring excellent local coverage for the most part, gets all it's "national" news from the likes of the NYT, WaPo, and AP. These stories, much of it "fake news" in my opinion, are offered as gospel by the "New Mexican", with no journalistic effort to print opposing views. People I know seem so proud of themselves that they subscribe to "The Times," and I don't even dare try to point out to them that they are being duped and propagandized into believing the most outrageous (and dangerous) crap.

To add another dimension, these sources are so jealous of their position as the ultimate word on what Americans are to believe, and also so worried about their waning influence, that now RT and Sputnik, both Russia-sponsored news outlets, may be forced to register as "foreign agents" in the U.S. I am not familiar with Sputnik, but I have been watching RT on TV for several years and find it to be an excellent source of national and foreign news. Stories I see first on RT are usually confirmed soon after by other reliable sources, such as this excellent site – Consortiumnews. At no point did I feel I was being coerced by Russia during the 2016 election – I needed no confirmation that both Trump and Clinton were probably the worst candidates ever to run for President.

Joe Tedesky , September 17, 2017 at 9:31 am

You know what I find interesting is how a reporter such as Robert Parry will pinpoint his details to a critique of say the NYT, but when or if a NYTer is to write a likewise article of the Alternative Internet Press the NYTer will just simply critique their internet rival as a 'conspiracy theorist' or as now as in 2017 they refer to them as 'fake news artist'. I mean no rebuttal back referencing certain details such as what Parry mentioned, but just rhetorical words written over tabloid written headlines finalized under the heading of 'fake news'. This must be being taught in journalism school these days, because it's popular in the MSM.

Just like you have never heard or read from the MSM a detailed answered rebuttal to the pointed questions of say the '911 Truthers' or a 'JFK Assassination Researcher' a valid bona fide answer. No, but you do hear the masters and mistresses of the corporate media world call writers such as Parry, Roberts, and St Clair, 'fake newscasters', 'Putin Puppets', and or a whole host of other nasty names, as they feel fit to write, but never a honest too goodness rebuttal. Then they talk about Trump not sounding or acting presidential hmm the nerve of these wordsmiths.

BTW, I don't care much for Trump, and I even care less for our MSM. Just wanted to get that straight.

Nice comment Patricia. Joe

hatedbyu , September 16, 2017 at 10:57 am

let's not forget about the nytimes grossly negligent reporting on syria and libya. judith miller? russian doping scandal. lying about the holdomor . man i could do this all day ..

Joe Tedesky , September 17, 2017 at 10:12 am

You mean the on air hours of punditry explaining away their professions mistakes, or the honest rebuttal? It's at those particular times and occurrences of ignored self reflection our honorable (not) MSM falls back on Orwell's 1984. Like it never happened. The dog didn't eat no home work, because there never was a dog, nor was there any homework .stupid us. Life goes on uninterrupted and non commercial time can be filled with an update on Bill Cosby's past alleged sexual predator attacks, and this is our professional news casting doing its best to entertain us, not inform us god forbid, but entertain us the ignorant masses of their workless society.

One day hatedbyu the ignorant masses may just show the corporate infotainment duchess and dudes that they 'the people' ain't so ignorant, and things must change. Well at least that's the dream, but it's still a work in progress, and then there's the historical seesaw.

I think it's the power of empire to expand, just like a balloon, until it reaches it's bursting point. But just what that bursting point is, is without a doubt the most disputable of arguments to be made. I am coming to the belief we are, as always, continually getting to that point, and we may of course be very close to igniting that spark in the not so far off future. I would prefer the spark to be completely financial, and dealt with accordingly, but I'm a dreamer purest and a conspiracy theorist, so that means when the crap starts going down, I'll be the old man on the hill lighting up a big fat doobie cue soundtrack 'Fool On the Hill'.

Sorry just had to get carried away, but it's Sunday morning hatedbyu and I'm home alone and nobody's trying to break in .. Good comment hatedbyu. Joe

Stephen J. , September 16, 2017 at 11:27 am

A Compilation Not seen in Corporate Media: See Link Below:
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
US Wars and Hostile Actions: A List
By David Swanson

http://davidswanson.org/warlist/?link_id=3&can_id=ed31bf4cbc8f991980718b21b49ca26d&source=email-how-outlawing-war-changed-the-world-in-1928-2&email_referrer=email_232560&email_subject=how-outlawing-war-changed-the-world-in-1928

Bob Van Noy , September 16, 2017 at 9:42 pm

Stephen J. Thank you for introducing me to David Swanson. Great link.

Joe Tedesky , September 17, 2017 at 11:29 am

Im with you on that Bob, Stephen J providing the Swanson link should be a must read, to keep things fair and balanced. I also do wonder if Swanson's message isn't getting out there, and we all don't already know it? I'm a glass half full kind of guy, but what do we really know about each other, other than what the corporate media instills on us? I wish cable news would air a program made up of Swanson, Pilger, and Parry, for that at least could put some well needed balance finality back, if it ever was there in the first place, back into the public narrative .but there go I.

Good to see you Bob. Joe

Hank , September 16, 2017 at 11:32 am

The deep state sticks with what works: controlling the media keeps the masses ignorant and malleable. "Remember the Maine"
Germans are bayoneting Belgium babies and "remember the Lusitania" , some evidence shows higher ups knew the Japanese fleet was 400 miles from Hawaii, recall "Tonkin Gulf" episode, Iran Contra , invasion of Granada, Panama, and of course 911 and war on terror, patriot act, weapons of mass destruction, and Russia hacking the election. The masses "believe" these to be true and react and respond accordingly.

"
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY."

–Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 12:53 pm

Thanks Hank. Same ole same ole, eh? When will we ever learn?

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 11:32 am

"Trump might well go down in history of the President who screwed-up a historical opportunity to really change our entire planet for the better and who, instead, by his abject lack of courage and honor, his total lack of political and diplomatic education and by his groveling subservience to the "swamp" he had promised to drain ended up being as pathetically clueless as Obama was." (The Saker)

My sentiments exactly.

Voytenko , September 16, 2017 at 11:49 am

What a glaring lie this article is, its' author being either "useful idiot" played by Kremlin, or maybe not so much of an idiot. What are you talking about here in comments, those who applaud this article, this bunch of lies? You live in Ukraine, you know anything about that so-called "putch"? How dare you to insult the whole nation – Ukrainian nation? Shame on you, people. You don't know (author of the article including) anything about Russia, Ukraine and that bloody Putin, but you have problems with the US and its' politics. US are your business, Ukraine definitely not. Find some other examples of NYT and USA malfeasance, some you know something about. Stop insulting other nations.

anon , September 17, 2017 at 9:53 am

You are not from Ukraine, and you care not for Ukraine, or you would seek unity not dominance of East over West Ukraine. Tell us about your life in Ukraine, and show us the evidence of "that bloody Putin."

Abe , September 16, 2017 at 1:31 pm

Yellow journalism now employs "open source and social media investigation" scams foisted by Eliot Higgins and the Bellingcat disinformation site.

Bellingcat is allied with the New York Times and the Washington Post, the two principal mainstream media organs for "regime change" propaganda, via the First Draft Coalition "partner network".

In a triumph of Orwellian Newspeak, this Google-sponsored "post-Truth" Propaganda 3.0 coalition declares that member organizations will "work together to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the verification process".

The New York Times routinely hacks up Bellingcat "reports" and pretends they're "verification"

Malachy Browne, "Senior Story Producer" at the New York Times, cited Bellingcat to embellish the media "story" about the Khan Shaykhun chemical incident in Idlib Syria.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/insider/the-times-uses-forensic-mapping-to-verify-a-syrian-chemical-attack.html

Before joining the Times, Browne was an editor at "social news and marketing agency" Storyful and at Reported. ly, the "social reporting" arm of Pierre Omidyar's First Look Media.

Browne generously "supplemented" his "reporting" on the Khan Shaykun incident with "videos gathered by the journalist Eliot Higgins and the social media news agency Storyful".

Browne encouraged Times readers to participate in the Bellingcat-style "verification" charade: "Find a computer, get on Google Earth and match what you see in the video to the streets and buildings"

Browne of Storyful and Higgins of Bellingcat are founding members of the Google-funded "First Draft" coalition.

Browne demonstrates how the NYT and other "First Draft" coalition media outlets use video to "strengthen" their "storytelling".

In 2016, the NYT video department hired Browne and Andrew Glazer. a senior producer on the team that launched VICE News, to help "enhance" the "reporting" at the Times.

Browne represents the Times' effort to package its dubious "reporting" using the Storyful marketing strategy of "building trust, loyalty, and revenue with insight and emotionally driven content" wedded with Bellingcat style "digital forensics" scams.

In other words, we should expect the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, UK Guardian, and all the other "First Draft" coalition media "partners" to barrage us more Bellingcat / Atlantic Council-style Facebook and YouTube video mashups, crazy fun with Google Earth, and Twitter campaigns.

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 1:47 pm

Thanks Abe. Sounds like these guys all read 1984, and decided it was just the thing for 2017 Amerika.

Abe , September 16, 2017 at 1:49 pm

"Our investigation debunks the claims"

Browne keeps the April 2017 NYT video positioned at the top of his Twitter feed
https://twitter.com/malachybrowne/status/857290743068721152

Obviously Browne is proud of the "investigation" even though merely shared a "story" fed to him by Higgins' Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council .

Abe , September 16, 2017 at 1:58 pm

Higgins and Bellingcat receives direct funding from the Open Society Foundations (OSF) founded by business magnate George Soros, and from Google's Digital News Initiatives (DNI).

Google's 2017 DNI Fund Annual Report describes Higgins as "a world–leading expert in news verification".

Higgins claims the DNI funding "allowed us to push this to the next level".
https://digitalnewsinitiative.com/news/case-study-codifying-social-conflict-data/

In their zeal to propagate the story of Higgins as a courageous former "unemployed man" now busy independently "Codifying social conflict data", Google neglects to mention Higgins' role as a "research fellow" for the NATO-funded Atlantic Council "regime change" think tank.

Despite their claims of "independent journalism", Eliot Higgins and the team of disinformation operatives at Bellingcat depend on the Atlantic Council to promote their "online investigations".

The Atlantic Council donors list includes:

– US government and military entities: US State Department, US Air Force, US Army, US Marines.

– The NATO military alliance

– Large corporations and major military contractors: Chevron, Google, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BP, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Northrup Grumman, SAIC, ConocoPhillips, and Dow Chemical

– Foreign governments: United Arab Emirates (UAE; which gives the think tank at least $1 million), Kingdom of Bahrain, City of London, Ministry of Defense of Finland, Embassy of Latvia, Estonian Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Defense of Georgia

– Other think tanks and think tankers: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Nicolas Veron of Bruegel (formerly at PIIE), Anne-Marie Slaughter (head of New America Foundation), Michele Flournoy (head of Center for a New American Security), Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution.

Higgins is a Research Associate of the Department of War Studies at King's College, and was principal co-author of the Atlantic Council "reports" on Ukraine and Syria.

Damon Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programs and Strategy at the Atlantic Council, a co-author with Higgins of the report, effusively praised Higgins' effort to bolster anti-Russian propaganda:

Wilson stated, "We make this case using only open source, all unclassified material. And none of it provided by government sources. And it's thanks to works, the work that's been pioneered by human rights defenders and our partner Eliot Higgins, uh, we've been able to use social media forensics and geolocation to back this up." (see Atlantic Council video presentation minutes 35:10-36:30)

However, the Atlantic Council claim that "none" of Higgins' material was provided by government sources is an obvious lie.

Higgins' primary "pieces of evidence" are a video depicting a Buk missile launcher and a set of geolocation coordinates that were supplied by the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) and the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior via the Facebook page of senior-level Ukrainian government official Arsen Avakov, the Minister of Internal Affairs.

Higgins and the Atlantic Council are working in support of the Pentagon and Western intelligence's "hybrid war" against Russia.

The laudatory bio of Higgins on the Kings College website specifically acknowledges his service to the Atlantic Council:

"an award winning investigative journalist and publishes the work of an international alliance of fellow investigators using freely available online information. He has helped inaugurate open-source and social media investigations by trawling through vast amounts of data uploaded constantly on to the web and social media sites. His inquiries have revealed extraordinary findings, including linking the Buk used to down flight MH17 to Russia, uncovering details about the August 21st 2013 Sarin attacks in Damascus, and evidencing the involvement of the Russian military in the Ukrainian conflict. Recently he has worked with the Atlantic Council on the report "Hiding in Plain Sight", which used open source information to detail Russia's military involvement in the crisis in Ukraine."

While it honors Higgins' enthusiastic "trawling", King's College curiously neglects to mention that Higgins' "findings" on the Syian sarin attacks were thoroughly debunked.

King's College also curiously neglects to mention the fact that Higgins, now listed as a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council's "Future Europe Initiative", was principal co-author of the April 2016 Atlantic Council "report" on Syria.

The report's other key author was John E. Herbst, United States Ambassador to Ukraine from September 2003 to May 2006 (the period that became known as the Orange Revolution) and Director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.

Other report authors include Frederic C. Hof, who served as Special Adviser on Syrian political transition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012. Hof was previously the Special Coordinator for Regional Affairs in the US Department of State's Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, where he advised Special Envoy George Mitchel. Hof had been a Resident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East since November 2012, and assumed the position as Director in May 2016.

There is no daylight between the "online investigations" of Higgins and Bellingcat and the "regime change" efforts of the NATO-backed Atlantic Council.

Thanks to the Atlantic Council, Soros, and Google, it's a pretty well-funded gig for fake "citizen investigative journalist" Higgins.

Dave P. , September 17, 2017 at 12:26 am

Abe – Thanks for all the invaluable information you have been providing.

jaycee , September 16, 2017 at 1:52 pm

The meme of an aggressive assertive Russia, based on what happened in Crimea, is a deliberate lie expressed with the utmost contempt towards principled diplomacy. The average consumer of mainstream news is also being shamelessly and contemptuously manipulated.

First, the people of Crimea did not want to be part of Ukraine after the USSR dissolved, and had previously expressed their opinion through referenda. The events of 2014 were part of an obvious pattern of previously expressed opinion.

Second, around the time of the so-called Orange Revolution, NATO analysts forecast what would probably happen should Ukraine embrace European "security architecture" (i.e. NATO), and concluded that Russia would take steps to protect their naval facilities in Crimea. Yet, in 2014, NATO officials would disingenuously express their utmost shock and surprise at the event.

Third, Viktor Yushchenko, who came to power in Ukraine in 2005 through the NED-financed Orange Revolution, consistently described his intention to join Ukraine with European institutions, including its "security architecture" (NATO), although acknowledging that the Ukrainian citizenry would have to be manipulated into accepting such a controversial and adversarial position. He would downplay presumed Russian reaction to potential removal from Crimea despite the obviousness and predictability of a serious crisis (see Sept 23, 2008 "Conversation with Viktor Yushchenko" Council On Foreign Relations). Yushchenko polled at 5.45% when he lost the Presidency in 2010, running on a platform of European integration.

Fourth, Russian officials at the highest level told their American counterparts in 2009 that any attempt to integrate Ukraine into NATO, and a corresponding threat to the Crimean naval facilities, would result in moves similar to what would later happen in 2014. Yet the United States, after instigating and legitimizing the Ukraine coup, would react to the Crimean referendum as an aggressive act which represented an unexpected security crisis requiring a reluctant but firm response of militarizing the entire region, and portraying the Russian state to the public as a dangerous and aggressive rogue power.

The deliberate omission of relevant contextual background by politicians, military officials, and the mainstream media demonstrates that none of these institutions can be trusted, and it is they who represent the greatest threat to international security. Putin has been relentlessly demonized, but it can be argued that his swift and essentially bloodless moves in Crimea in 2014 avoided what could have been a major international crisis on the level of the Berlin blockade in 1961. It appears, in hindsight, that such a crisis is exactly what the NATO alliance desired all along.

Sam F , September 17, 2017 at 9:58 am

Well said.

Joe Tedesky , September 17, 2017 at 12:02 pm

Nicely put jaycee. What you wrote took me back to a time of some eight months before Maiden Square, when my niece decided to live in Kiev. A bit of a ways away from Pittsburgh, so I started researching Ukraine. I also discovered RT & Moonofalabama, and sites like that.

What you wrote jaycee, in my humble opinion should be said in our MSM news. If for no other reason but to give an alternative fair and balance to say the likes of Rachel Maddow, or Joy Ann Reed. The way the MSM picks and chooses, and skims across important events in Ukraine, like Odessa, are criminal if ever the Press is to be judged for crimes of war. To the crys of a destroyed empire's vanquished population would then your small essay be heard jaycee, and yet that's the world we live in, but at least you said it.

Thanks jaycee (that's the first time I wrote your name and the j didn't go capital what does that mean? Who cares.)
Joe

rosemerry , September 16, 2017 at 2:04 pm

Of course the NYT liars would not bother to watch Oliver Stone's interviews with Pres. Putin, but during them he explained at length about his cooperation during the years after Ukraine elected a pro-Western president, managing to carry out mutual agreements and policies, but after the new pro- Russian president was elected, the USA did not accept him and overthrew him, which preceded the antics of Nuland et al in 2014 and the rest which followed.

MaDarby , September 16, 2017 at 2:05 pm

It appears to me that the elites decided long ago that the best solution to overpopulation is just to let climate change take care of three or four billion people while the Saud family and the Cargill family live on in their sheltered paradises with every convenience AI can provide.

It is clear these mega-rich families DO NOT CARE about society, about mass human extension or even about nature itself. They are the pinnacle of human evolution. Psycho-pathological loss of empathy might have been a bad evolutionary experiment.

This is derangement on a human specie scale, no leader no one in power has been willing to do anything but exploit every opportunity to make money and increase global domination, the great powers knew this day was coming when they made their decisions to hide it 50 years ago. The consequences are acceptable to the decision makers.

A mass extension of organic life is taking place before our eyes, nothing can stop it, THEY DO NOT CARE.

They sure as hell don't care if millions don't believe the Russia crap they just move ahead as the Imperial power, might makes right. In the end it is a religious project, the biblical slaughter of the innocents to appease a vengeful god and rid the world of evil.

Joe Tedesky , September 17, 2017 at 12:19 pm

What you bring up MaDarby takes me towards the direction of wondering what all those other Departments, other than State & Defense, of the Presidential Cabinet are up too? If our news were done and somehow properly organized, in such away as to educate us peons, then whatever the time allowed would be to broadcast and print out what each Federal Agency is up to. Now I know a citizen can seek out this information, but why can't there be a suitable mass media representation to reach us clunkheads like me, not you?

What should be exposed is the corporate ownership of the very agencies that were put in place to protect the 'Commons' has been corrupted to the point of no return. This dilemma will take a huge public referendum short of a mob revolution to change this atmosphere of complacency. The public will get blamed, but the real blame should be put on the massive leadership programs which were bolted down on to their citizens masses knowledge of said events, and there in lies the total crime of deception.

MaDarby your concern for nature is where a smart person should put their number one priority concern, no arguing there, but just a lifting word of approval of how you put it. Joe

Donald Patterson , September 16, 2017 at 2:45 pm

Consortium has been a clear voice on the lunacy of the Russia-Gate scandal. But to paint Yanukovych former President of the Ukraine as an injured party considering his history in government with what appears to be large scale corruption is part of the story as well. A treason trial started in May. More info needed on what looks like a complicated story. This would be a good piece of investigative journalism as well.

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 9:03 pm

Can you imagine what a huge can of worms would be revealed if there was a thorough investigation on every congressperson and public official in Washington DC? It would make Yanukovych look like a saint. And in addition, let's investigate the 10,000 richest people in the US, including all their offshore fortunes gained by illegal means. Wouldn't it make sense to do that? Isn't there enough evidence of probable criminal activity to open these investigations? Where is our ethical sense when it comes to our own dirty laundry? I guess it's easier to speculate about other's crimes than look into our own, eh?

Joe Tedesky , September 17, 2017 at 12:40 pm

The focus I get isn't so much focused on Yanukovych, even Putin wasn't all that crazy about his style of leadership, but my focus on a viable democratically created government doesn't necessarily start with an armed public coup. Yes, leading up to the violence, peaceful protesters took to the streets, but as we both know this is always the case until the baton twirling thugs come to finally ramp up the protest to a marathon of violent clashes and whatever else gets heads busted, until we have a full fledged revolution on our hands pass out the cookies. I mean by by-passing the voting polls, even to somehow ad hoc a temporary government in some manner of government overthrow were done peacefully, well then maybe I could get on board with this new Ukrainian government, but even the NYT finds it impossible to cover up everything.

And what about the people of Donbass? Shouldn't they have a say in this new government realignment? Ukraine has, and has always had a East meets West kind of problem. That area has been ruled over for centuries by each other, and one another, to a point of who's who and what's what is hard to figure out. Donbass, should in my regard be separate from the Now Kiev government. (Be kind with your critique of me for I am just an average American telling you what I see from here)

It's like everything else, where we should let the people of the region sit down with each other and work it out, we instead blame it on Putin, or whoever else Putin appears to be, and there you have it MIC spending up the ying-yang, for the lack of a better portrayal, but still a portrayal of what ills our modern geopolitical society.

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 2:49 pm

"The best thing which could happen to this country and its people would be the collapse of this Empire. The support, even tacit and passive, of this Empire by people like yourself only delays this outcome and allows this abomination to to bring even more misery and pain upon millions of innocent people, including millions of your fellow Americans. This Empire now also threatens my country, Russia, with war and possibly nuclear war and that, in turn, means that this Empire threatens the survival of the human species. Whether the US Empire is the most evil one in history is debatable, but the fact that it is by far the most dangerous one is not. Is that not a good enough reason for you to say "enough is enough"? What would it take for you to switch sides and join the rest of mankind in what is a struggle for the survival of our species? Or will it take a nuclear winter to open your eyes to the true nature of the Empire you apparently are still supporting against all evidence?" (the Saker)

Please go to the entire article on today's Saker Blog.

Voytenko , September 16, 2017 at 3:48 pm

Sick edition consortiumnews, sick readers. Elites, Deep State, Evil Empire USA Dove Putin with olive branch Guys, why don't you watch, say for a week, Russian TV, if you have somebody around who can translate from Russian. If you want to hear real nazi racist alt-whatever crap, Russian TV is the place. But you'll enjoy it, most probably. Thankfully, you guys, are obviously, minority, with all your pseudo intellectual delusions, discussions and ideas. "Useful idiots" – that's what Lenin said about the likes of you.

Abe , September 16, 2017 at 7:00 pm

There is no reason to assume that the trollish rants of "Voytenko" are from some outraged flag-waving "patriot" in Kiev. There are plenty of other "useful idiots" ready, willing and able to make mischief.

For example, about a million Jews emigrated to Israel ("made Aliyah") from the post-Soviet states during the 1990s. Some 266,300 were Ukrainian Jews. A large number of Ukrainian Jews also emigrated to the United States during this period. For example, out of an estimated 400 thousand Russian-speaking Jews in Metro New York, the largest number (thirty-six percent) hail from Ukraine. Needless to say, many among them are not so well disposed toward the nations of Russia or Ukraine, and quite capable of all manner of mischief.

A particularly "useful idiot" making mischief the days is Sergey Brin of Google. Brin's parents were graduates of Moscow State University who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1979 when their son was five years old.

Google, the company that runs the most visited website in the world, the company that owns YouTube, is very snugly in bed with the US military-industrial-surveillance complex.

In fact, Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish "partnerships" with military contractors like SAIC, Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.

Google's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful".

In a 2004 letter prior to their initial public offering, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin explained their "Don't be evil" culture required objectivity and an absence of bias: "We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see."

The corporate giant appears to have replaced the original motto altogether. A carefully reworded version appears in the Google Code of Conduct: "You can make money without doing evil".

This new gospel allows Google and its "partners" to make money promoting propaganda and engaging in surveillance, and somehow manage to not "be evil". That's "post-truth" logic for you.

Google has been enthusiastically promoting Eliot Higgins "arm chair analytics" since 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbWhcWizSFY

Indeed, a very cozy cross-promotion is happening between Google and Bellingcat.

In November 2014, Google Ideas and Google For Media, partnered the George Soros-funded Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) to host an "Investigathon" in New York City. Google Ideas promoted Higgins' "War and Pieces: Social Media Investigations" song and dance via their YouTube page.

Higgins constantly insists that Bellingcat "findings" are "reaffirmed" by accessing imagery in Google Earth.

Google Earth, originally called EarthViewer 3D, was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funded company acquired by Google in 2004. Google Earth uses satellite images provided by the company Digital Globe, a supplier of the US Department of Defense (DoD) with deep connections to both the military and intelligence communities.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is both a combat support agency under the United States Department of Defense, and an intelligence agency of the United States Intelligence Community. Robert T. Cardillo, director of the NGA, lavishly praised Digital Globe as "a true mission partner in every sense of the word". Examination of the Board of Directors of Digital Globe reveals intimate connections to DoD and CIA

Google has quite the history of malicious behavior. In what became known as the "Wi-Spy" scandal, it was revealed that Google had been collecting hundreds of gigabytes of payload data, including personal and sensitive information. First names, email addresses, physical addresses, and a conversation between two married individuals planning an extra-marital affair were all cited by the FCC. In a 2012 settlement, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Google will pay $22.5 million for overriding privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser. Though it was the largest civil penalty the Federal Trade Commission had ever imposed for violating one of its orders, the penalty as little more than symbolic for a company that had $2.8 billion in earnings the previous quarter.

Google is a joint venture partner with the CIA In 2009, Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel invested "under $10 million each" into Recorded Future shortly after the company was founded. The company developed technology that strips information from web pages, blogs, and Twitter accounts.

In addition to funding Bellingcat and joint ventures with the CIA, Brin's Google is heavily invested in Crowdstrike, an American cybersecurity technology firm based in Irvine, California.

Crowdstrike is the main "source" of the "Russians hacked the DNC" story.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council "regime change" think tank.

Alperovitz said that Crowdstrike has "high confidence" it was "Russian hackers".

"But we don't have hard evidence," Alperovitch admitted in a June 16, 2016 Washington Post interview.

Allegations of Russian perfidy are routinely issued by private companies with lucrative US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. The companies claiming to protect the nation against "threats" have the ability to manufacture "threats".

The US and UK possess elite cyber capabilities for both cyberspace espionage and offensive operations.

Both the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are intelligence agencies with a long history of supporting military operations. US military cyber operations are the responsibility of US Cyber Command, whose commander is also the head of the NSA.

US offensive cyber operations have emphasized political coercion and opinion shaping, shifting public perception in NATO countries as well as globally in ways favorable to the US, and to create a sense of unease and distrust among perceived adversaries such as Russia and China.

The Snowden revelations made it clear that US offensive cyber capabilities can and have been directed both domestically and internationally. The notion that US and NATO cyber operations are purely defensive is a myth.

Recent US domestic cyber operations have been used for coercive effect, creating uncertainty and concern within the American government and population.

The perception that a foreign attacker may have infiltrated US networks, is monitoring communications, and perhaps considering even more damaging actions, can have a disorienting effect.

In the world of US "hybrid warfare" against Russia, offensive cyber operations work in tandem with NATO propaganda efforts, perhaps best exemplified by the "online investigation" antics of the Atlantic Council's Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat disinformation site.

mike k , September 16, 2017 at 8:50 pm

Thanks Abe. Your insights are invaluable.

GMC , September 17, 2017 at 4:53 am

I live in Russia and see those shows that you speak of. The Nazi rants are from the Ukraine folks invited on the show – you want to see Ukraine shows like the ones in RU. – well, you won't see any Russians invited to talk -- -- NONE --

Gregory Herr , September 17, 2017 at 10:33 am

Your posts are so blatantly contrived it's almost funny. Do you write for sitcoms as well?

mrtmbrnmn , September 16, 2017 at 4:48 pm

Is this a great country, or wot???

Stupid starts at the very top and there is no bottom to it .

Dominic Pukallus , September 16, 2017 at 10:13 pm

The Washington Post has its own ironically self-describing slogan. Perhaps that of the NYT these days should be, in the same vein, "The Sleep of Reason begets monsters". And who will soon then be able to whistle in the darkness full of these things?

mike k , September 17, 2017 at 8:03 am

When looking for monsters, the WaPo should start by looking at themselves.

Walter DuBlanica , September 17, 2017 at 2:26 pm

The chaos in Ukraine was engineered by Victoria Nuland at Hillary's request. Good that she is not president. The Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same people, same DNA, same religion Orthodoxy., Slavic, languages very close to each other, Cyrillic alphabet and a long common history .

Russian_angel , September 17, 2017 at 9:43 pm

Thank you for the truth about Russia, it hurts the Russians to read about themselves in the American newspapers a lie.

Florin , September 18, 2017 at 2:15 am

Gershman, Nuland, Pyland, Feltman . essentially ths four biggest US (quasi) diplomats, like Volodymyr Groysman, Petro Poroshenko and perhaps 'our guy' Yats – are Jewish.

Add to this the role of Israeli 'ex' military, some hundreds, which means Mossad, and of Jewish oligarchs in Ukraine – and consider that Jews are less than 1% of the population.

The point is if we were free to speak plainly, the Ukraine coup looks to be one in which American and Ukrainian Jews acted in concert to benefit Jewish power. There is more to be said on this, but this glimpse will suffice because, of course, one is not free to speak plainly even where plain speaking is, on the face of it, encouraged.

Jamie , September 18, 2017 at 12:03 pm

Where was fake Antifa when Obama armed Nazi's in the Ukraine?

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/12/u-s-house-admits-nazi-role-in-ukraine/

Obama then put Joe Biden's sleazy son, Hunter, on the board of the largest gas company there:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/05/14/hunter-bidens-new-job-at-a-ukrainian-gas-company-is-a-problem-for-u-s-soft-power/

By ignoring the fascism of one political party, Antifa is actually pro-fascist. This fits in well with their Hitler-like disdain for freedom of press, speech and assembly. And their absolute love of violence, we also saw in the 1930s among Nazi groups

[Sep 18, 2017] Trump won but he is completely alone. The Neocons have a total, repeat total, control of the Congress, the media, banking and finance, and the courts. From Clinton to Clinton they have deeply infiltrated the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, and the three letter agencies by The Saker

Although he speaks about the USA being occupied, looks like Saker does not understand that that the US empire is actually a global neoliberal empire where multinationals and financial oligarchy have political control. And without a viable alternative it probably will not collapse, as any collapse presuppose the withdrawal of support. The necessary level of isolation is possible only if a an alternative is present
Now like in befor the World War Ii there is struggle for "spheres of influence", in which the USA is gradually losing as both Germany and Japan restored their industrial potential and China is a new powerful player on the world scene, which now is allied with Russia with its formidable nuclear deterrent that now anti-missile defense can neutralize"
Also the USA venture into Ukraine means the completion of revision of the results of WWII, which opened a new can of worms for the USA making Russia essentially a hostile power (which neocon admit and try to exploit via the current neo-McCarthism witch hunt)
Notable quotes:
"... Trump wins. Problem: he will be completely alone. The Neocons have a total, repeat total, control of the Congress, the media, banking and finance, and the courts. From Clinton to Clinton they have deeply infiltrated the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, and the three letter agencies. ..."
"... In their hate-filled rage against Trump and the American people (aka "the basket of deplorables") the Neocons have had to show their true face. By their rejection of the outcome of the elections, by their riots, their demonization of Trump, the Neocons have shown two crucial things: first, that the US democracy is a sad joke and that they, the Neocons, are an occupation regime which rules against the will of the American people. ..."
"... And since, just like Israel, the USA are unable to frighten their enemies, they are basically left with nothing, no legitimacy, no ability to coerce. So yes, the Neocons have won. But their victory is removes the last chance for the US to avoid a collapse. ..."
"... Externally, the US foreign policy is basically "frozen" and in lieu of a foreign policy we now only have a long series of empty threats hurled at a list of demonized countries which are now promised "fire and brimstone" should they dare to disobey Uncle Sam. ..."
"... This bizarre, and illegal, form of a "vote of no-confidence" further hammers in the message that Trump is either a madman, a traitor, or both. ..."
"... Organizationally, it is clear that Trump is surrounded by enemies as illustrated by the absolutely outrageous fact that he can't even talk to a foreign head of state without having the transcript of his conversation leaked to the Ziomedia . ..."
"... I believe that these all are preparatory steps to trigger a major crisis and use it to remove Trump, either by a process of impeachment, or by force under the pretext of some crisis. Just look at the message which the Ziomedia has been hammeing into the brains of the US population. ..."
"... just imagine the reaction in South Korea and Japan if some crazy US strike on the DPRK results in Seoul and Tokyo being hit by missiles! ..."
"... when the cat is gone, the mice dance ..."
"... The mouse dreams dreams that would terrify the cat ..."
"... Third, for all the encouraging statistics about the Dow Jones, unemployment and growth, the reality is that the US society is rapidly transforming itself in a three-tired one: on top, a small number of obscenely rich people, under them, a certain amount of qualified professionals who service the filthy rich and who struggle to maintain a lifestyle which in the past was associated with the middle-class. And then the vast majority of Americans who basically are looking at making "minimal wage plus a little something" and who basically survive by not paying for health insurance, by typically working two jobs, by eating cheap and unhealthy "prolefeed" and by giving up on that which every American worker could enjoy in the 1950s and 1960s (have one parent at home, have paid holidays, a second vacation home, etc.). Americans are mostly hard workers and, so far, most of them are surviving, but they are mostly one paycheck away from seriously bad poverty. A lot of them only make ends meet because they get help from their parents and grand-parents (the same is true of southern Europe, by the way). A large segment of the US population now survives only because of Walmart and the Dollar Store. Once that fails, food stamps are the last option. That, or jail, of course. ..."
"... No wonder that when so many Americans heard Hillary's comment about the "basket of deplorables" they took that as declaration of war. ..."
"... Whatever may be the case, by their manic insistence, on one hand, to humiliate and crush Trump and, on the other, to repress millions of Americans the Neocons are committing a double mistake. First, they are showing their true face and, second, they are subverting the very institutions they are using to control and run this country. ..."
"... What makes the gradual collapse of the AngloZionist Empire so uniquely dangerous is that it is by far the biggest and most powerful empire in world history. No empire has ever had the quasi monopoly on power the USA enjoyed since WWII. By any measure, military, economic, political, social, the US came out of WWII as a giant and while there were ups and downs during the subsequent decades, the collapse of the USSR only reaffirmed what appeared to be the total victory of the United States. ..."
"... And if Obama was probably the most incompetent President in US history, Trump will be the first one to be openly lynched while in office. As a result, the AngloZionist Empire is now like a huge freight train which has lost its locomotive but still has an immense momentum pushing it forward even though there is nobody in control any more. The rest of the planet, with the irrelevant exception of the East Europeans, is now scrambling in horror to get out of the path of this out of control train. So far, the tracks (minimal common sense, political realities) are more or less holding, but a crash (political, economic or military) could happen at any moment. And that is very, very scary. ..."
"... The US has anywhere between 700 to 1000 military bases worldwide, the entire international financial system is deeply enmeshed with the US economy, the US Dollar is still the only real reserve currency, United States Treasury securities are held by all the key international players (including Russia and China), SWIFT is politically controlled by the US, the US is the only country in the world that can print as much money as it wants and, last but not least, the US has a huge nuclear arsenal. As a result, a US collapse would threaten everybody and that means that nobody would want to trigger one. The collapse of the Soviet Union threatened the rest of mankind only in one way: by its nuclear arsenal. In contrast, any collapse of the United States would threaten everybody in many different ways. ..."
"... This is the irony of our situation: even though the entire planet is sick and tried of the incompetent arrogance of the AngloZionists, nobody out there wants their Empire to catastrophically collapse. And yet, with the Neocons in power, such a collapse appears inevitable with potentially devastating consequences for everybody. ..."
"... This is really amazing, think of it: everybody hates the Neocons, not only a majority of the American people, but truly the entire planet. And yet that numerically small group of people has somehow managed to put everybody in danger, including themselves, due to their ugly vindictiveness, infinite arrogance and ideology-induced short-sightedness. That this could ever have happened, and at a planetary scale, is a dramatic testimony to the moral and spiritual decay of our civilization: how did we ever let things get that far?! ..."
"... My biggest hope with Trump was that he would be willing to sacrifice the Empire for the sake of the US (the opposite of what the Neocons are doing: they are willing to sacrifice the US for the sake of their Empire) and that he would manage a relatively safe and hopefully non-violent transition from Empire to "normal country" for the US. Clearly, this is ain't happening. Instead, the Neocons are threatening everybody: the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans and the Venezuelans of course, but also the Europeans (economically), the entire Middle-East (via the "only democracy in the Middle-East"), all the developing countries and even the American people. Heck, they are even threatening the US President himself, and in not-so-subtle ways! ..."
"... my overwhelming sense is that Trump will be removed from office, either for "high crimes and misdemeanors" or for "medical reasons" (they will simply declare him insane and unfit to be the President). ..."
"... The evil hand of the "Russian KGB" (yes, I know, the KGB was dissolved in 1991) will be found everywhere, especially amongst US libertarians (who will probably the only ones with enough brains to understand what is taking place). The (pseudo-) "Left" will rejoice. ..."
"... Should this course of action result in an unexpected level or resistance, either regional or social, a 9-11 false flag followed by a war will the most likely scenario (why stray away from something which worked so well the first time around?!). ..."
"... in 1991 when the US sent the 82nd AB to Iraq there was nothing standing between this light infantry force and the Iraqi armored divisions. Had the Iraqis attacked the plan was to use tactical nuclear weapons. Then this was all quickly forgotten ..."
"... There is a reason why the Neocons thrive in times of crisis: it allows them to hide behind the mayhem, especially when they are the ones who triggered the mayhem in the first place. This means that as long as the Neocons are anywhere near in power they will never, ever, allow peace to suddenly break out, lest the spotlight be suddenly shined directly upon them. Chaos, wars, crises – this is their natural habitat. Think of it as the by-product of their existence. Eventually, of course, they will be stopped and they will be defeated, like all their predecessors in history. But I shudder when I think of the price mankind will have to pay this time around. ..."
Aug 18, 2017 | www.unz.com

First, my writing on the wall

In October of last year a wrote an analysis I entitled The USA are about to face the worst crisis of their history and how Putin's example might inspire Trump and I think that this is a good time to revisit it now. I began the analysis by looking at the calamities which would befall the United States if Hillary was elected. Since this did not happen (thank God!), we can safely ignore that part and look at my prediction of what would happen if Trump was elected. Here is what I wrote:

Trump wins. Problem: he will be completely alone. The Neocons have a total, repeat total, control of the Congress, the media, banking and finance, and the courts. From Clinton to Clinton they have deeply infiltrated the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, and the three letter agencies. The Fed is their stronghold. How in the world will Trump deal with these rabid " crazies in the basement "? Consider the vicious hate campaign which all these "personalities" (from actors, to politicians to reporters) have unleashed against Trump – they have burned their bridges, they know that they will lose it all if Trump wins (and, if he proves to be an easy pushover his election will make no difference anyway). The Neocons have nothing to lose and they will fight to the very last one.

What could Trump possibly do to get anything done if he is surrounded by Neocons and their agents of influence? Bring in an entirely different team? How is he going to vet them? His first choice was to take Pence as a VP – a disaster (he is already sabotaging Trump on Syria and the elections outcome). I *dread* the hear whom Trump will appoint as a White House Chief of Staff as I am afraid that just to appease the Neocons he will appoint some new version of the infamous Rahm Emanuel And should Trump prove that he has both principles and courage, the Neocons can always "Dallas" him and replace him with Pence. Et voilŕ !

I went on to suggest that Trump's only option would be to follow Putin's example and do the the Neocons what Putin did to the oligarchs. Clearly that did not happen. In fact, one month after the election of Trump I wrote another analysis entitled " The Neocons and the "deep state" have neutered the Trump Presidency, it's over folks! ".

Less than a month ago I warned that a 'color revolution ' was taking place in the USA . My first element of proof was the so-called "investigation" which the CIA, FBI, NSA and others were conducting against President Trump's candidate to become National Security Advisor, General Flynn. Tonight, the plot to get rid of Flynn has finally succeeded and General Flynn had to offer his resignation . Trump accepted it. Now let's immediately get one thing out of the way: Flynn was hardly a saint or a perfect wise man who would single handedly saved the world. That he was not. However, what Flynn was is the cornerstone of Trump's national security policy . ( ) The Neocon run 'deep state' has now forced Flynn to resign under the idiotic pretext that he had a telephone conversation, on an open, insecure and clearly monitored, line with the Russian ambassador. And Trump accepted this resignation. Ever since Trump made it to the White House, he has taken blow after blow from the Neocon-run Ziomedia, from Congress, from all the Hollywood doubleplusgoodthinking "stars" and even from European politicians. And Trump took each blow without ever fighting back. Nowhere was his famous "you are fired!" to be seen. But I still had hope. I wanted to hope. I felt that it was my duty to hope. But now Trump has betrayed us all. Again, Flynn was not my hero. But he was, by all accounts, Trump's hero. And Trump betrayed him. The consequences of this will be immense. For one thing, Trump is now clearly broken. It took the 'deep state' only weeks to castrate Trump and to make him bow to the powers that be . Those who would have stood behind Trump will now feel that he will not stand behind them and they will all move back away from him. The Neocons will feel elated by the elimination of their worst enemy and emboldened by this victory they will push on, doubling-down over and over and over again. It's over, folks, the deep state has won.

I then concluded that the consequences of this victory would catastrophic for the United States:

In their hate-filled rage against Trump and the American people (aka "the basket of deplorables") the Neocons have had to show their true face. By their rejection of the outcome of the elections, by their riots, their demonization of Trump, the Neocons have shown two crucial things: first, that the US democracy is a sad joke and that they, the Neocons, are an occupation regime which rules against the will of the American people. In other words, just like Israel, the USA has no legitimacy left. And since, just like Israel, the USA are unable to frighten their enemies, they are basically left with nothing, no legitimacy, no ability to coerce. So yes, the Neocons have won. But their victory is removes the last chance for the US to avoid a collapse.

I think that what we are seeing today are the first signs of the impending collapse.

The symptoms of the agony

Externally, the US foreign policy is basically "frozen" and in lieu of a foreign policy we now only have a long series of empty threats hurled at a list of demonized countries which are now promised "fire and brimstone" should they dare to disobey Uncle Sam. While this makes for good headlines, this does not qualify as a "policy" of any kind (I discussed this issue at length during my recent interview with SouthFront ). And then there is Congress which has basically stripped Trump from his powers to conduct foreign policy . This bizarre, and illegal, form of a "vote of no-confidence" further hammers in the message that Trump is either a madman, a traitor, or both. Internally, the latest riots in Charlottesville now being blamed on Trump who, after being a Putin agent is now further demonized as some kind of Nazi (see Paul Craig Roberts' first and second warnings about this dynamic) Organizationally, it is clear that Trump is surrounded by enemies as illustrated by the absolutely outrageous fact that he can't even talk to a foreign head of state without having the transcript of his conversation leaked to the Ziomedia .

I believe that these all are preparatory steps to trigger a major crisis and use it to remove Trump, either by a process of impeachment, or by force under the pretext of some crisis. Just look at the message which the Ziomedia has been hammeing into the brains of the US population.

The psychological preparation for the forthcoming coup: scaring them all to death Here are three very telling examples taken from Newsweek's front page:

... ... ...

Ask yourself, what is the message here? Trump is a traitor, he works for Putin, Putin wants to destroy democracy in the United States and these two men together are the most dangerous men on the planet . This is a " plot against America ", no less! Not bad, right? "They" are clearly out there go get "us" and "we" are all in terrible danger: Kim Jong-un is about to declare nuclear war on the US, Xi and Putin are threatening the world with their armies, and "our" own President came to power courtesy of the "Russian KGB" and "Putin's hackers", he now works for the Russians, he is also clearly a Nazi, a White supremacist, a racist and, possibly, a " new Hitler " ( as is Putin , of course!).

And then, there are those truly scary Mooslims and Aye-rabs who apparently want only two things in life: destroy "our way of life" and kill all the "infidels". This is why we need the TSA, 16 intelligence agencies and militarized police SWAT teams everywhere: in case the terrorists come to get us where we live.

Dangerous international consequences

This would all be rather funny if it was not also extremely dangerous. For one thing, the US is really poking at a dangerous foe when it constantly tries to scare Kim Jong-un and the DPRK leadership. No, not because of the North Korean nukes (which are probably not real nuclear capable ICBMs but a not necessarily compatible combination of nuclear 'devices' and intermediate range ballistic missiles) but because of the huge and hard to destroy conventional North Korean military. The real threat are not missiles, but a deadly combination of conventional artillery and special forces which present very little danger to the US or the US military, but which present a huge threat for the population of Seoul and the northern section of South Korea. Nukes, in whatever form, are really only an added problem, a toxic "icing" on an already very dangerous 'conventional cake'.

[Sidebar - a real life nightmare : Now, if you *really* want to terrify yourself and stay awake all night then consider the following. While I personally believe that Kim Jong-un is not insane and that the main objective of the North Korean leadership is to avoid a war at all costs, what if I am wrong? What if those who say that the North Korean leaders are totally insane are right? Or, which I think is much more likely, what if Kim Jong-un and the North Korean leaders came to the conclusion that they have nothing to lose, that the Americans are going to kill them all, along with their families and friends? What could they, in theory, do if truly desperate? Well, let me tell you: forget about Guam; think Tokyo! Indeed, while the DPRK could devastate Seoul with old fashioned artillery systems, DPRK missiles are probably capable of striking Tokyo or the Keihanshin region encompassing Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe including the key industries of the Hanshin Industrial Region . The Greater Tokyo area (Kanto region) and the Keihanshin region are very densely populated (37 and 20 million people respectively) and contain an immense number of industries, many of which would produce an ecological disaster of immense proportions if hit by missiles. Not only that, but a strike on the key economic and financial nodes of Japan would probably result in a 9-11 kind of international economic collapse. So if the North Koreans wanted to really, really hurt the Americans what they could do is strike Seoul, and key cities in Japan resulting in a huge political crisis for the entire planet. During the Cold War we used to study the consequences of a Soviet strike against Japan and the conclusion was always the same: Japan cannot afford a war of any kind. The Japanese landmass is too small, too densely populated, to rich in lucrative targets and a war lay waste to the entire country. This is still true today, only more so. And just imagine the reaction in South Korea and Japan if some crazy US strike on the DPRK results in Seoul and Tokyo being hit by missiles! The South Koreans have already made their position unambiguously clear , by the way. As for the Japanese, they are officially placing their hopes in missiles (as if technology could mitigate the consequences of insanity!). So yeah, the DPRK is plenty dangerous and pushing them into their last resort is totally irresponsible indeed, nukes or no nukes]

What we are observing now is positive feedback loop in which each move by the Neocons results in a deeper and deeper destabilization of the entire system. Needless to say, this is extremely dangerous and can only result in an eventual catastrophe/collapse. In fact, the signs that the US is totally losing control are already all over the place, here are just a few headlines to illustrate this:

Iran could quit nuclear deal in 'hours' if new U.S. sanctions imposed: Rouhani Israel: Netanyahu declares support for a Kurdish state Syrian forces take 3 more towns en route to Deir ez-Zor in first airborne operation Maduro calls for nationwide 'anti-imperialist' drills after Trump's threat of 'military option' Soldiers of the 201st (Russian) base in Tadjikistan have been put on high alert as part of a military exercise Confirmed: Turkey to end support for anti-government terrorists in Syria Russia Plans Huge Zapad 2017 Military Exercises With Belarus

A French expression goes " when the cat is gone, the mice dance ", and this is exactly what is happening now: the US is both very weak and basically absent. As for the Armenians, they say " The mouse dreams dreams that would terrify the cat ". Well, the "mice" of the world are dancing and dreaming and simply ignoring the "cat". Every move the cat makes only makes things worse for him. The world is moving on, while the cat is busy destroying himself.

Dangerous domestic consequences

First on my list would be race riots. In fact, they are already happening all over the United States, but they are rarely presented as such. And I am not talking about the "official" riots of Black Lives Matter, which are bad enough, I am talking about the many mini-riots which the official media is systematically trying to obfuscate. Those interested in this topic should read the book here ). The simple truth is that no regime can survive for too long when it proactively supports the exact opposite of what it officially is supposed to stand for. The result? I have yet to meet an adult American who would sincerely believe that he/she lives in the "land of the free and the home of the brave". Maybe infants still buy this stuff, but even teenagers know that this is a load of bull.

Third, for all the encouraging statistics about the Dow Jones, unemployment and growth, the reality is that the US society is rapidly transforming itself in a three-tired one: on top, a small number of obscenely rich people, under them, a certain amount of qualified professionals who service the filthy rich and who struggle to maintain a lifestyle which in the past was associated with the middle-class. And then the vast majority of Americans who basically are looking at making "minimal wage plus a little something" and who basically survive by not paying for health insurance, by typically working two jobs, by eating cheap and unhealthy "prolefeed" and by giving up on that which every American worker could enjoy in the 1950s and 1960s (have one parent at home, have paid holidays, a second vacation home, etc.). Americans are mostly hard workers and, so far, most of them are surviving, but they are mostly one paycheck away from seriously bad poverty. A lot of them only make ends meet because they get help from their parents and grand-parents (the same is true of southern Europe, by the way). A large segment of the US population now survives only because of Walmart and the Dollar Store. Once that fails, food stamps are the last option. That, or jail, of course.

Combine all this and you get a potentially extremely explosive situation. No wonder that when so many Americans heard Hillary's comment about the "basket of deplorables" they took that as declaration of war.

And how do the Neocons plan to deal with all this? By cracking down on free speech and dissent, of course! What else? Their only response – repression of course!

YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter – they are all cracking down on "bad" speech which includes pretty much any topic a garden variety self-described 'liberal' frowns upon. GoDaddy and Google are even going after domain names. Oh sure, nobody gets thrown in jail for, say, defending the 2nd Amendment, but they get "demonetized" and their accounts simply closed. It's not the cops cracking down on free speech, it's "Corporate America", but the effect is the same. Apparently, the Neocons do not realize that censorship is not a viable strategy in the age of the Internet. Or maybe they do, and they are deliberately trying to trigger a backlash?

Then there is the vilification campaign in the media: unless you are some kind of 'minority' you are assumed to be nefarious by birth and guilty of all the evils on the planet. And your leader is Trump, of course, or maybe even Putin himself, vide supra. Christian heterosexual White males better run for cover

Whatever may be the case, by their manic insistence, on one hand, to humiliate and crush Trump and, on the other, to repress millions of Americans the Neocons are committing a double mistake. First, they are showing their true face and, second, they are subverting the very institutions they are using to control and run this country. That, of course, only further weaken the Neocons and the United States themselves and that further accelerates the positive feedback loop mentioned above which now threatens the entire international system.

Us and Them

What makes the gradual collapse of the AngloZionist Empire so uniquely dangerous is that it is by far the biggest and most powerful empire in world history. No empire has ever had the quasi monopoly on power the USA enjoyed since WWII. By any measure, military, economic, political, social, the US came out of WWII as a giant and while there were ups and downs during the subsequent decades, the collapse of the USSR only reaffirmed what appeared to be the total victory of the United States. In my admittedly subjective opinion, the last competent (no, I did not say 'good', I said 'competent') US President was George Herbert Walker Bush who, unlike his successors, at least knew how to run an Empire. After that, it is all downhill, faster and faster. And if Obama was probably the most incompetent President in US history, Trump will be the first one to be openly lynched while in office. As a result, the AngloZionist Empire is now like a huge freight train which has lost its locomotive but still has an immense momentum pushing it forward even though there is nobody in control any more. The rest of the planet, with the irrelevant exception of the East Europeans, is now scrambling in horror to get out of the path of this out of control train. So far, the tracks (minimal common sense, political realities) are more or less holding, but a crash (political, economic or military) could happen at any moment. And that is very, very scary.

The US has anywhere between 700 to 1000 military bases worldwide, the entire international financial system is deeply enmeshed with the US economy, the US Dollar is still the only real reserve currency, United States Treasury securities are held by all the key international players (including Russia and China), SWIFT is politically controlled by the US, the US is the only country in the world that can print as much money as it wants and, last but not least, the US has a huge nuclear arsenal. As a result, a US collapse would threaten everybody and that means that nobody would want to trigger one. The collapse of the Soviet Union threatened the rest of mankind only in one way: by its nuclear arsenal. In contrast, any collapse of the United States would threaten everybody in many different ways.

So the real question now is this: can the rest of the planet prevent a catastrophic collapse of the AngloZionist Empire?

This is the irony of our situation: even though the entire planet is sick and tried of the incompetent arrogance of the AngloZionists, nobody out there wants their Empire to catastrophically collapse. And yet, with the Neocons in power, such a collapse appears inevitable with potentially devastating consequences for everybody.

This is really amazing, think of it: everybody hates the Neocons, not only a majority of the American people, but truly the entire planet. And yet that numerically small group of people has somehow managed to put everybody in danger, including themselves, due to their ugly vindictiveness, infinite arrogance and ideology-induced short-sightedness. That this could ever have happened, and at a planetary scale, is a dramatic testimony to the moral and spiritual decay of our civilization: how did we ever let things get that far?!

And the next obvious question: can we still stop them?

I honestly don't know. I hope so, but I am not sure. My biggest hope with Trump was that he would be willing to sacrifice the Empire for the sake of the US (the opposite of what the Neocons are doing: they are willing to sacrifice the US for the sake of their Empire) and that he would manage a relatively safe and hopefully non-violent transition from Empire to "normal country" for the US. Clearly, this is ain't happening. Instead, the Neocons are threatening everybody: the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans and the Venezuelans of course, but also the Europeans (economically), the entire Middle-East (via the "only democracy in the Middle-East"), all the developing countries and even the American people. Heck, they are even threatening the US President himself, and in not-so-subtle ways!

So what's next?

Truly, I don't know. But my overwhelming sense is that Trump will be removed from office, either for "high crimes and misdemeanors" or for "medical reasons" (they will simply declare him insane and unfit to be the President). Seeing how weak and spineless Trump is, he might even be "convinced" to resign. I don't see them simply murdering him simply because he is no Kennedy either. After that, Pence comes to power and it will all be presented like a wonderful event, a group-hug of the elites followed by an immediate and merciless crackdown on any form of political opposition or dissent which will immediately be labeled as racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, terrorist, etc.

The evil hand of the "Russian KGB" (yes, I know, the KGB was dissolved in 1991) will be found everywhere, especially amongst US libertarians (who will probably the only ones with enough brains to understand what is taking place). The (pseudo-) "Left" will rejoice.

Should this course of action result in an unexpected level or resistance, either regional or social, a 9-11 false flag followed by a war will the most likely scenario (why stray away from something which worked so well the first time around?!). Unless the US decides to re-invade Grenada or give Nauru a much deserved thrashing, any more or less real war will result in a catastrophic failure for the US at which point the use of nukes by the Neocon crazies might become a very real risk, especially if symbolic US targets such as aircraft carriers are hit ( in 1991 when the US sent the 82nd AB to Iraq there was nothing standing between this light infantry force and the Iraqi armored divisions. Had the Iraqis attacked the plan was to use tactical nuclear weapons. Then this was all quickly forgotten ).

There is a reason why the Neocons thrive in times of crisis: it allows them to hide behind the mayhem, especially when they are the ones who triggered the mayhem in the first place. This means that as long as the Neocons are anywhere near in power they will never, ever, allow peace to suddenly break out, lest the spotlight be suddenly shined directly upon them. Chaos, wars, crises – this is their natural habitat. Think of it as the by-product of their existence. Eventually, of course, they will be stopped and they will be defeated, like all their predecessors in history. But I shudder when I think of the price mankind will have to pay this time around.

This analysis was written for The Unz Review

[Sep 18, 2017] Why Petraeus, Obama And Brennan Should Face 5,000 Years In Prison

Notable quotes:
"... add Bush. Glenn Greenwald on John Brennan . It is interesting that the empire sues the little people. ..."
"... "It is a perfect illustration of the Obama legacy that a person who was untouchable as CIA chief in 2008 because of his support for Bush's most radical policies is not only Obama's choice for the same position now, but will encounter very little resistance. Within this change one finds one of the most significant aspects of the Obama presidency: his conversion of what were once highly contentious right-wing policies into harmonious dogma of the DC bipartisan consensus. Then again, given how the CIA operates, one could fairly argue that Brennan's eagerness to deceive and his long record of supporting radical and unaccountable powers make him the perfect person to run that agency. It seems clear that this is Obama's calculus." ..."
"... one more quote from your newest link to the NYT: "The job Mr. Brennan once held in Riyadh is, more than the ambassador's, the true locus of American power in the kingdom. Former diplomats recall that the most important discussions always flowed through the CIA station chief." The Saudis bought the CIA From station chief in Riyadh to Director Tenet's chief of staff to Deputy Executive Director of the CIA and finally, under Obama, to Director of the CIA ..."
"... Best background article I've come across on how the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings were either suppressed (in the U.S. client oil monarchies like Bahrain) or hijacked for regime change purposes (as in Libya and Syria): http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion... how-the-arab-spring-was-hijacked/ (Feb 2012) ..."
"... The best explanation is that despite the effort to "woo" Assad into the Saudi-Israeli axis (c.2008-2010), Assad refused to cut economic ties with Iran, which was setting up rail lines, air traffic and oil pipeline deals with Assad on very good terms. This led Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, etc. to lobby Obama to support a regime change program: ..."
"... Replace "plan" with "ongoing project". The main point would be that Panetta and Clinton also belong on that "illegal arms transfer" charge sheet. Civil damages for the costs Europe, Turkey, Lebanon etc. bore due to millions of fleeing refugees should also be assessed (let alone damage in Syria, often to priceless historical treasures destroyed by ISIS). ..."
"... Then there's the previous regime and its deliberate lies about non-existent WMDs in Iraq, claims used to start a war of aggression that killed thousand of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Woolsey, Tenet, Powell - they should have their own separate charge sheet. ..."
"... But it wasn't just anti-arms trafficking laws that were broken, was it? Wouldn't a conspiracy to use extremists as a weapon of state amount to a crime against humanity? David Stockman thinks so, but he pins the 'crime' on old, sick McCain. (see: 'Moderate Rebels' Cheerleader McCain is Fall Guy But Neocon Cancer Lives ..."
"... I classify attempts at regime change as terrorism, too, since it's essentially the waging of aggressive war via different means, which is the #1 War Crime also violating domestic law as well ..."
"... What of the US bases being established in N. Syria that were helpfully marked by the Turks? Within the context that the SF force multiplier model has varied success but hasn't worked AFAIK since the Resistance in WW2. What, short of an explicit invasion, is an option for the US+? US-hired mercenaries failed to do the job, and the US as mercenaries for the Arabs are not willing to commit. Maybe if the USIC offered up more "wives" they'd acquire more psychopathic murderers to spread the joy. ..."
"... Trump may have put Pompeo in to present the facade of housecleaning, but who here believes that there is any serious move to curtail the Syrian misadventure? Just a change in the marketing plan. ..."
"... As the Brits came out with blocking the release of 30-yr-old official records on the basis that "personal information" and "national security" would be compromised? More like the criminal activity at 10 Downing St. and the misappropriation of public money for international crime would be brought to light. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4159032/whitehall-refuses-documents-release/ ..."
"... While I do agree with some of the things Trump has done so far, I cannot agree that he makes for a good "leader" of our rapidly devolving nation. As much "good" that Trump has done, he's probably done much worse on other issues and levels. It's really pretty awful all around. ..."
"... That said, when some people say how much they "miss Obama," I want to either pound my head into a brick wall and/or throw up. The damage that Obama and his hench men/women did is incalculable. ..."
"... Not so much with "No drama Obama" the smooth talking viper that we - either unwittingly or wittingly - clutche to our collective bosom. Obama's many many many lies - all told with smooth suave assurance - along with his many sins of omission served as cover for what he was doing. Trump's buffoonery and incessant Twitting at least put his idiocies out on the stage for all to see (of course, the Republicans do use that as cover for their nefarious deeds behind Trump's doofus back). ..."
"... I likened a Trump presidency to sticking the landing of a crashing US empire. ..."
"... Remember this, The prosecution of a Swedish national accused of terrorist activities in Syria has collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain's security and intelligence agencies would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead, the Guardian can reveal. ..."
"... His lawyers argued that British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he was, and were party to a secret operation providing weapons and non-lethal help to the groups, including the Free Syrian Army. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/01/trial-swedish-man-accused-terrorism-offences-collapse-bherlin-gildo ..."
"... John McCain was neck deep in supporting Terrorists in Syria he wanted to give them manpads. ..."
"... WASHINGTON (Sputnik) -- Media reported earlier in October that Syrian rebels asked Washington for Stinger missiles to use them against Russia's military jets. "Absolutely Absolutely I would," McCain said when asked whether he would support the delivery of Stinger missiles to the opposition in Syria. ..."
"... The US were into regime change in Syria a long time ago..... Robert Ford was US Ambassador to Syria when the revolt against Syrian president Assad was launched. He not only was a chief architect of regime change in Syria, but actively worked with rebels to aid their overthrow of the Syrian government. ..."
"... Ambassador Ford talked himself blue in the face reassuring us that he was only supporting moderates in Syria. As evidence mounted that the recipients of the largesse doled out by Washington was going to jihadist groups, Ford finally admitted early last year that most of the moderates he backed were fighting alongside ISIS and al-Qaeda. ..."
"... b asked : "When will the FBI investigate Messrs Petraeus, Obama and Brennan? Duh, like never... Most here understand this, I'm sure. The wealthy and the connected puppets never face justice, for their crimes, committed in the service of their owners. ..."
"... NYT never saw a war (rather an attack by the US, NATO, Israel, UK, on any defenseless nation) that it did not support. Wiki uses the word "allegedly" in explaining the CIA and Operation Mockingbird. It just isn't feasible that a secret government agency - gone rogue - with unlimited funding and manpower could write/edit the news for six media owners with similar war-profiteering motives. ..."
"... Brennan : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBG81dXgM0Q ..."
"... Seymour Hersh, in his 'Victoria NULAND moment' audio, states categorically BRENNAN conceived and ran the 'Russian Hack' psyop after Seth RICH DNC leaks. ..."
Aug 04, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

California CEO Allegedly Smuggled Rifle Scopes to Syria - Daily Beast, August 1 2017

Rasheed Al Jijakli,[the CEO of a check-cashing business who lives in Walnut,] along with three co-conspirators, allegedly transported day and night vision rifle scopes, laser boresighters used to adjust sights on firearms for accuracy when firing, flashlights, radios, a bulletproof vest, and other tactical equipment to Syrian fighters.
...
If Jijakli is found guilty, he could face 50 years in prison . Jijakli's case is being prosecuted by counterintelligence and Terrorism and Export Crimes Section attorneys. An FBI investigation, in coordination with other agencies, is ongoing.
---

Under Trump, a Hollowed-Out Force in Syria Quickly Lost CIA Backing - NY Times * , August 2, 2017

CIA director, Mike Pompeo, recommended to President Trump that he shut down a four-year-old effort to arm and train Syrian rebels
...
Critics in Congress had complained for years about the costs [...] and reports that some of the CIA-supplied weapons had ended up in the hands of a rebel group tied to Al Qaeda
...
In the summer of 2012, David H. Petraeus , who was then CIA director, first proposed a covert program of arming and training rebels
...
[ Mr. Obama signed] a presidential finding authorizing the CIA to covertly arm and train small groups of rebels
-...
John O. Brennan , Mr. Obama's last CIA director, remained a vigorous defender of the program ...

When will the FBI investigate Messrs Petraeus, Obama and Brennan? Where are the counterintelligence and Terrorism and Export Crimes Section attorneys prosecuting them? Those three men engaged in the exactly same trade as Mr. Jijakil did, but on a much larger scale. They should be punished on an equally larger scale.

* Note:

The NYT story is largely a whitewash. It claims that the CIA paid "moderate" FSA rebels stormed Idleb governate in 2015. In fact al-Qaeda and Ahrar al Sham were leading the assault. It says that costs of the CIA program was "more than $1 billion over the life of the program" when CIA documents show that it was over $1 billion per year and likely much more than $5 billion in total. The story says that the program started in 2013 while the CIA has been providing arms to the Wahhabi rebels since at least fall 2011.

Posted by b on August 3, 2017 at 05:15 AM | Permalink

nmb | Aug 3, 2017 5:31:09 AM | 1

Easy: because they are war criminals.
V. Arnold | Aug 3, 2017 5:47:16 AM | 4
But, but, b; you're dealing with a rogue government of men; not laws. Should have been obvious in 2003, March 19th...
Igor Bundy | Aug 3, 2017 5:47:28 AM | 5
In case there is any doubt, North Korea has already said arming "rebels" to over throw the government would face nuclear retaliation.
Igor Bundy | Aug 3, 2017 5:52:50 AM | 6
India and Pakistan spends insane amounts of money because Pakistan arms "rebels" both countries could use that money for many other things. Especially Pakistan which has a tenth the economy of India. BUT Pakistan is controlled by the military or MIC so arming terrorists is more important than such things as schools and power supplies etc. Their excuse is India is spending so much on arms. Which India says is because in large part due to Pakistan. US says well move those 2 million troops to attack China instead. Everyone is happy except the population in those 3 countries which lack most things except iphones. Which makes US extremely happy.
Emily | Aug 3, 2017 5:54:48 AM | 7
It would interesting to get to the truth about Brennan. Is he an islamist himself? Did he actually convert to islam in Saudi Arabia? Lots of stories out there.
Has he been acting as a covert agent against his own country for years?Selling out the entire west and every christian on the planet. Time to find this out, methinks.

Is treason in the USA a death penalty issue?. Its certainly what he deserves.

Mina | Aug 3, 2017 5:55:21 AM | 8
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/274688/World/Region/,-Syrian-refugees-and-fighters-return-home-from-Le.aspx
V. Arnold | Aug 3, 2017 6:25:03 AM | 9
Mina | Aug 3, 2017 5:55:21 AM | 8

Informative link; thanks.

Peter AU 1 | Aug 3, 2017 6:30:12 AM | 10
"a four-year-old effort to arm and train Syrian rebels."

A four year effort to arm the f**kers? Doubtful it was an effort to arm them, but training them to act in the hegemon's interests... like upholders of democracy and humanitarian... headchopping is just too much of an attraction

somebody | Aug 3, 2017 6:52:48 AM | 12
add Bush. Glenn Greenwald on John Brennan . It is interesting that the empire sues the little people.
Anonymous | Aug 3, 2017 6:54:31 AM | 13
Mina @3. The title of the article is deceptive.

"7,000 Syrian refugees and fighters return home from Lebanon"

The 'al-Qaeda linked' fighters are mostly foreigners, paid mercenaries. They have been dumped in Idlib along with the other terrorists. In the standard reconciliation process, real Syrians are given the option of returning home if they renounce violence and agree to a political solution. Fake Syrians are dumped in with the foreigners. The real Syrian fighters who reconcile have to join the SAA units to fight against ISIS etc.

ISIS fighters were encouraged to bring their families with them (for use as human shields and to provide settlers for the captured territory). ISIS documents recovered from Mosul indicate that unmarried foreign mercenaries fighting with them were provided with a wife (how does that work? do the women volunteer or are they 'volunteered'?), a car and other benefits. These families and hangers-on would probably be the 'Syrian refugees'.

On a side note, the Kurds have released a video showing the training of special forces belonging to their allies, the 'Syrian Defense Force' (composed largely of foreigners again). The SDF fighters fly the FSA flag, ie they are the carefully vetted moderate head chopping rebels beloved of the likes of McCain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHBFkZZ1y40

librul | Aug 3, 2017 8:20:55 AM | 14
somebody @12,

Thanks for the link, it is a keeper.

"It is a perfect illustration of the Obama legacy that a person who was untouchable as CIA chief in 2008 because of his support for Bush's most radical policies is not only Obama's choice for the same position now, but will encounter very little resistance. Within this change one finds one of the most significant aspects of the Obama presidency: his conversion of what were once highly contentious right-wing policies into harmonious dogma of the DC bipartisan consensus. Then again, given how the CIA operates, one could fairly argue that Brennan's eagerness to deceive and his long record of supporting radical and unaccountable powers make him the perfect person to run that agency. It seems clear that this is Obama's calculus."

My own addition to the Brennan record:

Brennan was station chief for the CIA in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia during the planning period for 9/11. The Saudi rulers do not use the US embassy as their first point of contact with Washington, they use the CIA Brennan moved back to the US some time in (late?) 1999. The first 9/11 Saudi hijackers arrived on US shores in January 2000. Brennan was made CIA chief of staff to Director Tenet in 1999 and Deputy Executive Director of the CIA in March 2001.

somebody | Aug 3, 2017 8:36:06 AM | 15
14 add this New York Times link: U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels
The support for the Syrian rebels is only the latest chapter in the decades long relationship between the spy services of Saudi Arabia and the United States, an alliance that has endured through the Iran-contra scandal, support for the mujahedeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan and proxy fights in Africa. Sometimes, as in Syria, the two countries have worked in concert. In others, Saudi Arabia has simply written checks underwriting American covert activities. ... Although the Saudis have been public about their help arming rebel groups in Syria, the extent of their partnership with the CIA's covert action campaign and their direct financial support had not been disclosed. Details were pieced together in interviews with a half-dozen current and former American officials and sources from several Persian Gulf countries. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program.

From the moment the CIA operation was started, Saudi money supported it.

...

The roots of the relationship run deep. In the late 1970s, the Saudis organized what was known as the "Safari Club" -- a coalition of nations including Morocco, Egypt and France -- that ran covert operations around Africa at a time when Congress had clipped the CIA's wings over years of abuses.

...

Prince Bandar pledged $1 million per month to help fund the contras, in recognition of the administration's past support to the Saudis. The contributions continued after Congress cut off funding to the contras. By the end, the Saudis had contributed $32 million, paid through a Cayman Islands bank account.

When the Iran-contra scandal broke, and questions arose about the Saudi role, the kingdom kept its secrets. Prince Bandar refused to cooperate with the investigation led by Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel.

In a letter, the prince declined to testify, explaining that his country's "confidences and commitments, like our friendship, are given not just for the moment but the long run."

michaelj72 | Aug 3, 2017 8:43:35 AM | 16

"Many commit the same crime with a very different result. One bears a cross for his crime; another a crown." ― Juvenal, The Satires

librul | Aug 3, 2017 9:09:59 AM | 17
somebody @15

one more quote from your newest link to the NYT: "The job Mr. Brennan once held in Riyadh is, more than the ambassador's, the true locus of American power in the kingdom. Former diplomats recall that the most important discussions always flowed through the CIA station chief." The Saudis bought the CIA From station chief in Riyadh to Director Tenet's chief of staff to Deputy Executive Director of the CIA and finally, under Obama, to Director of the CIA

Greenbean950 | Aug 3, 2017 9:47:03 AM | 18
NYT's article was a white wash. It was cover. NYT = CIA
paul | Aug 3, 2017 9:47:16 AM | 19
The art of limited hangout as practiced by the NYT
nonsense factory | Aug 3, 2017 10:15:14 AM | 20
Best background article I've come across on how the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings were either suppressed (in the U.S. client oil monarchies like Bahrain) or hijacked for regime change purposes (as in Libya and Syria): http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion... how-the-arab-spring-was-hijacked/ (Feb 2012)
In particular:
A fourth trend is that the Arab Spring has become a springboard for playing great-power geopolitics.

Syria, at the center of the region's sectarian fault lines, has emerged as the principal battleground for such Cold War-style geopolitics. Whereas Russia is intent on keeping its only military base outside the old Soviet Union in Syria's Mediterranean port of Tartus, the U.S. seems equally determined to install a pro-Western regime in Damascus.

This goal prompted Washington to set up a London-based television station that began broadcasting to Syria a year before major protests began there. The U.S. campaign, which includes assembling a coalition of the willing, has been boosted by major Turkish, Saudi, Qatari and UAE help, including cross-border flow of arms into Syria and the establishment of two new petrodollar-financed, jihad-extolling television channels directed at Syria's majority Sunni Arabs.

The best explanation is that despite the effort to "woo" Assad into the Saudi-Israeli axis (c.2008-2010), Assad refused to cut economic ties with Iran, which was setting up rail lines, air traffic and oil pipeline deals with Assad on very good terms. This led Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, etc. to lobby Obama to support a regime change program:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk...Leon-Panetta-supports-Hillary-Clinton-plan-to-arm-Syrian-rebels.html (Feb 2013)

Replace "plan" with "ongoing project". The main point would be that Panetta and Clinton also belong on that "illegal arms transfer" charge sheet. Civil damages for the costs Europe, Turkey, Lebanon etc. bore due to millions of fleeing refugees should also be assessed (let alone damage in Syria, often to priceless historical treasures destroyed by ISIS).

Then there's the previous regime and its deliberate lies about non-existent WMDs in Iraq, claims used to start a war of aggression that killed thousand of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Woolsey, Tenet, Powell - they should have their own separate charge sheet.

Send the lot to Scheveningen Prison - for the most notorious war criminals. Pretty luxurious as prisons go, by all accounts.

Jackrabbit | Aug 3, 2017 10:36:48 AM | 21
But it wasn't just anti-arms trafficking laws that were broken, was it? Wouldn't a conspiracy to use extremists as a weapon of state amount to a crime against humanity? David Stockman thinks so, but he pins the 'crime' on old, sick McCain. (see: 'Moderate Rebels' Cheerleader McCain is Fall Guy But Neocon Cancer Lives
karlof1 | Aug 3, 2017 10:45:27 AM | 22
Within the Outlaw US Empire alone, there're several thousand people deserving of those 5,000 year sentences, not just the three b singled out. But b does provide a great service for those of us who refuse to support terrorists and terrorism by not paying federal taxes by providing proof of that occurring. I classify attempts at regime change as terrorism, too, since it's essentially the waging of aggressive war via different means, which is the #1 War Crime also violating domestic law as well. Thanks b!
james | Aug 3, 2017 12:07:05 PM | 23
it's the usa!!!! no one in gov't is held accountable.. obama wants to move on, lol... look forward, not backward... creating a heaping pile of murder, mayhem and more in other parts of the world, but never examine any of it, or hold anyone accountable.. it is the amerikkkan way...
stumpy | Aug 3, 2017 12:46:57 PM | 26
What of the US bases being established in N. Syria that were helpfully marked by the Turks? Within the context that the SF force multiplier model has varied success but hasn't worked AFAIK since the Resistance in WW2. What, short of an explicit invasion, is an option for the US+? US-hired mercenaries failed to do the job, and the US as mercenaries for the Arabs are not willing to commit. Maybe if the USIC offered up more "wives" they'd acquire more psychopathic murderers to spread the joy.

Trump may have put Pompeo in to present the facade of housecleaning, but who here believes that there is any serious move to curtail the Syrian misadventure? Just a change in the marketing plan.

As the Brits came out with blocking the release of 30-yr-old official records on the basis that "personal information" and "national security" would be compromised? More like the criminal activity at 10 Downing St. and the misappropriation of public money for international crime would be brought to light. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4159032/whitehall-refuses-documents-release/

RUKidding | Aug 3, 2017 12:56:29 PM | 27
While I do agree with some of the things Trump has done so far, I cannot agree that he makes for a good "leader" of our rapidly devolving nation. As much "good" that Trump has done, he's probably done much worse on other issues and levels. It's really pretty awful all around.

That said, when some people say how much they "miss Obama," I want to either pound my head into a brick wall and/or throw up. The damage that Obama and his hench men/women did is incalculable.

At least with Trump, we can clearly witness his idiocy and grasp the level of at least some of his damage.

Not so much with "No drama Obama" the smooth talking viper that we - either unwittingly or wittingly - clutche to our collective bosom. Obama's many many many lies - all told with smooth suave assurance - along with his many sins of omission served as cover for what he was doing. Trump's buffoonery and incessant Twitting at least put his idiocies out on the stage for all to see (of course, the Republicans do use that as cover for their nefarious deeds behind Trump's doofus back).

Agree with b. NYT is worthless. Limited hangout for sure.

stumpy | Aug 3, 2017 1:15:55 PM | 28
Speaking of who DID get arrested, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/08/03/fbi-arrests-wannacry-hero-marcus-hutchins-las-vegas-reports/

Gee, wouldn't we like to see the arrest warrant?

NemesisCalling | Aug 3, 2017 1:16:29 PM | 29
@27 beating a dead horse, but I agree.

I likened a Trump presidency to sticking the landing of a crashing US empire. He'll bring it down without going true believer on us, a la Clinton and ilk who were busy scheduling the apocalypse.

Trump has not been tested yet with a rapidly deteriorating economy which as we all know is coming. Something is in the air and Trump will have to face it sooner or later. The weight of the anger of millions will be behind it...will it be too late? Will Trump finally go MAGA in what he promised: Glas-Steagall, making trade fair for US interests, dialing back NATO...etc. etc. I fear he can not articulate the issues at hand, like Roosevelt or Hitler. He is too bumbling. I guess really we can only hope for an avoidance of WW. Will the world even weep for a third world USA?

Mina | Aug 3, 2017 1:23:53 PM | 30
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/274706/Egypt/Politics-/Egypt-and-Russia-broker-truce-between-Syrian-regim.aspx
harrylaw | Aug 3, 2017 2:14:24 PM | 31
Remember this, The prosecution of a Swedish national accused of terrorist activities in Syria has collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain's security and intelligence agencies would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead, the Guardian can reveal.

His lawyers argued that British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he was, and were party to a secret operation providing weapons and non-lethal help to the groups, including the Free Syrian Army. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/01/trial-swedish-man-accused-terrorism-offences-collapse-bherlin-gildo

John McCain was neck deep in supporting Terrorists in Syria he wanted to give them manpads.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) -- Media reported earlier in October that Syrian rebels asked Washington for Stinger missiles to use them against Russia's military jets. "Absolutely Absolutely I would," McCain said when asked whether he would support the delivery of Stinger missiles to the opposition in Syria.

"We certainly did that in Afghanistan. After the Russians invaded Afghanistan, we provided them with surface-to-air capability. It'd be nice to give people that we train and equip and send them to fight the ability to defend themselves. That's one of the fundamental principles of warfare as I understand it," McCain said. https://sputniknews.com/us/201510201028835944-us-stingers-missiles-syrian-rebels-mccain/

virgile | Aug 3, 2017 2:23:20 PM | 32
They will pay sooner or later for their crimes against the Syrians. Add Sarkozy, Cameron and Holland to the list of criminals hiding under their position.
harrylaw | Aug 3, 2017 2:44:11 PM | 33
The US were into regime change in Syria a long time ago..... Robert Ford was US Ambassador to Syria when the revolt against Syrian president Assad was launched. He not only was a chief architect of regime change in Syria, but actively worked with rebels to aid their overthrow of the Syrian government.

Ford assured us that those taking up arms to overthrow the Syrian government were simply moderates and democrats seeking to change Syria's autocratic system. Anyone pointing out the obviously Islamist extremist nature of the rebellion and the foreign funding and backing for the jihadists was written off as an Assad apologist or worse.

Ambassador Ford talked himself blue in the face reassuring us that he was only supporting moderates in Syria. As evidence mounted that the recipients of the largesse doled out by Washington was going to jihadist groups, Ford finally admitted early last year that most of the moderates he backed were fighting alongside ISIS and al-Qaeda. Witness this incredible Twitter exchange with then-ex Ambassador Ford: http://www.globalresearch.ca/you-wont-believe-what-former-us-ambassador-robert-s-ford-said-about-al-qaedas-syrian-allies/5504906

Noirette | Aug 3, 2017 2:48:20 PM | 34
Specially Petraeus. A US Army General, and director of the CIA You don't get more 'pillar' of the State than that! And off he goes doing illegal arms trades, in the billions, see for ex. Meyssan, as an ex.:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article197144.html

In other countries / times, he'd be shot at dawn as a traitor. But all it shows really is that the USA does not really have a Gvmt. in the sense of a 'political structure of strong regulatory importance with 'democratic' participation..' to keep it vague.. It has an elaborate public charade, a kind of clumsy theatre play, that relies very heavily on the scripted MSM, on ritual, and various distractions. Plus natch' very vicious control mechanisms at home.. another story.

Meanwhile, off stage, the actors participate and fight and ally in a whole other scene where 'disaster capitalism', 'rapine', 'mafia moves' and the worst impulses in human nature not only bloom but are institutionalised and deployed world-wide! Covering all this up is getting increasingly difficult -Trump presidency - one would hope US citizens no not for now.

The other two of course as well, I just find Petraeus emblematic, probably because of all the BS about his mistress + he once mis-treated classified info or something like that, total irrelevance spun by the media, which works.

OJS | Aug 3, 2017 2:49:46 PM | 35
@virgile, 32

"They will pay sooner or later for their crimes against the Syrians. Add Sarkozy, Cameron and Holland to the list of criminals hiding under their position."

I humbly disagree, and they sincerely believe they are helping the Syrians (plus other states) - freedom and democracy against the brutality of Dr. Assad. I believe all these murderers are sincere doing god works and will all go to heaven. That is one of the reasons why I refuse to go to heaven even if gods beg me. Fuck it!

My apologies if I offend you or anyone. It's about time we look carefully beside politic and wealth, what religion does to a human?

karlof1 | Aug 3, 2017 3:26:11 PM | 36
OJS @35--

Have you read Reg Morrison's Spirit in the Gene ? Here's a link to one of his related essays with many more of relevance on his website, https://regmorrison.edublogs.org/1999/07/20/plague-species-the-spirit-in-the-gene/

ben | Aug 3, 2017 3:35:09 PM | 37
b asked : "When will the FBI investigate Messrs Petraeus, Obama and Brennan? Duh, like never... Most here understand this, I'm sure. The wealthy and the connected puppets never face justice, for their crimes, committed in the service of their owners.

You can include ALL the POTUS's and their minions, since the turn of the century. " It's just business, get over it."

john | Aug 3, 2017 4:16:52 PM | 38
ben says:

Duh, like never..Most here understand this, I'm sure right. like voyeurs, we like to watch , and watch , and watch .

somebody | Aug 3, 2017 4:23:25 PM | 39
35 Religion has nothing to do with it.

How to spot a Sociopath

6 Look for signs of instigating violent behavior. As children some sociopaths torture defenseless people and animals. This violence is always instigating, and not defensive violence. They will create drama out of thin air, or twist what others say. They will often overreact strongly to minor offenses. If they are challenged or confronted about it, they will point the finger the other way, counting on the empathic person's empathy and consideration of people to protect them, as long as they can remain undetected. Their attempt to point the finger the other way, is both a smokescreen to being detected, and an attempt to confuse the situation.

The link is a pretty good summary. It is easy to find more respectable psychological sources for the disorder on the internet.

fast freddy | Aug 3, 2017 5:45:24 PM | 40
NYT never saw a war (rather an attack by the US, NATO, Israel, UK, on any defenseless nation) that it did not support. Wiki uses the word "allegedly" in explaining the CIA and Operation Mockingbird. It just isn't feasible that a secret government agency - gone rogue - with unlimited funding and manpower could write/edit the news for six media owners with similar war-profiteering motives. /s
OJS | Aug 3, 2017 8:12:07 PM | 42
@karlof1, 36

" Here, evolution had hit on the sweetest of solutions. Such perceptions were guaranteed to produce a faith-dependent species that believed itself to be thoroughly separate from the rest of the animal kingdom, ...."

Interesting article, but stop reading years ago when struggled to raise a family, make a living to survive. Debatable Is "sociopath" (Antisocial Personality Disorder) or the genes make humanly so brutally? Very often hard to fathom the depth of human suffering be it USA, Syria or elsewhere. Thanks sharing you thought.

falcemartello | Aug 3, 2017 9:03:06 PM | 43
What most of the msm and the echo chamber seem to be deliberately missing is all intentional. The whole Assad must go meme is dead and buried. The western cabal has not acheived their regime change in Syria. The Russian economy has not sunk to the bottom of the Black sea, the Russians hacked into my fridge meme has all been debunked and is falling apart. The collusion of all anglo antlantacist secret agency and governments to destabalize the ME has all come out with an ever turbulant flow. Iran being the threat of the world ,debunked. Russia invading and hacking the free world ,debunked.

Hence I expect that the western oligarchs along with their pressitute and compromised politicians will be bying up alot of bleach. They will be whitewashing for the next three months all semblance of anything related to their fraudulent existence.

Nurenberg 2, the Hague would be to soft for these vile criminals of humanity. Look how they had to back track on the Milosevic conviction mind u post death.
Just another day in the office for these criminals of humanity. Gee can't wait until this petro-dollar ponzi scheme crashes hopefully we can get back o being human again. The emperor has no clothes.

runaway robot | Aug 3, 2017 9:07:30 PM | 44
karlof1@36:
Thanks for reminding me about Reg Morrison! I need to re-read that book, slowly.
fast freddy | Aug 3, 2017 9:20:33 PM | 45
43 The whole Assad must go meme is dead and buried. The western cabal has not acheived their regime change in Syria. The Russian economy has not sunk to the bottom of the Black sea, the Russians hacked into my fridge meme has all been debunked and is falling apart. The collusion of all anglo antlantacist secret agency and governments to destabalize the ME has all come out with an ever turbulant flow. Iran being the threat of the world ,debunked. Russia invading and hacking the free world,debunked.

Optimistic. Has Trump been instrumental in these? Perhaps. This would be a good reason for Zionists to hate him. But how is it that Trump is such a bumbling idiot? Now the Senate has ratfcked him with recess appointments. And he signed that stupid Russia Sanctions bill.

Temporarily Sane | Aug 4, 2017 12:06:50 AM | 46
@45 fast freddy
This would be a good reason for Zionists to hate him.

Except they don't hate him. Quite the opposite in fact. Looking to Trump as some sort of savior figure is absolutely ridiculous.

rm | Aug 4, 2017 12:17:56 AM | 47
Brennan : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBG81dXgM0Q

Seymour Hersh, in his 'Victoria NULAND moment' audio, states categorically BRENNAN conceived and ran the 'Russian Hack' psyop after Seth RICH DNC leaks.

[Sep 18, 2017] Discovery Of Another Democratic Secret Server May Have Prompted Imran Awan Firing

Was Imran Awan a part of DNC private spying operation?
Notable quotes:
"... Now, the latest revelation comes via an exclusive report from The Daily Caller which suggests that Awan may have been fired only after Capitol Police discovered a "secret server" being housed by the House Democratic Caucus. ..."
"... Now-indicted former congressional IT aide Imran Awan allegedly routed data from numerous House Democrats to a secret server. Police grew suspicious and requested a copy of the server early this year, but they were provided with an elaborate falsified image designed to hide the massive violations . The falsified image is what ultimately triggered their ban from the House network Feb. 2, according to a senior House official with direct knowledge of the investigation. ..."
"... The secret server was connected to the House Democratic Caucus, an organization chaired by then-Rep. Xavier Becerra. Police informed Becerra that the server was the subject of an investigation and requested a copy of it. Authorities considered the false image they received to be interference in a criminal investigation, the senior official said. ..."
"... Data was also backed up to Dropbox in huge quantities, the official said. Congressional offices are prohibited from using Dropbox, so an unofficial account was used, meaning Awan could have still had access to the data even though he was banned from the congressional network. ..."
"... Awan had access to all emails and office computer files of 45 members of Congress who are listed below. Fear among members that Awan could release embarrassing information if they cooperated with prosecutors could explain why the Democrats have refused to acknowledge the cybersecurity breach publicly or criticize the suspects. ..."
"... "They were using the House Democratic Caucus as their central service warehouse. It was a breach. The data was completely out of [the members'] possession. Does it mean it was sold to the Russians? I don't know," the senior official said. ..."
"... Capitol Police considered the image a sign that the Awans knew exactly what they were doing and were going to great lengths to try to cover it up, the senior official said. The House Sergeant-at-Arms banned them from the network as a result. ..."
"... This all follows speculation that surfaced last week suggesting that even if the Awans were originally acting to protect/extort Debbie Wasserman Schultz, that may have all changed on April 6, 2017 when Imran seemingly led U.S. Capitol Police directly to her laptop. Per The Daily Caller: ..."
"... A laptop that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has frantically fought to keep prosecutors from examining may have been planted for police to find by her since-indicted staffer, Imran Awan, along with a letter to the U.S. Attorney. ..."
"... U.S. Capitol Police found the laptop after midnight April 6, 2017, in a tiny room that formerly served as a phone booth in the Rayburn House Office Building, according to a Capitol Police report reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation's Investigative Group. Alongside the laptop were a Pakistani ID card, copies of Awan's driver's license and congressional ID badge, and letters to the U.S. attorney. Police also found notes in a composition notebook marked "attorney-client privilege." ..."
"... I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if DWS weren't doing her own surveillance of the Democratic House Caucus, in cahoots with the whole Clinton cabal. ..."
"... The Hillary Clinton Democrats seem to have a fascination with, and profound ignorance of, computers. There's Hillary's homebrew server, which she had her flunkies set up because she wanted to keep using her Blackberry to access her e-mail. Then when the Sanders campaign started getting traction, DWS claimed falsely the Sanders people had hacked into the Clinton part of the DNC donor database. And meanwhile, there was all this going on with the Awans, who got their foot in the door with the Dems under Bob Wexler, and continued with DWS. ..."
"... DWS is pretty dumb. She's also vicious, very tenacious and doggedly loyal to Hillary. It strikes me as very likely she'd be the kind of person who would think it was clever to spy on her caucus, to find anyone insufficiently loyal the Hillary and punish them had Hillary become President. She'd be just dumb enough to want stuff covertly synched to a Dropbox account, not thinking it could all be traced back to her, or those under her control, easily. ..."
"... I suspect that your inclination to tie this to Clinton is due, in part, to the fact that a lawyer with ties to the Clintons, Christopher Gowenis, is representing Imran Awan. ..."
"... Supposedly 400,000 people work for intelligence agency contractors. No doubt many dual citizens and H1bs. The whole planet can access national security data ..."
"... A secret server! Ah! Everyone who deals with secured information with our government should have a secret server, so they can, you know, copy things to it. Perhaps Imran and Hina were using the secret server to write their book.."What Happened," ..."
"... Came upon sort of a Cliffs Notes version of the Awan saga. To get us up-to-date. https://steemit.com/awanbrothers/@v4vapid/the-awan-brothers-for-dummies-... ..."
Sep 13, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Now, the latest revelation comes via an exclusive report from The Daily Caller which suggests that Awan may have been fired only after Capitol Police discovered a "secret server" being housed by the House Democratic Caucus.

A secret server is behind law enforcement's decision to ban a former IT aide to Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz from the House network.

Now-indicted former congressional IT aide Imran Awan allegedly routed data from numerous House Democrats to a secret server. Police grew suspicious and requested a copy of the server early this year, but they were provided with an elaborate falsified image designed to hide the massive violations . The falsified image is what ultimately triggered their ban from the House network Feb. 2, according to a senior House official with direct knowledge of the investigation.

The secret server was connected to the House Democratic Caucus, an organization chaired by then-Rep. Xavier Becerra. Police informed Becerra that the server was the subject of an investigation and requested a copy of it. Authorities considered the false image they received to be interference in a criminal investigation, the senior official said.

Data was also backed up to Dropbox in huge quantities, the official said. Congressional offices are prohibited from using Dropbox, so an unofficial account was used, meaning Awan could have still had access to the data even though he was banned from the congressional network.

Awan had access to all emails and office computer files of 45 members of Congress who are listed below. Fear among members that Awan could release embarrassing information if they cooperated with prosecutors could explain why the Democrats have refused to acknowledge the cybersecurity breach publicly or criticize the suspects.

According to the DC, the "secret server" was discovered when California Congressman, and chair of the House Democratic Caucus, Xavier Becerra asked to have his server wiped clean (you know, like with a cloth) in advance of his departure to take his new seat as Attorney General of California.

On Jan. 24, 2017, Becerra vacated his congressional seat to become California's attorney general. "He wanted to wipe his server, and we brought to his attention it was under investigation. The light-off was we asked for an image of the server, and they deliberately turned over a fake server," the senior official said.

"They were using the House Democratic Caucus as their central service warehouse. It was a breach. The data was completely out of [the members'] possession. Does it mean it was sold to the Russians? I don't know," the senior official said.

Capitol Police considered the image a sign that the Awans knew exactly what they were doing and were going to great lengths to try to cover it up, the senior official said. The House Sergeant-at-Arms banned them from the network as a result.

The senior official said the data was also funneled offsite via a Dropbox account, from which copies could easily be downloaded. Authorities could not immediately shut down the account when the Awans were banned from the network because it was not an official account.

"For members to say their data was not compromised is simply inaccurate. They had access to all the data including all emails. Imran Awan is the walking example of an insider threat, a criminal actor who had access to everything," the senior official said.

Meanwhile, these latest allegations come after Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) appeared on Fox News yesterday to share his prediction that the Awans could be working on a broader immunity deal with prosecutors in return for a "significant" and "pretty disturbing" story about Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

"I don't want to talk out of school here but I think you're going to see some revelations that are going to be pretty profound. The fact that this wife is coming back from Pakistan and is willing to face charges, as it were, I think there is a good chance she is going to reach some type of immunity to tell a larger story here that is going to be pretty disturbing to the American people."

"I would just predict that this is going to be a very significant story and people should fasten their seat belts on this one."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Vp7wZQpF47o

This all follows speculation that surfaced last week suggesting that even if the Awans were originally acting to protect/extort Debbie Wasserman Schultz, that may have all changed on April 6, 2017 when Imran seemingly led U.S. Capitol Police directly to her laptop. Per The Daily Caller:

A laptop that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has frantically fought to keep prosecutors from examining may have been planted for police to find by her since-indicted staffer, Imran Awan, along with a letter to the U.S. Attorney.

U.S. Capitol Police found the laptop after midnight April 6, 2017, in a tiny room that formerly served as a phone booth in the Rayburn House Office Building, according to a Capitol Police report reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation's Investigative Group. Alongside the laptop were a Pakistani ID card, copies of Awan's driver's license and congressional ID badge, and letters to the U.S. attorney. Police also found notes in a composition notebook marked "attorney-client privilege."

The laptop had the username "RepDWS," even though the Florida Democrat and former Democratic National Committee chairman previously said it was Awan's computer and that she had never even seen it.

The laptop was found on the second floor of the Rayburn building -- a place Awan would have had no reason to go because Wasserman Schultz's office is in the Longworth building and the other members who employed him had fired him.

Of course, we're certain this is just more attempts to "criminalize behavior that is normal."

knukles -> Boris Alatovkrap , Sep 13, 2017 7:53 PM

People who live in glass houses, etc. They wanted an investigation, well here's the fucking investigation! Welcome back, Boris.

Luc X. Ifer -> knukles , Sep 13, 2017 9:13 PM

That's the server the raghead used to establish VPN tunnels for/with his islamist terrorists friends.

JSBach1 -> knukles , Sep 13, 2017 9:44 PM

Does anyone believe that Imran was re-routing this much data onto a server and then synching it to an unofficial Dropbox account and for this many congress people, that we know of to this point, simply to hold onto it personal use/resale/blackmail? He and his associates -- were planted there, albeit on different occasions, for a common purpose and as such I suspect that this leads directly to a state actor(s).

esum -> JSBach1 , Sep 13, 2017 9:48 PM

HILLARY

swmnguy -> JSBach1 , Sep 13, 2017 10:19 PM

I don't know about actual foreign espionage. But I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if DWS weren't doing her own surveillance of the Democratic House Caucus, in cahoots with the whole Clinton cabal.

The Hillary Clinton Democrats seem to have a fascination with, and profound ignorance of, computers. There's Hillary's homebrew server, which she had her flunkies set up because she wanted to keep using her Blackberry to access her e-mail. Then when the Sanders campaign started getting traction, DWS claimed falsely the Sanders people had hacked into the Clinton part of the DNC donor database. And meanwhile, there was all this going on with the Awans, who got their foot in the door with the Dems under Bob Wexler, and continued with DWS.

DWS is pretty dumb. She's also vicious, very tenacious and doggedly loyal to Hillary. It strikes me as very likely she'd be the kind of person who would think it was clever to spy on her caucus, to find anyone insufficiently loyal the Hillary and punish them had Hillary become President. She'd be just dumb enough to want stuff covertly synched to a Dropbox account, not thinking it could all be traced back to her, or those under her control, easily.

JSBach1 -> swmnguy , Sep 13, 2017 11:57 PM

I suspect that your inclination to tie this to Clinton is due, in part, to the fact that a lawyer with ties to the Clintons, Christopher Gowenis, is representing Imran Awan.

For me, however, it is the fact that they specifically chose members of the House Permanent Select Committee and House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which deal primarily in foreign and intelligence matters, along with the fact that these perpetrators were all foreign nationals with ties to foreign intelligence services that leads me to suspect foreign involvement in this matter. As you recall Clinton's MO is domestic agents -- who can be controlled and/or disposed of with relative ease-of-reach.

BTW, nice to finally have a direct dialogue with you; I've enjoyed your personal stories involving work and your family. It seems you did a great job rasing your children even though exposing them through the public school system in or near the inner-city -- no easy feat for sure.

Of course George Webb has been the stalwart in this endeavor!

(This site even referenced ZeroHedge)

XWeatherman -> JSBach1 , Sep 13, 2017 10:58 PM

That's what George said. I think he is a Mossad agent. He admitted his people were Jewish people, but now he claims he is Cherokee. He has far to many investigative and communication skills to be an ex-college-basketball-star, even if he is very tall.

JSBach1 -> XWeatherman , Sep 13, 2017 11:50 PM

Whatever can and is often said of George, nothing will change the fact that without his (and whose ever else's) involvement in this investigation it would probably have been set aside and buried after some initial fanfare.

RumpleShitzkin -> JSBach1 , Sep 13, 2017 11:31 PM

It could be done. I have scripts that can savage a laptop for the files I want and dump them anywhere I specify as a destination for the dump. Awan could have used something similar, then reversed the process at night to dump from Dropbox to local storage at his house. The kind of taxpayer money they were throwing around, I'm sure they have tip top bandwidth to dump all kinds of shit wherever they wanted.

JSBach1 -> RumpleShitzkin , Sep 13, 2017 11:54 PM

Needless to say, the NSA will have copies of said data in due part of their own network re-routing... Someone awaken Jeff Sessions investigations are abound and screaming for attention...no, not the pot-head ones.

doctor10 -> Boris Alatovkrap , Sep 13, 2017 7:54 PM

Shit...do we even HAVE a functional Republic anylonger? This crap gives life to the Keystone Kops...how many effin' "intelligence" agencies are we paying salaries on? 16-17 ? WTF? And yet start a 501C3 devoted to limited government and Lois Lerner will find and prove the lemonade stand on the street corner you started in 6th grade still has outstanding health department violations and unpaid taxes...due with penalty.

Xena fobe -> doctor10 , Sep 13, 2017 9:42 PM

Supposedly 400,000 people work for intelligence agency contractors. No doubt many dual citizens and H1bs. The whole planet can access national security data

FoggyWorld -> HelluvaEngineer , Sep 13, 2017 9:51 PM

There is no rule of law for the wealthy and politically connected but don't kid yourself, there is a heavy rule of law for the rest of us.

UmbilicalMosque... -> FoggyWorld , Sep 14, 2017 12:39 AM

No end to statutoryGFF legalisms created by US, Inc. Constitutional Rule of Law has been bypassed and negated by them.

tmosley -> Cognitive Dissonance , Sep 13, 2017 7:38 PM

You always need to have a second cleaner to clean up the mess left by the first one. Then a third. Then a fourth. There is no end to it. That is why the Dems are feeling so cornered these days. EVERYTHING is going to come out at some point. The ones who aren't deep in Trump derangement syndrome can see it, and are trying to salvage the situation. Luckily, those are few and far between.

knukles -> tmosley , Sep 13, 2017 7:55 PM

This is what happens when a rule of lies begins unravelling Just happens to coincide with the Propaganda Mechanism failing Would they be bastards of the same Soros/Satan Cabal?

Bay of Pigs -> knukles , Sep 13, 2017 8:15 PM

It all leads to the murder of Seth Rich.

Implied Violins -> Bay of Pigs , Sep 13, 2017 10:19 PM

...and the *one* thing that will unite humanity against these psychopathic Satanic bastards: pedophilia. CAN'T WAIT.

Eeesh , Sep 13, 2017 7:21 PM

If his wife is returning from Pakistan under the impression that a deal will be made, this story has got to be JUICY!

Cognitive Dissonance -> Eeesh , Sep 13, 2017 8:13 PM

Oddly enough, they STILL aren't talking about the deleted 30,000 Hillary emails. I wonder why?

East Indian -> Cognitive Dissonance , Sep 13, 2017 10:35 PM

Because those 30k mails are alive and kicking somewhere

Sanity Bear , Sep 13, 2017 7:32 PM

and she's such a rancid and unsympathetic character there's no way they're going to sell the poor beleaguered woman bit

LadyAtZero , Sep 13, 2017 7:35 PM

A secret server! Ah! Everyone who deals with secured information with our government should have a secret server, so they can, you know, copy things to it. Perhaps Imran and Hina were using the secret server to write their book.."What Happened," or in Urdu: Wh (*&^(*&^&.

shimmy , Sep 13, 2017 7:36 PM

I like how Russia got brought up by that senior official. Just pathetic. That banana republic right now is the biggest joke in the history of mankind.

chunga -> shimmy , Sep 13, 2017 7:45 PM

No shit. Nothing will come of this. I'd have more confidence in an investigation run from Pakistan. I've been watching things like this my entire adult life and it's just not interesting anymore.

LadyAtZero , Sep 13, 2017 7:40 PM

Came upon sort of a Cliffs Notes version of the Awan saga. To get us up-to-date. https://steemit.com/awanbrothers/@v4vapid/the-awan-brothers-for-dummies-...

loveyajimbo , Sep 13, 2017 7:41 PM

Too bad eunuch Sessions has decided that the rule of law in the USA does not apply to politicians or to their staff maggots. Be great to see the new Cally AG Becerra indicted for a major felony... but that should have happened to Hillary long ago... her crimes are legion.

Dickweed Wang -> loveyajimbo , Sep 13, 2017 8:22 PM

Sessions is way to busy going after those evil pot smokers to be concerned with petty things like political corruption. You go Jeff!!

[Sep 18, 2017] The Russian Hacking Story Continues to Unravel by Mike Whitney

The key problem with the "official" story of DNS hack is the role of Crowdstrike and strangely coincident murder of Seth Rich. Que bono analysis here might also help: the main beneficiary of "Russian hack" story was Hillary camp as it allowed them to put a smoke screen shadowing allegation that they nefariously has thrown Sanders under the bus. A very serious allegation which has substantial supporting evidence. In a way they were fighting for their lives. Also Imran Awan story is omitted from the official narrative. Was not this another proved large scale hacking case? They also have a motive and opportunity in DNC case.
Notable quotes:
"... The reason Assange keeps saying that Russia wasn't involved is because Russia wasn't involved. There's nothing more to it than that. ..."
"... As for the other eyewitness, Craig Murray, he has also flatly denied that Russia provided WikiLeaks with the DNC emails. ..."
"... He claims he had a clandestine hand-off near American University with one of the email sources. Murray said the leakers' motivation was 'disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the 'tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders' ..."
"... Murray says: 'The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks'. 'Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that,' Murray insists." . ..."
"... Murray said he was speaking out due to claims from intelligence officials that Wikileaks was given the documents by Russian hackers as part of an effort to help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidential election. ..."
"... 'I don't understand why the CIA would say the information came from Russian hackers when they must know that isn't true,' he said. 'Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that." ..."
"... Is Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and human rights activist, a credible witness? There's one way to find out, isn't there? The FBI should interview Murray so they can establish whether he's telling the truth or not. And, naturally, one would assume that the FBI has already done that since the Russia hacking story has been splashed across the headlines for more than a year now. ..."
"... But that's not the case at all. The FBI has never questioned Assange or Murray, in fact, the FBI has never even tried to get in touch with either of them. Never. Not even a lousy phone call. It's like they don't exist. Why? Why hasn't the FBI contacted or questioned the only two witnesses in the case? ..."
"... Could it be because Assange and Murray's knowledge of the facts doesn't coincide with the skewed political narrative the Intel agencies and their co-collaborators at the DNC what to propagate? Isn't that what's really going on? Isn't Russia-gate really just a stick for beating Russia and Trump? How else would one explain this stubborn unwillingness of the FBI to investigate what one senator called "The crime of the century"? ..."
"... "It is no secret that NSA has the technology to trace a web event, e.g., a cyber attack, back to its source. There has been no public claim, nor is it implied in either Grizzly Steppe or the ICA that the NSA has trace routing to Russia on any of these purported Russian hacks." ("The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge", Skip Folden) ..."
"... What the author is saying is that: If Russia hacked the DNC computers, the NSA would know about it. It's that simple. ..."
"... But no one at the NSA has ever verified the claims or produced one scintilla of evidence that connects Russia to the emails. In fact, the NSA has never even suggested that such evidence exists. Nor has anyone in the media asked Director Michael Rogers point blank whether the NSA has hard evidence that Russia hacked the DNC servers? ..."
"... The only logical explanation is that there's no proof that Russia was actually involved. Why else would the NSA withhold evidence on a matter this serious? It makes no sense. ..."
"... "The FBI, having asked multiple times at different levels, was refused access to the DNC server(s). It is not apparent that any law enforcement agency had access. ..."
"... 4. Not the FBI, CIA, nor NSA organizations analyzed the information from Crowdstrike. Only picked analysts of these agencies were chosen to see this data and write the ICA ." ..."
"... The DNC computers are Exhibit A. The FBI has to have those computers, and they are certainly within their rights to seize them by any means necessary. So why haven't they? Does the FBI think they can trust the second-hand analysis from some flunkey organization whose dubious background casts serious doubt on their conclusions? ..."
"... It's a joke! The only rational explanation for the FBI's behavior, is that they've been told to "stand down" so they don't unwittingly expose the truth about what's really going on, that the whole Russia hacking fiction is a complete and utter fraud, and that the DNC, the CIA and the media are all having a good laugh at the expense of the clueless American people. ..."
"... "Adam Carter: the FBI do not have disk images from any point during or following the alleged email hack. CrowdStrike's failure to produce evidence. – With Falcon installed between April and May (early May), they should have had evidence on when files/emails/etc were copied or sent. – That information has never been disclosed." ..."
"... What people want is proof that Russia hacked the DNC servers or that Trump cozied up to Russia to win the election. Nothing else matters. All these diversions prove is that, after one full year of nonstop, headline sensationalism, the investigation has produced nothing; a big, fat goose-egg. ..."
"... Remember the January 6, Intelligence Community Assessment? The ICA report was supposed to provide iron-clad proof that Russia hacked Democratic emails and published them at WikiLeaks. The media endlessly reiterated the claim that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies took part in the assessment and that it's conclusions represented the collective, objective analysis of America's finest. ..."
"... Right. The whole thing was a fraud. As it happens, only four of the agencies participated in the project (the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.) and the agents who provided the analysis were hand-picked for the task. Naturally, when a director hand-picks particular analysts for a given assignment, one assumes that they want a particular outcome. Which they did. Clearly, in this case, the intelligence was tailored to fit the policy. The intention was to vilify Russia in order to further isolate a country that was gradually emerging as a global rival. ..."
"... Lastly, Folden's report sheds light on the technical inconsistencies of the hacking allegations. Cyber-forensic experts have now shown that "The alleged "hack" was effectively impossible in mid-2016. The required download speed of the "hack" precludes an internet transfer of any significant distance." In other words, the speed at which the emails were transferred could only have taken place if they were "Downloaded onto external storage, e.g., 2.0 thumb drive." (The report also provides evidence that the transfers took place in the Eastern time zone, which refutes the theory that the servers were hacked from Romania.) ..."
"... "There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee's system on July 5 last year!not by the Russians, not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak!a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC's system." ("A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack", Patrick Lawrence, The Nation) ..."
"... Read the whole report here: " Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge ", Skip Folden, Word Press. ..."
Sep 14, 2017 | www.unz.com

A new report by a retired IT executive at IBM, debunks the claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign by hacking Democratic computers and circulating damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The report, which is titled " The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge ", provides a rigorous examination of the wobbly allegations upon which the hacking theory is based, as well as a point by point rejection of the primary claims which, in the final analysis, fail to pass the smell test. While the report is worth reading in full, our intention is to zero-in on the parts of the text that disprove the claims that Russia meddled in US elections or hacked the servers at the DNC.

Let's start with the fact that there are at least two credible witnesses who claim to know who took the DNC emails and transferred them to WikiLeaks. We're talking about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and WikiLeaks ally, Craig Murray. No one is in a better position to know who actually took the emails than Assange, and yet, Assange has repeatedly said that Russia was not the source. Check out this clip from the report:

Assange has been adamant all along that the Russian government was not a source; it was a non-state player.

ASSANGE: Our source is not a state party

HANNITY (Conservative talk show host): Can you say to the American people unequivocally that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta's emails -- can you tell the American people 1,000 percent you did not get it from Russia

ASSANGE: Yes.

HANNITY: or anybody associated with Russia?

ASSANGE: We -- we can say and we have said repeatedly over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party

("The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge", Skip Folden)

Can you think of a more credible witness than Julian Assange? The man has devoted his entire adult life to exposing the truth about government despite the risks his actions pose to his own personal safety. In fact, he is currently holed up at the Ecuador embassy in London for defending the public's right to know what their government is up to. Does anyone seriously think that a man like that would deliberately lie just to protect Russia's reputation?

No, of course not, and the new report backs him up on this matter. It states: "No where in the Intelligence Community's Assessment (ICA) was there any evidence of any connection between Russia and WikiLeaks." The reason Assange keeps saying that Russia wasn't involved is because Russia wasn't involved. There's nothing more to it than that.

As for the other eyewitness, Craig Murray, he has also flatly denied that Russia provided WikiLeaks with the DNC emails. Check out this except from an article at The Daily Mail:

(Murray) "flew to Washington, D.C. for emails. He claims he had a clandestine hand-off near American University with one of the email sources. Murray said the leakers' motivation was 'disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the 'tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders'

Murray says: 'The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks'. 'Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that,' Murray insists." .

Murray said he was speaking out due to claims from intelligence officials that Wikileaks was given the documents by Russian hackers as part of an effort to help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidential election.

'I don't understand why the CIA would say the information came from Russian hackers when they must know that isn't true,' he said. 'Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that."

(EXCLUSIVE: Ex-British ambassador who is now a WikiLeaks operative claims Russia did NOT provide Clinton emails", Daily Mail)

Is Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and human rights activist, a credible witness? There's one way to find out, isn't there? The FBI should interview Murray so they can establish whether he's telling the truth or not. And, naturally, one would assume that the FBI has already done that since the Russia hacking story has been splashed across the headlines for more than a year now.

But that's not the case at all. The FBI has never questioned Assange or Murray, in fact, the FBI has never even tried to get in touch with either of them. Never. Not even a lousy phone call. It's like they don't exist. Why? Why hasn't the FBI contacted or questioned the only two witnesses in the case?

Could it be because Assange and Murray's knowledge of the facts doesn't coincide with the skewed political narrative the Intel agencies and their co-collaborators at the DNC what to propagate? Isn't that what's really going on? Isn't Russia-gate really just a stick for beating Russia and Trump? How else would one explain this stubborn unwillingness of the FBI to investigate what one senator called "The crime of the century"?

Here's something else from the report that's worth mulling over:

"It is no secret that NSA has the technology to trace a web event, e.g., a cyber attack, back to its source. There has been no public claim, nor is it implied in either Grizzly Steppe or the ICA that the NSA has trace routing to Russia on any of these purported Russian hacks." ("The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge", Skip Folden)

This is a crucial point, so let's rephrase that in simple English. What the author is saying is that: If Russia hacked the DNC computers, the NSA would know about it. It's that simple.

But no one at the NSA has ever verified the claims or produced one scintilla of evidence that connects Russia to the emails. In fact, the NSA has never even suggested that such evidence exists. Nor has anyone in the media asked Director Michael Rogers point blank whether the NSA has hard evidence that Russia hacked the DNC servers?

Why? Why this conspiracy of silence on a matter that is so fundamental to the case that the NSA and the other Intel agencies are trying to make?

The only logical explanation is that there's no proof that Russia was actually involved. Why else would the NSA withhold evidence on a matter this serious? It makes no sense.

According to the media, Intelligence agents familiar with the matter have "high confidence' that Russia was involved.

Okay, but where's the proof? You can't expect to build a case against a foreign government and a sitting president with just "high confidence". You need facts, evidence, proof. Where's the beef?

We already mentioned how the FBI never bothered to question the only eyewitnesses in the case. That's odd enough, but what's even stranger is the fact that the FBI never seized the DNC's servers so they could conduct a forensic examination of them. What's that all about? Here's an excerpt from the report:

"The FBI, having asked multiple times at different levels, was refused access to the DNC server(s). It is not apparent that any law enforcement agency had access.

The apparent single source of information on the purported DNC intrusion(s) was from Crowdstrike.

3. Crowdstrike is a cyber security firm hired by the Democratic Party.

4. Not the FBI, CIA, nor NSA organizations analyzed the information from Crowdstrike. Only picked analysts of these agencies were chosen to see this data and write the ICA ."

( "The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge)

Have you ever read anything more ridiculous in your life? The FBI's negligence in this case goes beyond anything I've ever seen before. Imagine if a murder was committed in the apartment next to you and the FBI was called in to investigate. But when they arrive at the scene of the crime, they're blocked at the door by the victim's roommate who refuses to let them in. Speaking through the door, the roommate assures the agents that the victim was shot dead with a single bullet to the head, and that the smoking gun that was used in the murder is still on the floor. But "don't worry", says the obstructing roommate, "I've already photographed the whole thing and I'll send you the pictures as soon as I get the chance."

Do you really think the agents would put up with such nonsense?

Never! They'd kick down the door, slap the roommate in handcuffs, cordon-off the murder scene, and start digging-around for clues. That's what they'd do. And yet we are supposed to believe that in the biggest case of the decade, a case that that allegedly involves foreign espionage and presidential treason, that the FBI has made no serious effort to secure the servers that were allegedly hacked by Russia?

The DNC computers are Exhibit A. The FBI has to have those computers, and they are certainly within their rights to seize them by any means necessary. So why haven't they? Does the FBI think they can trust the second-hand analysis from some flunkey organization whose dubious background casts serious doubt on their conclusions?

It's a joke! The only rational explanation for the FBI's behavior, is that they've been told to "stand down" so they don't unwittingly expose the truth about what's really going on, that the whole Russia hacking fiction is a complete and utter fraud, and that the DNC, the CIA and the media are all having a good laugh at the expense of the clueless American people.

Here's another interesting clip from the report:

"Adam Carter: the FBI do not have disk images from any point during or following the alleged email hack. CrowdStrike's failure to produce evidence. – With Falcon installed between April and May (early May), they should have had evidence on when files/emails/etc were copied or sent. – That information has never been disclosed."

("The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge", Skip Folden)

Read that excerpt over again. It's mind boggling. What Carter is saying is that, they have nothing, no evidence, no proof, no nothing. If you don't have a disk image, then what do you have?

You have nothing, that's what. Which means that everything we've read is 100 percent conjecture, not a shred of evidence anywhere. Which is why the focus has shifted to Manafort, Flynn, Trump Jr and the goofy Russian lawyer?

Who gives a rip about Manafort? Seriously? The investigation started off with grave allegations of foreign espionage and presidential collusion (treason?) and quickly downshifted to the illicit financial dealings of someone the American people could care less about. Talk about mission creep!

What people want is proof that Russia hacked the DNC servers or that Trump cozied up to Russia to win the election. Nothing else matters. All these diversions prove is that, after one full year of nonstop, headline sensationalism, the investigation has produced nothing; a big, fat goose-egg.

A few words about the ICA Report

Remember the January 6, Intelligence Community Assessment? The ICA report was supposed to provide iron-clad proof that Russia hacked Democratic emails and published them at WikiLeaks. The media endlessly reiterated the claim that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies took part in the assessment and that it's conclusions represented the collective, objective analysis of America's finest.

Right. The whole thing was a fraud. As it happens, only four of the agencies participated in the project (the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.) and the agents who provided the analysis were hand-picked for the task. Naturally, when a director hand-picks particular analysts for a given assignment, one assumes that they want a particular outcome. Which they did. Clearly, in this case, the intelligence was tailored to fit the policy. The intention was to vilify Russia in order to further isolate a country that was gradually emerging as a global rival. And the report was moderately successful in that regard too, except for one paradoxical disclaimer that appeared on page 13. Here it is:

"Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents."

What the authors are saying is that, 'Everything you read in this report could be complete baloney because it's all based on conjecture, speculation and guesswork.'

Isn't that what they're saying? Why would anyone waste their time reading a report when the authors openly admit that their grasp of what happened is "incomplete or fragmentary" and they have no "proof" of anything?

Gregory Copley, President, International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) summed it up best when he said: "This is a highly politically motivated and a subjective report which was issued by the intelligence community. does not present evidence of successful or even an attempt to actually actively manipulate the election process."

Like we said, it's all baloney.

Lastly, Folden's report sheds light on the technical inconsistencies of the hacking allegations. Cyber-forensic experts have now shown that "The alleged "hack" was effectively impossible in mid-2016. The required download speed of the "hack" precludes an internet transfer of any significant distance." In other words, the speed at which the emails were transferred could only have taken place if they were "Downloaded onto external storage, e.g., 2.0 thumb drive." (The report also provides evidence that the transfers took place in the Eastern time zone, which refutes the theory that the servers were hacked from Romania.)

The Nation summed it up perfectly in this brief paragraph:

"There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee's system on July 5 last year!not by the Russians, not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak!a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC's system." ("A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack", Patrick Lawrence, The Nation)

Bingo.

Bottom line: A dedicated group of independent researchers and former Intel agents joined forces and produced the first hard evidence that "the official narrative implicating Russia" is wrong. This is a stunning development that will, in time, cut through the fog of government propaganda and reveal the truth. Skip Folden's report is an important contribution to that same effort.

Read the whole report here: " Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge ", Skip Folden, Word Press.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] .

Seamus Padraig > , September 14, 2017 at 12:43 pm GMT

In related news, Craig Murray is now being sued for libel in the UK over specious accusations stemming from the Jeremy Corbyn 'anti-Semitism' scandal. Murry writes:

I am being sued for libel in the High Court in England by Jake Wallis Simons, Associate Editor of the Daily Mail Online. Mr Wallis Simons is demanding Ł40,000 in damages and the High Court has approved over Ł100,000 in costs for Mark Lewis, Mr Wallis Simons' lawyer. I may become liable for all of this should I lose the case, and furthermore I have no money to pay for my defence. I am currently a defendant in person. This case has the potential to bankrupt me and blight the lives of my wife and children. I have specifically been threatened by Mr Lewis with bankruptcy.

Source: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/09/save-craig-murray/

Britain is notorious for having libel laws with a reversed burden of proof , meaning that the defendant (in this case, Murray) must prove himself innocent! Some shady plaintiffs, when jurisdiction-shopping for a libel case, have been known to try and file libel charges in Britain for this very reason.

Somebody's after Craig Murray big-time.

elmer t. jones > , September 14, 2017 at 7:09 pm GMT

The ICA report was a joke to anyone with rudimentary internet skills. It had a page of infographics featuring the iconic hacker-in-a-hoodie, a short list of perps ("hairyBear69″ etc etc) and the rest of it looked like a generic corporate PowerPoint on good cyber security practices. The media of course acted like it was all damning evidence of collusion.

Jonathan Mason > , September 15, 2017 at 12:56 am GMT
Reading Unz Review you will be better off replacing the word "Jew" with the term "the member of financial oligarchy". That's also will be more correct as tribal interests of financial oligarchy are the same as attributed to Jews in Protocols of Zion Elders...

The media endlessly reiterated the claim that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies took part in the assessment and that it's (sic) conclusions represented the collective, objective analysis of America's finest.

Well, at the time, I, and probably most other people of moderate intelligence, said: "It is highly unlikely that all seventeen intelligence agencies have carried out independent investigations and come to identical conclusions without any of them being able to produce hard evidence. So this can safely be dismissed as bullshit."

People are not stupid, just like almost no one believed in Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Apparently Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton were the only people who were fooled. And Hillary Clinton also believed that she came under fire in Serbia, having been sent as First Lady to a place where it was too dangerous for the President to go, even though he had been there in person only a few months earlier.

There is a pattern here, I think.

Miro23 > , September 15, 2017 at 3:29 am GMT

The only rational explanation for the FBI's behavior, is that they've been told to "stand down" so they don't unwittingly expose the truth about what's really going on, that the whole Russia hacking fiction is a complete and utter fraud, and that the DNC, the CIA and the media are all having a good laugh at the expense of the clueless American people.

The same that they were told to "stand down " on the plentiful 9/11 evidence that contradicts the government story (see especially what they were doing down in Florida, Daniel Hopsicker "Welcome to Terrorland" https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Terrorland-Mohamed-Cover-up-Florida/dp/0970659164/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1505445435&sr=8-2&keywords=daniel+hopsicker ).

I'm not sure that the FBI and CIA operatives are having a good laugh. To some extent they ARE the American people, and will have some basic ideas of justice and honesty. Their political masters can bribe and coerce them but there are limits to the efficiency of a (US) system run on fear and greed.

exiled off mainstreet > , September 15, 2017 at 3:36 am GMT

Despite the massive amount of evidence exposing the fraudulent nature of the story the media keeps going along based on the assumption that the lies are facts. Many if not most of those who consume the media propaganda continue to believe this crap. It is a sort of 21st century iteration of Goebbels propaganda but with the risk of nuclear war.

dc.sunsets > , September 15, 2017 at 8:31 pm GMT

Fake news is gonna be fake.

Until recently, people believed. They believed in The System (and the System's Narrative) more fervently than did their 14th Century European ancestors believe in Christianity.

They believed we could all get rich by Government and corporations issuing more and more and more debt. They believed that a promise to pay future cash flows, from Social Security or a Teacher's Pension or a Treasury Bond maturing, it was ALL as certain as if the money was already sitting on a table in front of their eyes.

Every institution in the West is being destroyed from within by the very people who staff it and who count on it for financial income. Those working in The News make stuff up out of whole cloth, apparently believing that a public that sees their output as fiction will continue to fund the channel that accrues to their paycheck. The same holds true of FB and social media. Government officials can't keep their lies straight anymore, and everywhere we look we see a wave of awakening, as members of the public each come to reframe that which they can see.

We are past apogee on the wave of pathological trust. The path ahead is of growing distrust, and while healthy in part, it will likely overshoot a better place by as much on the downside as it trust overshot wisdom on the upside.

View everything with distrust and suspicion; by doing so now, you'll be the rush.

Backwoods Bob > , September 15, 2017 at 9:48 pm GMT

It's exasperating but the strategy from the beginning has been psychological, not evidence-based, and it has been working.

All they have to do is keep repeating the three words Russia, Trump, and Hacking in close proximity to one another. They got the vast majority of people to believe Saddam Hussein did 9/11. I visit my mother in a retirement home and the mainstream television media has them completely in their grip.

I occasionally check in with the nauseating mainstream press or talking head shows, and watched a gaggle of clowns devolve into a shouting match over Trump/Russia. It was perfectly choreographed to make sure no coherent sentence, no complete thought was ever uttered. It was just noise – which is what the CIA is paying for and the producers are serving up.

In the meantime the Awan spy ring in Congress is being investigated by citizen journalists and studiously ignored by both Congress and the media. Does that tell you anything? They're mostly either safely blackmailed or paid off. The FBI can't find a crime being committed right in front of them in broad daylight so long as the criminal is helping out the country with weapons deliveries to Al Qaeda and ISIS, opium from Afghanistan, and other charitable efforts.

CalDre > , September 16, 2017 at 7:38 am GMT

Whilst I share the view there is no credible evidence of this "Russian hacking", this article does not provide any evidence against. How is Assange a witness? Did the leaker/hacker walk into the Ecuadorian embassy in London and hand it to him? No, no doubt he thinks that because that is what Murray told him. Now Murray could be lying, or he could have been fooled: if indeed it was Russia behind the hacks, they could have hired anyone / used any asset to deliver the goods to Murray.

This just doesn't advance the ball one iota.

The Alarmist > , September 16, 2017 at 11:06 am GMT

The term "Stand Down" seems to crop up a lot in matters involving Hillary Clinton, no?

Anonymous > , Disclaimer September 16, 2017 at 11:16 am GMT

I put some effort into editing the original text by Skip Folden and put into into .odt and .pdf. Also checked the links and highlighted some problems.

Have a go, I put it on Amazon S3 (imma supporting Bezos, here), it's easier to read on the train, too:

The+Non+Existent+Foundation+of+the+Russian+Hacking+Charge.pdf

The+Non+Existent+Foundation+of+the+Russian+Hacking+Charge.odt

Logging is off BTW.

El Dato > , September 16, 2017 at 12:38 pm GMT

Meanwhile, Stripped Nuts and Loose Screws:

https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=66BF6DAD-0C50-4279-8EA2-018A8B17CAD7

"There is no credible doubt that Russia attacked our election infrastructure in 2016," said Gillibrand. "We need a public accounting of how they were able to do it so effectively, and how we can protect our country when Russia or any other nation tries to attack us again. The clock is ticking before our next election, and these questions are urgent. We need to be able to defend ourselves against threats to our elections, our democracy, and our sacred right to vote. I am proud to introduce this bipartisan legislation to create a 9/11-style Commission to defend our democracy and protect ourselves against future attacks on our country."

Lying and not realising you created the problem in the first place (Closed-source Diebold QUALITY machines etc.)

Just go back to paper, you fcsking idiots.

Seamus Padraig > , September 16, 2017 at 3:07 pm GMT

@CalDre Whilst I share the view there is no credible evidence of this "Russian hacking", this article does not provide any evidence against. How is Assange a witness? Did the leaker/hacker walk into the Ecuadorian embassy in London and hand it to him? No, no doubt he thinks that because that is what Murray told him. Now Murray could be lying, or he could have been fooled: if indeed it was Russia behind the hacks, they could have hired anyone / used any asset to deliver the goods to Murray.

This just doesn't advance the ball one iota.

Whilst I share the view there is no credible evidence of this "Russian hacking", this article does not provide any evidence against.

Oh? You want us to reverse the burden of proof, do you? Look, I don't know what country you come from, but in the US, a man is always innocent until proven guilty.

Now Murray could be lying, or he could have been fooled: if indeed it was Russia behind the hacks, they could have hired anyone / used any asset to deliver the goods to Murray.

Like Seth Rich, for example? Now that would be an elaborate plot!

Backwoods Bob > , September 16, 2017 at 6:44 pm GMT

@El Dato I can't remember hearing much about Sibel Edmond's revelations either recently.

That story disappeared faster than Oswald exiting a bookstore.

At least she's still alive. So true, El Dato. Even after the 29 pages came out and pointed to Saudi Arabian involvement like suspected, it was just dropped.

Or any number of other ghastly acts like Fast and Furious, the IRS and other organs of government being used to harass and suppress. We overthrew Ukraine and the mockingbird media made it sound like it was a Russian invasion, the story could not have been more backwards.

It's the Church Committee, Iran-Contra, and the Rosenberg's except bigger. Judicial Watch keeps digging out pay-to-play emails. A person would have to be brain dead not to see Comey obstructed investigations and let them destroy evidence. It is clear Congressmen are implicated directly, both parties, Clinton and McCain represent all the worst of our corruption. Aiding Al Qaeda and ISIS.

We have whole shipping containers at a time going to and fro from our ports under diplomatic immunity. Talk about a grotesque corruption of the diplomatic "pouch" immunity. The USSR did its industrial and defense espionage through diplomatic immunity, read Major Jordan's Diaries on the ratline through Alaska via the Lend-Lease program. But now instead of brief cases, it is international shipping containers.

Clear and Present Danger.

CalDre > , September 16, 2017 at 6:47 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig

Whilst I share the view there is no credible evidence of this "Russian hacking", this article does not provide any evidence against.
Oh? You want us to reverse the burden of proof, do you? Look, I don't know what country you come from, but in the US, a man is always innocent until proven guilty.
Now Murray could be lying, or he could have been fooled: if indeed it was Russia behind the hacks, they could have hired anyone / used any asset to deliver the goods to Murray.
Like Seth Rich, for example? Now that would be an elaborate plot!

You want us to reverse the burden of proof

First, I never claimed that. It was the author's claim that he was "disproving" it. Second, it's not reversing the burden of proof – in a trial both sides submit evidence. The "burden of proof" only indicates who will win if there is no evidence at all. Once the part with the burden of proof submits evidence, it is up to the other side to disprove it.

Like Seth Rich, for example? Now that would be an elaborate plot!

Has Murray, who allegedly met the leaker, ever claimed it was Seth Rich? Craig isn't dead, you know.

Lawrence Fitton > , September 16, 2017 at 7:51 pm GMT

in 1947 the national security act was passed which meant politicians can lie to the American public as long as the lie is to protect national security. everything is a national security issue now. Not that politicians weren't liars before the act. but today they have cover. Remember james clapper's lies on tv? But he also lied to congress. Congress has no balls or they would have prosecuted him. they have given up their power, of which they have much. particularly when it comes to war. congress declares it; congress funds it; congress can end it. The bums we elect just know to do one thing – hold out their hands.

JackOH > , September 16, 2017 at 11:51 pm GMT

I'm not even a close follower of the "Russian hacking" theory, or whatever the hell it is, but as an ordinary, thinking human being, I find the explanation that a disgruntled Seth Rich (?) leaked those e-mails much more parsimonious than a bunch of Ivans messing about in the DNC's skivvies.

CalDre > , September 17, 2017 at 3:25 am GMT

@JackOH I'm not even a close follower of the "Russian hacking" theory, or whatever the hell it is, but as an ordinary, thinking human being, I find the explanation that a disgruntled Seth Rich (?) leaked those e-mails much more parsimonious than a bunch of Ivans messing about in the DNC's skivvies. Absolutely, Seth Rich, a leftist Jew who supported Bernie Sanders, a leftist Jew, being disgusted by the conspiring at the DNC to screw Sanders makes perfect sense.

Except Craig Murray has never claimed (or AFAIK denied) that it was Seth. One could understand him not revealing it since Wikileaks promises anonymity, and they need to keep that promise even posthumous to be effective.

Only chance of getting at that truth is if Seth's family authorizes Wikileaks to claim or disclaim Seth as the source (if they would honor such a request is another issue), but they won't do that because they are Democrat loyalists and would rather their son's death go unsolved than implicate the Democrats in a huge scandal. Seth's family actually disgusts me.

Seamus Padraig > , September 17, 2017 at 2:45 pm GMT

@CalDre

You want us to reverse the burden of proof
First, I never claimed that. It was the author's claim that he was "disproving" it. Second, it's not reversing the burden of proof - in a trial both sides submit evidence. The "burden of proof" only indicates who will win if there is no evidence at all. Once the part with the burden of proof submits evidence, it is up to the other side to disprove it.
Like Seth Rich, for example? Now that would be an elaborate plot!
Has Murray, who allegedly met the leaker, ever claimed it was Seth Rich? Craig isn't dead, you know.

First, I never claimed that. It was the author's claim that he was "disproving" it.

In a technical sense, you are right. Whitney did once above use (or misuse, actually) the word 'disprove' to mean that the other side had failed to prove it's case. But in our legal system, simply showing that the prosecution has failed to prove it's case is quite sufficient to get your man acquitted. You don't have to have proof positive of your man's innocence, so long as the prosecution has no proof of his guilt. Why? Because the burden of proof rests with the prosecution. Whitney's semantic gaffe here doesn't change that fundamental fact.

Has Murray, who allegedly met the leaker, ever claimed it was Seth Rich? Craig isn't dead, you know.

He confirmed having met the leaker in person inside the US, though it's true he never mentions Rich by name. Wikileaks strives to protect the anonymity of their sources wherever possible. However–and rather tellingly–Assange did offer a cash reward for information leading the arrest of Rich's murderer(s). Again, Assange did not come out and say plainly that Rich was the source, but it's hard to imagine him offering a reward for just anybody out there in world with no connection to Wikileaks whatsoever.

And while Craig Murray may still be alive, as I pointed out above in comment #1, he is now facing a potentially ruinous trial in Britain. A bit like the mysterious Swedish rape allegations against Assange, one could argue that this is all just some remarkably timed coincidence; but then again, it could just as well be the system's way of signalling its displeasure with Murray for cooperating with Wikileaks.

FKA Max > , Website September 18, 2017 at 1:48 am GMT

This is a pretty amusing and insightful article, that might interest Unz Review readers:

'I Get Called a Russian Bot 50 Times a Day'

How a network of little-known Twitter "rooms" helps die-hard fans amplify Trump's message, attack CNN, and spread #MAGA to the world.

[Hide MORE]

Microchip, a Twitter user who uses several different accounts and is routinely banned from the site, told POLITICO the pro-Trump rooms help him spread racist and otherwise controversial material. His dual aims are to prod the left and entice the media into covering the latest online controversy he helped stoke.

Microchip said he started several rooms in November 2015. A handful of people in other rooms confirmed that he was an "early player." But he has been blocked from many rooms because of his "wild claims," one said, as well as anti-Semitic and inflammatory remarks.
[...]
But Microchip, who described himself as an "atheist liberal that just hates immigration" and transgender people, has open contempt for most of Trump's base.

"Conservatives are generally morons," he said. "It's like herding cats."

He's just as frank about what he's peddling to Trump supporters.

"You know how I know they're spreading lies?" Microchip asked one die-hard this week. "Because I do the same thing, it's fake news and spin."
[...]
Lotan said Microchip's claims explain the link between the boomer generation in the mainstream rooms and the younger meme producers on 4chan and reddit.

"The boomers are there, thirsty for ammunition. And 4chan is so good at generating ammunition," Lotan said. "But the boomers will not go to 4chan."

People in the mainstream pro-Trump rooms said Microchip had not been active there for many months. In turn, Microchip said he maintains pseudonymous accounts to hide his identity from "brain dead" Trump supporters.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/09/twitter-trump-train-maga-echo-chamber-215470

... ... ...

JackOH > , September 18, 2017 at 8:34 am GMT

@CalDre Absolutely, Seth Rich, a leftist Jew who supported Bernie Sanders, a leftist Jew, being disgusted by the conspiring at the DNC to screw Sanders makes perfect sense.

Except Craig Murray has never claimed (or AFAIK denied) that it was Seth. One could understand him not revealing it since Wikileaks promises anonymity, and they need to keep that promise even posthumous to be effective.

Only chance of getting at that truth is if Seth's family authorizes Wikileaks to claim or disclaim Seth as the source (if they would honor such a request is another issue), but they won't do that because they are Democrat loyalists and would rather their son's death go unsolved than implicate the Democrats in a huge scandal. Seth's family actually disgusts me. CalDre, thanks. This whole story stinks badly, and the "Russian hack" blather put out on the TV blab shows by Washington gamesmen just seems to me self-serving careerism.

We're asked to believe that Russian intelligence has gathered damaging information on Hillary Clinton, then the front-runner among Democrat candidates, by hacking the DNC's computers. Then, instead of reserving this information to blackmail a future President Hillary Clinton, they turn the information over to Julian Assange. Why in hell would I, i. e ., Russian intelligence, squander good leverage over President Hillary? Are we expected to believe Russian intelligence actually thought it could swing an election by using Assange as a sort of sub-contractor?

Seth Rich, on the other hand, is an idealistic, low-level guy who has a strong motive to hurt the organization that's betrayed him.

As I mentioned, my knowledge of the story is pretty superficial, but it really does seem to me a pile of horse dung.

jilles dykstra > , September 18, 2017 at 10:50 am GMT

Even if Russia tried to interfere in USA elections, what is it in comparison with the CIA organising the murder of Allende, or Soros trying to change Hungarian law ?

Joe Hide > , September 18, 2017 at 1:13 pm GMT

This is great news. The fraudulent stories about Russia and Trump are great news. The other deep state and shadow government false propaganda are great news. This is because the level of this false propaganda is so low, so poor, so unbelievable, that sane people wake up and withdraw any allegiance to the sources of this misinformation. It is great news, because many of the politically insane citizens are becoming sane due to the misinformation being so obviously a pack of lies, that even they have to think differently.
By the way, Great Article!

Wizard of Oz > , September 18, 2017 at 1:16 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig Forgive me if I am out of date but to say that there is a reverse burden of proof in libel cases in Britain (sic – Scotland too?) is BS according to my recollection. (I set aside the possibility that you S P are confusing a civil tort action with a criminal prosecution although your use of the wňrd "innocence" suggests that you may be).

Here's how it was for at least 150 years. Once the court decided that the words complained of were defamatory so at least some general damages were possibly claimable (maybe a farthing which meant the plaintiff would have to pay the defendant's costs) the defendant had several possible avenues of defence. One was that the words were true. If you call a man a thief you have committed an assault on his reputation and you had better have some justification for that. Are you really complaining about that? Complain all you like about so-called "stop writs" where a (typically) rich plaintiff starts proceedings which he suspects the defendant will not have the means to defend properly, and then just sits on the cade having achieved intimidation.

Then there is the defense of "fair comment on a matter of public interest" which is available to the defendant even if he can't prove the truth of his libel. Logically that can't succeed if the defendant is found to have been actuated by malice.

Finally, without pretending to cover the whole subject, the defendant can contend and provide evidence that the plaintiff had no good reputation to lose.

Having read the link I see that it does look like a move to shut him up. If the plaintiff wanted real compensation he would be suing Sky Television which didn't cut the defamatory remarks. Or has that been settled by an apology – which wouldn't be usual for Sky would it?

I am intrigued by the Ł100,000 costs approved by the court. Presumably this is some procedural innovation which was introduced well after I learned about libel actions and which could be justified .. except it surely leaves the law looking like an ass if the damages clImed are only Ł40,000!

Finally .can you tell us what the actual libel was? What did Murray say? This is a US site so the First Amendment should look after us.

Wizard of Oz > , September 18, 2017 at 1:31 pm GMT

@Grandpa Charlie

The most interesting thing in your Comment is what you claimed to have found by your "background checks" on the new Senator Obama. What can you tell us to substantiate the novel assertion that Obama was closely connected to the CIA What sources? What relationships? What facts?

[Sep 17, 2017] America could ironically be experiencing its very own Color Revolution. The Last Color Revolution on Earth! Which I suppose is poetic justice.

Notable quotes:
"... Soros you say. I wondered why it reminded me of the "Color Revolutions" of eastern Europe. I suppose they'd be banging pots and pans together except their utensils of choice are Styrofoam take-out containers. ..."
"... "Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media," Sanders said in a statement. "People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids - all while the very rich become much richer." ..."
"... Listen to this final Trump ad. Except for the illegal immigration sentence, this is vintage Sanders ..."
"... I don't think Trump really matters at the moment. What happened to the Borg (my first use of this term, still not sure) is what is important. It doesn't matter if Trump is a Sheldon Adelson lap dog, the MSM has been shamed, the Anglo-Zionists have coped a reversal, and the American people have woken from a long slumber. Stop following the bouncing ball, the world has caught up to itself is a giant leap, the future is no longer written. ..."
Sep 17, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"The Art of the Deal?" revisited on 6 September 2017 I posted this just after DJT became president. In light of today's DJT agreement with the Democrats over McConnell and Ryans' heads it seems of continued relevance. pl

**************

"First, the President-elect must make a stab at uniting the country, after a scorched-earth campaign in which he consciously tore at the nation's gender, racial and economic fault lines to build a movement to win power. He's practicing some unusual humility. "I pledge to every citizen of our lands that I will be the president for the American people," Trump said in his victory speech Tuesday. "For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, for which there were a few people, I'm reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so we can work together and unify our great country." But his challenges were on clear display Wednesday as protests broke out from Boston to Los Angeles." ------------- The crazies with their foreheads painted "not my president" don't bother me. They can march around the big cities all they want. Rain will come. Snow and wind will come and they will go home. The progressive cause has taken a mighty hit but it will re-assert itself.

There are two real question facing the US as to what sort of president will Trump be.

1. Thus far he looks to me to be a man who will play a dominan role deciding major issues himself and will make deals with whomever has the power to entable him to reach his goals.

IMO that means that the Republicans in Congress will either go along with Trump's legislative proposals or see Trump go across the aisle to seek votes.

A good example would be whatever it is that Trump decides that he wants to do about the obvious failure that is the ACA, presently sinking under the weight of far higher costs than expected and smaller enrollments. Democrats understand that the law must be modified for it to survive and to preserve the increase in health care coverage that it has brought. The hardline Republicans in both Houses of Congress want to destroy Obamacare and they have no realistic alternative other than the usual blather about private health accounts. Trump will not want to alienate his working class followers. Why would Trump not make a deal with the Democrats to get what he wants and needs?

2. There is also a danger that the neocon faction among Trump's advisers will succeed in achieving power in his cabinet. The appointment of John Bolton to State, would be ,IMO, an unmitigated disaster. pl

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/politics/donald-trump-barack-obama-transition/index.html

kao_hsien_chih -> Kooshy... , 10 November 2016 at 05:41 PM

I have a bit of soft spot for Gingrich: I've found him, at least in his Congressional career, to be very unprincipled in a good way, meaning that he is willing to negotiate and cut deals when he feels is necessary, rather than hold on to his "principles" like a madman to the end, and ironically, is willing to pay a high personal price for the sake of compromise. That, plus, his usually good read of the political terrain can make him a very good advisor, although his total lack of tact and uncanny ability to stuff both feet into his mouth make for a bad front man.

I realized this during the Clinton impeachment fight: he basically lost speakership because he tried to go behind other Republican leaders' backs to work out a compromise for censure with the Democratic leaders, rather than go ahead with the impeachment vote. Other Republican leaders did not take kindly to it and ousted him, but, however much that act of spite--the impeachment vote supported only by Republicans--might have satisfied their self-righteousness, it did the Republicans no good, while a bipartisan censure might have carried real political bite in the long term.

johnf -> kooshy... , 10 November 2016 at 05:41 PM
With Move On on the move, it seems that America could ironically be experiencing its very own Color Revolution. The Last Color Revolution on Earth! Which I suppose is poetic justice.

As for the progressives, Bernie already seems to be putting the message out. And after their major defeat, I doubt if the neo-con and neo-liberal Clintonistas will have much sway within the party. Bernie's chosen successor and Elizabeth Warren would both be serious challengers.

Kooshy -> johnf... , 10 November 2016 at 05:02 PM
Being still on some of the so called democratic organization mailing list, last night I got an email for move on asking supporters to attend anti-Trump demonstrations all over the country.

They even had a zip code link to where you could find. Demonstration/ gathering near you some in private residences. Their agenda and Is to pressure Trump early on, from what I learned on how Trump beat them on the poles, I don't think or hope they can succeed.

kooshy -> Kooshy... , 10 November 2016 at 10:08 PM
Here is the link on email I got from the pathetic Move On,

http://act.moveon.org/event/Solidarity_gatherings/?source=couragecampaign

Kooshy -> johnf... , 10 November 2016 at 05:06 PM
Start getting worried if you see Victoria N cookies in Time Square
ex-PFC Chuck -> kooshy... , 10 November 2016 at 12:23 PM
Or Soros, allegedly its primary beneficiary, could rename it "Won't Move On."
Martin Oline -> ex-PFC Chuck... , 10 November 2016 at 01:29 PM
PFC Chuck:

Soros you say. I wondered why it reminded me of the "Color Revolutions" of eastern Europe. I suppose they'd be banging pots and pans together except their utensils of choice are Styrofoam take-out containers.

There are probably many powerful people who believe they won't be able to manipulate our president-elect. I suspect that Tel Aviv would much rather deal with Mike Pense than the Donald. I'm not a religious person but I think I'll start praying for Trump's health.

I remember Nixon supposedly saying he selected Agnew as his vice president because no one would try to assassinate him because they'd get Spiro.

Seeing the winner of his first presidential campaign getting shot probably made him much more aware of that possibility than the average citizen. I don't know if he chose Spiro for that reason but it was interesting that Agnew was removed just before his administration came to an end.

oofda -> kooshy... , 10 November 2016 at 05:03 PM
No- they were spontaneous after the election- the kid of a friend of mine at one of the California universities reported that.

The Colonel is spot on about Bolton -- appointing him to State would be an unmitigated disaster. Check his history- in addition to being an incompetent manager -- he is one of those who puts the interests of another country ahead of the USA...

Pitch Pole , 10 November 2016 at 10:41 AM
There's a natural tendency to over extrapolate on the state of the progressive cause or liberalism in America from the election result. The election was lost by the democratic establishment which, while it has its liberal or progressive elements, is firmly a corporatist, statist organization. The presidency and the senate, though probably not the house, were lost by an ingrown and complacent party bent on crowning their seriously flawed queen. We will never know for sure - but if they had put up Biden instead of shoving him aside, we'd still be talking about the fate of the republican party. Bernie would have been a wild card, but the primaries showed him getting lots of votes in the places that put Trump into the whitehouse.

It will be interesting to see how positive everyone remains once the Republicans own the show for a few years. Will everyone on this board still be so glowing with what appears to be their apparent full embrace of Israel's priorities? If we pull the Iran deal and start the air campaign? When those manufacturing and coal mining jobs don't come flooding back?

It was a devil's choice and not the outcome I would have wanted, however half heartedly, so I'm keeping an open mind. Trump has no fixed core beliefs and revels in pissing up anyone's leg whenever he feels like it, and that might be a feature not a bug. At this juncture, I'm more concerned with the people to whom he's going to delegate so much. Those guys we've seen in action for long enough to be very worried....

- Pitch

johnf , 10 November 2016 at 12:46 PM
On Trump seeking Democrat support in Congress:

"Sanders: I'm 'Prepared To Work With' Trump On Economic Issues

"Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media," Sanders said in a statement. "People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids - all while the very rich become much richer."

"To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him," Sanders added."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sanders-prepared-work-with-trump

kao_hsien_chih -> johnf... , 10 November 2016 at 05:45 PM
God, I honestly hope that kind of cooperation works out--Democratic deplorables working together with the Republican deplorables, for the betterment of the country. The stage is set for that kind of enterprise, now that both parties' elites lie in wreck humbled.
Mishkilji -> johnf... , 10 November 2016 at 05:47 PM
Listen to this final Trump ad. Except for the illegal immigration sentence, this is vintage Sanders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8

Earthrise , 10 November 2016 at 06:20 PM
I don't think Trump really matters at the moment. What happened to the Borg (my first use of this term, still not sure) is what is important. It doesn't matter if Trump is a Sheldon Adelson lap dog, the MSM has been shamed, the Anglo-Zionists have coped a reversal, and the American people have woken from a long slumber. Stop following the bouncing ball, the world has caught up to itself is a giant leap, the future is no longer written.

This is what hope feels like.

[Sep 17, 2017] RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 20170906

Sep 17, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

AMERICA-HYSTERICA.

" A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack " finally got the VIPS analysis into the mainstream. (Briefly: Guccifer 2.0 documents were locally downloaded and doctored to give a Russian flavour).

Has this killed the story? Maybe: the MSM has been shrieking about other things since. ( And the interminable US investigations inch closer to the truth. ) Normal hysteria returns: " Putin's Hand Can Clearly Be Seen In the Chaos of a Destabilized West ".

Amazing how powerful these people think he is, isn't it? Nothing is beyond his reach (except Kiev and Vilnius.)

[Sep 17, 2017] The infighting among infosec companies is one interesting aspect of all this. Avans brothers might also be involved in all this

Add to it a desire to make money on all those 'security incidents"...
Notable quotes:
"... The infighting among infosec companies is one interesting aspect of all this. CrowdStrike has motivation to inflate their expertise, and other infosec companies have motivation to deflate CrowdStrike's expertise. ..."
"... I tend to fall on the side of those who say attribution is next to impossible absent "direct" intelligence, i.e., offline intelligence that reveals actual command and control of hostile operations. Something like what Mandiant did with the Chinese hackers (assuming they were right.) ..."
"... The fact that they have not said that pretty clearly shows they don't have the data (or for some reason have been prohibited from saying so, which in view of the hysteria seems unlikely.) ..."
"... I don't think we can say the FBI has more data than CrowdStrike, especially since the drive images may well be compromised by CrowdStrike (or irrelevant, since the indicators of compromise were laughable as far as proving Russian involvement, which is the whole point). ..."
"... Joel McCray has a funny story he tells at infosec conferences about that. He was doing a vulnerability audit and found an unpatched server in the network DMZ. He tries to logon using SSH and it takes him five minutes. He finds FIVE separate rootkits on the machine. In his words, "hackers were elbowing each other for room on the box." When he reports this to the client, the client asks, "Why didn't our IDS detect this?" The box WAS the IDS... LOL ..."
"... The Russia connection had already been setup and was well-underway. The Wikileaks emails of John Podesta contains an email from Podesta that sets up the Trump Russia connection 21 Dec 2015 - Podesta email from [email protected], Subject Re: HRC, Obama amd ISIS. In this email, Podesta writes "Best approach is to slaughter Donald for the bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria." ..."
"... The Awans, Imran Awan and family, have been reported on extensively, and were in the business of collecting large amounts of money and sending the money to Pakistan. To me, the simple explanation is that the second "hackers" were the Awans, singularly or plurally, and the Awans were the ones who asked Wikileaks for money. ..."
"... The Awans had full access to Debbie Wasserman Schultz's email and many House Democrats, including members of the House Intel Committee, and would have had no trouble accessing the DNC servers by having been "contracted" to do work on the DNC servers and/or by using Wasserman Schultz's logon id or one of the other House Democrats logon ids. ..."
Sep 17, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Richardstevenhack -> The Twisted Genius ... , 05 September 2017 at 08:24 PM

The infighting among infosec companies is one interesting aspect of all this. CrowdStrike has motivation to inflate their expertise, and other infosec companies have motivation to deflate CrowdStrike's expertise.

I tend to fall on the side of those who say attribution is next to impossible absent "direct" intelligence, i.e., offline intelligence that reveals actual command and control of hostile operations. Something like what Mandiant did with the Chinese hackers (assuming they were right.)

The NSA may very well have more detailed info on the DNC hack than has been released. But the fact remains that they have NOT even said that they have that. One of their "assessments" was only "moderate confidence" - without any particulars or specificity. If you HAVE the data, it's not "moderate". If you don't have it, "moderate" means "low."

Also, the NSA can explicitly say, "yes, we saw Russia hack the DNC" just as they did with the Sony hack by North Korea (if you believe that), without revealing how. The assumption would be that they saw it by monitoring the DNC, as I expect they were doing just like they monitor everything else (or could backtrack the data that was recorded by their overall surveillance), which would surprise no one and reveal nothing.

The fact that they have not said that pretty clearly shows they don't have the data (or for some reason have been prohibited from saying so, which in view of the hysteria seems unlikely.)

I don't think we can say the FBI has more data than CrowdStrike, especially since the drive images may well be compromised by CrowdStrike (or irrelevant, since the indicators of compromise were laughable as far as proving Russian involvement, which is the whole point).

And we don't know how or from where the FBI got its indications that the DNC was being hacked, although the NSA would be a likely source. But then one has to ask again why the FBI hasn't explicitly said so.

Also, those earlier hacks in 2015 weren't necessarily by the same hackers. It could well be that the FBI got its info from intel from the hacker underground or data from the DNC surfacing on hacker boards. A lot of organizations that are breached only learn that from third parties such as the FBI based on intel from the hacker underground. Or someone calls in a pen-test outfit and the pen-test turns into incident response when someone notices the system is already breached.

Joel McCray has a funny story he tells at infosec conferences about that. He was doing a vulnerability audit and found an unpatched server in the network DMZ. He tries to logon using SSH and it takes him five minutes. He finds FIVE separate rootkits on the machine. In his words, "hackers were elbowing each other for room on the box." When he reports this to the client, the client asks, "Why didn't our IDS detect this?" The box WAS the IDS... LOL

j2 , 06 September 2017 at 01:13 PM
You all being way above my pay grade, this will most likely be a one-time comment. I've a question, festering for weeks, that no one's been able to answer. Perhaps you all might help.

There were two "hacks" into the DNC servers. John Podesta's email was also "hacked." In an interview on 8 Feb 2017, John Podesta states "I think we knew...that there were two different incursions into the DNC but the GRU, the Fancy Bear side of this, was active in going after personal emails." https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/08/john-podesta-talks-email-hack-fake-news-and-russia/

The Russia connection had already been setup and was well-underway. The Wikileaks emails of John Podesta contains an email from Podesta that sets up the Trump Russia connection 21 Dec 2015 - Podesta email from [email protected], Subject Re: HRC, Obama amd ISIS. In this email, Podesta writes "Best approach is to slaughter Donald for the bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria."

Moving back to the DNC "hack," Seymour Hesch has drawn a line to Seth Rich. "Mr. Hersh told Butowsky that Seth Rich "offered a sample [to WikiLeaks][,] an extensive sample, you know I'm sure dozens, of emails, and said I want money.""
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/seymour-hersh-owes-the-world-an-explanation-for-his-seth-rich-comments-f9b2756123d3
Audio of Hersch's statements re: Seth Rich http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giuZdBAXVh0

However, "Hersh concurs with the D.C. police who say the murder was a botched robbery." https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/08/a-new-twist-in-seth-rich-murder-case/

The Awans, Imran Awan and family, have been reported on extensively, and were in the business of collecting large amounts of money and sending the money to Pakistan. To me, the simple explanation is that the second "hackers" were the Awans, singularly or plurally, and the Awans were the ones who asked Wikileaks for money. Both "hacks" were done locally.

The Awans had full access to Debbie Wasserman Schultz's email and many House Democrats, including members of the House Intel Committee, and would have had no trouble accessing the DNC servers by having been "contracted" to do work on the DNC servers and/or by using Wasserman Schultz's logon id or one of the other House Democrats logon ids.

From Diana West "According to the New York Times picture above, dated December 13, 2016, a reportedly Russian-"breached" DNC server was just sitting in the DNC national headquarters in Washington, DC" http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3596/Where-Is-the-DNC-Server.aspx
(Now at the Daily Caller http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/25/wheres-the-dnc-server/)

Since both "hacks" were done locally, the NSA would not have any record(s) of either "hack." As for the identity of Guccifer 2.0, that could be anyone. Everyone "hacks" everyone.

Does this fit in with the current thinking? Thank you.

turcopolier , 07 September 2017 at 08:03 PM
richardstevenhack

Hersh has personally told me that all that is BS. pl

Richardstevenhack -> turcopolier ... , 08 September 2017 at 04:27 PM
So how does he explain his complete and explicit statements in the tape? You know Hersh is an impatient guy who suffers fools badly. He never wants to do interviews and brushes aside any criticism. If he can't explain why he said what he said, then what's the answer? HE was just BS'ing? Is that his explanation?
turcopolier , 08 September 2017 at 04:27 PM
richardstevenhack

Ask him. pl

[Sep 05, 2017] Should Tillerson Resign by Daniel Larison

for some reasons Larison support neocon blabbering of Daniel W. Drezner in WaPo Why Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should resign - The Washington Post ez
If Critics such as neocon Max Boot are calling for him to resign, I want him to stay.
The "wrecking of the State Department" that By Daniel Larison is concerned, is necessary as it is too infested with neocons leftover from Hillary days, including cadre of female warmongers.
Also color revolutions zeal needs to be tamed.
Taking into account that Trump effectivly changed sided starting from infamous Tomahawk attack, the nes round of sanctions for Russia and sabersrattling with Iran and North Korea, it is difficult to forsee how the Secratary of State can be effective with such a boss. Being a bully in the schoolyard was the policy the the USA sucessfully tried for all presidencies since Reagan, so in a sense Trump is proud hier f this noble tradition.
Notable quotes:
"... Tillerson was a CEO of for the longest time head of the US largest corporation by market cap. His problem or problems no doubt reflect his tenure in the corporate world. A world where you have to get things done some work out some don't. ..."
"... Point is he is a non fit in the Swamp where dysfunction is implanted. Can readers recall how an experience career politician like John Boy ran all over the world and in the end was manipulated by the Russians to their advantage. Hillary logged millions of miles obviously to the benefit of the Clinton foundation. So until the prior ruling class gets back in office a new diplomat will have to wait. ..."
"... Even setting aside the critical matter of civilian control of the government and military in a democratic society, these days our military isn't exactly a by-word for competency, success, or even sound judgment. ..."
Aug 31, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
calls for Rex Tillerson's resignation:

In less than seven months in the job, Tillerson has proven to be a feckless manager of his organization and a poor handler of the president of the United States. To be fair, even the savviest secretary of state would have his or her hands full with a president like Trump. The sharp contrast between Tillerson's fumblings and the more nimble footwork of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis shows that Tillerson is the opposite of a good secretary of state. Most of Trump's private-sector cabinet officials have been dreadful, but Tillerson is the worst of the lot.

Tillerson has been presiding over the wrecking of the State Department ever since he was confirmed, and he has very little else to show for his tenure. It's safe to say that the demoralization and hollowing out of the department will just keep getting worse the longer he is in charge. The trouble is that replacing Tillerson probably won't change any of that, because the gutting of the State Department has been and continues to be an administration priority. The person Trump chooses to replace Tillerson is likely to have the same disdain for diplomacy and diplomats that he has.

So while I am inclined to agree with the call for Tillerson's resignation, I can't agree with Drezner when he says "I am no longer worried about who Trump would pick to replace him." This is exactly what we should be worrying about.

Tillerson got the job at State in part because all of the other people Trump was considering were so fanatical, ethically compromised, or otherwise awful that he seemed the best of a bad lot at the time. That may have been true, but that process produced one of the least effective Secretaries of State in modern times.

Now imagine Trump going through a similar process a second time. Is he likely to choose someone more capable than Tillerson? Considering the state of Trump's administration after just seven months, would anyone who fits that description be willing to take the job? If there is someone willing, I am concerned Trump would end up choosing another former general on account of his fascination with military officers, and that would be at least one too many in this Cabinet.

Tillerson reportedly never wanted the job, so it shouldn't take much to persuade him to leave. That said, the damage already done to the State Department isn't going to be repaired anytime soon, and as long as Trump is president we should assume it will continue regardless. I have been very critical of how Tillerson has been running his department, but as one his critics I think we should acknowledge that his successor could still be even worse.

Dan Green , August 31, 2017 at 10:07 am

Tillerson was a CEO of for the longest time head of the US largest corporation by market cap. His problem or problems no doubt reflect his tenure in the corporate world. A world where you have to get things done some work out some don't.

Point is he is a non fit in the Swamp where dysfunction is implanted. Can readers recall how an experience career politician like John Boy ran all over the world and in the end was manipulated by the Russians to their advantage. Hillary logged millions of miles obviously to the benefit of the Clinton foundation. So until the prior ruling class gets back in office a new diplomat will have to wait.

icarusr , August 31, 2017 at 10:15 am
Looks like what's good for Exxon is not necessarily good for the United States.
Seven Months In 2017 , August 31, 2017 at 10:47 am
"I am concerned Trump would end up choosing another former general on account of his fascination with military officers, and that would be at least one too many in this Cabinet."

And you should be concerned. Even setting aside the critical matter of civilian control of the government and military in a democratic society, these days our military isn't exactly a by-word for competency, success, or even sound judgment.

It has failed to win on multiple battlegrounds. Judging by the recent Three Stooges performance of the Pacific Fleet, there are basic competency issues at the highest levels of command. And now we learn that both Gens. Mattis and McMaster strongly urged Trump to double down in Afghanistan, one of the worst examples of judgment and decision-making in recent memory.

So far as I know, Tillerson had nothing to do with that idiocy, so I'd leave him where he is and pray that Trump will eventually be disabused of the instinct to defer to (or rather cringe before) his generals.

collin , August 31, 2017 at 11:20 am
TBH, I can't figure out exactly why Tillerson has been so bad but I assume his lack of experience of the State Department makes him a very poor choice for President Trump. Judging by the Trump's administration G&G (General & Goldman) cabinet is very experience expertise with Job-like patience is needed to work with President Trump. Basically, it fits Drezner's toddler comments that Mattis works well with Trump because Mattis knows a lot more than the President and is willing to allow Trump to throw two hour tantrums for his policy. It is to the point that we almost need Mattis to be Secretary of State as at least we know that he can work with the President. (Dear God is wrong to state that an ex-General be our chief Diplomat.)

However, one area where Tillerson does work well is he truly dislikes taking media oxygen away from Trump so he may last awhile.

JEinCA , August 31, 2017 at 11:28 am
Why doesn't everyone resign and we'll make little "Billy" Kristol of the Weekly Standard the official Emperor of United States? Tillerson is the last voice of reason (and bulwark against the psychotic war mongering neocons) lefy in Trump's Administration.
Viriato , August 31, 2017 at 12:46 pm
@collin: We've had at least two generals serve as Secretary of State before: George Marshall and Colin Powell. And those are just two examples that I can name off the top of my head. I would not be surprised to find out that there have been other generals who served as our nation's Chief Diplomat.
Viriato , August 31, 2017 at 12:54 pm
Personally, I think Tillerson has been doing reasonably well at State. He seems to be a very articulate, thoughtful person. Certainly I much prefer Sec. Tillerson's ineffectiveness to Sec. Clinton's deadly effectiveness in Libya.

As to the gutting of the State Department. Tillerson recently stated that the hiring freeze was temporary and indeed announced a major hiring initiative: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s8LynW4TmTU

MB , August 31, 2017 at 12:56 pm
There's probably an easily identifiable formula out there for who Trump might chose as a Tillerson replacement, based on who donated to his campaign, who has more money than Trump himself, and/or who has suspicious ties to Russian interests. Rohrabacher? Royce?
Cynthia McLean , August 31, 2017 at 1:31 pm
Tillerson should probably resign to retain his integrity and save his soul.
Swami , August 31, 2017 at 4:36 pm
Rumor is that Hillary Clinton is currently between gigs.

[Sep 05, 2017] Medvedev said that the Trump signed sanctions bill is an attempt to squeeze Russia out of foreign markets by Michael Averko

Notable quotes:
"... Actually, the tough talk and sanctions against Russia haven't worked. Trump's effort at improving relations with Russia has been greatly stonewalled. This surely isn't an act on his part. In line with the predominating Capitol Hill and US mass media groupthink, it'd be politically convenient for him to fully acquiesce to their line – something he hasn't done. Some related matters caught my eye. ..."
"... well-documented meddling in the 2016 presidential election ..."
Aug 07, 2017 | www.eurasiareview.com

The disagreement between US President Donald Trump and his main critics on Russia lingers on. In a July 31 MSNBC segment, former US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul said that Trump was tame in his reply to the Russian government measures taken against US diplomatic interests in Russia. For McFaul, what earlier happened to Russian diplomatic staff in the US is apparently okay, unlike the Russian retaliation, which came months AFTER the US based Russian diplomatic personnel were penalized. McFaul misleadingly underscored that Trump's playing nice with Putin hasn't worked.

Actually, the tough talk and sanctions against Russia haven't worked. Trump's effort at improving relations with Russia has been greatly stonewalled. This surely isn't an act on his part. In line with the predominating Capitol Hill and US mass media groupthink, it'd be politically convenient for him to fully acquiesce to their line – something he hasn't done. Some related matters caught my eye.

... ... ...

Trump and Tillerson, have expressed a reluctance in going along with the increased sanctions against Russia, which is overwhelmingly supported by the mostly groupthink minded (on Russia) US Congress and Senate. Trump and Tillerson can make a strong case on why the sanctions are counterproductive. Specifically:

  • the EU's (notably Germany's) negative reply to the advocated further sanctions
  • Russia's retaliatory response
  • limits in persuading Russia to go against its reasonable interests.

When it comes to US mass media and body politic, the last particular is very much in the too hot to handle category. The present lack of a strongly detailed Trump rebuttal to the Congress and Senate is what led Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to say that the US president has been too capitulationist. Medvedev also said that the Trump signed sanctions bill is an attempt to squeeze Russia out of foreign markets. (The bill seeks to penalize Western companies doing business in Russia.)

Within US mass media, there've been some second guessing of the Capitol Hill groupthink sanctions against Russia. David Ignatius' August 3 Washington Post column expresses that view. Notwithstanding, Ignatius clings to the faulty belief in "Russia's well-documented meddling in the 2016 presidential election ." I'd love to see him directly reply to the counterclaim on that opinion, which he presents as a clearly established fact.

The Tucker Carlson hosted Fox News show continues to provide some reasonably dissenting views. One such recent segment featured retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, who believes that Capitol Hill has been overly bellicose towards Russia. Mind you that Macgregor is no Russophile. He expressed doubt on whether the US and Russia can ever become allies and characterized the latter as a periodic 300 year menace to the West.

On this point, I expressed my disagreement to Macgregor (who I've had some prior limited discourse with) by noting that:

  • The West hasn't been so monolithic, in conjunction with Russia not being such a perennial threat.
  • The US fought Germany in two world wars – not Russia.
  • Russian behavior during America's Revolution, War of 1812 and Civil War was more favorable to America than the British stance.
  • Russia joined Britain, Prussia and Austria in opposing Napoleon.
  • Russia had openly inquired about NATO membership upon the Soviet collapse.
  • Russia was the first nation to console the US on 9/11, followed by Russian cooperation with the US in Afghanistan.

I haven't gotten a reply back from him. In the aforementioned Fox News segment, Macgregor noted how some special interest groups get disproportionate influence in the US. Concerning that matter, I brought to his attention the Democratic National Committee-Kiev regime collusion and a July 31 pro-Polish/anti-Russian National Interest article , which is cherry picked history – contradicting the realist image of the venue where it appeared.

I'm of the belief that patriotically minded Russians should be able to acknowledge bad moments on Russia's part relative to Poland and some others. Conversely, the same should hold true when it comes to the wrongs of others. While glorying Poland and bashing Russia, The National Interest article in question omits the following:

  • 1919 – Under Josef Pilsudski, Poland seeks to take former Russian Empire territory, largely inhabited by non-Poles with ties to Russia. The Pilsudski led Poles reject a Russian White offer to combat the Reds, when the Bolsheviks were in a losing situation. The Russian Whites were willing to recognize a Polish state within Polish ethnic boundaries.
  • 1920 -Thousands of Soviet POWs die under miserable conditions while in Polish captivity.
  • 1934 – Polish-Nazi non-aggression pact, four years prior to the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact.
  • 1938 – Polish, Nazi and Hungarian taking of CzechoSlovak territory, with the Soviet call for a joint Soviet-West (particularly French) counter support for CzechoSlovakia rebuffed.

According to German General Heinz Guderian and some other sources, the Soviets needed a break on their WW II westward offensive. After the Stalingrad battle, the Nazis were still a threat, as evidenced by the many casualties they were still able to inflict on the Red Army. The Polish Home Army didn't initially seek to coordinate their uprising with the Red Army. That only came after the Nazi counterattack in Warsaw.

Under Stalin, the USSR had some especially brutal aspects. Nevertheless, equating the USSR with Nazi Germany is false. The former utilized a good number of Jews and Poles – something the latter wouldn't tolerate. Between the two world wars, Poland left something to be desired on the subject of respecting non-Polish minorities.

One can also go back to the early 1600s Polish subjugation of Russia, as well as the close to 100,000 Poles who joined Napoleon in his attack on Russia.

Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic. This article was initially placed at the Strategic Culture Foundation's website on August 6.

[Sep 04, 2017] Make no mistake, the latest US thuggery is a sign of weakness, not strength

Notable quotes:
"... " Why would they give us only 2 days? Do they really think that we cannot clear the premises from anything sensitive in 60 minutes if needed? Or are they actually trying to inconvenience our personnel? If so, do they really think that we are going to break out in hysterics? Do the Americans really think that they will find something? What? Papers proving that Trump is our agent? Maybe a hidden nuclear device? Or the computers we used to hack in every server in the USA? " ..."
"... The latest US thuggery against Russian diplomats is as stupid as it is senseless. I think that US diplomats of the era of James Baker must be absolutely mortified to see the kind of idiocy their successors are now engaging in. ..."
"... Incorrect, the author left out a key point. As the Obama team left last December, it started a fire by expelling the Russians from a vacation compound for diplomats in New York, just to be dicks. The Russians expected Trump to correct this insult, and when he spinelessly refused, they retaliated. ..."
"... Now, whoever runs US foreign policy (no one is really sure), refused to let it end. They closed more Russian compounds, just to be dicks. Meanwhile, these dicks want Russia to help with the North Korea mess. ..."
"... Whichever European power used to be the dominant one at the time, in order to be truly certified as the top dog – they sought to prove superiority over Russia. That baton was picked up by US after WW2. No European power has ever succeeded in proving superiority over Russia – at least not military one. ..."
"... Another sign of the spasmodic, directionless, almost suicidal weakness of the United States is its recent abuse of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. The United States is going around the world identifying countries and individuals who will no longer be allowed to use the dollar and the dollar-designated US-controlled international payment system for financial transactions as an instrument of its foreign policy. ..."
Sep 04, 2017 | www.unz.com

For a while already the Russian diplomats have been openly saying that their American counterparts are недоговороспособны or "non-agreement capable". This all began under Obama, when Kerry flew to meet with Lavrov and declared 'A', then flew back to Washington, DC and declared 'B'. Then there were the cases in Syria when the US agreed to a deal only to break that very same deal in less than 24 hours. That's when the Russians openly began to say that their US colleagues are rank amateurs who lack even the basic professionalism to get anything done . Now the US has slipped even lower: the Russians speak of US "hellish buffoonery" and "stupid thuggery".

Wow!

For the normally hyper-diplomatic Russians, this kind of language is absolutely unheard of, this has never ever happened before. You could say that the Russians are naive, but they believe that their diplomats should always be, well, diplomatic, and that public expressions of disgust is just not something a diplomat does. Even more telling is rather than call the Americans "evil" or "devious", they openly express their total contempt for them, calling them stupid, incompetent, uneducated and their actions unlawful (read Maria Zakharova's statement to that effect on Facebook ).

So let me explain what is happening here how the Russians interpreted the latest US thuggery concerning the Russian Consulate in San Francisco and the Russian diplomatic annexes in Washington and New York.

First, the Russians fully expected the Americans to retaliate after the Russian expulsion of US diplomatic personnel in Russia. That, by itself, is not the problem. The Russians understand that Trump is a cornered and weak President, that he has to show how "tough" he is. Sure, they smile, but they think that this is 'fair game'. The Russians also know that, as a country, the USA cannot accept the biggest reduction in US diplomatic personnel in history without reacting. Again, they don't necessarily like it, but they think that this is 'fair game'.

You know what really triggered the Russians off? The fact that the Americans gave them only 2 days to vacate the premises they would seize and that they organized some kind of bizarre search operation. Let me immediately explain that this is not a case of ruffled feathers by the Russians, not at all. But here is how they would think about it:

" Why would they give us only 2 days? Do they really think that we cannot clear the premises from anything sensitive in 60 minutes if needed? Or are they actually trying to inconvenience our personnel? If so, do they really think that we are going to break out in hysterics? Do the Americans really think that they will find something? What? Papers proving that Trump is our agent? Maybe a hidden nuclear device? Or the computers we used to hack in every server in the USA? "

To a Russian, these questions can only have one answer: of course not. So what is going on here? And then there is the only possible explanation left:

" We beat them is Syria, we are beat them in the Ukraine, they lost Afghanistan, they lost Iraq, their Navy apparently does not know how to use a radar, their soldiers are terrified to fight somebody capable of resistance, they failed to impress not only China, but even the North Koreans who are openly laughing at them. Hezbollah laughs at them. Even Venezuela refuses to be scared! The Iranians openly threaten them with consequences if they back out of the deal they signed. Even Pakistan is openly expressing its disgust with the USA. Ditto for Turkey. Heck – the Americans are losing on all fronts and the very best they can do is try to feel good about illegally harassing our diplomatic personnel! Pathetic, lame, losers! "

And they are 100% correct.

The latest US thuggery against Russian diplomats is as stupid as it is senseless. I think that US diplomats of the era of James Baker must be absolutely mortified to see the kind of idiocy their successors are now engaging in.

This is also the end of Rex Tillerson. The poor man now has only two options left: resign (that would be the honorable thing to do) or stay and become another castrated eunuch unable to even deal with the likes of Nikki Haley, nevermind the North Koreans!

A "spokesperson" for the White House declared that Trump personally ordered the latest thuggery. Okay, that means one of two thing: either Trump is so weak that he cannot even fire a lying spokesperson or that he has now fallen so low as to order the "thug life" behavior of the State Department. Either way, it is a disgrace.

This is also really scary. The combination of, on one hand, spineless subservience to the Neocons with intellectual mediocrity, a gross lack of professionalism and the kind of petty thuggery normally associated with street gangs and, on the other hand, nuclear weapons is very scary. In the mean time, the other nuclear armed crazies have just declared that they have a thermonuclear device which they apparently tested yesterday just to show their contempt for Trump and his general minions. I don't think that they have a hydrogen bomb. I don't think that they have a real ICBM. I don't even think that they have real (usable) nuclear warheads. But what if I am wrong? What if they did get a lot of what they claim to have today – such as rocket engines – from the Ukies?

In one corner, the Outstanding Leader , Brilliant Comrade, Young Master and Great Successor, Kim Jong-un and on the other, The Donald, Grab them by the xxxxx and Make 'Merica Great, the Grand Covfefe Donald Trump. Both armed with nukes.

Scary, scary shit. Really scary.

But even more scary and depressing is that the stronger man of the two is beyond any doubt Kim Jong-un.

All I see in the White House are vacancy signs.

Cloak And Dagger , September 3, 2017 at 11:49 pm GMT

We beat them is Syria, we are beat them in the Ukraine, they lost Afghanistan, they lost Iraq, their Navy apparently does not know how to use a radar, their soldiers are terrified to fight somebody capable of resistance, they failed to impress not only China, but even the North Koreans who are openly laughing at them. Hezbollah laughs at them. Even Venezuela refuses to be scared! The Iranians openly threaten them with consequences if they back out of the deal they signed. Even Pakistan is openly expressing its disgust with the USA. Ditto for Turkey. Heck – the Americans are losing on all fronts

Such is the sad state of affairs in this country and the beginning of the end of the American Empire (and none too soon). We squandered the potential for world peace when the Soviets broke up. Instead of taking advantage of the peace windfall, the neocons redoubled their efforts to dominate by projecting military power. We have been paying the price since.

Meanwhile, the Chinese have been expanding their power projection peacefully by leveraging their financial might. The gold-backed RMB is about to replace the petro-dollar. They have been quietly building alliances across the globe using trade as the incentive, while we have been killing and maiming people everywhere – and all in vain, apparently to win "hearts and minds"!

Something that amused me a few days ago was a picture of a Chinese businessman in Pakistan, escorted by two pro-government, two anti-government, and two rebel businessmen. Apparently, this assured the safety of the Chinese businessman, even if his companions hated each other. For our part, we had refused to do business there because we had not found a means to unify these warring factions – and we are supposed to be the capitalists!

A day of reckoning is fast approaching, my fellow countrymen, and the price we will have to pay is daunting. It may be a while before we can recover from the coming debacle, however, I take solace in the following:

  1. The accompanying pain will rewaken all our somnambulant citizenry to who and what has brought us to this low point in our history, and they may unite to rout the Jewish banking power that has resulted in our predicament.
  2. We will no longer be able to borrow the trillions that fund our illegal wars across the globe, and civilians can sleep peacefully once more.
  3. Without our support, and the increasing unification of the countries in the ME (note Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, ) Israel and Saudi Arabia will stand alone, surrounded by angry nations that have scores to settle. I doubt that those two mischief makers will survive another 5 years.

So, an imposed world peace is possible – even probable. With increasing Russian influence in the Middle East and the sale of advanced weaponry to the emerging coalition of Muslim countries, western invasions of these countries will become all but impossible. Already, the Syrian airspace has been shut out from Israel and the US by Russia's command of the skies, by S-300 and S-400 defenses and the Russian air force. It is only a matter of time before Lebanon, too, enjoys the same protection, as will Iraq. Iran is already unassailable. Turkey has started to distance itself from NATO, and is still smarting from the EU rejection.

Interesting, but painful times lay ahead.

Carlton Meyer , Website September 4, 2017 at 4:21 am GMT

"First, the Russians fully expected the Americans to retaliate after the Russian expulsion of US diplomatic personnel in Russia."

Incorrect, the author left out a key point. As the Obama team left last December, it started a fire by expelling the Russians from a vacation compound for diplomats in New York, just to be dicks. The Russians expected Trump to correct this insult, and when he spinelessly refused, they retaliated.

Now, whoever runs US foreign policy (no one is really sure), refused to let it end. They closed more Russian compounds, just to be dicks. Meanwhile, these dicks want Russia to help with the North Korea mess.

It seems whenever the USA threatens to destroy North Korea, their leader threatens to harm the USA if that happens. Clearly, the North Korean leader is mad, at least those dicks think so.

Cyrano , September 4, 2017 at 7:17 am GMT

Whichever European power used to be the dominant one at the time, in order to be truly certified as the top dog – they sought to prove superiority over Russia. That baton was picked up by US after WW2. No European power has ever succeeded in proving superiority over Russia – at least not military one.

I don't think that the exceptional ones believe that they can do it either, that train left the station in the 90's, together with Boris. So now the exceptional ones are throwing temper tantrums, because the bear doesn't want to lie down and play dead. They had their chance for a while and they didn't really deserve it either.

The bear that they used to know and love in the 90's was a circus animal and that circus has left town. The world is changing and if you think that the best protection against hitting the iceberg is to blow the horn, for everybody to get out of your way because you are too big to sink, you are heading straight to the bottom, only maybe with accompanying loud noise from the horn, for which the world really doesn't care too much about.

Osten , September 4, 2017 at 8:58 am GMT

American media show paranoia about Russia.
Trump Russia connections and election influence are nonsense.
Public sees the nonsense so media dropped the publicity.
Democratic Party will put on charm offensive to say they reject Antifa so to defuse Republican Trump supporters.
If Democrats succeed they will regain many Congress seats in 2018 election.
Republicans need to put pressure on FBI to complete Clinton investigation.
That completion would clear air for better relations, restore public trust in government and slap media to be more honest.
Republicans should be glad Russia is in Syria. Russia presence reduces American defense expense.
Israel wants American presence.
Saudi Arabia wants presence.
People in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon and Iraq want peace after years of American wars that cause death and refugee humanitarian crisis.
American journalists except for Seymour Hersh are not allowed to tell Americans facts about Middle East countries.

Realist , September 4, 2017 at 9:18 am GMT

@Carlton Meyer

"Meanwhile, these dicks want Russia to help with the North Korea mess."

Russia should tell the US to go shit in their hat and pull it down over your ears.

TheJester , September 4, 2017 at 10:21 am GMT

The End of Bretton-Woods I and II

Another sign of the spasmodic, directionless, almost suicidal weakness of the United States is its recent abuse of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. The United States is going around the world identifying countries and individuals who will no longer be allowed to use the dollar and the dollar-designated US-controlled international payment system for financial transactions as an instrument of its foreign policy.

Led by the BRICS, the rest of the world is racing to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency with local currencies and/or pseudo-currencies and the US-controlled international payment system with block-chain technologies.

When the movement to de-status the dollar reaches critical mass, the United States will officially be recognized as a bankrupt Third-World country wracked by inflation. It will no longer have the luxury of recklessly printing petrodollars to pay its bills.

Not all is bleak. The collapse of the AngloZionist Empire is the sine qua non for getting our Constitutional liberties back.

KA , September 4, 2017 at 12:40 pm GMT

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450890/iran-nuclear-deal-exit-strategy-john-bolton-memo-trump

John Bolton wants to scrap the deal, provide supports to outsiders and insiders to foment troubles against the regime and ban all commercial diplomatic and educational legal contacts to the rest of the world . He wants to inform China and Russia only after the whole thing is over ( Iran has become I guess Yemen!).

Why is he outside the high security prison or outside the administration?

anon , Disclaimer September 4, 2017 at 2:56 pm GMT

@KA

Genesis of American relentless march to stupidity has been promoted and secured by dimwit halfling midget like Bolton

Unfortunately Israel instead of keeping and maintaining the logical support from the intellectual, visionary and moral people has relied on morons like these endangering itself and USA . These morons wouldn't get a job as a third shift janitor in a slaughter house solely on merits . They did what they could – race the bottom of the barrel of dishonesty because that was their upbringing . It made them street smart without necessary IQ.

[Sep 03, 2017] Anyone who blames the US for something it is not responsible for, in an attempt to distract from the country's economic issues for example, is an anti-American

Sep 03, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Matt , September 3, 2017 at 3:06 pm

Strawman, that many here, including Mark and PO, have tried using against me. First, I have criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, like the 2003 Iraq war, intervention in Libya, and the war in Afghanistan. This debunks the first part of your post.

As for the second: anyone who blames the U.S. for something it is not responsible for, in an attempt to distract from the country's economic issues for example, is an anti-American. Ditto for anyone who wants the U.S. to collapse, be destroyed, or makes fun of its people with stereotypes.

The above paragraph can be applied to any country in the world and is standard fare for defining phobia against a country. You and your ilk are quick to whine about "Russophobia", but when similar tactics are used against the U.S., you start calling anyone who calls them out an "imperialist".

Such extreme over-simplifications do nothing except twist my words and make it easier for you to avoid critically self-assessing your views on U.S. foreign policy. An easy way to avoid debate.

Same old, same old.

likbez , September 3, 2017 at 6:10 pm
"Ditto for anyone who wants the U.S. to collapse, be destroyed, or makes fun of its people with stereotypes."

That's too simplistic. The USA simultaneously represents a country and a global neoliberal empire led from Washington. The latter gave us all those wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and Syria (KSA is a part of the empire).

You may want prosperity for the USA proper, and the collapse of this neoliberal empire at the same time. This is essentially Bannon's position and the position of other "economic nationalists" in the USA, who are now tarred and feathered as "Putin friends" (Putin's position is also somewhat closer to economic nationalism then to neoliberalism, although in certain areas he sits between two chairs).

The USA is a great country which among other things gave the world Internet, as we know it. As well as modern CPUs and computers ( although here British scientists and Germans made important contributions too, often as staff of foreign subsidiaries of the US companies such as Intel, and IBM) . Due to which such forums are possible.

Neoliberalism and US governed global neoliberal empire will most probably shrink or even collapse after the end of cheap oil and due to the rise of nationalist movements in almost all EU countries and elsewhere, which partially reverses the trend toward neoliberal globalization that existed before. That's uneven process. In the USA neoliberalism demonstrated amazing staying power after financial crisis of 2008, which buried neoliberal ideology.

Recently in some countries (not without some help from the USA) neoliberalism staged revenge (Argentina, Brazil), but the general trend now does not favor neoliberal globalization and, by extension, kicking the can down the road via color revolutions and such.

The typical forecast for end of cheap oil is a decade or two. KSA is the canary in the mine here. It should collapse first.

The USA as a country probably will be OK because it is rich in hydrocarbons, but the neoliberal empire will collapse as the USA probably it will not be able or willing to serve as armed enforcer of multinationals around the globe any longer. The set of ideas known as neoliberalism are already on life support. See https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199283273 A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey. Also see http://softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neoliberalism/index.shtml

Neoliberals who control the US state after Reagan coup (or even starting with Carter) still push down the throats of Americans those dead ideas due to power of propaganda machine, but they are less and less effective. Trump election means that allergic reaction to neoliberal propaganda already is a factor in the US political life. Hillary positioned herself as quintessential globalist and warmonger for the USA led neoliberal empire and lost. Trump proved to be no better then the king of "bait and switch" Barak Obama and shed all his election promises with ease. But the fact remains. .

For the same reason we also need to distinguish between neocons, who currently determine the US foreign policy (and dominate the State Department) and the rank-and-file Americans who suffer from this imperial overreach, from outsourcing, with some of them returning home dead or maimed. There nothing bad in denigrating neocons.

I would view the current round of hostilities between Russia and the USA through the prism of the fight for the preservation of the US neoliberal empire. They need an external enemy to squash mounting resistance to neoliberalism with the USA. And Ukraine gambit was designed explicitly for that. If they can take out Russia (by installing Yeltsin-style regime, which is the goal) the life of empire might be prolonged (they tried and failed in 2012). The second round of looting also might help with paying external debt. The shot in the arm which the USA got from the collapse of the USSR led to [fake] prosperity in 1994-2000.

[Sep 03, 2017] Russian consulate shutdown Deep State victory or Trumps attempt to avoid impeachment

Notable quotes:
"... On Thursday, the US State Department demanded closure of the Russian consulate in San Francisco, as well as two annex buildings in Washington and New York. The decision was motivated by the "spirit of parity invoked by the Russians" and came in response to Moscow ordering the US to reduce its diplomatic personnel in Russia, according to the US State Department. ..."
"... "One can say pretty firmly that the change of the chief of staff and other personnel in the Trump White House means that, as some would have it, the Deep State has won and this so-called 'isolationist Donald Trump candidate' is over. He's ramping up military war games on the Korean peninsula, he's ramping up troops to Afghanistan and he's ramping up troops to Russia's actual borders in the European Union countries," ..."
"... "What we're seeing here is definitely ramping up of tension with Moscow. We have to wait [and see] what the next enemy of Washington is, is it now going to be China? ..."
"... "The United States is ramping it up when it comes to the foreign diplomatic pressure, foreign military pressure. We must remember the number of times the Trump White House said 'all options are on the table' over a variety of different problems that previously have been seen as diplomatic," ..."
"... "Russia collusion" ..."
"... "A cynic might say that while this may be not very good news for Russian citizens in the United States and business partnerships and so on between the United states and Russia, this could be a means seen by some in the Trump administration of trying to curb continuous attacks on US media that Donald Trump is compromised by the Putin government in Moscow," ..."
"... "By doing this he can say 'Look, I'm no pawn of Moscow, here I am, making unprecedented closures of diplomatic facilities and actually creating more tensions with Moscow than President Obama did or did his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.' And therefore by showing this might, he's somehow independent and therefore 'Please don't impeach me'," ..."
"... because they are the biggest nuclear powers on Earth," ..."
"... "We have to wait and see whether Donald Trump himself tweets differently or indeed speaks differently, when he talks at a press conference – compared to the former CEO of Exxon, Rex Tillerson, his Secretary of State, someone much more arguably deeply allied to the Deep State." ..."
Sep 03, 2017 | www.rt.com

On Thursday, the US State Department demanded closure of the Russian consulate in San Francisco, as well as two annex buildings in Washington and New York. The decision was motivated by the "spirit of parity invoked by the Russians" and came in response to Moscow ordering the US to reduce its diplomatic personnel in Russia, according to the US State Department.

Read more US orders closure of Russian Consulate in San Francisco – State Department

While the decision will likely to ramp up tensions between the two countries, the reasons behind it might have deeper roots, Rattansi believes.

"One can say pretty firmly that the change of the chief of staff and other personnel in the Trump White House means that, as some would have it, the Deep State has won and this so-called 'isolationist Donald Trump candidate' is over. He's ramping up military war games on the Korean peninsula, he's ramping up troops to Afghanistan and he's ramping up troops to Russia's actual borders in the European Union countries," Rattansi said, adding that this is all quite in line with the recent Trump policy of heating up tensions worldwide and searching for enemies.

"What we're seeing here is definitely ramping up of tension with Moscow. We have to wait [and see] what the next enemy of Washington is, is it now going to be China?

The aggressive US policy is being watched closely by the international community and the developing countries, Rattansi said, stressing that previously purely diplomatic questions are now becoming international flashpoints.

"The United States is ramping it up when it comes to the foreign diplomatic pressure, foreign military pressure. We must remember the number of times the Trump White House said 'all options are on the table' over a variety of different problems that previously have been seen as diplomatic," Rattansi said.

Read more Lavrov to Tillerson on consulate closure: We regret escalation of tension not initiated by Russia

Such behavior might be a desperate attempt to fix the internal problems in the US and help Trump to beat the "Russia collusion" narrative, which has been plaguing his presidency.

"A cynic might say that while this may be not very good news for Russian citizens in the United States and business partnerships and so on between the United states and Russia, this could be a means seen by some in the Trump administration of trying to curb continuous attacks on US media that Donald Trump is compromised by the Putin government in Moscow," Rattansi said.

"By doing this he can say 'Look, I'm no pawn of Moscow, here I am, making unprecedented closures of diplomatic facilities and actually creating more tensions with Moscow than President Obama did or did his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.' And therefore by showing this might, he's somehow independent and therefore 'Please don't impeach me'," Rattansi said.

It's quite hard to tell how far the tensions can go, as there will always be diplomatic relations between Moscow and Washington, " because they are the biggest nuclear powers on Earth," Rattansi believes. "We have to wait and see whether Donald Trump himself tweets differently or indeed speaks differently, when he talks at a press conference – compared to the former CEO of Exxon, Rex Tillerson, his Secretary of State, someone much more arguably deeply allied to the Deep State."

[Sep 03, 2017] US raid of Russian diplomatic sites a parade of power to reassert claim for global dominion

Notable quotes:
"... The international law lays it down really clearly. The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations says that any diplomatic and affiliated premises in a foreign country are inviolable. And any incursion on that territory is therefore seen as an attack on the country that is hosting that diplomatic mission. ..."
"... So this is breaching all international law. And I have to say it seems very hypocritical because for example, going back to the Snowden disclosures of 2013, where it was disclosed that there were big illegal spying technical operations on the roof off, for example, the British embassy in Berlin, the American embassy in Berlin Can you imagine the outcry if Germans then said: 'We don't want this in our country. We're going to go raid these embassies and see what is going on inside them.' I cannot imagine the international fallout. So why is that okay for America to do this to another sovereign state's property in its own country? ..."
"... Why they are doing it now, I do not know. It seems that President Trump initially wanted to try and recalibrate the relations with Russia to try to build a peaceful and a profitable world for both nations. And he has been hedged in, hedged in, hedged in, ever since his election by an American establishment plot to try and stop him, to make sure he can't do that. ..."
"... I think there is a certain degree of theatre always in these sort of acts but also what is particularly concerning to me is that there is a Senate Intelligence Authorization Act going through the corridors of power in America. It was announced in the middle of August and this will actually effectively attack intelligence agencies working in America and even non-state hostile intelligence agencies, as they are calling WikiLeaks for example. ..."
"... We have had a situation since the end WWII where there's been a sort of detente with diplomatic relations, where people have assumed that there are certain rules in play, and it has been quite civilized. And it appears now increasingly on all sort of fronts, not just diplomatic fronts but you know on internet fronts, corporate fronts, whatever, that America keeps trying to claim global dominion. ..."
"... And I think they are trying to assert that in this case – the question is why and why now? And I think it might be linked to this Senate Intelligence Authorization Act that is going through at the moment that is not being much reported on in America. ..."
Sep 03, 2017 | www.rt.com

People are seen on the rooftop at the Consulate General of Russia in San Francisco, California, U.S., September 2, 2017 © Stephen Lam / Reuters

The shutting and subsequent searches of Russia's diplomatic sites are a meaningless show of power and domination by the US, which, however, could help push through controversial new intelligence related legislation, believes Annie Machon, a former MI5 intelligence officer. It's part of efforts to push through the Intelligence Authorization Act that would recognize actors, such as WikiLeaks, as a "non-state hostile intelligence service," Machon told RT. Read more 'Illegal, meaningless clownery': Russia condemns US searches of diplomatic property

RT: The State Department is saying the trade mission has been stripped of its immunity, that it was essentially lifted when that consulate was shut down. The Vienna Convention which governs consular relations says otherwise. Which do you think has got this right?

AM: The international law lays it down really clearly. The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations says that any diplomatic and affiliated premises in a foreign country are inviolable. And any incursion on that territory is therefore seen as an attack on the country that is hosting that diplomatic mission.

So this is breaching all international law. And I have to say it seems very hypocritical because for example, going back to the Snowden disclosures of 2013, where it was disclosed that there were big illegal spying technical operations on the roof off, for example, the British embassy in Berlin, the American embassy in Berlin Can you imagine the outcry if Germans then said: 'We don't want this in our country. We're going to go raid these embassies and see what is going on inside them.' I cannot imagine the international fallout. So why is that okay for America to do this to another sovereign state's property in its own country?

RT: It seems a strange decision in a sense – I mean really, all you need to do is conduct an internet search... that this apparently goes against the Vienna Convention, and yet the US has gone ahead with this. Why do you think they are doing this?

AM: I don't know, I really don't know why they are trying to do this now. Well, obviously the tension has been ramping up. So Barack Obama in his last days as a president, at the end of last year, actually sent home 35 diplomats from Russia, which sort of confirmed in the public mind globally that Russia was involved in this bogus election hacking. And it just escalated from there.

So more sanctions being placed against Russia at the beginning of August. Russia was retaliating by expelling more American diplomats and their associates. So it is just escalating from this point.

Why they are doing it now, I do not know. It seems that President Trump initially wanted to try and recalibrate the relations with Russia to try to build a peaceful and a profitable world for both nations. And he has been hedged in, hedged in, hedged in, ever since his election by an American establishment plot to try and stop him, to make sure he can't do that.

RT: Why conduct a search of the premises? Is it just a pantomime, a kind of theatre?

AM: I think there is a certain degree of theatre always in these sort of acts but also what is particularly concerning to me is that there is a Senate Intelligence Authorization Act going through the corridors of power in America. It was announced in the middle of August and this will actually effectively attack intelligence agencies working in America and even non-state hostile intelligence agencies, as they are calling WikiLeaks for example.

Russian diplomatic property in America 'inviolable', Assange tells US

Now we all know that Julian Assange has had a safe haven in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012. We also know that in 2012, the UK government was looking at the idea that they might try and raid the embassy against all international law, again to try to get him out to try to get him extradited.

So I'm wondering if this might be linked? There is some sort of meaningless parade of power by raiding these consulates in America, Russian consulates in America. Because they are going to push through this new law and then they can use it globally against anyone else they perceived to be an enemy. And we know that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are perceived to be an American enemy. And they want him back there, and they want to persecute him under some secret laws.

RT: And this deadline to vacate the premises, it is really short notice, isn't it? We saw that the Russian gave the US a whole month to clear out. Do you think the US is trying to set a precedent to let foreign nations know – don't get too comfortable, we could ask you to get out at any moment?

AM: Absolutely. We have had a situation since the end WWII where there's been a sort of detente with diplomatic relations, where people have assumed that there are certain rules in play, and it has been quite civilized. And it appears now increasingly on all sort of fronts, not just diplomatic fronts but you know on internet fronts, corporate fronts, whatever, that America keeps trying to claim global dominion.

And I think they are trying to assert that in this case – the question is why and why now? And I think it might be linked to this Senate Intelligence Authorization Act that is going through at the moment that is not being much reported on in America.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

[Sep 03, 2017] Russia Urges Washington To Come To Their Senses Over Consulate, Denounces Blunt Act Of Hostility

Did the US intelligence services know something, or this just a dirty provocation by neocons entrenched in the State Department, who managed to coopt Rex Tillerson ?
Notable quotes:
"... If the international diplomatic agreements are no longer valid, then there is no longer any reason for other countries to comply with them. How can the US comp!ain, if Russia (or other countries) no longer choose to abide by the rules? ..."
"... Actually, there were MULTIPLE searches: the Trade Mission and the apartments of the Mission's employees. Let's forget for a second that the diplomats still have valid diplomatic immunity. Each search requires a separate warrant. What kind of a crime could all of them have committed that would give a probable cause to search all of their apartments in the Mission? ..."
"... Now, this shit cannot be blamed on the Kenyan fudge-packer. The warmongering cunts in Congress have nothing to do with this either. This is not just on Trump's watch – he actually ordered it! ..."
Sep 03, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Already furious over Washington's " unprecedented aggressive action, " at the Russian consulate in San Francisco, Moscow has responded with an official statement calling the "occupation" of diplomatic properties in the US a "blunt act of hostility. "

As a reminder, Russian diplomats were denied access to the trade mission building despite it being owned by Russia and protected by diplomatic immunity.

The ministry called the planned "illegal inspection" of Russian diplomatic housing an " unprecedented aggressive action ", which could be used by the U.S. special services for " anti-Russian provocations" by the way of "planting compromised items ".

Searches of the Russian premises began on Saturday, after the US State Department ordered the foreign ministry on August 31 to vacate the premises by September 2.

The FBI arrived in at least two vehicles to search the San Francisco Consulate. The minute the deadline expired, agents entered the Russian-owned diplomatic property, which in 2016 alone issued more than 16,000 tourist visas to American citizens.

Russian diplomats have posted photo and video evidence of the searches, which they call a "travesty of justice."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/DzSKTqAqxDc

And now, as RT reports, the ministry said in a statement on Sunday. " We regard the incident as a blunt act of hostility, a gross violation of international law by Washington, including the Vienna Conventions on diplomatic and consular relations," The ministry called upon the US "to come to their senses and immediately return Russian diplomatic compounds ." "Otherwise, the US will be responsible for the continuing degradation of relations between our countries , which largely affect global stability and international security," the statement continued.

The Vienna Convention of Diplomatic Relations forms the basis for diplomatic immunity and defines the framework of relation between countries. It states that the premises of [any] mission "shall be inviolable" and the "agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission." Moscow pointed out that all seized properties in New York, Washington, and San Francisco have diplomatic immunity. "The US special services supported by armed police are now 'hosting' the occupied buildings," the statement added.

"The US State Department is violating the Vienna Convention; this creates a bad precedent to international diplomacy," Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos, who served as a Greek ambassador in Canada in 2000-2004, told RT. " I can't see the reason why it is happening. The relations between the US and Russia are not bad. Some people in the US are trying to make [these relations] bad. Perhaps that was the goal all along?

ET , Sep 3, 2017 3:26 PM

War is the continuation of politics by other means. - Carl von Clausewitz

It could be worse for the Russians. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8bC1DEYbI4

JohninMK -> ET , Sep 3, 2017 3:31 PM

Brilliant precedent for the US to have set. Time to increase State's budget for protection of its premises around the world. Also, every diplomatic mission in the US is now only too aware that they are vulnerable to this type of action.

ET -> JohninMK , Sep 3, 2017 3:34 PM

I'm in favor of resolving disputes through diplomacy and negotiations rather than violence and barbarism. Good leadership works toward peace and prosperity. We have had the good fortune of not having had a destructive World War in many decades. That time might be coming to an end.

Fritz -> JohninMK , Sep 3, 2017 3:50 PM

It's all just another bullshit distraction to control the news cycle.

OverTheHedge -> Fritz , Sep 3, 2017 4:30 PM

Possibly, but in a world of tit for tat escalations, what happens if the Russians now evict all US personnel from an American consulate, with zero notice, and show the world all the incriminating evidence of attempted regime change they are bound to find?

If the international diplomatic agreements are no longer valid, then there is no longer any reason for other countries to comply with them. How can the US comp!ain, if Russia (or other countries) no longer choose to abide by the rules?

I think there might be consequences that the US no longer seems capable of recognizing: does no one wargame these scenarios any more?

As a Brit, I can tell you that end-of-empire is a difficult period of readjustment, and it takes quite a lot of soul-searching to get through unscathed.

Looney -> OverTheHedge , Sep 3, 2017 4:32 PM

What's the probable cause for the searches? Lifting diplomatic immunity from the Trade Mission is not enough of a cause to conduct a search of the property.

Actually, there were MULTIPLE searches: the Trade Mission and the apartments of the Mission's employees. Let's forget for a second that the diplomats still have valid diplomatic immunity. Each search requires a separate warrant. What kind of a crime could all of them have committed that would give a probable cause to search all of their apartments in the Mission?

This is beyond weird, it's fucking scary! If this can be done to foreign diplomats covered by both the US Constitution (searches) and the Vienna Convention (diplomatic immunity), can you imagine what they can do to us, working stiffs? Rule of Law my ass!

Now, this shit cannot be blamed on the Kenyan fudge-packer. The warmongering cunts in Congress have nothing to do with this either. This is not just on Trump's watch – he actually ordered it!

As soon as I'm done typing, I'm gonna take a huge dump into my MAGA hats.

BTW If anybody wants their MAGA hats filled too, lemme know – first come, first served. ;-)

Looney

Looney -> Looney , Sep 3, 2017 4:33 PM

Here's the full text of the Vienna Convention , but check out Article 22 and, especially, Article 45 below:

Article 22

1.The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.

2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.

3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.

Article 45

If diplomatic relations are broken off between two States, or if a mission is permanently or temporarily recalled:

(a) The receiving State must, even in case of armed conflict, respect and protect the premises of the mission, together with its property and archives;

(b) The sending State may entrust the custody of the premises of the mission, together with its property and archives, to a third State acceptable to the receiving State;

(c) The sending State may entrust the protection of its interests and those of its nationals to a third State acceptable to the receiving State.

Looney

MozartIII -> Looney , Sep 3, 2017 4:41 PM

Looney, Our pols can't and don't care to read. Why do you think they pass bills so that we can then see whats in them.

jeff montanye -> ET , Sep 3, 2017 3:48 PM

these blackhearted bastards have no interest in good leadership, peace or any prosperity but their own. we citizens have got to vote the war party out and the peace party in. break the hold that the mossad likud zionists have on our government.

president trump, when do you start to assert some authority? left to their own devices you see what the deep state will do. that the intelligentsia world wide is coming to understand this better through the exposure of such clumsy false flags as russiagate and charlottesvile is of valuable but limited consolation.

not being hillary clinton may not be enough in 2018 or 2020.

stacking12321 -> jeff montanye , Sep 3, 2017 3:51 PM

"Peace party"? Sounds like an oxymoron. People get into the government racket to take power over others through violent means. Bad means lead to bad ends. And btw, trump has no authority. The only true authority is personal sovereignty, everything else is a con game.

Dark star -> jeff montanye , Sep 3, 2017 4:17 PM

Trump is an instant one term President. He has reneged on every promise he made to his supporters; his credibility is zero.

MozartIII -> jeff montanye , Sep 3, 2017 4:38 PM

Of what peace party do you speak? The Russians are asking our leadership to come to their senses. For that to happen, we would need someone in washington with an IQ over 20. Not going to happen. With any luck Irma will strenghen to a cat 12 hurricane, hit washington & erase the swamp. We need to start somewhere!

GUS100CORRINA -> ET , Sep 3, 2017 3:59 PM

Russia Urges Washington To "Come To Their Senses" Over Consulate, Denounces "Blunt Act Of Hostility" My response: The US Legislators should be ashamed of themselves. They have pushed America's executive and law enforcement groups to do STUPID THINGS.

I am beginning to wonder if America can survive this CRAP much longer?

By the way, the DEMON released during Obama's 2nd term is called NERGAL who is a war god. You can read about this DEMON below. I really hate where this is headed!!!

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/nergalhyborian.htm

Of course, the Churches in America for the most part are absolutely CLUELESS when it comes to understanding this stuff and impact on people's faith. I have truly come to believe that many of our godless US legislators are being influence by NERGAL,

OverTheHedge -> GUS100CORRINA , Sep 3, 2017 4:46 PM

From your link:"First appearance, Conan the Barbarian" Great books, and very iffy film, but hardly conclusive proof that demons are amoung us. It's fiction - made up scary stories to frighten children and entertain adults. Are you frightened, or entertained?

serotonindumptruck -> JohninMK , Sep 3, 2017 3:44 PM

Clearly, the ultimate goal behind the US State Department's illegal search of the Russian Embassy was to provoke an escalatory response from the Russians.

As the collapse of the Amerikan Empire gains steam, we should anticipate further insults and provocations to be levied against the Russian Federation by the despicable US Government.

opport.knocks -> JohninMK , Sep 3, 2017 3:45 PM

... cuz it was the Russians who gave the keys, floor plans and detailed instuctions to the invaders in Benghazi, donchano.

Not Too Important -> JohninMK , Sep 3, 2017 3:49 PM

After Benghazi who is stupid enough to be in any US mission anywhere? Except for the gay US diplomatic corp in Norway that like little kids and get Hillary's protection.

https://mic.com/articles/48277/howard-gutman-prostitution-wasn-t-even-th...

jmarshally -> JohninMK , Sep 3, 2017 4:36 PM

Right-e-o John,

Further, it makes one wonder; if the US Government has no respect for the privacy (sanctity of one's dwelling; i.e private property) of a foregin nation, it does not bode well for the privacy of a US citizen (in any venue).

J.

John Basilone -> JohninMK , Sep 3, 2017 4:43 PM

If Trump ok'd this we can then assume that he's gone full retard - or his Joo master basterds are dangling the orange haired marionette while his mad dog SecDef bloviates bellicose bullshyte ad nauseam.

chunga , Sep 3, 2017 3:26 PM

I'm right with you Russia. The depraved frauds in DC have got to go. The Imperial City is clearly a domestic and international menace.

Francis Marx , Sep 3, 2017 3:27 PM

Isn't there any US buildings they can occupy in Russia?

JohninMK -> Francis Marx , Sep 3, 2017 3:33 PM

Yes, but for some strange reason the Russians and Putin in particular seem to believe in the rule of Law. Yesterday's attitude from the US perspective.

Blankone -> JohninMK , Sep 3, 2017 3:48 PM

It is not a belief in the rule of law (although that may also be true), it is the lack of backbone.

This is NOTHING compared to all the murdered diplomats, business leaders/Putin allies, downed airliner, downed military transport with military music group, arrests of russians in the public eye on "Trumped" up charges, sanctions against business leaders, sanctions against key businesses, international arrest warrants so that business CEO's cannot travel outside Russia etc,

The current action is akin to an Arab taking off his shoe and slapping Putin across the face with it on an international live news cast. Or Clint Eastwood in a cowboy flick spitting tobacco into the face of a dirty .... The entire town is watching and knows the magnitude of insult.

Don't Poke The Bear!!! Again, well, not again, well better not again, please stop, please it's making him cry, ....

Cue the photo opp, Putin riding a horse with no shirt, Putin fishing with no shirt, Putin staring intensely during a diplomatic meeting/photo session,

the_narrator -> Blankone , Sep 3, 2017 3:56 PM

I wonder if the recent navy ship collisions and diplomat injuries in Cuba are Russian retaliation.

Blankone -> the_narrator , Sep 3, 2017 4:15 PM

The diplomat injuries in Cuba (IF they are real) may be. Should be. But why do so in Cuba, why put Cuba out there, instead do so in a US friendly country. For that reason I feel it may be a false story to begin negative PR against Cuba. I believe the travel restrictions were recently put back in place by Trump.

I doubt the ships. The ships are so huge, move so slow, any competent officer in the control structure should have been able to see it coming in the dark of night even. IMO Plus there are more than one system looking for approaching objects.

John Basilone -> Blankone , Sep 3, 2017 4:45 PM

The worst I ever witnessed during my time in the USMC was an LPD that ran aground in Australia. The ship collisions are either a sign of gross incompetence (which is unlikely) or sabotage. I tend to think it is the latter.

neutrino3 -> Blankone , Sep 3, 2017 4:07 PM

You patetic ukrop still do not undersand Dei Plan A. Dontcha?

Baron von Bud , Sep 3, 2017 3:28 PM

The Russians are right. This act was incited by a brain damaged person with poor judgment. Someone needs to talk to McCain.

chunga -> Baron von Bud , Sep 3, 2017 3:35 PM

I like to bash McCain as much as the next guy but trump is presidont.

Not Too Important -> chunga , Sep 3, 2017 3:52 PM

But, at this point, is he allowed to make any real decisions? He looks like he's been ring-fenced by the NWO.

They'd kill him like Kennedy if they could, but at this point it would cause domestic war, with little or no control on their part. So he lives, has his Twitter feed, and they run the country.

I wish someone would show us different.

chunga -> Not Too Important , Sep 3, 2017 4:10 PM

Checks and balances are long gone, US gov is run by evil forces and no one in it fights back. We need to brace for big changes.

Blankone -> Not Too Important , Sep 3, 2017 4:40 PM

He is president, he can make decisions aplenty. He is making the decisions he wants to make, they just do not match the lies he told during his campaign.

He is one of "them". But his fans will deflect blame to the point of claiming "they made him do it/say it".

BritBob , Sep 3, 2017 3:29 PM

Blunt act of hostility?

Russia tells Britain give back the Falklands before telling US what to do.

RUSSIA has told Britain it should "clean its conscience" and give back the Falkland Islands before it criticises them over their involvement in Ukraine. Moscow's ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin made the shocking remarks when responding to his British counterpart Matthew Rycroft at a UN security council meeting in New York. ( Daily Express 4 Feb 2017)

Funny thing to say when Argentina has never legally owned the Falklands. So how can they 'be returned' ?

Falklands -- Never Belonged to Argentina (single page):

https://www.academia.edu/31111843/Falklands_Never_Belonged_to_Argentina

AurorusBorealus -> BritBob , Sep 3, 2017 3:50 PM

Ok Bob, I will bite. First off, I do not want to hear any nonsense about how the British Parliament is so concerned about the 500 fishermen and their families that live on those islands. If the British government were concerned about its people, it would not be flooding your country with terrorist Muslim to blow the little Britbobs to bits in London.

Britain is using those islands to claim the vast oilfields around them as "British" property. How large are the oilfields... well... very large. Ok. So Britian is using a flag that they planted in the ground 300 years ago as an excuse to rob oil from regions that are, by international law, in the maritime zone of Argentina, and under Argentina's jurisdiction. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/17/rockhoppers-falklands-oil...

Do not believe me? Then why is Argentina able, by international law, to prohibit the development of the oilfields there? Why? Because these oilfields are on Argentina property. That England has managed to cajole 2,600 fishermen on a few rocks in the Atlantic to live under British rule does not give England the right to take a billion barrels of oil that rightfully belong, BY LAW, to the people of Argentina.

If I can convince 2,600 of your good Muslim friends in England to vote to renounce English rule, does that give Argentina the right to all of BPs holdings in the North Sea?

Typically British shit. Use any excuse to rob, steal, and pillage, and then call it "empire" and our "right." You are full of shit Bob.

opport.knocks -> BritBob , Sep 3, 2017 3:48 PM

Russia's opinion does not matter and ZH readers do not care Bob - talk to the nobs in your own foreign service about their policies toward Russia first.

Dark star -> BritBob , Sep 3, 2017 4:09 PM

What Vitaly Churkin said was that if Britain wished to criticise Russia over Crimea, THEN Britain should give the Falklands to Argentina.

It was a justifiable complaint about double standards, not a definitive statement regarding Russia's view of International Law.

Everybody understands that except you.

Every sane and normal person on the planet understands that Crimea had a fair referendum, (like that which Britain depended on for its stance in the Falklands), which was necessitated by the U.S. overthrowing a democratically elected Government. Western politicians who argue otherwise merely make themselves look stupid subservient poodles of the Rogue State which the U.S. has now become.

Albertarocks , Sep 3, 2017 3:34 PM

USA has just crossed the Rubicon. This is undoubtedly the most aggregious act of lawlessness ever perpetrated by the USA in its history. The sanctity of embassies is the one common sense rule and tradition that all civilized nations on earth have honored almost throughout history. Sure, Iran invaded the US embassy, but don't forget how they were chastised and demonized for it. Now it's the USA's turn to commit the same unthinkable crime.

The USA will never be trusted again, by any nation, for eternity. This is the last straw because with this one act of supreme lawlessness the US has essentially isolated itself from the rest of the world *forever*. Talk about shooting yourself in the face.

AriusArmenian -> Albertarocks , Sep 3, 2017 3:39 PM

Exactly right. Diplomatic missions from the rest of the world are aware of the lawless rogue nature of the US.

The Cooler King -> AriusArmenian , Sep 3, 2017 3:43 PM

I doubt they're unaware about (((who))) is responsible for the rogue nature of US politics.

Escrava Isaura -> Albertarocks , Sep 3, 2017 3:43 PM

You can't make this stuff up. Albertarocks : USA has just crossed the Rubicon. Just crossed? LOL.

chunga -> Albertarocks , Sep 3, 2017 3:48 PM

Pulling a stunt like this with the present situation in KN is reckless, unstable, dangerous.

Not Too Important -> chunga , Sep 3, 2017 3:58 PM

The rest of the world governments know the US is on its' last legs, period. A pit bull with steroid rage, with a lethal case of rabies. The smart thing to do is sit back and let it run its' course, while keeping a safe distance, but it'll be a few years before the dog loses his bite and no way to keep it on a leash.

How would you run your government's foreign policy under this scenario? Knowing that the only other options for safety are on the pitbull's kill list before it dies?

A thousand nukes on Russia or China will affect every country on this planet. There are a lot of world leaders shitting their pants right now, and will for the next decade until the dog rolls over and dies.

GoatHollow -> Not Too Important , Sep 3, 2017 4:04 PM

Russia has 7,000 nuclear warheads of it's own.

finametrics , Sep 3, 2017 3:31 PM

we all know why this is happening. butthurt establishment is desperate and acting out. their time is near and they know it.

Big Creek Rising -> finametrics , Sep 3, 2017 3:45 PM

Would it not be best for Russia to at least kinda sorta be on our side with the NorK debacle? We're giving Putin good reason to quietly support that chubby little dickhead that now has better nukes and missiles.

And for what benefit?

Dark star -> Big Creek Rising , Sep 3, 2017 3:56 PM

What idiot would be on the side of someone who had just kicked them in the balls? The U.S. needs friends to help deal with NK and it has none left. Why is NK only threatening the U.S.? Could it perhaps be that only the US is threatening to attack NK? Questions far beyond the ability of the U.S. State Dept

[Sep 03, 2017] It seems that nearly every week Congress is passing bills that are intended to pummel one foreign adversary or another. Russia and Iran have become particular favorites

Notable quotes:
"... sometimes stealth is employed, inserting a nugget in an otherwise innocuous bit of legislation that will provide authority to go after yet another potential enemy of the state. ..."
"... With a digital media, the Espionage Act could conceivably reach even a citizen merely reading online a classified document that has been leaked. While no longer called the Sedition Act, that was originally the title of the amendment to the Espionage Act, and remnants of its logic remain in the current Espionage Act putting anyone who disseminates information contrary to the official government narrative at risk in some way or other, entirely at the whim of the C-in-C. ..."
Sep 03, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Original title: Is U.S. Congress Declaring War on WikiLeaks The American Conservative

By Philip GiraldiSeptember 1, 2017

The United States, uniquely among nations, believes that its writ runs all over the world!and that it has a right to use its courts of law to seek retributive justice even in situations that did not involve American citizens and occurred in a foreign land. No other country sends its marshals overseas to forcibly detain fugitives from "justice." If the United States is truly exceptional, it is no doubt due to its hubris in declaring itself to be the final arbiter of what goes on all around the globe.

It seems that nearly every week Congress outdoes itself in passing bills that are intended to pummel one foreign adversary or another. Russia and Iran have become particular favorites with nary a dissenting voice when new sanctions are put in place, together with mechanisms to ensure that a puissant chief executive shall have no ability to mitigate the punishment. And sometimes stealth is employed, inserting a nugget in an otherwise innocuous bit of legislation that will provide authority to go after yet another potential enemy of the state.

The latest Senate Intelligence Authorization Act (SB 1761) , which was released by the committee on August 18 when few senators were in town, is in the nature of a routine document. It notably calls for "more" in terms of both probing and revealing Russian spying and alleged aggression, but that was to be expected due to the current panic over Moscow and its intentions. It will nevertheless almost certainly become law even though few members of congress will actually bother to read any part of it.

The bill has already been approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee and will likely go immediately to a vote in the full Senate when that body reconvenes after the August recess. It will almost certainly be approved unanimously.

That anyone in the alternative media is paying any attention at all to what the bill says is due to the last section in the document, numbered 623. It reads "SENSE OF CONGRESS ON WIKILEAKS: It is the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States."

Todd Pierce , says: September 1, 2017 at 8:46 am

Thanks for this very informative and important article Phil! Anyone who thinks this stops at Wikileaks is foolishly infantile, and ignorant of what has been going on in the U.S. legal system now for years. McCain, Graham, and their Democratic ally Joe Lieberman were instrumental in getting Congress to pass Sec. 1021 of the 2012 NDAA (now Public Law) which provided for arbitrary military detention of anyone deemed a threat by the Commander in Chief (FKA President).

How far that reached was shown in DOJ arguments in the case of Hedges v. Obama, where it was argued that, of course, journalists and activists were subject to military detention for their "expressive activities."

With a digital media, the Espionage Act could conceivably reach even a citizen merely reading online a classified document that has been leaked. While no longer called the Sedition Act, that was originally the title of the amendment to the Espionage Act, and remnants of its logic remain in the current Espionage Act putting anyone who disseminates information contrary to the official government narrative at risk in some way or other, entirely at the whim of the C-in-C.

Jim Bovard , says: September 1, 2017 at 9:51 am
Excellent article – the best analysis I have seen on this outrage.
IHeartDagny , says: September 1, 2017 at 10:24 am
What do people think all those taxpayer funds FORCED from the American people and given to most countries around the world is supposed to pay for?

[Sep 03, 2017] Proper response would be for Russia to nationalize their bank

It is interesting that on Sunday, Sept 3, 2017 there was no anti-Russian hysteria in US MSM anymore. The flow of anti-Russian news just disappeared
Russia still need year to recover from Yeltsin carnage, so the best policy for Russia is just do not react on this provocation. direct retaliation is counterproductive.
Sep 03, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Son of Captain Nemo , Sep 3, 2017 4:26 PM

To the Russian Federation. If this faggot pedo of a U.S. Marine doesn't make it clear enough at this point ( http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-03/mattis-we-have-many-options-ach... ), after the banks attempted to control your resources post-Soviet Union for 28 years using threats of war and well "war" in your neighborhood, with paid for mercenaries in American $$$ to kill their own in places like your Southern Caucus, Dagestan

They are desperate, bankrupt financially and without resources with no equal in human history... And angry at their own worst choices going on the last 72 years and in need of a Hemorrhoid-ectomy with one of these ( http://www.mashpedia.com/RS-28_Sarmat )

TIMES UP!... GLOVES NEED TO COME OFF!... YOU GAVE IT YOUR BEST SHOT!... Now it's time to throw them out of your Country for good and tell them YOU'RE READY FOR ANYTHING THEY CHOOSE TO DO NEXT!!!

Anunnaki , Sep 3, 2017 4:40 PM

Is this draining the swamp, how? The Cheetolini is AWOL from foreign affairs.

rejected , Sep 3, 2017 4:41 PM

I really wish the Russians would respond in kind but I suspect they have too much class. Link for more videos of yet another treaty violation by the US government.

https://sputniknews.com/society/201709031057051981-russia-consulate-fbi-...

Anunnaki -> rejected , Sep 3, 2017 4:55 PM

Proper response would be for Russia to nationalize their bank

RedDwarf , Sep 3, 2017 4:54 PM

Wow, we really are heading for war with Russia. This is turning into America vs. World. It never ends well for the country that tries to go to war against the rest of the world. There is no sane reason to do this unless your desire is the destruction of America or a religious goal of bringing about the end days.

We need to find these lunatics and traitors and we need to get rid of them before they poison the Northern Hemisphere in blood and ash.

Consuelo -> RedDwarf , Sep 3, 2017 5:00 PM

There is no 'finding them', RD. They operate in plain view. But they have the 'cattle' herded in essentially any direction they so choose, by way of Fake News, Sports & entertainment and social-media distraction. It takes a thinking electorate to see and identify their machinations. Which is why they get so upset when thinking people speak...

[Sep 03, 2017] Steve Bannon and Trumps Populist Victory

Notable quotes:
"... over $100 million ..."
"... Jeb's 2016 departure draws out Mike Murphy critics , ..."
"... Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency ..."
"... Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyon ..."
"... Tensions Between and Within the Two Parties, ..."
"... When Donald Trump burst onto the scene, Bannon had found what he is quoted describing as a "blunt instrument for us," a man who had "taken this nationalist movement and moved it up twenty years." ..."
"... Devil's Bargain ..."
"... the rise of Bannon and Trump holds lessons for the Dissident Right. One of them: despite how powerful the Establishment may appear, there are fatal disconnects between it and the people it rules!for example, on social and identity issues. Thus, many members of this Ruling Class, such as the Republican strategists who predicted a Jeb or Rubio victory, have been more successful in deluding themselves than they have been in building any kind of effective base. Similarly, Clinton campaign operatives believed, without much evidence, that undecided voters would eventually break in their favor. Because the thought of a Trump presidency was too horrifying for them to contemplate, they refused to recognize polls showing a close race, ignored the Midwest and sauntered their candidate off to Arizona in the final days. ..."
"... Of course, currently the ideas that Bannon fought for appear to be on the wane, leading him to declare upon leaving the White House that the "Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over." [ Weekly Standard, August 18, 2017] ..."
"... But this is probably somewhat of an exaggeration. I doubt that Bannon laments the fact that the current president is Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio. But it has proved much more difficult to change government policy than to win an election. Unlike GOP strategists, the Deep State appears to know what it is doing. ..."
"... Nixon's White House Wars ..."
get=

Republished from VDare.com

Throughout 2016, I would occasionally turn on the television to see how the punditocracy was responding to the mounting Trump tsunami . If you get most of your news online, watching cable news is frustrating. The commentary is so dumbed down and painfully reflective of speaker's biases, you can always basically guess what's coming next. With a few exceptions!above all Ann Coulter 's famous June 19, 2015 prediction of a Trump victory on Bill Maher !these pundits again and again told us that Trump would eventually go away, first after he made this or that gaffe, then after he "failed" in a debate, then after people actually started voting in the primaries.

Finally, after having been wrong at every point during the primaries, they just as confidently predicted that the Republican primary voter had foolishly done nothing more than assure that Hillary Clinton would be the next president.

The most interesting cases to me: the " Republican strategists ," brought on to CNN and MSNBC to give the audience the illusion that they were hearing both sides: Nicole Wallace, Steve Schmidt, Ana Navarro, Rick Wilson, Margaret Hoover, Todd Harris. Mike Murphy even convinced donors to hand him over $100 million to make Jeb Bush the next president! [ Jeb's 2016 departure draws out Mike Murphy critics , By Maeve Reston, February 22, 2016]

With campaigns and donors throwing money at these people, and the Main Stream Media touting them, it was easy to assume they must know what they were talking about. Significantly, each of these pundits was a national security hawk, center-right on economic issues, and just as horrified by " racism " and " sexism " as their Leftist counterparts . By a remarkable coincidence, the " strategic " advice that they gave to Republican candidates lined up perfectly with these positions. Their prominence was a mirage created by the fact that the MSM handed this token opposition the Megaphone because they did not challenge the core prejudices of the bipartisan Ruling Class.

And of course they were all humiliated in a spectacular fashion, November 8 being only the climax. Joshua Green begins his book Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by giving us a view inside the Trump campaign on election night, before tracing Steve Bannon's path up to that point. Reliving the journey is one of the joys of Green's work, which is mostly an intellectual biography of Steve Bannon, with a special focus on his relationship with Trump and the election.

Bannon joined the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016 without any previous experience in electoral politics. But like the candidate himself, the Breitbart editor showed that he understood the nature of American politics and the GOP base better than Establishment Republicans. The "strategists'" supposed "expertise," "strategic advice," and "analysis" was in reality built on a house of cards. (In fact, the Bannon-Trump view of the electorate is closer to the consensus among political scientists that, unlike more nationalist and populist policies, Republican Establishment positions have relatively little popular support. [ Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyon d | Tensions Between and Within the Two Parties, Voter Study Group, June 2017]).

One key example: Green recounts how after Obama's re-election, the GOP Establishment was eager to surrender on immigration, supporting the bipartisan Amnesty/ Immigration Surge Gang of Eight bill . GOP leaders had neutralized Fox News, leaving Breitbart.com, talk radio and guerilla websites like VDARE.com as the only resistance. But the bill died due to a grass-roots revolt, partly inspired by Breitbart's reporting on the flood of Central American "child" refugees t he Obama Regime was allowing across the southern border. GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his congressional seat in a shock upset in the primaries. And little over a year later, Donald Trump became a candidate for president with opposition to illegal immigration as his signature issue.

Bannon at Breitbart.com gave the Republican base what it wanted. Moral: in a democracy, you always have a chance at winning when public opinion (or at least intraparty opinion) is on your side.

Green traces Bannon's journey from his Irish-Catholic working-class roots and traditionalist upbringing, to his time in the Navy, at Harvard Business School and Goldman Sachs, and finally Breitbart.com and the pinnacle of American politics. The picture that emerges is of a man with principles and vigor, refusing to submit to the inertia that is part of the human condition, with enough confidence to realize that life is too short to not make major changes when staying on the current path is not going to allow him to accomplish his goals.

For example, Bannon originally wanted a career in defense policy, and took a job in the Pentagon during the Reagan administration. Yet he was off to Harvard Business School when he realized that the rigid bureaucracy that he was a part of would not let him move up to a high-level position until he was middle-aged. Decades later, after taking over his website upon the unexpected death of Andrew Breitbart in 2012, it would have been easy to go low-risk!sticking to Establishment scripts, making life comfortable for Republican elites, implicitly submitting to the taboos of the Left. Instead , he helped turn Breitbart News into a major voice of the populist tide that has been remaking center-right politics across the globe.

When Donald Trump burst onto the scene, Bannon had found what he is quoted describing as a "blunt instrument for us," a man who had "taken this nationalist movement and moved it up twenty years."

From Green, we learn much about Bannon's intellectual influences. Surprisingly, although he was raised as a Roman Catholic and maintains that faith today, we find out that Bannon briefly practiced Zen Buddhism while in the Navy. There are other unusual influences that make appearances in the book, including Rightist philosopher Julius Evola and René Guénon, a French occultist who eventually became a Sufi Muslim. Although not exactly my cup of tea, such eccentric intellectual interests reflect a curious mind that refuses to restrict itself to fashionable influences.

It's incorrect to call Devil's Bargain a biography. There is practically no mention of Bannon's personal life!wives, children. I had to Google to find out that he has three daughters. His childhood is only discussed in the context of how it may have influenced his beliefs and political development.

Rather, we get information on Bannon's intellectual and career pursuits and his relationships with consequential figures such as mega-donor Robert Mercer, Andrew Breitbart and Donald Trump.

As Bannon exits the White House and returns to Breitbart, we must hope that Bannon and the movement he's helped to create accomplish enough in the future to inspire more complete biographies.

But the rise of Bannon and Trump holds lessons for the Dissident Right. One of them: despite how powerful the Establishment may appear, there are fatal disconnects between it and the people it rules!for example, on social and identity issues. Thus, many members of this Ruling Class, such as the Republican strategists who predicted a Jeb or Rubio victory, have been more successful in deluding themselves than they have been in building any kind of effective base. Similarly, Clinton campaign operatives believed, without much evidence, that undecided voters would eventually break in their favor. Because the thought of a Trump presidency was too horrifying for them to contemplate, they refused to recognize polls showing a close race, ignored the Midwest and sauntered their candidate off to Arizona in the final days.

Of course, currently the ideas that Bannon fought for appear to be on the wane, leading him to declare upon leaving the White House that the "Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over." [ Weekly Standard, August 18, 2017]

But this is probably somewhat of an exaggeration. I doubt that Bannon laments the fact that the current president is Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio. But it has proved much more difficult to change government policy than to win an election. Unlike GOP strategists, the Deep State appears to know what it is doing.

In his memoir Nixon's White House Wars , Pat Buchanan writes about how, despite playing a pivotal role in the election of 1968, the conservative movement was mostly shut out of high-level jobs:

Then there was the painful reality with which the right had to come to terms. Though our movement had exhibited real power in capturing the nomination for Barry Goldwater and helping Nixon crush the Rockefeller-Romney wing of the Republican Party, and though we were

playing a pivotal role in the election of 1968, the conservative movement was mostly shut out of high-level jobs:

Then there was the painful reality with which the right had to come to terms. Though our movement had exhibited real power in capturing the nomination for Barry Goldwater and helping Nixon crush the Rockefeller-Romney wing of the Republican Party, and though we were veterans of a victorious presidential campaign, few of us had served in the executive branch. We lacked titles, resumes, credentials Our pool of experienced public servants who could seamlessly move into top positions was miniscule compared to that of the liberal Democrats who had dominated the capital's politics since FDR arrived in 1933.

History repeated itself in 2016, when Donald Trump would win the presidency on a nationalist platform but find few qualified individuals who could reliably implement his agenda.

If nationalists want to ensure that their next generation of leaders is able to effectively implement the policies they run on, they are going to have to engage in the slow and tedious project of working their way up through powerful institutions.

Bannon may have been and remains an "outsider" to the political Establishment. But nonetheless, throughout his life he has leveraged elite institutions such as Harvard, Goldman Sachs, the Republican Party, and even Hollywood in order to become financially independent and free to pursue his political goals.

If enough of those on the Dissident Right forge a similar path, we can be sure that future nationalist political victories will be less hollow. Jeremy Cooper is a specialist in international politics and an observer of global trends. Follow him at @NeoNeoLiberal .

Clyde Wilson > , August 29, 2017 at 12:29 pm GMT

Is there any evidence that Trump even tried to find the right people to fill the offices?

Jobless > , August 30, 2017 at 6:52 pm GMT

@Clyde Wilson Is there any evidence that Trump even tried to find the right people to fill the offices? Having dabbled ever so slightly in this process in the spring, my impression is that there is a mechanism run largely by lawyers from the big DC law firms (presumably one for each party) who are the gatekeepers for applicants. The result of this system, which I have little doubt that the "Trump Team" did not try to take on (after all, they had only a couple of months to put together the beginnings of a team, and that left little or no time replacing The Swamp Machine ) is that the key positions throughout the administration are largely filled with lawyers from connected law firms. After all, who better to administer the government than lawyers!?!?

At any rate, my experience with the process was: on your marks, get set, nothing. 30 years experience in and around federal government, but not a lawyer. Don't call us, we don't want to talk to you. (I also made clear in my cover letter that the key motivator for my application -- and first ever political contributions -- was Trump and his agenda. In retrospect, this "admission" was probably a kiss of death. I was a Trumpite. Eeeewww!!! (I may well not have been qualified for anything, but I'm SURE I was disqualified by my support for Trump )

The triumph of the Swamp.

Clyde Wilson > , August 30, 2017 at 9:08 pm GMT

We have here perhaps the key to Trump's tragic failure. It was our last shot.

Sep 03, 2017 | www.unz.com

[Sep 03, 2017] Al Gore Advises President Trump To Resign

Media attack on Trump continues unabated...
Sep 03, 2017 | www.msn.com

During a recent interview with LADbible, when Al Gore was asked what advice he would give President Trump, he simply responded, "resign."

[Sep 02, 2017] Washington and Moscow Must Embrace Détente -- Despite Trump by Katrina vanden Heuvel

What Katrina van den Heuvel does not understand is that American imperialism in not compatible with independent, sovereign Russia, only with vassal Yeltsin Russia. that why Russian believe that the USA is trying "regime change" via color revolution in Russia. Obama administration tried this and spend a lot of cash delivered by diplomatic mail on this exercise in 2012. They failed. So the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency" is right in reporting that "the Kremlin apparently believes the United States seeks regime change in Russia."
So as long as the USA continues building global neoliberal empire led from Washington, tensions are hostilities are inevitable
Notable quotes:
"... In Russia, the United States is seen as the aggressor, asserting itself as the global unipower. ..."
"... NATO expansion helped convince Russians that the West regards it as a permanent enemy. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency recently reported that the Kremlin apparently believes the United States seeks regime change in Russia. ..."
"... In fact, each perspective holds more than a grain of truth. ..."
"... The United States has seen itself as the global arbiter, the "indispensable nation," dismissing the legitimacy of any other nation's sphere of influence. ..."
"... Despite all this, two countries possessing over 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons urgently need a working relationship. A working détente requires persistent efforts to find areas of agreement and to settle disputes, rather than a willingness to freeze relations, deepen sanctions and escalate military posturing. ..."
"... At the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia could have joined in building and strengthening a zone of peace in Europe. Instead, the United States expanded NATO right up to Russia's border. ..."
"... An agreement guaranteeing Georgia and Ukraine's independence, committing them to remain nonaligned, outside of NATO and free to join both the EU and the Russian economic bloc, would greatly reduce tensions. Russia and the United States might join in pushing for the full implementation of the Minsk II Accords, providing for an end to violence and greater autonomy for eastern Ukraine. Sanctions relief might be combined with an agreement for an internationally monitored referendum on Crimea's status, under the UN's auspices. ..."
Sep 02, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

On January 26 of this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Clock from 11:57 to 11:58:30 (midnight represents nuclear apocalypse). The Bulletin considers these days more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis, and for good reason. The new cold war between Russia and the United States is punctuated by perilous military face-offs in three arenas: in Syria; in the skies over the Baltic Sea, on Russia's western border with three hundred thousand NATO troops on high alert and both Russia and NATO ramping up deployments and exercises; and in Ukraine.

The rising tensions express totally contradictory perspectives. In the United States, across the political spectrum, Putin is seen as a merciless autocrat with expansionist designs. He's denounced for aggression in Georgia and Ukraine, and for propping up a brutal dictator in Syria. Investigations on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election -- and possible collusion with the Trump campaign -- have generated a continuing media frenzy that poisons any discussion.

In Russia, the United States is seen as the aggressor, asserting itself as the global unipower. When Bill Clinton trampled upon repeated promises and began expanding NATO towards the Russian border, George F. Kennan, the architect of containment, warned of a "tragic mistake." NATO expansion helped convince Russians that the West regards it as a permanent enemy. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency recently reported that the Kremlin apparently believes the United States seeks regime change in Russia.

In fact, each perspective holds more than a grain of truth. Putin does want to reassert Russia's influence on the international stage, and challenge what he sees as America's unipolar delusion. The United States has seen itself as the global arbiter, the "indispensable nation," dismissing the legitimacy of any other nation's sphere of influence. The Pentagon does designate Russia as its leading adversary. The United States has encouraged the "color revolutions" in Georgia and the coup in Ukraine. Both countries have mucked about in the others' internal and electoral politics.

Despite all this, two countries possessing over 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons urgently need a working relationship. A working détente requires persistent efforts to find areas of agreement and to settle disputes, rather than a willingness to freeze relations, deepen sanctions and escalate military posturing.

The first priority for the United States should be reengaging Russia in efforts to reduce nuclear arsenals, and to deny terrorists access to nuclear materials. They should be working together -- as they did in the P5+1 negotiations over Iranian nuclear-weapons capacity -- to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

The United States and Russia also have a shared concern about the terrorist threat posed by ISIS, Al Qaeda and their offshoots. In Syria, cooperation with Russia may be the only way to stabilize the nation so it can eventually recover from its horrific war. The United States has no intention of committing the troops and resources needed to overthrow Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. Washington would do well to increase cooperation with Russia in the war against ISIS, and seek joint guarantees of a cease-fire that gives the Syrian people a respite from six years of brutal warfare, and begins to slow the refugee flows destabilizing Europe.

At the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia could have joined in building and strengthening a zone of peace in Europe. Instead, the United States expanded NATO right up to Russia's border. That expansion will be virtually impossible to undo, but the United States and Russia could reverse the buildup of troops and stand down the military exercises on both sides of the Russian border without any formal agreement.

An agreement guaranteeing Georgia and Ukraine's independence, committing them to remain nonaligned, outside of NATO and free to join both the EU and the Russian economic bloc, would greatly reduce tensions. Russia and the United States might join in pushing for the full implementation of the Minsk II Accords, providing for an end to violence and greater autonomy for eastern Ukraine. Sanctions relief might be combined with an agreement for an internationally monitored referendum on Crimea's status, under the UN's auspices.

... ... ...

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation.

[Sep 02, 2017] The Costs of Ignoring Russia by Dimitri K. Simes

This is extremely week article. The problem here is the logic of neoliberalism requires crushing Russian attempt to restore sovereignty and open the country to multinationals on multinationals, not Russia. terms.
In this sense the USA play role of armed enforcer of neoliberal values around the globe and as long as it continues to play this role normalization of relations with Russia without color revolution (that Obama administration attempted to launch in 2012 but failed) are somewhat unrealistic.
Sep 02, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

...failing to arrest the downward spiral in U.S.-Russia relations poses real dangers. The most dramatic, if least likely, is a direct military confrontation leading to uncontrollable escalation and potentially a global catastrophe. Many dismiss this risk, arguing that neither the United States nor Russia wants to commit suicide and would show restraint; however, the same assumption that the other side would pull back at the last moment contributed to World War I. The truth is that no one knows what might happen if U.S. and Russian warplanes started shooting at each another or if American cruise missiles hit Russian bases in Syria. Russia could retaliate asymmetrically, perhaps in eastern Ukraine...

...Russia could double down on its emerging alignment with China. Russia and China maintain strong mutual suspicions, and China is a much stronger country by most measures. Although both are interested in normal relations with the United States, and would be reluctant to go too far in ways that could lead to a serious conflict, they are fearful of and, indeed, irritated with Washington. They are drawing closer economically and militarily, and are increasingly coordinating their foreign policies. Moscow and Beijing are concerned over American-led encirclement and, specifically, expanding U.S. antimissile systems that threaten their retaliatory capabilities. At a minimum, the worse the U.S.-Russia relationship, the more a rising China can count on Russian support in any disagreement with the United States. Emboldening China in this fashion cannot be in the U.S. national interest.

... ... ...

The obstacles to seeking a new approach to Russia are so numerous and momentous that many may feel that even trying is not a good use of President Trump's time, energy and limited political capital. Yet if it goes badly wrong, the U.S.-Russia relationship could end in nuclear conflict.

Dimitri K. Simes, publisher and CEO of the National Interest, is president of the Center for the National Interest.

[Sep 02, 2017] Cutting Iran out of SWIFT, while caused some harm, does not have the effects the USA expected. Russia is probably better prepared now such move and can borrow some Iran experience using smartphones as a substitute to credit cards, at least domestically

Looks like the USA now playing into Chinese hands...
Notable quotes:
"... The USA is accustomed to ignoring the law and pressing ahead when it suits it to do that, but the deciding factor was that sanctions and cutting Iran out of SWIFT were ineffective at achieving US aims. Iran suffered, but it was not stopped, and the whole exercise mobilized feeling against the USA. ..."
Sep 02, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren , September 2, 2017 at 1:58 am

CGTN, Published on 29 Aug 2017

Russia is collaborating with China to create an alternative of SWIFT system for international payments, along with establishing domestic credit card.

Zerg , September 2, 2017 at 7:21 am
They can create alternative for payments with each other but it not alternative because they need swift for interbank exchange with banks in swift system anyway.

Domestically it can be replaced with whatever homebrew solution and not issue, but it needed for interneational tranasactions, this is the point.

And If you declared to be "cut" out of swift, it will not stop you for using it domestically but swift system international banks will just stop any transactions with you by whatewer means.

All this talk is overhyped, will Germany pay for gas by trucks with cash or what. When we at this point – cards is last of your problem. So swift will stay in any case. mir is old news

marknesop , September 2, 2017 at 1:06 pm
The idea was floated to cut Russia out of SWIFT, but it was quickly stepped on by the Americans themselves. Cutting Iran out of SWIFT was a transparently self-interested move by the United States to discourage an oil brokerage which avoided use of the US dollar as a benchmark – don't want people getting ideas. Western states which got on board were sharply rebuked when the EU's General Court ruled that sanctioning two Iranian banks was illegal and that they must be compensated for their losses, as no proof was offered that they were doing business on behalf of 'the regime'.

The USA is accustomed to ignoring the law and pressing ahead when it suits it to do that, but the deciding factor was that sanctions and cutting Iran out of SWIFT were ineffective at achieving US aims. Iran suffered, but it was not stopped, and the whole exercise mobilized feeling against the USA.

You could times that by ten in Russia's case. So they won't do it. But Russia becoming fiscally more self-reliant and the international business community becoming more suspicious of American manipulating are overall good things.

And two large countries agreeing to remove the US dollar from their bi-national trades is a blow to dollar dominance.

Patient Observer , September 2, 2017 at 2:04 pm
Presumably a BRICS SWIFT could be developed to facilitate transactions among the members. It could be part of the effort to reduce the dominance of the US dollar in international trade. Presumably, other countries can be added resulting in more of a global payment system.

As a total novice in such matters, I can state with complete confidence it will be a likely next step in the growing financial power of Russia, China and like-mined nations.

[Sep 02, 2017] Iranians and Their iPhones, and the Futility of Sanctions by Paul R. Pillar

Does the USA tried to replay Iranian sanctions round on Russia? As Russia depends on the USA companies for many technologies this can be painful.
Notable quotes:
"... That Apple's move is the result of an abundance of fear and caution is indicated by Google taking a different tack. Google has done nothing to remove Iranian-developed apps for Android phones from its Play store, and it permits Iranian developers to publish their apps in Iran provided that they do not involve purchases. ..."
"... But with the American political impulse to keep imposing still more anti-Iran sanctions, and with a resulting system of sanctions that is so complicated it can be fully understood only by a few experts in Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, many companies will take Apple's more cautious approach. ..."
"... it stimulates a turn to Iranian alternatives such as an internal Iranian online payment system. ..."
"... the overall effect on the Iranian economy is to weaken portions of that economy that are outside the regime and to strengthen the regime's influence over other parts, including the economic activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the sanctions mean more lost business for American companies. While Apple is prevented from selling its phones in Iran, one of its biggest competitors, Samsung, opened earlier this year a large sales center in Iran. ..."
Sep 02, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

U.S.-imposed economic sanctions often have been misdirected and counterproductive, but a new sanctions-related development involving Iran is especially illustrative.

First, some background. Iran has been a favorite target of American politicians who use sanctions as a vehicle for expressing disapproval for a regime, with little apparent thought about the actual effects of the sanctions. Since the entering into force of the nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which in the eyes of most governments successfully resolved the issue of a possible Iranian nuclear weapon, the United States has been alone among major powers in continuing to sanction Iran. The sanctions that the United States has piled on Iran for years have become so extensive and complex, and the penalties for violation so severe, that many American companies have erred on the side of caution by forgoing business opportunities in Iran even more than is legally required. The fear of God, or rather of the U.S. Treasury Department, has made them wary of inadvertently stepping across some unclear line.

The new development is that Apple is attempting to shut down apps developed by Iranians for use on iPhones inside Iran. The sanctions prohibit Apple from selling its phones in Iran, but millions of the popular devices have been smuggled into the country from places such as Dubai and Hong Kong. Hence the market for apps that Iranians find useful, such as an Uber-like ride-hailing service known as Snapp. Apple is removing Iranian-developed apps, including Snapp, from its App Stores. The company issued a message to Iranian developers in which it attributed the move to "U.S. sanctions regulations".

That Apple's move is the result of an abundance of fear and caution is indicated by Google taking a different tack. Google has done nothing to remove Iranian-developed apps for Android phones from its Play store, and it permits Iranian developers to publish their apps in Iran provided that they do not involve purchases. Maybe Google is on firm legal ground. But with the American political impulse to keep imposing still more anti-Iran sanctions, and with a resulting system of sanctions that is so complicated it can be fully understood only by a few experts in Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, many companies will take Apple's more cautious approach.

Impeding the full use by Iranians of their iPhones does absolutely nothing to weaken the Iranian regime, to punish it for behavior we don't like, to deter it from future behavior we might not like, or to accomplish any other ostensible purpose of the sanctions that have led Apple to do what it is doing. It only takes ordinary Iranians farther away from fully enjoying an American product with an American operating system, and it stimulates a turn to Iranian alternatives such as an internal Iranian online payment system.

As with many of the U.S. sanctions, the overall effect on the Iranian economy is to weaken portions of that economy that are outside the regime and to strengthen the regime's influence over other parts, including the economic activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

An instructive irony of Apple removing apps that ordinary Iranians use is that recently Apple removed apps that ordinary Chinese were using to circumvent government censorship and gain use to non-Chinese internet sites. The Iranian regime, like the Chinese regime, blocks the use of some popular Western-based social media (although the Iranian telecommunications minister has hinted that some of these restrictions may be dropped).

The difference is that in one case Apple is responding to pressure from the Chinese government, while in the other case it is responding to pressure not from Iran but instead from the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, the sanctions mean more lost business for American companies. While Apple is prevented from selling its phones in Iran, one of its biggest competitors, Samsung, opened earlier this year a large sales center in Iran.

[Sep 02, 2017] US Warns Russia Relationship in a Downward Spiral

Sep 02, 2017 | news.antiwar.com

US Warns Russia Relationship in a 'Downward Spiral' US Officials Say Russia Started It

Jason Ditz Posted on August 31, 2017 August 31, 2017 Categories News Tags Russia , State Department , Trump The US State Department has admitted in its statement on the US closing the Russian Consulate in San Francisco that the move comes amid a "downward spiral in our relationship." This is an unusual admission that relations are both at an all-time low, and continuing to worsen at a rapid pace .

improve relations ," this doesn't seem sincere expectation. Rather, the State Department's comments seem more interested in trying to shift the blame.

The State Department credited itself for only closing one consulate and two annexes, saying they "have chosen to allow the Russian government to maintain some of its annexes" to try to keep the situation getting worse.

One official was quoted as saying that "it is our hope that the Russians will recognize that they were the ones who started the discussion" on facility closures, citing the recent US loss of a warehouse in Moscow and a vacation house.

Absent in all official US comments were the December 2016 US moves to expel Russian diplomats and seize two vacation houses. While Russia couched their closures as retaliation for that, US officials are choosing to ignore December and present today's moves as retaliation for Russia's closures.

The comments about hoping for better relations don't appear realistic, as the closure of a consulate is a major step forward in escalation of tensions, and will almost certain oblige Russia to take further moves. These tit-for-tat measures show no sign of ending any time soon. The best we can hope is that it doesn't further escalate.

[Sep 02, 2017] Moscow summons US Ambassador to submit protest note over diplomatic downsizing

Notable quotes:
"... "We consider the planned illegal search of Russian diplomatic premises in the absence of Russian officials and the threat we have received to break down the door of the building as an aggressive action, which the US intelligence service may use to orchestrate an anti-Russian provocation by planting compromising items," the statement also said. ..."
Sep 02, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Perimetr | Sep 2, 2017 11:56:25 AM | 15

US reportedly preparing to forcibly enter Russian trade mission in DC to "search" it

http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/09/breaking-moscow-summons-us-ambassador.html?m=1

BREAKING: Moscow summons US Ambassador to submit protest note over diplomatic downsizing
September 2, 2017 - Fort Russ News - Paul Antonopoulos

Russia has call for the deputy chief of mission of the US Embassy in Moscow, Anthony F. Godfrey, to submit a protest letter over US plans to search the Russian trade mission in Washington, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement just made moments ago.

The statement revealed that Russian diplomats have been denied access to the trade mission building despite being owned by Russia and protected by diplomatic immunity. Because of this gross violation of diplomatic immunity, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated that:

"The US authorities must stop the gross violations of international law and refuse to encroach on the immunity of Russia's diplomatic institutions. Otherwise we reserve the right to reciprocate on the basis of reciprocity."

"We consider the planned illegal search of Russian diplomatic premises in the absence of Russian officials and the threat we have received to break down the door of the building as an aggressive action, which the US intelligence service may use to orchestrate an anti-Russian provocation by planting compromising items," the statement also said.

This was triggered when days ago the US ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in San Francisco and the downsizing of its diplomatic presence in New York City and Washington DC.

[Sep 02, 2017] No Russian Hacking In Durham Election - NY Times Report Belies Its Headline

NYT = neocon/neolib fear mongering and neo-McCarthyism.
If we assume that Russians can control election machine, the question arise about the CIA role in the US elections. They are much more powerful and that's their home turf. And they can pretend to be Russians of Chinese at will. Then they can cry "Thief" to divert attention. Does this that promoting Russia hacking story they implicitly reveal to us that elections are controlled by Deep State and electronic voting machines and voter rosters are just a tool to this end. They allow to get rid of human vote counting and that alone makes hijacking of the election results really easy. machine magically calculates the votes and you are done. As Stalin said it doesn't matter how people are voting, what matters is who is calculating the votes.
Dems should concentrate on removing neoliberal/Clinton wing of the Party from the leadership and making it at lease "A New Deal" Party, not sold to Wall Steer bunch of fear mongering neocons. Anti-Russian campaign is designed to sabotage those efforts.
Notable quotes:
"... All of the reported troubles are simple computer hiccups that would not have occurred in a more reasonable election system build on paper and pencil balloting. All the computer troubles have various innocent causes ..."
"... Moreover, there was no chance that these troubles in one district would have effected the general election. There was thereby no motive for anyone to hack these systems: ..."
"... The NYT headline is an outrageous lie. It promotes as causal fact completely unproven interference and troubles for which, as the article notes, plenty of other reason might exist. It is politically irresponsible. Only two out of ten people read beyond the headlines. Even fewer will read down to paragraph five and recognize that the headline lies. All others will have been willfully misled by the editors of the New York Times. ..."
"... The whole "Russian hacking" issue is a series of big lies designed and promulgated by Democratic partisans (specifically Brennan and Clapper who were then at the head of U.S. intelligence services) ..."
"... The New York Times, and other media, present these lies as facts while not providing any evidence for them. In many cases they hide behind " intelligence reports " without noting suspiciously mealymouthed caveats in those subjective "assessments" of obviously partisan authors. Hard facts contradicting their conclusions are simply ignored and not reported at all. ..."
"... "Never trust a computer with anything important." I have been relentlessly campaigning against the use of voting machines, particularly voting computers, since 2004. I have demanded openly hand counted paper ballots in hundreds of blog posts, and even have a website promoting this. ..."
"... At the end of the day it is obvious that the Deep State Syndicate controls the machines, and thus the elections. And then they have the nerve to demand that we must beware of "Russian hacking"! ..."
"... The whole Russia stole my homework meme is getting fairly old and it makes me wonder what they are really hiding with this ongoing obfuscation of the facts......if the drums of war are loud enough will they drown out the calls for justice by any of the current or recent politicians? ..."
Sep 02, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

The last piece pointed out that the NYT headline " U.N. Peacekeepers in Lebanon Get Stronger Inspection Powers for Hezbollah Arms " was 100% fake news. The UNIFIL U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon were not getting any stronger inspection powers. The relevant UN Security Resolution, which renewed UNIFIL's mandate, had made no such changes. No further inspection powers were authorized.

Today we find another similarly lying headline in the New York Times.

Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny

By NICOLE PERLROTH, MICHAEL WINES and MATTHEW ROSENBERGSEPT. 1, 2017

The piece is about minor technical election trouble in a district irrelevant to the presidential election outcome. Contradicting the headline it notes in paragraph five:

There are plenty of other reasons for such breakdowns -- local officials blamed human error and software malfunctions -- and no clear-cut evidence of digital sabotage has emerged, much less a Russian role in it
"We don't know if any of the problems were an accident, or the random problems you get with computer systems, or whether it was a local hacker, or actual malfeasance by a sovereign nation-state," said Michael Daniel, who served as the cybersecurity coordinator in the Obama White House. "If you really want to know what happened, you'd have to do a lot of forensics, a lot of research and investigation, and you may not find out even then."

...

the firm had not conducted any malware analysis or checked to see if any of the e-poll book software was altered, adding that the report produced more questions than answers.

All of the reported troubles are simple computer hiccups that would not have occurred in a more reasonable election system build on paper and pencil balloting. All the computer troubles have various innocent causes. The officials handling these systems deny that any "Russian hacking" was involved. Moreover, there was no chance that these troubles in one district would have effected the general election. There was thereby no motive for anyone to hack these systems:

Despite the disruptions, a record number of votes were cast in Durham, following a pattern there of overwhelming support for Democratic presidential candidates , this time Hillary Clinton.

The NYT headline is an outrageous lie. It promotes as causal fact completely unproven interference and troubles for which, as the article notes, plenty of other reason might exist. It is politically irresponsible. Only two out of ten people read beyond the headlines. Even fewer will read down to paragraph five and recognize that the headline lies. All others will have been willfully misled by the editors of the New York Times.

This scheme is the gist of ALL reporting about the alleged "Russian hacking" of the U.S. presidential election. There exists zero evidence that Russia was involved in anything related to it. No evidence -none at all- links the publishing of DNC papers or of Clinton counselor Podesta's emails to Russia. Thousands of other circumstances, people or political entities might have had their hands in the issue. There is zero evidence that Russia was involved at all.

The whole "Russian hacking" issue is a series of big lies designed and promulgated by Democratic partisans (specifically Brennan and Clapper who were then at the head of U.S. intelligence services) to:

  • cover up for Hillary Clinton's and the DNC's failure in the election and to
  • build up Russia as a public enemy to justify unnecessary military spending and other imperial racketeering.

The New York Times, and other media, present these lies as facts while not providing any evidence for them. In many cases they hide behind " intelligence reports " without noting suspiciously mealymouthed caveats in those subjective "assessments" of obviously partisan authors. Hard facts contradicting their conclusions are simply ignored and not reported at all.

Posted by b on September 1, 2017 at 11:26 PM | Permalink

WG | Sep 2, 2017 1:27:08 AM | 1

Look at what happened today in San Francisco - after ordering the Russians to shut down their embassy there in an unreasonably short timeframe, they then had the fire department respond to smoke coming out of the chimney of the building. Conveniently this brings attention to the situation and continues the narrative of 'ongoing conflict' to the American people.

The end of this story has already decided. It didn't matter who won the election, it doesn't matter that the people chose the candidate who wanted peace, and it doesn't matter that there wasn't any Russian election hacking.

blues | Sep 2, 2017 1:37:27 AM | 2
"Never trust a computer with anything important." I have been relentlessly campaigning against the use of voting machines, particularly voting computers, since 2004. I have demanded openly hand counted paper ballots in hundreds of blog posts, and even have a website promoting this.

At the end of the day it is obvious that the Deep State Syndicate controls the machines, and thus the elections. And then they have the nerve to demand that we must beware of "Russian hacking"!

Get strategic hedge simple score voting today!

psychohistorian | Sep 2, 2017 1:59:38 AM | 3
The whole Russia stole my homework meme is getting fairly old and it makes me wonder what they are really hiding with this ongoing obfuscation of the facts......if the drums of war are loud enough will they drown out the calls for justice by any of the current or recent politicians?

Yes, of course.....thats the plan.....is it working?

If not, invade Venezuela on some pretext and claim ownership of their oil....someone has to make Israel look reasonable.

Bob | Sep 2, 2017 2:01:39 AM | 4
What a bizarre article.
"We don't know if any of the problems were an accident, or the random problems you get with computer systems, or whether it was a local hacker, or actual malfeasance by a sovereign nation-state," said Michael Daniel, who served as the cybersecurity coordinator in the Obama White House. "If you really want to know what happened, you'd have to do a lot of forensics, a lot of research and investigation, and you may not find out even then."

...

the firm had not conducted any malware analysis or checked to see if any of the e-poll book software was altered, adding that the report produced more questions than answers.

They don't even know what happened. Best blame it on the Russians anyway.

Perimtr | Sep 2, 2017 3:07:52 AM | 5
The "paper of record" is just another outlet for the Ministry of Propaganda.
Kalen | Sep 2, 2017 3:22:15 AM | 6
B of course realizes that the headline of an article is almost never written by author but by an editor.

Such as blatant nonsense at NYT and elsewhere I think is possible when author wanting to get published on good NYT page would lie to editor about its contents.

Of course Editor is no idiot and in old American tradition of pretending and deniability does not read it to cover his/her butt and hence this obvious crap get published epitomizing a failure {actually Orwellian success] of editor to vet the paper, as long as bosses are happy with insinuations however baseless.

Shakesvshav | Sep 2, 2017 3:31:33 AM | 7
The Guardian still sees mileage in Pussy Riot, or at least one former member: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/01/pussy-riot-mariya-alyokhina-russian-activist-jailed-white-house
Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 2, 2017 7:21:37 AM | 8
...
Of course Editor is no idiot and in old American tradition of pretending and deniability does not read it to cover his/her butt and hence this obvious crap get published epitomizing a failure {actually Orwellian success] of editor to vet the paper, as long as bosses are happy with insinuations however baseless.
Posted by: Kalen | Sep 2, 2017 3:22:15 AM | 6

I like the theory that NYT's sub-editors are too lazy/busy/careless to read the articles they're paid to summarise and add an appealing headline. It's certainly food for thought when pondering possible Chain Of Command issues within the MSM.

When I was a regular lurker at What's Left, one notable aspect was the frequency with which Gowans' most stunning revelations were sourced from the nether regions of articles published in the NYT, WaPo et al.

Lawrence Smith | Sep 2, 2017 9:59:42 AM | 9
What this all speaks of is ineptitude and malfeasance at all levels of government. Lies covering more lies. The only things that gets done in Washington iare covering asses and those, like their wars without end, are complete and utter failures. That the Clinton mob are sore losers and press on with delegitimization of a clown president who, unlike the wicked witch of the West, feigned disinterest in war and won what's left of a hollowed out presidency is theatre of the absurd par excellence. Build the fence around the beltway and keep the psychopaths in the asylum in.
doug | Sep 2, 2017 10:44:46 AM | 10
Moreover, there was no chance that these troubles in one district would have effected the general election. There was thereby no motive for anyone to hack these systems:

Plenty wrong with that logic...gosh...give it some thought...a tiny bit will help there...

james | Sep 2, 2017 11:01:34 AM | 12
yeah - more stories on pussy riot.. a story like how pussy riot ate george soros, or putins breakfast would be good..... when i read the nyt, i want a story filled with lies and deception... i'm running away from reality and heading straight for the nyt, lol..
Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 2, 2017 11:20:17 AM | 14
...
Plenty wrong with that logic...gosh...give it some thought...a tiny bit will help there...
Posted by: doug | Sep 2, 2017 10:44:46 AM | 10

It would only be a logical fallacy if it said... "Moreover, there was no chance that these troubles in more than one district would have effected the general election." ...but it doesn't, so it isn't.

[Sep 01, 2017] America and Russia Same Old, Same Old

It is interesting to see posts of neocon Gary below and reactions of other commenters to his nonsense...
Notable quotes:
"... Angela Stent directs the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University and is the author of ..."
"... The "smaller or weaker" states you mention had better not involve themselves in a campaign to demonize Russia and everything Russian-but above all they should try to ..."
"... Not attack it directly like Georgia did in 2008 ..."
"... Attack it indirectly as Ukraine did after the Maidan coup in 2014 ..."
"... In both cases an appropriate and symmetric response was handed to them by Russia. You know, being small or weak does not mean that you are virtuous ..."
"... Gary believes America is protected by a comic book superhero version of Jesus that will magically intercept all of Russia's ICBM's. These people are crazies. ..."
"... Before to come to conclusions, remember please about jar of white powder Colin Powell. Where are the Iraqi nuclear weapons? When Russia invaded Using the word "invaded" compare the situation in Crimea and Iraq, or Libya. Just think about it for leisure. ..."
"... Crimea is a done deal. It is more likely that Russia would give Moscow than Crimea. As for the Donbass rebels, sure, as long as the Kiev regime ceases its brutal repression tactics across the rest of Ukraine, I believe an understanding where Donbass integrates somehow with Ukraine could be reached. ..."
"... Putin certainly came intending to negate the disasters of the Yeltsin years. He has, and Russians widely admire him for that. However, the assertion that he wants to return to the USSR and its overpowering of all neighbors is neocon dogma, not based in anything Putin has said or done. ..."
"... Putin actually said this: "Those who do not regret that the USSR has fallen apart have no heart, those who want it back have no brain" ..."
"... Every administration since 1992 has expanded NATO eastward, up to the border of Russia itself. NATO is a nuclear-armed military alliance. How would we feel if the Warsaw Pact was deploying thousands of soldiers and missiles along our southern and northern borders? ..."
"... Why are american journalists always inventing fake desires for Putin and Russia. It is like saying the US wants world domination and to defeat Russia and China. Well, it would be nice if it happened, but we are not working toward it, are we? ..."
Sep 01, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

What interests do the United States and Russia have in common? Both bear a unique responsibility as the two nuclear superpowers and share a commitment to preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but when it comes to defining exactly what they mean by that, they cannot always agree. Both agree that terrorism is a common threat, but often have different definitions of who is a terrorist, as is clear from the difficulties they have had cooperating in the fight against ISIS in Syria. And, unlike the United States' relationship with China, for instance, it has limited common economic interests with Russia, and hence fewer stakeholders to promote continued and improved relations. Russia's main exports are hydrocarbons and military hardware, neither of which the United States needs. And the difficult investment climate and weakness of the rule of law!as well as the current sanctions regime!act as a brake on further U.S. investment.

Despite the lack of common interests, there are issues on which the United States and Russia must and can work together. The war in Syria, with its catastrophic human toll, is the most pressing issue. Beyond the current cease-fire, Washington and Moscow must continue to deconflict air operations and to provide humanitarian relief. The fact that bilateral military ties have resumed is a hopeful sign. The situation in North Korea could also be an avenue for cooperation, although Russia opposes putting further pressure on Kim Jong-un. And opening talks about designing rules of the road in the cyber sphere would be desirable.

Ukraine remains another major stumbling block to improved ties. The appointment of Ambassador Kurt Volker as special envoy for Ukraine is a welcome development. But the prospects for the Minsk agreement being fulfilled are not good. Secretary Tillerson has hinted that there may be a way forward outside of Minsk, but that will require imagination and determination on all sides to resolve the conflict.

Given the fundamental differences between the two sides on a host of issues, and the lack of trust, the U.S.-Russian relationship will at best remain a limited partnership, with cooperation on some issues of mutual interest, and disagreement or competition on others. Things are unlikely to look so different under a Trump administration from the way they did under the Obama administration, barring some major new revelation about Russian activities during the election campaign last year. That should not be surprising, since the basic issues that confront the United States and Russia have not really changed that much over the past decade. Given these realities, skilled management of a challenging relationship and avoiding a deterioration in ties are probably the most to be expected for the foreseeable future.

Angela Stent directs the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University and is the author of The Limits of Partnership: U.S-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century .

Gary -> Guest , August 18, 2017 9:52 PM

Are you saying that the smaller or weaker states on Russia's western borders must submit to Russia's control as during the Cold War? Sorry, but we are not going to let Russia bully or threaten them. They made the decision to join the NATO precisely out of distrust and fear of Russia, confirmed by Putin's belligerence and aggression in Georgia and Ukraine. Blame it on Putin's nostalgia for Russia's domination over Eastern Europe and the occupation of the Baltic states.

Roy Tyrell -> Gary , August 19, 2017 3:19 PM

Who is "we" Gary?

I'm a native born American citizen (as is my family - many generations - going back to 1850) and a voter.

No one in my Family will ever take up arms for the glorification of neocons.

CCCP -> Gary , August 20, 2017 8:20 PM

They made the decision to join the NATO In some countries (new NATO members) had a referendum on this subject?
But Crimea held a referendum on joining Russia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia held a referendum on independence and fought for their independence.
If you refer to the decision of the people, then do it always, not only when you want it.

Drinas -> Gary , August 24, 2017 6:33 AM

The "smaller or weaker" states you mention had better not involve themselves in a campaign to demonize Russia and everything Russian-but above all they should try to :

A) Not attack it directly like Georgia did in 2008

B) Attack it indirectly as Ukraine did after the Maidan coup in 2014

In both cases an appropriate and symmetric response was handed to them by Russia. You know, being small or weak does not mean that you are virtuous .

Youry Gromadsky -> Guest , August 19, 2017 2:28 PM

Yes! You right 1000000$

Gary G9 -> Guest , August 19, 2017 6:28 AM

US treats Russia a major power, not a minor country. We've got a lot of special bilateral agreements on nukes and other things. When Russia invaded Ukraine/Crimea we didnt do a Desert Storm operation or even send defensive weapons to Ukraine. Ditto with Georgia 2008, Syria in 2016. US and West knows these aren't worth risking confrontation. Russia still has its Security Council UN seat. So, I think we are "somewhere in the middle", as you say.

Russia's leaders want to dominate their smaller neighbors without the West criticising them harshly, and they want to invest their klepto-wealth in the West's safe banking and real estate world so that a future Russian leader can't re-steal it. They will probably succeed in getting one or these goals, but not both. We Westerners love to criticize bogeyman, and Russia is still more interesting in that role than the Chinese. But at least a bogeyman is respected, not ignored. Until Russia becomes part of the West, and not its own Eurasian civ, this is the best we can all hope for.

Roy Tyrell -> Guest , August 19, 2017 3:22 PM

Gary believes America is protected by a comic book superhero version of Jesus that will magically intercept all of Russia's ICBM's. These people are crazies.

Gary G9 -> Guest , August 20, 2017 2:18 AM

We Agree - that's my point. We don't treat Russia like Iraq, Panama, Libya.

CCCP -> Gary G9 , August 20, 2017 8:08 PM

Before to come to conclusions, remember please about jar of white powder Colin Powell. Where are the Iraqi nuclear weapons? When Russia invaded Using the word "invaded" compare the situation in Crimea and Iraq, or Libya. Just think about it for leisure.

Gary G9 -> CCCP , August 20, 2017 9:20 PM

How would you like me to think about Russia military intervention in southern Ukraine (i.e. Crimea), and its involvement supporting with the separatists in SW Ukraine? Are you saying these these events not happen and continue to happen? Are you saying the reporting from those areas are some sort of Western media conspiracy against pacifist Russia?

Sergey Titkov -> Gary G9 , August 21, 2017 3:58 AM

First of all most of western reporters have never been to Donbass or Crimea. They usually stay in Kiev or on Ukrainian territory close to the border with DNR/ LNR. Some of them just copy/paste each other's nonsense. If RF was involved in a conflict there would have been no Ukrainian as state in a week (remember Georgian conflict?).

There are "specialists" in DNR/LNR, nothing more. I've got some relatives there so I need neither Russian nor western media to tell me what's really going on there.

About Crimea try asking people from there or someone who has really been there recently. I guarantee that if you tell locals about "the occupation" they'll just laugh in your face.

Gary G9 -> Sergey Titkov , August 21, 2017 5:25 AM

I don't think we're saying different things. You seem to think that I think that a million RF troops and thousands of tanks are in Ukraine. I never said that, nor did I say anything about an occupation of Crimea. I said "intervention" in Crimea, and continued military support of separatists in SW Ukraine.

I guess the morale of the story is never give up your nukes, and never trust the Russians. Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Sweden should create their own independent nuclear deterrent so they aren't at the mercy of Russia, and aren't reliant on a permanent US umbrella.

Question: Why haven't you guys "intervened" in Odessa yet? Most reports I hear are that a majority of population are Russian, so you would welcomed with open arms, just like Crimea. Why are you letting your Russian-speaking brethren wallow in Ukrainian corruption and Western decadence?

Sergey Titkov -> Gary G9 , August 22, 2017 7:54 AM

Well, about Odessa it's not quite true. There is a Russian minority, they could have held two referendums as people did in Crimea (on independence from Ukraine and another one on accession to RF) but no-one would ever let them since the city is very well guarded.

Besides people are very much afraid 'cause they remember what so called "patriots" did few years ago (about 50 people burned alive). Now we come to the nuclear question. Guess what will happen if mindless nationalistic ukropithecus government gets its bloody hands on this tech (they are now talking that Rostov and Kuban' is there territory).

There will be trouble, 'cause in that case we will have to interfere in a full scale. Other countries you've mentioned will never even try to get the tech cause it is far cheaper to cry in hysterics asking US troops to defend them (they have succeeded in this). You could give them a few bombs, pols now know how to use those. But I doubt you ever will. And we do not have a million in the army. It is better to have a medium size but a highly professional army and that's what we aim for.

P.S. In some time there will be riots not only in Odessa but in all cities of Ukraine. They used to have a thief for a president, now they have thieves and murderers.

Gary G9 -> Sergey Titkov , August 22, 2017 8:57 AM

Yes, yes, of course, the Ukrainians are so much more corrupt and murderous than Russia's competent and loving government. Its a great wonder why they wanted to become independent country 25 years ago and a mystery that they haven't overthrown their corrupt leaders and asked to re-join Mother Russia.

The only possible explanation must be that the CIA has bribed its leaders and brainwashed the Ukraine population with anti-Russia propaganda, including that fairy tale about how Moscow starved 5 or 10 million of their grandparents in the 1930s. Ha hahahahah.

Come on Sergey, give me a break. I appreciate your insights about Odessa, but Russians should stop the propaganda that Ukrainians are like children and incapable of self-government.

Sergey Titkov -> Gary G9 , August 23, 2017 6:31 AM

You didn't get what I was trying to say. Every Ukrainian government was corrupt (in some way or another), but none was killing its own people, none was making the 2nd Ward War criminals their national heroes, none was blocking media, arresting and killing jurnalists, none except this one.

About their "independence": remind me what was Nuland and McCain doing there during maidan?

What was she discussing on the phone with Jim "the lord of Ukraine" Payete? What was Jo Biden's son doing there? And it is just a coincidence that in the SBU building in Kiev there are two floors with CIA personnel, and SBU agents are not permitted there, isn't it? You do not need to brainwash people a lot 'cause there are pretty many rationalists in western Ukraine. You just need to help them to come to power, all the rest they'll do themselves. I wish Ukraine could be a sovereign and neutral state, but it became a US vassal, an anti-Russian puppet. Remember who said this: "Samosa is a son of a ..., but he is our son of a ..." )? This is a huge political game.

And for God sake we do not want them to become a part of RF. It is a huge pain in a very well-known part of a body. Would you like for example Honduras to be another US state? I doubt so. And I have no illusions about our government: some of them should be hanging out somewhere in "sunny" Magadan (lots of good prisons there for them).

Sergey Titkov -> Gary G9 , August 23, 2017 6:46 AM

And about that starvation: far more Russians died in southwest of Russia than in Ukraine. This was a crime but not a crime against Ukrainians as a nation. Golodomor is a ukronationalists' and former Hitler's collaborators' lie. It has been around for about 65 years, this is not a new invention.

CCCP -> Gary G9 , August 21, 2017 4:42 PM

You speak as if someone stole your car. You somehow completely forgot about the people who live in Crimea. In the Crimea there was a referendum, 80% of the total adult population voted for joining Russia (I'm talking about the total number, not of those who went to vote).
My friends go every year to rest into Crimea with young children. Would you go for a vacation in Libya, or Iraq? Citizens would surely will make a very warm welcome for you, because you freed them from the bloody dictators and brought democracy...

Drinas , August 18, 2017 3:36 AM

"The appointment of Ambassador Kurt Volker as special envoy for Ukraine is a welcome development."

Sure, what is wrong with appointing a rabid Russophobe like Volker (John "all Russians are evil" McCain) at this position? The first move by Volker was to push for advanced weapon deliveries for Ukraine, thus fueling the now quasi-frozen conflict. Very constructive..

Roy Tyrell -> Drinas , August 19, 2017 3:15 PM

Russia would bulldoze Ukraine if they ever started stepping outside the box with new weapon systems. There would be no Ukraine left to whine about Crimea.

Gary -> Drinas , August 18, 2017 9:55 PM

Just tell Russia to stop supporting the Donbas rebels, negotiate with Ukraine on Crimea and respect the sovereignty of his neighbors. Then we can have mutual respect.

Drinas -> Gary , August 19, 2017 2:48 AM

Crimea is a done deal. It is more likely that Russia would give Moscow than Crimea. As for the Donbass rebels, sure, as long as the Kiev regime ceases its brutal repression tactics across the rest of Ukraine, I believe an understanding where Donbass integrates somehow with Ukraine could be reached.

Till then, they will fight for their freedom. As for mutual respect, how about doing something about rampant russophobia in US media, Hollywood etc? That would be a good start.

Roy Tyrell -> Drinas , August 19, 2017 3:02 PM

I'm an American and do wish to visit Russian Crimea one day. It sounds like you guys are really turning that place into quite a tourist destination (with plenty of military protection). Well done on the Turbines ;-)

Drinas -> Roy Tyrell , August 19, 2017 3:23 PM

You are more than welcome! Summertime is the best season for visiting Crimea. Another tourist attraction is on its way- https://sputniknews.com/rus...

Just don't take pictures of it! :-P Joking aside, I just hope relations will at least normalize soon. The vast majority of Russian people, though somewhat disenchanted, still very much like USA and its people!

Sergey Titkov -> Roy Tyrell , August 21, 2017 4:29 AM

And you (as anyone else) is always welcome. There are still some major problems in Crimea (electricity being turned off from time to time, Kiev regime blocking water supplies and harassing people moving through the border) but they will be solved when the bridge is finished (ukrops will likely try blowing it up so it needs to be well protected). P.S. There was a grand jazz festival in Koktebel recently with quite a number of musicians from the US. It's held every summer.

Roy Tyrell , August 17, 2017 11:10 PM

I'm sorry but America bears the bulk of the blame. This goes all the way back to the breakup of Yugoslavia and the CIA's unmitigated disastrous role in the whole sordid affair. Ending with bombing Serbia - the country that Russia literally went to global war to protect early in the 20th century.

It's all on America and it's unbridled arrogance.

Gary -> Roy Tyrell , August 18, 2017 9:44 PM

BS! The situation with the former Yugoslavia was that Serbia was trying to expand its territory at the expense of Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia, so the Serbs started attacking the non-Serbs there hoping to drive them out and creating Greater Serbia. The Serbs were attacking Sarajevo with anti-aircraft guns, mortars and snipers resulting in death of civilians there. They also massacred over 7,000 Bosnian men and boys at Srebrenica. The UN had enough and authorized the NATO to attack Serbian targets to get them to stop killing and sit down to a peace talk.

You don't get to create an alternative history to suit your biases.

Андрей Соколов -> Gary , August 19, 2017 3:46 AM

These "7000
Bosnian men and boys" (we call these people Islamic terrorists) during their raids from Srebrenica cruelly killed three thousand Serbian women and children.

Is this also an "alternative history"?

Gary -> Андрей Соколов , August 27, 2017 8:14 PM

No, they weren't terrorists. You just pretend that they were to justify murdering them and no, they didn't killed any Serbian women. That is just your invention and YOUR alternative history.

Андрей Соколов -> Gary , August 28, 2017 3:08 AM

Do you think that the Serbs themselves killed their children in order to justify the invasion of Srebrenica?

Mark Thomason , August 18, 2017 12:14 PM

Putin certainly came intending to negate the disasters of the Yeltsin years. He has, and Russians widely admire him for that. However, the assertion that he wants to return to the USSR and its overpowering of all neighbors is neocon dogma, not based in anything Putin has said or done.

Putin has said the opposite, that while the heart may see the end of the USSR as disaster, the head must see that it was the right thing for Russia.

Putin's actions have been reactions, and he has stopped short, as when he pulled back out of Georgia after the lunatics of Georgia attacked Russia, with encouragement from the neocon lunatics of the Bush Admin led by Cheney himself.

Our problems with Russia are real, but they are not what these ideologues pretend.

We could deal with the Russians, to find a level that would feel safe enough for them to cooperate on other issues. Instead, we are set on feeding their paranoia.

Ashok Bhagat -> Mark Thomason , August 27, 2017 10:01 PM

Russia should have gone it and taken Georgia whether they were at it and put Shaskshivilli in prison. One less issue to deal with.

Sergey Titkov -> Mark Thomason , August 21, 2017 4:53 AM

You are right. Putin actually said this: "Those who do not regret that the USSR has fallen apart have no heart, those who want it back have no brain" .

And about Georgia: they attacked and killed our peacekeepers while bombing Tskhinval so literally they stacked RF. Later it was recognised by Heidy Taliaviny and EU parliament.

But no-one seem to care now 'cause we are once again called "aggressors". Quite convenient for some western politicians.

sammagus , August 18, 2017 2:59 PM

Every administration since 1992 has expanded NATO eastward, up to the border of Russia itself. NATO is a nuclear-armed military alliance. How would we feel if the Warsaw Pact was deploying thousands of soldiers and missiles along our southern and northern borders?

This is the only real problem we have with Russia, which is, like most countries we deal with, a more or less capitalistic, and more or less democratic state. There is no fundamental reason we should not be partnering with Russia to manage the difficulties of the current and developing world situation.

Jiri Klouda , August 18, 2017 6:38 PM

Why are american journalists always inventing fake desires for Putin and Russia. It is like saying the US wants world domination and to defeat Russia and China. Well, it would be nice if it happened, but we are not working toward it, are we?

if everyone in the world started making fake claims like this about our aims and then acted based on those fantasies, it would be pretty difficult.

We could of course deny it as much as we would like to, but it would only be taken as confirmation of our nefarious ways. Come on. Can we once take the Russians at their word and just agree that all they want is respect and sovereignty in their own territory and no NATO bases near their borders and just for once base our analysis on the facts rather than fiction?

Gary -> Jiri Klouda , August 18, 2017 10:12 PM

No, we can't take the Russians at their word seriously. They have been lying for so long about their goals in the hope of fooling us into dropping our guard. The former Warsaw Pact countries and the independent Baltic states will stay under the NATO protection that they want until Putin and his ilks leave.

Jiri Klouda -> Gary , August 19, 2017 4:55 PM

Gary, you are absolutely absurd. Just look at the facts. We have lied about every single war since the Cold War ended. The Russians are lying? Look at Trump for fsck sake? Compared to him, Putin is a high moral authority. Seriously, you must thing that people outside of United States are as blind, uncaring and uneducated as the people inside.

Roy Tyrell -> Gary , August 19, 2017 3:07 PM

The public record is too easy to find. It's like asking off-duty soldiers not to see wikileaks because the material is outside their clearance. Absolutely absurdity.

America's fantasy world needs to come to an end.

You have done a heroic effort to makes us all believe in ZENU and the easter bunny though

Sergey Titkov -> Gary , August 21, 2017 5:03 AM

Before speaking about lies look at your own governments starting from Clinton times, take a good look at your media as well. Goebbels would have been pleased. Remember this quotation: "tell as many lies as you can, eventually you will believe them yourself". That is happening now, do not be fooled.

Gary G9 , August 22, 2017 2:59 AM

Why do all these Russians dominate this Comments section? Does National Interest do a lot of advertsing there, or is this some kind of target for their government's disinformation campaign?

Hey Russians - is there some sort of similar Russian-based web publication I can go to give you guys my opinions on GeoPolitics, or would i be wasting my time?

Gary -> Gary G9 , August 27, 2017 8:20 PM

They are probably working at the troll factory in St. Petersburg. It is their duty to divert, deflect and lie about everything, and they have a daily quota to make many nonsensical pro-Russia and anti-American comments.

Airbrush2020 , August 18, 2017 11:38 PM

The author cites "...the difficult investment climate and weakness of the rule of law..." The problem with Russia is the internal climate of being a mafia controlled security state. The rules of the game are much different in Russia. And, given that Russia continuously tries to degrade European alliances, western organizational structures, and faithfully poses a military threat to the west...we can say that we've never had "good" relations with either the USSR or Russia.

[Sep 01, 2017] Is America Losing Its Military Edge to Russia The National Interest Blog

Sep 01, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

don huang , August 31, 2017 12:23 AM

A war with Russia will eventually go nuclear; Russia will be tempted to use the nuke option if they perceive losing the war, and the same goes for the US-led NATO forces. The biggest losers will be the Europeans because the war, if any, is in Europe. NATO is not protecting European security; rather it is serving more for the US's national interests by deploying NATO forces right up to the Russian borders. NATO's relentless recruitment of former USSR's satellite states in eastern Europe would be considered as 'casus belli', inviting aggression rather than deterring it.

Juan Manzano , August 30, 2017 7:47 PM

It's going to be 4/8 booming years for Defense contractors.

Bangash , August 31, 2017 6:07 AM

Very technical and impressive. However, it could have been more suitable if you had made it some balance approach in other words, contrasting measures. This article is actually telling the story against Russian armaments, looking from here as a villain, but where are the American Facts?

Indeed, you should also discuss other side of the coin in order to convey a message before everyone, or at least a novice.

cynicus , August 31, 2017 11:19 PM

Another one sided rubbish article from the American media. Crimea was part of Russia since 1783. In 1954 the President of the USSR gave it to the Ukraine to administer. The majority of the Crimean population, who consider themselves Russian by the way, voted in a 2014 referendum to rejoin Russia.
The billions of dollars Russia spends on arms, around $90 billion, pales in comparison to what America spend which is around $800 billion.
America is very good at bombing other countries that can't fight back, North Korea is not like them, they can fight back and South Korea would suffer, the only solution is to negotiate.

johngaltfla.com , August 30, 2017 7:23 PM

The funny thing is Russia is not ready for an offensive. By 2020, sure, possibly, but not yet. In the mean time our bureaucrats and bungling Pentagon keep trying to acquire weapons for the last war, not the next one.

The scariest part is that Russia has tested its robotic armored vehicles (small versions) in real combat situations in Syria. While we argue about the best vendor for the same.

don huang johngaltfla.com , August 31, 2017 12:44 AM

Whatever the Russians are doing today, the reality is that the USA had done it a long time ago. The Russians are depicted as an enemy for political expedient because it suits the profits of the oil and military industrial conglomerate.

johngaltfla.com don huang , August 31, 2017 6:35 AM

True. And the US is a victim of the "we have to have an enemy" paranoia to maintain the globalist military-industrial complex.

Thomas Fung , August 30, 2017 4:59 PM

It seems to this person that if additional ground troops are indeed needed in Europe, then they should be provided by Europeans, not North Americans.

don huang Thomas Fung , August 31, 2017 12:28 AM

Since it is the Americans that is actively pushing NATO forces to move into the former USSR's satellite states in Eastern Europe it is only reasonable that American troops be leading from the Russian fronts.

[Aug 31, 2017] US orders Russia to close consulate and annexes in diplomatic reprisal

Aug 31, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

The US has ordered Russia to close diplomatic offices in San Francisco, New York and Washington within the next two days, in the latest round of punitive measures between the two countries that began at the end of last year.

The secretary of state Rex Tillerson spoke to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in a phone call on Thursday. Lavrov said Moscow "regrets an escalation of tension not initiated by Russia", according to the state-run RT news channel . A senior US administration official said the call was "professional" and that Lavrov "agreed to the sentiment that it was important to find a way to improve our relations".

No Russians will be expelled in this latest move, and US officials said staff at the offices affected could be reassigned to other Russian diplomatic missions around the country. But they made it clear that the buildings had to be vacated and would have to be sold or have their leases ended.

[Aug 30, 2017] Insurgent Russia is prior target of global oligarchy

Aug 30, 2017 | eadaily.com

Three powerful groups have opposed the oligarchy: the group of insurgents Russia, the group in US led by Mr. Trump, and finally, the group in China led by Mr. Xi. These three groups are now trying to feel out the possibility of making a strategic alliance to overcome the decline. Perhaps, each group would like to keep the old game rules on conditions favorable to it.

Since there are no such conditions, they have to rise against the system. The key link in that revolt against old rules is Russia. It was the first to see that something very muddy is happening and it must be stopped.

Of course, there is no longer the Russia that won the Great Patriotic War. However, present-day Russia is awakening; it has army, a nuclear missile shield.

All these factors taken together can ensure a successful revolt. Russia announced revolt in 2013, when it stopped the US Administration and did not let it destroy Syria. Since that moment, the insurgent Russia is the prior target of the global oligarchy.

[Aug 28, 2017] Bryan MacDonald

Notable quotes:
"... The portal purports to use "600 Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence efforts online" to prove how Moscow is trying to sow seeds of doubt in the Western political system, via the social network. However, the creators won't reveal the users concerned, and results seem to suggest they are mostly members of the US alt-right and alt-left. Meaning this is yet another attempt to pass off American dissent as some Kremlin "Psy-op." Which is beyond ridiculous. ..."
"... Furthermore, the names behind AFSD betray the project's real purpose: to shift blame from internal American and European factors to the convenient Russian bogeyman. Which, of course, suits its financial backers , including the State Department, NATO, and the ubiquitous weapons maker Raytheon. All of whom benefit commercially and politically from strained ties between Moscow and Washington. ..."
"... To achieve these goals they've hired the usual roll call of reliably anti-Russia blowhards. Including Estonian-American politician Ilves Toomas and rent-a-quote talking head Michael McFaul, the 'Mother Theresa of the Russia beat.' Those two are joined by neoconservative windbag William Kristol and ex-CIA chief Michael Morell. ..."
"... The dashboard itself is helmed by a chap named J.M. Berger , who was apparently an expert on ISIS and the Middle East, before discovering the Russia-bashing gravy train this summer. This week, he's taken to the pages of Politico to explain his plaything. What follows is best described as an inept and ignorant form of thrift-store McCarthyism. ..."
"... The examples become ever stranger. Berger bemoans "conspiracy theories seeking to discredit Bana al-Abed, a young girl in Syria who tweeted about the civil war." But it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest the then seven-year-old was manipulated to serve a propaganda effort. Especially after a press interview revealed how the child couldn't understand even rudimentary English, despite issuing hundreds of perfectly crafted tweets in the language. ..."
"... America's state broadcaster's RFE/RL and VOA do in Russia where they laboriously detail the travails of nationalist politicians like Alexei Navalny and their leftist counterparts, such as Sergei Udaltsov. This is what alternative media does in every market, but it seems to be only unusual when "the Russians" are involved. ..."
"... But, not content with mulching around the bottom of the barrel, he reaches into the depths when he states "while the alt-right has a very real base of support in the United States, it also enjoys deep and undisputed ties to Russia, many of which can be found offline in the real world." Amazingly, the link he uses to justify his contention is a Daily Beast article on how American white supremacist Richard Spencer was married to an ethnic Russian. The lady involved has no profile in Russia, doesn't live in the country and is a follower of a fringe philosopher called Alexander Dugin. Who is so far outside the Russian mainstream that he can't even hold down a job in Moscow. ..."
"... Reprinted with permission from RT . ..."
Aug 26, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org
Since the German Marshall Fund of the United States unveiled its "Alliance For Securing Democracy (AFSD)," I've resisted commenting, simply because the lobby group's "Hamilton 68 dashboard" is too preposterous to merit serious analysis.

It has rightly been ridiculed by journalists and activists who never tire of knocking the Kremlin.

The portal purports to use "600 Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence efforts online" to prove how Moscow is trying to sow seeds of doubt in the Western political system, via the social network. However, the creators won't reveal the users concerned, and results seem to suggest they are mostly members of the US alt-right and alt-left. Meaning this is yet another attempt to pass off American dissent as some Kremlin "Psy-op." Which is beyond ridiculous.

Furthermore, the names behind AFSD betray the project's real purpose: to shift blame from internal American and European factors to the convenient Russian bogeyman. Which, of course, suits its financial backers , including the State Department, NATO, and the ubiquitous weapons maker Raytheon. All of whom benefit commercially and politically from strained ties between Moscow and Washington.

To achieve these goals they've hired the usual roll call of reliably anti-Russia blowhards. Including Estonian-American politician Ilves Toomas and rent-a-quote talking head Michael McFaul, the 'Mother Theresa of the Russia beat.' Those two are joined by neoconservative windbag William Kristol and ex-CIA chief Michael Morell.

Convert zeal

The dashboard itself is helmed by a chap named J.M. Berger , who was apparently an expert on ISIS and the Middle East, before discovering the Russia-bashing gravy train this summer. This week, he's taken to the pages of Politico to explain his plaything. What follows is best described as an inept and ignorant form of thrift-store McCarthyism.

Berger tells us how his dashboard displays "the near-real-time output of Russian Influence Operations on Twitter." Something he calls RIOT, for short. And he cites things like RT's coverage of Vladimir Putin's recent pike fishing trip, a jaunt also prominently featured in The New York Times, The Daily Mail and The Sun, which incidentally described Putin as a "beefcake." Meaning, either Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch are Russian agents, or this contention is just farcical.

The lobbyist also frets over this network's widely-shared report on Oliver Stone's Facebook post "condemning US sanctions against Russia and claiming US intelligence agencies are engaged in a 'false flag' war against Russia." Which exposes a total lack of comprehension of how news works. Because Stone is one of Hollywood's most famous figures and his name attached to a perspective like this was bound to attract plenty of attention, regardless of the messenger. It's also worth pointing out (for the really obtuse) that RT obviously doesn't control Stone's Facebook and was merely bringing to a wider audience the American writer and director's personal beliefs.

The examples become ever stranger. Berger bemoans "conspiracy theories seeking to discredit Bana al-Abed, a young girl in Syria who tweeted about the civil war." But it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest the then seven-year-old was manipulated to serve a propaganda effort. Especially after a press interview revealed how the child couldn't understand even rudimentary English, despite issuing hundreds of perfectly crafted tweets in the language.

Rock Bottom

Our hero descends further into hogwash when observing how "the most retweeted Russia Today stories recorded by the dashboard involved scaremongering videos appearing to show refugees swarming into Spain." But, two weeks ago, a boatful of migrants did land on a Spanish tourist beach, near Cadiz, and quickly scattered to evade police detection. And numerous outlets, including The New York Times , The Guardian and the BBC prominently reported the story. But apparently, it's only an issue when RT gives it coverage.

But the garrulous quack isn't finished, asserting how RT "treads relatively carefully in their flirtation with the far right, and they devote a significant amount of space to the far left as well." Hardly news, given how the channel openly admits offering a platform for alternative voices, regardless of their political compass. Incidentally, a mirror image of what America's state broadcaster's RFE/RL and VOA do in Russia where they laboriously detail the travails of nationalist politicians like Alexei Navalny and their leftist counterparts, such as Sergei Udaltsov. This is what alternative media does in every market, but it seems to be only unusual when "the Russians" are involved.

Berger does concede one salient point: "it is important to note here again that we are not asserting Russia is responsible for creating or shaping this content," he writes. Which suggests he fully understands how his project is geared to smear anybody who opposes US policy as working for Moscow's interests.

Yellow press

But, not content with mulching around the bottom of the barrel, he reaches into the depths when he states "while the alt-right has a very real base of support in the United States, it also enjoys deep and undisputed ties to Russia, many of which can be found offline in the real world." Amazingly, the link he uses to justify his contention is a Daily Beast article on how American white supremacist Richard Spencer was married to an ethnic Russian. The lady involved has no profile in Russia, doesn't live in the country and is a follower of a fringe philosopher called Alexander Dugin. Who is so far outside the Russian mainstream that he can't even hold down a job in Moscow.

The fact Berger has to descend to such irrelevant tittle-tattle to score a few points tells us all we need to know about the moral bankruptcy of the Alliance For Securing Democracy. This is pathetic, miserable and feeble stuff and the German Marshall Fund of the United States should be ashamed of themselves for financing this sort of muck.

Reprinted with permission from RT .

[Aug 28, 2017] Racism if a new rallying cry of anti-Trump coalition

Aug 26, 2017 | www.unz.com

Brabantian > , Website August 26, 2017 at 6:16 am GMT

Israel Shamir has some terrific but sadly likely-only-dream-world recommendations for Donald Trump, asking him to be the man whom voters hoped he was how beautiful it would be indeed, for Trump to end the Mid-East & South Asian wars, close Guantánamo, let hundreds of thousands of non-violent black & other offenders / railroaded innocents out of US prison (as Vladimir Putin did for hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners) this last an especially brilliant suggestion by Shamir, as that one Lincolnesque act would be a total trumping of the 'racist' slurs against Trump & his voters

But the question is Can we really hope that the USA 'Tsar' will or could act well & honourably for his people? Was Trump just the Master New York Salesman all along?

Or is it that Trump in his heart really wanted to do some good with that high office he was able to win Trump who trumpeted to the world the great truth that the News is Fake but a Trump who is in fact now in part a hostage under the direst threats, not only against himself but all his family?

As this photo meme suggested

bliss_porsena > , August 26, 2017 at 7:26 am GMT

Brawling street-fighting rabbles do not a revolutionary civil war make. You need snipers on rooftops. Every perspective ruler knows that.

Greg Bacon > , Website August 26, 2017 at 10:27 am GMT

Welcome to the NWO Comrade. The USA will become the USSA, please report to your nearest FEMA Gulag for reeducation NOW! Don't force us to kick down your door at 3 am.

What do we know about RAM? [An offshoot of Antifa] Well, according to their website:

"The Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement is a political movement dedicated to freeing people from bondage and building resistance in the United States."

Just like every other Antifa group, they oppose white supremacy, racism, and bigotry. Seems reasonable, right? But read a little further into their "Political Foundation" and you will find a few things that aren't so reasonable.

They advocate for the abolition of gender:

They advocate for the expropriation of good, lands, and tools:

And finally, just like every other Antifa group, they oppose capitalism and are open proponents of communism.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-25/armed-antifa-group-hosts-%E2%80%9Cour-enemies-blue%E2%80%9D-anti-police-workshop

Robert Magill > , August 26, 2017 at 10:39 am GMT

This article is an accurate indictment of forces at work in America that don't bode well for our future as a great power. So be it. We have never demonstrated an affinity for world leadership.

The same tendencies that led to the schism the preceded our Civil War have risen again in global affairs. The materialism and cupidity that so rankled the South in 1861 became the m.o. of the victors and shape us today. This won't do. Eurasia has had enough and is turning away from US influence as rapidly as feasible considering the tendency for rabid violence we exhibit.

http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

jacques sheete > , August 26, 2017 at 11:08 am GMT

Zionists are good for one thing. They are excellent for revealing the hidden Jewish racism.

True. They're also good at presenting themselves as something they're not, (just like Trump, btw). They present themselves as victims, while the opposite is more accurate. They present themselves as Semites, while Palestinians are probably much more "Semitic" than they are. Zionists, in fact, are among the most anti-Semitic characters around. They present themselves as Jews, and i'd like to know by what standard. Most are likely not even religious. They present themselves as sane and "intelligent," but their actions don't show it. We're told that they are moral; I'd like to know how. They are good for showing the world what crazed narcissism looks like.

[Aug 26, 2017] Total amount of capital that private Russian citizens have taken offshore exceeds one trillion dollars

Notable quotes:
"... At the recent G20 summit, finance ministers discussed closing loopholes that allow multinational corporations to stash profits in offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. In the U.S., Senator Carl Levin has introduced the "Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act" to prohibit U.S. corporations from avoiding paying taxes on their offshore income. ..."
"... NerdWallet Taxes conducted a study of the Fortune 50 to find that 88% are stashing profits in foreign subsidiaries . But just how much tax revenue is at stake? ..."
Aug 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

karl1haushofer ,

August 23, 2017 at 2:44 am
Total amount of capital that private Russian citizens have taken offshore exceeds one trillion dollars (trillion dollars = 1,000 billion dollars): https://lenta.ru/news/2017/08/23/offshore/

This is three times more than the level of Russia's foreign exchange reserves.

Luckily Finland does not have an "elite" like this. Take this kind of money out of Finland and we would have nothing.

karl1haushofer , August 23, 2017 at 2:45 am
Imagine what would happen to Russian economy is even half of this capital was sensibly reinvested back to Russia.
Moscow Exile , August 23, 2017 at 3:12 am
The above linked lenta.ru article posted by the oh-so-concerned about Russia Finn is based on this source:

FROM SOVIETS TO OLIGARCHS:
INEQUALITY AND PROPERTY IN RUSSIA, 1905-2016

NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
August 2017

In the lenta.ru article the following is pointed out:

В настоящее время перекос в распределении доходов в России находится на уровне США -- 1 процент граждан получают 20-25 процентов всех доходов в стране.

Currently, the imbalance in income distribution in Russia is at the level of the USA: 1 percent of the population receives 20-25 percent of all income in the country.

Luckily Finland does not have an "elite" like that in the USA!

yalensis , August 23, 2017 at 3:20 am
Is Finland a socialist country?
karl1haushofer , August 23, 2017 at 3:28 am
More so than Russia. Stealing this kind of wealth and taking it offshore would not be possible here. And Finnish elite is a tad more patriotic than Russian.
Moscow Exile , August 23, 2017 at 3:35 am
How do you know that the wealth invested offshore by some Russian citizens has all been stolen?
karl1haushofer , August 23, 2017 at 3:45 am
If it was not stolen why would they take it out of the country?
Moscow Exile , August 23, 2017 at 3:51 am
Hmmmmm -- that's a tough one to answer.
Jen , August 23, 2017 at 4:08 am
Well, where exactly do these Russians invest their money? Do you know if the countries that receive this money are known tax havens? Is all or most of the money going into family trust funds or going into accounts based in countries where taxation of income or profit is known to be lower than in Russia?

Also you can't assume that because these people are sending the money out of Russia, that it was all stolen. For all you know, they could be sending the money out because they are not confident that Russian financial markets are stable enough or that the Central Bank is pursuing policies that would allow them to invest in enterprises or funds in Russia.

Jen , August 23, 2017 at 4:53 am
Wikipedia article on Russian billionaire Alexey Khotin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Khotin

Khotin owns stock in various companies within and outside Russia either directly or indirectly through other companies. If he has a stake in Kuwait Energy, is that evidence of guilt on his part? Where did the money come from, that he could buy shares in an energy company? Who says that Russian individuals and companies may not invest their after-tax profits in companies outside Russia?

Look at this billionaire's Wikipedia entry – aaargh, this David Iakobashvili fellow invests money stolen I mean, earned in Russia in philanthropic causes in Georgia!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Iakobashvili

marknesop , August 23, 2017 at 1:43 pm
Oh, I don't know .maybe it has something to do with taxes.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/taxes/corporate-tax-rates/corporations-hide-billions-in-offshore-profits/

At the recent G20 summit, finance ministers discussed closing loopholes that allow multinational corporations to stash profits in offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. In the U.S., Senator Carl Levin has introduced the "Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act" to prohibit U.S. corporations from avoiding paying taxes on their offshore income.

NerdWallet Taxes conducted a study of the Fortune 50 to find that 88% are stashing profits in foreign subsidiaries . But just how much tax revenue is at stake?

[Aug 26, 2017] Economic Nationalism Theory, History and Prospects

Aug 26, 2017 | www.globalpolicyjournal.com

In its aftermath, commentators warned of a resurgence of economic nationalism, that is, protectionism. Some states did increase tariff levels but this has not led to a generalised increase in barriers to trade in the pursuit of national economies for interrelated reasons: (1) the integration and therefore interdependency of economies; (2) the complexity of the global economy, making it all but impossible to separate by nationality; (3) the greater extensity of world markets compared to the mid-20th century; (4) the redundancy of the various models of economic nationalism.

Policy Implications
  • Economic nationalism should be understood as a set of practices to create, bolster and protect national economies in the context of world markets. The rise and institutionalisation of economic nationalism in the 20th century was a product of economic crisis, nationalist movements and enlarged states.
  • There has been no 'return of economic nationalism' as in a generalised rise in protective barriers to trade since the financial crash of 2011. Unlike the 1930s, sovereign debt has not motivated states to withdraw from global markets.
  • The integration, complexity and extensity of the world's economy mean that a reversal of trade as great as during the interwar period would entail an economic Armageddon. Whatever future ructions the world's economy experiences due, above all, to chronic levels of sovereign debt, policy makers should be mindful of this reality.
  • Simultaneously, they should be aware that ongoing instability may entail greater economic nationalism. The key lesson from the period after the Second World War is relevant now at a more overtly global level: the importance of planning, regulation and respect for models of economic diversity to further global trade.

[Aug 26, 2017] What the Alternative Right is

Anti-globalism of alt-right is very important...
See discussion at "16 Points Of The Alt Right" That Invert The Alt Right Into Leftism
Notable quotes:
"... neocons are not Alt Right. National Socialists are not Alt Right. ..."
"... The Alt Right is anti-globalist. It opposes all groups who work for globalist ideals or globalist objectives. ..."
"... The Alt Right is opposed to the rule or domination of any native ethnic group by another, particularly in the sovereign homelands of the dominated peoples. The Alt Right is opposed to any non-native ethnic group obtaining excessive influence in any society through nepotism, tribalism, or any other means. ..."
"... The Alt Right does not believe in the general supremacy of any race, nation, people, or sub-species. Every race, nation, people, and human sub-species has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and possesses the sovereign right to dwell unmolested in the native culture it prefers. ..."
"... The Alt Right is a philosophy that values peace among the various nations of the world and opposes wars to impose the values of one nation upon another ..."
Aug 26, 2017 | voxday.blogspot.com

  1. The Alt Right is of the political right in both the American and the European sense of the term. Socialists are not Alt Right. Progressives are not Alt Right. Liberals are not Alt Right. Communists, Marxists, Marxians, cultural Marxists, and neocons are not Alt Right. National Socialists are not Alt Right.
  2. The Alt Right is an ALTERNATIVE to the mainstream conservative movement in the USA that is nominally encapsulated by Russel Kirk's 10 Conservative Principles , but in reality has devolved towards progressivism. It is also an alternative to libertarianism.
  3. The Alt Right is not a defensive attitude and rejects the concept of noble and principled defeat. It is a forward-thinking philosophy of offense, in every sense of that term. The Alt Right believes in victory through persistence and remaining in harmony with science, reality, cultural tradition, and the lessons of history.
  4. The Alt Right believes Western civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement and supports its three foundational pillars: Christianity, the European nations, and the Graeco-Roman legacy.
  5. The Alt Right is openly and avowedly nationalist. It supports all nationalisms and the right of all nations to exist, homogeneous and unadulterated by foreign invasion and immigration.
  6. The Alt Right is anti-globalist. It opposes all groups who work for globalist ideals or globalist objectives.
  7. The Alt Right is anti-equalitarian. It rejects the idea of equality for the same reason it rejects the ideas of unicorns and leprechauns, noting that human equality does not exist in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form.
  8. The Alt Right is scientodific. It presumptively accepts the current conclusions of the scientific method (scientody), while understanding a) these conclusions are liable to future revision, b) that scientistry is susceptible to corruption, and c) that the so-called scientific consensus is not based on scientody, but democracy, and is therefore intrinsically unscientific.
  9. The Alt Right believes identity > culture > politics.
  10. The Alt Right is opposed to the rule or domination of any native ethnic group by another, particularly in the sovereign homelands of the dominated peoples. The Alt Right is opposed to any non-native ethnic group obtaining excessive influence in any society through nepotism, tribalism, or any other means.
  11. The Alt Right understands that diversity + proximity = war.
  12. The Alt Right doesn't care what you think of it.
  13. The Alt Right rejects international free trade and the free movement of peoples that free trade requires. The benefits of intranational free trade is not evidence for the benefits of international free trade.
  14. The Alt Right believes we must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children.
  15. The Alt Right does not believe in the general supremacy of any race, nation, people, or sub-species. Every race, nation, people, and human sub-species has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and possesses the sovereign right to dwell unmolested in the native culture it prefers.
  16. The Alt Right is a philosophy that values peace among the various nations of the world and opposes wars to impose the values of one nation upon another as well as efforts to exterminate individual nations through war, genocide, immigration, or genetic assimilation.
TL;DR: The Alt Right is a Western ideology that believes in science, history, reality, and the right of a genetic nation to exist and govern itself in its own interests.

The patron saint of conservatives, Russell Kirk, wrote: "The great line of demarcation in modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal."

This is no longer true, assuming it ever was. The great line of demarcation in modern politics is now a division between men and women who believe that they are ultimately defined by their momentary opinions and those who believe they are ultimately defined by their genetic heritage. The Alt Right understands that the former will always lose to the latter in the end, because the former is subject to change.

[Aug 26, 2017] The Alt-Right Is Not Who You Think They Are by George Hawley

Rejection of globalization by alt-right is very important. that's why make them economic nationalists. And that's why they are hated neocon and those forces of neoliberalism which are behind Neocon/Neolib Cultural Revolution -- promotion of LGBT, uni-gender bathrooms, transsexuals, etc, identity wedge in politics demonstrated by Hillary, etc. (modeled on Mao's cultural revolution, which also what launched when Mao started to lose his grip on political power).
Aug 26, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
In my experience with the alt-right, I encountered a surprisingly common narrative: Alt-right supporters did not, for the most part, come from overtly racist families. Alt-right media platforms have actually been pushing this meme aggressively in recent months. Far from defending the ideas and institutions they inherited, the alt-right!which is overwhelmingly a movement of white millennials!forcefully condemns their parents' generation. They do so because they do not believe their parents are racist enough

In an inverse of the left-wing protest movements of the 1960s, the youthful alt-right bitterly lambast the "boomers" for their lack of explicit ethnocentrism, their rejection of patriarchy, and their failure to maintain America's old demographic characteristics and racial hierarchy. In the alt-right's vision, even older conservatives are useless "cucks" who focus on tax policies and forcefully deny that they are driven by racial animus.

... ... ...

To complicate matters further, many people in the alt-right were radicalized while in college. Not only that, but the efforts to inoculate the next generation of America's social and economic leaders against racism were, in some cases, a catalyst for racist radicalization. Although academic seminars that explain the reality of white privilege may reduce feelings of prejudice among most young whites exposed to them, they have the opposite effect on other young whites. At this point we do not know what percentage of white college students react in such a way, but the number is high enough to warrant additional study.

A final problem with contemporary discussions about racism is that they often remain rooted in outdated stereotypes. Our popular culture tends to define the racist as a toothless illiterate Klansman in rural Appalachia, or a bitter, angry urban skinhead reacting to limited social prospects. Thus, when a white nationalist movement arises that exhibits neither of these characteristics, people are taken by surprise.

George Hawley (@georgehawleyUA) is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama. His books include Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism , White Voters in 21st Century America , and Making Sense of the Alt-Right (forthcoming).

Nate J , says: August 24, 2017 at 10:35 pm

It boggles my mind that the left, who were so effective at dominating the culture wars basically from the late 60s, cannot see the type of counter-culture they are creating. Your point about alt-righters opposing their parents drives this home.

People have been left to drift in a sea of postmodernism without an anchor for far too long now, and they are grasping onto whatever seems sturdy. The alt-right, for its many faults, provides something compelling and firm to grab.

The left's big failure when all the dust settles will be seen as its inability to provide a coherent view of human nature and a positive, constructive, unifying message. They are now the side against everything – against reason, against tradition, against truth, against shared institutions and heritage and nationalism It's no wonder people are looking to be for something these days. People are sick of being atomized into smaller and smaller units, fostered by the left's new and now permanent quest to find new victim groups.

DonChi , says: August 25, 2017 at 5:17 am
I'm disappointed to read an article at The American Conservative that fails to address the reality behind these numbers. Liberal identity politics creates an inherently adversarial arena, wherein white people are depicted as the enemy. That young whites should respond by gravitating toward identity politics themselves in not surprising, and it's a bit offensive to attribute this trend to the eternal mysteries of inexplicable "racist" hate.

The young can see through the fake dynamic being depicted in the mainstream media, and unless The American Conservative wants to completely lose relevance, a light should be shone on the elephant in the room. For young white kids, The Culture Wars often present an existential threat, as Colin Flaherty shows in Don't Make the Black Kids Angry–endorsed and heralded as a troubling and important work by Thomas Sowell.

Nicholas , says: August 25, 2017 at 7:44 am
From the 16 Points of the Alt-Right:
5. The Alt Right is openly and avowedly nationalist. It supports all nationalisms and the right of all nations to exist, homogeneous and unadulterated by foreign invasion and immigration.
6. The Alt Right is anti-globalist. It opposes all groups who work for globalist ideals or globalist objectives.

It is important to remember that nations are people, not geography. The current American Union, enforced by imperial conquest, is a Multi-National empire. It has been held together by force and more recently by common, though not equal, material prosperity.

With the imposition of Globalism's exotic perversions and eroding economic prospects the American Union is heading for the same fate as all Multi-National empires before it.

Nation(Identity) > Culture > Politics.

KD , says: August 25, 2017 at 9:15 am
Mysteriously absent from the scholarly discussion seems to be the pioneer of sociology, Ludwig Gumplowicz. Incredibly so, as the same factors that led to the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire abound in contemporary America.
Steve , says: August 25, 2017 at 9:25 am
I have two teenage sons – we live in Canada – and they tell that, no matter what they say, who they hang out with, what music they listen to, no matter how many times they demonstrate they are not racist, they are repeatedly called racist. They are automatically guilty because they are white. They are beaten over the head with this message in school and in the press and are sick and tired of it.
Todd Pierce , says: August 25, 2017 at 10:48 am
What might also be considered is the cultural effect upon a generation which has now matured through what the government calls "perpetual war," with the concomitant constant celebration of "warriors," hyper-patriotism as demanded of all public events such as shown in the fanaticism of baseball players engaged in "National Anthem standouts," such as were popular a couple years ago in MLB, the constant references in political campaigns to the "enemy," to include Russia as well now, and the "stab in the back" legend created to accuse anyone opposed to more war and occupation of "treason." We've "radicalized" our own youth, with Trump coming along with his links to Israel's ultra militarist, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli "Right," and created a cultural condition much like this: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/04/conservative-revolutionaries-fascism/
Doc Broom , says: August 25, 2017 at 10:49 am
Odd, you write "How did the youngest white Americans respond to the most racially polarizing election in recent memory?" In reality it was less racially polarized than 2012, when 93 % of African Americans and 71% of Hispanics voted for Obama while in 2016 88% of Blacks and 65% of Hispanics voted from Hillary. So Trump won a higher percentage of African American votes and Hispanic votes than Mitt Romney. In 2008 Obama won 95% of Blacks and 67% of Hispanics, in 2004 the numbers were 88 and 53 for Kerry so the three elections between 2004 and and 2016 were all more polarizing than the 2016 race.
Eric Mader , says: August 25, 2017 at 10:55 am
Yes, you make many important points, Mr. Hawley, but that you feel the need to join the chorus of those who see our president's reaction to Charlottesville as somehow inappropriate or even itself racist–that is sad. I don't see what else you may be implying in your opening paragraphs, since you move directly from the number of "likes" Obama's bromide received to this: "[Obama's reaction] also offered a stark contrast to that of President Trump."

In spite of many liberals' frantic desire to read whatever they want into President Trump's words, he very clearly condemned the neo-Nazis and the evil of Heather Heyer's murderer. That he also condemned the violence coming from Antifa ranks does not lessen his condemnation of that coming from the alt right side. Rather, condemning the rising illiberalism on both sides of this growing conflict was both commendable and necessary.

Many Americans see these recent events in a context stretching back years. Myself, at fifty, having watched especially the steady empowerment of a demagogic left on our campuses, I'm not much surprised that a racist "white nationalist" movement should burst into flame at just this point. The kindling is right there in the anti-white, misandrous virulence of our SJW left.

Sane conservatives have strongly condemned the new alt-right racism. The problem is that we are not seeing anything similar from the left. Our left seems incapable of condemning, let alone even seeing , its own racist excesses. Which are everywhere in its discourse, especially in our humanities departments.

I would say that in the recent decades the American left has grown much more deeply invested in identity politics than the right has ever been during my lifetime. In my view, our left has grown more enamored of identity issues precisely because it has abandoned the bread and butter issues that really matter to most Americans.

I have many left-liberal friends and regularly read the left press. Surveying the reactions to Charlottesville and the rising conflict between alt-right extremists and a radicalized Antifa left, I see nowhere a step toward acknowledging the obvious: our rabid identity politics is by no means just a problem of the right.

Racial identity politics is a curse. Sadly, it seems we've been cursed by it well and and good. The poison's reaching down to the bone. Unless both smart moderates and people on the left start to recognize just how badly poisoned our left has been by this curse, no progress will be made. Identity politics needs to be condemned on both sides of this growing national street brawl, and it should start NOW.

But I'm afraid it's not going to happen. I see my friends on the left, and they're nowhere near acknowledging the problem. And I'm sad to see our president's attempt to call out both sides has gotten such negative reactions. I'm afraid this isn't going to end well.

Todd Pierce , says: August 25, 2017 at 11:21 am
Should read: "National Anthem standoffs," not "standouts."
Siarlys Jenkins , says: August 25, 2017 at 11:29 am
Liberal identity politics creates an inherently adversarial arena, wherein white people are depicted as the enemy. That young whites should respond by gravitating toward identity politics themselves in not surprising

One of many good reasons for rejecting "identity" politics generally.

CampNouidiote , says: August 25, 2017 at 11:34 am
A white friend attended a Cal State graduate program for counseling a couple of years ago; he left very bitter after all his classes told him that white men were the proximate cause of the world's misery. Then a mutual Latina friend from church invited him to coffee and told him that he was the white devil, the cause of her oppression. You can conclude how he felt.

The liberal universities' curricula has caused a storm of madness; they have unleashed their own form of oppressive thought on a significant portion on American society:white men. There is now an adverse reaction. Of course, even more opprobrium will be heaped upon on men who might question the illogicality of feminism and the left. How can all of this end well if the humanity of white men is denied in universities, public schools and universities?

G. K. , says: August 25, 2017 at 11:39 am
The Alt Right simply believes that Western nations have a right to preserve their culture and heritage. Every normal man in these United States agreed with that premise prior to the Marxist takeover of our institutions in the 1960's. And you know it's true.
Cornel Lencar , says: August 25, 2017 at 11:41 am
Maybe at the bottom of it is not racism as in they are the wrong colour, but about cultural traits and patterns of behaviour that are stirring resentment. Plus maybe the inclusion towards more social benefits not available before (Obamacare?).

The current rap music, as opposed to the initial one, that emphasized social injustice is such that one feels emptying his own stomach like sharks do.

The macho culture that black gangs, latin american gangs manifest is a bit antagonistic to white supremacists gangs and attitudes towards women. After all, vikings going raiding used to have shield maidens joining, and Celtic culture is full of women warriors. Northern European culture, harking back to pre-Christian times was more kinder to women than what women from southern Europe (Greece, Rome) experienced (total ownership by husbands, the veil, etc., all imported from the Middle East: but one must not judge too harshly, the book "Debt, the first 5000 years" could be an eye opener of the root causes of such attitudes).

Also, the lack of respect for human life expressed in these cultures is not that palatable, even for white supremacists (while one can point to Nazi Germany as an outlier – but there it was the state that promoted such attitudes, while in Japan the foreigner that is persecuted and ostracized could be the refugee from another village around Fukushima – see the Economist on that).

So I think there are many avenues to explore in identifying the rise in Alt right and white supremacists in the U.S. But colour is definitely not it.

Joe Beavers , says: August 25, 2017 at 11:50 am
Come now. There were the same types around me years ago at school, work, society. They just did not march around like Nazis in public, probably because the Greatest Generation would have kicked their butts.

Now, with the miracle of modern technology, a few hundred of them can get together and raise hell in one place. Plus they now get lots of encouraging internet press (and some discouraging).

A better article on this is:

http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/keillor-my-advice-be-genial-dont-take-lunacy-too-seriously/

Jack V , says: August 25, 2017 at 12:17 pm
This article says virtually nothing.
The author fails to define his terms, beginning with Alt-Right.
And he seems to operate from a dislike of Trump underneath it all. This dislike is common among pundits, left and right, who consider themselves to be refined and cultured. So it was that the NYT's early condemnation of Trump led with complaints about his bearing and manners – "vulgar" was the word often used if memory serves.
This gets us nowhere. Many in the US are disturbed by the decline in their prospects with a decrease in share of wages in the national income ongoing since the 1970's – before Reagan who is blamed for it all. Add to that the 16 years of wars which have taken the lives of Trump supporters disproportionately and you have a real basis for grievances.
Racism seems to be a side show as does AntiFa.
KD , says: August 25, 2017 at 12:24 pm
Richard McEvoy writes:

"The accusation of being racist because you are white is a misunderstanding of structural racism."

I agree, but I notice that Jews have the same misunderstanding when you mention structural "Zionist Occupied Government" or "Jewish Privilege".

Perhaps because they are both conspiracy theories rooted in hatred and ignorance, which is where we descend when the concept of a statistical distribution or empirical data become "controversial", or "feelings" overtake "facts".

Alex (the one that likes Ike) , says: August 25, 2017 at 12:36 pm
And progressives still refer to KKK when they seek an example of a white supremacist group. Amazing. They are too lazy even to learn that the Klan lost its relevance long ago, and the most powerful white supremacist organization of today consists of entirely different people, who are very far from being illiterate.

***

Todd Pierce,

Israel's ultra militarist, Benjamin Netanyahu

I won't deny that Bibi is a controversial figure, but calling him an ultra militarist is quite a bit of a stretch.

haderondah , says: August 25, 2017 at 1:35 pm
Elite sports. After reading this article and it's underlying thesis, it occurs to me that the way sports have evolved in this country is very likely to be the experience that millennial whites have had that fosters their "out group" belief systems. It is very common, using soccer as my frame of reference, for wealthy suburban families to spend a fortune getting their children all the best training and access to all the best clubs. Their children are usually the best players in their community of origin and usually the top players all the way through the preadolescent years only to find all of that money and prestige gone to waste once their kids get to around sixteen at which point their children are invariably replaced on the roster by a recent immigrant -- mainly from Africa or south of our border and usually at a cut rate compared to the one they are bleeding the suburban families with. I'm assuming this is becoming more common across all sports as they move toward a pay to play corporate model. In soccer, the white kids are, seriously, the paying customers who fill out the roster that supports the truly talented kids (from countries who know how to develop soccer talent.)
sedric , says: August 25, 2017 at 8:20 pm
The thing is when blacks begin to feel power and a secure place in America then their true colors show-at least among many. Left unchecked they would become the biggest racists of all. You can see that now. So what it comes down to are white people going to give away their country? Until blacks become cooperative and productive things need to stay as they are. Sad maybe but that's just the way it has to be.
vato_loco_frisco , says: August 25, 2017 at 8:18 pm
There have always been fringe, rightwing groups in the US. Nothing new there. But the so-called alt-right, comprised of Nazi wannabes and assorted peckerwoods, is truly the spawn of the looney left, whose obsession with race has created the toxic environment we find ourselves in.

[Aug 25, 2017] The US military industrial complex needs a bogey-man

Aug 25, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Gavekal On The Coming Clash Of Empires Russia's Role As A Global Game-Changer Zero Hedge

Now for China's "dream of empire" to work, China would need to convince two important countries, and maybe three, to at least become "neutral", instead of quasi-hostile, for these new communications lines to work. Those two countries are Russia and Germany. The 3rd is Saudi Arabia, which has an interesting hand to play.

1. Russia

Russia is the main land bridge between China and Europe. So logic says that the US should be very nice to Russia and seek to establish some kind of military alliance, if only to control the movement of people and goods between China and Europe, and from Europe to China. However, in its immense wisdom, the US Senate and the entire US diplomatic corps have decided that America's interests are best served by imposing sanctions on Russia for crimes!not even proven at the time of writing!that the Central Intelligence Agency routinely commits inside countries that are nominally allies of the US!

It seems that US policymakers have forgotten Lord Palmerston's dictum that nations don't have friends, just permanent interests. And instead of following policies to maximize its national interest, the US would rather cut off its nose to spite its face. The end result is that the US seems to be working as hard as possible to make Russia join forces with China. But why would the US so consciously make an enemy out of Russia?

A starting point is that it is a little odd that a country that cannot conceivably be invaded spends more on defense then the next ten nations combined (see chart overleaf). It is also odd that the US has been involved in wars, somewhere around the globe, with very few interruptions, ever since President Dwight Eisenhower warned his countrymen about the growing clout of the "US military industrial complex".

Of course, we fully realize that even mentioning the "US military industrial complex' makes one sound like some kind of tin-potted, conspiracy-theorist prone loon. This is not our intention. But we do want to highlight that, in order to justify a budget of US$622bn, soon heading to US$800bn, the US military industrial complex needs a bogey-man

Now the natural bogey-man should logically be China. After all, China is now sporting the second biggest military budget in the world (US$192bn in 2016), is rapidly expanding its global presence (Belt and Road, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Silk Road Fund) and increasingly treats the South China Sea as a mare nostrum. Still, the past few months of broad US hysteria toward Russia make it fairly clear that US military interests would rather pick on Russia then China. Why so? The first, and most obvious explanation, is simply institutional inertia. After all, Russia was the main enemy between 1945 and 1991 and entire institutions were built (NATO, OECD, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) with either the stated, or unstated, goal of containing Russia's influence. Such government-led institutions usually turn around as easily as a cruise ship captained by Francesco Schettino.

...As no-one in the US business community cares deeply about Russia, Moscow makes for a good, "compromise bogey man"?

A third explanation is tied to a theme we have discussed in the past (see The Consequences of Trump's Syrian Strike ), namely the unfolding civil war in the Middle-East between Sunnis and Shias. On the Sunni side of the war sits Saudi Arabia. On the Shia side of the war is Iran. And behind Iran stands Russia, who would like nothing more than to see the Saudi regime implode. Indeed, a collapse of the House of Saud would be an immense boon for Russia. The price of oil would likely surge (which would be great for non-Arab producers like Russia) and Europe would find itself wholly dependent on Russia for its energy supplies, thereby giving Moscow more geopolitical clout than it has enjoyed in decades.

At the same time, a collapse of the House of Saud would be terrible news for US, French and British arms suppliers (for whom the Middle-Eastern monarchies are big clients) and for all big oil companies which have huge contracts in Saudi Arabia and across the Middle-East to protect.

This brings us to the current make-up of the US administration which, to say the least, is somewhat skewed towards military officers (military men and the merchants of death tend to get along) and oil-men. Is it too much of a stretch to think that an administration loaded with oil and military men would, almost by default, fight Saudi Arabia's corner? Now this may be unfair. After all, it's not as if the first trip of the current US president was to Saudi Arabia, or as if that trip yielded many lucrative deals for US weapons manufacturers, US oil companies, and US financiers, was it?

Russia as a game-changer

Whatever the reason for the current anti-Russia hysteria in the US, it is now clearly in Russia's interest for it to play a very active role in the coming Chinese efforts to reduce the power of the dominant "maritime empire". This means that Chinese and European products will be able to travel through Russia for the foreseeable future, so avoiding possible threats created by the US navy should Washington ever act to disrupt trade between the two economic centers.

The reason that the US's approach to Russia is so short-sighted is that Russia's role in the coming clash between the two empires may go far beyond it facilitating communication and transport across its territory. Indeed, Russia (along with Qatar and Iran) could already be helping China break the monopoly that the US has on the payment of energy all over the world through the US dollar (see The Most Important Change And Its Natural Hedge ).

For the past 100 years, the US dollar has been the world's major reserve and trading currency. Needless to say, having the ability to settle one's (rather large) trade and budget deficits in one's own currency is a competitive advantage of huge proportions. Greater than its edge in finance, tertiary education, technology, biotech, weapons manufacturing and agricultural productivity, this "exorbitant privilege" may be the US's single biggest comparative advantage.

Now our starting point when looking at China is that the guys who run the show in Beijing are basically control freaks. After all, what else do you expect from career technocrats steeped in Marxist theory? So with that in mind, the question every investor should ask themselves is: why would control freaks yield control of their country's exchange rate and interest rate structure? Why liberalize the bond and currency markets?

For let's face it, there are few prices as important to an economy as the exchange rate and the interest rate. So if the politburo is willing to gradually lose control over them, it must be because it hopes to gain something better on the other side. And the something better is to transform the renminbi into Asia's deutschemark; the "natural" trading (and eventually reserve) currency for Asia and even wider emerging markets. In fact, internationalizing the renminbi is the lynchpin on which the whole "Belt and Road" empire rollout rests. If this part fails, then China's imperial ambitions will most likely crumble over time (for one cannot have an empire on somebody else's dime).

The rise of the renminbi

Which brings us to a key change in our global monetary system that has received scant attention, namely, the recent announcement by the Hong Kong exchange that investors will soon be able to buy and settle gold contracts in renminbi (see release). This initiative has the potential to be a game-changer for the architecture of our global monetary system.

Imagine being Russia, Iran, Qatar, Venezuela, Sudan, Uzbekistan or any other country liable to fall foul of US foreign policy, and thus susceptible to having Washington use the dollar as a "soft weapon" (see BNP, Big Brother And The US Dollar ). Then China comes along and says: "Rather than trading in dollars, which leaves us both exposed to US sanctions, and US banks' willingness to fund our trade, let's deal in renminbi. I can guarantee that ICBC will never pull the rug from under your feet ".

If you are Russia, or Qatar ( which have already signed renminbi deals for oil and natural gas) , this may be an interesting proposition. However, the question will quickly arise: "What will I do with my renminbi? Sure, I can buy goods in China, but I only need so much cheap clothing, tennis shoes, and plastic junk. What do I do with what is left over?". And the answer to that question is that the US dollar remains the world's reserve currency since the US offers the deepest and most liquid asset markets. From real estate (as shown by the Russia-Trump investigation), to equities, to bonds, there is no shortage of US assets that Americans will sell foreigners so that foreigners can park their hard earned dollars back into the US.

This brings us back to China and the main constraint to the renminbi's rise as a reserve currency. Simply put, foreign investors do not trust the Chinese government enough to park their excess reserves in Chinese assets. This lack of trust was crystallized by the decision in the summer of 2015 to "shut down" the equity markets for a while and stop trading in any stock that looked like it was heading south. That decision confirmed foreign investors' apprehension about China and in their eyes set back renminbi internationalization by several years, if not decades.

Until now, that is. For by creating a gold contract settled in renminbi, Russia may now sell oil to China for renminbi (already signed), then take whatever excess currency it earns to buy gold in Hong Kong. As a result, Russia does not have to buy Chinese assets or switch the proceeds into dollars (and so potentially fall under the thumb of the US Treasury). This new arrangement is good news for Russia, good news for China, good news for gold and horrible news for Saudi Arabia as it leaves the Middle-Eastern kingdom in between a rock and a hard place.

2. Saudi Arabia

The fact that China wants to buy oil with its own currency will increasingly present Saudi Arabia with a dilemma . It could acknowledge that China is now the world's largest oil importer, and only major growth market, and accept renminbi payments for its oil. However, this would go down like a lead balloon in Washington where the US Treasury would (rightly) see this as a threat to the dollar's hegemony . In such a scenario, it is unlikely that the US would continue to approve modern weapon sales to Saudi and the embedded "protection" of the House of Saud that comes with them. And without this US protection, who knows which way the Sunni-Shia civil war may tip (most likely in favor of the Iran-Russia axis).

Unfortunately for Saudi Arabia, the alternative is hardly attractive. Getting boxed out of the Chinese market will increasingly mean having to dump excess oil inventories on the global stage, thereby ensuring a sustained low price for oil. But with its budget deficit stuck at about 16% of GDP, with half its population below 27 and needing jobs, and with reserves shrinking by around US$10bn a month, just maintaining the current status quo is not a long-term viable option.

So which way will Saudi turn? Will Riyadh accept low oil prices forever and the associated costs on Saudi society? Or will it change horse and move to accept renminbi in order to ensure more access to the world's largest oil importer, even at the risk of triggering Washington's wrath? Investors who like to bet on form may wish to consider the second option. Indeed, King Ibn Saud (the current King Salman's father) was once a loyal British client as the Brits had helped suppress the Wahhabi brotherhood, so cementing his power. Yet in 1936, Ibn Saud's adviser Abdullah Philby (father of British traitor Kim Philby), persuaded the king to switch his allegiance to the US, by offering Saudis exclusive oil concession to Chevron/Texaco rather than BP. This is why the Saudi oil company is called Aramco (the Arab-American oil company) rather than Arbroco.

Could the House of Saud pull off the same stunt again? One indication may be who lines up as cornerstone investors in the coming Aramco IPO. If those end up as China Investment Corporation, Petrochina and the PRC's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, than perhaps Aramco will be on its way to becoming Archoco. And with that, the pricing of Saudi oil could shift from US dollars to renminbi.

Incidentally, such a move would likely solve Saudi's biggest macro hurdle; specifically, the defense of the Saudi Riyal peg to the US dollar. Indeed, with reserves shrinking so rapidly, the arrangement looks to be on a slow-moving death watch (admittedly, at the current pace of reserve depletion, Riyadh could hold out three years and possibly five). But should Saudi announce that Aramco (or Archoco!) will now accept renminbi for oil payments, the dollar would likely tank while oil prices would shoot up (as Saudi would have a willing buyer for its oil in China). A lower US dollar/ higher oil combination would, needless to say, make the Saudi peg that much easier to sustain.

Lastly, if you were King Salman and thought that the long-term sustainability of the House of Saud depended on dumping the US and engaging China, what would you be doing right now? Would you be buying as many top-end US weapons as you possibly could, knowing that, in the future, such purchases may no longer be as easy as they are today? But let us now move to the third major player in this many-part drama, namely Germany, where the situation is even more complex.

3. Germany

Unencumbered by its own "heavy" history, Germany! being at heart a "continental" nation!would probably have joined the "continental alliance" and left the maritime alliance (which may explain why the "maritime alliance" tapped Angela Merkel's phone; arguably a greater intrusion then anything the US has accused Russia of). After all, consider the advantages for Germany of joining the "land-based empire":

  • Politically, Germany could finally develop its own diplomacy and stop taking orders from Washington.
  • Economically, German industry would have unlimited access to develop not only Russia but also all the populations north of the Himalayas set to join the modern world through the creation of the "New Silk Road".
  • Geopolitically, let us first state the obvious: a Middle-East ruled by the Sunnis under the control of the US diplomacy has not been a resounding success. Worse yet, the incredible mistakes made by the last two US administrations across the Middle-East have led to a very old religious war (Sunnis vs. Shiites) again erupting. As we write, it seems that the Russians and Iranian allies are gradually succeeding in taking the control of the Middle East. Now the return to some form of peace (under a Russia/Iranian yoke) would offer new markets for German industry, provided Germany immediately allied itself with Russia and broke away from the American sanctions imposed by the US Senate. Failing that, Germany could lose a Middle-Eastern market which has historically been important for its exporters.
  • Domestically: A German-Russian alliance would crimp Turkey's resurgence as Ankara would find itself isolated due to Iran and China being on its eastern borders and Russia on its northern frontiers. As a result, Turkey would most likely stop rattling Europe's cage, which would be a boon for Merkel as Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has been a significant thorn in her side. In other words, Merkel would outsource her "Turkey problem" to Russia.
  • Energetically, a Russian-dominated Middle East would still provide gas from Russia and oil from the Middle-East. The implication is that Germany would no longer need to have its energy imports "protected" by the maritime empire's fleet (Merkel's short-sightedness on the energy front, from the end of coal, to the banning of nuclear power, has fitted in the category of being "worse than a crime, it is a mistake").
  • Many people in Germany!business people and public servants such as ex -chancellor Gerhard Schroeder!understand the above and have lobbied for such an outcome. The recent trend of US prosecutors trying to export the supremacy of the US legal system over local ones, and imposing egregious fines on all and sundry (Deutsche Bank, Volkswagen) can only push German business leaders further down that path.

    Of course, as Frenchmen, we know that nothing good comes of:

  • Germany and Russia getting along like a house on fire.
  • Britain retreating back to its island.
  • And we would suggest that President Emmanuel Macron is also keenly aware of this. Which explains he is so far the only Western leader to have gone out of his way to be nice to President Trump; aside from the Polish President of course (more on that later).

    Macron has bent over to accommodate Merkel. And let's face it, his task is not easy. For as good as our president may be with the older ladies, he needs to convince Merkel to walk away from the above win-win and keep Germany committed to the greater European integration exercise, and Germany wedded to its role inside the broader "maritime empire".

    Germany as the sole paymaster

    Now, to be fair, the German population has enthusiastically supported the European integration project, partly out of historical guilt (now abating as the share of the population alive in World War II fast shrinks) and partly because it has been a boon to German exporters. However, recent years have highlighted that the low hanging fruit of European integration has been harvested. And to stay afloat, the European project now needs Berlin to transfer 2%-6% of GDP to poorer, less productive, European Union countries (especially as the UK will soon stop paying into EU coffers). This is a hard sell, even for a politician as gifted as Macron. Soon, Germany may be the only meaningful contributor to French agricultural subsidies; and that is unlikely to go down well with the average Bavarian housewife.

    Which brings us to the only other Western leader who has publicly embraced the current incumbent of the White House, namely Polish president, Andreszj Duda. After all, History suggests that France should not be the only country worried about a German rapprochement with the new "land-based empire". Most Eastern European countries, in particular Poland, have similar reactions to such a hook-up. In fact, threat of a German-Russian rapprochement may already be creating the birth of a new, Austro-Hungarian empire, aka the Visegrad Group alliance of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

    Historically, the role of the Austrian empire was to protect Europe from the Turks and also to stop an alliance between Prussia and Russia. For the time being the Visegrad group is negotiating (rather unsuccessfully) with Berlin about how to handle thousands of "Turks" (at least migrants entering Europe through Turkey, whether those migrants come from North Africa, the Middle-East, Afghanistan, Bangladesh or elsewhere is almost irrelevant). This Eastern grouping may have to address, sooner than they think, a German-Russian rapprochement.

    Just as importantly, the re-emergence of the Austrian empire is incompatible with the "Europe as a Nation" project. In the world we are describing Poland, followed by Hungary and the Czech Republic, may be the next countries to leave the EU. Although in so doing, the Visegrad Group would almost guarantee the feared rapprochement between Germany and Russia. Of course the Eastern European nations would only make such a move if they were militarily guaranteed by the US. And, by an amazing coincidence, this is exactly the promise that President Trump just delivered in Warsaw!

    For the "maritime empire", a loss of Germany would have to be rapidly compensated by an increased presence in Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Lithuania and almost every country East of Berlin and West of Moscow. Of course, this is what France and England (the "maritime empires of the day") did in the 1930s! with limited success .

    Conclusion

    History shows that maritime powers almost always have the upper hand in any clash; if only because moving goods by sea is cheaper, more efficient, easier to control, and often faster, than moving them by land. So there is little doubt that the US continues to have the advantage. Simple logic, suggests that goods should continue to be moved from Shanghai to Rotterdam by ship, rather than by rail.

    Unless, of course, a rising continental power wants to avoid the sea lanes controlled by its rival. Such a rival would have little choice but developing land routes; which of course is what China is doing. The fact that these land routes may not be as efficient as the US controlled sealanes is almost as irrelevant as the constant cost over-run of any major US defense projects. Both are necessary to achieve imperial status.

    As British historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson highlighted in his mustread East And West, empires tend to expand naturally, not out of megalomania, but simple commercial interest: "The true explanation lies in the very nature of the trade route. Having gone to all expenses involved the rule cannot be expected to leave the far terminus in the hands of another power." And indeed, the power that controls the end points on the trading road, and the power that controls the road, is the power that makes the money. Clearly, this is what China is trying to achieve, but trying to do so without entering into open conflict with the United States; perhaps because China knows the poor track record of continental empires picking fights with the maritime power

    Still, by focusing almost myopically on Russia, the US risks having its current massive head-start gradually eroded. And obvious signs of this erosion may occur in the coming years if and when the following happens:

  • Saudi Arabia adopts the renminbi for oil payments
  • Germany changes its stripes and cozies up to Russia and pretty much gives up on the whole European integration charade in order to follow its own naked self-interest.
  • The latter two events may, of course, not happen. Still, a few years ago, we would have dismissed such talk as not even worthy of the craziest of conspiracy theories. Today, however, we are a lot less sure. And our concern is that either of the above events could end up having a dramatic impact on a number of asset classes and portfolios.

    And the possible catalyst for these changes is China's effort to create a renminbi-based gold market in Hong Kong. For while the key change to our global financial infrastructure (namely oil payments occurring in renminbi) has yet to fully arrive, the ability to transform renminbi into gold, without having to bring the currency back into China (assuming Hong Kong is not "really" part of China as it has its own supreme court and independent justice system just about!) is a likely game-changer.

    Clearly, China is erecting the financial architecture for the above to occur. This does not mean the initiative will be a success. China could easily be sitting on a dud. But still, we should give credit to Beijing's policymakers for their sense of timing for has there ever been a better time to promote an alternative to the US dollar? If you are sitting in Russia, Qatar, Iran, or Venezuela and listening to the rhetoric coming out of Washington, would you feel that comfortable keeping your assets, and denominating your trade, in dollars? Or would you perhaps be looking for alternatives?

    This is what makes today's US policy hard to understand. Just when China is starting to offer an alternative!an alternative that the US should be trying to bury!the US is moving to "weaponize" the dollar and pound other nations!even those as geo-strategically vital as Russia!for simple domestic political reasons. It all seems so short-sighted

    ... ... ...

    skbull44 -> Mr 9x19 , Aug 20, 2017 10:57 AM

    I've got a different suggestion for the US Empire, rather than attempt to suppress rising competition, take the words of Eddie Morra in the Bradley Cooper movie Limitless to heart: "There are no safeguards on human nature. We're wired to overreach. Look at history, all the countries that ever ruled the world. Portugal with this big, massive navy. All they got now are salt cod and cheap condos. The Brits. Now they're just sitting on their dank, little island fussing over their suits. No one's stopping and thinking, hey, we're doing pretty well. We got France. We've got Poland. We've got big, Swiss bank accounts. You know what? Let's not invade Russia in the winter. Let's go home. Let's pop a beer. And, let's live off the interest."

    new game -> Jim in MN , Aug 20, 2017 7:43 AM

    agree on pile of shit. so many if this then thats, I am head spinning. moar like predictiing the weather.

    but to wish/think merica will cease eurasia vital interests agression is moar hogwash. see, this is what empires do until they make that fatal mistake of over extending themselves into the hand of conflict and loose.

    and trillions later and the mideast in turmoil serves as a prime example the beginning of failure. but to think the deep state/MIC is going to roll back operations is to think mcstain lindsey types are going away, just plain dellusional.

    jim, you are ignorant of the gorilla in the budget, 600+ billion and growing! some say near 1 trillion counting all inclusive costs-va ect.

    there will be the opposite of your wish think realize-moar expansion and bases...

    until defeat.

    history...

    purplewarrior -> Buckaroo Banzai , Aug 20, 2017 3:47 AM

    I don't see Russia being a game changer. They rely too much on oil. Low oil prices really cripple them.

    Freddie -> purplewarrior , Aug 20, 2017 4:00 AM

    Russia has some of the best computer programmers in the world. Their rocket engines and missiles are the best in the world too. Jet fighters may be the best as well because the F-35 is garbage and the F-22 was killed and has it's own problems.

    Finally, Russia has the largest gold reserves in the world and also other natural resources. As long as Putin is around, Russia will be fine.

    besnook -> DrewJackson , Aug 20, 2017 11:41 AM

    When wealth is in an endless supply of commodities demographics are not as important, Canada and Australia for examples. i don't think Russia is losing population anymore, anyway. russia is the game changer. they are the eurasian link. the side that gets russia gets the world. If both Germany and china get Russia the usa is finished economically and politically on the world stage. That much is obvious. a lot of the rest of what these guys are saying is just geopolitical speculation based upon historic European geopolitical behavior.

    My response to that is the Eurozone would have been considered impossible just a few years ago. a united Eurozone allied with Russia and China in a multipolar world suits everyone and provides an economic and political check and balance on violence on both continents leaving the USA harmless in the middle of the oceans.

    sinbad2 -> purplewarrior , Aug 20, 2017 4:01 AM

    It's the US that relies too much on oil, a little competition from Russia and Iran, has forced the US to start wars in a dozen countries

    sinbad2 -> Buckaroo Banzai , Aug 20, 2017 3:58 AM

    You obviously haven't noticed that all of Africa's resources, gold diamonds oil etc, is owned by American British and French companies.

    The slavers never left Africa, the US has special forces destabilizing many countries in Africa today.

[Aug 25, 2017] Some analogies of current events in the USA and Mao cultural revolution: In China when the Mao mythology was threatened the Red Guard raised holy hell and lives were ruined

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... In China when the Mao mythology was threatened the Red Guard raised holy hell and lives were ruined. Apparently our Red Guard is now beginning to stir. ..."
Aug 23, 2017 | www.unz.com

Robert Magill, August 23, 2017 at 7:12 pm GMT

"The country's bourgeois culture] laid out the script we all were supposed to follow: Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance substance abuse and crime.

You might think that's pretty bland stuff."

You might think that's bland, but in essence that was the American Myth for most of the 20th century. In the middle nineteen fifties the myth began to unravel when the boomers reached sufficient numbers to be targeted for separation from the mainstream mythology. They constituted a potential very lucrative major market. Enter bubble-gum pop: an entry vehicle for what would follow. Bye bye "Your Hit Parade". Hello Sex, drugs and Rock and Roll.

Forward flash to 2017 and that pretty bland stuff still looks like pretty bland stuff. So if Myth America was too bland to be true, how do we set about replacing it with something more realistic.

In China when the Mao mythology was threatened the Red Guard raised holy hell and lives were ruined. Apparently our Red Guard is now beginning to stir.

GummyBar, August 23, 2017 at 10:00 pm GMT

May I suggest an acronym – rather than the Obama-Holder-Lynch Effect, change the order to the Holder-Obama-Lynch Effect. HOLE just seems much more appropriate.

[Aug 24, 2017] McCain renews calls for Trump to send weapons to Ukraine

Notable quotes:
"... During his visit to Kiev, Mattis is expected to reassure the country's leaders that the U.S. remains opposed to Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, according to The Associated Press . ..."
Aug 24, 2017 | thehill.com
John McCain (R-Ariz.) is again urging President Trump to provide lethal aid to Ukraine as Defense Secretary James Mattis arrives in the country for a meeting with its president and top defense official.

"It is long past time for the United States to provide Ukraine the defensive lethal assistance it needs to deter and defend against further Russian aggression," McCain, the chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Wednesday.

The senator's renewed calls for the U.S. to provide lethal weaponry to Ukraine as it battles pro-Russia separatists in the eastern Donbas region comes two days after Trump announced a new broad strategy for Afghanistan.

With the change of course in Afghanistan, McCain said, Trump "now has the same opportunity with regard to Ukraine."

The senior Arizona Republican argued that providing weapons to Ukraine "is not opposed to a peaceful resolution of this conflict -- it is essential to achieving it."

"As long as the status quo remains, Russia has no reason to change its behavior, and we should only expect more violence and more death," he said.

Russia has denied providing support to the separatists, but U.S. officials have claimed otherwise.

The president already has the authority to send lethal assistance to Ukraine under the annual defense policy bill. But former President Barack Obama chose instead to send only nonlethal assistance to the country.

During his visit to Kiev, Mattis is expected to reassure the country's leaders that the U.S. remains opposed to Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, according to The Associated Press .

Trump entered office in January with hopes of improving the relationship between the U.S. and Russia. But ties have grown tense amid ongoing investigations into Russia's role in the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Also fueling tensions between the two countries is a sanctions package signed into law earlier this month that penalizes Russia for its efforts to meddle in the election. Trump reluctantly signed the measures after they were overwhelmingly passed by Congress.

[Aug 24, 2017] RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 24 AUGUST 2017

Aug 24, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

THE NEW NWO AND RUSSIA. This is very much worth reading . The authors argue that in the coming (well, already here) rivalry between the American maritime power and the Chinese land power, Russia is the swing player that can hand victory to one or the other: "So logic says that the US should be very nice to Russia and seek to establish some kind of military alliance". Well, logic's voice isn't loud enough for the US Congress to hear. Also interesting is their discussion of Germany's choices and the important role Saudi Arabia could play if it changes protectors again. ( I too wondered this two years ago.

PUTIN'S POPULARITY. Some Western academics asked " But is his popularity real, or are respondents lying to pollsters?" and concluded "Putin's approval ratings largely reflect the attitudes of Russian citizens. " I didn't bother to read their paper because I know – as does any serious observer – the answer already. Of course he's popular: he is the leader of a team which has achieved a tremendous turnaround in Russia's situation. Since 2000 all indicators are up. I wish we could say the same in our part of the world.

RUSSIA INC. GDP grew 2.5% year-on-year in the second quarter ; this is the highest growth since 2013. PMI is up to 52.7 Inflation is the lowest in five years

USSR DEBT. With a payment to Bosnia, Moscow has paid off the last of the debt it inherited from the USSR . When an earlier agreement that the 15 would divide the debt fell apart, Moscow took responsibility for all of it in return for USSR assets abroad. It did this despite the fact that its creditors insisted on repayment while many of its debtors could not pay. The total was about USD80 billion and many debts to it were forgiven. I well remember how glad we all were that it took responsibility for the debts as well as the other leftovers: weaponry outside, nuclear weapons and its guarantee of Russian citizenship to any Soviet citizen who wasn't automatically given citizenship where he lived. It was only later that the last three were rebranded as evidence of imperialistic intentions.

DEMOGRAPHICS. There has been a small net decline in Russia's population this year after several years of growth. We will see if this is a bump or a trend. (Although Karlin, who is much more knowledgeable than I, predicted a return to "normal" rates two and a half years ago .)

AGRICULTURE. The Agriculture Minister estimates the grain harvest will be 110 million tonnes which would leave as much as 40 million for export . So Russia will presumably keep the title of number one.

VISA RETALIATION. My take : I believe Moscow is ready to follow Washington right down to zero representation is that's where it goes. But, if the Russiagate bubble bursts (probably the most severe blow is the exposure of the Guccifer 2.0 fake by VIPS ) then the original pretext will burst too and things can get back to normal.

MAKING WATER RUN UP HILL. Lithuania is getting LNG from the USA and Ukraine coal from the USA . More expensive but supposedly for security. Well, whatever: if they want to pay more, let them. Of course in all likelihood they will "pay" with IMF or EU loans. Payback's a problem for later.

CHANGE OR BLIP? The Prime Minister says Riga is interested in better relations with Moscow and a Polish poll shows number who regard Russia as a threat down about 50% in 3 years . After all, despite years of " Europe faces a 'real threat' from Russia " Russia still hasn't conquered anybody. But that just makes some people shout louder: " The growing Russian military threat in Europe ".

TRUMP KEEPS AFGHANISTAN GOING. Reinforcing failure . Trump Vows To Leave A Better Afghanistan For Nation's Grandchildren To Fight In . The generals rolled him, as they rolled Obama . And if it really was short skirts, then there's a lot more to that story than he, or McMaster, probably know . Today the Americans get their supplies in via Pakistan or the Central Asian countries (through Russia). Washington has made threatening noises at Pakistan and Russia. How then?

CHICKENS, HOME, ROOST . Torchlight parades in Kiev , Riga , Tallinn . And now Charlottesville . " Nationalists" there , but " Nazis" here . Some historical background for the Ukraine case ; Baltics .

AMERICA-HYSTERICA. Newsweek discovers a new bottom level. " Charlottesville's Alt-right Leaders Have a Passion for Vladimir Russian Federation President Putin ".

UKAINE. More signposts of disaster. Ukrainians now spend 50% of their income on food; not poverty says the Minister of Social Policy fatuously but because they like to eat well . The Economist rates Kiev among the ten least liveable cities . Did Ukraine supply the rocket motors to North Korea ? And, I've mentioned this before , but the longest-lasting effect of the Kiev coup may be a nuclear disaster

[Aug 24, 2017] The Economist Exclusive -- The Future of Bannonism 'The Judeo-Christian Liberal West Won'

Notable quotes:
"... Bannon openly acknowledged his animus for the "Party of Davos" editorial positions of The Economist ..."
"... For Mr Bannon, who went from a working-class Virginian family to careers in Wall Street and Hollywood, those agreements epitomised the folly of globalisation, which he considers disastrous for American workers and avoidable. He hardened this critique after returning to America from a spell in Hong Kong; China, whose gaming of WTO rules Mr Bannon considers tantamount to an "economic war" against America, remains at the heart of it. ..."
"... When some of Mr Bannon's early schemes failed -- including the shabbily planned travel ban, now snarled up in the courts -- Mr Trump turned increasingly to his more conventional advisers, including Mr Kushner and Mr McMaster. ..."
Aug 24, 2017 | www.breitbart.com
President Trump's former chief strategist and current Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon invited the editors of The Economist to his home for a candid discussion about the future of the populist economic nationalist movement and the civilizational challenges that will pit "the Judeo-Christian liberal West" against globalist "mercantilist" forces from China to Silicon Valley.

Bannon openly acknowledged his animus for the "Party of Davos" editorial positions of The Economist , referring to them as "the enemy" of economic nationalism for their "radical" obsession with free trade at all costs.

He also affirmed his loyalty to Trump and his desire to help him. Breitbart "will never turn on [Trump]," Bannon said, "But we are never going to let him take a decision that hurts him."

Bannon acknowledged that in the White House he had "influence," but outside at Breitbart he has "power." He said he intends to use that power to "rally the base" and "have [Trump's] back. The harder he pushes, the more we will be there for him."

The discussion soon turned to what Bannon sees as the inevitable civilizational struggle between the Judeo-Christian classical liberalism of the West -- which affirms human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and self-governance -- versus the "mercantilist, Confucian system" of an ascendant China.

From The Economist :

Among the particular opponents he has in his sights, said Mr Bannon, seated in a dining-room decorated with Christian iconography and political mementos, are congressional Republicans ("Mitch McConnell, I'm going to light him up"), China ("Let's go screw up One Belt One Road") and "the elites in Silicon Valley and Wall Street -- they're a bunch of globalists who have forgotten their fellow Americans." Despite his departure -- voluntarily, he insists, though his resignation is reported to have been demanded of him -- Mr Bannon says he will never attack his former boss. Yet Breitbart will caution Mr Trump to stick to the populist nationalist course Mr Bannon charted. "We will never turn on him. But we are never going to let him take a decision that hurts him." The website offered an early taste of this in its disparaging coverage of Mr Trump's "flip-flop" decision to send more American troops to Afghanistan, which was announced on August 21st and Mr Bannon strongly opposes (see article ).

As Mr Trump's campaign chief (his third in two months, the campaign having been roiled by scandals) Mr Bannon urged him to redouble that effort [to campaign on as a populist economic nationalist taking on the politically correct establishment]. "The American people understood his foibles and understood his character flaws and they didn't care," he says. "The country was thirsting for change and [Barack] Obama didn't give them enough. I said, we are going for a nationalist message, we are going to go barbarian, and we will win."

For Mr Bannon, who went from a working-class Virginian family to careers in Wall Street and Hollywood, those agreements epitomised the folly of globalisation, which he considers disastrous for American workers and avoidable. He hardened this critique after returning to America from a spell in Hong Kong; China, whose gaming of WTO rules Mr Bannon considers tantamount to an "economic war" against America, remains at the heart of it.

A zealous Catholic who believes in the inevitability of civilizational conflict, he considers China's growth to be an additional, overarching threat to America, which it must therefore dial back. "I want the world to look back in 100 years and say, their mercantilist, Confucian system lost. The Judeo-Christian liberal West won."

The president has, if not fixed intellectual differences with Mr Bannon, different predilections, including his slavish regard for the military and business elites now stocking his cabinet, whom his former adviser derides. ("What did the elites do?" asks Mr Bannon. "These are the guys who gave us happy talk on Iraq, who let China into the WTO and said it would sign up to the rules-based order.")

When some of Mr Bannon's early schemes failed -- including the shabbily planned travel ban, now snarled up in the courts -- Mr Trump turned increasingly to his more conventional advisers, including Mr Kushner and Mr McMaster.

On trade and security in particular, they have edged him towards the mainstream. Whereas Mr Bannon urged the president to withdraw from NAFTA and Afghanistan, for example, he has launched a modest-looking review of the former and will send more troops to the latter. Increasingly isolated, Mr Bannon's departure from the White House was predicted.

Read the rest here .

[Aug 24, 2017] Civil War inside the US Far Right by Tamar Pileggi

www.defenddemocracy.press
'I'm not going to breathe the same air as that terrorist'
Bannon boycotted Trump meet with 'terrorist' Abbas -- report

Days after his ouster from the White House, the extent of the animosity between divisive strategist Steve Bannon and the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner is steadily emerging in US media reports, with an article in Vanity Fair detailing their disputes and asserting that Bannon is now planning his "revenge."

Bannon, a hero of the so-called "alt right" whose presence in the West Wing was controversial from the start, had become the nucleus of one of several competing power centers in a chaotic White House. During his six-month tenure as Trump's chief strategist, Bannon and Kushner reportedly clashed on numerous policy issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

... ... ...

Hours after he was fired, Bannon returned to his previous job as editor of the ultra-conservative Breitbart News, where he declared war on Ivanka, Kushner and fellow "globalist" Gary Cohn.

The Vanity Fair article was headlined: "Steve Bannon readies his revenge: The war on Jared Kushner is about to go nuclear."

... ... ...

"Jared and Ivanka helped push him out. They were concerned about how they were being viewed by the Jewish community," The Mail reported on Sunday.

Read more http://www.timesofisrael.com/bannon-boycotted-trumps-meeting-with-terrorist-abbas-report

SOURCE www.timesofisrael.com

Commnets from Bannon boycotted Trump meet with 'terrorist' Abbas -- report The Times of Israel

Jossef Perl · Nahariyah, Hazafon, Israel Yes, this time it is Tamar Pileggi who gives us Time of Israel's typical Trump's blasting story quoting "Vanity Fair detailing their (i.e. Kushner vs. Bannon) disputes and asserting that Bannon is now planning his 'revenge."" If it comes from Vanity Fair that Bannon is planning a revenge (albeit without a single named source) it must be true right? But this is what the US fake news media has decended to, while the Israeli fake news media goes one step lower, just quoting the US fake media. Any 7 years old can see the that intent here continues to be to creat an impression that the Trump white is out of control and everything around Trum is falling apart. How can this kind of media continue to think the public believes a word from them? Tamar Pileggi, if all you do is quoting Vanity Fair, which is typical to the rest of the staff at TOI, why don't you all just include a link to the original articles in your TOI webpage? Who need all of you filling your paper by quoting other publications without any due diligence? How can you call yourselves journalists when all you do is cut and paste? Audrey Travis · Works at Music Teacher - Retired Perhaps, but 90% of the world knows nothing about the extreme violence of the ultra left Antifa and the fact the y brought and used weapons in Charlottesville. What Trump should have done was be explicit in the detailsof why he was condemning both side. His broadsided condemnation of both sides was the problem. Albert Reingewirtz · Works at Happily Retired He did not do any equivalence between two despicable gangs of mobsters. He talked about BOTH of their VIOLENCE. You listen too much to propaganda. The more they repeat the more people believe their lies. Steve Klein · Works at Self-Employed Albert Reingewirtz, do you believe there were "some very fine" people marching with the Nazis in Charlottesville? Like · Reply · 2 · Aug 21, 2017 5:17am Steve Klein · Works at Self-Employed 'Bannon: Mahmoud Abbas is a terrorist, I'd never meet with him'

Ousted WH strategist Steve Bannon reportedly lobbied hard for Jerusalem embassy move, tougher line against PA - but was opposed by Kushner.

David Rosenberg, 21/08/17 11:23 (Israel National News)

[Aug 24, 2017] Vault 7 release includes revelation of CIA capability to allow it to misdirect the attribution of cyber attacks leaving behind the fingerprints of the very groups that the attack techniques were stolen from

Aug 24, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Robert Beal | Aug 24, 2017 12:47:02 PM | 17

"Only recently did the "collusion with Russia" nonsense suddenly die down."

My short letter to the editor of The New Yorker (see last sentence):

Raffi Katchadourian ("Julian Assange, a man without a country," Aug. 21, 2017) didn't mention Wikileak's Vault 7 release includes revelation of CIA capability to allow it to misdirect the attribution of cyber attacks. According to Wikileaks, the U.S. false-flag technology consists of "leaving behind the 'fingerprints' of the very groups that the attack techniques were stolen from."

Karchadourian's omission belies his assertion: "Whatever one thinks of Assange's election disclosures, accepting his contention that they shared no ties with the two Russian fronts requires willful blindness."

His article, of near-record length for the magazine, exhaustively attempts to resuscitate speculation about a Russian cyber connection to the Clinton meltdown.

[Aug 24, 2017] Russian meddling is Watergate-worthy, but Israeli meddling is hunky-dory by Philip Weiss

This is the key question: if there are instances of meddling in the USA elections while not to investigate them all, why to select Russia who is probably a monor player in this game.
Notable quotes:
"... Apart from the question of whether Trump will be brought down by his Russia connections, the real issue here is, What is the American people's interest? In the Syria case, it would appear that Trump is realigning U.S. foreign policy vis-a-vis Russia. And that this realignment could be good for the U.S. position in the world: an effort to lessen U.S. military engagement in the Middle East. But meanwhile it is clearly in Israel's interest for the U.S. to be up to its hips in the perpetual war of the Middle East, because occupiers love company. ..."
"... I believe the no-daylight policy has been hugely costly to the United States; and has involved a great deal of meddling by Israel and its friends in our politics. The media are afraid to touch this stuff; but a look back on the special relationship between the countries reveals a number of policy decisions that the U.S. would have made differently if Israel weren't putting its thumb on our scale. Let's review: ..."
"... The United States has suffered enormously for its inability to stop this process. Even the 9/11 attacks were motivated in good measure by the sufferings of Palestinians. The Israel lobby and its American friends played the lead role in nullifying U.S. policy in the settlements– witness the undermining of President Obama's efforts to stop settlements in 2011 and 2012 via political pressure. (Even Noam Chomsky has said that in this area the client is influencing the superpower, not the other way round.) ..."
"... Israel acquired nuclear weapons in violation of clear U.S. policy in the 60s, and likely also by pilfering highly-enriched uranium from the United States through a front operation in Pennsylvania. There has never been a squeak about this from the U.S. government or officials– no they all maintain the deception– and meantime Israeli nukes have contributed to an arms race around the region, and fostered the U.S. image as lying imperialist hypocrite ..."
"... Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for the Iraq war, saying it would transform the region for the better: "If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region." The leading Israel lobby group AIPAC also pushed for this war, while Israel's rightwing American friends, the neoconservatives, argued that the war would bring democracy to Arab states and make Israel safer; ..."
www.defenddemocracy.press

The investigation of Russia's meddling in our politics dominates the liberal press; and for my part, I believe everything The New York Times and MSNBC are suspicioning about Donald Trump and the Russians. I bet that the Russians have something on Trump personally, possibly involving money or sex; and that the Russians meddled in our election. (Not that the meddling changed the outcome; no, Hillary Clinton did a great job of losing it on her own.)

But as someone who focuses on Israel policy, what stands out to me is that conduct that is Watergate-worthy when it comes to Russia is hunky-dory when it comes to Israel. Just yesterday, for instance, Trump adviser Jared Kushner was on the hot seat in Congress over his contacts with a Russian official last year. But no one has a hearing about the fact that Kushner's family, out of devotion to Israel, financed illegal Israeli settlements that have undermined the two-state solution, thereby nullifying longtime U.S. policy. I think that's a real problem. MSNBC doesn't.

Just in the last week there have been two other expressions of Israel's active interests in our politics that the liberal media have failed to say boo about.

First, there's the Israel Anti-Boycott Act in the House and Senate. Israel regards the Boycott movement (BDS) as an existential threat; and so the Israel lobby group AIPAC produced legislation that scores of Senators and Congresspeople, including many liberal heroes, signed on to that trashes the First Amendment by making it a possible crime to support boycott of Israel. By the way, AIPAC has a mission to insure that there is "no daylight" between the Israeli government and the U.S. government. In the 1960s despite the best efforts of Senator Fulbright, AIPAC escaped designation as an agent of a foreign government. That ought to be a scandal, but everyone walks on by.

Then there's Israel's unhappiness with the Syrian ceasefire deal that Donald Trump reached with Russia. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says that the deal fails to limit Iran's presence in Syria or to prevent weapons getting to Israel's enemy, Hezbollah; and Israel supporters in the U.S. duly echoed Netanyahu's view.

Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, who launched his dazzling career, in his own words, "with the support of the pro-Israel community," wrote :

"This is unbelievable! Trump Administration ignored Israel's security concerns in making the Syrian deal with Putin."

While Daniel Shapiro , also a former U.S. ambassador to Israel– who lately called Israel "this miracle, this gift, this jewel" -- wrote that the deal needs to be revised:

Can the deal be restructured to Isr's satisfaction? US-Russia dynamic makes that difficult & worrisome. But effort needs to be made.

Apart from the question of whether Trump will be brought down by his Russia connections, the real issue here is, What is the American people's interest? In the Syria case, it would appear that Trump is realigning U.S. foreign policy vis-a-vis Russia. And that this realignment could be good for the U.S. position in the world: an effort to lessen U.S. military engagement in the Middle East. But meanwhile it is clearly in Israel's interest for the U.S. to be up to its hips in the perpetual war of the Middle East, because occupiers love company.

I believe the no-daylight policy has been hugely costly to the United States; and has involved a great deal of meddling by Israel and its friends in our politics. The media are afraid to touch this stuff; but a look back on the special relationship between the countries reveals a number of policy decisions that the U.S. would have made differently if Israel weren't putting its thumb on our scale. Let's review:

  • Israel has put more than 600,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, thereby violating the Geneva Convention and destroying the two-state solution, which was U.S. policy. The United States has suffered enormously for its inability to stop this process. Even the 9/11 attacks were motivated in good measure by the sufferings of Palestinians. The Israel lobby and its American friends played the lead role in nullifying U.S. policy in the settlements– witness the undermining of President Obama's efforts to stop settlements in 2011 and 2012 via political pressure. (Even Noam Chomsky has said that in this area the client is influencing the superpower, not the other way round.)
  • Israel acquired nuclear weapons in violation of clear U.S. policy in the 60s, and likely also by pilfering highly-enriched uranium from the United States through a front operation in Pennsylvania. There has never been a squeak about this from the U.S. government or officials– no they all maintain the deception– and meantime Israeli nukes have contributed to an arms race around the region, and fostered the U.S. image as lying imperialist hypocrite .
  • Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for the Iraq war, saying it would transform the region for the better: "If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region." The leading Israel lobby group AIPAC also pushed for this war, while Israel's rightwing American friends, the neoconservatives, argued that the war would bring democracy to Arab states and make Israel safer; as did liberals such as Tom Friedman, Israel's onetime promoter, who said we should go to war against Iraq because terrorists were blowing up pizza parlors in Tel Aviv. Whether the voice given to Israel's interest was determinative or not in our decision to invade Iraq (I say it was), this is an influence that clearly should have been exposed and investigated, beyond the efforts of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby. But the media shut down that conversation, in part through the vociferous efforts of Jeffrey Goldberg, who formerly emigrated to Israel and served in its armed forces.

[Aug 24, 2017] Notes On The Junta, An Unnecessary Land-Corridor And A Regular Russian Maneuver

Neoliberalism logically leads to the establishment on military junta or some variation of centralized control of the state. This also makes possible to suppress or at least deflect the wave of right wing nationalism that is swiping all Western countries and which also is the restion to the failure of neoliberalism as a social system The USA is just a little bit ahead of EU countries in this respect
Notable quotes:
"... Kelly, Mattis and McMaster are not the only military figures serving at high levels in the Trump administration. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke each served in various branches of the military, and Trump recently tapped former Army general Mark S. Inch to lead the Federal Bureau of Prisons. [...] the National Security Council [..] counts two other generals on the senior staff. ..."
"... Western society is awash in propaganda, and we dare make fun of the North Koreans. ..."
"... The political directorate has basically become a group of surrogates for corporate/banking interests, while the military elite have moved into the political space along with the banksters. ..."
"... The third element of non-democratic rule in the US is the judiciary front men/women who are essentially putting the interests of the corporate elite into their interpretations of statuatory law. ..."
"... This was written before the inauguration - during the transition: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/james-mattis-iran-secretary-of-defense-214500 A good dissection of Mad Dog ..."
"... on the first part, i quote you "But he does not like to be controlled. I expect him to revolt one day. He will then find that it is too late and that he is actually powerless." i fully agree with what you say here.. However, i think this has probably already happened and will happen again. ..."
"... But I'm optimistic that He's still got a few tricks up his sleeve. I've never watched The Apprentice but EVERY real CEO has a stool pigeon or two, or more, within the organisation. The CEO of Oz Branch of the last multinational corp I worked for had 4 (according to the Credit Manager(!?) who gave me a list of their names). Trump was a CEO. There's no way he would take a CEO job without making sure that he could install his own stoolies. Imo. ..."
"... I now think this is about old big money/values versus new (past 40 years) upstart money/values. But what we are seeing are the troops/puppets.....and that is internally. Internationally, the internal conflict is focused, like Bannon says, around trying to contain the China/Russia axis and maintain global private finance control versus haggling about LGBT issues. ..."
"... Interesting that 20 years ago USA Americans were taught that "The Evil Red Soviet Union" committed these horrible acts (state propaganda and domestic surveillance) and that because of these things its people were not FREE like USA Americans. ..."
"... Goldman Sachs and Military Hunta are just plain Evil ..."
"... "Then there is the MIC corporations that rotate leadership of generals through their organizations...... The Generals are held captive by that big $ welded, and promised to them for their "second lives" in various MIC corporations after their "retirements". ..."
"... As, let's not forget, Trump's cloudy common sense, his semi-isolationist nationalist attitude, trade protectionism (etc.) actually appealed to voters, which is unbearable to the PTB, out of bounds, leading to covert hysteria, burning up the wires. The sheeples are supposed to vote as the Media Spin ordains, not ever for their own interests or for a disgusting deplorable person like pussy-grabbing Trump. Unthinkable! that the PTB would ever be bothered by 'voter' crap. The Gore-Bush II standoff was splendiferous, a tight contest, etc. and who won might be suspense but not more, policies would be in the 'same system.' Arguments about Supreme Court decisions, yeah, only evidence a genuine 'rule of law' method.. ..."
"... The no.1. faction that can dominate Trump, also many others, is the Military. (Second are the banks, third Big Corps.) For now their position is shadowed and ambiguous, but a military Junta is perhaps not so fanciful. Thing is, a Junta solves many problems for many ppl, so in certain conditions it is embraced. ..."
"... I think Trump may have so deeply surrounded (embedded may be the better word) himself primarily to protect himself from the intelligence community. JFK was not a one off in my opinion and probably not in Trump's. ..."
"... The new troops may be a Pentagon face saving measure ... Or they may be a sop to the CIA, those poppy fields won't guard themselves:) ..."
Aug 24, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
According to a 1950s political theory The Structure of Power in American Society is mainly build on three elite groups, the high military, the corporation executives and the political directorate. (The "political directorate" can best be described as the bureaucracy, the CIA and their proxies within Congress.)

On election day I noted that only the military had supported The Not-Hillary President . The corporate and executive corners of the triangle had pushed for Hillary Clinton and continued to do so even after Trump had won. (Only recently did the "collusion with Russia" nonsense suddenly die down.) I wrote:

The military will demand its due beyond the three generals now in Trump's cabinet.

That turned out to be right. A military junta is now ruling the United States:

Inside the White House, meanwhile, generals manage Trump's hour-by-hour interactions and whisper in his ear -- and those whispers, as with the decision this week to expand U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, often become policy.

At the core of Trump's circle is a seasoned trio of generals with experience as battlefield commanders: White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster. The three men have carefully cultivated personal relationships with the president and gained his trust.

...

Kelly, Mattis and McMaster are not the only military figures serving at high levels in the Trump administration. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke each served in various branches of the military, and Trump recently tapped former Army general Mark S. Inch to lead the Federal Bureau of Prisons. [...] the National Security Council [..] counts two other generals on the senior staff.

With the firing of the renegade Flynn and various other Trump advisors, the Junta has already removed all independent voices in the White House. It is now attaching more control wires to its "salesperson" marionette:

The new system, laid out in two memos co-authored by [General] Kelly and Porter and distributed to Cabinet members and White House staffers in recent days, is designed to ensure that the president won't see any external policy documents, internal policy memos, agency reports, and even news articles that haven't been vetted.

Trump has a weakness for the military since he attended a New York military academy during his youth. But he does not like to be controlled. I expect him to revolt one day. He will then find that it is too late and that he is actually powerless.

P Walker | Aug 24, 2017 10:16:40 AM | 1

Western society is awash in propaganda, and we dare make fun of the North Koreans.
yancey | Aug 24, 2017 10:48:40 AM | 2
The political directorate has basically become a group of surrogates for corporate/banking interests, while the military elite have moved into the political space along with the banksters.

The third element of non-democratic rule in the US is the judiciary front men/women who are essentially putting the interests of the corporate elite into their interpretations of statuatory law.

Anonymous | Aug 24, 2017 10:58:10 AM | 4
Meanhwhile NATO join Sweden in tremendous military exercise next month. But western outlet propaganda journalists wont tell you about that...
Exercise: "Aurora 17"
"Is a planned military exercise that will take place in Sweden during a three-week period, from 11 through 29 September 2017.[1] It is expected to be the largest military exercise in 20 years to take place on Swedish soil.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_17

Also: Mattis mulls supplying Ukraine with lethal weapons after visit
https://www.sott.net/article/360000-Mattis-mulls-supplying-Ukraine-with-lethal-weapons-after-visit

nmb | Aug 24, 2017 10:59:05 AM | 5
As Western propaganda rapidly collapses, Washington's hawks start to retire from searching for pretexts
Yul | Aug 24, 2017 11:20:28 AM | 7
@b

This was written before the inauguration - during the transition: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/james-mattis-iran-secretary-of-defense-214500 A good dissection of Mad Dog

Yul | Aug 24, 2017 11:23:14 AM | 8
BTW: Mad Dog has thrown the Kurds under the bus:
YPG:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ypg-not-a-choice-but-necessity-us-tells-turkey.aspx?pageID=238&nID=117126&NewsCatID=409

PKK:

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/08/mattis-pledges-support-erdogan-pkk-turkey.html

Jonesy | Aug 24, 2017 11:25:12 AM | 9
More anti-Iranian propaganda from the UK, this is not a coincidence IMHO:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4815440/Iranian-backed-fighters-close-corridor-Med.html

james | Aug 24, 2017 11:25:54 AM | 10
thanks b..

on the first part, i quote you "But he does not like to be controlled. I expect him to revolt one day. He will then find that it is too late and that he is actually powerless." i fully agree with what you say here.. However, i think this has probably already happened and will happen again.

point 2 - israel wants a war with iran.. they will dream up anything they can to keep the usa military on alert for whatever hairbrained warmongering act they have in mind next..

point 3.. more bullshit to sprinkle with what is not bullshit - nato war exercises as @4 anonymous points out...

dh | Aug 24, 2017 11:40:51 AM | 11
@8 Mad Dog might as well come right out and tell the YPG/PKK/SDF they are dispensable. Time for another rabies shot.
Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 24, 2017 11:49:23 AM | 12
...
The new system, laid out in two memos co-authored by [General] Kelly and Porter and distributed to Cabinet members and White House staffers in recent days, is designed to ensure that the president won't see any external policy documents, internal policy memos, agency reports, and even news articles that haven't been vetted.

Trump has a weakness for the military since he attended a New York military academy during his youth. But he does not like to be controlled. I expect him to revolt one day. He will then find that it is too late and that he is actually powerless.
...

I agree it's beginning to LOOK grim for Trump, b.

But I'm optimistic that He's still got a few tricks up his sleeve. I've never watched The Apprentice but EVERY real CEO has a stool pigeon or two, or more, within the organisation. The CEO of Oz Branch of the last multinational corp I worked for had 4 (according to the Credit Manager(!?) who gave me a list of their names). Trump was a CEO. There's no way he would take a CEO job without making sure that he could install his own stoolies. Imo.

psychohistorian | Aug 24, 2017 12:24:55 PM | 14
Thanks for the posting b.

That said, again the private finance folk are not included in your analysis. The private finance folk are certainly part of Trump's inner circle and none of them have been ejected. Then there is the MIC corporations that rotate leadership of generals through their organizations......

I now think this is about old big money/values versus new (past 40 years) upstart money/values. But what we are seeing are the troops/puppets.....and that is internally. Internationally, the internal conflict is focused, like Bannon says, around trying to contain the China/Russia axis and maintain global private finance control versus haggling about LGBT issues.

fastfreddy | Aug 24, 2017 12:45:11 PM | 16
Western Society is awash in propaganda as it is enveloped in a Homeland Security/Domestic Surveillance Police State - New World Order - Juggernaut.

Interesting that 20 years ago USA Americans were taught that "The Evil Red Soviet Union" committed these horrible acts (state propaganda and domestic surveillance) and that because of these things its people were not FREE like USA Americans.

(Homeland Security is budgeted such that airport security personnel are hired not out of necessity, but simply to soak up the funding.

dahoit | Aug 24, 2017 12:47:16 PM | 18
In the Guardian the other day they had a poll;54


''''5


In the Guardian the other day; 54% to 27% saying leave the Con. monuments alone.

Brad | Aug 24, 2017 1:01:51 PM | 21
@14
https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-315-meet-goldman-sachs-the-vampire-squid/

Everyone sing.....

" Goldman Sachs and Military Hunta are just plain Evil , they are Evil as can be...."

ben | Aug 24, 2017 2:10:13 PM | 24
Thanks b, I would agree that a military Junta has the reins and Trump's ear, but, as

psycho @ 14 said.. "Then there is the MIC corporations that rotate leadership of generals through their organizations...... The Generals are held captive by that big $ welded, and promised to them for their "second lives" in various MIC corporations after their "retirements".

Noirette | Aug 24, 2017 2:25:01 PM | 25
The raucous clamor painting Trump as a Russkie collaborator has now sputtered, frizzled out, to be replaced by the equally lame 'Trump is a neo-nazi fascist racist mysoginist' as his supporters 'mow down ppl', etc. or whatever. All these elements were present before he was elected. (Trump is less racist than Obama..not that it matters..)

As, let's not forget, Trump's cloudy common sense, his semi-isolationist nationalist attitude, trade protectionism (etc.) actually appealed to voters, which is unbearable to the PTB, out of bounds, leading to covert hysteria, burning up the wires. The sheeples are supposed to vote as the Media Spin ordains, not ever for their own interests or for a disgusting deplorable person like pussy-grabbing Trump. Unthinkable! that the PTB would ever be bothered by 'voter' crap. The Gore-Bush II standoff was splendiferous, a tight contest, etc. and who won might be suspense but not more, policies would be in the 'same system.' Arguments about Supreme Court decisions, yeah, only evidence a genuine 'rule of law' method..

The no.1. faction that can dominate Trump, also many others, is the Military. (Second are the banks, third Big Corps.) For now their position is shadowed and ambiguous, but a military Junta is perhaps not so fanciful. Thing is, a Junta solves many problems for many ppl, so in certain conditions it is embraced.

frances | Aug 24, 2017 2:30:39 PM | 26
B- Great article,just a few thoughts

re the surfeit of military

I think Trump may have so deeply surrounded (embedded may be the better word) himself primarily to protect himself from the intelligence community. JFK was not a one off in my opinion and probably not in Trump's.

re Trump info access

He has people who can and do provide him with info galore outside of the office, he is not as isolated as you suggest, and he is out of the office a lot:)
re Wars

... ... ...

re Afghanistan

The new troops may be a Pentagon face saving measure ... Or they may be a sop to the CIA, those poppy fields won't guard themselves:)

[Aug 24, 2017] Russian meddling is Watergate-worthy, but Israeli meddling is hunky-dory by Philip Weiss

Notable quotes:
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Apart from the question of whether Trump will be brought down by his Russia connections, the real issue here is, What is the American people's interest? In the Syria case, it would appear that Trump is realigning U.S. foreign policy vis-a-vis Russia. And that this realignment could be good for the U.S. position in the world: an effort to lessen U.S. military engagement in the Middle East. But meanwhile it is clearly in Israel's interest for the U.S. to be up to its hips in the perpetual war of the Middle East, because occupiers love company. ..."
"... I believe the no-daylight policy has been hugely costly to the United States; and has involved a great deal of meddling by Israel and its friends in our politics. The media are afraid to touch this stuff; but a look back on the special relationship between the countries reveals a number of policy decisions that the U.S. would have made differently if Israel weren't putting its thumb on our scale. Let's review: ..."
"... The United States has suffered enormously for its inability to stop this process. Even the 9/11 attacks were motivated in good measure by the sufferings of Palestinians. The Israel lobby and its American friends played the lead role in nullifying U.S. policy in the settlements– witness the undermining of President Obama's efforts to stop settlements in 2011 and 2012 via political pressure. (Even Noam Chomsky has said that in this area the client is influencing the superpower, not the other way round.) ..."
"... –Israel acquired nuclear weapons in violation of clear U.S. policy in the 60s, and likely also by pilfering highly-enriched uranium from the United States through a front operation in Pennsylvania. There has never been a squeak about this from the U.S. government or officials– no they all maintain the deception– and meantime Israeli nukes have contributed to an arms race around the region, and fostered the U.S. image as lying imperialist hypocrite . ..."
"... Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for the Iraq war, saying it would transform the region for the better: "If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region." The leading Israel lobby group AIPAC also pushed for this war, while Israel's rightwing American friends, the neoconservatives, argued that the war would bring democracy to Arab states and make Israel safer; ..."
07, 2017 | www.defenddemocracy.press

The investigation of Russia's meddling in our politics dominates the liberal press; and for my part, I believe everything The New York Times and MSNBC are suspicioning about Donald Trump and the Russians. I bet that the Russians have something on Trump personally, possibly involving money or sex; and that the Russians meddled in our election. (Not that the meddling changed the outcome; no, Hillary Clinton did a great job of losing it on her own.)

But as someone who focuses on Israel policy, what stands out to me is that conduct that is Watergate-worthy when it comes to Russia is hunky-dory when it comes to Israel. Just yesterday, for instance, Trump adviser Jared Kushner was on the hot seat in Congress over his contacts with a Russian official last year. But no one has a hearing about the fact that Kushner's family, out of devotion to Israel, financed illegal Israeli settlements that have undermined the two-state solution, thereby nullifying longtime U.S. policy. I think that's a real problem. MSNBC doesn't.

Just in the last week there have been two other expressions of Israel's active interests in our politics that the liberal media have failed to say boo about.

First, there's the Israel Anti-Boycott Act in the House and Senate. Israel regards the Boycott movement (BDS) as an existential threat; and so the Israel lobby group AIPAC produced legislation that scores of Senators and Congresspeople, including many liberal heroes, signed on to that trashes the First Amendment by making it a possible crime to support boycott of Israel. By the way, AIPAC has a mission to insure that there is "no daylight" between the Israeli government and the U.S. government. In the 1960s despite the best efforts of Senator Fulbright, AIPAC escaped designation as an agent of a foreign government. That ought to be a scandal, but everyone walks on by.

Then there's Israel's unhappiness with the Syrian ceasefire deal that Donald Trump reached with Russia. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says that the deal fails to limit Iran's presence in Syria or to prevent weapons getting to Israel's enemy, Hezbollah; and Israel supporters in the U.S. duly echoed Netanyahu's view.

Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, who launched his dazzling career, in his own words, "with the support of the pro-Israel community," wrote :

"This is unbelievable! Trump Administration ignored Israel's security concerns in making the Syrian deal with Putin."

While Daniel Shapiro , also a former U.S. ambassador to Israel– who lately called Israel "this miracle, this gift, this jewel" -- wrote that the deal needs to be revised:

Can the deal be restructured to Isr's satisfaction? US-Russia dynamic makes that difficult & worrisome. But effort needs to be made.

Apart from the question of whether Trump will be brought down by his Russia connections, the real issue here is, What is the American people's interest? In the Syria case, it would appear that Trump is realigning U.S. foreign policy vis-a-vis Russia. And that this realignment could be good for the U.S. position in the world: an effort to lessen U.S. military engagement in the Middle East. But meanwhile it is clearly in Israel's interest for the U.S. to be up to its hips in the perpetual war of the Middle East, because occupiers love company.

I believe the no-daylight policy has been hugely costly to the United States; and has involved a great deal of meddling by Israel and its friends in our politics. The media are afraid to touch this stuff; but a look back on the special relationship between the countries reveals a number of policy decisions that the U.S. would have made differently if Israel weren't putting its thumb on our scale. Let's review:

  • –Israel has put more than 600,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, thereby violating the Geneva Convention and destroying the two-state solution, which was U.S. policy. The United States has suffered enormously for its inability to stop this process. Even the 9/11 attacks were motivated in good measure by the sufferings of Palestinians. The Israel lobby and its American friends played the lead role in nullifying U.S. policy in the settlements– witness the undermining of President Obama's efforts to stop settlements in 2011 and 2012 via political pressure. (Even Noam Chomsky has said that in this area the client is influencing the superpower, not the other way round.)
  • –Israel acquired nuclear weapons in violation of clear U.S. policy in the 60s, and likely also by pilfering highly-enriched uranium from the United States through a front operation in Pennsylvania. There has never been a squeak about this from the U.S. government or officials– no they all maintain the deception– and meantime Israeli nukes have contributed to an arms race around the region, and fostered the U.S. image as lying imperialist hypocrite .
  • Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for the Iraq war, saying it would transform the region for the better: "If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region." The leading Israel lobby group AIPAC also pushed for this war, while Israel's rightwing American friends, the neoconservatives, argued that the war would bring democracy to Arab states and make Israel safer; as did liberals such as Tom Friedman, Israel's onetime promoter, who said we should go to war against Iraq because terrorists were blowing up pizza parlors in Tel Aviv. Whether the voice given to Israel's interest was determinative or not in our decision to invade Iraq (I say it was), this is an influence that clearly should have been exposed and investigated, beyond the efforts of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby. But the media shut down that conversation, in part through the vociferous efforts of Jeffrey Goldberg, who formerly emigrated to Israel and served in its armed forces.

[Aug 24, 2017] Russiagate collapse is due to the VIPS metadata analysis published recently that provides irrefutable facts.

Notable quotes:
"... As for Russiagate, it's collapse is due to the VIPS metadata analysis published recently that provides irrefutable facts. ..."
Aug 24, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 | Aug 24, 2017 11:57:18 AM | 13

The Zionists have an Iranian Brain Freeze as NuttyYahoo displayed in his Moscow visit, http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/08/netanyahu-meets-putin-rants-about-iran.html

I suspect he's feeling the heat of the corruption investigation that will hopefully land him in prison, thus his ranting.

As for Russiagate, it's collapse is due to the VIPS metadata analysis published recently that provides irrefutable facts.

Yet, it's very clear so-called liberals and Democrats are incapable of admitting defeat and have doubled down yet again trying to prove something nefarious occurred between Russia and Trump, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/08/23/follow-money-they-say-it-was-about-russian-orphans-theyre-lying The comment made to that article by HisStory torpedoes it rather well.

So, we have an inside-out version of Seven days in May . I wonder if the generals are as hip to escalate the hybrid war against China and Russia as those the Clintons represented? Something tells me they're not so keen; perhaps the initial volleys made by the Outlaw US Empire have drawn some return fire we are yet to become privy to.

[Aug 24, 2017] Reports Globalists in White House Oppose Trumps Border Wall, Reforms

Notable quotes:
"... The "West Wing Democrats" in the White House are eager to sacrifice President Donald Trump's top campaign promise in exchange for Democratic approval of the tax cuts sought by wealthy donors and business interests, according to an article in Politico. In an August 23 article about Trump's push to get funding for an extended border wall, Politico described the lack of support for the wall among his business-affiliated aides: Few staff members in the West Wing are as concerned about it [as the President], senior administration officials said. Some in the White House have urged Trump not to focus as much on the wall, try to pass a clean debt-ceiling bill and move to tax reform. "You have barely anyone here saying, 'Wall, wall, we have to get the wall at all costs,'" one White House official said. Two people who have spoken to Trump said he sees not building the wall as a personal embarrassment -- and that he has shown more interest in building the wall than in other issues, like the upcoming budget negotiations. "You don't want a government shutdown," the White House official said. "He is told that. He says, 'I want money for the wall.'" The same emphasis on tax cuts for the elite before immigration reform for voters was also cited by Axios on August 20, in an article which claimed to explain why top staff chose to stay in the White House amid elite hatred of his populist, wage-boosting, pro-American priorities. Axios reported : We talked to a half dozen senior administration officials, who range from dismayed but certain to stay, to disgusted and likely soon to leave. They all work closely with Trump and his senior team so, of course, wouldn't talk on the record. Instead, they agreed to let us distill their thinking/rationale: "You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill": The most common response centers on the urgent importance of having smart, sane people around Trump to fight his worst impulses. If they weren't there, they say, we would have a trade war with China, massive deportations, and a government shutdown to force construction of a Southern wall. "General Mattis needs us": Many talk about their reluctance to bolt on their friends and colleagues who are fighting the good fight to force better Trump behavior/decisions. They rightly point out that together, they have learned how to ignore Trump's rhetoric and, at times, collectively steer him to more conventional policy responses. This situation leaves Trump dependent on a few aides -- such as immigration reformer Steve Miller -- and his supporters at his rallies to help fend off the insistent demands by his globalist aides for a back-room surrender of his presidential goals. ..."
"... the pro-American immigration reformers who backed Trump in the election fear his globalist aides will push Trump to accept and establish former President Barack Obama's DACA amnesty in exchange for minor concessions, such as a modest amount of funds to build a short distance of border wall. ..."
Aug 24, 2017 | www.breitbart.com
The "West Wing Democrats" in the White House are eager to sacrifice President Donald Trump's top campaign promise in exchange for Democratic approval of the tax cuts sought by wealthy donors and business interests, according to an article in Politico.

In an August 23 article about Trump's push to get funding for an extended border wall, Politico described the lack of support for the wall among his business-affiliated aides:

Few staff members in the West Wing are as concerned about it [as the President], senior administration officials said.

Some in the White House have urged Trump not to focus as much on the wall, try to pass a clean debt-ceiling bill and move to tax reform. "You have barely anyone here saying, 'Wall, wall, we have to get the wall at all costs,'" one White House official said.

Two people who have spoken to Trump said he sees not building the wall as a personal embarrassment -- and that he has shown more interest in building the wall than in other issues, like the upcoming budget negotiations. "You don't want a government shutdown," the White House official said. "He is told that. He says, 'I want money for the wall.'"

The same emphasis on tax cuts for the elite before immigration reform for voters was also cited by Axios on August 20, in an article which claimed to explain why top staff chose to stay in the White House amid elite hatred of his populist, wage-boosting, pro-American priorities. Axios reported :

We talked to a half dozen senior administration officials, who range from dismayed but certain to stay, to disgusted and likely soon to leave. They all work closely with Trump and his senior team so, of course, wouldn't talk on the record. Instead, they agreed to let us distill their thinking/rationale:

"You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill": The most common response centers on the urgent importance of having smart, sane people around Trump to fight his worst impulses. If they weren't there, they say, we would have a trade war with China, massive deportations, and a government shutdown to force construction of a Southern wall.

"General Mattis needs us": Many talk about their reluctance to bolt on their friends and colleagues who are fighting the good fight to force better Trump behavior/decisions. They rightly point out that together, they have learned how to ignore Trump's rhetoric and, at times, collectively steer him to more conventional policy responses.

This situation leaves Trump dependent on a few aides -- such as immigration reformer Steve Miller -- and his supporters at his rallies to help fend off the insistent demands by his globalist aides for a back-room surrender of his presidential goals.

That surrender would help his aides win Democratic support for their goals -- but it would leave Trump with few friends heading into the 2018 midterm elections and the crucial 2020 reelection, says D.C. insiders. For example, the pro-American immigration reformers who backed Trump in the election fear his globalist aides will push Trump to accept and establish former President Barack Obama's DACA amnesty in exchange for minor concessions, such as a modest amount of funds to build a short distance of border wall.

"If [Trump's aides] are left to their own devices, they would exchange this for a few trinkets," so violating Trump's campaign promise before the 2018 and 2020 elections, said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

The suggested deal was outlined in a Tuesday article by Anita Kumar, a reporter for the McClatchy news service. She uses the Democrats' term -- 'dreamers' – to describe the 800,000 DACA illegals as she wrote:

White House officials want Trump to strike an ambitious deal with Congress that offers Dreamers protection in exchange for legislation that pays for a border wall and more detention facilities, curbs legal immigration and implements E-verify, an online system that allows businesses to check immigration status, according to a half-dozen people familiar with situation, most involved with the negotiations.

The group includes former and current White House chiefs of staff, Reince Priebus and John Kelly , the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump , and her husband, Jared Kushner , who both serve as presidential advisers, they said. Others who have not been as vocal publicly about their stance but are thought to agree include Vice President Mike Pence , who as a congressman worked on a failed immigration deal that called for citizenship, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, a Democrat who serves as director of the National Economic Council.

There is no evidence that Democrats will accept that ambitious deal before the 2018 election, and much evidence that Trump's aides will quickly give up wall funding and the popular RAISE Act to win Democratic support for tax cuts. So far, top Democrats have responded that they would not offer anything as they demand a permanent DACA amnesty.

However, Trump's determination to resist his aides is likely boosted by the cheering he gets at rallies when he promises to build the wall.

"We are building a wall on the southern border, which is absolutely necessary," he told roughly 30,000 cheering supporters at an August 22 rally in Phoenix, Ariz. "The obstructionist Democrats would like us not to do it, believe me, [but] if we have to close down our government, we are building that wall We're going to have our wall. We're going to get our wall."

There you have it, @realDonaldTrump -- Your own 30k focus-group. LIKE: deportations, a wall, jobs; DON'T LIKE: Media, Afghan War & tax cuts.

-- Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) August 23, 2017

Trump later thanked the crowd.

Phoenix crowd last night was amazing – a packed house. I love the Great State of Arizona. Not a fan of Jeff Flake, weak on crime & border --

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2017

Read the Axios article here , and the Politico article here .

Under current immigration policy, the federal government accepts 1 million legal immigrants each year, even though 4 million young Americans enter the workforce to look for decent jobs. Each year, the government also hands out almost 3 million short-term work permits to foreign workers. These permits include roughly 330,000 one-year OPT permits for foreign graduates of U.S. colleges, roughly 200,000 three-year H-1B visas for foreign white-collar professionals, and 400,000 two-year permits to DACA illegals.

The current annual flood of foreign labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up r eal estate prices , widens wealth-gaps , reduces high-tech investment , increases state and local tax burdens , hurts kids' schools and college education , pushes Americans away from high-tech careers , and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families.

Many polls show that Americans are very generous, they do welcome individual immigrants, and they do want to like the idea of immigration. But the polls also show that most Americans are increasingly worried that large-scale legal immigration will change their country and disadvantage themselves and their children. Trump's "Buy American, Hire American" policies are also extremely popular , including among Democratic-leaning voters.

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[Aug 23, 2017] The U.S. Can Not Be Trusted - Case XXXIV Trump Cheats On China Sanction Deal

Notable quotes:
"... the usa needs to copyright this : ''sanctions-r-us''.... they will sell this as the good cop routine that plays to the wacky right wing nut jobs that drive us foreign policy.. it wears thin quickly though for anyone looking under the hood - something the western msm is loath or unable to do.. keeping the populace ignorant is the cause de jour for them.. some things don't change... show down in the o k corral is on it's way... ..."
"... Honestly, anyone who doesn't understand that making deals and treaties with the US is pointless when not dangerous because they will never respect them is hopeless and has lost any pretense at sanity. I've yet to see any single treaty in their whole history that the US hasn't broken at some point. Though I also have to point out that it's not merely that "Americans are treacherous and have a forked tongue" or whatever. It's hardcoded in the political system itself, which is highly unstable and at the same time doesn't punish inconsistency, stupidity and betrayal. ..."
"... China deserved what they got since they were dumb enough to believe ANYHING the US. How can anyone side with a country that is on the other side of the world against one that is right next to you? The only thing I can think of is a ploy by China to further cause the US to economically hurt itself. So many things are going on that it's hard to keep track of what's what. ..."
Aug 23, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
The U.S. Can Not Be Trusted - Case XXXIV: Trump Cheats On China Sanction Deal

During the ramp up to new UN sanctions on North Korea the Trump administration threaten to sanction China if it would not commit to further pressure. Trade measures against China were held back while the discussions about the resolution were ongoing:

An opportunity to hit North Korea with new United Nations sanctions has sidelined President Donald Trump's bid to punish China for its alleged unfair trade practice.
...
[O]n Thursday afternoon, senior administration aides postponed the announcement [of trade measures against China] at the urging of United Nations and State Department officials, who are in the sensitive final stages of convincing China to sign on to a U.N. resolution that would impose new sanctions on North Korea. U.N. and State Department officials warned that the trade announcement could kill their chances of winning Beijing's buy-in , according to the officials.

Trump himself implied that he was willing to go for a quit pro quo:

While past presidents have tried at least ostensibly to keep security and economic issues on separate tracks in their dealings with China, Mr. Trump has explicitly linked the two, suggesting he would back off from a trade war against Beijing if it does more to pressure North Korea. "If China helps us, I feel a lot differently toward trade, a lot differently toward trade," he told reporters...

A deal was made and the UN Resolution 2371 passed. China immediately implemented the relevant measures:

In an unprecedented move against North Korea, China on Monday issued an order to carry out the United Nations sanctions imposed on the rogue regime earlier this month.

China did its part of the deal. It helped pass the UN resolution against North Korea and it immediately implemented it even while that causes a significant loss for Chinese companies which trade with North Korea.

Now Trump is back at sanctioning Chinese (and Russian) companies:

The Trump administration on Tuesday imposed sanctions on 16 mainly Chinese and Russian companies and people for assisting North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs and helping the North make money to support those programs.
...
Among those sanctioned are six Chinese companies, including three coal companies ; two Singapore-based companies that sell oil to North Korea and three Russians that work with them; a Russian company that deals in North Korean metals and its Russian director; a construction company based in Namibia; a second Namibia-based company, and its North Korean director, that supplies North Korean workers to build statues overseas to generate income for the North.

These are "secondary sanctions" which block financial transactions and make it nearly impossible for those companies and people to run an international business. Moreover - China had already banned all coal imports from North Korea. It had sent back North Korean coal ships and instead bought coal from the United States. Now Chinese companies get sanctioned over North Korean coal they no longer buy? Furthermore selling fuel oil to North Korea is explicitly allowed under the new UN sanctions. There is no reason to sanction any company over it.

The Chinese feel cheated:

Reuters World @ReutersWorld - 7:12pm · 22 Aug 2017

JUST IN: China urges U.S. to 'immediately correct its mistake' of sanctioning Chinese firms over North Korea - embassy spokesman

If the Trump administration insist of holding up these sanction China and Russia will obviously become negligent in controlling the sanctions imposed on North Korea. Why should they hold to their side of the deal, at great costs, when the U.S. does not hold up its side?

They will also stop at making any further deals with the Trump administration. It has now proven to be just as lying and cheating as the Obama administration has been. The U.S. can forget about ANY further action or sanctions at the UN.

This as extremely shortsighted and stupid way of handling international relations.

How does the U.S. hope to win anything in the long run when it behaves in such untrustworthy ways?

02:41 PM | Comments (37)

Mike Maloney | Aug 22, 2017 2:58:52 PM | 1

Bannon's sayonara interview with Robert Kuttner was all about the coming trade war with China. Bannon thinks it is the key to electoral success. It will be interesting to see if his strategy lives on now that he is gone.
james | Aug 22, 2017 3:10:41 PM | 2
thanks b.... the usa needs to copyright this : ''sanctions-r-us''.... they will sell this as the good cop routine that plays to the wacky right wing nut jobs that drive us foreign policy.. it wears thin quickly though for anyone looking under the hood - something the western msm is loath or unable to do.. keeping the populace ignorant is the cause de jour for them.. some things don't change... show down in the o k corral is on it's way...
Clueless Joe | Aug 22, 2017 3:18:44 PM | 3
Honestly, anyone who doesn't understand that making deals and treaties with the US is pointless when not dangerous because they will never respect them is hopeless and has lost any pretense at sanity. I've yet to see any single treaty in their whole history that the US hasn't broken at some point. Though I also have to point out that it's not merely that "Americans are treacherous and have a forked tongue" or whatever. It's hardcoded in the political system itself, which is highly unstable and at the same time doesn't punish inconsistency, stupidity and betrayal.
ben | Aug 22, 2017 3:19:25 PM | 4
Gee, you mean the U$A doesn't want to live up to its words? Well, I'm shocked.. Not! Actions, not meeting rhetoric, is the U$A's stock in trade, in all its endeavors.

I see Trump rolled out his new infrastructure plan. Destroying other nation's infrastructure, to create more jobs in the weapons industry here at home.

Wonderful...

Peter AU 1 | Aug 22, 2017 3:25:21 PM | 5
@1
Bannon August 16..."To me," Bannon said, "the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able to recover."
Bannon's plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. "We're going to run the tables on these guys. We've come to the conclusion that they're in an economic war and they're crushing us."

Reuters August 21... China expressed "strong dissatisfaction" on Monday with the U.S. launch of an investigation into China's alleged theft of U.S. intellectual property, calling it "irresponsible".

The U.S. Trade Representative formally announced the investigation on Friday, a widely expected move following a call from President Donald Trump earlier last week to determine whether a probe was needed.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-trade-china-idUSKCN1B10MF

fastfreddy | Aug 22, 2017 3:34:00 PM | 6
Because he is a bit dim-witted like Dubya, Trump has a way of going off script and putting his foot in his mouth. The PTB knew all along they were going to fck China - with or without the UN Korean sanctions agreement.

This would be one reason why AIPAC doesn't want Trump. That other moron, Pence, would be capable of reading his lines without the need for extemporaneous commentary.

Perimtr | Aug 22, 2017 3:34:16 PM | 7
What goes around, comes around.

When China starts turning down US dollars and Treasuries in exchange for all Chinese services and goods produced by the industries we offshored to them (only accepting RMB and gold today, thank you), we will see how this all works out.

Probably the neocon "solution" will be military (isn't it always?), but as they say, "Good luck with that!" The recent rash of US naval "accidental collisions" provides a hint of things to come.

NotToMention | Aug 22, 2017 3:34:23 PM | 8
It looks even worse for China. NK might be the epicenter of the realization that China is just as self-serving as any other country, but the ripples will have damaged China's reputation far and wide. By not enforcing the UNSC sanctions China will only prove her vote was not based on principle.
JSonofa | Aug 22, 2017 3:58:45 PM | 9
Quit Pro Quo. That actually does sound like Trump policy. Oh man, that's great! Thanks b!!!
NewYorker | Aug 22, 2017 3:59:57 PM | 10
China deserved what they got since they were dumb enough to believe ANYHING the US. How can anyone side with a country that is on the other side of the world against one that is right next to you? The only thing I can think of is a ploy by China to further cause the US to economically hurt itself. So many things are going on that it's hard to keep track of what's what.
ger | Aug 22, 2017 4:15:41 PM | 11
The words Trump and Cheat are redundant! Nobody in their right mind would buy a used car from the Big Cheat in Chief.
Oliver K | Aug 22, 2017 4:46:40 PM | 12
Isn't it obvious that any form of sanctions, "cheating" etc. by the US is the best thing for the rest of the world? Unfortunately, the "elites" in Russia, and many people in China are only too eager to lick the feet of the US. Good old fashioned corruption via trade would surely destroy (likely) Russia and China -- but, as a god-given present, the US actually behaves as the benevolent exceptional nation, really, by teaching Russia and China the necessary lessons!

Perhaps Trump is really a deep genius? Or perhaps in 50 years we will learn that ACTUALLY Putin did it! He really controls the whole West, and makes it destroy itself. :-))

jo6pac | Aug 22, 2017 4:55:29 PM | 13
That's great news and hopefully NC had to pay the same great price the Ukraine got or maybe the Ukraine will trade with NC for more rocket motors. Greed Amerikas bottom line and I wonder what the trumpster cut was?
Out of Istanbul | Aug 22, 2017 4:58:24 PM | 14
I doubt any other state actors still trust the US, regardless of what administration is in power. Power when wielded is always a blunt instrument, and as long as the US policy elite see no equal on the world stage, thanks to the US' sprawling military and extensive economic advantages (reserve currency, resource wealth, etc), they don't need to nor will play nice.
brian | Aug 22, 2017 5:39:54 PM | 15
would china PLEASE pull the plug on USA and call in its debt?!
Hesllng | Aug 22, 2017 5:43:26 PM | 16
Well in a way this serves China right, the price they pay for a treacherous act of betrayal against NK and instead thinking they can do a deal the devil. Now perhaps the Chinese will "get their logic right"
michaelj72 | Aug 22, 2017 5:49:12 PM | 17
"These are "secondary sanctions" which block financial transactions and make it nearly impossible for those companies and people to run an international business..."

I have often wondered how any nation can have such power - and continually wield it so unwisely as the United States has

apparently there's no real appeal to the use of the such sanctions (please correct me if I am wrong) so that in essence it is a world-wide dictatorial economic power exercised by one nation over all the others, and without legal recourse, the very definition of tyranny.....and even if there were current judicial recourse, the US would have corrupted that totally as well.

The Chinese and the Russian have been pretty foolish the last 10-15 years or so in trusting the US at all. the perfect case was the UN resolution on Libya which the West used to slaughter the whole country and create a failed state. at least Putin learned his lesson early on in Syria and took effective counter-measures, finally putting his foot down on this also world-wide regime change bullshit, which has really paid off since Nov 2015....

Kalen | Aug 22, 2017 5:49:40 PM | 18
Question is why they were so gullible to believe US in the first place after repeated betrayal in the past. Are they retarded? Were they really ready to strangle NK economy in a face of blatant US belligerence and provocations knowing well that only NK nukes may bring Japan and US to the peace table to end WWII and Korean War?

Is in the national interest of China and Russia collapse of NK. OF COURSE NOT. So why all those stupid maneuvers? Do they not see that US incoherence is aimed for dividing Sino-Russian alliance? Somobody have to say it if b is not saying that, fool me once, but if you fool me twice I become a fool. Are Russians and Chinese fools believing that US are something else than bunch of delusional psychotics one cannot reason with or bargain with?

Is that because they are rich delusional psychotics and pay is good?

Pnyx | Aug 22, 2017 6:08:26 PM | 19
"The U.S. can forget about ANY further action or sanctions at the UN."

I really, really hope so, B. I can't understand why China agreed to the U.N. resolution in the first place. The outcome was crystal clear from the beginning, we had it before times and again. Are the Russian and the Chinese governments to stupid to learn from experiences? Or just to gutless to 'just say no'? Or to eager to hold the neoliberal economic system afloat, they obviously immagine as the only way possible? I wonder.

ian | Aug 22, 2017 6:22:39 PM | 20
I don't feel the least bit sorry for the Chinese. They have been playing us re North Korea - North Korea starts pulling crazy shit at just the right moments, China offers to 'help'. There won't be any huge trade wars either - it is in their interest just as much as ours to avoid it and they're businessmen, first and foremost.
Julian | Aug 22, 2017 7:07:02 PM | 21
The Chinese knew this would happen, signing onto new sanctions against North Korea has absolutely nothing to do with dodging any US trade sanctions!

Totally irrelevant.

The Chinese have sanctioned North Korea for their own reasons.

Peter AU 1 | Aug 22, 2017 7:15:14 PM | 22
Chinese casualties in the Korean war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Casualties
Western sources estimate the PVA suffered about 400,000 killed and 486,000 wounded,
Data from official Chinese sources, on the other hand, reported that the Chinese PVA had suffered 114,000 battle deaths, 34,000 non-battle deaths, 340,000 wounded, 7,600 missing

Either way, China shed a lot of blood for NK. The latest UN sanctions were harmless bullshit to buy a bit of time. China and Russia made a joint statement that they would not see North Korea economicaly strangled. Any NK losses would be made up in other ways.

karlof1 | Aug 22, 2017 7:18:49 PM | 23
Throughout all of history, I can't recall any nation as dishonest as the USA. In a Just World, it would be shunned, ostracized and be made to sit is the equivalent of a corner for a millennia-long time-out. But since it has a UNSC veto, it really can't be made to behave within the family of nations. The only way forward I can see is for the planet's people to push every vestige of the Outlaw US Empire out of their nations and declare it persona non grata until it's proven for at least a century that it's changed its ways. And don't go to visit it despite the scenery of its landscape; there're plenty of other outstanding places having natural beauty on the planet to visit. And don't use any of its tech products, like Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, etc. In other words, Boycott everything USA-- Everything! And don't give its Trolls the time of day.
ashley albanese | Aug 22, 2017 7:30:41 PM | 24
There is a bottom line - ww3 - the Russians and Chinese know what this means . They are terrified as Stalin was of the 'West ' in 1941. Under such pressure things must always be 'Alice and Wonderlandish' . Events of the moment are to be seen in this equivocal light.
Outsider | Aug 22, 2017 7:48:32 PM | 25
"How does the U.S. hope to win anything in the long run when it behaves in such untrustworthy ways?"

Because they're all in on it? Everyone. What other explanation is there?

It's a fake world people and it's starting to become glaring.

anonymous | Aug 22, 2017 7:49:57 PM | 26
@20

Specifically, the United States and South Korea 'start' a (yearly) variation of military exercises, North Korea responds by 'threatening' missile tests (secretly offering a mutual 'freeze' of exercises and tests), and China offers to sponsor (yearly) peace conferences.

What else can China do?

anonymous | Aug 22, 2017 7:58:16 PM | 27
They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they kept only one; they promised to take our land, and they did.
Red Cloud
Daniel Bruno | Aug 22, 2017 8:31:51 PM | 28
1.

The State Dept, TSA, DHS et al. treats individual American citizens with the same utter contempt and scorn...that Washington has for NK, China and Russia (unless said American citizen is connected to a certain lobby / special group or status.)

2.

In light of how the US government has not upheld treaties it signed with First Nations people for 300 years, or any other organization or government that was weaker than itself at any time, it bewilders me how any modern government could expect the US to honor any treaty it signs today, unless upholding said treaty were in the immediate interest of the US.

3.

How utterly stupid is the regime in Washington?...it seems to gyrate madly, imposing sanctions here, sanctions there, threatening everybody from NK to Syria to Venezuela to China to Russia, when it should be minding its own fucking business. We need a constitutional convention in the US and we need to restore democratic governance to the USA.

OJS | Aug 22, 2017 8:32:11 PM | 29
anonymous, 27

OT continuation "they promised to take our land, and they did. Red Cloud"

First we had the land and they had the Bibles, now we have the Bibles and they have the land. Chief Dan George

http://www.azquotes.com/quote/645351

"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land". Desmond Tutu and Jomo Kenyatta

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/desmondtut107531.html

daffyDuct | Aug 22, 2017 8:52:26 PM | 30
Somewhat related in terms of leverage/sanctions:

http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2017/08/15/us-russia-ties-poised-to-take-incredible-turn/

"
"The Ukraine crisis -- and Russian-American relations -- reaches an inflection point with the assessment made by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London that North Korea's dramatic leap in ballistic missile capability in the past year is attributable to its clandestine acquisition of a Soviet-era technology that is available in a factory near the frontline in Donbass war zone, close to the breakaway region held by Russia-backed separatists. The IISS flags that North Korea's Hwasong-14 missile, tested for the first time, twice, last month signifies an incredible leap in technology that is simply inconceivable for human ingenuity – that is, unless Pyongyang gained access to foreign technology from an established missile power.

However, the IISS report says,

The engine tested by North Korea does not physically resemble any LPE manufactured by the US, France, China, Japan, India or Iran. Nor do any of these countries produce an engine that uses storable propellants and generates the thrust delivered by the Hwasong-12 and -14 LPE. This leaves the former Soviet Union as the most likely source.

Now, there could have been clandestine transfers of the engines from either Russia or Ukraine with the knowledge of the local authorities – or more likely, there might have been clandestine smuggling by the mafia from factories that are loosely guarded. The mafia is active in both Russia and Ukraine. The IISS is inclined to point the finger at the factory in Ukraine (known as Yuzhnoye which has facilities in Dnipropetrovsk and Pavlograd), which has been in dire straits ever since 2006 when Russia stopped buying from it as part of the Soviet-era supply chain and the once-vaunted factory came to the brink of financial collapse circa 2015. To quote the IISS,

The total number of RD-250 (rocket) engines fabricated in Russia and Ukraine is not known. However, there are almost certainly hundreds, if not more, of spares stored at KB Yuzhnoye's facilities and at warehouses in Russia A small team of disgruntled employees or underpaid guards at any one of the storage sites could be enticed to steal a few dozen engines by one of the many illicit arms dealers, criminal networks, or transnational smugglers operating in the former Soviet Union. The engines (less than two metres tall and one metre wide) can be flown or, more likely, transported by train through Russia to North Korea. Pyongyang has many connections in Russia North Korean agents seeking missile technology are also known to operate in Ukraine Today, (Ukrainian) Yuzhnoye's facilities lie close to the front lines of the Russian-controlled secessionist territory. Clearly, there is no shortage of potential routes through which North Korea might have acquired the few dozen RD-250 engines that would be needed for an ICBM programme.

Several questions arise. Importantly, almost all of them will have implications for the trajectory of US-Russia relations. Most important -- the timing of the IISS report. The US-Russia relations are on razor's edge. (See my blog Russia edgy as US prepares to retaliate.)

Thus, can it be that the Russian intelligence leaked the information already available with it to respectable western sources so as to underscore in western capitals that the West has ended up creating a bleeding wound in Ukraine that is turning gangrene? (After all, IISS has profound links with Smiley's people.)

It is entirely conceivable that the CIA and the Pentagon are ahead of the IISS' scientific finding. Has this got something to do with the threatening reports that refuse to die away that the Trump administration is revisiting the moribund idea of supplying lethal weapons to hit at Russia-backed separatists in Donbass -- which Russia has been opposing tooth and nail? Simply put, is someone firing a flare into the night sky to make the point that it is a rotten idea to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine which will sooner or later find their way inevitably to non-state actors? This is one thing.

Indeed, Russia is keen to engage with the Trump administration over the Ukraine crisis. But then, Russia also hopes that progress on Ukraine would lead to an easing of Western sanctions. Now, on the contrary, the US Congress' latest bill on Russia sanctions expressly forbids the White House from negotiating the sanctions removal without its prior approval. If there is ever a Gordian knot, waiting to be cut, this is it.

The IISS concludes by stressing the high importance of the "US and its allies, along with China and perhaps Russia, to negotiate an agreement that bans future missile testing, and effectively prevents North Korea from perfecting its capacity to terrorise America with nuclear weapons. But the window of opportunity will soon close, so diplomatic action must be taken immediately."

However, such a process demands a high level of Russian-American coordination and cooperation. Of course, 'Barkis is willing'. But, is the US ready to abandon the sanctions against Russia? There is an existential choice to be made here, because Russian intelligence must be up to date on North Korea. Paradoxically, the US needs Russian intelligence inputs to protect the American people from potential nuclear radiation."

OJS | Aug 22, 2017 9:02:06 PM | 31
Economic (sanctions) war with Russia may be a piece of cake but not so easy against China. Both sides suffer. Especially China's wartime arch enemies' Japan and stupid India tagging behinds.

There were speculations what China can do - import/export/wheats/soy beans/US$... Where it hurts most, trademarks Ivanka Trump's company in China

J Swift | Aug 22, 2017 9:03:04 PM | 32
Several have said China (and Russia) are fools, or they are cowards...why would they fall for this again? Well, they aren't fools or cowards, and in fact there is every reason to think they did in fact expect the US to renege on any agreement almost immediately. Especially lately, where the US has gone completely off the rails, and no longer conceals that sanctions are aimed as much at weakening its "friends" (competitors) as its "enemies."

That said, perhaps this was intended to be another demonstration, an emphasis, particularly to the Europeans who are already getting sick of US sanctions. Why not agree to sanctions as requested by the US, knowing they will never have to be enforced because of US weaseling, while providing a strong argument to refuse all future attempts at sanctions.

frances | Aug 22, 2017 9:17:48 PM | 33
What if these Trump admin actions are a deliberate ploy to backdoor making America great again by getting other nations to set up trade barriers forcing America to return to manufacturing
Paisciego | Aug 22, 2017 9:18:39 PM | 34
Mr. Arkadin. Scorpion and frog
james | Aug 22, 2017 9:20:00 PM | 35
@17 michaelj72.. i think you have that exactly right, except in your last paragraph... it is difficult to navigate, and until russia and china are of a similar level to the usa militarily, i think they have been working towards the moment when they can do just that - pull the plug of this ponzi / mafia type set up the usa has going..

@18 kalen / @19 pnyx... see my response to michael above... it is how i see it..

@24 ashley albanese.. we see it very similar.. thanks..

@30 daffyduck.. thanks.. interesting speculation that all sounds plausible..

@32 j swift.. i tend to see it that way too, although europe is going to have to get a backbone at some point.. same deal all the usa lapdogs...

frances | Aug 22, 2017 9:36:43 PM | 36
reply to DaffyDuct 30

".. engines that would be needed for an {NK} ICBM programme."

All well and good except for the fact that NK doesn't have an ICBM capability.
The US govt admitted that the NK rockets fired were NOT ICBMs but were Intermediate missiles used in the past to launch NK weather satellites.

V. Arnold | Aug 23, 2017 12:51:34 AM | 37
karlof1 | Aug 22, 2017 7:18:49 PM | 23

Yup, I dumped google and yahoo years ago.
Yandex browser and e-mail; both are excellent.
When my anti-virus expires I'm going to Kaspersky Labs; my wife already did.

[Aug 23, 2017] Good Riddance to Steve Bannon by Karl Rove

The fact that Karl rove is allowed to write for WSJ makes WSJ a yellow publication...
Aug 23, 2017 | www.wsj.com

The country is better off with him out of the West Wing, but now Trump has to step up.

After departing his post as White House chief strategist last week, Steve Bannon told the Weekly Standard that "the Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over." The clear suggestion is that Mr. Trump's chance at success had followed Mr. Bannon out the door.

Trying to recast his ouster as a personal choice, Mr. Bannon bragged "I can fight better on the outside." He promised "to crush the opposition," saying "I built a f! machine at Breitbart."

The former adviser also told a Bloomberg reporter he would be "going to war for Trump against his opponents!on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America."...

[Aug 23, 2017] Amerika got where it is today by being a fork tongued double dealer whose words aren't worth the paper

Notable quotes:
"... With many of the asset purchases by China based corporations there is absolutely no intention of selling them or otherwise letting go of them ever again. As I learned this is per se no bad thing, but it could be if say, too much of a nation was owned by foreigners who will never relinquish those properties. ..."
"... Most Chinese certainly China's leaders have no intention of changing their outlook one iota, but that doesn't mean they want non-Chinese to alter and adopt their values. If Xi Jinping bothered to consider that he would most likely decide he preferred Trump and the rest of the Americans to remain exactly as they are because the adulation of material gain, arrogance and inability to lie straight in bed makes people's behaviour very predictable. ..."
"... I disagree with those who think that China has been duped - there's simply no evidence that China is that gullible. One century of humiliation was enough to learn how the western world works. ..."
"... As Debsisdead points out, "Whatever China eventually does to counter these deceits may not be actioned for decades, but when it is implemented it will be apposite, well considered and impregnable." ..."
"... We keep talking about hybrid warfare, and noting the west with its color revolutions and its increasingly visible lies, but have we learned yet how to detect asymmetrical responses from the multi-polar world? Especially since it's at least possible that they will occur almost invisibly? ..."
"... No. China does not believe anything the US says in public or even in private to them. 80% of Earth ppl know the US can't be trusted, it does not do deals, even private individuals who shake hands and the like, ever (they back out, my country orders..) ..."
"... All is calculation on where it might be advantageous to seem to 'submit' or 'shut up' or conversely 'complain' and make a fuss (to the UN, WTO, the US itself ) China and Russia don't want to take on the US militarily for now (except in low level proxy wars with a positive calculated outcome, see Syria), so all this stuff is just par for the course, it is expected, it is tit for tat shadow play that on the part of the weaker groups is thought out cynically. ..."
"... Trump maybe doesn't quite know what he is doing, in the sense of measuring, anticipating the results, as he is being manipulated. That is one view. Others can be put forward. ..."
"... Backdoors created for NSA/CIA can be exploited by others too, which makes all Outlaw US military electronic systems vulnerable. I recall a video presentation by Nasrallah showing the video Hezbollah intercepted from Zionist drones scouting the ground for its assassination of Hariri--evidence for Hezbollah's defense in the affair that nobody thought they'd be capable of obtaining that demolished the Zionist/Outlaw US Empire framing of Hezbollah for that murder. ..."
"... My bet is that the Generals have taken complete charge. ..."
"... An Asymmetric war will not do for the overlords (or generals?). The "Cyber" and other parts are to control dissidents in the EU and US. Both Russai and China will be aware of this as it is not the first time that either of them has been targeted by the US-UK. ..."
"... Adopting the NATO sanctions against NK must have fit the Chinese game plan. Chinese are not that stupid. ..."
"... There is no naive China, Russia or whatever, all Nations understand that the US regime is not reliable nor trustworthy, the game most of the Nations continue to play is the game to buy time, any war with the US regime can be hard at the moment, but not in few years time. China knows is and will play the patience game til the end, Russia does the same, expect for few "no go" like Syria and the south China sea islands. ..."
"... After Iran's experience with US "lifting of sanctions", should anyone ever trust USA at all? ..."
Aug 23, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Debsisdead | Aug 23, 2017 2:25:35 AM | 38

I'm with everyone who has already noted that amerika got where it is today by being a fork tongued double dealer whose words aren't worth the paper I wipe my arse with.
There isn't a single agreement reached between US authorities and any other entity since the days of treaties with the indigenous owners of the land amerika continues to purloin that amerika hasn't breached in either the letter or the spirit, usually both.

On the other hand China isn't Iran, not only are they well aware of amerikan perfidy they are in a position to counter it.

The fact they haven't done so yet merely indicates their preference for a square up which doesn't cost China or any of its citizens. This is a culture which always plays the long game no matter how long - witness their bemusement at amerikan commercial interests bitching about listed Chinese corporations not meeting Wall St imposed quarterly 'targets'.
When I lived in Northern Australia I had a landlord for several years who never increased my rent - this in a market where property prices were shooting up thanks to the usual worthless asset appreciation that too many consider a wealth generator. When I asked my landlord who was a third generation Australian the great grandson of gold miners who arrived from Shanghai towards the end of the 19th century he said "You are paying me $25 a week correct?" I replied yes, to which he responded "Well your week's rent is considerably more than my grandfather paid for it, $25 was a fair price when we shook hands and so that is what the rent will remain at unless you move out - a deal is a deal. I'm happy if you are"

That is what happened after I did move out the building which was little more than a big corrugated iron shed was pushed over and my former landlord put an office block in its stead. On the fringes of Darwin's CBD when I moved in by the time I left the property was most def 'down town'. The family will never sell it because for them it will always be a part of the family morphology. The original settler would never have been able much less permitted to buy land in 1880's China but he innately knew exactly how it related to his family once he bought land somewhere else.

This is something that few if any of the media or business outside China fully comprehend, an assumption has been made that Chinese, just as likely they imagine of all non-western peoples, are morphing into western commercial mindsets.

We see this all the time when those nations who have a bureaucratic mechanism for scrutinizing foreign asset purchases decide at least in part on the basis that the property will eventually change hands again.

With many of the asset purchases by China based corporations there is absolutely no intention of selling them or otherwise letting go of them ever again. As I learned this is per se no bad thing, but it could be if say, too much of a nation was owned by foreigners who will never relinquish those properties.

I was initially positive about Chinese investors outbidding engander, Oz, amerikan and european buyers for big chunks of Aotearoa but now I am less positive because denying locals the opportunity to buy in their own country seems to me to be a recipe for eventual conflict.

Trump may 'get away' with his deceit, but America will not. Whatever China eventually does to counter these deceits may not be auctioned for decades, but when it is implemented it will be apposite, well considered and impregnable.

Most Chinese certainly China's leaders have no intention of changing their outlook one iota, but that doesn't mean they want non-Chinese to alter and adopt their values. If Xi Jinping bothered to consider that he would most likely decide he preferred Trump and the rest of the Americans to remain exactly as they are because the adulation of material gain, arrogance and inability to lie straight in bed makes people's behaviour very predictable.

jezabeel | Aug 23, 2017 3:34:56 AM | 39
No. Rookie fucking error by the Chinese. Take one look at the record of the US keeping its word on anything. They deserve to be done over.
Arioch | Aug 23, 2017 4:16:16 AM | 40
DoubleThink concept was coined by UK BBC propagandist.

I had a dispute with allegedly UK citizen, who at THE SAME time demanded me to agree that

1) there was no NATO promise to avoid expanding East, as there is no signed paper document today on it, and personal speaks are merely speaks.

2) there is no threat to Russia from, and hence Russia acts unreasonably demanding legally-binding documents to, those "anti-Iranian" missile stations in Europe, because "everyone told you so".

And he did pursue both lanes in the SAME argument.

-----------

Now, while i admit that US and UK are different states for long, some habits seem to die hard

-----------

They also say, Iran was promised US do not care about their invasion in Kuwait, and they also say in 19114 German kanzler was promised UK King would not do a thing about European(read: Continental) war.

paulmeli | Aug 23, 2017 7:59:17 AM | 42
"would china PLEASE pull the plug on USA and call in its debt?!"

Central banks still funding government deficits and the sky remains firmly above

Ragheb | Aug 23, 2017 8:26:01 AM | 43
US warmonging will not end until and unless military suffers heavy casualties in a war of choice or the buck goes down for the count.
somebody | Aug 23, 2017 9:27:23 AM | 44
40

Gorbachev did not care about any written statement as he assumed the cold war to be over and envisioned a common European-Russian zone from "Wladivostock to Lisbon".

"The West" assumed the same but interpreted it as taking over Russia (integrating it in the Western system) as Russia "had lost the cold war".

The West then lost the peace by their best and brightest causing a severe economic and humanitarian crisis in Russia which led to the rise of Putin and Russia realizing that they had to defend themselves.

Steinmeier just held a speech in Estonia accusing Russia of "thinking in terms of zones of influence" and geopolitics whilst disrespecting the free will of people. The speech was very coded but ended with Germany never again fighting against Russia in "blind enemity" whilst saying before that Germany would never again do something like the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Usually what you say in the end sticks in people's mind.

The way Victoria Nuland operated (and the EU/Steinmeier followed) showed Russia is not alone in geopolitical thinking never mind the free will of people and their elected representatives.

Same party as Steinmeier, Martin Schulz now campaigns with the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Germany.

Let's see how this plays out.

okie farmer | Aug 23, 2017 10:10:20 AM | 45
Global Empire - A Conversation With Edward Said
https://youtu.be/YvR3qeroQ2M
Mina | Aug 23, 2017 10:28:34 AM | 46
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-41023264
Ksa is fine but not Egypt?
Grieved | Aug 23, 2017 10:52:33 AM | 47
I agree with the voices here saying that China understands exactly what is going on. Especially thanks to Debsisdead @ 38 for the wonderful cultural insights.

I disagree with those who think that China has been duped - there's simply no evidence that China is that gullible. One century of humiliation was enough to learn how the western world works.

@41 lysias - "The McCain apparently experienced a mysterious steering failure before the collision."

I too wonder if the US Navy is experiencing asymmetrical responses from either Russia or China or both. I greatly want to know more about all this. Joaquin Flores had a speculative piece at Fort Russ the other day, making the point that the Navy's call to halt all operations worldwide seems completely disproportionate to the apparent causes. Pun intended, what's really going on below the waterline?

As Debsisdead points out, "Whatever China eventually does to counter these deceits may not be actioned for decades, but when it is implemented it will be apposite, well considered and impregnable."

We keep talking about hybrid warfare, and noting the west with its color revolutions and its increasingly visible lies, but have we learned yet how to detect asymmetrical responses from the multi-polar world? Especially since it's at least possible that they will occur almost invisibly?

Noirette | Aug 23, 2017 11:28:15 AM | 48
China deserved what they got since they were dumb enough to believe ANYHING the US. .. New Yorker at 10.

1) No. China does not believe anything the US says in public or even in private to them. 80% of Earth ppl know the US can't be trusted, it does not do deals, even private individuals who shake hands and the like, ever (they back out, my country orders..)

Are the Chinese, Gvmt., industry, military, to be considered out of that loop?

2) All is calculation on where it might be advantageous to seem to 'submit' or 'shut up' or conversely 'complain' and make a fuss (to the UN, WTO, the US itself ) China and Russia don't want to take on the US militarily for now (except in low level proxy wars with a positive calculated outcome, see Syria), so all this stuff is just par for the course, it is expected, it is tit for tat shadow play that on the part of the weaker groups is thought out cynically.

3) Trump maybe doesn't quite know what he is doing, in the sense of measuring, anticipating the results, as he is being manipulated. That is one view. Others can be put forward.

karlof1 | Aug 23, 2017 11:36:46 AM | 49
Grieved @47--

If fly-by-wire control systems can be hacked and captured on airplanes, then the same can happen to any such system regardless of what it's guiding; and there've been hints at this being done by the Multipolar Alliance. Recall Iran's capturing one of the Outlaw US Empires most sophisticated drones several years ago then reverse engineering its own version.

Lots of evidence cruise missiles went awry thanks to EW. Then there were several reports of Outlaw US Navy vessels having their systems completely shutdown via Russian EW. I imagine PavewayIV has a good recap of these incidents.

Backdoors created for NSA/CIA can be exploited by others too, which makes all Outlaw US military electronic systems vulnerable. I recall a video presentation by Nasrallah showing the video Hezbollah intercepted from Zionist drones scouting the ground for its assassination of Hariri--evidence for Hezbollah's defense in the affair that nobody thought they'd be capable of obtaining that demolished the Zionist/Outlaw US Empire framing of Hezbollah for that murder.

Detecting asymmetrical responses will be difficult since the Multipolar Alliance will be reluctant to announce such an action, while the Unipolar Hegemon will also be reluctant since it won't want the other side to learn how effective its actions are. Imagine if North Korea has the capability to redirect B-1 and B-2 bombers by taking control of their fly-by-wire systems; would you expect North Korea to announce such capability or reserve it for use?

karlof1 | Aug 23, 2017 12:08:27 PM | 50
Pepe Escobar weighs-in yet again on the "two never-ending wars with no visible benefits" in Korea and Afghanistan, http://www.atimes.com/article/korea-afghanistan-never-ending-war-trap/
Brad | Aug 23, 2017 12:15:04 PM | 51
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/08/us-china-trade-war-brewing-trade-deficit-sticks-at-25-billion-dollars.html

US want China to exit production economy and become Debt consumer Economy. US can play that stock market/futures with print money out of thin air. If Rothschilds want China to become US debt model,...it probably happens,
Or....Chinese get RIP of Rothschilds

james | Aug 23, 2017 12:18:30 PM | 52
@38 debsisdead ...

thanks for your personal insights debs.. it is interesting to me as i have lived in the vancouver area for most of my life.. the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th generation chinese seem so different then the new arrivals from hong kong..

I would like to agree with your view, but this new generation primarily from hong kong, seem to have a very different mind set.. either way - thanks for sharing..

anonymous | Aug 23, 2017 12:46:42 PM | 53
@40

If you're ever confronted by any more British apologists on the issue of NATO missile systems in Poland and Romania, mention the United States could only have set up the systems by unilaterally withdrawing American signatures from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, a decade BEFORE the European Union and Ukraine 'started talks' on framing, signing, and ratifying the EU Association Agreement (violating Article Six of the Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty of 1997, which required Russian foreknowledge and participation in any frameworks or any agreements Ukraine had with 'a third party') that partitioned public opinion in Ukraine and precipitated the civil war.

@44

While transcripts of the NATO-Soviet peace talks throughout 1990 haven't been released, the U.S. Secretary of State and the West German Foreign Minister literally layed out a post-war framework (the Nine Assurances in May; the London Declaration in July) publicly (it was reported in mainstream German and American media) at the end of these respective conferences BEFORE the Two Plus Four Agreement was reached.

It envisioned the 'reform' of NATO in the framework of the CSCE (now OSCE) or the replacement of NATO by the CSCE, the ratifying of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (building on other 'arms reduction measures by treaty' needed to permanently demilitarize Europe), and the invitation of the original nine Soviet Republics to NATO Summits to accept NATO Membership BEFORE post-Soviet Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus were invited to accept membership.

The framework ('collective security') was explicitly what the Soviet Politburo had been trying to achieve since the Soviet Foreign Ministry requested the British Foreign Ministry (through public conferences) and the Polish Foreign Ministry (through secret telegrams) to sign mutual security treaties in early and mid August of 1939 (which was rejected consistently by Britain and Poland).

The Soviet Politburo was quick to end the war because it seemed the 'long strategy' had worked, not because of Soviet indifference to formality. I think it was widely understood by any European (worker or statesmen) the United States would never substantially compromise to the discipline of formality, however, the Soviet Union preferred the risk and not diplomatic stagnation.

Side note:

While I personally dislike involving a notorious personality in a social or political history, I think it's interesting to speculate what would've happened if it was Chernenko who lived and Gorbachev who died in 1985. He was a militarist, but never seemed committed to decentralizing the Soviet economy and compromising so easily to the United States.

stonebird | Aug 23, 2017 1:28:15 PM | 54
Part of b's headline; "Trump cheats...." may be wrong. Does Trump control anything at all any more?

Not only the NK sanctions, but a corresponding increase in troop levels in Afghanistan, (including "unknown helicopters" ferrying militants in Mazar-i-Sharif, from the Afghan base of the 209 Afgh Nat Army corps in NATO controlled airspace, for a massacre of Hazara Shias in Sar-e-Pol province), the increase of US servicemen training Ukrainian snipers on the Donbass frontline and a reported blocking of a (small) Russian Bank from the SWIFT network, - all suggest that the military have totally taken over command in the US.

That they have decided to push everyone around as far as possible. This change in policy is since Trump "lost" his powers to Congress by massive one sided voting, and the introduction of the "new" all encompassing anti-Russian and Chinese sanctions.

I may be wrong about WHO is in control (add your own here...), but it seems fairly clear that the "Americans" (people) have been reduced to potential cannon-fodder.

My bet is that the Generals have taken complete charge.

-----

Unfortunately this is not a uniquely US phenomena. Examples in France go back to 1875 with the "Anarchists" (actually FOR worker's rights at the beginning), The "commune de Paris, (US CHicago riots) where other normal people didn't want the "status-quo" of overlord-underling to continue. Usually the movement was treated as a proto-terrorist threat, all the MSM of the time condemning the leaders - and the whole thing finishing in a blood-bath with troops firing on dissenters -- WWI was another "overlord organised restucturation" by the military).

Not really OT - but I am just trying to show that the new situation has antecedents throughout history, and if I am correct the next stage will be to cross several frontiers (by NATO or US) "accidentally" to provoke a reaction. ie NK is another.

An Asymmetric war will not do for the overlords (or generals?). The "Cyber" and other parts are to control dissidents in the EU and US. Both Russai and China will be aware of this as it is not the first time that either of them has been targeted by the US-UK.

I hope this post is not too OT!

fast freddy | Aug 23, 2017 4:47:40 PM | 55
Adopting the NATO sanctions against NK must have fit the Chinese game plan. Chinese are not that stupid.

It should be considered that official sanctions naturally encourage, promote and serve the black markets - the Mafia, Cartels, etc. The underground economy will surely not obey sanctions. It should also be noted that certain official bodies will turn a blind eye and allow certain other bodies to engage in trade, etc.

Note how the CyA brings in drugs to Mena Arkansas, for one example. And the cya plane crash in Central America - loaded to the gills.

Canthama | Aug 23, 2017 5:31:30 PM | 56
There is no naive China, Russia or whatever, all Nations understand that the US regime is not reliable nor trustworthy, the game most of the Nations continue to play is the game to buy time, any war with the US regime can be hard at the moment, but not in few years time. China knows is and will play the patience game til the end, Russia does the same, expect for few "no go" like Syria and the south China sea islands.
Alexander Grimsmo | Aug 23, 2017 7:01:10 PM | 57
After Iran's experience with US "lifting of sanctions", should anyone ever trust USA at all?
karlof1 | Aug 23, 2017 7:27:31 PM | 58
Canthama @56--

Nice to see you commenting here! Agreed that China and Russia understand but still seek dialog since that's the essence of "the patience game." But I wonder about those running Brazil; we don't discuss that much at SyrPers. Then there's India's Modi and the cadre of Hindu Neoliberals who seem to want to have their own game instead of teaming with China and Russia for a Win/Win partnership rather than the dying Zero-Sumism of the Neoliberalcons. And thanks again for all the effort you devote to SyrPers; it's quite remarkable!

[Aug 22, 2017] Hawks Soaring After Bannons Departure by Michael Crowley

Notable quotes:
"... Stephen Bannon may have been a political adviser to President Donald Trump, but his firing Friday could have an impact on U.S. foreign policy from Europe to the Middle East and Asia. Bannon's exit clears an obstacle for backers of an active U.S. foreign policy in line with recent presidencies -- and is a resounding win for Bannon's internal rival, national security adviser H.R. McMaster. ..."
"... More generally, it will remove an internal brake on U.S. military action abroad. Bannon has argued greater U.S. intervention in Iraq and Syria and was among the few White House officials to oppose President Donald Trump's early-April missile strike in Syria. ..."
"... Tonight if Trump order more troops to Afghanistan, he'd put the last and hardest nail on his own coffin. I do not understand, how long Americans will let the Deep State win, making them sacrificial animals at the mercy of a perpetual power. ..."
Aug 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

His exit is a win for backers of a more traditional -- and interventionist -- U.S. foreign policy.

Stephen Bannon may have been a political adviser to President Donald Trump, but his firing Friday could have an impact on U.S. foreign policy from Europe to the Middle East and Asia. Bannon's exit clears an obstacle for backers of an active U.S. foreign policy in line with recent presidencies -- and is a resounding win for Bannon's internal rival, national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

Bannon was a regular participant in national security debates, often as an opponent of military action and a harsh critic of international bodies like the United Nations and the European Union.

He has also been a withering critic of diplomatic, military and intelligence professionals -- "globalists" he says have repeatedly shown bad judgment, particularly when it comes to U.S. military interventions abroad. That put him at loggerheads with Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as well as McMaster.

"If you look at the balance of power of isolationists versus internationalists in the White House now, it seems safe to say that the pendulum has swung towards the internationalists," said Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Though Bannon has not described himself as an "isolationist," he has proudly adopted Trump's "America First" motto, which he says argues for spending less blood and treasure overseas for anything less than America's most vital interests.

He has also alarmed European leaders with his criticism of the E.U. and his expressed support for some European nationalist movements. Bannon actively backed Great Britain's 2016 "Brexit" from the E.U. and introduced Trump to its chief political advocate, the populist British politician Nigel Farage.

"Our European allies are happy about Bannon's departure," said Jorge Benitez, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council.

In the immediate term, foreign policy insiders agreed, Bannon's departure also could increase the chances of a U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan -- a plan championed by McMaster but strongly opposed by Bannon, who managed to draw out debate on the issue with direct appeals to Trump.

More generally, it will remove an internal brake on U.S. military action abroad. Bannon has argued greater U.S. intervention in Iraq and Syria and was among the few White House officials to oppose President Donald Trump's early-April missile strike in Syria.

Bannon is not totally conflict averse: He calls for a far stronger U.S. posture against China and has warned that war with Beijing could be inevitable. But he pressed Trump to take economic, not military action against Beijing.

And on Wednesday, Bannon told the American Prospect magazine that there is "no military solution" to Trump's standoff with North Korea -- undermining the president's recent military threats against that country, and echoing China's view of the situation.

Beyond the policy realm, Bannon's exit is a clear victory for national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who at times seemed to be in zero-sum struggle with the Trump adviser for power and influence in the White House.

Foreign policy veterans were startled when, in early February, Trump designated Bannon as a member of the National Security Council's elite principals committee -- calling it unprecedented for a White House political adviser to have a reserved seat at the table for life-and-death debates.

McMaster stripped Bannon of his official NSC position in April, after succeeding the ousted Michael Flynn -- a Bannon ally -- as national security adviser. Bannon continued to attend NSC meetings and debates about foreign policy in the Oval Office. But Bannon resented McMaster for demoting him, and for purging several Flynn allies from the NSC.

Bannon and McMaster also sharply differed on how Trump should discuss terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda. Bannon favors using the phrase "radical Islamic extremism," but McMaster has largely prevented Trump from saying it in public on the grounds that it could alienate moderate Muslims who hear it as an attack on their religion.

McMaster's defenders have accused Bannon of spearheading a campaign of leaks meant to undermine the top national security aide.

"The campaign to get him out was clearly coming from Bannon or his allies," said Brian McKeon, a former NSC chief of staff and senior Pentagon policy official in the Obama administration. "The national security adviser's job is hard enough without having to always look over your shoulder to see who's trying to knife you.

"This will make McMaster's days a little easier," he added.

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Likely to share McMaster's satisfaction at Bannon's ouster is Tillerson, who chafed at Bannon's role in State Department personnel decisions. Speaking to the American Prospect this week, Bannon boasted that he was working to remove Tillerson's top official for China and East Asia.

"I'm getting Susan Thornton out at State," Bannon said in the interview.

In a pointed show of support the next morning, Tillerson shook Thornton's hand in front of television cameras.

And when Tillerson recommended in February that Trump nominate former Reagan and George W. Bush administration official Elliott Abrams to be his deputy, Bannon intervened to block the choice, according to Abrams.

"Bannon's departure probably means a return to normalcy, where the State and Defense Departments will have greater influence on foreign policy," Abrams said.

Bannon also told the Prospect that he was "changing out people" on the Pentagon's China desk. Mattis, too, has had personnel disputes with the White House.

"Anything that Tillerson and Mattis really push for will now have a better chance of winning out -- for better and for worse," Abrams added.

Abrams and others said that Bannon's exit makes it more likely that McMaster and Mattis will convince Trump to send more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the subject of a meeting among Trump and his national security team at Camp David today.

Some sources downplayed the significance of Bannon's departure, however -- noting that, on military and diplomatic issues, Bannon was more dissenter than policy maker.

Ben Rhodes, a former top national security aide to former President Barack Obama, said Bannon's main contributions was his backing for Trump's early executive orders restricting travel from several Muslim-majority countries. Bannon was also a defender of his friend and ally Sebastian Gorka, a controversial White House adviser who often appears on television.

"On national security, it was hard to see Bannon's influence anywhere other than the Muslim ban and Gorka doing cable hits, so I don't think it changes that much," Rhodes said, adding: "It does suggest a greater likelihood of a troop increase in Afghanistan."

And several sources cautioned that while Bannon may not longer occupy the White House, his worldview is still frequently reflected in the words of the most powerful policymaker of all: President Trump.

European allies "will not be popping champagne corks because their main source of worry remains in the White House, Donald Trump," Benitez said. "Most Europeans blame Trump personally rather than Bannon or other subordinates for damaging transatlantic relations."

"The president gets the last vote," McKeon added. "And he has a different approach to foreign policy than all his predecessors."

Eliana Johnson contributed reporting

===

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Felix · 7 hours ago

As long as there is disagreement there is hope for compromise and moderation. If everyone in the Executive branch were in agreement, there would be no hope for moderation..
DrS · 6 hours ago
Our 'dear' leaders are NOT in control. North Korea ia a distraction as is Trump. Examine the military buildup by Nsto against Russia. Time for Germany, Russia and China to work together militarily for harmony/peace in our world.
andrewboston · 4 hours ago
God help us when Bannon is the voice of reason ......
Bill Malcolm · 4 hours ago
330 million people and a bunch of nutbars in charge of the place, very few of whom have ever had a vote cast for them in any election, Trump being the exception. Some guy like Bannon sits around formulating a wanker worldview and somehow gains power for seven months. I don't suppose the EU gives a tinker's damn that he dislikes it, it's none of his business. Fulminating on it just exposes his acceptance of Imperial America, muttering threats because in his blinkered mind that's not the way the US would have organized Europe - I am unaware that anyone with a brain regards Bannon as an intellectual, merely a weirdo. Then you have all these generals running around thinking they're political geniuses or something, all unelected bozos with little exposure to real life. Giving and taking orders and salutes all around, living a regimented life - just the thing for running the civilian part of the USA.

Why is it that in the US you vote for dogcatchers, sheriffs and judges which no other country bothers with, yet all these high cabinet posts are filled from unelected dorks out there who somehow got noticed, picked by the president, nominated and agreed to by the Senate? The argument has been, well because they're specialists. So what - they're not responsible to the electorate in any direct manner. There's a fat chance that they are managerial competents if they are from the military, a big chance they have developed some warped theory about the world, and few of them are in the slightest bit interested in domestic politics as it relates to the average citizen. 50% of the budget goes to running the armed forces, by nature always measuring foreign "threats" as if diplomacy was a competition or something. The business types picked as cabinet secretaries are invariably from the big business side of the ledger and find foreigners annoying when they don't hand over their natural resources for next to nothing royalties, leading to the government bashing these foreigners over the head until they put someone in charge who sees the "light" and becomes a US ally.

It's a formula for bad government for the domestic population from beginning to end. So up ramps the patriotism to make the people keep the faith which many are happy to do, and then they crap all over the way other countries are organized, their food, customs and "only in America can a hobo be elected President" and there's no opportunity anywhere but in the USA memes. Mesmerized by their own propaganda into thinking the US is the best there is. Cough.

GivingUpOnTrump · 4 hours ago
Tonight if Trump order more troops to Afghanistan, he'd put the last and hardest nail on his own coffin. I do not understand, how long Americans will let the Deep State win, making them sacrificial animals at the mercy of a perpetual power.

[Aug 22, 2017] Pat Buchanan

Buchanan demonstrates very superficial understanding of the result of the USSR collapse. Afghan war was just one contributing factor. It was never the primary reason. Soviet people understood pretty well that they actually faced the USA in Afghan war. Or more correctly the combination of the USA has technological superiority, Saudi money and political Islam. The fact that the USA supplied Stingers portable anti-aircraft rocket launchers. Which later will shoot down some US helicopters. The fact the the USA fe-factor put political Islam on front burner later will bite the USA several times.
Also Buchanan does not understand the role of neoliberal revolution (or coup d'état if you wish, called quite coup) of 80th in the current US troubles. Trump was the first ever presidential candidate, who companied and managed to win the elections on promises to tame neoliberal globalization. The fact that he was crushed in six month of so is not surprising, as he faced very well organize Trotskyite militants (aka deep state) - neoliberalism is actually Trotskyism for rish. Russiagate witch hunt with its Special Prosecutor is a replica of Stalin processes. As Marx used to say history repeats, first as tragedy, second as farce.
"I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire," said Winston Churchill. and this is the essence of Trump betrual of his election promises.
Notable quotes:
"... Is it now the turn of the Americans? Persuaded by his generals -- Mattis at Defense, McMasters on the National Security Council, Kelly as chief of staff -- President Trump is sending some 4,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to augment the 8,500 already there. Like Presidents Obama and Bush, he does not intend to preside over a U.S. defeat in its longest war. Nor do his generals. Yet how can we defeat the Taliban with 13,000 troops when we failed to do so with the 100,000 Obama sent? The new troops are to train the Afghan army to take over the war, to continue eradicating the terrorist elements like ISIS, and to prevent Kabul and other cities from falling to a Taliban now dominant in 40 percent of the country. ..."
"... Writes Bob Merry in the fall issue of The National interest: "War between Russia and the West seems nearly inevitable. No self-respecting nation facing inexorable encirclement by an alliance of hostile neighbors can allow such pressures and forces to continue indefinitely. Eventually (Russia) must protect its interests through military action." ..."
"... Trump himself seems hell-bent on tearing up the nuclear deal with Iran. This would lead inexorably to a U.S. ultimatum, where Iran would be expected to back down or face a war that would set the Persian Gulf ablaze. ..."
"... Yet the country did not vote for confrontation or war. ..."
"... America voted for Trump's promise to improve ties with Russia, to make Europe shoulder more of the cost of its defense, to annihilate ISIS and extricate us from Mideast wars, to stay out of future wars. ..."
"... This agenda did exist and Trump used it to get elected. Once he pulled off that trick he tried to get together again (unsuccessfully) with his New York Plutocrat friends. It's that New York social background. It's always been difficult to see Trump fit together economically or socially with the America that elected him, and after he got elected he quickly weakened his ties with Middle America. So why should he complain about Fake News since he got elected on a Fake Agenda? ..."
"... Trump does not even remember what he was elected to do. A man who was determined to drain the swamp is deep, up to his neck, in that swamp. The neocons and the never-Trumpers are the main decision makers in the Trump administration. All the loyal supporters have been chased out of the Trump's inner circle. A man who built his empire with his brain and shrewdness can't seem to handle the Presidency. He is trying to appease the very same people who opposed him in the election. ..."
"... For a smart businessman, Donald Trump can't seem to make any friends. There is a very simple solution to these wars of choice. Mr. Trump swallow your pride and bring the boys home. You will save American lives and will also earn the gratitude of the families of these soldiers. You may even bring peace to many countries around the world and people who have been displaced by these wars can return home. You may even solve the refugee problem in the process. You might even save your presidency. Give peace a chance. ..."
"... I think The Donald offered the lame excuse that things looks much different when you're in the oval office vs. the campaign trail. That won't be any consolation to people who voted for him in the hopes that their family members in the military would be coming home soon. And it won't be any consolation to some members of his base. ..."
"... Trump isn't going to keep his campaign promises. ..."
"... Continuing to maintain forces in South Korea continues to contribute to our bankruptcy. ..."
"... Now that the generals have gone wild under Trump we may as well admit that we're ruled by a military junta. We'll let them make all the decisions since they're so brilliant while Trump tweets and holds stupid rallies trying to convince people that he hasn't reneged on any campaign promises. ..."
Aug 22, 2017 | www.unz.com

12 Comments

"I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire," said Winston Churchill to cheers at the Lord Mayor's luncheon in London in November 1942. True to his word, the great man did not begin the liquidation. When his countrymen threw him out in July 1945, that role fell to Clement Attlee, who began the liquidation. Churchill, during his second premiership from 1951-1955, would continue the process, as would his successor, Harold Macmillan, until the greatest empire the world had ever seen had vanished.

While its demise was inevitable, the death of the empire was hastened and made mo re humiliating by the wars into which Churchill had helped to plunge Britain, wars that bled and bankrupted his nation. At Yalta in 1945, Stalin and FDR treated the old imperialist with something approaching bemused contempt. War is the health of the state, but the death of empires. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires all fell in World War I. World War II ended the Japanese and Italian empires -- with the British and French following soon after. The Soviet Empire collapsed in 1989. Afghanistan delivered the coup de grace.

Is it now the turn of the Americans? Persuaded by his generals -- Mattis at Defense, McMasters on the National Security Council, Kelly as chief of staff -- President Trump is sending some 4,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to augment the 8,500 already there. Like Presidents Obama and Bush, he does not intend to preside over a U.S. defeat in its longest war. Nor do his generals. Yet how can we defeat the Taliban with 13,000 troops when we failed to do so with the 100,000 Obama sent? The new troops are to train the Afghan army to take over the war, to continue eradicating the terrorist elements like ISIS, and to prevent Kabul and other cities from falling to a Taliban now dominant in 40 percent of the country.

Yet what did the great general, whom Trump so admires, Douglas MacArthur, say of such a strategy? "War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision." Is not "prolonged indecision" what the Trump strategy promises? Is not "prolonged indecision" what the war policies of Obama and Bush produced in the last 17 years? Understandably, Americans feel they cannot walk away from this war. For there is the certainty as to what will follow when we leave.

When the British left Delhi in 1947, millions of former subjects died during the partition of the territory into Pakistan and India and the mutual slaughter of Muslims and Hindus. When the French departed Algeria in 1962, the "Harkis" they left behind paid the price of being loyal to the Mother Country. When we abandoned our allies in South Vietnam, the result was mass murder in the streets, concentration camps and hundreds of thousands of boat people in the South China Sea, a final resting place for many. In Cambodia, it was a holocaust.

Trump, however, was elected to end America's involvement in Middle East wars. And if he has been persuaded that he simply cannot liquidate these wars -- Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan -- he will likely end up sacrificing his presidency, trying to rescue the failures of those who worked hardest to keep him out of the White House.

Consider the wars, active and potential, Trump faces.

Writes Bob Merry in the fall issue of The National interest: "War between Russia and the West seems nearly inevitable. No self-respecting nation facing inexorable encirclement by an alliance of hostile neighbors can allow such pressures and forces to continue indefinitely. Eventually (Russia) must protect its interests through military action."

If Pyongyang tests another atom bomb or ICBM, some national security aides to Trump are not ruling out preventive war.

Trump himself seems hell-bent on tearing up the nuclear deal with Iran. This would lead inexorably to a U.S. ultimatum, where Iran would be expected to back down or face a war that would set the Persian Gulf ablaze.

Yet the country did not vote for confrontation or war.

America voted for Trump's promise to improve ties with Russia, to make Europe shoulder more of the cost of its defense, to annihilate ISIS and extricate us from Mideast wars, to stay out of future wars.

America voted for economic nationalism and an end to the mammoth trade deficits with the NAFTA nations, EU, Japan and China. America voted to halt the invasion across our Southern border and to reduce legal immigration to

Grandpa Charlie > , August 22, 2017 at 6:33 am GMT

I think that the case of Korea is very different from all the others, but generally I agree with Mr. Buchanan to the extent that I say: Pat Buchanan for President

Miro23 > , August 22, 2017 at 6:44 am GMT

Trump's populist-nationalist and America First agenda,

This agenda did exist and Trump used it to get elected. Once he pulled off that trick he tried to get together again (unsuccessfully) with his New York Plutocrat friends. It's that New York social background. It's always been difficult to see Trump fit together economically or socially with the America that elected him, and after he got elected he quickly weakened his ties with Middle America. So why should he complain about Fake News since he got elected on a Fake Agenda?

MEexpert > , August 22, 2017 at 7:12 am GMT

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This quote is so well-known that almost everyone knows it, except perhaps the politicians and the generals. Afghanistan has been called the deathbed of empires. The two recent empires to go down are the British and the Soviet. For almost 200 years the British tried to tame the Afghan tribes but couldn't. The devastation they caused did not deter the natives. It is all there in the history books for everyone to read. The Soviet empire didn't even last ten years. It cut its losses and ran.

The lack of teaching of history and geography in American schools is quite evident when one looks at the performance of American forces in Afghanistan after 17 years. Add the arrogance of the Presidents and the generals to this lack of knowledge and one can understand the disasterous results of the Afghan war. One other subject that is missing from the modern presidency is diplomacy. War over diplomacy seems to be the order of the day.

Trump, however, was elected to end America's involvement in Middle East wars. And if he has been persuaded that he simply cannot liquidate these wars -- Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan -- he will likely end up sacrificing his presidency, trying to rescue the failures of those who worked hardest to keep him out of the White House.

Trump does not even remember what he was elected to do. A man who was determined to drain the swamp is deep, up to his neck, in that swamp. The neocons and the never-Trumpers are the main decision makers in the Trump administration. All the loyal supporters have been chased out of the Trump's inner circle. A man who built his empire with his brain and shrewdness can't seem to handle the Presidency. He is trying to appease the very same people who opposed him in the election.

Trump himself seems hell-bent on tearing up the nuclear deal with Iran. This would lead inexorably to a U.S. ultimatum, where Iran would be expected to back down or face a war that would set the Persian Gulf ablaze.

It is never going to happen. Not only the Middle East would be set ablaze, but America will lose its European allies as well. The relations with Russia are already confrontational and heading fast towards an ultimate war. European allies are also confused about the US foreign policy or lack thereof. Trade war is brewing with China. The only country which is happy with this chaos is Israel.

For a smart businessman, Donald Trump can't seem to make any friends. There is a very simple solution to these wars of choice. Mr. Trump swallow your pride and bring the boys home. You will save American lives and will also earn the gratitude of the families of these soldiers. You may even bring peace to many countries around the world and people who have been displaced by these wars can return home. You may even solve the refugee problem in the process. You might even save your presidency. Give peace a chance.

Renoman > , August 22, 2017 at 8:51 am GMT

No one has ever been able to conquer Afghanistan why would America think it can? Likely just throwing a bone to the neocons. As for Iran, Trump has been beating his chest all over the World and doing nothing, again with the Neocon feeding, I don't think he has any intention of getting into anything larger than a skirmish with anyone, he's a lot smarter than he looks --

syd.bgd > , August 22, 2017 at 9:10 am GMT

Well while Mr. Buchanan is not an expert in Balkans history, or politics, as I've argued here, he is excellent in American history and politics. An article somewhat short, because he is not connecting his sharp analysis to ongoing First Amendment disaster. It comes along, obviously, but still an excellent piece.

To be copied and saved in my personal archives, anyway. I do not believe that even this site will last long. Greetings from Serbia, suicidal country controlled from that feudal fortress (US Embassy) where our Scott-Pasha resides.

Chris Dakota > , August 22, 2017 at 11:21 am GMT

It was the eclipse that swept across America to change it forever. We now know we are on our own, there is no political solution for this war. The eclipse marks the end of a war, our war, we lost. Trump extends Afghan swamp war on the very day. Eclipse was conjunct Trumps Mars, he was castrated. Doesn't mean we won't win, but it won't be via the rigged ballot box and the DC swamp.

KenH > , August 22, 2017 at 11:47 am GMT

I think The Donald offered the lame excuse that things looks much different when you're in the oval office vs. the campaign trail. That won't be any consolation to people who voted for him in the hopes that their family members in the military would be coming home soon. And it won't be any consolation to some members of his base.

Now that the generals have gone wild under Trump we may as well admit that we're ruled by a military junta. We'll let them make all the decisions since they're so brilliant while Trump tweets and holds stupid rallies trying to convince people that he hasn't reneged on any campaign promises.

But if it prevents tens of thousands of knuckle dragging Afghans steeped in a culture of violence, pedophilia and pederasty from entering America as refugees then I guess there's a silver lining.

MEH 0910 > , August 22, 2017 at 1:42 pm GMT

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/full-transcript-donald-trump-announces-his-afghanistan-policy/537552/

My original instinct was to pull out, and historically, I like following my instincts. But all my life I've heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.

Trump isn't going to keep his campaign promises. That means he's not going to build a beautiful wall on our southern border.

Liberty Mike > , August 22, 2017 at 2:31 pm GMT

@Grandpa Charlie What is different about "the case of Korea"?

Continuing to maintain forces in South Korea continues to contribute to our bankruptcy.

Liberty Mike > , August 22, 2017 at 2:34 pm GMT

@KenH I think The Donald offered the lame excuse that things looks much different when you're in the oval office vs. the campaign trail. That won't be any consolation to people who voted for him in the hopes that their family members in the military would be coming home soon. And it won't be any consolation to some members of his base.

Now that the generals have gone wild under Trump we may as well admit that we're ruled by a military junta. We'll let them make all the decisions since they're so brilliant while Trump tweets and holds stupid rallies trying to convince people that he hasn't reneged on any campaign promises.

... ... ..

[Aug 22, 2017] Interactive Timeline Everything We Know About Russia and President Trump by Steven Harper

Hatchet job. But pretty well designed hatchet job. Sophisticated set of lies mixed with truth to facilitate the witch hunt.
Aug 21, 2017 | billmoyers.com

Explore our updated, comprehensive Trump-Russia Timeline -- or select one of the central players in the Trump-Russia saga to see what we know about them.

... ... ...

Steven Harper blogs at The Belly of the Beast , is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, and contributes regularly to The American Lawyer. He is the author of several books, including The Lawyer Bubble -- A Profession in Crisis and Crossing Hoffa -- A Teamster's Story (a Chicago Tribune "Best Book of the Year"). Follow him on Twitter: @StevenJHarper1 .

[Aug 22, 2017] Russia-gate's Evidentiary Void by Robert Parry

Notable quotes:
"... Exclusive: A cyber-warfare expert sees no technical evidence linking Russia to the Democratic email releases, but The New York Times presses ahead with a new hope that Ukraine can fill the void, reports Robert Parry. ..."
"... "There is not now and never has been a single piece of technical evidence produced that connects the malware used in the DNC attack to the GRU, FSB or any agency of the Russian government," Carr said. ..."
"... Yet, the reliance on Ukraine to provide evidence against Russia defies any objective investigative standards. The Ukrainian government is fiercely anti-Russian and views itself as engaged in an "information war" with Putin and his government. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the Times offered its readers almost no cautionary advice that – in the case of Russia-gate – Ukraine would have every motive to send U.S. investigators in directions harmful to Russia, much as happened with the MH-17 investigation. ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
"... At this point, Carr is right: There is NO publicly available, non-circumstantial, non-spoofable evidence that a DNC hack even occurred, let alone that any hack that might have been done was done by Russians at all, let alone the Russian government. And all of the alleged US intelligence "assessments" have provided NO additional evidence. ..."
Aug 18, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Exclusive: A cyber-warfare expert sees no technical evidence linking Russia to the Democratic email releases, but The New York Times presses ahead with a new hope that Ukraine can fill the void, reports Robert Parry.

The New York Times' unrelenting anti-Russia bias would be almost comical if the possible outcome were not a nuclear conflagration and maybe the end of life on planet Earth.

A classic example of the Times' one-sided coverage was a front-page article on Thursday expressing the wistful hope that a Ukrainian hacker whose malware was linked to the release of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails in 2016 could somehow "blow the whistle on Russian hacking."

Though full of airy suspicions and often reading like a conspiracy theory, the article by Andrew E. Kramer and Andrew Higgins contained one important admission (buried deep inside the "jump" on page A8 in my print edition), a startling revelation especially for those Americans who have accepted the Russia-did-it groupthink as an established fact.

The article quoted Jeffrey Carr, the author of a book on cyber-warfare, referring to a different reality: that the Russia-gate "certainties" blaming the DNC "hack" on Russia's GRU military intelligence service or Russia's FSB security agency lack a solid evidentiary foundation.

"There is not now and never has been a single piece of technical evidence produced that connects the malware used in the DNC attack to the GRU, FSB or any agency of the Russian government," Carr said.

Yet, before that remarkable admission had a chance to sink into the brains of Times' readers whose thinking has been fattened up on a steady diet of treating the "Russian hack" as flat fact, Times' editors quickly added that "United States intelligence agencies, however, have been unequivocal in pointing a finger at Russia."

The Times' rebuke toward any doubts about Russia-gate was inserted after Carr's remark although the Times had already declared several times on page 1 that there was really no doubt about Russia's guilt.

"American intelligence agencies have determined Russian hackers were behind the electronic break-in of the Democratic national Committee," the Times reported, followed by the assertion that the hacker's "malware apparently did" get used by Moscow and then another reminder that "Washington is convinced [that the hacking operation] was orchestrated by Moscow."

By repeating the same point on the inside page, the Times editors seemed to be saying that any deviant views on this subject must be slapped down promptly and decisively.

A Flimsy Assessment

But that gets us back to the problem with the Jan. 6 "Intelligence Community Assessment," which -- contrary to repeated Times' claims -- was not the "consensus" view of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, but rather the work of a small group of "hand-picked" analysts from three agencies: the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency. And, they operated under the watchful eye of President Obama's political appointees, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who was the one who called them "hand-picked."

Those analysts presented no real evidence to support their assessment, which they acknowledged was not a determination of fact, but rather what amounted to their best guess based on what they perceived to be Russian motives and capabilities.

The Jan. 6 assessment admitted as much, saying its "judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents."

Much of the unclassified version of the report lambasted Russia's international TV network RT for such offenses as hosting a 2012 presidential debate for third-party candidates excluded from the Republican-Democratic debate, covering the Occupy Wall Street protests, and reporting on dangers from "fracking." The assessment described those editorial decisions as assaults on American democracy.

But rather than acknowledge the thinness of the Jan. 6 report, the Times – like other mainstream news outlets – treated it as gospel and pretended that it represented a "consensus" of all 17 intelligence agencies even though it clearly never did. (Belatedly, the Times slipped in a correction to that falsehood in one article although continuing to use similar language in subsequent stories so an unsuspecting Times reader would not be aware of how shaky the Russia-gate foundation is.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have denied repeatedly that the Russian government was the source of the two batches of Democratic emails released via WikiLeaks in 2016, a point that the Times also frequently fails to acknowledge. (This is not to say that Putin and Assange are telling the truth, but it is a journalistic principle to include relevant denials from parties facing accusations.)

Conspiracy Mongering

The rest of Thursday's Times article veered from the incomprehensible to the bizarre, as the Times reported that the hacker, known only as "Profexer," is cooperating with F.B.I. agents inside Ukraine. President Barack Obama and President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine talk after statements to the press following their bilateral meeting at the Warsaw Marriott Hotel in Warsaw, Poland, June 4, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Yet, the reliance on Ukraine to provide evidence against Russia defies any objective investigative standards. The Ukrainian government is fiercely anti-Russian and views itself as engaged in an "information war" with Putin and his government.

Ukraine's SBU security service also has been implicated in possible torture , according to United Nations investigators who were denied access to Ukrainian government detention facilities housing ethnic Russian Ukrainians who resisted the violent coup in February 2014, which was spearheaded by neo-Nazis and other extreme nationalists and overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

The SBU also has been the driving force behind the supposedly "Dutch-led" investigation into the July 17, 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. That inquiry has ignored evidence that a rogue Ukrainian force may have been responsible – not even addressing a Dutch/NATO intelligence report stating that all anti-aircraft missile batteries in eastern Ukraine on that day were under the control of the Ukrainian military – and instead tried to pin the atrocity on Russia , albeit with no suspects yet charged.

In Thursday's article, the Times unintentionally reveals how fuzzy the case against "Fancy Bear" and "Cozy Bear" – the two alleged Russian government hacking operations – is.

The Times reports: "Rather than training, arming and deploying hackers to carry out a specific mission like just another military unit, Fancy Bear and its twin Cozy Bear have operated more as centers for organization and financing; much of the hard work like coding is outsourced to private and often crime-tainted vendors."

Further, under the dramatic subhead – "A Bear's Lair" – the Times reported that no such lair may exist: "Tracking the bear to its lair has so far proved impossible, not least because many experts believe that no such single place exists."

Lacking Witnesses

The Times' article also noted the "absence of reliable witnesses" to resolve the mystery – so to the rescue came the "reliable" regime in Kiev, or as the Times wrote: "emerging from Ukraine is a sharper picture of what the United States believes is a Russian government hacking group."

The Times then cited various cases of exposed Ukrainian government emails, again blaming the Russians albeit without any real evidence.

The Times suggested some connection between the alleged Russian hackers and a mistaken report on Russia's Channel 1 about a Ukrainian election, which the Times claimed "inadvertently implicated the government authorities in Moscow."

The Times' "proof" in this case was that some hacker dummied a phony Internet page to look like an official Ukrainian election graphic showing a victory by ultra-right candidate, Dmytro Yarosh, when in fact Yarosh polled less than 1 percent. The hacker supposedly sent this "spoof" graphic to Channel 1, which used it.

But such an embarrassing error, which would have no effect on the actual election results, suggests an effort to discredit Channel 1 rather than evidence of a cooperative relationship between the mysterious hacker and the Russian station. The Times, however, made this example a cornerstone in its case against the Russians.

Meanwhile, the Times offered its readers almost no cautionary advice that – in the case of Russia-gate – Ukraine would have every motive to send U.S. investigators in directions harmful to Russia, much as happened with the MH-17 investigation.

So, we can expect that whatever "evidence" Ukraine "uncovers" will be accepted as gospel truth by the Times and much of the U.S. government – and anyone who dares ask inconvenient questions about its reliability will be deemed a "Kremlin stooge" spreading "Russian propaganda."

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

Litchfield , August 18, 2017 at 3:39 pm

Can the United States, its mainstream media, and its intelligence services sink any deeper into the status of laughable but also malicious clowns? Yes. They reach new lows with practically every edition of the NYT -- The only group maintaining any respectability within these entities is the VIPS group.

Pathetic. Laughingstock of the world. But don't kick sand in these bullies' faces. They may nuke you --

Anna , August 18, 2017 at 5:32 pm

You don't understand. The Times Co. Chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the newspaper, wants the Golan Heights for his pet project by any means and he is beyond himself that the bad, bad Russians stopped the slaughter of civilians in Syria and thus stopped the dissolution of Syria.

The Chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. hates, hates the idea of sovereign Syria. He wants Syria to become another Libya. Period.

And he wants to see Iran obliterated (some old grievances against the noble ancient civilization that used to provide the best living place for Jews). And then, the Chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. wants to see profits, even if his profitable fake-news business could lead to a nuclear conflict with Russain Federation. Like other super-wealthy imbeciles, the Chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. is accustomed to a very special order when other people are always ready to clean his mess. He is not aware that the Mess, which he is so eagerly inviting, could end up his comfortable life and make his relatives into shades on a hard surface. Would not this planet be better without the Chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. and likes?

JWalters , August 18, 2017 at 7:02 pm

Well put. These people are like the "nobles" of medieval times. They care not a whit about the "peasants" they trample. They are wealth bigots, compounded by some ethnic bigotry or other, in this case Jewish supremacism. America has an oligarchy problem. At the center of that oligarchy is a Jewish mafia controlling the banks, and thereby the big corporations, and thereby the media and the government. This oligarchy sees America as a big, dumb military machine that it can manipulate to generate war profits.

"War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror" . http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com

Erik G , August 18, 2017 at 5:59 pm

Yes, the VIPS & CN have provided critical analysis of these mass media scams, often led by the biased NYT.

Those who would like to petition the NYT to make Robert Parry their senior editor may do so here:
https://www.change.org/p/new-york-times-bring-a-new-editor-to-the-new-york-times?recruiter=72650402&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink .

Mr. Parry may prefer independence, and we all know the NYT ownership makes it unlikely, and the NYT may try to ignore it, it is instructive to them that intelligent readers know better journalism when they see it. A petition demonstrates the concerns of a far larger number of potential or lost subscribers.

j. D. D. , August 19, 2017 at 3:07 pm

The "Russiagate" hoax is in big trouble. thanks in large part to the V.I.P.S. memo to President Trump, first published on this site on July 24. No surprise then that the Times has rushed to stem the bleeding, much the way the Post did in its threatening message to The Nation editor Van den Heuvel to retract its coverage of that explosive report. So what now? Shift the tactic to playing the race card, in an effort to oust this President, the methods, and in fact many of the same names employed in the staged event in Charlottesville, being all too familiar to those who followed the coup which overthrew the elected government of Ukraine.

Randal Marlin , August 18, 2017 at 3:48 pm

I think your statement "Yet, the reliance on Ukraine to provide evidence against Russia defies any objective investigative standards" gets to the crux of the matter.
Note how the evidentiary question is not significantly altered when, say, expert Dutch investigators confirm a Russian-blaming narrative regarding MH-17 when, and to the extent that, the Dutch experts form their opinion based on evidence selected by (anti-Russian) Ukrainian authorities.

I've used the example before of salted gold-ore samples being given to experts for analysis. Those who fell for the Bre-X scam some 20 years ago apparently failed to appreciate the disclaimer by SNC-Lavalin, who reported a rich find, that they had not done an independent collection of the ore samples. There was a high reported price tag for the analysis and people may have just assumed such an independent collection had taken place.

Sam F , August 18, 2017 at 6:03 pm

It is absurd that an admitted hacker in Ukraine, and its militantly anti-Russian government, are considered reliable sources in the smoke-and-mirrors game of tracing international hacking. Their only "evidence" appears to be standard hacking scams of simulating sources to throw off investigators. It is amazing that they can't even find a hacker somewhere else to make absurd claims in a plea bargain. Obviously NYT does not believe this ridiculous story themselves. It is the greatest fool who believes all others to be greater fools.

JWalters , August 18, 2017 at 7:14 pm

Israel controls the New York Times. Therefore this is an Israeli operation. "What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis" http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/02/what-neocons-want-from-ukraine-crisis/

The Israelis appear afraid Trump will suddenly turn on them, just as he suddenly and totally disavowed all forms of racism, white supremacism, KKK, alt-right, etc. (And Bannon did, too.) He had needed that support to wrest the GOP nomination away from the Wall Street gang (who merely winked and nodded at the racists, a large and crucial part of their voting base.) Perhaps the glaring, blaring racist crimes and atrocities of Israel will be called out next?
"Netanyahu is silent for 3 days over neo-Nazi violence, while his son says Black Lives Matter and Antifa are the real threat"
http://mondoweiss.net/2017/08/netanyahu-violence-antifa/
"Charlottesville is moment of truth for empowered U.S. Zionists (who name their children after Israeli generals)"
http://mondoweiss.net/2017/08/charlottesville-empowered-children/

Sam F , August 19, 2017 at 5:00 pm

Interesting that you say that this is an Israeli operation. I once traced malware on my PC to three sources, one with an address in Tel Aviv Israel, and two front companies in NYC run by people with Jewish names. Complete coincidence of course.

I also traced a complex web of internet copyright piracy, which included front companies, servers, and offices in Panama, Cayman Islands, Barbados, Montreal, UK, and various piracy and tax evasion venues. One company "TzarMedia" (in English) claimed to have its servers in Moscow, but it turned out that this was just one more false-flag: it was in Texas, and its servers could be anywhere. So anti-Russia false-flags are standard practice.

Because some Ukrainian oligarchs are apparently Jewish with Israeli nationality and bitter anti-Russia views on both fronts, it seems likely that they would be hiring Ukrainian hackers by the dozen to create false-flag hacks blamed on Russia. That must be a real growth industry in Ukraine and Israel by now, not to mention Washington.

Peter Dyer , August 18, 2017 at 3:58 pm

This is sadly reminiscent of another instance of the willingness of the New York Times to publish "evidence" of malfeasance on the part of the enemy du jour: the series of stories in 2001-02 by Judith Miller based on Ahmad Chalabi's "evidence" of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 9:57 pm

At least it ended her career with the NYT. Judith Miller was being fed stories from the office of VP Cheney, who would later cite the NYT as evidence of his accusations of WMD, completing the circle. Similarly, Kwiatkowski went public with how DIA staff were pressured by Sec of Defense and Cheney to stovepipe cherry picked intel to support WMD. The malfeasance germinated in the mechanical heart of one Richard Cheney and the NYT and DIA were used and abused. Not faultless, but the bulk of the derision belongs with that administration.

Bill , August 18, 2017 at 4:12 pm

There's a bigger story behind all of this. John Brennan was abusing his position as CIA Director to wage a war against Trump. Comey and Clapper are also "in" on it. A conspiracy? Yes. Who told them to do it? By golly, it was President Obama.

Litchfield , August 18, 2017 at 6:07 pm

Yes, but don't dream of tarnishing the halo St. Barry with perfectly reasonable suppositions as to who put this mess in motion and, I reckon, continues to ride herd on it. He is "above the fray" (my a–). He is at the center of the fray. After Hillary's ignoble loss to Obama in 2008, she ate crow and went to work for him. They must have made some kind of deal, reached some kind of accommodation.

Richard Tarnoff , August 18, 2017 at 4:19 pm

It is depressing, but not surprising given their corporate ownership, that the entire MSM is unwilling to ask the same hard questions as does Consortium News. It is also depressing that the Democratic Party is happy to jump on this risky band wagon in their desperate desire to bring down Trump.

Drogon , August 18, 2017 at 4:25 pm

I find it bizarre and frustrating that the anti-Trump forces insist on focusing on the flimsy Russia-gate distraction when there are so many objectively awful reasons to criticize the Trump administration.

*Resurgence of Civil-Asset Forfeiture? Check.
*Supporting the private prison industry? Check.
*Empowering federal prosecutors? Check.
*Working to sabotage the Iran nuclear deal? Check.
*Dismissing anthropogenic climate change? Check.
*Going out of his way to equate Nazis with anti-Nazi protestors? Check.
*Undermining net neutrality? Check.
*Subverting scientific independence at the EPA? Check.
*Sticking up for Wall Street and bad-mouthing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Check.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 5:38 pm

Trump's being criticized for all-of-the-above by virtually all of the leftist media and NGO's (Counterpunch, DemocracyNow, FAIR, RealNewsNetwork, Free Press, Public Citizen, etc) that criticized Obama, Bush, Clinton, et al for their many shortcomings and fuck-ups.
You need to get out more.

Litchfield , August 18, 2017 at 6:09 pm

But it seems like the MSM is standing in for "leftish" (sic) forces, as they combine with neocons to bring Trump down.

Drogon , August 18, 2017 at 7:43 pm

Just because the MSM doesn't like Trump doesn't mean he's a good person.

BobH , August 18, 2017 at 7:07 pm

Yes, but the DNC has put all their ammo into the straw man argument of Russia-gate. I believe this is what Drogon was saying, and I also believe it's a valid point.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 7:52 pm

I'll agree that it's the focus of the DNC. But he wrote "anti-Trump forces", which encompasses much more than the DNC.

Joe Tedesky , August 18, 2017 at 11:49 pm

Way to go BobS, you have an excuse for every stupid remark you make. Since Drogon said some pretty factual things that made sense, you had to go find something to make a negative comment as a reply, and in doing so you made yourself look awfully foolish I'll bet your working hard to sound smart and clever all the time, guess what you make yourself look ignorant instead.

If you are a contributor to this site, then I want my money back. You certainly don't bring any class, or anything worthwhile to this site, with your crudeness. Although, you probably laugh at your own jokes, and think your funny. I've tried for the last couple of days to somehow deal with you with the hopes that you and I could have a civil conversation, but as I can see I shouldn't take it personally, since you seem to offend everyone no matter what what is wrong with you man.

Leslie F , August 18, 2017 at 7:07 pm

All of this is worthy of criticism, but not likely to lead to his ouster. The fools think Russia-gate will, but it is obviously that the Repubs. in Congress are not buying it anymore than most of the population who just declines to become hysterical over Russia when they have much more immediate problems. There is that matter of Trumps financial malfeasance which is real AND impeachable, but the Dem establishment isn't interested because it won't deflect attention from their internal problems and many among their number are guilty of similaar crimes, if not to the same extent as Trump. And the deep state doesn't care because it doesn't advance their neocon agenda like Russia-gate. I think, however, that it could help mobilize popular outrage which will be necessary if he is ever going to be impeached.

turk151 , August 18, 2017 at 7:50 pm

That is because those are all ideas that the MSM's benefactors actually support.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 4:30 pm

Yet another strained effort to distract from the actual reality of Trump's Russian connection. Here is Bill Moyers' timeline of factual events. Tells the story better for anyone with an open mind.

http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-russia-timeline/

Drogon , August 18, 2017 at 4:41 pm

Does Trump have "Russian connections?" Of course he does. He's a billionaire oligarch and, as such, he almost certainly has corrupt connections with billionaire oligarchs from pretty much any country you can name. If the anti-Trump brigade was less hysterical, these connections could most likely be used to remove him from office. That said, is there currently any evidence that he collaborated with the Russian government to throw the election? No.

Zachary Smith , August 18, 2017 at 4:55 pm

Thank you for the link. Because of my "closed mind" I've concluded that Bill Moyers has lost it.

I made a couple of searches of my own and found this from Moyers:

"Raked over the coals by Republican inquisitors in Congress who could never make a case that she had acted wrongly in Libya "

Gist of the story, poor Hillary isn't a male and everybody has been after the innocent woman on that account. Obviously nobody would have commented if it had been a MAN with the same amount of blood on his hands. In another story he dismissed Hillary's email maneuvers.

h**p://billmoyers.com/story/hillary-hatred-revisited/

The man is an old Hillary-Bot and I've no use at all for that sort.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 6:04 pm

Actually, if you'd watched her testimony, they couldn't make that case, the reason being they focused on BENGHAZEEEE -- -- -- -- as opposed to the attack on Libya itself (which all or most of the Republicans in Congress agreed with).
Also, it's disingenuous to pretend that Clinton (and female politicians, in general) aren't held to somewhat different standards than men.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 6:26 pm

Agree with you Bob. But CN is infected with Russian bots. Used to be main go to site for me, now it's just the place for Trump and Putin apologists.

Anon , August 18, 2017 at 7:32 pm

"Roy G Biv" is today's name for one of the discredited trolls here lately, probably BobS himself, who pretends to be a former supporter. Thanks for letting us know that rightwingers are liars.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 7:41 pm

""Roy G Biv" is today's name for one of the discredited trolls here lately, probably BobS himself, who pretends to be a former supporter. Thanks for letting us know that rightwingers are liars."

Thanks for letting me know it's so easy to fuck with your somewhat empty head.

Joe Tedesky , August 18, 2017 at 11:30 pm

Yeah BobS your the only smart one here. BTW You couldn't put a patch on Anon's ass even if you tried.

D5-5 , August 19, 2017 at 10:53 am

"CN infected with Russian bots and Putin apologists." Here's your guilt by association tool again. Anyone critical of the Official Narrative = automatically name-called to Russian bots etc etc the "commie sympathizer" BS of years ago. This kind of comment from you automatically disqualifies you as having anything worthwhile to say here.

Anon , August 18, 2017 at 7:30 pm

He just finished saying that they are being held to different standards.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 7:39 pm

His implication was that they get a pass, when in fact just the opposite is true.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 9:08 pm

I was never once discredited. Just censored and shouted down. Now you plant a flag and claim to have refuted. That's not winning an argument, it's just being loud and intolerant.

LongGoneJohn , August 19, 2017 at 4:11 am

So because of the comments, you don't frequent CN anymore? I call BS, mr perpetual war apologist.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 6:24 pm

Actually the timeline stands on its own, and is factual. Try reading it and follow the chain of events. Very illustrative. Doesn't really matter your personal animus against Moyers and Clinton.

D5-5 , August 18, 2017 at 5:04 pm

The specific charge, emanating from the Clinton people, and used as diversion from DNC corruption and Clinton Foundation corruption, is that Russia interfered with the 2016 election. This is a separate matter from Trump has had dealings with and association with Russia since decades back. Conflating these two matters is the easy demonizing brush which you're pushing here. There is no evidence on the specific accusation that Trump worked with Putin to fix the election. If you think there is evidence, versus guilt-by-association, give us a heads-up on where and what it is.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 5:42 pm

WhoWhatWhy & David Cay Johnston are doing and have done a much better job than consortiumnews in covering Trump's likely connections to Russian (and Italian) organized crime.

Litchfield , August 18, 2017 at 6:11 pm

That begs (that is, avoids) the question.
I suspect all of our presidents have had connections with organized crime.

Trump is being charged with, basically, treason for colluding with the Russians to influence the election. Two different animals.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 6:17 pm

"That begs (that is, avoids) the question."
?
Kennedy, at least, at the wrong end of a gun.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 6:29 pm

Malcolm Nance has also chronicled the rise of Vlad and his seizure of the Russian economy from foreign vulture capitalists, only to claim all the spoils for himself and his cronies, as well as how Trump relied on Russian funding to bail out his bankrupcies. It's shockingly ignored here.

BobH , August 18, 2017 at 7:43 pm

Malcolm Nance's book is a "best seller" because he allowed himself to become a shill for the corporate intelligence network not unlike Ann Coulter who became a "best seller" with right wing sponsorship. Such books are printed in mass by the propagandist and often advertised as best sellers before a copy is sold. Unlike, Coulter, Nance is articulate but he starts out by "poisoning the well" with the premise that Putin's Russia is evil. He never really questions the hack theory. His book THE PLOT TO HACK AMERICA is all the rage among Demo "true believers". It was given to me by a friend, no doubt to open my eyes to the evil Putin's maneuvers but apart from the probability that he believed it himself his conclusion was based on a number of distorted facts(yes, I actually read it).

Dave P. , August 18, 2017 at 9:25 pm

BobS: The organized Russian Crime mafia you are referring to had branches in Tel Aviv, New York, and London too. They were lot of people who were part of it, and must be close too Clintons too in their corrupt World in New York and elsewhere in the West. That is how our British Friends keep their economy running. The real Russians, the peasants according to the West they are, never really learnt the art you are describing.

May be, Trump had his hand in there in that pot somewhere too, when they were looting Russia in a big way. But they have not dug it out yet. I fail to understand with all these intelligence agencies, they have not shown it to the public as yet.

mike k , August 18, 2017 at 5:30 pm

If your mind is open like a sieve.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 6:33 pm

The sieve serves to filter isolate particles of significance from the soup of information. A dam on the other hand prevents the flow. Most here have built dams against anything implicating Trump and Putin, and there is extensive evidence of it, from many sources.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 6:56 pm

Good analogy.
There's enough criticism of Trump here (although he does have his share of apologists, especially with respect to Charlottesville e.g.'whatabout BLM?'), but Putin, not so much. I'm guessing he gets a pass from many of the readers due to him being somewhat alone in standing up to the US (in Georgia, Ukraine, etc) as well as consortiumnews being relatively unique in disputing the 'official' narrative with respect to the Ukrainian coup, MH17, & Crimea (as well as Syria). While Putin has served as a valuable counterweight to the American empire, it doesn't make him beyond reproach, and he may possibly have helped to put a white-nationalist authoritarian into the presidency.

Joe Tedesky , August 18, 2017 at 7:41 pm

Hillary put Trump in the Oval Office. Bernie would have won, but your darling Hillary made sure that he didn't stand a chance to win the Democratic primary, because her being a Clinton means she cheats.

Why don't you and Roy go peddle your insulting selfs to people who might buy what your selling. She loss, because she wasn't a good candidate. In fact Hillary would have loss to almost any of the insane Republicans who ran. You BobS are one dull gem of a person .now go mimic me you clown.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 7:48 pm

"Hillary put Trump in the Oval Office."
She helped.

"Bernie would have won"
Agreed.

"She loss, because she wasn't a good candidate. In fact Hillary would have loss to almost.."
You should get your money back for the ESL course.

Joe Tedesky , August 18, 2017 at 8:02 pm

BobS why can't you just talk sensibility with me?

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 9:18 pm

Vlad does get some credit for straight-arming the West vulture capitalists from feeding on the carcass of the USSR and the state owned infrastructure, BUT he supplanted those efforts with his own. He's become one of the richest men in the world by the most unrestrained crony capitalism and is a skilled authoritarian ruler. Why he is so defended around here makes me wonder who these people are who feel so butt hurt when he is criticized.

Anon , August 19, 2017 at 5:53 am

What garbage: find the evidence and your intellectual superiors will gladly review it.

Anon , August 18, 2017 at 7:40 pm

Roy G Biv = BobS: you know as well as we that the utterly discredited Russiagate propaganda is intended solely to distract from the DNC corruption and Repub corruption. So you pretend that discrediting it is a distraction. The crook is always full of accusations of the same crookedness, like our Ukrainian hacker.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 9:23 pm

Hate to disappoint you Anon, but we are not the same person and I have no idea who BobS is. I guess you find it easier to ignore dissenting opinion by lumping it into one persona. And your dismissal of Malcolm Nance is pretty thin IMO. The Russian hacking of our election and the financial connections to DJT are well established and creating slogans and memes like "Russiagate" is a cheap parlor trick.

Anon , August 19, 2017 at 5:56 am

BS. You haven't a single shred of evidence of any election hacking, let alone Russian, and apparently you know it. I demand your evidence, not propaganda.

DocHollywood , August 20, 2017 at 12:51 am

"The Russian hacking of our election and the financial connections to DJT are well established"

All that's missing is evidence.

Peter Duveen , August 18, 2017 at 5:01 pm

I only pick up the New York Times once or twice a year as a novelty. It has priced itself out of the market, as have many other newspapers, which used to be affordable by those eking out even the meanest of livings.

It would appear that the Russian hysteria is somehow connected with the anti-Trump hysteria in general, to which has been added the charge of his being a white nationalist Nazi, merely because he acknowledged two factions willing to exercise violence in conjunction with a politically charged demonstration. Yet, the latter charges would seem to divide so-called progressives while casting intellectually honest analyses like Parry's as sympathetic to white supremacists by association. This may seem to be quite a challenging environment for journalists to operate in, as the actual situation is so at odds with the conventional wisdom being touted from the same regions of the universe. I do hope the very fabric of truth-telling is not ripped to shreds by these counter-currents.

mike k , August 18, 2017 at 5:34 pm

So Trump is not a Nazi sympathizer? They sure think so. Ask David Duke. He tweeted thanks to Trump for defending them.

Litchfield , August 18, 2017 at 6:17 pm

This is faulty logic.
I have said it before and I will say it again:
In our two-party system, millions of voters don't actually have any party that represents their views. This includes what would be called in the USA "extremists" on both the left and the right.

Unlike what would be the case in a parliamentary system, where if a party gets over the 5% threshold they are represented in the legislature and may even participate in forming a government, in the USA such groups have to decide which of the two parties is closer to their own platform. IF David Duke decides that the Repugs are closer to what he wants, that doesn't mean that Trump is therefore a Nazi or white supremacist.
It means that Duke is some kind of Republican.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 6:25 pm

Trump has received adulation from the white nationalist fringe unusual for a candidate from any party.
Even more unusual, Trump has reciprocated.

Joe Tedesky , August 18, 2017 at 9:37 pm

Knowing you BobS you'll probably think that what I'm about to say, is my supporting Trump, because you are still living the 2016 presidential election. When you bring up odd alliances, how about when Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland (and John McCain) orchestrated the coup in Ukraine that installed a full on Nazi Party, complete with swastikas?

Let's see if you can answer me in a decent tone. That doesn't mean you need to agree with me, but it does mean you are an ignorant know it all, if you don't answer me with some common respect.

Before you came here BobS, it was nice to have conversations with the many others who whether they agreed with you or not, at least the use of good manners did lead to our learning something worthwhile. You BobS, only bring out the worst in a person, with your little boy agitation. It also over shadows the good points you make, when you use ridicule the way you do. In other words BobS, I can tell your not stupid, but you sure come off that way with your words and actions when you do the silly things you do with your rude comments.

It's very rare that I burn down bridges, for you see BobS all my life I have been a bridge builder. So, when your ready to grow up, and become mature, then who knows, maybe you and I will become friends, if not well it's no big loss. Take care Joe

Zachary Smith , August 18, 2017 at 11:43 pm

Joe, they are both professional disruptors. The Roy G Biv character is too well informed to be merely mistaken – he's simply not honest. I'd posit he is CIA or back-room NYT employee. Or possibly a nutcase Zionist with a good US education posting from some stolen land in Israel.

Speaking of the New York Times, I'm done with them. I now have zero respect for the filthy propaganda site.

As I was reading through Mr. Parry's piece I decided to find out for myself if they were as bad as they seem. But how to test this? Long story short, I hit on the idea to see what they've written about the USS Liberty on this 50th Anniversary of the attempted sinking of the ship and attempted mass murder of all aboard.

Search terms were "USS LIberty" and "nytimes.com".

According to the Google results there were zero mentions of the USS Liberty on the NYT site within the past 12 months. Double checking, I went to the site and entered the term into the search there. Nothing.

They lie. They distort. They conceal. Mostly for Israel. These days Israel wants Syria to get the Iraq/Libya treatment. Russia is an obstacle. The lying, cheating, and distortions of the NYT and WP are focused on pressuring Russia enough to get them out of Syria. The professional newcomers here are accusing us of being Putin-Hacks, and much more. They do everything they can to disrupt discussion. I'd imagine it's because Mr. Parry's site is becoming one too many people around the world come to view. The deliberate chaos created by these guys is another small part of the attack on Russia for Israel.

By the way, have you noticed a single thing the BobS and Roy G Biv types have written which is notable in any way whatever? I haven't. I'm going to try very hard to be done with them as well.

Joe Tedesky , August 19, 2017 at 12:00 am

Thanks Zachary. Hearing you say that these two buttheads maybe professional disrupters is comforting. No, I'm actually honored that BobS started with me (I think first) the other day. Now I feel empowered to deal with the likes of these two clown asses.

You may have already seen this article over at the Saker, about the USS Liberty, but here it is in case you haven't, or for the others who may find interest in it as well.

http://thesaker.is/remembering-the-liberty/

Take care Zachary Joe

Sam F , August 19, 2017 at 6:33 am

I agree, Zachary and Joe. They appear to be trolls, and may use varying names for a while.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 6:52 pm

You just said: " .charge of his being a white nationalist Nazi, merely because he acknowledged two factions willing to exercise violence in conjunction with a politically charged demonstration." Your use of the word merely is very disturbing. If it was abundantly clear from previous revelations, his performance this week should have removed all doubt about his sentiments.

Peter Duveen , August 18, 2017 at 7:41 pm

Yes it was wrong for me to use "merely," because the characterization of Trump as a white supremacist has nothing to do with reality, and the fact that Trump took a balanced approach to the demonstration was another excuse for unfounded accusations. What we have is people who want Trump out, who lost an election, who are doing everything they can to overthrow a president. Since the Russian hacking meme has been shown to be without merit (although it is still harped upon), the white supremacist angle is now being milked for everything it has. It's a hoax completely in parallel with the Russian hacking narrative. Reality has nothing to do with this attempt to overthrow Trump. And the CIA is fully behind it. So stick with it. People may be making idiots of themselves, but for them, the ends justifies the means.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 9:29 pm

Well, I guess we'll see. But I believe you will be the one eating crow when the facts are laid out. It seems people have trouble holding disparate thoughts in their minds and require mutual exclusivity, i.e. the past misdeeds of the CIA vs the idea that they might actually be doing public service in this Putin/Trump situation. I don't have trouble with this and embrace both. The world and people are complex, not neatly black or white.

Annie , August 18, 2017 at 5:14 pm

I remember as soon as the leak that the DNC tried to subvert the Sanders campaign came out, Hillary's campaign manager Robby Mook stated the Russians did it, and obviously he had no conclusive proof. At the time I thought they already had it planned that if their misdeeds were ever revealed Russia would be blamed, and it would be a good reason to go after Trump should he win the election. It would also allow them to continue to escalate a cold war, already well underway under the Obama administration. It's basic science that you can't come to a valid conclusion if you have already determined what that will be. I never believed their lies from the get go. What is very disturbing is that the press is so complicit in pushing this lie while the American public, and in this case the so called liberal/progressives, are so willing to swallow it. For me, that's the scary part. Equally scary is that the CIA, FBI and NIA are equally complicit in this deception.

mike k , August 18, 2017 at 5:37 pm

Right, they are all in on this phony Russia scare gambit. There are plenty of other causes to impeach Trump. Our President is a crook, as well as a racist.

Annie , August 18, 2017 at 7:11 pm

I don't know if Trump's a racist, maybe he is, but did you ever hear Obama, Bush, or Cheney called a racist, or if they were, did the American people buy into it the way they have with Trump? However, what would you call people who destroy whole nations which are predominantly Muslim, cross sovereign borders in Muslim countries killing thousands of innocents with drone warfare? Is Israel in it's treatment of the Palestinians not racist? Are we not racist as a nation as well? I ask myself if these countries were predominately Christian would the American people be so laid back about our warring exploits in these countries? What about those papal bulls that gave explorers of the new world the right to conquer and exploit the indigenous people? Not to mention our sense of entitlement to practically wipe out the American Indian population. If indeed he is a racist, he fits right in. Take a look at our legal system where over 90 percent of people take a plea bargain and never get a fair trial, and most of the prison population is black although they constitute a small minority in this country.

I have a friend who berated me for not being more outraged by Trump's racist rhetoric, but she refused to visit an elderly, and lonely aunt who lived in a black area, while I move in and out of that area quite frequently. We're full of hypocrisy.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 7:32 pm

"I don't know if Trump's a racist"
Trump's a racist.

"Is Israel in it's treatment of the Palestinians not racist?'
Amy Goodman had on a spokesman from the Anne Frank Center this morning forcefully (and accurately, in my opinion) criticizing Trump, Bannon, & Gorka.
The interview took a somewhat comical turn when Goodman showed her guest a clip of white supremacist Richard Spencer being interviewed on Israeli television saying:
"As an Israeli citizen, someone who understands your identity, who has a sense of nationhood and peoplehood and the history and experience of the Jewish people, you should respect someone like me, who has analogous feelings about whites. I mean, you could -- you could say that I am a white Zionist, in the sense that I care about my people. I want us to have a secure homeland that's for us and ourselves, just like you want a secure homeland in Israel."
The comical part was watching the histrionics of the guy from the Anne Frank Center as he avoided addressing Spencer's point.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 9:33 pm

"Hail Trump -- " chanted by Richard Spencer after the election. Fascists love fascists.

Annie , August 18, 2017 at 9:37 pm

I usually listen to Democracy Now, but missed this one, and it makes a good point. Easy to point a finger at someone's perceived racism, but difficult to look at your own, which is too often justified. My point exactly. People talk about Trumps immigration policies and deportation of immigrants, but are mindless of the fact that Obama deported 2 million immigrants. Many Americans don't place what is going on now within an historical framework, not even a recent historical framework. I also believe there is an attempt to undermine the people who voted for Trump, which would make a coup more possible. I don't like Trump, but more then anything I don't like the idea of overturning the election of a president based on lies and innuendo. I really don't think that's a good thing --

Dave P. , August 18, 2017 at 9:49 pm

Annie, your comments are always very sincere and objective.

You wrote above: ". . .What is very disturbing is that the press is so complicit in pushing this lie while the American public, and in this case the so called liberal/progressives, are so willing to swallow it. For me, that's the scary part. Equally scary is that the CIA, FBI and NIA are equally complicit in this deception. . ."

By this time, it should be clear to any one with an open mind that there is no such thing left in the country as free and fair Media which informs public. And all these agencies you mentioned are nothing but a sewage pit of lies. And the liberal/ progressives are like most of the population, completely brainwashed and believe whatever is fed to them by the likes of Rachael Maddow.

Annie , August 18, 2017 at 10:35 pm

My brother listens to her everyday, and I can't listen to him. He's literally hysterical over the Trump presidency, as is she. He can't hear anything I have to say, or any other point of view. To me it is a total surprise since he is well educated, and will define himself as a liberal thinker. Bah humbug --

frank scott , August 22, 2017 at 7:54 pm

thank you annie

Drew Hunkins , August 18, 2017 at 5:23 pm

"The Times' rebuke toward any doubts about Russia-gate was inserted after Carr's remark although the Times had already declared several times on page 1 that there was really no doubt about Russia's guilt."

The NYT is now terrified of the genuine research and honest conclusions made by the VIPS. It's almost as if the NYT's suffering under some sort of OCD neurosis, the VIPS has them on their heels, though the NYT will never admit it. Ergo, like Rainman, they resort to repeating over and over and over to their brainwashed readers the Kremlin's guilt and the intel agencies' assurances. They try ever so hard to pass themselves off as the only reasonable and sane voices in the room, during these times of upheaval and uncertainty.

To use an admittedly stretched sports analogy: the VIPS have been doing, and are going to do, to the NYT what Floyd Mayweather is about to do to McGregor in their upcoming prize fight. A real authentic professional is about to dominate a huckster and charlatan who's out of his element, just there to collect a fat paycheck (not unlike the careerism of the NYTers).

Karl Sanchez , August 18, 2017 at 5:33 pm

Given the overall context of Russiagate and the "journalistic" history of the NY Times , it would be fair to assess it and its loyal readership as spreading Washington propaganda and unwitting Washington stooges, respectively. But which gets to claim the Greatest Propaganda Rag Prize: NY Times or Washington Post ?

mike k , August 18, 2017 at 5:39 pm

Too close to call.

D5-5 , August 18, 2017 at 6:02 pm

From Parry: the "certainties" blaming the DNC "hack" on Russia's intelligence agencies "lack a solid evidentiary foundation."

What would that evidentiary foundation be?

Would it be Donald Trump visited Russia therefore he's guilty of conspiring with Putin to fix the election, starting with hacking the DNC.

Or Trump had real estate dealings, mafia dealings, whatever, with Russia, and leap to "I wouldn't doubt it."

Or, I hate Trump so much I'll believe anything negative about him.

Or Russia was once the Soviet Union and a bunch of commie rat bastards so of course this story is true.

Or, The New York Times, that esteemed bastion of truth and investigative journalism says it's true so it must be true.

Evidence defined: what furnishes proof.

Yet, reminded by Parry once again, here is the basis for the January 6 assessments:

Quoted from the reporting agencies themselves on January 6, their judgments–

"are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents."

Based on what evidence IS, here we have NO evidence. What we do have is speculation.

Clapper weighed in on January 6 with a "moderate" assessment. How does a moderate differ from a high assessment–was some of the logic–since the statement indicates no proof based on fact exists–somehow dubious or tendentious?

He was moderately convinced that it just might be so, maybe, possibly. Is that what this means?

Dempsey weighed in at "high" with the above statement, and perhaps somebody knows what this "high" meant, based on what?

Comey weighed in at "high" although his agency, the FBI, did not examine the DNC computers, and relied entirely on Crowdstrike, shown repeatedly as a biased anti-Russian source in the employ of Hillary Clinton.

This is the authority creating the flimsy evidentiary foundation of the NY Times et al MSM to which we citizens are now either a) skeptical or b) entirely convinced.

"Evidentiary void"–right on, Robert Parry --

D5-5 , August 19, 2017 at 12:08 pm

Sorry, meant to say Brennan, not "Dempsey" re CIA assessment.

Stephen J. , August 18, 2017 at 6:53 pm

An interesting read at link below:
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
The Neocons Are Pushing the USA and the Rest of the World Towards a Dangerous Crisis
THE SAKER • AUGUST 18, 2017
http://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-neocons-are-pushing-the-usa-and-the-rest-of-the-world-towards-a-dangerous-crisis/

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 7:14 pm

The Saker is always interesting, and even though you find some good people over there (Michael Hudson & Mike Whitney, among others), the race stuff at Unz always makes me feel like I have to wash off.

John , August 18, 2017 at 6:58 pm

America is walking into a well planned nightmare. Spoon fed to you by the corporate media soon the spark of hate will become an uncontrollable wildfire

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 7:00 pm

It did not rely entirely on Crowdstrike. They are just the ones who referred it to FBI. If you don't think the USA has powerful IT divisions who can forensically determine source and method, then your fear of deep state are immediately invalidated, a contradiction. If you believe in the awesome power of the intelligence community, then you cannot use the argument that they don't know anymore than what the got from Crowdstrike. I understand the mistrust of the IC, but you must admit that they just might me trying to protect us in this case from enemies foreign and domestic.

Sam F , August 18, 2017 at 7:57 pm

No, no one can "forensically determine source and method" except in lucky cases or when tracing naive hacks. NSA got its trove of hack methods including false-flagging methods on the black market from a Ukraine hacker. So no one will buy garbage accusations of Russia from a Ukrainian hacker.

If the US IC has insider sources, they must be prepared to have them bail out and give testimony, after some reasonable period, where grave accusations must be either discredited or cause serious policy changes.
No hiding behind "trust us" after months: only fools will believe "confidence."

The same goes for MH-17, WMD, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and many others.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 9:39 pm

What you are saying is true and reasonable. But consider that this is an ongoing counter espionage investigation that has been in progress for over one year, and these take years to conclude. You may not be able to trust them without seeing the info and intel, but you cannot simply conclude that the evidence simply doesn't exist just because it's not visible to you. There are reasons to hold cards close to the vest while leveraging suspects into witnesses.

Sam F , August 19, 2017 at 6:38 am

Fine, let them investigate, but they must not announce extremely serious conclusions to the public, with immediate political implications, especially conclusions that serve immediate political ends in the US, and refuse to provide evidence to the public even after a month or so. That is either careless methodology or fraud. The history of such "revelations" on "high confidence" has been a history of fraud by political appointees to the intel agencies.

I do not exclude the possibility that intel technology whose nature and location are critical secrets might be revealed with the evidence, although it appears that the secrets could generally be kept. Such technology requires having a safe disclosure method, such as disguising/relocating informants and devices. Most likely such technology would provide clues to direct other safely-revealable technology. If it does not, it does not serve democracy well, and probably is fundamentally a tool of tyranny, a product of excessive spying, and must be discounted by the public.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 7:06 pm

By the way, the "Evidentiary Void" might actually look pretty filled up in private eyes of the office of special counsel. I wouldn't expect to see the all of the evidence of a case in progress, as persons being investigated are best left unknowing and useful to flip for a leniency deal. Again, the timeline will be very informative if you take the time to read it. It's merely the chronological presentation of factual events.

http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-russia-timeline/

Sam F , August 18, 2017 at 8:08 pm

That link is so full of invasive scripts that my script blocking software cannot be persuaded to show it.

Zachary Smith , August 18, 2017 at 8:37 pm

I use YesScript for Firefox on a case-by-case basis. If a site has annoying animations, it gets the treatment.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 9:40 pm

Just goole billmoyers.com and look for timeline. It's so easy.

D5-5 , August 19, 2017 at 10:40 am

The time-line is irrelevant to the specific claim that Trump conspired with Russia to fix the election. Point to anything in this time-line that offers evidence.

Reminder 1: evidence is what offers proof on the specific charge.

Reminder 2: the IC January 6 statement "not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact."

This very interesting statement suggests that a political motive was operative in these assessments, in which "what we want to believe" becomes "what we believe," or to quote Seymour Hersh recently, 2 + 2 = 45.

Your absence of doubt, particularly given the history of lying from our official government reps over many years now, as well as your swerving aside to an irrelevant "time-line," puts you in the camp of the propagandists.

Stephen J. , August 18, 2017 at 7:26 pm

This is disgusting: where is the outrage?
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –

Missouri Senator: 'I Hope Trump Is Assassinated -- '
12:46 PM 08/17/2017
http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/17/missouri-senator-i-hope-trump-is-assassinated/

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 7:34 pm

I'm outraged.
Feel better?

Stephen J. , August 18, 2017 at 7:38 pm

I believe it is a disgusting and dangerous remark for a person in an elected position to make.

BobS , August 18, 2017 at 7:56 pm

That's why I'm outraged.

Joe Tedesky , August 18, 2017 at 11:37 pm

See BobS no one knows how to take your snarky remarks. Plus, I don't believe you when you say you were outraged, because your squirrelly mind doesn't know how to be sincere. Oh will you pay for my ESL courses? Jagoff.

Pierre Anonymot , August 18, 2017 at 7:27 pm

Mr. Pary, do you manage to send your articles to selected editors and journalists of the NYT, The Guardian, and their MSM mates? To selected politicians, including executive bureaucrats & MIC peple? It seems to me that some of them must read more than twits twittering? I think it's very vital that you do so or that someone does it on your behalf (and ours.)

Pierre Anonymot , August 18, 2017 at 7:27 pm

Oops, Parry.

Roy G Biv , August 18, 2017 at 9:42 pm

Parry is well known on Capitol Hill and among the MSM. Long standing feud, but no doubt respected.

Sam , August 18, 2017 at 7:37 pm

"a Ukrainian hacker whose malware was linked to the release of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails in 2016"

Mr Parry, the malware and its developer had nothing whatsoever to do with the DNC. The New York Times erroneously made this claim and was forced to issue a correction. It has NEVER been claimed that this malware was deployed against the DNC. I think your piece would be strengthened if you mentioned that The New York Times made a big blunder about this.

Sam F , August 18, 2017 at 8:11 pm

Hi Sam, I regularly post here as Sam F and would appreciate your using an initlal to avoid confusion, if you will.

Taras77 , August 18, 2017 at 9:33 pm

This might be a tad OT but both links follow the reporting on Russia-gate hysteria:

This link is a review of a book on the Browder deception (title of review article is a tad more dire than the title of the book):

http://thesaker.is/cooperative-authors-the-killing-of-william-browder-deconstructing-bill-browders-dangerous-deception-alex-krainer-with-review-by-the-saker/

This link is to a very long article by saker on the neo con campaign to take down America and probably the world-very long but worth a read, particularly with fast moving developments in the trump white house; comments in general are also worthy of perusing:

http://thesaker.is/the-neocons-are-pushing-the-usa-and-the-rest-of-the-world-towards-a-dangerous-crisis/ ?

Joe Tedesky , August 18, 2017 at 11:13 pm

We should be careful, as not to dwell strictly on memorial statues. I will admit though, that the conversation should be had, but not without looking at the type of individuals who flock towards the racist trend. So far, of what I have been able to read regarding these young white guys, who have found comfort in racism, I find these misguided youth to be angry over the rise of minority groups. Reading their words, these angered white supremacist wrote, they complain that we spend to much time worried about bathrooms over them having a decent job. I say, why can't we do both. Someone needs to tell these racist, that it's not the various minority's who are getting in the way of their success in America, as much as it is themselves for not being able to overcome the many obstacles life has put in their way. They need to realize, that their future welfare doesn't rely on a minority losing any of their rights, in order for these racist to survive comfortably. What they need to learn, is they are their own best hope .attitude is altitude.

I also hope, that what happened in Charlottesville doesn't bring down the hammer on all public protest.

backwardsevolution , August 19, 2017 at 3:20 am

Joe – but there are too many "unskilled" workers coming into the country and it IS making a difference. Long time ago, when there was an abundance of factories churning out all sorts of products, there was a need for unskilled labor. People flooded into the country to fill these much-needed positions. You didn't need any special training; you didn't need to understand English.

With jobs having been offshored to Asia and with increasing automation, there is not a need for the same amount of "unskilled" labor as before, and yet they continue to pour into the country. What are the people who are on the left-hand side of the bell curve supposed to do? Innovate? Compete with the newcomers and have wages decline even more?

It's not the immigrants these kids dislike. It's the sheer numbers of them. Does that make any sense to you, that it's about the "numbers"? I agree that obstacles in life often make you wiser and stronger, but there comes a point in time when you start banging your head against the wall. What is the point of putting so many unnecessary obstacles in front of people? So some corporation can maintain a cheap labor force?

Sometimes my posts come across as sounding blunt. I don't mean them to. It's just that when things are reduced to words, you miss the shrugs of the shoulders, the eye movement, the sincerity in a person's voice.

Cheers, Joe.

Joe Tedesky , August 19, 2017 at 9:22 am

You never come off sounding bad, or blunt, with me.

For all the reasons you mentioned, is for all the reasons we as a society should require us to pull together. You see, I don't believe that all these problems should be remedied with racism taking over our young white mens political ideology. That's all I'm saying. If only our country would elect leaders, instead of billionaire realtors with tv celebrity status. If only this country's political parties were to not break the law running their gentrified Wall St hack candidate, who's only aim is to feather her historical bio. You see backwardsevolution, we need leaders, not celebrities seeking office for their own vain gratification.

Yes, for all the hard choices, and for all the tough decisions, should be the reason for our leaders to reach out or down, which ever you prefer, and should be what pulls us together. It breaks my heart, that here we are in 2017, the most successful nation God ever put on earth, and our white young men are turning into racist. Now, what could be wrong with that? I'll tell you what's wrong with that. Our leaders have quit leading, and replaced this leadership we the people should be receiving, and replaced this ever distant leadership with ignorance of doing their job to represent the voters.

Thanks for your response. Joe

backwardsevolution , August 19, 2017 at 11:49 am

Joe – " our white young men are turning into racists." I don't think they are, Joe. I think they get angry that they are not being allowed to speak, as if what they have to say doesn't really matter. I think that what we hear is carefully filtered, especially in the MSM, so as to make it look like they're racist, but I don't think this is the case at all. No time now, Joe. Thanks.

Joe Tedesky , August 19, 2017 at 11:59 pm

Okay, I will admit that our media portrays many of our events in the worst possible way. You more than likely may have a point that these young white men are not racist, that for many of them this white supremacist movement is just a vehicle to carry out their concerns.

What is wrong with our country's leadership, is how they speak to the problems, such as unemployment, with the sharpest rhetoric they can find to say how they are going to create many, many new and exciting jobs, but once in office they don't do a darn thing, as they go on to ignore the many promises they had made on the campaign trail. What these politicians seem completely oblivious too, is the voters who voted for them ,have memories, and they don't forget.

Opportunity only comes to those who seek it. Well that's not completely true, but in most cases it does prove that to those who try hard, much may be achieved. So if our politicians were to really want to change our sad employment status in this country, then why don't they do it? Would you invite 100 people over for a barbecue, and only have enough beverage and food for 25 of your guess. So, why can't the American politicians manage to accommodate a sagging work force, who's jobs they send off shore, with enough new jobs to fill the quota of the unemployed? Because they weren't told too, by their corporate special interest, or maybe they just didn't care enough to do something about it.

So, the young white, black, red, and yellow, person loses out. They lose out all because they were neglected by the very people who said they would help them. I don't know about you, but one of life's biggest disappointments, is when your savior turns their back on you.

I hope backwardsevolution I'm not sounding like I'm just spinning wheels, and I hope you at least get a peek of what is going on inside my head, with these important issues.

Joe

Realist , August 19, 2017 at 5:49 am

"Illegitimi non carborundum." (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)

Keep fighting for your principles AND civil discourse on this board, Joe. I offer the same words to backwardsevolution with whom you were conversing. You have both been stellar examples of respectful debaters.

I don't for a minute think, like some who keep obnoxiously pushing the accusation that most Americans, especially most Southern Americans, are racist, that racism underlies most of the dysfunction in governance of modern America, and that President Trump is the king of all racists, winning office only with the support of racists (and Russian saboteurs) to carry on a racist agenda thus depriving us of a new golden age under Saint Hillary the Great. The whole racist conflict in Charlottesville seemed suspiciously contrived to me to distract from other problem areas and to facilitate the ongoing coup against Trump (like him or hate him). I am NOT going to recapitulate all that yet again.

Certainly there were bone fide haters, some predisposed to violence, recruited into both factions by professional agitators. They couldn't have succeeded in provoking the violence if there were not. But, most working Americans are basically running scared, fearing they might lose their jobs, their houses, their medical coverage, quality education for their kids, and a viable future. Most whites, whether right or left, from the North or South, do not hate blacks, Latinos, Muslims or immigrants in general. They can see how disadvantaged those people often are and fear ending up in the same predicament. Most never say much about the situation, certainly not in strident public statements. Even the participants at political rallies are just a self-selected minority. Most who vote do so quietly, without comment. (My parents would never tell us who they voted for -- Keeps the peace.) More than half the country does not even vote. They choose to shy away from the political battlefield and certainly do not want to confront agitators in the street.

Call them alienated or disconnected from society, and condemn them if it suits your world view. We contributors to this site do put a lot of blame on those we decide are willfully ignorant. But I suspect that most of the self-disenfranchised simply don't have enough time to devote to learning the issues, choosing up sides and becoming activists, or even voters. I doubt that many of them think that tearing down a bunch of old monuments they were totally oblivious to will change their lives in any way and they certainly don't want to devote the time or energy to fighting about them.

If either the left or the right want to improve the lot of regular Americans, they will take some kind of action to bring back jobs to this country, not just high-skill jobs that require massive re-education, but jobs for the middle and the working classes alike. I thought that's what Dems always wanted to do, and what Trump said he would do. Why is everything still in grid-lock in Washington while both parties are trying to dump the man who opposed the TPP and said he would pressure corporations to keep jobs in and even bring back jobs to America–not that I think the latter is likely, but why has even lip-service to the idea stopped? If the Dems ostentatiously claimed THAT issue was their major bone of contention with Trump, they'd have a lot more followers than the few idiots who buy the Russia-Gate bullshit.

When Newt Gingrich swept the GOP to power in the congress during Bill Clinton's first term, he had devised a lengthy detailed plan of action called the "Contract for America." I was not an advocate of those policies, but they certainly resonated better with the public than today's "elect the Democrats to power and the Russians will never steal another election, in fact, we'll kick their asses from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea." "Plus we'll tear down all the confederate monuments which should bring peace and harmony to the streets." If the real game changers can ever be implemented (which seems near to hopeless to me), racism will not be a major issue in this country, not if most of us are physically and economically secure and optimistic about our futures. (I've had two black families and a Latino family living in houses right next to mine in South Florida, and I had a mixed race family as neighbors in my previous place of residence. Do I care? No. Do they care? No. Anyone else in the neighborhood ever make a comment about anyone's race? No. Does it affect my property value? No, but the real estate bubble caused by the banks sure did.)

Sam F , August 19, 2017 at 7:03 am

Yes, good to point out that economic distress is a major factor in apparent racism and immigration resistance among US workers. This is a great concern to those who advocate international development aid, who must answer objections on economic effects.

The answer on globalization may involve treaties and laws restricting trade to nations that provide a standard of living that compares well with the lower middle class of the US, and to suppliers who provide well for their employees. While that would be cheaper elsewhere, so does not remove competition with US labor, it does require that the cost in jobs to the US worker is matched by benefits in development elsewhere. So our assistance to US workers is reduced by development assistance.

It also would prevent the US heartlessly exploiting cheap labor pools of oppressed workers, without you or I being able to help them by purchasing choices, or to escape guilt in their exploitation. It would be good to know that one could make purchasing decisions without grinding others into poverty and degradation to save a few pennies.

BobS , August 19, 2017 at 7:53 am

" economic distress is a major factor in apparent racism and immigration resistance among US workers."
Partly, though certainly not solely, with respect to immigration.
Racism?
Nope.
Makes a nice scapegoat, though, for racists and their apologists.

Joe Tedesky , August 19, 2017 at 10:07 am

Your comment Sam took my mind back to my younger days when this town had an abundance of steel mills. If you were a young apprentice sometimes on your first day on the job, no one seemed to want to teach you the ropes, because each mill worker felt threatened that you were to be trained to replace them. In time, if you didn't screw up, you would be accepted and inducted into the group. We love cliques and groups, don't we? I thought of this, because what you wrote reminded me of how outsiders are viewed by the existing work force. This comparison on a international level is what we are experiencing. Our leadership is to blame for this new dividing dilemma. Promises to replace your old job with a brand new better job, was the big lie. Corporate profits override human necessity, and with that we all lose. I don't think that all these retail outlets closing their doors, is merely due to Amazons convenient purchasing, but much of this loss of retail revenue, is due to the beatdown society just cannot afford it.

Good comment as always Sam. Joe

Realist , August 19, 2017 at 6:25 pm

You are very much on point, Joe, about worker pitted against worker. Who benefits from such a divide and conquer tactic? The robber baron capitalists are who. And, I use that term because the phenomenon is nothing new. It, like the bruhaha about race goes back to before the Civil War. Ever watch the movie "The Gangs of New York?" Both these conflicts, involving race (and ethnicity) and socioeconomic class, are laid out powerfully right there. And, just as in the movie, after our generations exit the stage following all the sturm und drang, all the hate and all the angst churned up because we are made pawns of greater forces, no one will even remember we personally ever existed.

Trump Tower, the Clinton Foundation, and Obama's Library in Jackson Park (yeah, named after the racist Andrew, not Stonewall) will still persist though, just like the confederate statues do today. But would we really want our descendants to forget this era and the players who dominated it? We build monuments in DC to the holocaust in Europe which didn't even happen here, not to honor or glorify it but so we collectively don't forget. Maybe the purpose of some monuments actually evolves over time to serve as a lesson rather than hero worship, and when Americans a hundred years from now look upon a bronze cast of Robert E. Lee, U.S. Grant or Douglas MacArthur their take will be, "war, how could our forebears possibly have embraced something so heinous, so destructive, so insane?"

Joe Tedesky , August 20, 2017 at 12:20 am

I always take away something of high value from what you write Realist. I agree with what you wrote here. I also think that our government should build right next to the Holocast museum, a fitting tribute to the suffering of the 600 indigenous nations who the U.S. had destroyed in its quest for manifest destiny. I'm serious, as a Sunday school teacher is on a Sunday teaching the word of God. If our nation's soiled pass, is to remain hidden by the curtain of everything that's just and right, then America's beloved citizens will never know to what is true. How can our nation become truly great, if it keeps on continuing to lie to itself. Making stuff up, will only last so long, until the truth will finally overcome every lie you ever told yourself.

The change in attitude towards venerating our country's historical pass, is a sign of how our American culture is changing. What got praise 100 years ago, may not be praise worthy by today's existing society. There isn't much to cry about, but instead we should understand that these changes will come, just as night follows day. I guess I'm a revisionist at heart, but I do believe that assumptions and conclusions, are a ever changing thing. So what we are witnessing, and experiencing, is just our own human evolution. Plus, I might add, as you know Realist, history is always being updated, and revised, and with it many truths that weren't known then become known.

It's always a pleasure to correspond with a reasonable, and sensible, comment poster as you. Joe

Joe Tedesky , August 19, 2017 at 9:32 am

Every word you wrote Realist, is excellent. I felt the same way about Bill Clinton, but your right, at least the masses at his time in office thought the economy was what it was all about. I will save going into the reality of Clinton's time in office, but your point is well made.

Whether it be the Democrates, or a truly changed Republican party, one of these political parties will need to accommodate the voter, if anything is to get better.

Rather than me go on, I'm just going to read once again what you wrote Realist, because I could not write what you had wrote any better. Your words are excellent to what we are talking about.

I always enjoy reading your comments Realist, never leave us. Joe

Gregory Herr , August 19, 2017 at 3:06 pm

I have to chime in Joe. I read it twice for good measure. Thanks to Realist and the many here who share such understandings.

backwardsevolution , August 20, 2017 at 7:11 am

Realist – thank you for your kind words. I always appreciate your well-thought-out and intelligent posts. They provide class and depth to the conversation. I, on the other hand, do not really belong on this site.

Sam F , August 20, 2017 at 9:58 am

Your posts have also been very useful and interesting, b-e.

backwardsevolution , August 21, 2017 at 12:15 am

Yours too, Sam. Always enjoy your comments --

Joe Tedesky , August 20, 2017 at 9:02 pm

Hey backwardsevolution your the life of this party, you never seem like you don't belong. I personally look forward to reading your comments. So brighten up, you are needed here, and that's no lie. Joe

backwardsevolution , August 21, 2017 at 12:25 am

Joe – you're such a kind man. Thank you. I enjoy reading your posts too; they're always very considerate. What I mean by "I do not really belong on this site" is that I just see things differently than a lot of others on here do, too differently. I'll hang around a while yet, though. Thanks, Joe.

Joe Tedesky , August 21, 2017 at 4:09 pm

"that I just see things differently than a lot of others on here do, too differently"

With your quote that is all the more reason this sites comment board needs you backwardsevolution.

backwardsevolution , August 20, 2017 at 7:15 am

Realist – excellent post. Thank you.

exiled off mainstreet , August 19, 2017 at 12:02 am

At Nuremberg, in 1946, Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi propaganda rag Der Stuermer, was executed based on the crime of propagandizing for war. This article provides further evidence that the New York Times Russia posturing is a tissue of propaganda lies. Since the logical goal of the propaganda is war, and the crap they are publishing has similar validity to that which was published for decades in the Nazi Stuermer rag, then if the legal doctrines put forward in the Nuremberg trial could be applied to US war propagandists, their status as war criminals would be apparent.

backwardsevolution , August 19, 2017 at 11:42 am

exiled – yeah, I don't see a difference between then and now. Lies are everywhere, and not just little ones, but huge mothers used to sway public opinion. These guys really need to be in jail.

Look at what the Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, said re Charlottesville. His remarks were quickly refuted by the Virginia State Police, but if you happened to hear what McAuliffe said, yet missed the police's remarks, you'd be none the wiser and you probably would have believed McAuliffe.

"In an interview Monday on the Pod Save the People podcast, hosted by Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, McAuliffe claimed the white nationalists who streamed into Charlottesville that weekend hid weapons throughout the town.

"They had battering rams and we had picked up different weapons that they had stashed around the city," McAuliffe told Mckesson.

McAuliffe claimed in an interview with The New York Times that law enforcement arrived to find a line of militia members who "had better equipment than our State Police had." In longer comments that were later edited out of the Times' story, McAuliffe said that up to 80 percent of the rally attendees were carrying semi-automatic weapons. "You saw the militia walking down the street, you would have thought they were an army," he said."

All total bullshit -- Talk about inciting people -- Why is this guy still walking around?

backwardsevolution , August 19, 2017 at 11:43 am

exiled – here's the link for the above:

http://reason.com/blog/2017/08/16/virginia-state-police-say-they-didnt-fin

Bruce , August 19, 2017 at 12:16 am

Neo-nazis in Ukraine = good.

Neo-nazis in the US = bad.

To be more successful, the right wing protestors should have paraded under a facade of free speech, human rights and democracy, all the while promoting Nazi policies. This is something US intelligence agencies, MSM, and Congress do every day. US politicians should wear little swastika lapel pins on their suits to avoid confusion.

BobS , August 19, 2017 at 1:24 am

Obviously, the correct answer is
neo-Nazis in Ukraine = bad.
neo-Nazis in the U S = bad.
Then there's answers I've read in these comment sections, for instance
neo-Nazis in Ukraine = bad.
neo-Nazis in the U S = bad BUT .whatabout BLM?
&
neo-Nazis in Ukraine = bad
neo-Nazis in the U S = trap for Trump
as well as this classic:
neo-Nazis in Ukraine = bad.
neo-Nazis in the U S = DEEP STATE -- -- --

backwardsevolution , August 19, 2017 at 1:59 am

Here is a post by Karl Denninger, a fellow who used to own his own Internet company in Chicago and is very knowledgeable about these things. After reading The Nation article by Patrick Lawrence, he said:

"I wouldn't go so far as to claim impossible, but I would say "highly unlikely." The second part of the statement, however, is utterly true -- it is completely consistent with either a SD card or USB flash drive inserted into a computer.

When it comes to Internet transfer of data, remember one thing: You're only as fast as the slowest link in the middle.

There are plenty of places on the Internet with gigabit (that's ~100MegaBYTE per second) speeds. But you would need such pipes end to end, and in addition, they'd have to be relatively empty at the time you exfiltrated the data.

What's worse is that there is a real bandwidth product delay problem that most "pedestrian" operating systems do not handle well at all.

In other words as latency and number of hops go up, irrespective of bandwidth, there's an issue with the maximum realistically obtainable speed, irrespective of whether there's sufficient available pipe space to take the data. This is a problem that can be tuned for if you know how and your system has the resources to handle it on some operating systems -- specifically, server-class operating systems like FreeBSD. But the "common" Windows machine pretty-much cannot be adjusted in this way and it requires expert knowledge to do so. [ ]

But it sure does cast a long shade on the claims of "Russians -- " in this alleged "hack." The simple fact of the matter is that the evidence points to inside exfiltration of the data directly from the physical machines in question, which is no "hack" at all: It's an inside job, performed by someone who had trusted, administrative access, and then doctored the documents later to make it look like Russians.

And, I might add, poorly doctored at that.

PS: Left unsaid in the linked article, but it shouldn't have been, is that if there was an SD card or external USB device plugged into the machine there is an event log from said machine documenting the exact time that said device was attached and detached. Find that log (or the timestamp on it being erased, which is equally good in a situation like this), match it against the metadata times, and then start looking for security camera footage and/or access card logs for where that machine is and you know who did it with near-certainty, proved by the forensic evidence.

Now perhaps you can explain why the FBI didn't raid the DNC's offices with a warrant, take custody of said logs and go through them to perform this investigation -- which would have pointed straight at the party or parties responsible .."

Read the whole thing.

backwardsevolution , August 19, 2017 at 1:59 am

Here's the link for the above piece:

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=232304

Stephen J. , August 19, 2017 at 8:06 am

Article of interest at link below
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
FINIAN CUNNINGHAM | 18.08.2017 | OPINION
As Russia-Gate Story Stalls, Cue Trump Neo-Nazi Scandal
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/08/18/as-russia-gate-story-stalls-cue-trump-neo-nazi-scandal.html

Stephen J. , August 19, 2017 at 8:19 am

Could the quote below apply to today?
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right." – George Orwell, 1984

BobS , August 19, 2017 at 8:44 am

"Could the quote below apply to today?"
If one is a drama queen, apparently yes.

Joe Tedesky , August 19, 2017 at 9:51 am

Stephen it doesn't take a drama queen to recognize the true sorry state our society has evolved into. Orwell's 1984 is disturbingly coming to life more than ever. I read 1984 back when I was a sophomore in high school, but recently a lawyer friend of mine read that book, and he said that all he kept thinking about was me. He said, that while he read the book, the many conversations which him and I had had made him think of my warnings to where our civilization is going. No we are here, the date on your calendar may read 2017, but make no mistake about it we are living in 1984.

I dread that these violent protest, will deny our civil rights to form protests, and that would be a great loss. Although, these buggers in D.C. are convinced they must seize every crisis, and milk it for all they can. Each terrible disaster brings with it new restrictions. It maybe found when boarding a plane, or opening an investment account, as each tragic event brought us to these new restrictions we must live with. We are being played, but that piece of information, is covered over with conspiracy nut paper, and there go I.

Keep the faith Stephen, and ignore the trolling critics, who no doubt are paid to annoy us with our own hard earned taxpayer money .now that's Big Brother stuff, if ever there was any Big Brother stuff to disturb our inquiring minds. Joe

Stephen J. , August 19, 2017 at 11:12 am

Hi Joe Tedesky, very true, 1984 is here in 2017, but some are ignorant of the fact. i believe we are "Prisoners of "Democracy"
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/07/the-prisoners-of-democracy.html
I always enjoy your concise comments.

Joe Tedesky , August 20, 2017 at 9:53 am

Reading the link you provided, all I could picture, was Senator John McCain doing a photo op session with his new found friends the terrorist. Also, I believe that if you pay your taxes you have every right to complain. That your ability to lodge a complain against your government shouldn't depend solely on your voting, because you still pay your taxes, and that paying your taxes, is your ticket to the complaint window.

What this country's politicians really need is a 'low voter turnout', so low as to delegitimize the results of any election, which would result in the world not honoring your country's election results.

https://criminalbankingmonopoly.wordpress.com

Good conversation, and link sharing Stephen. Joe

BobS , August 19, 2017 at 10:13 am

As if on cue, to illustrate my point.
Get out the smelling salts.

Tannenhouser , August 22, 2017 at 10:32 pm

Balloons full of piss. I'd say that illustrates anything remotely resembling a point you make believe you have made bobs.

Keep up the good work Joe. Thanks for all you and other's do here.

Michael Kenny , August 19, 2017 at 10:30 am

Mr Parry is simply repeating what he has said before in many articles. He even harks back to the Malaysian airliner -- Whatever other evidence there may be (MacronLeaks, the criminal investigation into which is still ongoing), Trump Junior's admissions prove Russian interference in the US election. Russians claiming to represent their government met with Junior and offered him DNC "dirt". DNC dirt subsequently appeared on the internet via Wikileaks. That those two events are wholly unrelated coincidences is more than I am prepared to believe. At that point, it matters not one whit how the Russians obtained the information or from whom. The Russians promised, the Russians delivered. Did Charlottesville really do this much damage? Putin's American supporters seem to be in panic -- Or is it Bannon?

Desert Dave , August 19, 2017 at 10:53 am

"Trump Junior's admissions prove Russian interference"? Unless I am not keeping up, all that happened is that a PR flak (not in Russian government) used the promise of compromat to arrange a meeting with Junior, where they talked about something else.

That's weak, my friend. And while it seems true that Trump's supporters are in a panic, Trump is not Putin.

And in case you want to put me in the box with Trump supporters, know that I am actually a LGBTQ-celebrating, anti-war, dirt-worshipping tree-hugger.

Gregor , August 19, 2017 at 12:47 pm

A sincere congratulations to some of us who have learned to ignore the snarky but non- contributive remarks
of Bob S. . Joe and Stephen and others, it seems you have found a way to communicate with each other and the rest of us
without responding to Bob S. That's good.

Bob In Portland , August 19, 2017 at 2:16 pm

Let me toot my own horn again. I figured all this out last spring. But the way the false information was fed to the public, large portions were revealed after the election, indicates that the disinformation wasn't originally to prevent Trump's election, but rather intended as use for President Hillary Clinton's casus belli to take the war to Russia. Everyone presumed she would win. You can read original piece here: https://caucus99percent.com/content/okeydoke-americans-were-supposed-get

But, as I suggested in April, this okeydoke was directed by the intelligence wing of the Deep State, probably the CIA, for Hillary's warhorse to ride into battle. It not only was supported by the CIA, it was created by it. And while most Americans never consider that the powers who are the likeliest suspects for the political assassinations of the sixties would insinuate themselves into the political system and support and promote their own, I suggest that another article, another one from the New York Times, which tries to explain Hillary suspiciously bouncing from the right to the left during the troubled times of 1968. What the article doesn't provide is that after volunteering for Gene McCarthy in early 1968 she attended the Republican convention. After that she worked as an intern in Congress that summer and wrote a speech for then-Republican congressman Robert "Bom" Laird about financing the war in Vietnam. Six months after that speech Laird was Nixon's Secretary of Defense, sending wave after wave of B-52s over Vietnam. Then Hillary capped her summer by going to the civil war that was the Chicago Democratic convention.

Rather than looking like a confused college student, not sure whether to be a pro-war Republican or an anti-war Democrat, Hillary Rodham looks more like one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of government spies that infiltrated all progressive groups back then in operations like the FBI's COINTELPRO. What did she do after that? She "observed" a Black Panther trial in New Haven. Then a year or so later she spent a summer interning for the law office in Oakland that represented Black Panthers in the Bay Area.

In short, she appeared to have an intelligence background before she allegedly met Bill on the Yale campus, which holds out the possibility that their marriage was actually a marriage made in Langley. And that explains why Deep State interests wanted and expected her to be leading the charge in 2017.

Here is the NY Times article on Hillary, published in September 2007 to prepare the Times' audience for her initial run for the Presidency in 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/us/politics/05clinton.html?_r=0

Joe Tedesky , August 21, 2017 at 4:13 pm

As usual I take away a lot from your posting comments.

Michael , August 19, 2017 at 4:54 pm

Roy G Biv wrote: "It seems people have trouble holding disparate thoughts in their minds and require mutual exclusivity "

Sam F wrote: "I do not exclude the possibility that intel technology whose nature and location are critical secrets might be revealed with the evidence "

So what is being said is that the benefit to the USA of disclosing methods and sources has not yet reached the level at which the FBI or the IC will comply on their own to make public any evidence AND it also has not negatively affected the country enough to force our leaders with the levers of power in their hands to make them comply.

That's what I hear and it sounds like typical political posturing. So we will get more dysfunction in govt and more people dying here and abroad. Mean while we wait for the magic event that will put us over the line. Or not

Sam F , August 19, 2017 at 6:00 pm

Yes, it looks like political manipulation. The IC could have revealed sufficient information after a month or so at only moderate loss of intelligence asset value, both on the alleged hacking and flight MH-17. If they were unprepared to reveal evidence after this time, then they should not have publicized conclusions. By now they should accept the loss and reveal it, otherwise citizens may fairly presume that political appointees in intel are deceiving them for political purposes.

Typical sources that could be revealed by now:
1. A well-placed source in a foreign government agency: Try to claim another plausible source, email intercept, or recently dismissed employee or defector already protected; if that is impossible and the info is of great political importance in the US, the real source must defect to the US for safety. We must take the intel loss to preserve the integrity of public information.
2. A satellite or new technology: If the images or info seem to identify the source or location or capability, then modify them enough to make it look like another technology or location. Admitting alteration is better than providing nothing.
3. A snoop connection in a valuable location: move it, install another similar device, claim that the info comes from a distinct source or location, etc.

If the problem is "developing" witness credibility or forthrightness, which some may hope will improve, then the source is not yet credible and potential conclusions should not be stated with "high confidence" by anyone who cares for truth in policy making.

Billy , August 19, 2017 at 7:30 pm

The "Russia hacked the DNC so if you pay attention to the content of the emails leaked, you're a Putin loving unAmerican dog -- " lie used by the DNC to distract from their cheating Bernie. Really took off, practically every pretend news source on the internet repeated the evidence free accusation, as if it were a proven fact. As did all the MSM propagandist posing as news anchors. The sheer number of people pushing the lie was mind boggling. Now all of the sudden not a peep about it. I have to question the timing of the statue removal shit stirring. It seems like a convienent distraction. Why now? All of a sudden these statues must go -- -- I still haven't figured out what the distraction is distracting from. But the Nation and other web sites were starting to publish truth about "Russia gate"

Bruce , August 19, 2017 at 10:13 pm

Good comment Billy. The timing of these events is always interesting. Like when the MSM released info on trumps son meeting with a Russian, just after trump met face to face with Putin in Europe. Presumably the MSM had this story for months, and ran it to "punish" trump for the Putin meeting.

Bruce , August 19, 2017 at 10:04 pm

Again, its probably best to ignore BobS. He is probably a paid professional disruptor ..your tax dollars at work huh? The fact he is bothering to muddy these waters is both flattering to CN and evidence of the validity of CN's stance on many important issues.

Herman , August 20, 2017 at 9:50 am

President Trump will probably survive but the effects of his treatment by the media, politicians in both parties, and monied folks but the way he was attacked and its effects will forever leave a mark on the Office itself. It is an unnecessary reminder how mindless lynch mobs can be and how powerless the great majority of people are regarding what is happening and will likely happen to them.

Hank , August 21, 2017 at 5:04 pm

Russia Gate is a Farce. If by now, the deep state has not figured out a way to make it look like a Russian hack with some "credible" evidence that at least MSM and the masses can swallow then we must seriously doubt. Post Categories: Canada
William Blum | Saturday, June 24, 2017, 20:02 Beijing
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Print

GR Editor's Note

This incisive list of countries by William Blum was first published in 2013, posted on Global Research in 2014.

In relation to recent developments in Latin America and the Middle East, it is worth recalling the history of US sponsored military coups and "soft coups" aka regime changes.

In a bitter irony, under the so-called "Russia probe" the US is accusing Moscow of interfering in US politics.

This article reviews the process of overthrowing sovereign governments through military coups, acts of war, support of terrorist organizations, covert ops in support of regime change.

In recent developments, the Trump administration is supportive of a US sponsored regime change in Venezuela and Cuba

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, June 24, 2017

******************

Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War.

(* indicates successful ouster of a government)

China 1949 to early 1960s
Albania 1949-53
East Germany 1950s
Iran 1953 *
Guatemala 1954 *
Costa Rica mid-1950s
Syria 1956-7
Egypt 1957
Indonesia 1957-8
British Guiana 1953-64 *
Iraq 1963 *
North Vietnam 1945-73
Cambodia 1955-70 *
Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
Ecuador 1960-63 *
Congo 1960 *
France 1965
Brazil 1962-64 *
Dominican Republic 1963 *
Cuba 1959 to present
Bolivia 1964 *
Indonesia 1965 *
Ghana 1966 *
Chile 1964-73 *
Greece 1967 *
Costa Rica 1970-71
Bolivia 1971 *
Australia 1973-75 *
Angola 1975, 1980s
Zaire 1975
Portugal 1974-76 *
Jamaica 1976-80 *
Seychelles 1979-81
Chad 1981-82 *
Grenada 1983 *
South Yemen 1982-84
Suriname 1982-84
Fiji 1987 *
Libya 1980s
Nicaragua 1981-90 *
Panama 1989 *
Bulgaria 1990 *
Albania 1991 *
Iraq 1991
Afghanistan 1980s *
Somalia 1993
Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 *
Venezuela 2002 *
Iraq 2003 *
Haiti 2004 *
Somalia 2007 to present
Libya 2011*
Syria 2012

Q: Why will there never be a coup d'état in Washington?

A: Because there's no American embassy there.

Tom , August 22, 2017 at 7:13 am

Putin's denial is meaningless (though he just as likely could be telling the truth) HOWEVER to my knowledge Assange has yet to be proven wrong (must less intentionally lying) about anything. IMO he's the ONLY person in all of this who has anything resembling a record of credibility. That MSM dismisses this demonstrates they are driven by narrative & ideology, NOT pursuit of fact/truth

Jamie , August 22, 2017 at 12:59 pm

"If you look at Facebook, the vast majority of the news items posted were fake.
They were connected to, as we now know, the thousand Russian agents."

– Crooked Hillary

Large Louis de Boogeytown , August 22, 2017 at 2:58 pm

There is just as much evidence that Ukraine hacked the DNC computer and releasing the information was another one of that countries 'mistakes'. If they are capable of nothing else, Ukraine seems to produce "software experts" who are involved in EVERY dirty game attached to the internet. The latest one is about turning the Ukrainian 'hryvnia' into real money – 'bitcoin'.

Richard Steven Hack , August 22, 2017 at 6:34 pm

Yes, it DID rely ENTIRELY on CrowdStrike.

All CrowdStrike did was send the FBI a "certified true image" of the DNC servers. This also applies to the other two infosec companies who weighed in on the evidence – Mandiant and FireEye. Neither the FBI or those two companies ever examined the DNC servers, the DNC routers or other IT infrastructure which is an absolute MUST in investigating a computer crime.

That is NOT sufficient. ALL the alleged "evidence" provided by CrowdStrike is either circumstantial or easily spoofable. Therefore the only thing the FBI can see on that "certified true image" is the "evidence" provided by CrowdStrike.

And CrowdStrike is COMPLETELY COMPROMISED by being a company run by an ex-pat Russian who hates Putin and Russia, someone who sees Russian under every PC.

Richard Steven Hack , August 22, 2017 at 7:32 pm

I should also point out that Jeffrey Carr has been saying this exact thing since the events unfolded last summer. In fact, from an email to me, he's said he's tired of talking about it.

Jeffrey is absolutely right. NONE of the alleged "evidence" provided by CrowdStrike in any way connects directly back to ANYONE, let alone the Russian government.

Some of it is laughable, such as the notion that the malware compile times were "during Moscow business hours." If you look at a time zone map, you see that Kiev, Ukraine, is one hour behind Moscow time. When it's business hours in Moscow, it's business hours in Ukraine – and can you imagine there are Ukraine hackers more than willing to frame Russia for a high-profile hack?

The National article and the research by The Forensicator does not PROVE that the DNC emails were leaked, because it is POSSIBLE for someone to access high-speed Internet. Unlikely, as The Forensicator states, but NOT impossible. At least 17% of the US has access to Gigabit Ethernet to the home and business. However, as The Forensicator correctly points out, it's hard to get that kind of speed across the Internet, especially to Eastern Europe where the entity Guccifer 2.0 allegedly resides.

Further, we don't know that the copies analyzed by The Forensicator were copied originally from the DNC. In fact, The Forensicator specially disavows that requirement. What is important to him is that the analysis proves that Guccifer 2.0 was NOT remotely hacking from Romania because 1) the speeds involved, and 2) the timestamps are all East Coast USA times (which he acknowledges could be faked but Guccifer 2.0 would have had little reason to do so or even think of doing so.)

The bottom line is that The Forensicator's analysis, coupled with Adam Carter's analysis of the Guccifer 2.0 entity, establishes good solid CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence that Guccifer 2.0 is NOT a remote Romanian hacker and is NOT a Russian agent, but rather an entity inserted into the mix to provide "evidence" that the DNC leak was a Russian hack.

And finally, of course, we have Sy Hersh being caught on tape explicitly stating that he has seen or had read to him an FBI report that specifically states the murdered DNC staff Seth Rich WAS in contact with Wikileaks and had offered to sell them DNC documents. And that Wikileaks had access to Rich's DropBox account where presumably he was stashing those documents or using it to transfer them to Wikileaks.

Hersh is preparing a full report on this matter, which if it's anything like his earlier articles will bury the "DNC hack" story completely.

Remember that "Russiagate" essentially depends on TWO critical factors:

1) That it is a fact that Russia hacked the DNC; and
2) That it is Russia that transferred the DNC emails to Wikileaks – otherwise there is no real reason why Russia would hack the DNC and it certainly did not do so to "influence the election."

If number one is weak, due to laughable "evidence" and number two proves to be false, the entire "Russia influencing the election" story goes away. And the rest of the "Trump collusion" "evidence" is also laughable.

Now it may well be true that even if Russia did not give Wikileaks the emails they may still have hacked the DNC at some point. I submit that if the Russian government did it, we'd never know about it. First because they wouldn't have done it over the Internet because of the risk of the NSA detecting it (the NSA certainly wasn't monitoring the DNC) and second, they wouldn't have left any real evidence, especially not evidence linking directly to Russia.

Russian intelligence would have either used a physical penetration of the DNC network (easily done as demonstrated by US penetration testers all the time) or used a wireless connection into the DNC network from somewhere close to the DNC server location. That's assuming they wouldn't use the standard intelligence tactic of bribery or blackmail to get a DNC staffer to GIVE them the emails. In any case, the NSA would not have detected that hack, and CrowdStrike wouldn't have found any significant forensic evidence except perhaps some evidence that forensic traces had been ERASED.

Which basically means that whoever hacked the DNC – and that is only IF the DNC was REALLY hacked, for which there is NO PROOF except the DNC's and CrowdStrike's word since the FBI did not investigate the alleged hack itself – might have been 1) some criminal hacker(s) from Russia or elsewhere, or 2) some other intelligence agency trying to frame Russia for a hack.

It has been suggested that Russian intelligence DOES use criminal hackers on a contract basis either to perform hacks or to buy intel from said hackers. However, I find it unlikely that Russian intelligence would use incompetent hackers – and the DNC hackers had to be incompetent to leave the traces they did – for such a "sensitive" hack on a political party in the US.

You can't have it both ways: 1) that awesomely capable Russian hackers are hacking everything in the US connected to the election, and 2) that they are so incompetent as to leave easily followed trails right back to the Kremlin.

In general, so-called "attribution" of "Russian hackers "is nothing of the sort. It is merely attribution to a collection of hacking tools and alleged "targets". With the sole exception of Mandiant identifying specific individuals in a specific building in China, which if accurate was an impressive display of solid attribution, ninety percent of the time no individuals or agencies can be reliably identified by attribution.

Instead, what we get is the following:

1) Someone ASSUMES that because "target X" is a government or other sensitive facility that the hacker of said target MUST BE a "nation state actor."

2) Then some later hacker who either happens to use the same hacking tools or happens to target a similar target is ASSUMED to be either the same hacker or associated with the same hacker. (Note: the DNC hackers are actually alleged to be TWO SEPARATE entities – APT28 and APT29 – not including Guccifer 2.0.)

3) Thus a house is built on the sand of the first assumption and used to justify all the subsequent "analysis" and "assessments."

An example of this is German intelligence believing that Russia committed a specific hack, and that is now used as justification for believing the DNC hack was done by the same group, when in fact German intelligence merely stated that because of the TARGET of the hack they "assessed" that it MIGHT have been Russian intelligence.

In reality, ANY hacker will hack ANY TARGET if he thinks 1) that it will be a challenge, and/or 2) that it will be interesting, and/or 3) that it contains PII (Personally Identifiable Information) or other data such as credit cards which he can sell on the hacker underground. Therefore the choice of target doesn't really prove anything.

The choice of hacking tools is also irrelevant. CrowdStrike asserted that some of the tools used in the DNC hack are "exclusive". Jeffrey Carr has proven they're not, because he spoke to Ukrainian hackers and others who have them.

Bottom line: Without HUMINT (human intelligence) or SIGINT (signals intelligence) obtained offline that specifically identifies a given organization or individuals, attribution of a specific hack to a specific hacker(s) is almost impossible.

Most of the hackers who have been caught have been caught because they had poor operational security and allowed email addresses and other identifying information that connected directly to their offline identity to be found. Without that, most hackers get away, unless they can be lured into identifying themselves by bragging or being set up by a law-enforcement sting.

At this point, Carr is right: There is NO publicly available, non-circumstantial, non-spoofable evidence that a DNC hack even occurred, let alone that any hack that might have been done was done by Russians at all, let alone the Russian government. And all of the alleged US intelligence "assessments" have provided NO additional evidence.

Richard Steven Hack , August 22, 2017 at 7:36 pm

Correction to my post:

"(the NSA certainly wasn't monitoring the DNC)" s/b
"(the NSA certainly was monitoring the DNC)"

frank scott , August 22, 2017 at 7:41 pm

now it isn't just the nytimes but the new yorker as well, with a many pages piece in its current issue that reads like a doctoral thesis written by a gossip columnist and is a hatchet job on assange and in great part accusing him, putin and russia of electing trump.. hope you will comment on some of the specifics the writer includes which will probably be convincing to readers of political gossip columns and benefit from informed criticism such as you can provide..i don't believe any of this crap anyway.

[Aug 21, 2017] Steve Bannon Plots Fox News Competitor As He Goes To War With Globalists, Report

Notable quotes:
"... Before his death in May, Roger Ailes had sent word to Bannon that he wanted to start a channel together. Bannon loved the idea: He believes Fox is heading in a squishy, globalist direction as the Murdoch sons assume more power. ..."
"... "That's a fight I fight every day here," he said. "We're still fighting. There's Treasury and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying." ..."
"... The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over I feel jacked up Now I'm free. I've got my hands back on my weapons ..."
Aug 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Axios: that part of that war effort might include a brand new cable news network to the right of Fox News.

Axios' Jonathan Swan hears Bannon has told friends he sees a massive opening to the right of Fox News , raising the possibility that he's going to start a network. Bannon's friends are speculating about whether it will be a standalone TV network, or online streaming only.

Before his death in May, Roger Ailes had sent word to Bannon that he wanted to start a channel together. Bannon loved the idea: He believes Fox is heading in a squishy, globalist direction as the Murdoch sons assume more power.

Now he has the means, motive and opportunity: His chief financial backer, Long Island hedge fund billionaire Bob Mercer, is ready to invest big in what's coming next, including a huge overseas expansion of Breitbart News. Of course, this new speculation comes after Bannon declared last Friday that he was " going to war" for Trump ...

" If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up. I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents... on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America,

Meanwhile, with regard his internal adversaries , at the departments of State and Defense, who think the United States can enlist Beijing's aid on the North Korean standoff, and at Treasury and the National Economic Council who don't want to mess with the trading system, Bannon was ever harsher...

"Oh, they're wetting themselves," he said, explaining that the Section 301 complaint, which was put on hold when the war of threats with North Korea broke out, was shelved only temporarily, and will be revived in three weeks. As for other cabinet departments, Bannon has big plans to marginalize their influence.

"That's a fight I fight every day here," he said. "We're still fighting. There's Treasury and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying."

Finally, perhaps no one can summarize what Bannon has planned for the future than Bannon himself:

"The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over I feel jacked up Now I'm free. I've got my hands back on my weapons.

I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There's no doubt. I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now we're about to rev that machine up."

[Aug 21, 2017] Awan Plot Thickens As NY Democrat Yvette Clarke Quietly Wrote-Off $120,000 Of Missing Tech Equipment

Aug 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Daily Caller , the more interesting component of the FBI's investigation could be tied to precisely why New York Democrat Representative Yvette Clarke quietly agreed in early 2016 to simply write-off $120,000 in missing electronics tied to the Awans.

A chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke quietly agreed in early 2016 to sign away a $120,000 missing electronics problem on behalf of two former IT aides now suspected of stealing equipment from Congress, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

Clarke's chief of staff at the time effectively dismissed the loss and prevented it from coming up in future audits by signing a form removing the missing equipment from a House-wide tracking system after one of the Awan brothers alerted the office the equipment was gone. The Pakistani-born brothers are now at the center of an FBI investigation over their IT work with dozens of Congressional offices.

The $120,000 figure amounts to about a tenth of the office's annual budget, or enough to hire four legislative assistants to handle the concerns of constituents in her New York district. Yet when one of the brothers alerted the office to the massive loss, the chief of staff signed a form that quietly reconciled the missing equipment in the office budget, the official told TheDCNF. Abid Awan remained employed by the office for months after the loss of the equipment was flagged.

If true, of course this new information would seem to support previously reported rumors that the Awans orchestrated a long-running fraud scheme in which their office would purchase equipment in a way that avoided tracking by central House-wide administrators and then sell that equipment for a personal gain while simultaneously defrauding taxpayers of $1,000's of dollars.

Meanwhile, according to the Daily Caller, CDW Government could have been in on the scheme.

They're suspected of working with an employee of CDW Government Inc. -- one of the Hill's largest technology providers -- to alter invoices in order to avoid tracking. The result would be that no one outside the office would notice if the equipment disappeared, and investigators think the goal of the scheme was to remove and sell the equipment outside of Congress.

CDW spokeswoman Kelly Caraher told TheDCNF the company is cooperating with investigators, and has assurance from prosecutors its employees are not targets of the investigation. "CDW and its employees have cooperated fully with investigators and will continue to do so," Caraher said. "The prosecutors directing this investigation have informed CDW and its coworkers that they are not subjects or targets of the investigation."

Not surprisingly, Clarke's office apparently felt no need whatsoever to report the $120,000 worth of missing IT equipment to the authorities... it's just taxpayer money afterall...

According to the official who talked to TheDCNF, Clarke's chief of staff did not alert authorities to the huge sum of missing money when it was brought to the attention of the office around February of 2016. A request to sign away that much lost equipment would have been "way outside any realm of normalcy," the official said, but the office did not bring it to the attention of authorities until months later when House administrators told the office they were reviewing finances connected to the Awans.

The administrators informed the office that September they were independently looking into discrepancies surrounding the Awans, including a review of finances connected to the brothers in all the congressional offices that employed them. The House administrators asked Clarke's then-chief of staff, Wendy Anderson, whether she had noticed any anomalies, and at that time she alerted them to the $120,000 write-off, the official told TheDCNF.

Of course, the missing $120,000 covers only Clarke's office. As we've noted before, Imran and his relatives worked for more than 40 current House members when they were banned from the House network in February, and have together worked for dozens more in past years so who know just how deep this particular rabbit hole goes.

Also makes you wonder what else Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the Awans might be hiding. Certainly the decision by Wasserman-Shultz to keep Awan on her taxpayer funded payroll, right up until he was arrested by the FBI while trying to flee the country, is looking increasingly fishy with each passing day.

Anarchyteez , Aug 21, 2017 7:26 PM

Who cares? Nothing will happen.

bigdumbnugly -> Anarchyteez , Aug 21, 2017 7:27 PM

is it me or do all these criminal democrat representatives look the same?

Looney -> bigdumbnugly , Aug 21, 2017 7:29 PM

I have just one word you – "Huma Abedin".

I have two more words – "She was recommended as a White House intern by Prince Bandar, the then Saudi Ambassador".

Twenty years of spying in the open! Huma WAS the most successful spy in our history! ;-)

Looney

Jim in MN -> Looney , Aug 21, 2017 7:33 PM

How about this babe? Any relation?

http://thehill.com/50-most-beautiful/2016/294175-zoya-awan

Zoya Awan

Microsoft's Government Affairs Team

overbet -> Jim in MN , Aug 21, 2017 7:50 PM

And.......the equipment's hard drives were filled with classified data prior to sale.

AlaricBalth -> overbet , Aug 21, 2017 8:15 PM

18 U.S. Code § 4 - Misprision of felony

Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

Normalcy Bias -> AlaricBalth , Aug 21, 2017 8:17 PM

Ohhhhhh NO she dint! Sumbody gonna axe her some quershuns!

AlaricBalth -> Normalcy Bias , Aug 21, 2017 8:19 PM

The Federal misprision of felony statute is usually only used in prosecutions against defendants who have a special duty to report a crime, such as a government official.

gmrpeabody -> AlaricBalth , Aug 21, 2017 8:23 PM

Another phukkin slimball seeps through the woodwork...

TwelveOhOne -> gmrpeabody , Aug 21, 2017 9:21 PM

CDW was Computer Discount Warehouse; I bought floppies from them and sold them in college.

TBT or not TBT -> The Cooler King , Aug 21, 2017 8:06 PM

I've got a deplorable feeling about this person.

Cardinal Fang -> overbet , Aug 21, 2017 9:01 PM

That's what I was thinking, the shit was full of classified and sold off to the highest bidder.

It wasn't about the replacement value of the missing computers, it was about the intrinsic value of used US Government Legislative Branch computers. Probably included network sdrowssap for a nominal fee...

Anarchyteez -> bigdumbnugly , Aug 21, 2017 7:29 PM

Now that's funny.

But seriously! How much money do you have to steal? How many people do you have to murder? And how many secrets do you have to sell before anything happens to any of these asshats ?

MagicHandPuppet -> bigdumbnugly , Aug 21, 2017 7:36 PM

Slightly O.T.: It would be interesting if a little thread of interrogation led them to the hundreds of thousands of dollars of hardware "lost" here in Charlotte before a massive fraudulent insurance claim was made. A little birdy told me of a number of people who worked as IT support at the Charlotte DNC national convention who personally benefited to a great degree of this said "lost" hardware. And, their "free goodies" were nothing compared to how much loot the top of the DNC food chain walked away with.

Jim in MN -> Anarchyteez , Aug 21, 2017 7:29 PM

We're past that point.

Things are going to happen bigly.

By hook, or by crook....they will.

LindseyNarrates... -> Anarchyteez , Aug 21, 2017 7:45 PM

Brother, you are 100% correct.

"Same fucking shit, just another mother-fucking day, in the God damned and under-siege (((Empire)))."

Lindsey

grunk , Aug 21, 2017 7:28 PM

DWS gets sacrificed at the altar of Clinton.

DRTexas -> grunk , Aug 21, 2017 7:30 PM

Yeah, I heard they were sacrificing a donkey.

the cork -> DRTexas , Aug 21, 2017 7:52 PM

.

Correct DRTexas - There's gonna be a donkey show

They're gonna sacrifice some poor donkey to fuck Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

That's her best chance of getting laid

Poor Donkey . Talk about cruelty to animals...

land_of_the_few -> grunk , Aug 21, 2017 8:13 PM

If she is thrown under the bus then the leash will pull her owners under the tires too.

Reminds me of a discussion about motorcycles and small pet dogs out for a walk...if they run out in front, aim for the leash?

Well you gotta decide somehow, even if the end result is inevitably pretty similar whichever way it goes!

Mazzy , Aug 21, 2017 7:28 PM

A lot of folks need to be lynched down by the big swamp. Lets start with the Awan brothers. Spies and saboteurs get no quarter.

Jim in MN -> Mazzy , Aug 21, 2017 7:37 PM

Speaking of Lynch....breaking at Circa News this evening:

https://www.circa.com/story/2017/08/21/politics/watchdog-group-will-ask-...

"They told us there was no documents related to the inquiry but there were," said Sekulow. "These documents show it went to the chief of staff of James Comey and he gets out there and acts like he was shocked and appalled by this but he knew about it. And didn't decide to do anything about it, except he decides to go public on that statement he made about Hillary Clinton and the investigation where he clears her."

JLee2027 -> Jim in MN , Aug 21, 2017 8:30 PM

What's to probe? We all know the Lynch-Clinton meeting was obstruction of justice. Just indict already.

land_of_the_few -> NoPension , Aug 21, 2017 8:15 PM

Perhaps so, but the Awans or their mystery handlers seem to have really pissed off the Feds for some reason.

The airport arrest was just a symptom of what had been in progress, clearly much juicy meat had been found beforehand.

Maybe they found a really big problem that had to be dealt with, and could not reasonably be ignored.

Plus, threatening a House police officer for doing his job is not a good way to win friends and influence people. That is a bad look.

Supafly -> land_of_the_few , Aug 21, 2017 8:57 PM

They likely did, so now it's down to negotiating who owes whom and for what, and who now does what, and how to deal with all the slighted whos, and fuck, I don't know. Gotta give them credit for all their effort though.

Grandad Grumps , Aug 21, 2017 7:31 PM

And the difference with this article is that the photos are not altered. Can you tell the difference?

wisefool , Aug 21, 2017 7:35 PM

Was the expensed "tech equipment" for the timeline when hillary won and they did it with non-secured resources running IT for POTUS?

I can not tell you enough folks. We dont need tax reform. We need moar wars on the other side of the planet. /sarc

My crotch itches , Aug 21, 2017 7:32 PM

And when I got caught doing 38 in a 25 mph zone, I got a nice big fine. Nothing for these crimes?

are we there yet -> My crotch itches , Aug 21, 2017 7:36 PM

Because you are one of the little people.

NoPension -> are we there yet , Aug 21, 2017 8:26 PM

We are below " little people".

We are irrelevant. Just keep paying, slave.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.....

This country was founded on the principle that the individual had sovereign rights, imbued from God...and was the vessel of ultimate power.

Today...these illegally elected ( it's almost ALL proven a fraud) cocksuckers go in broke and come out the other end multimillionaires with legal immunity from anything, up to and including murder.

It's high time to water the fucking tree.

[Aug 21, 2017] Why Explaining US Internal Strife Through Russian Influence Is Lazy and Unhelpful by Alexey Kovalev

Notable quotes:
"... By Alexey Kovalev, an independent journalist living and working in Moscow. Follow him on Twitter: @Alexey__Kovalev. Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
Aug 19, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
August 19, 2017 by Yves Smith Yves here. This is a well-argued debunking of various "evil Rooskie" claims and is very much worth circulating. Stunningly, there actually are people asserting that white supremacists and the figurative and now literal hot fights over Confederate symbols (remember that Confederate flags have been a big controversy too?) are part of a Russian plot. Help me. Fortunately their views don't seem to have gotten traction outside the fever-swamp corners of the Twitterverse.

Author Kovalev's bottom line: When you are doing the same thing Putin and his propaganda machine does, you're doing something wrong.

By Alexey Kovalev, an independent journalist living and working in Moscow. Follow him on Twitter: @Alexey__Kovalev. Originally published at openDemocracy

On 11-12 August, violent clashes erupted between the far-right Unite the Right movement and anti-fascist counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. One woman died when an alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer rammed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters. There were numerous injuries and a major national crisis erupted in the United States resulting from and inspired by the rapid rise of white nationalist, neo-Nazi and other similar sentiments far to the right of the political spectrum.

As it often happens these days, numerous people on Twitter immediately jumped in, pitching the so-called "hot takes" -- rapid, hastily weaved together series of tweets with often outlandish theories of what really happened. These instant experts, who have come to prominence in the wake of the Trump presidency, have carved out a niche for themselves by taking the most tangential or non-existent connection to anything Russian and "connecting the dots" or "just asking questions". The most egregious example is Louise Mensch , a former UK conservative pundit (and sometime MP) now residing in the US. Mensch is the most extreme example of a Twitter-age conspiracy-mongering populist . But there are other people, with more credible credentials, who are also prone to demanding that "ties with Russia" (via individuals, events and institutions) be investigated.

Immediately following the events in Charlottesville, the writer and consultant Molly McKew and Jim Ludes of the Pell Center , among others, chimed in with their "hot takes", repeating each other almost word for word: "We need to closely examine the links between the American alt-right and Russia." These particular expressions ("links between X and Russia", "ties with Russia", "Russian connections" or "close to Putin/Russian government") are, essentially, weasel words, expressions so elastic that they could mean anything -- from actively collaborating with senior Russian officials and secretly accepting large donations from to the vaguest, irrelevant connections mentioned simply for the sake of name-dropping Russia in an attempt to farm for more clicks.

Almost every person of Russian origin involved in the Trump drama is "Putin-connected", although in Russia that definition only applies to a tiny power circle of trusted aides and advisors, a select group of oligarchs running state-owned enterprises and close personal friends from before Putin's presidency. The exaggerated tone of reporting often suggests something more far-reaching, coordinated and sinister than a loose collection of unconnected factoids.

So, what do "links between the American alt-right and Russia" actually mean? Much of the allegations of American alt-right's "collusion" with Putin's regime rely on the fact that Richard Spencer, a divisive figure in this already quite loose movement, was once married to a woman of Russian origin , Nina Kupriyanova. Their current marital status is unclear and, frankly, irrelevant. Kupriyanova, a scholar of Russian and Soviet history with a PhD from the University of Toronto, is also a follower of Alexander Dugin, a larger-than-life figure in contemporary Russian media and politics. Because of Dugin's outsized presence in the western media where he is often, and quite erroneously, presented as "Putin's mastermind" or "Putin's Bannon", this connection is often enough to be declared the smoking gun in the crowdsourced investigation .

Dugin has been many things to many people over his decades-long, zig-zagging career as an underground occult practitioner in the Soviet years: philosopher, lecturer, one of the founding fathers of a radical movement, public intellectual, flamboyant media personality. But he is not a "Putin advisor" and never has been. Although Dugin is a vocal fan of the Russian president, has repeatedly professed his loyalty to Putin and has orbited the halls of Russian power for more than a decade, he hasn't accumulated enough influence to even keep a stable job.

In 2014, Dugin was fired from his position as a guest lecturer at the department of sociology of Moscow State University. Students and academic staff had complained for years about the "anti-scientific, obscurantist" atmosphere Dugin had created within the department (one petition filed by the students mentions Dugin "performing extrasensory experiments" on them during lectures). But the final straw was Dugin's interview where he agitated to "kill, kill, kill" Ukrainians in June 2014 -- the early stages of Russia's war campaign in Ukraine. Both Dugin and his patron, the dean of the sociology department, were promptly fired after a major media scandal.

Later, Dugin was quite unceremoniously removed from his position as a host on Tsargrad TV -- a right-wing, reactionary private network funded by "Orthodox oligarch" Konstantin Malofeyev and launched with the help of a former Fox News executive. All mentions of Dugin's show on Tsargrad simply disappeared from the network's website.

Although Richard Spencer's own writings for his Radix Journal do have visible Dugin inspirations, it's inconceivable that Dugin has any significant influence on the American right. His teachings are just too eclectic, esoteric and over-intellectualised for an average American neo-Nazi who just wants to see more white faces around him. In fact, Dugin's overarching idea of "Eurasianism" goes against the grain of "keeping America white and ethnically pure": at its core is an obscure early 20th century Orientalist school of thought which accentuated Russia's civilisational continuity with Mongolian and Turkic ancestors, as opposed to the spiritually alien West.

Russia's conservatives of all shades of right have indeed been long cultivating links with their brethren to the west of Moscow -- well before Putin appeared on the scene. These have been well documented by scholars of the far right such as Anton Shekhovtsov . After Putin's onslaught in Ukraine, Russia, in dire need of new allies, intensified efforts to strengthen those links .

A trove of leaked emails released by the hacker group Shaltai Boltai ("Humpty Dumpty") in December 2014 did indeed uncover a sinister plot to place Russia in the centre of a wide-ranging alliance of right-wing, far-right, pro-life, pro-"family-values", hardcore Christian and other similar organisations in Europe and both Americas. But there's little evidence that anything resembling the coveted "Black International" ever came to fruition. Only temporary, tactical alliances have been more or less successful, aimed at promoting shared common interests -- such as Italy's pro-Kremlin Lega Nord party lobbying for lifting EU's sanctions against Russia -- or values.

In the latter case, the dynamic is reversed: it's not Russia influencing the West and exporting its values, but vice versa. It's Russia's parliamentary ultra-conservatives like Yelena Mizulina (now a senator) who have been inspired and supported by the American religious right.

Russia's last public attempt to unite the European and American far-right ended in a major media scandal in early 2015 when the "International Russian Conservative Forum" in Saint Petersburg was widely criticised in the press. The forum's Russian official supporters from the "traditionalist" Rodina (Motherland) party allied with the ruling United Russia were forced to withdraw their endorsement, and no further attempts to organise the forum have been made. Propaganda outlets like RT are quietly shedding commentators with far-right sympathies like Manuel Ochsenreiter or Richard Spencer mentioned above in an attempt to cleanse their image as a safe haven for Holocaust deniers and white power enthusiasts. Only a couple of days after Charlottesville, Russian authorities banned The Daily Stormer, a virulently anti-Semitic "alt-right" website, which had temporarily sought refuge on Russian web space after having been refused service in the US.

There is little to no evidence that any of the above had anything to do with the tragic events in Charlottesville. The resurgence of murderous, hateful ideologies in the United States is a home-grown issue. Young men with identical haircuts and matching, uniform-like attires chanting "Blood and soil -- " in the streets of American cities are inspired and influenced by many things, but a bearded Russian mystic is hardly one of them. Attempting to explain internal strife in your country by "Russian influences", hastily put together disjointed and exaggerated phenomena, is intellectually lazy. It distracts from getting to the root of the problem by offering quick, easy answers to complicated questions.

Ironically, it's also a very Putin thing to do. Explaining Russia's internal issues by blaming the West's machinations is the Russian president's shtick. When you find yourself doing the same thing Putin and his propaganda machine does, you're doing it wrong.

[Aug 20, 2017] Bannon's interview with the American Prospect last week was his shot across the proverbial bow aimed directly at the globalists fomenting more wars

With Bannon Gone, Trump Loses Key Anti-War Aide Trump Loses Anti-War Aide In Bannon The Daily Caller
Notable quotes:
"... For the record, Mr. Bannon gave notice on 8/7 to POTUS. As well, Mr. Bannon, when appointed to Trump's cabinet, stated for any who bothered to read/listen that he would accept under one condition, which was he'd be leaving the WH in eight months. Eight months brings us to 8/7. No one fired him. He is back at Breitbart as its Chairman. ..."
"... Bannon's interview with the American Prospect last week was his shot across the proverbial bow aimed directly at the globalists who are determined to keep their march toward raping the world from all her resources aka the NWO/neocon/neolib mafia while fomenting more war(s). ..."
"... If you are unaware of the current round of NAFTA negotiations, now in its fourth day, w/Canada and Mexico OR if you are unaware that on Friday the Trump administration formally launched a Section 301 Trade investigation into China's trading practices, then you are not paying attention to what the right hand is doing. ..."
"... Oh, and btw, it was Kushner and his data operation who carried Trump over the finish line not Bannon and his policy positions. ..."
Aug 20, 2017 | t-room.us

h | Aug 20, 2017 12:52:39 PM | 122

Francis @68 - Refreshing to read a comment by someone who obviously has made it her/his business to understand Trump and Team from the conservative perspective. Great comment and spot on IMHO.

For the record, Mr. Bannon gave notice on 8/7 to POTUS. As well, Mr. Bannon, when appointed to Trump's cabinet, stated for any who bothered to read/listen that he would accept under one condition, which was he'd be leaving the WH in eight months. Eight months brings us to 8/7. No one fired him. He is back at Breitbart as its Chairman.

Bannon's interview with the American Prospect last week was his shot across the proverbial bow aimed directly at the globalists who are determined to keep their march toward raping the world from all her resources aka the NWO/neocon/neolib mafia while fomenting more war(s).

Bannon with Mercer and et al backing (and I can make a pretty solid educated guess that there are others) have been developing a new media platform of some kind which will be launched in weeks not months (another educated guess). Sinclair broadcasting has been mentioned on other conservative platforms as getting ready to make a move of some kind as well.

As Breitbart's editor wrote on Friday following the Bannon announcement - "WAR" - is unequivocally that sites way of saying the Swamp in DC is going to be drained. Indeed, Trump and Team have already begun to roll out their 2018 election strategy.

Any who hold the belief that Trump is stupid, naive, or whatever derogatory statement conjured up is just plain wrong and shouldn't be taken seriously by any here who know better.

Trump is a businessman. Trump is not a politician. And he certainly wasn't elected to serve as America's grandpa-he ain't gonna hold your hand...ever.

If you are unaware of the current round of NAFTA negotiations, now in its fourth day, w/Canada and Mexico OR if you are unaware that on Friday the Trump administration formally launched a Section 301 Trade investigation into China's trading practices, then you are not paying attention to what the right hand is doing.

There is always much going on behind all of the noise the insufferable Left makes on a daily basis. Apparently, they don't want you to know about any of the plethora of Executive Orders signed, the roll back of regulations zero and czars put in place, the trade negotiations and so, so much more.

On the other hand, conservative sites are all over the blogosphere report daily what this administration is doing and how it is succeeding. Bannon remains a phone call away.

Oh, and btw, it was Kushner and his data operation who carried Trump over the finish line not Bannon and his policy positions.

[Aug 20, 2017] Mr. Bannon's disdain for General McMaster also accelerated his demise

Notable quotes:
"... The war veteran has never quite clicked with the president, but other West Wing staff members recoiled at a series of smears against General McMaster by internet allies of Mr. Bannon. ..."
Aug 20, 2017 | www.msn.com

Mr. Bannon's disdain for General McMaster also accelerated his demise. The war veteran has never quite clicked with the president, but other West Wing staff members recoiled at a series of smears against General McMaster by internet allies of Mr. Bannon.

The strategist denied involvement, but he also did not speak out against them.

By the time Charlottesville erupted, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump had a powerful ally in Mr. Kelly, who shared their belief that Mr. Trump's first statement blaming "many sides" for the deadly violence needed to be amended.

Mr. Bannon vigorously objected. He told Mr. Kelly that if Mr. Trump delivered a second, more contrite statement it would do him no good, with either the public or the Washington press corps, which he denigrated as a "Pretorian guard" protecting the Democrats' consensus that Mr. Trump is a race-baiting demagogue. Mr. Trump could grovel, beg for forgiveness, even get down on his knees; it would never work, Mr. Bannon maintained.

"They're going to say two things: It's too late and it's not enough," Mr. Bannon told Mr. Kelly.

[Aug 20, 2017] Breitbart Goes After Ivanka And McMaster

Aug 20, 2017 | dailycaller.com

The first earlier in the day was " Report: Powerful GOP Donor Sheldon Adelson Supports Campaign to Oust McMaster ." This article detailed how major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson reportedly is supporting a campaign against McMaster that claims the national security adviser is anti-Israel.

Later in the day, the lead story on the site was " McMaster Of Disguise: Nat'l Security Adviser Endorsed Book That Advocates Quran-Kissing Apology Ceremonies ." This piece from frequent McMaster critic Aaron Klein said that McMaster endorsed a book that "calls on the U.S. military to respond to any 'desecrations' of the Quran by service members with an apology ceremony, and advocates kissing a new copy of the Quran before presenting the Islamic text to the local Muslim public."

The article went on to say that McMaster has "troubling views" on Islamic terrorism.

The site also published two articles Sunday critical of Ivanka. One of them is an aggregate of a Daily Mail report that claimed Ivanka helped push Bannon out of the White House. Shortly after the story was published, the article received an update that said a White House senior aide stated the Daily Mail report is "totally false."

Breitbart also wrote a piece that highlighted six times Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner's displeasure with President Trump had been leaked to the media.

Bannon said in interviews after his departure from the White House that he will use Breitbart to fight for the president's agenda.

"In many ways, I think I can be more effective fighting from the outside for the agenda President Trump ran on," Bannon told The New York Times . "And anyone who stands in our way, we will go to war with."

[Aug 20, 2017] The chattering political classes have converged on the belief that Trump is not only incompetent, but dangerous. They use identity politics to discredit his base.

The USA started to imitate post-Maydan Ukraine: another war with statues... "Identity politics" flourishing in some unusual areas like history of the country. Which like in Ukraine is pretty divisive.
McAuliffe was co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, and was one of her superdelegates at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Notable quotes:
"... The thrust appears to be to undercut components of his base while ratcheting up indignation. WaPo and the Times dribble out salacious "news" stories that, often as not, are substance free but written in a hyperbolic style that assumes a kind of intrinsic Trump guilt and leaps from there. They know better. No doubt they rationalize this as meeting kind with kind. ..."
"... It reminds me of the coverage in the run up to Nixon's resignation. Except this one's on steroids. I believe the DC folks fully expect Trump to be removed and now are focusing on the strategy that accrues the maximum benefit to their party. Unfortunately, things strongly favor the Democrats. ..."
"... Democrats want to drag this out as long as possible and enjoy the chipping away at segments of the Republican base while the Republicans want to clear the path before the midterms. However, the Republican officials, much as many or most can't stand Trump, have to weave a thin line because taking action against Trump would kill them in the primaries and possibly in the general. ..."
"... So the Democrats are licking their chops and hoping this can continue until the midterms with the expectation they will then control Congress. ..."
"... Some of you still don't get it. Trump isn't our last chance. Its your last chance. Yet still so many of you oxygen thieves still insist RUSSIA is the reason Hillary lost. You guys are going to agitate your way into a CW because you can't accept you lost. Many of you agitating are fat, slow, and stupid, with no idea how to survive. ..."
"... From day one after the unexpected (for the punditry class and their media coherts) elections results everybody was piling on Trump. The stories abound about his Russia Collusion (after one year of investigation not even a smoke signal) or his narcistic attitudes (mind you LeeG Trump always addresses people as We where as Humble Obama always addresses in the first person). ..."
"... I get this feeling the Swamp doesn't want a President who will at least try to do something for the American people rather than promises (Remember Hope and Change ala Obama, he got the Change quite a bit of it for him and his Banker Pals from what is left of the treasury and we the people are left with Hope). ..."
"... Someone on the last thread said in a very elegant way that what binds us Americans together is one thing, economic opportunity for all. I believe that was Trump's election platform, with the "for all" emphasized frequently. ..."
"... There is quite the precedent for the media treating trump as they do, Putin has been treated quite similarly, as well as any other politician the media cars disagree with [neocons/neolibs]... ..."
"... I think, during the election campaign, the negative media coverage may have well be a boon to him. Anyone who listened to the media, and then actually turned up at a Trump rally to see for himself, immediately got the idea that the media is full of shit. I think this won Trump a fair number of converts. ..."
"... But I think by now they are just over the top. It almost reminds me of Soviet denunciations of old communists who have fallen out of favor. ..."
"... The one clear thing is that there is a coup attempt to get rid of Donald Trump led by globalist media and supra-national corporate intelligence agents. Charlottesville may well be due to the total incompetence of the democratic governor and mayor. ..."
"... On the other hand, the razing of Confederate Memorials started in democrat controlled New Orleans and immediately spread to Baltimore. This is purposeful like blaming Russia for losing the 2016 election. ..."
"... The unrest here at home is due to the forever wars, outsourcing jobs, tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity. Under stress societies revert to their old beliefs and myths. John Brennon, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are scorpions; they can't help themselves. After regime change was forced on Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine; a color revolution has been ignited here in the USA; damn the consequences. We are the only ones that can stop it by pointing out what is really happening. ..."
"... What I see in my Democrat dominated county is that the blue collar folks are noting this overt coup attempt and while they didn't vote for Trump are beginning to become sympathetic towards him. I sense this is in part due to the massive mistrust of the MSM and the political establishment who are viewed as completely self-serving. ..."
"... I read a transcript of the entirety of Trump's news conference upon which CBS and others are basing their claims that Trump is "defending white supremacists," and at no point did he come within hand grenade distance of doing anything of the sort. What he did do is accuse the left wing group of being at fault along with the right wing group in causing the violence, and he did not even claim that they were equally at fault. ..."
"... There is no doubt whatever that his statement was entirely accurate, if in no other respect in that the left's decision to engage in proximate confrontation was certain to cause violence and was, in fact, designed to do so regardless of who threw the first punch. CBS and other media of its caliber are completely avoiding mentioning that aspect of the confrontation. ..."
"... CBS et. al. have been touting the left's possession of not one but two permits for public assembly, but they carefully do not point out that the permits were for two areas well removed from the area where the conflict occurred, and that they did not have a permit to assemble in that area. ..."
"... The media is flailing with the horror of Trump's advocacy of racial division, but it is the Democratic Party which has for more than a decade pursued the policy of "identity politics," and the media which has prated endlessly about "who will get the black vote" or "how Hispanics will vote" in every election. ..."
"... As a firm believer in the media efforts to sabotage Trump and a former supporter (now agnostic, trending negative - Goldman Sachs swamp creatures in the Oval Office????), he greatly disappointed me. First, i will state, that I do not believe Trump is antisemitic (no antisemite will surround himself with rich Jewish Bankers). ..."
"... It doesn't matter whether Trump is getting a raw deal or not. Politics has nothing to do with fairness. ..."
"... But when you've lost Bob Corker, and even Newt Gingrich is getting wobbly, when Fox News is having a hard time finding Republicans willing to go on and defend Trump, you don't need to be Nostradamus to see what's going to happen. ..."
Aug 20, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

doug , 17 August 2017 at 04:54 PM

The media, and political elite, pile on is precisely what I expect. The chattering political classes have converged on the belief that Trump is not only incompetent, but dangerous. And his few allies are increasingly uncertain of their future.

The thrust appears to be to undercut components of his base while ratcheting up indignation. WaPo and the Times dribble out salacious "news" stories that, often as not, are substance free but written in a hyperbolic style that assumes a kind of intrinsic Trump guilt and leaps from there. They know better. No doubt they rationalize this as meeting kind with kind. Trump is the epitome of the salesman that believes he can sell anything to anyone with the right pitch. Reporters that might normally be restrained by actual facts and a degree of fairness simply are no longer so constrained.

It reminds me of the coverage in the run up to Nixon's resignation. Except this one's on steroids. I believe the DC folks fully expect Trump to be removed and now are focusing on the strategy that accrues the maximum benefit to their party. Unfortunately, things strongly favor the Democrats.

Democrats want to drag this out as long as possible and enjoy the chipping away at segments of the Republican base while the Republicans want to clear the path before the midterms. However, the Republican officials, much as many or most can't stand Trump, have to weave a thin line because taking action against Trump would kill them in the primaries and possibly in the general.

So the Democrats are licking their chops and hoping this can continue until the midterms with the expectation they will then control Congress. After that they will happily dispatch Trump with some discovered impeachable crime. At that point it won't be hard to get enough Republicans to go along.

The Republicans can only hope to convince Trump to resign well prior to the midterms. They hope they won't have to go on record with a vote and get nailed in the elections.

In the meantime the country is going to go through hell.

turcopolier , 17 August 2017 at 05:19 PM
kerim,

Yes, we are staring into the depths and the abyss has begun to take note of us. BTW the US was put back together after the CW/WBS on the basis of an understanding that the Confederates would accept the situation and the North would not interfere with their cultural rituals.

There was a general amnesty for former Confederates in the 1870s and a number of them became US senators, Consuls General overseas and state governors.

That period of attempted reconciliation has now ended. Who can imagine the "Gone With the Win" Pulitzer and Best Picture of the Year now? pl

Tyler , 17 August 2017 at 05:30 PM
Some of you still don't get it. Trump isn't our last chance. Its your last chance. Yet still so many of you oxygen thieves still insist RUSSIA is the reason Hillary lost. You guys are going to agitate your way into a CW because you can't accept you lost. Many of you agitating are fat, slow, and stupid, with no idea how to survive.
Murali -> LeeG... , 17 August 2017 at 05:38 PM
I totally disagree with you LeeG. From day one after the unexpected (for the punditry class and their media coherts) elections results everybody was piling on Trump. The stories abound about his Russia Collusion (after one year of investigation not even a smoke signal) or his narcistic attitudes (mind you LeeG Trump always addresses people as We where as Humble Obama always addresses in the first person).

I get this feeling the Swamp doesn't want a President who will at least try to do something for the American people rather than promises (Remember Hope and Change ala Obama, he got the Change quite a bit of it for him and his Banker Pals from what is left of the treasury and we the people are left with Hope). I hope he will succeed but I learnt that we will always be left with Hope!

AK -> Dr.Puck... , 17 August 2017 at 06:27 PM
Dr. Puck,

The calls have begun:

That last tweet is from the Green Party candidate for VP. Those are just a few examples from a quick Google search before I get back to work. Those of you with more disposable time will surely find more.

BillWade , 17 August 2017 at 06:47 PM
Someone on the last thread said in a very elegant way that what binds us Americans together is one thing, economic opportunity for all. I believe that was Trump's election platform, with the "for all" emphasized frequently.

I believe Charlottsville was a staged catalyst to bring about Trump's downfall, there seems now to be a "full-court press" against him. If he survives this latest attempt, I'll be both surprised and in awe of his political skills. If he doesn't survive I'll (and many others, no matter the "legality of the process") will consider it a coup d'etat and start to think of a different way to prepare for the future.

A.I.Schmelzer , 17 August 2017 at 07:20 PM
There is quite the precedent for the media treating trump as they do, Putin has been treated quite similarly, as well as any other politician the media cars disagree with [neocons/neolibs]...

I think, during the election campaign, the negative media coverage may have well be a boon to him. Anyone who listened to the media, and then actually turned up at a Trump rally to see for himself, immediately got the idea that the media is full of shit. I think this won Trump a fair number of converts.

But I think by now they are just over the top. It almost reminds me of Soviet denunciations of old communists who have fallen out of favor.

As far as statue removal goes: There should be legal ways of deciding such things democratically. There should also be the possibility of relocating the statues in question. I imagine that there should be plenty of private properties who are willing to host these statues on their land. This should be quite soundly protected by the US constitution.

That these monuments got, iirc, erected long after the war is nothing unusual. Same is true for monuments to the white army, of which there are now a couple in Russia.

As far as the civil war goes, my sympathies lie with the Union, I would not be, more then a 100 years after the war, be averse to monuments depicting the common Confederate Soldier.

I can understand the statue toppler somewhat. If someone would place a Bandera statue in my surroundings, I would try to wreck it. I may be willing to tolerate a Petljura statue, probably a also Wrangel or Denikin statue, but not a Vlassov or Shuskevich statue. Imho Lees "wickedness", historically speaking, simply isn't anything extraordinary.

Haralambos -> turcopolier ... , 17 August 2017 at 07:29 PM
Col., thank you for this comment. I grew up in the "North" and recall the centenary of the Civil War as featured in _Life_ magazine. I was fascinated by the history, the uniforms and the composition of the various armies as well as their arms. I would add to that the devastating use of grapeshot. I knew the biographies of the various generals on both sides and their relative effectiveness. I would urge others to read Faulkner's _Intruder in the Dust_ to gain some understanding of the Reconstruction and carpetbagging.

I believe the choice to remove the monument as opposed to some other measure, such as the bit of history you offer, was highly incendiary. I also find it interesting that the ACLU is taking up their case in regard to free-speech: http://tinyurl.com/ybdkrcaz

I was living in Chicago when the Skokie protest occurred.

Fred -> Lars... , 17 August 2017 at 07:36 PM
Lars,

"They came to Charlottesville to do harm. They came armed and were looking for a fight."

I agree. This means Governor McAuliffe failed in his duty to the people of the Commonwealth and so did the Mayor of Charlottesville and the senior members of the police forces present in the city. Congradulations to the alt-left.

They - the left - previously came to DC to do harm - on flag day no less. Namely the Bernie Bro James Hodgkinson, domestic terrorist, who attempted to assasinate Steve Scalise and a number of other elected representatives. The left did not denounce him nor his cause. Sadly they did not even denounce the people who actually betrayed him - those who rigged the Democratic primary: Donna Brazile and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

Seamus Padraig -> Dr.Puck... , 17 August 2017 at 07:40 PM
"I know of no call by anybody to remove all statues of the slaveholders. Please edify."

Well, it appears that Al Sharpton is now in favor of defunding the Jefferson Memorial. That's close, isn't it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg4XKIX1bs4&feature=youtu.be&t=5

VietnamVet , 17 August 2017 at 08:32 PM
PT

The one clear thing is that there is a coup attempt to get rid of Donald Trump led by globalist media and supra-national corporate intelligence agents. Charlottesville may well be due to the total incompetence of the democratic governor and mayor.

On the other hand, the razing of Confederate Memorials started in democrat controlled New Orleans and immediately spread to Baltimore. This is purposeful like blaming Russia for losing the 2016 election.

The protestors on both divides were organized and spoiling for a fight.

The unrest here at home is due to the forever wars, outsourcing jobs, tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity. Under stress societies revert to their old beliefs and myths. John Brennon, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are scorpions; they can't help themselves. After regime change was forced on Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine; a color revolution has been ignited here in the USA; damn the consequences. We are the only ones that can stop it by pointing out what is really happening.

James , 17 August 2017 at 09:32 PM
It seems to me that this brouhaha may work in Trump's favor. The more different things they accuse Trump of (without evidence), the more diluted their message becomes.

I think the Borg's collective hysteria can be explained by the "unite the right" theme of the Charlottesville Rally. A lot of Trump supporters are very angry, and if they start marching next to people who are carrying signs that blame "the Jews" for America's problems, then anti-Zionist (or even outright anti-Semitic) thinking might start to go mainstream. The Borg would do well to work to address the Trump supporters legitimate grievances. There are a number of different ways that things might get very ugly if they don't. Unfortunately the establishment just wants to heap abuse on the Trump supporters and I think that approach is myopic.

Jack , 17 August 2017 at 09:56 PM
There will always be an outrage du jour for the NeverTrumpers. The Jake Tapper, Rachel Maddow, Morning Joe & Mika ain't gonna quit. And it seems it's ratings gold for them. Of course McCain and his office wife and the rest of the establishment crew also have to come out to ring the obligatory bell and say how awful Trump's tweet was.

What I see in my Democrat dominated county is that the blue collar folks are noting this overt coup attempt and while they didn't vote for Trump are beginning to become sympathetic towards him. I sense this is in part due to the massive mistrust of the MSM and the political establishment who are viewed as completely self-serving.

Cvillereader -> turcopolier ... , 17 August 2017 at 10:17 PM
It is illegal in the Commonwealth of Virginia to wear a mask that covers one's face in most public settings.

LEOs in Central Va encountered this exact requirement when a man in a motorcycle helmet entered a Walmart on Rt 29 in 2012. Several customers reported him to 911 because they believed him to being acting suspiciously. He was detained in Albemarle County and was eventually submitted for mental health evaluation.

This is not a law that Charlottesville police would be unfamiliar with.

luxetveritas , 17 August 2017 at 10:45 PM
Chomsky: "As for Antifa, it's a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were. "It's a major gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant."

"what they do is often wrong in principle – like blocking talks – and [the movement] is generally self-destructive."

"When confrontation shifts to the arena of violence, it's the toughest and most brutal who win – and we know who that is. That's quite apart from the opportunity costs – the loss of the opportunity for education, organizing, and serious and constructive activism."

Bill H , 18 August 2017 at 02:02 AM
I read a transcript of the entirety of Trump's news conference upon which CBS and others are basing their claims that Trump is "defending white supremacists," and at no point did he come within hand grenade distance of doing anything of the sort. What he did do is accuse the left wing group of being at fault along with the right wing group in causing the violence, and he did not even claim that they were equally at fault.

There is no doubt whatever that his statement was entirely accurate, if in no other respect in that the left's decision to engage in proximate confrontation was certain to cause violence and was, in fact, designed to do so regardless of who threw the first punch. CBS and other media of its caliber are completely avoiding mentioning that aspect of the confrontation.

CBS et. al. have been touting the left's possession of not one but two permits for public assembly, but they carefully do not point out that the permits were for two areas well removed from the area where the conflict occurred, and that they did not have a permit to assemble in that area. A pundit on CBS claimed that "if they went" to the park in question, which of course they did, "they would not have been arrested because it was a public park." He failed to mention that large groups still are required to have a permit to assemble in a public park.

The media is flailing with the horror of Trump's advocacy of racial division, but it is the Democratic Party which has for more than a decade pursued the policy of "identity politics," and the media which has prated endlessly about "who will get the black vote" or "how Hispanics will vote" in every election.

Old Microbiologist -> Lars... , 18 August 2017 at 03:53 AM
Lars, but they came with a legal permit to protest and knew what they would be facing. The anti-protestors including ANTIFA had a large number of people being paid to be there and funded by Soros and were there illegally. The same mechanisms were in place to ramp up protests like in Ferguson which were violent and this response was no different.

However, the Virginia Governor a crony of the Clintons, ordered a police stand down and no effort was made to separate the groups. I remind you also that open carry is legal in Virginia.

So, IMHO this was deliberately set up for a lethal confrontation by the people on the left. I will also remind you that the American Nazi Party and the American Communist Party among others, are perfectly legal in the US as is the KKK. Believing and saying what you want, no matter how offensive, is legal under the First Amendment. Actively discriminating against someone is not legal but speech is. Say what you want but that is the Constitution.

AK -> Richardstevenhack ... , 18 August 2017 at 04:02 AM
Richardstevenshack,

Your last paragraph is a suitably Leftist post-modern ideological oversimplification of an infinitely complex phenomenon. It also reveals a great deal of what motivates the SJW Left:

" As for the notion that this is a 'cultural issue', I quote: 'Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.' 'Culture' is the means by which some people oppress others. It's much like 'civilization' or 'ethics' or 'morality' - a tool to beat people over the head who have something you want. "

First, it is a cultural issue. It's an issue between people who accept this culture as a necessary but flawed, yet incrementally improvable structure for carrying out a relatively peaceful existence among one another, and those whose grudging, bitter misanthropy has led them to the conclusion that the whole thing isn't fair (i.e. easy) so fuck it, burn it all down. In no uncertain terms, this is the ethos driving the radical Left.

Second, I don't know exactly which culture created you, but I'm fairly sure it was a western liberal democracy, as I'm fairly certain is the case with almost all Leftists these days, regardless of how radical. And I'm also fairly certain the culture you decry is the western liberal democratic culture in its current iterations. But before you or anyone else lights the fuse on that, remember that the very culture you want to burn down because it's so loathsome, that's the thing that gave you that shiny device you use to connect with the world, it's the thing that taught you how to articulate your thoughts into written and spoken word, so that you could then go out and bitch about it, and it even lets you bitch about it, freely and with no consequences. This "civilization" is the thing that gives rise to the "morals" and "ethics" that allow you to take your shiny gadgets to a coffee shop, where the barista makes your favorite beverage, instead of simply smashing you over the head and taking your shiny gadgets because he wants them. These principles didn't arise out of thin air, and neither did you, me, or anyone else. This culture is an agreed-upon game that most of us play to ensure we stand a chance at getting though this with as little suffering as possible. It's not perfect, but it works better than anything else I've seen in history.

Old Microbiologist -> FourthAndLong... , 18 August 2017 at 04:12 AM
Not as significant but along a similar trend to re-write history is this pastor asking Chicago mayor Emmanuel to rename parks named for Presidents because they were also slave owners. http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/08/inevitable-chicago-pastor-demands-washington-name-be-removed-from-park-because-of-slavery-ties/
AK -> Tyler... , 18 August 2017 at 04:33 AM
In his inimitable fashion, I'll grant Tyler (and the Colonel, as well) the creditable foresight to call this one. Those of you who find yourselves wishing, hoping, agitating, and activisting for an overturn of the election result, and/or of traditional American culture in general would do well to take their warnings seriously.

If traditional American culture is so deeply and irredeemably corrupt, I must ask, what's your alternative? And how do you mean to install it? I would at least like to know that. Regardless of your answer to question one, if your answer to question two is "revolution", well then you and anyone else on that wagon better be prepared to suffer, and to increase many fold the overall quotient of human suffering in the world. Because that's what it will take.

You want your revolution, but you also want your Wi-Fi to keep working.
You want your revolution, but you also want your hybrid car.
You want your revolution, but you also want your safe spaces, such as your bed when you sleep at night.

If you think you can manage all that by way of shouting down, race baiting, character assassinating, and social shaming, without bearing the great burden of suffering that all revolutions entail, you have bitter days ahead. And there are literally millions of Americans who will oppose you along the way. And unlike the kulaks when the Bolsheviks rode into town, they see you coming and they're ready for you. And if you insist on taking it as far as you can, it won't be pretty, and it won't be cinematic. Just a lot of tragedy for everyone involved. But one side will win, and my guess is it'll be the guys like Tyler. It's not my desire or aim to see any of that happen. It's just how I see things falling out on their current trajectory.

The situation calls to mind a quote from a black radical, spoken-word group from Harlem who were around in the early to mid 60s, called the Last Poets. The line goes, "Speak not of revolution until you are willing to eat rats to survive." Just something to think about when you advocate burning it all down.

[email protected] -> rick... , 18 August 2017 at 07:19 AM
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) has added his name to a growing list of public officials in state governments encouraging the removal of Confederate statues and memorials throughout the South. Late in the day on Wednesday McAuliffe released an official statement saying monuments of Confederate leaders have now become "flashpoints for hatred, division and violence" in a reference to the weekend of violence which shook Charlottesville as white nationalists rallied against the city's planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. McAuliffe further described the monuments as "a barrier to progress" and appealed to state and local governments to take action. The governor said:

As we attempt to heal and learn from the tragic events in Charlottesville, I encourage Virginia's localities and the General Assembly – which are vested with the legal authority – to take down these monuments and relocate them to museums or more appropriate settings. I hope we can all now agree that these symbols are a barrier to progress, inclusion and equality in Virginia and, while the decision may not be mine to make...

It seems the push for monument removal is now picking up steam, with cities like Baltimore simply deciding to act briskly while claiming anti-racism and concern for public safety. Of course, the irony in all this is that the White nationalist and supremacist groups which showed up in force at Charlottesville and which are even now planning a major protest in Lexington, Kentucky, are actually themselves likely hastening the removal of these monuments through their repugnant racial ideology, symbols, and flags.

Bishop James Dukes, a pastor at Liberation Christian Center located on Chicago's south side, is demanding that the city of Chicago re-dedicate two parks in the area that are named after former presidents George Washington and Andrew Jackson. His reasons? Dukes says that monuments honoring men who owned slaves have no place in the black community, even if those men once led the free world.

Just a few I've seen....

James F , 18 August 2017 at 07:29 AM
Salve, Publius. Thanks for the article. Col. Lang made an excellent point in the comments' section that the Confederate memorials represent the reconciliation between the North and the South. The same argument is presented in a lengthier fashion in this morning's TAC http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-confederate-monuments-represent-reconciliation/ . That reconciliation could have been handled much better, i.e. without endorsing Jim Crow. I wish more monuments were erected to commemorate Longstreet and Cleburne, JB Hood and Hardee. I wish there was more Lee and less Forrest. Nonetheless, the important historical point is that a national reconciliation occurred. Removing the statues is a symbolic act which undoes the national reconciliation. The past which is being erased is not the Civil War but the civil peace which followed it. That is tragic.
Ishmael Zechariah -> Dr.Puck... , 18 August 2017 at 08:14 AM
Dr. Puck,
Do you agree w/ this elected representative's statement: ""I hope Trump is assassinated!" Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, wrote during a morning Facebook exchange, referring to Republican President Donald Trump."
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/chappelle-nadal-posts-deletes-facebook-post-hoping-for-trump-s/article_406059d6-1aa4-52fc-89ee-2a6a69baaf2e.html
Ishmael Zechariah
Kooshy -> Richardstevenhack ... , 18 August 2017 at 09:21 AM
IMO, most of the problems majority of people (specially the ruling class) have with Donald Trump' presidency is that, he acts and is an accidental president, Ironically, everybody including, him, possibly you, and me who voted for him knows this and is not willing to take his presidency serious and act as such. IMO, he happens to run for president, when the country, due to setbacks and defeat on multiple choice wars, as well as national economic misfortunes and misshapes, including mass negligence of working class, was in dismay and a big social divide, as of the result, majority decided to vote for some one outside of familiar cemented in DC ruling class knowing he is not qualified and is a BS artist. IMO that is what took place, which at the end of the day, ends of to be same.
Croesus -> doug... , 18 August 2017 at 09:52 AM
Netanyahu is under pressure for failing to speak out forcefully against Trump

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/benjamin-netanyahu-resists-calls-to-denounce-trumps-response-to-charlottesville/

Bibi has keen political skills. He hasn't lasted this long based on his mastery of judo.

Fred -> James F... , 18 August 2017 at 10:03 AM
James F,

" Removing the statues is a symbolic act which undoes the national reconciliation."

That is the intent. The coalition of urban and coastal ethnic populists and economic elites has been for increased concentration and expansion of federal power at the expense of the states, especially the Southern states, for generations. This wave of agitprop with NGO and MSM backing is intended to undo the constitutional election and return the left to power at the federal level.

TV , 18 August 2017 at 10:18 AM
I agree with most of Trump's policy positions, but he is negating these positions with his out-of-control mouth and tweets.
As much as I have nothing but contempt and loathing for the "establishment" (Dems, Republicans, especially the media, the "intelligence" community and the rest of the permanent government), Trump doesn't seem to comprehend that he can't get anything done without taming some of these elements, all of whom are SERIOUSLY opposed to him as a threat to their sinecures and riches.
"Who is this OUTSIDER to come in and think that he in charge of OUR government?"
blowback , 18 August 2017 at 10:33 AM
What seems like a balanced eyewitness account of Charlottesville that suggests that although the radicals on both sides brought the violence, it was the police who allowed it to happen.

https://newrepublic.com/article/144365/cops-dropped-ball-charlottesville

The need to keep protesters away from counter-protesters particular when both are tooled should be obvious to anyone, but not so with the protest in Charlottevlle.

doug -> Tyler... , 18 August 2017 at 10:40 AM
-"Trump isnt our last chance. Its your last chance."

Reminds me of the 60's and the SDS and their ilk. A large part of the under 30 crowd idolized Mao's Little Red Book and convinced themselves the "revolution" was imminent. So many times I heard the phrase "Up Against the Wall, MFs." Stupid fools. Back then people found each other by "teach-ins" and the so called "underground press." In those days it took a larger fraction to be able to blow in each other's ear and convince themselves they were the future "vanguard."

These days, with the internet, it is far easier for a smaller fraction to gravitate to an echo chamber, reinforce group think, and believe their numbers are much larger than what, in reality, exists. This happens across the board. It's a rabbit hole Tyler. Don't go down it.

turcopolier , 18 August 2017 at 10:45 AM
Booby

Yes, Forts Bragg, Hood, Lee, AP Hill, Benning, etc., started as temporary camps during WW1 and were so named to encourage Southern participation in the war. The South had been reluctant about the Spanish War. Wade Hampton, governor of SC said of that war, "Let the North fight. the South knows the cost of war." pl

ISL , 18 August 2017 at 10:53 AM
I would like to share my viewpoint. As a firm believer in the media efforts to sabotage Trump and a former supporter (now agnostic, trending negative - Goldman Sachs swamp creatures in the Oval Office????), he greatly disappointed me. First, i will state, that I do not believe Trump is antisemitic (no antisemite will surround himself with rich Jewish Bankers).

But violence on all sides is absolute BS. Nazi violence gets its own sentence and language at least as strong as the language he has no trouble hitting ISIS with. Didn't hear that. So I guess in his mind, the threat the US faced from Nazis during WW2 was less than a ragtag, 3rd world guerilla force whose only successes are because of 1. US, Saudi, and other weapons, and their war on unstable third world countries. Give me a break - did he never watch a John Wayne movie as a kid?

When I discuss nazi's, F-bombs are dropped. I support the right of nazi's to march and spew their vitriolic hatred, and even more strongly support the right of free speech to counter their filth with facts and arguments and history.

I am sorry, but Antifa was not fighting against the US in WW2. If one wants to critique Antifa, or another group, that criticism belongs in a separate paragraph or better in another press conference. Taking 2 days to do so, and then walking it back, is the hallmark of a political idiot (or a billionaire who listens to no one and lives in his own mental echo chamber).

If Trump gets his info and opinions from TV news, despite having the $80+ billion US Intel system at his beck and call, he is the largest idiot on the planet.

sid_finster , 18 August 2017 at 11:29 AM
It doesn't matter whether Trump is getting a raw deal or not. Politics has nothing to do with fairness.

But when you've lost Bob Corker, and even Newt Gingrich is getting wobbly, when Fox News is having a hard time finding Republicans willing to go on and defend Trump, you don't need to be Nostradamus to see what's going to happen.

[Aug 20, 2017] As Russia-Gate Story Stalls, Cue Trump Neo-Nazi Scandal by Finian Cunningham

Notable quotes:
"... Former CIA chief John Brennan said Trump's comments on racial violence were a "national security risk". ..."
"... The enthusiasm for whipping up the new anti-Trump campaign seems due in large part because the erstwhile Russia-gate story has patently failed to gain any traction. For nearly seven months since Trump's inauguration, the relentless claims pushed by Democrats, the media and anonymous intelligence sources that his election last November was enabled by Russian interference have shown little impact in terms of discrediting Trump and ultimately forcing him out of the White House. The Russia-gate theme has failed in its soft coup objective. ..."
"... It is relevant that Wikileaks editor Julian Assange has consistently denied US intelligence and media claims that his source was Russian hackers. Also, former British ambassador Craig Murray has confirmed that he knows the identity of the source for Wikileaks and that, as the dissenting veteran US intelligence people have assessed, the information was leaked, not hacked. ..."
"... In sum, the Russia-gate story that the US Deep State and media have peddled non-stop for seven months is on its knees gasping for lack of credibility. ..."
"... Not only that, but now technical details and expert analysis are emerging from credible former US intelligence personnel who are verifying that the Russia-gate story is indeed a hoax. ..."
"... The imminent death of the Russia-gate "scandal" is giving way to the next orchestrated campaign to oust Trump in the form of allegations that the president is a "Neo-Nazi sympathizer". ..."
Aug 20, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

August 18, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - The political opponents of President Trump have found a new lever for sabotaging his presidency – his alleged embrace of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. He is now being labelled a "sympathizer" of fascists and bringing America's international image into disrepute. Cue the impeachment proceedings.

Notably, the same power-nexus that opposed Trump from the very outset of his presidency is vociferously condemning his alleged racist leanings. Pro-Democrat media like the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN can't give enough coverage to Trump "the racist", while the intelligence community and Pentagon have also weighed in to rebuke the president. Former CIA chief John Brennan said Trump's comments on racial violence were a "national security risk".

This is not meant to minimize the ugliness of the various Neo-Nazi fringe groups that have lately rallied across Southern US states. Trump's wrongheaded remarks which appeared to lay equal blame on anti-fascist protesters for deadly violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, were deplorable.

However, the concerted, massive media campaign to nail Trump as some kind of new Fuhrer seems way over the top. The media frenzy smacks of Deep State opponents scouring for a handy new pretext for ousting him from office.

The enthusiasm for whipping up the new anti-Trump campaign seems due in large part because the erstwhile Russia-gate story has patently failed to gain any traction. For nearly seven months since Trump's inauguration, the relentless claims pushed by Democrats, the media and anonymous intelligence sources that his election last November was enabled by Russian interference have shown little impact in terms of discrediting Trump and ultimately forcing him out of the White House. The Russia-gate theme has failed in its soft coup objective.

Back in January, on the eve of Trump's inauguration, the US intelligence agencies claimed that Russia had interfered in the presidential election with the aim of promoting Trump's victory over Democrat rival Hillary Clinton. But seven months on, no evidence has ever been produced to support that sensational claim.

Despite this absence of "killer evidence" to damage Trump as a Russian stooge, the Congress continues to hold investigations into the vapid allegations. And, separately, a "special prosecutor" – former FBI chief Robert Mueller – continues to expand his investigation, forming a grand jury and this week opening enquiries into White House staff.

Thus the whole Russia-gate affair is in danger of becoming a giant farce from the lack of evidence. With so little to show for their herculean efforts to trap Trump as a "Russian patsy", his political opponents, including prominent media organizations, are at risk of being seen as ridiculous hoaxers.

A telltale sign of how bankrupt the Russia-gate story is was the publication of a lengthy article in Wired earlier this month. The California-based online magazine proclaims to be a cutting-edge technology publication. Wired is published by Condé Nast, a global American company, whose other prestige titles include Vogue, Vanity Fair and New Yorker . With a claimed monthly readership of 30 million, and an editorial staff of over 80, Wired is supposed to be a global leader in new technology and communications.

According to its advertising blurb, "Wired is where tomorrow is realized", adding: "It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation".

Therefore, as a US technology forum, this publication is supposed to be the elite in insider information and "nerdy journalism". With these high claims in mind, we then turn excitedly to its article published on August 8 with the headline: "A guide to Russia's high tech tool box for subverting US democracy".

On reading it, the entire article is a marathon in hackneyed cliches of Russophobia. It is an appalling demonstration of how threadbare are the claims of Russian hacking into the US election last year. Citing US intelligence sources, the Wired article is a regurgitation of unsubstantiated assertions that Russian state agencies hacked into the Democratic National Committee last July and subsequently used whistleblower site Wikileaks to disseminate damaging information against Trump's rival Hillary Clinton.

"According to US investigators", says Wired, "the hack of the DNC's servers was apparently the work of two separate Russian teams, one from the GRU [military intelligence] and one from the FSB [state security service], neither of which appears to have known the other was also rooting around in the Democratic Party's files. From there, the plundered files were laundered through online leak sites like WikiLeaks and DCLeaks Their impact on the 2016 election was sizable, yielding months of damaging headlines".

Nowhere in the Wired article is any plausible technical detail presented to back up the hacking claims. It relies on US intelligence "assessments" and embellishment with quotes from think tanks and anonymous diplomats whose anti-Russia bias is transparent.

Wired's so-called Russian "tool box for subverting US democracy" covers much more than the alleged hacking into the DNC. It accuses Russia of using news media, diplomats, criminal underworld networks, blackmail and assassinations as an arsenal of hybrid warfare to undermine Western democracy.

Wired declares: "And they are self-reinforcing, because in Russia the intelligence apparatus, business community, organized crime groups, and media distribution networks blend together, blurring and erasing the line between public and private-sector initiatives and creating one amorphous state-controlled enterprise to advance the personal goals of Vladimir Putin and his allies".

This is an astoundingly sweeping depiction of Russia in the most slanderous, pejorative terms. Basically, Wired is claiming that the entire Russian state is a criminal enterprise. The Russophobia expressed in the article is breathtaking – and this is in a magazine that is supposed to be a leader in technology-intelligence.

Wired tells its readers of Russia having a "Grand Strategy" – to undermine Western democracies, and multilateral alliances from NATO to the European Union.

With foreboding, it warns: "[T]he Putin regime's systematic effort to undermine and destabilize democracies has become the subject of urgent focus in the West the biggest challenge to the Western order since the fall of the Berlin Wall".

The salient point here is that despite its grandiose professional claims, Wired provides nothing of substance to support the narrative that Russia hacked into the US election. If a supposed cutting-edge technology magazine can't deliver on technical details, then that really does demonstrate just how bankrupt the whole Russia-gate story is.

Moreover, another nail in the coffin for the Russia-gate narrative was recently provided by a respected group of former US intelligence officers called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Last month, the group wrote to President Trump with their expert analysis that the DNC incident was not a hack conducted via the internet, but rather that the information came from a DNC insider. In other words, the information was a leak, not a hack, in which the data was transferred by person out of the DNC offices on a memory disk. In that case, Russian agents or any other internet agents could not have possibly been involved. The key finding in the VIPS analysis is that the information obtained from the DNC computers was so vast in file size, it could not have been downloaded over the internet in the time period indicated by meta-data.

It is relevant that Wikileaks editor Julian Assange has consistently denied US intelligence and media claims that his source was Russian hackers. Also, former British ambassador Craig Murray has confirmed that he knows the identity of the source for Wikileaks and that, as the dissenting veteran US intelligence people have assessed, the information was leaked, not hacked.

In sum, the Russia-gate story that the US Deep State and media have peddled non-stop for seven months is on its knees gasping for lack of credibility.

Even a supposed top technology publication, Wired, is embarrassingly vacant of any details on how alleged Russian hackers are supposed to have interfered in the US election to get Trump into the White House. As if to compensate for its dearth of detail, the Wired publication pads out its "big story" with hackneyed Russophobia worthy of a corny James Bond knock-off.

Not only that, but now technical details and expert analysis are emerging from credible former US intelligence personnel who are verifying that the Russia-gate story is indeed a hoax.

The Deep State and other political/media opponents of Trump are inevitably scrabbling for alternative means of sabotaging his presidency. They are finding that the Russia-gate ploy to get Trump out of the White House is in danger of collapsing from lack of evidence and from the emergence of a plausible explanation for the DNC breach that damaged Clinton's election campaign. The bottomline is: it wasn't the Russians, so all the hype about Trump being a Russian stooge is a case of fake news, just as Trump has long maintained.

The imminent death of the Russia-gate "scandal" is giving way to the next orchestrated campaign to oust Trump in the form of allegations that the president is a "Neo-Nazi sympathizer". Trump's nationalistic America First views may be suspect, even reprehensible in their wider association. That's not the point. The point is the concerted, orchestrated way that the Deep State will rail-road the new campaign to oust Trump in place of the failing Russia-gate ploy. The contempt for democratic process raises the question of who the more dangerous American fascists are?

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.

This article was first published by Strategic Culture Foundation

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

[Aug 20, 2017] A De-Putin-Nazification of America Update

Notable quotes:
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
Aug 20, 2017 | www.unz.com

Given the current level of hysteria, few people are going to check your facts. This is one you can really have fun with. See how far you can push the paranoia. Make up elaborate conspiracy theories. If you're not quite sure how to go about that, check The New York Times or The Washington Post they're masters of that kind of thing.

Your anti-Nazi loyalty oath should definitely not include any of the following:

(1) Any mention of the Ukrainian Nazis that Obama, Clinton, and the rest of the Resistance (before it was the Resistance, of course) helped regime-change the Ukrainian government when it wouldn't play ball with the EU and NATO. Mentioning the Resistance's support of these Nazis would only confuse those reading your oath, who might not understand that there are good Nazis and bad Nazis, and who have probably forgotten how the US government smuggled a number of actual Nazis (i.e., members of the NSDAP) into America after WWII or how, since the end of that war, the United States has mass murdered countless millions of people all over the planet (but, technically, not in a genocidal fashion, so that doesn't make us the same as Nazis).

(2) Actual membership figures on neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups, because those figures are pathetically small. Doing this would make your loyalty oath (not to mention the whole Nazi hysteria thing, generally) seem, if not paranoid, then at least absurd, or like part of some manufactured effort to whip up support for a ruling class coup by waving Nazis in front of everyone's faces. This would be extremely counterproductive. Remember, one of the primary goals of the De-Putin-Nazification program is to convince the public that Richard Spencer (and the handful of other insignificant idiots that the corporate media is showering with publicity) is about to lead an overwhelming force of tiki torch-bearing neo-Nazis into the streets of American cities to battle the hyper-militarized police, the national guard, and the US military, or some other preposterous scenario like that.

(3) Any reference whatsoever to the corporatocracy that runs the country, and that normally decides who can run for president, and which is currently making an example of Trump in order to dissuade any future billionaires from having the audacity to fuck with them. You'll be better off avoiding this subject entirely, as it only reminds folks how screwed they are, and how, odds are, they're probably all worked up about something the corporate-owned media wanted to get them all worked up about, neo-Nazis, Russian hackers, nuclear war with North Korea, Syrian gas attacks, lone wolf terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, or whatever. Take it from someone who's worked in show business. No one likes being made aware of how they are being manipulated or provided with a binary set of officially acceptable contextual parameters within which they can think and speak.

But don't worry too much about that binary stuff. There'll be plenty of time to get into all that after we rid the world of these Nazis, and these racists, and all these Confederate statues. And Trump, of course. That's the main thing getting rid of Donald Trump, and getting a Democrat back in office. Oh, yeah and the books. We need to look at the books. God knows how many Confederate books are still out there in the public libraries, and in people's homes, where children can read them. We'll need to get to the books eventually.

In the meantime, focus on Priority One. Go hard on the Nazi hysteria, at least throughout the rest of the weekend, after which they'll probably need to switch us back to the Russia hysteria, or possibly the North Korea hysteria, or damn, see? Here I go with that contextual parameter stuff again. I've really got to stop doing that. The last thing I need is to get myself accused of being some kind of Nazi sympathizer, or Confederate apologist, or Russian propagandist, or extremist, or terrorist, or, you know whatever.

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org

Brabantian > , Website August 19, 2017 at 9:37 am GMT

Indeed it is hysteria & the madness of crowds in the USA, to a degree never seen before in our lifetimes

Perhaps the cleverness of Trump & others with him, is instinctively understanding that, this hysteria cannot be directly defused given its elite & corp media support, but now the fire must simply be left to run its course, until it burns itself out, in the end forcing a widespread recognition of the absurdity, & enduring shame for those who fostered it

This may explain including such nominal feints such as the jettisoning of 'goy' top advisor Steve Bannon to give the antifa etc hysterics more fuel for their fires

Interesting article by, of all people, David P Goldman aka 'Spengler' of Asia Times, arguing that Donald Trump may at the moment be making an extremely clever riverboat gamble -

Siding with the more common-sense ordinary people of both USA Democrat & Republican political parties, as those parties implode and split into pieces, & possibly building a new, core, more sensible political centre once the current hysteria has run its course

Trump will reach out to Democratic voters who are alienated from a leadership that has devoted most of its energy to a radical social agenda instead of bread-and-butter solutions, and he will appear to a majority of his own party. I do not know whether he will succeed; if he does, the self-inflicted wounds to the erstwhile arbiters of American opinion will be fatal.

'The Bloody Shirt of Charlottesville and its unintended consequences'

http://www.atimes.com/unintended-consequences-charlottesville/

Renoman > , August 19, 2017 at 10:54 am GMT

Good article, thank you.

War for Blair Mountain > , August 19, 2017 at 11:39 am GMT

When all the Confederate Statutes are taken down, what replaces them?

The Anti-fascist replacement:go google photos of Hillary Clinton pick the Hillary Clinton photo with Hillary wearing the most hideous of her pantsuits that's the one that will replace General Lee .A statue of a psychopathic War Criminal bulldyke who was organized and gave the order to mass murder Conservative Russian Christians in the Eastern Ukraine on behalf of Neo-Nazis.

Hillary Clinton created Al QUEDA and ISIS .enabler of Ukraino Nazis ..

Hillary Clinton..the poster girl for the Antifa Tranny Freaks .and the cucked White Protestant Male Ministers standing up to hate in Charlottesville

anonymous > , Disclaimer August 19, 2017 at 12:58 pm GMT

Nicely provocative, an essay that seems more likely than a lot published here to get through to Americans not yet divided-and-conquered.

Another way to help people you know and care about to get beyond the TV-level dumbshittery afflicting the country: posit whether ANY statue, plaque, etc., of ANY politician, military "hero," or other person being thus celebrated for exercising governmental authority is worth funding with taxation, much less squabbling over.

Every sheep gets sheared.

Michael Kenny > , August 19, 2017 at 2:14 pm GMT

Yet another panic reaction to Charlottesville, I suppose. Small correction of fact: the Ukrainian government wasn't overthrown when it wouldn't play ball with the EU and NATO. Quite the contrary, indeed. It was when Yanukovych decided that he would sign the EU association agreement that he was overthrown or, more correctly, that he simply fled. NATO was never an issue. As with Mr Zuesse, the polemical style and the pro-Putin line suggest growing fear in the pro-Putin camp.

Seamus Padraig > , August 19, 2017 at 3:48 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny Yet another panic reaction to Charlottesville, I suppose. Small correction of fact: the Ukrainian government wasn't overthrown when it wouldn't play ball with the EU and NATO. Quite the contrary, indeed. It was when Yanukovych decided that he would sign the EU association agreement that he was overthrown or, more correctly, that he simply fled. NATO was never an issue. As with Mr Zuesse, the polemical style and the pro-Putin line suggest growing fear in the pro-Putin camp. As usual, you're dead wrong. Yanuvovich ultimately did not sign the EU agreement:

The political provisions of the treaty were signed on 21 March 2014 after a series of events that had stalled its ratification culminated in a revolution in Ukraine and overthrow of the then incumbent President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. This ousting was sparked by Yanukovych's refusal to sign the agreement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93European_Union_Association_Agreement

As far as NATO is concerned, it is unlikely that Ukraine will be joining in the near future, because of Transnistria and because it has two border disputes with Russia. But the country can still be used as a cat's paw to get at Russia (just like Georgia under Sakashvili), which is even better from Washington's point of view, since they don't even have to give the Ukies any security guarantees if they get into trouble with Russia (again, just like Georgia under Sakashvili).

Anon > , Disclaimer August 19, 2017 at 7:05 pm GMT

You are right, hypocrisy rules. What else is new? Civil war has nothing to do with what happened in Charlottesville. These monuments stood for ~100 years or longer and caused no violence. It is important to face this fact, as well as the fact that the violence in Charlottesville was started by self-proclaimed "liberals". Considering how shamelessly they push lies in the media and how they violently suppress any opinion that differs from theirs, these "liberals" are anything but. What we are witnessing is yet another string of provocations by those who are sore that their beloved mad witch spent twice as much money as Trump and lost. Mind you, I am no fan of Trump, but I don't trust that lying corrupt to the core "alternative" an inch. As far as Hillary is concerned, from my viewpoint her gender does not matter. What matters is massive fraud in the Democratic primaries (that's why Debbie Wasserman-Schulz resigned as a head of DNC in 2016 right before the convention she presumably prepared), as well as the fact that Hillary never gave a speech w/o at least $100,000 "speaking fee", took vast amounts of money from the most unsavory sources, including Saudi Arabia (the same one that murders people by public beheading with a curved sword, exactly like ISIS, and keeps murdering hundreds of civilians in Yemen), and was openly supported by the most notorious neocons from both parties. I would not trust a male with this kind of record, either.
Trump's words that removal of monuments is "sad" and "so foolish" arguably are his first intelligent utterance in months. History does not change no matter what people do, and it has a way of punishing those who forget or try to erase it. Only cowardly scum fights monuments. I am deeply ashamed that some scenes from my country resemble those earlier seen in hopeless basket cases, like present-day Ukraine.

SolontoCroesus > , August 19, 2017 at 9:32 pm GMT

@Priss Factor https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/898978484709666821

Look, events in Boston vindicating the Alt Right narrative in Charlottesville.

All the violence is instigated by 'counter-protesters', as the globalist CBS calls them.

They are Antifanissary thugs and lunatics who oppose free speech and side with Wall Street and the War State.

I'm glad this event happened. At this event, there were no Confed flags, no one with Nazi flag, and no extremists.

There were only patriots defending free speech, but the Antifanissary scum attack just the same.

Trump should talk about this.

Globalist War on Free Speech and Free Assembly.

Barking dogs on leash who can't tolerate the howl of free wolves.

Thank the Police on this. The State, in this case, defended those defending freedom of speech and assembly.

But the Corporations will all side with PC Proglodytes.
But there will be blowback. Just like the Jihadis supported by the US turned on the West, these Antifa scum will turn around and bite the corpies.

In a way, the bogeyman of 'nazi' is very useful to corporations. Capitalists know that the Far Left hates them and wanna smash windows, burn down Starbucks, create havoc in upscale cities like Seattle, and etc. And capitalists fear BLM and black thugs too.

If 'nazis' didn't exist, these restless Antifa and BLM would likely be doing Occupy Wall Street, rioting in gentrified parts of town, attacking yuppies and hipsters, and attacking GREED.

But if there are 'nazis' as bogeyman, the corporations can direct all Antifa and BLM rage at the 'white supremacists' who actually have no power and wealth.
Also, as having sponsored the Antifa and BLM, the corpies hope that the far-left and black thugs will be grateful and not attack them.

But there is blowback sometime down the line. you've made an important point, Priss: "Nazi," "Hitler," "Swastika" and "Holocaust ™ " are brands created by and for corporate interests; the narrative behind these brands does NOT represent history, it is the product of Bernays/hasbara. That is, its basic appeal is to emotion, deliberately bypassing reason and critical analysis.

Corporatists, zionists and Jews *** are striking back as hard as they are, and attempting to associate "hate" with "Nazi" as often as they can, in an exercise in Brand Spanking: as Sam Shama let slip the other day, spanking the Nazi etc. brand is essential because more and more people are waking up .

Charlottesville was, indeed, a set-up: some PR shop managed the affair and cucksertive media are following the script to a Tee.

On C Span on Aug 15, John McArdle hosted an exercise in propaganda so obvious you have to wonder if UVa might consider rescinding his diploma. McArdle invited callers to opine on Trump's statement on the C'ville events; in the 61 minute program, he spoke the word "hate" 41 times: once every 90 seconds.

"Hate" was associated with "white" at every opportunity.
If a caller failed to link "hate" with "white/supremacists/nationalist," McArdle prompted them to do so.

https://www.c-span.org/schedule/?date=2017-08-15

The history of the era of the European-Jewish wars is a radically different entity from the branding.

Before the history can be made more fully consistent with reality -- an absolute essential for a the "well informed citizens" in a representative form of government -- the "Nazi" etc. brands have got to be torn apart: shattered, fragmented.

One of Eddie Bermays's first triumphs was to persuade elite women that smoking cigarettes was chic.

Years and many deaths later, cigarettes now carry a warning from the Surgeon General that cigarettes can kill you.

The same thing has to happen to the deadly way the Jewish PR/media has bastardized "Nazi" Hitler" "Swastika" .

It must be made clear in every instance that the people who inserted the toxic ingredients in those brands had only their own revenue stream in view, and not full and truthful information for the American public.

!!!

*** Jews -- and they can be named & should be shamed -- were at the vanguard of branding "Nazi" "Hitler" and "Swastika" with the epithet Hate nearly a decade before a single hair on a Jewish head was so much as mussed: James Waterman Wise, son of Rabbi Stephen Wise, published a book titled "Swastika" in about May, 1933.
The book opened with the declaration that "the swastika represents hatred of the Jew."

https://www.amazon.com/Swastika-Nazi-terror-James-Waterman/dp/B00086B93S/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1472385235&sr=8-3&keywords=swastika+the+nazi+terror

In fact, and contrary to the sappy tale related in some video docs, the design of the Swastika/banner is based on a Harvard banner https://www.shutterstock.com/editor/image/197551868?exit=%2Fimage-photo%2F197551868&ref=image-photo (in the 1800s, Harvard football banners borethe letter H in a white shield, on a red field) , just as "Seig Heil" is based on Harvard football cheers.

SolontoCroesus > , August 20, 2017 at 1:58 am GMT

@Anon I've listened to nearly a 24-hour day's worth of C Span programming about Charlottesville; I've heard "hate" and "Nazi" and "KKK" and "white supremacy" said so many time my ears are numb and my cerebral cortex overdosed.

I have NOT heard, in all that C Span programming, one, single, solitary guest or journo-phoner discuss what Robert E. Lee stood for; or his correspondence with Lord Acton, about the necessity of state sovereignty to guard against an oppressive centralized power that could take a country to war with no bulwark against its force.

Incredibly -- and I have to post this for all to see: a Jewish woman called C Span to complain that Jewish interests were not represented in C Span programming on Charlottesville.
Here's what she said:

Moderator: Let's go to Virginia Beach, Virginia; Betty is on the line for Democrats:

BETTY: Good morning. Thank you for C Span. I want to say one thing. The two gentlemen you just had on were fine, *** but I'm extremely disappointed because I happen to be Jewish and I was in Connecticut, which I'm originally from Newtown, Connecticut [and spent ] the last weekend there visiting my family there.
I heard more news when I got home. But what I'm disappointed about -- I don't know if C Span ever invited -- I know you've had Jewish people on talking before, but with the Charlottesville thing, I don't know if you've invited anybody from the Anti Defamation League or a rabbi or some other Jewish person to come on, representing a group, because it's awful with the KKK but it's also awful with these Nazis marching -- Nazis marching down in Charlottesville! Both groups are – are- are terrible. It was a horrible thing to see such a thing in 2017 in the United States of America.
And one other thing, and I mean, these other networks, I mean, I don't just sit home and watch TV but I watch C Span, I watch CNN, I watch MSNBC quite a bit --
I haven't seen too many uh Jewish commentators come out and talk. And I really I appreciate and respect the Black commentators that have come on, but I don't know why there hasn't just! Let me make one more comment please:
All the Jews and people of color that are in -- I don't think there's too many, but the ones that are in the Trump administration really should resign after what he said.
I'm glad Steve Bannon is gone. But he uh he uh Trump himself in my opinion is a sympathizer to these groups, that's how I feel, I mean that's how I feel.
And just, I mean, y'know uh uh they're wimps, and especially his son-in-law. He's supposed to be an Orthodox Jew? No, I'm not even a religious Jew, but I mean in my heart, that's what I am. But I mean, he's a wimp! He shouldn't be in there with his father-in-law! He should get up and walk out! That's how I feel.
And real quick !I was so proud to get a letter from President Obama -- I was always going to write him -- I always been a big supporter of his from the very very beginning. And uh I wrote him a letter before he left office, and now I have a framed letter from President Obama on my wall and I'm very very grateful for that.
Thank you very much for allowing me to make my comments.I00:10:04

Mod. Geoff Bennett: Thank you for your suggestion about our programming. We will take it under consideration.

In fact, several persons who are "Jewish in their hearts" (or at least their names) appeared on C Span to explain the many sins of the "white supremacists."

Several highly informative Black people also were guests at the C Span table. Two of them, Robert Woodson and Prof. Bernard Anderson of Princeton University, were highly critical of the cult of victimization that is besetting the Black community. https://www.c-span.org/video/?432749-4/washington-journal-robert-woodson-bernard-anderson-discuss-race-relations-us

Over the course of 6 days, I heard only ONE (white male) guest who had been on the scene, who had a journalist's eye, and who provided a larger perspective than "Nazis . . . hate . . . white supremacist." That was Joe Thomas, a Charlottesville-based conservative radio talk show host with 30 years experience in the city. His commentary is here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?432556-3/charlottesville-radio-host-discusses-aftermath-white-nationalist-protests-violence

The one group (in addition to sound historians on Robert E Lee) that was not represented in C Span program over the course of this hysteria was a single representative of the Unite the Right project.

There are plenty of articulate voices that C Span could have hosted to better inform its audience.

Paul Craig Roberts's article, here ,

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/08/15/america-propaganda-vanquished-truth/

would make a very useful contribution to the knowledge-base of the C Span audience.

Surely C Span producers are aware of the work of persons like Roberts, and of Giraldi and Ray McGovern.

They don't want those voices to be heard.

Go get 'em, Betty; the world is your (kosher) oyster.

[Aug 19, 2017] Vassal Aristocracies Increasingly Resist Control by US Aristocracy by Eric Zuesse

Notable quotes:
"... the ultimate driving force behind today's international news is the aristocracy that the MIC represents, the billionaires behind the MIC, because theirs is the collective will that drives the MIC ..."
"... The MIC is their collective arm, and their collective fist. It is not the American public's global enforcer; it is the American aristocracy's fist, around the world. ..."
"... The MIC (via its military contractors such as Lockheed Martin) also constitutes a core part of the U.S. aristocracy's wealth (the part that's extracted from the U.S. taxpaying public via the U.S. government), and also (by means of those privately-owned contractors, plus the taxpayer-funded U.S. armed forces) it protects these aristocrats' wealth in foreign countries. Though paid by the U.S. government, the MIC does the protection-and-enforcement jobs for the nation's super-rich. ..."
"... So, the MIC is the global bully's fist, and the global bully is the U.S. aristocracy -- America's billionaires, most especially the controlling stockholders in the U.S.-based international corporations. These are the people the U.S. government actually represents . The links document this, and it's essential to know, if one is to understand current events. ..."
"... This massacre didn't play well on local Crimean television. Immediately, a movement to secede and to again become a part of Russia started, and spread like wildfire in Crimea. (Crimea had been only involuntarily transferred from Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954; it had been part of Russia for the hundreds of years prior to 1954. It was culturally Russian.) Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, said that if they'd vote for it in a referendum, then Russia would accept them back into the Russian Federation and provide them protection as Russian citizens. ..."
"... The latest round of these sanctions was imposed not by Executive Order from a U.S. President, but instead by a new U.S. law, "H.R.3364 -- Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" , which in July 2017 was passed by 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House , and which not only stated outright lies (endorsed there by virtually everyone in Congress), but which was backed up by lies from the U.S. Intelligence Community that were accepted and endorsed totally uncritically by 98 Senators and 419 Representatives . (One might simply assume that all of those Senators and Representatives were ignorant of the way things work and were not intentionally lying in order to vote for these lies from the Intelligence Community, but these people actually wouldn't have wrangled their ways into Congress and gotten this far at the game if they hadn't already known that the U.S. Intelligence Community is designed not only to inform the President but to help him to deceive the public and therefore can't be trusted by anyone but the President . ..."
"... Good summary of where we're at, but please don't call the ruling goons aristocrats. The word, "aristocrat," is derived from the Ancient Greek ἄριστος (áristos, "best"), and the ruling thugs in this country have never been the best at anything except lies, murder and theft ..."
"... I realize that calling them violent bloodthirsty sociopathic parasites is a mouthful, and that "plutacrats" doesn't have quite the appropriate sting, but perhaps it's more accurate. ..."
"... They also -- through the joint action of Rating Agencies, the Anglosaxon media, the vassal vassal states' media, make national debt's yield spreads skyrocket. It's been the way to make entire governments tumble in Europe, as well as force ministers for economics to resign. After obeisance has been restored -- and an "ex Goldman Sachs man" put on the presidential/ministerial chair, usually -- investors magically find back their trust in the nation's economic stability, and yield spreads return to their usual level. ..."
"... First, he delineates the American Elites well. The USA forged by Abe Lincoln is not a real democracy, not a real republic. It is the worst kind of oligarchy: one based on love of money almost exclusively (because if a man does not love money well enough to be bribed, then he cannot be trusted by plutocrats) while proclaiming itself focused on helping all the little guys of the world overcome the power of the rich oppressors. ..."
Aug 14, 2017 | www.unz.com

The tumultuous events that dominate international news today cannot be accurately understood outside of their underlying context, which connects them together, into a broader narrative -- the actual history of our time . History makes sense, even if news-reports about these events don't. Propagandistic motivations cause such essential facts to be reported little (if at all) in the news, so that the most important matters for the public to know, get left out of news-accounts about those international events.

The purpose here will be to provide that context, for our time.

First, this essential background will be summarized; then, it will be documented (via the links that will be provided here), up till the present moment -- the current news: America's aristocracy controls both the U.S. federal government and press , but (as will be documented later here) is facing increasing resistance from its many vassal (subordinate) aristocracies around the world (popularly called "America's allied nations"); and this growing international resistance presents a new challenge to the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC), which is controlled by that same aristocracy and enforces their will worldwide. The MIC is responding to the demands of its aristocratic master. This response largely drives international events today (which countries get invaded, which ones get overthrown by coups, etc.), but the ultimate driving force behind today's international news is the aristocracy that the MIC represents, the billionaires behind the MIC, because theirs is the collective will that drives the MIC. The MIC is their collective arm, and their collective fist. It is not the American public's global enforcer; it is the American aristocracy's fist, around the world.

The MIC (via its military contractors such as Lockheed Martin) also constitutes a core part of the U.S. aristocracy's wealth (the part that's extracted from the U.S. taxpaying public via the U.S. government), and also (by means of those privately-owned contractors, plus the taxpayer-funded U.S. armed forces) it protects these aristocrats' wealth in foreign countries. Though paid by the U.S. government, the MIC does the protection-and-enforcement jobs for the nation's super-rich.

Furthermore, the MIC is crucial to them in other ways, serving not only directly as their "policeman to the world," but also indirectly (by that means) as a global protection-racket that keeps their many subordinate aristocracies in line, under their control -- and that threatens those foreign aristocrats with encroachments against their own territory, whenever a vassal aristocracy resists the master-aristocracy's will. (International law is never enforced against the U.S., not even after it invaded Iraq in 2003.) So, the MIC is the global bully's fist, and the global bully is the U.S. aristocracy -- America's billionaires, most especially the controlling stockholders in the U.S.-based international corporations. These are the people the U.S. government actually represents . The links document this, and it's essential to know, if one is to understand current events.

For the first time ever, a global trend is emerging toward declining control of the world by America's billionaire-class -- into the direction of ultimately replacing the U.S. Empire, by increasingly independent trading-blocs: alliances between aristocracies, replacing this hierarchical control of one aristocracy over another. Ours is becoming a multi-polar world, and America's aristocracy is struggling mightily against this trend, desperate to continue remaining the one global imperial power -- or, as U.S. President Barack Obama often referred to the U.S. government, "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come." To America's aristocrats, all other nations than the U.S. are "dispensable." All American allies have to accept it. This is the imperial mindset, both for the master, and for the vassal. The uni-polar world can't function otherwise. Vassals must pay (extract from their nation's public, and then transfer) protection-money, to the master, in order to be safe -- to retain their existing power, to exploit their given nation's public.

The recently growing role of economic sanctions (more accurately called "Weaponization of finance" ) by the United States and its vassals, has been central to the operation of this hierarchical imperial system, but is now being increasingly challenged from below, by some of the vassals. Alliances are breaking up over America's mounting use of sanctions, and new alliances are being formed and cemented to replace the imperial system -- replace it by a system without any clear center of global power, in the world that we're moving into. Economic sanctions have been the U.S. empire's chief weapon to impose its will against any challengers to U.S. global control, and are thus becoming the chief locus of the old order's fractures .

This global order cannot be maintained by the MIC alone; the more that the MIC fails (such as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, ), the more that economic sanctions rise to become the essential tool of the imperial masters. We are increasingly in the era of economic sanctions. And, now, we're entering the backlash-phase of it.

A turning-point in escalating the weaponization of finance was reached in February 2014 when a Ukrainian coup that the Obama Administration had started planning by no later than 2011, culminated successfully in installing a rabidly anti-Russian government on Russia's border, and precipitated the breakaway from Ukraine of two regions (Crimea and Donbass) that had voted overwhelmingly for the man the U.S. regime had just overthrown . This coup in Ukraine was the most direct aggressive act against Russia since the Cold War had 'ended' (it had actually ended on the Russian side, but not on the American side, where it continues ) in 1991. During this coup in Kiev, on February 20th of 2014, hundreds of Crimeans, who had been peacefully demonstrating there with placards against this coup (which coup itself was very violent -- against the police, not by them -- the exact opposite of the way that "the Maidan demonstrations" had been portrayed in the Western press at the time), were attacked by the U.S.-paid thugs and scrambled back into their buses to return home to Crimea but were stopped en-route in central Ukraine and an uncounted number of them were massacred in the Ukrainian town of Korsun by the same group of thugs who had chased them out of Kiev .

This massacre didn't play well on local Crimean television. Immediately, a movement to secede and to again become a part of Russia started, and spread like wildfire in Crimea. (Crimea had been only involuntarily transferred from Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954; it had been part of Russia for the hundreds of years prior to 1954. It was culturally Russian.) Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, said that if they'd vote for it in a referendum, then Russia would accept them back into the Russian Federation and provide them protection as Russian citizens.

On 6 March 2014, U.S. President Obama issued "Executive Order -- Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine" , and ignored the internationally recognized-in-law right of self-determination of peoples (though he recognized that right in Catalonia and in Scotland), and he instead simply declared that Ukraine's "sovereignty" over Crimea was sacrosanct (even though it had been imposed upon Crimeans by the Soviet dictator -- America's enemy -- in 1954, during the Soviet era, when America opposed, instead of favored and imposed, dictatorship around the world, except in Iran and Guatemala, where America imposed dictatorships even that early). Obama's Executive Order was against unnamed "persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean region without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine." He insisted that the people who had just grabbed control of Ukraine and massacred Crimeans (his own Administration's paid far-right Ukrainian thugs, who were racist anti-Russians ), must be allowed to rule Crimea, regardless of what Crimeans (traditionally a part of Russia) might -- and did -- want. America's vassal aristocracies then imposed their own sanctions against Russia when on 16 March 2014 Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to rejoin the Russian Federation . Thus started the successive rounds of economic sanctions against Russia, by the U.S. government and its vassal-nations . (As is shown by that link, they knew that this had been a coup and no authentic 'democratic revolution' such as the Western press was portraying it to have been, and yet they kept quiet about it -- a secret their public would not be allowed to know.)

The latest round of these sanctions was imposed not by Executive Order from a U.S. President, but instead by a new U.S. law, "H.R.3364 -- Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" , which in July 2017 was passed by 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House , and which not only stated outright lies (endorsed there by virtually everyone in Congress), but which was backed up by lies from the U.S. Intelligence Community that were accepted and endorsed totally uncritically by 98 Senators and 419 Representatives . (One might simply assume that all of those Senators and Representatives were ignorant of the way things work and were not intentionally lying in order to vote for these lies from the Intelligence Community, but these people actually wouldn't have wrangled their ways into Congress and gotten this far at the game if they hadn't already known that the U.S. Intelligence Community is designed not only to inform the President but to help him to deceive the public and therefore can't be trusted by anyone but the President .

It's basic knowledge about the U.S. government, and they know it, though the public don't.) The great independent columnist Paul Craig Roberts headlined on August 1st, "Trump's Choices" and argued that President Donald Trump should veto the bill despite its overwhelming support in Washington, but instead Trump signed it into law on August 2nd and thus joined participation in the overt stage -- the Obama stage -- of the U.S. government's continuation of the Cold War that U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush had secretly instituted against Russia on 24 February 1990 , and that, under Obama, finally escalated into a hot war against Russia. The first phase of this hot war against Russia is via the "Weaponization of finance" (those sanctions). However, as usual, it's also backed up by major increases in physical weaponry , and by the cooperation of America's vassals in order to surround Russia with nuclear weapons near and on Russia's borders , in preparation for a possible blitz first-strike nuclear attack upon Russia -- preparations that the Russian people know about and greatly fear, but which are largely hidden by the Western press, and therefore only very few Westerners are aware that their own governments have become lying aggressors.

Some excellent news-commentaries have been published about this matter, online, by a few 'alternative news' sites (and that 'alt-news' group includes all of the reliably honest news-sites, but also includes unfortunately many sites that are as dishonest as the mainstream ones are -- and that latter type aren't being referred to here), such as (and only the best sites and articles will be linked-to on this):

All three of those articles discuss how these new sanctions are driving other nations to separate themselves, more and more, away from the economic grip of the U.S. aristocracy, and to form instead their own alliances with one-another, so as to defend themselves, collectively, from U.S. economic (if not also military) aggression. Major recent news-developments on this, have included (all here from rt dot com):

"'US, EU meddle in other countries & kill people under guise of human rights concerns' – Duterte", and presented Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte explaining why he rejects the U.S. aristocracy's hypocritical pronouncements and condemnations regarding its vassals among the world's poorer and struggling nations, such as his. Of course, none of this information is publishable in the West -- in the Western 'democracies'. It's 'fake news', as far as The Empire is concerned. So, if you're in The (now declining) Empire, you're not supposed to be reading this. That's why the mainstream 'news'media (to all of which this article is being submitted for publication, without fee, for any of them that want to break their existing corrupt mold) don't publish this sort of news -- 'fake news' (that's of the solidly documented type, such as this). You'll see such news reported only in the few honest newsmedia. The rule for the aristocracy's 'news'media is: report what happened, only on the basis of the government's lies as to why it happened -- never expose such lies (the official lies). What's official is 'true' . That, too, is an essential part of the imperial system.

The front cover of the American aristocracy's TIME magazine's Asian edition, dated September 25, 2016, had been headlined "Night Falls on the Philippines: The tragic cost of President Duterte's war on drugs" . The 'news'-story, which was featured inside not just the Asian but all editions, was "Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's War On Drugs" , and it portrayed Duterte as a far-right demagogue who was giving his nation's police free reign to murder anyone they wished to, especially the poor. On 17 July 2017, China's Xinhua News Agency bannered "Philippines' Duterte enjoys high approval rating at 82 percent: poll" , and reported: "A survey by Pulse Asia Inc. conducted from June 24 to June 29 showed that 82 percent of the 1,200 people surveyed nationwide approved the way Duterte runs the country. Out of all the respondents, the poll said 13 percent were undecided about Duterte's performance, while 5 percent disapproved Duterte's performance. Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June last year, ends his single, six-year term in 2022." Obviously, it's not likely that the TIME cover story had actually been honest. But, of course, America's billionaires are even more eager to overthrow Russia's President, Putin.

Western polling firms can freely poll Russians, and do poll them on lots but not on approval or disapproval of President Putin , because he always scores above 80%, and America's aristocrats also don't like finding that confirmed, and certainly don't want to report it. Polling is routinely done in Russia, by Russian pollsters, on voters' ratings of approval/disapproval of Putin's performance. Because America's aristocrats don't like the findings, they say that Russians are in such fear of Putin they don't tell the truth about this, or else that Russia's newsmedia constantly lie about him to cover up the ugly reality about him.

However, the Western academic journal Post-Soviet Affairs (which is a mainstream Western publication) included in their January/February 2017 issue a study, "Is Putin's Popularity Real?" and the investigators reported the results of their own poll of Russians, which was designed to tap into whether such fear exists and serves as a distorting factor in those Russian polls, but concluded that the findings in Russia's polls could not be explained by any such factor; and that, yes, Putin's popularity among Russians is real. The article's closing words were: "Our results suggest that the main obstacle at present to the emergence of a widespread opposition movement to Putin is not that Russians are afraid to voice their disapproval of Putin, but that Putin is in fact quite popular."

The U.S. aristocracy's efforts to get resistant heads-of-state overthrown by 'democratic revolutions' (which usually is done by the U.S. government to overthrow democratically elected Presidents -- such as Mossadegh, Arbenz, Allende, Zelaya, Yanukovych, and attempted against Assad, and wished against Putin, and against Duterte -- not overthrowing dictators such as the U.S. government always claims) have almost consistently failed, and therefore coups and invasions have been used instead, but those techniques demand that certain realities be suppressed by their 'news'media in order to get the U.S. public to support what the government has done -- the U.S. government's international crime, which is never prosecuted. Lying 'news' media in order to 'earn' the American public's support, does not produce enthusiastic support, but, at best, over the long term, it produces only tepid support (support that's usually below the level of that of the governments the U.S. overthrows). U.S. Presidents never score above 80% except when they order an invasion in response to a violent attack by foreigners, such as happened when George W. Bush attacked Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11, but those 80%+ approval ratings fade quickly; and, after the 1960s, U.S. Presidential job-approvals have generally been below 60% .

President Trump's ratings are currently around 40%. Although Trump is not as conservative -- not as far-right -- as the U.S. aristocracy wants him to be, he is fascist ; just not enough to satisfy them (and their oppostion isn't because he's unpopular among the public; it's more the case that he's unpopular largely because their 'news'media concentrate on his bads, and distort his goods to appear bad -- e.g., suggesting that he's not sufficiently aggressive against Russia). His fascism on domestic affairs is honestly reported in the aristocracy's 'news'media, which appear to be doing all they can to get him replaced by his Vice President, Mike Pence. What's not reported by their media is the fascism of the U.S. aristocracy itself, and of their international agenda (global conquest). That's their secret, of which their public must be (and is) constantly kept ignorant. America's aristocracy has almost as much trouble contolling its domestic public as it has controlling its foreign vassals. Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .

Recently from Author

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Fidelios Automata > , August 19, 2017 at 2:22 am GMT

Fascism is defined as a system that combines private monopolies and despotic government power. It is sometimes racist but not necessarily so. By the correct definition, every President since at least Herbert Hoover has been fascist to some degree.

exiled off mainstreet > , August 19, 2017 at 4:21 am GMT

One bit of silver lining in the deep-state propaganda effort to destabilise the Trump regime is the damage to the legitimacy of the yankee imperium it confers, making it easier for vassal states to begin to jump ship. The claims of extraterritorial power used for economic warfare might confer a similar benefit, since the erstwhile allies will want to escape the dominance of the yankee dollar to be able to escape the economic extortion practised by the yankee regime to achieve its control abroad.

WorkingClass > , August 19, 2017 at 4:43 am GMT

Good news – The beast is dying. Bad news – We Americans are in its belly.

Wally > , August 19, 2017 at 6:00 am GMT

"America's aristocracy" = lying Israel First Zionists. Why doesn't Eric Zuesse just say the truth? What is he afraid of?

Must read:

jilles dykstra > , August 19, 2017 at 6:31 am GMT

" America's aristocracy has almost as much trouble controlling its domestic public as it has controlling its foreign vassals. "

These foreign vassals had a cozy existence as long as the USA made it clear it wanted to control the world. Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs Ben Bot made this quite clear whan the Netherlands did not have a USA ambassador for three months or so, Ben Bot complained to the USA that there should be a USA ambassador.
He was not used to take decisions all by himself.

Right now Europe's queen Merkel has the same problem, unlike Obama Trump does not hold her hand.

Grandpa Charlie > , August 19, 2017 at 6:38 am GMT

Fidelios,

Yes, of course. I don't know about before Herbert Hoover, but certainly during the 50s, business -- monopolistic or oligopolistic (like the old Detroit auto industry) -- and government (including the MIC) were closely integrated. Such was, indeed, as aspect of progressivism. It was considered by most to be a good thing, or at least to be the natural and normal state of affairs. Certainly, the system back then included what amounted to price-fixing as a normal business practice.

On the other hand, the "despotic" thing is less clear. Some assert that since FDR was effectively a dictator during World War II, that therefore the Democratic Party represented despotism ever since FDR (or maybe ever since Wilson).

Having lived through that period of time, I have to say that I am not so sure about that: if it was despotism, it was a heavily democratic and beneficent despotism. However, it is evident that there was a fascist skein running through the entirety of USA's political history throughout the 20th Century.

jilles dykstra > , August 19, 2017 at 6:40 am GMT

@Fidelios Automata

Fascism originates from Mussolini's Italy. It was anti socialist and anti communist, it of course was pro Italian, Italy's great deeds in antiquity, the Roman empire, were celebrated.

One can see this as racist, but as Italy consisted of mostly Italians, it was not racist in the present meaning of the word at all. Italy was very hesitant in persecuting jews, for example. Hitler depised Mussolini, Mussolini was an ally that weakened Germany. Hitler and Mussolini agreed in their hatred of communism.

Calling Hitler a fascist just creates confusion. All discussions of what nowadays fascism is, our could mean, end like rivers in the desert.

Priss Factor > , August 19, 2017 at 7:52 am GMT

Come on

'Aristocracy' and 'fascist' are all weasel words. (I'm the only true fascist btw, and it's National Humanism, National Left, or Left-Right.)

US is an ethnogarchy, and that really matters. The Power rules, but the nature of the Power is shaped by the biases of the ruling ethnic group.

It is essentially ruled by Jewish Supremacists.

Now, if not for Jews, another group might have supreme power, and it might be problematic in its own way. BUT, the agenda would be different.

Suppose Chinese-Americans controlled much of media, finance, academia, deep state, and etc. They might be just as corrupt or more so than Jews, BUT their agenda would be different. They would not be hateful to Iran, Russia, Syria, or to Palestinians. And they won't care about Israel.

They would have their own biases and agendas, but they would still be different from Jewish obsessions.

Or suppose the top elites of the US were Poles. Now, US policy may be very anti-Russian BUT for reasons different from those of Jews.

So, we won't learn much by just throwing words like 'fascist' or 'aristocrat' around.

We have to be more specific. Hitler was 'fascist' and so was Rohm. But Hitler had Rohm wiped out.

Surely, a Zionist 'fascist' had different goals than an Iranian 'fascist'.

One might say the Old South African regime was 'fascist'. Well, today's piggish ANC is also 'fascist', if by 'fascist' we mean power-hungry tyrants. But black 'fascists' want something different from what white 'fascists' wanted.

It's like all football players are in football. But to understand what is going on, we have to know WHICH team they play for.

Jewish Elites don't just play for power. They play for Jewish power.

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 11:42 am GMT

Good summary of where we're at, but please don't call the ruling goons aristocrats. The word, "aristocrat," is derived from the Ancient Greek ἄριστος (áristos, "best"), and the ruling thugs in this country have never been the best at anything except lies, murder and theft.

I realize that calling them violent bloodthirsty sociopathic parasites is a mouthful, and that "plutacrats" doesn't have quite the appropriate sting, but perhaps it's more accurate.

Or maybe we should get into the habit of calling them the "ruling mafiosi." I'm open to suggestions.

"Goonocrats"?

Anon > , Disclaimer August 19, 2017 at 12:56 pm GMT

and that threatens those foreign aristocrats with encroachments against their own territory, whenever a vassal aristocracy resists the master-aristocracy's will.

They also -- through the joint action of Rating Agencies, the Anglosaxon media, the vassal vassal states' media, make national debt's yield spreads skyrocket. It's been the way to make entire governments tumble in Europe, as well as force ministers for economics to resign. After obeisance has been restored -- and an "ex Goldman Sachs man" put on the presidential/ministerial chair, usually -- investors magically find back their trust in the nation's economic stability, and yield spreads return to their usual level.

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 1:42 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

These foreign vassals had a cozy existence

No doubt about it. That's how thugs rule; there are plenty of quivering sell outs to do the rulers' bidding. Look at the sickening standing ovations given to Netanyahoo by supposed "US" congresscreeps.

Jake > , August 19, 2017 at 1:46 pm GMT

@Fidelios Automata Abraham Lincoln's economic policy was to combine private monopolies with the Federal Government under a President like him: one who ordered the arrests of newspaper editors/publishers who opposed his policies and more 'despotic' goodies.

Joe Hide > , August 19, 2017 at 1:47 pm GMT

While the article favorably informs, and was written so as to engage the reader, it lacks reasonable solutions to its problems presented. One solution which I never read or hear about, is mandated MRI's, advanced technology, and evidence supported psychological testing of sitting and potential political candidates. The goal would be to publicly reveal traits of psychopathy, narcissism, insanity, etc. Of course, the most vocal opposition would come from those who intend to hide these traits. The greatest evidence for the likelyhood of this process working, is the immense effort those who would be revealed have historically put into hiding what they are.

SolontoCroesus > , August 19, 2017 at 3:04 pm GMT

@jacques sheete

"ruling mafiosi."

No way. How about Jewish terrorists ? Very few Italians in the ruling "aristocracy." Lots of Jews.

Jake > , August 19, 2017 at 3:05 pm GMT

Eric Zuesse is a nasty, hardcore leftist in the senses that matter most. Often, he reveals his Leftism to be based on his hatred of Christianity and his utter contempt for white Christians. But there is that dead clock being correct twice per day matter. In this article, Zuesse gets a good deal right.

First, he delineates the American Elites well. The USA forged by Abe Lincoln is not a real democracy, not a real republic. It is the worst kind of oligarchy: one based on love of money almost exclusively (because if a man does not love money well enough to be bribed, then he cannot be trusted by plutocrats) while proclaiming itself focused on helping all the little guys of the world overcome the power of the rich oppressors.

It is the Devil's game nearly perfected by the grand alliance of WASPs and Jews, with their Saudi hangers-on.

Second, it is fair to label America's Deep State fascist , Elite Fascist. And we should never forget that while Jews are no more than 3% of the American population, they now are at least 30% (my guess would be closer to 59%) of the most powerful Deep Staters. That means that per capita Jews easily are the fascist-inclined people in America.

The most guilty often bray the loudest at others in hope of getting them blamed and escaping punishment. And this most guilty group – Deep State Elites evolved from the original WASP-Jewish alliance against Catholics – is dead-set on making the majority of whites in the world serfs.

Third, the US 'weaponization of finance' seems to have been used against the Vatican to force Benedict XVI to resign so that Liberal Jesuit (sorry for the redundancy) Jorge Bergolgio could be made Pope. The Jesuits are far and away the most Leftist and gay part of the Catholic Church, and the American Deep State wanted a gay-loving, strongly pro-Jewish, strongly pro-Moslem 'immigrant' as Pope.

Fourth, that America's Leftists of every stripe, America's Neocons, and America's 'compassionate conservatives' all hate Putin is all you should need to know that Putin is far, far better for Russia's working class, Russia's non-Elites, than our Elites are for us.

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 3:36 pm GMT

@Brabantian Good comments.They apply to a few others around here as well, particularly this.

who mixes some truth with big lies

Priss Factor > , Website August 19, 2017 at 3:44 pm GMT

Charlottesville, Occupy Wall St And The Neoliberal Police State. Charlottesville was a Neoliberal ambush designed to crush the Alt Right once and for all. This story must be told.

https://altright.com/2017/08/19/charlottesville-occupy-wall-st-and-the-neoliberal-police-state/

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 3:46 pm GMT

@SolontoCroesus

"ruling mafiosi."
No way. How about Jewish terrorists ? Very few Italians in the ruling "aristocracy." Lots of Jews.

Very few Italians in the ruling "aristocracy."

Another common misconception is to associate the mafia with Italians mostly. The Italian mafiosi are pikers compared to the American ones of Eastern European descent. The real bosses are not the Italians.

Bugsy Siegel, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Longy Zwillman, Moe Dalitz, Meyer Lansky and many many others.

Even the Jewish Virtual Library admits to some of it.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-gangsters-in-america

New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, LA, Miami, and many others all dominated by non-Italian mobsters, not to mention the US government.

[Aug 19, 2017] Vassal Aristocracies Increasingly Resist Control by US Aristocracy by Eric Zuesse

Notable quotes:
"... the ultimate driving force behind today's international news is the aristocracy that the MIC represents, the billionaires behind the MIC, because theirs is the collective will that drives the MIC ..."
"... The MIC is their collective arm, and their collective fist. It is not the American public's global enforcer; it is the American aristocracy's fist, around the world. ..."
"... The MIC (via its military contractors such as Lockheed Martin) also constitutes a core part of the U.S. aristocracy's wealth (the part that's extracted from the U.S. taxpaying public via the U.S. government), and also (by means of those privately-owned contractors, plus the taxpayer-funded U.S. armed forces) it protects these aristocrats' wealth in foreign countries. Though paid by the U.S. government, the MIC does the protection-and-enforcement jobs for the nation's super-rich. ..."
"... So, the MIC is the global bully's fist, and the global bully is the U.S. aristocracy -- America's billionaires, most especially the controlling stockholders in the U.S.-based international corporations. These are the people the U.S. government actually represents . The links document this, and it's essential to know, if one is to understand current events. ..."
"... This massacre didn't play well on local Crimean television. Immediately, a movement to secede and to again become a part of Russia started, and spread like wildfire in Crimea. (Crimea had been only involuntarily transferred from Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954; it had been part of Russia for the hundreds of years prior to 1954. It was culturally Russian.) Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, said that if they'd vote for it in a referendum, then Russia would accept them back into the Russian Federation and provide them protection as Russian citizens. ..."
"... The latest round of these sanctions was imposed not by Executive Order from a U.S. President, but instead by a new U.S. law, "H.R.3364 -- Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" , which in July 2017 was passed by 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House , and which not only stated outright lies (endorsed there by virtually everyone in Congress), but which was backed up by lies from the U.S. Intelligence Community that were accepted and endorsed totally uncritically by 98 Senators and 419 Representatives . (One might simply assume that all of those Senators and Representatives were ignorant of the way things work and were not intentionally lying in order to vote for these lies from the Intelligence Community, but these people actually wouldn't have wrangled their ways into Congress and gotten this far at the game if they hadn't already known that the U.S. Intelligence Community is designed not only to inform the President but to help him to deceive the public and therefore can't be trusted by anyone but the President . ..."
"... Good summary of where we're at, but please don't call the ruling goons aristocrats. The word, "aristocrat," is derived from the Ancient Greek ἄριστος (áristos, "best"), and the ruling thugs in this country have never been the best at anything except lies, murder and theft ..."
"... I realize that calling them violent bloodthirsty sociopathic parasites is a mouthful, and that "plutacrats" doesn't have quite the appropriate sting, but perhaps it's more accurate. ..."
"... They also -- through the joint action of Rating Agencies, the Anglosaxon media, the vassal vassal states' media, make national debt's yield spreads skyrocket. It's been the way to make entire governments tumble in Europe, as well as force ministers for economics to resign. After obeisance has been restored -- and an "ex Goldman Sachs man" put on the presidential/ministerial chair, usually -- investors magically find back their trust in the nation's economic stability, and yield spreads return to their usual level. ..."
"... First, he delineates the American Elites well. The USA forged by Abe Lincoln is not a real democracy, not a real republic. It is the worst kind of oligarchy: one based on love of money almost exclusively (because if a man does not love money well enough to be bribed, then he cannot be trusted by plutocrats) while proclaiming itself focused on helping all the little guys of the world overcome the power of the rich oppressors. ..."
Aug 14, 2017 | www.unz.com

The tumultuous events that dominate international news today cannot be accurately understood outside of their underlying context, which connects them together, into a broader narrative -- the actual history of our time . History makes sense, even if news-reports about these events don't. Propagandistic motivations cause such essential facts to be reported little (if at all) in the news, so that the most important matters for the public to know, get left out of news-accounts about those international events.

The purpose here will be to provide that context, for our time.

First, this essential background will be summarized; then, it will be documented (via the links that will be provided here), up till the present moment -- the current news: America's aristocracy controls both the U.S. federal government and press , but (as will be documented later here) is facing increasing resistance from its many vassal (subordinate) aristocracies around the world (popularly called "America's allied nations"); and this growing international resistance presents a new challenge to the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC), which is controlled by that same aristocracy and enforces their will worldwide. The MIC is responding to the demands of its aristocratic master. This response largely drives international events today (which countries get invaded, which ones get overthrown by coups, etc.), but the ultimate driving force behind today's international news is the aristocracy that the MIC represents, the billionaires behind the MIC, because theirs is the collective will that drives the MIC. The MIC is their collective arm, and their collective fist. It is not the American public's global enforcer; it is the American aristocracy's fist, around the world.

The MIC (via its military contractors such as Lockheed Martin) also constitutes a core part of the U.S. aristocracy's wealth (the part that's extracted from the U.S. taxpaying public via the U.S. government), and also (by means of those privately-owned contractors, plus the taxpayer-funded U.S. armed forces) it protects these aristocrats' wealth in foreign countries. Though paid by the U.S. government, the MIC does the protection-and-enforcement jobs for the nation's super-rich.

Furthermore, the MIC is crucial to them in other ways, serving not only directly as their "policeman to the world," but also indirectly (by that means) as a global protection-racket that keeps their many subordinate aristocracies in line, under their control -- and that threatens those foreign aristocrats with encroachments against their own territory, whenever a vassal aristocracy resists the master-aristocracy's will. (International law is never enforced against the U.S., not even after it invaded Iraq in 2003.) So, the MIC is the global bully's fist, and the global bully is the U.S. aristocracy -- America's billionaires, most especially the controlling stockholders in the U.S.-based international corporations. These are the people the U.S. government actually represents . The links document this, and it's essential to know, if one is to understand current events.

For the first time ever, a global trend is emerging toward declining control of the world by America's billionaire-class -- into the direction of ultimately replacing the U.S. Empire, by increasingly independent trading-blocs: alliances between aristocracies, replacing this hierarchical control of one aristocracy over another. Ours is becoming a multi-polar world, and America's aristocracy is struggling mightily against this trend, desperate to continue remaining the one global imperial power -- or, as U.S. President Barack Obama often referred to the U.S. government, "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come." To America's aristocrats, all other nations than the U.S. are "dispensable." All American allies have to accept it. This is the imperial mindset, both for the master, and for the vassal. The uni-polar world can't function otherwise. Vassals must pay (extract from their nation's public, and then transfer) protection-money, to the master, in order to be safe -- to retain their existing power, to exploit their given nation's public.

The recently growing role of economic sanctions (more accurately called "Weaponization of finance" ) by the United States and its vassals, has been central to the operation of this hierarchical imperial system, but is now being increasingly challenged from below, by some of the vassals. Alliances are breaking up over America's mounting use of sanctions, and new alliances are being formed and cemented to replace the imperial system -- replace it by a system without any clear center of global power, in the world that we're moving into. Economic sanctions have been the U.S. empire's chief weapon to impose its will against any challengers to U.S. global control, and are thus becoming the chief locus of the old order's fractures .

This global order cannot be maintained by the MIC alone; the more that the MIC fails (such as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, ), the more that economic sanctions rise to become the essential tool of the imperial masters. We are increasingly in the era of economic sanctions. And, now, we're entering the backlash-phase of it.

A turning-point in escalating the weaponization of finance was reached in February 2014 when a Ukrainian coup that the Obama Administration had started planning by no later than 2011, culminated successfully in installing a rabidly anti-Russian government on Russia's border, and precipitated the breakaway from Ukraine of two regions (Crimea and Donbass) that had voted overwhelmingly for the man the U.S. regime had just overthrown . This coup in Ukraine was the most direct aggressive act against Russia since the Cold War had 'ended' (it had actually ended on the Russian side, but not on the American side, where it continues ) in 1991. During this coup in Kiev, on February 20th of 2014, hundreds of Crimeans, who had been peacefully demonstrating there with placards against this coup (which coup itself was very violent -- against the police, not by them -- the exact opposite of the way that "the Maidan demonstrations" had been portrayed in the Western press at the time), were attacked by the U.S.-paid thugs and scrambled back into their buses to return home to Crimea but were stopped en-route in central Ukraine and an uncounted number of them were massacred in the Ukrainian town of Korsun by the same group of thugs who had chased them out of Kiev .

This massacre didn't play well on local Crimean television. Immediately, a movement to secede and to again become a part of Russia started, and spread like wildfire in Crimea. (Crimea had been only involuntarily transferred from Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954; it had been part of Russia for the hundreds of years prior to 1954. It was culturally Russian.) Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, said that if they'd vote for it in a referendum, then Russia would accept them back into the Russian Federation and provide them protection as Russian citizens.

On 6 March 2014, U.S. President Obama issued "Executive Order -- Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine" , and ignored the internationally recognized-in-law right of self-determination of peoples (though he recognized that right in Catalonia and in Scotland), and he instead simply declared that Ukraine's "sovereignty" over Crimea was sacrosanct (even though it had been imposed upon Crimeans by the Soviet dictator -- America's enemy -- in 1954, during the Soviet era, when America opposed, instead of favored and imposed, dictatorship around the world, except in Iran and Guatemala, where America imposed dictatorships even that early). Obama's Executive Order was against unnamed "persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean region without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine." He insisted that the people who had just grabbed control of Ukraine and massacred Crimeans (his own Administration's paid far-right Ukrainian thugs, who were racist anti-Russians ), must be allowed to rule Crimea, regardless of what Crimeans (traditionally a part of Russia) might -- and did -- want. America's vassal aristocracies then imposed their own sanctions against Russia when on 16 March 2014 Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to rejoin the Russian Federation . Thus started the successive rounds of economic sanctions against Russia, by the U.S. government and its vassal-nations . (As is shown by that link, they knew that this had been a coup and no authentic 'democratic revolution' such as the Western press was portraying it to have been, and yet they kept quiet about it -- a secret their public would not be allowed to know.)

The latest round of these sanctions was imposed not by Executive Order from a U.S. President, but instead by a new U.S. law, "H.R.3364 -- Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" , which in July 2017 was passed by 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House , and which not only stated outright lies (endorsed there by virtually everyone in Congress), but which was backed up by lies from the U.S. Intelligence Community that were accepted and endorsed totally uncritically by 98 Senators and 419 Representatives . (One might simply assume that all of those Senators and Representatives were ignorant of the way things work and were not intentionally lying in order to vote for these lies from the Intelligence Community, but these people actually wouldn't have wrangled their ways into Congress and gotten this far at the game if they hadn't already known that the U.S. Intelligence Community is designed not only to inform the President but to help him to deceive the public and therefore can't be trusted by anyone but the President .

It's basic knowledge about the U.S. government, and they know it, though the public don't.) The great independent columnist Paul Craig Roberts headlined on August 1st, "Trump's Choices" and argued that President Donald Trump should veto the bill despite its overwhelming support in Washington, but instead Trump signed it into law on August 2nd and thus joined participation in the overt stage -- the Obama stage -- of the U.S. government's continuation of the Cold War that U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush had secretly instituted against Russia on 24 February 1990 , and that, under Obama, finally escalated into a hot war against Russia. The first phase of this hot war against Russia is via the "Weaponization of finance" (those sanctions). However, as usual, it's also backed up by major increases in physical weaponry , and by the cooperation of America's vassals in order to surround Russia with nuclear weapons near and on Russia's borders , in preparation for a possible blitz first-strike nuclear attack upon Russia -- preparations that the Russian people know about and greatly fear, but which are largely hidden by the Western press, and therefore only very few Westerners are aware that their own governments have become lying aggressors.

Some excellent news-commentaries have been published about this matter, online, by a few 'alternative news' sites (and that 'alt-news' group includes all of the reliably honest news-sites, but also includes unfortunately many sites that are as dishonest as the mainstream ones are -- and that latter type aren't being referred to here), such as (and only the best sites and articles will be linked-to on this):

All three of those articles discuss how these new sanctions are driving other nations to separate themselves, more and more, away from the economic grip of the U.S. aristocracy, and to form instead their own alliances with one-another, so as to defend themselves, collectively, from U.S. economic (if not also military) aggression. Major recent news-developments on this, have included (all here from rt dot com):

"'US, EU meddle in other countries & kill people under guise of human rights concerns' – Duterte", and presented Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte explaining why he rejects the U.S. aristocracy's hypocritical pronouncements and condemnations regarding its vassals among the world's poorer and struggling nations, such as his. Of course, none of this information is publishable in the West -- in the Western 'democracies'. It's 'fake news', as far as The Empire is concerned. So, if you're in The (now declining) Empire, you're not supposed to be reading this. That's why the mainstream 'news'media (to all of which this article is being submitted for publication, without fee, for any of them that want to break their existing corrupt mold) don't publish this sort of news -- 'fake news' (that's of the solidly documented type, such as this). You'll see such news reported only in the few honest newsmedia. The rule for the aristocracy's 'news'media is: report what happened, only on the basis of the government's lies as to why it happened -- never expose such lies (the official lies). What's official is 'true' . That, too, is an essential part of the imperial system.

The front cover of the American aristocracy's TIME magazine's Asian edition, dated September 25, 2016, had been headlined "Night Falls on the Philippines: The tragic cost of President Duterte's war on drugs" . The 'news'-story, which was featured inside not just the Asian but all editions, was "Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's War On Drugs" , and it portrayed Duterte as a far-right demagogue who was giving his nation's police free reign to murder anyone they wished to, especially the poor. On 17 July 2017, China's Xinhua News Agency bannered "Philippines' Duterte enjoys high approval rating at 82 percent: poll" , and reported: "A survey by Pulse Asia Inc. conducted from June 24 to June 29 showed that 82 percent of the 1,200 people surveyed nationwide approved the way Duterte runs the country. Out of all the respondents, the poll said 13 percent were undecided about Duterte's performance, while 5 percent disapproved Duterte's performance. Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June last year, ends his single, six-year term in 2022." Obviously, it's not likely that the TIME cover story had actually been honest. But, of course, America's billionaires are even more eager to overthrow Russia's President, Putin.

Western polling firms can freely poll Russians, and do poll them on lots but not on approval or disapproval of President Putin , because he always scores above 80%, and America's aristocrats also don't like finding that confirmed, and certainly don't want to report it. Polling is routinely done in Russia, by Russian pollsters, on voters' ratings of approval/disapproval of Putin's performance. Because America's aristocrats don't like the findings, they say that Russians are in such fear of Putin they don't tell the truth about this, or else that Russia's newsmedia constantly lie about him to cover up the ugly reality about him.

However, the Western academic journal Post-Soviet Affairs (which is a mainstream Western publication) included in their January/February 2017 issue a study, "Is Putin's Popularity Real?" and the investigators reported the results of their own poll of Russians, which was designed to tap into whether such fear exists and serves as a distorting factor in those Russian polls, but concluded that the findings in Russia's polls could not be explained by any such factor; and that, yes, Putin's popularity among Russians is real. The article's closing words were: "Our results suggest that the main obstacle at present to the emergence of a widespread opposition movement to Putin is not that Russians are afraid to voice their disapproval of Putin, but that Putin is in fact quite popular."

The U.S. aristocracy's efforts to get resistant heads-of-state overthrown by 'democratic revolutions' (which usually is done by the U.S. government to overthrow democratically elected Presidents -- such as Mossadegh, Arbenz, Allende, Zelaya, Yanukovych, and attempted against Assad, and wished against Putin, and against Duterte -- not overthrowing dictators such as the U.S. government always claims) have almost consistently failed, and therefore coups and invasions have been used instead, but those techniques demand that certain realities be suppressed by their 'news'media in order to get the U.S. public to support what the government has done -- the U.S. government's international crime, which is never prosecuted. Lying 'news' media in order to 'earn' the American public's support, does not produce enthusiastic support, but, at best, over the long term, it produces only tepid support (support that's usually below the level of that of the governments the U.S. overthrows). U.S. Presidents never score above 80% except when they order an invasion in response to a violent attack by foreigners, such as happened when George W. Bush attacked Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11, but those 80%+ approval ratings fade quickly; and, after the 1960s, U.S. Presidential job-approvals have generally been below 60% .

President Trump's ratings are currently around 40%. Although Trump is not as conservative -- not as far-right -- as the U.S. aristocracy wants him to be, he is fascist ; just not enough to satisfy them (and their oppostion isn't because he's unpopular among the public; it's more the case that he's unpopular largely because their 'news'media concentrate on his bads, and distort his goods to appear bad -- e.g., suggesting that he's not sufficiently aggressive against Russia). His fascism on domestic affairs is honestly reported in the aristocracy's 'news'media, which appear to be doing all they can to get him replaced by his Vice President, Mike Pence. What's not reported by their media is the fascism of the U.S. aristocracy itself, and of their international agenda (global conquest). That's their secret, of which their public must be (and is) constantly kept ignorant. America's aristocracy has almost as much trouble contolling its domestic public as it has controlling its foreign vassals. Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .

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Fidelios Automata > , August 19, 2017 at 2:22 am GMT

Fascism is defined as a system that combines private monopolies and despotic government power. It is sometimes racist but not necessarily so. By the correct definition, every President since at least Herbert Hoover has been fascist to some degree.

exiled off mainstreet > , August 19, 2017 at 4:21 am GMT

One bit of silver lining in the deep-state propaganda effort to destabilise the Trump regime is the damage to the legitimacy of the yankee imperium it confers, making it easier for vassal states to begin to jump ship. The claims of extraterritorial power used for economic warfare might confer a similar benefit, since the erstwhile allies will want to escape the dominance of the yankee dollar to be able to escape the economic extortion practised by the yankee regime to achieve its control abroad.

WorkingClass > , August 19, 2017 at 4:43 am GMT

Good news – The beast is dying. Bad news – We Americans are in its belly.

Wally > , August 19, 2017 at 6:00 am GMT

"America's aristocracy" = lying Israel First Zionists. Why doesn't Eric Zuesse just say the truth? What is he afraid of?

Must read:

jilles dykstra > , August 19, 2017 at 6:31 am GMT

" America's aristocracy has almost as much trouble controlling its domestic public as it has controlling its foreign vassals. "

These foreign vassals had a cozy existence as long as the USA made it clear it wanted to control the world. Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs Ben Bot made this quite clear whan the Netherlands did not have a USA ambassador for three months or so, Ben Bot complained to the USA that there should be a USA ambassador.
He was not used to take decisions all by himself.

Right now Europe's queen Merkel has the same problem, unlike Obama Trump does not hold her hand.

Grandpa Charlie > , August 19, 2017 at 6:38 am GMT

Fidelios,

Yes, of course. I don't know about before Herbert Hoover, but certainly during the 50s, business -- monopolistic or oligopolistic (like the old Detroit auto industry) -- and government (including the MIC) were closely integrated. Such was, indeed, as aspect of progressivism. It was considered by most to be a good thing, or at least to be the natural and normal state of affairs. Certainly, the system back then included what amounted to price-fixing as a normal business practice.

On the other hand, the "despotic" thing is less clear. Some assert that since FDR was effectively a dictator during World War II, that therefore the Democratic Party represented despotism ever since FDR (or maybe ever since Wilson).

Having lived through that period of time, I have to say that I am not so sure about that: if it was despotism, it was a heavily democratic and beneficent despotism. However, it is evident that there was a fascist skein running through the entirety of USA's political history throughout the 20th Century.

jilles dykstra > , August 19, 2017 at 6:40 am GMT

@Fidelios Automata

Fascism originates from Mussolini's Italy. It was anti socialist and anti communist, it of course was pro Italian, Italy's great deeds in antiquity, the Roman empire, were celebrated.

One can see this as racist, but as Italy consisted of mostly Italians, it was not racist in the present meaning of the word at all. Italy was very hesitant in persecuting jews, for example. Hitler depised Mussolini, Mussolini was an ally that weakened Germany. Hitler and Mussolini agreed in their hatred of communism.

Calling Hitler a fascist just creates confusion. All discussions of what nowadays fascism is, our could mean, end like rivers in the desert.

Priss Factor > , August 19, 2017 at 7:52 am GMT

Come on

'Aristocracy' and 'fascist' are all weasel words. (I'm the only true fascist btw, and it's National Humanism, National Left, or Left-Right.)

US is an ethnogarchy, and that really matters. The Power rules, but the nature of the Power is shaped by the biases of the ruling ethnic group.

It is essentially ruled by Jewish Supremacists.

Now, if not for Jews, another group might have supreme power, and it might be problematic in its own way. BUT, the agenda would be different.

Suppose Chinese-Americans controlled much of media, finance, academia, deep state, and etc. They might be just as corrupt or more so than Jews, BUT their agenda would be different. They would not be hateful to Iran, Russia, Syria, or to Palestinians. And they won't care about Israel.

They would have their own biases and agendas, but they would still be different from Jewish obsessions.

Or suppose the top elites of the US were Poles. Now, US policy may be very anti-Russian BUT for reasons different from those of Jews.

So, we won't learn much by just throwing words like 'fascist' or 'aristocrat' around.

We have to be more specific. Hitler was 'fascist' and so was Rohm. But Hitler had Rohm wiped out.

Surely, a Zionist 'fascist' had different goals than an Iranian 'fascist'.

One might say the Old South African regime was 'fascist'. Well, today's piggish ANC is also 'fascist', if by 'fascist' we mean power-hungry tyrants. But black 'fascists' want something different from what white 'fascists' wanted.

It's like all football players are in football. But to understand what is going on, we have to know WHICH team they play for.

Jewish Elites don't just play for power. They play for Jewish power.

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 11:42 am GMT

Good summary of where we're at, but please don't call the ruling goons aristocrats. The word, "aristocrat," is derived from the Ancient Greek ἄριστος (áristos, "best"), and the ruling thugs in this country have never been the best at anything except lies, murder and theft.

I realize that calling them violent bloodthirsty sociopathic parasites is a mouthful, and that "plutacrats" doesn't have quite the appropriate sting, but perhaps it's more accurate.

Or maybe we should get into the habit of calling them the "ruling mafiosi." I'm open to suggestions.

"Goonocrats"?

Anon > , Disclaimer August 19, 2017 at 12:56 pm GMT

and that threatens those foreign aristocrats with encroachments against their own territory, whenever a vassal aristocracy resists the master-aristocracy's will.

They also -- through the joint action of Rating Agencies, the Anglosaxon media, the vassal vassal states' media, make national debt's yield spreads skyrocket. It's been the way to make entire governments tumble in Europe, as well as force ministers for economics to resign. After obeisance has been restored -- and an "ex Goldman Sachs man" put on the presidential/ministerial chair, usually -- investors magically find back their trust in the nation's economic stability, and yield spreads return to their usual level.

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 1:42 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

These foreign vassals had a cozy existence

No doubt about it. That's how thugs rule; there are plenty of quivering sell outs to do the rulers' bidding. Look at the sickening standing ovations given to Netanyahoo by supposed "US" congresscreeps.

Jake > , August 19, 2017 at 1:46 pm GMT

@Fidelios Automata Abraham Lincoln's economic policy was to combine private monopolies with the Federal Government under a President like him: one who ordered the arrests of newspaper editors/publishers who opposed his policies and more 'despotic' goodies.

Joe Hide > , August 19, 2017 at 1:47 pm GMT

While the article favorably informs, and was written so as to engage the reader, it lacks reasonable solutions to its problems presented. One solution which I never read or hear about, is mandated MRI's, advanced technology, and evidence supported psychological testing of sitting and potential political candidates. The goal would be to publicly reveal traits of psychopathy, narcissism, insanity, etc. Of course, the most vocal opposition would come from those who intend to hide these traits. The greatest evidence for the likelyhood of this process working, is the immense effort those who would be revealed have historically put into hiding what they are.

SolontoCroesus > , August 19, 2017 at 3:04 pm GMT

@jacques sheete

"ruling mafiosi."

No way. How about Jewish terrorists ? Very few Italians in the ruling "aristocracy." Lots of Jews.

Jake > , August 19, 2017 at 3:05 pm GMT

Eric Zuesse is a nasty, hardcore leftist in the senses that matter most. Often, he reveals his Leftism to be based on his hatred of Christianity and his utter contempt for white Christians. But there is that dead clock being correct twice per day matter. In this article, Zuesse gets a good deal right.

First, he delineates the American Elites well. The USA forged by Abe Lincoln is not a real democracy, not a real republic. It is the worst kind of oligarchy: one based on love of money almost exclusively (because if a man does not love money well enough to be bribed, then he cannot be trusted by plutocrats) while proclaiming itself focused on helping all the little guys of the world overcome the power of the rich oppressors.

It is the Devil's game nearly perfected by the grand alliance of WASPs and Jews, with their Saudi hangers-on.

Second, it is fair to label America's Deep State fascist , Elite Fascist. And we should never forget that while Jews are no more than 3% of the American population, they now are at least 30% (my guess would be closer to 59%) of the most powerful Deep Staters. That means that per capita Jews easily are the fascist-inclined people in America.

The most guilty often bray the loudest at others in hope of getting them blamed and escaping punishment. And this most guilty group – Deep State Elites evolved from the original WASP-Jewish alliance against Catholics – is dead-set on making the majority of whites in the world serfs.

Third, the US 'weaponization of finance' seems to have been used against the Vatican to force Benedict XVI to resign so that Liberal Jesuit (sorry for the redundancy) Jorge Bergolgio could be made Pope. The Jesuits are far and away the most Leftist and gay part of the Catholic Church, and the American Deep State wanted a gay-loving, strongly pro-Jewish, strongly pro-Moslem 'immigrant' as Pope.

Fourth, that America's Leftists of every stripe, America's Neocons, and America's 'compassionate conservatives' all hate Putin is all you should need to know that Putin is far, far better for Russia's working class, Russia's non-Elites, than our Elites are for us.

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 3:36 pm GMT

@Brabantian Good comments.They apply to a few others around here as well, particularly this.

who mixes some truth with big lies

Priss Factor > , Website August 19, 2017 at 3:44 pm GMT

Charlottesville, Occupy Wall St And The Neoliberal Police State. Charlottesville was a Neoliberal ambush designed to crush the Alt Right once and for all. This story must be told.

https://altright.com/2017/08/19/charlottesville-occupy-wall-st-and-the-neoliberal-police-state/

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 3:46 pm GMT

@SolontoCroesus

"ruling mafiosi."
No way. How about Jewish terrorists ? Very few Italians in the ruling "aristocracy." Lots of Jews.

Very few Italians in the ruling "aristocracy."

Another common misconception is to associate the mafia with Italians mostly. The Italian mafiosi are pikers compared to the American ones of Eastern European descent. The real bosses are not the Italians.

Bugsy Siegel, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Longy Zwillman, Moe Dalitz, Meyer Lansky and many many others.

Even the Jewish Virtual Library admits to some of it.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-gangsters-in-america

New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, LA, Miami, and many others all dominated by non-Italian mobsters, not to mention the US government.

[Aug 18, 2017] Steve Bannon s work is done. Donald Trump doesn t need him now

Notable quotes:
"... Tragic that so many in the US don't seem able to see that the problem is gross economic inequality in their country, regardless of race. But divide and rule still works well for the ruling class. ..."
"... There's more to it than that. Its true that the white working class in America are the only group that the media feels it is acceptable to insult/denigrate. What was it Obama said - People in small towns clinging on to their religion & guns. ..."
"... The white middle class has to walk the walk with respect of social justice. Due to the economics of it, multiculturalism has affected the working classes far more than the middle classes. As I say, I'm prepared for the consequences personally, but I wonder how many others would be. ..."
"... People may underestimate the populist element in Bannon's make up. As Scaramucci tells it, both he and Bannon had white middle class fathers who had played with a straight bat and had their retirement savings wiped out in 2008 and all that, while the fat cats were saved by Uncle Sam. Maybe a story just for the telling, but it is out there. ..."
"... "In Bannon's view, we are in the midst of an existential war, and everything is a part of that conflict. Treaties must be torn up, enemies named, culture changed. Global conflagration, should it occur, would only prove the theory correct. For Bannon, the Fourth Turning has arrived. The Grey Champion, a messianic strongman figure, may have already emerged. The apocalypse is now. ..."
"... I got the strong sense that Trump was hunkered down defensively and baring his teeth like a feral dog trapped in a corner. ..."
"... Trump is not Mussolini or Franco in that he is not a true believer ..."
"... With the exception of the military which at this point is a state unto itself the government is a paradox of being both omnipresent and nowhere and thus truly Kafkaesque...utterly opaque and completely visible at all times... ..."
"... The left's focus on identity politics is the reason this Bannon chump is relevant at all. The switch in focus from class to race and gender has segmented the working class from the common struggle. A people divided. This is about the only strategic fact Bannon understands. But it is an important one. ..."
"... Identity politics at its core is mostly untenable and while it might treat the symptoms of disease in the short run it will always collapse under the weight of its internal inconsistencies. The blind squirrel Bannon has found his nut. Continuing to assert that poor white men have it made is demonstrably false and offensive. And gives the alt-right plenty of tools to recruit. ..."
Aug 18, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

jessthecrip , 18 Aug 2017 09:16

Tragic that so many in the US don't seem able to see that the problem is gross economic inequality in their country, regardless of race. But divide and rule still works well for the ruling class.

So a billionaire like Trump, with Bannon's aid, does whatever he can to focus the disatisfaction of the population on people who have a different skin colour, rather than the vastly rich elites who have grabbed such a massive share of US wealth and power - and demand yet more

joey2000 -> jessthecrip , 18 Aug 2017 09:29

There's more to it than that. Its true that the white working class in America are the only group that the media feels it is acceptable to insult/denigrate. What was it Obama said - People in small towns clinging on to their religion & guns.

Must have gone down really well in those rustbelt towns where everyone is on oxycontin out of sheer despair. But hey, they're only rednecks so who cares right ?

JerHig -> jessthecrip , 18 Aug 2017 09:36

Tragic that so many in the US don't seem able to see that the problem is gross economic inequality in their country, regardless of race. But divide and rule still works well for the ruling class.

Exactly, it's all about creating a group you can point to and say "at least you're not as bad off as them!"

When your entire existence is predicated on 'at least I'm not the worst off' it becomes frightening when those who were previously 'worse off' start improving. But instead of improving themselves they try and bring the others down again.

MattSpanner -> Isomewhatagree , 18 Aug 2017 09:34

That's what I don't get about the Nazis who turned up in Charlottsville: they chanted "Jews will not replace us" and also "we're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump". How can Nazis believe Trump is on their side when his daughter is married to a Jew? There are so many contradictions in this situation that I can't get my head around it.

asparagusnextleft -> MattSpanner , 18 Aug 2017 09:40

It's simple. They're fucking idiots.

Fwaffy -> BrokenLogic , 18 Aug 2017 09:34

It's remarkable isn't it, the man appears to be visibly decomposing. It's been suggested that the statue of Robert E Lee was his penultimate Horcrux.

MattSpanner -> Fwaffy , 18 Aug 2017 09:49

He looks like an alchy.

therebythegrace -> MattSpanner , 18 Aug 2017 10:13

Or Dorian Gray's picture. Maybe the more evil Trump gets, the worse Bannon looks?

Ravenblade -> Bjerkley , 18 Aug 2017 10:35

Someone has to lose out in a redistribution of anything, be it political power or wealth. I mention the white middle classes because they tend to the the keyboard warriors refusing to tackle the insecurities and concerns of the white working class, and simply resorting to calling them racist.

The white middle class has to walk the walk with respect of social justice. Due to the economics of it, multiculturalism has affected the working classes far more than the middle classes. As I say, I'm prepared for the consequences personally, but I wonder how many others would be.

Agree with your latter point and I'm sensitive to the fact that within class groups, minorities and women remain disadvantaged; I'm not saying we don't continue to look at that. But realistically, on an economic level, you're not going to get white working class men accepting that middle class minorities or women are disadvantaged compared to them, are you? The only reason this distinction doesn't seem to happen (class lines) is because most of the SJW contingent suddenly have to check an aspect of privilege they're unkeen to pay attention to.

tamborineman , 18 Aug 2017 09:27

People may underestimate the populist element in Bannon's make up. As Scaramucci tells it, both he and Bannon had white middle class fathers who had played with a straight bat and had their retirement savings wiped out in 2008 and all that, while the fat cats were saved by Uncle Sam. Maybe a story just for the telling, but it is out there.

As to Bannon still in the job, I think LBJ's story about tents and which way the piss goes applies.

Bjerkley -> tamborineman , 18 Aug 2017 09:31

Maybe a story just for the telling, but it is out there.

As others have noted, given that both of them worked in finance/had some background in finance, it's odd that their fathers lost savings which could have been avoided (Bannon's father, for instance, only lost out because he sold his stock but it regained its value shortly afterwards, i.e. it was a bad financial decision). But as you say, its out there.

KeithNJ -> Bjerkley , 18 Aug 2017 09:54

Indeed. If you held on through the crash you now have double the money you had in 2007.

There are some pretty basic retirement rules (60/40 equity to bonds or less, keep 2 years in cash) which if anyone followed would have resulted in no pain from the crash, just some anxiety.

If he got greedy, had 100% in equities and sold at the bottom of the market because he had not kept a cash cushion - well he cannot blame the Chinese for that.

Of course he was bitter before his son became a billionaire, but to still be bitter is more about character than the economy.

MattSpanner , 18 Aug 2017 09:28

"In Bannon's view, we are in the midst of an existential war, and everything is a part of that conflict. Treaties must be torn up, enemies named, culture changed. Global conflagration, should it occur, would only prove the theory correct. For Bannon, the Fourth Turning has arrived. The Grey Champion, a messianic strongman figure, may have already emerged. The apocalypse is now.

"What we are witnessing," Bannon told The Washington Post last month, "is the birth of a new political order.""

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-apocalypse_us_5898f02ee4b040613138a951

...and along comes N.Korea and makes all Bannon's dreams come true.


richmanchester
-> MattSpanner
, 18 Aug 2017 09:34

Though in Bannon's last interview he explicitly stated there was no military option available wrt North Korea.

Dwaina Tembreull -> userforaday , 18 Aug 2017 09:54

An interesting interpretation of his behavior. I got the strong sense that Trump was hunkered down defensively and baring his teeth like a feral dog trapped in a corner.

ID4524057 , 18 Aug 2017 17:49

" and it has forged an indefatigable core of support that will stay with Trump through the next general election and beyond."

Except that atavistic and uneducated people can and will change their sense of allegiance on a dime or a whim and given the fact that Trump is not an ideologue but rather an unstable pathological narcissist and a bigot (versus espousing a coherent racist plan of action because he has a particular ideological agenda) there is no way to effectively predict what his actions will echo in that part of his base and therefore no way to predict what his base will do if Trump is untethered from Bannon. Trump is as likely to make a boneheaded deal with China that pleases Wall Street as he is to accidentally start a war. He is as likely to break his support as he is to cement it.

As Christopher Hitchens said:

"A feature, not just of the age of the end of ideology, but of the age immediately preceding the age of the end of ideology, is that of the dictator who has no ideology at all."

Trump is not Mussolini or Franco in that he is not a true believer though he is a bigot and clearly dictatorial. Trump is all expediency first and faith second even if he has consistently been a racist.

The second problematic issue is that if you assert that Axelrod and Rove "achieved" anything of lasting consequence then Axelrod could not have followed Rove and Bannon could not have followed Axelrod.

Unlike in France where the president serves far longer the reelection cycle here with its utterly corrupt need to raise massive amounts of cash which then forces candidates to constantly be in race mode (and effectively reduces the period of actual governance to around 18 months) has created a perpetually unstable and ineffective bureaucracy that has more in common with late Ottoman inefficiency than it does with a contemporary "modern" state.

With the exception of the military which at this point is a state unto itself the government is a paradox of being both omnipresent and nowhere and thus truly Kafkaesque...utterly opaque and completely visible at all times...

Further, there is this: "There's another reason why firing Bannon wouldn't be a huge loss: his work is largely done."

In fact, Trump has achieved nothing and done nothing of lasting change to the bureaucracy. In a sense it is analogous to the situation with North Korea where, despite Trump's pale Strangelove imitation it was noted in the media that the military had made no changes to its posture.

... ... ...

jmad357 , 18 Aug 2017 17:53

The only time I have ever agreed with Bannon is that his analysis of the potential for N Korea to destroy S Korea with an artillery barrage. With about 12,000 artillery prices the North could launch somewhere around 50,000 shells per minute into Soul. Do the arithmetic for a 10 minute shelling. Any grandstanding by the US military is simply folly.

MasMaz , 18 Aug 2017 17:59

The left's focus on identity politics is the reason this Bannon chump is relevant at all. The switch in focus from class to race and gender has segmented the working class from the common struggle. A people divided. This is about the only strategic fact Bannon understands. But it is an important one.

Identity politics at its core is mostly untenable and while it might treat the symptoms of disease in the short run it will always collapse under the weight of its internal inconsistencies. The blind squirrel Bannon has found his nut. Continuing to assert that poor white men have it made is demonstrably false and offensive. And gives the alt-right plenty of tools to recruit.

[Aug 18, 2017] Allies of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster hold Bannon responsible for a campaign by Breitbart News, which Bannon once led, to vilify the security chief by Robert Kuttner

Notable quotes:
"... Contrary to Trump's threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: "There's no military solution [to North Korea's nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us." ..."
"... "To me," Bannon said, "the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able to recover." ..."
"... Bannon's plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. "We're going to run the tables on these guys. We've come to the conclusion that they're in an economic war and they're crushing us." ..."
"... "The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats." ..."
"... For ideas on how to counter the far-right agenda in the aftermath of the events in Charlottesville, click here . ..."
Aug 16, 2017 | prospect.org
You might think from recent press accounts that Steve Bannon is on the ropes and therefore behaving prudently. In the aftermath of events in Charlottesville, he is widely blamed for his boss's continuing indulgence of white supremacists. Allies of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster hold Bannon responsible for a campaign by Breitbart News, which Bannon once led, to vilify the security chief. Trump's defense of Bannon, at his Tuesday press conference, was tepid.

But Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of taking a harder line with China, and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury. "They're wetting themselves," he said, proceeding to detail how he would oust some of his opponents at State and Defense.

Needless to say, I was a little stunned to get an email from Bannon's assistant midday Tuesday, just as all hell was breaking loose once again about Charlottesville, saying that Bannon wished to meet with me.

Needless to say, I was a little stunned to get an email from Bannon's assistant midday Tuesday, just as all hell was breaking loose once again about Charlottesville, saying that Bannon wished to meet with me. I'd just published a column on how China was profiting from the U.S.-North Korea nuclear brinkmanship, and it included some choice words about Bannon's boss.

"In Kim, Trump has met his match," I wrote. "The risk of two arrogant fools blundering into a nuclear exchange is more serious than at any time since October 1962." Maybe Bannon wanted to scream at me?

I told the assistant that I was on vacation, but I would be happy to speak by phone. Bannon promptly called.

Far from dressing me down for comparing Trump to Kim, he began, "It's a great honor to finally track you down. I've followed your writing for years and I think you and I are in the same boat when it comes to China. You absolutely nailed it."

"We're at economic war with China," he added. "It's in all their literature. They're not shy about saying what they're doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it's gonna be them if we go down this path. On Korea, they're just tapping us along. It's just a sideshow."

Bannon said he might consider a deal in which China got North Korea to freeze its nuclear buildup with verifiable inspections and the United States removed its troops from the peninsula, but such a deal seemed remote. Given that China is not likely to do much more on North Korea, and that the logic of mutually assured destruction was its own source of restraint, Bannon saw no reason not to proceed with tough trade sanctions against China.

Contrary to Trump's threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: "There's no military solution [to North Korea's nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us." Bannon went on to describe his battle inside the administration to take a harder line on China trade, and not to fall into a trap of wishful thinking in which complaints against China's trade practices now had to take a backseat to the hope that China, as honest broker, would help restrain Kim.

"To me," Bannon said, "the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able to recover."

Bannon's plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. "We're going to run the tables on these guys. We've come to the conclusion that they're in an economic war and they're crushing us."

But what about his internal adversaries, at the departments of State and Defense, who think the United States can enlist Beijing's aid on the North Korean standoff, and at Treasury and the National Economic Council who don't want to mess with the trading system?

"Oh, they're wetting themselves," he said, explaining that the Section 301 complaint, which was put on hold when the war of threats with North Korea broke out, was shelved only temporarily, and will be revived in three weeks. As for other cabinet departments, Bannon has big plans to marginalize their influence.

"I'm changing out people at East Asian Defense; I'm getting hawks in. I'm getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State."

But can Bannon really win that fight internally?

"That's a fight I fight every day here," he said. "We're still fighting. There's Treasury and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying."

"We gotta do this. The president's default position is to do it, but the apparatus is going crazy. Don't get me wrong. It's like, every day."

Bannon explained that his strategy is to battle the trade doves inside the administration while building an outside coalition of trade hawks that includes left as well as right. Hence the phone call to me.

There are a couple of things that are startling about this premise. First, to the extent that most of the opponents of Bannon's China trade strategy are other Trump administration officials, it's not clear how reaching out to the left helps him. If anything, it gives his adversaries ammunition to characterize Bannon as unreliable or disloyal.

More puzzling is the fact that Bannon would phone a writer and editor of a progressive publication (the cover lines on whose first two issues after Trump's election were "Resisting Trump" and "Containing Trump") and assume that a possible convergence of views on China trade might somehow paper over the political and moral chasm on white nationalism.

The question of whether the phone call was on or off the record never came up. This is also puzzling, since Steve Bannon is not exactly Bambi when it comes to dealing with the press. He's probably the most media-savvy person in America.

I asked Bannon about the connection between his program of economic nationalism and the ugly white nationalism epitomized by the racist violence in Charlottesville and Trump's reluctance to condemn it. Bannon, after all, was the architect of the strategy of using Breitbart to heat up white nationalism and then rely on the radical right as Trump's base.

He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: "Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more."

"These guys are a collection of clowns," he added.

From his lips to Trump's ear.

"The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."

I had never before spoken with Bannon. I came away from the conversation with a sense both of his savvy and his recklessness. The waters around him are rising, but he is going about his business of infighting, and attempting to cultivate improbable outside allies, to promote his China strategy. His enemies will do what they do.

Either the reports of the threats to Bannon's job are grossly exaggerated and leaked by his rivals, or he has decided not to change his routine and to go down fighting. Given Trump's impulsivity, neither Bannon nor Trump really has any idea from day to day whether Bannon is staying or going. He has survived earlier threats. So what the hell, damn the torpedoes.

The conversation ended with Bannon inviting me to the White House after Labor Day to continue the discussion of China and trade. We'll see if he's still there.

For ideas on how to counter the far-right agenda in the aftermath of the events in Charlottesville, click here .

[Aug 18, 2017] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/us/politics/steve-bannon-trump-white-house.html

Notable quotes:
"... Lots of dunces, but chief strategist Steve Bannon, sadly, isn't one of them. The intellectual leader of the alt-right movement is no genius – nobody with his political views could be – but neither is he an idiot. He's one of the few people in that White House with even a primitive grasp of long-term strategy, which makes his impulsive-seeming decision to call The American Prospect this week curious. ..."
"... In the interview, Bannon said there was "no military solution" to North Korea's posturing. He stressed his efforts to fight economic war with China, adding, in a Scaramuccian touch, that his intramural foes on that front were "wetting themselves." ..."
"... "The longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em," he said. "I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats." ..."
Aug 18, 2017 | www.nytimes.com

Reply Friday, August 18, 2017 at 10:19 AM

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-fire-steve-bannon-w498354

Fire Steve Bannon

The Trump administration's stubbly race warrior reminds us why he's so dangerous

By Matt Taibbi
21 hours ago

The list of nitwits in the Trump administration is long. Betsy DeVos, in charge of education issues, seems capable of losing at tic-tac-toe. Ben Carson thought the great pyramids of Egypt were grain warehouses. Rick Perry, merely in charge of the nation's nuclear arsenal, probably has post-it notes all over his office to remind him what things are: telephone, family photo, souvenir atomic-reactor paperweight, etc.

Lots of dunces, but chief strategist Steve Bannon, sadly, isn't one of them. The intellectual leader of the alt-right movement is no genius – nobody with his political views could be – but neither is he an idiot. He's one of the few people in that White House with even a primitive grasp of long-term strategy, which makes his impulsive-seeming decision to call The American Prospect this week curious.

In the interview, Bannon said there was "no military solution" to North Korea's posturing. He stressed his efforts to fight economic war with China, adding, in a Scaramuccian touch, that his intramural foes on that front were "wetting themselves."

When asked about the Charlottesville tragedy, Bannon called the neo-Nazi marchers "a collection of clowns." He also called them "losers" and a "fringe element."

This theoretically should be a dark time for Bannon, since Charlottesville reminded the whole world of his inexplicable and indefensible presence in the White House. The story has even the National Review howling for his dismissal.

But Prospect writer Robert Kuttner noted with surprise in his piece that Bannon seemed upbeat. He essentially told Kuttner he believed the Charlottesville mess and stories like it were a long-term political windfall for people like himself.

"The longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em," he said. "I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."

...
Reply Friday, August 18, 2017 at 10:20 AM

The president and senior White House officials were debating when and how to dismiss Stephen K. Bannon as chief strategist.

Mr. Bannon had clashed for months with other senior West Wing advisers and members of the president's family.

Trump Tells Aides He Has Decided to Remove Stephen Bannon https://nyti.ms/2vKGSNG

NYT - MAGGIE HABERMAN - August 18

President Trump has told senior aides that he has decided to remove Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled White House chief strategist who helped Mr. Trump win the 2016 election, according to two administration officials briefed on the discussion.

The president and senior White House officials were debating when and how to dismiss Mr. Bannon. The two administration officials cautioned that Mr. Trump is known to be averse to confrontation within his inner circle, and could decide to keep on Mr. Bannon for some time.

As of Friday morning, the two men were still discussing Mr. Bannon's future, the officials said. A person close to Mr. Bannon insisted the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this week, but the move was delayed after the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va.

Mr. Bannon had clashed for months with other senior West Wing advisers and members of the president's family.

But the loss of Mr. Bannon, the right-wing nationalist who helped propel some of Mr. Trump's campaign promises into policy reality, raises the potential for the president to face criticism from the conservative news media base that supported him over the past year.

Mr. Bannon's many critics bore down after the violence in Charlottesville. Outraged over Mr. Trump's insistence that "both sides" were to blame for the violence that erupted at a white nationalist rally, leaving one woman dead, human rights activists demanded that the president fire so-called nationalists working in the West Wing. That group of hard-right populists in the White House is led by Mr. Bannon.

On Tuesday at Trump Tower in New York, Mr. Trump refused to guarantee Mr. Bannon's job security but defended him as "not a racist" and "a friend."

"We'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon," Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Bannon's dismissal followed an Aug. 16 interview he initiated with a writer with whom he had never spoken, with the progressive publication The American Prospect. In it, Mr. Bannon mockingly played down the American military threat to North Korea as nonsensical: "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us." ...
Reply Friday, August 18, 2017 at 10:37 AM
Trump on North Korea https://nyti.ms/2vI6smj
NYT - MARK LANDLER - August 17

WASHINGTON -- For all his fire-breathing nationalism -- the demands to ban Muslims, build a wall on the Mexican border and honor statues of Confederate heroes -- Stephen K. Bannon has played another improbable role in the Trump White House: resident dove.

From Afghanistan and North Korea to Syria and Venezuela, Mr. Bannon, the president's chief strategist, has argued against making military threats or deploying American troops into foreign conflicts.

His views, delivered in a characteristically bomb-throwing style, have antagonized people across the administration, leaving Mr. Bannon isolated and in danger of losing his job. But they are thoroughly in keeping with his nationalist credo, and they have occasionally resonated with the person who matters most: President Trump.

Mr. Bannon's dovish tendencies spilled into view this week in unguarded comments he made about North Korea to a liberal publication, The American Prospect. Days after Mr. Trump threatened to rain "fire and fury" on the North Korean government if it did not curb its belligerent behavior, Mr. Bannon said, "There's no military solution here; they got us." ...
Reply Friday, August 18, 2017 at 10:43 AM

The casualties are not worth the little chance of blunting Kim.

Beside look: with all that money and training and so forth....DDG 62, an Aegis destroyer could not stay safe in peaceful water!

US can't poke ISIS out of Raqqa in 3 years, what would happen with 2 million soldier tough as VC?

+outside of Lemay/MacArthur nukes. Reply Friday, August 18, 2017 at 02:12 PM

"When asked about the Charlottesville tragedy, Bannon called the neo-Nazi marchers "a collection of clowns." He also called them "losers" and a "fringe element.""

Maybe that was it? Why would he call the Prospect? Did he think he was calling the American Conservative and it was off the record? Did he know he was out?
Reply Friday, August 18, 2017 at 10:45 AM

Stephen K. Bannon's exit was described in a White House statement as a mutual decision between Mr. Bannon and Chief of Staff John Kelly.

Critics of Mr. Bannon, a right-wing nationalist, bore down after the violence in Charlottesville.

Stephen Bannon Out at the White House After
Turbulent Run https://nyti.ms/2vKGSNG

Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled chief strategist who helped President Trump win the 2016 election but clashed for months with other senior West Wing advisers, is leaving his post, a White House spokeswoman announced Friday.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best." ... Reply Friday, August 18, 2017 at 11:31 AM

What kind of talk doesn't threaten the money and power of the 0.1%?

What kind of talk do we get and from whom? Reply Friday, August 18, 2017 at 10:55 AM

"The Democratic Party isn't going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer
....................
"The Democratic Party isn't going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill," Warren said. "We're not going back to the days of being lukewarm on choice. We're not going back to the days when universal healthcare was something Democrats talked about on the campaign trail but were too chicken to fight for after they got elected."

"And," Warren concluded, "we're not going back to the days when a Democrat who wanted to run for a seat in Washington first had to grovel on Wall Street."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/08/18/centrist-democrats-riled-warren-says-days-lukewarm-policies-are-over

[Aug 18, 2017] What Bannon s exit might mean the end of even the pretense that Trumpist economic policy is anything different from standard Republicanism

To a certain extent Bannon symbolized backlash against neoliberal globalization, that is mounting in the USA. With him gone Trump is a really emasculated and become a puppet of generals, who are the only allies left capable to run the show. Some of them are real neocons. What a betrayal of voters who are sick and tired of wars for expansion and protection of global neoliberal empire.
Notable quotes:
"... What Bannon's exit might mean, however, is the end of even the pretense that Trumpist economic policy is anything different from standard Republicanism -- and I think giving up the pretense matters, at least a bit. ..."
"... The basics of the U.S. economic debate are really very simple. The federal government, as often noted, is an insurance company with an army: aside from defense, its spending is dominated by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (plus some ACA subsidies). ..."
"... Conservatives always claim that they want to make government smaller. But that means cutting these programs -- and what we know now, after the repeal debacle, is that people like all these programs, even the means-tested programs like Medicaid. Obama paid a large temporary price for making Medicaid/ACA bigger, paid for with taxes on the wealthy, but now that it's in place, voters hate the idea of taking it away. ..."
"... So if Bannon is out, what's left? It's just reverse Robin Hood with extra racism. On real policy, in other words, Trump is now bankrupt. ..."
"... with Bannon and economic nationalism gone, he will eventually double down on that part even more. If anything, Trump_vs_deep_state is going to get even uglier, and Trump even less presidential (if such a thing is possible) now that he has fewer people pushing for trade wars. ..."
Aug 18, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

Christopher H. , August 18, 2017 at 01:24 PM

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/whither-Trump_vs_deep_state/

Whither Trump_vs_deep_state?

by Paul Krugman

AUGUST 18, 2017 1:48 PM

Everyone seems to be reporting that Steve Bannon is out. I have no insights about the palace intrigue; and anyone who thinks Trump will become "presidential" now is an idiot. In particular, I very much doubt that the influence of white supremacists and neo-Nazis will wane.

What Bannon's exit might mean, however, is the end of even the pretense that Trumpist economic policy is anything different from standard Republicanism -- and I think giving up the pretense matters, at least a bit.

The basics of the U.S. economic debate are really very simple. The federal government, as often noted, is an insurance company with an army: aside from defense, its spending is dominated by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (plus some ACA subsidies).

Conservatives always claim that they want to make government smaller. But that means cutting these programs -- and what we know now, after the repeal debacle, is that people like all these programs, even the means-tested programs like Medicaid. Obama paid a large temporary price for making Medicaid/ACA bigger, paid for with taxes on the wealthy, but now that it's in place, voters hate the idea of taking it away.

So what's a tax-cutter to do? His agenda is fundamentally unpopular; how can it be sold?

One long-standing answer is to muddy the waters, and make elections about white resentment. That's been the strategy since Nixon, and Trump turned the dial up to 11. And they've won a lot of elections -- but never had the political capital to reverse the welfare state.

Another strategy is to invoke voodoo: to claim that taxes can be cut without spending cuts, because miracles will happen. That has sometimes worked as a political strategy, but overall it seems to have lost its punch. Kansas is a cautionary tale; and under Obama federal taxes on the top 1 percent basically went back up to pre-Reagan levels.

So what did Trump seem to offer that was new? First, during the campaign he combined racist appeals with claims that he wouldn't cut the safety net. This sounded as if he was offering a kind of herrenvolk welfare state: all the benefits you expect, but only for your kind of people.

Second, he offered economic nationalism: we were going to beat up on the Chinese, the Mexicans, somebody, make the Europeans pay tribute for defense, and that would provide the money for so much winning, you'd get tired of winning. Economic nonsense, but some voters believed it.

Where are we now? The herrenvolk welfare state never materialized, in part because Trump is too lazy to understand policy at all, and outsourced health care to the usual suspects. So Trumpcare turned out to be the same old Republican thing: slash benefits for the vulnerable to cut taxes for the rich. And it was desperately unpopular.

Meanwhile, things have moved very slowly on the economic nationalism front -- partly because a bit of reality struck, as export industries realized what was at stake and retailers and others balked at the notion of new import taxes. But also, there were very few actual voices for that policy with Trump's ear -- mainly Bannon, as far as I can tell.

So if Bannon is out, what's left? It's just reverse Robin Hood with extra racism. On real policy, in other words, Trump is now bankrupt.

But he does have the racism thing. And my prediction is that with Bannon and economic nationalism gone, he will eventually double down on that part even more. If anything, Trump_vs_deep_state is going to get even uglier, and Trump even less presidential (if such a thing is possible) now that he has fewer people pushing for trade wars.

[Aug 18, 2017] "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us

At least Bannon does not look like a sociopath as Hillary "We came, we saw he died" and her inner cicle. He has some concerns about South koreian population, dying for US empire geopolitical goals.
Notable quotes:
"... "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us." ..."
Aug 18, 2017 | www.msn.com

... [in] an Aug. 16 interview he initiated with a writer with whom he had never spoken, with the progressive publication The American Prospect. In it, Mr. Bannon mockingly played down the American military threat to North Korea as nonsensical: "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us."

He also bad-mouthed his colleagues in the Trump administration, vowed to oust a female diplomat at the State Department and mocked officials as "wetting themselves" over the consequences of radically changing trade policy.

[Aug 18, 2017] Alt-Right and Ultra-Zionist Alliance against National Security Advisor McMaster

Notable quotes:
"... He was then moved quickly to contain the influence of chief strategist Steve Bannon, who McMaster removed from the National Security Council. If you recall, he was appointed to contain other Trump loyalists such as Michael Flynn, as well. ..."
"... Recently, a campaign accusing him of being anti-Israel has been waged with the support of billionaire Sheldon Adelson by a coalition of alt-right nationalists that includes Steve Bannon ..."
Aug 18, 2017 | therealnews.com

Remember Lieutenant-General Herbert Raymond McMaster? He was appointed as President Trump's national security adviser back in February. He was then moved quickly to contain the influence of chief strategist Steve Bannon, who McMaster removed from the National Security Council. If you recall, he was appointed to contain other Trump loyalists such as Michael Flynn, as well.

Recently, a campaign accusing him of being anti-Israel has been waged with the support of billionaire Sheldon Adelson by a coalition of alt-right nationalists that includes Steve Bannon and extreme right-wing Zionists such as the president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, as well as by Israeli journalist Caroline Glick from the Jerusalem Post. President Trump, in response to all of this, called McMaster "a good man, very pro-Israel," and Israeli officials have also come forward calling McMaster a friend of Israel.

On to talk about these connections and tensions is Shir Hever. Shir is a Real News correspondent in Heidelberg, Germany. Of course, he covers Israel and Palestine for us extensively. I thank you so much for joining us, Shir.

SHIR HEVER: Thanks for having me, Sharmini.

SHARMINI PERIES: Shir, President Trump is now six months into his office as president. He initially has appointed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to take up the Israel file, but there are these allegations flying against General McMaster. Explain to us what's going on. Why are these individuals like Sheldon Adelson even concerned about how Trump is responding in terms of Israel and Israel policy?

SHIR HEVER: I think there's very little that General McMaster can actually do about Israel or against Israel. It really doesn't matter much. The only issue that has come up was the Iran nuclear deal, and I think this is going to be a decision taken directly by President Trump and not by McMaster. Also, what exactly is the Israel interest regarding the Iran nuclear deal? It is not so clear. Obviously, Prime Minister Netanyahu has a certain opinion, but other Israeli politicians have other opinions.

I think this is really a symbolic issue. There are people in the alt-right and also the extreme Zionism who are using this old worn-out accusation that somebody is anti-Israel in order to get their own people into the National Security Council, in order to exert influence on the Trump administration. This coalition between extreme right nationalists, white nationalists in the United States, and Jewish Zionists, which traditionally were on opposing sides, are now working together because of this very strange rise of this alt-right.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right. Now, give us a greater sense of the connection or the tensions between these alt-right organizations and McMaster and Bannon. Map this for us.

SHIR HEVER: Yeah. I've been looking through these accusations that Caroline Glick, deputy editor of the Jerusalem Post, and Steve Bannon himself, and also Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America. What problem do they have with McMaster? They make very vague things about some statements that he made, but they couldn't put them in context. He said that Israel is an occupying power. Of course, Israel is an occupying power, but they couldn't place that statement. The only thing that their criticism boils down to is they say McMaster is a remnant of the Obama administration. He continues the Obama policies, and therefore he's not loyal to Trump.

I think this is the crux of the matter, because actually, for people like Caroline Glick and I think also for Sheldon Adelson, their relation to Trump borders on religious. They consider Trump to be some kind of messiah or savior that will allow Israel once and for all to annex the occupied territory, expand its borders, and then the land will be redeemed. They talk about this in religious terminology.

Here's the problem. Trump has been president for six months now, and Israel did not annex the territory. It did not expand its borders. In fact, it has gone from one crisis to the next, and the Israeli government is not able to cement its power over the Palestinians. Palestinian resistance is not tied down. They're looking for an explanation. The explanation is that something is not pure in the Trump administration, and they're pointing the finger at McMaster saying, "Because of people like him who are sabotaging Trump's own policies from the inside, then this is preventing the Trump administration from reaching its full potential."

SHARMINI PERIES: Right. Obviously, Netanyahu and the Israeli government doesn't agree with this assessment. In fact, they have come out supporting McMaster as being a good supporter of Israel. How does this play out here?

SHIR HEVER: Absolutely. Prime Minister Netanyahu is doing real politics. He knows that there's nothing that President Trump can do that will actually make Israel suddenly conquer more territory. That's not the point. Netanyahu is trying to balance a very complicated system with pressure from different points, and he is a populist, and he's only in power because of his populism. Now, his administration is under threat because of corruption allegations, so this is a problem for him. When people expect that the Trump administration will free his hands to do whatever he wants, Netanyahu suddenly has a problem because he needs to come up with a new excuse. Why doesn't he annex all the occupied territory?

Of course, for him, it's not a good time to get into a fight with the Trump administration. He wants to create the impression that things are happening under the surface, that he is in the know, that his friends are involved in this, but I think the fact that Sheldon Adelson, the big financial supporter of Netanyahu, is now switching to support extreme right groups that have nothing to do with the interests of the Israeli current administration, but are actually trying to push the Israeli administration to move further to the extreme right and to annex territory, that puts Netanyahu in trouble. I think it also spells some clouds over the warm relationship between Netanyahu and Adelson.

SHARMINI PERIES: Coming back to this side of things here in the United States, in light of the events of Charlottesville, Shir, showing a direct link between the alt-right and hardcore racists and neo-Nazis, why would extreme right-wing Zionist Jewish organizations and individuals like Glick and Klein agree to cooperate with the alt-right in this way?

SHIR HEVER: I think people on the left tend to forget that, just like the left considers itself to be a kind of universalist movement, and that leftists around the world should have solidarity with each other, the right also has a kind of solidarity, especially the extreme right. Extreme right movements in different countries consider the extreme right in other countries to be their allies. One of the things we saw in Charlottesville is that some of these neo-Nazi groups and white nationalist groups are big supporters of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, because they see him as the kind of strong leader they would like to see in the United States as well.

For people who see Donald Trump talking about America first, then they're saying, "Okay, that's exactly the kind of administration we want to see in Israel, somebody taking about Israel first." For Caroline Gluck or for a Morton Klein, they are willing to accept a very heavy load of racism and even anti-semitism against Jews from the Trump administration and from its supporters in exchange for being allowed to copy that same kind of racism and that same kind of right-wing policy towards their minorities. Just like the American administration has its minorities, Muslims, Mexicans which are being targeted, Israel also has its minorities, Palestinians and asylum-seekers, and they want those people to be targeted in the same harsh language and the same harsh policies, so that we can [inaudible] a great compromise.

I have to say, the events in Charlottesville had a profound impact on Israeli public opinion. In fact, there are a lot of Israelis who are very concerned about this kind of coalition. They are saying, "No, there's not that much that we're willing to take in order to keep the relations with the Trump administration on good footing." Because of that, the president of Israel, President Rivlin, and also the education minister Naftali Bennett issued statements condemning white nationalists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. I think Naftali Bennett, who is the head of the Jewish Nationalist Party in Israel, and he's actually of the same political camp as Caroline Glick, as Morton Klein, when he makes that statement, that shows that even he thinks that they have gone too far.

SHARMINI PERIES: Interesting analysis, Shir. I thank you so much for joining us today. I guess the situation in Charlottesville is evolving, and it would be interesting to continue to keep an eye on what's developing here against what's happening in Israel as well. Thank you so much.

SHIR HEVER: Thank you, Sharmini.

SHARMINI PERIES: Thank you for joining us here on the Real News Network.

Jibaro 4 hours ago

Confusing, at least to me, in any case I believe that the Zionists learned a lot from the Nazis and there is very little difference between the two groups. I would say that the main difference lies in the fact that the Zionists are sneakier and know how to play with popular opinion. That's why it doesn't surprise me that they are making a common cause with the white supremacists groups.

The only surprise here is that they are doing it openly now. They have become brave and have decided to take the backlash. Perhaps they are doing so because they know they have the support of Trump.

Divide and conquer. Soon we will be fighting on our own streets against each other. It will be the death of the US...

Donatella 10 hours ago

"For Caroline Gluck or for a Morton Klein, they are willing to accept a very heavy load of racism and even anti-semitism against Jews from the Trump administration and from its supporters in exchange for being allowed to copy that same kind of racism and that same kind of right-wing policy towards their minorities."

I have great respect for Shir Hever, he has great insight into Israel society and politics. However, his statement that Klein and Glick (and maybe Adelson) want to be "allowed" to copy Trump's supporter's racism and right-wing policies towards minorities in Israel is beyond hilarious. Minorities in Israel have been and continue to be subjected to racist and supremacist policies (much worse than anything Trump supporters can even imagine) by the Zionists since the theft of Palestinian's land in 1948. The Israelis are not just pursuing racist policies but as Israeli historian Ilan Pappe said, they are committing slow motion genocide against the Palestinians.

[Aug 18, 2017] Russia-gate Hoax About To Be Exposed by Justin Raimondo

Aug 18, 2017 | original.antiwar.com

Julian Assange has the evidence – but will he reveal it?

There's an exciting new development in the "Russia-gate" investigation, one that has the potential to blast apart what is arguably the biggest hoax in the history of American politics.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) has met with Julian Assange – the first US congressman to do so – and returned with some spectacular news:. The Hill reports :

"Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year's election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future."

Assange has maintained all along that the Russians had nothing to do with procuring the DNC/Podesta emails, despite the intelligence community's assertions – offered without evidence – that Vladimir Putin personally approved the alleged "hack." Yet credible challenges to this view have emerged in recent days, including from a group of former intelligence officials, that throw considerable doubt on the idea that there was even a "hack" to begin with. "Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents," says The Hill ,

"Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Trump. 'Julian also indicated that he is open to further discussions regarding specific information about the DNC email incident that is currently unknown to the public,' he said."

What this looks like is an attempt by Assange to negotiate with the US government over his current status as a political prisoner: he has been confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London for many years. Hanging over him is the threat of arrest should he leave and his rendition to the United States to face charges. Could he be making a bid for freedom, offering to provide evidence of how he got his hands on the DNC/Podesta emails in exchange for a pardon?

Rohrabacher, who has a history as a libertarian fellow traveler, has been the target of a smear campaign due to his unwillingness to go along with the Russophobic hysteria that's all the rage in Washington, D.C. these days. Politico attacked him in a piece calling him "Putin's favorite congressman," and "news" accounts of this meeting with Assange invariably mention his "pro-Russian" views – as if a desire to get along with Russia is in itself somehow "subversive."

It's a brave stance to take when even the ostensibly libertarian and anti-interventionist Cato Institute has jumped on the hate-on-Russia bandwagon. Cato cut their ties to former Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus because he refused to accept the War Party's line on the US-sponsored Ukrainian coup that overthrew the country's democratically elected chief of state. But it gets worse. Here 's Cato senior fellow Andrei Illarionov saying we are already at war with Russia:

"First of all, it is necessary to understand that this is a war. This is not a joke, this is not an accident, this is not a mistake, this is not a bad dream. It will not go away by itself. This is a war. As in any war, you either win or lose. And it is up to you what choice you will make."

And it's not just a cold war: the conflict must, says Illarionov, contain a military element:

"First, in purely military area, it is quite clear that victory in this war cannot be achieved without serious adjustments made to the existing military doctrine. Certainly, soft power is wonderful, but by itself it does not deter the use of force."

While the rest of the country is going about its business with nary a thought about Russia, in Washington the craziness is pandemic. Which is why Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Adrienne Watson felt safe vomiting up the usual bile in response to Rohrabacher's initiative: "We'll take the word of the US intelligence community over Julian Assange and Putin's favorite Congressman."

The power of groupthink inside the Washington Beltway has energized both the neo-cold warrior hysterics – epitomized by the imposition of yet more sanctions -- and the "Russia-gate" hoax to the point where it is unthinkable for anyone to challenge either. Yet Rohrabacher, whom I don't always agree with, has the balls to stand up to both, and for that he should be supported.

Assange has stubbornly resisted revealing anything about the provenance of the DNC/Podesta emails, allowing the CIA/NSA to claim that it was the Russians who "hacked the election," and also giving them a free hand to smear WikiLeaks as an instrument of the Kremlin. This meeting with Rohrabacher, and the promise of revelations to come, indicate that he is reconsidering his stance – and that we are on the verge of seeing "Russia-gate" definitively debunked.

We here at Antiwar.com have challenged the "mainstream" media's wholesale swallowing of the government's line from the very beginning. That's because there hasn't been one iota of solid proof for blaming the Russians, or even for the assertion that the DNC was "hacked." We don't accept government pronouncements at face value: indeed, we don't accept the "conventional wisdom" at face value, either. We always ask the question: " Where's the evidence? "

[Aug 18, 2017] The Corporate fascist - with grains of salt - USA. The democracy part is fiction, camouflaged via a fools theatre two-party system and ginormous social re-distribution, amongst others.. the Core (PTB) found itself through miscalculation and loss of power subject to a challenger who broke thru the organised/fake elections, to attempt some kind of readjustement - renewal - reset...

Ethnic nationalism rises when the state and the nation experience economic difficulties. Weimar republic is a classic example here.
Notable quotes:
"... That's exactly nationalism, for sure. The work of that wealth creation by the way is done by the all the classes below the rentier class, from working to middle class. The funneling upwards thing is actually theft. ..."
"... The middle class is shrinking and being pushed down closer to rage because the wealth-stealing mechanisms have become bigger and better, and saturated the entire national system, including its electoral politics. This real face of capitalism has driven out the iconic American Dream, which was the essence of upward mobility. ..."
"... Nationalism is an ugly word, but it's easily reached for when there aren't any better words around. In Russia, they already went through what faces the US, and they figured it out. ..."
"... "In our view, faster growth is necessary but not sufficient to restore higher intergenerational income mobility," they wrote. "Evidence suggests that, to increase income mobility, policymakers should focus on raising middle-class and lower-income household incomes." ..."
"... Advocating smoothed-out relations with Russia (for commercial perso reasons, Tillerson, etc. and a need to grade adversaries and accept some into the fold, like Russia, instead of Iran ), a more level playing field, multi-polar world, to actually become more dominant in trade (China etc.) and waste less treasure on supporting enemies, aka proxy stooges, to no purpose (e.g. Muslim brotherhood, Al Q kooks, ISIS) and possibly even Israel -- hmmm. ..."
"... The old guard will do much to get rid of the upstart and his backers (who they are exactly I'd quite like to know?) as all their positions and revenues are at risk ..."
"... The Trump crowd seems at the same time both vulnerable and determined and thus navigating ŕ vue as the F say, by sight and without a plan An underground internal war which is stalemated, leading to instrumentalising the ppl and creating chaos, scandals, etc. ..."
Aug 18, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Tay | Aug 18, 2017 6:56:05 AM | 82

The US has no problem generating wealth, and has no need to force conflict with China. The US's problem is that that wealth is funneled upwards. Wealth inequality is not a meme. "Shrinking middle class" is a euphemism for downward-mobility of the middle class, an historical incubator for Reaction. And that's what we have here, reactionaries from a middle class background who now are earning less than their parents at menial jobs, or who are unemployed, becoming goons; aping the klan, appropriating nazi icons, blaming the foreigner, the negro, the Jew, the Muslim, for their circumstances. A "trade war" will not help them one iota, it will make their lives worse, and Bannon will go out and say it's the fault of the foreigner and the immigrant, their numbers wool swell. More terror, depper culture wars. I suppose that's nationalism to some people.

Grieved | Aug 18, 2017 9:51:21 AM | 83

@82 Tay

That's exactly nationalism, for sure. The work of that wealth creation by the way is done by the all the classes below the rentier class, from working to middle class. The funneling upwards thing is actually theft.

The middle class is shrinking and being pushed down closer to rage because the wealth-stealing mechanisms have become bigger and better, and saturated the entire national system, including its electoral politics. This real face of capitalism has driven out the iconic American Dream, which was the essence of upward mobility.

Nationalism is an ugly word, but it's easily reached for when there aren't any better words around. In Russia, they already went through what faces the US, and they figured it out.

Since we're looking for the grown-ups, let's turn to Vladimir Putin, always reliable for sanity when direction is lost.

Putin recalled the words of outstanding Soviet Russian scholar Dmitry Likhachev that patriotism drastically differs from nationalism. "Nationalism is hatred of other peoples, while patriotism is love for your motherland," Putin cited his words.

-- Putin reminds that "patriotism drastically differs from nationalism"

somebody | Aug 18, 2017 11:00:25 AM | 86
83
Upward mobility has fallen sharply
"In our view, faster growth is necessary but not sufficient to restore higher intergenerational income mobility," they wrote. "Evidence suggests that, to increase income mobility, policymakers should focus on raising middle-class and lower-income household incomes."

Interventions worth considering include universal preschool and greater access to public universities, increasing the minimum wage, and offering vouchers to help families with kids move from poor neighborhoods into areas with better schools and more resources, they said.

Is there any political party or group in the US that suggests this?

Noirette | Aug 18, 2017 11:56:04 AM | 90
The Corporate "fascist" - with grains of salt - USA. The 'democracy' part is fiction, camouflaged via a fools theatre two-party system and ginormous social re-distribution, amongst others.. the Core (PTB) found itself through miscalculation and loss of power subject to a challenger who broke thru the \organised/ fake elections, to attempt some kind of re-adjustement - renewal - re-set - review...

Advocating smoothed-out relations with Russia (for commercial perso reasons, Tillerson, etc. and a need to grade adversaries and accept some into the fold, like Russia, instead of Iran ), a more level playing field, multi-polar world, to actually become more dominant in trade (China etc.) and waste less treasure on supporting enemies, aka proxy stooges, to no purpose (e.g. Muslim brotherhood, Al Q kooks, ISIS) and possibly even Israel -- hmmm.

Heh, the profits of domination are to be organised, extracted and distributed, differently. One Mafia-type tribe taking over from another! Ivanka will be The Sweet First Woman Prezzie! Style, Heart, Love, Looks! Go!

The old guard will do much to get rid of the upstart and his backers (who they are exactly I'd quite like to know?) as all their positions and revenues are at risk, so they are activating all - anything to attack. The Trump crowd seems at the same time both vulnerable and determined and thus navigating ŕ vue as the F say, by sight and without a plan An underground internal war which is stalemated, leading to instrumentalising the ppl and creating chaos, scandals, etc.

[Aug 17, 2017] Grown-ups Versus Ideologues The Media Narrative of the White House May Be All Wrong

Notable quotes:
"... McMaster's was spewing nonsense. The same was said about the Soviet Union and China when they became nuclear weapons states. North Korea just became one . Conventional deterrence of both sides has worked with North Korea for decades. Nuclear deterrence with North Korea will work just as well as it did with the Soviet and Chinese communists. If North Korea were really not deterrable the U.S. should have nuked it yesterday to minimize the overall risk and damage. It is the McMaster position that is ideological and not rational or "grown up" at all. ..."
"... Compare that to Steve Bannon's take on the issue: ..."
"... "There's no military solution [to North Korea's nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us." ..."
"... But looking at things now, rather than a spoilt paranoid kid, perhaps someone trained from an early age for leadership, and perhaps rather than being paranoid (Russia/China), perhaps a leader that finds it more important to create a deterrence against the US. Third generation at war with the US and his seen his father was fucked over when trying to make a deal with the US. NK's nuke and missile tech have come a long way in the few short years Kim Jong Un has been in power. ..."
"... "Deterrence is a strategy intended to dissuade an adversary from taking an action not yet started, or to prevent them from doing something that another state desires." ..."
"... Classic deterrence strategy IS working for NK perfectly. ..."
"... All one has to do to know what Bannon's position on Iran is to read Breitbart on any given day. Unless we are supposed to believe that Bannon's opinions are not reflected by the website he ran for four years. Bannon is for war against Islam in general, there is nothing "realist" about his foreign policy. ..."
"... @12... "Bannon is a fascist" I'm not so sure. Mussolini defined fascism as being an alliance of corporate and state powers... but Bannon (and most of his followers) have no trust in the corporate sector as they [the corporate sector] are to a large degree Globalists - they used the US and then threw it aside in pursuit of profit elsewhere. For that, he would even call them traitors. So you could call him a Nationalist. ..."
"... Bannon makes sense. That must be why many want him gone especially the neocons. As to North Korea, the US should have admitted "facts on the ground" long ago and worked to sign the official end of the war and work to get the two Koreas talking and working together. ..."
Aug 17, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

The Democrats and the media love the Pentagon generals in the White House. They are the "grown ups":

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., had words of praise for Donald Trump's new pick for national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster -- calling the respected military officer a "certified, card-carrying grown-up,"

According to the main-stream narrative the "grown ups" are opposed by " ideologues " around Trump's senior advisor Steve Bannon. Bannon is even infectious, according to Jeet Heer, as he is Turning Trump Into an Ethno-Nationalist Ideologue . A recent short interview with Bannon dispels that narrative.

Who is really the sane person on, say, North Korea?

The "grown-up" General McMaster, Trump's National Security Advisor, is not one of them. He claims North Korea is not deterrable from doing something insane.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But your predecessor Susan Rice wrote this week that the U.S. could tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea the same way we tolerated nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union far more during the Cold War. Is she right?

MCMASTER: No, she's not right. And I think the reason she's not right is that the classical deterrence theory, how does that apply to a regime like the regime in North Korea? A regime that engages in unspeakable brutality against its own people? A regime that poses a continuous threat to the its neighbors in the region and now may pose a threat, direct threat, to the United States with weapons of mass destruction?

McMaster's was spewing nonsense. The same was said about the Soviet Union and China when they became nuclear weapons states. North Korea just became one . Conventional deterrence of both sides has worked with North Korea for decades. Nuclear deterrence with North Korea will work just as well as it did with the Soviet and Chinese communists. If North Korea were really not deterrable the U.S. should have nuked it yesterday to minimize the overall risk and damage. It is the McMaster position that is ideological and not rational or "grown up" at all.

Compare that to Steve Bannon's take on the issue:

"There's no military solution [to North Korea's nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us."

It was indeed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea which "got" the United States and stopped the U.S. escalation game. It is wrong to think that North Korea "backed off" in the recent upheaval about a missile test targeted next to Guam. It was the U.S. that pulled back from threatening behavior.

Since the end of May the U.S. military trained extensively for decapitation and "preemptive" strikes on North Korea:

Two senior military officials -- and two senior retired officers -- told NBC News that key to the plan would be a B-1B heavy bomber attack originating from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.
...
Of the 11 B-1 practice runs since the end of May, four have also involved practice bombing at military ranges in South Korea and Australia.

In response to the B-1B flights North Korea published plans to launch a missile salvo next to the U.S. island of Guam from where those planes started. The announcement included a hidden offer to stop the test if the U.S. would refrain from further B-1B flights. A deal was made during secret negotiations . Since then no more B-1B flights took place and North Korea suspended its Guam test plans. McMaster lost and the sane people, including Steve Bannon, won.

But what about Bannon's "ethno-nationalist" ideology? Isn't he responsible for the right-wing nutters of Charlottesville conflict? Isn't he one of them?

He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: "Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more."

"These guys are a collection of clowns," he added.

Bannon sees China as an economic enemy and wants to escalate an economic conflict with it. He is said to be against the nuclear deal with Iran. The generals in Trump's cabinet are all anti-Iran hawks. As Bannon now turns out to be a realist on North Korea, I am not sure what real position on Iran is.

Domestically Bannon is pulling the Democrats into the very trap I had several times warned against:

"The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."

This worked well during the presidential election and might continue to work for Trump. As long as the Democrats do not come up with, and fight for, sane economic polices they will continue to lose elections. The people are not interested in LGBT access to this or that bathroom. They are interested in universal healthcare, in personal and economic security. They are unlikely to get such under Bannon and Trump. But, unlike the Democrats, the current White House crew at least claim to have plans to achieve it.

Posted by b on August 16, 2017 at 11:51 PM | Permalink

Peter AU 1 | Aug 17, 2017 1:05:52 AM | 1

A couple of very interesting links from the last thread were the one to the Bannon article, and also the link to the Carter/NK article.

Kim Jong Un, 3rd generation like his father and grandfather leader of NK. From what I have read this is a cultural thing t hat predates communism and the Japanese occupation prior. Many pictures of Kim show an overweight youngster amongst gaunt hungry looking generals. Gave the impression of a spoilt kid simply handed power. Not going to the May 9 parade in Russia when invited also gave the impression he was paranoid.

But looking at things now, rather than a spoilt paranoid kid, perhaps someone trained from an early age for leadership, and perhaps rather than being paranoid (Russia/China), perhaps a leader that finds it more important to create a deterrence against the US. Third generation at war with the US and his seen his father was fucked over when trying to make a deal with the US. NK's nuke and missile tech have come a long way in the few short years Kim Jong Un has been in power.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Kim Jong Un and Trump have a meet one day.

The link to the Carter article http://www.fox5atlanta.com/national-news/273096065-story

ben | Aug 17, 2017 1:22:28 AM | 2
b said: "The people are not interested in LGBT access to this or that bathroom. They are interested in universal healthcare, in personal and economic security. They are unlikely to get such under Bannon and Trump. But, unlike the Democrats, the current White House crew at least claim to have plans to achieve it."

With that statement b, you nailed it..

V. Arnold | Aug 17, 2017 1:32:51 AM | 3
"There's no military solution [to North Korea's nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us."

Doesn't that at least show Bannon as the adult in the room?
I would say so.

psychohistorian | Aug 17, 2017 1:53:13 AM | 4
So lets start parsing this economic nationalism that Bannon is making happen with Trump.

Economic nationalism is a term used to describe policies which are guided by the idea of protecting domestic consumption, labor and capital formation, even if this requires the imposition of tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of labour, goods and capital. It is in opposition to Globalisation in many cases, or at least on questions the unrestricted good of Free trade. It would include such doctrines as Protectionism, Import substitution, Mercantilism and planned economies.

Examples of economic nationalism include Japan's use of MITI to "pick winners and losers", Malaysia's imposition of currency controls in the wake of the 1997 currency crisis, China's controlled exchange of the Yuan, Argentina's economic policy of tariffs and devaluation in the wake of the 2001 financial crisis and the United States' use of tariffs to protect domestic steel production.

Think about what a trade war with China would do. It would crash the world economy as China tried to cash in on it US Treasury holdings with the US likely defaulting......just one possible scenario.

At least now, IMO, the battle for a multi-polar (finance) world is out in the open.....let the side taking by nations begin. I hope Bannon is wrong about the timing of potential global power shifting and the US loses its empire status.

psychohistorian | Aug 17, 2017 2:19:03 AM | 5
I thought that maybe Bannon was being a bit too forthright in his recent comments and perhaps he has just painted a big bullseye on his back for the racist clowns he has used to aim at. Check this out: Bannons colleagues disturbed by interview with left wing publication
Copeland | Aug 17, 2017 2:30:36 AM | 6
Bannon thinks the bombast on display between the Kim and Trump has been "a sideshow". The real show, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the dramatic sparring between the two leaders. The Mother Of All Policies, according to Bannon, is an all-bets-on trade war with China, whose endgame admits to only one outcome,--that is to say-- that only one hegemon will remain standing at the end of this struggle.

There can be only one King-of-the-Hill. But where is the Greek Chorus?--the prophetic warning that goes by the name of necessity?-- that tries to ward off hubris? "One must never subscribe to absurdities" (it was Camus who aptly said that).

V. Arnold | Aug 17, 2017 2:39:11 AM | 7
psychohistorian | Aug 17, 2017 2:19:03 AM | 5

I had read this before; interesting to say the least.
Truth be told, I'd never heard of Bannon prior to Trumps election and still know little about him.
Politics aside Bannon seems a straight shooter; I certainly can't argue his statement re: what would happen if we attacked NK. His statement is echo'd by many long before today.
I do plan to start paying attention from this point forward.
Oh, and I did read that Trump is afraid of Bannon, but don't remember the reason stated.

Realist | Aug 17, 2017 3:18:01 AM | 8
Here is Bannon's latest:

Bannon dismissed the far-right as irrelevant:

"Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more."

"These guys are a collection of clowns," he added.

Bannon is no friend of White Nationalists.

somebody | Aug 17, 2017 4:49:34 AM | 12
No, whoever planned that "United Right" rally walked Trump into the trap.

As Trump was incapable to disassociate himself clearly from people who protest against the take down of a statue of General Lee. Trump now owns the race issue.

Steve Bannon is a fascist . That does not mean he is stupid.

The generals are clearly dangerous. They have the power to walk everybody to world war III. Trump has pledged to spend even more on the US military, the military already has the highest spending world wide. The generals don't want to admit that they cannot solve anythings by military power.

Trump going off script in that press conference into a stream of consciousness was bad. He reminded everybody of their rambling demented great-grandfather. He tried to get the discussion to economic issues, he did not succeed.

Veterans Today is a dubious source, but this here sounds genuine Washington behind the mirrors

In stepped more lies and garbage, this time more fake than the other, with chaos theory and psychological warfare organizations drowning in capabilities from the overfunded phony war on terror and too much time on their hands now lending their useless talents toward disinforming the general public.

The result has been a divided US where "alternative facts" fabricated for a vulnerable demographic now competes with the "mainstream" now termed, and I believe rightly so, "fake news" to support different versions of a fictional narrative that resembles reality only in the most rarified and oblique manner.
...

America has left itself open to dictatorship. It long since gave up its ability to govern itself, perhaps it was the central bank, the Federal Reserve in 1913 or more recent erosions of individual power such as the Citizens United Supreme Court decision of 2005. Whatever milestone one chooses, the remains of democratic institutions in the US are now difficult to find.

What we are left with is what increasingly seems to be factions, mistakenly defined as "right" or "far right" jockeying for control over America's military, and with that, control over the planet itself.

You see, whoever controls the American military controls the world, unless a power bloc appears that can challenge, well, challenge what? If the Pentagon controls America's military and the Pentagon is controlled by a cabal of religious extremists as many claim or corporate lackeys as most believe, then where does the world stand?

Then again, if Trump and his own Republican congress are at war over impeachment, and I assure you, little else is discussed in Washington, two sides of the same coin, servants of different masters, has all oversite of the newfound military power over American policy disappeared?

To this, we reluctantly say "yes."

Clueless Joe | Aug 17, 2017 5:24:06 AM | 13
Bannon can be perfectly mature, adult and realist on some points and be totally blinded by biases on others - him wanting total economic war against China is proof enough. So I don't rule out that he has a blind spot over Iran and wants to get rid of the regime. I mean, even Trump is realist and adult in a few issues, yet is an oblivious fool on others.

Kind of hard to find someone who's always adult and realist, actually. You can only hope to pick someone who's more realist than most people. Or build a positronic robot and vote for him.

somebody | Aug 17, 2017 6:16:13 AM | 14
There is something to that interview by Steve Bannon with a left wing website .
More puzzling is the fact that Bannon would phone a writer and editor of a progressive publication (the cover lines on whose first two issues after Trump's election were "Resisting Trump" and "Containing Trump") and assume that a possible convergence of views on China trade might somehow paper over the political and moral chasm on white nationalism.

The question of whether the phone call was on or off the record never came up. This is also puzzling, since Steve Bannon is not exactly Bambi when it comes to dealing with the press. He's probably the most media-savvy person in America.

I asked Bannon about the connection between his program of economic nationalism and the ugly white nationalism epitomized by the racist violence in Charlottesville and Trump's reluctance to condemn it. Bannon, after all, was the architect of the strategy of using Breitbart to heat up white nationalism and then rely on the radical right as Trump's base.

He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: "Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more."

Explanation a) He wants to explain the climbdown of his boss on North Korea.
Not really helpful to Trump.

b) He wants to save his reputation as the association with the KKK and White Suprematists has become toxic.

Checking on what Breitbart is doing - splitting the Republican Party

A trade war with China would mean prices in the US would become very expensive. It is a fool's strategy.

In other news Iran is threatening to leave the nuclear agreement, and Latin America unites against the US threatening Venezuela with war.

The generals are completely useless.

fairleft | Aug 17, 2017 6:35:17 AM | 15
I think Bannon is an authentic economic nationalist, and one that Trump feels is good counsel on those matters. If this is so, then Bannon cannot be trying to provoke a trade war with China, since that would be an economic catastrophe for the US (and China and the rest of the world). I'm hoping he's playing bad cop and eventually Trump will play good cop in negotiations for more investment by China in the US and other goodies in exchange for 'well, not much' from the US. Similar to what the US dragged out of Japan in the 80s nd 90s.
c | Aug 17, 2017 6:51:35 AM | 16
psychohistorian a
c | Aug 17, 2017 6:59:32 AM | 17
psychohistorian at 4: 'as China tried to cash in on it US Treasury holdings with the US likely defaulting...'

as a sovereign currency issuer of that size the usa can not run out of dollars
to default on their obligations would be a voluntary mistake the federal reserve will avoid
meanwhile the chinese are investing in africa and other countries securing their position in the world

V. Arnold | Aug 17, 2017 7:43:30 AM | 18
c | Aug 17, 2017 6:59:32 AM | 17
as a sovereign currency issuer of that size the usa can not run out of dollars
to default on their obligations would be a voluntary mistake the federal reserve will avoid
meanwhile the chinese are investing in africa and other countries securing their position in the world

Very good; and I agree with your POV; the usa can not run out of dollars.
And therein lies its power; a very dangerous situation that I do not think the world is equipped to deal with in toto...

steven t johnson | Aug 17, 2017 8:18:55 AM | 19
Every political swindler today starts off by pretending Trump won the election instead of the Electoral College, including Steve Bannon. It is the Republican Party, not Trump and his Trumpery who holds majorities in the House, the Senate and the nation's statehouses. Anybody who wants to think that "economic nationalism" will crush the Democrats has forgotten that Trump lost the popular vote on this ticket.

It appears that as a purely nominal Republican, an owner in a hostile takeover, Trump has no qualms about trashing the system. Practically speaking, this is the very opposite of draining the swamp, which requires effective leadership.

Just Sayin' | Aug 17, 2017 8:51:55 AM | 20
Kim Jong Un, 3rd generation like his father and grandfather leader of NK. From what I have read this is a cultural thing that predates communism and the Japanese occupation prior.

But looking at things now, rather than a spoilt paranoid kid, perhaps someone trained from an early age for leadership, and perhaps rather than being paranoid (Russia/China), perhaps a leader that finds it more important to create a deterrence against the US.

Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Aug 17, 2017 1:05:52 AM | 1

OR, looked at another way:

Perhaps the gurning wunderkind Kim's ascent to the North Korean Throne was completely predictable and was predicted a long time ago, and plans were set in motion to ensure that he was co-opted as a kid, and now works with the US to help counter the rising Chinese power.

Perhaps the alleged face-off Trump, Kim and the western MSM treated the world to over the past while, was merely nothing but a pre-scripted choreographic display, a piece of theater agreed upon beforehand by all participants except China

I wouldn't be surprised to see Kim Jong Un and Trump have a meet one day.

I wouldn't be surprised if Kim Jong Un and Trump actually play for the same side.

Just Sayin' | Aug 17, 2017 8:59:31 AM | 21
Every political swindler today starts off by pretending Trump won the election instead of the Electoral College, i

Posted by: steven t johnson | Aug 17, 2017 8:18:55 AM | 19

Actually as far as I can tell the real political swindlers are the ones who refuse to acknowledge that a US Presidential election is, (and has been for nearly whole time the US has been in existence, which is more than 200 years for those who have problems keeping track of such simple matters) decided NOT by the popular vote but by the results of the Electoral College voting.

Anybody who wants to think that "economic nationalism" will crush the Democrats has forgotten that Trump lost the popular vote on this ticket.

Again, just to repeat the actual reality regarding US Presidential elections: They are decided on the basis of Electoral Collage voting and NOT on the basis of the popular vote, as political swindlers would now like everyone to believe.

Thegenius | Aug 17, 2017 9:08:56 AM | 22
Economics PhDs are resisting the only thing that can actully cause higher inflation rate: trade war
somebody | Aug 17, 2017 9:45:00 AM | 23
19

He is doubling down now defending General Lee statues as beautiful. He is doing the same strategy as he did in his duel with Hillary Clinton when everybody thought he was insane, playing to his core Republican base to make sure Republicans have to stay in line or face a primary challenge.

Breitbart is doing the same threatening "Republican traitors".

The problem with this strategy is that Trump won because Hillary Clinton was so unpopular, because their pollsters outsmarted Nate Silver and Co. and possibly because she was a woman.

But Republicans who have to pretend they are religious right wing nuts in the primaries, then have to appeal to independents to win the actual election.

So they cannot go against Trump but cannot defend him. They are paralysed.

That what it comes down to. That the main aim of the president of the United States is to paralyze the party he hijacked.


somebody | Aug 17, 2017 9:58:52 AM | 24
add to 23

Breitbart has gone full culture wars. It is comical, have a look.

john | Aug 17, 2017 10:26:02 AM | 25
Just Sayin' says:

They are decided on the basis of Electoral Collage voting and NOT on the basis of the popular vote, as political swindlers would now like everyone to believe

indeed, though, speaking of political swindlers, there's mucho evidence that Trump may have won the popular vote as well.

likklemore | Aug 17, 2017 10:32:06 AM | 26
Posted by: steven t johnson | Aug 17, 2017 8:18:55 AM | 19

Every political swindler today starts off by pretending Trump won the election instead of the Electoral College, including Steve Bannon. It is the Republican Party, not Trump and his Trumpery who holds majorities in the House, the Senate and the nation's statehouses. Anybody who wants to think that "economic nationalism" will crush the Democrats has forgotten that Trump lost the popular vote on this ticket.

Have you read the Constitution of the USA? The Electoral College elects the President by the rank and file voters electing the Electors to the College on November election day. That's how the system works.

Ask Al Gore; he won the popular vote.

Oh and btw, the Hillary won the popular 2016 vote meme. Take a look at Detroit, MI heavy Democrats' precints - more votes than voters - and the millions of illegal aliens' vote in California who voted after the invite of Obama.

WJ | Aug 17, 2017 10:50:13 AM | 27
Trump won the election. Period. End of story. Done. Finished. Get over it and get on with your life. He didn't compete to win the popular vote. He competed and campaigned to win the election. Advice to Democrats - nominate a candidate beside a senile old neocon woman who is corrupt to her ugly core, and then maybe you can beat a former reality show star.
Just Sayin' | Aug 17, 2017 10:56:25 AM | 29
The problem with this strategy is that Trump won because Hillary Clinton was so unpopular, because their pollsters outsmarted Nate Silver and Co. and possibly because she was a woman.

Posted by: somebody | Aug 17, 2017 9:45:00 AM | 23

Nope - first part of the sentence is correct but the rest of is just you, as usual, repeating crap you found on the Internet and then repeating it here pretending it is profound and that you actually understand what you are talking about, which you clearly don't as evidenced by the fact that you then go on to reference Nate Silver whose fame was never anything but media created hype with little or nothing to back it up.

Silver's feet of clay were evident long before the latest Prez election. It became obvious that his alleged electoral statistical prowess rested as much on luck as anything else. Lucky in prediction when it came to the 2008 election but by 2010 things started to go wrong but the media ignored his feet of clay and kept hyping him as a stats genius.

By the time 2016 rolled round Silver was exposed for the lucky fraud he is.

The real truth of Hillarys inability to win lies not in her being female as you and many others disingenuously (at best) try to claim, but simply lies in the fact that she is a thoroughly unpleasant person with a complete lack of charisma and a massive sense of entitlement.

Blacks and others, minorities generally and independents, who came out in droves for the Obama elections simply refused to go and vote for her.

The Republican vote however changed very little - pretty much the exact same demographic voted republican as voted for Romney.

Trump won partly because of Clintons massive hubris in refusing to campaign in several key states. Cambridge analytical were not required to give him the win, no matter what you read, without analysing it, elsewhere on the web and are now repeating here in an effort to pretend you know what you are talking about.

CA probably helped somewhat but it unlikely that they were central to the win. Clintons hubris and her complete lack of charisma, ensured low black/minority/independent for her in key states, especially those where she had refused to even bother to campaign, which was enough to seal the win for Trump

You simply repeating crap you heard on the net and pretending that if you say it in an authoritative fashion it will magically become true, just ends up making you look completely clueless, as usual. (or dishonest)

Just Sayin' | Aug 17, 2017 11:01:18 AM | 30
@ Everybody who bought into the MSM Steve Bannon promoted white supremacy and through Breitbart. Suggested you read his world view expressed in remarks at Human Dignity Institute, Vatican Conference 2014

Posted by: likklemore | Aug 17, 2017 10:51:54 AM | 28

Anyone with any intelligence would be wise to treat with great caution anything Bannon claims in public interviews about himself or his alleged political beliefs,

RUKidding | Aug 17, 2017 11:21:24 AM | 32
US politics is a great big clusterfeck - worse than ever, which is hard to believe. Bannon's big liar. He did heaps to create this very situation with the White Supremacists. Of course the Democrats are worse than useless. All they're doing is presenting themselves as "We're not Trump" and whining about Putin. All of them are clowns. Every last one. Including the so-called "Generals." Worthless.
Pnyx | Aug 17, 2017 11:27:14 AM | 33
"Since then no more B-1B flights took place and North Korea suspended its Guam test plans."
but: "Yesterday (...) two US B-1 strategic bombers, operating with Japanese fighter jets, conducted exercises to the southwest of the Korean Peninsula." says WSWS. ?
james | Aug 17, 2017 12:32:00 PM | 37
@2 ben.. i agree!

everything about the usa today is divisive... i can't imagine the usa being happy if this didn't continue until it's demise..the 2 party system hasn't worked out very well as i see it.. failed experiment basically.. oh well..

anoymous | Aug 17, 2017 12:51:38 PM | 39
@19

If I remember correctly, wasn't it both the President Elect and the Republican Congressmen who won clear majorities in nearly 80 percent of congressional districts? Presuming an issue like the gerrymandering of districts wasn't significant, that's a far more legitimate victory than an extra million Democrats voting in California (determining the future of national policy). I'm not a fan of the Republicans, but denying the short term efficiency of 'populist rhetoric' isn't helping the left win any substantial electoral victories in the future.

Morongobill | Aug 17, 2017 1:03:36 PM | 40
Good Lord. Can't people read anymore? The election is all about the EC. Keep talking and running for the popular vote, and Trump will keep winning the Electoral College. You either want to win or you don't. I hope you keep preaching the popular vote personally.
Just Sayin' | Aug 17, 2017 1:06:52 PM | 41
@ Just Sayin' 30

I won't give you a pass. Your bias and lack of intelligence is on great display.


No pass for little ol me? Aw shucks, I'm heart broken.

The fact that you think Bannon&Trump are going to do anything about Wall Street and the Banking System in general is quite amusing.

Perhaps you could list a few of Bannon&Trumps anti Wall Street achievements or initiatives since Trump took office?

It should by now be clear to anyone paying attention that while both Bannon & Trump certainly TALK a lot, they seem to actually do very little.

So, do please tell us: what have they actually done?

Just Sayin' | Aug 17, 2017 1:15:57 PM | 42
@2 ben.. i agree!

everything about the usa today is divisive...

Posted by: james | Aug 17, 2017 12:32:00 PM | 37

As the CIA might say: "Mission Accomplished!!"

Keep the proles spilt in their little "identity groups", their micro-tribes, and continue building the Kleoptocracy/Prison/Military State while the dumbed down demos are busy hunting micro-aggressions/fighting gender & race wars etc etc

During the last 5 Prez Election cycles the population spilt on utterly retarded lines such as Gay-marriage, Gender-free toilets etc. All this while the US fought or financed numerous very expensive wars in the Middle East ukraine etc, resulting hundreds of thousands of lives lost.

anoymous | Aug 17, 2017 1:16:15 PM | 43
@26

The 2008 elections had one of the highest ever voter turnout rates for the Democrats and the 2016 elections had one of the lowest ever. The turnout rates (abysmal if ever compared to voter turnout rates in Germany and Japan) easily explain the initial victory and the eventual defeat, not 'Detroit fraud' or 'the millions of illegals' voting in your head. Racial gerrymandering against black voters in the Southern States is a far more real issue.

ben | Aug 17, 2017 1:33:55 PM | 44
somwbody @ 12: Good link thanks..Interesting read about "The Forth Turning"

psycho @ 5: good link also..

WJ @ 27 said:" Advice to Democrats - nominate a candidate beside a senile old neocon woman who is corrupt to her ugly core, and then maybe you can beat a former reality show star."

Yep, so-called "Russian hacking" wasn't the problem, HRC was the problem...

ben | Aug 17, 2017 1:40:34 PM | 45
Just Sayin' @ 41 said:"It should by now be clear to anyone paying attention that while both Bannon & Trump certainly TALK a lot, they seem to actually do very little."

Kinda' waitin' myself to see all those "accomplishments"....

anoymous | Aug 17, 2017 2:01:34 PM | 46
@40

I'll assume this was directed to me.

I understand and respect your point, but I was responding to the initial comment's implicit argument on public opinion: "a common argument is the lower-middle-to-upper-middle-class social base of the Republicans is less receptive to the short term effects of Protectionist policy and this would reduce political morale, as well as grassroots and voting organization. However, the Democrats 'won the popular vote.' So, it's 'obvious' in saying the classless definition of 'the American people' oppose this Republican policy, and naturally, the social base of the Republican Party isn't especially relevant to consider when organizing voters and grassroots movements for a renewed Democratic Party."

To be fair, I think like the early Unionist and Communist circles, and presume public opinion translates to expressions of grassroots politics between conflicting classes (more so than it actually happens in American class society).

Mina | Aug 17, 2017 2:32:30 PM | 47
From Syria with love

https://arabic.rt.com/liveevent/894352-%D8%A7%D9%81%D8%AA%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%AD-%D9%85%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%B6-%D8%AF%D9%85%D8%B4%D9%82-%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%84%D9%8A-5-%D8%B3%D9%86%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%BA%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%A8/

Sad Canuck | Aug 17, 2017 2:52:38 PM | 48
If one proceeds on the assumption that politics in the United States closely follows themes, scripts and production values pioneered by WWF, then all becomes clear. It's simply pro-wrestling on a global scale with nuclear weapons and trillions of dollars in prize money.
james | Aug 17, 2017 2:58:51 PM | 49
@42 just sayin'.. yes to all you say - it is quite sad actually.. not sure of the way out at this point, short of complete rebellion in the streets which looks like a longs ways off at this point..
Just Sayin' | Aug 17, 2017 3:12:27 PM | 50
not sure of the way out at this point, short of complete rebellion in the streets which looks like a longs ways off at this point..

Posted by: james | Aug 17, 2017 2:58:51 PM | 49

Most of the younger generation seem to be much to busy, obsessing over non-existent things like "Micro-agressions" or "hetero-normative cis-gender oppression", to pay attention to, let alone acknowledge, the enormous global macro-aggressions their own country is engaged in on a world-wide scale.

Thirdeye | Aug 17, 2017 3:24:12 PM | 52
But, unlike the Democrats, the current White House crew at least claim to have plans to achieve it.
Is there a "don't" missing from that sentence?

I must disagree that DPRK nuclear missiles are a qualitatively similar threat to those possessed by the Soviet Union and China. DPRK's guiding Suche ideology is a literal cult that goes far beyond the cult-of-personality that held sway over the Soviet Union and China when Stalin and Mao ruled. And by the time the Soviets developed delivery capabilities Stalin was dead and his cult was done. By the time the Chinese developed delivery capabilities Mao was declining into figurehead status and Zhou Enlai, who as commander of the PLA realized how weak China really was militarily, had no illusions about what would happen in a military confrontation with the US. But DPRK is still ruled by a cult that believes the Kims are ordained with supernatural powers that allowed them to drive the Japanese off the peninsula then fight off an American "invasion." They truly don't mention the role of the Soviets and the Chinese in saving their bacon. In terms of face-saving, the Kims have set the bar pretty high for themselves by fostering their cult. Their legitimacy would be threatened if their statecraft as rational actors undermined their Suche cult.

DPRK have been rogue actors against ROK and Japan out of sheer spitefulness, fully exploiting the umbrella provided by the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Assistance with China. They have done extraterritorial kidnappings and murders not for perceived strategic reasons but merely to intimidate. DPRK has pointedly refused to enter talks for a formal peace between them and the ROK. Those kinds of motives do not bespeak of someone who can be trusted with nukes.

Charles R | Aug 17, 2017 3:39:13 PM | 53
Posted by: RUKidding | Aug 17, 2017 12:23:40 PM
Bannon is someone whom I hold quite responsible for contributing to the rise of White Supremacy in the USA, which I consider a clear and present danger. Bannon's dismissive hand waving yesterday is meant to dissemble. Guess some are willing to buy what he was selling yesterday. Not me.

What are your reasons for believing this about Bannon? What counts as contributing, and how did you come to your decision?

It's not that I don't believe you. It's rather important to establish in what way his words (whether the ones you found or the recent ones in American Prospect ) are lies or misdirection, so that I, and anyone interested, can evaluate this for ourselves and come to similar or different conclusions.

stonebird | Aug 17, 2017 3:40:47 PM | 54
I don't think Bannon wants a "trade" war with China but he is right that there is an economic war going on. The "silk roads" and the various new organisations that the Chinese-Russians have set up, (Major Banks, "Swift" equivalent, Glossnass satellites, card payment systems, industrial independence, and food self-sufficiency etc), plus the use of currencies other than the dollar - are all examples of a break-away from a US-EU domination.

However, they have not suddenly introduced everything at once to "bring the US house down". Why? One possible reason could be that they are expecting the US to collapse anyway. Another is that viable alternatives also take time to set up.

b has mentioned the "grown ups" v the Idealogues". The impact of the military on the economic war seems to be underestimated. How much longer can the US afford the more than trillion dollars per year of the "visible" arms? This does not include hidden costs ("Intelligence agencies and pork). Nor does it include costs borne by other countries. ie. Italy has about 80 US bases (the most in the EU) and about 77 nuclear warheads on its soil. Italy PAYS for those bases, and even that does not include infrastucture (roads, increased airport capacity, sewage, water mains, etc) which are paid for by the Italians themselves. Other countries will have similar systems. Some like Kuwait are "paying" back the amounts spent on arms for example.
The total cost is astronomical.

A brief reminder the USSR collapsed because of massive overspending on arms and military projects - leaving the rest of the economy in the lurch. Presumably the Chinese and Russians are expecting the same thing to happen again.

(Aside - yes, you can print dollars as a sovereign state, but printing roubles didn't help the soviets either)
So McMasters and the others are in fact just spoilt brats who think that the good times are forever.
----
One example of the new "bluff-calling" cheaper method of economic warfare (*NK is the another) were the recent NATO/US manoeuvres in Georgia (country) on the anniversary of the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia. The number of troops and means involved would have been enough to carry out a "surprise" attack this time too. The Russians - sent in Putin, who declared that the Russians supported S.Ossetia and were ready to deal with any threat - exactly as they did "last" time. Cost? One plane trip.

(*The NK threat by the US would have seen about 40'000 men from S. Korea and Japan sent against about 700'000 motivated local troops and massive artillery arrays. It was a non-starter, even with nukes)

Tom in AZ | Aug 17, 2017 4:03:19 PM | 55
thirdeye @52

You are forgetting to mention the main sticking point to talks is our refusal to halt our annual̶d̶e̶f̶e̶n̶s̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶d̶r̶i̶l̶l̶s̶ invasion practice before they will come to the table. At least from what I read.

Thirdeye | Aug 17, 2017 4:04:22 PM | 56
54

Even with China's international financial position growing more robust with SWIFT independence, AIDB, the New Silk Road and such, they still have an interest in the Dollar-based western financial system as long as they can make money off of it. They are not going to shoot themselves in the foot by deliberately causing it to collapse. They might even prop it up in a crisis, but I suspect they would drive a hard bargain.

@Madderhatter67 | Aug 17, 2017 4:09:49 PM | 57
Thirdeye says, "But DPRK is still ruled by a cult that believes the Kims are ordained with supernatural powers." What is American Exceptionalism?


MCMASTER: Says classic deterrence strategy won't work with NK.

"Deterrence is a strategy intended to dissuade an adversary from taking an action not yet started, or to prevent them from doing something that another state desires."

Classic deterrence strategy IS working for NK perfectly.

RUKidding | Aug 17, 2017 4:31:17 PM | 60
@53 Charles R: fair enough question.

What I base my analysis of Bannon is his leadership at Bretibart which may or may not be continuing right now. Just read Breitbart if you think Bannon isn't fully behind the White Supremacists rising up right now.

somebody | Aug 17, 2017 5:26:37 PM | 64
35
Steve Bannon is a fascist.

exhibit A
Steve Bannon Allies with Catholic Theo-Fascism Against Pope Francis

exhibit B
Steve Bannon shares a fascist's obsession with cleansing, apocalyptic war. And now he's in the White House

exhibit C
Generation Zero - Bannons Film using the theory of the fourth turning

The idea that people (a people) have to suffer a big war in order to cleanse themselves from moral depravity is fascism pure and simple as who should force people to do this but a dictator.

Greg M | Aug 17, 2017 6:15:08 PM | 67
All one has to do to know what Bannon's position on Iran is to read Breitbart on any given day. Unless we are supposed to believe that Bannon's opinions are not reflected by the website he ran for four years. Bannon is for war against Islam in general, there is nothing "realist" about his foreign policy.
Thirdeye | Aug 17, 2017 6:15:20 PM | 68
55 Tom in AZ

That's a different issue from entering talks for a formal peace with with ROK. DPRK has been refusing that for years. Did you ever consider that DPRK's constant saber rattling against ROK was what lent impetus to US exercises in the region in the first place? The US knows that China would not tolerate a US invasion of DPRK. Why take the risk of invading across great defensive terrain when you can simply destroy?

57 Madhatter67

Thirdeye says, "But DPRK is still ruled by a cult that believes the Kims are ordained with supernatural powers." What is American Exceptionalism?

That's a dumb analogy and a pathetic attempt at deflection. Criticize American Exceptionalism all you want, but don't compare it to a supernaturalist cult. That's just stupid.

DPRK has a history of doing whatever they think they can get away with, exploiting their treaty with China. If their delusional Suche ideology leads them to miscalculate or paints them into a corner trying to prop it up, it could lead to war.

If there's any bright spot in the whole picture it's China's chilly stance towards DPRK after recent events. The excesses of DPRK's ruling cult have occurred largely because they figured China had their back. But China's regional interests have changed dramatically over the past 30 years. ROK is no longer a competitive threat to China and is economically more important to China than DPRK ever was. DPRK's military power is of much less benefit to China than it was in the past. It might even be considered a liability.

61 Stonebird

It wouldn't be cash, it would be be assets and/or the means of controlling them. Big Chinese money is already coming into the west coast of the US and Canada. Oh well, we fucked things up here; maybe the Chinese will do a better job.

Greg M | Aug 17, 2017 6:20:48 PM | 69
@10, this article was written while Bannon was heading Breitbart, bragging about being "conceived in Israel." http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/11/17/breitbart-news-network-born-in-the-usa-conceived-in-israel/

Bannon is against the nuclear deal, and is one of the top people in the administration arguing for Trump to move the Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Bannon has been cited as promoting Sheldon Adelson's Israel policy in meetings with Trump. http://www.timesofisrael.com/pro-abbas-lauder-hawkish-adelson-battling-to-influence-trump-on-mideast/ If anything Bannon/Breitbart push an even harder line on Israel than most politicians and media do.

blues | Aug 17, 2017 6:27:33 PM | 70
First of all, I will now declare that I am 99% confused! So please let me review the 1% that comes through my little keyhole. What has been said?

/~~~~~~~~~~
<< = Just Sayin' | Aug 17, 2017 11:01:18 AM | 30

Anyone with any intelligence would be wise to treat with great caution anything Bannon claims in public interviews about himself or his alleged political beliefs,
\~~~~~~~~~~

Well sure! The guy's a political operative -- One does not get to be a political operative by being some kind of a Dudly Do-Right. Damn.

/~~~~~~~~~~
<< = les7 | Aug 17, 2017 12:27:02 PM | 35

@12... "Bannon is a fascist" I'm not so sure. Mussolini defined fascism as being an alliance of corporate and state powers... but Bannon (and most of his followers) have no trust in the corporate sector as they [the corporate sector] are to a large degree Globalists - they used the US and then threw it aside in pursuit of profit elsewhere. For that, he would even call them traitors. So you could call him a Nationalist.
\~~~~~~~~~~

Well since we can't believe anything from Bannon... And aside from that I am sick of hearing Mussolini's definition of fascism -- After all, he was a psycho-villain -- so why believe it?!

UNTIL WE HAVE STRATEGIC HEDGE SIMPLE SCORE VOTING WE WILL BE SADDLED WITH THE TWO-PARTY "SYSTEM" (really only one party). Who cares if we really have no choice whatsoever. We are held hostage to the false alternatives of the vast legion of the election methods cognoscenti.

See my simple solution soon at Global Mutiny!

Greg M | Aug 17, 2017 6:30:54 PM | 71
@31, "except for the Zion-flavored warmongering." I don't know about you but completely disqualifies him in my view.
Greg M | Aug 17, 2017 6:34:43 PM | 72
@35, please refer to post 69. If Bannon was not a Zionist, he would not have ran a site which brags of being conceived in Israel and which pushes a harder line on Israel than almost any other, and he would not be promoting Adelson's Israel policy within the administration.
Curtis | Aug 17, 2017 7:03:10 PM | 73
Bannon makes sense. That must be why many want him gone especially the neocons. As to North Korea, the US should have admitted "facts on the ground" long ago and worked to sign the official end of the war and work to get the two Koreas talking and working together.
anoymous | Aug 17, 2017 7:41:46 PM | 74
"That's a different issue from entering talks for a formal peace with with ROK. DPRK has been refusing that for years."

I doubt any substantial transcripts from early talks will ever be released, so whoever had diplomats offering the 'fairest' compromises for terms of an early framework (resulting in a later settlement) cannot be known (regarding specifics).

If I remember correctly, there has been at least three Chinese-sponsored peace conferences (on Korea) since 2007, where the general position of the U.S. was: North Korea had to freeze total nuclear production, accept existing and additional (U.N.) verification missions, and dismantle all warheads PRIOR to the signing of any peace treaty. How is demanding unconditional surrender not intransigence? Are we going to just pretend the United States hadn't sponsored military coups in Venezuela and Honduras and hadn't invaded Iraq and Libya (in a similar time frame)?

During peace talks, any terms are argued, refused, and eventually compromised (usually over years and sometimes over decades). Why presume the United States and South Korea had the fairest offers and general settlements in a handful of conferences (especially when we have no transcripts)?

"Did you ever consider that DPRK's constant saber rattling against ROK was what lent impetus to US exercises in the region in the first place?"

You're presuming your case and not giving specific information on what you might know.

Personally, I don't know who 'started it' (I would guess Japan 'started it' by forcing through the Protectorate Treaty of 1905, or the United States 'started it' by forcing through the Amity and Commerce Treaty of 1858), but if North Korea isn't testing missiles near Guam and the United States isn't flying specific planes over South Korea, a compromise WAS made this last week, and more can be made to ensure peace.

Why do any Americans oppose this?

[Aug 16, 2017] Neocons Leverage Trump-Hate for More Wars Defend Democracy Press by Robert Parry

Notable quotes:
"... For his part, Putin compounded his offense to the neocons by facilitating Obama's negotiations with Iran that imposed strict constraints on Iran's actions toward development of a nuclear bomb and took U.S. war against Iran off the table. The neocons, Israel and Saudi Arabia wanted the U.S. military to lead a bombing campaign against Iran with the hope of crippling their regional adversary and possibly even achieving "regime change" in Tehran. ..."
"... Many U.S. pundits and journalists – in the conservative, centrist and liberal media – were swept up by the various hysterias over Syria, Iran and Russia – much as they had been a decade earlier around the Iraq-WMD frenzy and the "responsibility to protect" (or R2P) argument for the violent "regime change" in Libya in 2011. In all these cases, the public debate was saturated with U.S. government and neocon propaganda, much of it false. ..."
"... But it worked. For instance, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks achieved extraordinary success in seducing many American "peace activists" to support the "regime change" war in Syria by sending sympathetic victims of the Syrian government on speaking tours. ..."
"... Still, whenever the White Helmets or other "activists" accused the Syrian government of some unlikely chemical attack, the information was treated as gospel . When United Nations investigators, who were under enormous pressure to confirm the propaganda tales beloved in the West, uncovered evidence that one of the alleged chlorine attacks was staged by the jihadists, the mainstream U.S. media politely looked the other way and continued to treat the chemical-weapons stories as credible. ..."
"... "Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press." ..."
"... The evidence that Russia had "hacked our democracy" was very thin – some private outfit called Crowdstrike found Cyrillic lettering and a reference to the founder of the Soviet KGB in some of the metadata – but that "incriminating evidence" contradicted Crowdstrike's own notion of a crack Russian hacking operation that was almost impossible to trace. ..."
"... According to Clapper's later congressional testimony, the analysts for this job were "hand-picked" from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and assigned to produce an "assessment" before Obama left office. Their Jan. 6 report was remarkable in its lack of evidence and the analysts themselves admitted that it fell far short of establishing anything as fact. It amounted to a continuation of the "trust us" approach that had dominated the anti-Russia themes for years. ..."
"... "When all right-thinking people in the nation's capital seem to agree on something – as has been the case recently with legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia – that may be a warning that the debate has veered into an unthinking herd mentality," Ignatius wrote as he questioned the wisdom of overusing sanctions and tying the President's hands on when to remove sanctions. ..."
"... But Ignatius failed to follow his own logic when it came to the core groupthink about Russia "meddling" in the U.S. election. Despite the thinness of the evidence, the certainty about Russia's guilt is now shared by "all right-thinking people" in Washington, who agree that this point is beyond dispute despite the denials from both WikiLeaks, which published the purloined Democratic emails, and the Russian government. ..."
"... Yet, the neocons have achieved perhaps their greatest success by merging Cold War Russo-phobia with the Trump Derangement Syndrome to enlist liberals and even progressives into the neocon drive for more "regime change" wars. ..."
"... Even relative Kremlin moderates such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev , are citing Trump's tail-between-his-legs signing of the sanctions bill as proof that the U.S. establishment has blocked any hope for a détente between Washington and Moscow. ..."
"... In other words, the prospects for advancing the neocon agenda of more "regime change" wars and coups have grown – and the neocons can claim as their allies virtually the entire Democratic Party hierarchy which is so eager to appease its angry #Resistance base that even the heightened risk of nuclear war is being ignored. ..."
5 August 2017 | www.defenddemocracy.press

The original source of this article is Consortiumnews Copyright © Robert Parry , Consortiumnews , 2017

A savvy Washington observer once told me that the political reality about the neoconservatives is that they alone couldn't win you a single precinct in the United States. But both Republicans and Democrats still line up to gain neocon support or at least neocon acceptance. Part of the reason for this paradox is the degree of dominance that the neoconservatives have established in the national news media – as op-ed writers and TV commentators – and the neocon ties to the Israel Lobby that is famous for showering contributions on favored politicians and on the opponents of those not favored.

Since the neocons' emergence as big-time foreign policy players in the Reagan administration , they also have demonstrated extraordinary resilience, receiving a steady flow of money often through U.S. government-funded grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and through donations from military contractors to hawkish neocon think tanks .

But neocons' most astonishing success over the past year may have been how they have pulled liberals and even some progressives into the neocon strategies for war and more war, largely by exploiting the Left's disgust with President Trump

People who would normally favor international cooperation toward peaceful resolution of conflicts have joined the neocons in ratcheting up global tensions and making progress toward peace far more difficult.

The provocative "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act," which imposes sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea while tying President Trump's hands in removing those penalties, passed the Congress without a single Democrat voting no.

The only dissenting votes came from three Republican House members – Justin Amash of Michigan, Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky – and from Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Senate.

In other words, every Democrat present for the vote adopted the neocon position of escalating tensions with Russia and Iran. The new sanctions appear to close off hopes for a détente with Russia and may torpedo the nuclear agreement with Iran, which would put the bomb-bomb-bomb option back on the table just where the neocons want it.

The Putin Obstacle

As for Russia, the neocons have viewed President Vladimir Putin as a major obstacle to their plans at least since 2013 when he helped President Obama come up with a compromise with Syria that averted a U.S. military strike over dubious claims that the Syrian military was responsible for a sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.

Subsequent evidence indicated that the sarin attack most likely was a provocation by Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate to trick the U.S. military into entering the war on Al Qaeda's side.

While you might wonder why the U.S. government would even think about taking actions that would benefit Al Qaeda, which lured the U.S. into this Mideast quagmire in the first place by attacking on 9/11, the answer is that Israel and the neocons – along with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-governed states – favored an Al Qaeda victory if that was what was needed to shatter the so-called "Shiite crescent," anchored in Iran and reaching through Syria to Lebanon.

Many neocons are, in effect, America's Israeli agents and – since Israel is now allied with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf states versus Iran – the neocons exercise their media/political influence to rationalize U.S. military strikes against Iran's regional allies, i.e., Syria's secular government of Bashar al-Assad

Read also: JFK at 100

For his part, Putin compounded his offense to the neocons by facilitating Obama's negotiations with Iran that imposed strict constraints on Iran's actions toward development of a nuclear bomb and took U.S. war against Iran off the table. The neocons, Israel and Saudi Arabia wanted the U.S. military to lead a bombing campaign against Iran with the hope of crippling their regional adversary and possibly even achieving "regime change" in Tehran.

Punishing Russia

It was in that time frame that NED's neocon President Carl Gershman identified Ukraine as the "biggest prize" and an important step toward the even bigger prize of removing Putin in Russia.

Other U.S. government neocons, including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and Sen. John McCain , delivered the Ukraine "prize" by supporting the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine and unleashed anti-Russian nationalists (including neo-Nazis) who began killing ethnic Russians in the south and east near Russia's border.

When Putin responded by allowing Crimeans to vote on secession from Ukraine and reunification with Russia, the West – and especially the neocon-dominated mainstream media – denounced the move as a "Russian invasion." Covertly, the Russians also helped ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who defied the coup regime in Kiev and faced annihilation from Ukrainian military forces, including the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which literally displayed Swastikas and SS symbols. Putin's assistance to these embattled ethnic Russian Ukrainians became "Russian aggression."

Many U.S. pundits and journalists – in the conservative, centrist and liberal media – were swept up by the various hysterias over Syria, Iran and Russia – much as they had been a decade earlier around the Iraq-WMD frenzy and the "responsibility to protect" (or R2P) argument for the violent "regime change" in Libya in 2011. In all these cases, the public debate was saturated with U.S. government and neocon propaganda, much of it false.

But it worked. For instance, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks achieved extraordinary success in seducing many American "peace activists" to support the "regime change" war in Syria by sending sympathetic victims of the Syrian government on speaking tours.

Meanwhile, the major U.S. media essentially flacked for "moderate" Syrian rebels who just happened to be fighting alongside Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate and sharing their powerful U.S.-supplied weapons with the jihadists, all the better to kill Syrian soldiers trying to protect the secular government in Damascus.

Successful Propaganda

As part of this propaganda process, the jihadists' P.R. adjunct, known as the White Helmets , phoned in anti-government atrocity stories to eager and credulous Western journalists who didn't dare visit the Al Qaeda-controlled zones for fear of being beheaded.

Still, whenever the White Helmets or other "activists" accused the Syrian government of some unlikely chemical attack, the information was treated as gospel . When United Nations investigators, who were under enormous pressure to confirm the propaganda tales beloved in the West, uncovered evidence that one of the alleged chlorine attacks was staged by the jihadists, the mainstream U.S. media politely looked the other way and continued to treat the chemical-weapons stories as credible.

Historian and journalist Stephen Kinzer has said ,

"Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press."

Read also: The future of Sanders' political movement

But all these successes in the neocons' "perception management" operations pale when compared to what the neocons have accomplished since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton last November.

Fueled by the shock and disgust over the egotistical self-proclaimed pussy-grabber ascending to the highest office in the land, many Americans looked for both an excuse for explaining the outcome and a strategy for removing Trump as quickly as possible. The answer to both concerns became: blame Russia.

The evidence that Russia had "hacked our democracy" was very thin – some private outfit called Crowdstrike found Cyrillic lettering and a reference to the founder of the Soviet KGB in some of the metadata – but that "incriminating evidence" contradicted Crowdstrike's own notion of a crack Russian hacking operation that was almost impossible to trace.

So, even though the FBI failed to secure the Democratic National Committee's computers so the government could do its own forensic analysis, President Obama assigned his intelligence chiefs, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper , to come up with an assessment that could be used to blame Trump's victory on "Russian meddling." Obama, of course, shared the revulsion over Trump's victory, since the real-estate mogul/reality-TV star had famously launched his own political career by spreading the lie that Obama was born in Kenya.

'Hand-Picked' Analysts

According to Clapper's later congressional testimony, the analysts for this job were "hand-picked" from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and assigned to produce an "assessment" before Obama left office. Their Jan. 6 report was remarkable in its lack of evidence and the analysts themselves admitted that it fell far short of establishing anything as fact. It amounted to a continuation of the "trust us" approach that had dominated the anti-Russia themes for years.

Much of the thin report focused on complaints about Russia's RT network for covering the Occupy Wall Street protests and sponsoring a 2012 debate for third-party presidential candidates who had been excluded from the Democratic-Republican debates between President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney

The absurdity of citing such examples in which RT contributed to the public debate in America as proof of Russia attacking American democracy should have been apparent to everyone, but the Russia-gate stampede had begun and so instead of ridiculing the Jan. 6 report as an insult to reason, its shaky Russia-did-it conclusions were embraced as unassailable Truth, buttressed by the false claim that the assessment represented the consensus view of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.

So, for instance, we get the internal contradictions of a Friday column by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius who starts off by making a legitimate point about Washington groupthink.

"When all right-thinking people in the nation's capital seem to agree on something – as has been the case recently with legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia – that may be a warning that the debate has veered into an unthinking herd mentality," Ignatius wrote as he questioned the wisdom of overusing sanctions and tying the President's hands on when to remove sanctions.

Lost Logic

But Ignatius failed to follow his own logic when it came to the core groupthink about Russia "meddling" in the U.S. election. Despite the thinness of the evidence, the certainty about Russia's guilt is now shared by "all right-thinking people" in Washington, who agree that this point is beyond dispute despite the denials from both WikiLeaks, which published the purloined Democratic emails, and the Russian government.

Read also: Now, only CIA and the military do not lie in USA! But, alone, can they stop the Coup and the War?

Ignatius seemed nervous that his mild deviation from the conventional wisdom about the sanctions bill might risk his standing with the Establishment, so he added:

"Don't misunderstand me. In questioning congressional review of sanctions, I'm not excusing Trump's behavior. His non-response to Russia's well-documented meddling in the 2016 presidential election has been outrageous."

However, as usual for the U.S. mainstream media, Ignatius doesn't cite any of those documents. Presumably, he's referring to the Jan. 6 assessment, which itself contained no real evidence to support its opinion that Russia hacked into Democratic emails and gave them to WikiLeaks for distribution.

Just because a lot of Important People keep repeating the same allegation doesn't make the allegation true or "well-documented." And skepticism should be raised even higher when there is a clear political motive for pushing a falsehood as truth, as we should have learned from President George W. Bush 's Iraq-WMD fallacies and from President Barack Obama's wild exaggerations about the need to intervene in Libya to prevent a massacre of civilians.

But Washington neocons always start with a leg up because of their easy access to the editorial pages of The New York Times and Washington Post as well as their speed-dial relationships with producers at CNN and other cable outlets.

Yet, the neocons have achieved perhaps their greatest success by merging Cold War Russo-phobia with the Trump Derangement Syndrome to enlist liberals and even progressives into the neocon drive for more "regime change" wars.

There can be no doubt that the escalation of sanctions against Russia and Iran will have the effect of escalating geopolitical tensions with those two important countries and making war, even nuclear war, more likely.

In Iran, hardliners are already telling President Hassan Rouhani , "We told you so" that the U.S. government can't be trusted in its promise to remove – not increase – sanctions in compliance with the nuclear agreement.

And, Putin, who is actually one of the more pro-Western leaders in Russia, faces attacks from his own hardliners who view him as naďve in thinking that Russia would ever be accepted by the West.

Even relative Kremlin moderates such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev , are citing Trump's tail-between-his-legs signing of the sanctions bill as proof that the U.S. establishment has blocked any hope for a détente between Washington and Moscow.

In other words, the prospects for advancing the neocon agenda of more "regime change" wars and coups have grown – and the neocons can claim as their allies virtually the entire Democratic Party hierarchy which is so eager to appease its angry #Resistance base that even the heightened risk of nuclear war is being ignored.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

[Aug 14, 2017] Slouching Toward Mar-a-Lago

Notable quotes:
"... Expectations that Trump's ouster will restore normalcy ignore the very factors that first handed him the Republican nomination (with a slew of competitors wondering what hit them) and then put him in the Oval Office (with a vastly more seasoned and disciplined, if uninspiring, opponent left to bemoan the injustice of it all). ..."
"... Not all, but many of Trump's supporters voted for him for the same reason that people buy lottery tickets: Why not? In their estimation, they had little to lose. Their loathing of the status quo is such that they may well stick with Trump even as it becomes increasingly obvious that his promise of salvation -- an America made "great again" -- is not going to materialize. ..."
"... Yet those who imagine that Trump's removal will put things right are likewise deluding themselves. To persist in thinking that he defines the problem is to commit an error of the first order. Trump is not cause, but consequence. ..."
"... the election of 2016 constituted a de facto referendum on the course of recent American history. That referendum rendered a definitive judgment: the underlying consensus informing U.S. policy since the end of the Cold War has collapsed. Precepts that members of the policy elite have long treated as self-evident no longer command the backing or assent of the American people. Put simply: it's the ideas, stupid. ..."
"... "Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American?" As the long twilight struggle was finally winding down, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, novelist John Updike's late-twentieth-century Everyman , pondered that question. ..."
"... Unfettered neoliberalism plus the unencumbered self plus unabashed American assertiveness: these defined the elements of the post-Cold-War consensus that formed during the first half of the 1990s -- plus what enthusiasts called the information revolution. The miracle of that "revolution," gathering momentum just as the Soviet Union was going down for the count, provided the secret sauce that infused the emerging consensus with a sense of historical inevitability. ..."
"... The three presidents of the post-Cold-War era -- Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama -- put these several propositions to the test. Politics-as-theater requires us to pretend that our 42nd, 43rd, and 44th presidents differed in fundamental ways. In practice, however, their similarities greatly outweighed any of those differences. Taken together, the administrations over which they presided collaborated in pursuing a common agenda, each intent on proving that the post-Cold-War consensus could work in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. ..."
"... To be fair, it did work for some. "Globalization" made some people very rich indeed. In doing so, however, it greatly exacerbated inequality , while doing nothing to alleviate the condition of the American working class and underclass. ..."
"... I never liked Obama, but I don't think he has personal animus against Russia, Syria, Iran, Libya, or Palestinians. But given who was looking over his shoulder, he had to make things difficult for those nations, and that is why leaders of those nations and Obama came to hate one another. As for North Korea, much of the tensions wouldn't exist if US hadn't threatened or invaded 'axis of evil' nations and forced S. Korea to carry out joint exercises to prepare for invasion. ..."
"... Same with Trump. I seriously doubt if Trump has personal animus against Syrians, Russians, Iranians, Palestinians, and etc. But who is looking over his shoulder? So, he has to hate the same people that Obama had to hate. ..."
Aug 14, 2017 | www.unz.com

If we have, as innumerable commentators assert, embarked upon the Age of Trump, the defining feature of that age might well be the single-minded determination of those horrified and intent on ensuring its prompt termination. In 2016, TIME magazine chose Trump as its person of the year . In 2017, when it comes to dominating the news, that "person" might turn out to be a group -- all those fixated on cleansing the White House of Trump's defiling presence.

Egged on and abetted in every way by Trump himself, the anti-Trump resistance has made itself the Big Story. Lies, hate, collusion, conspiracy, fascism: rarely has the everyday vocabulary of American politics been as ominous and forbidding as over the past six months. Take resistance rhetoric at face value and you might conclude that Donald Trump is indeed the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse , his presence in the presidential saddle eclipsing all other concerns. Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death will just have to wait.

The unspoken assumption of those most determined to banish him from public life appears to be this: once he's gone, history will be returned to its intended path, humankind will breathe a collective sigh of relief, and all will be well again. Yet such an assumption strikes me as remarkably wrongheaded -- and not merely because, should Trump prematurely depart from office, Mike Pence will succeed him. Expectations that Trump's ouster will restore normalcy ignore the very factors that first handed him the Republican nomination (with a slew of competitors wondering what hit them) and then put him in the Oval Office (with a vastly more seasoned and disciplined, if uninspiring, opponent left to bemoan the injustice of it all).

Not all, but many of Trump's supporters voted for him for the same reason that people buy lottery tickets: Why not? In their estimation, they had little to lose. Their loathing of the status quo is such that they may well stick with Trump even as it becomes increasingly obvious that his promise of salvation -- an America made "great again" -- is not going to materialize.

Yet those who imagine that Trump's removal will put things right are likewise deluding themselves. To persist in thinking that he defines the problem is to commit an error of the first order. Trump is not cause, but consequence.

For too long, the cult of the presidency has provided an excuse for treating politics as a melodrama staged at four-year intervals and centering on hopes of another Roosevelt or Kennedy or Reagan appearing as the agent of American deliverance. Donald Trump's ascent to the office once inhabited by those worthies should demolish such fantasies once and for all.

How is it that someone like Trump could become president in the first place? Blame sexism, Fox News, James Comey, Russian meddling, and Hillary's failure to visit Wisconsin all you want, but a more fundamental explanation is this: the election of 2016 constituted a de facto referendum on the course of recent American history. That referendum rendered a definitive judgment: the underlying consensus informing U.S. policy since the end of the Cold War has collapsed. Precepts that members of the policy elite have long treated as self-evident no longer command the backing or assent of the American people. Put simply: it's the ideas, stupid.

Rabbit Poses a Question

"Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American?" As the long twilight struggle was finally winding down, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, novelist John Updike's late-twentieth-century Everyman , pondered that question. In short order, Rabbit got his answer. So, too, after only perfunctory consultation, did his fellow citizens.

The passing of the Cold War offered cause for celebration. On that point all agreed. Yet, as it turned out, it did not require reflection from the public at large. Policy elites professed to have matters well in hand. The dawning era, they believed, summoned Americans not to think anew, but to keep doing precisely what they were accustomed to doing, albeit without fretting further about Communist takeovers or the risks of nuclear Armageddon. In a world where a " single superpower " was calling the shots, utopia was right around the corner. All that was needed was for the United States to demonstrate the requisite confidence and resolve.

Three specific propositions made up the elite consensus that coalesced during the initial decade of the post-Cold-War era. According to the first, the globalization of corporate capitalism held the key to wealth creation on a hitherto unimaginable scale. According to the second, jettisoning norms derived from Judeo-Christian religious traditions held the key to the further expansion of personal freedom. According to the third, muscular global leadership exercised by the United States held the key to promoting a stable and humane international order.

Unfettered neoliberalism plus the unencumbered self plus unabashed American assertiveness: these defined the elements of the post-Cold-War consensus that formed during the first half of the 1990s -- plus what enthusiasts called the information revolution. The miracle of that "revolution," gathering momentum just as the Soviet Union was going down for the count, provided the secret sauce that infused the emerging consensus with a sense of historical inevitability.

The Cold War itself had fostered notable improvements in computational speed and capacity, new modes of communication, and techniques for storing, accessing, and manipulating information. Yet, however impressive, such developments remained subsidiary to the larger East-West competition. Only as the Cold War receded did they move from background to forefront. For true believers, information technology came to serve a quasi-theological function, promising answers to life's ultimate questions. Although God might be dead, Americans found in Bill Gates and Steve Jobs nerdy but compelling idols.

More immediately, in the eyes of the policy elite, the information revolution meshed with and reinforced the policy consensus. For those focused on the political economy, it greased the wheels of globalized capitalism, creating vast new opportunities for trade and investment. For those looking to shed constraints on personal freedom, information promised empowerment, making identity itself something to choose, discard, or modify. For members of the national security apparatus, the information revolution seemed certain to endow the United States with seemingly unassailable military capabilities. That these various enhancements would combine to improve the human condition was taken for granted; that they would, in due course, align everybody -- from Afghans to Zimbabweans -- with American values and the American way of life seemed more or less inevitable.

The three presidents of the post-Cold-War era -- Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama -- put these several propositions to the test. Politics-as-theater requires us to pretend that our 42nd, 43rd, and 44th presidents differed in fundamental ways. In practice, however, their similarities greatly outweighed any of those differences. Taken together, the administrations over which they presided collaborated in pursuing a common agenda, each intent on proving that the post-Cold-War consensus could work in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.

To be fair, it did work for some. "Globalization" made some people very rich indeed. In doing so, however, it greatly exacerbated inequality , while doing nothing to alleviate the condition of the American working class and underclass.

The emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism improved the status of groups long subjected to discrimination. Yet these advances have done remarkably little to reduce the alienation and despair pervading a society suffering from epidemics of chronic substance abuse , morbid obesity , teen suicide , and similar afflictions. Throw in the world's highest incarceration rate , a seemingly endless appetite for porn , urban school systems mired in permanent crisis, and mass shootings that occur with metronomic regularity, and what you have is something other than the profile of a healthy society.

As for militarized American global leadership, it has indeed resulted in various bad actors meeting richly deserved fates. Goodbye, Saddam. Good riddance, Osama. Yet it has also embroiled the United States in a series of costly, senseless, unsuccessful, and ultimately counterproductive wars. As for the vaunted information revolution, its impact has been ambiguous at best, even if those with eyeballs glued to their personal electronic devices can't tolerate being offline long enough to assess the actual costs of being perpetually connected.

In November 2016, Americans who consider themselves ill served by the post-Cold-War consensus signaled that they had had enough. Voters not persuaded that neoliberal economic policies, a culture taking its motto from the Outback steakhouse chain, and a national security strategy that employs the U.S. military as a global police force were working to their benefit provided a crucial margin in the election of Donald Trump.

The response of the political establishment to this extraordinary repudiation testifies to the extent of its bankruptcy. The Republican Party still clings to the notion that reducing taxes, cutting government red tape, restricting abortion, curbing immigration, prohibiting flag-burning, and increasing military spending will alleviate all that ails the country. Meanwhile, to judge by the promises contained in their recently unveiled (and instantly forgotten ) program for a "Better Deal," Democrats believe that raising the minimum wage, capping the cost of prescription drugs, and creating apprenticeship programs for the unemployed will return their party to the good graces of the American electorate.

In both parties embarrassingly small-bore thinking prevails, with Republicans and Democrats equally bereft of fresh ideas. Each party is led by aging hacks. Neither has devised an antidote to the crisis in American politics signified by the nomination and election of Donald Trump.

While our emperor tweets, Rome itself fiddles.

... ... ...

Robert Magill > , August 8, 2017 at 5:06 pm GMT

First, abolish the Electoral College. Doing so will preclude any further occurrence of the circumstances that twice in recent decades cast doubt on the outcome of national elections and thereby did far more than any foreign interference to undermine the legitimacy of American politics.

The November numbers indicate that for the time being without the Electoral College, California and New York will elect our President well into the future.

http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

Priss Factor > , Website August 8, 2017 at 5:17 pm GMT

If Bacevich had really balls, he would cut to the chase and say it like it is.

I think Trump the person doesn't want trouble with Iran, Syria, and Russia. He's a businessman who wants to do business with the world while protecting US borders and sovereignty. Trump is anti-Iran because of Jewish Lobby. His peace with Russia was destroyed by the Lobby and its purse-strings and puppet-strings.

The undeniable fact of the US is it's not a democracy in terms of real power. It is a Jewish Supremacist Oligarchy. To be sure, there are Jewish critics of Jewish power. Think of Philip Weiss and others. Technically, US still has rule of law and due process. But in the end, the Power decides. Look at the anti-BDS bill supported even by Republicans who make a big stink about liberty and free speech.

California is said to be uber-'progressive', and many grassroots people there are supportive of BDS. But California elites and whore politicians are anti-BDS and even passed laws against it. What does that tell you?

Rule of Law is for little people. The Power has Rule of Rule. And if American People, along with their politicians, seem to schizo, well, what does one expect? They get their info from J-Media that feed that lies 24/7.

What is often called 'American' is processed mindset, like yellow American singles is bogus processed 'cheese food'. Because handful of industries control all the media that beam same signals to over 300 million TV sets in the US, 'Americanism' is processed mind-food. We need more organic minds. Too many minds have been processed and re-processed by Great Mind Grinder of J-Media.

The Scalpel > , Website August 9, 2017 at 9:51 pm GMT

AB's 10 recommendations remind me of the beauty pageant contestant answering the question about what she intended to do ."promote world peace".

Actually the beauty queen is being more sincere and realistic. AB's points are very nice sounding, but he gives us no idea how realistically, he or anyone could achieve them and we are left with the feeling that he is just grandstanding. Like the beauty queen, he knows that he will never do much of anything concrete to further these goals, not even if his life or his son' life, depended on it.

DYiFC > , August 10, 2017 at 10:04 am GMT

Well said. I agree – Trump is a symptom of the underlying problems in this country.

Stogumber > , August 12, 2017 at 5:49 am GMT

"Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American?"

Well, Updike speaks from the position of a "universalist"? Did he ever consider that being an American may not mean standing up for universal ideas, but simply caring for one's own children and grandchildren? But even from a universalist position the answer seems simple now – not for Bacevich, but for me. The United States are singled out and unique w.r.t. their First Amendment. Whereas all other Western countries have succumbed to Bolshevist propaganda and have undermined freedom of speech, the "Americans" are the only ones to stand up for it. Why, even Damore may win a lawsuit against Google.

Carlton Meyer > , Website August 14, 2017 at 4:50 am GMT

Whoops Colonel, you forgot to add slashing military spending to your list. The USA could cut its military budget in half and still spend more than Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China combined. Trump's insane push for more military spending undermines his effort at cutting domestic programs to balance the budget. Yet Jimmy Dore explains that most Democrats voted boost the military budget even more than Trump!

It is unfair to depict Trump as a bumpkin. He graduated from an excellent university and used a few million dollars from Dad's seed money to become a billionaire. Moreover, he defied all odds to become President of the USA. I challenge all his brilliant critics to run for President in 2020 to prove that is simple.

LarryS > , August 14, 2017 at 4:59 am GMT

@Robert Magill The US Constitution would have to be amended to eliminate the Electoral College by 3/4 of the states ratifying the amendment. The smaller states would never vote to eliminate their role in electing the president. Nor should they. My respect for Bacevich is waning.

anonymous > , Disclaimer August 14, 2017 at 7:05 am GMT

As for militarized American global leadership, it has indeed resulted in various bad actors meeting richly deserved fates. Goodbye, Saddam. Good riddance, Osama.

Goodbye Saddam?? The implication being that all the death and destruction was somehow worth it?? You scum, of the most evil *beep* nation on earth! A pox on all of you.

The Alarmist > , August 14, 2017 at 8:07 am GMT

"First, abolish the Electoral College. Doing so will preclude any further occurrence of the circumstances that twice in recent decades cast doubt on the outcome of national elections and thereby did far more than any foreign interference to undermine the legitimacy of American politics."

Yeah, let's trade the consensus of a nation of local communities for the tyranny of the (bi-coastal) majority. I might give up the EC, however, if the system was replaced by gladiatorial combat to the death for all who want the job, or, if we're sticking to a two-party system, the decision can come by pistols at dawn (Good Morning America can't get the nod I hate that Roker chap, and I don't think Megan Kelly should be anywhere near selection of a President). Real skin in the game, so to say.

Yeah, bring back the draft. Military service only. We won't end senseless wars unless many more of our young people actually experience them, and that's not going to happen if they are picking up litter or emptying bed pans.

More money for public education? We've been doing that for years dude, and we get worse results as we spend more. There's already too much money in public education. College for all is a mistake, and in gen snowflake, tell me who isn't deserving. How about serious testing for results and beating for those who do not achieve them?

Income equality sounds nice, but it's never been had anywhere by taxation. It takes a certain societal moderation and modesty requiring our ruling elites to not want to be so conspicuous in their consumption (this in the age of the Rich Kids of Instagram) and to share the wealth through employment and good wages to their fellow citizens. Good luck with that ever gracing our shores.

Stop yakking about the pseudoscience nay the religion of climate change. Plant some more trees and take a couple aspirin. Add the costs of global wars for resources to the cost of gas, which will spike it to $6 per gallon and dissuade a lot of unnecessary driving.

Require all candidates for Federal elective office to be physically neutered, and forbid any of their progeny for at least three generations as well as any immediate relations closer than fourth cousin from holding any position of honor, elective office, or Federal employment whatsoever.

Priss Factor > , Website August 14, 2017 at 9:20 am GMT

Trump or no Trump, things would be much saner without Jewish globalist pressure.

I never liked Obama, but I don't think he has personal animus against Russia, Syria, Iran, Libya, or Palestinians. But given who was looking over his shoulder, he had to make things difficult for those nations, and that is why leaders of those nations and Obama came to hate one another. As for North Korea, much of the tensions wouldn't exist if US hadn't threatened or invaded 'axis of evil' nations and forced S. Korea to carry out joint exercises to prepare for invasion.

Same with Trump. I seriously doubt if Trump has personal animus against Syrians, Russians, Iranians, Palestinians, and etc. But who is looking over his shoulder? So, he has to hate the same people that Obama had to hate.

In the US, politicians must hate according to Jewish neurosis. And that's the problem. We don't have autonomy of likes and dislikes. Like dogs, we have to like or hate what our master likes or hates. And Jewish Globalists are elites. The great evil of America is we are forced to HATE whatever Jewish globalists Hate. It is a culture of Hate. Ironically, the biggest haters accuse others of hate.

Priss Factor > , Website August 14, 2017 at 9:49 am GMT

Jeff & Gerald Celente – The Trump Presidential Freak Show

Priss Factor > , Website August 14, 2017 at 10:25 am GMT

Stephen Cohen on why we need close cooperation with Russia.

A new kind of terrorism in aftermath of state collapse in Middle East.

But it seems new sanctions will totally derail any sane policy.

Reactionary Utopian > , August 14, 2017 at 11:05 am GMT

Most of Mr. Bacevich's piece was quite good. Then we got to the Ten-Point Program. A bold, revolutionary program calling for more of how we got here. What the hell?

Wizard of Oz > , August 14, 2017 at 12:10 pm GMT

@LarryS The US Constitution would have to be amended to eliminate the Electoral College by 3/4 of the states ratifying the amendment. The smaller states would never vote to eliminate their role in electing the president. Nor should they. My respect for Bacevich is waning. Yes, it is interesting how smaller states in federations show that they understand and will hold on to their leverage even when , as in Australia, the people themselves vote on constitutional change.

But why would eliminating the Electoral College allow presidentlal elections to be decided by the popular vote in California and NY as someone suggested? Aren't the number of electoral college votes adjusted quite promptly in proportion to population changes?

Wizard of Oz > , August 14, 2017 at 12:20 pm GMT

Here's an anti Imperial Presidency policy for the author to consider and perhaps endorse .

1. Move towards the constitutiobal monarchy or limited presidency parliamentary model by strengthening the H of R and relying on ordinary human ambition to forward the project;

2. Specifically extend Congressional terms from 2 years to 4 (and perhaps provide lots of public financing and free publicity to diminish thevcorruption by donors)

3. Enhance the role of Majority leader – indeed facilitate his forming his own Cabinet – and restrict the amending of budget bills submitted (as the main ones would have to be) by the leader of the majority – or his nominated Finance spokesperson..

Wizard of Oz > , August 14, 2017 at 12:44 pm GMT

@The Alarmist Aren't the votes in the Electoral College quite promptly adjusted for population changes?

The Alarmist > , August 14, 2017 at 1:40 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz To some extent, but since each state has at least one Representative and two Senators, there is a bias toward political geography that is difficult to overcome by population. This is a good thing.

The Alarmist > , August 14, 2017 at 1:51 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz Sorry, should have connected the dots each state's Electors total the same as their Congressional delegations in House and Senate, and House is capped at 435.

bliss_porsena > , August 14, 2017 at 1:57 pm GMT

Eleven: write more articles with never-can-be-done lists until the whole aberrant construct cracks wide open.

anonymous > , Disclaimer August 14, 2017 at 2:14 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz Only with respect to the EC votes corresponding to the number of House Representatives. From Wikipedia:

"Each state chooses electors, totaling in number to that state's combined total of senators and representatives."

Each state – irrespective of population – has two senators, so this protects citizens of less populous states from those in, e.g., California. Part of the Constitutional bargain that makes for a republic as opposed to a national democracy.

Were you sincerely unaware of this?

Wizard of Oz > , August 14, 2017 at 2:47 pm GMT

@The Alarmist Sorry, should have connected the dots ... each state's Electors total the same as their Congressional delegations in House and Senate, and House is capped at 435. Yes, the effect of adding in the senators is substantial. The two biggest (Democrat) states add just 4 out of 543 to their basic Congressional weighting while the 48 other states add 96/543. Thus 17.6 per cent against just an extra 0.7 per cent.
Not even Texas would think of supporting the abolition of the Electoral College. A pity yhe excellent author should be so sloppy as not at least to acknowledge which items on his wish list are pure fantasy.

Logan > , August 14, 2017 at 3:00 pm GMT

"Nominally, the Constitution assigns responsibilities and allocates prerogatives to three co-equal branches of government."

Oh, dear, I do get tired of this meme.

No, the Constitution does not create "three co-equal branches of government," no matter how often the phrase is repeated.

The Constitution establishes a legislative branch that, whenever it is sufficiently united and desirous, has absolute power over the other two branches.

The Congress can remove any member of the other two branches from office, among other powers, but the countervailing power of the other two branches over Congress, at least per the Constitution, is very limited indeed.

In most republics and constitutional monarchies, the executive branch has a number of ways to influence the legisilature, including calling new elections when desired. Our Constitution has none of that.

Under the Constitution, the Congress is not co-equal. Its supreme.

Logan > , August 14, 2017 at 3:17 pm GMT

@gustafus " as we import more and more of the LOW IQ 3rd world – education will be more about the reasons we don't boink our children siblings and cousins"

Nahh, that would be imposing our Eurocentric values on their vibrant cultures.

Wizard of Oz > , August 14, 2017 at 3:37 pm GMT

@Joe Franklin That sounds like another valid reason to stick with the EC.

Wizard of Oz > , August 14, 2017 at 3:40 pm GMT

@Logan And that's why it's ownership by the donors is so destructive.

Jus' Sayin'... > , August 14, 2017 at 4:09 pm GMT

@Robert Magill Any citizen of the USA and/or student of its history who writes in the same essay both that he is a conservative and that he favors abolishing the Electoral College is either a fool, an unprincipled knave, or most likely both.

Olorin > , August 14, 2017 at 4:36 pm GMT

@Robert Magill I came in to make the same point and will add that it would be effectively only two metropolitan areas–LA and NYC.

Whoever would control those cities politically would control the nation politically, economically, and socially the way Chicago's elites control much of Wisconsin (to use an example recently discussed at iSteve).

The republic would be ripe for division into two coastal demesnes vying with each other for power, resources, and serfs (both in the coastal hives and the "flyover states").

What is undermining the legitimacy of American politics isn't the United States Constitution. It is the countless billions of dollars spend on election campaigning each year. That includes all corollary expenditures, as on media buys and polling.

Not the kind of polling that involves voting. The kind of polling that Nate Silver does.

Election campaigns engineer infiltration of the public culture at every level–federal, state, county, municipal, and local–by divisive discourse and methods. These originally were developed so that merchants could differentiate and sell to the masses soap and junk food brands. Not even the commodities themselves–but brands of them.

Political campaigning rolls up the worst elements of advertising, PR, propaganda, and opinion research into one unending tsunami of hostility, division, manufactured conflict, false equivalencies, forced choices, and sneering tearing-down of what others believe, want, or have built.

The people who create political campaigns for a living–with all the corollary products that go with that, including the candidate himself/herself–are, like the people who communicate those, among the biggest parasites in the republic. They literally create positions, opinions, and ideas, then go out and create the demand for them by whatever means it takes. They produce nothing of value. They siphon off value and resources and set the conditions where by organic excellence is drowned in a sea of mass communications.

If the Electoral College were demolished tomorrow, they would have even more unfettered access to more billions of dollars as Candidate Cool Ranch Dorito vied for an influential and lucrative sinecure with Candidate Salty Crunchy Triangular Fried Corn Thing.

And thanks to Citizens United, money is free speech, and free speech means carefully selected, constructed, massaged, spun, and polled speech.

Keeping the campaign-media-finance industrial complex operating is all that matters to these people. Sounds like Bacevich is one of them. Members of the Pontificating Caste usually are. The Constitution is a barrier to their aspirations.

As it was designed to be.

Linda Green > , August 14, 2017 at 4:45 pm GMT

The author did a decent job of describing the zeitgeist. But his list of 10 big government solutions is a riot! The solution is a return to human liberty and acceptance of the reality that all politics that matter to people is local. But our owners don't like local, they like global, they like universal, they claim to be supporters of diversity but their diversity if they have their way looks exactly the same everywhere you go – wow, how diverse. You can be in any major metropolitan area in the US these days and you find it has the same chain store signage dominating the landscape, the same stories in the newspapers, the same ideological megaphones spouting (((their))) doctrines to the masses, the same conformity of expressed opinions (don't say what you really think if you want to keep your job at xyz corp), the same. And unbeknownst to most Americans who are quick to thank servicemen for "their service", their actual service is that when are elites have finally won the entire world will be indistinguishable like US metropolitan areas are today. There is not a big government solution to these issues, big xxx is the problem. The real question at least in my mind is if our owners would allow pockets of American style, liberty based pockets to emerge?

If we could find responsible enough men to do it, we could take back monetary sovereignty from the federal reserve and start a Bank of America. We have our politicians beginning to sell off the commons (highways for example) to investors. We can fund that by letting some money creation occur by being earned into existence rather than loaned into existence. This is explicitly disallowed in the FEDs charter, and it is not for certain we can find men responsible enough to handle this task without problems nor is it certain that global finance would not retaliate. But we have a lot of infrastructure that needs upgrading and maintenance. This would allow some level of exodus from the metros back to Mayberry if there were jobs. We need a small effective government that has a long term plan of how we are going to maintain our infrastructure. Presently the elected children in Washington, short sighted immature bunch they are, put construction money for bridges in the back of bills recognizing a particular day as "insert bullshit day here day" to make their fellow child go along with the pork they put is some other garbage bill. This is an awful way to run a country and the chickens have come home and are roosting. Let the metros continue their present course of forced conformity via peer shaming and propaganda.

Flavius > , August 14, 2017 at 5:44 pm GMT

Alarm bells going off in the night? How about Bill Clinton? Robert Dole? Al Gore? George W Bush? How about the stupendously unqualified mirage of Presidential gravitas, Barrack Obama? his opponents, the snarling ignoramus from Arizona, John McCain? the leaden corporatist Mitt Romney. Perhaps we are to understand these names that the Colonel leaves unmentioned as constituting the "slouching:" But the reason we have arrived at Mar-a-Lago is that the terminally corrupt Democratic Party chose as their candidate the terminally corrupt, stupendously unqualified former President's wife. The foresight of our founding Father's saved us from that miserable fate, thank you US Constitution.
But lest we become too nostalgic for a time when our co-equal legislative branch had members who could assert themselves against the stooge of the moment who the people had installed in the White House, let us take a moment to ponder the stupendous stupidity of our current body that just recently, with near unanimity, chose to lump Russia in with Iran and North Korea on its sanctions bill while producing no evidence of any kind to justify its measure.

Alden > , August 14, 2017 at 5:46 pm GMT

@Joe Franklin Vote fraud is not necessary in California. I'm the only person I know who votes Republican.

Logan > , August 14, 2017 at 6:00 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz Quite right. Though the whole thing started when the "real" job of the congressman became re-election. Once that was internalized, the rest was pretty much inevitable. As long as the government is heavily involved with businesses, determining not only their profit rate but perhaps whether they even survive, they will continue efforts to influence government decisions. Limiting contribution's primary effect, I suspect, would be to drive the influence-buying underground.

The solution, of course, is to get the government out of business and indeed everything else to the extent possible.

[Aug 11, 2017] RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 20170810

Notable quotes:
"... But short-sighted outbursts are to be expected in the final days I suppose: Congress' war with Trump displays a contemptuous indifference to its allies' interests. (Mercouris argues that Trump's signing statement hints at a Supreme Court challenge : very plausible given that there is nothing to the Russia collusion story – even the WaPo seems to be backing off – and that Trump will be able to appoint more SC judges.) ..."
"... Do you think Putin is messing with their minds? ..."
Aug 11, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com
257.a.9 ) is specifically targeted; damage to NASA ( 237 ) is carefully voided. (NASA needs the Russians to get to the ISS and to launch things but European allies can freeze in the dark .

Take that, Europeans, it's for your own good! " You can't... ask for a bigger U.S. military commitment... while... oppose nonmilitary coercive measures ").

The effect of anti-Russia sanctions since 2014 is that Europe has likely suffered more than Russia and certainly more than the USA; Russia has used the sanctions (and its counter sanctions) to increase domestic production (see below) whereas Europe has just lost markets. Well, we'll find out whether Europe has the feet to stand on that Merkel thinks it has .

Russia has many ways to respond and, as Jeffrey Carr has pointed out, Congress has shown it where to hit hardest .

Another thing to find out is whether Moscow decides it's had enough – as Medvedev suggests – and that it's time to make its "partner" hurt. (Some responses: no more rocket engines, no overflights, no supply line to Afghanistan, no US NGOs, no Russian investments in USA, no accepting US dollars in trade.

But Putin & Co will probably come up with something cleverer than anything I can think of). They will be a drag on Washington's foreign policy for decades: "never recognize" Crimea in Russia ( 257.a.3 )? well, they're going to have to some time. I am collecting negative reactions on my site.

They're another step on the downward trajectory of the USA: they will drive a wedge between Europe and the USA; push Russia closer to China; may even lead to a rapprochement between Europe and Russia. But short-sighted outbursts are to be expected in the final days I suppose: Congress' war with Trump displays a contemptuous indifference to its allies' interests. (Mercouris argues that Trump's signing statement hints at a Supreme Court challenge : very plausible given that there is nothing to the Russia collusion story – even the WaPo seems to be backing off – and that Trump will be able to appoint more SC judges.)

SANCTIONS EFFECT. Russian statistics tell us that the share of imports in the retail sector is 36%, the lowest since the 2008 crash . Food imports are down to 24% from 34% in 2014. The percentage of imports in various categories: cereals 0.2%; sausages 1.6%; flour 1.8%; poultry 4.1%; pork 8.3%. Gessen will be glad that cheese imports are 27.7%, but sad that they're down from 48.4%. Sanctions work: just not the way the US Congress thinks they do. Altogether, it's probably fair to say that Russia is now self-sufficient in food. And production is only going to become bigger: the potential of Russian agriculture has never been tapped; serfdom, the village mir and collectivisation were not very productive.

CORRUPTION. The trial of the former Minister of Economic Development has begun . He was caught red-handed taking a bribe they say. I believe he is the highest ranking official yet to be charged: some – Luzhkov and Serdyukov spring to mind – have been accused of things and been fired, but no charges laid. We are told that 45,000 people have been convicted of corruption crimes over the last three and a half years and about 350 officials have been fired this year and the same last year.

VILLAGE LIFE. Someone who often lives in the Russian countryside blasts another NYT-Russia-is-an-unchanging-nightmare piece . Agreement from an American happily living in a village .

PHOTO OP. Putin and Shoygu, alone but for photographers, go fishing in Tyva; they forget to pack shirts. Western media goes nuts. ( DMail ) ( USA Today ) ( Daily B ) ( AP ) ( Fox ) ( Time ) ( Sky ) ( WaPo ) ( TorSun ) ( News.com.au ) France 24 ) ( Telegraph ) ( You look for the rest ). Maybe he really is " the most powerful man in the world ". Bare-chested Trudeau and Obama are ever so dreamy, but bare-chested Putin isn't: CrazyLand is bigger than I imagined. ( Do you think Putin is messing with their minds?

THE THREAT. Pew has an international survey out asking about leading security threats . The following NATO members name US power as a greater threat than Russian or Chinese: Canada, Germany, Greece, Spain and Turkey. USA is named first by 19 countries, China by 9, Russia by 7. This is a competition that the US has won every time out of the gate . And rising . Interesting, eh? And after all that propaganda, too. NATO StratCom needs more money!

UKRAINE. The disaster continues. In 2001 its population was 48.5 million. Latest official estimate is 42.5. Examination of various consumption statistics suggest that this estimate is too high. About 2.5 million are in Russia and another 1.5 million in Poland . At some point, for a country constructed out of bits and pieces of other states, depopulation will become geopolitically significant.

[Aug 11, 2017] Why Some US Ex-Spies Dont Buy the Russia Story by Leonid Bershidsky

Notable quotes:
"... Evidence that undermines the "election hack" narrative should get more attention. ..."
"... The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been investigating the now conventional wisdom that last year's leaks of Democratic National Committee files were the result of Russian hacks. What they found instead is evidence to the contrary. ..."
"... VIPS instead surmises that, after WikiLeaks' Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016 his intention to publish Hillary Clinton-related emails, the DNC rushed to fabricate evidence that it had been hacked by Russia to defuse any potential WikiLeaks disclosures. To this end, the theory goes, the DNC used the Guccifer 2.0 online persona to release mostly harmless DNC data. Guccifer 2.0 was later loosely linked to Russia because of Russian metadata in his files and his use of a Russia-based virtual private network. ..."
"... The VIPS theory relies on forensic findings by independent researchers who go by the pseudonyms "Forensicator" and "Adam Carter." The former found that 1,976 MB of Guccifer's files were copied from a DNC server on July 5 in just 87 seconds, implying a transfer rate of 22.6 megabytes per second -- or, converted to a measure most people use, about 180 megabits per second, a speed not commonly available from U.S. internet providers. Downloading such files this quickly over the internet, especially over a VPN (most hackers would use one), would have been all but impossible because the network infrastructure through which the traffic would have to pass would further slow the traffic ..."
"... However, as Forensicator has pointed out , the files could have been copied to a thumb drive -- something only an insider could have done -- at about that speed. ..."
"... And yet these aren't good reasons to avoid the discussion of what actually happened at the DNC last year, especially since no intelligence agency actually examined the Democrats' servers and CrowdStrike, the firm whose conclusions informed much of the intelligence community's assessment, had obvious conflicts of interest -- from being paid by the DNC to co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch's affiliation with the Atlantic Council , a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that has generally viewed Russia as a hostile power. ..."
"... Many Americans' certainty about Russian involvement, which has led to increased hostility toward Russia... ..."
"... The U.S. public didn't quite buy Clinton's "the Russians did it" line last year, and she lost the election. By now, though, many Americans are sold on it. That may be an Iraq-sized mistake, leading to a dangerous failure to recognize that Donald Trump's victory was an American phenomenon, not a Russian-made one. Authoritarian regimes such as Putin's routinely use external enemies to gloss over domestic divisions and distract the public from problems at home. In a functioning democracy, such tactics should not succeed. ..."
Aug 10, 2017 | www.bloomberg.com
Evidence that undermines the "election hack" narrative should get more attention.

What if it wasn't Russia's fault?

In 2003, when a number of former intelligence professionals formed a group to protest the way intelligence was bent to accuse Iraq of producing weapons of mass destruction, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a sympathetic column quoting the group's members. In 2017, you won't read about this same group's latest campaign in the big U.S. newspapers.

The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been investigating the now conventional wisdom that last year's leaks of Democratic National Committee files were the result of Russian hacks. What they found instead is evidence to the contrary.

Unlike the "current and former intelligence officials" anonymously quoted in stories about the Trump-Russia scandal, VIPS members actually have names. But their findings and doubts are only being aired by non-mainstream publications that are easy to accuse of being channels for Russian disinformation. The Nation, Consortium News, ZeroHedge and other outlets have pointed to their findings that at least some of the DNC files were taken by an insider rather than by hackers, Russian or otherwise.

The January assessment of the U.S. intelligence community, which serves as the basis for accusations that Russia hacked the election said, among other things: "We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release U.S. victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks."

VIPS instead surmises that, after WikiLeaks' Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016 his intention to publish Hillary Clinton-related emails, the DNC rushed to fabricate evidence that it had been hacked by Russia to defuse any potential WikiLeaks disclosures. To this end, the theory goes, the DNC used the Guccifer 2.0 online persona to release mostly harmless DNC data. Guccifer 2.0 was later loosely linked to Russia because of Russian metadata in his files and his use of a Russia-based virtual private network.

The VIPS theory relies on forensic findings by independent researchers who go by the pseudonyms "Forensicator" and "Adam Carter." The former found that 1,976 MB of Guccifer's files were copied from a DNC server on July 5 in just 87 seconds, implying a transfer rate of 22.6 megabytes per second -- or, converted to a measure most people use, about 180 megabits per second, a speed not commonly available from U.S. internet providers. Downloading such files this quickly over the internet, especially over a VPN (most hackers would use one), would have been all but impossible because the network infrastructure through which the traffic would have to pass would further slow the traffic.

However, as Forensicator has pointed out , the files could have been copied to a thumb drive -- something only an insider could have done -- at about that speed.

Adam Carter, the pseudonym for the other analyst, showed that the content of the Guccifer files was at some point cut and pasted into Microsoft Word templates that used the Russian language. Carter laid out all the available evidence and his answers to numerous critics in a long post earlier this month.

VIPS includes former National Security Agency staffers with considerable technical expertise, such as William Binney, the agency's former technical director for world geopolitical and military analysis, and Edward Loomis Jr., former technical director for the office of signals processing, as well as other ex-intelligence officers with impressive credentials. That doesn't, of course, mean the group is right when it finds the expert analysis by Forensicator and Carter persuasive. Another former intelligence professional who has examined it, Scott Ritter, has pointed out that these findings don't necessarily refutes that Guccifer's material constitute the spoils of a hack.

VIPS's record of unruly activism might have devalued its theories and conclusions in the eyes of mainstream journalists. Ray McGovern, a VIPS founder who used to prepare and deliver White House briefings at the Central Intelligence Agency, has been removed from Hillary Clinton's events for protesting her policies. While the group was right about Iraq in 2003, that doesn't mean it's right about Russia in 2017, with some of its members' intelligence work now long in the past.

And yet these aren't good reasons to avoid the discussion of what actually happened at the DNC last year, especially since no intelligence agency actually examined the Democrats' servers and CrowdStrike, the firm whose conclusions informed much of the intelligence community's assessment, had obvious conflicts of interest -- from being paid by the DNC to co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch's affiliation with the Atlantic Council , a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that has generally viewed Russia as a hostile power.

One hopes that the numerous investigations into Trump-Russia are based on hard evidence, not easy assumptions. But since these investigations are not transparent at this point, the only way to make sure their attention is still focused on the technical aspects of the suspected Russian hacks and leaks is to present the available evidence, along with any arguments undermining it, to the public.

Many Americans' certainty about Russian involvement, which has led to increased hostility toward Russia...

Having been burned so badly on the Iraq intelligence claims in 2003, you would think major U.S. media would apply more journalistic skepticism and rigor here, even if, to the broader public, Russia is a faraway power to which it's easy to ascribe pretty much any nefarious activity. Instead, these outlets seem more intent on noting Putin's bare-chested physique and accusing him of further meddling on social networks. The alt-right may not need Russia's help in using Twitter bots to run its social media campaigns , but it gets less scrutiny for them than Russia.

The U.S. public didn't quite buy Clinton's "the Russians did it" line last year, and she lost the election. By now, though, many Americans are sold on it. That may be an Iraq-sized mistake, leading to a dangerous failure to recognize that Donald Trump's victory was an American phenomenon, not a Russian-made one. Authoritarian regimes such as Putin's routinely use external enemies to gloss over domestic divisions and distract the public from problems at home. In a functioning democracy, such tactics should not succeed.

( Corrects volume of data transferred in sixth paragraph.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at [email protected]

[Aug 11, 2017] Colluding with Foreign Spies--It Apparently Ain t the Trumps by Publius Tacitus

Notable quotes:
"... " So here's what I want you to tell every politician: If you get a call from somebody suggesting that a foreign government wants to help you by disparaging your opponent, tell us all to call the FBI." ..."
"... https://youtu.be/VzawbjQc4iM?t=1m34s ..."
"... What did McCain do? He twice received material generated by a foreign intelligence operative and passed this along as if it was valuable, verified intelligence. Here is the proof, thanks to Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times . ..."
"... McCain is not the only one guilty here. The work of Fusion GPS was paid for by unnamed Democrats (and one unnamed Republican). And this is not the only instance of collusion with a foreign intelligence organization. Hillary Clinton and her campaign reportedly consorted with Ukrainian operatives: ..."
"... Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found. ..."
"... We can continue to be distracted by new intelligence about shenanigans during the presidential election until Trump's first term is up. That is the plan. ..."
"... Which reminds me what about all those dirty little wars, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc that Obama and the Clintonist queen involved the US in on the basis of an AUM signed back in 2001, and how was Gadaffi, Assad and the Houthis, all sworn enemies of the jihadists, "associated force" of those responsible for 9/11. ..."
"... I continue to be baffled by the Trump Administration's response to the continued attacks by former and possibly current high officials in the IC. There seems to be no overt investigation by the AG. They seem to be just reacting as the media go to town manufacturing hysteria. ..."
"... In Britain, when the intelligence services make an unholy mess of things, it is usually possible to find the right kind of judge, or former senior official, to apply the appropriate degree of 'whitewash'. It was Lord Hutton's application of a lavish quantity of this substance to the Joint Intelligence Committee, MI6, and the Blair Government in his inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly which played a non-trivial role to reducing the BBC to its present status as a kind of imitation of the Brezhnev-era Radio Moscow. ..."
"... The acceptance of patently fabricated evidence by Owen took the 'whitewash' process to new heights. It would seem to me unlikely that those involved are optimistic that, by selecting the right kind of judge and organising another propaganda 'barrage' on the BBC and other outlets, they can contain the damage done by the lawsuits brought over the dossier. But I could be wrong. ..."
"... The latter [Russophobia] is an effort to assert US power over the legitimate interests of a nuclear-armed Russia, to continue to act provocatively against Russia, and to kill any attempts at a rapprochement. Birtherism crossed a line of political rhetoric, but the efforts of neocons in tying Trump's hands regarding peaceful relations with Russia is crossing a far more dangerous line. ..."
"... Birtherism was one of many things that discredited Trump as a huckster from receiving my vote. Warmongering, among other matters, also disqualified Hillary. ..."
Aug 11, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

When it comes to meeting with foreign spies to dish dirt on a Presidential candidate (or a President elect), John McCain is more at fault than anyone connected to Donald Trump. McCain was directly involved in spreading unverified slanderous material regarding President-elect Donald Trump as he consorted with operatives linked to a foreign government--in this case, the United Kingdom.

This should give Lindsay Graham pause after watching his his exchange with FBI nominee Christopher Wray at Wednesday's Senate Judiciary hearing. Graham, who rhetorically fell on a fainting couch overwhelmed by outrage from the news that an obscure Russian lawyer had sought a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. in order to dish dirt on Hillary Clinton, admonished the FBI nominee to deal harshly with his colleagues on the following :

" So here's what I want you to tell every politician: If you get a call from somebody suggesting that a foreign government wants to help you by disparaging your opponent, tell us all to call the FBI." https://youtu.be/VzawbjQc4iM?t=1m34s

But Donald Trump Jr. is not guilty of doing this. Instead, it is Senator John McCain. He is the one who was fooling around with a foreign intelligence organization.

What did McCain do? He twice received material generated by a foreign intelligence operative and passed this along as if it was valuable, verified intelligence. Here is the proof, thanks to Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times .

Aleksej Gubarev , a Cypriot based chief executive of the network solutions firm XBT Holdings, filed suit against Christopher Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, for defamation over their role in the publication of an unproven dossier (which appeared in Buzzfeed) on President Donald Trump's purported activities involving Russia and allegations of Russian interference during last year's U.S. election.

The businessman, Aleksej Gubarev , claims he and his companies were falsely linked in the dossier to the Russia-backed computer hacking of Democratic Party figures.

Gubarev , 36, also is seeking unspecified damages from Buzzfeed and its top editor, Ben Smith, in a parallel lawsuit filed in Miami. Lawyers for Christopher Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence in the United Kingdom filed a response with the British court.

Rowan Scarborough obtained a copy of the document and posted it on-line in April. The defense document is both illuminating and damning (I don't know how I missed this when it came out in April). This is like a statement under oath and it presents the following facts:

1. Orbis Business Intelligence was engaged by Fusion GPS sometime in early June 2016 to prepare a series of confidential memorandum based on intelligence concerning Russian efforts to influence the U.S. Presidential election process and links between Russia and Donald Trump (the first memo was dated 20 June 2016).

2. Fusion GPS is run by three former Wall Street Journal reporters: Glenn Simpson; Tom Catan; and Peter Fritsch. ( According to the New York Times, Fusion GPS was originally hired by a Republican donor – who has not been publicly identified – to dig up dirt on Trump in 2015. After Trump won the nomination, the firm began working with Democrats and honed in on Trump's links to Russia.)

3. Senator John McCain, accompanied by David Kramer (a Senior Director at Senator McCain's Institute for International Leadership), met in London with an Associate of Orbis, former British Ambassador Sir Andrew Wood, to arrange a subsequent meeting with Christopher Steele in order to read the now infamous Steele Dossier.

4. David Kramer and Christopher Steele met in Surrey on 28 November 2016, where Kramer was briefed on the contents of the memos.

5. Once Senator McCain and David Kramer returned to the United States, arrangements were made for Fusion GPS to provide Senator McCain hard copies of the memoranda.

6. After Donald Trump was elected, Christopher Steele prepared an additional memorandum (dated 13 December 2016) that made the following claims:

  • Michael Cohen held a secret meeting in Prague, Czechoslovakia in August 2016 with Kremlin operatives.
  • Cohen, allegedly accompanied by 3 colleagues (Not Further Identified), met with Oleg SOLODUKHIM to discuss on how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the Clinton campaign and various contingencies for covering up these operations and Moscow's secret liaison with the Trump team more generally.
  • In Prague, Cohen agreed (sic) contingency plans for various scenarios to protect the operation, but in particular what was to be done in the event that Hillary Clinton won the Presidency.
  • Sergei Ivanov's associate claimed that payments to hackers had been made by both Trump's team and the Kremlin.

[Note--Michael Cohen denies he was ever in Prague.]

7. Christopher Steele passed a copy of the December memo to a senior UK Government national security official and to Fusion GPS (via encrypted email) with the instruction to give a hard copy to Senator McCain via David Kramer.

Sometime between December 14, 2016 and December 31, 2016, Senator McCain passed this salacious material to FBI director, James Comey.

As I pointed out in my previous piece ( Trump Jr. Emails Prove No Collusion . . . ), the Steele Dossier now stands completely discredited because the Trump Jr. emails provide prima facie evidence that there was no regular, sustained contact with Kremlin operatives. If there had been then there was no need to meet with an unknown lawyer peddling anti-Hillary material that, per the Steele Dossier, already had been delivered to the Trump team.

The role of Fusion GPS in this whole sordid affair needs to be thoroughly investigated. Circumstantial evidence opens them to charges of facilitating and enabling sedition. What they did appears to go beyond conventional opposition research and dirty tricks. Spreading a lie that Donald Trump and his team are Russian operatives crosses a line and, as we have witnessed over the last six months, roiled and disrupted the American political system.

McCain is not the only one guilty here. The work of Fusion GPS was paid for by unnamed Democrats (and one unnamed Republican). And this is not the only instance of collusion with a foreign intelligence organization. Hillary Clinton and her campaign reportedly consorted with Ukrainian operatives:

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

You can read the full story here . The hysteria on the part of Democrats over alleged Russian meddling and collusion with the Trumps shows a growing potential for blowback. As more actual evidence emerges of anti-trumpets receiving intelligence and sharing that intelligence in underhanded back channels, the greater the risk that public attention will hone in on the real actions as opposed to unsubstantiated allegations. Such a development would leave the Democrats very vulnerable and very exposed.

IssacNewton -> iowa steve... , 17 July 2017 at 08:21 PM

I agree that Birtherism was an unethical strategy (e.g., when did you stop molesting children). I would point out the Hillary Clinton used this as an issue against Obama in 2008. She published photos of him in native african garb and had her surrogetes us this against up through the Democrat Convention. It was a strategy of both Trump and Clinton.
I'veBeenANaughtyBoy , 16 July 2017 at 06:07 AM
Slightly OT but mentioned by Steve & Iowa Steve above. I watched an hour or so long You Tube video 3 or 4 months ago about how Sheriff Joe Arpio (??sp) had got a couple of investigators to look into the Obama birth Cert brouhaha & to try & put it to bed, one way or another. The result was what I considered to be (I am not any expert in document forensics) a pretty convincing explanation of how the Birth Cert that the White House put forward was a forgery & how it had been falsified.

They even had tracked down (& named the woman) the birth cert that Obamas had been based on. It was convincing.

The other thing that sold the investigation to me as being genuine was there was nothing - nothing, in the MSM about it. I took that to mean that they didn't want to try & debunk it as it would attract attention to the video. I didn't pay over much attention to the scandal back when, & only watched the vid as I was laid up that day. Since then I've also come across a "Barry Soetoro" foreign student I.D. card from Columbia U with a young Obama pictured on it.

DianaLC , 14 July 2017 at 02:30 PM
We can argue the merits of a Trump presidency all we want. We can continue to be distracted by new intelligence about shenanigans during the presidential election until Trump's first term is up. That is the plan.

I understand that foreign governments -- and probably mostly Russia -- try desperately to influence our elections in their favor. Just as I understand that our government officials do the same in foreign elections. It's disgusting behavior for someone who really, really believes the high principles on which our government was founded. I admit it: I am a Pollyanna in that regard.

But I also KNOW my tendencies to be more idealistic than realistic in regard to human nature. At my age, the reality of human nature has caused me more heartbreak than I care to remember.

Therefore, I have to prioritize my worries. And so, here again, I am with PT on this issue. McCain is the bigger jerk. In my opinion, he can't stand it that more Americans voted for Trump than voted for McCain (this American included--though I did hold my nose and vote for McCain simply because my stomach would not take voting for BHO. I was not a birther, but I was fully aware of things in regard to his past that I didn't like and his ideology that I despised and his friendships with people I found reprehensible. I could go on, but won't).

The people I admire the most are, in many cases, people who did champion Trump from the beginning. I was originally flabbergasted by that fact. I was, and still am, a Cruz person. But.....I am also an American and do put much faith in the everyday, working, Americans who live in the Middle, where I live. These are truly the "salt of the earth" and the "light of the world" people. Their votes were given mostly because, I think, Trump declared that he wanted to "drain the swamp." We knew what that meant. We know now that avoiding the machinations of swamp people is harder than we might have guessed. So I am willing to give the Trump boys some grace, but not the smarmy "bomb, bomb, bomb. Bomb, bomp Iran" McCain.

Nothing came from this juvenile and inept attempt to "collude." Let's forget it, get the swamp drained and the leaks plugged and get on with making campaign promises come true. Take the NYT and WaPo copies and find some way to use them for good: birdcage liners, shredded packaging stuffing, even cat litter. Let CNN become a memory as you avoid watching it or any news story about it. Heck, don't even watch Fox except to get the news without listening to the commentary. Write your senators and representatives about your views of the issues; then go on with leading good American lives, while saying your daily prayers to the only One who is in charge.

Anna -> David Habakkuk ... , 14 July 2017 at 01:37 PM
"Sir Robert Owen's report into the death of Alexander Litvinenko is a flagrant cover-up."

This is in addition to attracting more attention to Magnitsky Act (and to a documentary by Nekrasov), and, by association, to another important documentary, "Two hundreds years together" by Solzhenitsyn. Both authors used to be the darlings of the west for their harsh critique of the Soviet Union (by Solzhenitsyn) and Putin (by Nekrasov).

No publishing house in the US and UK dares to publish "Two hundreds years together," and no western country dares to show "The Magnitsky Act – Behind The Scenes," because the presented facts are not fitting the ziocons' sensibilities.

blowback -> Fred... , 14 July 2017 at 12:18 PM
What subversion is that? Nothing came of Donald Jr's stupidity but there were real effects from the Fusion GPS garbage. As for Trump making gooey eyes at Putin, it was one part of his election platform that Trump was clear and open about and as the president pretty much gets to decide foreign policy, rather than McCain, Graham, the Clintonists, etc. so what?

Which reminds me what about all those dirty little wars, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc that Obama and the Clintonist queen involved the US in on the basis of an AUM signed back in 2001, and how was Gadaffi, Assad and the Houthis, all sworn enemies of the jihadists, "associated force" of those responsible for 9/11.

Greco , 14 July 2017 at 10:49 AM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4690834/Don-Trump-Jr-lawyer-linked-dirty-dossier-firm.html

Apparently the Russian lawyer who met with Don Jr was lobbying on behalf of a Russian oligarch who was sanctioned as a result of the Magnitsky Act. That same oligarch was also faced with a $230 million fine for money laundering. He tried to cut a deal back in 2015 whereupon he would act as an informant to US authorities. The $230 million fine was later reduced to only $6 million days before his case was set for trial this past May.

Sam Peralta -> David Habakkuk ... , 14 July 2017 at 10:14 AM
David

" In Britain, when the intelligence services make an unholy mess of things, it is usually possible to find the right kind of judge, or former senior official, to apply the appropriate degree of 'whitewash'. "

This is exactly what breeds cynicism. I don't believe it is any different in the US as the judiciary always gives a pass when the "state secrets" defense is mounted. This is a perfect legal doctrine as it can be used to cover up all kinds of malfeasance and misfeasance. There's a reason why support exists for whistleblowers like Snowden and Wikileaks among the general public.

What was the reaction of the average person in Britain to the Lord Hutton "inquiry"?

I continue to be baffled by the Trump Administration's response to the continued attacks by former and possibly current high officials in the IC. There seems to be no overt investigation by the AG. They seem to be just reacting as the media go to town manufacturing hysteria.

David Habakkuk , 14 July 2017 at 09:31 AM
PT,

There is a further lawsuit against BuzzFeed, brought by the Alfa Group oligarchs, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan. The summons, dated 26 May 2017 is at

http://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/buzzfeed.pdf

Also, a report on 'McClatchy' on 11 July, entitled 'John McCain faces questions in Trump-Russia dossier case', linked to the response of Steele and Orbis dated 18 May to the request by Gubarev's lawyers for further information in response to the 'Defence' in the London suit to which you linked.

(See http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article160622854.html .)

Whether the fact that the lawyer who prepared the response, Nicola Cain, was until recently a senior barrister at the BBC is of any relevance I do not know.

There is a lot in this which is not at the moment making a great deal of sense. It is absolutely basic journalistic 'tradecraft' to get a piece like the dossier 'lawyered' before publication. The question in my day would have been 'is it a fair business risk?'

A lawyer competent in the law of defamation – as Ms Cain clearly is – would I think have almost certainly said that the memorandum on the Alfa oligarchs was in no way a 'fair business risk.'

Moreover, it is hard to see any compelling reason why it should not have simply been omitted from the published version of the dossier – particularly as this would not have materially reduced the 'information operations' impact of the document.

As to the reference to Gubarev, a simple redaction would have reduced the risk of his suing to zero, and again, would not have materially reduced the impact of the dossier.

Indeed, even if the BuzzFeed journalists are amateurish, former WSJ journalists like those who run Fusion – and one of the company's partners, Thomas Catan, is also a former 'Financial Times' journalist – should have been aware they were on a sticky wicket without needing to consult a lawyer.

At the moment, both sets of legal proceedings are a hostage to fortune, for many reasons, including the possibility that they could make people for the first time actually notice that Sir Robert Owen's report into the death of Alexander Litvinenko is a flagrant cover-up.

Although the claims made about Steele's involvement in that affair are a hopeless mess of contradictions, what would seem reasonably clear is that he was a key figure in orchestrating proceedings. (Whether Fusion were involved, at the American end, is an interesting question.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we end up with a situation where people are stabbing each other in the back. So Steele is trying to rescue himself, by suggesting that the memoranda were not intended for publication at all, and that the reason for their publication was a violation of a confidentiality agreement by Fusion.

Meanwhile, the former British Moscow Ambassador Sir Andrew Wood has already directly contradicted the 'Defence', claiming that, contrary to what it says, he was never an 'associate' of Orbis.

(See http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/09/comey-testimony-leaves-questions-unanswered-about-anti-trump-dossier.html .)

In Britain, when the intelligence services make an unholy mess of things, it is usually possible to find the right kind of judge, or former senior official, to apply the appropriate degree of 'whitewash'. It was Lord Hutton's application of a lavish quantity of this substance to the Joint Intelligence Committee, MI6, and the Blair Government in his inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly which played a non-trivial role to reducing the BBC to its present status as a kind of imitation of the Brezhnev-era Radio Moscow.

The acceptance of patently fabricated evidence by Owen took the 'whitewash' process to new heights. It would seem to me unlikely that those involved are optimistic that, by selecting the right kind of judge and organising another propaganda 'barrage' on the BBC and other outlets, they can contain the damage done by the lawsuits brought over the dossier. But I could be wrong.

Anna -> LeaNder... , 14 July 2017 at 09:21 AM
More on the same, this time on the infamous Magnitsky Act: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/13/how-russia-gate-met-the-magnitsky-myth/#comment-274252
Fred -> steve... , 14 July 2017 at 08:49 AM
Steve,

"Just can't bring myself to get worked up over this..."

Subverting the constitutional order is a-ok if the guy duly elected is a jerk. What a wonderful standard of conduct.

Anna -> steve... , 13 July 2017 at 11:32 PM
The whole anti-Trump bruha-ha has been about his alleged collusion with a foreign government. Here we have a documented case of a collusion of clintonistas with the foreign intelligence organization (UK) and foreign government (Ukraine). The "progressives" (including McCain and the most rabid ziocons) have been waling like sirens about alleged "treason." Well. It seems that their wish was heard.
This is not about Trump. This is about the law.

"...if there was any line, it was crossed a long time ago."

Sigh. Obama's "we scam" was a powerful instrument of breeding both lawlessness and cynicism. i

iowa steve -> steve... , 13 July 2017 at 10:46 PM
Yeah, Trump's birtherism was odious but I don't see the equivalence between that and the current Russiaphobia.

The latter [Russophobia] is an effort to assert US power over the legitimate interests of a nuclear-armed Russia, to continue to act provocatively against Russia, and to kill any attempts at a rapprochement. Birtherism crossed a line of political rhetoric, but the efforts of neocons in tying Trump's hands regarding peaceful relations with Russia is crossing a far more dangerous line.

Birtherism was one of many things that discredited Trump as a huckster from receiving my vote. Warmongering, among other matters, also disqualified Hillary.

[Aug 10, 2017] The Untouchable Mr. Browder

Notable quotes:
"... The New Republic ..."
"... [AKA "SmoothieX12"] ..."
Aug 10, 2017 | www.unz.com

Chapeau, Mr Browder! Hats off for this incredible man. Last month, he succeeded in stopping a film screening in the European parliament and took off a few articles from American web sites. This week, he turned the only US screening of a film critical to his version of events into a ruckus . No freedom of speech for his enemies! His lawyers prowl around and issue summons to whoever digs in his sordid affairs. His hacks re-wrote his Wikipedia entry, expunging even discussions of the topic: despite hundreds of edits, nothing survived but the official version. Only a few powerful men succeed purifying their record to such an extent. Still, good fortune (a notoriously flighty lady) is about to desert Mr Browder.

Who is this extremely influential man? A businessman, a politician, a spy? The American-born Jewish tycoon William Browder, says The Jewish Chronicle , considers himself Putin's Number One enemy. For him, Putin is "no friend of the Jews", "cold-blooded killer" and even "criminal dictator who is not too different from Hitler, Mussolini or Gadhafi". More to a point, Browder is the man who contributed most to the new cold war between the West and Russia. The roots were there, still he made them blossom. If the US and Russia haven't yet exchanged nuclear salvos, do not blame Browder: he tried. For a valid reason, too: he was hit by cruel Hitler-like Mr Putin into his most susceptible spot, namely his pocket. Or was there even a better reason?

Browder, a grandson of the US Communist leader, came to Russia at its weakest point after the Soviet collapse, and grabbed an enormous fortune by opaque financial transactions. Such fortunes are not amassed by the pure of spirit. He was a ruthless man who did as much as any oligarch to enrich himself.

Eventually he ran afoul of Mr Putin, who was (and is) very tolerant of oligarchs as long as they play by the rules. The oligarchs would not be oligarchs if they would found that an easy condition. Some of them tried to fight back: Khodorkovsky landed in jail, Berezovsky and Gusinsky went to exile. Browder had a special position: he was the only Jewish oligarch in Russia who never bothered to acquire the Russian citizenship. He was barred from returning to Russia, and his companies were audited and found wanting.

As you'd expect, huge tax evasion was discovered. Browder thought that as long as he sucked up to Putin, he'd get away with bloody murder, let alone tax evasion. He was mistaken. Putin is nobody's fool. Flatterers do not get a free ride in Putin's Russia. And Browder became too big for his boots.

It turned out that he did two unforgivable things. Russians were afraid the foreigners would buy all their assets for a song, using favourable exchange rates and lack of native capital, as had happened in the Baltic states and other ex-Communist East European countries. In order to avoid that, shares of Russian blue-chip companies (Gazprom and suchlike) were traded among Russian citizens only. Foreigners had to pay much more. Browder bought many such shares via Russian frontmen, and he was close to getting control over Russian oil and gas. Putin suspected that he had acted in the interests of big foreign oil companies, trying to repeat the feat of Mr Khodorkovsky.

His second mistake was being too greedy. Russian taxation is very low; but Browder did not want to pay even this low tax. He hired Mr Magnitsky, an experienced auditor, who used loopholes in the Russian tax code in order to avoid taxes altogether. Magnitsky established dummy companies based in tax-free zones of Russia, such as pastoral Kalmykia, small, Buddhist, and autonomous. Their tax-free status had been granted in order to improve their economy and reduce unemployment; however, Browder's companies did not contribute to economy and did not employ people; they were paper dummies swiftly bankrupted by the owner.

Another Magnitsky trick was to form companies fronted by handicapped people who were also freed from paying tax. In the film, some of these persons, often illiterate and of limited intelligence, told the filmmaker of signing papers they could not read and of being paid a little money for the millions passing through their account.

(Mr Browder does not deny these accusations; he says there is nothing criminal in trying to avoid taxes. You can read about Browder and Magnitsky tricks here and here , and learn of the ways they attacked companies using minority shareholders and many other neat schemes.)

Eventually Magnitsky's schemes were discovered and he was arrested. Ten months later, in 2009, he died in jail. By that time, his patron Mr Browder was abroad, and he began his campaign against Russia hoping to regain his lost assets. He claimed Mr Magnitsky had been his lawyer, who discovered misdeeds and the outright thievery of government officials, and was imprisoned and tortured to death for this discovery.

The US Congress rushed in the Magnitsky Act, the first salvo of the Cold War Two. By this act, any Russian person could be found responsible for Mr Magnitsky's untimely death and for misappropriation of Browder's assets. His properties could be seized, bank accounts frozen – without any legal process or representation. This act upset the Russians, who allegedly had kept a cool $500 billion in the Western banks, so tit for tat started, and it goes to this very day.

The actual effect of the Magnitsky Act was minimal: some twenty million dollars frozen and a few dozen not-very-important people were barred from visiting the US. Its psychological effect was much greater: the Russian elite realised that they could lose their money and houses anytime – not in godless Putin's Russia, but in the free West, where they had preferred to look for refuge. The Magnitsky Act paved the road to the Cyprus confiscation of Russian deposits, to post-Crimean sanctions and to a full-fledged Cold War.

This was painful for Russia, as the first adolescent disillusionment in its love affair with the West, and rather healthy, in my view. A spot of cold war (very cold, plenty of ice please) is good for ordinary people, while its opposite, a Russian-American alliance, is good for the elites. The worst times for ordinary Russian people were 1988-2001, when Russians were in love with the US. The oligarchs stole everything there was to steal and sold it to the West for pennies. They bought villas in Florida while Russia fell apart. That was bad time for everybody: the US invaded Panama and Afghanistan unopposed, Iraq was sanctioned to death, Yugoslavia was bombed and broken to pieces.

As the Cold War came back, some normalcy was restored: the Russians stopped the US from destroying Syria, and Russian officials learned to love Sochi instead of Miami. For this reason alone, Browder can be counted as a part of the power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good. The Russian government, however, did not enjoy the cold shower.

The Russians denied any wrongdoing or even political reasons for dealing with Browder. They say Magnitsky was not a lawyer, just an auditor and a tax code expert. They say that he was arrested and tried for his tax avoidance schemes, and he died of natural causes while in jail. Nobody listened to them, until they demanded that Browder testify under oath. He refused. For two years lawyers tried to give him a summons , but he was a quick runner. There are funny videos showing Browder running away from summons.

Some good sense began to seep into American minds. The New Republic wondered : if Browder was indeed the victim of persecution in Russia and had enlisted the U.S. justice system to right the balance, why was he so reluctant to offer his sworn testimony in an American courtroom?

Enter Mr Andrey Nekrasov , a Russian dissident filmmaker. He made a few films considered to be highly critical of Russian government. He alleged the FSB blew up houses in Moscow in order to justify the Chechnya war. He condemned the Russian war against Georgia in 2008, and had been given a medal by Georgian authorities. He did not doubt the official Western version of Browder-Magnitsky affair, and decided to make a film about the noble American businessman and the brave Russian lawyer fighting for human rights. The European organisations and parliamentarians provided the budget for the film. They also expected the film to denounce Putin and glorify Magnitsky, the martyr.

However, while making the film, Mr Nekrasov had his Road to Damascus moment. He realised that the whole narrative was hinging on the unsubstantiated words of Mr Browder. After painstaking research, he came to some totally different conclusions, and in his version, Browder was a cheat who run afoul of law, while Magnitsky was his sidekick in those crimes.

Nekrasov discovered an interview Magnitsky gave in his jail. In this interview, the accountant said he was afraid Browder would kill him to prevent him from denouncing Browder, and would make him his scapegoat. It turned out Browder tried to bribe the journalist who made the interview to have these words expunged. Browder was the main beneficiary of the accountant's death, realised Nekrasov, while his investigators were satisfied with Magnitsky's collaboration with them.

Nekrasov could not find any evidence that Magnitsky tried to investigate the misdeeds of government officials. He was too busy covering his own tax evasion. And instead of fitting his preconceived notions, Nekrasov made the film about what he learned. ( Here are some details of Nekrasov's film)

While the screening in the EU Parliament was been stopped by the powerful Mr Browder, in Washington DC the men are made of sterner stuff. Despite Browder's threats the film was screened , presented by the best contemporary American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who is 80 if a day, and still going strong. One has to recognise that the US is second to none for freedom of speech on the globe.

What makes Browder so powerful? He invests in politicians. This is probably a uniquely Jewish quality: Jews outspend everybody in contributions to political figures. The Arabs will spend more on horses and jets, the Russians prefer real estate, the Jews like politicians. The Russian NTV channel reported that Browder lavishly financed the US lawmakers. Here they present alleged evidence of money transfers: some hundred thousand dollars was given by Browder's structures officially to the senators and congressmen in order to promote the Magnitsky Act.

Much bigger sums were transferred via good services of Brothers Ziff, mega-rich Jewish American businessmen, said the researchers in two articles published on the Veteran News Network and in The Huffington Post .

These two articles were taken off the sites very fast under pressure of Browder's lawyers, but they are available in the cache. They disclose the chief beneficiary of Browder's generosity. This is Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland. He was the engine behind Magnitsky Act legislation to such an extent that the Act has been often called the Cardin List . Cardin is a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton, also a cold warrior of good standing. More to a point, Cardin is a prominent member of Israel Lobby.

Browder affair is a heady upper-class Jewish cocktail of money, spies, politicians and international crime. Almost all involved figures appear to be Jewish, not only Browder, Brothers Ziff and Ben Cardin. Even his enemy, the beneficiary of the scam that (according to Browder) took over his Russian assets is another Jewish businessman Dennis Katsiv (he had been partly exonerated by a New York court as is well described in this thoughtful piece).

Browder began his way to riches under the patronage of a very rich and very crooked Robert Maxwell, a Czech-born Jewish businessman who assumed a Scots name. Maxwell stole a few million dollars from his company pension fund before dying in mysterious circumstances on board of his yacht in the Atlantic. It was claimed by a member of Israeli Military Intelligence, Ari Ben Menashe, that Maxwell had been a Mossad agent for years, and he also said Maxwell tipped the Israelis about Israeli whistle-blower Mordecai Vanunu. Vanunu was kidnapped and spent many years in Israeli jails.

Geoffrey Goodman wrote Maxwell "was almost certainly being used as – and using himself as – a two-way intelligence conduit [between East and West]. This arrangement included passing intelligence to the Israeli secret forces with whom he became increasingly involved towards the end of his life."

After Maxwell, Browder switched allegiance to Edmond Safra, a very rich Jewish banker of Lebanese origin, who also played East vs West. Safra provided him with working capital for his investment fund. Safra's bank has been the unlikely place where the IMF loan of four billion dollars to Russia had been transferred!and disappeared. The Russian authorities say that Browder has been involved in this "crime of the century," next to Safra. The banker's name has been connected to Mossad: increasingly fearful for his life, Safra surrounded himself by Mossad-trained gunmen. This did not help him: he died a horrible death in his bathroom when his villa was torched by one of the guards.

The third Jewish oligarch on Browder's way was Boris Berezovsky, the king-maker of Yeltsin's Russia. He also died in his bathroom (which seems to be a constant feature); apparently he committed suicide. Berezovsky had been a politically active man; he supported every anti-Putin force in Russia. However, a few months before his death, he asked for permission to return to Russia, and some negotiations went on between him and Russian authorities.

His chief of security Sergey Sokolov came to Russia and purportedly brought with him some documents his late master prepared for his return. These documents allege that Browder had been an agent of Western intelligence services, of the CIA to begin with, and of MI6 in following years. He was given a code name Solomon, as he worked for Salomon Brothers. His financial activity was just a cover for his true intentions, that is to collect political and economic data on Russia, and to carry out economic war on Russia. This revelation has been made in the Russia-1 TV channel documentary Browder Effect , (broadcasted 13.04.2016), asserting that Browder was not after money at all, and his activities in Russia, beside being very profitable, had a political angle.

The documents had been doubted for some linguistic reasons discussed by Gilbert Doctorow who comes to a reasonable conclusion: "Bill Browder['s] intensity and the time he was devoting to anti-Russian sanctions in Europe was in no way comparable to the behaviour of a top level international businessman. It was clear to me that some other game was in play. But at the time, no one could stand up and suggest the man was a fraud, an operative of the intelligence agencies. Whatever the final verdict may be on the documents presented by the film "The Browder Effect," it raises questions about Browder that should have been asked years ago in mainstream Western media if journalists were paying attention. Yevgeny Popov deserves credit for highlighting those questions, even if his documents demand further investigation before we come to definitive answers".

We do not know whether Browder is, or had been, a spy. This should not surprise us, as he was closely connected to Maxwell, Safra and Berezovsky, the financiers with strong ties in the intelligence community.

Perhaps he outlived his usefulness, Mr Browder did. He started the Cold war, now is the time to keep it in its healthy limits and to avoid a nuclear disaster or rapid armaments race. This is the task we may hope will be entertained by the next US President, Mr Donald Trump.

This article was first published in The Unz Review .

Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected]

Astuteobservor II > , June 20, 2016 at 4:20 am GMT

damn, this fucker and madoff is like what everyone in the world hates about jews come to life.

If I were jewish, I would want to distance my self as far away as possible, that taint is real.

Lot > , June 20, 2016 at 6:39 am GMT

his hacks re-wrote his Wikipedia entry, expunging even discussions of the topic

Wikipedia talk pages are regularly archived so that only active discussions are on the main talk page. "Expunged" implies they were deleted and not available. In fact, the old talk pages for the article are all available one click away from the main talk page.

Here, for example, is a much longer archived talk page for Browder:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Bill_Browder&oldid=544048631

Likewise, there seems to be no censorship of the article. Rather, like most wikipedia articles, over the years the article has slowly grown in length. The only substantial deletion from the article in the past 6 years was the recent deletion of a 4,000 word quotation from a source article. Such very long quotations are usually copyright violations and in any case are not good wikipedia style.

In short, both your claim of wikipedia censorship and wikipedia "expunging" content are completely wrong.

The wikipedia editor who made the deletion and is presumably the "hack" is an extremely prolific editor who has made more than 500 wikipedia edits in the past month and many thousands of edits since 2009, the first being on the articles "Protein folding" and "Chloride peroxidase."

Now it is possible Browder has a long-time wikipedia super-editor as one of his "hacks," but if you are going to libel a person like this, some evidence should be presented.

Kiza > , June 20, 2016 at 8:52 am GMT

I have written this before, but most US citizens think that CIA is a big bureaucracy which does secret stuff. Although this is partially true, there are also free-wheeling agents who work primarily for their own private or group interest (getting rich) and hopefully also in the Israeli and/or US national interest. Like in everything else, intelligence agencies are organised in a packing order: Mossad at the top, CIA working for Mossad, MI6 and BND working for CIA and so on. But most of the time these agencies both cooperate and compete and sometimes shaft each other (e.g. 911), from project to project.

One small complaint within a great article. Israel says:

One has to recognise that the US is second to none for freedom of speech on the globe.

This is a wrong interpretation of what transpired. There are two reasons why the documentary could have been shown in the US but not in EU:
1) EU is a lower level servant of the state of Israel than the US, and
2) EU has the most draconian libel laws (especially UK), which make stating anything about a lawyered person prepared for lawfare too risky. Nothing to do with freedom of speech.

The most interesting, previously unknown, detail to me in this article was that Browder's grandfather was the leader of the US Communist Party. This underlines Communism as primarily a Jewish movement world-wide.

Tom Welsh > , June 20, 2016 at 9:01 am GMT

My, we are disempowered, aren't we? Amid a plethora of articles and books suggesting that Jewish people conspire together to enrich themselves, buy politicians and control governments, no one dares say a word – unless, like Mr Shamir, they are themselves Jewish. Even then there is a definite risk, which I thank and applaud Mr Shamir for taking.

JL > , June 20, 2016 at 9:14 am GMT

" Browder was not after money at all " Uh, no. Browder was notorious for his greed and obsession with money. This is someone who had a program that calculated his personal net worth online and would check it no less than every half hour. Think Gordon Gekko but too cheap to even buy a decent suit. While there may have been some intelligence connections somewhere along the way, as the article states, he went political only when his honey pot was removed. Without Russia, his fund management business quickly tanked.

Rehmat > , June 20, 2016 at 9:17 am GMT

Israel Shamir should have learned from his own experience that in the Zionist colonized "civilized West" there is no 'freedom of speech' for people who are disliked by the powerful Organized Jewry.

For example, Europe's so-called cradle of 'freedom of speech' – France, where insulting Muslims and Islam had long been declared "freedom of speech" – but French Christians who tell the truth about Jewish history are persecuted.

On Tuesday, a French court fined French philosopher Alain Soral $13,000 and six month suspended jail sentence for saying that Nazis should have finished killing the Jews of Europe.

The sentence, handed down was over Soral's Facebook post of last year about Romanian Serge Klarsfield, 80, and his German wife Beate Klarsfeld, 77, the so-called 'Nazi hunter couple'. The legendary Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was a Mossad agent according to Dalia Karpel, Ha'aretz, February 9, 2010.

"This is what happens when you don't finish the job," Soral wrote about an article on a state honor of Federal Order of Merit conferred on the Klarsfelds by Germany last year. During the acceptance speech both parroted the "rising antisemitism in Europe" mantra.

The judge found Soral guilty of "justifying war crimes and crimes against humanity." In other words supporting Israeli rabbis that Jews are the only humans and the rest of six billion people were created to serve the 13 million Jews!

The judge also ordered Soral to pay $5,600, to each of the Klarsfelds and $2,250, to the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism, which filed the complaint against Soral for his Facebook post.

In 2004, Alain Soral was fined $8,000 for insulting the Zionist Jewry.

https://rehmat1.com/2016/06/19/french-philosopher-fined-27000-for-insulting-jews/

Robert Magill > , Website June 20, 2016 at 9:49 am GMT

Everything you need to know in 631 words on 55 lines. Read it now!

https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/faith-the-human-o-s/

Seraphim > , June 20, 2016 at 10:09 am GMT

@Astuteobservor II A really astute observation: Browder>Madoff. Where the money to finance Madoff's Ponzi Scheme came from? An who were the beneficiaries? The whole tribe, as it were. Wiesel, Spielberg, Katzenberg, Spitzer, Zuckerman, Gottesman ..

Jon Halpenny > , June 20, 2016 at 10:39 am GMT

Jewish Communism transmuting into oligarchism

AmericaFirstNow > , Website June 20, 2016 at 10:54 am GMT

US pushing a Zionist PNAC Neocon agenda vs Russia: :

http://america-hijacked.com/2014/02/24/us-has-neocon-agenda-in-ukraine-russia-analyst/

http://tinyurl.com/neoconmeddling

The Alarmist > , June 20, 2016 at 10:55 am GMT

If Putin was as evil and meglomoniacal as everyone keeps telling us in the west, wouldn't this guy be dead already?

Jacques Sheete > , June 20, 2016 at 11:04 am GMT

@Astuteobservor II "If I were jewish, I would want to distance my self as far away as possible, that taint is real."

That is very true. For that reason, many smart, moral Jews resisted and still resist the (atheist) Zionist project in Palestine as you may already know. Of course, they were and are sidelined.

Once again, all it takes is a few rotten apples to spoil the whole barrel.

annamaria > , June 20, 2016 at 11:20 am GMT

@Kiza This is priceless: "We do not know whether Browder is, or had been, a spy. This should not surprise us, as he was closely connected to Maxwell, Safra and Berezovsky, the financiers with strong ties in the intelligence community."

Could Mr. Browder hope for a better end of life than Maxwell, Safra and Berezovsky? And what would be the fate of Mr. Cardin, the famous congressional prostitute? http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/new/?p=3742#.V2fRqzc5FCo

"Israel's Agent of Influence: Senator Ben Cardin shows how it's done:"

"So who does Cardin actually represent? I would suggest that he fits the mold of the classic agent of influence in that his allegiance to the United States is constrained by his greater loyalty to a foreign nation."

Karl > , June 20, 2016 at 11:38 am GMT

@Rehmat another day, another "honor killing" by Rehmat's tribesmen:

http://ktla.com/2016/06/19/pregnant-woman-husband-tortured-and-shot-dead-in-honor-killing-in-pakistan/

Quartermaster > , June 20, 2016 at 1:06 pm GMT

More conspiracy theories posited as fact.

Alas, Putinist Russia is dangerous to those who would criticize Putin's regime, or Putin himself. Putin is known for using accusations of tax evasion as an excuse for seizing certain businesses. If he has to, he has no compunction about jailing the proprietors, especially if they become politically active in opposition to Putin and his greater Russian schemes. Just ask Khodorkovsky.

Rehmat > , June 20, 2016 at 1:36 pm GMT

@Karl Another day, another "Jewish lie" by Karl's 'chosen tribe' .

http://newdemocracyworld.org/culture/muslims5.html

polistra > , June 20, 2016 at 1:39 pm GMT

@JL I don't know anything more about this case than what Shamir has written but the connection of CIA, leftists and banking is NOT unusual at all. It's highly typical and goes back many decades. Wherever you find American leftists, you'll find banking and CIA/OSS connections.

KA > , June 20, 2016 at 1:47 pm GMT

@Karl Honor is interesting issue in human psyche .It is deeply emotional
It can be tribal /communal or can be individual . In US , you might have noticed had you paid some attention that on average once a week a child and his or her mother are killed by the boyfriend or ex husband . Neither Koran nor American Constitution supports it . Nether local board of Kabul or Pakistan nor Bible supports it unless you search old bible.

Jacques Sheete > , June 20, 2016 at 2:31 pm GMT

SOS, aka history repeats.

"If you want to be anybody nowadays, you must dare some crime that merits narrow Gyara[23] or a gaol; honesty is praised and left to shiver. It is to their crimes that men owe their pleasure-grounds and palaces, their fine tables and old silver goblets with goats standing out in relief. For when was Vice more rampant? When did the maw of Avarice gape wider? When was gambling so reckless? Men come not now with purses to the hazard of the gaming table, but with a treasure-chest beside them. "

Juvenal, SATIRE I, ~ 100AD

Difficile Est Saturam Non Scribere (Indeed)

CanSpeccy > , Website June 20, 2016 at 3:09 pm GMT

Maxwell stole a few million dollars from his company pension fund before dying in mysterious circumstances on board of his yacht in the Atlantic.

The amount Maxwell nicked from his own workers was more than a few million. It was in fact £440 million , or about $1 billion. Moreover, Maxwell died, according to the official inquest held in Madrid, not "on board his yacht" but of "accidental drowning." However, it was claimed by Auberon Waugh, writing in the Telegraph, that the corpse recovered from the ocean as that of Robert Maxwell (and buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem), was in fact the remains of a small white whale. In view of Maxwell's enormous size and weight, who could really be sure.

JL > , June 20, 2016 at 3:52 pm GMT

@polistra Oh, I'm not saying there was no connection, just that money was his prime motivator. Anything else, including intelligence work, was either to further his greedy gains or simply out of revenge later on. I've had the great pleasure of knowing him personally.

Realist > , June 20, 2016 at 3:59 pm GMT

@Quartermaster People like you are the rich Zionists favorite goyim

Realist > , June 20, 2016 at 4:05 pm GMT

"This is probably a uniquely Jewish quality: Jews outspend everybody in contributions to political figures. The Arabs will spend more on horses and jets, the Russians prefer real estate, the Jews like politicians."

And this, boys and girls is why Jews call the shots and have for decades, probably centuries.

Mark Green > , Website June 20, 2016 at 4:08 pm GMT

Israel Shamir writes another fascinating and insightful article. Thank you. Essays of this quality make UNZ one of the hottest online magazines around.

The Alarmist > , June 20, 2016 at 4:24 pm GMT

@Quartermaster

"Putin is known for using accusations of tax evasion as an excuse for seizing certain businesses."

And that would differentiate him from other countries' tax authorities in what way?

JL > , June 20, 2016 at 4:45 pm GMT

Yeah, didn't they get Al Capone for tax evasion?

The Browder affair is a heady upper-class Jewish cocktail of money, spies, politicians and international crime – The Daily Coin > , June 20, 2016 at 4:47 pm GMT

[ ] by Israel Shamir, Unz Review [ ]

Israel Shamir > , June 20, 2016 at 5:14 pm GMT

@Rehmat This is exactly what I said: the US has more freedom of speech))

Israel Shamir > , June 20, 2016 at 5:17 pm GMT

@Quartermaster In Russia, everybody criticises Putin. No danger at all. Andrey Nekrasov was a foremost critic of Putin, made him no harm. Russia has as much freedom of speech as Europe; still less than the US.

Israel Shamir > , June 20, 2016 at 5:21 pm GMT

@Kiza Dear Kiza, you provide an explanation, but the fact remains there: the US has more freedom of speech. Not as much as we would like, but indeed more than Europe, as you yourself explained. Still, David Duke had a spell (a year?) in jail for some strange reason.

empty > , June 20, 2016 at 6:21 pm GMT

After Maxwell, Browder switched allegiance to Edmond Safra, a very rich Jewish banker of Lebanese origin The banker's name has been connected to Mossad: increasingly fearful for his life, Safra surrounded himself by Mossad-trained gunmen. This did not help him: he died a horrible death in his bathroom when his villa was torched by one of the guards.

Safra's widow has had an interesting life various patterns emerge from wikipedia

Lily Safra (née Watkins) is a Brazilian philanthropist and socialite who attained considerable wealth through her four marriages. By March 2013, her net worth was estimated at $1.2 billion; according to Forbes, she is one of the richest people in the world. Safra has a significant art collection and owns the historic Villa Leopolda on the French Riviera.

Safra was born Lily Watkins on December 30, 1934, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, daughter of Wolf White Watkins, a Czechoslovak railway engineer who moved to South America, and Annita Noudelman de Castro, a Uruguayan of Russian-Jewish ancestry. She grew up in Rio de Janeiro but moved with her family to Uruguay.

At the age of 17, she met and married Mario Cohen, an Argentine hosiery magnate of Italian-Jewish descent. They had three children: Claudio, Eduardo, and Adriana. (Claudio died with his three-year-old son in a car crash in Brazil ca. 1989.) Lily and Cohen divorced in the early 1960s.

In 1965, she married Alfredo "Freddy" Monteverde, (formerly Greenberg). He was a Romanian Jewish immigrant who fled Europe in 1939 because of Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews. He was a leader in the Brazilian household appliance distribution business, where he established the Ponto Frio brand. He and Lily adopted a child, named Carlos. In 1969, Monteverde committed suicide. According to biographer Isabel Vincent, Monteverde left all his assets to his wife.

One month after her husband's death, Lily Monteverde moved to London. Her late husband's banker, Edmond Safra, helped her secure control over her late spouse's entire fortune. She dated Safra for some time but the romance ended. Her family, who is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, did not approve of her relationship with Safra, who was of Sephardic Jewish descent.

In 1972, Monteverde married businessman Samuel Bendahan, also a Sephardic Jew. They separated after two weeks, and she divorced him after one year of marriage.

In 1976, Monteverde married Edmond Safra after all.

Bill Jones > , June 20, 2016 at 7:28 pm GMT

Speaking of Maxwell, the English satirical Private Eye had a long running fight with Maxwell, whom they nicknamed Captain Bob (he was an avid sailor)- careful on the spelling there, Jones. He sued them for libel numerous times and they took to incorporating a new legal vehicle for each Issue at one point if they had good stuff on him.

They of course had the last word, after he was found drowned after falling, drunk, off his boat, the PE headline was
"Captain Bob, bob, bob"

The word around town at the time was that Maxwell had been "suicided"

Art > , June 20, 2016 at 7:35 pm GMT

The US Congress rushed in the Magnitsky Act, the first salvo of the Cold War Two. By this act, any Russian person could be found responsible for Mr Magnitsky's untimely death and for misappropriation of Browder's assets. His properties could be seized, bank accounts frozen – without any legal process or representation. This act upset the Russians, who allegedly had kept a cool $500 billion in the Western banks, so tit for tat started, and it goes to this very day.

Here is the real crime – the Jew control of our government.

We expect Jews to be thieves and cheating money changers – that is a given – that is their cultural DNA. Jew dishonest greed is legendary.

But here we see the US government – congress and the presidency – backing up Jew crime and Jew criminals. Look at all the evil that the Jew oligarchs did to Russia – a nation of hundreds of million people. Look at how America is turned and used by Jews.

Here is the real truth – the giant crime of a tribe. Browder did not do this on his own – he had a criminal network of Jews backing him up. Browder had AIPAC, and J-Street, and the ADL, and your Jew neighbor backing him up.

This is a JEW tribal crime. Thinking anything else is cowardly.

Svigor > , June 20, 2016 at 7:59 pm GMT

Muslim slavers and slave-owners castrated hundreds of thousands of black slaves.

Wally > , Website June 20, 2016 at 8:29 pm GMT

@Lot Wikipedia is highly controlled by supremacist Jew fanatics / Zionists, as are many other sites.

see:
Zionist Wikipedia Editing Course

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139189

Then there's:
Zionist attempt to control language:
The Israel Project's 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY

https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-israel-projects-2009-global-language-dictionary.pdf

The commander behind the pro-Israel student troops on U.S. college campuses

http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page//.premium-1.709014

Israel tech site paying "interns" to covertly plant stories in social media

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-tech-site-paying-interns-covertly-plant-stories-social-media

Israeli students to get $2,000 to spread state propaganda on Facebook

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-students-get-2000-spread-state-propaganda-facebook

Wally > , Website June 20, 2016 at 8:40 pm GMT

@Realist " And this, boys and girls is why Jews call the shots and have for decades, probably centuries. "

Now that is an understatement.

Who demands mass immigration into white gentile countries, but stops non-Jew immigration into "that shitty little country"?
Who runs the Federal Reserve?
Who runs Wall Street?
Who owns the US Congress?
Who owns the White House?
Who forces acceptance of the fictitious & impossible '6M & gas chambers'?
Who runs the media / entertainment?
Who runs the music business?
Who dominates 'academia'?
Why is AIPAC the most powerful, dominant lobby, which regularly writes the text of Congressional bills and resolutions?
Who is it that wants to censor free speech via the "hate speech" canard?
Who is it that demands we shed the blood of US troops for their interests?
Who are the real & biggest racists on the planet?

5371 > , June 20, 2016 at 9:40 pm GMT

@empty [Wolf White Watkins, a Czechoslovak railway engineer]

Shome mishtake here shurely

Anonymous > , Disclaimer June 20, 2016 at 10:02 pm GMT

@Tom Welsh Are we talking about the same Browder? If this one is the son of Earl Browder, former head of CPUSA in the thirties, we need to note that EB was born in Kansas to a farmer who was also a Methodist minister. Earl Browder was, to my knowledge, a Unitarian until he shucked religion for Communism.

Oscar Peterson > , June 20, 2016 at 10:25 pm GMT

Incredible–well, not really–that our mainstream media resolutely refuses to print, much less discuss, the two main pieces of information here:

1. Browder was the one who gained most from Magnitsky's death as evidenced by the interview in which the latter asserted a fear of being killed by Browder.

2. Nekrasov, the film's director, has a history of making films very critical of Putin and the Russian government and state.

US media coverage either omits any mention of these two points or buries allusions to them in the article. The NYT piece on Browder's attempt to block the film's screening at the Newseum in Washington was filed in the "Europe" section of the paper.

Freedom of speech is under assault in the West and, again and again, we see the common denominator of these despicable efforts to suppress key information.

LG > , June 21, 2016 at 12:08 am GMT

@Anonymous Please look up the background of his mother, Raisa Berkman

NewModelArmy > , June 21, 2016 at 12:12 am GMT

Israel Shamir: Why do you and some commenters write about Browder being Jewish if his dad, Earl Browder of the CPUSA, was born into a Kansas Methodist farm family? What gives in your research?

anony-mouse > , June 21, 2016 at 12:19 am GMT

1/ ' The Untouchable Mr. Browder? '

No problem. Just wait till he dies and then put him on trial. Worked for Magnitsky didn't it? So why the fuss?

2/ As to wikipedia edits-here's a wikipedia article with obviously very few edits you can work on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumous_trial

Only one (Magnitsky) posthumous trial in the last few centuries? That can't be right, can it?

3/ Sorry folks but Putin bungled. You can't condemn Browder without condemning Magnitsky and very few (sane) people will condemn the 'defendant' in a post-mortem trial.

Giving him not one but two lawyers in his trial (one who wore a t-shirt during the proceedings). Nice touch.

4/Should in the future Shamir question the justice system of any other country, remember, he thinks post-mortem trials are just fine. In fact, he endorsed the verdict in one.

5/ In the distant past when a person committed a capital crime while riding a horse, it was not impossible to put the horse on trial as well. Ha, ha, ha, boy is that ridiculous, putting a horse on trial. Almost as ridiculous as, as, as, well, putting a corpse on trial.

6/ If you want to link Jews with a clear victim of injustice (Magnitsky) go ahead.

anonymous > , Disclaimer June 21, 2016 at 12:23 am GMT

@Svigor I'd say that even worse than the castration was the starvation and maltreatment of male slaves along the desert trade routes; the majority coming from the bantu regions died on the way to their routes.

Realist > , June 21, 2016 at 1:30 am GMT

@Wally I said what you said .concisely

Anonymous > , Disclaimer June 21, 2016 at 2:05 am GMT

@Anonymous Earl married Raissa Berkman, a Russian Jew in about 1929 while on a trip to the USSR. Bill's father was likely raised as an ethnic Jew and may have married Jewish as well, which would make Bill a Jew.

Earl and Bill are cousins to me, falling in my Browder family lines through one of my GG Grandmothers, Victoria Louella Browder.

5371 > , June 21, 2016 at 4:50 am GMT

@anony-mouse To hold a posthumous trial of an individual to establish the facts of the case sounds very like holding a "trial of the facts" while he is alive but reportedly too senile to be put in the dock in an actual trial. And most unluckily for anony-rats, the latter procedure was exactly that which the justice system of perfidious Albion was going to apply to the great and good "Lord" Greville Janner, shining light among British Jews, pioneering holocaust-propagandist and alleged sexual abuser of dozens of children, had he not conveniently passed on to the great big orphanage in the sky.

Seraphim > , June 21, 2016 at 5:20 am GMT

@Rehmat In relation to Serge Klarsfeld (not a Romanian, but "born in Bucharest to a family of Romanian Jews" – Wikipedia) Wikipedia gives some interesting details:

"In 2012 the archivist of the Stasi revealed that Klarsfeld's attack on the chancellor was carried out in agreement with and the support of the government of East Germany, which was conducting a campaign against West German politicians (see Braunbuch). Beate Klarsfeld was paid 2,000 DM by the Stasi for her actions. Both Serge and Beate Klarsfeld were revealed to have been regular Stasi contacts. According to the State Commissioner for the Stasi Archives of Saxony, they cooperated with the Stasi in the 1960s in blackmailing West German politicians for Second World War activities The cooperation of both Beate and Serge Klarsfeld with the Stasi and their status as contacts was also documented in a new book by former Stasi officers, Günter Bohnsack and Herbert Brehmer."

Israel Shamir > , June 21, 2016 at 5:34 am GMT

@NewModelArmy Earl was his grandfather, and the rest of Bill's parentage was Jewish. More to the point, he himself considers himself Jewish as the piece in the Jewish Chronicle (referred in the article) makes clear.

Seraphim > , June 21, 2016 at 5:37 am GMT

@Anonymous He is presented as Jew:

"Vladimir Putin is no friend of the Jews. So says William Browder, the American-born Jewish tycoon who describes himself as the leader's "number one enemy" in his book: Red Notice."
"He married his first wife in Marble Arch Synagogue and his son (Joshua) was barmitzvahed; a ceremony he never had."
@ http://www.thejc.com/arts/books/148889/be-careful-putin-he-a-true-enemy-jews

He might not have been raised as a "Jew" (meaning practicing), Communists being professed 'atheists'. But it most likely that he frequented Jewish milieux (which probably pushed him).

JL > , June 21, 2016 at 7:52 am GMT

How funny to hear people question Browder's Jewishness, in the Unz comments section of all places. Lest there be any doubt, he, himself, very much identified as being a Jew, to the extent that he had a Mezuzah on his office doorway and hired only Jewish employees.

Concerning Magnitsky's indeed unusual posthumous trial, this was actually at the behest of his own mother who refused to sign the legal papers closing the criminal case due to his death. This is usually a mere formality. However, the Russian legal system is a stickler for the letter of the law and so the trial went ahead. His mother's motivation was unclear, though it probably had something to do with extra publicity.

5371 > , June 21, 2016 at 8:47 am GMT

@Anonymous Did he ever share any of the loot with you gentile relatives?

tbraton > , June 21, 2016 at 2:41 pm GMT

When I first became aware of Mr. Browder a number of years ago, I was curious about his name, since I was aware of Earl Browder, the former head of the American Communist Party when I was growing up. After I subsequently learned of the familial connection, I was highly amused to discover the leap from Communist to capitalist in three generations. But then I recalled that Dr. Armand Hammer, eventually the controlling shareholder of Occidental Petroleum, had a father who was also a doctor, an emigrant from Odessa, and a founder of the Communist Party U.S.A. That was a mere two generations to make the leap from Communist to capitalist.

A few years ago I happened to read an amusing memoir of the girl who was my date to my high school prom but who went on to achieve a modest fame and acquaintance with many prominent Americans and foreigners. (I am being intentionally vague.) When I was dating her in high school and college, I operated under the false assumption that her mother (whom I met) was Jewish and her natural father (whom I never met); I met her stepfather, who was Jewish) was Catholic, which I thought was kind of cool, since I was totally nonreligious. You can imagine my disappointment to learn nearly a half century later that both of her natural parents were Jewish. Elsewhere in her memoir, my friend referred to her mother's sister, who was a member of the Communist Party and got caught up in the Hollywood blacklist and lost her job. (That was the first I heard of it, btw.) Things turned out well for her since she hooked up with and married a wealthy Jewish doctor, who left her a sizable fortune when he died. She eventually moved to Israel where she found nirvana, marrying a much younger man and enjoying late in life "fantastic sex." So, it appears that what motivates many young Communists is the dream of becoming fantastically wealthy and enjoying life as a plutocrat, not the BS of improving life for the downtrodden. If I weren't such a natural skeptic, I would have been very disillusioned, but not as much as I was to discover late in life that her father was Jewish and not Catholic. Apologies to all those women I dated in my 20′s and 30′s whom I regaled with the story of my half-Jewish, half-Catholic prom date.

Sam Shama > , June 21, 2016 at 2:51 pm GMT

@5371 The establishment surely closed ranks around Janner, whom I had the distinct inconvenience of shaking hands with once, at a speech arranged by some club or the other at my alma mater in the latish 90s. That he was a buggerer of little boys had already made the rounds, yet it was with astonishing ease the good Lord Janner managed to negotiate his way around Labour/lefty social circles. "trial of the facts" was all they could muster and in keeping with the impunity that marked several decades of his activities, Janner passed as you say, to the big orphanage upstairs. I am also reminded, 'as it 'appens' of Jimmy Savile who similarly managed to give CPS the slip (?); his preference, if memory serves was for little girls, apparently on occasion arranged in a row.

joey > , June 21, 2016 at 5:30 pm GMT

Wikipedia can be crooked.
From my own experience.
I contacted Wikipedia with some serious complaints about an article discussing a court decision, which presented opinion as being fact. .
Wikipedia almost immediately replied, disputing my complaint about the content.
When I immediately returned to the article, the sections about which I complained were gone, and the whole article had been re written, except for remaining one identifier critical line.
Very fast work, indeed.
My mistake was in not saving the original article, and printing it.
Wikipedia would never admit to its informational "crime."
Obviously Wikipedia admitted guilt by first grossly changing the article, and then refusing to admit to that.
On any critical issue, never trust Wikipedia.
This is always a big problem with anything not published and distributed on paper .
Unless you are searching not for light, but for the darkness.

Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] > , Website June 21, 2016 at 7:03 pm GMT

For two years lawyers tried to give him a summons, but he was a quick runner. There are funny videos showing Browder running away from summons.

I thoroughly enjoyed the video:-)

bunga > , June 21, 2016 at 7:13 pm GMT

"Yet Schroeder's employment in an oil-gas venture that is 51 percent owned by Gazprom no more makes Schroeder a Russian prostitute than big campaign contributions to Lantos from the Washington PAC make him a whore for Israel. Presumably, Schroeder believes trade with Russia is in Germany's (and Europe's) interests, just as Lantos thinks America's current policy of unconditional support for Israel is good for America.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2007/06/27/tom-lantos-warmonger/

As is often the case with AP's coverage of news having to do with Israel, there's a serious omission in its reporting on the Russia-Israel connection even when it involves oil and the United States.

The day after the State of the Union Address, two Interpol fugitives attended the "National Prayer Breakfast" held in Washington DC. The day before that, these fugitives from the law were the guests of honor at an hour-long meeting of the International Relations Committee on Capitol Hill, invited by ranking Democrat Tom Lantos (Calif.)

You would think it would be hot news when wanted men being hunted by European police suddenly pop up in the US particularly on Capitol Hill and at events attended by the US president.

Yet, there was not a single AP story in the US on any of this. [1] Not a single national network television or radio news program even mentioned these facts. In fact, Google and LexisNexis searches four days after these events took place turned up only three newspaper articles on them anywhere in the entire country. [2]

Who are these fugitives from the law, wanted by Interpol, who are meeting at the highest levels of the US government? And why didn't we learn of them?

Therein lies the story. These two men, it turns out, are just the tips of a colossal iceberg. And this iceberg doesn't just have 90 percent of its mass hidden under water; this iceberg is almost entirely submerged.

They are Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov, Israeli-Russian partners in the giant Russian oil company Yukos. They, along with a number of their cronies, are wanted by Interpol for allegedly bilking Russian citizens out of billions of dollars. To elude Russian prosecution, these men have taken up residence in Israel. [3]

As the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz explains: "In recent years Russian authorities began investigating [Yukos], its managers and major stockholders, many of whom are of Jewish origin. The probes caused several of the managers to flee to Israel, and resulted in Khodorkovski's [Yukos CEO] arrest and a Kremlin attack on Yukos."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/02/17/russia-israel-and-media-omissions/

I will suspect Tom Lantos was taking money from these fugitives

imbroglio > , June 21, 2016 at 8:12 pm GMT

@Astuteobservor II Yes, it's Abe and Izzy who run the shoe store on Main Street, pay their bills and their taxes and struggle to make ends meet and are true to their wives and help their kids with their homework, who'll pay the price.

anony-mouse > , June 21, 2016 at 11:19 pm GMT

@5371 1/ Of course, as you point out once he died there was no question of having a trial-which backs my position-no sane justice system would put a dead person on trial-and none have for centuries until Magnitsky.

2/ I'm pleased though with 2 things:

a/ that you think that 'anony-rat' is an argument.

b/ that you (along with many others here) are backing Shamir in justifying in some way a post-mortem trial.

In the distant future when people look back on this trial they're going to react like we do today to the idea of trying horses for the crimes of their owners. Why not?

Can't be sure what they'll make of the defenders of such a trial, but I can guess.

Art > , June 21, 2016 at 11:55 pm GMT

@bunga

As is often the case with AP's coverage of news having to do with Israel, there's a serious omission in its reporting on the Russia-Israel connection even when it involves oil and the United States.

The AP (All Propaganda) is always pro Jew/Israel on everything domestic and foreign – you do not write bad things about Jews/Israel if you are published by the AP – PERIOD.

Oscar Peterson > , June 22, 2016 at 1:08 am GMT

@tbraton Sounds a lot like Ayn Rand.

Seraphim > , June 22, 2016 at 2:08 am GMT

@tbraton It became tedious to evoke the murky relations of Bolshevism with the Jewish bank cartel in the financing of Lenin, Trotsky &Co by Jacob Schiff ("a banker who grew up in House of Rothschild Frankfurt, monopolized American rail system, funded the Rockefellers through First City Bank, ADL and the NAACP. Schiff's granddaughter married Al Gore's Son" From his base on Wall Street, he was the foremost Jewish leader from 1880 to 1920 in what later became known as the "Schiff era", grappling with all major Jewish issues and problems of the day, including the plight of Russian Jews under the Tsar, American and international anti-semitism, care of needy Jewish immigrants, and the rise of Zionism" – per Wikipedia), and Warburg ("Paul Warburg was a planner for the U.S. Federal Reserve System which is a collection of private banks, and attended as American representative, the Treaty of Versailles conference, where his brother Max was on the German side of the bargaining table" by Wiki). One can see why Lenin was 'permitted' to pass through Germany!

Schiff financed the Japanese for their attack on Russia ("He extended loans to the Empire of Japan in the amount of $200 million, through Kuhn, Loeb & Co Schiff saw this loan as a means of answering, on behalf of the Jewish people, the anti-Semitic actions of the Russian Empire, specifically the then-recent Kishinev pogrom"), the 1905 Revolution and the 1917 Revolution. "In addition to his famous loan to Japan, Schiff financed loans to many other nations, including those that would come to comprise the Central Powers Schiff made sure none of the funds from his loans ever went to the Russian Empire, which he felt oppressed Jewish people. When the Russian Empire fell in 1917, Schiff believed that the oppression of Jews would end. He formally repealed the impediments within his firm against lending to Russia". It's true that Communist Russia quickly opened the door for foreign investment (NEP) and the looting of Russia.
When Stalin tried to reduce USSR's dependence on foreign investments, he became instantly the monster. It is remarkable that America stood behind Trotsky in the case of the so-called "Show Trials" (The Dewey Commission).
Particularly interesting is that (per Wikipedia);
"Some ten years later, the Dewey Commission was cited in great detail, when in an open letter to the British press dated 25 February 1946, written by George Orwell and signed by Arthur Koestler, C. E. M. Joad, Frank Horrabin, George Padmore, Julian Symons, H. G. Wells, F. A. Ridley, C. A. Smith and John Baird, among others, it was suggested that the Nuremberg Trials then underway were an invaluable opportunity for establishing "historical truth and bearing upon the political integrity" of figures of international standing. Specifically, they called for Rudolf Hess to be interrogated about his alleged meeting with Trotsky and that the Gestapo records then in the hands of Allied experts be examined for any proof of any "liaison between the Nazi Party or State and Trotsky or the other old Bolshevik leaders indicted at the Moscow trials "

tbraton > , June 22, 2016 at 2:21 am GMT

@Oscar Peterson "Sounds a lot like Ayn Rand."

I assume you are referring to the aunt, who was a Communist in Hollywood. As I indicated in my message, the first I learned about her aunt was from reading the memoir a few years ago.

With respect to the memoir, I had the uneasy feeling when I read it that it was not altogether truthful. I am mentioned briefly in the memoir, and the few pages were very flattering, so I have nothing to complain about. But some of the details are wrong, which led me to speculate that, if she got our story wrong whether accidentally or deliberately, the details of the numerous other stories in her book could also be untrustworthy. I posted in detail about my friend's memoir on Rod Dreher's blog dealing with Lena Dunham's "memoir" about a year and a half ago. See http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/liar-lena-dunham/comment-page-2/#comment-7047604

My friend's memoir ostensibly was written by her, not a "as told to" book. It is very well written and very funny, and, as far as I know, it is the first book written by her. And, while her talents lie in areas other than writing, her memoir refers to her close friendship over the years with a man noted for his writing ability, and I suspect that he played a major role in reviewing and editing my friend's "memoir." (Within the past few years, my older first cousin who is in her late 80′s and who graduated from Radcliffe in the late 40′s wrote a book based on her late mother's experience growing up in rural Greece in the early part of the 20th century before coming to America. I was impressed with my cousin's effort and actually learned a lot about my family, but I could tell she had little experience writing books since the book did not flow easily and could have used some editing by a professional writer. My friend's memoir, on the other hand, has a very professional touch to it, is tightly written and is very entertaining.)

tbraton > , June 22, 2016 at 2:29 am GMT

@Seraphim Huh? What does all that have to do with my post?

Seraphim > , June 22, 2016 at 3:33 am GMT

@tbraton Can't you figure out?

heady cocktail - Occurrences > , June 22, 2016 at 4:32 am GMT

[ ] "The Untouchable Mr. Browder?" by Israel Shamir: [ ]

5371 > , June 22, 2016 at 5:21 am GMT

@anony-mouse [no sane justice system would put a dead person on trial]

Because, I presume, no dead person can in any way be made to answer for his actions. So why, slow-witted rodent, was the English justice system going to have a trial when the possibility of making the protagonist answer for his actions in any way had been excluded?

5371 > , June 22, 2016 at 5:25 am GMT

@Seraphim [One can see why Lenin was 'permitted' to pass through Germany!]

You think it was all because of the Warburgs? Or maybe because Germany was fighting for her life and needed to bet on any long shot of weakening one of her enemies?

Israel Shamir > , June 22, 2016 at 9:59 am GMT

http://plumenclume.org/blog/126-intouchable-mr-browder-par-israel-adam-shamir

tbraton > , June 22, 2016 at 11:21 am GMT

@Seraphim Don't want to waste my time figuring out the connection between your post, which looks like it should have been a stand alone post, and mine, since it doesn't exactly respond to any point I made. Since I now know your tendency, I won't waste my time responding next time.

Sam Shama > , June 22, 2016 at 1:53 pm GMT

@tbraton Don't want to waste my time figuring out the connection between your post, which looks like it should have been a stand alone post, and mine, since it doesn't exactly respond to any point I made. Since I now know your tendency, I won't waste my time responding next time. [ figuring out the connection ]
I am guessing the inextricable link between Jewish finance, Bolshevism and Germany's contemporary, pre and post-war experience? [It was very tangential a reply to your post of course]

annamaria > , June 22, 2016 at 8:11 pm GMT

@Quartermaster More conspiracy theories posited as fact.

Alas, Putinist Russia is dangerous to those who would criticize Putin's regime, or Putin himself. Putin is known for using accusations of tax evasion as an excuse for seizing certain businesses. If he has to, he has no compunction about jailing the proprietors, especially if they become politically active in opposition to Putin and his greater Russian schemes. Just ask Khodorkovsky. Is this what your former-Soviet relatives have been telling you? Still believing in anti-semitism in Russia? Perhaps you need to inform yourself about recent executive order (anti-Constitutional) prohibiting a peaceful worldwide protest known as BDS: "NY Gov. Cuomo signs "unconstitutional, McCarthyite" pro-Israel exec. order punishing BDS boycott movement" http://www.salon.com/2016/06/05/ny_gov_cuomo_signing_unconstitutional_mccarthyite_pro_israel_exec_order_punishing_bds_boycott_movement/

You see, here are businesses of a whole state of New York, prepped for punishment because of their critique of a (special) foreign government.

annamaria > , June 22, 2016 at 8:23 pm GMT

@anony-mouse 1/ '... The Untouchable Mr. Browder?...'

No problem. Just wait till he dies and then put him on trial. Worked for Magnitsky didn't it? So why the fuss?

2/ As to wikipedia edits-here's a wikipedia article with obviously very few edits you can work on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumous_trial

Only one (Magnitsky) posthumous trial in the last few centuries? That can't be right, can it?

3/ Sorry folks but Putin bungled. You can't condemn Browder without condemning Magnitsky and very few (sane) people will condemn the 'defendant' in a post-mortem trial.

Giving him not one but two lawyers in his trial (one who wore a t-shirt during the proceedings). Nice touch.

4/Should in the future Shamir question the justice system of any other country, remember, he thinks post-mortem trials are just fine. In fact, he endorsed the verdict in one.

5/ In the distant past when a person committed a capital crime while riding a horse, it was not impossible to put the horse on trial as well. Ha, ha, ha, boy is that ridiculous, putting a horse on trial. Almost as ridiculous as, as, as, well, putting a corpse on trial.

6/ If you want to link Jews with a clear victim of injustice (Magnitsky) go ahead. "Sorry folks but Putin bungled." – What has Putin to do with the holy Browder?

"If you want to link Jews with a clear victim of injustice "
Enjoy:
"Known Pedophile is Instrumental in Promoting Holocaust Hoaxer and Plagiarizer Denis Avey's New Book:" http://carolynyeager.net/book/export/html/96
"There is credible evidence that this man carried out some of the most serious sex crimes imaginable over three decades against children who were highly vulnerable and the majority of whom were in care." http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2016/01/remembering-greville-janner-on-holocaust-memorial-day/

tbraton > , June 22, 2016 at 8:27 pm GMT

@Sam Shama Thanks, Sam. I figured it was something along those lines, but the response was so "tangential" to my message that I thought I would let it pass without comment. I try to make my responses to a specific message as responsive to a point contained in that message as possible. If I have an entirely separate point to make, I will post a separate message in order to avoid confusion.

BTW, while I pointed out the three generation process from Communist to Capitalist in the case of Browder and the two generation process in the case of Armand Hammer, I forgot to mention the one generation process in the case of the Russian oligarchs, both Jewish and non-Jewish. As far as I know, every oligarch in Russia started out as a Communist with very good connections in the Communist Party.

Sam Shama > , June 22, 2016 at 9:24 pm GMT

@tbraton [ I forgot to mention the one generation process in the case of the Russian oligarchs, both Jewish and non-Jewish. As far as I know, every oligarch in Russia started out as a Communist with very good connections in the Communist Party.]

Hahaha, you are quite right. It appears that with passing generations, the cloak of "class struggles" slipped off with greater ease.

tbraton > , June 22, 2016 at 11:55 pm GMT

@5371 "Or maybe because Germany was fighting for her life and needed to bet on any long shot of weakening one of her enemies?"

I am shocked that you would think such a thing.

DaveE > , June 23, 2016 at 12:29 am GMT

@imbroglio Yeah, yeah, the "eternal victim" thing.

Jews have had 100 years to stand up for the Palestinians, 100 years to admit they destroyed Russia, took out Germany .. 15 years to stand for 9/11 Truth . the theft of the Fed, the USS Liberty, Pollard, Lavon Affair Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Morgenthau, the entire Rosenfeld Administration .. it just goes on and on and on.

How long should Abe and Lizzy have to "come clean"?

tbraton > , June 23, 2016 at 12:33 am GMT

@tbraton BTW I wonder how many people, including posters here, are aware that the U.S., under President Wilson, sent a military expedition to Russia after the Communist takeover there in 1917 and kept them there for about a year and a half. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Force_Siberia When I was in college in the early 60′s, I bought a paperback of George Kennan's "Russia and the West, Under Lenin and Stalin" (hardcover ed. 1961), the first book of Kennan that I read, and was startled to learn of our military invasion of Russia at the end of WWI and after, something I didn't remember being taught in high school American history a few years earlier. That was about 50 years ago. This past year I got around to reading A. Scott Berg's much acclaimed biography, "Wilson." I didn't remember reading anything in that biography re Wilson's commitment of military forces to Russia. I have just reviewed the index and found one obscure reference to "military intervention in Russia" (p. 590 of hardcover ed.) and George Kennan. More important, I reviewed the Bibliography and found no reference to George Kennan's "Russia and the West, Under Lenin and Stalin." I don't know what to make of the gross omission by a highly-regarded biographer, but it is clear that an effort has been made to downplay this aspect of Wilson's policy, for reasons that escape me.

Kiza > , June 23, 2016 at 12:51 am GMT

@tbraton Sorry to barge in on your discussion, maybe I am to blame for initiating it in this thread.

In terms of progression from Communism to Capitalism in so many or no generations, I would offer an opinion (from personal encounters). It is the Populism part of the Communism which attracts demagogues and careerists, who are quick to change color at the first chance. True communists are often ideological extremists who would rather die than change colors. Many a capitalist learns from communists how to be a populist, one example which comes to mind is Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's son, who studied philosophy and was a fan of Marxism in his student days. This could be extended to contemporary populists such as Donald Trump – whatever he says is unreliable, he will change it in a blink of an eye.

In summary, my point is that Populism is the cheap ideology under whose flag most opportunists fly. Under Communism the only version of Populism allowed was Communism thus so many converts after its demise. This part has nothing to do with Jews.

Kiza > , June 23, 2016 at 1:52 am GMT

@tbraton Maybe because I was educated in a different country I was very well aware of this item of information. It was not only the US, then most of the Western countries from both sides of WW1, including Britain, France, Italy, then also Czechoslovakia (Austria-Hungary), Japan, Germany and so on, which sent troops to Russia on the side of Belaya Gvardiya fighting the Lenin's Bolsheviks, even whilst WW1 was still ongoing. They fought with Belaya Gvardiya in Siberia, Ukraine and Crimea (part of Russia, not part of Ukraine until 1953 when given to Ukraine by the Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev).

This is possibly the best reference about this second, less well known, part of WW1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement

The US contingent was supposed to support the Siberain Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Army but shipped back without fighting.

Sam Shama > , June 23, 2016 at 1:56 am GMT

@tbraton Fascinating, thank you. Reading more, I find that Wilson was motivated to safeguard almost a billion dollars in armaments and equipment [including railway cars] given to Russia by the U.S in the hopes of Russia prevailing over the Central Powers and thereafter adopting the capitalist model. Alas the men and hardware [including frozen machine guns] did not hit the right wavelength with the Siberian winter.

Sam Shama > , June 23, 2016 at 2:31 am GMT

@tbraton It occurred to me to ask you if you thought her ideological metamorphosis had had in part, resulted from the entry of Alan Greenspan in their midst ?

Great story to captivate your company no doubt!

Anatoly Karlin > , June 23, 2016 at 2:41 am GMT

@Quartermaster

Just ask Khodorkovsky.

Why don't you ask the ECHR while you're at it?

tbraton > , June 23, 2016 at 3:51 am GMT

@Sam Shama As I made clear in my message, Sam, the first I heard of her black-listed aunt was from reading my friend's memoir a few years ago. The aunt never came up in our conversations, and I knew her for roughly 10 years or more. In fact, we never discussed her natural father, whom she discusses a lot in the memoir. I have reason to doubt the veracity of her story for reasons stated here and in my earlier message on Dreher's blog and for other unstated reasons. (It was my first occasion to be mentioned in someone's memoir, and it became a consuming moment, because my still good memory remembered things very differently from what was represented in the one or two pages which refer to me quite favorably. My friend was not only attractive, but she was built like a young Elizabeth Taylor and was highly intelligent and a very nice girl. That leads me to suspect that the misrepresentations of which I am aware were deliberate and not accidents of a faulty memory and lead me to suspect that other parts of the memoir may be fabricated as well.) In reading about her Communist aunt, I was struck by the utter lack of irony expressed by my old friend. That applies as well to an overarching theme of the book which my friend violates without exhibiting any sense of self-awareness. I guess I gave her more credit than she deserved. She is also relatively vague about dates, which, I suspect, is done deliberately to hide inconsistencies in her story, many of which I only became aware of upon reading her memoir. Suddenly, things which had puzzled me at the time made sense, as I learned more details of her life.

5371 > , June 23, 2016 at 5:28 am GMT

@tbraton As I often point out, the real purpose of that expedition was to prevent the Japanese from using the Russian civil war as an opportunity for large-scale expansion.

Seraphim > , June 23, 2016 at 5:47 am GMT

Many of us are aware of the 'Allied Intervention in the Russian civil war' which occured in the aftermath of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk while the Entante was still at war with Germany. The chaos which ensued as a result of the misguided policies of the HLH (Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Hoffman), especially the 'Napoleonic complex' of Ludendorff compounded by the greedy desires of many petty German 'Fuersten' for crowns in the East, determined the Allies to intervene, motivated by the following considerations:
- prevent the German or Bolshevik capture of Allied material stockpiles in Arkhangelsk
- mount an attack helping the Czechoslovak Legions stranded on the Trans-Siberian Railroad
– resurrect the Eastern Front by defeating the Bolshevik army with help from the Czechoslovak Legions and an expanded anti-Bolshevik force of local citizens and stop the spread of communism and the Bolshevik cause in Russia.

Now, this is news only for graduates of American schools where history is no more taught. The Wikipedia entry ('Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War') would have been sufficient (for beginners) to set the record straight:

"Severely short of troops to spare, the British and French requested that President Wilson provide American soldiers for the campaign. In July 1918, against the advice of the United States Department of War, Wilson agreed to the limited participation of 5,000 United States Army troops in the campaign. This force, which became known as the "American North Russia Expeditionary Force" (a.k.a. the Polar Bear Expedition) were sent to Arkhangelsk while another 8,000 soldiers, organised as the American Expeditionary Force Siberia, were shipped to Vladivostok from the Philippines and from Camp Fremont in California. That same month, the Canadian government agreed to the British government's request to command and provide most of the soldiers for a combined British Empire force, which also included Australian and Indian troops. Some of this force was the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force; another part was the North Russia Intervention. A Royal Navy squadron was sent to the Baltic under Rear-Admiral Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair. This force consisted of modern C-class cruisers and V- and W-class destroyers. In December 1918, Sinclair sailed into Estonian and Latvian ports, sending in troops and supplies, and promising to attack the Bolsheviks "as far as my guns can reach". In January 1919, he was succeeded in command by Rear-Admiral Walter Cowan.
The Japanese, concerned about their northern border, sent the largest military force, numbering about 70,000. They desired the establishment of a buffer state in Siberia, and the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff viewed the situation in Russia as an opportunity for settling Japan's "northern problem". The Japanese government was also intensely hostile to communism.
The Italians created the special "Corpo di Spedizione" with Alpini troops sent from Italy and ex-POWs of Italian ethnicity from the former Austro-Hungarian army who were recruited to the Italian Legione Redenta. They were initially based in the Italian Concession in Tientsin and numbered about 2,500.
Romania, Greece, Poland, China, and Serbia also sent contingents in support of the intervention."
All these troops have been involved, in a way or another, in the Russian Civil War, but by 1920 all have been withdrawn. Only the Japanese stayed in the Maritime Provinces of the Russian Far East until 1922 and in northern Sakhalin until 1925.

There is obviously no space here to talk about the 'Treaty of Rapallo' between Russia and Germany of 1922 and of the 'Genoa Conference' held in Genoa in 1922, where "the representatives of 34 countries gathered to discuss global economic problems following World War I. The purpose was to formulate strategies to rebuild central and eastern Europe, particularly Russia, after the war, and also to negotiate a relationship between European capitalist economies, and the new Russian Bolshevik regime". These were signals for the introduction of NEP (New Economic Policy) and the policy of 'concessions' which was, in Lenin's terms " a strategic retreat from socialism".
Anyhow, I think that a BA is a minimum requirement in order to gain a modicum of understanding of these problems. For sure Wikipedia is not sufficient.

Seraphim > , June 23, 2016 at 6:46 am GMT

If someone would have the resolve and patience to delve into the genealogies of the Bolsheviks/Neo-Con/Bankers/American communists/NY 'intellectuals'/Holywood moguls/Kosher Nostra/paranoid Russophobe journalists/Analysts of 'Russian problems', he will find a common thread linking them to what was called "The Pale of Settlement (Russian: Черта́ осе́длости, chertá osédlosti, Yiddish: דער תּחום-המושבֿ‎, der tkhum-ha-moyshəv, Hebrew: תְּחוּם הַמּוֹשָב‎‎, tcḥùm ha-mosháv) the western region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited. It extended from the eastern pale, or demarcation line, to the western Russian border with the Kingdom of Prussia (later the German Empire) and with Austria-Hungary."
One would stop then wonder why all display that pathological hatred of Russia and Russians and the desire to harm her no matter what, as retribution for the imagined 'persecutions' they supposedly endured.

Kiza > , June 23, 2016 at 2:09 pm GMT

@Seraphim My high school history, at the level of Wikipedia, is nowhere near your knowledge of the subject. Thanks for this learning experience.

Israel Shamir > , June 23, 2016 at 7:28 pm GMT

@annamaria "Sorry folks but Putin bungled." - What has Putin to do with the holy Browder?

"If you want to link Jews with a clear victim of injustice..."
Enjoy:
"Known Pedophile is Instrumental in Promoting Holocaust Hoaxer and Plagiarizer Denis Avey's New Book:" http://carolynyeager.net/book/export/html/96
"There is credible evidence that this man carried out some of the most serious sex crimes imaginable over three decades against children who were highly vulnerable and the majority of whom were in care." http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2016/01/remembering-greville-janner-on-holocaust-memorial-day/ Do not feed a troll, the first web wisdom says, and the person you replied to is an obvious troll.

Islamophobia is a multimillion-dollar industry – aladdinsmiraclelamp > , June 24, 2016 at 11:46 am GMT

[ ] This article was first published in The Unz Review. [ ]

MR BROWDER, IL NEMICO NUMERO UNO DI PUTIN | micheletocci > , June 26, 2016 at 1:15 pm GMT

[ ] Fonte: The Unz Review. [ ]

tbraton > , June 28, 2016 at 3:31 pm GMT

@Kiza Maybe because I was educated in a different country I was very well aware of this item of information. It was not only the US, then most of the Western countries from both sides of WW1, including Britain, France, Italy, then also Czechoslovakia (Austria-Hungary), Japan, Germany and so on, which sent troops to Russia on the side of Belaya Gvardiya fighting the Lenin's Bolsheviks, even whilst WW1 was still ongoing. They fought with Belaya Gvardiya in Siberia, Ukraine and Crimea (part of Russia, not part of Ukraine until 1953 when given to Ukraine by the Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev).

This is possibly the best reference about this second, less well known, part of WW1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement

The US contingent was supposed to support the Siberain Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Army but shipped back without fighting. There is no question the involvement of U.S. troops in Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 is downplayed in the U.S. As I noted, the issue wasn't touched on in my high school history class, and I was surprised to learn of our military involvement in Russia's civil war only when I went to college and bought the small paperback of Kennan's "Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin." In fact, I have a one-volume history of the U.S. written by one of the U.S.'s leading historians, Samuel Eliot Morison, who was the highly acclaimed biographer of Christopher Columbus and John Paul Jones and a long-time professor of history at Harvard. He was also the author of the highly acclaimed "History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II," a 15-volume effort. In his "The Oxford History of the American People" (1965, 1122 pages, ending with the 1963 assassination of JFK), he states briefly at p. 878 that "President Wilson went along [with efforts of France and Britain to overthrow the Bolsheviks] to the extent of sending a small American force to Archangel, ostensibly to prevent a cache of military supplies reaching Germany, and participating in a Japanese-directed invasion of Siberia, to see that Japan did not go too far." Rather cryptic reference to a somewhat small military involvement that lasted for more than a year and a half, but, in defense of Morison, his history was a one-volume affair (published by the Oxford University Press) and the American involvement in Russia had no effect on the Russian Revolution, other than to sour the relationship between the new Communist government and the U.S., which did not diplomatically recognize the new regime until FDR became President in 1933.

A. Scott Berg has no such defense. His detailed biography of Wilson runs to 743 pages, and he makes no reference at all to the U.S. military contingent that was sent to Russia in 1918 by Wilson and remained there for more than a year and a half. You would think that Berg could have added a few brief sentences alluding to the military expeditionary force and a brief summary of its impact, but not a word. This from an author who discusses the infamous "Palmer raids" at the end of the Wilson Administration and the bombs which set off those raids. I am just puzzled about the omission and fail to see what agenda is being served, other than it highlights the utter hypocrisy of Wilson with his vaunted "Fourteen Points," which impliedly called for respect of international borders. Wilson was also the hypocrite who won reelection in a close race in 1916 running on a campaign that "he kept us out of war" and the declared war against Germany a month after he was reinaugurated in March 1917.

Rehmat > , July 7, 2016 at 7:06 pm GMT

@Israel Shamir This is exactly what I said: the US has more freedom of speech)) NOPE – that's what you said morally.

Did you ever questioned the SIX MILLION DIED or the 9/11 official story which have turned-out to be fraud?

Have you met Afro-American Catholic professor Larycia Hawkins who was fired by Wheaton College for saying that "both Christians and Muslims worship the same God"?

What I meant by your experience was the distortion your 2011 interview you gave to Will Yakowicz.

https://rehmat1.com/2011/05/19/israel-shamir-lost-in-translation/

AccidentalInsider > , July 31, 2017 at 4:55 pm GMT

@empty So glad to see someone noticing interesting patterns The media have only barely scratched the surface. There's so much more to Lily Safra, the death of her late (fourth) husband, Edmond Safra, and his connection to Russia. I hope more reporters will try to dig deeper and go beyond what powerful individuals want us to believe. The whole story has yet to emerge.

BilDing > , August 2, 2017 at 2:58 am GMT

Alternate title

Benefits of Friends in High Places

Clinton has Congress in a frenzy over a Russian illusion.
Browder has Congress in a frenzy over a Russian illusion.

Is it little wonder that real America has been taken to the cleaners over the past 4 decades?

NoseytheDuke > , August 3, 2017 at 4:46 am GMT

@Svigor I missed that part in the article.

Robert Magill > , August 3, 2017 at 10:00 am GMT

BTW I wonder how many people, including posters here, are aware that the U.S., under President Wilson, sent a military expedition to Russia after the Communist takeover there in 1917 and kept them there for about a year and a half.

Actually this 'invasion' was to help stabilize Russia during the revolution and to block Japan in the far east. Russia and the US had been good friends and allies since we helped Russia during the Crimean War, and with the purchase of Alaska and they had helped us during the US Civil War.
Harry Truman put an end to all that 'good neighbor policy" when he needed a scapegoat to launch the National Security State and prevent another depression. On it goes.

http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

Uebersetzer > , August 3, 2017 at 11:22 am GMT

@Anonymous I'm sure Wichita, Kansas in 1891 was just like the Pale of Settlement. If anything Browder was one of the few CPUSA leaders who didn't come from a Jewish background, but if your mantra is "the Jew is the Communist and the Communist is the Jew", that's you ready to partake in an Einsatzgruppe in Belarus in 1941. Or write comments on Unz Review

Sean > , August 3, 2017 at 11:31 am GMT

Any stick will do to beat a dog.

Quartermaster > , August 3, 2017 at 1:31 pm GMT

Eventually he ran afoul of Mr Putin, who was (and is) very tolerant of oligarchs as long as they play by the rules.

Meaning, Putin gets a healthy cut. If he doesn't get a piece of the action, you will suddenly be found to have evaded taxes, or worse. And, heaven forfend, if you decided to use your wealth to oppose Putin politically, just as Khodorkovsky.

The Alarmist > , August 3, 2017 at 1:53 pm GMT

" Hillary Clinton, also a cold warrior of good standing"

As an unrepentant Cold Warrior (v 1.0), I resent having the wicked witch of Chicago cum Arkansas and her fellow travelers reborn in new clothing likened to me and others who served honorably.

Can't we refer to those folks as Neo-Cold-Warriors, Neo-Warriors, Neo-Patriots or something similar?

Druid > , August 3, 2017 at 8:20 pm GMT

@imbroglio Yes, it's Abe and Izzy who run the shoe store on Main Street, pay their bills and their taxes and struggle to make ends meet and are true to their wives and help their kids with their homework, who'll pay the price. Unfortunately, most of the Abe and Izzy's support Zionism which is the current backbone of the shysters!

David In TN > , August 3, 2017 at 10:01 pm GMT

@Kiza Browder, Browder, let's see now, I knew I'd heard that name somewhere before.

Astuteobservor II > , August 4, 2017 at 3:09 am GMT

when I saw the news about browder testifying in front of congress, I was like, damn, our govt is completely bought and paid for. our politicians are stupid to boot.

using someone who was one of the few that raped russia for a decade to testify about putin being bad, because he kicked him out of russia. yea.

and the press eat that vomit up.

TheJester > , August 4, 2017 at 10:38 am GMT

Seems like the entire Browder/Magnitsky hustle is nothing more than Jews protecting Jews in a kind of international crime syndicate. When found out, they even have the network in place to control the narrative about their crimes to the point that trying to hold them accountable quickly morphs into a fundamental violation of their human rights.

"What do you mean you can't rip off a country's assets and hide the loot in offshore accounts? What do you do when you see a $10 bill laying in the street? You take it, of course! What else is a person suppose to do? When opportunity strikes, you make the best of it."

Browder and Magnitshy . How history repeats itself! I recall reading that something similar happened in the Weimar Republic when Germany was stripped of its assets after WWI. Indeed, even then there was an ((( international syndicate ))) in place to control the narrative and protect the shysters.

Don bass > , August 4, 2017 at 6:39 pm GMT

@Quartermaster """Meaning, Putin gets a healthy cut. If he doesn't get a piece of the action, you will suddenly be found to have evaded taxes, or worse. And, heaven forfend, if you decided to use your wealth to oppose Putin politically, just as Khodorkovsky."""
What evidence do you have for this libellous allegation?? These assertions are made habitually in the western media. However this article on Browder demonstrates who are the parties making such claims and why.

Hibernian > , August 5, 2017 at 12:41 am GMT

@Uebersetzer We're talking about his grandson, an international businessman active in Russia at one time. The WASP grandfather who eventually became CPUSA chief married a Jewish woman and their mathematician son was the international businessman grandson's father.

Try to get your facts straight before you call everybody and his brother a Nazi.

n230099 > , August 6, 2017 at 12:03 pm GMT

@Kiza I have written this before, but most US citizens think that CIA is a big bureaucracy which does secret stuff. Although this is partially true, there are also free-wheeling agents who work primarily for their own private or group interest (getting rich) and hopefully also in the Israeli and/or US national interest. Like in everything else, intelligence agencies are organised in a packing order: Mossad at the top, CIA working for Mossad, MI6 and BND working for CIA and so on. But most of the time these agencies both cooperate and compete and sometimes shaft each other (e.g. 911), from project to project.

One small complaint within a great article. Israel says:


One has to recognise that the US is second to none for freedom of speech on the globe.
This is a wrong interpretation of what transpired. There are two reasons why the documentary could have been shown in the US but not in EU:
1) EU is a lower level servant of the state of Israel than the US, and
2) EU has the most draconian libel laws (especially UK), which make stating anything about a lawyered person prepared for lawfare too risky. Nothing to do with freedom of speech.

The most interesting, previously unknown, detail to me in this article was that Browder's grandfather was the leader of the US Communist Party. This underlines Communism as primarily a Jewish movement world-wide.

"The most interesting, previously unknown, detail to me in this article was that Browder's grandfather was the leader of the US Communist Party. "

That's funny. The first thing I thought upon seeing the name and the topic was "oh good grief could it be?'

Skeptikal > , August 7, 2017 at 2:40 am GMT

@Kiza Shamir fails to mention that Browder now has UK citizenship.
All the better to perform financial jiujitsu on Russia from the City.

Skeptikal > , August 7, 2017 at 2:50 am GMT

@Quartermaster More conspiracy theories posited as fact.

Alas, Putinist Russia is dangerous to those who would criticize Putin's regime, or Putin himself. Putin is known for using accusations of tax evasion as an excuse for seizing certain businesses. If he has to, he has no compunction about jailing the proprietors, especially if they become politically active in opposition to Putin and his greater Russian schemes. Just ask Khodorkovsky. "especially if they become politically active"

Right. That was the deal. You can make money and even sort of rape to reap, but stay out of politics.
Nothing wrong with that.
Russia is Russia.
USA is USA. Here the deal is a bit different.]
You go into politics to MAKE money.

Ram > , August 7, 2017 at 6:28 am GMT

How did a US$ 4 billion "loan" made to Russia end up in a bank owned by a Zionist.?

TheOldOne > , August 9, 2017 at 1:28 pm GMT

Putin should just bomb the SOB's estates; ditto for Soros. KILL THEM!

Kiza > , August 10, 2017 at 3:48 am GMT

@Skeptikal Shamir fails to mention that Browder now has UK citizenship.
All the better to perform financial jiujitsu on Russia from the City. Being English speaking and brought up in the Anglo-world but with good understanding of Russia through Communism, made this Jewish Godfather much more damaging to Russia than the other forced Jewish emigres: Berezovsky, Gusinsky and Khodorovsky.

Browder's ties with Mossad and CIA make him a prototypical Deep-Stater, spreading Anglo-Zionist dominance of the World (Globalism) and getting personally rich in the process. If the Anglo-Zionists manage to bring down Russia (say, kill Putin) then Browder could become the Paul Bremer III of Russia (perhaps titled William Browder I).

[Aug 09, 2017] Trump's Choices

Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump as President of the United States was humanity's hope, or, I should say, the hope of that part of humanity aware of the danger inherent in provoking conflict between nuclear powers. For two decades, the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes have thrown sticks, stones, and nasty words at the Russian bear. The US has broken and withdrawn from security agreement after security agreement and has compounded the threat that Russia sees by conducting war games on Russia's borders, staging a coup in Ukraine, a province of Russia for centuries, and by a continuous stream of false accusations against Russia. ..."
Aug 09, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

Donald Trump as President of the United States was humanity's hope, or, I should say, the hope of that part of humanity aware of the danger inherent in provoking conflict between nuclear powers. For two decades, the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes have thrown sticks, stones, and nasty words at the Russian bear. The US has broken and withdrawn from security agreement after security agreement and has compounded the threat that Russia sees by conducting war games on Russia's borders, staging a coup in Ukraine, a province of Russia for centuries, and by a continuous stream of false accusations against Russia.

The result of this irresponsible, thoughtless, and reckless policy toward Russia was the announcement a few weeks ago (ignored by the US media) by the Russian high command that Russian military planners have concluded that Washington is preparing a surprise nuclear attack on Russia

This is the most alarming event of my lifetime. Now that Washington's criminally insane have convinced Russia that Russia is in Washington's war plans, Russia has no alternative but to prepare to strike first.

During the Cold War both sides received numerous false alarms of incoming ICBMs, but because both sides were working to reduce tensions, the alarms were disbelieved. But today with Washington having raised tensions so high, both sides are likely to believe the false alarm. The next false alarm could bring the end of life on earth, and for this there is no one to be blamed but Washington.

Trump's emphasis on normalizing relations with Russia was a great relief to people sufficiently intelligent to understand the consequences of nuclear war. But none of these people are in Washington, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the military/security complex, or among the presstitutes that pass for a media in America. All of these people want to destroy Trump because he wants to make peace with Russia.

Of the 535 members of the House and Senate, 530 voted in support of a bill that violates the separation of powers and prevents President Trump from removing sanctions on Russia. As the vote is so over-whelming that it is veto proof, the White House has announced that Trump will sign the bill, thus surrendering and giving up on his goal of restoring normal relations with Russia.

The White House believes that as the bill is veto proof, all that Trump could achieve by a veto is to prove the charges that he is a Russian agent and is using his office to protect Russia, and this could easily be turned into an impeachment proceeding.

However, there are things Trump could do, and since defusing the threat that Russia sees is essential to the avoidance of war, it is imperative that Trump do everything he can to prevent the military/security complex and its servants in Congress and the media from locking America into deadly conflict with Russia.

As I wrote yesterday ( http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/07/31/witch-hunt-donald-trump-surpasses-salem-witch-trials-1692-93/ ), Trump could take his case to the American people in a major speech and point out that Congress is violating the separation of powers, hamstringing the power of the presidency, and making it illegal for him to reduce the dangerous tensions that previous administrations have created with a major nuclear power.

Trump could also tell Congress that their law is unconstitutional and that he won't sign or veto the bill, and if Congress persists he will take it to the Supreme Court.

Trump could also get on the telephone with the German politicians and corporate CEOs who have denounced the sanctions as illegal and intended to serve US business interests at the expense of Germany. He should tell them to force Merkel to announce that Germany will not accept the sanctions. The EU leadership also denounces the sanctions. Trump, with a little effort, can organize so much European opposition that he can tell Congress that as the President of the United States he cannot permit a collection of mindless morons, which is what Congres is, to destroy Washington's empire by driving Europeans out of it. If Trump can get the Europeans to act, he can defeat the bill, which is really nothing but Congress' service to its political campaign contributors in the military/security complex and the US energy industry.

Trump is a fighter. And this is Trump's fight. He has everything to gain by rising to the challenge, and so do the rest of us. The entire world should get behind Trump as there is no one else to defuse the tensions that are leading to nuclear war.

I have been amazed at the stupidity and mendacity of the American liberal-progressive-left, who have fallen in line with the military/security complex's effort to destroy Trump, because peace with Russia takes away the orchestrated enemy so essential to the budget and power of the military/security complex. Of course, America no longer has a left. The left has been displaced by Identity Politics, a Zionist creation, as Gilad Atzmon explains in his books, that is proving effective in destroying the goyim by teaching them to hate one another. In Identity Politics, everyone is the victim of white heterosexual males, whom Identity Politics defines as misogynist, racist, homophobic gun nuts!Hillary's "Trump deplorables." As the "deplorables" voted for Trump, the liberal-progressive-left hate Trump and are helping the military/security complex destroy him even it it means nuclear war.

As I predicted would be the case, Trump had no idea how to appoint a government that would be on his side, and obviously failed completely. He is continually contradicted by his UN ambassador, his Secretary of State, his National Security Advisor, his Secretary of Defense. Trump is alone in his government.

So, he might as well fight. Address the American people. Organize the angry Europeans. Take the fight to criminally insane Washington before the criminals destroy the world in war.

Already in the 21st century Washington has destroyed in whole or part seven countries, producing millions of refugees who, together with immigrants claiming refugee status, are altering the populations of European countries and wiping Europe off of the face of the earth. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/07/30/europe-is-history/

This is Europe's reward for being Washington's vassal.

Trump should say to Europe: "It is time to tell Washington that you have had enough!"

If Trump doesn't fight and is led away by the morons advising him into the camp of the ruling oligarchs, Trump, in order to perform in a leadership role will lead American wars against the world. As a war leader he will be supported by the ruling oligarchy, and the dumbshit liberal-progressives, having helped the military/security complex defeat Trump's initiative for peace with Russia, will have not a leg to stand on.

Here is my prediction. Trump's personality compells him to be a leader. Trump, having been defeated in his peace initiative by the military/security complex, the liberal-progressive-left, the corrupt Democrats, the corrupt Republicans, and the whores who pass for a media will regain leadership via wars and aggression against foreign enemies.

Trump has already put illegal sanctions on Venezuela, hoping to overthrow Venezuelan democracy and restore Washington's rule through the small group of right-wing Spanish who have traditionally dominated Venezuela.

Russia and China had a chance to come to Venezuela's aid and to prevent the coming overthrow of the democratically elected government by Washington, but both countries lacked the necessary vision. Once Washington overthrows the Venezuelan government, Washington will overthrow the government in Ecuador and have Julian Assange's diplomatic asylum revoked. Once Assange is tortured into claiming that Wikileaks is a Russian/American organization financed by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Assange will be put to death, and the dumbshit Americans will cheer. Then Washington will overthrow Bolivia and have a purge conducted in Brazil against all political leaders who are not on the CIA's payroll.

Then Washington will brand Russia and China "outlaw nations" and surrounded as they will be with US nuclear missiles and ABM sites, Washington will demand surrender or destruction.

It all seems a fantasy, doesn't it. But it is very real.

Fake News A US Media Specialty

By Paul Craig Roberts

August 07, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - The American media specializes in fake news. Indeed, since the Clinton regime the American media has produced nothing but fake news. Do you remember the illegal US bombing and destruction of Yugoslavia? Do you remember "war criminal" Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president branded "the butcher of the Balkans," who was compared to Hitler until Hillary passed the title on to the President of Russia? Milosevic, not Bill Clinton, was arrested and placed on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal. He died in prison, some say murdered, before he was cleared of charges by the International Criminal Tribunal. http://www.globalresearch.ca/milosevic-and-the-destruction-of-yugoslavia-unpleasant-truths-no-one-wants-to-know/5540873

Do you remember the destruction of Iraq justified by the orchestrated propaganda, known by the criminal George W. Bush regime to be an outright lie, about Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," weapons that the UN arms inspectors verified did not exist? Iraq was destroyed. Millions of Iraqis were killed, orphaned, widowed, and displaced. Saddam Hussein was subjected to a show trial more transparent than Stalin's trial of Bukharin and then murdered under the pretext of judicial execution.

Do you remember the destruction of Libya based entirely on Washington's lies and the criminal misuse of the UN no-fly resolution by turning it into a NATO bombing of Libya's military so that the CIA-armed jihadists could overthrow and murder Muammar Gaddafi? Do you remember the killer bitch Hillary gloating, "we came, we saw, he died!"

Do you remember the lies that the criminal Obama regime told about Assad of Syria and the planned US invasion of Syria that was blocked by the UK Parliament and the Russian government? Do you remember that Obama and the killer bitch sent ISIS to do the job that US troops were prevented from doing? Do you remember General Flynn revealing on TV that it was a "willful decision" of the criminal Obama regime to send ISIS to Syria over his objection as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency? This bit of told truth is why Gen. Flynn is hated by the Washington criminals who forced him out as Trump's National Security Adviser.

Do you remember the US coup in Ukraine against the democratically elected government and its replacement with a neo-nazi regime? Do you remember that Washington's crime against Ukrainian democracy was quickly hidden behind false charges of "Russian invasion"?

Can you think of any truthful report in the American news in the past two decades?

All of the lies leading to the death of millions told by the criminal Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes were transparent. The US media could easily have exposed them and saved the lives of millions of peoples and saved seven countries from destruction in whole or part. But the presstitutes cheered on the gratuitous and criminal destruction of countries and peoples. Every one of the presstitutes is a war criminal under the standards set by US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg trials.

We cannot even get a truthful jobs report. Yesterday (Aug. 4) the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported 205,000 new private sector jobs in July and a drop in the unemployment rate to 4.3%. This is fake news.

The Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber rah-rahs the fake news, adding that many economists think "robust hiring could continue for many more months, or even years." Let's think about that for a moment. Generally speaking economists regard full employment to be a 5% rate of unemployment. There can never be a zero rate of unemployment because of frictions in the job market. For example, there are people between jobs who have lost or quit a job and are looking for a new one, and there are people who have dropped out of the work force, perhaps to spend more time parenting or to care for an aged and ill parent, and have reentered the work force. Economists also believe that employment cannot go too low without pushing up inflation.

Assuming economists have not suddenly changed their minds about what rate of unemployment is full employment, if the unemployment rate is currently 4.3%, it is already below the full employment rate. How can the rate continue to fall for years when the economy is already at full employment? Apparently, this question did not occur to the AP reporter or to the "many economists."

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Of course, the 4.3% unemployment rate is fake news. It does not include millions of discouraged workers. When these workers who have not looked for jobs within the last four weeks are included, the unemployment rate jumps to 22-23%.

Now consider the alleged 205,000 July new jobs. Probably about half of these jobs are due to the add-ons from the birth-death model, and the other half from manipulations of seasonal adjustments. John Williams at shadowstats.com will tell us. However, let's assume the jobs are really there. Where does the BLS tell us the jobs are?

Eighty-nine percent of the jobs are in services, essentially domestic non-tradable services.

Professional and business services account for 49,000 of the jobs, of which 30,000 are in administrative and waste services (garbage collection) and 14,700 are in temporary help services.

54,000 of the jobs are in education and health services, of which ambulatory health care services, home health care services and social assistance account for 46,900 of the jobs.

62,000 of the jobs are in leisure and hospitality, of which waitresses and bartenders account for 53,100 of the jobs and amusements, gambling, and recreation account for 5,900 jobs.

This picture of American employment has been holding for about two decades. It is a portrait of a third world labor force. The jobs are not in export industries. The jobs are not in high productivity, high value-added occupations that produce a middle class income. The jobs are in lowly paid, often part-time domestic services.

The jobs do not produce incomes that provide discretionary spending to drive up business profits. So why did the stock market hit new highs? The answer is that corporate executives are taking advantage of the Federal Reserve's zero interest rates to borrow money with which to buy back their companies' shares in order to drive up their bonuses, the main component of their pay.

But these undeniable facts about employment did not prevent Christopher Rugaber and the other financial presstitutes or newspaper headline writers or "many economists" from asking "How much better can it get?" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution front page, Aug. 5, 2017).

It is not only seven Muslim countries that Washington and its presstitutes have destroyed in whole or part with lies. Washington's lies have also destroyed the American economy and the American work force.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order

Conspiracy to Remove Trump at All Costs

By Greg Hunter

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts agrees that Democrats, RINO Republicans, military complex and the Deep State want Donald Trump removed from the White House at any and all costs. Dr. Roberts explains, "That's correct and, again, it's several different interests. The Democrats want him out because they want to be vindicated that he stole the election from them through some form of collusion with the Russians. The military security complex want him out because they see him as a threat to their budget. Trump normalizing relations with Russia!they don't want that. They need an enemy. The talk of pulling out of Syria also annoyed them. They don't want to give up these wars that keep people worried and willing to support the military. . . . The media is mad because Trump disproved all the smart people's predictions of Hillary being a shoe-in. Plus, Trump is elected by Americans considered to be deplorable. The deplorables are white heterosexual males. They are racist. They are sexist. They are homophobes. They are gun nuts, and these are illegitimate people. These illegitimate people elected Trump when all of the good people wanted to elect Hillary. So, you have that kind of left wing crazed ideological element, as well. So, all of these things conspire against Donald Trump. What is going on is essentially what Attorney General Robert Jackson warned all U.S. Attorneys about in 1940. He said it is impermissible to pick a person and then go look for some crime he may have committed. . . . And, yet, that's what the Special Prosecutor is doing in the case of Trump. We have no evidence of any crime. Even if there was some kind of Russian collusion, it's not illegal. It's normal for incoming governments to have open discussions with foreign governments. It happens in every administration. It's part of the transition team. . . In the case of Trump, there is no crime, but now there is a wide ranging investigation that has gone far beyond any sort of Russian contacts."

Who is conspiring to push Trump out? Dr. Roberts says, "I do know about campaign contributions, and they do come from the military security complex, and they come from energy companies. These are two massive campaign contributors. So, that's why the Russian sanctions bill passed. Of the 535 members of the House and Senate, 530 voted for the sanctions. . . . It's not the people who put Senators and Congressmen in office, it's the interest groups that finance their election campaigns. So, the members of the House and Senate are not responsible to their constituents or voters. They are responsible to their constituency of their campaign contributors. In this case, the Congress is perfectly loyal to the energy companies and to the military security complex, and they never are loyal to 'We the People.'"

Dr. Roberts thinks sanctions and provocations with Russia and China are "acts of war" by the U.S. Roberts contends the U.S. does not want war. If there is war, Dr. Roberts says it will have nothing to do with a failing economy. Roberts contends, "The notion that the government is somehow worried about the economy and, therefore, we will go to war, that's not likely. In fact, I think the military security complex doesn't really want a war. They want an enemy like they had with the Soviet Union for all those decades of the 'Cold War.' They want a renewed Cold War. They want an ever present threat because that keeps the budget funded. It keeps it growing, and it keeps their power in place. So, this is what they want, but these things can backfire. These are the kinds of things that will produce a war. It won't be some conscious decision. . . . If you are talking war with Russia, nothing will be left standing."

On the economy, Dr. Roberts, who was an Assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan Administration and holds a PhD in economics, says, "There is no economy there. The markets are rigged. The Fed has a huge trading desk, and they can trade anything."

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with former Assistant Treasury Secretary Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.

(To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here )

https://www.youtube.com/embed/FaSb3VV6BF8?rel=0

Dr. Roberts is a prolific writer and sometimes writes as many as three fresh articles a day. You can find his work free of charge on PaulCraigRoberts.org. To donate to Dr. Roberts to keep his site running click here.

This article was first published by USAWatchdog.com

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

[Aug 09, 2017] Shamir Archive

Notable quotes:
"... while average Russian salary (excepting Moscow and St Petersburg) is around $200 per month. ..."
"... Before the sanctions, rich Russians did not give a damn about their less fortunate fellow citizens. They went for holidays to Cote d'Azur, they sent their children to study at Oxford and Yale. They were as removed from ordinary Russians as Leo Tolstoy's nobles were. ..."
"... Putin, despite his macho ways, is a very cautious politician. He is not rushing into more confrontation with the US than it is strictly necessary. He is ready to wait. ..."
"... Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected] ..."
Aug 09, 2017 | www.unz.com

Blogview Between Cersei and Daenerys Israel Shamir August 7, 2017

...The Russian Prime Minister Mr Medvedev summed the situation in a brief and to the point post in his Facebook page , conveniently in Russian and English. "First, the sanctions law ends hopes for improving Russia's relations with the new US administration. Second, it is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia. Third, the Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way. This changes the power balance in US political circles."

The Prime Minister is a man whose opinion matters. He is not the weakling that the Russian nationalist opposition branded him. While a President and a Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, on 8.8.8 (Aug 8, 2008, for slow thinkers) he disregarded the US calls and Russians' divided public opinion, moved the tanks beyond the Caucasus mountains and defeated the arrogant Georgians with their Israeli and American instructors in a brief war. Still he is a liberal, his government carries out liberal policy, he is not seeking confrontation. If he says it's war, albeit economic one, then it's war the US declared on Russia.

Still the more important war goes on between the Establishment and the President, and this war is not over. Trump had been humiliated, it is true, he lost a battle but not the war. It is too early to write him off, as Medvedev suggests.

President Putin understood that as he ordered the mass expulsion of the US diplomats before Trump signed the bill, though previously he said he will do it after the bill will become a proper law. If Putin would wait a few days, the expulsion could be considered a response to Trump's signing. But Putin preferred to make the Congress responsible for the action.

President Trump agreed with Putin, when he twitted : "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress!" The Russia-baiting senator John McCain replied with "You can thank Putin", but this line of accusations leads nowhere.

Trump is in one hell of a mess, but he has some solid support. I do not mean the people, I mean the real business sector of America. The Swamp has been fed by the virtual economy of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, mass media, the Federal Reserve, the spy agencies. Their enemies, the people of the real industry, support Trump, and they aren't likely to surrender. The conflict crossed the Atlantic, and now it rages in Europe, where supporters of the Clinton Collective had found themselves in an unpleasant situation. They're losing money, for American business does not want to support them anymore

... ... ...

Sympathies of Putin and his supporters still are with Trump, with American nationalists, for we can imagine a deal that can be reached with them, a deal that will allow Russia to live peacefully in its own niche of the world and of the market. It is hard even to imagine a possible deal with devoted globalists who want to remake the world including Russia after their own image. Still, Putin does not intend to get involved in the intra-American quarrel.

The nearest and the best he could do was waiting for half a year before acting on December expulsion of the Russian diplomats. Now we are entering a new stage, a full-blown Cold War.

Here I must admit that it is not bad for the world, not bad at all. A great harmony between Trump and Putin would be even better, as I described , but Cold War is surely second best solution.

There are too many aggressive American actions all over the world. Before 1990, they were partially blocked by the USSR. Since then, the US could do whatever it wishes, with dire results. Interventions in Afghanistan, Panama, Iraq, and elsewhere would not have happened if there would be some counterweight to the US. And Putin's Russia didn't want to take the role of major counterweight. The Russians acted only within very limited territories and by very limited means. They saved Crimea from being turned into a NATO military base; they stopped the destruction of Syria. This is very good, but far from leading global resistance to the Empire. At best, they refused to cooperate with American designs.

... ... ...

...Putin's authoritarian regime gave the new Russian nobility of money and state positions too much leeway. They built the biggest yachts, they threw money like there was no tomorrow, while ordinary Russians had a very, very modest way of life. Deputy Prime Minister Mr Igor Shuvalov flies his wife's corgis in his private jet and owns $100 million worth real estate, while average Russian salary (excepting Moscow and St Petersburg) is around $200 per month.

Before the sanctions, rich Russians did not give a damn about their less fortunate fellow citizens. They went for holidays to Cote d'Azur, they sent their children to study at Oxford and Yale. They were as removed from ordinary Russians as Leo Tolstoy's nobles were.

The sanctions helped a bit. Some of the Putin's officials have been forbidden to travel and thus they were forced to discover modest discomforts of their homeland. If the Cold War will cut them off their properties in the West and will annihilate their offshore savings, they will contribute more to their own country.

They surely do not want that; that is why the new rich of Putin's Russia are the force against Cold War. They already call for a surrender to US mercy . The new Cold War will make these people irrelevant, as the US communists became irrelevant in the harsh climate of Cold War I.

The sanctions law is not a bad thing for Europe, too. By meddling in European elections, the US created a comprador political class. These blind followers of American invade/invite liberals were a real disaster for Europeans. With the advent of Trump, they began to get weaned off the American tit. Sanctions are likely to strike the Europeans' tender spot, their pockets. They are already annoyed by what they consider exterritoriality of American law, by heavy fines applied to European banks for doing things forbidden in the US, but perfectly legal in Europe, like trading with Iran. The US attack on their supply of cheaper Russian gas is likely to release them from their American tenets. So it is also positive thing.

In short, the new Cold War II is a good deal. Yes, harmony would be better, but until it comes, give us Cold War!

* * *

P.S. I'd like to conclude on this upbeat note, but as I am paid neither by Putin nor by Trump, I'd add that Cold War is not here yet. Putin, despite his macho ways, is a very cautious politician. He is not rushing into more confrontation with the US than it is strictly necessary. He is ready to wait.

We observed it in the case of diplomats. Obama expelled 35 diplomats, Putin patiently waited for seven months. During this waiting time, he reminded of the debt many times. Only met with American stonewalling, he decided to act, and then he expelled twenty times more diplomats. (The exact number is not clear yet, but it is about 700 carriers of US diplomatic passport.) This is Russian style. Russians procrastinate, stall, postpone, and when you think they forgot or gave up they produce a lot of quick action.

Now, after the sanctions, Putin's Russia voted today Saturday Aug 5 in the UN Security Council for the US-proposed draft with new sanctions against North Korea. The U.S.-drafted resolution bans North Korean exports of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. It also prohibits countries from increasing the current numbers of North Korean labourers working abroad, bans new joint ventures with North Korea and any new investment in current joint ventures, says Reuters . Thus Russia is punishing itself (it is an importer of Korean goods, it employs Korean workers and there are quite a few Russian – North Korean joint ventures) and sanctioning its North Korean ally while doing American bidding.

I regret this decision, but this is Putin: he does not want to aggravate the Russia-US rift. He is ready to launch a counterstrike, if necessary, but he is not in a rush to Doomsday. He does not want to give a chance to both Cersei and Daenerys to unite against him. He'd rather procrastinate a bit more, while the two queens fight it out. I'd prefer very, very cold war with a lot of ice and a twist of lemon, but then, I didn't pursue a pike for two hours in cold Siberian water.

Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected]

This article was first published at The Unz Review

See also: The Trump Administration Goes Neocon-Crazy The Saker April 5, 2017

Brabantian > , Website August 7, 2017 at 8:39 am GMT

Mr Israel Shamir is quite wrong when he claims above that Seymour Hersh is " the most trustworthy US journalist " Sy Hersh is a psy-op, a dis-info agent of some decades (see below). Hersh's currently famous video & leak 'debunking Russia-gate', is a Trojan horse cover for a very ugly deception.

Amidst Hersh's staged 'leak' – nicely pro-Trump to fool us – Hersh sells us a dodgy claim that Seth Rich was, he assures us, definitely NOT killed by mafias linked to Hillary Clinton but by some random street thug, according to Hersh's amazing 'secret inside sources' he always has when he is running a US gov psy-op this unknown 'street thug killed Seth Rich', but 'got scared' so didn't take Seth Rich's wallet uh-huh

Hersh is also trying to distract us from the fact that we now have a string of people who are dead or in prison after contacting what are known as the oily US-Israeli intel frauds of Wikileaks & also The Intercept, which are in fact 'rat traps' to help identify, silence & kill real dissidents duped into contacting them.

Wikileaks may have helped kill both Seth Rich, & another anti-Hillary leaker, Peter W Smith, also dead after contacting Wikileaks, with Assange absurdly claiming he never got any Smith files. Tho Assange posted a 'reward' for info about Seth Rich – funny how the USA international financial dragnet doesn't close Wikileaks fat bank accounts – Assange arguably may have set up the killing.

Just to remind that, years ago, Zbigniew Brzezinski & Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, both admitted that 'not really living in the London Ecuador Embassy' Julian Assange, & Wikileaks itself, are USA-Israeli intel agency frauds, the leaks all selected & controlled. Assange was the dry run for another fraud, that of Rothschild employee & ex-gay-p-rnographer Gleen Greenwald, who pumped the young friend of Dick Cheney & the Brzezinski family, 'Edward Snowden' who first claimed to 'leak' to Dick Cheney's biographer at the Washington Post with many other proofs of the fraud – a fraud Putin himself hints at, tho he plays along, not wishing to over-provoke the USA as Shamir states above – starting point on the Snowden fraud here:

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/09/21/russia-govt-report-snowden-greenwald-are-cia-frauds/

Assange & Greenwald & Snowden of course recommend the 'TOR' browser developed by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees working for US intel, as the 'safe' way to contact them, uh-huh, really secure

In younger days, Seymour Hersh made his bones as a fake 'brave investigative reporter' who like other 'limited hang-outs' of the time, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, etc, claimed the official JFK assassination story, lone gunman Oswald etc, was all perfectly fine & dandy the reward for all these people was their later fame.

Hersh and all of these fakers are totally anti 9-11 truth, against even questioning the official narrative – Seymour Hersh, Hersh's current media partner Eric Zuesse, Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange all of these dis-info people say the US official 9-11 story is just great, Israel had nothing to do with it, don't talk about the arrested 'dancing Israelis' or the 'Israeli art students' photographed in the Twin Towers with boxes of bomb detonator components a few weeks before 9-11, the pix in the New York Times, no less

http://www.newnationalist.net/2017/03/02/world-trade-centers-infamous-91st-floor-israeli-art-student-project/

Seymour Hersh – card-carrying member of the intel agency psy-op confusion brigade – also sold a greasy, absurd alt version of the 'Osama bin Laden assassination in 2011′ fake story, Hersh claiming that Pakistani leaders helped to murder bin Laden & toss his body pieces from a helicopter, in total insult to their own Muslim religion HA. Whereas the actual evidence points to Osama bin Laden having died a decade earlier, shortly after the 9-11 attacks of which, in fact, the real bin Laden denied being involved.

jilles dykstra > , August 7, 2017 at 10:37 am GMT

@Brabantian Hersh ended the Vietnam war by one photograph, My Lai, alas his description on how Obama had Bin Laden murdered had not a similar effect.

white noise > , August 7, 2017 at 11:05 am GMT

"And it will be beneficial for Americans. The worst Putin can dream to do against the US: forcing the US to close its military bases, end their interventions and regime changes, destroying the Federal Reserve and the position of US Dollar in international trade, will be good for you. Your country will not invade the world and invite the world. Americans will again have work, and meaningful work. Your country will blossom."

Right on These changes alone would practically save the world, not just America. Maybe the most important factor would be DESTROYING THE FEDERAL RESERVE, which has always had Jews at the helm.

Of all evils, the Federal Reserve, which is NOT a part of the Federal government, but a fucking foreign bankers cartel, is the most pernicious.

white noise > , August 7, 2017 at 11:22 am GMT

@The Alarmist "Seriously, Vlad knows the Neocons are itching to finally take Russia off the world stage and that the US is more than equipped to do it with relative impunity. All he can do is watch his step and hope the fastest draw in the west doesn't decide to unholster the arsenal."

Uh? With relative impunity? I don't doubt that the neocons are itching to push the buttons, but they won't Even these psycopaths understand that Russia has more nuclear power than the USA, currently. If relative impunity means that erasing who knows how many American big cities from the face of Earth is unimportant, then ok, I guess you can call it "relative impunity."

Putin said: A preemptive strike from any side would probably mean that nobody would survive. He means in the world. That was/is a wise thing to say.

Robert Magill > , August 7, 2017 at 11:54 am GMT

Russia is a side-show. The main event is China. Fortunately foggy bottom and the swamp buy the distraction and the big show continues. The longer the focus is on Russia and not China the better the chance for Europe, Asia and Africa to avoid further US meddling.

http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

LondonBob > , August 7, 2017 at 1:10 pm GMT

Mr Shamir should look up when President Taft was forced to abrogate the Russo-American Friendship Treaty of 1832.

Logan > , August 7, 2017 at 1:13 pm GMT

@white noise In the early 60s, at the time of the Cuban crisis, the total megatonnage of all Bombs was somewhere upwards of 10,000. Since that time all(?) of the really big Bombs have been gotten rid of, as smaller Bombs will do the job fine with better accuracy, and in addition the total number of Bombs has gone way, way down.

As a result, the total megatons of all Bombs today is somewhere in the vicinity of 500. That's still a lot of big booms, but 500 is a LOT less than 10,000. The risk of extermination of humanity has presumably been proportionately reduced. BTW, it is surprisingly difficult to find info on total megatons, which would seem to be an important metric to track.

Captain Nemo > , August 7, 2017 at 1:14 pm GMT

@The Alarmist

You seem like a singularly competent military expert, The Alarmist LOL!Yup, that's why the US is in panic because of North Korea feeble ICBM's Because it can even take out all the Russian ones

Moi > , August 7, 2017 at 1:17 pm GMT

Putin is weak–he voted in support of more sanctions on the DPRK. Sad that China also went along with this hypocrisy.

Michael Kenny > , August 7, 2017 at 1:46 pm GMT

Mr Shamir is an author in whose articles I always have difficulty finding a common thread. A few points: he speaks of "a deal that will allow Russia to live peacefully in its own niche of the world and of the market". That would be very nice, but, of course, the problem is precisely Putin's refusal to live in his own niche of the world. Clearly for such a "deal" to be possible, Putin must withdraw from Ukraine, to say nothing of Transnistria, South Ossetia etc. Secondly, I'd love to know where Mr Shamir gets the idea that there was ever any plan to turn Crimea into a NATO base or even to expel the Russian navy base already there. As for "working assertively to resist U.S. policies and damage America", "the Taliban with surface-to-air missiles to shoot down U.S. helicopters and jets", "new trade deals with North Korea and works to stabilize the Kim regime's struggling economy" or "Russia that provides equipment and training to anti-American terrorist groups", the more the merrier! The more Putin gets into open conflict with the US the better!

Beckow > , August 7, 2017 at 2:24 pm GMT

Cold war is not a war. And the last one wasn't one either. It is simply another word for hostility. The hostility gets worse, or sometimes better, each side tries to hurt the other in all the usual ways: attack allies, hurt economically, demonize in the media, try attacking key persons among the enemy, etc This has always be done, France and England had spent hundreds of years in this form of a 'cold war', or – on a smaller scale – Denmark and Sweden, and many others. Only when it actually turned into a hot war with actual fighting each other, only then there would be a war. War is too serious a business to devalue linguistically. Let's not inflate what we have today into what it clearly is not.

The key question is not the level of insanity among the neo-cons, or who would 'win' a nuclear war (who would want to?). I think the key still unanswered question is why are so many Washington courtiers escalating the hostility with Russia. I have seen different explanations: wanting Russia's resources, eager ammunition sellers, disappointed Clinton clan hangers-on, pipelines through Syrian deserts, atavistic ethnic hatreds, even belated bitterness over grandma's pogrom stories, but none of them – or even all of them together – really satisfy. On closer examination each one of those reasons is more nuanced and not compelling enough.

So, why really? Is this a force on its own in the DC ruling establishment court? Is it something that in an almost Tolstoyan fashion is simply a flow of history, and irresistible mental force that joins black inner-city politicians with Du Pont circle think-tank buffet aficionados, ambitious media scribes with Georgetown professors on a sugar high from too many cupcakes? What the is going on in their minds? How do you get extreme identity leftists from Baltimore inner city and small city Texas 'lord-is-coming' types to sing like a well coordinated choir? This is embarrassing because of its stupidity and total disregard for consequences. As if we are dealing with children.

Regarding Trump: historically a ruler so far out of sync with the court that surrounds him, but with strong popular support, either perished in an internal coup of some kind, or he asserted himself by a drastic clean-up of the courtiers. (Or in a few cases, he would just give up and go hunting, or to play golf). I think we are in for some turbulence.

Joe Wong > , August 7, 2017 at 3:03 pm GMT

Pentagon and Department of Energy requested 1 trillion to update US nuclear arsenal, such action simply means all US ICBMs are not at fly-worth conditions and "bolt out of the blue" is a fantasy.

ThatDamnGood > , August 7, 2017 at 3:58 pm GMT

If the USA could do successful first strikeon either Russia or China or both, it would have done so.

Israel Shamir > , Website August 7, 2017 at 4:03 pm GMT

It appears that the vote in the Security Council had been initiated by China, as the Chinese are very worried by the developments and prefer to try more diplomacy. Russia followed its Chinese ally. Makes sense.

ThatDamnGood > , August 7, 2017 at 4:11 pm GMT

Also, Putin isn't trying to avoid giving the USA some excuse to go to war against Russia, if they wanted to, the. USA would conjure up the pretext, learn your history. He hopes for some counterbalance to the Dragon and doesn't want to close the door on working with the USA on this.

Russia is playing a double game with China. It's does not want to be a USA dog yet doesn't real want a dominant China.

If Russia undermines China to much, more than it has, it will become one of the USA's satraps. So what will it do?

Putin I would say is showing the lethargy of being confronted with 2 outcomes he doesn't like. Regardless of how rational he has been trained to be, such training tends to involve suppressing the emotions one way or another.

Beckow > , August 7, 2017 at 4:34 pm GMT

@ThatDamnGood Also, Putin isn't trying to avoid giving the USA some excuse to go to war against Russia, if they wanted to, the. USA would conjure up the pretext, learn your history. He hopes for some counterbalance to the Dragon and doesn't want to close the door on working with the USA on this.

Russia is playing a double game with China. It's does not want to be a USA dog yet doesn't real want a dominant China.

If Russia undermines China to much, more than it has, it will become one of the USA's satraps. So what will it do?

Putin I would say is showing the lethargy of being confronted with 2 outcomes he doesn't like. Regardless of how rational he has been trained to be, such training tends to involve suppressing the emotions one way or another. It takes a lot to destroy a country, even to turn it into a satrapy. We are in very early stages of this process after literally decades of trying. Any 'outcomes' are way, way in the future, if any would happen at all. The interplay among major geo-political countries moves at snail pace and the changes are very gradual.

From Russia's point of view, China is more or less contained, all they need is not to have active hostility on that border and good trade relations – and they have both. US hostility toward Russia doesn't play well in Europe, people there know a lot more about it, there is a long nuanced history, and they are after all neighbors with an obvious interest in trade. What looks like a good strategy in Washington will never play out the same way in Europe. And having hostile relations with US might be unpleasant for Russia, but once that has become inevitable, as all people, they will simply adjust. US is not at all important for most things that happen in Russia.

Putin is rational enough to know that there are no end-points, no 'outcomes', just an ongoing process. He also knows that by taking Crimea he took the most valuable thing that was in play in this phase – and he could not had done it without the very clumsy, self-defeating Obama intervention in Ukraine to change the elected government there. So I would not describe that as lethargy, when one is basically winning, why stir it up?

Wally > , August 7, 2017 at 5:01 pm GMT

@Moi "Weak"?

How does acting in Russia's best interests indicate weakness?

bjondo > , August 7, 2017 at 5:07 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra Hersh ended the Vietnam war by one photograph, My Lai, alas his description on how Obama had Bin Laden murdered had not a similar effect. I've read that My lai was first reported in France, Le Mond. My Lai was well known in Vietnam and was a medium level atrocity in America's rolodex of atrocities.

Not sure quite why Hersh is such a hero for re reporting an atrocity well known except of course to the baboons of USA.

I don't trust him either. Only part of the story gets reported.

I think Israel Shamir sometimes is too polite and respectful.

Wally > , August 7, 2017 at 5:09 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny Mr Shamir is an author in whose articles I always have difficulty finding a common thread. A few points: he speaks of "a deal that will allow Russia to live peacefully in its own niche of the world and of the market". That would be very nice, but, of course, the problem is precisely Putin's refusal to live in his own niche of the world. Clearly for such a "deal" to be possible, Putin must withdraw from Ukraine, to say nothing of Transnistria, South Ossetia etc. Secondly, I'd love to know where Mr Shamir gets the idea that there was ever any plan to turn Crimea into a NATO base or even to expel the Russian navy base already there. As for "working assertively to resist U.S. policies and damage America", "the Taliban with surface-to-air missiles to shoot down U.S. helicopters and jets", "new trade deals with North Korea and works to stabilize the Kim regime's struggling economy" or "Russia that provides equipment and training to anti-American terrorist groups", the more the merrier! The more Putin gets into open conflict with the US the better! I remind our Zionist friend that the eastern Ukraine people voted overwhelmingl y to return to Russia. They will not go back.

Yes. we realize that Jews First Zionists wants as much "open conflict" as possible, as long as US gentile blood is being spilled.

The True Cost of Parasite Israel
Forced US taxpayers money to Israel goes far beyond the official numbers.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-true-cost-of-israel/

Israel's Dirty Little Secret
How it drives US policies exploiting a spineless Congress and White House

http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/israels-dirty-little-secret/

How to Bring Down the Elephant in the Room

http://www.unz.com/tsaker/how-to-bring-down-the-elephant-in-the-room/

Israeli occupied territories
'Join the US army, Fight for Israel

bjondo > , August 7, 2017 at 5:13 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny Mr Shamir is an author in whose articles I always have difficulty finding a common thread. A few points: he speaks of "a deal that will allow Russia to live peacefully in its own niche of the world and of the market". That would be very nice, but, of course, the problem is precisely Putin's refusal to live in his own niche of the world. Clearly for such a "deal" to be possible, Putin must withdraw from Ukraine, to say nothing of Transnistria, South Ossetia etc. Secondly, I'd love to know where Mr Shamir gets the idea that there was ever any plan to turn Crimea into a NATO base or even to expel the Russian navy base already there. As for "working assertively to resist U.S. policies and damage America", "the Taliban with surface-to-air missiles to shoot down U.S. helicopters and jets", "new trade deals with North Korea and works to stabilize the Kim regime's struggling economy" or "Russia that provides equipment and training to anti-American terrorist groups", the more the merrier! The more Putin gets into open conflict with the US the better! Which DC neocon cubicle do you occupy.

Of course, you could be satire.

Anatoly Karlin > , Website August 7, 2017 at 6:54 pm GMT

@The Alarmist The idea of US "nuclear primacy" is a neocon fantasy.

Anatoly Karlin > , Website August 7, 2017 at 6:56 pm GMT

@Moi The DPRK is a friend of sorts, being one of the few countries that recognized Crimea, but ultimately it is China's ward and Russia would be wise to follow China's direction there.

bjondo > , August 7, 2017 at 7:09 pm GMT

the sanctions signing is a temporary and eventually pyrrhic victory for the slugwhores of congress
Trump had his signing qualifiers
he can attack later

peterAUS > , August 7, 2017 at 7:30 pm GMT

@Beckow

So, why really?

A thoughtful post.

Not even close to be qualified in those matters, the same topic has been badgering me since this "Russians this/that" erupted all over the place.

Read article, recently, trying to explain it by angle "Protestant/Puritan vs Orthodox".

But, and now I am really going out of reservation, how about this:
The essential need of a human to have OTHER .as opponent, enemy, focus of bad things in life stuff like that.
Say, related to "Star Wars" makeup .the need for a certain myth for a human psyche.
I think we are not in rational space any more, but deep hindbrain.
As that movie "Forbidden planet" superego/ego/ID.

Anyway ..

But, in any case, the topic should get more attention around.

Would you have a theory?

Israel Shamir > , August 7, 2017 at 8:37 pm GMT

@Anatoly Karlin I agree with Anatol. Korea's connection to China is much, much stronger than Russia's. During Korean War, the Russians had lost a few dozen men, Chinese had lost tens of thousands, or even more. Son of Mao was killed defending Korea. All overland links of North Korea lead to China. There is a short stretch of Russian-Korean border, but until very recently there was no road neither bridge.
Korean trade with China is many times bigger than their trade with Russia.
However, Koreans are very strong nationalists; they are suspicious of China, and of China's motives. Thy think China does not want to have strong Korea next to itself, and that is why the Chinese can easily be persuaded by the Americans to join them demanding nuclear disarmament.
Both Russia and China have big Korean communities. As a bottom line, it would look strange for Russians to reject measures agreed by the US with Beijing.

Marshall Lentini > , August 7, 2017 at 9:28 pm GMT

@peterAUS "I think we are not in rational space any more, but deep hindbrain."

Pretty much.

I'd call it an availability heuristic tangled up with a few other things.

The Cold War set a precedent of America being at odds with Russia, following the old European example. They're reverting to something convenient. Focusing too hard on China would ultimately be "racism", as well.

They must blame Russia, for otherwise, they'd have to admit that selling out white people for so many decades is what got Trump elected. That would mean admitting that whites have interests. And that is Crimestop #1.

They also hate the existence of a massive white state not totally under their thumb, and where men are still mostly in charge. This isn't a small thing: "women's liberation" was one of the main casus bellorum for invading Afghanistan. So Russia, where smacking your bitch is now just a misdemeanor and the President goes hunting like old Teddy, is in need of enlightening.

The difference between neurotics and the American establishment is that the former are confined to over-definition of their own sphere, while the latter have the power to define that of others. In the end, they will tear everything down to avoid confronting their own sunk cost fallacies, just like neurotic in denial.

utu > , August 7, 2017 at 9:29 pm GMT

@Beckow "self-defeating Obama intervention in Ukraine to change the elected government there. "

Why self-defeating? It kind of worked. That Russia annexed Crimea is not really a big g deal. They do not care about Crimea. There was no real designs about turning Crimea into NATO base or Jewish colony as some say. That they act upset is just posturing. Their argument is legalistic. Technically Russia broke international law. But they succeeded up to some point of prying large chunk of land from Russia's direct sphere of influence and managed to turn Ukrainians to be hostile towards Russia. For people who do not consider peace and harmony to be the highest value the Maidan operation was a success.

Si1ver1ock > , August 7, 2017 at 9:48 pm GMT

I would have to rate this column as superior, very good.

The part that starts out:

There are considerable differences between refusing to cooperate with the United States, and working assertively to resist U.S. policies and damage America.

. . . .

is something I might have written in my comments even as recently as last year, but I find myself censoring my own comments these days. I'm not as sanguine about a new Cold War as the author is. The United States is bordering on becoming a Stasi State.

Wiki on Stasi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

The Security forces of the US have been going after pattern-of-life information on US citizens.

Marina has the ability to look back on the last 365 days' worth of DNI metadata seen by the Sigint collection system, regardless whether or not it was tasked for collection." The stored metadata is mainly used for pattern-of-life analysis. US persons are not exempt because metadata is not considered data by US law (section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis

Which sets us up for Zersetzung.

The practice of repression in Zersetzung comprised extensive and secret methods of control and psychological manipulation, including personal relationships of the target, for which the Stasi relied on its network of informal collaborators,[2] (in German inoffizielle Mitarbeiter or IM), the State's power over institutions, and on operational psychology. Using targeted psychological attacks the Stasi tried to deprive a dissident of any chance of a "hostile action".

Wiki on Zersetzung: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung

bjondo > , August 7, 2017 at 10:21 pm GMT

Not cold war 2 following cold war 1.

This new war with Russia is by and for the jews with their lickspittle puppets for israel.

It is about Russia stopping the defeat of Syria.

it is about Putin not bowing to judaized America and the judaized west.

it is about Trump not bowing to the corrupt, deep state – the judaized state.

Avery > , August 7, 2017 at 10:46 pm GMT

@utu { There was no real designs about turning Crimea into NATO base .}

How would you know?
There is no possible way for you to know that.

No, I don't know either, but given what has transpired since the breakup USSR and how West/NATO lied to idiot Gorbachev about not pushing NATO Eastward, it is far more plausible that NATO did in fact plan to oust Russia from Crimea, and the naval base there.
Oh, what a prize for NATO that would have been.

One after another country has been bribed into NATO.
NATO is right on the border of RF today in Europe.
And NATO tried and is still trying to recruit Republic of Georgia, right on Russia's border in the Caucasus.
So NATO/US campaign to surround and strangle Russia has not stopped.

{ .to turn Ukrainians to be hostile towards Russia.}

Part of Ukrainians – the Western ones – were always hostile to Russia and Russians, despite being Slavs. They even collaborated with Hitler to murder their fellow Slavs, until Hitler turned on them too and started murdering the idiots.

As to Eastern Ukrainians: you are right; Maidan operation was a success, but in a different way. With Ukraine intact, it would always be thorn on the side of Russia.
With it broken up, Novorossiya with its ethnic Russian population will eventually break free and join Russia – and everybody will live happily ever after.

bjondo > , August 7, 2017 at 11:33 pm GMT

@bjondo This new Jew war against Russia would be war number ?? against Russia in last 200 years.

Also Jew did hellava lot id killing of non jew in USSR.

Beckow > , August 8, 2017 at 12:12 am GMT

@peterAUS

The essential need of a human to have OTHER .as opponent, enemy, focus of bad things in life

What you wrote is about as close to what my theory would be if I felt competent to have one. The truth is that we really don't know. On some level what the motivation is – why people do what they do – doesn't matter. We cannot see into human psyche (thank god for that), and in my view assigning motivations is inherently imprecise. I am just curious.

A lot of establishment people in the West crave having an 'evil white enemy'. It is deeply embedded in the popular culture, it is today the only enemy that can exist given the PC and historical constraints in the West. There is no other viable alternative candidate for the role of the 'OTHER'. And Russia due to its whiteness, Christianity, but also remoteness and a slight obscurity – with the non-latin alphabet, Orthodoxy and difficult language – is an almost perfect 'ENEMY'. It has fulfilled this role for centuries, alternating with the Ottoman Turkey as the designated eternal foe.

Given today's reality our civilization cannot survive if it divides itself. To put it bluntly another civil war among the European countries will simply mean the end of the broader European civilization. We cannot afford more WW1′s or WW2′s. So this hysteria that is clearly out of control in Washington elite circles is very harmful. And maybe that's why they do it.

Pachyderm Pachyderma > , August 8, 2017 at 12:22 am GMT

@Israel Shamir I think a united, independent and nuclear Korea is in best interest of the United States and furthermore, both sides, the Chinese and the Americans are playing a waiting game to see which way the Kim regime will blow to see if it becomes, either a destitute dependency of China or a staunch ally of America (never say it's impossible).

Marshall Lentini > , August 8, 2017 at 12:26 am GMT

@Beckow I said it better.

For once.

Beckow > , August 8, 2017 at 12:30 am GMT

@utu They do care about Crimea – that was the price. Do you think Ukraine in Nato would continue having the home base for the Russian Navy? How would that work? The base would be gone over time and that was definitely part of the plan. There is no way Ukraine would be allowed into EU without first joining Nato – the logic here was ironclad and both sides knew it.

Russia broke the international law in the same way as Nato broke it when they bombed Serbia to force independence for Kosovo Albanians. It is hard to complain about one and ignore the other.

Russia used to heavily subsidize Ukraine, now Europe and US are expected to do it. The Ukrainian hostility toward Russia (and others) has always been there. It is more now, but these hatreds come and go as circumstances change. I agree that some might simply enjoy the chaos in Ukraine on the Russian border, but that is a very tricky goal that can easily backfire. My view is that everybody lost on Maidan: Russia, Europe, US and most of all the normal Ukrainians. Obama was either disengaged or extremely incompetent, this has not benefitted US in any tangible long-term way. And it permanently removed Crimea from Ukraine. That was a powerful lever against Russia and once used and lost it is no longer available. So, yes it was a stupid self-defeating policy. You can tell from Washington squealing about Crimea that they know it. They are angry at Russia for acting in Crimea, at their Kiev 'allies' for screwing it up, and at themselves for being so slow and clumsy. But it is too late.

utu > , August 8, 2017 at 5:27 am GMT

@Beckow They knew that prying Ukraine from Russia would force Russia to annex Crimea. So they did not count on getting Crimea. Ukraine minus Crimea was good enough. If Russia failed to act I am sure they would be more happy to get Crimea as a bonus. However by forcing Russia to act they got Russia where they wanted, i.e., aa a rouge state that does not respect international laws and thus can be sanctioned and isolated. Only squashing the Maidan coup would prevent it. Again somebody was asleep at the switch in Kremlin like in cases of Yugoslavia and Libya or simply Russia did not have means like lack of sufficient number of operatives in Kiev and Yanukovych regime. Perhaps Yanukovych was designated to do it but he did not want to be the fall guy who ends up with blood on his hands and then in the Hague court where Russia would certainly deliver him after restoring peace and control in Ukraine.

You can console yourself that it was Obama's mistake and so on. Time will tell. In the meantime Russa was beaten in this round.

Russia broke the international law in the same way as Nato broke it when they bombed Serbia to force independence for Kosovo Albanians. It is hard to complain about one and ignore the other.

Yes, but this does not make any difference in the world as it is. Might makes right. The West defines the narrative by which all actions are later justified in international institutions. Russia's propaganda apparatus with RT and Sputnik are no match. Russia never was good in PR and this kind of soft power. Not before Bolshevik revolution and not after and not after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always concentrated its propaganda for internal consumption chiefly to convince the population of Russia that the leadership knows what it is doing and that its military is great. Every authoritarian regime does it. Russia has no tradition of non-authoritarian rule.

The Alarmist > , August 8, 2017 at 7:09 am GMT

@Anatoly Karlin Yep, but that's all it takes for the Neocons to act.

anonymous > , Disclaimer August 8, 2017 at 7:51 am GMT

@The Alarmist The christian west (you keep electing the same evil mofers, so ) is out of its evil fcuking mind, that such a situation can even be considered!

With great Power, comes great Evil.

The white race, which will never peacefully relinquish its hegemony, will forever be proof of that.

white noise > , August 8, 2017 at 10:08 am GMT

@Logan Putin was probably thinking of the radiation, which can last many years, and can be transported far by the wind and rain and rivers, and even sewage. In any case, I hope we won't have to test just how bad a nuclear war can be.

white noise > , August 8, 2017 at 10:30 am GMT

@Michael Kenny There is a famous recorded phone conversation where American politicians discuss effecting a coup d'etat in Ukraine. This developed into the Maidan, and the ousting of President Yanukovich, who was loyal to Putin. John McCain was quick to visit the new government. McCain has been involved in many similar interventionist episodes in several countries, so that was suspicious.

It is conjecture to think if there was a plan to install a NATO base, but so, in all appearance, the coup was engineered by the American government. At first, Putin claimed that Russia intervened "to protect the Russian-speaking people" in Crimea. But later, he said that it was in fact a strategic move, to protect the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. Most likely, he decided to invade Crimea when he saw that Yanukovich fell and had to flee for his life His next move, which was to invade East Ukraine (through proxies in this case) shows that he got nervous with the change of government in Kiev, which announced a plan to join NATO and EU.

Lucy > , August 8, 2017 at 10:38 am GMT

@Avery They are hostile to Poles as well, despite Poland's "conservative" government's acting as if Ukraine was Poland's ally against Russia.

white noise > , August 8, 2017 at 10:45 am GMT

@Beckow "From Russia's point of view, China is more or less contained, all they need is not to have active hostility on that border and good trade relations – and they have both. US hostility toward Russia doesn't play well in Europe, people there know a lot more about it, there is a long nuanced history, and they are after all neighbors with an obvious interest in trade. What looks like a good strategy in Washington will never play out the same way in Europe. And having hostile relations with US might be unpleasant for Russia, but once that has become inevitable, as all people, they will simply adjust. US is not at all important for most things that happen in Russia.

Putin is rational enough to know that there are no end-points, no 'outcomes', just an ongoing process. He also knows that by taking Crimea he took the most valuable thing that was in play in this phase – and he could not had done it without the very clumsy, self-defeating Obama intervention in Ukraine to change the elected government there. So I would not describe that as lethargy, when one is basically winning, why stir it up?"

That is it.

white noise > , August 8, 2017 at 10:55 am GMT

@Anatoly Karlin "The idea of US "nuclear primacy" is a neocon fantasy."

Absolute fantasy.

Israel Shamir > , August 8, 2017 at 10:59 am GMT

Here is an interesting comment that was sent by a US military man from circles close to President Trump.

We are told that congressional approval–sampled by the same polls that rate the president at 40%–is at 4%; and since all of these polls are engineered we can easily accept that President Trump is in reality at 60%, whilst the congressional scum actually garners 6% approval from respondents, who are largely over-sampled in favour of democraps and independents (republicans are almost invariably a mere third of any selected group). The polls are very sophisticated garbage of the kind that predicted Trump's loss to Hitlery: nothing is real any longer in this vile, technologically-driven society of knaves and cretins.

I rather enjoy Mr Shamir's reasoning, my friend. But he is wrong about Trump. The president is in a death struggle with the greatest alliance of traitors and kleptocrats the world has ever known. He will win, because two-hundred-million Americans stand with him in this fight against globalist totalitarianism. Democrap leaders and their "social justice warrior" creatures are either seditious or guilty of outright treason. All are supported by massive globalist wealth, the Koch brothers and George Soros, Gates, Buffet and Zuckerberg, along with a great host of other top-level players, including Carlos Slim the Inaptly Named, who is the world's most powerful drug dealer. And yet President Trump stands tall against the crushing tide.

Why? Because the American presidency, while not nearly as autonomous as its French counterpart, functions as does our sun among the more distant stars. Trump can be attacked ceaselessly, even "indicted" as you suggest he may be–FOR NOTHING!–but his position at the heart of the U.S. governmental system is unassailable. And even if he is impeached by a future democrap majority, good to remember that Clinton went nowhere, disrupted the nation for two more horrible years after his impeachment, and then went on to loot the planet free of any stigma. Trump is a force for good, is beloved by tens of millions and is the most effective communicator in political history, tapping into the psyche of average Americans in a way that even Ronald Reagan could not match.

The left is satanic. It will continue to peddle its vomitory prescriptives, engineered polls, engineered riots, engineered outrage among its bicoastal supporters–and Trump will continue to work eighteen hours daily for the American people, undermining the illegitimate Federal Reserve system that is largely responsible for the West's boom and bust economic cycle, remaking the nation's infrastructure, at last reforming the moronically complex tax code, unravelling so-called Obamacare, which sought to control 40% of America's economy for the benefit of global insurance companies. Illegal immigration is already down 70%. The Department of Veterans Affairs has been overhauled at light speed (veterans were literally dying whilst waiting for care that they earned). American manufacturing renewal is being championed in every way by this president, while the Paris Climate Accord is dead to U.S. and America has been withdrawn from TPP, a disgraceful globalist compact designed to annihilate what remains of this country's manufacturing base.

My distant cousin will have to go. McMaster is working against President Trump. He is a neo-con globalist operative who wants war with Russia. McMaster's team has worked to isolate the president from developing events; these people have filtered information that should be fully analysed by Donald J. Trump; they have purged advisers who favour détente with Russia, together with a realistic approach to Ukraine and Syria. McMaster cannot be trusted. And Trump does not like him personally, happily enough. But these delicate moves take time and we have no time. The satanic left, aided by the deep state and its creatures, is working to eliminate the president. If they are successful, America will soon be finished.

What goes up must come down. The wildly inflated stock market is most likely going to crash and with it the global economy. President Trump will be on the side of those who are left out of the current temporary boom, the tens of millions who will be wrecked by this coming disaster, "the forgotten men and women" to whom he refers in every speech. Corrosive structures that Western elites built to enslave U.S. are coming apart at the seams. The inevitable economic realignment will benefit President Trump. If we can keep him alive. And if our president falls, the deep state goes down with him.

Semper Fidelis

white noise > , August 8, 2017 at 11:07 am GMT

@utu To begin with, Russia can at least claim that Ukraine was part of Russia for a long, long time. And it's the same people, Slavs. Centuries of history lived together. So, one could argue that Ukraine is Russia's business, to some extent. But it's definitely none of America's business.

It doesn't look like a success, anyway. The CIA ehr, I mean, the government in Kiev, has lost Crimea and the Donbass to Russia. And I can't see how could they recover them without making the interventionism (which is making the USA a hated country all over the world) significantly more obvious and risking a retaliation by Russia, which has nuclear power to really worry about, in spite of comic books fantasies a la Captain America.

Perhaps the American government should worry more about its own people than in scheming how to control other nations.

white noise > , August 8, 2017 at 11:22 am GMT

@bjondo "Not cold war 2 following cold war 1.

This new war with Russia is by and for the jews with their lickspittle puppets for israel.

It is about Russia stopping the defeat of Syria.

it is about Putin not bowing to judaized America and the judaized west.

it is about Trump not bowing to the corrupt, deep state – the judaized state."

Exactly. Putin is being demonized by the corporate media for a reason. He is going against the designs of the Jewish cabal. Also Trump is, and that's why the corporate media is demonizing him too, and also why they will try to impeach him.

The fact that Putin and Trump had a very cordial meeting of two hours and a half at the G20 is also no coincidence. And it could have been a longer conversation, but they both were urged to go and meet other dignitaries that they had WAITING in line, because they considered their meeting more important.

white noise > , August 8, 2017 at 11:40 am GMT

@utu Might makes right? So, you're saying that brute force alone is ok. That's barbaric, uncivilized. Very neo con, actually, and very in tune with the pro-Jewish rethoric of war, war and more war. You're not another minion of the Jews, are you?

But the might has not worked well, anyway America could not win a war in Vietnam, or Korea, or Afghanistan, or Irak, or Syria Nowhere.

The American government should perhaps worry more about its own people and its own affairs inside USA territory than in scheming how to control and invade and hurt other countries.

Human kind certainly needs for all these neo con crazies in the government to finally give up on their lunacy.

The Alarmist > , August 8, 2017 at 1:09 pm GMT

@Si1ver1ock Do your part for the resistance lose the smart-phone, and pay for everything with cash.

The Alarmist > , August 8, 2017 at 1:21 pm GMT

@white noise Then again, Russia rubber-stanped the UN sanctions on North Korea in a more MAD day and age, they might have vetoed. Vlad knows the hand he has been dealt.

utu > , August 8, 2017 at 3:31 pm GMT

@white noise So, you're saying that brute force alone is ok.

What is wrong with you people? What happened to reading comprehension? When one makes an affirmative statement that A is B this does not imply that one approves or condones that A is B or that one does not think that A should not be B.

Beckow > , August 8, 2017 at 4:33 pm GMT

@utu Motivations are hard to establish. But when we focus on the sequence of observable events, it looks like a major part of the plan was to 1) push the Russian Navy out of Crimea and 2) over time turn Sebastopol into a quasi-Nato naval base ('temporary visits'?). These things take time and you can imagine that 15-20 years time-frame and a Ukrainian fig leave in the meantime would be used. Same as e.g. with the Baltics.

they did not count on getting Crimea. Ukraine minus Crimea was good enough.

Crimea is geo-politically and strategically by far the most important part of Ukraine. Hitler had dreams about it and started German settlements there in the middle of WW2. It is that good. It has been a central piece of geography there for 3-4,000 years, from ancient Greeks, Goths, Ottomans, Russia. It is not credible to think that Washington planners gazing at maps of the region would not salivate at getting it, or at least at denying it to Russia. Without Crimea southern Russia is more or less surrounded.

It didn't work because Russia moved very fast. The clumsiness of the Kiev overthrow, the incompetence of the Maidanistas and their sponsors, and the general chaos and inertia were the reasons. Why in the holy f..k didn't Kiev secure key points of Crimea ahead of time? They had the forces, at a minimum they could had caused a stalemate, a division as in Donbass. Instead they focused on prancing around Yanukovitch's saunas and on who would be at meetings how frequently each week – listen to Nuland's tape, it is embarrassing in its shallowness and amateurism.

Ukraine as an appendage to Nato, as an irritant to Russia, as an unofficial forward base – all of that is very expensive to sustain permanently. Kiev players know that they are indispensable so they will raise the costs. Unless an enormous investment is made into Ukraine ($100 billion plus sustained aid, and not in 'loans'), the place will be an economic basket case. They are cut-off from both the Russia's market and also the EU market. People are leaving as quickly as they can. Democracy doesn't flourish in a situation like that, we are more likely to see a series of odd-ball strongmen. And those, as US has learned around the world, are hard to control. So what is the gain? It probably felt good in 2014-15, but longterm unless it gets successfully escalated it is a cul-de-sac. An escalation is extremely risky, Russia has nukes and they have shown in Crimea that they will make sudden assertive moves.

Maidan was a media success, as was the 'Orange Revolution' 10 years earlier. But it was a strategic screw-up. It handed Crimea to Russia on a silver plate, that was simply not going to happen under any other circumstances. (Could Nuland be a mole?)

peterAUS > , August 8, 2017 at 7:51 pm GMT

@utu Apart from

They knew that prying Ukraine from Russia would force Russia to annex Crimea. So they did not count on getting Crimea.

agree.

Especially agree with

Again somebody was asleep at the switch in Kremlin

Seen this debate tons of times so far.

You have, say, "western" approach.
Beckow "eastern".
Disregard the idiots, kids and high school fanbase members around.

The question is really only "did West get overstretched by Ukraine"?
If no, Russia lost.
If yes, Russia is, slowly, winning.

Mulegino1 > , August 8, 2017 at 8:03 pm GMT

@utu Russia may never have been very good at propaganda during the age of mainstream media hegemony, but now- in the age of virtually absolute informational fluidity- there is no need for state sponsored propaganda. The current dichotomy is set in stone. The stupid mouth breathers will continue to accept the mainstream MINITRUE propaganda as gospel, while the more articulate and intelligent will accept the in depth and scholarly analysis provided them by the alternative media. All the latter have to do is to state the facts. The former have no choice but to spout their foolishly consistent kosher narratives. The latter will lose among those with even a modicum of cerebral ability, and they will continue to succeed among the lobotomized infotainment consumers.

Smiddy > , August 8, 2017 at 8:16 pm GMT

@Brabantian Mr Israel Shamir is quite wrong when he claims above that Seymour Hersh is " the most trustworthy US journalist " ... Sy Hersh is a psy-op, a dis-info agent of some decades (see below). Hersh's currently famous video & leak 'debunking Russia-gate', is a Trojan horse cover for a very ugly deception.

Amidst Hersh's staged 'leak' - nicely pro-Trump to fool us - Hersh sells us a dodgy claim that Seth Rich was, he assures us, definitely NOT killed by mafias linked to Hillary Clinton ... but by some random street thug, according to Hersh's amazing 'secret inside sources' he always has when he is running a US gov psy-op ... this unknown 'street thug killed Seth Rich', but 'got scared' so didn't take Seth Rich's wallet ... uh-huh

Hersh is also trying to distract us from the fact that we now have a string of people who are dead or in prison after contacting what are known as the oily US-Israeli intel frauds of Wikileaks & also The Intercept, which are in fact 'rat traps' to help identify, silence & kill real dissidents duped into contacting them.

Wikileaks may have helped kill both Seth Rich, & another anti-Hillary leaker, Peter W Smith, also dead after contacting Wikileaks, with Assange absurdly claiming he never got any Smith files. Tho Assange posted a 'reward' for info about Seth Rich - funny how the USA international financial dragnet doesn't close Wikileaks fat bank accounts - Assange arguably may have set up the killing.

Just to remind that, years ago, Zbigniew Brzezinski & Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, both admitted that 'not really living in the London Ecuador Embassy' Julian Assange, & Wikileaks itself, are USA-Israeli intel agency frauds, the leaks all selected & controlled. Assange was the dry run for another fraud, that of Rothschild employee & ex-gay-p-rnographer Gleen Greenwald, who pumped the young friend of Dick Cheney & the Brzezinski family, 'Edward Snowden' ... who first claimed to 'leak' to Dick Cheney's biographer at the Washington Post ... with many other proofs of the fraud - a fraud Putin himself hints at, tho he plays along, not wishing to over-provoke the USA as Shamir states above - starting point on the Snowden fraud here:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/09/21/russia-govt-report-snowden-greenwald-are-cia-frauds/

Assange & Greenwald & Snowden of course recommend the 'TOR' browser developed by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees working for US intel, as the 'safe' way to contact them, uh-huh, really secure

In younger days, Seymour Hersh made his bones as a fake 'brave investigative reporter' who like other 'limited hang-outs' of the time, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, etc, claimed the official JFK assassination story, lone gunman Oswald etc, was all perfectly fine & dandy ... the reward for all these people was their later fame.

Hersh and all of these fakers are totally anti 9-11 truth, against even questioning the official narrative - Seymour Hersh, Hersh's current media partner Eric Zuesse, Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange ... all of these dis-info people say the US official 9-11 story is just great, Israel had nothing to do with it, don't talk about the arrested 'dancing Israelis' or the 'Israeli art students' photographed in the Twin Towers with boxes of bomb detonator components a few weeks before 9-11, the pix in the New York Times, no less
http://www.newnationalist.net/2017/03/02/world-trade-centers-infamous-91st-floor-israeli-art-student-project/

Seymour Hersh - card-carrying member of the intel agency psy-op confusion brigade - also sold a greasy, absurd alt version of the 'Osama bin Laden assassination in 2011' fake story, Hersh claiming that Pakistani leaders helped to murder bin Laden & toss his body pieces from a helicopter, in total insult to their own Muslim religion HA. Whereas the actual evidence points to Osama bin Laden having died a decade earlier, shortly after the 9-11 attacks of which, in fact, the real bin Laden denied being involved. So I suppose Wikileaks blowing the whistle on Iraq during the Bush admin was to the globalist's agenda?

So I suppose pedogate was only controlled information that the globalists wanted to get out as well? Even though the corporate media has been locking that story down like their lives depended on it Also funny how they release pedogate the day after Trump's pussygate was made public Whoever backs Wikileaks is in some type of alliance with Trump

Wikileaks is the result of the NWO-autonomous joint Russian-Israeli tech sector, and you don't even know that Israeli Nationalists (e.g. Bibi, believe it or not, even though they colluded on 9/11, but I suppose the globalists wanted Israel to call out Soros last month smh) are opposing the Globalists/Rothschilds these days, so I suppose that shows how much you know. You don't even know that there is a split between the "Zionists", hell you probably think the Rothschilds/NWO are loyal to Jews and Israel before anything. Believe it or not, to some degree, they even use Israel as a front, and Israel has been biting their hand since atleast Contra (Carter was the bankster's pick they did not want Reagan).

All that said I actually agree on your original premise of Seymour but then you take it on a tangent. And upon closer observation you're just another one of those emotional, "its all one giant conspiracy" pundits.

utu > , August 9, 2017 at 4:56 am GMT

there is a split between the "Zionists"

There are lots of signs of it. For example what compelled Netanyahu to get cozy with Putin and let Putin have his little show of muscle flexing in Syria?

The split however is not about the ultimate goal. There is only one goal and they agree on it. It is about the tactics and the priorities on the way to it.

[Aug 09, 2017] Liberating Europe from Russian Gas

Notable quotes:
"... The sanctions bill has been promoted as one that appropriately penalizes Russia for its international misbehavior. The always-cited examples being the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the (alleged) invasion of Ukraine in 2014. (As though these in any way rival in their impact and ramifications of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, based on lies, in 2003, or the U.S./NATO-led assault on Libya sold in the UN Security Council as a "humanitarian" intervention supported by Russia, that turned out to be a grotesque regime change operation culminating with Hillary Clinton's public orgasm following Muammar Gadaffi's sodomy-murder. "We came, we saw, he died!") ..."
"... Russia is always depicted in the corporate media as an "adversary." It acts, we are told ad nauseam, against U.S. "interests" around the world. Its involvement in Syria is (to support the survival of the secular modern Syrian state against the most savage opponents imaginable) is somehow objectionable (whereas U.S. bombing of Syria, condemned by Damascus as a violation of Syrian sovereignty and clearly in violation of international law, is treated as a matter of course). Its role in the bombing of Aleppo, resulting in the reconquest of the city from al-Nusra and its allies, was depicted by the U.S. media as a bad thing. Meanwhile U.S. bombing of Mosul, to retake that city from ISIL, is treated as heroic, however many thousands perish in "collateral damage." Anyway CNN won't cover it and has fewer reporters on the ground there than RT does. ..."
"... Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev matter-of-factly tweeted: "The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way." But where will this power lead? ..."
Aug 09, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

But U.S. policy now, under the Trump administration, is to promote U.S. energy exports to Europe to replace Russian ones. It is both old-fashioned Cold War Russophobia and old-fashioned inter-capitalist, inter-imperialist contention.

The sanctions bill has been promoted as one that appropriately penalizes Russia for its international misbehavior. The always-cited examples being the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the (alleged) invasion of Ukraine in 2014. (As though these in any way rival in their impact and ramifications of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, based on lies, in 2003, or the U.S./NATO-led assault on Libya sold in the UN Security Council as a "humanitarian" intervention supported by Russia, that turned out to be a grotesque regime change operation culminating with Hillary Clinton's public orgasm following Muammar Gadaffi's sodomy-murder. "We came, we saw, he died!")

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fgcd1ghag5Y?feature=oembed

Hillary Clinton on Gaddafi: We came, we saw, he died

Russia is always depicted in the corporate media as an "adversary." It acts, we are told ad nauseam, against U.S. "interests" around the world. Its involvement in Syria is (to support the survival of the secular modern Syrian state against the most savage opponents imaginable) is somehow objectionable (whereas U.S. bombing of Syria, condemned by Damascus as a violation of Syrian sovereignty and clearly in violation of international law, is treated as a matter of course). Its role in the bombing of Aleppo, resulting in the reconquest of the city from al-Nusra and its allies, was depicted by the U.S. media as a bad thing. Meanwhile U.S. bombing of Mosul, to retake that city from ISIL, is treated as heroic, however many thousands perish in "collateral damage." Anyway CNN won't cover it and has fewer reporters on the ground there than RT does.

Russia is depicted as "provocative" when it mobilizes military forces within its own territory (and Belarus), in response to massive NATO exercises involving 31,000 troops in Poland last June that the German foreign minister criticized as "warmongering."

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev matter-of-factly tweeted: "The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way." But where will this power lead?

The concept, as articulated by Sen. John McCain and Sen. John Hoeven in a 2014 Wall Street Journal op-ed, is to "liberate our allies from Russia's stranglehold on the European natural-gas market." But as the Washington Post has observed, "The problem is that Europeans don't necessarily want to be liberated. Russian gas is much cheaper than American LNG, and could become even cheaper to undercut the United States if it entered the European market. American LNG suppliers prioritize their own profits over America's strategic advantage anyway, and are likely to want to target more lucrative markets than Europe, such as Japan. Finally, the Russian gas supply is likely to be more reliable than the United States', since it involves predictable long-term contracts, whereas U.S. production capacity rises and falls, as it becomes cheaper and more expensive to extract American unconventional hydrocarbons."

The McCain-Hoeven piece was of course written before there was any talk about Russian "election meddling." But that issue was used to justify the sanctions bill. That, plus miscellaneous Russian actions, basically in response to U.S. actions (as in Ukraine, where!as everyone should know!Hillary Clinton's crony Victoria Newland helped organize a putsch in February 2014, designed to pull Ukraine into NATO, although that effort has failed and anyway lacks German support).

The U.S. at this point (under Trump) is taking actions towards Russia that recall those of the Truman administration. The warm, fuzzy (and miserable, abjectly weak) Russia of the 1990s under Yeltsin is now a reviving world power within an emerging Eurasian trade system. The relationship between Russia and China will stay strong even if the U.S. takes measures to sabotage trade relations between Russia and Europe.

Meanwhile, the sanctions law has produced general European outrage. This is not the anti-Trump outrage that accompanied his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. It is outrage at the U.S. legislature for its arrogance in demanding Europe shoot itself in the foot, to show Washington deference. In other words, the entirety of the divided, troubled U.S. polity is seen as a problem. This is as a new Pew Research Center report showing that only 49% of the world's people now hold a positive view of the U.S.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern have publicly condemned the law, which could prevent them from benefiting from the planned Nord Stream 2 pipeline, declaring: "we cannot agree with threats of illegal extraterritorial sanctions against European companies which take part in the development of European energy supply." Brigitte Zypries, head of Germany's Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, says the new sanctions are "against international law, plain and simple Americans cannot punish German companies because they [do business] in another country." The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Spain have protested. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said the bill could have "unintended unilateral effects" on the EU's energy security, adding, "America first cannot mean that Europe's interests come last."

This is not just a provocation of Russia, but of the whole world. It's leveled by a bipartisan effort, and general (although insane) consensus that Russia is trying to revive the Soviet empire, is constantly interfering in foreign countries' elections, and represents an "existential" threat to the U.S. and its freedoms, etc. (Because!reputable media talking heads opine routinely!Putin hates freedom and wants to oppose it, by electoral interference in Germany, France, Italy, etc.)

U.S. politicians!many of whom who do not believe in global warming or evolution, and cannot find Syria or Ukraine on the map!have boldly gone where no one has gone before: to risk a trade war with traditional allies, to force them to more firmly embrace the principle of U.S. hegemony. This when the U.S. GDP has dropped below that of the EU, and U.S. clout and credibility in the world!in large part due to global revulsion at the results of U.S. regime-change wars!is at low ebb.

Medvedev predicts that "relations between Russia and the United States are going to be extremely tense regardless of Congress' makeup and regardless of who is president. Lengthy arguments in international bodies and courts are ahead, as well as rising international tensions and refusal to settle major international issues." No bromance here.

Meanwhile Sen. Lindsey Graham!an extreme reactionary and warmonger now lionized my the mainstream media as some sort of "moderate" and adult in the room!informs NBC's Today Show that reports that "there is no military option" on North Korea are "just false."

"There is a military option: to destroy North Korea's nuclear program and North Korea itself. He's not going to allow -- President Trump -- the ability of this madman [Kim Jong Un] to have a missile that could hit America. If there's going to be a war to stop him, it will be over there. If thousands die, they're going to die over there. They're not going to die over here -- and he's told me that to my face."

[Aug 09, 2017] Could the September 11 masterminds have imagined todays world by Rich Higgins

This is article by the person recently fired by McMaster for promoting "deep state" theory of the coup against Trump. The hypothesis that does makes some sense ;-).
But primitive anti-Islamism does provide much insights into the situation, In snot American Imperialism and neoliberal globalization it promotes and enforces by force (sometimes by force of arms) destined to produce blowback? the fact that some of it runs on Islamic banners is mostly immaterial. Also the USA is using political Islam for its purposes since the days of The USSR occupation of Afghanistan.
The fact that attempts to resist neoliberal globalization in Islamic world often decent into barbarity and head chopping should not obscure the reason political Islam obtained traction and the leading role of the USA in forming the current brand as a tool to make the USSR occupation of Afghanistan the second Vietnam for the USSR. In was a social experiment hatched in the USA political laboratories as a countervailing force for Soviet Bolshevism (which was a decaying ideology since mid 60th, in any case and eventually was overthrown by the forces of neoliberalism in the USSR space) that eventually went wrong. and this reckless political experimentation is hall mark of the USA foreign policy for a long time.
So is Muslim Brotherhood which definitely has deep connection with Obama administration was a threat, or a tool for the US led global neoliberal empire (Huma Aberdeen of Hillary Clinton email scandal fame is one example) ? Kind of universal door opener for neoliberal globalization for countries that try to resist it. This is the question.
Notable quotes:
"... Abidine Ben Ali would be removed in Tunisia, Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen and Moammar Quadaffi in Libya, the latter two states descending into civil war, as a Syrian civil war rages with no coherent U.S. strategy and no end in sight. ..."
"... The Islamic State (ISIS) would be armed with American weapons and declare itself the Caliphate, spreading across the globe using videos of Christian beheadings and other atrocities broadcast on digital media to recruit thousands of jihadis worldwide, including open FBI cases in all 50 states. ..."
"... A strategic reassessment of the entire combating terrorism effort that is free from politically correct nonsense is long overdue. The "Islam has nothing to do with terrorism" narratives have effectively shut down the intelligence process for the war in any meaningful sense. Sure, we CT officers could look at organizations and people and places, some of which had Islamic names, but we could never dig into the political and ideological reasons the enemy was attacking us!which is supposed to be the first order of business in any strategic threat assessment. ..."
Sep 09, 2016 | www.washingtontimes.com Washington Times

Picture a breakfast meeting on the morning of September 11, 2001 between Mullah Omar, Ayman al Zawahiri, and Osama bin Laden, the three leaders of al-Qaeda. While eating their yogurt and fruit, they discuss the successful September 9th assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud and the imminent strikes in Washington and New York.

Could they have imagined that a short 15 years later:

The United States would be approximately $20 TRILLION in debt.

Iraq in sectarian civil war and Afghanistan under increasing Taliban (ISIS) control would both have Constitutions placing those Republics under Sharia Law, and U.S. ally Turkey would be moving quickly into the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) camp.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak would be removed from power in Egypt, replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood, then replaced by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the U.S. would support the MB.

Abidine Ben Ali would be removed in Tunisia, Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen and Moammar Quadaffi in Libya, the latter two states descending into civil war, as a Syrian civil war rages with no coherent U.S. strategy and no end in sight.

Nigeria, West Africa (Boko Haram) and Somalia (al Shahbab) under threat.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is on the road to nuclear weapons and receives $150 BILLION courtesy of the U.S. government while Saudi Arabia builds hundreds of Wahhabi mosques in Indonesia and in South America.

Nascent Islamic insurgencies in France, Italy, Germany, England, Belgium and other European countries fueled by millions of inassimilable Islamic immigrants who reside in "no-go zones" and who are flooding into Europe as well as the U.S. receiving social welfare benefits paid for by the citizens of those counties.

The Islamic State (ISIS) would be armed with American weapons and declare itself the Caliphate, spreading across the globe using videos of Christian beheadings and other atrocities broadcast on digital media to recruit thousands of jihadis worldwide, including open FBI cases in all 50 states.

U.S. presidential candidates from both political parties saying "the Islamic State is not Islamic" while U.S. and European patriotism is considered racism.

National Security officials are prohibited from developing a factual understanding of Islamic threat doctrines, preferring instead to depend upon 5th column Muslim Brotherhood cultural advisors.

  • If you could go back in time and tell Messrs. Omar, Zawahiri and bin Laden this would be the outcome in just 15 short years, do you think they would believe you? Do you think that they would think that their side is winning?
  • When a tactical fire-team breaches a door expecting four bad guys on the other side, but they find forty, what do they do?
  • Do they keep going in? That's a one-way trip.
  • Do they ask one of the bad guys why there are so many of them in the room? Probably wouldn't be a smart move to hang around for the answer. Not smart at all.

Ideally, the team backs out quickly and moves off the target. This is called a tactical pause and that is basically what Donald Trump has proposed in the form of a halt on immigration.

After getting out of danger, the tactical team will do a reassessment of what happened. Was their information wrong? Did they go to the wrong house? Did somebody purposefully give them bad information? Can they call in an air strike? All of these things need to be considered.

A strategic reassessment of the entire combating terrorism effort that is free from politically correct nonsense is long overdue. The "Islam has nothing to do with terrorism" narratives have effectively shut down the intelligence process for the war in any meaningful sense. Sure, we CT officers could look at organizations and people and places, some of which had Islamic names, but we could never dig into the political and ideological reasons the enemy was attacking us!which is supposed to be the first order of business in any strategic threat assessment.

At present, Mr. Trump's proposed course of action pertaining to the terrorist threat is a tactical pause and a strategic reassessment. This proposal isn't rhetorical, alarmist or ill-conceived. This is smart tactics being applied to a strategic issue.

Rich Higgins is currently a DOD contractor. He formerly led several classified programs for Special Operations Command. He is the former Chair of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict at the National Defense University's College of International Security Affairs.

[Aug 09, 2017] Trump is Guilty, of Something by Andrew Levine

Aug 04, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

Donald Trump is guilty of something, guilty as sin. Nobody outside his innermost circle knows yet what he is guilty of, and all the evidence is circumstantial. But guilty he surely is.

Is it that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton? That is the story line that corporate media take for gospel truth. It is not out of the question that some Russians, some of whom had some connection with the Russian government, hacked into something. Even if they did, however, the Russian meddling story is ridiculously overblown – for reasons that are politically self-serving and irresponsibly, if not criminally, dangerous.

If catastrophic outcomes can somehow be avoided, that story will eventually go the way of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Before that happens, however, count on Vladimir Putin's affront to the "integrity" of American democracy being used to justify devastating, potentially catastrophic, diplomatic and military adventures -- in much the way that Saddam Hussein's WMDs once were.

By the time the dust settles, it will likely become clear that either there never was any reason to accept the party line on Russian meddling or that, even if there was something to it, there was never any reason to get all worked up about it.

This is not to say that "Russiagate" investigations should be opposed; quite to the contrary, there is every reason to support them fully.

If nothing else, investigations like Robert Mueller's and the ones underway in the House and Senate help keep Trump and the people he has brought into his administration from executing their nefarious agendas. Better yet, they are likely, before long, to bring Trump himself down – in ways that would make it harder for Trump's appointees and, when the times comes, for Mike Pence to turn many of the progressive gains of the past hundred or so years around.

But the fact remains: the election meddling furor is, at best, a red herring – about which all one can honestly say, for now, is: Who knows? Who cares?

Who knows – because the only reason to think that there was Russian meddling is that "the intelligence community" says there was. But, as everybody knows or ought to know, they are inveterate liars. Lying is in their genes and in their job descriptions.

Moreover, if history is a guide, they are just as likely to be wrong as to be right, even when they aren't deliberately telling lies.

Everybody also knows that the CIA in particular is not above politicizing intelligence when it serves some institutional purpose.

Who knows too – because liberal and not-so-liberal media have been pressing the case for Russian election meddling so vigorously for such a long time that the idea has become almost second nature to all but the most circumspect consumers of news. In cases like this, the wisest course of action usually is to become more, not less, skeptical.

It is hard to say which media outlet is the most at fault; the competition is so intense. The Washington Post and The New York Times are serious contenders, though it must be said, in fairness, that the Trump menace seems to have reignited a taste for real investigative reporting – about Trump -- in both of them. For that, one could forgive a great deal.

But they are still, on the whole, a servile lot. My vote for the worst of them all is MSNBC, with Joy Reid leading the way and Rachel (take twenty minutes to make a twenty second point) Maddow close behind.

A character in Edgar Allan Poe's "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" advised believing only half of what one sees and nothing that one hears. Inasmuch as most of what one sees and hears about Russian meddling in the 2016 election are breathless repetitions of claims originating in the intelligence services, this is good advice in the case at hand.

The problem is not "fake news," news reports that are deliberately deceptive. Trump blathers on endlessly about that – in his usual, self-serving, bullying way – using the term so loosely as to void it of meaning. On this as on so much else, what comes out of Trump's mouth and what one reads in his tweets is sheer nonsense.

It is true, of course, that, under his aegis and inspiration, there has been an up-tick in deliberately false news stories, mainly in "alt-right" media outlets. But there is little, if any, genuinely fake (deliberately false) news in mainstream media. This side of Fox News, and sometimes even there, most journalists do try to maintain journalistic standards. They are not pathological liars, little Donald Trumps.

What they are, wittingly or not, are propagandists – in the sense discussed long ago by Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman in Manufacturing Consent (reprint edition, Pantheon, 2002). Ď

Through the workings of the several mechanisms described in that book, they fashion and reinforce narratives, story lines, that accord with the interests of the owners of the corporations they work for and, when the need arises, with the interests of the entirety of what C. Wright Mills called the "power structure." At the same time, they derogate and marginalize counter-narratives that have, or could have, effects detrimental to the interests of the people and institutions they serve.

Their express intention, of course, is to report the news, not to maintain the status quo; they don't set out to deceive. More often than not, they believe the stories they tell. Why would they not? The system they are part of incentivizes compliance with the power structure's interests; and, when tensions arise, it is generally easier to go along than to be a stickler for plausibility.

***

For getting mainstream media to sign on to the election meddling narrative, it would be difficult to underestimate the importance of the role played by a key component of the power structure in the United States today, the Democratic Party.

That is how desperate Democrats are to make sure that Clinton's stunning, self-inflicted defeat last November will not be Clintonism's (neoliberalism's, liberal imperialism's) last hurrah. To that end, they have been willing, even eager, to revive Cold War demons that had lain dormant for decades -- bringing the world to the brink of a nuclear apocalypse.

Ostensibly the less noxious of the two neoliberal parties that dominate our politics, Democrats today have sunk so low that were Republicans still no worse than they were, say, when they fell into line behind George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, or even before Obama's 2008 electoral victory made many rank-and-file Republicans bat shit crazy, it would now be an open question which party actually is the greater evil of the two.

The consensus view in mainstream media lately, in the Democratic Party, and increasingly in the Republican Party as well, is that Trump is doing grave harm to the office of the Presidency and to many of the institutions, both domestic and international, through which the United States has dominated the world since 1945.

This is certainly the case. But, contrary to what is assumed throughout the power structure, it is at least debatable whether Trump's effect on these institutions – and the negative effect his presidency is having on the GOP itself – is, on balance, a good or bad thing.

Instead of rallying around the Democratic Party, a genuine Left would itself be taking aim at the bastions of empire and class rule that Trump is mindlessly but inexorably undoing. Trump's way is nihilistic and thuggish; and the only alternatives he or his cabinet secretaries and agency heads have in mind are odious even by Republican standards.

This is why the Trump presidency is, and will continue to be, an unmitigated disaster – no matter how much damage Trump does to the old world order or to some of the more disabling institutional arrangements afflicting the political scene.

Democrats can be and, for the most part, actually are, monumentally awful, but Republicans who support Trump are worse. This would not be so plainly the case, if the comparison was with pre-9/11 Republicans or even with the Republican Party before the 2008 election.

After all, if the appropriate metric is damage to world peace, geopolitical stability, and the wellbeing of humankind, Bush is still the worst President ever. Of course, if Trump mentally decomposes more than he already has, or if he starts acting out in exceptionally lethal ways, he could surpass even the standard Bush has set. For now, though, six months into the Trump era, W remains Number One How revealing, therefore, that the very media that, to their credit, have nothing good to say about the billionaire buffoon, are now welcoming Bush, and his underlings, back into the fold.

In polite society nowadays, Obamaphiles, including Obama himself and his First Lady, even seem to regard Bush the Younger as one of the good guys; and miscreants from his administration are featured in all the leading media outlets. How pathetic is that!

To his credit, however, Bush, unlike Trump, was not blatantly racist or nativist in his public pronouncements; and notwithstanding the fact that he and Cheney waged war on the Muslim world, he wasn't overtly Islamophobic either. The party he led generally followed suit.

However, once he was gone, Tea Partiers and Tea Party fellow travelers didn't have anything holding them back. With Obama at the helm of the empire, it didn't take long for them to make the Party over in their image.

For appearance sake, the Republican Party became the Party of No, but what they really were was the anti-Obama-for-all-the wrong-reasons Party. Republicans had no principled reason to turn Obama into Public Enemy Number One; his political views, which he did little to advance in any case, were more or less in line with those of pre-2001, or even pre-2008, Republicans.

Obama's rival in the 2012 election, Mitt Romney, was essentially a pre-2008 Republican; politically, he and Obama were cut from the same cloth. Tea Partiers didn't like that one bit, but even the most "deplorable" of them never hated Romney the way they hated Obama. What set their hatred off was the color of Obama's skin.

How else to account for eight years of "repeal and replace Obamacare" sloganeering? In substance and genealogy (its origins in the Heritage Foundation, the implementation of something very like it in Massachusetts under Governor Mitt Romney) Obamacare is essentially a Republican program. Had it not come with Obama's name attached, doctrinaire free-market theologians of the Rand Paul or Ted Cruz variety would still not like it, but neither would they or any of their co-thinkers get especially worked up on its account.

Nevertheless, it was opposition to Obamacare, more than anything else, that kept the GOP's several factions together during the Obama years. How ironic that all those "repeal and replace" Republicans are now floundering because when they finally got their chance to do what they said they wanted to do, they were unable to do anything at all. It is tempting to say that they outsmarted themselves, but the word "smart" grates when applied to them.

Democrats are generally nicer than Republicans, and many times more civilized. Were their self-exonerating anti-Russian, anti-Putin campaigning not so dangerous, they would plainly be the good guys still, comparatively speaking.

Even with their hysterical Russophobia, they probably still are. But being comparatively less awful than the GOP is no reason to buy into the election meddling story that Democrats are so assiduously promoting.

It is possible, of course, that despite all the reasons to be skeptical of their narrative, there is some truth in what they say. Even if there is, however, why make such a big deal or it? Who cares?

Evidently, pundits with venting privileges on ostensibly liberal cable networks do and Democratic Party sore losers, but their concerns are misdirected. No one, not even the worst of the worst on MSNBC, claims that those dastardly Russian meddlers affected the outcome of the election in any significant way. Russians didn't defeat Hillary Clinton; she defeated herself.

It is not for want of trying that no one has been able to make a plausible case for the claim that, but for Russian meddling, Clinton would have beaten Trump. But, alas, no one has been able to maintain that Russians had anything to do with collecting or counting votes, or that they interfered with the workings of the electoral process in any other way.

The idea instead is that they depressed Democratic turnout by diminishing enthusiasm for Clinton. They did this, supposedly, by providing evidence of the Democratic National Committee's efforts to rig the election for Hillary and against Bernie Sanders, and by demeaning Clinton in ways that Democrats and their friends in the mainstream press don't even bother to try to spell out.

If only the Democrats and their media flacks would evince half as much self-righteous indignation over past and on-going Republican efforts at voter suppression! There is no doubt that they were real and that their consequences were significant. Neither is the case with alleged Russian voter suppression efforts last year.

Moreover, even if the Russians did do all that our propagandists claimed they did, they did nothing worse than what countless homegrown political operatives do when they sell candidates to voters in more or less the way that commercial advertisers sell the wares they peddle to targeted audiences.

The difference is morally significant. If the Russians actually did suppress voter turnout in 2016, it was through one or another form of persuasion. Republicans suppress votes by making it difficult, or impossible, for likely Democratic voters -- African Americans and other "persons of color" mainly, but also students, and many elderly citizens -- to exercise their right to vote.

***

The consensus view notwithstanding, the Russian election meddling narrative is short on compelling evidence, and is grounded in a patently defective rationale. Even so, it could still have merit.

But even if there was meddling as charged, nothing much came of it. This has always been obvious, and it too is significant.

Sanders supporters didn't need Russians to tell them that the Democratic Party wanted Bernie to lose and Hillary to win. Everyone paying attention knew that already. Clinton's shortcomings were also evident for all to see.

Therefore, if the story line being pushed by our "manufacturers of consent" is on track, it would only show that those Russians are not nearly as clever as the propagandists vilifying them would like people to think. By documenting the obvious, what they did made about as much sense as throwing buckets of water into the ocean.

Why then is Trump putting the extent of his ineptitude on display by acting as if he is about to block the Mueller investigation into Russian meddling? Trump may not be the magisterial dealmaker his remaining fans believe him to be, but he is surely not as self-destructively stupid as his actions suggest.

The answer must be that he really does have something to hide; something more damaging than anything the mainstream media narrative suggests.

Trump doesn't know much, but he surely does know that Congressional investigations and Justice Department investigations involving special prosecutors take on lives of their own, even when, in the first instance, they are much ado about nothing. Watergate was only "a third-rate burglary," after all.

He is also shrewd enough to realize that his business machinations give Congress and the Justice Department plenty to investigate. There is sleaze galore out there, waiting to be uncovered.

Therefore, in the weeks and months ahead, if Trump is still around – or even if he returns to the gilded monstrosity on Fifth Avenue that he had built to glorify himself, leaving arch-reactionary Mike Pence in charge -- we will have loads of well-corroborated reports of shady (artful?) deals with Russian oligarchs and, insofar as there is a difference, Russian mobsters, making the news interesting again.

This is sheer speculation, of course; and the evidence, what there is of it so far, is circumstantial. Much of it consists of idiotic tweets that suggest nothing more damning than an acute consciousness of guilt. Ě

Nevertheless, I would bet the ranch, if I had one to bet, that honest and determined investigators with subpoena power scratching beneath the surface, will find incontrovertible proof of legal, moral, or political infractions so egregious that even the fools who still refuse to admit that Trump conned them into thinking that, as President, he would somehow make their lives better, will find it impossible to keep on standing by their man.

Trump is guilty, a hundred times over; and it is plain as day too that whatever it turns out to be that he is guilty of, that his over-arching cupidity and vanity made him do it.

Finding out what he is guilty of should be at the top of every competent authority's to do list. It should also become a consuming passion of journalists who, for their own good and the good of the public they serve, no longer want to propagandize for the beneficiaries of the status quo.

Because the power structure is so thoroughly and uniformly intent on dumping Trump – not for wholly creditable reasons, but, for a matter of such urgency, that hardly matters – opportunities for doing authentic journalism, even in the face of the propaganda mechanisms Herman and Chomsky identified, now exist to a degree that would have seemed unimaginable before November 2016.

It is a complicated business, however because the same anti-Trump animosities that make it possible to mobilize the press against the government also enable the Democratic Party to enlist support, in media circles and more generally, for the demonization of Putin and his government, with all the dangers that ensue.

So, by all means, investigate, investigate, and investigate some more – taking care, however, not to be sidetracked onto false paths where perils of Clintonite design threaten to spin out of control in ways that even competent statesmen, like Putin and Sergey Lavrov, would have a hard time diffusing, if they still had reasonable interlocutors in Washington to work with.

Those are, to put it mildly, in short supply. With Trump in the White House and a bipartisan (but Clinton inspired) neocon consensus in Congress, reasonable interlocutors in Washington are about as numerous as genuine progressives in the Democratic fold. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Andrew Levine

ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What's Wrong With the Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

[Aug 08, 2017] Russia is more susceptible than China to being politically undermined by both overt and covert means

Aug 08, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit | Aug 6, 2017 1:46:45 PM | 33

The sanctions are a smart play for world domination by the cabal that controls the Empire. that the rest of the world suffers while this plays out is of no concern to them.

Those wringing their hands over Trump's failure to confront Congress are foolish. His caving was entirely predictable because he is a faux-Populist like Obama before him. Isn't it clear by now that "America First" is as much as lie as "Change You Can Believe In"?

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

Russia is more susceptible than China to being politically undermined by both overt and covert means.

As the economic cost of conflict with the US mounts, so too does the potential benefits of restoring ties. The potential for a HUGE economic boost by restoring ties with the West will play a big part in post-Putin politics.

If US can disrupt energy trade with China and new Silk-Road transport links (via proxies like ISIS) , the Russian economy will sink and pro-Western candidates will gain much support.

JSonofa | Aug 6, 2017 1:48:59 PM | 34
LOL. Mentions Karl Marx twice. Yeah, like he didn't quite get it right. Nice false flag.
Seamus Padraig | Aug 6, 2017 2:27:41 PM | 35
The new additional sanctions, like the Jackson-Vanik amendment and the Magnitsky act, were shaped by domestic U.S. policy issues.

Yeah, sure. (((Domestic U.S. policy issues.)))

Seriously though, as a committed isolationist, I'm actually overjoyed that our congress is idiotic enough to start up a trade war with the EU. The notion that the Germans are going to import overpriced fracked gas all the way from the US is a total fantasy. No: these sanctions will accelerate the coming break-up of NATO ... an outcome I very much welcome. And even if the Germans were to cave and cancel Nordstream, the Russians would simply sell all that extra gas to Asia anyway. So this isn't going to have any real effect on them either.

Grieved | Aug 6, 2017 2:30:05 PM | 36
@30 h

Trump was realistic to sign the sanctions bill. What's important is his Signing Statement, which lawyer Mercouris analyzes nicely, and therebu shows what many people are missing, including I'm afraid b, and commenters in this thread, up until your comment.

Articles of Impeachment are not a judicial thing - they are brought by Congress in its discretion. If Trump vetoed a bill coming forward with such hugely unanimous backing, he would be overridden for sure, and the Congress would then have the upper hand completely. From there, it's completely realistic to think of impeachment, and the odds are very good many Republicans would go along with this, as it would then make Pence the President.*

I was going to link that Mercouris piece too. I've been recommending everywhere that people read it. It was NOT a mistake to sign a bill that was impossible to veto successfully. But in his signing statement, Trump lays the ground very clearly for a challenge to the Supreme Court if he wants to make any accord in the future that contradicts whatever elements of the sanctions bill may infringe on his prerogative to run foreign policy.

It seems likely that the bill does infringe on the presidential role, and by laying it open to a Supreme Court finding of unconstitutionality, Trump actually is holding the hand now - while the act of sanctioning will reflect on Congress and Trump's enemies, as the sanctions both fail and help to tear the EU apart.

The Mercouris piece is essential reading in my view for anyone wanting to pass a judgment on the wisdom of Trump's signing this bill. That link again: Trump sidesteps impeachment trap in sanctions law and prepares challenge to Supreme Court

~~

* as to how serious a situation this was for Trump, a commenter on the Mercouris piece agrees that the prospect of Pence as president is all the Republicans need to support impeachment, and adds:

"When Andrew Johnson was impeached he was a Republican nominated VP (serving out Lincoln's term) impeached by a Republican dominated Congress which wanted to install a 'real' Republican in his place."
h | Aug 6, 2017 2:33:32 PM | 37
Jackrabbit @33, I must respectfully disagree with this part of your comment "His caving was entirely predictable because he is a faux-Populist like Obama before him."

Using the word 'populist' whether faux or not when describing Obama is a disservice to the meaning of the word. Obama was a liar. Period. Nothing more. Nothing less.

As for Trump? I don't really know what term I'd use to describe his politic. Candidly, I'm not sure if such a term for his style even exists.

But I will say that I don't concur with your take on his signing the sanctions bill. I don't see it as 'caving' and as I stated above your comment, Merouris' take on his signing the legislation makes sense, at least to me. Especially given the plethora of battle lines being drawn in the sewage pit known as DC. Gaining clarity as to motives behind decision making these days is murky at best, but nothing about Trump and his resume suggests 'caving' as being part of his character. Knowing when to hold them and when to fold them does.

And imagine if Merouris' take turns out to be correct. If so, how in the world does one navigate the minefields, let alone, succeed. More importantly, it means 550 elected leaders are out to destroy one. My God man, how friggin sick is that?!? The globalists don't get their way so they are going to destroy our form of government? That is the kind of power they are wielding when they succeed in securing what was it, 548 votes in the House and Senate (I haven't read the vote tally but know Rand Paul and another Senator, maybe Sanders, voted against it).

My point is that that's not only significant it's HUGE. At a minimum it means dysfunction and maximum means a declared war inside our body politic - the Globalist puppets v Trump/Pence.

Wwinsti | Aug 6, 2017 2:38:49 PM | 38
@ #6 blues:

Reverse engineer?!? Boing has had a license to build RD180s for over a decade. It's not an option they seem overly eager to employ by the leisurely pace they've asked regarding their construction. At least I think it's Boing.

chet380 | Aug 6, 2017 2:49:08 PM | 39
Grieved --

If Trump and Tillerson are quietly able to have the Europeans to raise a constant hue and cry about the bill's negative impact on their ability to conduct international trade, an excellent groundwork would be laid for Trump to go to the US SC to attack the constitutionality of the bill.

h | Aug 6, 2017 2:54:20 PM | 40
Grieved @36 - I appreciate your most thoughtful comment. When I read Mercouris' article I immediately thought - Whoa, if this turns out to be the correct analysis, my God man the U.S. government is in way more trouble than I understood. Navigating a soft coup takes a great deal of skill to avoid, but if the globalists continue to escalate their warmongering demands from the White House and Trump/Team continue to form their own path, the people of the U.S. should be warned a hard coup isn't far behind...Antifa and others are being readied for just such an event.

Gives me a chill...

james | Aug 6, 2017 2:58:32 PM | 41
thanks b.. i am super busy so not able to comment and read the comments like i would like, but i am sure someone else has already articulated what i am going to say... is it a failure of strategy, or is it a continuation of the same strategy to make war for financial reasons on others? seems like a combo of both at this point.. either way, when do the western puppets wake up, or is that not going to happen, as they are a part of this same financial ponzi scheme as well?
james | Aug 6, 2017 2:59:51 PM | 42
@36 grieved.. if i could just paraphrase you in my own words... the usa system is fucked...
Berry Friesen | Aug 6, 2017 3:31:14 PM | 43
b got it right: "a huge and stupid mistake."

Mercouris' talk of "an impeachment trap" suggests he doesn't understand the US system of government very well. A president doesn't commit an impeachable offense when using his veto, and a veto would only have strengthened Trump's claim that the bill breaches the separation of powers. As matters stand, it appears Trump doesn't believe his own signing statement.

If the Republicans ever hope to impeach their guy without forever wrecking their party and bringing years of civil unrest to this country, they will needs reams of solid evidence supporting legitimate charges. A veto wouldn't count for much in terms of legitimacy.

Vollin | Aug 6, 2017 3:35:37 PM | 44
What happens if Trump declines to enforce sanctions?
Sid2 | Aug 6, 2017 3:43:41 PM | 45
On the other hand to the Mercouris view--

He could have signed it and still gone to the Supreme Court. This leaves he signed it due the impeachment threat. This won't go away by his signing it. 2018 is closer by the minute and you've got to suppose Repub candidates are nervous about re-election due to Trump (poll numbers sinking). On the other hand if he had signed it he would have showed some guts instead of caving and earning the "humiliated" label from the Russians. Instead of no respect he might have gotten a little respect. He has reinforced Trump as BS full of talk and inept. I agree with b.

Sid2 | Aug 6, 2017 3:47:27 PM | 46
Couple days back I read he'll be gone by February. Not long ago the odds were 2-1 by the end of the year.
Temporarily Sane | Aug 6, 2017 4:34:15 PM | 47
b writes:
That in itself is astonishing and frightening. Can no one in the U.S. see where this will lead to?

When analyzing the United States' relations with the rest of the world it helps to keep in mind the deep state goal of world domination via "full spectrum dominance". It is a dangerous delusion of the highest order but it is one that is actively being put into practice. The actions taken against Russia, Iran, North Korea and other nations all lead to one thing: war.

frances | Aug 6, 2017 4:46:10 PM | 48
my apologies, this is a bit long but...On Trump's perceived option of signing vs not signing; I think he knew that the Congress/DNC/MSM would have tarred and feathered him as a RUSSIAN PAWN (RP) till the cows come home if he didn't sign. However by signing the bill with notations stating its flaws and forwarding it the the SC for their review, he blocked this latest RP label attempt and attendant witch hunt. And assuming the SC thinks as little of the two bills legislative incursions into the exec domain as I do, it can be tossed back to both houses of Congress (with a 2018 election cycle staring them in the face)with a statement from Trump saying something to the effect of "Merciful God, how can you represent your constituents when you clearly don't have a grasp of your own job description?? Now I have to fund Trump supporting candidates to run against every single one of you." Remember he has already raised 75 million and he raised 250 million plus 66 million of his own and beat a 1.3 billion DNC machine. I do not see him as a great candidate but I do see that every single current congressional seat is held by people who are bought and paid for by business/MIC interests opposed to mine. I believe this latest attack on him via these bills will give him the opportunity to "drain the swamp" some of it anyway, in the upcoming election cycle and I will contribute to his effort to wipe them out of office and I suspect others will as well. There will be no coup on my watch if I can help it by helping him.
heath | Aug 6, 2017 4:50:46 PM | 49
rather than press China directly in the south China Sea, it seems DC keeps on pressing the North Koreans to do something rash and the Chinese having to invade to forestall the rash attack then being stuck in a long Guerrilla war against Korean resistance.
the US strategy seems to be to create a problem and force other nations to choose "the Axis of Evil" or "the Free World"
goldhoarder | Aug 6, 2017 4:56:09 PM | 50
Xi has made 6 visits to Russia. I am not sure how often Putin has been to Beijing. The number of heads of state visits is remarkable. I've never seen anything like this in history. Has anyone else noticed this? Clearly they are trying to form a significant economic and military power block to challenge US "Full Spectrum Dominance".
karlof1 | Aug 6, 2017 5:03:32 PM | 51
b--would you check the spam grabber and rescue my links-filled post from @4pm blog time? Thanks!!
ben | Aug 6, 2017 5:04:51 PM | 52
The following, is for all you folks that believe voting in the U$A can make a difference.

https://www.rt.com/usa/397907-defcon-first-voting-village/

Until we trash the e-voting systems, our voting means nothing..

karlof1 | Aug 6, 2017 5:06:39 PM | 53
Grieved @36--

If you haven't yet, you'll want to read my several posts related to yours a few threads ago beginning here, http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/07/countdown-to-war-on-venezuela.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01b8d29b37ca970c

Anonymous | Aug 6, 2017 5:25:41 PM | 54
LawrenceSmith @1

There are two faces to Europe - the ordinary elected representatives and business people see the futility and danger of the sanctions. The bought Eurocrat and high political placemen will repeat what they are paid to say as the waters rise above their lips.

fast freddy | Aug 6, 2017 5:26:57 PM | 55
Trump can go on TV anytime and appeal to the Public with some creative truth. Why not? Afraid of the PTB? or he's a fraud like Obama going along with the PTB?

Mostly from Trump we get boilerplate global terror war bullshit, immigrant and gay bashing - gruel for the knuckleheads.

There is no question that Pence would gladly run the bus over Trump and be a real warmonger for Zion. The "real" Republicans (and the "business-friendly New Democrats") would love President Pence. Everything (media) would quiet down.

karlof1 | Aug 6, 2017 5:35:50 PM | 56
Regarding the Mercouris article myself and others have linked to and discussed, one possibility he didn't really explore was Trump Pocket Vetoing the bill. Congress would then upon returning from its recess need to reenact the entire measure after getting lots of heat from constituents for their votes during recess. Indeed, I think the overwhelming Pro vote was due to many congresscritter's assumption that Trump would do just that.

For me, the important question is why the Deep State instigated this move; so, I posted links to 6 incisive articles also looking for an answer in one manner or other that all together pointing to a Deep State flailing its arms in the deep end of the Hubris Pool realizing its drowning in its own effluent yet unable to utter that truth as it never will--it will break the mirror before allowing it to utter the truth. The Law of Diminishing Returns is finally laying the lumber to the Deep State after 130 years of grossly naked imperialism. Luce would be spinning in his grave if he knew how his American Century was being destroyed for A Few Dollars More.

Perhaps, John Pilger's latest essay will provide an explanation, https://www.rt.com/op-edge/398789-us-russia-china-war/

Jackrabbit | Aug 6, 2017 6:01:45 PM | 57
h@37

My take on Trump is informed by facts such as:

>> The US political system is designed to prevent real populists from ever gaining office. Examples: Citizens United and the rules to qualify for inclusion in candidate debates.

>> Obama was a faux populist and Sanders was a sheep-dog. Are we to believe that these populists were phonies but Trump is the real deal?

>> Only Sanders and Trump positioned themselves as populists. And even more importantly, Hillary didn't counter Trump by taking a more populist approach.

>> Hillary made it clear that she wanted to face Trump in the general election. The media dutifully covered Trump as a serious candidate. Supposedly, she felt that she had a better chance to defeat him. She then ran a terrible campaign (see: NYPost: Hillary ran the worst presidential campaign ever despite having every advantage.

>> Why would any oligarch oppose the establishment? Especially since Trump was so close to Hillary who was considered to be the likely next President. In fact, Trump served Hillary by becoming a leader of the 'Birthers'. Hillary was the first to question if Obama was foreign born.

>> Pence is a friend of McCain's. Why would any populist pick Pence as VP?

>> One of Trump's first announcements after he was elected was that he would not seek to prosecute Hillary. The strange, and short-lived, media frenzy regarding Hillary's health helped Trump to make this choice. It seems likely that this was coordinated.

>> Trump acts or doesn't act in ways that are inconsistent with 'America First' and/or fuel the scaremongering over Russia:

> The missile attack on Syria (despite tweeting warnings to Obama not to bomb Syria in 2013) and sword dancing with the Saudis (WTF?);

> Not dismissing Comey early in his Administration - then alluding to 'tapes' after he did;

> Drip-drip of info regarding Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian; Publicly attacking Sessions; etc.

> Trump complains about 'Fake News' but has accepted that Russia interfered in the election;

For more:

How Things Work: Betrayal by Faux-Populist Leaders

Taken In: Fake News Distracts Us From Fake Election

Peter AU 1 | Aug 6, 2017 6:07:06 PM | 58
h, Greived...
Some of the points in the Mercouris article, Trump has most likely played a bad hand the best way possible. What I see in the article though is that Trump/White House managed to have a few changes made to the wording to try to protect US/European companies and individuals from the new sanctions.
I would have preferred it to hit the European companies hard. If the peasants do it tough, nobody cares, but when big manufacturing, and the likes of European based oil companies get hit, then something may happen.
With Trumps amendments? to the law, the European dog may keep crawling back to its master rather than turning to Russia/China and the multi polar world.
PavewayIV | Aug 6, 2017 6:11:05 PM | 59
Berry Friesen@43 - "...A president doesn't commit an impeachable offense when using his veto..."

Depends. From Mercouris:

With the President totally isolated in Congress his opponents would be in a position to say that by vetoing the law the President was obstructing action by Congress to protect the integrity of the US electoral process from interference by Russia, and that he was therefore guilty of committing a "high crime or misdemeanour" by preventing action against Russia, the US's main international adversary, on an issue of fundamental importance to the US. On those grounds they would say that he should be impeached and removed from office.

Since the Constitution does not say what a "high crime or misdemeanour" is and leaves the definition entirely to Congress, it is not impossible that in the present hysterical atmosphere the President's constitutional use of his veto to block an unconstitutional sanctions law could be successfully misdefined in that way, and that Congress would accept this mis-definition and would vote for impeachment on that basis.

This was only one of the many other twisted 'facts' that will eventually support the thesis that Trump colluded with the Russians to interfere with elections. And as Mercouris points out, the interpretation of those facts and a vote for impeachment is entirely up to Congress , not the courts. Whether an indictment for such imagined collusion would stand up in US courts and result in a conviction is immaterial - they have no say.

An impeachment resolution HR 438 has already been filed by members of our lower house. It's rather weak, citing Trump's firing of former FBI Director, James Comey, as an obstruction of justice. The bill's sponsor acknowledges it is weak, but says it "gets the ball rolling". It will either be amended with additional articles of impeachment, or a new resolution will replace it. If one assumes all Democrat lower house representatives vote for the bill (~195 of 435), they will only need an additional 24 Republicans to pass it. It has not been submitted to a vote, but will when the representatives think the charges are numerous and strong enough that 2/3rds of the Senate will vote for Trump's removal. This is not necessarily a Democrat vs. Republican fight - Republicans would be delighted to give Trump the boot for a much more obedient replacement, Republican yes-man Vice President Pence. Hence the near unanimous vote for the sanctions bill. I can almost hear Congress screeching: "Trump must go!

They are waiting to assemble the final package of articles of impeachment so it looks credible and the MSM has sold it as such. One shouldn't look at Mercouris' logic regarding the veto as the only thing Congress will eventually use in the articles of impeachment against Trump. The bill will have to look legitimate and will be accompanied by a dumpster of manufactured evidence to confuse the little people and raise doubt.

FBI Director Muller's current investigation is to whether the Trump team colluded with Russia. It has TWO purposes: indicting someone close to Trump including his family, and (as a side-effect) blessing manufactured evidence as factual that can then be used by Congress to impeach Trump. If Trump fires Muller (perfectly legal) then - Aha! More evidence!

If Trump pardons any of his family members or close associates as a result of an indictment (perfectly legal), then that will be used against him suggesting that the charges are true. In any case, the investigation will probably produce more manufactured facts which will be used to strengthen the argument that Trump colluded with Russia to interfere with elections. A veto to the sanctions bill would have been used to support that thesis, not 'prove' an impeachable offense by itself.

An Articles of Impeachment bill - the 'charges' - are just for show. The Senate is free to interpret them any way it wants. Their decision overrides 'the law' so it doesn't matter if they prove the thesis by law or logic.

The US Congress - Democrats and Republicans - want Trump gone and Pence as the replacement lackey taking us into war. The 'facts' supporting an impeachment will eventually prove sufficient. They've got the whole Borg working on them. The veto ploy was far from the only 'evidence' that will be used for impeachment. Linear thinking... Trump Must Go!

I personally have no dog in this hunt either way - it's not like either outcome will make much difference. I'm close enough to strategic US targets that I won't feel a thing for more than, say, a microsecond or two.

Jackrabbit | Aug 6, 2017 6:16:36 PM | 60
karlof1 @56

Alternative to signing the bill:

1. Veto and explain why to the public: partisan politics / Russian witchhunt / etc.

2. Pocket veto and appeal to the public in the weeks before Congress returns from its summer recess. Congress-critters would then have to explain why they disagree with the President.

3. Veto/pocket veto and issue an executive order that imposes sanctions but doesn't tie his hands. If Congress re-enacted, it would ONLY be to unconstitutionally impinge on Presidential authority. (This strategy was suggested by someone at ZeroHedge.)

4. A combination of 2+3: first 2, then 3 if Congress decided to re-enact.

Peter AU 1 | Aug 6, 2017 6:29:32 PM | 61
karlof1 56

Thanks for the link to the Pilger article. I don't check his site very often because he only writes a few articles, but worth reading when they appear.
Another of the Vietnam era investigative journalists who can no longer get articles printed in MSM.

Clueless Joe | Aug 6, 2017 6:37:47 PM | 62
At this point, it is the EU's duty to actually tell the US to go fuck itself with a nuclear warhead. And then to throw in the dumpster all the current economic treaties with it.
If EU leaders don't do it, then break the whole sorry useless Union that can't even be bothered to defend its constituency, and if needed create another better one, that is one with the clear, open and deliberate intent to stand up against the US bully, a Union which will forever stand as an opponent to the US, ready to side with China, Russia or India if needed.
But then, any sane European leaders would've understood 20 years ago that the only sensible move for EU would be a formal alliance with Russia and a loosening of the trans-atlantic ties. It's probably too late for that, and this might cost once again the vassalization of a third of Europe to Moscow; so be it then, these dumb fuckers should've seen the light earlier when that kind of moves would've been far less costly.
Shh | Aug 6, 2017 6:47:33 PM | 63
It's possible that the US strategic end game is not one we understand and highly effective. What that might be is obscured by reason.

Hahahahahaha! oh I slay me!

karlof1 | Aug 6, 2017 6:49:46 PM | 64
Not Off Topic: Learned of yet another head of state assassination done by CIA prior to JFK's, Pakistan's first PM, Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, "according to State Department documents," http://www.thedailystar.net/world/south-asia/cia-killed-first-pm-pakistan-1442917
Fidelios Automata | Aug 6, 2017 9:58:07 PM | 65
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
Grieved | Aug 6, 2017 10:05:09 PM | 66
@53 karlof1

I realize I never did acknowledge your various comments in that thread - I was grateful, and should have said so. I copied them all to a note for my reference, and thank you for offering all of that material. Time is my great enemy and I'm something of a hit-and-run poster in threads - but this one I did come back to scan, as I do increasingly with most of these MoA threads nowadays, it seems...

By the way, I read - and value - all of your comments here that I see.

Grieved | Aug 6, 2017 10:26:56 PM | 67
@42 james

It's rare that LOL actually means what it says but reading your comment I burst out laughing. Thank you.

On reflection, however, I have to say that I feel the US system has great merit. The country may well be fucked, but the underlying system has the potential to be workable, in suitable hands.

I don't know of any representative system in the world that isn't gamed by the big boys. This business of the people's actually having a say in how a nation is run is a newish thing, by and large, I think. I can't imagine how anyone could think it's been perfected yet. To me, it's still a miracle that even the pretense of having it exists - and this speaks loudly of something real that inheres in the people and that rulers remain wary of, at every turn.

I don't know if before the American Revolution anyone in the world ever published the paradigm that national sovereignty derives exclusively from the sovereignty of the individual persons that comprise the nation. I only know where I heard it first, and still hear it today.

I actually admire what the framers of the Constitution put together, having read their discussions verbatim. But it was the Bill of Rights that enabled that document to be ratified - it would not have happened without the Ten Amendments. And that powerful piece of negotiation came from the people, and their States. So we see in the US system a combination of interests.

I'm not ready yet to write it off, and I don't say that it was in itself compromised from the beginning. Gamed and bypassed, yes, certainly. We're still working on ruling ourselves, we sovereign individuals. Story not finished yet.

Debsisdead | Aug 6, 2017 10:27:47 PM | 68
Anyone else seen this little beauty from Foreign Policy?
"According to a source familiar with the matter, McMaster is trying to dismiss anyone involved with a controversial memo arguing that the so-called "deep state" is engaged in a Maoist-style insurgency against the Trump administration. The author of that memo, NSC staffer Rich Higgins, has already been fired, and at least two other anti-globalist NSC staffers have also been forced out."

Heh heh heh the trumpeters Vs the corporatists - every oppressive theocracy should be made to play this game; of course the audience is susceptible to table-tennis watchers neck from swivelling to follow the dried dog turd bouncing back n forth, but the popcorn is pretty good.

james | Aug 6, 2017 10:56:31 PM | 69
okay - got a chance to read others comments..

@6 blues.. good post.. thanks.

@22 fast freddy..good comments too, but your link doesn't work.

@38 Wwinsti.. i think what blues is trying to say is if you don't have any engineers, or manufacturing capabilities which have been in a state of decline for many years, all the talk of reverse engineering is just that - talk and nothing more..

@48 frances.. it is funny that russian pawn claptrap was given such a regular viewing in the msm, that some now seem to truly believe it.. i am still waiting for the tooth ferry myself.. let me know if anyone sees it, lol...

@50 goldhoarder. yeah, as b notes - if the usa was trying to throw russia and china together - they are going about it the right way!!!

@56 karlof1.. good article.. thanks!

@59 paveway quote "This was only one of the many other twisted 'facts' that will eventually support the thesis that Trump colluded with the Russians to interfere with elections." as i mentioned earlier the usa is fucked in the head.. but maybe a better way to put it is in an opening quote in naomi kleins latest book (2017) called "NO is not enough"... "I'm not looking to overthrow the American government, the corporate state already has." John Trudell - Santee Dakota activist, artist, and poet ( 1946-2015) in the msm we trust, lol - it's in the national anthem... i like how you ended your post, lol..

@62 clueless joe.. i had heard they cleaned up the bill to make it more palatable for europe.. i don't know if that is true, but i read that somewhere.. they put some usa #1 export sugar on top of the large dose of arsenic.. lets see if the poodles go for it, lol...

@64 karlof1.. sounds about right.. i guess the leader was a bit too democratic for his own good, lol.. clearly he was doing something right for the cia to want to get rid of him..

@67 grieved.. thanks.. i use the lol way too much and clearly i am mostly talking to myself and laughing at my own stupid jokes that most people find boring..i admire your optimism and the fact you don't fall prey to cynicism nearly as quickly as me! i hope you are right, but man we are at a tipping point here in a major way circa 2017... i don't see things moving forward all that favourably but i do admire those who can stay positive in spite of what we are seeing here..

@68 debs is dead.. thanks.. too many pop ups from fp, so i'm closing the window.. sounds about right though.. to quote the pilger article that karlof1 left @64 - "A coup against the man in the White House is under way. This is not because he is an odious human being, but because he has consistently made clear he does not want war with Russia." msm verses trump... msm is winning, lol... trump is going to have to pick up the twitter pace or he is in deep doo doo, or deep 6'd by the deep state.. mcmaster - what a disgrace to the scottish clan this man is.. he needs to change his friggin nam...


PavewayIV | Aug 7, 2017 12:09:28 AM | 70
Debsisdead@68 - Everyone seems to take a side on McMaster. Some conservative press claims he's cleaning house of Israeli-firsters, a claim denied by TimesofIsrael despite their description of Ezra Cohen-Watnik as a "Jewish official". They see a common thread of 'Iran hawks' in the McMaster purge. Other conservative press sees McMaster as the puppet of Saudi-controlled Soros, wonderfully illustrated here . Their association with the Richard Higgins memo is less clear, and the memo (and Higgins views in general) are usually portrayed as nutty. The Atlantic just published an article that gives a more rational-sounding (relative, I know...) description of Higgins views in the memo as:
"...Higgins's memo describes supposed domestic and international threats to Trump's presidency, including globalists, bankers, the "deep state," and Islamists. The memo characterizes the Russia story as a plot to sabotage Trump's nationalist agenda. It asserts that globalists and Islamists are seeking to destroy America. The memo also includes a set of recommendations, arguing that the problem constitutes a national-security priority..."

I have to say that the threat to Trump's presidency seems real enough regardless of the debate about who or why.

The real reason I think Higgins was fired: he had called for whistle-blowers in US law enforcement and the DHS to come forward with evidence of being ordered to allow suspected terrorists into the US and systematic blindness at all levels of any monitoring or investigation. This is all (according to him) being driven by political correctness and the globalist's/Soros' 'open borders' scheme. Nutty conspiracy theory? I'm not so sure. I keep hearing the same thing from European nations - an official (but secret) policy of turning a blind eye to terrorism suspects entering their country. That's a damn strange 'conspiracy theory' coincidence across the pond, if I do say so myself.

Back to the McMaster 'purge' - who knows? Nobody is in charge at the White House and everyone is purging everyone else (apparently even Trump). McMaster himself is thought to be in danger of dismissal - his grand hawkish plans for a renewed, invigorated Afghanistan War version 2.0 were quickly rejected by Trump. The plans were essentially, "We'll try again in Afghanistan, but with more troops... and we'll REALLY mean it this time!"

I don't necessarily think Trump is against US world domination schemes. He is just skeptical of the clownish, sure-to-fail linear-thinking plans the neocons have typically choked out. Incometence - sad! Trump would rather bumble into a war all on his own, I guess...

James | Aug 7, 2017 1:40:27 AM | 71
Thanks for this insight into the Sanctions bill - b.

What I'm waiting for is the response of the EU ( Germany)
Will they stop nord stream 2 ?

Also do these sanctions affect Turk stream?

I can't see Erdogan stopping this pipeline which will underpin Turkeys economic developments and build stronger reflations with those in Southern Europe - Hungary, Bulgaria, and the ex-Yugoslavia countries.

As for the Baltic countries and Poland - they are the fly in the EU ointment making a unified EU response impossible - always ready to do the US bidding especially if it involves attacking Russia.
But even here does economic concerns come even before this? as LNG from the US will cost far far more than Russian gas.

Poland would loose transit fees due to nordstream 2 . Then we have Ukraine who need the transit fees - it's part of their budget. The Infrastructure however needs investment - and who will do that.

Also the does anyone know if the pipeline to china - can't remember its name - is being built and when that is due to be operational

All in all the sanctions bill just codified the domestic Russophobia and if anything should kill off the Pro - American wing that exists in Russia. The accusations against Russia were unjust and have not been proved.

The main response from Russia will be to further insulate itself from these type of attacks which are only possible through being part of the dollar economy.


P S - I disagree with b that medvedev could be president again. Most Russians don't even want him as prime minister! His statement read to me as a reflection of his personal disappointment in Trump.

psychohistorian | Aug 7, 2017 1:54:44 AM | 72
@ b who wrote:
"
These sanctions will shape U.S.-Russian relation for the next 30 plus years.
"
I think that the geo-political situation is too volatile at this time to make this claim and one, multiple and/or a sequence of events is going to precipitate a crisis that will end the current shape of our world and birth something else....the crisis will include a global debt "reset" of some sort if not frontal on attack on private finance global tools......whatever is going to happen will occur in less than 30 years is my point to counter b's statement.

What will the US do to precipitate the crisis TPTB seem to be jonesing for?....or will the rest of the world continue to stand by and watch the center of empire collapse of its own deathly dissonance?

Steve | Aug 7, 2017 3:19:43 AM | 73
I concur with everything in this piece but this line: "Core European countries will resist pressures that endanger their economies." I doubt there is any European country that has the backbone to stand up against the US interest at this moment.
Anon | Aug 7, 2017 4:46:34 AM | 74
Whats worse is the stupid sanctions on NK, pushed by neocons and supported by not only stupid warmongering EU but also Russia and China! Talk about being naive and a sell out!
J Swift | Aug 7, 2017 7:37:02 AM | 75
Are we underestimating the importance of it being Medvedev who sent such a blunt and honest critique of the sanctions scheme? He is the spokesboy for the pro-West/oligarch/integrationist half of the Russian government. For him to make such a statement must have been either as a plea or warning ("Dude! You're killing your own agents over here!); or perhaps its more grave and is more of an indication that even the lapdogs in Russia are disgusted and angry and prepared to side with Putin's sovereign Russia camp and make some of the financial changes Putin has been sneaking up on for the last few years. Either way, sounds like it could be good news for Russia, and more strengthening of Putin's hand as we approach their election cycle. He may already have the political capital to kick out or hamstring most of the foreign NGOs, which he certainly needs to do as a follow-up to the diplomatic staff reductions. Should be interesting.
john | Aug 7, 2017 7:41:19 AM | 76
a million laughs how so much commentary in its infinite wisdom still confers such faith in our hallowed institutions. be it a Congress that votes unanimously to sanction a sovereign nation based on unproven absurdities while ignoring their president's lobbing of 60 cruise missiles into another sovereign nation for, well, for no real reason at all, actually, oh yeah, for other unproven absurdities, to some purported strategy for the Supreme Court in its infinite wisdom to presumably restore good sense and order to perfidious political shenanigans(oooh, the intrigue)...that would be the same Supreme Court that protects scum-of-the-earth corporate personhood above all else(remember Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker ?).
okie farmer | Aug 7, 2017 8:18:22 AM | 77
Google: Lost in translation?

by Seamus Padraig In an article sure to breathe life into the old conspiracy theories about Silicon Valley and the CIA, The Guardian recently reported that: Google has fixed an "automated" error which saw its online translating tool convert "Russian Federation" into "Mordor". Other erroneous translations included "russians" becoming "occupiers" and the name of Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, rendered as "sad little horse". Mordor is the fictional realm in JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books, also known as the land of shadows. The error, which Google said is down to an automatic bug, appeared in the online tool when users converted the Ukranian [sic] language into Russian. Google, naturally, denied any 'evil' intent, telling The Guardian in a written statement that its translator tool works "without the intervention of human translators". Sure it does! And no doubt the problem was fixed automatically too, wasn't it! Down in the comboxes, many took the opportunity to bash Russia and all things Russian, but at least one commenter decided to take a shot at the messenger.

Lea | Aug 7, 2017 8:24:50 AM | 78
A Russian MP talking to RT has an interesting and simple take: Trump made no mistake and is no puppet. He knowingly declared a trade war onto Russia, while retaining a "good cop" attitude designed to shift the blame and hopefully to keep a good image among his anti-war voters, Obama-style, of "prisoner in the White House" (poor guy is "forced to be tough" against his will, sob).
Sometimes, the simplest explanation makes the most sense, all the more as, every time Trump has made amicable noises in the past, something bad has ensued. What if it's no accident?
https://www.rt.com/politics/398429-trump-is-no-puppet-russian/
Piotr Berman | Aug 7, 2017 9:24:06 AM | 79
While the percentage of Germans mentioning Russia as the largest foreign threat dropped to 33% (below 35 for USA), Poland has hefty 65%. Main political parties vigorously insult each other, and Russian/Putin stooge is a favorite (although creativity in that field exceeds American standards, polite Britain not really competing). Thus I was surprised that the current foreign minister made an effort to allow several interviews with Russian media. Among others, he stated that while Poland is interested in American liquified natural gas, at this time it is not competitive with Russian natural gas (it seems that European gas prices are at least double of those in Europe, but liquifying, transporting highly explosive cargo etc. adds a lot to the cost). And the purchase of American Patriots is needed, but not finalized (the government talks a lot about expanding the military to face the Russian threat, but they are surprisingly stingy with arms budget, so far they got a big fleet of armored limousines for VIPs and few Being planes, also for VIPs).

Basically, even most Russophobic politicians do not want real breakdown in trade, and given that arms industry is mostly non-domestic, they have measured enthusiasm for the arms race. I guess Waszczykowski (English phonetics: Vashchikofky) does not support new American sanctions. The other aspect is that the current government is in conflict with "EU bureacracy", but what alternatives does Poland have? Well... there are some, right?

William Bowles | Aug 7, 2017 9:33:57 AM | 80
At #38
Here's some links that try to explain why the US isn't building the Russian aka Soviet RD180 rocket engine:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39502.0

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/15494/why-cant-pratt-whitney-make-rd-180-engines-on-their-own

http://www.airforce-technology.com/features/featurerussian-rockets-the-us-governments-rd-180-conundrum-4325220/

James | Aug 7, 2017 9:49:40 AM | 81

I agree with the post at 78. Trump is all in with these sanctions -he is just trying to fool his base.

Does anyone really think he did not know the bill was being drafted - Paul Ryan and Priebus would have told him.

An article on antiwar.com states the following

Tillerson says he's told Russia that US will respond by Sept. 1 to Moscow's move to expel US diplomats.

They want an escalation and Cold War

Bluemot5 | Aug 7, 2017 10:21:52 AM | 82
". This a little disguised attempt to press European countries into buying expensive U.S. liquefied natural gas instead of cheap Russian gas delivered by pipelines. The immediate target is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany which passes through the Baltic Sea to avoid potential conflict points in east Europe. The sanctions are a threat to an independent German energy policy. " b

Seems to me that Russian gas probably has a much smaller carbon footprint than fracked, compressed, shipped and regassified USA shale gas? I have searched but not found any carbon footprint comparisons online.

if Russian gas is much cleaner, they could win at least on the public opinion front on this issue....


paul | Aug 7, 2017 10:27:41 AM | 83
For Putin to whine and cry about sanctions vs Russia whilst hammering North Korea with sanctions is just pure hypocrisy - raging, insane hypocrisy - at best. Putin, it's clear now, is just a punk and a thug and ultimately a US vassal. Xi the same. Before I thought that somehow those two leaders, bad as they are, were pillars of decency and integrity compared to US misleaders. That, it seems, has changed. US misleaders are worse than ever. Trump is a total creep. Both parties exude nothing but stench. Yet Xi and Putin are Trump's/US' vassals, even more disgusting. When called upon to jump, they do a dance and jump right through the ring as commanded.

A couple of weeks ago China and Russia made a reasonable statement pointing out that the way to peace had to involve regard for the security issues on both sides. Now they've burned that statement just because they were commanded to. Oh yes it's sort of there in the UNSC fine print, which I guess makes for a nice fig leaf.

James | Aug 7, 2017 10:36:38 AM | 84

Paul @ 83
Putin has not commented on the sanctions
Medvedev did.

As for North Korea - that's a separate topic all together which I am sure b will cover.

Anon | Aug 7, 2017 10:47:28 AM | 85
paul

Yeah, one day before China and Russia blast sanctions imposed on themselves by Trump, then next day - they follow through with Trump and do the same onto North Korea. Hypocrisy and treachery!

lysias | Aug 7, 2017 10:48:13 AM | 86
A system of represntative government that severely limited the power of the rich was that of ancient Athens. Council members and most government officials were chosen by lot from the whole body of adult male citizens. As a reading of elite authors like Plato will reveal, the rich didn't like this system at all.
RenoDino | Aug 7, 2017 10:50:25 AM | 87
The Trump Presidency is effectively over. It ended on the day he signed the Sanctions Bill. A velvet junta has assumed control of the executive branch. Trump's family and advisors await conviction. The Generals are now in charge and will lead us into the next war sooner than later.
fast freddy | Aug 7, 2017 11:36:47 AM | 88
Sanctions, but US still buying billions of dollars worth (including baksheesh) of rocket engines and screwing around with international space station boondoggle (million dollar toilet seats, hammers and widgets). And more baksheesh.

Try to google search a fixed price on one Russian rocket engine.

Just Sayin' | Aug 7, 2017 11:39:59 AM | 89
This 'Pipelineistan' [Bullshit?] conspiracy: The war in Syria has never been about gas
Paul Cochrane
Wednesday 10 May 2017 10:57 UTC


The pipeline hypotheses do not stand up to the realities of how energy is transported through the Middle East in the 21st century

3. No Qatari offer to Damascus

The pipeline narrative, from 2013 onwards, also makes much mention of Damascus rebuffing an alleged Qatari offer in 2009 to build a pipeline. This part of the story hinges around statements by unnamed diplomats in a 2013 Agence France-Presse article about a meeting between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia's Bandar bin Sultan.

Qatar's then-Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani (R) and First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al-Misned (L) welcome Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma at Doha airport in January 2010 (AFP)

The report says: "In 2009, Assad refused to sign an agreement with Qatar for an overland pipeline running from the Gulf to Europe via Syria to protect the interests of its Russian ally, which is Europe's top supplier of natural gas."

But Dargin says: "There are no credible sources that show that Qatar even approached Syria in 2009 and was rebuffed in the process. I am not saying it definitely did not occur, rather there is no evidence supporting this claim."

Syrian experts also support Dargin's rebuttal, highlighting the burgeoning economic and political ties between Doha and Damascus.

'An important aspect that we don't talk about is the Syrian government never said the Qataris were fighting for a pipeline' - Jihad Yazigi, Syria Report

Yassin-Kassab says: "The absurdity is that relations between the Assad regime and the Qataris were excellent until summer 2011. Assad and his wife and the Qatari royal couple were also being portrayed as personal friends."

Although Assad may have repeatedly criticized Qatar since late 2011 onwards for supporting "terrorists," he has never publicly stated that Qatari support for the rebels was over a future pipeline.

Jihad Yazigi, editor of economy website Syria Report, says: "An important aspect that we don't talk about is the Syrian government never said the Qataris were fighting for a pipeline; that is telling in itself, that Assad never mentioned it."


4. The Moscow-Tehran connection

Then there's the other part of the Pipelineistan puzzle – the Iran-Syria pipeline, also known as the Islamic Pipeline.

Yazigi explains: "The Islamic pipeline has been talked about for years. There were pre-contract memorandums of understanding, but until July 2011, there was no formal signing [between Syria and Iran]. You can't argue this is a serious reason to destroy the whole country. "

While the project was politically expedient, it ignored economic and energy realities. First, the project was estimated to cost $10 billion, but it was unclear who would foot the bill, particularly as Tehran was – and still is – under US and international sanctions, as is Syria, since 2011.

Second, Iran lacks the capabilities to export significant amounts of gas. Sanctions mean it cannot access the advanced US technology that would allow it to exploit gas from the South Pars field that borders Qatar.

dh | Aug 7, 2017 11:41:03 AM | 90
@71 James, there are many small contractors involved in Nordstream in several countries. The sanctions are designed to squeeze them out and make Nordstream impossible.

It's not unlike the strategy being used against NK. They are designed to make life even more difficult for ordinary people....perhaps drive them into China and cause China to attack NK.

dh | Aug 7, 2017 11:57:30 AM | 91
@90 Should have included this link...it mentions the situation with the Black Sea pipeline.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-sanctions-gazprom-analysis-idUSKBN1AJ1AN

Skip | Aug 7, 2017 12:04:55 PM | 92
@15

"Not me! Term limits mean nothing more than the elimination of the ability of the voters to assess candidates based on legislative track records. The result is that every two years the voters will have to choose representatives with no past history of legislation. Disaster."

Gag me with a spoon. This argument is so old and so worn thin. Statistically 95+% of these fools are reelected because the highly cerebral voters you refer to have elevators that almost never go to the top of the building.

Money, money money. That's what drives the engine of elections. Incumbents have it working for them in so many ways: PACs, corporate centers of influence; radio and teevee.

All of the alternatives you propose are red herrings. They are only workable in heaven, not here on Terra Firma.

Remember, all of that institutional memory brought about by all of the 'experienced' members of congress got us where we are today. And, it's gotten them a 10% approval rating.

karlof1 | Aug 7, 2017 12:16:45 PM | 93
Grieved @66 & 67--

Thanks for your reply and endorsement.

Something to consider when dealing with the Revolutionary time period is what part of the populous is considered "The People," as in "We The People"? And just how equal in reality were those people in 1776 when the phrase "All men are created equal" appeared? This is of great importance when we look at the proportion of the populous that was allowed to have a stake in the process and compare that with the amount of time it took until a majority was finally deemed to have equal rights under the law--1920 within USA--although it can be argued that full equality under the law is still lacking as Glenn Greenwald did to great affect in With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality . Two works providing info on this issue are The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States and People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization , although there are many others.

Is the United States federal government reformable? IMO, as currently constituted, no. A new document and associated institutions needs to be written and built, although some current institutions will have a place within the new construct. Yes, I did write a Constitution 3.0 using Madisonian principles not long after the fiasco of the 2000 election to use as a classroom discussion tool. But to have any chance at making that reality, the Rule of Law must be reinstated within the Outlaw US Empire in order to bring the Deep State to Justice and thus its destruction.

james | Aug 7, 2017 12:44:43 PM | 94
@78 lea.. i agree.

@81 James.. i agree as well - "they want an escalation and cold war." keeping the us$ supreme is the forever game plan..

@83 paul.. as always thanks for the laugh..

nurse.comic | Aug 7, 2017 1:02:13 PM | 95
I was happily surprised to just read the BRZEZINSKI article which wasn't ruthless chessboard as portrayed here. The quote doesn't give a good idea of what the article says about the US working constructively>> with both Russia and China not for domination but less conflict. As he says, "The alternative to a constructive vision, and especially the quest for a one-sided militarily and ideologically imposed outcome, can only result in prolonged and self-destructive futility".
Zbigniew Brzezinski died in May, as late as April this year he was calling for closer relations between Russian and the US. I am sad to see this site misuse him in this article. Or rather I am glad because now I hold ZB a bit higher and will be even more cautious here.
Arioch | Aug 7, 2017 1:30:51 PM | 96
One jewish journalist (link was posted here few days ago) nicely pointed out these sanctions are the stupidest thing US could have possibly done. Not only it forges even closer Russia-China-Iran alliance, it also alienates the closest and strongest ally US have - the EU.

@18 - or the opposite. If Trump really is isolationists and if he wants USA isolate itself on the two Americas, then he has two options: make America turn its back on the world, or make the world turn its back on America. The first option he failed, DC regime is stronger than POUTS. Then - the second option.

William Bowles | Aug 7, 2017 2:33:33 PM | 97
AT #88:


Russian Rocket Engines Exempted from Sanctions Bill – Parabolic Arc

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2017/06/17/russian-rocket-engines-exempted-sanctions-bill/

17 Jun 2017 ... Russian Rocket Engines Exempted from Sanctions Bill ... using at least one Russian engine to try to placate the Great Russia ... Which means that it could've been human rated or fixed to meet the NASA needs. Tom Billings • 1 month ago. And cost two to four times as much as an Atlas V. Those LHy/Lox ...

Just Sayin' | Aug 7, 2017 2:56:49 PM | 98
Not only it forges even closer Russia-China-Iran alliance, it also alienates the closest and strongest ally US have - the EU.

Posted by: Arioch | Aug 7, 2017 1:30:51 PM | 96

What's wrong about that statement is that the EU nations are not US Allied states - they are US vassal states.

bit of a difference between those two: "allied state" and "vassal state"

William Bowles | Aug 7, 2017 3:12:30 PM | 99
At #96:
or the opposite. If Trump really is isolationists and if he wants USA isolate itself on the two Americas, then he has two options: make America turn its back on the world, or make the world turn its back on America. The first option he failed, DC regime is stronger than POUTS. Then - the second option.

Everything continues as 'normal' with Trump as Prez, except, he's a bit of a loose canon, not one of the 'boys'. Worse still, he actually believes that the prez runs the show! I don't know prezs actually last ran the show, maybe Kennedy, maybe never. Big capital runs the show and uses structures like the CFR, Bilderberg, Chatham House, plus of course, the universities and 'think tanks'. They're not united however, as Trump so forcefully reveals. So how to deal with him without giving the game away? Pre-election, they tried ridicule. Post, they're trying to incriminate him and it shouldn't be difficult to do, without Russia. He is after all, a billionaire capitalist, who must have done all kinds shady, nee illegal deals and probably some in Russia as well. Show me a big capitalist who hasn't?

In a strange way, Trump is actually helping them by being such a big doofus. I think the lights are on but nobody's home. If only he'd behave the way Obummer did, and do as he's told!

karlof1 | Aug 7, 2017 3:44:05 PM | 100
Use of the terms "Isolationist" and "Isolationism" within the context of US History differs little from the use of the terms "Conspiracy Theory," Conspiracy Theorist," and "Revisionist"--all are used in an attempt to degrade the credibility of an individual or organization. A priori, everyone aside from First Peoples is an Internationalist as commerce with other nations of the world isn't optional--it's mandatory, thus the phrase within the Declaration about telling the world why. Rather, Isolationist is used to tar someone against Imperialism, the best examples being the very heated debate during the 1930s over the various Neutrality Acts when the hoi polloi last had some vestige of control over the federal government. (Pacifist was also a derogatory term used then for similar reasons.) Did Trump say he would close US borders to one and all--people, goods, financial instruments? No, of course not; so, he cannot be labeled an Isolationist. Now, is he what's known as a Nativist promoting an America First Nativism? During his campaign, he did use rhetoric of that sort, but his actions in office don't provide confirmation. (The 1932 presidential election also gives an excellent example of how the terms Internationalist and Isolationist are used politically, with FDR steadfastly refusing to acknowledge his Internationalism thanks to the divisive League of Nations debate after WW1.)

Essentially, to be an informed citizen of almost any nation, one needs the equivalent of a PhD in their national and world history, with minors in philosophy, anthropology and economics, which is why the citizenry seems so ill-informed--they are!--and easily led by the nose.

[Aug 08, 2017] What if Trump did want sanctions ?

Notable quotes:
"... The Trump Presidency is effectively over. It ended on the day he signed the Sanctions Bill. A velvet junta has assumed control of the executive branch. Trump's family and advisors await conviction. The Generals are now in charge and will lead us into the next war sooner than later. ..."
Aug 08, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 56

Thanks for the link to the Pilger article. I don't check his site very often because he only writes a few articles, but worth reading when they appear.
Another of the Vietnam era investigative journalists who can no longer get articles printed in MSM.

Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Aug 6, 2017 6:29:32 PM | 61

Shh | Aug 6, 2017 6:47:33 PM | 63

It's possible that the US strategic end game is not one we understand and highly effective. What that might be is obscured by reason.

Hahahahahaha! oh I slay me!

karlof1 | Aug 6, 2017 6:49:46 PM | 64
Not Off Topic: Learned of yet another head of state assassination done by CIA prior to JFK's, Pakistan's first PM, Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, "according to State Department documents," http://www.thedailystar.net/world/south-asia/cia-killed-first-pm-pakistan-1442917
Fidelios Automata | Aug 6, 2017 9:58:07 PM | 65
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
Grieved | Aug 6, 2017 10:26:56 PM | 67
@42 james

It's rare that LOL actually means what it says but reading your comment I burst out laughing. Thank you.

On reflection, however, I have to say that I feel the US system has great merit. The country may well be fucked, but the underlying system has the potential to be workable, in suitable hands.

I don't know of any representative system in the world that isn't gamed by the big boys. This business of the people's actually having a say in how a nation is run is a newish thing, by and large, I think. I can't imagine how anyone could think it's been perfected yet. To me, it's still a miracle that even the pretense of having it exists - and this speaks loudly of something real that inheres in the people and that rulers remain wary of, at every turn.

I don't know if before the American Revolution anyone in the world ever published the paradigm that national sovereignty derives exclusively from the sovereignty of the individual persons that comprise the nation. I only know where I heard it first, and still hear it today.

I actually admire what the framers of the Constitution put together, having read their discussions verbatim. But it was the Bill of Rights that enabled that document to be ratified - it would not have happened without the Ten Amendments. And that powerful piece of negotiation came from the people, and their States. So we see in the US system a combination of interests.

I'm not ready yet to write it off, and I don't say that it was in itself compromised from the beginning. Gamed and bypassed, yes, certainly. We're still working on ruling ourselves, we sovereign individuals. Story not finished yet.

PavewayIV | Aug 7, 2017 12:09:28 AM | 70
Debsisdead@68 - Everyone seems to take a side on McMaster. Some conservative press claims he's cleaning house of Israeli-firsters, a claim denied by TimesofIsrael despite their description of Ezra Cohen-Watnik as a "Jewish official". They see a common thread of 'Iran hawks' in the McMaster purge. Other conservative press sees McMaster as the puppet of Saudi-controlled Soros, wonderfully illustrated here . Their association with the Richard Higgins memo is less clear, and the memo (and Higgins views in general) are usually portrayed as nutty. The Atlantic just published an article that gives a more rational-sounding (relative, I know...) description of Higgins views in the memo as:
"...Higgins's memo describes supposed domestic and international threats to Trump's presidency, including globalists, bankers, the "deep state," and Islamists. The memo characterizes the Russia story as a plot to sabotage Trump's nationalist agenda. It asserts that globalists and Islamists are seeking to destroy America. The memo also includes a set of recommendations, arguing that the problem constitutes a national-security priority..."

I have to say that the threat to Trump's presidency seems real enough regardless of the debate about who or why.

The real reason I think Higgins was fired: he had called for whistle-blowers in US law enforcement and the DHS to come forward with evidence of being ordered to allow suspected terrorists into the US and systematic blindness at all levels of any monitoring or investigation. This is all (according to him) being driven by political correctness and the globalist's/Soros' 'open borders' scheme. Nutty conspiracy theory? I'm not so sure. I keep hearing the same thing from European nations - an official (but secret) policy of turning a blind eye to terrorism suspects entering their country. That's a damn strange 'conspiracy theory' coincidence across the pond, if I do say so myself.

Back to the McMaster 'purge' - who knows? Nobody is in charge at the White House and everyone is purging everyone else (apparently even Trump). McMaster himself is thought to be in danger of dismissal - his grand hawkish plans for a renewed, invigorated Afghanistan War version 2.0 were quickly rejected by Trump. The plans were essentially, "We'll try again in Afghanistan, but with more troops... and we'll REALLY mean it this time!"

I don't necessarily think Trump is against US world domination schemes. He is just skeptical of the clownish, sure-to-fail linear-thinking plans the neocons have typically choked out. Incometence - sad! Trump would rather bumble into a war all on his own, I guess...

James | Aug 7, 2017 1:40:27 AM | 71
Thanks for this insight into the Sanctions bill - b.

What I'm waiting for is the response of the EU ( Germany)
Will they stop nord stream 2 ?

Also do these sanctions affect Turk stream? I can't see Erdogan stopping this pipeline which will underpin Turkeys economic developments and build stronger reflations with those in Southern Europe - Hungary, Bulgaria, and the ex-Yugoslavia countries.

As for the Baltic countries and Poland - they are the fly in the EU ointment making a unified EU response impossible - always ready to do the US bidding especially if it involves attacking Russia. But even here does economic concerns come even before this? as LNG from the US will cost far far more than Russian gas.

Poland would loose transit fees due to nordstream 2 . Then we have Ukraine who need the transit fees - it's part of their budget. The Infrastructure however needs investment - and who will do that.

Also the does anyone know if the pipeline to china - can't remember its name - is being built and when that is due to be operational

All in all the sanctions bill just codified the domestic Russophobia and if anything should kill off the Pro - American wing that exists in Russia. The accusations against Russia were unjust and have not been proved.

The main response from Russia will be to further insulate itself from these type of attacks which are only possible through being part of the dollar economy.

P S - I disagree with b that Medvedev could be president again. Most Russians don't even want him as prime minister! His statement read to me as a reflection of his personal disappointment in Trump.

psychohistorian | Aug 7, 2017 1:54:44 AM | 72
@ b who wrote:
"
These sanctions will shape U.S.-Russian relation for the next 30 plus years.
"
I think that the geo-political situation is too volatile at this time to make this claim and one, multiple and/or a sequence of events is going to precipitate a crisis that will end the current shape of our world and birth something else....the crisis will include a global debt "reset" of some sort if not frontal on attack on private finance global tools......whatever is going to happen will occur in less than 30 years is my point to counter b's statement.

What will the US do to precipitate the crisis TPTB seem to be jonesing for?....or will the rest of the world continue to stand by and watch the center of empire collapse of its own deathly dissonance?

Steve | Aug 7, 2017 3:19:43 AM | 73
I concur with everything in this piece but this line: "Core European countries will resist pressures that endanger their economies." I doubt there is any European country that has the backbone to stand up against the US interest at this moment.
Anon | Aug 7, 2017 4:46:34 AM | 74
Whats worse is the stupid sanctions on NK, pushed by neocons and supported by not only stupid warmongering EU but also Russia and China! Talk about being naive and a sell out!
J Swift | Aug 7, 2017 7:37:02 AM | 75
Are we underestimating the importance of it being Medvedev who sent such a blunt and honest critique of the sanctions scheme? He is the spokesboy for the pro-West/oligarch/integrationist half of the Russian government. For him to make such a statement must have been either as a plea or warning ("Dude! You're killing your own agents over here!); or perhaps its more grave and is more of an indication that even the lapdogs in Russia are disgusted and angry and prepared to side with Putin's sovereign Russia camp and make some of the financial changes Putin has been sneaking up on for the last few years. Either way, sounds like it could be good news for Russia, and more strengthening of Putin's hand as we approach their election cycle. He may already have the political capital to kick out or hamstring most of the foreign NGOs, which he certainly needs to do as a follow-up to the diplomatic staff reductions. Should be interesting.
john | Aug 7, 2017 7:41:19 AM | 76
a million laughs how so much commentary in its infinite wisdom still confers such faith in our hallowed institutions. be it a Congress that votes unanimously to sanction a sovereign nation based on unproven absurdities while ignoring their president's lobbing of 60 cruise missiles into another sovereign nation for, well, for no real reason at all, actually, oh yeah, for other unproven absurdities, to some purported strategy for the Supreme Court in its infinite wisdom to presumably restore good sense and order to perfidious political shenanigans(oooh, the intrigue)...that would be the same Supreme Court that protects scum-of-the-earth corporate personhood above all else(remember Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker ?).
okie farmer | Aug 7, 2017 8:18:22 AM | 77
Google: Lost in translation?

by Seamus Padraig In an article sure to breathe life into the old conspiracy theories about Silicon Valley and the CIA, The Guardian recently reported that: Google has fixed an "automated" error which saw its online translating tool convert "Russian Federation" into "Mordor". Other erroneous translations included "russians" becoming "occupiers" and the name of Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, rendered as "sad little horse". Mordor is the fictional realm in JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books, also known as the land of shadows. The error, which Google said is down to an automatic bug, appeared in the online tool when users converted the Ukranian [sic] language into Russian. Google, naturally, denied any 'evil' intent, telling The Guardian in a written statement that its translator tool works "without the intervention of human translators". Sure it does! And no doubt the problem was fixed automatically too, wasn't it! Down in the comboxes, many took the opportunity to bash Russia and all things Russian, but at least one commenter decided to take a shot at the messenger.

Lea | Aug 7, 2017 8:24:50 AM | 78
A Russian MP talking to RT has an interesting and simple take: Trump made no mistake and is no puppet. He knowingly declared a trade war onto Russia, while retaining a "good cop" attitude designed to shift the blame and hopefully to keep a good image among his anti-war voters, Obama-style, of "prisoner in the White House" (poor guy is "forced to be tough" against his will, sob).

Sometimes, the simplest explanation makes the most sense, all the more as, every time Trump has made amicable noises in the past, something bad has ensued. What if it's no accident?

https://www.rt.com/politics/398429-trump-is-no-puppet-russian/

Piotr Berman | Aug 7, 2017 9:24:06 AM | 79
While the percentage of Germans mentioning Russia as the largest foreign threat dropped to 33% (below 35 for USA), Poland has hefty 65%. Main political parties vigorously insult each other, and Russian/Putin stooge is a favorite (although creativity in that field exceeds American standards, polite Britain not really competing). Thus I was surprised that the current foreign minister made an effort to allow several interviews with Russian media. Among others, he stated that while Poland is interested in American liquified natural gas, at this time it is not competitive with Russian natural gas (it seems that European gas prices are at least double of those in Europe, but liquifying, transporting highly explosive cargo etc. adds a lot to the cost). And the purchase of American Patriots is needed, but not finalized (the government talks a lot about expanding the military to face the Russian threat, but they are surprisingly stingy with arms budget, so far they got a big fleet of armored limousines for VIPs and few Being planes, also for VIPs).

Basically, even most Russophobic politicians do not want real breakdown in trade, and given that arms industry is mostly non-domestic, they have measured enthusiasm for the arms race. I guess Waszczykowski (English phonetics: Vashchikofky) does not support new American sanctions. The other aspect is that the current government is in conflict with "EU bureacracy", but what alternatives does Poland have? Well... there are some, right?

William Bowles | Aug 7, 2017 9:33:57 AM | 80
At #38
Here's some links that try to explain why the US isn't building the Russian aka Soviet RD180 rocket engine:
James | Aug 7, 2017 9:49:40 AM | 81

I agree with the post at 78. Trump is all in with these sanctions -- he is just trying to fool his base. Does anyone really think he did not know the bill was being drafted - Paul Ryan and Priebus would have told him. An article on antiwar.com states the following.

Tillerson says he's told Russia that US will respond by Sept. 1 to Moscow's move to expel US diplomats. They want an escalation and Cold War

Bluemot5 | Aug 7, 2017 10:21:52 AM | 82
". This a little disguised attempt to press European countries into buying expensive U.S. liquefied natural gas instead of cheap Russian gas delivered by pipelines. The immediate target is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany which passes through the Baltic Sea to avoid potential conflict points in east Europe. The sanctions are a threat to an independent German energy policy. " b

Seems to me that Russian gas probably has a much smaller carbon footprint than fracked, compressed, shipped and regassified USA shale gas? I have searched but not found any carbon footprint comparisons online.

if Russian gas is much cleaner, they could win at least on the public opinion front on this issue....

paul | Aug 7, 2017 10:27:41 AM | 83
For Putin to whine and cry about sanctions vs Russia whilst hammering North Korea with sanctions is just pure hypocrisy - raging, insane hypocrisy - at best. Putin, it's clear now, is just a punk and a thug and ultimately a US vassal. Xi the same. Before I thought that somehow those two leaders, bad as they are, were pillars of decency and integrity compared to US misleaders. That, it seems, has changed. US misleaders are worse than ever. Trump is a total creep. Both parties exude nothing but stench. Yet Xi and Putin are Trump's/US' vassals, even more disgusting. When called upon to jump, they do a dance and jump right through the ring as commanded.

A couple of weeks ago China and Russia made a reasonable statement pointing out that the way to peace had to involve regard for the security issues on both sides. Now they've burned that statement just because they were commanded to. Oh yes it's sort of there in the UNSC fine print, which I guess makes for a nice fig leaf.

James | Aug 7, 2017 10:36:38 AM | 84

Paul @ 83
Putin has not commented on the sanctions. Medvedev did. As for North Korea - that's a separate topic all together which I am sure b will cover.
Anon | Aug 7, 2017 10:47:28 AM | 85
paul

Yeah, one day before China and Russia blast sanctions imposed on themselves by Trump, then next day - they follow through with Trump and do the same onto North Korea. Hypocrisy and treachery!

lysias | Aug 7, 2017 10:48:13 AM | 86
A system of representative government that severely limited the power of the rich was that of ancient Athens. Council members and most government officials were chosen by lot from the whole body of adult male citizens. As a reading of elite authors like Plato will reveal, the rich didn't like this system at all.
RenoDino | Aug 7, 2017 10:50:25 AM | 87
The Trump Presidency is effectively over. It ended on the day he signed the Sanctions Bill. A velvet junta has assumed control of the executive branch. Trump's family and advisors await conviction. The Generals are now in charge and will lead us into the next war sooner than later.
Just Sayin' | Aug 7, 2017 11:39:59 AM | 89
This 'Pipelineistan' [Bullshit?] conspiracy: The war in Syria has never been about gas
Paul Cochrane
Wednesday 10 May 2017 10:57 UTC

The pipeline hypotheses do not stand up to the realities of how energy is transported through the Middle East in the 21st century

3. No Qatari offer to Damascus

The pipeline narrative, from 2013 onwards, also makes much mention of Damascus rebuffing an alleged Qatari offer in 2009 to build a pipeline. This part of the story hinges around statements by unnamed diplomats in a 2013 Agence France-Presse article about a meeting between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia's Bandar bin Sultan.

Qatar's then-Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani (R) and First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al-Misned (L) welcome Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma at Doha airport in January 2010 (AFP)

The report says: "In 2009, Assad refused to sign an agreement with Qatar for an overland pipeline running from the Gulf to Europe via Syria to protect the interests of its Russian ally, which is Europe's top supplier of natural gas."

But Dargin says: "There are no credible sources that show that Qatar even approached Syria in 2009 and was rebuffed in the process. I am not saying it definitely did not occur, rather there is no evidence supporting this claim."

Syrian experts also support Dargin's rebuttal, highlighting the burgeoning economic and political ties between Doha and Damascus.

'An important aspect that we don't talk about is the Syrian government never said the Qataris were fighting for a pipeline' - Jihad Yazigi, Syria Report

Yassin-Kassab says: "The absurdity is that relations between the Assad regime and the Qataris were excellent until summer 2011. Assad and his wife and the Qatari royal couple were also being portrayed as personal friends."

Although Assad may have repeatedly criticized Qatar since late 2011 onwards for supporting "terrorists," he has never publicly stated that Qatari support for the rebels was over a future pipeline.

Jihad Yazigi, editor of economy website Syria Report, says: "An important aspect that we don't talk about is the Syrian government never said the Qataris were fighting for a pipeline; that is telling in itself, that Assad never mentioned it."


4. The Moscow-Tehran connection

Then there's the other part of the Pipelineistan puzzle – the Iran-Syria pipeline, also known as the Islamic Pipeline.

Yazigi explains: "The Islamic pipeline has been talked about for years. There were pre-contract memorandums of understanding, but until July 2011, there was no formal signing [between Syria and Iran]. You can't argue this is a serious reason to destroy the whole country. "

While the project was politically expedient, it ignored economic and energy realities. First, the project was estimated to cost $10 billion, but it was unclear who would foot the bill, particularly as Tehran was – and still is – under US and international sanctions, as is Syria, since 2011.

Second, Iran lacks the capabilities to export significant amounts of gas. Sanctions mean it cannot access the advanced US technology that would allow it to exploit gas from the South Pars field that borders Qatar.

dh | Aug 7, 2017 11:41:03 AM | 90
@71 James, there are many small contractors involved in Nordstream in several countries. The sanctions are designed to squeeze them out and make Nordstream impossible.

It's not unlike the strategy being used against NK. They are designed to make life even more difficult for ordinary people....perhaps drive them into China and cause China to attack NK.

dh | Aug 7, 2017 11:57:30 AM | 91
@90 Should have included this link...it mentions the situation with the Black Sea pipeline.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-sanctions-gazprom-analysis-idUSKBN1AJ1AN

Skip | Aug 7, 2017 12:04:55 PM | 92
@15

"Not me! Term limits mean nothing more than the elimination of the ability of the voters to assess candidates based on legislative track records. The result is that every two years the voters will have to choose representatives with no past history of legislation. Disaster."

Gag me with a spoon. This argument is so old and so worn thin. Statistically 95+% of these fools are reelected because the highly cerebral voters you refer to have elevators that almost never go to the top of the building.

Money, money money. That's what drives the engine of elections. Incumbents have it working for them in so many ways: PACs, corporate centers of influence; radio and teevee.

All of the alternatives you propose are red herrings. They are only workable in heaven, not here on Terra Firma.

Remember, all of that institutional memory brought about by all of the 'experienced' members of congress got us where we are today. And, it's gotten them a 10% approval rating.

karlof1 | Aug 7, 2017 12:16:45 PM | 93
Grieved @66 & 67--

Thanks for your reply and endorsement.

Something to consider when dealing with the Revolutionary time period is what part of the populous is considered "The People," as in "We The People"? And just how equal in reality were those people in 1776 when the phrase "All men are created equal" appeared? This is of great importance when we look at the proportion of the populous that was allowed to have a stake in the process and compare that with the amount of time it took until a majority was finally deemed to have equal rights under the law--1920 within USA--although it can be argued that full equality under the law is still lacking as Glenn Greenwald did to great affect in With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality . Two works providing info on this issue are The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States and People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization , although there are many others.

Is the United States federal government reformable? IMO, as currently constituted, no. A new document and associated institutions needs to be written and built, although some current institutions will have a place within the new construct. Yes, I did write a Constitution 3.0 using Madisonian principles not long after the fiasco of the 2000 election to use as a classroom discussion tool. But to have any chance at making that reality, the Rule of Law must be reinstated within the Outlaw US Empire in order to bring the Deep State to Justice and thus its destruction.

james | Aug 7, 2017 12:44:43 PM | 94
@78 lea.. i agree.

@81 James.. i agree as well - "they want an escalation and cold war." keeping the us$ supreme is the forever game plan..

@83 paul.. as always thanks for the laugh..

nurse.comic | Aug 7, 2017 1:02:13 PM | 95
I was happily surprised to just read the BRZEZINSKI article which wasn't ruthless chessboard as portrayed here. The quote doesn't give a good idea of what the article says about the US working constructively>> with both Russia and China not for domination but less conflict. As he says, "The alternative to a constructive vision, and especially the quest for a one-sided militarily and ideologically imposed outcome, can only result in prolonged and self-destructive futility".
Zbigniew Brzezinski died in May, as late as April this year he was calling for closer relations between Russian and the US. I am sad to see this site misuse him in this article. Or rather I am glad because now I hold ZB a bit higher and will be even more cautious here.
Arioch | Aug 7, 2017 1:30:51 PM | 96
One jewish journalist (link was posted here few days ago) nicely pointed out these sanctions are the stupidest thing US could have possibly done. Not only it forges even closer Russia-China-Iran alliance, it also alienates the closest and strongest ally US have - the EU.

@18 - or the opposite. If Trump really is isolationists and if he wants USA isolate itself on the two Americas, then he has two options: make America turn its back on the world, or make the world turn its back on America. The first option he failed, DC regime is stronger than POUTS. Then - the second option.

AT #88:

Russian Rocket Engines Exempted from Sanctions Bill – Parabolic Arc

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2017/06/17/russian-rocket-engines-exempted-sanctions-bill/

AT #88:

Russian Rocket Engines Exempted from Sanctions Bill – Parabolic Arc

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2017/06/17/russian-rocket-engines-exempted-sanctions-bill/

17 Jun 2017 ... Russian Rocket Engines Exempted from Sanctions Bill ... using at least one Russian engine to try to placate the Great Russia ... Which means that it could've been human rated or fixed to meet the NASA needs. Tom Billings • 1 month ago. And cost two to four times as much as an Atlas V. Those LHy/Lox ...
/div

William Bowles | Aug 7, 2017 3:12:30 PM | 99
At #96:
or the opposite. If Trump really is isolationists and if he wants USA isolate itself on the two Americas, then he has two options: make America turn its back on the world, or make the world turn its back on America. The first option he failed, DC regime is stronger than POUTS. Then - the second option.

Everything continues as 'normal' with Trump as Prez, except, he's a bit of a loose canon, not one of the 'boys'. Worse still, he actually believes that the prez runs the show! I don't know prezs actually last ran the show, maybe Kennedy, maybe never. Big capital runs the show and uses structures like the CFR, Bilderberg, Chatham House, plus of course, the universities and 'think tanks'. They're not united however, as Trump so forcefully reveals. So how to deal with him without giving the game away? Pre-election, they tried ridicule. Post, they're trying to incriminate him and it shouldn't be difficult to do, without Russia. He is after all, a billionaire capitalist, who must have done all kinds shady, nee illegal deals and probably some in Russia as well. Show me a big capitalist who hasn't?

In a strange way, Trump is actually helping them by being such a big doofus. I think the lights are on but nobody's home. If only he'd behave the way Obummer did, and do as he's told!

[Aug 08, 2017] The Tale of the Brothers Awan by Philip Giraldi

Highly recommended!
The real question is who controlled Imram Awan and who planted him into Congress (as a mole). The level of criminal negligence demonstrated during his hiring is atypical for the USA government. And especially for government IT. Which is staffed by very security conscious people, as a rule. So he definitely should have a "sponsor" among intelligence agencies to accomplish such a feat and suppress all the "flash lights" that lighted during evaluation of his candidacy. I think that "I want this guy" request from Debbie Wasserman was not enough. She is no Hillary Clinton ;-) But to which country this intelligence agency belong is an open question, but most probably this was a USA intelligence agency. I doubt that Mossad would use Pakistani as their agent.
Notable quotes:
"... To be sure, the tale is a strange one with plenty of unsavory links. Thirty-seven year old Awan, his wife, sister-in-law and two brothers Abid and Jamal worked as IT administrators, full and part-time, for between 30 and 80 congressmen , all Democrats, including former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. They did not have security clearances and it is not even certain that they were in any way checked out before being hired. Nor were their claimed skills at IT administration confirmed as their work pattern reportedly turned out to consist more of absences than time spent in the House offices. One congressional IT staffer described them as "ghost employees." ..."
"... At one point, Imran brought into the House as a colleague one Rao Abbas, someone to whom he owed money, best distinguished by his being recently fired by McDonald's . Abbas lived in the basement of a house owned by Imran's wife as a rental property. He may have had no qualifications at all to perform IT but the congressmen in question did not seem to notice. Abbas wound up working, on the rare occasions that he went into the building, in the office of Congressman Patrick Murphy, who was at the time a member of the House Intelligence Committee as well as for Florida Congressman Theo Deutch. He was paid $250,000. ..."
"... To cover for all the non-working but on the payroll employees, Imran also hired a high school friend Haseeb Rana, who actually did know something about computers. Rana reportedly did "all the work" and kept wanting to quit for that reason. It was also against House rules for an IT administrator to fill in for someone else, as Rana routinely did, since each such employee had be personally registered by the congressman. ..."
"... The Awans and their two friends were all taken on as salaried employees of the House of Representatives at senior civil service level paygrades of ca. $165,000 annually, which normally is what is paid to highly experienced senior managers or chiefs of staff. Imran's younger brother Jamal was only twenty years old when he was hired at that level in 2014. ..."
"... It is not known if the Awans, who were working for several Intelligence Committee members simultaneously, would have been involved or had access to the computers able to pull up classified material being used by those staffers, but Buzzfeed, in its initial reporting on the investigation of the Awans family, repeated the concerns of a Congressman that the suspects might have "had access to the House of Representatives' entire computer network." Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that that was not the case. In office environments, the IT administrators routinely ask for passwords if they are checking out the system. WikiLeaks emails confirm that Imran certainly had passwords relating to Congressman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as well as to others on her staff. ..."
"... As of February 2016, the Awans came under suspicion for having set up an operation involving double billing as well as the theft and reselling of government owned computer equipment. It was also believed that they had somehow obtained entry to much of the House of Representatives' computer network as well as to other information in the individual offices' separate computer systems that they were in theory not allowed to access. The Capitol Hill Police began an investigation and quietly alerted the congressmen involved that there might be a problem. Most stopped employing the Awan family members and associates, but Wasserman-Schultz kept Imran on the payroll until the day after he was actually arrested. ..."
"... Initially Wasserman-Schultz refused to cooperate with the police, refusing to provide her passwords and not permitting them to open her computers, but Fox News reports that she has recently apparently allowed the authorities to do a scan. ..."
"... Dr. Ali A. Al-Attar fled the United States after the indictment to avoid arrest and imprisonment and is now considered a fugitive from justice. Late in 2012 he was observed in Beirut Lebanon conversing with a Hezbollah official. Al-Attar is of interest in this case because he appears to have been a friend of Imran Awan and also loaned him $100,000, which was never repaid. The FBI is currently looking into any possible international espionage specifically involving the two men as Awan and his associates clearly had access to classified information while working in the House of Representatives that would have been of interest to any number of foreign governments. ..."
"... [An earlier version of this article appeared on The American Conservative on August 3 rd ] ..."
Aug 08, 2017 | www.unz.com

There has been surprisingly little media follow-up on the story about the July 25 th Dulles Airport arrest of House of Representatives' employed Pakistani-American IT specialist Imran Awan, who was detained for bank fraud while he was allegedly fleeing to Pakistan. The mainstream media somewhat predictably produced minimal press coverage before the story died. The speed at which the news vanished has prompted some observers, including Breitbart, to sound the alarm over a suspected cover-up of possible exposure of classified information or even espionage that just might be part of the story that we are now calling Russiagate.

To be sure, the tale is a strange one with plenty of unsavory links. Thirty-seven year old Awan, his wife, sister-in-law and two brothers Abid and Jamal worked as IT administrators, full and part-time, for between 30 and 80 congressmen , all Democrats, including former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. They did not have security clearances and it is not even certain that they were in any way checked out before being hired. Nor were their claimed skills at IT administration confirmed as their work pattern reportedly turned out to consist more of absences than time spent in the House offices. One congressional IT staffer described them as "ghost employees."

At one point, Imran brought into the House as a colleague one Rao Abbas, someone to whom he owed money, best distinguished by his being recently fired by McDonald's . Abbas lived in the basement of a house owned by Imran's wife as a rental property. He may have had no qualifications at all to perform IT but the congressmen in question did not seem to notice. Abbas wound up working, on the rare occasions that he went into the building, in the office of Congressman Patrick Murphy, who was at the time a member of the House Intelligence Committee as well as for Florida Congressman Theo Deutch. He was paid $250,000.

To cover for all the non-working but on the payroll employees, Imran also hired a high school friend Haseeb Rana, who actually did know something about computers. Rana reportedly did "all the work" and kept wanting to quit for that reason. It was also against House rules for an IT administrator to fill in for someone else, as Rana routinely did, since each such employee had be personally registered by the congressman.

The Awans and their two friends were all taken on as salaried employees of the House of Representatives at senior civil service level paygrades of ca. $165,000 annually, which normally is what is paid to highly experienced senior managers or chiefs of staff. Imran's younger brother Jamal was only twenty years old when he was hired at that level in 2014.

The process of granting security clearances to Congressional staff is not exactly transparent, but it is not unlike the procedures for other government agencies. The office seeking the clearance for a staff member must put in a request, some kind of investigation follows, and the applicant must then sign a non-disclosure agreement before the authorization is granted. Sometimes Congress pushes the process by demanding that its staff have access above and beyond the normal "need to know." In March 2016, for example, eight Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee requested that their staffs be given access to top secret sensitive compartmented information.

It is not known if the Awans, who were working for several Intelligence Committee members simultaneously, would have been involved or had access to the computers able to pull up classified material being used by those staffers, but Buzzfeed, in its initial reporting on the investigation of the Awans family, repeated the concerns of a Congressman that the suspects might have "had access to the House of Representatives' entire computer network." Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that that was not the case. In office environments, the IT administrators routinely ask for passwords if they are checking out the system. WikiLeaks emails confirm that Imran certainly had passwords relating to Congressman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as well as to others on her staff.

Congress paid the Awans more than $4 million between 2004 and 2016 at their $165,000 salary level, a sum that some sources suggest to be three or four times higher than the norm for government contractor IT specialists performing similar work at the same level of alleged competency. Four of the Awans were among the 500 highest paid of the 15,000 congressional staffers. The considerable and consistent level of overpayment has not been explained by the congressmen involved. In spite of all that income being generated, Imran Awan declared bankruptcy in 2010 claiming losses of $1 million on a car business that he owned in Falls Church Virginia that ran up debts and borrowed money that it failed to repay. The business was named Cars International A, abbreviated on its business cards as CIA

The Awans family also was noted for its brushes with the law and internal discord, though it is doubtful if the congressional employers were aware of their outside-of-the-office behavior. The brothers were on the receiving end of a number of traffic citations, including DUI, and were constantly scheming to generate income, including what must have been a hilarious phone conversation to their credit union in which Imran pretended to be his own wife in order to wire money to Pakistan. They were on bad terms with their father and step-mother, including forging a document to cheat their step-mother of an insurance payment and even holding her "captive" so she could not see their dying father. Their father even changed his last name to dissociate himself from them.

As of February 2016, the Awans came under suspicion for having set up an operation involving double billing as well as the theft and reselling of government owned computer equipment. It was also believed that they had somehow obtained entry to much of the House of Representatives' computer network as well as to other information in the individual offices' separate computer systems that they were in theory not allowed to access. The Capitol Hill Police began an investigation and quietly alerted the congressmen involved that there might be a problem. Most stopped employing the Awan family members and associates, but Wasserman-Schultz kept Imran on the payroll until the day after he was actually arrested.

Some of those defending the Awans, to include Wasserman-Schultz and the family lawyer, have insisted that he and his family were the victims of "an anti-Muslim, right-wing smear job," though there is no actual evidence to suggest that is the case. They also claim that the bank fraud that led to the arrest, in which Imran obtained a home equity loan for $165,000 from the Congressional Federal Credit Union based on a house that he owned and claimed to live in in Lorton Virginia, was largely a misunderstanding It has been described as something "extremely minor" by his lawyer Chris Gowen , a high priced Washington attorney who has worked for the Clintons personally, the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative.

It turned out that Imran and his wife no longer lived in the house which had been turned into a rental property, a clear case of bank fraud. The Awans had tenants in the house, an ex-Marine and his Naval officer wife, who were very suspicious about a large quantity of what appeared to be government sourced computer equipment and supplies, all material that had been left behind by the owners. They contacted the FBI, which discovered hard drives that appeared to have been deliberately destroyed.

The FBI is certainly interested in the theft of government computers but it is also looking into the possibility that the Awans were using their ability to access and possibly exploit sensitive information stored in the House of Representatives' computer network as well as through Wasserman-Schultz's iPad, which Imran had access to and was connected to the Democratic National Committee server. It is believed that Imran sent stolen government files to a remote personal server . It may have been located in his former residence in Lorton Virginia, where the smashed equipment was found, or as far away as Pakistan. As Imran Awan is a dual-national, born in Pakistan, the possibility of espionage also had to be considered. By some accounts the Awan family traveled back to Pakistan frequently, where Imran was treated royally by local officialdom, suggesting that he may have been doing favors for the not very friendly government in Islamabad.

Considering the possible criminal activity that Imran and his family might have been engaged in and which was still under investigation, the Capitol Police and FBI determined that he should be stopped in his attempt to flee to Pakistan. The charge that Awan was actually arrested on at the airport, bank fraud, was an easy way to hold him as it was well documented. It allows the other more serious investigations to continue, so the argument that Imran Awan is only being held over a minor matter is not necessarily correct.

Awans had wired the credit union money and some cash of his own to Pakistan, as part of a $283,000 transfer that was made in January. His wife Hina Alvi also left the U.S. two months later. She was searched by Customs officers and it was determined that she had on her $12,400 in cash. She also had with her their three children, and numerous boxes containing household goods and clothing. It was clear that she did not intend to come back but there has been no explanation why she was even allowed to leave since carrying more than $10,000 out of the country without reporting it is a felony.

As Imran Awan reportedly had access to Wasserman-Schultz's iPad, he presumably also was able to see the incriminating Hillary Clinton emails. He used a laptop in her office as well that was, according to investigators, concealed in an "unused crevice" in the Rayburn House Office Building. It is currently being examined by police but Wasserman-Schultz tried strenuously to recover it before it could be looked at. She pressured the Chief of the Capitol Police Matthew Verderosa to return it, threatening him by saying "you should expect that there will be consequences." Initially Wasserman-Schultz refused to cooperate with the police, refusing to provide her passwords and not permitting them to open her computers, but Fox News reports that she has recently apparently allowed the authorities to do a scan.

There is another odd connection of Imran Awan that goes back to the neocon circle around Paul Wolfowitz during the Iraq War. In late 2002 and early 2003, Wolfowitz regularly met secretly with a group of Iraqi expatriates who resided in the Washington area and were opponents of the Saddam Hussein regime. The Iraqis had not been in their country of birth for many years but they claimed to have regular contact with well-informed family members and political allies. The Iraqi advisers provided Wolfowitz with a now-familiar refrain, i.e. that the Iraqi people would rise up to support invading Americans and overthrow the hated Saddam. They would greet their liberators with bouquets of flowers and shouts of joy.

The Iraqis were headed by one Dr. Ali A. al-Attar, born in Baghdad to Iranian parents in 1963, a 1989 graduate of the American University of Beirut Faculty of Medicine. He subsequently emigrated to the United States and set up a practice in internal medicine in Greenbelt Maryland, a suburb of Washington D.C. Al-Attar eventually expanded his business to include nine practices that he wholly or partly owned in Virginia and Maryland but he eventually lost his license due to "questionable billing practices" as well as "unprofessional conduct" due to having sex with patients

Al-Attar was investigated by the FBI and eventually indicted for large scale health care fraud in 2008-9, which included charging insurance companies more than $2.3 million for services their patients did not actually receive with many of the false claims using names of diplomats and employees enrolled in a group plan at the Egyptian Embassy in Washington. In one case, the doctors claimed an embassy employee visited three of their clinics every 26 days between May 2007 and August 2008 to have the same testing done each time. The insurance company paid the doctors $55,000 for more than 400 nonexistent procedures for the one patient alone.

Dr. Ali A. Al-Attar fled the United States after the indictment to avoid arrest and imprisonment and is now considered a fugitive from justice. Late in 2012 he was observed in Beirut Lebanon conversing with a Hezbollah official. Al-Attar is of interest in this case because he appears to have been a friend of Imran Awan and also loaned him $100,000, which was never repaid. The FBI is currently looking into any possible international espionage specifically involving the two men as Awan and his associates clearly had access to classified information while working in the House of Representatives that would have been of interest to any number of foreign governments.

The Imran Awan case is certainly of considerable interest not only for what the investigation eventually turns up but also for what it reveals about how things actually work in congress and in the government more generally speaking. I don't know which of the allegations about what might have taken place are true, but there is certainly a lot to consider. Whether the case is investigated and prosecuted without fear or favor will depend on the Department of Justice and FBI, but I for one was appalled to learn that the official who quite likely will oversee the investigation of the Awans is one Steven Wasserman, Assistant Attorney for the District of Columbia, the brother of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. If that should actually occur, it would be a huge conflict of interest and it has to be wondered if Wasserman would have the integrity to recuse himself.

There are many questions regarding the Awan case. One might reasonably ask how foreign-born IT specialists are selected and vetted prior to being significantly overpaid and allowed to work on computers in congressional offices. And the ability of those same individuals to keep working even after the relevant congressmen have been warned that their employee was under investigation has to be explained beyond Wasserman-Schultz's comment that Awan had not committed any crime, which may have been true but one would expect congressmen to err on the side of caution over an issue that could easily have national security ramifications. And how does a recently bankrupt and unemployed Imran Awan wind up with a high-priced lawyer to defend him who is associated with the Clintons? Would that kind of lawyer even take a relatively minor bank fraud case if that were all that is involved? Finally, there are the lingering concerns about the unfortunately well-established Russiagate narrative. Did the Russians really hack into the DNC or were there other possibilities, to include some kind of inside job, a "leak," carried out by someone working for the government or DNC for reasons that have yet to be determined, possibly even someone actually employed by DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz? There are certainly many issues that the public needs to know more about and so far, there are not enough answers.

[An earlier version of this article appeared on The American Conservative on August 3 rd ]

Ace , August 8, 2017 at 5:39 am GMT

Foreign-born people should be barred for life from holding any kind of security clearance. I mean in the highly unlikely event I were to become a Chinese citizen (and be 40 years younger), would the Chinese be so stupid as to give me a clearance and allow me to work in a key government office?

Obviously not but forget"obviously" when we're talking about the U.S.A.

Ivy , August 8, 2017 at 5:49 am GMT

Where is the outrage? Where is the coverage? Wolf, Anderson, Jake, Erin, anybody at CNN? Of course, I don't expect them to acknowledge the issue.

exiled off mainstreet , August 8, 2017 at 6:18 am GMT

The Department of Justice needs to do its job looking at the Clintons, the DNC, Wasserman-Schultz, Donna Brazile and others. The stench of corruption is appalling, and the Russia thing looks more like a fraudulent story to keep the pressure off, particularly since the phony dossier which started it was compiled at the behest of a political consultancy which usually works for the same crowd. I think it is about time that Mueller's fishing expedition be closed down and the necessary draining of the swamp be commenced.

The Alarmist , August 8, 2017 at 7:34 am GMT

Occam's razor she schtupped him, and she must have really enjoyed it.

annamaria , August 8, 2017 at 1:24 pm GMT

@Cloak And Dagger It should come as no surprise to anyone that the law is only meant for we ordinary citizens and not for the elite. Those of us who are silently hoping for the indictment of Debbie and Hillary are sure to be sorely disappointed.

There is no justice anymore in these United States whose domestic and foreign policies are controlled by the deep state. Some days can be so bleak... Actually, the whole Awan-US Congress case is about the High Treason. No security clearances. The open access to the classified documents of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (oh the irony!) and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/04/exclusive-house-intelligence-it-staffers-fired-in-computer-security-probe/
There are should be arrests made of those congresspeople who allowed the greatest breach in the national cybersecurity by inviting and financing the non-qualified personnel (fraudulent hiring).
An important question is, who pays Chris Gowen, a very expensive and well-connected lawyer, for the defense of the documented fraudster and possible spy.
That Steven Wasserman, Assistant Attorney for the District of Columbia, the brother of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz oversees the investigation is a scandal of gigantic proportions.
Those making the presstituting peeps about Russiangate should be from now on pummelled with the facts of the Tale of the Brothers Awan.

anonymous , Disclaimer August 8, 2017 at 1:38 pm GMT

This is a staggering story. What a load of incompetence and coverup. This government is a total sieve. Of course those people were spying. Even if they didn't want to spy, for whatever reason, the Pakistani government could surely find ways to 'convince' them to do so. Most of these politicians appear to be so clueless that it's difficult to comprehend. It's just a carnival of taxpayer ripoff in DC.

The Alarmist , August 8, 2017 at 1:48 pm GMT

@Dana Thompson Somebody should write a movie script based on this. It would be better than American Hustle - call it Pakistani Hustle, maybe. The pitch would start with, "It's the Sopranos meet the Simpsons."

Seamus Padraig , August 8, 2017 at 1:56 pm GMT

I for one was appalled to learn that the official who quite likely will oversee the investigation of the Awans is one Steven Wasserman, Assistant Attorney for the District of Columbia, the brother of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

Yup. And guess what? As Assistant DA for DC, Wasserman is also ultimately responsible for investigating the Seth Rich murder 13 months on and still no leads!

When the hell are Trump and Sessions going to get serious about going after these freaks?

F. G. Sanford , August 8, 2017 at 2:37 pm GMT

What if the Awan brothers are "cutouts" for another intelligence agency? What if Seth Rich leaked the emails, and they exposed Hillary Clinton to prosecution? What if the "deep state" panicked because it could no longer control the narrative? What if Comey dragged his feet on a slam-dunk investigation because the "deep state" was sure Clinton would win, and it could all be buried? What if they hadn't had time to consider "Plan B" in time to head off investigation of Clinton Foundation fraud? What if they never expected that Anthony Wiener's sexting would get his computer seized by the NYPD? What if the whole story extends back to the Mueller, Wolfowitz, Clarke and Tenet cabal, and all of their think-tank gurus? What if somebody realizes that the planning stages had to predate the Bush-Cheney administration? What if Russia-gate and Clinton-gate are playing out as two hands in a game of strip poker? What if one side refuses to fold? What if Hillary threatens to file a sworn affidavit? What if Mueller is the historical analogue of John J. McCloy, the anonymous "deep state" Chairman of the Board? What if this is just a plot in the latest episode of war pornography? What if it's called, "Debbie Does Dulles", and its stars include "Many Talented Celebrities"? What are the chances that somebody important goes to jail? I'm guessing the odds are pretty long. I'm betting Hillary has the goods on all of them, and she'll file that affidavit if she has to.

annamaria , August 8, 2017 at 3:22 pm GMT

Killing freedom of speech in America, one google search at a time: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/08/08/google-committed-suppression-free-speech/
"According to reports, Google works hand in hand with the NSA and CIA to expand unconstitutional spying on everyone everywhere and to suppress independent and dissenting thought and expression. For example, on July 31, the World Socialist Web Site reported that "Between April and June, Google completed a major revision of its search engine that sharply curtails public access to Internet web sites that operate independently of the corporate and state-controlled media. Since the implementation of the changes, many left wing, anti-war and progressive web sites have experienced a sharp fall in traffic generated by Google searches." https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/31/goog-j31.html

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-01/wikileaks-reveals-googles-strategic-plan-help-democrats-win-election : "Wikileaks Reveals Google's "Strategic Plan" To Help Democrats Win The Election, Track Voters"

annamaria , August 8, 2017 at 3:36 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig "As Assistant DA for DC, Wasserman is also ultimately responsible for investigating the Seth Rich murder 13 months on and still no leads!"

Amazing. How come that the name "Wasserman" has become spread over the major ongoing DC scandals: The leak of the DNC emails (the pseudo-Russiangate), the greatest breach in the national cybersecurity (Awan affair), and finally, the death of Seth Rich, a DNC employee who went into contact with Wikileaks re the DNC machinations. Looks like American "democracy on the march," Clinton style.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/05/debbie-wasserman-schultzs-brother-steven-wasserman-accused-burying-seth-rich-case/

"The Seth Rich Case: Nucleus of An American Coup Attempt:" http://www.phillip-butler.com/seth-rich-case/

Rurik , August 8, 2017 at 4:46 pm GMT

@annamaria

the greatest breach in the national cybersecurity (Awan affair)

and the Trump Justice Dept. seems to have zero interest in it

I suspect this and other reasons- like the serial leaks from the highest levels of the intelligence agencies are why Trump is becoming openly exasperated with Sessions

I suspect that Sessions knows that too much exposure of back-room dealings of the deepstate (with perhaps the Senate), would be potentially inconvenient.

when Lindsey Graham! came to Jeff Sessions defense, I sort of knew then that Jeff Sessions is a deepstate asset

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/27/lindsey-graham-warns-donald-trump-firing-jeff-sess/

Joe Tedesky , August 8, 2017 at 5:02 pm GMT

@F. G. Sanford What if the Awan brothers are "cutouts" for another intelligence agency? What if Seth Rich leaked the emails, and they exposed Hillary Clinton to prosecution? What if the "deep state" panicked because it could no longer control the narrative? What if Comey dragged his feet on a slam-dunk investigation because the "deep state" was sure Clinton would win, and it could all be buried? What if they hadn't had time to consider "Plan B" in time to head off investigation of Clinton Foundation fraud? What if they never expected that Anthony Wiener's sexting would get his computer seized by the NYPD? What if the whole story extends back to the Mueller, Wolfowitz, Clarke and Tenet cabal, and all of their think-tank gurus? What if somebody realizes that the planning stages had to predate the Bush-Cheney administration? What if Russia-gate and Clinton-gate are playing out as two hands in a game of strip poker? What if one side refuses to fold? What if Hillary threatens to file a sworn affidavit? What if Mueller is the historical analogue of John J. McCloy, the anonymous "deep state" Chairman of the Board? What if this is just a plot in the latest episode of war pornography? What if it's called, "Debbie Does Dulles", and its stars include "Many Talented Celebrities"? What are the chances that somebody important goes to jail? I'm guessing the odds are pretty long. I'm betting Hillary has the goods on all of them, and she'll file that affidavit if she has to. I'm sorry F.G., but what if all the various narratives, which are being supplied to the Seth Rich murder end up only being a way of hiding the truth within plain sight, so as to make it hard to distinguish between the real, and the phony, narratives which have been put in place, as to only confuse us truth seekers? This is how 'conspiracy theories' are made to become conspiracy theories.

Rurik , August 8, 2017 at 5:21 pm GMT

It's possible the Wasserman-Schultz – Awan scandal was raised subsequently by a caller to C Span, but as the above schedule of C Span Washington Journal programming displays, if the American people wanted to in-depth information about the Awans, they'd do better to tune in to RT, where Dr. Phil Giraldi explained the case and labeled it "the scandal of the century"

EdwardM , August 8, 2017 at 5:30 pm GMT

@annamaria "As Assistant DA for DC, Wasserman is also ultimately responsible for investigating the Seth Rich murder 13 months on and still no leads!"

Amazing. How come that the name "Wasserman" has become spread over the major ongoing DC scandals: The leak of the DNC emails (the pseudo-Russiangate), the greatest breach in the national cybersecurity (Awan affair), and finally, the death of Seth Rich, a DNC employee who went into contact with Wikileaks re the DNC machinations. Looks like American "democracy on the march," Clinton style.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/05/debbie-wasserman-schultzs-brother-steven-wasserman-accused-burying-seth-rich-case/
"The Seth Rich Case: Nucleus of An American Coup Attempt:" http://www.phillip-butler.com/seth-rich-case/ Where is Mr. Wasserman's boss, the U.S. Attorney for D.C.? Oh, right, it's an Obama holdover. Why hasn't President Trump put his own person in this critical job? (Apparently he has nominated someone but as usual the Senate is in no hurry to approve him. Nothing would stop DOJ from firing the current guy and placing the Trump nominee in an acting position, just as Obama did with the incumbent.)

This story would be hilarious if it weren't so serious. The quintessential example of foreigners from corrupt societies learning quickly how to work our system. We have to give the Awans credit for milking liberal banks' and Democrats' foreigner- and Muslim-worship (combined with sheer stupidity) to refrain from asking any questions.

MEexpert , August 8, 2017 at 5:35 pm GMT

@Ace Foreign-born people should be barred for life from holding any kind of security clearance. I mean in the highly unlikely event I were to become a Chinese citizen (and be 40 years younger), would the Chinese be so stupid as to give me a clearance and allow me to work in a key government office?

Obviously not but forget"obviously" when we're talking about the U.S.A.

Foreign-born people should be barred for life from holding any kind of security clearance.

Several years ago, I was denied employment in an aerospace company because I was considered a security risk for having relatives abroad. This was done in spite of the fact that I was already working for the same company in another division. In the end, I had the last laugh, because a week later a company employee, a native born white American, was arrested for passing out secret information.

chris , August 8, 2017 at 6:11 pm GMT

@annamaria "As Assistant DA for DC, Wasserman is also ultimately responsible for investigating the Seth Rich murder 13 months on and still no leads!"

Amazing. How come that the name "Wasserman" has become spread over the major ongoing DC scandals: The leak of the DNC emails (the pseudo-Russiangate), the greatest breach in the national cybersecurity (Awan affair), and finally, the death of Seth Rich, a DNC employee who went into contact with Wikileaks re the DNC machinations. Looks like American "democracy on the march," Clinton style.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/05/debbie-wasserman-schultzs-brother-steven-wasserman-accused-burying-seth-rich-case/
"The Seth Rich Case: Nucleus of An American Coup Attempt:" http://www.phillip-butler.com/seth-rich-case/ Maybe it should be called Wassergate.

annamaria , August 8, 2017 at 6:44 pm GMT

@EdwardM Where is Mr. Wasserman's boss, the U.S. Attorney for D.C.? Oh, right, it's an Obama holdover. Why hasn't President Trump put his own person in this critical job? (Apparently he has nominated someone but as usual the Senate is in no hurry to approve him. Nothing would stop DOJ from firing the current guy and placing the Trump nominee in an acting position, just as Obama did with the incumbent.)

This story would be hilarious if it weren't so serious. The quintessential example of foreigners from corrupt societies learning quickly how to work our system. We have to give the Awans credit for milking liberal banks' and Democrats' foreigner- and Muslim-worship (combined with sheer stupidity) to refrain from asking any questions. There is no Muslim-worship among the ziocons at DNC, who got caught in the Awan affair. The Muslim card is a desperate argument for the currently unstoppable process of investigation. Whether Mr. Wasserman or his boss or Clintons' lawyer defending Awan for the undisclosed amount of money, the train is moving and the word Treason is in the air.
The most serious detail of the Awan affair is the violation of the protocol re classified information: The Awan family had no security clearance, there was no documentation of the confirmation of the previous employment and no records for their relevant education/training. Just to reiterate: the family (with a history of fraud and suspicious connections) has an open access to the classified documents of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/04/exclusive-house-intelligence-it-staffers-fired-in-computer-security-probe/
Wasserman-Schultz has been directly involved in the greatest breach of the national cybersecurity. She tried to impede the investigation and she kept the fraudsters on the US-taxpayers-paid payroll up to the day of the arrest of the main culprit. She did that despite being warned by the police. She should be stripped already of her security clearance and arrested for the breach that was done on her watch and with her active help.

annamaria , August 8, 2017 at 6:51 pm GMT

@chris Maybe it should be called Wassergate. Wassergate. Great suggestion.

Ace , August 8, 2017 at 7:23 pm GMT

@MEexpert


Foreign-born people should be barred for life from holding any kind of security clearance.
Several years ago, I was denied employment in an aerospace company because I was considered a security risk for having relatives abroad. This was done in spite of the fact that I was already working for the same company in another division. In the end, I had the last laugh, because a week later a company employee, a native born white American, was arrested for passing out secret information. It's all about minimizing risk. My respect for Sikhs would make me inclined to grant security clearances to them liberally. My overall position, however, is that we have let in far too many foreigners than sane persons would and are stupidly phlegmatic about leaving illegals here to "make a life for themselves" or "make a contribution" (at the expense of native born Americans).

You were entitled to the last laugh indeed. We do not lack for native born white Americans. In fact, they are the source of our fundamental problems.

annamaria , August 8, 2017 at 7:27 pm GMT

The Kagans' clan triumph in Ukraine: http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/08/neo-nazi-commander-running-for.html
"The creator and ex-commander of the Neo- Nazi "Azov" battalion Andrei Biletsky has announced his running for president of Ukraine."
This Biletsky: http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/04/ukrainian-nazi-leader-threatens-new.html
This deserves a special new addition for the Holocaust Museums.

The Alarmist , August 8, 2017 at 8:46 pm GMT

@Biff


n no explanation why she was even allowed to leave since carrying more than $10,000 out of the country without reporting it is a felony.
Not a felony, but a mere civil infraction. Not reporting carrying more than $10k across the border can be either a criminal charge with fines up to $500k and jail time, or a civil violation which often results in all unreported assets being seized and forfeit and possibly with a civil penalty of up to the amount forfeit, or even both criminal and civil. The fact that she was allowed to go on her way with her cash shows an unusual deference to the lady.
Ace , August 8, 2017 at 9:16 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig His boss, no doubt, is also an Obama flunkee. That's entirely possible given Trump's bewildering indifference to personnel matters.

He appears to have been hamstrung at the outset, eschewing both philosophical leadership and staffing up with loyalists. His director of personnel is a bad joke but Trump simply doesn't see it or care. He made a point of saying how he hires good people and lets them run but competent isn't the same thing as loyal or otherwise appropriate

Sowhat , August 8, 2017 at 9:27 pm GMT

@Cloak And Dagger It should come as no surprise to anyone that the law is only meant for we ordinary citizens and not for the elite. Those of us who are silently hoping for the indictment of Debbie and Hillary are sure to be sorely disappointed.

There is no justice anymore in these United States whose domestic and foreign policies are controlled by the deep state. Some days can be so bleak... I agreed but it sure would be nice if Sessions would get her and her brother.

Sowhat , August 8, 2017 at 9:48 pm GMT

@anonymous This is a staggering story. What a load of incompetence and coverup. This government is a total sieve. Of course those people were spying. Even if they didn't want to spy, for whatever reason, the Pakistani government could surely find ways to 'convince' them to do so. Most of these politicians appear to be so clueless that it's difficult to comprehend. It's just a carnival of taxpayer ripoff in DC. It could possibly be a case of intensional incompetence. There are a huge number of people IN Congress that are totally committed to destruction from within. The Trojan Horse has been within the gates for a surprising number of years. Trevor Loudon has an interesting video on Amazon titled The Enemies (inclde the "s") Within. If accurate, it IS intensional incompetence. It may be on Youtube as well.

Pachyderm Pachyderma , August 8, 2017 at 9:50 pm GMT

La (w)hore Pakistan is most likely in bed with her pimp du jour, China and using the Pakis working for the US Congress to secure data to be passed on to their handlers at ISI who in turn, pass it on to Beijing. And let's not forget the Saudis

Philip Giraldi , August 8, 2017 at 9:52 pm GMT

@Sowhat I agreed but it sure would be nice if Sessions would get her...and her brother. I just saw this posted. Don't know if it is completely true but it fits with other information. Devastating.

http://truepundit.com/exclusive-fbi-debbie-wasserman-schultz-pressured-congressional-bank-to-give-illicit-loan-to-imran-awan-and-wife/

RobinG , August 8, 2017 at 9:53 pm GMT

@Joe Tedesky I'm sorry F.G., but what if all the various narratives, which are being supplied to the Seth Rich murder end up only being a way of hiding the truth within plain sight, so as to make it hard to distinguish between the real, and the phony, narratives which have been put in place, as to only confuse us truth seekers? This is how 'conspiracy theories' are made to become conspiracy theories. F.G. said "What if the Awan brothers are "cutouts" for another intelligence agency?" But of course. They're perfect patsies, just like in our most famous "conspiracy theory" dubbed case.

Were the Awan brothers really gathering intelligence for Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)? And was the ISI on secret contract with the CIA?

http://cosmicconvergence.org/?p=20927

AWANGATE: A CIA Black Operation That Used Pakistan's ISI To Do The Dirty Work While MOSSAD's Inside Woman Directs

Eagle Eye , August 8, 2017 at 10:22 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig


I for one was appalled to learn that the official who quite likely will oversee the investigation of the Awans is one Steven Wasserman, Assistant Attorney for the District of Columbia, the brother of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
Yup. And guess what? As Assistant DA for DC, Wasserman is also ultimately responsible for investigating the Seth Rich murder ... 13 months on and still no leads!

When the hell are Trump and Sessions going to get serious about going after these freaks?

As Assistant DA for DC, Wasserman is also ultimately responsible for investigating the Seth Rich murder 13 months on and still no leads!

In a recent broadcast, Michael Savage suddenly savaged what he called "fake news from the right" such as the Seth Rich murder, Pizzagate (which he misrepresented as relating to hookers), etc. The presentation seemed curiously disengaged.

My guess is that Savage and his family were physically threatened.

SolontoCroesus , August 8, 2017 at 11:16 pm GMT

@Sam Shama What evidence prompts your scepticism about the Hezbollah connection? Al-Attar is a known Hezbollah operative with a connection to Awan. Pakistan is next door to Iran which finances Hezbollah. You want all that to be airbrushed away?

What evidence prompts your scepticism about the Hezbollah connection?

Read what was written: LACK of evidence -- in the face of the logic of antipathies -- prompts the skepticism.

Pakistan is next door to Iran which finances Hezbollah. You want all that to be airbrushed away?

Israel shares borders with Lebanon, which is home to Hezbollah; it was at Israel's instigation that Hezbollah came into being.
Does that constitute "evidence" that Israel supports Hezbollah and is also/likewise complicit in Wassergate (h/t Chris @ #35)?
Or do you prefer that Israel's involvement be airbrushed away ?

Alden , August 8, 2017 at 11:59 pm GMT

@Pachyderm Pachyderma La (w)hore Pakistan is most likely in bed with her pimp du jour, China and using the Pakis working for the US Congress to secure data to be passed on to their handlers at ISI who in turn, pass it on to Beijing. And let's not forget the Saudis... I think you are absolutely right that the Pakis passed on information to China and any other country willing to pay for it.

[Aug 08, 2017] According to a source familiar with the matter, McMaster is trying to dismiss anyone involved with a controversial memo arguing that the so-called deep state is engaged in a Maoist-style insurgency against the Trump administration

Notable quotes:
"... "According to a source familiar with the matter, McMaster is trying to dismiss anyone involved with a controversial memo arguing that the so-called "deep state" is engaged in a Maoist-style insurgency against the Trump administration. The author of that memo, NSC staffer Rich Higgins, has already been fired, and at least two other anti-globalist NSC staffers have also been forced out." ..."
Aug 08, 2017 | foreignpolicy.com

Anyone else seen this little beauty from Foreign Policy?

"According to a source familiar with the matter, McMaster is trying to dismiss anyone involved with a controversial memo arguing that the so-called "deep state" is engaged in a Maoist-style insurgency against the Trump administration. The author of that memo, NSC staffer Rich Higgins, has already been fired, and at least two other anti-globalist NSC staffers have also been forced out."

Heh heh heh the trumpeters Vs the corporatists - every oppressive theocracy should be made to play this game; of course the audience is susceptible to table-tennis watchers neck from swivelling to follow the dried dog turd bouncing back n forth, but the popcorn is pretty good.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Aug 6, 2017 10:27:47 PM | 68

[Aug 07, 2017] The Strange Case of Imran Awan by Philip Giraldi

Looks like DC has some competing clans with nefarious goals, that fight each other and enlist foreign powers to further their case. And this power is not only and not so much Russia
Notable quotes:
"... There really isn't a happy ending for the honest whistleblowers in such cases, corporate or governmental, since the dishonest players are not only well-connected, but those in charge have too often also been ethically compromised by indirect financial benefit from the schemes. ..."
"... The press and Congress apparently either unwilling or unable to distinguish smoke from flame are more than happy to avoid anything that makes a case against them. I heard bits and pieces of this story on Chris Plank(?) radio program. It's hard to trust a Congress that avoids its own issue. ..."
"... Certainly all of these issues have weight to US security and Intel concerns, but what is more apparent is that Congress is unwilling to take on their own issues of integrity [and] credibility. All the collusion appears to be among house members. Whether its contractors or lobbyists agitating for war, There's really a problem in Congress about policing themselves. ..."
"... I am beginning to wonder, just how dysfunctional has the congressional body become. More and more it looks like Congress avoiding accountability, whether it's their support for needless sanctions (more political point making than policy) – or the mess of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan ..."
"... In my view, their avoidance is an indication of just how wrong headed or blind the establishment is to their own failings. ..."
"... These Awan characters appear to be incompetent, even stupid. Nonetheless, they were able to hack the US Congress, and the US law enforcement allowed half of them to leave the country and get away scot-free. ..."
"... What does it usually mean when a rich, prominent older woman continues paying a young handsome man for work he is not actually doing? I'm just sayin'. ..."
"... A lot of people "deliberately destroy" their abandoned hard drives. And I recommend anyone do so unless they really trust the government not to manufacture a case against them. ..."
"... Conservatism, at least in theory, also doesn't include idiocy. Decapitating the ruling clique from a bit of land which comprises three factions of inherent hostility bound together by a necessarily brutal minority (Kurds, Sunni, and the Shia majority) was going to do what exactly? ..."
"... Bush appointed Paul Bremer, a desk guy with zero military or political experience, to run the place. Bremer, a bureaucrat, dismissed the Baath military, and prohibited them from having any government jobs, which effectively meant they had no jobs. But of course he did not round up each and every rifle, grenade and drum of ammonium nitrate, that's impossible. ..."
"... Reminds me of the Pagliano Platt River Sub contractor who was indicted after Running a mortgage fraud scheme, fixing loans with clients kids social security numbers. see pdf..fascinating how scammers work ..."
"... If a loan is not repaid..than IRS will gingerly declare it income..and if one owes more than 50k in taxes..one can't leave the country under recent laws enacted..selling all those houses..certainly involved some capital gain..If not Congress..then The IRS should be all over this..like they did Al Capone.. ..."
"... We let foreigners in. For reasons unknown we then let the foreigners work for the government, something that would probably happen in no other country except the US. ..."
"... And of course we're angry at the native-born Americans who complain that they should have had those government jobs that the Democrats gave to the foreigners. ..."
"... Sadly, the Awans' hacking of the US Congress is only a "strange" case insofar as similar cases rarely get this kind of scrutiny. The level of corruption and national security threats involving "foreign contractors" in DC is incredible. ..."
"... I had said it many times before, Russiagate is a diversion. Comey had lined the dots. There is no way that awan could have gotten the IT position without the Mossads approval. Who were the contractors who filled in for the no shows? What is awans educational background; his qualifications? I don't for a second believe the wasserman shultz would allow herself to be blackmailed; most likely the other way around, if blackmail was a factor. It is interesting that he was not fired until after his arrest. Was this to allow him the use of his position to escape the country? This certainly would show collusion with wasserman shultz. Pollard comes to mind. I could be all wrong, but I can't help but wonder. ..."
"... Just a thought, they may very well be competent smart spies, when notes who's left holding the bag. ..."
"... The Awans are almost certainly just a small sample of the kind of corruption likely to come to light now that the Clinton Machine is no longer wealthy or powerful enough to keep it hidden (and to keep mouths shut). So this type of story is bound to be repeated quite a lot over the next few years ..."
"... Also, these employees made $160,000 a year: including a 20 year old whose last job was at McDonalds. They had 12 nice homes in the area -bought through Congressional bank, along with 22 businesses I've found so far. ..."
"... Setting aside the possible financial crimes, blackmail, etc, how can our government claim to be serious about cyber-security when it lets "foreign-born IT experts" use US government computers and systems? It isn't 1995. It's 2017. ..."
"... Can you imagine what smart, competent spies and traitors are getting away with? ..."
"... It doesn't seem likely that Awan would have leaked his employers emails to Wikileaks. It seems far more likely that Awan fingered Seth Rich for the leak, and even seems plausible that Awan may have been involved in the revenge murder of Seth Rich. ..."
"... Several commenters have knocked my math skills re the salaries the Awans received. They assume that all four Awans (actually five – three brothers and two wives) worked all twelve years that the Awans were active on the Hill. They did not. Only Imran worked all 12 years – the others worked less. ..."
"... I would also note to skeptics about this story that I too am not totally convinced about it in every detail but the one element that I find to be both inexplicable and very suggestive of a cover-up is the Awan lawyer Chris Gowen – how does a blue chip Clinton lawyer wind up defending this guy over a false document in a case of bank fraud? He is the one element that screams out that something is very, very wrong here. ..."
"... Phil, How does a blue chip lawyer wind up defending this guy? How did a bankrupt Simpson get a dream team of attorneys to defend him? Why didn't you publish the exact amounts paid to the whole Awan family over the duration? Why aren't corrupt American officials arrested for squandering Billions (with a B) of our hard earned money in Afghanistan, Iraq and a host of other countries? What about the Kushner family selling green cards to the Chinese or having the zoning changed for their properties or Clinton accepting huge sums of money from the Saudis whom she has called the biggest backers of terrorism? ..."
Aug 03, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Fran Macadam, August 3, 2017 at 12:18 am

One of the corporate scams I uncovered as a new IT Director at a Fortune 500 company, was one in which equipment would be ordered for the company and paid for, but then sold to parties outside by the perpetrators. Sometimes those involved were quite high up the corporate food chain. Such schemes would work even more easily in certain government agencies which have even poorer financial reporting and oversight or undisclosed budgets.

There really isn't a happy ending for the honest whistleblowers in such cases, corporate or governmental, since the dishonest players are not only well-connected, but those in charge have too often also been ethically compromised by indirect financial benefit from the schemes.

JRR_Lovecraft, August 3, 2017 at 2:28 am
Hannity has been pushing this story like he thinks it's the smoking gun that will send Hillary Clinton to jail for the rest of her life. It would be supremely ironic if it turns out to be an important link in the Trump-Russia-DNC relationship that he claims is just anti-Trump media fake news. After all, without FNC pushing this story so hard I never would have heard about it.
I don't post often, August 3, 2017 at 3:28 am
So, I am a computer programmer (actually, Applications Developer according to my employer) who has been working in the field for over 20 years who has never worked for the government, but

$4 million over 12 years for 4 people comes to $83,333 a year each.

Supposedly this is "three or four times higher than the norm for government contractor IT specialists performing similar work", which means that that according to the best case scenario for them the average contractor earns $27,777.

Assuming 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year (and the article provides no information on how many hours a year all of them worked, what their specialty is, and how good they are at it, all of which can make an incredible difference in how much they should make), that comes to $13.35 an hour for the average government IT contractor. This is in the highest salary, highest living expenses city in the country to live, and with no benefits as a contractor, having to pay their own health, dental, vision and no 401K.

Don't get me wrong. It sounds like this family was into some bad stuff, this has been known for a long time by everyone, and everyone but DWS got clear of them a long time ago.

As a generally pretty liberal person (who was quite conservative until GWB's push to war in Iraq made me re-evaluate all of my political beliefs and realize that all of the things I had taken in theory as facts actually worked out in reality as much less than fact), I consider DWS to be at best a wart on the butt of the democratic party.

If these numbers are correct, then it completely makes sense. IT contractors who should be making upwards of $150 an hour working for $40 an hour? Of course they would have some nefarious motivation to do so.

Hardfloor, August 3, 2017 at 6:04 am
The Awans were not contractors, they were employees if the House of Representatives. They didn't "bill" anyone for $4 million dollars. But each of them were paid roughly $160k per year -- a nice salary, but solidly lower middle class in DC. And the fraud charge IS minor. So you got a HELOC opened against a house you owned but didn't live in full time? Happens a lot. Should probably happen more. Everything else is just a riff on the fact that he is a Muslim who knows muslims, some of whom live in Pakistan. I can't believe I agree with Debbie Wasserman Schutz.
EliteCommInc., August 3, 2017 at 7:19 am
As suspected the fire is not were the smoke is. I suspect the "collusion story" is one of misdirection.

The press and Congress apparently either unwilling or unable to distinguish smoke from flame are more than happy to avoid anything that makes a case against them. I heard bits and pieces of this story on Chris Plank(?) radio program. It's hard to trust a Congress that avoids its own issue.

The big Republican stories;

1. Congressman Flake's call to reign in the executive. All of the issues that concern the everyday lives of US citizens and s it turns out one of them is managing the WH you have got to be kidding. Apparently, members of Congress and others have been hoodwinked by what appears be a grifting operation that may include spying and the big news story is Congressional republicans reigning the executive. Maybe they should look at reigning in themselves. It's been seven years of claims to repeal the healthcare legislation !

2. Having spent millions of dollars investigating actual collusion to undermine the US – not an iota of evidence.

3. There's a new proposal coming to on immigration. RAISE proposal which on its face sounds nice, but has that curious taste of elitism about it. I find this business of the best and the brightest foreigner immigration idea unhelpful to the skilled workers of US citizens. Who also get undermined by skilled best and brightest foreign labor.

4. The two largest providers of drugs making headlines opioids, and cocaine continue to dominate the news cycle: China and Mexico.

Certainly all of these issues have weight to US security and Intel concerns, but what is more apparent is that Congress is unwilling to take on their own issues of integrity [and] credibility. All the collusion appears to be among house members. Whether its contractors or lobbyists agitating for war, There's really a problem in Congress about policing themselves.

I remember when it looked the CIA had turned the tables on members of congress and how they had conniption fits. I am beginning to wonder, just how dysfunctional has the congressional body become. More and more it looks like Congress avoiding accountability, whether it's their support for needless sanctions (more political point making than policy) – or the mess of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan

In my view, their avoidance is an indication of just how wrong headed or blind the establishment is to their own failings.

connecticut farmer, August 3, 2017 at 9:01 am
It never ceases to amaze how often political scandals either directly or indirectly seem to involve The Clintons in some fashion. Now this. Arkansas journalist Paul Greenberg of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette had those two pegged from the very beginning.
Donald, August 3, 2017 at 10:26 am
Interesting, but the last few sentences are wildly speculative even by the standards governing Russiagate stories.
Where Was Law Enforcement?, August 3, 2017 at 11:40 am
"One might well ask how foreign-born IT specialists are selected and vetted prior to being significantly overpaid and allowed to work on computers in congressional offices. "

Indeed. In fact, one should ask why "foreign-born IT specialists" are allowed to work for our government. There are plenty of native-born Americans with the expertise to do this sort of work. There are plenty of native born Americans who NEED this work. And the native-born Americans don't bring all this weird and suspicious baggage with them.

These Awan characters appear to be incompetent, even stupid. Nonetheless, they were able to hack the US Congress, and the US law enforcement allowed half of them to leave the country and get away scot-free.

Can you imagine what smart, competent spies and traitors are getting away with?

Michelle, August 3, 2017 at 2:23 pm
In fact, one should ask why "foreign-born IT specialists" are allowed to work for our government.

I know at least two foreign-born IT specialists who work for the federal government. One is Russian. On Pakastani. Both are citizens. My husband, also Russian-born, worked in the IT industry for 20-plus years. Well over half of his colleagues were foreign-born. It's not because they were paid less so that they were undermining American-born programmers. If the feds do proper security clearances, where a legal immigrant who has been granted citizenship shouldn't matter.

Libertarian, August 3, 2017 at 2:58 pm
They hire foreign born Muslims because when shib hits the fan, they have the race card to play on the bleeding hearts liberals with massive white guilt issues.

"Those poor Pakistanis with ties to hezbollah -- No one ever gives them a chance! But we fine liberals do! We won't judge you unless your white and christian!"

Also, it's much easier for corrupt officials to work with corrupt contractors. Everyone is already on the same page, no graft necessary.

Allen, August 3, 2017 at 5:21 pm
What does it usually mean when a rich, prominent older woman continues paying a young handsome man for work he is not actually doing? I'm just sayin'.
Moone Boy, August 3, 2017 at 5:55 pm
Cars International A? This is less "Burn After Reading" and more "Fargo". (At least the Coen Brothers were being deliberately absurd with the National Association of Matrimonial Attorneys Nationwide, of "Intolerable Cruelty")
David Skerry, August 3, 2017 at 6:08 pm
Dear Phil: Have always had respect and admiration for your articles. But this one is on thin ice. I hope u have not joined the ranks of the "conspiracy theorists" and get back to matters u really know about.
Josef Schwammberger, August 3, 2017 at 7:42 pm
Hezbollah can liberate both Lebanon and the US
TR, August 3, 2017 at 8:48 pm
A lot of people "deliberately destroy" their abandoned hard drives. And I recommend anyone do so unless they really trust the government not to manufacture a case against them.

Al-Attar's insurance fraud, at least by Miami standards, is pretty much nickels and dimes and at at least didn't include bilking Medicare.

So far (famous last words) this doesn't sound like much more than the usual malfeasance described by Fran M. above. I could give a few examples from my career in academia. And local governments are rife such.

DrivingBy, August 3, 2017 at 11:08 pm

"As a generally pretty liberal person (who was quite conservative until GWB's push to war in Iraq made me re-evaluate all of my political beliefs"

Many do not consider GWB to be a conservative. He did run with culture-wars conservative branding, but that's after decades of heavy drinking and perhaps other party drugs. More significantly, his disastrous Iraq blunder was arguably Wilsonian, not conservative.

Conservatism includes the notion that human nature is not naturally good and that placing a society in a paint shaker and carefully (or not carefully, in this case) pouring out the newly 'improved' contents does not result in a tasty delight.

Conservatism, at least in theory, also doesn't include idiocy. Decapitating the ruling clique from a bit of land which comprises three factions of inherent hostility bound together by a necessarily brutal minority (Kurds, Sunni, and the Shia majority) was going to do what exactly?

Bush appointed Paul Bremer, a desk guy with zero military or political experience, to run the place. Bremer, a bureaucrat, dismissed the Baath military, and prohibited them from having any government jobs, which effectively meant they had no jobs. But of course he did not round up each and every rifle, grenade and drum of ammonium nitrate, that's impossible.

So now there's a professional, unemployed and bitter military who are members of a hated minority. I ain't even a pee-aych-dee and I know that much. Seems like Bush and the leftover 'smart people' he hired knew even less.

PeterG, August 3, 2017 at 11:45 pm
Four people assumed full-time over twelve years is 48 person-years. $4 million/48 is about $83,000/person-year. Might be a little high, but absolutely, certainly not 3-4 times the norm for a government contractor. Philip, you started off on the wrong foot.
Manny, August 4, 2017 at 5:27 am
Great Article!
Reminds me of the Pagliano Platt River Sub contractor who was indicted after Running a mortgage fraud scheme, fixing loans with clients kids social security numbers. see pdf..fascinating how scammers work

http://freebeacon.com/politics/clintons-email-server-firm-scrubs-data-disposal-references-from-website/
http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/YAindictment.pdf

The connection to companies getting cars then shipping them out..to perhaps bogus buyers..or selling to folks that don't have proper traceable Ids is therefore not a an improbable stretch. The same rings can be used as conduits for drugs and weapons.

That the spouse left with 12k 2k above legal limit. indicates prior approval. and for this to be happening over such a long period of time under the noses of 17 intelligence agencies for 13 years.. lets say to be nice 5 years.. is beyond the pale.

If a loan is not repaid..than IRS will gingerly declare it income..and if one owes more than 50k in taxes..one can't leave the country under recent laws enacted..selling all those houses..certainly involved some capital gain..If not Congress..then The IRS should be all over this..like they did Al Capone..

How Did It Happen?, August 4, 2017 at 10:54 am
We let foreigners in. For reasons unknown we then let the foreigners work for the government, something that would probably happen in no other country except the US. Still later, we are shocked and surprised that the the foreigners we let in got jobs inside our government, and we're shocked and surprised that they turn out to be working for foreign countries, terror groups, organized crime, whatever.

And of course we're angry at the native-born Americans who complain that they should have had those government jobs that the Democrats gave to the foreigners.

Can anybody explain to me why it isn't against the law (with very rare exceptions) for foreigners or foreign-born to have government jobs?

Not So Strange Fruit, August 4, 2017 at 2:01 pm
Sadly, the Awans' hacking of the US Congress is only a "strange" case insofar as similar cases rarely get this kind of scrutiny. The level of corruption and national security threats involving "foreign contractors" in DC is incredible.
Granola Bob, August 4, 2017 at 2:24 pm
"carrying more than $10,000 out of the country without reporting it is a felony."
this is not true.

The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) mainly obligates banks (not citizens) to report transactions of more than $10,000. There are no laws preventing citizens from having cash or flying with cash. So, you got this wrong. How much of the rest of the article is wrong?

Boris M Garsky, August 4, 2017 at 3:09 pm
I had said it many times before, Russiagate is a diversion. Comey had lined the dots. There is no way that awan could have gotten the IT position without the Mossads approval. Who were the contractors who filled in for the no shows? What is awans educational background; his qualifications? I don't for a second believe the wasserman shultz would allow herself to be blackmailed; most likely the other way around, if blackmail was a factor. It is interesting that he was not fired until after his arrest. Was this to allow him the use of his position to escape the country? This certainly would show collusion with wasserman shultz. Pollard comes to mind. I could be all wrong, but I can't help but wonder.
JRP, August 4, 2017 at 7:02 pm
Its just the tip of the iceberg
EliteCommInc., August 4, 2017 at 7:37 pm
"Can you imagine what smart, competent spies and traitors are getting away with?"

Just a thought, they may very well be competent smart spies, when notes who's left holding the bag.

When The Levee Breaks, August 5, 2017 at 12:56 pm
Like a lot of other people in DC, the Awans were expecting a very big Pay Day after a Hillary victory.

Then it didn't happen. The "sure thing" – Hillary's inevitable win over Trump – didn't happen. A lot of commitments of the "just wait until after the election" kind suddenly couldn't be fulfilled, and crooks like the Awans who were expecting great things are suddenly looking at bankruptcy and "powerful friends" who are no longer powerful. Debtors close in. Maybe foreign intelligence agents start squeezing them. The Awans start to realize that maybe all that Congressional data they were given access to might be worth real money, maybe a straight sale to a foreign government, maybe blackmailing individual Congressmen, whatever works.

The Awans are almost certainly just a small sample of the kind of corruption likely to come to light now that the Clinton Machine is no longer wealthy or powerful enough to keep it hidden (and to keep mouths shut). So this type of story is bound to be repeated quite a lot over the next few years.

abinico warez, August 5, 2017 at 6:44 pm
Nothing strange here – sounds like business as usual.
Susan Huffman, August 6, 2017 at 12:24 pm
Great article. Nicely done! Please continue to follow this.

Also, these employees made $160,000 a year: including a 20 year old whose last job was at McDonalds. They had 12 nice homes in the area -bought through Congressional bank, along with 22 businesses I've found so far.

Mudd PhD, August 6, 2017 at 3:08 pm
@WhereWasLawEnforcement? In fact, one should ask why "foreign-born IT specialists" are allowed to work for our government. There are plenty of native-born Americans with the expertise to do this sort of work. There are plenty of native born Americans who NEED this work. And the native-born Americans don't bring all this weird and suspicious baggage with them.

But Democratic leaders like Wasserman-Schultz or Chuck Schumer don't like or trust native-born Americans. The Democratic leadership wants to replace native-born American workers with cheaper, more obedient foreign labor. That swells the Democratic vote and keeps Wall Street donations flowing to Democrats.

Too many politicians are hiring Pakistanis, Indians, Israelis, Chinese, and Eastern Europeans, many of them hiding behind so-called "dual citizenship". They're stealing jobs from Americans and making it easy for foreign governments and foreign criminals to hack our government systems.

Setting aside the possible financial crimes, blackmail, etc, how can our government claim to be serious about cyber-security when it lets "foreign-born IT experts" use US government computers and systems? It isn't 1995. It's 2017. We know how these foreign spies and criminals operate. How is it possible that anyone with a foreign background is permitted anywhere near a US government computer?

Hawkins CT, August 6, 2017 at 9:16 pm
Unfortunately it isn't a "strange" case.

Stories like this have become all too familiar. People with names that sound like they come from almost anywhere except America involved in some damn mess with some corrupt damn Washington politicians.

IT_Mike, August 6, 2017 at 9:26 pm
This is an interesting story, but right now it still reads a bit like a conspiracy theory: too much circumstantial evidence and inferences regarding what is undoubtedly suspicious behaviour. I hope you continue to report on it as it progresses though.

A few other points.

  • – $4 million dollars for four specialist IT contactors over a 12 year period actually doesn't work out to be a huge amount: just over $80,000 dollars per year, per person. That's a real bargain for a good IT contractor.
  • – "hard drives that appeared to have been deliberately destroyed". Not unheard of amongst the cyber security conscious.
  • – Lastly "the incriminating Hillary Clinton emails". Except they weren't incriminating were they? Or at least according to the FBI not sufficiently so to press charges. We could discuss the potentially incriminating nature of the deleted emails, but then we're back to evidence-less conspiracy based on inferences from suspicious behaviour.
EngineerScotty, August 6, 2017 at 10:13 pm
Can you imagine what smart, competent spies and traitors are getting away with?

Winning the election?

Tom, August 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm
It doesn't seem likely that Awan would have leaked his employers emails to Wikileaks. It seems far more likely that Awan fingered Seth Rich for the leak, and even seems plausible that Awan may have been involved in the revenge murder of Seth Rich.
DRK, August 7, 2017 at 10:19 am
But Democratic leaders like Wasserman-Schultz or Chuck Schumer don't like or trust native-born Americans. The Democratic leadership wants to replace native-born American workers with cheaper, more obedient foreign labor.

So kinda like Trump, then, who employs mostly foreigners brought over on H2B visas to staff Mar-A-Lago. His adminustration expanded the H1B program by 15,000 slots this year, and Trump wanted 76 of them for his resort.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/20/16003254/trump-h2b-visa-program

Phil Giraldi, August 7, 2017 at 12:28 pm

Several commenters have knocked my math skills re the salaries the Awans received. They assume that all four Awans (actually five – three brothers and two wives) worked all twelve years that the Awans were active on the Hill. They did not. Only Imran worked all 12 years – the others worked less. The publicly available salary records for all the Awans reveal that they earned a total of $4 million paid at the senior end of the scale for employees at ca. $160,000 per year. Several of the links I provided break down the income in more detail.

I would also note to skeptics about this story that I too am not totally convinced about it in every detail but the one element that I find to be both inexplicable and very suggestive of a cover-up is the Awan lawyer Chris Gowen – how does a blue chip Clinton lawyer wind up defending this guy over a false document in a case of bank fraud? He is the one element that screams out that something is very, very wrong here.

fitemoo, August 8, 2017 at 1:31 am
Phil, How does a blue chip lawyer wind up defending this guy? How did a bankrupt Simpson get a dream team of attorneys to defend him? Why didn't you publish the exact amounts paid to the whole Awan family over the duration?

Why aren't corrupt American officials arrested for squandering Billions (with a B) of our hard earned money in Afghanistan, Iraq and a host of other countries?

What about the Kushner family selling green cards to the Chinese or having the zoning changed for their properties or Clinton accepting huge sums of money from the Saudis whom she has called the biggest backers of terrorism?

[Aug 07, 2017] Nekrasov film about Magnitsky and Browder

Aug 07, 2017 | www.unz.com

Corvinus > , August 4, 2017 at 12:49 pm GMT

@geokat62


Which, in the end, is irrelevant to his testimony. Nice try.
I beg to differ. Ever heard of the expression: "actions speak louder than words"?

Why would someone who is purportedly telling the truth run away from someone who is trying to serve him a subpoena to appear in court? Or, as Giraldi put it:

"In one case he can be seen on YouTube running away from a server, somewhat unusual behavior if he has nothing to hide." "Why would someone who is purportedly telling the truth run away from someone who is trying to serve him a subpoena to appear in court?"

You probably will be asking that question to members of Trump's team in the coming months.

Regardless, as I stated earlier, Browder undoubtedly tried to make money through questionable, or even illegal means. And in the end, his testimony was unwavering.

"In one case he can be seen on YouTube running away from a server, somewhat unusual behavior if he has nothing to hide."

It is other than unusual for people who are guilty of something to avoid potential negative consequences, whether it be a five-year-old boy who took some cookies when he wasn't suppose to or whether it be an older man who was engaged in fraudulent activities.

He had little to hide once he was secured by the legal system and compelled to testify. Again, his testimony was unwavering.

Don Bass > , August 4, 2017 at 6:55 pm GMT

First four words of the article: "Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer" . And so the article begins with an egregious error. As fellow Unz contributor Israel Shamir states. Magnitsky was a tax accountant With a talent for tax minimisation and tax avoidance schemes Only his after his death did he become a Russian "lawyer" a promotion or career allocation by Browder.

It is worth noting that while in prison Magnitsky stated he feared for his life from Browder, who indeed does seem to have benefitted from Sergei's demise. Language again masks and misdirects the truth.

geokat62 > , August 5, 2017 at 12:47 am GMT

@Corvinus

He had little to hide once he was secured by the legal system and compelled to testify.

Which legal system are you referring to? Not the Senate Judiciary Hearing, I hope? If so, you must have been impressed by the grilling to which Bill Browder, the witness, was exposed. He looked like he was about to melt sitting in the hot seat for over an hour and a half. The cross-examining was relentless.

Again, his testimony was unwavering.

It was unwavering because there was no one their to contradict his statements. Which member of the Judiciary committee would you say posed the most difficult questions to Bill Browder? That was no proceeding of the legal system, it was a Putin hate fest, joined in by every single member of the committee.

The irony of the subject matter before the committee could not have been any greater. Bill Browder filing a compliant under FARA that representatives of the Russian government were trying to influence US gov't policy by attempting to lift the Magnitsky sanctions.

For those who haven't been drinking the Zionist kool-aid, it is incredible to witness a hearing investigating interference by a foreign government (in this case Russia), while the whole political system is beholden to the Zionist Lobby and no one is questioning why they are not required to register under FARA. You have to be totally politically ignorant not to see the incredible irony in that. Could you even imagine these illustrious members of the Judicial Committee putting pointed questions to a witness of The Lobby seeking to expose it to the light of day. Hell will freeze over before any of us witness a day like that.

MarkinLA > , August 5, 2017 at 1:07 am GMT

@Corvinus The NYAG is looking into human sex trafficking and money laundering against Trump Model Management.

Seriously, Trump wanting to create a modeling agency of the likes of Elite and Wilhelmina is supposed to be a front for prostitution and call girls who are sex slaves? Give Trump some credit, high end call girls are anything but sex slaves. Sex slaves usually come from places Trump would never even visit.

What is your definition of "real proof"?

Well it certainly isn't the testimony of some highly suspect scumbag like Browder.

Tony > , August 5, 2017 at 1:42 am GMT

@Rehmat Hey rehmat you still around. Figured you'd be deported already. Trump got his eye on you boy.

geokat62 > , August 5, 2017 at 2:12 am GMT

The purpose was to find facts. There was a specific purpose in mind.

The purpose was not to find facts. It was to vilify Putin as the next Hilter.

It's not about Jews, it's about specific Russians and their relationship with Trump.

You are so clueless, it isn't funny. The Lobby has a stranglehold over the American political system and you're obsessed with what those dastardly Ruskies are up to.

Just keep watching the Lugenpresse of Weimerica and I'm sure you'll be able to connect the dots if not this millennium, then the next.

Focus on the substance. You are emphasizing peripherals.

Look who's talking!

MarkinLA > , August 5, 2017 at 2:28 am GMT

@Corvinus Nobody's testimony is real proof of anything. What does he have to back up his testimony? Nothing but his "sacred honor".

Trump has been all over the world, especially Eastern Europe. Allegedly, underage sex slaves were procured there through Trump Modeling.

Imagine, modeling agencies going where the prettiest girls in the world are. This is obviously proof of a crime. Trump like any big agency has people scouting for him. Trump doesn't see them in person until they back to NYC.

It is amazing that you are so willing to believe such drivel without any proof.

ussr andy > , August 5, 2017 at 4:25 am GMT

@Boris N

But the real problem is the Russian government do not want good for Russians as well.

I think the whole Crimea business though showed that Putin has some geopolitical vision. He didn't need any of the stuff that followed. So he can't be purely a comprador and a time-server.

And I don't see how the Russian government is colonial and to whom (except in the sense that elites tax farming a working population, i.e. the whole system of wage labor, is colonial.) Putin does seem to try to preserve what little has been left of the USSR, basic research, defense, which IMO is about as anti-colonial and close to "wanting good for the people" as it gets.

ussr andy > , August 5, 2017 at 4:46 am GMT

@Boris N you know, there are people who say the 1979 Revolution was in essense a bourgeois revolution under an Islamic sauce (or anesthetic) and the conflicts between the West and Iran should be regarded as an internecine conflict between various brands of pro-Western (and ultimately, anti-Persian people) colonialists.

hence why it's hard for me to see this "liberalism sucks but so does Putin" opinion and claims of complete continuity between Yeltsin and Putin as anything but concern trolling.

anonymous > , Disclaimer August 5, 2017 at 4:27 pm GMT

@rod1963 Just a small example of how the christian (their boast) west has systematically looted the world, for God only knows how long. Is it any wonder that they have built such elaborate cities and succeeded in so many fields?

Immense success through ill gotten wealth, by the most immoral people, with the best masks.

anonymous > , Disclaimer August 5, 2017 at 5:10 pm GMT

@Sebastian Puettmann "Your enemies are not wealthy Jews who see investments opportunities first."

You sir, must be one those who was indeed "born yesterday." ;D

Alfred > , August 6, 2017 at 4:42 am GMT

"Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer" Sorry. He was an accountant. He never studied law. He is not a qualified lawyer in Russia or anywhere else. Please stop repeating this piece of fiction. His speciality was tax-avoidance.

The cop who was accused of mistreating him started a libel case in London over this matter. The English judge decided that since this Russian policeman had no reputation to protect in the UK, the case cannot proceed.

geokat62 > , August 6, 2017 at 10:10 am GMT

@Alfred

Sorry. He was an accountant. He never studied law. He is not a qualified lawyer in Russia or anywhere else. Please stop repeating this piece of fiction. His speciality was tax-avoidance.

But Browder "solemnly, sincerely and truly affirmed" that he was his lawyer, as part of his compelling and unwavering testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, right Corvy?

geokat62 > , August 6, 2017 at 10:58 am GMT

@Corvinus

Yes, those Jews are everywhere. They are even hiding under your bed. Boo!

Under my bed? Try at the top of this page.

Again, in the coming months, we will find out.

Months? You've got to be joking. This will be dragged out until next year's mid-terms at least, if not the 2020 election. Corvy, sorry to disappoint you, but there is no there, there.

If you'd paid closer attention, you would know this. Why aren't you familiar with this blockbuster news story:

Intel Vets Challenge 'Russia Hack' Evidence
July 24, 2017

In a memo to President Trump, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers, including NSA specialists, cite new forensic studies to challenge the claim of the key Jan. 6 "assessment" that Russia "hacked" Democratic emails last year.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Was the "Russian Hack" an Inside Job?

Executive Summary

Forensic studies of "Russian hacking" into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

After examining metadata from the "Guccifer 2.0" July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that "telltale signs" implicating Russia were then inserted.

Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying and doctoring were performed on the East coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies [see here and here].

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/

Pretty interesting stuff, hey Corvy. Don't you find it rather peculiar that the "mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies"?

Why would that be, Corvy? Any hypotheses?

geokat62 > , August 6, 2017 at 4:14 pm GMT

and in part because editors deem this story as other than important at this time.

Kind'a like the story that broke in the alternative media a few years back about Snowden's disclosure that the NSA had contracted out spying on Americans to their Israeli counterpart and how the editor of the NYT (the paper of [false] record) refused to cover it? Something along those lines?

Here's a previous comment of mine:

And we only found out about this secret MOU because Edward Snowden was courageous enough to disclose it. You would think that this bombshell of a story would be reported on the front page of the NYT, the so-called newspaper of record, right? Here's what Margaret Sullivan of the NYT wrote shortly after the disclosure:

After no mention was made in The Times of the article, I asked the managing editor, Dean Baquet, about it on Monday morning.

"I didn't think it was a significant or surprising story," he said. "I think the more energy we put into chasing the small ones , the less time we have to break our own. Not to mention cover the turmoil in Syria."

So, I asked him, by e-mail, was this essentially a question of reporting resources? After all, The Times could have published an article written by a wire service, like Reuters or The Associated Press.

"I'd say resources and news judgment," he responded.

In a world with many news outlets, he said: "We can spend all our time matching stories, and not actually covering the news. This one was modest and didn't feel worth taking someone off greater enterprise. "

http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/guardian-story-on-israel-and-n-s-a-is-not-surprising-enough-to-cover/?_r=0

Corvy, you keep waiting for the Lugenpresse of Weimerica (LOW) to report the truth. The irony is the Russian people came to realize their newspapers were telling them lies. I wonder how long it will take the average American to reach the same conclusion? Judging by a few of the commenters here, it may never happen.

Henry's Cat > , August 6, 2017 at 7:03 pm GMT

The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes," produced by Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov. The documentary had been blocked in Europe through lawsuits filed by some of the parties linked to the prevailing narrative..

Is this film commercially available anywhere? If not, why isn't it on YouTube, or any other video-sharing site outside the purview of European courts?

Perhaps Mr. Giraldi could explain more about Browder's involvement in the film, and his reaction when Nekrasov began to go off script. Did he seek to address Nekrasov's concerns? Did he try and scupper the release of the film? Was the film privately financed?

One really can't begin to make sense of things without a lot more knowledge of said affairs.

Philip Giraldi > , August 6, 2017 at 8:54 pm GMT

@Henry's Cat Henry – Bob Parry goes into the film much more deeply that I did. His article will likely answer all your questions: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/02/a-blacklisted-film-and-the-new-cold-war/ . I will have a new article on the story here at Unz on Tuesday. As far as I can tell, the film is not available anywhere due to lawsuits filed by Browder.

Henry's Cat > , August 6, 2017 at 10:15 pm GMT

@Philip Giraldi Mr. Giraldi, you wrote:

A number of Congressmen and staffers were invited to the showing of the Nekrasov documentary at the Newseum but it is not clear if any of them actually bothered to attend, demonstrating once again how America's legislature operates inside a bubble of willful ignorance of its own making. Nor was the event reported in the local "newspaper of record" the Washington Post, which has been consistently hostile to Russia on its editorial and news pages.

But the Parry piece you linked to says different: After the Newseum presentation, a Washington Post editorial branded Nekrasov's documentary Russian "agit-prop" and sought to discredit Nekrasov without addressing his many documented examples of Browder's misrepresenting both big and small facts in the case. I trust you won't make a distinction between reportage and an editorial.

Your reference to Browder being subpoenaed with regard to "allegations connected to the Magnitsky fraud that are making their way through American courts" require more substance. Perhaps you'll address that on Tuesday.

As for the availability of the film, how did you get to see it? Parry says it's hiding on Vimeo.

Philip Giraldi > , August 6, 2017 at 10:34 pm GMT

@Henry's Cat Mr. Giraldi, you wrote:

A number of Congressmen and staffers were invited to the showing of the Nekrasov documentary at the Newseum but it is not clear if any of them actually bothered to attend, demonstrating once again how America's legislature operates inside a bubble of willful ignorance of its own making. Nor was the event reported in the local "newspaper of record" the Washington Post, which has been consistently hostile to Russia on its editorial and news pages.
But the Parry piece you linked to says different: After the Newseum presentation, a Washington Post editorial branded Nekrasov's documentary Russian "agit-prop" and sought to discredit Nekrasov without addressing his many documented examples of Browder's misrepresenting both big and small facts in the case. I trust you won't make a distinction between reportage and an editorial.

Your reference to Browder being subpoenaed with regard to "allegations connected to the Magnitsky fraud that are making their way through American courts" require more substance. Perhaps you'll address that on Tuesday.

As for the availability of the film, how did you get to see it? Parry says it's hiding on Vimeo. The Washington Post did not announce it before the fact-after the fact is irrelevant since they only chose to attack it. I saw the viewing at Newseum.

[Aug 07, 2017] Neocons Leverage Trump-Hate for More Wars

Notable quotes:
"... These arch-neocons, Krauthammer (left), and Kristol are still omni-present as talking heads. After all the war, death and suffering in the Middle East that they have cheered on, and all the aggression against Russia they have peddled, why are their views still pushed by the networks onto Americans? Why does Tucker Carlson have widely despised Krauthammer on all the time? (caption is from RI, not the author) ..."
"... It was in that time frame that NED's neocon President Carl Gershman identified Ukraine as the "biggest prize" and an important step toward the even bigger prize of removing Putin in Russia. The Neo-Con's greatest fear - the Return of the Czar ..."
"... As part of this propaganda process, the jihadists' P.R. adjunct, known as the White Helmets , phoned in anti-government atrocity stories to eager and credulous Western journalists who didn't dare visit the Al Qaeda-controlled zones for fear of being beheaded. ..."
"... , "Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press." But all these successes in the neocons' "perception management" operations pale when compared to what the neocons have accomplished since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton last November. Fueled by the shock and disgust over the egotistical self-proclaimed pussy-grabber ascending to the highest office in the land, many Americans looked for both an excuse for explaining the outcome and a strategy for removing Trump as quickly as possible. The answer to both concerns became: blame Russia. The evidence that Russia had "hacked our democracy" was very thin – some private outfit called Crowdstrike found Cyrillic lettering and a reference to the founder of the Soviet KGB in some of the metadata – but that "incriminating evidence" contradicted Crowdstrike's own notion of a crack Russian hacking operation that was almost impossible to trace. ..."
"... According to Clapper's later congressional testimony, the analysts for this job were "hand-picked" from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and assigned to produce an "assessment" before Obama left office. Their Jan. 6 report was remarkable in its lack of evidence and the analysts themselves admitted that it fell far short of establishing anything as fact. It amounted to a continuation of the "trust us" approach that had dominated the anti-Russia themes for years. ..."
"... "When all right-thinking people in the nation's capital seem to agree on something – as has been the case recently with legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia – that may be a warning that the debate has veered into an unthinking herd mentality," Ignatius wrote as he questioned the wisdom of overusing sanctions and tying the President's hands on when to remove sanctions. ..."
"... But Washington neocons always start with a leg up because of their easy access to the editorial pages of The New York Times and Washington Post as well as their speed-dial relationships with producers at CNN and other cable outlets. ..."
"... Yet, the neocons have achieved perhaps their greatest success by merging Cold War Russo-phobia with the Trump Derangement Syndrome to enlist liberals and even progressives into the neocon drive for more "regime change" wars. ..."
"... And, Putin, who is actually one of the more pro-Western leaders in Russia, faces attacks from his own hardliners who view him as naďve in thinking that Russia would ever be accepted by the West. ..."
Aug 07, 2017 | russia-insider.com
Neocons Leverage Trump-Hate for More Wars

The enactment of new sanctions against Russia and Iran – with the support of nearly all Democrats and Republicans in Congress – shows how the warmongering neocons again have come out on top Robert Parry 31

These arch-neocons, Krauthammer (left), and Kristol are still omni-present as talking heads. After all the war, death and suffering in the Middle East that they have cheered on, and all the aggression against Russia they have peddled, why are their views still pushed by the networks onto Americans? Why does Tucker Carlson have widely despised Krauthammer on all the time? (caption is from RI, not the author)


The enactment of new sanctions against Russia and Iran – with the support of nearly all Democrats and Republicans in Congress – shows how the warmongering neocons again have come out on top. A savvy Washington observer once told me that the political reality about the neoconservatives is that they alone couldn't win you a single precinct in the United States. But both Republicans and Democrats still line up to gain neocon support or at least neocon acceptance.

Part of the reason for this paradox is the degree of dominance that the neoconservatives have established in the national news media – as op-ed writers and TV commentators – and the neocon ties to the Israel Lobby that is famous for showering contributions on favored politicians and on the opponents of those not favored.

big-time foreign policy players in the Reagan administration , they also have demonstrated extraordinary resilience, receiving a steady flow of money often through U.S. government-funded grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and through donations from military contractors to hawkish neocon think tanks .

But neocons' most astonishing success over the past year may have been how they have pulled liberals and even some progressives into the neocon strategies for war and more war, largely by exploiting the Left's disgust with President Trump.

People who would normally favor international cooperation toward peaceful resolution of conflicts have joined the neocons in ratcheting up global tensions and making progress toward peace far more difficult.

The provocative "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act," which imposes sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea while tying President Trump's hands in removing those penalties, passed the Congress without a single Democrat voting no.

The only dissenting votes came from three Republican House members – Justin Amash of Michigan, Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky – and from Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Senate.

In other words, every Democrat present for the vote adopted the neocon position of escalating tensions with Russia and Iran. The new sanctions appear to close off hopes for a détente with Russia and may torpedo the nuclear agreement with Iran, which would put the bomb-bomb-bomb option back on the table just where the neocons want it.

The Putin Obstacle

As for Russia, the neocons have viewed President Vladimir Putin as a major obstacle to their plans at least since 2013 when he helped President Obama come up with a compromise with Syria that averted a U.S. military strike over dubious claims that the Syrian military was responsible for a sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.

Subsequent evidence indicated that the sarin attack most likely was a provocation by Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate to trick the U.S. military into entering the war on Al Qaeda's side.

While you might wonder why the U.S. government would even think about taking actions that would benefit Al Qaeda, which lured the U.S. into this Mideast quagmire in the first place by attacking on 9/11, the answer is that Israel and the neocons – along with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-governed states – favored an Al Qaeda victory if that was what was needed to shatter the so-called "Shiite crescent," anchored in Iran and reaching through Syria to Lebanon.

For his part, Putin compounded his offense to the neocons by facilitating Obama's negotiations with Iran that imposed strict constraints on Iran's actions toward development of a nuclear bomb and took U.S. war against Iran off the table. The neocons, Israel and Saudi Arabia wanted the U.S. military to lead a bombing campaign against Iran with the hope of crippling their regional adversary and possibly even achieving "regime change" in Tehran.

Punishing Russia

It was in that time frame that NED's neocon President Carl Gershman identified Ukraine as the "biggest prize" and an important step toward the even bigger prize of removing Putin in Russia.

The Neo-Con's greatest fear - the Return of the Czar

Other U.S. government neocons, including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and Sen. John McCain, delivered the Ukraine "prize" by supporting the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine and unleashed anti-Russian nationalists (including neo-Nazis) who began killing ethnic Russians in the south and east near Russia's border.

Many U.S. pundits and journalists – in the conservative, centrist and liberal media – were swept up by the various hysterias over Syria, Iran and Russia – much as they had been a decade earlier around the Iraq-WMD frenzy and the "responsibility to protect" (or R2P) argument for the violent "regime change" in Libya in 2011. In all these cases, the public debate was saturated with U.S. government and neocon propaganda, much of it false.But it worked. For instance, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks achieved extraordinary success in seducing many American "peace activists" to support the "regime change" war in Syria by sending sympathetic victims of the Syrian government on speaking tours.Meanwhile, the major U.S. media essentially flacked for "moderate" Syrian rebels who just happened to be fighting alongside Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate and sharing their powerful U.S.-supplied weapons with the jihadists, all the better to kill Syrian soldiers trying to protect the secular government in Damascus.

Successful Propaganda

As part of this propaganda process, the jihadists' P.R. adjunct, known as the White Helmets , phoned in anti-government atrocity stories to eager and credulous Western journalists who didn't dare visit the Al Qaeda-controlled zones for fear of being beheaded.

Still, whenever the White Helmets or other "activists" accused the Syrian government of some unlikely chemical attack, the information was treated as gospel . When United Nations investigators, who were under enormous pressure to confirm the propaganda tales beloved in the West, uncovered evidence that one of the alleged chlorine attacks was staged by the jihadists, the mainstream U.S. media politely looked the other way and continued to treat the chemical-weapons stories as credible.

Historian and journalist Stephen Kinzer has said , "Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press."

But all these successes in the neocons' "perception management" operations pale when compared to what the neocons have accomplished since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton last November.

Fueled by the shock and disgust over the egotistical self-proclaimed pussy-grabber ascending to the highest office in the land, many Americans looked for both an excuse for explaining the outcome and a strategy for removing Trump as quickly as possible. The answer to both concerns became: blame Russia.

The evidence that Russia had "hacked our democracy" was very thin – some private outfit called Crowdstrike found Cyrillic lettering and a reference to the founder of the Soviet KGB in some of the metadata – but that "incriminating evidence" contradicted Crowdstrike's own notion of a crack Russian hacking operation that was almost impossible to trace.

So, even though the FBI failed to secure the Democratic National Committee's computers so the government could do its own forensic analysis, President Obama assigned his intelligence chiefs, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, to come up with an assessment that could be used to blame Trump's victory on "Russian meddling." Obama, of course, shared the revulsion over Trump's victory, since the real-estate mogul/reality-TV star had famously launched his own political career by spreading the lie that Obama was born in Kenya.

'Hand-Picked' Analysts

According to Clapper's later congressional testimony, the analysts for this job were "hand-picked" from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and assigned to produce an "assessment" before Obama left office. Their Jan. 6 report was remarkable in its lack of evidence and the analysts themselves admitted that it fell far short of establishing anything as fact. It amounted to a continuation of the "trust us" approach that had dominated the anti-Russia themes for years.

Much of the thin report focused on complaints about Russia's RT network for covering the Occupy Wall Street protests and sponsoring a 2012 debate for third-party presidential candidates who had been excluded from the Democratic-Republican debates between President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney.

The absurdity of citing such examples in which RT contributed to the public debate in America as proof of Russia attacking American democracy should have been apparent to everyone, but the Russia-gate stampede had begun and so instead of ridiculing the Jan. 6 report as an insult to reason, its shaky Russia-did-it conclusions were embraced as unassailable Truth, buttressed by the false claim that the assessment represented the consensus view of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.

So, for instance, we get the internal contradictions of a Friday column by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius who starts off by making a legitimate point about Washington groupthink.

"When all right-thinking people in the nation's capital seem to agree on something – as has been the case recently with legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia – that may be a warning that the debate has veered into an unthinking herd mentality," Ignatius wrote as he questioned the wisdom of overusing sanctions and tying the President's hands on when to remove sanctions.

Lost Logic

But Ignatius failed to follow his own logic when it came to the core groupthink about Russia "meddling" in the U.S. election. Despite the thinness of the evidence, the certainty about Russia's guilt is now shared by "all right-thinking people" in Washington, who agree that this point is beyond dispute despite the denials from both WikiLeaks, which published the purloined Democratic emails, and the Russian government.

Neocon logic at its finest

Ignatius seemed nervous that his mild deviation from the conventional wisdom about the sanctions bill might risk his standing with the Establishment, so he added:

"Don't misunderstand me. In questioning congressional review of sanctions, I'm not excusing Trump's behavior. His non-response to Russia's well-documented meddling in the 2016 presidential election has been outrageous."

However, as usual for the U.S. mainstream media, Ignatius doesn't cite any of those documents. Presumably, he's referring to the Jan. 6 assessment, which itself contained no real evidence to support its opinion that Russia hacked into Democratic emails and gave them to WikiLeaks for distribution.

Just because a lot of Important People keep repeating the same allegation doesn't make the allegation true or "well-documented." And skepticism should be raised even higher when there is a clear political motive for pushing a falsehood as truth, as we should have learned from President George W. Bush's Iraq-WMD fallacies and from President Barack Obama's wild exaggerations about the need to intervene in Libya to prevent a massacre of civilians.

But Washington neocons always start with a leg up because of their easy access to the editorial pages of The New York Times and Washington Post as well as their speed-dial relationships with producers at CNN and other cable outlets.

Yet, the neocons have achieved perhaps their greatest success by merging Cold War Russo-phobia with the Trump Derangement Syndrome to enlist liberals and even progressives into the neocon drive for more "regime change" wars.

There can be no doubt that the escalation of sanctions against Russia and Iran will have the effect of escalating geopolitical tensions with those two important countries and making war, even nuclear war, more likely.

In Iran, hardliners are already telling President Hassan Rouhani, "We told you so" that the U.S. government can't be trusted in its promise to remove – not increase – sanctions in compliance with the nuclear agreement.

And, Putin, who is actually one of the more pro-Western leaders in Russia, faces attacks from his own hardliners who view him as naďve in thinking that Russia would ever be accepted by the West.

Even relative Kremlin moderates such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, are citing Trump's tail-between-his-legs signing of the sanctions bill as proof that the U.S. establishment has blocked any hope for a détente between Washington and Moscow.

In other words, the prospects for advancing the neocon agenda of more "regime change" wars and coups have grown – and the neocons can claim as their allies virtually the entire Democratic Party hierarchy which is so eager to appease its angry #Resistance base that even the heightened risk of nuclear war is being ignored.


Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

[Aug 07, 2017] The US propaganda machines has accused Russia of arming the Taliban

Notable quotes:
"... The fact that now the US propaganda machines has accused Russia of "arming the Taliban" ..."
"... I've been expecting this for some time. ..."
"... No sooner had WW II ended than the West started on the Cold War, designed to create fear, panic and hysteria in the US–and Europe–so the Deep State types could regal Americans with tales of a nuclear weapons, missiles, bombers and the like 'gaps' that those devious Rooskies had on the US and we just had to spend all sorts of money to build machines of death to keep 'Old Glory' flying high. And use that excuse to go after people and head-hunt those who didn't goose step to this new artificial reality. ..."
"... When the Iron Curtain fell, within 18 months, the West had a new boogeyman, Saddam and on 9/11, that was enlarged to include the Islamic world, who we just have to fight over there so we don't fight them in Baltimore, not that any sane nation would want to invade most of our big cities, it's too dangerous. ..."
Aug 07, 2017 | www.unz.com

Si1ver1ock, August 5, 2017 at 10:21 am GMT

The fact that now the US propaganda machines has accused Russia of "arming the Taliban"

I've been expecting this for some time. Funny how the blame falls on the Russians–without proof as usual. Little if any mention of the 16 years of U.S. occupation.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/asia/taliban-weapons-afghanistan/index.html

Greg Bacon, Website August 6, 2017 at 4:40 pm GMT

@restless94110

Churchill started making speeches; the recent book on the brothers Dulles documents extensively Allen Dulles' extreme beliefs about Communism, so radical that he favored fascism and Nazis over the Commies. He became the father of the CIA, and made sure that many in the Nazi spy apparatus found homes in the United States, then went on a decade long crusade to crush communism in Italy and several other countries.

It is you who is silly. Writing some nonsense about something in the archives somewhere when there is evidence in the West that's been right in front of your face? You couldn't be that stupid, could you?

And by the way, do you know the difference between Trotsky and Stalin? Trotsky wanted world-wide revolution; Stalin wanted communism in the USSR, no world-wide revolution. Do you know who won that argument?

You probably don't. Stalin did.

Furthermore, are you familiar with the Game theory basis for the Cold War? It was the lunatic schizoprhenic John Nash, who was certifiably insane when he cooked it up, and years later, when he his schizophrenia was on the wane, repudiated his own theory!

The Cold War was cooked up in the West by state actors. Don't talk your nonsense. I agree. No sooner had WW II ended than the West started on the Cold War, designed to create fear, panic and hysteria in the US–and Europe–so the Deep State types could regal Americans with tales of a nuclear weapons, missiles, bombers and the like 'gaps' that those devious Rooskies had on the US and we just had to spend all sorts of money to build machines of death to keep 'Old Glory' flying high. And use that excuse to go after people and head-hunt those who didn't goose step to this new artificial reality.

When the Iron Curtain fell, within 18 months, the West had a new boogeyman, Saddam and on 9/11, that was enlarged to include the Islamic world, who we just have to fight over there so we don't fight them in Baltimore, not that any sane nation would want to invade most of our big cities, it's too dangerous.

[Aug 06, 2017] New Sanctions Against Russia - A Failure Of U.S. Strategy

Notable quotes:
"... I think this was a shrewd move by the CFR foreign policy hardliners: further isolating Russia, coercing Europe, and cornering Trump. Russia cannot respond. Europe cannot respond. Nor can Trump. What else should the imperial strategist do? Be nice to everybody and lose control? ps: why is the media not covering this? well perhaps because of this: http://bit.ly/2vE26Ol ..."
"... When analyzing the United States' relations with the rest of the world it helps to keep in mind the deep state goal of world domination via "full spectrum dominance". It is a dangerous delusion of the highest order but it is one that is actively being put into practice. The actions taken against Russia, Iran, North Korea and other nations all lead to one thing: war. ..."
"... Pence is a friend of McCain's. Why would any populist pick Pence as VP? ..."
"... One of Trump's first announcements after he was elected was that he would not seek to prosecute Hillary. The strange, and short-lived, media frenzy regarding Hillary's health helped Trump to make this choice. It seems likely that this was coordinated. ..."
Aug 06, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Recently the U.S. congress legislated sanctions against the Russian Federation over alleged, but completely unproven, interference in the U.S. presidential elections. The vote was nearly unanimous.

President Trump signed these sanctions into law. This was a huge and stupid mistake. He should have vetoed them, even as a veto would likely be overturned. With his signing of the law Trump gave up the ability to stay on somewhat neutral grounds towards Russia. This for no gain to him at all.

Sanctions by Congress are quasi eternal. The 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment restricted trade with the then "Communist block". It was supposed to press for Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union to Israel. But even after the Soviet Union broke down in the early 1990s, after the "communist block" had disappeared and long after any limits on emigrations had been lifted, the law and its economic sanctions stayed in place. It was only lifted in 2012 and only to be immediately replaced by the ludicrous Magnitsky act which immediately established a new set of sanctions against the Russian Federation and its interests.

The new additional sanctions, like the Jackson-Vanik amendment and the Magnitsky act, were shaped by domestic U.S. policy issues. There is nothing Russia could have done to avoid them and there is nothing it can do to have them lifted.

The new U.S. sanctions are not only directed against Russia but against any company and nation that cooperates with Russia over energy. This a little disguised attempt to press European countries into buying expensive U.S. liquefied natural gas instead of cheap Russian gas delivered by pipelines. The immediate target is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany which passes through the Baltic Sea to avoid potential conflict points in east Europe. The sanctions are a threat to an independent German energy policy. (Additional partners in the pipeline are Austria, France and the Netherlands.) Consequently 35% of Germans name the U.S. as a "major threat to the country". Russia is seen as such by only 33%. This view is consistent with the global perception .

These sanctions will shape U.S.-Russian relation for the next 30 plus years. On August 2 the Russian Prime Minister Medvedev pointed to the weakness of President Trump as the main reason for these sanctions :

The US President's signing of the package of new sanctions against Russia will have a few consequences. First, it ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration. Second, it is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia . Third, the Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way. This changes the power balance in US political circles.

What does it mean for them? The US establishment fully outwitted Trump ; the President is not happy about the new sanctions, yet he could not but sign the bill. The issue of new sanctions came about, primarily, as another way to knock Trump down a peg. New steps are to come, and they will ultimately aim to remove him from power. A non-systemic player has to be removed. Meanwhile, the interests of the US business community are all but ignored, with politics chosen over a pragmatic approach. Anti-Russian hysteria has become a key part of both US foreign policy (which has occurred many times) and domestic policy (which is a novelty).
...

Remember that Medvedev as Russian leader was, for a long time, the "hope" of the U.S. establishment. He was perceived as more amenable than the Russian President Putin. Medvedev may well become president again. But no U.S. media except the New York Post took notice of his statement. That in itself is astonishing and frightening. Can no one in the U.S. see where this will lead to? Medvedev predicts:

The sanctions regime has been codified and will remain in effect for decades unless a miracle happens. [...] [R]elations between Russia and the United States are going to be extremely tense regardless of Congress' makeup and regardless of who is president. Lengthy arguments in international bodies and courts are ahead, as well as rising international tensions and refusal to settle major international issues

Economically and politically Russia can and will cope with these sanctions, says Medvedev. But can the U.S.?

The supreme global role of the U.S. depends on preventing a Euro-Asian alliance between, mainly, Russia and China. In his latest "grand chessboard" piece Toward a Global Realignment the U.S. strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski - ruthless, amoral and capable - asserts:

[I]t behooves the United States to fashion a policy in which at least one of the two potentially threatening states becomes a partner in the quest for regional and then wider global stability, and thus in containing the least predictable but potentially the most likely rival to overreach. Currently, the more likely to overreach is Russia, but in the longer run it could be China.

The U.S. foreign policy establishment has declared war on Russia. The confrontational position towards China, which was en vogue under Obama, has noticeably changed. The Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama "pivot to Asia" was cancelled. The anti-Chinese Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement has been called off. Military provocations of China in the South Chinese Sea have been reduced and replaced by continuous provocations against Russia in eastern Europe. These steps follow the strategy Brzezinski laid out.

Russia has historically proven to be resourceful in its policies. It is extremely resistant to pressure. With the U.S. in a less hostile position against China, the behemoth will relentlessly press its own advantage. Russia will soon be one of China's main sources of fossil energy and other commodities. There is no major reason for China and Russia to disagree with each other. Under these circumstances the hoped for Russian-Chinese split will not happen. Core European countries will resist pressures that endanger their economies.

The Brzezinski strategy is clouded by a personal hate against Russia. (He is descendant of minor noble Galician-Polish family .) It is flawed as it enables China to establish its primacy. Even under Brzezinski's framework a Russian-European-U.S. alliance against Chinese pursuit of hegemony would have been the more logical way to go.

Hillary Clinton's strategy to blame Russia for her lack of likability and her failure in the election now results in a major failure of U.S. grand strategy. An organized White House policy could have prevented that but there is no such thing (yet) under Trump.

I fail to see how the current strategy, now enshrined by congressional sanctions, could ever end up in an overall advantage for the United States.

Lawrence Smith | Aug 6, 2017 11:17:13 AM | 1

Of course the NATO alliance and much of the EU will follow such ignorance and hostility to their grave. Unless powerful nations such as Germany wakes up to what hardship this will place on them and the daunting danger enlisted by such a corrupt policy, we are all in for dangerous times. The US congress has always been a pack of fools. No sign of that ever changing.
WorldBLee | Aug 6, 2017 11:22:23 AM | 4
Yep, as usual short-term thinking prevails in the US. It seems cheap and easy (to the US, although not to Europe!) to sanction Russia as well as Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea while proclaiming US supremacy. Because of the US dollar's role as reserve currency, the US can inflict heavy damage on many countries. "Step out of the line," the US says with its sanctions, "and you'll be next on our list."

Unfortunately, China saw that it definitely was next on the list and the best way to alleviate that situation was to partner with Russia to combine China's growing economic power with Russia's military, energy, and diplomatic strengths, thus providing an impressive barrier against US unilateral actions. The one thing the US cannot overcome--a united China and Russia -- is now in place, with Europe just barely starting to wake up to the reality that it MIGHT not want to exclusively depend on the US.

Russia and China exhibit long term thinking while the US follows the CEO mantra of short term results, damn the long term effect on the company (or country).

blues | Aug 6, 2017 11:44:15 AM | 6
/~~~~~~~~~~
Reuters -- U.S. needs up to 18 more Russian rocket engines: Pentagon -- April 9, 2016
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-space-russia-idUSKCN0X600H

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon will need to buy up to 18 more Russian-built RD-180 engines to power rockets carrying U.S. military satellites into space over the next six years or so, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said in an interview on Friday.

[....]

Work said the United States needed to ensure there were at least "two affordable and reliable means into space." He added the RD-180 would be needed only during what he described as a transition period of new domestic rocket engine development.

"We just don't see any way you can get a new engine in anything less than six years," Work said.
\~~~~~~~~~~

Let's think about what this means. The USSA currently possesses something like a score of these Russian RD-180 rocket engines (they are liquid fueled -- kerosene/liquid oxygen -- engines, which may be observed at the base of rockets). Since the USSA has physical possession of them, reverse engineering should be a cake walk. So why the six year hold-up?

Since circa 1971 the USSA has been gutting its technology-based productional system. And since circa 2000, Russia has been frantically consolidating its own. Of course a country may have a large GDP and yet have a severely fragmentary productional base, if it's exporting bananas, or technology that requires imported components, and this is just what the USSA has been doing. Because of this productional fragmentation it cannot produce RD-180 rocket engines even though all of the technical details of this engine are well known. It cannot even produce a quality strike fighter jet, as illustrated in the case of the F-35.

And because the Russians have been consolidating their technological productionality while the USSA has been fragmenting its own, the sanctions have turned out to be a tremendous boon to the Russians.

The sanctions are all about symbolism, which the USSA is obsessed with; they are not about gaining any advantages. Russia is the party that will reap all the advantage. The Beloved Leaders of the USSA prove once again to be insane.

JSonofa | Aug 6, 2017 11:44:51 AM | 7
#1
"The US congress has always been a pack of fools. No sign of that ever changing."

Maybe. Maybe not. In the words of the ever-sage George Harrison, "All Things Must Pass." Anyone for a constitutional amendment for term-limiting congress to two terms? Re: realignment; BRICS, onward and upward. May the IMF and its war machine have financial competition and lose their monopolistic squeeze on empire.

AllHopeGone | Aug 6, 2017 11:46:33 AM | 8
Quote: " I fail to see how the current strategy... could ever end up in an overall advantage for the United States."
The advantage of the United States...!!?? What's that got to do with anything? The US government is there to service the interests of Wall Street and The Israel Lobby/Neocon/International Zionists. Everyone surely recognises this now. Get used to it.
Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 6, 2017 11:51:09 AM | 9
It sounds dramatic but all I see is The Swamp's "Let's do SOMETHING, even if it's stupid" megalomaniacs enthusiastically outing themselves. I was wondering when and how Trump was going to out them but they've 'cleverly' decided to do it for him. I'm confident that Trump saw this coming and will turn it to his MAGA advantage.
Mishkin | Aug 6, 2017 11:54:06 AM | 10
I think this was a shrewd move by the CFR foreign policy hardliners: further isolating Russia, coercing Europe, and cornering Trump. Russia cannot respond. Europe cannot respond. Nor can Trump. What else should the imperial strategist do? Be nice to everybody and lose control? ps: why is the media not covering this? well perhaps because of this: http://bit.ly/2vE26Ol
metamars | Aug 6, 2017 12:02:25 PM | 12
"huge and stupid mistake" is too kind. I think it was idiotic of Trump. What's even more depressing is that Trump is claiming "national unity" as his reason for signing. He'll get no "national unity" for this - I suppose the Republican leaders have played him for a fool, and Trump was dumb enough to believe it.

It's secondarily depressing that the media was claiming that Trump had little choice. So, the media was employed in manipulating Trump, both before and after the fact (of his signing). Did it not occur to Trump that this exculpatory nonsense might be "fake news"?

From "Trump Signs Russia Sanctions Bill, World At A Dangerous Point As Deep State Shows Their Teeth" @ http://www.activistpost.com/2017/08/trump-signs-russia-sanctions-bill-deep-state.html

"As Paul Craig Roberts points out in his article, there were a number of strategies that could have been taken by Trump. First, he should have vetoed the bill. At worst, if Congress overrode his veto, Congress would bear responsibility for the political fallout or the radioactive fallout if it comes to that.
Second, in the lead up to the veto, Trump could have brought his case to the American people. He could have laid it all out in the open, pointing out that Congress, both misinformed and eaten up with special interest money, was endangering America's way of life and possibly even life itself the world over. He could have stated plainly that the interests who own Congress and who are working through Congress are now marching the United States to World War Three. He could have even told them to go watch The Day After with their families and ask themselves if they think the potential costs would be worth it. He could have done any number of things explaining why he was vetoing the bill and then he could have vetoed it. But he didn't. "

john | Aug 6, 2017 12:04:50 PM | 13
sounds like more flatulence from the chubby little super power, or, as Frank Zappa might say, 'America drinks and goes marching.'
metamars | Aug 6, 2017 12:05:16 PM | 14
Somewhat off/topic, though if the Russia nonsense had been debunked more competently by the Trump Administration, maybe Trump wouldn't have felt compelled to sign the sanctions bill. "Ray McGovern Explains How The DNC Hack Was Used To Cover-Up The Election Stolen From Bernie Sanders" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vte-uSyQhKw

The Trump Administration should take McGovern's counsel often, but is probably too dumb/manipulated to do so.

blues | Aug 6, 2017 12:06:01 PM | 15
=>> JSonofa | 11:44:51 AM | 7

"Anyone for a constitutional amendment for term-limiting congress to two terms?"

Not me! Term limits mean nothing more than the elimination of the ability of the voters to assess candidates based on legislative track records. The result is that every two years the voters will have to choose representatives with no past history of legislation. Disaster.

The only answer is to abolish the two-party system by eliminating the spoiler effect. Strategic hedge simple score voting would do that. Nothing else, including "ranked choice" voting ("IRV") will work. This is vital to understand!

JSonofa | Aug 6, 2017 12:06:14 PM | 16
Here's a new type of realignment: The End Of Nation States

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-05/doug-casey-end-nation-state

Harry | Aug 6, 2017 12:15:17 PM | 18
One jewish journalist (link was posted here few days ago) nicely pointed out these sanctions are the stupidest thing US could have possibly done. Not only it forges even closer Russia-China-Iran alliance, it also alienates the closest and strongest ally US have - the EU.

I don't know how far EU will go to fight back, but their alliance is breaking through all stitches, and US effectively expedited EU rapprochement to the East. It was bound to happen sometime in the future due to US decline and the rise of SCO/BRICS, but now calculation has changed - it will happen soon.

j | Aug 6, 2017 12:26:06 PM | 19
"I fail to see how the current strategy, now enshrined by congressional sanctions, could ever end up in an overall advantage for the United States."

unless the USG itself is nothing more at this moment than a platform for committing "crimes against the peace," foreign & domestic. or is there some other motivation than domination of rivals, w/not the slightest hint of "partnership"? there is nothing the USG can do except use its (overrated & rapidly declining) military advantage to offset its steadily declining economic supremacy, w/all the dangers of nuclear war from the morally insane running this country.

the task of people in the US is to distract the eye of Sauron (the one on the pyramid on the dollar bill) in any way it can, until Mordor, Inc. just collapses. and that requires some serious troublemaking here, massive national strikes, burning down the pentagon & the like, which don't seem too likely.

Mataman | Aug 6, 2017 12:38:35 PM | 21
@15 So long as Congress critters get to sit in office indefinitely they have the opportunity to build their criminal fiefdoms and become available for bribery. Why do they need some legislative track record? Either they vote for sane things or they don't. And if they're insane, they get tossed the next election cycle. And even if they're great it is better to get fresh blood in every few years.

A more logical solution would be to institute a draft of legislators from ordinary citizens (who maybe need to meet certain educational benchmarks just so they're mentally capable of doing the job--something our Congress of idiot lawyers is usually unable to do). You get drafted to serve your nation in Congress, get a nice check, and legislate for your fellow citizens while discussing their concerns with other regular citizens and then take your honorable discharge back into civilian life. When you have people who want power and allow them to be elected by other people who want the power to manipulate the people who write the laws it is necessarily going to end in disaster. Get people who don't really want to be there and shift their composition every few years and regulatory capture by industry becomes impossible.

Also, Congress mostly needs to spend time removing laws and consolidating laws. There isn't really a lot of reason to pass new laws every term other than to look busy. Note they have done absolutely nothing this term save sanction Russia and the world continues as normal.

fast freddy | Aug 6, 2017 12:42:08 PM | 22
blues 6

The graft will be enormous. Billion$. The esteemed Senator McCain right in the thick of it. Typical ridiculous doublespeak in that article - and the players - John McCain, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings and sanctions on two particular individuals in the Russian Space Agency.

http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2017/08/ american_space_program_not_pay.html

Aug 1, 2017
Meanwhile, NASA has only 12 employees in Russia now, according to a tally in the Washington Post. They are supporting those rides for American astronauts to the space station. America has been paying Russia $81 million per seat for rides to the station while it awaits completion of U.S. crew carriers being built by Boeing and SpaceX.

Add the history of cooperation, the interest in going forward by top Russian space officials, and the money involved and the space program seems out of the threat zone for now. If Russia does sever the relationship, it will be a sign of a truly serious breech between the two countries.

JSonofa | Aug 6, 2017 12:47:39 PM | 23
@ #15 blues

Perhaps a secret life in government, a spy since WWII, a secret life lived, but not ever fully-vetted, secret knowledge and involvement in Dallas 1963 to later become a pivotal US President to invade Iraq, and still today, a life not ever fully vetted, would give you pause that the answer lies in the simple abolition of the 2 party system?

The Secret Life of Poppy: https://whowhatwhy.org/2013/09/16/part-1-mr-george-bush-of-the-central-intelligence-agency/

fast freddy | Aug 6, 2017 1:27:05 PM | 29
China is making well-planned, strategic moves - Silk Road, Rail Bridge to Russia, Base in Djibouti. All excellent. Nothing ham-handed, self-defeating, short-term, knee-jerk and stupid.
h | Aug 6, 2017 1:33:38 PM | 30
I'm thinking Alexander Mercouris has a solid take on Trump's reasoning for signing congresses sanctions into law - Impeachment... Trump sidesteps impeachment trap in sanctions law and prepares challenge to Supreme Court - http://theduran.com/trump-sidesteps-impeachment-trap-sanctions-law-prepares-challenge-supreme-court/

,BLOCKQUOTE>"Indeed the more I think about this bizarre sanctions law the more I wonder whether the impeachment scenario I have just outlined may have been the very scenario that it was intended to engineer." ...

"In other words the sanctions law may have been put together by the President's opponents in Congress – who include Republicans as well as Democrats – with the actual intention of provoking him into vetoing it so as to set up the conditions for his impeachment by Congress on an issue where Congress is united against him."

"If so then the President – heeding the advice of his lawyers – has sidestepped the trap whilst putting himself in a strong position to challenge the law in the US Supreme Court when the right moment comes."

The globalists boogieman is Putin and Team, at least for the next four or more years. He became their target for displeasure long ago, thus, he must pay. Globalists don't give a rats about Trump's agenda BECAUSE the Globalists bought Congress off long ago...THEY OWN IT. Congress stopped working for the good folks of the United States long ago and for heavens sake they're not all of a sudden going to start working for us now. Just sayin...

Jackrabbit | Aug 6, 2017 1:46:45 PM | 33
The sanctions are a smart play for world domination by the cabal that controls the Empire. that the rest of the world suffers while this plays out is of no concern to them. Those wringing their hands over Trump's failure to confront Congress are foolish. His caving was entirely predictable because he is a faux-Populist like Obama before him. Isn't it clear by now that "America First" is as much as lie as "Change You Can Believe In"?

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

Russia is more susceptible than China to being politically undermined by both overt and covert means. As the economic cost of conflict with the US mounts, so too does the potential benefits of restoring ties. The potential for a HUGE economic boost by restoring ties with the West will play a big part in post-Putin politics. If US can disrupt energy trade with China and new Silk-Road transport links (via proxies like ISIS) , the Russian economy will sink and pro-Western candidates will gain much support.

Seamus Padraig | Aug 6, 2017 2:27:41 PM | 35
The new additional sanctions, like the Jackson-Vanik amendment and the Magnitsky act, were shaped by domestic U.S. policy issues.

Yeah, sure. (((Domestic U.S. policy issues.)))

Seriously though, as a committed isolationist, I'm actually overjoyed that our congress is idiotic enough to start up a trade war with the EU. The notion that the Germans are going to import overpriced fracked gas all the way from the US is a total fantasy. No: these sanctions will accelerate the coming break-up of NATO ... an outcome I very much welcome. And even if the Germans were to cave and cancel Nordstream, the Russians would simply sell all that extra gas to Asia anyway. So this isn't going to have any real effect on them either.

Grieved | Aug 6, 2017 2:30:05 PM | 36
@30 h

Trump was realistic to sign the sanctions bill. What's important is his Signing Statement, which lawyer Mercouris analyzes nicely, and therebu shows what many people are missing, including I'm afraid b, and commenters in this thread, up until your comment.

Articles of Impeachment are not a judicial thing - they are brought by Congress in its discretion. If Trump vetoed a bill coming forward with such hugely unanimous backing, he would be overridden for sure, and the Congress would then have the upper hand completely. From there, it's completely realistic to think of impeachment, and the odds are very good many Republicans would go along with this, as it would then make Pence the President.*

I was going to link that Mercouris piece too. I've been recommending everywhere that people read it. It was NOT a mistake to sign a bill that was impossible to veto successfully. But in his signing statement, Trump lays the ground very clearly for a challenge to the Supreme Court if he wants to make any accord in the future that contradicts whatever elements of the sanctions bill may infringe on his prerogative to run foreign policy.

It seems likely that the bill does infringe on the presidential role, and by laying it open to a Supreme Court finding of unconstitutionality, Trump actually is holding the hand now - while the act of sanctioning will reflect on Congress and Trump's enemies, as the sanctions both fail and help to tear the EU apart.

The Mercouris piece is essential reading in my view for anyone wanting to pass a judgment on the wisdom of Trump's signing this bill. That link again: Trump sidesteps impeachment trap in sanctions law and prepares challenge to Supreme Court

~~

* as to how serious a situation this was for Trump, a commenter on the Mercouris piece agrees that the prospect of Pence as president is all the Republicans need to support impeachment, and adds:

"When Andrew Johnson was impeached he was a Republican nominated VP (serving out Lincoln's term) impeached by a Republican dominated Congress which wanted to install a 'real' Republican in his place."
h | Aug 6, 2017 2:33:32 PM | 37
Jackrabbit @33, I must respectfully disagree with this part of your comment "His caving was entirely predictable because he is a faux-Populist like Obama before him."

Using the word 'populist' whether faux or not when describing Obama is a disservice to the meaning of the word. Obama was a liar. Period. Nothing more. Nothing less.

As for Trump? I don't really know what term I'd use to describe his politic. Candidly, I'm not sure if such a term for his style even exists.

But I will say that I don't concur with your take on his signing the sanctions bill. I don't see it as 'caving' and as I stated above your comment, Merouris' take on his signing the legislation makes sense, at least to me. Especially given the plethora of battle lines being drawn in the sewage pit known as DC. Gaining clarity as to motives behind decision making these days is murky at best, but nothing about Trump and his resume suggests 'caving' as being part of his character. Knowing when to hold them and when to fold them does.

And imagine if Merouris' take turns out to be correct. If so, how in the world does one navigate the minefields, let alone, succeed. More importantly, it means 550 elected leaders are out to destroy one. My God man, how friggin sick is that?!? The globalists don't get their way so they are going to destroy our form of government? That is the kind of power they are wielding when they succeed in securing what was it, 548 votes in the House and Senate (I haven't read the vote tally but know Rand Paul and another Senator, maybe Sanders, voted against it).

My point is that that's not only significant it's HUGE. At a minimum it means dysfunction and maximum means a declared war inside our body politic - the Globalist puppets v Trump/Pence.

Wwinsti | Aug 6, 2017 2:38:49 PM | 38
@ #6 blues:

Reverse engineer?!? Boing has had a license to build RD180s for over a decade. It's not an option they seem overly eager to employ by the leisurely pace they've asked regarding their construction. At least I think it's Boing.

chet380 | Aug 6, 2017 2:49:08 PM | 39
Grieved --

If Trump and Tillerson are quietly able to have the Europeans to raise a constant hue and cry about the bill's negative impact on their ability to conduct international trade, an excellent groundwork would be laid for Trump to go to the US SC to attack the constitutionality of the bill.

h | Aug 6, 2017 2:54:20 PM | 40
Grieved @36 - I appreciate your most thoughtful comment. When I read Mercouris' article I immediately thought - Whoa, if this turns out to be the correct analysis, my God man the U.S. government is in way more trouble than I understood. Navigating a soft coup takes a great deal of skill to avoid, but if the globalists continue to escalate their warmongering demands from the White House and Trump/Team continue to form their own path, the people of the U.S. should be warned a hard coup isn't far behind...Antifa and others are being readied for just such an event.

Gives me a chill...

Berry Friesen | Aug 6, 2017 3:31:14 PM | 43
b got it right: "a huge and stupid mistake."

Mercouris' talk of "an impeachment trap" suggests he doesn't understand the US system of government very well. A president doesn't commit an impeachable offense when using his veto, and a veto would only have strengthened Trump's claim that the bill breaches the separation of powers. As matters stand, it appears Trump doesn't believe his own signing statement.

If the Republicans ever hope to impeach their guy without forever wrecking their party and bringing years of civil unrest to this country, they will needs reams of solid evidence supporting legitimate charges. A veto wouldn't count for much in terms of legitimacy.

Sid2 | Aug 6, 2017 3:43:41 PM | 45
On the other hand to the Mercouris view--

He could have signed it and still gone to the Supreme Court. This leaves he signed it due the impeachment threat. This won't go away by his signing it. 2018 is closer by the minute and you've got to suppose Repub candidates are nervous about re-election due to Trump (poll numbers sinking). On the other hand if he had signed it he would have showed some guts instead of caving and earning the "humiliated" label from the Russians. Instead of no respect he might have gotten a little respect. He has reinforced Trump as BS full of talk and inept. I agree with b.

Temporarily Sane | Aug 6, 2017 4:34:15 PM | 47
b writes:
That in itself is astonishing and frightening. Can no one in the U.S. see where this will lead to?

When analyzing the United States' relations with the rest of the world it helps to keep in mind the deep state goal of world domination via "full spectrum dominance". It is a dangerous delusion of the highest order but it is one that is actively being put into practice. The actions taken against Russia, Iran, North Korea and other nations all lead to one thing: war.

frances | Aug 6, 2017 4:46:10 PM | 48
my apologies, this is a bit long but...On Trump's perceived option of signing vs not signing; I think he knew that the Congress/DNC/MSM would have tarred and feathered him as a RUSSIAN PAWN (RP) till the cows come home if he didn't sign. However by signing the bill with notations stating its flaws and forwarding it the the SC for their review, he blocked this latest RP label attempt and attendant witch hunt. And assuming the SC thinks as little of the two bills legislative incursions into the exec domain as I do, it can be tossed back to both houses of Congress (with a 2018 election cycle staring them in the face)with a statement from Trump saying something to the effect of "Merciful God, how can you represent your constituents when you clearly don't have a grasp of your own job description?? Now I have to fund Trump supporting candidates to run against every single one of you." Remember he has already raised 75 million and he raised 250 million plus 66 million of his own and beat a 1.3 billion DNC machine. I do not see him as a great candidate but I do see that every single current congressional seat is held by people who are bought and paid for by business/MIC interests opposed to mine. I believe this latest attack on him via these bills will give him the opportunity to "drain the swamp" some of it anyway, in the upcoming election cycle and I will contribute to his effort to wipe them out of office and I suspect others will as well. There will be no coup on my watch if I can help it by helping him.
heath | Aug 6, 2017 4:50:46 PM | 49
rather than press China directly in the south China Sea, it seems DC keeps on pressing the North Koreans to do something rash and the Chinese having to invade to forestall the rash attack then being stuck in a long Guerrilla war against Korean resistance.
the US strategy seems to be to create a problem and force other nations to choose "the Axis of Evil" or "the Free World"
goldhoarder | Aug 6, 2017 4:56:09 PM | 50
Xi has made 6 visits to Russia. I am not sure how often Putin has been to Beijing. The number of heads of state visits is remarkable. I've never seen anything like this in history. Has anyone else noticed this? Clearly they are trying to form a significant economic and military power block to challenge US "Full Spectrum Dominance".
ben | Aug 6, 2017 5:04:51 PM | 52
The following, is for all you folks that believe voting in the U$A can make a difference.

https://www.rt.com/usa/397907-defcon-first-voting-village/

Until we trash the e-voting systems, our voting means nothing..

karlof1 | Aug 6, 2017 5:06:39 PM | 53
Grieved @36--

If you haven't yet, you'll want to read my several posts related to yours a few threads ago beginning here, http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/07/countdown-to-war-on-venezuela.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01b8d29b37ca970c

Anonymous | Aug 6, 2017 5:25:41 PM | 54
LawrenceSmith @1

There are two faces to Europe - the ordinary elected representatives and business people see the futility and danger of the sanctions. The bought Eurocrat and high political placemen will repeat what they are paid to say as the waters rise above their lips.

fast freddy | Aug 6, 2017 5:26:57 PM | 55
Trump can go on TV anytime and appeal to the Public with some creative truth. Why not? Afraid of the PTB? or he's a fraud like Obama going along with the PTB?

Mostly from Trump we get boilerplate global terror war bullshit, immigrant and gay bashing - gruel for the knuckleheads.

There is no question that Pence would gladly run the bus over Trump and be a real warmonger for Zion. The "real" Republicans (and the "business-friendly New Democrats") would love President Pence. Everything (media) would quiet down.

karlof1 | Aug 6, 2017 5:35:50 PM | 56
Regarding the Mercouris article myself and others have linked to and discussed, one possibility he didn't really explore was Trump Pocket Vetoing the bill. Congress would then upon returning from its recess need to reenact the entire measure after getting lots of heat from constituents for their votes during recess. Indeed, I think the overwhelming Pro vote was due to many congresscritter's assumption that Trump would do just that.

For me, the important question is why the Deep State instigated this move; so, I posted links to 6 incisive articles also looking for an answer in one manner or other that all together pointing to a Deep State flailing its arms in the deep end of the Hubris Pool realizing its drowning in its own effluent yet unable to utter that truth as it never will--it will break the mirror before allowing it to utter the truth. The Law of Diminishing Returns is finally laying the lumber to the Deep State after 130 years of grossly naked imperialism. Luce would be spinning in his grave if he knew how his American Century was being destroyed for A Few Dollars More.

Perhaps, John Pilger's latest essay will provide an explanation, https://www.rt.com/op-edge/398789-us-russia-china-war/

Jackrabbit | Aug 6, 2017 6:01:45 PM | 57
h@37

My take on Trump is informed by facts such as:

>> The US political system is designed to prevent real populists from ever gaining office. Examples: Citizens United and the rules to qualify for inclusion in candidate debates.

>> Obama was a faux populist and Sanders was a sheep-dog. Are we to believe that these populists were phonies but Trump is the real deal?

>> Only Sanders and Trump positioned themselves as populists. And even more importantly, Hillary didn't counter Trump by taking a more populist approach.

>> Hillary made it clear that she wanted to face Trump in the general election. The media dutifully covered Trump as a serious candidate. Supposedly, she felt that she had a better chance to defeat him. She then ran a terrible campaign (see: NYPost: Hillary ran the worst presidential campaign ever despite having every advantage.

>> Why would any oligarch oppose the establishment? Especially since Trump was so close to Hillary who was considered to be the likely next President. In fact, Trump served Hillary by becoming a leader of the 'Birthers'. Hillary was the first to question if Obama was foreign born.

>> Pence is a friend of McCain's. Why would any populist pick Pence as VP?

>> One of Trump's first announcements after he was elected was that he would not seek to prosecute Hillary. The strange, and short-lived, media frenzy regarding Hillary's health helped Trump to make this choice. It seems likely that this was coordinated.

>> Trump acts or doesn't act in ways that are inconsistent with 'America First' and/or fuel the scaremongering over Russia:

> The missile attack on Syria (despite tweeting warnings to Obama not to bomb Syria in 2013) and sword dancing with the Saudis (WTF?);

> Not dismissing Comey early in his Administration - then alluding to 'tapes' after he did;

> Drip-drip of info regarding Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian; Publicly attacking Sessions; etc.

> Trump complains about 'Fake News' but has accepted that Russia interfered in the election;

For more:

How Things Work: Betrayal by Faux-Populist Leaders

Taken In: Fake News Distracts Us From Fake Election

Peter AU 1 | Aug 6, 2017 6:07:06 PM | 58
h, Greived...
Some of the points in the Mercouris article, Trump has most likely played a bad hand the best way possible. What I see in the article though is that Trump/White House managed to have a few changes made to the wording to try to protect US/European companies and individuals from the new sanctions.

I would have preferred it to hit the European companies hard. If the peasants do it tough, nobody cares, but when big manufacturing, and the likes of European based oil companies get hit, then something may happen.

With Trumps amendments to the law, the European dog may keep crawling back to its master rather than turning to Russia/China and the multi polar world.

PavewayIV | Aug 6, 2017 6:11:05 PM | 59
Berry Friesen@43 - "...A president doesn't commit an impeachable offense when using his veto..."

Depends. From Mercouris:

With the President totally isolated in Congress his opponents would be in a position to say that by vetoing the law the President was obstructing action by Congress to protect the integrity of the US electoral process from interference by Russia, and that he was therefore guilty of committing a "high crime or misdemeanour" by preventing action against Russia, the US's main international adversary, on an issue of fundamental importance to the US. On those grounds they would say that he should be impeached and removed from office.

Since the Constitution does not say what a "high crime or misdemeanour" is and leaves the definition entirely to Congress, it is not impossible that in the present hysterical atmosphere the President's constitutional use of his veto to block an unconstitutional sanctions law could be successfully misdefined in that way, and that Congress would accept this mis-definition and would vote for impeachment on that basis.

This was only one of the many other twisted 'facts' that will eventually support the thesis that Trump colluded with the Russians to interfere with elections. And as Mercouris points out, the interpretation of those facts and a vote for impeachment is entirely up to Congress , not the courts. Whether an indictment for such imagined collusion would stand up in US courts and result in a conviction is immaterial - they have no say.

An impeachment resolution HR 438 has already been filed by members of our lower house. It's rather weak, citing Trump's firing of former FBI Director, James Comey, as an obstruction of justice. The bill's sponsor acknowledges it is weak, but says it "gets the ball rolling". It will either be amended with additional articles of impeachment, or a new resolution will replace it. If one assumes all Democrat lower house representatives vote for the bill (~195 of 435), they will only need an additional 24 Republicans to pass it. It has not been submitted to a vote, but will when the representatives think the charges are numerous and strong enough that 2/3rds of the Senate will vote for Trump's removal. This is not necessarily a Democrat vs. Republican fight - Republicans would be delighted to give Trump the boot for a much more obedient replacement, Republican yes-man Vice President Pence. Hence the near unanimous vote for the sanctions bill. I can almost hear Congress screeching: "Trump must go!

They are waiting to assemble the final package of articles of impeachment so it looks credible and the MSM has sold it as such. One shouldn't look at Mercouris' logic regarding the veto as the only thing Congress will eventually use in the articles of impeachment against Trump. The bill will have to look legitimate and will be accompanied by a dumpster of manufactured evidence to confuse the little people and raise doubt.

FBI Director Muller's current investigation is to whether the Trump team colluded with Russia. It has TWO purposes: indicting someone close to Trump including his family, and (as a side-effect) blessing manufactured evidence as factual that can then be used by Congress to impeach Trump. If Trump fires Muller (perfectly legal) then - Aha! More evidence!

If Trump pardons any of his family members or close associates as a result of an indictment (perfectly legal), then that will be used against him suggesting that the charges are true. In any case, the investigation will probably produce more manufactured facts which will be used to strengthen the argument that Trump colluded with Russia to interfere with elections. A veto to the sanctions bill would have been used to support that thesis, not 'prove' an impeachable offense by itself.

An Articles of Impeachment bill - the 'charges' - are just for show. The Senate is free to interpret them any way it wants. Their decision overrides 'the law' so it doesn't matter if they prove the thesis by law or logic.

The US Congress - Democrats and Republicans - want Trump gone and Pence as the replacement lackey taking us into war. The 'facts' supporting an impeachment will eventually prove sufficient. They've got the whole Borg working on them. The veto ploy was far from the only 'evidence' that will be used for impeachment. Linear thinking... Trump Must Go!

I personally have no dog in this hunt either way - it's not like either outcome will make much difference. I'm close enough to strategic US targets that I won't feel a thing for more than, say, a microsecond or two.

Jackrabbit | Aug 6, 2017 6:16:36 PM | 60 Peter AU 1 | Aug 6, 2017 6:29:32 PM | 61
karlof1 56

Thanks for the link to the Pilger article. I don't check his site very often because he only writes a few articles, but worth reading when they appear.
Another of the Vietnam era investigative journalists who can no longer get articles printed in MSM.

Clueless Joe | Aug 6, 2017 6:37:47 PM | 62
At this point, it is the EU's duty to actually tell the US to go fuck itself with a nuclear warhead. And then to throw in the dumpster all the current economic treaties with it.
If EU leaders don't do it, then break the whole sorry useless Union that can't even be bothered to defend its constituency, and if needed create another better one, that is one with the clear, open and deliberate intent to stand up against the US bully, a Union which will forever stand as an opponent to the US, ready to side with China, Russia or India if needed.
But then, any sane European leaders would've understood 20 years ago that the only sensible move for EU would be a formal alliance with Russia and a loosening of the trans-atlantic ties. It's probably too late for that, and this might cost once again the vassalization of a third of Europe to Moscow; so be it then, these dumb fuckers should've seen the light earlier when that kind of moves would've been far less costly.
karlof1 | Aug 6, 2017 6:49:46 PM | 64
Not Off Topic: Learned of yet another head of state assassination done by CIA prior to JFK's, Pakistan's first PM, Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, "according to State Department documents," http://www.thedailystar.net/world/south-asia/cia-killed-first-pm-pakistan-1442917
Fidelios Automata | Aug 6, 2017 9:58:07 PM | 65
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

[Aug 04, 2017] Is Trump's Russia Policy Being Hijacked

While the US is clearly not omnipotent, Ukraine was sliding into Baltic model for a long time, probably since independence. So while the Maydan coup was organized and implemented by the USA, the coming to power of right wing Western Ukrainian nationalists was probably given. The USA actually only speeded the events by a year or two. During the next Presidential election far right Ukrainian nationalist my impression is that they would depose Yanukovich anyway. so the coup was probably more the result of incompetence and hubris of staunch neocon (and former Cheney associate) Nuland then a real necessity. If we consider neocons to be a flavor of political psychopaths such a result is not surprising.
Putin has a chance to prevent Maydan by using the same dirty methods as the USA, but iether had chosen not to do this, or was slightly distracted by Olympics (please not that Georgian invasion of South Ossetia also happened during Olympic events). After the coup he has one or two days -- a small window of opportunity for deposing right wing nationalist by recognizing Yanukovich government and sending groups to restore "the legitimate government", which was actually corrupt (although probably to lesser level the subsequent government of Poroshenko, where each minister became a millionaire) and hated by a lot of Ukrainians. So the population reaction to restoration of Yanukovich regime by force might be quite hostile. Putin and his government had chosen not to do it and gave the victory to the USA: Russia completely lost the geopolitical game for Ukraine to the USA and now need to suffer the new cold war2 (which also was given, the the global hegemon which accepts only vassals, the USA needed only the pretext to squash attempts of Russia to conduct independent foreign policy). But in a decade from now the USA probably will pay the price for this as the alliance of Russia and China is now more of a reality then even before. Also the end of "cheap oil" automatically will drive the US economy into perma stagnation. The current artificial low price can't last forever.
Destruction on Ukraine and its economic potential started at this point in full force and in addition to the necessity of handing huge refugees flow to Russia, Russian economic suffered huge losses from braking cooperation with Ukraine (which was part of the USSR economics and were closely connected to Russian).
So Barack Obama got a huge geopolitical victory, the main victory of his presidency (along with his Libyan adventure). But Ukrainians now need to suffer and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. they are now just pawns in Washington geopolitical game against Russia and have no choice but fight.
Notable quotes:
"... In crafting the platform in Cleveland on which Donald Trump would run, America Firsters inflicted a major defeat on the War Party. The platform committee rejected a plank to pull us deeper into Ukraine, by successfully opposing new U.S. arms transfers to Kiev. ..."
"... As pro-Russia rebels in East Ukraine have armored vehicles, Kiev wants U.S. tank-killing Javelin missiles, as well as antiaircraft weapons. State and Defense want Trump to send the lethal weapons. This is a formula for a renewed war, with far higher casualties in Ukraine than the 10,000 dead already suffered on both sides. And it is a war Vladimir Putin will not likely allow Kiev to win. ..."
"... If Ukraine's army, bolstered by U.S. weaponry, re-engages in the east, it could face a Moscow-backed counterattack and be routed, and the Russian army could take permanent control of the Donbass. ..."
"... Is President Trump losing control of Russia policy? Has he capitulated to the neocons? These are not academic questions. For consider the architect of the new arms package, Kurt Volker, the new U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations. ..."
"... If the following is true it is worth reading: https://www.rt.com/news/398490-us-main-global-threat-survey/ ..."
"... Dear Mr. Buchanan, Had the Journal one small moment of "truth telling" then its goal would be crystal clear not to bleed Russia but to bleed the United States to utter insolvency through their endless stupid wars.. Just look at our nation's balance sheet to see the truth. Nearly FIFTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS of debt generated in a mere seventeen years. ..."
"... Volker envisions a deepening U.S. involvement in a Ukrainian civil war that can bleed and break Russia's Ukrainian allies and convince Putin to back down and accept what we regard as a just settlement ..."
"... On the contrary, I think that Volker and others driving US policy are very well aware that Putin won't back down, and this is indeed what they want. A direct, permanent conflict with Russia which will leave it isolated from the "Western" world. A bit like track and field, where it increasingly looks like Russia will be permanently excluded from international competitions, and where Russian athletes will only be allowed to compete as "neutrals", under pain of exclusion if they as so much as sing the Russian national anthem in their hotel. And once the conflict heats up in Ukraine, look for a call to boycott the 2018 World Cup in Russia (as per the 1980 Olympics). The recent Confederations Cup in Russia was widely viewed as a considerable success, and received favorable reporting in much of the Western press, and this clearly can't be allowed to happen with the World Cup, the World's premier sporting event. ..."
"... And of course conflict with Russia has nothing to do with the proclaimed goal of containing an "agressive" Putin and Russia, which is a fallacious representation of Russia's actions and motives, and everything to do with maintaining the seemingly absolute World hegemony the USA gained after the collapse of the USSR. This fantasy of absolute hegemony is hard to let go for Neocons and Deep state, and they will cling to it with all their claws, even risking nuclear war for it ..."
"... The latest sanctions on Russia are an attempt to bleed Russia in another way, by pushing it out of the World economy, with the naive conviction that it would all end well if that plan succeeded ..."
"... It's a confusion of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan with the defense of ethnic Russians standing up to a Yankee Puppet Regime trying to subjugate them. The coffins might well secure a landslide election for Putin in such a cause. The US may have seriously misunderestimated the situation there. ..."
"... I'd say the neocons have Trump on the ropes. Perhaps he figures if he buys enough of their guns he can pacify them long enough to get some control back, I doubt he has any intention of firing those guns but hey, shit happens! ..."
"... a previous puppet of US, Yushchenko, was installed in Kiev with the help of the State Dept. and the CIA-supported and educated organizations like The National Endowment for Democracy (NED). http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/08/killing-europe-us-launches-sanctions.html ..."
"... Monsanto is already in charge of the Ukraine' agricultural lands. Splendid. http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2526593/ukraine_opens_up_for_monsanto_land_grabs_and_gmos.html ..."
Aug 04, 2017 | www.unz.com

In crafting the platform in Cleveland on which Donald Trump would run, America Firsters inflicted a major defeat on the War Party. The platform committee rejected a plank to pull us deeper into Ukraine, by successfully opposing new U.S. arms transfers to Kiev.

Improved relations with Russia were what candidate Trump had promised, and what Americans would vote for in November.

Yet, this week, The Wall Street Journal reports:

"The U.S. Pentagon and State Department have devised plans to supply Ukraine with antitank missiles and other weaponry and are seeking White House approval as Kiev battles Russia-backed separatists Defense Secretary Mattis has endorsed the plan."

As pro-Russia rebels in East Ukraine have armored vehicles, Kiev wants U.S. tank-killing Javelin missiles, as well as antiaircraft weapons. State and Defense want Trump to send the lethal weapons. This is a formula for a renewed war, with far higher casualties in Ukraine than the 10,000 dead already suffered on both sides. And it is a war Vladimir Putin will not likely allow Kiev to win.

If Ukraine's army, bolstered by U.S. weaponry, re-engages in the east, it could face a Moscow-backed counterattack and be routed, and the Russian army could take permanent control of the Donbass.

Indeed, if Trump approves this State-Defense escalation plan, we could be looking at a rerun of the Russia-Georgia war of August 2008.

Then, to recapture its lost province of South Ossetia, which had seceded in 1992, after Georgia seceded from Russia, Georgia invaded.

Putin sent his army in, threw the Georgians out, and recognized South Ossetia, as John McCain impotently declaimed, "We are all Georgians now!"

Wisely, George W. Bush ignored McCain and did nothing.

But about this new arms deal questions arise.

As the rebels have no aircraft, whose planes are the U.S. antiaircraft missiles to shoot down? And if the Russian army just over the border can enter and crush the Ukrainian army, why would we want to restart a civil war, the only certain result of which is more dead Ukrainians on both sides?

The Journal's answer: Our goal is to bleed Russia.

"The point of lethal aid is to raise the price Mr. Putin pays for his imperialism until he withdraws or agrees to peace. The Russians don't want dead soldiers arriving home before next year's presidential election."

Also going neocon is Mike Pence. In Georgia this week, noting that Russian tanks are still in South Ossetia, the vice president not only declared, "We stand with you," he told Georgians the U.S. stands by its 2008 commitment to bring them into NATO.

This would mean, under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, that in a future Russia-Georgia clash the U.S. could find itself in a shooting war with Russia in the South Caucasus.

Russia's security interests there seem clear. What are ours?

Along with Trump's signing of the new sanctions bill imposed by Congress, which strips him of his authority to lift those sanctions without Hill approval, these developments raise larger questions.

Is President Trump losing control of Russia policy? Has he capitulated to the neocons? These are not academic questions. For consider the architect of the new arms package, Kurt Volker, the new U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations.

A former CIA agent, member of the National Security Counsel, and envoy to NATO, Volker believes Russian troops in Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk are all there illegally -- and U.S. policy should be to push them out.

A former staffer of Sen. McCain, Volker was, until July, executive director of the neocon McCain Institute. He has called for the imposition of personal sanctions on Putin and his family and European travel restrictions on the Russian president. In the Journal this week, "officials" described his strategy:

"Volker believes that a change in Ukraine can be brought only by raising the costs for Moscow for continued intervention in Ukraine. In public comments, he has played down the notion that supplying weapons to Ukraine would escalate the conflict with Russia."

In short, Volker believes giving antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Ukraine will bring Putin to the negotiating table, as he fears the prospect of dead Russian soldiers coming home in caskets before his 2018 election. As for concerns that Putin might send his army into Ukraine, such worries are unwarranted. Volker envisions a deepening U.S. involvement in a Ukrainian civil war that can bleed and break Russia's Ukrainian allies and convince Putin to back down and accept what we regard as a just settlement.

Does Trump believe this? Does Trump believe that confronting Putin with rising casualties among his army and allies in Ukraine is the way to force the Russian president to back down and withdraw from Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, as Nikita Khrushchev did from Cuba in 1962?

What if Putin refuses to back down, and chooses to confront?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

Copyright 2017 Creators.com.

Ace , August 4, 2017 at 5:28 am GMT

E. Ukraine and Crimea would be part controlled by Ukraine and there would be no fighting in E. Ukraine today if Obama and Nuland had not interfered in Ukraine. Period.

The upheaval and deaths there are entirely our responsibility.

jilles dykstra , August 4, 2017 at 5:42 am GMT

If the following is true it is worth reading: https://www.rt.com/news/398490-us-main-global-threat-survey/

Wally , August 4, 2017 at 6:45 am GMT

@reiner Tor "Interestingly, it's never explained why Putin would fear his soldiers being killed before the election if he really was a dictator. Either he doesn't care much for the election or he's not really a dictator." Well said.

Wally , August 4, 2017 at 6:47 am GMT

@Taras77 Forget "neo con", call them what they are, Israel First

alexander , August 4, 2017 at 7:07 am GMT

Dear Mr. Buchanan, Had the Journal one small moment of "truth telling" then its goal would be crystal clear not to bleed Russia but to bleed the United States to utter insolvency through their endless stupid wars.. Just look at our nation's balance sheet to see the truth. Nearly FIFTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS of debt generated in a mere seventeen years.

What an utter disaster and total disgrace to our nation.

for-the-record , August 4, 2017 at 7:14 am GMT

Volker envisions a deepening U.S. involvement in a Ukrainian civil war that can bleed and break Russia's Ukrainian allies and convince Putin to back down and accept what we regard as a just settlement .

On the contrary, I think that Volker and others driving US policy are very well aware that Putin won't back down, and this is indeed what they want. A direct, permanent conflict with Russia which will leave it isolated from the "Western" world. A bit like track and field, where it increasingly looks like Russia will be permanently excluded from international competitions, and where Russian athletes will only be allowed to compete as "neutrals", under pain of exclusion if they as so much as sing the Russian national anthem in their hotel. And once the conflict heats up in Ukraine, look for a call to boycott the 2018 World Cup in Russia (as per the 1980 Olympics). The recent Confederations Cup in Russia was widely viewed as a considerable success, and received favorable reporting in much of the Western press, and this clearly can't be allowed to happen with the World Cup, the World's premier sporting event.

Captain Nemo , August 4, 2017 at 7:30 am GMT

And of course conflict with Russia has nothing to do with the proclaimed goal of containing an "agressive" Putin and Russia, which is a fallacious representation of Russia's actions and motives, and everything to do with maintaining the seemingly absolute World hegemony the USA gained after the collapse of the USSR. This fantasy of absolute hegemony is hard to let go for Neocons and Deep state, and they will cling to it with all their claws, even risking nuclear war for it .

The latest sanctions on Russia are an attempt to bleed Russia in another way, by pushing it out of the World economy, with the naive conviction that it would all end well if that plan succeeded

Anyone with an ounce of common sense realises that it would end terribly bad for all the parties involved.

The Alarmist , August 4, 2017 at 7:50 am GMT

@reiner Tor It's a confusion of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan with the defense of ethnic Russians standing up to a Yankee Puppet Regime trying to subjugate them. The coffins might well secure a landslide election for Putin in such a cause. The US may have seriously misunderestimated the situation there.

Priss Factor , Website August 4, 2017 at 8:22 am GMT

Ozzie done it. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/03/jfk-assassination-lone-gunman-cia-new-files-215449

Renoman , August 4, 2017 at 9:10 am GMT

I'd say the neocons have Trump on the ropes. Perhaps he figures if he buys enough of their guns he can pacify them long enough to get some control back, I doubt he has any intention of firing those guns but hey, shit happens!

Sergey Krieger , August 4, 2017 at 9:22 am GMT

Expecting Russia to back down fearing causalities? It would be wise to check who has been backing down due to causalities first before making such conclusions. Here Russia security is concerned and causalities are acceptable. USA should be very worried not to take too much responsibilities along Russian borders because things can get hot and this is not the war USA can win. Lose it even small way and USA days as great power are over.

jacques sheete , August 4, 2017 at 9:36 am GMT

@Taras77

and never be held accountable

That's a huge flaw in "our" system. We really need to find good answers to that problem.

JL , August 4, 2017 at 9:51 am GMT

Both this article, and the problems it proposes to address, are based on deep and fundamental misunderstandings of Russia and its domestic politics. Russia has escalation dominance in the Ukrainian theater and will not only match, but exceed, any American provocation there, including the delivery of arms to the UAF. I believe Russia would have no problem with this development, as it would give them cover to increase, and perhaps make official, its support for the NDF.

As an aside, before their civil war, the Ukraine was perennially among the top five of the world's largest arms exporters. So lack of arms is not clearly not the problem. No, the problem is that those who are trained to use them are not particularly enthusiastic about fighting, and those that are enthusiastic about fighting are not particularly well trained. Not to mention that a lot of them are dead already.

As for Putin and the elections, the real risk for him is not soldiers coming home in bodybags. Russian mentality, and their general attitudes towards war, allow them to take losses perhaps like no one else in the world. No, the real political risk to Putin is not appearing to react strongly enough.

As it is, Russian public opinion would like him to take a tougher stance in facing down the Empire. The world should really be glad that Russia has such a patient and tolerant leader. Russia's next leader will lack the political capital that Putin has developed over the years, and will likely be much more aggressive in the defense of Russia's national interests. Those dreaming of Putin's exit should really be careful of what they wish for.

Randal , August 4, 2017 at 11:13 am GMT

@reiner Tor Silence, boy. The Emperor's suit is of surpassing magnificence, as all respectable folk agree.

isthatright , August 4, 2017 at 11:34 am GMT

@reiner Tor good point

War for Blair Mountain , August 4, 2017 at 11:42 am GMT

The Democratic Party

Mass murder of Conservative Christian Russians in the name of Homosexual-Pedophile-Tranny Rights

Democratic Party Family Values ..

War for Blair Mountain , August 4, 2017 at 11:47 am GMT

If Putin backs down to the neocons .he will very likely be overthrown by the Russian Military .I would like to know Comrade Saker's and Comrade SmothieX1′s view on this matter since they are both by many orders of magnitude more qualified to comment on this point that I have raised

Andoheb , August 4, 2017 at 12:03 pm GMT

Wonder if Russians could respond by arming Taliban

neutral , August 4, 2017 at 12:11 pm GMT

@for-the-record

look for a call to boycott the 2018 World Cup in Russia

That would never work, the USA could prevent their team from going and nobody would care, but there is no way they could make the rest of the world do this, to deprive people of such a big event would create an epic backfire for the neocons, even vassal states such as Germany or UK being told by the USA not to go with get the middle finger.

Astuteobservor II , August 4, 2017 at 12:11 pm GMT

putin will 100% not back down. this is not 1962. same reason why china would never allow NK to be taken over.

anonymous , Disclaimer August 4, 2017 at 12:34 pm GMT

Well, at least we're spared in his latest Mr. Buchanan's witlessly carrying around a bucket of "Russian hacking" BS.

But he still serves the Establishment. Note his habitual use of "we" in reference to the USG. People who self-identify with their rulers are essential for the warmongers. Isn't that why Americans are subjected to camouflage uniforms and "thank you for your service" spectacles at athletic events?

I can appreciate the author's desire to see himself and to be lauded as a "true conservative." But the fact is that he was part of the regime that was more successful only because it picked on Grenada and other relative weaklings. 99% of the people who live in this country shouldn't care less about who governs Ukraine, Korea, or any other place outside the lawful territory of the United States

More of us every day realize that the beat has been rolling on, no matter who is in nominal power in Washington, for a long, long time. Mr. Buchanan should take a couple more steps back. Maybe he will see that, too.

Andrei Martyanov , Website August 4, 2017 at 12:55 pm GMT

In short, Volker believes giving antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Ukraine will bring Putin to the negotiating table, as he fears the prospect of dead Russian soldiers coming home in caskets before his 2018 election.

1.There are NO cohesive Russian Armed Forces units (formations) in Donbass. Volunteers (aka "vacationers") from regular Russian Army? Sure, they are being paid well, plus Northern Wind. But it seems even Ukrainian Army's top brass admission that there are no Russian troops in Ukraine falls on a deaf ear. Evidently those in the "West" who continue to repeat this baloney have very little understanding of how real wars are fought and how real formations from company up to battalion and regiment level, not to speak of brigades or divisions, are deployed. Per personnel–neither DNR nor LNR have issues with mobilizing numbers.

2. Volker continues, if that are his real intentions, to demonstrate a complete lack of any strategic vision and following dead beat cliches–which are defining characteristics of D.C. "elites" who are completely removed from everyday realities, which actually matter, of the world. Nor are they competent in their assessments of the scale of the resources required for "bringing Putin to negotiating table". Even giving some Javelins (not to speak of TOWs) and Stinger-type weapons will only accelerate a demise of the Ukrainian Army and with it, of the current Kiev regime. But then again, considering level of US "diplomacy" in general, and Volker's in particular one can reasonably expect another FUBAR with dire consequences for both US and its clients.

Andrei Martyanov , Website August 4, 2017 at 1:02 pm GMT

@Astuteobservor II

putin will 100% not back down. this is not 1962. same reason why china would never allow NK to be taken over.

It has nothing, zilch, to do with Putin. It has everything to do with overwhelming majority of Russian people, whose blood was spilled on US and EU (NATO) money. The combined West and especially its pathetic Russian "academe" have no clue about cultural suicide West (US especially) has committed in Russia. It is my academic contention that US Russia's "scholarship" (with some few exceptions) knows next to zero about Russia and especially her 20th and 21st century history. It is an established scientific fact now. Overwhelming empirical evidence to support my claim is in place and easily accessible. It is also a major reason why US "power elites" are so dangerous–they miscalculate constantly, because they are incompetent.

Michael Kenny , August 4, 2017 at 1:08 pm GMT

If I have understood Mr Buchanan's writings correctly, his primary goal is the destruction of the EU, which he sees as a threat to US global hegemony. Putin is merely an American stooge to be used to promote that end in return for which he is to get such reward as the hegemonic US vouchsafes to grant him. The conundrum for the US hegemonists is that if Putin wins in Ukraine, then US global hegemony is irreversibly destroyed but if he loses, the hated EU is enormously strengthened, which in its turn destroys US global hegemony! Heads, the EU wins, tails, the US loses! The argument Mr Buchanan is challenging seems to be that taking Putin out will do less damage to US hegemony than allowing him to win. As for Putin, he has two choices. He can capitulate in return for some face-saving fudge that will fool nobody. That will probably destroy him politically with his elderly Soviet-generation supporters at home. Or he can start WWIII and lose or start WWIII, go nuclear and then lose. That too will destroy him at home. Thus, for US hegemonists who haven't yet accepted that Putin has "blown it" and can no longer serve as a battering ram to destroy the EU (and has, indeed, become a liability to the very US groups that initially backed him), the logical thing is to try to get the US to capitulate to Putin in the mistaken belief the the European members of NATO are incapable of fending off Putin's rickety military machine by themselves. That wholly misunderstands the strength of nationalism in Europe, the very same nationalism that the US hegemonists have been trying to whip up as (yet another!) battering ram to destroy the EU!

Harold Smith , August 4, 2017 at 1:27 pm GMT

"Is President Trump losing control of Russia policy? Has he capitulated to the neocons? [OR ARE WE NOW FORCED TO CONCLUDE THAT TRUMP'S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN WAS A CALCULATED FRAUD FROM THE BEGINNING]?"

There; I fixed it for you.

Ludwig Watzal , Website August 4, 2017 at 1:31 pm GMT

Political morons are running the US. Trump is not in control of any of his agencies or departments. All of them are hostile to him not to speak to Congress. which blocks any of his initiatives. What Vice President Mike Pence is talking about his trip in the Baltics or the other US satellite states, is irresponsible. It shows that Trump has lost control that is what the war party and the Republicans want. They will push Trump out of office and if it doesn't work some hired crazy will kill him like JFK. The real political gangsters are the members of the Deep State such as the CIA, NSA, the wider intelligence community, and the Clinton and Obama political mafia.

The suggestions made by Kurt Volker, the new U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, are just beyond the pale for the Russians. For what Volker suggested, Trump should replace him. President Putin should not accept being fooled by the US any longer and just take the Donbas, period as he did with South Ossetia. If the US war-mongers in Washington want to go to war over Ukraine, they should try it. Putin should not allow the US to blackmail him further on.
Putin is not an imperialist or an aggressor, but the US Empire and its NATO satellites are.

Having conquered 75 per cent of the world's territories through over 700 US military bases, the real perpetrator is obvious. Putin should not back down against US aggression and provocation. Why should the US risk its destruction for a corrupt and criminal political leadership in Ukraine? Perhaps there are still some sane people within the Belt Way, although they are thin on the ground.

Seward , August 4, 2017 at 2:04 pm GMT

@JL As I've proposed in other fora, a simple, effective Russian response would be to proclaim a temporary protectorate over the Donbas republics of the Ukraine until such time as the Minsk II agreement is fulfilled, or renegotiated to the agreement to the concerned parties. (I.E., temporarily permanent.) A precedent would be the French protectorates Tunisia and Morocco, and the various analogous protectorates still exercised around the world (see Wikipedia). The proclamation should proclaim that Russia will retaliate against any artillery, missile, air, or naval attacks on the Donbas using forces located in Russian; and also against any ground attack across the cease-fire line using ground forces presently deployed in Russia, at the request of either Donbas republic. The U.S. and Nato would scream bloody murder of course, Congress would vote more meaningless sanctions, but the situation would stabilize permanently IMHO, perhaps after a few retaliatory barrages. It would be like the Crimea, a frozen conflict the Ukraine and the West know they cannot win short of WW3.

Sergey Krieger , August 4, 2017 at 2:10 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov And because they have not been hurt yet and have no clue as to what real hubris after failure coming home looks like.

anon , Disclaimer August 4, 2017 at 2:14 pm GMT

@Wally You are deluded. It's almost hopeless – but one last try- the policy of US global hegemony has nothing to do with Israel. It's been the goal of almost the entire foreign policy elite- including the WASP elite- since 1945. If you mistakenly insist on blaming Israel or its supporters for everything that is happening, you can't identify the real ideas and forces that are propelling us to disaster. That's why anti- Semitisn is such a disabling disease- it mentally cripples those who go down that path. But you won't listen or try to get out, so I'm wasting my breath.

anon , Disclaimer August 4, 2017 at 2:18 pm GMT

@Captain Nemo Your analysis is correct. Add in the liberal interventionists to the foreign policy groups seeking US global hegemony.

anon , Disclaimer August 4, 2017 at 2:20 pm GMT

@Captain Nemo Your analysis is correct. Add in the liberal interventionists to the foreign policy groups seeking US global hegemony.

Quartermaster , August 4, 2017 at 2:29 pm GMT

This is a formula for a renewed war, with far higher casualties in Ukraine than the 10,000 dead already suffered on both sides.

last I looked there is already a war. Nothing would be "renewed," as it is ongoing.

Volker envisions a deepening U.S. involvement in a Ukrainian civil war that can bleed and break Russia's Ukrainian allies and convince Putin to back down and accept what we regard as a just settlement.

It is not a civil war. That is a Putinist lie. Russian units are already on the ground in the Donbas and their casualties have been quite heavy. Russian troops have been captured, and they were in possession of their military ID and internal passports. "Cargo 200″ shipments have been rather heavy over the last 3 years, and parents of the troops killed have been asking about their kids.

The Ukrainians are willing to fight for themselves. They simply need the tools. Putin may not like the fact that the Ukrainians don't want any part of his renewed Russian Empire, but it need not involve our troops when the people are their are willing to fight.

annamaria , August 4, 2017 at 2:51 pm GMT

@Taras77 "The stupidity of Volker is astonishing but he is in keeping with his neo con associates "

This is not stupidity. This is the zioncon-inspired treason against US citizenry at large. McCain father, an admiral, got his fame for whitewashing the USSLiberty "accident," thus insulting the memory of American sailors who were wounded and died during the despicable Israeli attack. John McCain moniker, "Tokyo Rose," is not for nothing. Similarly, his open fraternization with Ukrainian neo-Nazis (on a cue from ziocons) is just a family tradition of profitable betrayal. McCain has been loyal to ziocons because the Lobby has become all-powerful in the US.
https://www.dailystormer.com/senile-traitor-john-mccain-claims-america-was-stronger-under-obama/ "McCain's entire political career has been based off of doing what's best for Israel and not America."

http://america-hijacked.com/2011/09/02/john-mccain-praises-fathers-whitewashing-of-israels-attack-on-the-uss-liberty/

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/john-mccain-most-hypocritical-opportunistic-and-untrustworthy-senator

As for Volker, he is a regular opportunist who would sell the US for a right amount of money and power. Like boss, like servant.

Wally , Website August 4, 2017 at 2:52 pm GMT

@anon Another desperate hasbarist has spoken.

'Antisemitism' is simply a logical reaction to the lies, thievery, violence, destruction, and hate that is perpetrated and advocated by Jewish supremacists.

The '6M Jews' crap is falling part, BDS is breathing down their neck, & "that shitty little country" is doomed. Excellent.

"Alone the fact that one may not question the Jewish "holocaust" and that Jewish pressure has inflicted laws on democratic societies to prevent questions!while incessant promotion and indoctrination of the same averredly incontestable 'holocaust' occur!gives the game away. It proves that it must be a lie. Why else would one not be allowed to question it? Because it might offend the "survivors"? Because it "dishonors the dead"? Hardly sufficient reason to outlaw discussion. No, because the exposure of this leading lie might precipitate questions about so many other lies and cause the whole ramshackle fabrication to crumble."

- Gerard Menuhin / righteous Revisionist Jew, son of famous violinist

Must reads:
Holocaust Handbooks & Documentaries

http://holocausthandbooks.com/index.php?main_page=1

The '6M Jews, 5M others, & gas chambers' are scientifically impossible frauds.
see the 'holocaust' scam debunked here:

http://codoh.com

No name calling, level playing field debate here:

http://forum.codoh.com

The True Cost of Parasite Israel
Forced US taxpayers money to Israel goes far beyond the official numbers.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-true-cost-of-israel/

Israel's Dirty Little Secret
How it drives US policies exploiting a spineless Congress and White House

http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/israels-dirty-little-secret/

Rurik , August 4, 2017 at 2:54 pm GMT

@Seward

proclaim a temporary protectorate over the Donbas republics of the Ukraine until such time as the Minsk II agreement is fulfilled, or renegotiated to the agreement to the concerned parties

but that all presumes the existence of some adherence to some principle of International Law or respect for such notions. When from the West, there are none anymore. The zio-West now destroys entire nations based on what everyone knows and accepts are blatant lies. The charade is over. Even the trappings of the illusion have been tossed aside, and the snarling zio-face of 'might = right' is now menacing the world.

A precedent would be the French protectorates

you're using the language of codified law, when there isn't any anymore

Russia will retaliate against any artillery, missile, air, or naval attacks on the Donbas using forces located in Russian;

the zio-fiend is salivating for any pretext it can use to act outraged and shocked, shocked! that today it has been proven true! Putin is Adolf Hitler and threatens the world with military tyranny! He must be stopped at all costs! John McCain and Lindsey Graham were right all along!! This man is a menace! and France and Germany and England are joining the ZUSA with immediate calls for Russia to desist and respect International Law and sovereign borders!!

'THIS WILL NOT STAND!'

blah, blah, blah

What Putin should do is tell the West/NATO to stop fomenting war on his borders, and if they really are going to keep pushing until Russia accepts its status as vassal state to Tel Aviv, (like the ZUSA and England and France and Germany obviously are), that before that happens, everyone should know that there's a certain 'shitty little state' in the middle east that can expect to be visited by a couple of Satan II ambassadors before Russia bows down like a mangy dog to the Jewish supremacist$ in Israel.

anonymous , Disclaimer August 4, 2017 at 3:01 pm GMT

@neutral ZioUSA did everything in its power to derail Sochi.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-burnett/boycott-the-winter-olympi_b_4439037.html

U.S. skeleton athletes seek boycott of Sochi championships
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sport-doping-skeleton-usa-idUSKBN13U01H

U.S. Athletes Weigh a Boycott Over Russian Doping – The New York

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/sports/russian-doping-boycott-us-athletes.html

Should the US have boycotted the Sochi Olympics
http://www.debate.org › Opinions › Politics

Latvia skeleton team to boycott world championships in Russia | Sport
https://www.theguardian.com › Sports › Russia doping scandal

U.S. men's hockey players may boycott world championships in
http://www.chicagotribune.com/ /ct-us-men-may-boycott-hockey-world-championships-2 ;

U.S. women's hockey players to boycott world championships
http://www.chicagotribune.com/ /ct-womens-hockey-world-championships-boycott-20170 ;

Boycott the Winter Olympics | HuffPost
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-burnett/boycott-the-winter-olympi_b_4439037.html

Canada and U.S. should consider boycott of men's hockey in Sochi
archives.cerium.ca/Canada-should-boycott-men-s-hockey

for-the-record , August 4, 2017 at 3:02 pm GMT

@neutral That would never work, the USA could prevent their team from going and nobody would care, but there is no way they could make the rest of the world do this, to deprive people of such a big event would create an epic backfire for the neocons, even vassal states such as Germany or UK being told by the USA not to go with get the middle finger.

My point was that there will be a call to boycott the World Cup, hopefully you are right as to the outcome. After decades of being subservient vassals, it would be truly ironic if the ultimate wedge between the US and the "coalition of the willing" were to be sports, showing what is truly important in life

for-the-record , August 4, 2017 at 3:08 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov Nor are they competent in their assessments of the scale of the resources required for "bringing Putin to negotiating table".

Following up on an earlier post, I think you are misinterpreting Volker's objective (and those of his "fellow travelers"). They know very well that Putin won't "come to the table", in fact they don't want him to. What they want is to force him to intervene directly and openly, as in Syria, and then use this "invasion" to justify permanent pariah status for Russia. They don't care at all what happens to Ukraine, only that Russia is forced to act in a manner that will allow them to demonize it.

Rurik , August 4, 2017 at 3:17 pm GMT

They don't care at all what happens to Ukraine, only that Russia is forced to act in a manner that will allow them to demonize it.

bingo!

Mulegino1 , August 4, 2017 at 3:31 pm GMT

As Volker so trenchantly illustrates, corruption, stupidity, recklessness and ignorance are indispensable prerequisites for the wielding of influence in the Washington D.C. "national security" establishment. It is not so much a swamp as an open sewer.

Trump should have let the Russian sanctions bill become law without his signature. One of his major weaknesses is his being bedazzled by flag officers and brass. His chief national security adviser is a dead ringer for Aleister Crowley.

Andrei Martyanov , Website August 4, 2017 at 3:35 pm GMT

What they want is to force him to intervene directly and openly, as in Syria, and then use this "invasion" to justify permanent pariah status for Russia. They don't care at all what happens to Ukraine, only that Russia is forced to act in a manner that will allow them to demonize it.

It would have been a valid point should what you propose as a rationale hasn't been tried before–to no avail. Russia DOES have a proxy force in LDNR and, if and when necessary, may drastically "improve" its fighting capabilities. Considering the (what's known) present state of the Ukrainian Army (obviously a "strongest one in Europe(c)", wink, wink) I think the forces LDNR field currently are enough to prevent Kiev from attempting any large scale offensive. Having said all that, Poroshenko is desperate and he may try anything but political fallout for Russia, if to consider Russia's direct involvement, which will be very short and very bad for Ukraine, is being increasingly mitigated by Russia's Asian dynamics. Once Power of Siberia is operational (among other serious infrastructure projects at the Far East)–Europe can go to hell. But I am sure there are more aces and trump cards (no pun intended) up Russia's "sleeve". As per demonization: is it possible to demonize even more? I think Clapper has already established the fact that Russians are genetically inferior. So, concentration camps for Russians are in order at some point of time.

Harold Smith , August 4, 2017 at 4:03 pm GMT

@Ludwig Watzal "Political morons are running the US. Trump is not in control of any of his agencies or departments. All of them are hostile to him not to speak to Congress."

Would you agree with me that this pathetic situation obviously didn't happen by "accident"? It must be concluded that the Trump "presidency" is a Trojan horse. Trump's whole campaign was a calculated fraud from the beginning. That is, presidential poseur Trump ran with the intention of turning most general policy decisions, especially foreign policy, over to his Jewish-supremacist handlers, and letting them pick most if not all of his subordinates (or at least letting them have veto power over his choices).

Hood Canal Gardner , August 4, 2017 at 4:08 pm GMT

What has The Donald got for a 'good deal swap' for Afghanistan, ie Putin to pick up where they left-off in the 70s?

virgile , August 4, 2017 at 4:25 pm GMT

What is the USA's Achilleus heel where Russia, Iran or North Korea can inflict it the maximum pain?
Iraq? Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia? the Gulf countries? Japan? Israel?
It seems that North Korea already won as Tillerson now strongly denies that the USA is seeking a regime change there. It seems that the threat of nuclear is very effective in making the USA back down. Iran has proven on the ground in Syria that its missiles can easily reach Israel, that is why the USA rushed to inflict new sanctions. The USA seems to be building up a pretext ( or a false flag) to destroy Iran's missile development capabilities to protect Israel. Is Iran staying idle, or covertly threaten USA's local allies, the Gulf countries of possible retaliation? The Gulf countries are probably trying to prevent any attack on Iran. Japan did the same about North Korea, resulting in offers of negotiations. Will the Gulf countries have the same weight or the USA will take the chance of an all out war where it would have to intervene militarily again?
Now Russia will be watching Trump weakening and the neocons taking over. Is it a done game? who will rescue Trump? The American people who voted for him? will the USA fall into a civil war if Trump is threatened of impeachment?
I trust Trump will reach to the American people and win back his power.

Alden , August 4, 2017 at 5:36 pm GMT

@Harold Smith Hasn't every president since Johnson been an Israeli/APAIC front man?

jacques sheete , August 4, 2017 at 6:02 pm GMT

@Harold Smith

[OR ARE WE NOW FORCED TO CONCLUDE THAT TRUMP'S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN WAS A CALCULATED FRAUD FROM THE BEGINNING]?"

There; I fixed it for you.

You certainly did!

aaaa returns , August 4, 2017 at 6:03 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny The EU are doing a good job of destroying themselves. If the Central and Eastern countries continue to be bullied over migrants and bad economic deals, then maybe they'll rightly cut and run.

USA's soft-war against Europe was evident right after the 2008 economic bust, with Greece CDS's being targeted until capitulation. Then Hillary or whomever conned Europe into wrecking Libya, then Ukraine, then Syria, then the wave of migrants began..

It might sound ridiculous, but I am starting to think Erdogan has been a far better leader than Merkel or the clown car carousel of France. He's totally ruthless, and has been a supporter of terrorists, but his moves have been somewhat logical in the face of extreme crisis. Now he seems to have oriented Turkey to a relatively solid footing as far as I can see.

annamaria , August 4, 2017 at 6:07 pm GMT

@Rurik The destruction and rape of Ukraine had been planned already by the ZUSA when a previous puppet of US, Yushchenko, was installed in Kiev with the help of the State Dept. and the CIA-supported and educated organizations like The National Endowment for Democracy (NED). http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/08/killing-europe-us-launches-sanctions.html

"Back in 2010, Russia proposed creating a joint venture with Ukraine and unifying Gazprom's fields and Ukraine's gas pipelines. However, the pro-American leadership of Ukraine at the time (when Viktor Yushchenko, who led the country as a result of a color revolution, was president) rejected the project, seeing such as a "threat" to "national dignity", i.e., Ukraine's GTS [gas transport system]. The plan for "increasing Ukraine's energy security" contained in HR 3364 [concocted in the US] means turning Ukraine into a transit monopolist under the control of American companies. Accepting the Americans' conditions is economically disadvantageous to Russia and renders it politically dependent on the unpredictable transit that is Ukraine. If this act is implemented, American energy companies will be able to participate in the privatization of Ukraine's GTS (as provided by the Third Energy Package) and profit off of the transport of gas across Ukrainian territory. Thus, the main revenue from transiting Russian gas would not go to the Ukrainians, but to their overseas overlord."

Very clear. The natives can go die out peacefully without making any unnecessary noise re "sovereignty," "national interests" and other trifles that are of no interests for the US corporations.

Monsanto is already in charge of the Ukraine' agricultural lands. Splendid. http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2526593/ukraine_opens_up_for_monsanto_land_grabs_and_gmos.html

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been chaired by Carl Gershman, the ziocon who has been president since NED was founded in 1983.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article192992.html

https://journal-neo.org/2015/08/03/national-endowment-for-democracy-is-now-officially-undesirable-in-

SolontoCroesus , August 4, 2017 at 6:45 pm GMT

@Alden

Hasn't every president since Johnson been an Israeli/APAIC front man?

technicalities.

Woodrow Wilson was under control of zionists, most notably, in the person of Louis Brandeis & his claque.

Franklin D Roosevelt was most certainly under the control of zionists/Jews -- Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Baruch, and the Morgenthaus, pater et fil plus their acolytes and syanim, exerted enormous power over FDR. Eisenhower owed most of his power/authority to doing things that pleased zionist/Jewish string-pullers who maneuvered FDR

as you say, LBJ for sure was more committed to keeping the gawd's chozen happy than to protecting the interests of the American people.

Based on a review on "The American Empire Project" of a book by Nathan Thrall, titled "The Only Language they Understand," http://americanempireproject.com/blog/the-only-language-they-understand-by-nathan-thrall/ , Jimmy Carter probably did more to turn USA over to the zionists than even LBJ: this is surprising because, as the review notes, Carter initially took a hard line on Israel, demanding early on that Israel halt settlement-building, and arguing forcefully that Palestinians deserved protection of their territorial and all other rights.

When Carter's other activities vis a vis Jews are correlated with the actions Thrall describes, I think -- should say speculate -- that Carter was out-maneuvered by the zionists: it was Carter who gave Jews the opening to create the holocaust museum in Washington, DC -- in other words, it may be that Carter allowed the Trojan Horse to be rolled through the gates of the USA and to stand at USA's front door.
The Jews got what they wanted, but Carter's demands were not only ignored, they -- and he -- were cast aside.

Harold Smith , August 4, 2017 at 6:57 pm GMT

@Alden "Hasn't every president since Johnson been an Israeli/APAIC front man?"

Obviously. But the tenor of Ludwig Watzal's post seems to be that Trump, other than perhaps being "weak" or "incompetent" is not at fault.

I agree with him that technically, Trump probably isn't "in control", but that's apparently what Trump agreed to when he and his handlers set out to defraud all of us.

annamaria , August 4, 2017 at 7:02 pm GMT

What made Mueller such a great asset for the deep state?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/08/comey-and-mueller-russiagates-mythical-heroes/

"Long before he became FBI Director, serious questions existed about Mueller's role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI's illicit deals with mobster Whitey Bulger and other "top echelon" informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang . Mueller's FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of "national security letters" to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating "terrorism."

Mueller knew that Vice President Dick Cheney's claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. Mueller didn't speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn't speak out against torture. He didn't speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn't tell the truth about 9/11.
He is just "their man."

EugeneGur , August 4, 2017 at 7:35 pm GMT

@Quartermaster You sound like you copied this statement from a Ukrainian propaganda site.

Sure thing, thousands of Donbass people fighting in the militia do not exists but Russia troops nobody has been able to see or photograph do. I have the utmost respect for the Russian military capabilities but I do not think they've developed a clocking device as yet.

And, of course, going to a secret military mission, you should never forget to bring along you internal passport and military ID. Heavy losses, really? We know people who died in Donbass by name – and they aren't Russia soldiers. Oh, you forgot about buryats – no picture of the Russia invasion could be complete without byuryat motorized divisions invading Donbass.

You may not like it but this is a civil war brought about by the idiotic policies of the scumbags the West put in charge of Ukraine. As to the tools, bring them over – they'll end up in the hands of the Donbass militia in no time. You see, "Ukrainians are willing to fight for themselves" mostly on the pages of Facebook. Those that do go to the Army, mostly do it for money. The situation in today's Ukraine is so desperate, killing one's former compatriots is about the only way for a man to make a living.

Rurik , August 4, 2017 at 7:36 pm GMT

@annamaria all true anna

they've had their devil's tentacles in Ukraine for quite some time. When you mentioned the word 'trifles', I was reminded of what the Israeli/"Ukrainian" oligarch said about the people on MH17. He called their deaths a 'trifle', as he mentions that the wrong plane was shot down. Presumably his merc was sent up to shoot Putin's plane down and he shot the wrong one down (which would explain the machine gun holes).

this video has been scrubbed from most of the internet, and most of the ones you click on will say 'this video has been removed'

https://youtu.be/-TmarLwobzs

yeah , August 4, 2017 at 7:57 pm GMT

@reiner Tor Interestingly, it's never explained why Putin would fear his soldiers being killed before the election if he really was a dictator. Either he doesn't care much for the election or he's not really a dictator. Good catch! The pity is that people who have made up their minds (or have had theirs made up for them) about Putin being a dictator will not see the wit and logical beauty of your argument. They are quite likely to write you off as another Russian-stooge and dig in their heels even further. Here is a short farcical satire about our times.

Good, obedient citizen: Please Guvm'nt, help me. I can't sleep at night 'cause I fear there may be a red under my bed waiting to choke me to death.

Guvm'nt: Don't worry lad. We watch your house, we monitor your mail. We watch you and yours. We know when you pee and we watch who comes in and out of your house. No one can even breathe without our being in the know.

Good citizen: Ah thank God! Thanks for preventing a red under my bed. I can now sleep in peace.

[Aug 04, 2017] What made Mueller such a great asset for the deep state?

Notable quotes:
"... Mueller's FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of "national security letters" to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating "terrorism." ..."
"... Mueller knew that Vice President Dick Cheney's claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. Mueller didn't speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn't speak out against torture. He didn't speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn't tell the truth about 9/11. He is just "their man." ..."
Aug 04, 2017 | www.unz.com

annamaria > > , August 4, 2017 at 7:02 pm GMT

What made Mueller such a great asset for the deep state?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/08/comey-and-mueller-russiagates-mythical-heroes/

"Long before he became FBI Director, serious questions existed about Mueller's role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI's illicit deals with mobster Whitey Bulger and other "top echelon" informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang . Mueller's FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of "national security letters" to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating "terrorism."

Mueller knew that Vice President Dick Cheney's claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. Mueller didn't speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn't speak out against torture. He didn't speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn't tell the truth about 9/11. He is just "their man."

[Aug 04, 2017] Here's a link to a transcript of the call plus other commentary

Notable quotes:
"... It makes perfect sense to me. Business as usual--when all else fails, go to Big Lie mode, which is what was done. ..."
Aug 04, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 | Aug 3, 2017 12:18:43 PM | 25

frances @24--

Here's a link to a transcript of the call plus other commentary, https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/08/03/seymour-hersh-cracks-russiagate-as-cia-planted-lie-revenge-against-trump.html

It makes perfect sense to me. Business as usual--when all else fails, go to Big Lie mode, which is what was done.

[Aug 03, 2017] The Magnitsky Hoax

Margnistsky was an accountant. He never has been a laywer.
Notable quotes:
"... "Foreign non-governmental pro-democracy groups" means absolutely different things than it is stated. We must read "foreign" as "American", "non-governmental" as "uncontroled by the Russian government, but sponsored by the US government", and "pro-democracy" as "pro-US". ..."
"... There is nothing democratic in these groups. Everything they say is a lie. They do not want at all democracy for Russians. Because if there were democracy in Russia, then Browder and other foreign carpetbaggers were shot dead by popular vote. Or at least they could never come to Russia and rob it as they have been doing. And they all know it. They do not want freedom and human right for Russians. By "freedom" these groups understand the freedom for THEM and THEIR friends, and by "human right" they understand the rights for THEM and THEIR friends. ..."
"... I've been reading the Western press for many years now, and when they write about Russia or the above-mentioned holy things, I constantly read only less than a dozen of names. Namely: Politkovskaya, Litvinenko, Magnitsky, Khodorkovsky and a couple of others. Everything that concerns the human rights violations in Russia is just about that privileged dozen of people. Nothing else bad happens in Russia with anybody else. Believe me if all the problems with human rights in Russia were only with that dozen of people I would be really happy. ..."
"... The yankee imperium has evolved into the inverted totalitarianism structure. The mainstream press and those inside the beltway are no more free agents than politburo members were during the Soviet era. Why would Nekrasov, prior to this film a known enemy of the Russian state, change his views unless he was an honourable man convinced by the evidence? The treatment of this film reveals the true nature of the contemporary yankee power structure. ..."
"... The latest neocon line is to use Brexit as an excuse to (a) blame Putin even more (b) expand NATO. Today's Washington Post had an editorial demanding that NATO be strengthened to ward off the enhanced Russian threat now that Britain will be leaving the EU. ..."
"... Here is the perfect moment to remember that it was antisemitism to question the western narrative on Iran nuclear program. David Brooks will conform if his mind is still sharp enough that he once suggested attacking George Bush war of 2003 was a also antisemitic . ..."
"... Dr. Giraldi, do you know there is a Jewish organization in UK, which gives "Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Awards"? Last year, it awarded the honor on Israel-First Rep. Jim McGovern. Jim McGovern, a Democrat who co-chairs the influential 'Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission' – named after Jewish Rep. Tom Lantos (d. 2008). ..."
"... A famous quote springs to mind: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." CIA director William Casey (CIA director, 1981-1987) ..."
"... According to Israel Shamir, both Browder himself and the Jewish community consider him to be Jewish. http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-good-fortune-of-mr-browder/ ..."
"... Putin said 'enough!' And has stopped them in Syria (for now) when everyone else was wringing their hands, Putin showed them all how a man with integrity must act, when faced with a thug and a bully. You stand up to them. Or you cower, and place your fate in their hands, as Gadhafi had done. ..."
"... And from that you all have a problem. You get information about Russia either from the Washington-centric quasi-independent ("independent" in the American political doublespeak always means independent from everyone but Washington) outlets, like NYT, WP, Fox, CNN, you name it, and their view of Russia for the past 90 years is quite predictable if not annoying, and I understand why you do not believe them and interpret everything they say in the opposite way, so you have formed a habit that when they say something is black you understand it as something is white. ..."
"... On the other hand you have the Kremlin propaganda state machine like RT who obviously do the same thing as the Washington propaganda machine, but in the opposite direction; or Russophilic individuals (usually emigres with nostalgia), lone wolf voices like the Saker or Karlin, but whose voice anyway is irrelevant and illusional because, as I've said, they are outsiders and know little about the actual Russian life, but they rather might be characterized as positive interpreters of open sources (and neither the sources nor their interpretations ought to be true). ..."
"... Also we have local "opposition" outlets either in Russian like the radio station "Ekho Moskvy", the TV station "Dozhd", "Novaya Gazeta" and so on, or in English like "The Moscow Times", but I do not even take them seriously, I consider them as virtually subsidiaries of the Western MSM (though there is one irony that furiously anti-government "Ekho Moskvy" is owned by Gazprom). ..."
"... What I wanted to say, that even if many who are not hopelessly brainwashed understand that the demonizing of Russia is a lie, it does not make the opposite view automatically right, and your over-positive opinion is generally illusional. I tried to bring you around, but seemed to fail, though to change anybody's opinion was not my goal, I was just trying to say my opinion, be it right or wrong. ..."
"... It works in the opposite direction as well. When people have not enough means, they have no much time left to think about and to follow good moral, they are simply surviving as they can, often doing very ugly things. In most cases a society in strong need ends up in a chaos as we can see it in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. ..."
"... And then out of the blue came Putin, who wrested Russia away from the Fiend, and gave her hope, (and an ascendant middle class and pride in Russia's heritage). For the Fiend, this was an abomination, and ironically enough; Putin was now a new Hitler – especially when he jailed on of their own (and for hard labor -- It was another Holocaust!). But as long as he played ball with the West by letting most of the Jewish oligarchs keep their ill-gotten billions, and went along with atrocities like the savage rape of Iraq, the oligarchs were willing to ignore what Putin had done to their designs and fun up to a degree. ..."
"... I would say that Putin certainly does care about Iran. It doesn't take a genius to know which nations have been declared evil and targeted by the US, they are frequently named by traitorous whores like Hillary, Obuma, Biden etc, along with the treacherous neo-cons who bear responsibility for fomenting wars in the ME. ..."
"... Putin is smart enough to know that if any nation sits back and waits its turn to be attacked it will surely be destroyed. He went out on a limb to arrest the destruction of Syria and it has paid off. He appears to have played his cards remarkably well to date. I can't imagine that the stratospheric level of approval and support that he receives in Russia is fictional. ..."
"... I would believe RT News before I would the BBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, DW, Fox and all the other discredited western "news" outlets. ..."
"... To like/dislike Putin is not a political stance but rather a personal opinion. But it does not explain nor imply any other view. To be precise, several persons can dislike Putin, but one may be a pro-Western ultra-liberal, another a Stalinist, other a National-Bolshevik, other a Christian Monarchist, other a racist Nazi, other a pro-Ukrainian Nazi, and so on. It is difficult to list them all. And they all may have totally different views on many subjects, but just one thing in common, as you said, a dislike to Putin. ..."
"... Russia is on the fall . The crisis of the past two years has just nullified any achievements of the previous 2004-2014 decade. Russia has practically returned to its starting position. And nothing says about its rise, everything says the contrary . Russians have entered a difficult time. They will be remembering 2000-2014 with bitter nostalgia. ..."
"... Actually, for the past 25 years Russia is becoming "a multi-culture, failing state, with grinding poverty where the different factions of the population hate each other while a corrupt and incompetent elite rules over them" . I will add that that elite is in the West in their minds, and they have to be physically located in Russia just for the sake of "earning" money. ..."
Aug 03, 2017 | www.unz.com

The documentary began with the full participation of American born UK citizen William Browder, who virtually served as narrator for the first section that portrayed the widely accepted story on Magnitsky. Browder portrays himself as a human rights campaigner dedicated to promoting the legacy of Sergei Magnitsky, but he is inevitably much more complicated than that. The grandson of Earl Browder the former General Secretary of the American Communist Party, William Browder studied economics at the University of Chicago, and obtained an MBA from Stanford.

From the beginning, Browder concentrated on Eastern Europe, which was beginning to open up to the west. In 1989 he took a position at highly respected Boston Consulting Group dealing with reviving failing Polish socialist enterprises. He then worked as an Eastern Europe analyst for Robert Maxwell, the unsavory British press magnate and Mossad spy, before joining the Russia team at Wall Street's Salomon Brothers in 1992.

He left Salomons in 1996 and partnered with the controversial Edmond Safra, the Lebanese-Brazilian-Jewish banker who died in a mysterious fire in 1999, to set up Hermitage Capital Management Fund. Hermitage is registered in tax havens Guernsey and the Cayman Islands. It is a hedge fund that was focused on "investing" in Russia, taking advantage initially of the loans-for-shares scheme under Boris Yeltsin, and then continuing to profit greatly during the early years of Vladimir Putin's ascendancy. By 2005 Hermitage was the largest foreign investor in Russia.

Browder had renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1997 and became a British citizen apparently to avoid American taxes, which are levied on worldwide income. In his book Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man's Fight for Justice he depicts himself as an honest and honorable Western businessman attempting to function in a corrupt Russian business world. That may or may not be true, but the loans-for-shares scheme that made him his initial fortune has been correctly characterized as the epitome of corruption, an arrangement whereby foreign investors worked with local oligarchs to strip the former Soviet economy of its assets paying pennies on each dollar of value. Along the way, Browder was reportedly involved in making false representations on official documents and bribery.

As a consequence of what came to be known as the Magnitsky scandal, Browder was eventually charged by the Russian authorities for fraud and tax evasion. He was banned from re-entering Russia in 2005, even before Magnitsky died, and began to withdraw his assets from the country. Three companies controlled by Hermitage were eventually seized by the authorities, though it is not clear if any assets remained in Russia. Browder himself was convicted of tax evasion in absentia in 2013 and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Browder has assiduously, and mostly successfully, made his case that he and Magnitsky have been the victims of Russian corruption both during and since that time, though there have been skeptics regarding many details of his personal narrative. He has been able to sell his tale to leading American politicians like Senators John McCain, Ben Cardin and ex-Senator Joe Lieberman, always receptive when criticizing Russia, as well as to a number of European parliamentarians and media outlets. But there is, inevitably, another side to the story, something quite different, which Andrei Nekrasov presents to the viewer.

Nekrasov has discovered what he believes to be holes in the narrative that has been carefully constructed and nurtured by Browder. He provides documents and also an interview with Magnitsky's mother maintaining that there is no clear evidence that he was beaten or tortured and that he died instead due to the failure to provide him with medicine while in prison or treatment shortly after he had a heart attack. A subsequent investigation ordered by then Russian President Dimitri Medvedev in 2011 confirmed that Magnitsky had not received medical treatment, contributing to this death, but could not confirm that he had been beaten even though there was suspicion that that might have been the case.

Nekrasov also claims that much of the case against the Russian authorities is derived from English language translations of relevant documents provided by Browder himself. The actual documents sometimes say something quite different. Magnitsky is referred to as an accountant, not a lawyer, which would make sense as a document of his deposition is apparently part of a criminal investigation of possible tax fraud, meaning that he was no whistleblower and was instead a suspected criminal.

Other discrepancies cited by Nekrasov include documents demonstrating that Magnitsky did not file any complaint about police and other government officials who were subsequently cited by Browder as participants in the plot, that the documents allegedly stolen from Magnitsky to enable the plotters to transfer possession of three Hermitage controlled companies were irrelevant to how the companies eventually were transferred and that someone else employed by Hermitage other than Magnitsky actually initiated investigation of the fraud.

In conclusion, Nekrasov believes there was indeed a huge fraud related to Russian taxes but that it was not carried out by corrupt officials. Instead, it was deliberately ordered and engineered by Browder with Magnitsky, the accountant, personally developing and implementing the scheme used to carry out the deception.

To be sure, Browder and his international legal team have presented documents in the case that contradict much of what Nekrasov has presented in his film. But in my experience as an intelligence officer I have learned that documents are easily forged, altered, or destroyed so considerable care must be exercised in discovering the provenance and authenticity of the evidence being provided. It is not clear that that has been the case. It might be that Browder and Magnitsky have been the victims of a corrupt and venal state, but it just might be the other way around. In my experience perceived wisdom on any given subject usually turns out to be incorrect.

Given the adversarial positions staked out, either Browder or Nekrasov is essentially right, though one should not rule out a combination of greater or lesser malfeasance coming from both sides. But certainly Browder should be confronted more intensively on the nature of his business activities while in Russia and not given a free pass because he is saying things about Russia and Putin that fit neatly into a Washington establishment profile. As soon as folks named McCain, Cardin and Lieberman jump on a cause it should be time to step back a bit and reflect on what the consequences of proposed action might be.

One should ask why anyone who has a great deal to gain by having a certain narrative accepted should be completely and unquestionably trusted, the venerable Cui bono? standard. And then there is a certain evasiveness on the part of Browder. The film shows him huffing and puffing to explain himself at times and he has avoided being served with subpoenas on allegations connected to the Magnitsky fraud that are making their way through American courts. In one case he can be seen on YouTube running away from a server, somewhat unusual behavior if he has nothing to hide.

A number of Congressmen and staffers were invited to the showing of the Nekrasov

likbez, August 4, 2017 at 3:50 am GMT

Magnitsky was a sleazy accountant, not a lawyer and among his activities one was about getting tax breaks for Browder, using fictitious hiring of disabled people to get a tax break.

Browder was one of the very bold and very suspicious "gold-diggers" in xUSSR space, who tried to participate in the "economic rape of Russia".

http://thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-Economics&Finance/+Doc-Economics&Finance-GovernmentInfluence&Meddling/BankstersInRussiaAndGlobalEconomy.htm

During this time of gangster capitalism in Russia under drunk Yeltsin such a person, especially a foreign one, could easily get a six grams of led if he stepped on some oligarchs foot, but this did not stopped him. He was really reckless. I wonder why. Who protected him in Russia? Here is pretty interesting and educational reading

https://marknesop.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/sergei-magnitsky-bill-browder-hermitage-capital-management-and-wondrous-metamorphoses/

One quote:

"Ties with Russia run deep in his family; his grandfather was General Secretary of the US Communist Party and, according to documents released in 1995, worked for the NKVD, running a spy ring. Bill himself specialized in Eastern European markets, and when he felt the time was right, he founded Hermitage Capital Management in 1996, along with the main investor, Edmond Safra."

His real connection and why he renounced US citizenship and is hiding in UK suggest that some influential British structures were behind his activities.

In a way Browder was very interested in Magnitsky death as dead Magnitsky was much more useful for him that alive. Magnitsky knew way too much about Brower activities in Russia and already started talking.

Boris N, June 28, 2016 at 6:04 am GMT

It's a pity that doublespeak and doublethink rule the world. Every time you read something you now must decipher.

"Foreign non-governmental pro-democracy groups" means absolutely different things than it is stated. We must read "foreign" as "American", "non-governmental" as "uncontroled by the Russian government, but sponsored by the US government", and "pro-democracy" as "pro-US".

There is nothing democratic in these groups. Everything they say is a lie. They do not want at all democracy for Russians. Because if there were democracy in Russia, then Browder and other foreign carpetbaggers were shot dead by popular vote. Or at least they could never come to Russia and rob it as they have been doing. And they all know it. They do not want freedom and human right for Russians. By "freedom" these groups understand the freedom for THEM and THEIR friends, and by "human right" they understand the rights for THEM and THEIR friends.

But the real problem is the Russian government do not want good for Russians as well. This entire conflict is between the native colonial administration and the foreign carpetbaggers. And the main point is who'll get the cash, either Browder and his friends or some unknown Russian oligarchs and corrupt officials. But both the results are bad for Russians.

Haxo Angmark, Website June 28, 2016 at 6:33 am GMT

the Short Version: Putin's Russia is a large White pebble in the open-borders Judeo-globalist shoe. The Zionists/neo-conz/cucks will do anything – even upbrink to a nuclear WW III – to destroy Nationalist Russia

Boris N, June 28, 2016 at 6:36 am GMT

And something else about democracy, freedom, human rights and so on hypocritical demagogy of the West.

I've been reading the Western press for many years now, and when they write about Russia or the above-mentioned holy things, I constantly read only less than a dozen of names. Namely: Politkovskaya, Litvinenko, Magnitsky, Khodorkovsky and a couple of others. Everything that concerns the human rights violations in Russia is just about that privileged dozen of people. Nothing else bad happens in Russia with anybody else. Believe me if all the problems with human rights in Russia were only with that dozen of people I would be really happy.

But the fact is that everyday for the last 25 years thousands of common Russians are faced with the violations of their rights. But nobody in the West worry about them, nobody mention them, they simply do not exist for the West. The only people that exist are those who are directly or indirectly connected with the Western establishment. That is the Western establishment and their tame press are concerned only about their personal interests.

And when another Western (or Russian) journalist or human rights "activist", while writing another article about Russia, mention again and again just only that half a dozen of the names, I just cannot help but despise those hypocrites.

exiled off mainstreet, June 28, 2016 at 6:55 am GMT

The yankee imperium has evolved into the inverted totalitarianism structure. The mainstream press and those inside the beltway are no more free agents than politburo members were during the Soviet era. Why would Nekrasov, prior to this film a known enemy of the Russian state, change his views unless he was an honourable man convinced by the evidence? The treatment of this film reveals the true nature of the contemporary yankee power structure.

Rehmat, June 28, 2016 at 8:33 am GMT

Sergei Magnitsky like the US and EU was a Zionist clown whose strings were held by the Organized Jewry.

In November 2015, in an interview with UK's No.1 Israeli propaganda media outlet, 'Jewish Chronicle', William Browder, the American-born Jewish tycoon who describes himself as Putin's "number one enemy" in his book: Red Notice, claimed that though Putin had met Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman, and local Jewish leaders; supports Israel and donated $1 million to Moscow's Holocaust Museum – his heart is filled with hatred towards Jews. Why? Because he tortured and killed Magnitsky and supports Iran's ally Assad.

Madeleine Albright, who found her Jewish family roots while holding post of US secretary of state, in a recent interview she gave to Austrian newspaper DiePress.com called Russian president Vladimir Putin "a smart but a truly evil man." She claimed that Putin is trying his best to destroy European Union and NATO, two of Israel's allies.

"He is smart but truly an evil man. An officer of KGB, who wants to exercise power and believes that every body has come together to conspire against Russia. This is not true. Putin is playing bad cards well, for the time being at least. I believe his goal is to undermine and split EU. He want NATO to disappear from his sphere of influence," She said.

https://rehmat1.com/2016/04/24/madeleine-albright-putin-is-an-evil-man/

Philip Giraldi, June 28, 2016 at 11:43 am GMT

@Rehmat

Thanks. The latest neocon line is to use Brexit as an excuse to (a) blame Putin even more (b) expand NATO. Today's Washington Post had an editorial demanding that NATO be strengthened to ward off the enhanced Russian threat now that Britain will be leaving the EU.

Wizard of Oz, June 28, 2016 at 3:57 pm GMT

@exiled off mainstreet

You omit taking notice of the author's shrewd observation that there might still be available some large amount of money that even Nekrasov might find irresistable as way to quickly achieved financial independence. Even if he is basically an honest man he might be able to rationalise selling out if he knows that Browder is, anyway, a crook.

Rurik, June 28, 2016 at 5:06 pm GMT

@Boris N Hello Boris,

But the real problem is the Russian government do not want good for Russians as well.

in your opinion, is the Putin government just as corrupt as the Zio-West? From here in the (dying and looted) West, it looks like Russia's middle class is ascendant, while ours is being systematically murdered off

Personally, for me, what it feels like is that the worst elements in the population that were in Russia (and Eastern Europe) during the 20th century have now emigrated over to the West. And that just as Russia and Eastern Europe suffered unimaginable horrors during the last century, under cruel and sadistic Bolsheviks (and the Cheka and NKVD), they are now over here, fomenting genocide and looting the place blind.

It's as if when Putin came to power, the Fiend slithered over the Berlin wall into the West, where it now molders in the assorted banking houses and think tanks plotting its next iniquitous atrocity, whether financial or military or social/cultural.

That's how it seems to me anyways.

(thank you PG for your superlative and informative articles. They're very much appreciated)

bunga, June 28, 2016 at 5:53 pm GMT

@Rehmat

I guess he doesn't have to be anti Jewish ,but being a proponent of prosperity at home and peace abroad does create a monster out of a decent man in today's garbage land which defines the western minds . It sure doesn't help the warmongering war readiness war friendly Zio

In some way Zio are doing what they did to other peace makers through the ages. Being against war and being for peace automatically ensures extended definition of antisemitism will be attached

Here is the perfect moment to remember that it was antisemitism to question the western narrative on Iran nuclear program. David Brooks will conform if his mind is still sharp enough that he once suggested attacking George Bush war of 2003 was a also antisemitic .

WTF with these shitheads

Rehmat, June 28, 2016 at 10:32 pm GMT

Dr. Giraldi, do you know there is a Jewish organization in UK, which gives "Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Awards"? Last year, it awarded the honor on Israel-First Rep. Jim McGovern. Jim McGovern, a Democrat who co-chairs the influential 'Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission' – named after Jewish Rep. Tom Lantos (d. 2008).

During his acceptance speech Jim McGovern said that he was a staunch supporter of Israel and supported the US-Iran nuclear agreement because it would be good for Israel in long-term.

During his stay in London, Jim McGovern was interviewed by Israeli mouthpiece, Jewish Chronicle – published on November 27.

"I understand the security concerns, but I also believe that ultimately, the way forward in Israel is for there to be real negotiations with the Palestinians -- a two-state solution. People need to learn to live with each other -- that's the solution all over the world," McGovern said.

When asked does that include Hamas? McGovern replied: "I don't need to negotiate with my friends. I need to negotiate with the people I consider my adversaries and my enemies."

He also criticized Israel's human rights abuses and warned such actions are isolating Israel from the international community. "I think Israel does not have a perfect human rights record. I think the settlement policies are very troublesome," he said.

https://rehmat1.com/2015/11/28/rep-mcgovern-only-hamas-can-guarantee-israels-security/

Anonymous, Disclaimer June 29, 2016 at 12:28 am GMT

@Anonymous Scotland the Brave

http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/scotland-the-brave/?highlight=pan+am+103+lockerbie

Sam J., June 29, 2016 at 3:06 am GMT

@Anonymous As Anonymous says,"
Q: Who is guilty of lying, Nekrasov or Browder?

A: Which one is the Jew?"

Agreed. Frequently you will find that to find the truth just see what the Jew is saying and the opposite will be the truth or what they say will be so convoluted as to twist the truth into a blaspheme of some sort.

Art, June 29, 2016 at 4:09 am GMT

@Rehmat

Last year, it awarded the honor on Israel-First Rep. Jim McGovern. Jim McGovern, a Democrat who co-chairs the influential 'Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission' – named after Jewish Rep. Tom Lantos (d. 2008).

God help us, that Jew jerk Lantos is still screwing over America. Wonder how many Palestinians he is responsible for murdering?

Wizard of Oz, June 29, 2016 at 7:51 am GMT

@Anonymous Are you just idly polluting UR with your prejudices or do you have some faintly relevant information?

The Browders who are descended from (non-Jewish) Communist Earl Browder seem to have good mathematical brains which may be inherited from Earl Browder's Russian Jewish wife. But it appears the Jewishness ended with her. The younger Bill Browder (who has a mathematician uncle also called Bill) is the son of mathematician Felix who doesn't appear to have married a Jew. Over to you to research Nekrasov. Will your brain suffer spasms or paraysis if you find that neither of them are Jews.

Carroll Price, June 29, 2016 at 9:59 am GMT

A famous quote springs to mind: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." CIA director William Casey (CIA director, 1981-1987)

Philip Giraldi, June 29, 2016 at 10:05 am GMT

@Wizard of Oz

According to Israel Shamir, both Browder himself and the Jewish community consider him to be Jewish. http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-good-fortune-of-mr-browder/

alexander, June 29, 2016 at 10:34 am GMT

@Carroll Price Carroll,

If this is an accurate quote, and I assume that it is, .what is the point of it? I mean what goals should the CIA have ? Shouldn't OUR CIA be doing everything in its power, (like every other government agency which we employ) to shore up the health ,wealth and security of our nation.? Every action it takes, clandestine or otherwise, should be designed to ensure the safety, freedom , and prosperity of our nation and its citizens .

Period. End of story. If they are not doing that .Fire the bums.

peterike, June 29, 2016 at 2:44 pm GMT

@Greasy William

I still don't get what the cute girl in the pic is all about? She doesn't look Jewish or anything.

That cute girl is Elena Servettaz who edited the book, the cover of which is behind her. Here's a lot more photos of her for your viewing pleasure. Including one with her and Crazy John McCain, which probably tells you all you need to know.

http://magnitskybook.com/?page_id=29

Carroll Price, June 29, 2016 at 3:33 pm GMT

@Greasy William Without going into a lot of unnecessary detail, Elena Servettaz is a Russian Jew who serves basically the same role in the international journalistic world as Pamela Gellar serves in the right-wing talk-show host/U-tube world based in Jew York City.

http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/Elena_Servettaz

JL, June 29, 2016 at 5:28 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz Don't be ridiculous, Bill Browder is Jewish and has always strongly identified as such. He has a mezuzah on his office door and only hires Jewish employees. I knew him personally back in the 90s and 00s.

Eileen Kuch, June 29, 2016 at 8:32 pm GMT

@Boris N I agree with you wholeheartedly, Boris, with the comments you made on democracy in Russia, as well as the role the foreign (US) carpetbaggers had played in Russian society.

However, you failed to mention Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had succeeded the drunken, incompetent Boris Yeltsin, who had been installed by the Jewish Oligarchs, who were – during his Presidency – looting the Russian Treasury and bleeding the nation dry. It was Putin who salvaged the Russian economy by imprisoning and/or exiling these Oligarchs and seizing all of their assets. He also restored Orthodox Christianity in Russia after 70 years of it being underground under Bolshevik Communism. The magnificent Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer, which had been built in the 19th Century, then demolished by Lazar Kaganovich under Josef Stalin's orders, was restored (rebuilt) after Yeltsin became President in the 1990′s.

Democracy also came to Russia under Putin, along with the revival of Orthodox Christianity. As a result, the Russian people are experiencing more freedom than people are in Western countries, including the US. In a way, these two nations – Russia and the US – have switched ideologies. Even as I type this reply, Boris, Christianity in the US has just come under attack by the Federal Courts which, btw, is a gross violation of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees, along with freedoms of speech, press and peaceable assemply, freedom of religion.

helena, June 29, 2016 at 9:01 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz "as amongst the Jews what anti-Semites (and some Jews) would regard as "typically Jewish"."

Don't be ridiculous. Jewish people define themselves as an ethnic group. The fact that the ethnic group has considerably admixed is not the fault of those who merely observe that fact.

Carroll Price, June 30, 2016 at 4:27 am GMT

@Carroll Price https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/06/jean-marie-le-pen-fined-again-dismissing-holocaust-detail

Wizard of Oz, June 30, 2016 at 7:15 am GMT

@Eileen Kuch A friend who ran a very big charity funded by Khodorkovsky told me that he is not Jewish but Russian Orthodox and, indeed, his mother Marins seems to be Orthodox Christian, so why would the Jerusalem Post online refer to him as Jewish? Did he convert?

I guess its just that, on balance, any group likes to claim the rich unless they are too disreputable.

A related question is whether people with Jewish fathers, like K, got into the habit of associating with others who were at least part Jewish because of the viciousness or at least weight of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. After all one can get an idea of what it was like from the mad snti-Semitism in UR comments where even Rupert Murdoch can be called Jewish out of spite and envy even though he doesn't have a drop of known Jewish ancestry – pure Anglo-Celt it seems in case some twisted mind picks on that "known".

Boris N, June 30, 2016 at 7:29 pm GMT

@Rurik

in your opinion, is the Putin government just as corrupt as the Zio-West?

Yes, absolutely. It is not just my mere assumption, and it is not a conspiracy either, but clear open facts that anybody can see if one wants to see. It is not "as corrupt as", it IS controled by the West. We must not be deceived by the trickery red herring play of the official Kremlin (I do not like the cliche "Kremlin propaganda", but this is exactly it; unfortunately the Western MSM use this term for absolutely different things; the Western MSM play in the same duo, by the way).

Who is Putin and where has he come from in the first place? Apart from that he is a former KGB officer, and, as they say, "there aren't former KGB officers" (and this is important as a great deal of Russian oligarchs came from that organization), he has not come from anywhere and suddenly but fairly won the presidential campaign in 2000. During the 1990s he was moving around in the Russian oligarchic and Kremlin circles, in fact he once was the right hand of the first mayor of St.-Petersburg Sobchak, which in turn was a friend of Yeltsin. You think Putin is different, but he is the same, he is from the same circles, you has been tricked by the made-up image of Putin, a fiend for oligarchs and a friend of people, whereas he is, in fact, a friend of oligarchs, literally.

Then, what is more important. Even if we know little about Putin's life in the 1990s (everything is deliberately hidden), we know, hey, the entire world knows, how Putin has come to power. Putin was a protege of Yeltsin, and this Yeltsin's protectionism was not hidden, but absolutely public and official. Putin is the successor of Yeltsin, directly appointed by Yeltsin, a "legacy president" whose main goal is to maintain the status quo from the 1990s. I would rater call him a CEO under the control of the real masters, than an independent leader of the state. How can one at all believe "Putin is not Yeltsin", when it is contrary to the facts. And again we know which circles Yeltsin represented, and we know that those circles have had close connections with the West if not controled by the West, and here we've come to the most interesting part.

The entire post-Soviet Russian elite (oligarchs and government officials) has come come from the Communist nomenklatura, from the KGB and from the Soviet black market mafia structures (usually run by Jews, Ukrainians and Asiatics like Georgians, Armenians, Azeris and Uzbeks). And everybody of them have had many connections with the West, particularly with London, thousands of Russian oligarchs, higher officials or at least their families live in London, London is a second (true?) capital of Russia.

So there is no reason, why we must take the Kremlin and the West at face value. Why must we believe there is a conflict of the planetary scale, when there is none.

Well, I've said much enough (I hope MI6 will not find me; joke), but you can dig further yourself, everything is in open, the Russian ruling clique does not much hide itself, you do not need to be a secret agent trying to acquire the secret Kremlin (or rather Westminster?) documents, you just need to know the right directions of your searches. Just don't allow them to confuse yourself with the information noise, both from the Kremlin and the West. Sift attentively thousands of articles about a good Putin and a bad Putin from both the direction, because their real goal is just to hide the real truth.

Boris N, June 30, 2016 at 8:17 pm GMT

@Rurik

from here in the (dying and looted) West, it looks like Russia's middle class is ascendant, while ours is being systematically murdered off

As for the Russian middle class. Of course, since 2000 the living standards of Russians have improved greatly. We could argue if it is due magical Putin or high prices of natural resources. But this only if we compare it with the Sovet pitiful existence and the extreme poverty of the 1990s. But Even if Russians have now more money, cars, things and all, Russia outside of Moscow and St.-Petersburg is still and will be for many decades a Second Word country, in many places even a Third World one. I lived in Western Europe and I can tell the difference. This is absolutely another different planet. Every bit there is better than in Russia, so Russia seems quite backward. It is just simply pleasant to live in a First World country. You constantly complain how bad the life in the West is, but you do not understand your luck that you were born or live there.

And nothing much have changed since the 1990s, if not since the Soviet times. The entire country is still ruled by the former Soviet nomenklature, the oligarchs of the 1990s and Western companies still own and pwn Russia, gigantic bulks of the Russian wealth flow to off-shore havens, the state budget still consist of >60% of the "natural rent", the high level corruption is flourishing, a great deal of the budget is embezzled by officials. Maybe the reason why the average Russians still live decent lives is Russia's wealth so immense, that even if half of it is stolen by the upper 5-10%, the remaining half is enough for the well-being of the other 90%. But imagine how well the Russians would live without the robbery by the Kremlin oligarchic clique.

And don't take official Russian statistics at face value. The Russian middle class hardly exists. And after 2014 the income of people has been dropping steadily. For the most provincial cities the picture is following (at 70 roubles per USD):

  • Lowest 30% earn below $200 per month
  • Low Middle 40% – $200-$400
  • High Middle 20% – $400-$600
  • Upper 5% – $600-$1200

In Moscow, St.-Petersburg and some northern regions these number are 2 times higher, but they comprise barely 15% of the population.

And we're left with 5%, the clique and their servants.

I can hardly name the people who earns under $400 the "middle class", and the country where 70% earns below that can hardly be called rich (though it is quite developed, comparing with the Third World). So there are just 5%, max 25%, of the real middle class. And the average pensions are around $200/month, so no less than 40 mln of senior Russians live for that small amount of money, and with constantly rising prices it is very difficult to make both ends meet.

And the last. You will complain that Europe is being flooded with immigrants, but Russia is a last stronghold. But I'll tell you what. Russia is on the second place by immigrant population after the USA! And they are coming in. Russia has officially 10 mln and unofficially close to 25 mln of immigrants from Asia. Moscow, in fact, must compete with London by the percentage of Asiatic immigrants. The Muslim population is rising and the Kremlin openly favours Muslims and Muslim immigrants.

Boris N, June 30, 2016 at 9:00 pm GMT

@Eileen Kuch You just reproduce the idealized image (either good or bad) of Putin that has been created by the propaganda machine from both the sides during the past 15 years. As I said above, Putin is hardly a threat to the oligarchs. Putin hardly persecute any oligarch. There are up to 100 Russian billionaires, and some thousands of millionaires, but only Khodorkovsky, Lebedev and maybe a couple of others were really imprisoned. No any other oligarchs have been persecuted. Never the privatisation of the 1990s was questioned. Never the legacy of Yeltsin was questioned, rather he is a "hero", an entire Yeltsin museum has been built. The very same oligarchs from the 1990s, except for maybe some outcasts, are continuing to loot and rob Russian wealth. They buy entire castles somewhere in England or France, they buy enormous luxury yachts, they have bought a great deal of the London luxury realty, etc., etc. They roll in money, Russian money. The only reason the average Russians still live decent is the enormous size of the Russian wealth, that even scraps are enough for the entire nation to live.

And I'm not that religious, I do not think that the renaissance of religiosity in Russia is any good, I rather agree with (a rare case) the Marx's opinion about "opium for the people". It just makes Russian people stupid, superstitious and easy to manipulate. We live in the 21th century, we do not need 2000-year old fairy tales to be good. Anyway, I have a great respect for the PAST Russian Christian tradition, I think it is an important part of the Russian culture and mentality, so I'm strongly against any destruction of it.

However, with both the economics and the culture you seem to present a false dilemma. You imply that the only alternative to Yeltsin and Putin are Kaganovich and Stalin, whereas I strongly believe there are many better alternatives.

Carroll Price, July 1, 2016 at 2:00 am GMT

@Boris N The overall quality of life in any country and in any generation depends on much more than annual income, reflected in the amount of money people have at their disposal. In fact, it's becoming increasingly evident that the more money people have to spend on "toys" and other unnecessary items, leads to major social problems including atomized families, wide-spread drug addiction, high suicide rates, mental problems, obesity, and homelessness. Not to speak of a lowering of moral standards that's simply off the charts – in the wrong direction. It's obvious that rural Americans (in particular) in the 1920s and 30s, although having little money at their disposal, enjoyed a much higher quality of life including extended and close knit families, than the majority of Americans today. I could be mistaken, but I suspect the same would be true for the average Russian today.

Rurik, July 2, 2016 at 7:33 pm GMT

@Boris N Thank you for your reply Boris.

We all know Putin plays footsie with the oligarchs. We all know he pretends to like Bibi and is a master at realpolitik. But the impression I get is of a man who wrested control of Russia away from the worst of the oligarchs, while playing nice with the rest of them. That's how it looked to us from thousands of miles away in the dying West, and firmly under the Zio/Rothschild boot, that this was/is a great man. A world-class statesman and nationalist who crushed the fanatical terrorists in Chechnya and mollified the moderate ones with reasonable policies, and he returned the resources of Russia back the Russian state.

Sure there is massive corruption, and other problems, but considering what the Russian people have endured with decades of (Jewish imposed) genocidal commie slavery, and then having it all do a 180 and then being impoverished even worse under the cruel destitution of crony Jewish 'capitalism' that simply handed Russia over to a few Jewish and Russian minions of Rothschild- to lord it over the dying and starving Russian people- for Putin to have turned this around is incomprehensible. It's nothing less than an historic accomplishment of a truly great man. A giant on the world's stage.

He has, it seems to me, nearly single handedly reined in the drooling, frothing Fiend, ripping to shreds everything it could get its blood dripping teeth on. Libya was the final straw for Putin, and he alone stood up to the beast when all of Europe were counting their shekels and tossing their citizens and their nation's dignity onto the Moloch's pyres of war and slaughter and cowardly appeasement of the Fiend.

Putin said 'enough!' And has stopped them in Syria (for now) when everyone else was wringing their hands, Putin showed them all how a man with integrity must act, when faced with a thug and a bully. You stand up to them. Or you cower, and place your fate in their hands, as Gadhafi had done.

That's sort of how I see it. Yes, he plays ball with some very unsavory types, and corruption is rampant. But he has done something wonderful Boris.. he has given the Russian people back their dignity. They have something today that I don't think they've had for generations.. Hope. A shred of pride at being who and what they are; Russians.

How do you put a price on that? How do you quantify that kind of thing. Sure, Americans may be able to afford more flat screen TVs, with which to watch their culture and heritage being relentlessly maligned, their identities excoriated as evil, and their culture turned into a sewer. Oh joy. But how do you put a value on giving to your people a quiet sense of personal dignity? Vs. pitting them endlessly against each other with raging identity politics and a race down to the moral abyss of spiritual feculence, writ large.

That is our lot over here in the West Boris, and the SUVs and flat screen TVs just aren't all that, when you consider the soul and the doomed future of your people.

Boris N, July 2, 2016 at 8:15 pm GMT

@Carroll Price

I will strongly disagree. We have a lot of examples all around the world where the lack of money and low living standards lead to the same bad things that you have listed. You do not need to go far, just look at your neighbour countries in Central America, or else you even might go to your own American poor minority (Black or Hispanic) neighbourhood, where the people will strongly disagree with you that their living on $10,000/year gives them a great virtue, like if they have no money to buy "toys" (in fact, first-necessity goods) then they live better "spiritual" lives. When the poor speak about the spirituality of poverty, this usually means a getaway from the harsh reality with the help of self-illusion. When the rich speak about the spirituality of poverty, this usually means they try to cheat the poor.

Greasy William, July 2, 2016 at 8:22 pm GMT

We all know he pretends to like Bibi and is a master at realpolitik .

1. He's not pretending. There is a reason that Russian nationalists absolutely despise him. He completely betrayed Iran when he refused to sell them the s-300 until they accepted Obama's deal.

2. He is extremely conscious of Russian public opinion, and yet still has no problem having publicly good relations with Netanyahu. That tells you all you need to know about how indifferent the Russian people are towards the Palestinians. Contrary to your delusions, Russia is not some sort of alt right paradise as any of the nationalists who actually live in Russia would be quick to tell you.

Rurik, July 2, 2016 at 9:05 pm GMT

He completely betrayed Iran when he refused to sell them the s-300 until they accepted Obama's deal.

Jesus Greasy, that the realpolitik I was talking about that you even highlighted in your quote! What he doesn't want is an all out war with the Zio-West!

2. He is extremely conscious of Russian public opinion, and yet still has no problem having publicly good relations with Netanyahu.

again, he's pretending to like Bibi because Bibi is the king of the Jews and therefore the default king of the West today. He's Rothschild's number one stooge. Of course Putin has to play nice with him. But be honest Greasy, no one on this planet actually likes Bibi. That's like saying you like hemorrhoids. You deal with things like hemorrhoids or Bibi, as the case may be, but sure as shit don't like them.

Russia is not some sort of alt right paradise as any of the nationalists

no, certainly not. But it's also not a cultural sewer of the Jewish id, that we in the West all have to marinate in, thankyouverymuch.. not

Greasy William, July 2, 2016 at 9:37 pm GMT

@Rurik

Bibi is the king of the Jews

Bibi rules purely by default. He's not the king of anything. Nasrallah knew what he was talking about when he said that Sharon was the last King of Israel.

Jesus Greasy, that the realpolitik I was talking about that you even highlighted in your quote!

But Putin is democratically elected. The only reason he can engaged in realpolitik in the middle east is because the Russia public doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to the Iranians or Palestinians. The only people in Russia who care about those groups are the nationalists, who, as I have said, hate Putin's guts.

Carroll Price, July 2, 2016 at 9:54 pm GMT

@Boris N Moral always come first, with money being secondary. Of course It takes a certain amount of money for people to live, but in practically every case, the more money immoral people have at their disposal the lower they sink and the sorrier they get. With Hollywood pukes being living examples of what money without morals produces. I'm surprised you haven't figured this out.

Greasy William, July 2, 2016 at 10:42 pm GMT

but in practically every case, the more money immoral people have at their disposal the lower they sink and the sorrier they get.

Without spiritual health, economic health is not only meaningless, it's unsustainable. As we here in America are about to learn the hard way.

Boris N, July 4, 2016 at 12:30 pm GMT

@Rurik I can understand why you have a distorted view of Putin and the Russian life. Because Westerners simply lack important sources of information about the reality in Russia, you simply do not live in Russia, do not meet and hear the people everyday, you are not insiders. This is why I always say that the voice for Russia in the Western media (at least in the non-mainstream one, because I have no illusion about the MSM) must be given not to West-based either Russophobes or Russophiles, who practically know nothing, but to middle-aged, middle-class Russians, who love and understand best their own home. But even in such a case we must have many voices because no two Russians have a similar point of view, for example, even if I become one of the voices (I've written quite much here, that many of my comments deserve to become articles on their own, ha-ha) many Russians will agree with me, many will disagree, and many may have totally different third, forth, and so on views. The Russian political spectrum is much diverse, there is no false dichotomy like in the West.

And from that you all have a problem. You get information about Russia either from the Washington-centric quasi-independent ("independent" in the American political doublespeak always means independent from everyone but Washington) outlets, like NYT, WP, Fox, CNN, you name it, and their view of Russia for the past 90 years is quite predictable if not annoying, and I understand why you do not believe them and interpret everything they say in the opposite way, so you have formed a habit that when they say something is black you understand it as something is white.

On the other hand you have the Kremlin propaganda state machine like RT who obviously do the same thing as the Washington propaganda machine, but in the opposite direction; or Russophilic individuals (usually emigres with nostalgia), lone wolf voices like the Saker or Karlin, but whose voice anyway is irrelevant and illusional because, as I've said, they are outsiders and know little about the actual Russian life, but they rather might be characterized as positive interpreters of open sources (and neither the sources nor their interpretations ought to be true).

Also we have local "opposition" outlets either in Russian like the radio station "Ekho Moskvy", the TV station "Dozhd", "Novaya Gazeta" and so on, or in English like "The Moscow Times", but I do not even take them seriously, I consider them as virtually subsidiaries of the Western MSM (though there is one irony that furiously anti-government "Ekho Moskvy" is owned by Gazprom).

What I wanted to say, that even if many who are not hopelessly brainwashed understand that the demonizing of Russia is a lie, it does not make the opposite view automatically right, and your over-positive opinion is generally illusional. I tried to bring you around, but seemed to fail, though to change anybody's opinion was not my goal, I was just trying to say my opinion, be it right or wrong.

Maybe our opinions are heavily influenced by our lives, both you and I may have been disappointed by our lives in our respective countries, but you believe that there is somewhere a better land, and it's Russia, while I, in turn, believe the life in the West is better. But there is one distinction. I've been in both the places and I can compare, but I bet if you come to Russia and do not become one of the high-paid Western expats who live luxury lives in Moscow, you'll very soon run off home and your Putinism will fade immediately (though your love to Russia itself may strengthen, as it has been with many Westerners).

Boris N, July 4, 2016 at 12:46 pm GMT

@Greasy William I do not know what sort of Russian nationalists you are speaking about, simply because there are not THE Russian nationalists, but one or two dozens of diffused different small groups with different if not opposite views, who may call themselves or other may call them "Russian nationalists". Not to mention thousands of common non-partisan Russians who may call themselves nationalists as well but as well may have thousands of different personal opinions about the past and the current affairs.

Among those nationalists I know personally, most of them absolutely do not care about Iran, Israel and Palestine and about the Middle East in general. The interest has only aroused since the Syrian intervention, but the general opinion about it is negative, because many think that the war in Syria is utterly inappropriate, when just at the border there is an ongoing unfinished war with Ukraine. And some nationalists even have a positive view of both Israel and Iran as good examples of national states, of what Russia must become. And unlike many commenters here, most (with some exemptions) are not so much obsessed with Israel and Jews, and they do not care if Putin loves either Israel or Iran, they dislike Putin not for that, but for other mostly internal problems.

Boris N, July 4, 2016 at 12:56 pm GMT

@Carroll Price

I do not deny the need and the role of good moral, but I have a more materialistic view of the world, an important if not the fundamental condition for good moral is the full stomach. Again no need to go far for examples, there is Latin America where people theoretically have good moral, they all are devoted Catholics, but they live in a chaotic criminal frenzy, when Detroit would look like a safe haven compared to San Salvador. Do you really think that if the USA will be as poor as but as "spiritual" as Latin America, the US life will improve?

Boris N, July 4, 2016 at 1:07 pm GMT

@Greasy William

It works in the opposite direction as well. When people have not enough means, they have no much time left to think about and to follow good moral, they are simply surviving as they can, often doing very ugly things. In most cases a society in strong need ends up in a chaos as we can see it in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

In both the cases wealth does not guarantee good moral, but good moral is not an inevitable result of poverty. Where do you choose to live, in wealthy but "immoral" Geneva or in poor but "spiritual" San Salvador?

Greasy William, July 4, 2016 at 7:19 pm GMT

Where do you choose to live, in wealthy but "immoral" Geneva or in poor but "spiritual" San Salvador?

But San Salvador is just as spiritually sick as the West, just in a different way. A spiritually healthy society will have low corruption, low violence, respect for women's rights and concern for the welfare of the weak (the poor, the disabled, the sick). Poverty *can* breed evil, but evil always ultimately breeds poverty.

I do not know what sort of Russian nationalists you are speaking about

The one's who show off their gorgeous girlfriends who have "88″ and bladed swastikas tattooed on their asses.

And some nationalists even have a positive view of both Israel and Iran as good examples of national states, of what Russia must become.

They want Russia to become multi culture, failing states, with grinding poverty where the different factions of the population hate each other while a corrupt and incompetent elite rules over them? That is what they want Russia to become?

Have you ever read the Kreutzer Sonata? It is the only piece of Russian literature I have ever read and I really liked it a lot.

Rurik, July 5, 2016 at 2:11 pm GMT

@Boris N Hey Boris,

The Russian political spectrum is much diverse, there is no false dichotomy like in the West.

well from what I can glimmer, the 'dichotomy' in Russia seems to go something like either 'we/I like Putin', or 'we/I don't like Putin'.

Perhaps it has something to do with hard politics on the ground, and the reality that it's this guy that is running things today in Russia, for better or worse.

I understand why you do not believe them and interpret everything they say in the opposite way, so you have formed a habit that when they say something is black you understand it as something is white.

I wouldn't quite characterize it in this way. It's true I never believe them, but that doesn't mean they never tell the truth. Sometimes they mix a little truth in with the lies, and sometimes they say what's really going on, because by doing so it suits their agenda(s).

When they say the Olympics are happening in Sochi, I believe them. When they say Putin shot down MH17, I think they're lying. And then with most things in between, I think it's a combination of lies and truth, always with an agenda in mind. If Putin were assisting with the destruction of Syria today, like they (the occupied West) did to Iraq and Libya, I think they'd be calling him a great statesman, and partner in freedom and democracy. It all depends on if he toes the line.

but you believe that there is somewhere a better land, and it's Russia, while I, in turn, believe the life in the West is better. But there is one distinction. I've been in both the places and I can compare

It's true I've never been to Russia, at least not yet. The closest I've came is Slovakia and Hungary, (but I did meet a beautiful Russian girl when I visited Cuba a few years ago!)

I've never thought life was better in Russia. We do have many blessings in the West. But today I consider the government of Russia (with all of it's well known corruption and chicanery) as hands down a thousand times better than what we now have in the West. And the trajectory of Putin's Russia vs. the US or Germany for instance, I consider as like a country on the rise, vs. a civilization in rapid (free-fall) decline.

My short take is that after the revolution and the murder of the Tsar and his family, the Fiend took control of Russia, and set about slaughtering the best of the Russians (and everyone else they could get their feculent hands on), and imposing a genocidal slavery on those people for generations. And then one day when they (Rothschild) decided that commie slavery was too expensive (you had to feed and house the people), they decided to impose a system even more cruel and fiendish. They'd simply use their puppet, quisling government in Moscow to loot the wealth and resources of Russia outright, and make Rothschild's minions some of the richest men in the world overnight, while impoverishing the Russian people to the point of near starvation. (it's what the do ; )

And then out of the blue came Putin, who wrested Russia away from the Fiend, and gave her hope, (and an ascendant middle class and pride in Russia's heritage). For the Fiend, this was an abomination, and ironically enough; Putin was now a new Hitler – especially when he jailed on of their own (and for hard labor -- It was another Holocaust!). But as long as he played ball with the West by letting most of the Jewish oligarchs keep their ill-gotten billions, and went along with atrocities like the savage rape of Iraq, the oligarchs were willing to ignore what Putin had done to their designs and fun up to a degree.

But then came Libya, and Putin saw that the Fiend was in absolute control of the West, and must not be fed anymore, lest the Fiend grow and fester and become a dire threat to Russia itself, (again). So Putin put the kibosh on Syria, and now he's locked in a death struggle with the Fiend, who is insane with power-lust.

It's a difficult situation to be sure. And that's how I see the West vs. Putin's Russia, and why I like Putin even with all his warts and faults. At least he's trying to make Russia great again, and that's why there are many of us in the West who pine for a man like him to take on the Fiend that has its fangs locked deeply into the jugular of the West.

For what it's worth.

cheers

Rurik, July 5, 2016 at 2:25 pm GMT

@Greasy William

The only reason he can engaged in realpolitik in the middle east is because the Russia public doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to the Iranians or Palestinians.

I think they do care what happens to Iran, since it's a close trading partner. And the Palestinians are just a distant, tragic people to the Russians. Why should they wring their hands, it isn't them who're foisting the evils upon the Pals, it's us Americans that are doing that.

The only people in Russia who care about those groups are the nationalists, who, as I have said, hate Putin's guts.

how many Russian nationalists do you know or speak to who are not Jewish, Greasy?

From what I understand, the IDF is chock full of Russian émigrés, and their take on things must be skewed by Putin's thwarting of Israel's designs on the Golan.

here's a forum run by an ultra-Russian nationalist

http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302

another

http://slavija.proboards.com/

here's the Pravda main forum

http://engforum.pravda.ru/index.php?/forum/3-main-forum/

lot's of chafe on that one but you can at least glimmer a nuanced inkling of what the Russian nationalists are on about

(they love Putin ; )

Rurik, July 5, 2016 at 2:39 pm GMT

@Greasy William

Without spiritual health, economic health is not only meaningless, it's unsustainable. As we here in America are about to learn the hard way.

having linked to the Pravda forum, I just took a moment to peruse the Pravda front page.

This from an article on Russia today:

Putin has saved the country before and he is saving the country now. We despise all the fifth column "dissent" that is based on your taxpayer money. Russia will never behave like Soros, who maintains institutions to overthrow governments, because our leaders are Orthodox Christians. Capitalism is not our religion. You are addicted to a beautiful body, and we are addicted to a beautiful soul.

more:

Our aggressiveness exists only in your imagination. The reunification of the Russian people with the Crimea passed without one single shot, because Russia is more than just a country. Russia is a territory, which shares a common language, history and culture. We see any attempt to "reprogram" Russians in Ukraine as a hybrid warfare against us. One can welcome the Scottish Premier and discuss the likelihood for the UK to fall apart, but one can not support the population of southern lands of the former Russian Empire in their aspiration to withdraw from Ukraine? Is this not a double standard?

.. we do not like your determination to make us be like you. We change. Moscow has become one of the most beautiful capitals in Europe. We do not live up to Western lifestyles, and we do not "give a damn" if you do not like our way.

http://www.pravdareport.com/society/stories/04-07-2016/134920-russians_foreigners-0/

NoseytheDuke, July 6, 2016 at 3:22 am GMT

@Greasy William

I would say that Putin certainly does care about Iran. It doesn't take a genius to know which nations have been declared evil and targeted by the US, they are frequently named by traitorous whores like Hillary, Obuma, Biden etc, along with the treacherous neo-cons who bear responsibility for fomenting wars in the ME.

Putin is smart enough to know that if any nation sits back and waits its turn to be attacked it will surely be destroyed. He went out on a limb to arrest the destruction of Syria and it has paid off. He appears to have played his cards remarkably well to date. I can't imagine that the stratospheric level of approval and support that he receives in Russia is fictional.

I would believe RT News before I would the BBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, DW, Fox and all the other discredited western "news" outlets.

Boris N, July 9, 2016 at 2:25 am GMT

@Rurik

the 'dichotomy' in Russia seems to go something like either 'we/I like Putin', or 'we/I don't like Putin'.

To like/dislike Putin is not a political stance but rather a personal opinion. But it does not explain nor imply any other view. To be precise, several persons can dislike Putin, but one may be a pro-Western ultra-liberal, another a Stalinist, other a National-Bolshevik, other a Christian Monarchist, other a racist Nazi, other a pro-Ukrainian Nazi, and so on. It is difficult to list them all. And they all may have totally different views on many subjects, but just one thing in common, as you said, a dislike to Putin.

I cannot say for sure for the Western public but I hardly saw such a variety of views. Maybe the reason why Russians cannot unite and change something, because they are so disintegrated on many issues.

It's true I never believe them, but that doesn't mean they never tell the truth.

OK, I did not mean that. Of course, when they say that somewhere there has been a tornado, or, as in your example, a sporting event, or some other trivial factual thing they simply cannot not to say truth. But when they are trying to create some sort of analysis about hot global political affairs they usually back up the agenda of their Washington-Brussels masters. But the agenda of the Kremlin is hardly better . The best option is not to listen them both.

But today I consider the government of Russia (with all of it's well known corruption and chicanery) as hands down a thousand times better than what we now have in the West.

Again, you say this because you simply has a very limited range of sources of information. You just repeat a made-up image of the Russian government or, precisely, of just one person, Putin. But this is just an image for the outside (non-Russian) public . You need know more, much more, form a variety of Russian sources, for a long period of time, and then you might have not the right, but at least a less distorted view. The actual Russian government, if we put Putin (pun) aside, is comprised of very ugly, greedy, treacherous, hypocritical people, I simply cannot find the right words for those bastards. They are utterly disgusting. They have been ruining the country for the past 25 years.

And the trajectory of Putin's Russia vs. the US or Germany for instance, I consider as like a country on the rise, vs. a civilization in rapid (free-fall) decline.

Russia is on the fall . The crisis of the past two years has just nullified any achievements of the previous 2004-2014 decade. Russia has practically returned to its starting position. And nothing says about its rise, everything says the contrary . Russians have entered a difficult time. They will be remembering 2000-2014 with bitter nostalgia.

And then out of the blue came Putin, who wrested Russia away from the Fiend, and gave her hope,

Putin did not turn out of blue, he was a member of the 1990s robbing elite, he is a continuation of Yeltsin, I explained it in my other comments colorfully. Not to mention Putin's "team" are the very same people from the 1990s. Take anybody and they all were doing some ugly things in the 1990s, but now they are "respected" officials and "businessmen". The only thing he has done is to hide this ugly truth under the cover. And millions around the world believe his deceit, how naive.

Boris N, July 9, 2016 at 2:42 am GMT

@Greasy William

The one's who show off their gorgeous girlfriends who have "88″ and bladed swastikas tattooed on their asses.

If you speaking seriously, what I doubt, then they are a very small, marginal minority. Since the 2000s being 1488 is a mauvais ton in the Russian national circles, nobody take those Racial Holy Warriors and fans of Hitler seriously, they are just nutheads.

They want Russia to become multi culture, failing states, with grinding poverty where the different factions of the population hate each other while a corrupt and incompetent elite rules over them? That is what they want Russia to become?

Actually, for the past 25 years Russia is becoming "a multi-culture, failing state, with grinding poverty where the different factions of the population hate each other while a corrupt and incompetent elite rules over them" . I will add that that elite is in the West in their minds, and they have to be physically located in Russia just for the sake of "earning" money.

Of course, no Russian nationalists want this, even the Nazi nuthead minority. When I said Israel was taken as an example I meant something like that .

Boris N, July 9, 2016 at 2:56 am GMT

@Rurik

lot's of chafe on that one but you can at least glimmer a nuanced inkling of what the Russian nationalists are on about

(they love Putin ; )

No, you cannot accidentally pick up some obscure bulletin boards, hosted on a free-hosting site, which boards nobody knows and cares about.

The actual whole Russian national movement has been being thought through, discussed and constructed for many years entirely in Russian, in the Russian part of the internet, and not in English by some pro-Russian foreigners or Russian emigres.

[Aug 03, 2017] Did Hillary Scapegoat Russia to Save Her Campaign

Notable quotes:
"... Meanwhile, an entirely different computer, the one that belonged to Seth Rich, was confiscated by the police from his home immediately after his murder, which was supposedly the result of a 'botched mugging'. ..."
"... (BTW, Craig never ** said he met Seth.) ** anyone have evidence to refute that? PS Sept. approaches: anniversary of the event from which Craig departed to meet intermediary of DNC leaker. Will shadows outnumber attendees? lol ..."
"... No, he does not. Murray said that he met an intermediary, not the actual leaker. Murray said that he knows it was a leak, but he doesn't know the identity of the leaker. And he wasn't given a thumb drive or anything else. He says that the [handoff?] had already taken place. Murray's meeting with the intermediary was just to discuss something. So, a verbal exchange. ..."
"... Unfortunately, even Ray McGovern has perpetuated these fallacies, perhaps because he's so enthralled with his own story about being with Murray just before the secret meeting in the woods. Yes, Murray slipped away from a gathering at A.U., but he didn't meet Seth Rich, and he didn't convey anything tangible to Julian Assange. ..."
"... The fact that so many people believe it demonstrates the gross stupidity of the American people. The folks that matter don't believe it. It's a question of pensions and your very life. Make trouble for them as an FBI underling, step out of line, the best thing that could happen is you get fired and lose your pension. The worst? Join Seth Rich. Think of it. Hundreds of agents that spent five years of their lives collecting evidence and building a case against Hillary, Bill, Huma, DNC, Anthony Weiner the Iniitiative, the Clinton Foundation, pay-for-play bribes, the espionage and it all got swept under the rug as a "matter" instead of the criminal case that it was. Hundreds of agents and double A's at justice told to go stuff it by Comey, then Lynch, then Comey again. The shit with the hacking? THAT, to me is nothing. It's the criminal case already built and ready to hand over to a Grand Jury that gets to me. Screw these special prosecutors, they'll only twist it all up. Then, Lynch and Clinton on the tarmac and Comey back home squashed the whole thing. Sessions has probably had threats made against his children and grand children, Trump too. And the bad guys would make it stick. This is Little Rock writ large. ..."
"... BTW, at this very moment Lee Stranhan is single-handedly instigating a Twitter campaign to #FireMcMaster. I don't know enough about palace intrigue to comment, but Lee has made serious waves in DC, [with documented facts, not conjecture] about the DNC/Ukraine anti-Trump collusion, so I keep an eye on him. ..."
"... "Hillary and her gang" would not be able to make even a tiny wave if not a mighty support from the CIA How much do we spend on nationals security apparatus and technology? – At least $50 billion? And all these money and tech had melted away when faced the obvious DNC fraud called "Putin stole the elections?" – Not believable. The "Russian did it" campaign has been hatched and maintained by the joined efforts of the Jewish Lobby + Military Industrial Complex. ..."
"... The most striking thing about the ongoing affair is the brazen insolence on a part of the "conductors" -- the ziocons and CIA brass. Zero accountability. They are the owners of the country and they have no concern for the U.S. Constitution and for the rights and interests of the U.S. citizenry at large. The hapless aged Hillary served as a trigger for the show that has been revealing the major actors. ..."
"... And the coup goes on. Today Washington Post are printing transcripts of a sitting President's conversations with another head of state?! How can this happen? How can government function at all under these conditions? Why aren't leakers put in jail or worse? ..."
Aug 03, 2017 | www.unz.com

Anon , Disclaimer August 1, 2017 at 2:39 pm GMT

It's about as sophisticated as the dog ate my homework. The fact that so many people believe it demonstrates the gross stupidity of the American people.

Boris M Garsky , August 1, 2017 at 2:46 pm GMT

Two points of speculation: could Seth Richards, who was assassinated, be Murray? The seizure of Wassermans computer obviously caused her much consternation. Now the FBI may have the material that the DNC had denied the FBI?

exiled off mainstreet , August 1, 2017 at 2:56 pm GMT

This is one of the best articles I've seen and provides a plausible rationale for the entire story. The propaganda success of this farcical story reveals how repulsive and dangerous the yankee imperium has become. I don't see how it can now be reformed from within.

Seamus Padraig , August 1, 2017 at 2:56 pm GMT

Those computers are Exhibit A in the Trial of the Century. They should be under lock and key at FBI Headquarters not collecting cobwebs in the basement of the DNC-HQ.

Meanwhile, an entirely different computer, the one that belonged to Seth Rich, was confiscated by the police from his home immediately after his murder, which was supposedly the result of a 'botched mugging'.

But that's another MSM non-story.

jimbojones , August 1, 2017 at 3:36 pm GMT

It has been more than a year and we still haven't seen an ounce of proof. The WaPo, NYT and CNN have all had to make major retractions of stories related to Russia. Doesn't take much to put it all together.

The thing is, goodthinkers are extremely prejudiced and bigoted people, and two of the three groups they particularly love to hate are the Russians and the rednecks. And so they'll believe that "Russia tricked the rednecks to elect Trump" no matter what.

RobinG , August 1, 2017 at 7:37 pm GMT

@Boris M Garsky Absolutely NO, and NO !!

Seth Rich and Craig Murray have always been 2 separate people. Craig is alive and well, recently interviewed in London.

(BTW, Craig never ** said he met Seth.) ** anyone have evidence to refute that? PS Sept. approaches: anniversary of the event from which Craig departed to meet intermediary of DNC leaker. Will shadows outnumber attendees? lol

Off The Street , August 1, 2017 at 8:45 pm GMT

@RobinG Craig Murray should wear a live stream body cam and have video monitors wherever he goes. Even that could be circumvented by the determined Arkancide teams.

Peripatetic commenter , August 1, 2017 at 11:17 pm GMT

It's entirely possible that Russia interfered in the last election both on Hillary's side and Trump's side and that Hillary sought to blame Russia for her failure.

It's also possible that Russia was funding the environmentalist, anti-fracking and anti-oil lunatic fringe in America. After all, I am sure the CIA has been finding the lunatic fringe in Russia.

RobinG , August 2, 2017 at 4:16 am GMT

@Off The Street If Craig Murray is in any danger, it's because of sloppy reporting, like this from Mike Whitney:

"Murray .. claims he met the person who took the emails from the DNC "

No, he does not. Murray said that he met an intermediary, not the actual leaker. Murray said that he knows it was a leak, but he doesn't know the identity of the leaker. And he wasn't given a thumb drive or anything else. He says that the [handoff?] had already taken place. Murray's meeting with the intermediary was just to discuss something. So, a verbal exchange.

Unfortunately, even Ray McGovern has perpetuated these fallacies, perhaps because he's so enthralled with his own story about being with Murray just before the secret meeting in the woods. Yes, Murray slipped away from a gathering at A.U., but he didn't meet Seth Rich, and he didn't convey anything tangible to Julian Assange.

"In other words, we have a credible witness who can positively identify the person who leaked the emails "

Again, no, but maybe I should give up. I'm tired of saying this, and I seem to be the only one who's so particular about the truth.

Amomynous , August 2, 2017 at 4:24 am GMT

"Not a word of truth to any of it," yet it may well serve as the pretext to a war that ends civilisation. Glad we'll all be dying for the right cause.

Kiza , August 2, 2017 at 7:10 am GMT

"Russia meddling" is already settled science

Now where have I heard that phrase before? Is there a propensity by some people to consume propaganda as "settled science"? Anyone with even a single firing brain cell should know that when someone says "it is settled science" that it is a pure lie.

Seamus Padraig , August 2, 2017 at 9:20 am GMT

@RobinG Do you have a source on that? AFAIK Murry claimed to have verified the identity of the leaker.

Jim Christian , August 2, 2017 at 11:18 am GMT

@Anon

It's about as sophisticated as the dog ate my homework.

The fact that so many people believe it demonstrates the gross stupidity of the American people. The folks that matter don't believe it. It's a question of pensions and your very life. Make trouble for them as an FBI underling, step out of line, the best thing that could happen is you get fired and lose your pension. The worst? Join Seth Rich. Think of it. Hundreds of agents that spent five years of their lives collecting evidence and building a case against Hillary, Bill, Huma, DNC, Anthony Weiner the Iniitiative, the Clinton Foundation, pay-for-play bribes, the espionage and it all got swept under the rug as a "matter" instead of the criminal case that it was. Hundreds of agents and double A's at justice told to go stuff it by Comey, then Lynch, then Comey again. The shit with the hacking? THAT, to me is nothing. It's the criminal case already built and ready to hand over to a Grand Jury that gets to me. Screw these special prosecutors, they'll only twist it all up. Then, Lynch and Clinton on the tarmac and Comey back home squashed the whole thing. Sessions has probably had threats made against his children and grand children, Trump too. And the bad guys would make it stick. This is Little Rock writ large.

We know it happened, and there's the media, covering them. We're doomed. It's not our country anymore. Justice is dead. Trump digs too much into it, they'll put a bullet in his head. Sessions knows how it works, that's why he "recused" himself. Seriously, what's to force their hand and give us satisfaction? Nothing. And off go the Clintons with all their ill-gotten gains, into the warm narcotic American night, untouched. Again. It's so simple. Hand the entire thing over to Grand Jury, one to each participant in the scandal and we'd have the truth. Never happen.

Jim Christian , August 2, 2017 at 2:28 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig There's a Deep Throat, you just have to find it. Follow the money? Start at the top, the Clinton Foundation? Go to it, Woodward and Bernstein. Crime of the century. They only played Hit Man on Republicans. They weren't journalists, they were operatives.

Jim Christian , August 2, 2017 at 2:31 pm GMT

@Kiza

"Russia meddling" is already settled science
Now where have I heard that phrase before? Is there a propensity by some people to consume propaganda as "settled science"? Anyone with even a single firing brain cell should know that when someone says "it is settled science" that it is a pure lie.

settled science

I love buzzwords when they appear in Washington. Kind of similar to the notion of "Hillary, Huma and the DNC are 'BAKED IN' to the entire storyline. But the press and media aren't scientists and they aren't bakers. They're operatives. They own it, they'll cover what they want.

paraglider , August 2, 2017 at 4:25 pm GMT

there is a another much more tragic point in all this fraud and deception..

the democrats/media allies/hillary and all the scum around her were/are and continue to be willing to precipitate an american civil war and burn down the nation to save their own rotting chestnuts from the public discovering the truth.

this is actual treason and a hanging offense as you can get.

Clark Westwood , August 2, 2017 at 6:11 pm GMT

Did Hillary Scapegoat Russia to Save Her Campaign?

Hell yes. And once Trump won, Hillary and her gang became even more insistent, because they realized that unless they could find a way to immobilize the Trump administration, the jig would eventually be up.

Olorin , August 2, 2017 at 7:13 pm GMT

Observe/compare:

RobinG , August 2, 2017 at 9:02 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig Do you have a source for "AFAIK Murray claimed to have verified " ? And I mean a statement by Murray himself, not anybody (mis)quoting him. Because at the time, I read everything I could find and listened to his interviews. (Since I was at that AU meeting, and live near those woods, and detest Hillary/DNC, I had an almost obsessive interest.) No, I didn't bookmark it all, and I'm not going back now.

Murray said a lot of things. For instance, when he said he was honoring the WikiLeaks policy of not revealing sources, there may be an implication, but he never actually said he knew the identity of the primary source (the guy who plugged in the thumbdrive, or whatever). In fact, he pointedly said that he met an intermediary. What Murray said clearly was that he knew it was a leak from someone within the DNC.

As Sy Hersh says, you're just gonna have to trust me. BTW, Hersh is now, of course, being minimalized and marginalized. Silly me, I thought his statement would blow "Russian hack" out of the water and make the Craig Murray question irrelevant. Too bad, after his debunking of Libyan ratlines and Syrian false chemical flags, TPTB have consigned him to quackdom. But I take him very, very seriously.

AUDIO: Seymour Hersh Claims Seth Rich Was DNC Email Leaker

Kiza , August 3, 2017 at 4:19 am GMT

@Amomynous Does it make any difference what the cause was after we die?

Kiza , August 3, 2017 at 4:28 am GMT

@RobinG The only question about Seymour Hersh is how much of his intelligence (CIA) connections he managed to retain after his Osama expose. Before Sy appeared to have better connections than Philip Giraldi who worked there.

If he managed to retain connections then his writing is still as reliable as when he was a journalistic star in some US times past when journalism was not transcribing of government/neocon communiques.

Here is Eric Zuesse on the same: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-02/seymour-hersh-%E2%80%98russiagate%E2%80%99-cia-planted-lie-revenge-against-trump

RobinG , August 3, 2017 at 5:54 am GMT

@Kiza The Zero Hedge is mostly the transcript. Zuesse, in his one short paragraph, manages to step over the line, conflating what Hersh knows with what he suspects . Too much of that going around.

BTW, at this very moment Lee Stranhan is single-handedly instigating a Twitter campaign to #FireMcMaster. I don't know enough about palace intrigue to comment, but Lee has made serious waves in DC, [with documented facts, not conjecture] about the DNC/Ukraine anti-Trump collusion, so I keep an eye on him.

jilles dykstra , August 3, 2017 at 6:33 am GMT

A lot of words on a in my opinion simple issue. Hillary was the Deep State candidate, meant to wage the war on Russia that PNAC of AEI wanted. Of course she painted as black a picture of Russia as possible. If Russia interfered in the USA elections, I do not know. But as far as I can see this interference, if it existed, meant very little. No comparison to USA interferences such as in Iran, Iraq, Chile, Cuba, etc.

The Deep State mistake in my opinion is not to see that ordinary USA citizens do not see why the USA should continue to spend huge amounts on wars, while for example USA health care is lacking. Silent majorities do exist, as we now see in Europe on immigration.

utu , August 3, 2017 at 6:46 am GMT

@Kiza The only question about Seymour Hersh is how much of his intelligence (CIA) connections he managed to retained after his Osama expose.

I was very impressed with Hersh article from January 2016

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military#onepass

on shenanigans going on between DIA and CIA in Syria and how DIA was sabotaging CIA weapons supply to insurgents to gain confidence of Assad and how DIA kept open channels to Syria via Moscow, Berlin and Tel Aviv all under gen. Dempsey.

It all began to make sense to me when I was trying to figure out Trump-Pentagon connection and what faction was really behind Trump from the very beginning of his campaign and I knew about Gen. Flynn and his tenure as chief of DIA and then his speeches critical of Obama ME policy, so when I learned that Flynn was on Trump's team everything clicked together. Too bad that Trump lost him.

However I also believe that there was Russian connection to Trump from the very beginning but it won't be touched because it went via Netanyahu.

Dahlia , August 3, 2017 at 6:46 am GMT

Interview transcription (and audio link) I did of Craig Murray's interview with Scott Horton where he clarifies a lot of earlier misreporting on what exactly he did and what he knows with regards to Seth Rich as well as the DNC and Podesta emails (transcription not pretty, improvements/corrections welcome):

http://www.unz.com/forum/murdered-dnc-staffer-seth-rich-shared-44053-democrat-emails-with-wikileaks-report/#comment-1882983

!!!!-
World Net Daily put out an article tonight about the Sy Hersh revelations and added to it the words of former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz from back in May that might be worth reading: discusses the alarm bells that went off for him that Brennan rigged the Intelligence Community Assessment' (ICA) that found Russia deliberately interfered in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump's candidacy.

http://www.wnd.com/2017/08/seymour-hersh-spy-chiefs-invented-russia-collusion-story/

Anonymous , Disclaimer August 3, 2017 at 7:10 am GMT

so the media was already in full demonization -mode and raring to go.

Demonization?

Seamus Padraig , August 3, 2017 at 9:29 am GMT

@RobinG

[Murray] pointedly said that he met an intermediary. What Murray said clearly was that he knew it was a leak from someone within the DNC.

That's good enough for me.

War for Blair Mountain , August 3, 2017 at 11:16 am GMT

Hillary Clinton, a violent psychopathic hairy old farting bulldyke ..Bill Clinton,a violent psychopathic serial rapist ..John Podesta, a collector of satanic pedophile art work and a dead ringer along with his brother for one of the perps in the police drawing who raped and murdered a 7 year English Girl in Portugal ..these are the three Demons from fucking Hell!!!! instigating thermonuclear war with Christian Russia.

The power of the Clinton Organized Crime Family would not have been possible if the 1965 nonwhite LEGAL Immigrant Increase Act had not been passed .for post-1965 nonwhite LEGAL Immigtants are the core of the Clinton Democratic Party Voting Bloc.

In 2020, POTUS Kamala Harris our first Hindu-Jamaican POTUS, will take the baton from the Clinton's-whether or not Hillary likes it or not-and wage war against Christian Russia

eah , August 3, 2017 at 12:03 pm GMT

If she did she failed miserably to 'save her campaign' -- move on dork.

Noah Way , August 3, 2017 at 12:14 pm GMT

Bad headline. It was too late to save the campaign, the intention was multifaceted: benefit the Deep State / MIC (because that's who Hillary really works for) and lay the groundwork for a coup, which we are watching unfold.

The Alarmist , August 3, 2017 at 12:48 pm GMT

Well, it had to be the Russians, because the Chicoms have been big supporters of the Clintons for a couple decades.

Cameltoe Harris as POTUS is a step above Deval Patrick, so why did the Big O go for the latter.

Wizard of Oz , August 3, 2017 at 12:53 pm GMT

I have no trouble believing most of your conclusions and reasoning but I see some gaps in your story. For example why hasn't Craig Murray been invited to testify to a Congressional committee? Why at least has it not been suggested by a Republican congressman or senator- or failing that in a Trump tweet?

I would add that those who retain a bit of flexibility about their thinking on 9/11 might well assess the likelihood of the alleged leaking. If you were a loyal honest Democrat who discovered how the Clinton mob were stitching up Bernie Sanders wouldn't you be highly likely to leak the truth? So we know of the anti-Sanders plot and we know it was made available to the cyberconnected public. We consider it highly probable that it eould be leaked. How much room for other explsnations does it leave?

annamaria , August 3, 2017 at 1:52 pm GMT

@Clark Westwood

"Hillary and her gang" would not be able to make even a tiny wave if not a mighty support from the CIA How much do we spend on nationals security apparatus and technology? – At least $50 billion? And all these money and tech had melted away when faced the obvious DNC fraud called "Putin stole the elections?" – Not believable. The "Russian did it" campaign has been hatched and maintained by the joined efforts of the Jewish Lobby + Military Industrial Complex.

The most striking thing about the ongoing affair is the brazen insolence on a part of the "conductors" -- the ziocons and CIA brass. Zero accountability. They are the owners of the country and they have no concern for the U.S. Constitution and for the rights and interests of the U.S. citizenry at large. The hapless aged Hillary served as a trigger for the show that has been revealing the major actors.

The US has been Gladio-ed (chickens have come home to roost):

jacques sheete , August 3, 2017 at 2:52 pm GMT

@RobinG

Again, no, but maybe I should give up. I'm tired of saying this, and I seem to be the only one who's so particular about the truth.

It does get tiring. And it's an old problem, apparently.

So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book I, 1.21-[3], 431 BC

pepperinmono , August 3, 2017 at 2:54 pm GMT

@Noah Way And the coup goes on. Today Washington Post are printing transcripts of a sitting President's conversations with another head of state?!
How can this happen? How can government function at all under these conditions? Why aren't leakers put in jail or worse?
How is this covered under 1st Amendment? The Deep State need deep-sixed. I have never seen anything so blatant and brazen in my life in America! Clapper, Brennan, and Comey are traitors, aided and abetted by media and both parties with Russia as the pretext. It is having real world consequences. The Russian sanctions are souring relations with them .

We could use their help with North Korea. This is tyranny of the Deep State against the American people, plain and simple.

Greg Bacon , Website August 3, 2017 at 2:54 pm GMT

Many Americans were willing to hold their noses and vote for the Killer Queen, until they saw her cackling about Qaddafi getting a bayonet shoved up his rectum.

Linda Green , August 3, 2017 at 3:32 pm GMT

Telling the truth has never been one of Hillaries strong suits. "The Russians Hacked the DNC" is just another HRC whopper, kind of like when the CIA was running guns out of the US embassy in Benghazi and they got attacked. That time HRC was quick on her feet with the excuse that "Local Muslims had been enraged at a you tube video". Presumably HRC was hoping to kill two birds with one stone on that whopper, first to cover for the misdeeds of the spooks who should absolutely not be running guns out of oer diplomatic posts, and two to push for censorship of you tube so as not to upset the Lizzie's.

We need to rid our country of these people ASAP.

Wally , August 3, 2017 at 3:38 pm GMT

@Peripatetic commenter "Possible"?

jilles dykstra , August 3, 2017 at 3:48 pm GMT

@Greg Bacon Disgusting, on the man who made the Man Made River.
Ghadaffi did something for his country.

jilles dykstra , August 3, 2017 at 3:50 pm GMT

@Linda Green Truth means nothing to Hillary.
When she was New York senator she of course visited Israel, New York is the most jewish city in the world.
She, of course, there spoke 'it was all the fault of Arafat'.
How he died, we still do not know.

jacques sheete , August 3, 2017 at 4:05 pm GMT

@pepperinmono

This is tyranny of the Deep State against the American people, plain and simple.

True.

And it's good to see that people seem to be more aware of it. Now the question is, what can we do about it. I wish I had some decent answers but can offer nothing except that it would help if each of us work at becoming aware of the truth and endeavoring to avoid supporting the real enemies.

gwynedd1 , August 3, 2017 at 5:04 pm GMT

@Anon and it was the very dog that she wagged.

Michael Kenny , August 3, 2017 at 5:19 pm GMT

MacronLeaks proves Rusiagate and Junior's admissions confirm MacronLeaks. It is established that Russian nationals, claiming to act on behalf of their governemnt, contacted the Trump campaign about providing DNC "dirt". DNC "dirt" subsequently appeared on the internet and it doesn't matter whether it was obtained by hacking or from a "mole" insdie the DNC. Indeed, that latter would seem to be an even more serious situation inasmuch as it raises the question of what other US organisations have been inflitrated by Russian moles.

exiled off mainstreet , August 3, 2017 at 5:33 pm GMT

The latest incidents where Wheeler was paid (or otherwise forced) into engaging in a lawsuit against Fox repudiating his earlier statements, has blown back on the democratic party hack lawyer putting forward the suit. As a result, to defend against the suit, more tapes revealing that Wheeler said more than he stated directly to Fox, and corroborating that these were accurate statements, have been released. In addition, a Seymour Hersh tape has come out revealing his actual knowledge on the matter. His public denial must be treated as an effort to cover his ass against the reprisals of the Clinton and deep state crews, particularly in light of the particular statements he made in the tape. In addition, there is now a new FBI chief to replace Clinton lackey McCabe who was filling in after Comey's sacking. All of this indicates that the Russia thing was total bullshit, and, considering that Mueller went on a trip to Russia relating to the Clinton uranium deal engineered by Vancouver Clinton pal Giustra and others, and considering that he has hired Clinton lackeys as most of his legal team, the whole thing stinks like a cesspool on a hot humid day.

Delinquent Snail , August 3, 2017 at 6:14 pm GMT

@War for Blair Mountain I agree that the Clintons are monsters.

Googling Kamala Harris shows a bunch of negative articles for her. Not sure if she will be getting enough dems behind her to take the nomination. However, 4 years is a long time for a population that cant remember yesterday .

RobinG , August 3, 2017 at 6:16 pm GMT

@exiled off mainstreet Well, someone going on the offensive, finally

Congressman GOES OFF on Clinton Corruption – "Investigate ALL of This!"

Delinquent Snail , August 3, 2017 at 6:32 pm GMT

@jacques sheete Awareness will only get us so far. We need organised action, and soon. This country cant go on much longer like this. We need more people who are willing to STAND UP and speak out against this bullshit. We need to pressure companies to pull their advertising from the lieing MSM. We need to non-stop call our representatives and show we are sick of this bait and switch. We need to unite the different groups in this movement and make it a nation wide movement to restore order and justice to our once great nation. No more petty squabbles between brothers and sisters in arms. This is a cold war we are starting. Eventually it will become a hot war, and we need to be dug in and prepared or else our great-great grandkids (if any survive) will read about it in a chinese textbook in history class as the generation that undid nearly 3 centuries of progress.

Seamus Padraig , August 3, 2017 at 6:33 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig Curiouser and curiouser: it seems that the great Seymour Hersh stands accused of contradicting himself on the Seth Rich case: https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/seymour-hersh-owes-the-world-an-explanation-for-his-seth-rich-comments-f9b2756123d3

Delinquent Snail , August 3, 2017 at 7:20 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig "I'm not going to comment about that stuff, I mean, come on, I live in the real world."

Seems like some one put the fear in him. We live in a despicable time.

anonymous , Disclaimer August 3, 2017 at 8:38 pm GMT

We are fed up with the western stooges who are protecting a illiterate, criminal, mass murderer, zionist servant who so far has done NOTHING but lies and destruction of lives and erection of illegal bases in Syria for the zionist expansionist policy, Oded Yinon . He is advised by an illiterate son in law holding ONLY a fucking BA, repeat just a BA, as his CLOSE 'advisor' because he is Jewish and his mission is to serve the interest of the criminal tribe NOT us, He puts the interest of the zionist tribe ahead of the interest of US and humanity. These people are called traitors. His regime is filled with many traitors who are suppose to 'advise' an illiterate zionist servant. He is using the power and the office to manipulate an OLD illiterate man who knows SHIT about history or history of the region. the criminal zionist tribe must be transferred to New YORK, a real 'jewish state' now.

The world is fed up with these ' freelance journalists' whose work is nothing but to support a racist Russia and zionist stooge, Putin, close to jewish interest.

Russia is the a racist country and Putin is the enemy of Muslims who cooperate with the criminal west to kill and destroy Muslims community and countries for the zionist expansionist policy.

Putin is in bed with the illiterate stooge to help the criminal tribe to partition Syria, Iraq and other countries for 'greater Israel' where they take this wish into their graves. The history tells you that Russia cannot be trusted, so China.

Putin must know that if he once again put a knife on the back of another Muslim country for the zionist expansionist policy, then he will be destroyed, so the criminal west. We are FED UP.

Russia and Putin and fucking China SOLD Libya for a BONE. Both colonies voted for the sanctions against Iranian people and cooperate 100% with the Clinton and Obama regime against Iranian nuclear program, but neither Russia or fucking China ever objected to zionist mass murderers when they were massacred Palestinian toddlers. Russia voted for the erection of Israel on Palestinian land in 1948 and cooperated with the criminal West against Nasser at the time of Israel invasion and killing of Americans against Egypt, and now Putin is flirting with the terrorist kurds and Trump criminal regim, in the pocket of the zionist jews, to help zionist expansionist policy, 'greater Israel' to recieve a BONE as concession.

We are fed up and will destroy people who cooperate with the zionist plan and those who ignore Russian using Muslim cards for manipulation of the geopolitical for the interest of the criminal zionist tribe to receive a BONE as concession. Russia MUST bring resolution to force US out of Syria and close the illigal bases that the illiterate servant has erected illigally with the cooperation of the terrorist kurds now. Why Putin is shut up? why the ' freelance journalists' do not raise this important issue? Are they from the same criminal tribe? Putin is using Syria to help the criminal tribe where should be removed from the land of Palestinians

Down with traitors. We identify all the traitors. We are fed up with the criminal WEST and their behind lickers.

The santion that the illiterate stooge has signed against Russia has NO teeth and is ONLY for poplicity to please the dummies.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-kurdish-connection-israel-isis-and-u-s-efforts-to-destabilize-iran/5599608

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/world/middleeast/iran-attack-isis-terrorism.html

https://richardfalk.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/geopolitical-dirty-dreams-israels-victory-caucus/

Che Guava , August 3, 2017 at 9:30 pm GMT

@annamaria "Hillary and her gang" would not be able to make even a tiny wave if not a mighty support from the CIA How much do we spend on nationals security apparatus and technology? - At least $50 billion? And all these money and tech had melted away when faced the obvious DNC fraud called "Putin stole the elections?" - Not believable. The "Russian did it" campaign has been hatched and maintained by the joined efforts of the Jewish Lobby + Military Industrial Complex.
The most striking thing about the ongoing affair is the brazen insolence on a part of the "conductors" -- the ziocons and CIA brass. Zero accountability. They are the owners of the country and they have no concern for the U.S. Constitution and for the rights and interests of the U.S. citizenry at large. The hapless aged Hillary served as a trigger for the show that has been revealing the major actors.
The US has been Gladio-ed (chickens have come home to roost):
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2007/08/michael-ledeen-gladio-and-9-11.html
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Operation_Gladio
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/09/23/gladio/ I read everything at the first twn links.

Interesting, as is Mr. Whitney°s article, as usual. Always am liking his style.

This essay, from the late Guy Debord, dead at his own hand (R.I.P.), seems to have some relevance to the Gladio, P2, all of those things.

Tried to find a link to the original, but in French, only articles about it and random scans of the print version in PDF from a quick search.

http://www.notbored.org/commentaires.html

Anonymous , Disclaimer August 3, 2017 at 10:07 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig


Those computers are Exhibit A in the Trial of the Century. They should be under lock and key at FBI Headquarters not collecting cobwebs in the basement of the DNC-HQ.
Meanwhile, an entirely different computer -- the one that belonged to Seth Rich -- was confiscated by the police from his home immediately after his murder, which was supposedly the result of a 'botched mugging'.

But that's another MSM non-story. That's not how communications necessarily work. Whitney doesn't understand it either, and his target audience is largely clueless – evidence would not necessarily be on a physical
piece of hardware. (I thought it was common knowledge the NSA was reading all of your emails? The best survelliance tool is social media so keep posting.)

VIPS, MCGovern and Hersh are still
in the "entertainment business." The whole episode is a psyop piled on top of more psyops. Who cares who the President is anymore? Counterpunch Whitney wants you to care but you should try to think for yourself.

annamaria , August 3, 2017 at 10:14 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny MacronLeaks proves Rusiagate and Junior's admissions confirm MacronLeaks. It is established that Russian nationals, claiming to act on behalf of their governemnt, contacted the Trump campaign about providing DNC "dirt". DNC "dirt" subsequently appeared on the internet and it doesn't matter whether it was obtained by hacking or from a "mole" insdie the DNC. Indeed, that latter would seem to be an even more serious situation inasmuch as it raises the question of what other US organisations have been inflitrated by Russian moles. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47561.htm

"Everybody with a clear mind is up in arms about the US Congress' latest sanctions against Russia – and as usual – sanctions for naught- zilch, zero – since Russia hasn't done any of the things Washington and the servile west accuses her of, like interference in US elections (US secret services have repeatedly said there is no evidence whatsoever), interference in Ukraine (Washington / NATO / EU have instigated and paid for the bloody Maidan coup in February 2014); annexing Crimea (an overwhelming (97%) vote by the people of Crimea for reincorporation into the Russian Federation – their given right, according to the UN Charter). Even if Russia wanted to, she couldn't correct any of her 'mistakes'. They are all invented.
None of the accusations have any substance. But the western presstitute keeps hammering them into the dimwitted brains of the populace. We can only repeat with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Propaganda Minister: "Let me control the media, and I will turn any Nation into a herd of Pigs". Well, the western Anglo-Zionist propaganda machine has successfully turned western civilizations (sic) into a herd of pigs."
Germany, "Up in Arms" Against Washington's Sanctions Regime, By Peter Koenig

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47561.htm

'The head of the French cybersecurity agency says there is no evidence suggesting Russia was behind the leaks of campaign emails from Emmanuel Macron two days before the French election and his subsequent presidency."

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/336034-no-evidence-of-russia-behind-marcon-leaks-report

Seamus Padraig , August 3, 2017 at 10:59 pm GMT

@Delinquent Snail That's my take on it, too. Sy Hersh's career has been in freefall ever since exposed the poison gas false-flag in Syria a few years ago. First, he got booted from the New York Review of Books . Then he got booted from the London Review of Books , too. Now he's afraid just to speak in public!

These are dark times

Seamus Padraig , August 3, 2017 at 11:03 pm GMT

@Anonymous I'm somewhat knowledgeable about computer/internet security, having worked for internet security firm myself. But keep trying, hasba-rat

Wally , Website August 3, 2017 at 11:35 pm GMT

@Anon If they really believe in the impossible '6M Jews, 5M others & gas chambers', they can be made to believe in anything.
[MORE]
"Some stories are true that never happened."
- Elie Wiesel

Revisionism has the general function of bringing historical truth to a public that had been drugged by wartime lies and propaganda.

Now revisionism teaches us that this entire myth, so prevalent then and even now about Hitler, and about the Japanese, is a tissue of fallacies from beginning to end. Every plank in this nightmare evidence is either completely untrue or not entirely the truth. If people should learn this intellectual fraud about Hitler's Germany, then they will begin to ask questions, and searching questions, about the current World War III version of the same myth. Nothing would stop the current headlong flight to war faster, or more surely cause people to begin to reason about foreign affairs once again, after a long orgy of emotion and cliché.
- Murray Rothbard, Review of The Origins of the Second World War, 1966
more at:

http://mises.org/daily/2592

Linda Green , August 4, 2017 at 12:24 am GMT

Hillary has a tell in her eyes when she lies, the CIA likely advised her of this when she had to testify about Benghazi, she wore special glasses that prevented the Amercan people from looking into her eyes as she lied on the stand. Hillary should be grillad about her latest lies sans special glasses.

This is my theory, I cannot state it to be for certain, but the special glasses gig we all witnessed was likely ginned up after extensive work with spooky types who saw she has a tell.

jacques sheete , August 4, 2017 at 2:10 am GMT

Hillary has a tell in her eyes when she lies

She's always lying, so how would they know?

[Aug 02, 2017] Collateral Damage U.S. Sanctions Aimed at Russia Strike Western European Allies

Notable quotes:
"... République en marche ..."
"... Diana Johnstone is co-author of From MAD to Madness, by Paul H. Johnstone (Clarity Press). ..."
"... She can be reached at [email protected] ..."
Aug 02, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

The Bill H.R. 3364 "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" was adopted on July 25 by all but three members of the House of Representatives. An earlier version was adopted by all but two Senators. Final passage at veto-overturning proportions is a certainty.

... ... ...

The United States gets away with this gangster behavior because over the years it has developed a vast, obscure legalistic maze, able to impose its will on the "free world" economy thanks to the omnipresence of the dollar, unrivaled intelligence gathering and just plain intimidation.

... ... ...

Extraterritoriality

The chairman of the commission of enquiry, long-time Paris representative Pierre Lellouche, summed up the situation as follows:

"The facts are very simple. We are confronted with an extremely dense wall of American legislation whose precise intention is to use the law to serve the purposes of the economic and political imperium with the idea of gaining economic and strategic advantages. As always in the United States, that imperium, that normative bulldozer operates in the name of the best intentions in the world since the United States considers itself a 'benevolent power', that is a country that can only do good."

Always in the name of "the fight against corruption" or "the fight against terrorism", the United States righteously pursues anything legally called a "U.S. person", which under strange American law can refer to any entity doing business in the land of the free, whether by having an American subsidiary, or being listed on the New York stock exchange, or using a U.S.-based server, or even by simply trading in dollars, which is something that no large international enterprise can avoid. In 2014, France's leading bank, BNP-Paribas, agreed to pay a whopping fine of nearly nine billion dollars, basically for having used dollar transfers in deals with countries under U.S. sanctions. The transactions were perfectly legal under French law. But because they dealt in dollars, payments transited by way of the United States, where diligent computer experts could find the needle in the haystack. European banks are faced with the choice between prosecution, which entails all sorts of restrictions and punishments before a verdict is reached, or else, counseled by expensive U.S. corporate lawyers, and entering into the obscure "plea bargain" culture of the U.S. judicial system, unfamiliar to Europeans. Just like the poor wretch accused of robbing a convenience store, the lawyers urge the huge European enterprises to plea guilty in order to escape much worse consequences.

Alstom, a major multinational corporation whose railroad section produces France's high speed trains, is a jewel of French industry. In 2014, under pressure from U.S. accusations of corruption (probably bribes to officials in a few developing countries), Alstom sold off its electricity branch to General Electric.

The underlying accusation is that such alleged "corruption" by foreign firms causes U.S. firms to lose markets. That is possible, but there is no practical reciprocity here. A whole range of U.S. intelligence agencies, able to spy on everyone's private communications, are engaged in commercial espionage around the world. As an example, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, devoted to this task, operates with 200 employees on an annual budget of over $30 million. The comparable office in Paris employs five people.

This was the situation as of last October. The latest round of sanctions can only expose European banks and enterprises to even more severe consequences, especially concerning investments in the vital Nord Stream natural gas pipeline.

This bill is just the latest in a series of U.S. legislative measures tending to break down national legal sovereignty and create a globalized jurisdiction in which anyone can sue anyone else for anything, with ultimate investigative capacity and enforcement power held by the United States.

... ... ...

Jacques Myard said that "American law is being used to gain markets and eliminate competitors. We should not be naïve and wake up to what is happening."

This enquiry marked a step ahead in French awareness and resistance to a new form of "taxation without representation" exercised by the United States against its European satellites. They committee members all agreed that something must be done.

That was last October. In June, France held parliamentary elections. The commission chairman, Pierre Lellouche (Republican), the rapporteur Karine Berger (Socialist), Elisabeth Guigou (a leading Socialist) and Jacques Myard (Republican) all lost their seats to inexperienced newcomers recruited into President Emmanuel Macron's République en marche party. The newcomers are having a hard time finding their way in parliamentary life and have no political memory, for instance of the Rapport on Extraterritoriality.

As for Macron, as minister of economics, in 2014 he went against earlier government rulings by approving the GE purchase of Alstom. He does not appear eager to do anything to anger the United States.

However, there are some things that are so blatantly unfair that they cannot go on forever.

Diana Johnstone is co-author of From MAD to Madness, by Paul H. Johnstone (Clarity Press).
She can be reached at [email protected]

[Aug 02, 2017] Sanctions, smoke and mirrors from a kindergarten on LSD by Saker

Notable quotes:
"... "Israel Lobby" is, of course, a misnomer. The Israel Lobby has very little interest in Israel as a country or, for that matter, for the Israeli people. If anything, the Israel Lobby ought to be called the "Neocon Lobby". ..."
"... For one thing, it does not represent US interests. Neither does it represent the interests of Israel. Rather, it represents the interests of a specific subset of the US ruling elites, in reality much smaller than 1% of the population, which all share in the one common ideology of worldwide domination typical of the Neocons. ..."
"... Keep in mind that the historical record shows that while the Neocons are fantastically driven, they are not particularly smart. Yes, they do have the kind of rabid ideological determination which allows them to achieve a totally disproportionate influence over US policies, but when you actually read what they write and listen to what they say you immediately realize that these are rather mediocre individuals with a rather parochial mindset which makes them both very predictable and very irritating to the people around them. ..."
"... urbi et orbi ..."
"... Zero effects? Speaking of changing policy is true but not that it won't create troubles for Russia. Anyway, any aggression requires swift and ruthless response otherwise it invites more of aggression. Putin is wrong to behave the way he behaves. There must be zero patience and head for an eye response. Than aggression stops. ..."
"... someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to? "rights on climate change and refugee admissions" Seriously? Oh please. ..."
"... The Syrian Government did not ask Washington to intervene, so under international law American intervention and bombings there are as legitimate as "Saving Vietnam from the commies", "Bringing democracy to Iraq", or . the list is long. No adventure on that list turned out well for America or anyone else, with the exception of the merchants of death. ..."
"... This could no doubt be more accurately stated as, the Israel Lobby has nothing to do with the interests of the Israeli people. It seems to exist for the benefit of the ultra moneybag crowd and its deranged puppets such as Netanyahooooo! ..."
"... anything is possible with this gang of criminal sociopaths. Their poster boy is now an insatiable warmonger who is suffering from brain cancer! How could things get any worse? ..."
"... After the impressive military victories the US has achieved against such formidable foes as Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, mighty Grenada, Serbia and Libya, taking on Russia should be a "cakewalk", right? And to think there is a sizable demographic in this country which still believes this! Unbelievable. The last time that the US took on a military opponent at rough conventional parity with it (the Chinese in Korea) the result was a stalemate. To paraphrase Cardinal Newman, "To be deep in history is to cease to be a neocon." ..."
"... I'm afraid you're right. But I remain puzzled at how 98 Senators could have been lined up for that stupidity. ..."
"... The current crisis between the largely special interest owned American executive branch and the largely failing reformer Donald Trump can be a historic opportunity for Europe to mend the artificial divide between the European Union and Russia. The crisis can also be a golden opportunity to shake the corrupt system of government in the USA. These opportunities are subject to having strong and free leaders who can capitalize on the hubris of the ignorant senators and representatives on Capitol Hill. ..."
"... This sanctions bill is a domestic US matter. The Republicans are trying to pacify the Democrats' rage and bitterness over losing the election. It is most convenient for them to adopt the canard blaming Russia for the result of the election. The voters knew exactly where Trump stands on Russia, so even if Russia leaked the DNC and Podesta emails, there was no theft of the election. Voters were not mislead about positions, and knew very well the Democrats accuse the Russian of the leaks. ..."
"... We have an old saying: when you're enemy's committing suicide, stand back and let him. That's what Washington is doing now: committing suicide. ..."
"... I don't believe the "with every fiber of their being" part. This is just wishful thinking on the part of Saker. If this were so, they wouldn't just be grumbling or trusting their corrupt representatives. Average Americans still elect people like McCain, Graham and Schumer and I haven't seen any mass anti-war demonstrations in Washington or New York or anywhere else. ..."
"... Oil is the only reason the global population has quadrupled in only the last 100 years. The Industrial Revolution was not enough. Oil is necessary to maintain this population and keep it fed. ..."
"... Much is made of this so-called "neocon" business. They appear to be a current highly aggressive strain of American expansionism. However, there were no "neocons" in 1898 when the US saw it's opportunity to attack Spain and grab away it's holdings. The US has been aggressively expanding ever since, inserting itself into both world wars at the very last minute in order to gain as much for itself as possible. ..."
"... And, yes, that another THING; this time the opponent can retaliate hard. Nukes do make all that difficult to execute. ..."
Jul 31, 2017 | www.unz.com

The latest US sanctions and the Russian retaliatory response have resulted in a torrent of speculations in the official media and the blogosphere – everybody is trying to make sense of a situation which appears to make no sense at all. Why in the world would the US Senate adopt new sanctions against Russia when Russia has done absolutely nothing to provoke such a vote? Except for Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders, every single US Senator voted in favor of these sanctions. Why?! This is even more baffling when you consider that the single biggest effect of these sanctions will be to trigger a rift, and possibly even counter-sanctions , between the US and the EU. What is absolutely clear is that these sanctions will have exactly zero effect on Russia and I don't think anybody is seriously expecting the Russians to change anything at all in their policies. And yet, every Senator except Paul and Sanders voted for this. Does that make any sense to you?

Let's try to figure out what is going on here.

First, a simple reminder: like all US politicians, from the county level to the US Congress, Senators have only one consideration when then vote – "what's in it for me?". The very last thing which any US Senator really cares about are the real life consequences of his/her vote. This means that to achieve the kind of quasi unanimity (98%) for a totally stupid vote there was some kind of very influential lobby which used some very forceful "arguments" to achieve such a vote. Keep in mind that the Republicans in the Senate knew that they were voting against the wishes of their President. And yet every single one except for Rand Paul voted for these sanctions, that should tell you something about the power of the lobby which pushed for them. So who would have such power?

The website " Business Pundit: Expert Driven " has helpfully posted an article which lists the 10 top most powerful lobbies in Washington, DC . They are (in the same order as in the original article)

  • Tech Lobby
  • Mining Industry
  • Defense Industry
  • Agribusiness Industry
  • Big Oil
  • Financial Lobby
  • Big Pharma
  • AARP
  • Pro-Israel Lobby
  • NRA
Okay, why not? We could probably rearrange them, give them different labels, add a couple (like the "Prison Industrial Complex" or the "Intelligence Community") but all in all this is an okay list. Any name on it jump at you yet?

One could make the case that most of these lobbies need an enemy to prosper, this is certainly true of the Military-Industrial Complex and the associated high tech industry, and one could also reasonably claim that Big Oil, Mining and Agribusiness see Russia has a potential competitor. But a closer look at the interests these lobbies represent will tell you that they are mostly involved in domestic politics and that faraway Russia, with her relatively small economy, is just not that important to them. This is also clearly true for Big Pharma, the AARP and the NRA. Which leaves the Israel Lobby as the only potential candidate.

"Israel Lobby" is, of course, a misnomer. The Israel Lobby has very little interest in Israel as a country or, for that matter, for the Israeli people. If anything, the Israel Lobby ought to be called the "Neocon Lobby". Furthermore, we also have to keep in mind that the Neocon Lobby is unlike any other lobby in the list above. For one thing, it does not represent US interests. Neither does it represent the interests of Israel. Rather, it represents the interests of a specific subset of the US ruling elites, in reality much smaller than 1% of the population, which all share in the one common ideology of worldwide domination typical of the Neocons.

These are the folks who in spite of their 100% ironclad control of the media and Congress lost the Presidential election to Donald Trump and who are now dead set to impeach him. These are the folks who simply use "Russia" as a propagandistic fulcrum to peddle the notion that Trump and his entourage are basically Russian agents and Trump himself as a kind of "Presidential Manchurian Candidate".

Keep in mind that the historical record shows that while the Neocons are fantastically driven, they are not particularly smart. Yes, they do have the kind of rabid ideological determination which allows them to achieve a totally disproportionate influence over US policies, but when you actually read what they write and listen to what they say you immediately realize that these are rather mediocre individuals with a rather parochial mindset which makes them both very predictable and very irritating to the people around them. They always overplay their hand and then end up stunned and horrified when all their conspiracies and plans come tumbling down on them.

I submit that this is exactly what is happening right now.

First, the Neocons lost the elections. For them, it was a shock and a nightmare. The "deplorables" voted against the unambiguously clear "propaganda instructions" given to them by the media. Next, the Neocons turned their rabid hatred against Trump and they succeeded at basically neutering him, but only at the cost of terribly weakening the USA themselves! Think of it: 6 months plus into the Trump administration the USA has already managed to directly threaten Iran, Syria, the DPRK and in all cases with exactly zero results. Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans who created this situation completely ex nihilo --

So while Kim Jong-un fires missiles on the 4th of July, the Syrian Army is closing in on Deir ez-Zor, the Ukraine is turning into Somalia, the Russian economy is back to growth and Putin's popularity is as high as ever, the Neocons are totally freaking out and, as is typical of a person losing control, they don't do things which would make sense but do what they are used to doing: slapping sanctions (even if they are totally ineffective) and sending messages (even if they are totally ignored). In other words, the Neocons are now engaging in magical thinking, the deliberately chose to delude themselves about their power and influence and they are coping with their full-spectrum failure at everything by pretending that their votes in Congress matter. They truth is – they don't.

Here is where we need to turn to the other misconception in this matter, that the Russian reaction to these latest sanctions is really about these sanctions. It is not.

First, let's tackle the myth that these sanctions are hurting Russia. They really don't. Even the 100% russophobic Bloomberg is beginning to realize that, if anything, all these sanctions have made both Putin and Russia stronger . Second, there is the issue of timing: instead of slapping on some counter-sanctions the Russians suddenly decided to dramatically reduce the US diplomatic personnel in Russia and confiscate a two US diplomatic facilities in a clear retaliation for the expulsion of Russian diplomats and seizure of Russian diplomatic facilities by Obama last year. Why now?

Many observers say that the Russians are "naive" about the West and the USA, that Putin was "hoping" for better relations and that this hope was paralyzing him. Others say that Putin is "weak" or even "in cahoots" with the West. This is all total nonsense.

People tend to forget that Putin was an officer in the foreign intelligence branch of the KGB, the so-called "First Main Directorate" (PGU). Furthermore, Putin has recently revealed that he worked in the highly secretive "Directorate S" of the PGU and he was in charge of contacts with a network of illegal Soviet spies in East-Germany (were Putin was under the official cover of Director of the USSR-GDR Friendship House). If the PGU was the "elite of the elite" of the KGB, and its most secretive part, then the "Directorate S" was the "elite of the elite" of the PGU and its most secretive part. This is most definitely not a career for "naive" or "weak" people, to put it mildly! First and foremost, PGU officers were "specialists of the West" in general, and of the United States especially because the USA was always officially considered as the "main enemy" (even if most PGU officers personally considered the British as their most capable, dangerous and devious adversary). Considering the superb level of education and training given to these officers, I would argue that the PGU officers were amongst the best experts of the West anywhere in the world. Their survival and the survival of their colleagues depended on their correct understanding of the western world. As for Putin personally, he has always taken action in a very deliberate and measured way and there is no reason to assume that this time around the latest US sanctions have suddenly resulted in some kind of emotional outburst in the Kremlin. You can be darn sure that this latest Russian reaction is the result of very carefully arrived to conclusion and the formulation of a very precise and long-term objective.

I submit that the key to the correct understanding of the Russian response is in the fact that the latest US sanctions contain an absolutely unprecedented and, frankly, shocking feature: the new measures strip the President from the authority to revoke the sanctions. In practical terms, if Trump wanted to lift any of these sanctions, he would have to send an official letter to Congress which would then have 30 days to approve or reject the proposed action. In other words, the Congress has now hijacked the power of the Presidency to conduct foreign policy and taken upon itself to micromanage the US foreign policy.

That, my friends, is clearly a constitutional coup d'état and a gross violation of the principles of separation of powers which is at the very core of the US political system.

It also is a telling testimony to the utter depravity of the US Congress which took no such measures when Presidents bypass Congress and started wars without the needed congressional authority, but which is now overtly taking over the US foreign policy to prevent the risk of "peace breaking out" between Russia and the USA.

And Trump's reaction?

He declared that he would sign the bill.

Yes, the main is willing to put his signature on the text which represents an illegal coup d'état against this own authority and against the Constitution which he swore to uphold.

With this in mind, the Russian reaction is quite simple and understandable: they have given up on Trump.

Not that they ever had much hope in him, but they always strongly felt that the election of Trump might maybe provide the world with a truly historical opportunity to change the disastrous dynamic initiated by the Neocons under Obama and maybe return the international relations to a semblance of sanity. Alas, this did not happen, Trump turned out to be an overcooked noodle whose only real achievement was to express his thoughts in 140 characters or less. But the one crucial, vital, thing which Trump absolutely needed to succeed in – mercilessly crushing the Neocons – he totally failed to achieve. Worse, his only reaction to their multi-dimensional attempts at overthrowing him were each time met with clumsy attempts at appeasing them.

For Russia is means that President Trump has now been replaced by "President Congress".

Since it is absolutely impossible to get anything done with this Congress anyway, the Russians will now engage in unilaterally beneficial measures such as dramatically reducing the number of US diplomats in Russia. For the Kremlin, these sanctions are no so much an unacceptable provocation has an ideal pretext to move on a number of Russian internal policies. Getting rid of US employees in Russia is just a first step.

Next, Russia will use the frankly erratic behavior of the Americans to proclaim urbi et orbi that the Americans are irresponsible, incapable of adult decision-making and basically "gone fishing". The Russians already did that much when they declared that the Obama-Kerry team was недоговороспособны (nedogovorosposobny: "non agreement capable", more about this concept here ). Now with Trump signing his own constitutional demise, Tillerson unable to get UN Nikki to shut the hell up and Mattis and McMaster fighting over delusional plans to stop "not winning" in Afghanistan, the Obama-Kerry teams starts to look almost adult.

Frankly, for the Russians now is the time to move on.

I predict that the Neocon-crazies will not stop until they impeach Trump. I furthermore predict that the USA will not launch any major military interventions (if only because the USA has run out of countries it can safely and easily attack). Some "pretend interventions" (like the ill-fated missile strike on Syria) remain, of course, quite possible and even likely. This internal slow-mo coup against Trump will absorb the vast majority of the energy to get anything done, and leave foreign policy as simply another byproduct of internal US politics.

The East-Europeans are now totally stuck. They will continue to haplessly observe the unfolding Ukrainian disaster while playing at silly games pretending to be tough on Russia (the latest example of that kind of "barking from behind a fence" can be seen in the rather pathetic closure of the Romanian air space to a civilian aircraft with Russian Vice-Premier Dmitri Rogozin amongst the passengers). The real (West) Europeans will gradually come back to their senses and begin making deals with Russia. Even France's Emmanuel Macron de Rothschild will probably prove a more adult partner than The Donald.

But the real action will be elsewhere – in the South, the East and the Far-East. The simple truth is that the world cannot simply wait for the Americans to come back to their senses. There are a lot of crucial issues which need to be urgently tackled, a lot of immense projects which need to be worked on, and a fundamentally new and profoundly different multi-polar world which needs to be strengthened. If the Americans want to basically recuse themselves from it all, if they want to bring down the constitutional order which their Founding Fathers created and if they want to solely operate in the delusional realm which has no bearing on reality – that is both their right and their problem.

Washington DC is starting to look like a kindergarten on LSD – something both funny and disgusting. Predictably, the kids don't look too bright: a mix of bullies and spineless idiots. Some of them have their fingers on a nuclear button, and that is outright scary. What the adults need to do now is to figure out a way of keeping the kids busy and distracted so they don't press the damn button by mistake. And wait. Wait for the inevitable reaction of a country which is so much more and better than its rulers and which now desperately needs a real patriot to stop Witches' Sabbath in Washington DC.

I will end this column on a personal note. I just crossed the USA, literally, from the Rogue River in Oregon to East Central Florida. During that long trip I did not only see breathtakingly beautiful sights, but also plenty of beautiful people who oppose the satanic ball in DC with every fiber of their being and who want their country to be free from the degenerate demonic powers which have taken over the federal government. I have now lived a total of 20 years in the USA and I have learned to love and deeply appreciate the many kind, decent, honorable and simply beautiful people who live here. Far from seeing the American people as enemies of Russia, I see them has natural allies, if only because we have the same enemy (the Neocons in DC) and absolutely no objective reasons for conflict, none whatsoever. Moreover, in many ways Americans and Russians are very much alike, sometimes in comical ways. Just as during the Cold War I never lost hope in the Russian people, I now refuse to lose hope in the American people. Yes, the US federal government is disgusting, evil, ugly, stupid, degenerate and outright satanic, but the people of the USA are not. Far from it. I don't know if this country can survive the current regime as one unitary USA or whether it will break up in several quite different entities (something I see as very possible), but I do believe that the people of the USA will survive and overcome just as the Russian people survived the horrors of the 1980s and 1990s.

[Sidebar: after being accused of being a "paid Putin agent" (Vladimir, please send me money!!), a "Jew-lover" or even a "crypto-Jew" myself, a Nazi and Anti-Semite (which decent and good person has not been called an Anti-Semite" at least once in his/her life), a Communist and a Muslim (or, at least, a "Muslim propagandist"), I will now be called an "USA lover". Fine. Guilty as charged! I do love this country very much, as I do love its people. In fact, my heart often breaks for them and for the immense sufferings the Anglo-Zionist Empire also inflicts upon them. In the fight between the people of the USA and the Empire I unapologetically side with the people whom I see as friends, allies and even brothers.]

Right now the USA appears to be plunging into a precipice very similar to the one the Ukraine has plunged into (which is unsurprising, really, the same people inflicting the same disasters on whatever country they infect with their presence). The big difference is that immense and untapped potential of the USA to bounce back. There might not even be a Ukraine in 10 years, but there will most definitely be a USA, albeit maybe a very different one or even maybe several successor states.

But for the time being, I can only repeat what Floridians say when a hurricane comes barreling down on them: "hunker down" and brace for some very difficult and dangerous times to come. (Republished from The Vineyard of the Saker by permission of author or representative)

Bragadocious > , August 1, 2017 at 12:58 am GMT

Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans who created this situation completely ex nihilo

So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's enemies in the EU–they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the better. Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to?

Sharrukin > , August 1, 2017 at 1:50 am GMT

@Bragadocious Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans who created this situation completely ex nihilo

So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's enemies in the EU--they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the better. Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to? Americans and the US government are two different things.

That is no small part of why Trump got elected.

Antagonize Russia to what purpose?

Now we have Haley at the UN, Tillerton, and McMaster making statements at odds with Trumps and they still have a job. Can Trump even remove them?

Who is actually in charge of the American government? Is it Trump or the Neocons?

The entire Russia hacking story is a joke and probably a setup by the Democrats if their links to Fusion GPS is true.

Regardless, foreign nations have to deal with the world outside of Washington DC and its looks like the lunatics have taken control of the DC asylum which may well be the case.

The problem is the lack of coherence from Washington.

We may be looking at a slow motion coup, or simple incompetence, but Trump never struck me as incompetent in his other business dealings.

A power struggle seems to make the most sense.

Ned > , August 1, 2017 at 2:07 am GMT

God bless you Saker

Ned > , August 1, 2017 at 2:08 am GMT

@Bragadocious Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans who created this situation completely ex nihilo

So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's enemies in the EU--they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the better. Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to? Your trolling comment is offensive

Excal > , August 1, 2017 at 2:26 am GMT

"During that long trip I did not only see breathtakingly beautiful sights, but also plenty of beautiful people who oppose the satanic ball in DC with every fiber of their being and who want their country to be free from the degenerate demonic powers which have taken over the federal government."

I am anything but beautiful, but everything else about that sentence describes me.

I have never been to Russia, but I have known many Russians, and I am a bit of a Russophile. I voted for Trump partly because I was certain that Clinton would immediately plunge us into war with Russia. It sickens me that the senate are now rattling sabres against them. I am praying for them, and that this country is stopped from doing any real damage to them.

I can't help but wonder whether the all-but-signed alliance with the Saudis has something to do with this. There must be something diabolical there too.

Bragadocious > , August 1, 2017 at 3:45 am GMT

@Ned Your trolling comment is offensive You returned from a 3-year posting absence to write that?

exiled off mainstreet > , August 1, 2017 at 5:07 am GMT

Great picture and great description. Hopefully, things will degenerate to the point where they can't gin up a nuclear war.

NoseytheDuke > , August 1, 2017 at 6:21 am GMT

@Bragadocious You returned from a 3-year posting absence to write that? So Ned took a break for whatever reason, what of it? He wrote that your comment was offensive, I would have called it simply stupid. It smacks of knee-jerk chest-thumping of the sort that the US has already had more than enough of.

Yes, the neocons took over before Trump. Good observation, Sherlock. Trump was elected because he promised to do something about it but so far he's been a wimp. Many people still hope that Trump is merely playing rope-a-dope but Saker makes it clear in the article that this time is different in that it undermines the president's authority and it neuters his ability to effect change. Chew on that please, or better still, re-read the article.

Saker was hoping for peace just like so many Americans were when they voted for DT but it is increasingly looking like it's not going to happen.

Grandpa Charlie > , August 1, 2017 at 6:22 am GMT

I see USA as analogous to the Chinese Empire during its "decline and fall" 1850-1950 (very last part of the Manchu dynasty). Of course, it's a rough analogy, but it's there all the same. Like China back then, the "Court" of the USA like the imperial court of China was willing to sell off anything and everything. It's all been for sale for at least the last 50 years. (If you want an example, take the Panama Canal.)

In that milieu, consider the neocons. What are they unless (like the DNC and the GOP's National Central Committee) but a money-laundering and influence-peddling center. So apply that to the "known known" that the main 'position' of the neocons (their excuse for some kind of principle) is "Russia is dangerous and must be destroyed." As seen in the Saker's article, that is a destructive proposition – destructive of the interests of the USA and its people. So then WHY – why do the neocons pursue that agenda? Well, if you think about the nature of the neocons, of Congress, etc., you realize that the neocons must be making money off of this. They are pushing the anti-Russia agenda because they are paid to do so. Then, ask yourself, as with any money-following effort, CUI BONO? Well. what is accomplished by keeping the heat turned up on Russia? Isn't it that the anti-Russia agenda provides a distraction from what China is doing? And who, almost certainly, has been paying off the neocons for almost 50 years now – ever since Kissinger (godfather of the neocons) took his secret trip to Beijing in 1973. Put it this way: the old China lobby had been providing huge amounts of $US to the entire USA establishment – in particular to political parties and to the media – since way back in WW II. Now there would be a huge hole where the old China lobby had been. Who would fill that? Kissinger, for all his many faults, was smart enough to know, and Chou En-Lai was smart enough to know, what had to be done. And the old China Lobby had long seen the writing on the wall. So the old China Lobby was taken over by the New China Lobby. Lo-and-behold, Kissinger created the neocons where the paleocons had been. (If you want, you can also find evidence of an effective conspiracy extending back into WW II and the 1930′s, but that might mean identifying with the old JBS, and I want to stay focused on issues more current.)

That's the basic reality about the neocons. The PRC (or its rulers in the Standing Committee) are the neocons' bread-and-butter. Oh, sure they appreciate the Israel lobby and they need it to keep Congress dumb and afraid but their bread-and-butter is the PRC. Or more precisely, the Standing Committee. Americans like to think that we have all the billionaires (or the billionaires have us), but the reality is that USA's politicians, bureaucrats and bankers deal with many billionaires, including the billionaires (active and retired) of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China and the billionaires of the Kim dynasty of the DPRK. These billionaires use their money much more in concert with one another than do most billionaires. So they get what they want. And what they want includes the ability not to be bothered by, e.g., the US Navy when they decide to extend their empire over the SCS and do not want USA's people even to know that Hanoi asks pleadingly to become a port and outpost of the US Navy. Etc. etc.

If you find this hard to believe, google on "Clinton china bribery." Or, here at the Unz Review, check out Peter Lee's 'China Matters' blog story "Four Corners/Fairfax". Just think it over. If your mind has been closed, let it open.

"Yet none dare call it treason."

Parbes > , August 1, 2017 at 6:27 am GMT

The neocons and their media in the U.S. and the rest of the West simply HAVE to be taken out, one way or another. This is the only acceptable route – a knot tying the whole world up in insanity, which must be broken.

utu > , August 1, 2017 at 7:56 am GMT

@Bragadocious Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans who created this situation completely ex nihilo

So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's enemies in the EU--they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the better. Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to? Did I miss it or Saker does not even explain what kind of sanctions were imposed but nevertheless he assures his readers that they won't hurt Russia and possibly make it even stronger and basically everything will be hunky-dory because PGU has extremely well qualified individuals on its staff: "superb level of education and training." And obviously Putin is a superman who was in charge of spies in East Germany which required as much sophistication and risk taking as spying in Wales for James Bond.

Randal > , August 1, 2017 at 8:15 am GMT

But the one crucial, vital, thing which Trump absolutely needed to succeed in – mercilessly crushing the Neocons – he totally failed to achieve.

Indeed. The next step, as with Buchanan's piece today which is similarly discouraged as far as US foreign policy under Trump is concerned, is to name the neocons. Identify the people burrowing into the institutions of the US administration and subverting any hope of any substantive change in foreign policy from the Clinton/Bush/Obama years. Name the people who act as the tools of the Neocon Lobby within the administration, because those Trump can at least deal with, if he ever comes to understand what is going on (which admittedly seems unlikely so long as he tolerates Nikki Haley's open warmongering).

The subservience of Congress can only be dealt with by the American people defeating these sitting members and replacing them with ones who fear, and are loyal to, their constituents more than the lobbyists – which of course requires Americans to recognise when they are being manipulated by lobbyists via the media.

See the piece yesterday by Ron Maxwell, naming some of the neocons:

How Romney Loyalists Hijacked Trump's Foreign Policy

Randal > , August 1, 2017 at 8:29 am GMT

@Bragadocious Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans who created this situation completely ex nihilo

So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's enemies in the EU--they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the better. Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to?

I don't know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't.

Saker didn't refer to any of those things in his criticism of the Trump regime's foreign policy stupidity. The only aspect of "Trump's behaviour towards Europe" that he (absolutely correctly) singles out for criticism is the literally stupid sanctions resolution. Though he could equally well have criticised the delusional stupidity of Trump's seeming wholesale swallowing of neocon propaganda about Iran and the nuclear agreement.

Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq?

He's clearly well aware of that. As he has rightly pointed out previously (and Buchanan also points out again today), Trump was elected in part precisely because he seemed to offer an escape from the neocon-driven invade the world/invite the world lunacy. But his actual foreign policy seems to have been little more than continuity with minor trimming only when forced by reality, especially with the likes of Nikki Haley in such a prominent position.

And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to?

Not trying to right all the world's suppose wrongs by force (military or economic) would be a good start. That and ceasing to regard the interests of Israel and of Saudi Arabia as of primary importance for US foreign and military policy.

JL > , August 1, 2017 at 8:34 am GMT

This article is something of a mixed bag. The idea that there is going to be some rift between the EU and US is, at best, wishful thinking, but probably closer to downright delusion. No, European countries ceased to be subjects of history, and became objects, when they ceded their sovereignty to the implicitly Atlanticist and supranational structure that is the EU. So they may growl and gnash their teeth a bit, but will eventually roll over and hope that their bellies are scratched and not slashed.

As for Trump signing the sanctions legislation as it is written, Saker's point is valid. No president should abrogate power without a fight. He should, at the very least, insist that the restrictions on his ability to unilaterally cancel sanctions be removed from the legislation or he will veto the bill and fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. And, he should make clear that this isn't about sanctioning or not sanctioning Russia, but the fact that the law is unconstitutional.

Saker is also correct that the US is simply too dysfunctional now to pursue any kind of coherent foreign policy. If I were Putin, I would ask Trump who in Congress he should be negotiating with, since neither Trump himself, nor anyone in his cabinet, possesses the authority to follow through with any possible agreements. The smarter commentators are actually all coming around to the same view. Dmitry Trenin:

"I think the Kremlin views the U.S. as a dysfunctional polity, with its political class at war with itself and its society deeply divided along cultural fault lines. Under these circumstances one hardly expects a consistent policy Bad as they are now, U.S.-Russian relations continue to get worse, edging ever closer to a kinetic collision between their armed forces somewhere: in Syria, over the Baltic and Black Seas, or Ukraine."

It does indeed seem like something dramatic needs to happen, at which point the US will either come to its senses or it's mushroom cloud time for all of us.

animalogic > , August 1, 2017 at 8:58 am GMT

Although I think there is some hypobole involved, I would like to thank the Saker for raising this very interesting and very pregnant issue:

"In other words, the Congress has now hijacked the power of the Presidency to conduct foreign policy and taken upon itself to micromanage the US foreign policy.
That, my friends, is clearly a constitutional coup d'état and a gross violation of the principles of separation of powers which is at the very core of the US political system."

This is a very disturbing development, to say the least.

However, I do disagree with the Saker on this point:
"If the Americans want to basically recuse themselves from it all, if they want to bring down the constitutional order which their Founding Fathers created and if they want to solely operate in the delusional realm which has no bearing on reality – that is both their right and their problem."

The "Americans" -- that is US citizens -- do NOT want to bring down the constitution, nor have a government operate in a delusional realm. Nor does the US "government have the "right" to operate in the way they do: that amounts to saying they have the right to commit treason ( a meaningless concept for the Elites). Finally, it is NOT just an American "problem": unfortunately, it's a world problem. We are all liable to suffer for the insane shenanigans of the US Ruling class.

Anonymous > , Disclaimer August 1, 2017 at 10:19 am GMT

I predict that the Neocon-crazies will not stop until they impeach Trump.

And that's probably behind this clusterfuck. The globalist cabal is working hard to make Trump look bad and he's falling for it (him asking Comey – a certified swamp creature – to be loyal is proof of his naivete). This same cabal is running Western Europe so any "positive" developments between Macron de Rothchild and Putin will be temporary and designed to further ostracise Trump. With Jews you loose and Russia will forever be their ultimate target. Russian nukes are the only thing standing in the way of One World Government.

I furthermore predict that the USA will not launch any major military interventions

Don't be so sure. They want him to make mistakes . A new war would disappoint a lot of Trump's core supporters and destroy his capability to expand the base.

Bragadocious > , August 1, 2017 at 12:53 pm GMT

@NoseytheDuke So Ned took a break for whatever reason, what of it? He wrote that your comment was offensive, I would have called it simply stupid. It smacks of knee-jerk chest-thumping of the sort that the US has already had more than enough of.

Yes, the neocons took over before Trump. Good observation, Sherlock. Trump was elected because he promised to do something about it but so far he's been a wimp. Many people still hope that Trump is merely playing rope-a-dope but Saker makes it clear in the article that this time is different in that it undermines the president's authority and it neuters his ability to effect change. Chew on that please, or better still, re-read the article.

Saker was hoping for peace just like so many Americans were when they voted for DT but it is increasingly looking like it's not going to happen. Yes, the neocons took over before Trump. Good observation, Sherlock

Thanks. The reason I wrote that was because Saker wrote this:

Not that they ever had much hope in him, but they always strongly felt that the election of Trump might maybe provide the world with a truly historical opportunity to change the disastrous dynamic initiated by the Neocons under Obama

See, the key word there Sherlock, is initiated . That means to start, in case you didn't know. I know, I'm Captain Obvious again. Maybe Saker should write more carefully, and not sound like a kindergartner on LSD.

"I would have called it stupid"

Yes, that's the operative word for Saker and his minions. Everyone's stupid. Except you. You're smart. Especially when you're peddling 9/11 truther stuff. Then you're a special kind of smart.

Bragadocious > , August 1, 2017 at 1:28 pm GMT

@Randal


I don't know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't.
Saker didn't refer to any of those things in his criticism of the Trump regime's foreign policy stupidity. The only aspect of "Trump's behaviour towards Europe" that he (absolutely correctly) singles out for criticism is the literally stupid sanctions resolution. Though he could equally well have criticised the delusional stupidity of Trump's seeming wholesale swallowing of neocon propaganda about Iran and the nuclear agreement.

Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq?
He's clearly well aware of that. As he has rightly pointed out previously (and Buchanan also points out again today), Trump was elected in part precisely because he seemed to offer an escape from the neocon-driven invade the world/invite the world lunacy. But his actual foreign policy seems to have been little more than continuity with minor trimming only when forced by reality, especially with the likes of Nikki Haley in such a prominent position.

And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to?
Not trying to right all the world's suppose wrongs by force (military or economic) would be a good start. That and ceasing to regard the interests of Israel and of Saudi Arabia as of primary importance for US foreign and military policy. Saker didn't refer to any of those things

I agree, he didn't, but then again, it seems Saker doesn't do nuance very well. He specializes in grandiose insults (stupid, LSD, kindergartners, overcooked noodle, gone fishing) without mentioning some pretty important stuff, like Trump cutting off funding to the Syrian rebels. That move infuriated the neocons. Why doesn't Saker mention that? I guess it doesn't jibe with his overall "incompetence" theme and anti-Trump snark.

As for the sanctions, they seem to upset Saker. But then he says it's water off a duck's back for Putin. Hey, they probably even strengthen his hand -- So really, who gives a shit? He contradicts himself.

Finally, he says Trump has turned over foreign policy responsibility to Congress. I'm no constitutional expert, but Congress is in charge of declaring war. Sanctions can be interpreted as an act of war. In any case, forcing the congresscritters to go on record for something like this can be seen as very useful, just as the Iraq war vote was in blocking Hillary from higher office.

anonymous > , Disclaimer August 1, 2017 at 1:51 pm GMT

Thanks for the compliments regarding the American people. They all want peace just like all others and have always voted for what they thought was the peace candidate only to be betrayed later. I've lived here longer than just twenty years, however, but my whole life and am not so sanguine about the nature of most Americans. I'd say the vast majority, perhaps 70%, are ignorant dolts and easily bamboozled. Elections are just festivals of lies and deceit with few being able to learn from the previous experience. The population is composed mostly of dodo birds. The ruling class are predators looking for the next dollar to be extorted or stolen. This is a bad formula and can only go so far. The fault is not in our stars but in us.

Grandpa Charlie > , August 1, 2017 at 3:56 pm GMT

" The ruling class are predators looking for the next dollar to be extorted or stolen."

And who exactly is this "ruling class" if not the neocons? Are they not exactly like Milovan Djilas' "new class" – a class of apparatchiks in positions to profit enormously (while living very comfortably) from the decline and fall of an empire. How could this be, if their treasonous profiteering could only leave them as having no place to turn but the China-dominated new world order? Well, perhaps they actually know that the very millionaires who controlled key industries in China prior to 1950, were also millionaires who lived, have lived even during the Cultural Revolution, and for their families, continue to live, very comfortably and securely in Shanghai from 1950 onward – assuming that they were astute enough to have been doing business with the Communists all along. Perhaps they realize that the Communists are about as communistic as the National Socialists were socialistic so that course which is most profitable in the short-run is also most profitable in the long run.

"Yet none dare call it treason."

Robert Magill > , August 1, 2017 at 4:41 pm GMT

I submit that the key to the correct understanding of the Russian response is in the fact that the latest US sanctions contain an absolutely unprecedented and, frankly, shocking feature: the new measures strip the President from the authority to revoke the sanctions.

This is part of the plan to sideline Russia, render it untouchable on the Executive's part and move on to China. The plan is to stun everyone with the announcement (probably on Labor Day) of 50k new, well paying, mostly private sector jobs, with benefits. China will feature prominently. Chinese built factories in Wisconsin, Chicago etc. just teasers. Bigly deal to follow: much, much bigly. All will be well --

http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

Sean > , August 1, 2017 at 7:33 pm GMT

Largely due to Obama's timidity in Syria on top of his denial of defensive weapons to Kiev, Russia humiliated America in Syria. Putin will rue the day, because America is going to hit back at Russia (it has to). Trump is going to take asymmetric vengeance and bleed Russia white. A fraction of what has been spent in Syria will go a very long way in you-know-where.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/world/europe/pentagon-and-state-department-are-said-to-propose-arming-ukraine.html

Sean > , August 1, 2017 at 7:58 pm GMT

@Robert Magill


I submit that the key to the correct understanding of the Russian response is in the fact that the latest US sanctions contain an absolutely unprecedented and, frankly, shocking feature: the new measures strip the President from the authority to revoke the sanctions.
This is part of the plan to sideline Russia, render it untouchable on the Executive's part and move on to China. The plan is to stun everyone with the announcement (probably on Labor Day) of 50k new, well paying, mostly private sector jobs, with benefits. China will feature prominently. Chinese built factories in Wisconsin, Chicago etc. just teasers. Bigly deal to follow: much, much bigly. All will be well --

http://robertmagill.wordpress.com The production facilities of the future will be automated and the elimination of workers will mean there is no particular reason to continue offshoring production. The factories will come back to the West, but the jobs won't exist .

Alan Donelson > , August 1, 2017 at 8:03 pm GMT

@exiled off mainstreet Great picture and great description. Hopefully, things will degenerate to the point where they can't gin up a nuclear war. Great picture -- just not congruent with the title of the post. With a moniker like that, EoM, one might think you'd notice the size of that girl's pupils. Not on LSD. Ill bet she had already graduated from kindergarten, too. But then, why be critical of what one sees and reads. I take SAKER's input with a salt shaker on hand.

Anonymous > , Disclaimer August 1, 2017 at 8:34 pm GMT

And yet, every Senator except Paul and Sanders voted for this.

2 men out of "100″ men looks like the regular average.

Chuck > , August 1, 2017 at 9:38 pm GMT

@Grandpa Charlie I see USA as analogous to the Chinese Empire during its "decline and fall" 1850-1950 (very last part of the Manchu dynasty). Of course, it's a rough analogy, but it's there all the same. Like China back then, the "Court" of the USA like the imperial court of China was willing to sell off anything and everything. It's all been for sale for at least the last 50 years. (If you want an example, take the Panama Canal.)

In that milieu, consider the neocons. What are they unless (like the DNC and the GOP's National Central Committee) but a money-laundering and influence-peddling center. So apply that to the "known known" that the main 'position' of the neocons (their excuse for some kind of principle) is "Russia is dangerous and must be destroyed." As seen in the Saker's article, that is a destructive proposition - destructive of the interests of the USA and its people. So then WHY - why do the neocons pursue that agenda? Well, if you think about the nature of the neocons, of Congress, etc., you realize that the neocons must be making money off of this. They are pushing the anti-Russia agenda because they are paid to do so. Then, ask yourself, as with any money-following effort, CUI BONO? Well. what is accomplished by keeping the heat turned up on Russia? Isn't it that the anti-Russia agenda provides a distraction from what China is doing? And who, almost certainly, has been paying off the neocons for almost 50 years now - ever since Kissinger (godfather of the neocons) took his secret trip to Beijing in 1973. Put it this way: the old China lobby had been providing huge amounts of $US to the entire USA establishment - in particular to political parties and to the media - since way back in WW II. Now there would be a huge hole where the old China lobby had been. Who would fill that? Kissinger, for all his many faults, was smart enough to know, and Chou En-Lai was smart enough to know, what had to be done. And the old China Lobby had long seen the writing on the wall. So the old China Lobby was taken over by the New China Lobby. Lo-and-behold, Kissinger created the neocons where the paleocons had been. (If you want, you can also find evidence of an effective conspiracy extending back into WW II and the 1930's, but that might mean identifying with the old JBS, and I want to stay focused on issues more current.)

That's the basic reality about the neocons. The PRC (or its rulers in the Standing Committee) are the neocons' bread-and-butter. Oh, sure they appreciate the Israel lobby and they need it to keep Congress dumb and afraid ... but their bread-and-butter is the PRC. Or more precisely, the Standing Committee. Americans like to think that we have all the billionaires (or the billionaires have us), but the reality is that USA's politicians, bureaucrats and bankers deal with many billionaires, including the billionaires (active and retired) of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China and the billionaires of the Kim dynasty of the DPRK. These billionaires use their money much more in concert with one another than do most billionaires. So they get what they want. And what they want includes the ability not to be bothered by, e.g., the US Navy when they decide to extend their empire over the SCS and do not want USA's people even to know that Hanoi asks pleadingly to become a port and outpost of the US Navy. Etc. etc.

If you find this hard to believe, google on "Clinton china bribery." Or, here at the Unz Review, check out Peter Lee's 'China Matters' blog story "Four Corners/Fairfax". Just think it over. If your mind has been closed, let it open.

"Yet none dare call it treason." Kingmaker Sheldon Adelson also has a China connection.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/259853-training-tactical-officers-critical-for-national

Priss Factor > , Website August 2, 2017 at 4:08 am GMT

Let the US reveal itself to be totally owned by Zionist globalists.

And if EU goes along, it will only show itself as cuck vassals of the US.

Russia needs to fix its problems and build a super-economy of its own.

With China and Iran as partners, Russia can do much if they put their mind to it.

But do Russians have the National Character?

Stephen R. Diamond > , Website August 2, 2017 at 4:15 am GMT

@utu Did I miss it or Saker does not even explain what kind of sanctions were imposed but nevertheless he assures his readers that they won't hurt Russia and possibly make it even stronger and basically everything will be hunky-dory because PGU has extremely well qualified individuals on its staff: "superb level of education and training." And obviously Putin is a superman who was in charge of spies in East Germany which required as much sophistication and risk taking as spying in Wales for James Bond.

And obviously Putin is a superman

Have you notice that the same folks you say Trump is a superman say the same of Putin? Everything is a stroke of genius.

These folks might study up a bit on the nature of intelligence. It would help them recognize these mediocrities for what they are.

NoseytheDuke > , August 2, 2017 at 4:35 am GMT

@Bragadocious Yes, the neocons took over before Trump. Good observation, Sherlock

Thanks. The reason I wrote that was because Saker wrote this:

Not that they ever had much hope in him, but they always strongly felt that the election of Trump might maybe provide the world with a truly historical opportunity to change the disastrous dynamic initiated by the Neocons under Obama

See, the key word there Sherlock, is initiated . That means to start, in case you didn't know. I know, I'm Captain Obvious again. Maybe Saker should write more carefully, and not sound like a kindergartner on LSD.

"I would have called it stupid"

Yes, that's the operative word for Saker and his minions. Everyone's stupid. Except you. You're smart. Especially when you're peddling 9/11 truther stuff. Then you're a special kind of smart. I see that you've outed yourself as a Coincidence Theorist there so you may console yourself as at least being "useful", even if it is only as being a useful idiot.

Start with ae911truth.org, grap a book on high-school physics and go on from there. There's plenty of reading and learning ahead for you, but you'll be much better for it. Oh, and stop the chest-thumping, it only results in bruises.

Grandpa Charlie > , August 2, 2017 at 4:41 am GMT

@Chuck Kingmaker Sheldon Adelson also has a China connection.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/259853-training-tactical-officers-critical-for-national "Kingmaker Sheldon Adelson also has a China connection." – Chuck, citing to The Hill

Thanks, Chuck. That's a great catch.

aaaa returns > , August 2, 2017 at 4:45 am GMT

As always, a good read from the Saker.
I think his assessment is spot on; Trump and his movement have been disabled. Now Congress members seem to be jockeying for future power-gains, while Trump might be starting to check out. He'll keep tweeting or whatever, but Nikki Haley, Pence and the generals might end up grabbing more decision-making power or perhaps not.. who knows.

There's always the 25th amendment scenario, the Russian collusion angle, or maybe some other damning revelation to pop up in the future to sink Trump, but I think many in Washington may be under warning that his removal could have a devastating impact.

I am not as optimistic about a lack of militarism in response to the crisis. That has been the go-to option for all modern American presidents in times of crisis.

nsa > , August 2, 2017 at 5:08 am GMT

The worms in the House and Senate have been totally terrorized by the vile jooies. Give the loathsome jooies whatever they want, no matter how foul, and keep their jobs or cross the abominable jooies and lose their jobs when a well funded opponent supported by the repulsive KM (kosher media) just happens to appear in the next primary. The Jooie Lobby runs the Knesset on the Potomac, not the US citizenry who are held in the utmost contempt by the bloodthirsty jooie elites. Government of the jooies, by the jooies, for the jooies .

KA > , August 2, 2017 at 5:25 am GMT

Many events are sprouting up all over the map
India China, Taliban in Afghanistan ,Venezuela , Iran Syria Lebanon , Israel Palestine -- all are moving rapidly into unknown territory . America is no longer is in a position to influence these events. . despite not wanting American policy makers will be forced to look inwards . Those counytriesmay nt bother to inform America .

Health Care, Student loans, next inevitable housing bubble, millennial not saving and being forced to spend the income on health care and rents along , nation as a whole see increasing social fragmentation on ethnic lines -- these forces will make America much weaker economically and socially . Foreign countries like China and Gulf monarchies will influence American foreign and domestic policies .

America democracy itself may not survive the changes . Neocons with eager media may settle down on dictatorship.

F > , August 2, 2017 at 6:32 am GMT

@Ned God bless you Saker Creepy comment.

Sergey Krieger > , August 2, 2017 at 7:52 am GMT

"The latest US sanctions and the Russian retaliatory response"

There has not been any response so far. Response was to US expelling 35 Russian diplomats 6+ months ago. This is why I am not a fan of delayed responses. As saying goes, spoon is for dinner, not afterwards. Russia so far failed to respond to USA aggression which is what sanctions are.
Putin has been doing this whole patience expectations of US coming to her senses for some 10 years with poor results as US belligerence seems to grow in lack of appropriate responses from Russia.
Putin being liberal he is, seems cannot abandon hope to be part of the club so far hence this treatment in white gloves when it is stick across US face and kick into US groin what's necessary.
USA is like a dog that understands only stick. And stick has been missing despite Russia having enough options to start really hurting USA where it hurts and stop cooperation everywhere even in Syria.
I am not holding my breath with Putin though. He still insists on not letting up and talking to madman despite that doing everything to hurt him.
Slow learner he is both in regards to USA and Russian economy.

Sergey Krieger > , August 2, 2017 at 7:56 am GMT

"What is absolutely clear is that these sanctions will have exactly zero effect on Russia and I don't think anybody is seriously expecting the Russians to change anything at all in their policies."

Zero effects? Speaking of changing policy is true but not that it won't create troubles for Russia. Anyway, any aggression requires swift and ruthless repsonse otherwise it invites more of agression. Putin is wrong to behave the way he behaves. There must be zero patience and head for an eye response. Than aggression stops.

anonymous > , Disclaimer August 2, 2017 at 8:07 am GMT

@Randal


But the one crucial, vital, thing which Trump absolutely needed to succeed in – mercilessly crushing the Neocons – he totally failed to achieve.
Indeed. The next step, as with Buchanan's piece today which is similarly discouraged as far as US foreign policy under Trump is concerned, is to name the neocons. Identify the people burrowing into the institutions of the US administration and subverting any hope of any substantive change in foreign policy from the Clinton/Bush/Obama years. Name the people who act as the tools of the Neocon Lobby within the administration, because those Trump can at least deal with, if he ever comes to understand what is going on (which admittedly seems unlikely so long as he tolerates Nikki Haley's open warmongering).

The subservience of Congress can only be dealt with by the American people defeating these sitting members and replacing them with ones who fear, and are loyal to, their constituents more than the lobbyists - which of course requires Americans to recognise when they are being manipulated by lobbyists via the media.

See the piece yesterday by Ron Maxwell, naming some of the neocons:

How Romney Loyalists Hijacked Trump's Foreign Policy

The subservience of Congress can only be dealt with by the American people defeating these sitting members and replacing them with ones who fear, and are loyal to, their constituents more than the lobbyists – which of course requires Americans to recognise when they are being manipulated by lobbyists via the media.

Yet, that has never happened, and will never happen. People elect leaders quite like themselves.

It is the people, stupid (I don't necessarily mean you).

The Alarmist > , August 2, 2017 at 9:06 am GMT

The neoconservative are like junkies. Does a junkie ever really appreciate the risk whilst in the middle of pursuing his next fix? Each successive fix is never quite enough, so they go on to bigger fixes at the risk of overdose. Neocons seem to think kicking Russia's ass will be a manageable high, a cakewalk nonetheless, same for China thereafter, because the wars and dying will be done over there in their estimation.

TheJester > , August 2, 2017 at 10:20 am GMT

Furthermore, we also have to keep in mind that the Neocon Lobby is unlike any other lobby in the list above. For one thing, it does not represent US interests. Neither does it represent the interests of Israel. Rather, it represents the interests of a specific subset of the US ruling elites, in reality much smaller than 1% of the population, which all share in the one common ideology of worldwide domination typical of the Neocons.

These are the folks who in spite of their 100% ironclad control of the media and Congress lost the Presidential election to Donald Trump and who are now dead set to impeach him.

Many people who notice believe that "Neocon" is a euphemism for "Jew". Yes, there are non-Jewish outliers among the Neocons like John McCain and Lindsey Graham but this need be no more complex than assuming that they, like so many others in government such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, have cut their deals with the Jewish lobby. Indeed, when I read an article on Neocons, the list of culprits does read like a list of Ashkenazi Jews.

The import is that if the Neocons are religiously committed to world domination and "Neocon" is a euphemism for "Jew", then it follows that the age-old stereotype that there are cabals of Jews seeking world domination at the expense of the goyim they live among is true.

jacques sheete > , August 2, 2017 at 10:54 am GMT

Does that make any sense to you?

No.

And one of the things I've learned is to NOT seek a reasonable answer to situations provoked by utter crackpots.

It's simple; many of those in positions of power and responsibility are not only nuts in the head, but no human is built to shoulder much power at all.

mp > , August 2, 2017 at 10:56 am GMT

Of the lobby groups listed, probably only Big Oil and Big Jew (and not in that order) have much of an interest in going to war with Russia. The Military-Industrials are happy just to get contracts to build stuff. They don't really care, or particularly want, their stuff to be used. Most of it is too expensive to use, and probably doesn't work as advertised, anyhow.

Wizard of Oz > , August 2, 2017 at 10:58 am GMT

I'm afraid you're right.

But I remain puzzled at how 98 Senators could have been lined up for that stupidity.

Can you enlarge on the details of neo-con ideas, personnel and means of influence to explain the neo-con part? I mean 98 out of 100 Senators!!!

And, given especially your assertion that Israeli lobbyists aren't acting in Israel's real interests, can you give a fuller explanation of what they are up to and why, with particular reference to that Senate vote?

Following on from that, or, if you insist, as an aside would you care to give your view of what rational Israeli lobbying might seek Americann help for. Here's my attempt at starting your explanation .. Israel knows it can no longer defeat the battle hardened Hezbollah forces, from which they have already received a bloidy nose, without using nuclear weapons or losing a high proportion of young Israelis. So it fears that Hezbollah, still connected to Iran and protected in that by Syria, will launch intolerable rocket attacks to provoke Israeli attack against its dug in positions.

The need to remove Assad's regime has to be seen in that light??? Could it be as simple as that?

white noise > , August 2, 2017 at 11:44 am GMT

@Anonymous


I predict that the Neocon-crazies will not stop until they impeach Trump.
And that's probably behind this clusterfuck. The globalist cabal is working hard to make Trump look bad and he's falling for it (him asking Comey - a certified swamp creature - to be loyal is proof of his naivete). This same cabal is running Western Europe so any "positive" developments between Macron de Rothchild and Putin will be temporary and designed to further ostracise Trump. With Jews you loose and Russia will forever be their ultimate target. Russian nukes are the only thing standing in the way of One World Government.

I furthermore predict that the USA will not launch any major military interventions
Don't be so sure. They want him to make mistakes . A new war would disappoint a lot of Trump's core supporters and destroy his capability to expand the base. "Russian nukes are the only thing standing in the way of One World Government."

Indeed. Vladimir Putin has big balls, and the elites hate him. But he's not afraid of a murder attempt. The elites know that if something happens to him, Europe, Israel and North America would be reduced to radioactive debris in about one hour

KA > , August 2, 2017 at 12:11 pm GMT

A new alignment is likely to emerge .t will be much less adversarial and much less enthused with polemic. America China Israel Saudi Arab – pitted against – India Russia Iran Japan, . China will embrace US because of Neocon and myriad financial connections with US .India will be forced to return to Russia . China joining America or America deciding to join China is the game changer and disrupt very other relationship. China will try to occupy American position after WW2 while US will find itself occupying post WW2 British position. Neoconservatives and financial system of the world will force this merger .

Pakistan Germany Turkey will try to juggle and hedge theirs bets . Central Asian Stan will be politically connected to Russia but economically to China .China and Russia will quarrel here and these countries will face a period of turmoil. Balkans will move back to Russia . NATO will be largely irrelevant with no ability to have consensus and a mission .
The world will become more rambunctious and hyper verbal but it won't fight .
Polyglot countries like India and America will try to talk along ethnic lines more but the fundamental underlying realities will not change . Despite the divisiveness promoted by parties, the citizen will move to closer relationship and understanding and common ground partly because the divisiveness will fail to accrue any benefit to the groups most interested in harvesting it .But the divisiveness will not disappear from daily discourse .

ffff > , August 2, 2017 at 12:15 pm GMT

Anyone else find their comments censored on thesaker? Seems like a "pro"-russian version of CNN

utu > , August 2, 2017 at 12:16 pm GMT

@Stephen R. Diamond


And obviously Putin is a superman
Have you notice that the same folks you say Trump is a superman say the same of Putin? Everything is a stroke of genius.

These folks might study up a bit on the nature of intelligence. It would help them recognize these mediocrities for what they are. ;) Everything is a stroke of genius.

Like playing 3D or nD (n–>inf) chess, right?

I think it come from desperation and hope, I think. And as they say, hope does not want to die in spite of the evidence that it should long time ago.

n230099 > , August 2, 2017 at 12:31 pm GMT

" 10 top most powerful lobbies in Washington, DC. They are (in the same order as in the original article)

Tech Lobby
Mining Industry
Defense Industry
Agribusiness Industry
Big Oil
Financial Lobby
Big Pharma
AARP
Pro-Israel Lobby
NRA"

Well, some are 'lobbies' but some are just bogeymen.

white noise > , August 2, 2017 at 12:34 pm GMT

@The Alarmist The neoconservative are like junkies. Does a junkie ever really appreciate the risk whilst in the middle of pursuing his next fix? Each successive fix is never quite enough, so they go on to bigger fixes at the risk of overdose. Neocons seem to think kicking Russia's ass will be a manageable high, a cakewalk nonetheless, same for China thereafter, because the wars and dying will be done over there ... in their estimation. " Neocons seem to think kicking Russia's ass will be a manageable high"

That's what they think. Given that Russia currently has more nuclear power than USA and Israel combined, to think that they can handle Russia is sheer stupidity.

anonymous > , Disclaimer August 2, 2017 at 1:00 pm GMT

Much is made of this so-called "neocon" business. They appear to be a current highly aggressive strain of American expansionism. However, there were no "neocons" in 1898 when the US saw it's opportunity to attack Spain and grab away it's holdings. The US has been aggressively expanding ever since, inserting itself into both world wars at the very last minute in order to gain as much for itself as possible. It got a couple bloody rebuffs in Korea and Vietnam but learned how to refine it's technique from those experiences. The US has been on the march ever since 1898, sometimes slowly sometimes quickly. It's not something new but is an inherent dynamic. Like a balloon things expand until they reach some sort of internal or external limiting factor. For the US one can imagine what those might be.

John Q. Public > , August 2, 2017 at 1:08 pm GMT

We need a better term than "neo-con." People like Brennan, Clapper and McMaster were never Trotskyites and they never wrote for Commentary. Their view is really a liberal internationalism update for the post-Cold War, post-9/11 situation. And this view is ubiquitous inside the Beltway.

Joe Hide > , August 2, 2017 at 1:17 pm GMT

Saker,
I especially liked your use of the term "demonic" which is an appropriate term both figuratively and possibly literally to describe many neocon adherents.
The internet is providing "Light coming into the world", that is, Truth or information coming into mass consciousness. Mass consciousness must shape which possible futures become reality, or the controlled media wouldn't be spending billions to try to influence it. Some would say that this is solely because of the physical changes that people then force to happen, but evidence also supports consciousness simply altering possible outcomes "The prayers of a righteous man availeth much".
Saker, thanks much for Your articles!

jacques sheete > , August 2, 2017 at 1:18 pm GMT

Lesson unlearned.

Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage.

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book I, 1.42-[3]

Aedib > , August 2, 2017 at 1:25 pm GMT

Great article. Quite accurate description of the hubris infected American establishment.

jacques sheete > , August 2, 2017 at 1:26 pm GMT

@Sergey Krieger "What is absolutely clear is that these sanctions will have exactly zero effect on Russia and I don't think anybody is seriously expecting the Russians to change anything at all in their policies."

Zero effects? Speaking of changing policy is true but not that it won't create troubles for Russia. Anyway, any aggression requires swift and ruthless response otherwise it invites more of aggression. Putin is wrong to behave the way he behaves. There must be zero patience and head for an eye response. Than aggression stops.

Anyway, any aggression requires swift and ruthless repsonse

Not always, and not necessarily now. Sometimes no response is the most powerful. Aggressive and ruthless responses are often best reserved for the times they're likely to succeed decisively. Responding to petulant pissants is more often than not a waste of time, energy and concentration. Putin appears to know all that, and good for him. I 'd love to see him knock the bastards on their collective asses permanently. Sometime.

Aedib > , August 2, 2017 at 1:31 pm GMT

@utu

Did I miss it or Saker does not even explain what kind of sanctions were imposed but nevertheless he assures his readers that they won't hurt Russia and possibly make it even stronger and basically everything will be hunky-dory because PGU has extremely well qualified individuals on its staff: "superb level of education and training." And obviously Putin is a superman who was in charge of spies in East Germany which required as much sophistication and risk taking as spying in Wales for James Bond. Russia had quite satisfactorily surfed sanctions.

https://www.awaragroup.com/blog/russian-economy-2014-2016-the-years-of-sanctions-warfare/

Pandos > , August 2, 2017 at 2:19 pm GMT

@Bragadocious Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans who created this situation completely ex nihilo

So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's enemies in the EU--they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the better. Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to? "rights on climate change and refugee admissions" Seriously? Oh please.

yeah > , August 2, 2017 at 2:28 pm GMT

@Sean Largely due to Obama's timidity in Syria on top of his denial of defensive weapons to Kiev, Russia humiliated America in Syria. Putin will rue the day, because America is going to hit back at Russia (it has to). Trump is going to take asymmetric vengeance and bleed Russia white. A fraction of what has been spent in Syria will go a very long way in you-know-where.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/world/europe/pentagon-and-state-department-are-said-to-propose-arming-ukraine.html

Regarding Syria and your comments thereon: Excuse me, but is it all about Russia versus America or can the Syrian people and their Government have any say? The world has people and Governments other than American ones, you know, and they don't like freedom, democracy, or whatever delivered by bombs, not even by smart bombs. The Syrian Government did not ask Washington to intervene, so under international law American intervention and bombings there are as legitimate as "Saving Vietnam from the commies", "Bringing democracy to Iraq", or . the list is long. No adventure on that list turned out well for America or anyone else, with the exception of the merchants of death.

Now your fond hope is "Trump is going to bleed Russia white" and no doubt you would welcome "Getting tough on Russia". Maybe you prefer your news to be exciting – with trade wars, sanctions-wars, hot wars, cold wars, shooting wars, full blown mushroom-cloud-wars – but you will have to spare us such merry excitement.

John Q. Public > , August 2, 2017 at 3:27 pm GMT

You are making too big a deal about the 30 day repeal. I bet you Trump will include a signing statement that he reserves the right to ignore the parts of the law that are unconstitutional.

schmenz > , August 2, 2017 at 4:12 pm GMT

I'm afraid I had to stop reading when our beloved Saker stated that the Israel Lobby has nothing to do with Israel. I'm really not sure what planet Saker lives on but he might ask the destroyed nations around Israel if they think the Lobby has nothing to do with Israel.

jacques sheete > , August 2, 2017 at 4:36 pm GMT

@schmenz I'm afraid I had to stop reading when our beloved Saker stated that the Israel Lobby has nothing to do with Israel. I'm really not sure what planet Saker lives on but he might ask the destroyed nations around Israel if they think the Lobby has nothing to do with Israel.

I'm afraid I had to stop reading when our beloved Saker stated that the Israel Lobby has nothing to do with Israel.

This could no doubt be more accurately stated as, the Israel Lobby has nothing to do with the interests of the Israeli people. It seems to exist for the benefit of the ultra moneybag crowd and its deranged puppets such as Netanyahooooo!

Mulegino1 > , August 2, 2017 at 5:49 pm GMT

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. Thus, the "American" (please note the quotation marks) oligarchy is imploding. Hopefully, they will not exercise a Samson Option of their own, but anything is possible with this gang of criminal sociopaths. Their poster boy is now an insatiable warmonger who is suffering from brain cancer! How could things get any worse?

After the impressive military victories the US has achieved against such formidable foes as Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, mighty Grenada, Serbia and Libya, taking on Russia should be a "cakewalk", right? And to think there is a sizable demographic in this country which still believes this! Unbelievable. The last time that the US took on a military opponent at rough conventional parity with it (the Chinese in Korea) the result was a stalemate. To paraphrase Cardinal Newman, "To be deep in history is to cease to be a neocon."

Trump should have just let the veto proof sanctions become law without his signature.

Moi > , August 2, 2017 at 5:56 pm GMT

"The big difference is that immense and untapped potential of the USA to bounce back."

This tells me the writer is delusional. The "American Century" is over, and it did not last one hundred years. Too bad.

Moi > , August 2, 2017 at 6:01 pm GMT

@TheJester

Furthermore, we also have to keep in mind that the Neocon Lobby is unlike any other lobby in the list above. For one thing, it does not represent US interests. Neither does it represent the interests of Israel. Rather, it represents the interests of a specific subset of the US ruling elites, in reality much smaller than 1% of the population, which all share in the one common ideology of worldwide domination typical of the Neocons.

These are the folks who in spite of their 100% ironclad control of the media and Congress lost the Presidential election to Donald Trump and who are now dead set to impeach him.

Many people who notice believe that "Neocon" is a euphemism for "Jew". Yes, there are non-Jewish outliers among the Neocons like John McCain and Lindsey Graham ... but this need be no more complex than assuming that they, like so many others in government such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, have cut their deals with the Jewish lobby. Indeed, when I read an article on Neocons, the list of culprits does read like a list of Ashkenazi Jews.

The import is that if the Neocons are religiously committed to world domination and "Neocon" is a euphemism for "Jew", then it follows that the age-old stereotype that there are cabals of Jews seeking world domination at the expense of the goyim they live among is true. Agree!

Anonymous > , Disclaimer August 2, 2017 at 6:03 pm GMT

@Sean Largely due to Obama's timidity in Syria on top of his denial of defensive weapons to Kiev, Russia humiliated America in Syria. Putin will rue the day, because America is going to hit back at Russia (it has to). Trump is going to take asymmetric vengeance and bleed Russia white. A fraction of what has been spent in Syria will go a very long way in you-know-where.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/world/europe/pentagon-and-state-department-are-said-to-propose-arming-ukraine.html

Russia humiliated America in Syria

They humiliated Tel Aviv. American people never wanted to spill their blood and treasure on the other side of the Globe for the Grater Israel project.

Suman > , August 2, 2017 at 6:03 pm GMT

Rand Paul and Mike Lee voted against the sanctions. Bernie Sanders is getting undue credit.

Moi > , August 2, 2017 at 6:04 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz

I'm afraid you're right. But I remain puzzled at how 98 Senators could have been lined up for that stupidity. Can you enlarge on the details of neo-con ideas, personnel and means of influence to explain the neo-con part? I mean 98 out of 100 Senators!!!

And, given especially your assertion that Israeli lobbyists aren't acting in Israel's real interests, can you give a fuller explanation of what they are up to and why, with particular reference to that Senate vote?

Following on from that, or, if you insist, as an aside would you care to give your view of what rational Israeli lobbying might seek Americann help for. Here's my attempt at starting your explanation..... Israel knows it can no longer defeat the battle hardened Hezbollah forces, from which they have already received a bloidy nose, without using nuclear weapons or losing a high proportion of young Israelis. So it fears that Hezbollah, still connected to Iran and protected in that by Syria, will launch intolerable rocket attacks to provoke Israeli attack against its dug in positions.

The need to remove Assad's regime has to be seen in that light??? Could it be as simple as that? That kind of overwhelming support in the Senate is usually reserved for Israel.

Joe Levantine > , August 2, 2017 at 6:17 pm GMT

The current crisis between the largely special interest owned American executive branch and the largely failing reformer Donald Trump can be a historic opportunity for Europe to mend the artificial divide between the European Union and Russia. The crisis can also be a golden opportunity to shake the corrupt system of government in the USA. These opportunities are subject to having strong and free leaders who can capitalize on the hubris of the ignorant senators and representatives on Capitol Hill.

Germany, absent Merkel, can resurrect the reinsurance treaty with Russia which Kaiser Wilhelm II abrogated much to the frustration and disapproval of Bismarck, the pilot of German unification. What followed was a precarious geopolitical divide in Europe which led to the WWI with its disastrous consequences for Germany, followed by the ordeal of the Versailles Treaty and ultimately the breakout of WWII.

By putting the energy gun to the head of the Europeans, the American legislature will force the Europeans to rethink and revamp their self defeating policies towards Russia that are done at the behest of the USA. Any rapprochement with Russia will seal the fate of Eurasia as an integrated economic bloc with the New Silk Road at its backbone.

As for the United States internal politics, it is obvious that the neocons are pushing matters to a head with Trump whose only resort is to knit a special relationship with those leaders of the military establishment who do not fancy the dominance of the deep state under the leadership of the CIA The neocons move to impeach the president should create the kind of unrest that should spur the military to take action against the corruption of the legislative branch and its extension in the neocons media complex.

Yet this very much desired scenario that could a boon for world peace hinges on the emergence of a new leadership in the western world that is willing to defy the powers that be. Currently Europe is woefully lacking in the quality of leadership that can seize the moment to break free from the dominance of the neocons.

Zogby > , August 2, 2017 at 6:21 pm GMT

This sanctions bill is a domestic US matter. The Republicans are trying to pacify the Democrats' rage and bitterness over losing the election. It is most convenient for them to adopt the canard blaming Russia for the result of the election. The voters knew exactly where Trump stands on Russia, so even if Russia leaked the DNC and Podesta emails, there was no theft of the election. Voters were not mislead about positions, and knew very well the Democrats accuse the Russian of the leaks.

Trump did not veto the the bill because of the veto proof majority, but will effectively veto the bill by ignoring it. I don't see any Federal Court issuing orders to enforce this bill, and can ignore that too. It's like Congress declaring a war the President doesn't want to fight. Who is gonna make him?

Harold Smith > , August 2, 2017 at 6:33 pm GMT

"Why in the world would the US Senate adopt new sanctions against Russia when Russia has done absolutely nothing to provoke such a vote? Except for Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders, every single US Senator voted in favor of these sanctions. Why?!"

There is no satisfactory "worldly" explanation for what's happening here, but there is an explanation. The Jew-controlled "U.S. government" apparently hates Russia for the same reason that Cain hated (and eventually murdered) Abel. To put it another way, "bad" (evil) hates "good" because if there were no such thing as "good", then there would be no such thing as "bad" by comparison. The Russian government demonstrates respect for international law, mutual cooperation, diplomacy, stability, restraint, etc., while the U.S. government simply trashes everything, including America.

The Jews HATE a good example, and Russian re-emergence onto the world scene as an example of relative goodness, in stark contrast to U.S. evil, is simply too much for them to bear.

"An unjust man is an abomination to the just: and he that is upright in the way is abomination to the wicked" (Proverbs 29:27).

Seamus Padraig > , August 2, 2017 at 6:46 pm GMT

@Sergey Krieger "What is absolutely clear is that these sanctions will have exactly zero effect on Russia and I don't think anybody is seriously expecting the Russians to change anything at all in their policies."

Zero effects? Speaking of changing policy is true but not that it won't create troubles for Russia. Anyway, any aggression requires swift and ruthless repsonse otherwise it invites more of agression. Putin is wrong to behave the way he behaves. There must be zero patience and head for an eye response. Than aggression stops.

Putin is wrong to behave the way he behaves. There must be zero patience and head for an eye response. Than aggression stops.

I second what 'jaques sheete' said. I just want to add that we could be on the verge of a major break between Washington and the EU -- something Putin has been working towards for years. We have an old saying: when you're enemy's committing suicide, stand back and let him. That's what Washington is doing now: committing suicide.

Miro23 > , August 2, 2017 at 6:47 pm GMT

During that long trip I did not only see breathtakingly beautiful sights, but also plenty of beautiful people who oppose the satanic ball in DC with every fiber of their being and who want their country to be free from the degenerate demonic powers which have taken over the federal government.

I don't believe the "with every fiber of their being" part. This is just wishful thinking on the part of Saker. If this were so, they wouldn't just be grumbling or trusting their corrupt representatives. Average Americans still elect people like McCain, Graham and Schumer and I haven't seen any mass anti-war demonstrations in Washington or New York or anywhere else.

Seamus Padraig > , August 2, 2017 at 7:04 pm GMT

Even more depressing than the bill is Trump's craven capitulation:

In a signing statement released by the White House, Trump said the legislation "included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions" in lawmakers' "haste" to pass it.

"While I favor tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by Iran, North Korea and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed," he said

Trump, however, said in another statement accompanying the bill that he would not allow the U.S. to "tolerate interference in our democratic process and that we will side with our allies and friends against Russian subversion and destabilization."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-trump-signs-russia-sanctions-bill/story?id=48985465

So Trump now officially regards his own election as illegitimate? As the result of Russian "subversion and destabilization"? Incredible! I realize he can't stop the bill; but that doesn't mean he has to officially sign it.

Sean > , August 2, 2017 at 7:36 pm GMT

@yeah Regarding Syria and your comments thereon: Excuse me, but is it all about Russia versus America or can the Syrian people and their Government have any say? The world has people and Governments other than American ones, you know, and they don't like freedom, democracy, or whatever delivered by bombs, not even by smart bombs. The Syrian Government did not ask Washington to intervene, so under international law American intervention and bombings there are as legitimate as "Saving Vietnam from the commies", "Bringing democracy to Iraq", or .... the list is long. No adventure on that list turned out well for America or anyone else, with the exception of the merchants of death.

Now your fond hope is "Trump is going to bleed Russia white" and no doubt you would welcome "Getting tough on Russia". Maybe you prefer your news to be exciting - with trade wars, sanctions-wars, hot wars, cold wars, shooting wars, full blown mushroom-cloud-wars - but you will have to spare us such merry excitement.

https://defenceindepth.co/2017/02/17/the-russian-militarys-view-on-the-utility-of-force-the-adoption-of-a-strategy-of-non-violent-asymmetric-warfare/

Russian military thinking seems to have reached the point now where the idea of using force intentionally in conflicts with peer-state adversaries has been almost completely ruled out. This seems a radical move. But there has been a clear recognition within this military that better strategic outcomes for Russia will result from the use of non-violent 'asymmetric warfare' activities rather than those which will or can involve the use of force – such as conventional war or hybrid warfare. [...] The principal aim of Russian asymmetric warfare is to create degrees of destabilisation (destabilizatsiya) within targeted states and within collectives of targeted states (e.g. NATO, EU). [...] And all this plays to the Russian military's own strengths – its 'own relative advantages'. While it might lack 'quantitative indicators' – the tanks, aircraft and ships – it does have a massive capacity to gather information, to disseminate (mis)information and to employ considerable cyber abilities

The most painful sanctions for Putin are old news, it was the cancellation of the Exxon deal by the Obama administration. ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-exxon-treasury-fight-and-the-roots-of-russiagate_us_597de928e4b0c69ef70528ff ).

Too backward to frack, Russia tried to bribe the tech from Exxon with massive access to Russia untapped resources to show them how. I would really like someone to tell me why Russia should be rewarded by transfer of crucial US technology for what it did in Ukraine. Were they expecting a pat on the back? Russia will it not start a conventional or nuclear war unless it thinks there is a chance of it winning, and there isn't.

Sean > , August 2, 2017 at 7:43 pm GMT

@Anonymous

Russia humiliated America in Syria
They humiliated Tel Aviv. American people never wanted to spill their blood and treasure on the other side of the Globe for the Grater Israel project. No because Jordan not Syria is just across the river from the occupied territories' Palestinian population. Syria has little or no bearing on the West Bank Arab problem, which is the main one for Israel
Johnny Rico > , Website August 2, 2017 at 7:47 pm GMT

It is all about the oil.

Oil is the only reason the global population has quadrupled in only the last 100 years. The Industrial Revolution was not enough. Oil is necessary to maintain this population and keep it fed.

The remaining relatively-cheap oil is all in Russia, Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and The UAE. Everybody understands this. The Russians, the Chinese, the Neocons, Donald Trump. They all get this.

The United States is for all intents-and-purposes energy independent when you include supplies from Canada and rapidly-dwindling supplies from Mexico. But the United States relies on "control" of the oil coming from the Persian Gulf to maintain control of its Empire and as tenuous control over its real one and only rival – China.

South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are completely dependent for survival economically on energy that comes from the Middle-East and is protected by the U.S. Navy.

The constant tension between Israel and Saudi Arabia (The two worst regimes in the world) on the one side and Iran on the other is necessary to give the American Deep State and Empire purpose.

While it 'appears' that all the American military equipment and bases and meddling in the Middle East are aimed at surrounding and blunting Iran's power – it should be obvious from 75-plus years of history that the real purpose is to surround Saudi Arabia.

Whether it is Roosevelt meeting with the King in 1945 on the way back from Yalta or Trump meeting with the King a month ago – the message is clear – The heads belonging to the House of Sand are only attached to their necks at the discretion of the United States.

peterAUS > , August 2, 2017 at 8:26 pm GMT

@anonymous

Much is made of this so-called "neocon" business. They appear to be a current highly aggressive strain of American expansionism. However, there were no "neocons" in 1898 when the US saw it's opportunity to attack Spain and grab away it's holdings. The US has been aggressively expanding ever since, inserting itself into both world wars at the very last minute in order to gain as much for itself as possible. It got a couple bloody rebuffs in Korea and Vietnam but learned how to refine it's technique from those experiences. The US has been on the march ever since 1898, sometimes slowly sometimes quickly. It's not something new but is an inherent dynamic. Like a balloon things expand until they reach some sort of internal or external limiting factor. For the US one can imagine what those might be. Agree.

The only difference, at this stage of expansion, is that the lower classes do not get the spoils of the expansion. If they did .well .it would be interesting to see how much they'd be against The Empire.

And, yes, that another THING; this time the opponent can retaliate hard. Nukes do make all that difficult to execute. What a conundrum ..

[Aug 02, 2017] US committed to path of conflict with Russia, tensions higher than in Cold War by Paul Craig Roberts

Notable quotes:
"... Russia took retaliatory measures by cutting the US Embassy staff there in the Federation. In your view, how should Russian leadership interpret these new sanctions? ..."
"... It is unfortunate that one thing that seems to unite a lot of the American political class is Russophobia, the desire to restart the Cold War, in effect, in terms of a way to handle diplomatic relations There are interests behind that: the security industry and armaments industry in particular, they are all quite keen to restart the new Cold War. When you look at the actions of politicians, you should always look at the actions of who is paying and sponsoring politicians. There are usually sound economic reasons and reasons of private profit why they take the decisions that they do. ..."
"... This is just the beginning of measures taken by Russia. How do you see this playing out moving forward, especially when we have President Trump who's looking – against the wishes of Congress, apparently – to normalize these relations? How do you foresee Russia playing this out? ..."
Aug 02, 2017 | www.rt.com

RT Op-Edge

PCR: That's part of it. Congress gains political contributions from the American energy industry and it gains political contributions from the military-security complex because this bill is constructed to serve both interests. They're both extremely powerful interest groups. And so, the military-security complex wins by preventing the normalization of relations, which is a threat to the budget and the power of the military-security complex. And the energy companies win by having a new market for their natural gas, the liquefied natural gas that they're getting from the fracking operations that are doing so much environmental damage in the United States. This benefits both groups. And therefore Congress – as you saw, the votes are almost unanimous, only two senators out of a hundred voted against it, and only three US representatives out of [more than] four hundred [419-3] voted against it. You can see the power of these interest groups and they put their interests ahead of normalizing relations between nuclear powers. When you have bad relations between nuclear powers like Russia and the United States, the chance of something going wrong is extremely high.

... ... ...

RT: Russia took retaliatory measures by cutting the US Embassy staff there in the Federation. In your view, how should Russian leadership interpret these new sanctions?

PCR: I think the Russian leadership now has to finally abandon its cherished illusion that it can reach accommodation with Washington. I have made clear for a long time now, the only way Russia can reach accommodation with Washington is to surrender and to accept American hegemony. Now, if the Russian government continues with this illusion that it can reach an accommodation, I think it is guilty of a very dangerous delusion. I think this should be a wake-up call for Russia that the United States Congress has now made the principal goal of American foreign policy conflict with Russia.

It is unfortunate that one thing that seems to unite a lot of the American political class is Russophobia, the desire to restart the Cold War, in effect, in terms of a way to handle diplomatic relations There are interests behind that: the security industry and armaments industry in particular, they are all quite keen to restart the new Cold War. When you look at the actions of politicians, you should always look at the actions of who is paying and sponsoring politicians. There are usually sound economic reasons and reasons of private profit why they take the decisions that they do. – Craig Murray, former UK diplomat

RT: This is just the beginning of measures taken by Russia. How do you see this playing out moving forward, especially when we have President Trump who's looking – against the wishes of Congress, apparently – to normalize these relations? How do you foresee Russia playing this out?

PCR: Trump no longer can normalize relations. The bill prohibits that. And he has no real alternative to signing it because it's veto-proof. If Trump doesn't sign it, the media will use that as proof that he is working in favor of Russia and that would probably lead to his impeachment. So what Russia does, I don't know, it depends on how much they wake up, how much they give up this illusion, this delusion actually, of reaching an accommodation. It is a serious situation for Russia to have the United States committed to a path of conflict with Russia. And that is precisely where the United States is. That is the precise effect of this bill and that is the intention of one of the two main sponsors of the bill – to further the conflict, to raise tensions, because this is essential to the power and budget of the military-security complex.

[Aug 02, 2017] Meet the all-star team of lawyers Robert Mueller has assembled for the Trump-Russia investigation

From witch hunt there is a very small distance to "show trials". Show me the man and I will find the crime -- Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria , head of Stalin's secret police
Notable quotes:
"... several members of the team have come under fire for their previous donations to Democrats, ..."
"... "You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history - led by some very bad and conflicted people!" Trump said Thursday on Twitter . ..."
Aug 02, 2017 | www.msn.com
... Yet despite the lawyers' resumes and reputations, several members of the team have come under fire for their previous donations to Democrats, prompting some critics to cry foul on the investigation and urge Trump to fire Mueller.

Trump himself has even weighed in:

"You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history - led by some very bad and conflicted people!" Trump said Thursday on Twitter .

[Aug 02, 2017] Show Me The Man And Ill Find You The Crime by Bob Barr

The US Deep State witch hunt against President-elect Trump has taken all the distinct characteristics of "show trials".
Notable quotes:
"... Though likely a disappointment to all the partisan spectators wishing for a clear moral victory from Mueller, the sweeping, unspecified, and costly nature of his investigation has all the hallmarks of a typical prosecutorial fishing expedition. ..."
"... And, as any criminal defense lawyer knows, given the reach of federal criminal laws, if you look long enough and subpoena enough witnesses and documents, you are fairly guaranteed to find some violation of some law to pin on some person. ..."
"... What comes to mind is Harvey Silverglate's 2009 book, "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent"; and, perhaps most frightening, his reminding us that it was Stalin's feared NKVD henchman, Lavrentiy Beria, who assured his boss, "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime." ..."
"... So, what is the point to all these theatrics? Same as it always is in Washington. Personal and partisan aggrandizement for bureaucrats, at a massive cost to the rest of us. Mueller gets his name in the spotlight for kicking-up a lot of dust. Democrats claim a moral victory for forcing the appointment of a special prosecutor. And Republicans dodge a bullet for Trump's poor personnel choices. ..."
Jun 28, 2017 | townhall.com

The "Sorkinization" of American politics; a cultural phenomenon engendered by the works of Hollywood director Aaron Sorkin -- in which Washingtonian politics is romanticized as some grandiose theatrical production, in which the protagonist (normally a liberal archetype) wins against his unscrupulous foe (usually a conservative stereotype) by simply giving a rousing speech or clever rhetorical foil. You see it everywhere in Washington, D.C. -- beltway pundits breathlessly waiting to share together in that idyllic " Sorkin moment "; whether it was Hillary's hoped-for victory speech last November or, now, waiting for Special Counsel Robert Mueller astride his white horse to out the "evil Trump clan" for sins and improprieties.

This, of course, is all a Hollywood fairytale. What currently is taking place under Mueller's direction resembles not so much a magnanimous crusade for truth and justice; but rather another example of what happens when bureaucrats are taken off the leash. It becomes the classic tale of a government lawyer in search of a crime.

Though likely a disappointment to all the partisan spectators wishing for a clear moral victory from Mueller, the sweeping, unspecified, and costly nature of his investigation has all the hallmarks of a typical prosecutorial fishing expedition.

Rather than setting specific parameters for his investigation, or having them set for him, the order appointing Mueller, by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein grants Mueller almost limitless leeway in his probe, be it relative to "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated" with President Trump's presidential campaign (which likely would not constitute a crime), to federal regulations that relate to crimes that are among the most subjective, such as obstruction of justice and witness intimidation.

As one might expect, Mueller has taken the ball handed to him, and is off and running; like Diogenes with his lamp in search of an honest man, but here a prosecutor with a subpoena in search of a guilty man.

Not bound by any real budget constraints, Mueller already has begun building an investigatory army with which to haunt the Trump Administration for as long as he wants; or, at least, for as much time as it takes to find something to prosecute. That Mueller will find something is a virtual certainty given the vast scope of his appointment, and the lack of oversight by the Department of Justice now that Attorney General Jeff Sessions hastily (and, in my opinion, needlessly) recused himself. And, as any criminal defense lawyer knows, given the reach of federal criminal laws, if you look long enough and subpoena enough witnesses and documents, you are fairly guaranteed to find some violation of some law to pin on some person.

What comes to mind is Harvey Silverglate's 2009 book, "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent"; and, perhaps most frightening, his reminding us that it was Stalin's feared NKVD henchman, Lavrentiy Beria, who assured his boss, "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime."

So, what is the point to all these theatrics? Same as it always is in Washington. Personal and partisan aggrandizement for bureaucrats, at a massive cost to the rest of us. Mueller gets his name in the spotlight for kicking-up a lot of dust. Democrats claim a moral victory for forcing the appointment of a special prosecutor. And Republicans dodge a bullet for Trump's poor personnel choices.

The troubling, and lasting ramification of this melodrama, however, is the precedent it sets for future federal investigations. The degree of legal leeway given to Mueller is deeply bothersome. As law professor John C. Eastman notes in a recent article, the absence of virtually any limits on Mueller's power harks back to the days of the British empire's use of "writ[s] of assistance" and "general warrant[s]" to target and harass American colonists through invasive searches of homes, papers and possessions – with no judicial oversight, probable cause, or expiration date. "That is the very kind of thing our Fourth Amendment was adopted to prevent," writes Eastman , "[i]ndeed, the issuance of general warrants and writs of assistance is quite arguably the spark that ignited America's war for independence."

At the end of all this (if there is an end), America will be left a little more divided (if that is possible), and the Bill of Rights even weaker than today. If we were living in the "West Wing," it wouldn't really matter; but we are not living in Sorkin World. We are living in the real world; where government power run amok has very real and damaging effect on the way of life envisioned by our Founding Fathers and as enshrined in the United States Constitution.

[Aug 02, 2017] Washington will try to drag everyone else in the nes McCarthyism campaign. I don't think it has any credibility now, with its constant hysterical blaming of Russia for every single thing that is not to its liking

Aug 02, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile , August 2, 2017 at 12:46 pm

Keep on poking the bear
Russia-backed agents tried to kill Montenegro PM: Mike Pence
AFP| Last Updated: Wednesday, August 2, 2017 – 18:48

Podgorica: US Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday accused Russian-backed agents of attempting to assassinate the prime minister of Montenegro during an alleged coup attempt last year
Russia`s intentions were laid bare over the past year when Moscow-backed agents sought to disrupt Montenegro`s elections, attack your parliament and even attempt to assassinate your prime minister", Pence said at the Adriatic Charter Summit.
He said the attack aimed "to dissuade the Montenegrin people from entering our NATO alliance"

marknesop , August 2, 2017 at 1:16 pm
On its way down the side of the toilet bowl, Washington will try to drag everyone else with it. I don't think it has any credibility now, with its constant hysterical blaming of Russia for every single thing that is not to its liking. And the ridiculous pretense that Montenegro will contribute in any meaningful way to the defensive strength of the NATO alliance is just comical – it has become all about snatching territory away, allegedly out of Russia's grasp. I hope NATO does pour money into the Baltics like there's no tomorrow – the Balts will gladly take it, but NATO will see no return on its money, and unless it comes up with a way you can burn bullshit for fuel they will still depend on Russia for their energy.

[Aug 01, 2017] The New York Times Pushes Propaganda War Against Russia

Notable quotes:
"... Exercise Saber Guardian 17 is a U.S. European Command, U.S. Army Europe-led annual exercise taking place in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria in the summer of 2017. This exercise involves more than 25,000 service members from over 20 ally and partner nations. The largest of the Black Sea Region exercises, Saber Guardian 17 is a premier training event for U.S. Army Europe and participating nations that will build readiness and improve interoperability under a unified command, executing a full range of military missions to support the security and stability of the Black Sea Region. It is deterrence in action. ..."
"... Some of the more notable aspects of SG17 include: the massing of 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division (3/4ID) from several locations across the Operation Atlantic Resolve area of operation to the exercise joint operations area (JOA) in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria; and the movement of 2nd Cavalry Regiment (2CR) from Vilseck, Germany, to numerous locations throughout the JOA. ..."
"... it all makes sense once you understand from the perspective of the Washington borg, the world is comprised of semi-autonomous zones subject to broad oversight from the 'benign' hegemon. ..."
"... From time to time, some of these zones assert their sovereignty, which is a clear aggression against the Global Administrative Political Economy. The small ones are District Thirteen-ed, the large ones are treated as malevolent beasts who have seceded from humanity. ..."
"... If I may. Having looked at this a while, I noticed a synchronicity that manifests itself often in the intellectually barren Corridors of NYT, WaPo and CNN. All 3 seem to operate almost like a mutually supporting Machine with each sharing similar Naratives, getting convenient 'Leaks' that help these Naratives and each often quoting the others reporting. ..."
Aug 01, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

There is no longer any doubt that the New York Times is nothing more than a willing cog in the establishment war machine and is happy to serve as a propaganda platform. While there are times that newspapers and electronic media outlets are unwitting dupes for propaganda, the article penned by MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT (published on 31 July 2017) is the work of willing puppets masquerading as journalists:

Russia's Military Drills Near NATO Border Raise Fears of Aggression

This screed starts with this piece of artful dishonesty:

Russia is preparing to send as many as 100,000 troops to the eastern edge of NATO territory at the end of the summer, one of the biggest steps yet in the military buildup undertaken by President Vladimir V. Putin and an exercise in intimidation that recalls the most ominous days of the Cold War.

Since when is it an act of "aggression" for a country -- Russia in this case--to conduct military exercises in its own territory? Gordon and Schmitt also conveniently omit the facts that the United States has been engaged in a variety of military exercises on the border of Russia for the last year. Yet, rather than acknowledge that truth, Gordon and Schmitt push the lie that this is an unprovoked action by a militaristic Russia hell bent on conquering the world.

How else is one to interpret the following quotes:

The military exercise . . . .is part of a larger effort by Mr. Putin to shore up Russia's military prowess, and comes against the backdrop of an increasingly assertive Russia. Beyond Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election in support of the Trump campaign, which has seized attention in the United States, its military has in recent years deployed forces to Syria, seized Crimea and intervened in eastern Ukraine, rattled the Baltic States with snap exercises and buzzed NATO planes and ships . . . .

"There is only one reason you would create a Guards Tank Army, and that is as an offensive striking force," General Hodges said. "This is not something for homeland security. That does not mean that they are automatically going to do it, but in terms of intimidation it is a means of putting pressure on allies."

If you read only this article you would be excused for assuming that Russia is on the prowl for no good reason. Fortunately, our media is not totally subservient to the war machine. NPR reported last week that the United States is actually carrying out the largest military operations on Russia's border in 27 years :

The U.S. and NATO are staging their largest military exercises since the end of the Cold War, and they're doing it in countries of 3 former members of the Warsaw Pact: Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary

DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Yes, I did. This is all part of what's been called the European Deterrence Initiative, and it's a reinforcement of U.S. forces that had been depleted in Eastern Europe before Russia annexed Crimea three years ago. And as part of this sort of hardening of the U.S. presence here, there was an armored combat brigade team of about 4,000 Army troops from Fort Carson, Colo., that arrived here in Eastern Europe early this year. And they're here in Romania, and they're taking part in military exercises along with about 20,000 other troops.

On Saturday, I was in the Carpathian Mountains, and I watched a pretty impressive live fire, land and air assault there on an imagined enemy. And then yesterday, along the banks of the Danube River here, there was another assault staged to retake the other side of the river from another imagined enemy.

GREENE: You keep saying imagined enemy. Who is the imagined enemy?

WELNA: Well, no doubt it's Russia. And, you know, while this wasn't really a D-Day invasion along the Danube - there was no fire return from the other side - there was a lot of sound and fury. And here's a bit of what it sounded like.

The US military exercise is dubbed Saber Guardian :

Exercise Saber Guardian 17 is a U.S. European Command, U.S. Army Europe-led annual exercise taking place in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria in the summer of 2017. This exercise involves more than 25,000 service members from over 20 ally and partner nations. The largest of the Black Sea Region exercises, Saber Guardian 17 is a premier training event for U.S. Army Europe and participating nations that will build readiness and improve interoperability under a unified command, executing a full range of military missions to support the security and stability of the Black Sea Region. It is deterrence in action.

Some of the more notable aspects of SG17 include: the massing of 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division (3/4ID) from several locations across the Operation Atlantic Resolve area of operation to the exercise joint operations area (JOA) in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria; and the movement of 2nd Cavalry Regiment (2CR) from Vilseck, Germany, to numerous locations throughout the JOA.

But that's not all. The United States also has been busy in the Baltics in early June 2017 :

The U.S.'s European Command, which is based in Germany, said Thursday it had deployed an unspecified number of F-16 Fighting Falcons from Aviano Air Base in Italy to the Krzesiny Air Base in Poland in support of Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) and Saber Strike , two massive annual drills intended to boost the U.S.'s military presence in Europe and to support regional allies. European Command's statement came a day after it said a number of B-1B Lancers had been sent from Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota to join three B-52H Stratofortresses at the Royal Air Force base in Fairford, U.K. Meanwhile, 800 U.S. airmen in Europe were poised to train with NATO allies this month as the Western military alliance escalates its rivalry with Russia.

And there was US activity in Poland in January :

U.S. troops arrived in the small town of Drawsko Pomorskie, Poland, as part of the largest armed military brigade deployed in Europe since the end of the Cold War

The U.S. troops, along with 53 track vehicles, including the M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer, reached Poland after a three-day journey through Germany. The show of force falls under Operation Atlantic Resolve, designed to show the United States' commitment to its European allies in the face of what NATO sees as Russian aggression.

This is not a comprehensive list. If you take time to do further research you will discover that the United States military in tandem with other countries has carried out several military exercises from the Black Sea in the south, all along the western border of Russia and in the Baltic Sea in the north.

If you are Russia and you are witnessing repeated deployments of U.S. infantry, armor, air and naval units on the frontier that produced that last military invasion of Russia (which left at least 20 million dead) would you sit back and do nothing?

What would the United States do if Russia managed to convince Mexico to sign a mutual defense treaty and then proceeded to conduct tank and military air exercises along our southern border? Would we do nothing?

Gordon and Schmitt are an embarrassment to the profession of journalism. Rather than actually report facts and place them in their proper context, they chose instead to push lies as truth and try to help shape public opinion into believing that Russia poses an imminent threat to the west.

One other point worth remembering--Russia spends $60 billion annually on defense spending while the United States is slated for $650 billion. How much is the US spending on just EUCOM exercises targeted at Russia? Sadly, there is bipartisan stupidity and ignorance when it comes to the issue of properly assessing Russia and the threat it does (or does not) pose to the United States. My cynical conclusion is that as long as Russia is portrayed as the great Red menace bent on world domination we can justify spending $650 billion dollars to thwart an invasion that is not coming.

Posted at 01:20 PM in Borg Wars , Russia Permalink

Anna , 01 August 2017 at 02:11 PM
The two presstitutes, and the NYT at large, do their job for the propagators of Wolfowitz the Trotskyist' doctrine, according to which "Washington must conserve its advance over the rest of the world by hindering the development of all potential competitors." http://www.voltairenet.org/article197288.html
Meyssan writes, "We therefore find ourselves faced with the equation with which we started – one one side, the outsider President of " the People's America ", and on the other, all of the Washington ruling class supported by the deep state (meaning that part of the administration charged with the continuity of the state over and above political alternances). It is apparent that this coalition is supported by the United Kingdom and Israël."
Kooshy , 01 August 2017 at 02:17 PM
PT- incase you missed it, Michael Gordon and Judith Miller are the two NYT propaganda sonography couple to go to, in case you need to start and sell a war choice that the American public will have to pay with blood and savings.
Peter AU , 01 August 2017 at 02:24 PM
All western media singing in tune. All US senate minus two singing in tune. All US house of representatives minus three singing in tune. With the latest Russia/Iran/NK sanctions, the US president has just been rendered obsolete. Whoever owns US 'democracy' now must be congratulating themselves.
Dr. K. , 01 August 2017 at 02:27 PM
Please include VP Pence stirring the pot in the Baltic States.
Anna -> Dr. K.... , 01 August 2017 at 08:44 PM
and in Ukraine: "Adding fuel to the fire': Russia blasts US plans to supply lethal arms to Ukraine" https://www.rt.com/news/398253-us-weapon-supplies-ukraine-russia/
Lemur , 01 August 2017 at 03:04 PM
it all makes sense once you understand from the perspective of the Washington borg, the world is comprised of semi-autonomous zones subject to broad oversight from the 'benign' hegemon.

From time to time, some of these zones assert their sovereignty, which is a clear aggression against the Global Administrative Political Economy. The small ones are District Thirteen-ed, the large ones are treated as malevolent beasts who have seceded from humanity.

Grazhdanochka , 01 August 2017 at 03:48 PM
If I may. Having looked at this a while, I noticed a synchronicity that manifests itself often in the intellectually barren Corridors of NYT, WaPo and CNN. All 3 seem to operate almost like a mutually supporting Machine with each sharing similar Naratives, getting convenient 'Leaks' that help these Naratives and each often quoting the others reporting.

There is Quote some here will be familiar with - "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action" , whenever they each start to sing the same Tune I take more particular note.

For this Reason, I while ago suggested they represent a Media Form of the 3 Horsemen

iffen , 01 August 2017 at 04:01 PM
Beginning of NPR story:
After Russia annexed Crimea three years ago, the U.S. started reversing a military pullout from Eastern Europe.
From the body of the story:
PRESIDENT KLAUS IOHANNIS: This is living proof of the fact that our soldiers not only talk together. They are able, when it is necessary, to fight together.
WELNA: Could they deter Russia?
IOHANNIS: Of course they could. And I think they do it.
WELNA: But Romania's top military official, General Nicolae Ciuca, is less sanguine.
You are on the shore of the Black Sea. So is Russia. How worried are you about Russia?
NICOLAE CIUCA: I am as worried as the alliance is. We are not apart from the alliance.
WELNA: But is there reason to worry?
CIUCA: Always there's a reason to worry. We are not living in a full peace environment.

If our allies, who are quite familiar with an invasion from Russia, are worried, isn't the least we can do is act like we are prepared to act?
Lyttenburgh -> iffen... , 01 August 2017 at 07:17 PM
"If our allies, who are quite familiar with an invasion from Russia, are worried, isn't the least we can do is act like we are prepared to act?"

Are you aware when and under which circumstances did Romania experienced "an invasion from Russia", whose ally it have been at the moment etc.?

Btw, what do you understand by "our ally" pertaining to Romania? A sattelite state?

rkka -> Lyttenburgh... , 01 August 2017 at 09:03 PM
It was so funny when then Ukrainian PM Yatsenyuk announced to the world that the USSR invaded Europe through Ukraine in 1944 and that Ukraine would prevent such an awful event in the future.

So now it appears that the Banderastani mental disease has spread the Romanian general staff...

rkka -> iffen... , 01 August 2017 at 08:54 PM
"CIUCA: Always there's a reason to worry. We are not living in a full peace environment."

One wonders whether poor trembling Nicolae was similarly and fearful when the US was bombing Bosnia and Serbia back in the 1990s. The question answers itself.

What really has the Anglosphere Foreign Policy Elite & Punditocracy's (AFPE&P) knickers in a twist is that Russia and China now have the military capacity to deter them conventionally.

The AFPE&P are consumed, indeed, fixated, on having 'leverage' and 'freedom of action' and it drives them utterly out of their minds to be deprived of both.

VietnamVet , 01 August 2017 at 04:46 PM
PT

Russiagate shows that American citizens don't matter. Not a shred of evidence has been made public to document a Russian involvement. A war that could annihilate mankind could break out any second with no justification. Even, Germany staged the Gleiwitz Incident with Nazi S.S. troops wearing Polish uniforms to feed their propaganda machine to start WWII. With the rise of Major General (ret.) John F. Kelly to Chief of Staff, the military now controls the White House. To end the global media/intelligence community coup attempt; perhaps, a diversionary war with Iran is in the cards. North Korea has nuclear weapons. It is not clear if the relative sanity of General Martin Dempsey and Admiral Mike Mullen has returned to DC. Still, absolutely no one advocates for Peace and Prosperity.

blowback , 01 August 2017 at 05:49 PM
Aaah, Michael R Gordon, the s**t who didn't resign over the aluminium tubes story used as fake evidence to support the invasion of Iraq. And he and the NY Times have been spouting fake news ever since.

https://thinkprogress.org/after-propagating-false-iraq-intel-nyts-michael-gordon-now-echoing-bush-claims-on-iran-40881c2ed9fe

Cortes -> blowback... , 01 August 2017 at 08:01 PM
Delightful to see the use of maskirovka in the names of the two authors of the NYT article. Anyone might think that they're not Zionist.
Anna -> Cortes... , 01 August 2017 at 09:19 PM
Meanwhile, the MSM silence re Awan affair (the greatest national cyber-security breach) is deafening. It seems that the "deciders" made some orders for the presstitutes to not mention the well-documented (unlike "Russian hacking") breach. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/01/did-hillary-scapegoat-russia-to-save-her-campaign/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgKCNaDFl_U
Anna -> blowback... , 01 August 2017 at 08:49 PM
" Michael R Gordon, the s**t who didn't resign over the aluminium tubes story "
The families of the wounded and fallen soldiers -- the victims of the war-profiteers including Michael R Gordon -- should start a nice lawsuit against the scoundrel. There, for sure, is a line in the Nuremberg protocols that addresses the agitators of a war of aggression.
English Outsider , 01 August 2017 at 06:36 PM

A valuable over-view of where we are now in what has become a dangerous and unnecessary confrontation. Many thanks.

I'd like to ask about the Russian populations in the Baltic states.

Their position could be similar to that of the Russians in the Donbass in 2014. The Russian or pro-Russian population of the Donbass was at risk from the post-coup Ukrainian Government. That put the Russian Government in a cleft stick. It couldn't abandon the Donbass Russians even had it wanted to because Russian public opinion wouldn't let it. Nor could it simply order the Russian armed forces to move in to the Donbass and protect them. The compromise solution of assisting the rebels to the extent of not allowing them to be over-run was eventually adopted.

That task was simplified in that some of the Donbass Russians were trained soldiers and had been able to form effective fighting units on their own. It's also said that they were initially more or less self-sufficient in weapons and ammunition.

Although the Donbass resistance was initially piecemeal and uncoordinated it had the advantage of being unexpected and the further advantage that the forces sent against it were also poorly coordinated. The regular Ukrainian army was ill-prepared and the only Ukrainian forces eager to fight were untrained street fighters. NATO participation was initially restricted to advisers and covert assistance.

The position would be entirely different now in all respects. What happens if the Russians living in the Baltic states were similarly at risk from their governments? It would be difficult now for the Russian Government to assist them. Are the Baltic Russians in a position to protect themselves as the Donbass Russians did? Do they have access to arms? Or would we see what was avoided in the Donbass, forced expulsion of Russians living in the near-abroad?

Grazhdanochka -> English Outsider ... , 01 August 2017 at 07:23 PM
Situations for Russians in Donbass and Baltics differs of course...

Without going so deeply to this Matter, simply in Ukraine Russians and well all People sympathetic to Russian Identity were not only significant in Demographic and Political Weight but also have considerably involvement in Security Establishment....

When Events of Maidan through Crimea Events and into early Days of Donbas happened you saw the defections of Berkut, Interior Ministry (Regionally) and in case of Khodakovskiy and his Men - Regional SBU Unit...

This Groups made the Nucleus of Indigenous Resistance that expanded as Times went by (Ukrainian Military also defected with some Armor), this also helped to gain access to Arms and provided direct Inspiration regardless Moscow.

Russian Government support simply ensured that they would never lose...

Baltics by comparison has a Military which is far more Homogenous, Manned and Structured and Culturally distinct from most Post Soviet Militaries, it also carries NATO Membership making even just basic Perception of Support from Moscow a more risky consideration...

I think in general Russians in Baltics simply will do as always.... Sit and Deal with it demoralised, Emigrate, in some cases Assimilate or simply be flattened by local Power Structures should they express to much Anger.

For Russia, the Priority I think should be to how best bring them Home

Anna -> Grazhdanochka... , 01 August 2017 at 09:07 PM
The Baltic states had started a Russophobic complain under a slogan of the "native language" immediately after their "liberation." Even those Russian families that have been living in the Baltic states for generations must hold an exam in the "native" language in order to maintain their citizenship there. The statistics for the citizens of Baltic States tells that a large percent of the educated, intelligent, and ambitious have already left the new NATO launching pads against Russia. https://worldview.stratfor.com/analysis/baltics-emigration-and-demographic-decline
rkka -> English Outsider ... , 01 August 2017 at 08:45 PM
"What happens if the Russians living in the Baltic states were similarly at risk from their governments?"

It is surpassingly unlikely that ethnic Russians in the Baltics are similarly at risk from their governments. While they discriminate heavily against their ethnic Russians, they have never shown any propensity to actively harm them, unlike the Banderastanis.

AriusArmenian , 01 August 2017 at 06:39 PM
This is it. It's another Cold War or probably worse. The US Congress has spiked our future.
mike , 01 August 2017 at 07:05 PM
Trump's sidekick, Mike Pence, visited blisis where he stated: "US strongly condemns the occupation" that "sees Russian tanks parked on Georgian soil". Then visited Podgorica as a show of support after Montenegro's entrance into the NATO sparked bitter opposition from Moscow.
Lyttenburgh , 01 August 2017 at 07:07 PM
"One other point worth remembering--Russia spends $60 billion annually on defense spending while the United States is slated for $650 billion. "

Actually, I'm against such blanked exercises in the monetary phallometry . The amount of money spent doesn't mean anything without the context. It was here, on SSC, when I read about a multi million $ waste on overpriced DoD office equipment and such. How much $ does the US spend on TP compared to Russia? Whatever the answer, I can safely predict that US will be winner here as well. But... but... [you see what I'm doing here? ;)] does the overpriced US military TP is somehow better than the one we used in Russian military? Does it have some hitherto unknown properties, which might explain its higher cost? Some, pardon me, "magickal power"?

Once again, unadjusted flat budget numbers mean nothing . They might make someone feel good, that's for sure. But let me remind you of a something. Throughout the 2016 a certain wing of the political spectrum in the US flaunted their budget. They had more time on the TV. More so - the Intelligence community sympathetic to them had more money than the "potential enemy"... Now they are claiming that FSB (or whatever the crazy scheme of the week says) hacked them. Now they say that RT and Sputnik managed to (SOMEHOW!) dupe the populace of the Republic using a tiny fraction of CNN's budget alone.

Makes you feel... useless, doesn't it?

P.S.

Relax! Remember that Saudi Arabia military still spends humongous amount of money, more than the supposedly "traditional" powers of yore. It doesn't translate into the battlefield prowess. Money =/= assured victory.

[Aug 01, 2017] What will be the ramifications of Putins order to reduce US embassy staff? by Shaun Walker

Guardian is nothing more than a propaganda outlet for neocons and neoliberals now. A part of the US deep state war propaganda machine.
Shaun is well-known Guardian pressitute, so the article by itself does not make much sense. But some comments are interesting.
Notable quotes:
"... So Putin helps reduce Russian collusion in US Embassy in Moscow. That is the bright side I believe. ..."
"... Probably worth a mention that parity of staff not just the tit for tact reactions is the usual norm. The fact US had 1000+ staff in Russia compared to Russia's 455 in the US was a product of billateral agreements in the 90s, when the relations were good. Now they're not so it's not exactly scandalous a decision. ..."
Aug 01, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
A source in Moscow confirmed that the 455 figure was not only for US diplomats but for all staff employed at the US missions, "from the cleaners to the ambassador", and said it would be up to the Americans to decide how they reorganised their staffing.

Putin said on Sunday evening that the Russian order meant that 755 employees would have to "cease their work".

The US embassy has refused to comment on how many staff it has and what the breakdown is between local hires and diplomats, but a 2013 internal report into the Russia mission noted that the state department deployed 301 diplomats and 934 locally hired staff positions in Russia. Allowing for small changes over the past four years, this would fit roughly with Putin's statement that 755 should be dismissed to leave a total of 455.

... ... ...

The almost unanimous passing by both houses of Congress last week of new sanctions proved to be the final straw. Putin last week said Russia could not continue to tolerate such "insolence" from the Americans.

"After half a year of waiting and then harsh new American sanctions, a symmetrical response would have looked weak," the pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov wrote on Facebook.

"After the new law in which Russia is basically called an enemy of the US, there's no possibility for good relations. So why do we need such a big army of their diplomats here? So that they can spy and interfere in our elections? It's better if they go home."

Aquarius9 -> sebastian1974 , 31 Jul 2017 12:47

Please ....... provide evidence, because even the US hasn't provided any proof, all they do is make a noise ....... out of the emptiest vessels comes the loudest noise.
freeandfair -> gooner4thewin , 31 Jul 2017 12:43
Russia is more convenient as an enemy because it allows to justify spending a trillion on American "defense" every year without actually going to war with Russia.

At the same time, Russia is a major competitor in the energy and weapons sales businesses, and hurting Russia means benefiting the US businesses in this area.

KhusroK , 31 Jul 2017 12:43
Always nice to see the Guardian batting for the US.
ploughmanlunch , 31 Jul 2017 12:41
'What will be the ramifications of Putin's order to reduce US embassy staff?'

We can safely assume that none of the diplomats the US chooses to bring home were engaged in espionage, allowing the Russian security services to better concentrate their resources on the remainder.

Aquarius9 -> Rudeboy1 , 31 Jul 2017 12:39
And what follows is not going to be pleasant for Russia and Putin....talk about blowback.

Not sure that, that will be the case. Putin outmanoeuvred Obama and the US re Crimea, and Syria, added to which there was an article recently whereby both China and Russia agreed to protect each other, they both know that if one falls the other one will be next. Trump and the US have been waving their small willies around re the South China Sea, China has not said no ships can pass through it, and the US has also been having a go at Russia, the EU however, are not willing to support the new sanctions.

There is a crazy mentality in Washington, (together with a load of arm chair journalist) who think that if they start a war, they will win, the truth will probably be far more serious than that, for all parties, and the wider world ....... and then ask yourself why has neither China or Russia both of whom have vetoing powers on the UN, not pushed North Korea re it's missile tests, the geography, speaks for itself. It is about time, the willy waving, power crazed noises in the US, shut up. Jaw, jaw, is far better than a major catastrophe

KhusroK , 31 Jul 2017 12:37
This report could be factually more informative. There is reciprocity in the Russian move: the 455 staff who may stay on at the US Missions in Russia is precisely the number employed by Russia at its Missions in the US. In terms of real estate too there is reciprocity: 2 for 2.
For an informed assessment see: http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2017/07/30/us-russia-ties-going-south /
HollyOldDog -> Jonathan Stromberg , 31 Jul 2017 12:33
I'm certain that China is able to supple Russia with whatever fertilisers + machinery it needs though the Yanks have missed out in their sales of GMO seeds as Russia wouldn't except them as a gift ( neither would Ukraine- if it has any sense left ( hmm-debatable)).
TheDogsSnout -> Jonathan Stromberg , 31 Jul 2017 12:28
That's oversimplified bullocks, and I think you know it. US foreign policy in constant regardless of who is in the WH and Russia has been very patient.
MozartDE -> PekkaRoivanen , 31 Jul 2017 12:24
the sanction are probably thought to hit the EU business as the US is losing influence and can not keep a pace with the EU.
SUNLITE , 31 Jul 2017 12:24
How easily the public is mis led by the lies of our so called intelligence agencies and the accusations of a hysterical Hillary and the DNC .This has played perfectly into the hands of the NEO CONS.All without one scintilla of proof of any Russian hacking.As a 35 yr ,hi ranking whistle blowing NSA official William Binney said ,he suspects an FBI official released the E-Mails.Democrats and liberals have jumped on board because it makes the idiot ,boy king look bad.They have forgotten all the lies told to us since the end of WW2 by the pentagon,CIA,FBI,NSA State Dept and unnamed sources like "Curve Ball"and WMDs.
PekkaRoivanen , 31 Jul 2017 12:20
So Putin helps reduce Russian collusion in US Embassy in Moscow. That is the bright side I believe.

What I am curious about is what will be the response form Brussels once the American sanctions hit European businesses.

jochanan -> John Favre , 31 Jul 2017 12:19
and for the average south and central american, under waves of repression brought about by the us, sometimes indirectly, sometimes directly, over more than a century.

Middle east: American and western aggression also comes to mind.

a large amount of pity is indicated. and regret. and sorrow. repent, us -- there will be little forgiveness.

tomspen -> Aquarius9 , 31 Jul 2017 12:16
It is quite funny to watch. Obama and Clinton laughed at the suggestion of interference, now they've lost it's all their media friends are pushing. It is quite transparent and quite hypocritical considering the amount of elections and governments they've interfered with over the years.
John Favre -> MozartDE , 31 Jul 2017 12:14
Major allies for the US: Canada, Mexico, most of Europe, Israel, Jordan, South Korea, Australia, Japan

Russia: Syria and Iran

China: North Korea

If only the US were as popular as Russia and China...sigh.

Aquarius9 , 31 Jul 2017 12:14
The only way to make the cuts without sending dozens of diplomats home would be to make career diplomats start pruning the hedges and answering the phones.

Love it ..... lets see how well, these self-important people manage) Putin and Russia have been very restrained since Obama threw his teddy across the room, and spat out his dummy. No proof has been provided to collaborate Russia's supposed interference in the US elections, (the same as with other accusations) and until there is, the US should stop having childish tantrum ...... what's more, the US is saying that it is not the greatest nation on earth, that it's security/ IT systems aren't all singing, all dancing (well they have been hacked into by teenagers and others with medical condition), and that unless something goes a particular way, they'll shout 'it's not fair' like 5 year olds, when they can't get their own way ........ incidentally how many people precisely actually voted on line in the US? or is the US, saying all the millions who voted for Trump were brain-washed by Russia? If so, then Russia is most certainly the most powerful nation on earth.

Ifyouhavetoask -> Alexander Shlapak , 31 Jul 2017 12:12
Thank you for your mail. Unfortunately most people in the UK (and almost all those in the US) believe all this stupid propaganda about Putin interfering in elections and being an aggressive warmonger when he is nothing of the sort. The US war machine needs constant conflict, and Putin, by standing up to the US, provides a significant enough enemy to get budgets approved. I wish you all the best in Russia.
tomspen , 31 Jul 2017 12:04

Russia's surprise move is so severe that if it goes ahead it is likely to paralyse the work of US diplomats in Russia – depending on how the details shake out

'Diplomats' or 'spies' to give them their proper name.

freeandfair , 31 Jul 2017 11:50
Well, if 455 Russian diplomats can serve the US, a country of 320mil+ people, then the same number should be able to serve the country of 140mil+ people.

Yet, it already takes 2 months for a Russian tourist to get a US visa, while it takes just a couple of days for an American tourist to get a Russian visa.

I am assuming with the cuts it is going to be a year to get an American visa.

Honestly, I always got an impression that Americans didn't want to give visas to Russians at all. Otherwise, why make the process so difficult?

juster , 31 Jul 2017 11:45
Probably worth a mention that parity of staff not just the tit for tact reactions is the usual norm. The fact US had 1000+ staff in Russia compared to Russia's 455 in the US was a product of billateral agreements in the 90s, when the relations were good. Now they're not so it's not exactly scandalous a decision.
MustyKankles -> TragicomedyBeholder , 31 Jul 2017 11:42
"I expect that Putin and Trump will take it from here to move towards more constructive relations."

You appear to have convinced yourself the Russia wants to be America's friend. No, they dont. They want to best America, to achieve for yhemselves everything that Americans already have.

The Russians are still eager, still hungry. America, by comparisson, is fat and complacent.

Alexander Shlapak , 31 Jul 2017 11:41
What do you mean to say, "banning the import of European produce is hitting Russians"? Do you mean that we are starving here in Russia? I live in the agricultural South of Russia. Farmers and various sanctioned food producers in Russia pray to almighty God, the sanctions to last forever. It gives them great competitive advantage in a pretty large country.

Low Rouble rate also helps a lot to export all kinds of agricultural products. As for European export producers - well we don't care. And it's strange to think that absence of French cheese or Polish apples will make us cry.

MozartDE , 31 Jul 2017 11:37
The US makes itself enemies around the world. When Russia, China and the middle east states got enough and fed up with the US, it can stop using the US dollars as reserve currency and at the moment is an economic collapse of the US inevitable. It is probably going to happen in the future and in this case

The US with its worthless currency is doomed as Britain even far more.

TragicomedyBeholder , 31 Jul 2017 11:23

"After half a year of waiting and then harsh new American sanctions, a symmetrical response would have looked weak ..."

Markov's statement in the final paragraph sums up this sad situation well.

Putin is clear-minded enough to see that this latest episode of orchestrated Russophobia for US internal political purposes is not Trump's fault. He had little choice in the matter.

Noiseformind , 31 Jul 2017 11:19

What will be the ramifications of Putin's order to reduce US embassy staff?

To improve the life quality of all American staff returning the US?

[Aug 01, 2017] Washington's Addictive Foreign-Policy Drug The American Conservative

Notable quotes:
"... The enthusiasm for the latest sanctions initiative ignores the longtime unimpressive record of that tactic. Some three decades ago, the seminal scholarly work of Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered , demonstrated that sanctions rarely achieve their policy goal. More recent editions of the book confirm the basic conclusion. Sanctions may inconvenience the targeted regime!and create substantial suffering for innocent people in that country!but they seldom compel the regime to capitulate or even make major concessions. That is especially true when the issue in question is a high-priority matter for the country's political leadership. ..."
"... Most worrisome of all, sanctions will only inflame Moscow and intensify an already worrisome new cold war. Russia is not likely to concede that it meddled in America's 2016 elections!and, in fact, there are serious doubts about those allegations. The chances that Russia will abandon its secessionist allies in eastern Ukraine are not much better, and there is virtually no possibility that Russia will reverse its annexation of Crimea. The chances of that happening are about the same as Israel giving up the Golan Heights or Turkey withdrawing from occupied northern Cyprus and repudiating the puppet Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. ..."
Aug 01, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
would sign the bill!perhaps reflecting just how much proponents of a new cold war with Russia have intimidated the Trump team. The extent and virulence of anti-Russia sentiment has reached alarming levels. Members of Congress and other opinion leaders in both parties have branded the alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 election as an act of war, and one congressman even explicitly compared it to Pearl Harbor and 9-11 .

Given such hysteria and the lopsided congressional vote in favor of the sanctions legislation, Trump's reluctance to use his veto power was not necessarily a manifestation of political cowardice. Only three House members and two senators (Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders) cast negative votes. Even Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), who usually is sensible on foreign policy issues, joined the legislative lynch mob.

The enthusiasm for the latest sanctions initiative ignores the longtime unimpressive record of that tactic. Some three decades ago, the seminal scholarly work of Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered , demonstrated that sanctions rarely achieve their policy goal. More recent editions of the book confirm the basic conclusion. Sanctions may inconvenience the targeted regime!and create substantial suffering for innocent people in that country!but they seldom compel the regime to capitulate or even make major concessions. That is especially true when the issue in question is a high-priority matter for the country's political leadership.

The track record in recent decades does very little to contradict that thesis. The United States and its allies have imposed ever-tightening sanctions on North Korea to force that country to give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Pyongyang's repeated nuclear tests and its recent launches of an intercontinental ballistic missile demonstrate the utter futility of the sanctions strategy.

Washington has been equally unsuccessful in using that tactic toward another adversary, Cuba. A succession of U.S. administrations, beginning with Dwight Eisenhower's, maintained that approach for more than a half century before Barack Obama began to normalize relations with Havana in late 2014. Unfortunately, President Trump rescinded several of the beneficial and realistic changes that his predecessor had made. Yet the results of the Cuba embargo were no more impressive than the outcome of sanctions against North Korea. Washington's demands that the Castro regime stop its human-rights abuses, move toward democracy, and compensate Americans for property seized following the 1959 revolution all failed to produce any discernible results. The Castro dynasty remains in power, the Cuban regime is still a communist dictatorship, there has been no compensation for seized property, and the improvement in the treatment of political dissidents is minimal, at best.

Even the alleged success stories that sanctions proponents tout turn out to be unimpressive. The Iran agreement is a prominent example. Sanctions may have played a modest role in getting Tehran to the conference table, but the agreement occurred only when the United States and the other P5+1 powers backed off of their demand that Iran capitulate and refrain from developing any capacity to enrich uranium. The resulting agreement was very much a compromise measure, and hawks in the United States vehemently condemned it as a U.S.-led surrender to Iran.

Imposing harsh measures on Russia is especially worrisome. Moscow was quick to retaliate for congressional passage of the latest punitive package. Vladimir Putin's government immediately ordered a reduction in the size of America's embassy staff in Moscow and seized several U.S. diplomatic properties. Moreover, the argument that Russia's actions were in response to the Obama administration's similar steps in December 2016 misconstrues the situation. Putin made a point of assuring President-elect Trump that he would not retaliate for the December penalties. But imposition of the new sanctions triggered a decisive policy change.

Economic sanctions appear to be the habitual favorite tool in Washington's foreign policy tool kit. It provides the illusion of a moderate, middle course between a total reliance on diplomacy and resorting to military force. Given that tactic's pervasive lack of effectiveness, though, policymakers need to overcome their obsession. That is especially so when the underlying demands are completely unrealistic.

Sanctions will not compel North Korea to give up its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Pyongyang's leadership elite believes that it needs such capabilities to deter Washington from contemplating forcible regime change. Given U.S. actions against such nonnuclear adversaries as Serbia, Iraq, and Libya, that is not an irrational conclusion.

Likewise, new sanctions against Tehran for violating " the spirit " of the P5+1 accord is thoroughly counterproductive. Even the Trump administration had to concede , however reluctantly, that Iran has abided by the actual terms of the agreement. Imposing sanctions is not likely to cause President Rouhani's relatively moderate government to become more cooperative. Indeed, that step may strengthen the power of Iranian hardliners who wish to repudiate the agreement and move to build a nuclear deterrent.

Most worrisome of all, sanctions will only inflame Moscow and intensify an already worrisome new cold war. Russia is not likely to concede that it meddled in America's 2016 elections!and, in fact, there are serious doubts about those allegations. The chances that Russia will abandon its secessionist allies in eastern Ukraine are not much better, and there is virtually no possibility that Russia will reverse its annexation of Crimea. The chances of that happening are about the same as Israel giving up the Golan Heights or Turkey withdrawing from occupied northern Cyprus and repudiating the puppet Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

Economic sanctions have the dubious quality of being simultaneously provocative and ineffectual. The latest manifestation likely will cause serious trouble for the United States on multiple fronts. Policymakers need to overcome their addiction to sanctions before it produces an immense tragedy.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 10 books, the contributing editor of 10 books, and the author of more than 650 articles on international affairs.

[Aug 01, 2017] Did Hillary Scapegoat Russia to Save Her Campaign by Mike Whitney

The fact that the FBI was never given access to the DNC computers should lead to prosecution of Comey for criminal negligence ot for conspiracy to influence elections in favour of Hillary , or both.
This looks more an more like false flag operation.
Notable quotes:
"... (Ray McGovern again) "And if you watch the coverage since the WikiLeaks leak, two days before the convention, the media content was not 'how did Hillary steal the election' but 'How did the Russians do it?"' ..."
"... But there was one glitch to the 'Blame Russia' scheme. There was no hard evidence of Russian involvement. And, now, 10 months into multiple investigations of Russian hacking, there's still no evidence. How can that be? ..."
"... Well, for one thing, the FBI was never given access to the DNC computers. Let me repeat that: In the biggest and most politically-explosive investigation in more than a decade, an investigation that has obvious national security implications– alleged cyber-espionage by a hostile foreign power, alleged collusion by high-ranking officials in the current administration, alleged treason or collusion on part of the Chief Executive, and the possible impeachment of a sitting president– the FBI has not yet secured or examined the servers that may or may not provide compelling forensic evidence of cyber-intrusion by Russia. ..."
"... Why? Why would the FBI accept the analysis of some flunky organization that no one has ever heard of before (Crowdstrike) rather than use all the tools at their disposal to thoroughly investigate whether or not the hacking actually took place or not? Isn't that their job? ..."
"... Yer damn right it is. The reason the FBI never insisted on examining the DNC servers, is because they knew the story was baloney from the get go. Otherwise they would have kicked down the doors at the DNC, seized the computers through brute force, and arrested anyone who tried to stop them. Those computers are Exhibit A in the Trial of the Century. They should be under lock and key at FBI Headquarters not collecting cobwebs in the basement of the DNC-HQ. The fact that the servers have not been seized and examined just proves what a joke this whole Russia-deal really is. ..."
"... You see, when a law enforcement agency like the FBI fails so conspicuously in carrying out its duties, you have to assume that other factors are involved, mainly politics. It's all politics, right? There is no rational explanation for the FBI's behavior other than it is following a political script that coincides with the agenda and ambitions of the DNC and other power players behind the scenes. ..."
"... Right on, Porter. Facts don't matter in the Russia hacking case. They never have. The whole approach from Day 1 has been to drown the public with innuendo and baseless accusations, while the MSM Carnie barkers pretend that "Russia meddling" is already settled science and that only "Putin puppets" would ever doubt the veracity of the media's loony claims. Got that? ..."
"... But facts do matter and so does evidence. And on that score we're in luck because McGovern's group, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), released a blockbuster report last week that produced the first hard evidence that Russia most certainly DID NOT hack the DNC servers. It was a DNC insider. Here's an excerpt from the VIPS article titled "Was the "Russian Hack" an Inside Job?" ..."
"... The data was leaked after being doctored with a cut-and-paste job to implicate Russia . ..."
"... Capisce? There was no hack. Someone working inside the DNC (a disgruntled employee?) –who had access to the computers, and who worked on the East Coast– copied the data onto a storage device and transferred it to WikiLeaks. That's what you call a "leak" not a "hack". There was no hack. Russia was not involved. The official narrative is bullshit. End of story. ..."
"... The fact that the FBI has not seized the DNC computers is just one of many glaring omissions in this farcical investigation, but there are others too. Like this: Did you know that there are two eyewitnesses in the case that have not yet been questioned? That's right, there are two people who claim to know the identity of the person who gave the stolen emails to WikiLeaks; Julian Assange and Craig Murray. ..."
"... Murray, who is the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan and a human rights activist, claims he met the person who took the emails from the DNC in a wooded area in Washington DC last year. In other words, Murray can settle this matter once and for all and put an end to this year-long witch-hunt that has consumed the media and Capital Hill, prevented the Congress from conducting the people's business, and increased the probability of a conflagration with nuclear-armed Russia. ..."
"... The FBI has never interviewed Murray or made any effort to interview him ..."
"... lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] . ..."
Aug 01, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

Put yourself in Hillary's shoes for a minute. She knew the deluge was coming and she knew it was going to be bad. (According to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, DNC contractor Crowdstrike claimed to find evidence of Russian malware on DNC servers just three days after WikiLeaks announced that it was about "about to publish "emails related to Hillary Clinton." Clearly, that was no coincidence. The plan to blame Russia was already underway.) Hillary knew that the emails were going to expose the DNC's efforts to rig the primaries and torpedo Bernie Sanders campaign, and she knew that the media was going to have a field-day dissecting the private communications word by word on cable news or splashing them across the headlines for weeks on end. It was going to be excruciating. She knew that, they all knew that.

And how would her supporters react when they discovered that their party leaders and presidential candidate were actively involved in sabotaging the democratic process and subverting the primaries? That wasn't going to go over well with voters in Poughkeepsie, now was it? Maybe she'd see her public approval ratings slip even more. Maybe she'd nosedive in the polls or lose the election outright, she didn't know. No one knew. All they knew was that she was in trouble. Big trouble.

So she reacted exactly the way you'd expect Hillary to react, she hit the panic button. In fact, they all freaked out, everyone of them including Podesta and the rest of the DNC honchoes. Once they figured that their presidential bid could go up in smoke, they decided to act preemptively, pull out all the stops and "Go Big".

That's where Russia comes into the picture. The DNC brass (with help from allies at the CIA) decided to conjure up a story so fantastic that, well, it had to be true, after all, that's what the 17 intel agencies said, right? And so did the elite media including the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN. They can't all be wrong, can they? Sure, they goofed-up on Saddam's WMDs, and Iran's imaginary nukes program, and Assad's fictional chemical weapons attack, but, hey, everyone makes mistakes, right? And, besides, have I told you how evil Putin is lately and how much he reminds me of Adolph Hitler? (sarcasm)

In any event, they settled on Russia mainly because Russia had rolled back Washington's imperial project in both Ukraine and Syria, so the media was already in full demonetization-mode and raring to go. All the DNC needed to do was utter the words "Russia meddling" and they'd be off to the races.

Does any of this sound even remotely believable? Former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern seems to think so, because he expounded a very similar scenario about a month ago in an interview on You Tube. Check it out:

Ray McGovern– "What did Hillary do? Hillary gathered her war council together and one fellow says, "I know what we can do. We'll blame it on the Russians."

And someone else says, "But it wasn't the Russians it was WikiLeaks."

(Guy number 1 says) "Well, that's a twofer. We hate them both equally, so we'll say WikiLeaks is working with the Russians."

(Ray McGovern) That was two days before the convention.

And someone else says, "What would the rationale be?"

(Guy number 2 says) "C'mon, the Russians clearly want Trump to win."

(Number 1) "But what about the major media?"

(Number 2) "Well, the major media really want Hillary to win, so if we get the major media on board, well, we really got it wired."

(Ray McGovern again) "And if you watch the coverage since the WikiLeaks leak, two days before the convention, the media content was not 'how did Hillary steal the election' but 'How did the Russians do it?"'

("Ray McGovern: The Deep State Assault on Elected Government Must Be Stopped ")

He's right, isn't he? Hillary and Co. pulled off the whole ruse without a hitch. The media focused on the "Russia meddling" angle, and the calculating Ms. Clinton slipped away with nary a scratch. It's amazing!

But there was one glitch to the 'Blame Russia' scheme. There was no hard evidence of Russian involvement. And, now, 10 months into multiple investigations of Russian hacking, there's still no evidence. How can that be?

Well, for one thing, the FBI was never given access to the DNC computers. Let me repeat that: In the biggest and most politically-explosive investigation in more than a decade, an investigation that has obvious national security implications– alleged cyber-espionage by a hostile foreign power, alleged collusion by high-ranking officials in the current administration, alleged treason or collusion on part of the Chief Executive, and the possible impeachment of a sitting president– the FBI has not yet secured or examined the servers that may or may not provide compelling forensic evidence of cyber-intrusion by Russia.

Why? Why would the FBI accept the analysis of some flunky organization that no one has ever heard of before (Crowdstrike) rather than use all the tools at their disposal to thoroughly investigate whether or not the hacking actually took place or not? Isn't that their job?

Yer damn right it is. The reason the FBI never insisted on examining the DNC servers, is because they knew the story was baloney from the get go. Otherwise they would have kicked down the doors at the DNC, seized the computers through brute force, and arrested anyone who tried to stop them. Those computers are Exhibit A in the Trial of the Century. They should be under lock and key at FBI Headquarters not collecting cobwebs in the basement of the DNC-HQ. The fact that the servers have not been seized and examined just proves what a joke this whole Russia-deal really is.

You see, when a law enforcement agency like the FBI fails so conspicuously in carrying out its duties, you have to assume that other factors are involved, mainly politics. It's all politics, right? There is no rational explanation for the FBI's behavior other than it is following a political script that coincides with the agenda and ambitions of the DNC and other power players behind the scenes. Investigative journalist Gareth Porter summed it up perfectly in a brilliant article titled Foisting Blame for Cyber-Hacking on Russia. He said:

" the history of the US government's claim that Russian intelligence hacked into election databases reveals it to be a clear case of politically motivated analysis by the DHS and the Intelligence Community. Not only was the claim based on nothing more than inherently inconclusive technical indicators but no credible motive for Russian intelligence wanting personal information on registered voters was ever suggested." (" Foisting Blame for Cyber-Hacking on Russia ", antiwar.com)

Right on, Porter. Facts don't matter in the Russia hacking case. They never have. The whole approach from Day 1 has been to drown the public with innuendo and baseless accusations, while the MSM Carnie barkers pretend that "Russia meddling" is already settled science and that only "Putin puppets" would ever doubt the veracity of the media's loony claims. Got that?

But facts do matter and so does evidence. And on that score we're in luck because McGovern's group, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), released a blockbuster report last week that produced the first hard evidence that Russia most certainly DID NOT hack the DNC servers. It was a DNC insider. Here's an excerpt from the VIPS article titled "Was the "Russian Hack" an Inside Job?"

"Independent cyber-investigators have now come up with verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of the alleged Russian hack. They found that the purported "hack" of the DNC was not a hack (but) originated with a copy by an insider. The data was leaked after being doctored with a cut-and-paste job to implicate Russia .

Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying and doctoring were performed on the East coast of the U.S." ("Was the " Russian Hack" an Inside Job? ", CounterPunch)

Capisce? There was no hack. Someone working inside the DNC (a disgruntled employee?) –who had access to the computers, and who worked on the East Coast– copied the data onto a storage device and transferred it to WikiLeaks. That's what you call a "leak" not a "hack". There was no hack. Russia was not involved. The official narrative is bullshit. End of story.

Naturally, the MSM has completely ignored the VIPS report just as they ignored Sy Hersh's brilliant article that proved that Assad DID NOT launch a chemical weapons attack in Syria. That bit of information has been locked out of the MSM coverage altogether as it doesn't jibe with Washington's "Assad must go" policy. So too, McGovern's "verifiable forensic evidence" that the Russians did not hack the DNC servers will likely be consigned to the memory hole like every other inconvenient factoid that doesn't fit with Washington's foreign policy objectives.

The fact that the FBI has not seized the DNC computers is just one of many glaring omissions in this farcical investigation, but there are others too. Like this: Did you know that there are two eyewitnesses in the case that have not yet been questioned? That's right, there are two people who claim to know the identity of the person who gave the stolen emails to WikiLeaks; Julian Assange and Craig Murray.

Murray, who is the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan and a human rights activist, claims he met the person who took the emails from the DNC in a wooded area in Washington DC last year. In other words, Murray can settle this matter once and for all and put an end to this year-long witch-hunt that has consumed the media and Capital Hill, prevented the Congress from conducting the people's business, and increased the probability of a conflagration with nuclear-armed Russia.

But here's the problem: The FBI has never interviewed Murray or made any effort to interview him . It's like he doesn't exist. In other words, we have a credible witness who can positively identify the person who leaked the emails, gave them to WikiLeaks and set off a political firestorm that has engulfed the Capital and the country for the last year, and the FBI hasn't interviewed him?

Will someone explain that to me, please?

That's why I remain convinced that the Russia hacking story is pure, unalloyed bunkum. There's not a word of truth to any of it. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Mike Whitney

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] .

[Jul 31, 2017] Any hopes of mending Russia-US ties rest on curing the worsening political schizophrenia in Washington

The US Congress feel that they own the Earth like a big plantation, and all other countries including Russia, China, Japan and "Europiean allies" are their vassals. That's typical for the elite which lost connection with the reality as the global neoliberal empire built by the USA and allies since 1980 beginning to crumbles. Same situation happened with th UK elite too. At the same time the US is still dominant in many spheres and Russia should be very careful with countermeasures. The US Congress is spoiling for a fight, or, at least, is dreaming about the return of good old days on Cold War (with now now as a designated "Evil empire"), when existence of the USSR prevented the US elite from going off rails and helped to keep vassals (aka allies) in check.
Jul 31, 2017 | www.msn.com

But he did insist Russia remained keen on "continuing cooperation in the areas that correspond to our interests", suggesting Moscow remains open to working together on Syria after agreeing a ceasefire with the US in the south of the war-torn country.

... ... ...

In response to allegations of Kremlin election hacking then US president Barack Obama in December ordered out 35 Russian diplomats and closed down two embassy summer houses that Washington said were being used by Moscow for espionage.

At the time, the Kremlin said it would put any retaliation on hold as it waited for Trump to take office.

[Jul 31, 2017] Make America Safe Put Congress On Permanent Recess (What The Sanction Bill Is Really About) by Mike Shedlock

ZeroHedge suggests that it might well be The Awan Brothers – The (Not-Russian) IT Staff Who Allegedly Hacked Congress' Computer Systems.
Jul 31, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

House Speaker Paul Ryan just bragged the House passed "one of the most expansive sanction packages in history." The bill places sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Factor in Trump's ill-advised threats to raise tariffs on Chinese steel, and we have at hand a protectionist trade war tinder box in search of a match.

Protectionist trade war tinderbox in search of a match: EU, Russia, Brexit, Chinese Steel, Nord Stream, Trump https://t.co/DMQzgf3nji

! Mike Mish Shedlock (@MishGEA) July 26, 2017

... ... ...

Rule of Nothing

As is typically the case, and explained by the "Rule of Nothing" , the best possible outcome is for nothing to happen.

To that end, Congress may go on recess before working out the differences between the House and the Senate versions.

I propose a permanent recess before more damage is done.

historian40 , Jul 26, 2017 11:45 AM

The bi-partisan votes are only rare because they have to maintain the illusion of there being two opposing parties. When it comes to legislation to grow government intrusion, violate the Constitution, wars, etc, these "rare" votes always show up.

The First Rule -> New_Meat , Jul 26, 2017 1:05 PM

Paul Rino - How does aging on a country that has 4,000+ nuclear warheads pointed at the United States, "make our Country Safer" ???????

Mike Masr , Jul 26, 2017 12:18 PM

Russian Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

He asserted the restrictions cannot inflict substantial damage on Russia. "Our macroeconomic policy is shaped in such a way so that sanctions-related shockwaves coming from outside do not have significant impact on the Russian economy," he said.

My opinion is this does Fuck the EU! I hope the temps in the EU are unbelievably fucking cold this winter!!!

Mike Masr , Jul 26, 2017 12:39 PM

ELECTION MEDDLING BULLSHIT DEFINED

The US has been meddling and interfering in other countries elections and internal affairs for decades.

This includes US meddling in Russian elections using NGO's. Not only does the US meddle and interfere in other countries elections it overthrows democratically elected governments it doesn't like, and then installs puppet leaders. Our neocons casually refer to this as "regime change".

I can only imagine the hell that would break loose if Russia fomented, paid for, and assisted in a violent overthrow of the legitimately and democratically elected government in Mexico. Imagine Russian spymasters working from the Russian Embassy in Mexico City helping and training radicals how to use social media to bring out angry people and foment violent pubic unrest. Then Russian Duma members in Mexico City handing out tacos, and tamales emboldening and urging these angry people to riot, and overthrow the government and toss the bums out. Then Putin's executive group hand picking all the new (anti-USA) drug cartel junta puppet leaders of Mexico and a Russian senator, Ivan MiKainlev in Mexico City stating on RT, there are no drug cartels here!

On the other side of the world Obama's neocon warmongers spent billions doing exactly this. Instead of drug cartels it was Banderist Neo-Nazis. Obama and our neocons, including John McCain intentionally caused all of this fucking mess, civil war and horrific death in Ukraine on Russia's border and then placed all the blame for it on Putin and Russia. WTF!!!

Thanks to John McCain and our evil fucking neocons - the regime change policy implemented by Obama, Clinton and Nuland's minions, like Geoffrey Pyatt, the Ukraine today is totally fucked. It is now a banana republic embroiled in a civil war. For the US and NATO the golden prize of this violent undemocratic regime change was supposed to be the Crimea. This scheme did not play out as intended. No matter what sanctions the warmongering neocons place on Russia they will NEVER give back the Crimea!

Our neocon fuck heads spent billions of our hard earned taxpayer dollars to create pain, suffering, death and a civil war inside Ukraine on Russia's border!

This is a case of don't do what we do [meddle and interfere], only do what we tell you to do! The moral of the story here is its perfectly okay when we do it. We don't like it when we think it's been done to us!

It's hypocrisy and duplicity at its finest!

Tech Camp NGO operating out of US Embassy in Kiev (using social media to help bring out radicals-

cause civil war-pre Maidan 2013)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9hOl8TuBUM

Nuland talks about $5 billion spent on Ukraine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaR1_an9CnQ

Neocons -Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt in Kiev's Maidan Square

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVs2tcSyyuA

Nuland plotting on intercepted phone call the hand picked post coop Junta leaders.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL_GShyGv3o

US Support of Banderist Neo-Nazis in Ukraine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-RyOaFwcEw

RocketScience , Jul 26, 2017 12:50 PM

Mike Masr gets it.

Three congressmen get it: Thomas Massie, Justin Amash, and John Ducan.

The hard truth is the media/entertainment complex in coordination with the deep state bureaucrats are still running the country.

http://www.militaryvotescount.com/2017/07/09/remember-when-the-u-s-inter...

Youri Carma , Jul 26, 2017 3:11 PM

Sanctions are an act of war in order to provoke a hot expansion of that war.

[Jul 31, 2017] US committed to path of conflict with Russia, tensions higher than in Cold War by Paul Craig Roberts

Jul 31, 2017 | www.rt.com

RT Op-Edge

PCR: That's part of it. Congress gains political contributions from the American energy industry and it gains political contributions from the military-security complex because this bill is constructed to serve both interests. They're both extremely powerful interest groups. And so, the military-security complex wins by preventing the normalization of relations, which is a threat to the budget and the power of the military-security complex. And the energy companies win by having a new market for their natural gas, the liquefied natural gas that they're getting from the fracking operations that are doing so much environmental damage in the United States. This benefits both groups. And therefore Congress – as you saw, the votes are almost unanimous, only two senators out of a hundred voted against it, and only three US representatives out of [more than] four hundred [419-3] voted against it. You can see the power of these interest groups and they put their interests ahead of normalizing relations between nuclear powers. When you have bad relations between nuclear powers like Russia and the United States, the chance of something going wrong is extremely high.

[Jul 31, 2017] Washington is spoiling for a fight. They failed with the attempt of color revolution in Russia in 2012. After that setback they organized coup d' tat in Ukraine in 2014. Just watch how they will try to derail Putin during the next elections. All means are good or them.

Jul 31, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

likbez , July 31, 2017 at 12:28 pm

Mark,

Dollar dominance is just one feature of neoliberalism. You just can't take is separately and attack it. You will be instantly crushed.

And BTW Russia is still a neoliberal country with its own set of oligarchs (some of which now will face significant losses) and after Yeltsin drunken rampage always was. Which represents the fifth column within the country. So fact they did not rebel, but this may eventually change as losses are mounted. This is the USA calculation.

It was a miracle that Russia avoided further dismembering and complete neoliberal colonization. But that's about it. Now this is not the time to test its luck again, I think. It's too early.

BTW China is also a neoliberal country as well, although deviant in its own way. Anybody who think that in case of troubles China will come to Russia help, because she will be next target of Washington, might well be a dreamer. On the contrary, Chine might try to corner Russia in prices of hydrocarbons because of sanctions. The rule of neoliberalism if that if a country is sinking, help her to sink faster.

This "deviation" from Washington consensus" in the form of more independent foreign policy and defense of national interests than are allowed by Washington -- the center of global neoliberal empire is what Russia is punished for. All those fake accusation of hacking are just a convenient pretext. That's why sanctions legislation enjoyed such a majority in Congress -- the country that challenges the US dominance in global neoliberal empire should be destroyed.

That means that Russia should be very careful not to overreact as trump cards in this geopolitical game are still in the USA hands. Especially in high technology.

Washington is spoiling for a fight. They failed with the attempt of color revolution in Russia in 2012. After that setback they organized coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014. Just watch how they will try to derail Putin during the next elections. All means are good or them.

[Jul 31, 2017] Cold War 2.0 is officially on

Jul 31, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren , July 31, 2017 at 10:31 am

Published on 31 Jul 2017

It is time to speak the obvious: Cold War 2.0 is officially on. Though this Cold War is different and possibly far more dangerous. The world is in uncharted waters as the Trump White House attempts to find its footing.

CrossTalking with Edward Lozansky, Mark Sleboda, and Vladimir Golstein.

[Jul 31, 2017] Russia to Strike Hard in Response to US Sanctions

Jul 31, 2017 | www.strategic-culture.org
EDITORIAL | 28.07.2017

US Senate has voted on the bill containing a package of sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea. The senators have taken on great responsibility because Moscow is not going to watch the hostile action idly, it will respond. The retaliatory measures will be felt.

As Russia's Foreign Ministry announced on July 28, the decision has been taken to seize the Serebryany Bor diplomatic compound in north-west Moscow as well as the embassy's warehouse in a tit-for-tat move. A total of 35 diplomats will be sent home. The embassy staff must be reduced to 455 – the level of Russia embassy staff in Washington.

If President Trump signs the bill into law, it'll be hard to imagine Moscow cooperating with the US in the UN Security Council on the draft resolution sanctions to punish North Korea. Washington may need the Russia's support badly pretty soon.

The US space research programs will suffer a severe blow deprived of Russia RD-180 and RD-181 rocket engines they so much depend on. NASA's Atlas 5 rocket launches will be suspended.

  • The export portfolio of JSC Techsnabexport (TENEX) includes 25 contracts with a total value of about $6.5 billion concluded with 19 US companies with the supply perspectives until 2028. The volume of the agreed supplies of Russian uranium products (that is 20% of annual reactor needs at the US nuclear power plants) is 95% used. There are few actors on the world market who could substitute the Russian supplies and it takes time and effort to make new deals, if it possible at all.
  • VSMPO-AVISMA is the world's largest manufacturer of titanium products and the Russian supplier of titanium to Boeing and other US aerospace companies. It accounts for about a half of all titanium imported by the United States and over a third (35%) of titanium consumed by Boeing. The American company has investments in Russia. It has been in the country for decades. About five years ago, it announced plans to invest $27 billion over the next 30 years. In 2014, VSMPO and Boeing had signed an extension of the supply contract for titanium sheet to 2022.
  • VSMPO-AVISMA has no competitors in the world and can easily find other customers. The US partners will face a very serious problem unable to find an alternative. The suspension of titanium supplies from Russia would damage the US defense industry capabilities.

American companies operating in Russia could be targeted. They risk suffering heavy losses , especially energy giants and banking conglomerates. For instance, Caterpillar could lose orders for heavy equipment needed to build pipelines and other construction projects. US high-tech companies may be prevented from working with Russian counterparts – something they are interested in.

The issue fits into a larger geopolitical pattern. The EU reaction makes it a pro-Russian bill, pushing Europe away from the United States to Russia. Europeans get more evidence to see that Washington's high-fallutin' harangues about Atlantic solidarity are the way to promote its selfish interests. The differences between the United States and the EU undermine the G7's unity regarding Russia. The countries agreed on the link between the Minsk accords and the sanctions. Now the US is going unilateral, provoking Europeans into continuing with the North Stream 2 project to defy America and, thus, benefit Russia. According to Europeans, "America First" should not be a synonym for "Europe second" or "Europe irrelevant".

According to Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, this bill "will not achieve its objectives and will instead cause new problems. Unless it undergoes significant revision, it would compromise European energy security and damage US relations with Europe. The beneficiary of such an outcome would be Russia". According to Ischinger, the North Stream-2 issue "is not a question that should be decided in Washington. It is a European issue, to be decided by Europeans based on European law and regulation". The expert believes that signed into law, the legislation would "tip the scales in favor of those who want to end Europe's participation in the existing trans-Atlantic policy approach on Russia, including the sanctions regime. If the president signs the bill in its current form, it would alienate America's important complicating our alliance at a critical moment".

So, in an effort to strike Russia the US Congress has targeted Europe and NATO solidarity.

The fraying US-Russia ties will entail fraying arms control relationship. The "Russia sanctions bill" is not the only legislation expected to become law if Presidents Trump signs it. The proposed defense budget for 2018 has taken aim at the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, as well as the Open Skies and even New START treaties. Becoming law, it would deal a major blow to the US-Russia arms-control architecture. Russia would have no choice but respond. This would lead to arms race. If the US provokes the termination of the INF Treaty, it will greatly spoil its relations with the European allies. Is it wise to develop an intermediate range missile nobody wants on its soil?

President Trump has also ordered a major review of US nuclear policy, a common move by new administrations. The mission is impossible without making clear if the US has arms control arguments with Russia in force or not. No clarity on the issue would greatly complicate military planning in general.

Russia can and will deal a heavy blow in response to the US "sanctions bill". Unlike Iran or North Korea, it can do it. This ability should not be underestimated by the president who intends to sign the bill into law. Too many times have US experts and lawmakers made calculations about how much the measures will hurt Russia without assessing the damage America will inflict on itself.

[Jul 31, 2017] How Romney Loyalists Hijacked Trumps Foreign Policy

Notable quotes:
"... This isn't merely a story of palace intrigue and revolving chairs in the corridors of power. Brave Americans in the uniform of their country will continue to be sent into far-off lands to intercede in internecine conflicts that have little if anything to do with U.S. national security. Many will return physically shattered or mentally maimed. Others will be returned to Andrews Air Force Base in flag-draped coffins, to be saluted by serial presidents of both parties, helpless to stop the needless carnage. ..."
"... Ron Maxwell wrote and directed the Civil War trilogy of movies: ..."
"... Great piece. Thank you, Mr. Maxwell. Reading this, I burn with anger -- then a sense of utter futility washes over me. I think history will show that the Trump era was the moment the American people realized that the Deep State is more powerful than the presidency. ..."
"... The rogues' gallery of neocons and apprentice neocons described above is really disturbing. We didn't vote for this. ..."
"... Re Nikki Haley, she's already an embarrassment, an ignorant neocon-dependent. She's dragging us down the same old road of anti-Russia hysterics and Middle East meddling. The best that can be said of her presence at the UN is that by putting her there Trump promoted one of his allies into the SC governor's mansion. I don't think he was under any illusions as to her foreign policy knowledge, competence, or commitment to an America First policy. But she's become a vector for neocons to reinfect government, and she needs to be removed. ..."
"... Neoconism and neoliberalism is like a super-bug infection. None of the anti-biotics are working. We have only one hope left. Rand Paul, the super anti-neocon/neoliberal. ..."
"... In this country we can talk about resenting elites all we want, but when it comes to making American foreign policy there still is an American foreign policy elite – and it's very powerful. Why has there been no debate? Actually, Michael Mandelbaum, an author with whom I seldom agree on anything, but in his book "The Frugal Superpower" he actually tells you why there's no debate in the foreign policy establishment. ..."
"... And to be part of the establishment you have to buy into it – to its ideology, to its beliefs system, and that is a very hard thing to break. And so before we all jump up and down and say, "Wow! Donald Trump won! NATO is going to be changed. Our commitments in East Asia are going to change. The Middle East may change!" We'd better take a deep breath and ask ourselves, and I think Will Ruger raised this point on the first panel, where is the counter-elite? ..."
"... Where is a Trumpian counter-elite that not only can take the senior positions in the cabinet like Defense Secretary and Secretary of State, but be the assistant secretaries, the deputy assistant secretaries, the NSC staffers. ..."
"... I think that elite doesn't exist right now, and that's a big problem, because the people who are going to be probably still in power are the people who do not agree with the kinds of foreign policy ideas that I think most of us in this room are sympathetic to. So, over time maybe that will change. ..."
"... The problem with the neocons is that their ambition vastly exceeds their ability. ..."
Jul 31, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Rex Tillerson, formidably accomplished in global business, was nevertheless as much a neophyte as his boss when it came to navigating the policy terrain of the D.C. swamp. As is well known, in building his team he relied on those two neocon avatars, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, who had originally promoted his own candidacy for secretary of state. But Rice had been a vocal part of the neocon Never Trump coalition. Her anti-Trump pronouncements included: "Donald Trump should not be president .He doesn't have the dignity and stature to be president." The Washington Post greeted her 2017 book, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom , as "a repudiation of Trump's America First worldview."

Thus it wasn't surprising that Rice would introduce Elliott Abrams to Tillerson as an ideal candidate for State's No. 2 position. This would have placed a dyed-in-the-wool neocon hardliner at the very top of the State Department's hierarchy and given him the power to hire and fire all undersecretaries across the vast foreign policy empire. Rice, one of the architects of George W. Bush's failed policies of regime change and nation building, would have consolidated a direct line of influence into the highest reaches of the Trump foreign policy apparatus.

Not only was Abrams' entire career a refutation of Trump's America First foreign policy, but he had spent the previous eighteen months publicly bashing Trump in harsh terms. Cleverly, however, he had not signed either of the two Never Trump letters co-signed by most of the other neocon foreign policy elite. Abrams almost got the nod, except for a last-minute intervention by Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who was armed with every disparaging anti-Trump statement Abrams had made. Examples: "This is a question of character. He is not fit to sit in the chair of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln .his absolute unwillingness to learn anything about foreign policy .Hillary would be better on foreign policy. I'm not going to vote for Trump ."

But Abrams' rejection was the exception. As a high profile globalist-interventionist he could not easily hide his antipathy toward the Trump doctrine. Others, whose track records and private comments were more easily obscured, were waived in by gatekeepers whose mission it was (and remains) to populate State, DoD, and national security agencies with establishment and neocon cadres, not with proven Trump supporters and adherents to his foreign policy.

But how did the gatekeepers get in? Romney may have disappeared from the headlines, but he never left the sidelines. His chess pieces were already on the board, occupying key squares and prepared to move.

Once the president opened the door to RNC chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff, to Rex Tillerson at State, to James Mattis as defense secretary, and to H. R. McMaster at NSC, the neocons just walked in. While each of these political and military luminaries may publicly support the president's policies and in some instances may sincerely want to see them implemented, their entire careers have been spent within the establishment and neocon elite. They don't know any other world view or any other people.

Donald Trump ran on an America First foreign policy, repeatedly deriding George W. Bush for invading Iraq in 2003. He criticized Clinton and Obama for their military interventions in Libya and their support for regime change in Syria. He questioned the point of the endless Afghan war. He criticized the Beltway's hostile obsession with Russia while it ignored China's military buildup and economic threat to America.

Throughout the campaign Trump made abundantly clear his foreign policy ethos. If elected he would stop the policy of perpetual war, strengthen America's military, take care of U.S. veterans, focus particularly on annihilating the ISIS caliphate, protect the homeland from Islamist radicalism, and promote a carefully calibrated America First policy.

But, despite this clear record, according to Politico and other Beltway journals, the president has been entreated in numerous White House and Pentagon meetings to sign off on globalist foreign policy goals, including escalating commitments to the war in Afghanistan. These presentations, conducted by H.R. McMaster and others, were basically arguments to continue the global status quo; in other words, a foreign policy that Clinton would have embraced. Brian Hook and Nadia Schadlow were two of the lesser known policy wonks who participated in these meetings, determining vital issues of war and peace.

Brian Hook, head of State Department policy planning, is an astute operative and member in good standing of the neocon elite. He's also a onetime foreign policy adviser to Romney and remains in close touch with him. Hook was one of the founders, along with Eliot Cohen and Eric Edelman, of the anti-Trump John Hay Initiative. Hook organized one of the Never Trump letters during the campaign, and his views are well-known, in part through a May 2016 piece by Julia Hoffe in Politico Magazine. A passage: "My wife said, 'never,'" said Brian Hook, looking pained and slicing the air with a long, pale hand. .Even if you say you support him as the nominee," Hook says, "you go down the list of his positions and you see you disagree on every one."

One might wonder how a man such as Hook could become the director of policy planning and a senior adviser to Rex Tillerson, advising on all key foreign policy issues? The answer is: the Romney network.

Consider also the case of Margaret Peterlin, assigned as a Sherpa during the transition to guide Tillerson through the confirmation process. Another experienced Beltway insider, Peterlin promptly made herself indispensable to Tillerson and blocked anyone who wanted access to him, no matter how senior. Peterlin then brought Brian Hook onboard, a buddy from their Romney days, to serve as the brains for foreign policy while she was serving as the Gorgon-eyed chief of staff.

According to rumor, the two are now blocking White House personnel picks, particularly Trump loyalists, from appointments at State. At the same time, they are bringing aboard neocons such as Kurt Volker, executive director of the McCain Institute and notorious Russia hawk, and Wess Mitchell, president of the neocon Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). As special representative for Ukraine negotiations, Volker is making proclamations to inflame the conflict and further entangle the United States.

Meanwhile, Mitchell, another Romney alumnus and a Brian Hook buddy from the John Hay Initiative, has been nominated as assistant secretary of state for European and Erurasian affairs. Brace yourself for an unnecessary Cold War with Russia, if not a hot one. While Americans may not really care whether ethnic Russians or ethnic Ukrainians dominate the Donbass, these guys do.

Then there's Nadia Schadlow, another prominent operative with impeccable neocon credentials. She was the senior program officer at the Smith Richardson Foundation, where her main job was to underwrite the neocon project by offering grants to the many think tanks in their network. For the better part of a decade she pursued a PhD under the tutelage of Eliot Cohen, who has pronounced himself a "Never Trumper" and has questioned the president's mental health. Cohen, along with H.R. McMaster, provided editorial guidance to Schadlow for her book extolling nation-building and how we can do more of it.

Relationships beget jobs, which is how Schadlow became deputy assistant to the president, with the task, given by her boss H.R. McMaster, of writing the administration's National Security Strategy. Thus do we have a neocon stalwart who wrote the book on nation building now writing President Trump's national security strategy.

How, we might ask, did these Never Trump activists get into such high positions in the Trump administration? And what was their agenda at such important meetings with the President if not to thwart his America First agenda? Put another way, how did Trump get saddled with nearly Mitt Romney's entire foreign policy staff? After all, the American people did not elect Mitt Romney when they had the chance.

Trump is a smart guy. So is Barack Obama. But even Obama, Nobel Peace Prize in hand, could not prevent the inexorable slide to violent regime change in Libya, which resulted in a semi-failed state, tens of thousands killed, and a foothold for Al Queda and other radical Islamists in the Maghreb. He also could not prevent the arming of Islamist rebels in Syria after he had the CIA provide lethal arms strictly to "moderate rebels." Unable or unwilling to disengage from Afghanistan, Obama acquiesced in a series of Pentagon strategies with fluctuating troop levels before bequeathing to his successor an open ended, unresolved war.

Rumors floating through official Washington suggest the neocons now want to replace Tillerson at State with Trump critic and Neocon darling Nikki Haley, currently pursuing a one-person bellicose foreign policy from her exalted post at the United Nations. Not surprisingly, Haley and Romney go way back. As a firm neocon partisan, she endorsed his presidential bid in 2011 .

As UN ambassador, Haley has articulated a nearly incoherent jumble of statements that seem more in line with her own neocon worldview than with Trump's America First policies. Some samples:

"I think that, you know, Russia is full of themselves. They've always been full of themselves. But that's – its more of a façade that they try and show as opposed to anything else."

"What we are is serious. And you see us in action, so its not in personas. Its in actions and its what we do."

"The United States calls for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea. Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine."

One must ask: Is Ambassador Haley speaking on behalf of the Trump administration when she says it is official U.S. policy that Russia, having annexed Crimea, must return it to Ukraine? Is the Russo-American geopolitical relationship to be held hostage indefinitely because in 2014 the people of Crimea voted for their political reintegration into Russia, which they had been part of since 1776?

Since there is as much chance of Russia ceding Crimea back to Ukraine as there is of the United States ceding Texas back to Mexico, does this mean there is no possibility of any meaningful cooperation with Russia on anything else? Not even in fighting the common ominous threat from Islamist radicalism? Has Haley committed the American people to this dead-end policy on her own or in consultation with the President?

On July 14, the Washington Examiner wrote that "Haley's remarks set the tone for Trump's reversal from the less interventionist, 'America First' foreign policy he campaigned on." Little wonder, then, that in a little-noticed victory lap of her own, coinciding with the release of her book, Condoleezza Rice acknowledged the near complete takeover of Trump's foreign policy team. "The current national security team is terrific," she said. She even gave Trump her anointed blessing following their recent White House meeting, during which the septuagenarian schoolboy received the schoolmarm's pat on the head: " He was engaging," she said. "I found him on top of his brief .asking really good questions." That's a far cry from her campaign-season comment about Trump that he "doesn't have the dignity and stature to be president."

American foreign policy seems to be on auto-pilot, immune to elections and impervious to the will of the people. It is perpetuated by an entrenched contingent of neocon and establishment zealots and bureaucratic drones in both the public and private sector, whose careers, livelihoods, and very raison d'etre depend on an unchallenged policy of military confrontation with the prestige, power, and cash flow it generates. Those who play the game by establishment rules are waived in. Those who would challenge the status quo are kept out. This is the so-called Deep State, thwarting the will of President Trump and the people who voted for him.

This isn't merely a story of palace intrigue and revolving chairs in the corridors of power. Brave Americans in the uniform of their country will continue to be sent into far-off lands to intercede in internecine conflicts that have little if anything to do with U.S. national security. Many will return physically shattered or mentally maimed. Others will be returned to Andrews Air Force Base in flag-draped coffins, to be saluted by serial presidents of both parties, helpless to stop the needless carnage.

Ron Maxwell wrote and directed the Civil War trilogy of movies: Gettysburg, Gods and Generals, Copperhead.

Andrew , says: July 30, 2017 at 11:04 pm

This is all very convincing, but the point remains: Trump won and is the one responsible for allowing all these neocons through the door. Had Pat Buchanan won the nomination and the Presidency back in the nineties, does anyone believe he would make the same blunders, and not be equipped to find the right traditional conservatives instead of the establishment DC neocons that try and swamp every GOP Administration now since Reagan? Trump is simply too naive and doesn't have any feel for the political ideologies of all of these people, being not much of a political animal himself. And replacing Priebus with General Kelly isn't likely to change all that. He should be talking to Ann Coulter and Buchanan as unofficial advisers or something.
Fran Macadam , says: July 31, 2017 at 12:36 am
Globalism is the twenty-first century euphemism for old fashioned imperialism, now on Wall Street propelled nuclear steroids.
KaneV , says: July 31, 2017 at 1:15 am
Good God how shallow is the Trump foreign policy bench that the American Con has a director writing in its defense?
reelectclaydavis , says: July 31, 2017 at 4:43 am
Interesting argument, though you ignore other factors besides the conspiratorial-sounding "Romney network" that account for American interventionist neo-conservatives finding their way back into power: 1) that they are by far the largest group of people available to staff the government because of a) the dominance of aggressive liberal internationalism over more restrained realism in graduate schools which educate these foreign policy specialists; b) an inherent bias of these specialists not to admit that America cannot influence world events (that would be like a social worker who didn't believe s/he could usually mediate conflicts). Also, 2) Trump's alleged non-interventionist beliefs are less well-formed than you imply, you just project on him what you wish to see; a) you ignore his comments about taking the oil of other countries, an idea the neo-conservatives had as a way to pay for operations in Iraq; and b) Beliefs closer to Trump's core: that others not paying their fair share and that America is being taken advantage of, are not incompatible with the American interventions you oppose.
polistra , says: July 31, 2017 at 8:13 am
You can't hijack an executive's policy unless the executive is either hopelessly weak or a faker. Doesn't matter which.

The only good part is that the fake image of a somewhat less warlike "Trump", stirred up by the media to destroy Trump, is actually DOING what a real non-interventionist Trump would have done. EU is breaking away from US control, just as a real antiwar Trump would have ordered it to do.

Dan Stewart , says: July 31, 2017 at 8:23 am
Great piece. Thank you, Mr. Maxwell. Reading this, I burn with anger -- then a sense of utter futility washes over me. I think history will show that the Trump era was the moment the American people realized that the Deep State is more powerful than the presidency.
For Virginia , says: July 31, 2017 at 8:23 am
It's good to see Ron Maxwell published in these pages. I watch Gettysburg at least once a year. And don't think Virginians aren't grateful for Maxwell's role in helping put paid to Eric Cantor's political career.

The rogues' gallery of neocons and apprentice neocons described above is really disturbing. We didn't vote for this. And we don't want it.

Re Nikki Haley, she's already an embarrassment, an ignorant neocon-dependent. She's dragging us down the same old road of anti-Russia hysterics and Middle East meddling. The best that can be said of her presence at the UN is that by putting her there Trump promoted one of his allies into the SC governor's mansion. I don't think he was under any illusions as to her foreign policy knowledge, competence, or commitment to an America First policy. But she's become a vector for neocons to reinfect government, and she needs to be removed.

Johann , says: July 31, 2017 at 8:27 am
Neoconism and neoliberalism is like a super-bug infection. None of the anti-biotics are working. We have only one hope left. Rand Paul, the super anti-neocon/neoliberal.
SDS , says: July 31, 2017 at 8:46 am
"Trump is a smart guy" ..
??
If so; why does he not see this happening all around him? Except for his pompous, ignorant, hands-off method of governing, that is . The Emperor has no clothes but doesn't seem to know, nor care that he doesn't
Kurt Gayle , says: July 31, 2017 at 9:03 am
Christopher Layne, Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security, Texas A&M at the American Conservative Conference "Foreign Policy in America's Interest" (Nov 15 2016) said:

"In this country we can talk about resenting elites all we want, but when it comes to making American foreign policy there still is an American foreign policy elite – and it's very powerful. Why has there been no debate? Actually, Michael Mandelbaum, an author with whom I seldom agree on anything, but in his book "The Frugal Superpower" he actually tells you why there's no debate in the foreign policy establishment.

You see, debate is – basically goes from here to there [Dr. Layne puts his two index fingers close together in front of his face], like from the 45-yard-line to the 45-yard-line. And why does it stop there? Because people who try to go down towards the goal line have their union cards taken away. They're kicked out of the establishment. They're not listened to. They're disrespected.

And to be part of the establishment you have to buy into it – to its ideology, to its beliefs system, and that is a very hard thing to break. And so before we all jump up and down and say, "Wow! Donald Trump won! NATO is going to be changed. Our commitments in East Asia are going to change. The Middle East may change!" We'd better take a deep breath and ask ourselves, and I think Will Ruger raised this point on the first panel, where is the counter-elite?

Where is a Trumpian counter-elite that not only can take the senior positions in the cabinet like Defense Secretary and Secretary of State, but be the assistant secretaries, the deputy assistant secretaries, the NSC staffers.

I think that elite doesn't exist right now, and that's a big problem, because the people who are going to be probably still in power are the people who do not agree with the kinds of foreign policy ideas that I think most of us in this room are sympathetic to. So, over time maybe that will change.

Over time maybe a counter-elite will emerge. But in the short term I see very little prospect for all the big changes that most of us are hoping to see, and so for me the challenge that we face is really to find ways to develop this counter-elite than can staff an administration in the future, that has at least what we think are the views that Donald Trump holds."

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/watch-foreign-policy-in-americas-interest/

We're in a new period – a period of learning for President Trump and for those in the administration who back his anti-establishment foreign policy view. And while it is true that (as Chris Layne said) "in the short term I see very little prospect for all the big changes that most of us are hoping to see," as we move into the medium and long term, many of us are hopeful that these big Trumpian foreign policy changes can begin to be made.

Kevin , says: July 31, 2017 at 10:13 am
Shorter Ron Maxwell: good tsar, evil advisors --
Bill Smith , says: July 31, 2017 at 10:24 am
This article is sharply contradicted by an earlier and more informed article in Conservative Review, an outlet with a considerably larger audience than American Conservative. You might want to read that as a corrective to this one. You can find it here: https://www.conservativereview.com/articles/trump-nat-sec-strategy-to-translate-maga-into-foreign-policy

Money quote:

A senior administration official familiar with the work of Nadia Schadlow, a national security expert brought on to help draft the National Security Strategy, tells CR that she will attempt to produce an NSS as "iconoclastic as our new commander in chief," adding, "the era of milquetoast boilerplate is over."

Henri James , says: July 31, 2017 at 10:44 am
I do love that in all of these scenarios, Trump is just some innocent moon-eyed man child who can't possibly be expected to think on his own.
Charlie , says: July 31, 2017 at 11:27 am
The problem with the neocons is that their ambition vastly exceeds their ability. Neocons developed their minds in the Cold war dealing with a western power, the USSR. The problem is that once one enters the Middle East and Asia one is dealing with languages and cultures of which they [knew] next to nothing. How many speak Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Urdu such that they understand every nuance of what is said and unsaid?

When dealing with the arabs and many in Afghanistan everything is personnel and this can go back 5 generations and includes hundreds if not thousands of people.

Trump has the common sense not to become involved in that he does not understand.

David Skerry , says: July 31, 2017 at 11:51 am
They come back in boxes while those who sent them to their deaths remain in the bags of the "America Second" group which highjacked our Congress. It's no longer "God Bless America"; it's "God Help America."

[Jul 31, 2017] Intel Vets Challenge "Russia Hack" Evidence: they think that DNC file were leaked and not hacked

Notable quotes:
"... ..."
"... After examining metadata from the "Guccifer 2.0" July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that "telltale signs" implicating Russia were then inserted ..."
"... Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack ..."
"... Debbie Wassermann-Schultz certainly is though there is nary a peep out of the MSM over her IT staff member transferring a third of a million dollars to Pakistan, a country his wife already fled to, before being caught at the airport by police. With $12,000 in cash on hand too. I wonder if the congresswoman was 'colluding', a victim of extortion or just plain stupid? Than there is the question of who shot Seth Rich and why. ..."
"... I don't see how there can be any resolution to the alleged Russian hacking of the election and Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election memes, unless all federal government information around these matters are de-classified and released. Everyone will confirm their own biases with whatever story gets published in this opaque information environment. This is part and parcel of what Alastair Crooke notes is the self-destruction of the "center". ..."
"... '"The Awan brothers had complete and direct access to information of three extremely sensitive committees: The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Homeland Security Committee, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee." http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-23/congressional-aides-fear-suspects-it-breach-are-blackmailing-members-their-own-data "...on March 22, 2016, eight democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a letter, requesting that their staffers [Awan brothers] be granted access to Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI)." ..."
"... The Pakistani IT guys Wasserman-Schultz hired (starting in 2004 - that will have legs) had a lot of access, reportedly including TS/SCI and Debbie's iPad. It would be a neat trick if they used her as the vehicle to gain trusted access to the DNC network and her iPad to download DNC data. She would even bring it back to them on the Hill. Very convenient. ..."
"... Binney has been adamant since the beginning this was not a Russian web based hack. He was sure NSA would have seen the traffic and we would have heard about it one way or another if they had. NSA's "Moderate Confidence" in CIA's conclusions also seems to be damning with faint praise. ..."
Jul 31, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

" MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Was the "Russian Hack" an Inside Job?

Executive Summary

Forensic studies of "Russian hacking" into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

After examining metadata from the "Guccifer 2.0" July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that "telltale signs" implicating Russia were then inserted .

Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack . Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying and doctoring were performed on the East coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies [see here and here ].

Independent analyst Skip Folden, a retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology US, who examined the recent forensic findings, is a co-author of this Memorandum. He has drafted a more detailed technical report titled "Cyber-Forensic Investigation of 'Russian Hack' and Missing Intelligence Community Disclaimers," and sent it to the offices of the Special Counsel and the Attorney General. VIPS member William Binney, a former Technical Director at the National Security Agency, and other senior NSA "alumni" in VIPS attest to the professionalism of the independent forensic findings.

The recent forensic studies fill in a critical gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original "Guccifer 2.0" material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the "hand-picked analysts" from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the "Intelligence Community Assessment" dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics." VIPS

-------------

This makes a good "for the record" summary. pl

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/

Balint Somkuti, PhD , 31 July 2017 at 12:32 PM

If it is so then we are all in deep dodoo in Planet Earth.
Fred -> Balint Somkuti, PhD... , 31 July 2017 at 02:48 PM
Balint,

Debbie Wassermann-Schultz certainly is though there is nary a peep out of the MSM over her IT staff member transferring a third of a million dollars to Pakistan, a country his wife already fled to, before being caught at the airport by police. With $12,000 in cash on hand too. I wonder if the congresswoman was 'colluding', a victim of extortion or just plain stupid? Than there is the question of who shot Seth Rich and why.

Jack , 31 July 2017 at 01:04 PM
Sir,

I don't see how there can be any resolution to the alleged Russian hacking of the election and Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election memes, unless all federal government information around these matters are de-classified and released. Everyone will confirm their own biases with whatever story gets published in this opaque information environment. This is part and parcel of what Alastair Crooke notes is the self-destruction of the "center".

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/28/how-the-center-is-spinning-apart/

" ...the disputed vision which encapsulates the present U.S. civil stand-off: On the one side, the notion that diversity, freely elected sexual orientation, and identity rights, equals societal cohesion and strength. Or, on the other hand, the vision encapsulated by Pat Buchanan: that a nation (including its new-comers) are bound more by the possession of a legacy of memories, a heritage of manners, customs and culture, and an attachment to a certain "way-of-being," and principles of government. And it is this that constitutes the source of a nation's strength. "

Greco , 31 July 2017 at 01:33 PM
This is excellent work. Big kudos to VIPS. Thank you for sharing.
Eric Newhill , 31 July 2017 at 02:00 PM
Do we know whether or not President Trump actually received and read the memo?
Anna , 31 July 2017 at 02:01 PM
Meanwhile, a story of the greatest breach of the cybersecurity has been ignored by the MSM
'"The Awan brothers had complete and direct access to information of three extremely sensitive committees: The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Homeland Security Committee, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee." http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-23/congressional-aides-fear-suspects-it-breach-are-blackmailing-members-their-own-data
"...on March 22, 2016, eight democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a letter, requesting that their staffers [Awan brothers] be granted access to Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI)."
https://californiajimmy.com/2017/05/22/muslim-awan-bros-may-blackmailing-dem-congress-members-may-22-2017/
https://spectator.org/the-invisible-awan-brothers-scandal/
Emad , 31 July 2017 at 02:44 PM
Colonel,

You're absolutely right.

For the record it is; for the record it'll remain. No mountain of evidence can turn the Russia hack freak show into a debate over facts.

Lefty , 31 July 2017 at 03:08 PM
The Pakistani IT guys Wasserman-Schultz hired (starting in 2004 - that will have legs) had a lot of access, reportedly including TS/SCI and Debbie's iPad. It would be a neat trick if they used her as the vehicle to gain trusted access to the DNC network and her iPad to download DNC data. She would even bring it back to them on the Hill. Very convenient.

Binney has been adamant since the beginning this was not a Russian web based hack. He was sure NSA would have seen the traffic and we would have heard about it one way or another if they had. NSA's "Moderate Confidence" in CIA's conclusions also seems to be damning with faint praise.

[Jul 30, 2017] The USA has no authority to find the financial institutions of other sovereign nations guilty of corruption, and order them to pay huge fines to the United States its highway robbery. But now we get down to the nub of it because of the dollars status as international reserve currency

Notable quotes:
"... Diane Johnstone peels back the way the sanctions applied by the USA are likely to be the suicide note for the USD as reserve currency: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/28/collateral-damage-u-s-sanctions-aimed-at-russia-strike-western-european-allies/ ..."
"... at present other countries have no currency to flee to when Uncle Sam starts flinging his balls about. The dollar should be only one of a basket of reserve currencies of equal status, and we might see the Chinese making overtures to boost the global valuation of the yuan, although there are good reasons why it will probably not replace the dollar in our lifetimes. No reason countries should be left without a choice, though – isn't America forever blathering on about choices and how it means freedom if you have them? ..."
"... I know only nuts advance the possibility of a return to the gold standard, but I have to say it would make the world sit up and take notice if China and Russia united in a currency union backed by gold. ..."
"... A large-volume global sell-off of American dollars would put Washington in a very difficult position indeed. A popular move to a gold-backed currency would drop the bottom out of a fiat currency like the greenback. ..."
Jul 30, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Cortes , July 29, 2017 at 3:00 pm

Diane Johnstone peels back the way the sanctions applied by the USA are likely to be the suicide note for the USD as reserve currency: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/28/collateral-damage-u-s-sanctions-aimed-at-russia-strike-western-european-allies/
marknesop , July 29, 2017 at 9:04 pm
Thanks so much for that! I seem to have revealed my ignorance by asking rhetorically, earlier; "Why don't countries ordered to pay huge fines to the USA simply tell Uncle Sam to ram it up his chuff, sideways?" After all, the USA has no authority to find the financial institutions of other sovereign nations guilty of corruption, and order them to pay huge fines to the United States – it's highway robbery. But now we get down to the nub of it – because of the dollar's status as international reserve currency.

I have been saying for years that it is time for the world to dump the dollar as reserve currency, and maybe this time it will really happen. Oh, just as the reserve currency – the dollar will likely always be reserve currency, owing to the global importance of the American economy. But at present other countries have no currency to flee to when Uncle Sam starts flinging his balls about. The dollar should be only one of a basket of reserve currencies of equal status, and we might see the Chinese making overtures to boost the global valuation of the yuan, although there are good reasons why it will probably not replace the dollar in our lifetimes. No reason countries should be left without a choice, though – isn't America forever blathering on about choices and how it means freedom if you have them?

I know only nuts advance the possibility of a return to the gold standard, but I have to say it would make the world sit up and take notice if China and Russia united in a currency union backed by gold. Because although the United States is supposed to have the world's biggest gold reserves, I think many share my belief that that is all just on paper, and they really don't have more than a quarter what they say they have, perhaps less. They certainly go out of their way to squash any country which proposes trading in gold, as they did Libya and Iraq. Well, Iraq's crime was more a state-led drive to dump the greenback than it was a shift to gold, but it seemed to have the same effect.

A large-volume global sell-off of American dollars would put Washington in a very difficult position indeed. A popular move to a gold-backed currency would drop the bottom out of a fiat currency like the greenback.

yalensis , July 30, 2017 at 5:28 am
To quote that great American patriot, William Jennings Bryan:
"We shall crucify the bankers upon a cross of gold!"

[Jul 30, 2017] Lawmakers Need a Russia Sanctions Strategy with an Exit Plan

Notable quotes:
"... I've spent my entire post Soviet life believing the Jackson Vanik amendment was a hamhanded - quite literally imperialist - geopolitical tool and statement. ..."
"... So when Putin's government announced the Magnitsky Act as nothing more than a natural continuation of a US desire to wage economic warfare outside the constraints of, say, the WTO treaties it is signatory to, I agreed. ..."
"... Is this more of the same? ..."
Jul 30, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

The Russia-sanctions train appears to be accelerating out of the congressional station, which makes it highly unlikely that both chambers of the Legislative Branch will want to revisit its provisions, especially when escape from Washington's heat beckons with the forthcoming summer recess. Nevertheless, it behooves members of Congress, if they are determined to continue with this course of action (and the absolute majorities voting in favor of different versions of the sanctions in both the House of Representatives and Senate, far above the number needed to override any possible presidential veto), to take a pause and consider some changes.

Radical Pragmatist , July 29, 2017 8:54 AM

Agree. This is the same open-ended congressional stupidity as the AUMF, (unbounded perpetual war).

Russia will NEVER cede back Crimea. In that context, Congress has just baked in perpetuity Cold War II with Russia. And Trump with his feckless stupidity is all in. At a time when the obsolescent and unaffordable America as Global Cop model is unwinding.

Stick a fork in America - because it's cooked...

DmitryVedeneev , July 28, 2017 10:02 AM

I've spent my entire post Soviet life believing the Jackson Vanik amendment was a hamhanded - quite literally imperialist - geopolitical tool and statement.

So when Putin's government announced the Magnitsky Act as nothing more than a natural continuation of a US desire to wage economic warfare outside the constraints of, say, the WTO treaties it is signatory to, I agreed.

Is this more of the same? That seems a statistical probability.

[Jul 30, 2017] The Real Reason for Sanctions Stubborn Russia Wont Surrender Its Sovereignty

Jul 30, 2017 | russia-insider.com
The Real Reason for Sanctions? Stubborn Russia Won't Surrender Its Sovereignty

Regime change may not be the main aim of US sanctions against Russia!but it certainly fits the pattern Paul Goncharoff 10

In the 20th century, the use of sanctions as punitive policy became more and more popular. Franklin Roosevelt tried sanctions on Japan in 1940. Dwight Eisenhower imposed them on Britain (Suez) in 1956. Jimmy Carter smacked them on the Soviet Union after its invasion (by invitation) of Afghanistan in 1980 with a wheat embargo and an Olympic boycott. Reagan used them to protest martial law in Poland. Congress also began to see the ease of using sanctions as a cheap way of expressing a hissy fit. In 1996, for example, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Panama, Vanuatu and Venezuela all were sanctioned to one or another degree by the US for their historic relations with whales and/or dolphins. All told, it is estimated that sanctions were used in less than 25 instances during the 20 th century. Since then America has imposed more than 80 new sanctions on foreign independent, sovereign countries.

Sanctions make for headlines that show political "action", they have a feel-good aura and allow politicians to feel they are being seen and headlined as doing something. Sanctions are less wimpy than word spanking an ambassador and less gory than sending in the marines. They afford immediate satisfaction of work in progress, despite the annoying details of collateral damage. The alleged Russian violations of international norms resulted in a sanctions regime progressively imposed upon Russia. However, various legal and political scholars regard sanction regimes as basic material coercion and therefore irreconcilable with international law.

Regime change may not be the main aim of sanctions, or the norm, although it seems to fit the pattern. The morality of punishing the citizens of a foreign sovereign nation is worth a thought. It seems a kinky way to win hearts and minds. No wonder that sanctions, especially unilaterally imposed ones like America's long standing on again – off again ban on trade with Cuba, Libya, Iran, or amped up sanctions against Russia might also understandably cause friction among one's own allies.

Under current sanctions the export value from Russia to the United States for the first 5 months of 2017 amounted to $3.9 billion, while import value for the same period was $4.8 billion, a negative trade balance for Russia. The total volume of trade between Russia and the United States has been declining since 2014. In 2016, the total volume amounted to $19.9 billion, which is a drop from $29.1 billion in 2014. The 28-country EU during this same period recorded its greatest increase of trade with Russia, which overtook Switzerland as the third main source of imports for the EU. Despite western economic sanctions imposed after Crimea voted to integrate with the Russian Federation, EU exports to Russia grew 24.6 percent between January and May, driven by manufactured goods and machinery, while imports, composed principally of oil and gas, surged by 37.6 percent. This illustrates that change too is reality; perceptions and assessments move on and develop. Perceptions within the EU have certainly moved on from the emotional propaganda of 2014, to a more realistic view of what is happening in Ukraine today. It would be common sense if some thought were given right from the start to defining a clear mechanism for ending sanctions; they are easier to impose than to lift, and the sanctioned regime is unlikely to make even small concessions if these are not greeted with some quid pro quo. In any event, after years of ritual sanctioning for example the decade's long 'Jackson-Vannick' cork. Eventually fatigue sets in and the sanctioned state of affairs becomes the new normal. It can even be ended, then re-branded, say to 'Magnitsky' yet the band plays on.

The fashion today is "smart" sanctions, which try to isolate and hurt the elites of a country and not the collateralized populations. This is most often viewed by their citizenry as an insult to their nation and tends to raise a consolidating grass roots patriotic response irrespective of their brand of democratic flavor.

It is troubling that those who support and impose sanctions offer only the vaguest explanations of how they expect the imposition of economic pain to result in political gain. If one recalls the 1990's and Iraq when Western ambassadors declared that sanctions should aim to harm the Iraqi population thereby forcing Saddam Hussein to heel. At that time the then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that 500,000 children's deaths were 'worth it'. Excepting for the fact that this humanitarian disaster due to sanctions and its collateral damage did not unseat the Iraqi regime as envisioned. The ensuing 'smart' war did.

By dreaming up and using "smart" or "targeted" sanctions as ways to affect those perceived as directly responsible for disagreeing with the current status-quo, or today's flavor of what is 'normal' usually involve financial restrictions, travel bans and other inconveniences targeted at a few dozen to a few hundred individuals, companies or government entities. While it may sound like it could work, it is equally naďve. It assumes that target governments are driven entirely by the preferences of a small cabal of individuals, and that messing with their lifestyle perquisites will result in policy change. This is patently absurd, and in spite of MSM reports that may differ, even governments of an authoritarian lean are based on coalitions of social and political forces – which are often extremely broad, and shape what those governments can and cannot do.

High time a realistic assessment is made as to the quite limited capacities, not to mention legalities of engineering social and political outcomes in other sovereign governments. We need to fully appreciate the coalitions underpinning existing sovereign governments and those who are promoting alternatives to elected governments before embarking merrily on regime-change plots. It makes sense to consider how sanctions will affect these different groups and the conflicts/struggles between them. We need to be able definitively make the case of how imposing economic pain is likely to lead to changes we expect are being looked for, and whether in fact such changes are in anyone's national, economic, cultural or humanitarian interests.

These very basic assessments unsurprisingly are not being made by any state or international organization currently deploying sanctions. Sanctions therefore are being imposed based on fuzzy wishful thinking and not on defined outcomes. Given the real and often severe damage inflicted on target societies, that is highly irresponsible, frequently counter-productive, not legally justifiable and, for a policy often justified by appealing to some brand of morality, is simply unethical.

[Jul 30, 2017] The U.S. Sanctions Bill Is a Win for Russia by Angela Stent

Notable quotes:
"... The initial euphoria in some Russian circles that under Trump the Kremlin and the White House would enter into a new, friendly, pragmatic relationship, has evaporated. Putin may feel that he has to demonstrate that Russia cannot continue to respond passively to perceived insults from the United States... ..."
"... Moreover, German officials, echoed by Russians, have suggested that real agenda behind the sanctions is to boost U.S. natural gas exports to Europe. ..."
"... Let's see: "Hussein must go", "Gaddafi must go". Now "Assad must go". That is very much influencing the election and putting pressure on leaders of independent country, which is illegal, according to international law. ..."
"... The fact that the US has the UN in their pocket does not mean it's gonna be forever. ..."
"... Color revolutions in Ukraine in 1990, and 2014? Scores of CIA/FBI agents in Kiev aiding to violently oust a democratically elected president in 2014; he had to flee for his life. ..."
"... ...and on that note, isn't it interesting that Minsk II itself was incorporated by unanimous Security Council vote into UNSC Resolution 2202, yet the US speaks so casually about tossing it to the winds to placate Ukraine, after it itself voted for it and after it understood that Ukraine will never comply. ..."
"... The US uses UN resolutions like a street pimp uses 15 year old runaways ..."
"... Actually there are 1700 american diplomatic stuff in Russia and the stuff will be cut to 455. This is more like 73 per cent reduction not 60 per cent mentioned in the article. Moreover this is roughly the percentage of US diplomatic personnel spying on Russia or trying to influence Russian election. ..."
"... The real reason for all this is to increase American exports of LNG. But LNG costs a lot more which drives up the price of everything made in Europe. And by forcing Russia to export more gas to China, the US reduces the cost of energy to China. So now Europe is at even more of a disadvantage vs Chinese manufacturing. Basically this is a Lose-Lose-Lose situation for Europe. ..."
"... Once the US loses its dollar as the international trading currency, it will actually have to earn the monies used to purchase foreign goods. Now it is being printed out of thin air. Once that happens, inflation will skyrocket, severally taking down the US economy. Only a matter of time... ..."
"... It has been printed out of air since 1972. Most transactions are denominated in it because this nation has been politically stable for much of its existence. If we collapse everyone collapses. ..."
"... Johnny-boy, according to American MSM Russia quite easily outmaneuvers CIA and FBI cyber-security and gets to decide who becomes the President of the United States. Isn't it why the Congress passed the sanctions? ..."
"... It's the US and most specifically, the neocon PNAC-positive subculture and its unwitting supporters, that cannot tolerate an independent Russia (or any country of consequence for that matter) and resorts to any and all tools in its toolkit to assuage its intolerance, coup d'etats, election-meddling, blatant propaganda, sparking and fueling wars, civil and otherwise, endless sanctions (the kid sister to embargoes which are acts of war). ..."
"... Give the author some slack. Would she fail to repeat the mandatory russophobic Credo - her article would be censored in any politically approved media. She knows she is lying, it is just a required ticked to be printed in NI or any American media ..."
"... reminder the West backed the infinitely more corrupt Yeltsin regime in the nineties, which was basically a get rich quick scheme for Russian jews (OY VEY ANTI-SEMITISM ALERT). ..."
"... America ultimately does not care about corruption (Washington is incredibly corrupt - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ ... - there are plenty of allies like Columbia, Turkey, Pakistan, etc where every evil Russia is accused of finds even greater expression. Washington does not care about 'unilateral border changes' either, since it unilaterally changed the borders of Yugoslavia and her successor states for geopolitical advantage, tolerates NATO ally Turkey meddling in Cyprus and Syria, illegally occupies Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, illegally invaded Iraq, and protects Israeli land grabs in the Golan and so on. ..."
"... Russian corruption and foreign policy is a 'problem' for neocon trolls like Karol because Russia is sovereign, unlike the tame regimes that run Western Europe. A political elite at odds with Washington is intolerable for the Globo-homo Internationale. .. ..."
Jul 30, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

The surprise about the Russian Foreign Ministry's announcement of Russian sanctions on U.S. diplomats and embassy properties is that they did not come sooner. The usual practice during the Cold War and after was that any diplomatic expulsion on either side was met with a symmetrical response. Indeed, in December, after the Obama administration expelled thirty-five Russian diplomats and closed down two embassy compounds to punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, Foreign Minister Lavrov appeared the next day on television brandishing a list of thirty-five American diplomats whom he advised President Putin to expel. But Putin surprised the world by announcing, "While we reserve the right to take reciprocal measures, we're not going to downgrade ourselves to the level of irresponsible 'kitchen' diplomacy." Clearly the Kremlin believed that once President Trump took office the sanctions would be rescinded and relations would improve, so why not be magnanimous?

...The downturn in relations is largely for domestic reasons on both sides. The incessant stream of investigations into ties between the U.S. president's family and close advisors and different Russian individuals!plus the 2016 election!has made Russia a toxic subject in Washington, DC. In an unusual alliance between congressional Republicans and Democrats, the Senate passed by 98–2 a bill codifying and expanding existing sanctions, which were initially imposed under Obama after the annexation of Crimea by executive order, because they want to remove from Trump the ability to lift these sanctions unilaterally. Congress would now have to approve any modification of the sanctions regime. This kind of legislation is a blunt instrument. Once passed, as the history of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment shows (it remained in place for thirty-eight years), it will probably stay on the books for longer than necessary and remove the flexibility and leverage that a president could have in dealing with Russia.

Domestic factors have also influenced Russia's response. Russian nationalism has become a potent force. Putin faces re-election in March and, while his popularity remains high, his appeal rests largely on his foreign-policy accomplishments, showing that Russia is a respected world power and that he is a strong leader. The initial euphoria in some Russian circles that under Trump the Kremlin and the White House would enter into a new, friendly, pragmatic relationship, has evaporated. Putin may feel that he has to demonstrate that Russia cannot continue to respond passively to perceived insults from the United States...

...The U.S. sanctions bill, designed to hurt Russia, may have unintended consequences for the United States. As currently written, it will not only continue to penalize Russia but will also penalize American and European businesses because of its restrictions on energy projects that involve Russian companies. Specifically, the bill seeks to prevent the construction of the Nord Stream Two gas pipeline that would export Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Europe. Germany supports the pipeline as the most cost-effective way to meet future gas demand, as do most,but certainly not all, of its EU partners. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, has warned that the sanction bill "could have unintended unilateral effects that impact the EU's energy security interests." He added that "if our concerns are not taken into account sufficiently, we stand ready to act appropriately within a matter of days." Moreover, German officials, echoed by Russians, have suggested that real agenda behind the sanctions is to boost U.S. natural gas exports to Europe. Some EU officials have warned that the EU may rethink its own sanctions regime, carefully designed with the Obama administration, if the United States moves forward with the bill. This, of course, would be good news for the Kremlin.

Angela Stent directs the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University and is the author of The Limits of Partnership: U.S-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century .

Mr Russian , July 29, 2017 12:41 AM

"The irony, of course, is that Russia has brought this upon itself through its actions in Ukraine and during the U.S. election campaign."
The irony is that the author does not see (or pretends not to see) that the US does the same thing (and even worse).

Let's see: "Hussein must go", "Gaddafi must go". Now "Assad must go". That is very much influencing the election and putting pressure on leaders of independent country, which is illegal, according to international law. I'm not even gonna count how many countries were bombed "in the name of democracy", which is also illegal. The fact that the US has the UN in their pocket does not mean it's gonna be forever.

Willem Post -> Mr Russian , July 29, 2017 9:25 AM

Mr. Russian,

Exactly correct. How many times did the US interfere by installing friendly Juntas, in south and middle America? Several dozen times? The various "Color Revolutions" financed with US money to add former soviet states the EU/US/NATO orbit, so the EU could sell goods and services to them instead of Russia, and so NATO could supply them with arms instead of Russia?

Color revolutions in Ukraine in 1990, and 2014? Scores of CIA/FBI agents in Kiev aiding to violently oust a democratically elected president in 2014; he had to flee for his life.

Russia peacefully annexed Crimea AFTER the vast majority of the Crimean population voted for it, including many Ukrainians and some Tartars living in Crimea; population 65% ethnic Russian, 25% Ukrainian, 10% Tartar.

The CIA installing the Shah in Iran?

Serbian American , July 29, 2017 5:56 PM

Every time we (USA) do something based on lies and propaganda is a good news for Russia. Which is exactly how every time Soviet Union did something based on lies and propaganda was a good news for USA.

Also, how funny ... most of establishment politicians in USA keep pointing out a Russian "annexation" of Crimea. Yet, none of them have any problem with Bill Clinton using military force, bombing Yugoslavia for 70 days and recognizing independence of Kosovo. Let me just remind you which laws and chapters BiIl Clinton violated: USA Constitution, NATO chapter, Helsinki agreement, War Powers resolution ...

Michael DeStefano -> Serbian American , July 30, 2017 12:00 AM

....and UN Res. 1244 but that was just a convenience to wipe the egg off of Clinton's face on day 78, AFTER he himself insisted on pushing it through.

...and on that note, isn't it interesting that Minsk II itself was incorporated by unanimous Security Council vote into UNSC Resolution 2202, yet the US speaks so casually about tossing it to the winds to placate Ukraine, after it itself voted for it and after it understood that Ukraine will never comply.

The US uses UN resolutions like a street pimp uses 15 year old runaways ,

Robert Gowland -> Serbian American , July 29, 2017 6:11 PM

Well, once Russia starts writing larger checks than Riyadh is writing today the US politicians will suddenly "discover a discrepancy" - until then we'll have a (unjust) status quo. "FOLLOW THE MONEY"!

Donald Fbulu , July 28, 2017 10:51 PM

Actually there are 1700 american diplomatic stuff in Russia and the stuff will be cut to 455. This is more like 73 per cent reduction not 60 per cent mentioned in the article. Moreover this is roughly the percentage of US diplomatic personnel spying on Russia or trying to influence Russian election.

Politolog Externista -> Donald Fbulu , July 29, 2017 7:07 PM

murrican hypocrisy knows no bounds. Whatever they accuse others of they do worse, but there is no proof their accusations have any factual basis, only hoping that 100 times repeated lie becomes fact. USA the nazi-like empire, where facts don't matter as much as wishful thinking.

TheOtherDonald -> Guest , July 29, 2017 9:42 AM

Good post, and most of what you said is true. The real reason for all this is to increase American exports of LNG. But LNG costs a lot more which drives up the price of everything made in Europe. And by forcing Russia to export more gas to China, the US reduces the cost of energy to China. So now Europe is at even more of a disadvantage vs Chinese manufacturing. Basically this is a Lose-Lose-Lose situation for Europe.

Namey McName -> Guest , July 28, 2017 10:35 PM

Knock yourself out, Boris. You may see yourself in competition with the US, but there really is no competition. You will return to the failed Soviet policies, and we will continue to advance.

Duendao Namey -> McName , July 29, 2017 12:50 AM

The only thing that advances in US Is the trillions of it's debt.

TheOtherDonald -> Duendao , July 29, 2017 9:44 AM

And our debt is already so large that we cannot even pay the interest on it if interest rates were to rise to what they were in the Jimmy Carter Administration. We are a failed nation unless we can keep interest rates low.

siberiankitten -> TheOtherDonald , July 29, 2017 9:04 PM

30 year Treasuries yield indicates that the market is not freakinf out. And under the current interest rates servicing the debt is cheaper than under Reagan

Namey McName -> Duendao , July 29, 2017 4:23 PM

So, who cares if the debt is rising, and how do you think that it harms the US?

Allan -> Namey McName , July 29, 2017 7:29 PM

You will care, among every one else who lives in the USofA. Once the US loses its dollar as the international trading currency, it will actually have to earn the monies used to purchase foreign goods. Now it is being printed out of thin air. Once that happens, inflation will skyrocket, severally taking down the US economy. Only a matter of time...

Namey McName -> Allan , July 30, 2017 2:23 AM

It has been printed out of air since 1972. Most transactions are denominated in it because this nation has been politically stable for much of its existence. If we collapse everyone collapses.

That debt out there keeps the world under control. It is the greenback in your pocket, but it's not worth anything. Every currency traded on the open market works the same way. What matter is debt to GDP, and ours is fairly low still. Japan has ten times the debt to GDP ratio. The yen is still worth money.

Allan -> Namey McName , July 30, 2017 11:17 AM

Certainly, we have been printing money for a long time. Other nations could not get away with such practices as hyper inflation would surely follow. The fact that the US controls the IMF, World Bank and, pretty much the world's money supply, allows us to set the interest rates to artificially ridiculously low levels in order to service our outstanding debt levels with minimum costs. If/when the US dollar loses its special status to a basket of international currencies we'll lose our ability to set conditions for the world financial markets.

That is why the emerging Chinese-led BRICS banking system appears to be a deadly threat to the US economy and, in turn, to its world hegemony.

Just this week CIA head, Mike Pompeo, declared China as the #1 threat to the US. When asked, he further indicated that it was the Chinese economic progress that threatened the US. Christine Legarde, head of IMF, backed this up by predicting that the IMF could move to Bejing within 5 years. The writings are on the wall....

Mr Russian -> Namey McName , July 29, 2017 12:19 AM

Johnny-boy, according to American MSM Russia quite easily outmaneuvers CIA and FBI cyber-security and gets to decide who becomes the President of the United States. Isn't it why the Congress passed the sanctions?

Also Russia is the best supplier of natural gas to the EU. In fact it's so good that the Congress tries to use dirty tricks that might delay Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
You are right the US is in no position to compete with Russia, hence the hysteria in American establishment.

Michael DeStefano -> Namey McName , July 29, 2017 9:48 AM

Intelligent talking points met with sophomoric cookie cutter drivel. That's the extent of your understanding of the universe I'm afraid.

It's the US and most specifically, the neocon PNAC-positive subculture and its unwitting supporters, that cannot tolerate an independent Russia (or any country of consequence for that matter) and resorts to any and all tools in its toolkit to assuage its intolerance, coup d'etats, election-meddling, blatant propaganda, sparking and fueling wars, civil and otherwise, endless sanctions (the kid sister to embargoes which are acts of war).

You reap what you sow, kiddo. No excuses. Problem is, they drag most Americans into it with no true understanding of their motives or the consequences. It's THEY who should be sanctioned. Quarantined, even better.

Michael DeStefano , July 29, 2017 12:19 AM

The irony, dear author, is...that the US, just as it did in Syria by arming salafist jihadis to pressure Assad to step down and turned Syria into a nightmare, it fomented, backed, trained and financed the European banderite-fascist equivalent of Middle Eastern salafist jihadis to overthrow a duly-elected, OSCE sanctioned president and instead of insisting new elections occur in six months time as the EU had so laboriously negotiated, subverted democracy in the name of hegemonic dreams, shot itself in the foot, slipped in its own poo, hoisted itself by its own petard, singlehandedly resurrected the cold war and worse and still can't come to grips with its own culpability in it all.

THAT madam, is the irony of it all.

The Arioch -> Michael DeStefano , July 29, 2017 11:28 AM

Give the author some slack. Would she fail to repeat the mandatory russophobic Credo - her article would be censored in any politically approved media. She knows she is lying, it is just a required ticked to be printed in NI or any American media

Michael DeStefano The Arioch , July 30, 2017 12:58 AM

That's entirely true. Woe is the state of journalism today. Big Brother or one of his other brothers watches over them all.

Michael DeStefano Namey McName , July 30, 2017 2:06 AM

Ask Sessions. I suppose he should just emulate the democrats and their neocon cohorts by building cases on innuendo and speculation provided by a coterie of 'anonymous sources' and no proof of consequence and have their faithful media editors redact any news to the contrary.

A free press does not mean the freedom to press your agenda by any and all means available, in case you weren't aware.

I regret that I have to give you rudimentary lessons in civics but apparently, someone has to.

Politolog Externista Namey McName , July 29, 2017 7:00 PM

Messing in your politics ? You were supposed to vote in Hitlery and you got Trump. These politicians mean that meddling is having RT and Sputnik in English so you can form an opinion different than ordained by the deep state oligarchy. They want to punish you for not having Hitlery as president. It is very disturbing when a warmoínger, mass murderer, friend of now slain Al-Baghdadi who is photographed with McCain is somehow a positive person. USA is trying to meddle in politics of each country because they think might makes right. If EU peoples throw your NATO out and become independent, no more US vassals, seeking their own interests not US first EU last, because USA is the land of evil and of corruption to the bone. Your evil drives sane people from you. The wicked love you, the sane are disgusted. Nobody likes imperialist yanks. Nobody likes their terrorist friends. No Obama or Trump or swamp.

The Arioch -> Namey McName , July 29, 2017 11:48 AM

The million barrels question is how prevent american messing in the rest of the world's politics and elections... Which punishment to DC regime would be enough to bring freedom to the world?

Mark Thomason , July 30, 2017 11:34 AM

The US Embargo Act of 1807 did great damage to Northeast shipping interests, and commerce more generally. However, it became a huge boost to Northeast manufacturing interests. The US economy diversified, and new businesses were established to do what had been imported. Prices were higher at first, and quality was down at first, but the Embargo Act effectively protected the start up of the US post-colonial economy.

Western experts have long maintained that Russia needs to diversify its economy, away from exports of oil, gas, and raw materials, into the sort of manufacturing that would displace imports. That is harder for Putin to control and loot, and generally a lot harder to do than Putin's political machine has been able to do.

Now we are in effect giving them that. We've imposed on them their Embargo Act advantage, and are forcing them to do what we know they should do to be stronger against us.

This may hurt them in the short term, but it will hurt us in the long term, and we've been saying this for a long time now.

enoch arden -> Mark Thomason , July 30, 2017 4:31 PM

Quite true. The Russian farmers are going to erect a statue of Obama for the sanctions which greatly boosted the Russian agriculture by restricting import. The same effect will be on the industrial production. The only class in Russia who will lose on that are the local Compradors doing business on import and promoting the foreign control over the Russian market,

Wyrdless -> Karol Czenko , July 29, 2017 2:20 PM

The poles just opened a new LNG terminal to import US LNG.

They want options and i imagine know what it's like more than most to be under Russian influence

Che Lemur -> Karol Czenko , July 29, 2017 7:55 PM

reminder the West backed the infinitely more corrupt Yeltsin regime in the nineties, which was basically a get rich quick scheme for Russian jews (OY VEY ANTI-SEMITISM ALERT).

America ultimately does not care about corruption (Washington is incredibly corrupt - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ ... - there are plenty of allies like Columbia, Turkey, Pakistan, etc where every evil Russia is accused of finds even greater expression. Washington does not care about 'unilateral border changes' either, since it unilaterally changed the borders of Yugoslavia and her successor states for geopolitical advantage, tolerates NATO ally Turkey meddling in Cyprus and Syria, illegally occupies Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, illegally invaded Iraq, and protects Israeli land grabs in the Golan and so on.

Russian corruption and foreign policy is a 'problem' for neocon trolls like Karol because Russia is sovereign, unlike the tame regimes that run Western Europe. A political elite at odds with Washington is intolerable for the Globo-homo Internationale. ..

The rule of law and corruption have consistently improved under Putin, who reformed an oligarchic state into a illiberal democracy WITH corruption problems (understandable after 70 years of Soviet mismanagement and a decade of robber baron capitalism - eliminating social habits takes time). The worst nightmare for the US is actually a Russia free of corruption.

[Jul 30, 2017] Are the Latest Russia Sanctions Really About Forcing US LNG on Europe?

Notable quotes:
"... Of course they are; and it's so bloody transparent that nobody is fooled. Please check the link below: http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/eu-ready-retaliate-if-us-imposes-new-russia-sanctions/ri20467 ..."
"... The U.S. is waging full scale war against Russia; economic sanctions are war and Japan attacked Pearl Harbour for almost identical sanctions on oil and energy imports. Vladimir Putin is the Cool Hand Luke of Russia; let hope the outcome is not like the movie. The E.U. seems to have had a recent spinal transplant; let's just see how it plays out ..."
"... The Western, eastern stuff is irrelevant. Russia isn't the aggressor in the situation. Putin will enjoy a population much more willing to stand against U.S. aggression which is largely dependent on an ignorant U.S. population. ..."
"... Merkel will be under pressure as these sanctions are simply a tax on EU citizens and corporations to support American corporate profits without providing better products. Given the EU political structure and the lack of a "cool" President, I suspect the next Congressional delegation will be shocked to find they aren't well received. ..."
"... I personally doubt that the Blob/US financial interests are 'jealous' of them -- they just think that Russia, like other countries, should kowtow to them, and allow them to buy whatever part of the Russian society and economy and land they like. ..."
"... I had thought of it the other way around: that the insistence on unprofitable fracking was to support America as a world power. Got to have some way to bribe Europe away from the Russians. Is there actually enough gas to do that? I know there's quite a bit. ..."
"... The Dragon in the Sea ..."
Jul 26, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Anti Schmoo , July 26, 2017 at 5:17 am

Are the Latest Russia Sanctions Really About Forcing US LNG on Europe?

Of course they are; and it's so bloody transparent that nobody is fooled. Please check the link below: http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/eu-ready-retaliate-if-us-imposes-new-russia-sanctions/ri20467

Anti Schmoo , July 26, 2017 at 5:30 am

The U.S. is waging full scale war against Russia; economic sanctions are war and Japan attacked Pearl Harbour for almost identical sanctions on oil and energy imports. Vladimir Putin is the Cool Hand Luke of Russia; let hope the outcome is not like the movie. The E.U. seems to have had a recent spinal transplant; let's just see how it plays out

Anti Schmoo , July 26, 2017 at 5:34 am

I dare say, Russia is more self sufficient than the U.S. and almost every other country on the planet. Do the research; it's very enlightening.
The U.S. is a very jealous hegemon and can't bear this reality

Foppe , July 26, 2017 at 6:31 am

It's also got half the population, and a far less diversified economy (fwtw), so it's not exactly a apples to apples comparison.

Anti Schmoo , July 26, 2017 at 8:43 am

Have you ever thought to question your comparitive references? Most views of Russia are western-centric in the extreme. Russia is not western or European in any sense of that reality; Russia is a very different culture/s and sees things drastically different than the western-centric POV. Just sayin

NotTimothyGeithner , July 26, 2017 at 9:14 am

The Western, eastern stuff is irrelevant. Russia isn't the aggressor in the situation. Putin will enjoy a population much more willing to stand against U.S. aggression which is largely dependent on an ignorant U.S. population.

Merkel will be under pressure as these sanctions are simply a tax on EU citizens and corporations to support American corporate profits without providing better products. Given the EU political structure and the lack of a "cool" President, I suspect the next Congressional delegation will be shocked to find they aren't well received.

Foppe , July 26, 2017 at 10:38 am

I'm confused. Who was it who brought up "Russia is more self-sufficient than the US and almost every other country on the planet? That implies that you feel self-sufficiency (with respect to certain metrics) is something that one should value. Let's say other people do not share that meta value: does that then mean they are wrong?

I personally doubt that the Blob/US financial interests are 'jealous' of them -- they just think that Russia, like other countries, should kowtow to them, and allow them to buy whatever part of the Russian society and economy and land they like.

Mel , July 26, 2017 at 10:08 am

I had thought of it the other way around: that the insistence on unprofitable fracking was to support America as a world power. Got to have some way to bribe Europe away from the Russians. Is there actually enough gas to do that? I know there's quite a bit.

Damson , July 27, 2017 at 1:13 am

Yes indeed.

It's looking like quite the little diplomatic spat between the EU and Capitol Hill.

Here's the Russian envoy to the EU on talks to ban funding by EU banks for US business, if the US law is declared invalid in the EU :
http://tass.com/politics/957927

Note the bill bans not just business with Russians in Europe, but also Eurasia.

OBOR is clearly a target too.

So are the Chinese going to pipe up?

For this is nothing less than gloves – off imperialism .

timbers , July 26, 2017 at 6:38 am

Anyone know if it's possible the German's will act w/o the EU? In other words, unilaterally?

I'm asking because the article says EU may not be the "required" unanimous in responding to the U.S. sanctions & LNG so there may not be an official EU retaliation (though it seems there was much stronger opposition to the EU imposing Russian sanctions in 2014 in the first place but supposedly that was a "unanimous" decision).

Will Germany be a total puppet to the U.S.? Or might it start to move towards Russia which seems to be in Germany's business interest?

Ignacio , July 26, 2017 at 7:52 am

Germany wants to ensure stable gas supply for as long as possible. A pipeline thas goes through the sea and does not depend on third countries that migth disconnect the pipeline (like Ukrania) allows for a durable contract. So the US is not only intefering with russian interests but with german ones. I don't think Germany considers US shale LNG supply a robust enough alternative competitive in price and duration with russian gas. My guess is that in this case, Germany won't be a total puppet.

No spine no pain , July 26, 2017 at 9:05 am

Anti Schmoo put it very well "The E.U. seems to have had a recent spinal transplant"

EU has been following every global US initiative enthusiastically even though it only hurts Europeans: wars and invasions, TTIP, TiSA, CETA etc.

On top of being emasculated and spineless with regards to national and continental interests the current leaders of EU are neoliberals so they don't care about a new 'market solution' for gas. Will subsidize the higher prices for companies while the citizens pay the price.

Mel , July 26, 2017 at 11:30 am

:) q.v. Frank Herbert's very old novel The Dragon in the Sea (aka Under Pressure .) Being by Frank Herbert, it's about psychology, but it's also about petroleum pirating by submarine. Yeah, I guess the price per barrel must have been pretty high.

Harry , July 26, 2017 at 7:28 pm

The pipelines that go under the sea have lower capacities. They work to reduce the impact of ukrainians et al blackmailing gas supplies. They do not eliminate the need to route gas overland.

ZeWorldIsMine , July 26, 2017 at 6:52 am

Sadly, Sigmar Gabriel's word means nothing.

He's an opportunitist and may advocate something one day and oppose it the next day.
He is absolutely not trustworthy. A total pushover.
And I wouldn't expect much from the rest of the german government, too.

The german media could pick it up and put pressure on politicians.
But due to the pathetic state the germain mainstream media are in (with exceptions),
I expect they'll just stop bringing up this issue and let people forget about it.

Maybe other european countries will be more resistant, maybe

Clive , July 26, 2017 at 7:25 am

Plus Japan -- a big LNG importer historically as it has no conventional energy sources of its own -- is going to lessen its LNG demand as the nuclear restart gathers pace. Whatever you might think of the safety aspects, Japan has 50+gW of embedded nuclear generating capacity with a residual economic life of 20+ years on average. It is simply inconceivable that this plant, much of which, unlike Fukushima which was end-of-life, is mid-life and has decades of viable reactor runtimes available, will be mothballed and decommissioned without generating another kW of power ever again.

The LNG glut will only continue and probably get noticeably worse once all, or at least the vast majority, of Japanese reactors are brought back on line, which will be 5 years from now at the outer limit. Cutting off Russian gas into Europe (and the rest of the world) will be a big plus for the US. LNG liquefaction plant is a massive capital outlay, has big fixed costs and is highly operationally geared, so even small reductions below peak output have a big hit on plant profitability. It is those "wheels" the US plant operators will want to keep turning. Conversely, the regasification plants (based in EU countries) don't need to operate flat out, they're designed to have peaks and troughs as LNG consignments come in and get processed, then sit around for a bit waiting for the next one. Which, again, is why the US is bothered about restricting Russian supply, the EU not so much.

rjs , July 26, 2017 at 8:24 am

there is no surplus US LNG to be forced on Europe, it's a myth we are still importing more natural gas from Canada than we are exporting to Mexico and liquifying for export moreover, our own natural gas production has been falling year over year for 15 months straight i wrote about exactly this situation two weeks ago:
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/great-us-natural-gas-exports-myth-6112
all the data is included. you can repost it if you want.
we are contracting to sell US natural gas at below the cost of US production, and it's gonna come back and bite US natgas users big time when a shortage develops here..

ambrit , July 26, 2017 at 8:39 am

IS natgas users would be anyone who uses American electricity, right? Another 'regressive' tax on the way. Really, this is not New Cold War oriented, but Class War materiel.
Time for work.

rjs , July 26, 2017 at 10:10 am

there's been a gradual shift back to coal for generating over the past half year or so whether that's because of price or because the utilities see what's coming i couldn't tell you..

Yves Smith Post author , July 26, 2017 at 5:43 pm

See the comments above, the US is flaring a ton of gas now due to supposedly to lack of delivery mechanisms.

rjs , July 26, 2017 at 6:24 pm

maybe i'm projecting too much, but i see us heading down the same path that Australia took


How energy-rich Australia exported its way into an energy crisis
- Australia exported 62% of its gas production last year, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Yet its policy makers didn't ensure enough gas would remain at home. As exports increased from new LNG facilities in eastern Australia, some state governments let aging coal plants close and accelerated a push toward renewable energy for environmental concerns. That left the regions more reliant on gas for power, especially when intermittent sources such as wind and solar weren't sufficient. Shortages drove domestic gas prices earlier this year in some markets in eastern Australia to as high as $17 per million British thermal units for smaller gas users such as manufacturers. On the spot market, gas prices have gone from below $1 in 2014 to roughly $7 today .. In March, Australia's largest aluminum smelter cut production and laid off workers because it said it couldn't secure enough cheap energy.

the problem is that we are are contracting to export natural gas at today's low prices, which wont pay for tomorrow's production..

Carolinian , July 26, 2017 at 8:36 am

Perhaps the most interesting and depressing thing is that 419 to 3 vote. Who were these heroes who dared to defy the Blob?

Clearly defeating Hillary was not enough. TPTB will have their war with Russia–cold or hot–or bust.

NotTimothyGeithner , July 26, 2017 at 9:35 am

The U.S. much like Team Blue hid behind our "cool" President and 9/11 for so long, no one knows how to act. This is a trade war where we picked a fight with our most loyal vassals on behalf of one industry which needs to be replaced anyway. Do you remember Hollande? He joined with Obama against "OMG Russia." Macron's honey moon is over.

Vatch , July 26, 2017 at 10:00 am

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll413.xml

The 3 no voters were Justin Amash of Michigan, John Duncan of Tennessee, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. All are Republicans.

Carolinian , July 26, 2017 at 11:20 am

Thanks.

p7b , July 26, 2017 at 9:27 am

One aspect of the US natgas pipeline situation !

Due to resignations early in the Trump administration, and refusal of the Senate to approve new FERC nominees, the FERC, whose approval is needed for building interstate energy transport infrastructure, now lacks a quorum (having only 1 of the minimum 3 members out of 5 total). A number of pipeline projects originating in marcellus were approved around end of 2016 prior to the resignations, and are due to come on line in 2018, but many dozens more are now awaiting permitting -- both for domestic use and to transport to LNG export, as the piece above states.

The other interesting thing is that in the past, the explicit strategy of the US was to use domestic natgas domestically, but no longer, it seems.

Pipelines would raise prices at the wellhead and lower prices elsewhere in the country. If the lack of approval goes on for a few more years, it may have an impact on: the battle between natgas and wind for the medium-term dominance of newly added utility scale electric generation in the US, and the timing of how fast we can retire coal electric.

Lastly, besides Russia, Qatar is also a major natgas exporter to Europe, so they'll get their gas either way, they'll just pay more. A points of reference there -- I belive Germany is currently using coal as its main domestic baseload electric fuel – as prices were relatively high until recently, they're using NG for home heating only. Now everyone needs to retire coal for obvious reasons.

JohnnyGL , July 26, 2017 at 10:28 am

Jamming up FERC shouldn't be underestimated. They've got a huge amount of discretionary authority to blast through state and local laws and regulations at will. It's amazing how the oil/gas industry gets 1-stop shopping for all it's regulatory requirements.

oh , July 26, 2017 at 10:15 am

It's sickening to see how much power the Petroleum companies have over Congress. Bribes work well in our country. We need a wholesale re-haul of CON gress.

TheCatSaid , July 26, 2017 at 10:19 am

Regarding possible EU development of a spine, a recent George Webb video from just about 3 days ago said he's been told by some of his IC sources that Germany has been printing DMs on the quiet. I take this with a pinch of salt but it's intriguing nonetheless. If true, Germany must also be looking at the IT issue as well.

yan , July 26, 2017 at 11:14 am

EU is still threatening to cancel Poland voting rights for 1 year, even after the President vetoed the legislation regarding judiciary reform (which was to my understanding the main bone, albeit the country is keen on going full Adolph). Maybe it has something to do with this?

vidimi , July 26, 2017 at 11:25 am

i thought the president signed the bill despite saying he would veto it?

vidimi , July 26, 2017 at 11:23 am

thanks for this article, it's really a remarkable powerplay. the stakes are so high that it's unfathomable that it doesn't backfire spectacularly. this looks like an exercise in hubris that future historians will be long discussing.

more than forcing the EU to use american LNG, it is an attempt to force the EU to back american efforts to replace assad in syria. remember, syria is what stands in the way between bahraini/saudi gas and oil pipelines to europe.

the US is already at war against russia, they just haven't yet started shooting at each other. but also, any chinese silk road to europe will have to use russian assets and infrastructure, so this, potentially, affects them, too.

dcblogger , July 26, 2017 at 2:46 pm

Trump Is Being Moved Aside So That Conflict with Russia Can Proceed
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/07/26/trump-moved-aside-conflict-russia-can-proceed/

Rosario , July 26, 2017 at 3:54 pm

All stupidity with the Russia hysteria aside this may be all the faster at forcing a move to renewables in the US. NG is the bounciest of all carbon based fuels WRT price. Once they start pumping US NG into more foreign markets the price will climb, which will squeeze utilities that have moved en mass into NG based generation and prove that renewables are even more cost effective. Petty politics may end up having a silver lining 5 years down the road, and at this point I am open to any route to renewables, even the sloppiest, unintentional ones.

Synapsid , July 26, 2017 at 6:43 pm

Rosario,

If exporting US NG causes its price to rise domestically, utilities that had been using coal can shift back to it. That happened recently.

Rosario , July 26, 2017 at 7:43 pm

Sure, but the ball is in another (higher) cup as the cost graphs go. I suspect it is going to get increasingly difficult to transition back and forth with the lowering costs of renewables. Also, coal is not getting any cheaper to extract and it definitely hasn't reduced its externalities. We'll see, big utilities move in herds and it takes years to make a full transition. They may flood back to coal, and build new plants (I doubt it), but they will eventually get burnt and have to swing back again. In the absence of purposeful national level policy (what I prefer) this is the only way the market based approach will turn away from fossil fuels.

Olaf Lukk , July 26, 2017 at 4:02 pm

"Instruments of political sanctions should not be connected with economic interests"?

This echoes the rationalizations of Wall Street when they crashed the economy in '08. Let's not let politics interfere with the right to make money?

The sanctions against Russia were put in place in response to its annexation of Crimea and its support of insurrection in Eastern Ukraine. They have been extended, and expanded, in response to Russian meddling in the recent presidential election. To what extent their cyber warfare had an effect is debatable, but Trump's stonewalling on the issue practically guaranteed the lopsided vote on the latest sanctions.

The LNG issue has some valid points, but it ignores an issue which I have not seen addressed on Naked Capitalism: Just how much is Trump- and those in his administration (infested with alumni of the vampire squid)- beholden to Putin and his fellow oligarchs?

Trump appears to be the Pied Piper of Putin Patsies. I can't help but wonder why.

Yves Smith Post author , July 26, 2017 at 5:51 pm

Crimea was not "annexed". The US destabilized Ukraine. The government in Kiev came in as a result of a coup even thought elections were scheduled for a mere six weeks later and Yanukovich would clearly have been voted out. The new government tore up the current constitution and went through no legal process whatsoever to do that. That is not the behavior of a legitimate government.

Even though neo-Nazis are a very small percentage of the voters, they got 15% of government positions. The head of the defense department gave a speech in which he encouraged ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians of Russian origin, saying that any soldiers who removed them could keep their property.

Crimea petitioned to join Russia after a referendum that approved of that move by a large margin. The US used precisely the same mechanism with Kosovo. Are you about to call that an annexation?

We have repeatedly discussed how the idea that Russia has influence over Trump is nonsense.

Better trolls, please.

GeorgW , July 26, 2017 at 8:26 pm

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-what-does-russiagate-look-like-to-russians-w493462# -Amazed, that you never linked this

Yves Smith Post author , July 27, 2017 at 12:33 am

I'm not omniscient and I've been unable to read for more than a week due to an eye injury, as Lambert told readers.

Lambert Strether , July 27, 2017 at 12:47 am

Did you suggest it at the time? The newsflow is a gusher right now. It's simply not possible to give notice to everything. So do feel free to stifle your amazement.

Adding, it is a very good story (although I'm not a Russia hand). So readers may enjoy it even at this late date which was, I take it, the real point of your comment.

TheCatSaid , July 26, 2017 at 9:48 pm

Plus the assertion of Russian "meddling" in the 2016 election was never proven–it was only asserted and repeated ad nauseum. Recent investigations have shown that in fact the DNC and Podesta emails were insider leaks, they were not outsider hacks. The technical analysis showed evidence that Russian "footprints" had been specifically inserted to cause Russia to be blamed.

In contrast the US has a well-established track record of meddling in other countries elections and setting up regime change in various ways. Ukraine is one example, as Yves described. There are many others, think of the US-sponsored coups in Latin America. They seem to be trying to pull off another coup in Venezuela since their 2002 attempt didn't work out. And Obama didn't hesitate to publicly endorse Macron just a couple days before the French election.

jo6pac , July 26, 2017 at 10:11 pm

Thank You, Thank You

Lambert Strether , July 27, 2017 at 12:52 am

> the Pied Piper

Highly unfortunate, then, that the Clinton campaign maneuvered to have Trump as their opponent, using just that phrase ("Pied Piper") .

clarky90 , July 26, 2017 at 9:16 pm

"the latest US sanctions against Russia, which passed the House today by a 419-3 margin ".

and

"Republicans and Democrats agreed almost unanimously, by 97 votes to 2 , to impose new sanctions on Russia in the Senate on Wednesday"

I have been a member of many organizations, and do not recall seeing this kind of "unanimity" when voting on significant and controversial resolutions. Clearly, a majority of US Americans want peace, particularly with Russia (a Christian democracy). How and why did the People's Representatives/Senators find the "courage" to vote against the People's wishes??? Hmmmmmmmm?

To put the vote into a context, 77 years ago; on

" ..July 14–15, 1940 – Rigged elections held in Latvia and the other Baltic states. Only one pre-approved list of candidates was allowed for elections for the "People's Parliament". The ballots held following instructions: "Only the list of the Latvian Working People's Bloc must be deposited in the ballot box. The ballot must be deposited without any changes." The alleged voter activity index was 97.6% . Most notably, the complete election results were published in Moscow 12 hours before the election closed. Soviet electoral documents found later substantiated that the results were completely fabricated. Tribunals were set up to punish "traitors to the people." those who had fallen short of the "political duty" of voting Latvia into the USSR. Those who failed to have their passports stamped for so voting were allowed to be shot in the back of the head.

July 21, 1940 – The fraudulently installed Saeima meets for the first time. It has only one piece of business!a petition to join the Soviet Union. (The consideration of such an action was denied throughout the election.) The petition carried unanimously. .."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_Latvia_in_1940

Is the Neo-NKVD whipping the Senate and USA House members into voting in the "correct" way?

It is the nearly 100% vote that bothers me- Not what I would expect in a free and open minded democracy.

Olaf Lukk , July 29, 2017 at 4:03 am

So the US congress voted almost unanimously to impose sanctions because they were worried that otherwise, they would be shot in the back of the head?

Makes perfect sense to me!

Mark W. , July 27, 2017 at 1:10 am

Read Petrodollar Warfare and The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony for a start and a lot of this will become more clear. The Iraq war, the U.S. instigated coup in Ukraine, U.S. backed attempt at regime change in Syria and the demonization of Russia all concern oil supplies and who will be allowed to supply what to whom, and more importantly in what currency such sales will be denominated. All of this stuff is about trying to maintain the dollar's reserve currency status. Isn't this becoming clear by now. Americans are still trying to understand why they invaded Iraq. Was it WMDs, Al Qaeda, to bring freedom and democracy to the towel heads? Hussein decided in 2000 that Iraqi oil sales would be denominated in Euros, three years later he was conveniently dead.

Yves Smith Post author , July 27, 2017 at 3:09 am

While I agree that the US has hegemonic aspirations, the petrodollar thesis is all wet.

Since the 1600s at least, countries have pursued mercantilist policies. That means first of all that they like running trade surpluses. That allows them to have more jobs than their own economies would support, keeping their citizens happy. They can also be net savers without having a drag on the domestic economy.

But who will be the chump that exports jobs and has crappy growth to accommodate the mercantlists? The US has signed up for that role, in large measure because the US cares more about the 1%, the 0.1%, and the interest of US multinationals than its citizens.

As long as everyone else wants to run trade surpluses and we are the only big player willing to run sustained trade deficits, the dollar will remain the reserve currency. China has absolutely zero interest in running trade deficits despite pining after the cachet of having the reserve currency. The Eurozone maybe could have been a contender, but not with Germany being fiercely mercantlist and Germany's insistence on not rebalancing within the Eurozone creating perceived breakup risk.

mark , July 27, 2017 at 3:19 am

@Yves
In order to answer your question to German language readers in the article.
There are several differences this time compared to previous instances of perhaps controversial US-policy in Europe.
First of all the official positions of the German and Austrian government as well as the EU-Commission are in harsh opposition to the bill while previously only opposition politicians or fringe business interests voiced negative opinions.
Secondly the issue has been spread around in the relevant German business press a great deal, yesterday alone about a dozen news agency reports were published, all with pretty much the same tone and content. It has also been picked up by the op-ed pages in the papers today. This is in stark contrast to previous instances like a leader from Die Linke blaming the refugee crisis on US wars in 2015, Nato expansion to the east and troop build up in the Baltic or the planned upgrade of US nuclear weapons stationed in Germany. All three topics are out of mainstream discussion and anyone bringing up a negative opinion, like the mentioned politician from Die Linke, is ridiculed.
Thirdly while the EU needs the approval of all members to establish sanctions it could do a great deal to prosecute a trade war via executive decisions by the EU-Commission alone. While there has been no official indication how the threatened retaliation is going to look like several simple measures come to mind. For instance the EU could suspend the EU-US privacy shield agreement thereby increasing the cost of doing business in the EU for US companies by a significant amount, it would also be likely that cartell/market dominance investigations might result in harsher fines for US companies and more restricted mergers, something which has been brought up by EU officials sometime ago is to require all foreign or only US banking and maybe other financial institutions to be seperate concerns with full capitalisation and no dependencies on the US-holdings.

To summarise: it looks like a significant amount of the German "business community" is not amused and views the bill as a direct attack on its interests and tries to use their influence with the goverment against it. This raises the likelihood of something more than mere talk to above 0%. In any case the image of the US has taken another hit, this time with a group of people with mostly very positive opinions about close US-German relations.

Yves Smith Post author , July 27, 2017 at 5:51 am

This is VERY helpful. Thanks so much!

Damson , July 27, 2017 at 5:04 pm

Of course, the gas suppliers won't necessarily be in US – others plan to benefit from the Russian sanctions :

http://m.dw.com/en/eu-to-cut-gas-dependency-on-russia-with-israel-pipeline/a-38269274

What do people think the Syria carve – up is really about?

vidimi , July 26, 2017 at 11:23 am

thanks for this article, it's really a remarkable powerplay. the stakes are so high that it's unfathomable that it doesn't backfire spectacularly. this looks like an exercise in hubris that future historians will be long discussing.

more than forcing the EU to use american LNG, it is an attempt to force the EU to back american efforts to replace assad in syria. remember, syria is what stands in the way between bahraini/saudi gas and oil pipelines to europe.

the US is already at war against russia, they just haven't yet started shooting at each other. but also, any chinese silk road to europe will have to use russian assets and infrastructure, so this, potentially, affects them, too.

dcblogger , July 26, 2017 at 2:46 pm

Trump Is Being Moved Aside So That Conflict with Russia Can Proceed
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/07/26/trump-moved-aside-conflict-russia-can-proceed/

Rosario , July 26, 2017 at 3:54 pm

All stupidity with the Russia hysteria aside this may be all the faster at forcing a move to renewables in the US. NG is the bounciest of all carbon based fuels WRT price. Once they start pumping US NG into more foreign markets the price will climb, which will squeeze utilities that have moved en mass into NG based generation and prove that renewables are even more cost effective. Petty politics may end up having a silver lining 5 years down the road, and at this point I am open to any route to renewables, even the sloppiest, unintentional ones.

Synapsid , July 26, 2017 at 6:43 pm

Rosario,

If exporting US NG causes its price to rise domestically, utilities that had been using coal can shift back to it. That happened recently.

Rosario , July 26, 2017 at 7:43 pm

Sure, but the ball is in another (higher) cup as the cost graphs go. I suspect it is going to get increasingly difficult to transition back and forth with the lowering costs of renewables. Also, coal is not getting any cheaper to extract and it definitely hasn't reduced its externalities. We'll see, big utilities move in herds and it takes years to make a full transition. They may flood back to coal, and build new plants (I doubt it), but they will eventually get burnt and have to swing back again. In the absence of purposeful national level policy (what I prefer) this is the only way the market based approach will turn away from fossil fuels.

Olaf Lukk , July 26, 2017 at 4:02 pm

"Instruments of political sanctions should not be connected with economic interests"?

This echoes the rationalizations of Wall Street when they crashed the economy in '08. Let's not let politics interfere with the right to make money?

The sanctions against Russia were put in place in response to its annexation of Crimea and its support of insurrection in Eastern Ukraine. They have been extended, and expanded, in response to Russian meddling in the recent presidential election. To what extent their cyber warfare had an effect is debatable, but Trump's stonewalling on the issue practically guaranteed the lopsided vote on the latest sanctions.

The LNG issue has some valid points, but it ignores an issue which I have not seen addressed on Naked Capitalism: Just how much is Trump- and those in his administration (infested with alumni of the vampire squid)- beholden to Putin and his fellow oligarchs?

Trump appears to be the Pied Piper of Putin Patsies. I can't help but wonder why.

Yves Smith Post author , July 26, 2017 at 5:51 pm

Crimea was not "annexed". The US destabilized Ukraine. The government in Kiev came in as a result of a coup even thought elections were scheduled for a mere six weeks later and Yanukovich would clearly have been voted out. The new government tore up the current constitution and went through no legal process whatsoever to do that. That is not the behavior of a legitimate government.

Even though neo-Nazis are a very small percentage of the voters, they got 15% of government positions. The head of the defense department gave a speech in which he encouraged ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians of Russian origin, saying that any soldiers who removed them could keep their property.

Crimea petitioned to join Russia after a referendum that approved of that move by a large margin. The US used precisely the same mechanism with Kosovo. Are you about to call that an annexation?

We have repeatedly discussed how the idea that Russia has influence over Trump is nonsense.

Better trolls, please.

[Jul 30, 2017] Russia sanctions fuel new Cold War

Notable quotes:
"... Whatever you think of Vladimir Putin, or Donald Trump, for that matter, they are the presidents of the world's nuclear superpowers. Piling sanctions on Russia means escalating tensions. And that's extremely dangerous. ..."
"... Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ..."
"... Democratic lawmakers rightly deride Republicans for their "climate change denial," but both parties are locked into a kind of "nuclear war denial" in relation to Russia. The latest sanctions bill is part of an obsession with denouncing Russia that leaves scant room for considering how to reduce the dangers of nuclear war between the two countries. ..."
"... Norman Solomon is an author and a co-founder of RootsAction.org , an online activist group. ..."
Jul 30, 2017 | www.usatoday.com
Whatever you think of Putin or Trump, they're presidents of nuclear superpowers: Opposing view

The drive to put more sanctions on Russia might feel good. But fueling a new Cold War can only propel the United States in the wrong direction. It's time to turn away from a collision course, not step on the gas.

Whatever you think of Vladimir Putin, or Donald Trump, for that matter, they are the presidents of the world's nuclear superpowers. Piling sanctions on Russia means escalating tensions. And that's extremely dangerous.

When this year began, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its risk-estimate Doomsday Clock closer to apocalyptic midnight than at any time since 1953. "The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon," the Bulletin 's expert panel warned.

If new sanctions target Russia, the predictable results will include angry responses from the Kremlin and more polarized attitudes in both countries -- damaging the prospects for any détente while boosting a spiral of mutual hostility.

Democratic lawmakers rightly deride Republicans for their "climate change denial," but both parties are locked into a kind of "nuclear war denial" in relation to Russia. The latest sanctions bill is part of an obsession with denouncing Russia that leaves scant room for considering how to reduce the dangers of nuclear war between the two countries.

On Russia sanctions, applaud Congress

Such a war would be horrific. "A war fought with the deployed U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals would leave Earth virtually uninhabitable," according to Steven Starr, a former member of the Physicians for Social Responsibility national board.

In a warning last winter, former Defense secretary William Perry said, "We're going back to the kind of dangers we had during the Cold War." Those concerns are even more relevant and urgent now: "We are starting a new Cold War. We seem to be sleepwalking into this new nuclear arms race ."

While parading for sanctions against Russia, the sleepwalkers on Capitol Hill are endangering the future of humanity.

Norman Solomon is an author and a co-founder of RootsAction.org , an online activist group.

[Jul 30, 2017] Obama chickens come home to roost

In December, President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and seized two estates, one on Long Island and one on Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, in response to Russia's interference in the presidential election the month before. Moscow did not respond at that time. it waited till 8 month till the end of July.
The Russian foreign ministry now demanded that Washington cut its diplomatic presence in Russia by September to 455 -- the same number Moscow has in the US.
Jul 30, 2017 | www.nytimes.com

Putin, Responding to Sanctions, Expels 755 U.S. Diplomats - The New York Times By NEIL MacFARQUHARJ

MOSCOW - President Vladimir V. Putin announced on Sunday that 755 American diplomats would be expelled from Russia by Sept. 1

... ... ...

Speaking in a television interview on the Rossiya 1 network, Mr. Putin said that Russia's patience in waiting for improved relations with the United States had worn out.

"We waited for quite some time that maybe something will change for the better, had such hope that the situation will somehow change, but, judging by everything, if it changes, it will not be soon,"

[Jul 30, 2017] the Ukrainingate emerging from the evidence on Hillary campaign sounds like a criminal conspiracy of foreign state against Trump

Highly recommended!
That probably explains that Trump was initially very cold toward Ukraine and needed to be kicked by neocon to produce the necessary sounds. He knew.
Jul 30, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

turcopolier , 26 July 2017 at 07:18 PM

FB Ali

Would you agree that this sounds like a criminal conspiracy? pl

FB Ali -> turcopolier ... , 26 July 2017 at 07:21 PM
I would!

But I'm surprised that no one 'official' is treating it as such.

Richardstevenhack -> FB Ali ... , 26 July 2017 at 07:21 PM
There is some ramp up of calls to investigate the "Ukraine Connection"...

Senator Asks DOJ About Democrats' Work With Ukraine To Smear Trump Campaign
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/24/senator-asks-doj-about-democrats-work-with-ukraine-to-smear-trump-campaign/

Also, Christopher Wray was asked about this and said he might look into it:

UH OH: Trump's FBI Nominee Says He May Investigate Clinton Collusion
http://www.hannity.com/content/2017-07-13-uh-oh-trumps-fbi-nominee-says-he-may-investigate-clinton-collusion/

Going down that rabbit hole just might result in exposing a DNC-Clinton-CrowdStrike-Ukraine actual collusion...

[Jul 30, 2017] The likeliest and most obvious choice for Trump on how to escape the Mueller trap seems to have eluded Pat Buchanan: starting a war in the Middle East

Notable quotes:
"... With Trump quite clearly only concerned with his own well-being, the diversion of a patriotic war is the prime choice in times of trouble. The only question that remains is how will his generals will look at the option of getting involved in yet another ruinous war. A war that could have very dangerous implications and unpredictable outcomes. ..."
Jul 30, 2017 | www.unz.com

DannyMarcus > , July 30, 2017 at 12:49 pm GMT

@Diversity Heretic

My conclusion is that the Deep State is winning. Even I've getting numb and increasingly less interested in the twists and turns of who's investigating whom and why and what are the likely consequences.

I'm reminded of the quote attribute to Lavrentiy Beria: "Show me the man and I will find you the crime."

The likeliest and most obvious choice for Trump on how to escape the Mueller trap seems to have eluded Pat Buchanan: starting a war in the Middle East to overshadow or bury all investigations into the president's wrongdoings. Engineering a war with Iran would fit the bill perfectly.

With Trump quite clearly only concerned with his own well-being, the diversion of a patriotic war is the prime choice in times of trouble. The only question that remains is how will his generals will look at the option of getting involved in yet another ruinous war. A war that could have very dangerous implications and unpredictable outcomes.

[Jul 30, 2017] Mainstream News Manipulation of US Public

McGovern thinks that it was Brennan boys who hacked into DNC as a part of conspiracy to implicate Russia and to secure Hillary win. One of the resons was probably that DNC servers were not well protected and there were other hacks, about whihc NSA know. So the sad state of DNC internet security needed to be swiped under the carpet and that's why CrowdStike was hired.
NSA created 7 million lines of code for penetration and that includes those that were pablished by Wikileaks and designed to imitate that attackers are coming (and using the language) from: China, North Korea, Iran and Russia.
Also NSA probably intercepts and keeps all Internet communications for a month or two so if it was a hack NSA knows who did it and what was stolen
But the most unexplainable part was that fact that FBI was denied accessing the evidence. I always think that thye can dictate that they need to see in such cases, but obviously this was not the case.
Notable quotes:
"... She couldn't pack a school gymnasium while Trumps rallies were packed with 10's of thousands. ..."
Jul 30, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Anna C 1 month ago

LEGAL, WIKIMEDIA V. NSA Discussing fake news and the NSA lawsuit at Yale | https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/06/16/fake-news-nsa-lawsuit-yale/

Tracy Spose 1 month ago

Love the rest of the talk, but no way did Hillary win. No way did she get the popular vote.

The woman was calling for war and reinstating the draft on men and women. She couldn't pack a school gymnasium while Trumps rallies were packed with 10's of thousands.

[Jul 30, 2017] Luke Rosiak reported in May about Wasserman Schultz appearing to threaten Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa with "consequences" if he did not return a laptop Awan owned that his officers had seized

Notable quotes:
"... Other House Democrats had started dumping Awan around the same time, but Wasserman Schultz stuck with him, despite his reported banning from the House IT network over the investigation." ..."
Jul 30, 2017 | www.unz.com

annamaria , July 30, 2017 at 12:14 pm GMT

More on the real scandal involving the DNC and IT blackmailer. The MSM is quiet on this:

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/26/7-fast-facts-imran-awan-wasserman-schultzs-jailed-vendor/

"Imran Awan, the Pakistan-born IT vendor to several top House Democrats under investigation since February, was arrested allegedly trying to flee the United States Tuesday .

Luke Rosiak, who has been spearheading this story since February, reported in May about Wasserman Schultz's appearing to threaten Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa with "consequences" if he did not return a laptop Awan owned that his officers had seized.

Other House Democrats had started dumping Awan around the same time, but Wasserman Schultz stuck with him, despite his reported banning from the House IT network over the investigation."

[Jul 30, 2017] Yes, Buchanan and others needs to be briefed by VIPS, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Ray McGovern, leader of the group that includes former NSA says that the supposed "hack" was a leak

Notable quotes:
"... First this breaks the narrative as concerns a hack, it could not have been it was a leak, but more importantly is the issues of a weaponizing of the Intelligence agencies to take actions to blame it on the Russians using as it is in the Vault 7 Wikileaks data about such cyberwarfare .. ..."
Jul 30, 2017 | www.unz.com

Bruce Marshall > , July 30, 2017 at 3:39 am GMT

@anonymous Yes, Buchanan and others needs to be briefed by VIPS, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Ray McGovern, leader of the group that includes former NSA says that the supposed "hack" was a leak

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/

With a companion by Scott Ritter

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/time_to_reassess_roles_of_guccifer_20_and_russia_in_dnc_hack_20170727

First this breaks the narrative as concerns a hack, it could not have been it was a leak, but more importantly is the issues of a weaponizing of the Intelligence agencies to take actions to blame it on the Russians using as it is in the Vault 7 Wikileaks data about such cyberwarfare ..

Operational in crimes that are treasonous and go back to the Obama Administration.

https://larouchepac.com/20170727/every-tree-forest-will-fall

[Jul 30, 2017] Rumors have started about a 2nd Special Prosecutor to investigate the DNC hack

At the moment, the talk is about DNC scuttling Bernie. But if it gets going, how long before they get to DNC/Crowdstrike/Ukraine .? [And then there's DWS and the Awan bros.]
If Trump wants to survive he should FIGHT! He call out the Deep State explicitly, using the words "Deep State." and explaining machinations to the public. This creates a risk for his life, but still this is the only way he can avoid slow strangulation by Muller.
Notable quotes:
"... In explicit terms Trump should call out the Deep State – he should use the words "Deep State." ..."
"... Mueller is Deep Sate - he is an elite - if he comes up with things that have nothing to do with Russia and the election - Trump should pardon whoever - case closed. ..."
"... Murmurs have started about a 2nd Special Prosecuter – to investigate the DNC. At the moment, the talk is about DNC scuttling Bernie. But if it gets going, how long before they get to DNC/Crowdstrike/Ukraine .? [And then there's DWS and the Awan bros.] ..."
"... Lee Stranahan names names [Clinton, McCain, CIA, the Media, Soros....] ..."
Jul 30, 2017 | www.unz.com

RobinG , July 30, 2017 at 4:19 pm GMT

AT LAST .

HOUSE (20 MOC's signed) CALL TO INVESTIGATE CLINTON & DNC

US House Judiciary Committee requests DoJ appoint second Special Prosecutor (PDF)

https://judiciary.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/072717_HJC-Letter-to-AG-DAG.pdf

RobinG , July 30, 2017 at 7:41 am GMT

@Art Trump should FIGHT!

In explicit terms Trump should call out the Deep State – he should use the words "Deep State."

Mueller is Deep Sate - he is an elite - if he comes up with things that have nothing to do with Russia and the election - Trump should pardon whoever - case closed.

Trump should say that right now - put the onus on Mueller to do the right thing and not take down the election over small nothings.

Peace --- Art

... ... ...

Murmurs have started about a 2nd Special Prosecuter – to investigate the DNC. At the moment, the talk is about DNC scuttling Bernie. But if it gets going, how long before they get to DNC/Crowdstrike/Ukraine .? [And then there's DWS and the Awan bros.]

Lee Stranahan names names [Clinton, McCain, CIA, the Media, Soros....]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4q-sHJCGCk

LEE STRANAHAN: ALEX JONES INFOWARS

[Jul 29, 2017] Alyokhina memoirs and vaginal liberation of food incident

Notable quotes:
"... "She' written a "memoir" entitled "Riot Days", albeit she confesses that "writing a memoir at 27 is blasphemy"" ..."
"... "Strange looking feminist. I thought she was a singer in a punk band?" ..."
"... Voina were not pals with those who liked to call themselves the Moscow branch of Voina, namely the sent-down from MGU philosophy student Pete the Pedo and his philosophy student wife Nadya. In fact, serious accusations were made by the one and only genuine St. Pete Voina that Pete was not only a thief (he nicked one of their laptops and the data it contained, they said) but also a police informer. ..."
Jul 29, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

July 26, 2017 at 10:01 am

Moscow Exile , July 26, 2017 at 10:01 am

Remember this "feminist punk rocker"? She' written a "memoir" entitled "Riot Days", albeit she confesses that "writing a memoir at 27 is blasphemy". In her memoir, she whinges about her imprisonment in a colony. (That's a "gulag" amongst Western prestitutes.)

See: Написать мемуары в 27 лет – это кощунство

Strange looking feminist. I thought she was a singer in a punk band?

Evgeny , July 26, 2017 at 10:10 am
Kinda like acknowledging everything great that happened to her is in the past? That's wise thinking. I doubt she has any future as a musician.
Lyttenburgh , July 26, 2017 at 11:50 am
"She' written a "memoir" entitled "Riot Days", albeit she confesses that "writing a memoir at 27 is blasphemy""

Was she stoned then?

"Strange looking feminist. I thought she was a singer in a punk band?"

Nah, she's a walking repository for the frozen chickens. What?! If what Pavlensky does constitutes "art", surely what she did is art as well! Somehow

Moscow Exile , July 26, 2017 at 12:54 pm
Please don't mistake her for the woman who stuffed a supermarket frozen broiler chicken up her vagina and was filmed whilst doing this in a Petersburg supermarket aisle.

This error of identity made on this site provided grist to the infamous Peter's mill, he who often just posted the caustic comment "idiot" and who claimed he knew the name of the extremely stupid woman who performed this act (a dangerous thing to do), though as, usual, he wouldn't reveal her name, and it wasn't Alyokhina (above).

I found out who the chicken-in-the-pussy woman was was, but I have forgotten her name now.

She was one of the Petersburg Voina gang, and after the chicken performance she debunked, as did at the same time another leading light of Voina, to Finland, I think.

Voina were not pals with those who liked to call themselves the Moscow branch of Voina, namely the sent-down from MGU philosophy student Pete the Pedo and his philosophy student wife Nadya. In fact, serious accusations were made by the one and only genuine St. Pete Voina that Pete was not only a thief (he nicked one of their laptops and the data it contained, they said) but also a police informer.

See [warning: definitely not for family viewing!]: Vaginal Liberation of Food


The artist: not Alyokhina. The performance was called "How to snatch a chicken".

[Jul 29, 2017] Alyokhina memoirs and vaginal liberation of food incident

Notable quotes:
"... "She' written a "memoir" entitled "Riot Days", albeit she confesses that "writing a memoir at 27 is blasphemy"" ..."
"... "Strange looking feminist. I thought she was a singer in a punk band?" ..."
"... Voina were not pals with those who liked to call themselves the Moscow branch of Voina, namely the sent-down from MGU philosophy student Pete the Pedo and his philosophy student wife Nadya. In fact, serious accusations were made by the one and only genuine St. Pete Voina that Pete was not only a thief (he nicked one of their laptops and the data it contained, they said) but also a police informer. ..."
Jul 29, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

July 26, 2017 at 10:01 am

Moscow Exile , July 26, 2017 at 10:01 am

Remember this "feminist punk rocker"? She' written a "memoir" entitled "Riot Days", albeit she confesses that "writing a memoir at 27 is blasphemy". In her memoir, she whinges about her imprisonment in a colony. (That's a "gulag" amongst Western prestitutes.)

See: Написать мемуары в 27 лет – это кощунство

Strange looking feminist. I thought she was a singer in a punk band?

Evgeny , July 26, 2017 at 10:10 am
Kinda like acknowledging everything great that happened to her is in the past? That's wise thinking. I doubt she has any future as a musician.
Lyttenburgh , July 26, 2017 at 11:50 am
"She' written a "memoir" entitled "Riot Days", albeit she confesses that "writing a memoir at 27 is blasphemy""

Was she stoned then?

"Strange looking feminist. I thought she was a singer in a punk band?"

Nah, she's a walking repository for the frozen chickens. What?! If what Pavlensky does constitutes "art", surely what she did is art as well! Somehow

Moscow Exile , July 26, 2017 at 12:54 pm
Please don't mistake her for the woman who stuffed a supermarket frozen broiler chicken up her vagina and was filmed whilst doing this in a Petersburg supermarket aisle.

This error of identity made on this site provided grist to the infamous Peter's mill, he who often just posted the caustic comment "idiot" and who claimed he knew the name of the extremely stupid woman who performed this act (a dangerous thing to do), though as, usual, he wouldn't reveal her name, and it wasn't Alyokhina (above).

I found out who the chicken-in-the-pussy woman was was, but I have forgotten her name now.

She was one of the Petersburg Voina gang, and after the chicken performance she debunked, as did at the same time another leading light of Voina, to Finland, I think.

Voina were not pals with those who liked to call themselves the Moscow branch of Voina, namely the sent-down from MGU philosophy student Pete the Pedo and his philosophy student wife Nadya. In fact, serious accusations were made by the one and only genuine St. Pete Voina that Pete was not only a thief (he nicked one of their laptops and the data it contained, they said) but also a police informer.

See [warning: definitely not for family viewing!]: Vaginal Liberation of Food


The artist: not Alyokhina. The performance was called "How to snatch a chicken".

[Jul 29, 2017] Russia puts the USA on notice that it must reduce its Embassy personnel to the same manning levels as serve at the Russian Embassy in Washington

Notable quotes:
"... About time that Russia retaliated, the US interprets restraint and patience with weakness. Trump is beholden to the US Deep State with respective to US imperial and aggressive foreign policy. As much as Trump would like to reset relations with Russia and establish a modus vivendi with Russia. The US Deep State will simply not allow it, far too many people in the US political, military, intelligence, media, academia and think tank establishment have vested financial and career interests in maintaining enmity with Russia. ..."
Jul 29, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

July 28, 2017

Warren , July 28, 2017 at 3:51 am

Russia has retaliated to new US sanctions by telling Washington to cut its diplomatic staff to 455 and barring the use of some properties.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40751973

About time that Russia retaliated, the US interprets restraint and patience with weakness. Trump is beholden to the US Deep State with respective to US imperial and aggressive foreign policy. As much as Trump would like to reset relations with Russia and establish a modus vivendi with Russia. The US Deep State will simply not allow it, far too many people in the US political, military, intelligence, media, academia and think tank establishment have vested financial and career interests in maintaining enmity with Russia.

marknesop , July 28, 2017 at 7:49 pm
Meanwhile, Russia puts the USA on notice that it must reduce its Embassy personnel to the same manning levels as serve at the Russian Embassy in Washington – 455.

Washington of course refuses to say how many people work at the US Embassy in Russia: state secret, you know, national security, could affect the lives of Americans. But Tefft is reported to be not at all happy, while Russian sources say 'hundreds' will have to leave.

[Jul 29, 2017] Collateral Damage

Notable quotes:
"... République en marche ..."
Jul 29, 2017 | www.unz.com

Do they know what they are doing? When the U.S. Congress adopts draconian sanctions aimed mainly at disempowering President Trump and ruling out any move to improve relations with Russia, do they realize that the measures amount to a declaration of economic war against their dear European "friends"?

Whether they know or not, they obviously don't care. U.S. politicians view the rest of the world as America's hinterland, to be exploited, abused and ignored with impunity.

The Bill H.R. 3364 "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" was adopted on July 25 by all but three members of the House of Representatives. An earlier version was adopted by all but two Senators. Final passage at veto-overturning proportions is a certainty.

This congressional temper tantrum flails in all directions. The main casualties are likely to be America's dear beloved European allies, notably Germany and France. Who also sometimes happen to be competitors, but such crass considerations don't matter in the sacred halls of the U.S. Congress, totally devoted to upholding universal morality.

Economic "Soft Power" Hits Hard

Under U.S. sanctions, any EU nation doing business with Russia may find itself in deep trouble. In particular, the latest bill targets companies involved in financing Nord Stream 2, a pipeline designed to provide Germany with much needed natural gas from Russia.

By the way, just to help out, American companies will gladly sell their own fracked natural gas to their German friends, at much higher prices.

That is only one way in which the bill would subject European banks and enterprises to crippling restrictions, lawsuits and gigantic fines.

While the U.S. preaches "free competition", it constantly takes measures to prevent free competition at the international level.

Following the July 2015 deal ensuring that Iran could not develop nuclear weapons, international sanctions were lifted, but the United States retained its own previous ones. Since then, any foreign bank or enterprise contemplating trade with Iran is apt to receive a letter from a New York group calling itself "United Against Nuclear Iran" which warns that "there remain serious legal, political, financial and reputational risks associated with doing business in Iran, particularly in sectors of the Iranian economy such as oil and gas". The risks cited include billions of dollars of (U.S.) fines, surveillance by "a myriad of regulatory agencies", personal danger, deficiency of insurance coverage, cyber insecurity, loss of more lucrative business, harm to corporate reputation and a drop in shareholder value.

The United States gets away with this gangster behavior because over the years it has developed a vast, obscure legalistic maze, able to impose its will on the "free world" economy thanks to the omnipresence of the dollar, unrivaled intelligence gathering and just plain intimidation.

European leaders reacted indignantly to the latest sanctions. The German foreign ministry said it was "unacceptable for the United States to use possible sanctions as an instrument to serve the interest of U.S. industry". The French foreign ministry denounced the "extraterritoriality" of the U.S. legislation as unlawful, and announced that "To protect ourselves against the extraterritorial effects of US legislation, we will have to work on adjusting our French and European laws".

In fact, bitter resentment of arrogant U.S. imposition of its own laws on others has been growing in France, and was the object of a serious parliamentary report delivered to the French National Assembly foreign affairs and finance committees last October 5, on the subject of "the extraterritoriality of American legislation".

Extraterritoriality

The chairman of the commission of enquiry, long-time Paris representative Pierre Lellouche, summed up the situation as follows:

"The facts are very simple. We are confronted with an extremely dense wall of American legislation whose precise intention is to use the law to serve the purposes of the economic and political imperium with the idea of gaining economic and strategic advantages. As always in the United States, that imperium, that normative bulldozer operates in the name of the best intentions in the world since the United States considers itself a 'benevolent power', that is a country that can only do good."

Always in the name of "the fight against corruption" or "the fight against terrorism", the United States righteously pursues anything legally called a "U.S. person", which under strange American law can refer to any entity doing business in the land of the free, whether by having an American subsidiary, or being listed on the New York stock exchange, or using a U.S.-based server, or even by simply trading in dollars, which is something that no large international enterprise can avoid.

In 2014, France's leading bank, BNP-Paribas, agreed to pay a whopping fine of nearly nine billion dollars, basically for having used dollar transfers in deals with countries under U.S. sanctions. The transactions were perfectly legal under French law. But because they dealt in dollars, payments transited by way of the United States, where diligent computer experts could find the needle in the haystack. European banks are faced with the choice between prosecution, which entails all sorts of restrictions and punishments before a verdict is reached, or else, counseled by expensive U.S. corporate lawyers, and entering into the obscure "plea bargain" culture of the U.S. judicial system, unfamiliar to Europeans. Just like the poor wretch accused of robbing a convenience store, the lawyers urge the huge European enterprises to plea guilty in order to escape much worse consequences.

Alstom, a major multinational corporation whose railroad section produces France's high speed trains, is a jewel of French industry. In 2014, under pressure from U.S. accusations of corruption (probably bribes to officials in a few developing countries), Alstom sold off its electricity branch to General Electric.

The underlying accusation is that such alleged "corruption" by foreign firms causes U.S. firms to lose markets. That is possible, but there is no practical reciprocity here. A whole range of U.S. intelligence agencies, able to spy on everyone's private communications, are engaged in commercial espionage around the world. As an example, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, devoted to this task, operates with 200 employees on an annual budget of over $30 million. The comparable office in Paris employs five people.

This was the situation as of last October. The latest round of sanctions can only expose European banks and enterprises to even more severe consequences, especially concerning investments in the vital Nord Stream natural gas pipeline.

This bill is just the latest in a series of U.S. legislative measures tending to break down national legal sovereignty and create a globalized jurisdiction in which anyone can sue anyone else for anything, with ultimate investigative capacity and enforcement power held by the United States.

Wrecking the European Economy

Over a dozen European Banks (British, German, French, Dutch, Swiss) have run afoul of U.S. judicial moralizing, compared to only one U.S. bank: JP Morgan Chase.

The U.S. targets the European core countries, while its overwhelming influence in the northern rim – Poland, the Baltic States and Sweden – prevents the European Union from taking any measures (necessarily unanimous) contrary to U.S. interests.

By far the biggest catch in Uncle Sam's financial fishing expedition is Deutsche Bank. As Pierre Lellouche warned during the final hearing of the extraterritorial hearings last October, U.S. pursuits against Deutsche Bank risk bringing down the whole European banking system. Although it had already paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the State of New York, Deutsche Bank was faced with a "fine of 14 billion dollars whereas it is worth only five and a half. In other words, if this is carried out, we risk a domino effect, a major financial crisis in Europe."

In short, U.S. sanctions amount to a sword of Damocles threatening the economies of the country's main trading partners. This could be a Pyrrhic victory, or more simply, the blow that kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. But hurrah, America would be the winner in a field of ruins.

Former justice minister Elisabeth Guigou called the situation shocking, and noted that France had told the U.S. Embassy that the situation is " insupportable " and insisted that "we must be firm".

Jacques Myard said that "American law is being used to gain markets and eliminate competitors. We should not be naďve and wake up to what is happening."

This enquiry marked a step ahead in French awareness and resistance to a new form of "taxation without representation" exercised by the United States against its European satellites. They committee members all agreed that something must be done.

That was last October. In June, France held parliamentary elections. The commission chairman, Pierre Lellouche (Republican), the rapporteur Karine Berger (Socialist), Elisabeth Guigou (a leading Socialist) and Jacques Myard (Republican) all lost their seats to inexperienced newcomers recruited into President Emmanuel Macron's République en marche party. The newcomers are having a hard time finding their way in parliamentary life and have no political memory, for instance of the Rapport on Extraterritoriality.

As for Macron, as minister of economics, in 2014 he went against earlier government rulings by approving the GE purchase of Alstom. He does not appear eager to do anything to anger the United States.

However, there are some things that are so blatantly unfair that they cannot go on forever.

exiled off mainstreet > , July 29, 2017 at 4:40 am GMT

It looks like the rest of the world is going to have to bring down the economic yankee imperium or be destroyed themselves.

Randal > , July 29, 2017 at 9:01 am GMT

there are some things that are so blatantly unfair that they cannot go on forever.

LOL! Naďve, I think. As long as European countries (and the UK) are prepared to carry on acting as Washington's bitches, Washington will go on treating them as such.

The political, media and business elites need to be thoroughly cleansed of US apologists. That won't be easy, especially when Europe and the UK are in the grip of an ideologically anti-nationalist culture that is essentially treasonous and utterly lacking in national self-respect.

Ending NATO and suppressing the US-backed anti-Russian propaganda that keeps Europe and the UK subordinate would be the bare minimum first steps, along with cooperating with China and Russia to promote and use financial systems independent of the dollar.

or even by simply trading in dollars, which is something that no large international enterprise can avoid

The countries that are regularly targeted for US bullying are building structures that avoid vulnerability. European countries and the UK need to join with them in doing so (though it's unlikely they will be trusted very far given their track records of collaboration with Washington).

Also companies that decline to deal in the US market should be protected and supported, on national security grounds. It should be straightforwardly illegal in all sovereign countries for the US to try to impose its laws on any company merely for dealing in dollars, and the US should be held directly responsible when its courts seek to do so. US extraterritoriality has always been a gross intrusion into and threat to national sovereignty.

In 2014, France's leading bank, BNP-Paribas, agreed to pay a whopping fine of nearly nine billion dollars, basically for having used dollar transfers in deals with countries under U.S. sanctions.

Ideally this kind of extortion will be to some extent counterbalanced by retaliatory extractions from US business assets such as Google and Facebook.

entering into the obscure "plea bargain" culture of the U.S. judicial system, unfamiliar to Europeans. Just like the poor wretch accused of robbing a convenience store, the lawyers urge the huge European enterprises to plea guilty in order to escape much worse consequences

The US plea bargain system is a disgrace to any kind of concept of justice and basically means that no US confessions or guilty pleas can be regarded as meaningful, and nor should any sovereign country agree to extradition of its own citizens to the US. It is basically a system of organised blackmail, coerced confessions and corruption of witnesses.

El Dato > , July 29, 2017 at 9:24 am GMT

Well, Europe could consider all of these payouts to the US as "reparations for Nazi atrocities". This will make it go down easier, after all who wouldn't want to enslave himself to Yankees to repair Nazi atrocities?

Meanwhile, self-flaggelation goes on

Anonymous, July 29, 2017 at 1:11 pm GMT

Western European allies?

Nice choice of words, but fiction-supporting. Under-surerainty would be a better fit.

[Jul 29, 2017] Ray McGovern The Deep State Assault on Elected Government Must Be Stopped

Highly recommended!
Ray McGovern raise important fact: DNC hide evidence from FBI outsourcing everything to CrowdStrike. This is the most unexplainable fact in the whole story. One hypotheses that Ray advanced here that there was so many hacks into DNC that they wanted to hide.
Another important point is CIA role in elections, and specifically John O. Brennan behaviour. Brennan's 25 years with the CIA included work as a Near East and South Asia analyst and as station chief in Saudi Arabia.
McGovern thing that Brennon actually controlled Obama. And in his opinion Brennan was the main leaker of Trump surveillance information.
Notable quotes:
"... Do really think the Deep State cares about the environment. Trump is our only chance to damage Deep State. McGovern is wrong... DNC were from Seth Rich, inside DNC. Murdered for it. McGovern is wrong... i could go on and on but suffice it to say his confidence is way to high. He is wrong. ..."
Apr 2, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Greg Rhodes 3 months ago

I really like Ray... I watch and listen , he seems to use logic, reason and facts in his assessments.. I'm surprised CIA and the deep state allow him to operate ... stay safe Ray...
Robert Eargle 2 months ago

McGovern, you idiot. To try to put Trump on Hillary's level is complete stupidity. The war with Russia or nothing was avoided with a Trump victory. Remember the NATO build up on the Russian border preparing for a Hillary win? Plus, if Hillary won, justice and law in the USA would be over with forever. The Germans dont know sht about the USA to say their little cute phrase. Trump is a very calm mannered man and his hands on the nuke button is an issue only to those who watch the fake MSM. And no the NSA has not released anything either. Wrong on that point too.

Manley Nelson 2 months ago

The German expression of USA having a choice between cholera and plague is ignorant. McGovern is wrong ....everyone knew HRC was a criminal. McGovern is wrong... Jill Stein in not trustworthy. A vote for Jill Stein was a vote away from Trump. If Jill Stein or HRC were elected their would be no environment left to save. Do really think the Deep State cares about the environment. Trump is our only chance to damage Deep State. McGovern is wrong... DNC were from Seth Rich, inside DNC. Murdered for it. McGovern is wrong... i could go on and on but suffice it to say his confidence is way to high. He is wrong.

Rodger Asai 3 months ago

Another month or so and the DHS may offer a color-coding system to help the sheeple understand various levels of confidence. Green - Moderate Confidence Blue - High Confidence Yellow - Very High Confidence Orange - Extremely High Confidence Red - Based on Actual Fact

The last category may be one of the signs of the apocalypse.

KELLI2L2 3 months ago

As it turned out Jill Stein was a bad choice too... Recount debacle.

midnighfairy 1 month ago

I want Hilary to pay for her lies

[Jul 29, 2017] CrowdStrikes fake quotes and fake information about claimed Russia hack

At present, it looks a LOT like Shawn Henry & Dmitri Alperovitch (CrowdStrike executives), working for either the HRC campaign or DNC leadership were very likely to have been behind the Guccifer 2.0 operation
Notable quotes:
"... CrowdStrike were recently exposed with their misattribution of quotes and fake information. ..."
"... In other words, CrowdStrike lied to you. ..."
"... CrowdStrike, the cyber-security firm that initially claimed Russia hacked the DNC and tilted the 2016 election in Donald Trump's favor, is being accused of misattribution of quotes in a December report. CrowdStrike have since walked back key and central claims in said report, calling their credibility into serious question. ..."
"... "Michael Alperovitch – Russian Spy with the Crypto-Keys - Essentially, Michael Alperovitch flies under the false-flag of being a cryptologist who works with PKI. A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a system for the creation, storage, and distribution of digital certificates which are used to verify that a particular public key belongs to a certain entity. ..."
"... The PKI creates digital certificates which map public keys to entities, securely stores these certificates in a central repository and revokes them if needed. Public key cryptography is a cryptographic technique that enables entities to securely communicate on an insecure public network (the Internet), and reliably verify the identity of an entity via digital signatures. ..."
"... Digital signatures use Certificate Authorities to digitally sign and publish the public key bound to a given user. This is done using the CIA's own private key, so that trust in the user key relies on one's trust in the validity of the CIA's key. Michael Alperovitch is considered to be the number one expert in America on PKI and essentially controls the market." ..."
"... At present, it looks a LOT like Shawn Henry & Dmitri Alperovitch (CrowdStrike executives), working for either the HRC campaign or DNC leadership were very likely to have been behind the Guccifer 2.0 operation." ..."
Jul 29, 2017 | en.wikipedia.org
Voice of America (VOA) which is the largest U.S. international broadcaster and also according to the not-for-profit and independent Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), CrowdStrike were recently exposed with their misattribution of quotes and fake information.

In other words, CrowdStrike lied to you.

CrowdStrike, the cyber-security firm that initially claimed Russia hacked the DNC and tilted the 2016 election in Donald Trump's favor, is being accused of misattribution of quotes in a December report. CrowdStrike have since walked back key and central claims in said report, calling their credibility into serious question.

Related articles and sources

Related video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKJ7SRJuz-A&feature=youtu.be

Francewhoa ( talk ) 22:57, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

That article doesn't mention Wikileaks at all, so this is not the really the best place to discuss it. But in any case, my response is: the VOA news article is a good source for the article Fancy Bear , where it is already appropriately cited.
The VOA article or something like it might also be appropriate for the CrowdStrike article, so long as we were extremely careful to follow the source and avoid undue emphasis . (We would, for instance, have to note CrowdStrike's defense, that its update to the report "does not in any way impact the core premise of the report...").
Citation in almost any other article (except maybe Russian military intervention in Ukraine (2014–present) , in which the original report isn't even mentioned) would be a violation of a whole bunch of principles, including, variously, WP:SYNTH , WP:UNDUE , and WP:COATRACK . Neutrality talk 00:00, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
Hi all :) For those interested to join or continue this discussion, I suggest we resume in that other talk page . This would centralize discussion related to that news about CrowdStrike who walked back some of their key and central claims. Thanks to contributor Neutrality for that suggestion :)
Francewhoa ( talk ) 01:25, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this is a good place to discuss it because whether Wikileaks was specifically mentioned at all or not, the fact is it's a central component of what CrowdStrike was investigating so to say it's not appropriate to the article is ridiculous. As for "does not in any way impact the core premise"...) that's the typical dissembling by entities caught making false claims and conclusions. It's not a "defense." -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.239.232.139 ( talk ) 21:31, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Michael Alperovitch/ Papa Bear/ Fancy Bear
  • "Michael Alperovitch – Russian Spy with the Crypto-Keys - Essentially, Michael Alperovitch flies under the false-flag of being a cryptologist who works with PKI. A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a system for the creation, storage, and distribution of digital certificates which are used to verify that a particular public key belongs to a certain entity.

    The PKI creates digital certificates which map public keys to entities, securely stores these certificates in a central repository and revokes them if needed. Public key cryptography is a cryptographic technique that enables entities to securely communicate on an insecure public network (the Internet), and reliably verify the identity of an entity via digital signatures.

    Digital signatures use Certificate Authorities to digitally sign and publish the public key bound to a given user. This is done using the CIA's own private key, so that trust in the user key relies on one's trust in the validity of the CIA's key. Michael Alperovitch is considered to be the number one expert in America on PKI and essentially controls the market."

  • At present, it looks a LOT like Shawn Henry & Dmitri Alperovitch (CrowdStrike executives), working for either the HRC campaign or DNC leadership were very likely to have been behind the Guccifer 2.0 operation." -- 87.159.115.250 ( talk ) 17:54, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

[Jul 29, 2017] Russian Hack is an Inside Job Ray McGovern - VIPS Interview

Notable quotes:
"... Wow, great interview filled with useful information may it spread & awaken enough people to end the massive subversion of government/state which have been usurped & currently work for an oligarchy presenting the faint guise of a system of choice to keep enough people fooled into allowing this to continue. ..."
Jul 29, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Ray McGovern of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) joins LaRouchePAC to discuss a very important document released this week by the VIPS that debunks any idea that the DNC server was hacked by Putin and the Russians. (Read the report here: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24... ) In fact, the forensic evidence shows it was physically impossible that anyone hacked the DNC, it had to have been a leak. The greater strategic significance of this new evidence in relation to the new detente developing between the United States and Russia is discussed, as well as the significance of Trump challenging the intelligence communities lies about a "Russian hack".
----------
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Beppe Sapone 9 hours ago

The Clinton Gang don't care ...Donald is going down.

twaters57 11 hours ago (edited)

If congress truly believes that Russia hacked our election and the DNC computers which led to the election on Trump, then why don't they impeach Trump. You can have it both ways. The US congress is totally insane.

Expressed Rights 23 minutes ago

Israel is becoming aggravated once again. Trump must act to prevent another Israeli Rothschild false flag terrorist event to trigger planned cataclysms for their own gain.

American Dissident 6 hours ago

Excellent interview! Thank you!

John Mastroligulano 7 hours ago (edited)

Wow, great interview filled with useful information may it spread & awaken enough people to end the massive subversion of government/state which have been usurped & currently work for an oligarchy presenting the faint guise of a system of choice to keep enough people fooled into allowing this to continue.

Кристина Дождь 55 minutes ago

What hes talking about, i learned in networking classes / CompTIA (CCNA 1 & 2 / CCNP)

Gg Mo 11 hours ago (edited)

See: Steve Wasserman (Debbie's brother) shut down the Seth Rich investigation. Please do not overlook the Smith Mundt Modernization Act, put in place for a Hillary steal/"win" by the Kagan(ovich) Family FP octopus Zionist US Deep State Dept working w/ the Jesuit IMF/Wprld Bank/NATO..

[Jul 29, 2017] Did Russiagate begin as a Clinton campaign conspiracy? New forensic research suggests it by Alexander Mercouris

Now the most strange event: why investigation was outsourced go dubious security firm CrowdStrike, and FBI was completely excluded, falls in place.
Notable quotes:
"... That speed is many times faster than what is physically possible with a hack. ..."
"... copied (not hacked) ..."
"... what seems to have been a desperate effort to "blame the Russians" for publishing highly embarrassing DNC emails three days before the Democratic convention last July. ..."
"... The campaign was enthusiastically supported by a compliant "mainstream" media; they are still on a roll. ..."
"... "The Russians" were the ideal culprit. And, after WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, "We have emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication," her campaign had more than a month before the convention to insert its own "forensic facts" and prime the media pump to put the blame on "Russian meddling." ..."
"... The purported "hack" of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider. The data was leaked after being doctored with a cut-and-paste job to implicate Russia. We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI. ..."
"... We do not think that the June 12 & 15 timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it suggests the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack. ..."
"... someone within the DNC who was presumably anxious to protect the Hillary Clinton campaign set about creating a false trail so that the leak of the emails would be blamed not on a DNC insider but on the Russians. That way it was hoped that the focus would be not on the content of the emails themselves but on Russian meddling in the election. ..."
"... This was done by concocting a fake "Guccifer 2.0" persona to create the impression that the emails were stolen not by a leak but by way of a hack, and by setting up this persona to make him look like a front for Russian intelligence. ..."
"... As well as concocting "Guccifer 2.0" – who interestingly has had only an ephemeral twitter presence since these events – Crowdstrike was brought in to provide a report further claiming that the emails were stolen by way of a hack rather than a leak and to say that the Russians were responsible. ..."
"... Lastly, a further attempt was made on 5th July 2016 – the "key event" which is the focus of the VIPS memorandum, and which is the subject of the latest forensic examination – to link the fake "Guccifer 2.0" persona to the theft of data from the DNC's computer, and to do so in a way that also pointed to the Russians through a "subsequent synthetic insertion – a cut-and-paste job using a Russian template, with the clear aim of attributing the data to a "Russian hack."" ..."
"... This is an extremely disturbing scenario if it is true. It would mean that there is someone within the DNC who is perfectly aware that the whole Russiagate conspiracy is fake, and who has in fact deliberately concocted it, making the Russiagate scandal in effect a fraud. ..."
"... Moreover whoever that person is, he or she is clearly a person possessed great resources and influence: having access to the DNC's computer, able to concoct a fake "Guccifer 2.0" persona at short notice, able to bring in Crowdstrike to lend credence to the fraud, in possession of malware necessary to lay a false trail pointing to Russia, and – most worrying of all – able to dissuade the FBI from carrying out its own forensic examination of the DNC's and John Podesta's computers, which had it been carried out would presumably have quickly exposed the fraud. ..."
"... in the absence of a proper examination of John Podesta's and the DNC's computers by the FBI we cannot be sure that there ever was a hack. ..."
"... "Guccifer 2.0" might be the creation not of someone engaged in a cover-up on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, but of the original leaker seeking to cover his tracks by throwing suspicion onto Russia. Alternatively it may be that "Guccifer 2.0" is the concoction of some opportunistic narcissist within the DNC, out to claim credit for the leak of emails which had nothing to do with him. Unfortunately there are such people, and they are often the cause of huge confusion. ..."
"... If the scenario outlined by VIPS is correct – or if I have understood it correctly – then there is a far greater scandal behind the Russiagate scandal even than this, for in that case an attempt was made to swing the election through a fraud in which sections of the US's intelligence and security services appear to have colluded. ..."
Jul 26, 2017 | theduran.com

Forensic report by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity implies that DNC/Podesta hacks and "Guccifer 2.0' personas were concocted to discredit Wikileaks in advance of publication of the DNC/Podesta emails and to cast suspicion on Russia.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity ("VIPS"), one of the most formidable commentary groups in the world, which includes such heavyweights as William Binney, the former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA's Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, the former top CIA analyst Ray McGovern, and many others, has published another in its highly enlightening series of public memoranda addressed to the President of the United States.

... ... ...

The Key Event

July 5, 2016: In the early evening, Eastern Daylight Time, someone working in the EDT time zone with a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device. That speed is many times faster than what is physically possible with a hack.

It thus appears that the purported "hack" of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 (the self-proclaimed WikiLeaks source) was not a hack by Russia or anyone else, but was rather a copy of DNC data onto an external storage device. Moreover, the forensics performed on the metadata reveal there was a subsequent synthetic insertion – a cut-and-paste job using a Russian template, with the clear aim of attributing the data to a "Russian hack." This was all performed in the East Coast time zone .

.the independent forensic work just completed focused on data copied (not hacked) by a shadowy persona named "Guccifer 2.0." The forensics reflect what seems to have been a desperate effort to "blame the Russians" for publishing highly embarrassing DNC emails three days before the Democratic convention last July. Since the content of the DNC emails reeked of pro-Clinton bias, her campaign saw an overriding need to divert attention from content to provenance – as in, who "hacked" those DNC emails? The campaign was enthusiastically supported by a compliant "mainstream" media; they are still on a roll.

"The Russians" were the ideal culprit. And, after WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, "We have emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication," her campaign had more than a month before the convention to insert its own "forensic facts" and prime the media pump to put the blame on "Russian meddling."

. The purported "hack" of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider. The data was leaked after being doctored with a cut-and-paste job to implicate Russia. We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI.

In what I am now going to say I am going to join up the dots in a way that takes me beyond me what the VIPS actually say. If by doing so I am misunderstanding and misrepresenting the new evidence and I apologise in advance and I would ask them to correct me.

Briefly, the scenario suggested by the new evidence is explained by the VIPS by reference to a brief chronology in this way

The Time Sequence

  • June 12, 2016: Assange announces WikiLeaks is about to publish "emails related to Hillary Clinton."
  • June 15, 2016: DNC contractor Crowdstrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.
  • June 15, 2016: On the same day, "Guccifer 2.0" affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the "hack;" claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was synthetically tainted with "Russian fingerprints."

We do not think that the June 12 & 15 timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it suggests the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack.

I have always expressed doubts that "Guccifer 2.0" has any connection either to Russian intelligence or to Wikileaks or was actually the source of the emails published by Wikileaks..

What this scenario seems to be suggesting is that following the revelation by Julian Assange on 12th June 2016 in a British television interview that Wikileaks was about to publish damaging emails about Hillary Clinton someone within the DNC who was presumably anxious to protect the Hillary Clinton campaign set about creating a false trail so that the leak of the emails would be blamed not on a DNC insider but on the Russians. That way it was hoped that the focus would be not on the content of the emails themselves but on Russian meddling in the election.

This was done by concocting a fake "Guccifer 2.0" persona to create the impression that the emails were stolen not by a leak but by way of a hack, and by setting up this persona to make him look like a front for Russian intelligence.

Here I should say that I have always thought "Guccifer 2.0" to be a far too crude and obvious persona to be a front for Russian intelligence. Also I have never understood why – assuming it really was Russian intelligence which stole the emails – they would want to create such a persona at all. Surely by doing so they would be merely providing more clues leading back to themselves?

As well as concocting "Guccifer 2.0" – who interestingly has had only an ephemeral twitter presence since these events – Crowdstrike was brought in to provide a report further claiming that the emails were stolen by way of a hack rather than a leak and to say that the Russians were responsible.

Lastly, a further attempt was made on 5th July 2016 – the "key event" which is the focus of the VIPS memorandum, and which is the subject of the latest forensic examination – to link the fake "Guccifer 2.0" persona to the theft of data from the DNC's computer, and to do so in a way that also pointed to the Russians through a "subsequent synthetic insertion – a cut-and-paste job using a Russian template, with the clear aim of attributing the data to a "Russian hack.""

This is an extremely disturbing scenario if it is true. It would mean that there is someone within the DNC who is perfectly aware that the whole Russiagate conspiracy is fake, and who has in fact deliberately concocted it, making the Russiagate scandal in effect a fraud.

Moreover whoever that person is, he or she is clearly a person possessed great resources and influence: having access to the DNC's computer, able to concoct a fake "Guccifer 2.0" persona at short notice, able to bring in Crowdstrike to lend credence to the fraud, in possession of malware necessary to lay a false trail pointing to Russia, and – most worrying of all – able to dissuade the FBI from carrying out its own forensic examination of the DNC's and John Podesta's computers, which had it been carried out would presumably have quickly exposed the fraud.

The last point of course goes directly to the one which people like Daniel Lazare and "richardstevenhack"have made: in the absence of a proper examination of John Podesta's and the DNC's computers by the FBI we cannot be sure that there ever was a hack. If the scenario that appears to be set out in the VIPS memorandum is true then it would seem that there never was a hack and that the evidence that there was is concocted.

Before proceeding further I should say that there might be contrary arguments to this scenario. "Guccifer 2.0" might be the creation not of someone engaged in a cover-up on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, but of the original leaker seeking to cover his tracks by throwing suspicion onto Russia. Alternatively it may be that "Guccifer 2.0" is the concoction of some opportunistic narcissist within the DNC, out to claim credit for the leak of emails which had nothing to do with him. Unfortunately there are such people, and they are often the cause of huge confusion.

What however argues against these alternative theories is the involvement of Crowdstrike, as well as the FBI's willingness to be persuaded to accept Crowdstrike's report rather than carry out its forensic examination of the DNC's and John Podesta's computers. Perhaps whoever it was who concocted "Guccifer 2.0" was simply lucky that neither the DNC nor John Podesta nor the FBI seem to have been keen on a proper investigation. However on the face of it that does seem rather unlikely.

Of course it is also open to anyone who does not agree with the scenario outlined by VIPS to contest the conclusions of their forensic investigation. However if that is to be done successfully then whoever will do it will have to match the expertise in this field of people like William Binney and Skip Folden. That does look like a rather tall order.

At a relatively early stage of the Russiagate scandal I said that the true scandal – which the concocted Russiagate scandal seemed intended to conceal – was the illegal surveillance of US citizens during the election.

If the scenario outlined by VIPS is correct – or if I have understood it correctly – then there is a far greater scandal behind the Russiagate scandal even than this, for in that case an attempt was made to swing the election through a fraud in which sections of the US's intelligence and security services appear to have colluded.

That is a very disturbing possibility, and one which if true would mean that the political and constitutional system of the United States is in profound crisis.

Far more evidence is needed if what is still only a possibility is to be accepted as true, but the fact remains that unless I have misunderstood them completely the highly experienced and professional people who make up VIPS have just published a memorandum which points in that direction.

[Jul 29, 2017] Trump Faces Down the CIA and Co-Opts the Pentagon on Syria (for the time being) by Glen Ford

Notable quotes:
"... Trump this summer defied the War Party and its corporate media mouthpieces, negotiating a cease-fire with the Russians in several regions of Syria, to be followed by additional truces, and ending the CIA's not-so-covert role as Grandmaster of Islamic Jihad. It seemed...unreal. ..."
"... Peace-loving people around the world held their breath, waiting for the War Party's revenge. ..."
"... Back in late March, the Trump administration had signaled its abandonment of regime change, with both UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson indicating that Syrian President Assad's ouster was no longer a priority for the United States. But, within a week, Trump was hurling Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase, purportedly in retaliation for a chemical weapons incident that only a fool or a U.S. corporate media hack would blame on Syria. ..."
"... Then, two months later, on June 26, in a bizarre episode even for Trump, the administration charged the Syria military with preparing to launch another chemical weapons attack , for which the Assad government would "pay a heavy price." Strangely, the White House seemed to have failed to notify either the Pentagon or the State Department about the Syria threat, or the proposed retaliation. ..."
"... Stranger still, Trump issued his weaponized rant during the same period when his administration must have been deeply engaged in negotiations on a cease-fire with the Russians. We at Black Agenda Report wondered whether Trump had gone " play-crazy " – "acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon." ..."
"... The demons at the Washington Post and the New York Times have only one explanation for all earthly phenomena, including the termination of the CIA's jihadist overseer duties in Syria: Trump is "colluding" with the Russians. The Times moaned that "the decision is bound to be welcomed by the Russians." The WP whined that "the Russian government had long opposed the program, seeing it as an assault on its interests." Neither paper is concerned that the CIA project violates international laws against unprovoked attacks on sovereign nations, as well as U.S. laws against giving material assistance to al Qaida, a prime beneficiary of CIA weapons, or that half a million Syrians have died, as a result. ..."
"... Despite his apparent vow of semi-silence on the CIA front, Trump could not resist a Twitter retort . "The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad," he wrote, effectively declassifying the now-defunct (are we sure?) CIA terror campaign. ..."
Jul 27, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

The crazed, racist, stupid, boorish man in the White House "this summer defied the War Party and its corporate media mouthpieces, negotiating a cease-fire with the Russians in several regions of Syria, and possibly ending the CIA's not-so-covert role as Grandmaster of Islamic Jihad." Which makes him less dangerous to the human species than Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

"Donald Trump has taken the strangest, messiest route imaginable towards fulfilling his campaign pledge to curtail Washington's urge to regime change, and to ease tensions with Russia."

It's not like Donald Trump to "stifle" himself, as TV's Archie Bunker used to say, but the president has been relatively subdued about his decision, reportedly made last month, to terminate the CIA program that has armed, trained, directed and protected jihadist fighters in Syria. Trump's uncharacteristic reticence on the matter is understandable, given the agency's homicidal culture and history.

It is also likely that Trump's gaggle of White House generals, led by Secretary of Defense James "Mad Dog" Mattis and national security advisor H.R. McMaster, have kept the Pentagon in check, preventing a reprise of the mutiny that sabotaged President Obama's cease-fire and intelligence-sharing agreement with Russian forces in Syria, on September 17 of last year. In a blatant rebellion against civilian authority, U.S. warplanes killed 100 Syrian soldiers at Deir Ez-Zor, allowing ISIS to overrun half the city. The next week, with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter at his side, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford told the Senate Armed Services Committee, "The U.S. military role will not include intelligence sharing with the Russians." The Pentagon had "punked" lame duck President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry.

"Trump this summer defied the War Party and its corporate media mouthpieces, negotiating a cease-fire with the Russians in several regions of Syria."

Donald Trump took note, and surrounded himself with generals before setting foot in the White House, perhaps to shield his presidency from falling prey to its own " Seven Days In May "-type scenario. Or, maybe Trump the Bully just likes the company of other crude and stupid men. At any rate, Trump this summer defied the War Party and its corporate media mouthpieces, negotiating a cease-fire with the Russians in several regions of Syria, to be followed by additional truces, and ending the CIA's not-so-covert role as Grandmaster of Islamic Jihad. It seemed...unreal.

Peace-loving people around the world held their breath, waiting for the War Party's revenge. Trump seemed to hold his breath -- and his tongue -- too, playing down the cease-fire arrangement, even as French President Emanuel Macron stood at his side in Paris, July 13, telling the press: "No matter who they are, we want to build an inclusive and sustainable political solution. Against that background, I do not require Assad's departure. This is no longer a prerequisite for France to work on that, because I can only tell you that, for seven years, we did not have an embassy in Damascus, and still we have no solution."

Trump was remarkably low-key in Paris: "We are working on a second ceasefire in a very rough part of Syria," he said. "If we get that and a few more, all of a sudden, you're going to have no bullets firing in Syria, and that is a wonderful thing."

People around the world held their breath, waiting for the War Party's revenge."

Back in late March, the Trump administration had signaled its abandonment of regime change, with both UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson indicating that Syrian President Assad's ouster was no longer a priority for the United States. But, within a week, Trump was hurling Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase, purportedly in retaliation for a chemical weapons incident that only a fool or a U.S. corporate media hack would blame on Syria.

Then, two months later, on June 26, in a bizarre episode even for Trump, the administration charged the Syria military with preparing to launch another chemical weapons attack , for which the Assad government would "pay a heavy price." Strangely, the White House seemed to have failed to notify either the Pentagon or the State Department about the Syria threat, or the proposed retaliation.

Stranger still, Trump issued his weaponized rant during the same period when his administration must have been deeply engaged in negotiations on a cease-fire with the Russians. We at Black Agenda Report wondered whether Trump had gone " play-crazy " – "acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon."

Neither paper is concerned that the CIA project violates international laws against unprovoked attacks on sovereign nations, or that half a million Syrians have died, as a result."

Or, maybe the outburst was prompted by an aborted attempt to scuttle the talks with the Russians. Or, maybe Trump just had to shout the demons out of his system. Who knows?

The demons at the Washington Post and the New York Times have only one explanation for all earthly phenomena, including the termination of the CIA's jihadist overseer duties in Syria: Trump is "colluding" with the Russians. The Times moaned that "the decision is bound to be welcomed by the Russians." The WP whined that "the Russian government had long opposed the program, seeing it as an assault on its interests." Neither paper is concerned that the CIA project violates international laws against unprovoked attacks on sovereign nations, as well as U.S. laws against giving material assistance to al Qaida, a prime beneficiary of CIA weapons, or that half a million Syrians have died, as a result.

Despite his apparent vow of semi-silence on the CIA front, Trump could not resist a Twitter retort . "The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad," he wrote, effectively declassifying the now-defunct (are we sure?) CIA terror campaign.

Donald Trump has taken the strangest, messiest, "play-crazy" (or just plain crazy) route imaginable towards fulfilling his campaign pledge to curtail Washington's urge to regime change, and to ease tensions with Russia. His presidency has been six months of pain and confusion.

But, if Hillary Clinton had been elected, we might all be dead.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected] . - Glen Ford's blog

See also - Former CIA Director Calls For A Coup

[Jul 28, 2017] Should Russia provide cutting-edge weapons to India?

Jul 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Piotr Berman | Jul 27, 2017 1:05:02 PM | 110

J Swift | Jul 26, 2017 11:22:12 AM | 59

Why not? Russia does not have that many customers, it needs an independent arms industry and spreading the costs by deals with China and India allows to be military competitive with USA in spite of 10-fold gap in military spending.

Because the spending gap is so large, USA does not really have a problem with matching the technologies, in fact usually it is a pioneer, and there is no problem in reverse engineering what they did not engineer. Where USA has a problem, this is because some new technologies subvert shield/sword balance required by American military doctrine. For example, the first strike doctrine requires anti-missile weapon to mop up the hopefully few missiles that can reach USA after that first strike.

Landing vehicles that can execute a series of turns at highly supersonic speed can be reproduced by USA, but that would verge on pointless. What is important to improve the missile defense so it can cope with missiles that behave in that nasty way, and here there is a potential of improving the sword, the landing vehicles, faster than the shield.

BTW, I do not follow the sword/shield logic on tank warfare. Reactive armor stopped being adequate with the new generation of anti-tank weapons, and countermeasures seem very much attuned to technology aspects that can change in few years.

So tanks may join chariots as a military idea that had its day, but that day is gone (the last time chariots had a positive impact on battles was nearly 100 years ago.

check "tachanka", although "technicals" share the spirit, heavy machine gun type weapon mounted on a cheap civilian vehicle).

[Jul 28, 2017] The new sanctions expose that the US political establishment, spearheaded by the intelligence agencies is opposed to any shift away from the anti-Russia policy developed under the Obama administration.

Notable quotes:
"... The near-unanimous vote in both houses of Congress (all "no" votes in the House were from Republicans) testifies to the degree to which the CIA, NSA and other spy agencies directly control the institutions of the state and the personnel that compose them."*** ..."
"... By far the new U.S. bill place the most distressing question mark on the pipeline to northern Europe known as Nord Stream II. Five of Europe's biggest energy companies are all signed on to partner Gazprom in pumping gas westwards. ..."
"... "The Europeans intensely dislike U.S. extraterritoriality, and this will widen the breach between the EU and U.S.," Sir Lyne says. "For the Russians, that is a silver lining." ..."
"... All the Europeans need do is tell Uncle Sam to go fuck himself with his sanctions That will pull the rug out from under the American psychos behind the rabid sanction lunacy ..."
"... American politicians are also under the bizarre delusion that they can replace Russia's piped gas with LNG exports. This delusion is something else. America imports natural gas! It would have to take a major consumption hit, thereby driving up prices since demand will remain, to supply the EU with 150+ billion cubic meters of gas per year that currently comes from Russia. The USA consumed about 780 bcm of gas in 2016. It does not have a spare 150 bcm to sell. ..."
"... As I alluded yesterday, the USA has staked out a position from which it cannot back away, one which is of surpassing stupidity, because it has accustomed itself to being obeyed and fancies itself such a clever manipulator that it will always get its way. It is critical now that Europe actually stand together and speak with one voice; otherwise, America will begin probing for lack of resolve and unlimbering its divide-and-conquer game. ..."
"... It will also be pretty funny if Russia struggled and pleaded and accepted all manner of small-minded insults just to get into the World Trade Organization, only to see it collapse only a few years later. Because I'm pretty sure what America is trying to pull off here is in gross violation of WTO rules as well. ..."
Jul 28, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Northern Star , July 26, 2017 at 9:32 am

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/26/pers-j26.html

"The new sanctions expose the essential issues behind the "election hacking" campaign of the US media and political establishment, spearheaded by the intelligence agencies that are opposed to any shift away from the anti-Russia policy developed under the Obama administration.

**** The near-unanimous vote in both houses of Congress (all "no" votes in the House were from Republicans) testifies to the degree to which the CIA, NSA and other spy agencies directly control the institutions of the state and the personnel that compose them."***

Northern Star , July 26, 2017 at 9:53 am
http://www.newsweek.com/how-do-sanctions-work-new-us-bill-targets-russia-and-europe-nervous-642136

"One key question now is how Europe will react," Sir Lyne says. "Over Ukraine, the US and EU marched in step. That is not the case now; and the new bill has the potential to make Europe pay a much higher price than the US."

The EU has never been more dependent on Russian gas, according to Bloomberg, as Russia's state-run gas monopoly Gazprom now pumps over a third (34 percent) of Russia's gas. At present, Gazprom has put the kibosh on one pipeline to the EU, known as South Stream but agreed one that will bring gas on the EU's borders, to Turkey.

By far the new U.S. bill place the most distressing question mark on the pipeline to northern Europe known as Nord Stream II. Five of Europe's biggest energy companies are all signed on to partner Gazprom in pumping gas westwards.

Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch Shell, Austria's OMV, France's Engie and Germany's Uniper and Wintershall have agreed to work with Gazprom on the pipeline, collectively covering around half of the nearly $11 billion cost.

The European Commission President Jean Claude-Juncker warned Wednesday that Brussels needs to act "within days" if the U.S. does provide Europe with reassurance that the sanctions will not jeopardize EU interests. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity told European news site EUobserver, that the European companies would likely not be punished by the U.S. as part of the sanctions but called the situation a "risk" regardless.

"The Europeans intensely dislike U.S. extraterritoriality, and this will widen the breach between the EU and U.S.," Sir Lyne says. "For the Russians, that is a silver lining."

All the europeans need do is tell Uncle Sam to go fuck himself with his sanctions That will pull the rug out from under the American psychos behind the rabid sanction lunacy

marknesop , July 26, 2017 at 6:31 pm
All the Europeans need do is tell Uncle Sam to go fuck himself with his sanctions That will pull the rug out from under the American psychos behind the rabid sanction lunacy

Of course that is not going to happen, at least not publicly – there will be no outward sign of European rebellion, because that would be 'playing into Putin's hands', and the European elite still loathes Putin enough to not want to be seen doing that. At the same time, Uncle Sam does not want to back down, and an arrangement – even secret – that America would not apply the sanctions to European companies would completely nullify their effect. European companies would simply ignore them and carry on with their plans. So the possibility they might be invoked has to stay, with all the attendant fury that is likely to cause. Juicy as a mango, I think. Official America has been a bully for so long that it's the only problem-solving approach it remembers.

The question that keeps nagging at the corner of my mind, though, is "What if the USA were successful at stopping the construction of Nord Stream II and Russia ceased transit through Ukraine anyway?" After all, this whole effort is focused on forcing Russia to continue transiting a big part of Europe's gas supplies through Ukraine, both to keep Ukraine viable by forcing Russia to engage with it despite its objectionable ideological government, and to keep Ukraine as a bargaining chip to make Russia appear to be an unreliable supplier.

Washington's assumption is that Russia will continue to transit gas through Ukraine if its alternatives are removed – after all, it's just a big gas station, and it can't live without its gas sales to Europe. But what if, once again, Washington guessed wrong? If I were running Russia – let's pretend, because I'm not – I would orchestrate a series of 'rebel' sabotage attacks on Naftogaz's pipeline network, blowing up substantial parts of it, and then use that as a reason to cease transit of gas through the line: it's just not safe. I would then maximize transit through existing pipelines except Ukraine, perhaps accelerating the completion of Turkish Stream, and publicly and loudly blame any shortfall on American meddling – if Nord Stream had been twinned, you wouldn't have this problem. If it were managed correctly and everything went according to plan, I think it would resonate.

Also, Russia has reduced its dependence on energy exports. It might be worth it to allow a scenario in which Washington got the opportunity to make up for Russian shortfalls, because it would be a complete failure – the export capability is just not there, and if they redoubled their efforts they would lose money like crazy because they could not do it for Russia's prices. Either they would flop at the delivery end, or the Europeans would squeal like pigs because their gas rates went out of sight, or Uncle Sam would take a bath on American exports. Those are the only possible scenarios, it should be emphasized.

kirill , July 26, 2017 at 7:01 pm
We have clear evidence that the politicians in the USA do not have a grip on Russia's economy and exports dependence. By 2019 Russia will have a massive gas pipeline to China. Gas for this pipeline has to come from somewhere and filling it up with Banderastan transit gas would be a good start to put the USA and its EU colony in its place. According to the most recent Awara Group report, the fraction of oil and gas industry in Russia is down to 8% of GDP. Not only is Russia not dependent on oil and gas for its GDP, it will lose nothing by shifting supply away from the EU.

American politicians are also under the bizarre delusion that they can replace Russia's piped gas with LNG exports. This delusion is something else. America imports natural gas! It would have to take a major consumption hit, thereby driving up prices since demand will remain, to supply the EU with 150+ billion cubic meters of gas per year that currently comes from Russia. The USA consumed about 780 bcm of gas in 2016. It does not have a spare 150 bcm to sell.

Northern Star , July 27, 2017 at 11:20 am
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/27/euro-j27.html

"The European powers reacted sharply yesterday to the US House of Representatives' passage of a bill imposing sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea, indicating that it was unacceptable to European interests and that the European Union (EU) was preparing retaliatory measures."

"Angry commentary over the sanctions bill in the German press underscore that influential forces in the German ruling class see the sanctions bill as yet further evidence of hostile US intent towards Germany and Europe.
"What is particularly dangerous is that supporters of Russia sanctions in Washington are not only trying to put Putin and Trump in the same bag, but also helping the US economy against foreign competition," wrote the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Under the bill, the daily added, "Europeans would be forced to burn less Russian natural gas and more American liquefied natural gas. This is an unfriendly act, especially against Germany."
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that, "with all due respect for the Senate and its ambition to tie President Donald Trump's hands on Russia policy, the draft law is unacceptable from a European perspective. First, it breaks the diplomatic alliance between Europe and the United States in deciding on sanctions against Russia. The argument that America is promoting Europe's energy security is also quite insolent. That is Europe's responsibility. This is how you lose friends."

The question that is emerging is whether the US-EU military rivalry and bitter trade conflicts will now coalesce and escalate into a catastrophic breakdown in US-EU relations!in the form of a trade war that would bring the world economy to its knees, or of outright military conflict."

Hmmm .So the RWETA is born.. Russia &Western EuropeTrade Allliance

marknesop , July 27, 2017 at 5:37 pm
Why make it more complicated than it is? The French are in the lead for once – such sanctions are a violation of international law. Consequently no other nations are obligated to abide by them. If America levied a massive fine against BASF Wintershall, and that company simply ignored it, what would America do? Start booting out German companies in the USA? Melt BMW's and pour them down the drains in the street?

As I alluded yesterday, the USA has staked out a position from which it cannot back away, one which is of surpassing stupidity, because it has accustomed itself to being obeyed and fancies itself such a clever manipulator that it will always get its way. It is critical now that Europe actually stand together and speak with one voice; otherwise, America will begin probing for lack of resolve and unlimbering its divide-and-conquer game.

The really funny part in this, from my viewpoint, is the way the Europeans blame Trump and his presidency. Granted, he did frame the 'America first' policy, but that's just a convenient handle for the angry Europeans to grab. Trump entered office with the declared intention of mending the damaged relationship with Russia, and it was the Democrats who created an hysterical firestorm of accusation that Russia had greased Trump's way into office. It has been ideologues outside Trump's circle who crafted the sanctions legislation with a view to preventing him from lifting the sanctions under his own recognizance.

It will also be pretty funny if Russia struggled and pleaded and accepted all manner of small-minded insults just to get into the World Trade Organization, only to see it collapse only a few years later. Because I'm pretty sure what America is trying to pull off here is in gross violation of WTO rules as well.

[Jul 28, 2017] A Ray of Hope by Paul Craig Roberts

Jul 28, 2017 | www.unz.com

Europe hosts US military bases that threaten Russia. Europe has backed Washington's wars of aggression against Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Washington's air attacks on provinces of Pakistan, and Washington's use of Saudi Arabia to fight its proxie war against Yemen.

Europe has backed Washington's gratuitous economic sanctions against Iran and Russia, sanctions that have cost Europe much and Washington little.

Accustomed to having its way with Europe, Washington commits Europe without even consulting the vassal governments. Now it seems Washington's extraordinary arrogance and hubris has resulted in overreach. Confronted with a new round of sanctions against Russia, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission told Washington that the time has passed when Washington can put its interests first and Europe's last.

The new sanctions have devastating economic and political consequences for Europe. Juncker said that if Europe's "concerns are not taken into account sufficiently, we stand ready to act appropriately within a matter of days."

The German and French foreign ministries added their support to Juncker. The German foreign ministry said: "It is not in the Americans' right to judge or stipulate which way European companies may engage in cooperation with any third parties – particularly, with Russian energy companies."

The French foreign ministry said: the sanctions "contradict international law" due to their "extraterritorial reach."

Europe views the sanctions as a tool of US industrial policy that elevates US business interests over Europe's business interests.

Let's hope that Washington's arrogance will not permit Washington to back down and that Europe will give Washington the finger and disengage from the American Empire. Without Europe to host its military bases and to parrot its propaganda, Washington's ability to threaten Russia would significantly decline. Indeed, a continuation of the hostile threatening attitude toward Russia would leave Washington isolated in the world. No country wants the risk of experiencing nuclear war merely for the sake of Washington's unilateralism.

[Jul 28, 2017] The sanctions are as much against Germany as against Russia

Jul 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

AtaBrit | Jul 27, 2017 7:18:18 AM | 101

@Julian | 58

"They need the Germans/EU to actually start a serious pushback"

Fully agree. And as another commenter here stated the sanctions are as much against Germany as against Russia.
The question in my mind is the timing and force. Germany has to maintain a cohesive Europe while managing relations and antagonisms between US and RF. RF is also mindful of this and I doubt Putin would willingly make things difficult for Merkel.

A measured, long-term approach is what we're seeing and the US sanctions are a.kid throwing his toys put of the pram ... The US wants an over-reaction to this childness.

karlof1 | Jul 27, 2017 2:30:51 PM | 114
Thanks for the replies! Lots to think and write about, so hard to focus.

Seems to me the newest sanctions are also a test to see if the EU Parliament and EC will remain corrupted and thus bow down and allow the sanctions to ruin EU's economy.

The only way out I can see is for the EU to call-out all the Big Lies upon which the entire sanctions regime is based beginning with the still referred to Big Lie that Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 instead of the proven truth--Georgia attacked South Ossetia. Then there are the tremendous number of Big Lies aimed at Iran, which began in 1979, but which were greatly escalated by BushCo and its Greater Zion project.

Opening an aggressive investigation into Clinton Foundation illegalities within EU would also help. Logic suggests Europeans must switch sides at some point, overthrowing the Atlanticists and embrace Eurasianism and its Multipolar Alliance. Unfortunately, I believe the EU's corrupted beyond all hope and it will submit-- again . It seems there's only one real Champion of European Independence and it's Vladimir Putin.

[Jul 28, 2017] Perhaps Trump asked Sessions to fire Mueller and Sessions refused?

Highly recommended!
The problem is that that appointing a Special Prosecutor was a special operation directed against Trump. So Session behavior was the behavior of enabler of this special operation. Whether he did so because he was afraid of of being tarred and feathered with Russian connections himself, or he simply behayed Trump is unknown. But reclusing himself in such a critical for Trump Presidency matter is probably betrayal in any case.
Notable quotes:
"... The only reason I can think of for Trump to want Sessions removed from the Attorney Generalship is so Trump can get another Attorney General who can be said to be unconnected to Russian-whatever, and can therefore DE-recuse himself back into the Russia investigation. ..."
"... For someone with nothing to hide, Trump sure behaves like someone with something to hide. ..."
"... Hopefully some thread of this Trump bussiness will be wound around some thread of the Democrats's bussiness, giving Mueller a plausibly defensible reason to pull some Democratic affairs into this Trump investigation. ..."
"... I don't agree with any of the comment. Mueller's investigation serves the purpose of politically handicapping Trump and it looks like a classic perjury trap, they are trying to get him or his circle for obstruction of justice. Something remarkably easy to do as Martha Stewart or Frank Quattrone could attest. Trump's background will have already been gone through thoroughly, he is clean. ..."
"... This is the truth popping up through the cracks. It is impossible to drive Donald Trump from office without investigating the corruption and the information operation that supports the American Empire; in particular, the Clintons and Obama who are getting a free ride. ..."
"... "The truth will be what it is forever, without any input from anyone, whereas a lie becomes increasingly high maintenance in the face of simple questioning. It is endlessly difficult to maintain the back story, and then the back story's story, and so on, until the effort required to avoid self-contradiction simply becomes too much and the simple truth just comes out again, like a plant through cracked tarmac. That is why the propaganda campaign needs to be so vast and long term. It is a gargantuan feat that we only see the tip of." ..."
Jul 28, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

different clue -> Kooshy... Kooshy, 25 July 2017 at 08:52 PM

The only reason I can think of for Trump to want Sessions removed from the Attorney Generalship is so Trump can get another Attorney General who can be said to be unconnected to Russian-whatever, and can therefore DE-recuse himself back into the Russia investigation.

Trump would then want his new Attorney General to fire Mueller and fire whomever Mueller reports to. I can't think of any other reason why Trump would want Sessions removed.

For someone with nothing to hide, Trump sure behaves like someone with something to hide. The problem here is that Trump has such a trashy personality and such all-around trashy behavior that pure spite and irritation for no good reason at all is just as good a motive for Trump to want Sessions gone.

Sessions won't want to go. He has a legal-ideological mission at Justice. He won't resign. He will tough it out in place as long as he can.

Hopefully some thread of this Trump bussiness will be wound around some thread of the Democrats's bussiness, giving Mueller a plausibly defensible reason to pull some Democratic affairs into this Trump investigation.

bks -> different clue... 25 July 2017 at 09:52 PM

Perhaps Trump asked sessions to fire Mueller and Sessions refused?

different clue -> bks ... 26 July 2017 at 12:23 AM

bks,

That could be, but we will never know as long as Sessions remains AG. Because Sessions will remain focused on the DoJ mission, and not get involved in a spat-fight with Trump.

Also, if indeed Trump did ask Sessions to fire Mueller and Sessions declined to do so; perhaps Sessions has given Trump reason to understand that firing Sessions would play right into the "Obstruction of Justice" narrative which the Remove Trump forces are engineering.

And perhaps Sessions will have given Trump reason to understand further that even having given Sessions the reQUEST to fire Mueller could in itself further the "Obstruction of Justice" narrative. But in the event of imparting that further level of understanding unto the Trumpster, Sessions will then have followed up by reassuring Trump that as long as Trump does not fire Sessions, no one need ever know that Trump asked Sessions to fire Mueller. In the event of all these dominoes having fallen "just so" in a private discussion between these two men, Sessions will have reassured Trump that "no one need ever know about the request" . . . for as long as Sessions remains AG without being fired.

This is all pure speculation following on from your speculative question. We of the Great Uncleared will never know what has or hasn't been said behind the locked doors of steel and oak.

Kooshy -> different clue...25 July 2017 at 11:29 PM

I agree with the first part of your comment, but IMO the reason he wants Muller (or any Special investigator) removed is that he don't want his past business dealing and tax returns to be investigated, IMO they are scared of old days business deals, write off etc. and i think that's what Demos and Borg wants to pull out in a legal public way, and not the Russian connection. IMO the real sewer lies in past business and tax deals.

ked -> Kooshy... 26 July 2017 at 02:05 PM

If the "real sewer lies in past business and tax deals" and those happen to be penetrated by "the Russian connection", what then?

LondonBob -> Kooshy... 27 July 2017 at 05:42 AM

I don't agree with any of the comment. Mueller's investigation serves the purpose of politically handicapping Trump and it looks like a classic perjury trap, they are trying to get him or his circle for obstruction of justice. Something remarkably easy to do as Martha Stewart or Frank Quattrone could attest. Trump's background will have already been gone through thoroughly, he is clean.

Sessions offered his resignation a while back after he recused himself, Trump refused. Spicer went quickly and quietly, so would Sessions if he wanted him gone.

VietnamVet said... 25 July 2017 at 06:34 PM

PT

This is the truth popping up through the cracks. It is impossible to drive Donald Trump from office without investigating the corruption and the information operation that supports the American Empire; in particular, the Clintons and Obama who are getting a free ride.

It is shocking how inept the Trump family and the Russians are. To survive they will have to cultivate the truth and speak directly to the people. It is said that cassette tapes brought down the Soviet Union. Today we have the internet. Yesterday I read Tim Hayward's "It's Time to Raise the Level of Public Debate about Syria". Appendix 1 states the obvious:

"The truth will be what it is forever, without any input from anyone, whereas a lie becomes increasingly high maintenance in the face of simple questioning. It is endlessly difficult to maintain the back story, and then the back story's story, and so on, until the effort required to avoid self-contradiction simply becomes too much and the simple truth just comes out again, like a plant through cracked tarmac. That is why the propaganda campaign needs to be so vast and long term. It is a gargantuan feat that we only see the tip of."

Augustin L said... 25 July 2017 at 09:41 PM

John Helmer on Jared Kushner's testinomonial to stupidity and unfitness. http://johnhelmer.net/jared-kushners-testimonial-to-stupidity-and-unfitness-american-and-russian/

[Jul 28, 2017] Virtually no one [from MSM] is paying attention to the fact that a group of Pakistani muslims, working for a Jewish Congresswoman from Florida, had full computer access to a large number of Democrat Representatives. Most of the press is disinterested in pursuing this matter.

Jul 25, 2017 | www.unz.com

annamaria > , July 25, 2017 at 2:09 pm GMT

@zzzzzzz " but the Deep State knows how to box"
Let's see: "What Are the Democrats Hiding?" http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/07/what-are-the-democrats-hiding-by-publius-tacitus.html
"Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) demanded that Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa return equipment belonging to her office that was seized as part of the investigation -- or face "consequences."
Virtually no one [from MSM] is paying attention to the fact that a group of Pakistani muslims, working for a Jewish Congresswoman from Florida, had full computer access to a large number of Democrat Representatives. Most of the press is disinterested in pursuing this matter."

http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/23/exclusive-fbi-seized-smashed-hard-drives-from-wasserman-schultz-it-aides-home/

"FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's information technology (IT) administrator, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation. Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back."

This is not your phony Russia-gate or McCain-commissioned funny dossier on Trump. This is the documented "serious, potentially illegal, violations of the House IT network," which is a case of a free access to classified information by a group of the proven blackmailers.

Would this matter be treated with the same urgency of "patriotism" as the cases of Manning and Assange?

RobinG > , July 25, 2017 at 4:35 pm GMT

@annamaria "...but the Deep State knows how to box"

Let's see: "What Are the Democrats Hiding?"

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/07/what-are-the-democrats-hiding-by-publius-tacitus.html

"Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) demanded that Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa return equipment belonging to her office that was seized as part of the investigation -- or face "consequences."
Virtually no one [from MSM] is paying attention to the fact that a group of Pakistani muslims, working for a Jewish Congresswoman from Florida, had full computer access to a large number of Democrat Representatives. Most of the press is disinterested in pursuing this matter."
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/23/exclusive-fbi-seized-smashed-hard-drives-from-wasserman-schultz-it-aides-home/
"FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's information technology (IT) administrator, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation. Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back."
This is not your phony Russia-gate or McCain-commissioned funny dossier on Trump. This is the documented "serious, potentially illegal, violations of the House IT network," which is a case of a free access to classified information by a group of the proven blackmailers. Would this matter be treated with the same urgency of "patriotism" as the cases of Manning and Assange? " free access to classified information by a group of the proven blackmailers ."

Sounds like you're talking about Debbie and the DNC.

[Jul 28, 2017] Is Trump Entering a Kill Box

Notable quotes:
"... Unfortunately for all his bluster about being a fighter, Trump did none of this. ..."
"... Five minutes after he became president he should have been going after Obama and the Clintons and burying the Russian hacking nonsense before it had time to grow wings. He didn't and now he's paying the price. ..."
Jul 28, 2017 | www.unz.com
Diversity Heretic , July 28, 2017 at 4:57 am GMT

My conclusion is that the Deep State is winning. Even I've getting numb and increasingly less interested in the twists and turns of who's investigating whom and why and what are the likely consequences. I'm reminded of the quote attribute to Lavrentiy Beria: "Show me the man and I will find you the crime."

jacques sheete > , July 28, 2017 at 11:07 am GMT

Reports of his frustration and rage suggest that he knows he has been maneuvered, partly by his own mistakes, into a kill box from which there may be no bloodless exit.

He asked for it so he could play tough guy on the world stage. Only a fool, (especially at his age), would actually want the job, so I hope he doesn't expect any sort of pity party.

Drain the swamp? We should've flushed the bif.

Johnny Smoggins > , July 28, 2017 at 11:57 am GMT

When dealing with the left, you can never apologize and never back down. Double down and punch back twice as hard. Anyone on the alt right could have told Trump this.

Unfortunately for all his bluster about being a fighter, Trump did none of this.

Five minutes after he became president he should have been going after Obama and the Clintons and burying the Russian hacking nonsense before it had time to grow wings. He didn't and now he's paying the price.

[Jul 28, 2017] What Are the Democrats Hiding? by Publius Tacitus

Notable quotes:
"... And in a recent twist in the criminal probe, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) demanded that Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa return equipment belonging to her office that was seized as part of the investigation -- or face "consequences." ..."
"... The DNC/IT story is taking on wings (not exactly): http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-25/wasserman-schultz-it-aide-arrested-dulles-airport-while-attempting-flee-country ..."
"... Does Pakistani intelligence have a hand in the DNC "hack"? ..."
"... I don't see an immediate motive for the Pakistanis to want to ruin Clinton's campaign, but who knows? Maybe they thought Trump would sell them more weapons? Other motives certainly could exist. ..."
"... Only problem is the DNC "hack" was a leak, not a hack. Which doesn't mean there wasn't ALSO a hack in the mix. In fact, I would expect that to be the case. The DNC would be a perfectly desirable target for ANY opportunistic hacker during an election year, as well as any and all nation-states. ..."
"... The Dems are hiding a lot. Quite possibly, the entire basis of RussiaGate... ..."
"... And if the conspiracy--with the Dems's black ops at the center--is never demonstrated to be factually the case, and Clinton and Obama skate away, it will be described by dead-enders as a "perfect crime." ..."
"... I think the VIPS memorandum is quite conclusive on the subject. The DNC "hack" was in fact a leak. The leaked data was then doctored (on the East coast of the US) to implicate the Russians. In fact, there was no Russian hack. ..."
"... Why is Trump tweeting about leaks of intel and lack of investigation into Hillary? Can't he order such investigations? ..."
"... There is some ramp up of calls to investigate the "Ukraine Connection"... ..."
"... Senator Asks DOJ About Democrats' Work With Ukraine To Smear Trump Campaign ..."
"... UH OH: Trump's FBI Nominee Says He May Investigate Clinton Collusion ..."
"... The above discussion also leads me to believe that no conclusive technical proof is possible. That forces one to consider the balance of probabilities. As in any crime, motive is critical. Here I would go along with Ingolf (above). It is extremely unlikely that such an act would be worth the risk for Russia. Putin runs a tight ship, and he has much bigger fish to fry than getting involved in US domestic political dirty tricks. ..."
Jul 28, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

The mainstream media appears to be working overtime to ignore the following story:

EXCLUSIVE: FBI Seized Smashed Hard Drives From Wasserman Schultz IT Aide's Home

This is the story of Pakistani born Imran Awan. In late May the NY Post reported that :

The criminal probe into a cadre of Capitol Hill techies who worked for dozens of Democratic lawmakers remains shrouded in mystery, months after their access to congressional IT systems was suspended.

It's still not clear whether the investigation by the Capitol Police into the five staffers, who all have links to Pakistan, involves the theft of classified information.

The staffers are accused of stealing equipment and possible breaches of the House IT network, according to Politico, which first reported on the investigation in February. . . .

In the midst of the criminal probe, Imran and Abid Awan are now being accused of more wrongdoing, this time by a member of their own family. Last month, their stepmother accused them of threatening her in order to force her to sign a power of attorney to gain access to assets in Pakistan.

And in a recent twist in the criminal probe, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) demanded that Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa return equipment belonging to her office that was seized as part of the investigation -- or face "consequences."

Virtually no one is paying attention to the fact that a group of Pakistani muslims, working for a Jewish Congresswoman from Florida, had full computer access to a large number of Democrat Representatives. Most of the press is disinterested in pursuing this matter.

Politico was the first on this story :

The five current and former House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from members' offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the probe. . . .

Awan has long-standing relationships with Meeks, Wasserman Schultz and Fudge. Meeks was one of the first lawmakers Awan worked for after coming to Capitol Hill in 2004. He joined Wasserman Schultz's office in 2005 and started working for Fudge in 2008.

In addition, Meeks and, to a larger extent, Wasserman Schultz, are said to have a friendly personal relationship with Awan and his wife, according to multiple sources.

Awan made nearly $2 million since starting as an IT support staffer for House Democrats in 2004, according to public salary data. Alvi, who worked for House Democrats beginning in 2007, earned more than $1.3 million as an IT staffer during that time.

As shared employees, Awan, Alvi and their relatives worked for dozens of House Democrats at a time, meaning no one lawmaker was responsible for paying their full salary.

The access to the House IT network means that, at a minimum, Mr. Awan had access to the emails of several members of Congress. What are the odds that he had obtained compromising information? I would say high. But that is not the only possibility. Members of Congress running for office need money. Normally they steer clear of foreign money. Is it possible that Mr. Awan was knowledgeable of a scheme to bring in foreign money but disguise it as a domestic source? Or, and this is more far fetched, was Awan acting on behalf of a foreign intelligence organization to penetrate and monitor the Congressional email accounts?

No answers yet. The facts must be determined by investigation. I am in touch with a Pakistani friend who is investigating this matter. I am waiting eagerly to find out what he comes up with.

dilbert dogbert , 25 July 2017 at 10:14 AM

Finally they will get the evidence on Chelsea Clinton's criminal actions at Benghazi!!!
SteveSA , 25 July 2017 at 12:45 PM
VIDEO: Ex-Obama Official Evelyn Farkas Urges Intel Community to Compromise Sources, Methods

Evelyn Farkas, a former top Obama administration Defense Department official, has advocated for the intelligence community to consider compromising sources and methods when it comes to "saving American democracy."

"And I know that we have to preserve our sources and methods," Farkas said, speaking about the U.S. intelligence community. "But at some point you know, sometimes maybe you have to actually compromise some kind of source or method if it comes down to saving American democracy."

http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2017/07/25/video-ex-obama-official-advocated-spying-trump-urges-intel-community-compromise-sources-methods/

TV -> SteveSA... , 25 July 2017 at 04:45 PM
Another contributor (would be) to the "silent coup."
How dare this county elect an unacceptable "orange buffoon", etc. to the Presidency - an office only to be held by a member-in-good-standing of the self-anointed "ruling class?"
ked , 25 July 2017 at 04:53 PM
I wonder what William of Ockham might've made of the same reports.

Are there many Pakistani IT services working the gov sector in DC area?

Do small businesses sometimes experience troubling internal management events and behavioral dynamics?

Are there many members of Congress who are Jewish? Does being one indicate anything in particular?

Might a Congress-person reasonably desire the return of personal property containing personal information that was swept-up in a criminal investigation?

What is a "...friendly personal relationship"... what is the criteria for it being determinative of criminal behavior and by that standard, did a crime occur?

Was actual IT work performed and how did the invoiced amount compare to industry norms for equivalent contracted work for Congressional services?

I think it's great intellectual fun to generate alternative narratives for a given set of assertions. It may serve as a template for surfacing and evaluating corroborative evidence... or not. The razor may indeed be a good tool to separate wheat from chaff.

SteveSA -> ked... , 25 July 2017 at 06:23 PM
Let me introduce you to one Faisal Ahmed, formerly of Karachi, Pakistan. Remember the OPM data breach? The Chinese have all the info of military, defense contractors, etc. OPM outsourced its IT to the Department of the Interior.

From Ars Technica:

Government IT official ran law enforcement data systems for years with faked degrees Interior official resigned when caught, then took a job at Census Bureau.

SEAN GALLAGHER 7/16/2015

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/government-it-official-ran-law-enforcement-data-systems-for-years-with-faked-degrees/

The Department of the Interior's computer systems played a major role in the breach of systems belonging to the Office of Personnel Management, and DOI officials were called before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday to answer questions about the over 3,000 vulnerabilities in agency systems discovered in a penetration test run by Interior's Inspector General office. But there was one unexpected revelation during the hearing: a key Interior technology official who had access to sensitive systems for over five years had lied about his education, submitting falsified college transcripts produced by an online service.

The official, Faisal Ahmed, was assistant director of the Interior's Office of Law Enforcement and Security from 2007 to 2013, heading its Technology division. He claimed to have a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and a master's degree in technology management from the University of Central Florida!but he never attended either of those schools. He resigned from his position at Interior when the fraudulent claim was exposed by a representative of the University of Central Florida's alumni association, who discovered he had never attended the school after Ahmed accepted and then suddenly deleted a connection with her on LinkedIn.

Faisal did not leave government service, however!he took another government job at the Census Bureau, and is apparently still there, according to a report by the National Journal. While his name had been redacted from the official report, Rep. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming mentioned him by name multiple times during the committee hearing.

ked -> SteveSA... , 25 July 2017 at 08:37 PM
Steve, if there's a specific link between Ahmed & Awan, I'm too dense to recognize it. Please help.
Anna -> ked... , 25 July 2017 at 10:32 PM
The DNC/IT story is taking on wings (not exactly): http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-25/wasserman-schultz-it-aide-arrested-dulles-airport-while-attempting-flee-country
ked -> Anna... , 26 July 2017 at 12:23 AM
Does his behavior so far really strike you as that of an intel asset? Or a screw-up flying too close to the flame? Some of both... even a wanna-be free agent nothing burger? I'm not sure, so I'll patiently await more "facts".
John_Frank , 25 July 2017 at 05:16 PM
fyi According to Chad Pergram of FOX News:

Feds/USCP bust Hse IT staffer Imran Awan & charge him with multiple counts of bank fraud as part of Hse IT procurement scandal
https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/889943929050845184

Feds/USCP picked up Imran Awan at Dulles Aiport last night as he was "trying to leave the country." Has been arraigned. Surrendered passport
https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/889944148379394048

Awan had been at center of scandal where he allegedly double charged Hse for IT equipment & may have exposed Hse info online
https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/889944308257837056

Group of Hse Dems fired other Hse IT staffers probed by USCP. But Wasserman Schultz kept Awan on payroll. He was barred from Hse servers
https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/889944512038146052

Fox is told that Hse IT staffer Imran Awan is still on Hse payroll for moment under Wasserman Schultz.
https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/889944670498893824

Awan & his relatives worked for Hse IT for more than decade, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars. He declared bankruptcy in '12
https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/889944822429208576

Sam Peralta -> John_Frank ... , 25 July 2017 at 06:11 PM
Yes, looks like the dude was arrested at Dulles attempting to flee the country.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-25/wasserman-schultz-it-aide-arrested-dulles-airport-while-attempting-flee-country

" ...Imran Awan being paid nearly $2 million working as an IT support staffer for House Democrats since 2004. Abid Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, were each paid more than $1 million working for House Democrats. In total, since 2003, the family has collected nearly $5 million. "

Nice change for IT services work!!

" Of course, if Republicans and/or members of the Trump administration hired foreign-born IT specialists who were suspected of committing a laundry list of federal crimes and then smashed a bunch of hard drives just before skipping town...we're sure the media would still gloss right over it in much the same way they're doing for the the Democrats in this instance. "

Does Pakistani intelligence have a hand in the DNC "hack"?

Richardstevenhack -> Sam Peralta... , 25 July 2017 at 08:17 PM
I don't see an immediate motive for the Pakistanis to want to ruin Clinton's campaign, but who knows? Maybe they thought Trump would sell them more weapons? Other motives certainly could exist.

Only problem is the DNC "hack" was a leak, not a hack. Which doesn't mean there wasn't ALSO a hack in the mix. In fact, I would expect that to be the case. The DNC would be a perfectly desirable target for ANY opportunistic hacker during an election year, as well as any and all nation-states.

Incidentally, millions of voter records have turned up in the Dark Web for sale - once again proving that most hacks are done to steal PII (Personal Identifying Information) which is the coin of the realm for the hacker underground.

Kooshy , 25 July 2017 at 05:37 PM
It all sounds like attorney general Sessions is done, like Ann Richard said, he's done you can put a fork in him. It all reminds me of early days of watergate ( my first year in US) starting with small incremental leaks, followed with big newsprint and TV stories till the White House becomes overwhelmed and start acting irrationally and "illegally?"

Who knows how much more he (DT) has, but IMO, he will not go out without a fight, but now I think, out, he will go, since no one in the establishment (media, gov, etc.) wants him or is willing to work with him. Unfortunately this will cause a period of instability which looks like Borg has accepted and is willing to pay the price.

Some in Iranian academic and intellectual circles believe, the reason Iran was able to scape the grip of US hegemonic control over Iran's politics back in seventies, was only possible under this similar circumstances of destabilization in US' global and internal policy and policy making. Then it was the cause of Vietnam and watergate.Now Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. and the Russian gate. It don't smell good.

Fred , 25 July 2017 at 06:30 PM
Publius,

Apparently at least one of them has something to hide:

https://mobile.twitter.com/LokayFOX5/status/889948197556281344

Fred -> Fred ... , 25 July 2017 at 09:31 PM
If this is accurate it is even worse for some Democrats.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/25/wasserman-schultzs-it-aide-arrested-trying-to-flee-the-country/
different clue -> Fred... , 26 July 2017 at 12:29 AM
Fred,

Perhaps the Democrats knew this was going to start breaking and to divert attention from it they ( or somebody on their behalf) decided to rev up the "Mrs. Sanders college-collapse scandal" in order to somehow get Sanders so discredited that even if the Democrats collapse into a visibly dead beehive full of foul brood disease, Sanders would be rendered "un-turnable-to" as an alternative.

I hope the Democrats fail in that effort.

LJ , 26 July 2017 at 01:03 AM
Politico was not the first on this. George Webb was all over this months before. It's just now starting to leak out. He links the Awan brothers to the Clinton Foundation.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrQ-wHKVi0JDWjQGcuoYnew

novicitus -> LJ... , 27 July 2017 at 10:40 PM
Day 280 seems like a pretty good summary.
LondonBob , 26 July 2017 at 03:59 AM
The Awan brothers (whatever is the deal with that), the unmasking/spying scandal, the Clinton foundation and related Clinton criminality. There is a lot to be concerned about, hence the hysteria.

Trump publicly chewing up Sessions looks like another smokescreen.

Richardstevenhack , 26 July 2017 at 01:00 PM
The Dems are hiding a lot. Quite possibly, the entire basis of RussiaGate...

Alexander Mercouris connects the dots based on the VIPS memorandum and even references ME as having pointed out the possibility that no hack occurred at all at the DNC. The key point appears to be the appearance of the alleged "Guccifer 2.0" entity in the affair.

Did Russiagate begin as a Clinton campaign conspiracy? New forensic research suggests it
http://theduran.com/russiagate-begin-clinton-campaign-conspiracy-new-forensic-research-may-suggest/

As he's pointed out before, the entire RussiaGate meme depends at its base on two accusations: 1) the DNC "hack" actually being a hack, not a leak, and 2) the Steele Dossier. Without those two underpinnings, the rest of it is mere speculation and innuendo.

If the alleged "hack" is proven to be a complete hoax on the part of the DNC, CrowdStrike, the Clinton campaign, and/or some Ukrainians, half of RussiaGate goes down the tubes. IANAL, but I suspect legal consequences would ensue for the perpetrators.

Also see my comment posted in response to Alexander's post in which I list the scenarios and reference a number of links which cover the Guccifer 2.0 affair.

Dr.Puck -> Richardstevenhack ... , 26 July 2017 at 04:04 PM
And if the conspiracy--with the Dems's black ops at the center--is never demonstrated to be factually the case, and Clinton and Obama skate away, it will be described by dead-enders as a "perfect crime."

I still know lots of people who who have for 16 years remained sure Dick Cheney Inc. masterminded 9-11, (an earlier 'perfect crime.')

FB Ali -> Richardstevenhack ... , 26 July 2017 at 07:14 PM

I think the VIPS memorandum is quite conclusive on the subject. The DNC "hack" was in fact a leak. The leaked data was then doctored (on the East coast of the US) to implicate the Russians. In fact, there was no Russian hack.

The real story in all this is the lack of any serious investigation of these shenanigans by the FBI or anyone else. Thus allowing the 'Russiagate' story to spread and dominate the narrative.

I recall that TTG here was quite adamant about an official Russian hack of the DNC computers. I'm afraid I find the VIPS to be a much more reliable source on this subject.

Jack -> FB Ali ... , 26 July 2017 at 09:38 PM
There is so much fog around all of this that it is hard to conclude anything with certainty. A few points strike me as odd:
  • The FBI were never permitted to examine the DNC servers yet they are willing to put their imprimatur on the Russians did it story line.
  • Brennan and Clapper are publicly going after Trump and essentially accusing him of being a Russian stooge, and in doing so disclosing the most sensitive intelligence secrets.
  • Mueller has not publicly announced what is the scope of his investigation. Is he looking into who and how the DNC servers were hacked or is he just focused on the connections between Trump campaign team and Russian nationals?
  • Why is Trump tweeting about leaks of intel and lack of investigation into Hillary? Can't he order such investigations?
Richardstevenhack -> The Twisted Genius ... , 27 July 2017 at 01:27 PM
Colonel Lang: I'm sorry, I made a whole post without signing in. Apologies.

The problem with "Gigabit Internet" is that it's unlikely to be available to an individual hacker unless he is sitting in an ISP or a building owned by a company that requires such a line.

The Forensicator addresses this here:

MB: Mega Bytes or Mega Bits?
https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/2017/07/10/mb-mega-bytes-or-mega-bits/

He shows that the minimum data line required would be an Optical-Carrier 12 line which Wikipedia defines as follows:

Quote:

  • OC-12 / STM-4
  • OC-12 is a network line with transmission speeds of up to 622.08 Mbit/s (payload: 601.344 Mbit/s; overhead: 20.736 Mbit/s).
  • OC-12 lines are commonly used by ISPs as Wide area network (WAN) connections. While a large ISP would not use an OC-12 as a backbone (main link), it would for smaller, regional or local connections. This connection speed is also often used by mid-sized (below Tier 2) internet customers, such as web hosting companies or smaller ISPs buying service from larger ones.

End Quote

At the very least, this makes it extremely unlikely that the alleged hacker was coming in over the Internet, if not impossible. It's certainly the case that hackers have compromised ISP servers in the past, but in most cases such data lines are shared among all users and one rarely if ever gets the full line speed unless one is directly connected to the router or no one else is using the line.

It is possible that a wireless connection using 802.11n or 802.11ac could provide such speeds. This would be the case if a LEAKER was using wireless to connect to the local LAN, OR if a HACKER was hacking the facility from outside the premises.

As I've said, this is how Russian Intelligence might do it to avoid detection by the NSA. But Russian Intelligence would probably use either bribery or blackmail - standard tradecraft - to get the data.

In any event, why does CrowdStrike refer to Russian IP addresses if the hack was NOT done over the Internet?

While the Forensicator's analysis does not TOTALLY prove the download was on a local LAN, it's the most likely explanation.

As for my comments on the Forensicator's analysis earlier, that was mostly concerned with the assumption that WinRAR was the file compression utility used. I did not intend to disparage his primary conclusion that the copy was local.

TonyL's assertion that the Forensicator doesn't know forensics was unsupported by any evidence and can be dismissed.

Again, I apologize for making a post without being logged in, Colonel.

The Twisted Genius -> Richardstevenhack ... , 27 July 2017 at 03:23 PM
Richardstevenhack,

I am now thoroughly convinced that you either clueless about this technology or totally blinded by your desire to exonerate Russia. Perhaps both. Your discussion of gigabit ethernet is embarrassing. Don't you realize gigabit ethernet is now widely available for home use? It does not require an OC-12 or optical fiber. It can be done over cat 6 or even cat 5e copper cable.

I also doubt your fundamental understanding of an internet connection. Here's an example. I am sitting in a Cuban cafe in Miami with the original Mac Powerbook G4 Titanium and a T-mobile flip phone connected to the G4 through a USB 1.1 connection. Using that phone as a modem, I connect to a shell account. From that shell account I connect to another and then to a third. All of these shell accounts are on boxes with 10/100 ethernet. From that third shell account, I log into a server within a data center with gigabit capability. I then proceed to transfer a large amount of data from that server to another server in another data center at gigabit speed, faster than the 22.5 MB/s quoted by the Forensicator. This is accomplished with an internet connection from my Powerbook that clearly does not have a gigabit connection to the two data center servers. And each hop along the way has its own IP address. That's how the internet works. That's also how hackers work.

If the Forensicator shares the same understanding of the internet as you apparently do, he too doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

Richardstevenhack -> The Twisted Genius ... , 27 July 2017 at 08:13 PM
Yes, yes, yes, oh, please, of course I understand all that. Do try to tone down the insults.

"Don't you realize gigabit ethernet is now widely available for home use"

Don't YOU understand that is is NOT "widely available"? According to one report as of May of this year, the COVERAGE in the US is only 17 percent. That doesn't mean everyone in that coverage actually HAS it, just that it's available. In other countries, the percentage is much higher. It can be considerably more expensive than your average 3-6Mbps DSL line. Cheapest I've seen is $70 a month.

Of course, many corporations probably have it, as well as most ISPs, etc., as I noted above with regard to existing OC-12 and higher lines.

Yes, in your example you can transfer data from server to server at those sorts of speeds. As I noted, unless you're sitting in a ISP or a building with a direct connection to the router, you as the individual user don't get to access the full speed of the data line. YOU should know that.

So again, you are assuming said Russian hackers simply hacked into the DNC network,, used the DNC high-speed line (I assume they have one and that the sort of speeds we're talking about were available to a single connection) to directly transfer to another location with a high-speed line to which they had access to the full speed of the date line, and then downloaded to a local machine or perhaps to another collection point which eventually ends up in Russia.

I can easily subscribe to a file-sharing service which has a high-speed connection, request a file from a source with a high-speed connection and request a server-to-server transfer so the file doesn't come down to my local machine but goes directly to my file-sharing account. But that doesn't mean it goes at full line speed in competition with everyone else using that file-sharing service any more than the fact that my ISP might be using an OC-12 means I get 600+ Mbps to my apartment.

Yes, this is quite possible that a hacker could engineer this sort of operation, especially if the hacker has access to an intelligence organization with access to the necessary servers.

And the NSA will see every byte of that transfer from the DNC or at least can track it back in their database for the time periods involved and likely track it to any collection points the hackers might have used. Only once it is downloaded to a local machine is it likely the NSA would lose track of it.

Which is why no Russian intelligence agency would do that. And they wouldn't be happy if any hacker under their control would do that, let alone leave direct IOCs that lead directly back to Russia.

As William Binney - the guy who DESIGNED most of this stuff for the NSA - has explicitly said:

Quote:

"With all the billions of dollars we spend on this collection access system that the NSA has, there's no way that could have missed all the packets being transferred from those servers to the Russians," Binney said. "I mean, they should know exactly how and when those packets left those servers and went to the Russians, and where specifically in Russia it went. There's no excuse for not knowing that."

"My point is really pretty simple. There should be no guessing here at all, they should be able to show the traceroutes of all the packets, or some of them anyways, going to the Russians and then from the Russians to WikiLeaks," Binney explained. "There is no excuse for not being able to do that -- and that would be the basic evidence to prove it. Otherwise, it could be any hacker in the world, or any other government in the world, who knows."

End Quote

It's one thing to hack into somewhere using a portable rig which is mobile and connected to one access point which is never used again for another hack. And as I said, if it's done by local wireless, the NSA can't track it. Binney is assuming the hack is over the Internet - which is what all the alleged analysis by CrowdStrike and others says happened.

It's another to hook up to a major data line directly or indirectly and leave tracks. Maybe if you're sucking out terabytes of movie data like the Sony hack and you figure the NSA doesn't care, but not if you're hacking into sensitive organizations like the DNC.

None of this is proof that Russia DIDN'T do a hack on the DNC. It's simply highly unlikely that this process we describe here is more likely than the simpler explanation of a local file download.

Especially when the recipients of said data have explicitly stated that they did not get this data from anyone connected to Russia.

The Twisted Genius -> Richardstevenhack ... , 28 July 2017 at 01:19 AM
Richardstevenhack,

OK. I was a bit harsh there. But the idea that the Forensicator has proven that the DNC hack had to be due to a local leaker and couldn't possibly be due to a Russian IO is insultingly bogus to me. I've seen article after article claiming just that.

The scenario I described is doable to any decent hacker. Three shell accounts in bogus identities in locations around the world can be had for less than the cost of a home DSL connection and can be set up by anybody. It doesn't take the support of an intelligence organization.

I do agree with you and Binney that the NSA would probably have confirming information of the DNC hacks. Maybe even as much as they have from the 2014 State Department hack by Cozy Bear. Perhaps that's why the IC continues to say it was the result of a Russian government cyber operation. I don't expect them to release all they have for many years. There's a lot of stuff they have on many hacks that I know of that is not being released and it won't be released.

I do hope the local leaker theory is examined seriously. As you said, there is no reason that both the hack and the leak could have both occurred. However, Assange ought to explain why the Wikileaks servers were all moved to Russian providers before the election. Perhaps the NSA already knows what went into these servers, when it went in and from where. I don't think the public will get the full answer to any of these questions for quite some time.

Eric Newhill -> The Twisted Genius ... , 27 July 2017 at 02:56 PM
TTG,
"Both assume that hacked data would be initially transferred to Russia if it was a hack. Only the most incompetent hacker would do such a thing."

And yet they - according to you - left their signature all over the "hack". They're either trying to be covert, or not. Either leaving an extended middle finger to the DNC or hiding their activities by routing through various servers, etc. I don't see how you can have it both ways and be correct.

I think you should prepare to be proven wrong. A bottle of whatever top shelf drink you like (Bourbon man myself) says that by year end, this will have been proven to be a leak (a local download).

Ingolf Eide -> Eric Newhill... , 27 July 2017 at 08:40 PM

Is definitive forensic proof even possible? Maybe the potential for misdirection of various kinds means we can never know for sure, not even in the best of circumstances.

In this case, they're anything but. Like the crude "fingerprints" supposedly left behind that Eric just mentioned, the apparent refusal of the DNC to allow the FBI to investigate their server(s) directly is another of the oddities that characterise this business.

One thing does seem clear to me. Only one side was powerfully motivated and it wasn't the Russians. I don't doubt they take every opportunity to acquire useful information and at times also sow disinformation. However, under Putin they've been cautious and farsighted in everything they do. Their reputation, their brand value if you like, has long been their primary consideration. So, even assuming they got their hands on the DNC emails, would the uncertain reward of using that information justify the immense risk? After all, they're only too aware of the deep-seated animus against Russia within US politics. In my view, for them to engage in covert ops against one side in the US election would have been a wild, speculative flyer with catastrophic downside risks. And, IMO, entirely out of character.

The Clinton Democrats, on the other hand . . .

The Twisted Genius -> Ingolf Eide... , 28 July 2017 at 12:24 AM
Ingolf Eide,

You don't think the Russians were powerfully motivated to do what they could to ensure Clinton lost and Trump won? I think the Russians have good and valid reasons to defeat Clinton. I'm sure a lot of US voters voted for Trump for the same reasons. We all wanted to reduce the possibility of WWIII to a minimum. For the Russians not to attempt to influence the outcome of the election would have been negligent on their part. In my opinion, they have nothing to be ashamed of.

Ingolf Eide -> The Twisted Genius ... , 28 July 2017 at 04:34 AM

TTG,

If a genie had offered them a clean choice, I don't doubt Russia would have gone for Trump. In the real world, I don't think the decision for them would have been anything like as clear. As I see it, it's a matter of upside vs downside with the latter weighted far more heavily.

The potential benefits were uncertain and the odds of Russia being able to substantially affect the result would have seemed low, probably vanishingly so. Had a covert operation been exposed, on the other hand, the risk (at many levels) was potentially catastrophic. Far more so than Clinton's threatened no-fly zones. That could, IMO, have been managed in one form or another; Putin and Lavrov are almost preternaturally good at this sort of stuff. They have patience and strategic clarity while the US has neither.

As things turned out, the US has become so unmoored that to date it hasn't much mattered whether Russia did or didn't.

The Twisted Genius -> Eric Newhill... , 28 July 2017 at 12:27 AM
Eric Newhill,

From the time of the MOONLIGHT MAZE intrusions in the mid-90s, the Russians were stealthy and difficult to track. The Chinese, on the other hand, were much more noisy and bold in their intrusions. It was as if they didn't care if we knew they did it. In the last few years, the Russians began operating more like the Chinese. This was glaringly apparent in the November 2014 intrusion into the State Department unclassified system. NSA and FBI had a running battle with the intruders for days before they were able to finally expel them. Fortunately, NSA capabilities to track the hackers across the internet in real time were well advanced at that time. An allied intel service also hacked the surveillance cameras inside the the hackers' workspace. The attackers were what became known as the Cozy Bear hackers and were tracked every step of the way. This information wasn't make public until late 2015.

Flash forward to the DNC hacks. The FBI first notified the DNC in September 2015 that they noticed Cozy Bear hackers had compromised at least one DNC computer system. Neither the FBI nor the DNC took this information as seriously as they should have. In November 2015, the FBI informed the DNC that the hackers were connecting back to Moscow from the DNC network. The actions of both the FBI and DNC remained lackadaisical. It wasn't until March 2016 that the DNC contract computer tech met the FBI Special Agent and was convinced this wasn't some hoax or put on. The DNC finally installed some halfway decent monitoring tools in April 2016. By the end of the month, the DNC knew they had a serious problem and hired CrowdStrike. The rest of the story is more widely known.

I long ago promised someone I would not be a betting man, but if I was, I'd take you up on that bet. I'm 99% sure this whole thing is part of a Russian IO and not a vast left wing conspiracy. The last time I drank bourbon was the night before my first jump at Benning. Drank way too much and never touched the stuff after that. I have developed a taste for barrel-aged craft beers though. I guess we'll see who's right... eventually.

likbez -> The Twisted Genius... 28 July 2017

TTG,

> In November 2015, the FBI informed the DNC that the hackers were connecting back to Moscow from the DNC network.

Looks like you are incompetent. Especially your over-confidence. Qualified people have doubts. You don't. I will give you knowledge of some basic facts about networking. But that's it.

Anybody can connect "back to Moscow". Especially Balts, Ukrainians and Israelis. To say nothing about the USA. Actually anybody with a credit card, to say nothing about botnet owners.

No conclusive evidence were presented about IP space they were talking about. Was it ISP IP space or what?

You just parrot neoliberal propaganda.

The fact that DNC hired CrowdStrike and withhold any information from FBI speaks volumes. This really requires investigation: what they were hiding from FBI? Instead MSM fed us nonsense about "Russian hacking".

The fact that this explosive revelation, which clearly suggests cover up, was swiped under the carpet by neoliberal MSM also undermines your argumentation.

turcopolier , 26 July 2017 at 07:18 PM
FB Ali

Would you agree that this sounds like a criminal conspiracy? pl

FB Ali -> turcopolier ... , 26 July 2017 at 07:21 PM
I would!

But I'm surprised that no one 'official' is treating it as such.

Richardstevenhack -> FB Ali ... , 26 July 2017 at 10:05 PM
There is some ramp up of calls to investigate the "Ukraine Connection"...

Senator Asks DOJ About Democrats' Work With Ukraine To Smear Trump Campaign
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/24/senator-asks-doj-about-democrats-work-with-ukraine-to-smear-trump-campaign/

Also, Christopher Wray was asked about this and said he might look into it:

UH OH: Trump's FBI Nominee Says He May Investigate Clinton Collusion
http://www.hannity.com/content/2017-07-13-uh-oh-trumps-fbi-nominee-says-he-may-investigate-clinton-collusion/

Going down that rabbit hole just might result in exposing a DNC-Clinton-CrowdStrike-Ukraine actual collusion...

turcopolier , 26 July 2017 at 07:23 PM
FB Ali

That, of course, is DJT's main charge against Sessions. pl

ked , 26 July 2017 at 11:25 PM
the FBI is getting around to dealing with RE mortgage fraud after all...

"Awan is accused of trying to defraud Congressional Federal Credit Union, a popular bank for Capitol Hill staffers, by misrepresenting a $165,000 home equity loan he attempted to obtain for a piece of rental property. FBI Special Agent Brandon Merriman, who penned the charging document, stated in an affidavit that Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, misrepresented the property for which the loan was to be granted, identifying it as a "principal residence." CBS News

dilbert dogbert -> ked... , 27 July 2017 at 01:29 PM
My late wife was a CPA with many small business clients in Silicon Valley. She had many stories about the minor league miss behavior in "cooking the books".

If the FBI were to pursue these minor league crimes in California, let alone in the nation, it would need a vast increase in agents. I would guess someone high up in the food chain sickked the FBI on him.

FB Ali , 27 July 2017 at 10:52 PM
TTG,

You say your "years of experience" and NOT "any evidence" leads you to believe that Russia carried out the hack (rather than someone else, or the stuff being leaked). I'm afraid that is as clear a statement of bias as any I've come across in this discussion.

The above discussion also leads me to believe that no conclusive technical proof is possible. That forces one to consider the balance of probabilities. As in any crime, motive is critical. Here I would go along with Ingolf (above). It is extremely unlikely that such an act would be worth the risk for Russia. Putin runs a tight ship, and he has much bigger fish to fry than getting involved in US domestic political dirty tricks.

1664RM said...

Yet again we see more than a hint of malfeasance by officials within the DNC prior to the 2016 US Presidential Election.

And yet again the usual suspect start 'throwing smoke' ... in order lay a smokescreen & divert everybody towards the "Russia dunnit" meme ... its so noticeable here now as it is everywhere in internet land that its becoming more ridiculous by the day.

Seriously ... how are people supposed to take this Russia line 'seriously' when held up to the light & compared against the four years of HRC as SoS at the State Dept, the nefarious goings on within the DNC by Wasserman-Shultz, Brazzlle & the the Clinton Team with Podesta et al?

The whole Russia story IS THE biggest smoke screen ... aided & abetted by the media & literally millions of willing ordinary people who have been all too happy to swallow the bullshit hook line & sinker.

Useful idiots ... all of them.

I am a firm believer than Wasserman-Shultz is part of the Israeli system that has penetrated the entire US political & Judicial scene inside the Beltway .... two of the main 'handlers' in this are none other than Ghislane Maxwell & Geoffrey Epstein.

I believe that there are plenty of useful idiots across the political spectrum on both sides of the Atlantic that have enjoyed the 'corporate hospitality' offered buy Mr Epstein & his 'Lolita Express'.

Thus you will find nobody with the balls to prosecute the likes of the Clintons, Podesta or DWS for that matter ... thus they can get away with murder (literally) Federal organisations like the FBI are seemingly unable to access the IT infrastructure of such organisations as the DNC.

HRC should now be languishing in a cell for several Capital Offences including Treason ... it stands out like a dick on a donkey.

Dons tinfoil hat.

Per Mare Per Terram

[Jul 28, 2017] To survive Trump will have to cultivate the truth and speak directly to the people.

Notable quotes:
"... This is the truth popping up through the cracks. It is impossible to drive Donald Trump from office without investigating the corruption and the information operation that supports the American Empire; in particular, the Clintons and Obama who are getting a free ride. ..."
"... "The truth will be what it is forever, without any input from anyone, whereas a lie becomes increasingly high maintenance in the face of simple questioning. It is endlessly difficult to maintain the back story, and then the back story's story, and so on, until the effort required to avoid self-contradiction simply becomes too much and the simple truth just comes out again, like a plant through cracked tarmac. That is why the propaganda campaign needs to be so vast and long term. It is a gargantuan feat that we only see the tip of." ..."
Jul 28, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

VietnamVet 25 July 2017 at 06:34 PM

PT

This is the truth popping up through the cracks. It is impossible to drive Donald Trump from office without investigating the corruption and the information operation that supports the American Empire; in particular, the Clintons and Obama who are getting a free ride.

It is shocking how inept the Trump family and the Russians are. To survive they will have to cultivate the truth and speak directly to the people. It is said that cassette tapes brought down the Soviet Union. Today we have the internet.

Yesterday I read Tim Hayward's "It's Time to Raise the Level of Public Debate about Syria". Appendix 1 states the obvious:

"The truth will be what it is forever, without any input from anyone, whereas a lie becomes increasingly high maintenance in the face of simple questioning. It is endlessly difficult to maintain the back story, and then the back story's story, and so on, until the effort required to avoid self-contradiction simply becomes too much and the simple truth just comes out again, like a plant through cracked tarmac. That is why the propaganda campaign needs to be so vast and long term. It is a gargantuan feat that we only see the tip of."

[Jul 28, 2017] Jonathan Freedland s Trump Assassination Fantasy

Notable quotes:
"... There was a time when Jonathan Freedland might have been considered an embarrassment to The Guardian but nowadays The Guardian has itself become an embarrassment to Fish and Chip wrappers. ..."
"... I've never spent much time on the JFK assassination since the proof of a conspiracy is overwhelming. If you want more, watch this short video of JFK's Secret Service team being ordered off his limo shortly before he was shot. ..."
Jul 28, 2017 | www.unz.com

Jonathan Freedland's Trump Assassination Fantasy Andrew Joyce • July 25, 2017 • 1,200 Words • 42 Comments Reply

Jonathan Freedland, a British-Jewish journalist infamous for hailing the demographic eclipse of the British people in their own homeland as " a kind of triumph ," has devoted the last twelve months of his miserable journalistic life to neurotic attacks on the Trump presidency. His hyperbolic writings at the Guardian , while making little original contribution to the intellectual debate over the progress of the Trump administration, have instead revealed much about the paranoid preoccupations of Freedland, the Left, and elements of the organized Jewish community.

Until recently, Freedland's rantings have been predictable. In Freedland's caricature-like portrayals, Trump emerges as a shameless, dictator-like figure who "respects no limits on his lust for power." Rarely shy of a dramatic turn of phrase, Freedland writes about his prior enthusiasm for the Constitution of the United States -- a document he sees as guaranteeing a multicultural state -- and his growing unease that this same document somehow permitted "a dangerous man" like Trump to assume office: "Trump is testing my admiration for that document -- testing it, perhaps, to destruction." Freedland has lamented that democracy in America "now stands naked -- and vulnerable."

Freedland's opposition to the Trump administration, interpreted on the basis of his own words and arguments, is not rooted merely in generic Leftism. It also comprises an element of ethnic self-interest. Freedland perceives Trump to be obstructive to Jewish social and political objectives, and this is most apparent in his journalism for the Jewish Chronicle. W hile he rarely, if ever, mentions his Jewishness to the Guardian 's mass readership, in his writings at the JC Freedland is significantly less circumspect. In March, for example, he wrote in the JC that Trump "is no friend of ours and the correct Jewish stance on Trump was one of vigilant opposition."

Trump's 'crimes,' according to Freedland, have included the White House statement marking Holocaust Memorial Day which did not mention Jews or antisemitism. Freedland further complains that Trump "has no instinctive sensitivity for Jewish concerns. Any condemnation of antisemitism has to be either scripted for him or else extracted under pressure. More troublingly, he has an uncanny knack for speaking to and about Jews in a way that thrills antisemites." More embarrassingly for Freedland, he was one of the most vicious and persistent critics of Trump's assertion that the bomb threats called into a number of Jewish buildings were probably made by Jews. At the height of the controversy, Freedland had written:

Trump was asked in a meeting of states attorneys-general about the wave of bomb threats to Jewish community centres. According to those present, Trump speculated that, rather than taking these incidents at face value, they should consider that "sometimes it's the reverse, to make people -- or to make others -- look bad." Trump reportedly used the word "reverse" two or three times. What can this mean, except an implication that these threats to Jewish buildings were made by Jews themselves, to damage Trump? The notion of "false flag" attacks is a staple theme of the far right. In this context, it is a classic antisemitic trope: that anti-Jewish attacks are invented by cunning Jews to win underserved sympathy.

How unfortunate for Freedland that this 'classic antisemitic trope' was later very soundly confirmed.

Not one to waste his talents, Jonathan Freedland has for several years published fiction under the pseudonym Sam Bourne. His earliest pulp novels appear to have been an attempt to cash in on the success of Dan Brown's thriller formula, and the syllable similarity in the two names shouldn't be considered accidental. In these novels, one can discern Freedland/Bourne using fiction to play out personal fantasies. For example, The Righteous Men (2006) is a trashy religious thriller which derives its subject matter from Jewish folklore and has "a faction of the Christian Church" in the 'bad guy' role. The book was later followed by The Final Reckoning (2008), a revenge fantasy about a group of so-called "Holocaust survivors" who set out to assassinate former National Socialists.

To Kill The President , Freedland/Bourne's very recently published 'thriller,' has taken matters to a new extreme, blending the author's history of anti-Trump journalism with his penchant for fictional ethnic revenge fantasies. Of course, no-one in the Trump administration is named in the latest novel, but Freedland makes no attempt to disguise his meaning. In the 'feminist' plot of To Kill the President , a female White House aide (and "avowed liberal") uncovers a conspiracy to murder a recently elected populist president who unexpectedly won an election against a female Democrat who attracted criticism for being careless with her email service. The President, described as a "cheat and bigot," offends the political and media establishments with "the tweets, the lies, the grotesque misconduct, the acts of unwarranted aggression." One scene includes the President grabbing a female assistant by her genitals in the Situation Room, where staff have been summoned in the middle of the night because the President plans to launch missiles at China and North Korea.

Using a puppet then, Freedland gets to vent his spleen, casting the most vulgar accusations and insinuations against Trump without fear of a libel suit.

Freedland's portrayal of Steve Bannon is also noteworthy. The novel's President, an unstable demagogue, is ultimately a marionette dancing to the tune of a "ruthless chief strategist" with an Irish name -- in this instance Bannon becomes Crawford 'Mac' McNamara. McNamara/Bannon saunters around the White House as if he is President, talking down to women and acting every inch the alpha male. The Bannon caricature presented by Freedland has been likened to a "middle aged rock star." One senses that Freedland is made deeply uneasy by Bannon's opaque role within the White House administration, as well as his perceived masculinity -- not to mention his opposition to Muslim immigration and his generally populist attitudes. Much could be read into the fact that Freedland offers no fictional portrayal of Jared Kushner.

The novel thus offers insight into the minds of our opponents. Their fears, insecurities, and yes, their sick fantasies, are right here in black and white. But most importantly this is a work of incitement. Given the current context of increasingly violent Leftist conduct and rhetoric, To Kill The President should be interpreted as a very dangerous and deliberately targeted flirtation with the idea of political assassination. Even Mark Lawson, one of Freedland's colleagues at the Guardian , writes at the end of his review of the book: "Even committed Trump-haters may suffer struggles of conscience over what would count as a satisfactory resolution of the plot." This is a book that, ultimately, get its "thrills" from the prospect of the murder of Donald Trump.

The mainstream publication and promotion of To Kill The President should be interpreted as a stark symbol of the degradation and co-option of our cultural and political life by neurotic, twisted, and hateful elements within our gates.

(Republished from The Occidental Observer by permission of author or representative)

NoseytheDuke > , July 27, 2017 at 4:36 am GMT

There was a time when Jonathan Freedland might have been considered an embarrassment to The Guardian but nowadays The Guardian has itself become an embarrassment to Fish and Chip wrappers.

Carlton Meyer > , • Website July 27, 2017 at 4:57 am GMT

Allow me to kickstart this as a JKF thread. From my blog:

Apr 6, 2014 – More Proof

I've never spent much time on the JFK assassination since the proof of a conspiracy is overwhelming. If you want more, watch this short video of JFK's Secret Service team being ordered off his limo shortly before he was shot.

Carlton Meyer > , • Website July 27, 2017 at 5:18 am GMT

And this allows me to link the most interesting video on youtube. Did James Files kill JFK? From my blog:

Jul 10, 2016 – James Files Killed JFK?

Youtube has amazing stuff, like James Files explaining how he killed JFK. This is a long interview but very detailed and believable. The first question that arises is why this guy finally talked. This is answered in this short video that you should watch first.

James Files may be phony, but he is a former CIA/US Army Special Ops guy, a known gangster, and if he is a fraud, he is first rate actor with great knowledge about the underworld who spent years preparing for this interview. I'm not sure what to think about his story, but he is an interesting and likable guy!

There are websites that attempt to dismiss Files, and even one dedicated to discrediting him: James Files Fraud. But one must ask who has the time and motivation to devote a website just to counter a youtube interview? Our CIA has thousands of people employed in counter-intelligence. They have the time, resources and media contacts to refute "conspiracy theorists" like 9-11 and JFK. This includes full time "floggers" commenting on websites and maintaining the "truth" at Wikipedia.

The Files interview is very interesting and I highly recommend watching it all, before it disappears. I recall watching a youtube interview with his prison warden that has disappeared. The warden summoned Files to his office to find out why he refused to see prominent visitors. He became convinced of Files' detailed account of shooting JFK, and was angered to learn that FBI agents had managed to interview Files in his prison without his knowledge.

exiled off mainstreet > , July 27, 2017 at 6:17 am GMT

Just like retired boxer Mike Tyson was a sort of poster boy for racism, Freedland is sort of a poster boy for anti-Semitism. He gives Nazi sympathisers the chance to say that perhaps the fuhrer wasn't totally wrong.

Wally > , • Website July 27, 2017 at 6:40 am GMT

Revealing, Jonathan Freedland supports strict Israeli immigration laws which specify JEWS ONLY, while he demands massive 3rd world immigration into the US & Europe.

"Trump's 'crimes,' according to Freedland, have included the White House statement marking Holocaust Memorial Day which did not mention Jews or antisemitism."

Jonathan Freedland is the very essence of those that promote fraud for profit.

... ... ...

jilles dykstra > , July 27, 2017 at 8:22 am GMT

Kennedy was murdered two weeks after he threatened Israel not to give them weapons any more if they continued developing the atom bomb. What's new ?

Randal > , July 27, 2017 at 8:54 am GMT

Freedland's opposition to the Trump administration, interpreted on the basis of his own words and arguments, is not rooted merely in generic Leftism. It also comprises an element of ethnic self-interest. Freedland perceives Trump to be obstructive to Jewish social and political objectives, and this is most apparent in his journalism for the Jewish Chronicle.

The above article can usefully be read in conjunction with the following Occidental Observer piece published on Unz.com a couple of months ago, in the runup to the recent General Election:

Fake Jews: Deceit and Double-Think in Britain's Hostile Elite

Here is an article written for the Jewish Chronicle by Daniel Finkelstein, a strongly identified Jew high in the ruling Conservative party:

Corbyn must lose -- for our sake [i.e., for the readers of the Jewish Chronicle]

The Alarmist > , July 27, 2017 at 9:07 am GMT

They did it to W as well look at it as putting the R in taRget, because there are rarely Ds in their sites in any sales volume or venue or media that matters.

TelfoedJohn > , July 27, 2017 at 10:09 am GMT

Freedland has written endlessly about how Israel needs to be supported as an independent homeland for the Jewish people. You can't even buy land if you are not Jewish in Israel.

But in the UK, he regards the independence arising from Brexit, and any lessening of immigration, as complete disasters. What would he feel if only Christians could be citizens and buy land in the UK?

Bille ones > , July 27, 2017 at 10:47 am GMT

Under a Clinton regime he would be just one more of the hundred plus dead.

annamaria > , July 27, 2017 at 1:41 pm GMT

@NoseytheDuke True. Guardian has become the lowest of the presstitutes.

As for the ethnicity-minding Jonathan Freedland, "a British-Jewish journalist infamous for hailing the demographic eclipse of the British people in their own homeland as "a kind of triumph," it should be stickered to him every day that the supposedly super-moral state of Israel has not taken a single Syrian refugee fleeing the death and destruction of the ziocons' design. " every country in the region and many nations around the world have hosted Syrian refugees Except Israel. Even a symbolic government proposal to host 100 Syrian orphans was eventually dropped." https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/26/fear-and-trepidation-in-tel-aviv-is-israel-losing-the-syria-war/

How have many Syrian Anne Franks have been refused to come to Israel by the Israeli supremacists or were murdered by the Israel-friendly "moderate fighters" of ISIS/Al Qaeda variety?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/alliance-of-convenience-israel-supports-syrias-isis-terror-group/5587203

"Since the start of the conflict, Israel bombed targets in Syria as it saw fit, and casually spoke of maintaining regular contacts with certain opposition groups. On June 18, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel has been giving "secret aid" to Syrian rebels, in the form of "cash and humanitarian aid."

utu > , July 27, 2017 at 2:58 pm GMT

@Carlton Meyer How do you call the mental disorder when you make false claims that you were part of something big including being an assassin?

DaveE > , July 27, 2017 at 2:59 pm GMT

@Ludwig Watzal Yeah a "self-fulfilling prophecy" with a big push from outside forces . like relentless never-ending propaganda from slimeballs like Freedland. That was the author's point.

The simple, direct yet elegant style of Mr. Joyce should be studied by a few more Unz commenters.

Che Guava > , July 27, 2017 at 4:47 pm GMT

Andrew,

The Guardian is the disgusting institution, it runs on a massive bequest.

One can be sure that some Soros foundation will step in when it is running out. They are sharing common goals.

Unbelievably, they had two articles of interest last week, one by the vain Hadley Freeman, an interview with her co-ethnics or co-religionists, depending on the day, it is seeming, with the Goldman family, of the other victim of wrongful death at the hands of OJ. I would recommending it for your reading. I am sure that it is easy to find. I think that the Goldman family is making big profits from OJ, but he was a creep and the cause of two wrongful deaths, so am thinking he is deserving it.

The other was about the experience of Yazidi women under IS. Full of the occasional sentence about how bad the Syrian govt. and Assad are, which I see is a lie, I have read real testimonials from real British people, not wealthy, of how kind Assad was in his opthalmolagy practice.

That was also worth reading, despite the clear propaganda parts. I am forgetting the name of the writer.

Really, the Guardian is typified by its pnrtrait photos of the writers. Freedland is one of the worst, in the sense of false consciousness.

Still, almost all of them are photographed for their portrait photos, side-on, and sneering at the reader over the shoulder, seems to being their house style.

I used to comment there at times (only a very few mths), different u-name to here, even got an editor's pick once, on worker's rights.

Their Comment is Free has the stench of somethimg out of Orwell's 1984, far from free, more mild than some of my posts here, were there, they are such hypocrites and liars, disallow things for nothing. CiF? GTFO!

Never formally banned, but never to returning. I still reading at times with great cynicism, but they are the crap.

For the lighter touch, not being a U.S.A. person, never knew much abt. American football until much later, but saw OJ in Capricorn One as a child, so he is having some connection with 'Moon landings were the fake' conspiracy theories. Amusing to me.

Mr. Joyce, thank you for interesting writing, I am reading it at your main site at times, too.

jilles dykstra > , July 27, 2017 at 4:50 pm GMT

@utu Avner Cohen, 'Israel and the Bomb', New York 1998

The writer, or maybe the Israeli censor, goes to great length to hide the two week period.

jilles dykstra > , July 27, 2017 at 4:51 pm GMT

@annamaria I suppose the Guardian changed after Soros bought it.

Moi > , July 27, 2017 at 5:25 pm GMT

@NoseytheDuke None said it better!

for-the-record > , July 27, 2017 at 6:16 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra I suppose the Guardian changed after Soros bought it .

I don't believe that's actually correct. But until your post I wasn't aware that there was any connection, however murky, between the Guardian and Soros. The best I can find is the following, can you suggest anything more definitive?

http://russia-insider.com/en/media-criticism/uks-guardian-bed-soros-sees-russian-spies-behind-every-christmas-tree/ri18403

annamaria > , July 27, 2017 at 6:45 pm GMT

@Randal Freedland was piping the same hateful tune against Corbyn: https://off-guardian.org/2017/06/10/jonathan-freedlands-corbyn-apology/

yeah > , July 27, 2017 at 7:57 pm GMT

Friedland, the author of the phantasy fiction in which President Trump gets killed, is a typical specimen of the "neurotic, twisted, and hateful elements within our gates".

What exactly the multi-culti, LGBTQ, identity-obsessed, ultra liberals have against Trump beats me just as much as a three-legged transgender alien might. A psychotic one can understand; a deluded soul one can pity or ignore; a fanatic of the traditional right/left variety one can plan to deal with; but how on earth does one come to terms with the nominally sane but dangerously fanatical no-holds-barred warriors from the loony left who are prepared to destroy all and everything? Intellectual battle would be about as useful as reasoning with a psychotic, and physical battle with pansies is not an enticing prospect either. Political debates and re-elections would also not resolve the matter with people who have no respect for any facts, laws, or systems other than their own. Perhaps the only solution might be to cast them off to outer space to colonize their own planet, per Stephen Hawking's prescription for the human race.

Seriously, the degree of seething hate, lying, hypocrisy, and fanaticism we see in the new breed of self-proclaimed "progressives" is cause for serious worry. I despair and beg keener minds to propose solutions.

Anonymous > , • Disclaimer July 27, 2017 at 10:42 pm GMT

Jonathan Freedland, a British-Jewish journalist infamous for hailing the demographic eclipse of the British people in their own homeland as "a kind of triumph," has devoted the last twelve months of his miserable journalistic life to neurotic attacks on the Trump presidency. His hyperbolic writings at the Guardian,

How many "British people" have requested, or demanded, his demotion from his job place at the Guardian?

The fewer they have been, the righter has he been in behaving and writing the way he has.It is happens over a non-brief time span, it means that it works. If it works, it's right.

Same as for the "neurotic". What is insanity? Only what is disliked by the crowd, or those with power. It's not this journalist's case (or he would have lost his job), so "neurotic" doesn't apply to him.

[Jul 28, 2017] The moment Trump beat the 'chosen' one was the moment the United States government entered the crisis. If the scenario outlined by VIPS is correct or if I have understood it correctly then there is a far greater scandal behind the Russiagate scandal even than Russiagate

Notable quotes:
"... If the scenario outlined by VIPS is correct – or if I have understood it correctly – then there is a far greater scandal behind the Russiagate scandal even than this, for in that case an attempt was made to swing the election through a fraud in which sections of the US's intelligence and security services appear to have colluded." ..."
"... That is a very disturbing possibility, and one which if true would mean that the political and constitutional system of the United States is in profound crisis ..."
"... Lastly, I couldn't figure out why Sen Warner suggested on a Sunday morning show awhile back that Zero 'choked' that is until I read the recent article by Time magazine describing the 19-Page DHS Plan to post national guardsmen at polling sites throughout the USA. It's startling to learn all of this after the fact, to say the least. But know the D's had a plan for election day, of course, first having to sell the narrative about a Russian cyber attack, but the Secretary's of State appeared to have stopped that project in its tracks...hence, Warner's 'choked' comment. ..."
Jul 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

h | Jul 27, 2017 10:34:06 AM | 106

karlof1 @35 - Thanks for the link to Mercouris' article. What he is realizing is what many have been alluding to for quite some time.

" If the scenario outlined by VIPS is correct – or if I have understood it correctly – then there is a far greater scandal behind the Russiagate scandal even than this, for in that case an attempt was made to swing the election through a fraud in which sections of the US's intelligence and security services appear to have colluded."

" That is a very disturbing possibility, and one which if true would mean that the political and constitutional system of the United States is in profound crisis ."

The U.S. government is in a 'profound crisis.'

It is impossible to forget that Hillary was the anointed one to follow zero. The moment the numbers came in on the eve of the election showing Trump beat the 'chosen' one was the moment the United States government entered the crisis.

What little we are slowly learning is that Zero politicized every department charged with conducting the affairs on behalf of the people. What we learned shortly after Trump took office from an investigation conducted by Sen Grassley of the Sen Judiciary committee was the tip of the iceberg, that was all of the financial settlements from the banking industry following the 2008 financial meltdown went into a DOJ slush fund that was then dispersed to support groups like Black Lives Matter, La Raza and many, many more. Sessions ended those funds from being handed out within the first couple of month's of his taking office.

It was little reported. But think about the millions upon millions in those settlements. As well, I'd be remiss not to make note, but as part of the numerous settlements, DOJ would suggest, as part of the deal, that the bank or business settling make a 'tax deductible' donation to organizations of the DOJ's choosing. This was once the Chicago way of doing business, maybe it still is.

Had the 'anointed' one won trust these groups, good or bad, would have only grown and continued their disruptive practices on the streets of anywhere USA. Had that continued cities like Baltimore, Chicago, NYC, etc would have been begging for federal help to cease such disruption aka Martial Law.

I could go on and on about the many projects/programs Zero put in place only to have the anointed one to carry them through to fruition. All such programs ended on the eve of the election.

Also take notice that there has not been a horrific shooting since at least October, maybe even September, here in the U.S. One might want to ask why?

Lastly, I couldn't figure out why Sen Warner suggested on a Sunday morning show awhile back that Zero 'choked' that is until I read the recent article by Time magazine describing the 19-Page DHS Plan to post national guardsmen at polling sites throughout the USA. It's startling to learn all of this after the fact, to say the least. But know the D's had a plan for election day, of course, first having to sell the narrative about a Russian cyber attack, but the Secretary's of State appeared to have stopped that project in its tracks...hence, Warner's 'choked' comment.

Oh, there was a plan in place alright, and we're only at the beginning of the curtain being pulled back. In the meantime those radical leaders in congress who hide behind the D or R label are more than happy to grind the people's business to a complete halt.

/div
/div

[Jul 28, 2017] The improper association (maybe crime) of Victor Pinchuk with Hillary, Bill and Chelsea Clinton, covered up by the US media, US department of Justice, and the International Monetary Fund

Jul 28, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al , July 19, 2017 at 12:54 pm

JohnHelmer.net:

THE IMPROPER ASSOCIATION (MAYBE CRIME) OF VICTOR PINCHUK WITH HILLARY, BILL AND CHELSEA CLINTON, COVERED UP BY THE US MEDIA, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, AND THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND

http://johnhelmer.net/the-improper-association-maybe-crime-of-victor-pinchuk-with-hillary-bill-and-chelsea-clinton-covered-up-by-the-us-media-us-department-of-justice-and-the-international-monetary-fund/

Never in the field of American conflict with Russia has so much wool pulled over the eyes been owed to so few sheep. That was during the losing presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Now, in the investigations of President Donald Trump and his family, it's a case of so many sheep producing so little wool.

The case of the $13 million paid to the Clinton family by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, in exchange for personal favours and escalation of the war against Russia, was reported in detail throughout 2014. Click to read the opener, and more.

Early this month there has been fresh investigation of Pinchuk's money links with the Clintons, owing to the start of Ukrainian government inquiries into the theft of billions of dollars of International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans to Ukraine – money then transferred to Ukrainian commercial banks including Pinchuk's Credit Dnepr bank, and then loaned to offshore entities controlled by Pinchuk but apparently not repaid.

Theft of the IMF money was first reported here in connection with Igor Kolomoisky's operation of Privat Bank
####

More at the link. Goose & gander anyone?

[Jul 28, 2017] Counterpunch: Was the "Russian Hack" an Inside Job? Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Notable quotes:
"... The article contains a damning time-line: Wikileaks made their announcement on 12 June, the DNC/Crowdstrike malware announcement was made on 15 June, and the alleged "hack" occurred on 5 July. ..."
"... Another damning detail is that the data rate of the hack suggests either four simultaneous T3 connections, two internal 100MBPS ethernet connections with load sharing, or a USB or similar mechanism. It is doubtful that a SMTP (email) server would use anything as fast as a T1 (one thirtieth the data rate of a T3), ..."
"... This also suggests that the purpose behind the hack was purely to taint information that had already escaped, which is akin to hiding information for its incriminating content. I would think that that constitutes evidence of mens rea. ..."
Jul 28, 2017 | gravatar.com

saskydisc says: July 25, 2017 at 9:44 am

Counterpunch : Was the "Russian Hack" an Inside Job? Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Forensic studies of "Russian hacking" into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2017, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

The article contains a damning time-line: Wikileaks made their announcement on 12 June, the DNC/Crowdstrike malware announcement was made on 15 June, and the alleged "hack" occurred on 5 July.

Another damning detail is that the data rate of the hack suggests either four simultaneous T3 connections, two internal 100MBPS ethernet connections with load sharing, or a USB or similar mechanism. It is doubtful that a SMTP (email) server would use anything as fast as a T1 (one thirtieth the data rate of a T3), let alone four T3s especially for a smallish group of people such as the DNC, which suggests very strongly either internal ethernet (they might have had gigabit/s ethernet in their intranet) or a USB copy doctored to make it look like a hack.

This also suggests that the purpose behind the hack was purely to taint information that had already escaped, which is akin to hiding information for its incriminating content. I would think that that constitutes evidence of mens rea.

kirill says: July 25, 2017 at 7:12 pm

The details are always the key. But the average media consumer sap can't tell the difference between one technical detail and another and every detail is treated not as a show-stopping fact, but as a fuzzy entity that somehow can be ignored if needed. This is why the rapid Russia meddling narrative has any staying power. All the lemmings who basically run with what they are told and do not engaged their brains to do any analysis.

saskydisc says: July 25, 2017 at 8:49 pm
Analysis requires a baseline of curiosity. Curiosity requires a baseline of suspicion, and absence of fear. My impression is that much of the population is actually scared, and that they remain scared despite surviving various dangers. This I do not understand.
>

[Jul 27, 2017] The shrieking and wailing business about Russia is a sideshow; the main event, under the big top is China.

Notable quotes:
"... All of the above, EU, Japan etc. happily do business with China. Any face off exists in the feverish psyche of Western editorialists. The shrieking and wailing business about Russia is a sideshow; the main event, under the big top is China. ..."
Jul 27, 2017 | www.unz.com

July 26, 2017

Robert Magill > , July 26, 2017 at 10:45 pm GMT

The dispute and indecisions over who rules the empire will allow for regional powers to lay claims on contested regions. The EU, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Israel will face off with Russia, Iran and China. No one will wait for the US to decide which power center will rule

All of the above, EU, Japan etc. happily do business with China. Any face off exists in the feverish psyche of Western editorialists. The shrieking and wailing business about Russia is a sideshow; the main event, under the big top is China.

All the rest is carnival time and we stand in the midway in awe of the carnival barker in the big hat who announces the freak show inside.

China has a hundred friends. We have two; Saudi Arabia and Israel.

http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

[Jul 27, 2017] Russian Officials Warn New US Sanctions Put Them in Uncharted Waters by Jason Ditz

Notable quotes:
"... Officials See US Move as Proof of 'Anti-Russian Hysteria' ..."
Jul 27, 2017 | news.antiwar.com
Officials See US Move as Proof of 'Anti-Russian Hysteria' Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov was among a series of top Russian officials issuing warnings with regards to the latest round of US sanctions against Russia, which overwhelmingly passed the House and seem to have strong support in the Senate.

With US-Russian relations already at a post-Cold War low, officials are warning the US sanctions are putting them into " uncharted waters ," pushing an already unstable relationship even further with additional sanctions.

Russian officials pinned this on "anti-Russia hysteria" within the US Congress, saying that they believe President Trump, who was previously talking up a diplomatic rapprochement with Russia, had effectively been "trapped" into going along with the sanctions.

The House bill that imposes the sanctions also heavily restricts the ability of the president to unilaterally lift sanctions in the future. Indeed, that was the initial point of the bill, Democrats wanted to prevent Trump from removing any sanctions. To get it through Congress, they added sanctions on Iran and North Korea.

The Russia sanctions have not only riled Russia, but the European Union as well, with fears the US sanctions will heavily hit European energy companies that are reliant on Russia for supplies. EU officials have warned the US is likely to face a swift retaliatory move by them if the sanctions go through.

[Jul 27, 2017] The neoliberal system of governance is designed to protect the interests of the most powerful members of financial oligarchy. Trump can t challenge that, but he can expose them. What is good for Goldman Sacks is good to America slogan is here to stay

Notable quotes:
"... the neocons have numerous ways to make him cave. ..."
"... His ability to "do good" for the American masses is as severely limited as that of all his predecessors, unfortunately. ..."
Jul 27, 2017 | www.unz.com

jacques sheete > , July 27, 2017 at 12:31 am GMT

@Wally After only 7 months, is it really that bad for Trump's agenda? I think not.

Wally, yer one of the good guys, and your faith in Trump has aspects of charm, but the neocons have numerous ways to make him cave.

He could only be a dictator in the style you're suggesting if he had the backing of the military and or the big money crowd and I just don't see it. His ability to "do good" for the American masses is as severely limited as that of all his predecessors, unfortunately.

The system was designed to protect the interests of the most powerful money bag crowd while convincing the masses that whatever is good for GM is good for the USA, so to speak.

[Jul 27, 2017] Trump greatest accomplishment may well be that he has caused Washingtons Swamp Dwellers to rise from the ooze and expose themselves for all the world to see

Jul 27, 2017 | www.unz.com

Erebus, July 27, 2017 at 1:13 am GMT

@jacques sheete Wally, yer one of the good guys, and your faith in Trump has aspects of charm, but the neocons have numerous ways to make him cave.

He could only be a dictator in the style you're suggesting if he had the backing of the military and or the big money crowd and I just don't see it. His ability to "do good" for the American masses is as severely limited as that of all his predecessors, unfortunately.

The system was designed to protect the interests of the most powerful money bag crowd while convincing the masses that whatever is good for GM is good for the USA, so to speak. During the campaign, I assumed Trump had a lot more behind him than he appears to have after the inauguration. He needed to have a few key power centres four-square behind him, and to bring a dozen bloody-minded executive operators with well-considered plans to "hoist the black flag and start cutting throats" at key Departments and Agencies.

So far, it appears that instead of Seven Samurai, he brought the Seven Dwarfs. Our remaining hope is that it's all part of a "clever plan", but that hope is just a hope

His greatest accomplishment may well be that he has caused Washington's Swamp Dwellers to rise from the ooze and expose themselves for all the world to see. That's weakened them immeasurably, perhaps fatally. To be sure, that's no small thing, and the next Trump to come along is now on full alert as to who & what to bring with him.

Seamus Padraig, July 27, 2017 at 10:43 am GMT

@Erebus During the campaign, I assumed Trump had a lot more behind him than he appears to have after the inauguration. He needed to have a few key power centres four-square behind him, and to bring a dozen bloody-minded executive operators with well-considered plans to "hoist the black flag and start cutting throats" at key Departments and Agencies.

So far, it appears that instead of Seven Samurai, he brought the Seven Dwarfs. Our remaining hope is that it's all part of a "clever plan", but that hope is just a hope...

His greatest accomplishment may well be that he has caused Washington's Swamp Dwellers to rise from the ooze and expose themselves for all the world to see. That's weakened them immeasurably, perhaps fatally. To be sure, that's no small thing, and the next Trump to come along is now on full alert as to who & what to bring with him.

His greatest accomplishment may well be that he has caused Washington's Swamp Dwellers to rise from the ooze and expose themselves for all the world to see. That's weakened them immeasurably, perhaps fatally. To be sure, that's no small thing, and the next Trump to come along is now on full alert as to who & what to bring with him.

You nailed it. Even if they do eventually succeed in foiling Trump, things will never be the same again. The whole world is watching the circus in Washington, and so Washington's brand ('democracy') is now shot. 2016 was indeed an annus mirabilis!

[Jul 27, 2017] Democrats Colluded With Known Terrorist To Subvert The 2016 Election

Ukrainians government tried to propel Clinton and now have problems with Trump. So there might well be several blatant interference of foreign government in the US 20016 Presidential elections. But it was not Russia.
Jul 27, 2017 | www.unz.com

RobinG , July 27, 2017 at 12:18 am GMT

Who said there should be a pro-Trump rally on the National Mall? OK, but better yet

GO ON the OFFENSIVE in the Information War.

watch-v=-o_B6uw8r5Q

That's what Lee Stranahan is doing, and he's making waves.

Terrific interview: Soros-Clinton, Ukraine/Syria/DNC meddling and media coverup, etc.

Democrats Colluded With Known Terrorist To Subvert The 2016 Election

[Jul 27, 2017] Forensic studies of Russian hacking into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia

Jul 27, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Russiagate is the distraction. What are the Democrats hiding?

Seth Rich?
The Awan family 3,2,1

Consortiumnews: Intel Vets Challenge 'Russia Hack' Evidence
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/

July 24, 2017

In a memo to President Trump, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers, including NSA specialists, cite new forensic studies to challenge the claim of the key Jan. 6 "assessment" that Russia "hacked" Democratic emails last year.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Was the "Russian Hack" an Inside Job?

Executive Summary

Forensic studies of "Russian hacking" into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

After examining metadata from the "Guccifer 2.0" July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that "telltale signs" implicating Russia were then inserted.


Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying and doctoring were performed on the East coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies [see here and here].

Independent analyst Skip Folden, a retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology US, who examined the recent forensic findings, is a co-author of this Memorandum. He has drafted a more detailed technical report titled "Cyber-Forensic Investigation of 'Russian Hack' and Missing Intelligence Community Disclaimers," and [,]


Investors Business Daily (IBD) focuses on things financial has this Editorial:

The Bizarre Hacking Scandal That Democrats And The Press Are Happy To Ignore
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/the-bizarre-hacking-scandal-that-democrats-and-the-press-are-happy-to-ignore/


Scandal: When federal officials arrested Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's IT aide, Imran Awan, as he tried to flee for his native Pakistan, it was the latest twist to an already twisted scandal involving several House IT workers who possibly stole highly sensitive information from several Democrats. Stranger still has been the Democrats' nonresponse to this unfolding scandal.[.]

Posted by: likklemore | Jul 27, 2017 3:26:19 PM | 116

[Jul 26, 2017] Lawmakers in Russia Call for Retaliation Against New US Sanctions

Big victory for neocons. Defeat of Trump administration. Looks like the neocons have numerous ways to make him cave. Huge set back for Putin as it undermine his policy of cooperating with West. It's kind of hilarious that the neocon press corp pushing Clinton's BS #Russiagate narrative has put German Poodles on the same side as Trump
Russia can't retaliate as the USA is way too strong and is spoiling for a fight. Also the USA export to Russia is not that big. This is actually more a hit on Europeans, especially Germany.
Notable quotes:
"... Sergei A. Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, said that the new sanctions would bury any prospect of improving relations, calling the measures "beyond common sense." ..."
"... "The authors and sponsors of this bill are making a very serious step toward destruction of prospects for normalizing relations with Russia and do not conceal that that's their target," ..."
"... Mr. Trump will sign the bill because he is "a prisoner of Congress and anti-Russian hysteria," Aleksei K. Pushkov, another Russian legislator and frequent commentator on foreign relations, wrote on Twitter. He called the sanctions "a new stage of confrontation" and mused whether the restaurant chain McDonald's should be targeted in response. ..."
"... Alexis Rodzianko, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, said the lack of consultation and the cementing in place of the sanctions would put American firms at a disadvantage. ..."
"... It is considered unlikely that specific American companies would be targeted in any retaliation from Moscow, because Russia is just emerging from a recession. John F. Tefft, the American ambassador to Russia, noted recently that American firms employed about 175,000 people in the country, including many local executives. ..."
"... "The question was when would it happen," Mr. Khokhlov said. "With these sanctions now about to be converted into law, that makes it much more difficult, and you just have to realize that it is going to be for a long time." ..."
Jul 26, 2017 | www.msn.com

in response to plans for new American sanctions, while the Kremlin focused more on the damage to relations between Washington and Moscow.

Apart from demanding a tough response, many in Russia declared dead any hope for improved relations with Washington under a Trump administration, and there were suggestions that European pique over the proposed measures created an opening for an anti-American alliance.

Dmitri S. Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, noted that the proposed American law was still a draft. The House and the Senate must reconcile their versions before submitting it for President Trump's signature.

Any substantial response by Mr. Putin would require more study, Mr. Peskov said. Using one of Mr. Trump's favorite adjectives in describing the law, he said, "In the meantime, it can be said that the news is quite sad with regard to Russia-U.S. relations and prospects for their development." He added that it was "no less depressing with regard to the international law and international commercial relations."

Similar sentiments emerged from several European capitals. In Paris, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the new sanctions, targeting Iran and North Korea as well as Russia, appeared to contradict international law because of their global reach.

There is concern in Europe that the American sanctions could ripple through the energy market because they target companies that contribute to the development, maintenance or modernization of the pipelines exporting Russian energy.

That would most likely affect a hotly debated natural-gas pipeline project linking Russia with Germany, called Nord Stream 2, which is owned by the Russian state oil giant, Gazprom, but in which European firms hold financial stakes.

Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign relations committee in the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian legislature, said Moscow must respond even if it waited for the final law.

The reaction should be "painful for the Americans," he wrote on Facebook. He also suggested a temporary alliance with Europe.

Sergei A. Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, said that the new sanctions would bury any prospect of improving relations, calling the measures "beyond common sense."

"The authors and sponsors of this bill are making a very serious step toward destruction of prospects for normalizing relations with Russia and do not conceal that that's their target," Mr. Ryabkov said, according to the Russian news agency Itar-Tass. Despite that, he added, Moscow remained ready to cooperate on shared concerns, including fighting terrorism.

Last December, former President Barack Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and the closing of two Russian diplomatic estates near Washington and New York. Mr. Putin, anticipating better relations under a Trump administration, did not respond at the time. Many say they believe the Russian leader's most likely first step will mirror those actions, and Moscow has been threatening to take such measures for weeks.

The American bill, passed by a vote of 419 to 3 by the House of Representatives on Tuesday, bolsters economic sanctions against Russia that were imposed after Moscow annexed Crimea and destabilized Ukraine in 2014.

The measures reflect Congress's growing unease with Mr. Trump's relatively warm attitude toward Russia despite repeated assertions from United States intelligence agencies that Moscow hacked the American election. The law would require Mr. Trump to seek congressional approval before lifting any sanctions -- a curb on executive authority that has prompted mixed signals from the White House about whether Mr. Trump will sign any final version of the bill.

Russia, effectively ignoring the fact that its election meddling had prompted the measures, used the push for tightened sanctions as further proof that deep forces in the American government were continuing to thwart Mr. Trump's wish, expressed during the campaign, to improve ties with Moscow.

Mr. Trump will sign the bill because he is "a prisoner of Congress and anti-Russian hysteria," Aleksei K. Pushkov, another Russian legislator and frequent commentator on foreign relations, wrote on Twitter. He called the sanctions "a new stage of confrontation" and mused whether the restaurant chain McDonald's should be targeted in response.

There has been concern in the American business community that the sanctions would harm their interests. In previous rounds, Washington consulted with Europe on sanctions to ensure that everyone was on the same page. Alexis Rodzianko, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, said the lack of consultation and the cementing in place of the sanctions would put American firms at a disadvantage.

"If there is no coordination, everyone goes their own way," he said. "We don't like them," he added, referring to the sanctions.

In response to Western sanctions in 2014, Moscow banned the import of many foods from the West, including cheese and fish. Those counter-sanctions are often lauded in Russia as helping foster agricultural development at home.

It is considered unlikely that specific American companies would be targeted in any retaliation from Moscow, because Russia is just emerging from a recession. John F. Tefft, the American ambassador to Russia, noted recently that American firms employed about 175,000 people in the country, including many local executives.

More than anything else, the proposed law left the impression that the American sanctions, whether effective or not, would endure.

"There were sort of expectations that the sanctions would be gradually lifted because there would be progress in the political settlements in Ukraine," said Oleg Khokhlov, a partner with Goltsblat BLP, the Russian arm of Berwin Leighton Paisner, a London-based law firm.

"The question was when would it happen," Mr. Khokhlov said. "With these sanctions now about to be converted into law, that makes it much more difficult, and you just have to realize that it is going to be for a long time."

[Jul 26, 2017] Muller as A bomb dropped on Trump

Notable quotes:
"... Republicans join Democrats in warning Trump not to fire Mueller. Mueller remains and keeps digging. Mueller subpoenas damaging documents; Trump refuses to comply. A court orders him to comply. He declares this a witch hunt, an attack on his family (or whatever). Then he resigns, claiming he has already made America great. He tells the country that Vice President Pence will carry on in his place. ..."
"... It leaves out what comes after, though, and that's never wise with Trump. He lives to hit back. He's already attacking the GOP for its insufficient "defense" of him in this case, demanding openly that they put him above the law. If Rubin's scenario comes true, and Trump does leave, he'll look for vengeance unfettered by whatever remains of his political restraint. ..."
"... If Trump is forced out he's a hot torpedo looking for a target. He'll make revenge his life's mission. Donald Jr. and his siblings will take up the mantle because there's money to be made from political warfare. ..."
"... "President Trump and his advisers are floating possible replacements for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the list includes Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), The Washington Post reports. ..."
Jul 24, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

im1dc , July 25, 2017 at 08:57 AM

Well, well the Right's mouthpieces in the media are turning against Trump

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/7/23/1683310/-Trump-Loses-Jennifer-Rubin-Torpedo-in-the-Water

"Trump Loses Jennifer Rubin. Torpedo in the Water"

By Next Conservatism...Sunday Jul 23, 2017...8:55 PM EST

"Jennifer Rubin's "Right Turn" column in The Washington Post was reliably partisan beyond reason during the Obama years, so it's been a shock to see her turn sane and lawyer-like in her #nevertrump position. In fact she's given up on Trump and turned naysayer against the GOP. Her prognostications for what comes next as the Mueller investigation unfolds offer a range of possibilities, all bad. Bet on this one:

..... 4. Republicans join Democrats in warning Trump not to fire Mueller. Mueller remains and keeps digging. Mueller subpoenas damaging documents; Trump refuses to comply. A court orders him to comply. He declares this a witch hunt, an attack on his family (or whatever). Then he resigns, claiming he has already made America great. He tells the country that Vice President Pence will carry on in his place. LESSON: Congress must protect Mueller and preserve the possibility that Trump may be forced to resign.

That's the most likely scenario because it's to Trump's advantage in the same way that this entire presidency has been, as a branding effort to promote his business. If he rejects subpoenas and defies the law he's doing what he promised, fighting the evil Washington machine. If he leaves before a market correction he can allege that the spike in the Dow was his work; that he delivered on his promise to drive the Supreme Court rightward; that he gave the downtrodden Conservatives voters from both parties a real alternative; and that he is their martyr, their symbol of Making America Great Again despite all the efforts of the liars and partisans who forced him out. It's a perfect narrative, assuming that his resignation actually offers him some defense against indictment, which is not guaranteed.

It leaves out what comes after, though, and that's never wise with Trump. He lives to hit back. He's already attacking the GOP for its insufficient "defense" of him in this case, demanding openly that they put him above the law. If Rubin's scenario comes true, and Trump does leave, he'll look for vengeance unfettered by whatever remains of his political restraint. A third party of Trumpist candidates hand-picked by Trump is a realistic possibility. They'll run against the enemies Trump made in the deep red districts and force the GOP to accede to a Trumpist agenda or be defeated by it completely.

If Trump is forced out he's a hot torpedo looking for a target. He'll make revenge his life's mission. Donald Jr. and his siblings will take up the mantle because there's money to be made from political warfare.

If they're kingmakers instead of kings they can shelter themselves behind Far Right candidates, take huge money from political consultancies and influence peddling, and turn Conservatism into their business. Their properties and investments won't suffer, and they'll rebuild their fortresses of hidden deals and dark money. The GOP will be a sitting duck for them. The Trumps will do with the Republican Party what they do with any distressed property: take it over or tear it down it."

im1dc , July 24, 2017 at 05:47 PM
Trump wants to fire his Appointees Price if Obamacare Repeal and Replace fail, and Sessions for not protecting Trump from the Russian collusion investigation

The Big One is coming, I sense it and then every American must decide if Trump stays or goes, no more wiggle room after that happens

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/343556-cruz-being-considered-to-replace-sessions-report

"Cruz being considered to replace Sessions: report"

By Jacqueline Thomsen...07/24/17...07:57 PM EDT

"President Trump and his advisers are floating possible replacements for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the list includes Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), The Washington Post reports.

...Trump also slammed Sessions in a tweet Monday morning, asking why our "beleaguered A.G." wasn't investigating ties between Hillary Clinton and Russia...

...Trump associates are viewing a possible Sessions ousting as a step toward firing special counsel Robert Mueller, according to the Post."...

[Jul 25, 2017] Trump Should Veto Congress Foolish New Sanctions Bill - The Unz Review

Notable quotes:
"... No matter what the problem, no matter where on earth it occurs, the answer from Washington is always sanctions. Sanctions are supposed to force governments to change policies and do what Washington tells them or face the wrath of their people. So the goal of sanctions is to make life as miserable as possible for civilians so they will try to overthrow their governments. Foreign leaders and the elites do not suffer under sanctions. This policy would be immoral even if it did work, but it does not. ..."
"... Why is Congress so eager for more sanctions on Russia? The neocons and the media have designated Russia as the official enemy and the military industrial complex and other special interests want to continue getting rich terrifying Americans into believing the propaganda. ..."
"... Who has funded al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria for years? Saudi Arabia. Yet no one is talking about sanctions against that country. This is because sanctions are not about our security. They are about politics and special interests. ..."
"... President Trump was elected to pursue a new kind of foreign policy. If he means what he said on the campaign trail, he will veto this foolish sanctions bill and begin dismantling neocon control of his Administration. ..."
Jul 25, 2017 | www.unz.com
Ron Paul July 24, 2017 500 Words 4 Comments Reply
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This week's expected House vote to add more sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea is a prime example of how little thought goes into US foreign policy. Sanctions have become kind of an automatic action the US government takes when it simply doesn't know what else to do.

No matter what the problem, no matter where on earth it occurs, the answer from Washington is always sanctions. Sanctions are supposed to force governments to change policies and do what Washington tells them or face the wrath of their people. So the goal of sanctions is to make life as miserable as possible for civilians so they will try to overthrow their governments. Foreign leaders and the elites do not suffer under sanctions. This policy would be immoral even if it did work, but it does not.

Why is Congress so eager for more sanctions on Russia? The neocons and the media have designated Russia as the official enemy and the military industrial complex and other special interests want to continue getting rich terrifying Americans into believing the propaganda.

Why, just weeks after the White House affirmed that Iran is abiding by its obligations under the nuclear treaty, does Congress pass additional sanctions anyway? Washington blames Iran for "destabilizing" Syria and Iraq by helping them fight ISIS and al-Qaeda. Does this make any sense at all?

When is the last time Iran committed a terrorist act on our soil? It hasn't. Yet we learned from the declassified 28 pages of the Congressional 9/11 report that Saudi Arabia was deeply involved in the 2001 attacks against Washington and New York. Who has funded al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria for years? Saudi Arabia. Yet no one is talking about sanctions against that country. This is because sanctions are not about our security. They are about politics and special interests.

Why is Congress poised to add yet more sanctions on North Korea? Do they want the North Korean people to suffer more than they are already suffering? North Korea's GDP is half that of Vermont – the US state with the lowest GDP! Does anyone believe they are about to invade us? There is much talk about North Korea's ballistic missile program, but little talk about 30,000 US troops and weapons on North Korea's border. For Washington, it's never a threat if we do it to the other guy.

Here's an alternative to doing the same thing over and over: Let's take US troops out of North Korea after 70 years. The new South Korean president has proposed military talks with North Korea to try and reduce tensions. We should get out of the way and let them solve their own problems. If Iran and Russia want to fight ISIS and al-Qaeda at the invitation of their ally, Syria, why stand in the way? We can't run the world. We are out of money.

President Trump was elected to pursue a new kind of foreign policy. If he means what he said on the campaign trail, he will veto this foolish sanctions bill and begin dismantling neocon control of his Administration.

(Republished from The Ron Paul Institute by permission of author or representative)

Randal > , July 25, 2017 at 9:25 pm GMT

Trump vetoing it would create yet another bubble of media and political establishment noise against him. That might even be useful if he needs a distraction from something else.

Meanwhile, what's happening with Sessions? I can understand Trump being annoyed with him for recusing himself from the Russia nonsense and allowing a special prosecutor to be set up, when arguably it would have been better to just openly laugh at the allegations from the beginning. Would there have been enough Republican traitors to get him impeached for doing so? But losing Sessions seems likely to seriously piss off another remaining chunk of his core support, unless he can find someone else who can satisfy the base and get past Congress, which seems unlikely.

[Jul 25, 2017] US sanctions have taken a big bite out of Russia's economy by John W. Schoen

Notable quotes:
"... The loss of oil revenues – a drop of as much as 60 percent, according to a 2017 Congressional Research Service report -- helped spark a collapse in Russia's currency, the ruble, sending the prices of Russian consumer goods soaring. ..."
"... The Russian economy has also been hurt by a wave of capital flight out of the country, as individual Russians sought to move money offshore and convert their shrinking rubles to dollars and euros to protect their wealth. That money flow slowed in 2014 as U.S. and European sanctions took hold. ..."
"... Though U.S. sanctions have put pressure on the Russian economy, the impact on American business has been limited because Russia makes up less than 1 percent of U.S. exports. ..."
"... A version of the measure that was fashioned by U.S. Senate and House leaders would include fines for European companies that help Russia build energy export pipelines. That would likely impact EU firms involved in an $11 billion project called Nord Stream 2, that would ship Russian natural gas across the Baltic. ..."
Jul 25, 2017 | www.msn.com

Those 2014 U.S. sanctions were paired with related measures imposed by the European Union, which placed restrictions on business with Russia's financial, defense and energy sectors.

Today, Russia's economy is still feeling the harsh impact of those measures, which coincided with a crash in global oil prices that cut deeply into revenues from the country's main export.

The loss of oil revenues – a drop of as much as 60 percent, according to a 2017 Congressional Research Service report -- helped spark a collapse in Russia's currency, the ruble, sending the prices of Russian consumer goods soaring.

The Russian economy has also been hurt by a wave of capital flight out of the country, as individual Russians sought to move money offshore and convert their shrinking rubles to dollars and euros to protect their wealth. That money flow slowed in 2014 as U.S. and European sanctions took hold.

Though U.S. sanctions have put pressure on the Russian economy, the impact on American business has been limited because Russia makes up less than 1 percent of U.S. exports.

Only six U.S states count Russia as a significant market for goods and services. Washington, the most reliant, sells roughly 1 percent of its total exports to Russia, consisting mostly of machinery and farm products. That's half the level before the 2014 sanctions took effect.

European nations, which export greater volumes to Russia than the U.S., imposed their own set of sanctions response to the Crimean annexation.

But some European countries that rely more heavily on Russia as a trade partner are eyeing the latest U.S. sanctions warily.

A version of the measure that was fashioned by U.S. Senate and House leaders would include fines for European companies that help Russia build energy export pipelines. That would likely impact EU firms involved in an $11 billion project called Nord Stream 2, that would ship Russian natural gas across the Baltic.

[Jul 25, 2017] Intel Vets Challenge 'Russia Hack' Evidence

Notable quotes:
"... The recent forensic studies fill in a critical gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original "Guccifer 2.0" material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the "hand-picked analysts" from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the "Intelligence Community Assessment" dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics. ..."
Jul 25, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

By VIPS

July 25, 2017 " Information Clearing House " -

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT : Was the "Russian Hack" an Inside Job?

Executive Summary

Forensic studies of "Russian hacking" into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

After examining metadata from the "Guccifer 2.0" July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that "telltale signs" implicating Russia were then inserted.

Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack . Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying and doctoring were performed on the East coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies [see here and here ].

Independent analyst Skip Folden, a retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology US, who examined the recent forensic findings, is a co-author of this Memorandum. He has drafted a more detailed technical report titled "Cyber-Forensic Investigation of 'Russian Hack' and Missing Intelligence Community Disclaimers," and sent it to the offices of the Special Counsel and the Attorney General. VIPS member William Binney, a former Technical Director at the National Security Agency, and other senior NSA "alumni" in VIPS attest to the professionalism of the independent forensic findings.

The recent forensic studies fill in a critical gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original "Guccifer 2.0" material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the "hand-picked analysts" from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the "Intelligence Community Assessment" dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics.

NOTE : There has been so much conflation of charges about hacking that we wish to make very clear the primary focus of this Memorandum. We focus specifically on the July 5, 2016 alleged Guccifer 2.0 "hack" of the DNC server. In earlier VIPS memoranda we addressed the lack of any evidence connecting the Guccifer 2.0 alleged hacks and WikiLeaks, and we asked President Obama specifically to disclose any evidence that WikiLeaks received DNC data from the Russians [see here and here ].

Addressing this point at his last press conference (January 18), he described "the conclusions of the intelligence community" as "not conclusive," even though the Intelligence Community Assessment of January 6 expressed "high confidence" that Russian intelligence "relayed material it acquired from the DNC to WikiLeaks."

Obama's admission came as no surprise to us. It has long been clear to us that the reason the U.S. government lacks conclusive evidence of a transfer of a "Russian hack" to WikiLeaks is because there was no such transfer. Based mostly on the cumulatively unique technical experience of our ex-NSA colleagues, we have been saying for almost a year that the DNC data reached WikiLeaks via a copy/leak by a DNC insider (but almost certainly not the same person who copied DNC data on July 5, 2016).

From the information available, we conclude that the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different purposes:

-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to publish them (which he did on July 22) – the presumed objective being to expose strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and

-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by "showing" it came from a "Russian hack."

* * *

Mr. President:

This is our first VIPS Memorandum for you, but we have a history of letting U.S. Presidents know when we think our former intelligence colleagues have gotten something important wrong, and why. For example, our first such memorandum , a same-day commentary for President George W. Bush on Colin Powell's U.N. speech on February 5, 2003, warned that the "unintended consequences were likely to be catastrophic," should the U.S. attack Iraq and "justfy" the war on intelligence that we retired intelligence officers could readily see as fraudulent and driven by a war agenda.

The January 6 "Intelligence Community Assessment" by "hand-picked" analysts from the FBI, CIA, and NSA seems to fit into the same agenda-driven category. It is largely based on an "assessment," not supported by any apparent evidence, that a shadowy entity with the moniker "Guccifer 2.0" hacked the DNC on behalf of Russian intelligence and gave DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

The recent forensic findings mentioned above have put a huge dent in that assessment and cast serious doubt on the underpinnings of the extraordinarily successful campaign to blame the Russian government for hacking. The pundits and politicians who have led the charge against Russian "meddling" in the U.S. election can be expected to try to cast doubt on the forensic findings, if they ever do bubble up into the mainstream media. But the principles of physics don't lie; and the technical limitations of today's Internet are widely understood. We are prepared to answer any substantive challenges on their merits.

You may wish to ask CIA Director Mike Pompeo what he knows about this. Our own lengthy intelligence community experience suggests that it is possible that neither former CIA Director John Brennan, nor the cyber-warriors who worked for him, have been completely candid with their new director regarding how this all went down.

Copied, Not Hacked

As indicated above, the independent forensic work just completed focused on data copied (not hacked) by a shadowy persona named "Guccifer 2.0." The forensics reflect what seems to have been a desperate effort to "blame the Russians" for publishing highly embarrassing DNC emails three days before the Democratic convention last July. Since the content of the DNC emails reeked of pro-Clinton bias, her campaign saw an overriding need to divert attention from content to provenance – as in, who "hacked" those DNC emails? The campaign was enthusiastically supported by a compliant "mainstream" media; they are still on a roll.

"The Russians" were the ideal culprit. And, after WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, "We have emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication," her campaign had more than a month before the convention to insert its own "forensic facts" and prime the media pump to put the blame on "Russian meddling." Mrs. Clinton's PR chief Jennifer Palmieri has explained how she used golf carts to make the rounds at the convention. She wrote that her "mission was to get the press to focus on something even we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton."

Independent cyber-investigators have now completed the kind of forensic work that the intelligence assessment did not do. Oddly, the "hand-picked" intelligence analysts contented themselves with "assessing" this and "assessing" that. In contrast, the investigators dug deep and came up with verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of the alleged Russian hack.

They found that the purported "hack" of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider. The data was leaked after being doctored with a cut-and-paste job to implicate Russia. We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI.

The Time Sequence

June 12, 2016: Assange announces WikiLeaks is about to publish "emails related to Hillary Clinton."

June 15, 2016: DNC contractor Crowdstrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.

June 15, 2016: On the same day, "Guccifer 2.0" affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the "hack;" claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was synthetically tainted with "Russian fingerprints."

We do not think that the June 12 & 15 timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it suggests the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack.

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The Key Event

July 5, 2016: In the early evening, Eastern Daylight Time, someone working in the EDT time zone with a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device. That speed is many times faster than what is physically possible with a hack.

It thus appears that the purported "hack" of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 (the self-proclaimed WikiLeaks source) was not a hack by Russia or anyone else, but was rather a copy of DNC data onto an external storage device. Moreover, the forensics performed on the metadata reveal there was a subsequent synthetic insertion – a cut-and-paste job using a Russian template, with the clear aim of attributing the data to a "Russian hack." This was all performed in the East Coast time zone.

"Obfuscation & De-obfuscation"

Mr. President, the disclosure described below may be related. Even if it is not, it is something we think you should be made aware of in this general connection. On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks began to publish a trove of original CIA documents that WikiLeaks labeled "Vault 7." WikiLeaks said it got the trove from a current or former CIA contractor and described it as comparable in scale and significance to the information Edward Snowden gave to reporters in 2013.

No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA's Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015.

Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on March 31 that exposed the "Marble Framework" program apparently was judged too delicate to qualify as "news fit to print" and was kept out of the Times.

The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima, it seems, "did not get the memo" in time. Her March 31 article bore the catching (and accurate) headline: " WikiLeaks' latest release of CIA cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations."

The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was designed for flexible and easy-to-use "obfuscation," and that Marble source code includes a "deobfuscator" to reverse CIA text obfuscation.

More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report, Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a "forensic attribution double game" or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi.

The CIA's reaction was neuralgic. Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates "demons," and insisting, "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."

Mr. President, we do not know if CIA's Marble Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review.

Putin and the Technology

We also do not know if you have discussed cyber issues in any detail with President Putin. In his interview with NBC's Megyn Kelly, he seemed quite willing – perhaps even eager – to address issues related to the kind of cyber tools revealed in the Vault 7 disclosures, if only to indicate he has been briefed on them. Putin pointed out that today's technology enables hacking to be "masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can understand the origin" [of the hack] And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack."

"Hackers may be anywhere," he said. "There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a scenario? I can."

Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our former intelligence colleagues.

We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental. The fact we find it is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times. This is our 50 th VIPS Memorandum since the afternoon of Powell's speech at the UN. Live links to the 49 past memos can be found at https://consortiumnews.com/vips-memos/

FOR THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY

  • William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA's Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center
  • Skip Folden, independent analyst, retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology US (Associate VIPS)
  • Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)
  • Larry C Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)
  • Michael S. Kearns, Air Force Intelligence Officer (Ret.), Master SERE Resistance to Interrogation Instructor
  • John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
  • Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.)
  • Lisa Ling, TSgt USAF (ret.) (associate VIPS)
  • Edward Loomis, Jr., former NSA Technical Director for the Office of Signals Processing
  • David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
  • Ray McGovern, former U.S. Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst
  • Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA
  • Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)
  • Cian Westmoreland, former USAF Radio Frequency Transmission Systems Technician and Unmanned Aircraft Systems whistleblower (Associate VIPS)
  • Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
  • Sarah G. Wilton, Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.); Commander, US Naval Reserve (ret.)
  • Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat

This article was first published by Consortium News

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

[Jul 25, 2017] John Helmer Jared Kushner's Testimonial to Stupidity and Unfitness American and Russian

They are still digging. Getting metters of his family into the administration was aworse then a crime of the part of Trump, it was a blunder...
Jul 25, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

...It is more than 200 kilometres from the current Russian frontier with Belarus and the historical border with the territory which for a thousand years has been occupied by Lithuanian, Polish, German and Russian imperial as well as Soviet forces. Kushner's grandparents actually came from Navahrudak (Навагрудак), spelled in Russian as Новогрудок (Novogrudok). The meaning of the word, which was first used for the place in the 11 th century, is "new little town". When the Germans arrived in July 1941, there were 20,000 residents, 10,000 of whom, including the Kushners, were Jewish. The Kushners escaped; the majority who didn't were killed. Kushner reveals he doesn't know. His, and everyone else's mistake, is 834 kilometres off the mark.

...But Kushner admits that during the campaign he "had incoming [sic] contacts with people from approximately 15 countries." He also had "hundreds" of "calls, letters and emails from people outside the United States." He says he asked Henry Kissinger for "advice on policy for the candidate, which countries/representatives with which the campaign should engage, and what messaging would resonate." He says he spoke once for "less than a minute" with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak at an April 2016 Trump campaign speech in Washington, when the Russian was accompanied by three other foreign ambassadors; Kushner doesn't name them.

He denies any record of receiving or remembering two reported telephone calls with Kislyak between April and November, and had forgotten his name when, on November 9, an official congratulatory note arrived for Trump from President Vladimir Putin. From November 9 to January 20, Kushner says he received "over one hundred contacts from more than twenty countries They included meetings with individuals such as Jordan's King Abdullah II, Israel's Prime Bibi Netanyahu, Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Luis Videgaray Caso and many more."

A neophyte in foreign affairs as Kushner confesses himself to be, he doesn't reveal that Videgaray and he set up candidate Trump's visit to Mexico City to meet the Mexican President on August 31. The Mexican reaction to that was extremely hostile. Videgaray was forced to resign as finance minister on September 7, but promoted to foreign minister on January 4. Videgaray might be charged with colluding with the Americans to advance himself, with Kushner as co-conspirator, but no senator on the Intelligence Committee is reported to have asked Kushner about that.

Kushner may not know the nicknames of Videgaray or King Abdullah, but he certainly refers to the Israeli prime minister as Bibi, an appellation well-known to Israelis and Jews worldwide. His official name is Benjamin, and there is ample evidence that Kushner has been familiar with Netanyahu for many years. Kushner's father is also widely reported in Israel as Netanyahu's personal friend. Kushner's slip in yesterday's evidence was to reveal just how familiar he is with that foreign official, who met with Trump and Kushner for a campaign appearance in Israel in June, five months before Election Day.

The special relationship between Israel and the US cannot be collusion – that's a rule of US politics. The rule wasn't quite so fixed in the 1980s when the FBI caught US officials at spying, stealing and smuggling on behalf of Israel, and sent one of them to prison; click for details

Nor can God and the Orthodox Jewish group known as Chabad-Lubavitch be reported as colluding in Trump's victory, despite the evidence that Kushner and his wife Ivanka prayed for it at a Lubavitcher shrine on the weekend before the poll.

The Israeli and Jewish community media also claim the possibility that Kushner's pilgrimage reminded God to intervene when there was a suspected assassination attempt against Trump in Arizona at the same time.

The inadvertence of these slips in Kushner's statement reinforces his claim that he knows the difference between collusion with Russians and special relationships with Mexican, Israeli and Lubavitcher friends. The US press and the US appear convinced of the same thing.

... ... ...

Simes (Дмитрий Саймс), son of Jewish dissidents expelled from the Soviet Union to the US in 1978, is the Uriah Heep of Russian-American advisors, ingratiating themselves to both sides and making a living out of obsequious intermediation. He was Richard Nixon's factotum when the disgraced president visited Moscow. Nixon died in 1994 leaving Simes his think-tank as an inheritance. Its motto is "America's Voice for Strategic Realism". Kissinger is the honorary chairman , succeeding the American International Group (AIG) fraudster Hank Greenberg.

visitor , July 25, 2017 at 12:28 pm

Helmer provides a wealth of background about people and their role, institutions and practices. It is the kind of information that puts things in quite a different light -- and it turns out to be intriguing.

Apparently, the Kremlin really wanted to get in touch with Trump -- and tried it in a serious way (gifts that should have been laden with personal symbolism for Kushner, sending that high-powered Gorkov banker, letting the ambassador pester Kushner for meetings). All for naught, due to spectacularly poor assessment of the other party by the Russians, and a clueless Trump team (with Kushner supremely ignorant of his supposedly cherished Eastern-European Jewish heritage).

The picture of that milieu full of go-betweens, cats' paws, and assorted parasites is not pretty. Contrarily to the often agape descriptions of "Putin's regime", the Russians appear to have been rather incompetent in that specific occurrence.

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , July 25, 2017 at 2:50 pm

Creatures from the Swamp.

witters , July 25, 2017 at 5:52 pm

"Apparently, the Kremlin really wanted to get in touch with Trump -- and tried it in a serious way" – Well, I think the dirt on offer was of the wrong kind, no?
Funny you got here first "Visitor".

different clue , July 25, 2017 at 9:06 pm

Somebody is always first by definition. There was always a mad rush to be the "Me first commenter number One!" over at James Klunster's blog, for example.

Bill Smith , July 25, 2017 at 12:29 pm

"reveals just how ignorant Kushner, his legal and other advisors are of Russia"

It is a big deal that Kushner didn't know the proper spelling of the town his grandparents came from? Heck, I don't even know the name of the town my grandparents came from – much less how to spell it.

Interesting point on Mexico and Israel / collusion

For better or worse I think there are more US citizens who know who Bibi is and not many who know the nickname of the King of Jordan.

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , July 25, 2017 at 2:50 pm

1. I've come across the nickname Bibi so many times and I am only a casual reader of mainstream news.

Perhaps it is that many people in the mainstream media who are 'personal friends' of Bibi.

2. You know your grandparents home town either when they sat down with you and showed it to you on a map with its English spelling on an American map, or an old map with unknown words on it (a Belarussian one maybe), or they talked about it many times, so that you know, but only know how to say it (however imperfectly). Then, when it came for you to write it down the first time (or may not have to the first time, but the first time someone more familiar with the area reads it), you didn't get the spelling exactly right, and even confused it with any town.

Jamie , July 25, 2017 at 1:49 pm

I think the stupidity is anyone on the left buying into this fake McCarthyite Russia scare -- just because a racketeering war criminal lost the election. For one, Hillary took naked bribes from Russia. As Secretary of State, Hillary received millions in bribes to approve the transfer of 20% of our uranium assets to Russia:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=1

And the Podesta Group, founded by John Podesta, took money from Russia's largest bank, Sherbank, just last year, to lobby for a lessening of sanctions:

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=F137350&year=2016s

Secondly, Hillary's post election pronouncements were absurd and contradictory to DNC talking points:

"If you look at Facebook, the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were
connected to, as we now know, the thousand Russian agents."

– Crooked Hillary

"I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians."

– Crooked Hillary

Finally, the idea that the DNC was hacked by Russia is so flimsy, it makes the Bush WMD report look like the gold standard:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/25/was-the-russian-hack-an-inside-job/

cj51 , July 25, 2017 at 9:04 pm

I won't reciprocate and call you stupid Jamie but you do seem ignorant of the facts:
http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-uranium-russia-deal/
I thought this was well known by now.

and
"Finally, the idea that the DNC was hacked by Russia is so flimsy "
regardless of the fact that all major USA intelligence services have said Russia did hack DNC.
google "Russia hacked DNC".

likbez , July 25, 2017 at 10:08 pm

IMHO the person who cites snopes is clearly a Hillary supporter.

As for

"all major USA intelligence services have said Russia did hack DNC. Google "Russia hacked DNC"

that's a myth propagated by Hillary camp. There were handpicked analysts from three agencies who did the hatchet job as they were ordered to.

This is a recipe from Sharp's textbook ( http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12522848 ).

Such dirty tricks is how "color revolutions" are done in xUSSR space and ME, my Hillary-supporting friend.

Now it is the USA turn ;-)

Tomonthebeach , July 25, 2017 at 6:09 pm

I think that the average American reading this article would half-way through roll their eyes and say this is so micro nit-picky that there is no there there.

Arizona Slim , July 25, 2017 at 6:36 pm

That was my impression too.

Cujo359 , July 25, 2017 at 8:58 pm

No kidding. My summary of the first objection: "Kushner would certainly known that his grandfather was from Novafreakingrad, Ukraine, not Novafrakingrad, Russia if the idiot hadn't realized he was reading the wrong cyrillic alphabet."

Or something like that. I'm usually interested in trivia, but this strained my limit to the breaking point. Like Bill Smith said in his comment above, most of us would be hard pressed to know what country our forbears came from, let alone what city. I think if this is the dumbest thing Kushner writes or says while he's working for the White House, he'll be the best Director of the Office of American Innovation evah – even if every other President had at least two of them.

clarky90 , July 25, 2017 at 6:19 pm

God forbid that we talk to the Russians! Oh my. Far better to start a nuclear war that ultimately involves all of the nuclear powers, even the North Koreans. Then we can solve climate change by gifting the planet back to the extremophiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile

Shake and bake. A billion years from now, Earth will be covered with multitudinous expressions of life.

Millions of Americans colluded with the Russians and elected DJ Trump. IMO, largely because they are sick of this constant war-mongering. The second World War only lasted for 5 years!

likbez , July 25, 2017 at 10:08 pm

"God forbid that we talk to the Russians!"

Military industrial complex needs your money my friend. Nothing personal. This is strictly business :-)

"Millions of Americans colluded with the Russians and elected DJ Trump. IMO, largely because they are sick of this constant war-mongering. The second World War only lasted for 5 years!"

The last thing MIC cares is what millions of Americans, who elected Trump, want.

Temporarily Sane , July 25, 2017 at 6:24 pm

If the members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, ostensibly on a fact finding mission re the Trump administration's alleged collusion with Russian government officials and business people, take their assignment seriously they could use Helmer's brisk, no-nonsense just the facts ma'am approach as a template for their proceedings. The key word being "if"

Reading the American and European press it's striking how the reporting on countries in the 'axis of MIC designated evildoers' is almost always grossly, or hilariously, depending on your disposition, reductionist. While Western countries have a complex and multilayered system of government administration the "evil" countries are ruled by bad dudes with one name (North Korea's Kim Jong-un excepted) – Putin, Assad, Saddam, Gadaffi – who have absolute control over civilians military alike. It really is a South Parkesque view of the world. One can imagine a Putin or Assad grimly overseeing a trembling clerk issuing licenses at a provincial DMV, because Leader Knows Best of course.

Back in the real world this cartoonish dumbing down means every action – real, alleged or made up – the West doesn't like is traced back to The Leader. If a military unit goes nuts and slaughters a bunch of non-combatants , a nasty but not uncommon occurrence in wartime, it must be because The Leader ordered it. The Syrian Arab Army, to name one example, becomes "Assad's Army" and is composed of "soldiers loyal to Bashar al-Assad". The media would never talk about a Western, or "allied" army like this.

In the transcript Helmer cites, Gorkov's gifts to Kushner, something that might only be an innocent overlooking of protocol, can easily be spun in such a way that it becomes part of that evil rascal Putin's ploy to influence an American president. That's why these committees and hearings are a joke that belong in a low-budget sequel to Dr. Strangelove. Every person with a functioning brain knows there is a double-standard at play here. Even the maniacal partisan nutjobs agitating for Cold War 2.0 would have to admit this if logic and reason still have any meaning.

likbez , July 25, 2017 at 10:21 pm
Demonization of Putin is very profitable. This new round of McCarthyism enforced on the country proved to be the strategy chosen by neoliberal elite to return Dems to power and suppress populists within the party. Smash critique of neoliberalism equating them with Russian agents, who are trying to undermine the state.

There were rumors that original McCarthyism campaign partially was designed to suppress "leaks" about export of nazy scientist and spies in the USA after WWII that Communists and Trotskyites tried to expose.

rps , July 25, 2017 at 8:17 pm

Talk about a nothing burger about Kushner and Russia other than his aficionado to be Bibi's US puppet-in-law. If Trump has any Russian connections its through his first wife Ivana Trump. According to wikipedia, Ivana Trump nee Zelníčková was born February 20, 1949 in the Moravian town of Zlín, Czechoslovakia. From 1948 to 1990, Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc. Donald Jr speaks fluent Czech.

Now the Clintons Russian connection of selling and buying 'Merica uranium/speechifer/foundation grab bag of goodies makes the Trump Russian investigation look like its run by a whole buncha nut job congress critters who fell off the turnip truck conned into playing a shell game.

[Jul 25, 2017] Report Wasserman Schultz IT Aide Arrested Trying to Flee US

Jul 25, 2017 | www.newsmax.com

An information technology aide for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. – at the center of a congressional computer equipment scandal – was arrested while trying to flee the country and charged with bank fraud, Fox News reported.

Imran Awan was arrested at Dulles International Airport in suburban Virginia, and pleaded not guilty Tuesday to one count of bank fraud during his arraignment in federal court in Washington, D.C., Fox News reported.

Law enforcements authorities have been looking into how Awan might have double-billed the House for equipment like computers, iPads, monitors, keyboards and routers, Fox News reported.

Several relatives of Awan worked for House Democrats and were fired months ago, but Awan was kept on staff by Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee chair, as a part-timer.

Wasserman Schultz's spokesman, David Damron, told Fox News in a statement Tuesday that Awan has now been fired.

"Mr. Awan previously served as a part-time employee, but his services have been terminated," the statement asserted.

Fox News also reported the counsel for Wasserman Schultz recently began negotiating with Capitol Police for access to her laptop in the case.

[Jul 25, 2017] Color revolution against Trump was planned in Clinton circles with Soros participation by Michael Sainato

Notable quotes:
"... The Hill ..."
"... Harris also has ties to billionaire Democratic Party donor George Soros, who was one of the two owners of OneWest Bank at the time. Coincidentally, before Harris passed on the opportunity to file action against OneWest Bank, Soros was pouring money into California criminal policy initiatives that Harris was pushing. ..."
"... TheLos Angeles Times ..."
"... Billionaire George Soros held a closed door conference with wealthy donors in November 2016 that addressed how to "take back power" and was attended by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. ..."
"... On the weekend of Trump's inauguration, David Brock hosted a retreat for the most prolific Democratic donors to figure out how to "kick Donald Trump's a--." ..."
Jul 18, 2017 | www.msn.com

Harris' meetings with Clinton's donors signal that they are rallying behind her as the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee. Harris has emerged as a leading figure in the Trump Resistance; Politico reported that the hearings regarding Trump's connections to Russia have enabled the Democratic Party to frame her as Trump's most aggressive critic. In response to one of the hearings she was involved in, she launched the slogan "courage not courtesy." However, despite this catchy slogan, Harris has historically lacked the courage to hold her donors accountable when they have broken the law.

The nomination of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin provoked criticisms over his tenure as CEO of OneWest Bank. In 2013, California prosecutors claimed to have discovered over 1,000 foreclosure law violations, but the California Attorney General's office failed to file any action against the bank. At the time, Kamala Harris was California's attorney general. Many questioned why Harris didn't take any action given the evidence her office uncovered.

"We went and we followed the facts and the evidence, and it's a decision my office made," Harris told The Hill . "We pursued it just like any other case. We go and we take a case wherever the facts lead us."

Harris' vague defense is insufficient. The Democratic Party has branded her as a leader of the Trump Resistance without addressing why Harris avoided a criminal investigation that involved donors to her campaign.

In 2011, Mnuchin's wife at the time, Heather Mnuchin, gave $8,750 to Harris' 2011 campaign. OneWest Bank donated $6,500 to Harris' 2011 election. Heather Mnuchin also donated $850 to Harris' 2014 election for California attorney general.

In 2014, the Center for American Progress graded California's campaign donor recusal laws a "C." The state's lax laws allowed Harris to decide not to recuse herself from deciding whether or not to prosecute OneWest Bank.

Mnuchin donated to multiple Republicans' campaigns in 2016, but Harris was the only Democrat he donated to .

Harris also has ties to billionaire Democratic Party donor George Soros, who was one of the two owners of OneWest Bank at the time. Coincidentally, before Harris passed on the opportunity to file action against OneWest Bank, Soros was pouring money into California criminal policy initiatives that Harris was pushing.

In 2011, Harris' former aide Lenore Anderson was hired as campaign manager for Californians for Safety and Justice, which was financed by Soros' Open Society Foundations. In 2014, TheLos Angeles Times reported, "The organization operates under the umbrella of a San Francisco-based nonprofit clearinghouse, which effectively shields its donor list and financial operations from public view." The report cited that since 2012 Soros had led a four-year, $16 million campaign to change California criminal policy, which Harris was deeply involved in as California attorney general. Lenore Anderson also led Vote Safe, another Soros' funded organization.

In 2014, Soros and hedge fund billionaire John Paulson sold OneWest for $3.4 billion. In 2015, Soros donated the maximum amount to Harris' Senate campaign. Also in 2015, Harris spoke at Soros' 2020 Vision Conference in San Francisco with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and at Soros' Democracy Alliance Conference .

This background information on Harris' relationship to her donors provides context as to why the Democratic establishment is rallying behind her. However, any politician that doesn't hold corporate and special interests accountable only results in more corruption.

Since Hillary Clinton's unexpected loss to Donald Trump , her donors have strategized with Democratic leadership about how to revive the failing party.

Billionaire George Soros held a closed door conference with wealthy donors in November 2016 that addressed how to "take back power" and was attended by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

On the weekend of Trump's inauguration, David Brock hosted a retreat for the most prolific Democratic donors to figure out how to "kick Donald Trump's a--."

On July 15, Page Six reported that Sen. Kamala Harris, a potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, met with top Clinton donors in the Hamptons.

Many figures in Clinton's inner circle attended, including Clinton's 2008 Campaign National Finance co-Chair Michael Kempner, donors Dennis Mehiel and Steven Gambrel, and Democratic National Committeeman Robert Zimmerman. Harris also attended a separate luncheon hosted by one of Clinton's top lobbyist bundlers, Liz Robbins.

[Jul 24, 2017] Forensic studies of 'Russian hacking' into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2017, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia

Notable quotes:
"... Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. ..."
"... The evidence they are describing comes from the DNC server on which the copy originated. They can tell how long it took to create the copy, because there are system logs that record the time the file copy began, and the time it completed sucessfully. ..."
"... Copying to a USB drive takes much less time than copying across the internet. ..."
"... That's a totally reliable way to discover how the files were taken. ..."
Jul 24, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"Forensic studies of 'Russian hacking' into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2017, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia" [ Consortium News ].

" Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. "

This is from the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity , and so highly credible; they did good work back in the Iraq WMD days .

Indeed, IMNSHO, VIPS, not being torturers (Brennan) or perjurers (Clapper) are some of the few members of the intelligence community with any credibility at all.

WARNING: The scope of the post is limited: "We focus specifically on the July 5, 2016 alleged Guccifer 2.0 'hack' of the DNC server."

Bill Smith , July 24, 2017 at 2:13 pm

" DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack"

Look, I believe a fraction of the current Red Scare stuff but I don't see that point means anything. I can set the date on my computer to be years ago. Then copy files and the date stamp will reflect the date I set it to. Do the Russians now have time travel?

How do we know what machine the copy was made on?

Watt4Bob , July 24, 2017 at 3:41 pm

How do we know what machine the copy was made on?

The evidence they are describing comes from the DNC server on which the copy originated. They can tell how long it took to create the copy, because there are system logs that record the time the file copy began, and the time it completed sucessfully.

Copying to a USB drive takes much less time than copying across the internet.

That's a totally reliable way to discover how the files were taken.

hunkerdown , July 24, 2017 at 3:46 pm

Can't, but you can more than suspect they were saved by one Warren Flood (of Bright Blue Digital, the only "hack" in this affair) on GSA computer equipment, if you look at the RTF files in a text editor.

Bill Smith , July 24, 2017 at 7:51 pm

How would these guys have gotten the system files from the DNC?

"On 7/5/2016 at approximately 6:45 PM Eastern time, someone copied the data that eventually appears on the "NGP VAN" 7zip file (the subject of this analysis). This 7zip file was published by a persona named Guccifer 2, two months later on September 13, 2016."

https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/guccifer-2-ngp-van-metadata-analysis/

This doesn't look like they are taking about system files from a DNC machine.

Alex Morfesis , July 24, 2017 at 4:17 pm

Now now let us not get a call from the bezos daily shopper algo twisting (aka marketing) dept please do not feed the sharks

Could really not care less if raz-putin personally "bent the knee" & burped don trumpioni and imagined that would allow him to "own" el grande kahbrone

Russia is as much a threat to the american public as Uruguay anyone who suggests otherwise should be slapped with a qui tam case for wasting govmynt resources

And anyone who expects "the teflon don" to keep his promises once the "service" is rendered is imagining some other kid from queens

Have personally removed anyone from either side of the argument on my twitcher feed who says trump or russia or clinton

Good, bad or indifferent, the only matter that matters is the electoral college and if one does not like those results, one can move to impeach that is all

JustAnObserver , July 24, 2017 at 6:16 pm

Actually that's more difficult than it seems. Most operating systems require root (administrator) privileges to set the computer's clock backwards. For personal computers that's not a problem since the owner of the desktop/laptop/tablet normally has admin rights. For corporate computers on a complex network this is normally not the case.

Lambert Strether Post author , July 24, 2017 at 7:48 pm

> How do we know what machine the copy was made on?

Ideally, we would be able to work with the physical hard disk -- and it would certainly be a hoot if it were ever released!

That said, nobody has successfully challenged the validity of the email texts, including those with the greatest incentive to do so. Therefore, although attribution is hard, I'm willing to accept the forensics done on the metadata (and, although this is an argument from authority, more willing to accept their work than CrowdStrike's, or the intelligence community's).

WheresOurTeddy , July 24, 2017 at 2:20 pm

FBI Seized Crushed Hard Drives From Home Of Wasserman-Schultz' IT Aide

Been following this for some time. Strange, I haven't heard about this *ACTUAL* investigation with *EVIDENCE* of real *CRIMES BEING COMMITTED* on the #Resistance media outlets. Wonder why?

No problem gaslighting us for the better part of a year with their "anonymous" spook sources who never provide any evidence for their extraordinary claims, though.

Just IMAGINE the media bonanza if some of Kushner's/Bannon's/Conway's/Trump's hard drives popped up.

This is the most propagandized country in the world, with the possible exception of North Korea. But our rulers are way better at it.

WobblyTelomeres , July 24, 2017 at 4:31 pm

Crushed? Someone should have told them they have to sandblast those puppies (platters) if they don't want anyone to read them.

Lambert Strether Post author , July 24, 2017 at 8:19 pm

Single sourced from the Daily Caller? I'd like a bit more evidence

[Jul 20, 2017] Fracking Around with the Russians by Philip Giraldi

Notable quotes:
"... Now the irony in all this is that a major producer of relatively dirty oil is being accused of targeting an even dirtier and environmentally destructive energy resource, which is fracking, in collusion with organizations that are seeking to encourage the production of much cleaner power. And, of course, cleaner energy is a global interest whether one believes in climate change or not, which underlines the essential hypocrisy of the U.S. media in denouncing something that just might be good for the planet purely because Russia is allegedly involved. ..."
"... And, of course, the congressmen involved in the revelation come from fracking states. If Moscow is for something then surely Washington must be against it, ignoring the fact that many genuinely patriotic Americans who care about such matters support more strict environmental regulations, no matter what the Wall Street Journal, the White House and the loony tunes in congress are saying. ..."
"... There was a lot more anti-Russian agitprop in the U.S. media during the week, part of an endless stream of titillation provided free of charge to the American public in an effort to remind everyone that Russia is the enemy and will always be the enemy. Even Donald Trump's milquetoast initiative to mend fences with Vladimir Putin cobbled together during their meeting in Hamburg has been assailed from all sides, most particularly by the usual parties who seem to be locked into an anti-Trump non-détente mindset come what may. ..."
"... Mr. Giraldi, you're missing the salient point. The rulers of the USA aren't delusional lunatics. Russia is the single largest threat to America's dream of Global Hegemony. It's refusal to kowtow to Washington, and more critically, its lending of its military power to underpin China's Silk Road Dreams guarantees their GH dream will die. ..."
"... For the rulers of the USA, that's anathema. As good as death itself. They bet Americans' well being, Brand America, its industrial and civilian infrastructure, and almost its farms, for Global Hegemony and came up craps. They'll lose the farms soon enough. ..."
"... That is why they're panicking, and why they're going to do everything they can to break their fall. Above all, they have to convince their allies to stay loyal, particularly Europe long enough to allow them to "think of something". ..."
Jul 20, 2017 | www.unz.com
Fracking Around with the Russians What will those rascals in Moscow do next? July 18, 2017 1,400 Words 112 Comments

It has been another week full of news about Russia. Americans might be surprised to learn that nearly every aspect of their lives has been somehow impacted by the insidious covert activity of a former global enemy that now has an economy the size of Spain or Italy. One of the latest claims is that Moscow has been covertly funding some environmental groups, most particularly those opposed to the use of fracking technologies. The allegations, which have recently surfaced in Congress , conceded that the Russians allegedly moved forward with their strategy to damage America's energy independence without leaving behind "a paper trail," thus there appears to actually be little or no supporting evidence for what is little more than a series of claims, which have been denied by the groups in question, including the highly respectable Sierra Club. Moscow has not commented.

To be sure, there is a certain logic inherent in assertions that Russia might be behind such a development as Moscow's economy runs on energy exports and high prices are good for it. Consequently, it ought not surprise anyone that Russia would seek to discredit competitive technologies that work to increase the supply of energy and thereby cause prices to fall. It's simple math, but is it true given the fact that environmental groups are widely popular due to the appeal of the product they are promoting and have their own reliable sources of income?

Now the irony in all this is that a major producer of relatively dirty oil is being accused of targeting an even dirtier and environmentally destructive energy resource, which is fracking, in collusion with organizations that are seeking to encourage the production of much cleaner power. And, of course, cleaner energy is a global interest whether one believes in climate change or not, which underlines the essential hypocrisy of the U.S. media in denouncing something that just might be good for the planet purely because Russia is allegedly involved.

And, of course, the congressmen involved in the revelation come from fracking states. If Moscow is for something then surely Washington must be against it, ignoring the fact that many genuinely patriotic Americans who care about such matters support more strict environmental regulations, no matter what the Wall Street Journal, the White House and the loony tunes in congress are saying.

There was a lot more anti-Russian agitprop in the U.S. media during the week, part of an endless stream of titillation provided free of charge to the American public in an effort to remind everyone that Russia is the enemy and will always be the enemy. Even Donald Trump's milquetoast initiative to mend fences with Vladimir Putin cobbled together during their meeting in Hamburg has been assailed from all sides, most particularly by the usual parties who seem to be locked into an anti-Trump non-détente mindset come what may.

I was particularly bemused by the comment by former CIA Chief John Brennan who denounced Trump's performance during the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg over the lack of a hard line against Putin and his failure to support the "word of the U.S. intelligence community" about Russian interference in the recent election. In an interview Brennan complained "He said it's an honor to meet President Putin. An honor to meet the individual who carried out the assault against our election? To me, it was a dishonorable thing to say."

Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter has demonstrated how the "word" of U.S. intel is not exactly what it might seem to be. And Brennan is not exactly a tabula rasa. As he observed in his comment, his ire derives from the claims over Russian alleged interference in the U.S. election, a narrative that Brennan himself has helped to create, to include his shady and possibly illegal contacting of foreign intelligence services to dig up dirt on the GOP presidential candidate and his associates. The dirt was dutifully provided by several European intelligence services which produced a report claiming, inter alia, that Donald Trump had urinated on a Russian prostitute in a bed previously slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama.

And along the way I have been assiduously trying to figure out the meaning of last week's reports regarding the contacts of Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort with two alleged Russian agents while reportedly seeking the dirt on Hillary. As it turns out, there may not have been any discussion of Hillary, though possibly something having to do with irregularities in DNC fundraising surfaced, and there may have been a bit more about the Magnitsky Act and adopting Russian babies.

Barring any new revelations backed up by actual facts revealing that something substantive like a quid pro quo actually took place, the whole affair appears to be yet another example of a politically inspired fishing expedition. This observation is not necessarily naivete on my part nor a denial that it all might have been an intelligence operation, but it is an acceptance of the fact that probing and maneuvering is all part and parcel of what intelligence agencies do when they are dealing with adversaries and very often even with friends. It does not necessarily imply that Moscow was seeking to overthrow American democracy even if it was trying to advance its own interests.

Assuming even the worst case scenario that the media has been promoting, the Trump Tower meeting appears to have involved three political aspirants who were a bit on the novice side and a Russian lawyer and lobbyist who might have been intelligence cut-outs. What did happen anyway? Apart from not reporting the encounter by the three apparent victims of the planned corruption of America's democratic process, nothing apparently happened except that the event itself has now given the esteemed Senator Charles Schumer and the Honorable Adam Schiff something new to mouth off about. Oh, and it keeps Rachel Maddow and Stephen Colbert, who is celebrating Russia Week on his program, employed.

Politics is a dirty business, based on power and money in these United States. Presumably back in mid-June there was enough salacious information floating around emanating from both parties to provide employment for plenty of individuals who were prepared to do whatever it would take to dig up something damaging up from any source available, including foreigners. That game was played by both sides and anyone who does not think that is so is avoiding the hard edge of the pervasive political corruption that greases the wheels in the United States.

So maybe Russia is funding some environmental groups or maybe not. And if it is, so what? I would welcome anyone who challenges fracking. And so what if a cluster of political tyros met with a couple of Russians who may or may not have been sent by Putin. Clearly, nothing came of it and meeting with a Russian and talking is not yet ipso facto a crime in this country.

Sure, let's punish Russia if it has actually done something wrong, but first let's see the evidence. All of which leads one to question why the U.S. media insist on holding the Russian government and its intelligence services to a higher standard than they do other countries like Israel, which persistently spy on the U.S. and regularly interfere in our political process? And what about our own government and its multitude of spy agencies? Are we always the guys in the white hats? Let's look at the actual record. CIA has done far worse far more consistently in collecting information through misdirection, influencing overseas elections and even changing regimes than have the Russians. And let's not forget the U.S. military's record on Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and currently Syria. We are very good at that "regime change" sort of thing even though the results frequently turn out badly because no one in Washington seems to know what to do on day 2 after the invasion has ended with yet another "victory" and another foreign government has been consigned to the garbage heap. ← Who Is the Real Enemy? Category: Economics , Foreign Policy Tags: American Media , CIA , Environmentalism , Fracking , John Brennan , Russia , Scott Ritter

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Recently from Author Related Pieces by Author Of Related Interest What Did John Brennan and Anonymous Sources Really Say? Speaking to a Russian becomes treasonous Philip Giraldi May 30, 2017 1,300 Words 101 Comments Reply The Spooks and the Hacks: Why Do They Hate Russia? John Derbyshire February 18, 2017 1,100 Words 83 Comments Reply The Fraud of the White Helmets Hollywood buys into yet another lie Philip Giraldi July 4, 2017 1,100 Words 125 Comments Reply ← Who Is the Real Enemy? Hide 112 Comments Leave a Comment 112 Comments to "Fracking Around with the Russians" Commenters to Ignore Commenters to ignore (one per line)

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RobinG > , July 18, 2017 at 4:22 am GMT

Speaking of regime change, wasn't it Victoria Nuland and George Soros' enabling of Kiev coup that obliged the US installed puppet gov't. of Ukraine to interfere in the 2016 election at the behest to DNC to assist Hillary?

The MUST SEE guide to DNC/Ukraine Collusion and Election Interference

chris > , July 18, 2017 at 4:46 am GMT

Yeah, it might be illustrative to consider what the entire environmental movement would look like today if it was the Israelis and not the Arabs who owned the oil in the ME.

chris > , July 18, 2017 at 4:52 am GMT

Also in this whole Russia-fracking gate, will no one in the media mention the vanglorious and incompetent sleuth, John Podesta's Machiavellian (for dummies) support for groups putting pressure on the Catholic Church ?

LauraMR > , July 18, 2017 at 6:50 am GMT

"Sure, let's punish Russia if it has actually done something wrong, but first let's see the evidence."

The arrogance of it.

It is at times like this that I can only wonder what kind of death-rattling trauma we must endure as a nation to regain a measure of rationality.

Verymuchalive > , July 18, 2017 at 8:45 am GMT

" A former global enemy that now has an economy the size of Spain or Italy."
Recent studies indicate that the Russian Economy is now larger than that of Germany. Current Western sanctions, far from harming the Russian economy, have been beneficial in supporting import substitution and diversification.
It is clear Giraldi doesn't read the work of his fellow columnist, Anatoly Karlin. Giraldi is still stuck in 1995. Time you caught up on your homework, Philip.

Sergey Krieger > , July 18, 2017 at 8:54 am GMT

Mr. giraldi should ask can Italy or Spain afford or make what Russia can ,can France or Germany? Hence Mr. Giraldi views of what Russian economy is, are not correct.

The Alarmist > , July 18, 2017 at 9:16 am GMT

" talking is not yet ipso facto a crime in this country."

The Alarmist > , July 18, 2017 at 9:18 am GMT

" talking is not yet ipso facto a crime in this country."

There are secret laws, so one can no longer say even that with certainty. These are the same laws that make it illegal to know or merely meet a Russian.

Beckow > , July 18, 2017 at 10:04 am GMT

West needs evil white people. No civilization can function without some agreed on enemy. Russia has played this role on and off for centuries. Today there is simply no other viable candidate – with the multi-cultural and religous taboos, and the need for the enemy to be credible and a bit remote. So Russia it is and probably will be for a long time, any consequences be damned.

Russia dislike also feeds well into the surviving atavistic hatreds among key groups in the West: grandkids of pogroms, endless emigres with their bitter family memories and a need to fit in, the deep seated thirst for revenge among Germans now that they are again allowed to sit at the Western table, the French and Anglo-Saxon egomania and a need to distract from their own history. And of course the Poles, they would line up to attack Russia if Al Queda would lead it. One cannot fight emotions.

The question is whether it is wise. It is close to impossible to maintain permanent hostility with Russia, so something has to give. A climb-down is very unlikely – too many powerful people are freshly invested in the struggle against 'evil Russkies'. The two other alternatives are worse: if Russia gets destroyed, West won't last long – the Russia's hinterland will get overrun by southern and eastern masses and West will be basically done for. And destroying both Russia and West in a war needs no analysis.

Could we possibly perish because Western elites were emotionally invested in Clintons getting back in the White House and the jobs-perks that would come with it? Or because some nerd named Podesta messed up his email passwords? Well, why not, after all Franz Ferdinand's driver made a bad turn and

Philip Giraldi > , July 18, 2017 at 10:45 am GMT

@Verymuchalive This analysis comes from the World Economic Forum. Russia's economy is slightly bigger than Spain's and smaller than that of Italy. It is far smaller than that of Germany and is dwarfed by the US.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/worlds-biggest-economies-in-2017/

Erebus > , July 18, 2017 at 12:16 pm GMT

@Philip Giraldi Mr. Giraldi, that's nominal GDP. Meaningless. Might as well cite the number of bubble gum chewers as an indicator.
On a list of countries by projected 2017 GDP (PPP), Russia places 6th, in a virtual dead heat with Germany.

On that basis, China is ahead of even the EU, with the US 2nd on a national basis, and a distant 3rd on an economic "block" basis. It is some $4T behind China, which sounds about right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

Beckow > , July 18, 2017 at 12:16 pm GMT

@Philip Giraldi The best way to compare economies is by using PPP (Purchasing Power Parity). It is not perfect, but it adjusts for currency fluctuation. By that measure, using CIA Worldbook for 2016, Russia is #6 economy in the world, slightly smaller than Germany. Spain is #16 and about half the size of Russia's economy in real terms.

The reason it is absolutely essential to adjust for currecy conversion is that otherwise you get crazy variations when e.g. dollar goes up by 30% against the euro. Or in Russia's case ruble is down almost 50% against the dollar. Those are artificial numbers – showing size in 'dollars' that are nor used in those economies is like showing US economy's performance in pesos. PPP adjusts for purchasing power.

Russia's economy is about the size of Germany, with almost twice the population. It is also one of 4-5 economies that can manufacture everything from jet planes and space rockets, to nuclear power plants and weapons. It has about 1/5 of world's total physical resources and is self-sufficient in food. It is the largest lightly populated space in the world. There are different ways we can be wrong about the realities around us, trying to have it both ways and to stay within some allowed boundaries is one of them.

Z-man > , July 18, 2017 at 12:24 pm GMT

@The Alarmist As I've said many times before, one day it will be a crime, like it is in much of Europe already, to even question the numbers of the Holocaust, with SEVERE punishments maybe even death!

Z-man > , July 18, 2017 at 12:29 pm GMT

The Western Elites, you know who I mean, hate Putin for reestablishing and/or fostering the Christian Orthodox church in the country. 'They' just hate that!

Tom Welsh > , July 18, 2017 at 1:01 pm GMT

"Sure, let's punish Russia if it has actually done something wrong, but first let's see the evidence".

Well, there almost certainly isn't any evidence. But that doesn't really matter. Regardless, the USA DOES NOT GET to "punish" Russia. There is a little legal concept called "sovereignty" that seems to have slipped the mind of Americans. Nations do not – cannot "punish" one another these days. Until, perhaps, 1939, one nation could invade another and conquer it – but today that is illegal under international law, the Nuremberg Principles, and the UN Charter. Slighter acts of war, such as sanctions, are also strictly forbidden.

Now, as we all know, the US government – like its li'l bitty buddy the Israeli government – is in the habit of completely ignoring all laws, and doing whatever it likes. But trampling the law underfoot is not a wise thing to do – one day, you yourself might need it.

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 1:04 pm GMT

Russia's economy is slightly bigger than Spain's and smaller than that of Italy

Phil, this is dubious at best. The same as 18 trillion dollars US economy, 70% of which is FIRE, that is involved mostly in financial transactions. Even CIA's World Fact Book gives it (for 2015) as 3.8 trillion. At 2017 it is stated at 3.9 trillion which is about the size of Germany's. Using data of some supposedly "independent" (and globalist in nature) Swiss outlet on Russia is a dubious task. Big Mac Dollar was introduced for a reason.

Here is dynamics of Russia's GDP from International Monetary Fund (also globalist, but at least consistent).

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2017/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?sy=2015&ey=2022&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&pr1.x=94&pr1.y=12&c=922&s=NGDPD%2CNGDPDPC%2CPPPGDP&grp=0&a=

I omit here the usage of "absolute" dollars in measuring GDP–it really comes down to introducing not just Big Mac but F-35 dollars. When Spain will be able to produce what Russia produces, then maybe.

Rich > , July 18, 2017 at 1:14 pm GMT

I stubbed my toe the other night because Russia moved my kitchen table.

Gg Mo > , July 18, 2017 at 1:15 pm GMT

2+ million Bolsheviks have immigrated to Israel from Russia since the Gravy-train collapsed in 1991, absconding with not a few billion dollars and a deep resentment . Various careerist took their policies and plans with them as well.

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 1:27 pm GMT

@Erebus Western economic views were "monetarised" to the point of a complete absurd at the expense of real, that is manufacturing (productive) economy. This is the view which "equates" manufacturing of jet aircraft or space station with the balance sheet of some insurance company or some bank, both of which produce only services, much of them of a virtual and dubious nature. Sadly, "making money" long ago substituted "making things" and then making money based on that. The United States in particular paid a gruesome price for this delusion by de-industrializing almost to the point of no return. In the end, nothing short of a miraculous victory of Donald Trump is a greatest testimony to a complete bankruptcy of dominant monetarist economic views. He emphasized high paying manufacturing jobs–he won.

for-the-record > , July 18, 2017 at 1:33 pm GMT

@Beckow As the ultimate arbiter, we can refer to the Economist's "Big Mac Index":

THE Big Mac index was invented by The Economist in 1986 as a lighthearted guide to whether currencies are at their "correct" level. It is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), the notion that in the long run exchange rates should move towards the rate that would equalise the prices of an identical basket of goods and services (in this case, a burger) in any two countries. For example, the average price of a Big Mac in America in July 2017 was $5.30; in China it was only $2.92 at market exchange rates. So the "raw" Big Mac index says that the yuan was undervalued by 45% at that time.

For July 2017 the Big Mac index shows the Russian ruble to be undervalued by 57%:

Actual $ exchange rate -- 60.14

Implied $ exchange rate -- 25.85

http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index

Erebus > , July 18, 2017 at 1:44 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov For an in depth look at the Russian economy, have a look at: https://www.awaragroup.com/blog/russian-economy-2014-2016-the-years-of-sanctions-warfare/

Amongst the conclusions:
"In fact, (the Russian economy) is the most self-sufficient and diversified economy in the world." Thank God for sanctions. Before that it was just "a gas station with nukes".

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 1:57 pm GMT

@for-the-record

As the ultimate arbiter, we can refer to the Economist's

Economist (the magazine) and real economy in the same sentence is a bad joke. Economist as "the ultimate arbiter" is altogether–beyond redemption.

For July 2017 the Big Mac index shows the Russian ruble to be undervalued by 57%:

Russian economy in general is undervalued several times–that is why for the last 20+ years virtually nobody in Western "analytical" organizations can explain what just hit them.

Pandos > , July 18, 2017 at 2:07 pm GMT

@Gg Mo OH thank you Jesus!

Greg Bacon > , Website July 18, 2017 at 2:09 pm GMT

@chris

Yeah, it might be illustrative to consider what the entire environmental movement would look like today if it was the Israelis and not the Arabs who owned the oil in the ME.

The USA gets most of its oil from Canada, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela, not the ME.

BTW, in a way, the Israelis do own most of the ME oil, thru their Wall Street confederates in control of the commodity market where the oil is sold. Sold back and forth around 15 times before it reaches the refinery, meaning the US customer is getting screwed BIG TIME by our Israeli ally.

for-the-record > , July 18, 2017 at 2:22 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov I think you failed to appreciate the "tongue in cheek" quality of my remark. In your rather blind haste to defend Russia, which I can well understand, you seem to miss the fact that I am essentially on your side.

As to being "several times" times undervalued, this is not at all inconsistent with the 57% undervaluation shown by the Big Mac index, which means that the ruble's "true" value is nearly 2.5 times its quoted value.

Wizard of Oz > , July 18, 2017 at 2:32 pm GMT

@The Alarmist Come again! Secret laws? You mean the ones Senator Caligula arranges to have carved in Esperanto on stone blocks exhibited once a week on the top of a 50 foot scaffold? You are talking about laws in the everyday dictionary or constitutionsl sense and not just some note from tbe White House?

Erebus > , July 18, 2017 at 2:34 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov

The United States in particular paid a gruesome price for this delusion by de-industrializing almost to the point of no return.

Well, it had to if it was going to go for Dollar-based Hegemony. It apparently felt that it had to, and so it did.

Triffin's Dilemma states that if a single nation is the issuer of the world's reserve currency, then that nation had to run increasingly massive trade deficits to fund the world's liquidity. What better way to do that than to encourage their industry (via tax incentives) to move their industry off-shore? The captains of American industry jumped at the gift and made a LOT of money feeding China's development.

What China got way back in 2001 was the equivalent of being lent the US' credit card. They promptly traded piles of plastic toys and toasters for a modern 21st century infrastructure, a massive industrial base, and a sizeable military, raising some 1 billion of their population out of abject poverty along the way. They promised to open up their financial sector to foreign players, but shucks, that somehow never happened. Instead, the top 4 largest banks in the world are now Chinese. All state owned.
When they hand that card back in, it'll be at, or just over its limit, and overseas USM personnel will be hitch-hiking rides back to the US.

Shouldn't be long now.

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 2:35 pm GMT

@for-the-record My point was not in "defending Russia"–my reasons are much deeper than any mere "defense". I may have missed your sarcasm on Economist, but using Ruble (or any currency in general) as an economic indicator is a tricky business. Structure of GDP and a number of enclosed technological cycles are among most important, in fact–defining, factors.

Wizard of Oz > , July 18, 2017 at 2:38 pm GMT

It is quite certain that rich American environmentalists have funded speciously connected Aboriginal litigants to conduct lawfate against the potentially gigantic Galilee Basin ptoject in Queensland to export coal to India.

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 2:55 pm GMT

@Erebus

What China got way back in 2001 was the equivalent of being lent the US' credit card. They promptly traded piles of plastic toys and toasters for a modern 21st century infrastructure, a massive industrial base, and a sizeable military, raising some 1 billion of their population out of abject poverty along the way. They promised to open up their financial sector to foreign players, but shucks, that somehow never happened. Instead, the top 4 largest banks in the world are now Chinese. All state owned.

Very true. But using term "massive industrial base" may give an aneurysm to some Wall Street economic "analysts" or create a cognitive dissonance of such a scale that will require psychiatric intervention.

for-the-record > , July 18, 2017 at 3:01 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov Using rubles at the "official" exchange rate is of course meaningless; however, using a purchasing-power-parity adjusted exchange rate (which is what the Big Mac index is, in a certain sense) provides a very useful means for comparing levels of outputs in different countries, do you not agree?

Sergey Krieger > , July 18, 2017 at 3:04 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov This is not the first time Phil compared Russia to Spain or Italy. It is widespread dillusion and meme I read often. I find it in line general American policy to repeat lies and insinuations non stop be it WW2 history, Ukraine, Russian GDP,elections and so forth until it is accepted as sort of truth. Even Phil being non mainstream still repeats this nonsense comparing Russia to Spain.

Flavius > , July 18, 2017 at 3:07 pm GMT

Both as a veteran and as a former cold warrior, I must say that I feel betrayed by the myopia, historical ignorance, incompetence, hubris, recklessness, sheer nuttiness of the Washington establishment's conduct towards Russia over the past 20 years – bipartisan insanity. When one thinks it can't get worse, it gets worse; or as the circa 70s Soviet saying went, things are worse today than yesterday, but better than tomorrow.
Economic numbers are relevant but ultimately beside the point when calculating one's national interest in the context of the world's major political and nuclear powers and history's most blood soaked century.
Kudos to people like Phil Giraldi, Ray McGovern, and Patrick Buchanan who demonstrate regularly that at least some who were there as witnesses of what was retain the good judgment to recognize the road the damn DC fools ever more insistently are taking us down; and I would add for no good reason at all, but purely out of habit and for having something to do.

Verymuchalive > , July 18, 2017 at 3:10 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov This was part of the argument I was trying to expose. The Russian economy is grossly undervalued and many people who should know better like Philip Giraldi tend to grossly underestimate its size, range and capabilities.
By contrast, the American economy is grossly overvalued and its capabilities grossly overestimated. You yourself gave the most absurd example: Facebook is now valued on a parity with Boeing. Purely as an advertising vehicle, which is all it is, Facebook might be worth a couple of hundred million dollars. But no more.
And the there's Twitter. Never made a profit in its 11 years. $2 billion accumulative deficits. Book worth $11 billion. You couldn't make it up.

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 3:18 pm GMT

@for-the-record

do you not agree?

As one of the tools of economic analysis–agree.

Mr. Hack > , July 18, 2017 at 3:19 pm GMT

@RobinG For a guy that claims to 'only be interested in the facts' this 'great' investigative reporter sure likes to serve up a crock of BS for his main course. While trying to make a case that the DNC was solely responsible for installing Yanukovych's replacement, the video clip shows Nuland making a phone call to somebody (?) announcing that her choice was Vitali Klitschko oops, how did Victor Poroshenko end up running the show, and not Klitschko? Looks like this sinister Soros plot unraveled here a wee bit. Also, while trying to besmearch the good name of John McCain, he's shown on a stage with a supposed notorious 'anti-Semite'. But look, who's that third person on the stage with both McCain and Tyahnibok? Why it's Arseni Yatseniuk, a Ukrainian-Jew, of all people! What's this Ukrainian Jew doing on stage with this great anti-Semite? Maybe he's an anti-Semite too??

Erebus > , July 18, 2017 at 3:27 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov With any luck, it'll spoil their whole afternoon.

Philip Giraldi > , July 18, 2017 at 3:27 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov Andrei and others we are really on the same side on this – no matter how one values the Russian economy it is still tiny compared to the US and Western Europe. My point is that it is ludicrous to keep calling it a threat to everyone else – it doesn't have the economic mojo to take on the world. So let's stop picking on
Russia and calling it a threat. Likewise my comment about punishing Russia – if indeed Russia has deliberately gone out to wreck the US election then a response is in order. But we should be demanding evidence relating to all the allegations and even then when I am referring to punishment I am thinking in terms of sanctions and other actions, not any expansion of NATO or anything that actually threatens Russian security.

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 3:30 pm GMT

@Sergey Krieger Those are mantras. In one sense I understand that, even among people who, otherwise, would be considered "realists". It is akin to John Mearsheimer repeating non-stop his favorite mantra of Russian Armed Forces being "a mediocre army". It will take some time for a reality to sink in.

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 3:37 pm GMT

@Philip Giraldi

if indeed Russia has deliberately gone out to wreck the US election then a response is in order.

Agree, as strange it may sound from the man of my background. The United Sates is a sovereign nation and has to guard her institutions with everything at her disposal. Having said all that–I doubt strongly that Russia interfered in US elections. I make this conclusion purely on assessing the overall (much improved since mid-2000s) intellectual level of people who run Russian institutions which potentially may have interfered. I don't think those people are that stupid as to endanger US-Russian relations which are crucial for global stability, or whatever is left of it anyway.

Michael Kenny > , July 18, 2017 at 3:42 pm GMT

Back to "no evidence" again! "Let's punish Russia if it has actually done something wrong". OK. How about punishing Russia for what it has done and is doing in Ukraine? Everything Putin has done there is totally illegal under international law and the "evidence" is already there. Putin doesn't deny it! By the way, from what I gather, talking with representatives of a foreign power with a view to obtaining an advantage is a federal crime and it matters not one whit whether any advantage was actually obtained or even that the "representatives" were faking. In the particular case, DNC "dirt" actually did pop up on the internet. Moreover, one of the lawyer's clients was being prosecuted for money laundering. Trump removed the federal prosecutor and the company was suddenly offered a sweet settlement deal without a guilty plea. That's a long way from "ipso facto"!

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 3:44 pm GMT

@Verymuchalive

You yourself gave the most absurd example: Facebook is now valued on a parity with Boeing.

Atrocious, isn't it? Boeing–a crown jewel of American (and global aerospace) industry and engineering genius and a FB. One produces technological marvels with global demand, another produces absolutely nothing, sadly, also with a global demand.

BTW, as I type this–Russia held today opening of 2017 MAKS aerospace exhibition–a real economy on display. There is only other nation in the world which can on her own produce anything comparable–and that is the US.

Longfisher > , July 18, 2017 at 3:46 pm GMT

Moral Equivalence? Heck no. America is the indispensable and exceptional nation.

We can commit the same sins in even greater number and magnitude than other nations yet no one can hold us accountable while we hold others accountable for identical actions.

I recently wrote a very intelligent and cogent comment on a right-wing website which suggested that viewing America as if we were indispensable and exceptional, despite the plain fact that Trump was elected precisely because we aren't either of those things and his job was to find flaws and fix them, would tend to placate Americans such that we don't get to work fixing those flaws.

Guess what, that post was deleted by moderators within seconds.

Swell-headedness and self importance seems very deeply ingrained in Americans.

Erebus > , July 18, 2017 at 4:15 pm GMT

@Philip Giraldi

it is ludicrous to keep calling it a threat

Mr. Giraldi, you're missing the salient point. The rulers of the USA aren't delusional lunatics. Russia is the single largest threat to America's dream of Global Hegemony. It's refusal to kowtow to Washington, and more critically, its lending of its military power to underpin China's Silk Road Dreams guarantees their GH dream will die.

For the rulers of the USA, that's anathema. As good as death itself. They bet Americans' well being, Brand America, its industrial and civilian infrastructure, and almost its farms, for Global Hegemony and came up craps. They'll lose the farms soon enough.

That is why they're panicking, and why they're going to do everything they can to break their fall. Above all, they have to convince their allies to stay loyal, particularly Europe long enough to allow them to "think of something".

They have to stop the Silk Road from coming somehow, or American power will recede to the continent, leaving them to boss Canada and Mexico around. With Russia out of the way, China's a pushover. The two together can't be overcome. It really is as simple as that.

Erebus > , July 18, 2017 at 4:27 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny

Everything Putin has done there is totally illegal under international law and the "evidence" is already there.

Care to cite any of it? I have yet to see the Kremlin take a single step off the black letter law. I'd be interested if you did.

Rurik > , Website July 18, 2017 at 4:31 pm GMT

if indeed Russia has deliberately gone out to wreck the US election then a response is in order.

Agree

when you compare how the ZUSA has intervened in other nations sovereign affairs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJVcdKxs3XA

and compare that to a Russian lawyer meeting with Trump surrogates with potential dirt on Clinton, the sheer hypocrisy is enough to benumb the mind and soul, it's so beyond egregious.

what's going on is the unipolar world of Zio-NATO demanding fealty from every last bastion of the dying multilateral international community, until it's zio-interests reign the entire length and breath of the planet, without a shred of resistance or dissent.

Sort of like the way they demanded that no one give Edward Snowden safe haven. And almost all nations kowtowed. They will not rest until their unipolar domination extends to every last bastion of human freedom from their $atanic power.

The United Sates is a sovereign nation and has to guard her institutions with everything at her disposal

that's laughable.

the institutions of the US were murdered on 9/11, along with all those people in the planes and towers. We are no longer a people or a nation with a legal constitution, but rather are an occupied people with a quisling government serving Israel's interests, day and night. We're about as sovereign as Palestine, but at least they have the dignity of seeing their occupation for what it is, whereas we play pretend, and act like we're still sovereign, even as our citizens are assassinated if they become inconvenient to the regime in Tel Aviv that runs things here.

http://www.unzcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/netanyahu-congress-600×449.jpg

if we're going to be occupied by a hostile regime that hates us and wants to use us as cannon fodder to enslave Russia and everyone else, then we ought at least be allowed the dignity of knowing it and saying it.

Rurik > , Website July 18, 2017 at 4:45 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny

How about punishing Russia for what it has done and is doing in Ukraine? Everything Putin has done there is totally illegal under international law and the "evidence" is already there.

you must be from the Kagan family of war pigs

Victoria Nuland (Nudelman), and her corpulent husband Robert Kagan

the waddling blob of lard Frederick Kagan and his war sow wife Kimberly Kagan

which one are you?

http://il6.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/11730821/thumb/1.jpg

alternatereality > , July 18, 2017 at 4:51 pm GMT

@Pandos

OH thank you Jesus!

The lord gives and the lord takes --

Russian immigrants leaving Israel, discouraged by conversion woes

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/features/.premium-1.623745

Apr 14, 2017 Putin's Aliyah: Russian Jews leave Israel – Middle East Monitor

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170414-russian-jews-leave-israel/

(This may be one of the primary reasons for the ongoing demonization of Russia: One of zionism's foremost goals was the in-gathering of the diaspora. In the past zionists have destabilised states where Jews dwelt -- peacefully and securely -- in order to frighten Jews into leaving. If the Jews who left Russia in the 1980s are now returning, or are not integrating successfully in Israel, then similar tactics will likely be deployed.)
Putin's Aliyah: Russian Jews leave Israel According to Rozovsky, the post- 2000 immigrants, especially those who arrived following the failed

May 10, 2017 Some 17 per cent of the Jewish immigrants who came to Israel from the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s have since left, official data by

25 years later, Russian speakers still the 'other' in Israel,
http://www.timesofisrael.com/25-years-later-russian-speakers-still- ;

Sep 1, 2016 "The majority of native-born Israelis think Russian Israelis are not Jews," said Svetlova. . were forced to give up their citizenship and pension upon leaving.

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 4:58 pm GMT

@Rurik I may agree with you on some points but those agreements are not bases for denouncing national sovereignty as a crucial guiding principle of international relations. Yes, including USA.

chris > , July 18, 2017 at 5:16 pm GMT

@Greg Bacon Yeah, I know we don't get our oil in the ME, but we justify our meddling there and everywhere by trying to keep it out of the hands of our 'enemies' and flowing to our friends. even if we have to create those friends and enemies in order to create a role for ourselves.

Regarding the second point you made, I didn't know that, but somehow I'm not exactly surprised!

Beckow > , July 18, 2017 at 5:40 pm GMT

@Philip Giraldi How do you "wreck an election"? I can imagine a number of ways from using violence, intimidation, media pressure, buying votes, blackmail of candidates, electoral fraud, and a few others. But none of those happened in a significant way in the 2016 elections – and the esteemed Mr. Obama went out of his way right before the elections to say that all was in order.

Now, one can argue that some of the above always happens, and that it also happened in 2016 in US (there was some violence and media manipulation, there is always some fraud ). But how can any sane person claim that it "wrecked the election"?

If one looks at any event long enough and is motivated to find 'irregularities', one can always find them. But how was 2016 different from 2012,or 2000, or 1968, or any other election year?

Rurik > , Website July 18, 2017 at 5:45 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov

national sovereignty as a crucial guiding principle of international relations. Yes, including USA.

OK, but in order to expect anyone else to respect international law and the sovereignty of nations, isn't it rather incumbent upon us that we (the ZUSA) do so as well?

IOW, wouldn't it be rather silly for Israel to punish a Palestinian for failing to recognize Israel's sovereignty, when Israel doesn't even respect his right to breath, let alone have a spot on the earth that he can call his own?

Isn't it sort of a folly for the ZUSA to demand that Russia respect our sovereignty, when we relentlessly subvert her election processes and the stability of the nations on her borders, in a direct and obvious attempt to destabilize their government and society? And try to do them all manor of harm to benefit some dark and devious scheme of the (by now notorious) villains that run our government and institutions?

It seems like Jerry Sandusky demanding that Mother Theresa be more considerate to children.

or at least, that's sort of how it seems to me.

But then I'll gladly pretend that Trump is going to return to us our sovereignty, and behave within the norms of International Law, (respecting all other nation's sovereignty) and then when that happens, then I'll agree with you vis-a-vis the importance of protecting the institutions of our national sovereignty. Something I hope Trump will be able to wrest back from Tel Aviv, and we can all live happily ever after.

Anonymous > , July 18, 2017 at 5:49 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov

The United Sates is a sovereign nation and has to guard her institutions with everything at her disposal. Having said all that–I doubt strongly that Russia interfered in US elections.

The American electorate has, for 50 years, consistently elected "representatives" who, without fail, proceeded to take actions to devastate the American economy while enriching themselves and their grotesquely-corrupt monetary "supporters". With that in mind, why on earth would Russia seek to interfere in a US election? America is rapidly destroying itself -- no interference is necessary.

Anonymous > , July 18, 2017 at 6:00 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny

How about punishing Russia for what it has done and is doing in Ukraine? Everything Putin has done there is totally illegal under international law and the "evidence" is already there.

I see you are a well-paid 2nd-tier hasbara. A slicker, smoother, more practiced line of patter. But, bullshit, per the usual.

Russia has long-standing agreements with Ukraine that establish rights-of-way to its bases in Crimea. Nothing illegal was done with respect to international law. It's very typical of Israelis to squawk nastily about "international law" that does not exist.

Good to have you aboard, Moshe! We need a good token around to shill for Israel. Keep that bullshit coming!!

lavoisier > , Website July 18, 2017 at 6:22 pm GMT

Nothing at all respectable about the modern day Sierra Club.

They sold out for a big donation from a Jewish donor committed to open borders.

The environment in the United States be dammed.

It is all about the money with the modern day Sierra Club.

Nothing more disrespectful, or predictable with liberals, than that.

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 6:25 pm GMT

@Anonymous

The American electorate has, for 50 years, consistently elected "representatives" who, without fail, proceeded to take actions to devastate the American economy while enriching themselves and their grotesquely-corrupt monetary "supporters".

True to a large degree. Yet:

With that in mind, why on earth would Russia seek to interfere in a US election? America is rapidly destroying itself -- no interference is necessary.

You could be really stunned if you think that Russia seeks destruction of the US and once real Russia's intentions are understood. This is not to speak of consequences of the US imploding–they will be global and could be simply catastrophic for all. US is a nuclear superpower and is still a crucial player in global economy. Russia sure as hell is interested in saner and, in a good geopolitical sense, national interests' defending US–but those interests certainly can not be "global" in neocon "interpretation". In the end, during campaigning Trump was saying very many right words and those words have been prepared for him by very powerful people, which testifies to the fact of some powerful forces inside US who do understand the new game. We all are currently at the point of no return, we are still balancing on it, whether we will cross into the "pass the point of NR" is yet to be seen. But US power is declining both in relative and absolute terms and this process is objective.

lavoisier > , Website July 18, 2017 at 6:37 pm GMT

@Z-man Counterproductive for sure.

Criminalization of thought gives the thought more credibility.

chris > , July 18, 2017 at 6:37 pm GMT

@Philip Giraldi Why am I beginning to get the feeling that Russia is now being catapulted by the most complex algorithms to the forefront of the world economic ranking in order to make them look like the ominous opponent we've already 'agreed' to make them into?

Isn't this a bit transparent ?

lavoisier > , Website July 18, 2017 at 6:44 pm GMT

@Erebus If your analysis is correct, and it may well be, then our decline as a superpower will be the result of Jewish hegemony and the traitorous behavior of the cuckservatives.

A nation hollowed out at its core will die.

yeah > , July 18, 2017 at 6:58 pm GMT

Philip Giraldi, pretending to be so fair and reasonable, writes, ""Sure, let's punish Russia if it has actually done something wrong, but first let's see the evidence."

Punish exactly how? By making the Russians wear dunce caps? By expelling even more Russian diplomats? Or perhaps by launching a few good ones?

The stupidity, hypocrisy, and hubris of Neocons and their bedmates, the progressives, makes me gasp. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that the sanest and safest way in troubled times is for all parties to observe international law and not to renounce it.

Now what great human ideal, what dazzling symptom of moral and political greatness has been achieved by bombing silly but miserably weak countries? Is Iraq a better place for anyone now?Is Libya more democratic now? Should N. Korea be similarly treated? And of course the mother of all questions: how should Russia be punished? Will more Nato exercises in the Baltic teach the Russians better manners? What if they took it into their heads to conduct military exercises off the Gulf of Mexico? Of course, that will only prove how fiendish they are, how they "interfered" with US democracy. Interfered how? Perhaps they lifted American skirts a little too high. The US never, ever interferes with any country's political processes. The CIA exists to ensure that every US agency follows international law fully. But damn these Russians, they don't understand such noble things.

Dangerous times when hypocrisy and arrogance gets mixed up with tons of stupidity and ignorance.

Cortes > , July 18, 2017 at 7:25 pm GMT

An excellent article. Thank you.

One minor quibble. The "golden shower" allegation was designed to be more embarrassing than your version of it, since the story was that the prostitutes urinated on Trump and not the other way round.

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 7:34 pm GMT

@Rurik

OK, but in order to expect anyone else to respect international law and the sovereignty of nations, isn't it rather incumbent upon us that we (the ZUSA) do so as well?

Yes, absolutely so.

It seems like Jerry Sandusky demanding that Mother Theresa be more considerate to children. or at least, that's sort of how it seems to me.

A good point you make but once you observe with the naked eye most of what is going on currently in terms of global power re-balancing–it is precisely about a bottom line of several guiding principles applied to everyone which should be followed–respect for sovereignty is the most important of them. It will require (and it is happening as I type is) a significant re-defining of US "exceptionalism" before new balance is achieved but it is this new balance into whose sails the winds of history are blowing. Having said all that, espionage and operations of influence will certainly not go anywhere, but the level of violence will be reduced greatly.

chris > , July 18, 2017 at 8:02 pm GMT

@Cortes I knew right away that that whole golden shower story was fake because on the margins this charge had been made about Hitler also over the years.

Seems to be the standard smear against nazis, #7 in the ol' lexicon.

Priss Factor > , Website July 18, 2017 at 8:08 pm GMT

former global enemy that now has an economy the size of Spain or Italy.

But keep in mind that it's wrong to assess Russian economy this way.

Much of Spanish or Italian economy is just tourism, wine, foods, and such stuff. Italy and Spain don't have Power Economies.

In contrast, Russia has tons of resources, big machinery, military ware, and energy.
So, it is a Power Economy. And if Russia were to enter into war-footing, these sectors could be expanded vastly, like during WWII.

anon > , July 18, 2017 at 8:42 pm GMT

Wow. Just wow.

In fact:

1. Russia has been involved in financing 'green' anti EU and Ukrainian fracking for years. This is, in fact, interesting. Liquid crude oil is fungible but natural gas is very expensive to move around except in direct, physically connected pipelines. Ukraine could develop an unconventional gas and oil industry -- in theory. It has resources but not the political or economic cohesion to do anything for its economy.

2. Same with Europe. except there isn't much to develop. Romania gave it a try and could have done something at $100 oil but its project has been abandon at current prices.

3. US sanctions on Russia resulted in 'import substitution' economic development. The Ruble haircut (roughly half) has turned Russia into an agriculture export powerhouse. It's now the largest exporter of grain in the world.

4. What did we do? We 'manipulated' Russia's currency downward and luck reduced (temporarily) the value of oil exports. We pushed other countries *not* to trade with Russia. This resulted in Russia boycotting food imports, among other things. Effectively a tariff. The only negative was a real, significant, but transitory cost to Russian standard of living. I suppose the rationale was to punish Putin and cause political unrest. That worked well, no?

5. Meanwhile -- Fracking. Lets call it unconventional US Oil and Gas. The US is effectively self sufficient regarding net total trade balance of oil and gas, including refined products and basic chemicals. Not quite as obvious as it would be if every component was in exact balance. US refineries can get more out of heavy crude and well continue to import it and refine it. The US produces multi millions of bbl per day of 'liquids' -- a large quantity of which are exported. Propane, among others. Look it up if you are curious. Meanwhile, the US is the world's largest producer of natural gas.

The entire unconventional oil industry is the only large area of expansion in the US economy since 2008. It's why the US has done better than the rest of the developed world's economies since 2008. What replaced the housing bubble? I suppose nothing, but unconventional oil has come close. A problem is that the benefits are more concentrated than single family housing -- which had the advantage of being spread around fairly uniformly, with a lot going to the deplorable engaged in a segment of the skilled labor needed to pull it off.

A policy of global hegemony focused on oil is more than backwards looking. I suppose it is impossible not to fight the last war. WW 2 wasn't primarily about oil, but the popular narrative tends to seriously underestimate the extent to which it was catastrophic for Germany. Russia had it and Germany didn't. And of course -- it was fought on the Eastern Front and paid for in Russian blood. But oil was so 20th century. Would the US design a foreign policy around the 'strategic' asset of coal?

The point is that a commodity based view of global hegemony is old and wrong. US has been an 'agricultural' superpower for a century. And now we have made Russia the grain basket of the world. And now oil is effectively just another commodity. Time to get with it.

Zenarchy > , July 18, 2017 at 8:51 pm GMT

@Mr. Hack Yats is not a Jew and even Ukraine's chief rabbi has said so.
Have you even looked at him? There may be blonde and blue-eyed Jews etc, but this guy has zero Jewish features.

Anonymous > , July 18, 2017 at 8:52 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov

You could be really stunned if you think that Russia seeks destruction of the US and once real Russia's intentions are understood. This is not to speak of consequences of the US imploding–they will be global and could be simply catastrophic for all.

In my opinion, it follows that both Russia and China need the USA for economic reasons -- markets, currency standard, stabilizing effect of military, etc. More correctly, they need something like the USA, so the USA serves the purpose for the meanwhile. The US is collapsing from decay, where China is on a growth spurt of yet undetermined duration, Russia on a rebirth cycle following collapse that did not destroy it.

All interesting factors. I will say I do not believe the US can engender rebirth, and its collapse will be properly calamitous. We shall see.

Patrick Armstrong > , Website July 18, 2017 at 8:58 pm GMT

RUSSIA INC. Summarising three recent authorities, Wikipedia says Canada's GDP is greater than Russia's and Germany's is about two and a half times greater. There's something deeply misleading and, in fact, quite worthless about these GDP comparisons. Russia has a full-service space industry including the only other operating global satellite navigation system.

Neither Canada nor Germany does. It has an across the board sophisticated military industry which may be the world leader in electronic warfare, air defence systems, silent submarines and armoured vehicles. Neither Canada nor Germany does. It has a developed nuclear power industry with a wide range of products. Ditto.

It builds and maintains a fleet of SSBNs – some of the most complicated machinery that exists. Ditto. Its aviation industry makes everything from competitive fighter planes through innovative helicopters to passenger aircraft. Ditto.

It has a full automotive industry ranging from some of the world's most powerful heavy trucks to ordinary passenger cars. It has all the engineering and technical capacity necessary to build complex bridges, dams, roads, railways, subway stations, power stations, hospitals and everything else.

It is a major and growing food producer and is probably self-sufficient in food today. Its food export capacity is growing and it has for several years been the leading wheat exporter. It has enormous energy reserves and is a leading exporter of oil and gas. Its pharmaceutical industry is growing rapidly. It is intellectually highly competitive in STEM disciplines – a world leader in some cases.

Its computer programmers are widely respected. (Yes, there is a Russian cell phone.) It's true that many projects involve Western partners – the Sukhoy Superjet for example – but it's nonetheless the case that the manufacturing and know-how is now in Russia. Germany or Canada has some of these capabilities but few – very few – countries have all of them. In fact, counting the EU as one, Russia is one of only four.

Therefore in Russia's case, GDP rankings are not only meaningless, but laughably so. While Russians individually are not as wealthy as Canadians or Germans, the foundations of wealth are being laid and deepened every day in Russia. What of the future? Well there's a simple answer to that question – compare Russia in 2000 with Russia in 2017: all curves are up. Of course Russians support their government – why wouldn't they? It's doing what they hired it to do; we others can only dream of such governments. For what it's worth, PwC predicts Russia will be first in Europe in 2050, but, even so, I think it misses the real point: Indonesia and Brazil ahead of Russia? No way: it's not GDP/PPP that matters, it's full service. Russia is a full-service power and it won't become any less so in the next 30 years. Autarky. Very few aren't there? And in that little group of four autarkies on the planet, who's going up and who's going down? A big – fatal even – mistake to count Russia out.

https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/02/09/russian-federation-sitrep-9-february-2017/

Astuteobservor II > , July 18, 2017 at 9:52 pm GMT

@Verymuchalive he is using gdp numbers.

anon > , July 18, 2017 at 10:10 pm GMT

@chris It would have few dollars more per gallon and would have been like that since 1950

geokat62 > , July 18, 2017 at 10:57 pm GMT

As it turns out, there may not have been any discussion of Hillary, though possibly something having to do with irregularities in DNC fundraising surfaced, and there may have been a bit more about the Magnitsky Act and adopting Russian babies.

Speaking of the Magnitsky Act, here is some late-breaking news that, if substantiated, will put a completely different spin on the bogus Russia-gate scandal:

Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya says Magnitsky act lobbyist Browder behind Trump Jr. scandal

The scandal concerning the meeting between US President Donald Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was orchestrated by Magnitsky act lobbyist William Browder, the lawyer told RT in an exclusive interview.

"I´m ready to clarify the situation behind this mass hysteria – but only through lawyers or testifying in the Senate," Veselnitskaya told RT.

"I can only assume that the current situation that has been heated up for ten days or so by now is a a very well-orchestrated story concocted by one particular manipulator – Mr. Browder. He is one of the greatest experts in the field of manipulating mass media,"Veselnitskaya said.

She went on to say that Browder, who is the founder and CEO of the Hermitage Capital investment company, orchestrated this whole disinformation campaign as revenge for the defeat he suffered in a US court in 2013 from a team of lawyers that included Veselnitskaya.

"I have absolutely no doubt that this whole information [campaign] is being spun, encouraged and organized by that very man as revenge for the defeat he suffered in court of the Southern State of New York in the 'Perezvon' company case," she said.

"He wasn't able to convince the court with his lousy human tragedy that actually never happened, about the fate of a dead man – who he only learnt about after his death."

In 2013, Veselnitskaya was one of the lawyers who represented a Cyprus-based holding company Prevezon, owned by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, in its defense against allegations of money laundering in a court of the Southern State of New York.

The case was settled with no admission of guilt by Prevezon.

Veselnitskaya also said she is now concerned for the safety of her family as it's been revealed that Browder's team spied on her family's activities even before her meeting with Trump Jr.

"It's been revealed that Mr. Browder and his team have been gathering information about my family," she told RT, adding, that Browder's team "found photos of my house and sent them to Kyle Parker a famous man in the House of Representatives, who worked for Mr Browder for many years – and not for any congressmen or congress as a whole."

People working for Browder also shared all her personal details with representatives of the State Department, Veselnitskaya said.

Browder has a long history of hostility against Russia. In 2013, he was sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison for tax evasion. He was also the boss of the late Russian auditor Sergey Magnitsky.

According to the 2013 court verdict, Browder together with Magnitsky failed to pay over 552 million rubles in taxes (about US$16 million). The businessman was also found guilty of illegally buying shares in the country's natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, costing Russia at least 3 billion rubles (US$100 million).

Magnitsky died in pre-trial custody in 2009. His death led to a strain in Russian-American relations. US authorities eventually imposed sanctions against Russian officials they deemed responsible for the auditor's death by issuing the so-called Magnitsky list in 2012. Browder also lobbied European states to follow Washington's lead.

The Magnitsky Act is a 2012 law that allows the United States to seize assets from a number of alleged Russian human rights abusers, as well as barring them from entering the country. Russia retaliated by prohibiting American families from adopting Russian children.

https://www.rt.com/news/396728-russian-lawyer-scandal-america/

For those who may not recall, Phil previously wrote an excellent article on the sordid Magnitsky Act affair here on Unz. IIRC, Browder managed to get Sen. McCain to stand on the floor of the senate and make a sales pitch (with fancy presentation materials) to convince the rest of the senate to vote in favour of passing the Magnitsky Act, which they did. Hopefully, this story will now begin to unravel like a ball of yarn.

Client 9 > , July 18, 2017 at 11:11 pm GMT

"Now the irony in all this is that a major producer of relatively dirty oil is being accused of targeting an even dirtier and environmentally destructive energy resource, which is fracking"

We've been Fracking since the early 20th century, there are always risks but overall it is a safe alternative. Time to stop getting our oil from countries who use their wealth to spread terror/sharia, whose only aim is to build a global calipahte.

Erebus > , July 19, 2017 at 12:27 am GMT

@lavoisier Well, it's not really an "analysis" as such. If one goes back to the literature of the time, one sees that Triffen's Dilemma was known to the policy makers, and was hovering overhead in the deliberations leading up to Nixon's "closing the gold window" in 1971.

Dollar Hegemony was very attractive because it offered the West the opportunity to do an end run around its military stalemate in its Great Game with the USSR. Though closing the gold window was a policy decision, the attraction was not lost on the captain's of American industry. They could count on a generation or so of extraordinary profit and scrambled on board.

It was Dollar Hegemony that underpinned the West's takedown of the USSR. By loaning the USSR "hard currency" (remember that term?), and then collapsing the prices of the stuff the USSR exported to pay back the loans, the USSR was forced into austerity, and ultimately default.
That plan is a matter of historical record, so didn't require any "analysis" on my part either. They tried the same thing again in 2014, but I suspect the Russians were ready for them this time.

As for the Jewish part, the elite in most countries are "international" in their lifestyle and outlook. Yes, Jews are over-represented there, and are possibly more "international" in outlook than goy elites, but real "Jewish hegemony" comes later with the rise of the Financial State. Having laid out the ground work in the '90s with the repeal of Glass-Steagal etc, it really takes off at the time of 9/11, which coincided with the 2nd shoe dropping on the American economy. Namely, China's ascendance to the WTO and gaining Most Favoured Nation status.

To make Dollar Hegemony work, you need a powerful, and effective military. They got the "powerful" part, in the sense that the USM is really good at blowing stuff up, but they muffed the "effective", and so here we are.

Cortes > , July 19, 2017 at 12:28 am GMT

@chris Chris, if memory serves, Norman Davies (in his selection of key moments and people "Europe" – a door stopper of a book) went much further in describing the sexual pathology of Hitler. I may be mistaken (won't be the first or only time) so don't sue me. Check out the relevant section of the book.
Here, dealing with President Trump, the effort appears to me to be defamatory and consistent with the seeming ongoing campaign to destabilise his presidency by actors known and unknown.

NoseytheDuke > , July 19, 2017 at 12:35 am GMT

@Flavius "DC fools ever more insistently are taking us down; and I would add for no good reason at all, but purely out of habit and for having something to do."

I can't agree with that. I would say that total global control is the ultimate motivation.

America's role is to be the persuader and enforcer until such time as relative parity is achieved and then America can be reduced to little more than a struggling entity that can be slotted in amongst the other competing economic zones (all controlled by the same interests) in a competitive race to the bottom scenario.

NoseytheDuke > , July 19, 2017 at 12:44 am GMT

@alternatereality I would think that most are emigrating to the US, no?

ChuckOrloski > , July 19, 2017 at 1:03 am GMT

Brilliant revelation, NoseyTheDuke!

Gg Mo > , July 19, 2017 at 1:05 am GMT

@alternatereality Alternative Reality Indeed.

yeah > , July 19, 2017 at 2:26 am GMT

@Patrick Armstrong A very potent and astute piece of analysis – kudos to you, sir.

Now why don't the great economists in their ivory towers get these common sense things right? An economy making everything from A to Z is way different from an economy based on wines, cheese, and chocolates. A wild thought: Perhaps common sense should be made a compulsory part of many curriculums. Yes, no?

RobinG > , July 19, 2017 at 3:05 am GMT

@geokat62 Thanks, Geo.

Here's the weekly update on #UNRIG which, due to being attacked last week by Zionist entities in US, has added a second demand – AMERICA FIRST, NOT ISRAEL.

Robert Steele Weekly Integrity Update on #UNRIG

MarkinPNW > , July 19, 2017 at 3:06 am GMT

@Rurik Rurik, shame on you for insulting pigs!

Mokiki > , July 19, 2017 at 3:09 am GMT

Why do you embrace the watermelon position that fracking is "dirty"??

RobinG > , July 19, 2017 at 4:22 am GMT

@Mr. Hack Where to begin? How about the notion that John McCain has a good name to besmirch. ("Besmearch" sounds a bit like something a James Bond villain would do, no?)

Next, why the pretense? Everyone knows that Fuktoria was speaking with U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Ross Pyatt. From Wikipedia,

"In their phone conversation, Nuland and Pyatt discussed who should be in the government after Viktor Yanukovych's ouster and in what ways they might achieve that transition, with the name of Arseniy Yatsenyuk (whom Nuland refers to as "Yats") coming up several times. Specifically, the two spoke about which opposition leaders they would like to see in government, what pitches they would give each opposition leader in subsequent calls to achieve this, and strategies on how they would try to manage the 'personality problems' and conflicts between the different opposition leaders with ambitions to become president.[15][16] Yatsenyuk became prime minister of Ukraine on February 27, 2014″

So, as you see, their man Yats did become prime minister. Porky, the chocolate king, subsequently became president. Maybe your hearing is bad: they ruled out Klitch from the top positions.

Ya, that's the irony, that the Nudelwoman took power by unleashing a bunch of Banderites and neo-nazis. Pretty funny, huh? BTW, are you sure Mr. Hack isn't really Mr. Hasbara?

Sergey Krieger > , July 19, 2017 at 8:50 am GMT

@Anonymous In case of USA collapse the most important question is what happens with nukes and everything related.

Mr. Hack > , July 19, 2017 at 10:40 am GMT

@RobinG

So, as you see, their man Yats did become prime minister.

Yes, and millions of US citizens who voted in the last elections had their choice for president validated too. Were they all involved in some nefarious, covert act too? I replayed the video clip, and while the 'great reporter' talks about Nuland's favorite for the top Ukrainian post, photos of Klitschko were being transferred over the viewing screen. Still, it was Poroshenko and not Yatseniuk that filled the top post. In fact, Poroshenko's name was never mentioned in the nefarious phone call?? BTW, Poroshenko was elected president by way of a monitored and free election several months after the events on the Maidan had settled down.

For the record then, since you so cavalierly throw around the terms 'Banderites' and 'neo-Nazis', just who exactly do both Yatseniuk and Porosheno represent in your sophisticated view of contemporary Ukrainian political persuasions? Or are both of them both 'Banderites' and 'neo-Nazis?

Avery > , July 19, 2017 at 12:51 pm GMT

@Mr. Hack {For the record then, since you so cavalierly throw around the terms 'Banderites' and 'neo-Nazis', just who exactly do both Yatseniuk and Porosheno represent in your sophisticated view of contemporary Ukrainian political persuasions? Or are both of them both 'Banderites' and 'neo-Nazis?}

Don't know about Porkyshenko, but The Yats is a neo-Nazi*: scroll down and take a gander of The Yats giving the traditional greeting to his Nazi Master, Adolf. (right after Oleh Tyahnybok).

Heil Hitler!
Sieg Heil!

______________
*

https://off-guardian.org/2016/11/05/ukraine-fascisms-toe-hold-in-europe/

Rurik > , Website July 19, 2017 at 1:26 pm GMT

@MarkinPNW mea culpa

those pigs are actually very beautiful, and they have my apology for comparing them to the Kagans

Sarah Toga > , July 19, 2017 at 1:31 pm GMT

Phil,
What's your beef with hydraulic fracturing?

Anonymous > , July 19, 2017 at 2:06 pm GMT

"One of the latest claims is that Moscow has been covertly funding some environmental groups, most particularly those opposed to the use of fracking technologies."

And Russian environmental critics of Putin, such as Evgueniya Chirikova and Nadezdha Kutepova, are notoriously sponsored by organizations linked to the US government. The moral outrage of the American establishment is totally hypocritical. Anything is right or wrong just when it serves the interests of the American establishment.

In fact, much of the Russian opposition is financed by Washington, but this has never generated any tearing of the Yankee mainstream media.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/russian-opposition-caught-filing-into-us-embassy-in-moscow/30717

Anatoly Karlin > , Website July 19, 2017 at 2:47 pm GMT

@Philip Giraldi

As a rule of thumb, nominal GDP is a superior proxy of financial strength, while PPP-adjusted GDP is better as a proxy of industrial, inc. military-industrial potential (and of real living standards in its per capita format).

In the former domain, Russia is indeed a minor; in the latter domain, it is indeed comparable to Germany.

Philip Giraldi > , July 19, 2017 at 3:15 pm GMT

@Sarah Toga http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/011915/what-are-effects-fracking-environment.asp?lgl=rira-baseline-vertical

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_hydraulic_fracturing_in_the_United_States

Mr. Hack > , July 19, 2017 at 3:15 pm GMT

@Avery

Arseniy Yatsenyuk [center], former PM of Ukraine, also NOT performing a Nazi slaute.

I take this quote directly from underneath the photo in the article that you cite. Not an expert on correct 'Nazi salutes' I'll defer to the author of this photo for his knowledge on this matter. Yatseniuk, may have showed some solidarity with rightists like Tyahnybok during the Maidan period, but he's never been known for any far right viewpoints or belonging to any far right political parties, and indeed has been referred to as a Jew on many occasions. I don't know for a fact whether or not he's Jewish, not having taken a part in either his Christian baptism, nor his Jewish Bar Mitzvah.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/fearful-of-anti-semitism-22-of-european-jews-hide-identity/

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 19, 2017 at 3:58 pm GMT

@Anatoly Karlin

As a rule of thumb, nominal GDP is a superior proxy of financial strength, while PPP-adjusted GDP is better as a proxy of industrial, inc. military-industrial potential (and of real living standards in its per capita format).

Somewhat true. But while PPP is, indeed, "better" it is still highly inaccurate, and I mean highly. Reason being the "adjustment" itself, which changes dramatically across the whole spectrum of real (that is productive) economy plus calculation of costs in general–e.g. US healthcare system. While highly developed and world-class (most of the time), its "cost calculations" (through "charge masters") is ridiculous but it is this number (horrendously inflated) which goes in as part of US GDP. But here is an example which anyone will understand, since unlike financial transactions, it is an essential and extremely important service, that is healthcare. My mother just recently, in Moscow nonetheless, literally built all her teeth anew–she has now literally a new mouth. She paid 130 000 Rubles. World class dentist, excellent equipment, great service, implants etc–whole 9 yards. Now, if converted directly to US Dollar it comes up to 2167 USD. What can I do for that here, in US? I know for sure, my good acquaintance dentist offered me a single implant (and I really need it badly) of an upper tooth for a good price of 2 500 USD. Should I do to my teeth (desirable for me) what my mother did–I would end up with 20 000 + bill in the best case scenario. How do we convert that? I looked once at the cost (covered by my insurance, thankfully) of one of my CT scans–2 000 + USD. This is without "reading" it. As you may have guessed it already, the same procedure in Russia will cost much-much less, this is without counting free ones, but you have to wait there for weeks or even months. Here are simple examples of those gigantic discrepancies. Once one gets into real hi-tech manufacturing field, most (not all) Western "economists" will have their brains exploding.

Philip Giraldi > , July 19, 2017 at 5:18 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov Andrei and Anatoly – Thanks for explaining this. I last studied economics in an introductory course taught by Milton Friedman. I came away with a "C" and forgot everything I had learned almost immediately.

Apolonius > , July 19, 2017 at 5:28 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny Lets punish Russia? Are you sure that you have big enough punisher?

How you people get to think and say such a things? Are you not aware that Russia can obliterate USA and western Europe in 30 mins? No anti-rocket system will help, russian missiles can change their trajectory in flight (american don´t ) -- Not adding that to defend against thousands of missiles is virtually impossible. You still writing like you have power over Russia,this is the most stupid thing you can do – but of course , you are an exceptional representative of the exceptional people You have a donkey for the president, and you blame it on Russia? Whole world is having fun watching this opera..

As to international law, USA and NATO countries are in the gravest breach of the international law, they have executed illegal war and occupation in Serbia, since 1999.(That is just first of many) Let us first punish that, together with reparations to the attacked nation, and then you can start speaking about "International law".

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 19, 2017 at 5:46 pm GMT

@Philip Giraldi

I came away with a "C" and forgot everything I had learned almost immediately

Very similar, albeit I scored A ("5″) IIRC on my Political Economy Of Capitalism (did less well on the same but of Socialism) in naval academy. But life forced me, eventually, especially against the collapse of the USSR and our lives being thrown in complete disarray (politely speaking), to start review and, eventually, study the subject anew.

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 19, 2017 at 5:54 pm GMT

@Anonymous

In my opinion, it follows that both Russia and China need the USA for economic reasons -- markets, currency standard, stabilizing effect of military, etc.

Secret to China's economic miracle are precisely these very American markets, which were opened to Chinese-made goods. Russia is far-far less, on several orders of magnitude, less dependent on US markets than China, hence Russia has much bigger room for maneuver. But in the rest, you are correct–US is too important to global economic balance, even despite being so damaging to it, to think that possible collapse could be contained. It could not be contained completely. Some sort of accommodation has to be found. What sort? I am not competent enough to be very specific, plus we will have to go into military-political aspect of that issue.

Apolonius > , July 19, 2017 at 6:03 pm GMT

@Patrick Armstrong Just to add one personal observation. I know Russia very well, lived there for 12 years, last time in 1991. Then I visited Russia several times until 2006 – improvement was visible, but nothing prepared me to the Russsia 2017! Even people on the street changed – to the positive. As to buildings, stores, it is incredible, I couldn´t recognize old Russia, everything was new, shining, smart and much better than before.

Russians are optimistic , which was impossible in nineties! It was really a shock for me, very nice shock I don´t know how to express to you this enormous surprise I never thought such transformation possible .

So speaking about Russia like about some sick giant is a very stupid thing to do. Today, Russia from the point of view of her citizens is good, and working hard for excellence. I think Western leaders still think about Russia in categories of 90´s, and that is a big mistake. They should understand once for all, that Russia has to be treated as equal, and not messed with, like in Ukraine. If they will not, I think that the Russia will pass from partner, to the Master.

anon > , July 19, 2017 at 6:59 pm GMT

Here's material for Phil Giraldi's next week's piece:

http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-overheard-comments-netanyahu-lashes-eus-crazy-policy-on-israel/

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 19, 2017 at 7:26 pm GMT

@Apolonius

Today, Russia from the point of view of her citizens is good, and working hard for excellence

Without any jokes, however lighthearted this my statement may appear to you, one of the fields in which Russia's greatness is unsurpassed by the US is the field of 100% cotton socks. No, I don't mean those white (and warm) cotton socks any COSTCO or department stores sell. No, I am talking about 100% cotton socks of thin and different colors (including of dressy kind) you can by in any Russian department store or Auchan. This is not the case with US anymore.

For years now I was either bringing back with me or whenever any of our friends flew to Russia and back–the request is always the same: bring 10-12 pairs of not-white thin 100% cotton socks. I gave up trying to find these socks in US long time ago now, probably circa 2008-09. Including by means of internet. This is really ridiculous in the nation which was known around the world for its superb cotton products from jeans to socks for decades. I am almost forced now to go back to Russia next year to buy socks–jokes aside, a very serious consideration among few others.

krollchem > , July 19, 2017 at 7:45 pm GMT

@Andrei Martyanov Coming from a natural resource science background I would argue that GDP is not relevant to a sustainable society. The concept of GDP is based on the mythology of ever increasing growth. This has been debunked by the late Dr. Bartlett many years ago:

What is relevant is a sustainable society that maintains soil quality/fertility, water quality, and does not exceed the human carrying capacity of the land. More recently, the concept of doughnut economics encapsulates this:

Doughnut Economics – Grab a pencil, draw a doughnut!

https://theminskys.org/doughnut-economics/

https://www.kateraworth.com/animations/

Perhaps Russia can delay civilizational collapse by not following the the Western economic growth trap with the fracking, GMOs, water pollution, etc that is destroying what was once the resource rich land of America.

ps. Another quibble with GDP or PPP measurements is that it does not adequately measure WEALTH generated from the internal economy. See the automatic earth website for a different economic model.

Anonymous > , July 19, 2017 at 7:57 pm GMT

@Apolonius

No anti-rocket system will help

Even a 100% accurate system can be made useless if someone sets the warhead to detonate upon hitting the ground. Hitting a rocket (which is the goal) would only result in a nearby mushroom cloud. That's quite a predicament for the operators and for the host country.

HallParvey > , July 19, 2017 at 8:45 pm GMT

@Verymuchalive "You couldn't make it up."

Actually, you could. In fact, somebody did.

Bonjour

annamaria > , July 19, 2017 at 8:46 pm GMT

@Mr. Hack Why are you going on a childish offensive by defending the US-installed junta in Kiev and demanding others to provide you with evidence that the neo-nazis and Banderites have nothing to do with Yatz and Poroshenko and Nuland-Kagan?

Google "neo-Nazi parades in Ukraine" and enjoy the show. If you still have doubts about the direct responsibility of Poroschenko for the neo-Nazi presence in the government of Ukraine, read about Pravyj sector and its role in the Maidan revolution. Also, Proschenko had been in contact with the State Dept for years before the Maidan revolution. Your take on this?

The main point is the US-orchestrated regime change in Kiev. Or you want to convince the UNZ reader that Nuland was a virtual reality and nothing has changed in Ukraine since Mrs. Nuland-Kagan' and Mr. Brennan's visit to Kiev? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-14/white-house-admits-cia-director-brennan-was-secretly-kiev?page=7

Do you realize that the US has brought a range of US officials to Kiev – including the Director of the CIA – to "improve" a democratic process there by removing a lawfully elected and acting president?

Yes, the US intervention has brought neo-Nazis and Banderites to the positions of influence in Ukraine. What could be more natural than a combination of the name "Kagan" and the word "neo-Nazis?" https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/15/the-kagans-are-back-wars-to-follow/

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31887-the-ukraine-mess-that-nuland-made

Rurik > , Website July 19, 2017 at 10:47 pm GMT

some good news vis-ŕ-vis Russia, Syria and the US

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-ends-covert-cia-program-to-arm-anti-assad-rebels-in-syria-a-move-sought-by-moscow/2017/07/19/b6821a62-6beb-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html?utm_term=.620196799e59

NoseytheDuke > , July 19, 2017 at 11:10 pm GMT

@Philip Giraldi I found this small article to be wonderfully instructive on economics.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/12/how-the-world-works/305854/

I disagree with a lot of my American friends because they cannot conceive the notion that projects designed to benefit all of society are not necessarily evil socialism.

I believe in affordable healthcare for all and think Trump could achieve this by infusing the VA Hospital system with some extra funds and by using the Cuban healthcare methodology and then offering the service to those in need and charging according to what people can afford to pay. Medical students would be selected purely on merit and would work in the hospital as orderlies, cooks, cleaners whatever while undergoing studies. Post-graduation they would work within the system at a low income for about 10 years to repay their education. Medicines would be produced within the system and any profits from R & D would be ploughed back into the system. Preventative care would also be a feature.

Private healthcare would remain untouched for those who want it and can afford it. I have it myself.

It could be done, would cost far less than thought and ALL would benefit except perhaps the greedy and immoral. America would be a better nation for it.

Mr. Hack > , July 20, 2017 at 12:00 am GMT

@annamaria I'm curious why those of your persuasion aren't at all rattled by Russia's blatant attempts to unduly influence events in Ukraine during the Maidan period:

According to government documents released by former Deputy Interior Minister Hennadiy Moskal, Russian officials served as advisers to the operations against protesters. Codenamed "Wave" and "Boomerang", the operations involved the use of snipers to disperse crowds and capture the protesters' headquarters in the House of Trade Unions. Before some police officers defected, the plans included the deployment of 22,000 combined security troops in Kiev.[84] According to the documents, the former first deputy of the Russian GRU stayed at the Kiev Hotel, played a major role in the preparations, and was paid by the Security Services of Ukraine.. agents had been stationed in Kiev throughout the Euromaidan protests, had been provided with "state telecommunications" while residing at an SBU compound, and had kept in regular contact with Ukrainian security officials. "We have substantiated grounds to consider that these very groups which were located at an SBU training ground took part in the planning and execution of activities of this so-called antiterrorist operation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution

annamaria > , July 20, 2017 at 12:59 am GMT

@Mr. Hack There is a wonderful episode from a famous novel by Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol, where an official tells a story of an officer's widow who allegedly whipped herself with a lash.
According to your fiction (since you have completely omitted the well-established facts of Nuland-Kagan' and Brennan' presence at the key moments of the regime change in Kiev), Russians have arranged the regime change in Kiev themselves – "cut off your nose to spite your face," in short. You have also modestly omitted the fact of the rise of neo-Nazism in Ukraine, courtesy the US State Dept and its ziocon handlers.
Here is a report from much more reliable source of information than the ziocon-controlled MSM: "Ukraine: Poland trained putchists two months in advance, " by Thierry Meyssan http://www.voltairenet.org/article183373.html
Repost: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-14/white-house-admits-cia-director-brennan-was-secretly-kiev?page=7 https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/15/the-kagans-are-back-wars-to-follow/

Mr. Hack > , July 20, 2017 at 1:30 am GMT

since you have completely omitted the well-established facts of Nuland-Kagan' and Brennan' presence at the key moments of the regime change in Kiev

Just where have I ommitted reference to Nuland and Brennan. You must be mixing up my comments with somebody else? I've noted that both were in Kyiv, but question their ability to direct a movement that was homegrown from the very beginning and till the bitter end.

You have also modestly omitted the fact of the rise of neo-Nazism in Ukraine, courtesy the US State Dept and its ziocon handlers.

You're right, I have for the most part omitted reference to any far right parties. Svoboda, the largest of these, barely can muster 3% support in national elections. I'd rather concentrate my purview on the other 97% of the voter base, than on a 3% minority party.

But since you've brought up what I've conveniently omitted, HOW ABOUT YOU? No comment regarding the obtrusive and deadly amalgamation of FSB personnel in Ukraine during these events? From what I've read, they served up a lot more than just milk and cookies or courses in how to create a civil society?

annamaria > , July 20, 2017 at 2:46 am GMT

" they served up a lot more than just milk and cookies"

It was Nuland-Kagan who brought the treats to Kiev. It was the (former) Director of CIA Brennan who came to Kiev (supposedly in secret) on the eve of the Kiev' military actions against the civilian population of the pro-federalist east Ukraine. And you want to convince the UNZ readers that the Maidan was organized by Russians? What is the name of your new Prime Minister? – Mr. Groysman? "Groysman was born in Vinnytsia into a Jewish family " How come that the predominantly anti-semitic Ukraine has elected this nonety with the proper ethnic background? – Sure you know how to explain that this is also the Russians' fault. How about the US-enforced appointment of Misha Saakashvilli to the governorship of Ukraine's Odessa? – Kremlin's affair? Ukraine has lost its independence with the regime change in 2014.

"From what I've read " – You mean the presstituting MSM? None of the respectable sources, from consortium.com to Sic Semper Tyrannus ( http://turcopolier.typepad.com ) have ever suggested that the coup d'etat involved – in any capacity – Russian government. Keep in mind that the above-mentioned sources present the analyses of the principled and patriotic Americans who dedicated their lives to the US nationals security. For obvious reasons, they are hated by ziocons.

RobinG > , July 20, 2017 at 3:17 am GMT

@Rurik some good news vis-ŕ-vis Russia, Syria and the US

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-ends-covert-cia-program-to-arm-anti-assad-rebels-in-syria-a-move-sought-by-moscow/2017/07/19/b6821a62-6beb-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html?utm_term=.620196799e59 Yes, indeed. You beat me to it.

" President Trump has decided to end the CIA's covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia, according to U.S. officials."

Now that they've "decided," let's hope they get on with it, (and don't compensate with some other lunacy).

[Jul 20, 2017] Brennan just can t stop attacking Trump

And used this possibility again to advertize his hypothesis that Russians hacked the elections... Should not be a rule for former CIA directors to keep mouth shut ?
Notable quotes:
"... And Brennan is not exactly a tabula rasa. As he observed in his comment, his ire derives from the claims over Russian alleged interference in the U.S. election, a narrative that Brennan himself has helped to create, to include his shady and possibly illegal contacting of foreign intelligence services to dig up dirt on the GOP presidential candidate and his associates. The dirt was dutifully provided by several European intelligence services which produced a report claiming, inter alia, that Donald Trump had urinated on a Russian prostitute in a bed previously slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama. ..."
Originally from: [Jul 20, 2017] Fracking Around with the Russians by Philip Giraldi

I was particularly bemused by the comment by former CIA Chief John Brennan who denounced Trump's performance during the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg over the lack of a hard line against Putin and his failure to support the "word of the U.S. intelligence community" about Russian interference in the recent election. In an interview Brennan complained "He said it's an honor to meet President Putin. An honor to meet the individual who carried out the assault against our election? To me, it was a dishonorable thing to say."

Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter has demonstrated how the "word" of U.S. intel is not exactly what it might seem to be. And Brennan is not exactly a tabula rasa. As he observed in his comment, his ire derives from the claims over Russian alleged interference in the U.S. election, a narrative that Brennan himself has helped to create, to include his shady and possibly illegal contacting of foreign intelligence services to dig up dirt on the GOP presidential candidate and his associates. The dirt was dutifully provided by several European intelligence services which produced a report claiming, inter alia, that Donald Trump had urinated on a Russian prostitute in a bed previously slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama.

And along the way I have been assiduously trying to figure out the meaning of last week's reports regarding the contacts of Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort with two alleged Russian agents while reportedly seeking the dirt on Hillary. As it turns out, there may not have been any discussion of Hillary, though possibly something having to do with irregularities in DNC fundraising surfaced, and there may have been a bit more about the Magnitsky Act and adopting Russian babies.

Barring any new revelations backed up by actual facts revealing that something substantive like a quid pro quo actually took place, the whole affair appears to be yet another example of a politically inspired fishing expedition. This observation is not necessarily naivete on my part nor a denial that it all might have been an intelligence operation, but it is an acceptance of the fact that probing and maneuvering is all part and parcel of what intelligence agencies do when they are dealing with adversaries and very often even with friends. It does not necessarily imply that Moscow was seeking to overthrow American democracy even if it was trying to advance its own interests.

[Jul 19, 2017] Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya says Magnitsky Act lobbyist Browder behind Trump Jr. scandal

Jul 19, 2017 | gravatar.com
  1. Moscow Exile says: July 19, 2017 at 2:44 am

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZlT3kaxIlgw?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

    Reply

[Jul 19, 2017] Regarding the newest row between Russia and US about US seizing Russian diplomatic compounds, why does Russia again only complain but doesn't really do anything?

Notable quotes:
"... "DAS WAR EN BEFEHL! DER ANGRIFF STEINER WAR EIN BEFEHL!" ..."
Jul 19, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

karl1haushofer , July 19, 2017 at 1:42 am

Regarding the newest row between Russia and US about US seizing Russian diplomatic compounds, why does Russia again only complain but doesn't really do anything?

If the US seizes Russian property on American soil the correct countermeasure would be to seize American property on Russian soil.

The same goes for those diplomats that the Obama administration deported. Russia has still not extradited any US diplomats in return.

Usually countries answer to provocations like these with similar actions, but Russia chooses not to.

Moscow Exile , July 19, 2017 at 2:30 am
I don't know.

Do you?

If you do know, please tell us all, because I'm sure I'm not the only person here who is losing a lot of sleep over this pressing question.

Lyttenburgh , July 19, 2017 at 3:33 am
Wow, karl! So much activity in just one day! One has to imagine you, sitting tight in the badly lit poorly airconditioned bunker beneath Helsinki, reading one newspice about Russia after another, then, with you shaly hand, taking off the glasses from your red with rage sweaty face and exploding in:

"DAS WAR EN BEFEHL! DER ANGRIFF STEINER WAR EIN BEFEHL!"

Jen , July 19, 2017 at 4:23 am
Well, Karl, it would be a dull world if everyone behaved like robots engaging in tit-4-tat behaviours that by their very nature increase the chances of all-out war and annihilation. If Russia has a choice between two actions or a choice of several actions against US provocation, why should Moscow behave the way you (and the Americans) expect?
Patient Observer , July 19, 2017 at 4:13 pm
With Matt's departure, there is apparently an opening for another resident troll.
Hoffnungstirbtzuletzt , July 19, 2017 at 11:46 am
Prof. Stephen Cohen discusses this in this week's interview on the John Batchelor show. However, he says Putin is under a great deal of pressure from the Russian public to get this sorted out. True or not, I don't know. Listen for yourself: https://audioboom.com/posts/6120078-tales-of-the-new-cold-war-will-moscow-retaliate-for-washington-property-confiscations-stephen-f-cohen-nyu-princeton-part-2-of-2
cartman , July 19, 2017 at 2:13 pm
As soon as Mike McFaul was appointed Spaso House was hosting one kreakl after another. Confiscating that property would make it a lot more difficult to do that. Taking the Anglo-American school might cause the United States to cut back the number of embassy employees. With relations as they are, I would say that it is bloated and unnecessary.
marknesop , July 19, 2017 at 5:42 pm
They could build the American Ambassador a new residence which reflected the current state of the countries' relations; perhaps something like this . It should be on the outskirts of the city, far away from everything to minimize his meddling, and be in the center of about an acre of asphalt so that he could not leave without being spotted. Better still, just break off diplomatic relations and send him off to be the Russian Ambassador in Prague, like RFE/RL is.

The Russian government actually owns Pullman House, which serves as the residence of the Russian Ambassador to the United States, having paid $350,000.00 for it in 1913 . Spaso House, though, does not belong to the USA – the first US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, William C Bullit, 'selected' it as his official residence , and leased it for three years. I suppose the US government still pays something for using it, but the USA doesn't own it.

[Jul 19, 2017] F. William Engdahl looks at the claims that the economy of the RF is foundering

Jul 19, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Cortes , July 19, 2017 at 4:21 pm

F. William Engdahl looks at the claims that the economy of the RF is foundering:

https://journal-neo.org/2017/07/19/a-tale-of-two-nations-russia-vs-usa-economic-prospects/

His essay includes remarks about how US ratings agencies appear to be adjuvant parts of the Treasury economic warfare unit; the application of lessons learned in production of military assets to ensuring that civilian enterprises benefit from leading edge technologies to gain significant product improvement and cost reductions; and further detail on the high speed rail system being developed.

Patient Observer , July 19, 2017 at 7:41 pm
Yes well worth reading.
kirill , July 19, 2017 at 8:19 pm
Debt is not the main parameter of Uncle Scumbag's decline. It is the de-diversification and offshoring of most manufacturing. Aside from the military sector, the US civilian economy has transformed into a mercantile trickle down of cheap imports sold at high prices. Nobody has demonstrated how the downsized, right-sized, and offshored economy is supposed to be sustainable. All I see is a catabolic process where enough money keeps circulating in the system as the middle class disappears. The trickle down injection of money creates retail low wage jobs and props up consumer demand. But ultimately the consumers in the USA will become a minority. There is a clear shift of the job spectrum from well paying ones (related to manufacturing) to low wage ones (retail sector and "services"). Consumption is lubricated by debt increases both private and public (the local and federal governments in the USA are propping up consumption).

US multinationals do not care since they gain consumers abroad faster than they lose consumers at home. A globalist mega-corporation wins from the expansion of the middle class in China, India and elsewhere. These corporations are literally walking over the dead body of the USA to reach their goals.

By contrast, Russia is diversifying and de-offshoring and import substituting. As the cherry on top of this GDP growth cake, Russia has a very low debt (both public and private). Russia's growth and development is basically natural and not artificial stimulus through debt generation.

The trash talk about "Russia does not make anything" (Obama) and "Russia is a gas station posing as an economy" (McShitStain) reflects deep insecurity by US leaders.

They know that post-globalism America will be a 3rd world husk. Trump is going to have to really act like a dictator to unseat the globalist corporate interests that steer the US. I don't see this happening.

[Jul 19, 2017] Never in the field of American conflict with Russia has so much wool pulled over the eyes been owed to so few sheep. That was during the losing presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Now, in the investigations of President Donald Trump and his family, it's a case of so many sheep producing so little wool.

Jul 19, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al , July 19, 2017 at 12:54 pm

JohnHelmer.net: THE IMPROPER ASSOCIATION (MAYBE CRIME) OF VICTOR PINCHUK WITH HILLARY, BILL AND CHELSEA CLINTON, COVERED UP BY THE US MEDIA, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, AND THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND

http://johnhelmer.net/the-improper-association-maybe-crime-of-victor-pinchuk-with-hillary-bill-and-chelsea-clinton-covered-up-by-the-us-media-us-department-of-justice-and-the-international-monetary-fund/

Never in the field of American conflict with Russia has so much wool pulled over the eyes been owed to so few sheep. That was during the losing presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Now, in the investigations of President Donald Trump and his family, it's a case of so many sheep producing so little wool.

The case of the $13 million paid to the Clinton family by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, in exchange for personal favours and escalation of the war against Russia, was reported in detail throughout 2014. Click to read the opener, and more.

Early this month there has been fresh investigation of Pinchuk's money links with the Clintons, owing to the start of Ukrainian government inquiries into the theft of billions of dollars of International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans to Ukraine – money then transferred to Ukrainian commercial banks including Pinchuk's Credit Dnepr bank, and then loaned to offshore entities controlled by Pinchuk but apparently not repaid. Theft of the IMF money was first reported here in connection with Igor Kolomoisky's operation of Privat Bank

####

More at the link. Goose & gander anyone?

[Jul 18, 2017] Robbery in broad daylight

Notable quotes:
"... But with nothing to show for the delay so far, Russian officials have been issuing repeated statements that their patience is wearing thin. ..."
"... On Tuesday, frustrated by the failure of a meeting the day before in Washington to make any headway on the matter, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a blunt statement . In it, the ministry warned that "if Washington does not address this and other concerns, including persistent efforts to hinder the operation of Russia's diplomatic missions, Russia has the right to take retaliatory measures in accordance with the principle of reciprocity." ..."
"... Sergey V. Lavrov, the foreign minister, said any American preconditions for the return of the diplomatic property were unacceptable. Mr. Lavrov was asked at a news conference on Monday in Minsk, Belarus, about statements emanating from Washington that the compounds should not be handed back without getting something in return. Mr. Lavrov called the seizure "robbery in broad daylight" and said Russian control over the property was enshrined in a bilateral treaty. He blamed the continuing standoff, as Russian officials often do, on "Russophobia" in Washington that he hoped would eventually wane. ..."
"... Mr. Lavrov said he was sure there must be "sensible people" in the Trump administration who would realize that the seizure of the compounds and the expulsion of the diplomats were a last-ditch attempt by the Obama administration to destroy relations in a manner that the Trump administration would find difficult to fix. ..."
Jul 18, 2017 | www.msn.com

Orginally from NYT: Russia Issues New Threats in Dispute Over Diplomatic Compounds by ANDREW E. KRAMER

A 45-acre Russian diplomatic compound near Centreville, Md., that was seized in December 2016.

After President Trump's victory in November, Michael T. Flynn, who went on to become the national security adviser for 24 days , prevailed upon President Vladimir V. Putin to refrain from retaliating , with the promise that United States policy toward Russia would be far more accommodating under a Trump administration.

Mr. Trump, at the time president-elect, praised Mr. Putin's restraint, posting on Twitter , "Great move on delay" and "I always knew he was very smart!"

But with nothing to show for the delay so far, Russian officials have been issuing repeated statements that their patience is wearing thin.

Russia began focusing attention on the two seized compounds in the lead up to the first meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7.

Both the Kremlin and the Foreign Ministry mentioned them frequently, hinting that the diplomatic retreats were perhaps something Mr. Trump could easily deliver as a friendly gesture for the first meeting. Mr. Putin did raise the issue with the American president, according to Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman.

But with Trump associates under investigation for ties with the Russians, the president is hesitant to send any signals of weakness. So it did not happen then, either. Since that meeting, the official tone has turned more belligerent, with Russia threatening to expel American diplomats to match the 35 Russian diplomatic staff members kicked out of the United States at the same time that the two compounds were seized.

On Tuesday, frustrated by the failure of a meeting the day before in Washington to make any headway on the matter, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a blunt statement . In it, the ministry warned that "if Washington does not address this and other concerns, including persistent efforts to hinder the operation of Russia's diplomatic missions, Russia has the right to take retaliatory measures in accordance with the principle of reciprocity."

The deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told the news agency Interfax on Tuesday, "The fact that this issue hasn't been settled actually poisons the atmosphere and makes a lot of things extremely complicated."

Mr. Ryabkov and the United States under secretary of state, Thomas A. Shannon, discussed the property in talks in Washington on Monday.

Sergey V. Lavrov, the foreign minister, said any American preconditions for the return of the diplomatic property were unacceptable. Mr. Lavrov was asked at a news conference on Monday in Minsk, Belarus, about statements emanating from Washington that the compounds should not be handed back without getting something in return. Mr. Lavrov called the seizure "robbery in broad daylight" and said Russian control over the property was enshrined in a bilateral treaty. He blamed the continuing standoff, as Russian officials often do, on "Russophobia" in Washington that he hoped would eventually wane.

Mr. Lavrov said he was sure there must be "sensible people" in the Trump administration who would realize that the seizure of the compounds and the expulsion of the diplomats were a last-ditch attempt by the Obama administration to destroy relations in a manner that the Trump administration would find difficult to fix.

And on Tuesday, Mr. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said in a conference call with journalists that "our patience is still running out."

[Jul 18, 2017] The Real Crimes of Russiagate by Patrick J. Buchanan

Any person who sites neocons like Mike Morell is very suspicious, to say the least. Pat Buchanan is no exception, for now on...
Notable quotes:
"... Just days into Trump's presidency, a rifle-shot intel community leak of a December meeting between Trump national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn and Russia's ambassador forced the firing of Flynn. ..."
"... Not only do our Beltway media traffic in stolen secrets and stolen goods, but the knowledge that they will publish secrets and protect those who leak them is an incentive for bureaucratic disloyalty and criminality. ..."
"... journalists know exactly who is leaking against Trump, but they are as protective of their colleagues' "sources" as of their own. Thus, the public is left in the dark as to what the real agenda is here, and who is sabotaging a president in whom they placed so much hope. ..."
"... Where is the special prosecutor to investigate the collusion between bureaucrats and members of the press who traffic in the stolen secrets of the republic? ..."
"... People inside the executive branch are daily providing fresh meat to feed the scandal. Anti-Trump media are transfixed by it. It is the Watergate of their generation. They can smell the blood in the water. The Pulitzers are calling. And they love it, for they loathe Donald Trump both for who he is and what he stands for. ..."
"... Pat Buchanan does his best – but apparently he just can't bring himself to doubt the integrity of America's "intelligence" services – even after their epic failure &/or deception when it came to Iraq's non-existent WMD's. ..."
"... The Republic died a long time ago: The Empire is in that rough middle period where the Praetorians choose the leader who suits them most, but occasionally have an unsuitable one slip past them. ..."
"... Buchanan still being too reasonable towards the enemies of US democracy (the Democrats and their neocon Republican allies trying to undermine and overthrow the elected US President), imo. ..."
"... He seems to be a bit of an apologist for KNOWN liars and he doesn't seem to understand that the MSM is absolutely the mouthpiece for these agencies, populated with agents like Cooper and Mika etc etc etc ..."
Jul 18, 2017 | www.unz.com

For a year, the big question of Russiagate has boiled down to this: Did Donald Trump's campaign collude with the Russians in hacking the DNC? And until last week, the answer was "no." As ex-CIA director Mike Morell said in March, "On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all. There's no little campfire, there's no little candle, there's no spark."

Well, last week, it appeared there had been a fire in Trump Tower. On June 9, 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with Russians -- in anticipation of promised dirt on Hillary Clinton's campaign. While not a crime, this was a blunder. For Donald Jr. had long insisted there had been no collusion with the Russians. Caught in flagrante, he went full Pinocchio for four days.

And as the details of that June 9 meeting spilled out, Trump defenders were left with egg on their faces, while anti-Trump media were able to keep the spotlight laser-focused on where they want it -- Russiagate.

This reality underscores a truth of our time. In the 19th century, power meant control of the means of production; today, power lies in control of the means of communication.

Who controls the media spotlight controls what people talk about and think about. And mainstream media are determined to keep that spotlight on Trump-Russia, and as far away as possible from their agenda -- breaking the Trump presidency and bringing him down.

Almost daily, there are leaks from the investigative and security arms of the U.S. government designed to damage this president.

Just days into Trump's presidency, a rifle-shot intel community leak of a December meeting between Trump national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn and Russia's ambassador forced the firing of Flynn.

An Oval Office meeting with the Russian foreign minister in which Trump disclosed that Israeli intelligence had ferreted out evidence that ISIS was developing computer bombs to explode on airliners was leaked. This alerted ISIS, damaged the president, and imperiled Israeli intelligence sources and methods.

Some of the leaks from national security and investigative agencies are felonies, not only violations of the leaker's solemn oath to protect secrets, but of federal law. Yet the press is happy to collude with these leakers and to pay them in the coin they seek. First, by publishing the secrets the leakers want revealed. Second, by protecting them from exposure to arrest and prosecution for the crimes they are committing.

The mutual agendas of the deep-state leakers and the mainstream media mesh perfectly. Consider the original Russiagate offense. Confidential emails of the DNC and John Podesta were hacked, i.e., stolen by Russian intelligence and given to WikiLeaks. And who was the third and indispensable party in this "Tinker to Evers to Chance" double-play combination?

The media itself. While deploring Russian hacking as an "act of war" against "our democracy," the media published the fruits of the hacking. It was the media that revealed what Podesta wrote and how the DNC tilted the tables against Bernie Sanders. If the media believed Russian hacking was a crime against our democracy, why did they publish the fruits of that crime? Is it not monumental hypocrisy to denounce Russia's hacking of the computers of Democratic political leaders and institutions, while splashing the contents of the theft all over Page 1?

Not only do our Beltway media traffic in stolen secrets and stolen goods, but the knowledge that they will publish secrets and protect those who leak them is an incentive for bureaucratic disloyalty and criminality.

Our mainstream media are like the fellow who avoids the risk of stealing cars, but wants to fence them once stolen and repainted.

Some journalists know exactly who is leaking against Trump, but they are as protective of their colleagues' "sources" as of their own. Thus, the public is left in the dark as to what the real agenda is here, and who is sabotaging a president in whom they placed so much hope.

And thus does democracy die in darkness.

Do the American people not have a "right to know" who are the leakers within the government who are daily spilling secrets to destroy their president? Are the identities of the saboteurs not a legitimate subject of investigation? Ought they not be exposed and rooted out?

Where is the special prosecutor to investigate the collusion between bureaucrats and members of the press who traffic in the stolen secrets of the republic?

Bottom line: Trump is facing a stacked deck.

People inside the executive branch are daily providing fresh meat to feed the scandal. Anti-Trump media are transfixed by it. It is the Watergate of their generation. They can smell the blood in the water. The Pulitzers are calling. And they love it, for they loathe Donald Trump both for who he is and what he stands for.

It is hard to see when this ends, or how it ends well for the country.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

NoseytheDuke > , July 18, 2017 at 5:27 am GMT

Pat, you are again presenting yourself to be a disinformation asset and are truly undermining your credibility here. The DNC and Podesta emails were leaked not hacked. Please write this out in full a hundred times on the blackboard or whiteboard of your choice. Maybe then it will sink in.

Priss Factor > , Website July 18, 2017 at 5:57 am GMT

There is nothing there. Let the media cry Russia Russia Russia forever. Trump can do other things. People will lose interest in this. This is different from Watergate because there really was a burglary and a coverup. There's nothing remotely like this here.

1. If Russians really did it, they did it on their own. Trump team had nothing to do with it.

2. If Russians didn't do it, this is just the media wasting its resources and energy on nothing.

Let the media keep digging and digging and digging where they is no gold. Let them be distracted by Trump does something real. Because Buchanan lived through Watergate, I think he's over-thinking this. It's like dejavu to him. Sure, the media today are more deranged than ever. Media are also more cynical and in the control of globalists.

But they got nothing on Russia. They have the cry of Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, but unless they can provide solid evidence, this is nothing.

vinteuil > , July 18, 2017 at 8:43 am GMT

Pat Buchanan does his best – but apparently he just can't bring himself to doubt the integrity of America's "intelligence" services – even after their epic failure &/or deception when it came to Iraq's non-existent WMD's.

"Confidential emails of the DNC and John Podesta were hacked, i.e., stolen by Russian intelligence and given to WikiLeaks."

What reason do we have to believe this, other than the worthless word of these perpetually lying creeps?

The Alarmist > , July 18, 2017 at 9:37 am GMT

It is hard to see when this ends, or how it ends well for the country.

No it's not. The Republic died a long time ago: The Empire is in that rough middle period where the Praetorians choose the leader who suits them most, but occasionally have an unsuitable one slip past them. This ends with the barbarians moving in to assume all the trappings of being a Roman but lead the empire to a final crushing defeat at the hands of worse barbarians.

Randal > , July 18, 2017 at 11:37 am GMT

Buchanan still being too reasonable towards the enemies of US democracy (the Democrats and their neocon Republican allies trying to undermine and overthrow the elected US President), imo.

There's still no need, unless Buchanan knows something a lot more significant than what he covers here, to give any credence whatsoever to the "Russia influencing the US election" black propaganda campaign. It should still be laughed at, rather than given the slightest credibility, whilst, as Buchanan does indeed do repeatedly, turning the issue upon the true criminals – those in US government circles leaking US security information to try to influence US politics.

Did Donald Trump's campaign collude with the Russians in hacking the DNC?

Clearly not, as far as anybody knows based upon information in the public domain. There's no evidence Russia's government hacked anything anyway. A meeting by campaign representatives with Russians claiming to have dirt on Trump's rival is not evidence of collusion in hacking.

Confidential emails of the DNC and John Podesta were hacked, i.e., stolen by Russian intelligence and given to WikiLeaks.

Again, Buchanan seems to be needlessly conceding ground to known liars and deluded zealots.

If there was any attempt by Russia to "influence" the US election it was trivial, and should be put into context whenever it is mentioned. That context includes the longstanding and ongoing efforts by the US to interfere massively in other countries' (including Russia's) elections and governments, and the routine acceptance of foreign interference in US politics by Israel in particular.

If Trump and his backers really wanted to put a halt to this laughable nonsense about foreign influence, he should start a high profile investigation of the nefarious "influencing" of US politics by foreign "agents of influence" in general, specifically including Israel and staffed by men who are not sympathetic to that country.

That would quickly result in the shutting down of mainstream media complaints about foreign influence.

Gg Mo > , July 18, 2017 at 12:59 pm GMT

@NoseytheDuke Yup, His name was Seth Rich . (and let us never forget Michael Hastings and the Smith Mundt Modernization Act put in place for a Hillary win/steal.)

Gg Mo > , July 18, 2017 at 1:05 pm GMT

Yipes -- What is the matter with Buchanan? Is he taking weird prescription drugs for Alzheimers ?
He seems to be a bit of an apologist for KNOWN liars and he doesn't seem to understand that the MSM is absolutely the mouthpiece for these agencies, populated with agents like Cooper and Mika etc etc etc

Andrei Martyanov > , Website July 18, 2017 at 1:45 pm GMT

It is hard to see when this ends, or how it ends well for the country.

It already didn't end well and it pains me to say this. What it may become only is worse. At this stage I don's see any "better" scenarios. The truth has been revealed.

[Jul 18, 2017] 'Boomerangski' Returns To Bite The Clintons Zero Hedge

Jul 18, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
'Boomerangski' Returns To Bite The Clintons Tyler Durden Jul 17, 2017 7:32 PM 0 SHARES Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

The strenuous effort of "Resistance" passengers in the Limousine-of-State to shove Donald Trump out of the driver's seat continues into what would normally be the news-wasteland of midsummer. Last week it was the smoking popgun of Trump Junior's meeting with a Russian lawyer purported (by British music promoter Rob Goldstein) to be associated with the "Russian Crown Prosecutor" (no such office in a country without a monarch).

The news caused the usual commotion among the very media mouthpieces who publish anti-Trump allegations as a staple for their "Resistance" readerships. By the way, this blog might be described as anti-Trump, too, in the sense that I did not vote for him and regularly inveigh against his antics as President - but neither is Clusterfuck Nation a friend of the Hillary-haunted Dem-Prog "Resistance," in case there's any confusion about where we stand. If anything, we oppose the entirety of the current political regime in our nation's capital, the matrix of rackets that is driving the aforementioned Limousine-of-State off the cliff of economic collapse. Just sayin'.

"Resistance" law professors, such as Lawrence Tribe at Harvard, were quick to holler "treason" over Junior's meet-up with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin. Well, first of all, and not to put too fine a point on it, don't you have to be at war with another nation to regard any kind of consort as "treason?" Last time I checked, we were not at war with Russia - though it sure seems like persons and parties inside the Beltway would dearly like to make that happen. You can't call it espionage either, of course, because that would purport the giving of secret information, not the receiving of political gossip.

Remember, the "Resistance" is not going for impeachment, but rather Section 4 of the 25 th Amendment. That legal nicety makes for a very neat-and-clean surgical removal of a whack-job president, without all the cumbrous evidentiary baggage and pain-in-ass due process required by impeachment. All it requires is a consensus among a very small number of high officials, who then send a note to the leaders in both houses of congress stating that said whack-job president is a menace to the polity -- and out he goes, snippety-snip like a colorectal polyp, into the hazardous waste bag of history. And you're left with a nice clean asshole, namely Vice President Mike Pence.

Insofar as Pence appears to be a kind of booby-prize for the "Resistance," that fateful reach for the 25 th Amendment hasn't happened quite yet. It is hoped, I'm sure, that the incessant piling on of new allegations about "collusion" with the Russians will get the 25thers over the finish line and into the longed-for end zone dance.

More interestingly, though, the meme that has led people to believe that any contact between Russians and Americans is ipso facto nefarious vectors into the very beating heart of the "Resistance" itself: the Clintons.

How come the Clintons have not been asked to explain why -- as reported on The Hill blog -- Bill Clinton was paid half a million dollars to give speech in Russia (surely he offered them something of value in exchange, pending the sure thing Hillary inaugural) ...

or what about the $2.35 million "contribution" that the Clinton Foundation received after Secretary of State Hillary allowed the Russians to buy a controlling stake in the Uranium One company, which owns 20 percent of US uranium supplies, with mines and refineries in Wyoming, Utah, and other states, as well as assets in Kazakhstan, the world's largest uranium producer?

Incidentally, the Clinton Foundation did not "shut down," as erroneously reported early this year. It was only its Global Initiative program that got shuttered. The $2.35 million is probably still rattling around in the Clinton Foundation's bank account.

Don't you kind of wonder what they did with it? I hope Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller wants to know.

nmewn -> 38BWD22 , Jul 17, 2017 7:50 PM

Patience Mr.Bearing, patience.

Susan Rice has implicated herself (and by extension Obama) in a felony. Comey has lied under oath and stolen government property. Lowrenta has commited obstruction of justice and the world now knows that Natalia V was given "a special visa" by the State Department... in June of 2016! ...in order to even be present at a meeting with Jr set up by an associate of FusionGPS one Ron Goldstone in which, a "former Soviet counter-intelligence officer" was present who also was allowed (even though the Alinsky press won't report it) to roam freely around the Obama WH in a group tour...cuz... RUSSIAN SPIES! ...lol.

Gardentoolnumber5 -> 38BWD22 , Jul 17, 2017 8:08 PM

"Something stinks..." Neocons

StarGate -> Jim in MN , Jul 17, 2017 5:35 PM

OBAMA White House played HOST to RUSSIAN associate of Russian Atty Natalia the same day as the Trump Tower meeting June 9, 2016 - according to Obama's White House log. Natalia's translator, Samochornov was a contractor with Obama's State Dept. Per FBI insider Obama speaks Russian.

White House visitor log: http://white-house-logs.insidegov.com/l/73080195/Rinat-Akhmetshin#Detail...

drstrangelove73 -> FrozenGoodz , Jul 17, 2017 4:27 PM

Yeah,you missed 'The Russians are coming the Russians are coming'24/7 7 days a week for 8 months now and counting,with no proof yet of any wrongdoing whatsoever nor any explanation in concrete terms of exactly how those pesky Rooskies could possibly have 'meddled in our elections' let alone any proof of same. No,just morning 'til night 'the russians are coming the Russians are coming.The left has collectively lost its mind in a very public way.How any sentient being could any longer pay them any mind is a mystery to me

[Jul 17, 2017] Tucker Carlson Goes to War Against the Neocons by Curt Mills

Highly recommended!
max Book is just anothe "Yascha about Russia" type, that Masha Gessen represents so vividly. The problem with him is that time of neocon prominance is solidly in the past and now unpleasant question about the cost from the US people of their reckless foreign policies get into some newspapers and managines. They cost the USA tremedous anount of money (as in trillions) and those money consititute a large portion of the national debt. Critiques so far were very weak and partially suppressed voices, but defeat of neocon warmonger Hillary signify some break with the past.
Notable quotes:
"... National Interest ..."
"... Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump. This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird our policies." ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. . . . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject. ..."
"... New York Observer ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . . . Nobody is paying attention to it, " ..."
"... : Flickr/Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. ..."
Jul 14, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

This week's primetime knife fights with Max Boot and Ralph Peters are emblematic of the battle for the soul of the American Right.

To be sure, Carlson rejects the term "neoconservatism," and implicitly, its corollary on the Democratic side, liberal internationalism. In 2016, "the reigning Republican foreign-policy view, you can call it neoconservatism, or interventionism, or whatever you want to call it" was rejected, he explained in a wide-ranging interview with the National Interest Friday.

"But I don't like the term 'neoconservatism,'" he says, "because I don't even know what it means. I think it describes the people rather than their ideas, which is what I'm interested in. And to be perfectly honest . . . I have a lot of friends who have been described as neocons, people I really love, sincerely. And they are offended by it. So I don't use it," Carlson said.

But Carlson's recent segments on foreign policy conducted with Lt. Col. Ralph Peters and the prominent neoconservative journalist and author Max Boot were acrimonious even by Carlsonian standards. In a discussion on Syria, Russia and Iran, a visibly upset Boot accused Carlson of being "immoral" and taking foreign-policy positions to curry favor with the White House, keep up his ratings , and by proxy, benefit financially. Boot says that Carlson "basically parrots whatever the pro-Trump line is that Fox viewers want to see. If Trump came out strongly against Putin tomorrow, I imagine Tucker would echo this as faithfully as the pro-Russia arguments he echoes today." But is this assessment fair?

Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump. This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird our policies."

Even if Carlson doesn't want to use the label neocon to describe some of those ideas, Boot is not so bashful. In 2005, Boot wrote an essay called "Neocons May Get the Last Laugh." Carlson "has become a Trump acolyte in pursuit of ratings," says Boot, also interviewed by the National Interest . "I bet if it were President Clinton accused of colluding with the Russians, Tucker would be outraged and calling for impeachment if not execution. But since it's Trump, then it's all a big joke to him," Boot says. Carlson vociferously dissents from such assessments: "This is what dumb people do. They can't assess the merits of an argument. . . . I'm not talking about Syria, and Russia, and Iran because of ratings. That's absurd. I can't imagine those were anywhere near the most highly-rated segments that night. That's not why I wanted to do it."

But Carlson insists, "I have been saying the same thing for fifteen years. Now I have a T.V. show that people watch, so my views are better known. But it shouldn't be a surprise. I supported Trump to the extent he articulated beliefs that I agree with. . . . And I don't support Trump to the extent that his actions deviate from those beliefs," Carlson said. Boot on Fox said that Carlson is "too smart" for this kind of argument. But Carlson has bucked the Trump line, notably on Trump's April 7 strikes in Syria. "When the Trump administration threw a bunch of cruise missiles into Syria for no obvious reason, on the basis of a pretext that I question . . . I questioned [the decision] immediately. On T.V. I was on the air when that happened. I think, maybe seven minutes into my show. . . . I thought this was reckless."

But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. . . . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject.

Boot objects to what he sees as a cavalier attitude on the part of Carlson and others toward allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and also toward the deaths of citizens of other countries. "You are laughing about the fact that Russia is interfering in our election process. That to me is immoral," Boot told Carlson on his show. "This is the level of dumbness and McCarthyism in Washington right now," says Carlson. "I think it has the virtue of making Max Boot feel like a good person. Like he's on God's team, or something like that. But how does that serve the interest of the country? It doesn't." Carlson says that Donald Trump, Jr.'s emails aren't nearly as important as who is going to lead Syria, which he says Boot and others have no plan for successfully occupying. Boot, by contrast, sees the U.S. administration as dangerously flirting with working with Russia, Iran and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. "For whatever reason, Trump is pro-Putin, no one knows why, and he's taken a good chunk of the GOP along with him," Boot says.

On Fox last Wednesday, Boot reminded Carlson that he originally supported the 2003 Iraq decision. "You supported the invasion of Iraq," Boot said, before repeating, "You supported the invasion of Iraq." Carlson conceded that, but it seems the invasion was a bona fide turning point. It's most important to parse whether Carlson has a long record of anti-interventionism, or if he's merely sniffing the throne of the president (who, dubiously, may have opposed the 2003 invasion). "I think it's a total nightmare and disaster, and I'm ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it," Carlson told the New York Observer in early 2004. "It's something I'll never do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who's smarter than I am, and I shouldn't have done that. . . . I'm enraged by it, actually." Carlson told the National Interest that he's felt this way since seeing Iraq for himself in December 2003.

The evidence points heavily toward a sincere conversion on Carlson's part, or preexisting conviction that was briefly overcome by the beat of the war drums. Carlson did work for the Weekly Standard , perhaps the most prominent neoconservative magazine, in the 1990s and early 2000s. Carlson today speaks respectfully of William Kristol, its founding editor, but has concluded that he is all wet. On foreign policy, the people Carlson speaks most warmly about are genuine hard left-wingers: Glenn Greenwald, a vociferous critic of both economic neoliberalism and neoconservatism; the anti-establishment journalist Michael Tracey; Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation ; and her husband, Stephen Cohen, the Russia expert and critic of U.S. foreign policy.

"The only people in American public life who are raising these questions are on the traditional left: not lifestyle liberals, not the Williamsburg (Brooklyn) group, not liberals in D.C., not Nancy Pelosi." He calls the expertise of establishment sources on matters like Syria "more shallow than I even imagined." On his MSNBC show, which was canceled for poor ratings, he cavorted with noninterventionist stalwarts such as Ron Paul , the 2008 and 2012 antiwar GOP candidate, and Patrick J. Buchanan. "No one is smarter than Pat Buchanan," he said last year of the man whose ideas many say laid the groundwork for Trump's political success.

Carlson has risen to the pinnacle of cable news, succeeding Bill O'Reilly. It wasn't always clear an antiwar take would vault someone to such prominence. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney could be president (Boot has advised the latter two). But here he is, and it's likely no coincidence that Carlson got a show after Trump's election, starting at the 7 p.m. slot, before swiftly moving to the 9 p.m. slot to replace Trump antagonist Megyn Kelly, and just as quickly replacing O'Reilly at the top slot, 8 p.m. Boot, on the other hand, declared in 2016 that the Republican Party was dead , before it went on to hold Congress and most state houses, and of course take the presidency. He's still at the Council on Foreign Relations and writes for the New York Times (this seems to clearly annoy Carlson: "It tells you everything about the low standards of the American foreign-policy establishment").

Boot wrote in 2003 in the Weekly Standard that the fall of Saddam Hussein's government "may turn out to be one of those hinge moments in history" comparable to "events like the storming of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which everything is different." He continued, "If the occupation goes well (admittedly a big if ), it may mark the moment when the powerful antibiotic known as democracy was introduced into the diseased environment of the Middle East, and began to transform the region for the better."

Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . . . Nobody is paying attention to it, "

Carlson seems intent on pressing the issue. The previous night, in his debate with Peters, the retired lieutenant colonel said that Carlson sounded like Charles Lindbergh, who opposed U.S. intervention against Nazi Germany before 1941. "This particular strain of Republican foreign policy has almost no constituency. Nobody agrees with it. I mean there's not actually a large group of people outside of New York, Washington or L.A. who think any of this is a good idea," Carlson says. "All I am is an asker of obvious questions. And that's enough to reveal these people have no idea what they're talking about. None."

Curt Mills is a foreign-affairs reporter at the National Interest . Follow him on Twitter: @CurtMills .

Image : Flickr/Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.

[Jul 17, 2017] If Loving Putin Is 'Right,' I Want to Be Wrong The American Conservative

Notable quotes:
"... Putin's "aggressive behavior" in Syria was to support a secular Arab government against a bunch of Islamic thugs that included Al-Qaeda and ISIS. This may not be clear to people in the US since the US is a client state of Saudi Arabia and Israel, who want Syria to disintegrate, but it is perfectly obvious to the rest of the world. ..."
"... Ukraine is payback for what the Western powers did in Kosovo. To spite Russia, the Western powers supported Kosovo when it broke off from Serbia, claiming they were doing it to support the right of self-determination. At that time, Putin asked whether this right would be granted to the ethnic Russian minorities all over Eastern Europe in countries like Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Needless to say, the Western powers insisted that their actions in Kosovo did not set a precedent on any kind – in other words, supporting secessionists is OK if the West does it but no one else should try that stunt! Putin decided to draw the line in Ukraine, and I for one don't blame him. ..."
"... The US and Russia have no reason to fight, and Russia can be a valuable ally against growing threats like China and Islam. But generals always fight the last war, and apparently college professors do as well. ..."
"... He has managed to outwit us on several fronts and on occasion he has even bailed us out of some tight spots. Someone will have to explain to me why in the world we were telling the Ukrainians to engage in a violent revolution over some EU Russian oil deal. If the EU wanted to wooo the Ukrainians that should have offered a better price, not one higher than their competitor. ..."
"... Pres. Putin is a shrewd political competitor.. Reason enough to admire him. That however, has nothing to do with whether or not I am a conservative. ..."
"... Everything associated with Soros or preferred by Soros is omnicidally lethal. ..."
"... Any leader who effectively rejects and repels Soros and Sorosian organizations is on the good side. Putin and Erdogan are on the good side. Recently and surprisingly, Netanyahu has joined the good side, which should create problems for neocons. ..."
"... In the grand scheme, Russia is viewed by its major detractors as an impediment to Davos uber alles globalism. Whether Putin views himself in these grand ideological terms or if he is just a Russian looking out for the best interests of Russia, I do not know. But this is the way Russia is perceived by its vocal critics nonetheless. ..."
"... Besides the fact that genuine American conservatives should also oppose Davosian hegemony, it is not in the best interests of authentic conservatives to keep up the narrative that Russia is an inherent enemy. It is one of the main justifications for continuing the Warfare/Security State. This is evident by the fact that it seems to be Trump's suggestion of better relations with Russia more than anything else that sent the Deep State over the edge into now essentially attempting to bring about a coup. It is also not a coincidence that the ruse they are utilizing for their coup attempt furthers the narrative of Russia as the implacable bad guy. ..."
"... Speaking of murder and mayhem, before we criticize others, we should look first at our own sad recent history. We too have plenty of blood on our hands; the list is well known no need to repeat it hear. As a matter of fact the targeted countries have been penciled by neo-cons like this author who knowingly turns a blind eye on our very own problems. ..."
"... However, the facts about Putin are not agreed upon, and the author does not adumbrate any actual evidence for castigating Putin. Ukraine can be credibly read as a case for Victoria Nuland's overreach, and Putin's restraint. Likewise, a treaty between Syria and Russia make the military assistance there wholly legitimate. Putin's reputed intolerance for homosexuality withers when the record is actually examined. Finally, the benefits of rapprochement, something which would improve the lives of the peoples of both America and Russia, irrespective of minor vicissitudes of leadership, is nowhere discussed. ..."
"... There's nothing new in Gottfried's screed, which is all warmed-over Clintonian hysteria and neocon warmongering. What is new is an attempt to split what he considers to be the alt-right into two camps, and in so doing deny any place for Putin and Russia solidarity amongst Americans. Gottfried may have cast his lot with the rump of Mrs. Clinton's coterie, which makes one wonder if his posturing before the election was anything but insincere. ..."
"... Sigh .I stopped reading when I got to ."his aggressive behavior in Ukraine and Syria." What a total farce. But I'm sure Paul that somehow you're totally fine with aggressive behavior on the part of the US. Hypocrite much? So let's see. The CIA leads the coup in Kiev to overthrow the democratically elected Yanukovych, the newly installed US puppet ..errrr ..new President of Ukraine is hostile towards ethnic Russians in Crimea and Donestsk, those folks appeal to Putin for help and he obliges. ..."
"... Yet, of course "Russian aggression." The US sends troops in Eastern Europe on the Russian border and sends the Navy to patrol the Baltic Sea, and yet, you know, "Russian aggression." ..."
"... Russia's behavior under Putin has been restrained. There's nothing immoral about Russia's assistance to Syria especially given the fact that the Russian military is there legally with the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria in it's battle against ISIS and Al Nusra. ..."
"... As for Ukraine I had expected the Western backed coup to provoke a full on Russian invasion taking not only Crimea and Donbass but Kiev and Odessa leaving a rump Nationalist Ukrainian State in the West. ..."
"... And after how we treated Russia after the cold war, some of the actions and anger of the Russians can be understood. ..."
Jul 17, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Vladimir Putin will seem like a great guy to masses of non-establishment Right-wingers. The American Right is split between an official opposition to the Left, and a much more boisterous and genuine Right that the establishment keeps out of public view. As George Hawley points out in his study of Rightist critics of the conservative movement, these two Rights have been mortal enemies for decades; and it wouldn't surprise me if Tucker Carlson, who dwells largely in the bubble of Washington's elite, blue-blood Republican conservatism, knew nothing about the attitudes of a Right that he doesn't hang with. The only pro-Putin voices whom he's had on his program are those of two dissenting Leftists, Stephen Cohen and Oliver Stone.

It would be unfair for me to close without noting a sensible comment about Putin that I discovered where I least expected to find it, from a senior editor of Weekly Standard . Christopher Caldwell expresses eloquently in a speech at Hillsdale College why non-respectable conservatives admire Putin, warts and all. What Caldwell observes about Putin as a symbol of resistance to globalism and the cultural Left seems entirely credible; and Caldwell's remarks conclude with this noteworthy statement:

Putin has become a symbol of national sovereignty in its battle with globalism. That turns out to be the big battle of our times. As our last election shows, that's true even here.

Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, where he taught for twenty-five years. He is a Guggenheim recipient and a Yale PhD. He writes for many websites and scholarly journals and is the author of thirteen books, most recently Fascism: Career of a Concept and Revisions and Dissents . His books have been translated into multiple languages and seem to enjoy special success in Eastern Europe.

Howard , says: July 16, 2017 at 8:31 pm

Obviously you think you are a shining example that everyone aspires to emulate, but I've got news for you: Not all conservatives are enamored with Paul Gottfried, either.
Samson Corwell , says: July 16, 2017 at 8:34 pm
How can Putin be described as right-wing? While his administration had been repressive of the LGBT community and has reached out to the Easter Orthodox Church, but that's like Saudi Arabia, which while conservative is not the same kind of conservative as American conservatives.

The guest explained this was natural, since "President Vladimir Putin does not subscribe to their progressive worldview as Soviet leaders did."

Tucker Carlson's guest was less than intelligent.

tz , says: July 16, 2017 at 8:35 pm
If loving Netanyahu is right? Oh, lets not go there

I know the current c***servatives praise sodomy and abortion, but I don't and for that reason, have rejected Conservatism, Inc. which apparently has infected TAC, so TAC is NR-lite.

Also one can praise a specific policy and action without praising someone in general.

Janwaar Bibi , says: July 16, 2017 at 8:43 pm
His aggressive behavior in Ukraine and Syria suggests the need for us in the West to be wary of his expansionist ambitions.

This is nonsense on stilts.

Putin's "aggressive behavior" in Syria was to support a secular Arab government against a bunch of Islamic thugs that included Al-Qaeda and ISIS. This may not be clear to people in the US since the US is a client state of Saudi Arabia and Israel, who want Syria to disintegrate, but it is perfectly obvious to the rest of the world.

Ukraine is payback for what the Western powers did in Kosovo. To spite Russia, the Western powers supported Kosovo when it broke off from Serbia, claiming they were doing it to support the right of self-determination. At that time, Putin asked whether this right would be granted to the ethnic Russian minorities all over Eastern Europe in countries like Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Needless to say, the Western powers insisted that their actions in Kosovo did not set a precedent on any kind – in other words, supporting secessionists is OK if the West does it but no one else should try that stunt! Putin decided to draw the line in Ukraine, and I for one don't blame him.

The US and Russia have no reason to fight, and Russia can be a valuable ally against growing threats like China and Islam. But generals always fight the last war, and apparently college professors do as well.

Rob , says: July 16, 2017 at 8:54 pm
First, James Kirchik is a joke of a commentator etc, and his writing and punditry only works if you treat it as satire. This is the guy who advocated that the US military overthrow a Trump presidency, remember.

Second, Putin is impressive in that he reliably acts in the Russian national interest (as he and Russians see it, not as told to him by Obama). And he skillfully advances that interest. He is quite obviously a very capable statesman and administrator. Russians' quality of life has improved greatly under his tenure, and Russia's global 'importance' is greater than since the fall of the Soviet Union. I don't think I'd want to live under his rule, but I'm not Russian.

Rancor , says: July 16, 2017 at 10:20 pm
The West sort of proves what Russians suspect it of – hypocrisy. The West has limited its vocabulary to strong and vague words like democracy, freedom (of speech, religion etc.), equality, antidiscrimination. But the real logic behind those words goes against them

In western "democracy", one judge can block a president backed by 60 million people, a court that consists of 9 people can impose same sex marriage on 300 million people

According to the western "freedom" of speech, websites that discourage abortions are illegal (in France), the questioning of multiculturalism can be increasingly interpreted as unacceptable hate speech, even though it's a completely legitimate view to hold

According to western "antidiscrimination" and "equality", when a christian baker or somebody, refuses to provide service for homosexual wedding, he/she breaks the law and is being opressed through bureaucratic means

So Russians have increasingly good reasons to conclude that the West is full of hubris, but in the end will not deliver on what it claims to preach. So this sense of cultural superiority in the West over Russia, in russian eyes, is more and more hypocritical, which makes Russia with all its vices, in the end, very similar to the West, which means that Russia doesn't have to change at all, or at least that there's no country that one should look up to. Russians at least can openly discourage abortions, unlike the French

Lee , says: July 16, 2017 at 11:50 pm
His aggressive behavior in Ukraine and Syria suggests the need for us in the West to be wary of his expansionist ambitions?

Anyone, who knows anything beyond what the Fake News reports about Ukraine and Syria is perfectly aware of highly pertinent facts, historical context as to Russia acting in it's National Interest. Something the US Foreign Policy apparatus fails to do on behalf of the alleged domestic population it PRETENDS to represent.

The population within US territories are strapped with the MOST AGGRESSIVE GOVERNMENT ON THE PLANET!

I mean seriously, "oops, no WMD, over there!" The hyjackers are from Saudi? Well, let's invade all those other places on flimsy to nil National Security interest.

Perhaps, the author of this "piece" should stick to Humanities.

William Dalton , says: July 17, 2017 at 12:29 am
I am not particularly invested in being an "admirer" of Vladimir Putin as a political leader, given his autocratic machinations as ruler of Russia and the likelihood that he has engaged in political assassination to solidify his hold on power, albeit more circumspectly than Barack Obama, who spoke openly about his Sunday evenings composing his "kill list".

What I am insistent upon is that Republicans recognize the value Putin has for the United States as the vehicle by which we can comfortably, perhaps even profitably, give up our role as the rulers of a global empire. We can cede to Russia our wars in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab East, we can withdraw from being co-belligerent in the military tensions between Russia and Ukraine, Russia and Georgia, Russia and any country outside our actual commitments to NATO. Putin allows us the opportunity to do this because he is willing to step in as the champion of Christians and Christian civilization in these regions, and all we have been willing to champion is our parochial self-interests – and we haven't done a very good job of that. Putin, precisely because he is seeking to advance Russia's own interests, not forfeit them again in a vainglorious attempt to resurrect the Soviet Union, is the man we want in charge in Russia. It has nothing to do with Putin modelling our preferences for a President of the United States (we can certainly still find better than Donald Trump). But he does model a sound foreign policy, even when confronted with the threat of terrorism far greater than we face.

EliteCommInc. , says: July 17, 2017 at 12:32 am
"With notable exceptions, the further one moves to the Right, the less anti-Putin people sound."

I have no small admiration for Pres Putin, reasons stated on TAC several times. None of those reasons have any impact on my conservative orthodoxy, none.
In fact, I have no idea why there would be any measure of impact on my conservatism, because I think we need to foster as healthy a relationship as possible with as many nations as possible.

If there comes a time when we have to go to war with Russia, so be it. But I don't see any evidence that such is the case. It has been utterly foolish to engage in destabilizing Syria. Our hands are full wit the mistakes in Iraq and I include Afghanistan.

I think anyone who is making contentions that Saudi Arabia is fostering terrorist against US interests needs to put up so there can be a full and fair gearing on the issue. Not the I don't Saudi Arabia Royal Family because twenty years ago, the 9/11 hijackers were mostly Muslim. Where's the case that the Saudi family knew and endorsed the matter – which would be cause for war. Not terrorist complaints because they have issues with other Middle East country someone favors. And for the record, I have yet to receive a dime from the Saudis -- so skip the mouth piece mantra.

You don't like ISIS/ISIL fine who does I am unclear. But at least have some idea from when they sprang and why. Being Sunni is hardly a rationale to advocate some pitch and post war on them.

But supporting the current exec. does not mean dancing a jig with Pres Putin. And it has little or nothing to do with being a conservative in my view. I have a healthy respect for who he and the transformative place he is taking his country.

He has managed to outwit us on several fronts and on occasion he has even bailed us out of some tight spots. Someone will have to explain to me why in the world we were telling the Ukrainians to engage in a violent revolution over some EU Russian oil deal. If the EU wanted to wooo the Ukrainians that should have offered a better price, not one higher than their competitor.

Pres. Putin is a shrewd political competitor.. Reason enough to admire him. That however, has nothing to do with whether or not I am a conservative.

Tiktaalik , says: July 17, 2017 at 12:52 am
>>His aggressive behavior in Ukraine and Syria suggests the need for us in the West to be wary of his expansionist ambitions.

Whether the West behaviour in the Ukraine and Syria means something? Like Kiev is many thousand km from Washington, but of course it's not expansionist, sure.

polistra , says: July 17, 2017 at 6:08 am
It's not "love", it's just a simple understanding of a simple fact. Soros is the problem. Everything associated with Soros or preferred by Soros is omnicidally lethal.

Any leader who effectively rejects and repels Soros and Sorosian organizations is on the good side. Putin and Erdogan are on the good side. Recently and surprisingly, Netanyahu has joined the good side, which should create problems for neocons.

Mark Thomason , says: July 17, 2017 at 7:25 am
Conservatives don't "like Putin."

They just don't like Hillary or Team Hillary or the current Outrage that passes for politics of those sore losers.

There is no American interest in liking Putin or any other foreign leader. We have interests, not likes. And there are interests we can advance with Putin, as well as those that oppose him.

spite , says: July 17, 2017 at 8:32 am
I am not going to ask conservatives here what they think of Kirchik, I want to ask the many liberals that comment here if they consider Kirchik a conservative. And please, I am fully aware of how a lot of liberals have this need to lecture on what a conservative should be (basically a liberal), what I want to know is if you SINCERELY believe that Kirchik is conservative.
Dan Phillips , says: July 17, 2017 at 9:34 am
As much as I hate to disagree with Prof. Gottfried, I must. Putin and Russia have to be looked at in the context of the grand scheme of things. In the grand scheme, Russia is viewed by its major detractors as an impediment to Davos uber alles globalism. Whether Putin views himself in these grand ideological terms or if he is just a Russian looking out for the best interests of Russia, I do not know. But this is the way Russia is perceived by its vocal critics nonetheless.

Besides the fact that genuine American conservatives should also oppose Davosian hegemony, it is not in the best interests of authentic conservatives to keep up the narrative that Russia is an inherent enemy. It is one of the main justifications for continuing the Warfare/Security State. This is evident by the fact that it seems to be Trump's suggestion of better relations with Russia more than anything else that sent the Deep State over the edge into now essentially attempting to bring about a coup. It is also not a coincidence that the ruse they are utilizing for their coup attempt furthers the narrative of Russia as the implacable bad guy.

Kurt Gayle , says: July 17, 2017 at 9:36 am
Mr. Gottfried takes out of context remarks made on the May 17th Tucker Carlson Tonight show. This is what was said immediately before Carlson's guest, Eric Prince, said, "It's amazing. When I grew up in the Cold War, the left loved the U.S.S.R."

Tucker Carlson (at 0:50): "How should we see the Russians?"

Eric Prince (founder of Blackwater, a private military contracter): "The Russians suffer from Islamic terrorism as well. Whether it's attacks on their subways, their schools -- the Beslan massacre killed over 300 kids -- they suffer from it as badly as we do. So, that is actually one area of common interest that the United States, western civilization, and Russia [sic] should have with the Russians."

Carlson: "That seems an obvious point. Trump ran on that point. A lot of people thought it was common sense. Why the resistance to that among foreign policy professionals in D.C.?"

Prince: "It's amazing. When I grew up in the Cold War, the left loved the U.S.S.R."

Carlson: "Yes."

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/05/17/blackwater-erik-prince-democrats-loved-russia-during-cold-war

Radu Borcau , says: July 17, 2017 at 10:43 am
Indeed there is a lot East European of blood in Russia's dark past but that was mostly Stalin's blood. This author is placing an insincere equal sign between Putin and Stalin:

"I am unsettled by my fellow-Rightists who seem to have forgotten the murder and mayhem unleashed by past Russian governments against Ukrainians, Balts, Hungarians, Poles and other Central and Eastern Europeans."

Speaking of murder and mayhem, before we criticize others, we should look first at our own sad recent history. We too have plenty of blood on our hands; the list is well known no need to repeat it hear. As a matter of fact the targeted countries have been penciled by neo-cons like this author who knowingly turns a blind eye on our very own problems.

I would suggest two things:

-to the author: to read more history and write less, ideally throw away the pen.
-to TAC: do not pollute this place with such "authors".

Sophistry , says: July 17, 2017 at 10:57 am
Is it really so much Putin is loved by the right because of his social values? The Right in America likely has very little contact with Russia. Airfare is quite expensive, and there aren't really strong family ties to the region.

In contrast, the Left it appears has extensive contact with Russia. They are reporting on persecution of gays and whatnot from there.

The Right I think is more anti-Left than pro-Russia.

Dan A. Davis , says: July 17, 2017 at 12:23 pm
This last year has been most revealing. People whom I once thought were principled Conservatives have turned out, under pressure, to be bully-worshiping snobs.

It is quite devastating to see how many have fallen into the moral black hole that is Trump_vs_deep_state, and consequently how many are embracing America's historic opponent.

That so many "conservatives" are willing to burn down the United States of America in pursuit of their stated goal of destroying "libtards" and their leader, Hillary Satan, is sufficient evidence their "conservatism" has as its sole principle, resentment of those they think are laughing/sneering at them.

Rhetoric , says: July 17, 2017 at 12:32 pm
Gottfried assumes that all readers share the same view of Putin, that he is unabashed authoritarian and that his action in the Ukraine were an invasion, a grab for territory; and that in Syria, Putin's placement of Russian military force was a violation of Syria's sovereignty and an attempt to grab power. He then reasons that their support for these actions and Putin's other assumed comportment (racist, homophobic, etc.) is a misreading of true conservative principles.

It makes for a nice argument, as there appear to be two ways of viewing Putin's behavior, the correct one being a conservative rejection of racism, totalitarianism, xenophobia, etc.

However, the facts about Putin are not agreed upon, and the author does not adumbrate any actual evidence for castigating Putin. Ukraine can be credibly read as a case for Victoria Nuland's overreach, and Putin's restraint. Likewise, a treaty between Syria and Russia make the military assistance there wholly legitimate. Putin's reputed intolerance for homosexuality withers when the record is actually examined. Finally, the benefits of rapprochement, something which would improve the lives of the peoples of both America and Russia, irrespective of minor vicissitudes of leadership, is nowhere discussed.

There's nothing new in Gottfried's screed, which is all warmed-over Clintonian hysteria and neocon warmongering. What is new is an attempt to split what he considers to be the alt-right into two camps, and in so doing deny any place for Putin and Russia solidarity amongst Americans. Gottfried may have cast his lot with the rump of Mrs. Clinton's coterie, which makes one wonder if his posturing before the election was anything but insincere.

https://consortiumnews.com/ /13/the-mess-that-nuland-made/

Kurt Gayle , says: July 17, 2017 at 1:09 pm
To Paul Gottfried's credit, he ends with the excellent quote from Christopher ("The French, Coming Apart" -- great, great analysis) Caldwell:

"Putin has become a symbol of national sovereignty in its battle with globalism. That turns out to be the big battle of our times. As our last election shows, that's true even here."

In that same vein, commenter Dan Philips is 100% right: "In the grand scheme, Russia is viewed by its major detractors as an impediment to Davos über alles globalism."

Keep on impeding Davos, Mr. Putin. Don't stop! Keep impeding!

Mary Myers , says: July 17, 2017 at 1:14 pm
Apparently Prof. Gottfried is unaware of the tapped conversation between Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt where they are plotting who they will put in power after the U.S. sponsored coup in the Ukraine. Nuland has admitted that the U.S. spent $5 billion to destabilize Ukraine. U.S. meddling in on there countries' elections is more the norm for the U.S. than it is for current day Russia.

For another viewpoint on Putin I suggest that TAC publish Dr. Boyd Cathey's article, "Examining the Hatred of Putin.

Alan F , says: July 17, 2017 at 2:17 pm
Sigh .I stopped reading when I got to ."his aggressive behavior in Ukraine and Syria." What a total farce. But I'm sure Paul that somehow you're totally fine with aggressive behavior on the part of the US. Hypocrite much? So let's see. The CIA leads the coup in Kiev to overthrow the democratically elected Yanukovych, the newly installed US puppet ..errrr ..new President of Ukraine is hostile towards ethnic Russians in Crimea and Donestsk, those folks appeal to Putin for help and he obliges.

Yet, of course "Russian aggression." The US sends troops in Eastern Europe on the Russian border and sends the Navy to patrol the Baltic Sea, and yet, you know, "Russian aggression."

Quick question, how would Americans feel if the Russian navy was on patrol in the Gulf of Mexico? We'd be livid as heck and rightly so. But it's fine for us to that to them. And, last time I checked, Russia is any ally of Syria and was invited to be there by the Syrian govt. The US is there against the wishes of the Syrian govt. But, you know, "Russian aggression." The fact that the American left / GOP neocons have far more hatred for Putin than they ever did for the communist Soviet Union speaks volumes. The fact that folks like the author of this article hate Putin, while having absolutely zero problem with our number one ally, Saudi Arabia also speaks volumes. This would be the same SA that is the world's number one exporter of terrorism, that kills homosexuals for simply being homosexual and where women aren't allowed to drive cars. This is the very definition of hypocrisy.

Alan F , says: July 17, 2017 at 2:23 pm
@ Sophistry,

First off, I don't believe there is "persecution of gays" in Russia. What is there is the not allowing of kids (kids for goodness sake!) to be taught the LGBT agenda. Those are two totally different things. But for the sake of argument, let's say that there is some level of "persecution of gays." Whatever that amounts to, unquestionably it doesn't include being executed by the govt for being found to be gay. To find where that happens, one need look no further than the country that all of the Russia haters seem to have no problems with: Saudi Arabia. I'd love for you to explain to my why the same folks who hate Russia for "persecuting gays" seem to have no problem with SA. Actually, don't bother. I know full well why this is the case.

fabian , says: July 17, 2017 at 2:52 pm
Listen man, don't start with a collection of bad deeds committed by the UDSSR or Putin in the past because we can easily counter argue with a collection of bad deeds committed by the US in the present. I don't care what Putin does, he's not my government. But currently he is the only counter weight to the decay of the Western society. That's unless you turn to the radical muslims. Hopefully, not our sole alternative in the future.

On a larger scale, keep pushing Russia away and China will welcome them. Then you'll have the biggest country in the world allied with the most populous and hungry country in the world; unlimited resources, natural and human. The gravitational force they will produce will be difficult to resist unless they mess things up like we do in the US. But never bet on your adversary to be stupider than you are.

JEinCA , says: July 17, 2017 at 3:00 pm
Russia's behavior under Putin has been restrained. There's nothing immoral about Russia's assistance to Syria especially given the fact that the Russian military is there legally with the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria in it's battle against ISIS and Al Nusra.

As for Ukraine I had expected the Western backed coup to provoke a full on Russian invasion taking not only Crimea and Donbass but Kiev and Odessa leaving a rump Nationalist Ukrainian State in the West.

The Russians would have been well within their right to do as such given the existential threat that a hostile regime in Kiev poses to Russia itself. Instead Russia only took the mostly ethnic Russian Crimean peninsula and supported pro Russian rebels in Donbass. Last but not least lets recall another US backed incursion on Russia's borders when Georgia decided in 2008 to launch an offensive against its breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia killing Russian peacekeepers in the process. Had Russia been expansionist the Russians would've taken Tblisi overthrown Sakashvilli and placed a pro-Russian government there. They did not. They repelled Georgian forces from South Ossetia and Abkhazia and went home.

Think about had we been talking about dead American peacekeepers instead of Russian ones and what Washington's response would be? Or Washington's response to a theoretical Russian backed coup in Mexico? Russia has shown the utmost caution and restraint.

Jared Myers , says: July 17, 2017 at 3:16 pm
I can see how it might look like certain folks on the Right are politically "in love" with Putin, but that's not really the case. In the current polarized socio-political framework, where Russia has magically become "the enemy" (with no logic or reason behind that assumption), anyone who does not want to force a showdown with Moscow is somehow "enamored" with Putin. I consider myself more paleo-libertarian than paleo-conservative, but I will freely admit that I don't want to live in Russia or have Putin anywhere near the reigns of American power. But I also don't want nor see the need for any kind of conflict with the Russians either.
Fred Bilak , says: July 17, 2017 at 4:41 pm
Putin's Russia is a threat not because Putin is smart, clever, a former KGB agent that learned to be a master chess player of world politics, from that job or because he does loves his country and is trying to make his country a super power again to aid his people. He us all of those things for sure.

And after how we treated Russia after the cold war, some of the actions and anger of the Russians can be understood.

... ... ...

Grumpy Old Man , says: July 17, 2017 at 5:16 pm
Russia has interests, most of them in her near abroad. Putin has defended them, not always nicely. Powers aren't always nice. See: US policy in Central America. Russia's regional concerns aren't very important to the U.S.

Putin doesn't channel John Stuart Mill. Pity, that. But that's no reason to anathematize him. He does have lots of nukes, and if either side errs, which is unlikely but not impossible, catastrophe looms.

We have every reason to deal with the man soberly and without alarm or frissons of "bromance."

[Jul 17, 2017] A Russian Developer Helps Out the Kremlin on Occasion. Was He a Conduit to Trump by NEIL MacFARQUHAR

They did not find anything yet, but they have money and will continue digging till the next Presidential elections. This is just a witch hunt. If, for example members of Us congress are subjected to the same level of scrutiny probably over 50% would be already charged for criminal activities ;-) Trump is still standing... BTW it would be interesting where NEIL MacFARQUHAR got all this information. Were intelligences agencies involved?
Jul 16, 2017 | www.msn.com

Originally from: The New York Times

MOSCOW , Russian Island, near the port city of Vladivostok in the far east, was a decaying former military base and home to a scattering of cattle when President Vladimir V. Putin suddenly envisioned it as a $1.2 billion campus where he could welcome heads of state for an Asia-Pacific conference.

That sent Kremlin officials scrambling to find a developer to transform a site lacking fresh water, a pier or roads. They rejected numerous bids before one of them took a flier on a man known mostly for his glamorous shopping malls: Aras Agalarov of the Crocus Group.

A little more than three years later, in 2012, Mr. Putin opened the spectacular Far Eastern Federal University , some 70 modern buildings built in a crescent overlooking the sparkling Pacific Ocean.

Not long after, Mr. Putin pinned a blue-ribboned state medal, the Order of Honor, on Mr. Agalarov's chest at a dazzling Kremlin ceremony. Soon, a string of demanding, more prominent projects followed: a stretch of superhighway ringing Moscow; two troubled stadiums for the 2018 World Cup, including one in a Baltic swamp.

Mr. Agalarov, 61, also worked on a project with a future president, Donald J. Trump. Last week, the Russian developer and his crooner son and heir, Emin, were thrust into the swirl of speculation about whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election.

Their names popped up in emails about arranging a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who claimed to have incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, but the president and his son have both insisted that nothing of value was provided.

"This is obviously very high-level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump , helped along by Aras and Emin," wrote Rob Goldstone, a music producer and publicist working for Emin.

While there is no indication beyond what was said in the emails that the Agalarovs were serving as a conduit between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, wealthy and well-connected businessmen are often called on to do the bidding of the Russian government.

Kremlin analysts stress that its red, crenelated walls conceal not a well-oiled machine but a hornet's nest of interests and influences competing to dominate an Erector Set of ad hoc policies and sudden opportunities, many of them highly lucrative.

When it comes to exploiting those opportunities, the Kremlin often ignores its own bureaucrats, diplomats and other agents in favor of someone it thinks will get the job done , a charmed group whose members rise and fall in status along with their usefulness to Mr. Putin and his top aides.

In that context, analysts find it entirely plausible that the Kremlin would tap Mr. Agalarov, a construction tycoon with a web of contacts to Mr. Trump, as a way to pass information to the Trump presidential campaign.

"In a sense, almost no one is a direct agent of the Kremlin, but almost anyone can become one if the need arises," said Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.

Aleksei A. Navalny, the leading opposition figure in Russia and an anticorruption campaigner, says he has no doubt that the Agalarovs would do the bidding of the Kremlin if asked.

In a blog post, Mr. Navalny refers to Yuri Chaika, the Russian state prosecutor , a position equivalent to the United States attorney general , whom Mr. Goldstone identified in his emails as the source of the information on offer at the Trump Tower meeting. Mr. Chaika, a staunch Putin loyalist, has been in that position since 2006.

In the view of Mr. Navalny, a bitter opponent of Mr. Putin, it makes perfect sense that information passed from the Kremlin through Mr. Chaika and Mr. Agalarov to Mr. Trump, as the security services could easily have used such a trusted channel to reach out to the Trump campaign.

That is no more than informed speculation, yet there are deep connections among the men. After Mr. Navalny released a documentary in 2015 accusing Mr. Chaika of corruption, for example, Mr. Agalarov rose to his defense. Writing in the newspaper Kommersant, he said the film mixed fact and fiction and echoed the work of Joseph Goebbels, the chief Nazi propagandist.

Natalia Veselnitskaya , the lawyer who met with the younger Mr. Trump, and her former husband both worked in the prosecutor's office of the Moscow region, the district surrounding the capital, and would have been under Mr. Chaika's overall umbrella.

Ms. Veselnitskaya has done some legal work connected to real estate for Mr. Agalarov's company in Russia, according to media interviews given by the family lawyer in the United States, Scott Balber.

Mr. Trump entered this circle with the 2013 Miss Universe contest, carried out with the help of lower-level bureaucrats and Mr. Agalarov, who paid $20 million to bring the pageant to his family's Moscow concert pavilion, Crocus City Hall.

It would be natural for the Kremlin, aware of that relationship, to reach down to that level to try to get something done with the Trump campaign, analysts said.

"If you are a business person, you are supposed to do something that the Kremlin asks you; you are otherwise free to pursue your own interests. That is how Russia works," said Mrs. Schulmann, noting that most would be eager to respond to any such call as an expression of loyalty.

In this particular case, the Kremlin has denied any involvement, saying it was not in touch with Mr. Agalarov and did not even know the lawyer, Ms. Veselnitskaya. It is unclear precisely what was discussed at the meeting with members of the Trump team. Participants have said that it dealt largely with an American law called the Magnitsky Act, which blacklists those suspected of human rights abuses in Russia, and a ban on the adoption of Russian children, and that nothing of significance was given to the campaign.

Mr. Agalarov, in a Russian radio interview, called the story around the meeting , that it was about information damaging to Hillary Clinton , a "fabrication."

The Crocus Group did not respond to a request to interview Mr. Agalarov.

For Mr. Agalarov, the involvement in the Trump administration's Russia scandal is at best an unwelcome diversion in a career of steady if not always spectacular success.

He was born in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, then part of the Soviet Union, where he studied computer engineering and was a member of the Baku City Committee of the Communist Party.

He went to Moscow to study, and even before the collapse of the Soviet Union began trying to fill pent-up Russian demand for Western goods, especially computers.

What started as a modest trading company grew into a business organizing trade fairs that eventually mushroomed into the Crocus Group, a real estate empire that encompasses mammoth shopping malls, a chain of hypermarkets, an exposition center, restaurants, luxury housing developments and other enterprises.

Forbes magazine puts Mr. Agalarov 51st on its list of the richest Russians, with a fortune estimated at $1.7 billion.

"He is not the biggest retail guy, but Crocus City Mall was the first luxury mall to appear in Moscow," said Darrell Stanaford, a 20-year veteran of the Russian real estate world as the former managing director in Moscow for the CBRE Group, a Los Angeles-based commercial real estate firm. "He likes the glitz. It is high-end luxury, so that is why he becomes such a good matchup for Trump."

Mr. Agalarov keeps a modest footprint on social media, mostly by standing next to his photogenic son: on their luxury Moscow golf course development, for example, or posing with Robert De Niro at the opening of one of the two Nobu restaurants in Moscow where they are partners.

Mr. Trump pops up from time to time. On his Inauguration Day, both Agalarovs posted old pictures of themselves with him, along with effusive praise for their old friend.

Aside from the 2013 Miss Universe contest, it is not known what business ties, if any, the Agalarovs have with Mr. Trump, or with any other American companies. They clearly have an affinity for the United States, however, naming one chain of shopping malls "Vegas" and another luxury residential complex "Manhattan."

In November 2013, after the buzz of the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow had subsided, Mr. Trump met privately with a group of elite Russian businessmen, including the head of Russia's state-owned Sberbank at one of the Nobu restaurants in Moscow.

The elder Mr. Agalarov had been talking with Mr. Trump about building a Trump Tower in Moscow as part of a $3 billion real estate project involving hotels, a shopping center and office space.

Sberbank was ready to make it happen. About a week after the meeting, the bank announced a "strategic cooperation agreement" with the Crocus Group to finance about 70 percent of the ambitious project, including, potentially, a building bearing the Trump name.

"It was one of the 14 buildings that we planned to build here," Mr. Agalarov's son Emin said in a March interview with Forbes, adding that if Mr. Trump "hadn't run for president, we would probably be in the construction phase today."

The Sberbank financing , reported at the time as the biggest real estate development loan the bank had made , was another measure of the Agalarovs' increasingly close connections to the centers of power in Russia.

In another indication, the Crocus Group was written into a 2014 bilateral treaty with the government of Kyrgyzstan to help that country integrate into Russia's regional alliance, the Eurasian Economic Union.

In that deal, worth $127 million, the Crocus Group was designated the "single supplier" of services to integrate the two countries' bureaucracies and reinforce the new customs common border, by, for example, building new border posts.

By naming the company in an international treaty, the Russian government avoided opening the work to competitive bidding, ensuring that the Crocus Group won the contract, Edil Baisalov, a former Kyrgyz presidential chief of staff, said in a telephone interview.

In Kyrgyzstan, he said, the apparent giveaway to Kremlin-connected insiders became known as "Crocusgate."

Mr. Agalarov mentions occasionally how difficult it is to earn money on public works, telling the newspaper Vedomosti in 2015 that he had to buy a larger Gulfstream jet to make the cross-continental trek to Vladivostok to check on progress at the Far Eastern Federal University. On that project, he said, he spent more than $100 million of his own money because the official plans skipped significant costs like roads and landscaping. He won some of it back in court.

Statements about losing money are all part of the game, analysts said, noting that construction costs on Russian infrastructure routinely run 30 percent higher than for comparable projects in Europe.

"It is showing the wounds that he got in the service of the motherland," said Ms. Schulmann, the political scientist. "You see how indifferent I am to profit when I do a service for the Kremlin. I have to make sacrifices."

Mr. Agalarov, however, was more candid than most when asked whether it is altruism that leads him to respond when the Kremlin calls. In the interview with Vedomosti, he said, "There are things that you cannot turn down."

[Jul 17, 2017] If the Kremlin interfered in the US presidential elections, how come those wily Russkies failed to make the majority of voters at the ballot box nationwide vote for Trump yet at the same time managed to make the majority of voters in the Rust Belt and rural USA not vote for that mendacious shrew Clinton?

Notable quotes:
"... "Will the DNC lose in 2018, because they're beholden to inner-party special interests? Stay tuned. " ..."
"... "It's been nearly a year since the FBI started an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, the investigation has turned toward examining links between Russia and President Donald Trump's associates and members of his campaign, and even possible obstruction of justice by Trump. ..."
"... The investigation has been the go-to news item and topic of many heated conversations since last July, at least in DC . But outside of the nation's capital, many voters aren't as concerned about possible Trump ties to Russia. ..."
"... When I recently visited my hometown and one other small town in Michigan that went for Trump, I talked with residents about the investigation. Nearly every single person I spoke with said the same thing: The media just needs to leave Trump alone, and the Russia investigation is a distraction. ..."
"... "I'm tired of hearing about the Russia thing. Let it go and move on. The media is the one that's propagating it. They just won't let it die," said Nancy Androsky, a longtime resident whose grandchildren go to school in the area. ..."
"... Conversations with residents of Linden and Argentine, which are located between the cities of Detroit and Flint, confirmed what recent polls have shown -- that Republicans don't think the Russia investigation is a big deal. More than half of Republicans think the investigation is a political distraction, according to Vox's Alexia Fernández Campbell's analysis of a June CBS News poll. Only one in five consider it a critical security issue. ..."
"... And while nine out of 10 Democratic voters said that an investigation into Russian involvement in the election is somewhat or very important, only 35 percent of Republicans agreed , according to a February poll by Quinnipiac University . ..."
"... More important to the residents of Linden and Argentine Township than the Russia investigation are promises Trump made on the campaign trail: building a stronger military, restricting immigration by refugees and asylum seekers, and creating jobs for middle-class Americans. ..."
"... And around 60 percent of people in the two towns voted for Trump in the last election, up from the approximately 50 percent of people who voted for Republican candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. ..."
"... Despite the fact that he has yet to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including softening his position on China's currency manipulation, failing to build a wall on the US-Mexico border, and struggling to repeal and replace Obamacare, his supporters keep saying "give him a chance." ..."
"... "I think Trump will be a lot better than our previous president. I think he's going to get things done," said Rich Marshbanks, the owner of a local barbershop. "I think he's basically a good man. His heart's in the right place." ..."
"... It's not surprising that nearly every person I talked with said they supported Trump. With a combined population of approximately 6,500 people, the towns of Linden and Argentine are stereotypical small-town America. They're the kind of place where you'll run into at least one person you know at the only grocery store in town and the smell of cow manure from nearby dairy farms occasionally wafts in the air. ..."
"... "This is such a close-knit community," said Sharon Stone, the editor of the Tri-County Times, a newspaper covering several towns in the area. "They love the small hometown feel, but all of the perks of having everything available to them. We have so many lakes in this area, and there's quite a bit of money in this area." ..."
"... These towns are also almost entirely white -- 96 percent of Linden residents and 97 percent of Argentine residents identified as white on the 2010 census. ..."
"... Stone described the area as "passionate," but since the last election, people have become disenchanted with politics. "It's almost like they're completely fed up with politics in general on both sides," said Stone. "It's not necessarily just the whole Russian thing that's going on. It's just politics in general." ..."
"... And based on the conversations I had with people in the area who agreed to talk with me, that definitely seems to be true. People said they feel ignored by the Washington establishment, hate the "liberal media," and couldn't care less about the Russia investigation. ..."
"... "It's a waste of time and energy for us out here in the hinterlands for us to worry about what's going on in the cesspool in Washington," said Norman Schmidt, Argentine's treasurer who has been on the board for more than 20 years. "And it's a swamp. It really is a swamp."" ..."
"... If the Kremlin interfered in the US presidential elections, how come those wily Russkies failed to make the majority of voters at the ballot box nationwide vote for Trump yet at the same time managed to make the majority of voters in the Rust Belt and rural USA not vote for that mendacious shrew Clinton? ..."
"... Russian "sleepers" in Pittsburgh, Muskogee etc? ..."
Jul 17, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Lyttenburgh , July 17, 2017 at 6:35 am

"Will the DNC lose in 2018, because they're beholden to inner-party special interests? Stay tuned. "

If they keep up their obsession with Russia – YES!

Also – relevant article, which shows that this "rural/Red State American consensus", apparently, keeps up, despite the constant propaganda barrage from the mainstream biased media. Oh, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the Vox is dye in the wool liberal outlet with handshakable agenda.

I asked Trump voters in Michigan about the Russia investigation. They said it's fake news.

"It's been nearly a year since the FBI started an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, the investigation has turned toward examining links between Russia and President Donald Trump's associates and members of his campaign, and even possible obstruction of justice by Trump.

The investigation has been the go-to news item and topic of many heated conversations since last July, at least in DC . But outside of the nation's capital, many voters aren't as concerned about possible Trump ties to Russia.

When I recently visited my hometown and one other small town in Michigan that went for Trump, I talked with residents about the investigation. Nearly every single person I spoke with said the same thing: The media just needs to leave Trump alone, and the Russia investigation is a distraction.

"I'm tired of hearing about the Russia thing. Let it go and move on. The media is the one that's propagating it. They just won't let it die," said Nancy Androsky, a longtime resident whose grandchildren go to school in the area.

Conversations with residents of Linden and Argentine, which are located between the cities of Detroit and Flint, confirmed what recent polls have shown -- that Republicans don't think the Russia investigation is a big deal. More than half of Republicans think the investigation is a political distraction, according to Vox's Alexia Fernández Campbell's analysis of a June CBS News poll. Only one in five consider it a critical security issue.

And while nine out of 10 Democratic voters said that an investigation into Russian involvement in the election is somewhat or very important, only 35 percent of Republicans agreed , according to a February poll by Quinnipiac University .

More important to the residents of Linden and Argentine Township than the Russia investigation are promises Trump made on the campaign trail: building a stronger military, restricting immigration by refugees and asylum seekers, and creating jobs for middle-class Americans.

And around 60 percent of people in the two towns voted for Trump in the last election, up from the approximately 50 percent of people who voted for Republican candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.

Despite the fact that he has yet to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including softening his position on China's currency manipulation, failing to build a wall on the US-Mexico border, and struggling to repeal and replace Obamacare, his supporters keep saying "give him a chance."

"I think Trump will be a lot better than our previous president. I think he's going to get things done," said Rich Marshbanks, the owner of a local barbershop. "I think he's basically a good man. His heart's in the right place."

It's not surprising that nearly every person I talked with said they supported Trump. With a combined population of approximately 6,500 people, the towns of Linden and Argentine are stereotypical small-town America. They're the kind of place where you'll run into at least one person you know at the only grocery store in town and the smell of cow manure from nearby dairy farms occasionally wafts in the air.

"This is such a close-knit community," said Sharon Stone, the editor of the Tri-County Times, a newspaper covering several towns in the area. "They love the small hometown feel, but all of the perks of having everything available to them. We have so many lakes in this area, and there's quite a bit of money in this area."

These towns are also almost entirely white -- 96 percent of Linden residents and 97 percent of Argentine residents identified as white on the 2010 census.

Stone described the area as "passionate," but since the last election, people have become disenchanted with politics. "It's almost like they're completely fed up with politics in general on both sides," said Stone. "It's not necessarily just the whole Russian thing that's going on. It's just politics in general."

And based on the conversations I had with people in the area who agreed to talk with me, that definitely seems to be true. People said they feel ignored by the Washington establishment, hate the "liberal media," and couldn't care less about the Russia investigation.

"It's a waste of time and energy for us out here in the hinterlands for us to worry about what's going on in the cesspool in Washington," said Norman Schmidt, Argentine's treasurer who has been on the board for more than 20 years. "And it's a swamp. It really is a swamp.""

The article ends with the opinions of the locals.

moscowexile , July 17, 2017 at 7:15 am
If the Kremlin interfered in the US presidential elections, how come those wily Russkies failed to make the majority of voters at the ballot box nationwide vote for Trump yet at the same time managed to make the majority of voters in the Rust Belt and rural USA not vote for that mendacious shrew Clinton?

Russian "sleepers" in Pittsburgh, Muskogee etc?

I'm proud to be a Russkie fom Muskogee?

[Jul 16, 2017] How Russia-gate Met the Magnitsky Myth by Robert Parry

Notable quotes:
"... Aaron Kesel, in Activistpost documents the links between Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS, the company engaged by the Clintons to prepare the defamatory Christopher Steele Dossier ..."
"... it is also interesting that she is on record as anti-Trump and having associations with Clinton democrats. ..."
"... Though it may have been part of the beginnings of a conspiracy, the conspiracy may have developed later and the meeting became something they related back to to bolster this fraudulent dangerous initiative. ..."
Jul 14, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Exiled off mainstreet , July 14, 2017 at 1:54 pm

Aaron Kesel, in Activistpost documents the links between Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS, the company engaged by the Clintons to prepare the defamatory Christopher Steele Dossier against Trump later used by Comey to help gin up the Russian influence conspiracy theory. In the article, it is true the GPS connection may have involved her lobbying efforts to overturn the Magnitsky law, not the dossier, but it is also interesting that she is on record as anti-Trump and having associations with Clinton democrats.

Though it may have been part of the beginnings of a conspiracy, the conspiracy may have developed later and the meeting became something they related back to to bolster this fraudulent dangerous initiative.

[Jul 16, 2017] RussiaGate by Andrew Levine

Notable quotes:
"... When governments do the hacking themselves, or sponsor others who do it for them, it is usually because they want to hone their countries' offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. In short, they are developing weapons and testing them. ..."
"... Sometimes, though, they do more than that. The best known example occurred some ten years ago when the United States and Israel introduced the Stuxnet virus into Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, destroying roughly a fifth of that country's nuclear centrifuges by causing them to spin out of control. ..."
"... For the stewards of the American empire, inconvenient international laws apply to others, not the United States. It is therefore unclear what, if anything would change if cyber weapons too were forbidden. ..."
"... How proficient America's cyber warriors are at defending "the homeland," the post-9/11 term for the former "Land of the Free," is an open question. There is no doubt, however, that, at the very least, the United States leads the way in developing cyber surveillance capabilities. ..."
"... The story used to be that seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that reports of Russian meddling are correct. The official line now is that only four have weighed in decisively, the four actually in the know. ..."
"... Meanwhile, Putin says the Russians did not meddle; and Julian Assange has said many times that the source of the DNC documents that Wikileaks published was not the Russian state. It has become fashionable in mainstream circles to vilify Assange, but the fact remains that his integrity, and Wikileaks', is well established. ..."
"... Though portrayed as the devil incarnate, Putin is a skilled and worldly statesman, intent on advancing Russia's interests, as he understands them. He is therefore a liar by vocation, just as all serious politicians are. ..."
"... ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What's Wrong With the Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). ..."
Jul 16, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

If Vladimir Putin is half as clever as his demonizers make him out to be, he must have figured out a long time ago that, to get inside Donald Trump's head, clinical psychologists with expertise treating male adolescents would be more useful than the Russian hackers, real or imaginary, that Western media obsess over.

Why even bother with hackers? The little that goes on between Trump's ears is all there in his tweets.

But, of course, if the idea is to develop capabilities for waging wars in the cyber sphere, good hackers are worth their weight in gold. If Putin isn't working on that, he is not doing his job.

These days, hackers are everywhere -- including Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. The United States has more than its fair share too, as do the UK and other Western countries. Some work for intelligence services, directly or indirectly; many, probably most, do not.

When governments do the hacking themselves, or sponsor others who do it for them, it is usually because they want to hone their countries' offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. In short, they are developing weapons and testing them.

Sometimes, though, they do more than that. The best known example occurred some ten years ago when the United States and Israel introduced the Stuxnet virus into Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, destroying roughly a fifth of that country's nuclear centrifuges by causing them to spin out of control.

Needless to say, governments are not the only players; far from it. Many, probably most, hackers are not connected, even indirectly, with state intelligence services. Some of them may be "terrorists," according to one or another understanding of that fraught and contested term. It is safe to assume that most of them are not. They hack for the fun of it or because they can.

There are legally binding, though sometimes ineffective, conventions that prohibit the use of a few especially heinous kinds of weapons -- poison gas is a well-known example. Cyber weapons are not similarly proscribed. Hackers can be, and sometimes are, subject to domestic prosecution, but, between state actors, anything goes.

In much the same vein, international law does not prohibit states from interfering in the political affairs, or elections, of other states. Insofar as sovereignty still matters in our globalized neoliberal world, meddling of that kind plainly violates the spirit of the law, but it is not legally proscribed.

For the stewards of the American empire, inconvenient international laws apply to others, not the United States. It is therefore unclear what, if anything would change if cyber weapons too were forbidden.

What is clear, however, is that, for at least the past seven decades, the United States has interfered in one way or another in nearly every election that American government officials wanted to influence – either to prevent outcomes they opposed or to secure results they favored.

No corner of the world has been immune, but since the demise of the Soviet Union made meddling in the political affairs of Russia and other former Soviet republics easier, Washington has been especially intent on throwing its weight around in that part of the world – always in ways that put Russian national interests in jeopardy.

The "digital revolution" has greatly exacerbated the problem, making meddling a lot easier than it used to be.

How proficient America's cyber warriors are at defending "the homeland," the post-9/11 term for the former "Land of the Free," is an open question. There is no doubt, however, that, at the very least, the United States leads the way in developing cyber surveillance capabilities.

It is no slouch either when it comes to hacking into well-protected industrial and government servers around the world – to spy or to meddle or, as with those centrifuges in Iran, to sabotage.

Russia can do those things too – perhaps just as well, more likely not, but certainly well enough.

It may therefore be time, now that the Cold War is back, to revive a version of the old Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine, updated for the digital age.

* * *

Thanks to digitalization and the many ways in which computers nowadays are able to communicate with each other, state and non-state actors can meddle – or worse – more effectively than in the past.

Inasmuch as quality emerges out of quantity, as dialecticians inspired by Hegel would say, meddling has therefore become qualitatively more problematic than it used to be.

Thus, with Cold War insanity coming back into vogue -- promoted by the entire political class, no longer just by Clinton retainers, and by the media flacks who serve them -- meddling is taking new forms.

Some things don't change, however. As long as it keeps spending more money on "defense" than the Russians do, the United States will retain the dominant position. Despite the best efforts of Cold Warriors to scare Americans into acquiescence, everyone now concedes that this was how it was with nuclear weapons and missiles and much else during the original Cold War. It is how it is today too, now that cyber weapons are added into the mix.

Nevertheless, as in the past, the War Party's spokespersons will insist that we are not spending nearly enough. Lying through their teeth, JFK and his people concocted a "missile gap" some six decades ago. No one should be surprised, with the 2018 midterm elections looming, when a "cyber weapons gap" opens up.

The death merchants and mad dog generals must be salivating at the prospect. Silicon Valley plus the military-industrial complex, Eisenhower's euphemism for death merchants and military brass, now dominate the real economy. Over them all, there is Wall Street; a far greater menace now than in Eisenhower's time. The too-big-to-fail-or-jail miscreants there must be salivating most of all.

It was public opinion that made the original Cold War possible, and so it is again. This is why the "liberal press" has been pulling out all the stops – vilifying Russia and demonizing its President.

But there are at least two reasons why they will have a harder time getting the result they want now than their counterparts had long ago.

For one, they don't have a President on board this time, except occasionally when all the stars are lined up right. Unlike his post-War predecessors, from Truman on, Trump has no geopolitical goals. Instead, he wants to make "deals" that he thinks will make him look good, but that will only make him richer.

Trump is no more anti-imperialist than Cecil Rhodes, and he doesn't have an internationalist bone in his body. But, during the campaign, he did find it expedient to strike a kind of pre-War isolationist pose.

Since that could in principle lead him sometimes to do the right thing -- albeit for bad, even noxious reasons – there were a few observers who were inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Inasmuch as the alternative was a continuation of the liberal imperialism of the Obama era, who could blame them?

What they actually did, however, was give Trump way too much credit. The man has no ideological convictions to speak of. For all practical purposes, his mind is a blank slate, susceptible to being swayed by whomever he talked to last or by the last pundit he watched on TV.

However, where Russia is concerned, he did, and still does, seem to have sounder instincts than his rivals. For Trump, instincts are all; and his instincts are dangerously off on almost everything. But not on this.

No doubt, his business involvements have a lot to do with it. So, very likely, does the fact that he could care less what others think. It probably also helps that he has no ties to the foreign policy establishment or to the so-called deep state.

Whatever the reasons, Trump does seem less in thrall to the delusions that shape this latest outbreak of Russophobia in political and media circles than other politicians at the national level. Indeed, even at this late date, he actually does seem to want to diminish, not exacerbate, tensions between the world's two major nuclear powers.

Bravo to him for that.

The other reason why Cold Warriors today have their work cut out for them, in ways that their counterparts after the Second World War did not, is that the justifications they are obliged to offer for treating Russia as an enemy are preposterous on their face.

Half a century ago, the Soviet Union was, in Churchill's words, "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." Churchill went on to suggest that much of the mystery would dissipate if observers would think more carefully about Russia's national interests. That insight was among the first casualties of the rush to (cold) war that Churchill himself did so much to promote.

And so, an Iron Curtain descended over the Soviet Union and its "satellites," just as he said it would -- making it possible for the "free world's" propagandists to spin all kinds of yarns about Communist "subversion" and ill intent.

Cyber curtains are harder to construct. What could previously be kept opaque is therefore now ineluctably clear to anyone who cares to look.

This is why all the brouhaha over Russian meddling in the 2016 election would hardly even merit discussion, but for the fact that the stakes are so high, and because so many gullible people take it seriously.

Never mind that nothing actually came from the alleged meddling, except further confirmation of what everybody already knew: that the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, was working hard to assure that the Sanders insurgency would be defeated, and that Hillary Clinton would be the party's nominee.

Leave aside too the glaring hypocrisy of the United States, of all countries, objecting to election meddling. Evidently, the consensus view among mainstream politicians and in mainstream media circles too is that, in the United States, "what's sauce for the goose" is emphatically not also "sauce for the gander."

Forget genuinely "fake news" reports as well; for example, the claim that the Russians hacked into electoral grids in Vermont and elsewhere. There is no solid evidence for them; and, as one would expect, they disappear down the memory hole just as soon as they serve their purpose.

Reports of Russian hacking that bear on infrastructure security, financial transactions, trade, industrial processes, and other vital economic and military concerns would, if true, be genuinely worrisome were the recently revived Cold War to heat up.

With so many of the leading lights of the American political and media establishments working so diligently to make that happen, this is a cause for concern. But not even the most determined warmongers have been able to come up with a plausible story about how Russian hacking affected the election that put Donald Trump in the White House.

War Party propaganda notwithstanding, the claim that the Russians interfered with the 2016 election is hardly gospel truth. Nevertheless, it merits investigation.

The story used to be that seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that reports of Russian meddling are correct. The official line now is that only four have weighed in decisively, the four actually in the know.

Meanwhile, Putin says the Russians did not meddle; and Julian Assange has said many times that the source of the DNC documents that Wikileaks published was not the Russian state. It has become fashionable in mainstream circles to vilify Assange, but the fact remains that his integrity, and Wikileaks', is well established.

Though portrayed as the devil incarnate, Putin is a skilled and worldly statesman, intent on advancing Russia's interests, as he understands them. He is therefore a liar by vocation, just as all serious politicians are.

For profound historical reasons, slightly different, slightly less liberal and more authoritarian, norms obtain in Russia's political sphere than in most Western countries; and, needless to say, like everyone else everywhere, Putin and his constituents are creatures of their time and place.

On the whole, though, the demon of the hour seems no less governed by moral, customary or legal constraints than others in similar positions. Even in responding to events in Ukraine and Syria, he has been more scrupulously observant of international law than Barack Obama or Donald Trump.

His word may not be as good as gold, but it is a lot better than the CIA's. Indeed, when it comes to lying, the CIA is second to none. It has been known too to politicize intelligence when it suits its purposes or the purposes of the American government, insofar as the two diverge. The Bush-Cheney administration's "weapons of mass destruction" is only the best-known recent example.

I would therefore venture that of all the relevant parties weighing in, the American intelligence community is the least credible. But we are so bombarded with the party line on Russian meddling that it is hard not to succumb to the belief that there surely must be some there there. That (ultimately irrational) consideration apart, there is every reason to remain skeptical of everybody's assessments. For the time being and perhaps for some time to come, agnosticism is the only reasonable position to take.

The news that people close to Trump -- his son, his son-in-law, his campaign manager -- met with a lawyer whom they believed to be acting on behalf of the Russian government, and who probably was, changes nothing.

According to Donald Junior's emails, they did it to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Needless to say, "opposition research" is part of electoral politics nowadays; they all do it.

The problem in this case is the involvement of someone with ties to the Kremlin. Had the story been that Trump or someone close to him hired homegrown detectives to dig up dirt on Clinton, the news probably wouldn't even have gotten Rachel Maddow's hackles up.

Or had the famiglia arranged a meeting for the same purpose with persons connected to some other country – Israel is an obvious example, but not the only imaginable one – that would be fine too.

Apparently, it is the Russian connection that is toxic.

For the anti-Trump political class and their mainstream media friends, Junior's emails are the Holy Grail, the "smoking gun."

But all they show is that there was contact between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Except on the dubious theory that the provision of information is an emolument of the kind that the Constitution proscribes, there was nothing even remotely criminal about that meeting in Trump Tower. There was not even anything unusual; campaigns look for dirt where they can find it, and they talk to foreign sources all the time.

Trump's flacks say that the purported smoking gun is actually no big deal.

It grieves me to say it, but they are right.

What those emails provide is evidence of the stupidity of the Trump family (no surprise there!) and close Trump associates (ditto). To make anything more of it is, to say the least, a stretch.

***

Narratives that center on Russian meddling in the 2016 election are one thing; well-researched investigations of connections between Trump, the Trump family, and the Trump campaign, on the one hand, and Russian oligarchs, mobsters, spies, and assorted sleaze balls, on the other, are something else altogether.

Inasmuch as birds of a feather generally do flock together, there probably are quite a few contacts of that sort to uncover.

Unfortunately, though, in the fog of neoconservative, Russophobic propaganda that has settled in over our shores, these issues have become confounded.

On the meddling in the last election question, the jury is still out on which liars to believe. Does it really matter, though?

It does to proponents and opponents of the War Party. The former are desperate for reasons to find Putin culpable of something, anything; the latter understand the importance of not letting them have their way.

It matters too to feckless Democrats (is there any other kind?) hoping to ride anti-Trump loathing back to power in 2018. It is all they have going for them.

But it hardly matters at all for the integrity of American democracy -- notwithstanding the self-righteous blather that currently surrounds the issue.

The danger to democracy – what little of it we have -- is not coming from hackers, Russian or otherwise, government sponsored or freelance. At this historical moment, it is coming mainly from the voter suppression efforts of Republican state officials and the Trump White House.

Republican donors are culpable too. They are the ones who bankroll the governors and state legislators who are leading the charge against (small-d) democracy.

How ironic that one of the things the Russians are supposed to have hacked into are state voting rolls. It is fatally unclear why they would care about that, just as it is brutally obvious why Republicans would. But this doesn't phase the War Party's propagandists one bit.

The story they are going with for now is that Putin wants Americans to lose faith in the democratic process. Why would he even care?

During the original Cold War, when the Soviet Union was supposedly intent on world domination, there were ways of answering that question. The answers were disingenuous, to say the least, but they could at least be made to seem plausible. Good luck with that now!

In any case, if Putin really did want to undermine faith in American democracy, he would be a little late to the gate; and he would be redundant. Who needs a foreign autocrat to do what Democrats and Republicans are already doing better?

Meanwhile, even with Junior's emails, Trump is still there; and unless Republicans turn on him, which, for now, seems unlikely – or unless, more unlikely still, he decides he has had enough -- there is where he will remain.

Meanwhile too, the Democratic Party, having made itself irrelevant, is still scapegoating Russians. What a dangerous, albeit bipartisan, spectacle – unreconstructed Clintonites working side by side with the likes of John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

All this does, though, is increase the likelihood that, in the process, the world will stumble into a war that, this time around, really will be a war to end all wars.

Is there a silver lining in any of this? If there is, it is well hidden. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Andrew Levine

ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What's Wrong With the Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

[Jul 16, 2017] Will the DNC lose in 2018, because theyre beholden to inner-party special interests? Stay tuned. Say what you will about Trump, but he certainly made politics a lot more entertaining to watch. Not sure if thats good or bad, but Im getting popcorn.

Notable quotes:
"... "We need to be talking about impeachment constantly. If you're an elected Dem & you're not talking impeachment or 25th amendment then find a new party," Scott Dworkin, senior adviser to Democratic Coalition Against Trump, on Twitter. ..."
"... "Voters are getting plenty about the Russia story, and they don't need candidates' help making that case. I think it's a fundamental mistake to make this election a referendum on impeachment. That means it's not an election on a health care bill that will raise premiums and take more than 22 million people off of their health care," Zac Petkanas, Democratic strategist, former aide to Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... "All of that (on Russia) is going to come out, and if a politician was lacking in courage and never did anything about it, I think they will pay dearly for it, and they should. But if you're a governor candidate next year, you're a lot smarter saying, 'Here's what I'm going to do about jobs and education and wages' than weighing in every day on issues outside your control." David Pepper, Ohio Democratic Party chairman. ..."
"... The only two Democrats, out of that random sample, who are going "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" I mean "Russia, Russia, Russia," are Dworkin and Galland from MoveOn. I think this blog knows quite a bit about MoveOn, so I don't need to mention it, and the only other person talking about it, is someone who is trying to make his name by impeaching Trump. ..."
Jul 16, 2017 | ucgsblog.wordpress.com
ucgsblog says: July 16, 2017 at 7:21 pm Sorry about being MIA, I'm probably going to be MIA until mid-August, but in the meantime, here's an interesting article:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/message-democrats-must-more-talk-russia-122203301.html

"We know that we can be an America that works for everyone, because we believe that our diversity is our greatest strength. And we believe that when we put hope on the ballot we do well, and when we allow others to put fear in the eyes of people we don't do so hot," Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

___

"We need to be talking about impeachment constantly. If you're an elected Dem & you're not talking impeachment or 25th amendment then find a new party," Scott Dworkin, senior adviser to Democratic Coalition Against Trump, on Twitter.

___

"We're advising groups to pay attention to Russia, but the bottom line is they're trying to take your health care away. That should be the focus. Eye on the prize," Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible.

___

"I focus a lot on good-paying jobs, student loan issues, health care and the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Those are the issues that are at the top of (voters') minds. I don't think (the Russia investigation) has to interfere with our conversation about every day matters in people's lives," Jason Crow, Democratic candidate in Colorado's 6th Congressional District.

___

"Voters are getting plenty about the Russia story, and they don't need candidates' help making that case. I think it's a fundamental mistake to make this election a referendum on impeachment. That means it's not an election on a health care bill that will raise premiums and take more than 22 million people off of their health care," Zac Petkanas, Democratic strategist, former aide to Hillary Clinton.

___

"We will both defend the integrity of our democracy (on the Russian investigation) and we will defend access to health care for tens of millions of people. The resistance is big enough and sophisticated enough to track both of those urgent and important issues," Anna Galland, executive director of Moveon.org Civic Action.

___

"All of that (on Russia) is going to come out, and if a politician was lacking in courage and never did anything about it, I think they will pay dearly for it, and they should. But if you're a governor candidate next year, you're a lot smarter saying, 'Here's what I'm going to do about jobs and education and wages' than weighing in every day on issues outside your control." David Pepper, Ohio Democratic Party chairman.

___

"We need to be able to explain what we're for just as emphatically as who we are against. Voters need to hear you talking about them more than they hear you talking about yourself, your opponent or the president." Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana.

!!!!!!-

The only two Democrats, out of that random sample, who are going "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" I mean "Russia, Russia, Russia," are Dworkin and Galland from MoveOn. I think this blog knows quite a bit about MoveOn, so I don't need to mention it, and the only other person talking about it, is someone who is trying to make his name by impeaching Trump.

Looks like the DNC is slowly starting to realize what voters want, despite inner party special interest groups. Levin and Crow summarize mainstream Democrats, so I'll just requote them:

"We're advising groups to pay attention to Russia, but the bottom line is they're trying to take your health care away. That should be the focus. Eye on the prize I focus a lot on good-paying jobs, student loan issues, health care and the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Those are the issues that are at the top of (voters') minds. I don't think (the Russia investigation) has to interfere with our conversation about every day matters in people's lives"

Will the DNC lose in 2018, because they're beholden to inner-party special interests? Stay tuned. Say what you will about Trump, but he certainly made politics a lot more entertaining to watch. Not sure if that's good or bad, but I'm getting popcorn.

[Jul 16, 2017] Trump's Worst Collusion Isn't With Russia -- It's With Corporations

Notable quotes:
"... Many leading liberals suspect , now with a little more evidence, that Trump worked with Russia to win his election. But we've long known that huge corporations and wealthy individuals threw their weight behind the billionaire. ..."
"... The top priority in Congress right now is to move a health bill that would gut Medicaid and throw at least 22 million Americans off their insurance -- while loosening regulations on insurance companies and cutting taxes on the wealthiest by over $346 billion . ..."
"... As few as 12 percent of Americans support that bill, but the allegiance of its supporters isn't to voters -- it's plainly to the wealthy donors who'd get those tax cuts. ..."
"... every single state ..."
"... Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and the editor of Foreign Policy In Focus. ..."
Jul 12, 2017 | fpif.org

The billionaires who backed Trump are making out a lot better than Putin.

Originally published in OtherWords Print

donald-trump-der-spiegel-cover

Der Spiegel's instantly infamous Donald Trump cover.

I've always been a little skeptical that there'd be a smoking gun about the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia. The latest news about Donald Trump, Jr., however, is tantalizingly close.

The short version of the story, revealed by emails the New York Times obtained, is that the president's eldest son was offered "some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary" and "would be very useful to your father."

More to the point, the younger Trump was explicitly told this was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." Donald, Jr.'s reply? "I love it."

Trump Jr. didn't just host that meeting at Trump Tower. He also brought along campaign manager Paul Manafort and top Trump confidante (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner.

We still don't have evidence they coordinated with Russian efforts to release Clinton campaign emails, spread "fake news," or hack state voting systems. But at the very least, the top members of Trump's inner circle turned up to get intelligence they knew was part of a foreign effort to meddle in the election.

Some in Washington are convinced they've heard enough already, with Virginia senator (and failed VP candidate) Tim Kaine calling the meeting " treason ."

Perhaps. But it's worth asking: Who's done the real harm here? Some argue it's not the Russians after all.

"The effects of the crime are undetectable," the legendary social critic Noam Chomsky says of the alleged Russian meddling, "unlike the massive effects of interference by corporate power and private wealth."

That's worth dwelling on.

Many leading liberals suspect , now with a little more evidence, that Trump worked with Russia to win his election. But we've long known that huge corporations and wealthy individuals threw their weight behind the billionaire.

That gambit's paying off far more handsomely for them -- and more destructively for the rest of us -- than any scheme by Putin.

The evidence is hiding in plain sight.

The top priority in Congress right now is to move a health bill that would gut Medicaid and throw at least 22 million Americans off their insurance -- while loosening regulations on insurance companies and cutting taxes on the wealthiest by over $346 billion .

As few as 12 percent of Americans support that bill, but the allegiance of its supporters isn't to voters -- it's plainly to the wealthy donors who'd get those tax cuts.

Meanwhile, majorities of Americans in every single congressional district support efforts to curb local pollution, limit carbon emissions, and transition to wind and solar. And majorities in every single state back the Paris climate agreement.

Yet even as scientists warn large parts of the planet could soon become uninhabitable, the fossil fuel-backed Trump administration has put a climate denier in charge of the EPA, pulled the U.S. out of Paris, and signed legislation to let coal companies dump toxic ash in local waterways .

Meanwhile, as the administration escalates the unpopular Afghan war once again, Kushner invited billionaire military contractors -- including Blackwater founder Erik Prince -- to advise on policy there.

Elsewhere, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and other architects of the housing crash are advising Trump on financial deregulation , while student debt profiteers set policy at the Department of Education.

Chomsky complains that this sort of collusion is often "not considered a crime but the normal workings of democracy." While Trump has taken it to new heights, it's certainly a bipartisan problem.

If Trump's people did work with Russia to undermine our vote, they should absolutely be held accountable. But the politicians leading the charge don't have a snowball's chance of redeeming our democracy unless they're willing to take on the corporate conspirators much closer to home. Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and the editor of Foreign Policy In Focus.

[Jul 16, 2017] As Anti-Trump - Anti-Russia Campaign Fails - Yascha Mounk Feeds New Lies

Yet another classic "Yascha about Russia... " propaganda theme variation ( Gessen style Russophobia). This time he is from Germany, though. Some people would do everything to earn a living.
Notable quotes:
"... Judging by the comments in "Professor" Mounk's Twitter feed, the vast majority are pretty much wise to the deception. Whether this holds for the retweets I don't know. But I'm pretty sure we are witnessing the decay of the establishment. ..."
"... Lemoine ( http://www.twitter.com/phl43) destroys the liberal media bullshit narrative piece by piece. I haven't found a more thorough discussion anywhere else online. It's well worth reading just for its clarity and strength of argumentation. ..."
"... Illuminating how widely quoted and passed on is the rubbish of Yascha Mounk, and 'et al'. What does this say about the publications and outlets that give such dishonesty a megaphone? They must lose credibility. ..."
"... Paul Craig Roberts has written at various times words to the effect that just about all public and private institutions in the US are now corrupt. It's hard to find examples that refute that thesis. ..."
"... so this is what Harvard has to offer. and to think having a Harvard education used to mean something. ..."
"... Nice to see at least one US Journalist take on and destroy two prominent Neocons. Here Tucker Carlson takes on Lt Col Ralph Peters and Max Boot. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/07/13/tucker-carlson-neocon-slayer/ ..."
"... The Corporate Media is owned by 6 corporations as a result of (liberal?) Bill Clinton admin enacting Republican (with Democrat Complicity) "Media Consolidation" aka monopolies. ..."
"... One Media owner is GE which also manufactures aircraft engines and weaponry and seeks government contracts for same. ..."
"... Charles C. Johnson said he also suggested that Smith get in touch with Andrew Auernheimer, a hacker who goes by the alias 'Weev' and has collaborated with Johnson in the past. Auernheimer--who was released from federal prison in 2014 after having a conviction for fraud and hacking offenses vacated [on appeal - May 2014] and subsequently moved to Ukraine . ..."
"... American lies should be put in context. The USA is a dying country, that is all but unmanageable, in the midst of its second Civil War (fought mostly in the media now, but the erosion of country's national fabric is immense and keeps worsening). In such circumstances, finding external enemy in order to redirect the destructive energy outward is simply a matter of national survival. That's why we have the anti-Russia frenzy. ..."
"... That's how great countries fracture and disappear. It' ugly, and will only get uglier. ..."
Jul 16, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

The U.S. borg is vehemently trying to set up Russia as an enemy of the "west". Their anti-Russian propaganda has become part of the campaign against U.S. President Trump who seeks détente with Russia. It requires intense efforts to denigrate the country, its citizens and its leaders. Here is an example of how such propaganda is fabricated.

Yascha Mounk is:

a Lecturer on Political Theory at Harvard University's Government Department, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund, and a Nonresident Fellow at New America's Political Reform Program.

He is a self declared liberal internationalist who has been published and quoted by lots of international media.

Yesterday Mounk tweeted this :


bigger

The Mounk tweet is a series of lies:

Need a reminder of the human cost of dictatorship? All these are journalists who criticized Putin--and died under mysterious circumstances

The President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin is dully elected and not a dictator. The Russian Federation may not be a "liberal democracy", but it is a democracy. The picture is old. It shows all Russian journalists who died during their work since 1991. Most of them died as war- or crime-correspondents and were not involved in politics at all. The death of most of those journalists is not mysterious. Getting blown up by artillery during the wars in Chechnya, Yugoslavia or Ukraine is no mystery at all. Most of these journalists never criticize Putin. They were already dead before Putin had any significant political role.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) lists 82 killed Russian journalists since 1992, most of them died due to war or related to civil crimes or corruption. There are about 80 portraits of journalists in the picture Mounk tweeted.

Two recognizable portraits and names therein are of Vlad Listyev, a TV entertainment producer killed in 1995 over some controversy about lucrative advertisement on public TV. Another portrait is of Dmitry Kholodov, killed in 1994 while investigating mafia connections within the Russian military. At the time of their death Putin was a minor bureaucrat in Saint Petersburg. He did not gain power until he became acting president at the end of 1999.

According to the CPJ numbers more Russian journalists were killed during the eight years of Yeltsin's presidency (1992-2000) than in the 17 years of Putin's presidencies since. Mounk claims "All these are journalists who criticized Putin ..." when more than half of them were already dead before Putin became known and to power. It was during the time of the " Harvard boys " who robbed Russia blind that most of these journalist were killed. The Russian system, thanks to the Harvard driven "reforms" and criminal privatization under Yeltsin, is a rough terrain for investigating oligarchs and mafia businesses. But there is no evidence , none at all, that Putin was ever involved in the decease of any journalist.

The first original publishing of the Mounk picture may have been as early as 2009 . A piece on journalists remembrance in Russia from 2014 already includes the pic. The reverse image search shows that the picture has been has been used by several news-outlets since.

Every aspect of the Mounk tweet is a lie.

But Mounk's lies have by now been re-tweeted over 22,000 times. Many of those who see it will believe the claims he makes. They will trust a widely publish Harvard academic. But the tweet, as well as nearly all other claims about Russia one sees in "western" media, is pure propaganda. It is like the editorial in today's New York Times that claims "Russia's oil-dependent economy [is] in trouble" while all Russian economic numbers turned positive and all indicators point to accelerating growth . It is fake news.

The anti-Russian propaganda campaign is now part of the "liberal" campaign against U.S. president Trump. It is failing . Trump's support is steady if not increasing despite daily new revelation about his (non existent) "collusion with Russia" and the (non existing) "Russian interference" in the U.S. election.

The purveyors of the propaganda stories are in despair. Each and every new fire they try to stoke dies off within a day or two. The temptation then is to invent and push ever bigger lies about Trump, Russia and their non-existing connections.

The fake news Mounk spits out, and which disqualify him as an academic, is a sign of their accelerating panic.

Posted by b on July 16, 2017 at 11:06 AM | Permalink

lysander | Jul 16, 2017 12:00:05 PM | 3
Judging by the comments in "Professor" Mounk's Twitter feed, the vast majority are pretty much wise to the deception. Whether this holds for the retweets I don't know. But I'm pretty sure we are witnessing the decay of the establishment.
Lemur | Jul 16, 2017 12:12:55 PM | 4
Reminder these journalists and academics are so evil they actually want to repeal and replace the historic American nation with a variety of mystery meat immigration (invasion).
Anon | Jul 16, 2017 12:13:05 PM | 5
Here is the best discussion of the Trump Jr. nonsense available: https://necpluribusimpar.net/trumps-collusion-russia-add-nothing-nothing-get-still-nothing/

Lemoine ( http://www.twitter.com/phl43) destroys the liberal media bullshit narrative piece by piece. I haven't found a more thorough discussion anywhere else online. It's well worth reading just for its clarity and strength of argumentation.

Anonymous | Jul 16, 2017 12:20:43 PM | 6
There are journalists killed during the 1980's in that room, too. Here is a higher resolution version:
http://newsprom.ru/i/n/845/205845/tn_205845_12517dfa330f.jpg

Apart from the two you mentioned, you can make out several other names right off the bat, like Soviet journalist Alexander Kaverznev who died in 1983 and Gennadiy Kurennoy who died together with colleague and fellow Gosteleradio SSSR journalist Viktor Nogin in an armed ambush in Yugoslavia, during the war in 1991. Also visible is Andrey Pralnikov, who died in 1997 after finally succumbing to radiation injuries he sustained in 1986 during his on-site coverage of the Chernobyl accident (he wrote a book about, too).

In short, the portraits in that room are just Soviet and Russian journalists that have died on the job, regardless of how these deaths occured, and it goes back to the 1980s at least. Quite obviously, of the actual violence-related deaths the vast majority are from the 1990's, since there's been a rather dramatic downwards trend since Putin assumed office.

On his blog (I don't know if it's still up) Fedia Kriukov did an in-depth assessment of the cases post-2000 (i.e. the ones actually "under Putin") and found that several had nothing to do with the journalists' professional activities, but were just the results of them dealing with the criminal underworld themselves, some were the results of violence not targeting them but targeting people they happened to be covering at the time (e.g. Scott in 2002 and Khasanov in 2004), some were just pure bad luck, and out of the very few that actually were clear targeted killings it always had to do with organized crime (Domnikov, Politovskaya, Klebnikov).

And this is where the aforementioned downwards trend comes in, because the only correlation between journalists being murdered and the Putin period is strongly negative, and the reason is that the chief cause of investigative journalists being murdered - rampant organized crime and corrupted local law enforcement and officials - has been tackled rather successfully since 2000.

Robert Snefjella | Jul 16, 2017 12:29:31 PM | 7
Illuminating how widely quoted and passed on is the rubbish of Yascha Mounk, and 'et al'. What does this say about the publications and outlets that give such dishonesty a megaphone? They must lose credibility.

Paul Craig Roberts has written at various times words to the effect that just about all public and private institutions in the US are now corrupt. It's hard to find examples that refute that thesis.

I interpret PCR's words to at core mean that dishonesty, including evil omission, is now in the United States pervasive, normalized, institutionalized, 'mandatory' for those who want to remain 'gainfully employed' or accepted by those institutions.

That famous quote often identified with Orwell "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act" is the opposite side of that same coin.

This culture of bs is of course much broader than the US. We have the now famous confession by Udo Ulfkotte that much German media is corrupt, CIA controlled, bought and paid for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1lWKyRI10w

Another obscure but telling example: we have in Canada a book by Dr. Chopra titled 'Corrupt to the Core', detailing the situation at Health Canada during Chopra's long employment there.

And the WHO has been a snake in the grass for example when it comes to radioactivity and human health, for two generations allowing the nuclear powers that in effect act as censoring and misleading gatekeepers for material on that subject emanating from the WHO.
http://mondediplo.com/2008/04/14who

Perhaps I am engaging in wishfukl thinking but it seems to me we are seeing more and more signs of the breakdown of that systematic and comprehensive dishonesty machine that has infiltrated so many institutions and required and rewarded dishonesty in so many people? And along with that breakdown, the declining power of even so-called 'distinguished' institutions to wield power on behalf of lies. The 'appeal to whatever authority' seems to be losing much of its previous punch.

The recent increase in disclosures and public awareness of institutionalized pedo-predation is an example. Trump's election in the face of an unprecedented media and elite hostility, and extreme by same support for Clinton, to me suggests there is more than just a leak in the disgusting dike sustaining dishonesty as default position.

And when it comes to Putin, his popularity not just in Russia has been sustained or even grown in the face of an extreme mass media demonization effort.

The process puts me in mind of that scene from the Wizard of Oz where the wicked Witch is melting away, truth/water as deadly nemesis.

dan of steele | Jul 16, 2017 12:40:25 PM | 8
so this is what Harvard has to offer. and to think having a Harvard education used to mean something.

two are the choices here, either malice or incompetence. I want to believe it is merely because he is incurious and is getting enough positive feedback from his echo chamber but fear he knows full well what he is doing.

What is the endgame? How will rotten relations with Russia improve the lives of US citizens? If not the general population, then who stands to gain?

Robert McMaster | Jul 16, 2017 12:53:28 PM | 9
Hit these academic thugs where it hurts. Cut off their funding. The main reason they do this lying is because it pays. If the only reward was doing the right thing or speaking truth, then this Harvard Hack wouldn't be bothered. So, no tenure for you buddy. No nothing. Now go write your head off.
somebody | Jul 16, 2017 12:58:15 PM | 10
List of assassinated American politicians

Nothing like good old cold war propaganda. Ah the memories ....

Has Putin stopped talking about "our American partners" yet?

Philippe Lemoine | Jul 16, 2017 1:07:26 PM | 11
Thanks to the commenter above for sharing my post and for the nice words he had about it. People here may also be interested in the 3-part series of posts I wrote about the attack in Khan Sheikhoun. The first part is here and there are links to the other parts at the bottom of the post. I think it's the most thorough discussion of this attack, but I also discuss other similar incidents. I carefully document a shocking amount of bias and incompetence on the part of journalists. I also wrote a 4-part series of posts on this whole Russia/Trump nonsense back in February, which I think is still very relevant today. The first part is here .
james | Jul 16, 2017 1:25:53 PM | 12
thanks b... fascinating how a guy from harvard is oblivious to harvards historical role here in the phase of ripping off russia during and after the transition in 1991... great quote from you here - "It was during the time of the "Harvard boys" who robbed Russia blind that most of these journalist were killed. The Russian system, thanks to the Harvard driven "reforms" and criminal privatization under Yeltsin, is a rough terrain for investigating oligarchs and mafia businesses." why would this dipshit Yascha Mounk say all this? who pays him to lie? he is completely discredited here.. someone ought to send him a link to your article so he can see what an ignoramus or con man (it is one of the other) he really is..
Hoarsewhisperer | Jul 16, 2017 1:29:51 PM | 13
The Mythbusters motto was:
"If a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."

Considering that Mythbusters were in the business of exposing and/or confirming popular myths & memes, the "overdoing" aspect was typically confined to exploring the limits to which the counter argument might prove to be valid.
The derision which the program attracted from edu-phobic 'purists' was regularly discredited by fulsome praise from scientists who pointed out that Mythbusters' exploration of the counter-argument demonstrated text-book faithfulness to The Scientific Method.

I'd love to hear what Mounk tells himself in order to anesthetise his conscience when embracing The Un-scientific Method to spread infantile, un-researched crap in the name of Harvard, Science and Mounk?

Tim | Jul 16, 2017 1:30:22 PM | 14
Yascha Mounk's book is titled, Stranger in my own country - a Jewish family in modern Germany.
harrylaw | Jul 16, 2017 1:45:05 PM | 15
Nice to see at least one US Journalist take on and destroy two prominent Neocons. Here Tucker Carlson takes on Lt Col Ralph Peters and Max Boot. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/07/13/tucker-carlson-neocon-slayer/
fast freddy | Jul 16, 2017 1:56:36 PM | 16
The Corporate Media is owned by 6 corporations as a result of (liberal?) Bill Clinton admin enacting Republican (with Democrat Complicity) "Media Consolidation" aka monopolies.

One Media owner is GE which also manufactures aircraft engines and weaponry and seeks government contracts for same.

Liberal? ideals regularly featured are "Austerity For the Commons" and Tax Cuts for the rich with "Trickle Down" as the prevailing economic model for the past 40 years. And warmongering.

The MSM has never openly opposed any US war and it has, in fact, provided justification for all US invasions.

Liberal - Conservative labeling is a tool to divide the commons.

fast freddy | Jul 16, 2017 1:56:36 PM | 17
The Corporate Media is owned by 6 corporations as a result of (liberal?) Bill Clinton admin enacting Republican (with Democrat Complicity) "Media Consolidation" aka monopolies.

One Media owner is GE which also manufactures aircraft engines and weaponry and seeks government contracts for same.

Liberal? ideals regularly featured are "Austerity For the Commons" and Tax Cuts for the rich with "Trickle Down" as the prevailing economic model for the past 40 years. And warmongering.

The MSM has never openly opposed any US war and it has, in fact, provided justification for all US invasions.

Liberal - Conservative labeling is a tool to divide the commons.

stevelaudig | Jul 16, 2017 2:02:25 PM | 18
Meanwhile the list of those killed directly by the USG in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Syria. Or indirectly by arming the murderers of the Yemeni, Ukraine and on and on and on, whose names we don't and may never know. "Their name is Legion". He's a bullshit academic who should participate in the wars he wants others to fight to prove 'his theory'.. He can put his own skin in the game.
Sven Lystbak | Jul 16, 2017 2:23:35 PM | 19
It is worth noting that 10 journalists and media persons have been killed in the Ukraine since the glorious revolution in 2014 against only 2 in Russia over the same period. This of cause is of zero interest to the western MSM.
Oui | Jul 16, 2017 2:26:41 PM | 20
The WSJ held an interview with Peter W. Smith and published an article by Shane Harris on June 29 titled "GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn".

Peter Smith Tapped Alt-Right to Access Dark Net

Charles C. Johnson said he also suggested that Smith get in touch with Andrew Auernheimer, a hacker who goes by the alias 'Weev' and has collaborated with Johnson in the past. Auernheimer--who was released from federal prison in 2014 after having a conviction for fraud and hacking offenses vacated [on appeal - May 2014] and subsequently moved to Ukraine .

Oui | Jul 16, 2017 2:27:13 PM | 21
See Part 1 - GOP Operative Peter Smith's Death Ruled A Suicide
Petri Krohn | Jul 16, 2017 2:38:07 PM | 22
The conflict is not between Russia and the West. It is not even between the West and the East. It is between Modernity and Post-Modernity.
  • Russia, secular Arab Socialist Syria, and Trump present Modernity.
  • The War Party, Identity politics, transsexualism, ISIS, and The Resistance present Post-Modernity.
mh505 | Jul 16, 2017 2:42:19 PM | 23
@ 12

Interesting article on the subject :

How Harvard Lost Russia .
The best and brightest of America's premier university came to Moscow in the 1990s to teach Russians how to be capitalists. This is the inside story of how their efforts led to scandal and disgrace.

http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article/1020662/How-Harvard-lost-Russia.html?ArticleId=1020662&single=true

telescope | Jul 16, 2017 2:45:54 PM | 24
American lies should be put in context. The USA is a dying country, that is all but unmanageable, in the midst of its second Civil War (fought mostly in the media now, but the erosion of country's national fabric is immense and keeps worsening). In such circumstances, finding external enemy in order to redirect the destructive energy outward is simply a matter of national survival. That's why we have the anti-Russia frenzy.

It'll fail because Russia is militarily unassailable, and because continuing with the campaign is not only not helping with the domestic politics, but is scrambling America's geopolitical calculations. It's a geopolitical dead-end.

All in all, what we are seeing in the US is a full-scale panic of the establishment, with the MSM arm simply putting it all out there, no matter how preposterous or inaccurate, in a desperate bid to salvage something that is fundamentally unsalvageable.

That's how great countries fracture and disappear. It' ugly, and will only get uglier.

ruralito | Jul 16, 2017 2:56:08 PM | 25
@6 good catch!
james | Jul 16, 2017 3:17:58 PM | 26
@16 fastfreddy.. yeah, that is worth repeating...

@ 23 mh505... thanks.. that is a good link for getting a better understanding.. i wonder how Yascha Mounk perceives all this? surely he can't be ignorant of it.. is someone paying him for his propaganda? what a waste of money it is!!!

james | Jul 16, 2017 3:24:31 PM | 27
Yascha Mounk can be contacted [email protected]
Anonymous | Jul 16, 2017 3:49:31 PM | 28
Also another thing (I'm #6) again...

So, going back to the photo. There are 8 chairs/portraits in each row, and about 10 rows, so that's roughly 80 people affiliated with journalism that have died one way or another that might or might not be connected to their work, in 37 years (if we just assume it starts at 1980, seeing as there is a 1983 case in direct view...)

Considering that we clearly have journalists that have died while reporting from combat zones (see my earlier comment) as well as journalists that have died due to injuries received while reporting from dangerous "civilian" situations, it all comes across as pretty unremarkable.

Mind you, between 1980 and 1991, the USSR was a country of nearly 300 million people, and the Russian Federation has been hovering in the 140-150 ballpark since 1991.

Mind you, that the USSR was getting increasingly lawless towards the end, and pretty much all successor states were in a state of anarchy for at least a couple of years past the Soviet demise (some longer than others, Russia longer than most thanks to Yeltsin and the total carnage that the West supported)

Mind you that multiple armed conflicts occured during this time, both domestically (Chechnya 1 and 2 for instance, in which a number of journalists were injured or killed) and in the near-abroad (the Georgian/Abkhazian/Ossetian/Ajaran conflicts, the Azeri-Armenian conflicts, the numerous Central Asian conflicts, the the brief Moldovan warm, the Yugoslav wars etc)

...All things considered, 80 journalists dead over all this time is nothing compared to say Mexico. And Russia's also known to have way more journalists per capita than most countries, which further adds to how underwhelming these statistics really are. The final nail in the coffin is, of course, that all these scary statistics sank like a rock after Putin took office and Russia has never been as peaceful, free and civilized as it is right now. But we've been through that.

Somebody should compile all the relevant information on this and make a glossy report, to be honest. I mean, it's all out there, it's just that they get away with outright lying about it because people don't bother doing any research on their own and they know it.

mh505 | Jul 16, 2017 4:03:42 PM | 29
@ 26 james

You can be entirely certain that the guy does not believe his own drivel. But: he may lose his job otherwise, which some would consider attenuating circumstances.

To me, he is not the worst among those Harvard boys. A hypocrite of a much higher magnitude has to be Jeffrey Sachs, who was among the most diligent drivers behind the destruction of post-communist Russia; yet today acts as if he never was even there. A Saulus turned Paulus, except no atonement in any way

nonsense factory | Jul 16, 2017 4:16:30 PM | 30
Did a Google News search on Yascha Mounk.
First, his publicity is based on some fairly bogus research on "millenials abandoning democracy". The WaPo ran a decent article discrediting it, worth noting since the guy seems to have a taste for spinning data for political reasons:
. . .scary-chart-about-the-future-of-democracy-is-pretty-misleading/
Second, he calls for a "Cold War mentality", putting him in with the likes of Clinton & McCain & Bush-Cheney, Gary Kasparov, etc. It's pretty boilerplate neocon/neolib thinking, here's a taste:
It's time to return to a Cold War mentality
By Yascha Mounk, Slate Mar 2017
Two years ago, when Garry Kasparov, the chess champion turned political dissident, began to warn that Vladimir Putin sought to undermine liberal democracy!not only in neighboring countries, but all over the West!he was widely written off as a crank. After Russia managed to hack the servers of the Democratic National Committee and spread fake news on an industrial scale, his warnings were finally recognized as all too prescient. But it is only over the past weeks, as journalists around the world have broken dozens of stories about Russian meddling in the democratic process, that the sheer scale of this effort has become apparent.

The last time there was such a massive PR push inside the USA on a foreign policy issue was during the 2002-2003 runup to the Iraq invasion, based on an equally bogus story as the Russia bogeyman one, i.e. Iraqi WMDs.

The fact is, a multipolar world without "American exceptionalism" will be a better deal for the average American citizen, if not for the Washington circle of trough-feeders. This is a basic truth that the neoliberal empire-builders just can't handle. Of course, the big academic institutions are on board with endless military-industrial budgets, NATO expansion, regime change. Just as academic institutions in the old Soviet Union always went along with Central Committee PR lines.

On the other hand, on domestic policy? If you look into details, Clinton and Trump are not so different here - basically it's corporate rule, Trump and Clinton have similar numbers of Goldman Sachs people on their teams. Equally disastrous policies on the fundamentals like infrastructure, energy, manufacturing, etc. We'd be better off just giving our tax dollars to China to have them rebuild our infrastructure, it's that pitiful.

Maybe Trump should just spend the next four years abroad, running around with world leaders having a good time, ignoring all the neoliberal establishment pleas for regime changes and NATO wars, completely ignoring the domestic situation? The corrupt federal government in Washington can fight itself to death, and the states can run domestic policy instead?

[Jul 16, 2017] The legacy media and permanent ( deep ) state are struggling to savage Trump with absurd accusations, but our cage-fighter is keeping them at bay with his smart-phone

Jul 16, 2017 | www.unz.com

annamaria > , July 15, 2017 at 3:30 am GMT

@RobinG Well said. The legacy media and permanent ("deep") state are struggling to savage Trump with absurd accusations, but our cage-fighter is keeping them at bay with his smart-phone.

Meanwhile, journalist (and that's in the best sense) Lee Stranahan is building a solid case on the DNC's crimes, including collusion with a foreign government. Please share this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfNe5WsmKwU

The MUST SEE guide to DNC/Ukraine Collusion and Election Interference Agree.

Meanwhile, here is a sensational article re "great America:" "CIA Agent Confesses On Deathbed: 'We Blew Up WTC7 On 9/11″ http://yournewswire.com/cia-911-wtc7/

[Jul 16, 2017] There you have it, Putin murdered Seth Rich. And the rotten US establishment retains its golden halo of angelic moral authority

Jul 16, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

kirill , March 2, 2017 at 11:59 am

http://russia-insider.com/en/straight-clinton-playbook-russia-blamed-murder-dnc-staffer/ri19084

As I posted before, emails are not something that requires hacking beyond a noob script kiddie. Emails are simply not secure and can be easily intercepted by man-in-the-middle relay servers. There is simply no way to establish who runs such computers from the headers on the emails. It is up to the relay server to update the email header and it does not have to do it. BTW, the fake email relay can spoof an IP so that the other email relay servers can't even tell it is not in the pool of existing machines (and there is no global authority that maintains the integrity of this pool of machines anyway).

There is no way Seth Rich would have "discovered Russian email hacking". But for sure he did discover something that got him killed and the perps are 100% Americans.

marknesop , March 2, 2017 at 7:08 pm
The climate today is just so receptive to 'Russia did it' that the temptation to blame Russia for everything that is not going as planned or as desired – or for which one might otherwise be blamed oneself – is apparently overwhelming.

The comments nailed it right away – 'who styles himself as a former US Intelligence Officer' is taking made-up reporting to a new level of absurdity. Now reporters are even qualifying their anonymous sources so you're unsure if they actually are who they won't say they are.

Patient Observer , March 3, 2017 at 3:21 pm
http://www.gocomics.com/frank-and-ernest

[Jul 16, 2017] War on Russia Is Murdering Russians - LewRockwell

Notable quotes:
"... War with Russia is a call to murder Russian people. They don't deserve our hatred. ..."
"... Those of you who are preoccupied with the narrative that Russia hacked the election, please stop discounting the millions of us who had not voted for decades that came out to prevent Mrs. Clinton from rising to such a position of power. Then stop to consider that what you want the American Government to do, create an enemy of Russia, is to create an enemy of the Russian people. You want to kill the people who I have seen in these videos for really no better reason than you don't like how an election turned out. ..."
Jul 16, 2017 | www.lewrockwell.com
War on Russia Is Murdering Russians

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

July 14, 2017 Email Print Share

Writes Bob Strodtbeck:

Dear Lew,

Several months ago you had a video of a group of young Russian women singing a Russian folk song acapella (Youtube, Russian Girls Sing Lube) which left a lasting impression on me. For the last several days I have been exploring Russian folk music for the sake of getting an idea of what these people are like. My observations are below with a link to a video by a Russian folk music group.

The point is people who have their noses twisted out of joint over the defeat of a horribly corrupt presidential candidate would choose to see people such as those I have seen in the Russian folk music videos vaporized. We have become a hideous country.

War with Russia is a call to murder Russian people. They don't deserve our hatred.

This text is from my facebook posting which also has a link to the folk music video.

I have been taking time recently to find some information on the Russian people since the American political system seems so dedicated to make war against Russia.

I have been captivated by their folk music and the love they put into it. Much of it has been acapella and beautiful. In all of those presentations I got the sense that each singer considered the song more important than their individual talent, and the sound of the group the tribute to the song.

In watching tho se videos I came to the impression that the Russian people are happy, proud and strong. This impression speaks highly of their character, as it was within the lifetime of most Americans that the Russian system collapsed and those people had the duty to rebuild their economy, culture, and faith from the rubble left by Soviet Communism. It seems to me they have done it.

The main point here is a war with Russia is a war on these courageous, warm, and resilient people. I challenge anybody who is upset with what happened in the election last November to watch any of these videos and ask yourself if you have ever been as happy as the people that are in them. I don't believe any of them care who is President of the United States or probably that Vladimir Putin is the leader of their country. After all, Putin said that Russia spans 11 time zones an most Russians live life without worrying about the government.

Those of you who are preoccupied with the narrative that Russia hacked the election, please stop discounting the millions of us who had not voted for decades that came out to prevent Mrs. Clinton from rising to such a position of power. Then stop to consider that what you want the American Government to do, create an enemy of Russia, is to create an enemy of the Russian people. You want to kill the people who I have seen in these videos for really no better reason than you don't like how an election turned out.

You think about that.

[Jul 14, 2017] Russia Baiters and Putin Haters

Notable quotes:
"... "Is Russia an enemy of the United States?" NBC's Kasie Hunt demanded of Ted Cruz. Replied the runner-up for the GOP nomination, "Russia is a significant adversary. Putin is a KGB thug." ..."
"... "Why Russia is a Hostile Power" is the title of today's editorial in The Washington Post that seeks to explain why Middle America should embrace the Russophobia of our capital city: "Vladimir Putin adheres to a set of values that are antithetical to bedrock American values. He favors spheres of influence over self-determination; corruption over transparency; and repression over democracy." ..."
"... Bush I and James Baker even accused Ukrainians of "suicidal nationalism" for contemplating independence from Russia. ..."
"... As for favoring "repression over democracy," would that not apply to our NATO ally President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, our Arab ally Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt, and our Philippine ally Rodrigo Duterte? Were U.S. Cold War allies like the Shah of Iran and Gen. Augusto Pinochet of Chile all Jeffersonian Democrats? Have we forgotten our recent history? ..."
"... Will Magnitsky Act sanctions be slammed on China? Don't bet on it. Too much trade. Congress will do what comes naturally -- kowtow. Yet our heroic Senate voted 98-2 to slam new sanctions on Russia. ..."
"... When the Cold War ended in December 1991, the Soviet Union had dissolved into 15 nations. Moscow had given up her empire, a third of her territory, and half the population of the USSR. Marxist-Leninist ideology was dead. An epochal change had taken place. ..."
"... Yet hostility to Russia and hatred of Putin seem to exceed anything some of us remember from the worst days of the Cold War. ..."
"... Putin's Russia is called imperialist, though Estonia, next door, which Russia could swallow in one gulp, has been free for 25 years. ..."
"... Russia invaded Georgia. Well, yes, after Georgia invaded the seceded province of South Ossetia and killed Russian peacekeepers. ..."
"... Russia has taken back Crimea from Ukraine. True, but only after a U.S.-backed coup in Kiev replaced the elected pro-Russian regime. ..."
"... Russia has intervened to back Bashar Assad in Syria. Yes, but only after our insurgent allies collaborated with al-Qaida and ISIS to bring him down. Is Russia not allowed to support an ally, recognized by the U.N., which provides its only naval base on the Med? ..."
"... As big a clown as Trump is, just about everybody else in DC are proving to be even bigger clowns. ..."
"... Vladimir Putin is not a thug. The real political thugs reside in Congress such as McCain, Graham, Cruz, Pelosi, Schumer, just to name a few, and not to speak of the heads of the CIA, NSA and the other criminal organizations. ..."
"... Russiaphobia and Putin-hatred have reached unimaginable proportions within the Beltway. The Hartland America, however, couldn't care less. The whole Russian bashing is hypocritical and just disgusting. ..."
"... The entire Russian meddling-business is a media-spin. 95 per cent of it is anti-Trump and pro-Clinton and Obama. Didn't the US government intervene massively in the Yeltsin reelection? So far, not a single evidence proves Russian involvement in the US election. It's all baloney. ..."
"... The real reason for the Putin-bashing lies in his actions taken after he succeeds the criminal and corrupt Yeltsin gang. During the fateful 10-year term as Russia's president, an unprecedented robbery by a mafia-style network composed of the CIA, George Soros, and his Harvard-Boys together with the KGB and the Yeltsin-clan took place. ..."
"... After Putin had become President, he stopped the plundering of Russia at once and started to rebuild Russia from the scratch to its relatively political important role in international affairs. Without the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was the greatest disaster, the US political class could not act so recklessly and turn the Middle East into chaos. ..."
"... Perhaps the thugs in Washington should put their own house in order before slinging mud at other heads of state! ..."
Jul 14, 2017 | www.unz.com

"Is Russia an enemy of the United States?" NBC's Kasie Hunt demanded of Ted Cruz. Replied the runner-up for the GOP nomination, "Russia is a significant adversary. Putin is a KGB thug."

To Hillary Clinton running mate Tim Kaine, the revelation that Donald Trump Jr., entertained an offer from the Russians for dirt on Clinton could be considered "treason."

Treason is giving aid and comfort to an enemy in a time of war.

Are we really at war with Russia? Is Russia really our enemy?

"Why Russia is a Hostile Power" is the title of today's editorial in The Washington Post that seeks to explain why Middle America should embrace the Russophobia of our capital city: "Vladimir Putin adheres to a set of values that are antithetical to bedrock American values. He favors spheres of influence over self-determination; corruption over transparency; and repression over democracy."

Yet, accommodating a sphere of influence for a great power is exactly what FDR and Churchill did with Stalin, and every president from Truman to George H. W. Bush did with the Soviet Union.

When East Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Poles rose up against Communist regimes, no U.S. president intervened. For those nations were on the other side of the Yalta line agreed to in 1945.

Bush I and James Baker even accused Ukrainians of "suicidal nationalism" for contemplating independence from Russia.

When did support for spheres of influence become un-American?

As for supporting "corruption over transparency," ex-Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili resigned in disgust as governor of Odessa in November, accusing Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, our man in Kiev, of supporting corruption.

As for favoring "repression over democracy," would that not apply to our NATO ally President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, our Arab ally Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt, and our Philippine ally Rodrigo Duterte? Were U.S. Cold War allies like the Shah of Iran and Gen. Augusto Pinochet of Chile all Jeffersonian Democrats? Have we forgotten our recent history?

The Post brought up the death in prison of lawyer-activist Sergei Magnitsky in 2009. Under the Magnitsky Act of 2012, Congress voted sanctions on Russia's elites.

Yet China's lone Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Liu Xiaobo, sentenced to 11 years in prison for championing democracy, died Thursday of liver cancer, with police in his hospital room. Communist dictator Xi Jinping, who makes Putin look like Justin Trudeau, would not let the dying man go.

Will Magnitsky Act sanctions be slammed on China? Don't bet on it. Too much trade. Congress will do what comes naturally -- kowtow. Yet our heroic Senate voted 98-2 to slam new sanctions on Russia.

What are the roots of this hostility to Russia and hatred of Putin, whom a Fox analyst called "as bad as Hitler"?

During the Cold War, every president sought detente with a USSR that was arguably the most blood-soaked regime of the century.

When the Cold War ended in December 1991, the Soviet Union had dissolved into 15 nations. Moscow had given up her empire, a third of her territory, and half the population of the USSR. Marxist-Leninist ideology was dead. An epochal change had taken place.

Yet hostility to Russia and hatred of Putin seem to exceed anything some of us remember from the worst days of the Cold War.

  • Putin's Russia is called imperialist, though Estonia, next door, which Russia could swallow in one gulp, has been free for 25 years.
  • Russia invaded Georgia. Well, yes, after Georgia invaded the seceded province of South Ossetia and killed Russian peacekeepers.
  • Russia has taken back Crimea from Ukraine. True, but only after a U.S.-backed coup in Kiev replaced the elected pro-Russian regime.
  • Russia has intervened to back Bashar Assad in Syria. Yes, but only after our insurgent allies collaborated with al-Qaida and ISIS to bring him down. Is Russia not allowed to support an ally, recognized by the U.N., which provides its only naval base on the Med?

... ... ...

Thirdeye , July 14, 2017 at 5:29 am GMT

As big a clown as Trump is, just about everybody else in DC are proving to be even bigger clowns.

Ludwig Watzal , Website July 14, 2017 at 5:48 am GMT

Vladimir Putin is not a thug. The real political thugs reside in Congress such as McCain, Graham, Cruz, Pelosi, Schumer, just to name a few, and not to speak of the heads of the CIA, NSA and the other criminal organizations.

Russiaphobia and Putin-hatred have reached unimaginable proportions within the Beltway. The Hartland America, however, couldn't care less. The whole Russian bashing is hypocritical and just disgusting.

The entire Russian meddling-business is a media-spin. 95 per cent of it is anti-Trump and pro-Clinton and Obama. Didn't the US government intervene massively in the Yeltsin reelection? So far, not a single evidence proves Russian involvement in the US election. It's all baloney.

The real reason for the Putin-bashing lies in his actions taken after he succeeds the criminal and corrupt Yeltsin gang. During the fateful 10-year term as Russia's president, an unprecedented robbery by a mafia-style network composed of the CIA, George Soros, and his Harvard-Boys together with the KGB and the Yeltsin-clan took place.

After Putin had become President, he stopped the plundering of Russia at once and started to rebuild Russia from the scratch to its relatively political important role in international affairs. Without the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was the greatest disaster, the US political class could not act so recklessly and turn the Middle East into chaos.

Perhaps the thugs in Washington should put their own house in order before slinging mud at other heads of state!

Renoman , July 14, 2017 at 8:43 am GMT

Russia is no threat, America is the threat. The past is gone, trade with them, make deals, take their money and leave them alone. Grow up!

El Dato , July 14, 2017 at 9:47 am GMT

A disturbing item on the Magnitsky Thing: How Russia-gate Met the Magnitsky Myth

While I do think that property rights are often roadkill of the Russian Oligarchic and State 4x4s, there seem to be heard the loud banging sounds of construction behind the Magnitsky act.

El Dato , July 14, 2017 at 10:52 am GMT

Tucker Carlson does a Death Star Trench Run on Ralph Peters, so-called "military expert" and Max Boot, Nazi detector extraordinaire:

Tucker Carlson, Neocon Slayer: He scores two takedowns in two days

Also drills into Democratic Congresscritter David Cicilline:

'Punish Russians for having RT?' Fox News host slams US senator over 'Russian propaganda'

Fun on Fox, who would have thunk it?

Avery , July 14, 2017 at 12:27 pm GMT

@Ludwig Watzal

Vladimir Putin is not a thug. The real political thugs reside in Congress such as McCain, Graham, Cruz, Pelosi, Schumer, just to name a few, and not to speak of the heads of the CIA, NSA and the other criminal organizations.

Russiaphobia and Putin-hatred have reached unimaginable proportions within the Beltway. The Hartland America, however, couldn't care less. The whole Russian bashing is hypocritical and just disgusting.

The entire Russian meddling-business is a media-spin. 95 per cent of it is anti-Trump and pro-Clinton and Obama. Didn't the US government intervene massively in the Yeltsin reelection? So far, not a single evidence proves Russian involvement in the US election. It's all baloney.

The real reason for the Putin-bashing lies in his actions taken after he succeeds the criminal and corrupt Yeltsin gang. During the fateful 10-year term as Russia's president, an unprecedented robbery by a mafia-style network composed of the CIA, George Soros, and his Harvard-Boys together with the KGB and the Yeltsin-clan took place.

After Putin had become President, he stopped the plundering of Russia at once and started to rebuild Russia from the scratch to its relatively political important role in international affairs. Without the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was the greatest disaster, the US political class could not act so recklessly and turn the Middle East into chaos.

Perhaps the thugs in Washington should put their own house in order before slinging mud at other heads of state!

Well said.

btw: US has been meddling – and then some – in foreign elections for decades. The one that immediately comes to mind is Operation Ajax (1953), the combined US & UK coup against the _democratically_ elected Iranian government of Mosaddegh .

[Jul 14, 2017] Americas War for Global Domination by Michel Chossudovsky

While published almost 15 years ago, this artile still looks as if written yesterday. Presidents change but foreign policy does not.
Notable quotes:
"... US military and intelligence operations in the post Cold War era were led in close coordination with the "free market reforms" imposed under IMF guidance in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the Balkans, which resulted in the destabilization of national economies and the impoverishment of millions of people. ..."
"... The World Bank sponsored privatization programmes in these countries enabled Western capital to acquire ownership and gain control of a large share of the economy of the former Eastern block countries. This process is also at the basis of the strategic mergers and/or takeovers of the former Soviet oil and gas industry by powerful Western conglomerates, through financial manipulation and corrupt political practices. ..."
"... The deployment of America's war machine purports to enlarge America's economic sphere of influence. The U.S. has established a permanent military presence not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has military bases in several of the former Soviet republics on China's Western frontier. In turn, since 1999, there has been a military buildup in the South China Sea. ..."
"... The Pentagon views 'territorial control' over Syria, which constitutes a land bridge between Israel and occupied Iraq, as 'strategic' from a military and economic standpoint. It also constitutes a means of controlling the Iraqi border and curbing the flow of volunteer fighters, who are traveling to Baghdad to join the Iraqi resistance movement. ..."
"... Washington has adopted a first strike "pre-emptive" nuclear policy, which has now received congressional approval. Nuclear weapons are no longer a weapon of last resort as during the cold War era. ..."
"... The war on Iraq has been in the planning stages at least since the mid-1990s. A 1995 National Security document of the Clinton administration stated quite clearly that the objective of the war is oil. "to protect the United States' uninterrupted, secure U.S. access to oil. ..."
"... In September 2000, a few months before the accession of George W. Bush to the White House, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) published its blueprint for global domination under the title: "Rebuilding America's Defenses. ..."
"... The PNAC outlines a roadmap of conquest. It calls for "the direct imposition of U.S. "forward bases" throughout Central Asia and the Middle East "with a view to ensuring economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential "rival" or any viable alternative to America's vision of a 'free market' economy" (See Chris Floyd, Bush's Crusade for empire, Global Outlook, No. 6, 2003) ..."
"... The PNAC's reference to a "catastrophic and catalyzing event" echoes a similar statement by David Rockefeller to the United Nations Business Council in 1994: ..."
"... We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order." ..."
"... " it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus [in America] on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." ..."
"... The "catastrophic and catalyzing event" as stated by the PNAC is an integral part of US military-intelligence planning. General Franks, who led the military campaign into Iraq, pointed recently (October 2003) to the role of a "massive casualty-producing event" to muster support for the imposition of military rule in America. (See General Tommy Franks calls for Repeal of US Constitution, November 2003, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/EDW311A.html ). ..."
"... In many regards, the militarisation of civilian State institutions in the US is already functional under the facade of a bogus democracy. ..."
"... In the wake of the September attacks on the World Trade Center, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created to the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), or "Office of Disinformation" as it was labeled by its critics ..."
"... Spelled out in the National Security Strategy (NSS), the preemptive "defensive war" doctrine and the "war on terrorism" against Al Qaeda constitute the two essential building blocks of the Pentagon's propaganda campaign. ..."
"... The objective is to present "preemptive military action" --meaning war as an act of "self-defense" against two categories of enemies, "rogue States" and "Islamic terrorists" ..."
"... In other words, the Clinton Administration was "harboring terrorists". Moreover, official statements and intelligence reports confirm links between US military-intelligence units and Al Qaeda operatives, as occurred in Bosnia (mid 1990s), Kosovo (1998-99) and Macedonia (2001) ..."
"... The ties of these terrorist organizations (particularly those in Asia) to Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI) is acknowledged in a few cases by official sources and press dispatches. Confirmed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), some of these groups are said to have links to Pakistan's ISI, without identifying the nature of these links. ..."
"... both Richard Armitage and Colin Powell played a role in the 9/11 cover-up. ..."
"... The FBI confirmed in a report made public late September 2001 the role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence. According to the report, the alleged 9-11 ring leader, Mohammed Atta, had been financed from sources out of Pakistan. A subsequent intelligence report confirmed that the then head of the ISI General Mahmoud Ahmad had transferred money to Mohammed Atta. (See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization, op.cit.) ..."
"... Increasingly, the military-intelligence establishment (rather than the State Department, the White House and the US Congress) is calling the shots on US foreign policy. Meanwhile, the Texas oil giants, the defense contractors, Wall Street and the powerful media giants, operating discreetly behind the scenes, are pulling the strings. If politicians become a source of major embarrassment, they can themselves be discredited by the media, discarded and a new team of political puppets can be brought to office. ..."
"... The "Criminalization of the State", is when war criminals legitimately occupy positions of authority, which enable them to decide "who are the criminals", when in fact they are criminals. ..."
"... In the US, both Republicans and Democrats share the same war agenda and there are war criminals in both parties. Both parties are complicit in the 9/11 cover-up and the resultant quest for world domination. All the evidence points to what is best described as "the criminalisation of the State", which includes the Judiciary and the bipartisan corridors of the US Congress. ..."
"... Under the war agenda, high ranking officials of the Bush administration, members of the military, the US Congress and the Judiciary have been granted the authority not only to commit criminal acts, but also to designate those in the antiwar movement who are opposed to these criminal acts as "enemies of the State." ..."
"... More generally, the US military and security apparatus endorses and supports dominant economic and financial interests - i.e. the build-up, as well as the exercise, of military might enforces "free trade". The Pentagon is an arm of Wall Street; NATO coordinates its military operations with the World Bank and the IMF's policy interventions, and vice versa. Consistently, the security and defense bodies of the Western military alliance, together with the various civilian governmental and intergovernmental bureaucracies (e.g. IMF, World Bank, WTO) share a common understanding, ideological consensus and commitment to the New World Order. ..."
Dec 15, 2003 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

Originally published by Global Research (12/15/03)

We are the juncture of the most serious crisis in modern history.

The Bush Administration has embarked upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.

The wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are part of a broader military agenda, which was launched at the end of the Cold War. The ongoing war agenda is a continuation of the 1991 Gulf War and the NATO led wars on Yugoslavia (1991-2001).

The post Cold War period has also been marked by numerous US covert intelligence operations within the former Soviet Union, which were instrumental in triggering civil wars in several of the former republics including Chechnya (within the Russian Federation), Georgia and Azerbaijan. In the latter, these covert operations were launched with a view to securing strategic control over oil and gas pipeline corridors.

US military and intelligence operations in the post Cold War era were led in close coordination with the "free market reforms" imposed under IMF guidance in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the Balkans, which resulted in the destabilization of national economies and the impoverishment of millions of people.

The World Bank sponsored privatization programmes in these countries enabled Western capital to acquire ownership and gain control of a large share of the economy of the former Eastern block countries. This process is also at the basis of the strategic mergers and/or takeovers of the former Soviet oil and gas industry by powerful Western conglomerates, through financial manipulation and corrupt political practices.

In other words, what is at stake in the US led war is the recolonization of a vast region extending from the Balkans into Central Asia.

The deployment of America's war machine purports to enlarge America's economic sphere of influence. The U.S. has established a permanent military presence not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has military bases in several of the former Soviet republics on China's Western frontier. In turn, since 1999, there has been a military buildup in the South China Sea.

War and Globalization go hand in hand. Militarization supports the conquest of new economic frontiers and the worldwide imposition of "free market" system.

The Next Phase of the War

The Bush administration has already identified Syria as the next stage of "the road map to war". The bombing of presumed 'terrorist bases' in Syria by the Israeli Air Force in October was intended to provide a justification for subsequent pre-emptive military interventions. Ariel Sharon launched the attacks with the approval of Donald Rumsfeld. (See Gordon Thomas, Global Outlook, No. 6, Winter 2004)

This planned extension of the war into Syria has serious implications. It means that Israel becomes a major military actor in the US-led war, as well as an 'official' member of the Anglo-American coalition.

The Pentagon views 'territorial control' over Syria, which constitutes a land bridge between Israel and occupied Iraq, as 'strategic' from a military and economic standpoint. It also constitutes a means of controlling the Iraqi border and curbing the flow of volunteer fighters, who are traveling to Baghdad to join the Iraqi resistance movement.

This enlargement of the theater of war is consistent with Ariel Sharon's plan to build a 'Greater Israel' "on the ruins of Palestinian nationalism". While Israel seeks to extend its territorial domain towards the Euphrates River, with designated areas of Jewish settlement in the Syrian heartland, Palestinians are imprisoned in Gaza and the West Bank behind an 'Apartheid Wall'.

In the meantime, the US Congress has tightened the economic sanctions on Libya and Iran. As well, Washington is hinting at the need for a 'regime change' in Saudi Arabia. Political pressures are building up in Turkey.

So, the war could indeed spill over into a much broader region extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indian sub-continent and China's Western frontier.

The "Pre-emptive" Use of Nuclear Weapons

Washington has adopted a first strike "pre-emptive" nuclear policy, which has now received congressional approval. Nuclear weapons are no longer a weapon of last resort as during the cold War era.

The US, Britain and Israel have a coordinated nuclear weapons policy. Israeli nuclear warheads are pointed at major cities in the Middle East. The governments of all three countries have stated quite openly, prior to the war on Iraq, that they are prepared to use nuclear weapons "if they are attacked" with so-called "weapons of mass destruction." Israel is the fifth nuclear power in the World. Its nuclear arsenal is more advanced than that of Britain.

Barely a few weeks following the entry of the US Marines into Baghdad, the US Senate Armed Services Committee gave the green light to the Pentagon to develop a new tactical nuclear bomb, to be used in conventional war theaters, "with a yield [of up to] six times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb".

Following the Senate decision, the Pentagon redefined the details of its nuclear agenda in a secret meeting with senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex held at Central Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. The meeting was held on August 6, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, 58 years ago.

The new nuclear policy explicitly involves the large defense contractors in decision-making. It is tantamount to the "privatization" of nuclear war. Corporations not only reap multibillion dollar profits from the production of nuclear bombs, they also have a direct voice in setting the agenda regarding the use and deployment of nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has unleashed a major propaganda and public relations campaign with a view to upholding the use nuclear weapons for the "defense of the American Homeland."

Fully endorsed by the US Congress, the mini-nukes are considered to be "safe for civilians".

This new generation of nuclear weapons is slated to be used in the next phase of this war, in "conventional war theatres" (e.g. in the Middle East and Central Asia) alongside conventional weapons. In December 2003, the US Congress allocated $6.3 billion solely for 2004, to develop this new generation of "defensive" nuclear weapons.

The overall annual defense budget is of the order of 400 billion dollars, roughly of the same order of magnitude as the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the Russian Federation.

While there is no firm evidence of the use of mini-nukes in the Iraqi and Afghan war theatres, tests conducted by Canada's Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC), in Afghanistan confirm that recorded toxic radiation was not attributable to 'heavy metal' depleted uranium ammunition (DU), but to another unidentified form of uranium contamination:

"some form of uranium weapon had been used (...) The results were astounding: the donors presented concentrations of toxic and radioactive uranium isotopes between 100 and 400 times greater than in the Gulf War veterans tested in 1999." www.umrc.net

The Planning of War

The war on Iraq has been in the planning stages at least since the mid-1990s. A 1995 National Security document of the Clinton administration stated quite clearly that the objective of the war is oil. "to protect the United States' uninterrupted, secure U.S. access to oil.

In September 2000, a few months before the accession of George W. Bush to the White House, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) published its blueprint for global domination under the title: "Rebuilding America's Defenses."

The PNAC is a neo-conservative think tank linked to the Defense-Intelligence establishment, the Republican Party and the powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which plays a behind-the-scenes role in the formulation of US foreign policy.

The PNAC's declared objective is quite simple - to:

"Fight and decisively win in multiple, simultaneous theater wars".

This statement indicates that the US plans to be involved simultaneously in several war theaters in different regions of the World.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney had commissioned the PNAC blueprint prior to the presidential elections.

The PNAC outlines a roadmap of conquest. It calls for "the direct imposition of U.S. "forward bases" throughout Central Asia and the Middle East "with a view to ensuring economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential "rival" or any viable alternative to America's vision of a 'free market' economy" (See Chris Floyd, Bush's Crusade for empire, Global Outlook, No. 6, 2003)

The Role of "Massive Casualty Producing Events"

The PNAC blueprint also outlines a consistent framework of war propaganda. One year before 9/11, the PNAC called for "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor," which would serve to galvanize US public opinion in support of a war agenda. (See http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NAC304A.html )

The PNAC architects seem to have anticipated with cynical accuracy, the use of the September 11 attacks as "a war pretext incident."

The PNAC's reference to a "catastrophic and catalyzing event" echoes a similar statement by David Rockefeller to the United Nations Business Council in 1994:

"We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."

Similarly, in the words Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book, The Grand Chessboard:.

" it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus [in America] on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter was one of the key architects of the Al Qaeda network, created by the CIA at the onslaught of the Soviet Afghan war (1979-1989).

The "catastrophic and catalyzing event" as stated by the PNAC is an integral part of US military-intelligence planning. General Franks, who led the military campaign into Iraq, pointed recently (October 2003) to the role of a "massive casualty-producing event" to muster support for the imposition of military rule in America. (See General Tommy Franks calls for Repeal of US Constitution, November 2003, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/EDW311A.html ).

Franks identifies the precise scenario whereby military rule will be established:

"a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world - it may be in the United States of America - that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event." (Ibid)

This statement from an individual, who was actively involved in military and intelligence planning at the highest levels, suggests that the "militarisation of our country" is an ongoing operational assumption. It is part of the broader "Washington consensus". It identifies the Bush administration's "roadmap" of war and "Homeland Defense." Needless to say, it is also an integral part of the neoliberal agenda.

The "terrorist massive casualty-producing event" is presented by General Franks as a crucial political turning point. The resulting crisis and social turmoil are intended to facilitate a major shift in US political, social and institutional structures.

General Franks' statement reflects a consensus within the US Military as to how events ought to unfold. The "war on terrorism" is to provide a justification for repealing the Rule of Law, ultimately with a view to "preserving civil liberties."

Franks' interview suggests that an Al Qaeda sponsored terrorist attack will be used as a "trigger mechanism" for a military coup d'état in America. The PNAC's "Pearl Harbor type event" would be used as a justification for declaring a State of emergency, leading to the establishment of a military government.

In many regards, the militarisation of civilian State institutions in the US is already functional under the facade of a bogus democracy.

War Propaganda

In the wake of the September attacks on the World Trade Center, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created to the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), or "Office of Disinformation" as it was labeled by its critics:

"The Department of Defense said they needed to do this, and they were going to actually plant stories that were false in foreign countries -- as an effort to influence public opinion across the world. (Interview with Steve Adubato, Fox News, 26 December 2002.)

And, all of a sudden, the OSI was formally disbanded following political pressures and "troublesome" media stories that "its purpose was to deliberately lie to advance American interests." (Air Force Magazine, January 2003, italics added) "Rumsfeld backed off and said this is embarrassing." (Adubato, op. cit. italics added) Yet despite this apparent about-turn, the Pentagon's Orwellian disinformation campaign remains functionally intact: "[T]he secretary of defense is not being particularly candid here. Disinformation in military propaganda is part of war."(Ibid)

Rumsfeld later confirmed in a press interview that while the OSI no longer exists in name, the "Office's intended functions are being carried out". (Quoted in Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Secrecy News, http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2002/11/112702.html , Rumsfeld's press interview can be consulted at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2002/11/dod111802.html ).

A number of government agencies and intelligence units --with links to the Pentagon-remain actively involved in various components of the propaganda campaign. Realities are turned upside down. Acts of war are heralded as "humanitarian interventions" geared towards "regime change" and "the restoration of democracy". Military occupation and the killing of civilians are presented as "peace-keeping". The derogation of civil liberties --in the context of the so-called "anti-terrorist legislation"-- is portrayed as a means to providing "domestic security" and upholding civil liberties.

The Central Role of Al Qaeda in Bush's National Security Doctrine

Spelled out in the National Security Strategy (NSS), the preemptive "defensive war" doctrine and the "war on terrorism" against Al Qaeda constitute the two essential building blocks of the Pentagon's propaganda campaign.

The objective is to present "preemptive military action" --meaning war as an act of "self-defense" against two categories of enemies, "rogue States" and "Islamic terrorists":

"The war against terrorists of global reach is a global enterprise of uncertain duration. America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.

Rogue states and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction ( )

The targets of these attacks are our military forces and our civilian population, in direct violation of one of the principal norms of the law of warfare. As was demonstrated by the losses on September 11, 2001, mass civilian casualties is the specific objective of terrorists and these losses would be exponentially more severe if terrorists acquired and used weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction- and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, ( ). To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."12 (National Security Strategy, White House, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html )

To justify pre-emptive military actions, the National Security Doctrine requires the "fabrication" of a terrorist threat, --ie. "an outside enemy." It also needs to link these terrorist threats to "State sponsorship" by the so-called "rogue states."

But it also means that the various "massive casualty-producing events" allegedly by Al Qaeda (the fabricated enemy) are part of the National Security agenda.

In the months building up to the invasion of Iraq, covert 'dirty tricks' operations were launched to produce misleading intelligence pertaining to both Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and Al Qaeda, which was then fed into the news chain.

In the wake of the war, while the WMD threat has been toned down, Al Qaeda threats to 'the Homeland' continue to be repeated ad nauseam in official statements, commented on network TV and pasted on a daily basis across the news tabloids.

And underlying these manipulated realties, "Osama bin Laden" terrorist occurrences are being upheld as a justification for the next phase of this war. The latter hinges in a very direct way:

1) the effectiveness of the Pentagon-CIA propaganda campaign, which is fed into the news chain.

2) The actual occurrence of "massive casualty producing events" as outlined in the PNAC

What this means is that actual ("massive casualty producing") terrorist events are part and parcel of military planning.

Actual Terrorist Attacks

In other words, to be "effective" the fear and disinformation campaign cannot solely rely on unsubstantiated "warnings" of future attacks, it also requires "real" terrorist occurrences or "incidents", which provide credibility to the Washington's war plans. These terrorist events are used to justify the implementation of "emergency measures" as well as "retaliatory military actions". They are required, in the present context, to create the illusion of "an outside enemy" that is threatening the American Homeland.

The triggering of "war pretext incidents" is part of the Pentagon's assumptions. In fact it is an integral part of US military history.(See Richard Sanders, War Pretext Incidents, How to Start a War, Global Outlook, published in two parts, Issues 2 and 3, 2002-2003).

In 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had envisaged a secret plan entitled "Operation Northwoods", to deliberately trigger civilian casualties to justify the invasion of Cuba:

"We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington" "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." (See the declassified Top Secret 1962 document titled "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba"16 (See Operation Northwoods at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NOR111A.html ).

There is no evidence that the Pentagon or the CIA played a direct role in recent terrorist attacks, including those in Indonesia (2002), India (2001), Turkey (2003) and Saudi Arabia (2003).

According to the reports, the attacks were undertaken by organizations (or cells of these organizations), which operate quite independently, with a certain degree of autonomy. This independence is in the very nature of a covert intelligence operation. The "intelligence asset" is not in direct contact with its covert sponsors. It is not necessarily cognizant of the role it plays on behalf of its intelligence sponsors.

The fundamental question is who is behind them? Through what sources are they being financed? What is the underlying network of ties?

For instance, in the case of the 2002 Bali bomb attack, the alleged terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiah had links to Indonesia's military intelligence (BIN), which in turn has links to the CIA and Australian intelligence.

The December 2001 terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament --which contributed to pushing India and Pakistan to the brink of war-- were allegedly conducted by two Pakistan-based rebel groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba ("Army of the Pure") and Jaish-e-Muhammad ("Army of Mohammed"), both of which according to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) are supported by Pakistan's ISI. (Council on Foreign Relations at http://www.terrorismanswers.com/groups/harakat2.html , Washington 2002).

What the CFR fails to acknowledge is the crucial relationship between the ISI and the CIA and the fact that the ISI continues to support Lashkar, Jaish and the militant Jammu and Kashmir Hizbul Mujahideen (JKHM), while also collaborating with the CIA (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Fabricating an Enemy, March 2003, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO301B.html )

A 2002 classified outbrief drafted to guide the Pentagon "calls for the creation of a so-called 'Proactive, Pre-emptive Operations Group' (P2OG), to launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction -- that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to 'quick-response' attacks by U.S. forces." (William Arkin, The Secret War, The Los Angeles Times, 27 October 2002)

The P2OG initiative is nothing new. It essentially extends an existing apparatus of covert operations. Amply documented, the CIA has supported terrorist groups since the Cold War era. This "prodding of terrorist cells" under covert intelligence operations often requires the infiltration and training of the radical groups linked to Al Qaeda.

In this regard, covert support by the US military and intelligence apparatus has been channeled to various Islamic terrorist organizations through a complex network of intermediaries and intelligence proxies. In the course of the 1990s, agencies of the US government have collaborated with Al Qaeda in a number of covert operations, as confirmed by a 1997 report of the Republican Party Committee of the US Congress. (See US Congress, 16 January 1997, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html ). In fact during the war in Bosnia US weapons inspectors were working with Al Qaeda operatives, bringing in large amounts of weapons for the Bosnian Muslim Army.

In other words, the Clinton Administration was "harboring terrorists". Moreover, official statements and intelligence reports confirm links between US military-intelligence units and Al Qaeda operatives, as occurred in Bosnia (mid 1990s), Kosovo (1998-99) and Macedonia (2001).(See See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalisation, The Truth behind September 11, Global Outlook, 2003, Chapter 3, http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html )

The Bush Administration and NATO had links to Al Qaeda in Macedonia. And this happened barely a few weeks before September 11, 2001, Senior U.S. military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon, were fighting alongside Mujahideen in the terrorist attacks on the Macedonian Security forces. This is documented by the Macedonian press and statements made by the Macedonian authorities. (See Michel Chossudovsky, op cit). The U.S. government and the Islamic Militant Network were working hand in glove in supporting and financing the National Liberation Army (NLA), which was involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia.

In other words, the US military was collaborating directly with Al Qaeda barely a few weeks before 9/11.

Al Qaeda and Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI)

It is indeed revealing that in virtually all post 9/11 terrorist occurrences, the terrorist organization is reported (by the media and in official statements) as having "ties to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda". This in itself is a crucial piece of information. Of course, the fact that Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA is neither mentioned in the press reports nor is it considered relevant to an understanding of these terrorist occurrences.

The ties of these terrorist organizations (particularly those in Asia) to Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI) is acknowledged in a few cases by official sources and press dispatches. Confirmed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), some of these groups are said to have links to Pakistan's ISI, without identifying the nature of these links. Needless to say, this information is crucial in identifying the sponsors of these terrorist attacks. In other words, the ISI is said to support these terrorist organizations, while at same time maintaining close ties to the CIA

September 11

While Colin Powell --without supporting evidence-pointed in his February 2003 UN address to "the sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network", official documents, press and intelligence reports confirm that successive US administrations have supported and abetted the Islamic militant network. This relationship is an established fact, corroborated by numerous studies, acknowledged by Washington's mainstream think tanks.

Both Colin Powell and his Deputy Richard Armitage, who in the months leading up to the war casually accused Baghdad and other foreign governments of "harboring" Al Qaeda, played a direct role, at different points in their careers, in supporting terrorist organizations.

Both men were implicated --operating behind the scenes-- in the Irangate Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration, which involved the illegal sale of weapons to Iran to finance the Nicaraguan Contra paramilitary army and the Afghan Mujahideen. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, Expose the Links between Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html )

Moreover, both Richard Armitage and Colin Powell played a role in the 9/11 cover-up. The investigations and research conducted in the last two years, including official documents, testimonies and intelligence reports, indicate that September 11 was an carefully planned intelligence operation, rather than a act conducted by a terrorist organization. (For further details, see Centre for Research on Globalization, 24 Key articles, September 2003)

The FBI confirmed in a report made public late September 2001 the role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence. According to the report, the alleged 9-11 ring leader, Mohammed Atta, had been financed from sources out of Pakistan. A subsequent intelligence report confirmed that the then head of the ISI General Mahmoud Ahmad had transferred money to Mohammed Atta. (See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization, op.cit.)

Moreover, press reports and official statements confirm that the head of the ISI, was an official visit to the US from the 4th to 13th of September 2001. In other words, the head of Pakistan's ISI, who allegedly transferred money to the terrorists also had a close personal relationship with a number of senior Bush Administration officials, including Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, whom he met in the course of his visit to Washington. (Ibid)

The Antiwar Movement

A cohesive antiwar movement cannot be based solely on the mobilization of antiwar sentiment. It must ultimately unseat the war criminals and question their right to rule.

A necessary condition for bringing down the rulers is to weaken and eventually dismantle their propaganda campaign.

The momentum of the large anti-war rallies in the US, the European Union and around the world, should lay the foundations of a permanent network composed of tens of thousands of local level anti-war committees in neighborhoods, work places, parishes, schools, universities, etc. It is ultimately through this network that the legitimacy of those who "rule in our name" will be challenged.

To shunt the Bush Administration's war plans and disable its propaganda machine, we must reach out to our fellow citizens across the land, in the US, Europe and around the world, to the millions of ordinary people who have been misled on the causes and consequences of this war.

This also implies fully uncovering the lies behind the "war on terrorism" and revealing the political complicity of the Bush administration in the events of 9/11.

September 11 is a hoax. It's the biggest lie in US history.

Needless to say, the use of "massive casualty producing events" as pretext to wage war is a criminal act. In the words of Andreas van Buelow, former German Minister of Technology and author of The CIA and September 11:

"If what I say is right, the whole US government should end up behind bars."

Yet it is not sufficient to remove George W. Bush or Tony Blair, who are mere puppets. We must also address the role of the global banks, corporations and financial institutions, which indelibly stand behind the military and political actors.

Increasingly, the military-intelligence establishment (rather than the State Department, the White House and the US Congress) is calling the shots on US foreign policy. Meanwhile, the Texas oil giants, the defense contractors, Wall Street and the powerful media giants, operating discreetly behind the scenes, are pulling the strings. If politicians become a source of major embarrassment, they can themselves be discredited by the media, discarded and a new team of political puppets can be brought to office.

Criminalization of the State

The "Criminalization of the State", is when war criminals legitimately occupy positions of authority, which enable them to decide "who are the criminals", when in fact they are criminals.

In the US, both Republicans and Democrats share the same war agenda and there are war criminals in both parties. Both parties are complicit in the 9/11 cover-up and the resultant quest for world domination. All the evidence points to what is best described as "the criminalisation of the State", which includes the Judiciary and the bipartisan corridors of the US Congress.

Under the war agenda, high ranking officials of the Bush administration, members of the military, the US Congress and the Judiciary have been granted the authority not only to commit criminal acts, but also to designate those in the antiwar movement who are opposed to these criminal acts as "enemies of the State."

More generally, the US military and security apparatus endorses and supports dominant economic and financial interests - i.e. the build-up, as well as the exercise, of military might enforces "free trade". The Pentagon is an arm of Wall Street; NATO coordinates its military operations with the World Bank and the IMF's policy interventions, and vice versa. Consistently, the security and defense bodies of the Western military alliance, together with the various civilian governmental and intergovernmental bureaucracies (e.g. IMF, World Bank, WTO) share a common understanding, ideological consensus and commitment to the New World Order.

To reverse the tide of war, military bases must be closed down, the war machine (namely the production of advanced weapons systems like WMDs) must be stopped and the burgeoning police state must be dismantled. More generally we must reverse the "free market" reforms, dismantle the institutions of global capitalism and disarm financial markets.

The struggle must be broad-based and democratic encompassing all sectors of society at all levels, in all countries, uniting in a major thrust: workers, farmers, independent producers, small businesses, professionals, artists, civil servants, members of the clergy, students and intellectuals.

The antiwar and anti-globalisation movements must be integrated into a single worldwide movement. People must be united across sectors, "single issue" groups must join hands in a common and collective understanding on how the New World Order destroys and impoverishes.

The globalization of this struggle is fundamental, requiring a degree of solidarity and internationalism unprecedented in world history. This global economic system feeds on social divisiveness between and within countries. Unity of purpose and worldwide coordination among diverse groups and social movements is crucial. A major thrust is required which brings together social movements in all major regions of the world in a common pursuit and commitment to the elimination of poverty and a lasting world peace.

Copyright Michel Chossudovsky 2003

[Jul 14, 2017] House Dems plan to force Russia votes

Jul 14, 2017 | www.msn.com
House Democrats announced a new strategy on Friday to force votes in an effort to highlight President Trump's possible ties to Russia.

Democrats plan to offer measures known as resolutions of inquiry that automatically trigger floor votes if they don't get action in committee within 14 legislative days.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and several other Democratic lawmakers scheduled a press conference in the Capitol to announce the plans on Friday morning.

The announcement included members of the House Financial Services, Ways and Means, Transportation and Infrastructure, Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security and Judiciary committees.

Democrats are seizing on the few tools at their disposal given their limited ability to direct congressional oversight while in the minority.

Republicans are likely to consider the resolutions in committee to avoid forcing the entire House to vote on them.

Still, the votes are meant to put a spotlight on Trump as well as House Republicans, who Democrats say aren't being aggressive enough with oversight of the administration.

For instance, one resolution unveiled as part of the strategy would request documents or records from Trump relating to his abrupt firing of James Comey as FBI director in May and Attorney General Jeff Sessions' involvement in the decision.

The resolution, offered by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), will go to the House Judiciary Committee for consideration.

The Judiciary panel already rejected multiple previous resolutions of inquiry earlier this year that demanded documents from the Justice Department connecting the Trump campaign with the Russian government's 2016 election interference.

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) also offered a resolution of inquiry in the House Ways and Means Committee to request President Trump's tax returns from the last decade.

The party-line votes in committee to dismiss the resolutions prevented any House floor vote.

But Democrats are determined to force more votes - even if they don't go anywhere - to pressure Republicans after revelations this week involving President Trump's son.

Donald Trump Jr. released emails on Tuesday showing how he set up a meeting last year with a Russian lawyer claiming to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

A publicist with ties to a Trump family business partner who served as an intermediary said that it was "obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

[Jul 14, 2017] Ignore the Haters. Russia Is Not Our Enemy

Notable quotes:
"... The Washington Post ..."
Jul 14, 2017 | reason.com
The intelligence and military leakers and Trump's political enemies believe friendly relations with Vladimir Putin's government are dangerous. But since Russia can annihilate our country, the greater danger is not engaging with Putin.

The anti-Russia hyperventilation covers the political spectrum. Republican Sen. John McCain told an interviewer that Putin is a greater threat than ISIS, accusing Russia of trying to change election results in America, France and elsewhere. But Putin's regime is not decapitating or urging lone wolves to massacre Americans on US soil. And as for Russian manipulation, the pro-Russian candidate Marine LePen was crushed in the May presidential election in France.

Democrat Hillary Clinton accused the Trump campaign of conspiring with Russia to "weaponize" leaked information against her with the WikiLeaks' dump of John Podesta email messages. Clinton's collusion assertion is based on her questionable assumption that WikiLeaks is an agent of Russia. Since WikiLeaks operates out of an embassy in London, one might expect our British allies to have leaked Putin's instructions to Julian Assange by now.

McCain, Clinton and others are amplifying the US intelligence community's public indictment of Russia for election meddling during the closing days of the Obama administration. That report also claims that Russian agents hacked Podesta's email and released them through WikiLeaks, but does not provide hard evidence.

Intelligence community assertions should be treated with skepticism. After all, this community concluded in 2002 that Saddam Hussein had WMD's. Further, a senior member of the intelligence community, James Clapper, lied to Congress in 2013 when he denied that the NSA collects data on Americans.

Even assuming the allegations are true, they do not lead to the immediate conclusion that Russia is an enemy. Friendly countries spy on one another and try to influence each other's elections all the time. President Obama called on British voters to reject Brexit, and the NSA appears to have bugged German Prime Minister Angela Merkel's mobile phone.

Israel spies on the US and tries to influence our elections. Jonathan Pollard's espionage "has few parallels" according to the CIA , which concluded he had "put at risk important U.S. intelligence and foreign policy interests." In 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to scuttle President Obama's re-election effort.

Most of the intelligence community memo focuses on the activities of RT, a Russian media group that operates a cable news channel, a web site and social media properties in the US. RT is accused of spreading propaganda and fake news that impacted our election. But such media are neither new nor unique to Russia.

Our Voice of America, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and other state media have been around for decades. Among the personalities on RT America are Larry King, Jesse Ventura, and former Air America hosts Thom Hartmann and Ed Schultz – none of whom appear to be stooges for Vladimir Putin. Further, as Simon van Zuylen-Wood noted in his excellent overview of RT , the network "is watched by so few people that Nielsen doesn't bother to publish its ratings."

To be sure, Putin has some very undemocratic inclinations. But the US has maintained and continues to maintain friendly relations with despotic nations. President Richard Nixon visited China in 1971, not long after Mao Zedong killed tens of millions of people with his Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Today, there is widespread support for friendly relations with Saudi Arabia – an undemocratic nation that stones women to death for adultery.

It is also true that Russia is a rival for influence on the world stage. This perhaps is why our generals, intelligence operatives, representatives, think tanks and the media so dislike Putin. While the foreign affairs intelligentsia views the world as a power-playing chessboard, this approach to geopolitics is contrary to the interests of ordinary Americans who don't benefit from international conflicts.

When President Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the oval office a few weeks ago, he shared intelligence about a plot by Syrian-based ISIS operatives to place laptop bombs on civilian airplanes. Russia's presence in Syria may have helped thwart this plot. And it had an incentive to do so: ISIS previously downed a Russian civilian airliner in the Sinai Desert.

As president, Donald Trump has the legal right to declassify the intelligence. But some unelected bureaucrat in the US national security establishment decided that Trump's actions were inappropriate and leaked the story to The Washington Post . It is possible the leak alerted ISIS that its plot had been compromised, encouraging the terrorists to protect their bomb-building efforts from further scrutiny. The potential victims of this leak are civilian passengers of US airlines – the presumed target of the ISIS plot.

Russia also provided intelligence that, had it been handled properly by the FBI, could have prevented the Tsarnaev brothers from bombing the Boston marathon.

Rather than cooperating, however, the national security establishment not only seeks conflict with Russia, it looks for enemies around the world. Hostilities provide lucrative contracts and a sense of mission to those advancing them – but imposes huge costs on the rest of us. US troops are now engaged in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia.

Worldwide warfare has driven national security spending toward $1 trillion a year. With a national debt approaching $20 trillion, this is a financial cost our country can ill afford. And since 2001, the US has suffered almost 7,000 deaths and over 52,000 wounded in foreign hostilities.

Democrats 50 years ago were peace organizers, fired by Martin Luther King's condemnation of the Vietnam War. And Barack Obama won the presidency promising to withdraw from Iraq.

But in their desire to rid the White House of Donald Trump, Democrats have forsaken their anti-war heritage. Instead, they are teaming up with Republican hawks and the Deep State to drive a wedge between the US and Russia.

Libertarians are the logical champions of peace and prosperity, but some have expressed sympathy for coercive US government actions to counter Russian influence. These include targeted sanctions and funding for groups in Eastern Europe that supposedly promote liberal democracy.

Although portrayed as a penalty on foreign powers, sanctions prevent US individuals and companies and individuals from doing business with those countries. A new Senate bill, S.722 , prevents US companies from working on gas pipelines between Russia and Western Europe. The bill also appropriates $500 million of US taxpayer money to a "Countering Russian Influence Fund," to be spent in Eastern Europe. The legislative language lists six possible uses for this money which sound good, but are vague and open to broad interpretation.

Libertarians recognize the state usually abuses the powers we give it. We should never advocate for restrictions on trade or appropriation of tax money for so-called democracy promotion. Peace and non-interventionism are core tenets of libertarianism that too many self-identified libertarians seem to forget. We must avoid repeating the mistakes we made in the runup to the Iraq War.

Regardless of one's position on Trump, Congress has not declared war on Russia. Russia has not invaded us. Russia is not our enemy.

[Jul 13, 2017] Progressive Democrats Resist and Submit, Retreat and Surrender by James Petras

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?" ..."
"... Progressives joined the FBI/CIA's 'Russian Bear' conspiracy: " Russia intervened and decided the Presidential election" – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street's candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that 'their constituents', the masses, had rejected Madame Clinton and preferred 'the Donald'. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient 'white trash' electorate of 'Deploralandia'. ..."
"... Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former 'Director Comey' of the FBI, and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger or footprints. ..."
"... Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million more! ..."
"... Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being 'weak' on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They chided him for his lack support for Israel's suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump's embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen! ..."
"... Thank you for putting your finger on the main problem right there in the first paragraph. There were exceptions of course. I supported Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Primary that gave us the first black etc. But I never voted for Obama. Throughout the Cheney Admin I pleaded with progressives to bolt the party. ..."
"... This is an excellent summary of the evolution of "progressives" into modern militarist fascists who tolerate identity politics diversity. There is little to add to Mr. Petras' commentary. ..."
"... Barak Obama is America's biggest con man who accomplished nothing "progressive" during eight years at the top, and didn't even try. (Obamacare is an insurance industry idea supported by most Republicans, which is why it recently survived.) Anyone who still likes Obama should read about his actions since he left office. Obama quickly signed a $65 million "book deal", which can only be a kickback since there is no way the publisher can sell enough books about his meaningless presidency to justify that sum. Obama doesn't get royalties based on sales, but gets the money up front for a book he has yet to write, and will have someone do that for him. (Book deals and speaking fees are legal forms of bribery in the USA.) ..."
"... Then Obama embarked on 100 days of ultra expensive foreign vacations with taxpayers covering the Secret Service protection costs. He didn't appear at charity fundraisers, didn't campaign for Democrats, and didn't help build homes for the poor like Jimmy Carter. He returns from vacation this week and his first speech will be at a Wall Street firm that will pay him $400,000, then he travels to Europe for more paid speeches. ..."
"... They chose power over principles. Nobel War Prize winner Obomber was a particularly egregious chameleon, hiding his sociopathy through two elections before unleashing his racist warmongering in full flower throughout his second term. ..."
"... Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act ..."
Jul 10, 2017 | www.unz.com

Introduction

Over the past quarter century progressive writers, activists and academics have followed a trajectory from left to right – with each presidential campaign seeming to move them further to the right. Beginning in the 1990's progressives mobilized millions in opposition to wars, voicing demands for the transformation of the US's corporate for-profit medical system into a national 'Medicare For All' public program. They condemned the notorious Wall Street swindlers and denounced police state legislation and violence. But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who pursued the exact opposite agenda.

Over time this political contrast between program and practice led to the transformation of the Progressives. And what we see today are US progressives embracing and promoting the politics of the far right.

To understand this transformation we will begin by identifying who and what the progressives are and describe their historical role. We will then proceed to identify their trajectory over the recent decades.

  • We will outline the contours of recent Presidential campaigns where Progressives were deeply involved.
  • We will focus on the dynamics of political regression: From resistance to submission, from retreat to surrender.
  • We will conclude by discussing the end result: The Progressives' large-scale, long-term embrace of far-right ideology and practice.

Progressives by Name and Posture

Progressives purport to embrace 'progress', the growth of the economy, the enrichment of society and freedom from arbitrary government. Central to the Progressive agenda was the end of elite corruption and good governance, based on democratic procedures.

Progressives prided themselves as appealing to 'reason, diplomacy and conciliation', not brute force and wars. They upheld the sovereignty of other nations and eschewed militarism and armed intervention.

Progressives proposed a vision of their fellow citizens pursuing incremental evolution toward the 'good society', free from the foreign entanglements, which had entrapped the people in unjust wars.

Progressives in Historical Perspective

In the early part of the 20th century, progressives favored political equality while opposing extra-parliamentary social transformations. They supported gender equality and environmental preservation while failing to give prominence to the struggles of workers and African Americans.

They denounced militarism 'in general' but supported a series of 'wars to end all wars' . Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home and bloody imperial wars overseas. By the middle of the 20th century, different strands emerged under the progressive umbrella. Progressives split between traditional good government advocates and modernists who backed socio-economic reforms, civil liberties and rights.

Progressives supported legislation to regulate monopolies, encouraged collective bargaining and defended the Bill of Rights.

Progressives opposed wars and militarism in theory until their government went to war.

Lacking an effective third political party, progressives came to see themselves as the 'left wing' of the Democratic Party, allies of labor and civil rights movements and defenders of civil liberties.

Progressives joined civil rights leaders in marches, but mostly relied on legal and electoral means to advance African American rights.

Progressives played a pivotal role in fighting McCarthyism, though ultimately it was the Secretary of the Army and the military high command that brought Senator McCarthy to his knees.

Progressives provided legal defense when the social movements disrupted the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

They popularized the legislative arguments that eventually outlawed segregation, but it was courageous Afro-American leaders heading mass movements that won the struggle for integration and civil rights.

In many ways the Progressives complemented the mass struggles, but their limits were defined by the constraints of their membership in the Democratic Party.

The alliance between Progressives and social movements peaked in the late sixties to mid-1970's when the Progressives followed the lead of dynamic and advancing social movements and community organizers especially in opposition to the wars in Indochina and the military draft.

The Retreat of the Progressives

By the late 1970's the Progressives had cut their anchor to the social movements, as the anti-war, civil rights and labor movements lost their impetus (and direction).

The numbers of progressives within the left wing of the Democratic Party increased through recruitment from earlier social movements. Paradoxically, while their 'numbers' were up, their caliber had declined, as they sought to 'fit in' with the pro-business, pro-war agenda of their President's party.

Without the pressure of the 'populist street' the 'Progressives-turned-Democrats' adapted to the corporate culture in the Party. The Progressives signed off on a fatal compromise: The corporate elite secured the electoral party while the Progressives were allowed to write enlightened manifestos about the candidates and their programs . . . which were quickly dismissed once the Democrats took office. Yet the ability to influence the 'electoral rhetoric' was seen by the Progressives as a sufficient justification for remaining inside the Democratic Party.

Moreover the Progressives argued that by strengthening their presence in the Democratic Party, (their self-proclaimed 'boring from within' strategy), they would capture the party membership, neutralize the pro-corporation, militarist elements that nominated the president and peacefully transform the party into a 'vehicle for progressive changes'.

Upon their successful 'deep penetration' the Progressives, now cut off from the increasingly disorganized mass social movements, coopted and bought out many prominent black, labor and civil liberty activists and leaders, while collaborating with what they dubbed the more malleable 'centrist' Democrats. These mythical creatures were really pro-corporate Democrats who condescended to occasionally converse with the Progressives while working for the Wall Street and Pentagon elite.

The Retreat of the Progressives: The Clinton Decade

Progressives adapted the 'crab strategy': Moving side-ways and then backwards but never forward.

Progressives mounted candidates in the Presidential primaries, which were predictably defeated by the corporate Party apparatus, and then submitted immediately to the outcome. The election of President 'Bill' Clinton launched a period of unrestrained financial plunder, major wars of aggression in Europe (Yugoslavia) and the Middle East (Iraq), a military intervention in Somalia and secured Israel's victory over any remnant of a secular Palestinian leadership as well as its destruction of Lebanon!

Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act, thereby opening the floodgates for massive speculation on Wall Street through the previously regulated banking sector. When President Clinton gutted welfare programs, forcing single mothers to take minimum-wage jobs without provision for safe childcare, millions of poor white and minority women were forced to abandon their children to dangerous makeshift arrangements in order to retain any residual public support and access to minimal health care. Progressives looked the other way.

Progressives followed Clinton's deep throated thrust toward the far right, as he outsourced manufacturing jobs to Mexico (NAFTA) and re-appointed Federal Reserve's free market, Ayn Rand-fanatic, Alan Greenspan.

Progressives repeatedly kneeled before President Clinton marking their submission to the Democrats' 'hard right' policies.

The election of Republican President G. W. Bush (2001-2009) permitted Progressive's to temporarily trot out and burnish their anti-war, anti-Wall Street credentials. Out in the street, they protested Bush's savage invasion of Iraq (but not the destruction of Afghanistan). They protested the media reports of torture in Abu Ghraib under Bush, but not the massive bombing and starvation of millions of Iraqis that had occurred under Clinton. Progressives protested the expulsion of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, but were silent over the brutal uprooting of refugees resulting from US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the systematic destruction of their nations' infrastructure.

Progressives embraced Israel's bombing, jailing and torture of Palestinians by voting unanimously in favor of increasing the annual $3 billion dollar military handouts to the brutal Jewish State. They supported Israel's bombing and slaughter in Lebanon.

Progressives were in retreat, but retained a muffled voice and inconsequential vote in favor of peace, justice and civil liberties. They kept a certain distance from the worst of the police state decrees by the Republican Administration.

Progressives and Obama: From Retreat to Surrender

While Progressives maintained their tepid commitment to civil liberties, and their highly 'leveraged' hopes for peace in the Middle East, they jumped uncritically into the highly choreographed Democratic Party campaign for Barack Obama, 'Wall Street's First Black President'.

Progressives had given up their quest to 'realign' the Democratic Party 'from within': they turned from serious tourism to permanent residency. Progressives provided the foot soldiers for the election and re-election of the warmongering 'Peace Candidate' Obama. After the election, Progressives rushed to join the lower echelons of his Administration. Black and white politicos joined hands in their heroic struggle to erase the last vestiges of the Progressives' historical legacy.

Obama increased the number of Bush-era imperial wars to attacking seven weak nations under American's 'First Black' President's bombardment, while the Progressives ensured that the streets were quiet and empty.

When Obama provided trillions of dollars of public money to rescue Wall Street and the bankers, while sacrificing two million poor and middle class mortgage holders, the Progressives only criticized the bankers who received the bailout, but not Obama's Presidential decision to protect and reward the mega-swindlers.

Under the Obama regime social inequalities within the United States grew at an unprecedented rate. The Police State Patriot Act was massively extended to give President Obama the power to order the assassination of US citizens abroad without judicial process. The Progressives did not resign when Obama's 'kill orders' extended to the 'mistaken' murder of his target's children and other family member, as well as unidentified bystanders. The icon carriers still paraded their banner of the 'first black American President' when tens of thousands of black Libyans and immigrant workers were slaughtered in his regime-change war against President Gadhafi.

Obama surpassed the record of all previous Republican office holders in terms of the massive numbers of immigrant workers arrested and expelled – 2 million. Progressives applauded the Latino protestors while supporting the policies of their 'first black President'.

Progressive accepted that multiple wars, Wall Street bailouts and the extended police state were now the price they would pay to remain part of the "Democratic coalition' (sic).

The deeper the Progressives swilled at the Democratic Party trough, the more they embraced the Obama's free market agenda and the more they ignored the increasing impoverishment, exploitation and medical industry-led opioid addiction of American workers that was shortening their lives. Under Obama, the Progressives totally abandoned the historic American working class, accepting their degradation into what Madam Hillary Clinton curtly dismissed as the 'deplorables'.

With the Obama Presidency, the Progressive retreat turned into a rout, surrendering with one flaccid caveat: the Democratic Party 'Socialist' Bernie Sanders, who had voted 90% of the time with the Corporate Party, had revived a bastardized military-welfare state agenda.

Sander's Progressive demagogy shouted and rasped on the campaign trail, beguiling the young electorate. The 'Bernie' eventually 'sheep-dogged' his supporters into the pro-war Democratic Party corral. Sanders revived an illusion of the pre-1990 progressive agenda, promising resistance while demanding voter submission to Wall Street warlord Hillary Clinton. After Sanders' round up of the motley progressive herd, he staked them tightly to the far-right Wall Street war mongering Hillary Clinton. The Progressives not only embraced Madame Secretary Clinton's nuclear option and virulent anti-working class agenda, they embellished it by focusing on Republican billionaire Trump's demagogic, nationalist, working class rhetoric which was designed to agitate 'the deplorables'. They even turned on the working class voters, dismissing them as 'irredeemable' racists and illiterates or 'white trash' when they turned to support Trump in massive numbers in the 'fly-over' states of the central US.

Progressives, allied with the police state, the mass media and the war machine worked to defeat and impeach Trump. Progressives surrendered completely to the Democratic Party and started to advocate its far right agenda. Hysterical McCarthyism against anyone who questioned the Democrats' promotion of war with Russia, mass media lies and manipulation of street protest against Republican elected officials became the centerpieces of the Progressive agenda. The working class and farmers had disappeared from their bastardized 'identity-centered' ideology.

Guilt by association spread throughout Progressive politics. Progressives embraced J. Edgar Hoover's FBI tactics: "Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?" For progressives, 'Russia-gate' defined the real focus of contemporary political struggle in this huge, complex, nuclear-armed superpower.

Progressives joined the FBI/CIA's 'Russian Bear' conspiracy: "Russia intervened and decided the Presidential election" – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street's candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that 'their constituents', the masses, had rejected Madame Clinton and preferred 'the Donald'. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient 'white trash' electorate of 'Deploralandia'.

Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former 'Director Comey' of the FBI, and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger or footprints.

The Progressives' far right - turn earned them hours and space on the mass media as long as they breathlessly savaged and insulted President Trump and his family members. When they managed to provoke him into a blind rage . . . they added the newly invented charge of 'psychologically unfit to lead' – presenting cheap psychobabble as grounds for impeachment. Finally! American Progressives were on their way to achieving their first and only political transformation: a Presidential coup d'état on behalf of the Far Right!

Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement and betrayal!

In return, President Trump began to 'out-militarize' the Progressives by escalating US involvement in the Middle East and South China Sea. They swooned with joy when Trump ordered a missile strike against the Syrian government as Damascus engaged in a life and death struggle against mercenary terrorists. They dubbed the petulant release of Patriot missiles 'Presidential'.

Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million more!

Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being 'weak' on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They chided him for his lack support for Israel's suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump's embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen!

Conclusion

Progressives turned full circle from supporting welfare to embracing Wall Street; from preaching peaceful co-existence to demanding a dozen wars; from recognizing the humanity and rights of undocumented immigrants to their expulsion under their 'First Black' President; from thoughtful mass media critics to servile media megaphones; from defenders of civil liberties to boosters for the police state; from staunch opponents of J. Edgar Hoover and his 'dirty tricks' to camp followers for the 'intelligence community' in its deep state campaign to overturn a national election.

Progressives moved from fighting and resisting the Right to submitting and retreating; from retreating to surrendering and finally embracing the far right.

Doing all that and more within the Democratic Party, Progressives retain and deepen their ties with the mass media, the security apparatus and the military machine, while occasionally digging up some Bernie Sanders-type demagogue to arouse an army of voters away from effective resistance to mindless collaboration.

(Republished from The James Petras Website by permission of author or representative)

Recently from Author
Of Related Interest Democrats in the Dead Zone Jeffrey St. Clair June 23, 2017 1,500 Words

WorkingClass > , July 12, 2017 at 9:21 pm GMT

But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who pursued the exact opposite agenda.

Thank you for putting your finger on the main problem right there in the first paragraph. There were exceptions of course. I supported Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Primary that gave us the first black etc. But I never voted for Obama. Throughout the Cheney Admin I pleaded with progressives to bolt the party.

This piece accurately traces the path from Progressive to Maoist. It's a pity the Republican Party is also a piece of shit. I think it was Sara Palin who said "We have two parties. Pick one." This should be our collective epitaph.

exiled off mainstreet > , July 12, 2017 at 11:20 pm GMT

This is an excellent summary of the evolution of "progressives" into modern militarist fascists who tolerate identity politics diversity. There is little to add to Mr. Petras' commentary.

alan2102 > , July 13, 2017 at 2:04 am GMT

EXCELLENT.

Astuteobservor II > , July 13, 2017 at 5:17 am GMT

at this point, are they still progressives though? they are the new far right

CCZ > , July 13, 2017 at 5:30 am GMT

"Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement and betrayal!"

Perhaps the spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is joyously gloating as progressives (and democrats) take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

Carlton Meyer > , Website July 13, 2017 at 5:56 am GMT

The great Jimmy Dore is a big thorn for the Democrats. From my blog:

Apr 29, 2017 – Obama is Scum!

Barak Obama is America's biggest con man who accomplished nothing "progressive" during eight years at the top, and didn't even try. (Obamacare is an insurance industry idea supported by most Republicans, which is why it recently survived.) Anyone who still likes Obama should read about his actions since he left office. Obama quickly signed a $65 million "book deal", which can only be a kickback since there is no way the publisher can sell enough books about his meaningless presidency to justify that sum. Obama doesn't get royalties based on sales, but gets the money up front for a book he has yet to write, and will have someone do that for him. (Book deals and speaking fees are legal forms of bribery in the USA.)

Then Obama embarked on 100 days of ultra expensive foreign vacations with taxpayers covering the Secret Service protection costs. He didn't appear at charity fundraisers, didn't campaign for Democrats, and didn't help build homes for the poor like Jimmy Carter. He returns from vacation this week and his first speech will be at a Wall Street firm that will pay him $400,000, then he travels to Europe for more paid speeches.

Obama gets over $200,000 a year in retirement, just got a $65 million deal, so doesn't need more money. Why would a multi-millionaire ex-president fly around the globe collecting huge speaking fees from world corporations just after his political party was devastated in elections because Americans think the Democratic party represents Wall Street? The great Jimmy Dore expressed his outrage at Obama and the corrupt Democratic party in this great video.

jilles dykstra > , July 13, 2017 at 6:27 am GMT

Left in the good old days meant socialist, socialist meant that governments had the duty of redistributing income from rich to poor. Alas in Europe, after 'socialists' became pro EU and pro globalisation, they in fact became neoliberal. Both in France and the Netherlands 'socialist' parties virtually disappeared.
So what nowadays is left, does anyone know ?

Then the word 'progressive'. The word suggests improvement, but what is improvement, improvement for whom ? There are those who see the possibility for euthanasia as an improvement, there are thos who see euthanasia as a great sin.

Discussions about left and progressive are meaningless without properly defining the concepts.

Call me Deplorable > , July 13, 2017 at 12:06 pm GMT

They chose power over principles. Nobel War Prize winner Obomber was a particularly egregious chameleon, hiding his sociopathy through two elections before unleashing his racist warmongering in full flower throughout his second term. But, hey, the brother now has five mansions, collects half a mill per speech to the Chosen People on Wall Street, and parties for months at a time at exclusive resorts for billionaires only.

Obviously, he's got the world by the tail and you don't. Hope he comes to the same end as Gaddaffi and Ceaușescu. Maybe the survivors of nuclear Armageddon can hold a double necktie party with Killary as the second honored guest that day.

Seamus Padraig > , July 13, 2017 at 12:10 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

Discussions about left and progressive are meaningless without properly defining the concepts.

Properly defining the concepts would impede the system's ability to keep you confused.

Seamus Padraig > , July 13, 2017 at 12:16 pm GMT

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home and bloody imperial wars overseas.

You left out the other Roosevelt.

Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act

Hilarious!

Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million more!

This is a huge myth. All that really happened is that the INS changed some of its internal terminology to make it sound as though they were deporting more people: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/21/lies-damned-lies-and-obamas-deportation-statistics/?utm_term=.7f964acd9b0d

Stephen Paul Foster > , Website July 13, 2017 at 1:28 pm GMT

The Progressives now, failing electorally, are moving on to physical violence.

See: http://fosterspeak.blogspot.com/2017/07/trumps-would-be-assassins.html

annamaria > , July 13, 2017 at 2:22 pm GMT

@Carlton Meyer Obama, a paragon of American scoundrel

Anonymous IV > , July 13, 2017 at 2:49 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig Agree on the bit about Obama as "deporter in chief." Even the LA Times had to admit this was misleading

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obama-deportations-20140402-story.html

so it's not just conservative conspiracy theory stuff as some might argue.

Still, the overall point of this essay isn't affected all that much. Open borders is still a "right wing" (in the sense this author uses the term) policy–pro-Wall Street, pro-Big Business. So Obama was still doing the bidding of the donor class in their quest for cheap labor.

I've seen pro-immigration types try to use the Obama-deportation thing to argue that we don't need more hardcore policies. After all, even the progressive Democrat Obama was on the ball when it came to policing our borders, right?! Who needed Trump?

Agent76 > , July 13, 2017 at 3:28 pm GMT

"Who controls the issuance of money controls the government!" Nathan Meyer Rothschild

June 13, 2016 Which Corporations Control The World?

A surprisingly small number of corporations control massive global market shares. How many of the brands below do you use?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44864.htm

"Control the oil, and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people." Henry Kissenger

Alfa158 > , July 13, 2017 at 5:33 pm GMT

@Carlton Meyer If Jimmy keeps up these attacks on Wall Street, the Banksters, and rent-seekers he is going to get run out of the Progressive movement for dog-whistling virulent Anti-Semitism. Look at how the media screams at Trump every time he mentions Wall Street and the banks.

yeah > , July 13, 2017 at 5:46 pm GMT

Mr. Petra has penned an excellent and very astute piece. Allow me a little satire on our progressive friends, entitled "The path to hell is paved with good intentions".

The early socialist/progressive travellers were well-intentioned but naďve in their understanding of human nature and fanatical about their agenda. To move the human herd forward, they had no compulsions about resorting to harsher and harsher prodding and whipping. They felt entitled to employ these means because, so they were convinced, man has to be pushed to move forward and they, the "progressives", were the best qualified to lead the herd. Scoundrels, psychopaths, moral defectives, and sundry other rascals then joined in the whipping game, some out of the sheer joy of wielding the whip, others to better line their pockets.

So the "progressive" journey degenerates into a forced march. The march becomes the progress, becoming both the means and the end at the same time. Look at the so-called "progressive" today and you will see the fanatic and the whip-wielder, steadfast about the correctness of his beliefs. Tell him/her/it that you are a man or a woman and he retorts "No, you are free to choose, you are genderless". What if you decline such freedom? "Well, then you are a bigot, we will thrash you out of your bigotry", replies the progressive. "May I, dear Sir/Madam/Whatever, keep my hard-earned money in my pocket for my and my family's use" you ask. "No, you first have to pay for our peace-making wars, then pay for the upkeep of refugees, besides which you owe a lot of back taxes that are necessary to run this wonderful Big Government of ours that is leading you towards greener and greener pastures", shouts back the progressive.

Fed up, disgusted, and a little scared, you desperately seek a way out of this progress. "No way", scream the march leaders. "We will be forever in your ears, sometimes whispering, sometimes screaming; we will take over your brain to improve your mind; we will saturate you with images on the box 24/7 and employ all sorts of imagery to make you progress. And if it all fails, we will simply pack you and others like you in a basket of deplorables and forget about you at election time."

TheJester > , July 13, 2017 at 6:18 pm GMT

Knowing who is "progressive" and know who is "far-right" is like knowing who is "fascist" and who is not. For obvious historical reasons, the Russian like to throw the "fascist" slogan against anyone who is a non-Russian nationalist. However, I accept the eminent historian Carroll Quigley's definition of fascism as the incorporation of society and the state onto single entity on a permanent war footing. The state controls everything in a radically authoritarian social structure. As Quigley states, the Soviet Union was the most complete embodiment of fascism in WWII. In WWII Germany, on the other hand, industry retained its independence and in WWII Italy fascism was no more than an empty slogan.

Same for "progressives". Everyone wants to be "progressive", right? Who wants to be "anti-progressive"? However, at the end of the day, "progressive" through verbal slights of hand has been nothing more than a euphemism for "socialist" or, in the extreme, "communist" the verbal slight-of-hand because we don't tend to use the latter terms in American political discourse.

"Progressives" morphing into a new "far-right" in America is no more mysterious than the Soviet Union morphing from Leninism to Stalinism or, the Jewish (Trotskyite) globalists fleeing Stalinist nationalism and then morphing into, first, "Scoop" Jackson Democrats and then into Bushite Republicans.

As you might notice, the real issue is the authoritarian vs. the non-authoritarian state. In this context, an authoritarian government and social order (as in communism and neoconservatism) are practical pre-requisites necessity to force humanity to transition to their New World Order.

Again, the defining characteristic of fascism is the unitary state enforced via an authoritarian political and social structure. Ideological rigor is enforced via the police powers of the state along with judicial activism and political correctness. Ring a bell?

In the ongoing contest between Trump and the remnants of the American "progressive" movement, who are the populists and who the authoritarians? Who are the democrats and who are the fascists?

I would say that who lands where in this dichotomy is obvious.

RobinG > , July 13, 2017 at 6:19 pm GMT

@Alfa158 Is Jimmy Dore really a "Progressive?" (and what does that mean, anyway?) Isn't Jimmy's show hosted by the Young Turks Network, which is unabashedly Libertarian?

Anyway, what's so great about "the Progressive movement?" Seems to me, they're just pathetic sheepdogs for the war-crazed Dems. Jimmy should be supporting the #UNRIG movement ("Beyond Trump & Sanders") for ALL Americans:

On 1 May 2017 Cynthia McKinney, Ellen Brown, and Robert Steele launched

We the People – Unity for Integrity.

The User's Guide to the 2nd American Revolution.

Death to the Deep State.

https://www.unrig.net/manifesto/

Ben Banned > , July 13, 2017 at 9:13 pm GMT

Petras, for some reason, low balls the number of people ejected from assets when the mafia came to seize real estate in the name of the ruling class and their expensive wars, morality, the Constitution or whatever shit they could make up to fuck huge numbers of people over. Undoubtedly just like 9/11, the whole thing was planned in advance. Political whores are clearly useless when the system is at such extremes.

Banks like Capital One specialize in getting a signature and "giving" a car loan to someone they know won't be able to pay, but is simply being used, shaken down and repossessed for corporate gain. " No one held a gun to their head! " Get ready, the police state will in fact put a gun to your head.

Depending on the time period in question, which might be the case here, more than 20 million people were put out of homes and/or bankrupted with more to come. Clearly a bipartisan effort featuring widespread criminal conduct across the country – an attack on the population to sustain militarism.

peterAUS > , July 13, 2017 at 10:05 pm GMT

@yeah Nice.

If I may add:
"and you also have to dearly pay for you being white male heterosexual for oppressing all colored, all the women and all the sexually different through the history".

"And if it all fails, we will simply pack you and others like you in a basket of deplorables and forget about you at election time. If we see that you still don't get with the program we will reeducate you. Should you resist that in any way we'll incarcerate you. And, no, normal legal procedure does not work with racists/bigots/haters/whatever we don't like".

Reg Cćsar > , July 14, 2017 at 1:19 am GMT

@CCZ

"Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement and betrayal!"
Perhaps the spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is joyously gloating as progressives (and democrats) take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee

which itself was a progressive invention. There was no "right wing" anywhere in sight when it was estsblished in 1938.

[Jul 13, 2017] As of July 12 witch hunt continues unabated

They want to outdo Senator Joseph McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957). The level of hysteria and paranoia is amazing. The only question is whether they can run it for ten years.
Obviously the author has an agenda but it's interesting how this type of fantasy continues to be 'quacked'
Notable quotes:
"... By Election Day, an automated Kremlin cyberattack of unprecedented scale and sophistication had delivered critical and phony news about the Democratic presidential nominee to the Twitter and Facebook accounts of millions of voters. Some investigators suspect the Russians targeted voters in swing states, even in key precincts. ..."
"... One source familiar with Justice's criminal probe said investigators doubt Russian operatives controlling the so-called robotic cyber commands that fetched and distributed fake news stories could have independently "known where to specifically target to which high-impact states and districts in those states." ..."
Jul 13, 2017 | www.msn.com

Originally from: Trump-Russia investigators probe Jared Kushner-run digital operation

WASHINGTON -- Investigators at the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the Justice Department are examining whether the Trump campaign's digital operation – overseen by Jared Kushner – helped guide Russia's sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Congressional and Justice Department investigators are focusing on whether Trump's campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states – areas where Trump's digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton, according to several people familiar with the parallel inquiries.

Also under scrutiny is the question of whether Trump associates or campaign aides had any role in assisting the Russians in publicly releasing thousands of emails, hacked from the accounts of top Democrats, at turning points in the presidential race, mainly through the London-based transparency web site WikiLeaks .

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told McClatchy he wants to know whether Russia's "fake or damaging news stories" were "coordinated in any way in terms of targeting or in terms of timing or in terms of any other measure with the (Trump) campaign."

By Election Day, an automated Kremlin cyberattack of unprecedented scale and sophistication had delivered critical and phony news about the Democratic presidential nominee to the Twitter and Facebook accounts of millions of voters. Some investigators suspect the Russians targeted voters in swing states, even in key precincts.

Russia's operation used computer commands knowns as "bots" to collect and dramatically heighten the reach of negative or fabricated news about Clinton, including a story in the final days of the campaign accusing her of running a pedophile ring at a Washington pizzeria .

One source familiar with Justice's criminal probe said investigators doubt Russian operatives controlling the so-called robotic cyber commands that fetched and distributed fake news stories could have independently "known where to specifically target to which high-impact states and districts in those states."

All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation, led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, is confidential.

Top Democrats on the committees investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election have signaled the same.

Schiff said he wants the House panel to determine whether Trump aides helped Russia time its cyberattacks or target certain voters and whether there was "any exchange of information, any financial support funneled to organizations that were doing this kind of work."

Trump son-in-law Kushner, now a senior adviser to the president and the only current White House aide known to be deemed a "person of interest" in the Justice Department investigation, appears to be under the microscope in several respects. His real estate finances and December meetings with Russia's ambassador and the head of a sanctioned, state-controlled bank are also being examined.

Kushner's "role as a possible cut-out or conduit for Moscow's influence operations in the elections," including his niche overseeing the digital operations, will be closely looked at, said the source knowledgeable about the Justice Department inquiry.

Kushner joined Donald Trump Jr. and Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort at a newly disclosed June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York.. The meeting, revealed by The New York Times, followed emails in which Trump Jr. was told the lawyer for the Russian government would provide him with incriminating information on Clinton and he replied "If it's what you say I love it."

That disclosure could only serve to heighten interest in whether there was digital collaboration.

Mike Carpenter, who in January left a senior Pentagon post where he worked on Russia matters, also has suspicions about collaboration between the campaign and Russia's cyber operatives.

"There appears to have been significant cooperation between Russia's online propaganda machine and individuals in the United States who were knowledgeable about where to target the disinformation," he said, without naming any American suspects.

Trump has repeatedly repudiated or equivocated about the finding of four key intelligence agencies – the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and the Directorate of National Intelligence – that Russian cyber operatives meddled with the U.S. election.

Last Friday, during their first face-to-face meeting, Trump questioned Putin about Russia's role in the election meddling and Putin denied culpability, said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was present. Trump then said the two countries should find ways to move forward in their relationship, Tillerson said.

A Russian official who was at the meeting said the two sides agreed to form a working group to address cybersecurity, including interference in other countries' internal affairs. However, Trump backtracked Sunday night, saying in a tweet that he doesn't believe such an effort can happen.

As more has been learned about the breadth of the Russian cyber onslaught, congressional Democrats have shown growing resolve to demand that the Republican-controlled intelligence committees fully investigate ways in which Trump associates may have conspired with the Russians.

Among other things, congressional investigators are looking into whether Russian operatives, who successfully penetrated voting registration systems in Illinois, Arizona and possibly other states, shared any of that data with the Trump campaign, according to a report in Time.

"I get the fact that the Russian intel services could figure out how to manipulate and use the bots," Virginia Sen. Mark Warner told Pod Save America recently. "Whether they could know how to target states and levels of voters that the Democrats weren't even aware (of) really raises some questions How did they know to go to that level of detail in those kinds of jurisdictions?"

The Russians appear to have targeted women and African-Americans in two of the three decisive states, Wisconsin and Michigan, "where the Democrats were too brain dead to realize those states were even in play," Warner said.

[Jul 13, 2017] I suppose Lavrov called her a lady because hes a gentleman, but for me shes just a woman who shoots the shit that shes told and paid to shoot

Jul 13, 2017 | gravatar.com
moscowexile says: July 12, 2017 at 12:53 pm

Barbie Doll Nauert commented upon by Lavrov:

'Don't lag behind real events': Lavrov hits back after State Dept says he 'gets out ahead'

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has advised the US State Department to keep up with events after spokesperson Heather Nauert said that Lavrov "likes to talk a lot and get out ahead".

The Russian Foreign Minister was quick to retort, however.

"Nobody should get out ahead of things, but I suppose lagging behind real events does not help in a diplomat's job either."

"I don't understand how this lady can know what I like and don't like. We haven't been introduced", Lavrov said", speaking with the press following his meeting with the Belgian counterpart, Didier Reynders, in Brussels on Wednesday.

I suppose Lavrov called her "a lady" because he's a gentleman, but for me she's just a woman who shoots the shit that she's told and paid to shoot -- with a big, fixed smile on her Barbie-Doll face.

Big false smile, American know-nothing spokesperson.

[Jul 12, 2017] Stephen Cohens Remarks on Tucker Carlson Last Night Were Extraordinary

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Cohen's appearance on Carlson's show last night demonstrated again at what a blistering pace public opinion in the West about Putin and Russia is shifting, for the better. ..."
"... Cohen is always good, but last night he nailed it, calling the media's coverage of Hamburg 'pornography'. ..."
"... It was just a year ago, pre-Trump, that professor Cohen was banned from all the networks, from any major media outlet, and being relentlessly pilloried by the neocon media for being a naive fool for defending Putin and Russia. ..."
"... "The first thing you notice is just how much the press is rooting for this meeting between our president and the Russian President to fail. It's a kind of pornography. Just as there's no love in pornography, there's no American national interest in this bashing of Trump and Putin. ..."
"... Carlson tried to draw Cohen out about who exactly in Washington is so against Assad, and why, and Cohen deflected, demurring - 'I don't know - I'm not an expert'. Of course he knows, as does Carlson - it is an unholy alliance of Israel, Saudi Arabia and their neocon friends in Washington and the media who are pushing this criminal policy, who support ISIS, deliberately. But they can't say so, because, ... well, because. Ask Rupert Murdoch. ..."
Jul 12, 2017 | russia-insider.com
Cohen's appearance on Carlson's show last night demonstrated again at what a blistering pace public opinion in the West about Putin and Russia is shifting, for the better.

Cohen is always good, but last night he nailed it, calling the media's coverage of Hamburg 'pornography'.

Ahh, the power of the apt phrase.

It was just a year ago, pre-Trump, that professor Cohen was banned from all the networks, from any major media outlet, and being relentlessly pilloried by the neocon media for being a naive fool for defending Putin and Russia.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5L2F4ocEIZw

Last night he was the featured guest on the most watched news show in the country, being cheered on by the host, who has him on as a regular. And Cohen isn't remotely a conservative. He is a contributing editor at the arch-liberal Nation magazine, of which his wife is the editor. It doesn't really get pinker than that.

Some choice quotes here, but the whole thing is worth a listen:

"The first thing you notice is just how much the press is rooting for this meeting between our president and the Russian President to fail. It's a kind of pornography. Just as there's no love in pornography, there's no American national interest in this bashing of Trump and Putin.

As a historian let me tell you the headline I would write instead:

"What we witnessed today in Hamburg was a potentially historic new detente. an anti-cold-war partnership begun by Trump and Putin but meanwhile attempts to sabotage it escalate." I've seen a lot of summits between American and Russian presidents, ... and I think what we saw today was potentially the most fateful meeting ... since the Cold War.

The reason is, is that the relationship with Russia is so dangerous and we have a president who might have been crippled or cowed by these Russiagate attacks ... yet he was not. He was politically courageous. It went well. They got important things done. I think maybe today we witnessed president Trump emerging as an American statesman."

Cohen goes on to say that the US should ally with Assad, Iran, and Russia to crush ISIS, with Carlson bobbing his head up and down in emphatic agreement.

Carlson tried to draw Cohen out about who exactly in Washington is so against Assad, and why, and Cohen deflected, demurring - 'I don't know - I'm not an expert'. Of course he knows, as does Carlson - it is an unholy alliance of Israel, Saudi Arabia and their neocon friends in Washington and the media who are pushing this criminal policy, who support ISIS, deliberately. But they can't say so, because, ... well, because. Ask Rupert Murdoch.

Things are getting better in the US media, but we aren't quite able to call a spade a spade in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

[Jul 12, 2017] The Trump Jr. Russia Scandal Ain t No Big Deal by Stefan Molyneux

(Video)
Notable quotes:
"... The best analysis of what is really going on in the world is coming out of the alternative media. Molyneux is one of the heavy hitters in this world - with his 700k Youtube subscribers and similar numbers of podcast listeners, he matters. ..."
"... One of his points is this: How could this possibly be a serious Russian government effort if they have a fat Brit moron convey the message over unencrypted email? Our staff of Russian-trained intelligence experts has to concur. ..."
www.theamericanconservative.com
The best analysis of what is really going on in the world is coming out of the alternative media. Molyneux is one of the heavy hitters in this world - with his 700k Youtube subscribers and similar numbers of podcast listeners, he matters.

One of his points is this: How could this possibly be a serious Russian government effort if they have a fat Brit moron convey the message over unencrypted email? Our staff of Russian-trained intelligence experts has to concur.

Say hi to Rob Goldstone. This will be over in a few days, and as before, the dummies who are chasing this idea, will just look stupider than they already do.

Save this video and watch it over your Wheaties tomorrow morning. Molyneux nails it.

https://youtu.be/wohYNCD4u-E

Tommy Jensen , 3 hours ago

Karl Rove said in the middle of year 2000 to VIP lawyers in Washington, that they no more would be occupied with analises of facts but forward with analising the reality Washington defined.

Due to the unipolar position Washington would from early year 2000 define the reality the world should face and spend (waste) their time on analising.

Molyneux is good to hear and see on many subjects, but this subect is in my opinion irrelevant, irrelevant as the Russia hacking US election is, the Assad Chemical attack, the HitlerPutin, the Crimea annexion hoax, the NK threat, man made clima change hoax, etc.

People with true intelligent capabilities should of course not spend their time on finding evidences on and document all Washington´s lies and defined realities.

Both Molyneux, RI and many others must have the right to dismiss obvious lies and propagandas, and go straight to the subject, that anybody with power that lie to us and the public should and must be removed and replaced.

Otherwise we are using our powers, intelligence and energy in an un-constructive way and we never learn, because we jump on the joke and hot air train again again.

[Jul 12, 2017] Top Russian Analyst Explains How US Relations Got So Bad

Notable quotes:
"... Sergey Markov is a one of the most influential Russian political scientists and publicists on international relations. ..."
"... He is omnipresent as a charismatic talking head on the top national TV shows, and his thinking reflects the opinions of Russia's political elites. He speaks English fluently, and writes in a lively, accessible style, unusual for academics. ..."
"... This article, exclusive to RI, gives an interesting insight into how Russian elites see US behavior. ..."
"... Russia responded by the food embargo from Russia, so the Russian producers in fact gained from the whole story, with president Obama still uttering his phrase about the Russian economy being "in tatters." ..."
"... The peak of Western sanctions against Russia during the period of "Russia Isolated" was the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia. The pressure on Putin was so obvious, that he even had to leave the summit before all the other participants. ..."
"... That Western policy continued between March 2014 and autumn of 2015. Its legacy is still with us. After Donald Trump was unexpectedly elected the president in 2016, voices about the easing or even lifting the anti-Russian sanctions started to be heard in Europe and the US. But the legacy of 2014-2015 still dominates: the US requires Russia to change its policy in Ukraine (in fact, allowing the population of Donbass to be subjected to Nazi-like repressions). These requirements are unacceptable for Russia, but the West is determined not to lift sanction until its wishes (presented as "conditions of the Minsk agreement", even though Russia is not even mentioned there) are fulfilled. ..."
"... As a result, Trump was not allowed even to form his own new foreign policy team, he had to inherit that very part of Obama's foreign policy establishment, which Trump himself criticized during the elections. ..."
"... Currently, the Russia-US relations are in a state of a hiatus, a pause with no immediate end in sight. The new president of the US simply cannot conduct the Russia policy, which he had in his mind and which he promised his voters. His actions are blocked, and it is not clear how long this situation will persist. ..."
"... Very interesting assessment, but it ignores that Wall-Street starting with Clinton then re-enforced by Bush & Obama now Owns US Presidency, and Financiers do not adhere to Democratic principles, rather they are Dictators who view the public as assets to exploit, with Obama sabotaging Trump's Presidency on his way out. ..."
"... Vladimir Putin will eventually go down as 'The Shrewdest Gutsiest Moral Principled Politician of this era, with Chinese President Xi second, and US three stooges before Trump the most inept cowards or sell-outs in the history of that Nation. ..."
Jul 12, 2017 | russia-insider.com
Top Russian Analyst Explains How US Relations Got So Bad

A short history of US-Russia relations since 'Gorby-mania' Sergey Markov 15

Sergey Markov is a one of the most influential Russian political scientists and publicists on international relations.

He is omnipresent as a charismatic talking head on the top national TV shows, and his thinking reflects the opinions of Russia's political elites. He speaks English fluently, and writes in a lively, accessible style, unusual for academics.

This article, exclusive to RI, gives an interesting insight into how Russian elites see US behavior.


What would happen, if journalists from the early 2000s or even from the year 2007 (before Saakashvili's attack against South Ossetia) could by some magic gadget have access to the computer screens of their colleagues covering the recent G20 summit in Hamburg? These journalists would probably think they were transported into some kindergarten dystopia.

They would see everyone rejoicing about "the very fact" of a meeting of two middle-aged men with the most modern planes, ships and submarines at their disposal. A meeting that took place more than half of a year after they were supposed to meet as the presidents of the world's two most powerful countries. German chancellor Angela Merkel, arguably the third most powerful person in the world, says she is happy that the two men met and that they "stay in touch" (parents are usually happy about this kind of relationships between their children in a kindergarten).

The media frenzy around the meeting between these two middle-aged men looks absurd: what is there to admire and what is there to fear?

So, how did we allow the international relations to be reduced to the level when it became so difficult to organize a meeting between the presidents of Russia and the US – even on the background of the two very dangerous armed conflicts (in Syria and in Ukraine)? Why is a contact between two politicians in the epoch of modern transportation and communication – why is this contact such a problem now? Why does it take even more time and effort than the summits between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill during the World War II, when the capitals of the Allies were divided by the Nazi-occupied Europe and the Western Pacific occupied by the Japanese militarist regime?

In this situation, a short wrap-up of the Russia-US relations from the 1980s to 2017 might do some good: at least, it partially explains today's absurdities.

The history of relationships between Russia and the US in the last 25 years is full of zigzags and its own ups and downs. From my point of view, it is possible to single out 11 stages in this relationship. Each of them left its own legacy, and those different legacies continue to make a difference in various ways until now. Let me first single out all of these stages:

"Gorbomania" Consolidation of geopolitical pluralism. Russia First Russia doesn't matter War against terror. The epoch of "color revolutions" Perezagruzka 2 ("Reload of Relations") Onslaught on Putin (the Russian president is presented as an authoritarian leader of a regional power) Russia Isolated. Sanctions Russia is back as a world power "Russian hackers": pause of uncertainty

Act 1: Gorbomania (Gorby-mania)

The period of improvement in relations, which was based on hopes connected to Gorbachev, continued from 1987 until August 1991, the time of the de facto collapse of the Soviet Union. During this period, the US supported the new foreign policy course of Mikhail Gorbachev, which was generally aimed at openness, reconciliation with the West and general liberalization of the Soviet political regime. During this period the US did not conduct a policy aimed at the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the US' political course was instead promoting the unity of the USSR. This course was explained by the fear of the Soviet Union's collapse "in a Yugoslav way," with a possible nuclear war between former constituent republics.

One of the indicators of this cautious American approach to the unity of the Soviet Union was the famous "chicken Kiev speech" of the then president George W.H.Bush (the senior). He made that speech on August 1 of 1991 in the Supreme Soviet of what was then still the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic inside the Soviet Union. This body was already showing the signs of being the future parliament of independent Ukraine, making defiant moves against Moscow. However, in his speech president Bush told the audience that the US was not supporting Kiev's independence at the moment and that Ukrainians should rather orient themselves to the policies of the leader of the Soviet Union – Mikhail Gorbachev.

However, the period of Gorbomania (Gorby-mania) came to its natural end after the liquidation of the Soviet Union and the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev from the position of the defunct country's president. The legacy of that period was the formation in the US of a stable and wrong stereotype of what "good Russia" should look like. This mythologized stereotype presented "good Russia" as the Russia of Mikhail Gorbachev, which would make all sorts of concessions to the West, willingly leaving to the West the territories, which historically had been under its influence. So, in future Americans would support only that kind of Russia's foreign policy, which would be a complete remake of Gorbachev's approach.

Act 2. Consolidation of Geopolitical Pluralism

The second period in the history of relations took the space between August 1991 and the beginning of the year 1992. It can be summed up by the famous formula of "consolidation of geopolitical pluralism." The essence of this formula consisted in the following. The USA did bot strive to see the Soviet Union collapse, but since this collapse took place anyway, there was no way Washington could permit any kind of rebirth of a union of post-Soviet republics under the stewardship of Russia. The reason: such a rebirth would mean a new life for Russian imperialism.

One could say that this period lasted shortly, but it would also be right to say that in a lot of ways this period continues to this day. There is still a widespread opinion in the US that Washington should provide all kinds of assistance to all the neighbors of Russia in a bid to stem the growth of Russian influence there. This opinion also puts the sign of equality between Russian influence and "Russian imperialism." The theory behind this opinion is that any kind of union among the former Soviet republics with Russian participation would mean the rebirth of the Russian empire. Any Russian empire, according to this view, would make Russia an enemy of democracy and, as a consequence, an enemy of the United States. So, this view justifies any kind of assistance to any kind of anti-Russian regimes in the post-Soviet space.

In its extreme manifestation, this view inspired a policy that spurred the US to support the violent coup in Ukraine in 2014. The US also supported the subsequent policy of state terrorism led by the new regime in Kiev, that was installed as a result of the coup. In its softer forms, this policy meant American support for de-Russification in all post-Soviet countries. This support was provided despite the obvious fact that this de-Russification often took violent forms.

Act 3. "Russia First".

The third period, which could tentatively be called "Russia First" approach, consisted in the policy led by the then president Bill Clinton, the policy aimed at helping create a stable and democratic Russia. The idea was that this Russia could be an ally of the West, a kind of "kingsize Poland." This kingsize Poland was supposed to be a part of the Western coalition, even though it would have a subordinate position inside this coalition. American support for denuclearization of Ukraine (the removal of former Soviet nuclear weapons from the territories of the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan) – this American support was a part of "Russia First" policy.

In fact, Ukrainian political elites tried to retain the military nuclear capability on the territory of independent Ukraine. But Washington, represented by president Clinton and his key "ambassador-at-large" on Russia and post-Soviet space, Strobe Talbott, had a different plan. So, Washington pressured Kiev to transfer the nuclear weapons from the Ukrainian territory to Russia. This approach fitted the geopolitical interests of the United States, allowing to avert a possible conflict between Russia and Ukraine as nuclear powers. Such a conflict could have disastrous consequences for everyone. So, this policy fitted the Russian interests too.

The other distinct feature of the "Russia First" policy was the American pressure on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other international financial organizations. The aim was to persuade these structures to provide loans to Russia, even when the economic policy of the Russian government did not fit the requirements of the IMF and similar organizations to their client countries.

The other important element of "Russia First" policy was the presence of political and economic advisers from the United States and its allied countries in Russia. These people, being citizens of their countries, influenced the decisions of the Russian government, including some key decisions. Alas, the advice of these helpers, as well as the US assistance in general, did more harm than good, often leading to failures. The idea of making Russia a stable democratic country did not work. Russia crawled from one crisis to another. In 1993 Yeltsin made a violent coup d'etat, with tanks firing at the parliament's building, the constitution being changed and new policies rammed through without consent from the parliament. The presidential election of 1996, of which Yeltsin was declared the winner, had all the indications of being falsified (the bulletins cast were later destroyed by the government). If elections had been held in a fair way, the candidate of the Communist party of Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov could have been the winner.

The crisis and the subsequent default in 1998 led the economy to a disaster. The same year IMF de facto refused to continue cooperation with Russia, stopped giving loans and predicted that the Russian economy would contract by 8 percent. This forecast revealed itself to be wrong. As soon as Russia stopped using the services of Western economic advisers, its economy started growing and added 9 percent in the course of two subsequent years.

The period of "Russia First" and its legacy are still very much alive in today's policy of the United States towards Russia. They Western elites stay convinced that at a certain moment they provided great assistance to Russia and its people, giving their valuable advice and providing billions of dollars in loans. In the Russian public opinion, however, the majority view of this period is negative. It is viewed as further proof of the West's negative influence on Russia and the anti-Russian character of its foreign policy. Russian public opinion puts on the Western advisers of the Yeltsin government part of the blame for the disaster that Russian economy had to go through in the 1990s. The majority view in Russia is that it was Yeltsin's government (and its foreign advisers) that led in the 1990s to Russia's deindustrialization, the collapse of social institutions, the decline of science and education, mass migration out of the country. At the time, the mortality rates in the country soared. The rapid deterioration of life's standards led to a lot of "premature" deaths: in 1991-1997 on the territory of the Russian Federation every year there were many more deaths registered annually than in 1990. The total number of "premature" deaths for social reasons is estimated at the level of 2 million.

In a huge chunk of Russia's public opinion the prevailing view is that this socio-economic degradation of the country was a part of a conscious effort by the West to deceive Russia and to inflict the biggest possible damage on it.

In this way, the 1990s stay the main source of the diverging mythologies still dominating the bilateral relations between Russia and the community of Western nations.

The West honestly thinks that in the 1990s it helped Russia and generally played a positive role in its development. The majority of the Russian public opinion for good reasons sticks to the view that the West in the 1990s preserved and pampered Yeltsin's corrupt regime, thus adding to the destruction of the country. An often cited argument in support of that view is the fact that the West supported Yeltsin's coup d'etat in 1993 and acquiesced to the falsification of the 1996 presidential election, which retained Yeltsin in power.

The diverging visions of the 1990s' legacy will determine the "conflict potential" of the relations between Russia and the US for many more years.

Act 4. "Russia Does Not Matter"

This period started in 1998 and continued until the year 2001. It was a reaction to the previous unsuccessful attempt to help Russia in a speedy forming of a democratic, stable and West-friendly socio-political system. The end product was a weak country with a corrupt government and a crumbling economy – a typical declining power.

This period was ushered in by an acute economic crisis of 1998, it included the beginning of the economy's regeneration in 1999-2001, Boris Yeltsin's resignation and his replacement by his younger successor Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin, who was initially viewed in the US as just another opportunistic "apparatchik" brought to power by the corrupt ruling "family" in order to preserve that family's capitals and help it avoid the revenge of its enemies and Russia's people in general.

This period seats deep in Russian people's memory because it coincided with the peak of the Balkan wars with bombers from the US and other NATO countries bombing the then Yugoslav capital Belgrade and other cities of Serbia. The famous U-turn of the Washington-bound airplane of the then Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov also falls into this period. The prime minister was heading to the United States with a visit and, having learnt about the start of NATO's bombing of Serbia, Primakov decided to return back to Russia, making a U-turn over the Atlantic. Primakov decided to return without visiting Washington, even though the talks there had pivotal importance for the Russian economy.

It was then, during the bombing of Yugoslavia, that a serious change in the attitude of the public opinion to the West and especially to the United States took place. The cruel Western bombardment of Serb cities, led to the new perception of America as a hostile, aggressive and unjust country. The pro-American politicians in Russia started to be perceived as anti-Russian and generally unpatriotic.

Act 5. Russia and the US as Allies in the Fight Against International Terrorism (War On Terror)

The fifth period was ushered in by the terrorist act of 9/11 in the year 2001, when Russia and the US became allies in the fight against international terrorism. The preconditions for the alliance were created during the meeting between the Russian president Vladimir Putin and George Bush the junior in Ljubljana, the Slovenian capital, in June 2001. It was there that Bush said that he looked Putin in the eye and saw Putin's soul there. Putin's system of personal values cracked up to be remarkably akin to Bush – it was a combination of economic liberalism, social conservatism and religiosity.

Having learnt that Putin retained his Christians beliefs even inside the KGB, Bush made a conclusion that one could do business with Putin. This positive sentiment on Bush'a side got a powerful boost after the terrorist attack against the United States on 9/11 2001, when Putin became the first foreign leader who called Bush with an expression of support. Putin's support was not in words alone: on Putin's order, in 2001 all military activity of Russia was frozen for a few days, so that American armed forces could concentrate on fighting international terrorism, instead of wasting their resources on Russia.

In a few weeks the US became convinced that the brain center of the 9/11 attack was located in Afghanistan, so it was decided to crush the Taliban regime. It was then that Russia passed to the US a part of influence that Russia had over the Afghan-based Northern Alliance, a coalition of field commanders of mostly Tajik and Uzbek origin in the north of Afghanistan. As the US Airforce made its bombing strikes, all the "dirty work" of destroying the military might of Taliban on the Afghan ground was done by the Northern Alliance, with lots of help from the Russian special services and Russian army command. Most of the commanders of the Northern alliance had fought against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, but they later became allied with Russians in their fight against the Taliban.

The period of joint fight against terrorism was a great success, since the headquarters of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the regime of Taliban (but not its ideology) were liquidated. Cooperation between the Russian and American special services allowed to prevent a number of jihadist terrorist acts.

However, that anti-terrorist cooperation was quickly weakened by the desire of the United States to develop on their success in Afghanistan by toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Russia condemned the preparation of that war. Bush perceived the Russian opposition to the war in Iraq as treason on Russia's side. His narrative was that Russia betrayed the anti-terrorist alliance. So, Bush thought himself in his right to terminate his obligations to Russia in the framework of the anti-terrorist alliance.

Even though the war in Iraq was recognized to have been a mistake in the United States, relations between Russia and the US (including the anti-terrorist track) never returned to the level of the period of the early days of the "War On Terror." The fact that the pretext for the war – the presumed possession by Saddam Hussein of the weapons of mass destruction – revealed itself to be a massive falsification, undermined Russia's trust in the US mainstream media and its periodic hysterias over various "mortal threats" requiring American military interventions.

In general, the period of the "war on terror" left in Russians a firm belief that partnership with the West in the anti-terrorist fight should continue. This belief was strengthened by the growth in the scope and sophistication of international terrorism. In the United States' elite too, there remained a substantial minority group which considered anti-terrorist cooperation with Russia feasible.

Act 6. Color Revolutions

Already in November 2003, the first "color revolution" won in Georgia using a rose as its symbol (the words "flower" and "color" have the same sounding in Russian). The new leader Mikheil Saakashvili, with active support from the United States, started conducting a very anti-Russian foreign policy. In 2004, another color revolution happened in Ukraine – the closest ethnic relative of Russia, in whose capital (Kiev) the proto-Russian ancient state Kievan Rus was born. The winner of the Ukrainian color revolution, Viktor Yushchenko, also took a very anti-Russian position. All of these revolution won with active support from the American government and so called "non-government" (Soros-financed NGOs) structures.

All of these revolutions had a powerful anti-Russian message and they were all supported by the US authorities, including the president of the United States. In the West, discussions about the desirability of a 'color revolution' in Russia started. Russia responded with a tough "no" to this "project for its future." Limitations on the work of American NGOs in Russia were imposed. Putin's speech of the year 2007 in Munich became the apotheosis of this Russian "no," with Putin denouncing not only the Western policy of "regime change," but also with Putin denouncing the unipolar world with the US and the EU as the undisputed pole.

The US continued their onslaught, however, and the next conflict happened in Georgia. The pro-US Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili started his military operation against what he called "pro-Russian separatists in South Ossetia," who had seceded from Georgia fearing genocide under the first Georgian ultranationalist president Zviad Gamsakhurdia back in 1991.

Saakashvili's artillery struck not only at South Ossetians, but also at the Russian peace-keeping contingent in South Ossetia. In retaliation, the Russian army intervened in South Ossetia, and soon the Georgian troops, who had already begun celebrating their conquest of the South Ossetian capital Tskhinval, were pushed back to their initial positions. The US did not have the guts to support their ally militarily and backed off. However, the red line of direct military combat between the Russian and American forces was dangerously close.

Act 7. The Politics of Reload (Perezagruzka 2)

This period, ushered in by Barack Obama's coming to power, is marked by a temporary hiatus in the information war between the two countries. Russia also joined the WTO, and it seemed that a normal dialogue was restarting. Even the arrest of 10 Russian reconnaissance operatives in the US did not lead to a cooling of relations between the two countries, but rather to a "spy exchange" and even to a certain warming of relations.

The policy of reload, started in 2009, promised great perspectives, but it was wrapped up in a rather brief period of time. Contradiction was programmed into the very structure of the "reload" strategy. The aim of the "reload" was to improve relations between the US and Russia in a bid to get Russian support for the American foreign policy initiatives. The problem consisted in the fact that not all of these foreign policy initiatives were acceptable for Russia or simply well thought through.

For example, in spring 2011 the US pushed through a resolution of the Security Council of the United Nations on Libya, with Russia abstaining in the hope of giving the US a chance to resolve the Libyan problem. The result was awful: the resolution was misinterpreted to pave the way for a Western military intervention in Libya on the side of Islamist insurgents against the country's ruler, Muhammar Qaddafi. After the Western bombings and the collapse of Qaddafi's regime, Libya was plunged into the abyss of a civil war which continues to this way. Russia's decision in 2011 not to veto the US-suggested resolution at the United Nations was a serious mistake, which Moscow is determined not to repeat in future.

The first indicator of the Reload's speedy end was the American support for the protests that enveloped Moscow as a result of the opposition's defeat at the parliamentary elections of 2011. The US made clear its desire NOT to see Vladimir Putin back in the president's seat after the brief tenure of Dmitry Medvedev as the president. An important threshold was the official visit by the then US vice-president Joe Biden at the time. During his visit, Biden gave Putin an unsolicited "advice" not to present his candidacy for another term.

The conflict aggravated in 2013, when Moscow had the guts not to extradite the fugitive American whistle-blower Edward Snowden, who found himself on the Russian territory after his escape from Hong Kong putting Russia before a hard choice. The fact that Russia became the only country in the world that didn't cave in to Washington's demand for Snowden's scalp, this fact enraged Washington and in the first place the American intelligence community. After the Snowden episode the period of Reload actually came to its end.

The really important result of the Reload period was Washington's conviction that attempts to improve relations with Moscow by what the American side saw as "concessions" (even though they were not real concessions) – that these attempts are futile.

Act 8. Frontal Attack Against Russia's Interests (Putin presented as an "authoritarian leader of a regional superpower")

Here comes the 8th stage of the Russia-US relations, which lasted between 2012 and 2013. It was the time of a frontal personal attack against the Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Russian interests were attacked too.

American sanctions tied to the Magnitsky case and attempts to make an information attack against Putin's beloved project, the Sochi Olympics, were seen by many as hostile acts, the context of the Snowden scandal did not add to easing tensions.

It was then, back in the summer of 2013, that the American intelligence community, enraged by the Snowden episode, got down seriously to the project of removing the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. The opportunity presented itself when the controversy over the costs of Ukraine's joining the Association Agreement with the EU led to violent protests in Kiev. Western threats of personal sanctions paralyzed the will for resistance on the side of Yanukovych and Ukraine's government, oligarchs were pushed to change sides by the Western pressure. The legitimate government failed to restore order and prevent a violent "regime change", during which mass protests were "reformatted" as a violent rebellion.

The result of the 8th act was the establishment of a certain consensus in Washington. That consensus boiled down to the conviction that Russia is an enemy, and it should be treated as an enemy, with toughness sooner or later being rewarded by a victory. The outcome in Ukraine in the first days after the toppling of Yanukovych in the end of February 2014 was seen by the American elite as one such victory.

Act 9. Russia Isolated. Sanctions.

After the Ukrainian Maidan, a new low in Russia-US relations installed itself for duration. Russia reacted to the violent coup in Ukraine, with a rabidly anti-Russian regime established there, by taking back Crimea, with most of Crimeans more willing than ever to leave the newly nationalist Ukraine. The Russian leadership also supported the rebellion of the Donbass population, where the rebels were dying in an uneven fight against the Ukrainian army, with its airplanes, tanks and artillery. In response, the US started a powerful campaign against Russia. Sanctions against Russia were introduced, and the West started demanding that Russia stop its support for the movement in Donbass, which soon took the form of popular antifascist resistance.

A hybrid war, which the West accused Russia of leading, was in fact declared to Russia. Hundreds of Russian officials and business companies faced economic or visa sanctions. Ruble lost half of its value, which had a negative and a positive outcome: the negative was in a lower living standard and the positive in an increased competitive capacity of the Russian products.

Russia responded by the food embargo from Russia, so the Russian producers in fact gained from the whole story, with president Obama still uttering his phrase about the Russian economy being "in tatters."

The peak of Western sanctions against Russia during the period of "Russia Isolated" was the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia. The pressure on Putin was so obvious, that he even had to leave the summit before all the other participants.

The result of the period was the formation of a big Euro-Atlantic anti-Russian coalition, with iron discipline inside it. The other outcome was the legacy of sanctions and other elements of a de-facto hybrid war, now seen as a legitimate method of resolving the "Russian problem."

That Western policy continued between March 2014 and autumn of 2015. Its legacy is still with us. After Donald Trump was unexpectedly elected the president in 2016, voices about the easing or even lifting the anti-Russian sanctions started to be heard in Europe and the US. But the legacy of 2014-2015 still dominates: the US requires Russia to change its policy in Ukraine (in fact, allowing the population of Donbass to be subjected to Nazi-like repressions). These requirements are unacceptable for Russia, but the West is determined not to lift sanction until its wishes (presented as "conditions of the Minsk agreement", even though Russia is not even mentioned there) are fulfilled.

Act 10. Russia is Back

The new 10th period in the history of relations between Russia and the US started to the accompaniment of the Russian fighter jets' engines, as the Russian aviation came to Syria to save president Assad from the foreign-supported insurgents. The most prominent among the insurgents were visibly unpalatable for years: they were jihadists from the so called Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. By the end of 2015 it became obvious that Russia changed the course of events in Syria, thus establishing itself as a leading world power, and not as a regional one (see the Act 8).

The result was not just the jihadists' failure to topple Assad, but a gradual reestablishment of the Syrian government's full control over the most developed regions of Syria, such as Damascus and Aleppo.

The result was the general view that "Russia is Back", by 2016 it became a generally accepted opinion. The narrative of the Western press changed dramatically: just months before it wrote about Russia as a declining power, which is isolated with its economy in Obamian "tatters," by the winter 2016/2017 the narrative changed to Russia being "an overwhelming threat." Now Russia is perceived as a mighty international force, which can force on the United States and the EU the unfavorable results of votes and elections (Brexit, Trump's election).

This view of Russia as a "reborn" power in international relations is often coupled with Putin's demonization. The view of the Russian president as an all-powerful demon, which can manipulate the results of elections and public opinion in the US, Germany and France, while easily pushing Britain into Brexit – this view will one day be viewed as a twenty first century conspiracy theory, on the par with myths about the all-controlling "elders of Zion" and similar absurdities.

The result of Act 10 is the view of Russia as a "comeback kid" on the global stage, but the actions of this resurgent power are viewed as hostile to the US.

Act 11 – the ongoing one. Russian Hackers: the Pause of Unpredictability

During his electoral campaign, Donald Trump promised to improve Russia-US relations and spoke in favor of ending the new cold war. However, despite his sensational victory at the elections, the new US president soon found himself in a situation when he simply did not have a chance to pursue his vision of foreign policy. The unprecedented pressure came from Trump's enemies and from the US establishment in general. Trump was accused of having been brought to power by Russian "super-hackers." He was constantly presented as an admirer of Putin and later as a person under Russian influence, simply because he owes his electoral victory to Russia and to Putin personally. The American president is on the brink of impeachment.

As a result, Trump was not allowed even to form his own new foreign policy team, he had to inherit that very part of Obama's foreign policy establishment, which Trump himself criticized during the elections.

Currently, the Russia-US relations are in a state of a hiatus, a pause with no immediate end in sight. The new president of the US simply cannot conduct the Russia policy, which he had in his mind and which he promised his voters. His actions are blocked, and it is not clear how long this situation will persist.

TIMELY CONCLUSIONS

So, which legacy is staying with us after all these periods of recent history?

  1. Washington is convinced that a "good Russia" is a possibility. This is the kind of Russia that cedes ground to the US on every issue. "Good Russia" is also supposed to willingly lave the territory of its historic influence. It is expected to conduct the policy against its own national interest and to follow all recommendations from abroad, even if that goes against the right of its own citizens.
  2. The US sees its aim as helping the countries around Russia in order to stem the spread of Russian influence. Russian influence is seen as negative by definition. Washington sees itself as a friend of the Russian people, not Russian state. The period of the 1990s, seen in Russia as a disaster, is admired in the US. In the US there is a widespread view of Russia as a vulnerable "giant on the feet of clay" Russia still believes it can be an ally of the US in the fight against terrorism.
  3. The US has powerful instruments of undermining Russia, the technologies of "soft power" in the first place. Washington is not prepared to any concessions towards Russia, they are viewed as a way to a dead end. Washington still sees Putin as a supernatural demon, with the media recreating that delusion Sanctions form the backbone of the US policy towards Russia Russia is seen in the US as an enemy of the US – weak or strong.
  4. Foreign policy towards Russia is still a hostage of the inner politics in the US. The "Russiagate" is seen as a way towards Trump's impeachment.

In this situation the US elite still has ahead of it the task of forming a coherent policy towards Russia.

TellTheTruth-2 , 13 hours ago

Meet the New World Order .. Once it is understood Communism and Zionism are both trees split from the same trunk and the same root system, the picture becomes clearer. Both had the same goal: World Domination. Which one won? Putin, a Christian, stopped the ZioCON/Communists looting of Russia and, when he started to prosecute them, they fled to Israel. Today they've shifted their focus to the USA and, and in addition to looting the USA, they're bringing their Iron Curtain police state down on us. Until Trump, at the risk of being called an anti-Semite, gets the courage to do what Putin did and toss the ZioCON/Communists out of the US Government, the USA will continue its' downhill slide and, if they ever get the guns, millions of Christians will die, just like they did to the Christians in Russia.

ghartwell TellTheTruth-2 , an hour ago

Good quick overview.

John C Carleton , 14 hours ago

Putin is a very influential person on the world stage at this point. But to call Trump and the German zionist collaborating cow, second and third most powerful people in the world? You do not understand they are hand puppets? And you are writing a political dissection piece?

Ivan Grozny , 7 hours ago

This article is one of the most sensible and comprehensible pieces I have ever seen! Kudos to the author! Very good, very good indeed!

William Reston , 11 hours ago

Congrats Russia-Insider, you now have two great analysts clearing up the mess and making things clear between the US and Russia - P. Goncharoff and S. Markov. I do appreciate their views and brains!

Vince Dhimos , 13 hours ago

Russophobia is racism.

Tobe Fair , 4 hours ago

Very interesting assessment, but it ignores that Wall-Street starting with Clinton then re-enforced by Bush & Obama now Owns US Presidency, and Financiers do not adhere to Democratic principles, rather they are Dictators who view the public as assets to exploit, with Obama sabotaging Trump's Presidency on his way out.

Considering US lack of any victory for the $Trillions squandered on Military Belligerence & Predation, 'Desperation' is more fitting than any Political strategy.

Vladimir Putin will eventually go down as 'The Shrewdest Gutsiest Moral Principled Politician of this era, with Chinese President Xi second, and US three stooges before Trump the most inept cowards or sell-outs in the history of that Nation.

How else could US Senate & Reps in-cahoots with Spy-services be so confident as to threaten it's newly "elected" President? Fact is, every Nation which survived US & clients' sanctions, embargoes & asset freezes (never to be returned) are Head & Shoulders above those who subjugated themselves out of fear or lack of fortitude. Enough victims who know how to fight, to outnumber gang-banging NATO and it's EU parasites. Exciting & Traumatic times ahead.

peter gill , 10 hours ago

The only thing effecting U.S. Russia relations is the Jewish lobby, both in the U.K. and the U.S. The good thing is that the world is now waking up to the word Zionist. The Jewish media up to now has had total control of world opinion. The writing is on the wall, there is other financial institutions the new world is turning to, and their options are limitless. Right now the Zionists think they can weather the storm; but if their wrong it will be the end of their monopoly. Add to that the growing backlash against Israel and the consequences of public opinion. Especially in the United States,Great Britain,Australia and of course Israel.

Jon Geissinger , 11 hours ago

The American public is asleep at the wheel, not unlike a drunk at the wheel of a 50' tractor trailer having a blackout episode or better yet, at the controls of a 10 mile long train running at 100 mph. The road/track is littered with people who are also asleep, and the end of the road/rail line is a steep cliff leading to nowhere, into the abyss. We, the U.S., are within inches of that end of the 'line', and nobody is paying attention. You will not affect the American Public unless you take things like reality TV, Dancing with the Stars or Honey Boo Boo away, and jack the price of gas up to $10 a gallon.

It does not matter if you are a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, a blind evangelical christian, or a normal run of the mill Joe the Plumber. The end result is the same, and it has been repeated over and over throughout man's history. Empires will rise and fall; their speed of ascension or decent is a factor of the technology today, the timeline is highly compressed today because of things like the internet.

Generally speaking, all we can do is just sit back for the ride, and if so inclined, prepare for the massive conflagration that will be the result of the impending crash.
Russia's star is on the rise, the United States, and those attached to it, are on the descent. Natural process of history. Get over it. Screaming for your safe space is something that was seen in the fall of Rome as well! As is the murder of the infants and unborn; all text book, checklist fall of empire.

You can sit back and ignore it, take note and watch it unfold, move to a safer location (southern hemisphere!), do as you please; the average man and woman are without any other control other than their exact location on the planet.

What the esteemed writer points out is the points of the checklist, nothing more. There was no cause and effect, it was a matter of natural process.

God is doing a thing and there is nothing you or I can do about it. Probably not even relocation!

So get over it!

William Toffan Jon Geissinger , 7 hours ago

There's nothing normal or inevitable about it, and God has nothing to do with it. We can control our fate through free will. Putin did it in Russia, so why can't the USA? True, Russians are less enamored with bread and circuses than the poorly educated average American, but just read the posts from average Americans on the internet, The times they are a changin! Social change is always brought about by a minority of people with conviction for their goals. The masses will inevitably follow. That is the real lesson of history.

Constantine William Toffan , 5 hours ago

Hope you're right. But while I also believe the US citizenry, should it rise up, could make a huge difference, not just within its homeland, but on an international scale.

The melancholic truth, however, is that the US Americans are among the most docile and subservient people collectively when it comes to politics. So while you're right about the exercise of free will (which is an important aspect of the Christian religion BTW), it seems highly unlikely that they will be galvanized for a well-directed political action.

Jon Geissinger William Toffan , 7 hours ago

History. It repeats itself. We are in another repeat of that loop. The American Public has nothing to do with it other than being unwitting victims.
THE ONLY way the American public will sit up and take notice is an actual, physical kick in the mouth; history. Beyond that, they will continue to take the BS that is dished out and say "thank you can I have another". Yes, there is a SMALL percentage of the public that is taking notice, but not enough to stop the slide, and certainly not enough to return to the Constitution and Declaration; the first American revolution was supported and enacted by 14% of the population.
The posts that you read are 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of the population. That is .0000001% of 325 million people.
There is no recovery without a collapse.

Kjell Hasthi , 14 hours ago

- Russia's decision in 2011 not to veto the US-suggested resolution at the United Nations was a serious mistake, which Moscow is determined not to repeat in future.

What matters is if Russia was in arming mode at that time. My gut feeling is Putin already had concluded there will be a WWIII, and was preparing for that. The number of nuke shelters finished by Jan 2015 is astonishing. The buildup of Putin Jugend happened before or at the time?

By 2014 NATO had been turned into a expeditionary Corps ready to fight shoeless Africans. They are adapting themselves too late, like Britain 1940

[Jul 11, 2017] Russian Lawyer Who Met With Trump Jr. I Didn t Have Clinton Info They Wanted

Looks like recent leak is another fake...
www.unz.com

MOSCOW - The Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. during the presidential campaign denied in an exclusive interview with NBC News that she had any connection to the Kremlin and insists she met with President Donald Trump's son to press her client's interest in the Magnitsky Act - not to hand over information about Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"I never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton. It was never my intention to have that," Natalia Veselnitskaya said.

When asked how Trump Jr. seemed to have the impression that she had information about the Democratic National Committee, she responded:

"It is quite possible that maybe they were longing for such an information. They wanted it so badly that they could only hear the thought that they wanted."

Trump Jr. has confirmed that the meeting occurred, saying in a statement to The New York Times that he attended "a short introductory meeting" with the lawyer, where the topic of conversation was primarily about adoption.

On Monday, Trump Jr. seemed to confirm that he had been offered information about Hillary or her campaign but insisted that nothing untoward in the meeting had occurred.

"Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent... went nowhere but had to listen," he tweeted, seemingly sarcastic.

The New York Times on Monday reported that Trump Jr. was told in an email before the meeting that the information Veselnitskaya had was part of a Russian government effort to help his father's candidacy.

But Veselnitskaya flatly denied any connection to the Russian government.

[Jul 11, 2017] The Consequences of Donald Trump Jr.s Stupidity

This female lawyer probably can be characterized as anti-Russian lawyer. She is more probably MI6 asset then FSB asset ;-) (connection with William F. Browder ).
But attempts to stir the pot of Purple Color Revolution ( aka Russiagate) will continue. Neocons are pretty tenacious.
Notable quotes:
"... That it was, yes, ethically promiscuous!but, worse, incredibly stupid. One recalls the line, often incorrectly attributed to Talleyrand, in response to a burgeoning scandal at the French court: "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.'' ..."
"... But he didn't give up. At last week's G-20 Summit in Hamburg, in a long meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump sought to get beyond the matter of Russia's U.S. political interference and take up other serious matters of mutual interest to the two countries, with a hope of easing tensions. It was an important development in a crucial area of U.S. foreign policy. Now the president is back on the defensive, his back to the wall, with his opponents positioned to immobilize him on his Russian policy. ..."
"... But, in terms of Trump's command of his policy toward Russia, it almost doesn't matter because the new revelations will constrict his range of action irrespective of what may lie behind them. The forces that have wanted to destroy the president, or at least destroy his ability to bring about a détente with Putin, are once again in the saddle. One has to wonder at, perhaps even marvel at, the timing in all this. ..."
Jul 11, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

During a post-dinner cigar session at his elegant Cleveland mansion, Hanna reported back to McKinley on the results of his mission. Another participant recalled that the excited Hanna seemed "as keen as a razor blade.''

"Now, Major," said the political operative, addressing the governor by his Civil War title, "it's all over but the shouting. You can get both New York and Pennsylvania, but there are certain conditions." He didn't show any discomfort with the conditions, but McKinley was wary.

"What are they?" he asked. Hanna explained that Quay wanted control of all federal patronage in Pennsylvania, while others wanted to dominate government jobs in New England and Maine. But Platt wanted a bigger prize!the job of secretary of the Treasury!and he wanted a promise in writing.

McKinley stared ahead, puffing on his cigar. Then he rose from his chair, paced the room a few moments, and turned to Hanna.

"Mark," he said, "there are some things in this world that come too high. If I were to accept the nomination on those terms, the place would be worth nothing to me, and less to the people. If those are the terms, I am out of it.''

Hanna was taken aback. "Not so fast," he protested, explaining that, while it would be "damned hard" to prevail over the powerful bosses, who would surely not take kindly to a rebuff, Hanna thought it could be done and he welcomed the challenge. The men in the room pondered the situation and came up with a slogan: "The People Against the Bosses.''

McKinley ultimately beat the bosses, stirring a Washington Post reporter to write that "the big three of the Republican Party hoped to find McKinley as putty in their hands. When they failed, they vowed war on him." But now, said the reporter, their war was sputtering. "And over in the Ohio city by the lake, one Mark Hanna is laughing in his sleeve.''

This little vignette from the mists of the political past comes to mind with the latest development in the ongoing saga involving suspected Russian interference in last year's presidential campaign and the search for evidence that President Trump or his top campaign officials "colluded" with Russians to influence the electoral outcome. Now it turns out that the president's son, Donald Jr., met with a Russian lawyer, at the behest of a Russian friend, with an understanding beforehand that the lawyer could provide "official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton] and her dealings with Russia and be very useful to your father." For good measure, Donald Jr. took along his brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, a top Trump adviser, and his father's campaign manager at the time, Paul Manafort.

This is no small matter, and it is certain to roil the waters of the ongoing investigations. More significantly, it will roil the political scene, contributing mightily to the deadlock crisis that has America in its grip. White House officials and Trump supporters are defending young Trump with pronouncements that nothing was amiss here; every campaign collects dirt on opponents; nothing done was against the law; we must get beyond these "gotcha" political witch hunts, etc., etc.

Meanwhile. Trump opponents see skulky tendencies, nefarious intent, moral turpitude, and likely illegality. Both sides are trotting out criminal lawyers declaring, based on their prior political proclivities, that no laws were broken!or that laws were clearly broken. The cable channels are crackling with competition over who can be more definitive and sanctimonious on the air!Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity at Fox in defending the president; or Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews in attacking him on MSNBC.

Meanwhile, the country will continue to struggle with the question of what all this Sturm und Drang actually means. What to think? Whom to believe?

Let's stipulate, for purposes of analysis, that what we see is what there is, that what we know is not a harbinger of worse to come. How should we assess what we know thus far? What should we make of that meeting with the Russian lawyer?

That it was, yes, ethically promiscuous!but, worse, incredibly stupid. One recalls the line, often incorrectly attributed to Talleyrand, in response to a burgeoning scandal at the French court: "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.''

Consider that, after months of investigation, with leaks all over the place from those conducting the probe, no serious evidence emerged of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. The collusion story was receding in the national consciousness, and even in the Washington consciousness, with questions of "obstruction of justice" supplanting collusion as the more significant avenue of inquiry. Now the question of collusion is once again in the air.

The fate of Donald Trump Jr. is a puny matter in the scheme of things, but the state of the union is a huge matter. And the young man's stupidity of a year ago will have!indeed, is already having!a significant impact on the president's leadership. He campaigned on a pledge to improve relations with Russia, with an implicit acknowledgment that the West was probably equally responsible, along with Moscow, for the growing tensions between the two nations. He was right about that. Then came the evidence of Russian meddling in the U.S. election and the allegations of collusion, and Trump's effort at improving relations was killed in the crib.

But he didn't give up. At last week's G-20 Summit in Hamburg, in a long meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump sought to get beyond the matter of Russia's U.S. political interference and take up other serious matters of mutual interest to the two countries, with a hope of easing tensions. It was an important development in a crucial area of U.S. foreign policy. Now the president is back on the defensive, his back to the wall, with his opponents positioned to immobilize him on his Russian policy.

Now let's set aside, for just a moment, the previous stipulation that what we see is all there is. It's possible, of course, that this unfortunate meeting actually was part of a much bigger conspiracy that, if disclosed in full, could engulf the administration in revelations of such magnitude as to bring down the president. It's possible, but not likely.

But, in terms of Trump's command of his policy toward Russia, it almost doesn't matter because the new revelations will constrict his range of action irrespective of what may lie behind them. The forces that have wanted to destroy the president, or at least destroy his ability to bring about a détente with Putin, are once again in the saddle. One has to wonder at, perhaps even marvel at, the timing in all this.

Actions, even more than ideas, have consequences. That's what Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort ignored when they accepted an invitation to meet with a Russian representative with "official documents" that could harm the candidacy of the Democratic contender.

And that's precisely what William McKinley had in mind when he said he wouldn't enter into unsavory bargains with the Eastern bosses even if it meant giving up his presidential dream. Of course, McKinley was thinking in part about his own personal code of conduct!his inability to live with a decision that was beneath his concept of rectitude. But note that he also invoked the American people when he recoiled at the thought. He wouldn't take an action that he considered inconsistent with his duty to the electorate.

That was a long time ago!and a world away. Today we have the likes of the Trumps!and, for that matter, the Clintons, who leave nearly everyone in their wake when it comes to moral and ethical laxity in matters of public policy. And so it must have seemed perfectly normal for those three men, part of Donald Trump's inner circle of campaign confidantes, to accept the idea of sitting down with someone from a foreign power and talk about how official documents from that power could help upend their opponent. Did Trump himself know about all this as it was unfolding? We don't know, but probably. In any event, it probably wasn't a crime, but it was a hell of a blunder.

... ... ...

Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington, D.C., journalist and publishing executive, is editor of The American Conservative. His next book, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century , is due out from Simon & Schuster in November.

[Jul 11, 2017] The present state of US Russia relations can only be described as "confrontation"

Jul 11, 2017 | russiareviewed.wordpress.com
Monday evening, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center Dr. Dmitri Trenin gave a lecture at my university's school of public policy.

I won't try to give my own analysis of his remarks, but I will report them here for your reading and discussing pleasure.

Present state of U.S.-Russian relationship

According to Dr. Trenin, the present state of relations can only be described as 'confrontation' (defined here as a state of relations in which collision is possible). We no longer have a crisis in U.S.-Russian relations; since July of 2014 the two countries have settled into a new paradigm.

Trenin takes issue with those who call this the "New Cold War." He says the current confrontation differs from the old days in three distinct ways:

  • It is asymmetrical. The Cold War was fought between two superpowers/relatively equal military blocs. The "New Cold War" pits the U.S., which has a vastly greater hand than its opponent, against Russia, which does not want to lose.
  • It isn't static. During the Cold War, the Berlin wall and the division of Europe were immobile and effectively shielded each bloc from the influence of the other. In the 21st century, confrontation has spread to the information space ('propaganda'), the global economic space (sanctions), and cyberspace (hacking).
  • It is waged without mutually accepted rules and norms.
Controlling confrontation

It goes without saying that we need to do whatever it takes to minimize the danger of kinetic collison. Trenin opines that since the U.S. election, U.S.-Russian confrontation has been "put on hold", but the idea that Trump would usher in a new reset or detente should be taken with a large grain of salt. According to Trenin, the Russian government was all but bracing for a Hillary Clinton victory.

Trenin's recommendations for how to control confrontation:

  • reopening channels of communication between the U.S. and Russia
  • meetings between U.S. and Russian defense chiefs to reduce incidents between U.S. and Russian armed forces
  • Confidence-building measures (and here my notes become sloppy; it had something to do with scaling back aggressive training exercises on Russian border in anticipation of an invasion of the Baltics)
  • End the media/demonization barrage on both sides – the longer it lasts, the more difficult it will be to deescalate tensions
Future of U.S.-Russian relations

The future relationship between the U.S. and Russia lies somewhere between managed adversity and mismanaged adversity. There isn't a constituency in either country willing to work wholly to improve the relationship. However, cooperation between the U.S. and Russia is still possible in certain areas:

  • Nuclear arms proliferation – the question is whether this will remain part of the relationship or become a nonregulated strategic environment
  • space
  • combating terrorism – but Trenin thinks a Russian-U.S. coalition to fight ISIS is unlikely. The Pentagon wouldn't accept Russia as a partner. (He also mentioned that Russia wants the coalition primarily because it would give Russia status and respect. That seems simplified at best.)
  • Iran
  • trilateral discussion between U.S., Russia, and China on strategic issues. China's assumed nuclear potential is less than that of U.S./Russia, but it remains a major military power. It is in the interests of both the U.S. and Russia to strengthen stability in East Asia.
  • political transition in Syria
  • Afghanistan – mutual interest in preventing the country from becoming an ISIS romping-ground.
  • Libya – against extremists; for political settlement
  • North Pole
  • Russian Far East; Siberia

Trenin asserts that Russia has neither the will nor capacity to act as a superpower, and also that whatever future cooperation between the U.S. and Russia will have to occur within the existing framework of confrontation and adversity.

Thus concluded the lecture.


Questions from the audience

Yes, yours truly stayed for the Q&A, which tends to be the most disastrous part of any Russia-related lecture. In actuality, this particular Q&A wasn't bad!

Opinon on the recent anticorruption protests in Russia

Trenin says there are several sides to the issue (although he only explains one).

  • people in Russia are becoming less tolerant of corruption. In the recent past, corruption among officials was not seen as something completely abhorrent. Because "for the first time in their long history, the Russian people were left alone by their government."
  • The corruption material on Medvedev came from a very authoritative source: the FSB (did it? That also begs the question of why they'd pass it off to Navalny of all people – J.T.)
  • Revelations could be a manifestation of elite competition – different economic visions for Russia within the administration
  • Mass demonstrations have occurred across Russia for the first time in almost five years.
  • Russian elections are about confronting people in power, not changing them. So even though elections won't be held until 2018, it's safe to say the election year has already begun.
  • Potentially, this could become dangerous, as with anything in volatile Russia.
How will Russia and China maintain their political "friendship"?
  • The Sino-Russian partnership is best characterized as "good neighborly relations".
  • There isn't much suspicion of China in Russia, despite glaring imbalances within each country.
  • Russia is stong militarily, but lacks China's economic and demographic heft. China is an economic superpower and one of the most populous countries of the world, but lacks Russia's military might.
  • No two countries can be each other's direct equals. The key is to construct a relationship which won't lead to unilateral concessions.
  • Russia's problem is that it cannot accept any other country's leadership over its own. In Trenin's opinion, refusal to join a larger organization coupled with inability to defeat it can be costly.
  • The relationship is complicated. Trenin doubts Russia will accept Chinese leadership. Unlike the U.S., China wisely knows how to treat Russia with a modicum of care.
Population decline and demographic changes in Russia
  • One of the most important issues facing Russia today, in Trenin's opinion.
  • Due to improvements in life expectancy and birthrate, projections have become somewhat less dangerous for Russia.
  • Still, Trenin believes the real issue at hand isn't numbers, but the declining body of the workforce.
  • Ways of dealing with it: 1) Increase productivity. Currently the productivity of the average Russian worker is 25% of that of an American worker. 2) Improve healthcare. 3) "open up to others". (A few million guest workers have come to Russia from FSU countries.)
Russian economic development policy

Basically, there isn't one. Trenin says the Russian government has merely coasted on high oil prices, and when oil prices fell, the economy went into recession. He distills Putin into two things:

  • keeping Russia in one piece, and
  • restoring Russia's status in the world as a great power

Neither one dealing with economic policy. Trenin pins hope for real economic development on the post-Putin era.


There's a postscript to this little exercise in dictation that can't be resisted, and you can make of it what you will:

In the entirety of this two-hour lecture (including student questions), Trump was mentioned by name exactly one time.

I suppose I should be thankful.

[Jul 11, 2017] Blast from the Past: notes on lecture 'How to Deal with Russia: Advice for the Future President'

Jul 11, 2017 | russiareviewed.wordpress.com
Posted on May 31, 2017 by J.T. 3 Comments

Below is an unedited set of notes from a lecture given by former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack F. Matlock, Jr. sometime in Fall of 2016. This was before I started blogging about lectures seriously, so the notes may seem patchy in places.

All the usual disclaimers; shadowquoted to the max.


On allegations of Russian interference in the elections

Can Russia influence the campaign? Sure! Anybody they endorse is likely to lose votes.

Ambassador Matlock is skeptical of interference allegations.

I cannot imagine that if our election system is well managed, that any external actor can hack and change the election results.

He also believes the idea that the Russians prefer Trump is shaky. Many Russians prefer Hillary due to her predictability.

What does the new president need to understand?

U.S. foreign policy is in many respects not serving the national interest.

  • trapped in never-ending wars
  • politically split at home into two antagonistic factions
  • tied to "allies" whose interests aren't the same as ours – might be drawn into conflicts that are not in our interest
  • estranged from potential partners
  • infrastructure in need of repair – gross overspending in military, 100+ bases abroad
  • current policy threatens new nuclear arms race
Why has this happened?

U.S. foreign policy has become too concentrated on militarism and the use of force to solve problems.

The most serious threats facing the world today are:

  1. Nuclear weapons
  2. Global warming/environmental degradation
  3. failed states/terrorism
  4. Disease
  5. International crime and corruption

All are only exacerbated by military force, and none can be managed without active cooperation with Russia and china.

Ambassador Matlock says the future of the world, and indeed mankind, will not be determined by geopolitical conquest or control of territory. The greatest challenges transcend national boundaries and can only be solved through international cooperation.

How did we get off track?
  • triumphialism/unilateralism after the Cold War – the U.S. started treating Russia as a defeated nation. However, the U.S. did not defeat the USSR. The USSR collapsed due to internal pressure.
  • behavior seen abroad as imperialist
  • failure to understand others' perceptions
  • insistence on democracy promotion/regime change. If a country isn't a democracy, change the regime. This is based upon the assumption that democracy is the natural state of mankind. However, it takes time to develop democratic institutions, and the people must be ready for it.
Russian mistakes
  • overreaction to US/NATO/EU moves
  • military invention with neighbors
  • violation of prior agreements and international law
  • annexation of Crimea will be costly; Donbass fighting is a bleeding wound in Russia's most important neighbor

These mistakes have costs aside from Western sanctions.

On sanctions. They don't incentivize a Russian change in policy and allow Russians to claim that the problem lies not with their own government's policy, but with American hostility.

Mistaken ideas
  1. Control of land and people equals strength
  2. The goal should be to maximize power (power for what?)
  3. We should not think of power as a hierarchy: Do more powerful nations have rights or privileges denied others?
  4. Rivalry for control of territory benefits nobody. It damages or destroys the area fought over.
  5. Military force cannot create democracy in another country.
Priority tasks
  1. Restore nuclear cooperation with Russia and bring China into the loop.
  2. Stop military competition with China.
  3. Stop expanding the alliance system and make clear there is no blank check to defend risky behavior.
  4. With both Russia and China, seek areas where cooperation is possible to mutual benefit.

Long term:

  1. Reduce the military component in foreign policy.
  2. Withdraw from others' fights.
  3. Talk to everyone.
  4. End democracy promotion abroad, demonstrate its virtues at home.
  5. Give Russia and China incentive to feel part of the industrial/post-industrial 21st century world.
The situation is not hopeless.

Trump could be convinced he needs a different approach to be a "winner". Hillary may want to overshadow the legacy of her husband and predecessor. Just as Reagan, elected on an anticommunist platform, surprised people, so could Hillary.

Matlock concluded the lecture with the following quote from Senator J. William Fulbright:

Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.


And not one lesson has been learned since.

[Jul 11, 2017] Siemens to press charges after turbines moved from Russia to Crimea

Notable quotes:
"... There's some hinky stuff going on with these turbines. I just posted Part III of my series this morning on the turbines. ..."
"... do something ..."
"... " Siemens added that it would file lawsuits to halt any further deliveries to Crimea and to return already-dispatched equipment to its original destination." ..."
Jul 11, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al , July 10, 2017 at 2:27 pm

Neuters: Siemens to press charges after turbines moved from Russia to Crimea
https://in.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-crimea-power-idINKBN19V251

Germany's Siemens said on Monday at least two of its gas turbines had been moved "against its will" from Russia to Crimea, a region subject to sanctions barring EU firms providing it with energy technology

Siemens, which has repeatedly insisted it was not aware the turbines were destined for Crimea, said it would press criminal charges against those responsible for diverting the turbines .

Siemens added that it would file lawsuits to halt any further deliveries to Crimea and to return already-dispatched equipment to its original destination. It said it was evaluating what additional actions were possible.

#####

Is this a PR/face saving stunt? Where exactly are they going to file charges, Moscow, Berlin or Brussels. Maybe if they string it out until after Merkel's re-election they can gently let it drop. Otherwise, they could always just f/k off and leave Russia. Now that would be good for their business. I don't see them being among approved bidders for Russian projects in future.

yalensis , July 10, 2017 at 3:25 pm

There's some hinky stuff going on with these turbines. I just posted Part III of my series this morning on the turbines.

And wouldn't you know it, Prof. Robinson posted a comment on my blog with a link to a lenta piece claiming that the turbines ARE in fact of native Russian manufacture!

(Something which I tend to doubt, but I'll look into this .)

Anyhow, now I'm as confused as a hare at a dog show, and I don't know what to believe any more. I'll continue my posts tomorrow, but taking the lenta link into account.

Bottom line: Somebody out there is lying – GASP! Either the turbines are German, or they're not! And either the Germans knew the turbines were destined for Crimea, or they didn't know! And either the Russians are lying about the turbines being of native Russian manufacture, or .

marknesop , July 10, 2017 at 8:09 pm

Perhaps they are Siemens products manufactured to Siemens specifications in Russia, under license. That's far from uncommon, although I'm not sure to what extent it is done in Russia. But we know it is, because Russia intended to buy only the first two MISTRAL Class assault carriers from France – until the US State Department stepped in and fucked everything up for everybody, including and mostly France – and build the second pair in Russia.

et Al , July 11, 2017 at 2:14 am

Thanks for that yalensis. I really should visit your blog more often!

cartman , July 11, 2017 at 7:29 am

Doesn't Russia make its own turbines for hydro plants? How different are those from natural gas ones?

marknesop , July 10, 2017 at 8:03 pm

I'm pretty confident that they are pissed off they have to do anything, just because somebody blew the whistle. They have no choice now, they have to act or it will just snowball, with hysterical reporters roaring that Siemens isn't going to do anything when are they going to do something ??

Siemens is, of course, the builder of the Velaro high-speed train used in Russia, where it is called the Sapsan , or Peregrine Falcon. Russia bought 240 trains, 1,200 cars, and – most importantly – awarded Siemens a 40-year contract for preventive and all other maintenance . I doubt very much if they will jeopardize that over a couple of gas turbines. But the yapping press must be appeased.

kirill , July 10, 2017 at 9:05 pm

Siemens has no legal case. Just like no car manufacturer controls what you do with your car (e.g. who you sell it to), Siemens has no control over its turbines in the aftermarket.

kirill , July 10, 2017 at 9:03 pm

https://ria.ru/economy/20170710/1498213204.html

"Technopromexport bought four unfinished turbine assemblies on the secondary market and had them rebuilt and modernized."

Does not sound like these are brand new, fully assembled systems. BTW, Siemens has zero control over its products after they are sold. Perhaps if Russian law recognized some contract term that resale or rebuilding was forbidden then Siemens would have a case. Siemens would have no case in Russia based on contract laws in other jurisdictions and has to lump whatever Russian law dishes out. You can see similar limitations on warranties for products in North America: different states and provinces control warranties differently. Also, I have never heard of contract terms for any non-military product that impose such draconian limitations. Russia ***bought*** these aftermarket turbines and not leased them from Siemens.

marknesop , July 10, 2017 at 11:19 pm

That sounds like an end-user agreement. Under such an agreement, the purchaser must notify the seller prior to reselling the item to any third party. That usually happens with defense-related equipment or proprietary technology which the vendor fears will be reverse-engineered. As far as I know there is no reason to believe such an agreement was in force, and if it were the entity in trouble would not be Russia, but the country which sold them to Russia. In that case it was very likely to have been Germany itself.

Lyttenburgh , July 10, 2017 at 9:04 pm

" Siemens added that it would file lawsuits to halt any further deliveries to Crimea and to return already-dispatched equipment to its original destination."

Reply

[Jul 10, 2017] They Spoke - The Unz Review

Jul 10, 2017 | www.unz.com

The highly anticipated encounter of the two presidents went better, much better than anybody predicted. There was a lot of anxiety, and expectations were low as heavy rain clouds, especially after Trump's visit to Warsaw where he obediently repeated the Cold War platitudes dictated by his minders. Trump had been sent off to Hamburg by Washington establishment with warnings a convent novice gets before an unfortunate but unavoidable meeting with a Don Juan. They didn't trust the inexperienced youngster, and insisted he should speak with Vlad only in presence of grown ups , like Auntie Fiona (Hill) or Uncle HR (McMaster), well known for their aversion to Russians.

They warned him that, short of a nuclear strike, every other reaction will be considered betrayal of the Shining City upon a Hill. Every neocon and Cold Warrior in the West gave his advice to the President, how should he humiliate Putin and put him on his place, below the salt. They actually didn't allow Trump to have a proper meeting with Putin, with full agenda, advisers and ministers, preferably a few days long, in a Camp David format or similar.

...On Ukraine, the presidents agreed to establish a special bilateral channel of communications between the US special envoy and his Russian counterpart. They also confirmed their faith in the Minsk agreements, and this is an important diplomatic achievement for the Russians. However, these agreements did not prevent Kiev troops shelling the cities of Donbass.

[Jul 10, 2017] The Second Cold War by Steffen A. Woll

Notable quotes:
"... [AKA "Carthage"] ..."
Dec 10, 2015 | www.unz.com

In the light of the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, there has been much talk about the clouding of US-Russian relations. Some voices in the Internet's alternative media sections have conjured the possibility that these conflicts might lead to a new major war, while social networks like Twitter saw the usage of the hashtags #WorldWarIII and #WorldWar3 explode after Turkey shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 jet in the vicinity of the Syrian border. Headlines in mainstream media outlets like Foreign Policy and the Guardian also proclaimed, "Welcome to Cold War III" and asked "are we going back to the bad old days?".

This article suggests that although the ideological division of the Cold War ended de facto with the collapse of the Soviet Union, American geopolitical schemes to contain Russian power abroad have never really been abandoned. Throughout the 1990s and until today, US policymakers have been determined to wage overt or covert proxy wars with the aim of curbing its former adversary's political, economic, and military influence. Chechnya, Ukraine, and Syria are the key spots where the logic of this second Cold War is played out.

A short glance over the state of the world today and its representation in the media suffices to identify a growing number of actual and potential centers of conflicts: Civil war is raging in parts of Ukraine, military tensions are growing in the South Chinese Sea, and the Middle East is more of a mess than ever. Nonetheless, some have suggested that the actual number of armed conflicts has actually reached a historical low. But this assertion is solely based on statistical preference. It is true that interstate (conflicts between two or more states) wars are on the decline. Instead, wars today are much more likely to take the form of intrastate conflicts between governments and insurgents, rather than national armies fighting over territory. As demonstrated to an outstanding degree in Syria, these conflicts are more and more internationalized and involve a bulk of non-state actors and countries who try to reach their goals through proxies rather than direct involvement, which would require "boots on the ground."

But let's start at the end. The end of the Cold War, that is. The situation during the years of systemic antagonism between the Eastern and Western Blocs has sometimes been captured in the image of three separate "worlds": the capitalist First World, the socialist Second World, and a Third World. The latter term was not used as a marker for impoverishment and instability as it is commonly understood today, but as a postcolonial alternative "third way" for those newly independent states that struggled to avoid their renewed absorption by the two towering ideological empires. One strategy through which developing countries attempted to duck the neocolonial policies of the Cold War Blocs was by founding the informal Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) in 1961, initiated by India, Indonesia, Egypt, Ghana, and Yugoslavia. Counting 120 members as of now!in fact a large part of the global South!the movement's anti-imperialist and anti-colonial stance has lost much of its bargaining power after the end of the Cold War.

Still, the final document of the movement's 1998 summit in Durban, South Africa suggests that the end of the long-standing bipolar power configuration has by no means led to the betterment of those countries' situation. Unipolar American dominance and the collapse of the Soviet Union instigated what was understood to be "a worrisome and damaging uni-polarity in political and military terms that is conducive to further inequality and injustice and, therefore, to a more complex and disquieting world situation." This analysis turned out to be correct in many respects, particularly concerning the period of the 1990s.

While the Clinton years of domestic prosperity saw the US economy achieve the rarity of a budget surplus, the citizens of its erstwhile antagonist were (probably with the exception of Boris Yeltsin ) experiencing the more sobering effects of Russia's political and economic paradigm shift. Democratic Russia struggled to consolidate its deeply shaken economy in an environment ripe with organized crime, crippling corruption, and under the doubtful patronage of oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky who controlled the influential television channel ORT and whom Ron Unz in " Our American Pravda " described as "the puppet master behind President Boris Yeltsin during the late 1990s."

The actual situation in the former Soviet heartland during the 1990s was utterly different from what American elites and media often depicted as a "golden age" of newfound democracy and a ballooning private sector. From the perspective of many US elites, the country's plundering by oligarchs, ruthless criminal gangs, kleptocratic politicians, and corrupt military officers was welcomed as a convenient, self-fulfilling mechanism to permanently destabilize its mortally wounded adversary. But Russia never completed all the stages of collapse , not least because Yeltsin's successor Vladimir Putin eventually took legal action to put such "businessmen" like Roman Abramovich and Berezovsky out of business. The latter was forced to seek refuge in London, from where he threatened to use his Ł850m private fortune to plot " a new Russian revolution " and violently remove his former protégé from the Kremlin.

The chaotic and aimless term of the alcoholic Yeltsin is often regarded as a chiefly positive time in which the East and the West closed ranks, although politicians and neoconservative think tanks in reality conducted the political and economic sellout of Russia during these years. The presidency of Vladimir Putin, while anything but perfect and with its own set of domestic issues, still managed to halt the nation's downward spiral in many areas. Nevertheless, it is persistently depicted by Western elites and their "Pravda" as dubious, "authoritarian," and semi-democratic at best.

Thus, in spite of Francis Fukuyama's triumphalist proclamation of the "End of History" after the fall of the Berlin wall that supposedly heralded the universal rein of liberal democracy, the legacy of the Cold War is anything but behind us. Ostensibly, the current geopolitical situation with its fragmented, oblique, and often contradictory constellations and fault lines is utterly different from the much more straightforward Cold War dualism. Of the Marxist ideology only insular traces remain today, watered down and institutionalized in China, exploited in a system of nationalistic iconography in Cuba, and arranged around an absurdly twisted personality cult in North Korea. As of 2015, Russia is an utterly capitalistic nation, highly integrated in the globalized economy and particularly interdependent with the members of the European economic zone. Its military clout and budget ( $52 billion ) are dwarfed by US military spending of $598.5 billion in 2015. Even more importantly, after 1991 Russia had to close down or abandon many of its important bases, ports and other military installations as a result of the NATO's eastward expansion.

Nevertheless, the sheer size of its territory and its command of a substantial nuclear weapon arsenal cement Russia's role as a primary threat to American national interests. This is illustrated by the fact that for three and a half decades the US has covertly supported radical Islamic movements with the goal to permanently destabilize the Russian state by entrapping it in a succession of messy and virtually unwinnable conflicts. Pursued openly during the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s, this scheme continued to be employed throughout the 1990s during both Chechen Wars, as well as in Russia's so-called "near abroad" spheres of influence: Dagestan, Ingushetia, South Ossetia, and other former Soviet vassal republics in the Caucasus, which have constantly suffered from extremists who exploit the lack of governmental pervasion in their remote mountain regions. These regions are home to over 25 million ethnic Russians and important components of the country's economy. After the Soviet-Afghan War and the CIA's buildup of Osama bin-Laden's "resistance fighters," American policymakers recognized the destabilizing potential inherent in the volatile political and sectarian configurations in the Islamic countries that encircle the post-Soviet Russian borderlands.

Hence, despite many political ceremonies, pledges of cooperation, and the opening of Moscow's first McDonalds in 1990, this policy was never fully abandoned. As a matter of fact, peaceful political coexistence and economic convergence never were the primary goals. Democratic Russia with its allies, military potential, and possible Eurasian trade agreements that threaten to isolate or hamper US hegemony was and still is considered a menace to American ambitions of unipolar, universal dominance.

Since the First Chechen War in 1994, Russia's prolonged struggle against Islamic terrorism has for the most part been disregarded by Western media. Particularly after 9/11, the "war on terror" acted like a black hole that sucked up the bulk of the Western media's attention. When the acts of terrorism on Russian soil became too horrifying to ignore!the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis and the 2004 Beslan school siege in particular!the massive death tolls were blamed on the drastic responses of Russian security forces who were not adequately prepared and overwhelmed by the vicious and meticulously planned attacks. In Beslan, the death of hundreds of innocents (186 children were murdered on their first day at school) was indirectly condoned and sardonically depicted as the consequences of the "separatist movement [and its] increasingly desperate attempts to break Russia's stranglehold on its home turf." Truly, to describe those who shoot children in front of their parents and vice versa as "separatists" and glorify them as "rebels" who act in self defense against an "authoritarian" regime demands a very special kind of callous apathy.

In a 2013 article that examined the Chechen descent of the suspects behind the Boston Marathon bombing, retired FBI agent and 2002 Time Person of the Year Coleen Rowley exposed "how the Chechen 'terrorists' proved useful to the U.S. in keeping pressure on the Russians." She explicitly refers to a 2004 Guardian piece by John Laughland, in which the author connects the anti-Russian sentiments in the BBC and CNN coverage of the Beslan massacre to the influence of one particular organization, the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), whose list of members reads like "a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically (sic) support the 'war on terror,'" among them Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, James Woolsey, and Frank Gaffney. Laughland describes the ACPC as an organization that

heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo – implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilise the situation there.

There are three key elements in the organization's lobbying strategy to denigrate Russia and promote an intervention in Chechnya that serve to unmask a larger pattern behind the US foreign policy after 9/11. First, the labeling of a particular leader or government as "authoritarian" or in some other way "undemocratic" (Vladimir Putin, in this case). Second, the concept of an oppressed yet positively connoted population that strives for freedom and democracy (Chechen terrorists with ties to a-Qaeda , in this case). Finally, the stressing of "human rights violations" that warrant an intervention or economic embargo.

If all of these conditions are satisfied, the violation of the borders of a sovereign state is seen as justified (UN mandate not needed), enabling the US to emerge as a knight in shining armor and champion of human rights, bolting to the rescue of the world's downtrodden, while covertly achieving an utterly different goal: To further the logic of a second Cold War through proxy warfare and weaken Russian by diminishing its foothold in its surrounding "near abroad" regions, which in many respects represent vital interests, both economically and strategically.

Swap out names and dates and it becomes evident that the same tripartite strategy was used to justify every recent intervention of the US and other NATO members, in Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), and Syria (since 2011). Interventions that were legitimized under the banner of humanitarian relief through the removal of "authoritarian" tyrants and supposed dictators and which have resulted in the deaths of an estimated 500,000 people, in Iraq alone . When the ASPC's made its appeal regarding Chechnya in 2004, mind you, only one year had passed since the Abu Ghraib torture photos were leaked and two years since the first inmates arrived in the extralegal detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

Regarding the sweltering conflict in Ukraine's Donbass region, the key dynamics are similar. President Viktor Yanukovych, accused by the Euromaidan movement!fueled by aggressive US and EU media propaganda and enticed with promises of lucrative NATO and EU memberships!of "abusing power" and "violation of human rights," was forced to resign and replaced with a ultranationalist, anti-Russian and pro-Western government. Again, this campaign had nothing to do with actual humanitarian relief or concerns about the country's democratic integrity. Instead, the hopes of a whole generation for a better future under Western influence were exploited by US policymakers who hoped to stifle Russia's geostrategic elbowroom by ousting the naval bases of its Black Sea Fleet from the Crimea.

These bases, mostly located in the city of Sevastopol, have been the home port of the Russian navy for over 230 years, and are vital because they provide the only direct access to the Black Sea and (through the Bosporus strait in Turkey) to the Mediterranean. Any expansion of NATO towards these bases had to be regarded as a direct threat, leaving the Russian government practically no choice but to protect them with all means necessary. However, in the stories emanating from Western mainstream media, these bases were showcased as an occupation of sovereign Ukrainian territory and used as proof of Russia's aggressive, "authoritarian," and imperial aspirations. In reality, Ukraine and Russia signed a Partition Contract in 1997, in which the Ukraine agreed to lease major parts of its facilities to the Russian Black Sea Fleet until 2017, for an annual payment of $98 million.

Along the lines of the currently revitalized genre of alternate history, let's briefly indulge in the notion that we were still living in the ideologically divided world of the Cold War, in which the Warsaw Pact still existed. For a second, imagine if Mexico or Guatemala or Canada expressed their desire to join said pact and invited its troops to conduct military exercises at their shared border with the US. Even without the existence of an American naval base in that country, how do you think the US would react to such a scenario? Would it stand by idly and let itself be surrounded by its adversaries? For an even more striking parallel, take the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The American military actually has a naval base there!Guantanamo Bay, home to the infamous detention camp. Many historians see the deployment of Soviet missiles and troops on the island as the closest that humanity ever came to entering World War III and mutually assured destruction (MAD). With its support for "regime change" in Ukraine and extension of the NATO to the Russian borders, the US today is engaged in the same old Cold War superpower games that the Soviets played in Cuba 53 years ago. In fact, we should think of Ukraine as being situated in Mother Russia's "backyard."

Thousands of miles away from the coasts of North America, the Middle East is the region that Uncle Sam seems to regard as his very own backyard. Many consider George W. Bush's "War on Terror" after 9/11 and the subsequent interventions in Iraq and (to a lesser degree) Afghanistan as those catastrophic policy decisions that resulted in the sociopolitical destabilization of large parts of this region, resulting in the death, injury, and displacement of millions. In Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the spurious US rhetorical agenda of removing "tyrants" and endowing the local demographics with the liberating gift of democracy has in fact produced vast ungoverned spaces where militant groups like the al-Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh ) were able to carve out their "caliphates" and claim other territorial prices. For a long time, the rapid expansion of the Islamic State and its death-loving, apocalyptic ideology was resisted only by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the paramilitary National Defense Forces (NDF), and Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG). The SAA alone has lost as much as 200,000 soldiers in its struggle against various terrorist factions since March 2011.

US politicians and media have expressed their hopes that the Russian intervention to assist the Syrian government in its resistance against these Western, Saudi, and Turkey-backed groups will result in a military and economic debacle, comparable to the Soviet-Afghan war, which lasted well over nine years. It was during the course of this brutal and protracted conflict that US policymakers realized that there was really no need to shed American blood in order to deal the death blow to the Soviet Union. They drew their lessons from the CIA's countless ventures in South American "nation building," where a government's legitimacy and an opposition's status as either terrorists or freedom fighters depended on their usefulness for American national interests, often accoutered in pithy terms like the "war on drugs."

Since the days of Pablo Escobar, however, US foreign policy has shifted its main focus towards the Middle East, where the long-term goal has been to weaken the enemies of Israel and strengthen the enemies of Iran. Other goals are to guarantee American access to oil and other natural resources, to establish military bases and consolidate the network of troops abroad, and to secure arms deals for the one-percenters who preside over what president Eisenhower cautioned his nation about in his farewell address: the "military-industrial complex." As a consequence of the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration has shifted its strategy towards aerial and drone only warfare combined with the support and (illusion of) control over local militant factions.

Among the many groups fighting in Syria, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), also known as "moderate rebels," is the US faction of choice. Much like the bin Laden's Mujahideen fighters in 1980s Afghanistan, they are armed with the help of the CIA . In spite of their apparent moderation, however, a wealth of evidence suggests that this group is directly responsible for a multitude of massacres , mass executions , the ethnic cleansing of non-Sunni citizens, and eating the hearts of their fallen enemies .

The FSA has also been a suspect in the 2013 Ghouta chemical attacks, which some have claimed the US used as a false flag operation to engender international support for the violent removal of the Syrian government. The subsequent UN investigation however failed to establish any conclusive evidence concerning the perpetrator of the war crime and concluded that the sarin gas used in the attacks had most certainly been removed from government arsenals. Based on this information, US, UK, and French leaders and media outlets insisted that the Syrian government had to be the culprit, and immediately pressed the international community to support an intervention with the goal of eradicating Syria's alleged arsenal of nerve gas and other potential WMDs. This all begins to sound very familiar. Of course, they also requested the bolstering of the "moderate opposition." Interestingly, though, the official UN report , "careful not to blame either side," let on that investigators were actually being accompanied by rebel leaders at all times. Moreover, they repeatedly encountered "individuals [ ] carrying other suspected munitions indicating that such potential evidence is being moved and possibly manipulated." On page 13, the report goes on to state that

[a] leader of the local opposition forces [ ] was identified and requested to take 'custody' of the Mission [ ] to ensure the security and movement of the Mission, to facilitate the access to the most critical cases/witnesses to be interviewed and sampled by the Mission [ ].

Recently, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain have protested that their "moderate rebels" were being targeted unjustly by Russian airstrikes in Syria, complaining that "from their [i.e., the Kremlin's] perspective, they're all terrorists." Sometimes, one is inclined to advise them, it can be wise and healthy to assume an outsider's perspective and check if your reality still coincides with the facts that so many know are true about the FSA. These facts can be broken down to a very short yet concise formula: If it looks like a terrorist, if it talks like a terrorist, if it behaves like a terrorist!it probably is a terrorist.

Instead, the CIA is still supplying the "activists" with outdated-yet-deadly weapons from Army surplus inventories, including hundreds of BGM-71 TOW (" T ube-launched, O ptically tracked, W ire-guided") anti-tank missile systems, which the terrorists use against hard and soft targets alike. The same weapon platform can be seen in action in a recent FSA video that shows the destruction of a Russian helicopter that was sent to extract the Russian pilots at the crash site of their downed Su-24 plane on November 24, 2015. On the same day, another US-supplied TOW missile was used in an ambush targeting a car occupied by RT news journalists Roman Kosarev, Sargon Hadaya, and TASS reporter Alexander Yelistratov in Syria's Latakia province.

The FSA and other groups, branded as "moderates" who fight against the "authoritarian" forces of tyranny (just like a certain " Saudi businessman " back in the day), function as US proxies in Syria, just like al-Qaeda did in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan War. They are dangerously unstable pawns in a global strategy to secure American and Israeli interests in the Middle East, irrespective of the millionfold suffering and uprooting of entire societies caused by their crimes, the majority of which is directed towards other Muslims.

Commenting on the Russian military intervention at the invitation of the Syrian government, Mr. Obama said that he had no interest in turning this civil war into a proxy war between Russia and the United States, emphasizing that "this is not some superpower chessboard contest." But this is exactly what US foreign policy, both Republican and Democrat, has done, starting with the end of the Soviet Union and lasting until this very moment. The only difference now being that the Libya-proven rhetorical strategy of (illegal and mandate-less) intervention via "no-fly zones," "humanitarianism," and "regime change" did not have the desired effect in Syria because Iran, Lebanon, and Russia did not abandon their ally. Their combined effort succeeded in fending off an unprecedented onslaught of extremists that infiltrated the country, often across the Southern Turkish border, armed with the money of American taxpayers and Wahhabi sheiks.

The Syrian conflict can no longer be described as a civil war. It may have started as one during the ill-fated "Arab Spring" of 2011, when armed "protesters" (i.e., FSA terrorists) murdered several policemen and set government buildings on fire in Daraa, provoking a violent backlash from government forces. The ensuing nationwide chaos was spun by the Western mainstream media troika , namely those media outlets that serve as propaganda tools for the US political and financial elites and who fabricated the myth of the tyrant who massacred peaceful protestors!to be readily sucked up by their indoctrinated clientele.

As a result of the "moderate's" recent setbacks, the official American position, insofar as its mixed messages can be deciphered, has boiled down to a butt-hurt attitude and passive aggressive lecturing about how to distinguish between varying degrees of moderation among mass-murdering lunatics. Outmaneuvered and publicly exposed, all that is left for Mr. Obama seems to be to pick up the pieces and save some face by accepting Mr. Putin's offer to join a united front against terrorism in Syria. But such a step seems unthinkable in this ongoing Cold War between Russia and the US. Instead, the most powerful man on earth talks about climate change as the most pressing problem of our times. When it comes to ISIS, he has said he wanted to "contain" them. Meanwhile, tensions are rising as Turkish president Erdogan, on an power trip after his surprising landslide victory in November's general elections, apparently collaborated with ISIS and risked provoking an NATO Article 5 response by downing a Russian Su-24. On the other side of the equation, Russia's decision to intervene on behalf of the Syrian government reveals a twofold strategy: On the one hand, trough its direct action it positions the Putin government as being opposed to the fatal logics of proxy warfare. On the other hand, it simultaneously exposes the catastrophic flaws of Mr. Obama's strategies in Syria and the Middle East.

All these developments do not necessarily mean that we are heading for World War III!although logic dictates that it will happen at some point in the future. In reality, though, a full-on nuclear confrontation would require a massive unraveling of the still sufficiently functional channels of political cooperation and interstate diplomacy. International security and economic communities as well as overlapping alliances like the United Nations, NATO, OSCE, and BRIC all indicate a high level of international integration.

Nonetheless, the geopolitical decisions of the last years herald the start of a new period in political history that indeed corresponds to a Cold War constellation. Particularly US foreign policy is currently undergoing the revival of a more offensive realism, visible in recent demonstrations of power in NATO's Eastern border states, pushing of the TPP agreement in the Pacific economic area, and aggressive patrolling of the South Chinese Sea. In fact, the avoidance of superpower confrontation at all costs seems to increasingly take a back seat these high-risk maneuvers.

In the late 1940s the first Cold War began as a war of the words when the powers who had together defeated Nazi Germany started to level criticism at their respective global policies. With the help of their media and propaganda sources, their different stances and perspectives solidified and eventually developed into monolithic ideologies. These in turn spawned the geopolitical doctrines that warranted the replacement of any open (i.e., nuclear) confrontation with confined proxy wars as in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. A similar erosion of mutual trust, respect, and solidarity is taking place now as the outsourced US-Russian conflicts in Ukraine and Syria remain unsolved. Again, the second Cold War arises as a war of the words while negative sentiments are allowed to petrify and the glacial rhetorics of mistrust and veiled threats gradually begin to replace talk about common interests and cooperation. The influential and policy-shaping Foreign Affairs magazine already struck the right chords of the passive-aggressive Cold War parlance by titling , "Putin's Game of Chicken: And How the West Can Win."

At the end of the day, this exact attitude could be one of the reasons why the US might come out on the losing side of this conflict. Because they have not yet realized this is not a "game of chicken" anymore. In fact, this is no longer the same easy game of manipulation that the US played during the 1990s by throwing cheap shots at a collapsing state. The deployment of its air force in Syria is not least a signal to the American establishment that Russia in 2015 no longer stands at the sidelines and watches begrudgingly as the US and its allies commence their disastrous policies in the Middle East.

When Mr. Obama asserted that "this is not some superpower chessboard contest," he therefore either told a lie or he demonstrated his government's utter cluelessness with regard to the actual situation and consequences of their actions in Ukraine, Syria, the South Chinese Sea, and other hotspots of the second Cold War. Both possibilities do not bode well for the future.

Steffen A. Wöll is currently enrolled in the American Studies Master's program at Leipzig University. His research interests include foreign policy, the Middle East, popular culture, as well as radical millennialist and environmentalist movements in the US. RSS Category: Foreign Policy , History Tags: Middle East , New Cold War , Russia , Ukraine Recently from Author

KA [AKA "Carthage"] , December 10, 2015 at 7:52 am GMT

"They drew their lessons from the CIA's countless ventures in South American "nation building," where a government's legitimacy and an opposition's status as either terrorists or freedom fighters depended on their usefulness for American national interests, often accoutered in pithy terms like the "war on drugs."

Thank you. In a nutshell, the phenomenon of terrorism and self serving idea of "nation building" have been clarified .

On a different note -Memory of Checehn terrorism has become somewhat foggy distant and distorted . Checehn terrorist have always enjoyed enormous goodwill and support in Poland,US and UK . But at the onset when Dudayev was the secessionist leader , it was still a unarmed nonviolent political process with mutual (Russian and Checehnyan) disagreement .

It has been suggested that the same forces who later supported Checehn terrorism also provoked Yeltsin to mount unnecessary attacks on Chechen .

Kiza , December 10, 2015 at 9:10 am GMT

A nice article by a German (I am guessing). So different then what comes from the US.

My impression is that the Turkish military intervention under the cover of the US, UK and French airforces in Syria is imminent (within three months or less). The EU already gave Turkey Euro3B, supposedly for the refugees, but probably to pay its military for the attack on Syria.

It will be most interesting to see if the Iraqi Government will rescind the military forces agreement with US and request both Turkey and US to leave Iraq, then call Russia in to help eject the Turks from Iraq. This may complicate the Turkish military intervention in Syria, but is unlikely to stop it.

Ronald Thomas West , Website December 10, 2015 at 11:34 am GMT

When Mr. Obama asserted that "this is not some superpower chessboard contest," he therefore either told a lie or he demonstrated his government's utter cluelessness with regard to the actual situation and consequences of their actions in Ukraine, Syria, the South Chinese Sea, and other hotspots of the second Cold War

Obama is very comfortable with lying. Or better said, Obama is an accomplished liar. 'Grand Chessboard' author Brzezinski is still Obama's man on the inside:

Brzezinski in fact acted as the lead political advisor on foreign affairs to President Obama during his 2008 campaign and is still unofficially advising him on foreign policy today

http://www.mintpressnews.com/zbigniew-brzezinski-the-man-behind-obamas-foreign-policy/21369/

Good overall assessment. One improvement would be to point out a recent development with revelations it had been Erdogan's people (Turkey) carried out the 2013 Ghouta sarin gas attack in Syria (blamed on Assad) that killed well over 1,000 ordinary Syrians:

http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2015/12/07/send-a-letter/

Rurik , December 10, 2015 at 3:47 pm GMT

Nevertheless, the sheer size of its territory and its command of a substantial nuclear weapon arsenal cement Russia's role as a primary threat to American national interests.

national interests? or hegemonic agenda of domination of the planet? what all of this boils down to is the US and the west are today Israeli's bitch. That's why the US destroyed Iraq and that's why NATO destroyed Libya and they're working on Syria, because Saddam and Gadhafi were obstacles not friendly to Israel and because Israel wants the Golan Heights, respectively. None of these countries were any threat to America's interests. Hardly. Any suggestion that they were is ill-informed, or worse.

This is not a proxy war between the US and Russia. It's a proxy war between Israel and the rest of the planet, with Israel using the US and NATO as their proxies against Putin's Russia as the first real obstacle to their hegemonic designs. Resistance had to come from somewhere if we're not all going to live as Palestinians, and Putin was simply the blade of grass that would not bend to their will, like all the rest of them do since it's easy to destroy third world countries and send them reeling into the stone age (Afghaistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria..), or even better if they're controlled by corrupt quisling politicians to begin with (US, NATO, ). Putin may be corrupt, but he's also a nationalist and actually cares about Russia and has nukes. So that's why he is the obstacle.

what's going on now is Bibi (Zionism) and Putin (sanity and hope for the world) are pretending that this isn't a proxy war between the two of them. And the rest of the world is pretending too (like this article demonstrates). One day when Bibi and his crew decide that NATO has to go directly to war with Russia in order to achieve their goals, what I suspect will happen is that the pretense will drop, and the men and agendas behind all of these Machiavellian intrigues will be forced out into the open. And I suspect what will happen then is the threat of a kind of reverse Samson Option, with Putin (and the rest of the free world [ironically NOT the dying and corrupt west]) telling Bibi (actually the rabid, ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Knesset who tell Bibi what to do) , that if it comes to NATO vs. Russia, that the first one to go will be the state behind it all.

Sort of like in those Western movies when the good guy points his shotgun at the guts of the powerful bad guy with all his gunslingers around, and says 'you'll get it first', and then the rich and powerful bad guy says 'take it easy fellas, holster those guns'. Sort of like that I suppose.

And the world will enter into a new kind of MAD. And there will be the peace.

Giuseppe , December 10, 2015 at 5:11 pm GMT

Seymour Hersh absolutely demonstrated that the Sarin attack in Ghouta was a false flag operation, and that the chemical composition of the gas did not match that stockpiled by Syria when analyzed by the UK defense laboratory Porton Down.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

Taras Gitlerov , December 10, 2015 at 6:51 pm GMT

@KA I'm too young to remember coverage of the Chechen wars, but my local library still has several books which paint the Chechens in a sympathetic light.

The best English language book on the subject is Robert W. Schaefer's The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus: From Gazavat to Jihad, but it's expensive and was never in wide circulation AFAIK.

There's a lot of weird things about Chechnya that aren't talked about at all aside from a handful of conspiracy theory type web sites – even though they merit interest. There's more info on runet but I'm not sure I have the chops to evaluate how good the sources are.

guest , December 10, 2015 at 7:21 pm GMT

@Bill Jones They're not counting the debt. The debt is something that's just there and never changes, except to go up. They take it as given. Imagine you've had $5,000 in credit card debt for years and receive a $100 bonus from work. You might not even think about using it to pay off your debt. You simply think, "Awesome, I have an extra $100 this week!" That's pretty much the mindset.

I'm constantly surprised when I hear people talk about the nation going broke, or specific programs, like Social Security for instance, running out of money. Hello! We've been broke for a long time. What do you think the national debt is? As far as SS is concerned, I suppose, it's pure ignorance of how things work. They think it's a self-contained system (which what they want you to think, even if that means it's doomed to go bust, because it tricks people into thinking the Welfare State is part of the social contract, or something). As for the rest of the budget, how do people not notice? Because it's turned into background noise.

Bill Jones , December 10, 2015 at 8:51 pm GMT

@guest I agree. The drive by the establishment for ever increasing immigration is driven their lust to drive wages down but also to maintain the illusion that the various State Ponzi schemes can maintain themselves.

That the idea that the US and Europe can be turned into comfortable retirement homes staffed and paid for by pleasant and obeisant, productive and well assimilated pig ignorant fleeing peasants is astonishing, yet that's what we are asked to believe.

annamaria , December 11, 2015 at 2:02 am GMT

@Rurik Thanks god that Israel is relatively close to the Russian Federation. At some point, the incessant provocations against Russia could become suicidal for the Israelis. Lets hope that Zionists value their lives more than their quest for mythical Great Israel.

annamaria , December 11, 2015 at 2:07 am GMT

@Cracker Not so simple. The empire of Federal Reserve will continue demanding a pound of flesh from everyone. The parasitoids have been quite successful at hollowing out the US and they are ready for "doing" Russia. http://thesaker.is/russia-in-an-invisible-war/

Lepanto , December 11, 2015 at 3:26 am GMT

"Of the Marxist ideology only insular traces remain today " You forgot to add the anti-white efforts on college campuses today. These are real and ever present and brush against the grain of Russian and Chinese nationalist efforts as well as a coherent American identity that transcends racial divides including HBD. Richard Rorty's essay on the "Unpatriotic Academy" is always worth re-reading: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/13/opinion/the-unpatriotic-academy.html

Drapetomaniac , December 11, 2015 at 4:47 am GMT

@Ronald Thomas West A good president is one who can lie and be believed.

Ronald Thomas West , Website December 11, 2015 at 8:32 am GMT

@Drapetomaniac

A good president is one who can lie and be believed.

No, that's merely an accomplished liar, it doesn't necessarily make a good president. Maybe you're conflating 'good' with 'effective'

Does Obama's lies about the USA upholding 'the rule of law' even as he has been much more effective at dismantling (supposedly constitutionally protected) American civil liberties than Bush Jr's administration, make him a good president? No, it simply makes him effective at dismantling civil liberties, example given.

Then, Obamacare made #1 on Moyer's lies list, ahead of Bush & Cheney:

http://billmoyers.com/content/10-big-fat-lies-and-the-liars-who-told-them/2/

Wasn't industry right there to shepherd the process of health care 'reform'? You bet they were. Did Obama's lies on healthcare reform make Obama a good president? No, it made him an effective tool for the health industry.

For those who prefer the satire:

http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2013/08/22/demons-anonymous/

Ronald Thomas West , Website December 11, 2015 at 8:49 am GMT

@Ronald Thomas West ps, I just remembered the better parody:

http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2014/11/16/obamas-speech-at-queensland/

Thirdeye , December 11, 2015 at 7:01 pm GMT

@Lepanto Those aren't Marxist. "Cultural Marxism" is a complete misnomer. Dividing the working classes along ethnic lines keeps them impotent. It is a ruling class strategy.

Anonymous , December 12, 2015 at 2:51 am GMT

Actually, in many ways this is a Hot War, not a Cold one

Look at the new pattern. The State Dept underwrites and supports a neo-fascist coup on Russia's border in Kiev. Putin responds by seizing Crimea and abetting the rebellion in the Donbass Region. Sanctions are enforced against Russia, Putin openly provides military assistance to Syria. Now today Putin orders immediate retaliation against any attacks against the Russian military. Meanwhile the US, UK, France and Germany begin military actions in the Syrian Theater, ultimately threatening partition.. Turkey occupies part of Iraq Iraq requests Russian aid China weighs in on the Syrian situation.

This is definitely a path towards escalation, with a genuine chance of military conflict between the Russian/ Iranian/ Syrian forces and NATO forces. That's HOT the opposite of Cold War miceo-maneuvers.

In China, following the US Pivot , and support for Tibetan and Uighur independence, China claims the S. China Sea and starts building island reefs. The US crosses over international boundaries surrounding these islands again HOT WAR escalation. ..

with a chance any of these rising conflicts could escalate into a REALLY HOT thermonuclear confrontation, just the way the Cuban Missile did

Nikolai Vladivostok , Website December 12, 2015 at 8:56 am GMT

@Giuseppe It was such a ho-hum effort; the bored, deadpan US officials barely seemed to have convinced themselves. You don't need an ingenious cloak-and-dagger operation when no one's paying attention and no one cares.

anonymous , December 13, 2015 at 5:38 pm GMT

Good article. I take it by the description that the author is a graduate student and thus relatively young. If so then they're starting out quite clear-eyed and objective, things that usually take years of living to acquire.
The US is an aggressive and expansionist empire and has been so since it consolidated itself continentally, had it's Civil War, dealt with the internal problem of the Indian population, and then embarked on foreign acquisitions starting with the Spanish-American war where it seized Spanish possessions and inserted itself into Asia via the Philippines. It's pretty much been on the march since then, always probing for weakness and opportunity to move in. It's somewhat analogous to the Austro-Hungarian empire, outwardly expansionist even as the stitches holding the seams together started to fray and weaken. They started off boldly but no one in 1914 could foresee what 1918 would look like. Unfortunately the US seems to have some inner momentum driving it thus which doesn't seem as if it's path could be altered, at least not in the short run. Many people question how much power the president actually has in being able to effect a change of course. Could be he has less than popularly supposed.
Most people agree the US is deteriorating internally. A quick and short read would be Sir John Glubb's " The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival", available free on the internet. There's many points of similarity, it'll have a familiar ring to it.

[Jul 10, 2017] John Helmer How the Russian Economy Looks If You Arent Wearing NATO Night-Fighting Goggles

Notable quotes:
"... Hellevig warns against illusions. "Russia must understand that the Russia containment strategy of the West will be there for years to come, and will only disappear the day when they gather the courage to understand that Russia has overcome. Therefore, Russia must root all its economic strategy and development efforts in a firm understanding of this reality, and never to count on West in anything. Russia must, focus on China, the East, and the rest of the world." ..."
"... When American or European voters calculate that war against Russia is threatening their interests, then there may be a change in the war policy towards Russia. For US voters to turn against war, war must hurt. ..."
"... Unfortunately, China and Russia their own home-grown warmongers whose position is continuously advanced by the kind of bellicose claptrap spewed out in documents like the two cited above. Tuchman's *The Proud Tower* and *The Guns of August* have never been more relevant than they are today, but maybe it's her anti war magnum opus, *March of Folly*, that should be required reading for all high school students going forward (I fear previous generations may already be too brainwashed to see the light). ..."
"... There is without a doubt that both China and Russia have their war parties that are impatient with the diplomatic pace of their governments. They do exert pressure towards a more belligerent pose against the US. ..."
"... Unlike the US, the war parties in those two governments do not have that much influence in making their foreign policies. Unfortunately for the US there is the so called deep state that has infiltrated every branch or our government and is always pushing for more war. ..."
"... State owned enterprises in key sectors does not sound good to you because decades of relentless junk economics and neoliberal bullshit have had a terrible effect in our perception of the reality. ..."
"... No capital controls, no industrial planning, soft banking regulations, privatized utilities, privatized infrastructures, low real estate taxes, private banking, regressive tax code. That's the receipt to create a neofeudal economy incapable of competing in the international markets. ..."
"... The point, sir, is that if your industries are overwhelmed by imports they will be destroyed, leaving you dependent on external parties. De facto colonization does not run far behind. ..."
"... Helmer's article triggered some further questions: To what extent has the effort to punish and damage Russia through the low price of oil and sanctions pushed the Putin regime to increase Russia's financial, economic and military alliance with China mentioned by Ray McGovern in his article posted in today's NC Links section? ..."
"... My understanding is that the current government, not their central bank, was thinking about ways to make Russia less dependent on foreign imports before 2014. Unilateral tariffs or other import restrictions were considered but not implemented because of political reasons -- They were afraid there would be a consumer backlash. US and EU sanctions solved that problem.. The Russian people were willing to make that sacrifice in the face of an attack on their sovereignty. ..."
"... ,,,During the analyzed period Russia has been constantly increasing the volumes of mineral exports and despite the fact that in general "oil" exports positively affect the amount of fiscal revenues, the observed dynamics of GDP growth was in fact negative. It means that further economic growth in Russia is not possible at the expense of its natural resources endowments. The observed over the analyzed period dynamics of macroeconomic indicators reveals that Russian economy is still substantially influenced by crude oil prices. Russia needs to diversify its economy away from oil and gas dependency, because significant volumes of "oil" exports are not favorable to the economy in terms of its strategic development. And according to the obtained results, in order to stimulate "non-oil" exports monetary authorities should depreciate national currency on the one hand, whilst on the other hand fiscal burden should be mild towards to "non-oil" producers. Consequently, Russian government should focus on export-oriented development of non-oil sectors and find an optimum ratio between "oil" and "non-oil" exports so that "oil" revenues would have supported "non-oil" exports. This allows us to conclude that crude oil will continue to play, at least in foreseeable future, a dominant role in further development of the Russian economy. ..."
"... Or did I miss a reference to a downside of kleptocracy. ..."
"... This paper addresses Russian economic development and economic policy in 2015–2016. The analysis focuses on external and domestic challenges as well as the anti-crisis policy of the Russian government. Special attention is paid to key elements of the new model of economic growth in Russia. The paper discusses economic policy priorities for sustainable growth that include budget efficiency, structural reforms and import substitution, the encouragement of entrepreneurship, the efficiency of public administration, and the modernization of the welfare state. ..."
Jul 10, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
... ... ...

Hellevig warns against illusions. "Russia must understand that the Russia containment strategy of the West will be there for years to come, and will only disappear the day when they gather the courage to understand that Russia has overcome. Therefore, Russia must root all its economic strategy and development efforts in a firm understanding of this reality, and never to count on West in anything. Russia must, focus on China, the East, and the rest of the world."

In war, feats of courage, while awarded medals after the event, are usually irrationally motivated when they happen. Instead of courage to understand, Hellevig may mean something more like cost-benefit analysis, as performed in the minds of voters. When American or European voters calculate that war against Russia is threatening their interests, then there may be a change in the war policy towards Russia. For US voters to turn against war, war must hurt.

Hellevig doesn't have a programme for that as much as a programme for changing hearts and minds in the policy-making centres of Moscow. Here are his recommendations:

    "All further privatization, based on the failed globalist liberal ideology, must be rejected and instead Russia must strengthen state ownership in key branches of the economy, in order to build globally competitive national champions." "Russia's highly successful import substitution program [must continue]. This is the kind of thing Russia must continue to invest in, but not forgetting to heed our advice, that state ownership must be guaranteed in the new fledgling industries." "Russia must also speed up investments in transport and other public infrastructure as well as investment in urban renewal and amelioration programs, in the way it has been done in Moscow." "Cut interest rates. In a bewildering policy motivated by inflation targeting, the Russian Central Bank has inflicted record high real interest on the economy ever since end of 2015. Presently the primary real interest rate stands at a stunning 5%. This is an unprecedented situation in a global comparison. On the contrary, the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have fought against recession by bringing the real interest rates to historical lows, even to negative territory. Without this excessive austerity the Russian economy would have fared yet much betters, especially so the consumer Both charts show that the birth rates have fallen with high real interest rates. The Central Bank therefore must take urgent measures to reduce the gap before the situation worsens further."

Who does Hellevig think, from Putin on down, believes these things, or is even willing to consider the case for them?

Sergei Glazyev is obvious, but he is window-dressing in the Kremlin wall. Not one of his policy recommendations has been adopted, nor even endorsed in public by the president; for details, click to open . Instead, Glazyev is treated to public dressing-downs from Putin's spokesman, Dmity Peskov. Glazyev, to be sure, is a prickly, vain character with a voice pitch that compares unfavourably to chalk across a blackboard. Those are not disqualifications for his ideas.

In his latest presentation on the economy, Putin sounded all of Hellevig's findings, with the exception of the imports-to-GDP ratio and surpassing Germany. However, Putin committed to none of Hellevig's recommendations. For the full text of the president's June 15 "Direct Line" broadcast, read this . Addressing the criticism of Central Bank interest rate policy – the only Russian target Hellevig explicitly attacks -- Putin agreed with the critics; he also agreed with the Central Bank.

"I very much hope that the Central Bank continues to move cautiously towards reducing the key interest rate," Putin started.

"Why has the Central Bank adopted such a cautious approach? Unfortunately, the Russian economy still depends on oil and gas. The price of natural gas depends on the price of oil, and a special formula is used to calculate it. The price of oil has recently exceeded $50, and today it is only $48, I think. The Central Bank believes that if it declines, the key interest rate would have to be adjusted. What matters most for us right now is not the key interest rate itself, but avoiding any sharp fluctuations in the key interest rate. We need to ensure a stable exchange rate for our national currency, the ruble. This is what underpins the Central Bank's cautious approach. Some may like it, others may not. I am simply trying to explain the Central Bank's logic. It deserves respect."

Left to right: Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina; Finance Minister Anton Siluanov; ex-Finance Minister, Putin adviser and patron of the other two, Alexei Kudrin, at their own SPIEF session, June 16, 2016

So who else is Hellewig addressing with the new report? The regrettable answer is noone in particular. Russia's enemies are in for a long war, Hellevig acknowledges himself. US Congress action to finalize the new sanctions bill may come this month, even before the August summer recess; for details of the new Russian targets and US weapons to be deployed, according to the new statute, read this . A veto by President Trump is unlikely because there are two-thirds majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives to override.

So Hellevig's "What Doesn't Kill You" is a report in a vacuum unless it is convincing in the domestic producers' market, and in foreign investor markets.

Sentiment for the future of the Russian economy is measurable in what Russians with cash and capital say they plan to do. If they are producing, shipping, buying and selling more, that will show in growth rates for electricity consumption, cargo tonnage moved on railroads, and the flow of cash and capital goods inward and outward. The latest measures of the electricity and rail indicators show single-digit growth upon the depressed base numbers prevailing last year. However, the numbers for capital outflow, including Russian businessmen on the run, are also growing. The closer you get to the individuals who are moving their cash abroad, the less confidence in the future you hear.

From the regular monthly polling of confidence in the future on the part of Russian businesses, it's clear there is less optimism than Hellevig's: the score last month remained negative, as it had been in April and May. The minus-1 score wasn't as bad as last December, but at minus-8 even that was nowhere near as bad as the all-time low in measured Russian business confidence – minus-20 in 2008. For more details, read this .

Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/business-confidence

The sentiment of foreign investors should be estimated differently. The long money goes into Russian debt; the short or hot money is in Russian equity. Normally, they move in parallel. But for confidence in Russian bonds and confidence in Russian shares, the trend lines this year have been running in opposite directions. By the end of June, foreign buying of Russian debt issues rose sharply, compared to April and May, with an aggregate of $2.8 billion invested last month. For shares the situation has been the reverse. Funds holding Russian shares have been selling steadily for the past four months, and $1.6 billion has been withdrawn over this period, according to EPFR Global.

Guest Post , Russia on July 9, 2017 by Lambert Strether . About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism ("Because markets"). I don't much care about the "ism" that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don't much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue -- and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me -- is the tens of thousands of excess "deaths from despair," as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics -- even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton's wars created -- bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow -- currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press -- a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let's call such voices "the left." Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn't allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I've been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

JTMcPhee , July 9, 2017 at 8:18 am

Regarding the Spirit of NATO: I'm reminded of the discussion in "The Guns of August" about the French attitude, in the generation leading up to WW I, toward the war they were planning. Lots of General Staff activity, including jockeying for position as the One who would Rule Them All, and the reliance on a supposed "national psyche" of "attack, attack, attack" to be rendered victorious by the Superior Elan of the Nation and its forces.

One view through one lens of those NATO night vision goggles: "Putin's Russia and US Defense (sic) Strategy," http://inss.ndu.edu/Portals/82/Documents/conference-reports/Putins-Russia-and-US-Defense-Strategy.pdf

And then there's this: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_56626.htm
"None so blind as those who will not see "

Olga , July 9, 2017 at 9:11 am

Don't forget the British calls (around 1910-1913) for a "little war" that would be quickly over – once we showed those Germans who's the boss Didn't quite work out that way. The viciousness with which Germany was punished after WWI hid a lot of French and British (unacknowledged) guilt. It is bloody unbelievable that 100 yrs after that war (plus WWII), the West is still warmongering. China and Russia better hurry up with that changing-the world-order project – lest there'll be nothing left to change.

JTMcPhee , July 9, 2017 at 9:35 am

But of course, out of it all, a marvelous new tradition and industrial base, Krupp and Fokker and the British and French and Scandinavian, etc. armaments industry, and the inventive new fonancialists that enabled it all and all that nationalist patriotic fervor! And Bernays, too!

"A certain amount of killing has always been a concomitant of business "

philnc , July 9, 2017 at 10:59 am

Unfortunately, China and Russia their own home-grown warmongers whose position is continuously advanced by the kind of bellicose claptrap spewed out in documents like the two cited above. Tuchman's *The Proud Tower* and *The Guns of August* have never been more relevant than they are today, but maybe it's her anti war magnum opus, *March of Folly*, that should be required reading for all high school students going forward (I fear previous generations may already be too brainwashed to see the light).

ToivoS , July 9, 2017 at 11:12 pm

There is without a doubt that both China and Russia have their war parties that are impatient with the diplomatic pace of their governments. They do exert pressure towards a more belligerent pose against the US.

Unlike the US, the war parties in those two governments do not have that much influence in making their foreign policies. Unfortunately for the US there is the so called deep state that has infiltrated every branch or our government and is always pushing for more war.

Edward E , July 9, 2017 at 12:07 pm

"China and Russia better hurry up with that changing-the world-order project"
From reading a lot of Finian Cunningham and Willem Middelkoop, it appears that is exactly what is happening.

edr , July 9, 2017 at 9:48 am

"Hellevig's point deserves repeating -- the Russian economy is far more diversified than the enemy thinks. "

Hellevig calls the west "our western partners" but Helmer above is calling who the "enemy"? and enemy to whom? From Helmer's perspective that doesn't make sense. Is Helmer American? His first paragraph is equally confusing. Is Helmer recommending that a country under Economic Threat by a Stronger power hide economic gains, or the opposite ?

Hellevig: "state ownership must be guaranteed in the new fledgling industries."

Doesn't sound like good advice to me. Some subsidies for important fledgling industries sound like a better idea, like solar for instance.

Hiho , July 9, 2017 at 11:47 am

State owned enterprises in key sectors does not sound good to you because decades of relentless junk economics and neoliberal bullshit have had a terrible effect in our perception of the reality.

The truth is that liberalized economies have never been able to compete in the world and never will be.

edt , July 9, 2017 at 1:06 pm

What's your definition of a liberalized economy?

I didn't mention anything about "key sectors" (that was a different recommendation from Hellevig).

I referred to his recommendation about "fledgling industries," which could be anything.

I guess we could all go to work for the government. That shouldn't create any problems.

edr , July 9, 2017 at 1:17 pm

What's your definition of a liberalized economy?

I didn't mention anything about "key sectors" (that was different recommendation from Hellevig).

I referred to his recommendation about "fledgling industries" which could be anything.

I guess we could all go to work for the government. That shouldn't create any problems.

JTMcPhee , July 9, 2017 at 2:09 pm

Or we can all change our names to "Galt." Voluntarily, or by corporatist/financialist fiat. Actually seems to be well under way.

Of course the Galtians do want just that precise amount of "regulation," to be provided by Philosopher Galts from within the monopoly (sic) on the use of force, just the precise amount that's needed to make the Galtian system work, and to monopolize the government-protected freedom to loot and cadge subsidies and rents from the rest of us, and make us eat their externalities

Working so well so far, isn't it? Checked the outside air temperature and habitability indexes around the place lately? But those who profit from skills at looting and rentier-ing kvetch about the "government" they pervert for personal advantage -- nice to have it both ways.

Let us mopes never try to figure out how to have a "government" that embodies both "civil" and "service," one that's not immediately captured and twisted by Kochs and Musks and other Robber Barons. So hard to do, when one has the funhouse-mirror image of the Magna Carta as one of the Holy Texts

Hiho , July 9, 2017 at 2:37 pm

No capital controls, no industrial planning, soft banking regulations, privatized utilities, privatized infrastructures, low real estate taxes, private banking, regressive tax code. That's the receipt to create a neofeudal economy incapable of competing in the international markets.

JTMcPhee , July 9, 2017 at 5:57 pm

"incapable of competing in the international markets": you say that as if it's a Bad Thing ? And that all the "competition" does not, to greater or lesser degree, manifest every one of those supposed noncompetitive "weaknesses" of failings?

reslez , July 9, 2017 at 9:05 pm

The point, sir, is that if your industries are overwhelmed by imports they will be destroyed, leaving you dependent on external parties. De facto colonization does not run far behind.

JTMcPhee , July 9, 2017 at 10:52 pm

I got what he was saying, I think, and if it was not irony, then my point is that all those bad things Hiho cites are happening everywhere, to one degree or another, under neoliberal-neocon globalization. All part of the global race to the bottom, which I believe each of the presumed "bad things" cited by Hiho are part and parcel of. With the burden of militarized attempts to achieve Full Spectrum Dominance laid on top, though it sure is not clear, given the ascendancy of post-supra-national corporations and wealth concentration in the hands of Supra-state individuals with no national ties or loyalties, "cui bono" from that effort.

One wonders who and what the Received Wisdom of pursuit of imperial autarky-hegemony and "global competitiveness"might be expected to benefit

And the outcome, the industrial output, of the global system-as-it-is seems demonstrably to be killing the habitability of the planet. And of importance to us "top predators," the "comfort" and sustainability of our own brittle species

More of the same gets you exactly what, again? Minute local short-term Elites and their self-indulgences, who seem to have the "feudalism creation" process well under way, for their personal benefit ?

RabidGandhi , July 9, 2017 at 5:12 pm

"Our Western partners" is Putin's usual formulation, as Helmer makes clear in the article. It is not Hellevig's.

Carey , July 9, 2017 at 10:51 am

FWIW, I have often found Mr. Helmer obscure and difficult to confidently parse, with enough factual errors that I do take him with a grain of salt.

Yves Smith , July 9, 2017 at 5:47 pm

You need to address this particular article and not engage in a drive-by attack. You apparently can't find anything wrong but don't like where this goes. This piece makes clear it depends on a single source and Helmer has written it up. So what, pray tell, is hard to understand about that?

Our Richard Smith writes about scammers and his articles are similarly difficult because the relations among players and mechanisms are complex. That is often why Helmer's articles are dense: he's dealing with lots of material from sources with their own motives.

JTMcPhee , July 9, 2017 at 6:04 pm

Yves, thank you for adding that. I took "Carey" to be a kind of FUD-peddling troll. Can't let people start thinking well of folks like Helmer, now can they? Got to impeach whenever there's the chance.

Of course I could have it all wrong, and "Carey" was commenting in all sincerity In faceless bitspace, it's so hard to know

ToivoS , July 9, 2017 at 11:54 pm

Glad to see you defending Helmer. He very often comes up with some pretty good insights. But my God he is sometime difficult to follow. Someone who makes the reader work that hard just might be able to use a good copy editor. But, on the other hand,he does make one think.

Chauncey Gardiner , July 9, 2017 at 2:48 pm

Helmer's article triggered some further questions: To what extent has the effort to punish and damage Russia through the low price of oil and sanctions pushed the Putin regime to increase Russia's financial, economic and military alliance with China mentioned by Ray McGovern in his article posted in today's NC Links section?

To what extent has the growing economic relationship between Russia and China reduced the effectiveness of US sanctions on Russia and indirectly led to derivative policy blowback with potentially damaging implications for the US, such as loss of petrodollar hegemony to the Chinese yuan? China is now putting pressure on the Saudis to accept payment for oil in yuan by using China's oil imports from Russia as negotiating leverage.

Seems like an awful lot of ignorance and miscalculation by the usual suspects to me.

ToivoSt , July 10, 2017 at 12:03 am

My understanding is that the current government, not their central bank, was thinking about ways to make Russia less dependent on foreign imports before 2014. Unilateral tariffs or other import restrictions were considered but not implemented because of political reasons -- They were afraid there would be a consumer backlash. US and EU sanctions solved that problem.. The Russian people were willing to make that sacrifice in the face of an attack on their sovereignty.

John Casey , July 10, 2017 at 1:00 pm

To what extent has the effort to punish and damage Russia through the low price of oil and sanctions pushed the Putin regime to increase Russia's financial, economic and military alliance with China mentioned by Ray McGovern in his article posted in today's NC Links section?

I'll add that -- as far as I can tell, at least -- there's almost never any news about this issue in the three chief political establishment outlets (NYT, WaPo, and WSJ). You'd think that the editors of those papers regard the nascent Russia-China strategic partnership as verboten. Something unmentionable.

I wonder why.

Damson , July 9, 2017 at 2:48 pm

Helllevig's report is unabashedly pro – Putin so that doesn't gel too well with Helmer – a consistent, if generally fair critic.

Hard to know what the essential point of Helmer's take on the report really is – a warning against perceived Russian hubris vis a vis NATO?

Wariness of Glazeyev's proposed reforms? Contrary to Helmer, I believe they have not been adopted not because they are perceived to be wrong, but because they are currently too radical for the Russian economy – still very much part of the global system. (Though the SWIFT expulsion threat was challenged vigorously, and a Sino – Russian alternative is being put in place, it would have caused havoc if it had gone ahead.)

The impression that he's a 'narcissistic' attention – w***é is a new one on me Maybe Helmer is buddies with Kudrin, your standard market ideologue and a dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal (despite his organisation of financial reserves to cushion the effects of sanctions, he is not ideologically a threat to current Western dogma.)

Or is Helmer uneasy at the prospect of major power nationalising it's central bank?

All in all, a rather rum rumination.

Best read the full report until Helmer publishes an article offering more clarity on his own perspective.

Yves Smith , July 9, 2017 at 6:02 pm

I've said in passing that the West expected its sanctions to bring Russia to its knees. They've now been on for years. Even though GDP took a hit, the impact appears to be markedly less than what we inflicted on ourselves in the financial crisis, in part because Russia engaged in a muscular response (such as improving domestic industries, like cheese making, where they had chosen before to be significantly dependent on imports). And the sanctions also didn't hurt Putin's popularity, in fact they increased it. Even the Moscow intelligensia went quiet for a good year plus. And Putin brought a big increase in living standards. The GDP reduction is a blip compared to where Russia was circa the late 1990s.

So while Helllevig may be overegging the pudding, it's accurate to say that the sanctions didn't damage Russia anywhere near as much as the West hoped.

One issue is all the reports I can find easily (thanks to Google crapification) list GDP in $ terms. I'd like to see a GDP series in rouble terms, since that's what matters to Russians, particularly since Russia isn't a huge importer.

I did find a report at Barrons which is relatively bullish on Russia, although not at bullish as Hellevig, based on World Bank forecasts:

Russia's economy can expand at a 1.3% pace in 2017 and by 1.4% in 2018 and 2019, the World Bank said Tuesday.

The ruble is strengthening today, up 0.7% against the U.S. dollar, and Russian equities are rallying in Moscow. The VanEck Vectors Russia exchange-traded fund (RSX) is higher by 0.5% this morning, as are the U.S.-traded shares of Sberbank Rossia (SBRCY). Moody's Investors Service projected slightly higher GDP growth of 1.5% this year and next, but maintained its junk rating on Russian government bonds Monday.

http://www.barrons.com/articles/russia-rallies-1-3-gdp-growth-55-oil-world-bank-says-1495548544

Thor's Hammer , July 9, 2017 at 8:59 pm

Another statistic that goes unnoticed in the USA is the extent to which Russia is an outlier among the world's major economies. Where debt/GDP ratios in the US are 107% along with basket state countries like Italy and Greece, Russia is nearly debt free at 17%!by far the lowest in the world for a major industrial power.

Looks like the military-industrial state war hawks better make sure that the US can continue to impose the dollar as the world reserve currency!–. All those new SUV's purchased with 7 year loans will get pretty thirsty if the US has to earn the money to import the fuel to run them instead of just having the FED create the money with a key stroke.

optimader , July 9, 2017 at 11:31 pm

https://dspace.spbu.ru/bitstream/11701/6341/1/03-Korhonen.pdf
Figure 1. Russian GDP growth, 2000–2016, percent of corresponding period of previous year
S o u r c e: Rosstat. URL: http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/ru/statistics/accounts/ (accessed:
14.12.2016).

optimader , July 9, 2017 at 11:39 pm

https://acta.mendelu.cz/media/pdf/actaun_2017065010299.pdf

Volume 65 34 Number 1, 2017
https://doi.org/10.11118/actaun201765010299
THE SUCCESS OF ECONOMIC POLICIES
IN RUSSIA: DEPENDENCE ON CRUDE
OIL VS. EXPORT DIVERSIFICATION


,,,During the analyzed period Russia has been constantly increasing the volumes of mineral exports and despite the fact that in general "oil" exports positively affect the amount of fiscal revenues, the observed dynamics of GDP growth was in fact negative. It means that further economic growth in Russia is not possible at the expense of its natural resources endowments. The observed over the analyzed period dynamics of macroeconomic indicators reveals that Russian economy is still substantially influenced by crude oil prices. Russia needs to diversify its economy away from oil and gas dependency, because significant volumes of "oil" exports are not favorable to the economy in terms of its strategic development. And according to the obtained results, in order to stimulate "non-oil" exports monetary authorities should depreciate national currency on the one hand, whilst on the other hand fiscal burden should be mild towards to "non-oil" producers. Consequently, Russian government should focus on export-oriented development of non-oil sectors and find an optimum ratio between "oil" and "non-oil" exports so that "oil" revenues would have supported "non-oil" exports. This allows us to conclude that crude oil will continue to play, at least in foreseeable future, a dominant role in further development of the Russian economy.

Yves Smith , July 10, 2017 at 2:08 am

Thank you!

Optimader , July 10, 2017 at 8:57 am

Yr welcome, I'll look a little closer for gdp info later today

LifeIsLikeABeanstalk , July 9, 2017 at 6:18 pm

Given the fortuitous results the sanctions have allegedly produced are we to presume Vlad the Impaler (of Political Opponents and Truth Seeking Journalists) spent some time this past week lobbying for their continuation?

On the one hand I agree we have plenty of interests in common. And if the Russian people are content with rule by the siloviki they should be allowed that. We should think long and hard however before accepting the insinuation of their model into our own imbalanced and (hopefully) evolving system. That WAS the implication of the piece wasn't it? Or did I miss a reference to a downside of kleptocracy.

IMHO the long play is establishing ties with those who will unseat or outlast Vlad and encourage a government and economy of openness and participation.

BTW: Someone should write a piece looking at the similarities between Putin's agitation of the Orthodox Church to his own advantage and Donald's winning over of the Christian Right in this country.

witters , July 9, 2017 at 6:53 pm

"IMHO the long play is establishing ties with those who will unseat or outlast Vlad and encourage a government and economy of openness and participation."

So Regime Change and All the Openness and Participation the US always brings? And that is your Long Play?

Some people

reslez , July 9, 2017 at 9:10 pm

> Or did I miss a reference to a downside of kleptocracy.

Perhaps said reference was omitted in deference to the readership, who labor under our own journalist-persecuting kleptocracy and do not need a reminder.

Catsick , July 9, 2017 at 6:40 pm

The fall in the Russian economy was brought on by the oil price collapse not the sanctions. In a perverse kind of way the US then forced on Russia a kind of Trumpian make Russia great again set of policies through sanctions which unexpectedly led to an industrial rebirth which fully offset the oil price collapse, if the west had really wanted to undermine Russia then the best way would have been to encourage capital flight by helping the debauched overseas fantasies of the oligarchs they targeted.

RBHoughton , July 9, 2017 at 7:53 pm

I have often said that sanctions only put up prices, based on what I know has occurred historically, but Yves exposes a further risk in one of her comments. France had a share of the cheese market in Russia until she was persuaded to cease supplying. Since then domestic producers have made many of the cheeses France used to supply. That market has likely gone for France. Trade is trade, war is war. We should try not to confuse the two.

The Rev Kev , July 9, 2017 at 11:55 pm

It is worse than that. Remember those two Mistral-class ships that the French built for the Russian navy until, under pressure from NATO, they reneged on those contracts and were forced to pay a heavy penalty? Now anybody that has contracts with France, particularly military contracts, will have to wonder if France will honour those contracts if put under enough pressure.

Business hates uncertainty and so you wonder how many contracts France has lost since it proved to be an unreliable business partner.

Come to think of it, our mob has signed a $50 billion contract with France for 12 you-bewt submarines. I wonder if-

A- That was under pressure by others to compensate France for the loss of the Mistral contracts and

B- That was why the insistence of the subs being built in Adelaide. Not only for local jobs but also to ensure that there would be no future funny business about actual delivery. Hmmm

Enquiring Mind , July 9, 2017 at 10:15 pm

When I hear about Congress demanding sanctions, I visualize John McCain sputtering. So much of what passes for those great deliberations seems to be in effect more kayfabe. They produce what they think the public expects, as filtered through their minders on K Street, in the media and elsewhere.
Sanctions can be productive, when used thoughtfully and with limited scope. In the present context, there does not appear to be much thought given the ongoing "Russians Hacked, dammit" looped commentary.

optimader , July 9, 2017 at 11:27 pm

http://www.worldstopexports.com/russias-top-10-exports/
https://imrussia.org/en/analysis/politics/2454-russia's-elites-battle-over-a-shrinking-economic-pie
https://imrussia.org/en/analysis/economy/2787-sergey-aleksashenko-"the-kremlin-s-economic-policy-has-produced-no-growth-whatsoever"

optimader , July 10, 2017 at 10:30 am

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/53/1/012018/pdf
The problems and prospects of the public–private partnership in the Russian fuel and energy sector
SM Nikitenko1,3 and EV Goosen1,2
1Federal Research Center for Coal and Coal Chemistry, Siberian Branch of the
Russian Academy of Sciences, Kemerovo, Russia
2Kemerovo State University, Kemerovo, Russia
3Kemerovo Institute (Branch) of Plekhanov Russian University of Economics,
Kemerovo, Russia

optimader , July 10, 2017 at 10:34 am

https://helda.helsinki.fi/bof/bitstream/handle/123456789/14554/w2016.pdf?sequence=1

BOFIT Weekly Yearbook 2016 plenty of research here

optimader , July 10, 2017 at 10:40 am

. http://www.ersj.eu/repec/ers/papers/17_1_p29.pdf

Instruments of Marketing and Credit Support of the Large Industrial Enterprises Development: International Experience

optimader , July 10, 2017 at 10:48 am

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405473916300472

Abstract

This paper addresses Russian economic development and economic policy in 2015–2016. The analysis focuses on external and domestic challenges as well as the anti-crisis policy of the Russian government. Special attention is paid to key elements of the new model of economic growth in Russia. The paper discusses economic policy priorities for sustainable growth that include budget efficiency, structural reforms and import substitution, the encouragement of entrepreneurship, the efficiency of public administration, and the modernization of the welfare state.

[Jul 10, 2017] Trump core opinions and attitudes can reverse 180 degrees in mere hours. Thus worrying about his getting violently demised is probably unfounded. He will consistently perform for his Zionist handlers and dance for his Deep State controllers.

Notable quotes:
"... It could also be that he is just being "smart" -- saying what needs to be said ad hoc to appease -- with the intention of eventually, when the time is right, carrying out his strategic vision. We'll see. ..."
"... what about the 59 missiles its all kiss and make up? What a load of bollocks. ..."
Jul 10, 2017 | sputniknews.com
Dimitri Ledkovsky · Works at It's not what you do. It's who you are. 23 hrs

It's likely that Trump is mind controlled since his seemingly core opinions and attitudes can reverse 180 degrees in mere hours. Thus worrying about his getting violently demised is probably unfounded. He will consistently perform for his Zionist handlers and dance for his Deep State controllers.

Steven Hudson · Creative Director at Neoideograms.wordpress.com

I don't know about that. His expressing contrary opinions could be interpreted as his having some independence--a hopeful thing. It could also be that he is just being "smart" -- saying what needs to be said ad hoc to appease -- with the intention of eventually, when the time is right, carrying out his strategic vision. We'll see.

Robert Smiley · West Vancouver, British Columbia 23 hrs

A case can be made that the so called deep state is committing treason on a daily basis. Unfortunately its constituent parts are stronger than the President and his allies.

Robert Sinclair

what about the 59 missiles its all kiss and make up? What a load of bollocks. They both love israel. if you look carefully you can see the strings

ARG Asia
I did know "Deep State" was powerful, but I had no idea they could do whatever they wanted and interfere in nearly every of President Trump staff members with the exemption of the former Goldman Sachs appointees. Is the US really a democracy?

Here in Asia we see the US bullying and revolver diplomacy has insulted many countries, not only the Philippines. If the US want to have a future in Asia they have to be more respectful, stop interfering in domestic issues, and stop all these regimes change attempts.

[Jul 10, 2017] Steve Bannon Is Out of Trump's Doghouse and Leading the Charge Against Mueller by Joshua Green

Muller was Bush II 9/11 coverup guy. he is vulnerable.
Trump correctly identified Muller investigation to be a "witch hunt" telling Fox News that he finds Mueller's long-standing relationship with Comey "bothersome." So there should be a central figure who organizes that the defense and Bannon with his media formidable skills is suitable for this role, because he understands the political "kitchen", while Trump does not. Actually all Trump adversaries have skeletons in the closets too, so "nuclear option" is always on the table. 9/11 provides plenty such skeletons for all leading anti-Trump figures. But in the meantime it is important to know the difference between rational political move and political suicide.
The fact that Mr. Comey has now admitted that he is one of these leakers now bound Muller to lekk at leakers too, not only at Trump. It he does not so he is open attacks for partisanship and carrying water for Hillary.
Notable quotes:
"... Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich ..."
"... Access Hollywood. ..."
"... Access Hollywood ..."
"... Access Hollywood ..."
"... Access Hollywood ..."
"... Access Hollywood ..."
"... by Joshua Green (July 18; Penguin Press). Copyright © 2017 by Joshua Green. ..."
"... *This article appears in the July 10, 2017, issue of ..."
Jul 10, 2017 | www.msn.com

For Trump, Bannon's distinctive vocabulary was another point of his appeal. Bannon gloried in the slights and scorn directed at Trump supporters, proudly insisting that elitist Clintonites looked down on them as "hobbits," "Grundoons," and -- co-opting Clinton's own ill-advised term -- "deplorables." Anyone who thought otherwise was a "mook" or a "schmendrick." And Clinton herself was the subject of a steady stream of derision, carefully pitched to Trump's own biases and insecurities and delivered with the passion of a cornerman firing up a boxer for one last grueling round in the ring. Clinton, Bannon would insist, was "a résumé," "a total phony," "terrible on the stage," "a grinder, but not smart," "a joke who hides behind a complacent media," "an apple-polisher who couldn't pass the D.C. bar exam," "thinks it's her turn" but "has never accomplished anything in her life" -- and, for good measure, was "a f---ing bull dyke."

Although Trump didn't dwell on policy details, Bannon pitched in there, too. When Trump came under fire because his campaign hadn't produced a single policy paper, Bannon arranged for Nunberg and Ann Coulter, the conservative pundit, to quickly write a white paper on Trump's immigration policies. When the campaign released it, Coulter, without disclosing her role, tweeted that it was "the greatest political document since the Magna Carta."

Bannon and Breitbart also operated as shock troops for Trump's on-and-off war with Fox News. Trump's fixation with the cable network was a powerful force throughout the campaign. Although he had appeared regularly on Fox for years and had staunch backers at the network, Sean Hannity chief among them, Fox wasn't always friendly. And Trump was stung by a humiliation he'd suffered from Rupert Murdoch. He often told intimates how, as he was preparing to launch his campaign, his daughter Ivanka had arranged a lunch with Murdoch to share the news. Soon after the three of them were seated and the waiter brought their soup, Ivanka spoke up: "My father has something to tell you."

"What's that?" Murdoch said.

"He's going to run for president."

"He's not running for president," Murdoch replied without looking up from his soup.

"No, he is!" she insisted.

Murdoch changed the subject.

Trump nursed the slight for months. "He didn't even look up from his soup!" he'd complain. Nowhere was Trump's clash with the network more pronounced than in the aftermath of the first GOP debate -- sponsored by Fox News and co-moderated by Megyn Kelly -- on August 6 in Cleveland. Trump was particularly worried about Kelly, whose show he had backed out of three days earlier, complaining to a friend that she was out to get him. (Bannon had a special loathing for Kelly, just as some Fox hosts did for him. "Bannon is human garbage," one of them told me.)

When the lights went up in Cleveland, Kelly went right after Trump, confronting him with his history of sexist statements. "You've called women you don't like 'fat pigs,' 'dogs,' 'slobs,' and 'disgusting animals,' " she said. "Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?"

Within minutes of the debate's end, even as Trump was still nursing his grievances on live television, reporters started to realize that the revelations of his past behavior, so bluntly excavated by Kelly, had caused an intense reaction among Republican voters -- not against Trump but against Fox News. Bannon and the Breitbart editors had the same reaction and immediately turned on Kelly with a fusillade of negative articles slamming her as a backstabbing, self-promoting betrayer of the cause. Breitbart soon became the locus of pro-Trump, anti-Fox conservative anger. Between Thursday night, when the debate took place, and Sunday evening, Breitbart published 25 stories mentioning Kelly, and the site's editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow , went on CNN to accuse Fox News of "trying to take out Donald Trump" and staging "a gotcha debate."

The intensity of Republican anger stunned Fox News executives. The debate had drawn a record 24 million viewers. Now many of them were apoplectic at the network's top talent. In a panic, Ailes called Bannon and begged him to call off the attacks. "Steve, this isn't fair, and it's killing us," Ailes said. "You have to stop it." "F--- that, that was outrageous what she did!" Bannon retorted. "She pulled every trick out of the leftist playbook."

The call ended without resolution. Bannon and Ailes would not speak again for almost a year. Even after Ailes and Trump patched up their relationship, Bannon refused to relent. In fact, Breitbart's attacks on Kelly grew uglier. "Flashback: Megyn Kelly Discusses Her Husband's Penis and Her Breasts on Howard Stern," read a Breitbart headline a week after the debate. Ailes eventually dispatched his personal lawyer, Peter Johnson Jr., to the Breitbart embassy in D.C. to deliver a message to Bannon to end the war on Kelly. When he arrived, Johnson got straight to the point: If Bannon didn't stop immediately, he would never again appear on Fox News. Bannon was incensed at the threat.

"She's pure evil," he told Johnson. "And she will turn on [Ailes] one day. We're going full-bore. We're not going to stop. I'm gonna unchain the dogs." The conversation was brief and unpleasant, and it ended with a cinematic flourish. "I want you to go back to New York and quote me to Roger," Bannon said. " 'Go f--- yourself.' "

© Provided by Daily Intelligencer

Bannon remained a loyal outsider for most of the campaign. Then in August 2016, as Trump looked to be spiraling toward a blowout loss, Rebekah Mercer, whose family put millions of dollars into both Breitbart and Trump's presidential run, helped arrange for Bannon to take over. One weakness of Trump's campaign was that it was guided almost entirely by the candidate's impulses. Bannon kept Trump focused on a clear target at which to direct his ample talent for invective: "Crooked Hillary." And he brought an encyclopedic knowledge of damaging material with which to attack her, gleaned from having masterminded Peter Schweizer's best-selling 2015 book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich (another Mercer-backed effort). The book gave Trump an overarching theme in which to fit his attacks, one that the media, thanks partly to Schweizer's and Bannon's efforts, was already predisposed to accept: that Clinton was corrupt. And because Bannon's convulsive extremism was now setting the tone, no one would hold him back. "It's not going to be a traditional campaign," he said shortly after his hiring.

It wasn't. The great test arrived on October 7, when David Fahrenthold, a reporter at the Washington Post, was leaked outtake footage from a 2005 Trump appearance on the NBC show Access Hollywood. "When you're a star, they let you do it," Trump told host Billy Bush. "You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy."

It looked like Trump had finally said something that even he couldn't rebound from, and Republican officials quickly began abandoning the campaign. "I am not going to defend Donald Trump -- not now, not in the future," Paul Ryan told his House colleagues in a private call. As New York reported , Reince Priebus urged Trump to quit or "go down with a worse election loss than Barry Goldwater's." Bannon stood firm, although even he feared Trump might be finished. Still, he told an associate, it wouldn't be a total loss. "Our backup strategy," he said of Clinton, "is to f--- her up so bad that she can't govern. If she gets 43 percent of the vote, she can't claim a mandate." Psyching himself up, he added, "My goal is that by November 8, when you hear her name, you're gonna throw up."

Trump, who never apologized for any offense, took the unprecedented step of expressing remorse about the comments on the Access Hollywood tape in a hastily produced web video. "I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize," he said to the camera. But at Bannon's urging, his apology quickly morphed into an attack on the Clintons that made it clear he would not be dropping out. "I've said some foolish things," he said, but "Bill Clinton has actually abused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed, and intimidated his victims. We will discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate on Sunday." With Bannon by his side, Trump would navigate the greatest crisis of his campaign by putting his foot on the gas. When I reached Bannon to ask about the strategy for the upcoming debate, he didn't miss a beat: "Attack, attack, attack, attack."

Bannon had long believed that Bill Clinton's sexual history and Hillary's alleged complicity in covering it up was something that "has to be concentrated and brought up," as he'd once put it. His original thought was that relitigating the scandals would demoralize a younger generation of feminist women unfamiliar with the tawdry details. But with the Access Hollywood tape, Bannon saw that injecting Clinton's accusers into the race would force the media to devote attention to more than just Trump's damaging tape. The trick was to do it in a way that couldn't be ignored. Watching Bill Cosby's public evisceration by his accusers the year before, Bannon had noticed that their on-camera testimony was especially powerful because most of the victims had been assaulted decades earlier and were now elderly women and thus inherently sympathetic. Bannon thought a similar dynamic would apply to the Clinton accusers.

On Sunday afternoon, 90 minutes before the start of the debate at Washington University in St. Louis, word spread in the press corps that Trump was about to hold an event. As reporters squeezed into a conference room, Trump was seated at the center of a makeshift dais flanked by four women well known to veteran political reporters: Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathy Shelton, and Paula Jones. Willey, Broaddrick, and Jones had all accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault or harassment; in 1975, a judge had appointed Hillary Clinton, then a young lawyer, to defend a man accused of raping Shelton, who was then 12 years old.

After brief remarks from Trump, the women took turns defending him and assailing the Clintons. The shock of what was unfolding prompted frenzied live coverage on cable news. As cameras panned the room, they captured Bannon standing in the back, grinning wickedly. The brazenness of Bannon's gambit, and the visual of Trump seated among Clinton's accusers, ensured that the primary imagery on TV would cease to be the Access Hollywood footage.

A plan to seat the women at the front of the debate audience to rattle Clinton and assure them a steady presence in the camera shot had to be scuttled. In the end, it didn't matter. Bannon had always believed that Trump was his own greatest weapon. As 67 million people tuned in to the debate, Trump waited for the inevitable Access Hollywood question and sprung his counterattack. "If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse," he said. "Mine are words, and his was action. His was -- what he's done to women, there's never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously. Four of them are here tonight."

Outside the campaign, the Clinton-accuser gambit was seen as a transparently cynical ploy to change the subject. But Trump's brain trust was seeing numbers that said attacking Clinton was succeeding. A smattering of public polls indicated the same thing: More respondents improved their opinion of Trump than of Clinton after watching the debate.

Then, within days of the debate, multiple women came forward to accuse Trump of having groped or kissed them without their consent . The wave of new accusers put the campaign on a war footing. The distinction they needed to draw, Bannon told staffers, was between Trump's "locker room" behavior and what he alleged was Bill Clinton's sexually violent behavior. "This has nothing to do with consensual sexual affairs and infidelities," Bannon said in a strategy meeting that week. "We're going to turn him into Bill Cosby. He's a violent sexual predator who physically abuses women who he assaults. And she takes the lead on the intimidation of the victims."

Trump seemed to relish the prospect of ramping up his attacks on Hillary. And then, with just over a week to go until Election Day, he got an unexpected boost when FBI director James Comey announced he was reopening the investigation into Clinton's private email server. Trump's internal polls, which showed him already ascending before the Comey letter, now had him turning sharply upward in every battleground state. Out on the stump, he ratcheted up his criticism of Clinton. In speeches and ads, he channeled Bannon's conspiratorial worldview, accusing Clinton of plotting "the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special-interest friends." When Trump won the election, the lesson the 45th president took away from the campaign seemed to be that if he fought hard enough, he could survive anything.

Just six months into his presidency, Trump's faith in that proposition is being tested. His brief tenure has been shot through with turmoil, his legislative agenda is teetering on the cusp of collapse, and Robert Mueller's special-counsel investigation is an ever-present source of frustration. The Associated Press revealed that Trump's anger has reached a point where he is yelling at television sets in the White House, upset by the tenor of his coverage.

For Bannon, though, things are looking up. Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord was a sign that nationalism still holds sway, as was his July speech in Poland warning of the decline of the West. The Supreme Court's decision in late June to allow the administration's travel ban to take partial effect was another victory for Bannon, its principal architect. The House just passed two immigration bills, and, White House officials say privately, Congress will soon act on four more. Bannon's feud with Kushner has quieted down. And so far, while at least ten White House officials and former aides, including Kushner, have retained lawyers in the special counsel's probe, distancing themselves from Trump, Bannon is not among them.

Instead, he's back in the bunker alongside a boss who is often angry, always under fire, and, on the matter of Russia, increasingly isolated from all but a handful of advisers and family members. Early on, Bannon's war room displayed characteristic aggression, with Kasowitz holding a press conference to slam Comey in response to the former FBI director's June 8 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. "[It] is overwhelmingly clear that there have been and continue to be those in government who are actively attempting to undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications," Kasowitz said. "Mr. Comey has now admitted that he is one of these leakers."

Many of Trump's current and former aides cheered this lunge for the jugular. "Kasowitz is a junkyard dog, exactly the guy Trump needs in his corner right now," says Barry Bennett, a former campaign adviser. In TV appearances, war-room attorney Jay Sekulow -- Trump's Lanny Davis -- suggested that Mueller is biased, a charge Trump amplified on Twitter by calling the investigation a "witch hunt" and telling Fox News that he finds Mueller's long-standing relationship with Comey "bothersome."

But those personal attacks diminished in late June, after John Dowd, a prominent Washington attorney and veteran of the Justice Department, joined Trump's defense. References to a "war room" have also been dropped for the more tempered "president's outside legal team." And on June 28, Trump's lawyers decided to postpone filing a Justice Department complaint against Comey for having helped leak memos about his conversations with Trump to reporters -- a move Bloomberg News attributed to a new attitude of "professional courtesy" toward Mueller. "It could become an adversarial relationship, but at present the legal team decided it was best to hold off and not file those complaints," says Mark Corallo, the spokesman for the legal team. Which is not to say that Bannon's bare-knuckled instincts have vanished, but rather that he's come to understand that going after Mueller personally isn't the best move -- at least right now.

Davis himself says this was a necessary course correction. "There is huge danger in attacking Mueller directly," says Davis. "[White House counsel] Don McGahn, Bannon, and the political side of the White House ought to be listening." For now, they seem to be. And at least for the time being, Trump, too, has shifted his target from Mueller and Comey to Mika Brzezinski and CNN.

One critical element of the Lanny Davis model, says Davis, is having a president who has a firm enough grasp of the legal and political stakes that he's willing to focus on his day job and let his lawyers do the talking for him. But even some of Trump's defenders admit that not only is the president unlikely to show such deference, he is never more than a bad news cycle away from firing Mueller.

"Bannon's a smart guy -- he knows the difference between success and political suicide," says Davis. "But could he even stop him?" When it came to Comey, the answer was no. As Mueller expands his team of investigators, the question now is how long Trump's advisers will be able to dissuade him from going after the special counsel. "One thing that's always dangerous is telling Donald Trump that he can't do something," says Roger Stone. "Because then he wants to do it."

If Trump were to fire Mueller , numerous Republicans say privately that they would break with the president. "It would be a repeat of the 'Saturday Night Massacre' when Nixon fired Archibald Cox," the Watergate special prosecutor, says Davis.

There's no question, though, who would lead the attack on Trump's critics if such a scenario were to unfold. "At the end of the day," says Sam Nunberg, "the question is, are we going to stand with Trump when he fires Mueller? Steve will do it."

Adapted from Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency , by Joshua Green (July 18; Penguin Press). Copyright © 2017 by Joshua Green.

*This article appears in the July 10, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.

[Jul 10, 2017] The Media Perpetuated A Clinton Lie For 9 Months. What It Means For The Russia Narrative

Notable quotes:
"... The New York Times ..."
"... the Associated Press ..."
"... The truth about this "17 intel agencies" claim matters, not so much because of what it says about the intelligence community's conclusion on Russian meddling, but because of what it says about the establishment media's conclusion on Russian meddling. ..."
"... The fact is many of these narratives bear all the same hallmarks as the "17 intelligence agencies" mess. ..."
"... Based on the word of one anonymous source, The Washington Post reported that Russia had hacked the U.S. electrical grid. That was quickly proven false when the electric company, which the reporter had not bothered to contact before publishing, said in a statement the grid definitely was not hacked , and the "Russian hacker" may have been no hacker at all, but an employee who mistakenly visited an infected site on a work computer. ..."
"... The media is bent on supporting already foregone conclusions about Trump and Russian meddling, no matter what they have to scoop up or parrot or claim (or ignore) to do so. ..."
"... for the media, it's also just a "basic fact" that Trump likely colluded with Russia, and that he should be impeached, and that his White House is on the verge of literally disappearing into a sinkhole. ..."
Jul 10, 2017 | dailycaller.com
When Hillary Clinton claimed "17 intelligence agencies" agree on Russian meddling in the third presidential debate, a host of media outlets including The New York Times rated the claim as 100 percent true. Nine months later, those same outlets say the stat is obviously false, and there's been a "simple" explanation as to why all along.

A closer look at how the claim survived and thrived over those nine months reveals a startling lack of skepticism in the press when it comes to the Russia narrative. The truth is the great majority of the 17 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community had nothing to do with the investigation and made no judgments about the matter.

"The reason the views of only those four intelligence agencies, not all 17, were included in the assessment is simple: They were the ones tracking and analyzing the Russian campaign," The New York Times now reports . "The rest were doing other work."

Strange admission for the paper, since its star political reporter recently reiterated the false claim as she was in the middle of writing an article characterizing President Trump as stubbornly foolish.

"The latest presidential tweets were proof to dismayed members of Mr. Trump's party that he still refuses to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help him get elected," Maggie Haberman wrote. Her story was later corrected to reflect the -- basic fact -- that only three agencies working under the Director of National Intelligence contributed to the intelligence community's conclusion.

A few days later, the Associated Press echoed that correction in a "clarification" bulletin acknowledging there's no truth to the claim the wire service had repeatedly blasted out for publication to news outlets all over the world.

The bizarrely timed corrections put the media in a bit of a truth pickle, especially after Trump drew attention to the corrections at a high-profile press conference in Poland. "They had to apologize, and they had to correct," he noted.

The New York Times, CNN and others quickly spun up articles and tweets aimed at steering the conversation away from this uncomfortable truth about their proliferation of an outright false claim, and back to the more comfortable "isn't Trump an idiot?" narrative.

"17 intel agencies or four? Either way, Russia conclusion still valid," Politifact wrote in a Thursday headline . "Trump still doesn't seem to believe his intelligence agencies," CNN blared .

The New York Times took it a step further , dismissing the truth of the claim as a "technicality" and then accusing Trump of spreading a "misleading" narrative by correcting the record. Their headline on a story about Trump calling them out for pushing a bogus claim: "Trump Misleads on Russian Meddling: Why 17 Intelligence Agencies Don't Need to Agree."

Journalists eagerly tweeted out these headlines .

But that uncomfortable truth remains. The "17 intelligence agencies" embellishment is frighteningly easy to catch. A cursory glance of the DNI website would show the truth. More importantly, the sheer length of time the falsehood stood in public record at the highest echelons of media betrays an astounding lack of scrutiny on other points in the Russia narrative, which are often sourced to political operatives and anonymous "officials."

Let's look at how this happened, and what it says about the media's overall credibility in the Russia collusion narrative, from the top.

The claim can be traced straight back to candidate Clinton in the third presidential debate, remarking on Russian meddling a few weeks after the DNI released a statement on the investigation. The press didn't demonstrate any interest in the number of agencies that signed off on the Oct. 7 statement, until Clinton unleashed the "17" number in the debate (other than a CNN report incorrectly claiming there are 19 intelligence agencies).

She was clearly trying to add some umpf to the DNI assessment and pour cold water on Trump's skepticism about Russia's attempt to influence the election. She even repeated the number twice, firmly planting it in the record.

"I think that this is such an unprecedented situation," Clinton said. "We've never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing."

Trump took the bait.

"She has no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else," he replied, setting off a back and forth that would be reiterated over and over in the press as evidence he was in denial about Russian meddling. "I am quoting 17, 17 -- do you doubt?" Clinton said, and Trump responded definitively: "Our country has no idea. Yeah, I doubt it. I doubt it."

With that, Hillary's claim was up and off.

Journalists highlighted the talking point on Twitter as they covered the debate. And the fact checks came rolling in. The New York Times , Politico , ABC News , Politifact and PBS all rated the claim as totally true the night of the debate. Before the night ended The New York Times was using Clinton's number with authority in its reporting, saying in a debate wrap up that Trump had "refused" to acknowledge "the unanimous conclusion of America's 17 intelligence agencies."

The following day the number popped up in reports from Politico and Defense One, quickly divorced from its context as a debate talking point and transformed into an indisputable fact attached to Trump-Russia stories.

"The Office of the Director of National Intelligence collects and coordinates for the President the information and analysis from the 17 agencies that make up U.S. national intelligence collection," a line in the Defense One report on "Trump's Denial" stated.

Politico hadn't previously used the 17 figure in reporting on Russian meddling, but now framed it as common knowledge that Clinton had to "explain" to Trump: "As Clinton tried to explain that the Russian role is the finding of 17 military and civilian intelligence agencies, Trump cut her off: 'I doubt it.'"

The fact checks continued to roll in. USA Today wrote a particularly aggressive check on the claim headlined "Yes, 17 intelligence agencies really did say Russia was behind hacking." The article confidently asserted, "Clinton is correct."

All of these "fact checks" and reports were wrong, of course, as has since been made ultra clear. As The New York Times now concedes, the truth about her claim was obviously false from the start. Any reporter capable of operating Google could have looked up a list of the intelligence agencies in question, and ruled out almost half in just minutes.

The Department of Energy, Treasury and Drug Enforcement agencies can be dismissed out of hand. The military service intelligence organizations can't legally operate on U.S. soil. Add the Coast Guard and we're tentatively at eight remaining intel agencies under DNI. The Defense Intelligence Agency is also unlikely. Geospatial intelligence? Definitely not. National recon office? Not unless a political influence campaign has something to do with a missile launch or natural disaster.

That leaves us with State Department intelligence, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA and NSA. Five tops, narrowed down at the speed of common sense and Google.

Sure, the October DNI report was presented as the conclusion of the intelligence community, which does consist of 16 separate agencies headed up by the DNI. At first glance, her claim might seem perfectly reasonable to someone unfamiliar with the makeup of the intelligence community. But it's journalistic malpractice to do a fact-check level review of her claim that each agency separately reviewed and judged the campaign, without so much as hinting at the obvious likelihood that most of them weren't involved.

Nevertheless, the claim persisted.

"All 17 U.S. Intelligence agencies believe the Russians are behind that leak," ABC host George Stephanopoulos told Trump in an October interview . "Why don't you believe it?"

"[Trump] has consistently denied any link between the hackers and the Kremlin, despite 17 intelligence agencies' claims to the contrary," the Daily Beast reported that same day .

NBC News dropped Hillary's number nugget in a December report on the Obama White House asking the intelligence community for a dossier on the hacking assessment. The resulting report would be shared with the public, White House counterterrorism advisor Lisa Monaco said at the time.

"Monaco used careful language, calling it a 'full review of what happened during the 2016 election process,'" NBC reported. "But since the U.S. government has already said that all 17 intelligence agencies agree Russia was behind the hacks, Monaco's meaning was clear."

Reuters, too, touted the number in a December report that characterizes the DNI as a "17-agency strong" operation.

The declassified DNI report that followed in January provided new details on the assessment that dumped ice-cold water on the "17 intelligence agencies agree" claim. The conclusion was drawn only from the NSA, CIA and FBI, the report said. (The New York Times conceded this in a break down of the report, although the claim would later make its way back into the paper's pages.)

A few months later former national intelligence director James Clapper reiterated the truth in a high-profile congressional hearing about Russian interference, opting to correct the record without any partisan prompting.

"As you know, the I.C. was a coordinated product from three agencies; CIA, NSA, and the FBI -- not all 17 components of the intelligence community," he said in his opening remarks. "Those three under the aegis of my former office."

And when Democrat Sen. Al Franken reiterated the false claim later in the hearing, Clapper once again made a point of correcting the record.

"The intelligence communities have concluded -- all 17 of them -- that Russia interfered with this election," Franken said. "And we all know how that's right."

Clapper interjected: "Senator, as I pointed out in my statement, Senator Franken, it was, there were only three agencies directly involved in this assessment, plus my office."

"But all 17 signed on to that?" Franken pressed.

"Well, we didn't go through that, that process," Clapper replied, again shooting down the claim as utterly false. "This was a special situation because of the time limits we decided to restrict it to those three."

So not only was the assessment only made by three of the 16 agencies working under the DNI, but also Clapper indicated here that none of the other agencies even signed off on the report before it was released. Yes, none of them dissented. But why would they, since they didn't have independent evidence to suggest otherwise?

At this point in the life of Hillary's debate talking point, there's just no credible way to rate the claim as true. The DNI report made the truth explicit, and Clapper had now reiterated that truth in a very public setting.

Yet just a few weeks later Clinton unabashedly reiterated the "17 agencies agree" claim in an interview with the tech outlet recode, and as if on cue the media once more began spreading it around.

"Read the declassified report by the intelligence community that came out in early January," Clinton said. "17 agencies, all in agreement – which I know from my experience as a senator and secretary of state is hard to get – they concluded with 'high confidence' that the Russians ran an extensive information war against my campaign to influence voters in the election."

A little while later the bogus claim showed up in an AP report , after The Daily Caller News Foundation fact checked Clinton's claim in the interview and found it false. And then twice more in June before the "clarification" memo was published. Stephanopolous was back at it as well in a June 11 interview with Republican Sen. Mike Lee. And then that Haberman report in The New York Times on the 25th echoing the claim, which was rather strangely corrected four days later.

After all this, CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta actually accused Trump on Thursday of pushing "fake news" by saying the conclusion only came from "three or four" agencies. "Where does that number come from?" Acosta asked.

And all the time , the tweets from journos eager to harp on the Trump-Russia narrative kept coming .

The timing of the AP and NYT corrections are a bit of a mystery, but for whatever reason the press is now collectively saying Trump is correct in his push back on the "17 agencies" claim. And that's got the narrative a bit tangled. After initially doubling down on the "true" rating of Clinton's debate claim, Politifact is now bizarrely also rating the claim mostly false in a separate fact check.

So we're left with that uncomfortable truth. The establishment press uncritically "vetted" and embraced a Clinton campaign talking point designed to make Trump look foolish, divorced it of its political context and reiterated it word-of-God style for more than six months -- all the time either ignoring or missing entirely easily obtainable information proving it false -- and then suddenly reversed course on the claim weeks after it was unambiguously and authoritatively debunked.

We live in a world where r/the_donald -- a Reddit thread teeming with Trump supporters -- proved more shrewd than The New York Times and the Associated Press when vetting an important claim about the Russia investigation.

The truth about this "17 intel agencies" claim matters, not so much because of what it says about the intelligence community's conclusion on Russian meddling, but because of what it says about the establishment media's conclusion on Russian meddling.

Haberman and her ilk seem intent on casting Trump as a loner bordering on a nervous breakdown, maniacally watching the news at all hours, hollering at staff and generally acting like a buffoon. And there's the almost daily implication that Trump personally coordinated a hacking campaign with Russia, an implication grounded in no hard evidence despite a lengthy investigation.

The fact is many of these narratives bear all the same hallmarks as the "17 intelligence agencies" mess.

Sources often appear to be politically motivated, like Clinton. They show up in bizarre numbers, like "dozens" or "more than 30." Anecdotes seem almost questionable at face value. An astonishing number of hastily reported or vaguely sourced "scoops" turn out to be totally wrong when the subject of the story corrects the record.

In a report casting the White House as fraught and bordering on collapse, Haberman wrote that Trump likes to stew over cable news in a bathrobe. The White House refuted the anecdote in no uncertain terms the following day.

Based on the word of one anonymous source, The Washington Post reported that Russia had hacked the U.S. electrical grid. That was quickly proven false when the electric company, which the reporter had not bothered to contact before publishing, said in a statement the grid definitely was not hacked , and the "Russian hacker" may have been no hacker at all, but an employee who mistakenly visited an infected site on a work computer.

CNN reported that Former FBI Director James Comey would refute Trump's claim the director told him three separate times he was not personally under investigation. Comey did no such thing. In fact he corroborated Trump's account .

Just weeks after retracting a story on a wealthy Trump associate and Russia, CNN insisted for days Trump would not ask Putin about Russian meddling during their first meeting. Of course, the report depended on an anonymous source. Of course, it was wrong . One of the first things Trump did when he sat down with Putin was "press" him on the subject multiple times, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was in the room.

We could go on, but the point remains. The media is bent on supporting already foregone conclusions about Trump and Russian meddling, no matter what they have to scoop up or parrot or claim (or ignore) to do so. Sure, it's a "basic fact" Russia meddled in the election. But for the media, it's also just a "basic fact" that Trump likely colluded with Russia, and that he should be impeached, and that his White House is on the verge of literally disappearing into a sinkhole.

The facts they use to support these conclusions might as well be irrelevant.

Follow Rachel on Twitter Send tips to rachel@ dailycallernewsfoundation.org .

[Jul 10, 2017] Trump Putin Up Against US Deep State by Finian Cunningham

Wishful thinking. What was so rational in launching Tomahawk missiles against Syrian airbase on fake charges? Even on DNC hacking charges Trump moves closer to neocon views. And Polish speach has nothing to do with detente with Russia. The fact that Haley is UN ambassador in Trump administration demonstrates that quite well.
Notable quotes:
"... Too bad Trump is a total self–seeking asshole who will do nothing to better the lives of his citizens and is merely pursuing policies of corporate cronyism for his buddies. Deep State and Trump are just as bad as each other. We seem to be doomed. ..."
"... I pretty much doubt that Trump has the stature of really Standing up against the US Deep State. Kaennedy paid with his life! „Deep State USA: Dulles, Dallas and Devilish Games": https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2016/04/20/deep-st... ..."
"... If President Trump is committed to pursue a more healthy relationship with Russia, a great first step would be to fire that ignorant, hysterical anti-Russia know-nothing Nikki Haley as UN Ambassador. If he does not do so, then his words of co-operation with Putin cannot be taken seriously. ..."
Jul 09, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

It was pleasing to see Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin greet each other cordially at the G20 summit. After their breakthrough first meeting, one hopes the two leaders have a personal foundation for future cooperation.

At a later press conference in Hamburg, where the G20 summit was held, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he believed there was a chance for restoring the badly frayed US-Russia relations. He praised Trump for being thoughtful and rational. "The TV Trump is quite different from the real life one," quipped Putin.

Meanwhile, the White House issued a statement hailing the two-hour discussion ( four times longer than originally scheduled ) between the two leaders as a good start to working together on major world problems.

"No problems were solved. Nobody expected any problems to be solved in that meeting. But it was a beginning of a dialogue on some tough problem sets that we'll begin now to work on together," said HR McMaster, Trump's top national security adviser.

Trump deserves credit for the way he conducted himself. He met Putin on equal terms and with respect. "It's an honor to meet you," said the American president as he extended a handshake.

The much-anticipated encounter comes nearly seven months after Trump was inaugurated in the White House. Over that period, large sections of the US media have run an unrelenting campaign accusing Trump of being a Russian stooge and alleging that Putin ordered an interference operation in last year's US election to benefit Trump.

Apart from innuendo and anonymous US intelligence claims, recycled endlessly by dutiful news organizations, there is no evidence of either Trump-Russia collusion or Putin-sanctioned cyber hacking . Trump has dismissed the claims as "fake news", while Moscow has consistently rejected the allegations as baseless Russophobia.

... ... ...

Under immense pressure, Trump has at times appeared to buckle to the US political establishment with regard to projecting hostility towards Russia, as seen in the prosecution of the covert war in Syria and renewed sanctions on Moscow.

The day before he met Putin in Germany, Trump was in Poland where he delivered a barnstorming speech in Warsaw in which he accused Russia of "destabilizing countries", among other topics. The American president also inferred that Russia was undermining "Western civilization". It was provocative speech bordering on hackneyed Russophobia. It did not bode well for his imminent meeting with Putin. A clash seemed to be coming, just as the US media had been cajoling.

... ... ...

Immediately following the constructive meeting between the leaders, the US media started cranking up the Russophobia again. The US media are vents for Deep State hostility towards Trump and his agenda for normalizing relations with Moscow.

The New York Times reported another breathless story about Trump's election campaign having contact with "Kremlin-connected" people. CNN ran opinion pieces on how the president had fallen into a trap laid by Putin.

It is hard to stomach this outlandish confabulation that passes for journalism. And it is astounding that a friendly meeting between leaders of nuclear powers should not be received as a good development.

But it shows that Trump his up against very powerful deep forces within the US establishment who do not want a normalization with Russia. The US Deep State depends on confrontation, war and endless militarism for its existence. It also wants a world populated by vassals over which US corporations have suzerainty. An independent Russia or China or any other foreign power cannot be tolerated because that upends American ambitions for unipolar hegemony.

... ... ...

President John F Kennedy was assassinated in broad daylight by the US Deep State because he dared to seek a normalization and peaceful coexistence with Moscow. The Deep State does not want normalization or peace with Russia or anyone else for that matter because there are too many lucrative vested interests in maintaining the war machine that is American capitalism.

... ... ...

What needs to change is the US power structure through a democratic revolt. Until that happens, any president in the White House is simply a hostage to the dark forces of the Deep State.

lisacarso · 9 hours ago

Yes they are indeed. Too bad Trump is a total self–seeking asshole who will do nothing to better the lives of his citizens and is merely pursuing policies of corporate cronyism for his buddies. Deep State and Trump are just as bad as each other. We seem to be doomed.

Schlüter · 6 hours ago

I pretty much doubt that Trump has the stature of really Standing up against the US Deep State. Kaennedy paid with his life!
„Deep State USA: Dulles, Dallas and Devilish Games": https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2016/04/20/deep-st...

follyofwar · 5 hours ago

If President Trump is committed to pursue a more healthy relationship with Russia, a great first step would be to fire that ignorant, hysterical anti-Russia know-nothing Nikki Haley as UN Ambassador. If he does not do so, then his words of co-operation with Putin cannot be taken seriously.

chris · 5 hours ago

Trump as victim? You have to be kidding.

He IS the president,he actually could get out on the White House lawn and blow the whistle,or at least 'tweet' sneakily. World leader? At least post 'Don't do stupid shit.' Obama had the temerity to refer to the Kennedy option'.This guy doesn't seem to lose any sleep over the many thousands of deaths worldwide,including Americans, giving their lives because Trump saw the job as a business opportunity.

And his dumb subjects run around blaming 'the Jews' [sounds like 1930's Germany doesn't it?]

[Jul 10, 2017] Political Knockout Western Media Blasts Trump After Meeting With Putin

Notable quotes:
"... The first meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Hamburg evoked a wave of criticism from Western media, as a number of notable news outlets blasted the US President for his conduct during negotiations. ..."
Jul 10, 2017 | sputniknews.com

The first meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Hamburg evoked a wave of criticism from Western media, as a number of notable news outlets blasted the US President for his conduct during negotiations.

Advisers Avoid Saying If Trump Agreed With Putin Russia Did Not Meddle in US Election

At least several prominent newspapers took a dim view of President Trump's handling of this meeting, claiming that the Russian leader apparently managed to outplay and outsmart his US counterpart.

For example, Die Welt stated that it was clear to all professional observers that the meeting resulted in Trump's capitulation.

In an apparent effort to underscore Trump's relative inexperience in foreign affairs, the newspaper claims that the "political pro" Putin knocked out the newbie US President "by the book."

The article's author also emphasized the fact that Putin paused for a moment before shaking Trump's already extended hand.

The Guardian adds that while US politicians apparently felt relieved that Trump managed to avoid "a major gaffe" during the meeting, it was "hardly cause for celebration."

"It's an indication of how rapidly our standards are falling when we're reasonably pleased that President Trump has not made an obvious error," Thomas Countryman, former US acting undersecretary for arms control and international security, remarked.

[Jul 10, 2017] "Color Revolution" Comes Home Are Americans Also the Victims of "Regime Change" by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Notable quotes:
"... The United States has perfected the art of regime change operations. The US is the largest empire in world history with more than 1,000 military bases and troops operating throughout the world. In addition to military force, the US uses the soft power of regime change, often through 'Color Revolutions.' The US has been building its empire since the Civil War era , but it has been in the post-World War II period that it has perfected regime change operations. ..."
Jul 03, 2017 | www.globalresearch.ca

The United States has perfected the art of regime change operations. The US is the largest empire in world history with more than 1,000 military bases and troops operating throughout the world. In addition to military force, the US uses the soft power of regime change, often through 'Color Revolutions.' The US has been building its empire since the Civil War era , but it has been in the post-World War II period that it has perfected regime change operations.

Have the people of the United States been the victims of regime change operations at home? Have the wealthiest and the security state created a government that serves them, rather than the people? To answer these questions, we begin by examining how regime change works and then look at whether those ingredients are being used domestically.

Color Revolutions and Regime Change Operations

Almost from the start, the CIA's role has been more than intelligence gathering. It has been a key player in putting in place governments friendly to the United States and conducting other operations, e.g. the CIA is currently involved in drone strikes.

One of the first regime change operations of the CIA was Operation Ajax conducted in Iran, and led by Kermit Roosevelt , the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, who was president when the US solidified its global empire ambitions. The CIA was founded in 1947 and the regime change coup in Iran was 1953. Greg Maybury writes in "Another Splendid Little Coup ": "Placing to one side an early dress rehearsal in Syria in 1949 , the Iran coup was the first post-War exercise in regime change upon the part of Anglo-American alliance " Just this month the US government released documents showing the CIA and State Department's planning and implementation of the coup against the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh . This release supplements one from 2013 that did not reveal the full role of the US in the coup.

The Iran coup was crude compared to more modern efforts but had the ingredients that have become common – civil society protests against the government, media reports supporting the protests, agents within the government supporting the coup and replacement of the government with a US-friendly regime. The Iran coup may have been the most costly mistake in US foreign policy because it undermined a secular democratic government in Iran that could have been the example for the region. Instead the US installed the brutal Shah of Iran, whose rule ended in the 1979 revolution, in which, as Maybury reports, the US was also implicated because it felt the Shah had overstayed his welcome.

The Iran coup was perceived as a great CIA success, so it was copied in other Middle Eastern countries as well as countries in Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Regime change is still a major tool of US foreign policy. There is a long-term ongoing coup campaign in Venezuela, with its most recent episode last week in which a helicopter attack on the Supreme Court was tied to the US DEA and CIA . The US has allied with oligarchs, supported violent protests and provided funds for the opposition, which has also worked to undermine the Venezuelan economy -- a tactic the US has used in other coups, e.g. the coup of Allende in Chile .

The coup in Ukraine , which the media falsely calls a 'democratic revolution,' was, as the head of the 'private CIA' firm Stratfor says, " the most blatant coup in history ." The CIA and State Department played the lead roles.

Victoria Nuland , an assistant secretary of state under Clinton, bragged that the US spent $5 billion to build civil society opposition against a government that leaned toward Russia. The government funded civil society opposition through US AID, which is the open vehicle for what the CIA used to do covertly, along with the National Endowment for Democracy . This funding was used to build oppositional civil society groups and create destabilization. They focused on the issue of corruption , which exists in every government, and built it up to a centerpiece for regime change. The US allied with extremist right-wing groups in Ukraine.

The US picked the new leaders of Ukraine. This included Petro Poroshenko , whom U.S. officials refer to as "Our Ukraine (OU) insider Petro Poroshenko" in a classified diplomatic cable from 2006 . The selected Prime Minister was Arseniy Yatsenyuk . Before the coup, Victoria Nuland told the US Ambassador to Ukraine that 'Yats' should be the prime minister . And, the Finance Minister was Natalia Jaresko , a long-time State Department official who moved to Ukraine after the US-inspired coup, the Orange Revolution, to become a conduit for US funding of civil society through her hedge fund. She was a US citizen whom Poroshenko made a Ukrainian on the day she was appointed Finance Minister. To top it off, fmr. Vice President Joe Biden 's son, Hunter Biden , and fmr. Secretary of State John Kerry 's longtime financial ally, Devon Archer , were put on the board of the largest private gas corporation in the Ukraine. Yet, the US media refuses to call this complete take over of the country by the United States a coup and instead describes Russia as the aggressor.

The US has perfected regime change operations from the 1950s up through today. The standard method of operation is finding an issue to cause dissent, building opposition in a well funded civil society 'movement', manipulating the media, putting in place US friendly leaders and blaming US opposition for the coup to hide US involvement. This approach is consistent no matter which party is in power in the US.

The Kleptocratic Oligarch Coup In The United States

Let's apply the lessons from around the world to the United States. There is no question the US is an oligarchy. We say no question because recent political studies have proven it in multiple ways .

One difference in the US is that money plays an outsized influence in US elections . The wealthy can buy the government they want through campaign donations and by anonymous spending but the tools of color revolutions are still needed to legitimize the government. Legitimacy is getting harder to buy. Many realize we live in a mirage democracy . The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs reported in 2016 the extent of the loss of legitimacy of US government:

"Nine in 10 Americans lack confidence in the country's political system, and among a normally polarized electorate, there are few partisan differences in the public's lack of faith in the political parties, the nominating process, and the branches of government."

Jimmy Carter has pointed to the "unlimited bribery" of government as turning the US into an oligarchy . The government needs to use the tools of regime change at home in order to create an veneer of legitimate government.

The Donald Trump presidency, which we regularly criticize , brings a lot of these tools to the forefront because Trump beat the system and defeated the elites of both parties. As a result, Democratic Party propaganda is being used to undermine Trump not only based on his policies but also through manufactured crises such as RussiaGate. The corporate media consistently hammers home RussiaGate , despite the lack of evidence to support it. Unlike the Watergate or Iran-Contra scandals, there is no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to get elected. And, the security state – the FBI and the agencies that conduct regime change operations around the world – is working to undermine Trump in a still unfolding domestic coup .

Civil society also has a strong role. John Stauber writes that :

"The professional Progressive Movement that we see reflected in the pages of The Nation magazine, in the online marketing and campaigning of MoveOn and in the speeches of Van Jones , is primarily a political public relations creation of America's richest corporate elite, the so-called 1%, who happen to bleed Blue because they have some degree of social and environmental consciousness, and don't bleed Red. But they are just as committed as the right to the overall corporate status quo, the maintenance of the American Empire, and the monopoly of the rich over the political process that serves their economic interests."

Civil society groups created or aligned with the Democratic Party are defining the new form of false-resistance as electing Democrats. The Democrats, as they have done throughout history as the oldest political party, know how to control movements and lead them into ineffectiveness to support the Democratic Party agenda. We described, in " Obamacare: The Biggest Insurance Scam in History ," how this was done skillfully during the health reform process in 2009. This new resistance is just another tool to empower the elites, not resistance to the oligarchic-kleptocrats that control both parties. In fact, a major problem in progressive advocacy is the funding ties between large non-profits and corporate interests. The corruption of money is seen in organizations that advocate for corporate-friendly policies in education , health care , energy and climate , labor , and other issues.

Color Revolution Tools Used In The US

Now the tools the US uses for regime change around the world are being used at home to funnel activist energy and efforts into the Democratic party and electoral activities. In order to resist this new "resistance" we need to be aware of it and how it operates. We need to see through propaganda, such as RussiaGate, and attempts to manipulate the masses through scripted events that are portrayed as organic, such as the recent "sit in" by Rep. John Lewis and Sen. Cory Booker on the Capitol steps, or through highly emotional cultural content that portrays the plutocratic parties as parties of the people. We have to remember that the root issue is plutocracy and the US has two plutocratic parties, often referred to as "The Duopoly."

Nonprofit industrial complex

... ... ...

The original source of this article is PopularResistance.Org Copyright © Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers , PopularResistance.Org , 2017

[Jul 09, 2017] Patching It Up With Putin by Patrick J. Buchanan

Notable quotes:
"... President Eisenhower did not begin his summit with Nikita Khrushchev by berating him for crushing the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956, a more grievous crime then hacking the emails of John Podesta. ..."
"... Were Trump to start his first summit with Putin by dressing him down, why meet with him at all? ..."
"... Trump would do better to explore where we can work together, as in ending Syria's civil war and averting a new war in Korea. ..."
"... Moreover, when it comes to interference in the internal politics of other nations to bring about "regime change," understandably, Putin might see himself as more sinned against than sinning. ..."
"... Should Trump bring up the email hacking in 2016, Putin could ask him to explain U.S. support for the violent coup d'etat that overthrew a democratically elected pro-Russian government in Ukraine, a land with which Russia has been intimately associated for 1,000 years. ..."
"... Consider the behavior of post-Cold War America, after Moscow gave up its empire, pulled all its troops out of Europe, let the USSR dissolve into 15 nations and held out a hand in friendship. ..."
"... We gathered all the Warsaw Pact nations and three former Russian Federation republics into a NATO alliance targeted at Russia. We put troops, ships and bases into the Baltic on the doorstep of St. Petersburg. We bombed Russia's old ally Serbia for 78 days, forcing it to surrender its birth province of Kosovo. ..."
"... Among the failings of America's post-Cold War foreign policy elites are hubris, arrogance and an utter absence of that greatest of gifts that the gods can give us -- "to see ourselves as others see us." ..."
"... Can we not see why the Russian people, who saw us as friends in the 1990s, no longer do so, and why Putin, a Russia-First nationalist, has an 80 percent approval rating on the issue of standing up for his country? ..."
"... Trump cannot allow this Beltway obsession with Putin to prevent us from closing, if we can, this breach. If we do not bring Russia back into the West, where do we think she will go? ..."
"... I don't see why he should bow to political correctness by making a boiler plate acceptance of the discredited Russia hacking story in light of all of the evidence to the contrary including the unexplained murder of Seth Rich and the recent accidental disclosures by CNN executives and pundits that they knew the story was a false one. ..."
"... Trump himself has aptly compared the story to the false "weapons of mass destruction" story used to foment the Iraq war. Bearing in mind that the publisher of the Nazi rag Der Stuermer was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg in 1946 for propaganda, it seems to me that the present media leaders going on about these provably false stories are themselves guilty of war crimes. ..."
"... These Americans, of which you speak, are simply angry that Trump won and are looking for someone to blame because they cannot accept what he stands for to a large portion of the electorate. Foreign powers are of course going to fight, however they can, for the candidate they feel will be the most sympathetic to their interests. For example, Clinton was the preferred candidate for Israel and their efforts showed as much. ..."
"... Claiming that the Russians hacked the election, or meddled, or whatever, is an insult to Trump's supporters and voters. People like Buchanan should choose their words more carefully or they're just playing into the narrative. ..."
"... Finally, to those who follow Russia closely, the idea that it could influence the politics of the world's most powerful nation, while failing to prevent the rise to power of an explicitly hostile government in its next door neighbor with whom it shares millennia of history, is patently absurd. ..."
"... Nukes and credible delivery systems are Kim's insurance policy he saw what happened to leaders like Saddam and Ghadaffi when the failed to go there. ..."
"... There is no credible evidence that the Russians "hacked" our 2016 elections, but there is evidence that DHS did. But even if the Russians did, turnabout is fair play. There is credible evidence HRC's State Department hacked Russian elections in 2012, and there was even a Time Mag cover in the '90s crowing about American influence on Russian elections back then. ..."
"... Our entire government is nothing but a bunch of clowns standing in facade for the corprofacists pulling the strings. I am truly disgusted with this country. ..."
"... If I were the average Russian (or Ukrainian or Pole or German, et al), I'd be far more comfortable with aligning culturally with Putin's Russia than with the "West" of Hollywood and the kosher EU. ..."
"... "Americans are rightly angry that Russia hacked the presidential election of 2016." What hacking? Proof? None. ..."
"... Of these the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is not an independent intelligence-gathering organization, so that leaves three. Plus, this seems to have been a project run by a handpicked (read: politicized) group of analysts selected from the three agencies instead of independent analysts from three institutions reaching the same conclusion, we actually have just "one group of like-minded people " ..."
"... I'll echo other posters about Pat's mention of the so called "Russian hacking" of the 2016 presidential election. I don't know if Pat truly believes that or if he's throwing the loony left and neo-cons a bone on this for the appearance of objectivity and non-partisanship and/or to gain more appearances on FOX, but the claim has largely been exposed for the fraud that it is. ..."
"... So the claim "Russia hacked the election" boils down to RT posting some stories online unflattering to Hillary. Why is Buchanan participating in this dishonest shell game? ..."
"... . . .Let's begin with the continued refusal of the DNC to allow DHS or FBI to examine the computer/computers of the DNC where the alleged hack supposed took place. Instead of insisting that the FBI examine their computers, the DNC turned to a private organization–CrowdStrike. It was CrowdStrike that uncovered the "Russian hacking" of the DNC, and when the DNC refused to allow the FBI access to their servers to see the evidence for themselves, it was CrowdStrike that told the FBI that it was the Russians. ..."
Jul 09, 2017 | www.unz.com

President Donald Trump flew off for his first meeting with Vladimir Putin -- with instructions from our foreign policy elite that he get into the Russian president's face over his hacking in the election of 2016.

Hopefully, Trump will ignore these people. For their record of failure is among the reasons Americans elected him to office.

What president, seeking to repair damaged relations with a rival superpower, would begin by reading from an indictment?

President Eisenhower did not begin his summit with Nikita Khrushchev by berating him for crushing the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956, a more grievous crime then hacking the emails of John Podesta.

President Kennedy did not let Russia's emplacement of missiles in Cuba in 1962 prevent him from offering an olive branch to Moscow in his widely praised American University address of June 1963.

Were Trump to start his first summit with Putin by dressing him down, why meet with him at all?

Trump would do better to explore where we can work together, as in ending Syria's civil war and averting a new war in Korea.

Moreover, when it comes to interference in the internal politics of other nations to bring about "regime change," understandably, Putin might see himself as more sinned against than sinning.

Should Trump bring up the email hacking in 2016, Putin could ask him to explain U.S. support for the violent coup d'etat that overthrew a democratically elected pro-Russian government in Ukraine, a land with which Russia has been intimately associated for 1,000 years.

Consider the behavior of post-Cold War America, after Moscow gave up its empire, pulled all its troops out of Europe, let the USSR dissolve into 15 nations and held out a hand in friendship.

We gathered all the Warsaw Pact nations and three former Russian Federation republics into a NATO alliance targeted at Russia. We put troops, ships and bases into the Baltic on the doorstep of St. Petersburg. We bombed Russia's old ally Serbia for 78 days, forcing it to surrender its birth province of Kosovo.

Among the failings of America's post-Cold War foreign policy elites are hubris, arrogance and an utter absence of that greatest of gifts that the gods can give us -- "to see ourselves as others see us."

Can we not see why the Russian people, who saw us as friends in the 1990s, no longer do so, and why Putin, a Russia-First nationalist, has an 80 percent approval rating on the issue of standing up for his country?

Looking about the world today, do we really need any more crises or quarrels? Do we not have enough on our plate? As the Buddhist saying goes, "Do not dwell in the past concentrate the mind on the present moment."

Americans are rightly angry that Russia hacked the presidential election of 2016. But what was done cannot be undone. And Putin is not going to return Crimea to Kiev, the annexation of which was the most popular action of his long tenure as Russian president.

As D.C.'s immortal Mayor Marion Barry once said to constituents appalled by his latest episode of social misconduct: "Get over it!"

We have other fish to fry.

In Syria and Iraq, where the ISIS caliphate is in its death rattle, Russia and the U.S. both have a vital interest in avoiding any military collision, and in ending the war. This probably means the U.S. demand that Syrian President Assad be removed will have to be shelved.

Consider China. Asked by Trump to squeeze Pyongyang on its nuclear missile program, China increased trade with North Korea 37 percent in the first quarter. The Chinese are now telling us to stop sailing warships within 13 miles of its militarized islets and reefs in a South China Sea that they claim belongs to them, and demanding that we cancel our $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan.

Hong Kong's 7 million people have been told their democratic rights, secured in Great Britain's transfer of the island to China, are no longer guaranteed.

Now China is telling us to capitulate to North Korea's demand for an end to U.S. military maneuvers with South Korea and to remove the THAAD missile system the U.S. has emplaced. And Beijing is imposing sanctions on South Korea for accepting the U.S. missile system.

Meanwhile, the dispute with North Korea is going critical.

If Kim Jong Un is as determined as he appears to be to build an ICBM with a nuclear warhead that can hit Seattle or San Francisco, we will soon be down to either accepting this or exercising a military option that could bring nuclear war.

Trump cannot allow this Beltway obsession with Putin to prevent us from closing, if we can, this breach. If we do not bring Russia back into the West, where do we think she will go?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

exiled off mainstreet > , Show Comment Next New Comment July 7, 2017 at 5:47 am GMT

While, as is usual, I agree with Mr. Buchanan's foreign policy views which he again effectively and convincingly expresses, I don't see why he should bow to political correctness by making a boiler plate acceptance of the discredited Russia hacking story in light of all of the evidence to the contrary including the unexplained murder of Seth Rich and the recent accidental disclosures by CNN executives and pundits that they knew the story was a false one.

Trump himself has aptly compared the story to the false "weapons of mass destruction" story used to foment the Iraq war. Bearing in mind that the publisher of the Nazi rag Der Stuermer was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg in 1946 for propaganda, it seems to me that the present media leaders going on about these provably false stories are themselves guilty of war crimes.

JL, July 7, 2017 at 8:28 am GMT

Americans are rightly angry that Russia hacked the presidential election of 2016.

These Americans, of which you speak, are simply angry that Trump won and are looking for someone to blame because they cannot accept what he stands for to a large portion of the electorate. Foreign powers are of course going to fight, however they can, for the candidate they feel will be the most sympathetic to their interests. For example, Clinton was the preferred candidate for Israel and their efforts showed as much.

Claiming that the Russians hacked the election, or meddled, or whatever, is an insult to Trump's supporters and voters. People like Buchanan should choose their words more carefully or they're just playing into the narrative.

Besides, if a foreign country really did manage to subvert the US' democracy to such an extent, that speaks volumes about the weakness of the US system, not its adversaries' malicious intents. Finally, to those who follow Russia closely, the idea that it could influence the politics of the world's most powerful nation, while failing to prevent the rise to power of an explicitly hostile government in its next door neighbor with whom it shares millennia of history, is patently absurd.

The Alarmist , July 7, 2017 at 10:36 am GMT

"If Kim Jong Un is as determined as he appears to be to build an ICBM with a nuclear warhead that can hit Seattle or San Francisco, we will soon be down to either accepting this or exercising a military option that could bring nuclear war."

Nukes and credible delivery systems are Kim's insurance policy he saw what happened to leaders like Saddam and Ghadaffi when the failed to go there.

"Americans are rightly angry that Russia hacked the presidential election of 2016. But what was done cannot be undone."

There is no credible evidence that the Russians "hacked" our 2016 elections, but there is evidence that DHS did. But even if the Russians did, turnabout is fair play. There is credible evidence HRC's State Department hacked Russian elections in 2012, and there was even a Time Mag cover in the '90s crowing about American influence on Russian elections back then.

Ludwig Watzal , Website July 7, 2017 at 1:31 pm GMT

How come that Pat Buchanan repeats the media lies that the Russians hacked US election? So far, this allegation is fact-free. Has he finally succumbed to the constant lies the corporate media are spreading? He is undoubtedly aware of Nazi-Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels saying: "One must only repeat a lie so long until the people believe it as true."

As the first pictures from this G-20-meeting show, Donald Trump was sidelined by Merkel. Autocrats like the Chinese President, Erdogan, and Russias Putin were standing next to her, Donald Trump has sidelined just before French's Macron.

It's funny that even the US political class regards Merkel as powerful. She is just a Stalinist and a political opportunist who would even sacrifice her loved ones when it would suit her career. The US should not be carried away and blinded by this made-up spin.

nickels, July 7, 2017 at 1:38 pm GMT

Trump and his 'Russia should stop destabilizing Ukraine.'

Our entire government is nothing but a bunch of clowns standing in facade for the corprofacists pulling the strings. I am truly disgusted with this country.

WorkingClass , July 7, 2017 at 1:49 pm GMT

I have always respected Pat Buchanan. But it's time to take away his car keys. The Russians did not hack Podesta. The Podesta files were leaked. Who killed Seth Rich?

Rurik, Website July 7, 2017 at 2:26 pm GMT

Were Trump to start his first summit with Putin by dressing him down, why meet with him at all?

exactly!

... ... ...

If we do not bring Russia back into the West, where do we think she will go?

the irony is that Russia today is far more expressive of the ancient values of the West than the zio-West of Merkel's Germany and Islamic France. Let along the home of Hollywood spiritual sewage spilling out of the ZUSA.

If I were the average Russian (or Ukrainian or Pole or German, et al), I'd be far more comfortable with aligning culturally with Putin's Russia than with the "West" of Hollywood and the kosher EU.

Anon, July 7, 2017 at 4:16 pm GMT

@WorkingClass

I have always respected Pat Buchanan. But it's time to take away his car keys. The Russians did not hack Podesta. The Podesta files were leaked. Who killed Seth Rich?

Yes, that's an odd phrase, particularly as Mr. Buchanan has expressed incredulity at this sort of accusation in the past. Perhaps he simply means that Americans' anger at Russia (which I think he exaggerates; he seems to still believe the media have some actual contact with America) is justified based on their beliefs?

Wally, July 7, 2017 at 10:51 pm GMT

"Americans are rightly angry that Russia hacked the presidential election of 2016." What hacking? Proof? None.

MarkinLA, July 8, 2017 at 4:02 am GMT

Americans are rightly angry that Russia hacked the presidential election of 2016.

Et Tu Pat? Pat, you are never going to get a network gig again no matter how much sphincter you lick. You know this is bogus.

El Dato, July 8, 2017 at 11:46 am GMT

@MarkinLA NYT Finally Retracts Russia-gate Canard

The New York Times has finally admitted that one of the favorite Russia-gate canards – that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred on the assessment of Russian hacking of Democratic emails – is false.

On Thursday, the Times appended a correction to a June 25 article that had repeated the false claim, which has been used by Democrats and the mainstream media for months to brush aside any doubts about the foundation of the Russia-gate scandal and portray President Trump as delusional for doubting what all 17 intelligence agencies supposedly knew to be true.

However, on Thursday, the Times – while leaving most of Haberman's ridicule of Trump in place – noted in a correction that the relevant intelligence "assessment was made by four intelligence agencies -- the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."

Of these the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is not an independent intelligence-gathering organization, so that leaves three. Plus, this seems to have been a project run by a handpicked (read: politicized) group of analysts selected from the three agencies instead of independent analysts from three institutions reaching the same conclusion, we actually have just "one group of like-minded people "

KenH, July 8, 2017 at 1:39 pm GMT

I'll echo other posters about Pat's mention of the so called "Russian hacking" of the 2016 presidential election. I don't know if Pat truly believes that or if he's throwing the loony left and neo-cons a bone on this for the appearance of objectivity and non-partisanship and/or to gain more appearances on FOX, but the claim has largely been exposed for the fraud that it is.

Let's make no mistake that neo-conservatism, liberal interventionism, Israelphilia and Russophobia rule Washington, D.C. with an iron fist. Any elected leaders who don't play ball quickly find themselves marginalized and under attack. Either Trump was playing us during the campaign with his calls for warmer relations with Russia and a more humble foreign policy or he saw the writing on the wall after taking office and surrendered without a fight.

I think Trump's loyalty to Israel trumps his loyalty to American first principles and that's not good.

Priss Factor , Website July 8, 2017 at 3:50 pm GMT

@JL Buchanan has a kneejerk mentality on Russia as the enemy even as he argues for peace and reconciliation.

The formative and crucial period of his life was defined by the cold war.

Bill Jones, July 8, 2017 at 5:05 pm GMT

Paddy seems to take it as given that Russia hacked Podesta, despite the utter lack of evidence.

the raven, July 8, 2017 at 5:10 pm GMT

@KenH "Hacked the election" is a weasel phrase. You can go to shitlib sites and plenty of them think that Putin changed votes by hacking voting machines. Of course, this hasn't been alleged, let alone proved. The dishonest pundits using that phrase can claim they meant that Putin hacked the DNC emails. There's also no evidence for this, but it's hard to prove or disprove (but given that Podesta fell for a phishing scam, it could have been done by a 15 year old anywhere in the world). The only thing they can credibly claim is that Russia "interfered" in the US elections by their state media posting articles that the CIA disagrees with.

So the claim "Russia hacked the election" boils down to RT posting some stories online unflattering to Hillary. Why is Buchanan participating in this dishonest shell game?

Don Bacon, July 8, 2017 at 6:32 pm GMT

from the web– No, The Russians Did Not Meddle in Our Election by Publius Tacitus

. . .Let's begin with the continued refusal of the DNC to allow DHS or FBI to examine the computer/computers of the DNC where the alleged hack supposed took place. Instead of insisting that the FBI examine their computers, the DNC turned to a private organization–CrowdStrike.
It was CrowdStrike that uncovered the "Russian hacking" of the DNC, and when the DNC refused to allow the FBI access to their servers to see the evidence for themselves, it was CrowdStrike that told the FBI that it was the Russians.

Here's the problem with this: CrowdStrike's reputation is currently unraveling. Why? It seems that CrowdStrike is as politically motivated as everyone else in Washington, D.C. The company is itself an opponent of Vladimir Putin and Russia and was recently caught fabricating a report that attempted to blame Russian hacking for problems with Urkainian military technology. . .

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/07/no-the-russians-did-not-meddle-in-our-election-by-publius-tacitus.html

fuzzy, July 8, 2017 at 6:45 pm GMT

Hacked the election? How exactly? Go talk to Mr. Binney about it.

Avery, July 8, 2017 at 7:16 pm GMT

@MarkinLA { . no matter how much sphincter you lick.}

Brutal dude, brutal.

( ..well, I guess Pat asked for it: regurgitating unadulterated B____S____, to presumably appear 'balanced'.).

Bill Jones, July 8, 2017 at 9:31 pm GMT

This is worth a read

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/09/remarks-president-trump-regulatory-relief

The True and Original David, July 9, 2017 at 8:35 am GMT

@Ludwig Watzal Pat is an old USA conservative. The style of old USA conservatives is agree with the opponent on all essentials of fact and value then remonstrate defensively. Perfect example: "Yes, Putin hacked, but we have bigger fish to fry."

USA liberals were called "knee-jerkers," that is people whose liberal reaction is so automatic it is brain-free. But old USA conservatives also have their "knee-jerk": this is accepting the opponent's premises then quibbling.

"You're a racist!" "No, I'm certainly not, I swear."

"America is sexist!" "We are doing better lately. Salaries for women are showing progress."

"Putin hacked!" "Yes he did, but there are bigger fish to fry."

An old USA conservative would consider such replies as "fighting back"; but they are only whiny protests in response to blows.

The old USA conservative style is dated and being replaced by styles more adversarial. Pat the man is a decent guy and I wish him well.

Mr. Hack, July 9, 2017 at 2:47 pm GMT

Should Trump bring up the email hacking in 2016, Putin could ask him to explain U.S. support for the violent coup d'etat that overthrew a democratically elected pro-Russian government in Ukraine, a land with which Russia has been intimately associated for 1,000 years.

Buchanan here exhibits his supericial knowledge of Ukrainian/Russian history. Large swaths of Ukrainian territory never were under Russian hegemony until the middle part of the 20th century, but were part and and parcel of other European states including the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Hapsburg Empire. Also, insinuating that Trump need to cower in front of Putin during a hypothetical question and answer series regarding some sort of U.S. directed plot against Russia in Ukraine is also based on fluff and inuendo, and he should know better. Any 'cookies and milk' support offered to Ukrainian patriots who paid for their new found freedom by sacrificing their lives came long after altercations had already started on the Maidan. American ingenuity could not have created a protest movement of this scope and magnitude, and Buchanan should know better:

Realist, July 9, 2017 at 2:49 pm GMT

"Americans are rightly angry that Russia hacked the presidential election of 2016."

Pat,

You are just echoing and lending credence to the news media, including Fox News as well as the power elite. This is not the first time you have done this.
I fail to understand why anyone would believe anything the security(spy) agencies promote. They are incessant liars, as is most of our government. People should never take anything our government says at face value .always demand proof.

Realist, July 9, 2017 at 2:51 pm GMT

@exiled off mainstreet " . I don't see why he should bow to political correctness by making a boiler plate acceptance of the discredited Russia hacking story ."

Exactly

Realist, July 9, 2017 at 2:58 pm GMT

@nickels Trump and his 'Russia should stop destabilizing Ukraine.'
Our entire government is nothing but a bunch of clowns standing in facade for the corprofacists pulling the strings.
I am truly disgusted with this country. "I am truly disgusted with this country."

Rightly so.

[Jul 09, 2017] The stakes in U.S.-Russia relations could not be higher possible nuclear conflagration and the end of civilization but the U.S. mainstream media is still slouching around in mccarthyism-ville by Robert Parry

this is pure McCarthyism, not "propaganda ville". Clapper and Brennan are the leaders of Russiagate color revolution against Trump. And there is no countervailing force.
Notable quotes:
"... It wasn't until May 8 when then-former DNI Clapper belatedly set the record straight in sworn congressional testimony in which he explained that there were only three "contributing agencies" from which analysts were "hand-picked." ..."
"... The reference to "hand-picked" analysts pricked the ears of some former U.S. intelligence analysts who had suffered through earlier periods of "politicized" intelligence when malleable analysts were chosen to deliver what their political bosses wanted to hear. ..."
"... On May 23, also in congressional testimony, former CIA Director John Brennan confirmed Clapper's description, saying only four of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies took part in the assessment. ..."
"... Finally, on June 25, the Times' hand was forced when White House correspondent Maggie Haberman reverted to the old formulation, mocking Trump for "still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected." ..."
"... When this falsehood was called to the Times' attention, it had little choice but to append a correction to the article, noting that the intelligence "assessment was made by four intelligence agencies -- the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community." ..."
"... The Associated Press ran a similar "clarification" applied to some of its fallacious reporting repeating the "17-intelligence-agencies" meme. ..."
"... Though the Post did not identify the country, this reference suggests that more than one key element of the case for Russian culpability was based not on direct investigations by the U.S. intelligence agencies, but on the work of external organizations. ..."
"... Earlier, the Democratic National Committee denied the FBI access to its supposedly hacked computers, forcing the investigators to rely on a DNC contractor called CrowdStrike, which has a checkered record of getting this sort of analytics right and whose chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, is an anti-Putin Russian émigré with ties to the anti-Russian think tank, Atlantic Council. ..."
"... But the problem is not just the question of whether Russia hacked into Democratic emails and slipped them to WikiLeaks for publication (something that both Russia and WikiLeaks deny). Perhaps the larger danger is how the major U.S. news outlets have adopted a consistently propagandistic approach toward everything relating to Russia. ..."
"... The neocons delivered their payback to Putin in early 2014 by supporting a violent coup in Ukraine, overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installing a fiercely anti-Russian regime. ..."
"... The U.S. operation was spearheaded by neocon National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, with enthusiastic support from neocon Sen. John McCain. ..."
"... "On Ukraine, Mr. Trump must also display determination. Russia fomented an armed uprising and seized Crimea in violation of international norms, and it continues to instigate violence in the Donbas. Mr. Trump ought to make it unmistakably clear to Mr.Putin that the United States will not retreat from the sanctions imposed over Ukraine until the conditions of peace agreements are met." Along the same lines, even while suggesting the value of some collaboration with Russia toward ending the war in Syria, Post columnist David Ignatius wrote in a July 5 column , "Russian-American cooperation on Syria faces a huge bstacle right now. It would legitimize a Russian regime that invaded Ukraine and meddled in U.S. and European elections, in addition to its intervention in Syria." Note the smug certainty of Ignatius and the Post editors. There is no doubt that Russia "invaded" Ukraine; "seized" Crimea; "meddled" in U.S. and European elections. Yet all these groupthinks should be subjected to skepticism, not simply treated as undeniable truths. ..."
"... As offensive as this rejection of true truth-seeking may be, it also represents an extraordinary danger when mixed with the existential risk of nuclear conflagration. ..."
"... With the stakes this high, the demand for hard evidence – and the avoidance of soft-minded groupthink – should go without question. Journalists and commentators should hold themselves to professional precision, not slide into sloppy careerism, lost in "propaganda-ville." ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
Jul 09, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Exclusive: The stakes in U.S.-Russia relations could not be higher – possible nuclear conflagration and the end of civilization – but the U.S. mainstream media is still slouching around in "propaganda-ville," says Robert Parry.

MSM, Still Living in Propaganda-ville By Robert Parry

As much as the U.S. mainstream media wants people to believe that it is the Guardian of Truth, it is actually lost in a wilderness of propaganda and falsehoods, a dangerous land of delusion that is putting the future of humankind at risk as tension escalate with nuclear-armed Russia.

This media problem has grown over recent decades as lucrative careerism has replaced responsible professionalism. Pack journalism has always been a threat to quality reporting but now it has evolved into a self-sustaining media lifestyle in which the old motto, "there's safety in numbers," is borne out by the fact that being horrendously wrong, such as on Iraq's WMD, leads to almost no accountability because so many important colleagues were wrong as well.

Similarly, there has been no accountability after many mainstream journalists and commentators falsely stated as flat-fact that "all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies" concurred that Russia did "meddle" in last November's U.S. election.

For months, this claim has been the go-to put-down whenever anyone questions the groupthink of Russian venality perverting American democracy. Even the esteemed "Politifact" deemed the assertion "true." But it was never true.

It was at best a needled distortion of a claim by President Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper when he issued a statement last Oct. 7 alleging Russian meddling. Because Clapper was the chief of the U.S. Intelligence Community, his opinion morphed into a claim that it represented the consensus of all 17 intelligence agencies, a dishonest twist that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton began touting.

However, for people who understand how the U.S. Intelligence Community works, the claim of a 17-agencies consensus has a specific meaning, some form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE) that seeks out judgments and dissents from the various agencies.

But there was no NIE regarding alleged Russian meddling and there apparently wasn't even a formal assessment from a subset of the agencies at the time of Clapper's statement. President Obama did not order a publishable assessment until December – after the election – and it was not completed until Jan. 6, when a report from Clapper's office presented the opinions of analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency – three agencies (or four if you count the DNI's office), not 17.

Lacking Hard Evidence

The report also contained no hard evidence of a Russian "hack" and amounted to a one-sided circumstantial case at best. However, by then, the U.S. mainstream media had embraced the "all-17-intelligence-agencies" refrain and anyone who disagreed, including President Trump, was treated as delusional. The argument went: "How can anyone question what all 17 intelligence agencies have confirmed as true?"

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)

It wasn't until May 8 when then-former DNI Clapper belatedly set the record straight in sworn congressional testimony in which he explained that there were only three "contributing agencies" from which analysts were "hand-picked."

The reference to "hand-picked" analysts pricked the ears of some former U.S. intelligence analysts who had suffered through earlier periods of "politicized" intelligence when malleable analysts were chosen to deliver what their political bosses wanted to hear.

On May 23, also in congressional testimony, former CIA Director John Brennan confirmed Clapper's description, saying only four of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies took part in the assessment.

Brennan said the Jan. 6 report "followed the general model of how you want to do something like this with some notable exceptions. It only involved the FBI, NSA and CIA as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It wasn't a full inter-agency community assessment that was coordinated among the 17 agencies."

After this testimony, some of the major news organizations, which had been waving around the "17-intelligence-agencies" meme, subtly changed their phrasing to either depict Russian "meddling" as an established fact no longer requiring attribution or referred to the "unanimous judgment" of the Intelligence Community without citing a specific number.

This "unanimous judgment" formulation was deceptive, too, because it suggested that all 17 agencies were in accord albeit without exactly saying that. For a regular reader of The New York Times or a frequent viewer of CNN, the distinction would almost assuredly not be detected.

For more than a month after the Clapper-Brennan testimonies, there was no formal correction.

A Belated Correction

Finally, on June 25, the Times' hand was forced when White House correspondent Maggie Haberman reverted to the old formulation, mocking Trump for "still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected."

When this falsehood was called to the Times' attention, it had little choice but to append a correction to the article, noting that the intelligence "assessment was made by four intelligence agencies -- the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."

The Associated Press ran a similar "clarification" applied to some of its fallacious reporting repeating the "17-intelligence-agencies" meme.

So, you might have thought that the mainstream media was finally adjusting its reporting to conform to reality. But that would mean that one of the pillars of the Russia-gate "scandal" had crumbled, the certainty that Russia and Vladimir Putin did "meddle" in the election.

The story would have to go back to square one and the major news organizations would have to begin reporting on whether or not there ever was solid evidence to support what had become a "certainty" – and there appeared to be no stomach for such soul-searching. Since pretty much all the important media figures had made the same error, it would be much easier to simply move on as if nothing had changed.

That would mean that skepticism would still be unwelcome and curious leads would not be followed. For instance, there was a head-turning reference in an otherwise typical Washington Post take-out on June 25 accusing Russia of committing "the crime of the century." A reference, stuck deep inside the five-page opus, said, "Some of the most critical technical intelligence on Russia came from another country, officials said. Because of the source of the material, the NSA was reluctant to view it with high confidence." Though the Post did not identify the country, this reference suggests that more than one key element of the case for Russian culpability was based not on direct investigations by the U.S. intelligence agencies, but on the work of external organizations.

Earlier, the Democratic National Committee denied the FBI access to its supposedly hacked computers, forcing the investigators to rely on a DNC contractor called CrowdStrike, which has a checkered record of getting this sort of analytics right and whose chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, is an anti-Putin Russian émigré with ties to the anti-Russian think tank, Atlantic Council.

Relying on Outsiders

You might be wondering why something as important as this "crime of the century," which has pushed the world closer to nuclear annihilation, is dependent on dubious entities outside the U.S. government with possible conflicts of interest.

If the U.S. government really took this issue seriously, which it should, why didn't the FBI seize the DNC's computers and insist that impartial government experts lead the investigation? And why – given the extraordinary expertise of the NSA in computer hacking – is "some of the most critical technical intelligence on Russia [coming] from another country," one that doesn't inspire the NSA's confidence?

But such pesky questions are not likely to be asked or answered by a mainstream U.S. media that displays deep-seated bias toward both Putin and Trump.

Mostly, major news outlets continue to brush aside the clarifications and return to various formulations that continue to embrace the "17-intelligence-agencies" canard, albeit in slightly different forms, such as references to the collective Intelligence Community without the specific number. Anyone who questions this established conventional wisdom is still crazy and out of step.

For instance, James Holmes of Esquire was stunned on Thursday when Trump at a news conference in Poland reminded the traveling press corps about the inaccurate reporting regarding the 17 intelligence agencies and said he still wasn't entirely sure about Russia's guilt. "In public, he's still casting doubt on the intelligence community's finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election nearly nine months after the fact," Holmes sputtered before describing Trump's comment as a "rant." So, if you thought that a chastened mainstream media might stop in the wake of the "17-intelligence-agencies" falsehood and rethink the whole Russia-gate business, you would have been sadly mistaken.

But the problem is not just the question of whether Russia hacked into Democratic emails and slipped them to WikiLeaks for publication (something that both Russia and WikiLeaks deny). Perhaps the larger danger is how the major U.S. news outlets have adopted a consistently propagandistic approach toward everything relating to Russia.

Hating Putin

This pattern traces back to the earliest days of Vladimir Putin's presidency in 2000 when he began to rein in the U.S.-prescribed "shock therapy," which had sold off Russia's assets to well-connected insiders, making billions of dollars for the West-favored "oligarchs," even as the process threw millions of average Russian into poverty.

But the U.S. mainstream media's contempt for Putin reached new heights after he helped President Obama head off neoconservative (and liberal interventionist) demands for a full-scale U.S. military assault on Syria in August 2013 and helped bring Iran into a restrictive nuclear agreement when the neocons wanted to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran.

The neocons delivered their payback to Putin in early 2014 by supporting a violent coup in Ukraine, overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installing a fiercely anti-Russian regime. The U.S. operation was spearheaded by neocon National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, with enthusiastic support from neocon Sen. John McCain.

Nuland was heard in an intercepted pre-coup phone call with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who should become the new leaders and pondering how to "glue" or "midwife this thing."

Despite the clear evidence of U.S. interference in Ukrainian politics, the U.S. government and the mainstream media embraced the coup and accused Putin of "aggression" when ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, called the Donbas, resisted the coup regime.

When ethnic Russians and other citizens in Crimea voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to reject the coup regime and rejoin Russia – a move protected by some of the 20,000 Russian troops inside Crimea as part of a basing agreement – that became a Russian "invasion." But it was the most peculiar "invasion," since there were no images of tanks crashing across borders or amphibious landing craft on Crimean beaches, because no such "invasion" had occurred.

However, in virtually every instance, the U.S. mainstream media insisted on the most extreme anti-Russian propaganda line and accused people who questioned this Official Narrative of disseminating Russian "propaganda" – or being a "Moscow stooge" or acting as a "useful fool." There was no tolerance for skepticism about whatever the State Department or the Washington think tanks were saying.

Trump Meets Putin

So, as Trump prepares for his first meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, the U.S. mainstream media has been in a frenzy, linking up its groupthinks about the Ukraine "invasion" with its groupthinks about Russia "hacking" the election.

In a July 3 editorial , The Washington Post declared, "Mr. Trump simply cannot fail to admonish Mr. Putin for Russia's attempts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. He must make clear the United States will not tolerate it, period. Naturally, this is a difficult issue for Mr. Trump, who reaped the benefit of Russia's intervention and now faces a special counsel's investigation, but nonetheless, in his first session with Mr. Putin, the president must not hesitate to be blunt.

"On Ukraine, Mr. Trump must also display determination. Russia fomented an armed uprising and seized Crimea in violation of international norms, and it continues to instigate violence in the Donbas. Mr. Trump ought to make it unmistakably clear to Mr.Putin that the United States will not retreat from the sanctions imposed over Ukraine until the conditions of peace agreements are met." Along the same lines, even while suggesting the value of some collaboration with Russia toward ending the war in Syria, Post columnist David Ignatius wrote in a July 5 column , "Russian-American cooperation on Syria faces a huge bstacle right now. It would legitimize a Russian regime that invaded Ukraine and meddled in U.S. and European elections, in addition to its intervention in Syria." Note the smug certainty of Ignatius and the Post editors. There is no doubt that Russia "invaded" Ukraine; "seized" Crimea; "meddled" in U.S. and European elections. Yet all these groupthinks should be subjected to skepticism, not simply treated as undeniable truths.

But seeing only one side to a story is where the U.S. mainstream media is at this point in history. Yes, it is possible that Russia was responsible for the Democratic hacks and did funnel the material to WikiLeaks, but evidence has so far been lacking. And, instead of presenting both sides fairly, the major media acts as if only one side deserves any respect and dissenting views must be ridiculed and condemned.

In this perverted process, collectively approved versions of complex situations congeal into conventional wisdom, which simply cannot be significantly reconsidered regardless of future revelations.

As offensive as this rejection of true truth-seeking may be, it also represents an extraordinary danger when mixed with the existential risk of nuclear conflagration.

With the stakes this high, the demand for hard evidence – and the avoidance of soft-minded groupthink – should go without question. Journalists and commentators should hold themselves to professional precision, not slide into sloppy careerism, lost in "propaganda-ville."

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

[Jul 08, 2017] Russiagate The Stink Without a Secret by Craig Murray

Neoliberal presstitutes are now completely discredited. This is just another Iraq WDM case. But people soon forgot about Iraq WDM thing. None of pressitutute went to jail for misinforming the public.
Notable quotes:
"... After six solid months of coordinated allegation from the mainstream media allied to the leadership of state security institutions, not one single scrap of solid evidence for Trump/Russia election hacking has emerged. ..."
"... As we have been repeatedly told, "17 intelligence agencies" sign up to the "Russian hacking", yet all these king's horses and all these king's men have been unable to produce any evidence whatsoever of the purported "hack". Largely because they are not in fact trying. Here is another actual fact I wish you to hang on to: The Democrats have refused the intelligence agencies access to their servers to discover what actually happened. I am going to say that again. ..."
"... The heads of the intelligence community have said that they regard the report from Crowdstrike – the Clinton aligned private cyber security firm – as adequate. Despite the fact that the Crowdstrike report plainly proves nothing whatsoever and is based entirely on an initial presumption there must have been a hack, as opposed to an internal download. ..."
"... So those "17 agencies" are not really investigating but are prepared to endorse weird Crowdstrike claims, like the idea that Russia's security services are so amateur as to leave fingerprints with the name of their founder. If the Russians fed the material to WikiLeaks, why would they also set up a vainglorious persona like Guccifer2 who leaves obvious Russia pointing clues all over the place? ..."
"... Of course we need to add from the WikiLeaks"Vault 7" leak release, information that the CIA specifically deploys technology that leaves behind fake fingerprints of a Russian computer hacking operation. ..."
"... Crowdstrike have a general anti-Russian attitude. They published a report seeking to allege that the same Russian entities which "had hacked" the DNC were involved in targeting for Russian artillery in the Ukraine. This has been utterly discredited. ..."
"... Some of the more crazed "Russiagate" allegations have been quietly dropped. The mainstream media are hoping we will all forget their breathless endorsement of the reports of the charlatan Christopher Steele, a former middle ranking MI6 man with very limited contacts that he milked to sell lurid gossip to wealthy and gullible corporations. I confess I rather admire his chutzpah. ..."
"... The old Watergate related wisdom is that it is not the crime that gets you, it is the cover-up. But there is a fundamental difference here. At the center of Watergate there was an actual burglary. At the center of Russian hacking there is a void, a hollow, and emptiness, an abyss, a yawning chasm. There is nothing there. ..."
"... Those who believe that opposition to Trump justifies whipping up anti-Russian hysteria on a massive scale, on the basis of lies, are wrong. ..."
Jul 08, 2017 | original.antiwar.com

After six solid months of coordinated allegation from the mainstream media allied to the leadership of state security institutions, not one single scrap of solid evidence for Trump/Russia election hacking has emerged.

I do not support Donald Trump. I do support truth. There is much about Trump that I dislike intensely. Neither do I support the neo-liberal political establishment in the USA. The latter's control of the mainstream media, and cunning manipulation of identity politics, seeks to portray the neo-liberal establishment as the heroes of decent values against Trump. Sadly, the idea that the neo-liberal establishment embodies decent values is completely untrue.

Truth disappeared so long ago in this witch-hunt that it is no longer even possible to define what the accusation is. Belief in "Russian hacking" of the US election has been elevated to a generic accusation of undefined wrongdoing, a vague malaise we are told is floating poisonously in the ether, but we are not allowed to analyze. What did the Russians actually do?

The original, base accusation is that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC and Podesta emails and passed them to WikiLeaks. (I can assure you that is untrue).

The authenticity of those emails is not in question. What they revealed of cheating by the Democratic establishment in biasing the primaries against Bernie Sanders, led to the forced resignation of Debbie Wasserman Shultz as chair of the Democratic National Committee. They also led to the resignation from CNN of Donna Brazile, who had passed debate questions in advance to Clinton. Those are facts. They actually happened. Let us hold on to those facts, as we surf through lies. There was other nasty Clinton Foundation and cash for access stuff in the emails, but we do not even need to go there for the purpose of this argument.

The original "Russian hacking" allegation was that it was the Russians who nefariously obtained these damning emails and passed them to WikiLeaks. The "evidence" for this was twofold. A report from private cyber security firm Crowdstrike claimed that metadata showed that the hackers had left behind clues, including the name of the founder of the Soviet security services. The second piece of evidence was that a blogger named Guccifer2 and a website called DNCLeaks appeared to have access to some of the material around the same time that WikiLeaks did, and that Guccifer2 could be Russian.

That is it. To this day, that is the sum total of actual "evidence" of Russian hacking. I won't say hang on to it as a fact, because it contains no relevant fact. But at least it is some form of definable allegation of something happening, rather than "Russian hacking" being a simple article of faith like the Holy Trinity.

But there are a number of problems that prevent this being fact at all. Nobody has ever been able to refute the evidence of Bill Binney , former Technical Director of the NSA who designed its current surveillance systems. Bill has stated that the capability of the NSA is such, that if the DNC computers had been hacked, the NSA would be able to trace the actual packets of that information as those emails traveled over the Internet, and give a precise time, to the second, for the hack. The NSA simply do not have the event – because there wasn't one. I know Bill personally and am quite certain of his integrity.

As we have been repeatedly told, "17 intelligence agencies" sign up to the "Russian hacking", yet all these king's horses and all these king's men have been unable to produce any evidence whatsoever of the purported "hack". Largely because they are not in fact trying. Here is another actual fact I wish you to hang on to: The Democrats have refused the intelligence agencies access to their servers to discover what actually happened. I am going to say that again.

The Democrats have refused the intelligence agencies access to their servers to discover what actually happened.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/SqIY8KvuoJo

The heads of the intelligence community have said that they regard the report from Crowdstrike – the Clinton aligned private cyber security firm – as adequate. Despite the fact that the Crowdstrike report plainly proves nothing whatsoever and is based entirely on an initial presumption there must have been a hack, as opposed to an internal download.

Not actually examining the obvious evidence has been a key tool in keeping the "Russian hacking" meme going. On 24 May the Guardian reported triumphantly , following the Washington Post, that

"Fox News falsely alleged federal authorities had found thousands of emails between Rich and WikiLeaks, when in fact law enforcement officials disputed that Rich's laptop had even been in possession of, or examined by, the FBI."

It evidently did not occur to the Guardian as troubling, that those pretending to be investigating the murder of Seth Rich have not looked at his laptop.

There is a very plain pattern here of agencies promoting the notion of a fake "Russian crime", while failing to take the most basic and obvious initial steps if they were really investigating its existence. I might add to that, there has been no contact with me at all by those supposedly investigating. I could tell them these were leaks not hacks. WikiLeaks The clue is in the name.

So those "17 agencies" are not really investigating but are prepared to endorse weird Crowdstrike claims, like the idea that Russia's security services are so amateur as to leave fingerprints with the name of their founder. If the Russians fed the material to WikiLeaks, why would they also set up a vainglorious persona like Guccifer2 who leaves obvious Russia pointing clues all over the place?

Of course we need to add from the WikiLeaks"Vault 7" leak release, information that the CIA specifically deploys technology that leaves behind fake fingerprints of a Russian computer hacking operation.

Crowdstrike have a general anti-Russian attitude. They published a report seeking to allege that the same Russian entities which "had hacked" the DNC were involved in targeting for Russian artillery in the Ukraine. This has been utterly discredited.

Some of the more crazed "Russiagate" allegations have been quietly dropped. The mainstream media are hoping we will all forget their breathless endorsement of the reports of the charlatan Christopher Steele, a former middle ranking MI6 man with very limited contacts that he milked to sell lurid gossip to wealthy and gullible corporations. I confess I rather admire his chutzpah.

Given there is no hacking in the Russian hacking story, the charges have moved wider into a vague miasma of McCarthyite anti-Russian hysteria. Does anyone connected to Trump know any Russians? Do they have business links with Russian finance?

Of course they do. Trump is part of the worldwide oligarch class whose financial interests are woven into a vast worldwide network that enslaves pretty well the rest of us. As are the Clintons and the owners of the mainstream media who are stoking up the anti-Russian hysteria. It is all good for their armaments industry interests, in both Washington and Moscow.

Trump's judgment is appalling. His sackings or inappropriate directions to people over this subject may damage him.

The old Watergate related wisdom is that it is not the crime that gets you, it is the cover-up. But there is a fundamental difference here. At the center of Watergate there was an actual burglary. At the center of Russian hacking there is a void, a hollow, and emptiness, an abyss, a yawning chasm. There is nothing there.

Those who believe that opposition to Trump justifies whipping up anti-Russian hysteria on a massive scale, on the basis of lies, are wrong. I remain positive that the movement Bernie Sanders started will bring a new dawn to America in the next few years. That depends on political campaigning by people on the ground and on social media. Leveraging falsehoods and cold war hysteria through mainstream media in an effort to somehow get Clinton back to power is not a viable alternative. It is a fantasy and even were it practical, I would not want it to succeed.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster, human rights activist, and former diplomat. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. The article is reprinted with permission from his website .

Read more by Craig Murray

[Jul 08, 2017] Trump says he had a tremendous meeting with Putin

AP clearly pursue a neocon line of DNC hacks and Russian meddling in the US elections.
talkingpointsmemo.com
by Associated Press

The European trip to Poland and Germany has centered around the exchange with Putin, Trump's first in-person meeting as president. But both sides offered differing explanations of what took place.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump and Putin had a "robust and lengthy" discussion about the election interference but Putin denied any involvement. His Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, said Trump had accepted Putin's assurances that Russia didn't meddle in the U.S. election - a characterization that the U.S. disputed.

"I think the president is rightly focused on how do we move forward from something that may be an intractable disagreement at this point," said Tillerson, who took part in the meeting along with Lavrov.

Democrats seized upon Tillerson's remarks, saying that it was wrong to suggest the issue of Russia's role in the election meddling was unresolved. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said it was "disgraceful" and said it was a "grave dereliction of duty" to give "equal credence to the findings of the American Intelligence Community and the assertion by Mr. Putin."

U.S. officials have said Russia tried to hack election systems in 21 states and sway the election for Trump, representing a level of interference in the U.S. political system that security experts said represents a top-level threat.

Trump's meeting with Putin, which was originally scheduled for 35 minutes, wrapped up after more than 2 hours, and focused heavily on a just-announced ceasefire deal for southwestern Syria that was reached by Russia and the United States.

While the U.S. and Russia have held conflicting views on Syria in the past, Tillerson said Russia had an interest in seeing the Mideast nation become a stable place.

Tillerson said details about the ceasefire still need to be worked out, but Lavrov told reporters that Russian military police will monitor the ceasefire, with a monitoring center set up in Jordan - another party to the deal.

Both the Russians and the Americans took pains to describe the meeting as "constructive," cordial and wide-ranging, covering key topics including cyber security and North Korea.

"The two leaders connected very quickly," Tillerson said. "There was a very clear positive chemistry."

[Jul 08, 2017] The First Putin-Trump Meeting Yields Something Very Close to Nothing

Notable quotes:
"... But, seriously now, it does not really matter if these actions are just the result of imperial hubris and delusion, a complete lack of diplomatic education, the consequences of simple and straightforward human stupidity or all part of some diabolical plan to set the US on a collision course with the entire planet. ..."
"... What matters is the mind-blowing arrogance of it all, as if the USA were a white knight in shining armor worthy only of praise and adulation and as if the rest of the planet were composed of rowdy schoolchildren who needed to heed the words of their principal and start behaving or else get a good spanking from Uncle Sam. ..."
"... But, alas, it appears that many months of a sustained Neocon campaign to make darn sure that Russia and the US could never seriously collaborate have been very successful. ..."
"... So where does this all leave us, the millions of people who had at least *some* hopes about Trump being an outsider who could try to make some real changes happen and maybe liberate the United States from the Neocon regime in power here since at least Bill Clinton (if not earlier)? ..."
"... On February 14th of this year, following the anti-Flynn coup and Trump's betrayal of his friend, I wrote that "it's over folks" and "Trump betrayed us all". I took a lot of flak for writing this, especially since I had come strongly on Trump's side against Hillary during the campaign. Sadly, I believe that my conclusions in February are now proven correct. ..."
"... I understand while some will want to present this meeting as, if not a success, then at least "good start" or a "semi-success". For one thing, being the bearer of bad news never made anybody popular. Second, those who support Trump or Putin (or both) will want to show that the leader they support achieved something. Finally, if both sides report that the meeting has been a success, who are we to say otherwise? ..."
"... It has cemented Trump irrevocably in the role of clueless neocon waterboy. ..."
"... My first attempt to explain Trump's defection was to liken him to King Lear, desperately seeking validation and alienating the only ones who truly loved him. ..."
"... Hey, give it a couple of weeks (at least!) before declaring that it's Very Close to Nothing. By the way: I bet the Nazi regime in Kiev is shaking in its boots right now ..."
"... So the real boss of the European continent fears protectionism, it is therefore, according to Varoufakis, that Merkel continues the euro crisis, this makes Berlin the real capital of the continent. Not for nothing yesterday Juncker made a statement against protectionism, his mistress' voice. Merkel of course is the ally of Deep State, those who want the USA to control the world, want to impose the USA way of living on the whole world. On the other hand, Germany does want an need good trade relations with the East, Russia. ..."
"... Oh, sorry, I forgot. Poland unconditionally supports the USA and Trump! Well, good for them. They richly deserve each other. ..."
"... I get the feeling Trump and Putin themselves could actually forge a decent personal working relationship, because there would be a degree of mutual respect and Putin would eventually persuade Trump to see reason on the numerous important issues in which the Russian position is quite simply correct and the US position incorrect – Syria, Ukraine, the fantasy of "Russian interference", Korea, etc. This objective truth simply reflects the capture of US foreign policy by people who have operated it to serve interests other than those of the American nation, so that US policy has been determined not by reality and rational analysis, but ideology and dishonesty. ..."
"... However, it is ultimately of no benefit that there could be such a good personal and working relationship, because as we have seen Trump is a entirely prisoner of the very interest groups that were responsible for distorting US foreign policy in the first place. It's highly unlikely he would or could change much even if he were persuaded of the truth, and if he did make any significant changes he would be impeached or defeated at the next election and replaced by someone more in line with the poisonous US establishment views. ..."
"... Too many, too powerful US establishment groups (many of them not primarily loyal to the US) have an interest in maintaining the delusional and dysfunctional foreign policy we have seen in operation over the past three decades – inevitably, since they crafted that foreign policy foolishness. ..."
"... Another ceasefire for Israel, when they loose ground in Syria, A nice geste by Putin, to get talks started, probably. Russian diplomatic effort, which will sink in the swamp! Trump and Putin do seem to get along, but Trump is under Mike Pence's controll: War, war, and War for Israël and Exxon-mobile. ..."
"... Merkel of course is the ally of Deep State, those who want the USA to control the world, want to impose the USA way of living on the whole world. On the other hand, Germany does want an need good trade relations with the East, Russia. Being the German Kanzler is not an easy job. Germany has since 1870 been a country in difficulties, no natural borders, dependent on export. ..."
"... The nation shares a near-1,500 mile land and sea border with Russia. Stop NATO's Rick Rozoff earlier explained Ukraine is "the decisive linchpin in plans by the US and its NATO allies to effect a military cordon sanitary, severing Russia from Europe" – a sinister plot perhaps intended as prelude to nuclear war. ..."
"... Trump agreed to a ceasefire. It happened before: Obama agrees and – oops – the next day American planes bomb Syrian forces. And who ordered it, the president himself or a rogue organization inside (or outside?) Pentagon is anyone's guess. I think it's a wait&see at this point. ..."
Jul 08, 2017 | www.unz.com

First, we have the manner in which the Americans have been preparing the G20 summit. As we all know, in diplomacy actions count as much, or even more, than words. Here are just a few of the actions recently taken by the Americans in preparation for the G20 summit and Trump's first meeting with Putin (in no particular order):

Going down this list, you got to admire the American sense of timing and diplomacy

But, seriously now, it does not really matter if these actions are just the result of imperial hubris and delusion, a complete lack of diplomatic education, the consequences of simple and straightforward human stupidity or all part of some diabolical plan to set the US on a collision course with the entire planet.

What matters is the mind-blowing arrogance of it all, as if the USA were a white knight in shining armor worthy only of praise and adulation and as if the rest of the planet were composed of rowdy schoolchildren who needed to heed the words of their principal and start behaving or else get a good spanking from Uncle Sam.

If that is how Trump hopes to make "America Great Again" he might want to consider other options as this kind of attitude makes "America" (he means the USA, of course) look not "great" but arrogant, out of touch and supremely irritating. Let's take on the world, everybody at the same time seems to be the grand plan of this administration.

The result of all these "diplomatic" efforts were predicable: nothing.

Well, almost nothing. Here is what "nothing" looks in diplomatic language:

According to Foreign Minister Lavrov Presidents Trump and Putin, were "motivated by their national interests" (who would have thought?!) and they agree on a number of concrete measures:

an acceleration of the procedure to appoint new ambassadors – RU-US and US-RU they discussed the Russian diplomatic facilities seized by Obama they create a work group to discuss a number of issues including terrorism, organized crime, hacking and cybersecurity. they discussed Syria and the Ukraine and talked for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

According to RT , Russia and the US agreed on a ceasefire in the Daraa, Quneitra and As-Suwayda provinces of Syria. That is very good, of course, but this is in the one corner of Syria (southwest) where very little action is taking place (right now all the important stuff is taking place between Raqqa and Deir-Az-Sor). Oh, and there are de-escalation zones already in place in the southwest:

So unless Trump and Putin are keeping something really important secret, it seems that this summit has yielded exactly what I feared it would : nothing, or something very very close to nothing. If we find out later that in spite of everything, the two sides did discuss something of importance and agreed on something important, I will post and update here. And, believe me, nobody will be happier than me if that happens.

But, alas, it appears that many months of a sustained Neocon campaign to make darn sure that Russia and the US could never seriously collaborate have been very successful.

So where does this all leave us, the millions of people who had at least *some* hopes about Trump being an outsider who could try to make some real changes happen and maybe liberate the United States from the Neocon regime in power here since at least Bill Clinton (if not earlier)?

On February 14th of this year, following the anti-Flynn coup and Trump's betrayal of his friend, I wrote that "it's over folks" and "Trump betrayed us all". I took a lot of flak for writing this, especially since I had come strongly on Trump's side against Hillary during the campaign. Sadly, I believe that my conclusions in February are now proven correct.

I understand while some will want to present this meeting as, if not a success, then at least "good start" or a "semi-success". For one thing, being the bearer of bad news never made anybody popular. Second, those who support Trump or Putin (or both) will want to show that the leader they support achieved something. Finally, if both sides report that the meeting has been a success, who are we to say otherwise?

I don't know about anybody else, but I always have and always will call it as I see it. And what I see is simply nothing or something very close to nothing. Sorry folks, I wish I could say something else.

As for apportioning blame for this non-event, I place 100% of the guilt on the US side which did everything wrong with an almost manic determination and which will now find itself in the rather unenviable position of fighting pretty much the entire planet all on its own. Oh, sorry, I forgot. Poland unconditionally supports the USA and Trump!

Well, good for them. They richly deserve each other.

Intelligent Dasein , Website July 8, 2017 at 4:52 am GMT

I'll disagree with the Saker only to say that the meeting did not yield nothing, it yielded something far worse than nothing. It has cemented Trump irrevocably in the role of clueless neocon waterboy.

My first attempt to explain Trump's defection was to liken him to King Lear, desperately seeking validation and alienating the only ones who truly loved him. My next attempt was to liken him to King Saul, because he appears to have been rejected by God who had sustained his campaign so brilliantly. Now I've moved on to "So passes Denethor son of Ecthelion."

Kirt , July 8, 2017 at 5:42 am GMT

Nothing works better for increasing your happiness and appreciation of life than minimalizing your expectations. During the Bush II regime, I counted any day when the US did not attack Iran as a very good day. Now I count any day when the US does not attack Russia, Iran or North Korea to be a very good day. Sounds to me like Putin and Trump have avoided all out war and perhaps move just a tiny bit toward mutual agreement. That's an awesomely good day.

Mao Cheng Ji , July 8, 2017 at 6:13 am GMT

Hey, give it a couple of weeks (at least!) before declaring that it's Very Close to Nothing. By the way: I bet the Nazi regime in Kiev is shaking in its boots right now

jilles dykstra , July 8, 2017 at 6:16 am GMT

Half an hour was planned, it became two hours and 16 minutes. So one might conclude there was something to talk about.

Then there is the Trump Merkel difference. The USA is nearly autark, USA's export is something like five percent of national income. Germany exports, I guess, more than half its national income.

So the real boss of the European continent fears protectionism, it is therefore, according to Varoufakis, that Merkel continues the euro crisis, this makes Berlin the real capital of the continent. Not for nothing yesterday Juncker made a statement against protectionism, his mistress' voice. Merkel of course is the ally of Deep State, those who want the USA to control the world, want to impose the USA way of living on the whole world. On the other hand, Germany does want an need good trade relations with the East, Russia.

Being the German Kanzler is not an easy job. Germany has since 1870 been a country in difficulties, no natural borders, dependent on export.

Proud_Srbin , July 8, 2017 at 8:12 am GMT

Oh, sorry, I forgot. Poland unconditionally supports the USA and Trump! Well, good for them. They richly deserve each other.

=======

If the price of LNG is more expensive than ruski gas, American people can always subsidize it as a sign of goodwill and solidarity with brave polacks.

Randal , July 8, 2017 at 9:33 am GMT

I get the feeling Trump and Putin themselves could actually forge a decent personal working relationship, because there would be a degree of mutual respect and Putin would eventually persuade Trump to see reason on the numerous important issues in which the Russian position is quite simply correct and the US position incorrect – Syria, Ukraine, the fantasy of "Russian interference", Korea, etc. This objective truth simply reflects the capture of US foreign policy by people who have operated it to serve interests other than those of the American nation, so that US policy has been determined not by reality and rational analysis, but ideology and dishonesty.

However, it is ultimately of no benefit that there could be such a good personal and working relationship, because as we have seen Trump is a entirely prisoner of the very interest groups that were responsible for distorting US foreign policy in the first place. It's highly unlikely he would or could change much even if he were persuaded of the truth, and if he did make any significant changes he would be impeached or defeated at the next election and replaced by someone more in line with the poisonous US establishment views.

Too many, too powerful US establishment groups (many of them not primarily loyal to the US) have an interest in maintaining the delusional and dysfunctional foreign policy we have seen in operation over the past three decades – inevitably, since they crafted that foreign policy foolishness.

Putin, I think, knows this and hence is unlikely to make any real concessions to get agreements that will only be subverted or betrayed by the US as other interest groups within the US regime get the ear of the President or manage to subvert his policies, or by a future US regime.

Greg Bacon , Website July 8, 2017 at 9:34 am GMT

According to RT, Russia and the US agreed on a ceasefire in the Daraa, Quneitra and As-Suwayda provinces of Syria.

Wow, what a coincidence that this 'ceasefire' is adjacent to the stolen Golan, that water and oil rich part of Syria the Israelis STOLE during their 1967 War of Aggression.

This will give Israel time to get all those wounded jihadists medical care in those Golan field hospitals and at the Ziv Medical Center in Safed, Israel. And give the quisling US Congress time to reimburse Israel for all those shekels spent caring for and paying the salaries of ISIS/DAESH/al Nusra terrorists.

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/israel-risking-lives-elite-troops-save-syria-jihadis/ri11828

dykalg , July 8, 2017 at 10:21 am GMT

cheer up saker. the americans are sending an envoy to kiev tomorrow to pressure them to begin their first steps agreed to in the minsk accords. (the new york times was so upset about this that they could not write the words "minsk accords" in their page 1 article today.)
second, the intell community will be asked to justify by evidence their claim of russian hacking.
the audacity of this will leave them gob-smacked. and edgy.

Max Havelaar , July 8, 2017 at 12:44 pm GMT

Another ceasefire for Israel, when they loose ground in Syria, A nice geste by Putin, to get talks started, probably. Russian diplomatic effort, which will sink in the swamp! Trump and Putin do seem to get along, but Trump is under Mike Pence's controll: War, war, and War for Israël and Exxon-mobile.

How soon and how the Syrian slitup will be, that is the question.

Seamus Padraig , July 8, 2017 at 1:24 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

Half an hour was planned, it became two hours and 16 minutes. So one might conclude there was something to talk about.

Then there is the Trump Merkel difference. The USA is nearly autark, USA's export is something like five percent of national income. Germany exports, I guess, more than half its national income.

So the real boss of the European continent fears protectionism, it is therefore, according to Varoufakis, that Merkel continues the euro crisis, this makes Berlin the real capital of the continent. Not for nothing yesterday Juncker made a statement against protectionism, his mistress' voice.

Merkel of course is the ally of Deep State, those who want the USA to control the world, want to impose the USA way of living on the whole world. On the other hand, Germany does want an need good trade relations with the East, Russia. Being the German Kanzler is not an easy job. Germany has since 1870 been a country in difficulties, no natural borders, dependent on export.

Being the German Kanzler is not an easy job.

No, and Merkel is clearly not up to the job. She's definitely no Bismarck!

jacques sheete , July 8, 2017 at 1:40 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

Germany has since 1870 been a country in difficulties, no natural borders, dependent on export.

Not much by way of natural resources and surrounded by enemies, both near and far, too.

Agent76 , July 8, 2017 at 2:34 pm GMT

May 15, 2017 Ukraine: US-Installed Fascist Rule in Europe's Heartland. Will Donetsk Rejoin Russia?

The nation shares a near-1,500 mile land and sea border with Russia. Stop NATO's Rick Rozoff earlier explained Ukraine is "the decisive linchpin in plans by the US and its NATO allies to effect a military cordon sanitary, severing Russia from Europe" – a sinister plot perhaps intended as prelude to nuclear war.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-us-installed-fascist-rule-in-europes-heartland-will-donetsk-rejoin-russia/5590150

Sep 9, 2016 US-funded Ukrainian army is terrorizing civilians. Russell Bentley is a former US marine, that now fights for the Donbass, Eastern Ukraine, against the US-funded Ukrainian army.

Mao Cheng Ji , July 8, 2017 at 5:38 pm GMT

@DaveE

The two most powerful nations agree to a cease fire, in less than two hours

Trump agreed to a ceasefire. It happened before: Obama agrees and – oops – the next day American planes bomb Syrian forces. And who ordered it, the president himself or a rogue organization inside (or outside?) Pentagon is anyone's guess. I think it's a wait&see at this point.

[Jul 08, 2017] Trump says he had a tremendous meeting with Putin

AP clearly pursue a neocon line of DNC hacks and Russian meddling in the US elections.
get=
The European trip to Poland and Germany has centered around the exchange with Putin, Trump's first in-person meeting as president. But both sides offered differing explanations of what took place.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump and Putin had a "robust and lengthy" discussion about the election interference but Putin denied any involvement. His Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, said Trump had accepted Putin's assurances that Russia didn't meddle in the U.S. election - a characterization that the U.S. disputed.

"I think the president is rightly focused on how do we move forward from something that may be an intractable disagreement at this point," said Tillerson, who took part in the meeting along with Lavrov.

Democrats seized upon Tillerson's remarks, saying that it was wrong to suggest the issue of Russia's role in the election meddling was unresolved. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said it was "disgraceful" and said it was a "grave dereliction of duty" to give "equal credence to the findings of the American Intelligence Community and the assertion by Mr. Putin."

U.S. officials have said Russia tried to hack election systems in 21 states and sway the election for Trump, representing a level of interference in the U.S. political system that security experts said represents a top-level threat.

Trump's meeting with Putin, which was originally scheduled for 35 minutes, wrapped up after more than 2 hours, and focused heavily on a just-announced ceasefire deal for southwestern Syria that was reached by Russia and the United States.

While the U.S. and Russia have held conflicting views on Syria in the past, Tillerson said Russia had an interest in seeing the Mideast nation become a stable place.

Tillerson said details about the ceasefire still need to be worked out, but Lavrov told reporters that Russian military police will monitor the ceasefire, with a monitoring center set up in Jordan - another party to the deal.

Both the Russians and the Americans took pains to describe the meeting as "constructive," cordial and wide-ranging, covering key topics including cyber security and North Korea.

"The two leaders connected very quickly," Tillerson said. "There was a very clear positive chemistry."

[Jul 08, 2017] Susan Rice role in Russiagate

Jul 01, 2017 | www.youtube.com

SUSAN RICE GOING TO JAIL! SEE REASONS WHY -

> > > > > > > > > > >

[Jul 07, 2017] Was Tillerson to the right of Trump in Germany meeting

The problem if multiple personalities syndrome that Trump administration demonstrates that is mentioned below is a real one. It looks like Tilerson has its own version of foreign policy distinct from Trump. Haley also has her own definitely distinct and more neocons than Tillerson, and Tillerson did not fired her for insubordination. Yet.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump wasn't afraid to do this meeting. In this sense, even if he's a fool (which I'm not completely convinced of yet), he has some semblance here of being his own man. Also, for domestic consumption, he can say he made a deal if he wants. He walked away with some narrative. ..."
"... It seems to me that there's no reason why Putin and Trump can't keep talking as need arises if they choose to. No one is going to be friends here. But a narrative of two countries aggressively pursuing their own national interests is what Russia is now promoting. This is ground for dialog and actually some stability over time. ..."
"... Ray McGovern with RT thinks the agreement in southwest Syria is a little test from Putin to see what the strength of Trump's power is - i.e. will USAF act independently again or will it obey the commander-in-chief? Putin, Trump meeting gives way to developments in Syria . A lot of the Russian takeaway will be what kind of practical trust can be forged at this level, how in control is Trump? One wonders how much of this meta message got through to Trump himself. ..."
"... I think its clear that the 'Assad must go!' Coalition will not stop wanting Assad gone. But Russia and Iran will not allow it, arguing that Assad is needed to counter the Jihadis. This is a fundamental disagreement. ..."
"... So what can they agree on? The next logical demand of the 'Assad must go!' Coalition is some sort of division, isn't it? And whatever a division of Syria is called: "federated", "autonomous region", "safe zone" etc., it effectively means the creation of a "salafist principality"/Sunnistan - a goal which was revealed in a DIA report back in 2012. ..."
"... I think there is a full-court press to get Putin to deal. Everything has been set to make the establishment of 'Sunnistan' the least worst option (as Kissinger might say). I wrote of this here: Putin-Trump at the G-20: Birth of Sunnistan? ..."
"... How could RUSSIA - with her history - consider any backdown over Syria affecting all her allies anything but a short term Munich agreement (1938) for the space age. War between the Atlantacists and Eurasia would still be inevitable . ..."
"... more on the alleged chemical weapon attack of early april from al masdar.. OPCW ignores possibility Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack was staged: diplomat and.... US refuses Russia's offer to inspect Shayrat Airbase for chemical weapons ..."
"... here's the transcript to go with your video of the Tillerson presser held today following the Putin/Trump gab - https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/07/07/press-briefing-presidents-meetings-g20-july-7-2017 ..."
"... The Trump Administration continues to take a middle-ground approach that allows the "red scare" to continue. Some will say this is smart politics or smart negotiating or both. I think it shows a lack of will - an ambiguity that is harmful to a peaceful resolution. I think it stems from the Wahabbi-Zionist grip on US ME policy. W-Z want it ALL, so they (or their representatives) will always be ambiguous about any discussion that would leave them with something less than ALL. ..."
"... The Agreement on SW Syria was probably mostly done before the meeting. Meeting participants reviewed details of what the prepared agreement but mostly probed each other to determine how strongly held each sides views were about Syrian outcomes. ..."
"... Tillerson's blabbering about common objectives was meaningless. The Russians have long said that they believe that the Syrian people should decide the fate of Assad at some point in the future. The longstanding US position has been that Assad's removal should be sooner rather than later because free and fair elections can't be held with Assad as leader. ..."
"... Sounds quite reasonable to me. Putin/ Lavrov did the same with Obama/ Kerry, but they failed the test. They did negotiate in earnest imo, but... ..."
"... Moscow has committed far too much in Syria to 'relent'. The military, diplomatic and economic pressure on the US will increase if necessary to reach an solution. It has no choice but to agree. ..."
"... The peace deal or de-escalation with the US in southern Syria most likely has to do with US moving their operation from Tanf to Shaddadi. I had read sometime ago that Jordan wasn't happy about US using Jordan and Tanf base to attack SAA - not that Jordan would have much say in the matter. ..."
Jul 07, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Grieved | Jul 7, 2017 5:07:38 PM | 24

It's 2 cents day, so here's mine.

Two national leaders brought their heads of foreign ministry to an international meeting. Score 1 for diplomacy. They didn't bring their generals. And we've all seen how powerfully Russian diplomacy works. The message to the world and all stakeholders is that it keeps on working - work with it if you want to get somewhere.

Trump wasn't afraid to do this meeting. In this sense, even if he's a fool (which I'm not completely convinced of yet), he has some semblance here of being his own man. Also, for domestic consumption, he can say he made a deal if he wants. He walked away with some narrative.

It seems to me that there's no reason why Putin and Trump can't keep talking as need arises if they choose to. No one is going to be friends here. But a narrative of two countries aggressively pursuing their own national interests is what Russia is now promoting. This is ground for dialog and actually some stability over time.

I don't think anyone was looking for much out of this, and it was the wrong venue for such. But the meta-messages and to see how the leaders would interact were the key things, and personally I'm satisfied.

Grieved | Jul 7, 2017 5:50:53 PM | 25
More info coming...Tillerson says it was a good meeting that went on so long because they had so much to talk about. Very engaged: Listen: Tillerson describes meeting between Trump and Putin . The Duran's Adam Garrie picked up on the last soundbite in this clip where Tillerson says maybe Russia has the right approach to Syria and maybe we have the wrong approach. Very egalitarian view, not quite as bombshell as it sounds I think, more a way of signifying agreement on the (purported) end goals.

Ray McGovern with RT thinks the agreement in southwest Syria is a little test from Putin to see what the strength of Trump's power is - i.e. will USAF act independently again or will it obey the commander-in-chief? Putin, Trump meeting gives way to developments in Syria . A lot of the Russian takeaway will be what kind of practical trust can be forged at this level, how in control is Trump? One wonders how much of this meta message got through to Trump himself.

Jackrabbit | Jul 7, 2017 5:54:02 PM | 26
Everyone seems happy that Trump and Putin shook hands and agreed on something. But wasn't agreeing on SW Syria easy? Seems that both would want to avoid the messiness of stepped-up Israeli action.

I think its clear that the 'Assad must go!' Coalition will not stop wanting Assad gone. But Russia and Iran will not allow it, arguing that Assad is needed to counter the Jihadis. This is a fundamental disagreement.

So what can they agree on? The next logical demand of the 'Assad must go!' Coalition is some sort of division, isn't it? And whatever a division of Syria is called: "federated", "autonomous region", "safe zone" etc., it effectively means the creation of a "salafist principality"/Sunnistan - a goal which was revealed in a DIA report back in 2012.

IMO there is a high chance of cw ff leading to threat of US attack in the coming weeks. As a last-ditch effort to avoid a larger war, Putin might then relent and a allow a division that makes "Sunnistan" a reality.

I think there is a full-court press to get Putin to deal. Everything has been set to make the establishment of 'Sunnistan' the least worst option (as Kissinger might say). I wrote of this here: Putin-Trump at the G-20: Birth of Sunnistan?

Any thoughts?

ashley albanese | Jul 7, 2017 6:27:09 PM | 31

Jackrabbit 26

How could RUSSIA - with her history - consider any backdown over Syria affecting all her allies anything but a short term Munich agreement (1938) for the space age. War between the Atlantacists and Eurasia would still be inevitable .

james | Jul 7, 2017 6:46:47 PM | 32
more on the alleged chemical weapon attack of early april from al masdar.. OPCW ignores possibility Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack was staged: diplomat and.... US refuses Russia's offer to inspect Shayrat Airbase for chemical weapons
karlof1 | Jul 7, 2017 6:47:33 PM | 33
Well, it appears that the Putin/Abe meet was productive despite being delayed by the meet with Trump going long, http://tass.com/politics/955268. TASS has the most detailed report thanks to Lavrov's presser, http://tass.com/world/955288 "The situation in Syria, in Ukraine, on the Korean Peninsula, problems of cyber security, and a range of other issues were discussed in detail," he said, adding that the two leaders "agreed on a number of concrete things." Just what those "concrete things" are we'll need to wait and see.
h | Jul 7, 2017 7:28:39 PM | 37
Greived @25 here's the transcript to go with your video of the Tillerson presser held today following the Putin/Trump gab - https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/07/07/press-briefing-presidents-meetings-g20-july-7-2017
Jackrabbit | Jul 7, 2017 7:37:40 PM | 39
Tillerson's New Conference

Tillerson's answers to question about how much Trump pressed Putin on 'Russian interference' vaguely implied that the Russians accepted responsibility as he suggested that the Russians were willing to discuss guarantees against such interference happening in the future.

The Trump Administration continues to take a middle-ground approach that allows the "red scare" to continue. Some will say this is smart politics or smart negotiating or both. I think it shows a lack of will - an ambiguity that is harmful to a peaceful resolution. I think it stems from the Wahabbi-Zionist grip on US ME policy. W-Z want it ALL, so they (or their representatives) will always be ambiguous about any discussion that would leave them with something less than ALL.

The Agreement on SW Syria was probably mostly done before the meeting. Meeting participants reviewed details of what the prepared agreement but mostly probed each other to determine how strongly held each sides views were about Syrian outcomes.

The length of time that this took shows how close to the razor's edge US-Russia relations are. Care must be taken to avoid a miscalculation.

Tillerson's blabbering about common objectives was meaningless. The Russians have long said that they believe that the Syrian people should decide the fate of Assad at some point in the future. The longstanding US position has been that Assad's removal should be sooner rather than later because free and fair elections can't be held with Assad as leader.

It seems to me that the failure to agree "next steps" coupled with a failure to agree on a future meeting is significant. And the lack of detail from the Russian side (as per karlof1 @33) also suggests that the meeting didn't go well.

smuks | Jul 7, 2017 7:48:10 PM | 41
@Grieved 25

"Ray McGovern with RT thinks the agreement in southwest Syria is a little test from Putin to see what the strength of Trump's power is ... how in control is Trump? One wonders how much of this meta message got through to Trump himself."

Sounds quite reasonable to me. Putin/ Lavrov did the same with Obama/ Kerry, but they failed the test. They did negotiate in earnest imo, but...

@Jackrabbit

Moscow has committed far too much in Syria to 'relent'. The military, diplomatic and economic pressure on the US will increase if necessary to reach an solution. It has no choice but to agree.

james | Jul 7, 2017 8:53:20 PM | 44
i think the little test concept is exactly right... usa is notorious for failing those kinds of tests..
Peter AU | Jul 7, 2017 8:57:27 PM | 46
The peace deal or de-escalation with the US in southern Syria most likely has to do with US moving their operation from Tanf to Shaddadi. I had read sometime ago that Jordan wasn't happy about US using Jordan and Tanf base to attack SAA - not that Jordan would have much say in the matter.
Anoncommentator | Jul 7, 2017 9:00:27 PM | 47
James Corbett on the CNN gif debacle: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ7KIgV2s5w
Anoncommentator | Jul 7, 2017 9:13:31 PM | 49
A reminder, and if you've never seen it, how MSM (in this case C-span) broadcasts fake news as war propaganda- footage from 1991 Gulf War. This was eye opener for me as I recall being totally sucked in at time by both the CNN and C-Span stories.

But by the time of the Syrian "boy in ambulance" Omran story last year I could correctly smell a rat:

[Jul 07, 2017] What's really behind all the fake anti-Russia hysteria

Notable quotes:
"... However, in the wake of the Trump presidency, Deep State ..."
"... Whenever the Neocon cabal wants war, they pull out all the stops. However, in 2017, their New World Order ..."
"... As usual, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is coordinating the Russophobic propaganda campaign. The following data point explains why the CIA is always so effective in this endeavor and institutionally oriented to forever conduct war propaganda campaigns distinguished by extreme Russophobia. ..."
"... "General Reinhard Gehlen, former head of Nazi intelligence operations against the Soviets, was hired by the US Army and later by the CIA to operate 600 ex-Nazi agents in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany. In 1948, CIA Director Roscoe Hillenkoetter assumed control of the so-called Gehlen Organization." ..."
"... "excuse of the millennium" ..."
Jul 07, 2017 | stateofthenation2012.com
March 17, 2017

Why so much naked propaganda and fake news directed against Russia especially since Trump's election?

Executive Summary:

The Deep State now fears a "partnership for peace" between the United States and Russia more than anything else. It used to fear the natural alliance between Russia and Germany, since the Anglo-American domination of the world would be genuinely threatened by such a powerful geopolitical relationship. The two World Wars were engineered to pit Russia against Germany in order to preclude such a bloc from forming. The same Neocon cabal has been very busy setting up Europe for yet a third world war by manipulating Merkel's government against Putin's Kremlin. The immigrant crisis that began with the wars in the Middle East and North Africa was literally manufactured to destabilize Europe as a precursor to World War III.

However, in the wake of the Trump presidency, Deep State now has a much bigger 'problem'-the very real prospect of a United States-Russian Federation entente. For this reason, the CIA and MSM (mainstream media) have been beating the war drums like never before. Russia has, overnight, become the whipping boy for everything wrong with the Democratic Party as well as the scapegoat for every major intel security lapse in the USA. The U.S. Intelligence Community will continue to fabricate patently false stories about the Trump Administration with respect to Russia as pre-emptive strikes to make any meaningful dialogue politically precarious. At the request of the CIA, the MSM will also continue to publish fake news and naked propaganda about the same in order to greatly inflame anti-Russian sentiment.

Whenever the Neocon cabal wants war, they pull out all the stops. However, in 2017, their New World Order is under serious assault around the globe and war has become an apparent necessity. Populist movements and nationalist revolutions are springing up like mushrooms across the planet. After the controlled demolition of the global economic and financial system, the cabal considers war - World War III - as their only real option (just as they created the Great Depression to set the stage for World War II). Inciting extreme Russophobia has always been their means to starting the real big wars. WW3 will be no different, unless Trump and Putin meet in broad daylight and declare Deep State the archenemy of We the People everywhere. That's the short story, now read on for the extended back story.
________________________________________________________

The entire anti-Russian campaign is being quite deliberately orchestrated at the highest echelons of Deep State and the U.S. Intelligence Community.[1]

As usual, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is coordinating the Russophobic propaganda campaign. The following data point explains why the CIA is always so effective in this endeavor and institutionally oriented to forever conduct war propaganda campaigns distinguished by extreme Russophobia.

"General Reinhard Gehlen, former head of Nazi intelligence operations against the Soviets, was hired by the US Army and later by the CIA to operate 600 ex-Nazi agents in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany. In 1948, CIA Director Roscoe Hillenkoetter assumed control of the so-called Gehlen Organization." (Source: www.cia.gov )

... ... ...

The central organizing principle , which is always followed religiously by the secret NWO ruling cabal, concerns the strict maintenance of the perpetual war economy .

Toward that end, world peace can never be achieved. Rather, only the false notion that peace may be attained - at some magical moment in the future - is ever projected.

Consequently, the imaginary split between East and West is always exploited to the max by the ruling cabal. The East is just far and foreign enough relative to the West that it can always be successfully set up as the [fictitious] bogeyman.

... ... ... Clinton and Podesta

As always, there are several levels of intrigue going on simultaneously whenever Deep State undertakes such an all-consuming global operation as the "Russian hack" psyop. The sheer domination of the daily news cycle by "Russia this; Russia that" is always a reflection of what TPTB really do fear the most. However, there is also a purely political point being scored with this completely contrived Russophobia black op.

Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign chairman was John Podesta. Both Clinton and Podesta have gone down in U.S. presidential election history as the two of the biggest losers of all time. Bear in mind that this was Clinton's second humiliating loss after being blindsided by Barack Obama in 2008. Not only did these two very bad losers need a very good excuse for all the livid donors, they were also desperate for a story that would pacify their ultra-sensitive and still-crying liberal base.

There are actually multiple reasons why these two characters required the "excuse of the millennium" as to why they just got trounced by Trump. The very best they could come up with was the "Russian election hack". This false accusation led to the baseless conclusion that the election was hacked by the Russians and, therefore, the Democrats were powerless in defeat, even though no such thing happened.

This gave Podesta, especially, something very BIG to talk about at a time when his direct involvement with Pizzagate was being virally exposed in the worldwide Alt Media, and then to a lesser extent by the MSM. Once Pizzagate was exposed as Podesta's Achilles' heel, he became like a wounded animal thrashing about in sheer desperation. This is when the anti-Russian campaign was really racheted up because the very future of the Democratic Party was hanging in the balance as was his political fate.

PIZZAGATE : The Scandal That Will Take Down the Clintons, the Democratic Party and the Obama Administration

Clinton also needed to blame anyone but herself, being the most inferior and corrupt, caustic and unlikeable, offensive and dangerous, mean-spirited and vengeful presidential candidate in U.S history. How she ever even got the nomination can only be explained by the staunch support she received from the warmongering Neocons. They prepared her over the course of her entire career to be the POTUS who would wage war on Russia, even if it meant going nuclear on them.

Key Point: HRC was actually disqualified from holding any public office based on her own admissions of fact. ( U.S. CODE: Hillary R. Clinton is disqualified from holding any public office in the United States Government )

Most expediently, the concocted "Russian hacking" narrative by Podesta perfectly plays into the Neocon machination to provoke Russia into a regional war (e.g. Ukraine) on the way to triggering a full-scale WW3. The war propaganda also feeds into their desire for massive war profiteering in the form of gun running, human trafficking, drug smuggling, artifact black marketing, oil theft and other illicit enterprises which are easily covered up in the fog of war.

Lastly, this "Russian hacking" approach, the Neocons hope, will afford them the opportunity to again take back the Motherland from the Russian people. The Neocon cabal longs for the day when they can complete their Russia exploitation project via their oligarch agents of predatory capitalism and the draconian application of neoliberal economics. What follows is the back story to this multi-decade conspiratorial movement that has brought so much death and destruction to Russia for a century, as well as to the world-at-large. STRATFOR Chief Reveals Zio-Anglo-American Plot For World Domination

The bottom line here is that neither Clinton nor Podesta would take any blame whatsoever for their epic failure. Clinton herself had issued many anti-Russian screeds during the debates in order to smear Trump so it was a very convenient excuse when they were soundly defeated at the polls. It's a well known fact that criminally insane psychopaths will never assume responsibility for their misconduct and/or unlawful actions. When such bad actors enter politics, their incorrigible criminal behavior mixes with those of similar ilk, and then all hell can break loose as it is across America today. This link explains the surreptitious process of ponerization in much greater detail: PONERIZATION: How the American Republic was taken over by political cliques of criminally insane psychopaths

Deep State

Because of so many unanticipated eventualities, the agents of Deep State are working triple time to sow seed of chaos and confusion everywhere and anywhere. It's as though Pandora's box has been opened in every nation on Earth wherein each is now plagued with so much political pandemonium and social mayhem, economic instability and financial insecurity.

Economic Sabotage & Financial Terrorism: The Primary Weapons Deep State Will Use Against The Trump Administration

In light of this rapidly devolving predicament, it's more essential than ever for President Trump and President Putin to meet face-to-face in order to meet this extraordinary global challenge. The world is truly at a crossroad: it can follow the Neocons to more war or the righteous leaders to an enduring peace.

The current generation has never witnessed two presidents of the 2 superpowers willing to sit down with each other in a mutually respectful manner. This alone bodes well for humanity; now, if only they can be compelled by their good conscience to speak to each other as members of the universal brotherhood.

Remember, Deep State knows that it will be like the Titanic colliding with the iceberg should Trump and Putin cooperate to expose the real "Beast" that has terrorized the planet for so long. And Deep State will be the Titanic. Should enough people wake up to this unfolding reality, everything can change in a day and a night. There is nothing so strong and formidable as people power in this age of populist movements and authentic revolutions. Therefore, the real mission here is to enlighten as many people as possible before things really get so out of control that we move past the point of no return.

Trump cannot allow a fake Russian conspiracy to keep him from his stated mission. He said many times on the campaign trail that there was no reason not to make peace with Russia. And Trump asked why anyone would ever want war with the nuclear superpower. Putin is his own man and quite willing to meet with Trump. The vast majority of his people only want peace and good will between the two nations.

... ... ...

[Jul 07, 2017] Putin, Trump to meet in Germany amid a sea of disputes

Notable quotes:
"... ... The only issue where observers think a deal could be made is President Barack Obama's decision in December to shut down Russian Embassy compounds in Maryland and on Long Island, New York. The Kremlin emphasized this week that it has shown remarkable restraint by failing to respond tit-for-tat and warned that its patience is running out. ..."
Jul 07, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
"If Putin comes to the conclusion that even if Russia and the U.S. reach agreement, Trump would be unable to implement it for domestic policy reasons, he would lose interest in seeking an agreement," said Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

... ... ...

Russia and the U.S. have struggled to even set a specific time for Friday's meeting and the White House says there's "no specific agenda" for it. When the two presidents finally sit down for a talk, sharp differences remain on a wide range of issues, from Syria and the Ukrainian crisis to nuclear arms control.

While Trump has said the U.S. and Russia could pool efforts to fight the Islamic State group in Syria, Moscow's firm support for Syrian President Bashar Assad makes any agreement unlikely.

Moscow responded angrily when Trump ordered a missile strike on a Syrian base in April after a chemical attack blamed on Assad's forces, and was also vexed by the U.S. downing of a Syrian warplane in June. After last month's incident, the Russian military suspended a hotline with the U.S. to prevent mid-air incidents and warned that it would track U.S.-led coalition aircraft as potential targets over Syria.

And when the White House warned last week that Assad was preparing for another chemical attack and would "pay a heavy price" if he launches it, Russia responded by offering the Syrian ruler a tour of its air base.

Even though the Russian and U.S. militaries in Syria have worked out a way to avoid collisions, the situation could grow more unstable if Putin and Trump fail to get along, Trenin warned.

Bitter differences over Ukraine haven't been resolved. Some U.S. lawmakers have been pushing the White House to approve the delivery of weapons to the Ukrainian military in response to Moscow's support for separatists in eastern Ukraine - a move that would cross a red line for the Kremlin.

... The only issue where observers think a deal could be made is President Barack Obama's decision in December to shut down Russian Embassy compounds in Maryland and on Long Island, New York. The Kremlin emphasized this week that it has shown remarkable restraint by failing to respond tit-for-tat and warned that its patience is running out.

[Jul 07, 2017] Tillerson Putin Asked Trump For Proof Of Russias Interference In The 2016 Election

Trump discredited himself with the Tomahawk launches after deliberately false interpretation of Khan_sheikhoun_attack as chemical attack using zarin.
Notable quotes:
"... Putin wants to know who killed DNC email leaker Seth Rich? ..."
"... God, I hope they discussed taking down and prosecuting the Pedo elites. ..."
"... "CNN is reporting that Trump gave Alaska back to Russia during this meeting" ..."
"... when the US deep state has been neutered ??? ..."
Jul 07, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Update: As part of the 2+ hour discussion between presidents Trump and Putin, AP reports that the Russian president asked for "proof and evidence" of Moscow's alleged interference in the 2016 election which Russia denies . The request was made after Trump confronted Putin about Moscow's election meddling during their first face-to-face meeting in Germany on Friday, according to Rex Tillerson who was present in the meeting. The secretary of state told reporters afterward that Trump opened the conversation by "raising the concerns of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election."

Putin once again denied Russian involvement, Tillerson said, but Trump "pressed" him on the matter "on more than one occasion."

'President Putin denied such involvement as I think he has in the past,' he continued.

The Russians, speaking after the meeting, claimed that Trump accepted the denial - but Tillerson did not. Instead he said the issue may simply be an 'intractable disagreement.' Tillerson also said the Russians pushed Trump for proof and evidence of meddling, something which the president himself had doubted in public as recently as Thursday.

"The president at this point pressed him and felt like at this point, let's talk about how do we go forward,' Tillerson said.

Trump and Putin agreed to explore a "framework" around which they can work to better understand these types of cyberthreats, the U.S. diplomat said.

"The two leaders agreed that this is a substantial hindrance on the ability of us to move Russian-U.S. relationships forward and agreed to exchange further work ?regarding commitments of noninterference in the affairs of the United States and our democratic process as well as those of other countries," Tillerson said. "So more work to be done in that regard."

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who was in the meeting, said afterward that Trump accepted Putin's assurances that Russia didn't interfere in the election. But Tillerson, who has publicly called out Russia for election interference in the past, said he was 'not dismissing the issue in any way' and did not echo that language.

The secretary of state acknowledged that Putin's insistence that Russia did not interfere would leave the two countries at an impasse, at least for now. "It's not clear to me that we will ever come to some agreed-upon resolution of that question between the two nations," he said.

"So the question is, what do we do now?"

We are confident that the US press, which will not let this topic drop, will come up with some suggestions.

* * *

Earlier

Following their first ever, 2+ hour meeting which was originally supposed to last only 30-40 minutes, the question on everyone's mind was what did the two discuss.

So, in addition to the previously discussed ceasefire agreement in Southwest Syria unexpectedly announced by the two nations, speaking at the beginning of his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Vladimir Putin said that during his first meeting with US President Donald Trump, the two discussed Syria, Ukraine, counterterrorism, and drumroll, the "fight against cyber crime. "

"I had a very lengthy conversation with the President of the United States, there were a lot of issues such as Ukraine, Syria, other problems, some bilateral issues", according to Interfax news agency . "We again returned to the issues of fighting terrorism and cybersecurity," Putin added.

Elaborating after the meeting, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump repeatedly pressed Putin on the matter over the course of their meeting (see below for details).

Putin denied Russia's involvement, and according to a parallel comment from Russia's Sergey Lavrov, " Trump accepted Putin's assurance of no election hacking ."

Or as Interfax put it:

  • TRUMP ACKNOWLEDGES ANTI-RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN IN U.S. ALREADY LOOKING ODD, THAT HE ACCEPTS PUTIN'S STATEMENTS ON THIS MATTER - LAVROV: IFX

However, it appears Lavrov may have taken some artistic liberty, because according to NBC's chief White House correspondent, one administration official has said Lavrov's comment is " not accurate "

Pushback already from Trump administration: one official tells @NBCNews Lavrov's "not accurate" w/this comment --> https://t.co/URIsFPQYWT

- Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) July 7, 2017

Additionally, Tillerson also discussed the ceasefire deal in Syria :

"A cease-fire has been entered into," U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters. This is the "first indication of the U.S. and Russia being able to work together in Syria," he said.

Until now, Putin and Trump had only spoken on the phone. They were not alone: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were also present at the talks.

* * *

Earlier, during the press photo session, Trump told the media that "President Putin and I have been discussing various things, and I think it's going very well."

"We've had some very, very good talks, we are going to have a talk now and obviously that will continue," Trump added, saying there are hopes of "a lot of very positive things happening."

"It's an honor to be with you, thank you," Trump concluded, offering his hand to Putin.

"I'm delighted to be able to meet you personally Mr. President," Putin countered. "And I hope, as you have said, our meeting will yield positive result."

"Spasibo [thank you]," the US leader added in Russian. lester1 Jul 7, 2017 1:16 PM

Putin wants to know who killed DNC email leaker Seth Rich? Putin wants to know who killed DNC email leaker Seth Rich?
y3maxx lester1 Jul 7, 2017 1:22 PM
"Until now, Putin and Trump had only spoken on the phone."

CNN will jump all over this one, and Hitlary will call for another investigation.

yogibear y3maxx Jul 7, 2017 1:29 PM
Putin and Trump did what Obama could never do.

Putin and Trump did it in 2 hours!

Bathouse Barry deserved little respect. Bowing to every leader.

sixsigma cygnus... yogibear Jul 7, 2017 1:38 PM
I think a 30 minute meeting that turned into a 2 hour meeting with Putin is much better than the war with Russia that Hitlery had planned for us. Getting along with Russia is a good thing.
El Vaquero nope-1004 Jul 7, 2017 2:13 PM
That was just Kabuki theater, really. If Russia had hacked the election, the NSA and the CIA would have gone back through all of their stored data and found the evidence of it and crucified Trump and probably taken us to war.

PrayingMantis Blue Balls Jul 7, 2017 2:37 PM

... the planned 30-40-min meeting stretched to 2+ hours perhaps so they could talk about how to "carve" Syria into various "states" (since the US already has a modern airport in the Northern reaches of the beleaguered and oppressed sovereign country without the consent and permission of Syria's Al Assad >>> http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960415000266 ) ...

... and how not to hit any of their "flying objects" (jets and drones) trying to keep their respective MIC and banksters happy funding all these war toys ...

... and the oppressors, at the behest of their (((Red Shield))) masters and its BIS central banks' ownership of all worldwide central banks (with the exception of Iran, Syria, North Korea and Cuba), might just be pulling the necessary strings on how to divide the residual loot they'd get when Syria falls ...

... the ((( Red Shield snake ))) is poised to strike again ...

... meanwhile, attention Linux users ... "WikiLeaks Exposes CIA Targeting Linux Users With OutlawCountry Network Traffic Re-Routing Tool" ... >>> https://hothardware.com/news/wikileaks-exposes-cia-targeting-linux-users-with-outlawcountry-network-traffic-re-routing-tool ...

Ghost of PartysOver The_Juggernaut Jul 7, 2017 2:13 PM

I have said it before and will say it again, if the NeoCons and NeoLibs fail to find any Russian State Sanctioned evidence of election tampering or collusion then I would expect a trade deal with Russia within a year of two. Always better to have Boardroom Wars instead of Hot Wars. For the down voters may I remind you that Japan attacked the US, US was at war with Germany, do I need to mention Vietnam. All foes at one time and now trading partners.
CheapBastard Ghost of PartysOver Jul 7, 2017 2:25 PM
Clinton chairman John "Pizza Man" Podesta tells Trump: 'Get a grip'

Mr Podesta hit back in seven tweets, branding Mr Trump a "whack job".

"Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA Disgraceful!" Mr Trump tweeted on Friday morning from Hamburg.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40533959

Screw PedoMan. He should be in jail already.

laser Ghost of PartysOver Jul 7, 2017 2:30 PM

And Japan's attack was a surprise and unprovoked. Right?
Gardentoolnumber5 laser Jul 7, 2017 4:28 PM
US canceling the 1902 trade agreement. Metal and other material embargo. Oil and gas embargo. Then the open sea policy after non-declared economic war started in '38. Kind of like bombing other countries and having the welcome mat out for them. Sanctions/embargoes are acts of war.

chiswickcat sixsigma cygnusatratus Jul 7, 2017 2:26 PM

God, I hope they discussed taking down and prosecuting the Pedo elites.
Give Me Some Truth sixsigma cygnusatratus Jul 7, 2017 2:49 PM
The sanctions against Russia (that Trump must have supported, certainly 97 senators support this) are really a form of warfare.

If Trump DID "accept Putin's Assurances" that Putin's government did NOT meddle in a U.S. election, why then the necessity of these sanctions?

HRClinton sixsigma cygnusatratus Jul 7, 2017 2:50 PM
No lasting peace or deep cooperation between the US and Russia will be permitted, until the Khazariabs approve it, bless it and put their logo (with a micro tax) on it.

El Vaquero y3maxx Jul 7, 2017 1:57 PM

I think that CNN is getting its pee-pee slapped pretty hard right now. It has incurred the wrath of the internet hate machine and its ratings are sliding into the shitter on the eve of a corporate buyout of its parent company. I'd say that there are pretty good odds that CNN will either not exist in the near future, or it will exist in name only in the same way that Communist China is no longer actually Communist.

CheapBastard Lumberjack Jul 7, 2017 2:29 PM

Putin just handed him the photos of when Bill Clinton "gave a lecture" there for $2 million innturn for Hillary's handing the Russians 20% of American uranium.

Photos probably show a dozen mixed midgets peeing on Bill as he has sex with some Russian farm animals.

Sounds like Bill.

chiswickcat lester1 Jul 7, 2017 1:44 PM
"It's an honour to be with you, thank you" - Trump to Putin. Now watch Pedo-desta and Mad Maxine claim this is 'all the proof they need' that Trump is colluding with Putin.
Barney Fife lester1 Jul 7, 2017 6:24 PM
His name was Seth Rich.
Ralph Spoilsport Jul 7, 2017 1:18 PM
CNN is reporting that Trump gave Alaska back to Russia during this meeting.
Herd Redirectio... Ralph Spoilsport Jul 7, 2017 1:25 PM
Should give them California from Fort Ross south, as well...
Ralph Spoilsport Herd Redirection Committee Jul 7, 2017 1:31 PM
Interesting. Spetznaz troops could clear out La Raza in no time lol.
Herd Redirectio... Ralph Spoilsport Jul 7, 2017 1:38 PM
I am sure they would have a field day dealing with Hollywood's Gay Mafia as well.
CheapBastard Herd Redirection Committee Jul 7, 2017 2:31 PM
Barney Franks and Cooper Anderson would squeal for joy!
chiswickcat Ralph Spoilsport Jul 7, 2017 1:57 PM
CNN also reported that Trump gave Putin the launch codes.
JustPrintMoreDuh Ralph Spoilsport Jul 7, 2017 2:17 PM
Well he will likely have much more flexibility after his re-election
MaxThrust Ralph Spoilsport Jul 7, 2017 5:49 PM
"CNN is reporting that Trump gave Alaska back to Russia during this meeting"

I think this is fake news. /s/s

If Alaska becomes Russian territory again then Kim's missles will only be able to threaten Russia. How the hell will CNN beat the war drums for the MIC ?

souljaboy Jul 7, 2017 1:18 PM
I'm sure this is the kind of stuff that just kills Hillary Clinton.
chiswickcat souljaboy Jul 7, 2017 2:24 PM
...and the military industrial complex. Who do you think whispered in First Lady's ear to get meeting ended?
TILLERSON SAYS NEITHER LEADER WANTED TO STOP MEETING, U.S. FIRST LADY CAME IN AT ONE POINT TO TRY TO GET THEM TO CONCLUDE: RTRS
Anasteus TheJewsDidIT666 Jul 7, 2017 1:44 PM
Yes, indeed they have. After organizing and taking over Russia in 1917 during the Bolshevik revolution, when poor Russians had to undergo tremendous suffering caused by the most horrid scum imaginable, they now know the truth will soon come out. Everything one needs to know.
kochevnik walküre Jul 7, 2017 2:51 PM
Main activity of Ukraine is offshore banking for Nigerians
walküre kochevnik Jul 7, 2017 5:32 PM
Nigerian princes scam Americans and Brits into sending money which then gets deposited into Ukrainian banks?

Good luck with that. How safe is any of them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_in_Ukraine

Without the transit tolls for gas into EU, the Ukraine is a bankrupt farming nation.

EddieLomax TheJewsDidIT666 Jul 7, 2017 2:12 PM
I'd say it was more likely the people profitting from vast sums of money channelled into the US military-industrial complex. So many jobs also rely on it that it has become an impossible to kill program.

For that money the US gets a navy ready at any time to defeat imperial Japan again, and an army poised to push the Soviet hordes back in western Europe. It's absurd, like a Coyote cartoon where he is still standing but the ground beneath him has disappeared. Trump is smart, he can take on the mainstream media, the democrats and the republicans, but he cannot take on the military industrial complex at the same time and he knows it, whether he can ever or wants to is the real question.

If Trump left office with the next president no longer beholden to the military industrial complex, then he would be the greatest US president since George Washington.

ludwigvmises Jul 7, 2017 1:20 PM
So the 30 minute meeting turned into 2 hours? That's good, it means they got on well. Putin is known to cut meetings short if he finds it's a waste of time.
CheapBastard Kayman Jul 7, 2017 2:34 PM
<<So the 30 minute meeting turned into 2 hours? That's good, it means they got on well. >>

Putin and Trump enjoy talking to strong leaders, not limp wristed pussies. Even Condy Rice said Soweeto is considered a 'weak man' by foreign leaders. I guess she's being polite and at least called him a "man" instead of a tranny.

TabakLover Jul 7, 2017 1:21 PM
When will the "McCain" mindset toward Russia end? That being, if we win they lose and vice versa. Why the US and Russia could not/should not team up to stand against China and both win? We have so much more with the Russians as a people than we do with the Chinese, as do they.

Herd Redirectio... order66 Jul 7, 2017 1:32 PM

One of those forgotten episodes of history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_the_American_Revolution BTW, order66, Russia has been ruled by 'dictators' for about 700 years. I'd say Putin has another 10 to 12 years left in his rule of Russia.
seataka order66 Jul 7, 2017 1:32 PM
when the US deep state has been neutered ???
CheapBastard jm Jul 7, 2017 2:35 PM
When will Putin return my TV remote they stole during the election?

[Jul 07, 2017] Deep State Begins Anti-Russia Media Blitz Ahead Of Trump-Putin Meeting

Hacking allegations is just a projection... Remember Stixnet and Flame?
Jul 07, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

And so, three stories (2 anonymously sourced and one with no facts behind it) in The New York Times ( who recently retracted their "17 intelligence agencies" lie ) and CNN ( where do we start with these guys? let's just go with full retraction of an anonymously sourced lie about Scaramucci and Kushner and the Russians ) should stir up enough angst to ensure the meeting is at best awkward and at worst a lose-lose for Trump (at least in the eyes of the media).

First off we have the 'news' that hackers have reportedly been breaking into computer networks of companies operating United States nuclear power stations, energy facilities and manufacturing plants , according to a new report by The New York Times.

The origins of the hackers are not known. But the report indicated that an "advanced persistent threat" actor was responsible, which is the language security specialists often use to describe hackers backed by governments.

The two people familiar with the investigation say that, while it is still in its early stages, the hackers' techniques mimicked those of the organization known to cybersecurity specialists as "Energetic Bear," the Russian hacking group that researchers have tied to attacks on the energy sector since at least 2012.

And Bloomberg piled on...

https://lockerdome.com/lad/9533801169000550?pubid=ld-1806-5338&pubo=http%3A%2F%2Frussia-insider.com&width=686

So that's that 5 people - who know something - suspect it was the Russians that are hacking US nuclear facilities (but there's no proof).

Next we move to CNN who claim a 'current and former U.S. intelligence officials' told them that Russian spies have been stepping up their intelligence gathering efforts in the U.S. since the election, feeling emboldened by the lack of significant U.S. response to Russian election meddling .

"Russians have maintained an aggressive collection posture in the US, and their success in election meddling has not deterred them," said a former senior intelligence official familiar with Trump administration efforts.

"The concerning point with Russia is the volume of people that are coming to the US. They have a lot more intelligence officers in the US" compared to what they have in other countries, one of the former intelligence officials says.

But, according to Steve Hall, retired CIA chief of operations, the Russians could also be seeking more information on Trump's administration, which is new and still unpredictable to Moscow

So that's more anonymous sourcing about Russian spies... doing what they would normally do during a presidential transition.

And so finally, a third story - with CNN trotting out former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, to pin the 'Russians did it' tail on the "this is why we lost the election" donkey...

me title=

Claiming that the Russians alone were responsible for interference ...

"As far as others doing this, well that's new to me," Clapper, who served under former President Barack Obama, said during an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room."

"We saw no evidence whatsoever that [there] was anyone involved in this other than the Russians," he said.

So in summary - 3 stories pinning Russia for shameful acts against 'Murica that just happen to hit hours before Trump shakes hands with Putin... ensuring that unless Trump slams Putin to the ground like a wrestling-CNN-logo, he will be adjudged as being soft... and therefore clearly in cahoots with the Russian leader. Seriously, do the Deep State realy think Americans are that dumb? (rhetorical question)


medium giraffe , Jul 6, 2017 9:49 PM

" Russian hackers are targeting US nuclear facilities"

Reminds me of the claim that British subs can be hacked. What? do you just fucking google for them?

So much bullshit.....

espirit -> medium giraffe , Jul 6, 2017 9:59 PM

Old saying goes: Don't piss in the well you drink out of. Scorched earth here we come.

WordSmith2013 -> espirit , Jul 6, 2017 10:02 PM

The back story to the endless propaganda about Russia is all about the GREAT GAME .

http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=68902

What's really behind all the fake anti-Russia hysteria?

The "Executive Summary" says it all!

Dukes -> WordSmith2013 , Jul 6, 2017 10:10 PM

Trump and Putin should have a "beer summit". Let the shitty msm have a field day rationalizing how this time it's bad.

J S Bach -> Dukes , Jul 6, 2017 10:54 PM

Sometimes I just want to escape to the woods and never come back. This (((media world of inane contrivance))) literally makes me ill.

luky luke -> J S Bach , Jul 6, 2017 11:56 PM

The TRUTH no media will tell you about the conflict with Russia.

http://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-truth-about-the-c...

tip_top -> J S Bach , Jul 7, 2017 12:14 AM

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bamawatson -> tip_top , Jul 7, 2017 1:07 AM

i made $3 a week delivering the local paper every morning in 1961 when i was ten years old. Queer professor named wallace waites would stand in his underwear behind his screen door and beckon me https://vimeo.com/221102826

((another queer professor named cloyd paskins had a heart attack. He did not die. They said he got better after working out with waites))

burtonm.walker -> bamawatson , Jul 7, 2017 3:30 AM

I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... www.jobproplan.com

doctor10 -> J S Bach , Jul 7, 2017 3:34 AM

The MIC must be realizing their line of shit is getting pretty old. Next thing you know, they'll 911 Capitol Hill...

Nexus789 -> Dukes , Jul 7, 2017 5:42 AM

The two should go and get shit faced and solve all the world's problems.

sand_puppy -> WordSmith2013 , Jul 6, 2017 10:47 PM

By "Deep State" and "The Hidden Government" we are referring to the criminal Zionist group, sometimes called just "the neocons" and sometimes the "Khazarian Mafia." (This group does NOT include the majority of American Jews, who tend to be centrist and progressive.) But it does include a smaller subset of the Jewish people. (And a few non-Jewish people like Joe Biden.)

I just came across this interview from the 1970's with H.W. Rosenthal on the Zionist group seeking to rule the world. for me it was very illuminating.

https://nesaraaustralia.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/the-harold-wallace-rose...

meditate_vigorously -> medium giraffe , Jul 7, 2017 12:54 AM

JU's don't care who gets caught in the crossfire of their internecine East/West wars. All of the rest of us are just cattle to the Chosen People.

EmergentMind -> medium giraffe , Jul 7, 2017 1:46 AM

You are "wroking" on it? Tyler, get your editorial skills up to speed, or I forget you as legit.

LetThemEatRand , Jul 6, 2017 9:51 PM

I wish we could all stop paying attention to the "war" between Trump and CNN. It's a distraction from much bigger issues. CNN is not "liberal" media. It is the Deep State, which is not liberal or conservative. And I can't help but conclude that Trump is a knowing part of this circus while he leads us into real war under cover of the media war.

null -> LetThemEatRand , Jul 6, 2017 9:58 PM

Nice try. Really, that was pretty smooth. But gotta call BS on that ... yes, implying insincerity on your part (with all due respect I suppose).

The shallow play-on-words mixing "liberal" as politically defined with "classic liberal" as in philosophy, would not fool an informed person. But again, nice obfuscation.

LetThemEatRand -> null , Jul 6, 2017 10:02 PM

"Trump just became president."

CNN's Zakaria when Trump bombed Syria.

Fake news? Liberal media?

This is all an act. A circus. A big show.

null -> LetThemEatRand , Jul 6, 2017 10:11 PM

Just admit that you are against the stated US policy which, largely because of detractors like yourself, he May Not Change Yet, duh.

No shame in disagreeing with US policy. Do not blame it on POTUS, yet, is that clear? Not yet ...

LetThemEatRand -> null , Jul 6, 2017 10:16 PM

I would say you should be more specific, but I am against almost all stated US foreign policy, so you're probably right. But if you can be more specific I'll tell you specifically if you're right about my position. Which US policy do you think I'm against? I'll give you an honest answer whether I am or not.

null -> LetThemEatRand , Jul 6, 2017 10:27 PM

No, that's totally cool! I am guessing polar-opposite, so why nitpick.

One may have to take "US interest" position because of loyalty and not because the US has necessarily acted to deserve this loyalty. The past few decades have been "rough" to say the least.

Many here totally disagree with you about US foreign policy But Hope that this POTUS can cause the US to act in a way that would Mutigate this disagreement. Some things are off the table, but many are likely On The Table with this POTUS.

meditate_vigorously -> null , Jul 7, 2017 1:00 AM

I do not presume to speak for mister LTER, but I inferred his point was, that the existence of things that are "off the table" is proof that Trump is some faction of Deep State, rather than above board on what he sold those of us who voted for him.

null -> meditate_vigorously , Jul 7, 2017 6:42 AM

So disagreement with you about One (or more) policy equals deep-state membership.

Got it ... you certainly can define it how you want.

espirit -> null , Jul 6, 2017 10:20 PM

I got the lowdown about them Rooskies prowling about the nookier plant.

Some was dressed like EPA and DHS, real lookin' badges and everything - but I could tell they wasn't real.

I'll tell the whole true story for a million dollahs.

null -> espirit , Jul 6, 2017 10:33 PM

That'd be funny if the odds were not that something like that was happening constantly ... I think all the parties have been at this dance for a long time.

August -> espirit , Jul 7, 2017 11:06 AM

Back in the day, Clint Eastwood pulled that sort of stuff off... no problem.

baghead -> LetThemEatRand , Jul 6, 2017 10:53 PM

Trump bombing syria gave the "deep state" a temporary boner,when he didn't followup with troops,they went right back to bashing him.

ISEEIT -> null , Jul 6, 2017 10:38 PM

You don't get it.

"Progressivism" is the deep state.

"Progressivism" is communism.

Nothing 'liberal' about it.

Wanna be a farm animal.....?

Then be "Progressive".

null -> ISEEIT , Jul 6, 2017 10:50 PM

I don't disagree. Yes, anti-liberal in a classical sense.

But you are talking about Statism in general at that point. And one of the Vehicles is progressivism, sure.

And sure, I will admit that some "farming" is arguably necessary for a modern society to function, that makes me a full-on animal? Not fair ...

The Wizard -> null , Jul 6, 2017 11:45 PM

The arguments here are on the definition of labels. Forget the labels it is quite an easy analysis, centralization of authority vs. decentralization of authority. Call it what you wish.

Memedada -> ISEEIT , Jul 7, 2017 8:29 AM

It is you who don't "get it".

You write like you've been conditioned to - you use the words of your masters.

But maybe you're different (I think not): can you define "progressivism" and "communism" ? I'm a supporter of neither, but I know that in order to cure a disease you have to diagnose it correctly (the reason why the disease in power have made you misdiagnose it as "communism").

meditate_vigorously -> null , Jul 7, 2017 12:57 AM

I was about to tell you to take your meds, but since you got a fair number of upvotes, I wonder what I am missing, that you failed to articulate.

null -> meditate_vigorously , Jul 7, 2017 6:09 AM

Just trying to articulate that people be-talking-crap about this POTUS for no actual reason since he has not gotten a chance to govern.

Good point about the meds ... if you just gotta project to motivate yourself to take yours, glad 2 help.

meditate_vigorously -> null , Jul 7, 2017 1:02 AM

Getting people to think of things as systems and management of systems, rather than Hegellian Dialectic (problem/solution), is the hardest part.

The TV PROGRAMMING over the last 70 years has been more than successful.

hoytmonger -> LetThemEatRand , Jul 6, 2017 10:02 PM

Trump does seem to lead the way in terms of distractions.

He's a proven big-government, tax-and-spend progressive from NYC.

He has zero respect for individual liberty or private property rights.

But the mouth breathers eat it up.

Billy the Poet -> hoytmonger , Jul 6, 2017 10:31 PM

You're free to send your global warming contribution to China and make your daughter share a locker room with trannies. No one is stopping you. Release your inner nose breather.

LetThemEatRand -> Billy the Poet , Jul 6, 2017 10:46 PM

Billy, note that the only changes Trump has made so far have been on these issues. Tranny bathrooms. Paris Accord. The exact issues that are designed to divide us. I'll give you that I'd rather have Trump dealing with these issues than Hillary, but have you noticed that the issues that actually matter because they affect us all -- moar war, moar NSA, moar Deep State, bigger military budget, moar prison industrial complex, moar debt -- are the same as they would have been under Hillary?

Billy the Poet -> LetThemEatRand , Jul 6, 2017 11:06 PM

Would the media be fracturing like it is if Hillary had won? Would the average guy have ever discovered this thing called the "deep state" if Hillary had won? Would the Clinton Global Initiative have closed up shop if Hillary had won?

LetThemEatRand -> Billy the Poet , Jul 6, 2017 11:20 PM

All good questions. I don't know, except obviously the Clinton Global Initiative would still be going strong had Hillary won.

What I do know is that we're not making any progress towards more individual freedom or less war, or less control by oligarchs/bankers, which are the issues that matter to me. And I'm still making my Obamacare premium payment every month. And my taxes are the same. And my small business red tape is the same.

As for media fracturing, MSNBC has grown in ratings and is now second only to Fox. So divide and conquer seems to be working even better now. I don't have much a dog in the fight of whether CNN specifically rates well.

Billy the Poet -> LetThemEatRand , Jul 6, 2017 11:27 PM

Top General Says Hillary No Fly Zone Means WAR With Russia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzLeRWbVA18

On the other hand:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-prepared-to-ho...

The Wizard -> LetThemEatRand , Jul 6, 2017 11:47 PM

One of the experts on the Clinton Foundations Meet Charles Ortel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26DYq6JM3ew&feature=youtu.be

meditate_vigorously -> Billy the Poet , Jul 7, 2017 1:04 AM

I am missing where he referenced global warming. Are you a professional shill or a professional idiot?

Billy the Poet -> meditate_vigorously , Jul 7, 2017 1:27 AM

I'm the guy who is amused by your outrage.

hoytmonger -> Billy the Poet , Jul 7, 2017 5:31 AM

And you're free to have your land confiscated through eminent domain and have your grandchildren live in debt to pay for your support of the MIC.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/265171/donald-trump-and-eminent-do...

Miss Expectations , Jul 6, 2017 9:51 PM

The lies are too damn big.

Dormouse , Jul 6, 2017 9:52 PM

How is it that Clapper isn't behind bars yet?

BlindMonkey -> Dormouse , Jul 6, 2017 9:57 PM

He is in line. The have to prosecute Jon Corzine first......

Hahahaha. I kill me...

MayIMommaDogFac... -> BlindMonkey , Jul 6, 2017 10:58 PM

FREE JON CORZINE

(sorry, can't help myself)

thinkmoretalkless -> Dormouse , Jul 6, 2017 10:30 PM

For the record, he is a verified liar

Miss Expectations , Jul 6, 2017 9:56 PM

Begin GIFing....Putin Judo video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfGYThX-sTI

max_leering -> Miss Expectations , Jul 6, 2017 10:30 PM

he'd snap trump like a twig... then fart on him

[Jul 06, 2017] The Great Power Shift A Russia-China Alliance by Ray McGovern

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Whether or not Official Washington fully appreciates the gradual – but profound – change in America's triangular relationship with Russia and China over recent decades, what is clear is that the U.S. has made itself into the big loser. ..."
"... Gone are the days when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger skillfully took advantage of the Sino-Soviet rivalry and played the two countries off against each other, extracting concessions from each. Slowly but surely, the strategic equation has markedly changed – and the Sino-Russian rapprochement signals a tectonic shift to Washington's distinct detriment, a change largely due to U.S. actions that have pushed the two countries closer together. ..."
"... But there is little sign that today's U.S. policymakers have enough experience and intelligence to recognize this new reality and understand the important implications for U.S. freedom of action. Still less are they likely to appreciate how this new nexus may play out on the ground, on the sea or in the air. ..."
"... Instead, the Trump administration – following along the same lines as the Bush-43 and Obama administrations – is behaving with arrogance and a sense of entitlement, firing missiles into Syria and shooting down Syrian planes, blustering over Ukraine, and dispatching naval forces to the waters near China. ..."
"... A lack of experience or intelligence, though, may be too generous an interpretation. More likely, Washington's behavior stems from a mix of the customary, naďve exceptionalism and the enduring power of the U.S. arms lobby, the Pentagon, and the other deep-state actors – all determined to thwart any lessening of tensions with either Russia or China. After all, stirring up fear of Russia and China is a tried-and-true method for ensuring that the next aircraft carrier or other pricey weapons system gets built. ..."
"... Xi also reiterated that Beijing is urging Washington and Seoul to back off military pressure on North Korea, and he may even hope that South Korea's new President will react more sensibly than his predecessor who authorized THAAD deployment, which has made the North even more nervous about a possible preemptive strike. [In a seminar on the Web in February, Professor J. J. Suh and I discussed THAAD in the historical perspective of missile defense systems.] ..."
"... Less than a month ago, Putin and Xi met in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. At that time, Putin predicted that the bilateral meeting now under way in Moscow would be "a major event in bilateral relations." ..."
"... The Russian leader added, "By tradition, we use every opportunity to meet and to discuss bilateral relations and the international agenda." ..."
"... If Sino-Russian "tradition" is meant to describe relations further back than three decades ago, Putin exaggerates. It was not always so. A half-century retrospective on the vicissitudes of Russia-Chinese relations illustrates the difficult path they have taken. More important, it suggests their current closeness is not likely to evaporate any time soon. ..."
"... Like subterranean geological plates shifting slowly below the surface, changes with immense political repercussions can occur so gradually as to be imperceptible until the earthquake. As CIA's principal Soviet analyst on Sino-Soviet relations in the 1960s and early 1970s, I had a catbird seat watching sign after sign of intense hostility between Russia and China, and how, eventually, Nixon and Kissinger were able to exploit it to Washington's advantage. ..."
"... The grievances between the two Asian neighbors included irredentism: China claimed 1.5 million square kilometers of Siberia taken from China under what it called "unequal treaties" dating back to 1689. This had led to armed clashes during the 1960s and 1970s along the long riverine border where islands were claimed by both sides. ..."
"... In the late 1960s, Russia reinforced its ground forces near China from 13 to 21 divisions. By 1971, the number had grown to 44 divisions, and Chinese leaders began to see Russia as a more immediate threat to them than the U.S., which had fought Chinese troops during the Korean War in the 1950s and refused to recognize the country's communist leadership diplomatically, maintaining the fiction that Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists on Taiwan remained the legitimate government of China. ..."
"... Enter Henry Kissinger, who visited Beijing in 1971 to arrange the precedent-breaking visit by President Richard Nixon the next year. What followed was some highly imaginative diplomacy orchestrated by Kissinger and Nixon to exploit the mutual fear China and the USSR held for each other and the imperative each saw to compete for improved ties with Washington. ..."
"... Triangular Diplomacy ..."
"... Washington's adroit exploitation of its relatively strong position in the triangular relationship helped facilitate major, verifiable arms control agreements between the U.S. and USSR and the Four Power Agreement on Berlin. The USSR even went so far as to blame China for impeding a peaceful solution in Vietnam. ..."
"... It was one of those felicitous junctures at which CIA analysts could jettison the skunk-at-the-picnic attitude we were often forced to adopt. Rather, we could in good conscience chronicle the effects of the U.S. approach and conclude that it was having the desired effect. Because it was. ..."
"... Hostility between Beijing and Moscow was abundantly clear. In early 1972, between President Nixon's first summits in Beijing and Moscow, our analytic reports underscored the reality that Sino-Soviet rivalry was, to both sides, a highly debilitating phenomenon. ..."
"... Not only had the two countries forfeited the benefits of cooperation, but each felt compelled to devote huge effort to negate the policies of the other. A significant dimension had been added to this rivalry as the U.S. moved to cultivate better relations simultaneously with both. The two saw themselves in a crucial race to cultivate good relations with the U.S. ..."
"... The Soviet and Chinese leaders could not fail to notice how all this had increased the U.S. bargaining position. But we CIA analysts saw them as cemented into an intractable adversarial relationship by a deeply felt set of emotional beliefs, in which national, ideological, and racial factors reinforced one another. Although the two countries recognized the price they were paying, neither seemed able to see a way out. The only prospect for improvement, we suggested, was the hope that more sensible leaders would emerge in each country. But this seemed an illusory expectation at the time. ..."
"... We were wrong about that. Mao Zedong's and Nikita Khrushchev's successors proved to have cooler heads. The U.S., under President Jimmy Carter, finally recognized the communist government of China in 1979 and the dynamics of the triangular relationships among the U.S., China and the Soviet Union gradually shifted with tensions between Beijing and Moscow lessening. ..."
"... Yes, it took years to chip away at the heavily encrusted mistrust between the two countries, but by the mid-1980s, we analysts were warning policymakers that "normalization" of relations between Moscow and Beijing had already occurred slowly but surely, despite continued Chinese protestations that such would be impossible unless the Russians capitulated to all China's conditions. For their part, the Soviet leaders had become more comfortable operating in the triangular environment and were no longer suffering the debilitating effects of a headlong race with China to develop better relations with Washington. ..."
"... Still, little did we dream back then that as early as October 2004 Russian President Putin would visit Beijing to finalize an agreement on border issues and brag that relations had reached "unparalleled heights." He also signed an agreement to jointly develop Russian energy reserves. ..."
"... A revitalized Russia and a modernizing China began to represent a potential counterweight to U.S. hegemony as the world's unilateral superpower, a reaction that Washington accelerated with its strategic maneuvers to surround both Russia and China with military bases and adversarial alliances by pressing NATO up to Russia's borders and President Obama's "pivot to Asia." ..."
"... The U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, marked a historical breaking point as Russia finally pushed back by approving Crimea's request for reunification and by giving assistance to ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine who resisted the coup regime in Kiev. ..."
"... As the Russia-China relationship grew closer, the two countries also adopted remarkably congruent positions on international hot spots, including Ukraine and Syria. Military cooperation also increased steadily. Yet, a hubris-tinged consensus in the U.S. government and academe continues to hold that, despite the marked improvement in ties between China and Russia, each retains greater interest in developing good relations with the U.S. than with each other. ..."
"... The sports slogan has it that nothing is over "until the fat lady sings," but on this topic, her tones are quite clear. The day of the U.S. playing China and Russia off against each other is no more ..."
Jul 06, 2017 | www.unz.com

Top Russian and Chinese leaders are busy comparing notes, coordinating their approach to President Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Hamburg this weekend. Both sides are heralding the degree to which ties between the two countries have improved in recent years, as Chinese President Xi Jinping's visits Moscow on his way to the G20. And, they are not just blowing smoke; there is ample substance behind the rhetoric.

Whether or not Official Washington fully appreciates the gradual – but profound – change in America's triangular relationship with Russia and China over recent decades, what is clear is that the U.S. has made itself into the big loser.

Gone are the days when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger skillfully took advantage of the Sino-Soviet rivalry and played the two countries off against each other, extracting concessions from each. Slowly but surely, the strategic equation has markedly changed – and the Sino-Russian rapprochement signals a tectonic shift to Washington's distinct detriment, a change largely due to U.S. actions that have pushed the two countries closer together.

But there is little sign that today's U.S. policymakers have enough experience and intelligence to recognize this new reality and understand the important implications for U.S. freedom of action. Still less are they likely to appreciate how this new nexus may play out on the ground, on the sea or in the air.

Instead, the Trump administration – following along the same lines as the Bush-43 and Obama administrations – is behaving with arrogance and a sense of entitlement, firing missiles into Syria and shooting down Syrian planes, blustering over Ukraine, and dispatching naval forces to the waters near China.

But consider this: it may soon be possible to foresee a Chinese challenge to "U.S. interests" in the South China Sea or even the Taiwan Strait in tandem with a U.S.-Russian clash in the skies over Syria or a showdown in Ukraine.

A lack of experience or intelligence, though, may be too generous an interpretation. More likely, Washington's behavior stems from a mix of the customary, naďve exceptionalism and the enduring power of the U.S. arms lobby, the Pentagon, and the other deep-state actors – all determined to thwart any lessening of tensions with either Russia or China. After all, stirring up fear of Russia and China is a tried-and-true method for ensuring that the next aircraft carrier or other pricey weapons system gets built.

It's almost like the old days when the U.S. military budgeted to fight wars on multiple fronts simultaneously. Recent weeks saw the following:

–The guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem on Sunday sailed within 12 nautical miles of the Chinese-claimed Triton Island in the Paracels in the South China Sea. The Chinese Foreign Ministry immediately branded this "a serious political and military provocation."

–The U.S. last week announced a $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, placed sanctions on a Chinese bank for its dealings with North Korea, and labeled China the world's worst human trafficker.

–On June 20, President Donald Trump sent off a condescending tweet intimating that, at his request, China had tried but failed to help restrain North Korea's nuclear program: "It has not worked out. At least I know China tried." (Over the centuries, the Chinese have had bad experience with Western condescension.)

Common Concern: Missile Defense

On the eve of his arrival in Moscow, Xi gave an interview to Russia's TASS news agency, in which he focused on missile defense – an issue particularly close to Vladimir Putin's heart . Xi focused on U.S. deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles to South Korea as "disrupting the strategic balance in the region" and threatening the security interests of all countries in the region, including Russia and China.

Xi also reiterated that Beijing is urging Washington and Seoul to back off military pressure on North Korea, and he may even hope that South Korea's new President will react more sensibly than his predecessor who authorized THAAD deployment, which has made the North even more nervous about a possible preemptive strike. [In a seminar on the Web in February, Professor J. J. Suh and I discussed THAAD in the historical perspective of missile defense systems.]

Less than a month ago, Putin and Xi met in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. At that time, Putin predicted that the bilateral meeting now under way in Moscow would be "a major event in bilateral relations."

The Russian leader added, "By tradition, we use every opportunity to meet and to discuss bilateral relations and the international agenda."

If Sino-Russian "tradition" is meant to describe relations further back than three decades ago, Putin exaggerates. It was not always so. A half-century retrospective on the vicissitudes of Russia-Chinese relations illustrates the difficult path they have taken. More important, it suggests their current closeness is not likely to evaporate any time soon.

Like subterranean geological plates shifting slowly below the surface, changes with immense political repercussions can occur so gradually as to be imperceptible until the earthquake. As CIA's principal Soviet analyst on Sino-Soviet relations in the 1960s and early 1970s, I had a catbird seat watching sign after sign of intense hostility between Russia and China, and how, eventually, Nixon and Kissinger were able to exploit it to Washington's advantage.

The grievances between the two Asian neighbors included irredentism: China claimed 1.5 million square kilometers of Siberia taken from China under what it called "unequal treaties" dating back to 1689. This had led to armed clashes during the 1960s and 1970s along the long riverine border where islands were claimed by both sides.

In the late 1960s, Russia reinforced its ground forces near China from 13 to 21 divisions. By 1971, the number had grown to 44 divisions, and Chinese leaders began to see Russia as a more immediate threat to them than the U.S., which had fought Chinese troops during the Korean War in the 1950s and refused to recognize the country's communist leadership diplomatically, maintaining the fiction that Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists on Taiwan remained the legitimate government of China.

Enter Henry Kissinger, who visited Beijing in 1971 to arrange the precedent-breaking visit by President Richard Nixon the next year. What followed was some highly imaginative diplomacy orchestrated by Kissinger and Nixon to exploit the mutual fear China and the USSR held for each other and the imperative each saw to compete for improved ties with Washington.

Triangular Diplomacy

Washington's adroit exploitation of its relatively strong position in the triangular relationship helped facilitate major, verifiable arms control agreements between the U.S. and USSR and the Four Power Agreement on Berlin. The USSR even went so far as to blame China for impeding a peaceful solution in Vietnam.

It was one of those felicitous junctures at which CIA analysts could jettison the skunk-at-the-picnic attitude we were often forced to adopt. Rather, we could in good conscience chronicle the effects of the U.S. approach and conclude that it was having the desired effect. Because it was.

Hostility between Beijing and Moscow was abundantly clear. In early 1972, between President Nixon's first summits in Beijing and Moscow, our analytic reports underscored the reality that Sino-Soviet rivalry was, to both sides, a highly debilitating phenomenon.

Not only had the two countries forfeited the benefits of cooperation, but each felt compelled to devote huge effort to negate the policies of the other. A significant dimension had been added to this rivalry as the U.S. moved to cultivate better relations simultaneously with both. The two saw themselves in a crucial race to cultivate good relations with the U.S.

The Soviet and Chinese leaders could not fail to notice how all this had increased the U.S. bargaining position. But we CIA analysts saw them as cemented into an intractable adversarial relationship by a deeply felt set of emotional beliefs, in which national, ideological, and racial factors reinforced one another. Although the two countries recognized the price they were paying, neither seemed able to see a way out. The only prospect for improvement, we suggested, was the hope that more sensible leaders would emerge in each country. But this seemed an illusory expectation at the time.

We were wrong about that. Mao Zedong's and Nikita Khrushchev's successors proved to have cooler heads. The U.S., under President Jimmy Carter, finally recognized the communist government of China in 1979 and the dynamics of the triangular relationships among the U.S., China and the Soviet Union gradually shifted with tensions between Beijing and Moscow lessening.

Yes, it took years to chip away at the heavily encrusted mistrust between the two countries, but by the mid-1980s, we analysts were warning policymakers that "normalization" of relations between Moscow and Beijing had already occurred slowly but surely, despite continued Chinese protestations that such would be impossible unless the Russians capitulated to all China's conditions. For their part, the Soviet leaders had become more comfortable operating in the triangular environment and were no longer suffering the debilitating effects of a headlong race with China to develop better relations with Washington.

A New Reality

Still, little did we dream back then that as early as October 2004 Russian President Putin would visit Beijing to finalize an agreement on border issues and brag that relations had reached "unparalleled heights." He also signed an agreement to jointly develop Russian energy reserves.

A revitalized Russia and a modernizing China began to represent a potential counterweight to U.S. hegemony as the world's unilateral superpower, a reaction that Washington accelerated with its strategic maneuvers to surround both Russia and China with military bases and adversarial alliances by pressing NATO up to Russia's borders and President Obama's "pivot to Asia."

The U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, marked a historical breaking point as Russia finally pushed back by approving Crimea's request for reunification and by giving assistance to ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine who resisted the coup regime in Kiev.

On the global stage, Putin fleshed out the earlier energy deal with China, including a massive 30-year natural gas contract valued at $400 billion. The move helped Putin demonstrate that the West's post-Ukraine economic sanctions posed little threat to Russia's financial survival.

As the Russia-China relationship grew closer, the two countries also adopted remarkably congruent positions on international hot spots, including Ukraine and Syria. Military cooperation also increased steadily. Yet, a hubris-tinged consensus in the U.S. government and academe continues to hold that, despite the marked improvement in ties between China and Russia, each retains greater interest in developing good relations with the U.S. than with each other.

The sports slogan has it that nothing is over "until the fat lady sings," but on this topic, her tones are quite clear. The day of the U.S. playing China and Russia off against each other is no more .

One perhaps can hope that someone in the U.S. government will inform President Trump that his Russian and Chinese counterparts are singing from essentially the same songbook, the unintended result of arrogant miscalculations by his immediate predecessors. Implications for U.S. national security are enormous.

Ray McGovern was an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 year. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). He can be reached at: [email protected] . A version of this article first appeared on Consortiumnews.com.

[Jul 06, 2017] The Western nations controlled by the One World/New World Order globalist 0.1% White Collar business and banking mafia have done everything possible to take over Russia as they drool over the massive storehouse of natural treasures Russia has. Putin and the Kremlin leaders along with the military, KGB/FSB, and the Orthodox Church have no intention of allowing this conquest to happen.

Notable quotes:
"... antagonizing both, accelerating the very process he derided. It's all so predictable, and depressing. ..."
Jul 06, 2017 | www.unz.com

Carlton Meyer > , • Website

July 6, 2017 at 4:34 am GMT

Events this past year would make Henry Kissinger roll over in his grave, except he is somehow still alive. I remember when American diplomats and Generals were skilled and crafty. Since Bush II, they are mostly ignorant imbeciles who madly threaten and sometimes bomb other nations at will. They have a weekly meeting with the President to review the kill list of who they will assassinate each week, usually by drone but also by "Spec Ops" posted in nearly every nation. This will not end well.

Kyle McKenna > , July 6, 2017 at 4:43 am GMT

Headline this evening:

US missile shield not yet ready for North Korean nukes

Hmm, perhaps Israel could help us out? J/K..

Real Time > , July 6, 2017 at 5:02 am GMT

Have to love this guy. The Western nations controlled by the One World/New World Order globalist 0.1% White Collar business and banking mafia have done everything possible to take over Russia as they drool over the massive storehouse of natural treasures Russia has. Putin and the Kremlin leaders along with the military, KGB/FSB, and the Orthodox Church have no intention of allowing this conquest to happen. Currently NATO has moved troops and missiles up to the very frontiers of Russia. It has occupied Afghanistan and is moving further into the Balkans.

The U.S. and E.U. have deliberately fomented trouble inside Russia and former soviet republics like Georgia, Armenia, and Ukraine to install anti-Russian puppet governments to aid in undermining Russia. When Russia responds in a very careful and restrained manner as in occupying and annexing the Crimea, which was Russian for centuries before the Communists "gave" it to Ukraine a few decades ago, the West swiftly puts harsh economic and financial sanctions on Russia and conspires with the oil and gas companies to drive prices down on Russia's main sources of revenue.

In desperation Russia is forced into the arms of her old enemy China.

Now the neo cons and globalists are in an uproar over this supposed Sino-Russian Alliance--a marriage of convenience only as China needs Russia's natural resources at cheap prices and Russia needs China to "cover her back". Also China is increasingly concerned about her own national sovereignty and independence from the NWO. Now Putin has sent a very clear message to the Western bandits: "Back off".

No doubt Russia supplied the icbm to North Korea that was set off to coincide with America's Independence Day.

Putin in a recent interview also pointed out that international cooperation has kept Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Russia has land borders with both North Korea and Iran and hundreds of extra icbms and atomic warheads which they could easily disassemble and send to them.

Russia also has the largest military in Europe and the largest nuclear arsenal of any nation on earth.

The neo-cons and banksters and crapitalists better heed the signs and back off from Russia. A word to the wise is sufficient. Unfortunately I fear there are very few wise heads in the Western One World Order hierarchy or their political prostitute puppets. I hope and pray cooler, wiser heads on all sides will prevail and World War III, which would destroy all life on this planet, does not happen.

Anonymous > , July 6, 2017 at 5:53 am GMT

It's remarkable how well China and Russia complement one another in all aspects. The weakness of one partner is the strength of the other.

Neither Russia nor China could resist the West on its own, but together the West has no chance to take on both.

jilles dykstra > , July 6, 2017 at 7:03 am GMT

That the objects of PNAC's strategy, the AEI plan, began to cooperate should not surprise anyone, especially after Bush jr and Obama executed this strategy.

Prof Laslo Maracs of UVA university Amsterdam explains Trump's strategy from that he and his rich friends understand that continuing PNAC will ruin them, and the USA.

I cannot see any implications for USA security, neither Russia nor China shows any inclination to attack the USA.

Robert Magill > , July 6, 2017 at 9:44 am GMT

Xi also reiterated that Beijing is urging Washington and Seoul to back off military pressure on North Korea………

Perhaps Xi has countenanced that Kim Jong- un being a titular minor deity through his grandfather, has millions of followers (believers) and must perform in ways that are hard for us to fathom. The West would do well to consider his standing at home and act accordingly.

Instead, the Trump administration – following along the same lines as the Bush-43 and Obama administrations – is behaving with arrogance and a sense of entitlement, firing missiles into Syria and shooting down Syrian planes, blustering over Ukraine, and dispatching naval forces to the waters near China.

Perhaps this was all a sideshow for the minions at home who crave to 'study war' above all else. Trump is a deal maker and may surprise us at the G20 by pulling off the Deal of Deals.

http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

JL , July 6, 2017 at 10:10 am GMT

Candidate Trump was very clear in highlighting the stupidity of US policy pushing Russia into China's embrace. President Trump has continued with the same policy of antagonizing both, accelerating the very process he derided. It's all so predictable, and depressing.

Russia and China, on a cultural level, are rather incompatible. Russia is very much part of the West, while China is clearly East. However, on paper, each has what the other wants and needs. Russia has resources, land, and military technology, while China has manufacturing, loads of cash, and demand for Russia's military tech.

There is still a virulent strain of Sinophobia in Russia, especially in the military. It will probably take a generation, at least, to overcome this. It's not clear that it will happen at all. However, if current trends continue, it will. The other possibility is that the two are forced into a closer alliance sooner by US aggression.

Greg Bacon > , Website July 6, 2017 at 10:11 am GMT

But there is little sign that today's U.S. policymakers have enough experience and intelligence to recognize this new reality and understand the important implications for U.S. freedom of action.

What? You mean that Trump's slumlord son-in-law and his fashion model daughter, neither having any experience in creating foreign policy, don't have what it takes to deal with Russia and China in a meaningful, sensible way?

As a slumlord, Jared has that 'My way or the highway" attitude when jacking up rents and Ivanka knows that a shapely thigh can turn many a head, so they're a fine addition to his foreign policy team!

Johnny Smoggins > , July 6, 2017 at 11:56 am GMT

I can think of nothing better for world peace than a military alliance of Russia and China plus Iran to counter the axis of evil that is the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia.

[Jul 06, 2017] Neocon from WSJ push for confrontation with Russia by WSJ editorial board

They want the confrontation to solve internal problem. Also attacking weaker part of China-Russia alliance is less damaging to US economy the attacking China. Dismembering of Russia which neocons always wanted would solve some geopolitical problem facing the USA now. Especially after reckless adventure with the instigating coup in Ukraine.
As Ray McGovern stated "Whether or not Official Washington fully appreciates the gradual – but profound – change in America's triangular relationship with Russia and China over recent decades, what is clear is that the U.S. has made itself into the big loser." ... " A lack of experience or intelligence, though, may be too generous an interpretation. More likely, Washington's behavior stems from a mix of the customary, naďve exceptionalism and the enduring power of the U.S. arms lobby, the Pentagon, and the other deep-state actors – all determined to thwart any lessening of tensions with either Russia or China. After all, stirring up fear of Russia and China is a tried-and-true method for ensuring that the next aircraft carrier or other pricey weapons system gets built."
Notable quotes:
"... The Russian will interpret concessions as a sign of weakness. ..."
Jul 06, 2017 | nation.foxnews.com
Trump's Putin Test The Russian will interpret concessions as a sign of weakness. July 5, 2017 7:32 p.m. ET

The Russian will interpret concessions as a sign of weakness.

Donald Trump thinks of himself as a great judge of character and master deal-maker, and that could be a dangerous combination when the President meets with Vladimir Putin for the first time Friday during the G-20 meeting in Germany. The Russian strongman respects only strength, not charm, which is what Mr. Trump will have to show if he wants to help U.S. interests abroad and his own at home.

The meeting comes amid the various probes of Russian meddling into the 2016 election, and Mr. Trump's curious refusal to denounce it. There's no evidence of Trump-Russia campaign collusion, nor that Russian interference influenced the result. But the Kremlin's attempt was a deliberate affront to democracy and it has done considerable harm to Mr. Trump's Presidency. Mr. Trump should be angry at Mr. Putin on America's behalf, and his apparent insouciance has played into Democratic hands.

The irony is that on policy Mr. Trump has been tougher on Mr. Putin than either of his two predecessors. Over Kremlin objections, the U.S. President has endorsed Montenegro's entry into NATO and new NATO combat deployments in Eastern Europe. He has approved military action against Russian ally Bashar Assad in Syria even after Russian threats of retaliation.

The White House was also wise to visit Poland a day before he meets Mr. Putin. In Warsaw on Thursday he can reinforce traditional American support for Polish freedom and assert his personal and public support for NATO's Article 5 that an attack on one alliance member is an attack on all.

Perhaps most important, Mr. Trump has unleashed U.S. oil and gas production that has the potential to weaken Mr. Putin at home and in Europe. The Russian strongman needs high oil prices and wields the leverage of natural-gas supplies over Europe, and U.S. production undermines both.

Yet Mr. Putin will be looking to see if he can leverage Mr. Trump's desire for better U.S.-Russia relations to gain unilateral concessions. One Kremlin priority is easing Western sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine and President Obama's December 2016 sanctions for its election interference. The Russian foreign ministry is in particular demanding that the U.S. let Russia reopen compounds in Maryland and New York that Mr. Obama shut down.

Mr. Trump will be tempted to oblige because the compounds are ultimately of no great consequence, but the political symbolism of reopening them would still be damaging if the President gets nothing in return. Mr. Putin still denies any Russian election hacking, and to adapt Michael Corleone's line to Carlo in "The Godfather Part II," he should stop lying because it insults our intelligence. Mr. Trump should at least follow French President Emmanuel Macron's precedent and issue a face-to-face public rebuke unless Mr. Putin apologizes.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

[Jul 05, 2017] I thought nothing in Russia could shock me. Then I went to a television broadcast

Neoliberal guardian presstitute in all glory... It's a real Orwellian hate hour. Those presstitutes do love Saudi monarchy, though
But with is interesting that the tone of comments recently changes and composition of audience changed too. the number of hateful comments about Russia is astounding, and suggest some manipulation of public opinion. It is plausible that some or most comments are produced by government agencies or with the help of volunteers. It is difficult to see which comments are genuine and which are generated.
Jul 05, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
greenmanilishi ladyjanegrey , 30 Jun 2017 13:23 msm ,

Guardian,Telegraph,BBC,CNN,CBS,NBC ... all the letters of the alphabet have no intention of questioning US claims of authority to invade, attack, destroy nations who they decide are to be destroyed.... Iraq, Libya, Syria etc.etc.

Bush Cameron,Obama,Clinton, ´we came , we saw, he died, ha, ha, ha´ .....

I never heard Putin say anything like that..... push back against US war mongering and UK EU support or indifference to 25 years of destruction and mayhem... not Russian tv

Kiselev -> senya, 30 Jun 2017 13:22

That why USA have 11 peaceful aircraft carriers..Because of Russia that barely have one..

GeoffP Zepp , 30 Jun 2017 13:09

Bah: that's crap. WikiLeaks is still producing relevant stuff on the DNC and HRC as it goes along, and on the military-industrial complex in general. There's nothing wrong with that - and those that think it's 'corrupted' merely because it kicked over a beloved seizure horse really need to seriously re-examine their biases. As for this:

Their main motivation seems to be that acknowledging that Putin is a vicious dictator who interfered in US election denigrates Wikileaks.

??? Who in the hell thinks that? In short: citation needed. Badly.

doskey , 30 Jun 2017 13:07
I'm sorry as much as I would like to jump on the bandwagon (and there's much wrong in Russia), but isn't this article speaking for exactly what the police accused the writer accused of - journalism?

If he indeed came on a tourist visa and does investigative work, that is in a shady area, whatever the country. If I come to the U.S. and speak to groups as the Resistance, Black Lives Matter and democratic party leaders, I'd hardly classify as a tourist, no?

lochinverboy , 30 Jun 2017 11:23
Given the truly odious regimes we do business with and never criticise, it is telling that we never hear anything positive about Russia. Nor did we when it was part of the Communist USSR. It can't be an orchestrated US led campaign of destabilisation to allow the West access to those huge oil and gas resources!!!
footbollocks Guardianangell , 30 Jun 2017 10:42
>>"Ah, yes I remember Russia invading several countries in the last, lets say 15 years. Damn, we should keep a close eye on them."
Your reply appears to be alluding to several recent US led attacks on Arab regimes. Accordingly, in so far as it engages my observation that Putin's Russia approaches a fascist dictatorship that is a threat to countries on its borders, to the EU and to liberal democracy, you suggests one of four things:
(a) The US likewise approaches a fascist dictatorship
(b) The US poses a similar threat to the EU
(c) The US poses a similar threat to liberal democracy
(d) The US poses a similar threat to the countries on Russia's borders.
Plainly, however, all of (a) to (d) are false.
I conclude that the evident pleasure you take in what seems to you to be a clever comment is smug and delusional.
Martyn Richard Jones , 30 Jun 2017 10:37

These days Russia woos like a gangster, not a lover.

That's not the impression I get, at all. I find them to be relatively restrained, thoughtful and civil. Especially given the expansionist antics that NATO has got up to over the years.

It's easy to point the finger at Moscow, a habit that is over a century old. If the west had taken Thatcher's advice over the handling of the USSR, none of this would have probably come to pass.

dorotea petesire , 30 Jun 2017 10:25
It all really boils down to what kind of facts he was after. To, me, his whole piece sounds pretty much like hate-mongering, and yes it also can be classified as propaganda. So, the dude went to Russia pretty much with an agenda of collecting facts fitting with his already planned and pre-commissioned book, and then is so much 'surprised' when the trip is classified as professional work , not tourism. And when they asked him to sign paperwork confirming that he was travelling as a pro - he called it 'fake'. Wonderful way of presenting things that rivals the tv show he is so much disgusted with. Btw, if you want to enjoy real Orwellian hate-hour - just travel to US and turn on CNN , or any other mass media tv channel.
andrewboston , 30 Jun 2017 10:23
kleptocratic clique
-- just like Trump and May
Nazi weren't a different, long extinct species, they're alive and well as Rethugricans and Torys, today, mostly.
The UK Empire and the USA Empire are among the greatest evil the world has seen.... and they need enemies to maintain war profits.
Paul4701 , 30 Jun 2017 10:19
Interesting article, but let's be honest. It has become long clear that non-Western nations can not be viewed with Western social and political goggles. Putin might not meet many of the check boxes that symbolize Western (Democratic Values), neither does the US when we take a good close look or any of the other Western countries.
Point being: hate mongering by Russian TV is being seen as scary yet most Russian view Western Media as Hate-Mongers against Russia.
Tell me: Who is right here?
Yessen Bulumbayev chris rhode , 30 Jun 2017 10:03
Nice democracy you are having - population brainwashed by corrupted, aligned with warmongering foreign policy -->
Gwydion Madawc Williams , 30 Jun 2017 09:52
Yet another article that fails to face up to the West's abysmal failure in Russia in the 1990s. Then, they thought the West was friendly to the new non-Communist Russia. A Russia that had given up its Colonial Empire than any nation in the West managed.

The Yeltsin years saw a rise in the death rate, a shrinking of the economy and vast amounts of public property pass into the hands of crooks. This happened thanks to crackpot New Right schemes that issued shares as individual property of the company workers. Outside of New Right fairy tails, it was absolutely predictable that almost all of them would be sold for immediate cash profit. And not unexpected that it was crooks who scooped the big prizes.

Setting up genuine collectives in which you can't sell your share for cash might have worked. Anathema to the New Right, even though such schemes work and there need not be anything leftist about them.

So, years of miserable failure under Yeltsin. A recovery under Putin, whom polls show to be one of the most popular Russians ever. Though coming second to Stalin, and Western 'experts' should be wondering why instead of sneering at it from what they suppose to be a position of superior wisdom.

A 'wisdom' coming mostly from the widespread influence of Trotskyists and former Trotskyists. That this view has wholly failed to work in the real world does not put them off. (See https://gwydionwilliams.com/history-and-philosophy/why-trotksys-politics-achieved-nothing-solid /)

Protestors say that this was all wrong. That the majority who still back Putin are not allowed to do this, for unexplained reasons.

General Russian intolerance for the tiny minority nostalgic for the years of Russia's decline and humiliation is regrettable. But hardly unexpected. Do you think Britons would be any more tolerant had they been though something similar? You need only look at Northern Ireland and the dominant DUP to get the answer.

Or UKIP, which surged until the Tories took over many of its policies.

Yessen Bulumbayev jadamsj , 30 Jun 2017 09:47
Don't be lazy, read the report of UN inspection group report about gas attacks in 2013, which freely available online, before making whose baseless accusations. Or just watch the video http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-22424188 Carla Del Ponte ex-leading member of a UN commission of inquiry saying that rebels used sarin.
Dregsy , 30 Jun 2017 09:46
Sorry, were you there on a work visa or a holiday visa? And what was the work visa for? It sounds to me like you've been pulled up and let off lightly for doing something you know better than to do. -->
wartypig , 30 Jun 2017 09:44
The new Russia is a reflexion of western policy, the more the west interfere tne more nationalistic and oppressive they will become. It seems Mr Putin may have detractors and yes he is becoming ever more authoritarian but he still has popular support as far as I'm aware.

This is a issue that the Russian people will resolve in their own time in their own unique manner, interference simply closes ranks. There seems to be a concerted effort to demonize Russia by the western press yet the west allies its self with far more oppressive regimes, it is a glaring double standard, this alone makes me question the validity of all anti Russian articles.

Mr Putin has a habit of serving radioactive tea to his fellow citizens so if invited to dinner I would insist on a food taster, that alone wouldn't stop me going if invited, not that our secret services are beyond such nefarious activitys.

Perdito , 30 Jun 2017 09:40
Doesn't sound much different from an average episode of Jeremy Kyle or Jerry Springer. Mr Roxburgh should watch more TV.

As for 'teenage supporters of Alexei Navalny', here is a view from a Russian on this latest western-sponsored hero of resistance to Putin:

http://www.unz.com/akarlin/signifying-navalny/?highlight=Navalny

The fact is that four out of five Russians like the status quo, don't like being falsely accused of 'invading' Ukraine or 'stealing' Crimea, don't like Poland facilitating NATO aggression, don't like being denounced (by neocons, already) for doing the dirty work of cleaning out ISIS in Syria.

In general they don't like foreigners lecturing them on how to become more like the Europe or America which have so often tried to conquer and plunder them- unsuccessfully. They still remember what neoliberal economics did to the country after communism packed up.

They want to be Russians, and sometimes they express that preference somewhat crudely. They think it takes a strongman to hold the place together, be he Nevsky, Ivan, Peter the Great, Suvorov, Stolypin or Stalin. They judge the latest iteration of the strongman figure rather less dictatorial and punitive than his predecessors.

Since the RF is slowly and fitfully becoming more capitalist and more Christian, why not stop riling it and concentrate on the world's really bad actors- instead of portraying Putin as a modern Blofeld, because the military industrial complex needs more arms orders?

lordtruth , 30 Jun 2017 09:29
Here is someone who is basically a journalist who travels to Russia and gets a job thus breaking the laws about tourism and work that exist everywhere in the world particularly in Britian see Brexit problems He is arrested and given a small fine whats his problem?
His function as a tourist/spy journalist is to write an article attacking every aspect of Russia ,its people and government.
What is behind all this insane talk about the Russians the Russians?
Its quite simple really. America has ways believed that its destiny is to rule and control the world.
Its main enemy has always been the British which is why it supported Germany in WW1 AND The Nazis in WW2 confidently expecting Britiain to be invaded and defeated (there was no way that had America could have helped Britain if this had happened at such a late stage.
After WW2 there was Russia to contend with.Of course there was no real threat but the cold war kept the US defence industry going and gave Americans good jobs
With the collapse of the Soviet Union the full greed of America was unleashed which has resulted in an appallingly broken nation with two thirds of Americans living in appalling conditions while the rich get richer every day. In this situation there is only one thing to be done ..bring on the big Russian Bear. Nothing makes poor people forget their misery like being frightened and having someone to hate. Its true Russia also has750 nuclear missiles ready to fire at the west and that does irritate Americans but its nothing compared to America
America is trying to humiliate Russia by destroying Russias only ally in the Middle east Syria and has used the western media to use every trick to demonise Assad
Will America actually destroy the world as a result of all this? Possibly if not probably
Meanwhile the best advice is stop reading articles attacking Russia Support Putin and Assad and if you cant ,go on holiday and wait for the nuclear cloud coming soon to a town like yours....
TrueTeller , 30 Jun 2017 09:21
Let me understand something. You go to Russia and called the Russian government a kleptocracy and the police as thuggish then expect to be treated with respect and with love. Come to New York with that nonsense and you may well end up in our local hospital if you're lucky. -->
Ieuan RoeMaporix , 30 Jun 2017 09:00
RoeMaporix asked: "Does anyone over here actually like Putin?"

No doubt I'll get labelled a 'Putinbot', but I reckon there could be worse people in charge of Russia. Alas Yeltsin and his entourage encouraged the Russian mafia (oligarchs) so much that Putin had a hell of a job to try and clear up the mess he left.

It amuses me that the mafia trusted him so much that they installed him, and then he turned on them (moral: never trust a cop). Unfortunately to make any inroads into the gangster state he took over, he had to act like a gangster himself, but you only have to look at his enemies to see that out of a very bad choice, he was probably the best.

Ordinary Russians seem to like/approve of him, and that is all that matters for me, he reflects their values (unpopular as they may be in the 'liberal' west.)

He also strikes me as a very clever man who goes his own way (which are virtues I respect) who also surrounds himself with very clever advisors.

Jared Hall ngonyama , 30 Jun 2017 08:37
There's no evidence of that. Even CNN producers are saying it's bullshit now.

CNN Senior Producer Admits "Russia Story All Bullsh*t" -->

Yarkob Bauhaus , 30 Jun 2017 08:36
Yes, coupled with the pre-crime in Syria it really does sound like the drumbeat for war is starting..oh and for an excellent set of responses to the first "chemical attack" ignore the massively biased and under researched hogwash from the OPCW and check out Theodor Postol's papers, and also Sy Hersh' excellent piece in Die Welt this week..No, I won't provide links. If people are really interested in finding out the truth, a little self-reliance is necessary these days..

You're welcome

Brenda Micheletti , 30 Jun 2017 08:04
Eventually, they let me off with a small fine

You have not been in a British Cell, by the sound of it.
Navalny was posting from his cell on the internet.
Here they take your glasses away so that you cannot see.

We had enough of so much sugar pushed down our throats.
Propaganda unlimited.

Arapas , 30 Jun 2017 07:54
Tourists should walk round Red Square and go to the Bolshoi, not interview politicians or visit environmental disaster zones, or meet teenage supporters of Putin

I know of people who got barred from entering the UK, and even worse barred from entering the US because of their religion.
It is a fact that troublemakers are not welcome in any country, except Iraq and Libya.

[Jul 04, 2017] I Sure Hope That I am Wrong, But by saker

Notable quotes:
"... Missile Crisis. Not only are Russian and US servicemen now deployed in the same war zone (the Americans totally illegally), but unlike what happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis we have a US President who terminally lacks the willpower to deal with the crazies on the US side, I am talking about the Neocons, of course. ..."
"... In fact, under Kennedy there were no real Neocons to tackle to begin with. Now they are running the White House ..."
"... Second, it is absolutely clear that the US Ziomedia and Congress will declare any, any, positive outcome from the meeting as "Trump caved in to Putin" and try to get a pound of political flesh out of Trump for it. So for Trump any external success will mean an internal disaster. And we already know that the man does not have what it takes to deal with such attacks. Frankly, his only "tactic", so to speak, to deal with the Neocons has been to try to appease them. So short of Trump asking for political asylum in Russia and joining Snowden somewhere in Russia, I don't see him ever taking any independent action. ..."
"... Third, if we look at the people around Trump it is pretty clear that the only intelligent and rational person in the White House is Rex Tillerson. The rest of them are lunatics, maniacs and imbeciles – the current US what shall I call it-"actions" (can't call it a "policy") towards Syria clearly prove that the Executive Branch is completely out of control. ..."
"... We now can clearly see that Mattis and McMaster are not these military geniuses presented to us by the Ziomedia but that, in fact, they are both phenomenally incompetent and that their views of the conflicts in Syria and even Afghanistan can only be characterized as totally lacking anything remotely resembling any kind of vision. ..."
"... For all his intelligence, Tillerson can't even rein in this Nikki idiot at the United Nations. ..."
"... Please don't buy this sanctions canard. The damage these sanctions could do they have already done. The simple truth is that Russia has already survived the sanctions and come out even stronger, this is confirmed by international organizations and by the private sector . In fact, removing the sanctions right now would hurt the Russian economy far more, especially the agricultural sector, which has greatly benefited from the de-facto protectionist protection provided to the Russian economy by these sanctions. ..."
"... Besides, since Congress and UN Nikki have made it pretty darn clear that sanctions will remain in place until Russia agrees to return Crimea to the Ukraine, nothing will change until the current Ukraine finally breaks into three or four parts. ..."
"... As for the Ukraine, the situation there is so bad that an increasing number of specialists are saying that even the US has lost control of Banderastan and that now it's going to be all about intra-Ukie power plays: the social, political, military, cultural and economic disaster has reached what I would call an "escape velocity" when the various processes taking place are basically chaotic, unpredictable and unmanageable. I am personally very dubious that the Americans would have anything to offer the Russians. ..."
Jul 04, 2017 | www.unz.com

First, we should all stop kidding ourselves, Russia and the USA do not have "disagreements". The sad and frightening reality is that we are now closer to war than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not only are Russian and US servicemen now deployed in the same war zone (the Americans totally illegally), but unlike what happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis we have a US President who terminally lacks the willpower to deal with the crazies on the US side, I am talking about the Neocons, of course.

In fact, under Kennedy there were no real Neocons to tackle to begin with. Now they are running the White House while Trump serves them coffee or watches TV in another room (I am joking of course, but just barely). In this context, to meet on the "sidelines" of a G20 conference is bordering on the criminally irresponsible. What the world would need is for Trump and Putin to meet in a "Camp David" like format for at least 3-5 days with all their key advisors and officials. Even if we assume 100% good will on both sides, meeting on the "sidelines" of an already big conference just won't make it possible to get anything done. In the very best of cases Lavrov and Tillerson could have done most of the hard work away from the public eye, but the truth is that the Russians say that so far the two sides have not even agreed upon an agenda.

Second, it is absolutely clear that the US Ziomedia and Congress will declare any, any, positive outcome from the meeting as "Trump caved in to Putin" and try to get a pound of political flesh out of Trump for it. So for Trump any external success will mean an internal disaster. And we already know that the man does not have what it takes to deal with such attacks. Frankly, his only "tactic", so to speak, to deal with the Neocons has been to try to appease them. So short of Trump asking for political asylum in Russia and joining Snowden somewhere in Russia, I don't see him ever taking any independent action.

Third, if we look at the people around Trump it is pretty clear that the only intelligent and rational person in the White House is Rex Tillerson. The rest of them are lunatics, maniacs and imbeciles – the current US what shall I call it-"actions" (can't call it a "policy") towards Syria clearly prove that the Executive Branch is completely out of control.

We now can clearly see that Mattis and McMaster are not these military geniuses presented to us by the Ziomedia but that, in fact, they are both phenomenally incompetent and that their views of the conflicts in Syria and even Afghanistan can only be characterized as totally lacking anything remotely resembling any kind of vision. Yet these two "geniuses" seem to be in charge.

For all his intelligence, Tillerson can't even rein in this Nikki idiot at the United Nations. We should stop kidding ourselves and stop pretending like there is anybody to talk to for the Russians. At best, they are dealing with a Kindergarten. At worst, they are dealing with an evil Kindergarten. But either way, there is nobody to talk to on the US side, much less so somebody to begin solving the many issues that need solving.

I will admit that I did have high hopes for Trump and his apparent willingness to sit down and have an adult conversation with the Russians. I was especially inspired by Trump's repeated rejection of the Ziomedia's narrative about Russia and by what appeared to me as his "no nonsense" approach towards getting things done. I wrote many articles for this blog saying that having hopes (not expectations!) for Trump was the right thing to do. And, frankly, I think that at the time it was. Last Fall I even wrote an entire chapter on this topic in the book " Russian Military Power 2017 " report. Since it is pretty well written, I actually recommend that you download and read it: it is a mix of pretty good information about the Russian Armed Forces and the garden variety nonsense about Russian hackers and their cyber-threat to US and its allies. Just set aside the clearly politically-induced nonsense and you are left with a rather well made summary of what the Russian Armed Forces are up to these days.

I have to thank the DIA for this report: it made me feel young again, like I was in the 1980s when all the students of warfare and of the Soviet military were reading these annual "Soviet Military Power" reports with great interest. But other than making some of us feel young, the real purpose of this document is clear and it is the very same one behind the Cold War era "Soviet Military Power" series: to justify an increase in "defense" (i.e. "aggression") spending by showing how scary these evil Commies/Russkies were/are.

This would all be rather funny, and nostalgic in a way, if it did not show the total lack of imagination of the folks at the Pentagon. Far from coming up with anything novel or interesting, they are bringing back into service stuff which for years had been collecting dust in the memories of now mostly retired Cold Warriors. It is rather pathetic, really.

Over the past 30 years or so, Russia went from being the Soviet Union, to being a Somalia-like "democratic hell" during the 1990s, to becoming a completely new entity – a "New Russia" which is dramatically different from the Soviet Union of the 1980s. In contrast, the US got completely stuck in its old patterns, except for this time they are "the same, but even worse". If the US did not have nukes that would almost be okay (after all, the world can let "Uncle Sam" slowly lose his sclerotic brain, who cares?) but when a nuclear superpower is acting like an out-of-control rogue state, this is very, very, scary.

So back to our G20 meeting again. The first thing which needs to be said is that Trump is weak, extremely weak: he goes in with the Ziomedia and Congress hating him and with a basically treacherous White House team clearly controlled by Pence, Kushner and the rest of the Neocon crazies. To make things worse, Trump can offer the Russians absolutely nothing they would want or need.

Please don't buy this sanctions canard. The damage these sanctions could do they have already done. The simple truth is that Russia has already survived the sanctions and come out even stronger, this is confirmed by international organizations and by the private sector . In fact, removing the sanctions right now would hurt the Russian economy far more, especially the agricultural sector, which has greatly benefited from the de-facto protectionist protection provided to the Russian economy by these sanctions. Likewise, the Russian defense industry has successfully adapted to the total severance by the Ukronazi regime of all the defense contracts with Russia and now 100% Russian military systems and parts are being produced in Russia at a cheaper price and of a higher quality. Besides, since Congress and UN Nikki have made it pretty darn clear that sanctions will remain in place until Russia agrees to return Crimea to the Ukraine, nothing will change until the current Ukraine finally breaks into three or four parts.

Trump could, in theory, offer the Russians to stop sabotaging the peace process in Syria and the Russians would surely welcome that. But since the US policy of illegal air and missile strikes combined with a deployment of US forces on the ground in Syria is failing anyway, see here and here , the Russians are going to get what they want whether the US wants it or not.

As for the Ukraine, the situation there is so bad that an increasing number of specialists are saying that even the US has lost control of Banderastan and that now it's going to be all about intra-Ukie power plays: the social, political, military, cultural and economic disaster has reached what I would call an "escape velocity" when the various processes taking place are basically chaotic, unpredictable and unmanageable. I am personally very dubious that the Americans would have anything to offer the Russians.

Mao Cheng Ji, July 3, 2017 at 8:07 pm GMT

In Syria, the only problem the Pentagon has is no air superiority. Without air superiority the Pentagon is helpless. Russia could give them that, maybe partially at least, in some areas. And Ukraine - without regular cash infusions Kiev is dead. And that's what Trump could offer (maybe. He would have to grow some balls). And that's a possible deal.

Anatoly Karlin, Website July 3, 2017 at 8:30 pm GMT

Yes, this sounds about right.

Russia should use this window of opportunity to aggressively push its geopolitical interests, including in Ukraine (it is most assuredly not going to break "into three or four parts" by itself).

If Trump 2016 wins out, great. If the neocons fully reassert control, Russia is gonna get squeezed further regardless.

Dod, July 4, 2017 at 3:23 am GMT

I find it unsettling that someone whom I trusted can see "Nikki" as a person, with personal ideas. She doesn't recall her real name and her religion; how could she give a damn about whatever she spouts on orders from whoever is the object of her sycophancy?

fnn, July 4, 2017 at 5:23 am GMT

The real enemy of the US is domestic. Ex-CIA analyst Michael Scheuer thinks he is waging war against them with his tweets:

http://non-intervention.com/2789/pour-it-on-mr-trump-tweet-the-lying-bastards-and-bitches-straight-to-hell/

He may be giving Trump too much credit, but I'm in no position to judge. Nevertheless, we know who the consistent warmongers have been.

[Jul 04, 2017] US Senate Strikes for Russian Equality – The Oligarchs Targeted in New Sanctions Bill

Notable quotes:
"... By John Helmer , the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears ..."
"... The combined impact of war, sanctions, devaluation of the rouble, and the collapse of oil and other commodity prices, has been to diminish the value of most classes of Russian assets. Wealth for everyone below the millionaire level has been dwindling because home values have fallen, along with income, while debt has risen in absolute and proportional terms. According to the Credit Suisse report, "we estimate that [debt] now equals 16% of gross assets – up from 12% two years ago." ..."
"... A new study on inequality in Russia, published in February by the Analytical Centre of the Russian Government, confirms that the impacts on income, assets, and net wealth have been bad for the middle class of Russian income earners, and disastrous for the Russian poor. The divide between rich and poor has been getting worse, according to this English summary. ..."
"... So it is now the calculation of the US Senate, to be followed by the Congress and likely by the President, that Putin's greatest vulnerability in the present situation is not simply cronies like Timchenko, Kovalchuk or the Rotenbergs, but the inequality of the entire Russian oligarchical system. ..."
"... S.722 goes much further, codifying the existing Russian sanctions in statute which the White House cannot relieve by presidential decree; imposing new sanctions the same way; and setting up a scheme of reporting of new targets. By itself, the report process will immediately trigger informal sanctions, with or without the formal orders to follow. ..."
"... In this new Senate bill, the targeting is no longer crimes committed, or even the restraint of competition, but Russian wealth itself, and the oligarchs who have most of it. That is revolutionary. So is the exception in Section 241(a)(1)(A) for "their closeness to the Russian regime". That's a call for the oligarchs to join Mikhail Khodorkovsky in open rebellion. ..."
Jul 04, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Posted on July 4, 2017 by Yves Smith By John Helmer , the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

Not since the German government arranged for Vladimir Lenin to return to Russia, crossing German territory in a sealed train on April 16, 1917, has a foreign state at war with Russia done something as revolutionary as the US Senate did on June 15, 2017. That is when, by a vote of 98 to 2, the senators began the process of attacking the Russian oligarchs. They are the men who have dominated the Russian economy for more than twenty years, concentrating more national wealth in their hands than can be found in any other major state in the world today.

Unremarked by the senators themselves; unreported by the American press; and unnoticed, almost, in Russia, the new measure - if adopted by the full Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump - will target the oligarchs' lines of credit to international banks; the brokers, repositories and clearinghouses of their shares and bonds; their trade with the US and Europe; their US companies, bank accounts, boats on the high seas and homes abroad. If targeting the oligarchs is followed by formal sanctions, the aim will be to destroy their power at home and abroad. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation hasn't contemplated this much.

Senate Bill S. 722 started in March with Iran as its target. For short, it was called the ''Countering Iran's Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017''. Title I of the bill and 29 pages of its provisions deal with Iran. Then Title II was added. It runs for 94 pages and targets Russia. Read the text in full here .

The Anglo-American business media have reported the bill as an escalation in US economic sanctions against Russian targets, extending beyond the oil and gas sector. The Wall Street Journal interpreted the legislation as an attempt to "wrest more control of Russia policy from the Trump administration". The Financial Times reported the bill would "tighten existing sanctions and threatens to broaden the restrictions from energy and banking to metals, mining, railways and shipping."

The newspaper failed to read the small print, noticing few of the novel details, except for one - the bill's threat to strike at European companies engaged in building and operating the new Russian gas pipeline to Germany, Nord Stream II. According to Section 232, the US will prohibit a company from "mak[ing] an investment described in subsection (b) or sells, leases, or provides to the Russian Federation, for the construction of Russian energy export pipelines, goods, services, technology, information, or support described in subsection (c)- (1) any of which has a fair market value of $1,000,000 or more; or (2) that, during a 12-month period, have an aggregate fair market value of $5,000,000 or more."

In practice, as the text of the bill continues, this is aimed at all Russian exports of energy, including pipelines under the Black Sea and in the Far East, and tanker shipping, particularly the oil and gas tanker company, Sovcomflot. Privatization of part of the state shareholding in Sovcomflot, which has been postponed for years, has been promised by federal property agency officials for later this month.

However, the Senate bill threatens to sanction any company, US or other, which makes an investment of up to $10 million "if the investment directly and significantly contributes to the ability of the Russian Federation to privatize state-owned assets in a manner that unjustly benefits- (1) officials of the Government of the Russian Federation; or (2) close associates or family members of those officials." That puts the kybosh on Gennady Timchenko, front-runner for the Sovcomflot share sale, and father-in-law of Gleb Frank, son of the chief executive of Sovcomflot, Sergei Frank. For background, read this .

But the Senate bill goes much further than attacking foreign investment in share sales for Russian state companies. It attacks the shareholding control of most of the country's resource assets – that's to say, the oligarchs. Section 241 of the new bill is entitled "Report on Oligarchs and Parastatal Entities of the Russian Federation." Read carefully .

"(a) In general.-Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of State, shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a detailed report on the following:

(1) Senior foreign political figures and oligarchs in the Russian Federation, including the following:

(A) An identification of the most significant senior foreign political figures and oligarchs in the Russian Federation, as determined by their closeness to the Russian regime and their net worth.

(B) An assessment of the relationship between individuals identified under subparagraph (A) and President Vladimir Putin or other members of the Russian ruling elite.

(C) An identification of any indices of corruption with respect to those individuals.

(D) The estimated net worth and known sources of income of those individuals and their family members (including spouses, children, parents, and siblings), including assets, investments, other business interests, and relevant beneficial ownership information.

(E) An identification of the non-Russian business affiliations of those individuals.

(2) Russian parastatal entities, including an assessment of the following:

(A) The emergence of Russian parastatal entities and their role in the economy of the Russian Federation.

(B) The leadership structures and beneficial ownership of those entities.

(C) The scope of the non-Russian business affiliations of those entities."

(3) The exposure of key economic sectors of the United States to Russian politically exposed persons and parastatal entities, including, at a minimum, the banking, securities, insurance, and real estate sectors.

(4) The likely effects of imposing debt and equity restrictions on Russian parastatal entities, as well as the anticipated effects of adding Russian parastatal entities to the list of specially designated nationals and blocked persons maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Department of the Treasury.

(5) The potential impacts of imposing secondary sanctions with respect to Russian oligarchs, Russian state-owned enterprises, and Russian parastatal entities, including impacts on the entities themselves and on the economy of the Russian Federation, as well as on the economies of the United States and allies of the United States."

The senators voted in favour without deciding on a definition of Russian oligarch, corruption, "closeness to the regime", "relationship to President Vladimir Putin or other members of the Russian ruling elite", or "parastatal". Still, the meaning and intention are as clear as the US Air Force's MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) – the bunker buster. The targeting of Section 241 includes almost every major Russian corporation, its control shareholders, associated banks, and their offshore businesses. The stated aim is nothing less than to destroy those of them who side with the Kremlin; recruit the remainder for US-backed regime change; and pit each against the other, all against the Kremlin.

Selective oligarch targeting is already in effect; click to open for the current list. Timchenko has been sanctioned by the US and the European Union since 2014. Other oligarchs also proscribed include Sergei Chemezov, head of the state asset holding, Russian Technologies (Rostec); Yury Kovalchuk of Bank Rossiya; Boris and Arkady Rotenberg, who control SMP Bank plus pipeline and infrastructure businesses, and Roman Rotenberg, Boris's son; Igor Sechin, chief executive of Rosneft; Nikolai Shamalov, also of Bank Rossiya and father of Kirill Shamalov, Putin's son-in-law; and Vladimir Yakunin, former head of state-owned Russian Railways.

The Christmas dinner which Putin has hosted each year since the war started in Ukraine identifies by name four dozen potential targets in the latest act of US war. Read the guest list for 2014 ; for 2015 ; and for 2016 .

The pre-dinner speech-making session at the Kremlin oligarch dinner, December 19, 2016. Source: http://johnhelmer.net/oligarchs-on-the-skids-president-putin-goes-down-market-for-capital-reception-next-year-labour-union-bosses/

Missing from the official sanctions lists so far, but with substantial US assets, are Anatoly Chubais, head of the state high-technology holding Rusnano; Mikhail Abyzov , financial backer of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and minister of open government in his cabinet; and Mikhail Fridman of the Alfa Bank, LetterOne and Vimpelcom groups. Vimpelcom has been prosecuted for corruption by the US Department of Justice and fined $397.6 million, the ninth largest such penalty in US history. More recently, Alfa was targeted for allegedly operating clandestine connections with the Trump presidential campaign.

Two of the oligarchs with valuable residential assets in New York, and solid relationships with Putin, are Oleg Deripaska (lead image), who controls the state aluminium monopoly Rusal; and Roman Abramovich, the control shareholder of the Evraz steel group, which runs steel and pipemills in the US and Canada. Deripaska owns at least two homes in Manhattan, but is prevented from living there by a longstanding US visa ban which his Washington lobbyist has been unable to remove. For Deripaska's New York assets, read this ruling of April 25, 2017, by New York Supreme Court Judge Anil Singh.

Source: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=pFEUA7VGZSJVzEDl_PLUS_NHiTg==&system=prod An unredacted version of the text of the order can be read here . This reveals that Deripaska continues to be targeted by a US visa ban. One of the redactions Deripaska lawyers have obtained in the court docket reads: "Deripaska emphasizes that his access to New York is blocked because of a visa problem. Although he has been able to enter New York on a diplomatic visa, his visits to New York since 2009 have been limited to ten trips for a total of less than 30 nights. When he was directed by the court to make an effort to attend a trial as a witness in a case in New York in the Fall of2015, he applied for a visa, but his request was denied."

To view Abramovich's homes on East 75 th Street, Manhattan, click to open .

Another way to anticipate who will be informally targeted by the US shortly - formally later - is to look at the concentration of Russian wealth, and identify Russia's ultra high net worth individuals, the multi-millionaires. By world standards, the Russian count is in the top-20, but trails far behind the US, China, and several European and Pacific Rim countries.

Source: http://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/index.cfm?fileid=AD783798-ED07-E8C2-4405996B5B02A32E

But when the count is of billionaires and of concentration of national assets in their hands, Russia leads. In its latest Global Wealth Report for 2016, Credit Suisse reports: "According to our estimates, the top decile of wealth-holders owns 89% of all household wealth in Russia. This is significantly higher than any other major economic power: the corresponding figure is 78% for the United States, for example, and 73% for China. The high concentration of wealth in Russia is reflected in the fact that it has an estimated 96 billionaires – a total exceeded only by China with 244, and the USA with 582."

The combined impact of war, sanctions, devaluation of the rouble, and the collapse of oil and other commodity prices, has been to diminish the value of most classes of Russian assets. Wealth for everyone below the millionaire level has been dwindling because home values have fallen, along with income, while debt has risen in absolute and proportional terms. According to the Credit Suisse report, "we estimate that [debt] now equals 16% of gross assets – up from 12% two years ago."

"Household wealth in Russia grew rapidly in the initial years of this century, as the country boomed along with global commodity markets. Between 2000 and 2007, wealth per adult rose eightfold. Since 2007, however, growth has been slow and uneven – up 14% to date in ruble terms, but down 56% when measured in current USD, due to ruble depreciation. The USD–RUB rate rose from 25 in 2007 to 34 in mid-2014, and then shot up to 60 by the end of 2014 due to the imposition of financial sanctions. The rate was 64 in mid-2016. While household wealth per adult has risen from USD 2,940 in 2000 to USD 10,340 today, the current level is barely above that of ten years ago."

A new study on inequality in Russia, published in February by the Analytical Centre of the Russian Government, confirms that the impacts on income, assets, and net wealth have been bad for the middle class of Russian income earners, and disastrous for the Russian poor. The divide between rich and poor has been getting worse, according to this English summary.

Source: http://ac.gov.ru/files/publication/a/11944.pdf -- page 5.

So it is now the calculation of the US Senate, to be followed by the Congress and likely by the President, that Putin's greatest vulnerability in the present situation is not simply cronies like Timchenko, Kovalchuk or the Rotenbergs, but the inequality of the entire Russian oligarchical system.

In the past, there was a brief attempt by the US intelligence services to target some of the oligarchs. In 2010, when Admiral Dennis Blair was Director of National Intelligence (DNI), his annual threat assessment for the US Senate Intelligence Committee reported "[there is] a growing nexus in Russian and Eurasian states among government, organized crime, intelligence services, and big business figures. An increasing risk from Russian organized crime is that criminals and criminally linked oligarchs will enhance the ability of state or state-allied actors to undermine competition in gas, oil, aluminum, and precious metals markets." Implied but unnamed were Alexei Miller (Gazprom), Deripaska (aluminium), and Suleiman Kerimov (gold).

A year later, Blair's successor as DNI, Lieutenant-General James Clapper, repeated the line: "The nexus in Russian and Eurasian states among some government officials, organized crime, intelligence services, and big business figures enhances the ability of state or state-allied actors to undermine competition in gas, oil, aluminum, and precious metals markets." Read more .

The DNI annual reports were no more than that – no action was recommended, and none followed.

S.722 goes much further, codifying the existing Russian sanctions in statute which the White House cannot relieve by presidential decree; imposing new sanctions the same way; and setting up a scheme of reporting of new targets. By itself, the report process will immediately trigger informal sanctions, with or without the formal orders to follow.

In this new Senate bill, the targeting is no longer crimes committed, or even the restraint of competition, but Russian wealth itself, and the oligarchs who have most of it. That is revolutionary. So is the exception in Section 241(a)(1)(A) for "their closeness to the Russian regime". That's a call for the oligarchs to join Mikhail Khodorkovsky in open rebellion.

cocomaan , July 4, 2017 at 7:32 pm

Hell, if the DNI can do this for the Russians, imagine what we could do for America!!!!

IowanX , July 4, 2017 at 8:07 pm

Trump veto, I suspect. For "Fake News" reasons. Doubt an over-ride. Let's get this over with, and move onto common sense. American legislators are clueless as always, but the blob remains on the attack.

Biph , July 4, 2017 at 8:39 pm

It passed the Senate 98-2, I don't know why you doubt an over ride. Do you think 32 Senators will change their mind or that it won't get 2/3 of the House?

RBHoughton , July 4, 2017 at 8:11 pm

The Bill effectively requires Europe to shoot themselves in the other foot or cease using USD for exchange in Russian trade.

Europe's problem will be Poland where fear and trembling of Russia finds its European root. The Polish Government would choose poverty before Russian trade and the country has worked assiduously to build connections and friendships in the EC and parliament. In fact Poland has been America's 'foot in the door' in Europe and the first shipment of US fracked gas has already been received in that country.

If America can quickly build the LNG carriers needed for the trade there may be a prospect of keeping US fracking alive whilst diminishing Russian trade but this is contrary to European interests at a time when the neocon influence in Washington is driving many former friends away.

JTMcPhee , July 4, 2017 at 9:20 pm

And now The Koreans Have Launched An ICBM That Could Reach Sarah Palin's Porch In Alaska OMELG!!! Except the Chinese and Russians say it was only an IRBM!!!! And the Pentagram is gearing up for another "stop the WMDS how dare you not kowtow to Uncle Sam exercise!!!!"

And even my unpolitical spouse, who nonetheless grew up ducking and covering under her grade school desk, is feeling the queasy willies, and asking anxious questions, about nuclear weapons and what is going on, that I have to craft careful answers to.

Forking rotten stupid humans. Could and have screwed up a pretty lovely planet

On a local note, our "neighbors" are putting on what sounds like the start of the Tet offensive, fireworks and some gunfire, and the local cops in response to a phone call said they are not going out this national holiday celebration to enforce the law against what some Americans think of as "celebration." My dogs are going nuts from the explosions, and bits of smoldering guts from the skyrockets and "mortar-launched display shells and aerial bombs" are drifting down on our roof and cars and garden and the shade cloth we've stretched over the patio.

At least in Vietnam I could shoot back

Vatch , July 4, 2017 at 9:30 pm

Oligarchs should be targeted by the law. Few acquired their billions ethically, fairly, or as a result of activities that are useful to humanity in general. Here are some more oligarchs who should be targeted:

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , July 4, 2017 at 9:30 pm

will target the oligarchs' lines of credit to international banks; the brokers, repositories and clearinghouses of their shares and bonds; their trade with the US and Europe; their US companies, bank accounts, boats on the high seas and homes abroad . If targeting the oligarchs is followed by formal sanctions, the aim will be to destroy their power at home and abroad.

What about their football or basketball teams, or soccer clubs?

makedoanmend , July 4, 2017 at 10:41 pm

" to counter Iranian and Russian governments' aggression."

reminds me a bit about a UK news headline earlier this year, running along the lines of: "In order to thwart Russian aggression, we're sending UK soldiers to their border" a border 2,000+ km from the UK

We have to be more aggressive than they are in order to make them less aggressive. Are they less aggressive because we're more aggressive, or are they less aggressive because our aggression will make them more passive? The US Congress gotta know.

And when will the US Congress write a bill to support the American people against their own aggressive Oligarchs?

[Jul 04, 2017] Pour it on, Mr. Trump, tweet the lying bastards and bitches straight to hell by mike

Notable quotes:
"... President Trump's tweets this week smacking Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough are a case in point. Among Trump's supporters, and most Americans with commonsense, those two zany, so-called journalists are detested. They and scores of other so-called journalists - the bespectacled nymphs of CNN, and Rachel "Here's Trump's Tax returns" Madow of MSNBC, for example - have for far too long been able to heap scorn on their opponents without feeling any need to worry about being attacked in return. Now, there ought to be no limits on the amount of scorn, bile, and lies they can dispense, but they should not expect to enjoy immunity from responses that are meant to, and hopefully will, demolish them. ..."
"... Trump is now slowly destroying their sense of security ..."
"... I am especially delighted when Trump takes on the privileged and protected classes, not only journalists, but women, Blacks, and other privileged minorities of all kinds. For all of my adult life, these categories of greedy, pompous, and self-righteous folks have been demanding "full equality" in the public square. Their desire, they say, is to be treated like everyone else and not like lesser human beings. There's not a lick of truth in that assertion. ..."
"... Note for example Mika Brzezinski, whose only skills seem to be to verbally scourge and lie about Trump and his family, and to exploit her late, unlamented, and war-mongering father's name. ..."
"... Trump had the nerve - and savvy - to tailor his truthful, if critical comments to be pertinent to a pretentious, self-important, and talentless woman. ..."
"... Well, some women are spoiled, perpetually adolescent, and irresponsible bitches, but many are not. While many women can and do compete as equals - and, not infrequently, as much more than equals - in politics, the media, the public sector, the military, and in government service, others appear to be genetically destined to beat a humiliating retreat when challenged. They hide and weep in a safe-space cocoon named "I can say and do what I want, but you can't attack me because I'm a woman." ..."
"... When I worked for the CIA, there were any number of brave and talented women who were extraordinarily able, competitive, and every bit the equal of any man. They were always ready go toe-to-toe with men to debate important issues, won as often as they lost, and would neither shed tears nor shrilly scream misogyny, win, lose, or draw. One sacrificed her life on the Afghan battlefield, leaving behind three young kids. All Americans should recall that it was female CIA officers that gave the girly man Clinton ten untaken chances to kill bin Laden in 1998-99, who facilitated UBL's killing in 2011, and who, since 1994, have taken untold numbers of Islamist fighters from the streets of the world, dead or alive. What risks were you taking for your country while those events were going on, Ms. Mika? ..."
"... Likewise, we have Susan Rice -- apparently the great "unmasker" -- denying the crimes that she and others seem to have willingly committed under Thug Obama's orders, and claiming that she is under attack only because she's a woman and black. We also have Hillary Clinton, who now claims she lost the 2016 election because of rampant misogyny and Russia's evil-doing, and not because of the basic and irrefutable facts that she is a repellent semi-human being, a criminal, and a man-dependent bitch. ..."
Jul 01, 2017 | non-intervention.com
Pour it on, Mr. Trump, tweet the lying bastards and bitches straight to hell Posted on July 1, 2017 by mike

I have to admit that on most occasions President Trump's tweets make my day. Aside from the fact that the tweets are absolutely necessary for him to keep in touch with the voters who elected him, the tweets demonstrate that there are very few holies for him in a contemporary American society that is being overwhelmed and intellectually paralyzed with newly invented and utterly demented holies.

President Trump's tweets this week smacking Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough are a case in point. Among Trump's supporters, and most Americans with commonsense, those two zany, so-called journalists are detested. They and scores of other so-called journalists - the bespectacled nymphs of CNN, and Rachel "Here's Trump's Tax returns" Madow of MSNBC, for example - have for far too long been able to heap scorn on their opponents without feeling any need to worry about being attacked in return. Now, there ought to be no limits on the amount of scorn, bile, and lies they can dispense, but they should not expect to enjoy immunity from responses that are meant to, and hopefully will, demolish them.

Trump is now slowly destroying their sense of security, as well as that of their womanish political protectors like Senator Shumer, Speaker Ryan, the Marxist moron Senator Sanders, Senator Graham., and the rest of the girly men who are so prominent in Congress. Nowadays, clowns like Mika and Joe throw rocks, and Trump, praise God, responds by throwing boulders that reduces these creatures, whose only skill is reading the news-scripts smarter people write, to a quivering state in which they whine and whimper about how unfairly the president is using the bully pulpit to attack them.

I am especially delighted when Trump takes on the privileged and protected classes, not only journalists, but women, Blacks, and other privileged minorities of all kinds. For all of my adult life, these categories of greedy, pompous, and self-righteous folks have been demanding "full equality" in the public square. Their desire, they say, is to be treated like everyone else and not like lesser human beings. There's not a lick of truth in that assertion.

Note for example Mika Brzezinski, whose only skills seem to be to verbally scourge and lie about Trump and his family, and to exploit her late, unlamented, and war-mongering father's name. Mika and the noble steed she rides - I think his name is Joe––have been damning the president, his family members, anyone associated with him, and those who voted for him since long before last November's election. Trump now chooses to respond in kind, and ol' unhinged and stitched-up Mika is reduced to multiple on-air breakdowns, while the rest of those demanding "equality" in the public square rally to her defense because Trump had the nerve - and savvy - to tailor his truthful, if critical comments to be pertinent to a pretentious, self-important, and talentless woman.

Well, some women are spoiled, perpetually adolescent, and irresponsible bitches, but many are not. While many women can and do compete as equals - and, not infrequently, as much more than equals - in politics, the media, the public sector, the military, and in government service, others appear to be genetically destined to beat a humiliating retreat when challenged. They hide and weep in a safe-space cocoon named "I can say and do what I want, but you can't attack me because I'm a woman."

When I worked for the CIA, there were any number of brave and talented women who were extraordinarily able, competitive, and every bit the equal of any man. They were always ready go toe-to-toe with men to debate important issues, won as often as they lost, and would neither shed tears nor shrilly scream misogyny, win, lose, or draw. One sacrificed her life on the Afghan battlefield, leaving behind three young kids. All Americans should recall that it was female CIA officers that gave the girly man Clinton ten untaken chances to kill bin Laden in 1998-99, who facilitated UBL's killing in 2011, and who, since 1994, have taken untold numbers of Islamist fighters from the streets of the world, dead or alive. What risks were you taking for your country while those events were going on, Ms. Mika?

But instead of these heroic, self-confident women serving as role models, we now have the great, brave, equality-seeking Mika, who is bent on being womanhood's role model, even while she acts as a clearly aging and cowering crybaby, and is now drowning in crocodile tears because Trump thoroughly thrashed her at own game.

Likewise, we have Susan Rice -- apparently the great "unmasker" -- denying the crimes that she and others seem to have willingly committed under Thug Obama's orders, and claiming that she is under attack only because she's a woman and black. We also have Hillary Clinton, who now claims she lost the 2016 election because of rampant misogyny and Russia's evil-doing, and not because of the basic and irrefutable facts that she is a repellent semi-human being, a criminal, and a man-dependent bitch.

These three women are the Ms. Flotsam, Ms. Jetsam, and Grandma Detritus of a vast herd of child-like women, journalists, blacks, and minorities of all kinds who do not want equality in the public square - which requires courage, hard work, and a certain manliness - but rather want all the benefits that would accrue there to brave and well-balanced adults, while not recognizing the right of anyone they publicly hate, castigate, lie about, and dehumanize to respond in kind.

As Nathan Detroit, Sam Spade, or some other savant once said, "Dames is trouble", and, as I say, a whining bitch remains a whining bitch until she grows up and acts like a man.

[Jul 04, 2017] McGovern vs. Nixon has so many similarities to the 2016 Election

One similarity is the role of intelligence agencies in removal Nixon from the office...
Notable quotes:
"... The winner in 72 was impeached ..and, the winner in 2016 may well be impeached . ..."
Jul 04, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

John S , July 3, 2017 at 4:06 pm

FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL '72 by Hunter S. Thompson is a great, easy, blast from the past .for those of you who enjoy SHATTERED type books, I think you will enjoy this ..

McGovern vs. Nixon has so many similarities to the 2016 Election and pretty much no one under 70 will remember much of the '72 election, unless they were political junkies from "their get-go" .

Some 1972/2016 parallels and wierdities:

* The DNC was burgled by the GOP (Watergate) and in '16 hacked by the Russians (??)
* The GOP had one candidate (Nixon) while the Dems had a bunch including Muskie, Hube, Wallace and McGovern was the surprise winner
* Muskie and Jeb Bush started their primaries as For Sure Winners with lots of money
* Wallace and Trump played to the same crowd
* In October 1972 only 3% of the population thought that Watergate was a "serious problem"

* The McGovern ground game in Wisconsin was a marvel of its time (see Gene Pokorney) ..so, theoretically was Hillary's

* Although the USA was/is involved in WAR, once the main campaigning began, the WAR was not a major issue in either election

* Eagleton was a big problem for McGovern and Bill was a big problem for Hillary

* The FBI was accused of releasing Eagleton's medical records and Comey, was accused of stuff, too

* The winner in 72 was impeached ..and, the winner in 2016 may well be impeached .

At any rate, this book is an easy and prescient Summer Beach Read ..and, those who like this genre, may also "Like" Tim Crouse's THE BOYS ON THE BUS ..

50 years ago, we the reading public has to wait 1-2 years for the "Inside Scoop" books to be published .today, thanks to Lambert and so many others, we can "get the haps" pretty much simultaneously with the candidates and their staffs .

Happy 4th to Lambert and thanks for all you do four us .

shinola , July 3, 2017 at 4:41 pm

I agree with you on "Fear & Loathing " – HST is one of my all time favorite authors. I do have one minor quibble about the "under 70" remark.

IIRC, '72 was the 1st prez election in which 18, 19 & 20 year olds were allowed to vote so I would trim a few years off of that figure.

charles leseau , July 3, 2017 at 5:59 pm

Muskie and Jeb Bush started their primaries as For Sure Winners with lots of money

I knew Jeb would go nowhere once the media started ignoring him 24/7 and trotted out 12 Trump stories a day. Absolutely predicted Trump's nomination close to a year before he was actually nominated.

different clue , July 3, 2017 at 9:12 pm

JohnS,

I am only 60, but here is evidence that I remember a little from that time. There was a political saying . . . "Don't change Dicks in the middle of a screw. Nixon/ Agnew in '72!"

John S , July 3, 2017 at 9:41 pm

.shinola, if one posts here, chances are pretty good that one will know a bit about the '72 election .my current peer group of friends (68-74) had little or no memory of the '72 election as they were not "in" to politics or voting then .I wonder how many MSM or TV talkingheads are well versed in this election?

.different clue, great comment .I wonder if our current President will bring the Game of Bridge back into fashion (it was still BIG in '72) . playing Bridge in the Chevy Chase Country Club Card Room would give people a continuous opportunity to shout out their bid of :

"4 NO Trump!!!!"

even when they held 13 Spades, etc ..or, held nary an Ace or Face Card ..

Happy 4th to all .

Left in Wisconsin , July 4, 2017 at 12:38 pm

My "hippie" 7th grade social studies teacher took us on a field trip from the burbs to downtown Albany to see McGovern at a campaign rally. My first political experience.

[Jul 04, 2017] Foisting Blame for Cyber-Hacking on Russia by Gareth Porter

Notable quotes:
"... Recent hearings by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees reflected the rising tide of Russian-election-hacking hysteria and contributed further to it. Both Democrats and Republicans on the two committees appeared to share the alarmist assumptions about Russian hacking, and the officials who testified did nothing to discourage the politicians. ..."
"... The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a record of spreading false stories about alleged Russian hacking into US infrastructure , such as the tale of a Russian intrusion into the Burlington, Vermont electrical utility in December 2016 that DHS later admitted was untrue. There was another bogus DHS story about Russia hacking into a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011. ..."
"... So, there's a pattern here. Plus, investigators, assessing the notion that Russia hacked into state electoral databases, rejected that suspicion as false months ago. Last September, Assistant Secretary of DHS for Cybersecurity Andy Ozment and state officials explained that the intrusions were not carried out by Russian intelligence but by criminal hackers seeking personal information to sell on the Internet. ..."
"... Illinois is the one state where hackers succeeded in breaking into a voter registration database last summer. The crucial fact about the Illinois hacking, however, was that the hackers extracted personal information on roughly 90,000 registered voters, and that none of the information was expunged or altered. ..."
"... "Any time you more carefully monitor a system you're going to see more bad guys poking and prodding at it," he observed, " because they're always poking and prodding." [Emphasis added] ..."
"... Reagan further revealed that she had learned from the FBI that hackers had gotten a user name and password for their electoral database, and that it was being sold on the "dark web" – an encrypted network used by cyber criminals to buy and sell their wares. In fact, she said, the FBI told her that the probe of Arizona's database was the work of a "known hacker" who had been closely monitored "frequently." ..."
"... The sequence of events indicates that the main person behind the narrative of Russian hacking state election databases from the beginning was former FBI Director James Comey. In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Sept. 28, Comey suggested that the Russian government was behind efforts to penetrate voter databases, but never said so directly. ..."
"... The media then suddenly found unnamed sources ready to accuse Russia of hacking election data even while admitting that they lacked evidence. The day after Comey's testimony ABC headlined , "Russia Hacking Targeted Nearly Half of States' Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrating 4." The story itself revealed, however, that it was merely a suspicion held by "knowledgeable" sources. ..."
"... But that claim of a "likely" link between the hackers and Russia was not only speculative but highly suspect. The authors of the DHS-ODNI report claimed the link was "supported by technical indicators from the US intelligence community, DHS, FBI, the private sector and other entities." They cited a list of hundreds of I.P. addresses and other such "indicators" used by hackers they called "Grizzly Steppe" who were supposedly linked to Russian intelligence. ..."
"... But the highly classified NSA report made no reference to any evidence supporting such an attribution. The absence of any hint of signals intelligence supporting its conclusion makes it clear that the NSA report was based on nothing more than the same kind of inconclusive "indicators" that had been used to establish the original narrative of Russians hacking electoral databases. ..."
"... Russian intelligence certainly has an interest in acquiring intelligence related to the likely outcome of American elections, but it would make no sense for Russia's spies to acquire personal voting information about 90,000 registered voters in Illinois. ..."
Jul 04, 2017 | original.antiwar.com
Cyber-criminal efforts to hack into U.S. government databases are epidemic, but this ugly reality is now being exploited to foist blame on Russia and fuel the New Cold War hysteria

Recent hearings by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees reflected the rising tide of Russian-election-hacking hysteria and contributed further to it. Both Democrats and Republicans on the two committees appeared to share the alarmist assumptions about Russian hacking, and the officials who testified did nothing to discourage the politicians.

On June 21, Samuel Liles, acting director of the Intelligence and Analysis Office's Cyber Division at the Department of Homeland Security, and Jeanette Manfra, acting deputy under secretary for cyber-security and communications, provided the main story line for the day in testimony before the Senate committee - that efforts to hack into election databases had been found in 21 states.

Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap also endorsed the narrative of Russian government responsibility for the intrusions on voter registration databases.

But none of those who testified offered any evidence to support this suspicion nor were they pushed to do so. And beneath the seemingly unanimous embrace of that narrative lies a very different story.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a record of spreading false stories about alleged Russian hacking into US infrastructure , such as the tale of a Russian intrusion into the Burlington, Vermont electrical utility in December 2016 that DHS later admitted was untrue. There was another bogus DHS story about Russia hacking into a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011.

So, there's a pattern here. Plus, investigators, assessing the notion that Russia hacked into state electoral databases, rejected that suspicion as false months ago. Last September, Assistant Secretary of DHS for Cybersecurity Andy Ozment and state officials explained that the intrusions were not carried out by Russian intelligence but by criminal hackers seeking personal information to sell on the Internet.

Both Ozment and state officials responsible for the state databases revealed that those databases have been the object of attempted intrusions for years. The FBI provided information to at least one state official indicating that the culprits in the hacking of the state's voter registration database were cyber-criminals.

Illinois is the one state where hackers succeeded in breaking into a voter registration database last summer. The crucial fact about the Illinois hacking, however, was that the hackers extracted personal information on roughly 90,000 registered voters, and that none of the information was expunged or altered.

The Actions of Cybercriminals

That was an obvious clue to the motive behind the hack. Assistant DHS Secretary Ozment testified before the House Subcommittee on Information Technology on Sept. 28 ( at 01:02.30 of the video ) that the apparent interest of the hackers in copying the data suggested that the hacking was "possibly for the purpose of selling personal information."

Ozment 's testimony provides the only credible motive for the large number of states found to have experienced what the intelligence community has called "scanning and probing" of computers to gain access to their electoral databases: the personal information involved – even e-mail addresses – is commercially valuable to the cybercriminal underworld.

That same testimony also explains why so many more states reported evidence of attempts to hack their electoral databases last summer and fall. After hackers had gone after the Illinois and Arizona databases, Ozment said, DHS had provided assistance to many states in detecting attempts to hack their voter registration and other databases.

"Any time you more carefully monitor a system you're going to see more bad guys poking and prodding at it," he observed, " because they're always poking and prodding." [Emphasis added]

State election officials have confirmed Ozment's observation. Ken Menzel, the general counsel for the Illinois Secretary of State, told this writer, "What's new about what happened last year is not that someone tried to get into our system but that they finally succeeded in getting in." Menzel said hackers "have been trying constantly to get into it since 2006."

And it's not just state voter registration databases that cybercriminals are after, according to Menzel. "Every governmental data base – driver's licenses, health care, you name it – has people trying to get into it," he said.

Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan told Mother Jones that her I.T. specialists had detected 193,000 distinct attempts to get into the state's website in September 2016 alone and 11,000 appeared to be trying to "do harm."

Reagan further revealed that she had learned from the FBI that hackers had gotten a user name and password for their electoral database, and that it was being sold on the "dark web" – an encrypted network used by cyber criminals to buy and sell their wares. In fact, she said, the FBI told her that the probe of Arizona's database was the work of a "known hacker" who had been closely monitored "frequently."

James Comey's Role

The sequence of events indicates that the main person behind the narrative of Russian hacking state election databases from the beginning was former FBI Director James Comey. In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Sept. 28, Comey suggested that the Russian government was behind efforts to penetrate voter databases, but never said so directly.

Comey told the committee that FBI Counterintelligence was working to "understand just what mischief Russia is up to with regard to our elections." Then he referred to "a variety of scanning activities" and "attempted intrusions" into election-related computers "beyond what we knew about in July and August," encouraging the inference that it had been done by Russian agents.

The media then suddenly found unnamed sources ready to accuse Russia of hacking election data even while admitting that they lacked evidence. The day after Comey's testimony ABC headlined , "Russia Hacking Targeted Nearly Half of States' Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrating 4." The story itself revealed, however, that it was merely a suspicion held by "knowledgeable" sources.

Similarly, NBC News headline announced, "Russians Hacked Two US Voter Databases, Officials Say." But those who actually read the story closely learned that in fact none of the unnamed sources it cited were actually attributing the hacking to the Russians.

It didn't take long for Democrats to turn the Comey teaser - and these anonymously sourced stories with misleading headlines about Russian database hacking - into an established fact. A few days later, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff declared that there was "no doubt" Russia was behind the hacks on state electoral databases.

On Oct. 7, DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement that they were "not in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian government." But only a few weeks later, DHS participated with FBI in issuing a "Joint Analysis Report" on "Russian malicious cyber activity" that did not refer directly to scanning and spearphishing aimed of state electoral databases but attributed all hacks related to the election to "actors likely associated with RIS [Russian Intelligence Services]."

Suspect Claims

But that claim of a "likely" link between the hackers and Russia was not only speculative but highly suspect. The authors of the DHS-ODNI report claimed the link was "supported by technical indicators from the US intelligence community, DHS, FBI, the private sector and other entities." They cited a list of hundreds of I.P. addresses and other such "indicators" used by hackers they called "Grizzly Steppe" who were supposedly linked to Russian intelligence.

But as I reported last January, the staff of Dragos Security, whose CEO Rob Lee, had been the architect of a US government system for defense against cyber attack, pointed out that the vast majority of those indicators would certainly have produced "false positives."

Then, on Jan. 6 came the "intelligence community assessment" – produced by selected analysts from CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and devoted almost entirely to the hacking of e-mail of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. But it included a statement that "Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple state or local election boards." Still, no evidence was evinced on this alleged link between the hackers and Russian intelligence.

Over the following months, the narrative of hacked voter registration databases receded into the background as the drumbeat of media accounts about contacts between figures associated with the Trump campaign and Russians built to a crescendo, albeit without any actual evidence of collusion regarding the e-mail disclosures.

But a June 5 story brought the voter-data story back into the headlines. The story, published by The Intercept, accepted at face value an NSA report dated May 5, 2017 , that asserted Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, had carried out a spear-phishing attack on a US company providing election-related software and had sent e-mails with a malware-carrying word document to 122 addresses believed to be local government organizations.

But the highly classified NSA report made no reference to any evidence supporting such an attribution. The absence of any hint of signals intelligence supporting its conclusion makes it clear that the NSA report was based on nothing more than the same kind of inconclusive "indicators" that had been used to establish the original narrative of Russians hacking electoral databases.

A Checkered History

So, the history of the US government's claim that Russian intelligence hacked into election databases reveals it to be a clear case of politically motivated analysis by the DHS and the Intelligence Community. Not only was the claim based on nothing more than inherently inconclusive technical indicators but no credible motive for Russian intelligence wanting personal information on registered voters was ever suggested.

Russian intelligence certainly has an interest in acquiring intelligence related to the likely outcome of American elections, but it would make no sense for Russia's spies to acquire personal voting information about 90,000 registered voters in Illinois.

When FBI Counterintelligence chief Priestap was asked at the June 21 hearing how Moscow might use such personal data, his tortured effort at an explanation clearly indicated that he was totally unprepared to answer the question.

"They took the data to understand what it consisted of," said Priestap, "so they can affect better understanding and plan accordingly in regards to possibly impacting future election by knowing what is there and studying it."

In contrast to that befuddled non-explanation, there is highly credible evidence that the FBI was well aware that the actual hackers in the cases of both Illinois and Arizona were motivated by the hope of personal gain.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book is Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare . He can be contacted at [email protected] . Reprinted from Consortium News with the author's permission.

Read more by Gareth Porter Why Afghanistan? Fighting a War for the War System Itself – June 13th, 2017 The Kissinger Backchannel to Moscow – June 4th, 2017 Will Trump Agree to the Pentagon's Permanent War in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria? – May 14th, 2017 US 'Deep State' Sold Out Counter-Terrorism To Keep Itself in Business – April 23rd, 2017 New Revelations Belie Trump Claims on Syria Chemical Attack – April 14th, 2017

View all posts by Gareth Porter

[Jul 04, 2017] Why Ukranian economics now is flirting with disaster and why South Stream pipeline was derailed

fpif.org

Try to put aside, for the moment, the insufferable arrogance of American meddling in Europe's energy market, with a view to restricting its choice while – laughably – pretending it is broadening European energy options.

The readers and commenters of this blog will be well aware, since it has been a topic of discussion for years here, that a critical underpinning of the western plan to seize Ukraine and wrest it into the western orbit was the premise that Russia would be forced by simple momentum to go along with it. As long as events continued to unfold too quickly to get ahead of, Russia would have to help supply the sinews of its own destruction. And a big part of that was the assumption that Russia would help to finance Ukraine's transition to a powerful western fulcrum upon which to apply leverage against it, through continued trade with Ukraine and continued transit of Europe's energy supply through Ukraine's pipeline system.

But Russia slapped a trade embargo on most Ukrainian goods, and rescinded its tariff-free status as it became clear Brussels planned to use it to stovepipe European trade goods into the Russian market, through Ukraine – thus crushing domestic industries which would not be able to compete on economically-favorable terms. The armchair strategists nearly shit a brick when construction of the South Stream pipeline commenced, bypassing Ukraine and depriving it of about $2 billion annually in transit fees. But pressure ultimately forced Bulgaria to throw a wrench into the works, and the pipeline plans were shelved, to much victory dancing in the west. There was not quite as much happy-dancing in Bulgaria , but they were only ever a pawn anyway.

Sidebar for a moment, here; while the $2 Billion annually in transit fees is extremely important, Ukraine's pre-crisis GDP was $163 Billion. The funds realized for transit fees are important because (a) Russia has to pay them and (b) the west will have to come up with the equivalent in aid if Ukraine loses out on them. But the real value intrinsic to Ukraine as a transit country is its physical reality as an interface for Russian gas transit to Europe – what is a bridge can be easily turned into a wall. Any time Washington thinks Russia needs some more shit on its face, Ukraine can be prodded to announce a doubling of its transit fees, or to kick off some other dispute which the popular press will adroitly spin to make Russia appear to be an unreliable supplier. Therefore, it is essential to western strategy that significant amounts of Russian gas continue to transit Ukraine. Sufficiently so that Europe continues to evolve ever-more-desperate contingency plans in order to keep receiving gas through the country which was known to have provoked the previous shutoff of European supplies by siphoning Europe-bound gas for its own use. That's despite the assurances of Germany and western partners of Gazprom in the Nord Stream line that it will mean cheaper gas prices for Europe.

[Jul 03, 2017] What Would Putin Tell Trump by Israel Shamir

Notable quotes:
"... New York Times ..."
"... Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected] ..."
"... The Unz Review ..."
"... If only it were that simple – there is giant invisible elephant sitting in on that meeting – ISRAEL. Of course Putin is telling the truth. ISIS can easily be defeated by both the US and Russia working together – it is almost done now. It is 100% up to Trump - more war or a return to a measure of peace? ..."
"... You gave the American illiterate clown too much credit, credit he certainly do not deserve. If you expect him to become a fully fledge statesman like the one-in-a-century Vladimir Putin, you'll be disappointed. ..."
"... Mistakes and stupid decisions, there are many but one of his "mistakes" stands out above all: Giving the Pentagram & CIA free hand to run the US's wars as they see fit. He have now reduced himself to being a mere porch chimp, like Obongo, for his white ziocon owners. I hope Russia have back-channels to these two rough institutions because they are going to need it ..."
"... I don't know what he would tell the boob , but he should say, "Enough of the adolescent attention seeking behavior, OK?" Note to author: There is entirely too much hagiography for the USA's leading buffoon. ..."
"... Israel, you darn well know that the US (US interests, American people) have zero to gain in the Eternal Wars in the Middle East, and that all the serial aggressions over there are all to benefit Israel. Duh! Including the demand that 'Assad must go', and for Syria to come apart so Israel can pick at the carcass. ..."
"... So for Putin to tell Trump what Trump already knows is silly. We all know that the wars are all to benefit Israel, and we all know that what menaces the planet and Russia and the people of the US is the harsh reality of the Z USA. - That Zionist Jews completely dominate our media and deepstate (Pentagon, NSA, CIA, etc..). ..."
"... Let's hope Trump has enough wisdom to recognise how deep this swamp really is before it swallows him. ..."
Jul 03, 2017 | www.unz.com

Russia has had no leader equal in stature and public support to Putin since Stalin – in a recent poll for the greatest personality in history, a plurality of Russians placed Putin and Stalin at the top, preceding Pushkin, the Russian poet who occupies a place safeguarded for Shakespeare in English hearts...

They are very, very different. Their biggest difference lies in experience. Putin has led his country for (more or less) 17 years; he learned the tricks and skills of the power game the hard way, from being a frontman for the seven Jewish bankers who privatized Russia in Nineties, to a fully independent autocrat comparable to the penultimate Russian Tsar Alexander III, or to Napoleon III. He is a wise ruler, in the Confucian way, forever hiding his steel will under a velvet glove; always modest, moderate, temperate, not given to a momentary abandon of passion. He is in full control of himself, and the Sages tell us this is the most difficult and sublime subject of control. He is also a responsible and reliable statesman; his word is as good as his bond: he kept the ridiculous promises he gave to Yeltsin's family. He is also very popular with his subjects.

... ... ..

However, both leaders are severely handicapped. Trump is handicapped by the poisonous campaign insinuating that he had been elected due to Russian interference and that he is in thrall to Russia; at any conclusion short of a military strike the New York Times and CNN will smirk that he surrendered the crown jewels. Putin is handicapped by the fact that Russia is weaker than the US in every way excepting Doomsday weaponry. Russia is surrounded by US military bases; the US military budget is ten times bigger than the Russian one. Putin has very little leeway to retreat and he is likely to respond in force to a provocation.

... ... ...

Russia is a good friend of Iran and Syria, and it does not interfere with our friendship with Israel. Israelis understand that for us they are a Taiwan, while the rest of the Middle East is a China. You can do the same: make peace and friendship with Syria and Iran, while retaining friendship of Israel. They will understand; perhaps they will whine for a while, but they will eventually find a new modus vivendi.

Before getting into a war, define your objectives. If you will do this regarding Syria, you'll see that you are getting into a war for the interests of the army command, for the interests of global banking and for Israeli interests. I'd respect these interests, they are perfectly legitimate, but they aren't your interests, they aren't interests of the American people.

Generals like wars, that is their occupation; they want more wars, a bigger part of budget, more promotions. But a good ruler commands his generals, he does not follow their command. I have sent home three quarters of my generals, and my popularity did not suffer. How come? I appointed a silly-looking non-professional guy for Secretary of Defence with the brief to slim down the Army. He did it and he got all the flak. At the end, I fired him and the Army loved me even more.

You will really prosper and you will be called the best president of all time, if you will slim down your military. Russia has had many bases abroad, from Cuba to Vietnam, from Aden to the Arctic North; we disbanded them all, and we did not regret it for a day. Bases are an expensive thing, and it is better to do without them.

You know, my generals beseeched me to send troops into the Ukraine, but I didn't. We'd better spend money on the improvement of our citizens' life. Now a few million of Ukrainians have voted with their feet: they moved to live and work in Russia, because our way of life is better than theirs. And bear in mind: the Ukraine had been the richest part of the USSR in the time of the Union's breakup in 1991. Now they are quite poor. It is better to improve the economy than to fight wars.

The global bankers also like wars. I respect their wishes, but I do not intend to oblige them. The Jews like wars, but it is not necessary to grant them every wish. The US has not a single real interest to fight for Syria or Ukraine. Or for Estonia. I can promise you: our tanks will not roll into the Baltic states, though they were a part and parcel of Russia for three hundred years. Just take away the NATO bases from our vicinity. If you won't we'll have to defend ourselves.

Nixon also made a U-turn on his policy towards Russia. Instead of confrontation, he chose détente.

.... ... ..

Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected]

This article was first published at The Unz Review .

Art Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 5:18 am GMT

Putin to Trump: You can do a U-turn on the Middle East wars your country has carried on for too long. These wars are futile. Everything you want to obtain in Syria, you can have without shooting a single bullet, without sending a single soldier.

If only it were that simple – there is giant invisible elephant sitting in on that meeting – ISRAEL. Of course Putin is telling the truth. ISIS can easily be defeated by both the US and Russia working together – it is almost done now. It is 100% up to Trump - more war or a return to a measure of peace?

Was campaign Trump telling the truth when he said America First – no more wars? We shall find out soon!

Peace - Art

p.s. I think that Trump's future depends on it – his base will desert him if he chooses Israel over America.

mikh as Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 6:56 am GMT

You gave the American illiterate clown too much credit, credit he certainly do not deserve. If you expect him to become a fully fledge statesman like the one-in-a-century Vladimir Putin, you'll be disappointed.

Mistakes and stupid decisions, there are many but one of his "mistakes" stands out above all: Giving the Pentagram & CIA free hand to run the US's wars as they see fit. He have now reduced himself to being a mere porch chimp, like Obongo, for his white ziocon owners. I hope Russia have back-channels to these two rough institutions because they are going to need it

jilles dykstra Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 7:04 am GMT

Russia is not a great country, it even is not large.
As to being great, economically it is comparable to Spain.
Its 1600 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 70ties technology, is the only greatness, these missiles guarantee the independence of Russia.
Russia has ONE aircraft carrier, the USA has dozens, as far as I know.
The capacity to retaliate is in this world the only guarantee to stay independent, as N Korea makes abundantly clear these days.
Russia is not even geographically large, it seems large on most maps, the Mercator projection, that stretches the North Pole point infinitely.
On top of that, most of N Russia, Siberia, is uninhabitable.
Global warming may change this.

Diversity Heretic Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 7:37 am GMT

I guess my first reaction is that Richard Nixon had to resign under threat of impeachment. Not sure I want to end my presidency under similar circumstances. I'm also skeptical of the claim that Nixon set the basis for prosperity. Wage stagnation began in the early 1970s, during his administration.

Robert Magill Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 9:34 am GMT

Trump and Putin may agree on the biggest possible deal that will provide both countries, China and Japan as well, a radically different future. Details follow https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/the-art-of-the-deal/

G. Mayre Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 10:49 am GMT

Putin is the only leader in the world left stupid enough to take Trump seriously and have hopes for "cooperation", when everyone else – even the likes of Duterte – are dissing on him, just waiting it out patiently until his inevitable impeachment. Speaks volumes about the desperate situation Putin is in.

jacques sheete Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 11:57 am GMT

What Would Putin Tell Trump?

I don't know what he would tell the boob , but he should say, "Enough of the adolescent attention seeking behavior, OK?" Note to author: There is entirely too much hagiography for the USA's leading buffoon. He's a baby faced narcissistic punk who should be nowhere near the levers of power because he'll stoop to anything for a little attention. And another thing. This is entirely too melodramatic.:

The consequences can be joyous – or fatal.

Agent76 Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 12:40 pm GMT

Jun 3, 2017 Putin defends Trump – 'Don't worry, be happy'

President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement caused anger and anxiety across the world. But is there more than meet the eye? How many critics have actually read the agreement themselves – as President Putin rightfully points out? The agreement is a framework agreement with no particular obligations. There are no guidelines as to how resources should be spent, and the resources which the US ratified are quite substantial.

The Scalpel Website Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 1:20 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra "Russia is not even geographically large "

Well it is the largest country on earth. Or maybe you are saying with respect to Russia, "You bad!" as in "You are very, very good"

Z-man Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 1:25 pm GMT

Trump is surrounded by open and hidden enemies, by people who pray for his failure. He is opposed by his own secret services, by the media, by his own party. His popularity isn't certain.

So true.

If Putin were to speak his mind freely to Trump, and it is not likely, as their conversation will certainly be bugged, recorded and leaked by the NSA to the hostile media, he'd tell him:

The points you make about the current state of the world and affairs between the two countries is mostly spot on if a bit utopian but Putin should tell him these things anyway and to hell with the power of the evil Cabal --

nickels Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 2:17 pm GMT

"Uh, well Volodya, let me go ask Ivanka and Jared, then I'll get back to you you know, Jared, he's a real smart guy. He's very smart, you know "

John Brown Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 3:03 pm GMT

"Lenin was very, very friendly to Jews; he had many Jewish colleagues, but he never allowed them to ride upon him." No, he just let them kill millions of Russian Christians. Small detail in history, of course.

Rurik Website Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 3:05 pm GMT

What does the US want to have in Syria? You name it, you can have it, and without war, without expenditure, without trouble. And I do not mean in a part of a broken and fragmented Syria under occupation, I mean one Syria, united and complete, with its capital Damascus, and its president Bashar al Assad. There is nothing within reason that President Assad would refuse you and I'll second his promise.

Israel, you darn well know that the US (US interests, American people) have zero to gain in the Eternal Wars in the Middle East, and that all the serial aggressions over there are all to benefit Israel. Duh! Including the demand that 'Assad must go', and for Syria to come apart so Israel can pick at the carcass.

So for Putin to tell Trump what Trump already knows is silly. We all know that the wars are all to benefit Israel, and we all know that what menaces the planet and Russia and the people of the US is the harsh reality of the Z USA. - That Zionist Jews completely dominate our media and deepstate (Pentagon, NSA, CIA, etc..).

So this is the dilemma that confronts Putin, Trump, and all people of good will on the planet.

What Putin should tell Trump is to look at what Putin managed to pull off with a nation also absolutely under the thrall of antagonistic Rothschild minions, and how Putin managed (heroically) to wrest power from them. Putin is trained in Judo, which involves using your op0nents own momentum against them. That's what he did with the Jewish Oligarchs, he mollified some with kindness, and he attacked the most dangerous ones directly, throwing them all off balance and making them wonder what the next move might be, since the one certainty you're dealing with- is their own, honed to absolute lasers' perfection; self-interest.

So far Trump hasn't sent troops into Syria or bombed Iran. Hasn't downed a Russian jet or done anything so stupid that there's no turning back. We all have a shred of hope that Trump might manage to pull off a Putin, but any advise Putin could give would be great.

However, you should not allow these wonderful people to ride upon you as upon a horse.

exactly, but you have to make it look like they are right up until the point that Khodorkovsky / John Podesta is arrested on child abuse charges (or some other high ranking chump) This will send shock waves though their power structure, and have them all scrambling to protect their own arses, even as they turn on each other.

Their power is top down, yours is grass-roots up. Use that president Trump, play them as if they're Judo opponents always coming at you, and also keep in mind their galactic egos and preternatural self-interest, and somehow we might meet in the middle and toast the redemption and deliverance of mankind from the devil itself.

Rurik Website Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 3:38 pm GMT

please check out the lies being told as a pretext for a false flag chemical weapons attack on Syria. Putin, as usual speaks the plain truth, whereas the ZUS- as usual- speaks treacherous lies

Anonymous Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 3:40 pm GMT

@nickels Haha. There's a lot of truth in it.

I like Trump and he was definitely not the Deep State candidate but his knowledge is limited which puts him in a precarious position. I can only imagine how much irradiated garbage – masked as the "Truth" – he's getting fed daily. A "friendly" establishment veteran, with an intricate, detailed story, can sound very authoritative to the inexperienced.

Let's hope Trump has enough wisdom to recognise how deep this swamp really is before it swallows him. If I were him, I'd plug everyone to a Voight-Kampff test and keep a herd of hungry pigs in the WH's basement.

1Rw Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 4:11 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra You are wrong on every point. The US has 11 aircraft carriers, not dozens. While it's still more than Russia, it shows your ignorance. Russia is the largest country in the world, regardless of the projection, and has people living throughout its territory, even above the Arctic Circle. It's missiles are. It '70s tech, it has in fact continued upgrading its missile forces, with Bulava, Yars, and Sarmat systems being their latest SLBM, road mobile ICBM, and heavy, silk launched ICBM.

As to its economy being comparable to Spain, when was the last time Spain
- built a spaceship
- launched a nuclear submarine?
- launched a nuclear icebreaker?
- commissioned a fast beeeder reactor?
- developed a modern fighter plane?
- built a passenger jet?

Russia has done all of this in the last decade or so.

Wally Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 4:24 pm GMT

@mikh as And the alternative was .. Hillary.

Hillary's bus being pushed

http://cnsnews.com/s3/files/styles/content_60p/s3/woods4.jpg?itok=Z-tY9Coz

2010 Dems lost the House
2012 the Dems lost the Senate
2016 Dems lost the White House
The Democrats lost more than 1,000 seats at the federal and state level during Obama's presidency, including 9 Senate seats, 62 House seats, 12 governorships, and a startling 958 state legislative seats.

Wally Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 4:31 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra You're highly uninformed.

Russia's National Debt to Remain Lowest in Europe

http://www.russia-briefing.com/news/russias-national-debt-remain-lowest-europe.html/

Spain's national debt reaches highest level in over century

https://www.rt.com/business/356353-spain-debt-record-high/

NASA Data Proves Trump Right to Exit Paris Climate Accord

https://www.prisonplanet.com/nasa-data-proves-trump-right-to-exit-paris-climate-accord.html

'Global Warming' Is a Myth, Say 58 Scientific Papers in 2017

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/06/delingpole-global-warming-is-myth-58-scientific-papers-2017/

To Put America First Is to Put Our Planet's Climate First

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/16/america-first-climate/

Legates et al. (2015), for example, found that only 0.3 percent of 11,944 peer-reviewed articles on climate and related topics, published during the 21 years of 1991 to 2011, had explicitly stated that recent warming was mostly man-made.

"In the last 20 years, we have released more than a third of all the CO2 produced since the beginning of the industrial period. Yet global mean surface temperature has remained essentially constant for 20 years, a fact that has been acknowledged by the IPCC, whose models failed to predict it. NOAA's State of the Climate report for 2008 said that periods of 15 years or more without warming would indicate a discrepancy between prediction and observation – i.e., that the models were wrong. Just before the recent naturally occurring el Nińo event raised global temperature, there had been 18 years and 9 months without any global warming at all."

jilles dykstra Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 4:35 pm GMT

@1Rw Thanks for informing me on the number of aircraft carriers.

Any globe can inform you that Russia is not large, especially not in land that can be used. On Spanish technical and military efforts, as it is already occupied by the USA it cannot defend itself against USA occupation, as Russia does.

Agent76 Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 4:44 pm GMT

April 07, 2017 Pentagon Trained Syria's Al Qaeda "Rebels" in the Use of Chemical Weapons. The Western media refutes their own lies

https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/04/pentagon-trained-syrias-al-qaeda-rebels-in-the-use-of-chemical-weapons-prof-michel-chossudovsky/

Apr 9, 2017 No More

[Jul 03, 2017] War for Blair Mountain

Jul 03, 2017 | www.unz.com
Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 3:09 pm GMT

And where did Hitler worship get us?

Blonde hair blue eyed Waffen SS soldiers .I assume baptized Christian .being wasted by beautiful blonde haired Conservative Orthodox Christian Women Russian Snipers. This is what you will always get when you fall for the lies of the worshippers of Franco.

Hitler and Franco .enablers of the Mohammadan Gang Rape Army .Hitler's Waffen SS-Werhrmacht gang rape Army

Short tiny Andrew Anglin doesn't realize how much he has in common with the Jewish Antifas on a fundamental Level ..

War for Blair Mountain Show Comment Next New Comment July 3, 2017 at 3:19 pm GMT

History offers up important lessons for the Alt Right

There is a historic precedent for the Alt Right in US History:look no further than the late 19th-early 2oth Century US Labor Movement it was racially xenophobic .isolationist and economically progressive .The late 19th-early 2oth century Labor Movement gave us such wonderfull things such as The Chinese Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act and the Sihk Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act .not bad!!!

And let's honest The Alt Right kiddie brigade that worships Hitler Franco Pinochet .also swims in the sewage of JFK and Ronnie Reagan worship two scoundrels who unleashed race-replacement immigration policy on The Historic Native Born White American Working Class..

[Jul 02, 2017] Quite interesting Guardian piece encouraging to hate Russia and Putin while droning on about Hate Week in Orwell

Notable quotes:
"... "The use of fraudulent or forged documents should be-there's absolutely zero tolerance from us on this. If we find people submitting documents that are forged or fraudulent or they haven't disclosed full facts to us , we will not only refuse their application, they then risk a ban of 10 years from the UK if they make a subsequent application," Mackie said. ..."
Jul 02, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Pavlo Svolochenko ,

June 30, 2017 at 8:19 pm
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/30/russia-putin-protests-police-arrests-tv-show?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fzen.yandex.com

Dumb Guardian article or dumbest Guardian article?

marknesop , June 30, 2017 at 8:37 pm
There you go – he's received the ultimate shock; time to go home to the Pearl of Empire and spend his dotage rambling the moors in his wellies, or watching the sea thrash the Cornish coast, or something. Time to leave Russia, in any event; he's been studying it for 45 years, and this is the best he can come up with, while he plainly does not understand it. Why does he spend his time there, if everyone is a thug and a hate leader – why, in the name of God, does he spend time in a country where people live who have never heard of George Orwell?

By the bye, if you enter the UK on a visitor's visa and then work as a journalist, you might be looking at a 10-year ban on a subsequent re-application , you parrot-faced wazzock.

"The use of fraudulent or forged documents should be-there's absolutely zero tolerance from us on this. If we find people submitting documents that are forged or fraudulent or they haven't disclosed full facts to us , we will not only refuse their application, they then risk a ban of 10 years from the UK if they make a subsequent application," Mackie said.

Pavlo Svolochenko , July 1, 2017 at 3:32 am
If he didn't pad it out with invective, the article would be one or two paragraphs at most.

The undeleted comments are the real hoot – the average guardian reader appears to be a human being who failed the Turing test.

Cortes , July 1, 2017 at 6:23 am
I wonder how the comment by "timiengels" of a day ago evaded the cull:

"Quite interesting a piece encouraging to hate Russia and Putin while droning on about 'Hate Week' in Orwell."

Reply

[Jul 01, 2017] In Russia we have a combination of neoliberal elements with a very determined strategy to foster import substitution

Notable quotes:
"... The gist is that while Russia has a lot of problems, they made huge progress in Putin/Medvedev years, and data on alcohol, suicide, murder, deaths/births show nearly complete recovery from the collapse after the end of USSR. And the decline/recovery after the drop of oil prices and sanctions is quite remarkable. ..."
"... Russian economy and politics are run in a different way than in the West, and since many crucial numbers are hard to understand or explain, it is not easy to understand and explain them. In politics, Putin is characterized as autocrat, but more objective authors remark that he has a "light touch" compared with historical record and countries that can be used to compare. ..."
"... For example, is Putin "neoliberal"? Taxes on individuals are low, monetary policy seems tight. The response to oil shock was in a sense "shock therapy": rubble was allowed to float, lost half of its exchange value, the imports were halved, trade surplus was maintained. Most strange: ca. 100 billions of foreign debt was repaid in one year (which seems to confuse Krugman a lot). Real salaries declined quite drastically. But the largest surprise is that the employment was maintained. ..."
"... I would cite Iran as another import substitution country. Western sanctions are truly a double edge sword. They cut off a country from the international financial system. This makes many types of economic activity harder, but in the same time, it spares a country the dubious benefits that we can observe in Greece. ..."
Jul 01, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Piotr Berman | Jul 1, 2017 12:33:29 PM | 52

Re: @16

Awara blog is a product of a Russian company that offers services to foreign companies engaged or interested in Russian markets, so this company has an interest in compiling as rosy picture as possible.

In one place, the author adds numbers from a table presented just above, wrongly, getting a "better result". I got an outright false statement: population of Russia is not "at all time high" but about 9 millions lower. The period of population decline was about 20 years, and it is counterfactual that it was compensated with 3 years of growth.

And it is hard to tell what does it mean that Russia has "most diversified economy".

But the general picture is consistent with what I have read before, e.g. data from trading economics.com.

The gist is that while Russia has a lot of problems, they made huge progress in Putin/Medvedev years, and data on alcohol, suicide, murder, deaths/births show nearly complete recovery from the collapse after the end of USSR. And the decline/recovery after the drop of oil prices and sanctions is quite remarkable.

Russian economy and politics are run in a different way than in the West, and since many crucial numbers are hard to understand or explain, it is not easy to understand and explain them. In politics, Putin is characterized as autocrat, but more objective authors remark that he has a "light touch" compared with historical record and countries that can be used to compare.

For example, is Putin "neoliberal"? Taxes on individuals are low, monetary policy seems tight. The response to oil shock was in a sense "shock therapy": rubble was allowed to float, lost half of its exchange value, the imports were halved, trade surplus was maintained. Most strange: ca. 100 billions of foreign debt was repaid in one year (which seems to confuse Krugman a lot). Real salaries declined quite drastically. But the largest surprise is that the employment was maintained.

Thus we have a combination of neoliberal elements with a very determined strategy to foster import substitution. Import substitution is detrimental to productivity, but when the economy is under shock, it is better to loose productivity, especially if the effect is transient, then employment, which lead to social pathologies -- and government unpopularity. Concerning popularity, the current generation of Russians know one collapse and the previous oil shock, so apparently they appreciate orderly reorientation of the economy. Import substitution can easily go wrong, Argentina is a textbook negative example, and in Venezuela it turned to be a disaster, but Russia has a much larger internal market and non-oil resources and industries.

I would cite Iran as another import substitution country. Western sanctions are truly a double edge sword. They cut off a country from the international financial system. This makes many types of economic activity harder, but in the same time, it spares a country the dubious benefits that we can observe in Greece.

[Jul 01, 2017] MUST SEE video explains the entire 17 Intelligence Agencies Russian hacking lie

Highly recommended!
Political hacks picked up be Clinton stooges in intelligence agencies and guided by Clapper produced what was required on them...
Notable quotes:
"... Stefan Molyneux opens the below video with the song lyrics, "When the walls come crumbling down", as the political analyst comprehensively explains the bullsh**t lie Hillary Clinton and her mainstream media cronies feed the world so as to sabotage Trump's presidency, at the risk of war with Russia. ..."
"... It is a must watch, must share video which puts yet another US Deeep State lie to bed ..."
"... As a reminder as to how stupid the "17 Intelligence Agencies" Russian hacking narrative The FBI did not even get access to the DNC servers. It relied upon data provided by private security firm CrowdStrike, who had to walk back their audit conclusions on the hacks. ..."
"... Because we are certain that the Coast Guard Intelligence Agency, Marine Corps Intelligence Agency, and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency are authorities when it comes to US election hacking, and thus should be trusted when they sign off to being "highly confident" of Russian election meddling. ..."
Jul 01, 2017 | theduran.com

Yesterday The Duran reported that the New York Times was finally forced to admit that the "17 US intelligence agencies" narrative is completely made up fake news.

The "17 Intelligence Agencies" Russian hacking narrative was the core foundation for which the entire Trump-Russia collusion/cooperation/connection was built upon.

Stefan Molyneux opens the below video with the song lyrics, "When the walls come crumbling down", as the political analyst comprehensively explains the bullsh**t lie Hillary Clinton and her mainstream media cronies feed the world so as to sabotage Trump's presidency, at the risk of war with Russia.

watch-v=6vvPx7AqDl8

It is a must watch, must share video which puts yet another US Deeep State lie to bed

As a reminder as to how stupid the "17 Intelligence Agencies" Russian hacking narrative The FBI did not even get access to the DNC servers. It relied upon data provided by private security firm CrowdStrike, who had to walk back their audit conclusions on the hacks.

Below is a complete list of the 16 intelligence agencies in the US Intelligence Community, headed by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), whose statutory leadership is exercised through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), who under the Obama White House was James R. Clapper making 17 total agencies.

Why the list?

Because we are certain that the Coast Guard Intelligence Agency, Marine Corps Intelligence Agency, and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency are authorities when it comes to US election hacking, and thus should be trusted when they sign off to being "highly confident" of Russian election meddling.

The 16 members of the IC are:
Agency/Office Parent Agency Federal Department Date est.
Defense Intelligence Agency none Defense 1961
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency none Defense 1996
National Reconnaissance Office none Defense 1961
National Security Agency none Defense 1952
Military Intelligence Corps United States Army Defense 1863
Office of Naval Intelligence United States Navy Defense 1882
Twenty-Fifth Air Force United States Air Force Defense 1948
Marine Corps Intelligence United States Marine Corps Defense 1939
Coast Guard Intelligence United States Coast Guard Homeland Security 1915
Office of Intelligence and Analysis none Homeland Security 2007
Central Intelligence Agency none Independent agency 1947
Bureau of Intelligence and Research none State 1945
Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence none Treasury 2004
Office of National Security Intelligence Drug Enforcement Administration Justice 2006
Intelligence Branch Federal Bureau of Investigation Justice 2005
Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence none Energy 1977

[Jul 01, 2017] Gaius Publius An Investigation in Search of a Crime by Gaius Publius

Notable quotes:
"... Start at 2:25. Chris Hayes to Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell: "How long are you allowed to go before you retroactively file as a foreign agent?" Note Swalwell's carefully phrased non-answers, as well as Hayes' seeming failure to know that not registering is a very common practice. (If video doesn't play in your browser, go here and listen, again starting at 2:25.) ..."
"... The big story is that these chicken-little stories all seam to serve as cover for the bought-and-paid for chicken little politicians ..while those elected politicians who give a damp about their office and those they represent are sidelined. ..."
"... And why do you thing tyrants, despots, emirs and dictators generously donated so much to the phoney Foundation? Because they wanted to further its good works, just like the Saudis are very worried about AIDS prevention? No, they wanted to buy influence. And Clinton gave them what they wanted. And why did these same tyrants, despots, emits and dictators stop donating once Clinton lost? Because she could no longer deliver. ..."
"... Corruption in high places is the norm. It is childish, all this virtue signaling. I would respect the sore losers more if they were honest they want to put Obama in as President for Life the US is Haiti now. Or the Kissinger faction of the MIC could install one of our TV generals as our version of Gen. Pinochet. ..."
"... It was the filthy Clintonites who gave us Trump to begin with. ..."
"... No doubt plenty of insulating layers if money-laundering took place via real estate, though its worth plumbing those depths. But given Trump appointees' soft-ball approach to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, I'd guess that's an arena well worth the time of journalists, insulating layers or not. I recall Sheldon Adelson's disdain for the FCPA likely increasing his fervor to dump Democrats. ..."
"... as I keep reminding people, you can turn on the spigot of MacCarthyism, and you may think that you can turn off that spigot, but you can't. In the case of Joe MacCarthy himself, it didn't truly end till about the time of his premature death from alcoholism. ..."
"... One aspect of the now-thoroughly-rotten system in the U S of A is the constant contesting of election results. As Lambert Strether keeps writing, the electronic voting machines are a black hole, and both parties have been engaged in debasing the vote and diminishing the size of the electorate. The gravamen in both parties is that the voters don't know what they are doing and the ballots aren't being counted properly. Maybe we can do something about that ..."
"... This is an implicit warning about impeachment. I interpret this as a recommendation to vigorously oppose Trump's actions over the next three and a half years, and to effectively campaign against him in 2020. Trump really is a terrible President, but Mike Pence would be terrible, too. And so would Hillary Clinton, but I hope we won't have to worry about her any more. ..."
"... In case you're wondering why I think that Trump is a terrible President, here's a short summary: ..."
"... None of the left-leaning writers who have been pooh-poohing the Russia investigation* have demonstrated a working knowledge of counterintelligence. I've also noticed that they correlate a lack of publicly-known evidence to an actual absence of evidence, which is the purview of the investigation. Investigators will be holding any evidence they discover close to their vests for obvious reasons, but even more so in this case because some of the evidence will have origins where sources and methods will statutorily need to be concealed. ..."
"... If they had anything concrete on Trump we've have heard about it by now. The spooks have been leaking for months – they aren't going to suddenly clam up if they've discovered something that's actually a crime. ..."
"... Until someone presents actual evidence, this investigation is nothing more than Democrat payback for Benghazi, which itself was a BS investigation in search of a crime that went on for years. Unfortunately for sHillary, a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while and they did manage to uncover actual criminality in her case (and brushed it right under the rug). ..."
"... Russia disseminates propaganda that (it hopes) will sway the American election in a direction more favorable to their interests! ..."
"... This is what gets me. We're supposed to me a great power, and we're going nuts on this stuff. It's like an elephant panicking at the sight of a mouse. The political class has lost its grip entirely. ..."
"... How sad, then, that the Pied Piper email showed that the Clinton campaign wanted Trump for their opponent. Or Was she ..."
"... OK, so you are saying that we should trust the word of anonymous leakers from the intelligence community, that is, anonymous leaks from a pack of proven perjurers, torturers, and entrapment artists, all on the basis of supposed evidence that we are not allowed to see. ..."
"... For that matter, how do we know the leakers even exist? When some media outlet wants to publish some made-up story, they can just attribute it to an anonymous source. ..."
"... As Constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz pointed out, the DOJ reports to the President. Trump was completely within his authority to give instructions to Comey and fire him. Dershowitz also points out Trump can pardon anyone, including himself. But Trump doesn't read and oddly no one seems to have clued him in on what Dershowitz has said. ..."
Jun 30, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
...Gaius quotes Matt Taibbi's line of thought that the relentless Trump investigations will eventually turn up something, most likely money laundering. However, it's not clear that that can be pinned on Trump. For real estate transactions, it is the bank, not the property owner, that is responsible for anti-money-laundering checks. So unless Trump was accepting cash or other payment outside the banking system, it's going to be hard to make that stick. The one area where he could be vulnerable is his casinos. However, if I read this history of his casinos correctly, Trump could have been pretty much out of that business since 1995 via putting the casinos in a public entity (although he could have continued to collect fees as a manager). Wikipedia hedges its bets and says Trump has been out of the picture since at least 2011 . He only gets licensing fees and has nada to do with management and operations. So even if Trump got dirty money, and in particular dirty Russian money, it's hard to see how that begins to translate into influence over his Presidency, particularly since any such shady activity took place before Trump was even semi-seriously considering a Presidential bid.

By Gaius Publius , a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius , Tumblr and Facebook . GP article archive here . Originally published at DownWithTyranny

http://player.theplatform.com/p/7wvmTC/MSNBCEmbeddedOffSite?guid=n_hayes_drussiafakenews_170627

Start at 2:25. Chris Hayes to Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell: "How long are you allowed to go before you retroactively file as a foreign agent?" Note Swalwell's carefully phrased non-answers, as well as Hayes' seeming failure to know that not registering is a very common practice. (If video doesn't play in your browser, go here and listen, again starting at 2:25.)

"And most pitiful of all that I heard was the voice of the daughter of Priam, of Cassandra" - Homer, The Odyssey , Book 11 PRIAM: What noise, what shriek is this?
TROILUS: 'Tis our mad sister; I do know her voice.
It is Cassandra.
-Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida , Act II, scene 2 "I'll be your Cassandra this week." -Yours truly

So much of this story is hidden from view, and so much of the past has to be erased to conform to what's presently painted as true.

Example of the latter: Did you remember that Robert Mueller and Bush's FBI were behind the highly suspicious (and likely covered-up) 2001 anthrax investigation - Robert Mueller, today's man of absolute integrity? Did you remember that James Comey was the man behind the destruction of the mind of Jose Padilla , just so that Bush could have a terrorist he could point to having caught - James Comey, today's man of doing always what's right? If you forgot all that in the rush to canonize them, don't count on the media to remind you - they have another purpose .

Yes, I'll be your Cassandra this week, the one destined not to be believed . To what do I refer? Read on.

How Many Foreign Agents Register as Foreign Agents? A Number Far Smaller Than "All"

Today let's look at one of the original sins pointed to by those trying to take down Trump, leaving entirely aside whether Trump needs taking down (which he does). That sin - Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort's failing to register as "foreign agents" (of Turkey and Ukraine, respectively, not Russia) until very after the fact.

See the Chris Hayes video at the top for Hayes' question to Rep. Eric Swalwell about that. Hayes to Swalwell: "How long are you allowed to go before you retroactively file as a foreign agent?" What Swalwell should have answered: "Almost forever by modern American practice."

Jonathan Marshall, writing at investigative journalist Robert Parry's Consortium News, has this to say about the current crop of unregistered foreign agents (my emphasis throughout):

The Open Secret of Foreign Lobbying

The alleged hacking of the Hillary Clinton campaign's emails and the numerous contacts of Donald Trump's circle with Russian officials, oligarchs and mobsters have triggered any number of investigations into Moscow's alleged efforts to influence the 2016 election and the new administration .

In contrast, as journalist Robert Parry recently noted , American politicians and the media have been notably silent about other examples of foreign interference in U.S. national politics. In part that's because supporters of more successful foreign pressure groups have enough clout to downplay or deny their very existence . In part it's also because America's political system is so riddled with big money that jaded insiders rarely question the status quo of influence peddling by other nations .

The subject of his discussion is the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Under the Act, failure to properly register carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines. Marshall notes that while the influence of foreign agents was of great national concern during World War I and World War II, very little is done today to require or enforce FARA registration:

Since the end of World War II, however, enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act has been notably lax. Its effectiveness has been stymied by political resistance from lobby supporters as well as by the law's many loopholes - including Justice Department's admission that FARA "does not authorize the government to inspect records of those not registered under the Act."

A 2016 audit by the inspector general of the Department of Justice determined that half of FARA registrations and 62 percent of initial registrations were filed late , and 15 percent of registrants simply stopped filing for periods of six months or more. It also determined that the Department of Justice brought only seven criminal cases under FARA from 1966 to 2015, and filed no civil injunctions since 1991 .

The result - almost no one registers who doesn't want to.

Here's Russia-savvy Matt Taibbi , who is looking at the whole Russia-Trump investigation and wonders what's being investigated. Note his comments about FARA at the end of this quote:

When James Comey was fired I didn't know what to think, because so much of this story is still hidden from view .

Certainly firing an FBI director who has announced the existence of an investigation targeting your campaign is going to be improper in almost every case. And in his post-firing rants about tapes and loyalty, President Trump validated every criticism of him as an impetuous, unstable, unfit executive who additionally is ignorant of the law and lunges for authoritarian solutions in a crisis.

But it's our job in the media to be bothered by little details, and the strange timeline of the Trump-Russia investigation qualifies as a conspicuous loose end.

[So] What exactly is the FBI investigating? Why was it kept secret from other intelligence chiefs, if that's what happened? That matters, if we're trying to gauge what happened last week.

Is it a FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) case involving former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn or a lower-level knucklehead like Carter Page?

Since FARA is violated more or less daily in Washington and largely ignored by authorities unless it involves someone without political connections (an awful lot of important people in Washington who appear to be making fortunes lobbying for foreign countries are merely engaged in "litigation support," if you ask them), it would be somewhat anticlimactic to find out that this was the alleged crime underlying our current white-hot constitutional crisis.

Is it something more serious than a FARA case, like money-laundering for instance, involving someone higher up in the Trump campaign? That would indeed be disturbing, and it would surely be improper – possibly even impeachable, depending upon what exactly happened behind the scenes – for Trump to get in the way of such a case playing itself out.

But even a case like that would be very different from espionage and treason . Gutting a money-laundering case involving a campaign staffer would be more like garden-variety corruption than the cloak-and-dagger nightmares currently consuming the popular imagination.

Sticking narrowly with FARA for the moment, if this were just a FARA case, it would be more than "somewhat anticlimactic to find out that this was the alleged crime underlying our current white-hot constitutional crisis." It would be, not to put to fine a point on it, highly indicative that something else is going on, that other hands are involved, just as the highly suspicious circumstances around the takedown of Eliot Spitzer indicate the presence of other hands and other actors.

My best guess, for what it's worth, is that Trump-Russia will devolve into a money-laundering case, and if it does, Trump will likely survive it, since so many others in the big money world do the same thing. But let's stick with unregistered foreign agents a bit longer.

John McCain, Randy Scheuneman and the Nation of Georgia

Do you remember the 2008 story about McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann, who claimed he no longer represented the nation of Georgia while advising the McCain campaign, even though his small (two-person) firm still retained their business?

And all this while McCain himself was trying to gin up a war between Georgia and Russia that he would benefit from politically :

In the current [2008] crisis, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia fell into a Soviet trap by moving troops into the disputed territory of South Ossetia and raining artillery and rocket fire on the South Ossetian capital city of Tskhinvali, with a still undetermined loss of civilian life. As in 1956, the Soviets responded with overwhelming force and additional loss of life. Once again the United States could offer only words, not concrete aid to the Georgians.

It is difficult to believe that, like the Hungarians in 1956, the Georgians in 2008 could have taken such action without believing that they could expect support from the United States . Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denies that the Bush administration was the agent provocateur in Georgia. To the contrary, a State Department source said that she explicitly warned President Saakashvili in July to avoid provoking Russia.

If this information is correct, then, by inference, John McCain emerges as the most likely suspect as agent provocateur . First, McCain had a unique and privileged pipeline to President Saakashvili (shown to the right in the photo to the right). McCain's top foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, was a partner in a two-man firm that served as a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government . Scheunemann continued receiving compensation from the firm until the McCain campaign imposed new restrictions on lobbyists in mid-May. Scheunemann reportedly helped arrange a telephone conversation between McCain and Saakashvili on April 17 of this year, while he was still being paid by Georgia...

McCain has benefited politically from the crisis in Georgia. McCain's swift and belligerent response to the Soviet actions in Georgia has bolstered his shaky standing with the right-wing of the Republican Party. McCain has also used the Georgian situation to assert his credentials as the hardened warrior ready to do battle against a resurgent Russia. He has pointedly contrasted his foreign policy experience with that of his Democratic opponent Barack Obama. Since the crisis erupted, McCain has focused like a laser on Georgia, to great effect . According to a Quinnipiac University National Poll released on August 19 he has gained four points on Obama since their last poll in mid-July and leads his rival by a two to one margin as the candidate best qualified to deal with Russia.

Was Scheunemann a paid lobbyist for Georgia at the time of these events? He says no. Others aren't so sure :

Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal-leaning watchdog group, said Scheunemann still has a conflict of interest because his small firm continues to represent foreign clients. The records that show Scheunemann ceased representing foreign countries as of March 1 also show his partner, Michael Mitchell, remains registered to represent the three nations. Mitchell said Tuesday that Scheunemann no longer has any role with Orion Strategies but declined to say whether Scheunemann still is receiving income or profits from the firm .

If almost no one registers under FARA who doesn't want to, what's the crime if Flynn didn't register? The answer seems to be, because he's Trump appointee Michael Flynn, and FARA is a stick his enemies can beat him with, while they're looking for something better.

The fact that FARA is a stick almost no one is beaten with, matters not at all, it seems. Not to Democratic politicians and appointees; and not to many journalists either.

An Investigation in Search of a Crime

Questioning the Michael Flynn investigation leads us (and Matt Taibbi) down a further rabbit hole, which includes two questions: what's being investigated, and how did this investigation start?

Short answer to the first question - no one knows, since unlike the Watergate break-in, this whole effort didn't start with a crime that needed investigating. It seems to have started with an investigation (how to get rid of Trump) in search of a crime. And one that still hasn't found evidence of one.

Journalist Robert Parry, who himself was a key Iran-Contra investigator, makes the same point :

In Watergate , five burglars were caught inside the DNC offices on June 17, 1972, as they sought to plant more bugs on Democratic phones. (An earlier break-in in May had installed two bugs, but one didn't work.) Nixon then proceeded to mount a cover-up of his 1972 campaign's role in funding the break-in and other abuses of power.

In Iran-Contra , Reagan secretly authorized weapons sales to Iran, which was then designated a terrorist state, without informing Congress, a violation of the Arms Export Control Act. He also kept Congress in the dark about his belated signing of a related intelligence "finding." And the creation of slush funds to finance the Nicaraguan Contras represented an evasion of the U.S. Constitution.

There was also the attendant Iran-Contra cover-up mounted both by the Reagan White House and later the George H.W. Bush White House, which culminated in Bush's Christmas Eve 1992 pardons of six Iran-Contra defendants as special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh was zeroing in on possible indictment of Bush for withholding evidence.

By contrast , Russia-gate has been a "scandal" in search of a specific crime. President Barack Obama's intelligence chieftains have alleged – without presenting any clear evidence – that the Russian government hacked into the emails of the Democratic National Committee and of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta and released those emails via WikiLeaks and other Internet sites. (The Russians and WikiLeaks have both denied the accusations.)

The DNC emails revealed that senior Democrats did not maintain their required independence regarding the primaries by seeking to hurt Sen. Bernie Sanders and help Clinton. The Podesta emails pulled back the curtain on Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street banks and on pay-to-play features of the Clinton Foundation.

Hacking into personal computers is a crime, but the U.S. government has yet to bring any formal charges against specific individuals supposedly responsible for the hacking of the Democratic emails. There also has been no evidence that Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russians in the hacking.

Lacking any precise evidence of this cyber-crime or of a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, Obama's Justice Department holdovers and now special prosecutor Robert Mueller have sought to build "process crimes," around false statements to investigators and possible obstruction of justice.

I've yet to see actual evidence of an underlying crime - lots of smoke, which is fine as a starting point, but no fire, even after months of looking (and months of official leaking about every damning thing in sight). This makes the current investigation strongly reminiscent of the Whitewater investigation, another case of Alice (sorry, Ken Starr) jumping into every hole she could find looking for a route to Wonderland. Ken Starr finally found one, perjury about a blow job. Will Mueller find something more incriminating? He's still looking too.

Note that none of this means Trump doesn't deserve getting rid of . It just means that how he's gotten rid of matters. (As you ponder this, consider what you think would be fair to do to a Democratic president. I guarantee what happens to Trump will be repeated.)

What Was the Sally Yates Accusation Against Flynn Really About?

Short answer to the second question of my two "further rabbit hole" questions - How did this investigation start? - may be the Sally Yates accusation that Flynn was someone who could be blackmailed.

Here's Parry on that (same link):

In the case of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser, acting Attorney General Sally Yates used the archaic Logan Act of 1799 to create a predicate for the FBI to interrogate Flynn about a Dec. 29, 2016 conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, i.e., after Trump's election but before the Inauguration .

Green Party leader Jill Stein and retired Lt. General Michael Flynn attending a dinner marking the RT network's 10-year anniversary in Moscow, December 2015, sitting at the same table as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Logan Act, which has never resulted in a prosecution in 218 years , was enacted during the period of the Alien and Sedition Acts to bar private citizens from negotiating on their own with foreign governments. It was never intended to apply to a national security adviser of an elected President, albeit before he was sworn in.

But it became the predicate for the FBI interrogation - and the FBI agents were armed with a transcript of the intercepted Kislyak-Flynn phone call so they could catch Flynn on any gaps in his recollection, which might have been made even hazier because he was on vacation in the Dominican Republic when Kislyak called.

Yates also concocted a bizarre argument that the discrepancies between Flynn's account of the call and the transcript left him open to Russian blackmail although how that would work – since the Russians surely assumed that Kislyak's calls would be monitored by U.S. intelligence and thus offered them no leverage with Flynn – was never explained.

Still, Flynn's failure to recount the phone call precisely and the controversy stirred up around it became the basis for an obstruction of justice investigation of Flynn and led to President Trump's firing Flynn on Feb. 13.

Do I need, Cassandra-like, to say this again? None of this means that Trump doesn't deserve getting rid of . It just means that how he's gotten rid of matters.

"So Much of the Story Is Still Hidden From View"

I'm not taking Robert Parry as the final word on this, but he's one word on this, and his word isn't nothing. If we were looking down rabbit holes for the source of this investigation, for where all this anti-Trump action started, I don't think Yates' concerns are where it begins.

I think this story starts well before Trump took office , a rabbit hole I don't want to jump into yet, but one with John Brennan 's and James Clapper 's fingerprints - Obama's CIA director, Obama's DNI - all over it. Models of honesty all.

What's down that hole? Who knows.

What I do know is that Manafort and Flynn not registering as foreign agents puts them squarely in the mainstream of Washington political practice. The fact that these are suddenly crimes of the century makes me just a tad suspicious that, in Matt Taibbi's words, "so much of this story is still hidden from view."

I warned you - I'll be your Cassandra this week. crime

TomDority , June 30, 2017 at 6:50 am

I would think that a crime in search of an investigation would be Clinton's private server while at state and, the tie in thru the Clinton foundation .just saying.

The big story is that these chicken-little stories all seam to serve as cover for the bought-and-paid for chicken little politicians ..while those elected politicians who give a damp about their office and those they represent are sidelined.

Ed , June 30, 2017 at 9:04 am

While some might think there is some tie in with donations to the Clinton Foundation and favors granted by the political wing of the Clinton Conglomerate and the sudden dissolution of said donations after the toppling of Dame Clinton by Der Trumpf it appears all such talk originates in the fever swamp of the right wing echo chamber and it's shot caller the GRU.

sid_finster , June 30, 2017 at 12:27 pm

Oh, what a load of bullcrap!

Present us evidence that the GRU has any influence, much less is the "shot-caller" with respect to the "right-wing echo chamber".

And why do you thing tyrants, despots, emirs and dictators generously donated so much to the phoney Foundation? Because they wanted to further its good works, just like the Saudis are very worried about AIDS prevention? No, they wanted to buy influence. And Clinton gave them what they wanted. And why did these same tyrants, despots, emits and dictators stop donating once Clinton lost? Because she could no longer deliver.

different clue , June 30, 2017 at 9:12 pm

I cannot tell if Ed's comment is straight or satire or snarcasm or what. The internet is a poor place to try such things.

I am going to take it as a straight comment. The Clintons have been grooming Chelsea for public office and will try desperately to get her elected to something somewhere. That way, they will still have influence to peddle and their Family of Foundations will still be worth something.

I hope Chelsea's wanna-have political career is strangled in the cradle. And hosed down with napalm and incinerated down to some windblown ashes.

Thor's Hammer , June 30, 2017 at 9:35 am

That investigation has been firmly crammed down the rabbit hole and cemented over.

If it had taken place in a nation where laws meant anything it would have likely disclosed:

  • Clinton set up a private computer server center to control the information about her background, financial dealings, and political arrangements while serving as Secretary of State in the Obama administration.
  • Obama was aware of the arrangement
  • Clinton transferred classified and top secrete documents to her private server. This is by definition theft.
  • Clinton defied subpoenas, refused to turn over documents, and destroyed evidence. This is by definition obstruction of justice.
  • In spite of being informed that the server was not secure, Clinton placed classified and sensitive national security information on the server. This is equivalent to printing the same documents on paper and walking through Central Park throwing them at the squirrels. And it fits the legal definition of treason.
  • Failure to prosecute Clinton is graphic proof that the US is not a nation of laws, but rather one where power, bribes and influence peddling determine who the law applies to.
Disturbed Voter , June 30, 2017 at 7:09 am

Corruption in high places is the norm. It is childish, all this virtue signaling. I would respect the sore losers more if they were honest they want to put Obama in as President for Life the US is Haiti now. Or the Kissinger faction of the MIC could install one of our TV generals as our version of Gen. Pinochet.

RenoDino , June 30, 2017 at 8:16 am

"None of this means that Trump doesn't deserve getting rid of."

I guess this means, he needs to go, but not this way. This way is anti-democratic. But isn't that the point?

Carolinian , June 30, 2017 at 10:09 am

Did Obama "deserve getting rid of"? Oh heck yes. You pays your money and you makes your choice. Next chance: 2020.

Crazy Horse , June 30, 2017 at 12:57 pm

Since he won't be impeached, I assume Gaius meant Trump should be assassinated? In the USA every four years we have the opportunity to battle over the control of voting machine software, voter disqualification and hanging chads. But if we want to change Presidents in mid-stream the traditional method is to have them shot.

different clue , June 30, 2017 at 9:15 pm

It was the filthy Clintonites who gave us Trump to begin with. Let Trump be smeared all over their face and shoved way deep up their noses till 2020. And if the Clintonite scum give us another Clintonite nominee in 2020, then let Trump be elected all over again. I'll vote for that.

Alice X , June 30, 2017 at 8:17 am

As regards the 2008 Georgian situation discussed here, Russia seems to have been referred to as Soviet . Twice. This happened for some years in the '90s but it is rather late to do so these days. Maybe I misunderstood something?

Vatch , June 30, 2017 at 9:50 am

You did not misunderstand; yes, the author of that article was sloppy. He was switching back and forth between events of 1956 and 2008, and he failed to adequately proofread what he wrote about 2008.

Skip in DC , June 30, 2017 at 8:39 am

Gaius offers a realistic and well-put caution for Democrats and journalists taking their eye off the ball of the Mnuchin crowd.

I've a good friend who's exasperated when I utter such blasphemies, asking how I could have missed the constant swell of opinion by Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, Joe Scarborough, Rachel Meadow, etc

When I reply that prospects outside the courts of comedians and MSNBC infotainment pundits goosing their base are different – and I'm not so sure I'd prefer a less crass and crazed President Pence armed with Trumpster strategies – I'm asked "But what about justice?!!!"

Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

No doubt plenty of insulating layers if money-laundering took place via real estate, though its worth plumbing those depths. But given Trump appointees' soft-ball approach to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, I'd guess that's an arena well worth the time of journalists, insulating layers or not. I recall Sheldon Adelson's disdain for the FCPA likely increasing his fervor to dump Democrats.

sid_finster , June 30, 2017 at 12:30 pm

The right-on set ask "What about justice?"

Hell, let's see some evidence before we proceed to the sentence and verdict.

TheCatSaid , June 30, 2017 at 2:51 pm

And let's apply the justice to everyone , not just the "enemy camp" of whoever happens to be speaking.

And let's apply justice to those at the top first. Only after cleaning out all the top, most privileged layers, then the layers beneath them, should justice be applied to those at the bottom socio-economic layers. IOW, the opposite of the strategy we've seen applied over most of our history in many or most places.

DJG , June 30, 2017 at 9:18 am

Yves Smith: Thanks for this. Astute observations. And as I keep reminding people, you can turn on the spigot of MacCarthyism, and you may think that you can turn off that spigot, but you can't. In the case of Joe MacCarthy himself, it didn't truly end till about the time of his premature death from alcoholism.

Hence the observation above in the posting that the rightwingers will pull out the same techniques if a Democrat wins the next election.

One aspect of the now-thoroughly-rotten system in the U S of A is the constant contesting of election results. As Lambert Strether keeps writing, the electronic voting machines are a black hole, and both parties have been engaged in debasing the vote and diminishing the size of the electorate. The gravamen in both parties is that the voters don't know what they are doing and the ballots aren't being counted properly. Maybe we can do something about that

Crazy Horse , June 30, 2017 at 9:49 am

Perhaps we should look at the fairest electoral system in the world as a model. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8935

I'm sure readers will be shocked to learn that the electoral system referred to is that used in Venezuela in 2012. And it will be the rare person who can distinguish between a superior system for conducting an election and a result that they don't like.

Stephen Douglas , June 30, 2017 at 10:09 am

Do I need, Cassandra-like, to say this again? None of this means that Trump doesn't deserve getting rid of.

No. You didn't need to say it even once. Another interesting analysis utterly ruined by the writer's incessant feverish need to virtue signal himself as a Trump hater. Ugh!

You write an article chock-full of information clearly pointing to corruption, venality, un-democratic machinations, and still you feel the need to repeat over and over and over again that does not mean that you don't want to remove Trump. Remove him? Like how, Gaius? And why? Why not remove the people you write about in your article? Why not say 40 times you want to remove them. Undemocratically, of course. As you say in your article, be careful of how the talk about removing people one does not like.

You're a Cassandra alright. And methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Vatch , June 30, 2017 at 11:13 am

Here's another paragraph from the article:

Note that none of this means Trump doesn't deserve getting rid of. It just means that how he's gotten rid of matters. (As you ponder this, consider what you think would be fair to do to a Democratic president. I guarantee what happens to Trump will be repeated.)

This is an implicit warning about impeachment. I interpret this as a recommendation to vigorously oppose Trump's actions over the next three and a half years, and to effectively campaign against him in 2020. Trump really is a terrible President, but Mike Pence would be terrible, too. And so would Hillary Clinton, but I hope we won't have to worry about her any more.

In case you're wondering why I think that Trump is a terrible President, here's a short summary:

Scott Pruitt
Betsy DeVos
Jeff Sessions
Steven Mnuchin
Tom Price
Neil Gorsuch

There are other reasons, but that list should suffice for now.

Jay , June 30, 2017 at 11:10 am

None of the left-leaning writers who have been pooh-poohing the Russia investigation* have demonstrated a working knowledge of counterintelligence. I've also noticed that they correlate a lack of publicly-known evidence to an actual absence of evidence, which is the purview of the investigation. Investigators will be holding any evidence they discover close to their vests for obvious reasons, but even more so in this case because some of the evidence will have origins where sources and methods will statutorily need to be concealed.

Furthermore, many of these writers appear to be unfamiliar with the case law governing the major features of the case. Yes, money laundering may be a part of the case and a financial blog may emphasize that aspect of the case because that's what they're familiar with, but what we're fundamentally looking at is possible violations of the Espionage Act, as well as the obstruction of justice by certain players to hide their involvement. Not a single one of these articles (or any of the cable news shows) have taken note of one of the juiciest and obscure pieces of evidence that's right there out in the open, if you'd been following this as closely as I have. As much as I admire Gaius Publius and Matt Taibbi, and trust their reporting within their demonstrated and reliable competencies, neither have really written about intelligence activities in a thoroughgoing manner in order to be identified as journalists specializing in matters pertaining to intelligence, espionage, spies. Publius writes about political economy and Taibbi is as "Russia savvy" as your average Russian citizen; maybe less so. And being Russia savvy does not make you FSB savvy. Now if Sy Hersh wrote something about L'Affaire Russe, that would be worth seriously considering.

*I won't even address the seriousness or motives of the people on the right who have been pooh-poohing the Russia investigation. But it is curious for otherwise "GOP-savvy" lefties to align with people who spout Fox News talking points all the live long day, and who are wrong about everything, all the time, and not in a "broken clock tells correct time twice a day" sort of way.

lyman alpha blob , June 30, 2017 at 11:44 am

If they had anything concrete on Trump we've have heard about it by now. The spooks have been leaking for months – they aren't going to suddenly clam up if they've discovered something that's actually a crime.

Until someone presents actual evidence, this investigation is nothing more than Democrat payback for Benghazi, which itself was a BS investigation in search of a crime that went on for years. Unfortunately for sHillary, a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while and they did manage to uncover actual criminality in her case (and brushed it right under the rug).

shinola , June 30, 2017 at 2:12 pm

Just what makes Putin "the enemy"? Russia disseminates propaganda that (it hopes) will sway the American election in a direction more favorable to their interests! and in other news, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.

Lambert Strether , July 1, 2017 at 12:45 am

> Russia disseminates propaganda that (it hopes) will sway the American election in a direction more favorable to their interests!

This is what gets me. We're supposed to me a great power, and we're going nuts on this stuff. It's like an elephant panicking at the sight of a mouse. The political class has lost its grip entirely.

NotTimothyGeithner , June 30, 2017 at 2:15 pm

"but we've been hearing new evidence on a daily and weekly basis. Mueller isn't going to show his hand until the investigation has concluded,"

Ah we've been hearing new evidence, but Mueller is simultaneously keeping it secret wait did you mean we've heard new innuendos?

Jay , June 30, 2017 at 6:33 pm

Mostly it's been gumshoe reporters getting interviews. No need for inside sources for this story: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/republican-claimed-flynn-tie-clinton-emails-article-1.3289348

Lambert Strether , July 1, 2017 at 12:51 am

This is the story where the main source is dead?

Lambert Strether , July 1, 2017 at 12:49 am

> Putin must be delighted to have a vainglorious ignoramus presiding over a US government paralyzed by division

How sad, then, that the Pied Piper email showed that the Clinton campaign wanted Trump for their opponent. Or Was she Putin's stooge? Perhaps the server she left open to the world for three months with no password provided the Russkis with some kompromat ? Really, there's as much evidence for that theory as anything else

Lambert Strether , July 1, 2017 at 12:55 am

> so must also likewise concede that there may be more there than you suppose

So either there's something there or there isn't. That does seem to exhaust the possibilities. If only Maddow, the Clintonites, whichever factions in the intelligence community that are driving the "drip, drip, drip" of stories, the Jeff Bezos Shopper, cable, and all the access journalists writing it all up would take such a balanced perspective .

sid_finster , June 30, 2017 at 12:34 pm

OK, so you are saying that we should trust the word of anonymous leakers from the intelligence community, that is, anonymous leaks from a pack of proven perjurers, torturers, and entrapment artists, all on the basis of supposed evidence that we are not allowed to see.

Because secret squirrel counterintelligence. Ah, now I get it.

sid_finster , June 30, 2017 at 2:26 pm

We don't know who the leakers are. They're anonymous, but they willingly associate themselves with an intelligence community, the very organizations that commit perjury, that engage in torture, that do entrapment, all on a regular basis. Not to mention other crimes for which men have hung, such as gin up up evidence to drive this country towards aggressive war. So nothing to be suspicious of here.

These organizations have been leaking on a regular basis but they have not leaked evidence. That by itself is suspicious, since in a white collar crime case, a serial killer case, etc. we don't usually have a flood of anonymous leaks coming from supposed investigators.

Nor in a garden-variety criminal investigation do we have the suspect laid out in advance, and any leaks are intended to make the suspect guilty in the mind of the public, before charges or brought or a crime is determined.

ian , June 30, 2017 at 4:39 pm

For that matter, how do we know the leakers even exist? When some media outlet wants to publish some made-up story, they can just attribute it to an anonymous source.

Lambert Strether , July 1, 2017 at 12:34 am

> name the leakers who have committed perjury, torture, and entrapment.

We can't. They're anonymous.

> Is everyone in the intelligence community a perjurer, a torturer, or engaged in entrapment?

No, just the leadership. Clapper (perjury), Mueller (entrapment), Brennan (torture). Those come to mind immediately; there are doubtless others.

WeakenedSquire , June 30, 2017 at 2:10 pm

Nope. Telling us prawns to wait until the evidence is in, or, worse, that only the specialists can be trusted, is one of the tactics of repression that the elite use while they are busy manufacturing and/or hiding said evidence. And surely by now we all know that "specialists" have no clothes.

different clue , June 30, 2017 at 9:21 pm

If you want serious analysis by seriously non-left people who have broken rocks in the quarry of intelligence, you can read Sic Semper Tyrannis. They have offered some hi-valu input on this whole "Putin diddit" deal.

They also offered some hi-valu input on the Hillary server matter. And Colonel Lang had a thing or three to say about the Clinton Family of Foundations . . . including a little-remarked-upon stealth-laundry-pipeline registered in Canada.

Lambert Strether , July 1, 2017 at 12:35 am

Philip Giraldi at The American Conservative also does good work.

different clue , July 1, 2017 at 3:10 am

Philip Giraldi has also written guest-posts at Sic Semper Tyrannis from time to time. The name "Philip Giraldi' is one of the pickable subject-category names on the right side of the SST homepage.

Lambert Strether , July 1, 2017 at 12:59 am

> Not a single one of these articles (or any of the cable news shows) have taken note of one of the juiciest and obscure pieces of evidence that's right there out in the open, if you'd been following this as closely as I have.

OK, what is it?

sid_finster , June 30, 2017 at 12:19 pm

An investigation seeking to find evidence that a pre-selected target has commited a crime is I believe called a "witch hunt".

Byron the Light Bulb , June 30, 2017 at 1:48 pm

Or, you know, probable cause to investigate based on very public admissions. Production before a grand jury is secret under penalty of criminal prosecution. Once probable cause is affirmed, then the indictments will be under seal for what could be some time. I think it's probable that there may already be indictments against some of the players. DJT may already be a John Doe. The Fed GJ's in DC are three months long, the current one wrapping up third week of August [a guess based on past experience as a 3rd party]. Expect movement early this fall.

Yves Smith Post author , June 30, 2017 at 4:27 pm

As Constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz pointed out, the DOJ reports to the President. Trump was completely within his authority to give instructions to Comey and fire him. Dershowitz also points out Trump can pardon anyone, including himself. But Trump doesn't read and oddly no one seems to have clued him in on what Dershowitz has said.

Nixon was a completely different case. There had been an actual crime, a break in. Archibald Cox was an special prosecutor appointed by Congress. Firing him raised Constitutional issues.

Jay , June 30, 2017 at 6:43 pm

You mean this Alan Dershowitz? http://abovethelaw.com/2016/11/alan-dershowitz-thinks-black-lives-matter-is-anti-semitic-sticks-up-for-steve-bannon/

witters , June 30, 2017 at 8:47 pm

Yes. And?

Katje Borgesius , July 1, 2017 at 12:38 am

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, read the complaint in "Kriss et al v. BayRock Group LLC et al" [ 1:10-cv-03959-LGS-DCF ] in NY Southern District. It's a RICO. It goes from the 46-story Trump SoHo condo-hotel on Spring Street to Iceland [?] and beyond. Then check out DJT's deposition in Trilogy Properties "LLC et al v. SB Hotel Associates LLC et al" [ 1:09cv21406 ] and his D&O doc production.

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

Yves Smith Post author , July 1, 2017 at 12:49 am

Help me. This is the best you can do?

I've said repeatedly that people should stop hyperventilating about Trump and Russia and if anything should be bothered that he was in business with a crook, as in Felix Sater. I was on this long ago. Sater is Brighton Beach mafia. That means Jewish mafia, BTW; he worked Jewish connections overseas. He's not connected to anyone of any importance in Russia. No one with any sophistication would do business with a felon who turned state's evidence. Means he can't be trusted (by upstanding people, because he's a crook, and by crooks, because he sang like a canary).

Oh, and the former employees lost that suit.

Lambert Strether , July 1, 2017 at 12:36 am

Or a fishing expedition.

sid_finster , June 30, 2017 at 2:28 pm

For "super secret" investigations, the investigators sure leak like sieves. I wonder why.

Lambert Strether , June 30, 2017 at 5:02 pm

On the latest one, " GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn ," unlocked at the WSJ, the main source, long-time Republican oppo researcher Peter W. Smith, left the land of the living on May 14 of this year, at the age of 81. So, on the up side, we've finally got a source with a name. On the down side, he's dead. Do better!

[Jul 01, 2017] Potential conspirators of Russiagate are grilled by Try Gowdy

[Jun 30, 2017] CNN is making Tucker Carlson look good!

Jun 30, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
marknesop , June 29, 2017 at 11:54 am
I can't stand Tucker Carlson from his time as a loyal footsoldier in the ranks of the George Dubya Bush Apologist Army, but it's easy to feel in synch with him here just because CNN is so deservedly hated. Can't argue with your conclusions, either.
ucgsblog , June 29, 2017 at 2:12 pm
Then this will make you chuckle Mark – when I was discussing CNN at a meeting, one of the smarter analysts commented: "yet another reason to hate CNN is because they're making Tucker Carlson look good! Why doesn't anyone bring that up?"

The room responded with laughter. Remember the days when CNN used to claim that they're "the most trusted name in news" – well they're not doing that anymore:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-09/cnn-now-least-trusted-news-network-among-viewers

"In the poll published Wednesday by Rasmussen Reports, 1,000 likely voters were asked to describe their media viewing habits. Seventy-five percent said they watch at least some form of cable news each week, with 42 percent saying they most frequently watch Fox News, 35 percent usually choosing CNN, and 19 percent favoring MSNBC. An even 50 percent of frequent Fox News viewers agreed with a followup question, "Do you trust the political news you are getting?" By comparison, 43 percent of frequent MSNBC viewers and just 33 percent of those who mostly watch CNN said they trust their political news."

http://www.dailywire.com/news/18088/death-spiral-along-its-credibility-cnn-ratings-john-nolte#exit-modal

"For instance, on Tuesday, over the course of the day, CNN was only able to attract a measly 670,000 viewers. For context, MSNBC nearly doubled this number; Fox News nearly tripled it. CNN has almost always lagged a bit behind MSNBC in total viewers, but not like this."

Why couldn't it be 620,000? The reason I'm asking, is because 6.2 million Americans watched Putin's interview with Megyn Kelly. I'm not yet sure about Stone's Putin Interviews – but that number also seems to be very positive and in the millions. Of course losing to Discovery Channel didn't help CNN:

"Furthermore, throughout this same quarter, CNN lost to MSNBC in total and primetime demo viewers. This is the first time since 2014 that CNN has lost that demo crown to its leftwing rival. In total viewers last quarter, among all cable news channels, Fox News placed first, MSNBC third, and CNN is all alone in tenth place, just barely ahead of Investigative Discovery, a second-tier offshoot of the Discovery Network."

I predicted this would happen back when they fucked up their coverage of the Ossetian War. Now I'm just watching the train-wreck, thinking "am I really eating the best tasting popcorn? Have I finally found it?"

marknesop , June 29, 2017 at 2:56 pm
I hope they are driven right out of existence – I can't wait to see Wolf Blitzer sitting on a bench outside Hope Cottage in downtown Halifax, bleary-eyed and waiting for the free soup line to open. All of a journalist's enemies should be among the corrupt mages of the state apparatus – when the common man earnestly prays for you to be brought low, you've lost your way, and are feeding on a projected image of yourself. I think it's safe to say that we have seen the most precipitous decline in ethics in journalism, this past decade, that has occurred since its humble beginnings.

[Jun 30, 2017] Russia extends countersanctions on the EU for another year, until December 2018.

Jun 30, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
marknesop , June 30, 2017 at 6:34 pm
How long you wanna let this go on? Huh? 'Cause I can keep this up for as long as you can.

Russia extends countersanctions on the EU for another year , until December 2018. Growth for the EU for 2018 is forecast at around 1.4-1.5% . We'll see about that. It is forecast by the same sources to be 1.5-1.7% for Russia , so we'll see about that, too. I sure hope Russia can survive another year without French cheese for the kreakly. I have to say, though, that extending economic sanctions against another country when your own prognosis says their economy will do better than yours sounds fairly stupid.

[Jun 30, 2017] In effect, the sanctions have acted as a tariffs policy Russia might have introduced to enable key domestic industries to develop.

www.moonofalabama.org

Posted by: Jen | Jun 30, 2017 5:05:42 PM | 16

Christian Chuba@3:

Jon Hellevig's Awara blog has published an interesting report into the current state of Russia's economy after two years of sanctions imposed by the West: "What Does Not Kill You Will Make You Stronger – The Russian Economy 2014 – 2016, the Years of Sanctions Warfare"

https://www.awaragroup.com/blog/russian-economy-2014-2016-the-years-of-sanctions-warfare/

Here's a quick rundown of the report's key findings:

KEY FINDINGS:

  • Russia's economy has successfully adjusted to dual shock of sanctions and oil price plunge
  • Minor GDP loss of -2.3% for 3 years of sanctions will be completely recovered in 2017 with expected 2-3% growth
  • Oil & gas share of GDP drops to below 10%
  • Industrial production stable 2014-2016, soars in May by +5.3%
  • Russia's economy now the most diversified in the world. Exports remain relatively undiversified, but domestic production highly diversified and self-sufficient
  • Debt Crisis predicted by Western pundits failed to materialize
  • [Central bank] reserves intact and sovereign wealth funds solid
  • Budget deficit never went below -3.9%. Tax collection soars in 2017, budget now balanced
  • Oil & gas only 17% of budget revenue (2016)
  • Inflation falls to near 4%
  • Unemployment remains low at 5% level
  • Demographic indicators reach all-time best
  • Population at 146.8 million – all-time high
  • Only clearly negative data: Salaries, disposable income and consumption. Retail sales down more than 10%

In effect, the sanctions have acted as a tariffs policy Russia might have introduced to enable key domestic industries to develop.

Mike Norman Economics blog on the Awara report has some interesting comments on Putin's economic and financial policy. Russia's Central Bank is apparently still staffed by senior officials (like Elvira Nabiullina) who adhere to a neoliberal economic approach and who maintain a high interest rate regime which might be good for pensioners' incomes but bad for people establishing small businesses and needing loan funding.

http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com.au/2017/06/awara-russian-economy-2014-2016-years.html

[Jun 30, 2017] What Does Not Kill You Will Make You Stronger – The Russian Economy 2014 – 2016, the Years of Sanctions Warfare

marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile , June 29, 2017 at 11:22 am

An Awara Accounting Economic Analysis::

What Does Not Kill You Will Make You Stronger – The Russian Economy 2014 – 2016, the Years of Sanctions Warfare

This report is based on Awara Accounting's research on how the Russian economy managed in 2014 – 2016 to cope with the dual shocks of Western sanctions and the accompanying precipitous fall of the oil price.

KEY FINDINGS:

Russia's economy has successfully adjusted to dual shock of sanctions and oil price plunge
Minor GDP loss of -2.3% for 3 years of sanctions will be completely recovered in 2017 with expected 2-3% growth

Oil & gas share of GDP drops to below 10%

Industrial production stable 2014-2016, soars in May by +5.3%

Russia's economy now the most diversified in the world. Exports remain relatively undiversified, but domestic production highly diversified and self-sufficient

Debt Crisis predicted by Western pundits failed to materialize

CB reserves intact and sovereign wealth funds solid

Budget deficit never went below -3.9%. Tax collection soars in 2017, budget now balanced

Oil & gas only 17% of budget revenue (2016)

Inflation falls to near 4%

Unemployment remains low at 5% level

Demographic indicators reach all-time best

Population at 146.8 million – all-time high

Only clearly negative data: Salaries, disposable income and consumption.

Retail sales down more than 10%

Full Awara report here .

Source: Russia Insider Special Report by Awara Accounting: Russia's Economy Emerges Stronger Than Ever After Sanctions, Years 2014 – 2016

Do I detect any loud "hahaha" out there?

https://ads.pubmatic.com/AdServer/js/showad.js#PIX&kdntuid=1&p=156204

marknesop , June 29, 2017 at 12:08 pm
That's excellent news. Oh – unless you work for the State Department or the Poroshenko government. Keep those sanctions on, Washington! How's your market share doing, Europe?
kirill , June 30, 2017 at 5:58 am
I love the skewering of the idiots/propagandists who use Russia's exports profile to infer its diversification level. Since Russia has the smallest imports per GDP of any large economy on the planet, by definition it must be producing the goods and services that it consumes within its own borders. The propaganda would have everyone believe that Russia is a resource exporting banana republic that imports all of its value added goods and services.

The report also repeats the points I raise about the CBR. The CBR is acting to undermine the Russian economy since it operates on false assumptions. In particular it drinks the propaganda koolaid that Russia has an import economy due to lack of diversification. So the CBR thinks that there is more inflation pressure on the economy (i.e. via import price increases due to ruble forex drops) than there actually is. Putin is failing big time letting Nabiullina carry out her nonsensical inflation fighting prime rate policy:

Note how the CBR prime interest rate was closer to the inflation rate before the arrival of Nabiullina. Also note that the inflation rate shows no signs of instability after 2015 so there is no need for the large spread between the prime rate and the inflation rate. That is, the prime rate should be at most 4%.

[Jun 30, 2017] What Might a Civil War Look Like Matt Bracken on The Hagmann Report

Jun 29, 2017 | www.infowars.com

There are many keyboard warriors itching for a civil war in the U.S. Some even type "bring it on" and post to popular Internet forums and comment boards. But do they really know what they are asking for?

Matt Bracken has seen civil wars in various countries where he's served in our armed forces. He's been there, and it ain't pretty.

This is an important broadcast that anyone wanting to understand the war of ideologies taking place right now - the cultural war we are seeing within the United States - should hear.

Original broadcast date: 6/27/17

Matt Bracken's website: https://www.enemiesforeignanddomestic...

Follow Matt on Twitter: @MattBracken48
Follow Doug Hagmann on Twitter: @HagmannPI

Show Website: http://www.HagmannAndHagmann.com
News./Information: http://www.HagmannReport.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HagmannReport
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HagmannReport
Doug's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/douglas.hagmann

Pedro Wiegmann 10 hours ago

He's telling the truth. The left is using the language of incitement to war. It's the leaders and Hollywood scumbags MUST be taken out and tried for treason. They will start a massive war if we don't neutralize them immediately.

Scott F Davis 9 hours ago

As the instrumentalities of DOJ governance are rebuilt, We The People will probably have to wait until after the August recess before new US Attorneys and new FBI Director are confirmed. Pivotal window of time - July/ August 2017

Lori Snow 1 hour ago

I love Matt Bracken. I never miss what he has to say. Scary stuff but reality is scary. Who can deny his knowledge and patriotism? NOT me.He knows what he talks about and we better listen people. . I look for him here, on Infowars and Caravan to Midnight too.Thank you Matt.I like to say..."Release the Bracken.".

[Jun 30, 2017] The Russians are coming narrative is an attempt to reassert the control by neoliberal elite after Trump election

Notable quotes:
"... i think it's because the rump 'came in through the bathroom window' ... defying 'both parties'. the uniparty is trying to reassert control, somehow. what would happen if people noticed that the uniparty was not only not needed, was in fact the engine of malfeasance and misrule, what if people decided to 'do it themselves' ... platform, primaries, elections ... the whole nine yards? ..."
Jun 30, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

jfl | Jun 29, 2017 9:35:53 PM | 62

@59 ts

i think it's because the rump 'came in through the bathroom window' ... defying 'both parties'. the uniparty is trying to reassert control, somehow. what would happen if people noticed that the uniparty was not only not needed, was in fact the engine of malfeasance and misrule, what if people decided to 'do it themselves' ... platform, primaries, elections ... the whole nine yards?

so 'the Russians are coming!' anything to reassert a narrative it can control.

[Jun 30, 2017] Russia is uniquely hated by the US neoliberal elite and neocons. The key issue for them is "Putinism" which means 'sovereignty, local nationalism (for everyone), a multi-polar world, respect for the UN' vs the Full Specturm Dominance, 'exporting democracy' (via regime change for countries that put resitiance) and the preeminence of US world hegemony

Notable quotes:
"... As I mentioned earlier, Iran is dismissed as a terrorist state, N. Korea a rogue regime, and China a growing rival. With Russia the Foreign Policy Establishment (FPE) will invest the time to write, scholarly looking articles that make it look like they have thoroughly studied Russia and have reluctantly come to the conclusion that Russia is a basket case of evil. ..."
"... Because I watched Stone's interviews and read Russia insider, I can see why they view Putin as a threat. Contrary to their assertion that 'Russia has no culture or ideology to challenge the west (the U.S. FPE)'. This is an issue for them. Putinism, 'sovereignty, local nationalism (for everyone), a multi-polar world, respect for the UN' vs the FPE, 'exporting U.S. democracy (including regime change) and the preeminence of U.S. world leadership'. ..."
"... You can debate Putinism but not merely dismiss it as thuggery which they invariably do with their tediously long articles. It doesn't look like they actually listen to Russians, it looks like they read each other's papers. ..."
"... Now I can see why Russia has abandoned the information war, they view it as a hopeless waste of resources that they can never match. ..."
"... For example, here is a very clever apology for how we justified not having the OPCW investigate Khan Shaykhun and the Syrian airbase https://tcf.org/content/commentary/havent-chemical-weapons-inspectors-gone-syrias-shayrat-air-base/ ..."
Jun 30, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Christian Chuba | Jun 30, 2017 2:28:05 PM | 3

Russia is uniquely hated, they get boutique articles to show that they are rotten to the core.

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/05/seeing-russia-clearly/

As I mentioned earlier, Iran is dismissed as a terrorist state, N. Korea a rogue regime, and China a growing rival. With Russia the Foreign Policy Establishment (FPE) will invest the time to write, scholarly looking articles that make it look like they have thoroughly studied Russia and have reluctantly come to the conclusion that Russia is a basket case of evil.

These boutique articles will say a lot of condescending things but will tie into, 'Russia never had a liberal democratic tradition so of course they are governed by monsters like Putin'. I don't see the same level of care given to the rest of our enemies list. I read realclearworld.com which gives a sampling of neocon articles so I think I get a broad representation of their production.

Because I watched Stone's interviews and read Russia insider, I can see why they view Putin as a threat. Contrary to their assertion that 'Russia has no culture or ideology to challenge the West (the U.S. FPE)'. This is an issue for them. Putinism, 'sovereignty, local nationalism (for everyone), a multi-polar world, respect for the UN' vs the FPE, 'exporting U.S. democracy (including regime change) and the preeminence of U.S. world leadership'.

You can debate Putinism but not merely dismiss it as thuggery which they invariably do with their tediously long articles. It doesn't look like they actually listen to Russians, it looks like they read each other's papers.

If you take the time to read it, the author is diabolically clever in how he twists Putin's words. He refers to Russians who lost everything and were forced to leave (note, he leaves out the dreaded word 'oligarch', that is reserved for those who staid).

Now I can see why Russia has abandoned the information war, they view it as a hopeless waste of resources that they can never match.

For example, here is a very clever apology for how we justified not having the OPCW investigate Khan Shaykhun and the Syrian airbase https://tcf.org/content/commentary/havent-chemical-weapons-inspectors-gone-syrias-shayrat-air-base/

[Jun 30, 2017] How much of a threat does Russia pose, and to whom?

Jun 30, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Moscow Exile , June 29, 2017 at 5:01 am
From Auntie BBC (which is not a state-run organization!) -

How much of a threat does Russia pose, and to whom?

Oh do tell - pleeeeease!!!!

And get this:

If Moscow could tear up the rule-book of security in post-Cold War Europe by carving off a slice of Ukraine (as it previously did in Georgia), many feared the Baltic republics – also territory of the former Soviet Union – could be next

Tearing off a slice of Georgia, eh?

According to Michael Kofman of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute, "by 2012 Russia had reorganised its armed forces from a Soviet mass mobilisation army into a permanent standing force, and began improving quality across the board".

This was coupled with an intense regimen of snap checks on readiness and countless exercises, to the extent that "by 2014 the Russian military was markedly improved compared to its lacklustre performance in the Russia-Georgia war in 2008", he says.

Lacklustre?

So they got whupped by the US trained and equipped Georgians, did they?

All the experts I spoke to insist that the initial focus of the Russian effort has been on Ukraine, not the Baltics. Indeed, Michael Kofman argues that the war in Ukraine imposed unexpected requirements on Russia's military, which found itself lacking permanently stationed forces on the country's borders, and ill-positioned for the conflict.

The war in the Ukraine?

He means the civil war there, right?

He can't mean that Russia is waging against the Ukraine, can he?

"Russian armed forces", he says, "were, and still are, in transition".

To address the prospect of war with Ukraine in the medium to long term, he says, Russia "has spent much of the past three years repositioning units around Ukraine, building three new divisions, rebasing several brigades, and creating an entire new combined-arms army.

So now it's "the war with Ukraine" not "in the Ukraine" is it?

So he did mean above that Russia is at war with the Ukraine?

The intent is for Russian ground forces to be in place just across the border should they need to reinforce proxies in the Donbas, invade from several vectors, or simply deter Kiev from thinking it could quickly retake the separatist regions by force".

So they are at war with the Ukraine, but they are not actually in the Ukraine?

I see.

And they have "proxies" waging war for them in the Ukraine, right?

Michael Kofman notes, "Russia is a Eurasian land power, bringing a lot of firepower to the fight, but its strength shines when fighting close to home".

Well I'm so pleased you've grasped that point, Mr. Kofman!

The consensus among the experts seems to be that Ukraine was a warning bell. Russia's newfound assertiveness is not to be confused with a desire to launch a military attack westwards.
Indeed, the immediate Russian threat may come from its information warfare and cyber campaigns directed against the West. That's a battle that has already been joined. And it is one the West is equally ill-prepared for.

Well that's good news, isn't it?

By the way, when did Russia last launch an attack westwards?

1944 you say?

Well I never!

What on earth for?

What? They invaded Germany ?

You"ll be telling me next that they invaded France!

They did?

In 1814?

What the hell for?

Right! I get the picture.

The Russians are aggressive.

Clearly.

kirill , June 29, 2017 at 5:46 am
Yeah, the 7 million people in the Donbas are all Russian proxies. Gotta love the NATzO propagandist systematic omission of numbers to twist the context. In case my point is not clear, if the Donbas population was really Ukr and loyal to Kiev, then Russia would hardly be in any position to wage war there by proxy or directly. This is basically proof by induction; if Kiev loyal regions of Banderastan were as easy to disrupt like the Donbas, then all of Banderastan would be in this condition. Clearly, the narrative being peddled by the NATzO propaganda chorus is inane. The only explanation of the situation in the Donbas that fits the facts is that it is rebelling against Kiev.
marknesop , June 29, 2017 at 11:31 am
'Russia's newfound assertiveness' is no more or less than an abandonment of hope in NATO's promises and flannel, and a decision to stop backing up. It's nice of them to telegraph their moves so far in advance, though, and point to the Baltics as their designated flashpoint.
Cortes , June 30, 2017 at 1:51 pm
The Beeb definitely falls within the EU legal concept of an "emanation of the State."

[Jun 30, 2017] More clumsy comedy from the Exceptional Nation; America announces that it believes Syria has backed away from its diabolical plan to murder more women and children in another Assad-signature chemical attack

Jun 30, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
marknesop , June 30, 2017 at 12:09 pm
More clumsy comedy from the Exceptional Nation; America announces that it believes Syria has backed away from its diabolical plan to murder more women and children in another Assad-signature chemical attack – thanks, of course, to the fact that the United States of America has the Syrian airbase from which he planned to launch it under constant surveillance, and ample punishing forces on a hair-trigger alert. Have a care, Assad, you murderer!!!

So now the absence of evidence that a chemical attack is in progress is proof that there was such a plan. In other news, Donald Trump has had to abandon his plan to sodomize the neighbours' dog. Thanks to my having the pooch under constant surveillance.

https://ads.pubmatic.com/AdServer/js/showad.js#PIX&kdntuid=1&p=156204

Pavlo Svolochenko , June 30, 2017 at 7:25 pm
The blond moron has hit upon a solid tactic – issue warning, declare victory when nothing happens.

If he wants to keep this up for the rest of the war, I don't see a problem.

[Jun 30, 2017] Andy Haldane told BBC Newsnight that businesses had not invested enough to give the productivity improvements necessary to push up pay.

Jun 30, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Warren , June 30, 2017 at 3:29 pm

https://www.youtube.com/embed/TTXWBm8Xpgo?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Published on 29 Jun 2017
People in the UK feel "frustrated and squeezed" because their pay has flatlined for a decade, the Bank of England's chief economist has said.

Andy Haldane told BBC Newsnight that businesses had not invested enough to give the productivity improvements necessary to push up pay.

Newsnight is the BBC's flagship news and current affairs TV programme – with analysis, debate, exclusives, and robust interviews.

[Jun 30, 2017] After Hersh Investigation, Media Connive in Propaganda War on Syria

Notable quotes:
"... But, in fact, the western media were supremely uninterested in the story. Hersh, once considered the journalist's journalist, went hawking his investigation around the US and UK media to no avail. In the end, he could find a home for his revelations only in Germany, in the publication Welt am Sonntag. ..."
"... His story has spawned two clear "spoiler" responses from those desperate to uphold the official narrative. Hersh's revelations may have been entirely uninteresting to the western media, but strangely they have sent Washington into crisis mode. Of course, no US official has addressed Hersh's investigation directly, which might have drawn attention to it and forced western media to reference it. Instead Washington has sought to deflect attention from Hersh's alternative narrative and shore up the official one through misdirection. That alone should raise the alarm that we are being manipulated, not informed. ..."
"... The first spoiler, made in the immediate wake of Hersh's story, were statements from the Pentagon and White House warning that the US had evidence Assad was planning yet another chemical attack on his people and that Washington would respond extremely harshly if he did so. ..."
"... And then on Friday, the second spoiler emerged. Two unnamed diplomats " confirmed " that a report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had found that some of the victims from Khan Sheikhoun showed signs of poisoning by sarin or sarin-like substances. ..."
"... There are also well-known problems with the findings. There was no "chain of custody" – neutral oversight – of the bodies that were presented to the organisation in Turkey, as Scott Ritter, a former weapons inspector in Iraq, has noted . Any number of interested parties could have contaminated the bodies before they reached the OPCW. For that reason, the OPCW has not concluded that the Assad regime was responsible for the traces of sarin. In the world of real news, only such a finding – that Assad was responsible – should have made the OPCW report interesting again to the media. ..."
"... In fact, the US threats increase, rather than reduce, the chances of a new chemical weapons attack. Other, anti-Assad actors now have a strong incentive to use chemical weapons in false-flag operation to implicate Assad, knowing that the US has committed itself to intervention. On any reading, the US statements were reckless – or malicious – in the extreme and likely to bring about the exact opposite of what they were supposed to achieve. ..."
"... Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are " Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and " Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair " (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net . ..."
Jun 30, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

If you wish to understand the degree to which a supposedly free western media are constructing a world of half-truths and deceptions to manipulate their audiences, keeping us uninformed and pliant, then there could hardly be a better case study than their treatment of Pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

All of these highly competitive, for-profit, scoop-seeking media outlets separately took identical decisions: first to reject Hersh's latest investigative report, and then to studiously ignore it once it was published in Germany last Sunday. They have continued to maintain an absolute radio silence on his revelations, even as over the past few days they have given a great deal of attention to two stories on the very issue Hersh's investigation addresses.

These two stories, given such prominence in the western media, are clearly intended to serve as "spoilers" to his revelations, even though none of these publications have actually informed their readers of his original investigation. We are firmly in looking-glass territory.

So what did Hersh's investigation reveal? His sources in the US intelligence establishment – people who have helped him break some of the most important stories of the past few decades, from the Mai Lai massacre by American soldiers during the Vietnam war to US abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2004 – told him the official narrative that Syria's Bashar Assad had dropped deadly sarin gas on the town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 was incorrect. Instead, they said, a Syrian plane dropped a bomb on a meeting of jihadi fighters that triggered secondary explosions in a storage depot, releasing a toxic cloud of chemicals that killed civilians nearby.

It is an alternative narrative of these events that one might have assumed would be of intense interest to the media, given that Donald Trump approved a military strike on Syria based on the official narrative. Hersh's version suggests that Trump acted against the intelligence advice he received from his own officials, in a highly dangerous move that not only grossly violated international law but might have dragged Assad's main ally, Russia, into the fray. The Syrian arena has the potential to trigger a serious confrontation between the world's two major nuclear powers.

But, in fact, the western media were supremely uninterested in the story. Hersh, once considered the journalist's journalist, went hawking his investigation around the US and UK media to no avail. In the end, he could find a home for his revelations only in Germany, in the publication Welt am Sonntag.

There are a couple of possible, even if highly improbable, reasons all English-language publications ignored Hersh's story. Maybe they had evidence that his inside intelligence was wrong. If so, they have yet to provide it. A rebuttal would require acknowledging Hersh's story, and none seem willing to do that.

Or maybe the media thought it was old news and would no longer interest their readers. It would be difficult to sustain such an interpretation, but at least it has an air of plausibility – except for everything that has happened since Hersh published last Sunday.

His story has spawned two clear "spoiler" responses from those desperate to uphold the official narrative. Hersh's revelations may have been entirely uninteresting to the western media, but strangely they have sent Washington into crisis mode. Of course, no US official has addressed Hersh's investigation directly, which might have drawn attention to it and forced western media to reference it. Instead Washington has sought to deflect attention from Hersh's alternative narrative and shore up the official one through misdirection. That alone should raise the alarm that we are being manipulated, not informed.

The first spoiler, made in the immediate wake of Hersh's story, were statements from the Pentagon and White House warning that the US had evidence Assad was planning yet another chemical attack on his people and that Washington would respond extremely harshly if he did so.

Here is how the Guardian reported the US threats:

The US said on Tuesday that it had observed preparations for a possible chemical weapons attack at a Syrian air base allegedly involved in a sarin attack in April following a warning from the White House that the Syrian regime would 'pay a heavy price' for further use of the weapons.

And then on Friday, the second spoiler emerged. Two unnamed diplomats " confirmed " that a report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had found that some of the victims from Khan Sheikhoun showed signs of poisoning by sarin or sarin-like substances.

There are obvious reasons to be mightily suspicious of these stories. The findings of the OPCW were already known and had been discussed for some time – there was absolutely nothing newsworthy about them.

There are also well-known problems with the findings. There was no "chain of custody" – neutral oversight – of the bodies that were presented to the organisation in Turkey, as Scott Ritter, a former weapons inspector in Iraq, has noted . Any number of interested parties could have contaminated the bodies before they reached the OPCW. For that reason, the OPCW has not concluded that the Assad regime was responsible for the traces of sarin. In the world of real news, only such a finding – that Assad was responsible – should have made the OPCW report interesting again to the media.

Similarly, by going public with their threats against Assad, the Pentagon and White House did not increase the deterrence on Assad, making it less likely he would use gas in the future. That could have been achieved much more effectively with private warnings to the Russians, who have massive leverage over Assad. These new warnings were meant not for Assad but for western publics, to bolster the official narrative that Hersh's investigation had thrown into doubt.

In fact, the US threats increase, rather than reduce, the chances of a new chemical weapons attack. Other, anti-Assad actors now have a strong incentive to use chemical weapons in false-flag operation to implicate Assad, knowing that the US has committed itself to intervention. On any reading, the US statements were reckless – or malicious – in the extreme and likely to bring about the exact opposite of what they were supposed to achieve.

But beyond this, there was something even more troubling about these two stories. That these official claims were published so unthinkingly in major outlets is bad enough. But what is unconscionable is the media's continuing blackout of Hersh's investigation when it speaks directly to the two latest news reports.

No serious journalist could write up either story, according to any accepted norms of journalistic practice, and not make reference to Hersh's claims. They are absolutely relevant to these stories. In fact, more than that, the intelligence sources he cites are are not only relevant but are the reason these two stories have been suddenly propelled to the top of the news agenda.

Any publication that has covered either the White House-Pentagon threats or the rehashing of the OPCW report and has not mentioned Hersh's revelations is writing nothing less than propaganda in service of a western foreign policy agenda trying to bring about the illegal overthrow the Syrian government. And so far that appears to include every single US and UK mainstream newspaper and TV station. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Jonathan Cook

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are " Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and " Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair " (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net .

[Jun 30, 2017] The Late Show team shot four or five pieces in Russia -- an explanationwhy the ageing clown Colbert went to Russia

Notable quotes:
"... An explanation – of sorts – of why the ageing arse-clown Colbert went to Russia: ..."
"... "In total, the Late Show team shot four or five pieces in Russia, but the host didn't specify when these remote segments might air. The trip took months of planning, Colbert said, and yielded a week's worth of content. Perhaps not coincidentally, Emmy nomination-round voting closed Monday night - just days after Colbert made his trip public, first through a snarky tweet addressed to Donald Trump. ..."
"... By planning a week's worth of content, it seems Late Show wants to make certain that its trip to Russia lands with the greatest impact - and ends with a shiny new Emmy. After all, what would bother the president more than his archenemy in late-night taking home an award that Trump never managed to win himself?" ..."
"... Poison and antidote. Hooking them up on a drug and then extorting junkies for all their money for a new dose. ..."
Jun 30, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Lyttenburgh ,

June 28, 2017 at 3:43 pm
An explanation – of sorts – of why the ageing arse-clown Colbert went to Russia:

Vanity Fear: Why Stephen Colbert really went to Russia

The Late Show host is back in the U.S., with a week's worth of episodes from his trip-but there's another, bigger reason for his jaunt abroad

"In total, the Late Show team shot four or five pieces in Russia, but the host didn't specify when these remote segments might air. The trip took months of planning, Colbert said, and yielded a week's worth of content. Perhaps not coincidentally, Emmy nomination-round voting closed Monday night - just days after Colbert made his trip public, first through a snarky tweet addressed to Donald Trump.

Though we don't know when his Russia segments will air, it seems safe to assume they'll broadcast some time before final-round Emmy voting begins in August, or during the voting period itself. Colbert will host this year's Emmy ceremony in September, and after a year of hard work to overtake Jimmy Fallon in the ratings, the comedian and his team would love to walk home with some statuary as well. It's almost certain that Late Show itself will be nominated - and ambitious pieces filmed off-site could boost the host's chances of actually winning. After all, it was during his week of episodes from last year's Republican National Convention that Colbert found his groove as a network late-night host in the first place.

Colbert isn't the first late-night host to travel to Russia. Two years ago, John Oliver made waves when he interviewed Edward Snowden there. And last fall, Samantha Bee's team tracked down some Russian trolls for fascinating interviews. Outside the late-night sphere, Megyn Kelly also made the journey earlier this month for her dull interview with Vladimir Putin. Colbert's trip could carry even more weight than those of his late-night contemporaries simply because of timing - Oliver went before the presidential campaign had ramped up, and Bee went before Trump's victory.

By planning a week's worth of content, it seems Late Show wants to make certain that its trip to Russia lands with the greatest impact - and ends with a shiny new Emmy. After all, what would bother the president more than his archenemy in late-night taking home an award that Trump never managed to win himself?"

Here you go! Russia is a "commodity" on the Media market. You know – this "internationally isolated" (c) "gas station masquerading as a country" (c) that "produces nothing" (c). Here how it works. Talking heads create the illusion of "oppressive" and "forbidden" Russia, that is oh so dangerous to visit. And then they "brave" to visit it – woo-hoo! Surely, if they are so brave, that they MIRACLOUSLY survived numerous assassination attempts (remember, kids – billions of journos are killed in Russia daily!) then everything they say must be true .

Poison and antidote. Hooking them up on a drug and then extorting junkies for all their money for a new dose.

https://ads.pubmatic.com/AdServer/js/showad.js#PIX&kdntuid=1&p=156204

Lyttenburgh , June 28, 2017 at 3:46 pm
Addendum.

On the previous page yalensis made a very important observation – Colbert, Oliver, Stewart etc. are court jesters of the so-called Western liberal democracy. In ages past, court jesters were (wait for it!) present at this or that feudal lord's court but they were not of the court themselves. They were anti-court, and they looked the part: instead of a crown they wore a cap with bells, instead of regal scepter and orb – a stick with pig's bladder, instead of rich vestment and mantle – an eyegouging ridiculous attire. No one could possibly mistake them for "normal" people.

That was the point. They were tolerated because they were not perceived as normal.

Modern day court jesters don't stand out. They wear suits, and ties and expensive shoes – just like the members of elite they diss/serve under. They look normal and thus are perceived as normal. Which is wrong and deceitful. People consider them "journalists" and "reporters" – which they are not. The fool's role is to embellish, to tell parables and to exaggerate – and, yes, to lie.

They are fools, all right. But how would you call the people, their enormous audience, who listen to fools and believe their every single word?

Cortes , June 28, 2017 at 4:42 pm
I beg to disagree with your penultimate paragraph.

Proper court jesters are still around and wear not the attire of the perspiring middle class.

As the best courtroom potboiler puts it: I'd like to present Prosecution Exhibit #1:

http://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/2002/08/19/charlesandcamilla/

Reply

[Jun 30, 2017] As the article points out, the missile could not have reached the target from the launch point specified by the JIT in 10 seconds.

Jun 30, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile , June 28, 2017 at 10:42 am

Correction to above translation:

The radar, according to Blok, could simply have missed the missile. The minister compared the radar to a lighthouse, claiming that the missile could have slipped through during its "turn" and have therefore left no trace on the Russian Utes-T air route radar system. Blok also claimed that the radar would have been unable to register such a relatively small object as a Buk missile.

"It is inappropriate to say that the radar station could have missed the missile", the head of Russian Aviation Regulator Rosaviatsia, Oleg Storchevoy, said on Tuesday, commenting on the latest Dutch claims.

See also: Политическое направление: почему локатор не увидел ракету, сбившую MH17

Political direction: why the [radar] locator failed to see the missile that downed MH17

"The fact that something was not visible on the radar, doesn't mean that something was not there" - noted the Minister of Security and Justice, Stephen Blok, in answering a question from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives of the Dutch Parliament (the States General).

The question he was asked concerned radar data provided by Russia that showed that the radars had not detected a "Buk" missile. Bok reinforced his argument by speaking about the 360-degree sweep of a "Utes-T" radar locator, which before the crash of flight MH17 in the sky over the Donbas could have been sweeping in the opposite direction in the same way as does a lighthouse beam.

Moscow Exile , June 28, 2017 at 10:59 am
I wonder if Blok has ever actually observed a radar display that is tracking a Buk missile? Or any such tracking display for that matter.
marknesop , June 28, 2017 at 4:25 pm
As the article points out, the missile could not have reached the target from the launch point specified by the JIT in 10 seconds. And radar does not just illuminate targets, it records having received an echo return from bouncing off something, so that as the operator you see a dot – which they referred to as a tick – which is the accumulation of 'hits' by the radar, so that you can distinguish a target from the innumerable random dots which result from the characteristic known as 'scatter'. Most radars have a feature known as history recording or target trails, in which you begin to see the contacts progress by the trail of 'hits' it leaves behind.

In any case, it is significant that the Dutch investigation team did not bother to get a radar expert to summarize its findings in that area, but a political appointee with no experience in that field.

Jen , June 28, 2017 at 7:49 pm
Doesn't the BUK missile delivery system itself also rely on radar to locate and target any objects? So had there been a team or unit of soldiers operating such a system in the area where the Dutch claim they were in, then wouldn't Russian military have been able to work out the radar frequencies the group was using and contact it?
marknesop , June 28, 2017 at 10:28 pm
Well, the Russians would hardly contact this group, would they? Not knowing the SBU and their crack communications-intercept teams were listening and ready to record another admission of Russian culpability. Over several days of observations it would be possible to identify unique Buk systems by their operating frequencies, yes. Typically they are identified as operating in the band of frequencies which identify them as a Buk system, and that's good enough, but it is possible to identify one among others if you have the opportunity to match its frequencies to observation and watch it move around, although if there are several systems, their operating frequencies will all be close.

But the Dutch story is that this system was smuggled in just long enough to take the shot and then quickly smuggled out again, and that it was only one launcher and not a complete system. The radar on the launcher is highly directional, and electronic warfare systems might not pick it up unless they were along its line of sight, whereas the emitter which is usually correlated to the Buk (by electronic intercept) is the search radar, which is its own separate vehicle.

Russian electronic warfare did report several Buk systems active in the area – all Ukrainian, presumably, since the Ukrainian command insisted the rebels did not have any – the day prior to the disaster. That statement (that the rebels did not have any Buks that were captured from the Ukrainian Army) and other realities are what force the crazy story whereby Russia supposedly smuggled in a partial system, took the shot and ran for it. It's the only one they can make fit.

kirill , June 29, 2017 at 6:00 am
The Dutch are peddling one of the most inane tinfoil hat theories ever. If Russia smuggled in that single component for an in and out atrocity, then why the FCUK didn't they just help the Donbas "terrorists' fix up the system that fell into their hands that fits the same description (i.e. one lacking a separate radar unit). Hiding a few Buk missiles in the back of a truck is vastly easier than lugging around a whole mobile unit on a flatbed.

This is shit is the same "feed the retards some 'plausible' story" ploy as the Polonium murder of Litvinenko. Smearing Polonium on a Moscow circuit plane is the ultimate in inanity. Let's use an exotic murder weapon that is messy and hard to use and make sure to trace it back to ourselves. For fuck's sake, using a hand gun with a silencer is orders of magnitude easier and less traceable since throwing the gun in the river actually works and it will have negligible chance of being found by the cops unless they have a witness.

Jen , June 29, 2017 at 4:00 pm
Of course! – I hadn't thought the SBU would be monitoring communications between the rebels in Donetsk and any outside supporters. My oversight. I had in mind a hypothetical situation where the Russian military detects such a "unit", observes its activities to determine their intended objective and then warns the "unit" that it is under surveillance.
marknesop , June 28, 2017 at 3:54 pm
As I've pointed out before, any emitter with such a slow scan rate as that would be useless for air traffic control. There are radars with huge antennas and very slow scan rates, but they are high-power emitters used for Early Warning, not for controlling fast-moving aircraft and deconflicting a busy air picture at various altitudes. But the Dutch 'investigators' who are helping Ukraine wash itself out of the picture hope that you are stupid.

[Jun 30, 2017] in Lviv, ground zero for Ukrainian nationalism, where a recent survey and study found that 48 percent of undergraduates had paid bribes to get a better grade or to falsify attendance, while nearly all (the data sample was pretty small, 600) admitted to cheating on exams or tests

Jun 30, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
marknesop , June 30, 2017 at 6:54 pm
As any fule kno, the way to get a good grade in higher education is to buy it.

Or so it seems in Lviv, ground zero for Ukrainian nationalism, where a recent survey and study found that 48% of undergraduates had paid bribes to get a better grade or to falsify attendance, while nearly all (the data sample was pretty small, 600) admitted to cheating on exams or tests.

Keep working on those European standards, Galicia – you're nearly there .

[Jun 30, 2017] Why The Elites Hate Putin by Justin Raimondo

Notable quotes:
"... So it doesn't matter who wins the presidential election, and inhabits the White House, because the national security bureaucracy is forever, and their power is – almost – unchallengeable. And so, given this, Putin's answer to Stone's somewhat tongue-in-cheek question, "Why did you hack the election?", is anti-climactic. The answer is: why would they bother? Putin dismisses the question as "a very silly statement," and then goes on to wonder why Western journalists find the prospect of getting along with Russia so problematic. ..."
"... "And I think that Obama's outgoing team has created a minefield for the incoming president and for his team. They have created an environment which makes it difficult for the new president to make good on the promises he gave to the people." ..."
"... it's not about one single truck – there are thousands of trucks going through that route. It looks as if it were a living pipeline." ..."
"... Putin reveals how US aid reaches jihadists: "According to the data we received, employees of the United States in Azerbaijan contacted militants from the Caucasus." In a letter from the CIA to their Russian counterparts, the Americans reiterated their alleged right to funnel aid to their clients, and the missive "even named the employee of the US Special Services who worked in the US embassy in Baku." ..."
"... it reveals the Russian leader's instinctual pro-Americanism, despite his objections to the policies of our government. ..."
"... Early on, Stone asks "What is the US [foreign] policy? What is its strategy in the world as a whole?" To which Putin replies: "Certainly, I am going to reply to this question very candidly, in great detail – but only once I retire." In speaking about Washington's unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty, Stone remarks: ..."
"... "You know, the American Indians made treaties with the US government and they were the first to experience the treachery of the US government. You're not the first." ..."
"... To which Putin replies: "We wouldn't like to be the last." And he laughs. ..."
"... Stone has been pilloried in the US media, by all usual suspects, but what's very telling is that none of his critics delve into the content of the interviews: they simply accuse Stone of being a " useful idiot ," a phrase from the lexicon of the cold war that's being revived by the liberals who used to be labeled as such. ..."
"... And yet when you get down in the weeds, as I have tried to do in this series, one begins to realize the enormity of the hoax that's been perpetrated on the American people. Putin is routinely described in our media as the principal enemy of the United States: our military brass has been pushing this line, for budgetary reasons, and the Clinton wing of the Democratic party has been pushing it for political reasons. And yet the lasting impression left by "The Putin Interviews" is of a man who greatly admires the United States, and sees the vast potential of détente between Moscow and Washington, a potential he would like very much to bring to realization. ..."
Jun 30, 2017 | original.antiwar.com

On Oliver Stone's The Putin Interviews (Part III)

by Justin Raimondo Posted on June 30, 2017 June 29, 2017 As the "Russia-gate" farce continues to dominate the American "news" media, and President Trump's foreign policy veers off in a direction many of his supporters find baffling, one wonders: what the heck happened? I thought Trump was supposed to be "Putin's puppet," as Hillary Clinton and her journalistic camarilla would have it.

The Russian president, in his extended interview with filmmaker Oliver Stone, has an explanation: "Stone: Donald Trump won. This is your fourth president, am I right? Clinton, Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama, and now your fourth one. "Putin: Yes, that's true. "Stone: What changes? "Putin: Well, almost nothing."

Stone is surprised by this answer, and Putin elaborates:

"Well, life makes some changes for you. But on the whole, everywhere, especially in the United States, the bureaucracy is very strong. And bureaucracy is the one that rules the world."

This is a reiteration of something the Russian president said earlier in the context of Stone's questions about the US election. Stone asks what he thinks of the various candidates: Trump's name doesn't come up, but Stone does ask about Bernie Sanders. Putin replies:

"It's not up to us to say. It's not whether we are going to like it or not. All I can say is as follows the force of the United States bureaucracy is very great. It's immense. And there are many facts not visible about the candidates until they become president. And the moment one gets to the real work, he or she feels the burden."

So it doesn't matter who wins the presidential election, and inhabits the White House, because the national security bureaucracy is forever, and their power is – almost – unchallengeable. And so, given this, Putin's answer to Stone's somewhat tongue-in-cheek question, "Why did you hack the election?", is anti-climactic. The answer is: why would they bother? Putin dismisses the question as "a very silly statement," and then goes on to wonder why Western journalists find the prospect of getting along with Russia so problematic.

Trump and his campaign, says Putin, "understood where their voters were located" – a reference, I believe, to the surprising results in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Clinton's supporters "should have drawn conclusions from what they did, from how they did their jobs, they shouldn't have tried to shift the blame on to something outside." This is what the more perceptive progressives are saying – but then again I suppose that they, too, are "Putin's puppets."

This section of the interviews occurred in February, and so it's interesting how Putin predicted what would happen to the Trump presidency and the conduct of his foreign policy:

"And I think that Obama's outgoing team has created a minefield for the incoming president and for his team. They have created an environment which makes it difficult for the new president to make good on the promises he gave to the people."

To say the least. There is much more in this series of interviews, including some real news that has been ignored by the "mainstream" media, including:

Joint US-Russian efforts to eliminate ISIS in Syria were on the agenda even before Trump took the White House, "But at the last moment," says Putin, "I think due to some political reasons, our American partners abandoned this project." (This is yet another vindication of my theory of " libertarian realism ," by the way.) Putin tells Stone that the Ukraine snipers who shot at both the government forces and the anti-government crowds in Kiev – an event that signaled the end of the Yanukovych regime – were trained and financed in the West: "[W]e have information available to us that armed groups were trained in the Western parts of Ukraine itself, in Poland, and in a number of other places." Putin has evidence of Turkish support for ISIS : "During the G20 summit, when the journalists left the room, I took out photos and from my place where I was sitting I showed those photos [of ISIS oil being transported to Turkey] to everyone. I showed it to my counterparts. I showed them the route I mentioned earlier. And we have shown these photos to our American counterparts . Everyone knew about everything. So trying to open a door which is already open is simply senseless. It's something that is absolutely evident. So it's not about one single truck – there are thousands of trucks going through that route. It looks as if it were a living pipeline." At one point, Putin takes out his cell phone and shows Stone a video of a Russian attack on ISIS forces, remarking "By the way, they were coming from the Turkish side of the border." Putin reveals how US aid reaches jihadists: "According to the data we received, employees of the United States in Azerbaijan contacted militants from the Caucasus." In a letter from the CIA to their Russian counterparts, the Americans reiterated their alleged right to funnel aid to their clients, and the missive "even named the employee of the US Special Services who worked in the US embassy in Baku."

And then there's one specific instance in which the news is anticipated: Stone brings up the Snowden revelation that the Americans have planted malware in Japanese infrastructure capable of shutting that country down, and he speculates that Washington has surely targeted Russia in the same way. Which brings to mind a recent Washington Post story reporting that this is indeed the case .

There's a lot more in these interviews than I have space to write about: my favorites are the instances in which Stone's leftism comes up against Putin's paleoconservatism. At several points the issue of "anti-Americanism" comes up, and the debate between the two is illuminating in that it reveals the Russian leader's instinctual pro-Americanism, despite his objections to the policies of our government. I had to laugh when Putin asked Stone: "Are you a communist?" Stone denies it: "I'm a capitalist!"

There is also a lot of humor here: Stone insists on showing Putin a scene from "Dr. Strangelove," the part where the mad scientist rides a nuke, laughing maniacally. The sardonic expression on Putin's face speaks volumes. Early on, Stone asks "What is the US [foreign] policy? What is its strategy in the world as a whole?" To which Putin replies: "Certainly, I am going to reply to this question very candidly, in great detail – but only once I retire." In speaking about Washington's unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty, Stone remarks:

"You know, the American Indians made treaties with the US government and they were the first to experience the treachery of the US government. You're not the first."

To which Putin replies: "We wouldn't like to be the last." And he laughs.

Putin's sense of humor is a bit dark, and things get darker still as he predicts what the consequences for Stone will be when "The Putin Interviews" is released:

"You've never been beaten before in your life?," says Putin. "Oh yes, many times," says Stone. I think Putin was talking about being physically beaten, but, anyway, the Russian leader goes on to say: "Then it's not going to be anything new, because you're going to suffer for what you're about to do." "No, I know," says Stone, "but it's worth it. It's worth it to try to bring some more peace and consciousness to the world."

Stone has been pilloried in the US media, by all usual suspects, but what's very telling is that none of his critics delve into the content of the interviews: they simply accuse Stone of being a " useful idiot ," a phrase from the lexicon of the cold war that's being revived by the liberals who used to be labeled as such.

And yet when you get down in the weeds, as I have tried to do in this series, one begins to realize the enormity of the hoax that's been perpetrated on the American people. Putin is routinely described in our media as the principal enemy of the United States: our military brass has been pushing this line, for budgetary reasons, and the Clinton wing of the Democratic party has been pushing it for political reasons. And yet the lasting impression left by "The Putin Interviews" is of a man who greatly admires the United States, and sees the vast potential of détente between Moscow and Washington, a potential he would like very much to bring to realization.

What we have witnessed in the past few months, however, is that this potential benefit to both countries is being denied by some very powerful forces. The entire "Deep State" apparatus, which Putin is very much aware of, is implacably opposed to peaceful cooperation, and will do anything to stop it. But why?

There are many factors, including money – the military-industrial complex is dependent on hostility between the US and Russia, as are our parasitic "allies' in Europe – as well as cultural issues. Russia is essentially a conservative society, and our "progressive" elites hate it for that reason. Which brings us to the real reason for the Russophobia that infects the American political class, and that is Putin's commitment to the concept of national sovereignty.

Nationalism in all its forms is bitterly opposed by our elites, and this is what sets them against not only Putin but also against President Trump. Their allegiance isn't to the United States as a separate entity, but to the "Free World," whatever that may be. And their foreign allies are even more explicit about their radical internationalism, bitterly clinging to transnational institutions such as the European Union even as populist movements upend them.

This is the central issue confronting the parties and politicians of all countries, the conflict that separates the elites from the peoples they would like to rule: it is globalism versus national sovereignty. And this is not just a foreign policy question. It is a line of demarcation that puts the parties of all countries on one side of the barricades or the other.

In his famous essay, " The End of History ," neoconservative theorist Francis Fukuyama outlined the globalist project, which he saw as the inevitable outcome of human experience: a "universal homogenous State" that would extend its power across every civilized country and beyond. But of course nothing is inevitable, at least in that sense and on that scale, a fact the elites who hold this vision recognize all too well. So they are working day and night to make it a reality, moving their armies and their agents into this country and that country, encircling their enemies, and waiting for the moment to strike. And Putin, the ideologue of national sovereignty, is rightly perceived as their implacable enemy, the chief obstacle to the globalist project.

That's why they hate him. It has nothing to do with the annexation of Crimea, or the alleged "authoritarianism" of a country that now has a multi-party system a few short decades after coming out of real totalitarianism. Even if Russia were a Jeffersonian republic, and Putin the second coming of Gandhi, still they would demonize him and his country for this very reason.

As to who will win this struggle between globalism and national particularism, I would not venture a guess. What I will do, however, is to remind my readers that if ever this worldwide "homogenous State" comes into being, there will be nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, no way to escape its power.

Editorial note : This is the third and last part of a three-part series on Oliver Stone's "The Putin Interviews." The first part is here , and the second part is here . You can get the book version – which contains some material not included in the film – here .

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here . But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I've written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement , with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey , a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon ( ISI Books , 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here .

Read more by Justin Raimondo Vladimir Putin: A Suitor Spurned – June 27th, 2017 Who Tried to Kill Putin – Five Times? – June 25th, 2017 A Brief Missive – June 22nd, 2017 Our Rush to War in Syria – June 20th, 2017 Hodgkinson's Disease: Politics and Paranoia in the Age of Trump – June 18th, 2017

[Jun 28, 2017] Putin New US sanctions harmful to relations, but Russia will deal

Notable quotes:
"... "Of course, it remains to be seen what it leads to in the end. But whatever happens, whatever decisions they take across the ocean, it will not bring us to a dead end," ..."
"... "will probably have to make some policy corrections and take some new measures," ..."
"... "to some sort of a collapse." ..."
"... "This will certainly make Russian-American relations more difficult. I believe it to be harmful," ..."
"... "We generally reject sanctions with extra-territorial effects, meaning an impact on third countries," ..."
"... The US is currently investing heavily into costly liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure, which would allow it to deliver natural gas to the European market more easily. The product would compete directly with Russian-supplied gas, so undermining construction of the pipeline would give American producers an advantage in fighting for a bigger share of the European market. Read more US Senate adopts amendment on more sanctions against Russia ..."
Jun 18, 2017 | www.rt.com

New sanctions imposed on Russia by the US will certainly make relations between the countries worse, but will hardly leave Russia hamstrung, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

"Of course, it remains to be seen what it leads to in the end. But whatever happens, whatever decisions they take across the ocean, it will not bring us to a dead end," the president told Vesti on a Saturday program.

Putin was referring to the US Senate's approval of an amendment to an anti-Iran bill that would prevent US President Donald Trump from lifting current anti-Russian sanctions without congressional authorization and also impose new broad ones.

If Washington does implement the new sanctions, the Russian government "will probably have to make some policy corrections and take some new measures," Putin said, adding that this will in no way lead the country "to some sort of a collapse."

"This will certainly make Russian-American relations more difficult. I believe it to be harmful," he added.

Earlier, several European countries, including Germany, France and Austria, voiced concern over the newly proposed sanctions, which could potentially affect European companies working with Russia on joint energy projects, such as the NordStream 2 gas pipeline.

"We generally reject sanctions with extra-territorial effects, meaning an impact on third countries," German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told the media on Friday.

The US is currently investing heavily into costly liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure, which would allow it to deliver natural gas to the European market more easily. The product would compete directly with Russian-supplied gas, so undermining construction of the pipeline would give American producers an advantage in fighting for a bigger share of the European market. Read more US Senate adopts amendment on more sanctions against Russia

[Jun 28, 2017] Radar data debunks official MH17 findings, locator could not miss the BUK missile – Russian air regulator

Notable quotes:
"... Russian radar could not have failed to notice a projectile approaching Flight MH17, despite the claims by a Dutch minister, the head of Rosaviatsia says. The lack of radar marks shows nothing approached the plane from the east, despite official findings. ..."
"... "It is inappropriate to say that a radar station could miss the missile," the head of Russian aviation regulator Rosaviatsia, Oleg Storchevoy, said Tuesday, commenting on the latest Dutch claims. ..."
Jun 28, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Moscow Exile , June 28, 2017 at 10:08 am
WARNING!

Kremlin controlled "news" source

Radar data debunks official MH17 findings, locator could not 'miss' missile – Russian air regulator
Published time: 27 Jun, 2017 19:41

Russian radar could not have failed to notice a projectile approaching Flight MH17, despite the claims by a Dutch minister, the head of Rosaviatsia says. The lack of radar marks shows nothing approached the plane from the east, despite official findings.

Last week, the Dutch government published a series of replies by Security and Justice Minister Stef Blok, who explained to a parliamentary commission why radar data provided by Russia did not show any objects approaching the MH17 flight, including a Buk missile.

The radar, according to Blok, could simply miss a missile. The minister compared the radar to a lighthouse, claiming that a missile could slip through during its "turn" and therefore leave no trace on Russia's Utes-T air route radar system. Blok also claimed that the radar could not register such a relatively small object as a Buk missile.

"It is inappropriate to say that a radar station could miss the missile," the head of Russian aviation regulator Rosaviatsia, Oleg Storchevoy, said Tuesday, commenting on the latest Dutch claims.

It sneaked in while the radar antenna was looking the other way???????

Moscow Exile , June 28, 2017 at 10:42 am
Correction to above translation:

The radar, according to Blok, could simply have missed the missile. The minister compared the radar to a lighthouse, claiming that the missile could have slipped through during its "turn" and have therefore left no trace on the Russian Utes-T air route radar system. Blok also claimed that the radar would have been unable to register such a relatively small object as a Buk missile.

"It is inappropriate to say that the radar station could have missed the missile", the head of Russian Aviation Regulator Rosaviatsia, Oleg Storchevoy, said on Tuesday, commenting on the latest Dutch claims.

See also: Политическое направление: почему локатор не увидел ракету, сбившую MH17

Political direction: why the [radar] locator failed to see the missile that downed MH17

"The fact that something was not visible on the radar, doesn't mean that something was not there" - noted the Minister of Security and Justice, Stephen Blok, in answering a question from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives of the Dutch Parliament (the States General).

The question he was asked concerned radar data provided by Russia that showed that the radars had not detected a "Buk" missile. Bok reinforced his argument by speaking about the 360-degree sweep of a "Utes-T" radar locator, which before the crash of flight MH17 in the sky over the Donbas could have been sweeping in the opposite direction in the same way as does a lighthouse beam.

Moscow Exile , June 28, 2017 at 10:59 am
I wonder if Blok has ever actually observed a radar display that is tracking a Buk missile? Or any such tracking display for that matter.

[Jun 28, 2017] EBRD CORRUPTION – MI5 TRIES TO EXCHANGE BRIBES TO RUSSIAN BANKERS FOR ESPIONAGE AGAINST RUSSIAN OFFICIALS

Notable quotes:
"... The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the government-owned bank established in London in 1991 to finance market boosting projects in the former Soviet Union, has been secretly aiding UK and US intelligence services in espionage targeted at Russia. The US is a 10% shareholder in the bank, the UK holds an 8.7% stake; Russia, 4%. ..."
"... Treason against Russia was one crime Ryjenko refused to undertake, the Old Bailey testimony reveals. Also revealed, and for the first time, is EBRD's role in operating the scheme of lures and inducements MI5 proposed for Ryjenko, and other Russian nationals at the bank. "Honey traps," comments a London banking veteran, "are generally illegal. ..."
Jun 28, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , June 28, 2017 at 8:39 am
JohnHelmer.net: EBRD CORRUPTION – MI5 TRIES TO EXCHANGE BRIBES TO RUSSIAN BANKERS FOR ESPIONAGE AGAINST RUSSIAN OFFICIALS

http://johnhelmer.net/ebrd-corruption-mi5-tries-to-exchange-bribes-to-russian-bankers-for-espionage-against-russian-officials/

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the government-owned bank established in London in 1991 to finance market boosting projects in the former Soviet Union, has been secretly aiding UK and US intelligence services in espionage targeted at Russia. The US is a 10% shareholder in the bank, the UK holds an 8.7% stake; Russia, 4%.

The disclosure appears in the records of a trial this month at the Central Criminal Court in London of Andrei Ryjenko (Рыженко, usually Anglicized as Ryzhenko), a senior banker at the EBRD who is a dual Russian-British citizen. Early in June, Ryjenko was convicted of taking and then laundering $3.5 million in concealed bribes for helping applications to the EBRD for loans and equity investments from two Russian oil and gas companies win approval for a total of $275 million. MI5, according to testimony in open court, offered Ryjenko the opportunity to keep his money and avoid prosecution if he agreed to spy for the British against Russian foreign intelligence service (SVR) agents who, MI5 told Ryjenko, were under cover in London. Ryjenko refused for several months. He was then arrested and subsequently tried. On June 20, Ryjenko was sentenced to six years in jail.

Treason against Russia was one crime Ryjenko refused to undertake, the Old Bailey testimony reveals. Also revealed, and for the first time, is EBRD's role in operating the scheme of lures and inducements MI5 proposed for Ryjenko, and other Russian nationals at the bank. "Honey traps," comments a London banking veteran, "are generally illegal. Otherwise, the honey wouldn't be so sweet, or entrapment worth plotting. It looks like Ryjenko trapped himself. It also looks like the bank was happy to make its money baiting the trap for MI5."

[Jun 28, 2017] WaPo does not like Ukrainian far right

Notable quotes:
"... "The recent brutal stabbing of a left-wing anti-war activist named Stas Serhiyenko illustrates the threat posed by these extremists. Serhiyenko and his fellow activists believe the perpetrators belonged to the neo-Nazi group C14 (whose name comes from a 14-word phrase used by white supremacists). The attack took place on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday, and C14's leader published a statement that celebrated Serhiyenko's stabbing immediately afterward. ..."
"... The attack on Serhiyenko is just the tip of the iceberg. More recently C14 beat up a socialist politician while other ultranationalist thugs stormed the Lviv and Kiev City Councils. Far-right and neo-Nazi groups have also assaulted or disrupted art exhibitions, anti-fascist demonstrations, a "Ukrainians Choose Peace" event, LGBT events, a social center, media organizations, court proceedings and a Victory Day march celebrating the anniversary of the end of World War II. According to a study from activist organization Institute Respublica, the problem is not only the frequency of far-right violence, but the fact that perpetrators enjoy widespread impunity. It's not hard to understand why Kiev seems reluctant to confront these violent groups. For one thing, far-right paramilitary groups played an important role early in the war against Russian-supported separatists. Kiev also fears these violent groups could turn on the government itself - something they've done before and continue to threaten to do. ..."
"... To be clear, Russian propaganda about Ukraine being overrun by Nazis or fascists is false. Far-right parties such as Svoboda or Right Sector draw little support from Ukrainians." ..."
"... "Indeed, the brazen willingness of Vita Zaverukha – a renowned neo-Nazi out on bail and under house arrest after killing two police officers - to post pictures of herself after storming a popular Kiev restaurant with 50 other nationalists demonstrates the far right's confidence in their immunity from government prosecution. ..."
"... [ ] [T]he government must also break any connections between law enforcement agencies and far-right organizations. The clearest example of this problem lies in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is headed by Arsen Avakov. Avakov has a long-standing relationship with the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary group that uses the SS symbol as its insignia and which, with several others, was integrated into the army or National Guard at the beginning of the war in the East. Critics have accused Avakov of using members of the group to threaten an opposition media outlet. As at least one commentator has pointed out, using the National Guard to combat ultranationalist violence is likely to prove difficult if far-right groups have become part of the Guard itself. Avakov's Deputy Minister Vadym Troyan was a member of the neo-Nazi Patriot of Ukraine (PU) paramilitary organization, while current Ministry of Interior official Ilya Kiva – a former member of the far-right Right Sector party whose Instagram feed is populated with images of former Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini – has called for gays "to be put to death." And Avakov himself used the PU to promote his business and political interests while serving as a governor in eastern Ukraine, and as interior minister formed and armed the extremist Azov battalion led by Andriy Biletsky, a man nicknamed the "White Chief" who called for a crusade against "Semite-led sub-humanity." [ ] ..."
"... In one notorious incident, media captured images of swastika-tattooed thugs - who police claimed were only job applicants wanting to have "fun" - giving the Nazi salute in a police building in Kiev. This cannot be allowed to go on, and it's just as important for Ukrainian democracy to cleanse extremists from law enforcement as it is to remove corrupt officials from former president Viktor Yanukovych's regime under Ukraine's "lustration" policy." ..."
Jun 21, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Lyttenburgh , June 16, 2017 at 12:10 pm

Into the breach – once more! Or – once again about honest, balanced and tolerant Western Media ™, SUDDENLY finding out that there are roving bands of neo-nazis in the Ukraine. Why this particular article is important? First of all – because it's WaPo – a fearless crusader and enabler of leakers in anything Trump+Russia related. To doubt WaPo for a certain category of the people is sacrilege. Second – because of WHO wrote this article, namely Joshua Cohen, former (?) USAID chief honcho in realization of the "economic reforms" on the territory of the former USSR – a thoroughly handshakable person, judging by his last name.

Thirdly – the amount of evidence provided in one article combined with proof links to serve as the future reference material. Links are to very-very kosher and Ukrainian sources – so you can't accuse them in good faith of being Kremlenite propaganda.

Ukraine's ultra-right militias are challenging the government to a showdown

Blah-blah-blah – evil Russia, blah-blah, and then:

"The recent brutal stabbing of a left-wing anti-war activist named Stas Serhiyenko illustrates the threat posed by these extremists. Serhiyenko and his fellow activists believe the perpetrators belonged to the neo-Nazi group C14 (whose name comes from a 14-word phrase used by white supremacists). The attack took place on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday, and C14's leader published a statement that celebrated Serhiyenko's stabbing immediately afterward.

The attack on Serhiyenko is just the tip of the iceberg. More recently C14 beat up a socialist politician while other ultranationalist thugs stormed the Lviv and Kiev City Councils. Far-right and neo-Nazi groups have also assaulted or disrupted art exhibitions, anti-fascist demonstrations, a "Ukrainians Choose Peace" event, LGBT events, a social center, media organizations, court proceedings and a Victory Day march celebrating the anniversary of the end of World War II.

According to a study from activist organization Institute Respublica, the problem is not only the frequency of far-right violence, but the fact that perpetrators enjoy widespread impunity. It's not hard to understand why Kiev seems reluctant to confront these violent groups. For one thing, far-right paramilitary groups played an important role early in the war against Russian-supported separatists. Kiev also fears these violent groups could turn on the government itself - something they've done before and continue to threaten to do.

To be clear, Russian propaganda about Ukraine being overrun by Nazis or fascists is false. Far-right parties such as Svoboda or Right Sector draw little support from Ukrainians."

Full stop here. First of all – "Russian propaganda" (and the Western propaganda understands by that all Russian press, except a few "brave ones" that suck foreign grants tit of theirs) claims no such a thing. Second – it is Poroshenko and his government who renames streets after Bandera and Shukhevitch. Third – in the second half of the article Mr. Cohen basically proves, that said roving bands all BUT overrun the Ukraine, while the alleged lack of support does not translate in the active resistance to them – which is what's enough for them to reign supreme:

"Indeed, the brazen willingness of Vita Zaverukha – a renowned neo-Nazi out on bail and under house arrest after killing two police officers - to post pictures of herself after storming a popular Kiev restaurant with 50 other nationalists demonstrates the far right's confidence in their immunity from government prosecution.

[ ]

[T]he government must also break any connections between law enforcement agencies and far-right organizations. The clearest example of this problem lies in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is headed by Arsen Avakov. Avakov has a long-standing relationship with the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary group that uses the SS symbol as its insignia and which, with several others, was integrated into the army or National Guard at the beginning of the war in the East. Critics have accused Avakov of using members of the group to threaten an opposition media outlet. As at least one commentator has pointed out, using the National Guard to combat ultranationalist violence is likely to prove difficult if far-right groups have become part of the Guard itself.

Avakov's Deputy Minister Vadym Troyan was a member of the neo-Nazi Patriot of Ukraine (PU) paramilitary organization, while current Ministry of Interior official Ilya Kiva – a former member of the far-right Right Sector party whose Instagram feed is populated with images of former Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini – has called for gays "to be put to death." And Avakov himself used the PU to promote his business and political interests while serving as a governor in eastern Ukraine, and as interior minister formed and armed the extremist Azov battalion led by Andriy Biletsky, a man nicknamed the "White Chief" who called for a crusade against "Semite-led sub-humanity."

[ ]

In one notorious incident, media captured images of swastika-tattooed thugs - who police claimed were only job applicants wanting to have "fun" - giving the Nazi salute in a police building in Kiev. This cannot be allowed to go on, and it's just as important for Ukrainian democracy to cleanse extremists from law enforcement as it is to remove corrupt officials from former president Viktor Yanukovych's regime under Ukraine's "lustration" policy."

P.S. Comment section is as always colorful there.

yalensis , June 16, 2017 at 3:12 pm

"To be clear, Russian propaganda about Ukraine being overrun by Nazis or fascists is false. Far-right parties such as Svoboda or Right Sector draw little support from Ukrainians ."

True (about the level of support), but irrelevant, Mr. Cohen!
It doesn't matter if these fascists enjoy an approval rating of 5% or .005%
You yourself said that these perps enjoy "widespread impunity" --
They can do whatever they want, kill anybody they please, and never get punished --
That's the literal meaning of the word "impunity".

Eric , June 17, 2017 at 2:33 am
Yarosh is an MP, Parubiy would, if the same set of events occured as in February 2014, become President, as Turchynov did. Nazi's/far right are in the SBU, Police, parts of their academia, military

Its an intentionally idiotic statement by Cohen because Ukrainian political parties can come and go at the drop of the hat. All this just means that the 2 million Nazi voters in 2012 election have chosen these newly created parties because a new line of what is " mainstream" has been drawn in Ukraine.

That's why I found it more than a little odd what is happening in France now .a new party under Macron has been created and occupies that vast majority of seats .this is the type of thing you would see in a banana republic.

yalensis , June 17, 2017 at 4:36 am
Cohen is no idiot, I think he is just covering his ass and preparing his exit strategy.
In the hopes of keeping his press card after Ukraine goes totally South.
Cohen always knew these guys were Nazis, now he has to pretend to his reading public that he wasn't quite aware. He was duped!
Or maybe the turning point, which got his Jewish blood boiling was Biletsky calling his ethnic group a "Semite-led sub-humanity."

Cohen: "Oh, I never realized these people could be so hateful!" – LOL!

marknesop , June 17, 2017 at 8:15 am
They always use that to pooh-pooh the suggestion that Nazism is influential in Ukraine – but look! They only get tiny levels of support in elections! That matters little when people are appointed to political positions rather than voted into them. There are so many things – the dissolving of opposition political parties, the uberpatriotic signage everywhere exhorting citizens to report their neighbours if they suspect separatist sympathies, the hit list (Mirotvorets) of those who failed to shout the government line when prompted until told to stop – that simply scream "FASCISM!!!" But it is inconvenient for the west to see those things, because it could not acknowledge seeing them and continue to support the country and government which did them. The USA is an old hand at unseeing things which don't fit the narrative. Unfortunately, it has evolved into a nation which is good at unseeing obstacles as well; obstacles which are present and prevent it from achieving its goals. These are expected to disappear before the eraser called 'exceptionalism'.

The canard about levels of public support for Nazism in Ukraine is used to suggest that if Russia is spouting propaganda about this, then everything it says is propaganda. Reply

[Jun 28, 2017] Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election fortunes have a resounding message for party leaders: Stop talking so much about Russia.

Notable quotes:
"... Russia and Putin weren't effective issues for Hillary, and they're not effective issues now, yet the Democratic leadership insists on flogging them. The corrupt, sclerotic, and incompetent Democratic leadership is aloof and out of touch...and needs to go. ..."
Jun 28, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

JohnH , June 27, 2017 at 06:27 AM

Earth to the Democratic leadership: Stop talking so much about Russia.

"Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election fortunes have a resounding message for party leaders: Stop talking so much about Russia.

Democratic leaders have been beating the drum this year over the ongoing probes into the Trump administration's potential ties to Moscow, taking every opportunity to highlight the saga and forcing floor votes designed to uncover any business dealings the president might have with Russian figures.

But rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are much more worried about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and healthcare.
In the wake of a string of special-election defeats, an increasing number of Democrats are calling for an adjustment in party messaging, one that swings the focus from Russia to the economy. The outcome of the 2018 elections, they say, hinges on how well the Democrats manage that shift.
"We can't just talk about Russia because people back in Ohio aren't really talking that much about Russia, about Putin, about Michael Flynn," Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) told MSNBC Thursday. "They're trying to figure out how they're going to make the mortgage payment, how they're going to pay for their kids to go to college, what their energy bill looks like.

"And if we don't talk more about their interest than we do about how we're so angry with Donald Trump and everything that's going on," he added, "then we're never going to be able to win elections."

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/339248-dems-push-leaders-to-talk-less-about-russia

Russia and Putin weren't effective issues for Hillary, and they're not effective issues now, yet the Democratic leadership insists on flogging them. The corrupt, sclerotic, and incompetent Democratic leadership is aloof and out of touch...and needs to go.

[Jun 28, 2017] Norman Solomon: Is 'Russiagate' Collapsing as a Political Strategy? by Norman Solomon

Notable quotes:
"... By Norman Solomon, the coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org and the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." ..."
"... The Hill ..."
"... "While the voters have a keen interest in any Russian election interference, they are concerned that the investigations have become a distraction for the president and Congress that is hurting rather than helping the country." ..."
"... In early spring, the former communications director of the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign, Jennifer Palmieri, summarized the post-election approach in a Washington Post ..."
"... Polling data now indicate how wrong such claims are. ..."
"... Initially in lockstep this year, Democrats on Capitol Hill probably didn't give it a second thought if they read my article published by The Hill ..."
"... I find political strategy-speak such as "an adjustment in party messaging" to be sickening. The Democrats still seem to be talking about manipulating perception, rather than actually doing anything fundamentally different. ..."
"... Identity politics is basically a divide and rule strategy to keep progressive candidates off the ballot, the real purpose of the Democratic Party establishment. That is what they are being paid for. ..."
"... The first world has had enough neolib, pendulum has started moving the other way. Macron shows the desperation to try something new without embracing right wing LePen an option not available here, so revulsion to neolib resulted in Trump.. ..."
"... There are already significant legal barriers to the creation of a new party. Both parties will probably gang up on any new party development too. ..."
"... The Dims – because that's what these people truly are – will just assume that they haven't put enough effort into "Russia" and go triple- or quadruple-up on every failed candidate, strategy, platform, message, consultant, focus-group and whatever else a sane leadership should by now have been tarring, feathering and releasing the hounds upon. ..."
"... for Dims. The Russia thing is irresistible because it's supposed to get nationalistic rubes to turn against Trump while sucking up to the military-industrial complex. And yet, it didn't work during the campaign either. ..."
"... The fixation of Clintonites, or frustrated dems with russiagate is very telling and well explained here. It strikes me how the russiagate has treated so uncritically by the "liberal" press in Spain. ..."
"... Even if "evidence" would appear after all this time, do we not suspect it has been cooked in the truth-telling factories of the FBI, CIA, and NSA, all in bed with right-wing warmongers who own both parties ( not just Republicans – sorry, integer )? ..."
"... Comment was to your saying the security establishment "which is primarily GOP owned or aligned". Both parties, in a sense, "own" it, and use segments of it to advantage when necessary. But further, both the parties and agencies are "owned" by the power of capital as it is currently operating, and this power behind the throne makes the security and party establishment dance. You and I are on the ground, trying to avoid the footwork. ..."
"... This is one reason why russiagate is inevitable. Who wants to tell the donors that the Team D brain trust pissed away a billion and a half, with nothing to show for it? But if the election was somehow stolen (eeevil Russkies!) then it wasn't really Team D's fault you see, and then ..."
"... The entire Russia-gate issue ignores/insults the voters the Democrats hope to influence. To some extent, the Democrats are telling the deplorable Trump voters, "The Russians influenced you to vote for Trump, someone who you have been aware of for many years, over the other well-known candidate Hillary Clinton" ..."
"... The Trump voter is probably more than a little irritated to have their voting actions viewed this way, they do not see themselves influenced by the Russians and do not understand why the Russians COULD significantly influence the election when the USA spends so much money on the CIA, FBI, NSA and US military. ..."
"... The entire Russia-gate issue ignores/insults the voters the Democrats hope to influence. ..."
"... To some extent, the Democrats are telling the deplorable Trump voters, "The Russians influenced you to vote for Trump, someone who you have been aware of for many years, over the other well-known candidate Hillary Clinton" ..."
"... Unfortunately for the voters Bill Clinton and Obama and the Dem estab are neoliberals. Bill and O were neoliberals running in New Deal clothing. The current Dem estab is neolib. A better "message" sans better policies isn't any better than focusing on Russia, imo. ..."
"... Gore Vidal (among others) used to point out that the dirty little secret of America's anti-communist right was that they were actually jealous of the brutal tactics the commies could use against their dissenters and secretly – and in many cases, not so secretly – wished they could do the same thing here. ..."
"... What if "RussiaGate" was only really intended to pressure Trump hard against any diplomatic rapprochement with a country the Neocons have targeted? ..."
"... Trump's foreign policy has been relentlessly steered into a direction the Clintons always intended to take it. Ticking off the last countries on Israel's 'enemy list' as compiled by the PNAC creeps. Recall the statement of Col. Wilkerson or one of those old guard people who wandered into an office in the Pentagon to find that there was a list of countries to be destroyed, starting with Iraq and ending finally with Iran. Syria and Libya were on it. ..."
"... This whole thing is about a high level grand strategic plan that involves destabilizing and overthrowing governments the US and Israel find annoying and insufficiently obeisant. The ultimate goal will be breaking the Russian Federation into a bunch of independent statelets. This isn't 'conspiracy theory' – it's what Brzezinski advocated and aligns neatly with the needs of the military-industrial-financial complex and its obsession with total control over world energy supplies as a lever for domination. ..."
"... Cold, you bring up a topic often ignored that I find highly credible. The Deep State with all its power to manufacture information and create chaos has a long-standing interest in maintaining Russiaphobia. The Soviet Union was certainly the best enemy they have ever known. Without it trillions of dollars of armaments would have never been sold and billions of dollars of spy agency bureaucracies never have been funded. ..."
"... This has been mission accomplished for the Dems. You just have to assume they want the country to move right. ..."
Jun 27, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
By Norman Solomon, the coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org and the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."

The plan for Democrats to run against Russia may be falling apart.

  • After squandering much of the last six months on faulting Russians for the horrific presidency of Donald Trump
  • After blaming America's dire shortfalls of democracy on plutocrats in Russia more than on plutocrats in America
  • After largely marketing the brand of their own party as more anti-Russian than pro-working-people
  • After stampeding many Democratic Party-aligned organizations, pundits and activists into fixating more on Russia than on the thousand chronic cuts to democracy here at home
  • After soaking up countless hours of TV airtime and vast quantities of ink and zillions of pixels to denounce Russia in place of offering progressive remedies to the deep economic worries of American voters

Now, Democrats in Congress and other party leaders are starting to face an emerging reality: The "winning issue" of Russia is a losing issue.

The results of a reliable new nationwide poll - and what members of Congress keep hearing when they actually listen to constituents back home - cry out for a drastic reorientation of Democratic Party passions. And a growing number of Democrats in Congress are getting the message.

"Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election fortunes have a resounding message for party leaders: Stop talking so much about Russia," The Hill reported over the weekend. In sharp contrast to their party's top spokespeople, "rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are much more worried about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and healthcare."

The Hill coverage added: "In the wake of a string of special-election defeats, an increasing number of Democrats are calling for an adjustment in party messaging, one that swings the focus from Russia to the economy. The outcome of the 2018 elections, they say, hinges on how well the Democrats manage that shift."

Such assessments aren't just impressionistic or anecdotal. A major poll has just reached conclusions that indicate party leaders have been operating under political illusions.

Conducted last week, the Harvard-Harris national poll found a big disconnect between the Russia obsession of Democratic Party elites in Washington and voters around the country.

  • The poll "reveals the risks inherent for the Democrats, who are hoping to make big gains - or even win back the House - in 2018," The Hill reported. "The survey found that while 58 percent of voters said they're concerned that Trump may have business dealings with Moscow, 73 percent said they're worried that the ongoing investigations are preventing Congress from tackling issues more vital to them."
  • The co-director of the Harvard-Harris poll, Mark Penn, commented on the results: "While the voters have a keen interest in any Russian election interference, they are concerned that the investigations have become a distraction for the president and Congress that is hurting rather than helping the country."
  • Such incoming data are sparking more outspoken dissent from House Democrats who want to get re-elected as well as depose Republicans from majority power. In short, if you don't want a GOP speaker of the House, wise up to the politics at play across the country.

Vermont Congressman Peter Welch, a progressive Democrat, put it this way: "We should be focused relentlessly on economic improvement [and] we should stay away from just piling on the criticism of Trump, whether it's about Russia, whether it's about Comey. Because that has its own independent dynamic, it's going to happen on its own without us piling on."

Welch said, "We're much better off if we just do the hard work of coming up with an agenda. Talking about Trump and Russia doesn't create an agenda."

Creating a compelling agenda would mean rejecting what has become the rote reflex of Democratic Party leadership - keep hammering Trump as a Kremlin tool. In a typical recent comment, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi pounded away at a talking point already so worn out that it has the appearance of a bent nail: "What do the Russians have on Donald Trump?"

In contrast, another House Democrat, Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, said: "If you see me treating Russia and criticisms of the president and things like that as a secondary matter, it's because that's how my constituents feel about it."

But ever since the election last November, Democratic congressional leaders have been placing the party's bets heavily on the Russia horse. And it's now pulling up lame.

Yes, a truly independent investigation is needed to probe charges that the Russian government interfered with the U.S. election. And investigators should also dig to find out if there's actual evidence that Trump or his campaign operatives engaged in nefarious activities before or after the election. At the same time, let's get a grip. The partisan grandstanding on Capitol Hill, by leading Republicans and Democrats, hardly qualifies as "independent."

In the top strata of the national Democratic Party, and especially for the Clinton wing of the party, blaming Russia has been of visceral importance. A recent book about Hillary Clinton's latest presidential campaign - "Shattered," by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes - includes a revealing passage. "Within 24 hours of her concession speech," the authors report, campaign manager Robby Mook and campaign chair John Podesta "assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up."

At that meeting, "they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument."

In early spring, the former communications director of the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign, Jennifer Palmieri, summarized the post-election approach in a Washington Post opinion piece : "If we make plain that what Russia has done is nothing less than an attack on our republic, the public will be with us. And the more we talk about it, the more they'll be with us."

Polling data now indicate how wrong such claims are.

Initially in lockstep this year, Democrats on Capitol Hill probably didn't give it a second thought if they read my article published by The Hill nearly six months ago under the headline "Democrats Are Playing With Fire on Russia." At the outset, I warned that "the most cohesive message from congressional Democrats is: blame Russia. The party leaders have doubled down on an approach that got nowhere during the presidential campaign - trying to tie the Kremlin around Donald Trump's neck."

And I added: "Still more interested in playing to the press gallery than speaking directly to the economic distress of voters in the Rust Belt and elsewhere who handed the presidency to Trump, top Democrats would much rather scapegoat Vladimir Putin than scrutinize how they've lost touch with working-class voters."

But my main emphasis in that January 9 article was that "the emerging incendiary rhetoric against Russia is extremely dangerous. It could lead to a military confrontation between two countries that each has thousands of nuclear weapons."

I noted that "enthusiasm for banging the drum against Putin is fast becoming a big part of the Democratic Party's public identity in 2017. And - insidiously - that's apt to give the party a long-term political stake in further demonizing the Russian government."

My article pointed out: "The reality is grim, and potentially catastrophic beyond comprehension. By pushing to further polarize with the Kremlin, congressional Democrats are increasing the chances of a military confrontation with Russia."

Here's a question worth pondering: How much time do members of Congress spend thinking about ways to reduce the risks of nuclear holocaust, compared to how much time they spend thinking about getting re-elected?

In political terms, The Hill 's June 24 news article headlined "Dems Push Leaders to Talk Less About Russia" should be a wakeup call. Held in the thrall of Russia-bashing incantations since early winter, some Democrats in Congress have started to realize that they must break the spell. But they will need help from constituents willing to bluntly tell them to snap out of it .

If there is to be a human future on this planet, it will require real diplomacy between the U.S. and Russia , the world's two nuclear-weapons superpowers. Meanwhile - even if the nuclear threat from continuing to escalate hostility toward Russia doesn't rank high on the list of Democrats' concerns on Capitol Hill - maybe the prospects of failure in the elections next year will compel a major change. It's time for the dangerous anti-Russia fever to break.

EndOfTheWorld , June 27, 2017 at 3:55 am

The "Russiagate" farce had its waterloo moment when three CNN faux journalists were asked kindly to resign for being too faux even for the Clinton News Network.

Yes, the Democrat politicians who have enough functioning brain cells to actually go back to their districts and meet with their random constituents can plainly see that the people want this BS to come to and end immediately if not three months ago.

Louis Fyne , June 27, 2017 at 9:29 am

CNN producer on video admitting that it's all bunk courtesy of James Okeefe. Expect Fox News to run this clip 24/7. http://www.veritaslive.com/06-26-2017/americanpravdacnn.html

shinola , June 27, 2017 at 2:23 pm

Thanks for the link – confirms what I've suspected for months. If any of y'all have about 9 minutes to spare, this vid. is really interesting (& damning).

Thor's Hammer , June 27, 2017 at 11:31 am

Debates about whether the Democrat wing of the Property Party should change its PR focus from trying to manufacture Russiaphobia to pretending to care about the welfare of the working class are worse than debating about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's embarrassing to watch a highly intelligent group of people like the NC readership engage in discussions like this while ignoring the facts before them.

  • The US is not a democracy. Policies bear little or no correspondence to the desires of the vast majority of citizens while being highly correlated with the belief systems and self-interest of a tiny ruling class.
  • Elections are circuses organized for the distraction of the underclasses. They are never contested on the basis of fundamental issues that determine the future of the country. Rather, they are pissing contests between advertising agencies who employ all means at hand to temporarily manipulate public opinion.
  • Regardless of which party wins, promises in party platforms are meaningless the day after the election and have little correlation to candidate behavior.
  • It follows that it matters little which candidate/figurehead is elected since they are simply entertainment, while the country continues to be governed by the banksters, war hawks, medical extortionists, and greedhead trillionaires who own it.

NC has diligently documented the bankster fraud that characterized the 2007-2008 financial meltdown. Exactly how many of the perpetrators of this massive theft went to prison?

The US has been at permanent war in the middle east for 20 years under Democrat and Republican administrations, employing fabrication of events, torture of prisoners, shock and awe bombing attacks, assassination by remote control drones, false flag attacks, and proxy funding of Islamic terrorist organizations. How many CIA torturers, generals, and politicians have been held accountable for their lies and war crimes?

Thor's Hammer , June 27, 2017 at 4:18 pm

By "people who have been living in terror" I assume your mean people who find themselves on the Trump banned country list? Unjust and anti-humanitarian perhaps, but hardly equivalent to terrorism.

Terrorism is when your wedding party is bombed by a drone being piloted by a computer operator half a world away because the cyber spy satellites have detected too many cell phone conversations directed at one of the guests. Terrorism is when a delusional religious fundamentalist straps explosives to her body and blows herself up in a crowded nightclub. And terrorism is when a government funds the anti-human belief systems that lead to such mad acts.

Allegorio , June 27, 2017 at 5:10 pm

The first and foremost action should be government funded elections. Take the money out of politics. Open up ballot access. Election day should be a national holiday. Paper ballots publicly counted. Free electioneering on our public airwaves. Run off elections so that the elected truly have a mandate. The malefactors of wealth completely control the electoral process. Tall order but nothing else can be accomplished unless we take back the electoral system, foundation of democracy.

Lord Koos , June 27, 2017 at 1:06 pm

I find political strategy-speak such as "an adjustment in party messaging" to be sickening. The Democrats still seem to be talking about manipulating perception, rather than actually doing anything fundamentally different.

Allegorio , June 27, 2017 at 5:12 pm

That was absolutely Nancy Pelosi's line on CBS the other morning. We're not doing anything wrong we're just not getting our message out there. Delusional bought and paid for party hack. She has got to go.

oh , June 27, 2017 at 4:48 pm

Agree. Here's slight modification of one of you points:

  1. Elections are circuses organized for the distraction of the underclasses.
  2. They are never contested on the basis of fundamental issues that determine the future of the country.
  3. Rather, they are pissing contests between advertising agencies who employ all means at hand to temporarily manipulate public opinion while maximizing their revenue.
ChrisPacific , June 27, 2017 at 5:03 pm

All largely true; however, there remains a large contingent of non-NC readers (and traditional Democrat supporters) who remain unaware of most of this and who need to be convinced. Many of these people are our friends and relatives, and penetrating their illusions is essential if we are ever to reform the Democrat party by starving its more problematic members of voter support. The four points you mentioned, while largely accepted by NC readers, remain very much to be demonstrated when talking to these kind of people. We can't just lead with something like "Hillary is a warmongering crony capitalist who sold out the working class a long time ago." They will switch off if we do. We need to offer concrete, real-world examples that demonstrate it, along with the necessary context for them to understand the problem. If they follow along with the arguments then they will eventually reach the conclusion on their own. While this article may not be telling NC readers anything they don't already know, it's a good example of a narrative that we can use in those situations.

EoinW , June 27, 2017 at 8:23 am

Trojan Horse. It's the Guardian(and CNN) saying: "we deal with faux news the moment it happens. Look at how clean we are!" The entire MSM will jump all over this and pretend they've cleaned house, fixed the one isolated incident, therefore we can once again trust them to be the truth tellers they are. A wonderful script for the Lefties and the pseudo-Left media, like the Guardian. It's BS because they lie all the time about everything!

Allegorio , June 27, 2017 at 5:19 pm

Please don't conflate the left with the "Liberal Media". There is no left mass media in this country.

integer , June 27, 2017 at 5:16 am

https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/878773715147902977

Why the Democratic party is doomed:

1. The Democratic establishment has vortexed the party's narrative energy into hysteria about Russia (a state with a lower GDP than South Korea). It is starkly obvious that were it not for this hysteria insurgent narratives of the type promoted by Bernie Sanders would rapidly dominate the party's base and its relationship with the public. Without the "We didn't lose–Russia won" narrative the party's elite and those who exist under its patronage would be purged for being electorally incompetent and ideologically passé. The collapse of the Democratic vote over the last eight years is at every level, city, state, Congressional and presidential. It corresponds to the domination of Democratic decision making structures by a professional, educated, urban service class and to the shocking decline in health and longevity of white males, who together with their wives, daughters, mothers, etc. comprise 63% of the US population (2010 census). Unlike other industrialized countries US male real wages (all ethnic groups combined) have not increased since 1973. In trying to stimulate engagement of non-whites and women Democrats have aggressively promoted identity politics. This short-term tactic has led to the inevitable strategic catastrophe of the white and male super majorities responding by seeing themselves as an unserviced political identity group. Consequently in response to sotto-voce suggestions that Trump would service this group 53% of all men voted for Trump, 53% of white women and 63% of white men (PEW Research).

2. The Trump-Russia collusion narrative is a political dead end. Despite vast resources, enormous incentives and a year of investigation, Democratic senators who have seen the classified intelligence at the CIA such as Senator Feinstein (as recently as March) are forced to admit that there is no evidence of collusion
[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BS5amEq7Fc ]. Without collusion, we are left with the Democratic establishment blaming the public for being repelled by the words of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party establishment. Is it a problem that the public discovered what Hillary Clinton said to Goldman Sachs and what party elites said about fixing the DNC primaries against Bernie Sanders? A party elite that maintains that it is the "crime of the century" for the public and their membership to discover how they behave and what they believe invites scorn.

3. The Democrat establishment needs the support of the security sector and media barons to push this diversionary conspiracy agenda, so they ingratiate themselves with these two classes leading to further perceptions that the Democrats act on behalf of an entrenched power elite. Eventually, Trump or Pence will 'merge' with the security state leaving Democrats in a vulnerable position having talked up two deeply unaccountable traditionally Republican-aligned organizations, in particular, the CIA and the FBI, who will be turned against them. Other than domestic diversion and geopolitical destabilization the primary result of the Russian narrative is increased influence and funding for the security sector which is primarily GOP owned or aligned.

4. The twin result is to place the primary self-interest concerns of most Americans, class competition, freedom from crime and ill health and the empowerment of their children, into the shadows and project the Democrats as close to DC and media elites. This has further cemented Trump's anti-establishment positioning and fettered attacks on Trump's run away embrace of robber barons, dictators and gravitas-free buffoons like the CIA's Mike Pompeo.

5. GOP/Trump has open goals everywhere: broken promises, inequality, economy, healthcare, militarization, Goldman Sachs, Saudi Arabia & cronyism, but the Democrat establishment can't kick these goals since the Russian collusion narrative has consumed all its energy and it is entangled with many of the same groups behind Trump's policies.

6. The Democratic base should move to start a new party since the party elite shows no signs that they will give up power. This can be done quickly and cheaply as a result of the internet and databases of peoples' political preferences. This reality is proven in practice with the rapid construction of the Macron, Sanders and Trump campaigns from nothing. The existing Democratic party may well have negative reputational capital, stimulating a Macron-style clean slate approach. Regardless, in the face of such a threat, the Democratic establishment will either concede control or, as in the case of Macron, be eliminated by the new structure.

Carolinian , June 27, 2017 at 8:34 am

I agree with 6. The fact that the Dems reacted to their presidential loss by immediately accusing their opponent of treason shows how low they have sunk. Perhaps they thought they were justified in imitating Trump's own shoot from the lip style but someone has to be the adult in the room. Meanwhile the country's two leading newspapers turn themselves into social media sites. The ruling class seems to be cracking up.

Suggested name for new third party: the Not Crazy party.

fresno dan , June 27, 2017 at 9:56 am

integer June 27, 2017 at 5:16 am
Thanks for that! Again and Again and Again:
"It corresponds to the domination of Democratic decision making structures by a professional, educated, urban service class and to the shocking decline in health and longevity of white males, who together with their wives, daughters, mothers, etc. comprise 63% of the US population (2010 census). Unlike other industrialized countries US male real wages (all ethnic groups combined) have not increased since 1973. In trying to stimulate engagement of non-whites and women Democrats have aggressively promoted identity politics. This short-term tactic has led to the inevitable strategic catastrophe of the white and male super majorities responding by seeing themselves as an unserviced political identity group. Consequently in response to sotto-voce suggestions that Trump would service this group 53% of all men voted for Trump, 53% of white women and 63% of white men (PEW Research)."

Allegorio , June 27, 2017 at 5:26 pm

Identity politics is basically a divide and rule strategy to keep progressive candidates off the ballot, the real purpose of the Democratic Party establishment. That is what they are being paid for.

Tim , June 27, 2017 at 2:10 pm

The only way to create a new party of actual importance is for it to not be originated from disenfranchised republicans or disenfranchised democrats, lest it be branded as extreme by existing power structures, and be resigned to a fate similar to the libertarian and green parties, which are spoilers at best.

It would need to be a party that grows out of the moderate center. This is doable, because will all the gerrymandering they are becoming the least represented block of voters, that is compounded by the fact that in general 98% of the population are not represented by their representatives anyways. The center is open to facts and reasonable arguments as to policy solutions, such as single payer and a restructured health care industry. That is the executable path to republican and or democrat obsolescence.

John k , June 27, 2017 at 2:36 pm

The first world has had enough neolib, pendulum has started moving the other way. Macron shows the desperation to try something new without embracing right wing LePen an option not available here, so revulsion to neolib resulted in Trump..

Course, the something new macron is just neolib with a pretty face, French will be disappointed, either the left will join forces next time or French desperation will bring LE Pen to power.

Fully agree dems have hollowed themselves out enough to create a vacuum, country desperate for third party. New media is displacing corp mouthpieces, never been easier to start new. Still think take over greens, make functional, because ballot access hard to get, particularly with dems fighting tooth and nail. Come to think of it, maybe they're not completely dysfunctional, they did manage to get on the ballot in most states, not easy, and certainly dems didn't help, they hate the greens.

Dems 30, reps 30, indies 40.
Bernie heading progressive greens gets 1/3 dems, 1/6 reps, 3/4 indies? 45 in three way race is landslide.

oh , June 27, 2017 at 5:13 pm

I don't think I'd count on Bernie. He loves his committee appointments too much and will never leave the DImRats.

integer , June 27, 2017 at 3:11 pm

Just to be clear, the text in my comment above was written by Julian Assange, not me. See the link at the top of said comment.

Andrew Watts , June 27, 2017 at 5:06 pm

In response to point number six: There are already significant legal barriers to the creation of a new party. Both parties will probably gang up on any new party development too.

Secondly, Macron can't be compared to Trump/Sanders. He's just neoliberalism's Potemkin village in France. Both Trump/Sanders aren't really comparable as they both contained genuine political outsiders such as Bannon in Trump's case. I wouldn't compare Melenchon to Sanders either. Melenchon kinda seems like the Le Pen of the French left. By which I mean he would govern as a authoritarian.

integer , June 27, 2017 at 9:08 pm

There are already significant legal barriers to the creation of a new party. Both parties will probably gang up on any new party development too.

Granted, however it shouldn't be forgotten that there are significant barriers to reforming the D-party too.

Lambert Strether , June 27, 2017 at 11:33 pm

Invert "legal barrier" to "asset to be seized"

fajensen , June 27, 2017 at 5:19 am

The Dims – because that's what these people truly are – will just assume that they haven't put enough effort into "Russia" and go triple- or quadruple-up on every failed candidate, strategy, platform, message, consultant, focus-group and whatever else a sane leadership should by now have been tarring, feathering and releasing the hounds upon.

Just imagine the staff meetings: 'We gotta be right eventually, because Vince Lombardi said: "Winners never quit and quitters never win"' and politics is exactly like football. "Ohhh How Deep. Surely advice like that is worth paying 50 kUSD for".

Darn , June 27, 2017 at 5:37 am

+ for Dims. The Russia thing is irresistible because it's supposed to get nationalistic rubes to turn against Trump while sucking up to the military-industrial complex. And yet, it didn't work during the campaign either.

polecat , June 27, 2017 at 11:08 am

'If you are constantly pounding the pudding, shrieking endlessly, and hysterically so, about the evils of the PUTIN and his supposed orange-coiffed minion, while refusing to look into a mirror !!! . You just might be a DIMOCRAT !"

sid_finster , June 27, 2017 at 11:14 am

Team D will continue to double down because it is in the interests of those running Team D to do so.

Ignacio , June 27, 2017 at 5:50 am

The fixation of Clintonites, or frustrated dems with russiagate is very telling and well explained here. It strikes me how the russiagate has treated so uncritically by the "liberal" press in Spain. Nobody, and I say nobody, has even thougth twice about the political risks associated with the demonization of Russia that coincides with Ukraine isues and natural gas supplies in Europe. Interestingly Germans have recently agreed with Russia a new pipeline through the Baltic sea and there is clamor against these agreement amongst other European countries that do not benefit from the pipeline, and apparently the clamor is leaded by the US (the supposedly pro Russian Trump government).

Germany's gas pact with Putin's Russia endangers Atlantic alliance

mundanomaniac , June 27, 2017 at 1:53 pm

and the German journalists, print or TV were ready 2014 like their colleges were1933, when Goebbels called . And no physical threat this time, only probe of character.
And as the Germans since long have learnt to be eager to please their masters they did the trick again, alas now, when they are the paragons of success in the west.

But the president Donald, thank God, is disclosing all veils and Putin is showing a decent kind of leader on the planet. Cheers from Bavaria's

mundo http://astromundanediary.blogspot.de/2017/06/6_18.html

Benedict@Large , June 27, 2017 at 6:02 am

So the bottom line is that Hillary, who wouldn't work for anything better than ObamaCare, is ending up sacrificing ObamaCare itself, all because she got in a powder about people not buying her messageless campaign? We are literally a handful of days away from losing not only ObamaCare, but Medicaid as well, and the Democratic establishment has no strategy except to worry that Bernie Sanders might score a few points for merely repeating back to the party's base what that base was already saying? Forty years of trying to create a "centrist" third party is in shambles, and these people still believe they are entitled to lead what little remains of the party of the working people.

No wonder we were supposed to worry about the Russians. It was the furthest place they could find from where the problem really was.

Mike , June 27, 2017 at 8:38 am

As a side note, no one is mentioning the "progressive" bloggers and news sites (Young Turks, Majority Report, I'm lookin' at ya) who jumped on this bandwagon after showing support for Sanders, then switched to standard form to oppose the "fascist" Trump. It says to me that, just like the more well-known Democratic Party fronts who could have made an effort to show independence, they are ultimately fronts, just more distantly positioned for maximum believability. It all smells, and progressives need to examine their principles before looking to these "saviors".

Even if "evidence" would appear after all this time, do we not suspect it has been cooked in the truth-telling factories of the FBI, CIA, and NSA, all in bed with right-wing warmongers who own both parties (not just Republicans – sorry, integer)? If anything shows the necessity of party realignment (creating new ones to replace existing), this idiocy is not just a brick in the wall, but an entire edifice.

integer , June 27, 2017 at 11:23 am

Even if "evidence" would appear after all this time, do we not suspect it has been cooked in the truth-telling factories of the FBI, CIA, and NSA, all in bed with right-wing warmongers who own both parties ( not just Republicans – sorry, integer )?

Disappointed to read this, as I have never made that claim.

Mike , June 27, 2017 at 1:47 pm

Comment was to your saying the security establishment "which is primarily GOP owned or aligned". Both parties, in a sense, "own" it, and use segments of it to advantage when necessary. But further, both the parties and agencies are "owned" by the power of capital as it is currently operating, and this power behind the throne makes the security and party establishment dance. You and I are on the ground, trying to avoid the footwork.

RenoDino , June 27, 2017 at 8:42 am

http://nypost.com/2017/06/24/inside-the-shadowy-intelligence-firm-behind-the-trump-dossier/

It looks like the Fusion GPS Trump dossier, that is the basis for all of the Russian collusion accusations, is getting ready to become even more of a major embarrassment, hence all the talk about backing away from the current strategy.

Even Planned Parenthood hired this opposition research firm to get dirt on right to lifers. Your tax dollars and donations at work.

Arizona Slim , June 27, 2017 at 8:44 am

In the last six months, I have gone from being curious about Russia to learning how to speak Russian. Thanks for the inspiration, Democrats.

Andrew Watts , June 27, 2017 at 5:00 pm

Ahah! Most Americans don't learn foreign languages. This is irrefutable proof of a fifth columnist element in America plotting against Moose and Squirrel. Somebody tell the Hillary campaign!

Tertium Squid , June 27, 2017 at 8:54 am

Now I remember where I first heard of Norman Solomon. http://dilbert.com/search_results?terms=Norman+Solomon

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/162106845381/why-the-new-healthcare-bill-will-be-a-loser

Tom Stone , June 27, 2017 at 8:54 am

But, but, it was HER TURN! And her investors are really pissed off. $1.5B up in smoke and not even a blue dress to show for it.

NotTimothyGeithner , June 27, 2017 at 9:31 am

If Hillary with her celebrity and money can't win, what does it say about the potential future political dreams of the Dems who enthusiastically supported her? Or even corporate gigs? What good is a Democrat who can't deliver?

NBCNews has hired Greta, Megan Kelly, and now Hugh Hewitt. The NYT hired a host of climate change deniers.

For the Clintonistas especially, why would anyone hire them again? It's really no different on their part than the "OMG Nader" narrative. In an election with voter suppression, misleading ballots, bizarre recounts, Joe Lieberman, high youth non-Cuban Hispanic turnout for Shrub, Katherine Harris, and the fantasy of simply winning Tennessee, who did Democrats blame? A powerless figure in Nader.

sid_finster , June 27, 2017 at 11:19 am

This is one reason why russiagate is inevitable. Who wants to tell the donors that the Team D brain trust pissed away a billion and a half, with nothing to show for it? But if the election was somehow stolen (eeevil Russkies!) then it wasn't really Team D's fault you see, and then

Darius , June 27, 2017 at 1:08 pm

It also is attacking the Republicans from the right, always a Team D wet dream.

Karl Kolchak , June 27, 2017 at 2:58 pm

Problem is, anyone smart enough to earn that much dough is likely too smart to fall for the Russia stole the election BS, which is why Dumbocrats' fundraising has cratered.

John Wright , June 27, 2017 at 8:58 am

The entire Russia-gate issue ignores/insults the voters the Democrats hope to influence. To some extent, the Democrats are telling the deplorable Trump voters, "The Russians influenced you to vote for Trump, someone who you have been aware of for many years, over the other well-known candidate Hillary Clinton"

The Trump voter is probably more than a little irritated to have their voting actions viewed this way, they do not see themselves influenced by the Russians and do not understand why the Russians COULD significantly influence the election when the USA spends so much money on the CIA, FBI, NSA and US military.

The USA is also widely viewed as attempting to influence elections overseas, with none other than Senator Hillary Clinton recorded stating that 'We should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win' in a Palestine election.

http://observer.com/2016/10/2006-audio-emerges-of-hillary-clinton-proposing-rigging-palestine-election/

Disclaimer, this link is from Trump's son-in-law's publication, but the audio has not been questioned AFAIK..

I suspect the American voter does not believe they were "played" by the Russians.

But they may believe that is what the Democrats are attempting to do with the entire Russia-gate campaign

As James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid" when running Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign.

The Democrats need to see this is still good guidance.

Left in Wisconsin , June 27, 2017 at 1:48 pm

The entire Russia-gate issue ignores/insults the voters the Democrats hope to influence.

To some extent, the Democrats are telling the deplorable Trump voters, "The Russians influenced you to vote for Trump, someone who you have been aware of for many years, over the other well-known candidate Hillary Clinton"

I think this is not right. The Dems have no interest in the votes of the deplorables. What only matters is the meme that HRC should have won. The charitable interpretation is that DNC is still convinced that demographics are in their favor (in the long run). So they do not have to diss their corporate patrons and offer real help to real people; they just need to hold out long enough for the demographics to kick in. The meme that HRC should have won is a rationale for staying the course.

Of course, the uncharitable explanation is that they would rather lose than change.

flora , June 27, 2017 at 9:18 am

"As James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid" when running Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign. The Democrats need to see this is still good guidance."

Yes, it is. Unfortunately for the voters Bill Clinton and Obama and the Dem estab are neoliberals. Bill and O were neoliberals running in New Deal clothing. The current Dem estab is neolib. A better "message" sans better policies isn't any better than focusing on Russia, imo.

Kevin Horlock , June 27, 2017 at 9:29 am

Please just go away, Hillary and Hillary clones. When you think about it, increasing ever so slightly the risk of actual nuclear war, damaging the Democratic party, and doing untold damage to legitimate (hate to use the word anymore) "progressive" causes is more or less the end-game of all this. And all in service of, what? Vindicating the failures of the inane pundit class? (God forbid) setting up Hillary 2020? Shameful shit right there

John D. , June 27, 2017 at 10:13 am

Even on a purely political level, the whole Russiagate bullshit was doomed to failure, methinks.

Gore Vidal (among others) used to point out that the dirty little secret of America's anti-communist right was that they were actually jealous of the brutal tactics the commies could use against their dissenters and secretly – and in many cases, not so secretly – wished they could do the same thing here. It wasn't that long ago that the right wing blog-o-sphere and certain wingnut writers were all swooning over Putin's manliness (as opposed to Obama's alleged 'weakness') like a pack of horny schoolgirls. The dumb bastards were composing mash notes to the butch Mr. Putin. It was embarrassing.

So if the Dem "leadership" was hoping to turn our own home-grown reactionaries against Trump over being in bed with Putin, they should have known better. We all know the right are hypocrites. Even if there was anything to Russiagate, they wouldn't care. And the rest of us wouldn't give a shit, not if it meant ignoring every other problem that needs dealing with. Since it's all a bunch of bullshit anyway

Jonathan Holland Becnel , June 27, 2017 at 12:11 pm

Good to see this Neoliberal farce go away.

Indrid Cold , June 27, 2017 at 1:06 pm

What if "RussiaGate" was only really intended to pressure Trump hard against any diplomatic rapprochement with a country the Neocons have targeted?

Trump's foreign policy has been relentlessly steered into a direction the Clintons always intended to take it. Ticking off the last countries on Israel's 'enemy list' as compiled by the PNAC creeps. Recall the statement of Col. Wilkerson or one of those old guard people who wandered into an office in the Pentagon to find that there was a list of countries to be destroyed, starting with Iraq and ending finally with Iran. Syria and Libya were on it.

This whole thing is about a high level grand strategic plan that involves destabilizing and overthrowing governments the US and Israel find annoying and insufficiently obeisant. The ultimate goal will be breaking the Russian Federation into a bunch of independent statelets. This isn't 'conspiracy theory' – it's what Brzezinski advocated and aligns neatly with the needs of the military-industrial-financial complex and its obsession with total control over world energy supplies as a lever for domination.

Assad is really secondary to the main goals of:

  1. Getting the Russian naval presence out of the Mediterranean (note that Nuland -another PNAC operative- leverages unhappiness with the corruption in Ukraine to install a fascistic government that would certainly have seized the Russian naval assets at Sevastopol had Russia not seized the Crimea.
  2. Turning Isreal's neighbors into a collection Mad Max style bantu-stans that can be manipulated easily by Saudi -which is ironically Israel's ally.
  3. Controlling energy transit and access points.

Again, I'm not saying anything that isn't in the record.

John Wright , June 27, 2017 at 4:34 pm

Re the country list. It was Wesley Clark who saw the list of middle east/African countries the USA would attack and destroy.

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/26/wes_clark_and_the_neocon_dream/

Per Clark, "He said: "Sir, it's worse than that. He said – he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk – he said: "I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense's office. It says we're going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years – we're going to start with Iraq, and then we're going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.""

It was all supposed to occur within 5 years, so by 2008 the dream would have been accomplished. But maybe the neocons haven't given up, not installing HRC was a downer, but maybe Trump can be pulled into line..

Thor's Hammer , June 27, 2017 at 5:28 pm

Cold, you bring up a topic often ignored that I find highly credible. The Deep State with all its power to manufacture information and create chaos has a long-standing interest in maintaining Russiaphobia. The Soviet Union was certainly the best enemy they have ever known. Without it trillions of dollars of armaments would have never been sold and billions of dollars of spy agency bureaucracies never have been funded.

The real power centers in the US are the bankster cabal, robber baron capitalists, medical extortionists, and the Homeland Insecurity war hawks. The first three have nothing to fear from a Trump presidency– indeed they probably will fare better than if the Clinton Crime Syndicate had triumphed. However (to the extent that he actually stands for anything) Trump's goal of defusing tensions with Russia and doing oil deals with them is a direct threat to the War Hawks, and more than sufficient reason to cut him off at the knees

You do fall into the trap of repeating Deep State propaganda though. Russia did not seize Crimea. Crimea has been part of the Russian sphere of influence for generations. It probably is as much Russian as Texas is American. It's temporary incorporation into Ukraine when the Soviet Union fractured probably had as much to do with Khrushchev being Ukrainian as it had to do with creating the best fit. And when the choice was put before a popular referendum in 2014, 83% of the population turned out to vote and 96.77% voted to join the Russian Federation. Try getting that kind of turn out and consensus in an American election! And even if there was plenty of arm twisting behind the scenes, its hard to believe that the result didn't represent the actual choice of the citizens.

Indrid Cold , June 27, 2017 at 10:55 pm

Re Crimea – you're correct of course. The Texas analogy is pretty good. There was no distinction between Russians and Ukrainians during the time of the Czars anyway. The territory used to be controlled by the Hellenes and then the Byzantines. The Germans wanted to annex it as part of their war goals in ww2

kurtismayfield , June 27, 2017 at 1:32 pm

This has been mission accomplished for the Dems. You just have to assume they want the country to move right.

  1. Kick the left. Always.
  2. Pretend to #resist, while really you are in it to keep the political money spigot flowing.
  3. While distracting their supporters with Russia gate/GA-06/Trump's latest twit, Medicare and ACA get gutted.
  4. Run on returning to the status quo on 2018, taking single payer will be off the table.

It's brilliant... If you know their goal is to move the country right and be a bulwark against the left.

[Jun 27, 2017] Is Russia Starting to Realize That 'Dialogue' With Washington Is a Massive Waste of Time

marknesop.wordpress.com
Putin: "If there were no situation with Crimea and other problems, they would have invented something else to contain Russia"

Evidently, Russia has finally seen the light and understands inviting U.S. officials for a discussion on the whims and airy ideas Washington conjures up out of thin air, and usually on the spur of the moment, is ineffective and a total waste of time.

As reported by AP , Russia has canceled talks that were set for this coming Friday between Russia's deputy foreign minister, Sergey Ryabkov, and the No. 3 U.S. diplomat, Thomas A. Shannon, Jr.

Ryabkov said that "the situation is not conducive to holding a round of this dialogue," criticizing the U.S. for "not having offered anything specific" to discuss.

"We have said from the very beginning of Washington's exceptionally destructive policy in regard to applying anti-Russia sanctions, that [such measures] will not and cannot have an effect desired by the US on our individuals or entities," Ryabkov told RIA Novosti Tuesday.

[Jun 27, 2017] Fake News on Russia...CNN journalists resign

Jun 27, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

JohnH , June 27, 2017 at 06:45 AM

Fake News on Russia...CNN journalists resign:

"But CNN is hardly alone when it comes to embarrassing retractions regarding Russia. Over and over, U.S. major media outlets have published claims about The Russia Threat that turned out to be completely false – always in the direction of exaggerating the threat and/or inventing incriminating links between Moscow and the Trump circle. In virtually all cases, those stories involved evidence-free assertions from anonymous sources which these media outlets uncritically treated as fact, only for it to be revealed that they were entirely false.

Several of the most humiliating of these episodes have come from the Washington Post. On December 30, the paper published a blockbuster, frightening scoop that immediately and predictably went viral and generated massive traffic. Russian hackers, the paper claimed based on anonymous sources, had hacked into the "U.S. electricity grid" through a Vermont utility.

That, in turn, led MSNBC journalists, and various Democratic officials, to instantly sound the alarm that Putin was trying to deny Americans heat during the winter:

Literally every facet of that story turned out to be false."
https://theintercept.com/2017/06/27/cnn-journalists-resign-latest-example-of-media-recklessness-on-the-russia-threat/

Public perceptions of corporate media's integrity...RIP.

[Jun 27, 2017] The USA is sucessfully sabotaging Russian and try to secure its own shipping LNG to europe while Russia do not have alternative consumers comparable to EU, althout China and India shipments will grow dramatically

Notable quotes:
"... icebreaking LNG Carrier ..."
"... Yamal is projected to double Russia's share of the growing global LNG market by the time it reaches full capacity of 16.5m tonnes a year - equivalent to more than 80 per cent of China's annual demand - by 2021. Construction is three-quarters complete and production from the first phase of the project is due to commence by the end of this year. ..."
"... More than 95 per cent of Yamal's expected output has already been sold through 15 to 20 year contracts, with customers mostly in Asia and Europe. ..."
Jun 27, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star , June 23, 2017 at 11:55 am
https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-launches-deep-water-phase-turkstream-gas-pipeline-143410466.html

One of the best comment people on Yahoo:

"oldgeekMA 2 hours ago

Truth is Russia has been looking for an excuse to get out of the business of Shipping Natural Gas to the West and the South, altogether and these US Sanctions and EU Complaints about Gazprom Pipeline Construction, may just be the out they have been looking for. In Jan 2016, Russia completed 7 Massive High-Pressure Gas Pipelines, 2 to India and 5 to China. The ones to India make 4 total Gas Lines to India, but the 5 to China are the first time China, has had access to Russian Natural Gas. The contracts India and China signed with Gazprom are 50 years, and the price of NG starts at more than double the highest rate Gazprom charges in Europe, the icing on the cake however is that the currency is not US Paper Promissory Notes(Petro Dollars), but Gold Bullion. At full capacity those pipelines can use every single NG resource Gazprom, has at the present time, and all future NG resources. So, Gazprom would be foolish not to want to cut all off its Western and Southern pipelines off, and divert Maximum Flow East. In addition to these NG Pipelines, there are Crude Oil and Diesel pipelines under construction, going to China and India – Completion date scheduled for between November 2017 and January 2018. Chinese and Indian Construction Crews completed their internal distribution pipeline networks in 2016, and have 7 Oil Refineries in various stages of completion. -– All American III Percenter and Combat Disabled US Veteran"

Now..remind me what was this stuff about 'Murica shipping LNG to europe???
LOL!!!!

https://ads.pubmatic.com/AdServer/js/showad.js#PIX&kdntuid=1&p=156204

marknesop , June 24, 2017 at 5:27 pm
That would indeed be delightful if there were even the whiff of truth about it; but, unfortunately, there is not. Europe is still Russia's most important gas market by far. Numbers on the Russia-China gas deal are hard to come by and reporters who quote the price China will pay are just guessing because nobody has officially disclosed that figure and will not; it is strictly confidential.

However, the China-vs-EU figures are not even close; starting next year, Russia will export 30-38 BcM annually to China, and that might go as high as double as the agreement evolves. So, say 65 BcM annually, in a couple of years. That's still far less than half what Gazprom exports annually to Europe – 178.3 BcM in 2016, a significant jump over the previous year's 158.6 BcM.

Moreover, nearly all the increases in the past decade have been to imports by western Europe. Despite all the preaching in the media, the only countries which seem to be seriously trying to wean themselves off of Russian gas – with little to limited success, it must be said – are eastern European countries. One of the biggest yappers in the west is the UK but the UK went from zero imports of Russian gas in 2003 to the fourth-biggest European importer in 2013 .

That little quick-reference pocket guide is actually chock-full of useful facts which you can whip out and quote whenever some pea-brained bucket-mouthed know-nothing is trying to blizzard you with blue-sky bullshit. Here's a few:

1. All the blather and angst about reducing Europe's dependency on Russian gas imports conveniently ignores one buzzing fly in the ointment – long-term contracts. Of 178.6 BcM imported by Europe in 2013, 166 BcM of it was under 30-year contracts. By far the most of it. And you know what would happen if the EU broke a contract in order to reduce its imports, even if it could practically do so under conditions in which domestic sources of supply are rapidly drying up, which it can't. Also, contract supplies are by definition sanctions-exempt.

2. Home-grown Shale gas is not going to ride to the rescue. Even if Europe could tap supplies which are not sour with so much nitrogen that you can't even burn it, in order to reach shale gas supplies of only 28 BcM annually Europe would have to drill 800-1000 new wells every year for 10 years. Let's see that spun as fiscally viable, or sensible in any way, shape or form.

3. Blabber about the Southern Gas Corridor was always nothing more than that – supplies from Azerbaijan to Europe were never expected to total more than 30 BcM, about what Russia expects to export to China starting in 2018, and it would have taken until 2030 to reach that capacity.

4. LNG actually holds the best promise of undercutting Russian supply, and Europe's regassification terminals actually could handle more than the combined total of Russian imports now; 200 BcM. But LNG supplies to Europe depend entirely on whether they can be profitable, and all current objective studies find that Russia can keep LNG away as long as it likes, simply by consistently pricing its pipeline supplies lower than LNG. Given what it would cost Uncle Sam to get his supplies to market, Gazprom can still easily do that and turn a handsome profit.

https://ads.pubmatic.com/AdServer/js/showad.js#PIX&kdntuid=1&p=156204

Cortes , June 23, 2017 at 1:41 pm
Japanese need to diversify energy imports to benefit RF?

http://journal-neo.org/2017/06/22/japan-regards-russia-as-a-reliable-hydrocarbons-exporter/

et Al , June 24, 2017 at 11:25 am
I thought there was a plan to pipeline NG from Nakhoda to Japan? What happened to that, or was it simply to be an LNG terminal but got shifted?
marknesop , June 24, 2017 at 5:43 pm
I'm glad you brought that up; quite apart from the very interesting information contained in the article itself, it is a springboard to a larger discussion – is Russia equally committed to reducing its dependency on European pipelines as the Europeans are? Some say yes: Russia's $27 Billion icebreaking LNG Carrier project is an eye-opener which has been more or less entirely left out of energy discussions. And its target market is Asia .

Yamal is projected to double Russia's share of the growing global LNG market by the time it reaches full capacity of 16.5m tonnes a year - equivalent to more than 80 per cent of China's annual demand - by 2021. Construction is three-quarters complete and production from the first phase of the project is due to commence by the end of this year.

More than 95 per cent of Yamal's expected output has already been sold through 15 to 20 year contracts, with customers mostly in Asia and Europe.

et Al , June 25, 2017 at 8:04 am
That's hardcore! Thanks Mark. So the Chinese stepped in to take up the slack created by US sanctions against Timchenko's Novatek part of the project. Another US epic fail.

It's curious that the West's interpretation of 'globalization' hasn't turned out as expected. They saw it as western globo-corporations buying in around the world, but globalization has naturally progressed as 'multi-polarization' of global power, away from the US & the West's dominance. The Chinese stepping in is a perfect example. It shows that Russia has real options which it is building and if needs be, at some point in the future, tell the 'No thanks!'.

[Jun 27, 2017] Retracted CNN story a boon for president at war with media

"if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck" This was a witch hunt...
Jun 27, 2017 | www.msn.com

Originally from AP.

Trump quickly took advantage with a series of tweets on Tuesday, and conservative provocateur James O'Keefe piled on by releasing a video with a CNN producer caught on camera talking about the network's Russian coverage being ratings-driven.

...Trump tweeted that "they caught Fake News CNN cold." He lumped ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post together in the same "fake news" category.

...Aides also believe that highlighting media mistakes could be a useful way of questioning the credibility of much of the reporting on the scandals surrounding the White House to convince supporters that Trump was the victim of a witch hunt.

...

Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., suggested in an interview with Breitbart News that "maybe Jeff Zucker should do an on-camera briefing about CNN's fake news scandal before the White House does any more of them." CNN's White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, has been particularly vocal in protesting the administration's dwindling number of on-camera news briefings.

He also tweeted a link to the video posted by O'Keefe's Project Veritas. The hidden-camera video showed John Bonifield, an Atlanta-based producer in CNN's medical unit, talking about how the "ratings are incredible" for the network's Russian coverage. He said the network has no "smoking gun" showing wrongdoing by Trump and that "the president is probably right to say, look, you are witch-hunting me."

[Jun 27, 2017] I am so fucking tired of Russian hacking bullshit by now,

Jun 27, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Lyttenburgh , June 26, 2017 at 1:49 am

Level of sophistication – rock bottom Ukraine.

I'm so fucking tired of this bullshit by now, so – here you go:

[Jun 26, 2017] The New York Times steps up its anti-Russia campaign by Patrick Martin

Jun 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
The CIA's principal house organ, the New York Times, published a lead editorial Sunday on the investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election that is an incendiary and lying exercise in disinformation aimed at whipping up support for war with Russia.

The editorial was well-timed, coming on the morning of the same day that the US military shot down a Syrian warplane, setting off a dramatic escalation in the US conflict with Russia. The editors of the Times have the closest ties with US military and intelligence officials and no doubt were aware that something was being planned, if they were not briefed about the details.

Under the headline "Mr. Trump's Dangerous Indifference to Russia," the Times uses the language of war to assert: "A rival foreign power launched an aggressive cyberattack on the United States, interfering with the 2016 presidential election The unprecedented nature of Russia's attack is getting lost in the swirling chaos of recent weeks, but it shouldn't be."

The Times presents zero evidence to back up a wild reference to "the sheer scope and audacity of the Russian efforts." The editorial simply declares, "American intelligence agencies have concluded," followed by a long list of allegations:

"Under direct orders from President Vladimir Putin, hackers connected to Russian military intelligence broke into the email accounts of senior officials at the Democratic National Committee and of Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. They passed tens of thousands of emails to the website WikiLeaks, which posted them throughout the last months of the campaign in an attempt to damage the Clinton campaign.

"Even more disturbing, hackers sought access to voter databases in at least 39 states, and in some cases tried to alter or delete voter data. They also appear to have tried to take over the computers of more than 100 local election officials in the days before the November 8 vote."

Editorial page editor James Bennet presents not a single fact that supports the Times ' assertions. What is the evidence that there were "direct orders" from Putin, or that hackers linked to Russian intelligence raided Democratic email accounts and supplied material to WikiLeaks, or that (other?) hackers tried to access voter databases and the computers of local election officials? The entire mountain of accusations is suspended in air.

If one traces back the charges to their original sources, they all turn out to be factually unsupported claims by US intelligence agencies, made either in public "findings" issued in October 2016 and January 2017, or in a series of leaks from within the military-intelligence apparatus, mainly to the Times and the Washington Post .

The most recent allegations, about alleged hacking into voter databases and local election computers, are based on a National Security Agency (NSA) report leaked to The Intercept web publication, which even The Intercept admitted contained no underlying evidence to substantiate the NSA's claims.

Not a single one of the reports in the Times or Post is the product of a genuine investigation by journalists. Instead, the main reporting on the "Russian hacking" affair consists of taking dictation from unidentified intelligence officials. In not a single case did these officials offer evidence to substantiate their claims, invariably made in the form of ambiguous phrases like "we assess," "we believe," "we assess with high confidence," etc. Such claims are worth no more than previous assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction-a lie used to justify a war that has killed more than one million people.

In its brazen contempt for basic standards of evidence, the Times ignores more plausible sources of the leaked Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic Party information, such as an individual or individuals within the Democratic Party. The newspaper makes no mention of the content of the leaked emails, which document the efforts of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to sabotage the primary challenge of Bernie Sanders.

Read also: Germany falls in love with warmongering Trump

For all the rhetorical heat about a supposed Russia assault on "the integrity of American democracy," as the Times puts it, there is no such outrage over the dozens of interventions by Washington to manipulate elections all over the world.

One recent study found 81 instances-not counting outright CIA-backed military coups-in which the US government financed political parties, organized disinformation campaigns, carried out assassinations, blackmailed candidates, or otherwise sought to install its own nominees by rigging elections in countries on every continent.

One of the most flagrant such examples was the 1996 presidential election in Russia, won by the US-backed Boris Yeltsin (See: " Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin: When the White House fixed a Russian election ").

Apart from its continuous interference in elections, the US government is engaged in non-stop snooping operations against foreign governments, even those with which it is supposedly allied. Just a few years ago, it was revealed that the Obama administration had hacked-yes, HACKED-the cell phone of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Then-US President Obama acknowledged that the US does all sorts of "stuff" and offered a phony apology.

As for the Times, it has no reservations about serving as a conduit for fact-free propaganda from the US intelligence agencies. This points to the newspaper's putrefaction in recent decades, seen above all in the fact that its leading personnel, particularly on its editorial pages and foreign affairs staff, consist of ex-officio spokesmen for US imperialism, including a stable of CIA flacks such as Nicholas Kristof, Roger Cohen and Thomas Friedman.

The editorial page editor, James Bennet, is the brother of right-wing Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and son of Douglas Bennet, a top State Department official in the Carter and Clinton administrations, whose career includes a stint heading the Agency for International Development (AID), a frequent instrument for CIA provocations.

The Times , channeling the intelligence agencies, has a definite political agenda. Powerful factions of the ruling class want to continue and intensify the anti-Russian foreign policy adopted by the Obama administration, particularly in the wake of the 2014 campaign to bring down the elected pro-Russian government in Ukraine and install an ultra-right, pro-US stooge regime.

A recent Times article, focused on Senate passage of new sanctions against Russia, spells out the issues relatively clearly. In "Leaders Wary of Trump May Have an Ally: Congress," the Times asserts that congressional leaders, both Democratic and Republican, "are working to ensure that American foreign policy remains rooted in the trans-Atlantic alliance against traditional rivals like Russia." It praises Republican efforts to advance "an anti-Trump foreign policy" and impose sanctions against Russia for its actions in backing the Syrian government.

In the eyes of the factions of the ruling class for which the Times speaks, the problem is not that Russia is interfering with "American democracy," but that it is interfering with critical geo-strategic interests of American imperialism in Syria and the broader Middle East. The newspaper is attempting to condition American public opinion and overcome popular opposition to an escalating military confrontation with the world's second-largest nuclear power.

For the working class, the fight against the Trump administration and the fight against its opponents in the political establishment is the same fight. It is a fight against the capitalist ruling class, which is preparing to inflict on the people of the entire world a new and catastrophic world war.

[Jun 26, 2017] Unilateral secondary sanctions imposed by the US would, above all, fall on Chinese companies

Jun 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star , June 22, 2017 at 9:32 am
"Tillerson called on China to make greater efforts to halt "illicit" revenue streams to North Korea that allegedly help fund Pyongyang's military programs. Just last week, he told a congressional committee the Trump administration was "at a stage" where "we are going to have to start taking secondary sanctions"-that is, penalise countries and corporations that engage in economic activities with North Korea.

Unilateral "secondary sanctions" imposed by the US would, above all, fall on Chinese companies. China is, by far, North Korea's largest trading partner. US officials and the media have repeatedly accused Beijing of failing to do enough to choke off trade and finance with the Pyongyang regime. Any penalties against Chinese individuals or entities would quickly sour relations between the US and China."

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/22/usch-j22.html
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/06/20/532915180/why-is-china-snatching-up-australian-farmland

Next to Japan, Australia is 'Murica's biggest lapdog in the Western Pacific Aussie **elites** are obviously hungry for mucho Renminbi

Obvious question: Do any of the moron USA foreign policy makers have a grasp of freshman logic???

Northern Star , June 22, 2017 at 9:35 am
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/here-are-australias-top-10-two-way-trading-partners-2014-8#china
marknesop , June 22, 2017 at 6:55 pm
I will be extremely surprised if Washington takes any steps which result in sanctions against China. For one thing, a staggering number of American brands and corporations have factories and manufacturing assets in China , and pissing off the Chinese risks hurting the bottom line. For another, China is one of the few countries with money to lend which can match the American appetite for borrowing.

It seems patently obvious to me that countries which find themselves the target of American sanctions should immediately react by kicking out American businesses in their country and embargoing American goods for import. The United States does not make very much which is so unique and rare that you could not find it anywhere else. American businesses and corporations will react with fury to trade actions taken against them because of posturing by the government. Do I have to think of everything?

[Jun 26, 2017] The Soft Coup Under Way In Washington by David Stockman

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history – led by some very bad and conflicted people!" ..."
"... If Donald Trump had any kind of presidential strategy and propensity to take command, he would have had all the intercepts of Russian chatter gathered up weeks ago. He would then have had them declassified and made public, even as he launched a criminal prosecution against Obama's hit squad­-John Brennan, Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett for illegally unmasking and leaking classified information. ..."
"... Such a course of action would have crushed the Russian interference hysteria in the bud. At bottom, the latter was a rearguard invention of the Deep State and Democratic partisans. They became literally shocked and desperate for a scapegoat early last fall by the prospect that the unthinkable was happening. ..."
"... That became more than evident­-and more than pathetic, too­-when earlier this morning he tweeted out an attack on his own Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein. At least Nixon fired Elliot Richardson (his Attorney General) and Bill Ruckelshaus (Deputy AG): ..."
"... Mueller is a card-carrying apparatchik of the Deep State, who was there at the founding of today's surveillance monster as Director of the FBI in the aftermath of 9/11. Since the whole $75 billion apparatus that eventually emerged was based on a vastly exaggerated threat of global Islamic terrorism that doesn't exist, Russia had to be demonized into order to keep the game going­-a transition that Mueller fully subscribed to. ..."
"... To wit, Mueller's #1 hire was the despicable Andrew Weissmann. The latter had led the fraud section of the department's Criminal Division, served as general counsel to the F.B.I. when Mueller was its director, and, more importantly, was the driving force behind the Enron task force the most egregious exercise in prosecutorial abuse and thuggery since the Palmer raids of 1919. ..."
"... Exactly four years ago in June 2013, no one was seriously demonizing Putin or Russia. In fact, the slicksters of CNN were still snickering about Mitt Romney's silly claim during the 2012 election campaign that Russia was the greatest security threat facing America. ..."
"... But then came the Syrian jihadist false flag chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus in August 2013 and the US intelligence community's flagrant lie that it had proof the villain was Bashar Assad. To the contrary, it subsequently became evident that the primitive rockets that had carried the deadly sarin gas, which killed upwards of 1500 innocent civilians, could not have been fired from regime-held territory; the rockets examined by UN investigators had a range of only a few kilometers, not the 15-20 kilometers from the nearest Syrian base. ..."
"... Needless to say, in the eyes of the neocon War Party, this constructive act of international statesmanship by Putin was the unforgivable sin. It thwarted the next target on their regime change agenda­-removal of the Assad government in Syria as a step toward an ultimate attack on its ally, the Shiite regime of Iran. ..."
"... So it did not take long for the Deep State to retaliate. While Putin was basking in the glory of the 2014 winter Olympics at Sochi, the entire apparatus of Imperial Washington ­– the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy, the State Department and a long string of Washington funded NGOs ­- was on the ground in Kiev midwifing the putsch that overthrew Ukraine's constitutionally elected President and Russian ally. ..."
"... Indeed, given the Stalin-era animosity between the Russian-speaking Donbas and Crimean regions of the confected state of Ukraine and the virulent anti-Russian populations elsewhere­ – including descendants of the Nazi collaborators with Hitler during WWII -- there could have been no other outcome. And that was especially the case after Washington designated "Yats", a neo-Nazi sympathizer named Arseniy Yatseniuk, as the guy to takeover the Ukrainian government at the time of the Kiev uprising. ..."
"... There is nothing like a demonized enemy to keep the $700 billion national security budget flowing and the hideous Warfare State opulence of the Imperial City intact. So why not throw in an allegedly "stolen" US election to garnish the case? ..."
"... In a word, the Little Putsch in Kiev is now begetting a Great Big Coup in the Imperial City. This is a history-shattering development, but don't tell the boys and girls and robo-machines on Wall Street. ..."
Jun 22, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

This article was first published by Contra Corner

Bull's eye!

"They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history – led by some very bad and conflicted people!"

The Donald has never spoken truer words but also has never sunken lower into abject victimhood. Indeed, what is he waiting for -- handcuffs and a perp walk?

Just to be clear, "he" doesn't need to be the passive object of a "WITCH HUNT" by "they".

If Donald Trump had any kind of presidential strategy and propensity to take command, he would have had all the intercepts of Russian chatter gathered up weeks ago. He would then have had them declassified and made public, even as he launched a criminal prosecution against Obama's hit squad­-John Brennan, Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett for illegally unmasking and leaking classified information.

Such a course of action would have crushed the Russian interference hysteria in the bud. At bottom, the latter was a rearguard invention of the Deep State and Democratic partisans. They became literally shocked and desperate for a scapegoat early last fall by the prospect that the unthinkable was happening.

Namely, the election by the unwashed masses of an outsider and insurrectionist who could not be counted upon to serve as a "trusty" for the status quo; and whose naďve but correct instinct to seek a rapprochement with Russia was a mortal threat to the very modus operandi of the Imperial City.

Moreover, from the very beginning, the Russian interference narrative was rooted in nothing more than standard cyber noise from Moscow that pales compared to what comes out of Langley (CIA) and Ft. Meade (NSA). And we do mean irrelevant noise.

After all, it didn't take a Kremlinologist from the old Soviet days to figure out that Putin did not favor Clinton, who had likened him to Hitler. And that he welcomed Trump, who had correctly said NATO was obsolete, that he didn't want to give lethal aid to the Ukrainians, and had expressed a desire to make a deal with Putin on Syria and numerous other areas of unnecessary confrontation.

So let's start with two obvious points. Namely, that there is no "there, there" and that the president not only has the power to declassify secret documents at will but in this instance could do so without compromising intelligence community (IC) "sources and methods" in the slightest.

The latter is the case because after Snowden's revelations in June 2013, the whole world was put on notice and most especially Washington's adversaries­–that it collects in raw form every single electronic digit that passes through the worldwide web and related communications grids. It boils down to universal and omniscient SIGINT (signals intelligence), and acknowledgment of that fact by publishing the Russia-Trump intercepts would provide new knowledge to exactly no one.

Nor would it jeopardize the lives of any American spy or agent (HUMINT); it would just document the unconstitutional interference in the election process that had been committed by the US intelligence agencies and political operatives in the Obama White House.

Yes, we can hear the boxes on the CNN screen harrumphing and spinning noisily that declassifying the "evidence" would amount to obstruction of justice! That is to say, since Trump's "crime" is axiomatic (i.e. his occupancy of the Oval Office), anything that gets in the way of his conviction and removal therefrom amounts to "obstruction".

Given that he is up against a Deep State/Dem/Neocon/ mainstream media prosecution, the Donald has no chance of survival short of an aggressive offensive of the type described above.

But that's not happening because the man is clueless about what he is doing in the White House and is being advised by a cacophonous coterie of amateurs and nincompoops. So he has no action plan except to impulsively reach for his Twitter account.

That became more than evident­-and more than pathetic, too­-when earlier this morning he tweeted out an attack on his own Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein. At least Nixon fired Elliot Richardson (his Attorney General) and Bill Ruckelshaus (Deputy AG):

"I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt"

So alone with his Twitter account, clueless advisors and pulsating rage, the Donald is instead laying the groundwork for his own demise. Were this not the White House, it would normally be the point at which they send in the men in white coats with a straight jacket.

Indeed, that's essentially what Donald's ostensible GOP allies on the Hill are actually doing. RussiaGate is self-evidently a witch-hunt like few others in American political history. Yet as the mainstream cameras and microphones were thrust at one Congressional Republican after another yesterday afternoon following Donald's outburst quoted above, there was nary an echo of the agreement.

Even Senator John Thune, an ostensible Swamp-hating conservative, had nothing but praise for Special Counsel Robert Mueller while affecting an earnest confidence that he would fairly and thoroughly get to the bottom of the matter.

No he won't!

Mueller is a card-carrying apparatchik of the Deep State, who was there at the founding of today's surveillance monster as Director of the FBI in the aftermath of 9/11. Since the whole $75 billion apparatus that eventually emerged was based on a vastly exaggerated threat of global Islamic terrorism that doesn't exist, Russia had to be demonized into order to keep the game going­-a transition that Mueller fully subscribed to.

So he will "find" extensive Russian interference in the 2016 election and bring the hammer down on the Donald for seeking to prevent it from coming to light. The clock is now ticking and his investigatory team is being loaded up with prosecutorial killers who have proven records of thuggery when it comes to finding crimes that make for the fame and fortune of the prosecutors­-even if the crime itself never happened.

To wit, Mueller's #1 hire was the despicable Andrew Weissmann. The latter had led the fraud section of the department's Criminal Division, served as general counsel to the F.B.I. when Mueller was its director, and, more importantly, was the driving force behind the Enron task force the most egregious exercise in prosecutorial abuse and thuggery since the Palmer raids of 1919.

Meanwhile, as we said the other day, the GOP elders especially could also not be clearer about what is coming down the pike.

They are not defending Trump with even a modicum of the vigor and resolve that we recall from the early days of Tricky Dick's ordeal, and, of course, he didn't survive anyway. Instead, it's as if Ryan, McConnell, et al. have offered to hold his coat, while the Donald pummels himself with a 140-character Twitter Knife that is visible to the entire world.

So there should be no doubt. A Great Big Coup is on the way. But here's the irony of the matter.

Exactly four years ago in June 2013, no one was seriously demonizing Putin or Russia. In fact, the slicksters of CNN were still snickering about Mitt Romney's silly claim during the 2012 election campaign that Russia was the greatest security threat facing America.

But then came the Syrian jihadist false flag chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus in August 2013 and the US intelligence community's flagrant lie that it had proof the villain was Bashar Assad. To the contrary, it subsequently became evident that the primitive rockets that had carried the deadly sarin gas, which killed upwards of 1500 innocent civilians, could not have been fired from regime-held territory; the rockets examined by UN investigators had a range of only a few kilometers, not the 15-20 kilometers from the nearest Syrian base.

In any event, President Obama choose to ignore his own red line and called off the bombers. That, in turn, paved the way for Vladimir Putin to step into the breach and persuade Assad to give up all of his chemical weapons commitment he fully complied with over the course of the next year.

Needless to say, in the eyes of the neocon War Party, this constructive act of international statesmanship by Putin was the unforgivable sin. It thwarted the next target on their regime change agenda­-removal of the Assad government in Syria as a step toward an ultimate attack on its ally, the Shiite regime of Iran.

So it did not take long for the Deep State to retaliate. While Putin was basking in the glory of the 2014 winter Olympics at Sochi, the entire apparatus of Imperial Washington ­– the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy, the State Department and a long string of Washington funded NGOs ­- was on the ground in Kiev midwifing the putsch that overthrew Ukraine's constitutionally elected President and Russian ally.

From there, the Ukrainian civil war and partition of Crimea inexorably followed, as did the escalating campaign against Russia and its leader.

Indeed, given the Stalin-era animosity between the Russian-speaking Donbas and Crimean regions of the confected state of Ukraine and the virulent anti-Russian populations elsewhere­ – including descendants of the Nazi collaborators with Hitler during WWII -- there could have been no other outcome. And that was especially the case after Washington designated "Yats", a neo-Nazi sympathizer named Arseniy Yatseniuk, as the guy to takeover the Ukrainian government at the time of the Kiev uprising.

So as it turned out, the War Party could not have planned a more fortuitous outcome -- especially after Russia moved to protect its legitimate interests in its own backyard resulting from the Washington-instigated civil war in Ukraine, including protecting its 200-year old Naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea. The War Party simply characterized these actions falsely as acts of aggression by a potential sacker of the peace and territorial integrity of its European neighbors.

There is nothing like a demonized enemy to keep the $700 billion national security budget flowing and the hideous Warfare State opulence of the Imperial City intact. So why not throw in an allegedly "stolen" US election to garnish the case?

In a word, the Little Putsch in Kiev is now begetting a Great Big Coup in the Imperial City. This is a history-shattering development, but don't tell the boys and girls and robo-machines on Wall Street.

Pathetically, they still think its game on.

David Alan Stockman is an author, former businessman and U.S. politician who served as a Republican U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan and as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

[Jun 26, 2017] Report: Democrats Are About to Hang for Debunked Trump Dossier by The_Real_Fly

"False flag" operation charges for various "hacks" and "dossiers" now have additional validity. The DNC hack is the most prominent of them.
Notable quotes:
"... The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month threatened to subpoena the firm, Fusion GPS, after it refused to answer questions and provide records to the panel identifying who financed the error-ridden dossier, which was circulated during the election and has sparked much of the Russia scandal now engulfing the White House. ..."
"... "These guys had a vested personal and ideological interest in smearing Trump and boosting Hillary's chances of winning the White House." Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired a long-retired British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. ..."
"... In September 2016, while Fusion GPS was quietly shopping the dirty dossier on Trump around Washington, its co-founder and partner Peter R. Fritsch contributed at least $1,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and the Hillary For America campaign, Federal Election Commission data show. His wife also donated money to Hillary's campaign. Property records show that in June 2016, as Clinton allies bankrolled Fusion GPS, Fritsch bought a six-bedroom, five-bathroom home in Bethesda, Md., for $2.3 million. Fritsch did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Fusion GPS said the firm's work is confidential. ..."
"... Senate investigators are demanding to see records of communications between Fusion GPS and the FBI and the Justice Department, including any contacts with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch , now under congressional investigation for possibly obstructing the Hillary Clinton email probe, and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who is under investigation by the Senate and the Justice inspector general for failing to recuse himself despite financial and political connections to the Clinton campaign through his Democrat activist wife. Senate investigators have singled out McCabe as the FBI official who negotiated with Steele. Like Fusion GPS, the FBI has failed to cooperate with congressional investigators seeking documents. ..."
"... This pee-pee dossier is a side show compared to dozens of special access program intelligence documents Clinton ran through that server and we still have 30,000 emails that were deleted. Destruction of evidence under subpoena. ..."
"... The FBI is obviously corrupted. Comey backed Crowd Strike on the Russian hacking hoax. Invented "intent" as a new defense to felonies. ..."
Jun 25, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

So many of you are triggered to the point of feverish insanity. What sort of subhuman will you become when Trump is vindicated from all Russian collusion claims and the DOJ starts tossing faggots into dank prison cells for ginning up fake intelligence reports to take down a President? Paul Sperry from the NY Post is out with a report tonight, stating the Senate is about to ramp up their efforts in investigating the birthplace of the debunked Trump-Russian dossier, the one thar claimed germophobe Trump enjoyed getting urinated on by Russian hookers. For democrats, this might lead to a Mortal Kombat fatality move if implicated. Criminal charges might rain fire upon them -- like the second coming of Jesus. Many of you still believe said dossier was, in fact, correct. To those people, dare I say, prove it.

The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month threatened to subpoena the firm, Fusion GPS, after it refused to answer questions and provide records to the panel identifying who financed the error-ridden dossier, which was circulated during the election and has sparked much of the Russia scandal now engulfing the White House.

What is the company hiding? Fusion GPS describes itself as a "research and strategic intelligence firm" founded by "three former Wall Street Journal investigative reporters." But congressional sources say it's actually an opposition-research group for Democrat s, and the founders, who are more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump agenda. "These weren't mercenaries or hired guns," a congressional source familiar with the dossier probe said. "These guys had a vested personal and ideological interest in smearing Trump and boosting Hillary's chances of winning the White House." Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired a long-retired British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

And in 2015, Democrat ally Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate pro-life activists protesting the abortion group. More, federal records show a key co-founder and partner in the firm was a Hillary Clinton donor and supporter of her presidential campaign.

In September 2016, while Fusion GPS was quietly shopping the dirty dossier on Trump around Washington, its co-founder and partner Peter R. Fritsch contributed at least $1,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and the Hillary For America campaign, Federal Election Commission data show. His wife also donated money to Hillary's campaign. Property records show that in June 2016, as Clinton allies bankrolled Fusion GPS, Fritsch bought a six-bedroom, five-bathroom home in Bethesda, Md., for $2.3 million. Fritsch did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Fusion GPS said the firm's work is confidential.

Both partners of Fusion GPS have ties to Mexico -- with Fritsch a former Journal bureau chief in Mexico City, married to a Mexican woman who worked for Grupo Dina -- a beneficiary of NAFTA. His partner, Thomas Catan, formerly from Britain, once edited a Mexican business magazine. Perhaps we should now investigate the Democrats' ties to Mexico?

Senate investigators are demanding to see records of communications between Fusion GPS and the FBI and the Justice Department, including any contacts with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch , now under congressional investigation for possibly obstructing the Hillary Clinton email probe, and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who is under investigation by the Senate and the Justice inspector general for failing to recuse himself despite financial and political connections to the Clinton campaign through his Democrat activist wife. Senate investigators have singled out McCabe as the FBI official who negotiated with Steele. Like Fusion GPS, the FBI has failed to cooperate with congressional investigators seeking documents.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ov5gaMFmvus

I'm here for the chaos.

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

Chupacabra-322 , Jun 26, 2017 4:59 PM

Criminal at Large Loretta Lynch also had a DOJ tax payer slush fund to fund Political Leftists groups.

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and a group of his colleagues are calling on the newly appointed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to immediately investigate how US taxpayer funds are being used by the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to support Soros-backed, leftist political groups in several Eastern European countries including Macedonia and Albania. According to the letter, potentially millions of taxpayer dollars are being funneled through USAID to Soros' Open Society Foundations with the explicit goal of pushing his progressive agenda.

As Fox News pointed out, USAID gave nearly $15 million to Soros' Foundation Open Society - Macedonia, and other Soros-linked organizations in the region, in the last 4 years of Obama's presidency alone.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-16/senators-demand-investigation-t ...

Justapleb , Jun 26, 2017 2:58 PM

Why this, when Clinton committed multiple felonies with her private server conducting state department pay-to-play business for Clinton Foundation cash?

This pee-pee dossier is a side show compared to dozens of special access program intelligence documents Clinton ran through that server and we still have 30,000 emails that were deleted. Destruction of evidence under subpoena.

The FBI is obviously corrupted. Comey backed Crowd Strike on the Russian hacking hoax. Invented "intent" as a new defense to felonies. Etc.

goober -> Justapleb , Jun 26, 2017 4:31 PM

The dossier is not and was not a side show, it was a deliberate creation that failed. I hope all of these cocksuckers have their assets seized and go to jail ASAP --

I completely agree with Barnes on this one https://youtu.be/oA6FHBCWAyY Most of you are not any where near pissed off enough and you should be -- No wonder nothing much gets done and we end up with shit like this in our government when people are so fucking apathetic and acquiescent. We should all be livid and demand accountability or we certainly won't get it --

Herdee , Jun 26, 2017 2:48 PM

The Clinton influence peddling runs deep into the FBI. Nut job Comey was just the start.

RTUT , Jun 26, 2017 2:37 PM

FBI leadership is in it up to their necks too. It could not have ended up this way if they weren't.

flea , Jun 26, 2017 11:33 AM

McCain is apoplectic trying to stop the Senate from going any further. (He's on the Fusion GPS payroll)

goober -> flea , Jun 26, 2017 5:08 PM

Yes the fusion centers nationwide are all part of the Phoenix project brought to us by CIA and in more recent times the invention of DHS and all the other control mechanisms created here in USA today. The Phoenix project has morphed into the playbook of all these chicken shit worthless wars that are really just corp control and political control mechanisms for the insane psychopaths and sociopaths that have dominated Amercian governemnt for a very long time. The terrorism was a creation of these same people to be used as a tool and controlled. BHOs crew put it all on steroids for all of us to see and in a perverse way that is a very good thing indeed -- At least now many Americans see some of it. Americans are very slow to comprehend even their own demise.

All of the government agencies are well past out of control, not just the spooks. Look at what IRS did and so far giot away with ? They also need to be prosecuted and dealt with severely, but they won't unless we demand such and raise hell about all of it --

Posa , Jun 26, 2017 10:31 AM

So the entire DC Ruling Class is assembled in a circular firing squad, each faction investigating the other and threatening long prison sentences for all playerswhile the rest of America sits in mortified silence... real Banana Republic stuff... much of this overlaid with assassination talk, impeachment and vicious propaganda...

Meanwhile the ROW must be amused to watch the Pax Americana Empire self-immolate.

batushka , Jun 26, 2017 8:07 AM

From Way Back Machine:

Glenn R. Simpson is FUSION 's President and Managing Partner. Simpson has over 20 years of experience in research and investigations, including 14 years with The Wall Street Journal as the Washington bureau's lead investigative reporter. Since entering the commercial intelligence field in early 2009, he has managed complex projects in the US, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Simpson specializes in the banking and securities sectors. He is a seasoned expert on the relationship between government and business and in particular in financial regulation, and is well known in the capital's financial policymaking, regulatory and enforcement communities. For his articles in The Wall Street Journal and more recently for private clients, he has analyzed numerous multinational corporations including difficult international subjects such as banks in the Middle East. He is well versed in the arcana of tax havens, offshore banking, and securities and accounting fraud. He is also in expert in political influence and is widely known among Washington's top lobbyists, lawyers, journalists and lawmakers.

In addition to his long tenure in Washington, Simpson was stationed for three years in Brussels. There he developed strong knowledge of European business practices and structures as well as many contacts in the corporate world and media. His recent research work includes a matter resulting in a significant win for a major government contractor, the exposure of political corruption in Latin America and the exposure of a case of securities fraud in the UK. In December 2010, his nearly two-year investigation of a prominent family ended in a favorable client verdict worth over $70 million.

Simpson is a recipient of numerous awards for his articles, speaks frequently in academic fora and has appeared on many broadcast news programs including CNN, Nightline, Jim Lehrer NewsHour and the BBC. He is the co-author (with Larry J. Sabato) of the book, Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics (Times Books/Random House, 1996).

Peter R. Fritsch is a FUSION Partner and Project Leader. Fritsch is a multilingual investigator, writer and manager with 24 years of experience on four continents. As a reporter and bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, he led and participated in Pulitzer Prize-nominated investigations from Mexico, Brazil, Southeast Asia, Brussels and Washington, DC. He founded the WSJ's Sao Paulo bureau in 1997.

Fritsch has written widely on the global petroleum industry, guided a global team investigating the oil and natural resource industries for the WSJ, and has run top caliber corporate coverage around the world. He enjoys a large network of contacts in business, media and politics in Latin America, Asia and Europe.

His U.S. bases have included Houston, Boston and New York. While based in Singapore, he worked extensively in important emerging markets like Vietnam, Indonesia and India and oversaw newsgathering across South and Southeast Asia.

Most recently, Fritsch led the WSJ's national security and foreign affairs coverage in Washington, DC. In addition to spearheading coverage of the Pentagon and intelligence community, he has reported extensively on Iran's efforts to evade nuclear sanctions.

Fritsch's work has been recognized with several industry awards. His investigation of a Mexican corporate executive ended in the executive's eventual prosecution by Mexican authorities. He was among the first to sound the alarm regarding a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme in the Caribbean. His work in Europe included major terror finance and corporate bribery investigations.

Benjamin S. Schmidt is FUSION 's Managing Director. Schmidt is a former government intelligence analyst. Most recently, he served as Team Lead in the Middle East and Europe office of the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Intelligence and Analysis.

Over 7 years at Treasury, Schmidt ran complex transnational cases involving banking and other forms of financial activity. His work was often included in the President's Daily Brief and used to guide policy decisions with global ramifications.

Schmidt has worked extensively with Middle East governments and is schooled in identifying and mapping financial networks. He has wide knowledge of financial regulation, international monetary transfer systems and open-source corporate research. At Treasury, he collaborated with the intelligence community, regulators, policymakers and foreign partners to design economic sanctions programs, and has wide knowledge of sanctions laws.

Ben has served as a mentor to a cadre of junior Treasury investigators, instructing his partners in the art of transnational discovery. He is especially adept at devising databases and customized technological solutions to research problems. He is the recipient of several prestigious internal awards for his work and holds an MBA from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

Call them: 202-558-7142

Demologos -> batushka , Jun 26, 2017 12:55 PM

Well-pedigreed spooks. Handmaidens of the Deep State.

AntiLeMaire , Jun 26, 2017 6:27 AM

Burn baby burn!

Daily Caller: Grassley: Schumer Knew Trump Was Not Under Investigation When He Publicly Claimed Otherwise http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/24/grassley-schumer-knew-trump-was-not-un...

Washington Examiner: Byron York: On Russia, a senator's deception, and a timeline of Trump frustration http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-on-russia-a-senators-decept...

Legal Insurrection: Grassley: Schumer Publicly Stated Trump Was Under Investigation Knowing Full Well It Was Untrue http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/06/grassley-schumer-publicly-stated-tr...

Breitbart: Senate Judiciary Chairman Grassley: Chuck Schumer Knew Trump Wasn't Under Investigation but Said He Was Anyway http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/23/grassley-schumer-knew...

LOL

Tarzan -> Keyser , Jun 26, 2017 8:19 AM

Funny you ask, but when the FBI doesn't cooperate with a congressional inquiry, their boss should fire them!

THE PRESIDENT is the FBI's boss!

He should immediately fire any FBI official who refuses to cooperate with a congressional investigation.

Same for the CIA, NSA, IRS, and all the other Executive branches of Government. The congress holds the purse, but the President is the person who ultimately holds oversight over these rogue branches of Government.

What the hell is he waiting for, Isn't "Your Fired" part of the mans DNA, did he not promise to drain this swamp?

Fire them!

Hata Mari -> Tarzan , Jun 26, 2017 2:56 PM

I'd actually prefer imprisonment for Contempt of Congress.

In this atmosphere, if a weasle is fired, they'll just find some other lucrative position within the weasle pack (see Wasserman-Schulz).

But imprisoned! Now there's a concept.

[Jun 26, 2017] Beijing values Pyongyang as a strategic buffer between itself and US-allied South Korea. If North Korea were to fall, it could lead to a US-allied unified Korea, with US troops right on Chinas border

Jun 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star , June 24, 2017 at 1:31 pm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/korean-war-begins

"The result of a North Korean regime collapse would be catastrophic and may trigger a dangerous race between China and the US-ROK (Republic of Korea) forces attempting to secure strategic and symbolic locations such as the Yongbyon nuclear facility and Pyongyang," Andrew Injoo Park and Kongdan Oh wrote for the National Bureau of Asian Research.

China worries about both of those, especially the latter.

Beijing values Pyongyang as a strategic buffer between itself and US-allied South Korea. If North Korea were to fall, it could lead to a US-allied unified Korea, with US troops right on China's border."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/22/asia/north-korea-war-devastation/

[Jun 26, 2017] US Recklessly Provoking Russia by Stephen Lendman

Notable quotes:
"... He's pursuing the same reckless agenda as Obama, pushing the envelope toward possible direct confrontation. Despite neither country wanting war, unfolding events may cause the unthinkable to happen by accident or design. Among major powers, Russia is the world's leading peace and stability champion – America just the opposite. ..."
"... Madness defines US policy, state terror on a global scale, naked aggression its main expression, controlling planet earth, its resources and people its objective – risking potentially life-destroying nuclear war. ..."
"... On Monday, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said it "reinforced existing sanctions on Russia by designating or identifying a range of individuals and entities involved in the ongoing conflict under four Executive orders (EOs) related to Russia and Ukraine," adding: ..."
"... Fact: Russia wages peace, not war. Alone it's gone all-out to resolve things in Ukraine diplomatically, its good faith efforts sabotaged by Washington. ..."
"... Russia and America are world's apart on Syria. Moscow seeks diplomatic conflict resolution, the country's sovereignty respected, its territorial integrity preserved. ..."
"... Washington wants endless conflict, puppet governance it controls replacing overwhelmingly popular Assad, reelected president in June 2014 by an 89% majority. ..."
Jun 23, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

Instead of fulfilling a campaign promise to improve bilateral relations, Trump so far continues acting provocatively.

He's pursuing the same reckless agenda as Obama, pushing the envelope toward possible direct confrontation. Despite neither country wanting war, unfolding events may cause the unthinkable to happen by accident or design. Among major powers, Russia is the world's leading peace and stability champion – America just the opposite.

It's recklessly waging wars in multiple theaters, threatening conflicts against North Korea, Iran, and perhaps Russia the way things are going.

Madness defines US policy, state terror on a global scale, naked aggression its main expression, controlling planet earth, its resources and people its objective – risking potentially life-destroying nuclear war.

Last week, Senate members near unanimously imposed new illegal sanctions on Russia, including on its energy sector. House action awaits.

On Monday, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said it "reinforced existing sanctions on Russia by designating or identifying a range of individuals and entities involved in the ongoing conflict under four Executive orders (EOs) related to Russia and Ukraine," adding:

"US sanctions on Russia related to the situation in eastern Ukraine will remain in place until Russia fully honors its obligations under the Minsk Agreements."

"US sanctions related to Crimea will not be lifted until Russia ends its occupation of the peninsula."

  • Fact: Russia wages peace, not war. Alone it's gone all-out to resolve things in Ukraine diplomatically, its good faith efforts sabotaged by Washington.
  • Fact: Crimea is Russian territory, its newest republic, supporting the will of its people, correcting a historic error.
  • Fact: The territory won't be handed back to US-installed putschists running Ukraine. Its people won't be betrayed for Washington or anyone else.

Russia and America are world's apart on Syria. Moscow seeks diplomatic conflict resolution, the country's sovereignty respected, its territorial integrity preserved.

Washington wants endless conflict, puppet governance it controls replacing overwhelmingly popular Assad, reelected president in June 2014 by an 89% majority.

International observers called the process open, free and fair despite ongoing war, creating enormous hardships for its people. They want no one else leading them.

They want their sovereign independence respected. They reject foreign meddling in their affairs – especially by America, NATO, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and their rogue allies.

... ... ...

Visit Stephens website: www.stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected] . - My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html - Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

[Jun 26, 2017] The Middle East back in the 1950s under the Baathists was not infected with islamic fundamentalism. It took multi-year and multi-billion Us efforts to propel politicla islam to the level of ISIS

Looks like the USA played Islam in best British "divide and conquer" traditions.
Jun 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

kirill , June 23, 2017 at 2:12 pm

The Middle East back in the 1950s under the Baathists.

<video>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TN9_qmOekI

Compare to today under head chopping Wahabbi scum. Thanks America...

Cortes , June 23, 2017 at 4:54 pm
Truly depressing, Kirill.

I'd seen that before but thanks for re-posting.

The effort to produce the current clusterfuck has had a decades-long gestation. If one accepts that premise then the argument put forward by The Saker, for example, regarding the short term focus of western MSM in service of the long term goals of the elite becomes more comprehensible. No reason to consider thinking people in "the West " as somehow less savvy than the elites of the RF or the PRC. Short term focus is merely throwing coloured paper into the air for the distraction of the masses.

The western long term strategy has been sussed, I think.

Jen , June 24, 2017 at 5:31 am
Actually that's Egyptian President Gamal Nasser. Egypt didn't officially adopt Ba'athism as a political philosophy though I can imagine Nasser and other Egyptian politicians of his time may have been sympathetic towards it or parts of it. It was Arab nationalist and secular in character and preached religious tolerance. Ba'athism was mainly important in Syria and Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s. Of course what confuses the issue of Ba'athism is that there was a time when Egypt and Syria agreed to form a short-lived union called the United Arab Republic.
yalensis , June 24, 2017 at 10:23 am
The trend was clear, though. All the big, important Arab nations were evolving towards being modern, more secular states.
The Soviet Union was also a player at that time, supporting secular, moderate Arab nationalism.

Then the trend turned backwards toward medievalism. I believe the turning point was in the mid-1970's. A Combination of Israeli triumphalism and the U.S. (under Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski) placing their stake on Saudi Wahhabism, to counter Soviet influence.

Northern Star , June 24, 2017 at 12:14 pm
It's not only in the ME that a change has come:

Apparently in 1958 there was a high level of awareness of USA duplicity and deceit wrt the well being of the mostly impoverished masses of SA as opposed to the USA's hegemonic agenda that reflected its struggle against the 'evil commie aggressor' .at least in Venezuela

"Nixon and his wife, Patricia, had arrived in Venezuela in the course of their Latin American "goodwill tour." At the time, relations were strained between the Republican administration in Washington and Latin Americans on the left side of the political spectrum. They charged that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in focusing on cold war rivalries with the Soviet Union, had failed to address pressing economic needs in the Western Hemisphere while extending his backing to anti-communist dictatorial regimes."
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/vice-president-nixons-motorcade-attacked-in-venezuela-may-13-1958-106584 "

Good description of events:
https://carlosagaton.blogspot.com/2015/06/venezuela-en-1958-el-criminal-richard.html

Some of the footage is worth a look.but mostly jingoistic American propaganda :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Richard_Nixon%27s_motorcade#The_attack

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Kc2ZdQLrSXg?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent


http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/vice-president-nixon-is-attacked

Northern Star , June 24, 2017 at 12:24 pm
In Dire Straits food and medicine shortages

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/venezuelans-suffer-deadly-scarcity-food-medicine/

Jen , June 24, 2017 at 2:56 pm
One other turning point could also have been when Egypt under Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal after British, French and Israeli attempts to seize it and use the invasion as cover to assassinate Nasser in 1956.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

Among other things the war that followed and Nasser's crackdown on civil liberties of the Egyptian Jewish community led to thousands of those people fleeing to Israel (and perhaps giving Israel fuel for planning future attacks on the Sinai peninsula).

Another turning point was in 1973 when Arab countries imposed an oil embargo and raised oil prices after the US supported Israel in the Yom Kippur war. This was in the wake of the collapse of the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement in 1971 when the US went off the gold standard (due in part to US spending on the Vietnam War). The depreciation of the US dollar (with the price of oil tied to that) Also meant that for Middle Eastern oil producers, imports (especially food imports) became more expensive and raising the price of oil was one way of dealing with the increase in the price of grain and other global food staples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

kirill , June 24, 2017 at 10:24 am
Thanks for the correction. I recall that Iran was also secular and democratic (not Baathist) until Americans foisted regime change on it in 1953. America has been subverting independent democracies around the world for decades. They do this while screaming about spreading democracy. The de facto one-party state USA has a perverted idea of democracy.

[Jun 26, 2017] WaPos big scoop on alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, brought to you with the help of everyones favorite Anonymous Sources

Notable quotes:
"... My favorite comment from a poster called "Libertarian39" dated 6/23 7:45 AM: "Obama was just feckless. And it infected his entire administration." There is a certain poetry and alliteration there, plus it's just funny, although I don't know if it was meant to be. ..."
Jun 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
J.T. , June 25, 2017 at 6:18 am
WaPo's "big scoop" on alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, brought to you with the help of everyone's favorite Anonymous Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/obama-putin-election-hacking/?hpid=hp_hp-banner-high_russiaobama-banner-7a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&tid=a_inl&utm_term=.fe1f6735d9f3
yalensis , June 25, 2017 at 8:30 am
My favorite comment from a poster called "Libertarian39" dated 6/23 7:45 AM: "Obama was just feckless. And it infected his entire administration." There is a certain poetry and alliteration there, plus it's just funny, although I don't know if it was meant to be.

[Jun 26, 2017] Intelligence agency officials play big politics

Another Mayberry Machiavelli from intelligence community
Notable quotes:
"... "In 2016 the Russian government, at the direction of (President) Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election - plain and simple," Johnson said." ..."
"... Modern-day political figures seem more and more like some of the characters on "WKRP In Cincinnati"; people who, as the receptionist explained "would otherwise not be able to get jobs" ..."
Jun 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star , June 21, 2017 at 1:16 pm
Appears to be a moron:
"Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson from the Obama administration told the House Intelligence committee that Moscow's high-tech intrusion did not change ballots, the final count or the reporting of election results.

Johnson described the steps he took once he learned of the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, his fears about an attack on the election itself and his rationale for designating U.S. election systems, including polling places and voter registration databases, as critical infrastructure in early January, two weeks before Donald Trump's inauguration.

"In 2016 the Russian government, at the direction of (President) Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election - plain and simple," Johnson said."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-obama-homeland-security-chief-face-intelligence-panel-074831923–politics.html

Nope !! .IS a moron:

"In January 2011, Johnson provoked controversy when, according to a Department of Defense news story, he asserted in a speech at the Pentagon that deceased civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., would have supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite King's outspoken opposition to American interventionism during his lifetime.[28] Johnson argued that American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq were playing the role of the Good Samaritan, consistent with King's beliefs, and that they were fighting to establish the peace for which King hoped.[29][30] Jeremy Scahill of Salon.com called Johnson's remarks "one of the most despicable attempts at revisionist use of Martin Luther King Jr. I've ever seen," while Justin Elliott (also of Salon.com) argued that based on Dr. King's opposition to the Vietnam War, he would likely have opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the covert wars in Pakistan and Yemen."

yalensis , June 21, 2017 at 3:17 pm
"Johnson provoked controversy when, according to a Department of Defense news story, he asserted in a speech at the Pentagon that deceased civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., would have supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq "

He lies! My what-if machine (what I have in my basement) tells me that Dr. King would have opposed, in the most militant manner possible, the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars!

Jen , June 21, 2017 at 9:25 pm
You didn't have to consult the alternative-worlds TARDIS machine database to find out that Dr King would have opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: here's the speech he made opposing the war in Vietnam which may have made him a target for assassination.

http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/

yalensis , June 22, 2017 at 5:33 pm
I rest my case!

https://ads.pubmatic.com/AdServer/js/showad.js#PIX&kdntuid=1&p=156204

marknesop , June 21, 2017 at 7:40 pm
"In 2016 the Russian government, at the direction of (President) Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election - plain and simple," Johnson said."

He's half-right – the idea certainly is simple. Just like him.

Modern-day political figures seem more and more like some of the characters on "WKRP In Cincinnati"; people who, as the receptionist explained "would otherwise not be able to get jobs".

[Jun 26, 2017] Times never has no reservations about serving as a conduit for fact-free propaganda from the US intelligence agencies

Jun 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Northern Star , June 20, 2017 at 10:14 am

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/20/pers-j20.html

"As for the Times, it has no reservations about serving as a conduit for fact-free propaganda from the US intelligence agencies. This points to the newspaper's putrefaction in recent decades, seen above all in the fact that its leading personnel, particularly on its editorial pages and foreign affairs staff, consist of ex-officio spokesmen for US imperialism, including a stable of CIA flacks such as Nicholas Kristof, Roger Cohen and Thomas Friedman.

The editorial page editor, James Bennet, is the brother of right-wing Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and son of Douglas Bennet, a top State Department official in the Carter and Clinton administrations, whose career includes a stint heading the Agency for International Development (AID), a frequent instrument for CIA provocations.

The Times, channeling the intelligence agencies, has a definite political agenda. Powerful factions of the ruling class want to continue and intensify the anti-Russian foreign policy adopted by the Obama administration, particularly in the wake of the 2014 campaign to bring down the elected pro-Russian government in Ukraine and install an ultra-right, pro-US stooge regime."

FYI:

[Jun 26, 2017] Trump-Russia collusion fades from the media headlines

Jun 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al ,

June 25, 2017 at 1:10 pm
Washington Examiner: Trump-Russia collusion fades from the media headlines
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-russia-collusion-fades-from-the-media-headlines/article/2626994

David Brooks, another columnist for the Times who spends his days Googling mental disorders to diagnose Trump with, admitted this week that it's "striking how little evidence there is that any underlying crime occurred - that there was any actual collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians."

Axios journalist Mike Allen writes a daily newsletter widely read in Washington and on Friday he wrote that "No evidence of collusion has emerged," which several leading Democrats have also publicly stated .

That comment came after Comey said that an entire New York Times report alleging "repeated contacts" between Trump and his associates with "senior Russian intelligence officials" was false.

"In the main, it was not true," Comey said of the Times report .

Liberal MSNBC host Chris Matthews said the theory held by Trump's opponents that his campaign colluded with Russia "came apart" with Comey's testimony
####

This is just the latest evolution of the Russia wot did it meme . Evidence that Trump is Putin's puppet/blackmail etc. has run out of steam (and is now admitted) but the Russia angle is just too good to let go.

marknesop , June 25, 2017 at 1:38 pm
And so they just amp it up a couple of more notches, which is what you do when you have no evidence. Oh, everywhere except in court, of course. Maybe that's the next step for Russia – take the west to court for defamation. At least Washington would have to admit it doesn't have any proof, and that its supposed tracings of Russian links to hackings could very possibly have originated elsewhere. Not least of all, Russia would be able to introduce the angle that Hillary's server was wide-open; a child could have hacked it, and the email disclosures all reported true information. How it looked on Clinton is not Russia's problem, and if Americans and westerners in general prefer being lied to as long as they like what they hear, maybe it's time to get that on the table.

[Jun 26, 2017] A Combination of Historical Ignorance and Disastrous Blundering by Richard Beck

Notable quotes:
"... Trump's decision highlights a destructive and complicating feature of American foreign policy, which is the unspoken but ironclad prohibition against admitting military defeat. It's not only diplomats and congressmen who are bound by this prohibition. Growing up, I was taught in (a very good) public school that America had never lost a war, and that the only war it hadn't won outright, Vietnam, had been fought to a tragic stalemate. ..."
"... As for the Taliban and al Qaeda, both are active and thriving, a situation made worse by the fact that the country's elected government is riven with internal conflict and failing to carry out promised reforms that would shore up the country's political stability. Sixteen years on, America has accomplished none of its stated goals in Afghanistan. ..."
"... The reasons for this monumental failure are not mysterious -- they were elegantly and convincingly described in Anand Gopal's 2014 book No Good Men Among the Living. Gopal focuses not on America's successful initial effort to expel al Qaeda from Afghanistan (it was a rout), nor on its destruction of the Taliban (complete by 2002), nor even on its failure to track down Osama bin Laden (which was not of much consequence to the larger war), but on what happened afterward. ..."
"... Worse than this basic political misreading, however, was America's failure to account for the way its military presence in Afghanistan would distort the country's politics. That the appearance of the mightiest army in world history in an economically undeveloped country-one organized to a large extent around tribal allegiances-would have a seismic effect on that country's politics should not have been any kind of a surprise. ..."
"... Yet the US military was blindsided again and again by the effects of its own presence. Gopal details how in the wake of the Taliban's disappearance, anti-Taliban warlords exploited the US military's mandate to keep finding and killing terrorists even if there weren't any left to kill. ..."
"... Of course, these weren't actual terrorists -- those had already fled across the border into Pakistan or simply gone home. The people Sherzai directed the military to target were simply Sherzai's enemies. American soldiers were turned into excessively well-armed death squads and unwittingly thrust into local political disputes, with the obvious destabilizing effects down the road. ..."
"... The US army also, through a combination of historical ignorance and disastrous blundering, failed to populate Afghanistan's post-invasion government with the people who could have given it a chance at real stability. ..."
Jun 26, 2017 | nplusonemag.com

Donald Trump's administration is now engulfed by so many self-inflicted scandals, which arise on such a regular basis, that it's hard to imagine the President has any time left for governing. Nevertheless, as commander-in-chief Trump remains the leader of a military force that operates in more than a hundred countries around the globe, forcing him to act with some frequency in matters of life and death for millions of people, nearly all of them non-Americans. Since May, the military officers who serve Trump have been clamoring for an injection of new troops into Afghanistan, and last week the Pentagon announced that Trump's generals would get what they want. America has been at war in Afghanistan for nearly seventeen years (three years longer than the Vietnam War, hitherto the country's longest foreign war). The goal of this new "surge" is to address the unstable and deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, the same situation that prompted Obama to send 30,000 additional troops to that country in 2009. That the problem persists eight years down the line should tell you something about how Obama's surge went, but military advisors understandably tend to propose military solutions to the problems they confront.

Trump's decision highlights a destructive and complicating feature of American foreign policy, which is the unspoken but ironclad prohibition against admitting military defeat. It's not only diplomats and congressmen who are bound by this prohibition. Growing up, I was taught in (a very good) public school that America had never lost a war, and that the only war it hadn't won outright, Vietnam, had been fought to a tragic stalemate.

The truth, of course, is that America's defeat in Vietnam was total. The US entered the country with the goal of preventing it from unifying under a communist government; when it left the country a decade and a half later, Vietnam unified under a communist government. It doesn't get much clearer than that. But from the moment the inevitability of that defeat became obvious to Washington, the Nixon administration did everything possible to avoid calling defeat by its name, opting instead for the euphemistic phrase "peace with honor" in the 1973 speech in which Nixon announced the final withdrawal of US forces from the country.

Not much has changed over the last four decades, and while it is easy to be profligate in drawing parallels between Vietnam and the war on terror, here's one parallel it would be reckless to ignore: as in Vietnam, one of the main reasons for the duration of the war in Afghanistan is America's refusal to acknowledge that it has lost. In 2007, George W. Bush addressed the American Enterprise Institute and stated the goals of the war in Afghanistan: "to help its people defeat the terrorists" -- he meant the Taliban as well as al Qaeda-"and establish a stable, moderate, and democratic state that respects the rights of its citizens, governs its territory effectively, and is a reliable ally in this war against extremists and terrorists."

Four years later, announcing a drawdown of US troops that would conclude in 2014, Barack Obama claimed that many of these goals had been achieved or were on their way to completion, but he acknowledged one outstanding task. "The goal that we seek is achievable," he said, "and can be expressed simply: no safe haven from which al Qaeda or its affiliates can launch attacks against our homeland, our allies." Today, Afghanistan is neither stable nor moderate, and the mutual allegations of fraud that surrounded its disputed 2014 election call into question whether it is democratic. As for the Taliban and al Qaeda, both are active and thriving, a situation made worse by the fact that the country's elected government is riven with internal conflict and failing to carry out promised reforms that would shore up the country's political stability. Sixteen years on, America has accomplished none of its stated goals in Afghanistan.

The reasons for this monumental failure are not mysterious -- they were elegantly and convincingly described in Anand Gopal's 2014 book No Good Men Among the Living. Gopal focuses not on America's successful initial effort to expel al Qaeda from Afghanistan (it was a rout), nor on its destruction of the Taliban (complete by 2002), nor even on its failure to track down Osama bin Laden (which was not of much consequence to the larger war), but on what happened afterward.

Unlike the Communist Party in Vietnam forty years earlier, the Taliban was not an organization that enjoyed anything like a stable base of social or political legitimacy. It was instead made up of fanatical thugs who destroyed public life as such in Afghanistan. These thugs recognized the hopelessness of opposing the US military, and so in 2001 and 2002, they simply laid down their weapons, disbanded, and returned to their homes. Most Afghans were happy to see them go. (One of the best things about Gopal's book is that it tells the story from the perspective of the Afghans; aside from his own, American voices are largely absent from the narrative.)

Afghanistan now had a real opportunity to reorganize its system of government, but that opportunity could only succeed if the US was sufficiently careful and perceptive to respect and work with the country's underlying political complexities. It wasn't. To take just one example, the US has repeatedly made the mistake of treating the Taliban as an outside agitator in Afghan political life, citing the fact that many of its key members were educated at extremist madrassas in Pakistan. While this is true, the boys who were educated there were hardly foreigners. They were simply Afghans who had no domestic prospects for education whatsoever, as the country's civil war of 1992–1996 had resulted in the destruction of many Afghan schools. Those who returned from Pakistan and went on to make up the Taliban may have been radicalized abroad, but they were very much native sons. By failing to treat the Taliban as a homegrown political phenomenon, and by assuming that military force alone would be enough to drive it out, the US ensured that the Taliban would be able to regroup again and again.

Worse than this basic political misreading, however, was America's failure to account for the way its military presence in Afghanistan would distort the country's politics. That the appearance of the mightiest army in world history in an economically undeveloped country-one organized to a large extent around tribal allegiances-would have a seismic effect on that country's politics should not have been any kind of a surprise.

Yet the US military was blindsided again and again by the effects of its own presence. Gopal details how in the wake of the Taliban's disappearance, anti-Taliban warlords exploited the US military's mandate to keep finding and killing terrorists even if there weren't any left to kill. One of these warlords, a man named Gul Agha Sherzai, made himself wealthy by funneling supplies to the Americans and renting them land on which to build military bases.

Having embedded US military infrastructure in his territory, Sherzai put it to work. For months, his network of operatives fed the Americans intelligence on the identities and whereabouts of terrorists. Of course, these weren't actual terrorists -- those had already fled across the border into Pakistan or simply gone home. The people Sherzai directed the military to target were simply Sherzai's enemies. American soldiers were turned into excessively well-armed death squads and unwittingly thrust into local political disputes, with the obvious destabilizing effects down the road.

The US army also, through a combination of historical ignorance and disastrous blundering, failed to populate Afghanistan's post-invasion government with the people who could have given it a chance at real stability. The US pretended as though the Afghan civil war had never occurred, and allowed mujahedeen and warlords who had terrorized the country throughout the 1990s to assume positions of political power, which did not endear Afghans to their new rulers. Meanwhile blindly targeted raids often eliminated key American allies. Gopal describes one instance in damning detail, a January 2002 raid carried out by the US in Uruzgan, a province north of Kandahar, that killed "twenty-one pro-American leaders and their employees . . . the core of any future anti-Taliban leadership-stalwarts who had outlasted the Russian invasion, the civil war, and the Taliban years but would not survive their own allies." It was as if, "in a single night, masked gunman [in an American city] had wiped out the entire city council, mayor's office, and police department."

This manner of governance continued for years, and slowly the Afghan political system reorganized itself not around the needs of the Afghan people but around the distorting gravitational pull of the US military. Proximity to international aid became the key determinant of economic influence and power. Serving up enemies to American forces became the surest way to guarantee yourself a seat at the table. At no point did the US focus primarily on encouraging the development of a state that would be able to survive on its own, without enormous quantities of military and economic support from the US. And so the Taliban's insurgency thrives today, with the group controlling outright or at least seriously contesting 253 of the country's 400 districts (those numbers were reported in March by the Taliban itself, but they were described as a "conservative estimate" by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Long War Journal ). The Islamic State (IS) is now active in Afghanistan as well.

So, on the one hand, the US has a sixteen-year legacy of upending Afghan society in many different ways through the use of military force. But on the other hand, the prospect of the US leaving Afghanistan entirely does not engender the kind of wary optimism that would have been justified when the US pulled its last soldiers out of Saigon in March 1975. In that case, it was obvious the country would unify under the communist government that should have been ruling the country for years. Afghanistan has no similarly obvious organization or party ready to take the reins and usher in stability. What it has instead is a slightly more autonomous-than-usual puppet government that cannot survive on its own, plus a rebellion of authoritarian theocrats who control more than a third of the country. Forget nation-building and political miscalculations for a minute. What Afghanistan needs now, immediately, is to be protected from the terrorist groups that are running amok inside its borders. Why not just send a few thousand more troops?

There are a few problems with that line of argument. First, it sidesteps the fact that military occupations have negative consequences by definition. Whatever good an occupying army does, it also kills people, and you can't regularly kill people in a foreign country without at least semi-regularly killing the wrong people. Those killings will make people angry and scared, and they will destabilize the social and political bonds that tie a place together. That fact raises the second problem with continuing the military occupation, which is that the only way to counteract those inevitable negative consequences is to be simultaneously implementing a plan for political reconciliation and reconstruction, hoping as you go along that the positive consequences of that plan will manage to outpace the negative consequences of the occupation. Trump doesn't have such a plan. Neither did Obama, and neither did Bush. The previous two Presidents both tacitly accepted the fracturing and destabilizing of Afghanistan as a price worth paying to deny al Qaeda a base of operations, and Trump's decision to send more troops shows that he has reached the same conclusion. Our continued military presence in Afghanistan will certainly be able to disrupt the Taliban, al Qaeda, IS, and whatever new groups rise out of their ashes, but it will also entail the continued destruction of Afghan society.

The US may have had a chance to oust the Taliban and supervise the emergence of a stable democracy in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002-albeit a very, very slim one-but it blew that chance, and the US now has no prospects for improving the stability of Afghan politics through military force. It was US military aid that supported the mujahedeen in their fight against the Soviets in the first place, which led directly to the Taliban's taking power and sheltering al Qaeda. It was the invasion of Iraq that helped to birth IS, and it was the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya that turned that country into North Africa's preeminent terrorist haven. Whatever group succeeds IS as the West's terrorist bogeyman, you can bet it will have come to prominence by seizing opportunities presented to it by the US military. While the US should do all it can via diplomacy and economic assistance to promote stable government in Afghanistan, that requires a President with the capacity for thinking in diplomatic terms, a luxury we do not presently enjoy. In the absence of that luxury, the US should at the very least, finally, withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan.

Here is a good indicator of just how dire the state of America's foreign policy decision making has become: at the moment, the best prospect we have for any kind of military drawdown in the Middle East would be for Trump to belatedly act on the isolationist beliefs he expressed throughout his campaign, to choose crude, reflexive isolationism over his generals' deluded insistence that additional military force can now accomplish what it has failed to accomplish over the last fifteen years. The best we can do, in other words, is place our hopes in Steve Bannon.

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[Jun 25, 2017] The British Empire and their centuries old means of subverting nations

marknesop.wordpress.com
Warren , June 20, 2017 at 2:53 pm
Jun 20, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5RnmtzwIijg?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Published on Jun 20, 2017

Lyndon LaRouche at his finest-the only statesman alive today who pulls no punches identifying the British Empire and their centuries old means of subverting nations. Here, an excerpt from a September 2009 webcast.

[Jun 25, 2017] Trumps Deflections and Denials on Russia Frustrate Even His Allies by MAGGIE HABERMAN

NYT tries again to flare Russiagate... The particular pressitute assgned to this task was MAGGIE HABERMAN
Jun 25, 2017 | www.msn.com

But the campaign is long over. While many of Mr. Trump's allies and supporters are still reluctant to blame Russia, the American intelligence community has said that Russian interference is a fact, not an opinion. Mr. Trump's strategy of muddying his position has let the Russia issue grow , gumming up the gears in his administration's efforts to move forward with major legislation and decisions.

"Geopolitically, it touches everything," Mr. DuHaime said.

That includes some important decisions Mr. Trump will have to make: whether to support tougher sanctions against Russia ; to give back Russian properties seized by the Obama administration ; or to try to remove Robert S. Mueller III , the special counsel investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

Officials in a number of states have in the meantime complained that the White House has done little to try to safeguard the 2018 and 2020 elections against potential Russian intrusions, even as evidence grows that there were efforts to tamper with voter rolls last year.

Through it all, the president's allies continue to see Russia as a boogeyman for Democrats and a rapacious news media, an issue his core voters think is manufactured.

"He doesn't want to be set by this narrative that the Russians hacked the election when he has to negotiate with Russia, who, by the way, sits on China's border," said Sam Nunberg, a former campaign aide to Mr. Trump. "If Putin adamantly denies that he did it, it's frankly not an issue to the president."

[Jun 25, 2017] Election Interference Hypocrisy by Yves Engler

Notable quotes:
"... Ottawa has interfered in at least one recent Ukrainian election. Canada funded a leading civil society opposition group and promised Ukraine's lead electoral commissioner Canadian citizenship if he did "the right thing" in the 2004-05 poll. ..."
"... Globe and Mail ..."
"... [Canadian ambassador to the Ukraine, Andrew Robinson] began to organize secret monthly meetings of western ambassadors, presiding over what he called 'donor coordination' sessions among 20 countries interested in seeing Mr. [presidential candidate Viktor] Yushchenko succeed. Eventually, he acted as the group's spokesman and became a prominent critic of the Kuchma government's heavy-handed media control. Canada also invested in a controversial exit poll, carried out on election day by Ukraine's Razumkov Centre and other groups that contradicted the official results showing Mr. Yanukovich [winning]. ..."
"... In the 2010 election Ottawa intervened to bring far-right president Michel Martelly to power (with about 16% of the voter, since the election was largely boycotted). Canada put up $6 million for elections that excluded Fanmi Lavalas from participating. After the first round, our representatives on an Organization of American States Mission helped force the candidate the electoral council had in second place, Jude Celestin, out of the runoff. The Center for Economic and Policy Research explained , "the international community, led by the U.S., France, and Canada, has been intensifying the pressure on the Haitian government to allow presidential candidate Michel Martelly to proceed to the second round of elections instead of [ruling party candidate] Jude Celestin." Some Haitian officials had their U.S. visas revoked and there were threats that aid would be cut off if Martelly's vote total wasn't increased as per the OAS recommendation. ..."
"... The absurdity of the whole affair did not stop the Canadian government from supporting the elections and official election monitors from this country gave a thumbs-up to this farcical exercise in "democracy". Describing the fraudulent nature of the elections, Haiti Progrčs ..."
"... Washington has, of course, interfered in hundreds of elections in dozens of countries, including Italy, France, Greece, Chile, Ecuador, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Australia and, yes, Canada. ..."
"... Northern Shadows: Canadians and Central America ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... During the 1963 election campaign Kennedy's top pollster, Lou Harris, helped Pearson get elected prime minister. Kennedy backed Harris' move, though he opposed an earlier request for the pollster to help British Labour leader Harold Wilson, which Harris then declined. Since Harris was closely associated with the US president the Liberals called Kennedy's pollster by a pseudonym. ..."
"... The lesson? Perhaps Washington and Ottawa should treat other countries in the same way they wish to be treated. Perhaps it is time for a broader discussion about election meddling. ..."
Jun 23, 2017 | dissidentvoice.org

If a guy does something bad to someone else, but then complains later when another person does that same thing to him, what do we say? Stop being a hypocrite. Either you change tact or you got what you deserved.

Does the same moral logic apply to countries?

Purported Russian meddling in US, French and other elections has received significant attention recently. "Russian meddling abroad underscores need for electoral reform in Canada" declared a Rabble.ca headline this week while CBC noted "Russian attempts to infiltrate U.S. election systems found in 21 states: officials". An earlier Globe and Mail headline stated "Russia was warned against U.S. election meddling: ex-CIA head" while a Global News story noted "Canada should worry about Russian interference in elections: former CSIS head."

Interference in another country's election is an act of aggression and should not happen in a just world so these accusations deserve to be aired and investigated. But, how can one take the outrage seriously when the media commentators who complain about Russia ignore clear-cut Canadian meddling elsewhere and the decades-long history of US interference in other countries' elections around the world, including in Canada.

Ottawa has interfered in at least one recent Ukrainian election. Canada funded a leading civil society opposition group and promised Ukraine's lead electoral commissioner Canadian citizenship if he did "the right thing" in the 2004-05 poll. Ottawa also paid for 500 Canadians of Ukrainian descent to observe the elections. Three years after Globe and Mail reporter Mark MacKinnon explained :

[Canadian ambassador to the Ukraine, Andrew Robinson] began to organize secret monthly meetings of western ambassadors, presiding over what he called 'donor coordination' sessions among 20 countries interested in seeing Mr. [presidential candidate Viktor] Yushchenko succeed. Eventually, he acted as the group's spokesman and became a prominent critic of the Kuchma government's heavy-handed media control. Canada also invested in a controversial exit poll, carried out on election day by Ukraine's Razumkov Centre and other groups that contradicted the official results showing Mr. Yanukovich [winning].

Canada has also interfered aggressively in Haitian elections. After plotting , executing and consolidating the 2004 coup against Jean Bertrand Aristide's government, Canadian officials interceded in the first election after the coup. In 2006 Canada's then-chief electoral officer, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, led a team of Canadian observers to Haiti for elections that excluded the candidate – Father Gérard Jean Juste – of Haiti's most popular political party Fanmi Lavalas. With the country gripped by social upheaval after widespread fraud in the counting, including thousands of ballots found burned in a dump, Kingsley released a statement claiming, "the election was carried out with no violence or intimidation, and no accusations of fraud." Chair of the International Mission for Monitoring Haitian Elections, Kingsley's statement went on to laud Jacques Bernard, the head of the electoral council despite the fact that Bernard had already been widely derided as corrupt and biased even by other members of the coup government's electoral council.

In the 2010 election Ottawa intervened to bring far-right president Michel Martelly to power (with about 16% of the voter, since the election was largely boycotted). Canada put up $6 million for elections that excluded Fanmi Lavalas from participating. After the first round, our representatives on an Organization of American States Mission helped force the candidate the electoral council had in second place, Jude Celestin, out of the runoff. The Center for Economic and Policy Research explained , "the international community, led by the U.S., France, and Canada, has been intensifying the pressure on the Haitian government to allow presidential candidate Michel Martelly to proceed to the second round of elections instead of [ruling party candidate] Jude Celestin." Some Haitian officials had their U.S. visas revoked and there were threats that aid would be cut off if Martelly's vote total wasn't increased as per the OAS recommendation.

Half of the electoral council agreed to the OAS changes, but half didn't. The second round was unconstitutional, noted Haďti Liberté's Kim Ives, as "only four of the eight-member Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) have voted to proceed with the second round, one short of the five necessary. Furthermore, the first round results have not been published in the journal of record, Le Moniteur, and President Préval has not officially convoked Haitians to vote, both constitutional requirements."

The absurdity of the whole affair did not stop the Canadian government from supporting the elections and official election monitors from this country gave a thumbs-up to this farcical exercise in "democracy". Describing the fraudulent nature of the elections, Haiti Progrčs explained "the form of democracy that Washington, Paris and Ottawa want to impose on us is becoming a reality."

Washington has, of course, interfered in hundreds of elections in dozens of countries, including Italy, France, Greece, Chile, Ecuador, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Australia and, yes, Canada.

You haven't heard about that one?

During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis the Kennedy administration wanted Ottawa's immediate and unconditional support in putting the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) on high alert. Diefenbaker hesitated, unsure if Washington was telling him the full story about Soviet/Cuban plans or once again bullying the small island nation.

Not happy with Diefenbaker's attitude during the Cuban Missile Crisis or his ambivalence towards nuclear weapons in Canada, President John F. Kennedy worked to precipitate the downfall of his minority Conservative government. Kennedy preferred Lester Pearson's Liberals who criticized Diefenbaker on Cuba and were willing to accept nuclear-armed Bomarc missiles.

"In the fall of 1962," notes Peter McFarlane in Northern Shadows: Canadians and Central America , "the State Department began to leak insulting references about Diefenbaker to the U.S. and Canadian press." Articles highly critical of the Canadian prime minister appeared in the New York Times , Newsweek and other major US media outlets. On January 3 the outgoing commander of NATO, US General Lauris Norstad, made a surprise visit to Ottawa where he claimed Canada would not be fulfilling her commitments to the north Atlantic alliance if she did not acquire nuclear warheads. Diefenbaker believed the US general came to Canada "at the behest of President Kennedy" to set the table "for Pearson's conversion to the United States nuclear policy."

A future prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, concurred. He asked:

Do you think that General Norstad, the former supreme commander of allied forces in Europe, came to Ottawa as a tourist on January 3 to call publicly on the Canadian government to respect its [nuclear] commitments? Do you think it was by chance that Mr. Pearson, in his speech of January 12, was able to quote the authority of General Norstad? Do you think it was inadvertent that, on January 30, the State Department gave a statement to journalists reinforcing Mr. Pearson's claims and crudely accusing Mr. Diefenbaker of lying? you believe that it was by coincidence that this series of events ended with the fall of the [Diefenbaker] government on February 5?

A State Department official, Willis Armstrong, described Kennedy's attitude towards the March 1963 Canadian election: "He wanted to intervene and make sure Pearson got elected. It was very evident the president was uptight about the possibility that Pearson might not win." Later Kennedy's Secretary of State Dean Rusk admitted "in a way, Diefenbaker was right, for it was true that we preferred Mike Pearson."

During the 1963 election campaign Kennedy's top pollster, Lou Harris, helped Pearson get elected prime minister. Kennedy backed Harris' move, though he opposed an earlier request for the pollster to help British Labour leader Harold Wilson, which Harris then declined. Since Harris was closely associated with the US president the Liberals called Kennedy's pollster by a pseudonym.

Washington may have aided Pearson's campaign in other ways. Diefenbaker wondered if the CIA was active during the 1963 election while External Affairs Minister Howard Green said a US agent attended a couple of his campaign meetings in BC.

To Washington's delight, Pearson won the election and immediately accepted nuclear-armed Bomarc missiles.

The lesson? Perhaps Washington and Ottawa should treat other countries in the same way they wish to be treated. Perhaps it is time for a broader discussion about election meddling.

Yves Engler is the author of A Propaganda System: How Canada's Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Canada in Africa: 300 years of aid and exploitation . Read other articles by Yves .

This article was posted on Friday, June 23rd, 2017 at 7:28am and is filed under Canada , Elections , Haiti , Ukraine , US Hypocrisy .

[Jun 25, 2017] McCarthys Downfall

Notable quotes:
"... Welch: You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? ..."
Jun 25, 2017 | www.mtholyoke.edu

Exchange between McCarthy and Welsh, June 1954

Taken from http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/welch-mccarthy.html

Despite initial popularity among his fellow party members and the American public, McCarthy's career began to decline. Even some moderate Republicans withdrew their support from him because they felt the senator was hurting the presidential administration. Despite his waning support, President Eisenhower refrained from publicly reprimanding McCarthy. Apparently, the president refused to "go into the gutter" with McCarthy by initializing a public confrontation. Doing so would only create more chaos and generate more publicity for the senator .However, it became apparent that McCarthy's end was near.
McCarthy's First Strike
In june 1953, J.B. Matthews was appointed as McCarthy's research director. In July, Matthews published an article called "Reds in our churches" in the conservative American Mercury. In it, Matthews referred to the Protestant clergy as " the largest single group supporting the Communist apparatus in the United States." The result was a public outrage at Matthews as well as his boss McCarthy.
Army Investigation
McCarthy began his investigation of the Army Signal Corps Laboratory at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey in 1953. The laboratory had employed many Jewish engineers from New York. Many of the civilian employees there were members of the left-leaning Populist Front. In fact, Julius Rosenberg once worked there. Many of the workers have been inspected and cleared by the government. The army was already reexamining the entire workforce in 1953.Nevertheless, McCarthy insisted on opening up an investigation into the matter. McCarthy eventually gave up the investigation after months of quarreling with the army.
The Irving Peress Case

After giving up his investigation on the Army Signal Corps, McCarthy's committee began to concentrate on Irving Peress, an Army dentist. Peress had invoked the Fifth Amendment when filling out the army's questionnaire. Even though he was put under military surveillance, Peress was still promoted to Major. The army eventually found the paperwork that called for his dismissal and Peress was quickly discharged.

McCarthy then launched a campaign to criticize the army for allowing Peress to be promoted. When interrogating General Ralph Zwicker, the senator demanded that the general should reveal some names. Zwicker refused because he could not violate executive order. In response, McCarthy rudely insulted the general by comparing his intelligence to that of a "five year old child." McCarthy's treatment of the general generated a lot of hostility from the press and the American public.

In retaliation for McCarthy's investigation, the Army accused McCarthy's aide Roy Cohn of trying to force the Army into giving special treatment to his friend G. David Schine.

The Televised Hearings
The Senate then started hearings into the Peress matter. The investigations and hearings between the Army and McCarthy was televised live to the public. For two months, Americans watched on as McCarthy bully witnesses and called "point of order" to make crude remarks.

The climax came on June 9. Representing the Army was Joseph Welch. As the Welch was questioning Cohn, McCarthy intervened and said,

I think we should tell him that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher, whom he recommended, incidentally, to do work on this committee, who has been for a number of years a member of an organization which was named, oh year and years ago, as the legal bulwark of the Communist party.

Here, McCarthy was referring to Fred Fisher, a young associate in Welch's law firm. Fisher had refused to come to the hearings because he was once affiliated with the National Lawyers Guild. In response, Welch said he did not let Fisher come to the hearing because he did not want to hurt "the lad" on national television. Welch then urged McCarthy to drop the issue. Nevertheless, McCarthy persisted in questioning Fisher's background. At this point Welch exclaimed,

Welch: You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

At this point, the entire American public viewed McCarthy with disdain. On television, the senator from Wisconsin came off as cruel, manipulative and reckless.

The Final Days

The hearings were not the only components that eroded McCarthy's credibility. Earlier in the year, the journalist Edward R. Murrow had aired a documentary that showed how McCarthy's charges were groundless and how he had used bullying techniques to harass individuals. By June, the senator's Gallup Poll ratings fell from 50% to 34%.

On December 2, the Senate voted to censure Joe McCarthy by a margin of sixty-seven to twenty-two.

Driven by depression from being censured, Joe McCarthy resorted to alcohol, which greatly worsen his health. On May 2, 1957, Joe McCarthy died from acute hepatitis and was buried in Appleton, Michigan.

[Jun 25, 2017] Sen. Joe McCarthys Startling Morphine Source The Fix by Matt Harvey

Notable quotes:
"... During the 1950s Red Scare, America's first drug czar fed the opiate addiction of America's most feared senator. Loved or hated, McCarthy remains a legend. Why is his drug habit so little known? ..."
"... Joe McCarthy, the late senator from Wisconsin who built his reputation by whipping up the anti-Communist hysteria sweeping America at the beginning of the Cold War, has long been widely viewed as an object lesson in the abuse of power. His style of politics-demagoguery, paranoia and, worst of all, witch-hunts-has been named McCarthyism, and in recent years some politicians have emerged who would wear the label proudly. For people who have struggled with addiction, however, McCarthy-an alcoholic and opiate addict-offers a provocative question about the limits of our own anti-stigma views. ..."
"... In fact, McCarthy seems to be almost a role model for Cruz, who in 2010 upbraided his alma mater, Harvard Law School, for harboring a dozen communists on its faculty. ..."
"... The fact that he suffered from severe alcoholism is well known. But the fact that by many accounts, he was also addicted to opiates remains almost as hidden as it was during his lifetime. ..."
"... Consumer Reports, ..."
"... Ladies Home Journal ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Flowers in the Blood: the Story of Opium ..."
"... Philadelphia Inquirer ..."
May 13, 2013 | www.thefix.com

During the 1950s Red Scare, America's first drug czar fed the opiate addiction of America's most feared senator. Loved or hated, McCarthy remains a legend. Why is his drug habit so little known?

Joe McCarthy, the late senator from Wisconsin who built his reputation by whipping up the anti-Communist hysteria sweeping America at the beginning of the Cold War, has long been widely viewed as an object lesson in the abuse of power. His style of politics-demagoguery, paranoia and, worst of all, witch-hunts-has been named McCarthyism, and in recent years some politicians have emerged who would wear the label proudly. For people who have struggled with addiction, however, McCarthy-an alcoholic and opiate addict-offers a provocative question about the limits of our own anti-stigma views.

By the peak of his power in 1953, McCarthy's allegations of "Communist subversion" had wrecked havoc on virtually every level of government-from scores of federal employees whose careers were ruined by unfounded charges of "treason" to decorated war heroes to highly respected statesmen. McCarthy even characterized the entire Democratic Party as the "party of treason."

Not surprisingly, there is a long tradition of right-wing pols and pundits who see McCarthy as a misunderstood hero. Sen. Ted Cruz, the newly elected Tea Party Republican from Texas, has already won widespread comparisons to McCarthy for his innuendo-laced pronouncements about Democratic members of Congress and presidential appointees such as Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary. Cruz has welcomed the criticism as "a sign that perhaps we're doing something right." In fact, McCarthy seems to be almost a role model for Cruz, who in 2010 upbraided his alma mater, Harvard Law School, for harboring a dozen communists on its faculty.

A larger-than-life figure of enduring influence, the story of Joe McCarthy would seem to offer little in the way of surprises. The fact that he suffered from severe alcoholism is well known. But the fact that by many accounts, he was also addicted to opiates remains almost as hidden as it was during his lifetime.

That Capitol Hill was rife with drinking and even drugging was an open secret in the 1950s, but the "private" lives of political figures remained largely unpublicized. This protected McCarthy's favorable reputation with the American public from the stinging stigma attached to alcoholism and drug addiction. (There is some speculation that his opiate addiction was the result of either treatment for "chronic pain" or treatment by sympathetic doctors to help fortify the hangover-hobbled senator to get him through the day. But he may have had a personality disorder; a friend remarked once that he "operates in his own moral universe.")

Yet even in the current age of celebrity snort-and-tell publicity, when nothing seems capable of shocking, the method in which McCarthy's drugs were supplied is, well, shocking.

According to the country's first de-facto drug czar, Harry Anslinger, McCarthy's addiction was enabled by the federal government. Anslinger, who served as chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962, is credited with successfully demonizing "marijuana" as causing addiction and insanity, murder and mayhem. More than any other political figure, Anslinger was responsible for criminalizing opiates and its users. And his word was gospel when it came to the country's nascent war on drugs.

In his 1961 memoir, The Murderers, Anslinger wrote about finding out, in the 1950s, that a prominent senator (whom he left unnamed) was addicted to morphine. When confronted by Anslinger, the politician refused to stop, even daring Anslinger to reveal his addiction, saying it would cause irreparable harm to the "Free World." Anslinger responded to this gambit by securing the lawmaker a steady supply of dope from a Washington, DC, pharmacy. (Morphine taken by prescription was, then as now, legal.)

Anslinger's acquiescence was a testament to just how feared McCarthy was in his heyday. Few dared to speak above a whisper about his evident alcoholism. "[He] went on for some time, guaranteed his morphine because it was underwritten by the Bureau," Anslinger wrote. "On the day he died I thanked God for relieving me of my burden."

Beltway insiders guessed that the smack-addicted senator's bullying threats and bombastic appeals to patriotism-not to mention the fact that he had died in office-pointed to the late Joseph McCarthy. Anslinger, however, refused to reveal the name to reporters. The story dropped out of circulation until 1972, when a landmark study on the effects of narcotics, issued by Consumer Reports, repeated it (still with no name attached) in a chapter on "eminent narcotic addicts."

Even in the current age of celebrity snort-and-tell publicity, when nothing seems capable of shocking, the method in which McCarthy's drugs were supplied is, well, shocking.

During the Army-McCarthy hearings, which riveted Americans to their small black-and-white television sets in 1954, McCarthy's combustible mix of grandiosity and paranoia was on full self-destructive display. Every so often a senator on the subcommittee would remind viewers-among whom McCarthy's favorability ratings were falling by the week-of the real reason for the proceedings: an investigation of charges that McCarthy had tried to blackmail the Army into giving special favors to a McCarthy aide who had been drafted. All spring, McCarthy played to the cameras in his deep-throated baritone, using the hearings to preach "communist infiltration" at all levels of government (including the Army), and appealing to what he called the "real jury-the 16 million television viewers out there."

But then Army chief counsel Joseph Welch confronted McCarthy over his attempt to blacken the reputation of a young Welch associate, for purportedly joining a "Communist-front" lawyers organization. When McCarthy persisted, a visibly shaken Welch famously upbraided him with these words: "Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" The packed hall burst into applause.

By the time the gavel fell on the hearings, McCarthy could be seen desperately haranguing an empty chamber. Having finally gone too far, he was censured by a slim majority of his peers. Neither the career nor the man himself ever recovered; he died three years later. McCarthy's last years were not pretty. He was in and out of the hospital with exhaustion, broken bones, failing organs. Apt to suddenly appear on crutches, or with his arm in a sling, he fluctuated noticeably in weight. His official cause of death, "noninfectious, seldom fatal, hepatitis, cause unknown," is not consistent with the acute alcoholic's liver disease that is generally thought to have killed him.

McCarthy's opiate addiction became public fodder only after Anslinger's death. A 1978 article in, of all places, Ladies Home Journal named McCarthy as the senator in Anslinger's autobiography. "Agents who worked under [Anslinger] claim that the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy was addicted to morphine and regularly obtained his narcotics through a druggist near the White House, authorized by Anslinger to fill the prescription," Maxine Cheshire wrote.

Given Cheshire's credentials as a respected Washington Post reporter, the report was treated not as gossip but as news, and widely disseminated. United Press International (UPI) put it starkly, "[McCarthy] was a morphine addict who had his drugs supplied by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics for the sake of national security."

In Flowers in the Blood: the Story of Opium , a 1981 investigation into the history of opium use, addiction and interdiction, Dean Latimer reported that the relationship between Anslinger and McCarthy was more complicated and hypocritical than Anslinger had ever let on. Just when the top drug-enforcer was supplying McCarthy with his government-approved pharmaceutical smack, the two worked hand in hand to pin the country's burgeoning heroin trade on a Communist Chinese plot, even though the trafficking was clearly a mafia-controlled operation. Such a fiction would have conveniently served the federal government's relaxed policy toward organized crime. (During his 40-year reign, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover never even acknowledged Cosa Nostra's very existence.)

The last mainstream mention of McCarthy's morphine addiction that this writer has uncovered dates back to 1989, when the Philadelphia Inquirer attacked scholarship supporting Cheshire's findings. By now, of course, anyone who could have authoritatively confirmed the story is long dead.

McCarthy was undoubtedly a man who wrestled with more than his share of private demons that he was only too eager to unleash on the nation. His exploitation of his country's greatest fears have made him a polarizing figure. To most, he is a cautionary tale about the abuse of power. But to some, he is an exemplar of the principle that, as the late Arizona senator Barry Goldwater famously said, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Given the current climate of polarization in our national politics, it is not surprising that McCarthy-as-myth has made a comeback.

For the recovery community, there is a special question in the story of Joe McCarthy. Whether omitted by those who would rehabilitate him or advertised by those who would vilify him, his addiction is viewed as a shameful "scarlet letter." For those of us who view addiction as a disease to be treated with sympathy-and who reserve none of that emotion for McCarthy the demagogue-coming to terms with McCarthy the addict is, to say the least, challenging.

Matt Harvey is an award-winning freelance journalist whose writing has appeared on AnimalNY.com , Black Book, the New York Post and the New York Press, among other publications. He lives in Manhattan.

[Jun 25, 2017] UKRAINE meddled in US 2016 election. In conspiracy to blackmail Trump, Ukraine provided DNC with false accusations against Manafort, hoping to derail Trump and install Deep State figurehead Hillary Clinton

Jun 25, 2017 | www.unz.com

RobinG June 24, 2017 at 4:32 am GMT

DEMOCRATS & REPUBLICANS: ONE BIRD, 2 WINGS . SAME SHIT

UKRAINE meddled in US 2016 election. In conspiracy to blackmail Trump, Ukraine provided DNC with false accusations against Manafort, hoping to derail Trump and install Deep State figurehead Hillary Clinton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEjZ5gI9GaM UNREAL: The real election interference scandal HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

See the timeline, and smoking-gun email from Alexandra Chalupa. To steal election, DNC fabricated Trump-Russian collusion stories which have poisoned US-Russia relations in this administration and stoked impeachment fever. Anti-Russian hysteria serves Israel by killing Syria & Iran diplomacy. Great journalism by Lee Stranahan.

Exiled off mainstreet Show Comment Next New Comment June 24, 2017 at 5:59 am GMT

The fabricated collusion stories strike me as efforts to force Trump to put the US on an aggressive war footing against Russia in Syria and elsewhere. As such the constitute war crimes efforts and are not only criminal, but stupid in light of the unnecessary risk they put us to.

[Jun 24, 2017] Obama Ordered Cyberweapons Implanted Into Russias Infrastructure by Jason Ditz

Jun 23, 2017 | news.antiwar.com

Former Official: Implants Designed to 'Cause Them Pain and Discomfort'

A new report from the Washington Post today quoted a series of Obama Administration officials reiterating their official narrative on Russia's accused hacking of the 2016 election. While most of the article is simply rehashes and calls for sanctions, they also revealed a secret order by President Obama in the course of "retaliation" for the alleged hacking.

This previously secret order involved having US intelligence design and implant a series of cyberweapons into Russia's infrastructure systems, with officials saying they are meant to be activated remotely to hit the most important networks in Russia and are designed to " cause them pain and discomfort ."

The US has, of course, repeatedly threatened "retaliatory" cyberattacks against Russia, and promised to knock out broad parts of their economy in doing so. These appear to be the first specific plans to have actually infiltrate Russian networks and plant such weapons to do so.

Despite the long-standing nature of the threats, by the end of Obama's last term in office this was all still in the "planning" phases. It's not totally clear where this effort has gone from there, but officials say that the intelligence community, once given Obama's permission, did not need further approval from Trump to continue on with it, and he'd have actually had to issue a countermanding order, something they say he hasn't.

The details are actually pretty scant on how far along the effort is, but the goal is said to be for the US to have the ability to retaliate at a moment's notice the next time they have a cyberattack they intend to blame on Russia.

Unspoken in this lengthy report, which quotes unnamed former Obama Administration officials substantially, advocating the effort, is that in having reported that such a program exists, they've tipped off Russia about the threat.

This is, however, reflective of the priority of the former administration, which is to continuing hyping allegations that Russia got President Trump elected, a priority that's high enough to sacrifice what was supposed to be a highly secretive cyberattack operation.

[Jun 23, 2017] Hannity starts talking about murdered DNC staffer again

Jun 23, 2017 | www.msn.com

Sean Hannity spoke about the murder of late Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich during his Thursday radio program, ending a temporary hiatus from the topic.

Hannity brought up the murder while speculating about leaks of damaging DNC emails that he believes may have come from "dissatisfied, disgruntled" staffers within the group.

"My guess is there are a lot of angry, disgruntled, whistleblowing truth tellers within the DNC that were there that saw the collusion, that saw that the fix was in against Bernie Sanders, that saw that there was corruption at the highest levels," Hannity said on his nationally-syndicated radio program.

Released emails via Wikileaks revealed an effort from top officials of the DNC to undermine the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) during the primary campaign despite the organization insistence it was neutral in the race.

"Now I don't know anything about Seth Rich in this sense. I don't have any information about why he was murdered except that it was suspicious," Hannity continued. "And suspicious meaning it wasn't a robbery as they've claimed but otherwise why would you not steal his wallet, his phone, his necklace, his jewelry and watch and everything else."

[Jun 22, 2017] Americans have a blind spot on the actions of the USA. That's natural. But that blindness produces pretty idiotic comments even from commenters that are able to discuss intelligently other topics

Jun 21, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

DrDick -> Paine ... , June 21, 2017 at 08:33 AM

Also historically moronic, since China had become increasingly isolationist from the 16th century on. This is not to say that China has not been deliberately annoying their neighbors lately, especially in the South China Sea, however. Clearly China has been extending its influence, mostly economically, around the world, especially in Africa, for a couple of decades now, but I do not see this as any different from what we do in the same regions. It is certainly not nearly as troubling as what Russia has been doing under Putin.
libezkova said in reply to DrDick... , June 21, 2017 at 09:09 PM
Compare your viewpoint with Forbes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2017/06/16/in-final-oliver-stone-interview-putin-predicts-when-russia-us-crisis-ends/


In Final Oliver Stone Interview, Putin Predicts When Russia-US Crisis Ends

Jun 20, 2017 | www.forbes.com

But with Trump in the White House, the Trump-Putin conspiracy theory is one reality TV show the news media can't shake. Stone's love for foreign policy intrigue at least makes him a Putin kindred spirit here. America's age old fear of the Russians, has made Putin public enemy number one and Stone his sounding board. For some unhappy campers, like John McCain, Putin has " no moral equivalent " in the United States. He's a dictator , a war criminal and tyrant .

"You've gone through four U.S. presidents: Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Trump. What changes?" Stone asks him.

"Almost nothing. Your bureaucracy is very strong and it is that bureaucracy that rules the world," he says. Then, solemnly, "There is change...when they bring us to the cemetery to bury us."

In the last installment of the Putin interviews, the Russian leader admitted to liking Trump. "We still like him because he wants to restore relations. Relations between the two countries are going to develop," he said. It's a sentence very few in congress would say, and almost no big name politicians outside of Trump would imagine saying on television. On Russia, you scold. There is no fig leaf.

In a recent sanctions bill in the senate, only Republicans Rand Paul and Mike Lee voted against it, making for a 97-2 landslide in favor of extra-territorial sanctions against Russian companies, namely oil and gas.

Stone asked him why did he bother hacking the Democratic National Committee's emails if he believed nothing would change on the foreign policy front.

STONE: Our political leadership and NATO all believe you hacked the election.

PUTIN: We didn't hack the election at all. It would be hard to imagine any country, even Russia, being capable of seriously influencing the U.S. election. Someone hacked the DNC, but I don't think it influenced the election. What came through was not a lie.

They were not trying to fool anybody. People who want to manipulate public opinion will blame Russia. But Trump had his finger on the pulse of the Midwest voter and knew how to pull at their hearts. Those who have been defeated shouldn't be shifting blame to someone else....We are not waiting for any revolutionary changes.

Just then, editors cut to a video of Trump talking about Putin.

TRUMP: I hope I get along with Putin. I hope I do. But there is a good chance that I won't.

PUTIN: It almost feels like hatred of a certain ethnic group, like antisemitism. They are always blaming Russians, like antisemites are always blaming the Jews.

The editors then flashed to footage of John McCain on the floor of the Senate ranting and raving about Putin. Then Joseph Biden in the Ukrainian parliament, ranting about Russia. Putin tells Stone all of this is unfortunate. He thinks their view is"old world." He reminds Stone that Russia and the U.S. were allies in World War I and World War II. It was Winston Churchill that started the Cold War from London, despite having respect for Russia's strongman leader at the time, the real dictator, Joseph Stalin.

libezkova -> libezkova... , June 21, 2017 at 09:13 PM
The point is the Americans have a blind spot on the actions of the USA.

That's natural. But that produced pretty idiotic comments in this blog even from commenters that are able to discuss intelligently other topics.

[Jun 21, 2017] Good Agent, Bad Agent Robert Mueller and 9-11

Notable quotes:
"... Mueller, a Republican, was appointed by George W. Bush to head the FBI, and took the helm on September 4, 2001, one week before the terrorist attacks. So he can hardly be blamed for the failure of the FBI (along with the CIA and other U.S. and allied intelligence agencies) to detect and respond to numerous warning signs that the attacks were coming, including the arrival of many of the future perpetrators to the United States. ..."
"... The same cannot be said for Mueller's role in the subsequent coverup of FBI and White House bungling during the run up to 9/11. Six months after the attacks, Congress convened the Joint Senate-House Inquiry into Intelligence Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. Headed by Florida Democratic Senator Bob Graham, the inquiry was more thorough and penetrating than the later official 9/11 Commission would ever be. ..."
"... While the San Diego scenario was the most extreme, there was other evidence of the FBI allowing future 9/11 perpetrators to slip through its fingers. By the time it issued its report, the Joint Inquiry had found that five of the hijackers "may have had contact with a total of 14 people who had come to the FBI's attention during counterterrorism or counterintelligence investigations prior to September 11, 2001. Four of those 14 were the focus of FBI investigations during the time that the hijackers were in the United States. Despite their proximity to FBI targets and at least one FBI source, the future hijackers successfully eluded FBI attention." ..."
"... Intelligence Matters ..."
"... Only years later, Graham writes, did information provided by FBI staffers confirm what he had long suspected: that the FBI carried out its resistance and obfuscation on direct instructions from the White House. Whether Bush and Company were eager to downplay any further connections to their friends the Saudis, or just protect itself from the fallout of such an obvious intelligence failure, will likely never be known. ..."
"... So much for Robert Mueller remaining above the political fray. And so much for the Bureau's supposed independence and incorruptibility. The latter, clearly, has always been a myth. From its earliest days it was a highly politicized–and relentlessly reactionary–agency, made all the more so by the colossal power of J. Edgar Hoover. Its mission has always been at heart a deeply reactionary one, dedicated to protecting the republic from whatever it perceived as a threat, including all forms of dissent and unrest–from communists to civil rights leaders. ..."
www.forbes.com
Robert Mueller, the former FBI director named special counsel for the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election, is depicted as an iconic G-man: serious, patrician, and totally incorruptible. But in reality, it's a little different. As with FBI Agent Dale Cooper in the latest iteration of "Twin Peaks," there is a Good Mueller and a Bad Mueller. We've heard a lot about the good-guy Mueller, but nothing much about his bad side. And there is a bad side–though it's not the one that Trump supporters would have us think.

The President's loyal minions, following a familiar pattern, have been busy building an advance smear campaign against Mueller, claiming that he has it out for the poor, innocent Donald and is determined to bring him down due to pre-existing biases. In fact, if Mueller is indeed biased, it is toward preserving the institutions of government, including the White House, as well as his beloved FBI, even at the expense of making public the full truth. At least, that's how he behaved the last time he was involved in a major national crisis–namely, the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Mueller, a Republican, was appointed by George W. Bush to head the FBI, and took the helm on September 4, 2001, one week before the terrorist attacks. So he can hardly be blamed for the failure of the FBI (along with the CIA and other U.S. and allied intelligence agencies) to detect and respond to numerous warning signs that the attacks were coming, including the arrival of many of the future perpetrators to the United States.

The same cannot be said for Mueller's role in the subsequent coverup of FBI and White House bungling during the run up to 9/11. Six months after the attacks, Congress convened the Joint Senate-House Inquiry into Intelligence Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. Headed by Florida Democratic Senator Bob Graham, the inquiry was more thorough and penetrating than the later official 9/11 Commission would ever be.

Among other things, the Joint Inquiry learned of the involvement of a paid FBI informant with two of the future hijackers: Khalid Al Mindhar, who had fought for Al Qaeda in Bosnia and Chechnya and trained in Bin Laden's Afghan training camps, and Nawaf Al Hazmi, who had battle experience in Bosnia, Chechyna, and Afghanistan. According to the Joint Inquiry report, the NSA and CIA at the time had available enough information to connect the two men with Osama Bin Laden.

The CIA, however, failed to share its information with the FBI, and did not place the two men on any watch lists. So Al Mindhar and Al Hamzi flew to Los Angeles in early 2000 (shortly after attending an Al Qaeda summit in Malaysia), and were routinely admitted into the United States on tourist visas. They traveled to San Diego, where they got Social Security cards, credits cards, and driver licenses, and bought a car, as well as a season pass to Sea World. They soon began taking flight lessons. They also had contact with a radical imam and a local Saudi national who were both being watched by the FBI. And they actually rented a room in the home of Abdusattar Shaikh, who was a retired English professor, a leader of the local mosque–and a paid informant for the FBI's San Diego office, charged with monitoring the city's Saudi community.

As the Joint Inquiry report would reveal, by mid-2001 U.S. intelligence agencies had ample evidence of possible terrorist plans to use hijacked airplanes as bombs, but had done little to act on this threat. In July 2001, the CIA had passed on the names of Al Mindhar and Al Hamzi to the FBI office in New York–though not the office in San Diego. Shaikh had apparently done nothing to warn the Bureau about any possible danger from his tenants. And no one had warned the airlines or the FAA not to let these men get on planes. So on the morning of September 11, Al Mindhar and Al Hamzi boarded American Airlines Flight 77 at Dulles Airport and helped crash it into the Pentagon.

While the San Diego scenario was the most extreme, there was other evidence of the FBI allowing future 9/11 perpetrators to slip through its fingers. By the time it issued its report, the Joint Inquiry had found that five of the hijackers "may have had contact with a total of 14 people who had come to the FBI's attention during counterterrorism or counterintelligence investigations prior to September 11, 2001. Four of those 14 were the focus of FBI investigations during the time that the hijackers were in the United States. Despite their proximity to FBI targets and at least one FBI source, the future hijackers successfully eluded FBI attention."

Yet in testimony before the Joint Inquiry on June 18, 2002, FBI director Mueller said, that "while here [in America] the hijackers effectively operated without suspicion, triggering nothing that would have alerted law enforcement and doing nothing that exposed them to domestic coverage." There is no way of knowing whether Mueller was lying or just ignorant.

Subsequently, Senator Graham set out to subpoena the informant to testify before the Joint Inquiry. The FBI refused to cooperate, blocked the Inquiry's efforts to interview the informant, and it appears to have arranged for a private attorney to represent him. Despite insisting that the informant had done nothing wrong, the Bureau at one point suggested the Inquiry give him immunity, which Graham refused to do.

As Graham would later describe in is book Intelligence Matters, the FBI also "insisted that we could not, even in the most sanitized manner, tell the American people that an FBI informant had a relationship with two of the hijackers." The Bureau opposed public hearings on the subject and deleted any references to the situation from drafts of the Joint Inquiry's unclassified report. It took more than a year for the Bureau allow a version of the story to appear in the public report, and even then it was heavily redacted.

Only years later, Graham writes, did information provided by FBI staffers confirm what he had long suspected: that the FBI carried out its resistance and obfuscation on direct instructions from the White House. Whether Bush and Company were eager to downplay any further connections to their friends the Saudis, or just protect itself from the fallout of such an obvious intelligence failure, will likely never be known.

So much for Robert Mueller remaining above the political fray. And so much for the Bureau's supposed independence and incorruptibility. The latter, clearly, has always been a myth. From its earliest days it was a highly politicized–and relentlessly reactionary–agency, made all the more so by the colossal power of J. Edgar Hoover. Its mission has always been at heart a deeply reactionary one, dedicated to protecting the republic from whatever it perceived as a threat, including all forms of dissent and unrest–from communists to civil rights leaders.

What does all this bode for the current moment? Normally, it would seem that Mueller's instinct would be to try to preserve some semblance of the current order, up to and including the presidency. But with Trump now locked in a knock down drag out struggle with the intelligence agencies–what some people like to call "the Deep State"–Mueller and his intelligence cronies may find it in the best interests of the status quo–and, of course, themselves–to throw the President under the bus and one way Mueller could do so is by cutting some sort of deal with Congress, specifically with the legislature's true power broker, Mitch McConnell, to turn on Trump and run him out of office.

As Agent Cooper said of his own famous investigation into the death of Laura Palmer, "I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange."

Note: More detail, and complete sources, on the FBI informant scandal and the Joint Inquiry's investigation can be found in my book The 5 Unanswered Questions About 9/11.

[Jun 21, 2017] As for the Times, it has no reservations about serving as a conduit for fact-free propaganda from the US intelligence agencies

Jun 21, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star , June 20, 2017 at 10:14 am
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/20/pers-j20.html

"As for the Times, it has no reservations about serving as a conduit for fact-free propaganda from the US intelligence agencies. This points to the newspaper's putrefaction in recent decades, seen above all in the fact that its leading personnel, particularly on its editorial pages and foreign affairs staff, consist of ex-officio spokesmen for US imperialism, including a stable of CIA flacks such as Nicholas Kristof, Roger Cohen and Thomas Friedman.

The editorial page editor, James Bennet, is the brother of right-wing Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and son of Douglas Bennet, a top State Department official in the Carter and Clinton administrations, whose career includes a stint heading the Agency for International Development (AID), a frequent instrument for CIA provocations.

The Times, channeling the intelligence agencies, has a definite political agenda. Powerful factions of the ruling class want to continue and intensify the anti-Russian foreign policy adopted by the Obama administration, particularly in the wake of the 2014 campaign to bring down the elected pro-Russian government in Ukraine and install an ultra-right, pro-US stooge regime."

FYI:
http://freebeacon.com/issues/mexican-billionaire-carlos-slim-becomes-top-owner-of-new-york-times/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-Mexican-Billionaire-Even-Ex-Presidents-Fear-Talking-About–20151201-0019.html

[Jun 21, 2017] Russiagate is a new policy of Russian containment by the deep state

Notable quotes:
"... It would have been appeasement for Putin to stand by and let the Hillary neocon take over America and offer the last drop of US soldiers' blood to the Balts. Ignoring Clinton was like letting Hitler have Prague! ..."
"... Presidents come and go, and even parties come to and away from power. But the main policy tack does not change. So by and large we don't care who will be at the helm in the United States. We have a rough idea of what is going to happen. And in this regard, even if we wanted to it wouldn't make any sense for us to interfere. ..."
"... Speaking of opposition, let us recall the movement Occupy Wall Street. Where is it now? The law enforcement agencies and special services in the US have taken it apart, into little pieces, and have dissolved it. I'm not asking you about how things stand in terms of democracy in the United States. Especially so that the electoral legislation is far from being perfect in the US. Why do you believe you are entitled to put such questions to us and, mind you, do it all the time, to moralize and to teach us how we should live? ..."
Jun 21, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
libezkova -> Paine ... June 21, 2017 at 08:45 AM

"[Russiagate] is indeed a new forward policy on Russian containment by the deep state"

I agree. Very precisely formulated. thank you --

Paine June 21, 2017 at 08:06 PM

Russia is obviously tampering as much as optimal

Nothing new

Hence my suggesting putin is jut acting like all great powers must act to be great powers

ilsm Wednesday, June 21, 2017 at 08:47 AM

It would have been appeasement for Putin to stand by and let the Hillary neocon take over America and offer the last drop of US soldiers' blood to the Balts. Ignoring Clinton was like letting Hitler have Prague! Reply Wednesday, June 21, 2017 at 04:23 PM

Paine -> ilsm... June 21, 2017 at 04:37 PM

Indeed

libezkova -> Paine ...

"Hence my suggesting Putin is just acting like all great powers must act to be great powers "

Wrong. Putin actually has some respect for UN. Unlike Clinton, Bush II, Obama and Trump. American exceptionalism is pretty toxic thing that poison the US foreign policy. Something like far right movements poison discourse in their respective countries.

Putin slept over Obama/Nuland gambit in Ukraine. And Russia paid a huge price for that. Less then Ukrainians (who are now experiencing Central African level of poverty) but still huge.

I think he should resist US imperial advances (sugarcoated as "export of democracy") more strongly. But that's just me.

https://toinformistoinfluence.com/2017/06/05/transcript-putin-interview-with-megyn-kelly-of-nbc-news/

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: They have been misled and they are not analyzing the information in its entirety. I have not once seen any direct proof of Russia's interference in the presidential election in the USA.

We have talked about it with former president Obama and with several other officials. No one ever showed me any direct evidence.

When we spoke with President Obama about that, you know, you should probably better ask him about it – I think he will tell you that he, too, is confident of it. But when he and I talked I saw that he, too, started having doubts. At any rate, that's how I saw it.

I have already told you, and I can say it again, that today's technology is such that the final address can be masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one will be able to understand the origin of that address. And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack.

Modern technology is very sophisticated and subtle and allows this to be done. And when we realize that we will get rid of all the illusions. That's one thing. The other thing is that I am deeply convinced that no interference from the outside, in any country, even a small one, let alone in such a vast and great power as the United States, can influence the final outcome of the elections. It is not possible. Ever.

Megyn Kelly: But the other side says is it was only 70,000 votes that won Trump the election, and therefore influencing 70,000 people might not have been that hard.

Vladimir Putin: The Constitution of the United States and the electoral legislation are structured in such a way that more electors can vote for a candidate who is backed by fewer voters. And such situations do occur in the history of the United States. True, isn't it?

Therefore, if we were to discuss some kind of political and social justice, then probably that electoral legislation needs to be changed and bring a situation where the head of state would be elected by direct secret ballot and so there will be direct tabulation of votes that can be easily monitored. That's all there is to it. And there will be no need for those who have lost the elections to point fingers and blame their troubles on anybody.

Now, if we turn this page over, I will tell you something that you most likely know about. I don't want to offend anyone, but the United States, everywhere, all over the world, is actively interfering in electoral campaigns in other countries. Is this really news to you?

Just talk to people but in such a way (to the extent it is possible for you) so as to convince them that you're not going to make it public. Point your finger to any spot on the world's map, everywhere you'll hear complaints that American officials interfere in their political domestic processes.

Therefore, if someone, and I am not saying that it's us (we did not interfere), if anybody does influence in some way or attempts to influence or somehow participates in these processes, then the United States has nothing to be offended by. Who is talking? Who is taking offense that we are interfering? You yourselves interfere all the time.

Megyn Kelly: That sounds like a justification.

Vladimir Putin: It does not sound like justification. It sounds like a statement of fact. Each action invites appropriate counteraction, but, again, we don't need to do that because I did not tell you this without a reason, both you personally and other members of the media, recently I was in France and I said the same things.

Presidents come and go, and even parties come to and away from power. But the main policy tack does not change. So by and large we don't care who will be at the helm in the United States. We have a rough idea of what is going to happen. And in this regard, even if we wanted to it wouldn't make any sense for us to interfere.

Megyn Kelly: You had said for months that Russia had nothing to do with the interference of the American election, and then this week you floated the idea of patriotic hackers doing it. Why the change and why now?

Vladimir Putin: It's just that the French journalists asked me about those hackers, and just like I told them, I can tell you, that hackers may be anywhere. They may be in Russia, in Asia, in America, in Latin America. There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a scenario? In the middle of an internal political fight, it was convenient for them, whatever the reason, to put out that information. And put it out they did. And, doing it, they made a reference to Russia. Can't you imagine it happening? I can. Let us recall the assassination of President Kennedy.

There is a theory that Kennedy's assassination was arranged by the United States special services. If this theory is correct, and one cannot rule it out, so what can be easier in today's context, being able to rely on the entire technical capabilities available to special services than to organize some kind of attacks in the appropriate manner while making a reference to Russia in the process. Now, the candidate for the Democratic Party, is this candidate universally beloved in the United States? Was it such a popular person? That candidate, too, had political opponents and rivals.

Megyn Kelly: Let's move on. A special counsel has been appointed to investigate contacts between your government and the Trump campaign. You have said that your ambassador Kislyak was just doing his job. Right? So, what exactly was discussed in those meetings?

Vladimir Putin: There were no sessions. You see, there were no sessions. When I saw that my jaw dropped.

Megyn Kelly: No meetings between Ambassador Kislyak and anybody from the Trump campaign?

Vladimir Putin: No clue. I am telling you honestly. I don't know. That's an ambassador's every day, routine work. Do you think, an ambassador from any place in the world or from the US reports to me daily as to whom he meets with and what they discuss? It's just absurd. Do you even understand what you are asking me?

Megyn Kelly: Well, you're his boss.

Vladimir Putin: Listen, his boss is the foreign minister. Do you think I have the time to talk to our ambassadors all over the world every day? This is nonsense. Don't you understand that this is just some kind of nonsense. I don't even know with whom he met there. Had there been something out of the ordinary, something remarkable he of course would have advised the minister and the minister would have informed me. Nothing of that happened.

... ... ...

Megyn Kelly: Many Americans hear the name, Vladimir Putin. And they think, "He runs a country full of corruption, a country in which journalists, who are too critical, could wind up murdered, a country in which dissidents could wind up in jail or worse." To people who believe that, what is your message?

Vladimir Putin: I want to say that Russia is developing along a democratic path, this is without question so. No one should have any doubts about that. The fact that, amidst political rivalry and some other domestic developments, we see things happen here that are typical of other countries, I do not see anything unusual in it.

We have rallies, opposition rallies. And people here have the right to express their point of view. However, if people, while expressing their views, break the current legislation, the effective law in place, then of course, the law enforcement agencies try to restore order.

I am calling your attention to something that I discussed recently when on a trip to France and in my discussions with other European colleagues. Our police force, fortunately, so far, do not use batons, tear gas or any other extreme measures of instilling order, something that we often see in other countries, including in the United States.

Speaking of opposition, let us recall the movement Occupy Wall Street. Where is it now? The law enforcement agencies and special services in the US have taken it apart, into little pieces, and have dissolved it. I'm not asking you about how things stand in terms of democracy in the United States. Especially so that the electoral legislation is far from being perfect in the US. Why do you believe you are entitled to put such questions to us and, mind you, do it all the time, to moralize and to teach us how we should live?

We are ready to listen to our partners, ready to listen to appraisals and assessments when it is done in a friendly manner, in order to establish contacts and create a common atmosphere and dedicate ourselves to shared values. But we absolutely will not accept when such things are used as a tool of political struggle. I want everybody to know that. This is our message.

[Jun 21, 2017] The CIAs principal house organ, the New York Times, published a lead editorial Sunday on the investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election that is an incendiary and lying exercise in disinformation aimed at whipping up support for war with Russia.

Jun 21, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

RGC

, June 21, 2017 at 06:44 AM
The New York Times steps up its anti-Russia campaign
21/06/2017

The CIA's principal house organ, the New York Times, published a lead editorial Sunday on the investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election that is an incendiary and lying exercise in disinformation aimed at whipping up support for war with Russia.
....................

Not a single one of the reports in the Times or Post is the product of a genuine investigation by journalists. Instead, the main reporting on the "Russian hacking" affair consists of taking dictation from unidentified intelligence officials. In not a single case did these officials offer evidence to substantiate their claims, invariably made in the form of ambiguous phrases like "we assess," "we believe," "we assess with high confidence," etc. Such claims are worth no more than previous assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction-a lie used to justify a war that has killed more than one million people.

http://www.defenddemocracy.press/the-new-york-times-steps-up-its-anti-russia-campaign/

RGC -> RGC... , June 21, 2017 at 06:47 AM
Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul Buck Party Consensus on Russia and Iran Sanctions


Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal explains that these sanctions punish Russia and Iran and unnecessarily intensifies the conflict between the US and these countries

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=19337

sanjait -> RGC... , June 21, 2017 at 10:55 AM
Dead wrong about Bernie:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-russia-blackmail-links-vladimir-putin-nice-things-democratic-senator-a7647546.html

Nice try though!

RGC -> sanjait... , June 21, 2017 at 11:26 AM
Thursday, June 15, 2017

WASHINGTON, June 15 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement Thursday after he voted against a bill that would impose new sanctions on Iran and Russia:

"I am strongly supportive of the sanctions on Russia included in this bill. It is unacceptable for Russia to interfere in our elections here in the United States, or anywhere around the world. There must be consequences for such actions. I also have deep concerns about the policies and activities of the Iranian government, especially their support for the brutal Assad regime in Syria. I have voted for sanctions on Iran in the past, and I believe sanctions were an important tool for bringing Iran to the negotiating table. But I believe that these new sanctions could endanger the very important nuclear agreement that was signed between the United States, its partners and Iran in 2015. That is not a risk worth taking, particularly at a time of heightened tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia and its allies. I think the United States must play a more even-handed role in the Middle East, and find ways to address not only Iran's activities, but also Saudi Arabia's decades-long support for radical extremism."

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-statement-on-iran-and-russia-sanctions

anne -> RGC... , June 21, 2017 at 07:25 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/opinion/mr-trumps-dangerous-indifference-to-russia.html

June 17, 2017

Mr. Trump's Dangerous Indifference to Russia

anne -> anne... , June 21, 2017 at 01:21 PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/opinion/mr-trumps-dangerous-indifference-to-russia.html

June 17, 2017

Mr. Trump's Dangerous Indifference to Russia

A rival foreign power launched an aggressive cyberattack on the United States, interfering with the 2016 presidential election and leaving every indication that it's coming back for more - but President Trump doesn't seem to care.

The unprecedented nature of Russia's attack is getting lost in the swirling chaos of recent weeks, but it shouldn't be. American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia took direct aim at the integrity of American democracy, and yet after almost five months in office, the commander in chief appears unconcerned with that threat to our national security. The only aspect of the Russia story that attracts his attention is the threat it poses to the perceived legitimacy of his electoral win.

If not for the continuing investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians - and whether Mr. Trump himself has obstructed that investigation - the president's indifference would be front-page news.

So let's take a moment to recall the sheer scope and audacity of the Russian efforts.

Under direct orders from President Vladimir Putin, hackers connected to Russian military intelligence broke into the email accounts of...

ilsm -> anne... , June 21, 2017 at 04:22 PM
Not to worry Trump is doing all Obama did and more to sell Syria to al Qaeda.

Too busy keeping the Wahhabis happy to want to mess with Russia over a few millions Balts' desires.

The US is not offering the last drop of US soldiers' blood to the Balts it is already committed to the Wahhabis.

anne -> anne... , June 21, 2017 at 01:24 PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/opinion/mr-trumps-dangerous-indifference-to-russia.html

Under direct orders from President Vladimir Putin, hackers connected to Russian military intelligence broke into the email accounts of...

[ Interesting passage. ]

Paine -> RGC... , June 21, 2017 at 08:45 AM
Why critique this campaign against Russia
As if the kremlin may to have interfered and even collaborated with trump operatives to do it

Anything less would be dereliction of duty by a great powers leadership

Point out the motivation

Which is indeed a new forward policy on Russian containment by the deep state
As we now call the corporate planted cultivated and coddled security apparatus
With its various media cut thrus cut outs and compadres

Yes the NYT and the WP

Both are working with the deep state
Once called the invisible government
Much as they have in he past

Why I like he color revolution analogy

These media titans are working with the DS
Because they want to topple trump like they wanted to topple Nixon
And to a lesser extent wobble Reagan

Paine -> Paine ... , June 21, 2017 at 08:47 AM
Typo hazard

Russia is obviously tampering as much as optimal

Nothing new

Hence my suggesting putin is jut acting like all great powers must act to be great powers

ilsm -> Paine ... , June 21, 2017 at 04:23 PM
It would have been appeasement for Putin to stand by and let the Hillary neocon take over America and offer the last drop of US soldiers' blood to the Balts.

Ignoring Clinton was like letting Hitler have Prague!

Paine -> ilsm... , June 21, 2017 at 04:37 PM

Indeed
anne -> Paine ... , June 21, 2017 at 09:08 AM
Important, incisive perspective or argument, but a direction seldom taken. A Cold War sort of atmosphere makes us wary of using any such argument, and we have been forming a Cold War environment for several years now. This atmosphere by the way involves the way in which China is generally regarded, and I believe colors economic analysis even among academics.

[Jun 21, 2017] An Assault on Language Extremism by Gregory Barrett

Notable quotes:
"... The wealthy and powerful forces which control both of those influential centers in the formation of public opinion were desperate to regain control of the narrative, which has been slipping away from them at an increasing velocity since the advent of social media, and since the parallel growth of a broad spectrum of information networks with absolutely no interest in currying favor with the mighty, or in defending the status quo. ..."
"... As soon as the term "Fake News" appeared, Barack Obama pounced on it, and in a joint appearance in 2016 with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, used his worldwide microphone and bully pulpit – if only he had done so occasionally to sound the alarm about the approaching environmental crisis, or to express outrage about racism or police brutality, or to challenge war profiteers! – to announce his deep concern that "Fake News" was making it "difficult to govern" (for more on this and the struggle against corporate/government presstitute propaganda, see my article "Hope Is Our Enemy: Fighting Boiling Frog Syndrome"). ..."
"... This clumsy and panicky maneuver has deservedly met with far less success than Obama's incredibly successful propaganda sally against Russia and Vladimir Putin, which has captivated the paranoid fantasies of many millions of Americans and Europeans who desperately want to believe that NATO countries are virtuous and innocent, and are threatened by ruthless and aggressive foreigners who are responsible for the spreading chaos in the West. ..."
"... As one of his final acts in office, President Chameleon slapped new sanctions on Russia and deported Russian diplomats: after eight years, his transformation from Nobel Laureate and supposed apostle of peace to McCarthyite New Cold Warrior was complete, and vast numbers of angry Hillaroids were quickly on board the Blame Russia Express, full of self-righteous anger and the conviction that someone had stolen the election and that the usual suspects were obviously the guilty party. ..."
"... Things haven't gone so well for the "Fake News" campaign, however. Too many people could and can see disturbing patterns that ring true, if they spend enough time looking at truthful, objective analysis of the world around us, and there is quite a lot of it available via the internet. ..."
"... More people are spending more and more time on the internet and social media, where presstitute media lose the natural advantages they once had in a world dominated by government-regulated, corporate-financed TV, radio, and print news. ..."
"... It turns out that many of the best-informed writers see the world utterly differently than do the corporate and government shills who determine the "news" content in mainstream media. ..."
"... Social Democrats ..."
"... Christian Democrats ..."
"... The US military is by far the greatest polluter on Earth. ..."
"... I consider that an Orwellian assault on language. "Extremism" is what I oppose. Extreme wealth. Extreme greed. Extreme militarism. Extreme suicidal and ecocidal environmental destruction. Extreme governmental authority. Extreme stupidity. ..."
Jun 19, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

We have had a certain amount of success in exposing the amorphous and mendacious term "Fake News" for what it is: a tool in a major campaign of propaganda against dissenting independent journalism and political writing, a campaign perpetrated by governments and corporate media. The wealthy and powerful forces which control both of those influential centers in the formation of public opinion were desperate to regain control of the narrative, which has been slipping away from them at an increasing velocity since the advent of social media, and since the parallel growth of a broad spectrum of information networks with absolutely no interest in currying favor with the mighty, or in defending the status quo.

As soon as the term "Fake News" appeared, Barack Obama pounced on it, and in a joint appearance in 2016 with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, used his worldwide microphone and bully pulpit – if only he had done so occasionally to sound the alarm about the approaching environmental crisis, or to express outrage about racism or police brutality, or to challenge war profiteers! – to announce his deep concern that "Fake News" was making it "difficult to govern" (for more on this and the struggle against corporate/government presstitute propaganda, see my article "Hope Is Our Enemy: Fighting Boiling Frog Syndrome").

This clumsy and panicky maneuver has deservedly met with far less success than Obama's incredibly successful propaganda sally against Russia and Vladimir Putin, which has captivated the paranoid fantasies of many millions of Americans and Europeans who desperately want to believe that NATO countries are virtuous and innocent, and are threatened by ruthless and aggressive foreigners who are responsible for the spreading chaos in the West.

As one of his final acts in office, President Chameleon slapped new sanctions on Russia and deported Russian diplomats: after eight years, his transformation from Nobel Laureate and supposed apostle of peace to McCarthyite New Cold Warrior was complete, and vast numbers of angry Hillaroids were quickly on board the Blame Russia Express, full of self-righteous anger and the conviction that someone had stolen the election and that the usual suspects were obviously the guilty party.

Things haven't gone so well for the "Fake News" campaign, however. Too many people could and can see disturbing patterns that ring true, if they spend enough time looking at truthful, objective analysis of the world around us, and there is quite a lot of it available via the internet.

More people are spending more and more time on the internet and social media, where presstitute media lose the natural advantages they once had in a world dominated by government-regulated, corporate-financed TV, radio, and print news.

It turns out that many of the best-informed writers see the world utterly differently than do the corporate and government shills who determine the "news" content in mainstream media.

Which brings us to one of the latest victims in the assault on language by the 1% and their pawns in the presstitute media: the word "extremism".

Here in the European Union where I live, this word is currently heard so often in the traditional media – along with another victimized word being brutalized almost non-stop, "populist" – that even poorly-educated persons who aren't sure exactly what is meant can understand that they must mean something very, very bad.

If any such confused persons should take the time to pay closer attention and attempt to ascertain what it is that makes these "extremists" and "populists" so deplorable and dangerous, they may soon notice that at least one of these words, "extremist", has a pretty nebulous field of application. According to major sources of conventional wisdom in the EU, terrorists are "extremists". But "extremism", more generally, is also applied casually to nearly any political parties and interest groups to the Left and the Right of the large (if shrinking in some countries like France) parties called "people's parties" (Volksparteien) here in Germany: the no-longer-socialist Social Democrats who are allegedly center-left, the pseudo-Christian Christian Democrats who portray themselves as center-right, and even the thoroughly compromised and faded-to-brown Green Party , which has gone to great lengths and engaged in stupendous contortions of deliberate conformism to achieve its modern status as a pillar of the established order, a long journey from its radical roots in the 1980s.

As you may have deduced from my snarky tone, I find myself firmly ensconced among the so-called "extremists" of the Left.

What, one may legitimately ask, are the views which have led to this branding as a dangerous individual? Do I advocate keeping a stock of Molotov Cocktails handy for quick use when the shit starts to fly? I do not.

  • Do I engage in plots to overthrow the "legitimate" government and spread chaos throughout the EU? Do I support terrorism? I do not. While I have grave reservations about the ostensible "legitimacy" of a number of the governments named, and have major issues with the extent to which they are in thrall to American imperial foreign/military policy and the destructive austerity policies of the IMF and World Bank and Big Finance, you will find no blueprints for violent revolution at my house. I pay taxes and comply with bureaucratic governmental requirements. And as far as terrorism goes, I would even argue that it is NATO countries' complicity in American imperial designs and hegemony which is the source of most terrorism and is thus, in reality, "extreme" (see my recent article "Russia Didn't Do It").
  • Am I armed? I am not. I have never owned a gun. My only weapon is the keyboard at which I now write.
  • Do I support dangerous political organizations? I support the German party "Die Linke" (The Left), which is the largest opposition party in Germany's Parliament, the Bundestag, and a full participant in the national electoral process, having won around 14% of the vote in the last election. AHHH now we're getting somewhere. "Die Linke" is accused quite regularly in the corporate and government media of being "extreme".
  • And why? What positions does the party hold which are considered dangerous?

Okay I guess I'll have to come clean. Here are the radical, dangerous, "extremist" positions I support when I advocate more influence for this political party:

  • An end to weapons exports from Germany, especially into crisis regions, but more broadly, in principle.
  • The disbanding of NATO, which was formed as an allegedly defensive alliance against the "Warsaw Pact" or communist military bloc led by the Soviet Union – which no longer exists. An end to German participation in overseas military intervention (such as the current activity in Afghanistan).
  • A more extensive social system which builds more low-cost housing and offers greater protection for the rights of workers and less affluent citizens – rights which were scaled back by the program "Agenda 2010" to make the German economy more "competitive".
  • Active measures by government to stop the widening of the gap between rich and poor which, although not yet as profound in Germany as in the USA, is heading in the same direction.
  • Higher taxes on the wealthy.
  • A much more independent position on the world stage for Germany and the EU, with an end to EU servility to the USA.
  • Fundamental reform of the EU, with less power for Big Finance in its deliberations and economic policies, which have created great hardship in Greece, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere.

In addition, there is my allegedly "extreme" position on the environment, which is not so much a priority for "Die Linke" but is the most important issue of all for me personally. I am convinced that only a radical transformation of the world economy can save this planet, including most life on Earth. I believe this can only come about through an end to industrial capitalism: a ban on most fossil fuels, an end to the production of most plastics, an end to most beef production and strict organic regulation of all meat production, and worldwide mandatory measures to clean up the poisonous residue of the current system which is killing the planet. This will necessarily involve huge cuts in most military structures and war-making as well. The US military is by far the greatest polluter on Earth.

For these views, and my concomitant rejection of the large political parties in the EU and the USA which have done almost nothing to save the planet that was not outweighed by massive destruction – parties which thus, in the name of "realism", have sold our future to the rich and may have doomed all life on this planet, as scientific opinion is near unanimous that time is short – for these views I am labeled an "extremist".

I consider that an Orwellian assault on language. "Extremism" is what I oppose. Extreme wealth. Extreme greed. Extreme militarism. Extreme suicidal and ecocidal environmental destruction. Extreme governmental authority. Extreme stupidity.

[Jun 21, 2017] House Russia Probe Hobbled by Sharp Divide on Intelligence Panel

Jun 21, 2017 | www.msn.com

But Nunes complained on the radio show Monday that Democrats want to look now into accusations that Trump committed obstruction of justice because, he asserted, the probe so far has turned up "no evidence of collusion" between the president and the Russians.

"Republicans are getting tired of what appears to be investigations without a crime," Nunes said. "If someone doesn't pull a Russian out of a hat soon," he said, people "have got to question what is going on."

[Jun 21, 2017] Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly, and the Normalization of Conspiracy Culture by Adrienne LaFrance

Jun 17, 2017 | www.theatlantic.com

People who share dangerous ideas don't necessarily believe them.

The catastrophe wasn't what it seemed. It was an inside job, people whispered. Rome didn't have to burn to the ground.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, after the Great Fire of Rome leveled most of the city, Romans questioned whether the emperor Nero had ordered his guards to start the inferno so he could rebuild Rome the way he wanted. They said the emperor had watched the blaze from the the summit of Palatine Hill, the centermost of the seven hills of Rome, plucking his lyre in celebration as countless people died. There's no evidence of this maniacal lyre-playing, but historians today still debate whether Nero orchestrated the disaster.

What we do know is this: Conspiracy theories flourish when people feel vulnerable. They thrive on paranoia. It has always been this way.

So it's understandable that, at this chaotic moment in global politics, conspiracy theories seem to have seeped out from the edges of society and flooded into mainstream political discourse. They're everywhere.

That's partly because of the richness of today's informational environment. In Nero's day, conspiracy theories were local. Today, they're global. The web has made it easier than ever for people to watch events unfold in real time. Any person with a web connection can participate in news coverage, follow contradicting reports, sift through blurry photos, and pick out ( or publish ) bad information. The democratization of internet publishing and the ceaseless news cycle work together to provide a never-ending deluge of raw material that feeds conspiracy theories of all stripes.

From all over the world, likeminded people congregate around the same comforting lies, explanations that validate their ideas. "Things seem a whole lot simpler in the world according to conspiracy theories," writes Rob Brotherton, in his book, Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories. "The prototypical conspiracy theory is an unanswered question; it assumes nothing is as it seems; it portrays the conspirators as preternaturally competent; and as unusually evil."

But there's a difference between people talking about outlandish theories and actually believing them to be true. "Those are two very different things," says Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami and the co-author of the book American Conspiracy Theories . "There's a lot of elite discussion of conspiracy theories, but that doesn't mean that anyone's believing them any more than they did in the past. People understand what conspiracy theories are. They can understand these theories as political signals when they don't in fact believe them."

And most people don't, Uscinski says. His data shows that belief in partisan conspiracy theories maxes out at 25 percent-and rarely reach that point. Imagine a quadrant, he says, with Republicans on the right and Democrats on the left. The top half of the quadrant is the people of either party who are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. The bottom half is the people least likely to believe them. Any partisan conspiracy theory will only resonate with people in one of the two top-half squares-because to be believable, it must affirm the political worldview of a person who is already predisposed to believe in conspiracy theories.

"You aren't going to believe in theories that denigrate your own side, and you have to have a previous position of buying into conspiracy logic," Uscinski says.

Since conspiracy theories are often concerned with the most visible concentration of power, the president of the United States is a frequent target. "So when a Republican is president, the accusations are about Republicans, the wealthy, and big business; and when a Democrat is president, the accusations focus on Democrats, communists, and socialists."

"Right now," he added, "Things are little different. Because of Donald Trump."

As it turns out, the most famous conspiracy theorist in the world is the president of the United States. Donald Trump spent years spreading birtherism, a movement founded on the idea that his predecessor was born outside the country and therefore ineligible for the nation's highest office. (Even when Trump finally admitted in September that he knew Barack Obama was born in the United States, he attempted to spark a new conspiracy .)

Now, Trump's presidency is the focus of a range of conspiracies and cover-ups-from the very real investigation he's under to the crackpot ideas about him constantly being floated by some of his detractors on the left. Like the implication that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are involved in a money laundering scheme with the Russians, plus countless more theories about who's funneling Russian money where and to whom.

"The left has lost its fucking mind, and you can quote me on that," Uscinski said. "They spent the last eight years chastising Republicans about being a bunch of conspiracy kooks, and they have become exactly what they swore they were not. The hypocrisy is thick and it's disgusting."

Trump's strategy in the face of all this drama has been to treat real and fake information interchangeably and discredit any report that's unflattering to him. It's why he refers to reputable news organizations as "fake news," and why he brags about "going around" journalists by tweeting directly to the people. He wants to shorten the distance between the loony theories on the left and legitimate allegations of wrongdoing against him, making them indistinguishable.

Pushing conspiracy theories helped win Trump the presidency, and he's now banking on the idea that they'll help him as president. He's casting himself as the victim of a new conspiracy-a "witch hunt" perpetrated by the forces that want to see him fail.

"Donald Trump communicates through conspiracy theories," Uscinski says. "You can win the presidency on conspiracy theories, but it's very difficult to govern on them. Because conspiracy theories are for losers, and now he's a winner."

What he means is, conspiracy theories are often a way of expressing an imbalance of power by those who perceive themselves to be the underdog. "But if you control the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House, and the White House, you can't pull that," Uscinski says. "Just like how Hillary Clinton can't, in 1998, say her husband's troubles are due to a vast right-wing conspiracy."

Donald Trump may be the most famous conspiracy theorist in America, but a close second is the Infowars talk-radio personality Alex Jones, who has made a name for himself spewing reprehensible theories. He claimed the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax. He says 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombings were carried out by the U.S. government. Jones has an online store where he peddles products like iodine to people prepping for the apocalypse.

Jones has long been a controversial figure, but not enormously well known. That's changing. Jones was a vocal supporter of Trump, who has in turn praised Jones. "Your reputation is amazing," Trump told him in an Infowars appearance in 2015. "I will not let you down." Jones has claimed he is opening a Washington Bureau and considering applying for White House press credentials.

The latest Jones drama is a three-parter (so far): First, the NBC News anchor Megyn Kelly announced she had interviewed Jones, and that NBC would air the segment on Sunday, June 18. Next came the backlash: People disgusted by Jones blasted Kelly and NBC, saying a man whose lies had tortured the families of murdered children should never be given such a prominent platform. Even Jones joined the fracas, saying he'd been treated unfairly in the interview. Finally, on Thursday night, Jones claimed he had secretly recorded the interview, and would release it in full. (So far, he has released what seems to be audio from a phone conversation with Kelly that took place before the interview.)

Kelly has defended her decision to do the interview in the first place by describing Jones's popularity: "How does Jones, who traffics in these outrageous conspiracy theories, have the respect of the president of the United States and an audience of millions?" The public interest in questioning a person like Jones, she argues, eclipses any worries about normalizing his outlandish views. The questions are arguably more valuable than the answers.

Many journalists agree with Kelly's reasoning. But it's also true, scholars say, that giving a platform to conspiracy theorists has measurable harmful effects on society. In 1995, a group of Stanford University psychologists interviewed people either right before or right after they'd viewed Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK , which was full of conspiracy theories. Brotherton, who describes the findings in Suspicious Minds, says people leaving the movie described themselves as less likely to vote in an upcoming election and less likely to volunteer or donate to a political campaign, compared with those walking in. "Merely watching the movie eroded, at least temporarily, a little of the viewer's sense of civic engagement," Brotherton writes.

There are other examples of real-world consequences of giving platforms to conspiracy theorists, too. The conspiracy theory known as Pizzagate , which rose to prominence across websites like 4chan and niche conservative blogs, resulted in a man firing a weapon in a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor.

The debate over Kelly's interview comes on the heels of another high-profile conspiracy theory that sent shockwaves through conservative media circles. At the center of that scandal was the TV host Sean Hannity pushing a conspiracy theory about the unsolved murder of a Democratic National Committee staff member and an explosive Fox News report about the murder that was eventually retracted.

* * *

There's a popular science-fiction podcast, Welcome to Night Vale , developed around the idea of life in a desert town where all conspiracy theories are true. It was first released in June 2012, the summer before a U.S. presidential election, at a moment when Trump was test-driving a new anti-Obama conspiracy. "I wonder when we will be able to see @BarackObama's college and law school applications and transcripts," he tweeted the day Night Vale launched. "Why the long wait?"

Joseph Fink, who co-created the podcast, says conspiracy theories today are continuing to function the way they always have. Conspiracy theories are easy ways to tell difficult stories. They provide a storyline that makes a harsh or random world seem ordered. "Especially if it's ordered against you," he says. "Since, then, none of it is your fault, which is even more comforting."

"That said, more extreme conspiracy theories are becoming more mainstream, which is obviously dangerous," Fink adds. "Conspiracy theories act in a similar way as religious stories: they give you an explanation and structure for why things are the way they are. We are in a Great Awakening of conspiracy theories, and like any massive religious movement, the same power it has to move people also is easily turned into a power to move people against other people."

Look for the last awakening of this sort in the United States, and you'll find a sea of similarities-of course, as conspiracy theories tell us, it's easy to find connections when you go looking for them. Several scholars-people who focus on real conspiracies and people who study conspiracy theories-say the paranoia surrounding the Trump presidency evokes the tumult surrounding the Vietnam War. It's not that conspiracy theories weren't, at times, rampant before that. In the 1940s and 1950s, McCarthyism and the trial of Alger Hiss brought with them a surreal spate of hoaxes and misinformation. But it was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that set off a "general sense of suspicion" that would permeate the culture for some time, says Josiah Thompson, the author of Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination.

"Part of that was, what occurred almost immediately after the assassination, in the years afterward, was Vietnam," Thompson said, "And over time, a complete loss of confidence in what ever the government was saying about Vietnam. That was not just from the presidency, that was from the government itself."

This was also a period in which some of the most dramatic ideas that had been disparaged as conspiracy theories turned out to be true. "I am not a crook," Nixon had insisted. Less than a year later, he resigned. Nixon and Trump are compared not infrequently. Not all presidents are so thin-skinned and antagonistic to the press. Jennifer Senior, reviewing a recent Nixon biography, wrote that "the similarities between Nixon and Trump leap off the page like crickets." Nixon may have been increasingly paranoid in the final months of his presidency, but he didn't have access to the technology that Trump uses to showcase his conspiracy mindedness.

"With real conspiracy theorists, there's a kind of-how to put it-almost a dialectic operative," Thompson says. "Like Trump. You have to keep making wilder and wilder pronouncements over time to hold your audience."

I tell Thompson the idea Uscinski had shared, about how a person can win the presidency on conspiracy theories, but how they don't work so well once you're president. He seems to agree. "In a campaign, what you're trying to do is affect people's opinions that will be harvested on one day," he said. "But governing doesn't have to do with people's opinions. It has to do with facts. That's the real difference."

When the facts are disputed, of course, you do the best you can with the evidence you can find. Josiah Thompson, the author of Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination , has spent years thinking about all this. When I bring up the enormity of unknown unknowns in people's understanding of history, Thompson quotes the writer Geoffrey O'Brien: Black Deutschland by Darryl Pinckney. *

"And that's the trouble," Thompson says. "What may appear as conspiracy theory at one point turns out to be truth at another."

I ask Thompson how sure he is about the official explanation of the JFK assassination, that there was one gunman who fired on the president's motorcade from the Texas School Book Depository.

Thompson believes, based on controversial acoustic evidence, that on November 22, 1963, a shot was fired from the grassy knoll at Dealey Plaza-not just from the depository. "The acoustics give us a kind of template for how the event occurred-these two flurries of shots, separated by about six seconds." (Thompson later clarified that he believes the flurries of shots were 4.6 seconds apart.) He says it was two shots in the second flurry that killed Kennedy. * *

Thompson pauses.

"Does that make me a conspiracy theorist?"

He laughs.

"After all these years? What do you think?"


* New York Review of Books writer Geoffrey O'Brien, who first wrote the line in his review of the Darryl Pinckney novel Black Deutschland.

** Thompson clarified after publication that he believes the flurries of shots in the Kennedy assassination were 4.6 seconds apart, not six seconds apart. He believes Kennedy was killed by two shots in the second flurry, not by the two flurries of shots.

[Jun 20, 2017] FOIA Request On Susan Rices Unmaskings Rejected Because Records Were Moved To Obama Library

Obama was closely allied with intelligence services. So they now protect him and his close circle.
Notable quotes:
"... Any and all requests for information, analyses, summaries, assessments, transcripts, or similar records submitted to any Intelligence Community member agency or any official, employee, or representative thereof by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice regarding, concerning, or related to the following: ..."
"... Any and all records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of any Intelligence Community member agency and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and/or any member, employee, staff member, or representative of the National Security Council regarding, concerning, or related to any request described in Part 1 of this request. ..."
Jun 20, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Back in April, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request for documents related to the unmasking of "the identities of any U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team" by Obama's National Security Advisor Susan Rice. Unfortunately, and quite conveniently for members of the Obama administration, Judicial Watch has been informed by the National Security Council that records related to their request can not be shared because they " have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library" and will "remain closed to the public for five years."

Here is the full letter received from the National Secruity Council:

"Documents from the Obama administration have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library. You may send your request to the Obama Library. However, you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, Presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office."

Here was Judicial Watch's full request:
  1. Any and all requests for information, analyses, summaries, assessments, transcripts, or similar records submitted to any Intelligence Community member agency or any official, employee, or representative thereof by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice regarding, concerning, or related to the following:
    • Any actual or suspected effort by the Russian government or any individual acting on behalf of the Russian government to influence or otherwise interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
    • The alleged hacking of computer systems utilized by the Democratic National Committee and/or the Clinton presidential campaign.
    • Any actual or suspected communication between any member of the Trump presidential campaign or transition team and any official or employee of the Russian government or any individual acting on behalf of the Russian government.
    • The identities of U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team who were identified pursuant to intelligence collection activities.
  2. Any and all records or responses received by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and/or any member, employee, staff member, or representative of the National Security Council in response to any request described in part 1 of this request.
  3. Any and all records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of any Intelligence Community member agency and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and/or any member, employee, staff member, or representative of the National Security Council regarding, concerning, or related to any request described in Part 1 of this request.

Luckily, even if the media and Democrats are unsuccessful at getting Trump impeached in the near future, 5 years is still enough time to make sure that his reputation is sufficiently tarnished that he gets booted from office in 2020. Even better, as The Hill points out today, Joe Biden appears to be getting groomed to take yet another shot at the White House in 2020 which means we may never actually get a shot at understanding exactly what happened in the months leading up to the 2016 election.

HopefulCynical Anarchyteez , Jun 19, 2017 11:36 PM

There is no bigger shitstain than Barack Obama. And the Deep State scum are furiously covering up his many crimes.

tenpanhandle - HopefulCynical , Jun 19, 2017 11:42 PM

Past president's records kept secret for 5 years. Current president's records leaked daily.

07564111 - The_Dude , Jun 19, 2017 11:56 PM

America has no bread yet the circus continues :D

Who would have thought that the collapse of an 'empire' could be so fucking amusing. ;)

philipat - peddling-fiction , Jun 20, 2017 12:29 AM

OK, so let me see if I am understanding this correctly. All any administration has to do is obfuscate and delay FOIA requests until it leaves Office, then everything remains sealed for 5 years?

This cannot have been the intention behind the FOIA and it make the adminstration completely untransparent and unaccountable, which of course irrespective in the case of the Obozo administration, it always was (despite the fact that this was the self-declared "most transparent administration ever"). This goes nicely along the ability of members of an old administration to decline to appear before Congressional hearings even under subpoena.

Oh, and BTW the Presidential Library hasn't even been built yet so where are the records now? Of course, if it ever does get built on the South side of Chicago (if Chicago still exists by then) there is a very good chance that it will get burnt down and all its contents destroyed. That would be convenient wouldn't it?

This completely wreaks of "Banana Republic". What if there is a Court Order; does this still apply?

nmewn - Arnold , Jun 20, 2017 7:05 AM

To be followed by...

"Welp, looks like Elmer Fudd Moving & Storage LLC never delivered the requested documents to the Obama Bath House Library and Massage Parlor as contracted. We have spoken to our lawyers and are in the process of filing a lawsuit against the former owners of EFM&S even though they are now domiciled in the Cayman Islands."

To which prosecutor nmewn says: "Don't bother. The mishandling, transfer, theft, tampering and/or destruction of government property is still a ten year felony. The simple fact it is admitted you entrusted that property to EFM&S LLC is all the evidence I need to proceed with the prosecution so, thanks I guess."

Chuck Todd: "This is an outrage!"

JRobby - Handful of Dust , Jun 20, 2017 6:28 AM

The deep state owns both sides of the aisle.

That is why the whole thing must be torn down and rebuilt. And it will happen again in the future.

March in DC July 4

Yog Soggoth - philipat , Jun 20, 2017 8:10 AM

Obstruction of justice. Totally illegal!

GUS100CORRINA - divingengineer , Jun 20, 2017 12:04 AM

FOIA Request On Susan Rice's Unmaskings Rejected Because "Records Were Moved To Obama Library"

My response: WHAT???????? I am without words!!!

Ace006 - GUS100CORRINA , Jun 20, 2017 12:44 AM

Let's get Susan Rice's records. I don't think she was president recently and probably doesn't have a presidential library.

takeaction - Anarchyteez , Jun 19, 2017 11:36 PM

Remember this....

"Most Transparent Presidency Ever..."

You have to see this....(Enjoy...Not Spam...Safe for Work)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg9m1F8B2_c

[Jun 20, 2017] In Final Oliver Stone Interview, Putin Predicts When Russia-US Crisis Ends

Notable quotes:
"... "You've gone through four U.S. presidents: Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Trump. What changes?" Stone asks him. ..."
"... "Almost nothing. Your bureaucracy is very strong and it is that bureaucracy that rules the world," he says. Then, solemnly, "There is change...when they bring us to the cemetery to bury us." ..."
"... PUTIN: We didn't hack the election at all. It would be hard to imagine any country, even Russia, being capable of seriously influencing the U.S. election. Someone hacked the DNC, but I don't think it influenced the election. What came through was not a lie. ..."
"... They were not trying to fool anybody. People who want to manipulate public opinion will blame Russia. But Trump had his finger on the pulse of the Midwest voter and knew how to pull at their hearts. Those who have been defeated shouldn't be shifting blame to someone else....We are not waiting for any revolutionary changes. ..."
"... TRUMP: I hope I get along with Putin. I hope I do. But there is a good chance that I won't. ..."
"... PUTIN: It almost feels like hatred of a certain ethnic group, like antisemitism. They are always blaming Russians, like antisemites are always blaming the Jews. ..."
"... The editors then flashed to footage of John McCain on the floor of the Senate ranting and raving about Putin. Then Joseph Biden in the Ukrainian parliament, ranting about Russia. Putin tells Stone all of this is unfortunate. He thinks their view is"old world." He reminds Stone that Russia and the U.S. were allies in World War I and World War II. It was Winston Churchill that started the Cold War from London, despite having respect for Russia's strongman leader at the time, the real dictator, Joseph Stalin. ..."
Jun 20, 2017 | www.forbes.com
But with Trump in the White House, the Trump-Putin conspiracy theory is one reality TV show the news media can't shake. Stone's love for foreign policy intrigue at least makes him a Putin kindred spirit here. America's age old fear of the Russians, has made Putin public enemy number one and Stone his sounding board. For some unhappy campers, like John McCain, Putin has " no moral equivalent " in the United States. He's a dictator , a war criminal and tyrant .

"You've gone through four U.S. presidents: Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Trump. What changes?" Stone asks him.

"Almost nothing. Your bureaucracy is very strong and it is that bureaucracy that rules the world," he says. Then, solemnly, "There is change...when they bring us to the cemetery to bury us."

In the last installment of the Putin interviews, the Russian leader admitted to liking Trump. "We still like him because he wants to restore relations. Relations between the two countries are going to develop," he said. It's a sentence very few in congress would say, and almost no big name politicians outside of Trump would imagine saying on television. On Russia, you scold. There is no fig leaf.

In a recent sanctions bill in the senate, only Republicans Rand Paul and Mike Lee voted against it, making for a 97-2 landslide in favor of extra-territorial sanctions against Russian companies, namely oil and gas.

Stone asked him why did he bother hacking the Democratic National Committee's emails if he believed nothing would change on the foreign policy front.

STONE: Our political leadership and NATO all believe you hacked the election.

PUTIN: We didn't hack the election at all. It would be hard to imagine any country, even Russia, being capable of seriously influencing the U.S. election. Someone hacked the DNC, but I don't think it influenced the election. What came through was not a lie.

They were not trying to fool anybody. People who want to manipulate public opinion will blame Russia. But Trump had his finger on the pulse of the Midwest voter and knew how to pull at their hearts. Those who have been defeated shouldn't be shifting blame to someone else....We are not waiting for any revolutionary changes.

Just then, editors cut to a video of Trump talking about Putin.

TRUMP: I hope I get along with Putin. I hope I do. But there is a good chance that I won't.

PUTIN: It almost feels like hatred of a certain ethnic group, like antisemitism. They are always blaming Russians, like antisemites are always blaming the Jews.

The editors then flashed to footage of John McCain on the floor of the Senate ranting and raving about Putin. Then Joseph Biden in the Ukrainian parliament, ranting about Russia. Putin tells Stone all of this is unfortunate. He thinks their view is"old world." He reminds Stone that Russia and the U.S. were allies in World War I and World War II. It was Winston Churchill that started the Cold War from London, despite having respect for Russia's strongman leader at the time, the real dictator, Joseph Stalin.

See:

[Jun 20, 2017] The US intervention in EU gas market is even more pathetic than it seems

No LNG carriers are currently registered under the US flag, and if the USA plans to be a serious exporter it is going to need about 100 new LNG carriers over the next 30 years, something which is frankly not practically achievable considering it takes about 2 years to build one, at a cost of about $200 Million apiece". Of course, miracles can be made to happen if you pour enough money into them.
Jun 20, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , June 16, 2017 at 1:30 am
The US's intervention is even more pathetic than it seems.

This is not a stand alone anti-Russia bill which would signal strength from the US, but an adjunct to the anti-I-ran sanctions bill that continues to seek to punish I-ran in the vague hope that it will pull the plug on the cast-iron nuclear deal it has signed with international partners. The irony there is that I-ran Air is recapitalizing with both Airbus & Boeing (also ATR), 100 odd a piece, not to mention other significant investment opportunities for western firms.

They're quite the Gordian Tits!

Not only is there the potential of the Levianthan gas field off Cyprus/Israel/whatever, brutal dictator Azeri gas will also be arriving in (larger, but not gigantic) quantities. Not to mention that significant buyers of LNG, like the UK, have it come straight from Qatar. Is the US prepared to sell LNG at a discount compared to Qatar that has strategic agreements and its own fundamental interests to be protected by the Western (European) states as well?

So if this plan seems to damage not only the USA's allies but the USA itself, then what is its purpose? Stick it to Trump. Mire any plans to re-balance relations with Russia almost at any cost . It's a no brainer for Democrats as they neither hold a majority in the House or the Senate, and there seem to be enough dog whistle Republicans willing to go along with it, including those with mental problems like John 'Insane' McCaine. Ukraine is almost peripheral except as a convenient tool. It think the US accepts they've screwed the pooch on the Ukraine so its only value is to be used as a festering sore on Russia's frontier. Kiev mops up the completely free public political support whilst it is being kicked in the bollox by the same people.

[Jun 20, 2017] Israel had far more involvement in the US election than Russia

Jun 20, 2017 | nation.foxnews.com
The audience member explained that as Colbert pressed Oscar winner Stone - who was promoting his new Vladimir Putin Showtime series, "The Putin Interviews" - on his apparent sympathy for the Russian president in spite of claims about Russian interference in the US election, Stone, at a disadvantage, tried to shift the talk to Israel.

The source said they "watched from behind [their] hands" as Stone said words to the effect of: "Israel had far more involvement in the US election than Russia."

The "Platoon" director further challenged Colbert by saying, "Why don't you ask me about that?" - but we're told that the host shot back, "I'll ask you about that when you make a documentary about Israel!"

[Jun 20, 2017] Israels Dirty Little Secret

Notable quotes:
"... At a recent panel discussion in Washington, screenwriter, film director and producer Oliver Stone briefly addressed the issue of alleged Russian interference in the recent national election, observing that "Israel interfered in the U.S. election far more than Russia and nobody is investigating them." A few days later, in an interview with Stephen Colbert on the Late Show, Stone returned to the theme, responding to an aggressive claim that Russia had interfered in the election by challenging Colbert with "Israel had far more involvement in the U.S. election than Russia. Why don't you ask me about that?" ..."
"... Don't look for the exchange with Colbert on YouTube. CBS deleted it from its broadcast and website, demonstrating once again that the "I" word cannot be disparaged on national television. ..."
Jun 20, 2017 | www.unz.com

At a recent panel discussion in Washington, screenwriter, film director and producer Oliver Stone briefly addressed the issue of alleged Russian interference in the recent national election, observing that "Israel interfered in the U.S. election far more than Russia and nobody is investigating them." A few days later, in an interview with Stephen Colbert on the Late Show, Stone returned to the theme, responding to an aggressive claim that Russia had interfered in the election by challenging Colbert with "Israel had far more involvement in the U.S. election than Russia. Why don't you ask me about that?"

Don't look for the exchange with Colbert on YouTube. CBS deleted it from its broadcast and website, demonstrating once again that the "I" word cannot be disparaged on national television. Stone was, of course, referring to the fact that the Israel Lobby, most notably acting through its American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is undeniably a foreign lobby, no less so than anyone representing the presumed interests of Russia or China. It operates with complete impunity on Capitol Hill and also at state and local levels and no one dares to require it to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which would permit scrutiny of its finances and also end its tax-exempt "educational" status. Nor does Congress or the media see fit to inquire into AIPAC's empowerment of candidates based on their fidelity to Israel, not to mention the direct interference in the American electoral process which surfaced most visibly in its support of candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.

The last president that sought to compel the predecessor organization of AIPAC to register was John F. Kennedy, who also was about to take steps to rein in Israel's secret nuclear weapons program when he was assassinated, which was a lucky break for Israel, particularly as Kennedy was replaced by the passionate Zionist Lyndon Baines Johnson. Funny how things sometimes work out. The Warren Commission looked deeply into a possible Cuban connection in the shooting and came up with nothing but one has to wonder if they also investigated the possible roles of other countries. Likewise, the 9/11 Commission Report failed to examine the possible involvement of Israel in the terrorist attack in spite of a considerable body of evidence suggesting that there were a number of Israeli-sourced covert operations running in the U.S. at that time.

Looking back from the perspective of his more than 40 years of military service, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer described the consequences of Jewish power vis-ŕ-vis U.S. policy towards Israel, stating that "I've never seen a president – I don't care who he is – stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles your mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens don't have any idea what goes on."

He also addressed the 1967 Israeli assault on the USS Liberty, saying "Israel attempted to prevent the Liberty's radio operators from sending a call for help by jamming American emergency radio channels. [And that] Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned lifeboats at close range that had been lowered to rescue the most-seriously wounded." He concluded with "our government put Israel's interests ahead of our own? If so, Why? Does our government continue to subordinate American interests to Israeli interests?"

It is a question that might well be asked today, as the subservience to Israeli interests is, if anything, more pervasive in 2017 Washington than it was in 2002 when Moorer spoke up. And, as in Moorer's day, much of the partiality towards Israel makes its way through congress with little or no media coverage lest anyone begin to wonder whose tail is wagging which dog. To put it succinctly, there is an Israeli hand in much of what the United States does internationally, and the involvement is not intended to do anything good for the American people.

During the past several weeks alone there has been a flurry of legislation backed by Israel and its Lobby. One bill might actually have been written by AIPAC. It is called Senate 722, Countering Iran's Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017. The bill has 63 co-sponsors, most of whom are the usual suspects, but it also included an astonishingly large number of Democrats who describe themselves as progressive, including Corey Booker and Kamila Harris, both of whom are apparently terrified lest they say "no" to Israel. With 63 co-sponsors out of 100 senators the bill was certain to pass overwhelmingly, and it was indeed approved 98 to 2, with only Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders voting "no."

And there's more to S.722 than Iran – it's subtitle is "An act to provide congressional review and to counter Iranian and Russian governments' aggression." Much of it is designed to increase sanctions on both Iran and Russia while also limiting the White House's ability to relieve any sanctions without approval by congress. Regarding Iran, the bill mandates that "Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, and every 2 years thereafter, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Director of National Intelligence shall jointly develop and submit to the appropriate congressional committees a strategy for deterring conventional and asymmetric Iranian activities and threats that directly threaten the United States and key allies in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond."

ORDER IT NOW

The premise is of course nonsensical as Iran's ability to threaten anyone, least of all the United States, is limited. It is far outgunned by its neighbors and even more so by the U.S., but it has become the enemy of choice for congress as well as for the former generals who serve as White House advisers. The animus against Iran comes directly from Israel and from the Saudi Arabians, who have managed to sell their version of developments in their part of the world through a completely acquiescent and heavily Jewish influenced western media.

And there's more. A bill has surfaced in the House of Representatives that will require the United States to "consult" with Israel regarding any prospective arms sales to Arab countries in the Middle East. In other words, Israel will have a say, backed up undoubtedly by Congress and the media, over what the United States does in terms of its weapons sales abroad. The sponsors of the bill, one Brad Schneider of Illinois, and Claudia Tenney of New York, want "closer scrutiny of future military arms sales" to maintain the "qualitative military edge" that Israel currently enjoys.

Schneider is, of course, Jewish and a life member of AIPAC, so it is hardly as if he is a disinterested party. Tenny runs for office in New York State, so it is hardly as if she is disinterested either, but the net result of all this is that American jobs and U.S. international security arrangements through weapons sales will be at least in part subject to Israeli veto. And you know that is precisely what will happen as Israel could give a damn what happens to the struggling American entity that it so successfully feeds off of.

And there's still more. Bill HR 672 Combating European Anti-Semitism Act of 2017 was passed unanimously by the House of Representatives on June 14 th . Yes, I said "unanimously." The bill requires the State Department of monitor what European nations and their police forces are doing about anti-Semitism and encourages them to adopt "a uniform definition of anti-Semitism." That means that criticism of Israel must be considered anti-Semitism and will therefore be a hate crime and prosecutable, a status that is already de facto true in Britain and France. If the Europeans don't play ball, there is the possibility of repercussions in trade negotiations. The bill was co-sponsored by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Florida and Nita Lowey of New York, both of whom are Jewish.

There is also a Senate companion bill on offer in the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act of 2017. The bill will make the Anti-Semitism Envoy a full American Ambassador and will empower him or her with a full staff and a budget permitting meddling worldwide. The bill is sponsored by Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Marco Rubio of Florida. Gillibrand is unlikely to miss co-sponsoring anything relating to Israel due to her own self-interest and Rubio wants to be president real bad so he is following the money.

And finally, the U.S. Senate has also approved a resolution celebrating the 50 th anniversary of Israel's conquest of East Jerusalem. Again, the vote was unanimous. The resolution was co-sponsored by Senators Charles Schumer and Mitch McConnell, two reptiles who give snakes a bad name and about whom the less said the better. Schumer is Jewish and has described himself as the "shomer" or guardian of Israel in the Senate. That the resolution opposes long established U.S. government policy that the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank by Israel is in contravention of international law and is an impediment to any peace process with the Palestinians apparently bothered not even one Senator.

I might note in passing that there has been no Senate resolution commemorating the 50 th anniversary of the bravery exhibited by the officers and crew of the USS Liberty as they were being slaughtered by the Israelis at the same time as Jerusalem was being "liberated." There is probably even more to say, to include secret agreements with the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, but I will stop at this point with one final observation. President Donald Trump traveled to the Middle East claiming to be desirous of starting serious negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, but it was all a sham. Benjamin Netanyahu took him aside and came out with the usual Israeli bullshit about the Palestinians "inciting" violence and hatred of Jews and Trump bought into it. He then went to see Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and shouted at him for being a liar and opposed to peace based on what Netanyahu had told him. That is what passes for even-handed in the U.S. government, no matter who is president. A few days later the Israelis announced the building of the largest bloc of illegal new settlements on the West Bank since 1992, an action that they claim is being coordinated with Washington.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once boasted about owning the United States. I guess he was right.

[Jun 20, 2017] Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich likened the Russia investigation to going down a rabbit hole where no crime actually has been committed but people's lives are ruined

Jun 20, 2017 | www.msn.com
...Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich likened the Russia investigation to going down a rabbit hole where no crime actually has been committed but people's lives are ruined.

Gingrich said on "This Week" Trump has "a compulsion to counterattack and is very pugnacious" even though that sometimes works to his detriment.

Gingrich said prosecutors may not find evidence of obstruction against Trump, "but maybe there is going to be perjury. And maybe there will be – I mean, you go down the list and we have been here before. We watched Comey [when he was deputy attorney general] appoint [Chicago U.S. Attorney] Patrick Fitzgerald, who was the godfather to Comey's children and Fitzgerald knew there was no crime."

(Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate the leaking of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame in retaliation for her husband Joseph C. Wilson's statements about whether Saddam Hussein obtained uranium from Niger, contradicting the Bush administration. The investigation resulted in Lewis "Scooter" Libby pleading guilty to lying to investigators.)

Gingrich said if there is going to be an investigation into Russian influence, investigators also should look into a speech given by former President Bill Clinton for which he was paid $500,000 and the brother of Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. who is a registered agent for a Russian bank.

"I'm happy to look at Russia's relationship. I actually think it would be healthy to have congressional hearings on foreign influence peddling in the U.S. way beyond the Russians. I think that's important for the future of our democracy," Gingrich said.

"No one, and Comey himself said this in his last testimony, no one has suggested that Donald Trump had anything to do with colluding with the Russians. There's not a bit of evidence he did."

Gingrich said hires by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller indicate he's politicizing the investigation and Comey also should be investigated, a sentiment echoed by Trump attorney Jay Sekulow on CNN's " State of the Union ."

[Jun 20, 2017] Much of the left has gone completely bonkers on this issue. There is now an unholy alliance between the Cold War neocons in Congress and the Trump haters on the left in regard to Russia.

Jun 20, 2017 | www.thenation.com

 Much of the left has gone completely bonkers on this issue. There is now an unholy alliance between the Cold War neocons in Congress and the Trump haters on the left in regard to Russia. Katha Pollitt's legitimate animosity toward Trump because of his attitude toward women has unfortunately clouded her judgment vis-ŕ-vis Russia. However, there is a substantial segment of the left that wants to see better relations with Russia and is dismayed and disheartened by the relentless hyping of the alleged Russian hacking, Trump's ties with Russia, etc. The neocons are laughing all the way to a military confrontation with Russia. Bravo to Victor Navasky and Stephen F. Cohen for continuing to speak truth to hysteria. And bravo to The Nation for doing the same in its editorials.

Peggy Karp
sebastopol, calif.

[Jun 19, 2017] George Washington: Special Prosecutor Mueller Is a Political Hack

Notable quotes:
"... One of the lessons of the Brazilian soft coup is that you don't need the prez to commit a crime or even evidence of one. Just drive down popularity until the public finds it palatable. Dilma Rouseff lost her base and then was toast. ..."
"... As you've pointed out, yves, trump MUST hold his base to survive. ..."
"... The One party, governing class of Democrats/Republicans made itself well known when it voted 97 to 2 in the Senate for S. 722. Statement of Purpose: To impose sanctions with respect to the Russian Federation and to combat terrorism and illicit financing. ..."
"... New sanctions on Russia is a highly bipartisan, one governing class result. ..."
"... It would be nice if the country learned the lesson that running a country* is nothing like running a business (something shallow concept of "leadership" you read about in airport bookstores - and does it remind us of something? - erases). ..."
"... virtuous ..."
"... When I voted for Trump, I thought he would be a fighter. I was wrong. He's not fighting for anything. Maybe his highest priority is simply avoiding assassination. ..."
"... I don't think any of us knew what Trump would be. But while he certainly hasn't helped himself with the tweets and pettish behavior you can really blame him for failing to drain a swamp that also includes lots of members of his own administration (Pence, Haley etc). The elite groupthink on foreign policy in particular is overwhelming. So where would he find subordinates to enact a change of course? And on domestic matters a well bribed Congress is determined to maintain failed GOP Reaganomics. ..."
"... Trump's only real accomplishment may be the defeat of Clinton which has shaken the political world. Now they are seeking to undo that as well. It's the ongoing soft coup that must be resisted or we will turn into Brazil. ..."
"... No one else wanted the slot. It was considered political suicide. Haley turned him down. Joni Ernst turned him down. Ted Cruz said no. Pence only relented because he thought it would give him some national exposure when he sought the presidential nomination in 2020. ..."
"... Good god, had no idea Mueller was the one in charge of the anthrax investigation. That was one of the most ham-handed idiotic things I've ever read about. ..."
"... So what evidence did the FBI have against Hatfill? There was none, so the agency did a Hail Mary, importing two bloodhounds from California whose handlers claimed could sniff the scent of the killer on the anthrax-tainted letters. These dogs were shown to Hatfill, who promptly petted them. When the dogs responded favorably, their handlers told the FBI that they'd "alerted" on Hatfill and that he must be the killer. ..."
"... You'd think that any good FBI agent would have kicked these quacks in the fanny and found their dogs a good home. Or at least checked news accounts of criminal cases in California where these same dogs had been used against defendants who'd been convicted - and later exonerated. As Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times investigative reporter David Willman detailed in his authoritative book on the case, a California judge who'd tossed out a murder conviction based on these sketchy canines called the prosecution's dog handler "as biased as any witness that this court has ever seen." ..."
"... Instead, Mueller, who micromanaged the anthrax case and fell in love with the dubious dog evidence, personally assured Ashcroft and presumably George W. Bush that in Steven Hatfill the bureau had its man. Comey, in turn, was asked by a skeptical Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz if Hatfill was another Richard Jewell - the security guard wrongly accused of the Atlanta Olympics bombing. Comey replied that he was "absolutely certain" they weren't making a mistake. ..."
"... The Year of Voting Dangerously ..."
Jun 17, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

As Lambert pointed out via e-mail:

There's so much bad history that's been normalized we become numb, and this is an impressive parade of horribles.

By George Washington. Originally published at his website

The New York Times characterizes special prosecutor Robert Mueller as being independent and fair:

Robert S. Mueller III managed in a dozen years as F.B.I. director to stay above the partisan fray, carefully cultivating a rare reputation for independence and fairness.

Let's fact-check the Times

Anthrax Frame-Up

Mueller presided over the incredibly flawed anthrax investigation.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office says the FBI's investigation was "flawed and inaccurate" . The investigation was so bogus that a senator called for an "independent review and assessment of how the FBI handled its investigation in the anthrax case."

The head of the FBI's anthrax investigation says the whole thing was a sham . He says that the FBI higher-ups "greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation", that there were "politically motivated communication embargos from FBI Headquarters".

Moreover, the anthrax investigation head said that the FBI framed scientist Bruce Ivins. On July 6, 2006, the FBI's anthrax investigation FBI Plaintiff provided a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI's Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303, which noted:

(j) the FBI's fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer ; and, (k) the FBI's subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence .

Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ and FBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins' guilt . These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions .

In other words, Mueller presided over the attempt to frame an innocent man (and see this ).

Unsure About Assassination of U.S. Citizens Living On U.S. Soil

Rather than saying "of course not!", Mueller said that he wasn't sure whether Obama had the right to assassinate Americans living on American soil . Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley commented at the time:

One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.

***

He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: "Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution."

Spying on Americans

Mueller participated in one of the greatest expansions of mass surveillance in human history. As we noted in 2013:

NBC News reports :

NBC News has learned that under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, the government has been collecting records on every phone call made in the U.S.

On March 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee:

We put in place technological improvements relating to the capabilities of a database to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so that it does not require an individualized search .

Remember, the FBI – unlike the CIA – deals with internal matters within the borders of the United States.

On May 1st of this year, former FBI agent Tim Clemente told CNN's Erin Burnett that all present and past phone calls were recorded :

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation . It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the ainvestigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not ."

The next day, Clemente again appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but added expressly that "all digital communications in the past" are recorded and stored :

NSA whistleblowers say that this means that the NSA collects "word for word" all of our communications .

FBI special agent – and a 2002 Time Person of the Year – Colleen Rowley writes :

Mueller's FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the lhttp://www.washingtonsblog.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=68066&action=editaw improperly serving hundreds of thousands of "national security letters" to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating "terrorism."

Torture

FBI special agent Colleen Rowley points out :

Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any "war crimes files" were made to disappear. Not only did "collect it all" surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller's (and then Comey's) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.

Iraq War

Rowley notes :

When you had the lead-up to the Iraq War Mueller and, of course, the CIA and all the other directors, saluted smartly and went along with what Bush wanted, which was to gin up the intelligence to make a pretext for the Iraq War. For instance, in the case of the FBI, they actually had a receipt, and other documentary proof, that one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had not been in Prague, as Dick Cheney was alleging. And yet those directors more or less kept quiet. That included CIA, FBI, Mueller, and it included also the deputy attorney general at the time, James Comey.

Post 9/11 Round-Up

FBI special agent Rowley also notes :

Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the " post 9/11 round-up " of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI "progress" in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists .

9/11 Cover Up

Rowley points out :

The FBI and all the other officials claimed that there were no clues, that they had no warning [about 9/11] etc., and that was not the case. There had been all kinds of memos and intelligence coming in. I actually had a chance to meet Director Mueller personally the night before I testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee [he was] trying to get us on his side, on the FBI side, so that we wouldn't say anything terribly embarrassing.

But overwhelming evidence shows that 9/11 was foreseeable . Indeed, Al Qaeda crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was itself foreseeable . Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable .

Rowley also said says :

TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a " bombshell memo " to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller's having so misled everyone after 9/11.

In addition, Rowley says that the FBI sent Soviet-style "minders" to her interviews with the Joint Intelligence Committee investigation of 9/11, to make sure that she didn't say anything the FBI didn't like. The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 confirmed that government "minders" obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this ).

Mueller's FBI also obstructed the 9/11 investigation in many other ways. For example, an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location . And see this .

And Kristen Breitweiser – one of the four 9/11 widows instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks – points out :

Mueller and other FBI officials had purposely tried to keep any incriminating information specifically surrounding the Saudis out of the Inquiry's investigative hands. To repeat, there was a concerted effort by the FBI and the Bush Administration to keep incriminating Saudi evidence out of the Inquiry's investigation. And for the exception of the 29 full pages, they succeeded in their effort.

Conclusion

Rather than being "above the fray", Mueller is an authoritarian and water-carrier for the status quo and the powers-that-be.

As Coleen Rowley puts it :

It seems clear that based on his history and close "partnership" with Comey, called "one of the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen," Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.

Mueller didn't speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn't speak out against torture. He didn't speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn't tell the truth about 9/11. He is just "their man."

Furzy , June 17, 2017 at 10:26 am

Excellent run down of the 9/11 coverup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ342GueSUg&feature=youtu.be

15 Years Later: Never Forget 9/11 crimes were never thoroughly investigated

911InsideOut

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Published on Aug 30, 2016
After 15 years of meticulous research and analysis into the events and theories surrounding 9/11, this is a collection of all the best facts and evidence proving who had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the crimes we witnessed on September 11th, and who ought to be investigated if we ever hope to get to the bottom of it.
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UserFriendly , June 17, 2017 at 4:02 am

Well of course he's an evil SOB who has done horrible things in the name of this country, but he has done them for both parties; hence the 'above the partisan fray' line. You can't be a partisan hack if you are hacking up dead bodies for both sides.

integer , June 17, 2017 at 4:43 am

Sigh. Yet another of the empire's eunuchs steps up to the plate. Trump will prevail.

Yves Smith Post author , June 17, 2017 at 6:35 am

I would not bet on that. The play seems to be to bait him into obstruction of justice or pressure him into a health crisis.

johnnygl , June 17, 2017 at 7:41 am

One of the lessons of the Brazilian soft coup is that you don't need the prez to commit a crime or even evidence of one. Just drive down popularity until the public finds it palatable. Dilma Rouseff lost her base and then was toast.

As you've pointed out, yves, trump MUST hold his base to survive.

RenoDino , June 17, 2017 at 10:44 am

Driving down his popularity per se won't harm him. Even the elites who want him out could care less about the vox populi. They need to remind congressional Republicans there is only one party, the governing class, and supporting Trump makes them guilty by association of colluding with Russia and obstructing justice. The end game is making Republicans fall in line with the establishment thus making way for impeachment. It's their only hope and a long shot because the Republicans will be committing suicide.

Art Eclectic , June 17, 2017 at 12:14 pm

Republicans are on a Bataan Death March either way. They either embrace the alt-right and make that the new party standard or the alt-right destroys them. Trumps campaign was about burning down the governing class without respect for party. Not that he will be allowed to do any such thing on a grand scale, there's too much money at stake from donors who bought the governing apparatus fair and square.

Forcing the Republicans to engage in internecine warfare is destroying them. Democrats are doing the job on their own without much help from Trump's team. Both parties are under siege, which is not a bad thing. The bad thing is the destruction of education, energy, environmental, and financial policy. Instead of draining the swamp Trump has introduced swamp sharks to the predator mix.

RenoDino , June 17, 2017 at 1:00 pm

Totally agree and I like introduction of swamp sharks as a new predator class. I envision them as a football with fins. The policies you mentioned were already bad to begin with. Trump's tampering may make them worse at the margins.

Waking Up , June 17, 2017 at 1:25 pm

The One party, governing class of Democrats/Republicans made itself well known when it voted 97 to 2 in the Senate for S. 722. Statement of Purpose: To impose sanctions with respect to the Russian Federation and to combat terrorism and illicit financing.

New sanctions on Russia is a highly bipartisan, one governing class result.

Arizona Slim , June 17, 2017 at 8:58 am

Pressure him into a health crisis? Hmmm, where have we seen that one before?

Point of history: A few months after he left office (in disgrace), Nixon had a phlebitis attack and nearly died.

And he wasn't in the best of shape before he left the White House.

Lambert Strether , June 17, 2017 at 7:01 am

It would be nice if the country learned the lesson that running a country* is nothing like running a business (something shallow concept of "leadership" you read about in airport bookstores - and does it remind us of something? - erases).

It's going to be an expensive lesson though, and the political class might even double down on it; what we need is a virtuous CEO; like Zuckerberg, for example.

* I suppose the counter-argument would be Bloomberg. Perhaps there's a scale issue.

Lambert Strether , June 17, 2017 at 2:00 pm

> Zuckerberg or bloomberg are virtuous? I hope you are joking or being sarcastic.

I ladle my irony out with a shovel these days. It's the only way to cope.

EndOfTheWorld , June 17, 2017 at 5:14 am

When I voted for Trump, I thought he would be a fighter. I was wrong. He's not fighting for anything. Maybe his highest priority is simply avoiding assassination.

Sometimes he will get on Twitter and say some belligerent stuff, but doesn't he realize that he has the authority to hire and fire who he wants?

Carolinian , June 17, 2017 at 8:53 am

I don't think any of us knew what Trump would be. But while he certainly hasn't helped himself with the tweets and pettish behavior you can really blame him for failing to drain a swamp that also includes lots of members of his own administration (Pence, Haley etc). The elite groupthink on foreign policy in particular is overwhelming. So where would he find subordinates to enact a change of course? And on domestic matters a well bribed Congress is determined to maintain failed GOP Reaganomics.

Trump's only real accomplishment may be the defeat of Clinton which has shaken the political world. Now they are seeking to undo that as well. It's the ongoing soft coup that must be resisted or we will turn into Brazil.

EndOfTheWorld , June 17, 2017 at 9:22 am

Right, when he selected Pence as veep you could already see he was giving in to the establishment. But he had to: otherwise they would never have let him leave the convention with the nomination.

I would have preferred to see him select somebody like Jesse Ventura or Nomi Prins or Alex Jones as veep and let the chips fall where they may. It's not like he needs the job anyway.

edmondo , June 17, 2017 at 10:59 am

" when he selected Pence as veep you could already see he was giving in to the establishment.".

No one else wanted the slot. It was considered political suicide. Haley turned him down. Joni Ernst turned him down. Ted Cruz said no. Pence only relented because he thought it would give him some national exposure when he sought the presidential nomination in 2020.

EndOfTheWorld , June 17, 2017 at 12:34 pm

They turned him down only because they believed he had no chance of winning. But he had to choose somebody entrenched with the Republican establishment, because as it was he barely made it out of Cleveland still the nominee.

There were a lot of Republicans like Romney and Kasich who went to Cleveland but did not attend the convention. Obviously hoping for some kind of coup which would kick out The Donald.

Kim Kaufman , June 17, 2017 at 6:11 pm

Chris Christie would have done it in a heartbeat. The establishment did sort of force or trick Trump into Pence as I recall.

Disturbed Voter , June 17, 2017 at 6:41 am

People who want to be liked/loved are insecure demagogues. People who obey illegal orders or who initiate them, are no friend of the People. And yes, the real Deep State is bipartisan. Partisanship we see is kabuki.

And most coverups aren't Bourne Identity, they are just an incompetent bureaucracy covering its tracks.

RRH , June 17, 2017 at 7:46 am

"Hope" is not "You Will" when it comes to Flynn.

Asking organizations that knew there was no connection to make it public is not "obstruction of justice," it is exposing the deep state's intense effort to keep the level of the swamp high. Telling Comey to get on with the investigation is not obstruction, but an effort to expedite the witch hunt to it's logical conclusion so that the Administration can get on with it's agenda. Deep state's leaks are all against Trump. Statistically impossible.

cocomaan , June 17, 2017 at 8:15 am

Good god, had no idea Mueller was the one in charge of the anthrax investigation. That was one of the most ham-handed idiotic things I've ever read about.

Good to see George Washington around these parts again, there's few people as passionate about politics as him!

Katniss Everdeen , June 17, 2017 at 9:14 am

Here's an interesting run through of mueller's handling of the anthrax investigation, among other things. A fun bit:

So what evidence did the FBI have against Hatfill? There was none, so the agency did a Hail Mary, importing two bloodhounds from California whose handlers claimed could sniff the scent of the killer on the anthrax-tainted letters. These dogs were shown to Hatfill, who promptly petted them. When the dogs responded favorably, their handlers told the FBI that they'd "alerted" on Hatfill and that he must be the killer.

You'd think that any good FBI agent would have kicked these quacks in the fanny and found their dogs a good home. Or at least checked news accounts of criminal cases in California where these same dogs had been used against defendants who'd been convicted - and later exonerated. As Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times investigative reporter David Willman detailed in his authoritative book on the case, a California judge who'd tossed out a murder conviction based on these sketchy canines called the prosecution's dog handler "as biased as any witness that this court has ever seen."

Instead, Mueller, who micromanaged the anthrax case and fell in love with the dubious dog evidence, personally assured Ashcroft and presumably George W. Bush that in Steven Hatfill the bureau had its man. Comey, in turn, was asked by a skeptical Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz if Hatfill was another Richard Jewell - the security guard wrongly accused of the Atlanta Olympics bombing. Comey replied that he was "absolutely certain" they weren't making a mistake.

http://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/21/comey-mueller-bungled-big-anthrax-case-together/

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the fix is in. BTW, Hatfill got $5+ million in taxpayer money thanks to mueller / comey's dogged yet severely flawed pursuit of truth, justice and the american way.

Alex Morfesis , June 17, 2017 at 3:37 pm

Hold on had to open another roll to triple layer my tf hat there that's better

If hatfill might lead to others, one has to work hard to create the legend and backstory to divert attention

Mueller is the typical insider designed to insure only the unwashed and uninitiated are thrown into the grinder to keep the news folks busy with filling the hole between the ads

Hatfill might not have been the direct person, but the south afrikans and boeremag around and associated with him

And those wondrous apartheidistas were allowed to keep their toys after most of them had their "matter" dismissed

Mueller is there to keep trump in check the investigation will go on and on and on feeding tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to a group of "approved" insiders who will occasionally on a late friday, burp out some pdf report before some major sporting event or just after some massive news story on a thursday

"Bungling" a case is the best way to cover it up when it might lead to unexpected further investigation

Back to the funny papers yellow kid strikes again

teejay , June 17, 2017 at 8:59 am

Washington Blog forgot to mention Mueller slow walking the BCCI investigation.

https://saboteur365.wordpress.com/2017/05/17/special-prosecutor-mueller-is-the-consummate-deep-state-insider/

http://www.blacklistednews.com/?news_id=4304

lyman alpha blob , June 17, 2017 at 10:52 am

Good catch – thanks for pointing that out.

Mueller was also head of the FBI when post 9-11 it began framing impressionable young men by handing them phony weapons and then arresting them as 'terrorists' in an attempt to make it look like the spooks were keeping the country safe or some such nonsense.

I would imagine Trump can expect the same treatment.

Charles Yaker , June 17, 2017 at 9:59 am

Just for the record Trump is being Trump just like Obama did what Obama wanted despite Progressive self denial.

David Carl Grimes , June 17, 2017 at 10:33 am

Does the obstruction of justice issue have any merit? I thought it was a nothingburger according to posts here in the NC

Yves Smith Post author , June 17, 2017 at 12:34 pm

Of all people, Alan Dershowitz says no because in the US the DoJ and the FBI report to the President. He can fire anyone he wants to. According to Dershowitz, he can also tell them to stop an investigation. He can also pardon anyone, including himself! The idea that they are independent is a canard the media has been selling and civics-challenged Americans have been buying.

This is also not at all comparable to Watergate. There was an actual crime, as opposed to a protracted "Trump won when he shouldn't have! Evil Rooskies must have engineered it! And on top of that, they must have a secret handshake with Trump!" that has yet to do anything beyond hyperventilate about Trump officials knowing and meeting some Russians. And the reason firing the Watergate special prosecutor was obstruction of justice was that that that investigator, Archibald Cox, had been appointed by Congress and therefore really was independent.

Lambert Strether , June 17, 2017 at 1:55 pm

To my simple mind, the charge of obstruction of justice implies that there is justice to be obstructed, i.e. that the charges of Russian collusion of Trump were made in good faith with an evidentiary basis. Dubious, at best. Anonymous leaks from "intelligence officials" are not enough. Nor is the Steele report, such as it is.

Parker Dooley , June 17, 2017 at 2:56 pm

"To my simple mind, the charge of obstruction of justice implies that there is justice to be obstructed, i.e. that the charges of Russian collusion of Trump were made in good faith with an evidentiary basis"

Lambert, that is not how it works for the little people. Based on the gossip about Trump's actual net worth, perhaps he has been pegged as one of "us".

Plenue , June 17, 2017 at 7:09 pm

Democrats have gone from "Russia did something AND WE HAVE PROOF!" to Maxine Waters admitting they don't even have evidence that any crime was committed, but they all believe that something happened, so they just have 'connect the dots' and find actual evidence. This is some real presuppositional crap here; this is the type of 'thinking' that liberals are always mocking Creationists for. Over half of year with no evidence that anything even happened isn't an investigation: it's a fishing expedition.

Bobby Gladd , June 17, 2017 at 7:14 pm

So many Bright Shiny Things out there for our distraction pleasure (golden shower hookers, Russian anti-Clinton email and election hacking, dirty money, Jared ). How about keeping Eyes on the Prize. General Flynn was conducting an illegal rogue solo privatized ad hoc foreign policy shop, for which he was getting handsomely compensated by foreign entities. Trump either knew it since the beginning of their relationship (and either didn't care, or winky-winky greenlighted it), or suborned it when he later found out. Then he incontrovertibly started leaning on the investigations. Obstruction of Justice, if the phrase is to have any rational meaning. Whether the only remedy for that is impeachment is a separate issue (and is probably the case where Trump is concerned, notwithstanding that he'll probably pardon Flynn and bet on not getting convicted by the Senate).

Lambert Strether , June 17, 2017 at 7:29 pm

Since the whole thing is such a mass of confusion and conjecture, I don't see how it's clear what can have been "obstructed" or indeed what "justice" might mean. (Rhe "Russian hacking" of votes, for example, is so ludicrous it's pointless to discuss it, even if around half of Clinton's voters believe it)

On Flynn, who Trump heaved over the side, the alternative theory is that Flynn was opening an independent channel to the Russians, and The Blob hates that, because they want to go to war with Russia. As far as "inconvertibly," I always look adverbs like that. All I can tell is that great legal minds differ.

Steven , June 17, 2017 at 10:51 am

What the country and the world needs is someone who is actually serious about 'Draining the swamp' in Washington – and the editorial offices at the New York Times!

P.S. I'm still reading Maureen Dowd's The Year of Voting Dangerously . In a 2014 article Dowd provides a catalogue of sellouts by major Democratic Party players to Hillary and the Clintons, e.g. Elizabeth Warren, when it looked like the 2016 election was going to be a sure thing for HRC. The catalogue was so precise and devastating most likely the only thing that saved Dowd's job at the NYT was the reverence for HRC's ruthless pursuit of power with which she concluded the chapter (and, of course, Dowd's prodigious talent as a writer) .

Art Eclectic , June 17, 2017 at 12:22 pm

Draining the swamp in Washington would require removal of all sitting members of Congress. Those people ARE the swamp. They're duly elected and funded by the donor class to make business decisions that will impact revenue for the winners. We hold elections to decide which businesses we want to win. The FIRE sector famously buys both sides of the table to hedge.

JEHR , June 17, 2017 at 12:38 pm

A fine description!

Michael , June 17, 2017 at 12:09 pm

How crazy is the idea that Paul Ryan becomes Prez after the investigations conclude? We haven't done that yet if I recall correctly. Would Pence be any good as a Prez? Or would the R party clean house and force him out? Could he select a new VP then? (I don't know the answer to that one either) .

Yves Smith Post author , June 17, 2017 at 12:35 pm

Completely batshit but the Democrats keeping the upset dialed to 11 may get us there.

Pence was not a very good governor but he'd be celebrated for looking Presidential and not being Trump. He's also way more conservative and would get far more bills passed.

The Dems have a much better chance with Trump in in 2018 than out. They are best served by keeping him on the defensive rather than actually succeeding in driving him out. Pence would be a much less powerful fundraising hook than Trump, for instance.

Left in Wisconsin , June 17, 2017 at 1:46 pm

Dems want to make same mistake nationally they made here with Walker. Instead of giving voters til the next election to make up their mind, they prematurely instigated a recall, leading to the recall election being in the middle of summer instead of Nov 2012, and they lost because a majority of voters didn't like the process.

If they succeed in getting Trump out before 2018, there is likely to be a huge sympathy vote for Repubs when 2018 rolls around.

gepay , June 17, 2017 at 3:07 pm

Such is the state of political affairs that one has to wonder what, if anything, is true. Did Trump select (?) Pence as VP in order to get some cooperation from the mainsteam Republicans? If he had picked someone like Ron Paul one might have thought there was a good chance he would "drain the swamp". Goldman Sachs alumni, billionaires, and generals in his cabinet are not exactly "draining the swamp". One couldn't submit to HBO a series script with some general (affectionately lol) known as "Mad Dog" being the Sec of Def. So what part of the Powers That Be does Mueller work for? The part of which Soros is a visible element was not happy with Trump. It is possible that this whole circus is just a distraction rather than two different elements of the people who really decide things fighting. One clue is if damaging evidence comes out about either side. it is possible that the DNC and Podesta leaks were just from disillusioned Democrat (Bernie suppporters). Or they could be the evidence there is a real split.Did the revelations of former CFR (?ostracized) Steve Pieczenik of Trump being a counter coup to ;the Clintonistas have any value? FDR said, if it happens in the political world, it was planned, The only thing clear to me is when you get this kind hall of mirrors head confusion, then the CIA is at work.

Bernard , June 17, 2017 at 12:43 pm

Trump is a businessman out to make a profit. Hillary is a con artist out to grift. otherwise, there isn't that much difference betwixt the two. Hillary is straight forward with her "scam." Trump uses Market strategy to con others . Hillary uses whatever it takes to "get" and "enjoy" Power.

Trump's kind of business "men" hire media who enable the "Right kind" of Calvanism/American "Thinking" which has bought Congress. These grifters "use" whatever it takes to get what they want. Since everything has a price, Everything is for sale to the highest bidder . outright theft, looting and pillaging legalized by Congress. Lies, mispeaking, and others means. "Whatever it takes!," as someone said.

we could not foresee exactly what kind of "Grifter in Chief" Trump would turn out to be until in office . The Blob has now 'ensnared" Trump as blowback for "stealing" the Presidency. Hillary as the rightful heir is doing her part with her morally indignant, empty and vacuous righteousness, as if she possessed "morals" to begin with.

Hillary has continued to play her part in the subterfuge, though it's all out in the open, which lost her the deplorables' vote she didn't care about but she needed.

watching people show surprise at either of these two actors shows how Americans are so easily "led/fooled" by the PR. Goebbels was just ahead of his time . St. Reagan, a Hollywood Actor, who played his "Role," proved how easy it was to "sell' us out to Big Business. Before St. Reagan, due to losing so many elections, the Republican Party just laid low and built the groundwork for the absolute oligarchy we 'enjoy" courtesy of a bought and sold highest bidder Congress we see today.

we cant be nice or respectful to those who despoil our country or planet, for profit. a profit the 99% pay. not calling a spade a spade is how we got to this despicable situation, and allows the Scam to continue. Vichy Democrats and Corporate Republicans need to be jailed. Polite criticism wont cut it.

"For the many, not the few" is a belief we need here in America, too. though Americans are still buying the self-hating PR so-called Leaders Thatcher, St. Reagan sold. the young don't, however, which could promise a hopeful future in England. maybe Bernie can help reconnect the Youth here in America. Obama destroyed that "Dream" in America for the Poor and Young, thank you,very much.

Kent St. shows how the Blob responded to the Youth 50 years ago.
power cedes nothing without unyielding force in America.

Don Lowell , June 17, 2017 at 3:37 pm

Nothing will happen until we get rid of fixed elections. Suppression, kicking voters off the list, gerrymandering, no paper trail voting machine's. We are screwed.

dcblogger , June 17, 2017 at 3:55 pm

Mueller also play a notorious role in the Starr Chamber Whitewater witch hunt. Mueller is really truly awful. In some ways it is satisfying to see all the Republican hacks turn on one another.

Bobby Gladd , June 17, 2017 at 7:46 pm

Busted for my typo. Fair enough. :)

Flynn broke laws, repeatedly. I dimly recall some long ago "3rd rate burglary."

Trump is minimally trying to interfere with justice in regard to Flynn, for whatever reasons.

witters , June 17, 2017 at 7:58 pm

"Robert S. Mueller III managed in a dozen years as F.B.I. director to stay above the partisan fray, carefully cultivating a rare reputation for independence and fairness."

So he was independent and fairness? Clearly laughable nonsense.
So he was "cultivating a rare reputation" as such?
OK: Does that mean for the NYT that "cultivating a rare reputation for X" is what is it TO BE X?
In that case reality has collapsed into and become mere appearance.

(No wonder listening to Putin on Stone's movie is like listening to a different world.)

[Jun 18, 2017] What we see is a set of steps taken directly from Gene Sharp textbook on the subject.

Jun 18, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
libezkova - June 18, 2017 at 04:24 PM "

I like your use of color revolution analogy; it enrages liberal interventionists"

Thank you -- But is not an analogy. What we see is a set of steps taken directly from Gene Sharp textbook on the subject.

I'm not saying the Russians didn't try to tamper with the election, by discrediting already discredited neoliberal establishment (Although, as any patriotic American, I strongly doubt they can tamper as well as we can.)

But the set of steps we observed was the plot to appoint a Special Prosecutor, who later is expected to sink Trump. After the Special Prosecutor was appointed Russia changes does not matter, and more "elastic" charge of "obstruction of justice" can be used instead.

Also note the heavy participation of two heads of intelligence agencies (Clapper and Brennan) and State Department officials in the plot.

[Jun 18, 2017] Red Alert: Russian Focus Might Save Trumps

Notable quotes:
"... I'm not saying the Russians didn't try to tamper with the vote. (Although, as a patriotic American, I doubt they can tamper as well as we can.) I'm not saying it's not important or not worth looking into. I'm just saying that if you put most of your focus and resources and political capital on the bet that you will find some smoking gun of direct collusion between Trump and his circle with the Russian state - evidence so direct and overwhelming that even the GOP extremists in Congress can't overlook it - then you are going to be disappointed. You will not bring down Trump, who, despite mountains of dirt thrown on him, will still walk away and claim vindication. ..."
"... Let's put aside the fact that former head of the FBI - who has spent years waging war on Black Lives Matter and concocting fake terrorist plots to entrap mentally ill loners in order to garner good PR for himself - is now a liberal hero, even a "sex symbol," because he was fired by a lunatic fascist that no one with a shred of honor should have been working for in the first place ..."
"... Let's put aside that former CIA honcho James Clapper - who has lied under oath to Congress about the CIA's Putin-style hacking of the US Senate to stop release of reports on, er, CIA torture, who lied repeatedly about Saddam's non-existent WMD when he was a key player under George W. Bush, and who is now repeatedly saying that Russians have some kind of genetic defect that makes them inherent, unredeemable scheming lowlifes - has also become a much-lauded liberal hero. ..."
"... Let's put aside the abandonment of principle and common sense the "Resistance" has shown toward the bankrupt morality and demonstrable mendacity of these men and their institutions. And how anyone who expresses the same skepticism toward these "organs" that they have been expressing for decades - no matter who is in power - is now regarded as a Putin apologist, a Kremlin stooge or, more and more often, an outright, active traitor. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
Jun 18, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org
The "historic" appearances of James Comey Chameleon and Jefferson Davis Andersonville Sessions before a Senate committee have come and gone, leaving us pretty much where we were before. Trump was made to look stupid and thuggish (not exactly front-page news); his GOP apologists and enablers employed even more ludicrous justifications for said stupidity and thuggery ("Hey, the kid is still green, he didn't know he was doing anything wrong - not that he did do anything wrong, mind you."); media outlets reaped tons of ad revenue; twittery was rampant on every side. We all had a jolly good time. But as for the ostensible object of the exercise - learning more about possible Russian interference in the electoral process, and any part Trump's gang might have had in colluding with this and/or covering it up - there was not a whole lotta shaking going on.

That's to be expected. For I don't believe we are ever going to see confirmable proof of direct collusion between the Trump gang and the Kremlin to skew the 2016 election. I don't doubt there is a myriad of ties between Trump and nefarious Russian characters, all of whom will of necessity have some connection to Putin's authoritarian regime. And there may well be underhanded Trump gang ties of corruption to the state itself. But I don't think a "smoking gun" of direct collusion with Trump's inner circle in vote tampering exists. If it did, it would be out by now. It's obvious the intelligence services and FBI were all over the Trump campaign, looking into Russian ties from many angles.

I'm not saying the Russians didn't try to tamper with the vote. (Although, as a patriotic American, I doubt they can tamper as well as we can.) I'm not saying it's not important or not worth looking into. I'm just saying that if you put most of your focus and resources and political capital on the bet that you will find some smoking gun of direct collusion between Trump and his circle with the Russian state - evidence so direct and overwhelming that even the GOP extremists in Congress can't overlook it - then you are going to be disappointed. You will not bring down Trump, who, despite mountains of dirt thrown on him, will still walk away and claim vindication.

Meanwhile, away from the "dramatic hearings" and the all-day permanent Red scare of the "Resistance," the Trump White House and the Congressional extremists are quietly, methodically, relentlessly transforming the United States into a hideous oligarch-owned, burned-out, broken-down, looted-out, chaos-ridden, far-right dystopia. Right now, the Senate Republicans are trying to push through, in secret, a "health-care" bill that is scarcely less draconian than the universally hated House version, and like that bill, consists of two main parts: a gargantuan tax cut for the very rich and taking away healthcare coverage for millions upon millions of ordinary citizens, including the most vulnerable people in the nation.

And what did we hear Monday from Democratic staffers? That the Senate Democrats are NOT going to wage a fight to the death to prevent this monstrosity from being inflicted on the people; they're not "going nuclear," using every possible tactic and procedural rule to derail the Trumpcare bill, or at least stall it long enough to raise a public outcry against it. And why not? Why, because the Republicans have promised that no sanctions will be removed on Russia without the Democrats getting a chance to vote on it in the Senate. This is the kind of misplaced priority I'm talking about.

I won't even get into the fact that progressives and liberals now venerate the intelligence services they used to rightly condemn for decades of lies and deceit and misinformation and covert murder and, yes, manipulation of our electoral process (not to mention those of other nations.) And let's put aside how every "anonymous leak" from an "intelligence source" is now treated as gospel - even though it comes from the same "intelligence sources" that anonymously leaked all that "credible" evidence of Saddam's WMD way back in caveman times. And told us that Gadafy was about to unleash genocide on his people and was sending in rape squads jacked up on Viagra, etc., only to sheepishly admit later these claims had been all false after Gadafy had been sodomized and murdered in the street by NATO-backed Islamic extremists, even as Hillary Clinton laughed out loud and declared, "We came, we saw, he DIED!"

Let's put aside the fact that former head of the FBI - who has spent years waging war on Black Lives Matter and concocting fake terrorist plots to entrap mentally ill loners in order to garner good PR for himself - is now a liberal hero, even a "sex symbol," because he was fired by a lunatic fascist that no one with a shred of honor should have been working for in the first place.

Let's put aside that former CIA honcho James Clapper - who has lied under oath to Congress about the CIA's Putin-style hacking of the US Senate to stop release of reports on, er, CIA torture, who lied repeatedly about Saddam's non-existent WMD when he was a key player under George W. Bush, and who is now repeatedly saying that Russians have some kind of genetic defect that makes them inherent, unredeemable scheming lowlifes - has also become a much-lauded liberal hero.

Let's put aside the abandonment of principle and common sense the "Resistance" has shown toward the bankrupt morality and demonstrable mendacity of these men and their institutions. And how anyone who expresses the same skepticism toward these "organs" that they have been expressing for decades - no matter who is in power - is now regarded as a Putin apologist, a Kremlin stooge or, more and more often, an outright, active traitor.

Let's put aside all this for now, disheartening as it is, and focus on this: if the intent is to bring down Trump, then there is ample material just lying there for the taking - evidence of blatant criminality and corruption that could be taken up right now, keeping Trump and his whole sick crew tied up in prosecutions, investigations, special committees and independent prosecutors out the wazoo. The man had known Mafia figures with him at his New Year's celebration in Mar-a-Lago just months ago, for God's sake. You don't have to pry piss-tapes from the Kremlin to bring down a mook like Trump.

Of course, part of the problem is that a genuinely wide-ranging and thorough investigation of Trump's criminal corruption would doubtless expose the deep rot at the heart of our system, the incredibly complex entwining of the underworld and the "upper world": the dirty deals, the tax dodges, the sweetheart contracts, the cut-outs to maintain "deniability," the bribes, the "gifts," the special arrangements, the corporate espionage, the interpenetration of state and corporate power at every level, even in warfare and diplomacy - in short, all of the "corrupted currents" that lay behind the gilded facade maintained by our bipartisan elites and their servitors in the political-media class. If you start to pull too hard on the stinking threads of Trump's criminal entanglements, who knows what else might come undone, who else might be exposed?

We saw during the last campaign this reluctance to really go after Trump for the string of dodgy deals and frauds he's left across a decades-long career. Every now and then there would be a quick jab, but even these would usually be obscured by Trump's artful use of blathering idiocy on Twitter. Was he defrauding veterans and cancer patients with his patently fraudulent charities? "Look there! Trump just said McCain was a loser for being captured in Vietnam!" Didn't Trump commit criminal fraud in scamming people out of millions with his fake Trump University? "Look there! Trump's tweeting racist attacks on the judge!" And so off we'd go, fixing on the galling spectacle of Trump's character, while the focus on actual crime and corruption would recede. This reluctance was evident in both the GOP primary and in the general election. I kept waiting for the gloves to come off on Trump's dirty deals, but they never really did. The focus remained on his sleazy character, not his legal dangers; and Trump had long known that the spectacular sleaziness of his character was the mainspring of his popularity, both as a celebrity and candidate. (And yes, this sleaziness and corruption was well-known even when Bill and Hillary were wrapping their arms around Donald at his wedding years before.)

Be that as it may, there is still probably more than enough material on the surface for our elites to bring Trump down without going too deep into the corrupted currents where their own murk might be stirred up. Heck, there might even be enough honest players in the political circus to lead a multi-front attack on Trump's corruption without worrying about themselves being exposed. If you really want to bring Trump down - and in that way, cripple or at least hamper the ravages of the extremists who are using him as their tool - then it seems to me this more straightforward approach would be far more likely to succeed than waiting for some spy to come in from the cold and put incontrovertible proof of direct collusion in our hands.

But I don't see any sign of this happening anytime soon, if ever. The focus will remain on the Russians, who despite being genetically inferior lowbrow swindlers are nevertheless capable of orchestrating practically every event in the world, including, I guess, the rise of Rupert Murdoch and the rightwing media machine, the politicised fundamentalist churches and the thousands of sinister ideological outfits bankrolled by weird billionaires, all of which have spawned an entire alternative universe in which millions of people now live, feeding on lies and smears and hatemongering that fuels their prejudices, their fears, their resentments and their anger, and corrodes their sense of commonality and community with their fellow citizens. I would venture to say that the deliberate cultivation of this vicious and violent alternative reality - along with the creation of the Electoral College in the 18th century, and the vote suppression laws passed by billionaire-funded extremists in state legislatures that disenfranchised millions of anti-Trump voters - had more to do with Trump's victory than any phishing expeditions or email leaking by the Russians.

Again, I'm not saying that the latter didn't happen; it may well be that the people who lied to our faces about yellow cake and aluminium tubes and vials of sarin and CIA torture, the people who wage drone wars on farmers and wedding parties, the people who persecute the mentally ill for their own aggrandizement while stirring up needless fear and hatred are now being honourable and truthful in every single thing they tell us. I genuinely hope so. If they produced that smoking gun from the Kremlin tomorrow and brought Trump down, I'd be over the moon. But I don't think that is going to happen. And I fear we will find that a great deal of ruin has been done - and many more promising avenues of attack have been ignored, perhaps for good - while we chase ghosts in the shadowlands of espionage.

But hey, don't listen to me. I not only write for a publication which was put on a McCarthyite list of "subversives" trumpeted in the Washington Post (before it had to backpedal), I actually even lived in Russia once, which as we know - in an age where Louise Mensch is regarded as a credible source by the "Resistance" and all things Russian are tainted - means I am obviously a Kremlin agent or a Putin fanboy trying to save Comrade Trump from the forces of righteousness. What's more, I know people who still live in Russia, some of whom are even - gasp! - genetically Russian. (Please don't tell liberal hero James Clapper!) So of course, all of these people must be Kremlin tools as well - even though they are putting their lives and livelihoods on the line every day fighting Putin's tyranny, with a courage I doubt we'll see from many of our "Resisters" when Trump finishes with Muslims, immigrants, African-Americans, the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the insulted and injured of every stripe and finally come for the "real" people who read the New York Times and watch Rachel Maddow. For these days it's simply impossible to be associated with Russia in any way, or to question the credibility of our security organs in the slightest, or to suggest possibly better alternatives for removing Trump's copious rump from the Oval Office, without being shunned by polite progressive society.

So take what I say with a pinch of bread and salt. (The traditional Russian offering of welcome - oh damn, I gave myself away again!) But if the focus stays largely on Russia, don't be surprised to see Trump sitting on the White House toilet playing with his tweeter four years from now while Steven Bannon and Richard Spencer plan his re-election campaign.

[Jun 18, 2017] MSM Fake News vs. the Truth by Joachim Hagopian

Notable quotes:
"... #Pizzagate ..."
"... "Don't Let The Bastards Getcha Down." ..."
"... http://empireexposed.blogspot.com ..."
Dec 20, 2016 | www.lewrockwell.com
The Information War: Western Crime Cabal and MSM "Fake News" vs. Truth from Alternative News

Virtually every current headline unequivocally shows how US Empire and its Ministry of Propaganda are lying to the American people. Those in power have been so exposed by alt-media in 2016 that they are growing more desperate by the day. Right now their biggest lie is blaming Putin and Russia for being behind everything gone wrong in the world according to the Obama-Clinton-Bush-CIA-Rothschild crime cabal. The latest claims assert that Putin's hackers overturned the presidential election results in favor of Donald Trump and this whopper is currently being pushed as the flimsiest, last gasp excuse to spearhead its hollow "fake news" crusade in order to both outlaw the truth and derail Trump's January 20 th inauguration.

Longtime State Department veteran psychiatrist Steve Pieczenik , CIA/NSA whistleblower William Binney, CIA whistleblower Ray McGovern, and former UK ambassador Craig Murray have all stated that there is zero evidence showing that the Russians "hacked" emails or interfered with the election outcome in any way. Credible former CIA officers emphatically state that the emails were leaked, not hacked and that Putin had nothing to do with it. The 17 US intelligence agencies remain conflicted with the verdict still out, unable to even arrive at a consensus, despite the FBI's latest cave-in to pressures to feebly present a belated united front against Russia. Flip flopper Comey's at it again. Up until a day or so ago, the FBI maintained that there was not enough evidence to conclude the Russians hacked into DNC records or emails. The Clintons, Obama and their "intelligence" minions are fast growing irrelevant and impotent as the yearend days count down. What's perfectly clear is the CIA/MSM liars are acting on orders from the Clinton et al cartel deceitfully politicizing this meme because they cannot accept the fact that Hillary lost her "anointed" election. The feds' unending war agenda may soon be collapsing.

Before rushing to lynch mob judgment demonizing Putin once again, an important reminder worth noting is the historic track record of the Clintons, Obama, the Bushes and the CIA is that they lie all the time, both pathologically and professionally as full blown certifiable psychopaths . They all played a major part in creating and continuing to back the terrorists al Qaeda, al Nusra and ISIS in the Middle East and beyond. With perhaps the exception of the Saul Alinsky -Bill Ayers, " terrorist-inspired " community organizer and then Illinois state senator Obama, it's worth mentioning that they all bear guilt in murdering 3000 American citizens on 9/11 and then shamelessly promoting the boldface lie that Saddam Hussein had WMD's and direct links to terrorists. But let's not leave out Pinocchio-nosed Barrack who promised to be the most open and transparent president in US history and then proceeded to be the most secretive , least transparent, and perhaps most incompetent president in US history. But then given the mission to destroy America from within by the ruling elite that groomed and launched his meteoric rise, his puppet masters no doubt are very pleased with his record. And as far as the Central Intelligence Agency goes, as the elite's private mercenary army , from its very get-go the CIA's very purpose and everyday business have always been made of lies and propaganda .

Instead of blindly blaming the Russians, far more credible sources have posited that at least one DNC insider – Seth Rich – leaked documents and then likely paid for it with his murdered life. Additionally, if you believe Steve Piecnezik, intelligence operatives launched a soft anti-Clinton counter-coup handing over the thousands of Clinton-Podesta emails to WikiLeaks. And now we're even learning that US Homeland Security has been trying to hack into the Georgia state election apparatus at least ten times. So all these alleged hacks and leaks seem to surfacing internally from sources within the United States, mostly from operatives working either directly inside the government or political apparatchik.

Another relevant point worth raising is the indisputable fact that the US government is the most notoriously guilty entity in the world for constantly meddling and interfering in other sovereign nations' internal elections and affairs, engaging in crime after crime assassinating foreign leaders , and executing dozens of coups overthrowing sovereign governments. And let's face it, all the major players on the global stage are guilty of spying on one another, particularly in cyber-espionage , again with the US the main culprit. So this whole notion of using the blame game to falsely accuse other countries of the very same hideous aggressions that Washington is most guilty perpetrating for well over a century is extremely hypocritical in the least and downright diabolical to the max. Yet for centuries now this kind of duplicity and hubris is exactly how American exceptionalism has criminally operated around the globe with total impunity.

The "blame the Russian" game is an old cold war propaganda tactic from way back. History just keeps repeating itself because the powers-that-shouldn't-be exploit and count on Americans having a short attention span. Those who witnessed or pay attention to history can recall the cold war era of the early 1950's and the Red Scare of McCarthyism when many people's lives were ruined by dishonestly branding them as so-called communists and communist sympathizers. Deep state USA is at it once again, unjustly singling out and punishing those who speak the truth online by again falsely accusing them of being agents of Russian propaganda. Blacklisting alt-media sites that legitimately report accurate accounts of news events and world developments by again falsely accusing them as "fake news" sources when the corporate media liars themselves are infamously guilty of fake news propaganda is just more of the same bogus modus operandi that the government and mainstream media have been redeploying indefinitely for decades.

Project Mockingbird flourished throughout the cold war from the 1950's right into the 1970's and beyond when the CIA influenced if not controlled all the biggest news outlets (25 newspapers and wire agencies) using them to spread Washington's own cold war propaganda. This sinister collusion between the feds and the press resulted in the imperialistic division of two Asian ethnicities – the Koreans and Vietnamese people each split into two enemy nations fighting two costly wars killing up to over 7 million Asians (not to mention 95,000 American soldiers). And when the Senate Church Committee finally exposed Mockingbird, in 1976 then CIA director George Bush senior was forced to proclaim on paper at least its "official" end. But subsequent planting of disinformation in the foreign press that by design would then spread to the US was yet another covert means by which the deceitful CIA continued its propaganda control over both US and foreign news markets.

This unholy nexus has also persisted right up till today through such common ties as the all-powerful Council on Foreign Relations. For many decades the CFR strategically courts and recruits prominent members from mainstream media as well as the entertainment industry for the exact same PR purpose of using them to promote deep state propaganda and collude in corrupt cover-ups to willfully deceive the American public. Then in recent years the corporatized merging of government and mass media utilizing US military, CIA and FBI liaisons in Hollywood has only consolidated power and media control into fewer and fewer hands, with 6 oligarchs in control of the 6 largest mega media giants controlling the outflow of over 90% of today's news. Virtually every TV show and film out of Hollywood now is pure deep state propaganda serving for a full century as the best recruitment venue for brainwashing the next generation of GI's dying on foreign soil battlefields. Hence, what's emerged today is a fascist government cabal maintaining illegitimate control and authority through false propaganda delivered 24/7 by deep state surrogate the mainstream media.

But during this US presidential election year, largely due to WikiLeaks, social media and alternative and independent news, citizens of the world have discovered how corrosively evil in its criminality this existing crime cabal is, personified by the Clintons, Obama, and their minions in Washington, Wall Street and the corporate media. Over the last couple months the Clinton-Podesta connection has been directly tied to a global child sex trafficking ring operating from the " life insurance " laptop of Hillary's closest, 20-year aide- Saudi operative Huma Abedin's husband, disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner. But the pedophilia network has more recently expanded to include an infamous block of sinister pizza parlors and front offices in upscale Northwest Washington operating eerily close to the White House (perhaps even closer through DC's network of underground tunnels). Enter #Pizzagate .

And through thousands of internet sleuths working together online 24/7, the crumbling, gaping cracks of this crime cabal wall have been exposed like never before, threatening to bring down the most powerful Luciferian worshipping pedophiles at the top of this planet's demonic food chain. And this raw naked exposure of the diabolical matrix has the guilty party – the Obamas, Bushes, and Clintons panicking and resorting to extreme desperate measures to hide and conceal the filthy truth of who and what they are. Hence, in this age of deception and culture of evil, we are now living in a new era of McCarthyism frantically unleashed to justify their latest attack campaign on steroids to censor and ban all blacklisted alternative media news sites that provide much needed counterbalancing truth to the official false narrative lies. The aim here is to eliminate and silence all truth tellers so that the evildoers – as naked and exposed as they already are, can attempt to hold onto their waning power, slipping fast now from their control.

By deep state egregiously accusing alt-news of being "agents of Russian propaganda ," it intends to shut down America's First Amendment right to a free press – the alternative news, which regularly exposes NSM and gov.corps' propaganda lies. The totalitarian agenda now being rushed through prior to Trump becoming president has already passed " anti-Russian propaganda " bills in both chambers of Congress aimed at banning over 200 targeted alt-news sites on their bogus blacklists. Additionally, the EU has threatened further tyrannical censorship if co-opted internet ponds Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, and Reddit don't eliminate the so-called "fake news" from its social media and search engines. In effect, a final power grab is being played out right now attempting to usurp, control and silence the last voice of honest and accurate news accounting of what goes on in this world. But the crime cabal will fail as the world knows too much already.

Since 9/11 those who question authority refusing to believe the deep state lies have been customarily discarded as " conspiracy nuts ." Though for decades this strategy was quite effective, it's now wearing thin as more people every day are beginning to realize the truth about the previously concealed criminality endlessly committed by DC puppets and their masters. As a result, deep state's agenda has been to increasingly criminalize dissidents as potential homegrown terrorists and radicalized enemies of the state. What we're currently witnessing is the systematic targeting of both dissenting individuals and alternative news organizations as "dangerously" unwanted truth tellers posing the single largest threat to the crime cabal's continued power and control.

And with only a few remaining weeks, for that reason alone Obama and the Clintons are moving at breakneck speed to neutralize opposing forces bent on seeking justice by sending them to rot in prison. Since Soros' post-election riots have fizzled, Stein's recount failed and stealing the presidency through pro-Hillary death threats against Trump electoral voters have one by one fallen short of overturning the election, silencing alt-news and igniting a war against Russia are their last, "best shot" ploys that would manufacture the needed national crisis to prevent Trump from assuming office next month. Who knows? In the few days prior to January 20 th , a false flag perpetrated by Washington neo-crazies as a last gasp effort to blame Russia "justifying" war against the nuclear power may still be up their pathetic evil sleeve. That's how desperate these despots are, terrified their pedo-crimes will soon be their ruin.

In the meantime, yet another draconian law HR 4919 was just passed in the House. Using the benignly logical rationale of tracking lost victims suffering from autism or dementia, deep state is now pushing for RFID chips to be implanted in all people diagnosed with autism and dementia. Similar past measures have authorized the government to round up the homeless or those afflicted with respiratory ailments during the Ebola scare. Operating under the auspices of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in mid-August, the CDC proposed to grant itself the unlimited unconstitutional power to round up and detain citizens en masse without reason or due process, kind of like the medical bookend to the 2013 FDAA that also obliterates citizens' legal rights and civil liberties. The feds are becoming increasingly over-the- top in their totalitarian oppression, knowing that for good reason more people are opposing mandatory vaccinations for both children and adults as well as proposed mandatory microchips. Recall that a couple years ago NBC was predicting that next year every American would be micro chipped .

Like the regretful German pastor Martin Niemoller's famous quote decrying each group targeted and taken away by the Nazis without his speaking out, after the communists, socialists, trade unionists and the Jews, by the time they came for him it was too late. How far will the government go with its growing hit list of expendable throwaways? What's to stop the deep state from making microchips mandatory for anyone diagnosed with a mental disorder? Or the entire world population for that matter?

The insane DSM-5 has recently expanded the number of mental illnesses into absurdity, making sure to include practically anyone and everyone. The Diagnostic Statistical Manual has become the official tool and vehicle by which the government is moving to criminalize abnormality. This slippery slope may soon include every human on the planet.

As a former diagnostic clinician, I can tell you that the criteria by which people can be diagnosed with a dangerous label from a vast array is extremely arbitrary and subjective. There's nothing scientific or foolproof about it. Mislabeling citizens who may pose "trouble or a threat" to the authoritarian state is wide open for overreaching, widespread abuse as the convenient false pretense for microchipping and controlling a growing segment of "undesirables" within the population. Branding any individual who does not trust authority figures with "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" or anyone who appears "overly" health conscious and selective about what they eat as "suffering" from orthorexia nervosa could simply be deep state's way of branding us all with certifiable labels. Deep state has co-opted the psychiatric profession which is largely owned and controlled by Big Pharma, using its Diagnostic Statistical Manual's unlimited mental disorders as yet another weapon of mass destruction playbook for diabolical population control purposes.

In recent years MSM has clearly become Washington's ministry of propaganda . And adding insult to injury, Congress is busily passing bills designed to outlaw the real truth, so as to empower its propaganda ministry to become its "truth" ministry . We are living the Orwellian nightmare come true, as " useless eating " victims of a fascist totalitarian oligarchic police state bent on perpetrating democide as well as human genocide as part of its demonic eugenics plan to drastically reduce the world pop. from 7.4 billion to anywhere from a half to one billion depending on which invasively surveilled and controlled population in human history by a centralized tyrannical government controlling a centralized financial debtor-slave system . Deep state and corporate media together engage in covert concealment of secret, heinously deplorable brutality protecting the elite's systemic criminality perpetrated we now know on a massive colossal scale.

A century ago the ruling elite known as the internationalists envisioned a one world government. Now that same ruling elite controlled by the same tainted bloodlines are called globalists and they're rushing to suppress the truth on their way to bringing on the perfect storm that will usher in the violent tyranny of their global governance. Outside of technology that enables increasing power and control, little has otherwise changed over the course of the last century. That said, never before have more citizens of the world become aware of the treasonous and demonic crimes committed by those psychopaths in power. Before closing a final reminder warrants stating. Regardless of the figurehead occupying the White House, the same demonic power elite is still holding power over this earth. And the battle for truth, justice, and our very lives will continue after January 20 th . The doomsday clock that's been ticking under the Bush-Clinton-Obama cabal is only ticking shorter now and our struggle is hardly over.

The Best of Joachim Hagopian

Joachim Hagopian [ send him mail ] is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled "Don't Let The Bastards Getcha Down." It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master's degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.com .

[Jun 18, 2017] New video footage exposes US military helping ISIS fighters escape Syrian city of Raqqa

Jun 18, 2017 | theduran.com
A post via The Anti Media written by Darius Shahtahmasebi , exposes what many following the Syria "civil war" narrative have known for some time now that no civil war is really taking place, but rather a US-Saudi regime change invasion against the Assad government.

The proxy army being used to force an Assad regime change is the Islamic State (ISIS).

The following video, and accompanying post, shows the US military providing ISIS jihadists with a safe escape form the Syrian city of Raqqa. Needless to say it would have been drop dead simple to have bombed the convoy of ISIS jihadists as seen in the video, but this was not the goal. The goal was safe passage out of Raqqa.

Where are the ISIS fighters escaping to?

We venture to guess that these ISIS fighters are being sent, by US and Saudi military commanders, to territory under the control of the legally recognized government of Syria, where they will continue to fight against Assad.

With numerous distractions unfolding on the newly released reality TV show that is "Keeping Up with the Trump Administration," it may surprise readers to learn that the U.S. is using the terror group ISIS as a pawn in its depraved foreign policy.

Video footage obtained by Al-Masdar appears to show convoys of ISIS fighters fleeing the Syrian city of Raqqa untouched by the U.S. military, which is currently bombing that exact location. As Al-Masdar notes, despite having Kurdish and American drones hovering around the city of Raqqa, U.S. bombs are nowhere to be seen as hundreds of fighters pass safely. The release of this footage comes on the heels of accusations from both Russia and Iran that the U.S. is colluding with ISIS to allow the group's safe passage into areas controlled by the Syrian government.

Iran claims to have direct proof but thus far has not released it. Even if Russia and Iran don't have any secret documents that directly expose this collusion, the fact remains that we don't necessarily need them .

After all, this is exactly how ISIS grew exponentially in Syria in the first instance – as a direct result of U.S. foreign policy strategy. In 2012, a classified Defense Intelligence Agency report predicted the rise of ISIS, something actively encouraged by the U.S. establishment. The report stated :

"If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime."

Further, leaked audio of former Secretary of State John Kerry shows he knew ISIS was gaining momentum in Syria, and that in turn, the U.S. hoped this would bring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the negotiating table.

In recent times, the safe passage of ISIS fighters to areas under the control of the Syrian government has been an unspoken but official strategy and has been the reality on the ground in Iraq and Syria.

Late last year, Anti-Media reported on an anonymous military-diplomatic official's claims that the United States was allowing safe passage to Syria for ISIS fighters exiting Mosul, Iraq – even though the U.S. was supposedly waging an offensive to defeat ISIS in the area. As we noted, acknowledging the admittedly undesirable, questionable nature of the anonymous source:

" An anonymous source claiming to a Russian newspaper something as conspiratorial as the U.S. directly aiding ISIS militants may seem a bit dubious, but since the offensive was launched on Monday of this week , this has been the reality on the ground .

" According to Army Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati , as reported by anti-Russian newspaper , the Guardian, ISIS militants are already fleeing Mosul to Syria. This was further confirmed by the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, who said that if ISIS were forced out of Mosul, they would likely go on to Syria ."

Not long after, ISIS launched an offensive into a very strategic area in Syria called Deir ez-Zor, battling through Syrian government defenses. The most horrifying part of this offensive was the fact that, as noted by the Guardian , the ISIS fighters who successfully broke through government defense lines in Syria were "primarily reinforcements coming over the border from Iraq's Anbar province."

Deir ez-Zor is not outside the U.S. military's strike range capacity. This is the same city that was attacked by the American-led coalition in September of last year – an attack that targeted Syrian troops for over an hour, paving the way for a timely ISIS offensive. Yet when it comes to hundreds of reinforcements raging through the Iraqi border into Syria, the U.S. military is on a brief vacation.

We were told Raqqa was to be ISIS' last stronghold in Syria, but this is clearly not true. In order for the U.S. to ultimately put pressure on the Syrian government, the real prize is not Raqqa but a combination of two very strategic locations that are very heavily interlinked.

As explained by Gulf News :

"There, a complex confrontation is unfolding, with far more geopolitical import and risk. Daesh [ISIS] is expected to make its last stand not in Raqqa but in an area that encompasses the borders with Iraq and Jordan and much of Syria's modest oil reserves, making it important in stabilising Syria and influencing its neighbouring countries.

"Whoever lays claim to the sparsely populated area in this 21st-century version of the Great Game not only will take credit for seizing what is likely to be Daesh's last patch of a territorial caliphate in Syria, but also will play an important role in determining Syria's future and the post-war dynamics of the region."

And this is ultimately the problem for the U.S.-led coalition of anti-Assad (and anti-Iranian) nations. The behind-closed-doors official rationale for targeting Syria's government for regime change was to undermine Iranian influence in the region, according to Hillary Clinton's email archive. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and the other Gulf States have long feared that a fully dominated Shia-led bloc of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon could completely overthrow the regional balance of power. They have opposed such a development at all costs.

As Gulf News explains, the Iranians are in the process of fully implementing this Shia bridge, known as the "Shia Crescent":

"The contested area also includes desert regions farther south with several border crossings, among them the critical highway connecting Damascus and Baghdad - coveted by Iran as a land route to Lebanon and its ally, the Hezbollah militia."

This is why the U.S. military has set up a training base at the Aal-Tanf border crossing. If the Syrian government were to retake the area and open it up under its control, they would be able to directly link Iran to Syria and the rest of its allies, including Iraq and Lebanon.

This is also why the U.S. military has been engaging in illegal acts of aggression against Iranian-backed militias operating in the area - to defend this position.

Further, the Syrian government's outpost in Deir ez-Zor is isolated , hence why these two offensives are running in tandem. They both rely on the liberation of the other to have any real value to the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies.

As fascinating as the Comey testimony spectacle has been (don't forget to tune in for tomorrow's scandal of anonymous leaks and misspelled tweets), the real scandal lies in the fact that the U.S. is now openly siding with ISIS while allowing the terrorists safe passage into parts of Syria so that these extremists can battle a secular government . The U.S. is moments away from an all-out confrontation with Iran (and Russia , a nuclear power).

Don't expect the corporate media to report on these damning facts anytime soon, as the public continues to sleepwalk into a global powder keg of deceit, death, and destruction.

[Jun 18, 2017] Banana republic

Jun 18, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Cripes , June 17, 2017 at 2:48 am

Surprise, surprise.

Washington's blog does a fine job of archiving and assembling this kind of background, many pieces of which we all should remember, and make more sense together.

[Jun 18, 2017] 'Witch Hunt' Trump takes to Twitter to lash out at '7 months of collusion probes'

Notable quotes:
"... "I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt," ..."
Jun 18, 2017 | www.rt.com
Donald Trump has made a series of tweets about the prolonged investigations into alleged collusion with the Russian government and obstruction of justice, which he says yielded no proof. One of the tweets refers to his firing of FBI Director James Comey. "I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt," Trump tweeted, sending users and media into a guessing game of what exactly he meant.

I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2017

Trump appeared to be referring to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who wrote a memo recommending that Comey be fired.

Rosenstein also appointed Robert Mueller to investigate ties between Trump's campaign and Russia.

Mueller is said to be investigating whether Trump obstructed the course of justice in the probe into Russian interference in the US elections.

[Jun 17, 2017] Clappers Unhinged Russia-Bashing by David Marks

Notable quotes:
"... That Clapper would offer such a one-sided account of the reasons behind the worsening antagonisms and the emerging arms race – leaving out the fact that the United States, despite its own budgetary and economic problems, spends about ten times more on its military than Russia does – suggests that he is not an objective witness on anything regarding Russia. ..."
"... Clapper's shrill voice confirms his cold-warrior perspective, caught in the past but applying his thinking to the present, still believing that he has a special understanding of America's interests and is protecting them. Clearly, the Russians have been at the center of Clapper's frustrations for many years and Russia-gate just gives him the opportunity to rekindle anti-Moscow hysteria. ..."
"... Clapper has since been a star congressional witness pushing Russia-gate and his confidence in Putin's guilt. But Clapper did acknowledge that the Jan. 6 report – besides containing no actual evidence – was prepared by "handpicked" analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, not from a consensus of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies as had been widely reported. ..."
"... So, as we listen to the debate on Russia-gate, Clapper and his fellow national-security-state representatives are revealing not just their political perspectives but deeply disturbed minds. Those who angrily criticize the Russians are completely blind to their own participation in a similar destructive process. They perceive themselves as the cure when they are a primary cause of the illness they denounce. ..."
"... Undiscovered Self ..."
"... then the works of historians should be filed under non-fiction ..."
"... In reaching that harsh judgment, Clapper ignored the U.S. government's own role in the mounting tensions – ..."
"... no way to bold that statement ..."
Jun 15, 2017 | consortiumnews.com
Exclusive: Russia-gate's credibility rests heavily on ex-Director of National Intelligence Clapper who oversaw a "trust us" report, but a recent speech shows Clapper to be unhinged about Russia, as David Marks describes.

Whatever the ultimate truth about the murky Russia-gate affair, it appears that it is Donald Trump's willingness to consider friendship and cooperation with the Russians that is driving this emotional debate.

For some of the older U.S. intelligence and military officers, there appears to be a residual distrust and fear of Moscow, a hangover from the Cold War now transferred, perhaps almost subliminally, into the New Cold War and a sense that Russia is America's eternal enemy.

James Clapper, President Obama's last Director of National Intelligence, is a fascinating example of how this antagonism toward Russia never seems to change, as he revealed in a June 7 speech to the Australian National Press Club.

"The Russians are not our friends; they (Putin specifically), are avowedly opposed to our democracy and values, and see us as the cause of all their frustrations," Clapper declared.

In reaching that harsh judgment, Clapper ignored the U.S. government's own role in the mounting tensions – expanding NATO to Russia's borders, renouncing the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and locating new missile bases in Eastern Europe. Instead, Clapper blamed the renewed arms race and resulting tensions on the Russians:

"The Russians are embarked on a very aggressive and disturbing program to modernize their strategic forces - notably their submarine and land-based nuclear forces. They have also made big investments in their counter-space capabilities. They do all this - despite their economic challenges - with only one adversary in mind: the United States. And, just for good measure, they are also in active violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty."

That Clapper would offer such a one-sided account of the reasons behind the worsening antagonisms and the emerging arms race – leaving out the fact that the United States, despite its own budgetary and economic problems, spends about ten times more on its military than Russia does – suggests that he is not an objective witness on anything regarding Russia.

A Shrill Voice

Clapper's shrill voice confirms his cold-warrior perspective, caught in the past but applying his thinking to the present, still believing that he has a special understanding of America's interests and is protecting them. Clearly, the Russians have been at the center of Clapper's frustrations for many years and Russia-gate just gives him the opportunity to rekindle anti-Moscow hysteria.

Clapper is repeating with new gusto what he has sold to recent presidents, Republicans and Democrats, for decades. His entire attack on Trump beats the drum of Russian deviousness. Yet, Clapper ignores the context of the Russians actions.

Time magazine cover recounting how the U.S. enabled Boris Yeltsin's reelection as Russian president in 1996.

Way ahead of the Russians, the U.S. intelligence community mastered computer hacking and mounted the first known software attack on a country's strategic infrastructure by – along with Israel – unleashing the Stuxnet cyber-attack against Iranian centrifuges. U.S. intelligence also has a long record of subverting elections and toppling elected leaders, both before and since the computer age.

But Clapper only sees evil in Russia, even during the 1990s when the U.S. government advisers and American political operatives were propping up President Boris Yeltsin amid the rapacious privatizing of Russia's industries and resources, which made Russian oligarchs and their U.S. advisers very rich.

Clapper said, "Interestingly, every one of the non-acting Prime Ministers of Russia since 1992 has come from one of two domains: the oil and gas sector, or the security services. To put this in perspective, and as I have pointed out to U.S. audiences, suppose the last ten presidents of the U.S. were either CIA officers, or the Chairman of Exxon-Mobil. I think this gives you some insight into the dominant mind-set of the Russian government."

With such remarks, Clapper acts as if he doesn't know much about recent U.S. government staffing, which has been dominated by people with backgrounds in the oil industry, leading Wall Street banks, and the intelligence community. Indeed, the man who brought Clapper from Air Force intelligence into the White House was President George H.W. Bush, former director of the CIA and an oil company executive.

Bush's son, George W., also came from the oil industry, as did his Vice President Dick Cheney. Meanwhile, both Republican and Democratic administrations have filled senior economic policy positions from the ranks of Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street investment banks. And the U.S. intelligence community has wielded broad power over the few recent U.S. presidents, such as Barack Obama, who came into the White House with more limited government and private-sector experience.

Clapper, having been a senior executive for Booz Allen Hamilton, knows full well that giant intelligence contractors have a powerful influence in how they serve U.S. interests with an eye to profiteering from conflict. And along with Clapper, other White House advisers drift between intelligence contractors and government.

It's also true that a U.S. president doesn't need to have previous employment within the oil sector to do its bidding. Considering the influence of the millions spent on campaign donations and lobbying by the industry, the U.S. government is easily wed to oil and gas – as well as to the military and intelligence complex – at least as much as the Russian government. Indeed, the current Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was the Chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil.

Classic Projection

Clapper's perception of the Russians as evil for allegedly practicing the same sins as the U.S. government exemplifies classic projection of the highest order.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, following his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)

In case after case, Clapper justifies painting darkness onto the Russians with half the data, while ignoring the information that cancels out his perspective. Perhaps he is representative of many in Washington who have lost their rationality and morality in defense of the greatness of the United States. His ethics become situational.

As Director of National Intelligence, Clapper lied to Congress in 2013 about the National Security Agency's massive gathering of private data from Americans. Clapper's deception gave the final push to Edward Snowden who revealed the truth about NSA surveillance.

Subsequently, Clapper led the charge against Snowden, while excusing his own false congressional testimony by saying, "I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner."

Despite this history, the U.S. mainstream media has treated Clapper as a great truth-teller as he adds ever more fuel to the Russia-gate fires. From his Australian speech, most news outlets highlighted his best news-bite, when he declared: "Watergate pales, really, in my view compared to what we're confronting now."

Like other powerful government officials, Clapper may think it is his duty to a higher cause that allows him to defy the truth and transcend the law, a classic symptom of the super-patriot who thinks he knows best what's good for America, a dangerous creature that the U.S. government seems to produce in quantity.

In that sense, Clapper has played a central role in Russia-gate. He was the official who oversaw the key Jan. 6 report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. After promising much public evidence, he released a report that amounted to "trust us."

Clapper has since been a star congressional witness pushing Russia-gate and his confidence in Putin's guilt. But Clapper did acknowledge that the Jan. 6 report – besides containing no actual evidence – was prepared by "handpicked" analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, not from a consensus of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies as had been widely reported.

So, as we listen to the debate on Russia-gate, Clapper and his fellow national-security-state representatives are revealing not just their political perspectives but deeply disturbed minds. Those who angrily criticize the Russians are completely blind to their own participation in a similar destructive process. They perceive themselves as the cure when they are a primary cause of the illness they denounce.

In 1956, in the Undiscovered Self , the eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote about the state of the human mind and how it affected the political world: "And just as the typical neurotic is unconscious of his shadow side, so the normal individual, like the neurotic, sees his shadow in his neighbor or in the man beyond the great divide. It has even become a political and social duty to apostrophize the capitalism of one and the communism of the other as the very devil, so to fascinate the outward eye and prevent it from looking at the individual life within.

"We are again living in an age filled with apocalyptic images of universal destruction. What is the significance of that split, symbolized by the Iron Curtain, which divides humanity into two halves? What will become of our civilization and man himself, if the hydrogen bombs begin to go off, or if the spiritual and moral darkness of State absolutism should spread?"

Jung's words still ring with foreboding truth.

David Marks is a veteran documentary filmmaker and investigative reporter. His work includes films for the BBC and PBS, including Nazi Gold, on the role of Switzerland in WWII and biographies of Jimi Hendrix and Frank Sinatra.

mike k , June 15, 2017 at 9:38 pm

Once you clear away the cobwebs of cultural conditioning, the truth of many things becomes obvious. One does not need the authority of a Carl Jung or anyone to see what is right in front of your eyes. The amazing thing is that people can be so easily deluded to ignore the reality all around them. One of the purposes of meditation in the spiritual traditions of mankind is to clear a space in one's mind that is fresh and unconditioned. Without this cleansing of the consciousness, only those things one's conditioning permits can be seen.

Sillyme 2.0 , June 16, 2017 at 1:16 am

If ((("TPTB"))), even if they are only very temporary in the scheme of the time of the Universe, come here and read this, they are either too common-cored to understand the truth of it and change for the better or they are still smart enough to understand it and are laughing all the way to the temporary bank.
If you understand reincarnation you understand that your future personalities will be in-line with the immutable Universal laws of Consciousness-Evolution and Cause & Effect and the next one, at the least, won't be so easy and pretty for you, in view of the lesson that one just isn't learning at a normal Universal standard; the laws of the Universe simply don't allow for degradation to continue unabated so that evolution can take place in the allotted time, it will provide the necessary wake-up call in all it's required force.
Even though all of us who have made it here to read the great articles on this website know, deep down inside, that we are all equal in the grand scheme of all good thoughts, feelings and actions, we know that we are just that little bit ahead of the curve and it would behoove us to accept our and their respective positions in the curve and help them out, come what may.
Hoota Thunk I'd see you around these parts. ;->

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 5:38 am

These deviants in "intelligence" should have been brought under control long before they killed Kennedy, but they weren't. They've been allowed to self select themselves, with each generation of sociopaths cultivating an even more deranged next generation. I guess that Hoover had so much dirt on every pol ever elected to high office that few had the guts to challenge these most dangerous menaces to our freedoms and democracy. Even if a courageous president could chop off the "heads" of these traitorous agencies their conditioned subordinates would be hard to root out. You read of rumors, though I've seen no evidence but ambiguous grainy photos, that these maniacs actually practice satanic blood rituals and the like. I prefer not to believe such things, but what kind of perverted thinking motivates the very damaging policies driven by these agencies, which bring us to the brink of nuclear war for no discernible reason. How is it allowed for them to blackmail public figures like MLK, threatening to ruin his marriage and destroy his reputation unless he commits suicide? These are not "good" virtuous men. They are not protecting or upholding "American" values. They are sick control freaks.

Bill Bodden , June 15, 2017 at 9:48 pm

If people like James Clapper and their statements become sources for American history in the early 21st Century, then the works of historians should be filed under non-fiction.

The decadence of Washington is obvious when a senate intelligence (?) committee invites Clapper to give evidence after his blatant lie about torture to a former convocation of the committee. The United States senate is the world's greatest deliberative body? What a crock of shit!! Who was the idiot who gave the first utterance to that meretricious nonsense?

Bill Bodden , June 15, 2017 at 9:50 pm

then the works of historians should be filed under non-fiction

Ooops: That should be "under fiction."

Gregory Herr , June 15, 2017 at 11:13 pm

And only a blatant liar could characterize his lying as speaking in "the most truthful, or least untruthful" manner.

Skip Scott , June 16, 2017 at 9:40 am

I was absolutely amazed when I heard that. What kind of BS does he expect the world to fall for? It really shows his utter arrogance and distain for us "proles". His not being arrested for lying to Congress and the American people shows the ridiculousness of believing there is "equal justice for all" in the USA.

Pete , June 16, 2017 at 6:52 am

Bill, reading your comment, I am reminded of a similar assessment given Washington and it's august Senate by British MP George Galloway, during a Senate sub-committee hearing in May 2005, on his 'alleged' receipt of bribe monies from Iraq's Saddam Hussein. His absolutely devastating verbal attack upon the committee, chaired by Sen. N. Coleman, is a must view for those who haven't seen it online.

Bill Bodden , June 15, 2017 at 10:04 pm

In reaching that harsh judgment, Clapper ignored the U.S. government's own role in the mounting tensions –

Gregory Barrett has an interesting recap of U.S. and Russian histories: "The Russians Didn't Do It" – https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/15/the-russians-didnt-do-it/

Helen Marshall , June 17, 2017 at 12:19 pm

When I posted this on Facebook, a "liberal" friend made several angy comments about EVIL Russia and then accused me of being a traitor for "defending a sworn enemy of our country."

In today's climate that kind of charge is not trivial. Watch out when you share it!

Jessica K , June 15, 2017 at 11:02 pm

Great article by Gregory Barrett from Counterpunch, thanks, Bill. Worth sending around. Send a pile of copies to Clapper. That guy is either sick or evil, maybe both. Couldn't he disappear or something? "Clap-on, clap-off, it's the Clapper!" (Preferably "clap-off".) Maybe too much Booz he's been imbibing.

Gary Hare , June 15, 2017 at 11:19 pm

I wouldn't single Clapper out. The entire Washington establishment, and Mainstream Media, appear unhinged, deranged, absolutely stupid. That is unless you consider why they are this way. Are they not promoting the need for more military spending, about the only thing in which the US leads the World these days. Does this not make them feel alpha, tough, patriotic and falsely proud. Classic self-delusion. Or is it cunning propaganda?
What bothers me just as much, is that Clapper's speech was widely reported here in Australia, without a single word of criticism from Australian politicians or the media. However low the US stoops, we seem to get right down there with them.
I watched on YouTube a segment on Colbert interviewing (there must be a better word to describe this fiasco) Oliver Stone. Colbert was infantile. The audience reminiscent of a cheer squad for a college football game. No-one was interested in what Stone had to say. Too few people realise how dangerous this empty-headed jingoism is.

Sillyme 2.0 , June 16, 2017 at 1:45 am

G'Day Gary,
I think it is SBS that is airing The Putin Interviews starting either Sunday or Monday night, depending on your region.
Happy viewing and ammo for counter-attacks on stupidity!
airdates.tv at last resort in the future
Hoota Thunk.

Craig Watson , June 16, 2017 at 7:58 am

All of Stone's Putin interviews were published for everyone to watch on Information Clearinghouse yesterday:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47246.htm .

You don't need cable TV to see them now.

Skip Scott , June 16, 2017 at 9:43 am

Wow. Thanks for that. I really need to send ICH some money.

john wilson , June 16, 2017 at 5:13 am

Obviously, Garry, they are not unhinged they are simply looking after their own interests. The removal of Trump is essential to their plans for some kind of fight with Russia, so the rubbish about Russia gate and anything else is of course, pure lies and make believe. They all wanted Hillary who was a proven war monger and who they could manipulate to do their bidding. Had she won there would probably be some kind of open conflict in Syria with the USA, Russia and Iran bu now. War makes money so any one who has the temerity to suggest peace, is a threat and has to be got rid of.

Jessica K , June 15, 2017 at 11:38 pm

Good observations, Gary. Unfortunately, Clapper has played a large role in the development of this Russiagate fiasco, as former head of the CIA and overseeing of the phony documents that allegedly pointed to "Russian hacking" in the election. You are right that the whole bunch of the MIC bureaucrats depend on ginning up for war. And we had a conversation on CN a couple of days ago about Colbert, who is hugely overpaid for being nothing more than snide and smarmy. That's what passes for entertainment nowadays. Google today shows all the vicious and nasty published articles about the Putin interviews, such as the tabloids Daily Mail, Daily Star, also The Guardian, and no doubt there are other polemics. Hard to contemplate that this is the 21st century when human development was supposed to be advancing due to all the amazing technology, when actually it is regressing.

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 5:22 am

Clapper has been one of the guys charged with creating Karl Rove's "new realities." He thinks he's a god.

Skip Scott , June 16, 2017 at 9:45 am

So far he seems to be getting away with it.

Gregory Herr , June 15, 2017 at 11:48 pm

"Thursday's appearance by fired FBI Director James Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee has raised the anti-Russian hysteria in the US media to a new level. The former head of the US political police denounced supposed Russian interference in the US elections as a dire threat to American democracy. "They're going to come for whatever party they choose to try and work on behalf of," he warned. "And they will be back they are coming for America."
None of the capitalist politicians who questioned him challenged the premise that Russia was the principal enemy of the United States, or that Russian hacking was a significant threat to the US electoral system. None of them suggested that the billions funneled into the US elections by Wall Street interests were a far greater threat to the democratic rights of the American people .

the political issues in the anti-Russian campaign, which represents an effort by the most powerful sections of the military-intelligence apparatus, backed by the Democratic Party and the bulk of the corporate media, to force the Trump White House to adhere to the foreign policy offensive against Moscow embarked on during the second term of the Obama administration, particularly since the 2014 US-backed ultra-right coup in Ukraine.
Those factions of the ruling class and intelligence agencies leading the anti-Russia campaign are particularly incensed that Russian intervention in Syria stymied plans to escalate the proxy civil war in that country into a full-fledged regime-change operation. They want to see Assad in Syria meet the same fate as Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Their fanatical hatred of Putin indicates that they have similar ambitions in mind for the Russian president.
The entire framework of the anti-Russian campaign is fraudulent. The military-intelligence agencies, the Democratic Party and the media are following a well-established pattern of manufacturing phony scandals, previously a specialty of the Republican right:

Of what does the "undermining" of US democracy by alleged Russian hacking consist? No vote totals were altered. No ballots were discarded, as in Florida in 2000 when the antidemocratic campaign was spearheaded by the US Supreme Court. Instead, truthful information was supplied anonymously to WikiLeaks, which published the material, showing that the Democratic National Committee had worked to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders, and that Hillary Clinton had cozied up to Wall Street audiences and reassured them that a new Clinton administration would be in the pocket of the big financial interests

Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election because she ran as the candidate of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus and made no appeal to working-class discontent. This was after eight years during which Obama had intensified the economic stagnation, wage cutting and austerity that had been going on for decades, while overseeing a further growth in social inequality

[The Democrats] have chosen to attack Trump, the most right-wing president in US history, from the right, denouncing him as insufficiently committed to a military confrontation with Russia."

https://counterinformation.wordpress.com/2017/06/13/the-russians-are-coming-the-russians-are-coming/

george Archers , June 17, 2017 at 7:51 am

Excuses. "Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election because she ran as the candidate of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus and made no appeal to working-class discontent." pure garbage
Listen folks,Both parties take turns every 8 years like clock work–except one term Jimmy Carter who p!ssed off Israel firsters. Hillary was in it for the election donations collected.

, June 15, 2017 at 11:50 pm

Thank you for your thoughtful analysis, speaking truth to power Mr Marks, alarming how democracies are so chaotic?

The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended in order to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. The answer was provided immediately. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

Super patriots defying truth and transcending laws, his ethics becoming situational, which checks and balances are implemented to reign in the retired general?

Cal , June 16, 2017 at 12:41 am

Remember the neos and zios "Project for the New American Century that preceded the Iraq war?

Well Clapper is with the same group-except they have a new name now still lying and lobbying for the US to control the universe

Center for a New American Security

https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/extending-american-power-strategies-to-expand-u-s-engagement-in-a-competitive-world-order

irina , June 16, 2017 at 12:58 am

Clapper said something so astounding on 'Meet the Press' on May 28th that I found the transcript and printed it out.

In the context of Jared Kushner meeting with Sergei Kislyak, Clapper said "I will tell you that my dashboard warning
light was clearly on and I think that was the case with all of us in the intelligence community, very concerned about
the nature of these approaches to the Russians. If you put that in context with everything else we knew the Russians
were doing to interfere with the election. And just the historical practices of the Russians, who (are) typically, ALMOST
GENETICALLY DRIVEN TO CO-OPT, PENETRATE, GAIN FAVOR, WHATEVER, which is a typical Russian technique.
So we were concerned."

(Apologies for caps, no way to bold that statement and it is an extremely scary and revealing phrase.)

Chuck Todd ignored Clapper's "genetically driven" diatribe and soldiered on, reinforcing 'the Russians did it' meme.

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 10:36 am

That was quite a racist statement, was it not? If he had applied the remarks to any other distinct group of people Chuck Todd would have gone ballistic, playing the race card for all it's worth in the grand American tradition.

Bill Bodden , June 16, 2017 at 11:38 am

no way to bold that statement

There is. At the beginning of the text to be set in bold, type the word "strong" inside . At the end type "/strong" inside but not the quotation marks shown in this example.

Bill Bodden , June 16, 2017 at 11:46 am

Oops: After "inside" above there should have been a less-than sign ""

Joe Tedesky , June 16, 2017 at 12:59 am

The profits of War drive people like Clapper to do some hideous and unquestionable things. The beast they feed is the same beast Rumsfeld gave a speech about on 9/10/01 where he sighted the Pentagon not being able to account for 2.5 trillion dollars. If you recall last summer the DOD year ending June 2016 sighted another missing 6.5 trillion dollars this time tripling the 2001 unaccountability. This is a known unaccountability of 9 trillion dollars by the Defense Department so far this 21st Century that no one is even talking about. When a nation can spill this much coffee and not worry about it, then you know that the people spending this nations well earned capital aren't spending their own money, but they no doubt are profiting from all this saber rattling and war. Imagine the defense budgets with Russia in it's crosshairs.

http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/documents/DODIG-2016-113.pdf

Gregory Herr , June 16, 2017 at 5:36 am

Joe, have you seen this? https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Office_of_Naval_Intelligence

"Also killed in the Pentagon on 9/11 were a large number of budget analysts and accountants who may have been looking into the $2.3 trillion of unaccounted military spending that Donald Rumsfeld announced on Sept 10th, 2001."[

Joe Tedesky , June 16, 2017 at 7:20 am

This is something to new to me, but when it comes to 911 I have seen other similar things like it, like building #7. Nice of you Gregory to share this with me, thanks.

When it comes to 911, there are so many questions that I just wish there were somebody who could answer them. Yet, questioning any of the oddities regarding the 911 Attack will get you a 'tinfoil hat' since this is what we Americans do to each other these days over things such as assassinations or other unexplained tragedies. Like having doubts over Russia-Gate will deem you being a Trump Supporter or Putin Apologize.

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 10:50 am

Since you bring up 9-11 and the inconsistencies in its narrative, I just want to ask the question: Why didn't that high rise tower in London collapse under its own weight like the twin towers in NYC, especially since the fire appeared to be so much more intense? It wasn't just a localised burn, the entire structure was engulfed in flames. And, no, rebar-strengthened concrete is not more resistant than steel girders to damage from high temperatures. Concrete will more likely crack than steel girders will melt in a fire. I look for the structural engineers to chime in on this one.

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 12:43 pm

My dad always told me: "Never be above the third floor in an apartment building or a hotel. The smoke will get you before the fire does." Good advice. A fire fighter's worst nightmare, a hi-rise fire. As the London fire points out, they can be death traps.

Yeah, buildings don't just fall down. 9/11 was most definitely a controlled demolition, and if a proper investigation were conducted, "controlled demolition" would scream out at everyone with half a brain.

If you haven't seen this half-hour video, give it a watch. It's one of my favorites because the guy is a physicist/mathematician who used to work for N.I.S.T. He had never before questioned the findings, at least until August of 2016 when he started looking at it. He couldn't believe what he found.

Especially watch at 18:03 when he starts talking about the collapse. "Asymmetric damage does not lead to symmetric collapse. It's very difficult to get something to collapse symmetrically because it is the law of physics that things tend towards chaos. Collapsing symmetrically represents order, very strict order. It is not the nature of physics to gravitate towards order for no reason."

And:

"Huge chunks of steel perimeter beams flying hundreds of feet off to the side. Steel does not fly off to the side, hundreds of feet, due to gravity. Gravity works vertically, not laterally. There has to be a FORCE there pushing it to the side, otherwise it would just fall down to the ground. It would be like dropping a ball out of a window. It would just fall straight down."

The video is called "Former NIST Employee Speaks Out On World Trade Centre Towers Collapse Investigation".

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 12:44 pm

Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ_jQgIEnI8

Gregory Herr , June 16, 2017 at 1:50 pm

Other examples: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/fires.html

Joe Tedesky , June 16, 2017 at 9:50 pm

Honestly Realist I thought the same thing when I saw that high rise ablaze. I even made mention of it to my wife, commenting to how that is the way a high rise burns, not like 911. Now, Realist how many others had the same thought, as you and I.

Realist , June 17, 2017 at 2:27 am

Quite a powerful video by that analyst from Wisconsin, backwardsevolution.
I have read analyses by physicists and engineers of the collapses, mostly through PCR's website, but I had not seen that video with all the slo-mo shots parallel to computer models. Why is that production never shown on American television? Why was NIST so remiss in its analysis, as the narrator points out? Of course, we know the answers to both questions. The truth will never be admitted by any authorities in our life times, or even in our children's life times. Maybe in 50 years when all the blame can be placed on corpses that can't protest it will be. Even that will be done to usher in some new world order as the game never changes.

Sam F , June 17, 2017 at 7:14 am

Not a structural engineer but with knowledge and experience there. I have no prejudice as to motives and means of the WTC collapse. The WTC towers were uniformly supported by steel columns and one floor was subject to broadly distributed intense aviation fuel fire exceeding their melting point, so that floor was uniformly weakened.

Large steel columns are severely weakened by several minutes of intense petroleum fire, as I have observed myself. When a single failure occurs, adjacent components are subjected to the additional loads which is normally within their capacities by design. When those are also much weakened they too will fail, subjecting adjacent components to even greater overloads, etc. This is called "progressive failure." So filling an entire steel-supported floor with burning aircraft fuel would soon cause the entire floor to collapse in a rapid side-to-side progressive failure.

Because the floors are thin flat sections, not tall compared with their width, a quick lateral failure across the whole floor would cause the entire structure above to fall quite vertically until it hit the floor below. This in turn would severely overload all columns below that, causing the entire structure below to collapse. Because the entire support structure was uniform and was uniformly greatly overloaded, a near-vertical collapse is not surprising.

Smaller structures are usually not built that way; they have strong outer walls and a few inner "bearing walls." When part of the structure collapses, often some of the bearing walls collapse but others remain standing, so that forces on the collapsing structure are asymmetrical and it falls partly to the sides.

As to reinforced concrete columns (assuming as you suggest that these were used in the London fire), it is the concrete that provides most of the vertical support, and it does insulate the steel reinforcement rods, which mainly provide tension strength against bending loads (wind and earthquakes). The horizontal bars hold the concrete together against cracking loads during its curing and later, when it often has many small cracks. So it is not surprising that such a structure survives a fire sufficient to burn the combustibles normally inside, without a broad progressive failure.

Also it was probably not subjected to such a large. intense, and broadly-distributed fuel fire.

But of course it was defective in safety systems for a high-rise structure, and this is not permitted in the US or under the International Building Code so far as I know. It should have had smoke detectors, fireproof unit doors and hallways, sprinklers to suppress non-petroleum fires, non-combustible materials on all interior surfaces, and at least two "separate and independent" fireproof exit stairways. Presumably investigation will reveal the deficiencies in its construction, maintenance, and enforcement practices, if not in the building code itself.

Sam F , June 17, 2017 at 7:40 am

It is not necessary to remind me that there are other explanations and perhaps additional causes of the WTC fire, and that Bldg 7 apparently had intelligence offices with provision for a deliberate large fire that occurred while WTC was burning. I do not know what happened there.

I remain skeptical that persons so long and carefully prepared to attack WTC by aircraft would have prepared a distinct method of attack requiring ability to plant explosives, etc. It is not impossible but why do both? They would probably have attacked other structures with the aircraft. Also, if another attack on the same structures was planned, there is no obvious reason to wait until after the aircraft attacks to use the other method. Also, the plane that did not hit any buildings did not correspond to any structure simultaneously destroyed by other means.

So if there was another demolition means used simultaneously, we need evidence of that, and I have seen no convincing photos or reports of explosive residues. I have already looked at videos that do not in fact show this, but merely events not inconsistent with the aircraft-only model.

Sam F , June 17, 2017 at 7:52 am

I accept that there were motives for an attack like 911, and those parties may have been involved in the aircraft attack. But without direct evidence, our efforts are better spent investigating the sources of the aircraft attack.

We know that AlQaeda did the attack, that KSA was fairly directly involved, that AlQaeda was grown by US warmongers attacking the USSR in Afghanistan, and that US interests wanted another Pearl Harbor. That says a lot, and suggests that there is much more to be learned about US/KSA/Israel involvement that we may hope will be exposed.

backwardsevolution , June 17, 2017 at 3:41 pm

Sam F – had Building No. 7 not come down in exactly the same manner as the other two, I might have bought (maybe) what you just said. A really big "maybe". I think the reason the scientists at N.I.S.T. did not extend their models out past the collapse initiation stage is because they KNEW they wouldn't be able to replicate the building coming down in its own footprint. As the fellow in the video said, there would have been chaos and the building would have deviated to one side. No way it would have come straight down.

Could be the reason they hit the buildings with the planes was precisely to provide the excuse of the "jet fuel". "Oh, yes, it was the heat from the jet fuel. Wrap it up, boys, no more questions." I wonder whether that other plane was supposed to have hit Building No. 7, but didn't make it there. "Whoops, how do we explain this? Oh, who cares, just say the fire did it. Who is going to know the difference?"

I'm not buying any of it. Three huge buildings ALL come down on their own footprint? Yeah, right.

Sam F , June 17, 2017 at 4:04 pm

I agree, b-e, the Bldg 7 collapse is very strange and suspect; and I apologize to others for the long posts above, and do not object to anyone else's views on this.

1. The lowest floors of Bldg 7 are not shown in any of the videos, only floors above maybe floor 3 or 6, none of which show any damage at the time that it collapsed. So the damage must have been to lower floors.
2. It also fell quite vertically, which is odd because that implies near-simultaneous damage across an entire floor, while the only causes related to WTC N&S would be asymmetrical debris impacts from their prior collapses.
3. There were reports of a US intelligence agency office there, equipped with devices to burn that structure if security required. I do not know about this.

But I today reviewed many videos of the WTC collapses, and found nothing in the WTC N & S tower collapses that suggests controlled explosions; they appear to have only aircraft damage:

4. Both collapsed first at the lowest level of the burning sections, where the aircraft and fuel hit.
5. The structure above fell almost vertically (up to 20 degree tilt in the first collapse) with chunks and dust thrown outward from the collapsing sections only.
6. No damage is seen to lower sections until the upper structure hits them on the way down. That is conclusive.
7. It would be very difficult to install and detonate explosives progressively just below the falling structure as it comes down just to create that appearance, and would use many times the explosives necessary to do that to a single lower floor.
8. So the only way planted explosives could have been significant would be if the lowest burning floor had collapsed due to explosions instead of weakened columns. But the aircraft impact floor could not have been predicted so as to put explosives there, nor could such a system have been controlled with a high temperature fire burning so long on the same floor.
9. The temperature of a petroleum fire will collapse large steel columns in a few minutes. I saw the results when a fuel truck overturned and burned next to a very tall billboard (maybe ten floors high) supported by large steel columns near MIT in Cambridge in the 1970s (no casualties).
10. The planes probably had at least 10,000 gal of aircraft fuel in them: the wings are mostly fuel tanks; no doubt that has been estimated.
11. While interior materials also burn at temps higher than the melting point of steel, they wouldn't supply heat as fast as an intensive petroleum fire, likely not enough to prevent the rest of the steel cooling the heated portion.

Anyway, backwardsevolution is an interesting tag; I've wondered whether it warns of the peril of the fittest or survival of the least fit, both very apt in our era.

Gregory Herr , June 16, 2017 at 1:45 pm

Obviously a key to grasping 9/11 involves motive. The obvious things like expanding "security" budgets and "justifications" for war are easy. E.P. Heidner's "Collateral Damage" shows how more than two birds were killed with one stone .

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 2:25 pm

Gregory – yep. So many lies, so many cover-ups. Divided States of Lies would be a better name. Thanks, Gregory.

Joe Tedesky , June 16, 2017 at 9:51 pm

I think we have seen the motive play out over these last 16 years .what do you think Gregory?

Gregory Herr , June 16, 2017 at 10:22 pm

To the hilt, Joe and tragically so for so many.

Gregory Herr , June 17, 2017 at 10:50 am

A good deal of aviation fuel was likely used up in the initial explosion. Once the remaining fuel burned up there would be no source other than office furnishings for fires. There was never any large, intense, or broadly distributed fuel fire associated with the WTC. If any temperature melting points for steel were achieved (dubious), it would have been of very short duration and isolated with respect to the entire structure. My God, even the core columns disappeared .which is certainly not consistent with the already fanciful progressive destruction at rates that suggest no resistance. "Cut" beams (promptly removed and shipped out) and nanothermite residue were in evidence.

Why do both?
The hijacker narrative is part of the setup to assign blame and is also connected to the Pentagon, not just the WTC. The "plane crashes", in and of themselves were not sufficient to bring down the towers. Motives to bring down the towers can be discerned.
The "parties involved", the "sources" of the attacks, certainly constitutes the crux of the matter. Let's not make assumptions about this. Evidence supporting the "official" narrative is thin to contrived to nonexistent.

Unless and until Mr. Parry publishes an article concerned with 9/11, this is my last comment on the subject here. Discussion about 9/11 gets to be endless and prompts all sorts of abuse. I trust the many capable people who read CN can research the matter to their own satisfaction (or dissatisfaction).

george Archers , June 17, 2017 at 7:57 am

Joe–that hush money 2.5 trillion dollars disappeared into Israel. Payment for Sept 11 2001 bombings

UIA , June 16, 2017 at 2:13 am

It might as well be $200 trillion, it's a fiction and a gov fiction at that. People are missing body parts for the big oil adventure in Iraq. All the busted out US towns need new filling stations and used car lots to boom. With bad sandwiches, gas and lottery computers we can have an economy again. Supermarket is a bust. People are dying for nothing who knows where. War on terror and new scams to expand rackets. Smedley Butler called it. System is unhinged. Don't sleep much. You can't afford it.

Make the coins with lead, so we can melt them down and make bullets to kill with to fight over what's left. Nothing is left now. News isn't fake, the money is.

mej , June 16, 2017 at 2:51 am

I think we will hear Clapper say, 10 years after today's kerfuffle is buried by the next scandal, "yes, I lied, but it was for a good reason!"

Reminds me of Pres.Saakashvili after his failed war in 2008 and all the hysterical noise about Russia starting the war in Georgia. That statement helped seal his fate as the soon-to-be ex-president of Georgia.

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 3:56 am

mej – you're right.

Wendi , June 16, 2017 at 3:20 am

Bring back Iron Curtain discussion. Ultimately, we see it is a Mirror. Whatever dirt we say of Russians shows in fact we're looking at ourselves.

Sillyme 2.0 , June 16, 2017 at 3:42 am

Let me put it another way;

We're not going to return kind for kind,
we're going to let you think about what it means to be a human being
in your own good time on your own good island, with good isolation from us.
Good luck .

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 5:19 am

Clapper is either thoroughly devious, or paranoid. In either case, any sensible president would discharge him from his office immediately.

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 12:01 pm

Clapper resigned in November of 2016, his resignation took effect in January of 2017. Instead of being thoroughly discredited for lying to Congress, he's instead put on a pedestal and continually brought forward by the media as some sort of wise man.

He sits there, all calm, all knowing, a Wilford Brimley clone, and the public eat his words up. "This man is at the end of his career, so there's no way he would be lying to us." They don't realize grandpa-types can deceive too.

Yeah, I haven't figured him out yet, but I like your choices: either devious or paranoid. It's one or the other. Now he's off to pollute Australia.

"In June 2017 Clapper commenced an initial four-week term at the Australian National University (ANU) National Security College in Canberra that includes public lectures on key global and national security issues. Clapper was also expected to take part in the ANU Crawford Australian Leadership Forum, the nation's pre-eminent dialogue of academics, parliamentarians and business leaders.

In a speech at Australia's National Press Club in June, Clapper accused Trump of 'ignorance or disrespect', called the firing of FBI director James Comey 'inexcusable', and warned of an 'internal assault on our intuitions'."

The asylum has taken over.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 7:01 am

The secret police always gain a lot of power over time; now they are exercising their power in a big way. These are glory days for the spooks. From their secret lairs they are showing what they can do. Trump challenged them directly, as he did the media, both major political parties, and the MIC. These power centers cannot tolerate this, and are acting decisively to crush Trump. The Donald's electoral supporters are the only friends he has left, and these are a disorganized rabble, no match for the forces arrayed against them.

It looks like Donald's days in the spotlight are turning into a deer in the headlights moment. He just doesn't have the resources to withstand the shit storm he has provoked against his presidency.

Jessica K , June 16, 2017 at 8:16 am

Clapper's evil mendacity being permitted to be aired as fact is testimony to the nearly complete unhingement of a segment of the American population who have no rational understanding of what happened in this election. If the insanity unleashed by the loss of Madame Warmonger Clinton is not stopped, something very evil seems on the horizon. Russia has become the scapegoat for the madness unleashed in the US.

In an article this morning on Zero Hedge by Daniel Henninger titled "Political Disorder Syndrome: Refusal to Reason is the New Normal", the author reports that James Hodgkinson, the shooter of Steve Scalise and four others had tweeted before the incident: "Trump is a traitor. Trump has destroyed our democracy. It's time to destroy Trump." And a production to be staged in Central Park by New York Public Theater is planned for a production of "Julius Caesar" where Caesar is presented looking like Trump and will be pulled down from a podium by men in suits and assassinated by plunging knives.

This is beginning to look like a long, hot summer. The author of the article on Zero Hedge mentions that social media has become a marinade for psychological unhingement of much of the population, leading to "jacked-up emotional intensity". Is it possible this could happen simply because the Democrat presidential candidate lost? Or is there something else driving this insanity behind the scene? I was startled to see the number of vicious published articles about Oliver Stone's interviews with Vladimir Putin. Where's the curiosity, only knee-jerk reaction that Putin is a source of evil? The insanity, the sickness in America is becoming unnerving and I have a strange sense of foreboding.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:11 am

Neoliberal_rationality/ will be in short supply in the days ahead. To resist being sucked in by the waves of emotional madness will be important.

Pixy , June 16, 2017 at 9:00 am

As a Russian I should say I agree with this Clapper person actually. Consider what he says:

"Russia is America's enemy." – True. Russia has always stood on the way of any nation bent of world domination. Since the USA have embarked on that very mission, Russia IS their enemy.

"The Russians are avowedly opposed to our democracy and values." – Absolutely true! Russia does oppose to what passes for democracy in USA nowadays. And it opposes to your values, but not the officially declared ones, but those that you follow unofficially: blatant racism, dividing the world on übermensch and untermensch and treating nations and countries accordingly, hypocrisy and open lies, when children in Aleppo are very-very important and every tear they cry is the reason for the Hague tribunal, while children in Mosul are apparently non-existent, and no one gives two f..ks about carpet bombings, absence of safety corridors, suffering and deaths of civilians and general state of humanitarian crisis there. This is just one, most recent example.

USA is insulting the intelligence of the people all over the world (and I mean THE WORLD really, all 7 billion people, not just US satellites), if they think anybody but the american Joe buys into their transparent lies and double standards.

For as long as USA will continue on this trek, Russia will oppose you and remain your enemy. And we'll see how it turns out. So far the human history teaches us that every time the übermensch eventually break their necks and diminish.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:06 am

Yes. Good comment.

Linda Wood , June 16, 2017 at 10:12 am

Pixy,
Thank you for saying all of this.

MaDarby , June 16, 2017 at 9:09 am

""The Russians are not our friends; they, (Putin specifically) are avowedly opposed to our democracy and values, and see us as the cause of all their frustrations," Clapper declared."

I have a high regard for this site and this author but I want not so much to disagree with but to deepen the discussion.

Underlying Clapper's views are far far deeper forces than just being "stuck in Cold War mentality." Powerful forces in the US are gripped by extremist Calvinist ideology and have been sense the beginning of the US. These powerful forces supported the Nazi movement against the "godless" Soviet Union (to show just how extreme they are). Their view is that the US (them and their power) is the chosen instrument of god to rid the world of the evil devil (exceptionalism). This means taking over the world and dominating all non-Calvinest countries. It means the justification of the biblical slaughter of the innocents to appease a vengeful god and rid the world of evil. We see the results of this extremist religious ideology in the continuous slaughter the US has perpetrated against the rest of the world sense WWII.

Further, neutrality in the fight against the devil himself is unacceptable as immoral and those countries trying to be neutral are just as evil as the others.

All Clapper is doing is carrying on the fundamental views the US has held of itself as morally superior to the rest of the world the same view Roosevelt and Carter and Kennedy had much less Reagan or Lyndon Johnson.

Nothing will change until the iron grip of extremist Calvinism, which justifies the slaughter of millions, is no longer the fundamental guiding ideology.

You ask the fish abut the water and he responds – What water?

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:07 am

Interesting. There is much truth in what you say.

Linda Wood , June 16, 2017 at 10:10 am

You describe the mindset that is used so well. But the military industrialists who use it are doing it for the trillions of dollars in defense spending. People have killed for a lot less. Clapper represents an industry. He uses the mindset you describe to explain to us why we have to accept the pouring of more trillions into the black hole of war.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:17 am

Absolutely true Linda.

hyperbola , June 16, 2017 at 10:27 am

Calvinism is only half the story.

The Revolutionary Jew and His Impact on World History
http://www.culturewars.com/2003/RevolutionaryJew.html

. By 1649, when Charles I went on trial, the tradition of Judaizing which had been extirpated from Spain had struck deep roots in England. The English judaizers were known as Puritans, and Cromwell as their leader was as versed in using Biblical figures as a rationalization for his crimes as he was in using Jewish spies from Spain and Portugal as agents in his ongoing war with the Catholic powers of Europe. The Puritans in England could implement the idea of revolution so readily precisely because they were Judaizers, and that is so because revolution was at its root a Jewish idea. Based on Moses' deliverance of Israel as described in the book of Exodus, the revolutionary saw a small group of chosen "saints" leading a fallen world to liberation from political oppression. Revolution was nothing if not a secularization of ideas taken from the Bible, and as history progressed the secularization of the concept would progress as well. But the total secularization of the idea in the 17th century would have made the idea totally useless to the Puritan revolutionaries. Secularization in the 17th century was synonymous with Judaizing. It meant substituting the Old Testament for the New. The concept of revolution gained legitimacy in the eyes of the Puritans precisely because of its Jewish roots. Graetz sees the attraction which Jewish ideas held for English Puritans quite clearly. The Roundheads were not inspired by the example of the suffering Christ, nor were they inspired by the medieval saints who imitated him. They needed the example of the warriors of Israel to inspire them in their equally bellicose campaigns against the Irish and the Scotch, who became liable to extermination because the Puritans saw them as Canaanites. Similarly, the King, who was an unworthy leader, like Phineas, deserved to die at the hands of the righteous, who now acted without any external authority, but, as the Jews had, on direct orders from God. "The Christian Bible," Graetz tells us,

"with its monkish figures, its exorcists, its praying brethren, and pietistic saints, supplied no models for warriors contending with a faithless king, a false aristocracy and unholy priests. Only the great heroes of the Old Testament, with fear of God in their hearts and the sword in their hands, at once religious and national champions, could serve as models for the Puritans: the Judges, freeing the oppressed people from the yoke of foreign domination; Saul, David, and Joab routing the foes of their country; and Jehu, making an end of an idolatrous and blasphemous house-these were favorite characters with Puritan warriors. In every verse of the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, they saw their own condition reflected; every psalm seemed composed for them, to teach them that, though surrounded on every side by ungodly foes, they need not fear while they trusted in God. Oliver Cromwell compared himself to the judge Gideon, who first obeyed the voice of God hesitatingly, but afterwards courageously scattered the attacking heathens; or to Judas Maccabaeus, who out of a handful of martyrs formed a host of victorious warriors."

Chet Roman , June 16, 2017 at 9:58 am

"Clapper may think it is his duty to a higher cause that allows him to defy the truth and transcend the law"

"Those who angrily criticize the Russians are completely blind to their own participation in a similar destructive process"

Interesting article but the author is giving Clapper and the rest of the "intelligence" community too much credit. There is no "higher cause" and the "Washington consensus" is not blind to their own actions. Clapper and the deep state are well aware of their self serving actions and it is motivated by money and power. What is happening is the deliberate and aggressive promotion of propaganda to the U.S. public by the intelligence agencies, patriotism has nothing to do with it.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:09 am

Yes. The secret police are the slimiest of the slimy. To call them intelligent is absurd.

Gregory Herr , June 16, 2017 at 6:55 pm

I think this is accurate to a great extent. But even "wicked" people who deep down know their own black hearts allow themselves the relief of their rationalizations that is to say that in a psychotic sort of way, they sometimes allow themselves to "believe" their own shit even while knowing it's not true. It's how they are able to function.

Jessica K , June 16, 2017 at 10:12 am

Thank you for your viewpoints from outside the United States, and I hope you know that people who follow and post on CN are opposed to the United States' militarism and destruction in the world, which, as you say, MaDarby, is based upon the arrogance of the US, and you say comes from Calvinism, a belief that success means you are blessed by God. That may have been a starting point when the US was formed, but now there are such forces in power play that it goes farther. We, the dissenters in the US, have a powerful armed structure that makes opposition to it very difficult. And your good points from Russia are written in a clearer way than many Americans could even write, since the educational system has been deliberately controlled to "dumb down" the citizens.

But what to do even when we challenge this militaristic power in control? Our elections as you must know are certainly not fair and democratic. There are weapons now used against protesters so that has become increasingly difficult, as we just saw with the native peoples who opposed the Dakota oil pipeline. It looks as if the problems in the US will come to a head economically because of the enormous debt the US has allowed to get out of control, which may be the only way to stop the failing empire. We have read that Russia has paid off its debt wisely, and that's even after the bankers of the world mainly through the US in the 1990s tried to destroy Russia. But the US just keeps printing fictitious money to pay for its warmongering. And President Putin accurately stated that it is a multipolar world, no longer can one power such as the US call the shots.

I do not think that Russia is an enemy, but that Russia has the intelligence to lead a challenge to the USA, knowing that US cannot continue its behavior. I see it more as a challenge, and in fact, China is important to that challenge. Yes, it is ignorant and arrogant that Americans are not disturbed by the merciless destruction and killing their government has done. Good points you have made, thank you.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:32 am

Anyone who presents the vaguest challenge or limit to US hegemony is seen as an enemy to be dominated or destroyed. Capitalism is the cover for worship of unlimited power. This is the essence of fascism which is simply a religion of power worship. As Thrasymachus said in Plato's Republic, "Justice is the interest of the stronger." Meaning that force trumps all other considerations, and is the ultimate goal and meaning of human life. Human history has been the story of men's struggle to dominate others. The ultimate goal of this sick philosophy is for one man to dominate everyone and everything: the apotheosis of Power! One Man becomes God over everything! When Ayn Rand said that altruism is the enemy of mankind, she was voicing this deranged philosophy.

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 7:01 pm

Yes, there are so many riches on this planet in which all of its creatures were meant (more accurately "required") by nature to share, yet 5 men claim ownership of as much "wealth" (land, resources, means of production, etc) as another 4 billion and they do everything in their power to keep it all for themselves causing untold misery for those billions. They accomplish this by conflating the onerous realities of naked unregulated "capitalism" with the platitudes of "freedom and democracy," evidenced in the "invisible hand" of the free market clearly implied to represent "god's will" in action. So this inequitable status quo is buttressed in conventional wisdom not only by phony altruism but by the power of organised religion.

Really, these self-anointed de-facto gods know they're just hucksters who have hoodwinked the public into subordinating their own interests to tyrants. It is arguably a dysfunctional principle hardwired into the human genome, as strong-man rule traces back to our earliest recorded history. But knowledge is power and recognising this flaw in the system that makes life a misery for so many should give us a reason and the leverage to change things.

Aside from widespread ignorance and fear, what is it that has kept so many down for so long? Ah, yes, the principle of "divide and rule," wherein a deliberate socioeconomic gradient is maintained amongst the 99% to make us compete and fight with one another rather than challenge them. So much easier to hate your neighbor for the little more that he many have, so much more feasible to assault and steal from him than from the lords at the top.

I could go on, but the trolls still wouldn't see it since they are too invested in their delusions and meager rewards. They are sure to have some talking points on why degrading the planet so a few pashas can shit in solid gold commodes is a simply capital idea! And how we are fools for not seeing the obvious nature of things.

Jessica K , June 16, 2017 at 11:04 am

Hyperbola's point about the Old Testament domination of New Testament is interesting, carrying it through history by the Roundheads and Puritans. We certainly see plenty of that vicious Old Testament "YHWH" in the actions of Israel and its armed-to-the-teeth lackey, USA. The OT god is a god of power and hate, and we're seeing plenty of it now. Some of these Bible bangers really do believe in end times.

Abe , June 16, 2017 at 11:41 am

"complex conspiracy theories buttressed by the most tenuous documentation have been spun and promoted in the midst of public hearings, political rearrangements in the White House and other theatrics designed to keep the public engaged and convinced of the notion that Russia's government actually attempted to manipulate the results of America's presidential election.

"However, the entire spectacle and the narrative driving it, is based entirely on the assumption that Russia's government believes the office of US President is of significant importance enough so as to risk meddling in it in the first place. It also means that Russia believed the office of US President was so important to influence, that the substantial political fallout and consequences if caught were worth the risk.

"In reality, as US President Donald Trump has thoroughly demonstrated, the White House holds little to no sway regarding US foreign policy.

"While President Trump promised during his campaign leading up to the 2016 election cooperation with Russia, a withdrawal from undermining and overthrowing the government in Damascus, Syria and a reversal of decades of US support for the government of Saudi Arabia, he now finds himself presiding over an administration continuing to build up military forces on Russia's borders in Eastern Europe, is currently and repeatedly killing Syrian soldiers in Syria and has sealed a record arms deal with Saudi Arabia amounting to over 110 billion US dollars.

"It is clear that the foreign policy executed by US President George Bush, continued by President Barack Obama and set to continue under US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, is instead being faithfully executed by President Trump."

US Election Meddling: Smoke and Mirrors
By Ulson Gunnar
landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2017/06/us-election-meddling-smoke-and-mirrors.html

Jessica K , June 16, 2017 at 12:46 pm

I just listened to YouTube of the phenomenal Russian pianist, Denis Matsuev, playing Rachmaninoff's incredibly difficult Piano Concerto no. 3 with the Moscow Symphony, such talented people in the orchestra. And this mediocre bureaucrat, James Clapper, should call Russia "our enemy". I'll bet he has no appreciation for art. There has got to be a stop to this madness. The pianist was one of many Russian artists who signed a letter in support of President Putin when Crimea returned to Russia. The government of the USA is very, very sick and evil.

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 2:30 pm

David Marks – just a great article! Very well done. Thank you.

DMarks , June 16, 2017 at 4:20 pm

Thanks, I'm always interested in the comments provoked by my writing. A family member wrote to me: "There's no reason to give the Russian government some kind of trust, Russian policies towards gay people, the oligarchical power structure than ensures only the favored voices are heard, murdered journalists who raise criticisms against Putin, state controlled media, and the fact that Putin has turned himself into his own brand of reality TV star by staging ridiculous feats that are widely publicized in order to give him a superhero reputation these things are not the signs of a misunderstood government." I don't disagree. If I were in Russia, I could/would write an article that mirrors the one I just wrote. That's the central concept. From each side, the other side appears as the aggressors/destroyers.

Among Europeans, there are many who feel the Russian government is at the core of the problem, rather than the people in general. The farther you get from Europe, the easier it is to smear the whole country, along with their "failed" communism. We are the sum of history and it's hard to separate cause and effect of the events that lead us here. If there wasn't the immense fear of communism at the beginning of the 20th century coming from Royals, European industrialists and US oligarchs, we might have seen what the Russian experiment would have yielded. Instead the militarists and profiteers prevailed, with mirror images on both sides from the Stalin era through the Reagan era. No matter how much they were demonized before, the defeated Nazis became partners in fighting back the Soviet world. Just that single fact shows how desperately communism needed to fail in the eyes of the capitalists.

If we could have a re-run of the "cold-war" where no one is allowed to spend money on arms, defense, etc. (and of course no social repression) - purely an economic competition - what would happen? Well that's what the West feared and prevented - and we will never know what the outcome might have been.

My "neurosis" is formed as an American and still I struggle not to take "our" side. To keep some balance, I avoid the pressure to become a "fan" of anyone. Unfortunately, the majority of the general public (from all political persuasions) are pressured to see conflict as a sports event. Those in power support the notion that it's the whole other "team" that is evil and by extension the demonization of their leader is acceptable. The fanatical war mongering oligarchs of both sides bring conflict to a head by lying to us about everything, helping us believe we can win the "super-war" because we are the "good guys." Clapper is simply a great example of these beasts and the extremis we have reached. Unfortunately, there is someone just like him on the other "team."

Sam F , June 17, 2017 at 9:04 am

Indeed the warmongers and oligarchs of the US seek to provoke and grow similar forces in other powers, because they need a foreign monster to pose as protectors and accuse their moral superiors of disloyalty. While such elements can be found in every large group, the US failure to protect democratic institutions from economic concentrations has allowed them to predominate. Russia has a much smaller military, and even China has no modern record of foreign domination, provocation, and scheming.

This makes one consider whether the ideological vetting of the communist parties, which originally selected some rulers of present day Russia, and those of China, served their people better by excluding the worst of the warmongers. If the US cannot find better ways to protect democracy from warmongers, it will be discarded by history as less democratic than communism.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 5:28 pm

Mr. Marks, I agree with most of what you said in your article, but I must respectfully disagree with what I felt was your leaning over backwards to be "objective" and "even handed." Although it is true that nobody is all good or bad in this world situation, there are sides to be taken, and values to be affirmed. The United States is far and away the major cause of the very serious and potentially life ending problems on this planet at this time. The American Empire is the number one disaster for everyone alive today. I am not even going to try to prove what I have said here. To me it is by this time too obvious to ignore. I am tired of trying to point out the obvious to those who refuse to see what is right in front of them. By the way, I am not including you in that category. You have a good grasp of what is going down, but maybe you are a little too concerned with being "even handed" for my taste.

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 6:37 pm

David Marks – well, it's just a very fair article. You point out Clapper's projections. I'm always floored when I hear these guys speaking about how aggressive other countries are when, if the truth were told, they're actually the aggressor and the other country is just trying to defend themselves. Yeah, the other country is on their back, being pummeled, and they're the aggressor?

I know there are bad people in Russia too (they're everywhere), and I also know that if the U.S. wasn't the biggest bully on the block, someone else would step in and fill the vacancy. But for right now, in our current situation, the U.S. are acting like warlords, and it's just nice to have someone spell that out, point out the idiocy of people like James Clapper.

Jessica K , June 16, 2017 at 7:56 pm

Mr. Marks, one could say very parallel things about the US government that your family member said about Russia. The US bureaucratic leaders apparently have no desire to get their own house in order but would rather create scapegoats for their mistakes. There's no way to make exact comparisons between cultural values from one country to another, people's origins have similarities but also many differences. The US has no business deciding the gay issue for Russians, and that is especially hypocritical since the US still cannot treat its descendants of slaves equally, throwing a disproportionate number of them in prison after not even giving them opportunities as the whites. The US has a lot of housecleaning to do, but they don't really want to do it, they prefer to attack others and they never stop. And we the people can't get through to them, they don't care what we think.

Linda Wood , June 17, 2017 at 12:42 am

Jessica K, just to support what you are saying about our outrage over Russian backwardness with respect to gay rights, there is a writer at caucus99percent who contributes an essay nearly every day about another murder of a transgender person in the United States.

https://caucus99percent.com/diaries

turk151 , June 16, 2017 at 8:04 pm

Mr. Marks,

I sincerely appreciate the article, but my thoughts upon reading it, is that, while I agree with all of your points about Clapper, he is merely the top bureaucrat, not the agenda setter. As you can see by the comments above, while there is unanimous condemnation of the nefarious covert operations run by our government, there is a broad divergence of who sets that agenda, ranging from satanists, Calvinists, Jews, the MIC or Wall Street . However, in your follow up comment, you address a very under reported issue, which I feel is at the heart of this matter. That this stems from a fear from the Royals, who allied themselves with the Nazis to fight the communists. I believe this is the central story of the past century, yet perhaps it is still a topic that is too sensitive to discuss and does not receive nearly the coverage it deserves. I would love to more of your ideas on this subject.

Linda Wood , June 17, 2017 at 12:55 am

Not just the royal families of Europe, but Standard Oil, Chase Bank, and other U.S. corporations. This is the truth that is, just as you say, too sensitive to discuss, and is as you say so very clearly, the central story of the past century.

Thank you for saying it so well.

Bob , June 16, 2017 at 8:16 pm

Clapper and people like him in those positions are expected to lie when asked such things. Telling the truth might see you ending up like William Colby. Once you take that oath and realize the type of people you are dealing with, lying comes much easier.

Jamie , June 17, 2017 at 12:40 am

"If you look at Facebook, the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to, as we now know, the thousand Russian agents."

– Hillary

Andrew Nichols , June 17, 2017 at 3:20 am

"The Russians are not our friends; they, (Putin specifically) are avowedly opposed to our democracy and values, and see us as the cause of all their frustrations," Clapper declared.

And the Aussie pollies and media just lapped up the crap from the Clap and also from Mad Jihadi lover McCain. We in Aus really are pathetic grovellers.

Cal , June 17, 2017 at 6:25 am

This nails the anti Russia movement

Zero Hedge

Why the Elites Hate Russia

1, Russia is an independent country. It's not possible to manipulate Russia via external remote control, like it is most countries. The Elite don't like that! Russia kicked out Soros "Open Society":

Russia has banned a pro-democracy charity founded by hedge fund billionaire George Soros, saying the organization posed a threat to both state security and the Russian constitution. In a statement released Monday morning, Russia's General Prosecutor's Office said two branches of Soros' charity network - the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the Open Society Institute (OSI) - would be placed on a "stop list" of foreign non-governmental organizations whose activities have been deemed "undesirable" by the Russian state.

2. Russia is not easy to cripple via clandestine means, whether it be CIA, MI6, or outright military conflict. Some other BRICs however, that's not the case. Say what you will about Russia's military – it's on par and in many cases, advanced, compared to the US military. And that's not AN opinion, that's in the opinion of top US military commanders:

3. Russian culture, and language, is too complex for the average "Elite" who pretends to be internationally well versed because they had a few semesters of French.

. Plain and simple, the Elite do not control Russia.

While there are backchannels of Russian oligarchs that work directly with Western Rothschild interests, for example, they simply don't have the same level of control as they do European countries, like Germany for instance.

Jessica K , June 17, 2017 at 7:52 am

Thanks, Linda, for your point about murders of gays and transgenders in the US. This country for all its vaunted proclamations about being so advanced and exceptional, has a huge amount of prejudice and ignorance among the people, who have been kept down economically so many harbor resentments.

Your points about Russia are interesting, Cal, especially about the military. US has exploited its citizens for military service when jobs have been taken away in other fields, so that a huge number of the enlisted are just waiting to get out. I have a friend whose son-in-law has to finish his third or maybe fourth deployment to Afghanistan and he can't wait to get out. And as noted in various posts, sloppy work has been done on military equipment in US, much of which becomes wasted money. I suspect Russians have to pay more attention to the job they do because money can't be thrown around as in US, Russian defense budget is far leaner.

Michael Kenny , June 17, 2017 at 9:37 am

Every time I see an American article about Russiagate, I run a search for the word "Macron". I never get a hit. MacronLeaks proves Russiagate but no American author even mentions it. None even bother to refute the proposition that it does prove Russiagate. The parallels are astonishing: a populist "ranter" (Trump, Le Pen), a moderate candidate who is being discredited (Clinton, Fillon) and a dark horse (Sanders, Macron). The scam was to get Le Pen and Fillon into the second round and then discredit Fillon, in the hope that Macron's "new generation" voters would be so disgusted with the "old style" politician that they would abstain in the second round, thereby allowing Le Pen to win. The scam failed principally because the media blew the lid off the Fillon story before the first round of voting, meaning that Fillon's voters had already been driven into Macron's arms before the vote. In a ham-fisted, last-minute, panic move, the scammers tried to discredit Macron but, in their haste, made lots of mistakes and fell into a trap he had set for them. The matter is now before the French criminal courts, but three names have already become public, one Russian and two figures of the US alt-right, one of whom worked for the Trump campaign. It is therefore established that Russians, whether working for the Russian government, the Russian Mafia or someone else in Russia, and American rightwing extremists sought to rig the French presidential election. The same pattern in the US election, so logically, the same perpetrators. Thus, James Clapper's reasoning is perfectly sustainable and calling him rude names doesn't change that.

Bill , June 17, 2017 at 11:34 am

Is Clapper in a conspiracy with Brennan and Comey? Who else are they working with?

Jessica K , June 17, 2017 at 12:28 pm

Macron leaks were not any more provable than Russiagate, they were allegations. Macron is a Rothschild banker, he appeared as a politician very suddenly and is undoubtedly part of the New World Order plan for the neoliberal free market agenda manipulated by the wealthy. Obama endorsed Macron in the days preceding the French election showing that it is clear that Obama supports the neoliberal agenda of "free market" control which has stripped people of their assets and enriched the wealthy wherever it is employed. Just watch France in the next few years, there will be problems as great or greater than under Hollande. Immigrants will be brought in, hired as wage slaves, the economy will be manipulated by bankers, and the people will pay the price as usual. You are making inferences from hearsay, there is no proof of what you say. James Clapper is known to have lied in the past about domestic surveillance; he has claimed in the Russiagate investigations first one thing, then another: we have no proof but it is possible, later we know they did it (although we have no proof), once even saying that Russians are genetically prone to be dishonest, the most bizarre thing he has said. If you want to defend someone who says things like that, you put yourself in the same category of absurdity.

TellTheTruth-2 , June 17, 2017 at 1:50 pm

Let's face it .. they tried to shift from Russia to the WAR ON TERROR; but, after 15 years with no end in sight the American public got sick and tired of it and now they need to shift back to Russia so they have a bogyman they can use to scare us into supporting more guns. Econ 101 .. Guns or Butter? How about us getting some butter for a change?

J. D. , June 17, 2017 at 3:32 pm

Clapper's rant revealed the actual reason for the coup attempt against President Trump, which he, along with Brennan, Comey, and the Obama Dems have coordinated,. Contrast his lying depiction of Putin to the actual words of Russia's president in his interviews with Megyn Kelley and better yet, with Oliver Stone. Hopefully. Americans will get an actual chance to see and hear President Putin and not the demonized caricature they have been barraged with by the MSM.

[Jun 17, 2017] Trump now understands that Rosenstein was Obama/Hillary mole and that he backstabbed him, but this is too late

Notable quotes:
"... Acknowledging for the first time publicly that he is under investigation, Mr. Trump appeared to accuse Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, of leading what the president called a "witch hunt." Mr. Rosenstein appointed a special counsel last month to conduct the investigation after Mr. Trump fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey. ..."
"... "I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director!" Mr. Trump wrote, apparently referring to a memo Mr. Rosenstein wrote in May that was critical of Mr. Comey's leadership at the F.B.I. ..."
"... In other words, Washington is the opposite of how it orchestrates its portrait. There is no such thing as "liberal internationalism." All "liberal internationalism" means is American hegemony over the idiot countries that participate in "liberal internationalism." ..."
Jun 17, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs June 17, 2017 at 01:49 AM

Trump Attacks Rosenstein in Latest Rebuke of Justice Department

https://nyti.ms/2tuS5hb

NYT - MICHAEL D. SHEAR, CHARLIE SAVAGE and MAGGIE HABERMAN - JUNE 16

WASHINGTON - President Trump escalated his attacks on his own Justice Department on Friday, using an early-morning Twitter rant to condemn the department's actions as "phony" and "sad!" and to challenge the integrity of the official overseeing the expanding inquiry into Russian influence of the 2016 election.

Acknowledging for the first time publicly that he is under investigation, Mr. Trump appeared to accuse Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, of leading what the president called a "witch hunt." Mr. Rosenstein appointed a special counsel last month to conduct the investigation after Mr. Trump fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey.

"I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director!" Mr. Trump wrote, apparently referring to a memo Mr. Rosenstein wrote in May that was critical of Mr. Comey's leadership at the F.B.I.

"Witch hunt," Mr. Trump added.

The remarkable public rebuke is the latest example of a concerted effort by Mr. Trump, the White House and its allies to undermine officials at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. even as the Russia investigation proceeds.

The nation's law enforcement agency is under siege, short-staffed because of delays in filling senior positions and increasingly at odds with a president who had already engaged in a monthslong feud with the government's intelligence agencies.

Several current and former assistant United States attorneys described a sense of listlessness and uncertainty, with some expressing hesitation about pursuing new investigations, not knowing whether there would be an appetite for them once leadership was installed in each district after Mr. Trump fired dozens of United States attorneys who were Obama-era holdovers.

In the five weeks since Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey, he has let it be known that he has considered firing Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel leading the Russia investigation. His personal lawyer bragged about firing Preet Bharara, the former United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, who was let go as part of the mass dismissal of top prosecutors. Newt Gingrich, an ally of the president's, accused Mr. Mueller of being the tip of the "deep-state spear aimed at destroying" the Trump presidency. ...

graphic: How 7 Trump Associates Have Been
Linked to Russia https://nyti.ms/2sVvf23
NYT - updated June 13

ilsm , June 17, 2017 at 02:37 AM
"witch hunt" wrongly associates this travesty with Salem hangings!

This is more like Stalinist shows trials while the traitors ruin the branches. Or, "Beria hunts", if you wish

libezkova , June 17, 2017 at 06:57 AM
Neocon are determined not to allow anybody to change the US foreign policy as their well-being, as lobbyists of MIC and Israel, depends on this

President Trump is in trouble, Bacevich says, because "he appears disinclined to perpetuate American hegemony."

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-global-order-myth/

American hegemony is the neoconservatives doctrine and "the Russian threat" is an insurance of MIC $1.1 trillion annual budget.

And DemoRats now are just another War party, a bunch of lobbyists with the only difference that they get less money from Israel, and more from MIC and Wall Street (all wars are bankers wars)

Those "very serious guys" are determined to install President Pence and already succeeded in applointed a Special Prosecutor as the milestone of this color revolution.

Poor Trump did not realized that he is trapped until it was too late.

http://www.unz.com/proberts/global-order-is-an-euphemism-for-washingtons-hegemony/

Bacevich points out that the orchestrated attack on President Trump is based on the assumption that President Trump has launched an attack on the open, liberal, enlightened, rule of law, and democratic order that Washington has established. This liberal world order of goodness is threatened by a Trump-Putin Conspiracy.

Bacevich, a rare honest American, says this that this characterization of America is a bullshit myth.

For example, the orchestrated image of America as the great upholder of truth, justice, democracy, and human rights conveniently overlooks Washington's "meddling in foreign elections; coups and assassination plots in Iran [Washingtonn's 1953 overthrow of the first elected Iranian government], Guatemala, the Congo, Cuba, South Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, and elsewhere; indiscriminate aerial bombing campaigns in North Korea and throughout Southeast Asia; a nuclear arms race bringing the world to the brink of Armageddon; support for corrupt, authoritarian regimes in Iran [the Shah], Turkey, Greece, South Korea, South Vietnam, the Philippines, Brazil, Egypt, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and elsewhere-many of them abandoned when deemed inconvenient; the shielding of illegal activities through the use of the Security Council veto; unlawful wars launched under false pretenses; 'extraordinary rendition,' torture, and the indefinite imprisonment of persons without any semblance of due process [the evisceration of the US Constitution]."

In other words, Washington is the opposite of how it orchestrates its portrait. There is no such thing as "liberal internationalism." All "liberal internationalism" means is American hegemony over the idiot countries that participate in "liberal internationalism."

[Jun 17, 2017] Putin Claims Russia Proposed a Cyber War Treaty In 2015 But the Obama Admin Ignored Them

Notable quotes:
"... American three letter agencies spend more money 'cyber spying' than the total Russian military budget. Which isn't to say the Russians don't have talent or that any amount of money will turn a paper pusher into a hacker. ..."
"... The Americans didn't respond because they thought they were miles ahead. Recent releases show they _could_ just own anyone with any connected consumer device (e.g. router, PC, Mac, Android, iOS, Linux based etc etc). ..."
Jun 16, 2017 | politics.slashdot.org
(qz.com) 182

Posted by msmash on Friday June 16, 2017

Russian president Vladimir Putin ( who denies any Russian part in the hacking ) claims the Obama administration ignored a proposal in 2015 that might have avoided all of this. His administration suggested working out a cyber treaty with the US but was ignored by Obama officials, Putin told film director Oliver Stone in Showtime's four-part series broadcast this week. "A year and a half ago, in fall 2015, we made proposal to our American partners that we work through these issues and conclude a treaty on the rules of behavior in this sphere," he said in Stone's documentary The Putin Interviews. "

The American side was silent, they didn't reply to us. "

HornWumpus ( 783565 ) , Friday June 16, 2017 @12:55PM ( #54634053 )

Re:That's a really nice Internet you have there... ( Score: 4 , Insightful)

Do you realize how big the NSA is?

American three letter agencies spend more money 'cyber spying' than the total Russian military budget. Which isn't to say the Russians don't have talent or that any amount of money will turn a paper pusher into a hacker.

The Americans didn't respond because they thought they were miles ahead. Recent releases show they _could_ just own anyone with any connected consumer device (e.g. router, PC, Mac, Android, iOS, Linux based etc etc).

I'm thinking the OpenBSD guys are acting kind of smug, but where they owned too? I can't keep up.

[Jun 17, 2017] Power of alt media made obvious by backfire of corporate medias fake news war

Notable quotes:
"... Waddell and the Atlantic, among others, like the Daily Beast - known mouthpieces for the Democratic establishment scrambling to blame Hillary Clinton's loss on everything but the kitchen sink of a horribly flawed campaign - realize to some degree the threat posed by legitimate criticism of the accepted narrative. ..."
"... Zuckerberg's protestations and resistance to acknowledge 'fake news' as influencing the outcome of the election quickly melted under pressure from the pro-Hillary camp - and evaporated as Clintonites and a smattering of miffed Republicans switched gears and ratcheted up New Red Scare propagandizing. ..."
"... When utterly unfounded, un-researched, and unverified reporting by the Washington Post termed the collective body of independent, right-slanted, or pro-Jill Stein media organizations as either active agents of Russia or the Putin's "useful idiots," those outlets formed an implicit bond for having been scurrilously blacklisted. ..."
"... Once the Post's thinly-veneered paper tiger went down in flames for it being impossible to substantiate, the outlet threw journalistic integrity out the window and proffered another unprovable paragon of irresponsibility: " Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House ." ..."
Dec 17, 2016 | www.sott.net
Power of alt media made obvious by backfire of corporate media's 'fake news' war Claire Bernish

Free Thought Project

As you've likely heard by now, Facebook has taken its war against 'fake news' to a whole other level - employing third party media and fact-checking organizations to judge whether news items are legitimate - to the consternation of countless users who see the platform overstepping red lines.

Servile corporate media immediately parroted the wealth of benefits Facebook's plan will ostensibly provide, from an alert and gateway system forced onto articles deemed "disputed," to the organizations making the 'kiss of death' judgment call: Snopes, FactCheck.org, Politifact, and ABC News.

Anyone with passing knowledge of bias in media is probably spitting out their coffee - all four organizations are notoriously left-leaning and liberal, and the list includes no outlets with any other of myriad ideological tilts.

Indeed, right-leaning outlets from Breitbart to the Drudge Report, as well as the sizable alternative media community - who, collectively, held to higher journalistic standards throughout the election cycle than "old media" titans like the New York Times and Washington Post - quickly condemned the unabashed bias imbued in Facebook's plan.

Mark Zuckerberg, a large consensus concluded, just declared war on dissent - if not information, itself.

But in an article intended to criticize purveyors of 'fake news' and applaud the social media platform's oh-so-noble efforts to strike such outlets from the American interwebs, The Atlantic's Kaveh Waddell posited, " Will Facebook's Fake News Warning Become a Badge of Honor? "

Waddell asks this question, the reader doesn't discover until more than halfway through the article, through a lens of myopic bias - if not outright scorn - against anyone who dare question the motives of Facebook or its choice of fact-checkers.

"There's a danger that people who are disinclined to trust traditional sources of information will treat Facebook's warnings as a badge of honor," Waddell clarifies. "If fact-checking organizations deem a story questionable, they might be more likely to read and share it, rather than less. There's reason to believe this group might think of itself as a counterculture, and take the position that anything that 'the man' rejects must have a grain of subversive truth to it."

For a journalist in a nationally-regarded publication to display such seething condescension toward a category of people perhaps most critical to preventing a narrowing of news media to a single viewpoint is criminally self-interested, indeed - evincing the paranoia among old media to validate its reporting in the wake of horrendous election coverage.

Regardless of his patronizing tone, Waddell's question presents what might be the thinnest silver lining to having a Facebook-approved information gatekeeper - news deemed "disputed" will be viewed by non-establishment thinkers as bearing the Scarlet Letter C - censored for being problematic for the political elite.

In other words, this soft censorship could facilely create a Streisand Effect - whereby efforts to suppress content backfire and instead draw greater attention to something than it ever would have received otherwise.

Waddell and the Atlantic, among others, like the Daily Beast - known mouthpieces for the Democratic establishment scrambling to blame Hillary Clinton's loss on everything but the kitchen sink of a horribly flawed campaign - realize to some degree the threat posed by legitimate criticism of the accepted narrative.

This battle has literally nil to do with fake news - or even Russia - and everything to do with the power of dissent.

Of course, a brazen irony in Facebook's purge of random items is CEO Mark Zuckerberg's comments on the subject prior to mass Democratic and corporate media hysteria over iterations Donald Trump won because Russia:

"Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other."
Zuckerberg's protestations and resistance to acknowledge 'fake news' as influencing the outcome of the election quickly melted under pressure from the pro-Hillary camp - and evaporated as Clintonites and a smattering of miffed Republicans switched gears and ratcheted up New Red Scare propagandizing.

When utterly unfounded, un-researched, and unverified reporting by the Washington Post termed the collective body of independent, right-slanted, or pro-Jill Stein media organizations as either active agents of Russia or the Putin's "useful idiots," those outlets formed an implicit bond for having been scurrilously blacklisted.

Once the Post's thinly-veneered paper tiger went down in flames for it being impossible to substantiate, the outlet threw journalistic integrity out the window and proffered another unprovable paragon of irresponsibility: " Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House ."

This gem swears CIA officials have performed an extensive assessment of the election and can prove individuals with ties to the Russian government as responsible for submitting documents on the Democratic Party to Wikileaks for publication - an allegation Julian Assange emerged from the shadows to dispel in an interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday.

Wikileaks - whose published documents have never been proven inauthentic - found itself on the Post's 'Russian agent blacklist.'

In other words, by relying on user-reporting and biased outlets to flag articles means any "disputed" contents feasibly earned that label on a subjective - not hard and fast - basis.

But should there be any labeling - read: moderate censorship - of articles and items by a social media behemoth who claims impartiality while rubbing elbows with Democratic heavy-hitters. All grumblings on Facebook's status as a public entity aside, when your platform acts as the primary news aggregator for millions, there is a staunch obligation to preserve the rights of everyone to speak their version of truth.

To be honest, that includes outlets spewing horrendously false news items as the real thing.

In this new age of information aptly deemed the post-truth era by the Oxford Dictionaries this year, the onus of consequence for sharing any erroneous or fabricated information falls squarely on the shoulders of the fecklessly lazy who don't bother checking sources and hyperlinks - or, in most cases, read more than the title - before disseminating information online.

Because that basic duty was apparently too much for so many to bear, we're now all faced with the Huxleyan prospect of being spoon fed vanilla government propaganda disguised as news - while legitimate news earns the dystopic "disputed" label.

Maybe, just maybe, Waddell and the others have it all wrong. Maybe the imminent Streisand Effect will thwart Facebook gatekeeping in its tracks. Maybe people have wearied of the perilous penchant for categorization. Maybe this Scarlet Lettering of dissenting viewpoints will disgust the wary and students of history.

Maybe Facebook will see its fast-approaching, inevitable demise and decide the suppression of information does not a profitable business move make - or maybe the "disputed" info plot represents the ultimate poison pill.
Comment: See also:

[Jun 17, 2017] A Clinton Fan Manufactured Fake News That MSNBC Personalities Spread to Discredit WikiLeaks Docs by Glenn Greenwald

Notable quotes:
"... The phrase "Fake News" has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as "terrorism" and "hate speech"; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it. ..."
"... That did not stop Nance, who with a firm intelligence background should have been able to easily spot the fake with "(chaos)" actually written in the side bar and "((makes air quotes))" written before the "bucket of losers" piece in the completely comical so-called transcript, from referencing the document and saying: "Official Warning: #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done." ..."
"... Their Fake News tweets - warning people to view the WikiLeaks documents as fake - remain posted, with no subsequent retraction or acknowledgment of the falsehoods that they spread about the WikiLeaks archive. That includes MSNBC segments that spread this accusation. ..."
Dec 11, 2016 | Information Clearing House

The Intercept

The phrase "Fake News" has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as "terrorism" and "hate speech"; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets - a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry Fake News, despite the Post article itself being centrally based on Fake News. (The Post this week finally added a lame editor's note acknowledging these critiques; the Post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to "vouch for the validity" of the blacklist even though the article's key claims were based on doing exactly that).

Now we have an even more compelling example. Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming - with no basis whatsoever - that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored . That lie - and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth - was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance , The Atlantic's David Frum , and Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald .

Clinton camp chief strategist @benensonj : "I've seen things" in Wikileaks emails "that aren't authentic" #ThisWeek https://t.co/LPQJBfACqz

- This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 23, 2016

That the emails in the Wikileaks archive were doctored or faked - and thus should be disregarded - was classic Fake News, spread not by Macedonian teenagers or Kremlin operatives but by established news outlets such as MSNBC, The Atlantic, and Newsweek. And, by design, this Fake News spread like wildfire all over the internet, hungrily clicked and shared by tens of thousands of people eager to believe it was true. As a result of this deliberate disinformation campaign, anyone reporting on the contents of the emails was instantly met with claims that the documents in the archive had been proven fake.

The most damaging such claim came from MSNBC's intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance. As I documented on October 11 , he tweeted what he - for some bizarre reason - labeled an "Official Warning." It decreed: " # PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & # blackpropaganda not even professionally done." That tweet was re-tweeted by more than 4,000 people. It was vested with added credibility by Clinton-supporting journalists like Reid and Frum ("expert to take seriously").

All of that, in turn, led to an article in something called the "Daily News Bin" with the headline: "MSNBC intelligence expert: WikiLeaks is releasing falsified emails not really from Hillary Clinton." This classic fake news product - citing Nance and Reid among others - was shared more than 40,000 times on Facebook alone.

Official Warning: #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done. https://t.co/UuJZrurHAA

- Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) October 7, 2016

Joe, Malcolm Nance & other experts have validated these emails have been forged & altered by Russia before passing them off to Wikileaks! https://t.co/gZ7rVQ6JJp

- VLB (@BickiDoodle) October 27, 2016

The media ( @ABC , @CBSNews , @NBCNews and @PBS ) must heed Malcolm Nance: "You should have ZERO CONFIDENCE in the contents" of Wikileaks dumps!

- Thomas Gordon (@EarthOrb) October 23, 2016

Joy now discussing WikiLeaks with security expert Malcolm Nance who says we can have zero confidence in authenticity of documents. #AMJoy

- LaurenBaratzLogsted (@LaurenBaratzL) October 22, 2016

From the start, it was obvious that it was this accusation from Clinton supporters - not the WikiLeaks documents - that was a complete fraud, perpetrated on the public as deliberate disinformation. With regard to the claim about the Podesta emails, now we know exactly who created it in the first instance: a hard-core Clinton fanatic.

When Nance - MSNBC's "intelligence analyst" - issued his "Official Warning," he linked to a tweet that warned: "Please be skeptical of alleged #PodestaEmails . Trumpists are dirtying docs." That tweet, in turn, linked to a tweet from an anonymous account calling itself "The Omnivore," which had posted an obviously fake transcript purporting to be a Hillary Clinton speech to Goldman Sachs. Even though that fake document was never published by WikiLeaks, that was the entire basis for the MSNBC-inspired claim that some of the WikiLeaks documents were doctored.

But the person who created that forged Goldman Sachs transcript was not a "Trumpist" at all; he was a devoted supporter of Hillary Clinton. In the Daily Beast, the person behind the anonymous "The Omnivore" account unmasks himself as "Marco Chacon," a self-professed creator of "viral fake news" whose targets were Sanders and Trump supporters (he specialized in blatantly fake anti-Clinton frauds with the goal of tricking her opponents into citing them, so that they would be discredited). When he wasn't posting fabricated news accounts designed to make Clinton's opponents look bad, his account looked like any other standard pro-Clinton account: numerous negative items about Sanders and then Trump, with links to many Clinton-defending articles.

In his Daily Beast article, published on November 21, Chacon describes how he manufactured the forged Goldman Sachs speech transcript. He says he did it prior to learning that the WikiLeaks releases of Podesta emails contained actual Clinton speech excerpts to Wall Street banks. But once he realized WikiLeaks had published actual Clinton transcripts, Chacon began trying to lure people he disliked - Clinton critics - into believing that his forged speeches were real, so that he could prove they were gullible and dumb.

Sadly for Chacon, however, the people who ended up getting fooled by his Fake News items were the nation's most prominent Clinton supporters, including supposed experts and journalists from MSNBC who used his obvious fakes to try to convince the world that the WikiLeaks archive had been compromised and thus should be ignored. That it was pro-Clinton journalists who spread his Fake News as real now horrifies even Chacon:

The tweet went super-viral. It started an almost trending - but still going today - hashtag #bucketoflosers. A tweet declaring it a bad forgery was picked up by Malcolm Nance, an intelligence analyst for MSNBC among others, who tweeted to be wary of the WikiLeaks release .

That did not stop Nance, who with a firm intelligence background should have been able to easily spot the fake with "(chaos)" actually written in the side bar and "((makes air quotes))" written before the "bucket of losers" piece in the completely comical so-called transcript, from referencing the document and saying: "Official Warning: #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done."

At the end of the day, did this change anything? I don't know. I think I inadvertently hurt WikiLeaks, which I'm not proud of - but I'm not too sorry about either. I suspect that some people came to realize that they were believing in fake things.

That last sentence - that as a result of his fraud, "some people came to realize that they were believing in fake things" - is false, at least insofar as it applies to people like Eichenwald, Frum, Nance, and Reid. Even though it was clear from the start to any rational and honest person that there was zero evidence that any of the WikiLeaks documents were doctored, and even though (as Chacon himself says) nobody minimally informed (let alone supposed "intelligence experts") should have been fooled by his blatant Fake News, none of the journalists who lied to the public about these WikiLeaks documents have even once acknowledged what they did.

Their Fake News tweets - warning people to view the WikiLeaks documents as fake - remain posted, with no subsequent retraction or acknowledgment of the falsehoods that they spread about the WikiLeaks archive. That includes MSNBC segments that spread this accusation.

Indeed, not only should it have been blatantly obvious that Chacon's anonymously posted document did not impugn the WikiLeaks archive, but also the slightest research would have revealed that the person who manufactured the forgery was a Clinton supporter , not a "Trumpist" or a Kremlin operative. Indeed, one of the Clinton-criticizing journalists who Chacon tried to trick, Michael Tracey, said exactly this at the time . But because his facts contradicted the MSNBC/Newsweek political agenda, they were ignored in favor of the lie that the WikiLeaks archive had been compromised and doctored:

FYI: one of the accounts ( @OmnivoreBlog ) that circulated a fake HRC speech transcript is a pro-Clinton troll spreading disinformation. pic.twitter.com/HZ3UBm9pk8

- Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 11, 2016

I will be shocked if any of them now acknowledge this even with Chacon's confession. That's because MSNBC has repeatedly proven that it tolerates Fake News and outright lies from its personalities as long as those lies are in service of the right candidate (when Democrats were smearing Jill Stein as a Kremlin stooge , Reid's program aired Nance's lie to MSNBC viewers that Stein had previously hosted her own show on RT: an utter fabrication that MSNBC, to this day, has never corrected or even acknowledged despite multiple requests from FAIR ).

On Reid's show, Malcolm Nance falsely claimed Jill Stein hosted an RT show, & they just refuse to correct/retract it. How is that allowed? https://t.co/FKb5J0HDKF

- Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 19, 2016

Every day, literally, you can turn on MSNBC and hear various people so righteously lamenting the spread of "Fake News." Yet MSNBC itself not only spreads Fake News but refuses to correct it when it is exposed. How do they have any credibility to denounce Fake News? They do not.

That journalists and "experts" outright lied to the public this way in order to help their favorite candidate is obviously dangerous. This was most powerfully pointed out - ironically - by Marty Baron, executive editor of the Washington Post, who told the New York Times's Jim Rutenberg : "If you have a society where people can't agree on basic facts, how do you have a functioning democracy?"

Exactly: If you have prominent journalists telling the public to trust an anonymous group with a false McCarthyite blacklist, or telling it to ignore informative documents on the grounds that they are fake when there is zero reason to believe that they are fake, that is a direct threat to democracy. In the case of the Podesta emails, these lies were perpetrated by the very factions that have taken to most loudly victimizing themselves over the spread of Fake News.

But the problem here goes way beyond mere hypocrisy. Complaints about Fake News are typically accompanied by calls for "solutions" that involve censorship and suppression, either by the government or tech giants such as Facebook. But until there is a clear definition of "Fake News," and until it's recognized that Fake News is being aggressively spread by the very people most loudly complaining about it, the dangers posed by these solutions will be at least as great as the problem itself.

Note: The article was lightly edited to reflect the correct date of the Daily Beast article: November 21.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House editorial policy.

[Jun 17, 2017] The higher the stakes for the elite, the more you can be certain the mainstream news lie about and reports fake news produced by the goverment fakers

www.moonofalabama.org

According to Fox News and NBC, China flew such bomber on November 25 (Dec 5, 6 reps above), well BEFORE the Trump phone call.

It also flew the bombers AFTER (Dec 9 rep) the Trump's phone call with the Taiwanese government. Indeed it regularly flies these bombers.

The sightseeing flight had thereby nothing at all to do with any Trump call. Correlating the call with those flights is bogus spin.

The headlines above are all nonsense. There is nothing "nuclear" and the flights of outdated bombers have nothing to do with any Trump call to wherever. They are #fakenews just as most of the other news we get is:

News is fake. The higher the stakes for the ruling classes, the more you can be certain the mainstream news about it will be as fake as fuck and conversely, reports deemed fake by those same fakers should be duly considered on their merits.

[Jun 17, 2017] The higher the stakes for the elite, the more you can be certain the mainstream news lie about and conversely, reports deemed fake by those same fakers should be duly considered on their merits.

www.moonofalabama.org

According to Fox News and NBC, China flew such bomber on November 25 (Dec 5, 6 reps above), well BEFORE the Trump phone call. It also flew the bombers AFTER (Dec 9 rep) the Trump's phone call with the Taiwanese government. Indeed it regularly flies these bombers. The sightseeing flight had thereby nothing at all to do with any Trump call. Correlating the call with those flights is bogus spin.

The headlines above are all nonsense. There is nothing "nuclear" and the flights of outdated bombers have nothing to do with any Trump call to wherever. They are #fakenews just as most of the other news we get is:

News is fake. The higher the stakes for the ruling classes, the more you can be certain the mainstream news about it will be as fake as fuck and conversely, reports deemed fake by those same fakers should be duly considered on their merits.

[Jun 17, 2017] Are Europeans finally standing up to American economic imperialism and extra-territorial laws?

Jun 17, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren , June 16, 2017 at 3:07 pm

Are Europeans finally standing up to American economic imperialism and extra-territorial laws?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HNfFiXqGdww

Published on Jun 15, 2017
The new anti-Russian sanctions are outlined in an amendment to a bill imposing sanctions against Iran.

The anti-Russian measures in the amendment involve imposing penalties on enterprises that cooperate with Russian oil and gas companies.

READ MORE: https://on.rt.com/8eub

marknesop , June 16, 2017 at 3:46 pm
You know the pressure will be on now, from the State Department and other US sources, for European leaders to get their populations in line and start singing from the same song sheet again. Gonna be a tough sell in Germany, though.

So far none of the American promises about laying waste to Russia has come about. Generally speaking I find that if you announce "THIS is going to happen", and then you have to keep coming back to it and doing more stuff to shore it up and make it happen, then your initial plan sucked.

[Jun 17, 2017] What would US foreign policy look like under President Pence by Hady Amr and Steve Feldstein

May 25, 2017 | thehill.com
Among the Republican establishment, particularly the neoconservative wing, Pence has an impeccable reputation. Many describe him as a " hawk's hawk ." He was a strong proponent of the Iraq War, has vigorously stood up for a strong military and "American values" and, as vice president, has taken on an informal role as an emissary to NATO and other alliances. All of this contrasts starkly to what candidate Trump said on the campaign trail.

Likewise, Pence's evangelical Christian faith is central to his identity. He has proudly built up a reputation as one of the most conservative lawmakers in the country and frequently describes himself as "a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order." There is a high probability that Pence would explicitly embed religious morals in U.S. foreign policy and push an activist social conservative agenda.

For example, as the governor of Indiana, Pence signed one of the strictest abortion provisions in the country and approved a controversial law intended to allow businesses to deny services to members of the LGBT community for religious reasons (only after intense blowback did he backtrack). Translated into the foreign policy realm, it is not hard to imagine Pence defending Christian minorities around the world, possibly to the exclusion of other religious groups.

He will undoubtedly continue Trump's expansion of the " global gag rule ," and it is possible he may try to push a " clash of civilizations " strategy, primarily seeking alliances with countries that have a "Judeo-Christian" character.

But a Pence presidency could also mean re-adopting a "values agenda," with a greater emphasis on human rights, democracy and development that would be closer in line with President George W. Bush's policies. Under Bush, funding for development - particularly global health programs - expanded, bringing together an unlikely coalition of secular development advocates and faith-based stakeholders.

It is not hard to envision a similar coalition coming together under Pence's watch. A Pence presidency also may lead to a shoring-up of security and economic alliances. Just as Trump has cast the free-trade regime into jeopardy, castigated NATO (at least before an abrupt about-face last month) and signaled massive funding cuts to the Bretton Woods Institutions, Pence may reverse many of these pronouncements.

In the current configuration of the Trump administration, three separate groups tangle for foreign policy primacy: the economic nationalists/populists led by Stephen Bannon, the military pragmatists represented by Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and the economic globalists fronted by National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

Under Pence, the Bannon wing would likely make a quick and graceless exit. The economic globalists and the military pragmatists would stay entrenched in strong positions, but old groups would likely return, such as the neoconservatives and religious faith leaders.

A Pence presidency would bring big style changes. Gone would be the late night tweets and blustery rhetoric. More than likely, "America First" would gradually disappear, with a return to a more traditional form of American exceptionalism. The impulsivity, erratic swings of policy and casual disregard for intelligence and briefing material would also likely pass.

These changes alone would considerably ease fears about an accidental stumble into a major war or nuclear confrontation. On the other hand, the divisive culture wars that have framed Pence's political career would presumably return in a major way and likely spill over into the foreign policy arena.

[Jun 17, 2017] Limbaugh The Swamp Has Got Trump Playing the Swamps Game - Thats Not What Trump Was Elected to Do

Notable quotes:
"... According to Limbaugh, Trump was elected to "drain the swamp," but has been bogged down in taking on the Justice Department's investigation of his alleged ties to Russia and how that investigation had taken on other aspects. ..."
"... Partial transcript as follows (courtesy of RushLimbaugh.com ): ..."
"... If he wants to fire these people, he can. And if he wants to endure the excrement show that happens, he can. If he wants to drain the swamp, he could keep doing it. Now, the point is that once Trump's inaugurated, already under a cloud of suspicion that it limits his ability to drain the swamp because when he begins it taints what he's doing as rather than draining the swamp he's getting rid of people who could put him in trouble. That's what Josh here is saying. ..."
"... They understood that the executive branch was gonna try to become dictator. They understood legislative branch was gonna be trying to overthrow the executive. They understood that the judges are gonna try to trample over everybody. And so they gave every branch defense mechanisms against various forms of attack in order maintain the separation of powers. And these are still in place today. ..."
"... Now, Obama was able to take over the legislative branch 'cause they ceded it to him. The Democrats ran it, and they said, "We're more than happy because we believe in centralized command-and-control, and since we love Obama, since he's God, since he's Mr. Perfection, we are happy to cede our power to him." And they did. ..."
"... Republicans have no desire to cede their power to Trump. They're holding onto it so Trump's in a battle with his own party for power, and of course the DOJ is not equally powerful as the executive branch. It is part of the executive branch. It does not have independent powers. The built-in defense mechanisms are what are being employed now. Okay, we've announced the special counsel and he's announced that the president's under investigation, and so the political reality, the political consequences of using his executive power to broom all these people out of there is designed as a deterrent. ..."
"... Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor ..."
Jun 17, 2017 | www.breitbart.com
Friday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh warned President Donald Trump of "playing the swamp's game" in governing. advertisement

According to Limbaugh, Trump was elected to "drain the swamp," but has been bogged down in taking on the Justice Department's investigation of his alleged ties to Russia and how that investigation had taken on other aspects.

Limbaugh argued although he was playing "the swamp's game," he had other tools at his disposal that he has yet to use.

Partial transcript as follows (courtesy of RushLimbaugh.com ):

He could fire Rosenstein, and he could fire Mueller. There's nothing stopping him from doing it, nothing legally. He could go to Rosenstein right now. He would be perfectly within his bounds to go to Rosenstein and say, "Look, this investigation can't be wide open for anything. You've gotta limit what these people can look for. You've gotta limit it to actual felonious crimes. You can't have them subpoenaing anybody they want financial records, text records, tax records. There has to be a limit."

He would be perfectly within his bounds to do that because he is the executive branch. And if he wanted to fire these people, he could. When you see in the media, "There's no way he can do it," they're talking politically. But since the independent counsel, special counsel's been named, and now since they made sure to leak that Trump is under investigation, that is supposed to tie his hands, but it cannot tie his hands legally.

If he wants to fire these people, he can. And if he wants to endure the excrement show that happens, he can. If he wants to drain the swamp, he could keep doing it. Now, the point is that once Trump's inaugurated, already under a cloud of suspicion that it limits his ability to drain the swamp because when he begins it taints what he's doing as rather than draining the swamp he's getting rid of people who could put him in trouble. That's what Josh here is saying.

And all that is true. But it need not stop him. What is being relied on, therefore, is conventional inside-the-Beltway thinking. Look, the Constitution has devised, for every branch of the government - the Founding Fathers were smart people, folks. They anticipated that there would be a never-ending quest to consolidate power. They understood human beings.

They understood that the executive branch was gonna try to become dictator. They understood legislative branch was gonna be trying to overthrow the executive. They understood that the judges are gonna try to trample over everybody. And so they gave every branch defense mechanisms against various forms of attack in order maintain the separation of powers. And these are still in place today.

These various mechanisms that the branches can constitutionally use to rein in, say, an overzealous executive. Or that a president can use to rein in overzealous members of the executive branch. The executive branch cannot run anything legislatively and vice-versa. Now, Obama was able to take over the legislative branch 'cause they ceded it to him. The Democrats ran it, and they said, "We're more than happy because we believe in centralized command-and-control, and since we love Obama, since he's God, since he's Mr. Perfection, we are happy to cede our power to him." And they did.

Republicans have no desire to cede their power to Trump. They're holding onto it so Trump's in a battle with his own party for power, and of course the DOJ is not equally powerful as the executive branch. It is part of the executive branch. It does not have independent powers. The built-in defense mechanisms are what are being employed now. Okay, we've announced the special counsel and he's announced that the president's under investigation, and so the political reality, the political consequences of using his executive power to broom all these people out of there is designed as a deterrent.

But he could still do it. It's not constitutional or legal prohibitions stopping him. It's pure politics. And it's the politics of the swamp, folks. The swamp has got Trump playing the swamp's game right now. And that's not what Trump was elected to do, and that's not what Trump wants. Trump does not want to play the swamp's game. I think the effort to get health care passed in the House was Trump playing the swamp game. And by swamp game, I mean the traditional way to get legislation passed.

Somebody in the House comes up with a bill working with the White House and you got people that are for it and against it. You bring the detractors up to the White House, you wine and dine 'em, you cajole 'em, you beat 'em on the head. You do whatever, you try to get the bill passed, exactly the way it's always been done in the swamp. That first health care bill that ended up not being voted on because it never had a chance, I never thought it was gonna have a chance because it was "all swamp all the time."

Now, you might say, "Well, I mean, Rush, the swamp's the swamp. There's no other way to get a bill passed. The president's not a dictator." I understand that. But Trump has many more tools at his disposal than he is aware of. I shouldn't say that. He's got more tools at his disposal than he is using. The power vested in the president by the Constitution in the executive branch is awesome.

Now, there are limits to it. Separation of powers. But he hasn't gotten close to utilizing it. It's just politics that is the obstacle to getting rid of Mueller since Mueller has now leaked that Trump is under investigation. You've heard the media say if he gets rid of him now that takes us right back to Nixon. It takes us back to Nixon only because the media loved getting rid of Nixon. Nobody has any evidence Trump did anything yet. There isn't a shred of evidence even now, folks. If you read the Washington Post story on the latest examples of the independent counsel looking into financial - there's no evidence of anything. It's a wild good chase.

Trump would not be throwing out any evidence if he fired these people and shut down this investigation. If Trump thought the investigation was needlessly harming the country and derailing us at a time we needed to be focused on real dangers and enemies, he could do it. There would be hell to pay in the media, don't misunderstand. I mean, it would dwarf what's happening. But he could do it, is the point. Now, he won't probably choose to do it because of the political ramifications of it.

But the idea that he's been hamstrung since the beginning because he was inaugurated under investigation, and at that time we didn't even know what it was. It was just the FBI looking into Russia and collusion. Some of us have known that that was bogus from the get-go. Some of us have known that it was purely manufactured, invented by the Hillary campaign 24 hours after she lost. Some of us have never believed a single word of it and would have been happy if Trump acted that way as well.

But he didn't. Why? He's new. He wants to calm their fears. He wants to show them that the things they thought about him were not true, that the reasons they hated him were not grounded in any reality. He wanted to show them that he could work with them, be a good guy, we could all come together. I'm sure that's what he wanted to do. And of course they want no part of that 'cause they don't want any part of Donald Trump succeeding in anything, anytime, anywhere.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

[Jun 17, 2017] Political Elite Use Russia-Baiting to Medicate U.S. Crisis of Governance Black Agenda Report

Jun 17, 2017 | blackagendareport.com
Political Elite Use Russia-Baiting to "Medicate" U.S. "Crisis of Governance"

Submitted by Nellie Bailey a... on Tue, 06/13/2017 - 00:10

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The U.S. is engulfed in a "crisis of governance" that has been "intentionally misunderstood" by the corporate media and the political elite, said Danny Haiphong , a contributing political analyst at BAR.

Anti-Russian hysteria has been whipped up "to medicate political consciousness." "They don't want to discuss how Russia has absolutely nothing to do with the millions of incarcerated people in the U.S., or the fact that it is the U.S. monopoly capitalist economy, not the emerging capitalist economy of Russia, which has automated many of the jobs and siphoned much of the wealth that once belonged to a privileged sector of U.S. workers," said Haiphong. "This system has run its course. War is all the system has left."

[Jun 17, 2017] Dumping the Democrats for good is the only way to resist Trump

Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. is engulfed in a "crisis of governance" that has been "intentionally misunderstood" by the corporate media and the political elite, said Danny Haiphong , a contributing political analyst at BAR. Anti-Russian hysteria has been whipped up "to medicate political consciousness." "They don't want to discuss how Russia has absolutely nothing to do with the millions of incarcerated people in the U.S., or the fact that it is the U.S. monopoly capitalist economy, not the emerging capitalist economy of Russia, which has automated many of the jobs and siphoned much of the wealth that once belonged to a privileged sector of U.S. workers," said Haiphong. "This system has run its course. War is all the system has left." ..."
"... "If you are resisting Russian collusion with Trump, then what you are resisting is a fantasy," BAR executive editor Glen Ford told the opening plenary of the Left Forum. "And, if you are simply resisting Trump, the idiot in the White House, then you are simply a tool of a Democratic Party strategy." ..."
Jun 17, 2017 | blackagendareport.com

"Dumping the Democrats for good is the only way to resist Trump," said Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley , addressing BAR's panel at the Left Forum, in New York City. "What have they done since Election Day?" Kimberley asked. "They have refused to give even the appearance that they are willing to push for even meager reforms. We have to talk about replacing them and having a true workers party, a true peace party."

Political Elite Use Russia-Baiting to "Medicate" U.S. "Crisis of Governance"

The U.S. is engulfed in a "crisis of governance" that has been "intentionally misunderstood" by the corporate media and the political elite, said Danny Haiphong , a contributing political analyst at BAR. Anti-Russian hysteria has been whipped up "to medicate political consciousness." "They don't want to discuss how Russia has absolutely nothing to do with the millions of incarcerated people in the U.S., or the fact that it is the U.S. monopoly capitalist economy, not the emerging capitalist economy of Russia, which has automated many of the jobs and siphoned much of the wealth that once belonged to a privileged sector of U.S. workers," said Haiphong. "This system has run its course. War is all the system has left."

A Real Left Would Demand Peace

"If you are resisting Russian collusion with Trump, then what you are resisting is a fantasy," BAR executive editor Glen Ford told the opening plenary of the Left Forum. "And, if you are simply resisting Trump, the idiot in the White House, then you are simply a tool of a Democratic Party strategy."

Ford said the nation needs a rejuvenated anti-war movement, "or else we are defenseless against this kind of strategy on the part of the Democrats, who pretend that they are an alternative to the fascist-sounding and definitely virulently white nationalist forces in the Republican Party, but are themselves intent upon a war policy that can mean the extinction of the human race."

[Jun 17, 2017] NATO as a threat to European countries sovereinity

Jun 17, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

jfl | Jun 16, 2017 9:23:45 PM | 68

part 3 ~23:00 - 26:55

Stone :

But ... economically you say you are self-sufficient ... they're gone, let them have their problems. It's not going to destoy your country.

Putin :

Not in the least.

Stone :

... and at one point you told me in our last meeting that ... I asked you, you know, what about the Russian [base at Sevastopol] ... you told me that it [Russia] wasn't threatened by the loss of the base ...

Putin :

It was a threat, losing this base, but it was not too sensitive. Right now we are commissioning a new military base not far from here in Novorossiysk.

Stone :

Even if nato made an agreement with Ukraine, I still don't see the threat to Russia ... with the new weaponry.

Putin :

I see a threat.

The threat consists in the fact that once nato comes to this or that country, the political leadership of that country as a whole, along with its population, cannot influence the positions nato takes, including the decisions related to stationing the military infrastructure. Even very sensitive weapons can be deployed. I'm also talking about anti-ballistic missile systems.

Right now a certain strengthening of American influence is being witnessed in Europe, partly due to Eastern European countries, because they are trying to resist the former dominating power of the Soviet Union. Right now it's mirrored in Russia, but sooner or later this is going to stop. Through initiating the crisis in the Ukraine, they've [the Americans] managed to stimulate such an attitude towards Russia, viewing Russia as an enemy, a possible potential aggressor.

But very soon everyone is going to understand, that there is no threat whatsoever emanating from Russia, either to the Baltic countries, or to Eastern Europe or to Western Europe. And the stronger this misunderstanding is, the greater the desire is going to be to protect their [European] sovereignty and to fend for their national interests.

So this constant feeling of being under pressure, let me assure you, is something no one is happy about. Sooner or later it's going to have consequences if it's going to stop. And it's better if this happens through dialogue. Certainly you can try to use North Korea or some other countries to paint a darker picture, but i think what's needed right now is the transition to a new paradigm, a new philosophy for building relations among countries.

And this paradigm should be based on respect for the interest of othe countries, for the sovereignty of other peoples, not just trying to intimidate them using some outer threat which can only be resisted with the help of the United States. This paradigm will have to cease to exist sooner or later.

from the outside putin can clearly see the threat to european sovereignty from nato - the fact thereof, actually ... and he can see the threat to the united states from the european backlash to the european nations' loss of severeignty to the us under nato, once that's perceived, and the same through the eu - and the rump is being very helpful there. the us is sleepwalking right into its own demise, brought about by its own arrogant stupidity ... its arrogance 'will have to cease to exist sooner or later'. and it's looking to be sooner rather than later.

from the outside putin can clearly see the threat to european sovereignty from nato - the fact thereof, actually ... and he can see the threat to the united states from the european backlash to the european nations' loss of severeignty to the us under nato, once that's perceived, and the same through the eu - and the rump is being very helpful there. the us is sleepwalking right into its own demise, brought about by its own arrogant stupidity ... its arrogance 'will have to cease to exist sooner or later'. and it's looking to be sooner rather than later.

[Jun 17, 2017] Sanders is with neocon lobby and supports Russian sanctions

Jun 17, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

rickee | Jun 16, 2017 12:47:19 AM | 33

@15 You mistate/misunderstood: "There was a simultaneous vote..." There was not.

S.Amdt. 232 (increase sanctions on Russia and limit Trump) was an amendment to S. 722 (the Iranian sanctions bill).

Sanders voted for 232 because, frankly, he's all on board the Russia-Russia-Russia hysteria and demonizing Syria. He voted against 722 for the potential damage to the multi-lateral nuclear agreement with Iran. From his senate.gov website today:

" I am strongly supportive of the sanctions on Russia included in this bill. It is unacceptable for Russia to interfere in our elections here in the United States, or anywhere around the world. There must be consequences for such actions. I also have deep concerns about the policies and activities of the Iranian government, especially their support for the brutal Assad regime in Syria.

I have voted for sanctions on Iran in the past, and I believe sanctions were an important tool for bringing Iran to the negotiating table. But I believe that these new sanctions could endanger the very important nuclear agreement that was signed between the United States, its partners and Iran in 2015. That is not a risk worth taking, particularly at a time of heightened tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia and its allies. I think the United States must play a more even-handed role in the Middle East, and find ways to address not only Iran's activities, but also Saudi Arabia's decades-long support for radical extremism."

@10 is correct: they're all in...

[Jun 17, 2017] Global Order Is An Euphemism for Washingtons Hegemony

Notable quotes:
"... In other words, Washington is the opposite of how it orchestrates its portrait. There is no such thing as "liberal internationalism." All "liberal internationalsim" means is Amerian hegemony over the idiot countries that participate in "liberal internationalism." ..."
"... American hegemony is the neoconservatives' God, and "the Russian threat" is the savior of the military/security complex's $1.1 trillion annual budget. President Trump is a threat to both. ..."
Jun 17, 2017 | www.unz.com
by Paul Craig Roberts

Bacevich points out that the orchestrated attack on President Trump is based on the assumption that President Trump has launched an attack on the open, liberal, enlightened, rule of law, and democratic order that Washington has established. This liberal world order of goodness is threatened by a Trump-Putin Conspiracy.

Bacevich, a rare honest American, says this that this characterization of America is a bullshit myth.

For example, the orchastrated image of America as the great upholder of truth, justice, democracy, and human rights conviently overlooks Washington's "meddling in foreign elections; coups and assassination plots in Iran [Washingtonn's 1953 overthrow of the first elected Iranian government], Guatemala, the Congo, Cuba, South Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, and elsewhere; indiscriminate aerial bombing campaigns in North Korea and throughout Southeast Asia; a nuclear arms race bringing the world to the brink of Armageddon; support for corrupt, authoritarian regimes in Iran [the Shah], Turkey, Greece, South Korea, South Vietnam, the Philippines, Brazil, Egypt, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and elsewhere-many of them abandoned when deemed inconvenient; the shielding of illegal activities through the use of the Security Council veto; unlawful wars launched under false pretenses; 'extraordinary rendition,' torture, and the indefinite imprisonment of persons without any semblance of due process [the evisceration of the US Constitution]."

In other words, Washington is the opposite of how it orchestrates its portrait. There is no such thing as "liberal internationalism." All "liberal internationalsim" means is Amerian hegemony over the idiot countries that participate in "liberal internationalism."

President Trump is in trouble, Bacevich says, because "he appears disinclined to perpetuate American hegemony."

American hegemony is the neoconservatives' God, and "the Russian threat" is the savior of the military/security complex's $1.1 trillion annual budget. President Trump is a threat to both.

Here is Col. Andy Bacevich's column: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-global-order-myth/

[Jun 17, 2017] Are the Bilderbergers looking to overthrow Trump?

Jun 17, 2017 | thenationalsentinel.com

Posted on June 1, 2017 by usafeaturesmedia in globalism // 1 Comment

There is the feeling among the globalist elite that Trump is a fly in their ointment, and they're not going to let him spoil their party

( National Sentinel ) Globalism: We already know that President Donald J. Trump's message of "America first" has rattled the world's globalist elite, as past American leaders have allowed them to feed off our success and drain jobs, opportunities and treasure from our country while they distribute that wealth to other countries, so they can control them. Globalism today really is nothing less that colonialism from past centuries, only writ large and done with dollars, not military divisions.

In any event, Trump's nose-thumbing of the G7 leaders' agenda and his [reported] plan to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords may be a bridge too far for the world's elite, many of whom are meeting in Chantilly, Va., this week – an event to which Trump did send representation .

As reported by The Guardian , the secretive Bilderberg annual gathering of the world's governing and industrial elite "will include a 'progress report' on the Trump administration," and no one is sure if he'll get a passing grade.

So, perhaps, Plan B is taking shape.

As reported "exclusively" by InfoWars (yes, we know, but read on anyway), that plan may consist of "overthrowing" Trump in an extreme, last-use tactic to thwart his agenda, if talking to him and convincing him to abandon it (which he can't do because he'll lose reelection) doesn't work:

Sources close to the elitist Bilderberg Group conference tell Infowars that globalists see their agenda as being in "deep trouble" and that Donald Trump poses a "dangerous" risk to the international order and must be brought to heel or turfed out of office.

Over the years, Infowars has developed sources close to the conference who feed us information ahead of time as to the real agenda behind the confab, not just the vague list of topics released officially by Bilderberg.

Given that this is the first year since both Brexit and Trump came to pass, the effort to derail both is very much the primary focus of discussion amongst globalists in attendance this week.

One Bilderberger told the site that since Trump is "dangerously obsessed" with upsetting and derailing the current world order, it may just be that there is no other way for the globalist cabal to protect its interests than deposing, or helping to depose, a U.S. president who, for the first time in decades, isn't dancing to the same sheet of music.

More:

Globalists are baffled as to Trump's "erratic" style of governance and are panicked that he could undo decades of work they put in to build the new world order.

However, Bilderbergers still think Trump can be brought to his senses and taught "how the world really works," a line that is typical of the arrogance that has come to epitomize the attitude of Bilderberg members over the years.

Given the highly unlikely scenario of Trump taking orders from Bilderberg, the only recourse left for the elite will be to turf him out of office.

Another Bilderberger is confident that Trump can be impeached, but only if Democrats regain control of Congress in 2018, in which case his days are "numbered".

If the impeachment of Trump is in process by the end of 2018, globalists are confident that any effort on behalf of his administration to pull out of the Paris climate agreement and any other globalist treaties will be thwarted.

As of this writing Trump has yet to formally announce he will withdraw the U.S. from the Paris accords (or declare it a treaty and send it to the Senate, where it won't be ratified). But clearly there is the feeling among the globalist elite that Trump is a fly in their ointment, and they're not going to let him spoil their party.

[Jun 17, 2017] Deputy AG Rosenstein sees no reason to recuse himself from Russia probe, Justice Dept. says

In 2007, President George W. Bush nominated Rosenstein to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He did get this position.
Rod Rosenstein - Wikipedia "President Donald Trump nominated Rosenstein to serve as Deputy Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice on January 13, 2017. Rosenstein was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 25, 2017"
On May 17, 2017, Rosenstein (who had been put in charge of the Russia probe as soon as he was confirmed, because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself after it was reported that he had failed to disclose his contacts with the Russian ambassador when asked about those during his Senate confirmation hearing[38]) appointed Robert Mueller as a special counsel to conduct the investigation into "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump" as well as any matters arising directly from that investigation.[39] Rosenstein's order authorizes Mueller to bring criminal charges in the event that he discovers any federal crimes.[39]
www.politico.com

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein sees no reason at this point to recuse himself from overseeing the special counsel's investigations involving President Trump and the 2016 presidential election, the Justice Department said Friday.

[Jun 16, 2017] New Russia Sanctions Are All About Forcing the EU to Buy Overpriced US Gas

Jun 16, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Any Darwin Awards fans out there? For those few who have never heard of them, the Darwin Awards celebrate those individuals who have rendered a significant service to mankind by taking themselves out of the global gene pool. In preparing to discuss today's subject, I am reminded of unfortunate 1999 award-winner 'James' from Missouri, who became so fixated upon his love interest that he tried to lop off his own head with a chainsaw to demonstrate his commitment to an outcome on his terms. Although he was ultimately unsuccessful on both counts, he did fatally injure himself, and died in hospital. Ashes to ashes; dust to dust.

My intent today is to demonstrate clear destructive similarities between the above emotional decision and the equally simpleminded decision of the US Senate to impose further economic sanctions on Russia, this time explicitly tying them to penalizing of European companies which do business with Russia – moreover, in a clear attempt to stop the latter from proceeding with the Nord Stream II gas pipeline project. This, in turn, is clearly an attempt by the USA to make Europe a captive market for its own energy products, in the form of shipborne LNG. Significantly, that goal is also finally becoming clear to Europe; or at least to the parts of it that matter, such as Germany (thanks for the tip, James!) Try to put aside, for the moment, the insufferable arrogance of American meddling in Europe's energy market, with a view to restricting its choice while – laughably – pretending it is broadening European energy options.

The readers and commenters of this blog will be well aware, since it has been a topic of discussion for years here, that a critical underpinning of the western plan to seize Ukraine and wrest it into the western orbit was the premise that Russia would be forced by simple momentum to go along with it. As long as events continued to unfold too quickly to get ahead of, Russia would have to help supply the sinews of its own destruction. And a big part of that was the assumption that Russia would help to finance Ukraine's transition to a powerful western fulcrum upon which to apply leverage against it, through continued trade with Ukraine and continued transit of Europe's energy supply through Ukraine's pipeline system. But Russia slapped a trade embargo on most Ukrainian goods, and rescinded its tariff-free status as it became clear Brussels planned to use it to stovepipe European trade goods into the Russian market, through Ukraine – thus crushing domestic industries which would not be able to compete on economically-favourable terms. The armchair strategists nearly shit a brick when construction of the South Stream pipeline commenced, bypassing Ukraine and depriving it of about $2 billion annually in transit fees. But pressure ultimately forced Bulgaria to throw a wrench into the works, and the pipeline plans were shelved, to much victory dancing in the west. There was not quite as much happy-dancing in Bulgaria , but they were only ever a pawn anyway.

Sidebar for a moment, here; while the $2 Billion annually in transit fees is extremely important, Ukraine's pre-crisis GDP was $163 Billion. The funds realized for transit fees are important because (a) Russia has to pay them and (b) the west will have to come up with the equivalent in aid if Ukraine loses out on them. But the real value intrinsic to Ukraine as a transit country is its physical reality as an interface for Russian gas transit to Europe – what is a bridge can be easily turned into a wall.

Any time Washington thinks Russia needs some more shit on its face, Ukraine can be prodded to announce a doubling of its transit fees, or to kick off some other dispute which the popular press will adroitly spin to make Russia appear to be an unreliable supplier. Therefore, it is essential to western strategy that significant amounts of Russian gas continue to transit Ukraine. Sufficiently so that Europe continues to evolve ever-more-desperate contingency plans in order to keep receiving gas through the country which was known to have provoked the previous shutoff of European supplies by siphoning Europe-bound gas for its own use. That's despite the assurances of Germany and western partners of Gazprom in the Nord Stream line that it will mean cheaper gas prices for Europe.

But we knew this was coming, didn't we? Yes, we did, because as recently as last month, Democratic senator Jean Shaheen, who sits on the Senate Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on European Affairs, announced that the United States was considering involving itself in the Nord Stream II pipeline project , with a view to killing it stone dead. The purpose, as already mentioned, is to make way for LNG cargoes to Europe, cutting Russia out of the business, on the assumption that without energy sales the Russian economy will crumble and the country will collapse. Destroying Russia remains Washington's overriding strategic objective.

So the stakes are high; high enough to provide context for Washington's bizarre and aggressive behavior, and for its continued ridiculous insistence that Russia tampered with the 2016 US presidential election. What are the chances Washington will succeed with its latest adventure in global bullying?

Not good, according to multiple sources. Let's take a look at how Platts views the prospects; Platts, a division of S&P Global , is headquartered in London and employs over 1,000 people in more than 15 offices worldwide. These include global business centers such as New York, Shanghai and Sao Paulo, and major energy centers such as Houston, Singapore and London, where Platts is based. Having hopefully established the firm's credentials as someone who knows what they are talking about in the energy business, let's see what Platts has to say about the potential American LNG market in Europe . Mmmm .the review is mixed. At the outset, Platts is admiring of Cheniere Energy's go-to-hell expansion. But a couple of things about that are cause to curb enthusiasm. One, only 8 American LNG cargoes had gone to Europe so far; that was as of April this year, when the report was released. Of those, 4 went to Spain, 3 to Portugal and 1 to Italy. Two, the Iberian Peninsula is acknowledged by Platts as not particularly significant in terms of gauging Europe's welcome of American LNG.

"Indeed, the fact that Portugal and Spain were the first European countries to import LNG from the US is telling The Iberian Peninsula is considered an "island market" with poor interconnection to the rest of Europe, so the delivery of US LNG into the region is not likely to be seen as a sign that it will take hold in the wider European market."

The same passage points out that Russia does not supply the Iberian Peninsula with pipeline gas, and so is unlikely to be very concerned about the impact of US LNG on that market.

Three, Cheniere's rapid expansion has come at a terrifying cost, and the company is currently – as of fall 2016 – overleveraged with approximately $20 Billion in long-term debt . It is unprofitable, with interest payments representing 60% of revenues, the living embodiment of 'bicycle economics'; the second you stop pedaling, you crash.

For what it's worth, few great business breakthroughs have occurred without risk, and while Cheniere is plunging ahead with what seems like recklessness, it could just as easily pay off with complete domination of the North American export market. That's a hell of a debt load, though; not much margin for bad news. That does expose a flaw in the American strategy, as well – wrestling control of the European supply market from Russia would be frighteningly expensive.

a little better than 3 Billion Cubic Feet (BcF) of natural gas, which is mostly methane. That equates to about .85 Billion Cubic Meters (BcM). But Europe uses about 400 BcM per year , assuming LNG could supply the whole European market, which is of course unrealistic. Especially considering the entire global LNG shipping fleet consists of about 410 vessels .

No LNG carriers are currently registered under the US flag, and if the USA plans to be a serious exporter it is going to need about 100 new LNG carriers over the next 30 years , something which is frankly not practically achievable considering it takes about 2 years to build one, at a cost of about $200 Million apiece . Of course, miracles can be made to happen if you pour enough money into them. But we've already somewhat nervously mentioned how much all this is costing – how does the likely return on investment shape up?

Well, what the fuck? Platts comes right out and says that Russia has the option of cutting its prices to ensure it undercuts LNG costs in order to keep its share of the European market!

"Russia clearly does have the option to undercut the US LNG price to ensure it keeps its share of its key European markets and could flood the market with cheap gas, maximizing revenues and cash flow at a time when producers worldwide are suffering from the impact of such low prices."

So, let me get this straight. All the attempts by the west, led as usual by Washington, to force energy prices down and keep them low actually benefit Russia by putting the USA in an unacceptable profit/loss loop so that it cannot afford to sell its LNG to Europe and still make money? That appears to be pretty much how it shakes out.

"Russia, thanks to the bearish oil price environment and an enhanced export strategy from Gazprom, increased its exports to Europe by 15% (through the Nord Stream, Yamal, and Brotherhood pipelines) to 118 Bcm, taking back its place as Europe's largest gas supplier in the process."

Wait! I think I see a solution. All the USA needs to do is apply its global leverage to make energy costs rise!

"But US LNG could face problems of its own – the current low prices are forcing ever growing numbers of US producers into bankruptcy. According to a recent report by Haynes and Boone, 90 gas and oil producers in the US and Canada have filed for bankruptcy between January 2015 and the start of August 2016."

Oh, hey; I just realized – if forcing energy prices back up were an option, how is that going to hamstring an opponent who was already able to undercut you at the lower price, and still turn a profit?

Platts closes out this dismal synopsis with the consolation prize that, while US LNG is less competitive with pipeline gas given narrow Henry Hub-NBP spreads, it is coming to Europe regardless. More of that old American can-do. It will have to be, though, on what is described as a short-run marginal cost basis. Would you feel comfortable with that forecast if you were carrying, say, $20 Billion in debt?

And it's not just Platts who sounds a warning; Forbes has a similar, if slightly more mocking outlook of the situation .

"Most of this is just political posturing and noise. The U.S. is not now and nor will it be in the near future a key resource for Europe's energy needs According to EIAs Annual Energy Outlook, published in April, the United States remains a net importer of fuels through 2040 in a low oil price scenario. In a high oil and gas price scenario, the United States becomes a net exporter of liquid fuels due to increased production by 2021. A lot can happen in seven years. By then, Exxon will likely be back to its deal with Rosneft in Russia's Arctic Circle."

As well, Forbes adds the interesting perspective that foreign sales of American gas will be a tough sell domestically if the pressure remains on the American leadership to achieve greater energy self-sufficiency and reduced dependence on foreign sources. This situation can only be exacerbated by a rise in anti-American sentiment around the world, and is likely to spike if energy prices rise. But if they stay low, American LNG exports won't make any money. If they go up, pipeline gas will undercut LNG prices and make it noncompetitive. Jeez, we just seem to be going around in circles. Say, did you notice that little item in there, in which the author mentions the only possible way the USA could compete with Russia in the natural gas market in Europe would be if it had national rights to substantial supplies of gas abroad? Did that give your memory a little tickle, and make you think of Burisma Holdings, and Hunter Biden ?

The Brookings Institute, for God's sake, warned that US LNG could not compete price-wise before the first LNG cargo ever left the USA. Given its sympathies, it seems probable it was intended as a sobering restraint meant to keep the United States from doing something stupid that might expose it to failure and even ruin; it is much less likely to have been an endorsement of Russia's global business practices.

As so often happens, an unhealthy fixation on taking down a largely imagined enemy results in increased risk-taking and a totally unrealistic appraisal of the likelihood of success – it becomes worth doing simply to be doing something. The costs in this instance have included the alienation and infuriating of Germany, the European Union's anchor economy, and angry murmurs from the Gulf States that Washington negotiated production cuts simply to make its own product more competitive. All for nothing, as it happens, because a nation with surplus swing production can always undercut your price, and the nation with the world's lowest production costs should be last on your list of "People I Want To Start A Price War With".

If you were opposed to official Washington's swaggering, bullying modus operandi , this whole unfolding of events probably seems pretty delicious to you. But I've saved the most delicious for last – Trump dares not make any effort to overrule the Senate vote, or get it reframed, because of the successful media campaign to portray him as Putin's secret agent. Any effort to mollify Germany's fury will be seized upon by the reality-challenged Democrats as an opportunity to further discredit the Trump government, by making it appear to be negotiating in Russia's behalf.

You couldn't make it up. PaulR , June 15, 2017 at 5:29 pm

One should never underestimate peoples` willingness to spend vast sums of money on worthless projects. Witness the Canadian government's recent announcement of its plans to increase defense spending by 70%.

When the dust finally settles, the Chinese will end up on top.

marknesop , June 15, 2017 at 5:47 pm
I think you're probably right about that. And if it turns out to be the case, British Columbia will turn out to be the most progressive province in Canada, with its large numbers of Chinese citizens and its Chines-language television stations. At bottom I am mostly a peaceful guy and I don't really care very much who rules the world so long as it doesn't impact my lifestyle.

Once I would have argued strongly for American global leadership, based on a perception that it offered the best chance for prosperity and enlightenment for everyone, but events since have changed my view. Now I think other countries should be left alone in terms of interference, helped where you can lend a hand, and global leadership is an unrealistic aspiration for any country led by humans, since human nature tends to favour self-interest.

I don't know what the Liberals think they are doing, pushing what is essentially an unachievable Conservative platform where defense is concerned. To what end? So we can interfere more effectively on the USA's behalf? We have a good military. There's nothing wrong with keeping it up to date and well-supplied and trained. But a 70% increase is impractical and is only likely to incur the wrath of the non-military portion of the electorate, since the money has to come from somewhere.

PaulR , June 15, 2017 at 5:38 pm
I hadn't been aware of the connection between the sanctions and LNG, so thanks for pointing that out.

Meanwhile, I read this:

'Germany and Austria on Thursday sharply criticized the U.S. Senate's plan to add sanctions on Russia, describing it as an illegal attempt to boost U.S. gas exports and interfere in Europe's energy market. [ ]

"We cannot accept a threat of extraterritorial sanctions, illegal under international law, against European companies that participate in developing European energy supplies," [German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said in a joint statement]. "Europe's energy supply is Europe's business, not that of the United States of America."'

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/06/15/the-us-is-exposing-europes-divide-on-nord-stream-2/

marknesop , June 15, 2017 at 5:58 pm
After all, many other European leaders have publicly clamored for U.S. LNG imports as a way to ease their dependence on Gazprom.

Who? The Baltics? Thanks for that. It's mostly a rehash of the other article, but it does include some interesting insights, and it has a little more credibility than ZeroHedge, although there's little in that with which I can find fault and its breaking news is usually accurate.

That the EU's energy policies are completely outside the USA's remit is correct, but it's a surprise to hear someone of Gabriel's stature actually say it. It seems the USA has decided that forcing Germany to abandon its support for the project is worth trying. That will turn out to be a disastrous mistake, because the business community in Germany contains some of America's staunchest supporters, while anti-Americanism among the German population – especially its youth – is a growing problem. This will do nothing to help it, and it most certainly is not going to persuade Germany to order American LNG.

I urge you to digest the Platts Report in detail, at your leisure – it's illuminating, and I'm sure you will note that Russia's LNG export capability is already far, far ahead of the USA's. So even if pipeline gas proved only competitive with LNG, why would anyone depend on supplies which have to cross the ocean rather than supplies that can come from Kaliningrad?

PaulR , June 15, 2017 at 7:12 pm
As if on cue, Evgeniia Chirikova denounces North Stream II in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/14/gas-pipeline-nord-stream-2-funnel-billions-putin-bypass-sanctions
ucgsblog , June 15, 2017 at 7:23 pm
She's funny: "How can you shout about the transition to renewable, environmentally safe energy and at the same time make plans to increase gas flows into Europe?"

Uhh, Zhenichka, Russia is part of Europe, you can shout about it if you are increasing your energy dependence on both, and if one pipeline is simply replacing another. That's how. That was easy.

"Five European companies are involved but for some mysterious reason, 100% of the shares belong to Gazprom."

Because GazProm is paying $$$ for it. Zhenichka, in a Capitalist Society, those who pay for the shares, get the shares. Did I solve that mystery for you?

marknesop , June 15, 2017 at 10:23 pm
"Five European companies are involved but for some mysterious reason, 100% of the shares belong to Gazprom."

There is nothing mysterious about it; in fact, it is typical Guardian dishonesty. The Nord Stream II Project originally included minority shareholders as shown here . Then Poland introduced its anti-monopoly action and announced the pipeline could not be built. The partners dropped out, and left Gazprom to take the heat alone. When Poland failed in its bid to stop the project and it became clear the EU was all out of arrows – having never had a defensible legal basis – the partners hopped back on, but as investors only. I daresay they stand to make a good return on their investment even without being shareholders. Meanwhile, American meddling is only likely to make Europeans grateful attempts to stop the pipeline failed. I would not like to see their reaction if it ever became clear their governments had committed them to paying higher gas prices just to spite Russia, particularly in view of the USA's limited ability to provide reliable and constant supply.

The Guardian is just being a good American footsoldier, and trying to throw mud in the works for Uncle Sam.

yalensis , June 16, 2017 at 3:37 am
Chirikova works for the Estonian government now.
ucgsblog , June 15, 2017 at 7:16 pm
Beautiful article, and great timing Mark! I love it. This was one of the dumbest bills ever passed. It aimed at Russia, but it's just a take down of Germany. Reminds me of a recent Russian joke:

Obama: "America is mighty! Because of us, Russia's Economy is in ruins!"
Poroshenko: "not Russia's, sir. Ukraine's."
Obama: "Who gives a shit! It's in ruins!"

Also, here's what I'm wondering – can't Russia deliver it by truck or train? Won't that still be less expensive than delivering it by ship?

Jen , June 15, 2017 at 8:39 pm
Nordstream 2 is primarily a gas pipeline project under the Baltic Sea.

The main attraction of Nordstream 2 is it avoids transit through countries where tolls and transit fees would have to be paid, whether through land-based pipes, truck or train, and all these expenses added to the eventual cost that would be paid by the end consumer (ie the general public). Plus trucks and trains can be held up or subjected to attacks and gas in land-based pipelines can be siphoned off and diverted as was being done when the gas was passing through Ukraine originally. No such problems if the gas were being delivered through underwater pipelines though we can be sure that Swedish naval submarines (how many of those are there – one?) will be watching them very closely for phantom Russian subs.

marknesop , June 15, 2017 at 10:28 pm

I thought you were talking about LNG, from Kaliningrad. And if so, yes; it certainly could be transported by train, and probably would be.
Jen , June 16, 2017 at 5:46 am
Ah, I thought UCGS' original comment referred to your original post, not the one you sent at 5:58 pm yesterday.

Wouldn't transporting LNG by underground pipeline under its own pressure be a less risky and cheaper option than sending it by train? Trains carrying LNG can only carry so much and have to be specially adapted to transporting it. Plus they share rail networks with other trains so there are issues like how saturated the rail networks supporting LNG rail traffic, other cargo traffic and passenger traffic become, and the pressure this puts on drivers and maintenance of railway tracks, and building more rail lines in and through areas where pipelines could be laid down instead.

marknesop , June 16, 2017 at 8:56 am
It's possible; I'm afraid I don't know enough about it. It seems that when they speak of an LNG 'train', it refers to the liquefaction and purification facility , not a transport vehicle. In order to transport LNG it must be liquefied, which implies freezing it to below -161C. Naturally it must be maintained at a temperature which guarantees its stability as a liquid, until it is appropriate to return it to its gaseous form for use in that form. That's the purpose of the huge container vessels on an LNG tanker – you have to get it cold and then keep it cold.

I just don't know how you would do that in a pipeline. And obviously it would be wildly impractical for a train, I don't know what the hell I thought I was talking about. It could be done, but why? You'd need a hundred miles of teeny little flatcar-sized container vessels to equal what you can transport in an LNG carrier.

Your pipeline would have to originate at an LNG 'train' and terminate at another, somewhere else, so that the liquefaction/gasification process could be practically carried out, much as current NG pipelines use pumping stations. But you would also have to keep the LNG below -160C all the time it was in the pipeline. That's probably physically possible, too, if expense is no consideration, but it seems terribly impractical when NG already goes by pipeline safely at a fraction of what it would cost to transport LNG the same way.

Jen , June 16, 2017 at 2:30 pm
Ah, I see now of course you wouldn't need to transport NG in liquid form under 160C through pipelines. To transport it by ship or train though, it must be in liquefied form, presumably because as a liquid NG can be measured and quantified, and then exporters can work out how much they can charge for producing and transporting LNG. Not to mention of course that transporting commodities in gaseous form by train and ship is harder and riskier than transporting them as liquids.
marknesop , June 16, 2017 at 3:38 pm
As well, it needs to be liquefied in order to be compressed, to get the volumes you are looking for . One of those container vessels full of uncompressed NG wouldn't be much more than a good-sized European town would need for its barbecues.

LNG achieves a higher reduction in volume than compressed natural gas (CNG) so that the (volumetric) energy density of LNG is 2.4 times greater than that of CNG or 60 percent that of diesel fuel. This makes LNG cost efficient to transport over long distances where pipelines do not exist. Specially designed cryogenic sea vessels (LNG carriers) or cryogenic road tankers are used for its transport. LNG is principally used for transporting natural gas to markets, where it is regasified and distributed as pipeline natural gas.

That does highlight, as well, that if you can use road tankers there really is no reason you could not use trains. But anywhere it is practical to use trains or road transport, you would be asking yourself, "why can't I use a pipeline here?"

et Al , June 16, 2017 at 1:30 am
The US's intervention is even more pathetic than it seems.

This is not a stand alone anti-Russia bill which would signal strength from the US, but an adjunct to the anti-I-ran sanctions bill that continues to seek to punish I-ran in the vague hope that it will pull the plug on the cast-iron nuclear deal it has signed with international partners. The irony there is that I-ran Air is recapitalizing with both Airbus & Boeing (also ATR), 100 odd a piece, not to mention other significant investment opportunities for western firms.

They're quite the Gordian Tits!

Not only is there the potential of the Levianthan gas field off Cyprus/Israel/whatever, brutal dictator Azeri gas will also be arriving in (larger, but not gigantic) quantities. Not to mention that significant buyers of LNG, like the UK, have it come straight from Qatar. Is the US prepared to sell LNG at a discount compared to Qatar that has strategic agreements and its own fundamental interests to be protected by the Western (European) states as well?

So if this plan seems to damage not only the USA's allies but the USA itself, then what is its purpose? Stick it to Trump. Mire any plans to re-balance relations with Russia almost at any cost . It's a no brainer for Democrats as they neither hold a majority in the House or the Senate, and there seem to be enough dog whistle Republicans willing to go along with it, including those with mental problems like John 'Insane' McCaine. Ukraine is almost peripheral except as a convenient tool. It think the US accepts they've screwed the pooch on the Ukraine so its only value is to be used as a festering sore on Russia's frontier. Kiev mops up the completely free public political support whilst it is being kicked in the bollox by the same people.

Lyttenburgh , June 16, 2017 at 9:03 am
Whoop-whoop! A new article so soon!

"Try to put aside, for the moment, the insufferable arrogance of American meddling in Europe's energy market, with a view to restricting its choice while – laughably – pretending it is broadening European energy options."

"Invisible Hand of the Market" [nod, nod].

"And a big part of that was the assumption that Russia would help to finance Ukraine's transition to a powerful western fulcrum "

At first I read it as "western furuncle". That's what it became in the end.

First Rule of the Ukraine: "Every Peremoga turns into Zrada".Want to hear about yet another zrada ? Russia (okay – Mikhail Friedman) bought a German firm Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk (RWE) for $5.72 blns in 2015 . Why it's important? Well, because this firm carries out the reverse gas transition to the Ukraine, thus ensuring its [ha-ha, sorry, sorry!] "Energy Independence" which was officially proclaimed in the same 2015 A.D.

"No LNG carriers are currently registered under the US flag, and if the USA plans to be a serious exporter it is going to need about 100 new LNG carriers over the next 30 years, something which is frankly not practically achievable considering it takes about 2 years to build one, at a cost of about $200 Million apiece". Of course, miracles can be made to happen if you pour enough money into them.

Something-something-something Elon Musk something-something Super-technologies something-something-something Innovations! Progress!

And usual stuff, said by the people who believe that the Free Market will "Get the Things Straight" without governmental meddling. Like, Musk will invent cheap multi-use drone-rackets which will deliver gas to the clients across the Ocean. Why not?! They believe in all kinds of stupid stuff already!

The article is fresh breeze of actual facts and hard data – not your usual hurr-durring opinion pieces, passed as "analytics" by the esteemed think-tankers.

P.S. Mark, do you have the same e-mail address?

marknesop , June 16, 2017 at 1:19 pm
Thanks very much, NS!! I read a book some time ago which used newspaper and wire reports of the various times to thoroughly debunk most of the incidents of ships and aircraft 'disappearing without a trace' in the Bermuda Triangle. In incidents which resulted in total losses of the crew, the author also offered reasonable explanations for what likely happened. I have sailed through it many times myself and observed nothing untoward, although that does not mean much considering the amount of marine traffic which routinely does the same without incident.

Owners of LNG Carriers likewise play up how safe they are, and to the best of my knowledge there has never been a serious accident. However, on the scale of supply the USA is suggesting it wishes to achieve for itself, there could be no days taken off for bad weather, and carriers would have to transit the North Atlantic in winter – which is not generally a fun place to be. Most of my concern with the shipped method is its inherent unreliability compared with pipeline gas.

Northern Star , June 16, 2017 at 12:31 pm
"But Gazprom could block a lot of those cargoes by stepping up export volumes and selling them at prices below what can be achieved by U.S. LNG. Gazprom can export pipeline gas to Europe for $3.50 per million Btu (MMBtu) while American LNG would need prices of $4 to $5/MMbtu. Currently, Gazprom sells gas to Europe at a price of about $5.80/MMBtu on average, but could lower the price to beat U.S. LNG"

I do not see how the USA could begin to economically prevail over the Russians in a
"gas' war..given the above numbers.

"Of course, viewed another way, the growing U.S. export capacity – the mere existence of a competing source of supply – should push down the price that Gazprom is able to charge, a victory for Europe and a blow to Gazprom. Without U.S. LNG, its proponents argue, Russia would not be forced to accept lower prices. "It's the start of the price war between U.S. LNG and pipeline gas," said Thierry Bros, an analyst at Société Générale, according to the WSJ."

Moreover doesn't keeping a lid (cap) on what the Russians can charge for Gazprom gas ipso facto prevent the Americans from competitively pricing their LNG product..particularly in view of the first quote????
Either I'm a little dense today,or the American strategy here makes no sense whasoever.!!!!

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-To-Undermine-Russias-Gas-Monopoly-In-Europe.html

marknesop , June 16, 2017 at 1:51 pm
The latter – the American strategy makes no sense, and its proponents are so high on can-do that you might have to shoot them to get them down. The USA cannot supply either the volume or the consistency of supply to snatch the gas market from Russia, and that must be evident to all but the crazy. As usual, Washington just hopes to get itself into the mix so it will have a seat at the table, because it cannot bear being left out of things and has long been of the opinion that America makes its own reality. Once again, if America owned or controlled substantial gas reserves on the continent and it were practical for the USA to run its own pipeline to Europe, it might be in with a chance if it had sufficient supply, and it is attempts to do that that we should be watching out for. There was speculation much earlier that control of substantial gas holdings was exactly what Burisma Holdings and Hunter Biden were up to in Ukraine, but gas extraction is not practical there right now and id assay results had been positive you can bet there would be a lot more American pressure to bring the war to a close.

On that note, I noticed over at Sputnik yesterday that Turchynov was pressuring Poroshenko to bag the ATO and turn it into a full-press military operation, which is just what recent reports said they did not dare to do in case the Ukrainian Army loses. The same report said Poroshenko is about to sign legislation which orders by decree that Donbas resume its place as part of Ukraine. If they say "Pound sand up your ass" as we know they will, Poroshenko may have little alternative to throwing everything he has at them. Of course, I can't find it now; I knew I should have drawn attention to it when I saw it.

I'm sure Russia is watching carefully.

Northern Star , June 16, 2017 at 12:49 pm
I assume the (shipped) American LNG would have to be regasified at a european import terminal. Consulting page six at the link, is it not problematic to then transport the regasified lng product to its (receiving) nation destination. The whole scheme smacks of going around the well to get an expensive cup of water!!!!!
http://documents.jdsupra.com/c6c4403f-ad9f-4740-b184-9fc1f88550ab.pdf
marknesop , June 16, 2017 at 1:53 pm
The liquid LNG can only be unloaded at an LNG terminal, and so far as I am aware a feature of them is that they are connected to a gas hub, so that they can regasify the product directly into the system.
likbez says: June 16, 2017 at 9:05 pm
What I do not understand is why Russians can't increase natural gas consumption dramatically and need to export that much: is it so difficult to build several large chemical plants, increase usage in city transport as less polluting fuel to 100%, promote dual fuel private cars, etc.

In this case they can export saved oil instead using regular tankers which is much simpler then LNG.

I think the current suppression of oil prices by Wall Street (and the new US method of production using along with production of shale oil a parallel production stream of junk bonds which will never be repaid) can't last forever. "Break even" oil price for most shale wells is probably over $60 per barrel. If not $80.

Also without capital investment the annual decline of conventional fields is around 5% a year (most of those fields are really old). Which means approximately 5 million barrels per day are taken off the market automatically each year (no OPEC action is needed), if zero capital investment are done.

Of course Sechin is IMHO a corrupt player here, who cares mostly about his own pocketbook (and stupidly increased investment just before the crash, which later required bailout of the company by the government), but still Russian government has the means to enforce its will even on rogue players.

[Jun 16, 2017] Rosenstein may need to recuse himself from Russia probe ABC News

After backstabbing Trump, he now wants to play the game further...
Jun 16, 2017 | www.msn.com
WASHINGTON - U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has privately acknowledged he may need to recuse himself from matters relating to the probe into Russia and last year's U.S. election, given that he could become a potential witness in the investigation, ABC News reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources.

ABC said Rosenstein, the No. 2 official at the Department of Justice, told Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand she would have authority over the probe if he were to step aside. Rosenstein appointed special counsel Robert Mueller last month to investigate alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election and possible collusion by President Donald Trump's campaign, and has told lawmakers he would fire him only with good cause.

He is the department's lead official on the issue after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any issues linked to the Russia probe. Rosenstein was also the author of a memo recommending the dismissal of FBI Director James Comey, which the White House cited along with a memo from Sessions as the reason Trump fired Comey on May 9.

Trump, a Republican, later said that he had the Russia matter in mind when he fired Comey. The Democratic National Committee said on Friday it saw a need for Rosenstein to recuse himself, but it said control over the investigation should be given to Mueller and not another Trump appointee.

ABC's report comes as Trump said on Friday he is personally under investigation in the widening Russia probe over Comey's firing. According to ABC, Rosenstein made the comments about his possible recusal at a recent meeting with Brand but has yet to formally ask career attorneys at the department for their opinion on the issue.

At a Senate hearing earlier this week, Rosenstein declined to answer whether he would have a conflict of interest if he became a witness in the investigation but pledged to "do the right thing."

[Jun 16, 2017] Man on a Wire Mike Pences Tightrope Act

Politico is the mouth peace of conspirators -- so it looks like the the plan is President Pence.
Jun 16, 2017 | www.politico.com
"The truth is, you elected a man who never quits. He never backs down. He's a fighter. He's a winner," Pence said, according to an audio recording obtained by Politico Magazine . "And I'll make you a promise: No matter what Washington, D.C., might be focused on at any given moment, President Donald Trump will never stop fighting for the American people and for advancing an agenda that will make America great again!"

His audience roared. For those who feared the GOP's once-in-a-generation opportunity for a policy renaissance was being squandered by infighting and incompetence and the creeping scent of scandal, the vice president's words, as they so often have during the early days of the Trump administration, provided temporary relief. The performance was vintage Pence. He was grandiose but grounded, hailing a host of early victories but cautioning that the biggest were yet to come; he was authoritative but deferential, speaking for the party and the government while carrying greetings from his boss. Above all, Pence was upbeat, befitting the "happy warrior" persona he has long labored to promote. "It's hard to get through all these accomplishments-unless you're watching cable news," he said, chuckling. "They never come up, except on one network!" Had Pence not nodded twice to the Beltway media's preoccupations, one would have had no inkling that Trump was enduring the most perilous stretch of his young presidency-or that Pence appeared at risk of becoming collateral damage.

The night before, on the eve of Trump's first foreign trip-and Pence's private speech-two news outlets published a pair of eyebrow-raising stories that reflected mounting anxiety within the vice president's inner circle. The sourcing and strategy seemed clearly choreographed. First, both articles aimed to distance Pence from the chaos engulfing Trump's White House; CNN quoted "a senior administration adviser" who said Pence "looks tired" and never expected such mayhem on the job, while NBC cited "a source close to the administration" who complained of a "pattern" of Pence being kept in the dark on matters relating to the scandal-plagued former national security adviser, Mike Flynn. Second, both stories were authored by former Pence "embeds," reporters who had spent months traveling with him and are expertly sourced among the vice president's tight-knit team. And third, the news accounts cast Pence in a sympathetic light at the very moment when the D.C. media was, for the first time, beginning to hammer him. The New York Times had reported the day earlier that Flynn informed the Pence-run transition team before Inauguration Day that he was under federal investigation; the implications for Pence were staggering, and the White House categorically denied the story. But Pence had also courted trouble the week earlier by insisting that Trump's decision to fire Comey was based on the deputy attorney general's recommendation-a claim Trump promptly contradicted in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, embarrassing the vice president and sending an awkward question echoing around Washington: Is Pence being kept out of the loop, or is he being deceitful?

[Jun 15, 2017] Comeys Lies of Omission by Mike Whitney

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump is not the target of an FBI investigation. Donald Trump has never been the target of an FBI investigation. The FBI is not investigating Trump for collusion, improper relations with a foreign government, treason or any of the other ridiculous things he's been falsely accused of in the fake media. In fact, the FBI is not investigating him at all. ..."
"... So, there was no counter-intelligence case on Trump? There was no investigation of collusion with Russia? But how can that be, after all, Trump has been hectored and harassed by the media from Day 1? His appointments have been blocked, his political agenda has been derailed, and the results of the 2016 elections have been effectively repealed due to the relentless attacks of the media, political elites and high-ranking leaders in the Intelligence Community. Now Comey admits that Trump is not guilty of anything, he's not even a suspect. ..."
"... Trump repeatedly asked Comey to announce that he wasn't under investigation. According to Comey, Trump "emphasized the problems this was causing him" and (Trump) said "We need to get that fact out." But Comey repeatedly refused to publicly acknowledge the truth. Why? ..."
"... It's true, he admitted it himself. Following his first meeting with Trump on January 6, he started recording contents of his private conversations with the president-elect on a secure FBI laptop in his car outside Trump Tower. He didn't even wait until he got back to the office, he did it in the goddamn parking lot. That's what you call "eager". In his testimony he admitted that he kept notes of his private meetings with Trump "from that point forward." ..."
"... Does that sound like the normal activities of dedicated public servant acting in behalf of the elected government or does it sound like someone who's on an assignment to dig up as much dirt as possible on the target of a political smear campaign. ..."
"... Comey is a man with zero integrity. Did you know that? ..."
"... In short, the memo Comey that approved gave a thumbs-up on waterboarding, wall slams, and other forms of torture – all violations of domestic and international law. Then, there's warrantless wiretapping. ."("Let's Check James Comey's Bush Years Record Before He Becomes FBI Director", ACLU) ..."
"... Repeat: "He approved or defended some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration (including) torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention." How does that square with the media's portrayal of Comey as a man of unshakable integrity and honor? ..."
"... In my mind, Comey tipped his hand when he said that he leaked the memo of his private conversation with Trump to the media in order to precipitate the appointment of a special prosecutor. Think about that for a minute. Here's what he said: ..."
"... because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel ..."
"... Listen to Comey. The man is openly admitting that leaking the memo was all part of a very clearly-defined political strategy to force the appointment of a special prosecutor. That was the political objective from the get go. He doesn't even try to hide it. He wasn't trying to protect himself from 'mean old' Trump. That's baloney! He was laying the groundwork for a massive and expansive investigation into anything and anyone even remotely connected to the Trump team, a gigantic fishing expedition aimed at taking down Trump and his closest allies. That's what Comey's been up to. Only his plan didn't work, did it, because the 'leaked memo' didn't lead to the appointment of the special prosecutor. Instead, someone had to whisper in Trump's ear that he should fire Comey and, ah ha, that's all it took. ..."
"... In other words, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenberg had to step in and give Comey his pink slip before the media could cry "obstruction", creating the perfect opportunity to appoint "hired gun" Robert Mueller as special counsel. Now that the dominoes are in motion, Comey can trundle off to some comfy job at one of the many rightwing Washington think tanks while Mueller gathers together his team of superstar prosecutors to launch their first broadsides on the White House. ..."
"... Clearly, Trump was not trying to impede the investigation. But even if he was, it is a particularly murky area of the law and difficult to prove. ..."
"... lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] . ..."
"... Excellent article. The politicized charge 'obstruction of justice' is nebulous, arcane and insufferably highfalutin, which makes the entire investigation a very appealing opportunity to launch a politically correct witch hunt. Watch the MSM cheer it on. ..."
"... But the endgame is not exclusively about Russia. Ancillary targets include Russia's teetering allies, Syria and Iran. Cui Bono? ..."
"... Good takes all, Mike, and they're the truth. But I'd fire Rosenburg for his betrayals, then fire Mueller for his political selections, all Democrats, most with contributor or employment connections to the Clintons, the Foundation, or the Global Initiative. Those would be a firings for cause and I would fire all their allies, too. Immediately, I'd demand a Grand Jury hearing and have appointed another Special Prosecutor. Nixon wasn't impeached over the Saturday Night Massacre, he was impeached because they had the goods on him. ..."
"... The endless investigations can be terminated by the President on whim. The Congress can then impeach and hold a trial. They would all look like fools because there's nothing there, only their desire to do Trump in. Trump should fire, fire, fire wherever the politics lead in whatever agency. A lot of this is Clinton-driven, too. Jeff Sessions also needs to get on board, carry the frustrated Clinton investigations to a Grand Jury, flip it all back on them and indict Comey, Rosenberg and all their little buddies down below that leaked. Anyone who leaks, lies or obstructs goes to jail. ..."
"... It may sound strange, but I do not believe this entire escapade is about Donald Trump or Russia. It is about our Neocon overlords asserting their unconstitutional primacy over the sovereign will of the American People. ..."
"... If the American people had their way, all our "Neocon overlords" would be in federal prison or Guantanamo Bay, and all their assets seized to pay down the heinous 20 trillion debt their lies have created. ..."
"... Presumably Comey was deeply involved in Obama's illegal spying. ..."
"... Learned thus far; the deep state has more power than the Senate, the HOUSE and all members of the voting public.. Its not about Trump, its about you voters.. you people out their in vote land did not vote for the person the deep state elected.. therefore your elected persons must go.. somehow, he must go.. and believe me the DEEPSTATE has pledged to make it so.. ..."
"... Mueller was not appointed via the congressional "special prosecutor" statute (which was allowed to lapse.) He was appointed by the Justice Departement which means that Trump appointed the man whose job is to destroy him. Why would Trump agree to that when he can simply fire Rosenstein and instal someone who'll get rid of Mueller. Sure, the Washington Post will moan and groan, but who cares. ..."
"... A little discouraged. Don' t think the swamp is drainable. Trump agenda will never be enacted under these circumstances. Maybe Trump should fire Rosenstein and Mueller and then resign, loudly proclaiming truth about swamp. Don't like Pence but maybe few things can get done. Trump underestimated deep state. They ARE in charge. What will the people do ? Become more apathetic? ..."
"... Alternatively, Trump could go out swinging. Fire Rosenstein and Mueller and rally base and see what happens. Can't go on as is. The death by a thousand cuts. ..."
"... In light of Mueller's early actions corroborating his status as an establishment thug and lackey, Trump should fire him, and should fire Rosenstein, particularly since he has the power to do so, and Comey's testimony admits that the leak was intended to get somebody, probably his longtime associate Mueller, in as special prosecutor. As the article shows, the whole thing has been an effort by the power structure to continue its nihilistic war policies. Trump's other proven faults are not the issue. Our survival and the restoration of the rule of law are what is at stake. ..."
"... The problem is that this leads back to the same questions of why Russia is Washington's sworn enemy anyway. Furthermore, what is Trump's motivation in pushing for a detente with Russia, potentially jeopardizing first his candidacy, and now his presidency, with a generally unpopular among the electorate position? ..."
"... I tend to agree with some of the comments above, that this has to do with the Neocons, their hold on power and their plans for Middle Eastern conquest. Russia stands in the way of a lot of their plans. Still, Trump's stance on Russia, and who or what else is behind that, to me is the great mystery in all this. And, to be clear, I don't believe in any kind of ridiculous collusion or blackmail scenario. ..."
"... Trump needs to stage a false flag assasination attempt. Blame it on operatives within the FBI and the upper echelons of congress. Invite bikers for Trump and other patriots to washington, putting them on the payroll and arming them while stating "Due to the assasination attempt I can no longer trust the secret service or Washington establishment for protection." He then needs to have this army occupy both Capitol hill, the CIA and the FBI. etc etc. Its time for Trump to flex his inner Yeltsin. ..."
"... Uh, because he is a tool of the criminal elite who really run the show, which is one reason he was rewarded with a directorship at HSBC in an earlier time. He made beaucoup bucks there they made beaucoup bucks laundering hundreds of billions of drug cartel money. Apple tree. ..."
"... I don't care much for Trump, finding many of his specific domestic policies noxious; but I do have a dog in the fight when the Deep State tries to overturn the election of the Chief Magistrate of the nation because he might upset their applecart. He already fucked with their so-called "trade" deals by deep sixing the TPP, and then he is talking about speaking respectfully with Russia, implicitly rejecting the unipolarity of American Hegemony. What further proof did the Deep State require to set a soft coup into motion? ..."
"... Comey's having previously taken a job as general counsel of Bridgewater, including a reported and unmerited $3+ million severance on leaving, was sufficient reason for Trump to fire him on day one. Comey's due diligence had to have made him aware of–and therefore he apparently wanted to be in on–Dalio's deranged, Stalinesque corporate culture of backstabbing absolutely everyone under the guise of openness. ..."
"... Were Trump to take hysterical pieces like this post seriously it would likely precipitate him into war with Russia. Fortunately that won't be necessary, because Trump can order the FBI to do or stop doing things; the pres has that constitutional authority as Dershowitz has said repeatedly from the begining, so there is no case against Trump for obstruction. Dershowitz has also said anything (jaywalking) is in theory an "impeachable offense" , because impeachment is completely political. ..."
"... JULY 10 = ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF SETH RICH MURDER How about something big on July 10? The date shouldn't be wasted. Over 66,000 people have signed the petition to make this point. There are only 3 days left, but it could still make the 100K mark. ..."
Jun 14, 2017 | www.unz.com

"The Democrats are not fighting Trump over his assault on health care, his attacks on immigrants, his militaristic bullying around the world, or even his status as a minority president who can claim no mandate after losing the popular vote. Instead, they have chosen to attack Trump, the most right-wing president in US history, from the right, denouncing him as insufficiently committed to a military confrontation with Russia."

- Patrick Martin, "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming", World Socialist Web Site

Donald Trump is not the target of an FBI investigation. Donald Trump has never been the target of an FBI investigation. The FBI is not investigating Trump for collusion, improper relations with a foreign government, treason or any of the other ridiculous things he's been falsely accused of in the fake media. In fact, the FBI is not investigating him at all.

Last week, former FBI Director James Comey admitted publicly what he has known all along: that Trump was not a suspect in the Russia hacking probe and never has been. Here's the story from Politico:

"Comey assured Trump he wasn't under investigation during their first meeting. He said he discussed with FBI leadership before his meeting with the president-elect whether to disclose that he wasn't personally under investigation. "That was true; we did not have an open counter-intelligence case on him," Comey said." (Politico)

So, there was no counter-intelligence case on Trump? There was no investigation of collusion with Russia? But how can that be, after all, Trump has been hectored and harassed by the media from Day 1? His appointments have been blocked, his political agenda has been derailed, and the results of the 2016 elections have been effectively repealed due to the relentless attacks of the media, political elites and high-ranking leaders in the Intelligence Community. Now Comey admits that Trump is not guilty of anything, he's not even a suspect.

What's going on here? Why didn't Comey clear the air earlier so the American people would know that their president wasn't in bed with a foreign power? Why did he allow this farce to continue when he knew there was no substance to the claims? Did he enjoy seeing Trump twisting in the wind or was there some more sinister "political" motive behind his omission?

Trump repeatedly asked Comey to announce that he wasn't under investigation. According to Comey, Trump "emphasized the problems this was causing him" and (Trump) said "We need to get that fact out." But Comey repeatedly refused to publicly acknowledge the truth. Why?

Comey never answered that question to Trump, but he did explain his reasoning to the Senate Intelligence Committee last week. He said he didn't want to announce that Trump was not part of the Bureau's Russia probe because "it would create a duty to correct, should that change."

A "duty to correct"? Are you kidding me? What kind of bullshit answer is that? How many hours of legal brainstorming did it take to come up with that lame-ass excuse?

Let's state the obvious: Comey wanted to maintain the cloud of suspicion that was hanging over Trump because it helped to feed the perception that Trump was a traitor who collaborated with Russia to win the election. By remaining silent, Comey helped to fuel the public hysteria and reinforce the belief that Trump was guilty of criminal wrongdoing. That is why Comey never spoke out before, it's because his silence was already achieving the result he sought which was to inflict as much damage as possible on Trump and his administration.

Did you know that Comey was spying on Trump from Day 1?

It's true, he admitted it himself. Following his first meeting with Trump on January 6, he started recording contents of his private conversations with the president-elect on a secure FBI laptop in his car outside Trump Tower. He didn't even wait until he got back to the office, he did it in the goddamn parking lot. That's what you call "eager". In his testimony he admitted that he kept notes of his private meetings with Trump "from that point forward."

Does that sound like the normal activities of dedicated public servant acting in behalf of the elected government or does it sound like someone who's on an assignment to dig up as much dirt as possible on the target of a political smear campaign.

Isn't that what Comey was really up to?

Comey is a man with zero integrity. Did you know that?

"There's one very big problem with describing Comey as some sort of civil libertarian: some facts suggest otherwise. While Comey deserves credit for stopping an illegal spying program in dramatic fashion, he also approved or defended some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration during his time as deputy attorney general. Those included torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention.

On 30 December 2004, a memo addressed to James Comey was issued that superseded the infamous memo that defined torture as pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure". The memo to Comey seemed to renounce torture but did nothing of the sort. The key sentence in the opinion is tucked away in footnote 8. It concludes that the new Comey memo did not change the authorizations of interrogation tactics in any earlier memos.

In short, the memo Comey that approved gave a thumbs-up on waterboarding, wall slams, and other forms of torture – all violations of domestic and international law. Then, there's warrantless wiretapping. ."("Let's Check James Comey's Bush Years Record Before He Becomes FBI Director", ACLU)

Repeat: "He approved or defended some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration (including) torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention." How does that square with the media's portrayal of Comey as a man of unshakable integrity and honor?

It doesn't square at all, does it? The media is obviously lying. Now ask yourself this: Can a man who rubber-stamped waterboarding be trusted? No, he can't be trusted because he's already proved himself to be inherently immoral.

Would a man like Comey agree to use his position and authority to try to "undo" the damage he did prior to the election when he announced the FBI was reopening its investigation of Hillary Clinton? In other words, was Comey being blackmailed to gather illicit material on Trump?

I think it's very likely, although entirely unprovable. Even so, Comey has been way too eager to frame Trump for things for which he is not guilty. Why has he been so eager? Was he really just protecting himself as he says or was he gathering information to build a legal case against Trump?

In my mind, Comey tipped his hand when he said that he leaked the memo of his private conversation with Trump to the media in order to precipitate the appointment of a special prosecutor. Think about that for a minute. Here's what he said:

"My judgment was I needed to get that out into the public square. So I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. I didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel , so I asked a close friend of mine to do it."

Listen to Comey. The man is openly admitting that leaking the memo was all part of a very clearly-defined political strategy to force the appointment of a special prosecutor. That was the political objective from the get go. He doesn't even try to hide it. He wasn't trying to protect himself from 'mean old' Trump. That's baloney! He was laying the groundwork for a massive and expansive investigation into anything and anyone even remotely connected to the Trump team, a gigantic fishing expedition aimed at taking down Trump and his closest allies. That's what Comey's been up to. Only his plan didn't work, did it, because the 'leaked memo' didn't lead to the appointment of the special prosecutor. Instead, someone had to whisper in Trump's ear that he should fire Comey and, ah ha, that's all it took.

In other words, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenberg had to step in and give Comey his pink slip before the media could cry "obstruction", creating the perfect opportunity to appoint "hired gun" Robert Mueller as special counsel. Now that the dominoes are in motion, Comey can trundle off to some comfy job at one of the many rightwing Washington think tanks while Mueller gathers together his team of superstar prosecutors to launch their first broadsides on the White House.

Whoever wrote this script deserves an Oscar. This is really first-rate political theater.

Now it's up to Mueller to prove that Trump tried to obstruct the investigation by asking Comey to go easy on former national security advisor General Michael Flynn. (According to Comey, Trump said, "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.") It might sound like obstruction, but there are real problems with this type of prosecution particularly the fact that Trump denies the allegations. Also, Comey has acknowledged that Trump expressed his support for the overall goals of the investigation when he said, "that if there were some 'satellite' associates of his who did something wrong, it would be good to find that out."

Clearly, Trump was not trying to impede the investigation. But even if he was, it is a particularly murky area of the law and difficult to prove. Here's a short clip from an article by Professor Jonathan Turley at George Washington University who helps to clarify the point:

"The desire for some indictable or impeachable offense by President Trump has distorted the legal analysis to an alarming degree. Analysts seem far too thrilled by the possibility of a crime by Trump. The legal fact is that Comey's testimony does not establish a prima facie - or even a strong - case for obstruction.

It is certainly true that if Trump made these comments, his conduct is wildly inappropriate. However, talking like Tony Soprano does not make you Tony Soprano .

The crime of obstruction of justice has not been defined as broadly as suggested by commentators The mere fact that Trump asked to speak to Comey alone would not implicate the president in obstruction. .

It would be a highly dangerous interpretation to allow obstruction charges at this stage. If prosecutors can charge people at the investigation stage of cases, a wide array of comments or conduct could be criminalized. It is quite common to have such issues arise early in criminal cases. Courts have limited the crime precisely to avoid this type of open-ended crime where prosecutors could threaten potential witnesses with charges unless they cooperated.

We do not indict or impeach people for being boorish or clueless or simply being Donald Trump." ("James Comey's testimony doesn't make the case for impeachment or obstruction against Donald Trump", USA Today)

The fact that the obstruction charge won't stick is not going to stop Mueller from rummaging around and making Trump's life a living Hell. Heck no. He's going to dig through his old phone records, bank accounts, tax returns, shaky land deals, ex girl friends, whatever it takes. His prosecutorial tentacles will extend into every nook and cranny of Trump's private life and affairs until he latches onto some particularly sordid incident or transaction he can use he can use to disgrace, discredit, and demonize Trump to the point that impeachment proceedings seem like a welcome relief. It should be obvious by now, that the deep state elites who launched this coup are not going to be satisfied until Trump is forced from office and the results of the 2016 presidential election are wiped out.

But, why? Why is Trump so hated by these people?

Trump is not being attacked because of his reactionary political agenda, but because he's been deemed insufficiently hostile to Washington's sworn enemy, Russia. It's all about Russia. Trump wanted to "normalize" relations with Moscow which pitted him against the powerful US foreign policy establishment. Now Trump has to be taught a lesson. He must be crushed, humiliated and exiled. And that's probably the way this will end.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] .

Fran Macadam Website, June 14, 2017 at 5:04 pm GMT

Somebody else sure is in charge of America other than 300 million ordinary Americans, though it certainly isn't Russians.

Mike Whitney, June 15, 2017 at 3:30 am GMT

Let me get this straight: Comey leaks a memo to the NY Times saying that Trump pressured him to go easy on Flynn. He hoped that the leak would result in an "obstruction" charge against Trump. But it doesn't work.

So, Rod Rosenstein–who has convenently replaced Sessions– talks Trump into firing Comey. Why?

Because Rosenstein is working for the other team and he needs Trump to do something stupid that REALLY looks like obstruction, so he fires the head of the FBI. (Again, according to Salon, firing Comey was Rosenstein's idea)

A week later, Rosenstein –without consulting Trump– appoints deep state handyman and political assassin, Bob Mueller. So, in effect, Rosenstein appointed a special prosecutor to address the appearence of obstruction that he created when he told Trump to fire Comey.
How's that for symetry!

Then on Tuesday, Rosenstein was asked what he would do if the president ordered him to fire Mueller. Rosenstein said, "I'm not going to follow any orders unless I believe those are lawful and appropriate orders." He added later: "As long as I'm in this position, he's not going to be fired without good cause," which he said he would have to put in writing.

Oh man, this thing has "set up" written all over it. The whole thing stinks to high heaven

Countercoup, Part 5: After Comey, Sessions Hearings the #TrumpRussia Con is Failing – Rogue Money, June 15, 2017 at 5:05 am GMT

[ ] Comey's defenders were left sputtering that the fired FBI director had repeatedly affirmed the 'fact' of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and that Comey had called Trump a liar. The President's response was to hint again that he had recordings of his conversations with Comey, to which the ex-director cockily declared 'Lordy I hope there are tapes'. This of course, is a bluff by Comey and his derp state/Trump hating media backers, since Comey's entire argument for obstruction of justice rests on his feelings/interpretations of a conversation alone with the President, rather than any actual evidence of obstructing actions by Administration officials. The only thing known for sure as of this posting is that the U.S. Secret Service says it does not have recordings of the private Trump-Comey conversation. Meaning the President may have used a personal recording device to protect himself from Comey's subsequent write up and self-serving leaked recollections of their conversation. For more on the crookedness of Comey, read this summary by Mike Whitney at Unz Review. [ ]

utu, June 15, 2017 at 5:09 am GMT

@Mike Whitney I can see the reason for Trump being furious with Sessions.

Mark Green, June 15, 2017 at 6:17 am GMT

Excellent article. The politicized charge 'obstruction of justice' is nebulous, arcane and insufferably highfalutin, which makes the entire investigation a very appealing opportunity to launch a politically correct witch hunt. Watch the MSM cheer it on.

Meanwhile, the broad and well-earned suspicions surrounding the Clintons and their money-laundering foundation will be moved aside and slowly forgotten, as planned.

Trump's enemies will use this open-ended 'investigation' to cloud and sully every action the President makes. It is a legalistic act of war using the courts as cover. Disgraceful.

But the endgame is not exclusively about Russia. Ancillary targets include Russia's teetering allies, Syria and Iran. Cui Bono?

jilles dykstra, June 15, 2017 at 6:51 am GMT

Seen from Europe the hearings by the USA Senate seem a comedy, if it was not serious. In my view the effort is to prevent talks with Russia, in order to get a normal relation with that country. At all costs Russia must remain the dangerous enemy of the USA. Why ?

I suppose on the on hand the desire for USA world domination, on the other hand the fear, that existed in the USA since the 1917 Lenin coup, that Europe's trade relations with the east would become more important than across the Atlantic.

Antony C. Sutton, ´Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution', 1974 New Rochelle, N.Y.

Jim Christian, June 15, 2017 at 9:54 am GMT

@Mike Whitney

Good takes all, Mike, and they're the truth. But I'd fire Rosenburg for his betrayals, then fire Mueller for his political selections, all Democrats, most with contributor or employment connections to the Clintons, the Foundation, or the Global Initiative. Those would be a firings for cause and I would fire all their allies, too. Immediately, I'd demand a Grand Jury hearing and have appointed another Special Prosecutor. Nixon wasn't impeached over the Saturday Night Massacre, he was impeached because they had the goods on him.

The endless investigations can be terminated by the President on whim. The Congress can then impeach and hold a trial. They would all look like fools because there's nothing there, only their desire to do Trump in. Trump should fire, fire, fire wherever the politics lead in whatever agency. A lot of this is Clinton-driven, too. Jeff Sessions also needs to get on board, carry the frustrated Clinton investigations to a Grand Jury, flip it all back on them and indict Comey, Rosenberg and all their little buddies down below that leaked. Anyone who leaks, lies or obstructs goes to jail.

This IS manageable, Jeff Sessions needs to man up here, or another AG needs to be in his place.

alexander, June 15, 2017 at 10:01 am GMT

Dear Mr. Whitney,

Thank you for a fine article. It may sound strange, but I do not believe this entire escapade is about Donald Trump or Russia. It is about our Neocon overlords asserting their unconstitutional primacy over the sovereign will of the American People.

If the American people had their way, all our "Neocon overlords" would be in federal prison or Guantanamo Bay, and all their assets seized to pay down the heinous 20 trillion debt their lies have created.

Rather than be held to ACCOUNT for the gigantic mess they have made, the stupid wars they "lied us into", and the trillions they have pilfered from the taxpayer in the process They put on this " Comey (dog) and Mueller (pony) show to deflect from their stupendous failures and horrendous criminality.

On day ONE of his Presidency, Donald Trump should have called in "the Marines", and started seizing assets (up ,down, left and right) to recoup the losses our nation has endured.

The American people should be witnessing a Nuremberg like trial, today, where all our treasonous, defrauding "elites" are admonished, shamed, and sentenced before the entire world.

LondonBob, June 15, 2017 at 10:30 am GMT

@Mike Whitney Yes the role of Rosenstein and his background needs exploring. Firing Comey was the right thing to do I think, he and they would have worked something anyway.

Frank Qattrone and Martha Stewart could tell you that you can do nothing wrong but they can still put you in prison. Trump needs to be careful and get some good advice, I think so far he hasn't taken this seriously enough. Seems clear Mueller has a conflict and that a special counsel was appointed on false pretext.

LondonBob, June 15, 2017 at 10:33 am GMT

Presumably Comey was deeply involved in Obama's illegal spying.

Notaboutrump_but_about you voters, June 15, 2017 at 12:29 pm GMT

Learned thus far; the deep state has more power than the Senate, the HOUSE and all members of the voting public.. Its not about Trump, its about you voters.. you people out their in vote land did not vote for the person the deep state elected.. therefore your elected persons must go.. somehow, he must go.. and believe me the DEEPSTATE has pledged to make it so..

Mike Whitney, June 15, 2017 at 12:55 pm GMT

Why should Trump hire his own executioner? Would you? Would you try to help the people who are trying to frame you for nothing? Comey already admitted that there wasn't even an investigation. Why wasn't there an investigation? Because they have nothing on Trump. Nothing. That's why Comey "the waterboarder" agreed to frame him on the obstruction charge. Because they have Nothing.

Mueller was not appointed via the congressional "special prosecutor" statute (which was allowed to lapse.) He was appointed by the Justice Departement which means that Trump appointed the man whose job is to destroy him. Why would Trump agree to that when he can simply fire Rosenstein and instal someone who'll get rid of Mueller. Sure, the Washington Post will moan and groan, but who cares.

If Congress thinks there is enough evidence here to prosecute Trump, LET THEM APPOINT THEIR OWN SPECIAL PROSECUTOR.

Agent76, June 15, 2017 at 1:15 pm GMT

Jun 8, 2017 Comey's Testimony What's EVERYBODY Missing?

Jason Bermas breaks down the Comey testimony, and reveals what everyone is missing!

Jul 7, 2016 Justice Vs. "Just Us": Of Course the FBI Let Hillary off the Hook

The only thing that surprises me is that anyone is surprised by this.

pepperinmono, June 15, 2017 at 1:30 pm GMT

A little discouraged. Don' t think the swamp is drainable. Trump agenda will never be enacted under these circumstances. Maybe Trump should fire Rosenstein and Mueller and then resign, loudly proclaiming truth about swamp. Don't like Pence but maybe few things can get done. Trump underestimated deep state. They ARE in charge. What will the people do ? Become more apathetic?

Alternatively, Trump could go out swinging. Fire Rosenstein and Mueller and rally base and see what happens. Can't go on as is. The death by a thousand cuts.

exiled off mainstreet, June 15, 2017 at 2:06 pm GMT

In light of Mueller's early actions corroborating his status as an establishment thug and lackey, Trump should fire him, and should fire Rosenstein, particularly since he has the power to do so, and Comey's testimony admits that the leak was intended to get somebody, probably his longtime associate Mueller, in as special prosecutor. As the article shows, the whole thing has been an effort by the power structure to continue its nihilistic war policies. Trump's other proven faults are not the issue. Our survival and the restoration of the rule of law are what is at stake.

I emigrated to Canada 10 years ago, fortunately being a dual citizen. One of the major reasons I did so was the Martha Stewart case mentioned by a commenter above. I didn't think much of Martha Stewart personally, but if she could be prosecuted despite the fifth amendment for a statement made not under oath exclusively on the say-so of a government agent, then there was no longer due process in the yankee imperium.

The fact the courts had allowed this "law" to go unchallenged was proof that the rule of law no longer obtained. That was a key factor in my deliberations about what to do. I also find it discouraging that counterpunch apparently did not see fit to publish this Whitney article, probably because it is too much on point and they don't want to fully break with the traditional left, which has destroyed itself by being taken over by fascists like the Clintons and Tony Blair. The yankee imperium needs a figure like Corbyn to put things right again, not a sell-out like Sanders.

pepperinmono, June 15, 2017 at 2:12 pm GMT

Republicans in Congress surely don't like Trump. However, they better start getting on board with him. They are tied together, whether they like it or not.

art guerrilla Website, June 15, 2017 at 2:12 pm GMT

what i find so weird, is the almost immediate flip-flop of so-called progressives/dem'rats yelling full-throatedly for violence against -not just all things t-rumpian- ALL those who fail ANY trivial PC litmus test they have their about-face on -essentially- renouncing nonviolence, adopting Empire's motto of 'might makes right', and going full berserker against the rest of the 99% is too sudden and severe to be anything but an astroturf wannabe purple revolution with hillary's puppet masters pulling the strings

IF they were actually calling for jihad against EMPIRE, instead of their fellow pathetic nekkid apes, i could get behind that but their petulant excuses for why they should be given free reign to 'punch a nazi' (ie ANYONE who disagrees with me), the disgusting shilling for hillary/dem'rats/Empire is maddening
.
don't give a shit about t-rump; but they hound him out of office, i will consider that a direct assault on my small-dee democracy, that a duly elected official is run off by hijacking the mechanisms of state to pursue the agenda of the 1% is not right, though done numerous times
.
i think they might find that 100+ million PISSED-OFF, nothing-to-lose unemployed may consider that the straw that broke the camel's back, and soros and his cabal of deep state slime won't like the pushback when bubba gets out of the recliner
.
come the revolution idiot dem'rats appear to be itching for, just WHICH SIDE do stupid libtards think the police, natl guard, military, etc are going to come down on ? ? ?
(hint: NOT the libtard side )

SolontoCroesus, June 15, 2017 at 2:20 pm GMT

@Mike Whitney nb. from the essay:

"Instead, someone had to whisper in Trump's ear that he should fire Comey and, ah ha, that's all it took. In other words, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosen berg had to step in"

We know what you meant. They all look alike.

JL, June 15, 2017 at 2:23 pm GMT

The problem is that this leads back to the same questions of why Russia is Washington's sworn enemy anyway. Furthermore, what is Trump's motivation in pushing for a detente with Russia, potentially jeopardizing first his candidacy, and now his presidency, with a generally unpopular among the electorate position?

I tend to agree with some of the comments above, that this has to do with the Neocons, their hold on power and their plans for Middle Eastern conquest. Russia stands in the way of a lot of their plans. Still, Trump's stance on Russia, and who or what else is behind that, to me is the great mystery in all this. And, to be clear, I don't believe in any kind of ridiculous collusion or blackmail scenario.

nsa, June 15, 2017 at 2:42 pm GMT

We here in Ft. Meade are having a good laugh. One of our assets, a shyster named Rosenstein (that's Scottish, isn't it?) gives Trumpenstein a little pinprick in the back (not even a stab) and the silly old jooie tool folds like a cheap lawn chair. No wall, no tax cuts, no ending the jooie wars for the izzies, no mass deportations, no curbing the jooie central bank .just tacky soap opera histrionics for the few interested in the doings in wash dc.

nickels, June 15, 2017 at 2:52 pm GMT

Trump needs to stage a false flag assasination attempt. Blame it on operatives within the FBI and the upper echelons of congress. Invite bikers for Trump and other patriots to washington, putting them on the payroll and arming them while stating "Due to the assasination attempt I can no longer trust the secret service or Washington establishment for protection." He then needs to have this army occupy both Capitol hill, the CIA and the FBI. etc etc. Its time for Trump to flex his inner Yeltsin.

The Alarmist, June 15, 2017 at 3:20 pm GMT

"Why has he been so eager?"

Uh, because he is a tool of the criminal elite who really run the show, which is one reason he was rewarded with a directorship at HSBC in an earlier time. He made beaucoup bucks there they made beaucoup bucks laundering hundreds of billions of drug cartel money. Apple tree.

Joe Franklin, June 15, 2017 at 3:46 pm GMT

@Mike Whitney Put Rosenstein under oath and ask him about any communications and agreements and meetings he may have had with Comey or Mueller before he appointed a special prosecutor. Do the same thing with Comey and Mueller in regard to Rosenstein. Trump's attorney should do these interrogations.

Agent76, June 15, 2017 at 4:31 pm GMT

@JL

Know this and it is all NATO and their aggression in the world of the empire. Nov 29, 2016 The Map That Shows Why Russia Fears War With USA

Sowhat, June 15, 2017 at 5:11 pm GMT

I feel that, despite the exhaustive process, this one has to be played- all 19 holes. Everyone is going to demand a good stiff one at the nineteenth. Given his resume, Rosenstein was a good choice by Trump. Sessions may regret his recusal but, Rosenstein may feel that his Frosted Flakes breakfast will carry the day. One should not prejudice him. Trump may have snagged a few and ended up in a sand trap but, he's still below par and we're only on the forth fairway. I did some digging and found that Rod's from Philly. Just thought I would throw that in.
You can't judge a book by it's cover. The guy will be a good caddy.

anon, June 15, 2017 at 7:00 pm GMT

@Mike Whitney Trump should directly appeal to the American people( his base and large number of disaffected Clinton supporters)

JerseyJeffersonian, June 15, 2017 at 8:12 pm GMT

@Mike Whitney Thank you, Mr. Whitney. This comment and comment #12 delineate the mechanics of the set-up with laser-like precision.

We are in your debt for articulating the hinge points of this assault on the Constitutional order. I don't care much for Trump, finding many of his specific domestic policies noxious; but I do have a dog in the fight when the Deep State tries to overturn the election of the Chief Magistrate of the nation because he might upset their applecart. He already fucked with their so-called "trade" deals by deep sixing the TPP, and then he is talking about speaking respectfully with Russia, implicitly rejecting the unipolarity of American Hegemony. What further proof did the Deep State require to set a soft coup into motion?

DanCT, June 15, 2017 at 9:02 pm GMT

Comey's having previously taken a job as general counsel of Bridgewater, including a reported and unmerited $3+ million severance on leaving, was sufficient reason for Trump to fire him on day one. Comey's due diligence had to have made him aware of–and therefore he apparently wanted to be in on–Dalio's deranged, Stalinesque corporate culture of backstabbing absolutely everyone under the guise of openness.

Dalio may be very rich, but he's an evil man who we may assume saw in Comey a kindred spirit. Having a Ray Dalio protege leading the FBI suggests agents supported him, if that's actually the case, out of fear and not allegiance.

Sean, June 15, 2017 at 9:05 pm GMT

Were Trump to take hysterical pieces like this post seriously it would likely precipitate him into war with Russia. Fortunately that won't be necessary, because Trump can order the FBI to do or stop doing things; the pres has that constitutional authority as Dershowitz has said repeatedly from the begining, so there is no case against Trump for obstruction. Dershowitz has also said anything (jaywalking) is in theory an "impeachable offense" , because impeachment is completely political.

They want Trump to quit and are predicting impeachment in an attempt to get him to just go, but even if Trump got fed up and wanted to quit, he couldn't now, because without the protection of office, his fortune (at least) would be destroyed. As for the Russia innuendo, it is always open to Trump to humiliate Russia with a military initiative (in Syria for example), which would prove he has nothing to hide. As a major conflict with Russian proxies beckoned, the country would look askance at scarce domestic intelligence resources being used for an old tax or sexual harassment line of investigation against the sitting president. Knowing what kind of a man he is, who can doubt that Trump wouldn't hesitate to kill Russians if that is what it took to turn the heat on his opponents..

Sam J., June 15, 2017 at 9:33 pm GMT

@Joe Franklin " Put Rosenstein under oath "

That's a good idea. Should be public. He needs to be fired any way. The person or persons who recommended Rosenstein need to be fired also.

annamaria, June 15, 2017 at 9:58 pm GMT

@Fran Macadam " the Russians did not "interfere in our Democracy" either. We have no democracy."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/15/the-russians-didnt-do-it/

Sowhat, June 15, 2017 at 10:05 pm GMT

@Mike Whitney

A week later, Rosenstein –without consulting Trump– appoints deep state handyman and political assassin, Bob Mueller

I missed this. Is there a reference, please?

Sowhat, June 15, 2017 at 10:10 pm GMT

@alexander

If the American people had their way, all our "Neocon overlords" would be in federal prison or Guantanamo Bay, and all their assets seized to pay down the heinous 20 trillion debt their lies have created.

Agree

RobinG, June 15, 2017 at 10:26 pm GMT

@Mark Green "Ancillary targets" are American citizens. (Syria and Iran are much clearer direct targets.)

Trump has done some great things. Recognition of Fake News and the Deep State threatened a much bigger awakening. So Trump had to be diminished. Sure, he's a mixed bag, but his defeat of Killary was a blessing. His direct communication (Twitter) and exposure of the MSM was brilliant.

As you say, 'obstruction of justice' is nebulous. Going on the defensive is a loser's game. There must be a counter-attack. What have we got? Please, if you have something better, something simpler to put in meme and slogan, let's have it, but I see Who Killed Seth Rich as a powerful offensive. You don't even have to solve it. Just get the case broadcast. Do you know that only this week, Seth Rich's neighbor has come out as a witness? (NOT a witness of the shooting, but of the immediate aftermath, police, etc. Seth may have been totally beat down before he was shot.)

JULY 10 = ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF SETH RICH MURDER How about something big on July 10? The date shouldn't be wasted. Over 66,000 people have signed the petition to make this point. There are only 3 days left, but it could still make the 100K mark.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/appoint-special-prosecutor-investigate-murder-seth-rich-alleged-wikileaks-email-leaker

PLEASE SIGN. Either way, THE ANNIVERSARY LOOMS.

RobinG, June 15, 2017 at 10:36 pm GMT

@Jim Christian

"..carry the frustrated Clinton investigations to a Grand Jury, flip it all back on them and indict Comey, Rosenberg and all their little buddies down below that leaked "

YES, SO TRUE!! Big mistake to let Clinton off the hook. And what was her involvement in the murder of Seth Rich? Investigate the DNC, Lynch, Comey, Clinton – all of them.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/appoint-special-prosecutor-investigate-murder-seth-rich-alleged-wikileaks-email-leaker

Appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate the murder of Seth Rich, the alleged Wikileaks email leaker.

Sowhat, June 15, 2017 at 10:54 pm GMT

@Sam J. "...Put Rosenstein under oath..."

That's a good idea. Should be public. He needs to be fired any way. The person or persons who recommended Rosenstein need to be fired also. Putting him under is an excellent idea. Trump needs to hear it or read it. IMO, Rosenstein doesn't have a resumč that him suspect.

[Jun 15, 2017] The appointment of the special prosecutor was the part of the plan of Russiagate color revolution from the very beginning

Jun 15, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

libezkova, June 14, 2017 at 09:00 PM

Fred,

"Mr. Comey said during the testimony that it was up to Mr. Mueller to decide whether the president's actions amounted to obstruction of justice."

Comey probably lied. This was probably the plan hatched from the very beginning of this color revolution by Comey and other members of anti-trump conspiracy such as Brennan: to raise Russiagate or anything else to the level which allow to appoint special prosecutor and to sink Trump using this mechanism, because digging by itself produces the necessary result.

Obstruction of justice is the easiest path to remove Trump, a no-brainer so to speak, the charge which can be used to remove any any past and future US president with guaranteed result.

The other, more Trump-specific, is of financial deals within the Trump empire. Especially his son-in-law deals.

In this sense Trump is now hostage like Clinton previously was. He can fight for survival, by unleashing some war, like Clinton did with Yugoslavia. Which probably is OK for neocons because war for them is the first, the second and the third solution to any problem. But as a result the US standing in the globe probably will be further damaged.

BTW, in your zeal to republish this neocon propaganda, do you understand that Hillary was a head of one of those 17 intelligence agencies in the past?

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) has ties to the Office of Strategic Services from World War II, but was transferred to State after the war. INR now reports directly to the Secretary of State, harnessing intelligence from all sources and offering independent analysis of global events and real-time insight.

Headquarters : Washington, D.C.

Mission : This agency serves as the Secretary of State's primary advisor on intelligence matters, and gives support to other policymakers, ambassadors, and embassy staff.

Budget : $49 million in 2007, according to documents obtained by FAS.

This all drama makes no sense for me. Trump folded. He proved to be not a fighter. The attempt to bring members of his family close to White house is a huge liability for him now in view of possible digging of the past of his son in law by the special Prosecutor. Who is recruiting the most rabid Hillary hacks for the job ;-).

But the key question is what DemoRats will gain with the current vice president elevated to the new level?

Other then a blowback from the remaining part of Trump supporters. Pat Buchanan was talking about civil war recently, which is probably exaggeration, but the probably direction of reaction is probably guessed right:

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/patrick-j-buchanan/are-we-nearing-civil-war

Not that I trust him with such a prediction, but still this is a danger.

[Jun 15, 2017] Many Americans know that MSM are either feeding them unadulterated bs or lying by omission so they actually make a real effort to find out more – whether they agree with it or not – but are faced with having to wade through rivers of spam in comments. It is dispiriting to say the least.

Notable quotes:
"... Lots of people out there (Hello lurkers!) know that the Pork Pie News Networks are either feeding them unadulterated bs or lying by omission so actually make a real effort to find out more – whether they agree with it or not – but are faced with having to wade through rivers of f/ktard commenters. It is dispiriting to say the least. ..."
"... That may well be the idea, particularly those organizations that want to hose a and discredit alternative media sites (sic the JTRIG program and the likes of Brigade 77 and digilogues that have been running for years). If you can hack it, you probably think a) does this make sense? b) who is bono? c) timing, timing, timing.. d) is anything logically missing from the picture/story? e) if so, what conclusions can we draw from that? etc. It's not easy. ..."
"... Once upon a time we had newspaper columnists to do our thinking for us who we would religiously read. Now it is each one for themselves. What a pain in the ass. Fortunately we have the Kremlin Stooge and a bunch of other sites to help! :-) ..."
"... Don't miss the link to TTG's comment on leaks at Sic Semper Tyrannis! ..."
"... Yet again, you do not get this kind of information from the Pork Pie News Networks, the same ones who cosy up to the security services in return for juicy tidbits and also rubbish 'alternative news/websites/blogs'. ..."
"... the notion of compartmentalized operational security and broad state electronic surveillance of the population are mutually exclusive. ..."
Jun 09, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
at Al, June 7, 2017 at 7:17 am

Vis the Reality Winner leaking 'proof' of Russian hacking of US elections, PavewayIV's comment on Moon of Alabama says it all:

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/06/do-not-trust-the-intercept-or-how-to-burn-a-source.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01b8d28a09f7970c

####

He's one of a handful of good commenters there among the nutbags, antisemites, conspiracy theorists etc. It's one of the things that really bugs me about great (supposedly) alternative news/opinion/blogs. They always get immediately contaminated by all sorts of narcissistic 'tards who just want to s/t the bed for everyone else, particularly the flyby trolls. Lots of people out there (Hello lurkers!) know that the Pork Pie News Networks are either feeding them unadulterated bs or lying by omission so actually make a real effort to find out more – whether they agree with it or not – but are faced with having to wade through rivers of f/ktard commenters. It is dispiriting to say the least.

That may well be the idea, particularly those organizations that want to hose a and discredit alternative media sites (sic the JTRIG program and the likes of Brigade 77 and digilogues that have been running for years). If you can hack it, you probably think a) does this make sense? b) who is bono? c) timing, timing, timing.. d) is anything logically missing from the picture/story? e) if so, what conclusions can we draw from that? etc. It's not easy.

Once upon a time we had newspaper columnists to do our thinking for us who we would religiously read. Now it is each one for themselves. What a pain in the ass. Fortunately we have the Kremlin Stooge and a bunch of other sites to help! :-)

et Al , June 7, 2017 at 7:43 am
'Ghostship' elucidates how Reality Winner would have access to top class info;

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/06/do-not-trust-the-intercept-or-how-to-burn-a-source.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01b7c9000590970b

####

My only thoughts are, wouldn't such info be compartmentalized (standard operating procedure, innit?), i.e. a 'translator' would not have free and unlimited access, but rather have access to only very specific highly secret info? If there are that many translators out there, then compartmentalization would work very well. It is totally counter intuitive, nay stupid , to allow free range to anyone but the top of the top. More people, more chance of leaks, accidents or incomptence.

et Al , June 7, 2017 at 7:50 am
Ah, I should have read on. PavewayIV again:

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/06/do-not-trust-the-intercept-or-how-to-burn-a-source.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01bb09a3288d970d

####

Don't miss the link to TTG's comment on leaks at Sic Semper Tyrannis!

Yet again, you do not get this kind of information from the Pork Pie News Networks, the same ones who cosy up to the security services in return for juicy tidbits and also rubbish 'alternative news/websites/blogs'.

marknesop , June 7, 2017 at 8:09 pm
Indeed it is; Secret and Top secret information is made available to those who

(1) are cleared to the appropriate level, and

(2) have the need to know.

It's "and". Not "or". Top Secret information may not be viewed by anyone with a Top Secret security clearance – only by those who need to know that information to carry out their duties related to it.

Information may actually specify, "Top Secret – Eyes Only" in which the personnel holding a Top Secret clearance who may view the material are either listed, or it is restricted only to the addressee.

yalensis , June 8, 2017 at 2:34 am
I dunno, because that whole Snowden thing revealed a lot of holes in the American security apparatus. Snowden himself was surprised just how much stuff he was able to access, and he was just a contractor at the time, not even a permanent employee.
marknesop , June 8, 2017 at 5:37 am
Well, yes, because the notion of compartmentalized operational security and broad state electronic surveillance of the population are mutually exclusive.

But to the very best of my knowledge Snowden did not reveal any secrets of America's defense systems, its operational structure, its past military operations or its future plans in that area, if he knew them. The damaging information he disclosed all related to American spying on foreign leaders and the American electorate

[Jun 15, 2017] The Consent of the Governed

www.businessinsider.com

Last week, when former FBI Director James Comey gave his long-awaited public testimony about his apparently rough-and-tumble relationship with President Donald Trump, he painted a bleak picture. The essence of Comey's testimony was that the president asked him to drop an investigation of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn - Trump's former national security adviser - and then asked him to do so in return for keeping his job as FBI director and then fired him for not obeying his order.

On the other hand, Comey confirmed that the president personally, as of the time of Comey's firing, was not the target of any FBI criminal investigation. It was not clear from the Comey testimony whether this exoneration was referring to salacious allegations made by a former British intelligence agent of highly inappropriate and fiercely denied personal behavior a few years ago in a Moscow hotel room or whether the exoneration was with respect to widely reported allegations that the 2016 Trump campaign may have helped Russian intelligence agents in their efforts to manipulate the outcome of the presidential election.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt the president is now a target of a federal investigation with respect to his dealings with the then-FBI director. So, how could the tables have turned so quickly on the president, and who turned them? Here is the back story.

Prior to the Watergate era of the mid-1970s, the generally accepted theory of management of the executive branch of government was known as the unitary executive. This theory informs that the president is the chief executive officer of the federal government and is the sole head of the executive branch. He is also the only person in the executive branch who is accountable to the voters, as he, and he alone (along with the vice president, who is largely a figurehead), has been elected by the voters.

As such, this unitary executive theory informs, everyone in the executive branch of the federal government works at the pleasure of the president. Were this not the case, then vast areas of governance could occur and vast governmental resources could be spent by people who are unaccountable to the voters. And when the government is unaccountable to the voters, it lacks their consent. The consent of the governed is the linchpin and bedrock of popular government in America.

There are, of course, today vast areas of government that are not responsive to the people and that lack the consent of the governed. The administrative agencies that write, interpret and enforce their own regulations and the deep state - the secret parts of the financial, intelligence and law enforcement entities of the government that never change, operate below the radar screen and have budgets that never see the light of day - defy the notion that the consent of the governed is the sole legitimate basis for government in America.

Yet the FBI is not in the administrative state or the deep state. It is front and center as the premier law enforcement agency of the United States government. It is far from perfect, and its leaders are as fallible as the rest of us, but we have hired the folks who work there to enforce the federal laws that implicate our freedoms and our safety. And we have hired the president to exercise his discretion as to which laws shall be enforced and against whom.

Thus, under this theory, the president is constitutionally, legally, morally and ethically free to direct any person in the executive branch as to how he wants that person to perform his or her job. And the recipient of such direction is free to resign if the direction appears unlawful. That is at least the theory of the unitary executive.

After the Watergate era, Congress altered the public policy of the country to reflect the independence of the Department of Justice, including the FBI. It did so in reaction to Nixonian abuses. Thus, the post-Watergate theory of the DOJ's role articulates that federal law enforcement is independent from the president.

The Comey testimony revealed serious efforts to reject the public policy of independence and return to the unitary executive. Comey revealed a DOJ under former Attorney General Loretta Lynch in lockstep with the Obama White House and determined to exonerate Hillary Clinton in the espionage investigation concerning her emails, no matter the evidence. He also revealed his own view that President Trump's orders and quid pro quo offer with respect to Flynn were unlawful.
Where does this leave us today?

Today we have a White House under siege. The new DOJ criminal investigation that the president is no doubt the subject of will attempt to discover whether he corruptly attempted to interfere with the work of an independent FBI and whether he attempted to bribe its then-director. The White House is also the subject of five congressional investigations involving the Russians and the 2016 election, the firing of Director Comey, and the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions from much of this. And the investigation of Clinton is back from the grave for a third time to determine whether she was exonerated because of a lack of evidence, a lack of will or an Obama political imperative.

These are perilous times for men and women of goodwill and intellectual honesty who are charged with enforcing our laws and running the government. The government should not be terrifying. But it must be fair and transparent. And it must always enjoy the consent of the governed. For without that consent, it is illegitimate.

Copyright 2017 Andrew P. Napolitano. Distributed by Creators.com.

Agent76, June 15, 2017 at 1:26 pm GMT

Jun 15, 2017 | www.unz.com

Feb 1, 2017 Secrets Of The FBI Finally Revealed and Leaked

In this video, we go over the latest FBI leak of thousands of documents to the intercept that revealed their secret rule book and operations. We go over what was found in those documents and the dangers of these powers that the FBI has.

log Website, June 15, 2017 at 2:01 pm GMT

Dear Judge:

The existence of state secrets means the consent of the governed can never be informed.

themann, June 15, 2017 at 2:48 pm GMT

So when exactly did any of us, or our representatives, vote on the income tax? Because I certainly don't remember consenting to it.

Or twelve years of public schooling.
Or the TSA.
Or the entire history of Civil Wrongs laws.

Hyperventilating about the actions of one set of corrupt public officials vs. another is a bit far down the list of non consent issues any of us should be concerned about.

Agent76, June 15, 2017 at 3:08 pm GMT

I was expecting an article more related to this video and its content and narrative.

Dec 3, 2012 Murray Rothbard – The Government Is Not Us

Professor Rothard examines the irrational implications of the premise "we are the government."

willem1, June 15, 2017 at 5:28 pm GMT

"After the Watergate era, Congress altered the public policy of the country to reflect the independence of the Department of Justice, including the FBI The Comey testimony revealed serious efforts to reject the public policy of independence and return to the unitary executive."

The above quotes imply that these two policies are just "theories" of executive authority, and not really enshrined in hard law. However, the article is never clear on whether or not that is the case. If these are just two competing theories, and no law or clear court precedent exists, then what is the legal basis for any investigation/lawsuit? Inquiring minds want to know .

[Jun 15, 2017] Neocons are after Trump, managed to appoint special procecutor by subterfuge and Trump now losing...

Jun 15, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs, June 14, 2017 at 08:17 PM

Special-counsel probe is examining whether Trump obstructed justice
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mueller-probe-examining-whether-donald-trump-obstructed-justice-1497490897

WSJ - Del Quentin Wilber, Shane Harris and Paul Sonne - June 14, 2017

WASHINGTON-President Donald Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey is now a subject of the federal probe being headed by special counsel Robert Mueller, which has expanded to include whether the president obstructed justice, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Mueller is examining whether the president fired Mr. Comey as part of a broader effort to alter the direction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe into Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election and whether associates of Mr. Trump colluded with Moscow, the person said.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Mr. Trump's personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, denounced the revelation in a statement. "The FBI leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal," Mr. Corallo said.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mr. Mueller, declined to comment. The special counsel's pursuit of an obstruction of justice probe was first reported Wednesday by the Washington Post. Mr. Mueller's team is planning to interview Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers as part of its examination of whether Mr. Trump sought to obstruct justice, the person said. The special counsel also plans to interview Rick Ledgett, who recently retired as the deputy director of the NSA, the person added.

While Mr. Ledgett was still in office, he wrote a memo documenting a phone call that Mr. Rogers had with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. During the call, the president questioned the veracity of the intelligence community's judgment that Russia had interfered with the election and tried to persuade Mr. Rogers to say there was no evidence of collusion between his campaign and Russian officials, they said. Russia has denied any government effort to meddle in the U.S. election. Mr. Ledgett declined to comment, and officials at the NSA didn't respond to a request for comment. An aide to Mr. Coats declined to comment.

Mr. Coats and Mr. Rogers told a Senate panel June 7 that they didn't feel pressured by Mr. Trump to intervene with Mr. Comey or push back against allegations of possible collusion between Mr. Trump's campaign and Russia. But the top national security officials declined to say what, if anything, Mr. Trump requested they do in relation to the Russia probe.

"If the special prosecutor called upon me to meet with him to ask his questions, I said I would be willing to do that," Mr. Coats said June 7. Mr. Rogers said he would also be willing to meet with the special counsel's team.

Mr. Comey told a Senate panel on June 8 that Mr. Trump expressed "hope" in a one-on-one Oval Office meeting that the FBI would drop its investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who resigned under pressure for making false statements about his conversations with a Russian diplomat. Mr. Trump has denied making that request.

Mr. Comey said during the testimony that it was up to Mr. Mueller to decide whether the president's actions amounted to obstruction of justice. The former FBI director also said he had furnished the special counsel with memos he wrote documenting his interactions with the president on the matter.

At a June 13 hearing at a House of Representatives panel, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein declined to say who asked him to write a memo justifying Mr. Comey's firing. The White House initially cited that memo as the reason for the termination, and Mr. Trump later said in an NBC interview that he also was influenced by the Russia investigation. Mr. Rosenstein said he wasn't at liberty to discuss the matter.

"The reason for that is that if it is within the scope of Director Mueller's investigation, and I've been a prosecutor for 27 years, we don't want people talking publicly about the subjects of ongoing investigations," Mr. Rosenstein said.

libezkova - , June 14, 2017 at 09:00 PM
Fred,

"Mr. Comey said during the testimony that it was up to Mr. Mueller to decide whether the president's actions amounted to obstruction of justice."

Comey probably lied. This was probably the plan hatched from the very beginning of this color revolution by Comey and other members of anti-trump conspiracy such as Brennan: to raise Russiagate or anything else to the level which allow to appoint special prosecutor and to sink Trump using this mechanism, because digging by itself produces the necessary result.

Obstruction of justice is the easiest path to remove Trump, a no-brainer so to speak, the charge which can be used to remove any any past and future US president with guaranteed result. The other, more Trump-specific, is of financial deals within the Trump empire. Especially his son-in-law deals. In this sense Trump is now hostage like Clinton previously was. He can fight for survival, by unleashing some war, like Clinton did with Yugoslavia.

Which probably is OK for neocons because war for them is the first, the second and the third solution to any problem. But as a result the US standing in the globe probably will be further damaged.

BTW, in your zeal to republish this neocon propaganda, do you understand that Hillary was a head of one of those 17 intelligence agencies in the past?

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) has ties to the Office of Strategic Services from World War II, but was transferred to State after the war. INR now reports directly to the Secretary of State, harnessing intelligence from all sources and offering independent analysis of global events and real-time insight.

Headquarters : Washington, D.C.

Mission : This agency serves as the Secretary of State's primary advisor on intelligence matters, and gives support to other policymakers, ambassadors, and embassy staff.

Budget : $49 million in 2007, according to documents obtained by FAS.

This all drama makes no sense for me. Trump folded. He proved to be not a fighter. The attempt to bring members of his family close to White house is a huge liability for him now in view of possible digging of the past of his son in law by the special Prosecutor. Who is recruiting the most rabid Hillary hacks for the job ;-).

But the key question is what DemoRats will gain with the current vice president elevated to the new level?

Other then a blowback from the remaining part of Trump supporters. Pat Buchanan was talking about civil war recently, which is probably exaggeration, but the probably direction of reaction is probably right:

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/patrick-j-buchanan/are-we-nearing-civil-war

Not that I trust him with such a prediction, but still this is a danger.

EMichael - , June 14, 2017 at 09:26 PM
troll/bot
libezkova - , June 15, 2017 at 05:29 PM
You are a typical retired "frustrated underachiever". Nothing new here and your replies fits the pattern perfectly well.

You probably should not comment things that you have no formal training. I do believe that you are unable to define such terms as "neocon", "Bolshevism", "Trotskyism" and "jingoism" without looking into the dictionary. Judging from your comments this is above your IQ. Of cause, such twerps as you are always lucking in Internet forums, so you are just accepted here as the necessary evil. But you do no belong here. No way. Neither in economic or political discussions.

You can add nothing to the discussion. Actually your political position is the position of a typical neocons and as such is as close to betrayal of American Republic as one can get. If the American people had their way, all our "Neocon overlords" would be in federal prison or Guantanamo Bay, and all their assets seized to pay down the heinous 20 trillion debt their lies and wars have created. Because interests of neocons are not interests of the 300 million of US population. That's why people elected Trump with all his warts.

It is sleazy idiots like you who get us into the current mess. And please tell your daughters that you betrayed them as well -- you endanger them and their children, if they have any. Of course for retired idiots like you nuclear holocaust does not matter. But it does matter for other people. Is it so difficult to understand?

im1dc - , June 15, 2017 at 05:14 AM
Trump/Putin Spin.
JF - , June 15, 2017 at 07:50 AM
Agree, add JohnH and you see a disinformation team. One goal is to undermine the credibility of this blog, so skipping over their entries is what I recommend, unless you want to learn fifth column techniques. Quess that is interesting, but it is trolldpm!
JohnH - , June 15, 2017 at 08:05 AM
The choir of losers continues to sing: 'Putin and Trump colluded' ...just like the right wing sang that Bill Clinton was guilty of all sorts of heinous crimes. And what did they finally get on Bill? Monica.
Christopher H. - , June 15, 2017 at 09:43 AM
They're just lone cranks. If you think they're a disinformation team, you're paranoid. There are a lot of crazy people out there. If you don't understand that fact you need to get out more.

EMichael and PGL love to scold the cranks as much as possible b/c it makes their establishment line sound reasonable. I agree with you. I just ignore them. At least they're keeping busy instead of harassing people offline.

Christopher H. - , June 15, 2017 at 09:54 AM
BTW, now I think Trump is probably going down. He floats idea of firing Mueller. Mueller tells press they're investigating Trump. Meanwhile the Republicans are passing Trumpcare. Trump is moving to replace Yellen. So Mueller will have this list of things Trump and his campaign did. Will Republicans vote to remove Trump? Will it depend upon how the public reacts?
RC AKA Darryl, Ron - , June 15, 2017 at 09:57 AM
Perhaps they are just attempting to hasten the descent of the Democratic Party establishment consensus towards its inevitable rock bottom, the condition at which all addicts must finally arrive before they are forced to admit that they are the authors of their own failure and the only ones capable of their own rescue.
Christopher H. - , June 15, 2017 at 10:53 AM
To my eyes the Democratic Party establishment consensus doesn't really need much in the way of help. It's pushing on an open door.

Their candidate for Virginia's governor voted for George W. Bush twice?

Their candidate for New Jersey governor is a Goldman Sachs guy?

Way to read the room.

RC AKA Darryl, Ron - , June 15, 2017 at 12:59 PM
Exactly! I am in total agreement with you. We are both meaning the same thing, just framing it differently.
libezkova - , June 15, 2017 at 05:30 PM
My God, way too many neocons here.

[Jun 15, 2017] The basic thread running through all of the workshops and demagogic speeches was the fiction that the Democratic Party -- a party of Wall Street and the CIA-can be transformed into a peoples party

Jun 15, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star , June 13, 2017 at 10:51 am
"The event was a political fraud from beginning to end. The basic thread running through all of the workshops and demagogic speeches was the fiction that the Democratic Party-a party of Wall Street and the CIA-can be transformed into a "people's party."
LOL!!! Totally spot the F on!!!!!

"Sanders lent his support to the neo-McCarthyite campaign of the Democrats and the military-intelligence apparatus, which sees Russia as the chief obstacle to US imperialism's drive for regime change in Syria and Iran. "I find it strange we have a president who is more comfortable with autocrats and authoritarians than leaders of democratic nations," Sanders said. "Why is he enamored with Putin, a man who has suppressed democracy and destabilized democracies around the world, including our own?"

Sanders?? No fool like an old fool and tool of TPTB

marknesop , June 13, 2017 at 11:42 am
Oh, I doubt he's a fool; the creed of the western political class is recognition of its own and their interests over the interests of the majority. It is technically true that Putin is destabilizing governments around the world – 'democracies', if you will – but it would presuppose that western leaders are his accomplices. Because it is through them and their crackdowns and restrictions and surveillance, which they say they must introduce for our own protection (because, you know, freedom isn't free) that discontent and destabilization are born. Reply

[Jun 15, 2017] Keynes point. Cut the deficit in the good times, spend money in the bad times. Austerity doesnt work, and this was proved as Keynes economics brought the US out of the great depression

Notable quotes:
"... "This legislation takes a small but important step toward eliminating the tremendous regulatory burden imposed on financial institutions One principal reason banks are unable to make loans is the bewildering array of statutory and regulatory restrictions and paperwork requirements imposed by Congress and the regulatory agencies. While a case can certainly be made that every law and regulation is intended to serve a laudable purpose, the aggregate effect of the rapidly increasing regulatory burden imposed on banks is to cause them to devote substantial time, energy and money to compliance rather than meeting the credit needs of the community." ..."
Jun 15, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , June 14, 2017 at 10:52 am
Successive Conservative governments have forced significant cuts on county/city councils who have passed them on by reducing or stopping services. Looking at the news on Google Nudes UK we find out that there have long been significant concerns about the fire worthiness of many council run (though often privately managed) tower blocks and state housing. This will only be bad for the Conservatives however they try to spin it. It's clear proof that ass-terity kills.

I came across a couple of articles in The London Economic that pointed out the last Labor government public spending was at a record low of 37% of GDP, the lowest of any government since 1945 and also perforating Conservative propaganda about spending. Found it:

The London Economic: Next time someone says 'Money Tree' send them this
http://www.thelondoneconomic.com/tle-pick/next-time-someone-says-money-tree-send/05/06/

This underlines Keynes point. Cut the deficit in the good times, spend money in the bad times. Austerity doesn't work, and this was proved as Keynes economics brought the US out of the great depression .

####

And don't forget to click through to the linked '5 Tory Narratives that simply aren't true' : http://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/economics/five-labour-narratives-simply-arent-true/31/05/

As for Russia, it stockpiled cash from high energy sales that allowed it to weather financial crises and sanctions. So, who are the morons now?

marknesop , June 14, 2017 at 12:28 pm
Well, for starters, John McCain is a moron who argued strenuously , in the initial slide of the global financial crisis, for further banking-industry deregulation.

"This legislation takes a small but important step toward eliminating the tremendous regulatory burden imposed on financial institutions One principal reason banks are unable to make loans is the bewildering array of statutory and regulatory restrictions and paperwork requirements imposed by Congress and the regulatory agencies. While a case can certainly be made that every law and regulation is intended to serve a laudable purpose, the aggregate effect of the rapidly increasing regulatory burden imposed on banks is to cause them to devote substantial time, energy and money to compliance rather than meeting the credit needs of the community."

You know, I don't believe the great majority of people are aware just what simpletons their leaders are. We tend to think they have benefited from the very best educations – which, in the main, they have – and that consequently they are a great deal smarter than everyone else; that's why they're leaders. I'm sure each has a certain sector or subject in which they are unusually bright and in which their counsel is wise and informed. But overall, they are no smarter than you or I and every bit as prone to listen to bad advice or partisan gossip if it suits what they already believe. Our statues have feet of clay.

Speaking of McCain, remember when he exuberantly tweeted "Dear Vlad; the Arab Spring is coming to a neighbourhood near you"?

I liked Adajo's response, albeit it came three years later: "Dear John, let's recap: Russia is stronger than ever, and Mr. Vlad dominates. You destroyed Ukraine for nothing."

[Jun 15, 2017] Pentagon Agrees To Sell $12 Billion In F-15s To Qatar Zero Hedge

Notable quotes:
"... Read Starikov... All these recent weapons deals, and many before is nothing more than what's called Reparations and Contributions. ..."
"... It's an old deal http://defense-update.com/20141222_qatari_patriots.html ..."
"... You know I am not a fan of the military industrial complex but you have to be in awe of these people. Trump sells 350 billion to SA which includes the best automatic self destruct fighter every engineered by the U.S. and then sells F15s to their obvious rivals in Quatar lol. ..."
Jun 14, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Pentagon Agrees To Sell $12 Billion In F-15s To Qatar Tyler Durden Jun 14, 2017 4:35 PM 0 SHARES Remember when Trump called on Qatar to stop funding terrorism, claiming credit for and endorsing the decision of Gulf nations to isolate their small neighbor (where the most important US airbase in the middle east is located),even as US Cabinet officials said their blockade is hurting the campaign against ISIS. You should: it took place just 5 days ago.

"We had a decision to make," Trump said, describing conversations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. "Do we take the easy road or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have to stop the funding of terrorism." Also last week, Trump triumphantly announced on twitter that "during my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!"

Well, Qatar funding terrorism apparently is not a problem when it comes to Qatar funding the US military industrial complex , because just two weeks after Trump signed a record, $110 billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia, moments ago Bloomberg reported that Qatar will also buy up to 36 F-15 jets from the Pentagon for $12 billion .... even as a political crisis in the Gulf leaves the Middle East nation isolated by its neighbors and criticized by President Donald Trump for supporting terrorism, according to three people with knowledge of the accord.

According to the Pentagon, the sale will give Qatar a "state of the art" capability, not to mention the illusion that it can defend itself in a war with Saudi Arabia.

If nothing else, Uncle Sam sure is an equal-opportunity arms dealer, and best of all, with the new fighter planes, Qatar will be able to at least put on a token fight when Saudi Arabia invades in hopes of sending the price of oil surging now that every other "strategy" has failed.

To be sure, the sale comes at an opportune time: just days after Qatar put its military on the highest state of alert, and scrambled its tanks . All 16 of them. Maybe the world's wealthiest nation realized it's time beef up its defensive capabilities?

Qatar's defense minister will meet with Pentagon chief Jim Mattis on Wednesday to seal the agreement, Bloomberg reported citing people who spoke on condition of anonymity because the sale hasn't been announced. Last year, congress approved the sale of up to 72 F-15s in an agreement valued at as much as $21 billion but that deal took place before the recent political crisis in the region.

It is unclear what the Saudi reaction will be to the news that Trump is arming its latest nemesis. If our thesis that Riyadh is hoping for Qatar to escalate the nest leg of the conflict is correct , then the Saudis should be delighted.

nope-1004 - Alt RightGirl , Jun 14, 2017 4:43 PM

Oh c'mon y'all. This is nothing new. These are the same synchophants that (somehow, oops!) created ISIS and then go in and bomb them. WTF did you expect? That they'd actually do what they say?

Cognitive Dissonance - nope-1004 , Jun 14, 2017 4:52 PM

A big shout out to Boeing Military. Hookers and blow tonight in the exec suite. BTW these planes aren't sitting in inventory ready to be delivered. So any conflict in the next few years won't have to worry about these planes.

That is unless the US or some other buyer agrees to step aside and allow Qatar to take their place at the end of the assembly line.

Ahmeexnal - Cognitive Dissonance , Jun 14, 2017 4:52 PM

Classic Sun Tzu move by Trump.

ParkAveFlasher - Ahmeexnal , Jun 14, 2017 4:56 PM

Now, are these the planes already parked in that airbase in Qatar that should be evac'd?

Mr. Universe - ParkAveFlasher , Jun 14, 2017 5:00 PM

That should about wrap it up on who is in charge of the Deep state. Backing both sides of a potential conflict and making sure everyone has enough arms to blow each to smitherines. Sounds like the old Red Shield tricks are still the best ones. Long live central bankers, after they have been thrown into a burning pit of sulfer.

PrayingMantis - ParkAveFlasher , Jun 14, 2017 5:06 PM

... >>> ... " ... " We had a decision to make ," Trump said ... " ...

... lest we forget, Trump's a businessman ... sell to all buyers ... the (((Red Shield))) way ... and voila ... #maga profits!!! ...

HowdyDoody - Ahmeexnal , Jun 14, 2017 5:04 PM

They did the same with Iran and Iraq - for some, a very profitable bloodbath.

fx - HowdyDoody , Jun 14, 2017 5:37 PM

Absolutely. But, oh, these damned Iranians. They simply resisted the USA's boy Saddam and fought back.

That failure to comply with OUR orders sealed his faith.

Weapons of mass destruction. Well, we delivered them to him. chemical weapons to kill all the Iranians. So we KNEW they must have been there. We just didn't expect that he really used them all up against Iran and later on (the remaining few) against the curds. What a bastard. After all that WE did for Saddam, he didn't deliver. Fuck him.

Speaking of non-delivery, why has our newest boy, Poroshenko, not yet taken Moscow? So, fuck him, too! And fuck the EU.

And speaking of that, where is Monica, when one needs her? And let's have some Pizza...

FoggyWorld - Cognitive Dissonance , Jun 14, 2017 6:29 PM

That could happen and did on many F-18 sales where we in the US in effect packed the parts into glorified Heath kits and sent them to the buying countries who did their own labor. Also sent them the testing equipment and every other thing they needed so all we got were a few spare piece parts at a slightly lower price. The labor went to the purchasing country.

gmj - nuubee , Jun 14, 2017 4:47 PM

That right there is some wizard-level salesmanship. And I can assure you that these weapons systems have "ALL" of the capabilities of the ones in our US arsenal, hahaha. And furthermore, they cannot be messed with by remote control by the boys at the Pentagon, just in case things get a little messy or embarassing. Nosiree. What you see is what you get. Yes, Lord.

omi - nuubee , Jun 14, 2017 5:41 PM

Read Starikov... All these recent weapons deals, and many before is nothing more than what's called Reparations and Contributions.

11th_Harmonic - nuubee , Jun 14, 2017 7:29 PM

I'm at a loss for words anymore, so I'll just greenie your post and move the fuck on...

Great Deceivah - nuubee , Jun 14, 2017 7:45 PM

War is our Business and Business is GOOD!!

Nona Yobiznes , Jun 14, 2017 4:39 PM

Destabilize, arm both sides, and... profit!

yrad - Nona Yobiznes , Jun 14, 2017 4:42 PM

Rothschild playbook

logicalman - yrad , Jun 14, 2017 5:01 PM

Can't beat supplying boh sides in a conflict if you want to make a 'killing'!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiN1xHaNDJ0

Got The Wrong No - logicalman , Jun 14, 2017 5:34 PM

This deal reminds me of the Chevy Chase movie Deal Of The Century.

PhiBetaZappa , Jun 14, 2017 4:48 PM

There's no business like war business, there's no business we know.......

MIC ho's gotta earn to keep pimp daddy .gov in bling.

logicalman - PhiBetaZappa , Jun 14, 2017 5:03 PM

Arms companies can make more money in a day of war than in a year of peace.

serotonindumptruck , Jun 14, 2017 4:41 PM

"By way of deception, thou shalt do war"

--Mossad

TheDude1224 , Jun 14, 2017 4:43 PM

This quick money grab from Qatar is just what the government needed to help with our infrastructure problems, Obamacare, and subsidizing Elon Musk.

Soph , Jun 14, 2017 4:43 PM

Looks like Trump is just selling to whoever want to buy. What the hell, why not, he's shown himself to be a sell out. Might as well be the best damn arms dealer you can buy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399295/

Nightjar , Jun 14, 2017 4:44 PM

It's an old deal http://defense-update.com/20141222_qatari_patriots.html

Zepper , Jun 14, 2017 4:44 PM

You know I am not a fan of the military industrial complex but you have to be in awe of these people. Trump sells 350 billion to SA which includes the best automatic self destruct fighter every engineered by the U.S. and then sells F15s to their obvious rivals in Quatar lol.

I personally think the F15s will utterly destroy the f35s because all they have to do to down an f35 is keep it flying, it will eventual blow up on its own.

Well like I said before, let the body count be super high... and let all the fucking crazy suicide bombers head back home to kill themselves.

As Bernie, the man behind the man that shot up a bunch of congressmen said... Its going to be HUUUUUGE... the war thats coming that is... I wonder how many oil tankers will be sunk?

Volaille de Bresse , Jun 14, 2017 4:50 PM

Saudis not happy, tearing the contracts they signed with Trump in 10 9 8s... I'm sure Putin and China are gonna profit from Trump 12-bil blunder.

decentralisedsc... , Jun 14, 2017 4:52 PM

Almost all the world's economic and political problems revolve around the hegemony of a global corporate cartel, which is headquartered in the US because this is where their dominant military force resides. The US Constitution is therefore the "kingpin" of an all-inclusive global financial empire. These fictitious entities now own the USA and command its military infrastructure by virtue of the Federal Reserve Corporation, regulatory capture, MSM propaganda, and congressional lobbying.

The Founders had to fight a bloody Revolutionary War to win our right to incorporate as a nation – the USA. But then, for whatever reason, our Founders granted the greediest businessmen among them unrestricted corporate charters with enough potential capital & power to compete with the individual states, smaller sovereign nations, and eventually to buy out the USA itself. The only way The People can regain our sovereignty as a constitutional republic now is to severely curtail the privileges of any corporation doing business here. To remain sovereign we have to stop granting corporate charters to just any "suit" that comes along without fulfilling a defined social value in return. The "Divine Right Of Kings" should not apply to fictitious entities just because they are "Too Big To Fail". We can't afford to privatize our Treasury to transnational banks anymore. Government must be held responsible only to the electorate, not fictitious entities; and banks must be held responsible to the government if we are ever to restore sanity, much less prosperity, to the world.

It was a loophole in our Constitution that allowed corporate charters to be so easily obtained that a swamp of corruption inevitably flooded our entire economic system. It is a swamp that can't be drained at this point because the Constitution doesn't provide a drain. This 28 th amendment is intended to install that drain so Congress can pull the plug ASAP. As a matter of political practicality we must rely on the Article 5 option to do this, for which the electorate will need overwhelming consensus beforehand. Seriously; an Article 5 Constitutional Convention is rapidly becoming our only sensible option.

This is what I think it will take to save the world; and nobody gets hurt: 28 th Amendment

28 th Amendment:

Corporations are not persons in any sense of the word and shall be granted only those rights and privileges that Congress deems necessary for the well-being of the People. Congress shall provide legislation defining the terms and conditions of corporate charters according to their purpose; which shall include, but are not limited to:

1, prohibitions against any corporation; a, owning another corporation; b, becoming economically indispensable or monopolistic; or c, otherwise distorting the general economy;

2, prohibitions against any form of interference in the affairs of; a, government, b, education, c, news media; or d, healthcare, and

3, provisions for; a, the auditing of standardized, current, and transparent account books; b, the establishment of state and municipal banking; and c, civil and criminal penalties to be suffered by corporate executives for violation of the terms of a corporate charter.

[Jun 14, 2017] Senate Overwhelmingly Approves New Sanctions To "Punish" Russia

Notable quotes:
"... The bipartisan legislation, which passed with an overwhelming 97-2 vote, slaps new sanctions on Russia and restricts President Trump from easing them in the future without first receiving congressional approval. ..."
"... Known as the Crapo Amendment, after Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, the measure was endorsed by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) and ranking member Ben Cardin (D-Maryland). The deal was attached to an Iran sanctions bill that is expected to pass later this week. While top Republican senators had initially wanted to give the White House space to try improving U.S.-Russia relations, but ultimately decided talks with Russia have been moving too slowly. ..."
"... The sanctions against Russia are "in response to the violation of the territorial integrity of the Ukraine and Crimea, its brazen cyber-attacks and interference in elections, and its continuing aggression in Syria," according to the deal's sponsors. ..."
"... The biggest neocon in Congress, John McCain, was delighted with the outcome: "We must take our own side in this fight. Not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans," said Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) before the vote. "It's time to respond to Russia's attack on American democracy with strength, with resolve, with common purpose, and with action." ..."
Jun 14, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
This post was originally published on this site

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved new sanctions to punish Russia for "meddling" in the 2016 election.

The bipartisan legislation, which passed with an overwhelming 97-2 vote, slaps new sanctions on Russia and restricts President Trump from easing them in the future without first receiving congressional approval. The only two senators to vote against the measure were Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY), while Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) abstained.

Known as the Crapo Amendment, after Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, the measure was endorsed by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) and ranking member Ben Cardin (D-Maryland). The deal was attached to an Iran sanctions bill that is expected to pass later this week. While top Republican senators had initially wanted to give the White House space to try improving U.S.-Russia relations, but ultimately decided talks with Russia have been moving too slowly.

The sanctions against Russia are "in response to the violation of the territorial integrity of the Ukraine and Crimea, its brazen cyber-attacks and interference in elections, and its continuing aggression in Syria," according to the deal's sponsors.

The amendment also allows " broad new sanctions on key sectors of Russia's economy, including mining, metals, shipping and railways " and authorizes " robust assistance to strengthen democratic institutions and counter disinformation across Central and Eastern European countries that are vulnerable to Russian aggression and interference ."

New sanctions would be imposed on " corrupt Russian actors " and those "involved in serious human rights abuses," anyone supplying weapons to the Syrian government or working with Russian defense industry or intelligence, as well as "those conducting malicious cyber activity on behalf of the Russian government" and "those involved in corrupt privatization of state-owned assets."

The biggest neocon in Congress, John McCain, was delighted with the outcome: "We must take our own side in this fight. Not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans," said Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) before the vote. "It's time to respond to Russia's attack on American democracy with strength, with resolve, with common purpose, and with action."

As AP adds , lawmakers took action against Russia in the absence of a forceful response from President Donald Trump. While the president has sought to improve relations with Moscow and rejected the implication that Russian hacking of Democratic emails tipped the election his way, non-stop "anonymous sources" have repeatedly leaked "news" to the NYT and WaPo, suggesting Trump colluded with Russia and/or was being probed by the FBI. Following Comey's testimony, which confirmed there is no "there" there, the media attacks against Trump have shifted, and now accuse the president of obstruction of justice and interference with the FBI's investigation into Mike Flynn.

Speaking earlier on Wednesday, Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said told reporters the Kremlin will hold out with its reaction until the U.S. decides on new sanctions against Russia.

"We wouldn't like to enter this sanctions spiral again. But that's not our choice." Indeed, and with the US having made Russia's choice for them, we now look for Moscow's response.

Incidentally, earlier this week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told lawmakers that US allies around the world had asked Washington to improve relations with Russia , and warned that further measures against Moscow could hinder ongoing progress in the fight against terrorism in Syria.

"I have yet to have a bilateral, one-on-one, a poolside conversation with a single counterpart in any country: in Europe, Middle East, even South-East Asia, that has not said to me: please, address your relationship with Russia, it has to be improved ," Tillerson said on Tuesday, testifying before the Senate appropriations subcommittee about the proposed State Department budget.

Unfortunately, for the US Military Industrial Complex, which stands to profit only in times of (near) war, a detente with Russia, or any other nation for that matter, is not an option.

SHsparx , Jun 14, 2017 5:35 PM

Rand should have been POTUS.

Pinto Currency - SHsparx , Jun 14, 2017 5:38 PM

Russia needs to ship its palladium because London's metal market is gone sideways without it (and the bond market will dump):

http://www.safehaven.com/article/44504/palladium-blows-the-whistle-on-th...

PrayingMantis - Drimble Wedge , Jun 14, 2017 6:08 PM

... >>> ... " ... The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved new sanctions to punish Russia for "meddling" in the 2016 election . ... " ...

... well, here's what the Russians said at ... http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index2314.htm ... yesterday, June 13, 2017 ...

... >>> " US Spends $70 Billion To Influence Russian Election, Then Admits Its Own Nation Is Insane ..."

... the report ... " ... shockingly states that the United States has spent between $70-$100 billion to influence the election outcome in Russia ( https://www.rt.com/politics/391255-upper-house-votes-to-set/ ) ... - but then freely admits that the majority of its own American citizens are actually insane.

... According to this report, the Security Council today voiced "strong support" for lawmakers who are launching a dedicated commission to monitor foreign nations attempts to influence internal Russian politics and work on proposals to counter and prevent such moves - and that Speaker Valentina Matviyenko warned was a "grave threat" as up to $100 billion was sent to Russia from abroad each year "not for charity and not for social or medical aid, but for political activities". ...

... To the American people being able to know the truth about this "fake news" propaganda being filled into their heads, this report sadly notes, is not to be seen as nearly all of them, on an hourly basis, are pummeled with lies and hysteria falsely claiming Russia interfered in their election - when the facts, instead, prove, beyond all doubt, that the US is world's largest interferer in the elections of other nations ( http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=18700 ), including last year in Israel where the Obama regime paid over $350,000 to destroy that nations prime minister ( http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/ ).

At the exact same time that these American people are being brainwashed into believing every lie their "fake news" propaganda media tells them, this report continues, these people remain unaware that their leftist-communist "overlords" have classified nearly all of them as being insane. ... " ...

... is this just a classic case of the "meddler-Pot" blame-sanctioning the "meddler-Kettle" for what the meddler-Pot had been known to do? ...

...

doctor10 - PrayingMantis , Jun 14, 2017 6:11 PM

the real "meddlers" were the DNC ...

who is Seth Rich?

Alt RightGirl - doctor10 , Jun 14, 2017 6:17 PM

Those ki3sters are asking for it.

Let's vote them out in 2018.

And put Bernie out to pasture in a FEMA camp.

Sanders Fraud Family: Claims of Nepotism over a "Sweetheart Deal" for Bernie Sanders' Step-Daughter

Art Van Delay - Alt RightGirl , Jun 14, 2017 6:24 PM

We need to keep the RINOs out of Senate

2018 --

fx - Art Van Delay , Jun 14, 2017 6:40 PM

Rand Paul would have been assassinated long ago if he were elected Potus. Trump has been bought or simply tricked or forced into compliance. I suspect the tricked thingy since the Donald isn't exactly shining, intellectually, regarding most subjects other than pussies, women, real estate and immigration.

Got The Wrong No - HockeyFool , Jun 14, 2017 5:59 PM

The vote was 97-2. So the Republicans are also saying the Russians hacked the Election. Trump doesn't have a chance.

ZeroIntelligence - Pinto Currency , Jun 14, 2017 5:40 PM

Imagine if countries that had elections tampered by USCIAFBI slapped sanctions on US for a change. Wouldn't that be KOORAAZZYY?!

GUS100CORRINA - ZeroIntelligence , Jun 14, 2017 5:59 PM

Article Title: Senate Overwhelmingly Approves New Sanctions To "Punish" Russia

\The Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved new sanctions to punish Russia for "meddling" in the 2016 election. The bipartisan legislation, which passed with in a 97-2 vote, slaps new sanctions on Russia and restricts President Trump from easing them in the future without first receiving congressional approval.

My Response: NOT GOOD!!! I really hate where this is headed!!!!!!!

In a society where all lies, all deceptions, all corruptions are accepted, that society will lose control of everything. Chaos will begin to take over, and the only way that chaos will be slowed down will be when dictatorial control, or maybe even a police state is formed, where thought and behavior is fixed, and anybody out of bounds is punished. Eventually, the chaos has to be controlled. We're not headed toward socialism; we could very well be headed toward a dictatorship in our world. Is this hard to grasp?

Remember the America that was, some of you? This is not a Christian nation; there's no such thing. It never has been a Christian nation. Even the founding fathers of America were not true Christians but they did understand that Christianity was a fixed necessity because it established divine law; and when people knew that this was law from God, it controlled their behavior. Biblical ethics, biblical patterns of morality were honored, respected, and expected. Marriage, family, virtue, work, relationships, success were all connected to noble ideals that are found in Scripture. That's long gone and unlikely to ever appear in the lifetime of anybody reading this because evil men just get worse and worse.

Raffie - Pinto Currency , Jun 14, 2017 5:44 PM

NJo proof so why they doing this again?

Full Court Luge... - SHsparx , Jun 14, 2017 5:47 PM

They'd have done the same to him. Trump should definitely listen to him on foreign policy, but the fact is the MIC is exerting MASSIVE pressure in that arena.

FoggyWorld - Full Court Lugenpresse , Jun 14, 2017 5:56 PM

Cutest recent trick is MacMaster just hired one of Susan Rice's closest assistants to work for him! Is anyone home at the WH?

Got The Wrong No - Dr.Vannostrand , Jun 14, 2017 6:39 PM

The Dem the deep state, the Media and now the Republicans by the look of this vote are all trying to Impeach him. What reality are you living in?

Up voting yourself is part of your reality. LMAO

ZeroIntelligence , Jun 14, 2017 5:36 PM

I wonder if US citizens overwhelmingly approve of these sanctions.............

Endgame Napoleon - ZeroIntelligence , Jun 14, 2017 5:55 PM

I don't. They have not even told us why they know that Russia interfered with the election, as opposed to leaks interfering with the election. Even if they did interfere, foreign policy issues of any kind other than protecting Westerners against terrorist mass murders did not alter the outcome of the election. It was bread-and-butter issues that won it for Trump, along with resistance to the multiculturalist bashing by the ism patrol, which is really just an agressive form of snobbery.

[Jun 14, 2017] US Senate adopts amendment on more sanctions against Russia

Notable quotes:
"... "in response to the violation of the territorial integrity of the Ukraine and Crimea, its brazen cyber-attacks and interference in elections, and its continuing aggression in Syria," ..."
"... "broad new sanctions on key sectors of Russia's economy, including mining, metals, shipping and railways" ..."
"... "robust assistance to strengthen democratic institutions and counter disinformation across Central and Eastern European countries that are vulnerable to Russian aggression and interference." ..."
"... "corrupt Russian actors" ..."
"... "involved in serious human rights abuses," ..."
"... "those conducting malicious cyber activity on behalf of the Russian government" ..."
"... "those involved in corrupt privatization of state-owned assets." ..."
"... "I have yet to have a bilateral, one-on-one, a poolside conversation with a single counterpart in any country: in Europe, Middle East, even South-East Asia, that has not said to me: please, address your relationship with Russia, it has to be improved," ..."
"... "ridiculous pretexts" ..."
"... "[Members of] Congress try to tie the president's hands, trying to remove his ability to make foreign policy, and they are doing it for a simple reason – they do not want the relations with Russia to improve," ..."
"... "Republicans are launching a pre-emptive strike against their own president." ..."
"... "the whole pretext of the sanctions is absurd," ..."
"... "Nobody would go down to the Senate of the House floor and say what exactly did they do, how did they meddle in our relations, because nobody knows," ..."
"... "an entire inter-agency intelligence community review" ..."
"... "few hand-picked analysts who had come to this conclusion." ..."
"... "Who is in Syria illegally occupying territory, who is violating Syrian sovereignty? The US military," he said, dubbing the sanctions "a reflection of lack of any creativity" in the Senate. ..."
Jun 14, 2017 | www.rt.com
A measure codifying into law the US sanctions against Russia was approved in the Senate by a veto-proof majority of 97 to 2. The amendment requires congressional review before any sanctions are lifted, and allows for new ones. Amendment 232 has been attached to Bill 722 imposing sanctions against Iran, which the Senate is currently debating.

Known as the Crapo Amendment, after Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, the measure was endorsed by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) and ranking member Ben Cardin (D-Maryland).

The sanctions against Russia are "in response to the violation of the territorial integrity of the Ukraine and Crimea, its brazen cyber-attacks and interference in elections, and its continuing aggression in Syria," according to the sponsors.

The Senate adopted amendment #232 as modified (Russia sanctions) to S. 722, Iran Sanctions, 97-2.

- Senate D Floor Watch (@DSenFloor) June 14, 2017

Under the amendment, any executive sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration cannot be lifted without congressional review.

The amendment also allows "broad new sanctions on key sectors of Russia's economy, including mining, metals, shipping and railways" and authorizes "robust assistance to strengthen democratic institutions and counter disinformation across Central and Eastern European countries that are vulnerable to Russian aggression and interference."

New sanctions would be imposed on "corrupt Russian actors" and those "involved in serious human rights abuses," anyone supplying weapons to the Syrian government or working with Russian defense industry or intelligence, as well as "those conducting malicious cyber activity on behalf of the Russian government" and "those involved in corrupt privatization of state-owned assets."

Read more Tillerson says allies pleading with US to 'improve Russia relations' as Senate agrees new sanctions

Senators Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) voted against the amendment, while Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) abstained.

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told lawmakers that US allies around the world had asked Washington to improve relations with Russia, and warned that further measures against Moscow could hinder ongoing progress in the fight against terrorism in Syria.

"I have yet to have a bilateral, one-on-one, a poolside conversation with a single counterpart in any country: in Europe, Middle East, even South-East Asia, that has not said to me: please, address your relationship with Russia, it has to be improved," Tillerson said on Tuesday, testifying before the Senate appropriations subcommittee about the proposed State Department budget.

'Pre-emptive strike against Trump'

The executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, Daniel McAdams, told RT he believes that sanctions were imposed under "ridiculous pretexts" and are ultimately designed to hinder any attempts of the current US administration to improve Russia-US ties.

"[Members of] Congress try to tie the president's hands, trying to remove his ability to make foreign policy, and they are doing it for a simple reason – they do not want the relations with Russia to improve," McAdams told RT. He added that by striking an agreement with the Democrats on the issue "Republicans are launching a pre-emptive strike against their own president."

As far as the formal justification of yet another anti-Russian move is concerned, McAdams believes that "the whole pretext of the sanctions is absurd," in particular, the refrain of Russia's alleged meddling in the US elections.

"Nobody would go down to the Senate of the House floor and say what exactly did they do, how did they meddle in our relations, because nobody knows," McAdams said.

A US intelligence report, from which stem the bulk of allegations implicating Russia could not be regarded as "an entire inter-agency intelligence community review" as claimed, he noted, because it was compiled by a "few hand-picked analysts who had come to this conclusion."

Citing Russia's alleged "aggression" in Syria as one of the reasons to roll over a new round of sanctions is another example of the inadequacy of the measure, McAdams argued.

"Who is in Syria illegally occupying territory, who is violating Syrian sovereignty? The US military," he said, dubbing the sanctions "a reflection of lack of any creativity" in the Senate.

[Jun 14, 2017] Strange Oversight by Comey tells us a lot by Ray McGovern

Notable quotes:
"... Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – now including a possible impeachment battle over removing the President of the United States – wouldn't it seem logical for the FBI to insist on its own forensics for this fundamental predicate of the case? Or could Comey's hesitancy to demand access to the DNC's computers be explained by a fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted? ..."
"... "In the case of the DNC, and, I believe, the DCCC, but I'm sure the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn't get direct access." ..."
"... "Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?" ..."
"... "It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks – the people who were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016." ..."
"... Burr demurred on asking Comey to explain what amounts to gross misfeasance, if not worse. Perhaps, NBC could arrange for Megyn Kelly to interview Burr to ask if he has a clue as to what Putin might have been referring to when he noted, "There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia." ..."
"... Given the congressional intelligence "oversight" committees' obsequiousness and repeated "high esteem" for the "intelligence community," there seems an even chance that – no doubt because of an oversight – the CIA/FBI/NSA deep-stage troika failed to brief the Senate "oversight committee" chairman on WikiLeaks "Vault 7" disclosures – even when WikiLeaks publishes original CIA documents. ..."
Jun 13, 2017 | original.antiwar.com

Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – now including a possible impeachment battle over removing the President of the United States – wouldn't it seem logical for the FBI to insist on its own forensics for this fundamental predicate of the case? Or could Comey's hesitancy to demand access to the DNC's computers be explained by a fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted?

Comey was asked again about this curious oversight on June 8 by Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr:

BURR: "And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate – did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?"

COMEY: "In the case of the DNC, and, I believe, the DCCC, but I'm sure the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn't get direct access."

BURR: "But no content?"

COMEY: "Correct."

BURR: "Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?"

COMEY: "It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks – the people who were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016."

Burr demurred on asking Comey to explain what amounts to gross misfeasance, if not worse. Perhaps, NBC could arrange for Megyn Kelly to interview Burr to ask if he has a clue as to what Putin might have been referring to when he noted, "There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia."

Given the congressional intelligence "oversight" committees' obsequiousness and repeated "high esteem" for the "intelligence community," there seems an even chance that – no doubt because of an oversight – the CIA/FBI/NSA deep-stage troika failed to brief the Senate "oversight committee" chairman on WikiLeaks "Vault 7" disclosures – even when WikiLeaks publishes original CIA documents.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst for a total of 30 years and now servers on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Reprinted with permission from Consortium News .

[Jun 14, 2017] WOW: President of Russia Vladimir Putin Says US Presidents Are Puppets, Men in Dark Suits Rule Washington with The Same Orders

Jun 14, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren , June 13, 2017 at 3:56 am

https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/status/874035691570835457

Luke Rudkowski ‏ Verified account @ Lukewearechange Jun 11

Luke Rudkowski @Lukewearechange

WOW: President of Russia Vladimir Putin Says US Presidents Are Puppets, 'Men in Dark Suits' Rule Washington with The Same Orders

6:48 PM - 11 Jun 2017 · Brooklyn, NY 1,370 1,370 Retweets 1,624 1,624 likes

[Jun 14, 2017] Are We Nearing Civil War by Patrick J. Buchanan

Notable quotes:
"... As Newt Gingrich said Sunday: "Look at who Mueller's starting to hire. (T)hese are people that look to me like they're setting up to go after Trump including people, by the way, who have been reprimanded for hiding from the defense information into major cases. "This is going to be a witch hunt." ..."
"... Another example. According to Daily Kos, Trump planned a swift lifting of sanctions on Russia after inauguration and a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin to prevent a second Cold War. The State Department was tasked with working out the details. Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received "panicky" calls of "Please, my God, can you stop this?" Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded. ..."
"... Trump will deal with it by bombing Iran and Syria thereby starting a war with Russia. It was always about the Democrats not being sure that Donald Trump had the vigor and enthusiasm to destroy Christian Russia and Shia Muslim Iran for Greater Israel. Honestly, why is Trump worth defending? ..."
"... since they've only found Reality Winner thus far either they are progressing slowly or the people in charge of the investigation are actively sabotaging it and protecting some of the leakers. ..."
"... Trump doesn't even have the good sense or guts to tell his air-head daughter to shut up and knit some mittens for her kids, or to have his shyster son in law get out of government, and mind his own business, which is apparently shady financial and real estate deals and supporting zion. Trump was useful to defeat Hillary, and now that he has served his purpose, the search for a real American patriot and nationalist leader needs to intensify. Trump was never that person. ..."
"... It is hard to believe how naive or stupid Trump has been. He should have fired Comey and hundreds of others in the deep state when he raised his hand from the bible. ..."
"... His involvement in world affairs is stupid and dangerous. He is belligerent and menacing to Russia, Iran, China and middle-eastern countries that Israel doesn't like. This country's existence is at stake and needs all the attention of this administration. Our entanglement in world affairs is not warranted. ..."
"... "Trump has had many accomplishments since his election." None of significance. ..."
"... I want him to stop tweeting and pay attention to the consequences of his actions. I don't think he had any idea that the country he was bragging about ostracizing is the host to the largest US military base in the Middle East. Rex Tillerson had to remind him of that. ..."
"... So far, Trump has not shown the requisite amount of intelligence or courage, necessary to take on, let alone defeat, the forces arrayed against him. ..."
"... His first 100 days may have sealed his fate. Rather than take the initiative, and launch investigations into Mrs. Clinton's criminal empire, keep all his promises on immigration i.e. end DACA and reinstitute internal immigration enforcement, begin building the wall, etc. He gave up all of his potential leverage and got nothing in return. So much for the Art of the Deal. ..."
"... Trump would have to be a canny, electrifying, compelling and savvy figure to have even a chance. He's not. We never thought he would be, mind you; we just knew he'd be better than Hillary. Meanwhile, the Empire Strikes Back. It's not going to be pretty. ..."
"... The people of the Swamp are hostage to the Devil. ..."
Jun 14, 2017 | www.unz.com

President Trump may be chief of state, head of government and commander in chief, but his administration is shot through with disloyalists plotting to bring him down.

We are approaching something of a civil war where the capital city seeks the overthrow of the sovereign and its own restoration.

Thus far, it is a nonviolent struggle, though street clashes between pro- and anti-Trump forces are increasingly marked by fistfights and brawls. Police are having difficulty keeping people apart. A few have been arrested carrying concealed weapons.

That the objective of this city is to bring Trump down via a deep state-media coup is no secret. Few deny it.

Last week, fired Director of the FBI James Comey, a successor to J. Edgar Hoover, admitted under oath that he used a cutout to leak to The New York Times an Oval Office conversation with the president. Goal: have the Times story trigger the appointment of a special prosecutor to bring down the president. Comey wanted a special prosecutor to target Trump, despite his knowledge, from his own FBI investigation, that Trump was innocent of the pervasive charge that he colluded with the Kremlin in the hacking of the DNC.

Comey's deceit was designed to enlist the police powers of the state to bring down his president. And it worked. For the special counsel named, with broad powers to pursue Trump, is Comey's friend and predecessor at the FBI, Robert Mueller.

As Newt Gingrich said Sunday: "Look at who Mueller's starting to hire. (T)hese are people that look to me like they're setting up to go after Trump including people, by the way, who have been reprimanded for hiding from the defense information into major cases. "This is going to be a witch hunt."

Another example. According to Daily Kos, Trump planned a swift lifting of sanctions on Russia after inauguration and a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin to prevent a second Cold War. The State Department was tasked with working out the details. Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received "panicky" calls of "Please, my God, can you stop this?" Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded.

"It would have been a win-win for Moscow," said Tom Malinowski of State, who boasted last week of his role in blocking a rapprochement with Russia. State employees sabotaged one of the principal policies for which Americans had voted, and they substituted their own.

Not in memory have there been so many leaks to injure a president from within his own government, and not just political leaks, but leaks of confidential, classified and secret documents. The leaks are coming out of the supposedly secure investigative and intelligence agencies of the U.S. government.

The media, the beneficiaries of these leaks, are giving cover to those breaking the law. The real criminal "collusion" in Washington is between Big Media and the deep state, colluding to destroy a president they detest and to sink the policies they oppose.

Yet another example is the unfolding "unmasking" scandal.

While all the evidence is not yet in, it appears an abnormal number of conversations between Trump associates and Russians were intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies.

On orders higher up, the conversations were transcribed, and, contrary to law, the names of Trump associates unmasked. Then those transcripts, with names revealed, were spread to all 16 agencies of the intel community at the direction of Susan Rice, and with the possible knowledge of Barack Obama, assuring some would be leaked after Trump became president. The leak of Gen. Michael Flynn's conversation with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, after Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for the hacking of the DNC, may have been a product of the unmasking operation. The media hit on Flynn cost him the National Security Council post.

... ... ...

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

FusionPoweredMeatstick June 13, 2017 at 5:45 am GMT

Comey wanted Mueller in there, and Mueller is doing what he will, because Mueller is there primarily to PROTECT Obama and Clinton and their vast left wing cabal, just like Comey did before he was canned.

Mucking up Trump's life and those of Trump's people in the process is merely a sweet bonus. Not to mention the excellent distraction/diversion value that provides.

exiled off mainstreet June 13, 2017 at 6:16 am GMT

Trump needs to go after the deep state and quit attempting to mollify it with actions such as support of Saudi terrorists. It is a fight to the finish and if the power structure wins, our days are numbered.

Realist June 13, 2017 at 7:29 am GMT

Most people in this country don't know what is going on and wouldn't care if they did. Trump and this country are experiencing democracy's waning time in action. And it ain't pretty.

MEexpert June 13, 2017 at 8:09 am GMT

Trump is surrounded by judases. His own hand-picked people are not loyal to him, including his vice-president. Trump hasn't shown any cojones that every one expected from him. One little crisis and he has surrendered himself to the neocons. Session is a weak man. He couldn't even stand up to his old buddies who showed no respect to a fellow senator.

We are approaching something of a civil war where the capital city seeks the overthrow of the sovereign and its own restoration.

We already have a civil war. It may be bloodless but it is a civil war which it appears Trump is destined to lose unless he shows some courage and brains to turn the scale against the insurgents.

He should start by firing Rosenstein (sp) and Mueller and dare the congress to impeach him. He should take his case to the voters that had elected him and urge them to call on congress, especially, the Republicans to support him. He should go back to his pre-election agenda and start pulling the US out of the Middle East and make friendly overtures towards Russia. He also needs to rein in the intelligence commmunity and tell them to get off the Iran case and do some real intelligence work. Stop supporting all insurgents in the Middle East no matter what their affiliation.

From the beginning I have posted on this site that Trump should cancel Obama's executive order allowing NSA to share its intelligence with other agencies unless they officially request it. I can't believe he hasn't done this.

Finally, I thought by now he should have learned that he cannot govern through the Tweeter. He needs to get off of that binge and get serious. So far he does not have any coherent domestic or foreign policy. Bowing down to Israel and Saudi Arabia and do their bidding does not make a foreign policy. One is threatening him while the other is bribing him, neither is a true friend to the US. Except for the supreme court justice position, Trump has nothing to show for his domestic achievements. Republicans need to act as the majority party. They cannot let the Democrats run the congressional business.

This cannot last for ever.

hammerfist June 13, 2017 at 9:36 am GMT

Great article succinct overview. It's a coup we are witnessing

War for Blair Mountain June 13, 2017 at 9:47 am GMT

Pat

Trump will deal with it by bombing Iran and Syria thereby starting a war with Russia. It was always about the Democrats not being sure that Donald Trump had the vigor and enthusiasm to destroy Christian Russia and Shia Muslim Iran for Greater Israel. Honestly, why is Trump worth defending?

War for Blair Mountain June 13, 2017 at 10:04 am GMT

@War for Blair Mountain

Moreover Donald Trump is hellbent on using the Native Born White Working Class Teeanage Male Population as canon fodder Greater Israel in the Middle East. Trump is a vile, evil creature who will rot in hell for an eternity for doing this .

The Alarmist June 13, 2017 at 11:24 am GMT

" will not relent until they see him impeached or resigning in disgrace."

As if they're going to stop there. Those breaches of WH security a while back were the Deep State's warning shot, and you see how quickly Trump about-faced in the ME.

KenH June 13, 2017 at 11:41 am GMT

@MEexpert

From the beginning I have posted on this site that Trump should cancel Obama's executive order allowing NSA to share its intelligence with other agencies unless they officially request it. I can't believe he hasn't done this.

I agree, but I believe he's kept the EO in place since it's easier to find the leakers this way. But since they've only found Reality Winner thus far either they are progressing slowly or the people in charge of the investigation are actively sabotaging it and protecting some of the leakers.

Trump better cancel the EO if and when the find all the leakers and if he doesn't he'll unmask himself as a fraud who's smitten by absolute government power. Defense of civil liberties has never been his strong suit.

Anonymous June 13, 2017 at 2:52 pm GMT

@exiled off mainstreet

Kill Deep State by shutting off funding. Unclassify the whole intelligence budget. Then shut it down. Move the civilian intelligence functions to the military. Return FBI to a domestic agency covering federal crimes, not working closely with CIA or accompanying U.S. military in raids in Afghanistan and Middle East.

OilcanFloyd June 13, 2017 at 4:16 pm GMT

Trump doesn't even have the good sense or guts to tell his air-head daughter to shut up and knit some mittens for her kids, or to have his shyster son in law get out of government, and mind his own business, which is apparently shady financial and real estate deals and supporting zion. Trump was useful to defeat Hillary, and now that he has served his purpose, the search for a real American patriot and nationalist leader needs to intensify. Trump was never that person.

I think the nation could come unglued, but I don't see the military joining in, at least not on the side of nationalists against the government. The average American soldier seems to be a PC brainwashed, globalist stooge, and the officer class appears to be made up of weak-minded careerists and yes men, little different from the soldiers, so I don't see much help coming from them. Add that to the fact that the government is trying to pass laws giving amnesty to illegals who will join a U.S. military that already has many soldiers of foreign birth or roots, and I don't see much help coming from the military, which seems to become more distant from the population as time goes by.

Realist June 13, 2017 at 4:21 pm GMT

It is hard to believe how naive or stupid Trump has been. He should have fired Comey and hundreds of others in the deep state when he raised his hand from the bible.

He should have confronted those in his party that are out to destroy him Why did he waste his time interviewing loser like Romney? Was he serious about their possible usefulness? Trump doesn't seem to know that he is under assault. He needs to start some serious ass kicking.

His involvement in world affairs is stupid and dangerous. He is belligerent and menacing to Russia, Iran, China and middle-eastern countries that Israel doesn't like. This country's existence is at stake and needs all the attention of this administration. Our entanglement in world affairs is not warranted.

"Trump has had many accomplishments since his election." None of significance.

Realist June 13, 2017 at 4:26 pm GMT

@Corvinus "Idiot."

At least now you are signing your comments.

gda June 13, 2017 at 5:50 pm GMT

@MEexpert If you think he has "nothing to show for his domestic achievements" and that he "does not have any coherent domestic or foreign policy" it suggests to me that you're either a Democratic troll, not paying attention, or just plain ignorant.

One example – by pulling out of the Paris "Accord" he has saved the US around $100 trillion over the next 8o years, as well as at least one, if not more, percentage points in GDP growth over those years. Not to speak of millions of jobs. In 10 years time, this will no doubt be recognized as his signature achievement.

You can easily find the myriad of other domestic and foreign policy achievements if you really want. But its clear you really don't want.

I find it amusing that you would side with the enemy in recommending he stop tweeting. How many before you said he would never win the nomination, then he would never win the Presidency, BECAUSE he couldn't stop tweeting. They ALL were just as wrong as you are now.

bluedog June 13, 2017 at 6:46 pm GMT

@Corvinus

And of course your guessing or assuming when you really don't know war is hell so they say, and we are masters at starting them killing little children, what was the count in Iraq 100,000 500,000 thousand and the masters said it was worth it the problem with the American people including you is its alright as long as it happens in some other country but cry a river at the thoughts it could happen here, now who's the idiot?

MEexpert June 13, 2017 at 11:53 pm GMT

@gda

How many before you said he would never win the nomination, then he would never win the Presidency,

I don't know, because I never said it. LOL. I voted for Trump. So much for your insight into my motives.

One example – by pulling out of the Paris "Accord" he has saved the US around $100 trillion over the next 8o years, as well as at least one, if not more, percentage points in GDP growth over those years. Not to speak of millions of jobs. In 10 years time, this will no doubt be recognized as his signature achievement.

All this is in the future and unknown. $100 trillions sounds great but who came up with this outrageous number. I am talking about now. If he ends the war, the payoff will be immediate with savings in material cost and lives.

I want him to stop tweeting and pay attention to the consequences of his actions. I don't think he had any idea that the country he was bragging about ostracizing is the host to the largest US military base in the Middle East. Rex Tillerson had to remind him of that.

Sandy Berger's Socks June 14, 2017 at 12:50 am GMT

So far, Trump has not shown the requisite amount of intelligence or courage, necessary to take on, let alone defeat, the forces arrayed against him.

His first 100 days may have sealed his fate. Rather than take the initiative, and launch investigations into Mrs. Clinton's criminal empire, keep all his promises on immigration i.e. end DACA and reinstitute internal immigration enforcement, begin building the wall, etc. He gave up all of his potential leverage and got nothing in return. So much for the Art of the Deal.

Trump created a vacuum by failing to keep his promises, and his enemies are now using it as a snipers nest.

Mika-Non June 14, 2017 at 6:00 am GMT

@Travis That's the essence of it. We can't and won't have a civil war because a civil war requires at least two sides to fight it, and both political parties, all of the institutions, government apparatus, mass media, corporations, and the ruling tribe are on the same side.

Opposing this is (or was) maybe half the population on a very good day, but what we're seeing is that even half of the population is pretty much powerless in the face of the Empire's juggernaut.

In my view, the Republicans deserve our special ire because they were in a position to help bring about real change, with this singular opportunity, and they wanted no part of it. Fortunately, their party is toast and we'll enjoy a cataclysm before anyone takes their place. The Democrats? We knew what to expect from them, and still do. They are wrecking this nation systematically.

Trump would have to be a canny, electrifying, compelling and savvy figure to have even a chance. He's not. We never thought he would be, mind you; we just knew he'd be better than Hillary. Meanwhile, the Empire Strikes Back. It's not going to be pretty.

anonymous June 14, 2017 at 12:06 pm GMT

The evil empire owes the world a cold refreshing glass of schadenfreude. So, on with it then!!

anonymous June 14, 2017 at 12:27 pm GMT
@exiled off mainstreet Super-Mega-Evil Imperial terrorists supporting terror from all sides. You think the imperial terrorists can be defeated?

anonymous June 14, 2017 at 12:32 pm GMT
@MEexpert " neither is a true friend to the US" You imply that the evil empire can actually be a true friend to others which would be laughable, right? If not, how do you expect others to be just that??

The people of the Swamp are hostage to the Devil.

[Jun 14, 2017] Mattis Ready to Blame Russia for Qatar Diplomatic Split by Jason Ditz

Jun 14, 2017 | news.antiwar.com
Says He Thinks Russia Just Wants to Break All of the World's Alliances

assume that last week's report in CNN that Russia had used "fake news" to start the controversy was true, and to elaborate on their motives for that.

appeared only too eager to make that assumption, as requested, insisting that the he believed this reflected Russia's "shortsighted way" of thinking , and that they want to disrupt all alliances across the planet, not just alliances involving the US, or even just alliances related directly to Europe.

The narrative blaming Russia for the Qatar split does not have any evidence to substantiate it, and Sen. Warren went out of her way to ensure none might be revealed today. It is worth pointing out, however, that President Trump personally took credit for the split himself when it first happened, crediting it to his visit to Saudi Arabia just days prior.

Rather, it originates from Qatari state media having quoted the Qatari Emir saying something the Saudis didn't like, and subsequently attributing the quote to "hackers." US media outlets saw the word hackers, and naturally assumed Russia, and it appears that as with everything, this has quickly become something everyone is willing to assume is the case.

Mattis went on in the course of his testimony to insist he's seen "no indication" that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to have a positive relationship with the United States, apparently taking no note of the several times when Putin literally said that around the 2016 election, and was openly courting diplomatic normalization with the US. Rather, Mattis insists Putin has " chosen to be competitive ."

The Senate is said to be moving forward on a new round of sanctions against Russia, and some legislation to prevent the Trump Administration from easing the sanctions in any way. There appears to be little interest in gathering actual evidence against Russia to justify this move, and rather seem confident that they can just keep everyone assuming allegations in the media are true.

[Jun 14, 2017] NBC Butchered Putins Thoughtful Responses to Megyn Kelly. Good for Ratings - and Warmongers by Gilbert Doctorow

Notable quotes:
"... In the NBC version, Putin's answer has been cut to one empty introductory statement that "Russia is on its way to becoming a democracy" bracketed by an equally empty closing sentence. In the full, uncut version , Putin responds to Kelly's allegations point by point and then turns the question around asking what right the USA and the West have to question Russia's record when they have been actively doing much worse than what was in Kelly's charges. He asks where is Occupy Wall Street today, why US and European police use billy clubs and tear gas to break up demonstrations, when Russian police do nothing of the sort, and so on. ..."
"... In a word, you intentionally made Putin sound like an empty authoritarian, when he is in fact a very sophisticated debater who outranked your Megyn at every turn during the open panel discussion in the Forum, to the point she was the laughing stock of the day. ..."
"... Kelly is like all Yanks, she sells herself for Money. A hired serf does what its told, says what its told to say or they are out-the-door on their arse. She may be a cool smart lady but has to tow- the-line. tom • 6 days ago ..."
"... "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be". ..."
"... CONFIRMED: DNC paid the 'Russian' founder of CrowdStrike to hack its server so it could be blamed on Russia!... ..."
"... She's a media whore...nothing more, nothing less.... ..."
"... Putin was fantastic on Kelly's show he is greatly admired by millions and millions in the west. ..."
Jun 08, 2017 | russia-insider.com

An open letter to NBC News about Megyn Kelly's manipulative and shameful interview with Vladimir Putin Thu, Jun 8, 2017 | 7080 90

Dear NBC News Team,

Congratulations! You have graduated from fake news to falsified news, arriving at a journalistic level that is identical to that in the Soviet Union in its heyday.

A couple of days ago, the political talk show moderated by Vladimir Soloviev on state television channel Rossiya 1 broadcast two versions of a segment from Megyn Kelly's interview with Vladimir Putin last Friday in the St Petersburg on the sidelines of the International Economic Forum. One was the complete, uncut version that was aired on RT. The other was the cut-to-shreds version that you put on air for the American audience. ( Watch here, beginning 4 minutes into the program .)

The segment was Megyn Kelly's aggressive question to Putin, asking his response to what she said was Americans' understanding of his government, namely one that murders journalists, suppresses political opposition, is rife with corruption, etc., etc. In the NBC version, Putin's answer has been cut to one empty introductory statement that "Russia is on its way to becoming a democracy" bracketed by an equally empty closing sentence. In the full, uncut version , Putin responds to Kelly's allegations point by point and then turns the question around asking what right the USA and the West have to question Russia's record when they have been actively doing much worse than what was in Kelly's charges. He asks where is Occupy Wall Street today, why US and European police use billy clubs and tear gas to break up demonstrations, when Russian police do nothing of the sort, and so on.

In a word, you intentionally made Putin sound like an empty authoritarian, when he is in fact a very sophisticated debater who outranked your Megyn at every turn during the open panel discussion in the Forum, to the point she was the laughing stock of the day.

Who wins from these games? You are only preconditioning the American public for the war that is coming, whether by intention or by accident. And there will be no one left to have the last laugh after the first day of that war. So you can forget about your stock options and retirement schemes, ladies and gentlemen of the News Team.

have a nice day

Gilbert Doctorow

Brussels

Gilbert Doctorow is an independent political analyst based in Brussels. His latest book Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015. His forthcoming book Does the United States Have a Future? will be published on 1 September 2017.

rosewood11 6 days ago

The thing that everyone in the American media wants to ignore is this: If any President of any nation knew that one of the candidates in the national election of his biggest rival intended to start a nuclear war with his country as soon as they were elected, do you think he might be tempted to do anything possible to avoid the war? hillary clinton intended to go to nuclear war with Russia and everybody knew it. Why wouldn't Mr. Putin be tempted to try to keep her out of office. He says he didn't do so, and because I trust him (something I'm not so stupid as to do with hillary!!!), I choose to believe him. However, I wouldn't blame him if he had pulled out all the stops to keep her out of office, and can only thank him or any other "patriotic Russian" who saved America from a fate worse than death--namely having a fourth-degree black magic witch as President!!! And that's in addition to saving the lives of millions of people on both sides of the oceans.

You mentioned in the article that RT ran an uncut version of Megyn Kelly's interview with Vladimir Putin. I tried going to the link you provided, but the show was in Russian without subtitles. Is there a version of the full interview offered anywhere with subtitles or voice-over for those of us in the US who would like to see it? I'd like to know what else Mr. Putin said. see more

Peter Paul 1950 rosewood11 6 days ago

Try you tube and enter "putin megyn kelly" and you'll find dozens of clips ... and as to why Putin never intervened may become clear if you take notice of the following .... already in the beginning of 2016 the Russians must have discovered that plans existed to murder Trump ... I read a leaked message that the Russians were ready for war should that occur ... and apparently sent a secret message ... long before the election they had already figured out that Trump was going to win the election because they knew of Hillary's true intentions also ... they had no need to intervene because there are and were forces opposed to her then existing plans to ignite war ... and there must be much more to that, because Putin sent an escort to Antarctica before Kyrill even went there .... and later met the Pope in Mexico ... Kyrill went on to declare a Holy War against Terror a year ago ... a long time before the election took place .... and Kerry slipped off on election day to visit Antarctica himself ... and fell out of bed and bumped his head doing so ... see more

Peter Paul 1950 see more

rosewood11 Peter Paul 1950 5 days ago I agree with Astrid (below) in thanking you for the youtube hint. You mentioned the Antarctic. I notice all the globalists seem to be making that a "destination," but I've never seen Putin go himself (good!!!). Anybody know what the fascination is--Is Steve Quayle right? see more

Peter Paul 1950 rosewood11 5 days ago

One can't really be sure who is right and if any kind of exaggeration plays a large part of all the tales that have become more public thanks to the internet ...
... it's shrouded in mystery that almost anything seems to make some kind of sense ... I first heard of the Nazi connection with the discovery and founding of Newschwabenland and Project High Jump with Admiral Byrd in a private conversation decades in my younger years, but only through the internet was it possible to find out more ... everyone seem so make it a great mystery that there is something there nobody dares to make official ... even Vault 7 appears to add to all the whisperings by adding a collection of photos without comment ... much room for speculation ... but it does seem to be of some importance ... see more

Richard Burton rosewood11 4 days ago

Kelly is like all Yanks, she sells herself for Money. A hired serf does what its told, says what its told to say or they are out-the-door on their arse. She may be a cool smart lady but has to tow- the-line. tom 6 days ago

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be".

- Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey (1816)

RussG 6 days ago

Putin should sue NBC for falsifying his interview. And, Putin should never agree again to an interview by one of the US MSM. Vasya Pypkin 6 days ago Faked or falsified news. Could the author provide an example of similar news falsification by Soviet Union media. After many years I find that Soviet media actually was telling truth but smart assses among our population tended to believe lies by Western voices. Many who are still alive regret.

Otherwise good article. The western media is nothing but lies cloaka. Soviet media also was not entertaining enough mostly talking about industries, crops, health and other substantial and important things while life was stable and predictable.

Now Russian population is being constantly entertained, but there is little to report on industrial front and there is no confidence in future. Ruble is up and down and crude same. Was it worth to fjkuck up great country to have more entertainment and some artifial sausages varieties while losing what is the most important for human beings. Sorry for a rant. AMHants 6 days ago Surprise surprise, George Eliason - Op Ed News, was right, all along:

CONFIRMED: DNC paid the 'Russian' founder of CrowdStrike to hack its server so it could be blamed on Russia!...

http://themillenniumreport.... Nofearorfavor 5 days ago

But we all expected this .... It is only that by law, Russia should be able to sue any newscast for editing and thus misrepresenting in particular -- the Russian president's words and thoughts, because of occupying the highest office in Russia. As Gilbert said, the gravity of what it could portend for Americans, is mounting daily...

Rossiya 1 would perhaps be more cautious second time around ... make it a condition that what the president or any official of the Russian Federation said on tape, should be broadcast in full and no editing -- or face have their pants sued off . What a shameless and gutless excuse for a journalist this Kelly is!

Strange Quark 5 days ago

The West has never been a democracy! During the Cold War the so called "democracy" was just a voting facade to hide the fact that the West is OLIGARCHY. What choice do American citizens have in their elections? TWO (that is 2!) parties which both run basically the same imperialist, neocolonialist, hegemonic policy. And economic policy is also the same - neoliberal meaning privatization, outsourcing, policies that favor the rich and harm the poor... Only bloody revolutions can change things. You cannot change the system with voting pencils! Pencils have never changed anything anywhere. Robert Keith 6 days ago Megyn Kelly is, granted, a step above your run-of-the-mil, blond, airhead, TV talking head. I don't know whether President Putin suffered from the juxtaposition, what with her typical-for-TV mundane questions, but, probably not, because it allowed him to give down-to-earth answers to the questions that most Americans seem to be asking themselves, inane though they be. He is very skilled at this, because he makes himself available to his countryman in the same way on a regular basis it seems.

If one searched elsewhere for the full video, which was available (on this blog), he came across very well, I must say. We will spare the readership any comment on the relative merits of his performance in comparison to what we night have heard from our Chief Executive.

disqus_xp4GYx7DZk Robert Keith 6 days ago

She's a media whore...nothing more, nothing less.... see more

Isabella Jones 6 days ago

Well, yes it's infuriating, but it was also so very predictable. When I complained about this wretched woman and her boring, predicted and repetitive questions leaving unasked anything to do with the forum leaders speeches and the masses of trade discussion that had happened during the meeting, I was told by many "that this is how Putin can show the West the truth".

No - he can't, because we know they manipulate, cut, change, and frame it to make it look any way they want. Only those who need no convincing got to see the whole truth - and most of us know it already.

The only thing to do is ignore America, treat it like the meaningless 3 rd World country it is rapidly sinking into - and get intelligent moderators from elsewhere. see more

Peter Isabella Jones 6 days ago

"... the meaningless 3 rd World country it is rapidly sinking into ..."

*Exactly* the conclusion at which the known French demographer and historian Emmanuel Todd arrived in his 2001 book "Aprčs L'Empire: essai sur la décomposition du systčme américain" ("After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order"). His scientific analysis was based primarily on purely demographic data, in addition to other factors: https://www.amazon.com/Afte... . An interesting reading.

See also his 2003 interview on that topic to Neue Zürcher Zeitung, titled "Das eingebildete Imperium", https://www.nzz.ch/article8... the English translation "The Conceited Empire" is at http://www.countercurrents.... . see more

Isabella Jones Peter 6 days ago

Interesting. I had not heard of this man - so thank you for the link Peter. He seems to be thinking along the same lines as Dmitry Orlov, but coming from an Academic and Historian view point. Orlov just saw much of the Russian collapse - he has family in Russia, it is his native language, and he lived there during part of the 1990's if I understand him correctly. He drew a parallel between USSR and America - coming to the same conclusion as this Msr. Todd.

We are all wondering, of course "when". ?

It's like knowing the very obese man next door who already has heart and BP problems coupled with Diabetes, but takes no exercise and eats fast food like a hungry pig, is going to have a massive physical break down and die.

It's just that there 's no way of predicting exactly when. Nofearorfavor Isabella Jones 5 days ago I remember when Putin agreed to be interviewed by Charlie Rose in Sep 2015, condition was that CBS produced the full 60 minutes uncut, which then ran into over 60 minutes. However found this interesting article on State of the Nation about the interview ... El Maestro wiping the floor with Rose and not doing anything to help along his flagging ratings ....now this Kelly tried to do the same and she fell flat on her face... no journalistic integrity at all ...

http://stateofthenation2012...

Pretty sorry ass she is ..

L Garou 3 days ago NBC/CIA.

Edward Mercer L Garou 2 days ago

Clarification? see more

L Garou Edward Mercer 2 days ago

You can't spell M$M without the CIA.

chris chuba 4 days ago

My recommendation for anyone who is being interviewed for American TV is to find out how long the TV segment is and only allow the total interview time to be 1.5 times that amount to only allow reasonable editing, not the standard butchery. So in this case, a 15 minute interview would be sourced by 25 minutes, not the two hours that Putin must have given Kelly since he spent a day with her.

In all fairness, they had to butcher the question on Russian democracy, journalist killings, etc because Kelly chose to spend 95% of the air time on moronic questions about 'election meddling' as if that deserved more than one question and the expected denial. What the heck did Kelly expect Putin to day about election meddling, yet she kept going back to it. see more

Augustine 4 days ago

Unlike in America, in the Soviet Union the people knew that there was no truth in the Pravda nor news in the Izvestya. Nowadays there are more Bolsheviks in New York than in St. Petersburg. see more

Richard Burton 4 days ago

nbc are msnbc the same degenerate-infested propaganda US/ BS.

Putin was fantastic on Kelly's show he is greatly admired by millions and millions in the west.

Of course the lying bums, the democrats hate it that their 'Miss Piggy' Clinton was beaten, they will keep on their crap for years, nbc and many other so-called news outlets are democrat-lapping rats who spew-out the lies, hate and shit everyday, those slime at cnn are the same pork as is the US poodle Canada's cbc. see more

angrywhiteman 4 days ago

More info on US democracy:

BREAKING : This Powerful Seth Rich Video is GOING VIRAL http://truthfeed.com/breaki...

Voter Fraud Federal Investigator Found Murdered http://yournewswire.com/vot...

"The answer to why Seth Rich was killed, and why he gave to WikiLeaks is now out" https://kauilapele.wordpres...

http://stateofthenation2012... see more

Wanda Gumm 6 days ago

Where Megyn failed, NBC succeeds in editorializing Putin as the village idiot. How long before these horse-driven dimwits drown in the cesspools they dig for others? I don't see any way out of this but war. It's not the fictitious 'deep state' Russia should be concerned with, but Trump himself. Playing the Elder.

[Jun 14, 2017] If it looks like the Russians did it, I can guarantee you it was not the Russians

Notable quotes:
"... Some news now trickling into the blogosphere that the Democratic National Convention paid Crowdstrike – that's the cyber-security firm headed by Dmitri Alperovich with links to the Chalupa sisters and the Ukrainian diaspora in North America – to hack into its own server. ..."
insider.foxnews.com
Jun 09, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Jen , June 8, 2017 at 5:07 pm

Here's my good (?) deed for the day.

Some news now trickling into the blogosphere that the Democratic National Convention paid Crowdstrike – that's the cyber-security firm headed by Dmitri Alperovich with links to the Chalupa sisters and the Ukrainian diaspora in North America – to hack into its own server.

"DNC Russian Hackers Found!"
http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=62536

"CONFIRMED: DNC paid the 'Russian' founder of CrowdStrike to hack its server so it could be blamed on Russia!"
http://themillenniumreport.com/2017/06/dnc-hackers-finally-identified/

Global Commenter , June 8, 2017 at 5:42 pm

Earlier noted in this brilliant piece:

http://www.eurasiareview.com/07062017-sanctioning-russia-analysis/

Excerpt –

"In the US, talk of a Donald Trump-Russian government collusion against Hillary Clinton gets more attention than some other possibilities. Cyber-security developer John McAfee said: "If it looks like the Russians did it, I can guarantee you it was not the Russians." There's a wave of anti-Russian sentiment, as evidenced by the lack of US mass media and body politic condemnation to former National Security Agency (NSA) Director James Clapper's bigoted anti-Russian comment.

The subject of anti-Russian propaganda brings to mind the pro-Kiev regime leaning Atlantic Council and its cyber-security member CrowdStrike. Entities like them are silent in instances like when Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko falsely stated that Jews in Crimea are prohibited from observing their faith, since that area's reunification with Russia."

[Jun 14, 2017] James Clapper as one of instigators of Russiagate and probably one of the architects of color revolution against Trump

Jun 09, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al , June 7, 2017 at 4:01 am

James Clapper, former Director of the CIA who lied directly to Congress about whether it was spying on American citizens has very recently said to the Australian Press Club that "I think you compare the two, that Watergate pales, really, in my view, compared to what we're confronting now." and "Is there a smoking gun with all the smoke? I don't know the answer to that. I think it's vital, though, we find that out.".

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/07/james-clapper-says-watergate-pales-in-comparison-with-trump-and-russia-scandal?google_editors_picks=true

You really cannot make this up and be believed.

marknesop , June 7, 2017 at 5:47 am
As has become textbook with modern press roll-overs, they are trying to substitute momentum for evidence, and achieve critical mass without having to cite any real facts you could hang your hat on later. Everyone involved will shake their heads as if coming out of a dream, and say, "Well, we all thought "
J.T. , June 7, 2017 at 6:31 am
Hence the reason why I'm barely following the 'Russiagate' coverage anymore. I realized I was being played, so I left.

[Jun 14, 2017] To say that Trump is idiot in foreign policy without saying that Obama was the same dangerous idiot, who pursued the same neocon policies is hypocritical, because they are manipulated by the same people in dark suits and are just marionettes, or, at best, minor players. Other people decide for them what is good for America

Jun 12, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

libezkova, June 10, 2017 at 03:22 PM

There are several problems with Krugman both as an economist and as a political commentator.

First he does not understand that neoliberal system is inherency unstable and prone to periodic bubbles and crashes.

FED plays destabilizing role by attempting to save large banks. It essentially provided insurance for reckless behaviour. This is very "Minsky" -- "stability is destabilizing".

If we believe Jim Rogers, FED policies created a situation in which the next crash is a real possibility and might happen within a year, or two:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/jim-rogers-the-worst-crash-in-our-lifetime-is-coming/ar-BBCl6BS?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=ientp

Politically Krugman switched to neocon views and sometimes is undistinguishable from Wolfowitz : " And consider his refusal to endorse the central principle of NATO, the obligation to come to our allies' defense... What was that about? Nobody knows..."

NATO became obsolete with the dissolution of the USSR and now serves only as an instrument of the US foreign policy -- a tool for expansion and maintenance of neoliberal empire and keeping our European vassals in check.

He also got into Russiagate trap, which is a sign of weak intellect (dementia in cases of Hillary and McCain), or of a neocon political hack. As Krugman does not have dementia, I suspect the latter.

The standards he tries to apply to Trump would put in jail all three previous presidents starting from "change we can believe in" bait and switch artist.

In other words his column is highly partisan and as such represents interest only for Hillary Bots and DemoRats (which are still plentiful and control MSM).

For people who try to find a real way out of the current difficult situation (a crisis of confidence and, possibly, the start of revolt against neoliberal elite due to side effects of globalization) the USA now have find itself, this is just a noise. Nothing constructive.

Trump position "get what you want with the brute force; f*ck diplomacy, UN and decency" is actually an attempt to find a solution for the problems we face. Abhorrent as it is. Kind of highway robbery policy.

The key problem is whether we should start dismantling neoliberalism before it is too late, and what should be the alternative. Krugman is useless in attempts to answer those two key questions.

And it is unclear whether it is possible by peaceful means. Those neolib/neocon guys like Bolsheviks in the past want to cling to power at all costs.

Another question is whether the maintenance of global neoliberal empire led by the USA is now too costly for US taxpayers and need to be reconsidered. This is the same question British empire faced in the past. Do we really need 500 or so foreign bases? Do we really need to spend half a trillion dollars annually on military? Do we need all those never ending wars as in Orwellian "war is the health of the state" quote (actually this quote is not from 1984, this is the subtitle of the essay by Randolph Bourne (1918))

What is the real risk of WWIII with such policies? Because there is a chance that nor only the modern civilization, but all higher forms of life of Earth in general seize to exists after it.

Concentrating of Trump "deficiencies" Krugman does not understand that Trump is just a Republican Obama -- another "clean plate" offering to the US electorate, another "bait and switch" artist.

With just different fake slogan "Make America great again" instead of "Change we can believe in".

And as such any critique of Trump is an implicit critique of Obama presidency, which enabled Trump election.

Teleprompter personally was a dangerous and unqualified political hack, not that different from Trump (no foreign policy experience whatsoever; almost zero understanding of economics), who outsourced foreign policy to the despicable neocon warmonger Clinton and got us into Libya, Ukraine and Syria wars in addition to existing war in Afghanistan.

Continuing occupation of Afghanistan (which incorrectly called war) and illegal actions in Syria (there was no UN resolution justifying the USA presence in Syria) are now becoming too costly.

Afghan people definitely want the USA out and will fight for their freedom. Taliban has supporters in Pakistan and possibly in other Islamic countries.

In Syria the USA now clashed with Russian interests which make it a real power keg. And to this sociopaths in CIA like Mike "Kill-Russians" Morell and the fact that CIA is not under complete control of federal government and actually represent "state within the state" force in this conflict, and the situation looks really dangerous.

And please note that Russia protects a secular government, and the USA supports Islamic fundamentalists in Syria, to make Israel even greater. Instead of "Making America great again". Such a betrayal of elections promises... The same policy that Hillary would adopt if she sits on the throne.

So to say that Trump is idiot in foreign policy without saying that Obama was the same dangerous idiot, who pursued the same neocon policies is hypocritical, because they are manipulated by the same people in dark suits and are just marionettes, or, at best, minor players. Other people decide for them what is good for America.

The US army is pretty much demoralized and even with advanced weapons and absolute air superiority can't achieve much because solders understand that they are just cannon fodder and it is unclear what they fighting for in Afghanistan.

Because in Syria the USA support the same Islamic fundamentalists it is fighting in Afghanistan. Or even worse then those -- head choppers like guys from Al Nusra.

So we fight secular government in Syria supporting Sunni fundamentalists (often of worst kind as KSA supported Wahhabi fighters) and simultaneously are trying to protect secular government in Afghanistan against exactly the same (or even slightly more moderate) Islamic fundamentalist forces. Is not this a definition of split personality?

EMichael - , June 10, 2017 at 04:24 PM
Do you really think there are many people that are deluded enough to not know who and what you are?

You are a cancer on this blog.

libezkova - , June 10, 2017 at 11:35 PM
William S. Lind on Hillary:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-trump-can-do-for-defense/

"In the case of Hillary Clinton, not only does that mean more wasted money, it means more wars, wars we will lose.

Hillary is a wild-eyed interventionist. She gave us the Libyan fiasco, and had Obama been fool enough to listen to her again, we would now be at war on the ground in Syria.

The establishment refuses to see the limits of American power, and it also refuses to compel our military to focus on war against non-state opponents, or Fourth Generation war. The Pentagon pretends its future is war against other states.

The political and foreign-policy establishments pretend the Pentagon knows how to win. They waltz together happily, unaware theirs is a Totentanz."

[Jun 14, 2017] Bloomberg tried to keep Russian hacking story hot

Is Mossad for some reasons also interested in fueling Russiagate ;-) ?
Notable quotes:
"... That's an extremely weak story from Bloomberg. The article itself doesn't actually refer to evidence on its own; rather, it comes from anonymous sources. ..."
"... That's a maddening thing about this subject as it's treated by most mainstream news – it's called "Russian hacking" when, at best, it's an assumption that Russians, or at least the Russian government, were involved. ..."
"... It's become the identifier for this issue, IOW, it's "Russian hacking", not "hacking of DNC" or "attempted phishing of voting machine administrators". ..."
"... If the FBI is investigating these incidents, then its possible there actually is evidence we'll hear about eventually, but so far all we've see or heard is baseless assertions by the intel community. ..."
Jun 14, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

voteforno6 , June 13, 2017 at 4:02 pm

Re: "Russian Cyber Hacks on U.S. Electoral System Far Wider Than Previously Known" [Bloomberg].

That's an extremely weak story from Bloomberg. The article itself doesn't actually refer to evidence on its own; rather, it comes from anonymous sources.

Also, it keeps attributing the source of the hacks to Russia, without even attempting to provide evidence of that. The closest it gets is mentioning that investigators attributed them to certain IP addresses.

That's not all that convincing, as source IPs can be easily masked, which is one of the reasons why attribution is extremely difficult.

There's much less in the story than meets the eye, particularly when it comes to placing blame on Russia (assuming that these hacks in fact took place, of course).

Cujo359 , June 13, 2017 at 4:41 pm

That's a maddening thing about this subject as it's treated by most mainstream news – it's called "Russian hacking" when, at best, it's an assumption that Russians, or at least the Russian government, were involved.

It's become the identifier for this issue, IOW, it's "Russian hacking", not "hacking of DNC" or "attempted phishing of voting machine administrators".

If the FBI is investigating these incidents, then its possible there actually is evidence we'll hear about eventually, but so far all we've see or heard is baseless assertions by the intel community.

John k , June 13, 2017 at 9:05 pm

There's a history of that

[Jun 14, 2017] Oliver Stone interview is further evidence of hostile press, but he manages to rise above it.

Jun 14, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Carolinian , June 13, 2017 at 2:18 pm

If not already linked

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/06/12/oliver-stone-reveals-a-vulnerable-putin/

At one point Stone watches Dr. Strangelove with Putin

After watching the movie with Stone, Putin reflects on its enduring message. "The thing is that since that time little has changed," Putin says. "The only difference is that the modern weapon systems have become more sophisticated, more complex. But this idea of retaliatory weapons, and the inability to control such weapon systems still hold true to this day. It has become even more difficult, more dangerous."

Stone then gives Putin the movie's DVD case, which Putin carries into an adjoining office before realizing that it is empty. He reemerges, holding the empty case with the quip, "Typical American gift."

Montanamaven , June 13, 2017 at 2:38 pm

Oliver Stone interview is further evidence of hostile press, but he manages to rise above it. Oliver Stone Interview

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , June 13, 2017 at 3:21 pm

Perhaps Nixon was not so paranoid about resisting the media, which has grown ever more powerful in the last 40 plus years, since Watergate.

To the extent they are thought of as guarding the nation's health, who will guard the guards, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

This battle between Trump and the media is long overdue, I believe.

Will we see a swing back by the media toward the middle? We will see.

John , June 13, 2017 at 3:52 pm

The media is a privatized neoliberal corporate parasite. It has only one function extracting money from the host. It is amoral and pragmatically political. It will say anything to make money.

Huey Long , June 13, 2017 at 6:14 pm

To the extent they are thought of as guarding the nation's health, who will guard the guards, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I nominate George Smiley.

Annotherone , June 13, 2017 at 7:37 pm

We accidentally caught Stephen Colbert interviewing Oliver Stone last evening on a Late Show – I was disgusted by Colbert's treatment of Stone – also disgusting was the audience (obviously coached and organised to jeer and boo). No doubt Colbert was under orders from his corporate bosses – though maybe that's being too kind to him. Controlling the minds of the masses!

lyman alpha blob , June 13, 2017 at 8:18 pm

Just watched that and it was awful, but also very clarifying. Colbert's selling out just like Maddow did – she was actually pretty good on Air America a decade ago when she had a show with Daily Show creatrix Liz Winstead.

Colbert and the audience just assume demonization of Putin is justified while being oblivious to the log (or forest might be more apt) in Uncle Sugar's eye. Wonder how they would describe him if Russian domestic security forces routinely gunned down hundreds or thousands of Russian citizens every year. Some might consider that a sign of a very oppressive government .

Frustrating to watch people fall for this villain du jour schtick every single time.

Plenue , June 13, 2017 at 10:26 pm

I haven't paid attention to Colbert since 2013, when he played a role in the attempt to resuscitate Kissinger's public image (he later allowed Kissinger onto his show for a friendly interview). Oddly I can't seem to find the full video itself, but here's an ABC report on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaqhA5qTf7I

So he had already sold out before he even left Comedy Central.

Roger Smith , June 13, 2017 at 3:06 pm

I saw a preview of this on twitter recently. There is the analogous "President" of a country, driving himself, a body guard, and Oliver Stone down the highway. It was such a typical scene, no black limos, no cargo helicopters, no long walks and slow camera pans, just some dudes in traffic. I was wondering if Seinfeld was in the back.

[Jun 13, 2017] Comey s memos were exceptions to his standard operating procedure being created as part of a deliberate plan to generate self-serving material for him to use against the president

www.unz.com

"Comey's memos were not contemporaneous notes done in the ordinary course of business. These were exceptions to his standard operating procedure being created as part of a deliberate plan to generate self-serving material for him to use against the president. Their "revelations" should be accorded extreme skepticism rather than evidentiary weight. He did not inform his superiors after any of the meetings or memos, because, contrary to his testimony, he knew they would have immediately created more distance between him and the president, and that would have ended the game he was playing" [Mark Penn, The Hill]. One of the more entertaining features of the current zeitgeist is that people I heartily dislike keep coming up with perceptive, well-reasoned arguments.

"Amid Comey chaos, lessons from the history of America's secret police" [DigiBoston]. Worth noting that the FBI wasn't always iconic for liberals.

"Why Chris Ruddy floated the idea of firing Bob Mueller" [Chris Cillizza, CNN]. "My (educated) guess is that during his visit to the White House on Monday, Ruddy heard that Trump was considering firing Mueller. Ruddy thought, rightly, that doing so would be an absolutely terrible political move. Rather than calling the President to tell him that, Ruddy took to a medium where he knew Trump would listen: TV. We know from the 2016 campaign that Trump's advisers and friends would use cable television appearances to send messages to Trump that he was simply not hearing in private conversations."

"Russian Cyber Hacks on U.S. Electoral System Far Wider Than Previously Known" [Bloomberg].

"Special counsel team members donated to Dems, FEC records show" [CNN] .

[Jun 13, 2017] Democrats hope to parlay the latest furor surrounding the Russia investigations into political victory in the Midwest

Jun 13, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
New Cold War

"National Democrats hoping to parlay the latest furor surrounding the Russia investigations into political victory in the Midwest may want to take a different tack" [ NBC ]. "The party has targeted Iowa's 1st Congressional District, currently represented by Republican Rod Blum, as a battleground in the 2018 house race. But in the days leading up to former FBI Director James Comey's blockbuster testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, residents made it clear that while news of the scandal billowing around President Donald Trump's White House was impossible to avoid, it was far from their biggest concern. Most constituents interviewed by NBC News said that they need to see fire before they come to any conclusions about the Russia investigation and added that they are beginning to tune out news connected to it because of fatigue. Voters here are more concerned about issues like health care, veterans' benefits, Planned Parenthood and infrastructure."

"A Shining Comey on a Hill" [ Foreign Policy ]. Help me.

UPDATE "Virginia governor says Russia was helped by 'treasonous' Americans who gave 'these people a roadmap'" [ The Week ]. Making it all the more remarkable that some kind soul in the intelligence community hasn't risked their career to expose the traitors by coming forward with evidence (Reality Winner seems to be a kind soul, and she did risk her career, but the evidence part ) We really do need more than the word of a corrupt Clintonite - sorry for the redundancy - blowhard on this.

Our Famously Free Press

"And then there's the dirty little secret that every journalist knows - Trump stories drive ratings and clicks. The word 'Trump' in a headline vastly increases its chances of getting attention. (We're all guilty; see above.)" [Margeret Sullivan, WaPo ]. After shredding the notion of "balance," Sullivan considers what the press should do. For example:

Do news sites give serious, sustained attention to policy issues as well as publishing innumerable hot takes about the ­personality-driven dust-up of the moment?

Harvard professor Thomas E. Patterson, the study's author, sees trouble on that last point.

"The press is focusing on personality, not substance," he said recently on public radio's "On the Media" program. And that reflects "not a partisan bias but a journalistic bias," the tendency to seek out conflict. (No mystery there - it's more interesting.)

Trump stories are cheap to produce, because they generally don't require reporting. Or editing, apparently:

[Jun 13, 2017] Reality Winner throw away her career and life for nothing

Notable quotes:
"... The NSA document was very important. It basically proved, according to Scott Ritter, that the NSA had no real evidence of any Russian involvement, and relied on speculation from a single source: DNC contractor CrowdStrike, which recently had to retract a similar claim about Russian hacking of Ukrainian artillery. The real story behind 'Reality Winner' remains, I am sure, unknown. This might well be a ploy to undermine the anti-Russia hype, though the media cartel has trumpeted it uncritically for the short-term rush of goosing the Comey spectacle. ..."
"... This makes the refusal of the DNC to let the FBI examine those servers even more suspect. OTOH, one can see the thought processes in the DNC: A breach was discovered. If we blame the Russians not only do we further the neo-con agenda, but we also get to call anyone who publishes or cites the material taken from the servers a Russian tool. ..."
"... In fact, if they knew they had internal leakers, it would still be worth claiming to have been hacked by the Russians, so that internally leaked material could be 'poisoned' as part of a Russian plot. Talking points to this effect were ubiquitous and apparently well coordinated, turning virtually every MSM discussion of the content of the leaks into a screed about stolen documents and Russian hackers. It also put a nice fresh coat of paint on the target painted on Assange, turning the undiscerning left against a once valuable ally. ..."
"... He is lying about this and more because he needs a cover to avoid going after Clinton. Comey is a pathetic creature desperate to cover for someone who could have owed him a huuuuuge favor or that he could blackmail. ..."
"... He just simply lacked the political and theatrical acumen to pull it off and was undone by the court jester – Gowdey. The shame of it all – to be annihilated by a fool and sacked by a mobsters tool. ..."
"... I don't think he's lying. It's worse in that he believes the Russian hacking as presented to him by his subordinates and peers as true. Similar to Colin Powell believing in WMD evidence as found and presented to him. These "rational/reasonable/respected" people by their lack of critical skepticism cause more problems than the obvious and self aware snake oil salesmen. ..."
"... Comey's testimony actually amounted to saying Trump was correct all those weeks he was insisting the FBI wasn't investigating him when he fired Comey. But the media is just barreling on ahead as if Trump hasn't been vindicated. ..."
Jun 13, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

XXX

Reality Winner throw away her career and life for nothing--as that NSA memo wasn't a smoking gun and added nothing new (and further evidence that the intelligence community would label a Wikipedia article as "Top Secret")

And Reality had awful/naive "operational security." Anyone who read a few John LeCarre/Tom Clancy novels would've done better at avoiding detection.

JTMcPhee , June 12, 2017 at 3:51 pm

Hey, another gal took a big risk and wound up reasonably comfortable - what was her name, oh yeah, Monica Lewinski or something

Quentin , June 12, 2017 at 4:33 pm

She ended up 'reasonably comfortable'? Your source?

RUKidding , June 12, 2017 at 5:03 pm

What? Monica has not had an easy time of it. Yes, her choice, but still.

I don't see how you come by comparing what Monica Lewinsky did (which in no way compromised state secrets) with what Reality Winner did (I don't think she compromised state secrets, but she published what I thought was called a "Top Secret" document).

Two entirely different things. What's the connection? That they both have lady parts?

Seems like weird slut shaming to me.

Alex Morfesis , June 12, 2017 at 5:39 pm

Her father was a fairly large bundler of donations for the democratic party and her step dad was former head of voice of america she did not grow up in a family with any real financial stress and there has been no suggestion anywhere she has had to wait tables one does not get internships at the wh without some pull

RUKidding , June 12, 2017 at 6:39 pm

What does that have to do with what Reality Winner did? The initiating email in this thread discusses Reality Winner and the issue about her release of a top secret document.

Somehow that devolves into some weird slut shaming of Monica Lewinsky? WTF?

Again: why are we even discussing Monica Lewinsky in a thread that is about Reality Winner?

Very strange vibe going on here, imo.

Skip Intro , June 12, 2017 at 4:36 pm

The NSA document was very important. It basically proved, according to Scott Ritter, that the NSA had no real evidence of any Russian involvement, and relied on speculation from a single source: DNC contractor CrowdStrike, which recently had to retract a similar claim about Russian hacking of Ukrainian artillery. The real story behind 'Reality Winner' remains, I am sure, unknown. This might well be a ploy to undermine the anti-Russia hype, though the media cartel has trumpeted it uncritically for the short-term rush of goosing the Comey spectacle.

This makes the refusal of the DNC to let the FBI examine those servers even more suspect. OTOH, one can see the thought processes in the DNC: A breach was discovered. If we blame the Russians not only do we further the neo-con agenda, but we also get to call anyone who publishes or cites the material taken from the servers a Russian tool.

In fact, if they knew they had internal leakers, it would still be worth claiming to have been hacked by the Russians, so that internally leaked material could be 'poisoned' as part of a Russian plot. Talking points to this effect were ubiquitous and apparently well coordinated, turning virtually every MSM discussion of the content of the leaks into a screed about stolen documents and Russian hackers. It also put a nice fresh coat of paint on the target painted on Assange, turning the undiscerning left against a once valuable ally.

Kim Kaufman , June 12, 2017 at 6:08 pm

And yet Comey said it was definitely hacked by Russians. Odd. No evidence anywhere yet. Is he lying about this? Why?

uncle tungsten , June 12, 2017 at 8:29 pm

He is lying about this and more because he needs a cover to avoid going after Clinton. Comey is a pathetic creature desperate to cover for someone who could have owed him a huuuuuge favor or that he could blackmail.

He just simply lacked the political and theatrical acumen to pull it off and was undone by the court jester – Gowdey. The shame of it all – to be annihilated by a fool and sacked by a mobsters tool.

YY , June 12, 2017 at 8:36 pm

I don't think he's lying. It's worse in that he believes the Russian hacking as presented to him by his subordinates and peers as true. Similar to Colin Powell believing in WMD evidence as found and presented to him. These "rational/reasonable/respected" people by their lack of critical skepticism cause more problems than the obvious and self aware snake oil salesmen.

Plenue , June 12, 2017 at 4:51 pm

"especially the explosive testimony of former FBI director James Comey"

I find this downright amazing. Comey's testimony actually amounted to saying Trump was correct all those weeks he was insisting the FBI wasn't investigating him when he fired Comey. But the media is just barreling on ahead as if Trump hasn't been vindicated.

[Jun 13, 2017] Clinton mafia goes va bank

Notable quotes:
"... Defective political judgment, the [Brookings] authors recognize, also afflicts elites: 'If anything, wealthier and better-educated voters are often more, rather than less, subject to partisanship, systematic bias, rationalization, and overconfidence in inaccurate beliefs,' they write. ..."
Jun 13, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"Opinion: 5 alternative plutocrats to run America better than Trump" [ MarketWatch ]. Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Diane Hendricks. Well .

"The 9th Circuit's travel ban ruling declares the president's Twitter feed is a legally binding stream of consciousness" [ Slate ]. But what if it's self-contradictory, as bullshit often is?

"In recent months, leading Democrats from national chairman Tom Perez on down have been unleashing f-bombs, s-bombs and everything in between as they try to rally their party to 'resist.' And New York's junior senator seems to be leading the charge" [ New York Post ]. This descent to the vernacular kinda, sorta worked in 2003-2006 for "foul-mouthed bloggers of the left," as David Broder called them; profanity was a proof of authenticity, of boldness. I doubt that will work for Democrats today.

"Trump voters are more informed about the elites than are the elites about them. Trump voters see the elites on network and cable news and late-night talk shows. They encounter them in the dominant print media. And they take in the elite sensibility through feature films, and television sitcoms and dramas. In contrast, members of the so-called knowledge class seldom acquire more than a passing acquaintance with those in "flyover country," their dismissive term for the approximately 2,600 of 3,100 counties-or 84 percent of the geographic United States- where Donald Trump bested Hillary Clinton. Knowledge of how the other half lives and thinks is one glaring hole of elite education" [ RealClearPolitics ].

" Defective political judgment, the [Brookings] authors recognize, also afflicts elites: 'If anything, wealthier and better-educated voters are often more, rather than less, subject to partisanship, systematic bias, rationalization, and overconfidence in inaccurate beliefs,' they write.

The Brookings fellows nevertheless insist that career politicians, party officials, policy experts, and lawyers bring knowledge of institutional arrangements, complex trade-offs, and technical detail that are essential to good government." The report: "More professionalism, less populism: How voting makes us stupid, and what to do about it" (PDF) [ Brookings Institute ].

UPDATE "Welcome to the era of the 'bot' as political boogeyman" [Philip Bump, WaPo ]. "These stories, though, including the Daily News's, tend to be embraced for the same reason that Superman's monsters were so chilling: The threat is novel and not well understood. There's another level here, too. Assuming that vocal Trump supporters on social media are not real people reinforces an important political effect as well."

[Jun 13, 2017] NBCs Kelly Hits Putin With a Beloved Canard by Ray McGovern

Notable quotes:
"... "They have been misled and they are not analyzing the information in its entirety. We have talked about it with former President Obama and with several other officials. No one ever showed me any direct evidence. When we spoke with President Obama about that, you know, you should probably better ask him about it – I think he will tell you that he, too, is confident of it. But when he and I talked I saw that he, too, started having doubts. At any rate, that's how I saw it." ..."
"... As I noted in a Jan. 20 article about Obama's news conference two days earlier, "Did President Barack Obama acknowledge that the extraordinary propaganda campaign to blame Russia for helping Donald Trump become president has a very big hole in it, i.e., that the US intelligence community has no idea how the Democratic emails reached WikiLeaks? For weeks, eloquent obfuscation – expressed with 'high confidence' – has been the name of the game, but inadvertent admissions now are dispelling some of the clouds. ..."
"... "Hackers may be anywhere," Putin said. "There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a scenario? In the middle of an internal political fight, it was convenient for them, whatever the reason, to put out that information. And put it out they did. And, doing it, they made a reference to Russia. Can't you imagine it happening? I can. ..."
"... "Let us recall the assassination of President Kennedy. There is a theory that Kennedy's assassination was arranged by the United States special services. If this theory is correct, and one cannot rule it out, so what can be easier in today's context, being able to rely on the entire technical capabilities available to special services than to organize some kind of attacks in the appropriate manner while making a reference to Russia in the process. " ..."
"... The capabilities shown in what WikiLeaks calls the "Vault 7" trove of CIA documents required the creation of hundreds of millions of lines of source code. At $25 per line of code, that amounts to about $2.5 billion for each 100 million code lines. But the Deep State has that kind of money and would probably consider the expenditure a good return on investment for "proving" the Russians hacked into Democratic Party emails. ..."
"... In other words, it is altogether possible that the hacking attributed to Russia was actually one of several "active measures" undertaken by a cabal consisting of the CIA, FBI, NSA and Clapper – the same agencies responsible for the lame, evidence-free report of Jan. 6, that Clapper and Brennan acknowledged last month was not the consensus view of the 17 intelligence agencies. ..."
"... There is also the issue of the forensics. Former FBI Director James Comey displayed considerable discomfort on March 20, explaining to the House Intelligence Committee why the FBI did not insist on getting physical access to the Democratic National Committee's computers in order to do its own proper forensics, but chose to rely on the examination done by the DNC's private contractor, Crowdstrike. ..."
"... The firm itself has conflicts of interests in its links to the pro-NATO and anti-Russia think tank, the Atlantic Council, through Dmitri Alperovitch, who is an Atlantic Council senior fellow and the co-founder of Crowdstrike. ..."
"... Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – now including a possible impeachment battle over removing the President of the United States – wouldn't it seem logical for the FBI to insist on its own forensics for this fundamental predicate of the case? Or could Comey's hesitancy to demand access to the DNC's computers be explained by a fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted? ..."
Jun 13, 2017 | original.antiwar.com

To prove their chops, mainstream media stars can't wait to go head-to-head with a demonized foreign leader, like Vladimir Putin, and let him have it, even if their "facts" are wrong, as Megyn Kelly showed

NBC's Megyn Kelly wielded one of Official Washington's most beloved groupthinks to smack Russian President Vladimir Putin over his denials that he and his government were responsible for hacking Democratic emails and interfering with the U.S. presidential election.

In her June 2 interview with Putin, Kelly noted that all "17 intelligence agencies" of the US government concurred in their conclusion of Russian guilt and how could Putin suggest that they all are "lying." It's an argument that has been used to silence skeptics for months and apparently is so useful that no one seems to care that it isn't true.

For instance, on May 8, in testimony before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper conceded publicly that the number of intelligence agencies involved in the assessment was three, not 17, and that the analysts assigned to the project from CIA, FBI and NSA had been "handpicked."

On May 23, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, former CIA Director John Brennan confirmed Clapper's account about the three agencies involved. "It wasn't a full interagency community assessment that was coordinated among the 17 agencies," Brennan acknowledged.

But those public admissions haven't stopped Democrats and the mainstream media from continuing to repeat the false claim. In comments on May 31, failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton repeated the canard, with a flourish, saying: "Seventeen agencies, all in agreement, which I know from my experience as a Senator and Secretary of State, is hard to get."

A couple of days later, Kelly revived the myth of the consensus among the 17 intelligence agencies in her interview with the Russian president. But Putin passed up the opportunity to correct her, replying instead:

"They have been misled and they are not analyzing the information in its entirety. We have talked about it with former President Obama and with several other officials. No one ever showed me any direct evidence. When we spoke with President Obama about that, you know, you should probably better ask him about it – I think he will tell you that he, too, is confident of it. But when he and I talked I saw that he, too, started having doubts. At any rate, that's how I saw it."

As I noted in a Jan. 20 article about Obama's news conference two days earlier, "Did President Barack Obama acknowledge that the extraordinary propaganda campaign to blame Russia for helping Donald Trump become president has a very big hole in it, i.e., that the US intelligence community has no idea how the Democratic emails reached WikiLeaks? For weeks, eloquent obfuscation – expressed with 'high confidence' – has been the name of the game, but inadvertent admissions now are dispelling some of the clouds.

"At President Obama's Jan. 18 press conference, he admitted as much: 'the conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked .'" [Emphasis added]

Explaining the Technology

More importantly, Putin in his interview with Kelly points out that "today's technology" enables hacking to be "masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can understand the origin" of the hack. "And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack. Modern technology is very sophisticated and subtle and allows this to be done. And when we realize that we will get rid of all the illusions. "

Later, when Kelly came back to the issue of hacking, Putin expanded on the difficulty in tracing the source of cyber attacks.

"Hackers may be anywhere," Putin said. "There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a scenario? In the middle of an internal political fight, it was convenient for them, whatever the reason, to put out that information. And put it out they did. And, doing it, they made a reference to Russia. Can't you imagine it happening? I can.

"Let us recall the assassination of President Kennedy. There is a theory that Kennedy's assassination was arranged by the United States special services. If this theory is correct, and one cannot rule it out, so what can be easier in today's context, being able to rely on the entire technical capabilities available to special services than to organize some kind of attacks in the appropriate manner while making a reference to Russia in the process. "

Kelly: "Let's move on."

However carefully Megyn Kelly and her NBC colleagues peruse The New York Times, they might well not know WikiLeaks' disclosure on March 31 of original CIA documents showing that the agency had created a program allowing it to break into computers and servers and make it look like others did it by leaving telltale signs (like Cyrillic markings, for example).

The capabilities shown in what WikiLeaks calls the "Vault 7" trove of CIA documents required the creation of hundreds of millions of lines of source code. At $25 per line of code, that amounts to about $2.5 billion for each 100 million code lines. But the Deep State has that kind of money and would probably consider the expenditure a good return on investment for "proving" the Russians hacked into Democratic Party emails.

In other words, it is altogether possible that the hacking attributed to Russia was actually one of several "active measures" undertaken by a cabal consisting of the CIA, FBI, NSA and Clapper – the same agencies responsible for the lame, evidence-free report of Jan. 6, that Clapper and Brennan acknowledged last month was not the consensus view of the 17 intelligence agencies.

There is also the issue of the forensics. Former FBI Director James Comey displayed considerable discomfort on March 20, explaining to the House Intelligence Committee why the FBI did not insist on getting physical access to the Democratic National Committee's computers in order to do its own proper forensics, but chose to rely on the examination done by the DNC's private contractor, Crowdstrike.

The firm itself has conflicts of interests in its links to the pro-NATO and anti-Russia think tank, the Atlantic Council, through Dmitri Alperovitch, who is an Atlantic Council senior fellow and the co-founder of Crowdstrike.

Strange Oversight

Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – now including a possible impeachment battle over removing the President of the United States – wouldn't it seem logical for the FBI to insist on its own forensics for this fundamental predicate of the case? Or could Comey's hesitancy to demand access to the DNC's computers be explained by a fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted?

Comey was asked again about this curious oversight on June 8 by Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr:

BURR: "And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate – did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?"

COMEY: "In the case of the DNC, and, I believe, the DCCC, but I'm sure the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn't get direct access."

BURR: "But no content?"

COMEY: "Correct."

BURR: "Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?"

COMEY: "It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks – the people who were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016."

Burr demurred on asking Comey to explain what amounts to gross misfeasance, if not worse. Perhaps, NBC could arrange for Megyn Kelly to interview Burr to ask if he has a clue as to what Putin might have been referring to when he noted, "There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia."

Given the congressional intelligence "oversight" committees' obsequiousness and repeated "high esteem" for the "intelligence community," there seems an even chance that – no doubt because of an oversight – the CIA/FBI/NSA deep-stage troika failed to brief the Senate "oversight committee" chairman on WikiLeaks "Vault 7" disclosures – even when WikiLeaks publishes original CIA documents.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst for a total of 30 years and now servers on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Reprinted with permission from Consortium News .

[Jun 13, 2017] I wonder if it has ever occurred to the Democrat party brass that once the great Russian/Trump treason snipe-hunt comes up empty there can be consequnces

Notable quotes:
"... The wall-to-wall Russia 'scandals' being flogged by the Herbal Tea Party are providing cover a distraction that diverts the attention of the diminishing rump that is the Democratic Party base from demanding a no-holds-barred examination of why so few US citizens vote for its candidates any more. ..."
"... Is this revenge? She's so genuinely enraged at Trump for beating her fair-and-square that she's determined to hang around and cause as much trouble for him as she can? ..."
"... Is this truly nothing more than a case of her being so ego-crazed she just can't willingly step out of the spotlight? ..."
"... Are there plans afoot to usher Chelsea in as the next generation of the Clinton Political dynasty to keep the money machine going? ..."
"... Or – God help us – is she actually contemplating yet another run at the White House come 2020? I would have thought the notion insane but I'm beginning to wonder. She's no spring chicken, but, y'know, Trump's an old man, Bernie is an old man, that rotten sack of shit Reagan was an old man and senile to boot. I turn my thoughts to Washington, and there's no shortage of vicious old geezers who refuse to toddle off to their ill-earned retirement. Look at John McCain, fer Chrissakes. ..."
Jun 13, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
ex-PFC Chuck , June 12, 2017 at 5:27 pm

The wall-to-wall Russia 'scandals' being flogged by the Herbal Tea Party are providing cover a distraction that diverts the attention of the diminishing rump that is the Democratic Party base from demanding a no-holds-barred examination of why so few US citizens vote for its candidates any more.

Gareth , June 12, 2017 at 5:43 pm

I wonder if it has ever occurred to the Democrat party brain trust that once the great Russian/Trump treason snipe-hunt comes up empty that there will be a whole lot of dejected resistance members out there who will finally realize either that they have been fed a load of crap or, if they truly believe the mythology, that the party leadership was too cowardly to get to the truth. Either way, good luck getting those folks all revved up for 2018.

Code Name D , June 12, 2017 at 8:40 pm

Worse, what is to keep Trump form going back after the for sedition. And i couldn't say i would disagree eather.

John D. , June 12, 2017 at 6:49 pm

What is Hillary's endgame here, anyway? I had little use for Al Gore back in 2000, but dang if his slinking offstage obediently and meekly and (above all) quietly doesn't look downright dignified compared to HRC's refusal to willfully do the same. And I'm beginning to get the feeling there's more to this than just her ego at work. The possibilities as I see 'em (feel free to add to the list if you wish):

a.) Is this revenge? She's so genuinely enraged at Trump for beating her fair-and-square that she's determined to hang around and cause as much trouble for him as she can?

b.) Is this truly nothing more than a case of her being so ego-crazed she just can't willingly step out of the spotlight?

c.) Are there plans afoot to usher Chelsea in as the next generation of the Clinton Political dynasty to keep the money machine going?

d.) Or – God help us – is she actually contemplating yet another run at the White House come 2020? I would have thought the notion insane but I'm beginning to wonder. She's no spring chicken, but, y'know, Trump's an old man, Bernie is an old man, that rotten sack of shit Reagan was an old man and senile to boot. I turn my thoughts to Washington, and there's no shortage of vicious old geezers who refuse to toddle off to their ill-earned retirement. Look at John McCain, fer Chrissakes.

Hillary doesn't do anything unless she stands to gain something, so I assume she has her reasons for not riding off into the sunset. What are they?

David Carl Grimes , June 12, 2017 at 8:09 pm

I think she has to continue raising her profile and remain in public view. Otherwise her grifting machine grinds to a complete halt. All the people who depend on the Clintons are so numerous, (Podestas, Teneo, all those consultants) that they form their own ecosystem.

[Jun 13, 2017] It's hilarious listening to NPR's wall-to-wall coverage of today's protests in Moscow and then remember that NPR maintained radio silence on Occupy Wall Street for 10 days

Jun 13, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

allan , June 12, 2017 at 5:35 pm

It's hilarious listening to NPR's wall-to-wall coverage of today's protests in Moscow
and then remember that NPR maintained radio silence on Occupy Wall Street for 10 days.

(The protests began on Sept. 17, 2011. The first mention I can find
on the All Things Considered archive was Sept. 27 .)

JerseyJeffersonian , June 12, 2017 at 7:59 pm

Yet sadly, this is not at all surprising. As is always ominously intoned, "Follow the money".

This is NPR, No Proletarian Reporting

[Jun 13, 2017] The shining city on a hill sustains royalty, secures Wahhabi aims, wars to end unjust peace , ousts Qaddafi with no regard for how much turmoil millions endure and drops 27000 bombs on 7 Muslim countries during 2016 a year of peace overseen by a peace prize winner!

Notable quotes:
"... Are there no longer any Sunday PM rallies in US cities against the electoral college which denied the dnc crooks their conned prize? ..."
"... "As for that cherished image of a shining city on a hill*? As my fiend Richard Pitkin says, there is a little city-on-a-hill in all Americans. It is a complicated sort of truth about which even Russian journalists and scholars may have a say." ..."
"... The biggest threat to the republic comes from the fuzz exploding from domestic faux media. So much for diminishing fuzz in the US! Russia's vapid "influence" compares little to the scam run by a pair of political parties owned by Wall St. *The latest refuge of Comey; rolling out Dutch Reagan's 'shiny city' scam......... ..."
Jun 13, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

ilsm - June 12, 2017 at 04:57 PM

Corruption and stagnation.......

Are there no longer any Sunday PM rallies in US cities against the electoral college which denied the dnc crooks their conned prize?

David Warsh, June 11

http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/2017.06.11/2006.html

Not Russian fuzz! Why question RT?

Undiminshed fuzz is all the US gets from the dnc corrupted media!

"As for that cherished image of a shining city on a hill*? As my fiend Richard Pitkin says, there is a little city-on-a-hill in all Americans. It is a complicated sort of truth about which even Russian journalists and scholars may have a say."

The "shining city on a hill" sustains royalty, secures Wahhabi aims, wars to end "unjust peace", ousts Qaddafi with no regard for how much turmoil millions endure and drops 27000 bombs on 7 Muslim countries during 2016 a year of "peace" overseen by a 'peace prize' winner!

The biggest threat to the republic comes from the fuzz exploding from domestic faux media. So much for diminishing fuzz in the US! Russia's vapid "influence" compares little to the scam run by a pair of political parties owned by Wall St. *The latest refuge of Comey; rolling out Dutch Reagan's 'shiny city' scam.........

[Jun 12, 2017] The Evidence-Free Claims Against Trump and Syria Undermining Peace Efforts and Threatening More Wars by Robert Roth

Notable quotes:
"... But the use of disinformation has been expanded in what I now see as an attempt to destabilize the U.S. government itself, to achieve "regime change" at home as it has been practiced in many foreign countries over the last 70 years. ..."
"... There are many sound and urgent reasons to oppose many of Mr. Trump's policies – and I do. But a constitutionally elected sitting president should not be removed from office by an orchestrated campaign of disinformation and lies. Nor should "ideologically inspired disinformation" dominate our public discourse on critical issues – in any case, but especially when the result is a heightened risk of nuclear war. ..."
"... I have been watching in some dismay as those disciplined Soviet-style voices do their best to, among other things, discredit and thwart Mr. Trump's efforts to normalize relations with Russia. This is especially troubling in the case of The New York Times , whose relentless summaries of the various investigations are routinely reprinted in local newspapers all over the country, which can't afford to follow such "news" with their own reporters. The Times ' mantra-like repetition and characterization of the activities ostensibly under serious investigation is a subtle, but effective, form of brain-washing – or as Vanessa Beeley puts it, gaslighting. ..."
"... "What we've been undergoing to a large extent is a form of psychological abuse, actually, by very narcissistic, hegemonic governments and officials for a very long time. It's a form of gaslighting where actually our own faith in our ability to judge a situation, and to some extent even our own identity, has been eroded and damaged to the point where we're effectively accepting their version of reality." ~ Vanessa Beeley ..."
"... Robert Roth is a retired public interest lawyer. He received his law degree from Yale in 1971 and prosecuted false advertising for the attorneys general of New York (1981-1991) and Oregon (1993-2007). ..."
Jun 12, 2017 | www.unz.com
3,500 Words • 19 Comments

Disinformation and lies have been used to justify the wars on Syria that started in 2011. [1] I explored these in "What's Really Happening in Syria: A Consumer Fraud Lawyer's Mini-Primer" – "the primer" for short – which may be downloaded at http://www.syriasolidaritymovement.org/2017/01/21/m...regon/ ) But lately I've been amazed at the extent to which our entire public discourse now rests on disinformation and lies. This is a broader problem, but it also affects the prospects for peace in Syria, one of several places where U.S./NATO activities heighten the risk of nuclear war. [2] I first became aware of that heightened risk in following US/NATO activities in Ukraine, also widely misrepresented by the media; my work on that matter is posted at https://www.newcoldwar.org/how-obamas-aggression-in-...r-war/ .

I've been feeling pretty overwhelmed by it all lately, capped (most recently) by the third U.S. attack on Syria. As I put that together with President Trump's giving the military free rein over "tactics," it sank in that, with this delegation of authority, war-making power has now devolved from the Congress through the President to the military itself, in areas where not only Syrians but Russians, Iranians and others operate.

In the apparent absence of an organized peace movement, the concentration of so many people on opposing Trump, rather than on opposing U.S. wars, distracts attention from this problem. Otherwise under fire from all directions, Mr. Trump gets approval – across the spectrum – when he does something awful but military, like launching cruise missiles at Syria or dropping that horrific bomb in Afghanistan. Meanwhile his attempt to reset U.S. relations and reduce tension with Russia is being used to lay the groundwork for impeachment and/or charges of treason.

The lies about Syria have of course continued. First, Amnesty International issued " Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison Syria ," claiming that the Syrian government executed between 5,000 and 00 s13,000 people over a five-year period. Then another chemical weapons incident, blamed without evidence on the government, was used as the excuse for a second U.S. attack on Syria. Both of these charges were widely and uncritically reported in the major media, though neither of them is credible. [3]

Regarding the first, as Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report pointed out, the AI report "is based on anonymous sources outside of Syria, hearsay, and the dubious use of satellite photos reminiscent of Colin Powell's performance at the United Nations in 2003." http://www.blackagendareport.com/shamnest-internati...rhouse . See further Tony Cartalucci, US Revives Discredited Syria "Slaughterhouse" Story (Global Research, May 16, 2017), Land Destroyer Report, http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-revives-discredited...590306 .)

The second charge seemed preposterous to me under all the circumstances, including its predictably negative results for the Syrian government, and its reliance on "reports" from outside Syria based on hearsay from such biased sources as anti-government fighters and their media. The analyses of others confirmed and reinforced my own impression, e.g.,

  • RayMcGovern, The Syrian-Sarin "False Flag" Lesson, (December 13, 2016), http://www.mintpressnews.com/syrian-sarin-false-fla...23106/ ;
  • Daniel Lazare, Luring Trump into Mideast War (Consortium News, April 8, 2017), https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/08/luring-trump-i...-wars/ ;
  • Mike Whitney, The Impending Clash Between the U.S. and Russia (CounterPunch, April 7, 2017), http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/07/why-the-unit...l-law/ (citing interview with former CIA officer Philip Giraldi);
  • Robert Parry, Another Dangerous Rush to Judgment in Syria (Consortium News, April 5, 2017), https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/05/another-danger...syria/ ;
  • Patrick Henningsen, Reviving the 'Chemical Weapons' Lie: New US-UK Calls for Regime Change, Military Attack Against Syria ( 21st Century Wire, April 4, 2017), http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/04/04/reviving-the-...syria/ ;
  • The Saker, A Multi-level Analysis of the US attack on Syria (April 11, 2017), http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46845.htm ;
  • Theodore A. Postol, A Critique of 'False and Misleading' White House Claims About Syria's Use of Lethal Gas (April 14, 2017), http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/critique_white_...70414/ (The third of MIT Prof. Postol's reports; the first is at http://images.shoutwiki.com/acloserlookonsyria/f/f3...17.pdf and the second, an addendum to the first, is at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Vs2rjE9TdwUE9tam1...g/view );
  • aTim Hayward, Chemical attacks in Syria: Is Assad responsible? (April 15, 2017), https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2017/04/15/chemical...sible/ . (Prof. Hayward recommends Prof. Postol's reports; says, "The premise of my post comes from the [UK] government's position. I aim to show that even if one suspends disbelief and grants it, their claimed conclusion still needs to be properly demonstrated"; and says further that "a fuller and more formal statement of the question that I am introducing here is to be found at: http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/...a.html .").

But the use of disinformation has been expanded in what I now see as an attempt to destabilize the U.S. government itself, to achieve "regime change" at home as it has been practiced in many foreign countries over the last 70 years. [4] See, for example, William Blum, Overthrowing other people's governments: The Master List, Published February 2013, at http://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-oth...r-list .

It started right after the election with the attacks on General Mike Flynn. And as it has continued, the campaign to demonize Russia and Russian president Vladimir Putin has also intensified.

Bottom line: It seems clear there is no evidence, let alone proof, that computers at the DNC were hacked at all, let alone by Russia, or that Russia tried in any way to "meddle" in the U.S. election. It has thus far made no difference that, soon after the charge of Russian interference in the last election was first made, an organization of intelligence veterans who have the expertise to know pointed out that U.S. intelligence has the capability of presenting hard evidence of any such hacking and had not done so (and, I would add, still hasn't). Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity stated bluntly: "We have gone through the various claims about hacking. For us, it is child's play to dismiss them. The email disclosures in question are the result of a leak, not a hack." They then explained the difference between leaking and hacking. [5] U.S. Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims ( December 12, 2016), https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-...laims/ .

There was ample justification for President Trump's firing of FBI director Comey. Ray McGovern and William Binney observed:

The Washington establishment rejoiced last week over what seemed to be a windfall "gotcha" moment, as President Donald Trump said he had fired FBI Director James Comey over "this Russia thing, with Trump and Russia." The president labeled it a "made-up story" and, by all appearances, he is mostly correct.

That's because Mr. Trump

had ample reason to be fed up with Mr. Comey, in part for his lack of enthusiasm to investigate actual, provable crimes related to "Russia-gate" – like leaking information from highly sensitive intercepted communications to precipitate the demise of Trump aide Michael Flynn. [6] Trumped-up claims against Trump ( May 17, 2017), http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed...y.html . For a detailed discussion, see Kenneth W. Starr, "Rosenstein's Compelling Case Against Comey," The Wall Street Journal , May 15, 2017, p. A21.

And there was nothing unlawful, or even wrong, in his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak at the White House. This is, after all, what foreign ministers and ambassadors do – confer with leaders of other nations – but that didn't stop the media and what James Howard Kunstler called "the Lindsey Graham wing of the DeepState" from acting "as if Trump had entertained Focalor and Vepar, the Dukes of Hell, in the Oval Office." [7] A Monster Eating the Nation, http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/monster-eati...ation/ (May 19, 2017). And see Ted Van Dyk, "Anti-Trump Democrats Invite Chaos," The Wall Street Journal , May 22, 2017, p. A21.

Regarding the continuing investigations by the FBI, several Congressional committees, and others looking for, if not proof, at least evidence of pre-election "collusion" by Trump or his people with Russians supposedly hacking computers to influence the U.S. election, these are thus far based on no – as in zero – evidence, and it's hard to know what might be made of anything they eventually claim to find, in light of this:

On March 31, 2017, WikiLeaks released original CIA documents - ignored by mainstream media - showing that the agency had created a program allowing it to break into computers and servers and make it look like others did it by leaving telltale signs like Cyrillic markings, for example. [8] McGovern and Binney, op cit. McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years; he briefed the president's daily brief one-on-one to President Reagan's most senior national security officials from 1981-85. Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.

Or as Mr. Putin himself points out,

today's technology is such that the final address can be masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one will be able to understand the origin of that address. And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual [so] that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack. [9] Valdimir Putin's televised interview on NBC (June 4, 2017), Interview with Vladimr Putin by NBC News propagandist Megyn Kelly, text published on the website of the President of Russia, June 5, 2017 – https://www.newcoldwar.org/valdimir-putins-televised...-2017/ .

Granted, this can be a costly enterprise, in that "The capabilities shown in what WikiLeaks calls the "Vault 7″ trove of CIA documents required the creation of hundreds of millions of lines of source code. At $25 per line of code, that amounts to about $2.5 billion for each 100 million code lines." But not to worry, "the DeepState has that kind of money and would probably consider the expenditure a good return on investment for 'proving' the Russians hacked." [10] McGovern and Binney, op cit.

Put it all together and you now have "an extraordinary proportion of our public discourse [resting] on nothing but ideologically inspired disinformation." [11] Tipping over, By Patrick Lawrence, published by the American Committee for East-West Accord, May 17, 2017 – https://www.newcoldwar.org/tipping-over/ . A glaring example is the most recent baseless charge against the Assad government. Of this Patrick Lawrence writes, in part quoting Nation magazine contributing editor and Princeton University professor emeritus Stephen F. Cohen:

The May 16 editions of the government-supervised New York Times carried a report that we-we Americans, this is all done in our names-now accuse the Assad government of running a crematory at one of its prisons to dispose of the corpses of murdered political prisoners so as to eliminate evidence of war crimes. This is based on satellite photographs in the possession of American spooks for the past three or four years released a few days prior to the next round of peace talks co-sponsored by Russia, Iran, and Turkey. Trump, a day after meeting Lavrov, sent a fairly senior State Department diplomat to the talks in Astana, the Kazakstan capital.

I note this latest on Syria only in part because it is a here-and-now adjunct of the Russiagate insanity in Washington. It also marks a new low, and I do not say this for mere rhetorical effect, in what now passes for credible assertion in our nation's capital. Here's my favorite passage in the piece-which, had a student in one of my courses submitted it to fulfill an assignment, would have merited an 'F' and a private discussion in my office:

"Mr. Jones acknowledged that the satellite photographs, taken over the last four years, were not definitive. But in one from 2015, he said, the buildings were covered in snow- except for one, suggesting a significant internal heat source. 'That would be consistent with a crematorium,' he said. Officials added that a discharge stack and architectural elements thought to be a firewall and air intake were also suggestive of a place to burn bodies. 'That would be consistent of a crematorium,' he said."

Most certainly it would. And also a bakery, a heated basketball court, a machine shop, and I think you will understand: The assertion means bananas. Even the Times , to my surprise, took a step back from this silliness. The next paragraph:

"The United Nations is scheduled to begin another round of Syria peace talks in Geneva on May 23. The timing of the accusations seemed intended to pressure Russia, Mr. Assad's principal foreign ally, into backing away from him."

Well, half a step in the direction of reality-which is half a step more than our Pravda on the Hudson typically takes.

[As Professor Cohen said on the evening of May 16 to Tucker Carlson on the latter's daily Fox News program:]

"The preposterous nonsense about the Syria crematorium pushes me into positing a kind of meta-phenomenon. The Russia case is a problem, the Syria case, the Ukraine case: There is a far larger and more consequential problem running through all of these matters. It is the frightening extent to which we are succumbing to fabrication. An extraordinary proportion of our public discourse now rests on nothing but ideologically inspired disinformation."

As Prof. Cohen has said, we're thus creating our own new national security "threat," in that, as Mr. Lawrence put it, we are watching as our 45th president is deposed. [12] Mike Whitney outlines the facts behind the entire Russiagate insanity and presents a detailed analysis connecting a great many dots with specificity in Seth Rich, Craig Murray and the Sinister Stewards of the National Security State ( May 19, 2017), http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/seth-rich-cr...state/ ; and see Norman Solomon and Paul Jay (Interview), Warfare State at War with Trump as He Plans Warfare Against Iran (May 22, 2017), http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19149:Warfare-State...t-Iran .

Andrew C. McCarthy, Fighting the Politicized, Evidence-Free 'Collusion with Russia' Narrative, The National Review (May 24, 2017), http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447915/trump-...rative , suggests steps to resolve the matter.

There are many sound and urgent reasons to oppose many of Mr. Trump's policies – and I do. But a constitutionally elected sitting president should not be removed from office by an orchestrated campaign of disinformation and lies. Nor should "ideologically inspired disinformation" dominate our public discourse on critical issues – in any case, but especially when the result is a heightened risk of nuclear war. [13] James Howard Kunstler adds that "Trump, whatever you think of him – and I've never been a fan, to put it mildly – was elected for a reason: the ongoing economic collapse of the nation, and the suffering of a public without incomes or purposeful employment." And though I've never been a fan, either, a discussion I found helpful to understanding the reasons for Trump's election was posted by John Michael Greer, "When the Shouting Stops," November 16, 2016, at http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/11/when...s.html ).

Prof. Cohen, frozen out by the mainstream media, summarizes the risks we confront:

[W]e're at, maybe, the most dangerous moment in U.S.-Russian relations, in my lifetime, and, maybe, ever. The reason is, that we're in the new Cold War, by whatever name. We have three Cold War fronts that are fought with the possibility of hot war – in the Baltic region, where NATO is carrying out an unprecedented military buildup on Russia's border, in Ukraine, where there's a civil and proxy war between Russia and the West, and, of course, in Syria, where Russian aircraft and American warplanes are flying in the same territory. Anything could happen. [14] Prof. Cohen discusses these issues with great clarity in an interview posted as Dems crippling Trump's plans to cooperate with Russia out of own ambitions (May 19, 2017) at https://www.rt.com/shows/sophieco/388910-trump-scand...ia-us/ .

Looking for a little light in this deepening darkness, I find some comfort in former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin's book Return to Moscow (University of Western Australia, 2017). Mr. Kevin examines past and present attitudes toward the people of Russia and to its leaders with sympathetic eyes, and a deep understanding of Russian history and culture. Regarding the treatment of Russian president Putin in Western media, for example, Mr. Kevin observes:

Not since Britain's concentrated personal loathing of their great strategic enemy Napoleon in the Napoleonic wars was so much animosity brought to bear on one leader. Propaganda and demeaning language against Putin became more systemic, sustained and near universal in Western foreign policy and media communities than had ever been directed against any Soviet communist leader at the height of the Cold War. This hostile campaign evoked an effective defensive global media strategy by Russia. [...] A new kind of information Cold War took shape, with – paradoxically – Western media voices more and more speaking with one disciplined Soviet-style voice, and Russian counter voices fresher, more diverse and more agile. [15] Cited from Return to Moscow . An interview with Mr. Kevin by Associate Professor Judith Armstrong, former head of European Languages Department at MelbourneUniversity, appears at https://www.youtube.com/embed/NtNjpXozRKY .

I have been watching in some dismay as those disciplined Soviet-style voices do their best to, among other things, discredit and thwart Mr. Trump's efforts to normalize relations with Russia. This is especially troubling in the case of The New York Times , whose relentless summaries of the various investigations are routinely reprinted in local newspapers all over the country, which can't afford to follow such "news" with their own reporters. The Times ' mantra-like repetition and characterization of the activities ostensibly under serious investigation is a subtle, but effective, form of brain-washing – or as Vanessa Beeley puts it, gaslighting.

In an insightful exploration of the psychological issues we confront in criticizing U.S. foreign policy and countering the media that support it, which I think helps explain the ease with which the current batch of lies is being successfully promulgated, Caitlin Johnstone opens with this powerful combination:

"What we've been undergoing to a large extent is a form of psychological abuse, actually, by very narcissistic, hegemonic governments and officials for a very long time. It's a form of gaslighting where actually our own faith in our ability to judge a situation, and to some extent even our own identity, has been eroded and damaged to the point where we're effectively accepting their version of reality." ~ Vanessa Beeley

The only thing keeping westerners from seeing through the lies that they've been told about Syria is the unquestioned assumption that their own government could not possibly be that evil. They have no trouble believing that a foreigner from a Muslim-majority country could be gratuitously using chemical weapons on children at the most strategically disastrous time possible and bombing his own civilians for no discernible reason other than perhaps sheer sadism, but the possibility that their government is making those things up in order to manufacture consent for regime change is ruled out before any critical analysis of the situation even begins. [16] You Only Hate Assad Because Your TV Told You To (May 27, 2017), http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47136.htm (first published by 21wire at http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/05/27/syria-you-onl...ou-to/ ). I found it enormously helpful to read this piece in conjunction with Vanessa Beeley's Gaslighting: State Mind Control and Abusive Narcissism (May 26, 2016), http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/05/26/gaslighting-s...ssism/ .

Unless we can penetrate the resulting fog, we confront the situation described by Tony Kevin:

Under the false and demonizing imagery of "Putin's Russia" which has now taken hold in the United States and NATO world, the West is truly "sleepwalking", as Kissinger, Gorbachev, Sakwa, Cohen and others have urgently warned, into a potential nuclear war with Russia. It is the Cuban missile crisis all over again, but actually worse now, because there are so many irresponsible minor European actors crowding onto the policy stage, and because American policy under recent U.S. presidents has been so lacking in statesmanship, consistency or historical perspective where Russia is concerned. [17] Return to Moscow , page 255, citing The Slide Toward War with Russia, editorial in the Nation , 19 October 2016, https://www.thenation.com/article/the-slide-toward-w...ussia/ , and Richard Sakwa, West could sleepwalk into a Doomsday war with Russia – it's time to wake up , The Conversation (UK), https://www.theconversation.com/west-could-sleepwalk...-59936 .

Hopefully, the efforts of activists and analysts to make the real facts known, combined with the escalating preposterousness of what we are told to believe, will produce enough cognitive dissonance to wake us up before we sleepwalk into the end of the world. Meanwhile, if you share these concerns, stay tuned to each of the dedicated and courageous authors I've mentioned, and the sites that have posted their work, express your concerns to your federal legislators – and tell your friends!

Robert Roth is a retired public interest lawyer. He received his law degree from Yale in 1971 and prosecuted false advertising for the attorneys general of New York (1981-1991) and Oregon (1993-2007).

References

[1] I explored these in "What's Really Happening in Syria: A Consumer Fraud Lawyer's Mini-Primer" – "the primer" for short – which may be downloaded at http://www.syriasolidaritymovement.org/2017/01/21/mini-primer-on-syria-by-former-assist-attorney-general-ny-oregon/ )

[2] I first became aware of that heightened risk in following US/NATO activities in Ukraine, also widely misrepresented by the media; my work on that matter is posted at https://www.newcoldwar.org/how-obamas-aggression-in-ukraine-risks-nuclear-war/ .

[3] Regarding the first, as Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report pointed out, the AI report "is based on anonymous sources outside of Syria, hearsay, and the dubious use of satellite photos reminiscent of Colin Powell's performance at the United Nations in 2003." http://www.blackagendareport.com/shamnest-international-human-slaughterhouse . See further Tony Cartalucci, US Revives Discredited Syria "Slaughterhouse" Story (Global Research, May 16, 2017), Land Destroyer Report , http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-revives-discredited-syria-slaughterhouse-story/5590306 .)

The second charge seemed preposterous to me under all the circumstances, including its predictably negative results for the Syrian government, and its reliance on "reports" from outside Syria based on hearsay from such biased sources as anti-government fighters and their media. The analyses of others confirmed and reinforced my own impression, e.g., RayMcGovern, The Syrian-Sarin "False Flag" Lesson, (December 13, 2016), http://www.mintpressnews.com/syrian-sarin-false-flag-lesson/223106/ ; Daniel Lazare, Luring Trump into Mideast War (Consortium News, April 8, 2017), https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/08/luring-trump-into-mideast-wars/ ; Mike Whitney, The Impending Clash Between the U.S. and Russia (CounterPunch, April 7, 2017), http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/07/why-the-united-states-use-of-force-against-syria-violates-international-law/ (citing interview with former CIA officer Philip Giraldi); Robert Parry, Another Dangerous Rush to Judgment in Syria (Consortium News, April 5, 2017), https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/05/another-dangerous-rush-to-judgment-in-syria/ ; Patrick Henningsen, Reviving the 'Chemical Weapons' Lie: New US-UK Calls for Regime Change, Military Attack Against Syria ( 21st Century Wire , April 4, 2017), http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/04/04/reviving-the-chemical-weapons-lie-new-us-uk-calls-for-regime-change-military-attack-against-syria/ ; The Saker, A Multi-level Analysis of the US attack on Syria (April 11, 2017), http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46845.htm ; Theodore A. Postol, A Critique of 'False and Misleading' White House Claims About Syria's Use of Lethal Gas (April 14, 2017), http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/critique_white_house_fabrications_syrias_alleged_use_of_lethal_gas_20170414/ (The third of MIT Prof. Postol's reports; the first is at http://images.shoutwiki.com/acloserlookonsyria/f/f3/Postol_assessment_041117.pdf and the second, an addendum to the first, is at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Vs2rjE9TdwUE9tam16a3F0Wjg/view ); andTim Hayward, Chemical attacks in Syria: Is Assad responsible? (April 15, 2017), https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2017/04/15/chemical-attacks-in-syria-is-assad-responsible/ . (Prof. Hayward recommends Prof. Postol's reports; says, "The premise of my post comes from the [UK] government's position. I aim to show that even if one suspends disbelief and grants it, their claimed conclusion still needs to be properly demonstrated"; and says further that "a fuller and more formal statement of the question that I am introducing here is to be found at: http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/04/habakkuk-on-urgent-need-to-release-test-results-from-porton-down-on-samples-from-khan-sheikhoun-ghouta.html .").

[4] See, for example, William Blum, Overthrowing other people's governments: The Master List, Published February 2013, at http://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list .

[5] U.S. Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims ( December 12, 2016), https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hacking-claims/ .

[6] Trumped-up claims against Trump ( May 17, 2017), http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-trump-russia-phony-20170517-story.html . For a detailed discussion, see Kenneth W. Starr, "Rosenstein's Compelling Case Against Comey," The Wall Street Journal , May 15, 2017, p. A21.

[7] A Monster Eating the Nation , http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/monster-eating-nation/ (May 19, 2017). And see Ted Van Dyk, "Anti-Trump Democrats Invite Chaos," The Wall Street Journal , May 22, 2017, p. A21.

[8] McGovern and Binney, op cit. McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years; he briefed the president's daily brief one-on-one to President Reagan's most senior national security officials from 1981-85. Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.

[9] Valdimir Putin's televised interview on NBC (June 4, 2017), Interview with Vladimr Putin by NBC News propagandist Megyn Kelly, text published on the website of the President of Russia, June 5, 2017 https://www.newcoldwar.org/valdimir-putins-televised-interview-on-nbc-june-5-2017/ .

[10] McGovern and Binney, op cit.

[11] Tipping over, By Patrick Lawrence, published by the American Committee for East-West Accord, May 17, 2017 https://www.newcoldwar.org/tipping-over/ .

[12] Mike Whitney outlines the facts behind the entire Russiagate insanity and presents a detailed analysis connecting a great many dots with specificity in Seth Rich, Craig Murray and the Sinister Stewards of the National Security State ( May 19, 2017), http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/seth-rich-craig-murray-and-the-sinister-stewards-of-the-national-security-state/ ; and see Norman Solomon and Paul Jay (Interview), Warfare State at War with Trump as He Plans Warfare Against Iran (May 22, 2017), http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19149:Warfare-State-at-War-with-Trump-as-he-Plans-Warfare-Against-Iran .

Andrew C. McCarthy, Fighting the Politicized, Evidence-Free 'Collusion with Russia' Narrative, The National Review (May 24, 2017), http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447915/trump-russia-collusion-john-brennan-testimony-how-fight-politicized-narrative , suggests steps to resolve the matter.

[13] James Howard Kunstler adds that "Trump, whatever you think of him – and I've never been a fan, to put it mildly – was elected for a reason: the ongoing economic collapse of the nation, and the suffering of a public without incomes or purposeful employment." And though I've never been a fan, either, a discussion I found helpful to understanding the reasons for Trump's election was posted by John Michael Greer, "When the Shouting Stops," November 16, 2016, at http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/11/when-shouting-stops.html ).

[14] Prof. Cohen discusses these issues with great clarity in an interview posted as Dems crippling Trump's plans to cooperate with Russia out of own ambitions (May 19, 2017) at https://www.rt.com/shows/sophieco/388910-trump-scandal-russia-us/ .

[15] Cited from Return to Moscow. An interview with Mr. Kevin by Associate Professor Judith Armstrong, former head of European Languages Department at MelbourneUniversity, appears at https://www.youtube.com/embed/NtNjpXozRKY .

[16] You Only Hate Assad Because Your TV Told You To (May 27, 2017), http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47136.htm (first published by 21wire at http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/05/27/syria-you-only-hate-assad-because-your-tv-told-you-to/ ). I found it enormously helpful to read this piece in conjunction with Vanessa Beeley's Gaslighting: State Mind Control and Abusive Narcissism (May 26, 2016), http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/05/26/gaslighting-state-mind-control-and-abusive-narcissism/ .

[17] Return to Moscow, page 255, citing The Slide Toward War with Russia, editorial in the Nation, 19 October 2016, https://www.thenation.com/article/the-slide-toward-war-with-russia/ , and Richard Sakwa, West could sleepwalk into a Doomsday war with Russia – it's time to wake up, The Conversation (UK), https://www.theconversation.com/west-could-sleepwalk-into-a-doomsday-war-with-russia-its-time-to-wake-up-59936 .

[Jun 12, 2017] What Happened to Russiagate by Robert Parry

Notable quotes:
"... Or, if the neocons push ahead with their ultimate "regime change" strategy of staging a "color revolution" in Moscow to overthrow Putin, the outcome might be-not the pliable new leader that the neocons would want-but an unstable Russian nationalist who might see a nuclear attack on the U.S. as the only way to protect the honor of Mother Russia. ..."
Apr 18, 2017 | Consortiumnews

Democrats, liberals and some progressives might be feeling a little perplexed over what has happened to Russiagate, the story that pounded Donald Trump every day since his election last November-until April 4, that is.

On April 4, Trump fully capitulated to the neoconservative bash-Russia narrative amid dubious claims about a chemical attack in Syria. On April 6, Trump fired off 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase; he also restored the neocon demand for "regime change" in Syria; and he alleged that Russia was possibly complicit in the supposed chemical attack.

Since Trump took those actions-in accordance with the neocon desires for more "regime change" in the Middle East and a costly New Cold War with Russia-Russiagate has almost vanished from the news.

I did find a little story in the lower right-hand corner of page A12 of Saturday's New York Times about a still-eager Democratic congressman, Mike Quigley of Illinois, who spent a couple of days in Cyprus which attracted his interest because it is a known site for Russian money-laundering, but he seemed to leave more baffled than when he arrived.

Yet, given all the hype and hullabaloo over Russiagate, the folks who were led to believe that the vague and amorphous allegations were "bigger than Watergate" might now be feeling a little used. It appears they may have been sucked into a conspiracy frenzy in which the Establishment exploited their enthusiasm over the "scandal" in a clever maneuver to bludgeon an out-of-step new President back into line.

If that's indeed the case, perhaps the most significant success of the Russiagate ploy was the ouster of Trump's original National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was seen as a key proponent of a New Détente with Russia, and his replacement by General H.R. McMaster, a protégé of neocon favorite, retired Gen. David Petraeus.

McMaster was viewed as the key player in arranging the April 6 missile strike on Syria and in preparing a questionable "intelligence assessment" on April 11 to justify the rush to judgment. Although McMaster's four-page white paper has been accepted as gospel by the mainstream U.S. news media, its many weaknesses have been noted by actual experts, such as MIT national security and technology professor Theodore Postol.

How Washington Works

But the way Official Washington works is that Trump was made to look weak when he argued for a more cooperative and peaceful relationship with Russia. Hillary Clinton dubbed him Vladimir Putin's "puppet" and "Saturday Night Live" portrayed Trump as in thrall to a bare-chested Putin. More significantly, front-page stories every morning and cable news segments every night created the impression of a compromised U.S. President in Putin's pocket.

Conversely, Trump was made to look strong when he fired off missiles against a Syrian airbase and talked tough about Russian guilt. Neocon commentator Charles Krauthammer praised Trump's shift as demonstrating that "America is back."

Trump further enhanced his image for toughness when his military dropped the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), nicknamed the "mother of all bombs," on some caves in Afghanistan. While the number of casualties inflicted by the blast was unclear, Trump benefited from the admiring TV and op-ed commentaries about him finally acting "presidential."

But the real test of political courage is to go against the grain in a way that may be unpopular in the short term but is in the best interests of the United States and the world community in the longer term.

In that sense, Trump seeking peaceful cooperation with Russia-even amid the intense anti-Russian propaganda of the past several years-required actual courage, while launching missiles and dropping bombs might win praise but actually make the U.S. position in the world weaker.

Trump, however, saw his fledgling presidency crumbling under the daily barrage of Russiagate, even though there was no evidence that his campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the U.S. election and there wasn't even clear evidence that Russia was behind the disclosure of Democratic emails, via WikiLeaks, during the campaign.

Still, the combined assault from the Democrats, the neocons and the mainstream media forced Trump to surrender his campaign goal of achieving a more positive relationship with Russia and greater big-power collaboration in the fight against terrorism.

For Trump, the incessant chatter about Russiagate was like a dripping water torture. The thin-skinned Trump fumed at his staff and twittered messages aimed at changing the narrative, such as accusing President Obama of "wiretapping" Trump Tower. But nothing worked.

However, once Trump waved the white flag by placing his foreign policy under the preferred banner of the neoconservatives, the Russiagate pressure stopped. The op-ed pages suddenly were hailing his "decisiveness." If you were a neocon, you might say about Russiagate: Mission accomplished!

Russiagate's Achievements

Besides whipping Trump into becoming a more compliant politician, Russiagate could claim some other notable achievements. For instance, it spared the national Democrats from having to confront their own failures in Campaign 2016 by diverting responsibility for the calamity of Trump's election.

Instead of Democratic leaders taking responsibility for picking a dreadful candidate, ignoring the nation's anti-establishment mood, and failing to offer any kind of inspiring message, the national Democrats could palm off the blame on "Russia! Russia! Russia!"

Thus, rather than looking in the mirror and trying to figure out how to correct their deep-seated problems, the national Democrats could instead focus on a quixotic tilting at Trump's impeachment.

Many on the Left joined in this fantasy because they have been so long without a Movement that the huge post-inaugural "pussy hat" marches were a temptation that they couldn't resist. Russiagate became the fuel to keep the "Movement" bandwagon rolling. #Resistance!

It didn't matter that the "scandal"-the belief that Russia somehow conspired with Trump to rig the U.S. presidential election-amounted to a bunch of informational dots that didn't connect.

Russiagate also taught the American "left" to learn to love McCarthyism since "proof" of guilt pretty much amounted to having had contact with a Russian-and anyone who questioned the dubious factual basis of the "scandal" was dismissed as a "Russian propagandist" or a "Moscow stooge" or a purveyor of "fake news."

Another Russiagate winner was the mainstream news media which got a lot of mileage-and loads of new subscription money-by pushing the convoluted conspiracy. The New York Times positioned itself as the great protector of "truth" and The Washington Post adopted a melodramatic new slogan: "Democracy Dies in Darkness." ran a front-page article touting an anonymous Internet group called PropOrNot that identified some 200 Internet news sites, including Consortiumnews.com and other major sources of independent journalism, as guilty of "Russian propaganda." Facts weren't needed; the accused had no chance for rebuttal; the accusers even got to hide in the shadows; the smear was the thing.

The Post and the Times also conflated news outlets that dared to express skepticism toward claims from the U.S. State Department with some entrepreneurial sites that trafficked in intentionally made-up stories or "fake news" to make money.

To the Post and Times, there appeared to be no difference between questioning the official U.S. narrative on, say, the Ukraine crisis and knowingly fabricating pretend news articles to get lots of clicks. Behind the smokescreen of Russiagate, the mainstream U.S. news media took the position that there was only one side to a story, what Official Washington chose to believe.

While it's likely that there will be some revival of Russiagate to avoid the appearance of a completely manufactured scandal, the conspiracy theory's more significant near-term consequence could be that it has taught Donald Trump a dangerous lesson.

If he finds himself in a tight spot, the way out is to start bombing some "enemy" halfway around the world. The next time, however, the target might not be so willing to turn the other cheek. If, say, Trump launches a preemptive strike against North Korea, the result could be a retaliatory nuclear attack against South Korea or Japan.

Or, if the neocons push ahead with their ultimate "regime change" strategy of staging a "color revolution" in Moscow to overthrow Putin, the outcome might be-not the pliable new leader that the neocons would want-but an unstable Russian nationalist who might see a nuclear attack on the U.S. as the only way to protect the honor of Mother Russia.

For all his faults, Trump did offer a more temperate approach toward U.S.-Russian relations, which also could have tamped down spending for nuclear and other strategic weapons and freed up some of that money for infrastructure and other needs at home. But that was before Russiagate.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, "America's Stolen Narrative," either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

[Jun 12, 2017] Russiagate is the way to pressure Trump into abandoning his foreign policy goals and continue Obama neocon foreign policy

Notable quotes:
"... Either way, this constitutes a coup d'etat. ..."
"... The American people elected a president who promised an America First agenda, and the establishment is using the threat of an unjustifiable impeachment or unconstitutional use of the 25th amendment to nullify the results of that election. ..."
economistsview.typepad.com

John Gruskos June 12, 2017 at 3:59 pm GMT

Jun 12, 2017 | www.unz.com

Robert Roth is exactly right.

The ridiculous "Russian influence" narrative is a cynical ploy to pressure Trump to abandon his America First campaign promises, and instead wage a counter productive regime change war in Syria.

If Trump is not amenable to pressure, they establishment apparently plans to impeach Trump and use Pence as their tool instead.

Either way, this constitutes a coup d'etat.

The American people elected a president who promised an America First agenda, and the establishment is using the threat of an unjustifiable impeachment or unconstitutional use of the 25th amendment to nullify the results of that election.

[Jun 12, 2017] Statement Trump is Putins puppet. is a sign of dementia or of a neoliberal MSM presstitute

Jun 12, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

pgl- , June 10, 2017 at 01:47 AM

Trump is Putin's puppet.
ilsm, June 10, 2017 at 04:28 AM
heh!
Libezkova - , June 10, 2017 at 04:28 AM
"Trump is Putin's puppet."

Looks like you do not have enough IQ to understand that Russiagate is a typical "color revolution" scenario. I am lost. How such a post can correlate with your other posts, where you actually show understanding of complex things (your neoliberal bias notwithstanding)? Incredible! Is there two different PGL here ? Early dementia ?

This is even not funny, because anybody with IQ above 100 understands the POTUS does not matter much in foreign policy. So for Russians the difference is close to zero and risks are high to engage is such a behavior. Actually they probably have much more serious "compromat" on Hillary and, especially, Bill, so Hillary might be preferable to them.

Is it so difficult to understand that POTUS is just a placeholder of minor player, and other "very serious people" determine the US foreign policy.

To say nothing about that evidence is not here, and the whole "Purple revolution" scenario with the key idea of delegitimization of Trump via Russiagate is taken directly from Gene Sharp's book.

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/gene-sharp-handbook-nonviolent-resistance-dictators-trump

And Gene Sharp book is not a secret. It is the standard textbook used by the State Department for teaching such things. You can buy it from Amazon:

[Jun 12, 2017] In Praise of Hypocrisy by Masha Gessen

Empire of Lies is a 2008 thriller novel written by Andrew Klavan. The book takes its title from a quote by George Orwell often used by Ron Paul, "Truth is treason in an empire of lies." Masha Gessen is a part of US propaganda empire, and now trying to defend it by all means. Demonstrating the level of sophisticaion I never suspected of her. I like the term "aspirational hypocrisy", because now the USA neocon foreign policy and neocon's wars can be defined as the "Wars of aspirational hypocrisy". But this is all I like in the article. It is useful as as sample of sophisticated propaganda. That's it.
In any case this article is nice example of "deception as an art form" and this neoliberal Masha proved to be a real artist in this art.
Notable quotes:
"... Everybody lies. But American politics has long rested on a shared understanding of what it is acceptable to lie about, how and to whom. ..."
"... One of the many norms that Donald J. Trump has assaulted since taking office is this tradition of aspirational hypocrisy, of striving, at least rhetorically, to act in accordance with moral values - to be better. ..."
"... Fascists the world over have gained popularity by calling forth the idea that the world is rotten to the core. In "The Origins of Totalitarianism," Hannah Arendt described how fascism invites people to "throw off the mask of hypocrisy" and adopt the worldview that there is no right and wrong, only winners and losers. ..."
"... Hypocrisy can be aspirational: Political actors claim that they are motivated by ideals perhaps to a greater extent than they really are; shedding the mask of hypocrisy asserts that greed, vengeance and gratuitous cruelty aren't wrong, but are legitimate motivations for political behavior. ..."
"... In the last decade and a half, post-Communist autocrats like Vladimir V. Putin and Viktor Orban have adopted this cynical posture. They seem convinced that the entire world is driven solely by greed and hunger for power, and only the Western democracies continue to insist, hypocritically, that their politics are based on values and principles. ..."
"... when he was asked about his admiration for Mr. Putin, whom the host Bill O'Reilly called "a killer." "You got a lot of killers," responded Mr. Trump. "What, you think our country's so innocent?" ..."
"... To an American ear, Mr. Trump's statement was jarring - not because Americans believe their country to be "innocent" but because they have always relied on a sort of aspirational hypocrisy ..."
"... No American politician in living memory has advanced the idea that the entire world, including the United States, was rotten to the core. ... ..."
"... How do you like the NKVD libruls afraid of Trump bringing fascism who were running a gestapo (the FBI wiring tapping other country's Ministers) on US citizens of the opposing party? ..."
Feb 18, 2017 | nyt.com

Everybody lies. But American politics has long rested on a shared understanding of what it is acceptable to lie about, how and to whom.

One of the many norms that Donald J. Trump has assaulted since taking office is this tradition of aspirational hypocrisy, of striving, at least rhetorically, to act in accordance with moral values - to be better. This tradition has set the standard of behavior for government officials and has shaped Americans' understanding of what their government and their country represent. Over the last four weeks, Mr. Trump has lashed out against any criticism of his behavior, because, as he never tires of pointing out, "We won."

In requesting the resignation of his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, however, Mr. Trump made his first public concession to political expectations. Hypocrisy has scored a minor victory in America. This is a good thing.

The word "hypocrisy" was thrown around a lot during the 2016 presidential campaign. Both Mr. Trump and Bernie Sanders accused their respective parties and the country's elites of hypocrisy. As the election neared, some journalists tried to turn the accusation around on Mr. Trump, taking him to task, for example, for his stand on immigration. If Mr. Trump favored such a hard line on immigration, the logic went, should he not then favor the deportation of his own wife, Melania, who was alleged to have worked while in the United States on a visitor's visa?

The charge of hypocrisy didn't stick, not so much because it placed its proponents, unwittingly, in the distasteful position of advocating the deportation of someone for a long-ago and common transgression, but because Mr. Trump wasn't just breaking the rules of political conduct: He was destroying them. He was openly claiming that he abused the system to benefit himself. If he didn't pay his taxes and got away with it, this made him a good businessman. If he could force himself on women, that made him more of a man. He acted as though this primitive logic were obvious and shared by all.

Fascists the world over have gained popularity by calling forth the idea that the world is rotten to the core. In "The Origins of Totalitarianism," Hannah Arendt described how fascism invites people to "throw off the mask of hypocrisy" and adopt the worldview that there is no right and wrong, only winners and losers.

Hypocrisy can be aspirational: Political actors claim that they are motivated by ideals perhaps to a greater extent than they really are; shedding the mask of hypocrisy asserts that greed, vengeance and gratuitous cruelty aren't wrong, but are legitimate motivations for political behavior.

In the last decade and a half, post-Communist autocrats like Vladimir V. Putin and Viktor Orban have adopted this cynical posture. They seem convinced that the entire world is driven solely by greed and hunger for power, and only the Western democracies continue to insist, hypocritically, that their politics are based on values and principles.

This stance has breathed new life into the old Soviet propaganda tool of "whataboutism," the trick of turning any argument against the opponent. When accused of falsifying elections, Russians retort that American elections are not unproblematic; when faced with accusations of corruption, they claim that the entire world is corrupt.

This month, Mr. Trump employed the technique of whataboutism when he was asked about his admiration for Mr. Putin, whom the host Bill O'Reilly called "a killer." "You got a lot of killers," responded Mr. Trump. "What, you think our country's so innocent?"

To an American ear, Mr. Trump's statement was jarring - not because Americans believe their country to be "innocent" but because they have always relied on a sort of aspirational hypocrisy to understand the country. No American politician in living memory has advanced the idea that the entire world, including the United States, was rotten to the core. ...

Hungary's PM Viktor Orban praises Trump for saying countries should put their own interests first
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/donald-trump-nationalist-hungary-pm-viktor-orban-praise-america-first-a7542361.html

===

ilsm, February 18, 2017 at 12:27 PM

I am less worried now we got Trump and not apparatchik (experienced in deep state and catering to Jihadis) Clinton.
ilsm, February 18, 2017 at 12:25 PM
The faux librul side is all Joe McCarthy phony red scaring and surveillance of the opposition activists sort of like what Army Intell did to hippies protesting the liberals' debacle in Southeast Asia.

Deep state surveillance and trashing the Bill of Rights is a legacy of the past 8 years.

yuan, February 18, 2017 at 09:36 PM
it's telling that you believe genuine liberalism is positive...
ilsm , February 18, 2017 at 04:45 AM
Vox, what about reporting from a crystal ball requires truth?
Peter K. - , February 18, 2017 at 07:37 AM
The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming! Hide under your bed.
ilsm, February 18, 2017 at 12:42 PM
Flynn could have said something "inappropriate" by a Clintonista definition of "inappropriate", and he "could" be prosecuted under a law designed to muzzle US citizens, that has never been tried bc a Bill of rights argument would win!

How do you like the NKVD libruls afraid of Trump bringing fascism who were running a gestapo (the FBI wiring tapping other country's Ministers) on US citizens of the opposing party?

If the fascists are coming they would keep Obama's FBI!

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... February 18, 2017 at 05:35 PM

the dems' deep state have already trodden the Bill of Rights how worse can it get......

fascism is in the US for 8 years or so.

[Jun 11, 2017] What Trump Can Do for Defense The American Conservative

Notable quotes:
"... Still peddling the 4GW snake oil . . . Would there even be an ISIS without the support of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey, Israel . . . or without the Bush administration having destroyed the Iraqi state? ..."
"... 4GW is a mantra used rather ineffectively to obscure the obvious reality of our own strategic dysfunctions . . . replacing the establishment leadership only takes care of part of the problem, and perhaps not even the worst part, which imo is conceptual . . . connected with having followed Mr. Lind and Martin van Creveld down the rabbit hole notion of the "Transformation of War" . . . ..."
"... I understand you have to generate content on a regular basis, and a conservative publication should at least try to find the silver linings in a Trump presidency, but you have provided me with very little foundation for why all of these (ostensibly good) things would come to pass because of President Donald J. Trump. ..."
"... Enjoy the dream while it lasts, Mr. Lind. But be prepared for a rude awakening. Anyone who thinks that Trump will have a positive influence on any aspect of American governance needs to have his head examined, and probably to have it replaced. ..."
"... Most Trump supporters hope for negative accomplishments, catharsis: firings and prosecutions of elite miscreants, ending immigration and deporting illegals, getting out of the Middle East, beating down the GOP establishment and, with it, great swathes of Leviathan. ..."
"... Both sides aren't seeing their candidate as being great. They just see the other side as an absolute disaster. ..."
Jun 11, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

seydlitz89, says: July 11, 2016 at 5:55 am

Still peddling the 4GW snake oil . . . Would there even be an ISIS without the support of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey, Israel . . . or without the Bush administration having destroyed the Iraqi state?

4GW is a mantra used rather ineffectively to obscure the obvious reality of our own strategic dysfunctions . . . replacing the establishment leadership only takes care of part of the problem, and perhaps not even the worst part, which imo is conceptual . . . connected with having followed Mr. Lind and Martin van Creveld down the rabbit hole notion of the "Transformation of War" . . .

John , says: July 11, 2016 at 8:35 am
It's tempting to project your preferences onto Trump because there's so much blank space there in terms of policy, but Trump has in no way committed to firing half of our general officers, or a "housecleaning" that takes away enough money from the Pentagon to fund a major infrastructure program in its own right, or cancelling any weapons system currently under development.

This is all wishful thinking, even without considering what Congress would do. I understand you have to generate content on a regular basis, and a conservative publication should at least try to find the silver linings in a Trump presidency, but you have provided me with very little foundation for why all of these (ostensibly good) things would come to pass because of President Donald J. Trump.

An Agrarian , says: July 11, 2016 at 8:45 am
I wish it were as simple as waltzing about the Pentagon saying "You're Fired!" There's good reasoning in the essay with which I agree; Trump seems to have the better instincts to deal with Pentagon Inc, particularly when Option 2 is Hillary.

But. How does one reform an inherently unreformable institution? How to overcome a system rigged with flag officers and SES bureaucrats that were groomed for their true-belief in the military-industrial complex? Maybe I'm just the eternal pessimist, but knowing the Pentagon culture firsthand, I see zero chance at a "businessman-led housecleaning of the U.S. military.

Johann , says: July 11, 2016 at 9:50 am
"4GW does not justify big-ticket programs such as the F-35 fighter/bomber and its trillion-dollar price tag."

I would go further and say nothing justifies the F-35. Because of its expense, it is not mass producible, and therefore not suitable for a conventional war either. The cost/aircraft would come down with mass production, but it would still be too expensive and slow to mass produce in an all-out conventional war. It would be kind of like an aerial tiger tank.

Egypt Steve , says: July 11, 2016 at 10:28 am
Enjoy the dream while it lasts, Mr. Lind. But be prepared for a rude awakening. Anyone who thinks that Trump will have a positive influence on any aspect of American governance needs to have his head examined, and probably to have it replaced.
Kurt Gayle , says: July 11, 2016 at 11:55 am
William S. Lind contrasts Trump and Clinton with respect to Pentagon reform:

Trump: "Because Trump is anti-establishment, military reform would at least be a possibility .Trump is a businessman. Businessmen do not like wasting money. They want efficiency. They cut bloated staffs, fire incompetent executives, and get rid of unnecessary contractors."

Clinton: On the other hand, "So long as the establishment is in power, it [reform ] is not [possible]. In defense as in everything else, establishment leadership means more of the same. In the case of Hillary Clinton that mean[s] more wasted money."

Lind also contrasts Trump and Clinton with respect to American interventionism:

Trump: "He has repeatedly questioned American interventionism. He roundly condemned the idiotic and disastrous Iraq War, which suggests he would rather not repeat the experience. Of equal importance, he has called for repairing our relationship with Russia."

Clinton: A Hillary Clinton presidency "means more wars, wars we will lose. Hillary is a wild-eyed interventionist. She gave us the Libyan fiasco, and had Obama been fool enough to listen to her again, we would now be at war on the ground in Syria."

However – on reading further in the Lind article – it becomes apparent that Lind's argument is not so much with endless American military interventionism as it is with the targets of endless American interventionism:

"The Pentagon pretends its future is war against other states The establishment refuses to compel our military to focus on war against non-state opponents, or Fourth Generation war Might a Trump administration see the need for an alliance of all states against non-state forces?"

In other words, Lind proposes to merely redirect the current endless American military interventions away from existing nation states and towards non-state forces. Lind doesn't simply want to work with other states on a case-by-case basis when it is in the US national interest to do so - rather he wants a new "grand strategy" of an open-ended world-wide alliance with other states against non-state forces. Lind doesn't want to put a stop to endless American military interventionism, but instead to concentrate on a new kind of endless American interventionism.

An additional point of concern in the Lind article: In asking "Might a Trump administration see the need for an alliance of all states against non-state forces?" Lind writes: "Here we have a clue: Trump has chosen as a defense advisor-the rumor mill says shadow secretary of defense-retired Army general Michael Flynn. It was an excellent choice."

Two reference articles show why Michael Flynn would not be an "excellent choice"at all: First, in Flynn's own words on July 9th op-ed in The New York Post:

http://nypost.com/2016/07/09/the-military-fired-me-for-calling-our-enemies-radical-jihadis/

And secondly, in Daniel Larison's excellent "Flynn's Warped Worldview" (today in TAC):

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/flynns-warped-worldview/

Fred Bowman , says: July 11, 2016 at 12:01 pm
Wishful thinking, Mr. Lind even if Trump could with the election and try to make the changes you envision. Truth be told, America is now govern by the "Deep State" of which the MIC is major part of. Also, the MIC is not the least interested in ending any of these interventions wars as that would negatively impact their "gravy train".
JohnG , says: July 11, 2016 at 2:28 pm
I agree that we may be projecting our wishful thinking on Trump, but what is the alternative? Faced with a choice between a known bad apple and an apple that gives some vague hope, it is rational to bet on the second. Especially given that it is hard to imagine an apple more rotten than HRC, so our downside risk is limited too.

PS I was always willing to give pres. Obama a bit of a free pass because of his refusal to implicate us any deeper in the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. I figured the atrocity of Yemen and blunders elsewhere (Iraq, Afghanistan, relationship with SA and Turkey, the lack of resolve to draw an even clearer line in the sand on Syria, Libya, and Ukraine) were the norm given the neocon-infested foreign policy apparatus, and at least he was putting up SOME resistance. Sadly, that resounding endorsement of HRC blew it all up, he has fallen in line and we are in for some more GW-Cheney-style insanity should she prevail. Whatever respect I had for him is now gone. I was hoping he'd try to setup things so that the resistance to the neocon insanity and jingoism would grow further, not fall back, as the choice of HRC clearly indicates.

eNostrums , says: July 11, 2016 at 3:20 pm
"Anyone who thinks that Trump will have a positive influence on any aspect of American governance needs to have his head examined, and probably to have it replaced."

"Positive influence" is all well and good, but we're in slow motion collapse, and it's beside the point.

Most Trump supporters hope for negative accomplishments, catharsis: firings and prosecutions of elite miscreants, ending immigration and deporting illegals, getting out of the Middle East, beating down the GOP establishment and, with it, great swathes of Leviathan.

I have no idea what the Clinton supporters hope for. More abortions? More government jobs? More immigrants? More gay weddings and transwhatever toilets? More dead Americans and Middle Easterners? More Wall Street bailouts? More foreign dictators and more taxpayer money to put them on the US payroll? They probably aren't thinking "more money and power for the Clintons", "more recklessness and irresponsibility", or "more scandal and embarrassment", even though that's about all they'll get.

Stephen Johnson , says: July 11, 2016 at 3:28 pm
While it's true this is wishful thinking, one just needs to remember the alternative. It is as certain as anything can be in this life that with Clinton we will rush full speed ahead into more of the same disasters. Trump is bad, but worse than the status quo? That's hard to imagine. Flynn, though, seems to be another neocon nut, though I'm open to any contrary evidence.
Carl , says: July 11, 2016 at 4:13 pm
I wish it were otherwise, but I don't even think that Trump is a serious candidate. He's done nothing to encourage his supporters, taken little to no advantage of Clinton's obvious shortcomings, and everything to provide ammunition to Clinton's legions of delusional 'liberal' fascists. This is not a Donald who wants to win.
Hankest , says: July 11, 2016 at 5:26 pm
"Trump is a businessman. Businessmen do not like wasting money. They want efficiency. They cut bloated staffs, fire incompetent executives, and get rid of unnecessary contractors."

Nah.

Here's how Trump runs his businesses, he incurs enormous debts by grossly overpaying for whatever new toy he wants. Then he incurs more debt to pay himself and his family large salaries or to pay off his personal debts. He also wastes money on the gaudy, unnecessary and tasteless "improvements" to his purchases(small e.g., gold plated fixtures in the Trump Shuttle bathrooms). Then, he doesn't pay contractors for the work they performed. And, when it all goes belly-up he leaves his foolish investors or the banks holding the bag (i.e., the enormous debt).

More simply, going by his business record Trump actually loves debt, incompetence, overspending and obscene waste.

sglover , says: July 12, 2016 at 12:23 am
With this column, the 4GW hucksters have managed to get within their own OODA loop. I'm embarrassed to say that I ever paid attention to them.
sglover , says: July 12, 2016 at 11:49 am
I have no idea what the Clinton supporters hope for.

Maintaining a wobbly status quo. You'll see no grand visions of anything from HRC.

Elias , says: July 12, 2016 at 3:16 pm
Trump dug his grave when he delved into xenophobia and ethnic chauvinism.His ranting about Mexicans and Muslims and now his new Nixonian slogan of being a tough law and order president has given enough ammunition to the Democrats to trounce him coming next election.
Todd Pierce , says: July 12, 2016 at 10:16 pm
I think Lind is proof of the triumph of hope over reality here; either that or that there is a sucker born every minute. I think some important facts about Flynn are missed here. Here is a statement he made to Hugh Hewitt:

"Last, I'm going to just touch on Russia and Iran briefly. Both of these countries, I deal with in my book, because these are allies of radical Islamism, and most people don't know how they are interacting with each other. So I just wanted to touch on that."

Today, July 12th, his book with Michael Ledeen as co-author, Field of Fight, was released. In Flynn's own words:

"Yet, the alliance exists, and we've already dithered for many years.

The war is on. We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. We are under attack, not only from nation states, but also from al Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS, and countless other terrorist groups. Suffice to say, the same sort of cooperation binds together jihadis, Communists, and garden-variety tyrants.

Flynn isn't an antidote to Hilary Clinton; they're equals in madness.

A. G. Phillbin , says: July 12, 2016 at 11:50 pm
I wouldn't even now bet on Trump being the Republican nominee - the Republican establishment may well prefer to be trounced rather than elect Trump. Look for them to give Trump the kind of "support" a rope gives a hanged man, or to change the rules so they can select another nominee, or a combination of both. Paul Ryan has been making noises about allowing delegates to vote their conscience on the 1st ballot, allowing nervous Trump delegates to jump ship. All it would take is a meeting of GOP Rules Committee, which happens just before the convention. And this is a senator who has "endorsed" Trump, even if he has also called him a "racist."
Dakarian , says: July 13, 2016 at 12:33 am
from sglover:
"Maintaining a wobbly status quo. You'll see no grand visions of anything from HRC"

Sadly I think that IS what's expected. Similar to how Trump voters don't see him so much as doing great things as much as "80% chance of failure is better than 100%", Hillary voters see it as more "keeping the plane slightly tilted down being better than blowing the plane up with dynamite."

Both sides aren't seeing their candidate as being great. They just see the other side as an absolute disaster.

I'll be honest, given what the GOP was giving up as alternatives and assuming that Sanders didn't have a chance in hades, Trump/Hillary was, to me, the best outcome out of the primaries. I don't support Trump but I'd take him over Rubio or Bush.

Though note that at this point 8 years ago, I was saying "oh, Obama vs McCain. Either way, I'm happy." Then the general election campaign kicked in and I stopped being happy over the latter :/

Sort of worried I'll see the same here, and if the rumors about Trump's shift are true, then I think that's exactly what I'll be seeing.

Agent76 , says: October 13, 2016 at 10:35 am
Dec 18, 2015 Donald Trump Is The Establishment Candidate

While his rise in the polls is attributed to his challenging the establishment and the political status quo, let's look at the many ways Donald Trump, when it comes to his political positions, represents that very same status quo. From the Fed, to war, to civil liberties, the "anti-establishment"? Trump takes no positions not already endorsed by the establishment.

https://youtu.be/vt2NPP1z-y8

[Jun 11, 2017] Bernie would have won.

Jun 11, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

Christopher H., June 09, 2017 at 06:29 PM

"Alas the pretend progressives here cannot be bothered."

PGL you're the only "pretend progressive" here. Real leftists do well in an election and so PGL throws a little temper tantrum. You can't make him discuss it! He won't admit he was wrong! He supported Corbyn even though he didn't talk about the election once during the entire campaign. What a tedious phoney.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/opinion/how-jeremy-corbyn-proved-the-haters-wrong.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

How Jeremy Corbyn Proved the Haters Wrong

By RACHEL SHABI
JUNE 9, 2017

LONDON - Among the many satisfying outcomes of Britain's general election has been the roll call of pundits reeling out apologies for getting it so wrong. The Labour Party has, against all odds, surged to take a 40 percent share of the vote, more than it has won in years. And so the nation's commentariat, who had confidently thought that the party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership would be wiped off the political map, are now eating giant slices of humble pie.

Nobody is in politics to gloat. Labour's leadership team and supporters alike want the party to win not for the sake of winning, but in order to bring Labour's economic and social agenda to Britain, to measurably improve people's lives. Still, a little schadenfreude is definitely in order.

Mr. Corbyn, from the left of the party, unexpectedly took its helm in 2015 after a rule change allowed, for the first time, rank-and-file members to have an equal vote for their leader. And he has been ridiculed, dismissed and bemoaned ever since. Cast as an incongruous combination of incompetent beardy old man and peacenik terrorist sympathizer, Mr. Corbyn faced down a leadership challenge from his own party about a year ago and constant sniping, criticism and calls for him to quit throughout.

The political and pundit classes, in their wisdom, thought it entirely inconceivable that someone like him - so unpolished, so left wing - could ever persuade voters. After Britain's referendum decision, last June, to leave the European Union, more scathing criticism was piled upon the Labour leader for his decision to, well, accept the democratic referendum decision, however bad it was.

By the time Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap election six weeks ago, her party ran a 20-point poll lead ahead of Labour and her personal approval ratings were sky high while Mr. Corbyn's were abysmally low. Liberal pundits were aghast at the thought of the Labour Party self-destructing under Mr. Corbyn's supposedly toxic leadership. He was once again urged to step down.

Then the campaign started - and every prediction was turned on its head. The well-funded, hyper-efficient Conservatives and their chorus of supporters in Britain's mostly right-wing press ran a terrible campaign. Mrs. May came across as robotic and out of touch; she didn't seem to like engaging with the press, much less the public. The more people saw of her, the more her ratings sank.

For Mr. Corbyn, the opposite was true. His detractors said his appeal was limited to a niche of radical left activists, but in reality his quiet confidence, credibility and integrity - so refreshing at a time when politicians are viewed as untrustworthy careerists - drew crowds of enthusiastic supporters to ever-growing rallies. At one point, arriving to a televised debate just over a week before the election, he was greeted with solid cheers en route to the event. That was when his leadership team sensed something significant was taking place.

Part of this extraordinary success was a result of the party's campaign. Fun, energetic, innovative and inspiring, it created its own momentum, with organic support mushrooming out of the most unlikely places, flooding social media with viral memes and messages: Rappers and D.J.s, soccer players, economists and television personalities alike climbed aboard the Corbyn project. Momentum, a grass-roots organization of Corbyn supporters, activated the party's estimated 500,000 members - many of whom had joined because Mr. Corbyn was elected as leader - into canvassing efforts across the country, including, crucially, in up-for-grabs districts. Supporters were further encouraged by the sight of Labour candidates demolishing long-hated Conservatives on television, appearances that were swiftly turned into video clips and raced around the internet.

But the main mobilizer of support was the party's politics. For decades, Labour has been resolutely centrist, essentially offering a slightly kinder version of neoliberal consensus politics. Those on the left had long said that this was what had caused the party's slow decline, a hemorrhaging of support from its traditional working-class voters. With Mr. Corbyn at its helm, the party tacked firmly to the left, proposing to tax the few for the benefit of the many and offering major national investment projects, funding for the welfare state, the scrapping of university tuition fees and the re-nationalization of rail and energy companies.

It was a hopeful vision for a fairer society, offered at a time when the country is experiencing wage stagnation and spiraling living costs, with many buckling under because of the economic crash of 2008 and the Conservative Party's savage austerity cuts that followed. Given the chance for the first time in decades to vote for something else, something better, a surprising number of voters took it. Young people, in particular, seized this offer: With youth turnout unusually high at 72 percent, it's clear that Labour brought them to the ballot box in droves.

Labour's shock comeback has tugged the party, along with Britain's political landscape, and the range of acceptable discourse back to the left. In a hung Parliament, the Conservatives still came out of the election as the main party, and now looks set to go into coalition government with the homophobic, anti-abortion Democratic Unionist Party. But the Conservatives are now a maimed party with a discredited leader - weaknesses to be seized upon and exploited by a now united and empowered Labour party.

Christopher H. - , June 09, 2017 at 06:34 PM
Bernie would have won.
im1dc - , June 09, 2017 at 06:56 PM
Bernie couldn't beat Hillary therefore Bernie would not have won b/c he DIDN'T.
Christopher H. - , June 09, 2017 at 07:45 PM
Bernie would have won if he had been the nominee. Not my fault the establishment Democrats wanted to lose again.
Gibbon1 - , June 10, 2017 at 03:31 AM
The grifters in the party didn't lose you dope. They all got paid. It's all so very much like making a movie. So what if it didn't break even at the box office, everyone involved got theirs.

Seriously though you are correct. Sanders would have won against Trump. Everyone knows that, except the die hard centerist Democrats that are trying hard not to look in mirror.

Sanjait - , June 10, 2017 at 08:47 AM
You wingnuts cant seem to comprehend that the Democratic primaries
was a series of state elections in which Hillary legitimately got more voters to vote for her. They picked Hillary, for all your bleating about "elites."
Christopher H. - , June 10, 2017 at 09:39 AM
Sandy, Sandy, so naive.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron - , June 10, 2017 at 09:46 AM
Krugman posited once that Bernie might win the nomination by beating Hillary with disaffected white voters in the red states despite being ultimately unelectable because of his radical views in the general election. Of course that is not at all what happened.
Christopher H. - , June 10, 2017 at 10:09 AM
This is what Krugman wrote, which turned out to be exactly wrong.

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/populism-and-the-politics-of-health/

"....This ties in with an important recent piece by Zack Beauchamp on the striking degree to which left-wing economics fails, in practice, to counter right-wing populism; basically, Sandersism has failed everywhere it has been tried. Why?

The answer, presumably, is that what we call populism is really in large degree white identity politics, which can't be addressed by promising universal benefits. Among other things, these "populist" voters now live in a media bubble, getting their news from sources that play to their identity-politics desires, which means that even if you offer them a better deal, they won't hear about it or believe it if told. For sure many if not most of those who gained health coverage thanks to Obamacare have no idea that's what happened.

That said, taking the benefits away would probably get their attention, and maybe even open their eyes to the extent to which they are suffering to provide tax cuts to the rich.

In Europe, right-wing parties probably don't face the same dilemma; they're preaching herrenvolk social democracy, a welfare state but only for people who look like you. In America, however, Trump_vs_deep_state is faux populism that appeals to white identity but actually serves plutocrats. That fundamental contradiction is now out in the open."

RC AKA Darryl, Ron - , June 11, 2017 at 03:55 AM
I recall something more damning, but have not been able to find it after repeated attempts. My belief is that it was obviously so far off the mark that it has been taken down off Krugman's NYT blog and maybe any reference to it here at EV as well.

[Jun 10, 2017] We actually know nothing. Only rumors (aka fake news ) from neoliberal MSM.

Notable quotes:
"... "We also know that a number of state election officials computers were hacked by Russia " ..."
"... BTW Comey in his testimony blow up the whole neoliberal MSM narrative about Trump betrayal and Russian agents of influence. ..."
Jun 10, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

kurt , June 09, 2017 at 10:53 AM

We also know for certain that there were numerous violations of the voting rights act due to Crosscheck and other caging operations. We also know that a number of state election officials computers were hacked by Russia - and I have seen the guts of those Diabold machines and even with my limited programing skills I could hack one and cover my tracks.
libezkova, June 09, 2017 at 10:15 PM
"We also know that a number of state election officials computers were hacked by Russia "

We actually know nothing. Only rumors (aka "fake news") from neoliberal MSM.

So I assume that you have access to classified materials and was allowed to discuss them in blogs. Good for you ;-)

BTW Comey in his testimony blow up the whole neoliberal MSM narrative about Trump betrayal and Russian agents of influence.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/336960-comey-rips-media-for-dead-wrong-russia-stories

== quote ==

New York Times responds to Comey's challenge of its story Comey rips media for 'dead wrong' Russia stories MORE (R-Ark.) asked the former FBI director about a bombshell New York Times report from Feb. 14 titled "Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence."

"Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials," the Times wrote. Cotton asked Comey if that story was "almost entirely wrong," and Comey said that it was.

The Times has run one meaningful correction to that report, saying it overstated the number of people whom the FBI has examined. The Times report did note, however, that so far intelligence officials had seen no evidence of "cooperation" between the Trump campaign and Russia.

[Jun 10, 2017] Mike Morells Kill-Russians Advice by Ray McGovern

Notable quotes:
"... Decision Points ..."
"... At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, ..."
"... Not surprisingly, Tenet speaks well of his protégé and former executive assistant Morell. But he also reveals that Morell "coordinated the CIA review" of Secretary of State Colin Powell's infamous Feb. 5, 2003 speech to the United Nations – a dubious distinction if there ever was one. ..."
"... The Great War of Our Time ..."
"... It is sad to have to remind folks almost 14 years later that the "intelligence" was not "mistaken;" it was fraudulent from the get-go. Announcing on June 5, 2008, the bipartisan conclusions from a five-year study by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller described the intelligence conjured up to "justify" war on Iraq as "uncorroborated, contradicted, or even non-existent." ..."
"... In October 2003, the 1,200-member "Iraq Survey Group" commissioned by Tenet to find those elusive WMD in Iraq had already reported that six months of intensive work had turned up no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. By then, the U.S.-sponsored search for WMD had already cost $300 million, with the final bill expected to top $1 billion. ..."
"... The Great War of Our Time ..."
"... Reading his book and watching him respond to those softball pitches from Charlie Rose on Monday, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that glibness, vacuousness and ambition can get you to the very top of U.S. intelligence in the Twenty-first Century – and can also make you a devoted fan of whoever is likely to be the next President. ..."
"... Well, Morell is at least consistent. More telling, this gibberish is music to the ears of those whom Pope Francis, speaking to Congress last September, referred to as the "blood-drenched" arms traders. Morell seems to be counting on his deep insights being music to the ears of Hillary Clinton, as well. ..."
"... As for Morell's claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is somehow controlling Donald Trump, well, even Charlie Rose had stomach problems with that and with Morell's "explanation." In the Times op-ed, Morell wrote: "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." ..."
"... However, since Morell apparently has no evidence that Trump was "recruited," which would make the Republican presidential nominee essentially a traitor, he throws in the caveat "unwitting." Such an ugly charge is on par with Trump's recent hyperbolic claim that President Obama was the "founder" of ISIS. ..."
"... The American psyche has been shaped by oligarchy media for selfish motives. Exceptionalism, fear, propaganda and the Kardashians keep the vulnerable public in line with their corporate goals, entertained and uninformed. The Internet is changing that, as evidenced by Bernie's rise. ..."
"... This CIA psychopath was the one who purportedly told pet goat Bush upon Air Force One that dark day, that the ongoing "attack" was most likely Bin Laden. Morell gave Bush the CIA's daily intelligence briefings. And this psychopath was with Obama when Bin Laden was "killed". ..."
Aug 12, 2016 | www.commondreams.org

Published on Friday, by Consortium News Mike Morell's Kill-Russians Advice Washington's foreign policy hot shots are flexing their rhetorical, warmongering muscles to impress Hillary Clinton, including ex-CIA acting director Morell who calls for killing Russians and Iranians by Ray McGovern

33 Comments A closer look at the record of Mike Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, is warranted. (Photo: AP) Perhaps former CIA acting director Michael Morell's shamefully provocative rhetoric toward Russia and Iran will prove too unhinged even for Hillary Clinton. It appears equally likely that it will succeed in earning him a senior job in a possible Clinton administration, so it behooves us to have a closer look at Morell's record.

My initial reaction of disbelief and anger was the same as that of my VIPS colleague, Larry Johnson, and the points Larry made about Morell's behavior in the Benghazi caper, Iran, Syria, needlessly baiting nuclear-armed Russia, and how to put a "scare" into Bashar al-Assad give ample support to Larry's characterization of Morell's comments as "reckless and vapid." What follows is an attempt to round out the picture on the ambitious 57-year-old Morell.

I suppose we need to start with Morell telling PBS/CBS interviewer Charlie Rose on Aug. 8 that he (Morell) wanted to "make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. make the Russians pay a price in Syria."

Rose: "We make them pay the price by killing Russians?"

Morell: "Yeah."

Rose: "And killing Iranians?"

Morell: "Yes You don't tell the world about it. But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran."

You might ask what excellent adventure earned Morell his latest appearance with Charlie Rose? It was a highly unusual Aug. 5 New York Times op-ed titled "I ran the CIA Now I'm Endorsing Hillary Clinton."

Peabody award winner Rose - having made no secret of how much he admires the glib, smooth-talking Morell - performed true to form. Indeed, he has interviewed him every other month, on average, over the past two years, while Morell has been a national security analyst for CBS.

This interview , though, is a must for those interested in gauging the caliber of bureaucrats who have bubbled to the top of the CIA since the disastrous tenure of George Tenet (sorry, the interview goes on and on for 46 minutes).

A Heavy Duty

Such interviews are a burden for unreconstructed, fact-based analysts of the old school. In a word, they are required to watch them, just as they must plow through the turgid prose of "tell-it-all" memoirs. But due diligence can sometimes harvest an occasional grain of wheat among the chaff.

For example, George W. Bush's memoir, Decision Points , included a passage the former president seems to have written himself. Was Bush relieved to learn, just 15 months before he left office, the "high-confidence," unanimous judgment of the U.S. intelligence community that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003 and had not resumed work on such weapons? No way!

In his memoir, he complains bitterly that this judgment in that key 2007 National Intelligence Estimate "tied my hands on the military side. After the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?" No, I am not making this up. He wrote that.

In another sometimes inadvertently revealing memoir, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, CIA Director George Tenet described Michael Morell, whom he picked to be CIA's briefer of President George W. Bush, in these terms: "Wiry, youthful looking, and extremely bright, Mike speaks in staccato-like bursts that get to the bottom line very quickly. He and George Bush hit it off almost immediately. Mike was the perfect guy for us to have by the commander-in-chief's side."

Wonder what Morell was telling Bush about those "weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" and the alleged ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Was Morell winking at Bush the same way Tenet winked at the head of British intelligence on July 20, 2002, telling him that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq?

High on Morell

Not surprisingly, Tenet speaks well of his protégé and former executive assistant Morell. But he also reveals that Morell "coordinated the CIA review" of Secretary of State Colin Powell's infamous Feb. 5, 2003 speech to the United Nations – a dubious distinction if there ever was one.

So Morell reviewed the "intelligence" that went into Powell's thoroughly deceptive account of the Iraqi threat! Powell later called that dramatic speech, which wowed Washington's media and foreign policy elites and was used to browbeat the few remaining dissenters into silence, a "blot" on his record.

In Morell's own memoir, The Great War of Our Time , Morell apologized to former Secretary of State Powell for the bogus CIA intelligence that found its way into Powell's address. Morell told CBS: "I thought it important to do so because he went out there and made this case, and we were wrong."

It is sad to have to remind folks almost 14 years later that the "intelligence" was not "mistaken;" it was fraudulent from the get-go. Announcing on June 5, 2008, the bipartisan conclusions from a five-year study by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller described the intelligence conjured up to "justify" war on Iraq as "uncorroborated, contradicted, or even non-existent."

It strains credulity beyond the breaking point to think that Michael Morell was unaware of the fraudulent nature of the WMD propaganda campaign. Yet, like all too many others, he kept quiet and got promoted.

Out of Harm's Way

For services rendered, Tenet rescued Morell from the center of the storm, so to speak, sending him to a plum posting in London, leaving the hapless Stu Cohen holding the bag. Cohen had been acting director of the National Intelligence Council and nominal manager of the infamous Oct. 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate warning about Iraq's [non-existent] WMD.

Cohen made a valiant attempt to defend the indefensible in late November 2003, and was still holding out some hope that WMD would be found. He noted, however, "If we eventually are proved wrong - that is, that there were no weapons of mass destruction and the WMD programs were dormant or abandoned – the American people will be told the truth " And then Stu disappeared into the woodwork.

In October 2003, the 1,200-member "Iraq Survey Group" commissioned by Tenet to find those elusive WMD in Iraq had already reported that six months of intensive work had turned up no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. By then, the U.S.-sponsored search for WMD had already cost $300 million, with the final bill expected to top $1 billion.

In Morell's The Great War of Our Time , he writes, "In the summer of 2003 I became CIA's senior focal point for liaison with the analytic community in the United Kingdom." He notes that one of the "dominant" issues, until he left the U.K. in early 2006, was "Iraq, namely our failure to find weapons of mass destruction." (It was a PR problem; Prime Minister Tony Blair and Morell's opposite numbers in British intelligence were fully complicit in the "dodgy-dossier" type of intelligence.)

When the storm subsided, Morell came back from London to bigger and better things. He was appointed the CIA's first associate deputy director from 2006 to 2008, and then director for intelligence until moving up to become CIA's deputy director (and twice acting director) from 2010 until 2013.

Reading his book and watching him respond to those softball pitches from Charlie Rose on Monday, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that glibness, vacuousness and ambition can get you to the very top of U.S. intelligence in the Twenty-first Century – and can also make you a devoted fan of whoever is likely to be the next President.

'Wisdom' on China

For those who did not make it to the very end in watching the most recent Michael-and-Charlie show, here is an example of what Morell and Rose both seem to consider trenchant analysis. Addressing the issue of U.S. relations with China, Morell described the following as a main "negative:"

"We both have large militaries in the same place on the planet, the Pacific. What does that mean? It means you have to plan for war against each other, and we both do; it means you have to equip yourself with weapons systems for war against each other, which both of us do; and it means you have to exercise those forces for war against each other, and both of us do. And both sides see all of three of those things. That leads to a natural tension and pulls you apart. "

Those who got to the end of Morell's book had already been able to assimilate that wisdom on page 325:

"The negative side [regarding relations with China] includes the fact that each country needs to prepare for war against each other (because our militaries are in close proximity to each other). Each plans for such a war, each trains for it, and each must equip its forces with the modern weaponry to fight it [leading] to tension in the relationship. "

Well, Morell is at least consistent. More telling, this gibberish is music to the ears of those whom Pope Francis, speaking to Congress last September, referred to as the "blood-drenched" arms traders. Morell seems to be counting on his deep insights being music to the ears of Hillary Clinton, as well.

As for Morell's claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is somehow controlling Donald Trump, well, even Charlie Rose had stomach problems with that and with Morell's "explanation." In the Times op-ed, Morell wrote: "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

Let the bizarre-ness of that claim sink in, since it is professionally impossible to recruit an agent who is unwitting of being an agent, since an agent is someone who follows instructions from a control officer.

However, since Morell apparently has no evidence that Trump was "recruited," which would make the Republican presidential nominee essentially a traitor, he throws in the caveat "unwitting." Such an ugly charge is on par with Trump's recent hyperbolic claim that President Obama was the "founder" of ISIS.

Looking back at Morell's record, it was not hard to see all this coming, as Morell rose higher and higher in a system that rewards deserving sycophants. I addressed this five years ago in an article titled "Rise of Another CIA Yes Man." That piece elicited many interesting comments from senior intelligence officers who knew Morell personally; some of those comments are tucked into the end of the article. © 2017 Consortium News Ray McGovern Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Dede Aug '16

I will watch for this creep to show up in Clinton's administration as these two seem to be peas in a pod.
Hillary has a hard time relating to normal people on the campaign trail because her center of focus is in foreign policy. It stands to reason that she will want people with the kill instinct around her. Being a neocon at heart, her need for accurate intelligence is small and her desire has always been to go after Iran for Bibi and Russia, well, just because they are the go to enemy.
Russia is standing in the way of taking out Assad and clearing a path through Syria to Iran.
SuspiraDeProfundis Aug '16
Rest assured that is a public official in Russia publicly stated to a national TV audience that Russia needed to start killing Americans so as to send a message, the western media would be in an uproar proclaiming it as a unacceptable provocation.

Entire hours of broadcasts on multiple "News shows" would invite in pundits to make the most dire of pronouncements all concluding this showing Russia as a nation seeking war and conflict.

A simple fact. It is the Government of the USA that is the bully here and that same Government is the greatest threat to world peace on this globe. It is the USA that heads the "Empire of Evil".

planetearth Aug '16
This Morell could use a little dose of his own medicine.
Callmeskeptical Aug '16
PonyBoy

I say, kill Mike Morell and save our treasury trillions.

Careful, Pony. Unless you're an FBI instigator, this suggestion could elicit a visit from that agency.

Siouxrose1 Aug '16
If it weren't for the CIA--an organization that passes out licenses to kill the way the old church of Rome handed out "Indulgences" to its wealthiest donors--someone like Mike Morrell would be forced to find his calling as a street smart serial killer.

"It is sad to have to remind folks almost 14 years later that the "intelligence" was not "mistaken;" it was fraudulent from the get-go. Announcing on June 5, 2008, the bipartisan conclusions from a five-year study by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller described the intelligence conjured up to "justify" war on Iraq as "uncorroborated, contradicted, or even non-existent."

It's important to keep in mind that the CIA constantly manufactures false cases, false flags, bogus assassinations, and that makes lying child's play. One does it enough and their conscience (presuming they had one to begin with) goes cold and callous.

Morrell would be just as comfortable serving Hitler as he would an American dictator or head of state.

Siouxrose1 Aug '16
PonyBoy Advocating violence is never wise.

If there weren't entrenched, empowered interests BENT upon war, maniacal minds like that of Morrell would not be tolerated... nor used.

Someone had to pretend that the false pretexts were true. Imagine if the money spent on searching for weapons they KNEW didn't exist instead went to improving life for citizens of the targeted nations? But then, there'd be no terrorism; and without terrorism, how could the now gargantuan military infrastructure aimed at controlling citizens (as the global elites tighten the fiscal screws) come into place?

These professional cons and killers (like felons placed into jail cells where they learn from others how to improve "their craft") gained much from the writings of Goebbels. There must be an outside enemy threat made existentially real... and then, all Constitutional liberties can be rescinded under the guise of protecting citizens.

Notice all the recent terrorist events. Some are no doubt real; but others are false flags and the net impact of all of this is that the entire world is now perceived (by the spooks and the Pentagon) as a battleground.

And when there are vast, well-organized armies, it creates on the part of those brave enough to resist, ingenious forms of asymmetric warfare. Therefore, more and more unexpected places will indeed blow up. Meanwhile, how much $ is dumped into surveillance which NEVER stops these events? I guess the uniformed spooks are too busy in forums like this one, watching the Left (intellectuals, poets, labor leaders, and those who refuse to see things the way elites intend for citizens to see things) and/or watching porn... to notice.

Welcome to theater of the absurd. It's everywhere these days!

George_III Aug '16
This bloke is a terrorist by anybody's dictionary definition. Simple.

The last person who thought that killing Russians was a good idea ended up committing suicide just before the Russians got to his bunker in Berlin. This Morrell character would have us all commit nuclear suicide so as to fulfill his insane fantasy.

Siouxrose1 Aug '16
SuspiraDeProfundis Have you seen this material? It's very compelling: WORLD IS ON FIRE Dr Paul Craig Roberts
Lorenzo_LaRue Aug '16
PonyBoy One stupid (C)ommittee to (I)ntervene (A)nywhere dick dead, wow. How about 'kill' the Pentagon which seems to be the root of the problem? Not a person but the whole phkn deal. All those folks could 'maybe' just go 'get a life' instead of being terminal perverts.
Callmeskeptical Aug '16
Siouxrose1:

Have you seen this material? It's very compelling:

Yes. This particular interview includes much of what PCR has been discussing for the past many months. I'm surprised, though, that he left out specifically discussing the U.S. government's war against alternate currencies to the dollar that resulted in the destruction of Libya (and the death of Gaddafi) and now all of the covert and overt actions against the BRICS governments.

Articles addressing these continuing issues are normally first published on the following sites:

CounterPunch 3
Global Research 1
Paul Craig Roberts 3
The Saker 2
The Duran 3

Clovis Aug '16
Will we ever be rid of these psychopaths?
bushrodl Aug '16
Will the real villain please stand up? And they all stood!
stiffupperflipflop Aug '16 1
Dede

He may end up paired up with Ted Cruz as Secretaries of State and Defense. Improbable? Not to me. Is anything improbable any more?

It used to be that people in positions in the State and Defense Departments may have been murdering perceived enemies of the State, but they didn't go speaking out about it publicly. They tried to maintain the image that the USA only killed in self defense like the white hat heroes of the old cowboy movies, Roy Rogers and all like that, where the black hat bad guys always had to reach for their " shooting irons' first so they could be plugged fair and square.

That ethic is long gone and was probably never real but the idea was maintained. But now we have President BO not exactly bragging about his "drone kill list" but not in any way distancing himself from public knowledge of it either. Kissengerian "realpolitik" and Big Henry is HRC's hero and role model so she is positioned to become the Murder Mama of the west, ready to show them Chinese and Ruskies who's ready to be fastest straight shootin'ist gun slinger in the global town Main Street with Cruz and Morrell at her flanks like the Earp Brothers at the OK Corral with Doc Holliday Kissinger limping along right there with 'em

natureboy Aug '16
The fact that murderous authoritarian conservatives get ahead in government and business far better than peace loving, egalitarian liberals, says a lot about the American psychic.
Dede Aug '16
stiffupperflipflop

They don't feel they have to hide their true intentions like they used to.

Hillary is barely hiding her lust for power and the wars she wants to make. The Republicans have never tried to hide it.

Siouxrose11 Aug '16
Clovis The issue is not so much to be rid of them, but rather not to sustain a legal, financial, cultural, political, and tactical infrastructure that REWARDS them and counts on them to effortlessly enact the dirty work of Empire.

Essentially, the Shock Doctrine handbook might as well define "sociopath" as a required bona fide in the career search for the right candidates.

Siouxrose11 Aug '16
natureboy:

says a lot about the American psychic

To the contrary, it says a lot about the Power Structure and who it invites in (to positions of influence) and why. There is NO logic behind posts that continually turn the problem of sociopaths in empowered positions onto The People.

The Page and Gilens Study made it clear that The People's Will is NOT what those in government positions institute.

Find any long-sustained society on this planet (since the onset of patriarchy) that doesn't evidence a political/social/economic hierarchy?

The most egalitarian nations, Europe's social Democracies have hardly achieved full Democratic representation or full equality but they go much further than "political business as usual" within the U.S.

The bottom line is that in most nations there have been long-established family dynasties. And when 50 people hold half the nation's wealth or even half the world's wealth, there is no possible way that ordinary citizens can direct policies.

This much concentrated wealth taints all systems of would-be Democratic representation.

And the problem didn't arise overnight. It's been long-standing.

Our own nation has only enjoyed short periods where power, privilege, and economic opportunity were somewhat widely shared. To the Black community that marker is yet to be realized and ditto for many Hispanics and women.

Nonetheless, the elites like shadowy creatures built up their think tank influence in the shadows and patiently dismembered the New Deal piece by piece over the course of the past 3-4 decades.

When processes are done by stealth and through gradual accommodation, and when the mass media's "experts" all lie about what's going on, and when false flags are used to decimate civil liberties and to justify massive crackdowns on citizens... I think those persons enacting these strategies should be held as the accountable parties... rather than those being done unto.

I mean how different is this castigation than that which justifies the violence on the part of the white police officer when he and his gang of Neanderthals let loose with premeditated deadly force against a Black kid or man who is unarmed?

How different is if from the mindset that knocks down the doors of families living in their own nations! In Afghanistan, Iraq, etc... and then if someone gets shot, it's the fault of those under attack?

This is the mindset of the rapist/dominator. It has NO place in a would-be Progressive forum yet I come up against it daily. That is why I am SURE that many who post here (with regularity under a constantly changing BATTERY of screen names) are in the military or otherwise in some branch of its now farmed out "Intelligence-gathering" Hydra.

natureboy Aug '16
Siouxrose11 :
natureboy:

says a lot about the American psychic

To the contrary, it says a lot about the Power Structure and who it invites in (to positions of influence) and why.

There is NO logic behind posts that continually turn the problem of sociopaths in empowered positions onto The People.

The American psyche has been shaped by oligarchy media for selfish motives. Exceptionalism, fear, propaganda and the Kardashians keep the vulnerable public in line with their corporate goals, entertained and uninformed. The Internet is changing that, as evidenced by Bernie's rise.

sierra Aug '16
The only word description I have of Charlie Rose is, "smarmy"......politically smarmy...ok, two words.

peace

sierra Aug '16
SuspiraDeProfundis

"Killing Russians"....wasn't that the infamous Zbigniew Brzezinski's Afghanistan doctrine?

And we all know how well that went!!!!!!!
peace

sierra Aug '16
Siouxrose1 Destroy the CIA and one takes "one step" towards dismantling the National Security State and the "Deep State"
peace
Siouxrose11 Aug '16
sierra How could anyone destroy the CIA? It's like roaches hiding behind the woodwork.

Besides, any position that advocates a violent solution adds to the problem of violence in this world.

I am waiting for Lofgren's book on the Deep State. I ordered a paperback copy back in January not realizing that it would not be published till this coming September.

I am well-aware of the Deep State and its relationship to NSA and CIA and lots more.

Psychedelic_Chicken Aug '16
This CIA psychopath was the one who purportedly told pet goat Bush upon Air Force One that dark day, that the ongoing "attack" was most likely Bin Laden. Morell gave Bush the CIA's daily intelligence briefings. And this psychopath was with Obama when Bin Laden was "killed".

But hey, I'm one of those tin foil hat wearing Truthers. Excuse me for questioning these jerks all of these years later.

George_III Aug '16
natureboy It's the human "psyche". Greed unifies, but ideals fragment as each idealist tries to demonstrate how perfect they are in contrast to the other idealists.

[Jun 10, 2017] Comey and Mueller Russiagates Mythical Heroes

Notable quotes:
"... Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any "war crimes files" were made to disappear. Not only did "collect it all" surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller's (and then Comey's) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities. ..."
"... Mueller didn't speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn't speak out against torture. He didn't speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn't tell the truth about 9/11. He is just "their man." ..."
"... Since Mueller was apparently appointed at least in part as a result of Comey's leak, and no evidence has been shown of the phony Russia charges despite months of possibly extra-legal digging, Mueller's appointment should be cancelled and his office liquidated if that can be done in some fashion. If not, may be he should show more integrity than has heretofore been the case and liquidate the office himself. ..."
"... My old San Fran days memory recalls that "liberal" Democrat Diane Feinstein nominated neo-nazi Republican Mueller to US Attorney for N. California. I recall some thought because her husband was under investigation for a corrupt arms deal. That's just my memory ..."
"... So Clinton's odd lesbian Attorney General helped boost a Republican to greater powers. ..."
"... He was referring specifically to a widely publicized Sept. 14 statement in which he offered assurances - later proved to be false - that the bureau had no warning that terrorists might be training in American flight schools. On Sept. 17, Mr. Mueller went further, saying he knew of "no warning signs" of any sort of attack. ..."
"... Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who is on the Judiciary Committee, said his staff investigators would explore the accusations made by the Minneapolis agent, Coleen Rowley, that Mr. Mueller and other senior F.B.I. officials had intentionally shaded the truth about the investigation last summer of Zacarias Moussaoui." ..."
"... To summarize, we have a "Republican" from Northern California nominated by a "liberal" Democrat to become part of the Clinton "Justice" department who played a key role as FBI Director to cover 9-11. He now reappears from the grave with great praise from Democrats openly plotting to overthrow President Trump to investigate absurdly silly things like speaking to Russian diplomats. Let us recall Trump openly expressed doubts about the 9-11 twin towers ruse on 9-11! ..."
"... The 911 cover up team is now about to take President Trump down over yet another false flag, and this team would include the leadership of both parties. How convenient that the Democrats are doing the dirty work so that Fox News and the rest can now engage in covering up the Republicans' behind-the-scenes role in all this. ..."
"... March 07, 2017 CIA Leak: "Russian Election Hackers" May Work In Langley ..."
"... Attribution of cyber-intrusions and attacks is nearly impossible. A well executed attack can not be traced back to its culprit. If there are some trails that seem attributable one should be very cautions following them. They are likely faked. ..."
"... Although many details are still hazy because of secrecy – and further befogged by politics – it appears House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was informed last week about invasive electronic surveillance of senior U.S. government officials and, in turn, passed that information onto President Trump. ..."
"... The 9/11 myth is a multi-layered deception. Those within the kosher parameters of the 9/11 cult include the following: ..."
Jun 10, 2017 | www.unz.com

Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law enforcement figures. Perhaps if they included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.

Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration (Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence.

TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a " bombshell memo " to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller's having so misled everyone after 9/11. Although he bore no personal responsibility for intelligence failures before the attack, since he only became FBI Director a week before, Mueller denied or downplayed the significance of warnings that had poured in yet were all ignored or mishandled during the Spring and Summer of 2001.

Bush Administration officials had circled the wagons and refused to publicly own up to what the 9/11 Commission eventually concluded, "that the system had been blinking red ." Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which a FBI agent witness termed " criminal negligence " in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely manner. (Some failures were never fixed at all.)

Worse, Bush and Cheney used that post 9/11 period of obfuscation to "roll out" their misbegotten "war on terror," which only served to exponentially increase worldwide terrorism .

Unfulfilled Promise

I wanted to believe Director Mueller when he expressed some regret in our personal meeting the night before we both testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He told me he was seeking improvements and that I should not hesitate to contact him if I ever witnessed a similar situation to what was behind the FBI's pre 9/11 failures.

A few months later, when it appeared he was acceding to Bush-Cheney's ginning up intelligence to launch the unjustified, counterproductive and illegal war on Iraq, I took Mueller up on his offer, emailing him my concerns in late February 2003. Mueller knew, for instance, that Vice President Dick Cheney's claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. He also never responded to my email.

Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the " post 9/11 round-up " of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI "progress" in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists .

A History of Failure

Long before he became FBI Director, serious questions existed about Mueller's role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI's illicit deals with mobster Whitey Bulger and other "top echelon" informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang.

Current media applause omits the fact that former FBI Director Mueller was the top official in charge of the Anthrax terror fiasco investigation into those 2001 murders , which targeted an innocent man (Steven Hatfill) whose lawsuit eventually forced the FBI to pay $5 million in compensation. Mueller's FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of "national security letters" to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating "terrorism."

For his part, Deputy Attorney General James Comey , too, went along with the abuses of Bush and Cheney after 9/11 and signed off on a number of highly illegal programs including warrantless surveillance of Americans and torture of captives . Comey also defended the Bush Administration's three-year-long detention of an American citizen without charges or right to counsel.

Up to the March 2004 night in Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room, both Comey and Mueller were complicit with implementing a form of martial law, perpetrated via secret Office of Legal Counsel memos mainly written by John Yoo and predicated upon Yoo's singular theories of absolute "imperial" or "war presidency" powers, and requiring Ashcroft every 90 days to renew certification of a "state of emergency."

The Comey/Mueller Myth

What's not well understood is that Comey's and Mueller's joint intervention to stop Bush's men from forcing the sick Attorney General to sign the certification that night was a short-lived moment. A few days later, they all simply went back to the drawing board to draft new legal loopholes to continue the same (unconstitutional) surveillance of Americans.

The mythology of this episode, repeated endlessly throughout the press, is that Comey and Mueller did something significant and lasting in that hospital room. They didn't. Only the legal rationale for their unconstitutional actions was tweaked.

Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any "war crimes files" were made to disappear. Not only did "collect it all" surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller's (and then Comey's) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.

ORDER IT NOW

Neither Comey nor Mueller - who are reported to be " joined at the hip " - deserve their current lionization among politicians and mainstream media. Instead of Jimmy Stewart-like "G-men" with reputations for principled integrity, the two close confidants and collaborators merely proved themselves, along with former CIA Director George "Slam Dunk" Tenet, reliably politicized sycophants, enmeshing themselves in a series of wrongful abuses of power along with official incompetence.

It seems clear that based on his history and close "partnership" with Comey, called "one of the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen," Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.

Mueller didn't speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn't speak out against torture. He didn't speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn't tell the truth about 9/11. He is just "their man."

Coleen Rowley , a retired FBI special agent and division legal counsel whose May 2002 memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures, was named one of TIME magazine's "Persons of the Year" in 2002. Her 2003 letter to Robert Mueller in opposition to launching the Iraq War is archived in full text on the NYT and her 2013 op-ed entitled " Questions for the FBI Nominee " was published on the day of James Comey's confirmation hearing. This piece will also be cross-posted on Rowley's Huffington Post page.

Dan Hayes June 9, 2017 at 3:46 am GMT

As Colleen Rowley has so thoroughly and unequivocally demonstrated here, both Comey and Mueller are living examples of the Peter Principle (that managers rise to the level of their incompetence).

exiled off mainstreet Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 4:24 am GMT

According to Jonathan Turley, one of the best and most respected legal experts, Comey may have violated the law using his professor friend to leak what he thought was an incriminating memorandum documenting Trump's "hope" that he would lay off Flynn because Flynn was a "good guy." Even torture advocate Dershowitz, who, for his obvious faults, is a talented lawyer, indicates that it is preposterous to call this "obstruction of justice" when Trump had the power to pardon anybody. Meanwhile, the fact that Comey didn't find it necessary to document his interrogation of the harpy on the "matter" of her email server reveals that he seemed totally willing for justice to be obstructed in a more obvious fashion if he was on board with those doing the obstructing. It also came out that some of his testimony today appears to contradict statements he made under oath to Senator Grassley in a hearing dated May 3.

Since Mueller was apparently appointed at least in part as a result of Comey's leak, and no evidence has been shown of the phony Russia charges despite months of possibly extra-legal digging, Mueller's appointment should be cancelled and his office liquidated if that can be done in some fashion. If not, may be he should show more integrity than has heretofore been the case and liquidate the office himself.

Bill Jones Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 5:18 am GMT

Excellent piece. Not a dam word I can find fault with.

Carlton Meyer Website Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 5:31 am GMT

My old San Fran days memory recalls that "liberal" Democrat Diane Feinstein nominated neo-nazi Republican Mueller to US Attorney for N. California. I recall some thought because her husband was under investigation for a corrupt arms deal. That's just my memory

There are now lots of current news stories of Feinstein and open coup plotter Schumer excited about Muller's appointment to convict Trump for something. This from her own website:

https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?id=FEA7C76A-E029-49AF-98F2-5446AABFAD22

May 17 2017

Washington-Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today released the following statement on the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel: "The appointment of Bob Mueller as special counsel for the Russia investigation is a good first step to get to the bottom of the many questions we have about Russian interference in our election and possible ties to the president.

"Bob was a fine U.S. attorney, a great FBI director and there's no better person who could be asked to perform this function. He is respected, he is talented and he has the knowledge and ability to do the right thing."

I did find this from 1998:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/U-S-Attorney-Yamaguchi-Announces-Resignation-3000301.php

"In announcing his resignation, Yamaguchi said Attorney General Janet Reno will appoint Robert Mueller, a former federal prosecutor in San Francisco, as interim U.S. attorney. He is currently chief of the homicide division at the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, D.C. Mueller has spent almost his entire career as a federal prosecutor, doing both civil and criminal work in the San Francisco district and then moving to the U.S. attorney's office in Boston. He eventually joined the Justice Department, where he was an assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division."

So Clinton's odd lesbian Attorney General helped boost a Republican to greater powers.

Mueller went on to play key roles in the PanAm Lockerbie coverup and the 9-11 ruse, despite this:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/692291/posts

"Mr. Mueller's credibility was harshly attacked in a letter made public last weekend in which a Minneapolis agent said the F.B.I. director was engaged in a public relations campaign "to protect the F.B.I. at all costs" after Sept. 11. But they said a review of his public remarks about the Sept. 11 investigation had raised uncomfortable questions about the F.B.I. director's credibility and about his ability to gather accurate information from his deputies."

In a news conference on Wednesday that amounted to a painful mea culpa for the bureau and for his performance in the nine months since he took over the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Mueller said, "I have made mistakes occasionally in my public comments based on information or a lack of information that I subsequently got."

He was referring specifically to a widely publicized Sept. 14 statement in which he offered assurances - later proved to be false - that the bureau had no warning that terrorists might be training in American flight schools. On Sept. 17, Mr. Mueller went further, saying he knew of "no warning signs" of any sort of attack.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who is on the Judiciary Committee, said his staff investigators would explore the accusations made by the Minneapolis agent, Coleen Rowley, that Mr. Mueller and other senior F.B.I. officials had intentionally shaded the truth about the investigation last summer of Zacarias Moussaoui."

To summarize, we have a "Republican" from Northern California nominated by a "liberal" Democrat to become part of the Clinton "Justice" department who played a key role as FBI Director to cover 9-11. He now reappears from the grave with great praise from Democrats openly plotting to overthrow President Trump to investigate absurdly silly things like speaking to Russian diplomats. Let us recall Trump openly expressed doubts about the 9-11 twin towers ruse on 9-11!

Yes, all corruption in DC eventually becomes a 9-11 thread.

DanCT Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 12:13 pm GMT

The 911 cover up team is now about to take President Trump down over yet another false flag, and this team would include the leadership of both parties. How convenient that the Democrats are doing the dirty work so that Fox News and the rest can now engage in covering up the Republicans' behind-the-scenes role in all this.

Also, Colleen Rowley mentions that Meuller ignored his FBI agents' warnings about not going along with CIA torture overseas, yet there is reason to believe that FBI agents were in fact sent overseas to coordinate this activity with the CIA and Mossad.

Agent76 Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 12:51 pm GMT

March 07, 2017 CIA Leak: "Russian Election Hackers" May Work In Langley

Attribution of cyber-intrusions and attacks is nearly impossible. A well executed attack can not be traced back to its culprit. If there are some trails that seem attributable one should be very cautions following them. They are likely faked.

http://www.4thmedia.org/2017/03/cia-leak-russian-election-hackers-may-work-in-langley/

Agent76 Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 12:55 pm GMT

Aug 8, 2016 "I want to scare Assad" Mike Morell on Charlie Rose

Mike Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, discusses the need to put pressure on Syria and Russia. The full conversation airs on PBS on August 8th, 2016.

MarkinLA Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 2:02 pm GMT

I need to leak a memo (actually my own interpretation of what happened after the fact) to counter any possible lies Trump might say just in case Trump produces a tape of the meeting.

What is wrong with this sentence?

Che Guava Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 3:37 pm GMT

This was an interesting article.

Counterpunch does publish many interesting articles, once upon a time, I was to considering subscription to the print edition, but no credit card, and the 80 to 90% idiocy on the site, The article at the link below is not unrepresentative, though it is at the bottom end of the scale.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/09/lessons-from-portlands-clashes-with-fascists

Agent76 Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 5:54 pm GMT

March 31, 2017 The Surveillance State Behind Russia-Gate

Although many details are still hazy because of secrecy – and further befogged by politics – it appears House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was informed last week about invasive electronic surveillance of senior U.S. government officials and, in turn, passed that information onto President Trump.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-surveillance-state-behind-russia-gate/5582211

Jan 2, 2017 CNN Caught Using Video Game Image In Fake Russian Hacking Story

It looks like CNN Has tried to pull the wool over our eyes once again. This time, they used a screenshot from the Fallout 4 Video game to paint the picture of Russian Hacking. To bad that's not what a real hacking screen looks like. And an image you will only find in the video game! Nice Try Clinton News Network!

Agent76 Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 6:10 pm GMT

@Che Guava This is another good read Che Guava. November 07, 2016 FBI Director James Comey: Hillary Should Not Face Criminal Charges

But Who Conducted the Investigation? FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Whose Wife Received $467,500. FBI Director James Comey (image left) decided to issue a report two days before the November election confirming that there is no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Hillary in relation to the recent release of 650,000 Emails on October 28th.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/fbi-director-james-comey-no-evidence-of-hillary-wrong-doing-but-who-conducted-the-investigation-fbi-deputy-director-andrew-mccabe-bribed-whose-wife-received-467000/5555398

Agent76 Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 6:13 pm GMT

@Carlton Meyer This a very good read on the 9/11 event. September 07, 2016 September 11, 2001: The 15th Anniversary of the Crime and Cover-up of the Century "What Really Happened"?

New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to be trucked away and shipped to China – an order that constitutes disturbing a crime scene – which is a federal crime.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/september-11-2001-the-15th-anniversary-of-the-crime-and-cover-up-of-the-century/5544414

Julius Evola Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 6:14 pm GMT

Get a life!

Anonymous Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 11:15 pm GMT

@MarkinLA I need to leak a memo (actually my own interpretation of what happened after the fact) to counter any possible lies Trump might say just in case Trump produces a tape of the meeting.

What is wrong with this sentence? Actually what is right about your post ia that it draws attention to the likelihood that the President would have recordings of all such conversations (not ones when he says "come for a walk with me while I stretch my legs in the garden") and that, anyway, a canny fellow like Comey would assume so and, accordingly, make notes immediately afterwards to ensure that he was right on all the key points. Which all leads to the conclusion that recordings would bear out Comey.

Priss Factor Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 11:18 pm GMT

Deep State messes up and sheeple run wild.

Anonymous Show Comment Next New Comment June 9, 2017 at 11:34 pm GMT

@Agent76 As a big factor in Comey's thinking just before the election when new material possibly pertinent to Clinton's irregullarities came to FBI attention would have been his own self interest it seems reasonable to suppose that both his embarrassment of Clinton by his communication to Congress and his exoneration of her were part of a process which began with "how bad could it be for me if Clinton wins [as I sulppose she will] and something really bad turns up from the investigation of the emails?". Then, given it was true, the exonerating statement is a no brainer (he restores his position as well as he can with Clinton in case she wins and he inly diminishes his credit with Trump slightly if Trumo wins).

Mulegino1 Show Comment Next New Comment June 10, 2017 at 1:24 am GMT

The 9/11 myth is a multi-layered deception. Those within the kosher parameters of the 9/11 cult include the following:

  • Believers in the ridiculous official narrative of the 19 miracle working Jihadist amateur pilots and hydrocarbon based office fires.
  • Those who maintain that the Bush Administration was "incompetent" and that it "ignored the warnings."
  • The LIHOP crowd- Bush and Cheney deviously let it happen on purpose.

Robert Muller's role has nothing to do with being an impartial prosecutor but about being a "fixer" in proper Washingtonian parlance. He was probably brought into the FBI to insure a foreordained "slam dunk" verdict that 19 Arab amateur pilots hijacked 4 airliners led by a deathly ill man living in a cave, performed miraculous feats of aviation which would have made Waldo Pepper envious and violated the laws of physics all in one day. Now he is serving another purpose for his string pullers in the deep state by torpedoing Trump.

As Conan-Doyle wrote, "Whenever you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Office fires, nor jet fuel, nor building collapses or aircraft impacts will not cause hundreds of thousands of tons of structural steel and concrete to undergo molecular dissociation and turn into dust clouds. They generally do not cause the metal components of vehicles in the vicinity to be destroyed while their non-metallic components remain intact. Neither will conventional explosives or even nano-thermite. The destruction of WTC 1, WTC 2 and the core of WTC 6 was not caused by any of these things alone. WTC 7 may have been a case of conventional controlled demolition, but the idea that it experienced universal failure and collapsed into its footprint because of "raging fires" is too stupid for words.

It is O'Brien holding up the three fingers and torturing Winston into seeing two – except that a good part of our public accepts their masters' voice willingly and enthusiastically, even today in 2017.

geokat62 Show Comment Next New Comment June 10, 2017 at 2:20 am GMT

@Mulegino1

The 9/11 myth is a multi-layered deception. Those within the kosher parameters of the 9/11 cult include the following:

Not sure anyone would accuse Philip Giraldi (former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the CIA) of someone who is "within the kosher parameters of the 9/11 cult":

If there had been such a gathering, I would imagine that the Washington Post would have found out about it on the next day as intelligence officers are gregarious and like to talk. This has been my principal problem with the debate in some quarters about the 9/11 Commission. Their report did indeed miss many important angles in order to protect certain governmental interests, but if there had been a genuine conspiracy involving what must have been hundreds of people to demolish the Twin Towers with explosives, it surely would have leaked long ago .

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/do-high-level-leaks-suggest-a-conspiracy/

[Jun 09, 2017] Fake news became the only type of news people are fed

Notable quotes:
"... Take the terror situation. There is one half-bad (others and "do nothing" approach are worse) solution for it – the so-called "Israelisation" of the UK. No one's gonna implement it. NO. ONE. No one, as well, won't go and bust illegal arms trafficers, suppliers of the IED components, liquidate "no-go" borroughs, and, most of all – go after suppliers of the ideological component for the jihad which assures shit like in attacks in Manchester and London keep happening – and will happen in the future. ..."
"... Probably. But these are not normal times. They are extraordinary times. Yes, the Establishment corrals its wagons in a circle and squeals about Indians on the horizon, but there are fissures all over the place. Whether something will bust or not, I do not know, but what I do know is that some things are beyond control and we are passengers. ..."
"... History is its own master and time and time again when we proclaim that everything is 'OK', the carpet is swept away from under our feet and the serious s/t hits the fan. If that happens, I hope we survive. I've got a cat to feed. ..."
Jun 09, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Lyttenburgh , June 7, 2017 at 7:59 am
Et Al, it does not matter because the whole system is rigged. Yes, there are long term concerns which, if not adressed, gonna fuck all right in the arse generations of Britons to come. But they won't be adressed. The system is such that it precludes from that.

Take the terror situation. There is one half-bad (others and "do nothing" approach are worse) solution for it – the so-called "Israelisation" of the UK. No one's gonna implement it. NO. ONE. No one, as well, won't go and bust illegal arms trafficers, suppliers of the IED components, liquidate "no-go" borroughs, and, most of all – go after suppliers of the ideological component for the jihad which assures shit like in attacks in Manchester and London keep happening – and will happen in the future.

No one wants to go and say that the capitalist system adopted by the hopefuls in the past-war era is not sustainable for Europe anymore. There are two possible exits – either its total dismantling, or new war and plunder. But the system itself is beyond redeeming. You can't "reform it from within", because it's designed such way to prevent just such a thing.

et Al , June 7, 2017 at 8:25 am
The King is dead, long live the King?

Probably. But these are not normal times. They are extraordinary times. Yes, the Establishment corrals its wagons in a circle and squeals about Indians on the horizon, but there are fissures all over the place. Whether something will bust or not, I do not know, but what I do know is that some things are beyond control and we are passengers.

History is its own master and time and time again when we proclaim that everything is 'OK', the carpet is swept away from under our feet and the serious s/t hits the fan. If that happens, I hope we survive. I've got a cat to feed.

[Jun 09, 2017] Busy, busy Russian hackers; theyre everywhere.

Jun 09, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
kirill , June 7, 2017 at 5:02 pm
Inquiry makes it sound like an actual investigation. WTF could the FBI do in a couple of days. Just look at the IPs recorded in the computer logs. Well, fuckwads and assorted sheeple, those IP numbers prove FUCK ALL.
marknesop , June 7, 2017 at 10:45 pm
Busy, busy Russian hackers; they're everywhere. Maybe they will hack my bank and make me a wealthy, wealthy man. I promise it wouldn't change me.

[Jun 09, 2017] "I like him" Vladimir Putin discusses John McCain with Oliver Stone (Video)

Notable quotes:
"... "Carthage must be destroyed." ..."
Jun 09, 2017 | theduran.com

In the latest video clip segment for the Showtime documentary of Vladimir Putin by Oscar ward winning director Oliver Stone, the Russian President surprisingly speaks with respect for Senator John McCain, a neocon warmonger, who consistently calls for conflict with Russia and played an integral role in the US coup in Ukraine in 2014.

Putin told Stone in Moscow

"Well, honestly, I like Senator McCain to a certain extent. And I'm not joking. I like him because of his patriotism, and I can relate to his consistency in fighting for the interests of his own country."

RT reports that the Russian President compared US Senator McCain to the Ancient Roman Senator, Cato the Elder, who routinely signed off his speeches, regardless of the subject, with the phrase, "Carthage must be destroyed."

"People with such convictions, like the Senator you mentioned, they still live in the Old World. And they're reluctant to look into the future, they are unwilling to recognize how fast the world is changing."

"They do not see the real threat, and they cannot leave behind the past, which is always dragging them back,"

"Unfortunately there are many senators like this in the United States."

[Jun 09, 2017] FULL Unedited Interview of Putin TRASHING Megyn Kelly

Jun 09, 2017 | www.youtube.com
Green Onions 19 hours ago

OMG she can't even pretend to look smart. Should have pricked yourself with a push pin so you could keep that stupid smirk off your face Kelly.

John B. 8 hours ago

I hope Rachel MADdow watched that.

Gabe B 3 hours ago

ratchet mad cow isnt any brighter

[Jun 09, 2017] Putin's best moments while smashing NBC's Airhead Megyn Kelly

Jun 09, 2017 | www.youtube.com
Vera Aubert 5 days ago

The thinking people in USA KNOW Russia had nothing to do with our elections! We hated Clinton and would have voted for an alligator if that was the only opponent to Clinton!

See also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9DQPXKE2yk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzJSP99a4T4

[Jun 09, 2017] Whether the Russians did it or not, the USA has the dismal failure by the leading political party to secure their digital communications

The USA opened this can of works with Flame and Stixnet. Now it needs to face consequences of its reckless actions.
Both Hillary staff and DNC staff behaves like complete idiots, taking into account the level of mayhem the USA caused in other countries, including Russia. Blowback eventually came and bite their ass. In addition Hillary "private" staff was definitely incompetent.
Notable quotes:
"... The validity of outrage anyway vis-a-vis the Russians, is, to some extent, misplaced ( ..everyone's doin' it aren't they? For starters, recall the Time cover of' '96: ..."
Apr 28, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

This is all really becoming exasperating!

Incessantly reporting 24/7 on whether the Russians did it or not doesn't take into account the critical failure by a leading political party of the "free world" – a nation supposedly at the forefront of technology – to appropriately secure their digital communications along with those of a potential POTUS.

This is a question of how US government, or a potential one, works, and how it should work in the future.

The validity of outrage anyway vis-a-vis the Russians, is, to some extent, misplaced ( ..everyone's doin' it aren't they? For starters, recall the Time cover of' '96:

http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html )

[Jun 09, 2017] Comey rips media for dead wrong Russia stories

Notable quotes:
"... "Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials," the Times wrote. Cotton asked Comey if that story was "almost entirely wrong," and Comey said that it was. ..."
"... The Times has run one meaningful correction to that report, saying it overstated the number of people whom the FBI has examined. The Times report did note, however, that so far intelligence officials had seen no evidence of "cooperation" between the Trump campaign and Russia. ..."
"... "In the main it was not true," Comey said. ..."
Jun 09, 2017 | thehill.com
Former FBI Director James Comey repeatedly warned Thursday that news reports based on leaks of classified information pertaining to the Russia investigation have been consistently wrong.

In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Community, Comey said stories about Russia that are based on classified leaks have been a persistent problem for the FBI because news organizations have often received bad information.

"There have been many, many stories based on - well, lots of stuff, but about Russia that are dead wrong," Comey said.

Sen. Tom Cotton Tom Cotton Trump's 'infrastructure week' goes off the rails New York Times responds to Comey's challenge of its story Comey rips media for 'dead wrong' Russia stories MORE (R-Ark.) asked the former FBI director about a bombshell New York Times report from Feb. 14 titled "Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence."

"Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials," the Times wrote. Cotton asked Comey if that story was "almost entirely wrong," and Comey said that it was.

The Times has run one meaningful correction to that report, saying it overstated the number of people whom the FBI has examined. The Times report did note, however, that so far intelligence officials had seen no evidence of "cooperation" between the Trump campaign and Russia.

"But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin," the Times wrote.

"In the main it was not true," Comey said.

But in an analysis of Comey's comments on Thursday evening, the Times argued that sources cited in the Feb. 14 article have vouched for the account put forth, though the newspaper's reporters were not able to contact them immediately after Comey's testimony.

The analysis raises the possibility that Comey could have been disputing the article's characterization of Russian intelligence officials.

Another possibility, according to the Times, is that Comey may have disputed with the newspaper's description of the evidence as "phone records and intercepted calls."

Comey said incorrect reports are frustrating because the FBI's policy is not to comment on the media's coverage of its investigations.

"The challenge - and I'm not picking on reporters - about writing stories about classified information, is the people talking about it often don't really know what's going on, and those of us who actually know what's going on are not talking about it," Comey said. "We don't call the press and say, 'Hey, you got that thing wrong.' "

Trump has repeatedly railed against "fake news" and the media's reliance on unnamed sources.

CNN this week had to issue a correction after it reported that Comey would testify that he never told Trump that he wasn't the target of an investigation.

[Jun 08, 2017] Comey opted for revenge

Jun 08, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
"In that testimony he had already disclosed that Trump demanded his "loyalty" and directly pushed him to "lift the cloud" of investigation by declaring publicly the president was not the target of the FBI probe into his campaign's Russia ties."

Oh OK so Trump MADE the little bitch state that he (Trump) was not the target .Really!!

"Former FBI Director James Comey says if FBI agents knew the president had asked him to drop an investigation into the former national security adviser, it would have a "real chilling effect" on their work.

Comey says he decided not to tell agents working on the Russia investigation about what he perceived to be a request from the president to drop the probe into Michael Flynn.

Comey says even as good as the agents are, hearing that the president asked for this could be detrimental. He says, "that's why we kept it so tight."

Comey testiphony: speculative .conclusory ..ad hominem vague petitio principii ..et cetera..
http://www.wben.com/articles/comey-testimony-video-clips-minute-minute-summaries

[Jun 08, 2017] Comey apparently admit leaking stuff to New York Times

Notable quotes:
"... Except for the fact that Comey admitted he is a leaker, has a network through which he has leaked information designed to harm President Trump. ..."
"... Oh, and that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other Obama administration officials may have engaged in serious misconduct worthy of further investigation–which Comey testified about today. ..."
Jun 08, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

UPDATE 12:50 P.M. As the public part of the hearing adjourned, and Comey has completely vindicated Trump ahead of a later closed session hearing where he and senators are likely to discuss classified information he could not bring up during the televised hearing, the whole thing turned out exactly like Breitbart News Network told you it would: A giant nothing-burger.

Except for the fact that Comey admitted he is a leaker, has a network through which he has leaked information designed to harm President Trump.

Oh, and that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other Obama administration officials may have engaged in serious misconduct worthy of further investigation–which Comey testified about today.

UPDATE 12:37 P.M. Their hopes and dreams dashed by Comey completely vindicating Trump in this open hearing, and instead implicating ex-Obama administration officials like Loretta Lynch–and implicating himself as an anti-Trump leaker with a network through which he has leaked damaging information against the president–the left and media are pinning everything on a last ditch line of questioning from Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).

This line of questioning from @SenKamalaHarris regarding the Attorney General is extraordinarily important – not to be overlooked

- Matt House (@mattwhouse) June 8, 2017

Here's video of her comparing Trump to an armed robber though, so take whatever she says with a grain of salt:

Sen. Kamala Harris seems to compare Trump to an armed robber saying "I hope you will give me your wallet" #ComeyTestimony pic.twitter.com/2yjfV3UyIM

- Mike Ciandella ن (@MikeCiandella) June 8, 2017

Meanwhile, anti-Trump Never Trumper Max Boot is in an alternate reality, saying Comey was fantastic as a witness.

Bottom line for #ComeyDay : Comey a highly credible witness. Trump isn't. Comey makes damning accusations. Trump denials unconvincing.

- Max Boot (@MaxBoot) June 8, 2017

Flashback, though, to when Comey was fired and Boot with some bold predictions back on May 9:

Congress needs to ask Comey to testify & he needs to tell all he knows about Kremlingate. If he does Trump may regret firing him.

- Max Boot (@MaxBoot) May 10, 2017

Don't tell Max Boot about the black helicopters coming for him. Seriously. "KREMLINGATE"? What is wrong with these people? Anyway, another wonderfully fantastic flashback of this Never Trumper from when Comey was fired in May:

Prediction: If Democrats take control of Congress in 2018, the firing of Comey will form one of the articles of impeachment.

- Max Boot (@MaxBoot)

Senators should ask Comey the name of the Columbia professor and then subpoena the memos from him.

- Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) June 8, 2017

UPDATE 12:21 P.M. Loretta Lynch is in serious trouble right now. Looks like the Democrats' efforts may have backfired.

Loretta Lynch is having a surprisingly bad day in the Comey testimony

- Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) June 8, 2017

If it wasn't for Trump becoming president, the corruption with Obama's Department of Justice would be a major story.

- Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) June 8, 2017

Comey also just testified that he did not believe that Lynch could "credibly deny" the Hillary Clinton email scandal investigation, and that she had a serious conflict of interest. He also testified in exchange with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the Senate Majority Whip, that it is possible a special prosecutor was needed for the email scandal. He said he considered calling for appointing a special counsel in the scandal, but decided against it.

UPDATE 12:08 P.M. Oh my. Now confirmed leaker James Comey's leak network has been outed, or at least part of it has:

Only in Washington: Someone nursing a pint of beer shouts out to a crowded bar: "Daniel Richman of Columbia" https://t.co/hNXVbfBe8r

- Alexander Panetta (@Alex_Panetta) June 8, 2017

So the collusion involves former FBI director, mainstream media, and the left-wing academy to bring down the elected president #ComeyHearing https://t.co/sVWKpajWw9

- Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) June 8, 2017

And now Comey's anti-Trump leak network is confirming to the media that Comey is a leaker:

Columbia Law Prof Daniel Richman confirms to @ZCohenCNN that he is the friend that provided excerpts of the Comey memo to reporters.

- Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) June 8, 2017

UPDATE 12:05 P.M. There are now serious questions being raised as to whether Loretta Lynch, the former Attorney General from the Obama administration, will be subpoenaed to testify after this hearing where Comey has implicated her.

Legit question: is Loretta Lynch going to be subpoenaed as a result of this testimony?

- Mike Shields (@mshields007) June 8, 2017

Meanwhile, Comey's admission he is a leaker serious hurts him. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School makes the case Comey may be in serious trouble:

Comey admits that he leaked the internal memo through a Columbia law professor in order to force Special Counsel. Yet, that raises questions

- Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 8, 2017

Comey is doing well but leaking info runs against Comey's image, particularly in light of the leak controversy hoiunding the Administration

- Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 8, 2017

The memos could be viewed as gov't material and potential evidence . Leaking to a friend for disclosure can raise serious questions.

- Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 8, 2017

UPDATE 12:02 P.M. Donald Trump, Jr., highlights an excellent question from Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) to Comey. Comey did not have a great answer.

Sen Blunt: If you told Sessions you didn't want to be alone with Trump again, why did you continue to take his calls?

- Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 8, 2017

UPDATE 12:01 P.M. From our RNC friends, here's video of Sen. Rubio crushing another leftist media narrative during his questioning of Comey.

Basically, Comey was so concerned about President Trump's conversations with him that he alerted exactly nobody who could do anything about it. In other words, this whole thing is a giant nothing-burger. Except for Comey implicating himself as a leaker.

UPDATE 11:58 A.M. Comey is in big trouble after this hearing. He admitted he's a leaker, and has an actual network through which he leaks information to the press. In addition, he withheld from leaking information that would have vindicated President Trump weeks ago. White House social media director Dan Scavino captures it clearly and concisely on Twitter:

Because if it was leaked that @realDonaldTrump was personally not under investigation- it would have crushed the entire narrative. pic.twitter.com/drFcCxin5M

- Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) June 8, 2017

President Trump still has yet to Tweet, so no free drinks yet here at Union Pub. Looks like the owners here made a smart decision since this place is standing room only right now.

UPDATE 11:54 A.M. Oh, man, this keeps getting better and better. Comey just shredded the Democrats AND now the fake news media.

Oh Boy. Comey says there have been many many stories based on classified information about Russia that are just "dead wrong"

- Maeve Reston (@MaeveReston) June 8, 2017

I wonder if any of the media outlets that have printed repeated stories on these matters will check their reporting again or correct it if they're wrong. Not holding my breath.

UPDATE 11:50 A.M. Comey has emerged throughout this hearing before the American people looking very much like a drama queen. One of the more memorable lines is when he says when Trump called him to ask him if he was free for dinner, he had to break a date with his wife.

Comey says Trump called him at his desk. "Free for dinner tonight?"
"I said yessir I had to call my wife and break a date with her."

- Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 8, 2017

That's not the only drama-filled Comey testimony:

COMEY JUST QUOTES HENRY 11 on what he thought Trump meant: 'Will no one rid me of this toublesome priest"

- Trip Gabriel (@tripgabriel) June 8, 2017

Meanwhile, even CNN's Jim Acosta–a vehemently anti-Trump media figure in the heart of the opposition party's mothership CNN–is joining in on the anti-Comey fun.

Giving info to media "like feeding seagulls at the beach?" Fact check: True.

- Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 8, 2017

UPDATE 11:48 A.M. The leaky Capitol Hill GOP swamp aides are attacking Trump, despite the fact Comey has vindicated the president and implicated himself in potentially illegal leaks.

Senate R aide: Holding nose and defending Trump is taking a lot out of these GOP senators - and they will demand some kind of repayment

- Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) June 8, 2017

The fact that Swamp Creatures on the "Republican" side on Capitol Hill are throwing shade on their own president, and party, as the GOP and Trump likely emerge from today's masquerade mostly out of the woods is simply incredible but unsurprising. Swamp Things are going to Swamp.

UPDATE 11:45 A.M. Comey's open admission he orchestrated a potentially illegal leak puts him in serious potential trouble, the New York Times people note. That's the story folks. He vindicated Trump, and implicated himself. Wow, what a day.

Can't remember the last time someone in DC openly acknowledged orchestrating a leak - and without any senator having even asked.

- Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) June 8, 2017

UPDATE 11:39 A.M. CNN's Dan Merica says that President Trump's personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz will make a statement at the end of Comey's public testimony.

Marc Kasowitz, Trump's lawyer outside the White House, will make a statement at the end of James Comey's Senate testimony

- Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) June 8, 2017

UPDATE 11:35 A.M. As Comey continues vindicating Trump and throwing Democrats like Lynch, Obama, and Clinton under the bus–presumably accidentally–the Washington, D.C., daydrinking party scene is in full swing:

Spotted at Duffy's Irish Pub in North DC:
"Comey is my homey." pic.twitter.com/kvGuaqEqsd

- Sharon Nunn (@sharonmnunn) June 8, 2017

Her "homey" James Comey, meanwhile, has actually admitted he is a leaker.

Flag: Comey says he had a friend of his leak the content of his memo to a reporter to hopefully prompt the appointment of a special counsel. pic.twitter.com/qICnQhI2te

- Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 8, 2017

Comey admits to @SenatorCollins that he asked a friend to leak the contents of his memo to NYT to prompt the appointment of Special Counsel.

- Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) June 8, 2017

Here's video of Comey admitting he has been leaking information to the media:

Here's how I leaked my Trump memo after Trump's "tapes" tweet

by: James Comey pic.twitter.com/9Z1QPPdcKD

- Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 8, 2017

UPDATE 11:32 A.M. While obstruction is now off the table for Trump, as Breitbart's Joel Pollak detailed, Breitbart's John Hayward notes that obstruction is back on the table for several leading officials from now former President Barack Obama's administration. Hayward says Congress needs to investigate Loretta Lynch, the former Attorney General, as well as Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton–the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee–for obstruction of justice.

Big takeaway from the Comey hearing: urgent need to investigate Loretta Lynch, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton for obstruction

- John Hayward (@Doc_0) June 8, 2017

UPDATE 11:29 A.M. Our very own Joel Pollak is out with another bombshell piece detailing how this hearing has shattered the media's and the Democrats' efforts to taint President Trump with "obstruction of justice."

"Democrats have hinged their hopes for impeachment - and reversing the 2016 elections - on the idea that Trump committed obstruction of justice. That case has now been smashed beyond repair," Pollak writes, pointing to a Comey exchange with Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID).

Read his whole story here .

[Jun 08, 2017] Loretta Lynch meddled in the Clinton investigation

Comey deflated under Loretta Lynch pressure and wrapped the investigation of favorable to Hillary terms. He assigned close to Hillary Person to lead the investigation, which suggest cover up from the very beginning of the investigation. Then he has the second thought and issued his famous statement, in which he usurped the role of justice Department official.
marknesop.wordpress.com

Comey discussed the involvement of President Obama's Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, in the investigation of Hillary Clinton. He stated that Lynch made an odd request for how the FBI investigation should be described.

"At one point the attorney general had directed me not to call it investigation, but instead to call it a matter, which concerned and confused me," Comey said.

Comey added that Lynch's infamous tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton during the campaign was the reason he decided to make a statement when the decision was made not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.

"In a ultimately conclusive way, that was the thing that capped it for me, that I had to do something separately to protect the credibility of the investigation, which meant both the FBI and the Justice Department," Comey said.

[Jun 08, 2017] Pot. Kettle. Black. Hilarious.

Jun 08, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , June 8, 2017 at 4:10 am
So, "While Trump had done nothing illegal in requesting Comey to drop the investigation, there is still the question of 'political interference' and the optics.".

29 June 2016

CNN: Bill Clinton meeting causes headaches for Hillary
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/29/politics/bill-clinton-loretta-lynch/index.html

#####

Pot. Kettle. Black. Hilarious.

[Jun 08, 2017] Books about russiphobia

Notable quotes:
"... For something more serious, see Russophobia: Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy by Andrei Tsygankov. ..."
Jun 08, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Evgeny , June 7, 2017 at 7:33 pm
Hello Stooges!

Have you heard of " The Plot to Scapegoat Russia How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin " by Kovalik Dan?

So far I have had a cursory look on it - a few minutes of turning the pages. It doesn't look like a serious professional study, more like a light writing (albeit with numerous booknotes), and the author's focus seems to be on exposing the cases where the U.S. misbehaved in the world - so it shouldn't be critical of countries like Russia. The author cites journalists like Max Blumenthal, Robert Perry, even Paul Craig Roberts, so I guess it might be an interesting read. Perhaps I will read the book; not sure.

Warren , June 7, 2017 at 8:16 pm

https://www.youtube.com/embed/N3t8ut5r_0U

Published on 4 Jun 2017
As Hillary Clinton blames the Kremlin for her election loss, author and attorney Dan Kovalik argues that anti-Russia sentiment is deeply embedded in the U.S. political establishment. Kovalik's new book is "The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Russia."

J.T. , June 8, 2017 at 6:28 am
Heard of it, but I'll pass.
For something more serious, see Russophobia: Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy by Andrei Tsygankov.
Andreas Umland on June 11, 2010
Stretching "Russophobia"
An analysis like Andrei P. Tsygankov's book was sorely needed. However, I am not sure that Tsygankov will fully reach with this text what he seemingly wanted to attain - namely, an effective, noted and, above all, consequential critique of US attitudes towards Russia during the last decade. Tsygankov has, to be sure, done a great deal of investigative work. He details many episodes that illustrate well where US policy or opinion makers have gone wrong. The book's chapters deal with, among other topics, the Chechen wars, democracy promotion, and energy policies. It is also important that this interpretation comes from a Russia-born political scientist who lives in the US and knows American discourse and politics well.

Tsygankov's deep knowledge of both, Russian affairs as well as camps and trends in US politics, adds considerable value to this analysis.

Yet, already the title of the book indicates where Tsygankov may be defeating his purpose. By way of classifying most of US-American critique of Russia as "Russophobia", Tsygankov goes, at least in terms of the concepts and words that he uses to interpret these phenomena, a bit too far. Tsygankov asserts that Russophobia is a major intellectual and political trend in US international thought and behaviour. He also tries to make the reader believe that there exists a broad coalition of political commentators and actors that form an anti-Russian lobby in Washington.

It is true that there is a lot to be criticised and improved in Western approaches towards post-Soviet Russia - and towards the non-Western world, in general. US behaviour vis-ŕ-vis, and American comments on, Russia, for the last 20 years, have all too often been characterized by incompetence and insensitivity regarding the daunting challenges and far-reaching consequences of the peculiarly post-Soviet political, cultural and economic transformation. Often, Russian-American relations have been hampered by plain inattention among US decision and opinion makers - a stunning phenomenon in view of the fact that Russia has kept being and will remain a nuclear superpower, for decades to come.

The hundreds of stupidities that have been uttered on, and dozens of mistakes in US policies towards, Russia needed to be chronicled and deconstructed. Partly, Tsygankov has done that here with due effort, interesting results and some interpretative success.

Yet, Tsygankov does not only talk about failures and omissions regarding Russia. He also speaks of enemies of the Russian state in the US, and their supposed alliances as well various dealings.

Certainly, there is the occasional Russophobe in Washington and elsewhere, in the Western world. Among such personage, there are even some who are indeed engaged in an anti-Russian political lobbying of sorts.

However, the circle of activists who truly deserve to be called "Russophobes" largely contains immigrants from the inner or outer Soviet/Russian empire. These are people who have their own reasons to be distrustful of, or even hostile towards, Russia. After the rise of Vladimir Putin and the Russian-Georgian War, many of them, I suspect, feel that they have always been right, in their anti-Russian prejudices. In any way, this is a relatively small group of people who are more interested in the past and worried about the future of their newly independent nation-states than they are concerned about the actual fate of Russia herself.

Among those who are interested in Russia there are many, as Tsygankov aptly documents, who have recently been criticizing the Russian leadership harshly.

Some of them have, in doing so, exerted influence on Western governments and public opinion. And partly such critique was, indeed, unjustified, unbalanced or/and counterproductive.

But is that enough to assert that there is an "anti-Russian lobby"? What would such a lobby gain from spoiling US-Russian relationships? Who pays these lobbyists, and for what? Who, apart from a few backward-looking East European émigrés, is sufficiently interested in a new fundamental Russian-Western confrontation so as to conduct the allegedly concerted anti-Russian campaigns that Tsygankov appears to be discovering, in his book?

[Jun 08, 2017] Hey Intercept, Something Is Very Wrong With Reality Winner and the NSA Leak

Is not this CIA or Mossad trying to implicate Russians? why nobody asks relevant questions? Russia is way too convenient bogeyman to exclude such a possibility. Russians were under the gun already in 2016. In such circumstances they would prefer to lie low, not to do such stupid things.
Jun 07, 2017 | www.antiwar.com
June 7, 2017 An NSA document purporting to show Russian military hacker attempts to access a Florida company which makes voter registration software is sent anonymously to The Intercept . A low-level NSA contractor, Reality Winner, above, is arrested almost immediately. What's wrong with this picture? A lot.

Who Benefits?

Start with the question of who benefits – cui bono – same as detectives do when assessing a crime.

Trump looks bad as another trickle of information comes out connecting something Russian to something 2016 election. Intelligence community (IC) looks like they are onto something, a day or so before ousted FBI Director James Comey testifies before Congress on related matters. The Intercept looks like it contributed to burning a source. Which potential leaker is going to them in the future? If potential leakers are made to think twice, another win for the IC. The FBI made an arrest right away, nearly simultaneous to the publication, with the formal charges coming barely an hour after The Intercept published. The bust is sure thing according to the very publicly released information. No Ed Snowden hiding out in Russia this time. IC looks good here. More evidence is now in the public domain that the Russians are after our election process. Seems as if the IC has been right all along.

What Happened is Curious and Curiouser

Now let's look at what we know so far about how this happened.

A 25-year-old improbably-named Reality Winner leaves behind a trail long and wide on social media of anti-Trump stuff, including proclaiming herself a member of The Resistance. Never mind, she takes her Top Secret clearance with her out of the Air Force (she had been stationed with the military's 94th Intelligence Squadron out of Fort Meade, Maryland, co-located with the NSA's headquarters) and scores a job with an NSA contractor. Despite the lessons of too-much-access the Snowden episode should have taught the NSA, Winner apparently enjoys all sorts of classified documents – her Air Force expertise was in Afghan matters, so it is unclear why she would have access to info on Russia hacking of U.S. domestic companies.

Within only about 90 days of starting her new job, she prints out the one (and only one apparently, why not more?) document in question and mails it to The Intercept. She also uses her work computer inside an NSA facility to write to the Intercept twice about this same time.

Winner has a clearance. She was trained as a Dari, Pashto, and Farsi linguist by the Air Force. She knows how classified stuff works. She has been told repeatedly, as all persons with a clearance are, that her computer, email, printing, and phone are monitored. She mailed the document from Augusta, Georgia, the city where she lives and where the NSA facility is located. She practiced no tradecraft, did nothing to hide her actions and many things to call attention to them. It is very, very unclear why she took the actions she did under those circumstances.

The Document

The Intercept meanwhile drops by their friendly neighborhood NSA contact and shows them the document. NSA very publicly confirms the veracity of the document (unusual in itself, officially the Snowden and Manning documents remain unconfirmed) and then makes sure the open-court document filed is not sealed and includes the information on how the spooks know the leaked doc was printed inside the NSA facility. Winner went on to make a full confession to the FBI. The upshot? This document is not a plant. The NSA wants you to very much know it is real. The Russians certainly are messing with our election.

But funny thing. While the leaked NSA document seems to be a big deal, at least to the general public, it sort of isn't. It shows one piece of analysis suggesting but not confirming the GRU, Russian military intelligence, tried to steal some credentials and gain access to a private company . No US sources and methods, or raw technical intel, are revealed, the crown jewel stuff. There is no evidence the hack accomplished anything at all, never mind anything nefarious. The hack took place months ago and ran its course, meaning the Russian operation was already dead. The Russians were running a run-of-the-mill spearfishing attack, potentially effective, but nothing especially sophisticated. You get similar stuff all the time trying to harvest your credit card information. The leaked document looks like a big deal but isn't.

Another issue. The Intercept has a lot of very smart people working for it, people with real-world intelligence and tradecraft experience. People who know about microdot encoding on printed documents, one of the tells here, and people who know they don't show their whole hand when asking the NSA for a comment. The Intercept journalist volunteered to an NSA contracting company that the envelope received was postmarked to Augusta, where Winner lived and worked. Like Reality Winner and her own security training, it is very, very unclear why the Intercept took the actions it did under those circumstances.

So For Now

So, look, what we know about this story may represent .01% of the whole picture, and that tiny sliver of visible information is only what the government has chosen to reveal. And sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. Sometimes smart people make dumb mistakes.

But that's not the way you place your bets, especially when dealing with the IC who are good at these kinds of games. At this very early stage I'm going to say there are too many coincidences and too many mistakes to simple shrug it all off. Too many of the benefits in this have accrued on the side of the IC than is typical when a real whistleblower shares classified documents with a journalist.

If it frightens you that I invoke the question of the Deep State using journalists to smear the President, just forget I said anything. But if we're willing to believe the Russians somehow successfully manipulated our entire society to elect their favored candidate, then we can at least ask a few questions.

Otherwise, if anyone hears Winner's lawyer use the word "patsy," let me know, OK?

BONUS: Matt Cole, one of The Intercept journalists credited to this story, was also involved in the outing of source CIA officer John Kiriakou in connection with CIA torture claims. Small world!

Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People . His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent . Reprinted from the his blog with permission.

[Jun 07, 2017] Hillary was so corrupt and her judgment and actions so bad, that there was a never-ending stram of bad news about her. In no way they were fake news

Notable quotes:
"... I posted 99% anti-Hillary material. It consisted mostly of newspaper articles about many issues, ranging from her support for a right wing coup in Honduras that resulted in an escalation of violence, to her massive pay to play at the State Dept, to her disastrous regime change attempts in Libya and Syria (not to mention her support for the coup in Ukraine and the installation of a Neo Nazi regime). There were also many articles about her numerous campaign promise betrayals, such as her support for bad trade deals with Colombia, South Korea, and Singapore, despite her promises to oppose these (her change of position re: Colombia was after getting a $10 million donation). These articles were all from mainstream sources, including The Nation, The Hill, even the NYT. ..."
"... The thing is, Hillary was so corrupt and her judgment and actions so bad, that there was a seemingly never-ending wealth of bad things to post about her. It wasn't fake news, it was the actual historical record of her dastardly deeds. It wasn't just I who did this. This is what folks on FB and other social media sites did throughout. She probably would refer to what we all posted as "fake news" because she psychopathically denies the truth on a continual basis. ..."
"... Keep in mind that I had not mentioned where I'd gotten my information; I simply said I had done broad research of St. Hillary's history and found it bore little to no resemblance to what the media said about her. ..."
"... When I patiently explained this (and added my journalist's credentials), the attack-cultist then switched to their second favorite: I support Trump, and am guilty of his election. I don't know how long she kept on posting her foam-mouthed mantras, because I departed using my standard response: I no longer engage in battles of facts with unarmed opponents. ..."
Jun 07, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Anonymous , June 5, 2017 at 9:30 pm

Lots of people, including myself, created FB accounts solely to post material related to the 2016 Democratic Primary and the election. I have just under 5,000 friends on FB, all of whom are "friends in Bernie."

I posted 99% anti-Hillary material. It consisted mostly of newspaper articles about many issues, ranging from her support for a right wing coup in Honduras that resulted in an escalation of violence, to her massive pay to play at the State Dept, to her disastrous regime change attempts in Libya and Syria (not to mention her support for the coup in Ukraine and the installation of a Neo Nazi regime). There were also many articles about her numerous campaign promise betrayals, such as her support for bad trade deals with Colombia, South Korea, and Singapore, despite her promises to oppose these (her change of position re: Colombia was after getting a $10 million donation). These articles were all from mainstream sources, including The Nation, The Hill, even the NYT.

The thing is, Hillary was so corrupt and her judgment and actions so bad, that there was a seemingly never-ending wealth of bad things to post about her. It wasn't fake news, it was the actual historical record of her dastardly deeds. It wasn't just I who did this. This is what folks on FB and other social media sites did throughout. She probably would refer to what we all posted as "fake news" because she psychopathically denies the truth on a continual basis.

kimsarah , June 5, 2017 at 11:18 pm

So please tell us your Russian connections.

Elizabeth Burton , June 6, 2017 at 3:24 pm

It consisted mostly of newspaper articles about many issues, ranging from her support for a right wing coup in Honduras that resulted in an escalation of violence, to her massive pay to play at the State Dept, to her disastrous regime change attempts in Libya and Syria (not to mention her support for the coup in Ukraine and the installation of a Neo Nazi regime).

Funny you should mention. I responded to yet another episode of Russian hysteria yesterday and was immediately attacked by a Clinton cultist. Understand, this woman had no idea who I am and clearly didn't bother to find out. I said something against St. Hillary, and was therefore the enemy. Of course, the basis of her attack was that my sources of information were all "fake news."

Keep in mind that I had not mentioned where I'd gotten my information; I simply said I had done broad research of St. Hillary's history and found it bore little to no resemblance to what the media said about her.

When I patiently explained this (and added my journalist's credentials), the attack-cultist then switched to their second favorite: I support Trump, and am guilty of his election. I don't know how long she kept on posting her foam-mouthed mantras, because I departed using my standard response: I no longer engage in battles of facts with unarmed opponents.

[Jun 06, 2017] Interview to NBC by Vladimir Putin

Cue bono is a great principle, which helps to understand a lot in the Presidential elections and aftermath.
Jun 06, 2017 | en.kremlin.ru
Megyn Kelly: But the other side says is it was only 70,000 votes that won Trump the election, and therefore influencing 70,000 people might not have been that hard.

Vladimir Putin: The Constitution of the United States and the electoral legislation are structured in such a way that more electors can vote for a candidate who is backed by fewer voters. And such situations do occur in the history of the United States. True, isn't it?

Therefore, if we were to discuss some kind of political and social justice, then probably that electoral legislation needs to be changed and bring a situation where the head of state would be elected by direct secret ballot and so there will be direct tabulation of votes that can be easily monitored. That's all there is to it. And there will be no need for those who have lost the elections to point fingers and blame their troubles on anybody.

Now, if we turn this page over, I will tell you something that you most likely know about. I don't want to offend anyone, but the United States, everywhere, all over the world, is actively interfering in electoral campaigns in other countries. Is this really news to you?

Just talk to people but in such a way (to the extent it is possible for you) so as to convince them that you're not going to make it public. Point your finger to any spot on the world's map, everywhere you'll hear complaints that American officials interfere in their political domestic processes.

Therefore, if someone, and I am not saying that it's us (we did not interfere), if anybody does influence in some way or attempts to influence or somehow participates in these processes, then the United States has nothing to be offended by. Who is talking? Who is taking offense that we are interfering? You yourselves interfere all the time.

Megyn Kelly: That sounds like a justification.

Vladimir Putin: It does not sound like justification. It sounds like a statement of fact. Each action invites appropriate counteraction, but, again, we don't need to do that because I did not tell you this without a reason, both you personally and other members of the media, recently I was in France and I said the same things.

Presidents come and go, and even parties come to and away from power. But the main policy tack does not change. So by and large we don't care who will be at the helm in the United States. We have a rough idea of what is going to happen. And in this regard, even if we wanted to it wouldn't make any sense for us to interfere. Vladimir Putin: It's just that the French journalists asked me about those hackers, and just like I told them, I can tell you, that hackers may be anywhere. They may be in Russia, in Asia, in America, in Latin America. There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a scenario? In the middle of an internal political fight, it was convenient for them, whatever the reason, to put out that information. And put it out they did. And, doing it, they made a reference to Russia. Can't you imagine it happening? I can. Let us recall the assassination of President Kennedy.

There is a theory that Kennedy's assassination was arranged by the United States special services. If this theory is correct, and one cannot rule it out, so what can be easier in today's context, being able to rely on the entire technical capabilities available to special services than to organise some kind of attacks in the appropriate manner while making a reference to Russia in the process. Now, the candidate for the Democratic Party, is this candidate universally beloved in the United States? Was it such a popular person? That candidate, too, had political opponents and rivals.

... ... ...

Megyn Kelly: Aren't you interested?

Vladimir Putin: No. Because if there had been something meaningful he would have made a report to the minister, and the minister would have made a report to me. There weren't even any reports. Just every day, routine work that doesn't mean anything that may not even have any prospects.

It's just that someone decided to find fault with it and, you know, select it as a line of attack against the current President. This isn't for us to get into, these are your domestic political squabbles. So you deal with them. Nothing to talk about.

There was not even a specific discussion of sanctions or something else. I just find it amazing how you created a sensation where there wasn't anything at all. And proceeded to turn that sensation into a tool for fighting the sitting president. You know, you're just very resourceful people there, well done, probably your lives there are boring.

... ... ....

I almost did not talk to him. I said hello, we sat next to each other, then I said goodbye and left. This sums up my entire acquaintanceship with Mr Flynn. If Mr Flynn and I had this kind of interaction, while you and I, we have spent an entire day together, and Mr Flynn was fired from his job, you then should be arrested and put in jail.

... ... ...

Speaking of opposition, let us recall the movement Occupy Wall Street. Where is it now? The law enforcement agencies and special services in the US have taken it apart, into little pieces, and have dissolved it. I'm not asking you about how things stand in terms of democracy in the United States. Especially so that the electoral legislation is far from being perfect in the US. Why do you believe you are entitled to put such questions to us and, mind you, do it all the time, to moralize and to teach us how we should live?

[Jun 06, 2017] Cyber report of cyber bullshit ?

Emergence of cyber attack charge of a perfect false flag operation.
Neocons and Clinton wing of Democratic Party (DemoRats) are trying to add to the momentum of rising negativity about Trump in US public opinion to make impeaching Trump possible.
Jun 06, 2017 | politics.slashdot.org

Dunbal ( 464142 ) * , Monday June 05, 2017 @07:48PM ( #54555483 )

Hmmm ( Score: 4 , Insightful)

So we go from "they hacked us" to "they tried to hack us"? Not quite the same accusation. Next it will go from "It was the Russian government" to "it was someone using an IP from Russia"...

bmo ( 77928 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @07:59PM ( #54555565 )
Re:Hmmm ( Score: 5 , Insightful)

"it was someone using an IP from Russia"...

If you look at the actual public evidence, that's all we've got.

Shit coming from an IP in Russia, which could have been at the end of 7 PROXIES. Or TOR. Or whatever.

-- BMO

AHuxley ( 892839 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @08:32PM ( #54555801 ) Homepage Journal
Re:Hmmm ( Score: 2 )

Re "If you look at the actual public evidence, that's all we've got." The US has an IP range, time of day. IP ranges always point back to just a nation. Government workers always work 9 to 5 shifts in their own nation's time zones too.

whoever57 ( 658626 ) writes: on Monday June 05, 2017 @08:47PM ( #54555919 ) Journal
Re:Hmmm ( Score: 2 )

Government workers always work 9 to 5 shifts in their own nation's time zones too.

That may be true, but so what? Those pimply-faced script kiddies don't necessarily work normal day shifts.

hey! ( 33014 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @09:11PM ( #54556085 ) Homepage Journal
Re:Hmmm ( Score: 3 )
If you look at the actual public evidence, that's all we've got.

Exactly. The document in question takes a quite conclusive tone on the matter, but does not divulge any raw intelligence data or the methods used to assess that data.

Now, either the NSA personnel who produced this document are a hell of lot less smart than you are, or the document is a fake, or there is private information that the rest of us don't have.

dog77 ( 1005249 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @09:57PM ( #54556403 )
Re:Hmmm ( Score: 2 )

Here is report from CrowdStrike on why they beleive it was the Russians: https://www.crowdstrike.com/bl... [crowdstrike.com]

Bradbo ( 890238 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @09:03PM ( #54556021 )
Re:Hmmm ( Score: 2 )

The report doesn't say "using an IP address from Russia" -- it says it was from the Russian Military. I don't think the NSA would get the two confused. Also, the report says that at least one email account was probably compromised ("probably" being intel-speak for "very high confidence"). With a compromised email account, further phishing attacks are much more likely to be successful. So we don't know the extent of the hacking results (at least from this one report), but it was not a "attempt to hack" but a "successful hack" with unknown-as-yet damage.

Nehmo ( 757404 ) writes: < [email protected] > on Monday June 05, 2017 @08:16PM ( #54555691 )
Hillary lost because of RUSSIA! ( Score: 2 , Interesting)

This is the second time Hillary failed to become "the inevitable president". Did Russia sabotage her plans last time? (Oh, Obama won the primaries. Hillary made sure she won those this time.)

  • Did Russia tell Hillary to rig the primaries to freeze our Sanders?
  • Did Russia get the DNC to provide Hillary the debate questions in advance? (She still did terrible anyway.)
  • Did Russia make Hillary collapse on their way to their car?
  • Did Russia encourage Bill to pardon Marc Rich, the billionaire donor to the Clinton campaign and the Clinton Foundation?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to be so confident that she could ignore the (previously Democratic) rust belt states in her campaign?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to lie about dodging sniper bullets in Bosnia?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary, when she was a working attorney, to get a rapist a sweet plea deal and then laugh when questioned about it?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to call Bill sexual accusers "bimbos"?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to say to the bankers that she would ring China with defensive missiles?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to have Huma Aberdeen as her aide, assistant editor of a publication that believes in Muslim Sharia Law?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to say she would make a no-fly zone in Syria when Russia was already in Syria?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to laugh demonically about "came, saw, and kill" Kaddafi?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to take bribes on numerous occasions in the form of speaking fees?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to use the personal unsecured server?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to delete emails that were subpoenaed?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to have a corrupt charity?
  • Did Russia tell Hillary to call 31 million voters deplorable irredeemable racist sexist homophobic bigots?
  • Did Russia murder Seth Rich, DNC's Director of Voter Enhancement? He was the Sanders supporter who was shot 4 times while on the ground in a "botched robbery" in which nothing was taken.
  • Did Russia get the Clintons to accept a bribe on the Uranium One deal? Well, yes, they did do that one.
najajomo ( 4890785 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @08:52PM ( #54555967 )
I call cyber bullshit on this cyber report ... ( Score: 1 )

I call cyber bullshit on this cyber report ...

AHuxley ( 892839 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @09:17PM ( #54556129 ) Homepage Journal
Why military intelligence? ( Score: 2 )

Soviet "military intelligence" who normally did military spying tried to run a spy in the UK in the 1970's due to an accident of first contact. It ended in failure as the Soviet staff did not have the decades of skill to work long term with a person in the UK and all the emotional issues that result.

The write up of Russia/the Soviet Union ever using "military intelligence" in the West for activity seems more of an older US fantasy than reality. Russia knows what its "military intelligence" can do and should not do.

It learned that by losing one of its more productive spies in the UK in the 1970's. Losing a good spy does not get "military intelligence" a lot of other direct attempts at spying again.

Why would the US be talking about one of the one groups in Russia that would not be used for spying in the West? Every other spy agency in the world would notice that glaring mistake too and be wondering why the most simple lack of understanding of Russian's intelligence structure would be allowed to be presented as "news"? The report does not "show the underlying "raw" intelligence on which the analysis is based". "cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion" Read down further and find the part about "not involved in vote tallying"

From not changing votes what ever happened did not even work well "unknown whether" .. "and what potential data from the victim could have been exfiltrated" So some "spear-phishing" did not change the votes and did not seem to even get many other results. Thats using some "military intelligence". The quality of the effort was ""medium sophistication," one that "practically any hacker can pull off."" Note the use of the term "hacker". "The actual voting machines aren't going to be networked" Finally any issues got talked about as been the everyday issues of "between the setup of the computers and the poll workers using them."

Jack Zombie ( 637548 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @10:03PM ( #54556433 )
Misleading title; no proof given. ( Score: 2 )

From the Intercept article linked:

"While the document provides a rare window into the NSAâ(TM)s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying âoerawâ intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive."

If one reads other articles by the Intercept, one finds that Glenn Greenwald, who works as editor at the Intercept and helped publicize the Snowden leaks, is of the informed opinion that Russia did not manipulate the US election, and that the whole claim was manufactured by the US intelligence, and that both political sides saw it easier to treat this well-established lie as if it was true than to publicly confront it.

Just look for the articles by Glenn Greenwald in Intercept. He has stated this explicitly a good time before Putin said the same thing (but in Putin's mouth, it was subtle pressure against the US intelligence community to stop attacking Russia).

lessthan0 ( 176618 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @10:41PM ( #54556651 )
How is this new? ( Score: 2 )

This seems like a lot of crying and hang wringing over standard operating procedures.

Did Russia try to penetrate our voting systems? Probably.

Did the US plant stuxnet in Iranian nuke plants? Probably Did the US hack North Korean missile tests? Probably Did the US capture German and UK government communications? Yes Does the US try to penetrate Russian systems and generally hack every government and military computer on the planet 24x7? YES!

This is the way the world works, the way it has ALWAYS worked. It is naive and dangerous to think otherwise.

Our best response is to harden our systems and go on with life. Complete nothing burger.

arbiter1 ( 1204146 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @07:50PM ( #54555497 )
Re:Leftist Media 101 ( Score: 2 )

It was also wrote up but liberal leftist lackeys as well that can draw a conclusion using only 1 dot on page.

DigiShaman ( 671371 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @07:56PM ( #54555537 ) Homepage
Re:Hysteria ( Score: 4 , Insightful)

The Rush Limbaugh theorem states that the media isn't an arm of the Democrat Party, rather, that the Democrat Party is an arm of the media. Think about it, which side is more organized and sends a cohesive voice nightly or hourly?

Lisandro ( 799651 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @08:41PM ( #54555877 )
Re:Russians meddled - but Clinton lost the first t ( Score: 2 )
Look, I don't think any honest person can deny the Russians meddled in the election. The bigger question is, did they throw the American election?

That is hard (impossible?) to answer conclusively, but they likely did not. Clinton lost the election all by herself, IMHO.

The problem is that a) it appears that Russia did indeed meddle in US elections and b) there's an active investigation about collusion between the Trump administration and Russian officials. That is the story here.

hey! ( 33014 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @09:43PM ( #54556343 ) Homepage Journal
Re:Russians meddled - but Clinton lost the first t ( Score: 2 )

The problem is that results like 2016 don't have any single cause. There are many things that had they been different could have changed the outcome.

Blame isn't like a hot potato: there's plenty for everyone. Clinton has her share of the blame. Her weak and passive messaging, and her over-reliance on dubious analytics in the face of clear field intelligence were both mistakes. Absent either of them and she would have won -- it was only a matter of swinging 100,000 strategically placed votes, about 1/100th of 1% of the votes cast.

This doesn't mean other things didn't cause her loss too, but the bottom line was that she was facing Donald Trump, a boorish reality TV clown and easily the stupidest and most ignorant man ever to win the presidency. She should have blown the doors of the election far beyond the reach of a few unlucky breaks or marginal meddling to matter.

lucm ( 889690 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @08:26PM ( #54555757 )
Re:Hysteria ( Score: 2 )

Remember when the CIA planted logic flaws in some pipeline management software because they knew the Soviets would steal it? This led to the gigantic explosion of a Siberian pipeline:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]

Those people have suddenly become immensely skilled hackers?

hey! ( 33014 ) , Monday June 05, 2017 @09:05PM ( #54556029 ) Homepage Journal
Re:Hysteria ( Score: 3 )
This continued media frenzy became tiresome some time ago. Can we move on to something new to be outraged about?

You seem to be conflating "important" and "entertaining".

Important stuff is often quite boring, at least at the outset before you understand what's going on.

[Jun 04, 2017] Europe May Finally Rethink NATO Costs by Ray McGovern

Notable quotes:
"... New York Times ..."
"... U.S. officials (and The New York Times) have made it a practice to white-out the coup d'etat in Kiev and to begin recent European history with Russia's immediate reaction, thus the relentless presentation of these events as simply "Russian aggression," as if Russia instigated the crisis, not the U.S. ..."
May 27, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Exclusive: By dunning NATO nations to chip more money into the military alliance, President Trump may inadvertently cause some Europeans to rethink the over-the-top anti-Russian propaganda, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump traveled to Brussels, Belgium on Wednesday evening for their fourth stop on their trip abroad. President Trump met with leaders from around the world before the NATO Summit in Brussels. (White House photo)

At that point it will become possible to see through the West's alarmist propaganda. It will also become more difficult to stoke artificial fears that Russia, for reasons known only to NATO war planners and neoconservative pundits, will attack NATO. As long as Russian hardliners do not push President Vladimir Putin aside, Moscow will continue to reject its assigned role as bęte noire.

First a request:Let me ask those of you who believe Russia is planning to invade Europe to put down the New York Times for a minute or two.Take a deep cleansing breath, and try to be open to the possibility that heightened tensions in Europe are, rather, largely a result of the ineluctable expansion of NATO eastward over the quarter-century since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

Actually, NATO has doubled in size, despite a U.S. quid-pro-quo to expand NATO "one inch" to the east of Germany.The quid required of Russia was acquiescence to a reunited Germany within NATO and withdrawal of the 300,000-plus Russian troops stationed in East Germany.

The U.S. reneged on its quo side of the bargain as the NATO alliance added country after country east of Germany with eyes on even more – while Russia was not strong enough to stop NATO expansion until February 2014 when, as it turned out, NATO's eyes finally proved too big for its stomach.A U.S.-led coup d'etat overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installed new, handpicked leaders in Kiev who favored NATO membership.That crossed Russia's red line; it was determined – and at that point able – to react strongly, and it did.

These are the flat-facts, contrasting with the mainstream U.S. media's propaganda about "Russian aggression." Sadly, readers of the New York Times know little to nothing of this recent history.

Today's Russian Challenge

The existential threat to NATO comprises a different kind of Russian "threat," which owes much to the adroitness and sang froid of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who flat-out refuses to play his assigned role of a proper enemy – despite the Western media campaign to paint him the devil incarnate.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, following his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)

Over time, even the most sophisticated propaganda wears thin, and more and more Europeans will realize that NATO, in its present form, is an unnecessary, vestigial organ already a quarter-century beyond its expiration date – and that it can flare up painfully, like a diseased appendix.At a time when citizens of many NATO countries are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet, they will be reluctant to sink still more money into rehab for a vestigial organ.

That there are better uses for the money is already clear, and President Trump's badgering of NATO countries to contribute ever more for defense may well backfire. Some are already asking, "Defense against what?"Under the painful austerity that has been squeezing the Continent since the Wall Street crash nearly a decade ago, a critical mass of European citizens is likely to be able to distinguish reality from propaganda – and perhaps much sooner than anyone anticipates.This might eventually empower the 99 percent, who don't stand to benefit from increased military spending to fight a phantom threat, to insist that NATO leaders stop funding a Cold War bureaucracy that has long since outlived its usefulness.

A military alliance normally dissolves when its raison d'etre – the military threat it was created to confront – dissolves.The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 – more than a quarter century ago – and with it the Warsaw Pact that was established as the military counter to NATO.

Helpful History

NATO's first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, who had been Winston Churchill's chief military assistant during World War II, stated that NATO's purpose was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."But a lot can change over the course of almost seven decades.

The NATO flag is raised during the opening ceremony for Exercise Steadfast Jazz in Poland, Nov. 3, 2013. (NATO photo by British army Sgt. Ian Houlding)

The Russians relinquished their East European empire after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and withdrew their armed forces.There no longer needed to be a concerted priority effort to "keep the Russians out," preoccupied as they were with fixing the economic and social mess they inherited when the USSR fell.

As for "keeping the Germans down," it is not difficult to understand why the Russians, having lost 25 to 27 million in WWII, were a bit chary at the prospect of a reunited Germany.Moscow's concern was allayed somewhat by putting this new Germany under NATO command, since this sharply lessened the chance the Germans would try to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.

But NATO became the "defensive" blob that kept growing and growing, partly because that is what bureaucracies do (unless prevented) and partly because it became a way for U.S. presidents to show their "toughness." By early 2008, NATO had already added ten new members – all of them many "inches" to the east of Germany: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

There were rumors that Ukraine and Georgia were in queue for NATO membership, and Russian complaints were becoming louder and louder.NATO relations with Russia were going to hell in a hand basket and there was no sign the Washington policymakers gave a hoot.

A leading advocate from the Russo-phobic crowd was the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had been President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser and remained in the forefront of those pressing for NATO expansion – to include Ukraine.In 1998, he wrote, "Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire."

The relentless expansion of NATO greatly bothered former Sen. Bill Bradley, a longtime expert on Russia and a sober-minded policy analyst. On Jan. 23, 2008, in a talk before the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, he sounded an almost disconsolate note, describing NATO expansion a "terribly sad thing" a "blunder of monumental proportions.

"We had won the Cold War and we kicked them [the Russians] when they were down; we expanded NATO.In the best of circumstances it was bureaucratic inertia in NATO – people had to have a job.In the worst of circumstances it was certain irredentist East European types, who believe Russia will forever be the enemy and therefore we have to protect against the time when they might once again be aggressive, thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophesy."

As tensions with Russia heightened late last decade, Sen. Bradley added, "Right now we are confronted with something that could have easily been avoided."

Finally Saying Nyet

A week after Bradley's lament, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called in U.S. Ambassador William Burns to read him the riot act.The subject line of Burns's CONFIDENTIAL cable #182 of Feb. 1, 2008, in which he reported Lavrov's remarks to Washington shows that Burns played it straight, choosing not to mince his own or Lavrov's words: "Nyet means nyet: Russia's NATO enlargement redlines."

NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

Here what Ambassador Burns wrote in his summary, which the public knows because the cable was among the thousands leaked to WikiLeaks by Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, for which she was imprisoned for seven years and only recently released (yet the cable has been essentially ignored by the corporate U.S. news media):

"Following a muted first reaction to Ukraine's intent to seek a NATO Membership Action Plan at the Bucharest summit, Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains an emotional and neuralgic issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia.

"In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene. Additionally, the government of Russia and experts continue to claim that Ukrainian NATO membership would have a major impact on Russia's defense industry, Russian-Ukrainian family connections, and bilateral relations generally."

So, it is not as though then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other U.S. policymakers were not warned, in very specific terms, of Russia's redline on Ukrainian membership in NATO. Nevertheless, on April 3, 2008, the final declaration from at a NATO summit in Bucharest asserted: "NATO welcomes Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO."

The Ukraine Coup

Six years later, on Feb. 22, 2014, the U.S.-pushed putsch in Ukraine, which George Friedman, then President of the think-tank STRATFOR, labeled "the most blatant coup in history," put in power a fiercely anti-Russian regime eager to join the Western alliance.

President Barack Obama talks with President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker following a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, Sept. 18, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Russia's reaction was predictable – actually, pretty much predicted by the Russians themselves.But for Western media and "statesmen," the Ukrainian story begins on Feb. 23, 2014, when Putin and his advisers decided to move quickly to thwart NATO's designs on Ukraine and take back Crimea where Russia's only warm-water naval base has been located since the days of Catherine the Great.

U.S. officials (and The New York Times) have made it a practice to white-out the coup d'etat in Kiev and to begin recent European history with Russia's immediate reaction, thus the relentless presentation of these events as simply "Russian aggression," as if Russia instigated the crisis, not the U.S.

A particularly blatant example of this came on June 30, 2016, when then U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute spoke at a press briefing before the NATO summit in Warsaw:

"Beginning in 2014 we're moving into a new period in NATO's long history. So the first thing that happened in 2014 that marks this change is a newly aggressive, newly assertive Russia under Vladimir Putin. So in late February, early March of 2014, the seizing, the occupying of Crimea followed quickly by the illegal political annexation of Crimea. Well, any notion of strategic partnership came to an abrupt halt in the first months of 2014."

And so, for the nonce, Western propaganda captured the narrative.How long this distortion of history will continue is the question.The evolution of Europe as a whole (including Russia) over the past half-century, together with the profound changes that this evolution has brought, suggest that those of the European Establishment eager to inject life into the vestigial organ called NATO – whether for lucrative profits from arms sales or cushy spots in NATO's far-flung bureaucracy – are living on borrowed time.

President Trump can keep them off balance by creating uncertainty with respect to how Washington regards its nominal NATO obligation to risk war with Russia should some loose cannon in, say, Estonia, start a shooting match with the Russians. On balance, the uncertainty that Trump has injected may be a good thing. Similarly, to the degree that his pressure for increased defense spending belatedly leads to an objective estimate of the "threat" from Russia, that may be a good thing too.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A CIA analyst for 27 years, he specialized in Russian foreign policy. He led the CIA's Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and briefed the President's Daily Brief one-on-one during President Ronald Reagan's first term.

[Jun 04, 2017] Trump and the Bubbles from a Sunken (Old) World

Notable quotes:
"... What is NATO? Originally, NATO was supposed to be a military alliance to oppose the Soviet armed forces and, later, the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Now that these two have disappeared, NATO has no real mission. What NATO still has is a huge bureaucracy. There is a lot of money to be made through NATO: salaries, contracts, investments, etc. Heck – these guys just built themselves gigantic and brand new headquarters , probably to "deter the Russian aggression", right? ..."
"... NATO is also a huge bureaucratic lift which can pull people up to the real centers of power, including financial power. Furthermore, NATO is also a gang of people who use NATO to advance their petty career or political agenda. ..."
"... What NATO is not is a militarily useful alliance. Oh yes, sure, the Americans can use NATO to force the Europeans to use US military hardware, that is true, but should a war break out, especially a *real* war against Russia, the Americans would push all these Eurosissies out of the way and do 90%+ of the fighting. ..."
"... And then there is the " New Europe ": the crazies in Poland or the Baltics who are making an immense effort in trying to put the Old Europeans (who made the huge mistake of accepting them into NATO) on a collision course with Russia. ..."
"... From a pragmatic point of view, NATO member states should have never EVER incorporated the "New Europeans" into their alliance. The same goes for the EU, of course. But in their illusions of grandeur and their petty revanchism they decided that *real* Europe needed to be joined at the hip with "New Europe" and now they are paying the price for this strategic mistake of colossal proportions. Of course, the Americans are bastards for encouraging the Eurodummies in their delusional dreams, but now that the deed is done, the Americans are doing the rational and pragmatic thing: they are letting the Eurodummies deal with their own mistakes. This is best shown by Trump's new policy about the Ukraine: he simply does not care. ..."
"... There used to be a time when the G7 really was huge, but now with China and India missing at the table and with Russia expelled, the G7 has become just a kaffeeklatsch for ugly rich people, an occasion to reminisce about the good old days when Europe still mattered. ..."
"... We are told that the G7 is composed of the seven major advanced economies on the planet (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States), but the only real power in that list is the US. Next, it would be Germany, but Merkel's immigration policies have resulted in a EU-wide disaster and she is very much an embattled leader. She is also a prime culprit of the Ukrainian fiasco. ..."
"... in political terms the Japanese are voiceless US subcontractors ..."
"... in economic terms the G7 has pretty much been replaced by the G20 while in political terms the G7 is an empty shell. ..."
"... Trump's contempt for European leaders is definitely undiplomatic and shows a basic lack of education, but it still is a contempt the European leaders richly deserve. ..."
"... In politics, power is not absolute, but relative. Sure, the US military is basically dysfunctional and doesn't seem to be capable of frightening anybody on the US list of "enemies", but compared to Europe the US is a powerhouse. As for the Europeans, they are depending on the Americans for pretty much everything that matters. Trump understands all that and he seem to have more respect for Kim Jong-un than for Angela Merkel. I can't blame him as this is also how I feel. ..."
"... The traditional British foreign policy has always been to fosters wars in Europe to prevent any kind of continental unity. As for the US, its main objective has always been to keep "keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down". And now we see the Brits leaving the EU and the Americans pulling out well, maybe not out of Europe per se , but out of most of Europe's problems. So why are the Anglos pulling out? Is that not a clear sign that Europe is sinking? ..."
"... But for the time being, war is far less likely than it would have been the case with Hillary. What we see is Trump making "America great again" by stepping on its allies in Europe and by contemptuously disregarding the rest of humanity. That kind of arrogant megalomania is not a pretty sight for sure – but way better than WWIII. And "better than WWIII" is all we can hope for in the foreseeable future. ..."
"... The propaganda couched as the American Way of Life has become so all consuming that it took just one individual to march to center stage and reflect back our carefully hidden shortcomings and delusions for the fear and loathing to begin. We've been sleepwalking for a long time. https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/black-magic-or-jungian-shadow/ ..."
"... NATO gives the US a fig leaf by being a coalition of the willing for whatever merry ventures we choose to get into at any given time. ..."
"... I'm not so sure that the West has the will, purpose, or capacity for sacrifice to prosecute a Third World War. I think the Russians are primarily preparing to defend themselves from the disorganized, spastic lashing-out of a dying West. ..."
"... I can only hope Trump continues to treat the EU political elites as just so many gutless dogs & inept clowns: because they are ..."
"... Start with the most elementary act of common sense: stop ALL sanctions, whether economic or political against Russia. Then fully commit to Eurasian integration. Sure, the US will SPIT, but, the EU is sinking – fast. Anyway, I'll dream on .. ..."
"... You have entirely missed the point. We know good and well that the president alone does not get to make any important foreign policy decisions–or probably any decisions at all. We know just as well that he is expected to be a salesman promoting policies crafted by the banks, corporations and the deep state. We know. The point is that Trump is an incredibly bad spokesman! He is discrediting the empire by his very presence. ..."
"... American land forces never were serious contented compared to USSR and with 90′s mess reversed things are back to normal state of affairs which means Russian land forces asserting normal state of dominance along Russian borders. ..."
"... Avoiding World War III works for me. ..."
"... Yeah, I have a problem with that one too. I don't see such chivalry coming from US – assuming 90% of the fighting to save Europe. NATO was designed with one purpose only – to defend US and no one else. Anybody who believes otherwise – doesn't live in the real world. ..."
"... In the 68 years of NATO existence, the only country to ever invoke article 5 was – you guess it – US. Article 5 means asking for help from other NATO members to come to your defense when you are attacked. So US asked for help because they were "attacked" in Afghanistan. ..."
"... The money Changers's propaganda has always spread lies that have been the exact opposite of their actions. Trump probably had to buy in or he wouldn't be President and his Jewish son-in-law is there on keep an eye on him. He is changing our foreign policy to the extent that he isn't pursuing regime change in Syria even though we have boots on the ground. ..."
"... I believe that, despite the fact that we have been a fascist economic state since the Origins of the Truman Doctrine and the build up of the MIIC, Trump didn't become a billionaire because he's clueless. I'm in favor of his actions, so far. He has said screw the Globalist and screw the wasted-brains-EPA. ..."
"... Everything in the world is controlled by Money Grabbing Economy Controllers so Trump will have issues getting his MAGA agenda but his foreign policy, despite the Syria hiccup, is acceptable. After decades of our forces killing millions of civilians, if Syria lost a few at that airbase, well.. it could have been worse. ..."
"... Donald Trump: "Whenever you see the words 'sources say' in the fake news media, and they don't mention names it is very possible that those sources don't exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!" ..."
"... Your critique of Saker's evaluation of Trump is basically grounded deeply from within the matrix, whose prisoner you seem to be. Yes, Trump is widely painted to be "a laughing stock globally, despised, cringed at, as are the people who voted for him" but no, that is the view that the mass media has been dishing out. It is not true, simply not true, even though many have swallowed it along with a whole load of marbles. ..."
"... You are basically paraphrasing Clinton when you jeer "the people who voted for him". Yes, these "despicable folk" did vote Trump into power, and yes they might well do so again. You do not seem to understand the processes at work here: part democracy, part a revolt of the people sickened by the one-sided narrative propagated in the media. ..."
Jun 04, 2017 | www.unz.com

First, a confession: I really don't know how the corporate media has covered the Trump trip to NATO and the G7 summit. Frankly, I don't really care – it's been a long while since I stopped listening to these imperial shills. There is a risk in completely ignoring them, and that risk is the risk to say "white" when everybody else says "black". This is a small risk – and, after all, who cares? – but today I will take it again and give you my own take on Trump's trip to Europe: I think that it was an immense success. But not necessarily for Trump as much as it was an immense success for the enemies of the Empire, like myself. Here is my own rendition on what I think has taken place.

First, Trump was consistently rude. I cannot judge if this lack of manners is the real Trump or whether Trump was tying to send an unspoken message. For whatever this is worth, I know of only one person who had personal and private dealing with the Trump family, including The Donald Himself, and according to him, Trump is an impeccably courteous person. Whatever may be the case, whether this was nature or no so subtle "messaging", Trump truly outdid himself. He unceremoniously pushed aside the Prime Minister of Montenegro , who richly deserves being treated with utter contempt. Then he blocked out Angela Merkel during the official photo taking . He made the G7 wait for over an hour, he refused to walk to another photo op by foot.

He didn't even bother putting on his translation headset when others were speaking and, crime of crimes, he told the NATO members states to pay more money while not saying a single word about Article 5 . It is hard to gauge what the rest of the assembled politicians really thought (prostitutes are good at hiding and repressing their own feelings), but Merkel clearly was angry and frustrated.

Apparently, everybody hated Trump, with the sole possible exception of Marcon (but he is a high-end prostitute). As much as Obama was a charmer, Trump seems to relish the role of ruffian. But most importantly, Trump treated the EU/NATO gang with the contempt they deserve and that, frankly, I find most refreshing. Why?

The ugly truth about NATO: Eurosissies and Eurodummies

What is NATO? Originally, NATO was supposed to be a military alliance to oppose the Soviet armed forces and, later, the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Now that these two have disappeared, NATO has no real mission. What NATO still has is a huge bureaucracy. There is a lot of money to be made through NATO: salaries, contracts, investments, etc. Heck – these guys just built themselves gigantic and brand new headquarters , probably to "deter the Russian aggression", right?

NATO is also a huge bureaucratic lift which can pull people up to the real centers of power, including financial power. Furthermore, NATO is also a gang of people who use NATO to advance their petty career or political agenda. At best, NATO is a gigantic fig leaf covering the obscenity of western imperialism.

What NATO is not is a militarily useful alliance. Oh yes, sure, the Americans can use NATO to force the Europeans to use US military hardware, that is true, but should a war break out, especially a *real* war against Russia, the Americans would push all these Eurosissies out of the way and do 90%+ of the fighting. Most NATO armies are a joke anyway, but even those who are marginally better fully depend on the US for all the force multipliers (intelligence, logistics, transportation, communications, navigation, etc.).

And then there is the " New Europe ": the crazies in Poland or the Baltics who are making an immense effort in trying to put the Old Europeans (who made the huge mistake of accepting them into NATO) on a collision course with Russia.

From a pragmatic point of view, NATO member states should have never EVER incorporated the "New Europeans" into their alliance. The same goes for the EU, of course. But in their illusions of grandeur and their petty revanchism they decided that *real* Europe needed to be joined at the hip with "New Europe" and now they are paying the price for this strategic mistake of colossal proportions. Of course, the Americans are bastards for encouraging the Eurodummies in their delusional dreams, but now that the deed is done, the Americans are doing the rational and pragmatic thing: they are letting the Eurodummies deal with their own mistakes. This is best shown by Trump's new policy about the Ukraine: he simply does not care.

Oh sure, he will say something about the Minsk Agreement, maybe mention Crimea, he might even say something about a Russian threat. But then he turns away and walks. And the Eurodummies are now discovering something which they should have suspected all along: the Ukraine is *their* problem now, the Americans don't care because they have nothing to lose and nothing to win either, and so besides empty words they will offer nothing. Much worse is the fact that it appears that it will be the Europeans who will end up paying most of the costs of rebuilding the Ukraine when the current Nazi regime is finally removed (but that is a topic for a future article).

There is karmic justice at work here: all the Eurodummies will now have to deal with the fallout from the total collapse of the Ukraine, but the first ones to pay will be the Poles who tried so hard to draw NATO and the real Europe into their revanchist agenda. Besides, is it not simply justice for the Poles who for years have been ranting about a Russian threat and who for years have been supporting nationalist and even neo-Nazi movements in the Ukraine to now be faced with a deluge of problems (social, political, economic, etc.) coming from "their" Ukrainians while the Russians will be looking at this mess from the east, protected by the two Novorussian republics and formidable National and Border guards. As most Russians will, I wish the Europeans " bien du plaisir " with the upcoming waves of Ukrainian refugees and the "European values" they will bring with them.

... ... ...

The sad truth is that NATO and the EU are do not deserve to be treated with any respect at all. Trump's condescension is fully deserved. Worse, the Americans don't even have to pretend to take the Europeans seriously because, for the past decade, the latter have sheepishly obeyed the most ridiculous and even self-defeating orders from the Americans.

Truly, Victoria Nuland's famous words about the EU were expressing something of an American consensus about the Old Continent.

The G7: "bubbles from a sunken world"

" Bubbles from a sunken world " is not an expression I coined. It was the Russian author Ivan Solonevich who wrote that about the kind of exiled Russian aristocrats who still thought that they would one day recover all their properties seized by the Soviets in Russia. Still, this expression also applies to the G7 leaders who meet with a great deal of gravitas and pretend like they really matter. In truth, they don't. There used to be a time when the G7 really was huge, but now with China and India missing at the table and with Russia expelled, the G7 has become just a kaffeeklatsch for ugly rich people, an occasion to reminisce about the good old days when Europe still mattered.

In reality, of course, and just like with the EU or NATO, the G7 is an anachronistic leftover of a long gone past. G7 countries are simply not the place where the real action is nowadays. But even worse than that is the fact that the leaders of the G7 suffer from the same form of senile dementia as the EU or NATO leaders which is unsurprising since they are more or less the same people: they have nothing original or new to say, nothing important for sure. They have no vision at all, very little legitimacy and even less credibility.

Yes, sure, in France Macron did win, but only because the French establishment engaged in a massive propaganda campaign aimed at beating Marine LePen. But if you consider that only about 20% of the French voted for Macron in the first round and that he achieved that rather pitiful score even though he had the full support of the French establishment then you realize how unpopular that establishment really is with the French. While the Rothschild propaganda machine tried to present Macron like some kind of de Gaulle, most French people did see him for what he was: a hollow puppet in the hands of the transnational plutocracy. And yet, of all the leaders of the G7, Macron is undeniably the most dynamic one, not only due to his young age, but simply because he does not come across as some kind of fossil from a distant past.

Trump and the Eurodwarves

We are told that the G7 is composed of the seven major advanced economies on the planet (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States), but the only real power in that list is the US. Next, it would be Germany, but Merkel's immigration policies have resulted in a EU-wide disaster and she is very much an embattled leader. She is also a prime culprit of the Ukrainian fiasco.Next in line would be the UK, but the UK has just left the EU and May is presiding over a process which she herself opposes, as do the British elites. Which leaves us with Japan, Italy and Canada. Japan's past economic power is being overshadowed by China's immense economy while in political terms the Japanese are voiceless US subcontractors. Italy should not even be part of the G7, at least not in political and economic terms, because Italy is much closer to her Mediterranean neighbors such as Spain and Greece and therefore looked down with contempt by the "northerners", especially Germany. Which leaves Canada, arguably the most irrelevant and subservient country of them all (when is the last time Canada had anything of relevance to say about anything? Exactly). The bottom line is this: in economic terms the G7 has pretty much been replaced by the G20 while in political terms the G7 is an empty shell. Trump fully realizes that and that is why he does not even try to be polite with them.

Obama was a born used car salesman: he could be charming and polite with anybody and everybody. Trump has never had any need to act in such a way and, in the case of the Europeans, he does not even feel like trying.

Trump's contempt for European leaders is definitely undiplomatic and shows a basic lack of education, but it still is a contempt the European leaders richly deserve. Furthermore, while it is true that the AngloZionist Empire is sinking, the European part is sinking much faster than the American one. Which is unsurprising since the US is truly a very unique country.

The American Sonderfall

While I was writing this article, I have been listening to the press conference of Donald Trump in the Rose Garden explaining to the world that the US would now withdraw from the Paris Agreement . I don't want to discuss the merits of this agreements or the reasons behind Trump's decision, but I will stress that this places the US in direct opposition to 195 other countries who signed this treaty expecting the US to abide by its terms. 195 countries really means just about the entire planet. And yet Trump feels confident that he can afford taking a separate path and the rest of the world will have to shut up.

Trump is right. The US is a "special case".

There is absolutely nothing the rest of the planet can do to prevent the United States from withdrawing from this or any other agreement. The best proof of that fact can be found in the more or less official US position that it does not need a UN Security Council to impose sanctions on another nation, threaten it with military aggression or even go to war against it. Right now, the US have attacked Syria several times already and there are US forces deployed inside Syria and nobody seems to care, which is kind of ironic considering how many lawyers there are in the US and, even more so, in Congress. Yet everybody sheepishly accepts that the US is, for some reason, above the law, that laws are for "others", not for the "indispensable nation" with a "duty" and a "special responsibility" to "lead the world" (sorry, I indulge, but I just love this kind of imperialistic language!).

In politics, power is not absolute, but relative. Sure, the US military is basically dysfunctional and doesn't seem to be capable of frightening anybody on the US list of "enemies", but compared to Europe the US is a powerhouse. As for the Europeans, they are depending on the Americans for pretty much everything that matters. Trump understands all that and he seem to have more respect for Kim Jong-un than for Angela Merkel. I can't blame him as this is also how I feel.

The many sweet ironies of it all

The traditional British foreign policy has always been to fosters wars in Europe to prevent any kind of continental unity. As for the US, its main objective has always been to keep "keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down". And now we see the Brits leaving the EU and the Americans pulling out well, maybe not out of Europe per se , but out of most of Europe's problems. So why are the Anglos pulling out? Is that not a clear sign that Europe is sinking?

One of the favorite slogans of the Ukronazis is "Україна – це Європа" (The Ukraine is Europe). Alas, as I wrote in a past article , it is Europe which "became" (like) the Ukraine: poor, corrupt, lead by hypocritical ideologues totally detached from reality and, most importantly, totally fixated on imaginary threats. The only difference between the EU leaders and their Ukronazi counterparts is that while the latter have declared that they are already fighting a Russian invasion, the former are only preparing to counter it. That's it. Other than that, I see no difference, at least none that matters. Oh, I almost forgot the Americans: they don't fight the Russians (yet?), but they are "defending" their country from the onslaught of Russian hackers and pro-Russian moles in the entourage of Donald Trump. Brilliant.

In this world got mad, only the Russians are patiently trying to convince their western partners to return to some semblance of sanity. But, frankly, I don't think that they are very hopeful. They see how the so-called "West" is falling apart, how the ruling elites of the West appear to be hell-bent on self-destruction and they wonder: why are our "western partners" so determined to bring about their own demise and why are they blaming us for what they are doing to themselves? They also often laugh at the quasi magic powers the paranoid crazies in the West seem to ascribe to Russia. One senior US official, James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, even thinks that Russians are " almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique " to subvert democracy (I can't decide if he sounds more like a Nazi racist or a clown probably a mix of both). As I said, the Russians are mostly laughing at it all, but just to make darn sure things don't turn ugly, they are also re-creating their famous "Shock Armies " (including at least one Tank Army) and doubling the size of the Russian Airborne Forces bringing them to 72,000 soldiers and generally preparing for World War 3 .

But for the time being, war is far less likely than it would have been the case with Hillary. What we see is Trump making "America great again" by stepping on its allies in Europe and by contemptuously disregarding the rest of humanity. That kind of arrogant megalomania is not a pretty sight for sure – but way better than WWIII. And "better than WWIII" is all we can hope for in the foreseeable future.

... ... ...

Randal , June 3, 2017 at 10:07 am GMT

"Bubbles from a sunken world" is not an expression I coined.

It's a good reapplication of it, though.

The peoples of Europe no longer have the advantage they had from the industrial revolution they created. They are resource poor, having no great areas of territory, and that depleted by centuries of use. There is one remaining asset they could use to maintain some of their position of punching so dramatically above their weight, which has been their status in human affairs for the past few centuries at least, and that would be the cultural and genetic advantages they used to create that dominance in the first place.

The ultimate dark joke is the fact that the said peoples of Europe are in the process of actively destroying any remnants of that final asset, through cultural degradation and mass immigration.

In this light, we should consider to what degree the political and propaganda support for said processes of cultural degradation and mass immigration emanate from the rivals and enemies of the European peoples, with the intention of preventing forever any recovery from the disastrous, suicidal wars of the early C20th. The most obvious source of such malign influence would be the US, an offshoot of the European peoples which gained the most from the wars in question and has the most to lose from any recovery of the Old World European peoples to any position of sovereignty.

(In this context, of course, any process that hastens the alienation of the European political classes from their comfortable and profitable subordination to the US elites, such as the events Saker describes above, can only be regarded as a useful contribution to the process of recovery of sovereignty.)

Robert Magill , June 3, 2017 at 10:28 am GMT

Trump is right. The US is a "special case".

The propaganda couched as the American Way of Life has become so all consuming that it took just one individual to march to center stage and reflect back our carefully hidden shortcomings and delusions for the fear and loathing to begin. We've been sleepwalking for a long time. https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/black-magic-or-jungian-shadow/

Seamus Padraig , June 3, 2017 at 10:52 am GMT

One senior US official, James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, even thinks that Russians are "almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique" to subvert democracy

Sounds like a pretty good description of the Jew mafia.

The Alarmist , June 3, 2017 at 1:46 pm GMT

"It is hard to gauge what the rest of the assembled politicians really thought (prostitutes"

Correct punctuation at that point in the sentence: ). They were thinking of their own prostitutes and who would pay for them if the US pulls out of NATO. NATO gives the US a fig leaf by being a coalition of the willing for whatever merry ventures we choose to get into at any given time.

Carlton Meyer , Website June 4, 2017 at 4:24 am GMT

Don't give Trump too much credit. After hearing his campaign rhetoric, I thought one of this first moves would be to end the ERI, a recently created $3 billion annual American military slush fund to add bases and equipment stores in Europe. Check out this Dept of Defense press release this week

"The Defense Department's fiscal year 2018 budget request includes nearly $4.8 billion for the European Reassurance Initiative to enhance deterrence and defense and improve the readiness of forces in Europe, the U.S. European Command director of strategy, plans and policy said today. Air Force Maj. Gen. David W. Allvin held a telephone briefing with reporters, speaking from Eucom headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

ERI funding for next fiscal year is up $1.4 billion over fiscal 2017, he said, noting that the funding increase will support the deterrence of future Russian aggression and malign influence through increased joint air, sea and land force responsiveness and expanded interoperability with combined multinational forces. 'This is one of our nation's commitments to Europe, and it demonstrates our strong dedication to the trans-Atlantic bond and the defense of our allies,' Allvin said."

Johan Nagel , Website June 4, 2017 at 4:47 am GMT

Eurosissies? Eurodummies? the 'journalism' here is becoming increasingly puerile, perhaps aiming for a dumbed down audience as traffic has grown?

"Trump is an impeccably courteous person"?

The man has a global reputation of a human pig, a racist, a misogynist, a bigot The more I see such outlandish and frankly bewildering statements on here, the more I begin to believe my own value of the site has been too quickly given and now appears misguided.

I repeat, Trump has long ago persuaded the world that he is scum. Bush was bad enough, basically a special needs coke fiend. Yet he is one reason why the rest of the world understands how a man as sickeningly appalling as Trump could get into so called 'power'. This was not the media cleverly depicting him in a bad light, he has always behaved in the same way, always cultivated the same public image, many moons before running for president. It is not brainwashing or conditioning to find a nasty moron as putrid, it is natural to be sickened by sick souls. It is possible that the site has been co-opted, or was a tool designed to monitor and direct and feed a non mainstream audience who revel in their own arrogant assertion of exceptionalism?

I am unsure as of yet as to why the author has gradually parted Trump and the US government from the anglozionist machine. When clearly, by every measure, that power structure owns the US government, decides its every major decision and as for Trump making any decisions that matter indeed, alleged 'experts' are focusing on how he shakes hands with other 'leaders' rather focusing on the ins and outs of what the anglozionists have organised behind the scenes of $300bn moving from KSA to the banksters.

Trump is no leader. The more he is assumed as much the less credibility a writer enjoys. The man is a laughing stock globally, despised, cringed at, as our the people who voted for him. Nothing has changed with US policy, because it is not decided by the US government. Hilary, Obama, Trump, whoever they are Punch and Judy to draw attention, to nourish the fable of democracy, to provide a human shape to inhuman power

By focusing on the totem with strings attached, the real show is missed http://thedissolutefox.com/brief-glimpse-true-leaders/

jilles dykstra , June 4, 2017 at 6:39 am GMT

het vergt ook en vooral de politieke wil om een afschrikkingsmacht op te bouwen die zich kan meten met Ruslands militaire potentieel en van Teheran tot Peking ontzag inboezemt

This is what Brill this morning writes in the more or less leading Dutch newpaper Volkskrant.

http://www.volkskrant.nl/opinie/paul-brill-van-merkel-hoef-je-op-militair-terrein-geen-krachtig-leiderschap-te-verwachten~a4498822/

The translation: also the political will, especially, is needed to build a deterrent might that is equal to the Russian military potential and is seen with awe from Teheran to Peking. One wonders in what psychiatric institution Brill's treatment failed. Stalin died in 1953. Chrustsjow removed the Russian rockets and atomic heads from Cuba. Putin sells gas.

jilles dykstra , June 4, 2017 at 6:48 am GMT

@Carlton Meyer We, the Dutch, in a referendum rejected the EU association treaty with Ukraine. Of course in the democratic Netherlands and the even more democratic EU it had no effect.

But it did have a curious effect. When our prime minister Rutte, nickname Pinokkio for his lies, defended rejecting the referendum he referred to Russian vacuum bombs on Aleppo. So he confirmed what we knew, the Ukraine association is part of the war of the west against Russia. Rutte did not condemn the USA MOAB vacuum bomb east of Abottabad, Pakistan. NATO should have been dissolved in 1990, perhaps already when the Cuba crisis was solved peacefully.

Alfa158 , June 4, 2017 at 7:00 am GMT

I'm not so sure that the West has the will, purpose, or capacity for sacrifice to prosecute a Third World War. I think the Russians are primarily preparing to defend themselves from the disorganized, spastic lashing-out of a dying West. They need a credible nuclear force to deter the West from launching an end-of-life nuclear strike, and sufficient ground forces to protect their borders from refugees and bandit military units while the West finishes its death throes and then ( I hope) re-birth.

animalogic , June 4, 2017 at 8:26 am GMT

Great article. I can only hope Trump continues to treat the EU political elites as just so many gutless dogs & inept clowns: because they are . Perhaps such treatment will wake the EU up (sure: LOL !) The Saker is right about Europe's increasing insignificance but, the answers are there .

Start with the most elementary act of common sense: stop ALL sanctions, whether economic or political against Russia. Then fully commit to Eurasian integration.
Sure, the US will SPIT, but, the EU is sinking – fast. Anyway, I'll dream on ..

Seamus Padraig , June 4, 2017 at 12:43 pm GMT

Trump is no leader. The more he is assumed as much the less credibility a writer enjoys. The man is a laughing stock globally, despised, cringed at, as our the people who voted for him.

You have entirely missed the point. We know good and well that the president alone does not get to make any important foreign policy decisions–or probably any decisions at all. We know just as well that he is expected to be a salesman promoting policies crafted by the banks, corporations and the deep state. We know. The point is that Trump is an incredibly bad spokesman! He is discrediting the empire by his very presence.

We don't want to be admired or respected for destroying one country after the next. We don't want to be the leaders of the 'free' world. We don't want to be part of any entangling alliances, or any 'new world order'. We just want our country back . And since they won't let us simply vote to end the empire, we have no further recourse but to try and sabotage and discredit it from within. And it's working! It's working because of Trump.

So I say: let him be as vulgar and uncouth as wants. Let him smack around the other NATO countries until they finally wake up. Let him further erode our increasingly untenable position in the middle east. Let him!

It's all part of God's plan for man, my friend. If we have to endure a little international isolation in order to achieve our aims, well that's just fine with us. We are, after all, isolationists . We don't want empire or foreign wars. We just want our country back.

provincial , June 4, 2017 at 1:41 pm GMT

We are approaching, if not already in, the interregnum between empires. Europe has never recovered its pride since WWII the US made sure of that ..the question is whether Europe will find the leadership during this time when the US pulls out .much like the time when Rome left Britain.

Sergey Krieger , June 4, 2017 at 2:12 pm GMT

" but should a war break out, especially a *real* war against Russia, the Americans would push all these Eurosissies out of the way and do 90%+ of the fighting."

Knowing what we know of US military it would mean mostly bleeding and running towards the Channel losing hardware and status of so called "hyper" whatever in the process. Take away nuclear weapons and USA is clearly not a threat to Russia.

American land forces never were serious contented compared to USSR and with 90′s mess reversed things are back to normal state of affairs which means Russian land forces asserting normal state of dominance along Russian borders.

Fritz Pettyjohn , Website June 4, 2017 at 2:29 pm GMT

Avoiding World War III works for me.

Thales the Milesian , June 4, 2017 at 2:57 pm GMT

EUrabia! Evolutionary process in reverse. Except for Austria and Switzerland, the rest of them are terminally disgusting, particularly the Scandinavian harlots and the Baltic Chihuahuas. Vicky Newland was right: F *** k the EU!

in the middle , June 4, 2017 at 3:36 pm GMT

@Johan Nagel He is the President of the USA! Not of the world. So stop your ramble, and sit down. Trump kick A*s. Who cares what the 'world' thinks, we don't care who their leaders are, or who they voted for, we have Trump, and that is that!

El Dato , June 4, 2017 at 4:27 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

Actually MOAB is just a fat airblast bomb (not thermobaric aka fuel-air, aka "vacuum bomb", why even have a MOAB? I guess "because you can"), apparently fitted with a hard cone so that it burrows a bit.

Cyrano , June 4, 2017 at 4:57 pm GMT

@Sergey Krieger

" but should a war break out, especially a *real* war against Russia, the Americans would push all these Eurosissies out of the way and do 90%+ of the fighting."

Yeah, I have a problem with that one too. I don't see such chivalry coming from US – assuming 90% of the fighting to save Europe. NATO was designed with one purpose only – to defend US and no one else. Anybody who believes otherwise – doesn't live in the real world.

In the 68 years of NATO existence, the only country to ever invoke article 5 was – you guess it – US. Article 5 means asking for help from other NATO members to come to your defense when you are attacked. So US asked for help because they were "attacked" in Afghanistan.

That's like me going armed into a bank and trying to rob it, and then complaining that I was "attacked" by the security guard. NATO was simply an early version of the theorem: We fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them here. "Them" in this case being the Russians, instead of the terrorists. Like the Russians were ever planning to cross the Atlantic to fight the Americans "here". Then again, when was the last time paranoia was rational anyway?

Agent76 , June 4, 2017 at 6:28 pm GMT

Jun 3, 2017 Putin defends Trump – 'Don't worry, be happy'

President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement caused anger and anxiety across the world. But is there more than meet the eye? How many critics have actually read the agreement themselves – as President Putin rightfully points out? The agreement is a framework agreement with no particular obligations. There are no guidelines as to how resources should be spent, and the resources which the US ratified are quite substantial.

Sowhat , June 4, 2017 at 6:32 pm GMT

The money Changers's propaganda has always spread lies that have been the exact opposite of their actions. Trump probably had to buy in or he wouldn't be President and his Jewish son-in-law is there on keep an eye on him. He is changing our foreign policy to the extent that he isn't pursuing regime change in Syria even though we have boots on the ground.

Trump's actions are intentionally rude towards some and, contrary to belief in some circles, he's not mad, just flabergasting.

I believe that, despite the fact that we have been a fascist economic state since the Origins of the Truman Doctrine and the build up of the MIIC, Trump didn't become a billionaire because he's clueless. I'm in favor of his actions, so far. He has said screw the Globalist and screw the wasted-brains-EPA.

Everything in the world is controlled by Money Grabbing Economy Controllers so Trump will have issues getting his MAGA agenda but his foreign policy, despite the Syria hiccup, is acceptable. After decades of our forces killing millions of civilians, if Syria lost a few at that airbase, well.. it could have been worse.

I don't agree with everything but the author gets a "respected" from me.

Sowhat , June 4, 2017 at 6:48 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig Fully agree, Seamus. They can stick that PCWORLD compliance BS where the sun doesn't shine.

Wally , June 4, 2017 at 7:43 pm GMT

@Johan Nagel "The man has a global reputation of a human pig, a racist, a misogynist, a bigot "

For which there is no proof, only the elitist leftist MSM's unhinged wishful thinking. Harvard Study: Two Thirds Of Americans Believe Mainstream Media Is 'Fake News'

https://www.prisonplanet.com/harvard-study-two-thirds-of-americans-believe-mainstream-media-is-fake-news.html

Donald Trump: "Whenever you see the words 'sources say' in the fake news media, and they don't mention names it is very possible that those sources don't exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!"

Anonymous , June 4, 2017 at 8:31 pm GMT

@Johan Nagel

Your critique of Saker's evaluation of Trump is basically grounded deeply from within the matrix, whose prisoner you seem to be. Yes, Trump is widely painted to be "a laughing stock globally, despised, cringed at, as are the people who voted for him" but no, that is the view that the mass media has been dishing out. It is not true, simply not true, even though many have swallowed it along with a whole load of marbles.

You are basically paraphrasing Clinton when you jeer "the people who voted for him". Yes, these "despicable folk" did vote Trump into power, and yes they might well do so again. You do not seem to understand the processes at work here: part democracy, part a revolt of the people sickened by the one-sided narrative propagated in the media.

[Jun 04, 2017] Taken In: Fake News Distracts Us From Fake Election

Notable quotes:
"... Trump's first 100 days has come and gone and he has proven to be every bit the faux populist that Obama was (as I explained in a previous post). In hind-sight we can see how a new faux populist was installed. ..."
"... (she appears to be the picture of health now) ..."
"... (along with Russians!!!!) ..."
"... The 'fake news' frenzy is both a mechanism used to create the appearance of pressure on a faux populist President and a distraction from the the REAL news: the fake election. Seen in this light, 'fake news' was both inevitable and a smart media strategy. ..."
"... The rot runs deep. Citizens must develop a keen understanding of history and be as discerning of their news sources as they are of their food sources. Question everything. The passage of Citizens United that allowed almost unlimited money in politics, makes the election of a 'populist outsider' is nearly impossible. But a faux populist is nearly certain to be elected. ..."
May 31, 2017 | jackrabbit.blog
There are numerous clues that point to the 2016 US Presidential Election as having been a set-up. Few seem willing to take a close look at these facts. But it is necessary for an understanding of the world we live in today.

Trump's first 100 days has come and gone and he has proven to be every bit the faux populist that Obama was (as I explained in a previous post). In hind-sight we can see how a new faux populist was installed.

Evidence

  1. Sanders as sheep-dog Black Agenda Report called Sanders a sheep-dog soon after he entered the race . Sanders made it clear from the start that he ruled out the possibility of running as an independent. That was only the first of many punches that Sanders pulled as he led his 'sheep' into the Democratic fold. Others were:

    >> "Enough with the emails!"

    >> Not pursuing Hillary's 'winning' of 6 coin tosses in Iowa;

    >> Virtually conceding the black and female vote to Hillary;

    >> Not calling Hillary out about her claim to have NEVER sold her vote;

    >> Endorsing Hillary despite learning of Hillary-DNC collusion;

    >> Continuing to help the Democratic Party reach out to Bernie supports even after the election.

    As one keen observer noted: Sanders is a Company Man .

  2. Trump as Clinton protege
    Trump knew the Clinton's for years and was very friendly with them. His daughter Ivanka is close to Chelsea. He supported Hillary's Presidential run in 2008 – even taking up the 'birther' nonsense that she started so as to weaken Obama (just as 'fake news' now weakens Trump).

    Trump has done several things that have played into the hands of his 'fake news' critics, while doing other things that have alienated his base. These "own goals" are hard to explain. Like keeping Comey in his Administration and hinting that he taped conversations with Comey, etc. Trump has effectively turned the Russian witchhunt into an investigation into obstruction of justice.

  3. Hillary – playing along
    Hillary ran a very poor campaign for someone that has been in politics for a lifetime and has the support of the sharpest minds in politics (including her husband). The NY Post deemed it, "The Worst Campaign Ever" .

    Media rumors that Hillary was ill reached a high point when she was lifted into a van on 9-11. The frenzy over Hillary's health came and went in a matter of weeks but these bogus concerns (she appears to be the picture of health now) :

    1) gave Hillary an implied excuse for having run a poor race (along with Russians!!!!) , and

    2) helped to quell partisan outrage when Trump said – within days of winning the election – that he wouldn't prosecute Hillary.

    3) Despite her character flaws, collusion with DNC, and disastrous election showing, Hillary is still on top and aids and associates (like VP Biden) make excuses for her. Why do powerful people tip-toe around the Clintons like that?

How_to_Spot_Fake_News.pdf

Fake News

Why is the irresponsible journalism of 'fake news' so prevalent. Why are journalists, historians, politicians, and pundits so caught up in promoting it? In short, why has our society gone crazy?

The 'fake news' frenzy is both a mechanism used to create the appearance of pressure on a faux populist President and a distraction from the the REAL news: the fake election. Seen in this light, 'fake news' was both inevitable and a smart media strategy.

TRUMP COULD END THE 'FAKE NEWS' ABOUT RUSSIAN ELECTION MEDDLING BY POINTING TO OTHER COUNTRIES WHOSE MEDDLING IS MUCH MORE PERVASIVE, LIKE SAUDI ARABIA AND ISRAEL. But he doesn't.

Implications

The rot runs deep. Citizens must develop a keen understanding of history and be as discerning of their news sources as they are of their food sources. Question everything. The passage of Citizens United that allowed almost unlimited money in politics, makes the election of a 'populist outsider' is nearly impossible. But a faux populist is nearly certain to be elected.

[Jun 04, 2017] France Debunks Russian Hacking Claims - Clinton Again Loses It

Notable quotes:
"... The "Macron attack" was very curious. Gigabytes of campaign emails were released by "the hackers" just hours before a media silence period before the election. The campaign immediately found fakes with Cyrillic markings and blamed "Russia". None of the released emails contained anything that was even remotely scandalous. It was likely a planned Public Relations stunt, not a cyber attack. ..."
"... That NYT report was complete nonsense. The "cybersecurity firm" it quoted was peddling snake oil. Phishing attacks are daily occurrences, mostly by amateurs. Phishing emails are not cyber attacks. They are simply letters which attempt to get people to reveal their passwords or other secrets. They are generally not attributable at all. Likewise APT's, "Advanced Persistent Threats", are not "groups" but collections of methods that can be copied and re-used by anyone. After their first occurrence "in the wild" they are no longer attributable. ..."
"... The head of the French government's cyber security agency, which investigated leaks from President Emmanuel Macron's election campaign, says they found no trace of a notorious Russian hacking group behind the attack. ..."
"... In an interview in his office Thursday with The Associated Press, Guillaume Poupard said the Macron campaign hack "was so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone." ..."
"... Poupard says the attack's simplicity "means that we can imagine that it was a person who did this alone. They could be in any country." ..."
"... of the current 15 million plus followers of @HillaryClinton only 48%, or 7,605,960, are real and 8,108,833 fake. ..."
"... For the @realDonaldTrump account Twitter Audit ..."
"... Funny how western MSM totally block these news. But thats the propaganda we know so well from the same culprits. Clinton is also obviously mentally ill, spreading all these conspiracy theories and fake news against Russia and Trump and the equally mentally ill MSM is giving her all the space. ..."
"... Reading this is more surprising "None of the released emails contained anything that was even remotely scandalous." That has been the line of the Fr media since AFTER the election. In fact; there are orders for amphetamines paid in bitcoins and a possible allusion to a cocaine order. How can those emails be considered fakes when the rest is not? Some media are now using the mails related to the financial system of the newly set Macron party as genuine, so how do they sort them out? ..."
"... It is a long held opinion of mine, based on what I observe over a relatively long life, that most politicians who seek high levels of power are driven by needs and desires which quite often include sociopathic needs. Many successful politicians often display other pathological tendencies (lying, misleading, manipulation of others, self-glorification, egotism and deep insecurities as well as pursuit of wealth and public acclaim). It seems politics attracts people of this kind and the atmosphere exaggerates and encourages them. ..."
"... One other tendency also seems to stand out: attributing all manner of base and ugly intentions on others without real proof. This, I believe is founded on the real understanding of the accuser that he or she would do just that if given the chance. Look into your own heart and project onto others what you find there. It is fair to fear the worst of others but it can be catastrophic when those fears are acted upon as if the other party were guilty. Sort of, "Shoot first and ask questions later." Not the kind of neighbhour any rational person would want. Yet we choose them to lead. ..."
"... It would be easy to place fakes if I understand the US hacking software that wikileaks published correctly. ..."
"... Russia has a very real right wing populist movement of his own, and it is this movement that supports world wide populism including Trump . Putin calls them "patriotic hackers" and puts some distance between the Russian state and these activities (same as US think tanks are not the US state), but they get encouraged and used by the Russian state when needed like in Ukraine. ..."
"... It is an uneasy alliance as they are a very real threat to the Russian state itself . ..."
"... The "West" does not mind supporting Navalny in Russia who is a right wing populist himself. ..."
"... Interestingly, Clinton's backers in the legacy media are growing tired of her "not my fault" rant. ..."
"... A blackout shortly before elections makes sense - otherwise you do politics by rumour. No organisation is capable of deciding what is fake and what not with megabytes of emails. To put a researcher to work on it would still not solve it. So yes, Macron campaign statement "there are fakes in it" was preemptive. To hack stuff and trust someone will read it ...., well you can always hope. ..."
"... i am so tired of this 'russia bogeyman' thing the msm has going... i am even more tired of hearing about hillary clinton.. what a hopeless person.. ..."
"... bombing the shit out of other countries and climate control just don't go hand in hand... wonder when the puppets in europe, or the west actually recongize what a lying decietful game they are playing with people of climate control... oh yeah and walmart needs more people on the planet to generate more sales of plastic products from china.. and the beat goes on... ..."
"... Clinton does not have a choice at this point b but to take shrill to new levels. She herself is a war criminal and she may live to be prosecuted for such. The party she represents is corrupt to the core and it is in defense mode as well over its facade of populism...who is really behind the Seth Rich murder? How fast can the Merry-Go-Round spin before big parts start flying off? I think we are about to see. AtaBrit | Jun 2, 2017 3:24:21 PM | 25 @jfl | 8 Excellent link. Cheers. There has been a palpable shift in global dynamics since Trump's tour. No question about it. I am optimistic. xor | Jun 2, 2017 3:33:58 PM | 26 Hillary Clinton really is a disgusting critter. The presstitute media bias during the election campaign probably never has been so much in favor of one person. Even Google and Facebook participated in the public manipulation and still she keeps claiming it's the other way round. And then we're not even talking about DNC whistleblower Seth Rich who was set as an example. ..."
"... A part from Trend Micro joining the desinformation circus, it is and always delivered crappy software. ..."
"... Mediapart has looked at the leaks deducing what everybody guessed before - that "en marche" has been financed by the finance sector. I think the media is correct in not spreading rumour about Macron being gay (or dependent on drugs) - especially as there is no confirmation the leaks are untampered with. ..."
"... "Phishing attacks are daily occurrences, mostly by amateurs. Phishing emails are not cyber attacks. They are simply letters which attempt to get people to reveal their passwords or other secrets. They are generally not attributable at all. " ..."
"... b, your ignorance is pretty much on display, here. Cyber attacks take many different forms, among which are "phishing attacks". Try to get with the program ..."
Jun 02, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

In April the New York Times, published this bullshit: Russian Hackers Who Targeted Clinton Appear to Attack France's Macron

The campaign of the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has been targeted by what appear to be the same Russian operatives responsible for hacks of Democratic campaign officials before last year's American presidential election, a cybersecurity firm warns in a new report.
...
Security researchers at the cybersecurity firm, Trend Micro, said that on March 15 they spotted a hacking group they believe to be a Russian intelligence unit turn its weapons on Mr. Macron's campaign -- sending emails to campaign officials and others with links to fake websites designed to bait them into turning over passwords.

The group began registering several decoy internet addresses last month and as recently as April 15, naming one onedrive-en-marche.fr and another mail-en-marche.fr to mimic the name of Mr. Macron's political party, En Marche.

Those websites were registered to a block of web addresses that Trend Micro's researchers say belong to the Russian intelligence unit they refer to as Pawn Storm, but is alternatively known as Fancy Bear, APT 28 or the Sofacy Group. American and European intelligence agencies and American private security researchers determined that the group was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee last year.

The "Macron attack" was very curious. Gigabytes of campaign emails were released by "the hackers" just hours before a media silence period before the election. The campaign immediately found fakes with Cyrillic markings and blamed "Russia". None of the released emails contained anything that was even remotely scandalous. It was likely a planned Public Relations stunt, not a cyber attack.

That NYT report was complete nonsense. The "cybersecurity firm" it quoted was peddling snake oil. Phishing attacks are daily occurrences, mostly by amateurs. Phishing emails are not cyber attacks. They are simply letters which attempt to get people to reveal their passwords or other secrets. They are generally not attributable at all. Likewise APT's, "Advanced Persistent Threats", are not "groups" but collections of methods that can be copied and re-used by anyone. After their first occurrence "in the wild" they are no longer attributable.

That isn't just me saying so. It is the head of France's cyber security agency :

The head of the French government's cyber security agency, which investigated leaks from President Emmanuel Macron's election campaign, says they found no trace of a notorious Russian hacking group behind the attack.

In an interview in his office Thursday with The Associated Press, Guillaume Poupard said the Macron campaign hack "was so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone."

He said they found no trace that the Russian hacking group known as APT28, blamed for other attacks including on the U.S. presidential campaign, was responsible.
...
Poupard says the attack's simplicity "means that we can imagine that it was a person who did this alone. They could be in any country."

If, as the NYT claims, the authors of the attack on the Macron campaign were the same as in the Clinton case then the Clinton campaign was likely not hacked by Russians.

That will of course not hinder Clinton to claim that "the Russians" were the ones who caused her to lose the election. Clinton has by now listed 24 guilty persons and organizations that caused her loss. She is not one of them.

In her latest Clinton

suggested that Russia or Trump were somehow behind a deliberate inflation of his numbers of twitter followers through the use of bots, because [Trump's] European and Middle East tour had been a flop.

'Who is behind driving up Trump's twitter followers by the millions?' she said.

'We know they're bots. Is it to make him look more popular than he is? Is it to influence others? What is the message behind this?

The Clinton claim of "driving up Trump's twitter followers by the millions" is fake news based on a hoax. Twitter Audit , where Clinton got the bot numbers from (h/t @LutWitt ), says that of the current 15 million plus followers of @HillaryClinton only 48%, or 7,605,960, are real and 8,108,833 fake.

For the @realDonaldTrump account Twitter Audit finds that 51% of its 30 million+ followers are real. Not a great margin but still better than Clinton.

Clinton once famously said " We came, we saw, he died" and laughed (vid). She was talking about the murder of Muhammad Ghaddafi of Libya. She still does not understand why people might be turned off by her vile character. She should take more time to talk with her daughter . Chelsea for one does not like gags about killing presidents:

Hillary Clinton lost it (vid - see her off-the-meds rants on the election starting at 12:00 min). She needs a vacation on some lone island and a long period of silences in some remote cloister. Anything she adds now only reflects badly on her.

Stefan | Jun 2, 2017 4:14:41 AM | 2
Chelsea's tweet is Telling us that the neocons will try to install her in the White House next. As for Hillary, someone get her an (un)padded room.
Anonymous | Jun 2, 2017 4:25:31 AM | 3
Funny how western MSM totally block these news. But thats the propaganda we know so well from the same culprits. Clinton is also obviously mentally ill, spreading all these conspiracy theories and fake news against Russia and Trump and the equally mentally ill MSM is giving her all the space.

Mina | Jun 2, 2017 5:10:43 AM | 5
The Macron team has been brilliant in manipulating the French media. When the hack happened, every single gov and non gov media was blaming the Ruskis, so that ppl voted Macron blindly thinking great he is anti "popovs". But for a guy who believes himself the new De Gaulle, they'll be suprised...
Mina | Jun 2, 2017 5:12:54 AM | 6
Reading this is more surprising "None of the released emails contained anything that was even remotely scandalous." That has been the line of the Fr media since AFTER the election. In fact; there are orders for amphetamines paid in bitcoins and a possible allusion to a cocaine order. How can those emails be considered fakes when the rest is not? Some media are now using the mails related to the financial system of the newly set Macron party as genuine, so how do they sort them out?
justacynicalrealist | Jun 2, 2017 7:07:40 AM | 9
It is a long held opinion of mine, based on what I observe over a relatively long life, that most politicians who seek high levels of power are driven by needs and desires which quite often include sociopathic needs. Many successful politicians often display other pathological tendencies (lying, misleading, manipulation of others, self-glorification, egotism and deep insecurities as well as pursuit of wealth and public acclaim). It seems politics attracts people of this kind and the atmosphere exaggerates and encourages them.

One other tendency also seems to stand out: attributing all manner of base and ugly intentions on others without real proof. This, I believe is founded on the real understanding of the accuser that he or she would do just that if given the chance. Look into your own heart and project onto others what you find there. It is fair to fear the worst of others but it can be catastrophic when those fears are acted upon as if the other party were guilty. Sort of, "Shoot first and ask questions later." Not the kind of neighbhour any rational person would want. Yet we choose them to lead.

crone | Jun 2, 2017 9:21:00 AM | 10
@9

We don't choose them to lead.

Perimetr | Jun 2, 2017 9:54:45 AM | 11
In regard to Japanese and German militarism, both nations have the capacity to become nuclear weapon states, and Japan is certainly poised to become one any time it so chooses. Joe Biden made this clear a year ago, when he noted that Japan could have nuclear weapons "virtually overnight" if it wanted to. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/06/24/national/politics-diplomacy/japan-get-nuclear-weapons-virtually-overnight-biden-tells-xi/
somebody | Jun 2, 2017 10:56:51 AM | 13
Posted by: Mina | Jun 2, 2017 5:12:54 AM | 6

It would be easy to place fakes if I understand the US hacking software that wikileaks published correctly. Wikileaks kept a distance from the leak except an ambiguous comment by Assange. Since that comment Wikileaks kept quiet.

The fact that it was published so late with nobody having the chance to look through probably means there was nothing in it, just hoping that people might assume something to be there.

Russia has a very real right wing populist movement of his own, and it is this movement that supports world wide populism including Trump . Putin calls them "patriotic hackers" and puts some distance between the Russian state and these activities (same as US think tanks are not the US state), but they get encouraged and used by the Russian state when needed like in Ukraine.

It is an uneasy alliance as they are a very real threat to the Russian state itself .

"The worst thing that had happened to the leaders of the rebellion was that in the end Mr. Rutskoy and Mr. Khasbulatov, the leaders of this anti-Eltsin section, seeded control over the opposition to radical nationalists, Antisemites and paramilitaries that in the end ruled Russia in the White House and the Parliament building", he said.

These people captured the Moscow city hall, which is right across the White House, and attempted to cease Russian television in Ostankino. The events made Boris Yeltsin convince the army to go for the operation. On October 4, he ordered the army to storm the parliamentary building. The leaders of the resistance were arrested.

The "West" does not mind supporting Navalny in Russia who is a right wing populist himself.

SmoothieX12 | Jun 2, 2017 10:58:26 AM | 14
@3

Daily Fail is a major media outlet. They ran it. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4560344/Hillary-Trump-colluded-Russia-create-fake-news.html#comments

xxx | Jun 2, 2017 11:19:01 AM | 16

Interestingly, Clinton's backers in the legacy media are growing tired of her "not my fault" rant. The red line that she crossed was her criticism of the DNC's data analytics. This spurred a raft of recriminations: Obama starved the DNC; poor Wasserman-Schultz had nothing to work with. Hillary had the data that Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were in trouble and did nothing. The Democrats are a party in real trouble.
Mina | Jun 2, 2017 11:29:26 AM | 17
but the Bulgarian paper which gave the name of the so called FSB guy published some mails and pointed to the metadata as possibly leading very easily to the xerox machines used to make some of the pdf in the files there was a retweet by wl on the day after which was about a french guy who had put a link to the place where the files were pubished and immediately received a lawyer's letter anyway the frenchies don't read english, so it is not about the time between the publication and the election, but for the perfect blackout in the msm and good reactions of the culprits (we've planted fakes) and for the fact they are not interested in the internet outside french borders
somebody | Jun 2, 2017 11:52:09 AM | 18
Posted by: Mina | Jun 2, 2017 11:29:26 AM | 17

A blackout shortly before elections makes sense - otherwise you do politics by rumour. No organisation is capable of deciding what is fake and what not with megabytes of emails. To put a researcher to work on it would still not solve it. So yes, Macron campaign statement "there are fakes in it" was preemptive. To hack stuff and trust someone will read it ...., well you can always hope.

james | Jun 2, 2017 12:51:40 PM | 19
i am so tired of this 'russia bogeyman' thing the msm has going... i am even more tired of hearing about hillary clinton.. what a hopeless person..
Cousin Jack | Jun 2, 2017 1:51:18 PM | 20
This is rather droll: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/02/vladimir-putin-russia-us-election-hacking
james | Jun 2, 2017 2:35:50 PM | 22
bombing the shit out of other countries and climate control just don't go hand in hand... wonder when the puppets in europe, or the west actually recongize what a lying decietful game they are playing with people of climate control... oh yeah and walmart needs more people on the planet to generate more sales of plastic products from china.. and the beat goes on...
Heros | Jun 2, 2017 2:59:27 PM | 23
Debbie Wasserman Schultz Uses Voice Changer To Call Law Firm Suing DNC
"Attorney Elizabeth Lee Beck's office received a call just before 5PM on Thursday from an individual who was apparently using a 'robotic and genderless' voice changing device, sniffing around with questions about the DNC lawsuit filed over cheating in the 2016 election. The suit - based on documents released by hacker Guccifer 2.0, claims that the DNC colluded with Sec. Hillary Clinton's campaign 'to perpetrate a fraud on the public.'

After a brief chat with the law firm's secretary, the 'mysterious' voice-masking caller concluded the call with an 'Okey dokey.'

And whose number showed up when the law firm turned around and googled the number from the caller ID? Why, who else but Debbie Wasserman Schultz' Aventura office!"

Jewish Israeli-US teen arrested for phoning in JCC bomb threats used voice-altering technology to make threatening calls

Police said the resident of the southern city of Ashkelon was the subject of a months-long undercover investigation by police's Lahav 433 cyber unit and the FBI. It said in a statement that the motive behind the bomb threats was unclear. Police said he is 19 years old, but several Israeli media outlets reported him as 18.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the suspect allegedly placed dozens of threatening phone calls to public venues, synagogues and community buildings in the US, New Zealand and Australia. He also placed a threat to Delta Airlines, causing a flight in February 2015 to make an emergency landing.

"He's the guy who was behind the JCC threats," Rosenfeld said, referring to the dozens of anonymous threats phoned in to Jewish community centers in the US over the past two months.

The hoax calls were widely regarded as acts of anti-Semitism. The threats led to criticism of President Donald Trump's administration for not speaking out fast enough. Last month, the White House denounced the threats and rejected "anti-Semitic and hateful threats in the strongest terms."
...
Rosenfeld said the man used advanced technologies to mask the origin of his calls and communications to synagogues, community buildings and public venues. He said police searched his house Thursday morning and discovered antennas and satellite equipment.

Same tribe, same dirty tricks. They act as if all their crimes will never catch up to them.

psychohistorian | Jun 2, 2017 3:03:42 PM | 24
Clinton does not have a choice at this point b but to take shrill to new levels. She herself is a war criminal and she may live to be prosecuted for such. The party she represents is corrupt to the core and it is in defense mode as well over its facade of populism...who is really behind the Seth Rich murder?

How fast can the Merry-Go-Round spin before big parts start flying off? I think we are about to see.

AtaBrit | Jun 2, 2017 3:24:21 PM | 25
@jfl | 8
Excellent link. Cheers. There has been a palpable shift in global dynamics since Trump's tour. No question about it. I am optimistic.
xor | Jun 2, 2017 3:33:58 PM | 26
Hillary Clinton really is a disgusting critter. The presstitute media bias during the election campaign probably never has been so much in favor of one person. Even Google and Facebook participated in the public manipulation and still she keeps claiming it's the other way round. And then we're not even talking about DNC whistleblower Seth Rich who was set as an example.

A part from Trend Micro joining the desinformation circus, it is and always delivered crappy software. Even last year their products that are supposed to protect their users against virusses and remote attacks in fact facilitated these: "PCs running Trend Micro's Windows antivirus can be hijacked, infected with malware, or wiped clean by any website, thanks to a vulnerability in the security software."

and "Because the password manager was so badly written, Ormandy found that a malicious script could not only execute code remotely, it could also steal all passwords stored in the browser using the flaws in Trend's software – even if they are encrypted."

Trend Micro AV gave any website command-line access to Windows PCs

So a part from writing fake secutiry software, they also make fake statements and perform fake research.

stumpy | Jun 2, 2017 3:56:19 PM | 27
psychohistorian @ 24

My thoughts, too. After juggling so many schemes and dark deals over the years, the liar's mind just cracks up. Pretty soon we'll be hearing about the skunkworks at area 51 targeting her with death rays.

Her family should get her into a comfy retirement before she does more damage to herself and others. If her daughter wants to pick up the baton, that's fine. I hope she runs for a democrat seat.

Anonymous | Jun 2, 2017 4:15:45 PM | 28
Aslong as MSM gives her conspiracy theories space this maniac will live on.

I cant believe so many people, majority of western people, believe her on Trump, Russia etcetera. Classic brainwashing.

likklemore | Jun 2, 2017 4:19:16 PM | 29
The Russians did it from their secure cubicles in Langley, VA. We all read Wikileaks' expose Vault 7.

Heads Up Killary.
Seth Conrad Rich's life may have ended by assassins. Total legacy Media blackout but They will be found.

http://sethrich.info
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
RE: Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 2, 2017 2:30:00 PM | 21

This Climate Change program is a money scam. Lloyd Blankfein railed against Trump as his CCE) money bowl is affected. The whole green tax, carbon emissions credit trading makes no sense whatsoever. Just another financial vehicle.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/climate-change-global-warming-and-the-carbon-finance-business/5365419

Recall the dinosaurs; they forgot to tax the autos, and the factories' carbon emissions. Oh my, look what happened to them!

My weather guy/gal's 24-hr forecast taken from NOAA is always inaccurate. Never mind forecasting the next 30 years.

Garbage in, garbage out. Is earth cooling or warming?

  • When promoters of Climate Change ignore the Milankovitch Cycles we are being deceived. LINK
  • Ice once covered the Equator LINK
  • USA-Canada Equator Belt LINK
  • Natural Variability LINK
ben | Jun 2, 2017 4:21:35 PM | 30
HRC and Trump both work for the same team. Clinton is doing her part by creating the illusion there are actually choices between the two parties with her constant whining about the election. Trump is doing his part by distracting the sheep with weird behavior, while his corporate cronies ready the American sheep for a good shearing.
ben | Jun 2, 2017 4:26:58 PM | 31
P.S.--Should have put the word "election" in quotes. We, in the U$A, no longer have Presidential elections, we have selections.
psychohistorian | Jun 2, 2017 4:28:51 PM | 32
@ Ben who wrote about American sheep.... BAAAAAA! And we/I come here and spew textual white noise while humanity enters Hospice.
frances | Jun 2, 2017 5:19:48 PM | 33
re: Clinton does not have a choice at this point b but to take shrill to new levels. She herself is a war criminal and she may live to be prosecuted for such.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 2, 2017 3:03:42 PM | 24.

I watched her May 31, 2017 live interview on youtube and my first thought was, "You clever rascal, you are lying as fast as you can in order to taint the jury pool." No one ever said she was stupid; evil, corrupt, soulless, yes. But never stupid.

Anonymous | Jun 2, 2017 6:18:17 PM | 34
Speaking on the hatred for Trump, this is another woman that is completely mentally ill: Kathy Griffin: I am the victim - not Trump!
https://twitter.com/ABCWorldNews/status/870679050804633602
Dr. Bill edin | Jun 2, 2017 8:54:49 PM | 35
In that bizarre Clinton clip, where she channels Julius Caesar (whom she still hopes to be)--clapping her hands and shouting, "We came! We saw! He DIED!!!" on hearing the news that Gaddafi had been raped and gutted with a bayonet by US-supported Al-Qaeda "rebels" whom she had visited in Libya just a week before--the CBS reporter rhetorically asks her if Clinton thinks her own visit had anything to do with this event. And Clinton amazingly answers: "It did." I had to play the clip 3 X to believe it. But that's what she actually said!
alaric | Jun 2, 2017 11:42:07 PM | 36
Hillary appears to be quiet depressed, still, and in denial but she really can't admit the truth without completely pissing off her sponsors and future $500K a shot speaking gigs.

She can't come out and admit that the people didn't want her because she is a corrupt corporate/wall st whore and war monger and that the Dem playbook of identity politics failed because neo-liberalism has screwed over too many people. She can't admit that she has no personality and that she comes across has cold, fake and contrived either.

She really has no choice but to keep pointing fingers elsewhere because admitting the truth would be the end of her new career and the end of the political career she is pursuing for Chelsea.

stumpy | Jun 3, 2017 12:00:29 AM | 37
likklemore @ 29

The Green Climate Fund. $100 Billion a year to sit in the World Bank while a cartel decides who to give/lend it to. Whatever the reason, Trump got this one right. I guess it depends on which flavor of green you have in mind.

nonsense factory | Jun 3, 2017 1:17:50 AM | 38
Ah, now that Donald Trump has gotten in bed with the Saudis, perhaps it's time to review the long collaborative history between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton?
http://www.mintpressnews.com/trump-clinton-refuse-explain-share-address-delaware/215907/
Looks like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are on the same page, doesn't it?
Saunder | Jun 3, 2017 2:17:58 AM | 39
Saying it's Russians' fault like blaming everything on Jews' – & other Putin quotes at #SPIEF
https://mobile.twitter.com/RT_com/status/870807497283559425?p=p#
Mina | Jun 3, 2017 5:47:12 AM | 40
Great website http://www.photorientalist.org/
jfl | Jun 3, 2017 8:49:11 AM | 41
Study shows massive growth of political abstention in 2016 US election
Clinton's orientation to more affluent voters produced a dramatic shift in the landscape of American two-party politics in 2016. According to data from the American National Election Survey (ANES), the Democratic Party won a majority of votes from the wealthiest 5 percent of the white population for the first time since ANES began collecting data in 1948. Not only did the Clinton campaign win amongst the wealthiest 5 percent of whites, she won by an overwhelming margin, slightly greater than 10 percent. The Democrats won by wide margins among wealthier sections of all racial groups.

On the other side, the poorest two-thirds of white voters supported the Republican candidate, also for the first time in the ANES poll's 70-year history. The chart below shows the shift, with the Republican margin of victory appearing higher on the Y-axis and the income percentile groups listed from left to right on the X-axis, with the wealthiest 5 percent listed on the right of each graph. The fact that the chart for 2016 has a downward trajectory highlights the degree to which the Democratic Party has become the primary party of the affluent upper-middle class.

the 'Democrats' in the usofa are like the 'Democrats' in thailand ... they've got the plutocrat vote, and the wannabe plutocrat vote, sewed up. but that's not enough to get elected.

the thai 'Democrats' turn to coups to stay in power ... and now, so do the american Democrats. starting off with a judicial coup, they hope.

will they go whole hog with tanks in the streets when that fails?

Noirette | Jun 3, 2017 10:13:16 AM | 42
The Macron 'hack' was indeed curious. Maybe a sort of copy-cat-effort, like it has become fash to hack pol e-mails? Odd - I haven't seen what the content is, is it just a lot of rubbish, is the hack being ignored on purpose? Is all being covered up? Where is the material? Who is analysing it? Sure I could hunt it up, the point is this all sank without much of a trace The media were ordered not to publish: Independent
Jackrabbit | Jun 3, 2017 10:43:19 AM | 43
ben@30 nf@38

https://jackrabbit.blog/

somebody | Jun 3, 2017 10:48:17 AM | 44
Posted by: Noirette | Jun 3, 2017 10:13:16 AM | 42

You find them under #macronleaks on twitter

Wikileaks - Assange - posted that they were looking at the stuff if they were real but did not post anything after that. Mediapart has looked at the leaks deducing what everybody guessed before - that "en marche" has been financed by the finance sector. I think the media is correct in not spreading rumour about Macron being gay (or dependent on drugs) - especially as there is no confirmation the leaks are untampered with.

Bardi | Jun 3, 2017 2:04:18 PM | 46
"Phishing attacks are daily occurrences, mostly by amateurs. Phishing emails are not cyber attacks. They are simply letters which attempt to get people to reveal their passwords or other secrets. They are generally not attributable at all. "

b, your ignorance is pretty much on display, here. Cyber attacks take many different forms, among which are "phishing attacks". Try to get with the program

Former hacker.

jfl | Jun 3, 2017 8:54:38 PM | 51
@50 witters

see Putin defends Trump on Climate change - 'Don't worry, be happy' .

Putin

1. cuts to the chase: the paris accord has no teeth
2. notes that russia has yet to sign the accord itself
3. points out that serious, heavy lifting is required to deal with climate change
4. throws the rump a lifesaver ... implies that russia and the us might work together on 3.

i always like to listen to putin. he actually says things.

Hoarsewhisperer | Jun 3, 2017 11:50:28 PM | 52
i always like to listen to putin. he actually says things.
Posted by: jfl | Jun 3, 2017 8:54:38 PM | 51

That's true but, unlike Western leaders, Putin's most outstanding personal attribute is his firm commitment to keeping quiet when he's got nothing to say.
Malcolm Turnbull is the perfect example... the longer his rambling speeches take to deliver, the less solid info they contain.
It's a Neoliberal thing; long on verbosity - short on sane ideas.

[Jun 04, 2017] Vladimir Putin Suggests to Megyn Kelly That US Hackers May Have Framed Russia

Notable quotes:
"... The US Media try to manufacture a reality that pleases them (or, rather, their owners) on the basis of zero evidence. Putin laughs at this. His remarks are comical about the situation . and correct. America needs a doctor. Alternatively it needs to shoot itself in the head (the finance oligarchy) so it can grow a new one. ..."
Jun 04, 2017 | variety.com

"Hackers can be anywhere," Putin told Kelly. "They can be in Russia, in Asia even in America, Latin America. They can even be hackers, by the way, in the United States, who very skillfully and professionally, shifted the blame, as we say, on to Russia. Can you imagine something like that? In the midst of a political battle. By some calculations it was convenient for them to release this information, so they released it, citing Russia. Could you imagine something like that? I can."

Ben says: June 3, 2017 at 10:18 am

Putin is right. The US intelligence agencies need to present evidence before blaming someone.

physicsandmathsrevision says: June 3, 2017 at 1:45 am

The US Media try to manufacture a reality that pleases them (or, rather, their owners) on the basis of zero evidence. Putin laughs at this. His remarks are comical about the situation . and correct. America needs a doctor. Alternatively it needs to shoot itself in the head (the finance oligarchy) so it can grow a new one.

[Jun 04, 2017] Russiagate is rehash of classic Cold War propaganda, a set of a lies that has been the basis for so many wars launched to stop this alleged expansionism in the past

Jun 04, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs

, June 04, 2017 at 04:23 AM
(Is this anything?)

Obama's Dilemma on Troop Surge in Afghanistan

Now Vexes Trump https://nyti.ms/2sCkEsB

NYT - MARK LANDLER and ERIC SCHMITT - JUNE 3

WASHINGTON - A new president confronts an old war, one that bedeviled his predecessor. He is caught between seasoned military commanders, who tell him that the road to victory is to pour in more American troops, and skeptical political advisers, who argue that a major deployment is a futile exercise that will leave him politically vulnerable.

Barack Obama in 2009. But also Donald J. Trump in 2017.

As Mr. Trump faces his most consequential decision yet as commander in chief - whether to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan, where a truck bombing on Wednesday offered a brutal reminder that the 16-year-old war is far from over - his administration is divided along familiar fault lines.

The dispute pits two generals who had formative experiences in Afghanistan - Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster - against political aides, led by the chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who fear that sending in more troops would be a slippery slope toward nation-building.

"They are going to be faced with the same questions we were," said David Axelrod, a former senior Obama adviser, who worried, during the 2009 debate, that the generals were boxing his boss in. "How and when does this end? Or is it an open-ended commitment of American lives and resources? What will the investment produce in the long run?"

The White House shelved the deliberations over Afghanistan three weeks ago, after an initial Pentagon proposal to deploy up to 5,000 additional American troops ran into fierce resistance from Mr. Bannon, an ardent nationalist, and other political advisers. In the West Wing, some aides have taken to calling Afghanistan "McMaster's war."

Undeterred, General McMaster plans to bring the debate back to the front burner this coming week, a senior administration official said. But as he does so, the Pentagon appears to be moving toward a smaller recommendation, in which America's allies would supply half the new troops. Historically, the United States has supplied about two-thirds of the soldiers in Afghanistan.

That proposal depends on nailing down commitments from NATO and other allies - a task that former officials said had gotten harder after Mr. Trump's stormy visit to Europe, where he chided allies for not paying their fair share of the alliance's upkeep and declined to reaffirm America's commitment to mutual defense.

"Trump has made it harder, not easier, to follow the U.S. lead," said Douglas E. Lute, a former ambassador to NATO who advised both Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush on Afghanistan. "Questioning U.S. leadership makes it more difficult for the allies to send troops into harm's way." ...

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , June 04, 2017 at 04:27 AM
... Mr. Bannon, who was a powerful force behind Mr. Trump's decision to leave the Paris climate accord, has recovered some of his influence in the wake of that debate. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump's son-in-law and adviser, remains a crucial voice, despite his troubles over reported links to Russia. Though he has not taken a position on troops, his aides say he views his role as making sure the president gets genuine options.

Other officials may weigh in, too. John F. Kelly, the secretary of Homeland Security and another retired general, holds weight with Mr. Trump. His son was killed in combat in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson may be exerting behind-the-scenes influence already. The debate over Afghanistan abruptly slowed down after officials at the State Department expressed concern that General McMaster was "jamming through" a troop decision.

Still, Mr. Trump's heavy reliance on military commanders risks a repeat of what some critics viewed as a weakness of the Obama administration's troop debate, even with Mrs. Clinton's participation: its overemphasis on a military solution.

"This whole decision is being seen too narrowly, through a military prism," said Daniel F. Feldman, who served as special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under Mr. Obama. "It has to be seen in a more integrated way. It requires a more aggressive diplomatic component."

(And what of Ivanka?)

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , June 04, 2017 at 04:51 AM
(Not bloody likely.)

A Political Solution to the Afghan War

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/a-political-solution-to-the-afghan-war/241376/

The Atlantic - July 7, 2011

... But what about the political formula? How will Afghanistan be governed after we leave? Will it remain under its current constitution? What role will there be for the Taliban? How will power be shared between Kabul and the provinces? How about the most troublesome neighbor, Pakistan? What will its role be? And what can the United States do to make the answers these questions come out in a direction that does as little harm to our interests as possible? ...

The End of Afghanistan's War

https://www.thenation.com/article/end-afghanistans-war/

The Nation - June 29, 2013

If it happens, it will be because the United

States and Pakistan agree on a role for the

Taliban in a reshaped government in Kabul.

... If there is going to be a peaceful end to the war in Afghanistan unlikely as that may be, it will come when the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan all agree on a rebalancing of the government in Kabul, probably with a new constitution and probably either including the Taliban in the new regime or giving the Taliban effective control of parts of southern Afghanistan in some sort of federal system. ...

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , June 04, 2017 at 05:31 AM
(Hmmm. How the US military

probably sees Pakistan. Other

then the place where Bin Laden hid out.)

Military coups in Pakistan began in 1958 and there have been three successful attempts. There have also been numerous unsuccessful attempts since 1951. Since its creation in 1947, Pakistan has spent several decades under military rule (1958 – 1971, 1977 – 1988, 1999 – 2008). ... (Wikipedia)

libezkova - , June 04, 2017 at 05:41 AM
"Questioning U.S. leadership makes it more difficult for the allies to send troops into harm's way."

The question to be asked is why the

USA elite fights all this wars of neoliberal empire expansion at the expense of American people. They steal money from people. Huge amount of money. In order to help multinationals. And to create a smoke screen and justification inflate anti-Russian hysteria. Now probably 70% of Americans are adamantly anti-Russian like in good old days of Cold War. Very convenient for stealing even more money for MIC and multinationals: "stealing money as a patriotic duty"

http://exiledonline.com/russia-blog-7-when-mother-jones-was-investigated-for-spreading-kremlin-disinformation/

== quote ==

Mother Jones recently announced it's "redoubling our Russia reporting" - in the words of editor Clara Jeffery. Ain't that rich. What passes for "Russia reporting" at Mother Jones is mostly just glorified InfoWars paranoia for progressive marks - a cataract of xenophobic conspiracy theories about inscrutable Russian barbarians hellbent on subverting our way of life, spreading chaos, destroying freedom & democracy & tolerance wherever they once flourished. . . . because they hate us, because we're free.

Western reporting on Russia has always been garbage, But the so-called "Russia reporting" of the last year has taken the usual malpractice to unimagined depths - whether it's from Mother Jones or MSNBC, or the Washington Post or Resistance hero Louise Mensch.

But of all the liberal media, Mother Jones should be most ashamed for fueling the moral panic about Russian "disinformation". It wasn't too long ago that the Reagan Right attacked Mother Jones for spreading "Kremlin disinformation" and subverting America. There were threats and leaks to the media about a possible Senate investigation into Mother Jones serving as a Kremlin disinformation dupe, a threat that hung over the magazine throughout the early Reagan years. A new Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism (SST for short) was set up in 1981 to investigate Kremlin "disinformation" and "active measures" in America, and the American "dupes" who helped Moscow subvert our way of life. That subcommittee was created to harass and repress leftist anti-imperial dissent in America, using "terrorism" as the main threat, and "disinformation" as terrorism's fellow traveller. The way the the SST committee put it, "terrorism" and "Kremlin disinformation" were one and the same, a meta-conspiracy run out of Moscow to weaken America.

And Mother Jones was one of the first American media outlets in the SST committee's sites.

Adam Hochschild, the founding editor of Mother Jones (and author of some great books including King Leopold's Ghost), responded publicly to the threats coming out of the Senate in the early Reagan years. In a New York Times op-ed published in late 1981, "Dis-(Mis-?)Information", Hochschild wrote about a Republican Senate mailer sent out to 290 radio stations that accused Mother Jones of being Kremlin disinformation dupes. The mailer, on Senate letterhead, featured a tape recording of an interview between the chairman of the SST subcommittee, Sen. Jeremiah Denton of Alabama, and a committee witness- a "disinformation expert" named Arnaud de Borchgrave, author of a bestselling spy novel called "The Spike" - about a fictional Kremlin plot to subvert the West with disinformation, and thereby rule the world.

Here's how Hochschild described the Republican Senate mailer in his NYTimes piece:

"In it, the writer Arnaud de Borchgrave accuses Mother Jones, the Village Voice, the Soho News, the Progressive magazine of serving as disseminators of K.G.B. 'disinformation' – the planting of false or misleading items in news media.

"Mr. de Borchgrave provided no specific examples of facts or articles. But, then, the trouble with the K.G.B. is that you don't know what disinformation it is feeding you because you don't know who its myriad agents are. So the only safe thing is to distrust any author or magazine too critical of the United States. Because anyone who is against, say, the MX or the B-1 bomber could be working for the Russians."

Here, the Mother Jones founder describes the menacing logic of pursuing the "Kremlin disinformation" conspiracy: any American critical of US military power, police power, corporate power, overseas power . . . anyone critical of anything that powerful Americans do, is a Kremlin disinformation dupe whether they know it or not. That leaves only the appointed accusers to decide who is and who isn't a Kremlin agent.

Hochschild called this panic over Kremlin disinformation another "Red Scare", warning,

"[T]o accuse critical American journalists of serving as its unwitting dupes makes as little sense as Russians accusing rebellious Poles of being unwitting agents of American imperialism. When Mr. de Borchgrave accuses skeptical journalists of being unwitting purveyors of disinformation, the accusation is more slippery, less easy to definitively disprove, and less subject to libel law than if he were to accuse them of being conscious Communist agents.

" Although if you believe the K.G.B. is successfully infiltrating America's news media, then anything must seem possible."

It's a damn shame today's editorial staff at Mother Jones aren't aware of their own magazine's history.

Then again, who am I fooling? Mother Jones wouldn't care if you shoved their faces in their own recent history - they're way too donor-deep invested in pushing this "active measures" conspiracy. Trump has been a goldmine of donor cash for anyone willing to carry the #Resistance water.

PutinTrump was a project set up last fall by tech plutocrat Rob Glaser, CEO and founder of RealNetworks, to scare voters into believing that voting for Trump is treason. God knows I can't stand Trump or his politics, but of all the inane campaign ideas to run on - this?

One would've thought that the smart people would learn their lesson from the election, that running against a Kremlin conspiracy theory is a loser. But instead, they seem to think the problem is they didn't fear-monger enough, so they're "redoubling" on the Russophobia. Donor money is driving this - donor cash is quite literally driving Mother Jones' editorial focus. And it really is this crude.

Take for example a PutinTrump section titled "Russian Expansion" - the scary Red imagery and language are lifted straight out of the Reagan Cold War playbook from the early-mid 80s, when, it so happens, Mother Jones was targeted as a Kremlin dupe. Featuring a lot of shadowy red-colored alien soldiers over an outline of Crimea, Mother Jones' donor-partner promotes a classic Cold War propaganda line about Russian/Soviet expansionism -- a lie that has been the basis for so many wars launched to "stop" this alleged "expansionism" in the past, wars that Mother Jones is supposed to oppose.

[Jun 04, 2017] Putin Interview Did Russia Interfere in the Election, Collect Info on Trump

Notable quotes:
"... "Put your finger anywhere on a map of the world, and everywhere you will hear complaints that American officials are interfering in internal electoral processes," he said. ..."
"... "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction," he said. "But, I repeat, we don't even have to do that. Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change." ..."
"... Putin claimed that Russia has a preference in an election but only reacts to the "political direction" that the United States seems to be heading in. "It wouldn't make sense for us to interfere," he said. ..."
Jun 04, 2017 | www.msn.com

...Kelly met Putin in St. Petersburg, the Russian president's hometown and his nation's onetime capital, after sharing a contentious discussion about Russia's attempts to hack the 2016 election at the St. Petersburg World International Economic Forum. Putin, a former KGB agent, has been painted as the puppet master behind the challenge on November's voting.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Putin ordered the disruption of the election. During the interview, Putin tried to dismiss the evidence by claiming that the United States has a history of meddling in foreign elections.

"Put your finger anywhere on a map of the world, and everywhere you will hear complaints that American officials are interfering in internal electoral processes," he said.

Kelly pushed back at the assertion, saying it sounded like Putin's attempt to justify his government's attempts to influence elections. Putin demurred.

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction," he said. "But, I repeat, we don't even have to do that. Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change."

Putin claimed that Russia has a preference in an election but only reacts to the "political direction" that the United States seems to be heading in. "It wouldn't make sense for us to interfere," he said.

The conversation later turned to a pre-campaign dossier that was purportedly collected on Trump.

But Putin, who once worked as a KGB recruiter, alleged that he has no knowledge of such a dossier.

"Where would we get this information from? Why, did we have some special relationship with him?" Putin asked. "We didn't have any relationship at all. There was a time when he used to come to Moscow. But you know, I never met with him. We have a lot of Americans who visit us."

... ... ...

Related: Vladimir Putin Tells Megyn Kelly: U.S. Hacker Could Have Framed Russia

[Jun 04, 2017] Putin Russia Being Persecuted Like Jews, Megyn Kelly Needs a 'Pill' for Her Hysteria

Jun 04, 2017 | www.newsweek.com
Responding to Kelly's unrelenting line of questions about reports of Russian interference in the U.S. and European political systems, Putin reached for a controversial comparison, complaining that blaming Russians for the U.S. election had become a cliché tantamount to the anti-Semitic idea of "blaming the Jews."

"This reminds me of anti-Semitism," Putin said. "The Jews are to blame for everything. An idiot cannot do anything himself, so the Jews are to blame. But we know what such attitudes lead to. They end with nothing good."

Instead, he said, Trump's opponents had to accept the election's result.

The tension mounted after an apparent fault in the translation track that translated Kelly's paraphrasing of Trump's comments that he thinks Russia conducted cyberattacks on his opponents, to Kelly saying "I think" Trump made that claim. "She thinks," Putin exclaimed, noting the issue required certainty.

Putin was also riled when discussing Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's undisclosed meetings with two Trump allies-former national security adviser Mike Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. "Should we not talk about improving tensions?" Putin asked. "What should an ambassador do? That is his job. That is why he gets paid. He should hold meetings, discussing current affairs."

Putin turned even more combative when Kelly touched on the subject of Russian foreign news coverage spreading "disinformation." Putin accused her "colleagues" of dragging Russia into their coverage unfavorably.

[Jun 04, 2017] 'Give them a pill': Putin accuses US of hysteria over election hacking inquiry by Alec Luhn

Notable quotes:
"... Russian officials meeting with members of Trump's team during the campaign and transition, Putin declared they had just shared "general words about building relations" and that allegations of collusion were "some kind of hysteria, and you guys just can't stop". ..."
Jun 02, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
Vladimir Putin: allegations of Russian interference in the US is 'hysteria'
Vladimir Putin

Russian president calls allegations of interference in US presidential election 'useless and harmful chatter' at St Petersburg economic forum Share on Facebook Close

Vladimir Putin has said the US needs to stop the "useless and harmful chatter" about Russian interference in the presidential election, arguing that - Donald Trump 's electoral strategy was entirely responsible for his victory.

Speaking at the St Petersburg economic forum, Putin claimed there was no concrete evidence for US intelligence agencies' allegations of Russian hacking , and said cyber specialists "can make anything up and blame anyone".

The Russian president added that this "attempt to solve internal political issues using instruments of foreign policy" was damaging international relations.

"The problem is not here, the problem is within American politics. Trump's team was more effective in the electoral campaign," Putin told the event's moderator, the US television presenter Megyn Kelly.

"In all honesty, I myself sometimes thought that the guy was going too far, but it turned out he was right: he found an approach to those groups of the population and those groups of voters he counted on, and they came and voted for him," Putin said.

Hillary Clinton's campaign team was blaming the Russians rather than admitting its own mistakes, he said.

"It's easier to say we are not guilty, the Russians are guilty It reminds me of antisemitism: the Jews are guilty of everything," Putin said at the end of his comments, which drew titters from the audience.

"If the information about the Democratic party favouring Clinton was true, is it really important who leaked it?" he asked, echoing his previous statements on Russian hacking.

... ... ...

-- Russian officials meeting with members of Trump's team during the campaign and transition, Putin declared they had just shared "general words about building relations" and that allegations of collusion were "some kind of hysteria, and you guys just can't stop".

"Do we need to give you a pill? Does anyone have a pill? Give them a pill, really, honestly. It's surprising," he said, raising a laugh even out of the impassive Indian PM, Narendra Modi, who was seated next to him.

Austria's chancellor, Christian Kern, and Moldova's president, Igor Dodon, also took part in the discussion.

Besides praising Trump's electoral campaign, Putin refused to condemn the US president's decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord , making light of the issue and questioning whether the countries of the world were really "in a position to halt climate change".

"Somehow we here aren't feeling that the temperature is really rising, but we should be thankful to President Trump. There was snow in Moscow today; [in St Petersburg], it's rainy and cold – now we can blame all this on him and American imperialism," Putin joked.

Putin told Kelly, in English, "Don't worry, be happy," assuring her that the agreement would take effect in 2021, so there was still "plenty of time to reach an agreement".

It wasn't clear what he was referring to in this comment, since the accord took effect in November 2016.

One area where Putin was critical of Trump's policy was regarding the US president's demand that Nato members raise their military spending to 2% of GDP.

"If they aren't planning to attack anyone, then why increase spending? That of course worries us," Putin said.

[Jun 03, 2017] Treason To What Im With The Russians, They Hate Us Less Than The Media Does!

Notable quotes:
"... I concur completely. The Russians are not our enemies. The Russians have never been our enemies. The Soviet behemoth may have harnessed the captive Russian bear, but, to paraphrase St. Paul, "Our battle was not with flesh and blood Russians but with the the powers and principalities of international Jewry and its ugly and deadly spawn, Judeo-Communism." ..."
"... Apart from opportunistic careerism, the subtext to this realignment is a larger issue of culture, education, and class. A mostly urban, highly educated, and high-income globalized elite often shares more cultural and political affinities with their counterparts on the other side of the aisle than they do with the lower-middle and working classes of their own countries. ..."
"... I believe Trump when he says he's not a Russian agent. The Russians would never employ such an erratic and unpredictable individual as an agent! ..."
"... The Russians were against Hillary, not for Trump. They couldn't be sure what Trump would do anymore than anyone else could. With Hillary they could be sure, and they had every reason to be against her. ..."
"... "What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using anti-Russian slogans," Mr. Putin said. "Either they don't understand the damage they're doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt." ..."
Jun 03, 2017 | www.unz.com
Of course, this begs an obvious question. Traitor to what? In an "America" which no longer has a definable culture, language, ethnos , history, identity or rule of law, what is there left to betray?

The open celebration of what any other generation would have called "treason" reveals how fully self-discrediting is the Russian "interference" narrative. John Harington famously quipped: "Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason." The "Russian interference" narrative is false because the fact it can be loudly denounced without being shut down for being the equivalent of "racist" or "xenophobic" shows Russia isn't very powerful within our government and society.

In contrast, our government and media seem to not only tolerate openly subversive or even hostile actions by foreign governments against the United States, but celebrate them.

Consider:

To criticize any of these countries, or to suggest dual loyalty on the part of their supporters in this country, is political death. Of course, that is because such dual loyalty is sufficiently strong that it is dangerous to broach the topic.

Indeed, for some in our Congress, dual loyalty would be a massive improvement.

The only reason we can't call men like these traitors is because there's no evidence they ever considered themselves Americans in any meaningful way. What could be more ridiculous than considering Chuck Schumer "a fellow American" with some imaginary "common interest" he shares with me?

Or take certain Main Stream Media figures. Bill Maher wants to Democrats to ask if you are with "us or the Russians". [ Maher: I want Democrats to say "You're Either With Us Or With The Russians ," by Ian Hanchett, Breitbart, May 12, 2017] Maher naturally delights in Open Borders for America and the replacement of our own population, but has spoken in the past about how "Israel faces the problem of becoming a minority Jewish state within their own country". [ Bill Maher on Israel, uncut and uncensored , by Danielle Berrin, Jewish Journal, November 29, 2017]

It's not double loyalty; that would be giving Maher too much credit. And it's not treason, because Maher just isn't part of my people, by his own standards. When Bill Maher refers to "us," I know that doesn't include me or my readers, and I know "the Russians" hate me a lot less than he does.

I'm with the Russians.

After all, "treason" requires not just providing "aid and comfort" to a foreign nation, but to an enemy. Why exactly is Russia an enemy of the United States ?

It's not Russia which makes claims on our territory . It's not Russia which funds extremist networks. It's not Russia which is deliberately sending terrorists into the West.

Of course, there is a Trump associate who has disturbing ties with a country doing just that. The main focus of the investigation into "Russian collusion" is focusing on former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn . But Flynn's strongest ties to a foreign power seem to be to be increasingly extreme and anti-European Turkey of the autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Incredibly, Flynn even wrote an editorial demanding more support for Turkey on election day itself. [ Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support , by Michael Flynn, The Hill, November 8, 2016]

As Turkey is quite openly facilitating the migrant invasion of Europe and helping ISIS, there's a far better case to claim our NATO "ally" is a threat than Russia. And yet Flynn's ties to Turkey go all but unmentioned outside evangelical Christian websites [ Best-selling author predicted Flynn's departure , WND, February 14, 2017]. The MSM is utterly indifferent to Flynn's ties to Erdogan, even when they seem to be utterly dedicated to destroying General Flynn personally.

Part of it simply could be the defense industry and the "Deep State" need an enemy with a powerful conventional military to justify their wealth and power. As it can't be China (that would be racist), Russia will do.

The real reason Russia is hated is because it is a media threat. Russia is funding, or at least is tied to, several alternative media sources such as RT, possibly Wikileaks, Sputnik etc. Contrary to MSM claims, RT is hardly friendly to the "Alt-Right," instead promoting progressive hosts such as Thom Hartmann. But there is at least a slightly different point of view than the monolithic Narrative promoted on every late night comedy show, network news broadcast, cable news broadcast, newspaper headline, and Establishment website [ The Hard Road For Putin , by Gregory Hood, Radix, July 22, 2014].

There is also an undeniable, and openly articulated , sense of racial hatred expressed against Russians by Jewish members of the media. Russians are hated both as a specific ethnos and as a white nation which does not seem to be fully committed to "our values," which, as defined by Weimerica's journalist class, consists of various forms of degeneracy. [ Welcome to Weimerica , by Ryan Landry, Daily Caller, May 5, 2017]. John Winthrop's "City Upon A Hill" we are not.

It's not just idiotic but obscene that the same journalists gleefully involved in deconstructing the American identity now demand Middle America rally round the flag out of some misplaced Cold War nostalgia. Needless to say, these same journalists loved Russia back when it was Communist and killing millions of Orthodox Christians.

For immigration patriots, it's especially obnoxious because the eradication of the American identity is a result of mass immigration. And immigration is more important than every other issue for two reasons.

Ignoring immigration ensures no problem can ever be solved; indeed that every problem consistently gets worse.

ORDER IT NOW

To take just one example, Americans are sent all over the world to die because "we have to fight them there so they don't come here"; and then our government goes out of its way to bring terrorists here . And of course, as more problems are imported, the managerial class obtains more power to govern social relations and its own power grows . This is why it is hard to believe those who support Open Borders are actually working to defend the national interest in good faith.

But the second reason is even more important:

    Immigration cuts to the heart of what a country is, of who you mean when you say "my people." Are Americans still one people? Indeed, it's hard to claim America is even a geographic expression: referring to the United States shorthand as "America" is now designated as offensive . The replacement of existing American citizens is celebrated by the media and funded by our own government.

And even citizenship means nothing, The MSM constantly promotes Jose Antonio Vargas and his illegal friends or the protesters who parade under foreign flags not just as "Americans" but as people somehow more American than us.

It's a strange definition of patriotism where wanting peaceful relations with Russia is "treason" but banning the American flag in public schools because it might offend Mexicans is government policy .

Naturally, Leftist intellectuals and the reporters who parrot their ideas do have some vague idea of "American" identity-that of a "proposition" or "universal" nation which exists only to fight a global struggle for equality [ Superpowers , by James Kirkpatrick, NPI, June 24, 2013].

But can you betray a "proposition nation?" How exactly does someone turn against a "universal nation?"

Actually, you can. If you are part of the historic American nation, one of those European-Americans who actually think of this country as a real nation with a real culture, you are in a strange way the only people left out of what it means to be a modern "American." To consider America a particular place with a specific culture and history that not everyone in the world can join simply by existing is treason to a "universal nation." Everyone in the world can be an "American," except, you know, actual Americans.

This is why the MSM is insistent that the governing philosophy of " America First ," which should simply be a truism for any rational American government, is instead something subversive and dangerous .

The hard truth is that "our" rulers aren't the guardians of our sovereignty, but the greatest threat to our independence.

And this isn't an unprecedented circumstance in history. During the Napoleonic occupation of Prussia, Carl von Clausewitz violated his king's orders to join the invasion of Russia and instead joined the Tsar's forces in the hope of someday liberating his own country. After all, it wasn't Tsar Alexander that was occupying Prussia; it was Napoleon. And in the end, he won, Prussia was restored, and eventually it was Prussia that would unite all of Germany.

The same situation applies today. Today, those actively pursuing the destruction of my people, culture and civilization aren't in Moscow. I don't even concede those are enemies at all.

Our enemies are in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, in "our" own media companies, government bureaucracies and intelligence agencies.

The real America is under occupation – and resistance to collaborators is patriotism to our country. We elected Donald Trump because we thought he could help disrupt and perhaps even end that occupation so we could have a country once again.

The attempt to destroy the President has ripped the mask off the forces behind this occupation . And we owe no loyalty to the collaborators who are trying to destroy his administration, dispossess our people, and destroy our country.

Because in the end, "treason" to the occupation is loyalty to America.

Mulegino1 , Show Comment Next New Comment May 16, 2017 at 7:25 am GMT

I concur completely. The Russians are not our enemies. The Russians have never been our enemies. The Soviet behemoth may have harnessed the captive Russian bear, but, to paraphrase St. Paul, "Our battle was not with flesh and blood Russians but with the the powers and principalities of international Jewry and its ugly and deadly spawn, Judeo-Communism."

Once it cast off those chains, Russia became a natural ally of the American people, but not, of course, of the Atlanticist Zionist empire which the American deep state serves. Orthodox Christian Russia and the United States had a true compatibility of interests, until the advent of Roosevelt I and his war party of would be empire builders.

Achmed E. Newman , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 16, 2017 at 9:25 am GMT

This kind of purposeful switching of truth for lies and lies for truth, described excellently here by Mr. Kirkpatrick ( of VDare! ) is straight outta the Bible, and that's not a good sign at all. PeakStupidity here is on the search for the passage in question. Anyone, anyone .. Buehler?

Anon , Show Comment Next New Comment May 16, 2017 at 3:02 pm GMT

"I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University." - Buckley

We'd also be better off governed by names from the Moscow phone book than by the New York Times and Washington Post.

Seraphim , Show Comment Next New Comment May 17, 2017 at 3:00 am GMT

@Mulegino1 I concur completely. The Russians are not our enemies...

Just a reminder of who made Teddy. Everybody knows by now (a short overview@ http://www.tomatobubble.com/id695.html ):

"It's not merely that [Jacob] Schiff wielded enormous power, but rather the fact that his actions, more so than anyone else's, fundamentally altered the course of American history. Schiff was really the first true Jewish Mega-Mogul of the whole United States (Judah Benjamin had previously run the confederacy). As the first, Schiff, more than anyone who followed him, was able to leverage his power into eternity. That is why the MVZ award must go to him .

Schiff hated Christian Russia with a passion. He worked ceaselessly to overthrow the Romanov Dynasty and replace it with Jewish Reds / Communists. Toward that end, he personally financed, and sold bonds on behalf of, about 50% of the entire Japanese war effort during the Russo-Japanese War. As a result, the war ended with a Japanese victory. Russia's loss was also facilitated by Schiff's boy, President (and also a former New York Governor) Teddy Roosevelt*, whose negotiating intervention clearly favored Japan over Russia

(* Roosevelt became President after the conservative William McKinley was conveniently assassinated by aPolish[?]-American anarchist Leon Czolgosz, Teddy being conveniently Vice-President. Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy when the first false-flag incident of the USS Maine occured, later on followed by the Lusiatania – when FD Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy- and Pearl Harbour).

"Schiff's Jewish agents in Russia skillfully used the humiliating loss of the Russo-Japanese war as an occasion to launch a Communist revolution. The bloody Revolution of 1905 ultimately failed, but the Tsar's regime was left considerably weakened. Many of the returning Russian POW's came home brainwashed after Schiff had arranged for Communist propaganda to be given to them while in Japanese captivity. The final Bolshevik overthrow of Russia in 1917 will owe its success, in large part, to the damage done to Russia by the team of Jacob Schiff & Ted the Red Roosevelt on 1905.

President William H. Taft proved to be a Constitutional Conservative, and not a big government "progressive" like his predecessor Teddy Roosevelt. But what really angered Jacob Schiff most of all was Taft's refusal, told to Schiff in person, to dampen trade relations with Tsarist Russia*. According to Henry Ford's sources, Schiff and his entourage left the White House saying. "This means war .

[*Schiff imposed also the abrogation of the Russian American Trade Treaty of 1832 in 1911, first instance of 'sanctions' motivated by the 'ill-treatement' of Jews in Russia (actually of the Jews emigrated to America returning to Russia holding American passports and engaged in subversive activities)].

"In order to oust the popular Republican Taft in 1912, Schiff and company recruited Teddy Roosevelt to run for President again, as a third party challenger. This maneuver split the Republican vote in two, allowing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to steal the Presidency. Wilson's Jewish owned presidency would turn out to be disastrous for America, and the world (The Fed, World War I, Russian Revolution, Jewish foothold in Palestine, Depression of 1919-1920)

As was the case during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the chaos of World War I enabled the Communists (Bolsheviks) to stage another uprising in 1917. Leading the diabolical efforts was Jacob Schiff's loyal agent, Leon Trotsky, freshly reestablished in Russia after having hidden in Brooklyn for the past decade. The Tsar had been forced to abdicate earlier that same year. The provisional government would then be overthrown by the Jewish-led Bolsheviks.

The following year, Schiff's agents murdered the Tsar and his entire family. The reign of terror that the Soviets then ushered in would plague humanity for decades to come. Scores of millions would be murdered! And it could never have happened without the tireless leadership of Rothschild, Schiff and their Junior partners.
Soon after the Revolution, Schiff removed Russia (now the Soviet Union) from his "do-not-lend list".

Just for a little 'piquant'. The granddaughter of Jacob, Dorothy, had a 'relationship' (which detractors called an 'affair') with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Priss Factor , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 4:45 am GMT

Deep State should just be called the Sewer. At least a swamp is a natural eco-system. Deep State is a man-made Sewer, the Bowel of Power.

wayfarer , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 4:57 am GMT

"Let's Connect the Dots!" https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/05/17/lets-connect-the-dots/#more-150513

Priss Factor , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 5:14 am GMT

@Authenticjazzman "

... No, Jews fell out of love with communism once they became increasingly successful with capitalism. Also, even leftist Jews came to see the failure of communism in Cuba and Vietnam. And when the truth came out about Mao's crimes and the greater success of China under capitalism, most Jews lost faith in communism.
Some still had nostalgia for Old Idealism and did credit USSR for having defeated Nazi Germany, but few Jews were communist by the 80s when Soviet Union entered into its death throes. Also, the New Left of the 60s was more about drugs and rock n roll than revolution.

Also, the Soviet Union became gentile-dominated by the late 30s, and after WWII, especially as Zionists in Israel chose US over USSR, Jews came under increasing suspicion and even discrimination in the communist world. Initially, Stalin installed many Jewish communists in Eastern European nations, but after the fallout over Israel, many were purged as 'Zionists'.

So, most Jews welcomed the fall of the USSR. If anything, Jews used finance-capitalism to amass control of much of Russian resources.
And in the 90s, most powerful Jews did everything in their power to make sure the Russian Communist Party would not be come to power. They pulled every dirty trick in the book to ensure Yeltsin winning another term.

Those were the good ole days for Jews in Russia. And if they had been less greedy, they may have kept the power. But they grabbed too much loot and turned a blind eye to all the suffering, and this gave an opening to the Russian nationalists(mild though they may be). Mild nationalists like Putin didn't purge Jews, but he sent a message that Russia would no longer be a 'vacationland for Jewish lawyers in love'.

So, Jews tried various means to crack Russian nationalism, neo-traditionalism, and sovereignty. They used Pussy Riot and Homomania. They didn't work.

So, the main reason for anti-Russianism has nothing to do with communism. The problem for Jews is that Russia rejects globalism or at least globalist domination. Jewish power is centered on globalism. Nationalism is anathema to Jews because it means that the national elites should represent, defend, and serve their national masses. All nations except Israel is majority gentile. So, nationalism makes national gentile elites grow closer to national gentile masses. This accounts for mass support for Putin in Russia.

In contrast, under globalism, the national elites serve globalist elites than their national people, and that means national leaders serve Soros and his ilk than their own folk.

Now, you'd think that the masses would rebel against the leaders if for treason, but Public Education and Pop Culture have brainwashed tons of masses too. Look at all the white dummies in the US who support globalism that is actually hurting them. And they would rather side with Diversity(invasion) than with their own hurting kind.

These whites attack Trump for opposing mass invasion of the US by More Diversity. Why would they want to invaded and be made into a minority people? They've been mentally-colonized by the Glob Virus.

jilles dykstra , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 5:23 am GMT

Many USA jews, and rabbis, were against Zionism because the USA was the new Zion. Henry Ford around 1918 began to see the increase of jewish power in the USA, and began resistance.

Around 1933 world jewry accomplished a world wide boycott of Ford cars, and Ford gave up. Trump, though he has many close jewish contacts, is not the puppet of the neocons. Hillary is. So Deep State wants to get rid of Trump,in order to continue their plans to subjugate the whole world, the globalised world, where all cultures have disappeared, the whole world one big USA clone.

FKA Max , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 5:44 am GMT

High-quality TV with Victor Davis Hanson and Tucker Carlson:

Inside Dems' 'big lie' about Trump and Russia

Published on May 18, 2017

Historian dissects 'boogeyman of Russian collusion' that Democrats and the media cling to in quest to get Pres. Trump out of office #Tucker

This is a very welcome new development for the Alt Right:

Tucker Carlson's Reinvention
[...]
We've become fans of the show in this household even though we consume far more more information from the internet than cable television. He's reaching an audience which normally doesn't watch FOX News.

http://www.unz.com/article/the-battles-of-berkeley-someone-is-going-to-get-killed-where-is-trump/#comment-1845245

Hillary's Neoliberals

http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/hillarys-neoliberals/

Apart from opportunistic careerism, the subtext to this realignment is a larger issue of culture, education, and class. A mostly urban, highly educated, and high-income globalized elite often shares more cultural and political affinities with their counterparts on the other side of the aisle than they do with the lower-middle and working classes of their own countries.

Just as Hillary Clinton may feel more comfortable with the old neoconservatives, Trump supporters have little in common with either Clintonites or neocons.

Clinton versus Trump is a war of NPR, CBS, and the New York Times against the National Enquirer, conservative talk radio, and the Drudge Report. Clinton supporters such as former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, onetime Bush officials Hank Paulson and Brent Scowcroft, and billionaire Meg Whitman certainly have nothing in common with Republican Trump supporters such as Mike Huckabee and Rush Limbaugh.

Culture, not just politics, is rapidly destroying - but also rebuilding - traditional political parties.

Wally , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 7:30 am GMT

@Anon

Moscow has 92 synagogues for less than a thousand practicing Jews – they are staffed and manned by the imported American Rabbis of Habad. Best and the choicest pieces of Russian municipal land are given to synagogues and Jewish cultural centres for free. http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-russian-scare/

Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/islamophobia-shmislamophobia-97-of-homeland-security-security-grants-go-to-jewish-orgs

Zogby , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 9:44 am GMT

I believe Trump when he says he's not a Russian agent. The Russians would never employ such an erratic and unpredictable individual as an agent!

The Russians were against Hillary, not for Trump. They couldn't be sure what Trump would do anymore than anyone else could. With Hillary they could be sure, and they had every reason to be against her.

Take a recent incident The NYT publishes a smear story accusing Trump of revealing classified information to Lavrov. McMaster and other American officials present in the meeting rush to deny that Trump reveal classified information, and only mentioned things about the laptop scare that had already been public for weeks. Putin follows by offering to send Congress the Russian transcript of the meeting to show Trump didn't reveal any classified information. Then Trump goes on Twitter: Of course I revealed classified information! I'm the President and it's my right! Go help somebody like that

PiltdownMan , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 10:18 am GMT

What Putin said yesterday.

"What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using anti-Russian slogans," Mr. Putin said. "Either they don't understand the damage they're doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt."

Anon , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 11:24 am GMT

@Wally Moscow has 92 synagogues for less than a thousand practicing Jews ....

Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/islamophobia-shmislamophobia-97-of-homeland-security-security-grants-go-to-jewish-orgs Shamir is an inveterate liar and the figure of 90+ synagogues in Moscow is fraudulent.

Achmed E. Newman , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 11:25 am GMT

@Sebastian Puettmann Don't kid youselves.
The Russians hate you more than Keith Olberman.
He is just confused.

The Russians hate you more than Keith Olberman.

We all hate Keith Olberman, but the Russians don't get the same cable channels. Why would they hate Keith Olberman when he doesn't even come on TV there?

Serg Derbst , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 11:52 am GMT

I agree with the sentiment, but disagree with the idea that America had ever once been "one people". It was always a divided, segregated, even deeply racist society and its elites have always propagated that division as much as they have always waged war against whom ever.

There have been lynch mobs and progroms not just against the usual suspects (blacks and jews), but also against Germans, Irish, Polish, Italians etc.

I think there might be Anglo-American, Irish-American, Italian-American or African-American identities, but there never was a true American identity similar to what Germans, French, Russians or even Canadians have.

The reason is first the divide and conquer managed by the elites and second that American society is a dog eat dog society of constant competition. Also Americans see "freedom" as being independent as individual or family, while Europeans consider "freedom" as a form of being part of and embedded in a social group, so that people tended to remain within their ethnicity. It was always more patchwork than melting pot. Historically I'm sure the Civil War with its massive massacres did its part as well.

There has always been American patriotism based on the flag, the constitution and the army – but that is too superficial and too little to form a cultural identity. The American Dream has always just been a dream, an imagination, something unreal, and the American way of life? Consumerism, materialism, hedonism – an identity based on stuffing yourself with food and buying as many material goods as you can? Nah, that's a form of behavior formed by advertisement, but not an identity either.

There never has been a true, culturally ingrained and psychologically deep American identity. I don't see it. But maybe the coming massive crisis with possible famines and even civil war will create exactly that. Nothing binds people together more than common sorrow. Ask the Russians or the Germans.

Che Guava , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 11:55 am GMT

@Authenticjazzman " The real reason Russia is hated is because it is a media threat"

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The "real" reason Russia is hated is because it has rejected Communism, and it does not cater to gays.

Communist Russia had been , since the thirties, mecca and utopia for the US leftists and they are now out of their collective mind because their vision of world Marxism with Russia running the show have been obliterated by the likes of the anti-communist VP.

The Democrats were convinced that they had the election in the bag , and therefore the accomplishment of eternal one-party government. They would have legalized the illegals as a gigantic voting block, and the huge upset dealt to them by the deplorables has driven them off the cliff and into total madness.

"Media threat" is such a vague non-descript concept that I don't have the energy or patience to even elaborate thereon.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro jazz artist.

PS off subject but relevant : Russia has a thriving Jazz scene, and the are some monster American-style Jazz players coming out of Russia. You are making several good points, but I won't hit the 'agree' button, because I agree with the Priss Factor's reply to your main points.

Again, it is amusing that you post the same potted description of you on every post.

If you post under a pseudonym and won't identify your 'authentic jazz', you may be wiser to drop the claims.

Just leave the occasional incidental.

Nice to see you making a post that makes much sense, though.

neutral , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 12:07 pm GMT

@Sean The Russian ambassador was begging, begging for an audience with Obama in the Oval office, but didn't get it because Russia had annexed Crimea and waged a semi conventional war on Ukraine. The the Russians did not keep their idiot Assad under control.Trump granted the ambassador's request, but only did so the day after the US had bombed a Syrian airfield that the Russian expeditionary force regularly use.

Unfortunately Trump will have to kill some Russians now . Send the delta force into Syria disguised as rebels , they may be there already, because the Trump administration has stopped announcing what troop deployments he in making in Syria and Iraq. A typical cuckservative response, how about you respond to what this article is about. The facts are absolutely clear the greatest enemies are those that exist in America, they have been mentioned in this article, your obsession with Russia is not going to deflect from this fact.

Its rather simple, Ukraine is not American, despite all your stupid domino theories yourwill no doubt bring up, on the other hand extremists like Olberman openly support mass non white immigration into the USA, what would any reasonable nationalist think is the bigger issue.

Anonymous , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 12:15 pm GMT

@Mulegino1 I concur completely. The Russians are not our enemies. The Russians have never been our enemies. The Soviet behemoth may have harnessed the captive Russian bear, but, to paraphrase St. Paul, "Our battle was not with flesh and blood Russians but with the the powers and principalities of international Jewry and its ugly and deadly spawn, Judeo-Communism." Once it cast off those chains, Russia became a natural ally of the American people, but not, of course, of the Atlanticist Zionist empire which the American deep state serves.

Orthodox Christian Russia and the United States had a true compatibility of interests, until the advent of Roosevelt I and his war party of would be empire builders. Here's a 1200-page read for you. It's from a traditionalist Catholic perspective.

The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and its Impact on World History by E. Michael Jones, Ph.D. [20 mb PDF file]d

neutral , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 12:20 pm GMT

@Serg Derbst I agree with the sentiment, but disagree with the idea that America had ever once been "one people". It was always a divided, segregated, even deeply racist society and its elites have always propagated that division as much as they have always waged war against whom ever. There have been lynch mobs and progroms not just against the usual suspects (blacks and jews), but also against Germans, Irish, Polish, Italians etc. I think there might be Anglo-American, Irish-American, Italian-American or African-American identities, but there never was a true American identity similar to what Germans, French, Russians or even Canadians have. The reason is first the divide and conquer managed by the elites and second that American society is a dog eat dog society of constant competition. Also Americans see "freedom" as being independent as individual or family, while Europeans consider "freedom" as a form of being part of and embedded in a social group, so that people tended to remain within their ethnicity. It was always more patchwork than melting pot. Historically I'm sure the Civil War with its massive massacres did its part as well.

There has always been American patriotism based on the flag, the constitution and the army - but that is too superficial and too little to form a cultural identity. The American Dream has always just been a dream, an imagination, something unreal, and the American way of life? Consumerism, materialism, hedonism - an identity based on stuffing yourself with food and buying as many material goods as you can? Nah, that's a form of behavior formed by advertisement, but not an identity either.

There never has been a true, culturally ingrained and psychologically deep American identity. I don't see it. But maybe the coming massive crisis with possible famines and even civil war will create exactly that. Nothing binds people together more than common sorrow. Ask the Russians or the Germans. I partially agree with you on the identity thing, but on the other hand the American identity (I say this as a non American) was based on being white. There was the notable exception of the blacks, but they did not make up the majority of the population and their acceptance as being American was the exception more than the rule, their distinct culture added some spice to what was America, but nobody can seriously believe that if the USA was 90% black it would still be America.

You also now have the situation that people arrive off planes from places like India, China or Somalia and are declared American, I find that ridiculous. Sadly this is no longer a problem only in America, its the same in Sweden, France, Germany, UK, etc, they all have made what being a people is completely meaningless.

Che Guava , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 12:29 pm GMT

@Sean Assad keeps treating his people like bugs, by gassing them. There were dead aplenty Russians in Afghanistan. It would not take much to get them out of Syria, which as you may recall, they only dispatched their expeditionary force to once the US had declined to get involved in. General Dempsey never thought of the effect that the US staying out would have in emboldening Russia.

There was a program about Putin's Russia the other year in which a reporter visited the main Russia WW2 memorial museum, and to his bewilderment found the the music accompanying the Great Patriotic War presentation was the theme to the US series Dallas .

Assad keeps treating his people like bugs, by gassing them.

That is a very strange assertion, as are many of your others. Strong evidence has been widely reported about the gas attack while Obama was Prex of the USA having had a Turkish connection.

Erdogan imprisoned many reporters on this and other ties with al Qaeda and the Islamic state.

It is easy to look up.

Assad is an idiot.

He was a respected opthalmolagist in London for years, testimonials from former (British) patients are not hard to find. Opthalmology may not be the most demanding medical speciality, but it is up there, and is not a nest of idiots.

If you want to see an idiot, you may try the mirror.

Achmed E. Newman , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 12:47 pm GMT

@Serg Derbst I agree with the sentiment, but disagree with the idea that America had ever once been "one people". It was always a divided, segregated, even deeply racist society and its elites have always propagated that division as much as they have always waged war against whom ever. There have been lynch mobs and progroms not just against the usual suspects (blacks and jews), but also against Germans, Irish, Polish, Italians etc. I think there might be Anglo-American, Irish-American, Italian-American or African-American identities, but there never was a true American identity similar to what Germans, French, Russians or even Canadians have. The reason is first the divide and conquer managed by the elites and second that American society is a dog eat dog society of constant competition. Also Americans see "freedom" as being independent as individual or family, while Europeans consider "freedom" as a form of being part of and embedded in a social group, so that people tended to remain within their ethnicity. It was always more patchwork than melting pot. Historically I'm sure the Civil War with its massive massacres did its part as well.

There has always been American patriotism based on the flag, the constitution and the army - but that is too superficial and too little to form a cultural identity. The American Dream has always just been a dream, an imagination, something unreal, and the American way of life? Consumerism, materialism, hedonism - an identity based on stuffing yourself with food and buying as many material goods as you can? Nah, that's a form of behavior formed by advertisement, but not an identity either.

There never has been a true, culturally ingrained and psychologically deep American identity. I don't see it. But maybe the coming massive crisis with possible famines and even civil war will create exactly that. Nothing binds people together more than common sorrow. Ask the Russians or the Germans.

There never has been a true, culturally ingrained and psychologically deep American identity. I don't see it.

and, with a name like Serb, I can see why. Why are you writing about something that you obviously (from your racism drivel in the 1st paragraph) know not a damn thing about?

You are an prime example of the data points we at PeakStupidity use to prove that America and the West has arrived at a global maximum.

Agent76 , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 12:54 pm GMT

Apr 6, 2016 Fascism, American Style

The United States of America, that dream of what a democratic republic ought to be, has become the Fascist States of America. As the 2016 elections have more than revealed, we have moved beyond the era of representative government and have entered into a new age. You can call it the age of authoritarianism. Or fascism. Or oligarchy. Either way, argues John W. Whitehead, we are being played for fools.

jilles dykstra , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 1:35 pm GMT

@Mulegino1 I concur completely. The Russians are not our enemies. ....

Orthodox Christian Russia and the United States had a true compatibility of interests, until the advent of Roosevelt I and his war party of would be empire builders. Stalin was our enemy, a Roosevelt creation.
He died in 1953, probably murdered.
Then the threat was over, those that did nog believe it should have realised it when Chrustjow removed his rockets and atomic warheads from Cuba.
But the USA went on with the madness of possible mutual destruction, I suppose in the hope that the cost of the war effort would cause the collapse of the USSR.

jilles dykstra , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 1:38 pm GMT

@Anonymous Here's a 1200-page read for you. It's from a traditionalist Catholic perspective.

The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and its Impact on World History by E. Michael Jones, Ph.D. [20 mb PDF file]d Did you read it ?
If you did, is there the theory that christianity was a Roman invention, brought by Paul, to undermine jewish power ?

countenance , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 2:05 pm GMT

But can you betray a "proposition nation?" How exactly does someone turn against a "universal nation?"

By disagreeing with the proposition.

Che Guava , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 2:34 pm GMT

@Seraphim @the advent of Roosevelt I and his war party of would be empire builders. Just a reminder of who made Teddy. Everybody knows by now (a short overview@http://www.tomatobubble.com/id695.html) ....

I had never heard of that before.

It is irony on at least two levels, the treatment of the Japanese P.o.W.s from Manchuria, 40 years later, included much Communist indoctrination, although that was the time of the nadir of Jewish Bolshevism, I am quite sure that demoted Jewish officials would have been in charge of the Siberian prison camps where P.o.Ws from Japan were.

The other irony is the German High Command's use of Lenin as a kind of human bomb that spectacularly misfired on their intentions.

So, you are saying that Japan tried the same thing 12 years earlier, on a smaller scale?

It is an interesting idea, but foundation of the JCP was later but a joke version "was"founded earlier, perhaps that has a connection.

A comment not connected to this thread, some idiot on another claiming knowledge said that the victory in the Russo-Japanese war is not commemorated here. It is a lie.

The order is, how we were victimised by cruel bombings and having soldiers imprisoned in Manchuria, how we were great to invade China and other places, the technical genius of the Mitsubisi Zero (and I am to fully agreeing with that one), the sadness of the Special Attack Forces, and how clever was Admiral Togo in the Russo-Japanese war (also to agreeing with that, just from a military perspective).

Linda Green , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 2:34 pm GMT

@Achmed E. Newman This kind of purposeful switching of truth for lies and lies for truth, described excellently here by Mr. Kirkpatrick ( of VDare! ) is straight outta the Bible, and that's not a good sign at all. PeakStupidity here is on the search for the passage in question. Anyone, anyone ..... Buehler? Isiah 5:20:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

There are similar passages elsewhere but I think this is the most commonly cited.

Seraphim , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 2:59 pm GMT

@ThereisaGod You know your history. The people at the top of western power systems are truly diabolical. The moneychangers, the Sanhedrin and complicit gentile degenerates. What has changed in 2000 years? Why are 'Christian' leaders silent on these issues? Are they Christians at all? @What has changed in 2000 years?

A steady Judaization of Christianity. They are no more Christians.

Agent76 , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 3:21 pm GMT

Aug 9, 2016 Kill Russians, kill Iranians, scare Assad! Ex CIA deputy Mike Morell – Aug 8 – Charlie Rose

John Gruskos , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 3:28 pm GMT

@Sean The Russian ambassador was begging, begging for an audience with Obama in the Oval office, but didn't get it because Russia had annexed Crimea and waged a semi conventional war on Ukraine. The the Russians did not keep their idiot Assad under control.Trump granted the ambassador's request, but only did so the day after the US had bombed a Syrian airfield that the Russian expeditionary force regularly use.

Unfortunately Trump will have to kill some Russians now . Send the delta force into Syria disguised as rebels , they may be there already, because the Trump administration has stopped announcing what troop deployments he in making in Syria and Iraq. Trump doesn't "have" to do any such thing.

The Russians in Syria are protecting Christians, and they are fighting against our worst enemies, radical Sunni jihadists such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

In addition to defeating Al-Qaeda and protecting Middle Eastern Christians, Russian-American friendship would have many other benefits – boosting American exports, balancing the rise of China, and cooperating to end the migrant invasion of Europe.

John Gruskos , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 3:38 pm GMT

@Sean Assad keeps treating his people like bugs, by gassing them. There were dead aplenty Russians in Afghanistan. It would not take much to get them out of Syria, which as you may recall, they only dispatched their expeditionary force to once the US had declined to get involved in. General Dempsey never thought of the effect that the US staying out would have in emboldening Russia.

There was a program about Putin's Russia the other year in which a reporter visited the main Russia WW2 memorial museum, and to his bewilderment found the the music accompanying the Great Patriotic War presentation was the theme to the US series Dallas . The 1986 amnesty was Reagan's biggest mistake.

His second biggest mistake was arming the mujahedeen. The CIA basically helped create Al-Qaeda.

We need to learn from our mistakes, and stop supporting the radical Sunni jihadists who will commit acts of terrorism against us the first chance they get.

Seraphim , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 3:48 pm GMT

@Che Guava

Toward that end, he personally financed, and sold bonds on behalf of, about 50% of the entire Japanese war effort during the Russo-Japanese War.
Much of what you are saying I had read in passing (interesting post), but that is interesting to me. Do you have a pointer to something I could read on it, preferably on the 'net or a book in Japanese (also the below).
Schiff had arranged for Communist propaganda to be given to them while in Japanese captivity.
I had never heard of that before.

It is irony on at least two levels, the treatment of the Japanese P.o.W.s from Manchuria, 40 years later, included much Communist indoctrination, although that was the time of the nadir of Jewish Bolshevism, I am quite sure that demoted Jewish officials would have been in charge of the Siberian prison camps where P.o.Ws from Japan were.

The other irony is the German High Command's use of Lenin as a kind of human bomb that spectacularly misfired on their intentions.

So, you are saying that Japan tried the same thing 12 years earlier, on a smaller scale?

It is an interesting idea, but foundation of the JCP was later ... but a joke version "was"founded earlier, perhaps that has a connection.

A comment not connected to this thread, some idiot on another claiming knowledge said that the victory in the Russo-Japanese war is not commemorated here. It is a lie.

The order is, how we were victimised by cruel bombings and having soldiers imprisoned in Manchuria, how we were great to invade China and other places, the technical genius of the Mitsubisi Zero (and I am to fully agreeing with that one), the sadness of the Special Attack Forces, and how clever was Admiral Togo in the Russo-Japanese war (also to agreeing with that, just from a military perspective). You will find it in:

Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership

https://books.google.com.au/books?isbn=0874519489

Naomi Wiener Cohen – 1999 , p.137

It actually refers to an article in New York Times of March 24, 1917 – "KENNAN RETELLS HISTORY Relates How Jacob H. Schiff Financed Revolution Propaganda in Czar's Army".
@ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E05E4DB143AE433A25757C2A9659C946696D6CF&legacy=true

jilles dykstra , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 3:49 pm GMT

@Agent76 Aug 9, 2016 Kill Russians, kill Iranians, scare Assad!

Ex CIA deputy Mike Morell - Aug 8 - Charlie Rose

https://youtu.be/UZK2FZGKAd0 It is clear to me now that the CIA is a fascist led organisation, my definition of fascism being 'the use of power without any ideology'.

jilles dykstra , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 3:51 pm GMT

@John Gruskos The 1986 amnesty was Reagan's biggest mistake.

His second biggest mistake was arming the mujahedeen. The CIA basically helped create Al-Qaeda.

We need to learn from our mistakes, and stop supporting the radical Sunni jihadists who will commit acts of terrorism against us the first chance they get. Raegan never made any mistake: 'he slept through it all'.

Wally , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 3:52 pm GMT

@Anon Shamir is an inveterate liar and the figure of 90+ synagogues in Moscow is fraudulent. Still in denial we see.

Mark Green , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 3:52 pm GMT

Thank you, James Kirkpatrick, for another excellent article. Some of the hyperlinks in his essay however seem not to be functioning properly.

It's heartening to see Kirkpatrick finally explore (though gingerly) the Jewish angle to the never-ending chain of Trump-loathing 'experts' and Russia-hating politicians. Indeed, it is the Israel factor that remains the most potent as well as the most sacrosanct element in this fake drama about US secrets and 'compromised' national security.

Indeed, it is the marauding kosher beast–not Russia–that gets to graze unmolested throughout Washington while smaller, non-threatening animals are hunted down and slaughtered.

This top-down smoke and fog and hysteria suggests that America is no longer a sovereign state. This is true. But Russia has nothing to do with our nation's loss of self-rule. All this malarky about Putin's interference in our presidential election is a media-orchestrated farce. America should actually be aligned with Christian Russia, not engaged in damaging the Russian economy via sanctions or marching NATO up to its doorstep. But the warmongering and the deceptions about Russia, as well as the special treatment accorded Israel, continues.

Thus the MSM shrieks endlessly about non-existent Russian subversion but deliberately looks away when Israeli interference in US elections is operating and evident and functioning as designed. It's fake news about what is fast becoming a fake, lobotomized, Zionized nation.

Big media beats its chest over compromised US intelligence, yet it is nuclear Israel–not Russia–that has apparent access to raw US intelligence like no other foreign state.

And it is Israel–not Russia–that routinely steers America into needless conflicts against the foes of Zionism, even though these small, distant counties (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon) seek no war with Washington and pose no threat to the American people.

Trump, for all his subservient, pro-Israel posturing (not to mention his needless attack on Assad's Syria) remains too white, too independent, too 'old America' for his Jewish overlords or for the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. This is why Trump must go.

Just as Mel Gibson will always be radioactive in Hollywood for making accurate remarks about Jews being in the center of most European wars, Trump let the cat out of the bag by suggesting that Washington's serial warfare in the Middle East is "not in our national interest". The truthfulness of his simple observation rendered Trump a long-term threat to Israel's special status in America as well as Israel's unannounced goal of upending and reshaping the Middle East via US military power.

Even though Trump has recently changed course, his patriotic and nationalistic messages linger in the mind. If acted upon, Trump's campaign promises pose a threat to 1) increased (non-white) multiculturalism inside America and 2) more wars against Israel's enemies abroad. The Zions don't like this brand of nativism one bit. That political highway is reserved for Israelis, not Americans.

Most importantly, Israel and crypto-Israelis inside Washington remain committed to smashing the alliance between Iran, Syria and Russia. This requires a subservient president. Trump's erratic conduct and rhetoric endangers this Israeli objective. This animates the anti-Trump coup now underway.

US-based Israelis believe that VP Pence is a far more reliable Christian Zionist than the bombastic and unpredictable 'America First' president. This is why Trump is being targeted with such unceasing venom.

jilles dykstra , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 3:52 pm GMT

@John Gruskos Trump doesn't "have" to do any such thing.

The Russians in Syria are protecting Christians, and they are fighting against our worst enemies, radical Sunni jihadists such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

In addition to defeating Al-Qaeda and protecting Middle Eastern Christians, Russian-American friendship would have many other benefits - boosting American exports, balancing the rise of China, and cooperating to end the migrant invasion of Europe. Your benefits are to Deep State horrible losses.

Anon , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 4:33 pm GMT

The real reason is that the Russians are a convenient cover-up for Democratic incompetence. It is an alternate reality to convince the base and the sponsors that Hillary lost the election because she was co-opted by the Red Tide.

Dems really think that Trump and Putin colluded to steal the DNC emails and give it to Wikileaks. It really is a mental illness at this point.

They wanted Comey fired, but when Trump did it, it was obstruction. They wanted a Special Prosecutor, but now are worried that he may not find anything. They believe the incessant hysteria is whipping up their base and will guarantee the House in the 2018 election. Hope they crash and burn in 2018.

Achmed E. Newman , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 5:00 pm GMT

@Linda Green Isiah 5:20:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

There are similar passages elsewhere but I think this is the most commonly cited. Thank you very much, Linda! I know there are plenty of search tools and places to search on-line, but I didn't have the wording right.

Achmed E. Newman , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 5:08 pm GMT

@John Gruskos The 1986 amnesty was Reagan's biggest mistake.

His second biggest mistake was arming the mujahedeen. The CIA basically helped create Al-Qaeda.

We need to learn from our mistakes, and stop supporting the radical Sunni jihadists who will commit acts of terrorism against us the first chance they get. I agree with your point, John, but would like to say that Ronald Reagan's mistake with the amnesty of 1986 was in trusting members of the US Congress , not so much what should have been a 1-time deal – though, I grant you, any amnesty was a bad deal for Americans. Here is more regarding Reagan's regrets on that whole fiasco.

neutral , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 5:20 pm GMT

@John Gruskos The 1986 amnesty was Reagan's biggest mistake.

His second biggest mistake was arming the mujahedeen. The CIA basically helped create Al-Qaeda.

We need to learn from our mistakes, and stop supporting the radical Sunni jihadists who will commit acts of terrorism against us the first chance they get. With that amnesty he could never win any vote California if he existed now, this the problem with all these cuck types, they all want to believe in the magic dirt of America that somehow they will have another Reagan one day, this will never happen and Reagan shares part of the blame.

Anonymous , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 5:39 pm GMT

@Agent76 Aug 9, 2016 Kill Russians, kill Iranians, scare Assad!

Ex CIA deputy Mike Morell - Aug 8 - Charlie Rose

https://youtu.be/UZK2FZGKAd0 Do you think think this middling intellect, son of an autoworker from Akron, Ohio with a degree in accounting from U. of Akron, realizes he's only a useful goyim tool and has no real power??

jilles dykstra , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 6:06 pm GMT

@Mark Green Thank you, James Kirkpatrick, for another excellent article. Some of the hyperlinks in his essay however seem not to be functioning properly.

It's heartening to see Kirkpatrick finally explore (though gingerly) the Jewish angle to the never-ending chain of Trump-loathing 'experts' and Russia-hating politicians. Indeed, it is the Israel factor that remains the most potent as well as the most sacrosanct element in this fake drama about US secrets and 'compromised' national security.

Indeed, it is the marauding kosher beast--not Russia--that gets to graze unmolested throughout Washington while smaller, non-threatening animals are hunted down and slaughtered.

This top-down smoke and fog and hysteria suggests that America is no longer a sovereign state. This is true. But Russia has nothing to do with our nation's loss of self-rule. All this malarky about Putin's interference in our presidential election is a media-orchestrated farce. America should actually be aligned with Christian Russia, not engaged in damaging the Russian economy via sanctions or marching NATO up to its doorstep. But the warmongering and the deceptions about Russia, as well as the special treatment accorded Israel, continues.

Thus the MSM shrieks endlessly about non-existent Russian subversion but deliberately looks away when Israeli interference in US elections is operating and evident and functioning as designed. It's fake news about what is fast becoming a fake, lobotomized, Zionized nation.

Big media beats its chest over compromised US intelligence, yet it is nuclear Israel--not Russia--that has apparent access to raw US intelligence like no other foreign state.

And it is Israel--not Russia--that routinely steers America into needless conflicts against the foes of Zionism, even though these small, distant counties (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon) seek no war with Washington and pose no threat to the American people.

Trump, for all his subservient, pro-Israel posturing (not to mention his needless attack on Assad's Syria) remains too white, too independent, too 'old America' for his Jewish overlords or for the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. This is why Trump must go.

Just as Mel Gibson will always be radioactive in Hollywood for making accurate remarks about Jews being in the center of most European wars, Trump let the cat out of the bag by suggesting that Washington's serial warfare in the Middle East is "not in our national interest". The truthfulness of his simple observation rendered Trump a long-term threat to Israel's special status in America as well as Israel's unannounced goal of upending and reshaping the Middle East via US military power.

Even though Trump has recently changed course, his patriotic and nationalistic messages linger in the mind. If acted upon, Trump's campaign promises pose a threat to 1) increased (non-white) multiculturalism inside America and 2) more wars against Israel's enemies abroad. The Zions don't like this brand of nativism one bit. That political highway is reserved for Israelis, not Americans.

Most importantly, Israel and crypto-Israelis inside Washington remain committed to smashing the alliance between Iran, Syria and Russia. This requires a subservient president. Trump's erratic conduct and rhetoric endangers this Israeli objective. This animates the anti-Trump coup now underway.

US-based Israelis believe that VP Pence is a far more reliable Christian Zionist than the bombastic and unpredictable 'America First' president. This is why Trump is being targeted with such unceasing venom. If any state in the world is sovereign it is the USA.
USA military power, and political power still enable the USA to do as it pleases.
All other states in the world are less sovereign, just because of USA power.

What you write about is USA democracy, is what the USA does what the USA people want ?
The election of Trump, though he did not get the popular vote, means in my opinion that a large part of the USA population is fed up with the establishment politicians.
What USA citizens who did not vote want, I do not know, I wonder if anyone knows.

Just now on Belgian tv was a report on USA citizens who are pro Trump, what they mean by 'making America great again', not very clear to me.
A USA commentator stated that many Americans do not recognise the present USA as the USA they knew, or want.
Mentioned was socialism: the welfare state, gays, migrants.
And hostility to establishment politicians.

War for Blair Mountain , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 6:08 pm GMT

I have 0 allegiance to the Maxine Waters Negro Democratic Party the party of Negros Sihks .Chinese Koreans MS-13 Mexican Zetas

I believe in strong Native Born White American Christian Solidarity with Euro-Christian Russia

If Donald Trump goes to war against Christian Russia .I will go into battle with Christian Russia ..against the Maxine Waters Negro Democratic Party .

The Civil War was a terrible mistake .the Negro wasn't worth it .

Alden , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 6:20 pm GMT

@wayfarer "Let's Connect the Dots!"

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/05/17/lets-connect-the-dots/#more-150513 Leon Czolgosz was not Polish.

He was a Jew whose family lived in Poland for a few generations and then moved to Anerica. He was a follower of Emma Goldberg and Alexander Berkman who thanks be to God were deported back to Russia just in time to participate in the revolution.

Buzz Mohawk , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 6:26 pm GMT

100% Correct! Thanks go to Mr. Kirkpatrick for writing this and to Mr. Unz for putting it here.

Alden , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 6:28 pm GMT

Id just like to point out that the reason so many Chinese are giving tech and military secrets to China is my personal bete noire affirmative action. Were it not for affirmative action those military and tech secrets would be in the hands of White Americans, not foreign spies whose only qualification that they are not White.

Steve Naidamast , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 6:38 pm GMT

I agree with the basis of the author's complaint but it is full of a lot of holes in its foundations.

To offer the attacks on Trump as some sort of insurgency against a valid, national leader is a bit absurd.

No arguments from me as to who makes up such an insurgency. They are all war mongers and shills for the corporations, elites, and of course, the Israelis, with a few others thrown in for good measure (ie: Saudi Arabia).

Yet, Trump is the personification of the completely corrupt business class in the United States. His appointments to cabinet positions, his elevation of his daughter and son-in-law into governmental positions, his massive conflicts of interests that are still ongoing while in the presidency, his degenerate treatment of many who have worked for him as contractors throwing many into bankruptcy, and his inability comprehend anything that takes longer than 5 minutes to explain, among many other negatives are all severe indications of a person who has no business being the leader of a nation. I don't care who or why he was elected. The fact that such a man was elected at all shows the complete degeneracy of the US electorate.

As for the idea of "American identity", there has only been one; that of the White elite taking what he or she wants from the everything and everyone around them. One good study of American history will provide one with more than enough evidence of this contention.

Since its inception everything has been and still is for sale in the United States and the winners are always the highest bidders.

Just look at who supported the presidencies in past elections going back to after the War for Southern Independence.

America's involvement in both world wars were explicitly the result of presidents lying their way into them after promising the electorate consistently that they would keep the country out of the European conflicts. So much for honor in the presidency. Wilson at least had a reason; he thought he was Jesus Christ. FDR on the other hand simply didn't want a competitor to America in Europe and simply hated everything German in general.

So American identity is a a lot of hogwash as most Americans identity with something that never was. Our "Founding Fathers" certainly did not create a nation that would be just one to all but one to protect the wealthy and their needs.

There is no doubt that the US is undergoing a massive decline in its ability to govern itself while undergoing serious social deterioration. However, the seeds of this destructive, downward spiral were set in stone when a bunch of wealthy guys created a rather flimsy constitution to protect the White privileged classes .

Anon , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 6:43 pm GMT

@Wally Still in denial we see. That's not an argument. You are parroting Shamir, who said something that he never bothered to prove. Can you prove it?

Alden , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 6:45 pm GMT

@Achmed E. Newman I agree with your point, John, but would like to say that Ronald Reagan's mistake with the amnesty of 1986 was in trusting members of the US Congress , not so much what should have been a 1-time deal - though, I grant you, any amnesty was a bad deal for Americans. Here is more regarding Reagan's regrets on that whole fiasco. A decade before he even ran for governor Reagan was spotted by DART industries and other cut throat capitalists who wanted to reverse every gain the working class made in the 20th century.

Reagan's backers knew that the easiest way to do this was to import millions of legal and illegal immigrants to replace Americans in every job from physician to dishwasher.

So Reagan CLAIMED to regret his amnesty after the damage was done. There is an old French saying.

"Don't listen to what he says, look at what he does."

That's what I do. I look beyond the rehetoric and look at what is done. Reagan betrayed his working and middle class White voters with amnesty and making affirmative action worse.

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 6:55 pm GMT

@Sean The Russian ambassador was begging, begging for an audience with Obama in the Oval office, but didn't get it because Russia had annexed Crimea and waged a semi conventional war on Ukraine. The the Russians did not keep their idiot Assad under control.Trump granted the ambassador's request, but only did so the day after the US had bombed a Syrian airfield that the Russian expeditionary force regularly use.

Unfortunately Trump will have to kill some Russians now . Send the delta force into Syria disguised as rebels , they may be there already, because the Trump administration has stopped announcing what troop deployments he in making in Syria and Iraq. " because Russia had annexed Crimea and waged a semi conventional war on Ukraine"

Since then the UnzReview has become a platform for the Kagans' clan propaganda? The data on three (3) referenda have shown that Crimeans wanted a greater autonomy from Kiev long before the US-sponsored thugs of neo-Nazi leaning followed cookie-carrying Nuland-Kagan towards the "bright future" of today's economic and moral decline in Ukraine. Are not you longing for more auto-da-fe in Odessa, which was conducted by neo-Nazis battalion Azov in 2014? At that time the battalion was financed by an Israeli citizen and pillar of Jewish community of Ukraine Mr. Kolomojsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeguAaPYKU8
It is understandable why Israel-firsters hate Russian federation; the russkies dared to stop the advance of ISIS in a great game for Eretz Israel and other attractive mythological trinkets of supremacist kind.
When the US and EU are hollowed out by your insatiable tribe, where would the "eternal victims" have to go? To Rothschild bunkers?

Alden , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 7:19 pm GMT

@Zogby I believe Trump when he says he's not a Russian agent. The Russians would never employ such an erratic and unpredictable individual as an agent!

The Russians were against Hillary, not for Trump. They couldn't be sure what Trump would do anymore than anyone else could. With Hillary they could be sure, and they had every reason to be against her.

Take a recent incident...

The NYT publishes a smear story accusing Trump of revealing classified information to Lavrov.

McMaster and other American officials present in the meeting rush to deny that Trump reveal classified information, and only mentioned things about the laptop scare that had already been public for weeks.

Putin follows by offering to send Congress the Russian transcript of the meeting to show Trump didn't reveal any classified information.

Then Trump goes on Twitter: Of course I revealed classified information! I'm the President and it's my right!

Go help somebody like that... Actually it's true. The president, not state or justice and certainly not the liberal press is completely in charge of foreign affairs and the President can classify or not classify any and all information.

Wally , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 7:33 pm GMT

@Anon That's not an argument. You are parroting Shamir, who said something that he never bothered to prove. Can you prove it? I have.

It's noted that you predictably ignored:

Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/islamophobia-shmislamophobia-97-of-homeland-security-security-grants-go-to-jewish-orgs

And you will most certainly ignore:

Zionist Wikipedia Editing Course
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139189
and:
The Zionist attempt to control language.
The Israel Project's 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY
https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-israel-projects-2009-global-language-dictionary.pdf
and:
The commander behind the pro-Israel student troops on U.S. college campuses
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page//.premium-1.709014
and:
Israel tech site paying "interns" to covertly plant stories in social media
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-tech-site-paying-interns-covertly-plant-stories-social-media
and:
Israeli students to get $2,000 to spread state propaganda on Facebook
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-students-get-2000-spread-state-propaganda-facebook

Not to mention that every US taxpayers "loan" that 'Israel' receives has never been paid back. The Israeli Occupied Congress curiously "forgives" all these huge debts. As if it wasn't assumed at the beginning.

Jame Bamford of Wired subsequently reported that the NSA had hired secretive contractors with extensive ties to Israeli intelligence to establish 10 to 20 wiretapping rooms at key telecommunication points throughout the country."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-impact-of-nsa-domestic-spying-2013-6#ixzz3NxPMujNo
and:
Two Secretive Israeli Companies Reportedly Bugged The US Telecommunications Grid For The NSA
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-bugged-the-us-for-the-nsa-2013-6#ixzz3NxPnnUFg
and:
IDF Unit 8200 Cyberwar Veterans Developed NSA Snooping Technology
Read more: http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/06/08/idf-unit-8200-cyberwar-veterans-developed-nsa-snooping-technology/

'Join the US army, Fight for Israel
http://68.media.tumblr.com/639563970a638b606f4adb0ef05c778b/tumblr_inline_o7t4eewwJn1r75mb5_500.jpg

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 7:33 pm GMT

@Steve Naidamast I agree with the basis of the author's complaint but it is full of a lot of holes in its foundations.

To offer the attacks on Trump as some sort of insurgency against a valid, national leader is a bit absurd.

No arguments from me as to who makes up such an insurgency. They are all war mongers and shills for the corporations, elites, and of course, the Israelis, with a few others thrown in for good measure (ie: Saudi Arabia).

Yet, Trump is the personification of the completely corrupt business class in the United States. His appointments to cabinet positions, his elevation of his daughter and son-in-law into governmental positions, his massive conflicts of interests that are still ongoing while in the presidency, his degenerate treatment of many who have worked for him as contractors throwing many into bankruptcy, and his inability comprehend anything that takes longer than 5 minutes to explain, among many other negatives are all severe indications of a person who has no business being the leader of a nation. I don't care who or why he was elected. The fact that such a man was elected at all shows the complete degeneracy of the US electorate.

As for the idea of "American identity", there has only been one; that of the White elite taking what he or she wants from the everything and everyone around them. One good study of American history will provide one with more than enough evidence of this contention.

Since its inception everything has been and still is for sale in the United States and the winners are always the highest bidders.

Just look at who supported the presidencies in past elections going back to after the War for Southern Independence.

America's involvement in both world wars were explicitly the result of presidents lying their way into them after promising the electorate consistently that they would keep the country out of the European conflicts. So much for honor in the presidency. Wilson at least had a reason; he thought he was Jesus Christ. FDR on the other hand simply didn't want a competitor to America in Europe and simply hated everything German in general.

So American identity is a a lot of hogwash as most Americans identity with something that never was. Our "Founding Fathers" certainly did not create a nation that would be just one to all but one to protect the wealthy and their needs.

There is no doubt that the US is undergoing a massive decline in its ability to govern itself while undergoing serious social deterioration. However, the seeds of this destructive, downward spiral were set in stone when a bunch of wealthy guys created a rather flimsy constitution to protect the White privileged classes....

So American identity is a a lot of hogwash as most Americans identity with something that never was.

As most people understand the term, American identity refers to the racial and cultural characteristics of the people.

American identity has, since the nation's inception, been chiefly European and Christian. Today, the Euro-American Christian majority has been targeted for annihilation through reproductive dysfunction (induced by brainwashing aka state-directed education) and mass replacement immigration.

The American governing elite, plutocracy, criminal conspiracy that is government, call it what you want, seeks to genocide the American people as it urges on the corrupt European elites to do the same to their people.

Svigor , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 8:30 pm GMT

I just got out of the car after listening to the vomitorium NPR's daily short-stroke session with Brooks and Dudiowhocares how the weasel spells his fairy-sounding name. It's interesting, listening to a Jew (I could be wrong, but it's NPR, so probably not) interview a Jew pretending to be an Anglo Conservative, and a goy leftist that I find indistinguishable from a Brooklyn Jew. Anyhoo, between tossing each other off, Brooks (loyalty: Israel, his son serves in the IDF FFS) called Russia our "adversary." You know it's a lie when the media says it. Did NPR's pet "Conservatives" refer to the Soviet Union as our "adversary"?

Media = scum. Otherwise, they couldn't get work in that business.

Svigor , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 8:42 pm GMT

P.S., a giant AMEN to every word of this piece, Kirkpatrick. Bravo.

Svigor , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 8:59 pm GMT

Kneel before Zog.

Indeed. Many years ago, I used terms like "ZOG" only with emotional trepidation. That is long since gone. Now the trepidation is entirely practical; it puts off the idiots we need to get through to. It is an entirely accurate term for the regime.

No, Jews fell out of love with communism once they became increasingly successful with capitalism. Also, even leftist Jews came to see the failure of communism in Cuba and Vietnam. And when the truth came out about Mao's crimes and the greater success of China under capitalism, most Jews lost faith in communism.

After Stalin, the Russians removed Jews (and many other aliens) from their former heights of power in the USSR. That didn't win them any (((friends))). More to the point, Putin brought (((the oligarchs))) to heel, and reversed all their (((important work))). That's when the (((hate))) really started for Russia.

It is clear to me now that the CIA is a fascist led organisation, my definition of fascism being 'the use of power without any ideology'.

That's leftism.

Anon , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 9:43 pm GMT

@Wally I have.

It's noted that you predictably ignored:

Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/islamophobia-shmislamophobia-97-of-homeland-security-security-grants-go-to-jewish-orgs

And you will most certainly ignore:

Zionist Wikipedia Editing Course
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139189
and:
The Zionist attempt to control language.
The Israel Project's 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY
https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-israel-projects-2009-global-language-dictionary.pdf
and:
The commander behind the pro-Israel student troops on U.S. college campuses
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page//.premium-1.709014
and:
Israel tech site paying "interns" to covertly plant stories in social media
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-tech-site-paying-interns-covertly-plant-stories-social-media
and:
Israeli students to get $2,000 to spread state propaganda on Facebook
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-students-get-2000-spread-state-propaganda-facebook

Not to mention that every US taxpayers "loan" that 'Israel' receives has never been paid back. The Israeli Occupied Congress curiously "forgives" all these huge debts. As if it wasn't assumed at the beginning.

Jame Bamford of Wired subsequently reported that the NSA had hired secretive contractors with extensive ties to Israeli intelligence to establish 10 to 20 wiretapping rooms at key telecommunication points throughout the country."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-impact-of-nsa-domestic-spying-2013-6#ixzz3NxPMujNo
and:
Two Secretive Israeli Companies Reportedly Bugged The US Telecommunications Grid For The NSA
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-bugged-the-us-for-the-nsa-2013-6#ixzz3NxPnnUFg
and:
IDF Unit 8200 Cyberwar Veterans Developed NSA Snooping Technology
Read more:http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/06/08/idf-unit-8200-cyberwar-veterans-developed-nsa-snooping-technology/

'Join the US army, Fight for Israel
http://68.media.tumblr.com/639563970a638b606f4adb0ef05c778b/tumblr_inline_o7t4eewwJn1r75mb5_500.jpg You proved nothing about 90+ synagogues in Moscow. You only parroted Shamir. For all I know the rest of your claim might be right. I don't know one way or the other whether your other links are right, nor do I care. That's why I didn't respond to them, nor am I under any compulsion to.

Also, you dodged:

http://www.unz.com/article/the-hazards-of-military-worship/#comment-1874540

Because you're wrong and are too much an intellectual cripple to admit it.

Rurik , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 9:43 pm GMT

When Bill Maher refers to "us," I know that doesn't include me or my readers, and I know "the Russians" hate me a lot less than he does.

I'm with the Russians.

count me as also with the Russians

Bill Maher is a sewer rat*

great article

enjoyed the comments
.
.
.
.
.
.
*apologies to real sewer rats for the comparison

Wally , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 11:23 pm GMT

@Anon You proved nothing about 90+ synagogues in Moscow. You only parroted Shamir. For all I know the rest of your claim might be right. I don't know one way or the other whether your other links are right, nor do I care. That's why I didn't respond to them, nor am I under any compulsion to.

Also, you dodged:

http://www.unz.com/article/the-hazards-of-military-worship/#comment-1874540

Because you're wrong and are too much an intellectual cripple to admit it. And that's why I have beaten you in every debate. The list is rather large as I'm sure you remember.

I dodged nothing because I saw nothing.

How's your "English Literature" class going? LOL!!

Wally , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 11:28 pm GMT

@Anon The real reason is that the Russians are a convenient cover-up for Democratic incompetence. It is an alternate reality to convince the base and the sponsors that Hillary lost the election because she was co-opted by the Red Tide.

Dems really think that Trump and Putin colluded to steal the DNC emails and give it to Wikileaks. It really is a mental illness at this point.

They wanted Comey fired, but when Trump did it, it was obstruction. They wanted a Special Prosecutor, but now are worried that he may not find anything. They believe the incessant hysteria is whipping up their base and will guarantee the House in the 2018 election. Hope they crash and burn in 2018. Exactly, good point.

Like when Zionists claim that scrutiny of the '6M Jews, 5M other & gas chambers' is hateful to Jews.
Forgetting that making such claims in the first place is hateful to Germans and to Gentiles who Jews claim 'let it happen'.

KenH , Show Comment Next New Comment May 19, 2017 at 11:31 pm GMT

Count me with the Russians, too. Non self hating whites in America are stateless and behind enemy lines. We are told the nation belongs to every racial and religious group except those of the founding racial stock (Christian or not). We have laws promoting and protecting most non-white racial groups at the expense of the white majority. Our history is being rewritten to cast aspersions on our founding and villainize great white men who built America while lionizing non-whites who did next to nothing.

(((Hollywood))) movies and television shows depict whites as either corrupt, vapid, moronic or untrustworthy compared to non-whites and generally dehumanize us and foment racial hatred against us. The golden rule in politics is that white politicians are strictly forbidden from acknowledging whites as a group let alone show any sympathy or compassion for them or working on their behalf. Donald Trump has only done so half heartedly and implicitly and he's derided as a white supremacist 24/7 and as "un-American" while facing calls to resign simply for enforcing immigration laws and failing to take a wrecking ball to the last vestiges of the old, white America.

This is conquest and occupation, not progress as the (((authors))) of all these trends inform us. With a straight face. Everything most of us loved and held dear has been destroyed by the JOG and remade in their vile image and likeness.

Therefore, if Putin were to invade the U.S. this would be cause for celebration for the embattled and shrinking white majority. We would have nothing to lose. This nation betrayed us long ago and no longer deserves our loyalty, support or affection.

The pot bellied, "race doesn't matter" patriotards and antifa scumbags can have it.

Anon , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 12:09 am GMT

@Wally And that's why I have beaten you in every debate. The list is rather large as I'm sure you remember.

I dodged nothing because I saw nothing.

How's your "English Literature" class going? LOL!! You clearly have no interest in debate. Challenged on an intellectual debate, you wilt. Enjoy yourself.

Stonehands , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 2:12 am GMT

@Priss Factor The "real" reason Russia is hated is because it has rejected Communism, and it does not cater to gays. Cummunist Russia had been , since the thirties, mecca and utopia for the US leftists and they are now out of their collective mind because their vision of world Marxism with Russia running the show have been obliterated by the likes of the anti-communist VP.

No, Jews fell out of love with communism once they became increasingly successful with capitalism. Also, even leftist Jews came to see the failure of communism in Cuba and Vietnam. And when the truth came out about Mao's crimes and the greater success of China under capitalism, most Jews lost faith in communism.
Some still had nostalgia for Old Idealism and did credit USSR for having defeated Nazi Germany, but few Jews were communist by the 80s when Soviet Union entered into its death throes. Also, the New Left of the 60s was more about drugs and rock n roll than revolution.

Also, the Soviet Union became gentile-dominated by the late 30s, and after WWII, especially as Zionists in Israel chose US over USSR, Jews came under increasing suspicion and even discrimination in the communist world. Initially, Stalin installed many Jewish communists in Eastern European nations, but after the fallout over Israel, many were purged as 'Zionists'.

So, most Jews welcomed the fall of the USSR. If anything, Jews used finance-capitalism to amass control of much of Russian resources.
And in the 90s, most powerful Jews did everything in their power to make sure the Russian Communist Party would not be come to power. They pulled every dirty trick in the book to ensure Yeltsin winning another term.
Those were the good ole days for Jews in Russia. And if they had been less greedy, they may have kept the power. But they grabbed too much loot and turned a blind eye to all the suffering, and this gave an opening to the Russian nationalists(mild though they may be). Mild nationalists like Putin didn't purge Jews, but he sent a message that Russia would no longer be a 'vacationland for Jewish lawyers in love'.
So, Jews tried various means to crack Russian nationalism, neo-traditionalism, and sovereignty. They used Pussy Riot and Homomania. They didn't work.

So, the main reason for anti-Russianism has nothing to do with communism. The problem for Jews is that Russia rejects globalism or at least globalist domination. Jewish power is centered on globalism. Nationalism is anathema to Jews because it means that the national elites should represent, defend, and serve their national masses. All nations except Israel is majority gentile. So, nationalism makes national gentile elites grow closer to national gentile masses. This accounts for mass support for Putin in Russia.

In contrast, under globalism, the national elites serve globalist elites than their national people, and that means national leaders serve Soros and his ilk than their own folk.

Now, you'd think that the masses would rebel against the leaders if for treason, but Public Education and Pop Culture have brainwashed tons of masses too. Look at all the white dummies in the US who support globalism that is actually hurting them. And they would rather side with Diversity(invasion) than with their own hurting kind.

These whites attack Trump for opposing mass invasion of the US by More Diversity.
Why would they want to invaded and be made into a minority people? They've been mentally-colonized by the Glob Virus. 60′s Leftism isn't as innocuous as you make it seem.

The likes of Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag and Erica Jong ( assisted by the Pill and legalized abortion) led the charge through the institutions. Economic Marxism was abandoned for " Cultural" Marxism under the guise of New Age or Secular Humanism (the perennial religion e.g. satanism)
Once the God of revealed religion is abandoned ( an all-knowing Judge/Creator) for the God of "me"-then it should come as no surprise that the people- especially the women- will become weak and pathetic

Weak in Spirit, surrendering to material
desires
Succumbing to Jewish materialism instead of overcoming vice with Christian excellence.

Stonehands , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 2:55 am GMT

@ThereisaGod You know your history. The people at the top of western power systems are truly diabolical. The moneychangers, the Sanhedrin and complicit gentile degenerates. What has changed in 2000 years? Why are 'Christian' leaders silent on these issues? Are they Christians at all? "Why are 'Christian' leaders silent on these issues? "

Here we are.

Don't look for leadership from the Whore of Babylon.
All of these "hierarchical" churches are pyramids of power in the Beast System.

Authority among men is on a level field; with the Word of God- Jesus of the scriptures- as King.

Corvinus , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 4:01 am GMT

@CanSpeccy


So American identity is a a lot of hogwash as most Americans identity with something that never was.
As most people understand the term, American identity refers to the racial and cultural characteristics of the people.

American identity has, since the nation's inception, been chiefly European and Christian. Today, the Euro-American Christian majority has been targeted for annihilation through reproductive dysfunction (induced by brainwashing aka state-directed education) and mass replacement immigration.

The American governing elite, plutocracy, criminal conspiracy that is government, call it what you want, seeks to genocide the American people as it urges on the corrupt European elites to do the same to their people. Mr. Kirkpatrick stated "In an "America" which no longer has a definable culture, language, ethnos, history, identity or rule of law, what is there left to betray?"

His proceeding argument is built on a false premise. We clearly have these things. Then, we have you doubling down. The American identity refers to a host of traits that reflect its citizens. Initially, our nation was predicated on several European ethnic groups who held different faiths. Africans were imported. Tribal groups were removed by force for white settlement. Gradually, the Germans, the Irish, the Assyrians, the Mexicans, the Vietnamese, and the Nigerians immersed themselves into what is an American. We are a nation of mutts.

"Today, the Euro-American Christian majority has been targeted for annihilation through reproductive dysfunction (induced by brainwashing aka state-directed education)."

Did it ever occur to you that tens of millions of whites are other than brainwashed, that they created an educational system that represents their beliefs and values?

" mass replacement immigration."

No.

"The American governing elite, plutocracy, criminal conspiracy that is government, call it what you want, seeks to genocide the American people as it urges on the corrupt European elites to do the same to their people."

There is observably no genocide taking place here in the States. Your Alt Right talking point is tiresome to say the least.

Wally , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 4:05 am GMT

@Anon You clearly have no interest in debate. Challenged on an intellectual debate, you wilt. Enjoy yourself. Problem is that you're not an intellectual. Not in the slightest. Dream on.

Che Guava , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 7:02 am GMT

@jilles dykstra If any state in the world is sovereign it is the USA.
USA military power, and political power still enable the USA to do as it pleases.
All other states in the world are less sovereign, just because of USA power.

What you write about is USA democracy, is what the USA does what the USA people want ?
The election of Trump, though he did not get the popular vote, means in my opinion that a large part of the USA population is fed up with the establishment politicians.
What USA citizens who did not vote want, I do not know, I wonder if anyone knows.

Just now on Belgian tv was a report on USA citizens who are pro Trump, what they mean by 'making America great again', not very clear to me.
A USA commentator stated that many Americans do not recognise the present USA as the USA they knew, or want.
Mentioned was socialism: the welfare state, gays, migrants.
And hostility to establishment politicians. By definition, since the polity of the USA is controlled by the Izzies, it can not be a sovereign state.

It is a bizarre colonial posession of Israel. So, by your argument, Israel is the only truly sovereign state.

Anon , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 8:05 am GMT

@Stonehands 60's Leftism isn't as innocuous as you make it seem.

The likes of Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag and Erica Jong ( assisted by the Pill and legalized abortion) led the charge through the institutions. Economic Marxism was abandoned for " Cultural" Marxism under the guise of New Age or Secular Humanism (the perennial religion e.g. satanism)
Once the God of revealed religion is abandoned ( an all-knowing Judge/Creator) for the God of "me"-then it should come as no surprise that the people- especially the women- will become weak and pathetic...

Weak in Spirit, surrendering to material
desires...
Succumbing to Jewish materialism instead of overcoming vice with Christian excellence. The likes of Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag and Erica Jong ( assisted by the Pill and legalized abortion) led the charge through the institutions.

Not true. The hardline feminists turned on Friedan.

Sontag went her own way and didn't involve herself much with institutions. She was too independent to be academic hack.

Jong was a sexual libertarian, not a PC whore.

Eonic , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 8:15 am GMT

@Wally I have.

It's noted that you predictably ignored:

Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/islamophobia-shmislamophobia-97-of-homeland-security-security-grants-go-to-jewish-orgs

And you will most certainly ignore:

Zionist Wikipedia Editing Course
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139189
and:
The Zionist attempt to control language.
The Israel Project's 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY
https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-israel-projects-2009-global-language-dictionary.pdf
and:
The commander behind the pro-Israel student troops on U.S. college campuses
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page//.premium-1.709014
and:
Israel tech site paying "interns" to covertly plant stories in social media
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-tech-site-paying-interns-covertly-plant-stories-social-media
and:
Israeli students to get $2,000 to spread state propaganda on Facebook
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-students-get-2000-spread-state-propaganda-facebook

Not to mention that every US taxpayers "loan" that 'Israel' receives has never been paid back. The Israeli Occupied Congress curiously "forgives" all these huge debts. As if it wasn't assumed at the beginning.

Jame Bamford of Wired subsequently reported that the NSA had hired secretive contractors with extensive ties to Israeli intelligence to establish 10 to 20 wiretapping rooms at key telecommunication points throughout the country."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-impact-of-nsa-domestic-spying-2013-6#ixzz3NxPMujNo
and:
Two Secretive Israeli Companies Reportedly Bugged The US Telecommunications Grid For The NSA
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-bugged-the-us-for-the-nsa-2013-6#ixzz3NxPnnUFg
and:
IDF Unit 8200 Cyberwar Veterans Developed NSA Snooping Technology
Read more:http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/06/08/idf-unit-8200-cyberwar-veterans-developed-nsa-snooping-technology/

'Join the US army, Fight for Israel
http://68.media.tumblr.com/639563970a638b606f4adb0ef05c778b/tumblr_inline_o7t4eewwJn1r75mb5_500.jpg In view of the contents of your last link, you may be interested in this : https://eonic1.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/the-dumb-american-poem/

Authenticjazzman , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 10:22 am GMT

@Stonehands 60's Leftism isn't as innocuous as you make it seem.

The likes of Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag and Erica Jong ( assisted by the Pill and legalized abortion) led the charge through the institutions. Economic Marxism was abandoned for " Cultural" Marxism under the guise of New Age or Secular Humanism (the perennial religion e.g. satanism)
Once the God of revealed religion is abandoned ( an all-knowing Judge/Creator) for the God of "me"-then it should come as no surprise that the people- especially the women- will become weak and pathetic...

Weak in Spirit, surrendering to material
desires...
Succumbing to Jewish materialism instead of overcoming vice with Christian excellence. " An all-knowing judge/creator"

Okay so this indicates that your "judge/creator" also knew the future when he created Hitler and Stalin, and he then was fully aware of their future misdeeds, atrocities.
So why did he not rethink and say to himself :
Maybe I will just refrain from creating these two maniacs, and spare their millions of future victims.
Or was their, Hitlers and Stalins "free-will" more important than the lives and"free-will" of the hundreds of millions murdered through theri actions.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro jazz musician.

Wizard of Oz , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 12:06 pm GMT

@Corvinus Mr. Kirkpatrick stated "In an "America" which no longer has a definable culture, language, ethnos, history, identity or rule of law, what is there left to betray?"

His proceeding argument is built on a false premise. We clearly have these things. Then, we have you doubling down. The American identity refers to a host of traits that reflect its citizens. Initially, our nation was predicated on several European ethnic groups who held different faiths. Africans were imported. Tribal groups were removed by force for white settlement. Gradually, the Germans, the Irish, the Assyrians, the Mexicans, the Vietnamese, and the Nigerians immersed themselves into what is an American. We are a nation of mutts.

"Today, the Euro-American Christian majority has been targeted for annihilation through reproductive dysfunction (induced by brainwashing aka state-directed education)."

Did it ever occur to you that tens of millions of whites are other than brainwashed, that they created an educational system that represents their beliefs and values?

"...mass replacement immigration."

No.

"The American governing elite, plutocracy, criminal conspiracy that is government, call it what you want, seeks to genocide the American people as it urges on the corrupt European elites to do the same to their people."

There is observably no genocide taking place here in the States. Your Alt Right talking point is tiresome to say the least. I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture. (A retired judge with a guilty conscious about orphanages for part Aboriginal children did much to raise this controversial interpretation in Australia.)

As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now, quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So ..

Maybe passive cultural suigenocide is what we are seeing as the binding forces of anti-Communism and dogmatic religion have been released and a great mixture of ideas, none of them dominant by importance or by logic, are swirling around to infiltrate the minds of an increasingly large proportion of the population who think the fairly simple rhetoric and ideas they are grabbed by are important. Great times for the Scientologists, New Ageists et al

Agent76 , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 12:49 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra It is clear to me now that the CIA is a fascist led organisation, my definition of fascism being 'the use of power without any ideology'. Just keeping it real from inside the D.C. operations and from folk's in power!

War for Blair Mountain , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 1:40 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture. (A retired judge with a guilty conscious about orphanages for part Aboriginal children did much to raise this controversial interpretation in Australia.)

As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now, quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So.....

Maybe passive cultural suigenocide is what we are seeing as the binding forces of anti-Communism and dogmatic religion have been released and a great mixture of ideas, none of them dominant by importance or by logic, are swirling around to infiltrate the minds of an increasingly large proportion of the population who think the fairly simple rhetoric and ideas they are grabbed by are important. Great times for the Scientologists, New Ageists et al ... Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus for it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class.

Post-1965 Immigration Policy is demographically and economically genocidal .Corvinus the Cockroach is very well aware of this and likes it

If the Chinese in China had this the of immigration policy imposed on them they would view it as genocide

America is not a proposition nation and the "AMERICA" the dainty old Queen Libertarian Cornivus pines for will be already is Non-white racial identity politics 24 hours a day 365 days a year as Native Born White American Males at US Universities are well aware of

The future for the Native Born White America Working Class .Wichita HS football field gang rape and executions .and Rampage 82

Paul Kersey

Go by Rampage 82 my older late cousin was one of the White Women gang raped on the Infamous Syosset Dinner robbery gang rape by a gang of Brooklyn Jamaican Legal Immigrants..White Wives and White Fiances gang raped in front of their hudbands .my cousin committed suicide three years later .Oh my God what they did to that poor young waitress in the kitchen I know some of the emergency room nurses who had to administer the spermacidal foam into these White Woman's vagina's

John Derbyshire

I was just in Book Review this morning .there is a ten book stack on one of the tables:"Rampage 82 " go by it read it ..

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 1:56 pm GMT

The alleged patriotism of the US Congress (and Olderman, Maddow, and other hysterical "progressives") and the reality of meddling into the US affairs, as documented by the facts:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/19/the-open-secret-of-foreign-lobbying/
"When AIPAC director Morris Amitay was caught red-handed mishandling classified missile secrets in 1975, he could have been prosecuted under FARA. When AIPAC and an Israeli diplomat purloined the entire 300-page book of classified trade secrets compiled from 70 U.S. industry groups opposed to unilateral trade concessions for Israel in 1984, they could have been prosecuted for failing to report their clandestine subversion of due process. When in 2005 [AIPAC officials] Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman met with Israeli diplomats during efforts to pass classified information to the press they thought could trigger a U.S attack on Iran, FARA consequences would have awaited them all. However, because the U.S. Department of Justice has unilaterally abrogated its responsibility to enforce FARA, people, ideas, money and propaganda campaigns continue to secretly slosh freely between Tel Aviv and Israeli fronts in America with taxpayer funds thrown into the toxic brew."
In short, "support the troops" by sending them to fight for Tel Aviv projects.
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/01/05/neocons-protest-us-spying-on-israel/
Meanwhile, the US homeland security is in the Israelis' hands.
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2013/08/21/homeland-security-made-in-israel/
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/US-Deputy-of-Homeland-Security-US-Israel-to-sign-automated-cyber-information-sharing-agreement-457261

Stonehands , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 2:10 pm GMT

@Anon The likes of Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag and Erica Jong ( assisted by the Pill and legalized abortion) led the charge through the institutions.

Not true. The hardline feminists turned on Friedan.

Sontag went her own way and didn't involve herself much with institutions. She was too independent to be academic hack.

Jong was a sexual libertarian, not a PC whore. All 3 women heavily promoted cultural Marxism and were the products of the Jew commie academic system. They were mentored by the dregs of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse and neocon svengali Leo Strauss, and were responsible for the kindling of second wave feminism.

War for Blair Mountain , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 2:17 pm GMT

If you have any doubts about the open genocidal intent of the Democratic Party

Do the following thought experiment ..What would happen if Richard Spencer incessantly in his his US College Tour stated emphatically:"WOULDN'T IT BE WONDERFULL IF YOUNG NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN COUPLES STARTED HAVING LARGE WHITE FAMILIES .so Native Born White Americans can go back to being a 90 racial minority in America again!!!!"

How would Melissa Harris Perry react?

How would Maxine Waters react?

How would the TATA Institute grads react?

How would Ciela Munoz react?

How would the smelly hairy bulldyke Hillary Clinton react?

Paul Kersey

Go buy Rampage 82 .."Oh my God what they did to that waitress" .this is what the Greek owner of the restaurant next to Walt Whitman High School said to me several years ago .the restaurant by the Colonial Era..historic grave yard that the Salvadoran youth trample over disrespectefully every morning on their way to Walt Whitman High School ..West Hills area

Corvinus , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 2:48 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture. (A retired judge with a guilty conscious about orphanages for part Aboriginal children did much to raise this controversial interpretation in Australia.)

As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now, quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So.....

Maybe passive cultural suigenocide is what we are seeing as the binding forces of anti-Communism and dogmatic religion have been released and a great mixture of ideas, none of them dominant by importance or by logic, are swirling around to infiltrate the minds of an increasingly large proportion of the population who think the fairly simple rhetoric and ideas they are grabbed by are important. Great times for the Scientologists, New Ageists et al ... "I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture."

CanSpeccy employed that term with the intent of bastardizing its use for his own demonic ends.

"As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now, quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So .."

Thank you for your opinion on this matter, even if it is not relevant here.

"Maybe passive cultural suigenocide is "

Maybe. Or maybe not.

Corvinus , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 2:54 pm GMT

@War for Blair Mountain Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus...for it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class.


Post-1965 Immigration Policy is demographically and economically genocidal....Corvinus the Cockroach is very well aware of this and likes it...


If the Chinese in China had this the of immigration policy imposed on them...they would view it as genocide...

America is not a proposition nation...and the "AMERICA" the dainty old Queen Libertarian Cornivus pines for will be...already is Non-white racial identity politics 24 hours a day...365 days a year...as Native Born White American Males at US Universities are well aware of...

The future for the Native Born White America Working Class....Wichita HS football field gang rape and executions....and Rampage 82...

Paul Kersey


Go by Rampage 82...my older late cousin was one of the White Women gang raped on the Infamous Syosset Dinner robbery gang rape by a gang of Brooklyn Jamaican Legal Immigrants..White Wives and White Fiances gang raped in front of their hudbands....my cousin committed suicide three years later....Oh my God...what they did to that poor young waitress in the kitchen...I know some of the emergency room nurses who had to administer the spermacidal foam into these White Woman's vagina's...


John Derbyshire


I was just in Book Review this morning....there is a ten book stack on one of the tables:"Rampage 82..."...go by it read it..... "Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus for it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class."

The only thing creepy are your numerous sock puppets–Anonym and Anon, for starters.

"America is not a proposition nation "

Regarding posterity, the concept does NOT refer exclusively to one's own children. In particular, "Novus Ordo Seclorum" reflects the intention of the Founding Fathers to install political checks and balances to safeguard against tyranny REGARDLESS of one's racial or ethnic background. It is other than accurate to state that the Founding Fathers sought to exclusively preserve a genetic legacy, i.e. Anglo-America, since there is no racial or gender criteria to adhere to the universal principles of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" which are embedded in our representative form of government. Recall that Congress has the power to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization " By definition, naturalization extends citizenship, and all the rights and duties related to it, to those other than the "original" settlers and immigrants. The proposition remains that immigrants must meet the criteria as established by Congress to enter our shores.

Stonehands , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 3:00 pm GMT

@War for Blair Mountain Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus...for it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class.


Post-1965 Immigration Policy is demographically and economically genocidal....Corvinus the Cockroach is very well aware of this and likes it...


If the Chinese in China had this the of immigration policy imposed on them...they would view it as genocide...

America is not a proposition nation...and the "AMERICA" the dainty old Queen Libertarian Cornivus pines for will be...already is Non-white racial identity politics 24 hours a day...365 days a year...as Native Born White American Males at US Universities are well aware of...

The future for the Native Born White America Working Class....Wichita HS football field gang rape and executions....and Rampage 82...

Paul Kersey


Go by Rampage 82...my older late cousin was one of the White Women gang raped on the Infamous Syosset Dinner robbery gang rape by a gang of Brooklyn Jamaican Legal Immigrants..White Wives and White Fiances gang raped in front of their hudbands....my cousin committed suicide three years later....Oh my God...what they did to that poor young waitress in the kitchen...I know some of the emergency room nurses who had to administer the spermacidal foam into these White Woman's vagina's...


John Derbyshire


I was just in Book Review this morning....there is a ten book stack on one of the tables:"Rampage 82..."...go by it read it..... I grew up in Glen Cove, l remember that hideous event- it was life changing
on LI.

In addition, there was a mad scramble by restaurants to install windows everywhere; the old style of hospitality featured privacy.
The thought that rampaging niggers would take advantage of these circumstances was beyond anyone's scope of the imagination at the time.

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 3:01 pm GMT

@Wizard of Oz I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture. (A retired judge with a guilty conscious about orphanages for part Aboriginal children did much to raise this controversial interpretation in Australia.)

As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now, quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So.....

Maybe passive cultural suigenocide is what we are seeing as the binding forces of anti-Communism and dogmatic religion have been released and a great mixture of ideas, none of them dominant by importance or by logic, are swirling around to infiltrate the minds of an increasingly large proportion of the population who think the fairly simple rhetoric and ideas they are grabbed by are important. Great times for the Scientologists, New Ageists et al ...

I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture.

That, certainly. But there is also a deliberate, undeniable, cold-blooded policy aimed at the elimination of a racial group, which only liars for the promotion of genocide or the severely arithmetically challenged, such as Corvinus, deny.

The math is simple: if you have a fertility rate far below replacement (consistent with government directed sex "education," plus no-fault divorce and state-funded mass slaughter of the unborn) as is true of Euro-Americans and Europeans in Europe, and you combine that with a policy of mass immigration, then you have replacement of the original population. Hence the English, for example, are now a minority not only in my father's home town of Leicester where my ancestors lived for at least eight hundred years, but also in London, Luton, Birmingham (England's second city) where English children are not even the largest minority in elementary school, and in many other urban centers throughout Europe and North America.

Stonehands , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 3:50 pm GMT

@Authenticjazzman " An all-knowing judge/creator"

Okay so this indicates that your "judge/creator" also knew the future when he created Hitler and Stalin, and he then was fully aware of their future misdeeds, atrocities.
So why did he not rethink and say to himself :
Maybe I will just refrain from creating these two maniacs, and spare their millions of future victims.
Or was their, Hitlers and Stalins "free-will" more important than the lives and"free-will" of the hundreds of millions murdered through theri actions.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro jazz musician. You are correct.

Free will is paramount.

And with that free will we are given autonomy and responsibility for our actions.

Jesus said not to fear the first death.

Accounts will be settled at the final judgement.

Your actions will be tossed into a crucible and will burn like wood, hay or stubble (self- aggrandizement) or they will be refined like Gold if done for Jesus' sake.

Hey man, l am just stonehands. I say crazy, ardent statements that may turn you off to this message.

But please consider the great men of history- such as Bach- who wrote "Jesu Joy of Mans Desire"; who also added the addendum:
"ALL MUSIC is for the greater glory of God and the refreshment of the mind"

Aaron8765 , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 3:53 pm GMT

I agree completely with this article. I am a patriot who loves this country and whose ancestors fought for it in war. The Russians are a natural ally. I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish. There are plenty of us who love America and only America. Will you reject all of us who will fight for this country?

War for Blair Mountain , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 3:54 pm GMT

@Stonehands I grew up in Glen Cove, l remember that hideous event- it was life changing
on LI.

In addition, there was a mad scramble by restaurants to install windows everywhere; the old style of hospitality featured privacy.
The thought that rampaging niggers would take advantage of these circumstances was beyond anyone's scope of the imagination at the time. As you know Glen Cove has been completely colonized by El Salavodor and Mexico

Glen Cove used to be a beautifull North Shore Town

I used to go to that health food store down past the firehouse that used to proudly display the great big Convederate Flag in the firetruck bays .

Interestingly Tom Suozzi's uncle was the Mayor of Glenn Cove and got trashed by Newday for cracking down on the Mexicans and Salvadoran illegals .his nephew Tom the Cockroach is onboard with importing the nonwhite Democratic Party Voting Bloc .and war with Christian Russia

Congressman Tom Suozzi a creepy looking short Italian with cornrows of hairplugs and platforms in his shoes .and speaks with a lisp

War for Blair Mountain , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 4:01 pm GMT

@Corvinus "Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus for it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class."

The only thing creepy are your numerous sock puppets--Anonym and Anon, for starters.

"America is not a proposition nation..."

Regarding posterity, the concept does NOT refer exclusively to one's own children. In particular, "Novus Ordo Seclorum" reflects the intention of the Founding Fathers to install political checks and balances to safeguard against tyranny REGARDLESS of one's racial or ethnic background. It is other than accurate to state that the Founding Fathers sought to exclusively preserve a genetic legacy, i.e. Anglo-America, since there is no racial or gender criteria to adhere to the universal principles of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" which are embedded in our representative form of government. Recall that Congress has the power to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization..." By definition, naturalization extends citizenship, and all the rights and duties related to it, to those other than the "original" settlers and immigrants. The proposition remains that immigrants must meet the criteria as established by Congress to enter our shores. Oh shut the fuck up you libertarian Cuck as you sit in front of your computer in a white granny gown ..wrinkly and old .the demographic profile of a typical National Review reader these days .

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 4:07 pm GMT

Meanwhile, the Zio-propagandists ignore the death of Seth Rich:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/seth-rich-craig-murray-and-the-sinister-stewards-of-the-national-security-state/

"The Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on July 10 on a Washington, D.C., street just steps from his home had leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks, law enforcement sources told Fox News.
A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic report detailing the contents of DNC staffer Seth Rich's computer generated within 96 hours after his murder, said Rich made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time Okay, so where's the computer? Who's got Rich's computer? Let's do the forensic work and get on with it.
But the Washington Post and the other bogus news organizations aren't interested in such matters because it doesn't fit with their political agenda. They'd rather take pot-shots at Fox for running an article that doesn't square with their goofy Russia hacking story.
Murray should be the government's star witness in the DNC hacking scandal, instead, no one even knows who he is. But if we trust what Murray has to say, then we can see that the Russia hacking story is baloney. The emails were "leaked" by insiders not "hacked" by a foreign government. Here's the scoop from Robert Parry at Consortium News:
"Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, has suggested that the DNC leak came from a "disgruntled" Democrat upset with the DNC's sandbagging of the Sanders campaign and that the Podesta leak came from the U.S. intelligence community .He (Murray) appears to have undertaken a mission for WikiLeaks to contact one of the sources (or a representative) during a Sept. 25 visit to Washington where he says he met with a person in a wooded area of American University.
With all the hullabaloo surrounding the Russia hacking case, you'd think that Murray's eyewitness account would be headline news, but not in Homeland Amerika where the truth is kept as far from the front page as humanly possible. Bottom line: The government has a reliable witness (Murray) who can positively identify the person who hacked the DNC emails and, so far, they've showed no interest in his testimony at all. Doesn't that strike you as a bit weird?"

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 4:31 pm GMT

@PiltdownMan What Putin said yesterday.


"What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using anti-Russian slogans," Mr. Putin said. "Either they don't understand the damage they're doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt."

What Putin said yesterday:

"Either they don't understand the damage they're doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt."

Putin was being tactful, obviously.

Clearly, what he meant was that the US is now dominated by dangerously corrupt people. The same is true of virtually all states in all times. What is unusual about America today is the scale of harm that the US plutocracy is in a position to inflict, and is indeed inflicting, on both Americans and the world.

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 4:41 pm GMT

@War for Blair Mountain Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus...for it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class.


Post-1965 Immigration Policy is demographically and economically genocidal....Corvinus the Cockroach is very well aware of this and likes it...


If the Chinese in China had this the of immigration policy imposed on them...they would view it as genocide...

America is not a proposition nation...and the "AMERICA" the dainty old Queen Libertarian Cornivus pines for will be...already is Non-white racial identity politics 24 hours a day...365 days a year...as Native Born White American Males at US Universities are well aware of...

The future for the Native Born White America Working Class....Wichita HS football field gang rape and executions....and Rampage 82...

Paul Kersey


Go by Rampage 82...my older late cousin was one of the White Women gang raped on the Infamous Syosset Dinner robbery gang rape by a gang of Brooklyn Jamaican Legal Immigrants..White Wives and White Fiances gang raped in front of their hudbands....my cousin committed suicide three years later....Oh my God...what they did to that poor young waitress in the kitchen...I know some of the emergency room nurses who had to administer the spermacidal foam into these White Woman's vagina's...


John Derbyshire


I was just in Book Review this morning....there is a ten book stack on one of the tables:"Rampage 82..."...go by it read it.....

Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus

Yes, there is certainly something weird about Corvy. I have sometimes wondered if he might be an early CIA implementation of an artificially intelligent (sort of) propaganda bot, with the "agent provocateur" function enabled. The AP function would explain the repeated demands to know what someone opposed to European genocide proposes to do about it: bomb throwing being, presumably, the desired response, leading to arrest and incarceration under anti-terrorism laws.

One has to wonder though, whether Corvy's Euro-Holocaust denial should be tolerated. If he were denying the Jewish Holocaust he would be censored here, or if not, probably targeted for some kind of legal sanction, as would only be right. Why then should he be free to spew his anti-European hatred here?

Authenticjazzman , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 5:52 pm GMT

@Stonehands You are correct.

Free will is paramount.

And...with that free will we are given autonomy and responsibility for our actions.

Jesus said not to fear the first death.

Accounts will be settled at the final judgement.

Your actions will be tossed into a crucible and will burn like wood, hay or stubble (self- aggrandizement)...or they will be refined like Gold if done for Jesus' sake.

Hey man, l am just stonehands. I say crazy, ardent statements that may turn you off to this message.

But please consider the great men of history- such as Bach- who wrote "Jesu Joy of Mans Desire"; who also added the addendum:
"ALL MUSIC is for the greater glory of God and the refreshment of the mind" First of all, myself a graduate of classical flute study with Bach as a center focus, I am most certainly more versed within his, Bach's, artistic accomplishments than you could probably imagine, and point is : He was trying to survive in an age of absolute enslavement by the aristocratic PTB, therefore he had no choice but to pen his works in a religious vein if he wanted to continue eating, and this holds true for all of the Baroque/classical composers.
Now as to whether he believed the dogma, within which his works were set, this is up for speculation, and you, me or nobody else can state that he was or was not a pious advocate of religious ideas.
And as far as "ALL MUSIC" being for the greater glory of God, and refreshment of the mind : I agree with the "Refreshment of the mind" aspect, however being a confirmed atheist, I am unable to go along with the "Greater glory of God" approach.
I can say this much, when engaged within the action of performing/inprovising music within the jazz idiom, and attempting to create so-called "swinging" solos, there are no thoughts entering my mind regarding the "Greater glory of God, rather my focus is upon the moment and the effort at hand : Making it, the music, swing.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet and pro jazz artist.

Wizard of Oz , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 5:53 pm GMT

@Corvinus "I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture."

CanSpeccy employed that term with the intent of bastardizing its use for his own demonic ends.

"As I look at the grubby state of Australian politics in which voting for people to take otber people's money for your advantage has become the game I can't help connecting it to the defeat of Communism and the end of ideological battle. Once middle class Protestants and agnostics might have been delighted by the strength of the Catholic Church in politics despite objections to a diminishing range of Papist shibboleths concerning abortion, contraception and euthanasia. Now, quite apart from the debilitating child abuse scandals the Catholic Church is reduced to being a lobbyist for public funds for its school syatems. So .."

Thank you for your opinion on this matter, even if it is not relevant here.

"Maybe passive cultural suigenocide is..."

Maybe. Or maybe not. "not relevant here". Fair enough unless you are willing to allow in these often discursive conversations an attempt to lead people on a path of thought which will spark tecognition – in this case perhaps of the loss of much that used to bind even if it wasn't an essential eternal part of human existence.

Authenticjazzman , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 6:02 pm GMT

@Steve Naidamast I agree with the basis of the author's complaint but it is full of a lot of holes in its foundations.

To offer the attacks on Trump as some sort of insurgency against a valid, national leader is a bit absurd.

No arguments from me as to who makes up such an insurgency. They are all war mongers and shills for the corporations, elites, and of course, the Israelis, with a few others thrown in for good measure (ie: Saudi Arabia).

Yet, Trump is the personification of the completely corrupt business class in the United States. His appointments to cabinet positions, his elevation of his daughter and son-in-law into governmental positions, his massive conflicts of interests that are still ongoing while in the presidency, his degenerate treatment of many who have worked for him as contractors throwing many into bankruptcy, and his inability comprehend anything that takes longer than 5 minutes to explain, among many other negatives are all severe indications of a person who has no business being the leader of a nation. I don't care who or why he was elected. The fact that such a man was elected at all shows the complete degeneracy of the US electorate.

As for the idea of "American identity", there has only been one; that of the White elite taking what he or she wants from the everything and everyone around them. One good study of American history will provide one with more than enough evidence of this contention.

Since its inception everything has been and still is for sale in the United States and the winners are always the highest bidders.

Just look at who supported the presidencies in past elections going back to after the War for Southern Independence.

America's involvement in both world wars were explicitly the result of presidents lying their way into them after promising the electorate consistently that they would keep the country out of the European conflicts. So much for honor in the presidency. Wilson at least had a reason; he thought he was Jesus Christ. FDR on the other hand simply didn't want a competitor to America in Europe and simply hated everything German in general.

So American identity is a a lot of hogwash as most Americans identity with something that never was. Our "Founding Fathers" certainly did not create a nation that would be just one to all but one to protect the wealthy and their needs.

There is no doubt that the US is undergoing a massive decline in its ability to govern itself while undergoing serious social deterioration. However, the seeds of this destructive, downward spiral were set in stone when a bunch of wealthy guys created a rather flimsy constitution to protect the White privileged classes.... "The fact that such a man was elected at all shows the complete degeneracy of th electorate

So you would have prefered BC and HRC, the paragons of decency and integrity back in the white house.

Look friend you are labeling myself, my sister and my upstanding, decent, friends and family who in fact did pull the lever for DT as : Degenerate.

You are the "degenerate" malevolent one here and you have no clue as to what you are blathering about.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa"society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro jazz musician.

Wizard of Oz , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 6:14 pm GMT

@CanSpeccy


I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture.
That, certainly. But there is also a deliberate, undeniable, cold-blooded policy aimed at the elimination of a racial group, which only liars for the promotion of genocide or the severely arithmetically challenged, such as Corvinus, deny.

The math is simple: if you have a fertility rate far below replacement (consistent with government directed sex "education," plus no-fault divorce and state-funded mass slaughter of the unborn) as is true of Euro-Americans and Europeans in Europe, and you combine that with a policy of mass immigration, then you have replacement of the original population. Hence the English, for example, are now a minority not only in my father's home town of Leicester where my ancestors lived for at least eight hundred years, but also in London, Luton, Birmingham (England's second city) where English children are not even the largest minority in elementary school, and in many other urban centers throughout Europe and North America. At least Leicester has got a lot of successful Indians has it not (many ex East Africa I believe)? By chance I had dinner tonight at a Two Fat Indians restaurant, not nearly as cheap as in the UK but also no fat Indians but a couple of gorgeous smiling smart young women from Punjab. I wouldn't want all our immigration of the relatively smart to be Chinese, though I welcome them, so it tended to confirm my relatively optimistic view about Australia's population. Clearly native white Australians are breeding almost as dysgenically as outback Aborigines and Lebanese immugrants from 40 yeats ago so I see the Chinese and Indians who have often been educated in Australia as making up for that. It is curious however that our school PISA ranking has declined in the last 10 years or so. I suspect parties of the left and teacher unions though another cause for puzzling over it is that a larger proportion of children get their education in non government schools in Australia than almost anywhere in the First World.

Corvinus , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 6:19 pm GMT

@CanSpeccy


I think you may be overlooking CanSpeccy's use of "genocide" in the admittedly controversial and tendentious sense of cultural "genocide" which wipes out a people by wiping out its existence as a people with a shared, traditional and coherent culture.
That, certainly. But there is also a deliberate, undeniable, cold-blooded policy aimed at the elimination of a racial group, which only liars for the promotion of genocide or the severely arithmetically challenged, such as Corvinus, deny.

The math is simple: if you have a fertility rate far below replacement (consistent with government directed sex "education," plus no-fault divorce and state-funded mass slaughter of the unborn) as is true of Euro-Americans and Europeans in Europe, and you combine that with a policy of mass immigration, then you have replacement of the original population. Hence the English, for example, are now a minority not only in my father's home town of Leicester where my ancestors lived for at least eight hundred years, but also in London, Luton, Birmingham (England's second city) where English children are not even the largest minority in elementary school, and in many other urban centers throughout Europe and North America. "But there is also a deliberate, undeniable, cold-blooded policy aimed at the elimination of a racial group, which only liars for the promotion of genocide or the severely arithmetically challenged, such as Corvinus, deny."

Clearly your fixation on something that does not observable exist, chiefly the extermination of whites in the "West" by elites and their toadies, is a trait of you as an aspie. I have nothing personal against your affliction. I just find it fascinating that you rinse and repeat this phenomenon.

"The math is simple: if you have a fertility rate far below replacement "

Another one of your obsessions. Modern married white couples rarely look at their situation in this fashion. They have children. They will take care of them as best they are able. Tens of thousands of mothers and fathers assuredly are not going to be badgered by you and your ilk into thinking about ensuring the viability of the "white race" by having more babies. Have you met your obligation here? Do you have at least five white offspring? Have you properly indoctrinated, I mean discussed, of their future duty?

(consistent with government directed sex "education,")

Yes, sex education. A product of our society. The decision made by citizens. A fact of life.

"plus no-fault divorce"

Yes, no-fault divorce. A product of our society. The decision made by citizens. A fact of life.

"and state-funded mass slaughter of the unborn)"

Finally, we agree. This is a big deal.

"as is true of Euro-Americans and Europeans in Europe, and you combine that with a policy of mass immigration, then you have replacement of the original population."

NOT genocide. Mass immigration has been a historical and global phenomenon. Nations sent colonists to explore. The undesired and unwanted left their home countries and, as immigrants, arrived to other parts of the globe. Immigration policies were informal or formal, and they varied from nation to nation. Furthermore, there always has been some level of augmentation in a nation's population. The British helped to found the American colonies; other Europeans, along with Africans and Asians and Latin Americans, arrived there, either voluntarily or by force. The British were "replaced" in the fact they were no longer the dominant group to control the region, and that they increasingly intermarried with non-British. This ethnic "mixing" had been considered taboo in Europe (except among the elite to secure their power and authority), but in America it became the rule.

"Hence the English, for example, are now a minority not only in my father's home town of Leicester where my ancestors lived for at least eight hundred years, but also in London, Luton, Birmingham (England's second city) where English children are not even the largest minority in elementary school, and in many other urban centers throughout Europe and North America."

Tragic. But a fact of life. I suggest you run for political office. Make a difference in England, your home nation. Promote what you believe in.

"Yes, there is certainly something weird about Corvy. I have sometimes wondered if he might be an early CIA implementation of an artificially intelligent (sort of) propaganda bot, with the "agent provocateur" function enabled."

From what I've been told by a good friend who does work for this organization, the CIA has been targeting you since you were eight years old. They have a dossier on you and your family. You have been on notice for decades given your "pro-race is code for anti-humanity" mindset.

"One has to wonder though, whether Corvy's Euro-Holocaust denial should be tolerated."

Of course it should be "tolerated". In fact, it should be relished and replicated by other posters here to expose your lies and propaganda. There is no "Euro-Holocaust". That is Fake News. I'm sure at some point in time the CIA will engage in psycho-ops and reprogram you.

"Why then should he be free to spew his anti-European hatred here?"

False characterization. I am "spewing" my love for the human race. Unfortunately, there are people who are bitter and lost.

Corvinus , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 6:23 pm GMT

@War for Blair Mountain Oh shut the fuck up you libertarian Cuck......as you sit in front of your computer in a white granny gown .....wrinkly and old....the demographic profile of a typical National Review reader these days.... "Oh shut the fuck up you libertarian Cuck as you sit in front of your computer in a white granny gown ..wrinkly and old .the demographic profile of a typical National Review reader these days ."

Are your sock puppets on eight hour or daily shifts?

Now, regarding my posterity comment, do you have a rebuttal?

bluedog , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 8:20 pm GMT

@War for Blair Mountain Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus...for it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class.


Post-1965 Immigration Policy is demographically and economically genocidal....Corvinus the Cockroach is very well aware of this and likes it...


If the Chinese in China had this the of immigration policy imposed on them...they would view it as genocide...

America is not a proposition nation...and the "AMERICA" the dainty old Queen Libertarian Cornivus pines for will be...already is Non-white racial identity politics 24 hours a day...365 days a year...as Native Born White American Males at US Universities are well aware of...

The future for the Native Born White America Working Class....Wichita HS football field gang rape and executions....and Rampage 82...

Paul Kersey


Go by Rampage 82...my older late cousin was one of the White Women gang raped on the Infamous Syosset Dinner robbery gang rape by a gang of Brooklyn Jamaican Legal Immigrants..White Wives and White Fiances gang raped in front of their hudbands....my cousin committed suicide three years later....Oh my God...what they did to that poor young waitress in the kitchen...I know some of the emergency room nurses who had to administer the spermacidal foam into these White Woman's vagina's...


John Derbyshire


I was just in Book Review this morning....there is a ten book stack on one of the tables:"Rampage 82..."...go by it read it..... That's why militias were formed to take care of the wild dogs that roam thru society Join one today..

geokat62 , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 8:56 pm GMT

@Aaron8765 I agree completely with this article. I am a patriot who loves this country and whose ancestors fought for it in war. The Russians are a natural ally. I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish. There are plenty of us who love America and only America. Will you reject all of us who will fight for this country?

I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section.

Hi, Aaron. Just wanted to take a crack at providing you with an explanation of where I think most people are coming from on the issue you've raised.

While I obviously don't pretend to speak for all goyim, I can speak for myself.

It's not that goyim are expressing "hatred towards the entire Jewish people" for who they are. I think they are probably expressing their anger towards what organized Jewry has been, and is, actually doing.

One case in point is the big push towards diversity led by the ADL. Are you familiar with the following material they've posted on their website:

This is America.This is ADL. (NB – disingenuously referring to 9 pictures of distinct-looking individuals)

The United States is a vibrant mix of cultures, races, religions and ethnic groups. These differences enhance our nation's strength, beauty and collective wisdom. Together, we all weave the fabric of our pluralistic society.

For over 100 years, the Anti-Defamation League has upheld this distinctly American concept by leading the fight against anti-Semitism, bigotry and racism. Today, ADL is the nation's premier human relations and civil rights organization.

If your company or organization wants to be recognized as a leader in the fight to promote diversity, we invite you to become a member of ADL's Corporate Leadership Council - the nation's leading corporate diversity initiative. Additional co-branding, diversity training and recognition benefits are available to Corporate Partners.

https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/about-adl/corporate-partners.pdf

More and more people have come to realize that the ADL has been behind the push towards diversity. They were the ones to actually coin the phrase "Diversity Is Our Strength."

Given the historically delicate situation of Diaspora Jewry living in host nations- i.e., the perennial risks of pogroms and other forms of repression – promoting a policy of diversity, while damaging to the host nation, made eminent sense, from their perspective.

While this policy had been sustainable before the founding of Israel, it has since become problematic. Let me explain. While there are still goyim who think the ADL is sincere in their promotion of diversity, more and more are beginning to notice the blatant contradiction in Diaspora Jewry's position: while they support the promotion of diversity in their host nations, they fiercely defend the idea of an ethno-state in the ME. This is becoming an untenable position in the eyes of many goyim – i.e., either one favours multiculturalism or one favours mono-culturalism one cannot favour both at the same time.

So if we fast forward this film, what it comes down to is this: Diaspora Jewry must make up their minds and choose one of the following options:

1) sincerely embrace multiculturalism for all nations by insisting that Israel open its doors to all peoples of the world and let them become equal citizens; or

2) sincerely embrace mono-culturalism for all nations (and immediately cease and desist from promoting diversity) by either assimilating or making Aliyah.

If they refuse to choose, because they wish to have their cake and eat it too, I'm afraid this this film will not have a happy ending.

-----

P.S. I, for one, am a big fan of true diversity and sincerely embrace mono-culturalism. That's why I'm in favour of a rainbow of nations. Because, as the saying goes, "variety is the spice of life."

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 9:18 pm GMT

@War for Blair Mountain Oh shut the fuck up you libertarian Cuck......as you sit in front of your computer in a white granny gown .....wrinkly and old....the demographic profile of a typical National Review reader these days.... Waste of time, really, responding to the troll for the replacement of Euro-Americans. It only initiates another spew of hate speech. According to Corvy, there's something wrong with those who are for the survival of their own kith and kin. In fact, being against extinction of your own people is how Corvy seems to define hate speech and racism.

Wiz Oz is not quite so crude about it, but seems to think its fine for the English people of the city of Leicester to be replaced by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many other fine people, I do not.

There are something like a billion Hindus in India, so why should they occupy the tiny homeland of the English? England, it is true, ruled India for a while, no doubt over the objection of the Indian ruling class, but in doing so they merely replaced another and more exploitive alien ruling elite, and at no time attempted to settle India with millions of Europeans. Indeed they set out, from the time of Macaulay's memorandum on Indian Education, dated Feb 2nd, 1835 , to prepare India for self-government as the modern, independent, democratic nation state that it now is.

Anon , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 9:23 pm GMT

@Stonehands All 3 women heavily promoted cultural Marxism and were the products of the Jew commie academic system. They were mentored by the dregs of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse and neocon svengali Leo Strauss, and were responsible for the kindling of second wave feminism. Sontag's main place wasn't in the academia. She was essentially a person of letters.

Friedan is credited with second-wave feminism, but it would have happened anyway without her. The media just needed someone as 'leader'.

Jong was attacked by feminists. I'm not gonna defend her horny crap, but she' s not part of long march through institutions.

Also, these are more the products of capitalism. They have nothing to with Marxism. This term 'cultural marxism' should really be called 'cultural consumerism'.

Rurik , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 10:02 pm GMT

@geokat62


I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section.
Hi, Aaron. Just wanted to take a crack at providing you with an explanation of where I think most people are coming from on the issue you've raised.

While I obviously don't pretend to speak for all goyim, I can speak for myself.

It's not that goyim are expressing "hatred towards the entire Jewish people" for who they are. I think they are probably expressing their anger towards what organized Jewry has been, and is, actually doing.

One case in point is the big push towards diversity led by the ADL. Are you familiar with the following material they've posted on their website:


This is America.This is ADL. (NB - disingenuously referring to 9 pictures of distinct-looking individuals)

The United States is a vibrant mix of cultures, races, religions and ethnic groups. These differences enhance our nation's strength, beauty and collective wisdom. Together, we all weave the fabric of our pluralistic society.

For over 100 years, the Anti-Defamation League has upheld this distinctly American concept by leading the fight against anti-Semitism, bigotry and racism. Today, ADL is the nation's premier human relations and civil rights organization.

If your company or organization wants to be recognized as a leader in the fight to promote diversity, we invite you to become a member of ADL's Corporate Leadership Council - the nation's leading corporate diversity initiative. Additional co-branding, diversity training and recognition benefits are available to Corporate Partners.

https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/about-adl/corporate-partners.pdf

More and more people have come to realize that the ADL has been behind the push towards diversity. They were the ones to actually coin the phrase "Diversity Is Our Strength."

Given the historically delicate situation of Diaspora Jewry living in host nations- i.e., the perennial risks of pogroms and other forms of repression - promoting a policy of diversity, while damaging to the host nation, made eminent sense, from their perspective.

While this policy had been sustainable before the founding of Israel, it has since become problematic. Let me explain. While there are still goyim who think the ADL is sincere in their promotion of diversity, more and more are beginning to notice the blatant contradiction in Diaspora Jewry's position: while they support the promotion of diversity in their host nations, they fiercely defend the idea of an ethno-state in the ME. This is becoming an untenable position in the eyes of many goyim - i.e., either one favours multiculturalism or one favours mono-culturalism... one cannot favour both at the same time.

So if we fast forward this film, what it comes down to is this: Diaspora Jewry must make up their minds and choose one of the following options:

1) sincerely embrace multiculturalism for all nations by insisting that Israel open its doors to all peoples of the world and let them become equal citizens; or

2) sincerely embrace mono-culturalism for all nations (and immediately cease and desist from promoting diversity) by either assimilating or making Aliyah.

If they refuse to choose, because they wish to have their cake and eat it too, I'm afraid this this film will not have a happy ending.

-------------

P.S. I, for one, am a big fan of true diversity and sincerely embrace mono-culturalism. That's why I'm in favour of a rainbow of nations. Because, as the saying goes, "variety is the spice of life."

while they support the promotion of diversity in their host nations, they fiercely defend the idea of an ethno-state in the ME.

well said Geo,

we've all seen this genocidal hag shilling for the destruction of the West

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ERmOpZrKtw

and we all know by now the consequences of this insanity being foisted by these (often Jewish) netherworld demons

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3831991/Wheelchair-bound-woman-gang-raped-six-migrants-Swedish-asylum-centre-asking-use-toilet.html

no reasonable person blames all Jews for this evil that only a few of them are perpetrating, (with the eager assistance of many goys [homos and fat, ugly white women and other malcontents] who want the migrants to come for their own reasons, just like corporate/business interests who want to pay lower wages in general)

but the destruction of Europe and N. America by massive and transformational immigration is, at heart- being foisted by Jewish sludge like Sheldon Adelson, who demands open borders for the US, and uses his money to buy cucks in the Republican party to ensure that he gets just that, but then also uses his ill-gotten gains to promote racial purity in Israel, where his newspapers call all non-Jewish immigrants – invaders.

So you're right. It's the raging hypocrisy and demonic, Old Testament hatred for all non-Jewish tribes and the efforts to see all white nations founder under racial and ethnic hatred and strife, while simultaneously advocating for a racially pure state in Israel- that makes a lot of people exasperated with Jewish influence and nefarious intrigues.

There are of course other stuff too. Fomenting and foisting wars, false flag attacks, financial swindles, cultural sewage, etc.. But I suspect one of the main reasons people are losing patience is the psychotic imperative of some Jews to advocate for massive immigration into (only) white countries that outs (some of) them as existential enemies.

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 10:02 pm GMT

@Aaron8765 I agree completely with this article. I am a patriot who loves this country and whose ancestors fought for it in war. The Russians are a natural ally. I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish. There are plenty of us who love America and only America. Will you reject all of us who will fight for this country?

I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish.

Most commenters, surely, do not regard "the entire Jewish people" with hatred, and most surely, would acknowledge that most Jews of their acquaintance are good people.

Naturally, however, people react with anger when Jews engage in anti-European genocidal advocacy such as this . Anti-European advocacy, in various forms, in the media and the movie industry, is often associated with Jewish ownership or direction and naturally provokes anger at what appears to be the anti-European racism and indeed genocidal intent toward the European people of many influential Jews.

I do understand your feelings and sympathize with you, but it is surely wrong to infer that because there is push back against what some Jews do, this is evidence of irrational hatred. It is not. The European people are under a concerted assault as racial and cultural entities, a fact that is obvious to any but a propagandist for genocide or an idiot like Corvinus, and that process of European racial and cultural genocide is promoted by many Jewish-controlled or owned companies and institutions under the guise of promoting diversity, multi-culturalism, tolerance, etc. The role of Jews in that process is no doubt a problem for many loyal American and European Jews, but it is a problem that cannot simply be dismissed as evidence of universal or even widely occurring anti-Semitism.

Of course people speak carelessly and with undue inclusiveness when they speak of the actions or beliefs of this or that group. But one has only to hear advocates of diversity, or black-lives-matter, or critics of white privilege, etc. to realize that undifferentiated condemnation of entire groups, black, white, Hispanic, Hindu or whatever is widespread, not merely a problem experienced by Jews.

Stonehands , Show Comment Next New Comment May 20, 2017 at 10:14 pm GMT

@Authenticjazzman First of all, myself a graduate of classical flute study with Bach as a center focus, I am most certainly more versed within his, Bach's, artistic accomplishments than you could probably imagine, and point is : He was trying to survive in an age of absolute enslavement by the aristocratic PTB, therefore he had no choice but to pen his works in a religious vein if he wanted to continue eating, and this holds true for all of the Baroque/classical composers.
Now as to whether he believed the dogma, within which his works were set, this is up for speculation, and you, me or nobody else can state that he was or was not a pious advocate of religious ideas.
And as far as "ALL MUSIC" being for the greater glory of God, and refreshment of the mind : I agree with the "Refreshment of the mind" aspect, however being a confirmed atheist, I am unable to go along with the "Greater glory of God" approach.
I can say this much, when engaged within the action of performing/inprovising music within the jazz idiom, and attempting to create so-called "swinging" solos, there are no thoughts entering my mind regarding the "Greater glory of God, rather my focus is upon the moment and the effort at hand : Making it, the music, swing.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet and pro jazz artist. I own a small restaurant where l occassionally feature solo artists or duets, myself included. I have been playing classical/jazz guitar for 45 years. I recently performed for Jason Vieaux [2016 solo classical Grammy award] and friends, and one of the pieces l played was "Jesu."
He agreed that my original transcription [key of G] and fingering were unique and pleasing to the ear and probably easier to commit to memory then the Rick Foster or Christopher Parkening renditions; we're talking non- stop double and triple stops here!

As per Christianity; you may believe there is no God (that's your faith and hope) but you cannot confirm it.

Bro Methylene , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 2:18 am GMT

@Sean The Russian ambassador was begging, begging for an audience with Obama in the Oval office, but didn't get it because Russia had annexed Crimea and waged a semi conventional war on Ukraine. The the Russians did not keep their idiot Assad under control.Trump granted the ambassador's request, but only did so the day after the US had bombed a Syrian airfield that the Russian expeditionary force regularly use.

Unfortunately Trump will have to kill some Russians now . Send the delta force into Syria disguised as rebels , they may be there already, because the Trump administration has stopped announcing what troop deployments he in making in Syria and Iraq. What makes you think Assad is an idiot? He seems more intelligent than most politicians, journalists, and politicians in Washington, D.C. (I cringe at having to name the place. It's like speaking Orc-language in Rivendell.)

Millions of Americans, having been raised on TV propaganda, still have a screaming need to feel superior to everyone – except perhaps the Israelis.

The government of the USA has marked Putin for destruction. But I think the rest of the world is rooting for him, and the Russian people, to survive the American onslaught.

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 2:30 am GMT

While the "progressives" badmouth bad-bad russkies for "destroying our democracy," an obscene spectacle of persecution of the most important whistleblower of our times continues.
"Getting Assange: the Untold Story," by JOHN PILGER
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/getting-assange-the-untold-story/
"Hillary Clinton, the destroyer of Libya and, as WikiLeaks revealed last year, the secret supporter and personal beneficiary of forces underwriting ISIS, proposed, "Can't we just drone this guy." According to Australian diplomatic cables, Washington's bid to get Assange is "unprecedented in scale and nature." In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has sought for almost seven years to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. Assange's ability to defend himself in such a Kafkaesque world has been severely limited by the US declaring his case a state secret. In 2015, a federal court in Washington blocked the release of all information about the "national security" investigation against WikiLeaks, because it was "active and ongoing" and would harm the "pending prosecution" of Assange. The judge, Barbara J. Rothstein, said it was necessary to show "appropriate deference to the executive in matters of national security." This is a kangaroo court."

dfordoom , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 3:18 am GMT

@Authenticjazzman " The real reason Russia is hated is because it is a media threat"

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The "real" reason Russia is hated is because it has rejected Communism, and it does not cater to gays.

Cummunist Russia had been , since the thirties, mecca and utopia for the US leftists and they are now out of their collective mind because their vision of world Marxism with Russia running the show have been obliterated by the likes of the anti-communist VP.

The Democrats were convinced that they had the election in the bag , and therefore the accomplishment of eternal one-party government. They would have legalized the illegals as a gigantic voting block,
and the huge upset dealt to them by the deplorables has driven them off the cliff and into total
madness.

"Media threat" is such a vague non-descript concept that I don't have the energy or patience to even elaborate thereon.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro jazz artist.

PS off subject but relevant : Russia has a thriving Jazz scene, and the are some monster American-style Jazz players coming out of Russia.

Cummunist Russia had been , since the thirties, mecca and utopia for the US leftists and they are now out of their collective mind because their vision of world Marxism with Russia running the show

I don't see any evidence that those who call themselves the Left in the US today have any enthusiasm at all for Marxism. They serve the interests of global capitalism. The Russians are hated because they don't want to bow down before global capitalism and international bankers, and because Russia refuses to join in the persecution of Christians. The Russians aren't communists any more but they (quite rightly) recognise that global capitalism is every bit as evil as marxism ever was, if not more so.

I haven't noticed any of these so-called leftists in the modern US calling for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Have you?

It's amazing how many Americans on the right still subscribe to paranoid Cold War delusions about global Marxism.

dfordoom , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 3:41 am GMT

@ThereisaGod This comment reflects the mindless nationalism of a person who has spent too much time reading mainstream Zionist propaganda.
The USA INSTIGATED the Syrian "revolution". It armed and funded the rebels (Al Qaeda) and told them we would support them. The Assad government had NO CHOICE but to act as they did or die, handing Syria over to friends of Israel who would then set about dismantling the defences of the Shias in the region who effectively oppose the racist state of Israel.
As this article lays out, American patriots should be supporting Russia and Assad. If these countries fall to international finance (as the entire western world has done) the Washington swamp will turn its full attention to destroying the USA in a similar manner to the Soviets destruction of Christian Russia (it's the same people, folks. The NeoCons are Trotsyists pretending to be Conservatives).

Sean. Your comment is, umm ...... confused.

The NeoCons are Trotsyists pretending to be Conservatives

I hear this all the time. I know that many Trotskyists morphed into neocons but that's not quite the same as saying that Trotskyists are neocons are identical. Trotsky may have been a heretical communist but he was still a communist. Are neocons actual communists? In what way are they actual communists?

dfordoom , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 3:50 am GMT

@ThereisaGod You know your history. The people at the top of western power systems are truly diabolical. The moneychangers, the Sanhedrin and complicit gentile degenerates. What has changed in 2000 years? Why are 'Christian' leaders silent on these issues? Are they Christians at all?

Why are 'Christian' leaders silent on these issues? Are they Christians at all?

In the West Christian leaders are not Christian in any meaningful sense of the word. They're liberals. They're not liberal Christians, they're just liberals.

In Russia they take Christianity a bit more seriously. In Russia Christian leaders actually believe in God (which is extremely rare among western Christian leaders).

The problem with Christianity is that once you take away belief in God what you're left with really is just liberalism.

in the middle , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 4:36 am GMT

@Sean Assad keeps treating his people like bugs, by gassing them. There were dead aplenty Russians in Afghanistan. It would not take much to get them out of Syria, which as you may recall, they only dispatched their expeditionary force to once the US had declined to get involved in. General Dempsey never thought of the effect that the US staying out would have in emboldening Russia.

There was a program about Putin's Russia the other year in which a reporter visited the main Russia WW2 memorial museum, and to his bewilderment found the the music accompanying the Great Patriotic War presentation was the theme to the US series Dallas . Your comment is totally senseless!

Seraphim , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 4:37 am GMT

@Authenticjazzman " An all-knowing judge/creator"

Okay so this indicates that your "judge/creator" also knew the future when he created Hitler and Stalin, and he then was fully aware of their future misdeeds, atrocities.
So why did he not rethink and say to himself :
Maybe I will just refrain from creating these two maniacs, and spare their millions of future victims.
Or was their, Hitlers and Stalins "free-will" more important than the lives and"free-will" of the hundreds of millions murdered through theri actions.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro jazz musician. @why did he not rethink

Did that false 'judge/creator' not know that he would be taken to task by an Authenticjazzman, the 'authentic' judge of what God should or should not do as to not displease his 'Authenticity'? So, he is not all-knowing. QED.

in the middle , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 6:15 am GMT

@John Gruskos The 1986 amnesty was Reagan's biggest mistake.

His second biggest mistake was arming the mujahedeen. The CIA basically helped create Al-Qaeda.

We need to learn from our mistakes, and stop supporting the radical Sunni jihadists who will commit acts of terrorism against us the first chance they get. How exactly did Reagan biggest mistake was amnesty? Explain and give some examples, please.

in the middle , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 6:30 am GMT

@Alden Id just like to point out that the reason so many Chinese are giving tech and military secrets to China is my personal bete noire affirmative action. Were it not for affirmative action those military and tech secrets would be in the hands of White Americans, not foreign spies whose only qualification that they are not White. Regardless of ethnicity, these spies deserve the death penalty, for treason to the people who gave them the welcome into our land. As for "white christian", Christianity is either underground or dying, thanks to the power of the sons of the devil, as told by Iesous Christos, (greek), (John 8:44-45 King James Version (KJV)

44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

So now we know that 'churchianity' has become a den of thieves, and a cave of robbers, teaching that whom Christ called sons of the devil, Churchianity teaches that they are the children of god. What a contradiction by those who profess to represent Christ!

Authenticjazzman , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 11:58 am GMT

@Anon Sontag's main place wasn't in the academia. She was essentially a person of letters.

Friedan is credited with second-wave feminism, but it would have happened anyway without her. The media just needed someone as 'leader'.

Jong was attacked by feminists. I'm not gonna defend her horny crap, but she' s not part of long march through institutions.

Also, these are more the products of capitalism. They have nothing to with Marxism. This term 'cultural marxism' should really be called 'cultural consumerism'. "They have nothing to do with communism"

Bullshit they have everything to do with communism, as all, without exception, all of these characters are hoping and waiting for the transformation of capitalism to marxism, and they, as stupid and naive as they are, they think that they will be running the show thereafter, when fact is they will be the first to be purged.

You simply have no insight, and you are in above your head with these themes.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro jazz musician.

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 12:22 pm GMT

@dfordoom


Cummunist Russia had been , since the thirties, mecca and utopia for the US leftists and they are now out of their collective mind because their vision of world Marxism with Russia running the show
I don't see any evidence that those who call themselves the Left in the US today have any enthusiasm at all for Marxism. They serve the interests of global capitalism. The Russians are hated because they don't want to bow down before global capitalism and international bankers, and because Russia refuses to join in the persecution of Christians. The Russians aren't communists any more but they (quite rightly) recognise that global capitalism is every bit as evil as marxism ever was, if not more so.

I haven't noticed any of these so-called leftists in the modern US calling for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Have you?

It's amazing how many Americans on the right still subscribe to paranoid Cold War delusions about global Marxism. "I don't see any evidence that those who call themselves the Left in the US today have any enthusiasm at all for Marxism. They serve the interests of global capitalism. The Russians are hated because they don't want to bow down before global capitalism and international bankers, and because Russia refuses to join in the persecution of Christians."
Agree.

Authenticjazzman , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 12:59 pm GMT

@annamaria "I don't see any evidence that those who call themselves the Left in the US today have any enthusiasm at all for Marxism. They serve the interests of global capitalism. The Russians are hated because they don't want to bow down before global capitalism and international bankers, and because Russia refuses to join in the persecution of Christians."
Agree. " They serve the interests of global capitalism"

Right and "global capitalism" serves the interests of global marxism, and you are unable to decifer the connections, which is your own shortcoming, and does not change the situation.

Almost all of the honchos involved in big-money are in essence : marxists, and they are plotting and waiting for the shift to collectivism.

Just why did the "moneyed" classes in Russia and in the US support the 1917 revolution, when they could have simply left things are they were.

I know it is very hard for most people to imagine big-time capitalists as communists, but it is fact.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet and pro jazz musician.

Svigor , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 1:19 pm GMT

I agree completely with this article. I am a patriot who loves this country and whose ancestors fought for it in war. The Russians are a natural ally. I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish. There are plenty of us who love America and only America. Will you reject all of us who will fight for this country?

No, I won't reject you. That would be actual anti-Semitism, and would make no sense. But if you follow the usual pattern, and spend more time fighting critics of Jewry than you do fighting the Jews who deserve critiquing, then yeah, I've no use for you.

Basically I expect pro-White Jews to join the White Tribe, and put the Jewish Tribe at the back of the bus, or better yet, off the bus altogether (other than some special cases, I don't even see why most of them would even need to announce (or even hold) their Jewish identity; it's not like anyone's going to put you on the rack and force you to confess it – Jewish identity is something you can reject or opt out of).

As for those special cases: the most valuable thing a pro-White Jew can do is go into his own (former?) tribe and fight Whites' enemies there. You guys have a calling of epic importance waiting for you, if you'll have it.

Aaron8765 , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 1:21 pm GMT

We have enemies within and enemies without. Regarding our enemies without: the most dangerous are the Islamic supremacists, and China. The Chinese are a more traditional challenge, and hence more manageable. The Russians are a natural ally- and perhaps a necessary ally- against both of these threats. A traditional geopolitical analysis suggests that we always side with the weaker party- in this case the Russians- against rising/hegemonic states in Eurasia. So our foreign policy is out of joint. Why our foreign policy class insists upon supporting this policy is an interesting question- the policy is clearly in error.

Svigor , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 1:23 pm GMT

As per Christianity; you may believe there is no God (that's your faith and hope) but you cannot confirm it.

Well put, and succinctly. Though I say that as someone who believes there is no God (and does not have any faith or hope that there is not).

Aaron8765 , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 1:28 pm GMT

@geokat62


I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section.
Hi, Aaron. Just wanted to take a crack at providing you with an explanation of where I think most people are coming from on the issue you've raised.

While I obviously don't pretend to speak for all goyim, I can speak for myself.

It's not that goyim are expressing "hatred towards the entire Jewish people" for who they are. I think they are probably expressing their anger towards what organized Jewry has been, and is, actually doing.

One case in point is the big push towards diversity led by the ADL. Are you familiar with the following material they've posted on their website:


This is America.This is ADL. (NB - disingenuously referring to 9 pictures of distinct-looking individuals)

The United States is a vibrant mix of cultures, races, religions and ethnic groups. These differences enhance our nation's strength, beauty and collective wisdom. Together, we all weave the fabric of our pluralistic society.

For over 100 years, the Anti-Defamation League has upheld this distinctly American concept by leading the fight against anti-Semitism, bigotry and racism. Today, ADL is the nation's premier human relations and civil rights organization.

If your company or organization wants to be recognized as a leader in the fight to promote diversity, we invite you to become a member of ADL's Corporate Leadership Council - the nation's leading corporate diversity initiative. Additional co-branding, diversity training and recognition benefits are available to Corporate Partners.

https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/about-adl/corporate-partners.pdf

More and more people have come to realize that the ADL has been behind the push towards diversity. They were the ones to actually coin the phrase "Diversity Is Our Strength."

Given the historically delicate situation of Diaspora Jewry living in host nations- i.e., the perennial risks of pogroms and other forms of repression - promoting a policy of diversity, while damaging to the host nation, made eminent sense, from their perspective.

While this policy had been sustainable before the founding of Israel, it has since become problematic. Let me explain. While there are still goyim who think the ADL is sincere in their promotion of diversity, more and more are beginning to notice the blatant contradiction in Diaspora Jewry's position: while they support the promotion of diversity in their host nations, they fiercely defend the idea of an ethno-state in the ME. This is becoming an untenable position in the eyes of many goyim - i.e., either one favours multiculturalism or one favours mono-culturalism... one cannot favour both at the same time.

So if we fast forward this film, what it comes down to is this: Diaspora Jewry must make up their minds and choose one of the following options:

1) sincerely embrace multiculturalism for all nations by insisting that Israel open its doors to all peoples of the world and let them become equal citizens; or

2) sincerely embrace mono-culturalism for all nations (and immediately cease and desist from promoting diversity) by either assimilating or making Aliyah.

If they refuse to choose, because they wish to have their cake and eat it too, I'm afraid this this film will not have a happy ending.

-------------

P.S. I, for one, am a big fan of true diversity and sincerely embrace mono-culturalism. That's why I'm in favour of a rainbow of nations. Because, as the saying goes, "variety is the spice of life." I don't agree with everything you say, but thanks for your thoughts on this. If that is what the ADL is supporting- and I have no reason to doubt you- then they have to be opposed vigorously. On a lighter note, assimilated Jewish Americans never call our Christian brethren 'goyim' anymore- it might be a problem, considering that 60% of us, including yours truly, have married outside our religion of birth.

Svigor , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 1:33 pm GMT

Stop being gentle and delicate with the very creepy Corvinus for it harbors open genocidal intent towards the Historic Native Born White American Working Class.

Agreed. Corvinus is a piece of shit. CanSpeccy makes a great point about his "hi fellow kids!" "yeah but guys where can we buy some dynamite?" federal informant type trolling.

So if we fast forward this film, what it comes down to is this: Diaspora Jewry must make up their minds and choose one of the following options:

1) sincerely embrace multiculturalism for all nations by insisting that Israel open its doors to all peoples of the world and let them become equal citizens; or

2) sincerely embrace mono-culturalism for all nations (and immediately cease and desist from promoting diversity) by either assimilating or making Aliyah.

Shit or get off the pot, as I like to say. If I may be so bold, I would strike "embrace mono-culturalism for all nations" from the list of demands. It would certainly be the right thing for Jews to do, given their embrace of ethnopatriotism for themselves, but I would be satisfied with the demand (which is non-negotiable, I agree) "immediately cease and desist from promoting the anti-ethnopatriotic agenda for non-Jewish Whites" being met.

Aaron8765 , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 1:43 pm GMT

@CanSpeccy


I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish.
Most commenters, surely, do not regard "the entire Jewish people" with hatred, and most surely, would acknowledge that most Jews of their acquaintance are good people.

Naturally, however, people react with anger when Jews engage in anti-European genocidal advocacy such as this . Anti-European advocacy, in various forms, in the media and the movie industry, is often associated with Jewish ownership or direction and naturally provokes anger at what appears to be the anti-European racism and indeed genocidal intent toward the European people of many influential Jews.

I do understand your feelings and sympathize with you, but it is surely wrong to infer that because there is push back against what some Jews do, this is evidence of irrational hatred. It is not. The European people are under a concerted assault as racial and cultural entities, a fact that is obvious to any but a propagandist for genocide or an idiot like Corvinus, and that process of European racial and cultural genocide is promoted by many Jewish-controlled or owned companies and institutions under the guise of promoting diversity, multi-culturalism, tolerance, etc. The role of Jews in that process is no doubt a problem for many loyal American and European Jews, but it is a problem that cannot simply be dismissed as evidence of universal or even widely occurring anti-Semitism.

Of course people speak carelessly and with undue inclusiveness when they speak of the actions or beliefs of this or that group. But one has only to hear advocates of diversity, or black-lives-matter, or critics of white privilege, etc. to realize that undifferentiated condemnation of entire groups, black, white, Hispanic, Hindu or whatever is widespread, not merely a problem experienced by Jews. I appreciate the sympathy. The whole situation is a complete mess and getting worse. On a historical note, a biography just came out about Ernst Kantorowicz, a Jewish- German medievalist. You might find it interesting. His life was also discussed in a book about the great medievalists of the 20th Century- 'Medieval Lives', by Cantor. It's a fascinating book. Kantorowicz was a wealthy, assimilated Jewish- German who grew up with the Prussian upper class. He was a German officer in World War I, and after the war joined the paramilitary- right Freikorps and fought against the Communists inside Germany. As a medievalist, he was a romantic- nationalist associated with a circle of poets and scholars, and friends with Percy Ernst Schramm, who along with Kantorowicz was one of the great medievalists of his generation. Then the Nazis took power. Kantorowicz was purged from academic life. Some of his friends protected him as best they could, while others sided with the Nazis. He got out, barely, in 1938 and ended up at Berkeley, of all places, and the Institute for Advanced Study. His friend Schramm became the official historian of the Wehrmacht in WWII, and observed Hitler at first hand. After the war Schramm turned to Kantorowicz for help in reentering official, academic life (Kantorowicz helped.) The whole story is a tragic metaphor for the tragedy of the patriotic, assimilated- nationalist German Jews.

Aaron8765 , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 1:48 pm GMT

@CanSpeccy


I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish.
Most commenters, surely, do not regard "the entire Jewish people" with hatred, and most surely, would acknowledge that most Jews of their acquaintance are good people.

Naturally, however, people react with anger when Jews engage in anti-European genocidal advocacy such as this . Anti-European advocacy, in various forms, in the media and the movie industry, is often associated with Jewish ownership or direction and naturally provokes anger at what appears to be the anti-European racism and indeed genocidal intent toward the European people of many influential Jews.

I do understand your feelings and sympathize with you, but it is surely wrong to infer that because there is push back against what some Jews do, this is evidence of irrational hatred. It is not. The European people are under a concerted assault as racial and cultural entities, a fact that is obvious to any but a propagandist for genocide or an idiot like Corvinus, and that process of European racial and cultural genocide is promoted by many Jewish-controlled or owned companies and institutions under the guise of promoting diversity, multi-culturalism, tolerance, etc. The role of Jews in that process is no doubt a problem for many loyal American and European Jews, but it is a problem that cannot simply be dismissed as evidence of universal or even widely occurring anti-Semitism.

Of course people speak carelessly and with undue inclusiveness when they speak of the actions or beliefs of this or that group. But one has only to hear advocates of diversity, or black-lives-matter, or critics of white privilege, etc. to realize that undifferentiated condemnation of entire groups, black, white, Hispanic, Hindu or whatever is widespread, not merely a problem experienced by Jews. oh btw there was an amusing codicil to the Kantorowicz story. At Berkeley in the 50′s he and the other faculty were called to take an oath before some Govt Commission that they were not communists. Kantorowicz as a matter of principal refused to take the oath, since he believed in academic liberty, and was dismissed. In his explanation for his refusal he stated something to the effect that he was not a communist- in fact, he had shot a bunch in his youth!- but he wouldn't take the oath.

Aaron8765 , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 1:56 pm GMT

@Aaron8765 oh btw there was an amusing codicil to the Kantorowicz story. At Berkeley in the 50's he and the other faculty were called to take an oath before some Govt Commission that they were not communists. Kantorowicz as a matter of principal refused to take the oath, since he believed in academic liberty, and was dismissed. In his explanation for his refusal he stated something to the effect that he was not a communist- in fact, he had shot a bunch in his youth!- but he wouldn't take the oath. 'principle' (sic)

Corvinus , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 2:24 pm GMT

@CanSpeccy


I am disturbed and hurt that there is so much hatred towards the entire Jewish people in the comment section. I am Jewish.
Most commenters, surely, do not regard "the entire Jewish people" with hatred, and most surely, would acknowledge that most Jews of their acquaintance are good people.

Naturally, however, people react with anger when Jews engage in anti-European genocidal advocacy such as this . Anti-European advocacy, in various forms, in the media and the movie industry, is often associated with Jewish ownership or direction and naturally provokes anger at what appears to be the anti-European racism and indeed genocidal intent toward the European people of many influential Jews.

I do understand your feelings and sympathize with you, but it is surely wrong to infer that because there is push back against what some Jews do, this is evidence of irrational hatred. It is not. The European people are under a concerted assault as racial and cultural entities, a fact that is obvious to any but a propagandist for genocide or an idiot like Corvinus, and that process of European racial and cultural genocide is promoted by many Jewish-controlled or owned companies and institutions under the guise of promoting diversity, multi-culturalism, tolerance, etc. The role of Jews in that process is no doubt a problem for many loyal American and European Jews, but it is a problem that cannot simply be dismissed as evidence of universal or even widely occurring anti-Semitism.

Of course people speak carelessly and with undue inclusiveness when they speak of the actions or beliefs of this or that group. But one has only to hear advocates of diversity, or black-lives-matter, or critics of white privilege, etc. to realize that undifferentiated condemnation of entire groups, black, white, Hispanic, Hindu or whatever is widespread, not merely a problem experienced by Jews. "Naturally, however, people react with anger when Jews engage in anti-European genocidal advocacy such as this."

False characterization.

"I do understand your feelings and sympathize with you, but it is surely wrong to infer that because there is push back against what some Jews do, this is evidence of irrational hatred. It is not."

It is evidence of irrational hatred due to a belief that Jews overall engage in the purposeful destruction of cultures. There is the assumption that diversity/multi-culturalism/tolerance is the bane of existence, that the Jewish propaganda machine serves as an ethnic and societal meat grinder. Unwitting people are being brainwashed into promoting these concepts. Except you are conveniently discounting this important fact human beings have free will. Increasing numbers of people have made decisions of their own accord about these issues. They embrace these philosophies for a host of reasons. You are a snake oil salesman of how Cultural Marxism allegedly is murdering our youth. Let us assume that this Jewish menace would be neutralized. Do you not believe there would be some other group filling in for that void through their own strategies of indoctrination and mind control? Perhaps the philosophies you tout would then be force fed down the throats of the masses.

"According to Corvy, there's something wrong with those who are for the survival of their own kith and kin. In fact, being against extinction of your own people is how Corvy seems to define hate speech and racism."

That's not what I stated. I'm not a fan shall we say of you denigrating wholesale a particular group and characterizing that same group of being a proponent of genocide. You have every liberty to protect "your own kind", just as those individuals from "your own kind" have the freedom to question the reasons why you want those protections as well as how those protections are put in place. Furthermore, don't you realize there is no such thing as "racism" and "hate speech"? It's a ruse.

Pro-race is code for anti-humanity.

KenH , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 2:33 pm GMT

@Rurik


while they support the promotion of diversity in their host nations, they fiercely defend the idea of an ethno-state in the ME.
well said Geo,

we've all seen this genocidal hag shilling for the destruction of the West

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ERmOpZrKtw

and we all know by now the consequences of this insanity being foisted by these (often Jewish) netherworld demons

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3831991/Wheelchair-bound-woman-gang-raped-six-migrants-Swedish-asylum-centre-asking-use-toilet.html

no reasonable person blames all Jews for this evil that only a few of them are perpetrating, (with the eager assistance of many goys [homos and fat, ugly white women and other malcontents] who want the migrants to come for their own reasons, just like corporate/business interests who want to pay lower wages in general)

but the destruction of Europe and N. America by massive and transformational immigration is, at heart- being foisted by Jewish sludge like Sheldon Adelson, who demands open borders for the US, and uses his money to buy cucks in the Republican party to ensure that he gets just that, but then also uses his ill-gotten gains to promote racial purity in Israel, where his newspapers call all non-Jewish immigrants - invaders.

So you're right. It's the raging hypocrisy and demonic, Old Testament hatred for all non-Jewish tribes and the efforts to see all white nations founder under racial and ethnic hatred and strife, while simultaneously advocating for a racially pure state in Israel- that makes a lot of people exasperated with Jewish influence and nefarious intrigues.

There are of course other stuff too. Fomenting and foisting wars, false flag attacks, financial swindles, cultural sewage, etc.. But I suspect one of the main reasons people are losing patience is the psychotic imperative of some Jews to advocate for massive immigration into (only) white countries that outs (some of) them as existential enemies.

But I suspect one of the main reasons people are losing patience is the psychotic imperative of some Jews to advocate for massive immigration into (only) white countries

Don't be so sure about some . One hundred percent of Jews serving in both chambers of Congress have supported efforts at granting mass amnesty of third world illegal aliens. Seventy to eighty percent consistently vote Democrat no matter how far to the left or anti-white the party becomes. Even so called conservative (or neocon) Jews like Krauthammer, Bernie Goldberg and others have voiced support for amnesty or partial amnesty.

So it certainly seems that, based on the evidence, most of them are on board with America as proposition nation and the race replacement of whites while hypocritically supporting the militant racial nationalism and exclusivity of the Israeli state.

Rurik , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 4:30 pm GMT

it certainly seems that, based on the evidence, most of them are on board

I can't argue with that Ken

and you could say the same of all non-white peoples, they're mostly on board for an immigration policy that will eventually rip white nations apart and see the white people trampled under like they were in Zimbabwe, or Haiti when the whites received their comeuppance then.

They all seem to hate us, but none more so than Jews

but it is worth pointing out that certainly not all Jews (or other minorities) want us genocided

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Miller_(political_advisor)

some can see past their blind racial hatred and envy to the day that whitey is finally ground under the mire of their collective hatred, to what comes next.

what kind of world will it be without Western civilization and the Rule of Law?

Zimbabwe, Palestine, Darfur, the Balkans, Drug cartels and corruption running S. America outright, India and Pakistan cutting each other's throats, cannibalism returning to Africa and Indonesian islands, New Guinea, New Zealand, etc.

And I mention New Zealand, because the only thing protecting the white people (and the meek of all races) in places like Oceana or Latin America or Africa, the Middle East, etc is the fragile, amorphous sense of the law , that permeates the jungles and hinterlands of the planet, where some American expatriate living in Mexico is left unmolested by the cartels and corrupt governments down there. On the day that whitey is unable to protect his own families in the US, that is the day that certain ex-patriots in Mexico will find out just how loved they really are by the Mexicans, who've suffered their arrogance and relative wealth with bitter, quiet, simmering resentment.

If your society has reached the point where your women and children are brutalized by hostile invading armies and there's nothing you can do to protect them, and the courts and authorities will not punish the orcs, then it's only a short distance until the day of Zimbabwe comes and you're run out of your home in terror for your life.

There was a time when the whites of Zimbabwe could count on England and the rule of law to protect them. They discovered too late how wrong they were. It will be the same for all white places when the global system of the Rule of Law breaks down and we return to the law of the jungle with a vengeance.

how well will Israel fare when there's no more white guilt to milk for funding and arms and "moral" sanction?

already Norway and other nations are talking about BDS, in part because of the burgeoning Muslim populations in these countries.

when Europe becomes multicultural, as that Zionist hag insists it must, how well are the Jews of the world going to prosper when the governments of Europe are Islamized?

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 5:10 pm GMT

@Aaron8765 We have enemies within and enemies without. Regarding our enemies without: the most dangerous are the Islamic supremacists, and China. The Chinese are a more traditional challenge, and hence more manageable. The Russians are a natural ally- and perhaps a necessary ally- against both of these threats. A traditional geopolitical analysis suggests that we always side with the weaker party- in this case the Russians- against rising/hegemonic states in Eurasia. So our foreign policy is out of joint. Why our foreign policy class insists upon supporting this policy is an interesting question- the policy is clearly in error. Treason in high places: " Not Remembering the USS Liberty," by Ray McGovern
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/21/not-remembering-the-uss-liberty/

"The only investigation worth the name was led by Adm. Moorer, who had been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Among the findings announced by the commission on October 2003:
" Unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on the USS Liberty bridge, and fired 30mm cannon and rockets into the ship; survivors estimate 30 or more sorties were flown over the ship by a minimum of 12 attacking Israeli planes.
" The torpedo boat attack involved not only the firing of torpedoes, but machine-gunning of Liberty's firefighters and stretcher-bearers. The Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun at close range three of the Liberty's life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors to rescue the most seriously wounded."
"Shortly before he died in February 2004, Adm. Moorer strongly appealed for the truth to be brought out and pointed directly at what he saw as the main obstacle: " I've never seen a President stand up to Israel. If the American people understood what a grip these people have on our government, they would rise up in arms." Echoing Moorer, former U.S. Ambassador Edward Peck, who served many years in the Middle East, condemned Washington's attitude toward Israel as "obsequious, unctuous subservience at the cost of the lives and morale of our own service members and their families"

neutral , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 5:47 pm GMT

@Aaron8765 I don't agree with everything you say, but thanks for your thoughts on this. If that is what the ADL is supporting- and I have no reason to doubt you- then they have to be opposed vigorously. On a lighter note, assimilated Jewish Americans never call our Christian brethren 'goyim' anymore- it might be a problem, considering that 60% of us, including yours truly, have married outside our religion of birth.

have married outside our religion of birth

That makes no difference, since being jewish is ultimately a racial category not a religious one. You don't have to take my word for it, you can research how the state of Israel defines what a jew is, and it is not on religious grounds. In fact they use the Nuremberg race acts that defined what a jew was as their own criteria, obviously they will claim they are using it for those fleeing oppression, but anyone who is sincere about this knows it is because the Nuremberg race acts were correct in their definitions.

Sowhat , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 6:31 pm GMT

Jimmy, I like reading your but bluing your scripts (doesn't that usually indicate a reference or example) to send me to a VDARE donation page is tacky. JMO

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 7:17 pm GMT

@Authenticjazzman "The fact that such a man was elected at all shows the complete degeneracy of th electorate

So you would have prefered BC and HRC, the paragons of decency and integrity back in the white house.

Look friend you are labeling myself, my sister and my upstanding, decent, friends and family who in fact did pull the lever for DT as : Degenerate.

You are the "degenerate" malevolent one here and you have no clue as to what you are blathering about.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa"society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro jazz musician.

So you would have prefered BC and HRC, the paragons of decency and integrity back in the white house.

Quite.

Conservatives despair to find that Trump scores only a 1.5 or 2 relative to the ideal 10 they had hoped for.

However, Hillary would have been a solid and consistent -8 (MINUS EIGHT) or worse. Every day of Trump – however betrayed Conservatives may feel relative to their ideals – is a day on which the ALL-OUT DESTRUCTION of America does not proceed with the organized, unopposed vigor that it would have done under Hillary. (Also known as Mrs. Vincent Foster #2.)

Of course, the lackey MSM are doing their level best to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) among those opposed to the oligarchy. Their "Russia hacked the election" complex of lies (aka "narrative") would certainly have drawn admiring applause from Joseph Goebbels himself, both for the boldness of the original conception – tapping into old *conservative* mistrust of the USSR, and for the shameless repetitive execution.

Right now, the U.S. still has remnants of the Second Amendment, which alone is the true, long-term measure of a free country. (Various states and their complicit federal judges are working hard to get rid of this final obstacle to billionaire rule and death camps.)

Don't believe that the SECOND Amendment is the true measure of a free country? Spend 6 weeks in Canada or any other advanced country in Europe, Asia, talk to people, see what they say about sensitive subjects. Read and watch their MSM and alternative media. Ask yourself where the subject country was 100 years ago, and where it is likely to be in 100 years.

Has free speech in the subject country been OFFICIALLY curtailed under rubrics such as "hate speech," "incitement," "libel/slander" etc.? What is the extent of INFORMAL censorship, e.g. through publishers' associations, codes of conduct, post-modern J-schools and official "certification" of "journalists," etc.?

What do they/don't the MSM in the subject country report? Secret/informal taboos? Is there REAL criticism of the power structure? Of existing laws and institutions? Are politicians REALLY subject to the rule of law? Do they REALLY lock up corrupt politicians as the U.S. used to do? Are politicians' families exempt from public scrutiny?

Political murder is another indication of the health or otherwise of a free society. Are mysterious deaths of politicians and their staff commonplace in the subject society? Does interest in major incidents die down after 2-3 days? Or persist for years (JFK) despite repeated attempts at whitewashing?

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 7:54 pm GMT

@CanSpeccy Waste of time, really, responding to the troll for the replacement of Euro-Americans. It only initiates another spew of hate speech. According to Corvy, there's something wrong with those who are for the survival of their own kith and kin. In fact, being against extinction of your own people is how Corvy seems to define hate speech and racism.

Wiz Oz is not quite so crude about it, but seems to think its fine for the English people of the city of Leicester to be replaced by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many other fine people, I do not.

There are something like a billion Hindus in India, so why should they occupy the tiny homeland of the English? England, it is true, ruled India for a while, no doubt over the objection of the Indian ruling class, but in doing so they merely replaced another and more exploitive alien ruling elite, and at no time attempted to settle India with millions of Europeans. Indeed they set out, from the time of Macaulay's memorandum on Indian Education, dated Feb 2nd, 1835 , to prepare India for self-government as the modern, independent, democratic nation state that it now is.

Wiz Oz seems to think its fine for the English people of the city of Leicester to be replaced by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many other fine people, I do not.

What many modern observers are too shy to say out loud is this:

Cultures are NOT created equal, and it turned out that traditional English cultural notions in politics, economics and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled the American experiment to take the world forward as and when it did.

English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint, privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced by distrust of fads and "philosophies."

To the soi-disant intellectual, English traditions of tolerance, openness and restraint – vague, semi-feudalistic, determinedly bourgeois, unexciting as they are – are particularly maddening as they leave no room for the concoction of "logical" systems in their own image by gaggles of Nazi-sympathizing, sex-addicted continental "philosophers."

One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher." This may be the real reason why "philosophers" writing in English strive so mightily to make their works read like bad translations from ponderous German or Gauloise-reeking French.

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 8:08 pm GMT

@Aaron8765 I appreciate the sympathy. The whole situation is a complete mess and getting worse. On a historical note, a biography just came out about Ernst Kantorowicz, a Jewish- German medievalist. You might find it interesting. His life was also discussed in a book about the great medievalists of the 20th Century- 'Medieval Lives', by Cantor. It's a fascinating book. Kantorowicz was a wealthy, assimilated Jewish- German who grew up with the Prussian upper class. He was a German officer in World War I, and after the war joined the paramilitary- right Freikorps and fought against the Communists inside Germany. As a medievalist, he was a romantic- nationalist associated with a circle of poets and scholars, and friends with Percy Ernst Schramm, who along with Kantorowicz was one of the great medievalists of his generation. Then the Nazis took power. Kantorowicz was purged from academic life. Some of his friends protected him as best they could, while others sided with the Nazis. He got out, barely, in 1938 and ended up at Berkeley, of all places, and the Institute for Advanced Study. His friend Schramm became the official historian of the Wehrmacht in WWII, and observed Hitler at first hand. After the war Schramm turned to Kantorowicz for help in reentering official, academic life (Kantorowicz helped.) The whole story is a tragic metaphor for the tragedy of the patriotic, assimilated- nationalist German Jews. Re: Kantorowicz

Bureaucracies, governmental or academic, hate a non-conformist. I know. I worked (briefly) for three governments and also held academic appointments at three universities, the last, a tenure-track appointment, that I abandoned after three days.

The problem for all groups in a multi-cultural society is that group interests are liable to conflict and thus generate antagonisms that often have a racial or religious aspect. For Jews, it is worse than for most because they are adherents, or associates by descent, of a religion that is fundamentally racist. Yahweh, after all, is the God of the Jews, and urges the Jews to go forth, multiply and rule over the nations of the Earth.

Thus, when Jews succeed as they have done in large numbers in America in gaining positions of great wealth and power, and especially when they exercise that power for specifically Jewish interests such as the defense of the state of Israel, they naturally raise feelings of suspicion, fear and antagonism, as would say a bunch of Russian nationalists if they ran much of Hollywood , were among the principal peddlers of porn in America , had massive media influence , and held many seats in Congress and used their financial clout to determine who holds many of the other seats in Congress .

None of this, of course, alters the fact that it may at times seem tough being a Jew and an American-firster.

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment May 21, 2017 at 9:00 pm GMT

@annamaria Treason in high places: " Not Remembering the USS Liberty," by Ray McGovern
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/21/not-remembering-the-uss-liberty/

"The only investigation worth the name was led by Adm. Moorer, who had been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Among the findings announced by the commission on October 2003:
" Unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on the USS Liberty bridge, and fired 30mm cannon and rockets into the ship; survivors estimate 30 or more sorties were flown over the ship by a minimum of 12 attacking Israeli planes.
" The torpedo boat attack involved not only the firing of torpedoes, but machine-gunning of Liberty's firefighters and stretcher-bearers. The Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun at close range three of the Liberty's life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors to rescue the most seriously wounded."
"Shortly before he died in February 2004, Adm. Moorer strongly appealed for the truth to be brought out and pointed directly at what he saw as the main obstacle: " I've never seen a President stand up to Israel. If the American people understood what a grip these people have on our government, they would rise up in arms." Echoing Moorer, former U.S. Ambassador Edward Peck, who served many years in the Middle East, condemned Washington's attitude toward Israel as "obsequious, unctuous subservience at the cost of the lives and morale of our own service members and their families" WHY did the Israeli leadership collectively decide to attack the USS Liberty spy ship and risk serious damage to its relationship with its only superpower supporter? What did the Israelis know about the Liberty's activities? Why was this a matter of top-level national importance to Israel?

Somehow, endless repetition of the USS Liberty story never gets around to addressing the crucial WHY of the operation.

Without addressing the WHY, any account of the attack itself is little more than beating around the bush. Also, it is remarkable that no consistent U.S. version of the incident has evolved despite several generations of military and secret service officials transitioning to the relative safety and anonymity of retirement since then.

One conventional fake answer can easily be disposed off – it is sometimes claimed that the Israelis hoped to blame the sinking of the Liberty on Egypt, and cause damage to Egypt's relationship with the U.S. This version is wholly untenable.

First, an air attack would have been plainly visible on military radar across the Red Sea. Second, then as now, the U.S. had extensive secret service contacts throughout the Egyptian government. An Egyptian air attack on the USS Liberty would most likely have leaked in advance, and certainly within hours of a putative Egyptian attack which by definition would have to involved hundreds of individuals to propose, prepare and implement.

dfordoom , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 1:08 am GMT

@Authenticjazzman " They serve the interests of global capitalism"

Right and "global capitalism" serves the interests of global marxism, and you are unable to decifer the connections, which is your own shortcoming, and does not change the situation.

Almost all of the honchos involved in big-money are in essence : marxists, and they are plotting and waiting for the shift to collectivism.

Just why did the "moneyed" classes in Russia and in the US support the 1917 revolution, when they could have simply left things are they were.

I know it is very hard for most people to imagine big-time capitalists as communists, but it is fact.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet and pro jazz musician.

Just why did the "moneyed" classes in Russia and in the US support the 1917 revolution, when they could have simply left things are they were.

Because they figured they could make a fast buck out of it. A revolution is a great chance to loot a country (as the Russians discovered to their cost in the 1990s).

The "moneyed" classes do not believe in marxism because they do not believe in any ideology. They believe in money and power. Ideologies are for the rubes.

The US is currently making a massive arms deal with the Saudis. Does this mean that the US moneyed classes have suddenly converted to Islam? No, it means they see a chance to make money.

Achmed E. Newman , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 1:42 am GMT

@Sowhat Jimmy, I like reading your but bluing your scripts (doesn't that usually indicate a reference or example) to send me to a VDARE donation page is tacky. JMO Mr. What, that "bluing" is called a hyperlink *. They've been around for well nigh 25 years now by my recollection. The guy's link is fine, but VDare right now is raising some money, and that "splash" page will appear on anyone's initial visit, so to speak, to the site right now. If you mash that X in the right corner, you will get directly to the article that the guy you're replying to wants you to see.

I hope that helps I would like to AGREE with myself here too, because, as usual, I know I am right. I don't know how to do that though without joining faceboot or some such crap.

* Here is one, just as a random example. It'd be interesting to see what happens when you single-click on it. You might as well now – it'll bug you the rest of the evening if you don't.

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 2:09 am GMT

@Eagle Eye WHY did the Israeli leadership collectively decide to attack the USS Liberty spy ship and risk serious damage to its relationship with its only superpower supporter? What did the Israelis know about the Liberty's activities? Why was this a matter of top-level national importance to Israel?

Somehow, endless repetition of the USS Liberty story never gets around to addressing the crucial WHY of the operation.

Without addressing the WHY, any account of the attack itself is little more than beating around the bush. Also, it is remarkable that no consistent U.S. version of the incident has evolved despite several generations of military and secret service officials transitioning to the relative safety and anonymity of retirement since then.

One conventional fake answer can easily be disposed off - it is sometimes claimed that the Israelis hoped to blame the sinking of the Liberty on Egypt, and cause damage to Egypt's relationship with the U.S. This version is wholly untenable.

First, an air attack would have been plainly visible on military radar across the Red Sea. Second, then as now, the U.S. had extensive secret service contacts throughout the Egyptian government. An Egyptian air attack on the USS Liberty would most likely have leaked in advance, and certainly within hours of a putative Egyptian attack which by definition would have to involved hundreds of individuals to propose, prepare and implement. "Somehow, endless repetition of the USS Liberty story never gets around to addressing the crucial WHY of the operation."

First, there is no "endless repetition of the USS Liberty story" by MSM: this story has been hushed for many years. Second, apart from disparaging the survivors of USSLiberty, you suggest no viable explanation to the murderous attack.
The USS Liberty story emphasizes inordinate influence of Israel-firsters on the US policies abroad and domestically. Here is a excerpt from a speech of Mr. Dershowitz (the Idiot): "People write a book called the Israel lobby and complain that AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. My response to that is, that's not good enough. We should be the most powerful lobby in Washington. . . . We are entitled to use our power. We have contributed disproportionately to the success of this country. . . . We are a very influential community. We deserve our influence."
"Israel Lobby Pays the Political Piper:" https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/21/israel-lobby-pays-the-political-piper/
Don't you see how the obnoxious kind – that makes the Lobby, ADL, powerful warmongers among the Friends of Israel and such – have been destroying the true safe home for Jewry in the US and EU?

Authenticjazzman , Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 11:17 am GMT

@dfordoom


Just why did the "moneyed" classes in Russia and in the US support the 1917 revolution, when they could have simply left things are they were.
Because they figured they could make a fast buck out of it. A revolution is a great chance to loot a country (as the Russians discovered to their cost in the 1990s).

The "moneyed" classes do not believe in marxism because they do not believe in any ideology. They believe in money and power. Ideologies are for the rubes.

The US is currently making a massive arms deal with the Saudis. Does this mean that the US moneyed classes have suddenly converted to Islam? No, it means they see a chance to make money. " Because they figured they could make a fast buck out of it"

Hogwash, this idea is beyond absurd.

What you are saying is that for the purpose of "Making a fast buck" they will support a political/economic system, namely communism, which has the goal of destroying them , in other words the chickens are voting for Colonel Sanders.

" The monied classes do not believe in marxism" . Again hogwash, and you would be in a state of shock if you were able to engage certain billionaires in conversation regarding this issue.

The motivation behind their fixation upon Marxism is their striving to considered as "Intellectuals", and they are plagued by inferiority complexes regarding their status as "Businessmen", whereas marxists are looked upon as : "Intellectual".

I was never convinced that rich people were exceptionally intelligent, rather to the contrary.
Wall street being a perfect example of stupidity prevailing amongst millionaires and billionaires.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet and pro jazz artist.

Rurik , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 1:09 pm GMT

@annamaria "Somehow, endless repetition of the USS Liberty story never gets around to addressing the crucial WHY of the operation."

First, there is no "endless repetition of the USS Liberty story" by MSM: this story has been hushed for many years. Second, apart from disparaging the survivors of USSLiberty, you suggest no viable explanation to the murderous attack.
The USS Liberty story emphasizes inordinate influence of Israel-firsters on the US policies abroad and domestically. Here is a excerpt from a speech of Mr. Dershowitz (the Idiot): "People write a book called the Israel lobby and complain that AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. My response to that is, that's not good enough. We should be the most powerful lobby in Washington. . . . We are entitled to use our power. We have contributed disproportionately to the success of this country. . . . We are a very influential community. We deserve our influence."
"Israel Lobby Pays the Political Piper:" https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/21/israel-lobby-pays-the-political-piper/
Don't you see how the obnoxious kind - that makes the Lobby, ADL, powerful warmongers among the Friends of Israel and such - have been destroying the true safe home for Jewry in the US and EU?

First, there is no "endless repetition of the USS Liberty story" by MSM: this story has been hushed for many years.

yep

also as we all know, the attack on the USS Liberty was intended as a false flag attack to be blamed on Egypt in order to get America to fight Israel's wars for them.

As was the Lavon affair.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair

It is the well-known modus operendi of cowards. Commit crimes and blame them on people you don't like, so that those people will be punished for it. It happens all the time in America with hate "crime" hoaxes. The most egregious example of Israeli's treachery and endemic cowardice was the false flag attack on 9/11 – that is being used even today to get Americans to mass-murder people Israel doesn't like and reduce entire nations and regions into smoking ashes.

Corvinus , Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 4:10 pm GMT

@Eagle Eye


Wiz Oz ... seems to think its fine for the English people of the city of Leicester to be replaced by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many other fine people, I do not.
What many modern observers are too shy to say out loud is this:

Cultures are NOT created equal, and it turned out that traditional English cultural notions in politics, economics and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled the American experiment to take the world forward as and when it did.

English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint, privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced by distrust of fads and "philosophies."

To the soi-disant intellectual, English traditions of tolerance, openness and restraint - vague, semi-feudalistic, determinedly bourgeois, unexciting as they are - are particularly maddening as they leave no room for the concoction of "logical" systems in their own image by gaggles of Nazi-sympathizing, sex-addicted continental "philosophers."

One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher." This may be the real reason why "philosophers" writing in English strive so mightily to make their works read like bad translations from ponderous German or Gauloise-reeking French. "and it turned out that traditional English cultural notions in politics, economics and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled the American experiment to take the world forward as and when it did."

You do realize that those traditions were a result of the combined efforts of the Britons, the Picts, the Romans, and the Anglo-Saxon tribes. Moreover, this "American experiment" was the product of the English, Greek, and Roman ways of governance, as well as the philosophies of the Enlightenment.

"English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint, privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced by distrust of fads and "philosophies."

Thank you for your opinion on this matter.

"One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher.""

The English language does not prohibit anyone from indicating that their profession is a "philosopher", considering if a person graduates from university with a doctoral degree in philosophy and instructs students in this field.

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 5:38 pm GMT

"Support our troops!" in the time of institutionalized treason.
Two ugly siblings or why ISIS is a best friend of both Israel and Saudi Arabia.

"Israel and Saudi Arabia have always been enemies of secular, Arab nationalist states and federations. Whether an Arab state is Nasserist, Ba'athist, socialist, Marxist-Leninist or in the case of Gaddafi's Libya a practitioner of the post-Nassierist Third Political Theory: Israel and Saudi Arabia have sought to and in large part have succeeded, with western help, at destroying such states.
Unlike Israel's Apartheid military state and Saudi Arabia's human rights free monarchy, the aforementioned Arab styles of government are worthy of the word modern. These are countries which had progressive mixed economies, had secular governments and societies, had full constitutional rights for religious and ethnic minorities, they championed women's rights and engaged in mass literacy programmes and infrastructural projects. ..
Syria is the last secular Arab Ba'athist state in the world. Unlike in Israel, minorities have full constitutional rights and unlike in Saudi Arabia, all religions are tolerated. In Syria, women can act, speak and dress as they wish. Syria's independence has in the past thwarted Israel's ambition to annex Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and additional parts of Syria itself (Israel still occupies Syria's Golan Heights).
Syria remains strongly independent and refuses to surrender its values.
Saudi Arabia and Israel are allies in the material and psychological war against secular, modern Arab countries. It is a war which the United States has been fighting on behalf of Riyadh and Tel Aviv for decades ."

Authenticjazzman , Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 5:42 pm GMT

" considering if a person graduates from university with a doctoral degree in philosophy and instructs students in this field"

So what you are saying is that holding a "doctoral degree" in philosophy automatically transforms the individual involved into being a "Philsopher"

This is pure unadulterated nonsense, and I personally have had the aquaintance of two persons who did indeed hold doctoral degrees in philosophy and they were both light years away from the qualification of "Philosopher".

Homer was a"Philosopher", Marc Aurel, was a philosopher, Goethe was a philosopher, etc, but none of the BS artists in this day and age holding doctoral degrees in philosophy, could ever with a straight face claim to be a "philosopher".

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified US Army vet, and pro jazz musician.

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 6:41 pm GMT

@annamaria "Somehow, endless repetition of the USS Liberty story never gets around to addressing the crucial WHY of the operation."

First, there is no "endless repetition of the USS Liberty story" by MSM: this story has been hushed for many years. Second, apart from disparaging the survivors of USSLiberty, you suggest no viable explanation to the murderous attack.
The USS Liberty story emphasizes inordinate influence of Israel-firsters on the US policies abroad and domestically. Here is a excerpt from a speech of Mr. Dershowitz (the Idiot): "People write a book called the Israel lobby and complain that AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. My response to that is, that's not good enough. We should be the most powerful lobby in Washington. . . . We are entitled to use our power. We have contributed disproportionately to the success of this country. . . . We are a very influential community. We deserve our influence."
"Israel Lobby Pays the Political Piper:" https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/21/israel-lobby-pays-the-political-piper/
Don't you see how the obnoxious kind - that makes the Lobby, ADL, powerful warmongers among the Friends of Israel and such - have been destroying the true safe home for Jewry in the US and EU? The basic question – which remains unaddressed in the response – is very simply:

What was the Israeli leadership trying to do by launching a combined airborne and naval attack on the USS Liberty during the Six Day War in 1967?

You mention the Lavon affair in 1954. This scandal arose out of an attempted Israeli false-flag operation in Egypt that went spectacularly wrong.

The Suez Crisis in 1956 was another major disaster for Israel, the UK and France.

This experience will have informed Israeli government thinking in 1967.

Moreover, as noted in the original post, radar technology at the time, as well simple visual identification of the attacking jet fighters and vessels precluded even a remote possibility of dressing up the attack as having been perpetrated by Egypt.

Further, the U.S. had plenty of intelligence assets in both Egypt and Israel to find out what actually happened to the USS Liberty within hours. An operation of this magnitude involves at a minimum hundreds of people across different countries and cannot be kept completely secret.

The Lavon affair was intended to involve small anonymous attacks against random civilian targets, but failed to achieve this relatively modest objective.

Are we now to believe that the Israelis thought they could pull off a massive combined air-sea attack against a United States vessel on the high seas (where radar and visual observation is unobstructed) and blame it on Egypt? The very idea is insane.

So why did Israel resort to this desperate gamble?

Barring a collective bout of insanity throughout Israel's civilian and military leadership, the most likely explanation is that the USS Liberty itself was seen as a major and indeed mortal threat to Israel, to such an extent that the Israeli leadership decided to risk a major rift with the U.S. to eliminate the threat.

How would the USS Liberty itself be a threat? Most likely by compiling high-grade military intelligence and passing it to Egypt and the other Arab nations. This could have occurred either pursuant to official directives from the top of the U.S. hierarchy, or perhaps because the local command went rogue.

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 6:49 pm GMT

@Corvinus "and it turned out that traditional English cultural notions in politics, economics and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled the American experiment to take the world forward as and when it did."

You do realize that those traditions were a result of the combined efforts of the Britons, the Picts, the Romans, and the Anglo-Saxon tribes. Moreover, this "American experiment" was the product of the English, Greek, and Roman ways of governance, as well as the philosophies of the Enlightenment.

"English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint, privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced by distrust of fads and "philosophies."

Thank you for your opinion on this matter.

"One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher.""

The English language does not prohibit anyone from indicating that their profession is a "philosopher", considering if a person graduates from university with a doctoral degree in philosophy and instructs students in this field.

One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher."

Try it. Try saying "I am a philosopher."

Notice how ridiculous it sounds?

French does not have the same inbuilt resistance to unreality. "Moi, je suis philosophe" does not sound inherently ridiculous to a French speaker.

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 9:09 pm GMT

@Rurik


First, there is no "endless repetition of the USS Liberty story" by MSM: this story has been hushed for many years.
yep

also as we all know, the attack on the USS Liberty was intended as a false flag attack to be blamed on Egypt in order to get America to fight Israel's wars for them.

As was the Lavon affair.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair

It is the well-known modus operendi of cowards. Commit crimes and blame them on people you don't like, so that those people will be punished for it. It happens all the time in America with hate "crime" hoaxes. The most egregious example of Israeli's treachery and endemic cowardice was the false flag attack on 9/11 - that is being used even today to get Americans to mass-murder people Israel doesn't like and reduce entire nations and regions into smoking ashes.

as we all know, the attack on the USS Liberty was intended as a false flag attack to be blamed on Egypt in order to get America to fight Israel's wars for them

This suggestion at least makes logical sense.

However, the idea that Israel's entire senior leadership seriously thought they could pin a combined air/sea attack in the middle of the Red Sea on Egypt is quite outlandish, as explained in a separate post above. Given the circumstances, the Israelis must have KNOWN 100% that the attack would be traced back to them within hours at the latest.

In fact, nobody seems to suggest that the U.S. was ACTUALLY DECEIVED for even a split second about who launched the attack.

Reading between the lines of contemporary and later accounts, it appears that Israel took IMMEDIATE action to mitigate the fall-out in DC. This again is inconsistent with trying to pin it on Egypt.

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment May 22, 2017 at 9:39 pm GMT

@annamaria "Support our troops!" in the time of institutionalized treason.
Two ugly siblings or why ISIS is a best friend of both Israel and Saudi Arabia.
http://theduran.com/heres-why-saudi-arabia-and-israel-are-allies-in-all-but-name/
"Israel and Saudi Arabia have always been enemies of secular, Arab nationalist states and federations. Whether an Arab state is Nasserist, Ba'athist, socialist, Marxist-Leninist or in the case of Gaddafi's Libya a practitioner of the post-Nassierist Third Political Theory: Israel and Saudi Arabia have sought to and in large part have succeeded, with western help, at destroying such states.
Unlike Israel's Apartheid military state and Saudi Arabia's human rights free monarchy, the aforementioned Arab styles of government are worthy of the word modern. These are countries which had progressive mixed economies, had secular governments and societies, had full constitutional rights for religious and ethnic minorities, they championed women's rights and engaged in mass literacy programmes and infrastructural projects. ..
Syria is the last secular Arab Ba'athist state in the world. Unlike in Israel, minorities have full constitutional rights and unlike in Saudi Arabia, all religions are tolerated. In Syria, women can act, speak and dress as they wish. Syria's independence has in the past thwarted Israel's ambition to annex Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and additional parts of Syria itself (Israel still occupies Syria's Golan Heights). ...
Syria remains strongly independent and refuses to surrender its values.
Saudi Arabia and Israel are allies in the material and psychological war against secular, modern Arab countries. It is a war which the United States has been fighting on behalf of Riyadh and Tel Aviv for decades ."

Syria is the last secular Arab Ba'athist state in the world.

Modern, secular Syria TREBLED its population since 1980 even though water and land were already exhausted then.

http://globuspallidusxi.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-real-story-on-syria-forced.html

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 12:28 am GMT

@Eagle Eye


Syria is the last secular Arab Ba'athist state in the world.
Modern, secular Syria TREBLED its population since 1980 even though water and land were already exhausted then.

http://globuspallidusxi.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-real-story-on-syria-forced.html What is you point, that Syria has no right for her sovereignty?

"Trump and Netanyahu to the world: WE ARE ALL WAHHABISTS NOW!"
http://theduran.com/trump-and-netanyahu-to-the-world-we-are-all-wahhabists-now/

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 12:30 am GMT

@Eagle Eye


as we all know, the attack on the USS Liberty was intended as a false flag attack to be blamed on Egypt in order to get America to fight Israel's wars for them
This suggestion at least makes logical sense.

However, the idea that Israel's entire senior leadership seriously thought they could pin a combined air/sea attack in the middle of the Red Sea on Egypt is quite outlandish, as explained in a separate post above. Given the circumstances, the Israelis must have KNOWN 100% that the attack would be traced back to them within hours at the latest.

In fact, nobody seems to suggest that the U.S. was ACTUALLY DECEIVED for even a split second about who launched the attack.

Reading between the lines of contemporary and later accounts, it appears that Israel took IMMEDIATE action to mitigate the fall-out in DC. This again is inconsistent with trying to pin it on Egypt. " it appears that Israel took IMMEDIATE action to mitigate the fall-out in DC."
This is not true. Try do read the accounts objectively.

Seraphim , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 1:42 am GMT

@ "I am a philosopher."

Who is really a philosopher? What is really a philosopher? What is philosophy after all?

At the end of 'Antiquity' (6th Century) an Armenian Christian 'Neo-Platonic' philosopher, David Anhagt (the Invincible), wrote an 'Introduction to philosophy' in which he epitomized all the current definitions of Philosophy, which by logical necessity are only six (according to the object and purpose):

1) 'Philosophy is the knowledge of things that exist as they [really] are'.
2) 'Philosophy is the knowledge of things divine and human'.
3) 'Philosophy is preparation for death'.
4) 'Philosophy is becoming like the God to the best of human abilities.
5) 'Philosophy is the art of arts and science of sciences'.
6) 'Philosophy is love of wisdom' (filia sophias).

For David (and all 'philosophers') philosophia is a 'care of the soul'. It starts with 'Gnoti seauton- Know thyself) and ends with 'becoming like God' (theosis) and here it coincides with the purpose of Christianity ('If the Word became a man, It was so men may become gods', 'For the Son of God became man so that we might become God', 'The Word was made flesh in order that we might be made gods. Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life' – the definitions of the Fathers). Christianity is the 'true philosophy'. Jesus answered the Pharisees: "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? 35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:34-35)*
*"I have said, Ye are gods; and all [of you] children of the Most High" (Psalm 81:6 – Septuagint).

'Know thyself' because 'The Kingdom of God is within you'.

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 2:45 am GMT

@annamaria "...it appears that Israel took IMMEDIATE action to mitigate the fall-out in DC."
This is not true. Try do read the accounts objectively. (1) I said that "reading between the lines," one might conclude that Israel IMMEDIATELY set about containing the fall-out in Washington. Of course, such efforts (if they indeed took place) would be hugely embarrassing to Israel and would be kept top secret even years later.

(2) You have still not given us any real theory of WHY Israel would launch a combined air/sea attack on the USS Liberty.

The idea that Israel was at this precise moment in the middle of the Six Day War trying to pin the blame on Egypt does not hold water as explained in several posts above.

CONCLUSION: The best working theory at present is that the USS Liberty was providing high-grade intelligence to the Arab countries fighting Israel in the Six Day War.

If you have a better explanation consistent with the known facts, including the use of radar by the USS Liberty and airborne units in the area please share it here.

QUESTION: What is known about LBJ's stated and actual positions vis-a-vis Israel, Egypt, other Arab countries? Post-retirement contacts by LBJ and his family?

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 2:46 am GMT

@Eagle Eye


Wiz Oz ... seems to think its fine for the English people of the city of Leicester to be replaced by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many other fine people, I do not.
What many modern observers are too shy to say out loud is this:

Cultures are NOT created equal, and it turned out that traditional English cultural notions in politics, economics and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled the American experiment to take the world forward as and when it did.

English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint, privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced by distrust of fads and "philosophies."

To the soi-disant intellectual, English traditions of tolerance, openness and restraint - vague, semi-feudalistic, determinedly bourgeois, unexciting as they are - are particularly maddening as they leave no room for the concoction of "logical" systems in their own image by gaggles of Nazi-sympathizing, sex-addicted continental "philosophers."

One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher." This may be the real reason why "philosophers" writing in English strive so mightily to make their works read like bad translations from ponderous German or Gauloise-reeking French.

One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher."

I don't understand why you say that or why Corvinus thinks it would be silly if anyone did say in English "I am a philosopher."

Most significant universities in the English-speaking world have a philosophy department whose faculty members would, in most cases, be prepared to assert that "I am a philosopher."

This may be the real reason why "philosophers" writing in English strive so mightily to make their works read like bad translations from ponderous German or Gauloise-reeking French.

No doubt there are plenty of bad English-speaking philosophers as there are bad English-speaking academics in every other field, but it is simply false to suggest that philosophical works in the English language are characterized by ponderous bad writing. In fact, the great English-speaking philosophers lead the world in the clarity of their analysis: David Hume , for example, or George Berkeley .

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 2:57 am GMT

@Seraphim @ "I am a philosopher."

Who is really a philosopher? What is really a philosopher? What is philosophy after all?

At the end of 'Antiquity' (6th Century) an Armenian Christian 'Neo-Platonic' philosopher, David Anhagt (the Invincible), wrote an 'Introduction to philosophy' in which he epitomized all the current definitions of Philosophy, which by logical necessity are only six (according to the object and purpose):

1) 'Philosophy is the knowledge of things that exist as they [really] are'.
2) 'Philosophy is the knowledge of things divine and human'.
3) 'Philosophy is preparation for death'.
4) 'Philosophy is becoming like the God to the best of human abilities.
5) 'Philosophy is the art of arts and science of sciences'.
6) 'Philosophy is love of wisdom' (filia sophias).

For David (and all 'philosophers') philosophia is a 'care of the soul'. It starts with 'Gnoti seauton- Know thyself) and ends with 'becoming like God' (theosis) and here it coincides with the purpose of Christianity ('If the Word became a man, It was so men may become gods', 'For the Son of God became man so that we might become God', 'The Word was made flesh in order that we might be made gods. ... Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life' - the definitions of the Fathers). Christianity is the 'true philosophy'. Jesus answered the Pharisees: "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? 35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:34-35)*
*"I have said, Ye are gods; and all [of you] children of the Most High" (Psalm 81:6 - Septuagint).

'Know thyself' because 'The Kingdom of God is within you'. David Anhagt may have been at the forefront of philosophy at the end of antiquity, but things have moved on a bit since then. Today, surely, the key questions in philosophy are of the following kind:

(1) How do we know what we know, if we know anything at all?

(2) What is the nature of external reality, if there is an external reality, and what can we know of it and how?

(3) If there is an external reality, how come? How did it come to exist?

(4) What is morality?

(5) What is free will, and does it make us morally responsible for our actions?

And much more.

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 2:58 am GMT

@annamaria What is you point, that Syria has no right for her sovereignty?

"Trump and Netanyahu to the world: WE ARE ALL WAHHABISTS NOW!"
http://theduran.com/trump-and-netanyahu-to-the-world-we-are-all-wahhabists-now/

What is you point, that Syria has no right for her sovereignty?

A country at three times carrying capacity talking about "sovereignty" is like a 600 lb person talking about running a marathon.

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 5:14 am GMT

@Eagle Eye


Wiz Oz ... seems to think its fine for the English people of the city of Leicester to be replaced by Hindus, but being English, the nation of Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, Sam Johnson and many other fine people, I do not.
What many modern observers are too shy to say out loud is this:

Cultures are NOT created equal, and it turned out that traditional English cultural notions in politics, economics and religion supplied much of the "magic sauce" that enabled the American experiment to take the world forward as and when it did.

English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint, privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced by distrust of fads and "philosophies."

To the soi-disant intellectual, English traditions of tolerance, openness and restraint - vague, semi-feudalistic, determinedly bourgeois, unexciting as they are - are particularly maddening as they leave no room for the concoction of "logical" systems in their own image by gaggles of Nazi-sympathizing, sex-addicted continental "philosophers."

One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher." This may be the real reason why "philosophers" writing in English strive so mightily to make their works read like bad translations from ponderous German or Gauloise-reeking French.

English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint, privacy and secularism

That is probably the exact opposite of the fact. The English sense of tolerance, such as it is (think the burning of witches and heretics, the gaoling of or chemical castration of queers), restraint, such as it is (think football hooliganism and the crass obscenity of some BBC entertainment programming), etc. are probably the result of Britain's unique set of traditions, the common law, the breakdown of serfdom as the result of the crash in population caused by the Black Death, property law, the rights of women dating from pre-Norman times, the King's Courts that provided litigants access to a court presided over by a professional judge, English trust law, that gave rise to so many special purpose clubs and organizations from scientific societies to sporting associations and explains why nearly all the world's most popular sports were invented by the English, and Henry VIII's marital problems that largely freed Britain from the influence of the Catholic church.

As for:

privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced by distrust of fads and "philosophies.

LOL

Privacy? The Brits have more surveillance cameras per capita than any country on earth. They even have listening lamp posts.

Secularism? The present archbishop of Canterbury may be of Jewish extraction and experienced as a oil company money man, but until recent times the British were, for the most part, devout, mainly protestant, Christians.

Fads? Well maybe the Brits didn't trust them but they had plenty from rock and roll, flick knives, and ducks arse hair cuts, to mini-skirts, beatlemania, balsa wood airplanes, bellbottom pants, and on and on.

As for philosophies, the British empiricists are clearly among the most important of the modern age as the British who know anything about philosophy are happy to acknowledge.

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 10:51 am GMT

@Eagle Eye


What is you point, that Syria has no right for her sovereignty?
A country at three times carrying capacity talking about "sovereignty" is like a 600 lb person talking about running a marathon. as compared to an artificial state that has been squeezing the native population and importing the (allegedly) ethnically-proper economic migrants?
You seem have peculiar explanations to why such formerly functioning states as Iraq, Libya, and Syria should better cease to exist (along with the USSLiberty staff). According to your logic, the ongoing Syrian slaughter is a good deed because it allows for weeding out the excess of population there. The weeding out also works as a rationale for grabbing the Syrian natural resources by the "most moral" apartheid state.
And please don't try at lecturing the readers on Israel's virtues vs the US perfidy, considering the history of betrayal of the US by Israel-firsters. Pollard and more, the despicable PNAC crowd and the ziocons' obnoxious and stupid global games against ethnically-wrong humanity. At the head of the current mess is the Israel-occupied Congress, "conditioned" for guiding the hapless host in a desired direction.
Seraphim , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 11:06 am GMT

@CanSpeccy David Anhagt may have been at the forefront of philosophy at the end of antiquity, but things have moved on a bit since then. Today, surely, the key questions in philosophy are of the following kind:

(1) How do we know what we know, if we know anything at all?

(2) What is the nature of external reality, if there is an external reality, and what can we know of it and how?

(3) If there is an external reality, how come? How did it come to exist?

(4) What is morality?

(5) What is free will, and does it make us morally responsible for our actions?

And much more. All these 'moves' have been already made long before the end of Antiquity. There were the essential questions of 'philosophy' to which Plato, Aristotle and a score of 'Oriental' philosophers have offered the answers.
Didn't a noted philosopher of the 20th century, Alfred North Whitehead, famously said that: 'The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato'?

Corvinus , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 11:52 am GMT

@Eagle Eye


One of the advantages of the English language is that the language itself does not allow a person to identify his profession by saying "I am a philosopher."
Try it. Try saying "I am a philosopher."

Notice how ridiculous it sounds?

French does not have the same inbuilt resistance to unreality. "Moi, je suis philosophe" does not sound inherently ridiculous to a French speaker. "Try it. Try saying "I am a philosopher.""

OK. Doctor of philosophy.

"Notice how ridiculous it sounds?"

No.

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 1:15 pm GMT

The Saker publishes some interesting news re the MH17 tragedy:
"SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] orders to destroy all evidence of the conducted special operation MH17″ http://thesaker.is/sbu-orders-to-destroy-all-evidence-of-the-conducted-special-operation-mh17/
by Scott Humor: " If you want to know my opinion that hasn't changed since 2014. The Boeing flight MH17 was shot down by the Ukrainian air force fighter jets, but not necessarily piloted by Ukrainian pilots. It was a CIA and NATO operation to frame Russia. Most likely the Dutch government was a part of this operation. Now, they are trying to hang all the dogs on Waltzman -Poroshenko, because neither the Dutch monarchs, nor the CIA would fancy to be implicated in this crime."

The whole edifice of sanctions against Russian federation was built on the MH17 case. A few people come to mind. First is the Secretary of State John Kerry who had proclaimed that Russians were guilty of the shooting before any investigation took place.
Then there is a Department of War Studies, King's College London, which became famous for inviting Eliot Higgins (an expert in selling ladies underwear) to lecture the College' students on Higgins' specialty – the russophobic stuff, which was debunked on numerous occasions but which is still dear to the hearts at the Department of War Studies, King's College London. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/aboutkings/principal/Indexnew.aspx https://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/warstudies/people/professors/rainsborough.aspx
And then there is a circus of Dutch investigation: https://www.rt.com/news/375105-mh17-investigation-dutch-journalist/ and this http://www.whathappenedtoflightmh17.com/dutch-prosecutor-does-not-answer-questions-on-russian-supplied-radar-data/
The Dutch/Ukrainian scoundrels are now facing this (which is just a beginning): https://www.rt.com/news/374893-trump-letter-mh17-investigation/ "The open letter, signed by 25 journalists, former civil aviation pilots and researchers from Germany, the Netherlands and Australia, was posted on the website of Joost Niemoller – a Dutch journalist who publicly challenged the current investigation into the ill-fated Flight MH17, which was downed over Ukraine in July 2014. "

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 4:55 pm GMT

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato"

Newton, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, James Clerk Maxwell, Einstein - Some footnotes.

Rurik , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 6:19 pm GMT

@Eagle Eye


as we all know, the attack on the USS Liberty was intended as a false flag attack to be blamed on Egypt in order to get America to fight Israel's wars for them
This suggestion at least makes logical sense.

However, the idea that Israel's entire senior leadership seriously thought they could pin a combined air/sea attack in the middle of the Red Sea on Egypt is quite outlandish, as explained in a separate post above. Given the circumstances, the Israelis must have KNOWN 100% that the attack would be traced back to them within hours at the latest.

In fact, nobody seems to suggest that the U.S. was ACTUALLY DECEIVED for even a split second about who launched the attack.

Reading between the lines of contemporary and later accounts, it appears that Israel took IMMEDIATE action to mitigate the fall-out in DC. This again is inconsistent with trying to pin it on Egypt.

Given the circumstances, the Israelis must have KNOWN 100% that the attack would be traced back to them within hours at the latest.

then why did they machine gun the lifeboats, eh?

that in itself is a war crime you know, and the ONLY reason they would have done it is to sink the ship with ALL hands. Thereby leaving no survivors to expose the treachery.

and they had the Johnson regime and traitor McNamara on board with their cowardly, murderous treason.

not to mention the controlled kosher msm

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 7:05 pm GMT

@annamaria as compared to an artificial state that has been squeezing the native population and importing the (allegedly) ethnically-proper economic migrants?
You seem have peculiar explanations to why such formerly functioning states as Iraq, Libya, and Syria should better cease to exist (along with the USSLiberty staff). According to your logic, the ongoing Syrian slaughter is a good deed because it allows for weeding out the excess of population there. The weeding out also works as a rationale for grabbing the Syrian natural resources by the "most moral" apartheid state.
And please don't try at lecturing the readers on Israel's virtues vs the US perfidy, considering the history of betrayal of the US by Israel-firsters. Pollard and more, the despicable PNAC crowd and the ziocons' obnoxious and stupid global games against ethnically-wrong humanity. At the head of the current mess is the Israel-occupied Congress, "conditioned" for guiding the hapless host in a desired direction. You still haven't answered the question:

What was the U.S. Liberty doing in the Red Sea in 1967?

As a U.S. citizen, I would quite like to know, even at this late stage, what our military forces were doing far from Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps the answer gives a hint as to what is happening now.

Since you seem obsessed about the "sovereignty" of former Ottoman territories, please also explain how exactly the USS Liberty's presence was supposed to assist the "sovereignty" of Cis-Jordan (i.e. the current sovereign state of Israel).

Thank you.

Rurik , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 8:12 pm GMT

@Eagle Eye You still haven't answered the question:

What was the U.S. Liberty doing in the Red Sea in 1967?

As a U.S. citizen, I would quite like to know, even at this late stage, what our military forces were doing far from Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps the answer gives a hint as to what is happening now.

Since you seem obsessed about the "sovereignty" of former Ottoman territories, please also explain how exactly the USS Liberty's presence was supposed to assist the "sovereignty" of Cis-Jordan (i.e. the current sovereign state of Israel).

Thank you. if you (and Annamaria) don't mind, I'll address this..

What was the U.S. Liberty doing in the Red Sea in 1967?

there was a war going on between a US ally and a nation of strategic importance to the US- Israel and Egypt. The USS Liberty was a NSA intelligence ship. It was there to monitor what was going on. Duh.

explain how exactly the USS Liberty's presence was supposed to assist the "sovereignty" of Cis-Jordan (i.e. the current sovereign state of Israel).

unless you an admiral in the US Navy at the time, no one knows for sure. But a lot of people have speculated that the USS Liberty was sent by the Johnson regime to get sunk by Israel and be used as a false flag to take America into war against Egypt.

We already know for a fact that jets were scrambled to assist the USS Liberty and were called back and ordered not to assist by Johnson through Secretary of State McNamara. And not once, but twice.

So obviously Johnson wanted her sunk. Whether or not the ship was sent there for that purpose, or whether Johnson simply decided to let the Israelis sink her once he heard about it, we'll likely never know.

Hope that helps eagle

annamaria , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 10:43 pm GMT

@Eagle Eye You still


What was the U.S. Liberty doing in the Red Sea in 1967?

As a U.S. citizen, I would quite like to know, even at this late stage, what our military forces were doing far from Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps the answer gives a hint as to what is happening now.

Since you seem obsessed about the "sovereignty" of former Ottoman territories, please also explain how exactly the USS Liberty's presence was supposed to assist the "sovereignty" of Cis-Jordan (i.e. the current sovereign state of Israel).

Thank you. Why don't you look closely into the present to understand the past?
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/05/23/truth-has-become-un-american/

"As Israel controls US Middle East policy, Israel uses its control to have Washington eliminate obstacles to Israel's expansion. So far Israel has achieved the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government and chaos in Iraq, Washington's war on Syria, and Washington's demonization of Iran in the hope that sufficient demonization will justify war."

Seraphim , Show Comment Next New Comment May 23, 2017 at 11:00 pm GMT

@CanSpeccy


"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato"
Newton, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, James Clerk Maxwell, Einstein - Some footnotes. There are more, but most of them are sloppy footnotes.
CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 24, 2017 at 12:52 am GMT

@Seraphim There are more, but most of them are sloppy footnotes.

but most of them are sloppy footnotes

True. But that's true of most of what passes for thought or scholarship in every field of intellectual endeavor. Still mankind has come a long way since the time of Plato in understanding many things - so far that, in our morally unregenerate state, we appear on the brink of creating Hell on Earth, either as the result of a final global conflagration or the creation of a global slave state.

Heir Max , Show Comment Next New Comment May 24, 2017 at 3:30 am GMT

How does Russia ( read Putin ) embracing Christianity and encouraging it again in Russia factor in the sudden sour attitude of our progressives in the US? The LOVED the USSR.. as it was atheistic, no? But as a non-threat-Russia, and a Christian Russia, eh, not so much; especially since Russia has decided they are not so fond of the Muslim.

Interesting times. Great article.

Seraphim , Show Comment Next New Comment May 24, 2017 at 11:21 am GMT

@CanSpeccy


but most of them are sloppy footnotes
True. But that's true of most of what passes for thought or scholarship in every field of intellectual endeavor. Still mankind has come a long way since the time of Plato in understanding many things - so far that, in our morally unregenerate state, we appear on the brink of creating Hell on Earth, either as the result of a final global conflagration or the creation of a global slave state. You can see what sloppiness leads to.
John Gruskos , Show Comment Next New Comment May 24, 2017 at 3:55 pm GMT

@in the middle How exactly did Reagan biggest mistake was amnesty? Explain and give some examples, please. Giving amnesty to the illegal immigrants who were in America in 1986 encouraged more illegal immigrants to come, in hopes of a future amnesty.

In 1986 there were only 1 million illegal immigrants. Now there are at least 11 million.

CanSpeccy , Website Show Comment Next New Comment May 24, 2017 at 5:02 pm GMT

@Seraphim You can see what sloppiness leads to.

You can see what sloppiness leads to.

We need to define "sloppiness" with exactitude.

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment May 31, 2017 at 4:10 pm GMT

@CanSpeccy

English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint, privacy and secularism
That is probably the exact opposite of the fact. The English sense of tolerance, such as it is (think the burning of witches and heretics, the gaoling of or chemical castration of queers), restraint, such as it is (think football hooliganism and the crass obscenity of some BBC entertainment programming), etc. are probably the result of Britain's unique set of traditions, the common law, the breakdown of serfdom as the result of the crash in population caused by the Black Death, property law, the rights of women dating from pre-Norman times, the King's Courts that provided litigants access to a court presided over by a professional judge, English trust law, that gave rise to so many special purpose clubs and organizations from scientific societies to sporting associations and explains why nearly all the world's most popular sports were invented by the English, and Henry VIII's marital problems that largely freed Britain from the influence of the Catholic church.

As for:

privacy and secularism paired with traditional respect for organically grown institutions balanced by distrust of fads and "philosophies.
LOL. Privacy? The Brits have more surveillance cameras per capita than any country on earth. They even have listening lamp posts.

Secularism? The present archbishop of Canterbury may be of Jewish extraction and experienced as a oil company money man, but until recent times the British were, for the most part, devout, mainly protestant, Christians. Fads? Well maybe the Brits didn't trust them but they had plenty from rock and roll, flick knives, and ducks arse hair cuts, to mini-skirts, beatlemania, balsa wood airplanes, bellbottom pants, and on and on.

As for philosophies, the British empiricists are clearly among the most important of the modern age as the British who know anything about philosophy are happy to acknowledge.

English traditions achieved unrivaled primacy due to an innate sense of tolerance, restraint, privacy and secularism

It may have escaped you that my earlier post referred to the time of the American Revolution, and in particular to sophisticated British traditions and conventions as they were perceived by the educated class in the colonies.

The sad decline of Britain in the modern era, and its more colorful history in earlier ages, are neither here nor there for these purposes.

[Jun 03, 2017] State Department was at the center of neo-McCartyism compaign against Russia by Michael Isikoff

State department official were backstabbing Trump with impunity... Neocon cohorts recruited by Hillary such as staffers of Victoria Nuland still feel in charge... Essentially State Department was and is a neocon swamp that needs to be drained.
The level of McCarthyism hysteria in comments is really frightening...
Notable quotes:
"... These efforts to relax or remove punitive measures imposed by President Obama in retaliation for Russia's intervention in Ukraine and meddling in the 2016 election alarmed some State Department officials, who immediately began lobbying congressional leaders to quickly pass legislation to block the move, the sources said. ..."
"... Since this was the same State Department bureau that had helped develop the punitive measures in the first place, and actively pushed for them under the leadership of Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, who had just resigned, the tasking order left staffers feeling "deeply uncomfortable," said one source, who asked not to be identified. ..."
"... These concerns led some department officials to also reach out to Malinowski, an Obama political appointee who had just stepped down. Malinowski said he, like Fried, called Cardin and other congressional allies, including aides to Sen. John McCain, and urged them to codify the sanctions - effectively locking them in place - before Trump could lift them ..."
"... The lobbying effort produced some immediate results: On Feb. 7, Cardin and Sen. Lindsay Graham introduced bipartisan legislation to bar the administration from granting sanctions relief without first submitting a proposal to do so for congressional review. "Russia has done nothing to be rewarded with sanctions relief," Graham said in a statement at the time. If the U.S. were to lift sanctions without "verifiable progress" by Russia in living up to agreements in Ukraine, "we would lose all credibility in the eyes of our allies in Europe and around he world," added Cardin in his own statement. (A spokesman for Cardin told Yahoo News in an emailed statement: "I can also confirm that the senator did hear from senior Obama officials encouraging him to take sanctions steps, but that he had already been considering it as well.") ..."
"... But the political battles over the issue are far from over. Cardin, McCain and Graham are separately pushing another sanctions bill - imposing tough new measures in response to Russia's election interference. The measures have so far been blocked for consideration within the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by its chairman, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who says he wants to first hear the administration's position on the issue. ..."
"... In the meantime, Malinowksi said he is concerned that there may be other, less public ways the administration can undermine the Russian sanctions. He noted that much of their force results from parallel sanctions imposed by the European Union, whose members must unanimously renew them each year. ..."
"... "I had this nightmare vision of [White House senior adviser ] Steve Bannon or [National Security Council staffer] Sebastian Gorka calling in the Hungarian ambassador and telling them President Trump would not be displeased" if his country opposed the renewal of sanctions, he said. ..."
Jun 01, 2017 | www.yahoo.com

Originally from: Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

How the Trump administration's secret efforts to ease Russia sanctions fell short

In the early weeks of the Trump administration, former Obama administration officials and State Department staffers fought an intense, behind-the-scenes battle to head off efforts by incoming officials to normalize relations with Russia, according to multiple sources familiar with the events.

Unknown to the public at the time, top Trump administration officials, almost as soon as they took office, tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow.

These efforts to relax or remove punitive measures imposed by President Obama in retaliation for Russia's intervention in Ukraine and meddling in the 2016 election alarmed some State Department officials, who immediately began lobbying congressional leaders to quickly pass legislation to block the move, the sources said.

"There was serious consideration by the White House to unilaterally rescind the sanctions," said Dan Fried, a veteran State Department official who served as chief U.S. coordinator for sanctions policy until he retired in late February. He said in the first few weeks of the administration, he received several "panicky" calls from U.S. government officials who told him they had been directed to develop a sanctions-lifting package and imploring him, "Please, my God, can't you stop this?"

Fried said he grew so concerned that he contacted Capitol Hill allies - including Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., the ranking minority member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - to urge them to move quickly to pass legislation that would "codify" the sanctions in place, making it difficult for President Trump to remove them.

Tom Malinowski, who had just stepped down as President Obama's assistant secretary of state for human rights, told Yahoo News he too joined the effort to lobby Congress after learning from former colleagues that the administration was developing a plan to lift sanctions - and possibly arrange a summit between Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin - as part of an effort to achievea "grand bargain" with Moscow. "It would have been a win-win for Moscow," said Malinowski, who only days before he left office announced his own round of sanctions against senior Russian officials for human rights abuses under a law known as the Magnitsky Act.

The previously unreported efforts by Fried and others to check the Trump administration's policy moves cast new light on the unseen tensions over Russia policy during the early days of the new administration.

It also potentially takes on new significance for congressional and Justice Department investigators in light of reports that before the administration took office Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his chief foreign policy adviser, Michael Flynn, discussed setting up a private channel of communications with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak - talks that appear to have laid the groundwork for the proposals that began circulating right after the inauguration.

A senior White House official confirmed that the administration began exploring changes in Russia sanctions as part of a broader policy review that is still ongoing. "We've been reviewing all the sanctions - and this is not exclusive to Russia," the official said. "All the sanctions regimes have mechanisms built in to alleviate them. It's been our hope that the Russians would take advantage of that" by living up to Moscow's agreement to end the Ukraine conflict, but they did not do so.

To be sure, President Trump's interest in improving relations with Moscow was hardly a secret during last year's presidential campaign." If we can make a great deal for our country and get along with Russia, that would be a tremendous thing," Trump said in a April 28, 2016, Fox News interview ."I would love to try it."

But there was nothing said in public about specific steps the new administration took toward reaching the kind of deal the president had talked about during the campaign - without requiring the Russians to acknowledge responsibility for the annexation of Crimea or Moscow's "influence campaign" during the 2016 election.

Just days after President Trump took office, officials who had moved into the secretary of state's seventh-floor office sent a "tasking" order to the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs to develop a menu of options to improve relations with Russia as part of a deal in exchange for Russian cooperation in the war against the Islamic State in Syria, according to two former officials. Those options were to include sanctions relief as well as other steps that were a high priority for Moscow, including the return of two diplomatic compounds - one on Long Island and the other on Maryland's Eastern Shore - that were shut by President Obama on Dec. 29on the grounds that they were being used for espionage purposes. (The return of the compounds is again being actively considered by the administration, according to a Washington Post reportThursday. ) "Obviously, the Russians have been agitating about this," the senior White House official said when asked about the compounds, or "dachas," as the Russians call them. But it would be inaccurate to report there has been an agreement to return them without some reciprocal move on Moscow's part.

Since this was the same State Department bureau that had helped develop the punitive measures in the first place, and actively pushed for them under the leadership of Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, who had just resigned, the tasking order left staffers feeling "deeply uncomfortable," said one source, who asked not to be identified.

These concerns led some department officials to also reach out to Malinowski, an Obama political appointee who had just stepped down. Malinowski said he, like Fried, called Cardin and other congressional allies, including aides to Sen. John McCain, and urged them to codify the sanctions - effectively locking them in place - before Trump could lift them

The lobbying effort produced some immediate results: On Feb. 7, Cardin and Sen. Lindsay Graham introduced bipartisan legislation to bar the administration from granting sanctions relief without first submitting a proposal to do so for congressional review. "Russia has done nothing to be rewarded with sanctions relief," Graham said in a statement at the time. If the U.S. were to lift sanctions without "verifiable progress" by Russia in living up to agreements in Ukraine, "we would lose all credibility in the eyes of our allies in Europe and around he world," added Cardin in his own statement. (A spokesman for Cardin told Yahoo News in an emailed statement: "I can also confirm that the senator did hear from senior Obama officials encouraging him to take sanctions steps, but that he had already been considering it as well.")

The proposed bill lost some of its urgency six days later when Flynn resigned as White House national security adviser following disclosures he had discussed political sanctions relief with Kislyak during the transition and misrepresented those talks to Vice President Mike Pence. After that, "it didn't take too long for it to become clear that if they lifted sanctions, there would be a political firestorm," Malinowski said.

But the political battles over the issue are far from over. Cardin, McCain and Graham are separately pushing another sanctions bill - imposing tough new measures in response to Russia's election interference. The measures have so far been blocked for consideration within the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by its chairman, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who says he wants to first hear the administration's position on the issue.

In the meantime, Malinowksi said he is concerned that there may be other, less public ways the administration can undermine the Russian sanctions. He noted that much of their force results from parallel sanctions imposed by the European Union, whose members must unanimously renew them each year.

"I had this nightmare vision of [White House senior adviser ] Steve Bannon or [National Security Council staffer] Sebastian Gorka calling in the Hungarian ambassador and telling them President Trump would not be displeased" if his country opposed the renewal of sanctions, he said.

[Jun 03, 2017] Putin I Can Prove Trump Did Not Pass Secrets to Russia

Jun 03, 2017 | www.newsmax.com
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump had not passed on any secrets to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a meeting in Washington last week and that he could prove it.

Speaking at a news conference alongside Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Putin quipped that Lavrov was remiss for not passing on what he made clear he believed were non-existent secrets.

"I spoke to him [Lavrov] today," said Putin with a smile. "I'll be forced to issue him with a reprimand because he did not share these secrets with us. Not with me, nor with representatives of Russia's intelligence services. It was very bad of him."

Putin, who said Moscow rated Lavrov's meeting with Trump "highly," said Russia was ready to hand a transcript of Trump's meeting with Lavrov over to U.S. lawmakers if that would help reassure them.

A Kremlin aide, Yuri Ushakov, later told reporters that Moscow had in its possession a written record of the conversation, not an audio recording.

Complaining about what he said were signs of "political schizophrenia" in the United States, Putin said Trump was not being allowed to do his job properly.

"It's hard to imagine what else can these people who generate such nonsense and rubbish can dream up next," said Putin.

"What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using anti-Russian slogans. Either they don't understand the damage they're doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt."

Two U.S. officials said on Monday that Trump had disclosed highly classified information to Lavrov about a planned Islamic State operation, plunging the White House into another controversy just months into Trump's short tenure in office.

Russia has repeatedly said that anti-Russian politicians in the United States are using groundless fears of closer ties with Moscow to sabotage any rapprochement and damage Trump in the process.

.

[Jun 03, 2017] Putin We Should Be Grateful To President Trump In Moscow It's Cold And Snowing

Jun 03, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday during a panel at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum that the US investigations into whether the Kremlin meddled in the US election are nothing more than "hysteria," and that the anti-Russia sentiment in the US was about as virulent as anti-semitism. "It's like saying everything is the Jews' fault," said Putin, who said the blame for Hillary Clinton's November loss lies squarely at the feet of the Democratic presidential candidate and members of her party, according to a report.

"This reminds me of anti-Semitism," Putin said. "The Jews are to blame for everything. An idiot cannot do anything himself, so the Jews are to blame. But we know what such attitudes lead to. They end with nothing good."

Putin, who was being interviewed by NBC's Megyn Kelly, brushed off questions about meetings that members of the Trump campaign - including then-Sen. Jeff Sessions - had with Russian officials such as ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

" So our ambassador met someone. That's his job. That's why we pay him," Putin said. "So what? What's he supposed to do, hit up the bars ?"

Putin was amused when Kelly touched on the subject of Russian foreign news coverage spreading "disinformation." Putin accused her "colleagues" of dragging Russia into their coverage unfavourably.

"Let's end this," Putin told her. "You will feel better and we will feel better."

Donald Trump won because he had run a more effective presidential campaign than Hillary Clinton, Putin said, adding the US intelligence agencies may have faked evidence of Russian hacking, according to Reuters. Allegations of Russian involvement were nothing more than "harmful gossip," Putin insisted, there were no "Russian fingerprints" on the alleged hacks, Reuters reported.

Earlier this week, Putin denied the Russian state had directed any hacking operations designed to influence the U.S. election – though he did say Russian "patriots" could have been behind the plot on their own, Fox reported. Following President Donald Trump's decision Thursday to take the US out of the Paris Climate Accord talks, Putin said that there's still time to reach a deal on the 2015 pact even without the US's involvement, before adding, in English, "don't worry, be happy," according to Reuters.

Despite the critism that has been heapened upon Trump by other world leaders since he announced his decision to leave the accord last night, Putin said that he "wouldn't blame Trump" for leaving the accord , though he hoped the White House would set its own climate rules.

" By the way, we should be grateful to President Trump. In Moscow it's raining and cold and even, they say, some snow. Now we could blame this all on American imperialism, that it's all their fault. But we won't. "

And though he said he hopes that US sanctions against Russia would soon be lifted, he noted that they did have some positive effects. "We had to use our brains," Putin said. "Not rely on oil and gas dollars." Allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin have dogged the new administration since before the inauguration. In recent weeks, US media have taken aim at Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, whom NBC and WaPo reported was a "person of interest" in the FBI' campaign.

As a reminder, Kelly is set to interview Putin in St. Petersburg Friday for a Sunday night special that will air on NBC.

mdr attitude - froze25 , Jun 2, 2017 3:41 PM

Putin knows how to troll the MSM.

And not even using Twitter. If he would use it, the leftards would meltdown in record time.

MSM Finally Admits RussiaGate is Clinton's "Conspiracy Theory"

[Jun 03, 2017] Key Takeaways From Intelligence Community Testimony On Alleged Russian Hacking

Jun 03, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
For those disaffected Hillary snowflakes looking for some level of concrete, tangible evidence from today's Senate testimony from the "intelligence community" that "Russian Hackers" purposefully colluded with President-elect Trump to steal the 2016 election from Clinton, we have some bad news: your desire for evidence required to start World War III over your candidate's loss has still not been fulfilled. Better luck next time.

As we suspected, today's testimony offered up by James Clapper and others of the "intelligence community" to the Senate's Armed Forces Committee has largely been nothing more than another smear campaign rife with political rhetoric but light on facts and tangible evidence.

Asked whether Julian Assange was credible, Clapper, who ironically has lost all credibility throughout this process with his rapidly evolving story line, was quick to confirm in the negative. Per The Hill :

When asked if Assange was credible, Clapper responded with a very noticeably annoyed look, "Not in my view."

Navy Adm. Michael Rogers, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of National Security Agency responded, "I second those comments."

Meanwhile, other comments aimed at Julian Assange drew some expected criticism from Wikileaks

... ... ...

Clapper, apparently interviewing for a commentator spot at MSNBC, warned that hacking wasn't the extent of the efforts by Russia to meddle in the 2016 election which also included coordinated efforts from RT, and other "fake news" outlets, to exploit any "fissure they could find in our tapestry."

" RT was very active in promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights, etc . Whatever crack, fissure they could find in our tapestry, they would exploit it,"

... ... ...

..and warned against retaliatory efforts saying that "we and other nations conduct similar acts of espionage."

"As I say, people in glass houses need to think about throwing rocks. This was an act of espionage. And we and other nations conduct similar acts of espionage."

Per a note earlier this morning from The Hill , there are five key things to watch for as the hearing progresses:

1. How many Republicans will criticize Trump's stance? - Both John McCain, who chairs the committee, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another member of the panel, have been vocal in their criticism of Trump's unwillingness to blindly accept the rapidly evolving "facts" presented by the "intelligence community."

2. How strong is the evidence that Russia hacked the DNC? - After Julian Assange again appeared on Fox News earlier this week to confirm that his source was not Russia, or any "state actor" for that matter, the "intelligence community" once again changed its narrative this morning to imply that Russia hacked the DNC and John Podesta then provided that information to Wikileaks via a third party. Well, how convenient is that? We look forward to receiving some concrete, tangible evidence from Mr. Clapper on this new assertion.

3. What evidence does the intelligence community have that Putin wanted to assist Trump? - The CIA, without supplying any evidence, reportedly believes that Russia was explicitly trying to help Trump - raising politically explosive questions about the degree to which it succeeded. Meanwhile, the White House has stopped short if that conclusion telling CNN that "President Obama and this administration is 100 percent certain in the role that Russia played in trying to sow discord and confusion and getting involved, through the cyber domain, in our electoral process." Will any actual evidence of collusion between Trump and Russian officials be presented?

4. How much will the public get to see - and when? - Will this whole charade just be more political rhetoric , which is the only thing the "intelligence community" has provided to date, or will actual tangible evidence finally be presented to support the "Russian hacking" narrative.

5. How much will either committee be able to do? - With a new administration taking over in 15 days will any of this actually matter or is it just a last-ditch effort to delegitimize the incoming administration?

Of course, Trump has maintained a healthy dose of skepticism of the intelligence community's "facts." In a series of tweets earlier this week, Trump accused intelligence officials of delaying his briefing until Friday in order to build a case against Russia. He also noted comments from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange who has repeatedly said that his leaked material was not provided by the Russian government.

spastic_colon , Jan 5, 2017 1:06 PM

consider all of the supposed sources on the panel; the fact its even news, fake at that, is evidence enough the MSM is still over-populated with morons and sycophants.

Tom Servo - spastic_colon , Jan 5, 2017 1:07 PM

Clapper is already a "documented liar" - so why should we believe anything this shitbag said today?

froze25 - xythras , Jan 5, 2017 1:11 PM

All we need is a Closet Homosexual like Graham leading us into WW3, some body please just out this guy with a photo so we don't get into a nuclear exchange.

Joe Davola - froze25 , Jan 5, 2017 1:16 PM

The takeaway is that they would rather the 'election were hacked' than divulge how extensive and pervasive their big brother spying on every bit of communication traffic is. (Not that I think the election was hacked in the first place.)

Life of Illusion - Joe Davola , Jan 5, 2017 1:24 PM

Very long run since the 60's and now policy model broken as we witness scratch, screaming and blaming others going out the door.

Kayman - Joe Davola , Jan 5, 2017 2:20 PM

Who better to leave Russian fingerprints than the CIA Big slice of Yellow cake for anyone? Lie to the American people- no consequences.

BennyBoy - Kayman , Jan 5, 2017 3:00 PM

Fake news changed the election?

But not the fake spews coming outta Hillary's hole?

J S Bach - froze25 , Jan 5, 2017 1:18 PM

" They didn't change any vote tallies," Clapper said, but "We have no way of gauging the impact that - certainly the Intelligence Community can't - the choices that the electorate made. There's no way for us to gauge."

Hmmmm. Do they have a way of "gauging the impact" that our zio-controlled lying media may have had on the choices that the electorate made? Since this is a question of equal or greater importance, I just thought I'd ask.

Offthebeach - J S Bach , Jan 5, 2017 2:47 PM

They didn't change any vote tallies," Clapper said, but "We have no way of gauging .....There's no way for us to gauge."

Well, which is it? They didn't. Definitive statement. Followed by we don't/can't know. WTF?

Weasel.

The Saint - froze25 , Jan 5, 2017 1:17 PM

Clapper to MSNBC!! LOL Is that where all of Obama's moron appointments go to die?

Freddie - froze25 , Jan 5, 2017 1:38 PM

McCain, Graham, clapper and the rest totally involved in the genocide of Libya and Syria along with Clintons, Soros, Sid Blumenthal, Petreaus, KKR-Halliburton, Mike Morell-zio, White Helmets fraud, Nato, Epstein and the rest. They all need to be put on trial and arrested. Evil evil scum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCTzFNrsKns&t=0s

Tenshin Headache - , Jan 5, 2017 1:12 PM

Because it deviates from the story line.

JRobby - Tenshin Headache , Jan 5, 2017 1:16 PM

In his summary remarks, Henrich spewing raw sewage out of his mouth like a fire hose. His conclusion: MORE SANCTIONS!

And then, everyone present agreed! MORE SANCTIONS!

Kabuki of the most perverse order.

SoDamnMad - Tom Servo , Jan 5, 2017 1:20 PM

"The Russians created deceptive operations within Iraq that caused the US to believe that Saddam Hussein possessed wepons of mass destruction."

Colin Powell to the UN (must have been back in 2002-2003)

azusgm - spastic_colon , Jan 5, 2017 1:27 PM

"the MSM is still over-populated with morons and sycophants."

Lindsey Graham: "I resemble that remark!"

(What an enemy of the peace-loving people of this nation.)

BTW, how about we spend some time focusing on the contents of the emails instead of making the narrative about the bogeyman Putin?

Edward Bernays would be proud.

Freddie - azusgm , Jan 5, 2017 3:08 PM

I saw a video about JGs aka military attorneys which is what Graham was in the Navy or Naval Reserve. Supposedly they run a terror op and engage in a lot of the really dirty stuff that MIC, The Pentagram and Deep State enagge in.

doctor10 - spastic_colon , Jan 5, 2017 3:00 PM

the fake news about "Russian Hacking" originates from the NATO generation. They all are aware that is the first 20th century legacy institution on the chopping block.

there simply is no need

CheapBastard - hedgeless_horseman , Jan 5, 2017 1:16 PM

The >$600 Billion defense industry needs an enemy, even if it needs to create one where none exists.

11b40 - hedgeless_horseman , Jan 5, 2017 1:32 PM

All of the MIC sweating over their trillion $ war budget. Got to keep things hot to justify the waste. To many tapped out taxpayers asking too many questions.

logicalman - 11b40 , Jan 5, 2017 2:06 PM

THE FUNCTION OF WASTE IN MODERN TOTALITARIANISM

The production of weapons of mass destruction has always been associated with economic "waste." The term is pejorative, since it implies a failure of function. But no human activity can properly be considered wasteful if it achieves its contextual objective.... In the case of military "waste," there is indeed a larger social utility.... In advanced modern democratic societies, the war system ... has served as the last great safeguard against the elimination of necessary social classes. As economic productivity increases to a level further and further above that of minimum subsistence, it becomes more and more difficult for a society to maintain distribution patterns insuring the existence of "hewers of wood and drawers of water."... The arbitrary nature of war expenditures and of other military activities make them ideally suited to control these essential class relationships.... The continuance of the war system must be assured, if for no other reason, among others, than to preserve whatever quality and degree of poverty a society requires as an incentive, as well as to maintain the stability of its internal organization of power.

The Creature from Jeckyll Island

chunga - hedgeless_horseman , Jan 5, 2017 1:32 PM

Still not a single one of them has the balls to mention Seth Rich or Eric Braverman. It's all fake, every bit of it.

Tweet the shit out of it tRump, or you look fake too.

AC_Doctor , Jan 5, 2017 1:08 PM

Lindsey Graham and Democrat appointed Intelligence Heads is all you need to know.

The Brown Clown and his reach arounders have only 14 more days to start a war with Russia.

Mike Masr , Jan 5, 2017 1:17 PM

This bullshit Russian interference narrative and politicized investigation is more sour grapes meant to discredit Donald Trump's election victory!

* The anti-Trump protests and street riots didn't work.

*The Jill Stein recount failed miserably and actually gave Trump more votes!

*Death threats to intimidate the Electoral College failed.

*Now it's the fake news that "Russia did it".

Where is the investigation on all of this?

It's already out from a close friend of Julian Assange that it was a disgruntled Bernie Sanders DNC insider that "leaked" the emails to Julian Assange and Wikileaks and NOT Russian hacking. Maybe Seth Rich? The Obama Administration is ignoring this and continuing with its idiotic "Russia did it" narrative which is "fake news". Donald is right, not one shred of real and credible evidence.

Assange said that a 14 year old could have hacked John Podesta's emails!

This is just a vague circumstancial case to justify the fake Obama narrative to discredit Donald Trump's election victory.

Fuck Obama, fuck crooked Hillary......15 more days libtards!

aliki •Jan 5, 2017 1:09 PM take-away was simple mccain & lindsey are ass-hurt nobody picked them to play president for the next 4 years as a result, they want war with russia, iran, china, north korea id love nothing more than for trump to fire them by executive order its ironic to hear a pair of clowns say how assange has put our troops in harms-way coming from a pair of guys who never met a country they wanted to bomb & follow-up with an invasion then they talk about countries wanting to ruin our democratic process coming from the guys who had the cia train rebels to overthrow assad, overthrew saddam, tried to overthrow everyone in iran, kim-jon, stacking troops/tanks on the russian border fucking histerical the democrats have no idea why they lost the republicans have no idea why they won

besnook , Jan 5, 2017 1:23 PM

the usa has jumped every shark in the ocean. there are about three people who believe the russian meme and these zionazis can't stop over selling a dead meme. what are they up to? there is no election for another 2 years and trump is not going to war with russia. all they are doing to making sure their legacy depicts them as the craven fools they are.

stant , Jan 5, 2017 1:23 PM

1.2 billion$ went up in smoke by Hillary , = blame the rooskies . Still wont save the demo crap party, and half the repugnants

dltff-ya , Jan 5, 2017 1:24 PM

This is show time. Sources and Methods be damned. Kennedy showed the reconnaissance photos of Russian Missiles in Cuba. This demonstration is the super bowl. There is no tomorrow for them if they can't convince us they are not lying, so there is no point he holding back. Snowden might be an interesting source for this. His knowledge is a bit stale now, but he knows that the NSA can do, and if there is no forthcoming NSA public evidence, nothing redacted, then Clapper, et. al. lied before congress and should be prosecuted.

Lets have a confrontation the Russian experts in public like Kennedy did over the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is the Super bowl. There is no game tomorrow for these guys if they can't produce convincing evidence now. The moment the intelligence services are invented for. is NOW. I heard nothing today but bloviating. They did not even go into that Cozy bear Fancy bear crap. That story falls apart in your hands. Now there tack is that the Russian wanted us to know it was them so they were sloppy. Clapper, Graham, and McCain can be guilty of presenting false testimony to congress, or can be put under oath and ambushed into making statements they knew were false.

Bopper09 , Jan 5, 2017 1:29 PM

The biggest problem today was reality. Fuck it must be hard trying to convince an entire globe that we should be going to war without any facts or truth to anything. I can't believe these clowns actually sat through this like they were somehow relevant. How doesn't someone stand up in the middle of this and just say "Come on guys, really, come on. This is absolutely ridiculous. You can't continue to make shit up. Come on. Seriously."

Who was that ma... , Jan 5, 2017 1:32 PM

"Older men start wars, but younger men fight them." ~ Albert Einstein

"Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die." ~ Herbert Hoover

"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in." ~ George S. McGovern

The other day, I saw one of those bumper stickers that says, "War is Not the Answer". It's a silly bumper sticker because it provides an "answer" but fails to provide the corresponding question. Yes, I know it's a Liberal thing but what they should be saying is that, Government is Not the Answer because, for government, war IS the answer. For government and for those in government, war means power, and wealth, and influence. For the rest of us, war means only death and destruction and poverty.

Bavarian , Jan 5, 2017 1:45 PM

OMG, he's got nothing. Clapperclaimed today thathe's "ready" to brief Trump with his evidence. We're all still waiting. I'm so glad someone is taking these intel weenies to task. They've been hiding behind their secrecy for decades saying whatever they want with zero repercussions as they always deter to need-to-know tactics to silence all questions. Well, a new day has arrived, IC. You will learnthe word ACCOUNTABILITY. You might have to look it up.

How this guy isn't in prison is beyond me.He's a known liar in front of congress. What, did they really have the audacity of swearing him in again? He, Graham, McCain ad Ryan are all squealing like frightened rabbit being pulled out of their holes.This stance of "listen to me because I'm important" rhetoric has lost its luster. People are finally wising up to their crap. Put up or shut up, Clapper.

AriusArmenian , Jan 5, 2017 1:53 PM

Amazing that Trump is standing firm against the US anti-'intelligence' agencies.

He must realize that he is in danger of being JFK'd.

The CIA has stuck its neck way out this time.

They must be extremely desperate.

They want war with Russia and could well JFK Trump to get it.

DarthVaderMentor , Jan 5, 2017 2:04 PM

Well, that confirms it. The "Intelligence Community" leadership (and I use the term "intelligence" and "leadership" rather loosely) of Clapper, Brennan and Morel set off the alarm based on no factual evidence for political purposes, trying to trap Trump with the American flag and the red menace just like they did to GW Bush on the Iraq WMD and to the nigga with ISIS the JV team. They did this solely to help Hillary with her donors and hurt Trump.

Time to clean out the 17 intelligence agencies and ODNI. You can't trust the analysts and there's too few in the front lines doing real HUMINT.

Let's call the Democrats now McCarthyists!

Vin , Jan 5, 2017 2:14 PM

I dont' give a shit if the Russians hacked the DNC or not.

I do care about the criminality exposed.

LET'D TALK ABOUT THE CRIMINALITY AND PUT SOME DEMONRATS IN JAIL!

crazybob369 , Jan 5, 2017 2:27 PM

Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting this déjŕ-vu feeling all over again (to paraphrase Yogi). This ridiculous idea that the Russians somehow won the election for Trump, by hacking and other means, sounds eerily familiar to the WMDs that Iraq supposedly had, that Colon (sic)Powell, et-al, used as an excuse to lead us towar(s) thatare now going on two decades. Fine and dandy against a third world country, fighting with decades old weaponry, never mind that it's taken the life of many brave, young, gullible Americans, as well as 10's of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, but it's a whole different ball game against the Russians. Any type of conventional war against Russia is suicide (if in doubt, ask Napoleon, or Hitler) and if there is a conventional war and either side starts losing, the war goes nuclear and we are all fucked. The only saving grace is that most have us have seen this movie before and hopefully we're not stupid enough to fall for this plot the second time around, because if we do, there ain't going to be a third.

[Jun 03, 2017] Either they dont understand the damage theyre doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt

Jun 03, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

libezkova, June 03, 2017 at 01:05 PM

Another interesting quote from Putin speech:

"What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using anti-Russian slogans,"

"Either they don't understand the damage they're doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt."

Putin I Can Prove Trump Did Not Pass Secrets to Russia

[Jun 02, 2017] Stephen F. Cohen just wants Trump and Putin to get along by Isaac Chotiner

what is really interesting that there were only a couple of sane individuals (Jack Paper , Wilfred_Blake, PT come to mind ) and in the whole discussion thread. The level of hysteria is really incredible and remind me of Stalinist Russia. People are so brainwashed into new McCartyism, that Senator McCarthy is he would know, probably is really proud and little bit envious at the results achieved. This collective Senator McCarthy that MSM now represent proved to be more dramatically efficient
Notable quotes:
"... Threat. OK. Threat. That's a good word. We're in a moment when we need an American president and a Kremlin leader to act at the highest level of statesmanship. Whether they meet in summit or not is not of great importance, but we need intense negotiations to tamp down this new Cold War, particularly in Syria, but not only. Trump is being crippled by these charges, for which I can find no facts whatsoever. ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... You need Trump because he's in the White House. I didn't put him there. I didn't vote for him. Putin's in the Kremlin. I didn't put him in the Kremlin either, but we have what we have, and these guys must have a serious dialog about tamping down these cold wars, which means cooperating on various fronts. The obvious one-and they already are secretly, but it's getting torpedoed-is Syria. ..."
"... "This assault on Trump, for which as yet there are zero facts, has become a grave threat to American national security." ..."
"... So we come now with this so-called Russiagate. You know what that means. It's our shorthand, right? And Trump, even if he was the most wonderfully qualified president, he is utterly crippled in his ability to do diplomacy with the Kremlin. So let me give you the counterfactual example. ..."
"... Imagine that Kennedy had been accused of somehow being, they used to accuse him of being an agent of the Vatican, but let's say he had been accused widely of being an agent of the Kremlin. The only way he could have ended the Cuban Missile Crisis would have been to prove his loyalty by going to nuclear war with Russia. That's the situation we're in today. I mean Trump is not free to take wise advice and use whatever smarts he has to negotiate down this new and dangerous Cold War, so this assault on Trump, for which as yet there are zero facts, has become a grave threat to American national security. That's what I meant. That's what I believe. ..."
"... So we don't have any forensic evidence that there was a hack. There might have been. If there was a hack, we have no evidence it was the Russians, and we have an alternative explanation that it was actually a leak, that somebody inside did a Snowden, just stuck a thumb drive in and walked out with this stuff. We don't know. And when you don't know, you don't go to war. ..."
"... On the face of it, because it so deviated from American mainstream thinking about Putin, which was that he was a demon-that's what was startling about Trump, you're absolutely right. That he alone of all the candidates, even when we had multiple ones in the Democratic and Republican primaries, so far as I recall, he alone made this statement, I think I quote exactly, "Wouldn't it be great if we cooperated with Russia?" My answer is not only great but imperative. He also said, he also said he didn't know that Putin was actually a killer of personal enemies. That is correct. There is no evidence to support those allegations. He also said that Putin is a strong leader. That is also correct. ..."
"... I'm saying that the people with expertise and independence who examined, for example, the Litvinenko poisoning in London, find no evidence that Putin was involved. [Ed. note: A public inquiry in the United Kingdom found that Putin had "probably" approved his murder.] These are not Russians or Americans. These are just people who know about polonium. I'm saying that the newspaper in Moscow-and you're not quite correct that there's no free press in Moscow. There is a small, embattled free press in Moscow. I and my wife are very, very close, very close to the primary one, that's Novaya Gazeta ..."
"... Wait a minute. Let me just get to the point. That notion that he had her killed and put his signature on it is beyond ridiculous. Why? The next day he comes out, there's a press conference, and he's asked about her killing and the charges that the Kremlin was behind it, and he said something that might have been, what's the word? Not politic. Not diplomatic, but it was true. Essentially, I don't remember exactly what he said. Why would we want to kill her? Nobody in Russia read her. She had no influence in Russia. ..."
"... Why did you kill her? ..."
"... Why would I want to kill her? What was my motive? ..."
"... You know, Anna was a great journalist, we mourn her death, but let's be serious. She was not an influential force in Russia. ..."
"... My view is that this Cold War is even more dangerous. As we talk today, and this was not the case in the preceding Cold War, there are three new fronts that are fraught with hot war. You know them as well as I do. The NATO military build-up is going on in the Baltic regions, particularly in the three small Baltic countries, Poland, and if we include missile defense, Romania. That's right on Russia's border, and in Ukraine. You know that story. That's a proxy civil war right on Russia's border, and then of course in Syria, where American and Russian aircraft and Syrian aircraft are flying over the same airspace. ..."
"... And a nation, but a country that has long been deeply divided by history or by God. I mean, we're talking ethnicity, language, religion, political tilting. One part tilts toward Russia, one part tilts toward the West. Many millions of Ukrainians and Russians have intermarried over the years. This is a country that always had the potential to either break apart or launch into civil war. The events of 2014, for which both sides are highly culpable, initiated a civil war. This entourage around Putin, one segment of it was absolutely 1,000 percent convinced that NATO was headed via Kiev to Crimea. Had Crimea fallen in any way to NATO, any way, even in the shadow of NATO, Putin would have had to either go to war or resign. No Russian leader would have been able to sustain that kind of defeat. ..."
"... I don't want to go down in a subway and get blown up. It's going to happen. The Russians are excellent at this. They've got great intelligence. We're pretty good-not as good as the Russians. We need to combine it all. I see that this kind of alliance is good; we move on then to finding the solution in Ukraine and in the Baltic region. That's what Reagan did. Do you remember that Reagan going to Geneva, I think it was November 1985? Then two years later-I think this is right-he and Gorbachev for the first time in history, Isaac, abolished an entire category of nuclear weapons. This is what I want. This is probably what's not possible. ..."
"... I mean for Christ's sake. Have you watched Carter Page on television? ..."
"... Correction, May 30, 2017: This article originally misstated that the Moscow hotel mentioned in the dossier was the St. Regis. It was the Ritz-Carlton. ( Return .) ..."
"... I see little independent evidence that Putin wanted Trump specifically to be elected rather than wanting HRC not to be elected. There was no attempt at interfering with the GOP primary in Trump's favor. Any notion that Trump was groomed by Putin in some kind of long game defies reason. Simply put, no one could have had any confidence that Trump would win, ever. ..."
"... So if both of these assumptions hold, what the Democrats are creating, essentially, is a "stab in the back" myth on which they can focus their anger while muddying issues of accountability. Putin, I think it's clear, did not think that Trump had much chance of winning. To say he got "lucky" also doesn't describe the current reality, because this issue will probably taint US-Russian relations far into the future, and in ways no one could have foreseen. ..."
"... But then it's also possible that this will taint American politics into the distant future. The thing about stab-in-the-back myths is that they're emotional, it's extremely difficult for people to a discuss them. much less turn a contested narrative into one based upon mutual agreement. This will be true whether Trump gets impeached or serves two terms. ..."
"... "Europeans have an opinion of Americans as people who hysterically overreact to even the smallest of problems, real, or imagined" ..."
"... And what did exactly Putin did? Told everyone what they already knew about Hillary Clinton? American politics is all about negative ads and made up stuff about other candidates, how exactly was it news to anyone that Hillary Clinton was plotting to bring down Bernie Sanders? Did you guys never have an election before? ..."
"... Are you saying Putin finances Antifa? Because so far they have been the biggest force behind making Trump and Alt-Right look good. That would not be impossible, some corporations did that with environmental groups and they highlight targets for them that were either competitors or themselves but to paint those corporations as victims of unreasonable radicals (hence drowning any constructive criticism). ..."
"... His brilliant placement of several thousand Russian operatives in MI, WI and PA, who were able to bribe a significant number of voters to tip the electoral scale in Trump's favor, was simply brilliant. ..."
"... While this guy isn't saying Trump is right, in as nice a way possible he is saying the NeoCon/NeoLibs are as much to blame and the anti-Russian hysteria is overblown, out of control and incredibly short-sighted. ..."
"... I don't think the Russian interference amounted to a hill of beans in this election. If you think it did, you are delusional. Do you really think some person in the Midwest changed their vote because of what was in the Podesta emails? You're an idiot if you think that. ..."
"... And let's not forget our own interference. ..."
"... So why should Russia trust a country that reneged on its promises and expanded its way to Russia's border? ..."
consortiumnews.com

Stephen F. Cohen has long been one of the leading scholars of Russia and the Soviet Union. He wrote a biography of the Bolshevik revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin and is a contributing editor at the Nation, which his wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, edits and publishes. In recent years, Cohen has emerged as a more ideologically dexterous figure, ripping those he thinks are pursuing a "new Cold War" with Russia and calling for President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to form "an alliance against international terrorism." Cohen has gone so far as to describe the investigations into the Trump campaign and Russia "the No. 1 threat to the United States today."

... ... ...

I heard you recently on Fox News. You said that the "assault" on President Trump "was the No. 1 threat to the United States today." What did you mean by that?

Threat. OK. Threat. That's a good word. We're in a moment when we need an American president and a Kremlin leader to act at the highest level of statesmanship. Whether they meet in summit or not is not of great importance, but we need intense negotiations to tamp down this new Cold War, particularly in Syria, but not only. Trump is being crippled by these charges, for which I can find no facts whatsoever.

Wait, which charges are we talking about?

That he is somehow in the thrall or complicity or control, under the influence of the Kremlin.

I think it would help if he would admit what his own intelligence agencies are telling him, that Russia played some role in

No, I don't accept that. I don't accept that at all, not for one minute.

People in the Trump administration admit this too.

Well they're not the brightest lights.

And the president is?

No. You didn't ask me that. You asked me, you said, some of the president's people. You're referring to that intel report of January, correct? The one that was produced that said Putin directed the attack on the DNC?

I was referring to that and many news accounts that Russia was behind the hacking, yes.

The news accounts are of no value to us. I mean you and I both know ...

No value? None?

No. No value. Not on face value. Just because the New York Times says that I don't know, Carter Page or [Paul] Manafort or [Michael] Flynn did something wrong, I don't accept that. I need to see the evidence.

So then how do you know what's going on in, say, Ukraine? You're not reading "news accounts" of it?

I read on the internet mainly. I can't read Ukrainian very well, but most of the sources coming out of Ukraine are in Russian anyway.

So that media's OK, but the New York Times isn't?

No. It absolutely is not OK. No, no, no, no, no, no.

OK, let's just go back to what you were saying about Trump being hamstrung.

You need Trump because he's in the White House. I didn't put him there. I didn't vote for him. Putin's in the Kremlin. I didn't put him in the Kremlin either, but we have what we have, and these guys must have a serious dialog about tamping down these cold wars, which means cooperating on various fronts. The obvious one-and they already are secretly, but it's getting torpedoed-is Syria.

So we come now with this so-called Russiagate. You know what that means. It's our shorthand, right? And Trump, even if he was the most wonderfully qualified president, he is utterly crippled in his ability to do diplomacy with the Kremlin. So let me give you the counterfactual example.

Imagine that Kennedy had been accused of somehow being, they used to accuse him of being an agent of the Vatican, but let's say he had been accused widely of being an agent of the Kremlin. The only way he could have ended the Cuban Missile Crisis would have been to prove his loyalty by going to nuclear war with Russia. That's the situation we're in today. I mean Trump is not free to take wise advice and use whatever smarts he has to negotiate down this new and dangerous Cold War, so this assault on Trump, for which as yet there are zero facts, has become a grave threat to American national security. That's what I meant. That's what I believe.

To use your Kennedy example, there was no evidence that Kennedy was an agent of either the Vatican or the Kremlin-

No, but Isaac you're not old enough to remember, but during the campaign, because he was the first Catholic, they all went on about he's an agent of the Vatican.

I know that. I'm old enough to have read "news accounts" of it. Anyway, there was a hacking of the DNC and-

Wait actually no, Isaac stop. Stop. Now, I mean we don't know that for a fact.

That there was a hacking of the DNC?

Yeah we do not know that for a fact.

What do we think happened?

Well ...

So you're really going to argue with me that the DNC wasn't hacked?

I'm saying I don't know that to be the case.

OK.

I will refer you to an alternative report and you can decide yourself.

Can we agree on this much at least: that Trump said there was a hack, refused to say who he thought did it, encouraged the hackers to keep doing it, at the same time that he was getting intelligence reports that it was the Russians, and that he continued to talk very positively about Putin after he was told this?

You've given me too many facts to process, but if Trump said he knew it was a hack, he was not fully informed. We just don't know it for a fact, Isaac.

So we don't have any forensic evidence that there was a hack. There might have been. If there was a hack, we have no evidence it was the Russians, and we have an alternative explanation that it was actually a leak, that somebody inside did a Snowden, just stuck a thumb drive in and walked out with this stuff. We don't know. And when you don't know, you don't go to war.

Let me try another tactic.

It's not me making this stuff up. It's not my opinion. It's just out there. I read it, and I think it's credible.

Why do you think Trump, who has essentially, as far as I can tell, no clue about what's going on anywhere and can't keep his mind on some issue for 10 minutes, has had in his head consistently time and again that we must make peace with Putin, we must come together with Putin, Putin's a good guy? What do you make of that?

Well you have given me a kind of primitive version of what Trump said. First of all, I don't share the view that Trump's an idiot. Trump's a clever, cunning, smart man, or he wouldn't have become Donald Trump. Whether that's applicable to the presidency is a different question, but to treat him as a buffoon and an idiot is just silly.

On the face of it, because it so deviated from American mainstream thinking about Putin, which was that he was a demon-that's what was startling about Trump, you're absolutely right. That he alone of all the candidates, even when we had multiple ones in the Democratic and Republican primaries, so far as I recall, he alone made this statement, I think I quote exactly, "Wouldn't it be great if we cooperated with Russia?" My answer is not only great but imperative. He also said, he also said he didn't know that Putin was actually a killer of personal enemies. That is correct. There is no evidence to support those allegations. He also said that Putin is a strong leader. That is also correct.

You say there's no evidence Putin was a killer. Don't you think if Russia had a more robust free press and was more of a liberal democracy, evidence might actually emerge?

There's no evidence. I know there are allegations, but I have looked into the three or four most famous cases. I can't look at them all because there's about 30 now, some of them withdrawn.

So you're saying these Putin enemies who keep turning up dead in Moscow, and then those deaths are not properly investigated, there's no evidence that Putin was behind them? That's your argument?

Not behind, that's correct. He was not behind. He didn't order the killings, yes.

We know that because there's been a fair investigation and there's a free press to report on that? That's what you are saying?

I'm saying that the people with expertise and independence who examined, for example, the Litvinenko poisoning in London, find no evidence that Putin was involved. [Ed. note: A public inquiry in the United Kingdom found that Putin had "probably" approved his murder.] These are not Russians or Americans. These are just people who know about polonium. I'm saying that the newspaper in Moscow-and you're not quite correct that there's no free press in Moscow. There is a small, embattled free press in Moscow. I and my wife are very, very close, very close to the primary one, that's Novaya Gazeta. That's the newspaper that employed Anna Politkovskaya and several other journalists that were assassinated.

Who killed her?

I mean, I don't know who killed her. They've arrested the gunman, but they never get to the contract-giver. It almost certainly came out of Chechnya, almost certainly.

And who runs Chechnya?

You're headed now into a complicated turf.

You know who runs Chechnya, and you know who his patron is.

Let me put it to you like this: On the chart of federal authority, Ramzan Kadyrov runs Chechnya, and Putin could remove him.

OK, well, there you go.

No, that's the beginning of the discussion. What would happen in Chechnya if Putin removed Kadyrov? He either leaves Kadyrov in power and tries to rein him in, or the Russian army tries again to occupy Chechnya, which was a catastrophe two times under Yeltsin. You can't do it. What choice does Putin have at the moment?

Didn't Putin speak disparagingly after Anna's death and say she had "minimal influence"?

Wait a minute. Let me just get to the point. That notion that he had her killed and put his signature on it is beyond ridiculous. Why? The next day he comes out, there's a press conference, and he's asked about her killing and the charges that the Kremlin was behind it, and he said something that might have been, what's the word? Not politic. Not diplomatic, but it was true. Essentially, I don't remember exactly what he said. Why would we want to kill her? Nobody in Russia read her. She had no influence in Russia. What he said was about 95 percent true. Very few people except the inner political class knew who Anna Politkovskaya was, just like the great majority of Americans don't know who Stephen Cohen and Isaac Chotiner are. We are known to the people who care about the things we do.

What he was saying was, when people said, Why did you kill her? He said, Why would I want to kill her? What was my motive? He shouldn't have said it, I guess. He should have said, You know, Anna was a great journalist, we mourn her death, but let's be serious. She was not an influential force in Russia. That would have been better but he just, he's a blunt sort of guy. He said what he said.

Let's turn to Putin and America. Why do you think we have entered a new Cold War?

My view is that this Cold War is even more dangerous. As we talk today, and this was not the case in the preceding Cold War, there are three new fronts that are fraught with hot war. You know them as well as I do. The NATO military build-up is going on in the Baltic regions, particularly in the three small Baltic countries, Poland, and if we include missile defense, Romania. That's right on Russia's border, and in Ukraine. You know that story. That's a proxy civil war right on Russia's border, and then of course in Syria, where American and Russian aircraft and Syrian aircraft are flying over the same airspace.

And there is the utter demonization of Putin in this country. It is just beyond anything that the American political elite ever said about Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and the rest. If you demonize the other side, it makes negotiating harder.

You just said that Ukraine is a civil war. What was the Russian annexation of Crimea?

There's a long history, but it is a civil war in the sense that Ukraine is a country.

We agree on that.

And a nation, but a country that has long been deeply divided by history or by God. I mean, we're talking ethnicity, language, religion, political tilting. One part tilts toward Russia, one part tilts toward the West. Many millions of Ukrainians and Russians have intermarried over the years. This is a country that always had the potential to either break apart or launch into civil war. The events of 2014, for which both sides are highly culpable, initiated a civil war. This entourage around Putin, one segment of it was absolutely 1,000 percent convinced that NATO was headed via Kiev to Crimea. Had Crimea fallen in any way to NATO, any way, even in the shadow of NATO, Putin would have had to either go to war or resign. No Russian leader would have been able to sustain that kind of defeat.

Gallup did a poll afterward that 80-some percent of Crimeans wanted to be reunited with Russia.

You're explaining the way Putin and his advisers were thinking, which I agree is important context, but that doesn't give you the right to invade a sovereign country regardless of what a Gallup poll may say.

Isaac, come on. Great powers preach international law, and they do what they think they must.

If a province in any country votes for independence certainly the Crimeans did. There's just no question that that was a legitimate referendum. People get a little confused about what the choice was.

But this referendum was after the Russians had gone in.

No, no, no. Well ... wait, wait, wait, wait. Russia was already there by treaty. There were approximately 23,000 Russian soldiers at the naval base in Crimea, at Sevastopol. It was an invasion only in the sense that they left the base on Crimea.

[The idea of Crimea being part of Russia] was alive in Russia for years and years. Putin was never interested in it. ... That was a sleeping dog, which should not have been awakened, but the events of 2014 awakened it. Once that happened, it was close to inevitable that Russia would proceed with the annexation of Crimea, which was a part of Russia for 300 years.

What's now Pakistan was part of India for a long time. That doesn't mean India can go in and take Lahore tomorrow.

You know if we follow your logic, we're going to end up in Texas. We got to stay in modern history where leaders have a memory.

You and I are going to end up in Texas?

Well, you know what I mean. Texas wasn't always ours. The point is how far back in history do we go?

That's my point. Anyway, what did you mean when you said leakers here had become a fourth branch of government, and one intent on undermining Trump?

When I was asked what's driving the leaking, because you would agree that virtually every day almost there's a new news story that's based on a leak. You have to go back to when it began, which was the summer of 2016. The Clinton campaign was deeply involved. You know the story of this dossier right?

Yes.

The one BuzzFeed published?

I do.

It's the one that has urinating in the Ritz-Carlton hotel.*

I was trying to get you to keep going without saying that, but there you go.

Well, take it out. But there's a serious point here. CNN, where they broadcast 1,000 hours about this dossier as though it's authentic, says it won't repeat that part because it's too salacious. No, the reason is if you broadcast that part, people would realize the whole thing is bullshit.

I don't want to go down in a subway and get blown up. It's going to happen. The Russians are excellent at this. They've got great intelligence. We're pretty good-not as good as the Russians. We need to combine it all. I see that this kind of alliance is good; we move on then to finding the solution in Ukraine and in the Baltic region. That's what Reagan did. Do you remember that Reagan going to Geneva, I think it was November 1985? Then two years later-I think this is right-he and Gorbachev for the first time in history, Isaac, abolished an entire category of nuclear weapons. This is what I want. This is probably what's not possible.

Steve, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. I hope when this is printed that you will believe it is real news and not fake news.

No, no, no. Let me make a distinction. Opinion, what you and I think, is real news. It's our news. It's what we think. But when I read in the newspaper that Carter Page was somehow a Russian agent, I had plenty of reasons to know that that is really a super bogus report.

[Jun 02, 2017] Forum - The Unz Review

Notable quotes:
"... The comments under that piece are depressing. US liberals are such dumb assholes, disturbing how they're totally buying the anti-Russian narrative without any thought for the possible consequences. ..."
"... Cohen is an intelligent, accurate commentator and historian on Russian matters. The lamestream media, including Slate as indicated by the interviewer and other articles, seem to have it in for Russia in the manner of fascist propaganda. Of course, the fact Russia has a large store of nukes, makes the prevailing propaganda meme not only criminal but nihilistically stupid. ..."
Jun 02, 2017 | www.unz.com

German_reader , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 1:28 am GMT

The comments under that piece are depressing. US liberals are such dumb assholes, disturbing how they're totally buying the anti-Russian narrative without any thought for the possible consequences.

WorkingClass , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 2:59 am GMT

I have to wonder why SLATE published this. Too much truth!

exiled off mainstreet , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 3:50 am GMT

Cohen is an intelligent, accurate commentator and historian on Russian matters. The lamestream media, including Slate as indicated by the interviewer and other articles, seem to have it in for Russia in the manner of fascist propaganda. Of course, the fact Russia has a large store of nukes, makes the prevailing propaganda meme not only criminal but nihilistically stupid.

exiled off mainstreet , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 3:52 am GMT

@German_reader They robotically follow the party propaganda line like nihilist fascist lemmings almost like those following the prevailing view during the tausendjaehrige.

Nobody , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 5:17 am GMT

It wasn't too long ago that the lefties wanted to be bestest friends with the USSR. Now, Putin is our enemy.

Eagle Eye , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 6:08 am GMT

Breathtaking how WITHIN DAYS after November 8, 2016 all the former Russia-loving Left-Totalitarians did a smooth 180 and now spout anti-Russian rhetoric that would have seemed overwrought to Cold Warriors back in the 1950s.

Chuck , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 5:20 pm GMT

Putin's a good goy:

http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/197664/holocaust-deniers-in-russia-now-face-five-years-in/

utu , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 6:21 pm GMT

@Eagle Eye Left-Totalitarians did a smooth 180

It is easy for them. Till June 22, 1941 all communist in America were isolationists and supported America First, Charles Lindbergh. They were writing pacifist pamphlets and composed anti-war songs, etc. And within one day they switched 180. Took them some effort to cover up traces of their isolationist and pacifist episode.

http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-when-communism-inspired-americans/#comment-1855425
"Professor Zinn, in May of 1941 your friend, Pete Seeger, produced an album called Songs for John Doe which was a collection of blue collar songs that included one called The Ballad of October 16th. [At the time, Pete Seeger had formed his first commercial band called the Almanac Singers.] That song demonstrated yours and Pete's pacifist philosophy by excoriating Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for urging United States entry into World War II to fight Hitler. Shortly after the album's release, you and Pete were desperately trying to retrieve all the copies to take them out of circulation. Exactly what happened between May and June of 1941 to turn you from devoted anti-war activists into sabre-rattling patriots, resulting in your enlisting in the Army Air Force as a bombardier?"

RobinG , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 7:24 pm GMT

@Eagle Eye The Clintonistas and Berniacs have shamelessly united to attack Trump, cynically using the fakest of fake news. This weekend they're marching "for Truth." If that were true, why aren't they marching to investigate Hillary and who killed Seth Rich?

But no. On June 3 they're out to get Trump.
"Demonstrations to call for urgent investigations into Russian interference in the US election and ties to Donald Trump, his administration and his associates." https://www.marchfortruth.info/

Meanwhile, barely a peep about illegal, unconstitutional attacks on Syria, or huge sale of arms to Saudis that will likely end up with terrorists. A better investigation would be Who Killed Seth Rich. Ask for one here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/appoint-special-prosecutor-investigate-murder-seth-rich-alleged-wikileaks-email-leaker

On July 10, 2016, Seth Rich was shot twice in the early morning as he walked back to his house in Washington D.C. Immediately after the crime, the death was called an armed robbery but none of Seth Rich's belongings were taken from him.

Rod Wheeler, a private investigator hired by the family, said that there was evidence Seth Rich had contacted WikiLeaks and that law enforcement were covering this up. MSM is not covering this murder, instead pushing it to the side, so it is now up to us.

The facts do not add up, law enforcement stopped covering the crime, and now it is time for us to fight for justice. Seth Rich deserves this.

Ryan , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 9:43 pm GMT

I got the sense that the reporter was in high school or something. Totally immature.

Agent76 , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 9:57 pm GMT

14.05.2017 International Cyber Attack: Roots Traced to US National Security Agency

Over 45,000 ransomware attacks have been tracked in large-scale attacks across Europe and Asia - particularly Russia and China - as well as attacks in the US and South America.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/05/14/international-cyber-attack-roots-traced-us-national-security-agency.html

Jan 2, 2017 BOOM! CNN Caught Using Video Game Image In Fake Russian Hacking Story

It looks like CNN Has tried to pull the wool over our eyes once again. This time, they used a screenshot from the Fallout 4 Video game to paint the picture of Russian Hacking. To bad that's not what a real hacking screen looks like. And an image you will only find in the video game!

Daniil Adamov , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 11:45 pm GMT

Is it just me, or is this an exceptionally awful interview?

Whether you agree with Cohen or not (IMHO he certainly says some silly things there), the interviewer is demagogical and biased in the extreme. I suppose that's sort of the norm for them?

By the way, is there any evidence of 1) Putin ordering someone killed or 2) The Collusion out there yet? If read uncritically, the interview gives the impression that of course there is, all those smart and good people say so. If read critically one notices that if there's any evidence of anything, it's never mentioned. But if only Russia had a more liberal media environment, then surely

KenH , Show Comment Next New Comment June 1, 2017 at 11:59 pm GMT

Stephen F. Cohen is one of the few honest and patriotic Jews living in America who's capably of telling the unvarnished truth. I regularly seek out his writings for an objective appraisal of U.S. – Russia relations.

Unfortunately, there are ten Victoria Nuland's, William Kristol's and Chuck U. Schumer's to every one Stephen F. Cohen.

[May 31, 2017] Seth Rich murder is becoming more and more suspicious

Why they try to suppress Kim Dotcom evidence... Why on the Earth Cloudflare was allowed to investigate DNC leak by FBI? Is it really based in Ukraine ?
Notable quotes:
"... CrossTalking with Hank Sheinkopf, H. A. Goodman, and Alex Christoforou. ..."
"... The Company Cloudflare who investigated the server is based out of the Ukraine, you can also find the connection to Soros. Media is just covering up the truth. ..."
May 29, 2017 | RT

On July 10, 2016, DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered in Washington D.C. Was Rich the source who provided Wikileaks with the DNC's internal emails? Some have speculated that this is the reason for his murder. If true, what becomes of the mantra "Russia did it?"

CrossTalking with Hank Sheinkopf, H. A. Goodman, and Alex Christoforou.

dontdoleft

The facts are the collusion was thought up between Robbie Mook, Hillary Clinton and John Podesta. Read on politico's site a article by Kenneth Vogel, "Ukrainian Efforts to Sabotage Trump Backfires"

The only colluding going on was by the Ukraine and the Democrats.

The Company Cloudflare who investigated the server is based out of the Ukraine, you can also find the connection to Soros. Media is just covering up the truth.

[May 31, 2017] So why do the American people accept US criminal hegemony, domestic and foreign brutal tyranny neo-colonialist blood-letting with scant protest? by Vanessa Beeley

May 31, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info
Originally from: Gaslighting State Mind Control and Abusive Narcissism This article was first published by 21st Century Wire

Exceptionalism: the condition of being different from the norm; also : a theory expounding the exceptionalism especially of a nation or region.

May 29, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - There are many theories surrounding the origin of American exceptionalism. The most popular in US folklore, being that it describes America's unique character as a "free" nation founded on democratic ideals and civil liberties. The Declaration of Independence from British colonial rule is the foundation of this theory and has persevered throughout the often violent history of the US since its birth as a free nation.

Over time, exceptionalism has come to represent superiority in the minds and hearts of Americans. Belief in their economic, military and ideological supremacy is what has motivated successive US governments to invest in shaping the world in their superior image with little or no regard for the destruction left in the wake of their exceptional hegemony.

In considering itself, exceptional, the US has extricated itself from any legal obligation to adhere to either International law or even the common moral laws that should govern Humanity. The US has become exceptionally lawless and authoritarian particularly in its intolerant neo-colonialist foreign policy. The colonized have become the colonialists, concealing their brutal savagery behind a veneer of missionary zeal that they are converting the world to their form of exceptionalist Utopia.

Such is the media & marketing apparatus that supports this superiority complex, the majority of US congress exist within its echo chamber and are willing victims of its indoctrination. The power of the propaganda vortex pulls them in and then radiates outwards, infecting all in its path. Self-extraction from this oligarchical perspective is perceived as a revolutionary act that challenges the core of US security so exceptionalism becomes the modus vivendi.

Just as Israel considers itself 'the chosen people' from a religious perspective, the US considers itself the chosen nation to impose its version of Democratic reform and capitalist hegemony the world over. One can see why Israel and the US make such symbiotic bedfellows.

"The fatal war for humanity is the war with Russia and China toward which Washington is driving the US and Washington's NATO and Asian puppet states. The bigotry of the US power elite is rooted in its self-righteous doctrine that stipulates America as the "indispensable country" ~ Paul Craig Roberts: Washington Drives the World Towards War.

So why do the American people accept US criminal hegemony, domestic and foreign brutal tyranny & neo-colonialist blood-letting with scant protest? Why do the European vassal states not rise up against this authoritarian regime that flaunts international law and drags its NATO allies down the path to complete lawlessness and diplomatic ignominy?

What is Gaslighting?

Gaslight

The psychological term "Gaslighting" comes from a 1944 Hollywood classic movie called Gaslight. Gaslighting describes the abuse employed by a narcissist to instil in their victim's mind, an extreme anxiety and confusion to the extent where they no longer have faith in their own powers of logic, reason and judgement. These gaslighting techniques were adopted by central intelligence agencies in the US and Europe as part of their psychological warfare methods, used primarily during torture or interrogation.

Gaslighting as an abuser's modus operandi, involves, specifically, the withholding of factual information and its replacement with false or fictional information designed to confuse and disorientate. This subtle and Machiavellian process eventually undermines the mental stability of its victims reducing them to such a depth of insecurity and identity crisis that they become entirely dependent upon their abuser for their sense of reality and even identity.

Gaslighting involves a step by step psychological process to manipulate and destabilize its victim. It is built up over time and consists of repetitive information feeds that enter the victim's subconscious over a period of time, until it is fully registered on the subconscious "hard disk" and cannot be overridden by the conscious floppy disk. Put more simply, it is brainwashing.

" Overall, the main reason for gaslighting is to create a dynamic where the abuser has complete control over their victim so that they are so weak that they are very easy to manipulate." ~ Alex Myles

Three Stages of Gaslighting: Stage One

The first stage depends upon trust in the integrity and unimpeachable intentions of the abuser, a state of reliance that has been engendered by the abuser's artful self-promotion and ingratiating propaganda. Once this trust is gained, the abuser will begin to subtly undermine it, creating situations and environments where the victim will begin to doubt their own judgement. Eventually the victim will rely entirely upon the abuser to alleviate their uncertainty and to restore their sense of reality which is in fact that of the abuser.

Stage Two

The second stage, defence, is a process by which the abuser isolates the victim, not only from their own sense of identity but from the validation of their peers. They are made to feel that their opinion is worthless, discredited, down-right weird. In political circles they would be labelled a conspiracy theorist, a dissident, a terror apologist. As a consequence, the victim will withdraw from society and cease to express themselves for fear of ridicule, judgement or punishment.

This stage can also be compared to Stockholm Syndrome where a hostage or captive is reduced,by psychological mind games, back to infantile dependency upon their captor. Narcissistic abuse bonds the victim to the aggressor via trauma. Stockholm Syndrome bonds the victim to the aggressor via regression to an infantile state where the abuser/aggressor becomes the "parent" who will rescue the victim from imminent annihilation. Both methods tap into the victim's survival mechanisms to gain and maintain control.

Stage Three

The final stage is depression. A life under the tyrannical rule of a narcissist drives the victim into a state of extreme confusion. They are stripped of dignity & self-reliance. They, ultimately exist in an information vacuum which is only filled by that which the abuser deems suitable or relevant. This can eventually invoke symptoms of PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder]. Flashbacks, constant apprehension, hyper vigilance, mind paralysis, rage and even violence. The process is complete and the victim has been reduced to a willing accomplice in the abusers creation of a very distorted reality.

Exceptionalism or Narcissism?

Gaslight

We are currently seeing the transformation of US exceptionalism into an abusive Narcissism .

The gargantuan apparatus of mind bending and controlling is being put into hyper drive by the ruling elite. We are inundated with propaganda that challenges our sense of reality but only after being "tenderized" by the fear factor. Fear of "terror", fear of war, fear of financial insecurity, fear of gun violence, fear of our own shadow. Once we are suitably quaking in our boots, in comes the rendition of reality that relieves our anxiety. If we challenge this version of events we are labelled a conspiracy theorist, a threat to security. We are hounded, discredited, slandered and ridiculed. We are isolated and threatened.

Wars are started in the same way. Despite the hindsight that should enable us to see it coming, the process swings into motion with resounding success. The ubiquitous dictator, the oligarch who threatens to destroy all that the US and her allies represent which of course is, freedom, equality & civil liberty all wrapped up in the Democracy shiny paper and tied with the exceptionalist ribbon.

Next the false flag to engender fear, terror and to foment sectarian strife. The support of a "legitimate" organic, indigenous "revolution" conveniently emerging in tandem with US ambitions for imposing their model of governance upon a target nation. The arming of "freedom fighters", the securing of mercenary additions to these manufactured proxy forces. All this is sold in the name of freedom and democracy to a public that is already in a state of anxiety and insecurity, lacking in judgement or insight into any other reality but that of their "abuser".

The NGO Complex Deployment

Finally, the Humanitarians are deployed. The forces for "good", the vanguard of integrity and ethical intervention. The power that offers all lost souls a stake-holding in the salvation of sovereign nations that have lost their way and need rescuing. A balm for a damaged soul, to know they can leave their doubts and fears in such trustworthy hands as HRW, Amnesty International, they can assuage their deep sense of guilt at the suffering being endured by the people of far flung nations because they can depend upon the NGOs to provide absolution with minimal effort on their part. They don't realise that NGOs are an integral part of their abuser's apparatus, operating on the leash of neo-colonialist financing and influence. NGOs provide the optic through which the abuser will allow the victim to perceive their world and once absorbed into this flawed prism the victim's own cognitive dissonance will ensure they do not attempt a jail break.

In this state of oppressed consciousness the victim accepts what they are told. They accept that the US can sell cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia that obliterate human beings and lay waste to essential civilian infrastructure in Yemen. They accept that the US financially, ideologically & militarily supports the illegal state of Israel and provides the arsenal of experimental weapons that maim and mutilate children and civilians on a scale that is unimaginable. They accept that a crippling blockade of the already impoverished and starving nation of Yemen is "necessary" to resolve the issues of sectarian divisions that only exist in the minds of their Congressional abusers.

The majority of Americans accept mass murder under the pretext of the right to protect , because their ability to form rational and reasoned opinions has been engineered out of them. This is now the definition of US exceptionalism. It is their ability to manipulate the world into accepting their lawlessness and global hegemony agenda. In seeking to impose its own image upon our world the US has drifted so far from its founding principles, one wonders how they will ever return to them. They have employed a recognised form of torture to ensure capitulation to their mission of world domination which entails the mental, physical and spiritual torture of target civilian populations.

In conclusion, the US has indeed achieved exceptionalism. The US has become an exceptional global executioner and persecutor of Humanity. Imperialism is a euphemism for the depths of abuse the US is inflicting upon the people of this world.

Our only hope is to break the cycle of abuse with empathy for the victim and with appreciation for the years of brainwashing that precedes their agonizing passive-aggressive apathy towards crimes being committed in "their name".

This was an email I received recently from one courageous young American girl whose epiphany is testament to the resilience and survival instinct of the human spirit.

" My name is Caroline and I am a 22 year old US citizen. I only fairly recently discovered the truth about Empire/NATO's activities in Syria and Libya and so many other countries (thanks to writers like Andre Vltchek, Cory Morningstar, Forrest Palmer). I am sickened when I remember that I signed some of those Avaaz petitions and I feel horrified at knowing that I have Syrian and Libyan blood on my hands. I want to believe that I'm not "really" guilty because I really thought (as I had been told) that I was not doing something bad at the time, but still, what I did contributed to the suffering of those people and I want to do something to atone in at least some small way, even though I probably can't "make up" for what I did or erase my crime.

If it's not too much trouble, could you please tell me what you think I should do, if there is anything?"

She deserves an answer

***

Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and s ince 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall .

[May 30, 2017] Believing the Russian Hacking Claim by David Swanson

Notable quotes:
"... Government lies are common when seducing a population to support a war, but the Russian "hacking" claims are unusual in that U.S. officials supply no evidence while the "fact" is just assumed ..."
"... All of this is otherwise with the idea that the Russian government determined the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. US corporate media reports often claim that Russia did decide the election or tried to do that or wanted to try to do that. But they also often admit to not knowing whether any such thing is the case. ..."
"... There is no established account, with or without evidence to support it, of exactly what Russia supposedly did. And yet there are countless articles casually referring, as if to established fact to the . . . ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Business Standard ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Former CIA Director John Brennan, in the same Congressional testimony in which he took the principled stand "I don't do evidence," testified that "the fact that the Russians tried to influence resources and authority and power, and the fact that the Russians tried to influence that election so that the will of the American people was not going to be realized by that election, I find outrageous and something that we need to, with every last ounce of devotion to this country, resist and try to act to prevent further instances of that." He provided no evidence. ..."
"... Activists have even planned "demonstrations to call for urgent investigations into Russian interference in the US election." They declare that "every day we learn more about the role Russian state-led hacking and information warfare played in the 2016 election." ( March for Truth .) ..."
"... Belief that Russia helped put Trump in the White House is steadily rising in the US public. Anything commonly referred to as fact will gain credibility. People will assume that at some point someone actually established that it was a fact. ..."
"... Keeping the story in the news without evidence are articles about polling, about the opinions of celebrities, and about all kinds of tangentially related scandals, their investigations, and obstruction thereof. Most of the substance of most of the articles that lead off with reference to the "Russian influence on the election" is about White House officials having some sort of connections to the Russian government, or Russian businesses, or just Russians. It's as if an investigation of Iraqi WMD claims focused on Blackwater murders or whether Scooter Libby had taken lessons in Arabic, or whether the photo of Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands was taken by an Iraqi. ..."
May 30, 2017 | original.antiwar.com

Government lies are common when seducing a population to support a war, but the Russian "hacking" claims are unusual in that U.S. officials supply no evidence while the "fact" is just assumed

When the US public was told that Spain had blown up the Maine, or Vietnam had returned fire, or Iraq had stockpiled weapons, or Libya was planning a massacre, the claims were straightforward and disprovable.

Before people began referring to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, somebody had to lie that it had happened, and there had to be an understanding of what had supposedly happened. No investigation into whether anything had happened could have taken as its starting point the certainty that a Vietnamese attack or attacks had happened. And no investigation into whether a Vietnamese attack had happened could have focused its efforts on unrelated matters, such as whether anyone in Vietnam had ever done business with any relatives or colleagues of Robert McNamara.

All of this is otherwise with the idea that the Russian government determined the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. US corporate media reports often claim that Russia did decide the election or tried to do that or wanted to try to do that. But they also often admit to not knowing whether any such thing is the case.

There is no established account, with or without evidence to support it, of exactly what Russia supposedly did. And yet there are countless articles casually referring, as if to established fact to the . . .

  • "Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election" ( Yahoo ).
  • "Russian attempts to disrupt the election" ( New York Times ).
  • "Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election" ( ABC ).
  • "Russian influence over the 2016 presidential election" ( The Intercept ).
  • "a multi-pronged investigation to uncover the full extent of Russia's election-meddling" ( Time ).
  • "Russian interference in the US election" ( CNN ).
  • "Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election" ( American Constitution Society ).
  • "Russian hacking in US Election" ( Business Standard )."

"Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking" we're told by the New York Times , but what is "election hacking"? Its definition seems to vary widely. And what evidence is there of Russia having done it?

The "Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections" even exists as a factual event in Wikipedia , not as an allegation or a theory. But the factual nature of it is not so much asserted as brushed aside.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, in the same Congressional testimony in which he took the principled stand "I don't do evidence," testified that "the fact that the Russians tried to influence resources and authority and power, and the fact that the Russians tried to influence that election so that the will of the American people was not going to be realized by that election, I find outrageous and something that we need to, with every last ounce of devotion to this country, resist and try to act to prevent further instances of that." He provided no evidence.

Activists have even planned "demonstrations to call for urgent investigations into Russian interference in the US election." They declare that "every day we learn more about the role Russian state-led hacking and information warfare played in the 2016 election." ( March for Truth .)

Belief that Russia helped put Trump in the White House is steadily rising in the US public. Anything commonly referred to as fact will gain credibility. People will assume that at some point someone actually established that it was a fact.

Keeping the story in the news without evidence are articles about polling, about the opinions of celebrities, and about all kinds of tangentially related scandals, their investigations, and obstruction thereof. Most of the substance of most of the articles that lead off with reference to the "Russian influence on the election" is about White House officials having some sort of connections to the Russian government, or Russian businesses, or just Russians. It's as if an investigation of Iraqi WMD claims focused on Blackwater murders or whether Scooter Libby had taken lessons in Arabic, or whether the photo of Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands was taken by an Iraqi.

A general trend away from empirical evidence has been extensively noted and discussed. There is no more public evidence that Seth Rich (a Democratic National Committee staffer who was murdered last year) leaked Democratic emails than there is that the Russian government stole them. Yet both claims have passionate believers.

Still, the claims about Russia are unique in their wide proliferation, broad acceptance, and status as something to be constantly referred to as though already established, constantly augmented by other Russia-related stories that add nothing to the central claim. This phenomenon, in my view, is as dangerous as any lies and fabrications coming out of the racist right.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org . He is the author of War Is A Lie . Reprinted from his website .

Read more by David Swanson Iraq Has WMDs and Russia Has Invaded – September 3rd, 2014

[May 30, 2017] Swamp Politics, Trump Style Russiagate Diverts From the Real White House Scandals by Anthony DiMaggio

Notable quotes:
"... As a social scientist, it's been frustrating to listen to liberals and Democratic supporters authoritatively rant about Russia stealing the U.S. election. I've seen no compelling evidence that the anti-Clinton stories covered by Wikileaks ..."
"... Suspicion of the "Russiagate" investigation is also compounded by the fact that the Democratic Party is desperate to direct attention away from its unpopularity with the public. Gallup ..."
"... Conceding the questionable foundation of "Russiagate" to date, however, doesn't mean we should grant the Trump administration a free pass on corruption issues and on Trump's transactional, "everything's for sale" approach to "governing." ..."
"... While the charges associated with "Russiagate" and foreign election meddling are unsubstantiated at best, and trumped up at worst (no pun intended), there are legitimate concerns with this administration – even more so than previous ones – with its shameless attempts to combine politicking with tit-for-tat money exchanges with foreign officials. Shady business dealings were a real issue with former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who had monetary connections with the Russian government, receiving fees from Russian state media propaganda outlet Russia Today ..."
May 26, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org

The investigation of the Trump administration continues with the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to the inquiry into Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 election. I've refrained from writing about "Russiagate" to this point, because of how poorly the investigation has been handled by political leaders and the media.

Scarcely do I see a recognition from these political actors that the report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which supposedly provided evidence of Russian election meddling, provided no definitive documentation of a direct link between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. The report concluded that Vladimir Putin personally ordered email hacks of the Democratic Party to uncover potentially embarrassing information on Hillary Clinton, and to boost Trump's chances of winning the election. But the report failed to flesh out specific details documenting alleged Russian efforts to influence the election.

The public was expected to take the charges on faith. This is not to say that Russia is innocent of trying to sway the election. I have no hard evidence one way or the other on that question, but as someone who believes in evidence-based reasoning, I don't accept claims that are made without documentation.

As a social scientist, it's been frustrating to listen to liberals and Democratic supporters authoritatively rant about Russia stealing the U.S. election. I've seen no compelling evidence that the anti-Clinton stories covered by Wikileaks had a substantive impact on voter choice. Most of these stories were inside-baseball kind of stuff, including the "revelation" that John Podesta thought Hillary Clinton has poor political instincts, that the Clinton campaign didn't like Bernie Sanders (a shocker!), that Clinton supported "open borders" free trade agreements (you don't say?), and that she delivered a Wall Street speech voicing support for adopting "public" and "private position[s]" on political issues (politicians lie?!?). In an era of superficiality in American elections, it's also fair to ask how much attention citizens pay to these kinds of stories. Election scholars have long found that much of the public votes for candidates based on extremely superficial considerations such as physical attractiveness, use of buzz words, and an amorphous belief in a candidates' "character."

What little empirical evidence that's been presented so far raises doubts about the impact of alleged Russian spying on the election. As Harry Egan of 538 writes, despite considerable public interest in Wikileaks and the election, "Clinton's drop in the polls [in late October and early November] doesn't line up perfectly with the surge in Wikileaks interest" among the public, as seen in national google searches. "When Wikileaks had its highest search day in early October, Clinton's poll numbers were rising. They continued to go up for another two weeks, even as Wikileaks was releasing emails. That is, there isn't one pivotal 'aha!' point which shows that Wikileaks caused Clinton's numbers to drop There just isn't a clean-cut story in the data."

The evidence that does exist suggesting that individual news stories influenced the polls cuts against the Russia-election meddling thesis. In the fall of 2016, Nate Silver summarized various election-related events and their potential impact as follows: "when a story has broken through to dominate the news cycle, it usually has moved the polls in the direction that people expected. Trump's feuds with Judge Gonzalo Curiel and the family of the American soldier Humayun Khan corresponded with periods when he declined in the polls. The first debate turned into a disaster for Trump in a way that was predictable based on instant-reaction polls. Trump's convention was a mess, whereas Clinton's was conventionally effective, and she got a much larger convention bounce. However, Clinton was hurt by her email scandal resurfacing as a major story line in July. And she declined in the polls after her 'basket of deplorables' comments and Sept. 11 health scare." Notice that none of the events cited by Silver were tied back directly to "Russiagate." It seems much more likely that the re-announcement of the FBI's Clinton email investigation in late-October was a key factor in swinging what was already a close race.

Suspicion of the "Russiagate" investigation is also compounded by the fact that the Democratic Party is desperate to direct attention away from its unpopularity with the public. Gallup 's polling numbers for May 2017 find that just 40 percent of Americans hold a "favorable" view of the Democratic Party, compared to 39 percent sharing a favorable view of Republicans. And the Democrats' favorability numbers are in decline, falling from 45 percent in November 2016. The effort to define Democratic politics through opposition to Trump has backfired. The party has failed over the last half-year to cultivate any meaningful support from the public. The Democrats have no real identity anymore outside of resisting Trump, and this kind of "identity" is not something one can build public support around in terms of consistently winning elections. Hillary Clinton's election loss exposed the Democrats as a party that's lost touch with the public and is tone deaf to the economic troubles afflicting Americans.

Conceding the questionable foundation of "Russiagate" to date, however, doesn't mean we should grant the Trump administration a free pass on corruption issues and on Trump's transactional, "everything's for sale" approach to "governing." Taking an open and honest look at the wheeling and dealing of the Trump administration, it would be foolish to deny that something fishy is going on in Washington. Bizarrely, and in a sign of his incompetence, Trump has gone out of his way to suggest that he has something to hide regarding the Russia investigation. What it is that he may be hiding I can't say for sure without further evidence, but his behavior up to this point screams scandal. Perhaps, like former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, he is hiding prominent business investments with Russia. Trump has consistently and suspiciously refused to release his tax returns, fueling speculation that he's seeking to hide dubious financial connections with other countries. Trump's stubbornness extends beyond the "witch hunt" he now laments, as he refused to release these returns during the election season, prior to the emergence of "Russiagate."

Trump's erratic moves regarding the FBI also suggest something strange is afoot. When you fire the head of the FBI, and admit in an interview with Lester Holt that it was motivated by Comey's Russia investigation, that's a red flag. When news stories report that Trump demanded the end of the Flynn investigation, and when reports suggest Comey's firing was the result of his refusal to end said investigation, that's another red flag. If nothing else, it opens Trump up to charges of obstruction of justice. And when Trump has a sit down with Russian diplomats informing them that, now that Comey's gone, it frees the president up and relieves "great pressure" on him, that's a big red flag. If Trump is innocent of dubious business or political ties to foreign governments, why is he going out of his way to play the part of a guilty man?

While the charges associated with "Russiagate" and foreign election meddling are unsubstantiated at best, and trumped up at worst (no pun intended), there are legitimate concerns with this administration – even more so than previous ones – with its shameless attempts to combine politicking with tit-for-tat money exchanges with foreign officials. Shady business dealings were a real issue with former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who had monetary connections with the Russian government, receiving fees from Russian state media propaganda outlet Russia Today . Flynn blatantly lied about his financial ties with Russia to federal investigators. And Flynn's economic ties to Russia were no laughing matter. Such ties coexisted alongside Flynn's private sit-down with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, to discuss the lifting of U.S. sanctions against Russia.

Flynn has now opened himself up to federal charges, specifically to violating the Logan Act, which prohibits civilians outside the Executive branch from engaging in foreign policy making. Beyond this legal infraction, though, we see the broader problem of an administration that believes policy is just another commodity to be bought and sold like any good or service on the market. Those concerned with basic ethics in government should be displeased with the ham-fisted horse trading engaged in by Flynn, who accepted money from a foreign government while promising policy reforms that would benefit said government.

When government officials seek financial gain in exchange for policy quid-pro-quos, it raises serious ethical questions. That Trump still refuses to recognize how inappropriate Flynn's relationship was, and that he reportedly wants to bring Flynn back into the Executive fold once the investigation is over, demonstrates how oblivious he is to basic ethical considerations in government. Fynn's financial opportunism, of course, is by no means new to Washington. Other political officials regularly cash in on their business connections, as Obama recently did by giving a lucrative speech on Wall Street. But even Obama knew to give such speeches after he had served in office, rather than engaging in clumsy clientelism of the kind done by Flynn.

The Trump administration has consistently demonstrated contempt for transparency and dismissed the need to avoid potential conflicts of interest between the Executive and lobbyists. Trump also demands that non-partisan civil servants pledge "loyalty" to him, even in adversarial cases, like when former FBI director James Comey was investigating the Executive branch with regard to Russia. In doing so, Trump demonstrates a commitment to a "fiefdom" style of politics, in which he serves as a feudal lord over political subordinates. Within this fiefdom, Trump's signaled that Washington is open for business when it comes to horse trading financial benefits for policy outcomes. His openness to using the office for financial enrichment is apparent on multiple levels, as seen in the following instances:

  • Refusing to sell off his financial investments, or at the very least put them in a blind trust, prior to serving as president. Trump instead put his children in charge of managing his assets. There is no way to guarantee that he won't be passively or actively involved in influencing future investments as president, or that Trump won't make policy decisions in the White House with the goal of enriching his already existing assets at the expense of the public good.
  • Relying on campaign advisors and other officials who express various conflicts of interest regarding personal financial gain and influence peddling. One example is Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Trump's campaign, who profited as a consultant for a pro-Russia Ukrainian political party and working for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
  • Trump's recently announced $110 billion arms deal with the Saudi government, conveniently coupled with Saudi pledges to invest $20 billion in American "infrastructure" via the Blackstone Group, a corporation whose CEO Steve Schwarzman has close personal ties to Donald Trump, and another $100 million to Ivanka Trump's proposed "Women's Entrepreneurs Fund."

There should be nothing shocking about the above stories coming from a president who "authored" a book titled "The Art of the Deal," and who consistently bragged that, if elected, he would run the executive via a "deal making," business approach to policy making.

This administration demonstrates contempt for efforts to shine a light on its inappropriate "deal making." Most recently, Trump sought to block the Office of Government Ethics from securing the names of former lobbyists who secured waivers to work for the White House and other federal agencies. As the New York Times reported: "Dozens of former lobbyists and industry lawyers are working in the Trump administration, which has hired them at a much higher rate than the previous administration. Keeping the waivers confidential would make it impossible to know whether any such officials are violating federal ethics rules or have been given a pass to ignore them."

... ... ...

Anthony DiMaggio is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lehigh University. He holds a PhD in political communication, and is the author of the newly released: Selling War, Selling Hope: Presidential Rhetoric, the News Media, and U.S. Foreign Policy After 9/11 (Paperback: 2015). He can be reached at: [email protected]

[May 30, 2017] The Deep State is the State by Ron Jacobs

Notable quotes:
"... For those who don't know what the NSC-68 actually was, it is essentially a directive that militarized the conflict between US capitalism and Soviet communism. ..."
"... It was based on the correct understanding that US capitalism required open access to the resources and markets of the entire planet and that the Soviet Union represented the greatest threat to that access. ..."
"... When one recalls that this period in US history was also a period when the FBI and the US Congress were going after leftists and progressives in the name of a certain right-wing ideological purity, the power of the US secret police becomes quite apparent. ..."
"... At times, the seemingly absolute power of the CIA and FBI have caused the US Executive Branch to try and set up other means and methods in order to circumvent that power. Two examples of this that come quickly to mind are the establishment of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) by the Kennedy administration in 1961-1962 and the failed attempt (known as the Huston plan after its creator Tom Huston) by the Nixon White House to centralize the direction of all US government intelligence operations in the White House. ..."
"... There is no soft coup taking place in DC. The entire government has been owned by big business and the banking industry for more than a century, if not since its inception. That ownership has been dominated by the military-industrial complex since about the same time as when the aforementioned agencies were created. That is no coincidence. However, their role in the current uproar over Russia and Michael Flynn is not because they are taking over the government. It is because their current leadership represents the factions of the US establishment that were removed from power in November 2016. ..."
"... Donald Trump is not against the so-called deep state. He is against it being used against himself and his cohorts. In the world of capitalist power, the factions Trump represents are not the same factions represented by the presidents former FBI director Comey served-the factions represented by Bush and Obama. He understands that if he can install individuals in key positions at the FBI, CIA, DHS and other security and military agencies, he and his allies will be more than happy to use the power of these agencies against their opponents. ..."
"... When the ruling class is in crisis, as it is now, the job of the left is not to choose one side or the other. Nor is it to accept the narrative provided by one or other faction of the rulers, especially when that narrative supports the police state. Instead, it is the Left's job to go to the root of the crisis and organize resistance to the ruling class itself. ..."
"... Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest offering is a pamphlet titled Capitalism: Is the Problem. He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: [email protected] . ..."
May 26, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org
The deep state is not some enigmatic entity that operates outside the US government. It is the US state itself. Like all elements of that state, the so-called deep state exists to enforce the economic supremacy of US capitalism. It does so primarily via the secret domestic and international police forces like the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies. The operations of these agencies run the gamut from surveillance to propaganda to covert and overt military actions. Naturally, this so-called deep state operates according to their own rules; rules which ultimately insure its continued existence and relevance. Although it can be argued that it was the 1950 National Security Directive known as NSC-68 along with the Congressional Bill creating the Central Intelligence Agency that launched the "deep state" as we understand it, a broader understanding of the "deep state" places its genesis perhaps a century prior to that date. In other words, a structure designed to maintain the economic and political domination of certain powerful US capitalists existed well back into the nineteenth century. However, the centralization of that power began in earnest in the years following World War Two.

For those who don't know what the NSC-68 actually was, it is essentially a directive that militarized the conflict between US capitalism and Soviet communism.

It was based on the correct understanding that US capitalism required open access to the resources and markets of the entire planet and that the Soviet Union represented the greatest threat to that access. Not only did this mean the US military would grow in size, it also ensured that the power of the intelligence sector would expand both in terms of its reach and its budget. When one recalls that this period in US history was also a period when the FBI and the US Congress were going after leftists and progressives in the name of a certain right-wing ideological purity, the power of the US secret police becomes quite apparent.

As the 1950s turned into the 1960s, the so-called deep state's power continued to grow. Some of its better known manifestations include the failed attempt to invade revolutionary Cuba that became known as the Bay of Pigs, the use of psychoactive drugs on unsuspecting individuals as part of a mind control study, and numerous attempts to subvert governments considered anti-American. Among the latter actions one can include covert operations against the Vietnamese independence forces and the murder of the Congolese president Patrice Lumumba. In terms of the "deep state's" domestic operations, this period saw the intensification of spying on and disrupting various groups involved in the civil rights and antiwar organizing. Many elements of the domestic operation would become known as COINTELPRO and were directed by the FBI.

Although the agencies of the so-called deep state operate as part of the US state, this does not mean that those agencies are of one mind. Indeed, like any power structure, there are various factions represented. This means that there are disagreements over policies, priorities, direction, and personnel. The only certainty is that all of its members agree on the need to maintain the supremacy of US capital in the world. At times, the seemingly absolute power of the CIA and FBI have caused the US Executive Branch to try and set up other means and methods in order to circumvent that power. Two examples of this that come quickly to mind are the establishment of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) by the Kennedy administration in 1961-1962 and the failed attempt (known as the Huston plan after its creator Tom Huston) by the Nixon White House to centralize the direction of all US government intelligence operations in the White House.

There is no soft coup taking place in DC. The entire government has been owned by big business and the banking industry for more than a century, if not since its inception. That ownership has been dominated by the military-industrial complex since about the same time as when the aforementioned agencies were created. That is no coincidence. However, their role in the current uproar over Russia and Michael Flynn is not because they are taking over the government. It is because their current leadership represents the factions of the US establishment that were removed from power in November 2016.

Donald Trump is not against the so-called deep state. He is against it being used against himself and his cohorts. In the world of capitalist power, the factions Trump represents are not the same factions represented by the presidents former FBI director Comey served-the factions represented by Bush and Obama. He understands that if he can install individuals in key positions at the FBI, CIA, DHS and other security and military agencies, he and his allies will be more than happy to use the power of these agencies against their opponents. Indeed, he would most likely greatly enhance those agencies' power, making a further mockery of the US Constitution. If Trump is able to get the agencies of the deep state to work for the factions he represents-either by replacing those loyal to others not named Trump or by cajoling and coercing them to change their loyalty-he will think the deep state is a great thing. In this way he is no different than every other US president. He understands that whoever controls the deep state controls the US. The struggle we are witnessing between the FBI and the Trump White House is part of a power struggle between US power elites.

When the ruling class is in crisis, as it is now, the job of the left is not to choose one side or the other. Nor is it to accept the narrative provided by one or other faction of the rulers, especially when that narrative supports the police state. Instead, it is the Left's job to go to the root of the crisis and organize resistance to the ruling class itself.

Join the debate on Facebook

Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest offering is a pamphlet titled Capitalism: Is the Problem. He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: [email protected] .

[May 30, 2017] Democrats are falling for fake news about Russia

A pretty accurate (for Vox ;-) description of Neo-McCarthyism hysteria that the USA currently experience...
Notable quotes:
"... Twitter is the Russiasphere's native habitat. Louise Mensch, a former right-wing British parliamentarian and romance novelist, spreads the newest, punchiest, and often most unfounded Russia gossip to her 283,000 followers on Twitter . Mensch is backed up by a handful of allies, including former NSA spook John Schindler ( 226,000 followers ) and DC-area photographer Claude Taylor ( 159,000 followers ). ..."
"... Experts on political misinformation see things differently. They worry that the unfounded speculation and paranoia that infect the Russiasphere risk pushing liberals into the same black hole of conspiracy-mongering and fact-free insinuation that conservatives fell into during the Obama years. ..."
"... Mensch is quite combative with the press. When I asked her to email me for this piece, she refused and called me a "dickhead." But she's backed up by an array of different figures, who spend a lot of time swapping ideas on Twitter. ..."
"... One of them is Schindler, the former NSA spook. A former Naval War College professor who resigned in 2014 after a scandal in which he sent a photograph of his penis to a Twitter follower , he thinks Mensch doesn't get it right all the time. But he does think she was onto the truth about Trump and Russia "long before the MSM cared" (the two have been amiably chatting on Twitter since 2013 ). ..."
"... "Louise has no counterintelligence background, nor does she speak Russian or understand the Russians at a professional level, and that makes her analysis hit or miss sometimes," he told me. "That said, very few people pontificating on Kremlingate have those qualifications, so if that's disqualifying, pretty much everyone but me is out." ..."
"... dezinformatsiya ..."
"... These three - Mensch, Schindler, and Taylor - form a kind of self-reinforcing information circle, retweeting and validating one another's work on a nearly daily basis. ..."
"... The Palmer Report, and its creator, little-known journalist Bill Palmer, is kind of a popularizer of the Russiasphere. It reports the same kind of extreme, thinly sourced stuff - for instance, a story titled "CIA now says there's more than one tape of Donald Trump with Russian prostitutes" - often, though not always, sourced to Mensch and company. This seems to personally irk Mensch, who has occasionally suggested the Palmer Report is ripping her off . ..."
"... Yet nonetheless, Palmer appears to have built up a real audience. According to Quantcast , a site that measures web traffic, the Palmer Report got around 400,000 visitors last month - more than GQ magazine's website. The Russian prostitute story was shared more than 41,000 times on Facebook, according to a counter on Palmer's site; another story alleging that Chaffetz was paid off by Trump and Russia got about 29,000. ..."
"... "Misinformation is much more likely to stick when it conforms with people's preexisting beliefs, especially those connected to social groups that they're a part of," says Arceneaux. "In politics, that plays out (usually) through partisanship: Republicans are much more likely to believe false information that confirms their worldview, and Democrats are likely to do the opposite." ..."
"... actual conspiracy. ..."
"... For instance, after the New York Times published the Mensch piece back in March, former DNC chair Donna Brazile tweeted out the story, with a follow-up thanking Mensch for "good journalism": ..."
"... What you've got are prominent media figures, political operatives, scholars, and even US senators being taken in by this stuff - in addition to the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of ordinary people consuming it on Twitter and Facebook. These people, too, are letting their biases trump interest in factual accuracy. ..."
"... Will the mainstreaming of the Russiasphere speed up - and birth something like a Breitbart of the left? If so, it'll create an environment where the people most willing to say the most absurd things succeed, pulling the entire Democratic Party closer to the edge - and leaving liberals trapped in the same hall of mirrors as conservatives. ..."
May 30, 2017 | www.vox.com

President Donald Trump is about to resign as a result of the Russia scandal. Bernie Sanders and Sean Hannity are Russian agents. The Russians have paid off House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz to the tune of $10 million, using Trump as a go-between. Paul Ryan is a traitor for refusing to investigate Trump's Russia ties. Libertarian heroine Ayn Rand was a secret Russian agent charged with discrediting the American conservative movement.

These are all claims you can find made on a new and growing sector of the internet that functions as a fake news bubble for liberals, something I've dubbed the Russiasphere. The mirror image of Breitbart and InfoWars on the right, it focuses nearly exclusively on real and imagined connections between Trump and Russia. The tone is breathless: full of unnamed intelligence sources, certainty that Trump will soon be imprisoned, and fever dream factual assertions that no reputable media outlet has managed to confirm.

Twitter is the Russiasphere's native habitat. Louise Mensch, a former right-wing British parliamentarian and romance novelist, spreads the newest, punchiest, and often most unfounded Russia gossip to her 283,000 followers on Twitter . Mensch is backed up by a handful of allies, including former NSA spook John Schindler ( 226,000 followers ) and DC-area photographer Claude Taylor ( 159,000 followers ).

There's also a handful of websites, like Palmer Report , that seem devoted nearly exclusively to spreading bizarre assertions like the theory that Ryan and Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell funneled Russian money to Trump - a story that spread widely among the site's 70,000 Facebook fans.

Beyond the numbers, the unfounded left-wing claims, like those on the right, are already seeping into the mainstream discourse. In March, the New York Times published an op-ed by Mensch instructing members of Congress as to how they should proceed with the Russia investigation ("I have some relevant experience," she wrote). Two months prior to that, Mensch had penned a lengthy letter to Vladimir Putin titled "Dear Mr. Putin, Let's Play Chess" - in which she claims to have discovered that Edward Snowden was part of a years-in-the-making Russian plot to discredit Hillary Clinton.

Last Thursday, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) was forced to apologize for spreading a false claim that a New York grand jury was investigating Trump and Russia. His sources, according to the Guardian's Jon Swaine, were Mensch and Palmer:

Members of the Russiasphere see themselves as an essential counter to a media that's been too cautious to get to the bottom of Trump's Russian ties.

"There's good evidence that the Kremlin was planning a secret operation to put Trump in the White House back in 2014," Schindler told me. "With a few exceptions, the MSM [mainstream media] hasn't exactly covered itself in glory with Kremlingate. They were slow to ask obvious questions about Trump in 2016, and they're playing catch-up now, not always accurately."

Experts on political misinformation see things differently. They worry that the unfounded speculation and paranoia that infect the Russiasphere risk pushing liberals into the same black hole of conspiracy-mongering and fact-free insinuation that conservatives fell into during the Obama years.

The fear is that this pollutes the party itself, derailing and discrediting the legitimate investigation into Russia investigation. It also risks degrading the Democratic Party - helping elevate shameless hucksters who know nothing about policy but are willing to spread misinformation in the service of gaining power. We've already seen this story play out on the right, a story that ended in Trump's election.

"One of the failures of the Republican Party is the way they let the birther movement metastasize - and that ultimately helped Donald Trump make it to the White House," says Brendan Nyhan, a professor at Dartmouth who studies the spread of false political beliefs. "We should worry about kind of pattern being repeated."

Anatomy of a conspiracy theory

The Russiasphere doesn't have one unifying, worked-out theory - like "9/11 was an inside job" or "Nazi gas chambers are a hoax." Instead, it's more like an attitude - a general sense that Russian influence in the United States is pervasive and undercovered by the mainstream media. Everything that happens in US politics is understood through this lens - especially actions taken by the Trump administration, which is seen as Kremlin-occupied territory.

There are, of course, legitimate issues relating to Trump's ties to Russia - I've written about them personally over and over again . There are even legitimate reasons to believe that Trump's campaign worked with Russian hackers to undermine Hillary Clinton. That may or may not turn out to be true, but it is least plausible and somewhat supported by the available evidence .

The Russiasphere's assertions go way beyond that.

Take Mensch, who is probably the Russiasphere's most prominent voice. She actually did have one legitimate scoop, reporting in November that the FBI had been granted a warrant to watch email traffic between the Trump Organization and two Russian banks ( before anyone else had ). Since then, though, her ideas have taken a bit of a turn. In January, she launched a blog - Patribotics - that's exclusively dedicated to the Trump/Russia scandal. It's ... a lot.

Liberals fall for lies for the same reasons conservatives do: partisanship

"Sources with links to the intelligence community say it is believed that Carter Page went to Moscow in early July carrying with him a pre-recorded tape of Donald Trump offering to change American policy if he were to be elected, to make it more favorable to Putin," Mensch claimed in an April post . "In exchange, Page was authorized directly by Trump to request the help of the Russian government in hacking the election."

Another post , allegedly based on "sources with links to the intelligence community," claimed that Trump, Mike Pence, and Paul Ryan were all going to be arrested on racketeering charges against "the Republican party" owing to collaboration with Russia.

"Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who was the 'Designated Survivor' at the inauguration of Donald Trump (yes, really) is likely to become President," Mensch writes.

She's also suggested that Anthony Weiner was brought down as part of a Russian plot to put the Clinton emails back in the news:

I can exclusively report that there is ample evidence that suggests that Weiner was sexting not with a 15 year old girl but with a hacker , working for Russia, part of the North Carolina hacking group 'Crackas With Attitude', who hacked the head of the CIA, and a great many FBI agents, police officers, and other law enforcement officials.

And that the protests against police brutality in Ferguson were secretly a Russian plot:

Mensch is quite combative with the press. When I asked her to email me for this piece, she refused and called me a "dickhead." But she's backed up by an array of different figures, who spend a lot of time swapping ideas on Twitter.

One of them is Schindler, the former NSA spook. A former Naval War College professor who resigned in 2014 after a scandal in which he sent a photograph of his penis to a Twitter follower , he thinks Mensch doesn't get it right all the time. But he does think she was onto the truth about Trump and Russia "long before the MSM cared" (the two have been amiably chatting on Twitter since 2013 ).

"Louise has no counterintelligence background, nor does she speak Russian or understand the Russians at a professional level, and that makes her analysis hit or miss sometimes," he told me. "That said, very few people pontificating on Kremlingate have those qualifications, so if that's disqualifying, pretty much everyone but me is out."

Schindler's role in the Russiasphere is essentially as a validator, using his time working on Russia at the NSA to make the theories bandied about by Mensch seem credible. Schindler peppers his speech with terms pulled from Russian spycraft - like deza , short for dezinformatsiya (disinformation), or Chekist , a term used to describe the former spies who hold significant political positions in Putin's Russia.

This lingo has become common among the Russiasphere, a sort of status symbol to show that its members understand the real nature of the threat. Schindler and Mensch will often refer to their enemies in the media and the Trump administration using the hashtag #TeamDeza, or accuse enemies of being Chekists.

Claude Taylor is the third core member of the Russia sphere. He's a DC-area photographer who claims to have worked for three presidential administrations; his role is to provide inside information into the alleged legal cases against the president. He also routinely claims to have advance knowledge what's happening, even down to the precise number of grand juries impaneled and indictments that are on the way.

These anonymous intelligence community tip-offs lead him to tweet, with certainty, that Trump is finished. His tweets routinely get thousands of retweets.

These three - Mensch, Schindler, and Taylor - form a kind of self-reinforcing information circle, retweeting and validating one another's work on a nearly daily basis. A quick Twitter search reveals hundreds of interactions between the three on the platform in recent months, many of which reach huge audiences on Twitter (judging by the retweet and favorite counts). They're also reliably boosted by a few allies with large followings - conservative NeverTrumper Rick Wilson , the anonymous Twitter account Counterchekist , and financial analyst Eric Garland (best known as the "time for some game theory" tweetstormer.)

The Palmer Report, and its creator, little-known journalist Bill Palmer, is kind of a popularizer of the Russiasphere. It reports the same kind of extreme, thinly sourced stuff - for instance, a story titled "CIA now says there's more than one tape of Donald Trump with Russian prostitutes" - often, though not always, sourced to Mensch and company. This seems to personally irk Mensch, who has occasionally suggested the Palmer Report is ripping her off .

Yet nonetheless, Palmer appears to have built up a real audience. According to Quantcast , a site that measures web traffic, the Palmer Report got around 400,000 visitors last month - more than GQ magazine's website. The Russian prostitute story was shared more than 41,000 times on Facebook, according to a counter on Palmer's site; another story alleging that Chaffetz was paid off by Trump and Russia got about 29,000.

This stuff is real, and there's a huge appetite for it.

These theories are spreading because the Russia situation is murky - and Democrats are out of power

To understand how Democrats started falling for this stuff so quickly, I turned to three scholars: Dartmouth's Nyhan, the University of Exeter's Jason Reifler, and Temple's Kevin Arceneaux. The three of them all work in a burgeoning subfield of political science, one that focuses on how people form political beliefs - false ones, in particular. All of them were disturbed by what they're seeing from the Russiasphere.

"I'm worried? Alarmed? Disheartened is the right word - disheartened by the degree to which the left is willing to accept conspiracy theory claims or very weakly sourced claims about Russia's influence in the White House," Reifler says.

The basic thing you need to understand, these scholars say, is that political misinformation in America comes principally from partisanship. People's political identities are formed around membership in one of two tribes, Democratic or Republican. This filters the way they see the world.

"Misinformation is much more likely to stick when it conforms with people's preexisting beliefs, especially those connected to social groups that they're a part of," says Arceneaux. "In politics, that plays out (usually) through partisanship: Republicans are much more likely to believe false information that confirms their worldview, and Democrats are likely to do the opposite."

In one study , Yale's Dan Kahan gave subjects a particularly tricky math problem - phrased in terms of whether a skin cream worked. Then he gave a random subset the same problem, only phrased in terms of whether a particular piece of gun control legislation worked.

The results were fascinating. For the people who got the skin cream problem, there was no correlation between partisanship and likelihood of getting the right answer. But when people got the same question, just about gun control, everything changed: Republicans were more likely to conclude that gun control didn't work, and Democrats the other way around. People's political biases overrode their basic mathematical reasoning skills.

"[Some] people are willing to second-guess their gut reactions," Arceneaux says. "There just aren't that many people who are willing to do that."

In real-life situations, where the truth is invariably much murkier than in a laboratory math problem, these biases are even more powerful. People want to believe that their side is good and the other evil - and are frighteningly willing to believe even the basest allegations against their political enemies. When your tribe is out of power, this effect makes you open to conspiracy theories. You tend to assume your political enemies have malign motives, which means you assume they're doing something evil behind the scenes.

The specific nature of the conspiracy theories tends to be shaped by the actors in question. So because Obama was a black man with a non-Anglo name, and the Republican Party is made up mostly of white people, the popular conspiracy theories in the last administration became things like birtherism and Obama being a secret Muslim. This was helped on by a conservative mediasphere, your Rush Limbaughs and Fox Newses and Breitbarts, that had little interest in factual accuracy - alongside one Donald J. Trump.

There have been random smatterings of this kind of thing catering to Democrats throughout the Trump administration, like the now-infamous Medium piece alleging that Trump's Muslim ban was a "trial balloon for a coup." But most conspiracy thinking has come to center on Russia, and for good reason: There's suggestive evidence of an actual conspiracy.

We know that Trump's team has a series of shady connections to the Kremlin. Some of Trump's allies may have coordinated with Russian hackers to undermine the Clinton campaign. But we still don't know the details of what actually happened, so there's a huge audience of Democratic partisans who want someone to fill in the blanks for them.

"Conspiracy entrepreneurs are filling the void for this kind of content," Nyhan says. "If you're among the hardcore, you can follow Louise Mensch, and the Palmer Report, and John Schindler and folks like that - and get an ongoing stream of conspiracy discourse that is making some quite outlandish claims."

This kind of thing is poisonous. For Republicans, it made their party more vulnerable to actual penetration by hacks - the "Michele Bachmanns" and "Sean Hannitys," as Nyhan puts it. It allows unprincipled liars and the outright deluded to shape policy, which both makes your ideas much worse and discredits the good ones that remain. In the specific case of the Russia investigation, the spread of these ideas would make the president's accusations of "fake news" far more credible.

Luckily for the Democratic Party, there isn't really a pre-built media ecosystem for amplifying this like there was for Republicans. In the absence of left-wing Limbaughs and Breitbarts, media outlets totally unconcerned with factual rigor, it's much harder for this stuff to become mainstream.

But hard doesn't mean impossible. The most worrying sign, according to the scholars I spoke to, is that some mainstream figures and publications are starting to validate Russiasphere claims.

For instance, after the New York Times published the Mensch piece back in March, former DNC chair Donna Brazile tweeted out the story, with a follow-up thanking Mensch for "good journalism":

A current DNC communications staffer - Adrienne Watson - favorably retweeted a Mensch claim that the Russians had "kompromat," or blackmail, on Rep. Chaffetz:

Two former Obama staffers, Ned Price and Eric Schultz, favorably discussed a Palmer Report story aggregating Mensch's allegations about Chaffetz ("interesting, if single-source," Price tweeted). Larry Tribe, an eminent and famous constitutional law professor at Harvard, shared the same Palmer Report story on Twitter - and even defended his decision to do so in an email to BuzzFeed 's Joseph Bernstein.

"Some people regard a number of its stories as unreliable," Tribe wrote of Palmer. Yet he defended disseminating its work: "When I share any story on Twitter ... I do so because a particular story seems to be potentially interesting, not with the implication that I've independently checked its accuracy or that I vouch for everything it asserts."

And Keith Olbermann made a popular video for GQ based on Taylor's allegations about imminent arrests, adding that "Claude and his sources know their stuff."

What you've got are prominent media figures, political operatives, scholars, and even US senators being taken in by this stuff - in addition to the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of ordinary people consuming it on Twitter and Facebook. These people, too, are letting their biases trump interest in factual accuracy.

This is the key danger: that this sort of thing becomes routine, repeated over and over again in left-leaning media outlets, to the point where accepting the Russiasphere's fact-free claims becomes a core and important part of what Democrats believe.

"Normal people aren't reading extensively about what Louise Mensch claims someone told her about Russia," Nyhan says. "The question now is whether Democrats and their allies in the media - and other affiliated elites - will promote these conspiracy theories more aggressively."

That's how the GOP fell for conspiracy thinking during the Obama years. There's nothing about Democratic psychology that prevents them from doing the same - which means the burden is on Democratic elites to correct it.

Democratic partisans and liberal media outlets are the ones best positioned to push back against this kind of stuff. Rank-and-file Democrats trust them; if they're saying this stuff is ridiculous, then ordinary liberals will start to think the same thing. Even if they just ignore it, then the Russiasphere will be denied the oxygen necessary for it to move off of Twitter and into the center of the political conversation.

"Scrutiny from trusted media sources and criticism from allied elites can help discourage this kind of behavior," Nyhan says. "It won't suppress it - there are always places it can go - but on the margin, allies can help limit the spread of conspiracy theorizing inside their party."

So that's the key question going forward: Will the mainstreaming of the Russiasphere speed up - and birth something like a Breitbart of the left? If so, it'll create an environment where the people most willing to say the most absurd things succeed, pulling the entire Democratic Party closer to the edge - and leaving liberals trapped in the same hall of mirrors as conservatives.

[May 30, 2017] George Webb claims to have identified Seth Rich's killers.

May 30, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Ed Jobb - junction , May 30, 2017 10:38 PM

George Webb claims to have identified Seth Rich's killers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqY2QP-DNaQ

[May 30, 2017] Putin Russian Meddling Is A Fiction Democrats Invented To Divert Blame For Their Defeat

The Russia-screwed-the-Dems meme is obviously fantastical bullshit and it's absolutely disgraceful that the neoliberal MSM are running this garbage 24/7 like it's the gospel truth.
Notable quotes:
"... "Therefore, we should not build up tensions or invent fictional threats from Russia, some hybrid warfare etc.," the Russian leader told his French hosts. "What is the major security problem today? Terrorism. There are bombings in Europe, in Paris, in Russia, in Belgium. There is a war in the Middle East. This is the main concern. But no, let us keep speculating on the threat from Russia." ..."
"... Case in point, in the latest attempt to stir up an anti-Russian frenzy, America's biggest neocon, John McCain said that Russia is even more dangerous than ISIS . "You made these things up yourselves and now scare yourselves with them and even use them to plan your prospective policies. These policies have no prospects. The only possible future is in cooperation in all areas, including security issues." ..."
"... It is glaringly obvious that the (worthless) Rats painted themselves into a small corner. Blaming the Russians is both desperate and hilarious. ..."
May 30, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
With McCarthyism 2.0 continues to run amok in the US, spread like a virulent plague by unnamed, unknown, even fabricated sources , over in France one day after his first meeting with French president Emanuel Macron, the man who supposedly colluded with and was Trump's pre-election puppet master (but had to wait until after the election to set up back-channels with Jared Kushner) Vladimir Putin sat down for an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro in which the Russian president expressed the belief that Moscow and Western capitals "all want security, peace, safety and cooperation."

"Therefore, we should not build up tensions or invent fictional threats from Russia, some hybrid warfare etc.," the Russian leader told his French hosts. "What is the major security problem today? Terrorism. There are bombings in Europe, in Paris, in Russia, in Belgium. There is a war in the Middle East. This is the main concern. But no, let us keep speculating on the threat from Russia."

Case in point, in the latest attempt to stir up an anti-Russian frenzy, America's biggest neocon, John McCain said that Russia is even more dangerous than ISIS . "You made these things up yourselves and now scare yourselves with them and even use them to plan your prospective policies. These policies have no prospects. The only possible future is in cooperation in all areas, including security issues."

"Hacking" Clinton And the DNC

Even with the FBI special investigation on "Russian collusion" with the Trump campaign and administration taking place in the background, Putin once again dismissed allegations of Russian meddling in last year's U.S. presidential election as "fiction" invented by Democrats to divert the blame for their defeat. Putin repeated his strong denial of Russia's involvement in the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails that yielded disclosures that proved embarrassing for Hillary Clinton's campaign. Instead, he countered that claims of Russian interference were driven by the " desire of those who lost the U.S. elections to improve their standing ."

"They want to explain to themselves and prove to others that they had nothing to do with it, their policy was right, they have done everything well, but someone from the outside cheated them," he continued. "It's not so. They simply lost, and they must acknowledge it. " That has proven easier said than done, because half a year after the election, Hillary Clinton still blames Wikileaks and James Comey for her loss . Ironically, what Putin said next, namely that the "people who lost the vote hate to acknowledge that they indeed lost because the person who won was closer to the people and had a better understanding of what people wanted," is precisely what even Joe Biden has admitted several weeks ago , and once again yesterday . Maybe Uncle Joe is a Russian secret agent too...

In reflecting on the ongoing scandal, which has seen constant, daily accusations of collusion and interference if no evidence (yet), Putin conceded that the damage has already been done and Russia's hopes for a new detente under Trump have been shattered by congressional and FBI investigations of the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. In the interview, Putin also said the accusations of meddling leveled at Russia have destabilized international affairs

Going back to the hotly debated topic of "influencing" the election, Putin once again made a dangerous dose of sense when he argued that trying to influence the U.S. vote would make no sense for Moscow as a U.S. president can't unilaterally shape policies. " Russia has never engaged in that, we don't need it and it makes no sense to do it ," he said. " Presidents come and go, but policies don't change. You know why? Because the power of bureaucracy is very strong ." Especially when the bureaucracy in question is the so-called "deep state."

Asked who could have been behind the hacking of the Democrats' emails, The Russian leader added that he agreed with Trump that it could have been anyone. "Maybe someone lying in his bed invented something or maybe someone deliberately inserted a USB with a Russian citizen's signature or anything else," Putin said. "Anything can be done in this virtual world." This echoed a remark by Trump during a September presidential debate in which he said of the DNC hacks: "It could be Russia, but it could be China, could also be lots of other people. It could be someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds."

Assad, Red-Lines and Chemical Weapons

Putin was asked about French President Emmanuel Macron's warning that any use of chemical weapons in Syria was a "red line" that would be met by reprisals, to which the Russian president said he agreed with that position. But he also reiterated Russia's view that Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces weren't responsible for a fatal chemical attack in Syria in April. Putin said Russia had offered the U.S. and its allies the chance to inspect the Syrian base for traces of the chemical agent. He added that their refusal reflected a desire to justify military action against Assad. "There is no proof of Assad using chemical weapons," Putin insisted in the interview. "We firmly believe that that this is a provocation. President Assad did not use chemical weapons."

"Moreover, I believe that this issue should be addressed on a broader scale. President Macron shares this view. No matter who uses chemical weapons against people and organizations, the international community must formulate a common policy and find a solution that would make the use of such weapons impossible for anyone," the Russian leader said.

On NATO's Military Buildup across Russian borders

Weighing on the outcome of the recent NATO summit, at which Russia was branded a threat to security, Putin pointed to the ambiguous signals Moscow is receiving from the alliance. "What attracted my attention is that the NATO leaders spoke at their summit about a desire to improve relations with Russia. Then why are they increasing their military spending? Whom are they planning to fight against?" Putin said, adding that Russia nevertheless "feels confident" in its own defenses. Washington's appeal to other NATO members to ramp up their military spending and alleviate the financial burden the US is forced to shoulder is "understandable" and "pragmatic," Putin said.

But the strategy employed by the alliance against Russia is "shortsighted," the Russian president added, referring to the NATO's expanding missile defense infrastructure on Russia's doorstep and calling it "an extremely dangerous development for international security." Putin lamented that an idea of a comprehensive security system envisioned in the 1990s that would span Europe, Russia and US has never become a reality, arguing that it would have spared Russia many challenges to its security stemming from NATO. "Perhaps all this would not have happened. But it did, and we cannot rewind history, it is not a movie."

junction -> Boris Badenov •May 30, 2017 10:03 PM

Paging Seth Rich. Oh, he can't say anything about the reason why the Democrats lost. Maybe Hillary could try to contact him using witchcraft and the Satanist arts she follows. Then again, her old reliable is her hit team of FBI agents, not her sacrifices to Moloch.

GooseShtepping Moron •May 30, 2017 10:01 PM

Putin packs more truth into one newspaper interview than the entire Western media publishes in a year.

Francis Marx •May 30, 2017 10:01 PM

Who would they blame if Russia was suddenly gone?

rejected -> Francis Marx •May 30, 2017 10:05 PM

Iran.

GooseShtepping Moron -> Francis Marx •May 30, 2017 10:06 PM

Me and you, the basket of deplorables.

Billy the Poet -> rwmctrofholz •May 30, 2017 10:25 PM

I find this little cut and paste job to be effective when addressing this issue:

Background to "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections": The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution

"DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying."

"Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries."

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

Yars Revenge •May 30, 2017 10:23 PM

The Russia-screwed-the-Dems thing is obviously fantastical bullshit and it's absolutely disgraceful that the mainstream media are running this garbage 24/7 like it's the gospel truth.

ogretown •May 30, 2017 10:43 PM

It is glaringly obvious that the (worthless) Rats painted themselves into a small corner. Blaming the Russians is both desperate and hilarious. But who else could they blame? If instead they had started a campaign that focused on the Muslims trying to ruin America and (correctly) identified Saudi Arabia as America's greatest enemy, imagine the votes they would have received from the soft-right, independents, (relatively) sane liberals. If the (worthless) liberals opted for a moratorium on squandering any more money on the pseudo-science of global warming and insisted on a balanced panel to investigate the issue once and for all - even more votes.

Ditto with exotic pro-globalist trade deals...instead if the (worthless) Rats would have opted for town hall discussions on how a vast international trade deal would have may be helped America, they would have been viewed as the party of balance, consideration and the thoughtful.

But all of that means having smart and dedicated people as either part of the party or willing to trust the party - none of which exist. Instead the party of bankrupt ideals and impoverished morality finger point the Russians and try to blame it all on them.

[May 30, 2017] New Bombshell Documentary "Who Killed Seth Rich"

Notable quotes:
"... When establishment mainstream media "blacklists" the topic, it just makes us all suspect "they" have something to hide. Why can't we have an open and honest exploration of what really happened? ..."
May 30, 2017 | truthfeed.com

Tremendous kudos goes to OANN network for putting together this powerful documentary. The fact of the matter is the Seth Rich murder is unanswered and people want the truth.

When establishment mainstream media "blacklists" the topic, it just makes us all suspect "they" have something to hide. Why can't we have an open and honest exploration of what really happened?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OomLn6gut7E

Eddie Turner

America is in lots of trouble this is one of many deaths around the Clinton crime family do your own research see what comes up suicides with 2 shots back of head weird accidents people just disappearing these people must not be like my family high powered rifles and crack shots we would make sure justice was served.

Carlette Duperior

What a great documentary well done filled in a lot of blanks and questions that I had very professional very objective nice to see Great reporting.

[May 30, 2017] When Intelligence Is Not by Patrick Armstrong

Notable quotes:
"... I know a lot of people on this blog have experience in the intelligence world. I would be very interested in hearing what you think of my theory. ..."
"... intelligence sources ..."
"... So why are there so many "intelligence assessments" on important issues depending on social media "evidence"? ..."
"... four years earlier ..."
"... many of the "intelligence assessments" contain what look like hints by the authors that their reports are rubbish. ..."
May 29, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

I know a lot of people on this blog have experience in the intelligence world. I would be very interested in hearing what you think of my theory.

In my career in the Canadian government I was never formally in "intelligence" but I did participate in writing many "intelligence assessments". Facebook, Twitter and other kinds of social media didn't much exist at that time but, even if they had, I can't imagine that we would have ever used them as sources of evidence: social media is, to put it mildly, too easy to fake. In writing intelligence assessments, while we did use information gathered from intelligence sources (ie secret), probably more came from what was rather pompously called OSInt (Open Source Intelligence; in other words, stuff you don't need a security clearance to learn). What was, however, the most important part of creating an assessment was the long process of discussion in the group. Much talk and many rewrites produced a consensus opinion.

A typical intelligence assessment would start with a question – what's going on with the economy, or political leadership or whatever of Country X – and would argue a conclusion based on facts. So: question, argument, conclusion. And usually a prediction – after all the real point of intelligence is to attempt to reduce surprises. The intelligence assessment then made its way up the chain to the higher ups; they may have ignored or disagreed with the conclusions but, as far as I know, the assessment, signed off by the group that had produced it, was not tampered with: I never heard of words being put into our mouths. The intelligence community regards tampering with an intelligence assessment to make it look as if the authors had said something different as a very serious sin. All of this is preparation to say that I know what an intelligence assessment is supposed to look like and that I have seen a lot of so-called intelligence assessments coming out of Washington that don't look like the real thing.

Intelligence is quite difficult. I like the analogy of trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle when you don't know what the picture is supposed to be, you don't know how many pieces the puzzle has and you're not sure that the pieces that you have are actually from the same puzzle. Let us say, for example, that you intercept a phonecall in which the Leader of Country X is telling one of his flunkeys to do something. Surely that's a gold standard? Well, not if the Leader knew you were listening (and how would you know if he did?); nor if he's someone who changes his mind often. There are very few certainties in the business and many many opportunities for getting it wrong.

So real raw intelligence data is difficult enough to evaluate; social media, on the other hand, has so many credibility problems that it is worthless; worthless, that is, except as evidence of itself (ie a bot campaign is evidence that somebody has taken the effort to do one). It is extremely easy to fake: a Photoshopped picture can be posted and spread everywhere in hours; bots can create the illusion of a conversation; phonecall recordings are easily stitched together: here are films of Buks, here are phonecalls. (But, oddly enough, all the radars were down for maintenance that day). It's so easy, in fact, that it's probably easier to create the fake than to prove that it is a fake. There is no place in an intelligence assessment for "evidence" from something as unreliable as social media.

An "intelligence assessment" that uses social media is suspect.

So why are there so many "intelligence assessments" on important issues depending on social media "evidence"?

I first noticed social media used as evidence during the MH17 catastrophe when Marie Harf, the then US State Department spokesman, appealed to social media and "common sense" . She did so right after the Russians had posted radar evidence (she hadn't "seen any of that" said she). At the time I assumed that she was just incompetent. It was only later, when I read the "intelligence assessments" backing up the so-called Russian influence on the US election, that I began to notice the pattern.

There are indications during the Obama Administration that the intelligence professionals were becoming restive. Here are some examples that suggest that "intelligence assessments" were either not being produced by the intelligence professionals or – see the last example – those that were were then modified to please the Boss.

If one adds the reliance on social media to these indications, it seems a reasonable suspicion that these so-called intelligence assessments are not real intelligence assessments produced by intelligence professionals but are post facto justifications written up by people who know what the Boss wants to hear.

We have already seen what appears to have been the first example of this with the "social media and common sense" of MH17. And, from that day to this, not a shred of Kerry's "evidence" have we seen. The long-awaited Dutch report was, as I said at the time, only a modified hangout and very far from convincing .

Russia "invaded" Ukraine so many times it became a joke. The "evidence" was the usual social media accompanied by blurry satellite photos . So bad are the photos, in fact, that someone suggested that "Russian artillery" were actually combine harvesters . In one of the rare departures from the prescribed consensus, a former (of course) German Chief of Staff was utterly unconvinced by thse pictures and explained why . By contrast, here is a satellite photo of Russian aircraft in Syria ; others here . Sharply focussed and in colour. The "Russian invasion" photos were lower quality than the Cuban Missile Crisis photos taken six decades earlier! A hidden message? See below.

The so-called Syrian government CW attack on Ghouta in August 2013 was similarly based on social media; heavily dependent, in fact, on "Bellingcat". Quite apart from the improbability of Assad ordering a CW attack on a suburb a short drive away from arriving international inspectors, the whole story was adequately destroyed by Seymour Hersh . (Bellingcat's "proofs", by the way, can be safely ignored – see his faked-up "evidence" that Russians attacked an aid convoy in Syria .)

A dominant story for months has been that Russia somehow influenced the US presidential election. As ever, the Washington Post led the charge and the day after the election told us " Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House ". But when we finally saw the "secret assessments" they proved to be laughably damp squibs. The DHS/FBI report of 29 December 2016 carried this stunning disclaimer:

This report is provided "as is" for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within.

Perhaps the most ridiculous part of the DNI report of 6 January 2017 was the space – nearly half – devoted to a rant that had been published four years earlier about the Russian TV channel RT. What that had to do with the Russian state influencing the 2016 election was obscure. But, revealingly, the report included:

We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.

In other words, DHS told us to ignore its report and the one agency in the US intelligence structure that would actually know about hacking and would have copies of everything – the NSA – wasn't very confident. Both reports were soon torn apart: John McAfee: "I can promise you if it looks like the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the Russians". ( See 10:30 ). Jeffrey Carr: " Fatally flawed ". Julian Assange: not a state actor. Even those who loath Putin trashed them . In any case, as we now know, the NSA can mimic Russians or anyone else .

In April there was another suspiciously timed "CW attack" in Syria and, blithely ignoring that the responders didn't wear any protective gear in what was supposed to be a Sarin attack , the Western media machine wound up its sirens. The intelligence assessment that was released again referred to "credible open source reporting" and even "pro-opposition social media reports" (! – are the authors so disgusted with what they have to write that they leave gigantic hints like that in plain sight?). Then a page of so of how Moscow trying to "confuse" the world community. And so on. This "intelligence assessment" was taken apart by Theodore Postol .

So, we have strong suggestions that the intelligence professionals are being sidelined or having their conclusions altered; we have far too much reliance of social media; is there anything else that we can see? Yes, there is: many of the "intelligence assessments" contain what look like hints by the authors that their reports are rubbish.

  • Absurdly poor quality photos (maybe they were combine harvesters!).

  • Including a photo of damage to the port engine intake which contradicts the conclusion of the MH-17 report.

  • DHS "does not provide any warranties".

  • The one agency that would know has only "moderate confidence".

  • Irrelevant rants about RT or assumed nefarious Russian intentions.

  • "Pro-opposition social media reports".

There are too many of these, in fact, not to notice – not that the Western media has noticed, of course – they rather jump out at you once you look don't they? I don't recall inserting any little such hints into any of the intelligence assessments that I was involved in.

In conclusion, it seems that a well-founded case can be presented that:

Where done? By whom? That remains to be discovered. More Swamp to be drained.

[May 29, 2017] Jared Kushner Reportedly Discussed Setting Up Secret Communication Channel With Moscow by Mary Papenfuss

Is really Russian ambassador so negligent that he posted such an information over open channel? I doubt it. that means that Hayden may be lying and this is just a part of Purple revolution campaign of discreditation of Trump administration. Otherwise he reveals that the NSA broke Russian diplomatic communication cipher, which is biog NO-NO.
Notable quotes:
"... Without specifically mentioning the report about Kushner, Trump tweeted Sunday in an apparent response to a number of recent stories about his administration that "leaks coming out of the White House are fabricated lies." ..."
"... Kushner's reported plan is evidence of an extreme cynicism about "organs of the state," said Hayden, and a belief that government institutions only serve the self-interests of the president currently in power. The apparent implication of such a Kremlin link was that the Trump team trusted Russian agents more than the outgoing Obama administration or the U.S. intelligence community. ..."
May 29, 2017 | www.huffingtonpost.com

Kushner's reported actions suggest "we are in a really dark place as a society," Michael Hayden said.

Former CIA Director General Michael Hayden said that the reported plan by chief White House adviser Jared Kushner's to arrange secret communications with the Russians during President Donald Trump's transition was "off the map" and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime.

Hayden wants to chalk up the stunning plan to "naivete" rather than evil intentions - but that's not reassuring, he said in an interview on CNN.

"Right now, I'm going with naivete, and that's not particularly comforting for me," he said. "What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?"

Hayden was commenting on reports, which first appeared in The Washington Post Friday, that Kushner discussed last December establishing a secret communication channel with the Kremlin - using Russian facilities - without any monitoring by the U.S.

Kushner discussed the idea in Trump Tower with Sergei Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the U.S., who was surprised by the request, the Post reported, because of security risks such an arrangement would pose to both countries.

Kushner emerged last Thursday as a person of interest in the FBI's investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.

Without specifically mentioning the report about Kushner, Trump tweeted Sunday in an apparent response to a number of recent stories about his administration that "leaks coming out of the White House are fabricated lies."

Kushner's reported plan is evidence of an extreme cynicism about "organs of the state," said Hayden, and a belief that government institutions only serve the self-interests of the president currently in power. The apparent implication of such a Kremlin link was that the Trump team trusted Russian agents more than the outgoing Obama administration or the U.S. intelligence community.

"What degree of suspicion of the existing government, what degree of contempt for the administration they were replacing would be required again to think this was an acceptable course of action?" he asked.

Hayden added: "It says an awful lot about us as a society that we could actually harbor those kinds of feelings that the organs of the state would be used by my predecessor to come after me or ... to disrupt my administration in a way that made it seem legitimate to me to use the secure communications facilities of a foreign power - a foreign power that some in government alleged you were cooperating with to affect the American election."

It's evidence, he added, that "we are in a really dark place as a society."

[May 29, 2017] Professor Russia Dossier Is Attempt to Destroy Trump s Presidency Before Inauguration by Stephen Cohen

They are throwing all kind of stuff at Trump to see if anything stick...
Notable quotes:
"... "endgame in the last chapter in an attempt to destroy Trump's presidency" ..."
"... Cohen dismissed the dossier as "essentially tabloid stuff" that he could easily purchase from so-called Russian "private intelligence agents out to make a buck". "It's scuttlebutt, it's rumor," he said, "it's junk...[that's] seen in Moscow." ..."
"... People are desperate to wound Trump to stop any type of detente with Russia, Cohen said, "these accusations [themselves] have become a grave American national security threat." ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | insider.foxnews.com

Russian Studies Professor Stephen Cohen said the publication of an unverified dossier of information regarding President-elect Donald Trump and Russia is the "endgame in the last chapter in an attempt to destroy Trump's presidency" before he takes office.

Cohen dismissed the dossier as "essentially tabloid stuff" that he could easily purchase from so-called Russian "private intelligence agents out to make a buck". "It's scuttlebutt, it's rumor," he said, "it's junk...[that's] seen in Moscow."

Cohen said mainstream media figures have been calling Trump a 'puppet of the Kremlin' for some time, which he remarked started when they decided to consider him as running with "Putin" rather than "Pence".

People are desperate to wound Trump to stop any type of detente with Russia, Cohen said, "these accusations [themselves] have become a grave American national security threat."

[May 29, 2017] Russia Expert Says No Evidence Russia Hacked the Election by Debra Heine

Notable quotes:
"... Why didn't the FBI do their own investigation? ..."
"... "They say that, but it's bogus," Cohen argued. "When Clapper, the director of national intelligence, signed that report in January, technically he represents all seventeen. I'll bet you a dime to a nickel you couldn't get a guest on, unprepared, who could name ten of them. This figure -- seventeen -- is bogus!" ..."
"... "The one agency that could conceivably have done a forensic examination on the Democratic computers is a national security agency ..."
Mar 31, 2017 | pjmedia.com
Professor Stephen Cohen: Not One Piece of Factual Evidence That Russia 'Hacked the Election' March 31, 2017 chat 176 comments Prof. Cohen: Not One Piece of Factual Evidence That Russia 'Hacked the Election'

Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton, spoke Thursday evening with Fox News' Tucker Carlson about the latest shoes to drop in the investigations into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday that Michael Flynn, President Trump's former national security advisor, has told the FBI and congressional investigators that he is willing to be interviewed in exchange for a grant of immunity from prosecution -- not a particularly good sign for the Trump White House.

Cohen, one of the country's foremostexperts on Russia, has been arguing for months that the anti-Russia hysteria in Washington, D.C., is becoming a "grave national security threat."

Carlson began the discussion by bringing up what he sees as the core issue-- the allegations that the Russian government "hacked our election" by breaking into email accounts at the DNC and the Clinton campaign office.

"Everyone assumes this is true," he said. "We're all operating under the assumption that it's true. Do we know it's true?"

"No," Cohen answered flatly. "And if you listen to the hearings at the Senate today, repeatedly it was said -- particularly by Senator Warner, the Democratic co-chair of the proceedings -- that Russia had hijacked our democracy. What he means is that, the Russians, at Putin's direction, had gone into the Democratic National Committee's emails, which were embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton, given them to Wikileaks, Wikileaks then released them to damage Mrs. Clinton and put Trump in the White House."

He noted, "This is a very dramatic narrative and they're saying in Washington that this was an act of war.... So whether or not it's true is existential. Are we at war?"

After studying Russian leadership for 40 years, focusing on Putin in particular, Cohen said it was hard for him believe that the Russian president would have done such a thing.

"I could find not one piece of factual evidence," he said. "The only evidence ever presented was a study hired by the Clintons -- the DNC -- to do an examination of their computers.They [Crowdstrike] concluded the Russians did it. Their report has fallen apart." He added, " Why didn't the FBI do their own investigation? "

Tucker pointed out that even Republicans say that seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies (including Coast Guard Intelligence!) have concluded that Russian intelligence was behind this.

"They say that, but it's bogus," Cohen argued. "When Clapper, the director of national intelligence, signed that report in January, technically he represents all seventeen. I'll bet you a dime to a nickel you couldn't get a guest on, unprepared, who could name ten of them. This figure -- seventeen -- is bogus!"

The professor made one more critical point: "The one agency that could conceivably have done a forensic examination on the Democratic computers is a national security agency ," he said.

He continued: "When they admit that they have no evidence, they fall back on something else which I think is very important. They say Putin directed Russian propaganda at us and helped elect Trump. I don't know about you, Tucker, but I find that insulting -- because the premise they're putting out ... at this hearing is that the American people are zombies. ... It's the premise of democracy that we're democratic citizens," he said. "That we have a B.S. detector in us and we know how to use it."

  • ValVeggie 2 months ago Maybe not, but let's not forget that there IS evidence that the Obama administration apparently employed police-state tactics to spy on their political rivals during the election, and to widely disseminate the information they collected in hope that it would be illegally leaked in order to undermine the Trump administration.

    Remember, the only felony we have clear proof of is the leak of Flynn's surveillance data to the press.

    Time to get focused on where the crimes are, and stop falling for the progressive's shell game.

[May 29, 2017] Loesch Americans Are Tired of Being Manipulated Lied to by Mainstream Media

Notable quotes:
"... On "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Dana Loesch said the agenda-driven media is focused on negatively portraying Trump, while they're largely giving Democrats a pass. ..."
"... Let's talk for a moment about the California Democrat convention ... where you had a number of Democrats on stage screaming 'expletive Trump' and 'expletive Republicans.'" She said Democrats and the mainstream media then want to turn around and accuse Trump and those on the right of fomenting violence. ..."
May 29, 2017 | insider.foxnews.com

Following Montana Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte's alleged assault of a reporter, some in the mainstream media are trying to blame the incident on President Trump. CNN host Don Lemon argued that Trump has culpability because he's said "very horrible things" about reporters and suggested that they are the enemy of the American people. MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell said that Trump has helped whip up "hostility" toward the press, while Joe Scarborough said a "straight line" can be drawn between Trump's anti-media rhetoric and the Gianforte incident.

On "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Dana Loesch said the agenda-driven media is focused on negatively portraying Trump, while they're largely giving Democrats a pass.

"Let's discuss Tom Perez and his cussing crusade that he's been giving at so many different fundraisers.

Let's talk for a moment about the California Democrat convention ... where you had a number of Democrats on stage screaming 'expletive Trump' and 'expletive Republicans.'" She said Democrats and the mainstream media then want to turn around and accuse Trump and those on the right of fomenting violence.

Watch more above.

[May 29, 2017] You Are Fake News -- Trump Refuses to Let CNN Reporter Ask Question

Notable quotes:
"... Trump specifically called out BuzzFeed as a "failing pile of garbage" and CNN for building up the story after BuzzFeed first released it. ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | insider.foxnews.com

During his first press conference since the election, Donald Trump got into a back-and-forth exchange with CNN reporter Jim Acosta over the news organization's coverage of the unverified report -- first posted on BuzzFeed -- claiming Trump's deep ties with Russia.

While answering a question relating to his earlier tweet asking "Are we living in Nazi Germany," Trump specifically called out BuzzFeed as a "failing pile of garbage" and CNN for building up the story after BuzzFeed first released it.

When Trump finished his response, Acosta could be overheard trying to ask a question. "Since you're attacking us can you give us a question? Since you are attacking our news organization can you give us a chance?" Acosta said.

"Not you, your organization is terrible," Trump responded, telling Acosta to be quiet. "She's asking a question, don't be rude."

Acosta however kept trying to ask his question, until Trump ended the exchange by declaring CNN to be "fake news." "No, I'm not going to give you a question. You are fake news!" he said. "Mr. President-elect that's not appropriate," Acosta said before allowing the next reporter to ask her question.

Acosta appeared on CNN to discuss the incident.

[May 29, 2017] Rep Green After Reviewing Evidence I Felt Compelled to Call For Trump s Impeachment

May 29, 2017 | www.breitbart.com
Monday on MSNBC, while discussing his call on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for President Donald Trump to be impeached, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) declared he did so because he "felt compelled" after reviewing evidence.

Green said,

"This is not something that I wanted to do, sir, it's something that I felt compelled to do after reviewing evidence. We live in a country where we believe no police officer, no congressman, no senator and no president is above the law.

When the President decided that he would fire the FBI director who was investigating his campaign, which means that he was investigating him, the president, when he decided to fire him and he acknowledged that he was doing it for this reason, when you couple that with the fact that he said that the Russian thing was a made-up story and he said it is a witch-hunt, and then he went on to tweet something that may be considered an intimidating statement with reference to a recording that he might have, when you combine these things you have obstruction of justice.

Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States of America recognizes obstruction of justice as an impeachable offense."

[May 29, 2017] BREAKING Man Investigating FRAUD Charges Against the DNC Found DEAD

Notable quotes:
"... A lawsuit last year against the DNC was filed in the Southern District of Florida by attorney Shaun Lucas. ..."
"... A month after Lucas filed the papers to sue the DNC, he was found dead at the age of 38. 14 prosecutors have been killed in 100 years. ..."
"... One of those was Lucas - the man who served the DNC papers. ..."
"... The lawsuit was filed on June 28 by Bernie Sanders supporters against the DNC and then DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who resigned in the wake of the WikiLeaks email scandal. ..."
"... And now a young federal prosecutor working in the Southern District of Florida is also found dead. Florida Prosecutor Beranton J. Whisenant Jr., 37, was investigating fraud and visa case in Wasserman-Schultz's back yard district. Was he working on the case against the DNC? ..."
May 29, 2017 | truthfeed.com

A Florida federal attorney who was investigating against the DNC, specifically, Wasserman-Shultz district, was found dead on a beach with what authorities describe as "head trauma."

COINCIDENCE?

A lawsuit last year against the DNC was filed in the Southern District of Florida by attorney Shaun Lucas.

A month after Lucas filed the papers to sue the DNC, he was found dead at the age of 38. 14 prosecutors have been killed in 100 years.

One of those was Lucas - the man who served the DNC papers.

The lawsuit was filed on June 28 by Bernie Sanders supporters against the DNC and then DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who resigned in the wake of the WikiLeaks email scandal.

And now a young federal prosecutor working in the Southern District of Florida is also found dead. Florida Prosecutor Beranton J. Whisenant Jr., 37, was investigating fraud and visa case in Wasserman-Schultz's back yard district. Was he working on the case against the DNC?

From wptv.com

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (AP) - The body of a federal prosecutor has been found on a Florida beach with possible head trauma.

Hollywood police spokeswoman Miranda Grossman said Thursday that the body of 37-year-old Beranton J. Whisenant Jr. was found early Wednesday by a passerby on the city's beach. She said detectives are trying to determine if the death was a homicide, suicide or something else.

Whisenant worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami in its major crimes unit. He had joined the office in January. Court records show he had been handling several visa and passport fraud cases.

Acting U.S. Attorney Benjamin G. Greenberg said in a statement that Whisenant was a "great lawyer and wonderful colleague." The office declined to comment on the investigation.

Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can reach her on Facebook here .

[May 29, 2017] Wheel and Fight -- Pat Buchanans Nixon Book Provides Road Map For Trump by Peter Brimelow

Notable quotes:
"... If History is "a set of lies agreed upon," as Napoleon is supposed to have said, then American politics has increasingly become a series of induced hysterias by elite agreement. ..."
"... Trump Impeachment Talk Started Before He Was Even Nominated ..."
"... The good news: this demystifies impeachment, which VDARE.com has long argued is not a juridical proceeding but an assertion of political control like a no-confidence motion in a Parliamentary system ..."
"... Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Broke A President And Divided America Forever ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Conservative Review ..."
"... Even after Manchester terror, Congress silent on US problems ..."
"... Well, start with a Gulf of Tonkin made-up "incident" and you never know how might be dying and for what. My disgust is tempered by the political background history of the whole show where Good Guys were hard to find anywhere. ..."
"... President Trump could order thousands of American soldiers deployed to existing military bases near our borders to actually defend the USA. This was the primary role of the US Army before World War II. The US Border Patrol didn't even exist until 1924. ..."
"... European queen Merkel sees her chance to improve her position, as she says 'the USA no longer supports us, thus we need a stronger Europe', with Merkel as emperor. Luckily NATO is nothing without the USA military might, and European tax payers in general do not see the need for high military expenses. ..."
"... My main caveat with Mr. Brimelow's article is his sympathetic view of the Vietnam war. It was an immoral war sold on a lie no smaller than Iraq WMDs. ..."
"... Scratch a Brit and you always come up with an imperialist .and a delusional imperialist at that. ..."
May 29, 2017 | www.unz.com

If History is "a set of lies agreed upon," as Napoleon is supposed to have said, then American politics has increasingly become a series of induced hysterias by elite agreement.

Thus the Ruling Class's Trayvon Martin , Ferguson and Baltimore frenzies came and went, shamelessly unaffected by repeated Narrative Collapses -- inexplicable, unless you were aware of Left's amoral imperative to incite its black clients against the white American majority.

And the current "Impeach Trump!" frenzy really has nothing to do with Russia or Comey-it's simply the latest expression of the Left's long-brewing refusal to accept defeat in the 2016 election, which it counted on to complete its coup against the Historic American Nation [ Trump Impeachment Talk Started Before He Was Even Nominated , by Peter Hassan, Daily Caller , May 17, 2017].

It's as simple as this: If the Evil Party gets control of the House of Representatives, Trump was always going to be impeached, regardless of what he did. (Conviction, which requires 67 Senate votes, might be more difficult-although Democrats probably assume any Republican President could be guilted into capitulation, like Richard Nixon, unlike Bill Clinton ). The good news: this demystifies impeachment, which VDARE.com has long argued is not a juridical proceeding but an assertion of political control like a no-confidence motion in a Parliamentary system - and should be more broadly applied, by a patriot Congress, not just to Presidents but to bureaucrats and kritarchs .

And the great news: we now have a road map to how a patriot President can survive a Ruling Class induced hysteria- Patrick J. Buchanan's just-published Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Broke A President And Divided America Forever .

Buchanan's book is important and powerful-but somber: he's not joking at all with the last four words of his title, although he doesn't dwell on it. It's a theme that has increasingly appeared in his recent columns, here and here and here .

... ... ...

Buchanan vividly recreates the MSM-hyped atmosphere of crisis in Washington in the fall of 1969, now completely forgotten but at the time an incipient elite coup even more serious than anything yet seen under Trump:

Directly ahead was the largest antiwar protest in US history, October 15, when hundreds of thousands were expected on the Washington Monument grounds, within sight of the White House. Major media had become propagandists for the antiwar movement and were beating the drums for getting out of Vietnam now. It seemed as though the fate of Lyndon Johnson, his presidency broken by the Tet Offensive in 1968 and his humiliation by Gene McCarthy in New Hampshire, could be ours as well. David Broder of the Washington Post saw President Nixon's situation as did I. "It is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon Johnson's authority in 1968 are out to break Richard Nixon in 1969," wrote Broder on October 7. "The likelihood is great that they will succeed again."

This was a particularly dangerous situation for Nixon because his Republican Party controlled neither Senate nor House. In theory, the Democrats could have wrested policy from him at any point, although in those days the prestige of the Presidency and respect for its prerogatives, sacralized by years of Democratic dominance, was still a serious inhibition.

Contrary to his current Demon King image, Nixon had responded after his election very much as Trump (notwithstanding his more abrasive rhetoric) has done: appeasement.

... ... ...

Needless to say, appeasement did not work for either man. Partly this was because both provoked a really peculiar blind personal hatred from the political class -- "for reasons I could not comprehend," says Buchanan in the case of Nixon, "given his centrist politics and even liberal policies "

... ... ...

Although it's now hard to imagine, the Main Stream Media had been as generally respected as the office of the Presidency itself. Agnew and Buchanan burst that bubble for good.

.... ... ...

What this means in the current situation is clear: Trump must wheel and fight. And he must fight on the issue that elected him, which poses an existential threat to the American nation (and, incidentally, the GOP) that is even more serious than global Communism: mass out-of-control non-traditional immigration, which out-of-control Leftist judicial imperialists have now made unmistakably clear they intend to read into the constitution. Trump must make clear (especially to cowardly Republican Congressman) that the survival of the Historic American Nation is inextricable from his own.

Not for the first time , I agree with Conservative Review 's Daniel Horowitz:

As soon as the president returns home from Europe, he should call in leaders of Congress and demand that they vote on as many of these 20 immigration and homeland security ideas as possible . Specifically, they must:

    Block funding for all refugees and visas from the Middle East for the remainder of the fiscal year. Further enforce provisions of the INA that strip the courts of jurisdiction to adjudicate rejections of visas. Pass a supplemental funding bill for the border wall and the construction of a visa exit-entry tracking system, a goal Democrats officially support and that has been passed by Congress numerous times since 1996.

In order to accomplish this or anything else, Congressional Republicans need to modify the filibuster rules. Otherwise, they face electoral oblivion. It's time they actually confront the issues of our time and harness the news cycle to pass common-sense national security bills. The president must use the bully pulpit and his status as leader of the party to craft specific proposals for the do-nothing Congress. Then, place the onus on them to act. He should give a televised address from the Oval Office outlining his response to the growing threat of homegrown terrorism and demanding action from Congress to deal with the courts.

Or we could just use up this once-in-generation electoral mandate on naming post offices and continuing every major Obama policy.

Even after Manchester terror, Congress silent on US problems , May 23 2017. Link in original.

... ... ...

Peter Brimelow [ Email him ] is the editor of VDARE.com. His best-selling book, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster , is now available in Kindle format.

El Dato , May 28, 2017 at 6:42 pm GMT

He continued Johnson's suspension of the bombing of North Vietnam, a disgustingly irresponsible ploy originally designed to shore up Democratic support in the 1968 presidential election campaign at the expense of the Americans troops fighting and dying in great numbers in the South.

Well, start with a Gulf of Tonkin made-up "incident" and you never know how might be dying and for what. My disgust is tempered by the political background history of the whole show where Good Guys were hard to find anywhere.

Priss Factor , May 29, 2017 at 4:22 am GMT

WSJ's loopy version of 'nationalism' https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-nationalism-can-solve-the-crisis-of-islam-1495830440

anon , May 29, 2017 at 4:24 am GMT

Robert A. Caro's devastating multi-volume biography, eh?

Given all the dirt on Johnson now out there, hagiography might be a better description.

Anon , May 29, 2017 at 4:53 am GMT

Nation of Immigrants = Nation of Unassimilable Foreigners

Carlton Meyer , Website May 29, 2017 at 5:48 am GMT

President Trump could order thousands of American soldiers deployed to existing military bases near our borders to actually defend the USA. This was the primary role of the US Army before World War II. The US Border Patrol didn't even exist until 1924.

This would cost little and could be paid for by existing Army operational and training funding, and could be done in a matter of weeks. Congress would have no say and no permission is required. Anyone who doubts this has been confused by corporate propaganda and can learn from reading this. http://www.g2mil.com/border.htm

jilles dykstra , May 29, 2017 at 6:37 am GMT

http://www.volkskrant.nl/opinie/opinie-op-zondag-trump-is-een-blamage-voor-de-hele-vrije-wereld~a4497150/

Dat Trump zichzelf als brexiteer ziet en het anti-Europese populisme aanmoedigt, vormt een breuk met alles waar het naoorlogse Amerika voor staat.

The above is written by a Dutch journalist living in Berlin, Van Baar, a pro EU writer. Translation:

That Trump sees himself as brexiteer and encourages anti European populism, is a rupture with all that post WWII USA has as values.

Van Baar is quite right, Trump wants good relations with Russia, this does not fit in with EU expansion plans, the Ukraine association, an association with a military paragraph.

European queen Merkel sees her chance to improve her position, as she says 'the USA no longer supports us, thus we need a stronger Europe', with Merkel as emperor. Luckily NATO is nothing without the USA military might, and European tax payers in general do not see the need for high military expenses.

LondonBob , May 29, 2017 at 10:00 am GMT

@anon Robert A. Caro's devastating multi-volume biography, eh?

Given all the dirt on Johnson now out there, hagiography might be a better description.

Jim Christian , May 29, 2017 at 10:09 am GMT

The last volume is almost finished. Each of those books is a superb piece of research and writing. It's taken him around 35 years in total. The last volume (LBJ 1968-dead) ought to be coming out soon. And his biggest problem? Almost everyone that knew all the players is gone. Especially those who knew of LBJ's ongoing corruptions to his end.

Parsifal , May 29, 2017 at 10:52 am GMT

My main caveat with Mr. Brimelow's article is his sympathetic view of the Vietnam war. It was an immoral war sold on a lie no smaller than Iraq WMDs. Other than that, it's on the money, Trump really needs to come out swinging.

War for Blair Mountain , May 29, 2017 at 11:02 am GMT

I have always despised the English Foreigner Peter Brimelow. Brimelow is an unrepentant Cold Warrior. The Cold War which imposed the the Civil Rights Act of 1964(Maxine Waters) on us was a high speed highway-Route 1964-to the passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act=The Native Born White American Extermination Act.

Donald Trump is not worth defending nor saving .

nsa , May 29, 2017 at 4:33 pm GMT

Immigration to the USA should be severely curtailed ..starting with Brits like Brimmie.

Scratch a Brit and you always come up with an imperialist .and a delusional imperialist at that.

All evidence points to the loss of the Vietnam War on the battlefield, and the complete collapse of the US civilian military. All evidence points to the exceptional stupidity of a land war in Asia.

Evidence is no problem for a Brit imperialist ..just ignore it and assert we were stabbed in the back by an evil cabal in the US Knesset er Congress. As to Nixon and Buchanan ..they are relics from a bygone age when white people were 90% of the population and Americans still worked for a living i.e. growing, building, repairing something. Times change ..the white silent majority has disappeared and so will the ragtag American empire.

[May 29, 2017] Believing The Russian Hacking Claim Zero Hedge

May 29, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
May 27, 2017 10:25 PM 0 SHARES Authored by David Swanson via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Government lies are common when seducing a population to support a war, but the Russian "hacking" claims are unusual in that U.S. officials supply no evidence while the "fact" is just assumed,

When the U.S. public was told that Spain had blown up theMaine,or Vietnam had returned fire, or Iraq had stockpiled weapons, or Libya was planning a massacre, the claims were straightforward and disprovable.

Before people began referring to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, somebody had to lie that it had happened, and there had to be an understanding of what had supposedly happened. No investigation into whether anything had happened could have taken as its starting point the certainty that a Vietnamese attack or attacks had happened. And no investigation into whether a Vietnamese attack had happened could have focused its efforts on unrelated matters, such as whether anyone in Vietnam had ever done business with any relatives or colleagues of Robert McNamara.

All of this is otherwise with the idea that the Russian government determined the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. U.S. corporate media reports often claim that Russia did decide the election or tried to do that or wanted to try to do that. But they also often admit to not knowing whether any such thing is the case.

There is no established account, with or without evidence to support it, of exactly what Russia supposedly did. And yet there are countless articles casually referring, as if to established fact to the...

"Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election" ( Yahoo ).

"Russian attempts to disrupt the election" ( New York Times ).

"Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election" ( ABC ).

"Russian influence over the 2016 presidential election" ( The Intercept ).

"a multi-pronged investigation to uncover the full extent of Russia's election-meddling" ( Time ).

"Russian interference in the US election" ( CNN ).

"Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election" ( American Constitution Society ).

"Russian hacking in US Election" ( Business Standard )."

"Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking" we're told by the New York Times , but what is "election hacking"? Its definition seems to vary widely. And what evidence is there of Russia having done it?

The "Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections" even exists as a factual event in Wikipedia , not as an allegation or a theory. But the factual nature of it is not so much asserted as brushed aside.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, in the same Congressional testimony in which he took the principled stand "I don't do evidence," testified that "the fact that the Russians tried to influence resources and authority and power, and the fact that the Russians tried to influence that election so that the will of the American people was not going to be realized by that election, I find outrageous and something that we need to, with every last ounce of devotion to this country, resist and try to act to prevent further instances of that." He provided no evidence.

Activists have even planned "demonstrations to call for urgent investigations into Russian interference in the US election." They declare that "every day we learn more about the role Russian state-led hacking and information warfare played in the 2016 election." ( March for Truth .)

Belief that Russia helped put Trump in the White House is steadily rising in the U.S. public. Anything commonly referred to as fact will gain credibility. People will assume that at some point someone actually established that it was a fact.

Keeping the story in the news without evidence are articles about polling, about the opinions of celebrities, and about all kinds of tangentially related scandals, their investigations, and obstruction thereof. Most of the substance of most of the articles that lead off with reference to the "Russian influence on the election" is about White House officials having some sort of connections to the Russian government, or Russian businesses, or just Russians. It's as if an investigation of Iraqi WMD claims focused on Blackwater murders or whether Scooter Libby had taken lessons in Arabic, or whether the photo of Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands was taken by an Iraqi.

A general trend away from empirical evidence has been extensively noted and discussed . There is no more public evidence that Seth Rich (a Democratic National Committee staffer who was murdered last year) leaked Democratic emails than there is that the Russian government stole them. Yet both claims have passionate believers.

Still, the claims about Russia are unique in their wide proliferation, broad acceptance, and status as something to be constantly referred to as though already established, constantly augmented by other Russia-related stories that add nothing to the central claim . This phenomenon, in my view, is as dangerous as any lies and fabrications coming out of the racist right.

macki mack - john316jr , May 27, 2017 10:48 PM

"U.S. officials supply no evidence"

They don't need to. Their arm is long enough to do what they want.

http://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/the-long-arm-of-gover...

IntercoursetheEU - Number 9 , May 28, 2017 12:56 AM

Anyone with common sense would have tried to influence that election. Clinton's are crooks and we knew that anyway. Big deal

Bumpo - IntercoursetheEU , May 28, 2017 2:07 AM

This dude lost all credibility when he ended the article with "... racist right". Talk about no evidence. We live in an upside down world where protecting one's borders is considered racist, but blaming whitey for all the ills of the world is perfectly fine. Obama, and the Left, with their knee-jerk association of anyone who disagrees with them, are the true racists. Finding collective racism, sexism, etc so easily only proves your own mind-numbing intollerance and rabid sickness of hate and discrimination. Hillary Clinton proved it in spades at her Wellesly College Comencecunt speach. The vitriol outdoes Trump on his worst night.

Perimetr - IntercoursetheEU , May 28, 2017 1:33 AM

" the Russian "hacking" claims are unusual in that U.S. officials supply no evidence while the "fact" is just assumed,"

Sorry, nothing unusual about hearing lies in the MSM

Aussiekiwi , May 27, 2017 10:39 PM

A general trend away from empirical evidence has been extensively noted and discussed . There is no more public evidence that Seth Rich (a Democratic National Committee staffer who was murdered last year) leaked Democratic emails than there is that the Russian government stole them. Yet both claims have passionate believers.

Well actually there is evidence that Seth Richs was the DEM leak and not the Russians.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/murdered-dnc-staffer-seth-rich-...

Bubba Rum Das , May 27, 2017 10:35 PM

Once upon a time, there was a Man named Boris, & a Woman named Natasha...

galant , May 27, 2017 10:48 PM

"A general trend away from empirical evidence has been extensively noted and discussed ."

Who needs facts?

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. - Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, Nazi Germany 1933-45.

Give Me Some Truth , May 27, 2017 10:48 PM

Notice how no one is apparently really investigating if Assad "gassed his own people." This allegation is a big deal. Did the NYT assign five of its best international reporters to investigating the facts? Is the UN investigating? Are "intelligence" officers who dissent from the official meme being contacted?

That is, at some point, the truth doesn't matter. Nor does any "search for the truth" seem to take place or get any publicity.

chubbar - Give Me Some Truth , May 27, 2017 10:58 PM

In fact the US blocked a Russian demand that an investigation be conducted by a neutral 3rd party. Anyone that really follows this story knows it wasn't Assad. The lies aren't even disguised any longer. The only people they are trying to convinceare the people who only watch CNN or MSNBC but those dolts are convinced that Hillary won the election but Russia changed the ballots so there is really no trying to reason with idiots like that.

Bumpo - chubbar , May 28, 2017 1:44 AM

The big question is, does Trump know the Assad gassing meme is bullshit, or is he really not that well-informed. I hope and pray he is playing 5-D chess and is just pretending in order to buy himself enough time to drain the swamp in the long run.

GestaltNine , May 27, 2017 10:50 PM

yeah the media in the USA is exposing itself to everyone even the most brain dead lib has got to be questioning what the heck is going on with this Russian garbage, the sheer vapid intensity is such it borders on supernatural

indio007 , May 27, 2017 10:52 PM

Russia interferes in elections a and people in caves on dialysis organize complicated attacks.

Grandad Grumps , May 27, 2017 11:00 PM

Russian Hacking = Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction = Syrian Chemical Weapons = Muslins with Box Cutters = Gulf of Tonkin = a Miracle Bullet ... the list is endless.

lester1 , May 27, 2017 11:21 PM

"Russia" = DNC email leaker Seth Rich --

The deep state is terrified that investigating Seth's Murder will open up a huge can of worms! The dishonest liberal media will have lost credibility forever --

HRH Feant2 , May 27, 2017 11:22 PM

When I watch CNN and other people in the MSM talking about Russia I ask myself, "what the fuck are these people smoking?" You couldn't make me think the Russians were in control of Donald Trump even if you jacked me up with LSD and the strongest blunts from Colorado!

Seriously, to watch news readers on CNN go into fits of hysteria over Russia is mind numbing.

Can someone Fed Ex a blunt from Colorado? I don't even smoke anymore! FUCK.

Giant Meteor - HRH Feant2 , May 27, 2017 11:28 PM

The fuckers get fed lines, like movie actors. They are so fucking dumb, they don't even know it, (that they are dumb.) A fine example of special ops, brainwashing, probably educated in the finest elite training mills, with no emphasis on critical thnking skills nor original thoughts whatsoever ..

Near as I can figure ..

HRH Feant2 - Giant Meteor , May 27, 2017 11:42 PM

I guess they are willing to be, as Gerald Celente says, presstitutes! Pay them enough and they will say anything!

pippi68 , May 27, 2017 11:43 PM

The dems are breaking rule #7 of their manefesto, Saul Alansky's Rule Book for radicals. 7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." Don't become old news. We most definitely find the muh Russia charade tiresome. The dems are just too unimaginative to make up anything new for us. Hollywood too has proved itself to be out of ideas. Trump is the best amusement possible. You can't possibly guess what he's going to do or say next. Dems and neo-cons, the globalist elites, are totally predictable. They have never had such an adversary. It is a glorious show to behold!

Small Governmen... , May 28, 2017 12:37 AM

The stench of BS is so strong around Washington DC that I will not go there. Not even with my HAZMAT respirators that can filter out the aroma of a skunk. Skunks are no match for the stinking BS that pervades Washington DC.

I believe this is why you never read stories about "skunk problems" in DC. The skunks have left DC.

What remains in DC is the real stinkers. The people who would have you believe their utterly made up BS.

[May 29, 2017] OAN Offers $100,000 for Information on Seth Rich Murder, Total Reward $245,000

May 29, 2017 | www.thegatewaypundit.com
On July 8, 2016, 27 year-old Democratic staffer Seth Conrad Rich was murdered in Washington DC. The killer or killers took nothing from their victim, leaving behind his wallet, watch and phone .

Shortly after the killing, Redditors and social media users were pursuing a "lead" saying that Rich was en route to the FBI the morning of his murder, apparently intending to speak to special agents about an "ongoing court case" possibly involving the Clinton family .

Seth Rich's father Joel told reporters, "If it was a robbery - it failed because he still has his watch, he still has his money - he still has his credit cards, still had his phone so it was a wasted effort except we lost a life."

,,, ,,, ,,,

The Metropolitan police posted a $25K reward for information on Rich's murder.

In August Wikileaks offered a $20,000 reward for information on the murder of DNC staffer Seth rich.

Julian Assange also suggested in August that Seth Rich was a Wikileaks informant.
Via Mike Cernovich :

now OAN, cable news channel, offers $100K reward for details leading to arrest of Seth Rich killer - Washington Times

One America News Network (OAN) is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect in former DNC staffer Seth Rich 's murder case.

The Herring Networks, Inc. media company OAN joins a number of individuals and groups that are willing to pay for information that solves the July 10, 2016, killing of Mr. Rich . The election-season murder continues to spark conspiracy theories based on the suggestion that Mr. Rich provided DNC data to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

"One America News believes solving this case - and bringing Rich 's murderer to justice - is essential to exposing the truth for the American people," OAN's Greta Wall reported Monday. "We are offering a $100,000 reward for any information that leads to the arrest of a suspect in the case. If you have any information, please email us at [email protected]."

Others offering rewards include the Washington, D.C. Police Department ($25,000); WikiLeaks ($20,000); and Republican strategist Jack Burkman ($130,000).

[May 29, 2017] Martin Shkreli Announces $100,000 Reward for Info on Seth Rich's Murder

May 29, 2017 | www.eutimes.net
businessman and investor Martin Shkreli is putting up $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.

Shkreli, former chief executive officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals and KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc., made the announcement via his Facebook page Friday.

Rich, 27, was the voter expansion data director at the DNC, according to Roll Call, and had been employed for two years. Rich also worked on a computer application to help voters locate polling stations, and had just accepted a job with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

According to Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police reports, officers patrolling the Bloomingdale neighborhood heard gunshots at around 4:20 a.m. on the morning of July 10, 2016. Officers discovered a "conscious and breathing" Rich at 2100 Flagler Place NW.

Police have not yet solved the case, but surmised that Rich was a victim of a botched robbery. Police said that they found his wallet, credit cards and cellphone on his body. The band of his wristwatch was torn but not broken. The current theory maintains that the shooters panicked after shooting Rich and immediately fled the scene.

Source

[May 29, 2017] Professor Russia Dossier Is Attempt to Destroy Trump s Presidency Before Inauguration by Stephen Cohen

They are throwing all kind of stuff at Trump to see if anything stick...
Notable quotes:
"... "endgame in the last chapter in an attempt to destroy Trump's presidency" ..."
"... Cohen dismissed the dossier as "essentially tabloid stuff" that he could easily purchase from so-called Russian "private intelligence agents out to make a buck". "It's scuttlebutt, it's rumor," he said, "it's junk...[that's] seen in Moscow." ..."
"... People are desperate to wound Trump to stop any type of detente with Russia, Cohen said, "these accusations [themselves] have become a grave American national security threat." ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | insider.foxnews.com

Russian Studies Professor Stephen Cohen said the publication of an unverified dossier of information regarding President-elect Donald Trump and Russia is the "endgame in the last chapter in an attempt to destroy Trump's presidency" before he takes office.

Cohen dismissed the dossier as "essentially tabloid stuff" that he could easily purchase from so-called Russian "private intelligence agents out to make a buck". "It's scuttlebutt, it's rumor," he said, "it's junk...[that's] seen in Moscow."

Cohen said mainstream media figures have been calling Trump a 'puppet of the Kremlin' for some time, which he remarked started when they decided to consider him as running with "Putin" rather than "Pence".

People are desperate to wound Trump to stop any type of detente with Russia, Cohen said, "these accusations [themselves] have become a grave American national security threat."

[May 28, 2017] JFK had back-channels to both the Soviet Union and Cuba. Why? He didn't trust the CIA Then he was shot.

Notable quotes:
"... Trump is in a very difficult place considering his relationship with the Deep State and the intelligence services. If he really wants to screw with the CIA before he meets his own destiny he should release all the JFK files that are still classified. ..."
www.moonofalabama.org

Bob In Portland | May 28, 2017 1:45:10 AM | 50

JFK had back-channels to both the Soviet Union and Cuba. Why? He didn't trust the CIA Then he was shot.

Trump is in a very difficult place considering his relationship with the Deep State and the intelligence services. If he really wants to screw with the CIA before he meets his own destiny he should release all the JFK files that are still classified.

[May 27, 2017] Dems' Trump-Russia Witch Hunt Deranged and Unjustified

May 27, 2017 | www.newsmax.com

...we wouldn't be talking about this if Democrats and the media weren't lying every hour of every day about a nonexistent scandal. This bogus investigation should end forthwith, no matter who is heading it, because it is based on nothing but innuendo and partisanship. You conduct an investigation not because you want something to be true but because you have some evidence suggesting it may be. There is no such evidence here, and they've admitted it. ...

Mimi • 7 days ago

This Russian drum beat is getting tiresome. It is a terrible distraction to what more good and beneficial things the President is trying to implement. The devil is definitely at work in all the Democrat's hate-spewing words and deeds. Just look at their faces when they get interviewed on TV. They don't care about all the infractions Hillary was involved in - all her life, even dead bodies left in her wake. So they say.

KrrMudgeon • 13 days ago

"Dems' Trump-Russia Witch Hunt Deranged and Unjustified"...in other words, perfectly normal for dems.

concernedcitizen • 13 days ago

I would like someone on the Left to explain exactly how Russia interfered with the election. The DNC was hacked as was Podesta's emails and the information was given to wikileaks. Julian Assange himself stated that the information was not provided by Russia nor was it provided by a state agency. So, where is the EVIDENCE that Russia interfered with the election???

cam • 14 days ago

To believe that the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 Election and possible involvement of the Trump campaign with Russia is a witch hunt or "fake news" means that the 17 Intelligence Agencies, the Investigative Committees in the House and the Senate and other investigations are spending their valuable time investigating nothing is absurd. How can Trump and a few other people be right by claiming this investigation is a hoax and the hundreds of investigators be wrong!

It has been already proven by 17 Intelligence Agencies that Russia interfered in the Election and now the investigation is into the next part - the investigation of the Trump campaign and their possible involvement with the Russians to interfere in the 2016 Election.

It is insulting to me and other Americans that Trump considers this "fake news."

There are facts that support these investigations and to pretend that these facts do not exist is lying!

[May 26, 2017] This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!

May 26, 2017 | www.politico.com
"With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special council appointed!" Trump tweeted, after an unusually quiet 24 hours online.

He added in a second tweet: "This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!"

[May 25, 2017] Truth Has Become Un-American by Paul Craig Roberts

May 25, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

... Russia let go the Soviet empire and is glad to see it gone, as the empire was expensive and of little benefit. The Soviet Eastern European empire comprised Stalin's buffer against another Western invasion. The Warsaw Pact had no offensive meaning. It was not the beginning, as misrepresented in Washington, of Soviet world domination.

I see a lack of clarity about the threat that Russia faces in Russian media reports and articles posted on Russian English language websites. I see a lack of clarity in Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov's continued efforts to work out an accommodation with Washington. How can Lavrov work out an accommodation with Washington when Washington intends to dominate or isolate Russia?

Lavrov and Russian media organizations do not always show awareness that it is not Washington's intention to accommodate other national interests.

It cannot be otherwise for these three reasons:

  1. The budget for the US military/security complex is the largest in the world. It is larger than the Gross Domestic Product of many countries. It includes not only the Pentagon's budget but also the budgets of 16 US intelligence agencies and the Department of Energy, which is the location of the Oak Ridge nuclear weapons plant and 16 other national laboratories. When all the elements are added together, the military/security complex has annually the power and profit from $1,000 billion. An empire of this sort just doesn't give up and go away because some president or some part of the electorate want peace. The "Russian Threat" is essential to the power and profit of the military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned Americans 56 years ago. Just imagine how entrenched this power is now.
  2. The neoconservatives, who control both US foreign policy and the Western media's explanation of it, are mainly Jews of Zionist persuasion. Some are dual Israeli-US citizens. The neoconservatives believe that the collapse of Soviet communism means that History has chosen the United States as the socio-politico-economic system, and that the US government has the responsibility to assert the hegemony of America over the earth. Just read the neocon documents. They assert this over and over. This is what it means that America is the exceptional and indispensable nation. If you are the indispensable nation, every other nation is dispensable. If you are exceptional, everyone else is unexceptional. The claim that the neoconservatives make for the US is similar to the claim that Hitler made for Germany.
  3. As Israel controls US Middle East policy, Israel uses its control to have Washington eliminate obstacles to Israel's expansion. So far Israel has achieved the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government and chaos in Iraq, Washington's war on Syria, and Washington's demonization of Iran in the hope that sufficient demonization will justify war.

For the Russian Foreign Minister to believe that it is possible to reach an accommodation with Washington, other than a Russian surrender, is nonsense. Perhaps this is Lavrov's use of diplomacy to delay the US attack while Russia prepares. Or perhaps Lavrov is just a diplomat who sticks to his last, despite the facts.

Much of the Russian media, both in Russian and foreign language broadcasts and websites, thinks that the Western misrepresentation of Russia is just a mistake and that that facts, once they are established, can rectify the mistake. These Russian journalists don't understand that Washington could not care less about facts. Washington desperately needs an enemy, and Russia is the enemy of choice.

The Chinese government seems to think that Wall Street and US corporations are too dependent on the cheap Chinese manufacturing labor, which keeps the US system fueled with profits, to jeopardize these profits by going to war.

By underplaying the risk of war, Russia and China fail to mobilize world opposition to Washington's recklessness and, thereby, enable Washington's move toward war.

The presstitutes serving the National Security State continue to drive toward conflict. Consider Newsweek's May 26, 2017, cover story with Putin on the cover and the caption: "The Plot Against America: Inside Putin's Campaign to Destroy Democracy in the U.S."

It is difficult to imagine such ignorant nonsense from a mainstream news magazine. Democracy in America has been destroyed by special interest groups, by a US Supreme Court decision that gave the reins of power to special interest groups, and by a hoax war on terror that has destroyed the US Constitution. And here we have the presstitutes saying that Putin is destroying American democracy. Clearly, there is no extant intelligence anywhere in the Western media. The Western presstitutes are either corrupt beyond belief or ignorant beyond belief. Nothing else can be said for them.

Consider Time magazine's cover. It depicts Trump turning the White House into the foundation for the Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral, which rise above the White House, symbolizing America's subservience to Russia under President Trump. This extraordinary propaganda seems to be readily accepted by the bulk of the Western populations, peoples who will die as a result of their insouciance.

Even writers critical of Washington, such as Paul Street's recent article on CounterPunch and the English language Russian website, Strategic Culture Foundation, cannot bring themselves to state the truth that the US military/security complex needs a major enemy, has elected Russia for that role, and intends to defend this orchestration to the end of humanity on earth.

Street writes about "How Russia Became 'Our Adversary' Again." According to Street, Russia became the enemy of choice because Russia protected part of the world's population and resources from being exploited by global capital. Russia became the number one enemy of the US also because Putin stopped the American exploitation of Russia economically. Putin is in the way of Washington's exploitation of the world.

Much of what Street says is correct, but he is hesitant to state it in a straightforward manner. He has to dilute his message by repeating the obligatory propaganda. Street calls Trump, who originally wanted normal relations with Russia, an "orange-haired brute . . . [who admires] Putin's authoritarian manliness."

Trump's problems originated in his goal of normalizing relations with Russia. Hillary is the brute who intended to worsen the relations.

Putin is a democrat, not an authoritarian. The authoritarians are in Washington. Surely Paul Street and CounterPunch know this. But Street has to protect himself from speaking some politically incorrect truths about the US and Russia by throwing in some anti-Putin propaganda and denigrating President Trump.

That peace with Russia and China would undermine the justification of the $1,000 billion military/security budget, and that the military/security complex is the American government , is too much truth for most writers to state.

Truth is the most rare element in the Western world, and we will not be permitted to have much of it much longer. Increasingly, truth is difficult to find. Soak it up while it is still available.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order .

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

[May 24, 2017] Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble for Trump by Eric Margolis

Notable quotes:
"... No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is no peace until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup. ..."
"... Hilllary is of course also widely detested. In many ways, the last election was a contest about who the American people hate more, and Hillary got the award for Most Hated. Both candidates got a large percent of their votes from people who were voting against their opponent. Outside of CA, NY, and MA, more people hated Hillary, ..."
"... So, it turns out that Hillary is detested by the 'wrong' people. Hillary won the vote for most hated. But she's never investigated, the Clinton's are never charged. Bill openly violated election campaigning laws in MA, but no investigation, no charges. The Clintons have become filthy rich during a life of public service, but no investigations, no charges. And if you even want to hear about it, you have to turn off the corporate press and find independent reporters. ..."
May 20, 2017 | www.unz.com

"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble."
The witches in Macbeth.

President Trump's administration is now at a high boil as he faces intense heat from all sides. The Republican Party has backed away from their embattled president. US intelligence agencies are baying for his blood. The US media plays the role of the witches in 'Macbeth' as it plots against Trump.

One increasingly hears whispers about impeachment or the wonderful 1964 film about a military coup in Washington, 'Seven Days in May.'

As in Shakespeare's King Lear, Trump stands almost alone on a blasted heath, howling that he has been betrayed. The world watches on in dismay and shock.

One thing is clear: the US presidency has become too powerful when far-fetched talk of possibly Russian involvement in Trump's campaign could send world financial markets into a crash dive. And when Trump's ill informed, off the cuff remarks can endanger the fragile global balance of power.

Trump has made this huge mess and must now live with it. Yes, he is being treated unfairly by appointment of a special prosecutor when the titanic sleaze of the Clintons was never investigated. But that's what happens when you are widely detested. No mercy for Trump, a man without any mercy for others.

Trump is not a Manchurian candidate put into office by Moscow though his bungling aides and iffy financial deals often made it appear so. His choice of the fanatical Islamophobe Gen. Michael Flynn was an awful blunder. Flynn was revealed to have taken money from Turkey to alter US Mideast policy. Who else paid off Flynn? Disgraceful.

But what about all the politicians and officials who took and take money from the Saudis and Gulf emirates, or Sheldon Adelson, the ardent advocate of Greater Israel? What about political payoffs to the flat-earth Republicans who now act as Israel's amen chorus in Washington?

The growing scandals that are engulfing Trump's presidency seem likely to delay if not defeat the president's laudatory proposals to lower taxes, prune the bureaucracy, clean up intelligence, end America's foreign wars, and impose some sort of peace in the Mideast.

By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media, federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists, free-thinkers, cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton or abuse animals for a living.

No wonder Trump stands almost alone, like Rome's Horatio at the Bridge. One increasingly hears in Washington 'what Trump needs is a little war.'

That would quickly wrong-foot his critics and force the neocon media – Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and CNN – to back him. We already saw this happen when Trump fired salvos of cruise missiles at Syria. It would also provide welcome distraction from the investigations of Trump that are beginning.

Trump has appeared to be pawing the ground in a desire to attack naughty North Korea or Syria, and maybe even Yemen, Somalia or Sudan. A war against any of these small nations would allow the president to don military gear and beat his chest – as did the dunce George W. Bush. Bomb the usual Arabs!

Timur The Lame , May 21, 2017 at 12:02 am GMT

' As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents. more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

Shee-it! I thought Dubya accomplished this . Apparently the M'urkan public is being defiant and really wants to flaunt it's ignorance. Well, howdee! we got us a real contest goin' on now. Trump is obviously the proverbial monkey with a machine-gun. My inner survival instincts are starting to kick in. Does anyone see this this presidency as leveling out and trying to conduct business like you know as it has been in the last 200 years?

This is too insane. I honestly think that some kind of the fix is in. How? Don't know.

Every (real) man for himself now.

Cheers-

WorkingClass , May 21, 2017 at 2:22 pm GMT

By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media, federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists, free-thinkers, cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton or abuse animals for a living.

No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is no peace until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup.

Hunsdon , May 21, 2017 at 9:22 pm GMT

Eric wrote: His choice of the fanatical Islamophobe Gen. Michael Flynn was an awful blunder. Flynn was revealed to have taken money from Turkey to alter US Mideast policy.

Hunsdon said: The notorious Islamophobe, in pay of the Next Sultan? Too delicious.

Promintory Rider , May 21, 2017 at 11:18 pm GMT

Hilllary is of course also widely detested. In many ways, the last election was a contest about who the American people hate more, and Hillary got the award for Most Hated. Both candidates got a large percent of their votes from people who were voting against their opponent. Outside of CA, NY, and MA, more people hated Hillary, and the Electoral College was put into place precisely to keep a big state or a couple of big states from dominating the election of a President. Even in the 1780′s, many Americans didn't want NY to have the power to pick a President on their own.

So, it turns out that Hillary is detested by the 'wrong' people. Hillary won the vote for most hated. But she's never investigated, the Clinton's are never charged. Bill openly violated election campaigning laws in MA, but no investigation, no charges. The Clintons have become filthy rich during a life of public service, but no investigations, no charges. And if you even want to hear about it, you have to turn off the corporate press and find independent reporters.

Thus, its not that Trust is simply the most detested. He's not. At worst, the last election said he's the second most detested person in the country. But, the "right" people all detest him. So, a small minority of government insiders and the members of the media want to run him out of town.

There's things he's done since he's been elected that I don't like. I don't like the way that saying he was against regime change and more wars in the middle east has turned out to be a massive lie. But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.

If not, then CA and NY and the Deep State and the Media millionaires will run this country and everyone will know that elections don't matter.

Miro23 , May 22, 2017 at 2:16 am GMT

But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.

This is exactly right, and as others have said, the place to do this is a state level by reestablishing a close contact between the public and their representatives and senators on a detailed issue by issue basis.

If their representative is part of the chorus supporting a "Russian Hacking " investigation, or is an advocate of further wars then they have to understand that they are in real political trouble.

"Political Trouble" is a large scale, local, well organized and continuous public attack on their electability.

If the public are to lazy to do this then they'll deserve what they get.

balderdash , May 23, 2017 at 3:33 pm GMT

@WorkingClass


By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media, federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists, free-thinkers, cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton or abuse animals for a living.
No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is no peace until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup.
bob balkas , May 23, 2017 at 3:36 pm GMT

Few ruling classes had an opportunity to build an idyllical structure of society and governance over the last four centuries as the two ruling US classes had.

Instead, they created numerous cliquish cliques and with political powers of each clique diminishing from the two top classes down to the last class: prisoners, indigenes, white and black trash.

Eileen Kuch , May 23, 2017 at 9:08 pm GMT

@Miro23


But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.
This is exactly right, and as others have said, the place to do this is a state level by reestablishing a close contact between the public and their representatives and senators on a detailed issue by issue basis.

If their representative is part of the chorus supporting a "Russian Hacking " investigation, or is an advocate of further wars then they have to understand that they are in real political trouble.

"Political Trouble" is a large scale, local, well organized and continuous public attack on their electability.

If the public are to lazy to do this then they'll deserve what they get.

[May 23, 2017] Trumped-up claims against Trump by Ray McGovern

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... A few days before his firing, Mr. Comey reportedly had asked for still more resources to hunt the Russian bear. Pundit piranhas swarmed to charge Mr. Trump with trying to thwart the investigation into how the Russians supposedly "interfered" to help him win the election. ..."
"... Truth is, President Trump had ample reason to be fed up with Mr. Comey, in part for his lack of enthusiasm to investigate actual, provable crimes related to "Russia-gate" -- like leaking information from highly sensitive intercepted communications to precipitate the demise of Trump aide Michael Flynn ..."
"... we suspect Mr. Comey already knows who was responsible.) ..."
"... In contrast, Mr. Comey evinced strong determination to chase after ties between Russia and the Trump campaign until the cows came home. In the meantime, the investigation (already underway for 10 months) would itself cast doubt on the legitimacy of Mr. Trump's presidency and put the kibosh on plans to forge a more workable relationship with Russia -- a win-win for the establishment and the FBI/CIA/NSA "Deep State"; a lose-lose for the president. ..."
"... So far, it has been all smoke and mirrors with no chargeable offenses and not a scintilla of convincing evidence of Russian "meddling" in the election. The oft-cited, but evidence-free, CIA/FBI/NSA report of Jan. 6, crafted by "hand-picked" analysts, according to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper , is of a piece with the "high-confidence," but fraudulent, National Intelligence Estimate 15 years ago about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. ..."
"... On March 31, 2017, WikiLeaks released original CIA documents - ignored by mainstream media - showing that the agency had created a program allowing it to break into computers and servers and make it look like others did it by leaving telltale signs like Cyrillic markings, ..."
"... It is altogether possible that the hacking attributed to Russia was actually one of several "active measures" undertaken by a cabal consisting of the CIA, FBI, NSA and Mr. Clapper - the same agencies responsible for the lame, evidence-free memorandum of Jan. 6. ..."
"... Mr. Comey displayed considerable discomfort on March 20, explaining to the House Intelligence Committee why the FBI did not insist on getting physical access to the Democratic National Committee computers in order to do its own proper forensics, but chose to rely on the those done by DNC contractor Crowdstrike. Could this be explained by Mr. Comey's fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted? Did this play a role in Mr. Trump's firing of Mr. Comey? ..."
"... President Trump has entered into a high-stakes gamble in confronting the Deep State and its media allies over the evidence-free accusations of his colluding with Russia. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, publicly warned him of the risk earlier this year. "You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you," ..."
May 17, 2017 | www.baltimoresun.com
Donald Trump said he had fired FBI Director James Comey over "this Russia thing, with Trump and Russia." The president labeled it a "made-up story" and, by all appearances, he is mostly correct.

A few days before his firing, Mr. Comey reportedly had asked for still more resources to hunt the Russian bear. Pundit piranhas swarmed to charge Mr. Trump with trying to thwart the investigation into how the Russians supposedly "interfered" to help him win the election.

But can that commentary bear close scrutiny, or is it the " phony narrative " Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn of Texas claims it to be? Mr. Cornyn has quipped that, if impeding the investigation was Mr. Trump's aim, "This strikes me as a lousy way to do it. All it does is heighten the attention given to the issue."

Truth is, President Trump had ample reason to be fed up with Mr. Comey, in part for his lack of enthusiasm to investigate actual, provable crimes related to "Russia-gate" -- like leaking information from highly sensitive intercepted communications to precipitate the demise of Trump aide Michael Flynn . Mr. Flynn was caught "red-handed," so to speak, talking with Russia's ambassador last December. (In our experience, finding the culprit for that leak should not be very difficult; we suspect Mr. Comey already knows who was responsible.)

In contrast, Mr. Comey evinced strong determination to chase after ties between Russia and the Trump campaign until the cows came home. In the meantime, the investigation (already underway for 10 months) would itself cast doubt on the legitimacy of Mr. Trump's presidency and put the kibosh on plans to forge a more workable relationship with Russia -- a win-win for the establishment and the FBI/CIA/NSA "Deep State"; a lose-lose for the president.

So far, it has been all smoke and mirrors with no chargeable offenses and not a scintilla of convincing evidence of Russian "meddling" in the election. The oft-cited, but evidence-free, CIA/FBI/NSA report of Jan. 6, crafted by "hand-picked" analysts, according to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper , is of a piece with the "high-confidence," but fraudulent, National Intelligence Estimate 15 years ago about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But what about "Russia hacking," the centerpiece of accusations of Kremlin "interference" to help Mr.Trump?

On March 31, 2017, WikiLeaks released original CIA documents - ignored by mainstream media - showing that the agency had created a program allowing it to break into computers and servers and make it look like others did it by leaving telltale signs like Cyrillic markings, for example. The capabilities shown in what WikiLeaks calls the "Vault 7" trove of CIA documents required the creation of hundreds of millions of lines of source code. At $25 per line of code, that amounts to about $2.5 billion for each 100 million code lines. But the Deep State has that kind of money and would probably consider the expenditure a good return on investment for "proving" the Russians hacked.

It is altogether possible that the hacking attributed to Russia was actually one of several "active measures" undertaken by a cabal consisting of the CIA, FBI, NSA and Mr. Clapper - the same agencies responsible for the lame, evidence-free memorandum of Jan. 6.

Mr. Comey displayed considerable discomfort on March 20, explaining to the House Intelligence Committee why the FBI did not insist on getting physical access to the Democratic National Committee computers in order to do its own proper forensics, but chose to rely on the those done by DNC contractor Crowdstrike. Could this be explained by Mr. Comey's fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted? Did this play a role in Mr. Trump's firing of Mr. Comey?

President Trump has entered into a high-stakes gamble in confronting the Deep State and its media allies over the evidence-free accusations of his colluding with Russia. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, publicly warned him of the risk earlier this year. "You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you," Mr. Schumer told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Jan. 3.

If Mr. Trump continues to "take on" the Deep State, he will be fighting uphill, whether he's in the right or not. It is far from certain he will prevail.

Ray McGovern ([email protected]) was a CIA analyst for 27 years; he briefed the president's daily brief one-on-one to President Reagan's most senior national security officials from 1981-85. William Binney ([email protected]) worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.

truth_will_set_you_free Newcomer 4day(s)ago
The public owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to both Mr. McGovern and Mr. Binney, who are substantial individuals with sterling reputations, for putting themselves forward and informing the public of the crimes that are taking place in DC behind closed doors.

The fact that paid shills and trolls would make the effort to post content free criticisms of this article only serves to underline the article's importance to a thoughtful reader. The people who sponsor these posters obviously have complete contempt for the public. However, each day, thanks to articles like this and the idiotic attempts to criticize them, more and more people are becoming aware of the fraud that is DC.

[May 23, 2017] Manafort faced blackmail attempt, hacks suggest - POLITICO

Looks like Ukrainians joined the witch hunt...
May 23, 2017 | www.politico.com

A purported cyberhack of the daughter of political consultant Paul Manafort suggests that he was the victim of a blackmail attempt while he was serving as Donald Trump's presidential campaign chairman last summer.

The undated communications, which are allegedly from the iPhone of Manafort's daughter, include a text that appears to come from a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, seeking to reach her father, in which he claims to have politically damaging information about both Manafort and Trump.

Attached to the text is a note to Paul Manafort referring to "bulletproof" evidence related to Manafort's financial arrangement with Ukraine's former president, the pro-Russian strongman Viktor Yanukovych, as well as an alleged 2012 meeting between Trump and a close Yanukovych associate named Serhiy Tulub.

"Considering all the facts and evidence that are in my possession, and before possible decision whether to pass this to [the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine] or FBI I would like to get your opinion on this and maybe your way to work things out that will persuade me to do otherwise," reads the note. It is signed "Sergii" - an alternative transliteration of Leshchenko's given name - and it urges Manafort to respond to an email address that reporters have used to reach Leshchenko.

In the typo-ridden text to Manafort's daughter to which the note was attached, the sender writes from a different address, "I need to get in touch with Paul i need to share some important information with him regarding ukraine investigation." The sender adds "as soon as he comes back to me i will pass you documents," but also warns: "if I don't get any reply from you iam gonaa pass it on to the fbi and ukrainian authorities including media."

Leshchenko disavowed the texts in question, telling POLITICO on Tuesday "I've never written any emails or messages to Manafort or his family. I don't know their contact details." He added he said "I have nothing to do with" the email address from which the texts were sent.

And in a Facebook post , he wrote that the "correspondence with Manafort's daughter is obviously fake."

The White House did not respond to a question about whether Trump had met with Tulub, a hunting buddy of Yanukovych's who had served in the government when Yanukovych was prime minister. But a White House official questioned the chronology supporting the claim, explaining that Trump had not worked with Manafort before the 2016 campaign.

In a Tuesday interview, Manafort denied brokering a 2012 meeting between Trump and Tulub and also pointied out that he wasn't working for Trump at the time.

However, Manafort did confirm the authenticity of the texts hacked from his daughter's phone. And he added that, before the texts were sent to his daughter, he had received similar texts to his own phone number from the same address appearing to be affiliated with Leshchenko.

He said he did not respond directly to any of the texts, and instead passed them along to his lawyer. He declined to provide the texts to POLITICO.

The hacked correspondence from his daughter's phone, much of which is unrelated to Paul Manafort's work, appears to have first surfaced a couple of weeks ago in an anonymous post on a so-called darknet website run by a hacktivist collective.

While the post hints in its introductory text that the hacker or hackers have additional information on Manafort, it includes only a handful of screenshots of texts from Manafort's daughter's cellphone, as well as some data files that appear to be related to the texts.

The images began circulating this week in political circles in Kiev and Washington.

The post comes at a time when there's intense interest in the connections between Trump's inner circle and pro-Russian interests. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and congressional committees alike are looking into contacts between Trump's associates - including Manafort - and Russian officials during the presidential campaign , and the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russian intelligence engineered cyberattacks on Democratic officials and groups with the intent of boosting Trump's presidential campaign by damaging that of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

The screenshots of hacked texts sent to Manafort's daughter do not include any information indicating the date on which they were sent.

But Manafort said that the first of the texts arrived shortly before The New York Times published an August exposé revealing that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine had obtained documents - which have since come under scrutiny - that appeared to show $12.7 million in cash payments earmarked for Manafort.

Manafort challenged the authenticity of the documents. And, while he said he could not be sure whether the texts apparently referencing them were in fact sent by Leshchenko, he said "I find it coincidental that I got these texts, and then he released these phony journals."

The Times story identified Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist who has built a reputation as an anti-corruption crusader, as a key player in revealing the documents. They appear to be from a ledger maintained by the Party of Regions, which Yanukovych headed. With financing from pro-Russian oligarchs , Manafort and his team helped resurrect Yanukovych's career and get him elected prime minister in 2007 and president in 2010 . But Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia under the protection of Russian President Vladimir Putin amid widespread 2013 protests over government corruption.

The documents eventually were provided to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, a government agency that had signed an evidence-sharing agreement with the FBI in late June - less than a month and a half before it released the ledgers.

The Times reported that the payments earmarked for Manafort were "a focus" of an investigation by Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, while CNN reported days later that the FBI was pursuing an overlapping inquiry.

Leshchenko held a news conference after the stories to highlight the documents, urging Ukrainian and American law enforcement to aggressively investigate Manafort.

"I believe and understand the basis of these payments are totally against the law - we have the proof from these books," Leshchenko said during the news conference, which attracted international media coverage. "If Mr. Manafort denies any allegations, I think he has to be interrogated into this case and prove his position that he was not involved in any misconduct on the territory of Ukraine," Leshchenko added.

Manafort denied receiving any off-the-books cash from Yanukovych's party and said he had never been contacted about the ledger by Ukrainian or American investigators. Nonetheless, the swirling controversy from the ledger reports forced him to step down from Trump's campaign.

Yet, after Trump's surprising victory over Clinton, Ukrainian officials appeared to back away from claims about the ledger and their investigations thereof.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine told POLITICO in December that a "general investigation" of the ledger was "still ongoing," but it said Manafort was not a target of the investigation. "As he is not the Ukrainian citizen, [the anti-corruption bureau] by the law couldn't investigate him personally," the bureau said in a statement.

Although the bureau is structured as an independent agency, some critics of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko contend that the ledgers may have been doctored or even forged and were disseminated with Poroshenko's tacit support in an effort to damage Trump.

During the campaign, Ukrainian government officials publicly questioned Trump's fitness for office, and they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, according to a POLITICO investigation published last month.

Poroshenko and his allies, who are scrambling to establish a relationship with the Trump administration, have distanced themselves from those efforts, and from Leshchenko.

The anti-corruption bureau is "fully independent," a Poroshenko spokesman told POLITICO last month. The spokesman said the presidential administration did not take any "targeted action against Manafort."

The spokesman in a written statement said Leshchenko "positions himself as a representative of internal opposition in the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko's faction, despite [the fact that] he belongs to the faction," adding, "it was about him personally who pushed [the anti-corruption bureau] to proceed with investigation on Manafort."

The post that appears to be the first to disseminate the texts from Manafort's daughter included some anti-Trump language, justifying the hack as retribution on behalf of those damaged by Trump's politics.

The site hosting the post is associated with a hacktivist collective that is relatively unknown in the cybersecurity world.

One former U.S. military intelligence cybersecurity analyst said, "I don't think we've got a history with them. They are not a known entity."

The cybersecurity analyst, whose company patrols cyberspace in search of hacker groups for private clients and government agencies, said the collective "seems like randos, not the nation-states we usually track."

[May 23, 2017] Former CIA Chief Tells of Concern Over Possible Russia Ties to Trump Campaign

Warren Commission replay, anybody ?
Notable quotes:
"... John O. Brennan, the former director of the CIA, said publicly for the first time Tuesday that he was concerned about possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign ..."
"... Mr. Brennan became so concerned last summer about signs of Russian election meddling that he held urgent, classified briefings for eight senior members of Congress, speaking with some of them over secure phone lines while they were away on recess. In those conversations, he told lawmakers there was evidence that Russia was specifically working to elect Mr. Trump as president. ..."
"... Mr. Brennan was also one of a handful of officials who briefed both President Barack Obama and Mr. Trump in January on a broad intelligence community report revealing that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered an "influence campaign" targeting the presidential election. ..."
May 23, 2017 | www.nytimes.com

John O. Brennan, the former director of the CIA, said publicly for the first time Tuesday that he was concerned about possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

President Trump asked two top intelligence officials to deny the existence of any evidence of collusion between his campaign and Russia, former officials said. Both of the intelligence officials are testifying before lawmakers on Tuesday.

Mr. Brennan, the former CIA director, said Tuesday that he became concerned last year that the Russian government was trying to influence members of the Trump campaign to act - wittingly or unwittingly - on Moscow's behalf.

"I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals," Mr. Brennan told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee.

It raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals," he said, adding that he did not know whether the Russian efforts were successful. He added, "I don't know whether such collusion existed." It was the first time he publicly acknowledged that he was concerned about possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

He said he left office in January with many unanswered questions about the Russian influence operation. Intelligence officials have said that Russia tried to tip the election toward Mr. Trump.

Mr. Brennan became so concerned last summer about signs of Russian election meddling that he held urgent, classified briefings for eight senior members of Congress, speaking with some of them over secure phone lines while they were away on recess. In those conversations, he told lawmakers there was evidence that Russia was specifically working to elect Mr. Trump as president.

Mr. Brennan was also one of a handful of officials who briefed both President Barack Obama and Mr. Trump in January on a broad intelligence community report revealing that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered an "influence campaign" targeting the presidential election.

- Matt Apuzzo

[May 23, 2017] Seth Rich, Craig Murray and the Sinister Stewards of the National Security State by Mike Whitney

Notable quotes:
"... Repeat: "A politicized analysis that violated normal rules for crafting intelligence assessments." That says it all, doesn't it? ..."
"... Comey is a vicious political opportunist who doesn't mind breaking a few legs if it'll advance his career plans. I wouldn't trust the man as far as I could throw him. Which isn't far. ..."
"... Comey was a participant in the intelligence gathering for political purposes ..."
"... Are we suggesting that the heads of the so called Intelligence Community are at war with the Trump Administration and paving the way for impeachment proceedings? ..."
"... Yep, we sure are. The Russia hacking fiasco is a regime change operation no different than the CIA's 50-or-so other oustings in the last 70 years. The only difference is that this operation is on the home field which is why everyone is so flustered. These things are only suppose to happen in those "other" countries. ..."
"... Trump might be the worst US president of all time, in fact, he probably is. But that doesn't mean there aren't other nefarious forces at work behind the smokescreen of democratic government. There are. In fact, this whole flap suggests that there's an alternate power-structure that operates completely off the public's radar and has the elected-government in its death-grip. This largely invisible group of elites controls the likes of Brennan, Clapper and Comey. And, apparently, they have enough influence to challenge and maybe even remove an elected president from office. (We'll see.) ..."
"... Since that Fox News blockbuster report, the Rich-family private investigator, Rod Wheeler, has disavowed and retracted the claims he had made earlier about Rich's contacts with WikiLeaks. So that's the end of that. The Rich family now has a DNC operative as their spokesperson, who is representing the family pro bono. ..."
"... This is a coup. We are now officially Turkey, where the secret police and the army high command feel entitled to 'vet' our elected leaders, and overthrow them if they deem it necessary. ..."
"... sadly mike we are witnessing the several thousand strong bipartisan establishment rather destroy the united states as a governable nation instead of reforming themselves by putting the country first instead of their own venal interest. ..."
"... The Rich family now has a DNC operative as their spokesperson, who is representing the family pro bono. ..."
"... Though never a Trump fan, I am becoming increasingly sympathetic to his plight. More and more, this is taking on the trappings of a coup d'etat. ..."
"... Well, I'm pretty convinced they removed 2 presidents in my lifetime. The first with extreme prejudice, namely JFK, and the 2nd somewhat less extremely, namely Nixon. They then gave Reagan & Clinton a damn good scare and forced them to come around to seeing the world as they wanted it seen. ..."
"... Frankly, I am greatly heartened by this recent brouhaha. That "invisible group" are outing themselves. By the ferocity and volume of their totally overblown, caricaturized(sp?) accusations, they're making their existence and program pretty plain to alert citizens, and by continuing along this path they'll cause more and more of the inattentive to awaken. Now, even the likes of CNBC are suggesting that the assault on Trump looks more like a coup than partisan political infighting. ..."
"... They're in the process of transforming themselves from subjects of conspiracy theories, to mainstream political players. Maybe it's sooner than planned, and perhaps a little more chaotically than they would have wished, but the combination of geopolitical & economic/financial pressures with the rise of the Trumpian Deplorables has forced their hand. Should they ever get to end of that process, America will be indistinguishable from Orwell's Oceania. The question is what can stop them? ..."
"... Right; (((Big Media))) and the ruling class are spending a Hell of a lot of legitimacy on the campaign against Trump. And they've been bleeding legitimacy for years as it was. ..."
"... The author says that if he worked for media or FBI he'd be beating the bushes. Nope. Simple logic. If the Russian hacking version is true, there's no reason to beat the bushes. Everything coming out of media and FBI is true. ..."
"... If it's not true, then Seth Rich was killed by the Clintons, which is consistent with a 40 year history of Clinton mafia action. If you work in media or FBI, you KNOW FOR SURE that the Clintons kill their enemies. You don't want to die, so you go along with the official line. ..."
"... All the neocons/SJW/neoliberals (pretty much all the same thing now) don't believe in a nation yet they still believe in "national security", I don't think it will be too long until the term is replaced with a more acceptable (according to them) "global security". ..."
"... But isn't the time now to drain this swamp? Why wait? I mean, we live in a dictatorship. Our liberty has been stripped away. We have nothing left. The future for our children is grim. How much longer will the Jews and the elites and the banksters strong arm us into submission? I keep hearing how our overlords are hell bent on eradicating the white race, and that we are well on our way to becoming Brazil. What awakening will it take for YOU to leave your armchair and become a warrior? ..."
"... It is incomprehensible to me why USA citizens who want the truth bother with details since Sept 11. Anyone with the guts to see through propaganda now knows what USA politicians and media are capable of. Even those who refuse to see Sept 11 for what it is, must see the mess the USA created, still creates, in Middle East, and North Africa, soon also in middle Africa, when the drone base in Nigeria will be in operation. ..."
"... It is quite possible that Russia tried to influence USA elections, as Obama did with the French. The difference is only that the USA is entitled to do such things, but not Russia. ..."
"... It looks like CNN Has tried to pull the wool over our eyes once again. This time, they used a screenshot from the Fallout 4 Video game to paint the picture of Russian Hacking. To bad that's not what a real hacking screen looks like. And an image you will only find in the video game! ..."
"... December 28, 2016 OUTRAGEOUS: Election hacks traced back to Obama's Department of Homeland Security ..."
"... Rick Falkvinge, founder of the original pirate party and head of privacy at PrivateInternetAccess com, joins us to discuss his recent article, "Today, the FBI becomes the enemy of every computer user and every IT security professional worldwide." ..."
www.zerohedge.com

May 22, 2017 | www.unz.com

Why is it a "conspiracy theory" to think that a disgruntled Democratic National Committee staffer gave WikiLeaks the DNC emails, but not a conspiracy theory to think the emails were provided by Russia?

Why?

Which is the more likely scenario: That a frustrated employee leaked damaging emails to embarrass his bosses or a that foreign government hacked DNC computers for some still-unknown reason?

That's a no-brainer, isn't it?

Former-DNC employee, Seth Rich, not only had access to the emails, but also a motive. He was pissed about the way the Clinton crowd was "sandbagging" Bernie Sanders. In contrast, there's neither evidence nor motive connecting Russia to the emails. On top of that, WikiLeaks founder, Julien Assange (a man of impeccable integrity) has repeatedly denied that Russia gave him the emails which suggests the government investigation is completely misdirected. The logical course of action, would be to pursue the leads that are most likely to bear fruit, not those that originate from one's own political bias. But, of course, logic has nothing to do with the current investigation, it's all about politics and geopolitics.

We don't know who killed Seth Rich and we're not going to speculate on the matter here. But we find it very strange that neither the media nor the FBI have pursued leads in the case that challenge the prevailing narrative on the Russia hacking issue. Why is that? Why is the media so eager to blame Russia when Rich looks like the much more probable suspect?

And why have the mainstream news organizations put so much energy into discrediting the latest Fox News report, when– for the last 10 months– they've showed absolutely zero interest in Rich's death at all?

According to Fox News:

"The Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on July 10 on a Washington, D.C., street just steps from his home had leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks, law enforcement sources told Fox News.

A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic report detailing the contents of DNC staffer Seth Rich's computer generated within 96 hours after his murder, said Rich made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time .

Rod Wheeler, a retired Washington homicide detective and Fox News contributor investigating the case on behalf of the Rich family, made the WikiLeaks claim, which was corroborated by a federal investigator who spoke to Fox News .

"I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and Wikileaks," the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department." ("Family of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich blasts detective over report of WikiLeaks link", Fox News)

Okay, so where's the computer? Who's got Rich's computer? Let's do the forensic work and get on with it.

But the Washington Post and the other bogus news organizations aren't interested in such matters because it doesn't fit with their political agenda. They'd rather take pot-shots at Fox for running an article that doesn't square with their goofy Russia hacking story. This is a statement on the abysmal condition of journalism today. Headline news has become the province of perception mandarins who use the venue to shape information to their own malign specifications, and any facts that conflict with their dubious storyline, are savagely attacked and discredited. Journalists are no longer investigators that keep the public informed, but paid assassins who liquidate views that veer from the party-line.

WikiLeaks never divulges the names of the people who provide them with information. Even so, Assange has not only shown an active interest in the Seth Rich case, but also offered a $20,000 reward for anyone providing information leading to the arrest and conviction of Rich's murder. Why? And why did he post a link to the Fox News article on his Twitter account on Tuesday?

I don't know, but if I worked for the FBI or the Washington Post, I'd sure as hell be beating the bushes to find out. And not just because it might help in Rich's murder investigation, but also, because it could shed light on the Russia fiasco which is being used to lay the groundwork for impeachment proceedings. So any information that challenges the government version of events, could actually change the course of history.

Have you ever heard of Craig Murray?

Murray should be the government's star witness in the DNC hacking scandal, instead, no one even knows who he is. But if we trust what Murray has to say, then we can see that the Russia hacking story is baloney. The emails were "leaked" by insiders not "hacked" by a foreign government. Here's the scoop from Robert Parry at Consortium News:

"Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, has suggested that the DNC leak came from a "disgruntled" Democrat upset with the DNC's sandbagging of the Sanders campaign and that the Podesta leak came from the U.S. intelligence community .He (Murray) appears to have undertaken a mission for WikiLeaks to contact one of the sources (or a representative) during a Sept. 25 visit to Washington where he says he met with a person in a wooded area of American University. .

Though Murray has declined to say exactly what the meeting in the woods was about, he may have been passing along messages about ways to protect the source from possible retaliation, maybe even an extraction plan if the source was in some legal or physical danger Murray also suggested that the DNC leak and the Podesta leak came from two different sources, neither of them the Russian government.

"The Podesta emails and the DNC emails are, of course, two separate things and we shouldn't conclude that they both have the same source," Murray said. "In both cases we're talking of a leak, not a hack, in that the person who was responsible for getting that information out had legal access to that information

Scott Horton then asked, "Is it fair to say that you're saying that the Podesta leak came from inside the intelligence services, NSA [the electronic spying National Security Agency] or another agency?"

"I think what I said was certainly compatible with that kind of interpretation, yeah," Murray responded. "In both cases they are leaks by Americans."

("A Spy Coup in America?", Robert Parry, Consortium News)

With all the hullabaloo surrounding the Russia hacking case, you'd think that Murray's eyewitness account would be headline news, but not in Homeland Amerika where the truth is kept as far from the front page as humanly possible.

Bottom line: The government has a reliable witness (Murray) who can positively identify the person who hacked the DNC emails and, so far, they've showed no interest in his testimony at all. Doesn't that strike you as a bit weird?

Did you know that after a 10 month-long investigation, there's still no hard evidence that Russia hacked the 2016 elections? In fact, when the Intelligence agencies were pressed on the matter, they promised to release a report that would provide iron-clad proof of Russian meddling. On January 6, 2017, theDirector of National Intelligence, James Clapper, released that report. It was called The Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). Unfortunately, the report fell far-short of the public's expectations. Instead of a smoking gun, Clapper produced a tedious 25-page compilation of speculation, hearsay, innuendo and gobbledygook. Here's how veteran journalist Robert Parry summed it up:

"The report contained no direct evidence that Russia delivered hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta to WikiLeaks .The DNI report as presented, is one-sided and lacks any actual proof. Further, the continued use of the word "assesses" .suggests that the underlying classified information also may be less than conclusive because, in intelligence-world-speak, "assesses" often means "guesses." ("US Report Still Lacks Proof on Russia 'Hack'", Robert Parry, Consortium News)

Repeat: "the report contained no direct evidence", no "actual proof", and a heckuva a lot of "guessing". That's some "smoking gun", eh?

If this 'thin gruel' sounds like insufficient grounds for removing a sitting president and his administration, that's because it is. But the situation is even worse than it looks, mainly because the information in the assessment is not reliable. The ICA was corrupted by higher-ups in the Intel food-chain who selected particular analysts who could be trusted to produce a document that served their broader political agenda. Think I'm kidding? Take a look at this excerpt from an article at Fox News:

"On January 6, 2017, the U.S. Intelligence Community issued an "Intelligence Community Assessment" (ICA) that found Russia deliberately interfered in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump's candidacy (but) there are compelling reasons to believe this ICA was actually a politicized analysis that violated normal rules for crafting intelligence assessments to ensure this one reached the bottom line conclusion that the Obama administration was looking for.

.Director of National Intelligence James Clapper explained in his testimony that two dozen or so "seasoned experts" were "handpicked" from the contributing agencies" and drafted the ICA "under the aegis of his former office" While Clapper claimed these analysts were given "complete independence" to reach their findings, he added that their conclusions "were thoroughly vetted and then approved by the directors of the three agencies and me."

This process drastically differed from the Intelligence Community's normal procedures. Hand-picking a handful of analysts from just three intelligence agencies to write such a controversial assessment went against standing rules to vet such analyses throughout the Intelligence Community within its existing structure. The idea of using hand-picked intelligence analysts selected through some unknown process to write an assessment on such a politically sensitive topic carries a strong stench of politicization .

A major problem with this process is that it gave John Brennan, CIA's hyper-partisan former director, enormous influence over the drafting of the ICA. Given Brennan's scathing criticism of Mr. Trump before and after the election, he should have had no role whatsoever in the drafting of this assessment. Instead, Brennan probably selected the CIA analysts who worked on the ICA and reviewed and approved their conclusions .

The unusual way that the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment was drafted raises major questions as to whether it was rigged by the Obama administration to produce conclusions that would discredit the election outcome and Mr. Trump's presidency ."

("More indications Intel assessment of Russian interference in election was rigged", Fox News)

Repeat: "A politicized analysis that violated normal rules for crafting intelligence assessments." That says it all, doesn't it?

Let's take a minute and review the main points in the article:

1–Was the Intelligence Community Assessment the summary work of all 17 US Intelligence Agencies?

No, it was not. "In his May 8 testimony to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing, Clapper confirmed (that) the ICA reflected the views of only three intelligence agencies - CIA, NSA and FBI – not all 17."

2–Did any of the analysts challenge the findings in the ICA?

No, the document failed to acknowledge any dissenting views, which suggests that the analysts were screened in order to create consensus.

3– Were particular analysts chosen to produce the ICA?

Yes, they were "handpicked from the contributing agencies" and drafted the ICA "under the aegis of his former office" (the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.)

4– Was their collaborative work released to the public in its original form?

No, their conclusions "were thoroughly vetted and then approved by the directors of the three agencies and me." (Clapper) This of course suggests that the document was political in nature and crafted to deliver a particular message.

5–Were Clapper's methods "normal" by Intelligence agency standards?

Definitely not. "This process drastically differed from the Intelligence Community's normal procedures."

6–Are Clapper and Brennan partisans who have expressed their opposition to Trump many times in the past calling into question their ability to be objective in executing their duties as heads of their respective agencies?

Absolutely. Check out this clip from Monday's Arkansas online:

"I think, in many ways, our institutions are under assault, both externally - and that's the big news here, is the Russian interference in our election system," said James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence. "I think as well our institutions are under assault internally."

When he was asked, "Internally, from the president?" Clapper said, "Exactly." (Clapper calls Trump democracy assailant", arkansasonline)

Brennan has made numerous similar statements. (Note: It is particularly jarring that Clapper– who oversaw the implementation of the modern surveillance police state– feels free to talk about "the assault on our institutions.")

7–Does the ICA prove that anyone on the Trump campaign colluded with Russia or that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections?

No, it doesn't. What it shows is that –even while Clapper and Brennan may have been trying to produce an assessment that would 'kill two birds with one stone', (incriminate Russia and smear Trump at the same time) the ICA achieved neither. So far, there's no proof of anything. Now take a look at this list I found in an article at The American Thinker:

"12 prominent public statements by those on both sides of the aisle who reviewed the evidence or been briefed on it confirmed there was no evidence of Russia trying to help Trump in the election or colluding with him:

The New York Times (Nov 1, 2016);
House Speaker Paul Ryan (Feb, 26, 2017);
Former DNI James Clapper , March 5, 2017);
Devin Nunes Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, March 20, 2017);
James Comey, March 20, 2017;
Rep. Chris Stewart, House Intelligence Committee, March 20, 2017;
Rep. Adam Schiff, House Intelligence committee, April 2, 2017);
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senate Intelligence Committee, May 3, 2017);
Sen. Joe Manchin Senate Intelligence Committee, May 8, 2017;
James Clapper (again) (May 8, 2017);
Rep. Maxine Waters, May 9, 2017);
President Donald Trump,(May 9, 2017).
Senator Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, indicated that his briefing confirmed Dianne Feinstein's view that the President was not under investigation for colluding with the Russians."
("Russian Hacking and Collusion: Put the Cards on the Table", American Thinker)

Keep in mind, this is a list of the people who actually "reviewed the evidence", and even they are not convinced. It just goes to show that the media blitz is not based on any compelling proof, but on the determination of behind-the-scenes elites who want to destroy their political rivals. Isn't that what's really going on?

How does former FBI Director James Comey fit into all this?

First of all, we need to set the record straight on Comey so readers don't get the impression that he's the devoted civil servant and all-around stand-up guy he's made out to be in the media. Here's a short clip from an article by Human Rights First that will help to put things into perspective:

"Five former FBI agents raised concerns about his (Comey's) support for a legal memorandum justifying torture and his defense of holding an American citizen indefinitely without charge. They note that Comey concurred with a May 10, 2005, Office of Legal Counsel opinion that authorized torture. While the agents credited Comey for opposing torture tactics in combination and on policy grounds, they note that Comey still approved the legal basis for use of specific torture tactics.

"These techniques include cramped confinement, wall-standing, water dousing, extended sleep deprivation, and waterboarding, all of which constitute torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in contravention of domestic and international law," the letter states.

Those signing the letter to the committee also objected to Comey's defense of detaining Americans without charge or trial and observed, "Further, Mr. Comey vigorously defended the Bush administration's decision to hold Jose Padilla, a United States citizen apprehended on U.S. soil, indefinitely without charge or trial for years in a military brig in Charleston, South Carolina." ("FBI Agents Urge Senate Judiciary Committee to Question Comey on Torture, Indefinite Detention", Human Rights First)

Get the picture?

Comey is a vicious political opportunist who doesn't mind breaking a few legs if it'll advance his career plans. I wouldn't trust the man as far as I could throw him. Which isn't far.

American Thinker's Clarice Feldman explains why Comey launched his counter-intel investigation in July 2016 but failed to notify Congress until March 2017, a full eight months later. Here's what she said:

"There is only one reasonable explanation for FBI Director James Comey to be launching a counter-intel investigation in July 2016, notifying the White House and Clapper, and keeping it under wraps from congress. Comey was a participant in the intelligence gathering for political purposes - wittingly, or unwittingly." ("Russian Hacking and Collusion: Put the Cards on the Table", American Thinker)

Are we suggesting that the heads of the so called Intelligence Community are at war with the Trump Administration and paving the way for impeachment proceedings?

Yep, we sure are. The Russia hacking fiasco is a regime change operation no different than the CIA's 50-or-so other oustings in the last 70 years. The only difference is that this operation is on the home field which is why everyone is so flustered. These things are only suppose to happen in those "other" countries.

Does this analysis make me a Donald Trump supporter?

Never. The idea is ridiculous. Trump might be the worst US president of all time, in fact, he probably is. But that doesn't mean there aren't other nefarious forces at work behind the smokescreen of democratic government. There are. In fact, this whole flap suggests that there's an alternate power-structure that operates completely off the public's radar and has the elected-government in its death-grip. This largely invisible group of elites controls the likes of Brennan, Clapper and Comey. And, apparently, they have enough influence to challenge and maybe even remove an elected president from office. (We'll see.)

American history is not silent about the proclivities of unchecked security forces, a short list of which includes the Palmer Raids, the FBI's blackmailing of civil rights leaders, Army surveillance of the antiwar movement, the NSA's watch lists, and the CIA's waterboarding. . Who would trust the authors of past episodes of repression as a reliable safeguard against future repression?"

("Security Breach– Trump's tussle with the bureaucratic state", Michael J. Glennon, Harper's Magazine)

"Who?"

The Democrats, that's who.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] .

Mark Caplan , Website May 19, 2017 at 1:47 pm GMT

Since that Fox News blockbuster report, the Rich-family private investigator, Rod Wheeler, has disavowed and retracted the claims he had made earlier about Rich's contacts with WikiLeaks. So that's the end of that. The Rich family now has a DNC operative as their spokesperson, who is representing the family pro bono.

Seamus Padraig , May 19, 2017 at 1:47 pm GMT

This is a coup. We are now officially Turkey, where the secret police and the army high command feel entitled to 'vet' our elected leaders, and overthrow them if they deem it necessary.

In case there was any doubt, the constitution is now officially dead. We are a dictatorship run by the deep state.

The Alarmist , May 19, 2017 at 7:42 pm GMT

As to, "Where are the journalists?" there was a classified annex to the PATRIOT that outlawed journalism. That's why you haven't seen any in the US for years. They tried to spread its reach to the world by a secret annex to FATCA, but that effort has largely been limited to the wimps in Europe.

paraglider , May 19, 2017 at 10:01 pm GMT

sadly mike we are witnessing the several thousand strong bipartisan establishment rather destroy the united states as a governable nation instead of reforming themselves by putting the country first instead of their own venal interest.

imo its hopeless. within a decade or two the usa is done as a superpower perhaps even a nation of the first rank. the way washington projects its power is through the us dollar as reserve currency. for now there is no substitute.

once the dollar rallies strongly in the next few years as the euro project implodes and frightened money comes here looking for safety our exports from a high dollar will make for a profoundly deflationary evironment and doom our economy and with it out ability project power.

our military is already a bit of a joke capable of only defeating the semi disarmed and poorly led. against true adversaries like russia and china the pentagon won't even attempt a confrontation knowing they can not win.

forget the internecine warfare going on in america. it is cancer cells attacking the remnants of a healthy american host and the media opinion makers are rooting for cancer to win.

watch the dollar over the next few years as it rises in value our american future will grow dimmer. by 203? it will be lights here.

Antiwar7 , May 20, 2017 at 4:46 am GMT

@Mark Caplan Since that Fox News blockbuster report, the Rich-family private investigator, Rod Wheeler, has disavowed and retracted the claims he had made earlier about Rich's contacts with WikiLeaks. So that's the end of that. The Rich family now has a DNC operative as their spokesperson, who is representing the family pro bono.

anonymous , May 20, 2017 at 2:35 pm GMT

Though never a Trump fan, I am becoming increasingly sympathetic to his plight. More and more, this is taking on the trappings of a coup d'etat.

Erebus , May 20, 2017 at 4:17 pm GMT

This largely invisible group of elites controls the likes of Brennan, Clapper and Comey. And, apparently, they have enough influence to challenge and maybe even remove an elected president from office. (We'll see.)

Well, I'm pretty convinced they removed 2 presidents in my lifetime. The first with extreme prejudice, namely JFK, and the 2nd somewhat less extremely, namely Nixon. They then gave Reagan & Clinton a damn good scare and forced them to come around to seeing the world as they wanted it seen.

Frankly, I am greatly heartened by this recent brouhaha. That "invisible group" are outing themselves. By the ferocity and volume of their totally overblown, caricaturized(sp?) accusations, they're making their existence and program pretty plain to alert citizens, and by continuing along this path they'll cause more and more of the inattentive to awaken. Now, even the likes of CNBC are suggesting that the assault on Trump looks more like a coup than partisan political infighting.

They're in the process of transforming themselves from subjects of conspiracy theories, to mainstream political players. Maybe it's sooner than planned, and perhaps a little more chaotically than they would have wished, but the combination of geopolitical & economic/financial pressures with the rise of the Trumpian Deplorables has forced their hand. Should they ever get to end of that process, America will be indistinguishable from Orwell's Oceania. The question is what can stop them?

Whether he won the popular vote or not, it is clear that Trump has a massive voter base that knows, however vaguely, that there is an Everglades' worth of something long past rotten in DC.

That base is growing, thanks in very large part to the invisible group's damn-the-torpedoes onslaught. I doubt the awakening is big enough today to put a million armed Deplorables on Capital Hill, but if these invisible elites continue to flounder like this, they may awaken just enough of the population to make that possible.

And then, the gates of hell break open in America.

Corvinus , May 20, 2017 at 5:00 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig This is a coup. We are now officially Turkey, where the secret police and the army high command feel entitled to 'vet' our elected leaders, and overthrow them if they deem it necessary.

In case there was any doubt, the constitution is now officially dead. We are a dictatorship run by the deep state.

jakbit , May 20, 2017 at 5:41 pm GMT

are you and your readers following George Webb on youtube?

Svigor , May 20, 2017 at 7:55 pm GMT

Assuming this is the case, are you going to sit there and take it like an impotent chump? Or, since you are imprisoned in this cage, will you channel your inner white rage and lead the charge to rid yourself from those who control you?

Post your address, tough guy, and we'll find out.

Frankly, I am greatly heartened by this recent brouhaha. That "invisible group" are outing themselves. By the ferocity and volume of their totally overblown, caricaturized(sp?) accusations, they're making their existence and program pretty plain to alert citizens, and by continuing along this path they'll cause more and more of the inattentive to awaken. Now, even the likes of CNBC are suggesting that the assault on Trump looks more like a coup than partisan political infighting.

Right; (((Big Media))) and the ruling class are spending a Hell of a lot of legitimacy on the campaign against Trump. And they've been bleeding legitimacy for years as it was.

Whether he won the popular vote or not, it is clear that Trump has a massive voter base that knows, however vaguely, that there is an Everglades' worth of something long past rotten in DC.

I keep trying to explain this "popular vote" thing: The Electoral College system is essentially mandatory voting: every person casts a vote via the electoral college, whether they actually fill out a ballot or not. Choosing not to fill out a ballot is a vote for "I'll go with the majority's decision." The entire population of the United States of America is represented in this process: everyone is either a proxy (voter), or has his vote cast by a proxy.

The "popular vote" mantra is the scuzzbucket Democrat way of dismissing the legitimacy of the people who vote by proxy. It's Democrats' way of saying these people don't matter. And this from the party that claims to support mandatory voting!

The will of the people is expressed in the Electoral College. And in the 2016 election, that will very much favored Trump over Clinton.

Erebus , May 21, 2017 at 1:02 am GMT

@Corvinus "I doubt the awakening is big enough today to put a million armed Deplorables on Capital Hill, but if these invisible elites continue to flounder like this, they may awaken just enough of the population to make that possible."

But isn't the time now to drain this swamp? Why wait? I mean, we live in a dictatorship. Our liberty has been stripped away. We have nothing left. The future for our children is grim. How much longer will the Jews and the elites and the banksters strong arm us into submission? I keep hearing how our overlords are hell bent on eradicating the white race, and that we are well on our way to becoming Brazil. What awakening will it take for YOU to leave your armchair and become a warrior?

There are honestly serious questions. I would like to know your thoughts.

Svigor , May 21, 2017 at 12:37 pm GMT

As this seems to be addressed to me, I'll say that I did not misunderstand either the legal-constitutional concept of the Electoral College, or its workings. I know well that Trump won the election as defined by the American Constitution. Perhaps I should have said " won the popular vote count ".

As for "I'll go with the majority's decision.", that pretty much applies to any "first past the post" electoral system.

My point is that talk of "the popular vote" should be met with derision, not entertained or repeated.

Random Guy , May 21, 2017 at 9:42 pm GMT

I think your all crazy there. I was born in Canada of Scottish decent, and I won't go to the States anymore. You are a military dictatorship and gun worshipers. It's like being a dutch farmer hearing about the candle-light vigils of the NAZI's from Holland mid last century. I tell my family to stay away.

Willem Hendrik , May 21, 2017 at 10:09 pm GMT

America is too important to be left to Americans. You should be proud that others take an interest.

alexander , May 22, 2017 at 7:21 am GMT

@Carlton Meyer Private investigator Rod Wheeler made a few bucks doing an investigation, but soon realized that he stirred up a high-level hornets nest. Whoever killed Rich would not hesitate to threaten Wheeler or his family or his pension. Suddenly, Wheeler recants everything that he recently put in writing, with no explanation. Soon he will claim that he never did the investigation and has never even been to DC.

polistra , May 22, 2017 at 9:28 am GMT

The author says that if he worked for media or FBI he'd be beating the bushes. Nope. Simple logic. If the Russian hacking version is true, there's no reason to beat the bushes. Everything coming out of media and FBI is true.

If it's not true, then Seth Rich was killed by the Clintons, which is consistent with a 40 year history of Clinton mafia action. If you work in media or FBI, you KNOW FOR SURE that the Clintons kill their enemies. You don't want to die, so you go along with the official line.

Those are the two possibilities. Neither one leads to public exposure of truth.

neutral , May 22, 2017 at 11:08 am GMT

All the neocons/SJW/neoliberals (pretty much all the same thing now) don't believe in a nation yet they still believe in "national security", I don't think it will be too long until the term is replaced with a more acceptable (according to them) "global security".

neutral , May 22, 2017 at 11:18 am GMT

@Corvinus "I doubt the awakening is big enough today to put a million armed Deplorables on Capital Hill, but if these invisible elites continue to flounder like this, they may awaken just enough of the population to make that possible."

But isn't the time now to drain this swamp? Why wait? I mean, we live in a dictatorship. Our liberty has been stripped away. We have nothing left. The future for our children is grim. How much longer will the Jews and the elites and the banksters strong arm us into submission? I keep hearing how our overlords are hell bent on eradicating the white race, and that we are well on our way to becoming Brazil. What awakening will it take for YOU to leave your armchair and become a warrior?

There are honestly serious questions. I would like to know your thoughts.

jilles dykstra , May 22, 2017 at 11:34 am GMT

It is incomprehensible to me why USA citizens who want the truth bother with details since Sept 11. Anyone with the guts to see through propaganda now knows what USA politicians and media are capable of. Even those who refuse to see Sept 11 for what it is, must see the mess the USA created, still creates, in Middle East, and North Africa, soon also in middle Africa, when the drone base in Nigeria will be in operation.

It is quite possible that Russia tried to influence USA elections, as Obama did with the French. The difference is only that the USA is entitled to do such things, but not Russia.

I still hope that Trump wants good, normal, relations with Russia, as long as I can keep this hope, Deep State will try to remove Trump one way or another, and will continue the anti Russian propaganda. Once Trump is removed, the war can begin. As Sol Bloom, a friend of Roosevelt, writes in his memoirs, 'the great accomplishment of Roosevelt was to prepare the USA people slowly for war'. We now can write 'the great accomplishment of CNN, Washpost and NYT, is to prepare the USA people for war against Russia'.

jilles dykstra , May 22, 2017 at 11:37 am GMT

@Willem Hendrik America is too important to be left to Americans. You should be proud that others take an interest.

Anonymous White Male , May 22, 2017 at 1:07 pm GMT

"Trump might be the worst US president of all time, in fact, he probably is."

I am no fan of Trump, but how can anyone make such a statement concerning someone that has only been in office for 4 months? I have noticed Whitney's writing before. He has ridiculous comments inserted in with lucid ones. I wonder if his residence in Washington State is the cause of his delusions?

Che Guava , May 22, 2017 at 1:17 pm GMT

We are now officially Turkey, where the secret police and the army high command feel entitled to 'vet' our elected leaders, and overthrow them if they deem it necessary.

That statement is confused on so many levels. I haven't seen one convincing analysis of the recent failed coup in Turkey, but my impression is that they were Kemalists, wanting to get rid of Sultan Erdogan for very good reasons. Erdogan claims it was due to his fellow Islamist, Gulen. Point is, the coup was a massive failure, and almost certainly incited by those loyal to Erdogan, as a piece of theatre to maximise the vote for him in his referendum to assume despotic power.

He has sacked hundreds of thousands, military, judicial, and civil service, arrested tens of thousands, closed many educational institutions. None of that in the USA.

As a sympathizer with constitutionalist, freedom-loving, and oppressed USA people, it is clear that if Trump were at all sincere about his campaign promises, he needs to do a much better job of decapitating the political appointees in the civil service (unlike the victims in Turkey, no tears need be shed, they would all end up in other kinds of overly remunerated playtime).

He would do well to cut fed. money for the courses in culti-Marxi, etc., and to universities emphasizing that. Since none of that is going to happen (unfortunately) there may be another key factor. Turkey was best buddies with Israel for a long time, and almost has returned to that. They were never a colony of Israel. The USA is. Witness Prex Trump's craven obsequiousness right now (or in the last 24 hours). The tail that wags the dog, indeed.

Agent76 , May 22, 2017 at 1:35 pm GMT

Jan 2, 2017 BOOM! CNN Caught Using Video Game Image In Fake Russian Hacking Story

It looks like CNN Has tried to pull the wool over our eyes once again. This time, they used a screenshot from the Fallout 4 Video game to paint the picture of Russian Hacking. To bad that's not what a real hacking screen looks like. And an image you will only find in the video game!

December 28, 2016 OUTRAGEOUS: Election hacks traced back to Obama's Department of Homeland Security

In an unbelievable development that ought to outrage every single American, election officials in Georgia are essentially accusing the Obama administration of attempting to hack into the state's electronic balloting machines in what appears to be a naked political ploy.

http://www.newstarget.com/2016-12-28-election-hacks-traced-back-to-obamas-department-of-homeland-security.html

Agent76 , May 22, 2017 at 1:36 pm GMT

Jan 3, 2017 With Rule 41 the FBI Is Now Officially the Enemy of All Computer Users

Rick Falkvinge, founder of the original pirate party and head of privacy at PrivateInternetAccess com, joins us to discuss his recent article, "Today, the FBI becomes the enemy of every computer user and every IT security professional worldwide."

Erebus , May 22, 2017 at 1:51 pm GMT

@Carlton Meyer Private investigator Rod Wheeler made a few bucks doing an investigation, but soon realized that he stirred up a high-level hornets nest. Whoever killed Rich would not hesitate to threaten Wheeler or his family or his pension. Suddenly, Wheeler recants everything that he recently put in writing, with no explanation. Soon he will claim that he never did the investigation and has never even been to DC.

Che Guava , May 22, 2017 at 3:20 pm GMT

Must adding, another very good article from Mike Whitney.

Assange, a man of impeccable integrity?

It is Julian, not Julien.

I cannot vouch for impeccable. As a hacker, sure, no approval of the fraud types (minuscule at the time, but there). Past that slight connection at second-degree of separation, he is the media figure to me. Doesn't like to wash, so a dirty hippy. Reportedly extremely smelly. I would imagine the Ecuadorian embassy has house-trained him.

Attempts at political treatises are sub-undergraduate and pompous. Led by his penis, thus the trap in Sweden. Also done some great things, and been betrayed by MSM organisations (NYT and Guardian come to mind, in particular, the latter never shut up about the false rape charges). Now that those are over, it would be beautiful if Queen Elizabeth would grant him a pardon for his default on bail.

geokat62 , May 22, 2017 at 3:31 pm GMT

The electoral college is the "equalizer" which forces the candidates to campaign in all 50 states

That's the theory. The reality is more like:

The electoral college is the "equalizer" which forces the candidates to campaign in all 15 battleground states

or better still:

The electoral college is the "equalizer" which forces the candidates to campaign in all 5 states (CO, FL, NV, OH, VA) that have been truly competitive over the last five presidential elections

utu , May 22, 2017 at 3:32 pm GMT

@anarchyst The electoral college was put in place to keep the major population centers from determining the vote. Without the electoral college, the prospective presidential candidates would only have to cater to the major population centers and could safely ignore "flyover country", as the east and west coasts would have enough "clout" to determine the direction of the vote.

The electoral college is the "equalizer" which forces the candidates to campaign in all 50 states...

Corvinus , May 22, 2017 at 3:57 pm GMT

@Erebus

What awakening will it take for YOU to leave your armchair and become a warrior?
Being neither American, nor living anywhere near it, the only dog I have in what is still an internal American struggle is that I live on the same planet. America being what it is, it's (what I believe to be) existential struggle may well spill over its borders to impact all, in some cases violently.
So, I throw the question (quite seriously) backatchya. Will the Deplorables put their money on the table, and at what point will they do that?
But isn't the time now to drain this swamp? Why wait?
The swamp's ooze has permeated all of the power structures of the body politic, and its vapours much of the society. It cannot be drained in a day, and it cannot be drained without massive dislocation of both America's geo-political position, and its national cohesion. To "drain the swamp" is to manage the dissolution of a global empire while the resulting centrifugal forces work to tear the homeland apart.

I made a comment on another thread that expresses my view on America's situation. You may be interested.
http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/acuckalypse-now-the-budget-betrayal-and-trump-derangement-syndrome/#comment-1865244

jilles dykstra , May 22, 2017 at 4:12 pm GMT

The USA electoral system dates back to the time individual states were important. The GB system, the same. The French system, to the time De Gaulle wanted powers to be able to rule the country.

Generals fight the last war, just German generals in WWII had no experience in WWI, as had French genererals, so German tanks were more than twice as fast as French tanks, and the German system for fuelling tanks, jerrycans, was so much faster than the French system, tank lorries, with a waiting line, that France could be overrun.
At present in Europe we see that the election system is such that the majority in countried with high unemployment, the southern countries, those in the ages of 18 to 35 or so, are contemplating rebellion.

At the same time, the euro is the cause of the unemployment, devaluation impossible, to make the country competitive in a moment, Schäuble, a euro profiteer, is talking about 'strenghtening the euro zone'.

Politicians fight the the last fight.

Clark Westwood , May 22, 2017 at 4:41 pm GMT

@Erebus Since Wheeler and the Riches found the dead horse heads at the foot of their beds, things started happening...

Kim Dotcom announced he's prepared to submit written testimony, with real evidence to Congress should they include Seth Rich's death in their probe into Russian election tampering.

I knew Seth Rich. I know he was the @Wikileaks source. I was involved. https://t.co/MbGQteHhZM
- Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 20, 2017

I'm meeting my legal team on Monday. I will issue a statement about #SethRich on Tuesday. Please be patient. This needs to be done properly.
- Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 20, 2017

Then, Newt Gingrich, on Fox News, , "... (Rich) was assassinated at 4 in the morning after having giving Wikileaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. Nobody's investigating that. And what does that tell you about what is going on?"

Well, we know that Kim's chances of attracting Congressional interest was just about nil, but then Sean Hannity invited Dotcom to discuss his evidence in the Seth Rich case on his shows.

Stay tuned. Public invitation Kim Dotcom to be a guest on radio and TV. #GameChanger Buckle up destroy Trump media. Sheep that u all are!!! https://t.co/3qLwXCGl6z
- Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 20, 2017
Most recently, he tweeted:
Complete panic has set in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. Any bets when the kitchen sink is dumped on my head?? https://t.co/Zt2gIX4zyq
- Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 22, 2017
So, I'm taking heart. The swamp may be getting warm.

[May 23, 2017] Since Wheeler and the Riches found the dead horse heads at the foot of their beds, things started happening

www.unz.com

Erebus , May 22, 2017 at 1:51 pm GMT

May 23, 2017 | www.unz.com

@Carlton Meyer Private investigator Rod Wheeler made a few bucks doing an investigation, but soon realized that he stirred up a high-level hornets nest. Whoever killed Rich would not hesitate to threaten Wheeler or his family or his pension. Suddenly, Wheeler recants everything that he recently put in writing, with no explanation. Soon he will claim that he never did the investigation and has never even been to DC.

[May 23, 2017] Trump Is the Symptom, Not the Disease by Chris Hedges

Pretty naive, but poignant rant
Notable quotes:
"... It began when big money was employed by political operatives such as Roger Stone, a close Trump adviser, to create negative political advertisements and false narratives to deceive the public, turning political debate into burlesque. On all these fronts we have lost. We are trapped like rats in a cage. A narcissist and imbecile may be turning the electric shocks on and off, but the problem is the corporate state, and unless we dismantle that, we are doomed. ..."
"... "What's necessary for the state is the illusion of normality, of regularity," America's best-known political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, told me last week by phone from the prison where he is incarcerated in Frackville, Pa. " In Rome, what the emperors needed was bread and circuses. In America, what we need is 'Housewives of Atlanta.' We need sports. The moral stories of good cops and evil people. Because you have that . there is no critical thinking in America during this period... ..."
"... Trump, an acute embarrassment to the corporate state and the organs of internal security, may be removed from the presidency, but such a palace coup would only further consolidate the power of the deep state and intensify internal measures of repression. ..."
May 16, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

Forget the firing of James Comey. Forget the paralysis in Congress. Forget the idiocy of a press that covers our descent into tyranny as if it were a sports contest between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats or a reality show starring our maniacal president and the idiots that surround him. Forget the noise.

The crisis we face is not embodied in the public images of the politicians that run our dysfunctional government. The crisis we face is the result of a four-decade-long, slow-motion corporate coup that has rendered the citizen impotent, left us without any authentic democratic institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become omnipotent. This crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalized bribery and empowered those public figures that master the arts of entertainment and artifice. And if we do not overthrow the neoliberal , corporate forces that have destroyed our democracy we will continue to vomit up more monstrosities as dangerous as Donald Trump.

Trump is the symptom, not the disease.

Our descent into despotism began with the pardoning of Richard Nixon , all of whose impeachable crimes are now legal, and the extrajudicial assault, including targeted assassinations and imprisonment, carried out on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals.

It began with the creation of corporate-funded foundations and organizations that took control of the press, the courts, the universities, scientific research and the two major political parties. It began with empowering militarized police to kill unarmed citizens and the spread of our horrendous system of mass incarceration and the death penalty. It began with the stripping away of our most basic constitutional rights-privacy, due process, habeas corpus, fair elections and dissent.

It began when big money was employed by political operatives such as Roger Stone, a close Trump adviser, to create negative political advertisements and false narratives to deceive the public, turning political debate into burlesque. On all these fronts we have lost. We are trapped like rats in a cage. A narcissist and imbecile may be turning the electric shocks on and off, but the problem is the corporate state, and unless we dismantle that, we are doomed.

"What's necessary for the state is the illusion of normality, of regularity," America's best-known political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, told me last week by phone from the prison where he is incarcerated in Frackville, Pa. " In Rome, what the emperors needed was bread and circuses. In America, what we need is 'Housewives of Atlanta.' We need sports. The moral stories of good cops and evil people. Because you have that . there is no critical thinking in America during this period...

... ... ...

Trump, an acute embarrassment to the corporate state and the organs of internal security, may be removed from the presidency, but such a palace coup would only further consolidate the power of the deep state and intensify internal measures of repression.

[May 23, 2017] John Podesta Alt-Right Media Like Sean Hannity Colluding with Russia

Compare this with his unflattering assessment of Hillary released in leaked emails from his Google account. Would it so good if hillary was elected ?
The fact that NYT and WaPo suffered some reputational damage, if true (I think NYT time expanded its circulation during this period) is encouraging as they both were in bed with Hillary. essentially a part of Hillary campaign staff. That means more power to the Internet media. While I don't approve of Trump's cavalier joke suggesting that the Russians find and turn over the emails that were destroyed by Clinton, I think it's a very, very big stretch to combine the fact that the DNC obviously plotted to undermine Sanders with the failure of the staff to repel predictable hacking and conclude that the person at fault here is Donald Trump.
"He suggested that the media should have helped the Clinton campaign fuel the Russian angle, instead of reporting on his emails." -- this is not a suggestion, this is "Podesta strategy", which actually was successfully implemented. russian witch hunt as the mean to distruct attention from Hillary email and DNC corruption. "Look, a squirrel" type, "turd blossom" style political hack. The extent to which that narrative is working is an indictment of the US MSM
As for "an "echo system" ... that raised the social media profile of articles that were damaging to Democrats." such echo system emerge for any society in crisis. This was true for the USSR after 70th, this is true for the USA in 2010th. Neoliberal society is in crisis, both ideological, political and economical. Neoliberal globalization is under direct attack (Brexit, Trump election)
Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Podesta explained that it was one more example of how the Russians were "very active in propagating and distributing fake news, working with these alt-right sites in conjunction with them." He also cited an "echo system" created by the Russians that raised the social media profile of articles that were damaging to Democrats. ..."
"... He pointed out that "legitimate sites" like the Washington Post ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... He suggested that the media should have helped the Clinton campaign fuel the Russian angle, instead of reporting on his emails. ..."
"... "I think if you contextualize it - if you say that 'The Russians are coming,' and 'The Russians are here' - that can give people a sense of that they need to be more careful in the way they assess what they're hearing and what they're seeing and what's being peddled," he said. ..."
"... He described the period of leaks as "the Soviet days" and griped that the "low burn" of email stories helped revive questions about Clinton's own private emails. ..."
"... "We hadn't put it to bed completely," he admitted. ..."
May 23, 2017 | www.breitbart.com
Hillary Clinton's former campaign chief John Podesta attacked the First Amendment rights of the free press as he continued to spin his conspiracy theory of Russia colluding with American news websites to damage Democrats.

During a conversation with the Washington Post 's Karen Tumulty, he cited the "participation and the support of the alt-right media," naming "guys like Sean Hannity" and "disgusting" Newt Gingrich for helping spread "fake news" to hurt Democrats. He specifically criticized Hannity and Gingrich for asking questions about DNC staffer Seth Rich's murder and whether or not it had a connection with Wikileaks.

Podesta explained that it was one more example of how the Russians were "very active in propagating and distributing fake news, working with these alt-right sites in conjunction with them." He also cited an "echo system" created by the Russians that raised the social media profile of articles that were damaging to Democrats.

He pointed out that "legitimate sites" like the Washington Post and the New York Times suffered, as other "alt-right" websites got more traction during the election.

Podesta blamed websites in the United States for publishing emails from Emmanuel Macron during the French presidential election to influence the outcome.

"The first reports of them came from U.S. alt-right sites back into France," he said. "This is a global phenomena."

He praised the French media for helping censor the information to stop it from damaging Macron's campaign.

"I think unfortunately for us, but maybe fortunately for the world, I think the French press was more sensitive to it," he said, praising them for helping Macron "win by a landslide" after censoring their reporting on the hacked emails.

He suggested that the American media should have done the same things with his leaked emails.

"I didn't feel like that really happened last fall the mainstream U.S. press was much more interested in the gossip," he said.

Podesta warned the media about Russia's efforts to use the emails to hurt Democrats, pointedly directing them to be more responsible. He suggested that the media should have helped the Clinton campaign fuel the Russian angle, instead of reporting on his emails.

"I think if you contextualize it - if you say that 'The Russians are coming,' and 'The Russians are here' - that can give people a sense of that they need to be more careful in the way they assess what they're hearing and what they're seeing and what's being peddled," he said.

He described the period of leaks as "the Soviet days" and griped that the "low burn" of email stories helped revive questions about Clinton's own private emails.

"We hadn't put it to bed completely," he admitted.

[May 23, 2017] Sean Hannity Stands by Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory

May 23, 2017 | www.msn.com

Despite the pleas of a grieving family, and the growing unease of his own employer, right-wing commentator Sean Hannity insists he willnot back down from his increasingly problematic claims that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was slain last summer because he'd leaked information to Wikileaks. His murderers, in this warped version of the story, are presumably liberal operatives out for silence and revenge.

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"I retracted nothing," Hannity said on Tuesday afternoon. The defiant statement was in response to Fox News retracting a story, published last week, that suggested Rich had been in contact with Wikileaks. Fox News posted a statement on its website that said, in part :"The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting. Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed."

Related: Seth Rich's family slams Kim Dotcom's claims

Nobody has done more to promulgate the Seth Rich conspiracy theory than Hannity, who believes that a link between the DNC staffer and Wikileaks would absolve the Trump administration of charges of collusion with Russia. That suggests, however, a cynically simplistic understanding of the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. More troublingly, it relies on a wholly invented narrative about Rich's tragic death, which appears to have taken place during a late-nightrobbery gone horribly awry.

"I feel so badly for this family and what they have been through," Hannity said on his radio show on Tuesday afternoon. A little later, he hinted at why he has insistently peddled the ugly conspiracy theory: "This issue is so big now that the entire Russia collusion narrative is hanging by a thread."

That seems unlikely, given the appointment of former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, which many believe to be extensive and some think could be criminal. A few even believe they may be grounds for impeachment.

... ... ...

[May 23, 2017] If there was indeed a soft coup in our country, did it not occur at the DNC convention when our back room oligarchs decided to putsch Bernie Sanders out of the race, and gift the to Hillary ?

Notable quotes:
"... Having just noticed the latest by-line in Antiwar.com, I am forced to raise the question we should all be asking ourselves "Was it Russia or was it .. Seth Rich ? " ..."
"... If there was indeed a "soft coup" in our country, did it not occur at the DNC convention when our back room oligarchs decided to "putsch" Bernie Sanders out of the race, and gift the nomination to Hillary ? ..."
"... Was it not Bernie Sanders who was igniting the young progressive liberal base by the tens of millions ? Was it not Bernie who was gaining enormous momentum as the race for the nomination went on ? Was it not Bernie's "message" that began to ring true for so many voters across the country ? ..."
"... The homicide detective hired by the family , also pointed out, after doing some rudimentary due diligence, that word had come down through the DC mayor's office to stymie its own detectives in the murder investigation of Mr. Rich. Strange thing, especially when we are dealing with a homicide .No, Mr Giraldi ? If the Seth Rich murder was a "botched robbery" as is claimed, why won't the DC police release Seth's laptop computer to his family ? ..."

alexander , May 16, 2017 at 8:52 am GMT

Dear Mr. Giraldi,

Thanks for another fine article.

Certainly writers like Robert Parry and Ray Mcgovern, as well as yourself, have earned the highest of marks from internet readers around the globe, anxious for some integrity of analysis , as they seek to understand our nation's policy decisions. As long as gentlemen like you, as well as others, keep writing , you will find your readership growing at an exponential rate.

Having just noticed the latest by-line in Antiwar.com, I am forced to raise the question we should all be asking ourselves "Was it Russia or was it .. Seth Rich ? "

If there was indeed a "soft coup" in our country, did it not occur at the DNC convention when our back room oligarchs decided to "putsch" Bernie Sanders out of the race, and gift the nomination to Hillary ?

Was it not Bernie Sanders who was igniting the young progressive liberal base by the tens of millions ? Was it not Bernie who was gaining enormous momentum as the race for the nomination went on ? Was it not Bernie's "message" that began to ring true for so many voters across the country ?

Was it not Bernie Sanders who may well have swept the DNC nomination, were it not for the "dirty pool" being played out in the back room ?.

According to the retired homicide detective, hired by the family of Seth Rich to investigate their son's bizarre murder, it was Seth Rich who WAS in contact with Wikileaks.

(For all those who don't know who Seth Rich was , he was the 27 year old "voter data director" at the DNC, shot to death on july 10, 2016, in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington D.C.)

In an interview three days after Seth Rich was found dead, Julian Assange intimated, too, that Seth Rich HAD contacted Wikileaks .NOT Russia.

The homicide detective hired by the family , also pointed out, after doing some rudimentary due diligence, that word had come down through the DC mayor's office to stymie its own detectives in the murder investigation of Mr. Rich. Strange thing, especially when we are dealing with a homicide .No, Mr Giraldi ? If the Seth Rich murder was a "botched robbery" as is claimed, why won't the DC police release Seth's laptop computer to his family ?

We are all aware there were "shenanigans" going on in the DNC that put the kibosh on the Bernie nomination.(we all know this)

This makes sense too, given the fact that the DNC party bosses and their oligarchs, wanted Bernie running in the general election against the Donald like they wanted a "hole in the head". What we "cannot" see ..is how decisive Bernie's margin of victory might have been, Nor can we see what "crimes" were committed to ensure Hillary's run at the W. H. It is not much of a stretch to assume Seth Rich had hard evidence, perhaps of multiple counts of treasonous fraud and other sorted felonies that would have brought down "the back room" of the DNC.

Not good for the party..not good for its oligarchs .and not good for their Hillary anointment.

"Russia-gate" may prove to be the most concerted effort, by the powers that be, to DEFLECT from an investigation into their OWN "real"criminality .

How savvy and how clever they are to manipulate the public's perceptions, through Big Media, by grafting the allegations of the very crimes they may well have committed .onto Russia, the Donald, and Vladimir Putin.

Clever, clever, clever.

Can any of us imagine, how cold a day in hell it will be before Rachel Maddow(or any MSM "journalist") asks some basic questions about the Seth Rich laptop .or what was on it ?

Sub zero.

[May 23, 2017] The recent news as for Rich Seth murder might take Trump probe in a somewhat different direction and put additional pressure of neoliberal, Pelosi-Clinton part of the party leadership

Notable quotes:
"... the recent news as for Rich Seth murder might take Trump probe in a somewhat different direction and put additional pressure of neoliberal, Pelosi-Clinton part of the party leadership. If half of what was recently reported is true, Clapper-Brennan "Intelligence assessment" looks more and more like Warren Commission report. ..."
"... ... Then, Newt Gingrich, on Fox News, says: " (Rich) was assassinated at 4 in the morning after having giving Wikileaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. Nobody's investigating that. And what does that tell you about what is going on?" ..."
May 23, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
RGC -> Fred C. Dobbs, May 23, 2017 at 08:27 AM
If Trump goes, Pence becomes president.

Pence is worse than Trump. And he is more likely to get two terms.

In the meantime, nothing gets fixed.

Anyone who wants single-payer, better jobs, etc. should focus on the 2018 elections and work for people who can oust people like Nancy Pelosi in the primaries and Republicans in the general.

libezkova, May 23, 2017 at 08:52 AM

"Pence is worse than Trump. And he is more likely to get two terms.In the meantime, nothing gets fixed."

True. Also the recent news as for Rich Seth murder might take Trump probe in a somewhat different direction and put additional pressure of neoliberal, Pelosi-Clinton part of the party leadership. If half of what was recently reported is true, Clapper-Brennan "Intelligence assessment" looks more and more like Warren Commission report.

http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3559/A-Seth-Rich-Chronology-Part-1.aspx

Also at

http://www.unz.com/mwhitney/seth-rich-craig-murray-and-the-sinister-stewards-of-the-national-security-state/#comment-1880788

... Then, Newt Gingrich, on Fox News, says: " (Rich) was assassinated at 4 in the morning after having giving Wikileaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. Nobody's investigating that. And what does that tell you about what is going on?"

Well, we know that Kim's chances of attracting Congressional interest was just about nil, but then Sean Hannity invited Dotcom to discuss his evidence in the Seth Rich case on his shows.

Stay tuned. Public invitation Kim Dotcom to be a guest on radio and TV. #GameChanger Buckle up destroy Trump media. Sheep that u all are!!! https://t.co/3qLwXCGl6z

- Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 20, 2017

Most recently, he tweeted:

Complete panic has set in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. Any bets when the kitchen sink is dumped on my head?? https://t.co/Zt2gIX4zyq
- Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 22, 2017

[May 23, 2017] Since Wheeler and the Riches found the dead horse heads at the foot of their beds, things started happening

Notable quotes:
"... Then, Newt Gingrich, on Fox News, says: " (Rich) was assassinated at 4 in the morning after having giving Wikileaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. Nobody's investigating that. And what does that tell you about what is going on?" ..."
"... Well, we know that Kim's chances of attracting Congressional interest was just about nil, but then Sean Hannity invited Dotcom to discuss his evidence in the Seth Rich case on his shows. ..."
"... Complete panic has set in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. Any bets when the kitchen sink is dumped on my head? ..."
May 23, 2017 | www.unz.com
Erebus, May 22, 2017 at 1:51 pm GMT
@Carlton Meyer

Private investigator Rod Wheeler made a few bucks doing an investigation, but soon realized that he stirred up a high-level hornets nest. Whoever killed Rich would not hesitate to threaten Wheeler or his family or his pension. Suddenly, Wheeler recants everything that he recently put in writing, with no explanation. Soon he will claim that he never did the investigation and has never even been to DC.

Since Wheeler and the Riches found the dead horse heads at the foot of their beds, things started happening

Kim Dotcom announced he's prepared to submit written testimony, with real evidence to Congress should they include Seth Rich's death in their probe into Russian election tampering.

I knew Seth Rich. I know he was the @Wikileaks source. I was involved. https://t.co/MbGQteHhZM
- Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 20, 2017

I'm meeting my legal team on Monday. I will issue a statement about #SethRich on Tuesday. Please be patient. This needs to be done properly.
- Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 20, 2017

Then, Newt Gingrich, on Fox News, says: " (Rich) was assassinated at 4 in the morning after having giving Wikileaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. Nobody's investigating that. And what does that tell you about what is going on?"

Well, we know that Kim's chances of attracting Congressional interest was just about nil, but then Sean Hannity invited Dotcom to discuss his evidence in the Seth Rich case on his shows.

Stay tuned. Public invitation Kim Dotcom to be a guest on radio and TV. #GameChanger Buckle up destroy Trump media. Sheep that u all are!!! https://t.co/3qLwXCGl6z
- Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 20, 2017

Most recently, he tweeted:

Complete panic has set in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. Any bets when the kitchen sink is dumped on my head?? https://t.co/Zt2gIX4zyq
- Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 22, 2017

So, I'm taking heart. The swamp may be getting warm.

[May 23, 2017] Posted in Rons forum most definitive timeline of Seth Richs death courtesy of Diana West

May 23, 2017 | www.unz.com

Dahlia , May 22, 2017 at 10:47 pm GMT

Posted in Ron's forum most definitive timeline of Seth Rich's death courtesy of Diana West:

http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3559/A-Seth-Rich-Chronology-Part-1.aspx#.WSLtFJAmt0U.twitter

She, and Whitney, include the principals (primary sources) and their witness and actions:

    Julian Assange -recipient of Democratic emails. Gavin MacFadyen -alleged recipient of Seth Rich's emails according to law enforcement source. Craig Murray -recipient of Democratic emails in a DC park.

Now we have another man claiming to be a principal, Kim Dotcom. Says he was a friend of Seth's and worked on the leak. He has lived in New Zealand since 2010, I believe. The main principal, Julian Assange, just spoke out again on Seth Rich, seemingly in response to Kim, that informants may have spoken to others, but they don't out leakers.

Anyway, as always, keep your eye on the principals.

[May 23, 2017] The Death of the Grown-Up Diana West Home - A Seth Rich Chronology, Part 1

Notable quotes:
"... prohibited the FBI ..."
"... that evening -- ..."
"... never verified the firm's "Russian hacking" findings. ..."
"... Russian hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign. ..."
"... goes ahead orders sanctions on Russia and expels 35 diplomats anyway! ..."
"... "Speaking to us privately..." ..."
"... Note: It is this same "elementary school-level analysis" that remains the basis of the DNC-"Russian hacking" story! ..."
"... petitionagainst the advertisers of WTTG, ..."
"... retracts their developing Seth Rich story. ..."
May 23, 2017 | dianawest.net
A Seth Rich Chronology, Part 1 May 20

Written by: Diana West
Saturday, May 20, 2017 12:23 PM

June 14, 2016 : The Washington Post reports "Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee." On what did the paper base this claim? The Post cites "committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach."

These "security experts" are with CrowdStrike, a private cyber security firm hired and paid by the DNC.

While reading the following chronology, it is important to bear in mind that the FBI has never examined the DNC computer network because the DNC prohibited the FBI from doing so. Also, that the FBI, under former Director Comey, not to mention former President Obama and the "Intelligence Community," thought this was perfectly ok.

In the June 14, 2016 story, DNC chief executive Amy Dacey explained to the Post what happened after she received a call from "her operations chief" about "unusual network activity" noticed by the IT team in "late April."

That evening , she spoke with Michael Sussman, a DNC lawyer who is a partner with Perkins Coie in Washington. Soon after, Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor who handled computer crime cases, called [ CrowdStrike president Shawn Henry], whom he has known for many years.

I highlight "that evening" "DNC lawyer" "Perkins Coie" "Crowdstrike" and "many years" to highlight the political nature of this chain of damage control.Dacey spoke with Sussman, the DNC lawyer, that evening -- instead of, say , the FBI cyber crime unit that day. As a Perkins Coie partner, Sussmann is with the leadingDemocrat law firm: Perkins Coie has produced an Obama White House Counsel; a lawyer to ferry that copy of Obama's "birth certificate" from Hawaii to the White House; and it has represented the DNC, Democrats in Congress, Obama's presidential campaign, and, at that moment in June 2016, the Clinton presidential campaign.

With all of those Democrat interests in mind, the DNC and Perkins Coie chose to turn to CrowdStrike. Who, what is Crowdstrike? Here is one hair-raising theory. It is a fact that CrowdStrike's Moscow-born co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, a globalist, interventionist and swampist think tank, which gave Hillary Clinton its Distinguished International Leadership Award in 2013.

The political nature of the DNC's choice of a politically connected cyber-security firm itself is not surprising; what is five-alarm-shocking, though, is that the FBI has never verified the firm's "Russian hacking" findings.

June 22, 2016: John Ashe dies of his throat being crushed by a barbell at his home shortly before appearing in court with co-defendant Ng Lap Seng in a fraud case alleging payola to the late UN official. As New York Post notes: "Seng was identified in a 1998 Senate report as the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally funneled through an Arkansas restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, to the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration."

June 27, 2016: Bill Clinton and AG Loretta Lynch meet privately in her jet on the tarmac in Phoenix, AZ.

July 5, 2016 : FBI Director Comey holds a press conference enumerating Secretary Clinton's "extremely careless" handling of classified and secret information, announcing:

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.

July 10, 2016 : DNC staffer Seth Rich, whose title is reported as "voter expansion data director," is murdered in the street near his home in Washington, DC. The police will attribute his murder to robbery, although nothing was stolen from Rich. His murder remains unsolved.

Here, thanks to William Craddick of Disobedient Media , is the crime report, which tells us that three of the officers at the scene were wearing body cams.

July 12, 2016 : Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton

July 22, 2016 : It is three days before the start of DNC convention, and Wikileaks starts releasing 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments from the Democratic National Committee. The emails document the DNC's efforts to sink Bernie Sanders' primary run against Hillary Clinton. DNC chairmanWasserman Schultz will resign over this election-meddling scandal within the week.

July 23, 2016 : A spate of Trump-Putin stories begins to appear about now, including FP's Julia Ioffe's piece titled, "Is Trump a Russian Stooge?" A deflection to "Russian hacking" from DNC primary-rigging is immediately apparent, at least on the Left : "So what was once dismissed out of hand -- that the DNC was actively working against the Sanders campaign -- is now obviously true, but not a big deal."

July 25, 2016 : Sanders supporters boo DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz off the stage at national convention event over Wikileaks revelations of DNC collusion in Hillary Clinton's favor. W-S resigns from the DNC on July 28, 2016.

August 1, 2016: Peter Schweizer publishes " From Russia with Money, " a stunning report on Clinton cronyism and corruption detailing multiple and profitable connections between Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, John Podesta, and Russia. ( More info on Podesta and his Russian business dealings will followfrom Wikileaks.) Hillary-tanked MSM ignore evidence of "Russian influence" on Clinton and Podesta both.

On or about August 9, 2016 : During an interview (video above), Julian Assange brings up the recent murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich while discussing the great risks Wikileaks sources take. Wikileaks will contribute $20,000 to what grows to more $125,000 in reward money for information leading to arrest of the murderer(s) of Seth Rich. According to private investigator Rod Wheeler, no one has come forward to try to claim the money.

September 5, 2016: Washington Post reports DNI James Clapper is leading an investigation into Russian efforts to "sow distrust" in the presidential election and U.S. institutions.

The Kremlin's intent may not be to sway the election in one direction or another, officials said, but to cause chaos and provide propaganda fodder to attack U.S. democracy-building policies around the world, particularly in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

U.S. intelligence officials described the covert influence campaign here as "ambitious" and said it is also designed to counter U.S. leadership and influence in international affairs.

October 7, 2016 : Washington Post: "US government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaign to interfere with elections." The story reports on a joint statement released by the DNI and DHS. The paper only quotes this much:

"The U.S. Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations," said a joint statement from the two agencies. ". . . These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process."

Also of October 7, 2016 : The Washington Post releases Access Hollywood/Trump tape, although the published story is dated October 8, 2016.

Also on October 7, 2016 : Wikileaks releases the first cache of Podesta emails.

October 14, 2016 : Jonathan Rich, Seth Rich's cousin, tweets the following:

October 17, 2016: Julian Assange accuses a "state party" of severing his internet connection.

October 19, 2016 : Hillary Clinton turns the DHS-DNI statement into"17 intelligence agencies" during a debate with Donald Trump:

CLINTON: We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election.

I find that deeply disturbing. And I think it is time -

TRUMP: She has no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else.

CLINTON: I am not quoting myself. I am quoting 17, 17 - do you doubt?

TRUMP: Our country has no idea.

October 20, 2016 : At National Review, Fred Fleitz writes :

First of all, only two intelligence entities – the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – have weighed in on this issue, not 17 intelligence agencies.

Fleitz goes on to quote from the same joint DNI-DHS statement the Post cited so sparingly. The disclosures ...

are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow - the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europa and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

Fleitz, formerly with the CIA, writes: "Saying we think the hacks `are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts' is far short of saying we have evidence that Russia has been responsible for the hacks."

October 22, 2016 : Gavin McFadyen died of lung cancer in London on October 22, 2016 at the age of 76. According to a May 2017 Fox News report , Gavin McFadyen was Seth Rich's Wikileaks' contact.

October 28, 2016 : FBI Director Comey writes to congressional leaders informing them that "in connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation" of Secretary Clinton's personal email server, and that the FBI will review these emails for classified information.

November 2, 2016 : Jonathan Rich, Seth Rich's cousin, tweeted the following reply to a question about the Clinton body count:

November 6, 2016 : FBI Director Comey informs congressional leaders: "Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton."

Around November 9 or 10, 2016: According to the April 2017 book Shattered , Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and chairman John Podesta gather campaign staff in Brooklyn to set the post-election defeat narrative: Hillary's unsecured email sever was major over-reported story of the campaign, and Russian hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign.

December 9, 2016 : Washington Post writes:

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton's chances.

December 14, 2016 : Former UK Amb. to Uzbekistan and Wikileaks associate Craig Murray tells the Daily Mail that he flew to Washington in September 2016 to receive emails from one of Wikileaks' sources. Both the DNC emails and the Podesta emails, Murray said, came from inside leaks, not hacks. "He said the leakers were motivated by 'disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders.' "

December 22, 2016: The Washington Post reports CrowdStrike links Russian hacking of the DNC to Russian hacking of the Ukrainian military. Said CrowdStrike's Alperovitch: 'The fact that [these hackers] would be tracking and helping the Russian military kill Ukrainian army personnel in eastern Ukraine and also intervening in the U.S. election is quite chilling."

This new Russian hacking claim will be widely and loudly debunked by British, Ukrainian and other sources.

December 29, 2016: DHS and FBI release a joint report entitled "Russian Malicious Cyber Activity." The FBI, to repeat, has not examined the DNC servers to verify Crowdstrike's findings of "Russian hacking," but President Obama goes ahead orders sanctions on Russia and expels 35 diplomats anyway!

Russia does not respond in kind, which intensifies an air of unreality about the whole exercise. It all feels stagey.

January 10, 2017: For the first time, then-FBI Director James Comey publicly addresses the DNC-Russian hacking story, affirming that the FBI has not had direct access to the DNC servers or (bonus!) John Podesta's personal devices, despite "multiple requests at different levels."

Comey told the Senate committee, "Our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the orginal device or server that's involved ..." but no worries! " A highly respected private company eventually got access and shared with us what they saw there."

Right then and there, President-elect Trump should have planned to ask Comey to resign over this single act of rank incompetence (or corruption).

March 15, 2017 : According to Daily Mail, "CrowdStrike's Alperovitch cancels interview with VOA, the news outlet that first reported CrowdStrike had misstated data ..."

Also in March of 2017 and also according to Daily Mail , CrowdStrike is stonewalling:

CrowdStrike's co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch and its president Shawn Henry turned down an invitation to testify before the House Intelligence Committee about Russian interference in the U.S. election.

'They declined the invitation, so we're communicating with them about speaking to us privately,' said Jack Langer, a spokesperson for House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes.

"Speaking to us privately..."

(A request: Could Republicans please roll over, pull the trigger and put us out of their misery?)

Also in March 2017: In a May 16, 2017 interview with Sean Hannity, private investigator Rod Wheeler says that in March, when he began his investigation into the murder of Seth Rich on behalf of the Rich family, he called the DCPD but didn't hear back from anyone for two to three days. Wheeler says he learned from the family on May 15 that during that March interim, a high-ranking official at the DNC got the information about his query and called the Rich family "wanting to know why I was snooping around." (Who in the DCPD called the DNC official and why?)

In this same interview, Wheeler adds that Seth Rich was having problems at work, and that the person he was having problems with was the same DNC officialwho called the father.

March 20, 2017 : Then-FBI Director Comey and NSA Director Rogers appear before the House Intelligence Committee.

HURD: Have you been able to -- when did the DNC provide access for -- to the FBI for your technical folks to review what happened?

COMEY: Well we never got direct access to the machines themselves. The DNC in the spring of 2016 hired a firm that ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system.

HURD: Director Rogers, did the NSA ever get access to the DNC hardware?

ROGERS: The NSA didn't ask for access. That's not in our job. ..

HURD: ... So director FBI notified the DNC early, before any information was put on Wikileaks and when -- you have still been -- never been given access to any of the technical or the physical machines that were -- that were hacked by the Russians.

COMEY: That's correct although we got the forensics from the pros that they hired which -- again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this -- my folks tell me was an appropriate substitute.

Again, this shocking dereliction alone is enough to justify Comey's removal -- plus a thorough investigation into exactly how it was that DNC/CrowdStrike was able to thwart an FBI investigation -- and why Director Comey, not to mention why Barack Obama and on down, went along with all of it .

Smells, the whole thing, the whole gang, to high heaven.

March 27, 2016: Jonathan Rich, Seth Rich's cousin whose Twitter account bases him in Omaha, tweets that former DNC Chairman Donna Brazile, fired by CNN for leaking debate questions to Hillary, was "here."

April 5, 2017: Alana Goodman of the Daily Mail reports CrowdStrike has "quietly retracted" key portions from its debunked Ukrainian report "after the firm was found to have relied on inaccurate data posted online by a pro-Putin 'propaganda' blogger."

Too bizarre --

The errors prompted both the Ukrainian military and a prominent British think tank to issue public statements disputing CrowdStrike's data.

The Daily Mail quotes cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr, who, as the paper puts it, explained that "this is part of 'a pattern' for [Crowdstrike], and raises concerns about its credibility."

Carr:

'They just found what they wanted to find they didn't stop for a moment to question it, they didn't contact the primary source,' added Carr. 'This is like an elementary school-level analysis.'

Note: It is this same "elementary school-level analysis" that remains the basis of the DNC-"Russian hacking" story!

This is outrageous and alarming on multiple levels. To begin with, if a private firm claims that a foreign power has cyber-attacked a leading political organization critical to the functioning of the US national election process, how does the US government not become involved to investigate to ensure that any actions the US government may take in response -- sanctions, expulsions, to take the real- world example -- to that foreign attack are based on verified findings?

It does not seem possible that the DNC has the authority to rebuff the FBI in a case of a purported foreign strike -- unless the fix is already in. I mean, imagine a private eye putting off the FBI, saying, don't worry, we've got that Rosenberg spy ring covered, and we'll keep you fully apprised.

It's not really all that different.

There's more.

The Daily Mail:

There remain unanswered questions about the sequence of events which led to the secrets of the DNC being laid bare.

The DNC said it originally hired CrowdStrike in late April last year after discovering suspicious activity on its computer system indicating a 'serious' hack.

That's right. See entry for June 16, 2016 above.

But according to internal emails, CrowdStrike was already working for the DNC to investigate whether Bernie Sanders campaign staffers had gained unauthorized access to its voter database.

That five-week investigation appeared to have wrapped up on April 29, 2016. ...

"Already working for the DNC" in this timeframe of still-undisclosed anti-Bernie collusion means, in effect, already working in support of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign against Sanders. Great source for non-partisan and official intelligence.

And check this out: voter data base, Bernie Sanders staffers. Seth Rich's job at the DNC has been reported as "voter expansion data director." Related? Should the Seth Rich chronology go back to alleged dirty tricks in December 2015 involving yet another data breach?

Yes, my head hurts, too. But out of this giant headache may emerge some clear truths. In the meantime, it is extremely notable that Twitter talk of supression of the investigation into or even discussion of whetherSeth Rich was a DNCsource for Wikileaks and murdered as a result is coming not only from the MSM, but hard Left and Democrat "data" professionals.

Take, for example, Andrew Therriault, former "Director of Data Science" for the DNC. Zero Hedge reportsthat Therriault tweeted and deleted the following tweet calling Seth Rich "an embarassment" -- ten months after his murder.

More recently, Therriault retweeted Rob Flaherty's tweet (below), which includes a link to a petitionagainst the advertisers of WTTG, which re-introduced the Seth Rich story this past week.

Flaherty, too, is a Democratic operative, data pro, Hillary Clinton supporter, and works for the lavishly Soros-funded PAC, Priorities USA.

The petition, by the way, written by another hard left activist, Karl Frisch of Allied Progress, announces a boycott of WTTG advertisers unless they pull their WTTG advertising until the news station retracts their developing Seth Rich story.

Think there are some high stakes hiding in the tall Swamp grass? Just keep saying "Russian hacking," "Russian hacking." Everything will be just fine.

To be cont'd.

[May 23, 2017] Clapper intelligence assessment sounds a little bit like the Warren Commission and 9/11 Commission

May 23, 2017 | www.unz.com

Carroll Price , May 22, 2017 at 11:42 pm GMT

.Director of National Intelligence James Clapper explained in his testimony that two dozen or so "seasoned experts" were "handpicked" from the contributing agencies" and drafted the ICA "under the aegis of his former office" While Clapper claimed these analysts were given "complete independence" to reach their findings, he added that their conclusions "were thoroughly vetted and then approved by the directors of the three agencies and me."

Sounds a bit like the Warren Commission and 9/11 Commission, with both being presented with the results of what their investigation would uncover prior to any investigation taking place.

[May 22, 2017] The Russian Obsession Goes Back Decades by Jacob G. Hornberger

Notable quotes:
"... Just consider the accusations that have been leveled at the president: ..."
"... He has committed treason by befriending Russia and other enemies of America. ..."
"... He has subjugated America's interests to Moscow. ..."
"... President Donald Trump? No, President John F. Kennedy. What lots of Americans don't realize, because it was kept secret from them for so long, is that what Trump has been enduring from the national-security establishment, the mainstream press, and the American right-wing for his outreach to, or "collusion with," Russia pales compared to what Kennedy had to endure for committing the heinous "crime" of reaching out to Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union in a spirit of peace and friendship. ..."
"... They hated him for it. They abused him. They insulted him. They belittled him. They called him naďve. They said he was a traitor. All of the nasties listed above, plus more, were contained in an advertisement and a flier that appeared in Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963, the day that Kennedy was assassinated. They can be read here and here . ..."
"... In June 1963, Kennedy threw down the gauntlet in a speech he delivered at American University, now entitled the " Peace Speech ." It was one of the most remarkable speeches ever delivered by an American president. It was broadcast all across the communist Soviet Union, the first time that had ever been done. ..."
"... Kennedy wasn't dumb. He knew what he was up against. He had heard Eisenhower warn the American people in his Farewell Address about the dangers to their freedom and democratic way of life posed by the military establishment. After Kennedy had read the novel Seven Days in May, ..."
"... Kennedy didn't stop with his Peace Speech. He also began negotiating a treaty with the Soviets to end above-ground nuclear testing, an action that incurred even more anger and ire within the Pentagon and the CIA ..."
"... By this time, Kennedy's war with the national-security establishment was in full swing. He had already vowed to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds after its perfidious conduct in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. By this time, he had also lost all confidence in the military after it proposed an all-out surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, much as Japan had done at Pearl Harbor, after the infamous plan known as Operation Northwoods, which proposed terrorist attacks and plane hijackings carried out by U.S. agents posing as Cuban communists, so as to provide a pretext for invading Cuba, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the military establishment accused him of appeasement and treason for agreeing not to ever invade Cuba again. ..."
"... What Kennedy didn't know was that his "secret" negotiations with the Soviet and Cuban communists weren't so secret after all. As it turns out, it was a virtual certainty that the CIA (or NSA) was listening in on telephone conversations of Cuban officials at the UN in New York City, much as the CIA and NSA still do today, during which they would have learned what the president was secretly doing behind their backs. ..."
"... In response to the things that were said in that advertisement and flier about him being a traitor for befriending Russia, he told his wife Jackie on the morning he was assassinated: "We are heading into nut country today." Of course, as he well knew, the nuts weren't located only in Dallas. They were also situated throughout the U.S. national-security establishment ..."
"... For more information, attend The Future of Freedom Foundation's one-day conference on June 3, 2017, entitled " The National Security State and JFK " at the Washington Dulles Marriott Hotel. ..."
May 20, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org

Just consider the accusations that have been leveled at the president:

  1. He has betrayed the Constitution, which he swore to uphold.
  2. He has committed treason by befriending Russia and other enemies of America.
  3. He has subjugated America's interests to Moscow.
  4. He has been caught in fantastic lies to the American people, including personal ones, like his previous marriage and divorce.
President Donald Trump? No, President John F. Kennedy. What lots of Americans don't realize, because it was kept secret from them for so long, is that what Trump has been enduring from the national-security establishment, the mainstream press, and the American right-wing for his outreach to, or "collusion with," Russia pales compared to what Kennedy had to endure for committing the heinous "crime" of reaching out to Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union in a spirit of peace and friendship.

They hated him for it. They abused him. They insulted him. They belittled him. They called him naďve. They said he was a traitor. All of the nasties listed above, plus more, were contained in an advertisement and a flier that appeared in Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963, the day that Kennedy was assassinated. They can be read here and here .

Ever since then, some people have tried to make it seem like the advertisement and flier expressed only the feelings of extreme right-wingers in Dallas. That's nonsense. They expressed the deeply held convictions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the conservative movement, and many people within the mainstream media and Washington establishment.

In June 1963, Kennedy threw down the gauntlet in a speech he delivered at American University, now entitled the " Peace Speech ." It was one of the most remarkable speeches ever delivered by an American president. It was broadcast all across the communist Soviet Union, the first time that had ever been done.

In the speech, Kennedy announced that he was bringing an end to the Cold War and the mindset of hostility toward Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union that the U.S. national-security establishment had inculcated in the minds of the American people ever since the end of World War II.

It was a radical notion and, as Kennedy well understood, a very dangerous one insofar as he was concerned. The Cold War against America's World War II partner and ally had been used to convert the United States from a limited-government republic to a national-security state, one consisting of a vast, permanent military establishment, the CIA, and the NSA, along with their broad array of totalitarian-like powers, such as assassination, regime change, coups, invasions, torture, surveillance, and the like. Everyone was convinced that the Cold War - and the so-called threat from the international communist conspiracy that was supposedly based in Russia - would last forever, which would naturally mean permanent and ever-increasing largess for what Kennedy's predecessor, President Dwight Eisenhower, had called the "military-industrial complex."

Suddenly, Kennedy was upending the Cold War apple cart by threatening to establish a relationship of friendship and peaceful coexistence with Russia, the rest of the Soviet Union, and Cuba.

Kennedy knew full well that his actions were considered by some to be a grave threat to "national security." After all, don't forget that it was Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz's outreach to the Soviets in a spirit of friendship that got him ousted from power by the CIA and presumably targeted for assassination as part of that regime-change operation. It was Cuban leader Fidel Castro's outreach to the Soviets in a spirit of friendship that made him the target of Pentagon and CIA regime-change operations, including through invasion, assassination, and sanctions. It was Congo leader's Patrice Lamumba's outreach to the Soviets in a spirit of friendship that got him targeted for assassination by the CIA It would be Chilean President Salvador Allende's outreach to the Soviets in a spirit of friendship that got him targeted in a CIA-instigated coup in Chile that resulted in Allende's death.

Kennedy wasn't dumb. He knew what he was up against. He had heard Eisenhower warn the American people in his Farewell Address about the dangers to their freedom and democratic way of life posed by the military establishment. After Kennedy had read the novel Seven Days in May, which posited the danger of a military coup in America, he asked friends in Hollywood to make it into a movie to serve as a warning to the American people. In the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Pentagon and the CIA were exerting extreme pressure on Kennedy to bomb and invade Cuba, his brother Bobby told a Soviet official with whom he was negotiating that the president was under a severe threat of being ousted in a coup. And, of course, Kennedy was fully mindful of what had happened to Arbenz, Lamumba, and Castro for doing what Kennedy was now doing - reaching out to the Soviets in a spirit of friendship.

In the eyes of the national-security establishment, one simply did not reach out to Russia, Cuba, or any other "enemy" of America. Doing so, in their eyes, made Kennedy an appeaser, betrayer, traitor, and a threat to "national security."

Kennedy didn't stop with his Peace Speech. He also began negotiating a treaty with the Soviets to end above-ground nuclear testing, an action that incurred even more anger and ire within the Pentagon and the CIA Yes, that's right - they said that "national security" depended on the U.S. government's continuing to do what they object to North Korea doing today - conducting nuclear tests, both above ground and below ground.

Kennedy mobilized public opinion to overcome fierce opposition in the military, CIA, Congress, and the Washington establishment to secure passage of his Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

He then ordered a partial withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, and told close aides that he would order a complete pull-out after winning the 1964 election. In the eyes of the U.S. national-security establishment, leaving Vietnam subject to a communist takeover would pose a grave threat to national security here in the United States.

Worst of all, from the standpoint of the national-security establishment, Kennedy began secret personal negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro to bring an end to America's Cold War against them. That was considered to be a grave threat to "national security" as well as a grave threat to all the military and intelligence largess that depended on the Cold War.

By this time, Kennedy's war with the national-security establishment was in full swing. He had already vowed to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds after its perfidious conduct in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. By this time, he had also lost all confidence in the military after it proposed an all-out surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, much as Japan had done at Pearl Harbor, after the infamous plan known as Operation Northwoods, which proposed terrorist attacks and plane hijackings carried out by U.S. agents posing as Cuban communists, so as to provide a pretext for invading Cuba, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the military establishment accused him of appeasement and treason for agreeing not to ever invade Cuba again.

What Kennedy didn't know was that his "secret" negotiations with the Soviet and Cuban communists weren't so secret after all. As it turns out, it was a virtual certainty that the CIA (or NSA) was listening in on telephone conversations of Cuban officials at the UN in New York City, much as the CIA and NSA still do today, during which they would have learned what the president was secretly doing behind their backs.

Kennedy's feelings toward the people who were calling him a traitor for befriending Moscow and other "enemies" of America? In response to the things that were said in that advertisement and flier about him being a traitor for befriending Russia, he told his wife Jackie on the morning he was assassinated: "We are heading into nut country today." Of course, as he well knew, the nuts weren't located only in Dallas. They were also situated throughout the U.S. national-security establishment.

For more information, attend The Future of Freedom Foundation's one-day conference on June 3, 2017, entitled " The National Security State and JFK " at the Washington Dulles Marriott Hotel.

Reprinted with permission from the Future of Freedom Foundation .

[May 22, 2017] Key points of TIME magazine cover story on the Russian takeover of America

Notable quotes:
"... TIME magazine has just published a cover story on the Russian takeover of America: Inside Russia's Social Media War on America . The cover image shows the White House turned into the Kremlin. I will list some of the key points below with quotes from the article: ..."
May 22, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Petri Krohn | May 18, 2017 8:57:21 PM | 71

TIME magazine has just published a cover story on the Russian takeover of America: Inside Russia's Social Media War on America . The cover image shows the White House turned into the Kremlin. I will list some of the key points below with quotes from the article:

1) Social media has become a danger to democracy.

The vast openness and anonymity of social media has cleared a dangerous new route for antidemocratic forces. "Using these technologies, it is possible to undermine democratic government."

2) Democratic society must isolate itself from public opinion.

Russia may finally have gained the ability it long sought but never fully achieved in the Cold War: to alter the course of events in the U.S. by manipulating public opinion.

3) Russia spies on you.

The Russians "target you and see what you like, what you click on, and see if you're sympathetic or not sympathetic."

4) America is losing the cyberwar.

As Russia expands its cyberpropaganda efforts, the U.S. and its allies are only just beginning to figure out how to fight back.

5) Russia has clever algorithms that America lacks.

American researchers have found they can use mathematical formulas to segment huge populations into thousands of subgroups... Propagandists can then manually craft messages to influence them, deploying covert provocateurs, either humans or automated computer programs known as bots, in hopes of altering their behavior.

6) Russia has huge troll farms.

Putin dispatched his newly installed head of military intelligence, Igor Sergun, to begin repurposing cyberweapons previously used for psychological operations in war zones for use in electioneering. Russian intelligence agencies funded "troll farms," botnet spamming operations and fake news outlets as part of an expanding focus on psychological operations in cyberspace.

7) You must trust mainstream media.

Eager to appear more powerful than they are, the Russians would consider it a success if you questioned the truth of your news sources, knowing that Moscow might be lurking in your Facebook or Twitter feed.

8) Russia invaded Ukraine in April 2014 .

Putin was aiming his new weapons at the U.S. Following Moscow's April 2014 invasion of Ukraine.

9) Hillary Clinton did not murder Seth Rich.

That story went viral in late August, then took on a life of its own after Clinton fainted from pneumonia and dehydration at a Sept. 11 event in New York City. Elsewhere people invented stories saying Pope Francis had endorsed Trump and Clinton had murdered a DNC staffer.

10) The evidence:

Russia plays in every social media space. The intelligence officials have found that Moscow's agents bought ads on Facebook to target specific populations with propaganda. "They buy the ads, where it says sponsored by–they do that just as much as anybody else does," says the senior intelligence official. (A Facebook official says the company has no evidence of that occurring.) The ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, has said he is looking into why, for example, four of the top five Google search results the day the U.S. released a report on the 2016 operation were links to Russia's TV propaganda arm, RT. (Google says it saw no meddling in this case.) Researchers at the University of Southern California, meanwhile, found that nearly 20% of political tweets in 2016 between Sept. 16 and Oct. 21 were generated by bots of unknown origin; investigators are trying to figure out how many were Russian.

[May 22, 2017] Making Russia a scapegoat for political tension connected with the crumbling of the neoliberal society due to austerity, inequality and impoverishment of the lower 80% of population

Notable quotes:
"... "Corporate media and the intelligence community are united in making the Russia Federation the scapegoat for the crumbling of the West that is due to austerity, inequality and impoverishment. If a world war breaks out, that is it." ..."
"... Donald Trump used alt-right messaging to get into the White House but he and his third-rate staff haven't the slightest clue of what gave rise to the deplorables in the first place and how to address the root [causes of] despair of the western working class. ..."
May 22, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

libezkova, May 22, 2017 at 03:58 PM

A comment from MoA contains an insightful observation

"Corporate media and the intelligence community are united in making the Russia Federation the scapegoat for the crumbling of the West that is due to austerity, inequality and impoverishment. If a world war breaks out, that is it."

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/05/the-special-council-investigation-will-be-bad-for-trump.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01b7c8f9d50c970b

VietnamVet | May 18, 2017 9:19:08 PM | 75

This is tragic. Corporate media and the intelligence community are united in making the Russia Federation the scapegoat for the crumbling of the West that is due to austerity, inequality and impoverishment.

If a world war breaks out, that is it. Donald Trump used alt-right messaging to get into the White House but he and his third-rate staff haven't the slightest clue of what gave rise to the deplorables in the first place and how to address the root [causes of] despair of the western working class.

They will blunder about in lost befuddlement until they vanish.

[May 22, 2017] Corporate media and the intelligence community are united in making the Russia Federation the scapegoat for the crumbling of the West that is due to austerity, inequality and impoverishment

Notable quotes:
"... If a world war breaks out, that is it. Donald Trump used alt-right messaging to get into the White House but he and his third-rate staff haven't the slightest clue of what gave rise to the deplorables in the first place and how to address the root despair of the western working class ..."
May 18, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

VietnamVet | May 18, 2017 9:19:08 PM | 75

This is tragic. Corporate media and the intelligence community are united in making the Russia Federation the scapegoat for the crumbling of the West that is due to austerity, inequality and impoverishment.

If a world war breaks out, that is it. Donald Trump used alt-right messaging to get into the White House but he and his third-rate staff haven't the slightest clue of what gave rise to the deplorables in the first place and how to address the root despair of the western working class .

They will blunder about in lost befuddlement until they vanish.

[May 22, 2017] Manafort, Stone Give Russia Docs To Senate Intel Committee

They can dig this dirt to years. Trump is now a hostage.
Notable quotes:
"... A spokesman for Manafort, Jason Maloni, confirmed that Manafort turned over documents, adding that Manafort remains interested in cooperating with the Senate investigation. ..."
"... NBC adds that it was too early to tell whether the documents from Manafort and Stone "suggested they had fully complied with the request." In a parallel process, as part of the FBI's Russia collusion investigation, federal grand juries have issued subpoenas for records relating to both Flynn and Manafort. ..."
May 22, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
While Michael Flynn may refusing to comply with the Senate Intel Committee's probe of Russian interference, two other former associates of Donald Trump complied on Monday afternoon, and according to NBC , Paul Manafort and Roger Stone have turned over documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee in its Russia investigation, providing "all documents consistent with their specific request." As reported previously, the committee sent document requests to Manafort and Stone, as well as Carter Page and Mike Flynn, seeking information related to dealings with Russia. So far Page has not yet complied, while Flynn it was confirmed today, planned to plead the Fifth as a reason not to comply with a committee subpoena, citing "escalating public frenzy" as part of the ongoing probe.

According to NBC, the committee's letter to Page asked him "to list any Russian official or business executive he met with between June 16, 2015 and Jan. 20, 2017. It also asked him to provide information about Russia-related real estate transactions during that period. And it seeks all his email or other communications during that period with Russians, or with the Trump campaign about Russia or Russians."

While the precise contents is unknown, similar letters were sent to Manafort and Stone, who then sent the requested information to investigators by last Friday's deadline.

"I gave them all documents that were consistent with their specific request," Stone said in an email to NBC News.

A spokesman for Manafort, Jason Maloni, confirmed that Manafort turned over documents, adding that Manafort remains interested in cooperating with the Senate investigation.

NBC adds that it was too early to tell whether the documents from Manafort and Stone "suggested they had fully complied with the request." In a parallel process, as part of the FBI's Russia collusion investigation, federal grand juries have issued subpoenas for records relating to both Flynn and Manafort.

Meanwhile, Flynn's assertion of the Fifth Amendment would make it difficult for the Senate to enforce its subpoena, NBC News reported citing Senate sources: "The Senate could go to court, or go ask the Justice Department to go to court to enforce it, but either actin would require the Republicans who control the chamber to agree." Trump fired Flynn as his national security advisor in February after misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials about conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about U.S. sanctions on Russia.

WillyGroper , May 22, 2017 4:18 PM

if the ruskie investigation fails to unravel the deals/pay to play treason of hrc, it's a screenplay.

Honest John , May 22, 2017 4:19 PM

CNN led off their newscast saying that pleading the 5th is an admission of guilt. Only guilty people do it.

How do they get away with this stuff? And people buy into it.

dexter_morgan - Honest John , May 22, 2017 4:24 PM

Then all of Hillary's staff is guilty on the email probe stuff, they all claimed the 5th. Didn't Loretty Lynch or Holder also plead the 5th recently?

Grandad Grumps , May 22, 2017 4:31 PM

This is hilarious. Is there supposed to be some connection between meeting with Russians and rigging an election?

I am thinking that if there is to be an investigation then Congress needs to cast a wider net to include all of the past three administrations, All international banks and their legal representatives, all of Congress and everyone who has ever contributed to the DNC or RNC.

If they are going to hunt for witches, why not make it open season on ALL witches.

My personal preference is to be on friendly terms with both Russia and China ... not to mentioned Iran, people of all religions and the other countries that do not have BIS tied central banks. Why do we tolerate people telling us that we have to hate someone?

[May 22, 2017] DNC Affiliates Increase Involvement In Seth Rich Case After Wheeler Claims by William Craddick

Notable quotes:
"... Occam's razor's obvious: Seth and Assange, both had opportunity+motive+means. ..."
"... Seth, his family, the MSM, the politically appointed police and others were true believers, who love their god, the Demorat party, too dearly to accept the truth. ..."
"... There is a trail of dead bodies behind the Clintons. Kim Dotcom had the motive+opportunity+means to enable Seth+Assange. ..."
"... Was it a DNC leak or a Russian hack? Government and media say it was a hack, based on a report supplied by computer-tech company Crowdstrike, which has close connections to the Atlantic Council - an anti-Russian think tank. Already we have a bias in the reporting, and the FBI has opted to accept this finding without ever securing the evidence and analyzing the DNC data base itself. Pretty big decision there... dropping the ball a little? ..."
"... A hack is traceable and the FBI should be able to firm that up, whereas a flash drive could be untraceable. The FBI investigation was being dragged out and going nowhere - Comey deserved to be fired for that alone. ..."
"... If this is true, James Comey has already lied to Congress in saying that Trump wasn't "wiretapped." In this regard, he is no different than James Clapper and Brennan, who also denied spying to Congress, until Edward Snowden came out. ..."
May 22, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Via Disobedient Media

Last week, Fox 5 DC's report incited a storm of controversy after formerD.C. police homicide detectiveRod Wheeler stated that there was tangible evidence on murdered Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich's laptop suggesting that he was communicating with Wikileaks prior to his death. The story generated a large amount of outrage, with outlets like the Washington Post and Vice labelling it a "conspiracy theory" and claiming that it had no basis in fact. But details regarding the political affiliation of spokespeople and representatives of the Rich family appear to indicate that the DNC may beprioritizing its own interests, minimizing alleged political elements to the tragedy.

I. Legal Representatives And Spokespeople For Rich Family Have Ties To DNC, Crime Connected Unions

Since Fox 5 DC's report, a number of individuals speaking on behalf of the Rich family have blasted Fox News and Rod Wheeler for speaking out on the case. Rich family spokesman Brad Baumaninsisted thatanyone who continued to push the story either had a "transparent political agenda," or were a sociopath. But an August 2016 tweet from Wikileaks revealed that Bauman is a crisis public relations consultant working with the Pastorum Group . A media release from the Pastorum Group reveals that Bauman previously worked for the DNC and theService Employees International Union (SEIU).

The SEIU has previously been reported by the Wall Street Journal as a "top spender" for the Democrats, openly endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016and actively assisted in her campaign. It has been widely criticized by some groups for the involvement of union members in crimes including embezzlement, criminal conspiracy, perjury and identity theft.The SEIU is also a client of the Strategic Consulting Group , which was founded by the Democratic operative Robert Creamer . In 2016, Creamer was implicated in footage obtained by journalist James O'Keefe whichrevealed that Creamer was engaging in voting fraud and violentdisruption of politicalevents, sometimes using his connections to unions who were as clients of his.

Bauman's past professional ties to the DNC and the SEIU raise questions about the vehemence with which he has attacked journalists reporting on the circumstances of Seth Rich's murder.

On May 19th, Rod Wheeler was sent a cease and desist letter on behalf of the Rich family byJoseph Ingrisano of the law firm Kutak Rock LLP . Kutak Rock has a long history of incredibly close affiliation with DNC politicians.The law firm donated$21,850 and$13,400 to President Barack Obama during his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, respectively. Kutak also gave$11,800 to Hillary Clinton during her2016 presidential bid.

Kutak also has ties to the Rose Law Firm, which was at the center of the infamous Whitewater Controversy during the 1990's. Hillary Clinton as well as White House staffer Vince Foster both practiced law at Rose, though Clinton has sought to distance herself from the firm given the allegations of scandal that surrounded it. On April 13th,1998, Arkansas Business reported that a number of attorneys from Rose left the firm for Kutak Rock. Kutak Rock continues to maintain offices in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Pro-Democrat interests have also taken to Change.org to attack companies advertising with Fox 5 DC. The boycott campaign is organized by Karl Frisch , a former senior fellow at propaganda groupMedia Matters for America who spent his time at the organization helping develop "long-term strategy to target Fox News as a political actor."

II. Rich Family's Statements To The Public Are Inconsistent With Those Of Their Representatives

Despite the instance of representatives to the contrary, the Rich family have released multiple statements expressing gratitude to individuals privately attempting to help answer questions surrounding Rich's murder and indicating fatigue at efforts from both sides to politicize the tragedy. On April 24th, Seth Rich's parents released a video thanking those who had "stepped forward" to help identify their son's killers and donated to the family's GoFundMe. A May 18th update to the GoFundMe page by Seth Rich's brother Aaron exhibited a general annoyance at third parties who were using the family for political motives. He asked for help that would allow the family to solve Rich's murder without having to "rely on aid offered with strings."

Message from Seth Rich's brother criticizing "third parties" for politicizing Rich's murder

The Rich family themselves appears divided on who was responsible for Seth Rich's murder. Rich's cousin, Jonathan Rich , told Sean Hannity on Twitter that he suspected Rich might have been in touch with Wikileaks. The topic clearly continues to remain controversial for the family.

III. The Investigation Into Rich's Murder Has Been Marked By Incompetence

Facts about the investigation into Rich's murder continue to raise concerns about the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department's efforts to identify Seth Rich's killers. The public incident report filed after Rich's death shows that several officers who responded to the scene of the crime were wearing body cameras. But the Metropolitan Police claimed the footage was "lost" when met with requests to release the videos, which might have provided important clues. A May 21st, 2017 report by World Net Daily has also established that police failed to speak with staff at Lou's City Bar (where Rich was last seen alive) to enquire about whether they had any pertinent evidence.

Even stranger, police chief Cathy Lanier resigned just a month after Rich's death. Her replacement, Peter Newsham , has been plagued by past allegations of alcoholism and domestic violence. Newsham was also accused of severely mishandling a rape case after the family of an 11 year old girl alleged that he allowed the victim to becharged with filing a false report despite several medical accounts detailing her sexual injuries and genetic evidence indicating that she had been abused by multiple assailants.

It is also not clear why police would seize Rich's laptop for an investigation into what was supposed to be a robbery gone bad. The Washington Post claimed that neither the FBI nor the police were in possession of Rich's laptop. But this claim contradicts a report by the Washington Examiner which cited a former law enforcement official who stated that the laptop was examined during the investigation.

Whether the truth about who killed Seth Rich will emerge or not remains to be seen. In the aftermath of Fox 5 DC's claims, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom claimed he would provide proof thatSeth Rich was the source of Wikileaks DNC email release on May 23rd. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has additionally hinted that while Wikileaks never discloses their own sources, other parties may hold important information concerning Seth Rich's potential communications with the publisher.

Should information emerge showing that Seth Rich did in fact act as a source for Wikileaks, the intense denials from national media outlets and the intimate involvement of figures tied to the DNC in the case will undoubtedly fuel renewed allegations of a politically motivated cover up.

Grandad Grumps , May 22, 2017 4:43 PM

Peter "New Sham" ... oh come on, pleaaaaase!

Everyone incompetent enough to destroy evidence needs to be put in jail and accounted as an accessory after the fact.

bardot63 , May 22, 2017 4:12 PM

DNC and dem elites have modern history of buying off families, starting with Mary Jo. Kopechne's. Hannity has vowed to keep this story on the front burner. Hannity should stay out of Ft. Marcy Park and hire a food taster.

FIAT CON , May 22, 2017 2:58 PM

To all non believers, I suppose you think that there are very corrupt gov's and leaders in other countries but this cannot be happening here in murica....

Go back to sitcoms, comic books and the Kardashian's at least you woun't get on the way.

MrBoompi , May 22, 2017 2:21 PM

I wonder if anyone (DNC or affiliate) has made payments to the family? I know a few million bucks won't bring their son back, but it might be enough to keep the family from seeking prosecution in any serious way.

lastdance -> MrBoompi , May 22, 2017 2:51 PM

worked with the Kopechnes

FIAT CON , May 22, 2017 1:30 PM

Rich family spokesman Brad Bauman insisted that anyone who continued to push the story either had a "transparent political agenda," or were a sociopath.

Isn't Brad including himself in his statement! Isn't he a DNC Crisis manager! Wouldn't they ( DNC) consider this a crisis!

missionshk , May 22, 2017 11:23 AM

https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2017/05/18/surgeon-at-seth-richs-hospit...

http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2017/05/er-doc-who-operated...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhRw39wMUPk

This is what Anonymous said:

  • Seth Rich was shot twice in the back.
  • He sustained a "small injury" to his liver and "several small bowel injuries" - none of which was fatal.
  • He was taken to the operating room, where his injuries were treated.
  • He was then moved to ICU (Intensive Care Unit) where he received blood transfusion. He was stable, his blood pressure normal.
  • 8 hours after Rich arrived at the hospital, the place "swarmed" with law enforcement officers. Everyone, except the attending physician and a few nurses, was kicked out of the ICU. There were no visiting hours, which is abnormal for ICU.
  • That morning, Anonymous and the other doctors were instructed not to make rounds (visits) on "the VIP that came in last night" (Seth Rich).
  • When Rich died, no one other than the attending physician was allowed to see him. There was no code alert or call for a cardiopulmonary resuscitation team . Although Anonymous was with a patient in the next room, he/she was blocked from attending to Rich.
  • At the time, Anonymous couldn't understand why the patient Rich was treated that way and thought the whole thing to be "fishy". Later, when he found out that the patient was Seth Rich, Anonymous "was terrified".

    Here's a screenshot of Anonymous' post (click to enlarge):

    4chan deletes its contents at the end of each day, but the thread on which Anonymous had posted was briefly archived , which enabled me to copy what Anonymous wrote (see below) before the archived thread was removed.

    Below are Anonymous' post and his responses to 4chan readers' queries:

    Anonymous (ID: rhotYJAg ) 05/17/17(Wed)13:12:50 No. 125912863:

    4th year surgery resident here who rotated at WHC (Washington Hospital Center) last year, it won't be hard to identify me but I feel that I shouldn't stay silent.

    Seth Rich was shot twice , with 3 total gunshot wounds (entry and exit, and entry). He was taken to the OR emergently [sic] where we performed an exlap and found a small injury to segment 3 of the liver which was packed and several small bowel injuries (pretty common for gunshots to the back exiting the abdomen) which we resected ~12cm of bowel and left him in discontinuity (didn't hook everything back up) with the intent of performing a washout in the morning. He did not have any major vascular injuries otherwise. I've seen dozens of worse cases than this which survived and nothing about his injuries suggested to me that he'd sustained a fatal wound.

    Note: "OR" means operating room; "exlap" refers to exploratory laparotomy -> is a surgical operation where the abdomen is opened and the abdominal organs examined for injury or disease. It is the standard of care in various blunt and penetrating trauma situations in which there may be multiple life-threatening injuries; "resected" means cut off or remove.

    In the meantime he was transferred to the ICU and transfused 2 units of blood when his post-surgery crit came back ~20. He was stable and not on any pressors , and it seemed pretty routine. About 8 hours after he arrived we were swarmed by LEOs and pretty much everyone except the attending and a few nurses was kicked out of the ICU ( disallowing visiting hours -normally every odd hour, eg 1am, 3am, etc- is not something we do routinely ). It was weird as hell. At turnover that morning we were instructed not to round on the VIP that came in last night (that's exactly what the attending said, and no one except for me and another resident had any idea who he was talking about).

    Note: "post-surgery crit" is post-surgery critical care, referring to the patient's hematocrit level, i.e., the percentage of red blood cells circulating in the blood; " pressor " means "tending to increase blood pressure"; "LEOs" is law enforcement officers; "not to round" means not to make bedside visits.

    No one here was allowed to see Seth except for my attending when he died. No code was called. I rounded on patients literally next door but was physically blocked from checking in on him. I've never seen anything like it before , and while I can't say 100% that he was allowed to die, I don't understand why he was treated like that. Take it how you may, /pol/, I'm just one low level doc. Something's fishy though, that's for sure .

    Note: "No code was called" means no emergency alert was sounded for a cardiopulmonary resuscitation team ; "/pol/" refers to "politically incorrect" posts on 4chan .

    A commenter challenged Anonymous:

    prove you are not a larper. what are the list of medications you administered throughout the entire process?

    Note: "a larper" is someone who engages in larp or live action role playing, i.e., someone online pretending to be someone else.

    Anonymous (ID: rhotYJAg ) 05/17/17(Wed)13:26:47 No. 125914751:

    When he [Seth Rich] arrived to the trauma ward he had LR running, I don't keep up with how much he got but less than 2 liters before we rolled to the OR.

    Note: "LR" is Lactated Ringers (solution), a common fluid replacement for patients who have lost blood or other body fluids; "PRBC" is packed red blood cells; "FFP" is fresh frozen plasma.

    No transfusion was done in trauma; the massive transfusion protocol was started because he was hypotensive on arrival but by the time the cooler (4u PRBC, 2u FFP) was ready we were on the way to the OR and honestly I don't remember if he got any of it beforehand; he responded well to just IVF resuscitation so we went ahead with the surgery any just ended up giving him 2 units afterwards (the crit we got in trauma was returned just after we left and was low, ~24 IIRC but it wasn't communicated to us teamwork fail for sure but that can happen when we're rushing to the OR)

    Note: "hypotensive" means abnormally low blood pressure.

    As for the rest of the meds? You'd have to ask anesthesia I guess. He didn't need anything from us in the ICU except a propofol/fentanyl drip to maintain sedation while intubated but that's pretty par for the course. The important part was that he was hemodynamically stable and not requiring pressors.

    Anonymous (ID: rhotYJAg ) 05/17/17(Wed)13:36:13 No. 125915975

    I haven't spoken to the attending who was on staff that night but the other resident I was with that night doesn't remember it in any clarity (he was called to traumas as part of his rotation but that was ancillary to his ICU -different ICU btw- duties). Basically he said, "yeah that was weird, right?" At the time we were way more concerned with the rising class / new interns (July 1st is a terrifying time to be a patient lol) to make much notice it always stuck in my head as something super bizarre but it was a long time before I even realized it was Seth Rich. When he arrived he was assigned by our system a trauma number, not a name as his patient ID. I only knew him at that time as Tra### (no freaking way that I remember the actual number). When it came to light who he was a while later I was floored. And terrified.

    Anonymous (ID: rhotYJAg ) 05/17/17(Wed)13:39:36 No. 125916400

    Nope, nothing in the head so no freaking way we'd CT before going to the OR with a clear intraabdominal GSW. No need to FAST or anything, just stabilize and go to the OR

    Note: "CT" is CAT scan; "GSW" is gunshot wound.

    One could always just increase the propofol drip or give him a ton of roc and screw with the vent settings. No idea if that happened but it'd be easy if you have the right meds and access

    Anonymous (ID: rhotYJAg ) 05/17/17(Wed)13:53:57 No. 125918189

    He had two holes in his right flank and one in the left upper quadrant. In trauma you always assume by protocol that 3 holes = 3 bullets but it was pretty clear that he was shot twice by the trajectory of the bullet (eg, his liver injury). I've also seen enough GSWs to know that the media doesn't get the number right every time.

    Yeah, I'm not going to do that. Way too dangerous.

    Alright anons it's been swell but I'll be gone for the next few hours for regular residency meeting / journal club BS. Take everything you read especially from the MSM with a grain of salt as usual but don't stop digging.

  • hooligan2009 , May 22, 2017 9:29 AM

    hmmm. the WaPo and other MSM, plus the DNC guilty in obstructing justics, conspiracy and murder?

    not that the other 10,000 people murdered over the last 8 months are not equally important, but this smacks of murder for profit and political gain running into tens of billions of dollars from federal contracts via a run for presidency (busted apart thank god).

    https://www.reference.com/government-politics/many-people-murdered-day-u...

    deoxy , May 22, 2017 9:12 AM

    The DNC should have hired Black, Manafort and Stone.

    numapepi , May 22, 2017 9:01 AM

    The only entity in the history of the universe that is rewarded for incompetence... government.

    Synoia -> numapepi , May 22, 2017 1:25 PM

    Please read the Peter Principle, and then the follow on book.

    mary mary , May 22, 2017 8:52 AM

    Glenn Beck was right! And still is.

    SummerSausage , May 22, 2017 8:48 AM

    Wonder why the FBI isn't involved? Because it's their job to cover up for the swamp. Here's a reminder of how Comey got rich burying and ignoring scandals http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=72788

    mike_king -> SummerSausage , May 22, 2017 9:28 AM

    The FBI is as corrupt and against real Americans as the CIA Disband/dissolve both. They do nothing to make our lives better. For most of the the US's history, we had neither.

    chubbar -> SummerSausage , May 22, 2017 9:09 AM

    Aren't there any decent FBI and/or DC cops around any longer? I guess not. Anyone of those agents with verifiable intel on this case could blow it wide open by appearing on Hannity and exposing the truth. Come on guys, grow a pair!

    FIAT CON -> chubbar , May 22, 2017 2:43 PM

    In this vid it is described how the new cia members take an oath to the cia and how they and their family will be destroyed if they brake it. John Kiriakou, CIA whistle blower part 1

    343 Guilty Spark - chubbar , May 22, 2017 10:50 AM

    They are trying. An FBI source confirmed what the DC Private Investigator claimed. Basically, this FBI agent claimed he saw Seth Rich's laptop and the emails from the DNC that were sent to Wikileaks. Considering what happened to Seth Rich though, I am not surprised that this FBI source is staying anonymous.

    Edit: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2017/05/18/fbi-whistleblower-claims-...

    Anarchyteez , May 22, 2017 8:22 AM

    The DNC are murderous traitorous scum.

    DocinPA , May 22, 2017 8:06 AM

    There's a reason "Arkancide" is a word.

    Reaper , May 22, 2017 7:54 AM

    Occam's razor's obvious: Seth and Assange, both had opportunity+motive+means.

    Seth, his family, the MSM, the politically appointed police and others were true believers, who love their god, the Demorat party, too dearly to accept the truth.

    There is a trail of dead bodies behind the Clintons. Kim Dotcom had the motive+opportunity+means to enable Seth+Assange.

    Comey, at best Inspector Clouseau, is a corrupt political hack with a long history of covering for the Clintons beginning with New Square's 4 rabbis and the Marc Rich pardon. Clinton/DNC apparatchiks arranged Seth's murder.

    hazardous77 -> Reaper , May 22, 2017 9:01 AM

    Seems to me, as an independent observer of the political morass this great USA has devolved into, that Seth was obviously dispatched by the same 'team' that took care of Vince Foster, Ron Brown and several others.

    What truly is astounding appears to be the fact that those 'behind the scene' of this obvious Democrat's problem solving methodology appear to be the most vocal purveryors of the anti-Putin agenda claiming that he is Evil because he murders his political opponents! Diabolical, is it not?

    Got The Wrong No -> hazardous77 , May 22, 2017 2:14 PM

    Saul Alinsky Diabolical. Projection has been Hillary's, Obama's and the DNC's play plan all along. The Alt right Media has put a kink in their play book.

    Northern Flicker , May 22, 2017 8:23 AM

    Here's my take on the situation, with thanks to DuneCreature:

    Was it a DNC leak or a Russian hack? Government and media say it was a hack, based on a report supplied by computer-tech company Crowdstrike, which has close connections to the Atlantic Council - an anti-Russian think tank. Already we have a bias in the reporting, and the FBI has opted to accept this finding without ever securing the evidence and analyzing the DNC data base itself. Pretty big decision there... dropping the ball a little?

    A hack is traceable and the FBI should be able to firm that up, whereas a flash drive could be untraceable. The FBI investigation was being dragged out and going nowhere - Comey deserved to be fired for that alone.

    Mike Whitney is an independent journalist who frequently writes for a left-wing website (Counterpunch) and has no love for Donald Trump. However, I think he describes the present situation pretty well. A lot of the discussion here is just a red-herring. Neither the media, nor government agencies, are digging into the real facts. (Mike Whitney's Bottom Line " The government has a reliable witness (Craig Murray) who can positively identify the person who hacked the DNC emails and, so far,they've showed no interest in his testimony at all. Doesn't that strike you as a bit weird?")

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/seth-rich-craig-murray-and-the-sinister-stewards-of-the-national-security-state/

    There's roughly $250,000 in reward monies now for further information on what happened in the murder of Seth Rich (the reported DNC leaker). He apparently wasn't robbed, and the running narrative is that the DC police have not investigated further on orders from above (the mayor, who apparently is on good terms with Hillary, I believe). Lots of stories are surfacing, one says that Seth was not seriously injured, but the DC police "outside staff" took over his care and reported him dead in the morning. Reportedly, one of the higher-ranked police officers had ties to the DNC through his wife. Another big question is where is Seth's computer (supposedly seized by the DC police, although that is not normal for a reported robbery). While it is still early to tell what happened to Seth Rich, it doesn't smell good. Also see Kim Dotcom ref below.

    https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2017/05/18/surgeon-at-seth-richs-hospital-says-his-wounds-were-not-fatal/

    Kim Dotcom? https://www.intellihub.com/kim-dotcom-confirms-may-16-intellihub-report-murdered-dnc-staffer-seth-rich-was-the-dnc-emails-wikileaker/

    In the bigger picture, Freedom Watch was apparently the organization that brought the Obama administration's surveillance of the Trump administration personnel to Trump's attention. Freedom Watch negotiated an immunity agreement for Dennis Montgomery, a CIA contract agent with much higher seniority than Edward Snowden, with the US government. Freedom Watch is a highly respected operation and there's lots of information from this whistleblower if it ever surfaces.

    Freedom Watch's whistle-blower info had been "blown-off" by most government agencies until House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes got a hold of it and reported it to Trump. Reportedly, the information shows that the Obama administration was spying on 156 judges, including the Supreme Court, and congress, etc -Trump and many others. This information has apparently been in the hands of James Comey for several years.

    If this is true, James Comey has already lied to Congress in saying that Trump wasn't "wiretapped." In this regard, he is no different than James Clapper and Brennan, who also denied spying to Congress, until Edward Snowden came out.

    http://www.newsmax.com/LarryKlayman/chariman-nunes-fbi-james-comey-montgomery-whitsleblower/2017/03/19/id/779551/

    Dennis Montgomery information (start 5:00min – 11:00min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC3_AHLGE3Q

    SmittyinLA -> Northern Flicker , May 22, 2017 4:02 PM

    Here, let me clear things up http://www.muckety.com/Jamie-S-Gorelick/2302.muckety

    343 Guilty Spark - Northern Flicker , May 22, 2017 10:03 AM

    Woah. Thank you for sharing this, it really opens up a lot of 'food for thought' points.

    Posa -> 343 Guilty Spark , May 22, 2017 12:40 PM

    The Whitney piece is especially compelling:

    I'll add that

    The whole Trump impeachment movement is based on zero evidence and is a cold coup to nullify the last election. It's just like something you'd see in the banana republic CIA is trying over throw. The Deep State hate him because: 1) if he wants to do deals with Russia instead of waging war and destroying the Russian Federation; 2) he's against a lot of the trade deals and already undone the TPP; and 3) Trump is undermining the whole climate change /Paris Accords narrative.

    Aside from that Trump is showering the Predator Class with unprecedented filthy lucre.

    So Here's where I come down (as stated by Mike Whitney)

    "Does this analysis make me a Donald Trump supporter?"

    Never. The idea is ridiculous. Trump might be the worst US president of all time, in fact, he probably is. But that doesn't mean there aren't other nefarious forces at work behind the smoke screen of democratic government. There are. In fact, this whole flap suggests that there's an alternate power-structure that operates completely off the public's radar and has the elected-government in its death-grip. This largely invisible group of elites controls the likes of Brennan, Clapper and Comey. And, apparently, they have enough influence to challenge and maybe even remove an elected president from office. (We'll see.) And what's more surprising, is that the Democrats have aligned themselves with these deep state puppet masters. They've cast their lot with the sinister stewards of the national security state and hopped on the impeachment bandwagon. But is that a wise choice for the Dems?

    Author Michael J. Glennon doesn't think so. Here's what he says in the May edition of Harper's Magazine:

    "Those who would counter the illiberalism of Trump with the illiberalism of unfettered bureaucrats would do well to contemplate the precedent their victory would set. "

    idahobandito -> Northern Flicker , May 22, 2017 10:00 AM

    Montgomery's info has been out for a while and had been sent to some members of CONgress and possibly the AG. Its buried so deep, it would be recovered in china about now. NOTHING will ever reach the sheeple from the MSM on this.

    FoggyWorld -> idahobandito , May 22, 2017 3:11 PM

    One America News has been running a rather lenghy story about Seth Rich. Only problem is they are still too small be be included in the MSM.

    DuneCreature -> Northern Flicker , May 22, 2017 8:35 AM

    Great digging, NF.

    Yes, I know it's confusing for everyone. ... Me too.

    That is the way the Intelligence Community wants it because they can run any number of 'cover-ups', rescue operations (bail out valuable assets, hide fucked up illegal behavior, damage enemies, plant and or destroy evidence, etc.) during a good raging shit storm of bogus intel and accusations.

    That's why the CIA wants to own/control all the media.

    We are all paddling up stream. ... Only a scant few will have the time, energy and moxy to sift though all the bullshit and the IC is counting on it to stay in control.

    Trust me, all the bad information and false narratives are making my head hurt too. ....... Nothing pisses me off anymore than going down some rabbit hole for a day or two only to find out it really is just where some rabbit lives.

    The trouble is we have to do it or we will lose to the pirates and I think George Webb is trying hard to point out the consequences of losing that battle.

    This ain't a game or made for TV movie. ........ This is going to put some people in very REAL GRAVES. ........ Assuming the body is found.

    But yep, good work, Northern Flicker. .. Thank you, for your efforts.

    Just because you can't hear explosions and gunfire doesn't mean you can blow this off as not a 'war' .... It is a war. It just hasn't gone hot yet.

    Keep compiling evidence and SPREAD the info and knowledge around all you can. ....... Your kids and neighbors asses depend on it. .. No shit!

    And, hey, if we can survive this you'll have a good scrapbook to show your grand kids. .. You were in the Spy vs. Spy vs. We The People War of 2017. .. If not, you probably won't have grand kids anyway.

    Live Hard, Just Blur My Mugshot A Little For Me In Your Picture Album, ... You'll Be So Glad You Did, Die Free

    ~ DC v5.0

    Gohigher -> DuneCreature , May 22, 2017 11:08 AM

    Riding your viewership post coat tails, DC. I wish this was a cute, witty, glib and popular retort.

    But my anger, my fears, my gut turmoil for the future is exacerbated by my growing feelings of betrayal by the DS and all it's machinations. Our Salesman's latest travel to Flipville was the final chapter for me. Perhaps just another planned chapter in the enemy's playbook of division pitting one whatever after another whomever.

    Saudi Arabia>Israel>the pope>Brussels>G7? For the children and their children's children to find peace in this time? So is this the true "global warming" ?? Going hot ?

    Your stock on ZH is rising,DC, IMO. Good posts, good mix. Agreed:

    1) real people are about to die. (clarify For the idiot posters) -> "not over there stupid, right at your own murican soil for a change". It is right outside your door. will it be the poor and weak with nothing left from the theft or will it be some of many criminal DS members and traitors running this 100 year shitshow? Know your enemy. 2) will the deliverers of ultimate justice be seen in history as villains or will they be remembered as martyrs to the founding principals of individual liberty? Agreed: there will be graves on both sides, the only truth in every conflict. 3) what will be the tipping points the self-serving untouchables (in their minds) are systematically and randomly exterminated like rats? Dying vets? Dying and homeless boomers? The next bail out? Trigger happy mellinials who finally "get it", like "Dude, we are screwed for the next 40 years to the debt serfdom matrix". 4) does the 97 even remember what individual liberty is-is ??

    I plead guilty of the whine and bitch, piss and moan, post videos and links to vent ad.nauseum, hide on ZH et.al., hoping someone will do something. Fuck man, I have voted for 30 years against this colonial expansion / debt serfdom, home and abroad. A 100% personal failure rate.

    "Vocal" puking throughout man's history accomplishes little. I had some flicker of hope two years ago that the 99 people could regain a voice. Now, I believe all that is left for liberty's redress is .338 = 666-1

    Today is the personal re-start to finalize preparations placed on temporary hold after two years of praying that history will NOT REPEAT. Your post was in part the tipper along with being force fed that Israel, the Vatican and Saudi were pinnacles of truth, virtue and justice locked arm and "arms" with western powers to fight terror and bring freedoms to the world. My own final Orwellian straw. I no longer give a shit about the news cycle even though I can easily separate the truth out of the chaff. Or CAN I ?? Voting, the truth, the American experiment ? I no longer think this matters if you just look at history and it's only clear message left for us to individually re-discover. It IS time to finish my half completed plans for for the day that will come..... Flipville becomes Tipville and 3% mobilize, collectively or individually again.

    Damn it all. It always comes down to who will survive or perish. I thought for this little instant in time we had learned "civilization" and the big picture of "the greater good- FOR ALL".....

    Marie, if it shall be cake..... make mine a delicious chocolate with two scoops of iced cream. In about fifteen years or less, with nothing left to lose, you and your family will serve your last insult. Plan on it. For those who care to consider..... your individual plans are yours forever.

    I just wanted to share and visit, thanks for listening.

    Good night, and good luck.

    "We now return you to our Regular Programming". (never has that common phrase been so deadly and true)

    TESTIFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3dvbM6Pias&index=6&list=PL2EbESdPFdo5Xw...

    (you may need this)(or not) Lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rageagainstthemachine/testify.html

    [May 22, 2017] Newt Gingrich repeats Seth Rich conspiracy theory in Fox appearance by Lois Beckett

    Guardian defends Hillary. Again. They also are afraid to open the comment section on this article.
    Notable quotes:
    "... A prominent ally of Donald Trump suggested on Sunday that the - - special counsel appointed to investigate alleged links between the president's aides and - - Russia should instead focus on the murder last year of a young Democratic staffer, Seth Rich, which has become the focus of conspiracy theorists . ..."
    "... This week, the Russian embassy in the UK shared the conspiracy on Twitter, CNN reported , calling Rich a murdered "WikiLeaks informer" and claiming that the British mainstream media was "so busy accusing Russian hackers to take notice". ..."
    "... "He's been killed, and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigate his murder. So, I'd like to see how [former FBI director Robert] Mueller is going to define what his assignment is, and if it's only narrowly Trump, the country will not learn what it needs to learn about foreign involvement in American politics." ..."
    "... The Rich family has sent Wheeler a cease-and-desist letter, threatening legal action if he continues to discuss the case, the Washington Post reported . ..."
    May 22, 2017 | - www.theguardian.com
    Trump confidante and husband of ambassadorial nominee repeats WikiLeaks theory denounced as 'fake news' by family of murdered DNC staffer Sunday 21 May 2017, 16.48 EDT Last modified on Monday 22 May 2017

    A prominent ally of Donald Trump suggested on Sunday that the - - special counsel appointed to investigate alleged links between the president's aides and - - Russia should instead focus on the murder last year of a young Democratic staffer, Seth Rich, which has become the focus of conspiracy theorists .

    In an appearance on Fox and Friends less than two days after his wife was - - proposed as ambassador to the Holy See , Newt Gingrich – former speaker of the House, 2012 presidential candidate and a Trump confidante – publicly endorsed the conspiracy theory that Rich was "assassinated" after giving Democratic National Committee emails to WikiLeaks.

    Rich, 27, was shot dead in the early hours of 10 July 2016, as he walked home in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington. In August, the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, - - insinuated that Rich had been a source. Police initially explored whether Rich's murder might be connected to robberies in the area, according to a local news report , and officials in the capital have publicly debunked other claims.

    "This is a robbery that ended tragically," Kevin Donahue, Washington's deputy mayor for public safety, told NBC News this week. "That's bad enough for our city, and I think it is irresponsible to conflate this into something that doesn't connect to anything that the detectives have found. No WikiLeaks connection."

    On Sunday, the Washington DC police public affairs office did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

    In January, American intelligence agencies concluded with " high confidence " in a public report that Russian military intelligence was responsible for hacking the DNC and obtaining and relaying private messages to WikiLeaks, which made a series of embarrassing public disclosures. The goal, the agencies concluded, was to undermine the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and boost Trump, as well as hurt Americans' trust in their own democracy.

    This week, the Russian embassy in the UK shared the conspiracy on Twitter, CNN reported , calling Rich a murdered "WikiLeaks informer" and claiming that the British mainstream media was "so busy accusing Russian hackers to take notice".

    The Rich family has repeatedly denied that there is any evidence behind the conspiracy theories and called on Fox News to retract its coverage of their son's murder. Earlier this week, a spokesman for the family said in a statement that "anyone who continues to push this fake news story after it was so thoroughly debunked is proving to the world they have a transparent political agenda or are a sociopath".

    On Fox and Friends, Gingrich said: "We have this very strange story here of this young man who worked for the DNC who was apparently assassinated at four in the morning having given WikiLeaks something like 23,000 – I'm sorry, 53,000 – emails and 17,000 attachments.

    "Nobody's investigating that, and what does that tell you about what was going on? Because it turns out it wasn't the Russians, it was this young guy who, I suspect, who was disgusted by the corruption of the Democratic National Committee.

    "He's been killed, and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigate his murder. So, I'd like to see how [former FBI director Robert] Mueller is going to define what his assignment is, and if it's only narrowly Trump, the country will not learn what it needs to learn about foreign involvement in American politics."

    Last week, the private investigator and Fox News commentator Rod Wheeler claimed that evidence existed that Rich had been in contact with WikiLeaks. Questioned by CNN, however, he said: "I only got that [information] from the reporter at Fox News" and added that he did not have any evidence himself.

    "Using the legacy of a murder victim in such an overtly political way is morally reprehensible," a Rich family spokesman told CNN.

    The Rich family has sent Wheeler a cease-and-desist letter, threatening legal action if he continues to discuss the case, the Washington Post reported .

    [May 22, 2017] Seth Rich Plot Thickens DC Insider Speaks Of Complete Panic At Highest Levels Of DNC Zero Hedge

    Notable quotes:
    "... Of course, if it's true that WikiLeaks' emails came from a DNC insider it would end the "Russian hacking" narrative that has been perpetuated by Democrats and the mainstream media for the past several months. Moreover, it would corroborate the one confirmation that Julian Assange has offered regarding his source, namely that it was "not a state actor." ..."
    "... Meanwhile, the plot thickened a little more over the weekend when Kim Dotcom confirmed via Twitter that he was working with Seth Rich to get leaked emails to WikiLeaks. ..."
    "... If there was no smoke there would be no fire. I have never, in my 20 years of working in D.C. Seen [sic] such a panicked reaction from anyone. ..."
    "... This raises several questions. First, if Kim Dotcom knew that Seth Rich was, in fact, the WikiLeaks source, why is he just now coming forward with such information ? Second, while Seth Rich may explain the DNC leaks we still don't know who is responsible for the "Podesta Files" which we're certain will continue to be attributed to "Russian hackers." ..."
    "... Which leads to the most important queistion of all: is this all just another fake news diversion, or is there more to the Seth Rich murder? ..."
    May 22, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Last week, Fox News dropped a bombshell report officially confirming, via anonymous FBI sources, what many had suspected for quite some time, that murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was the WikiLeaks source for leaks which proved that the DNC was intentionally undermining the campaign of Bernie Sanders. In addition to exposing the corruption of the DNC, the leaks cost Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job as Chairwoman.

    Of course, if it's true that WikiLeaks' emails came from a DNC insider it would end the "Russian hacking" narrative that has been perpetuated by Democrats and the mainstream media for the past several months. Moreover, it would corroborate the one confirmation that Julian Assange has offered regarding his source, namely that it was "not a state actor."

    Meanwhile, the plot thickened a little more over the weekend when Kim Dotcom confirmed via Twitter that he was working with Seth Rich to get leaked emails to WikiLeaks.

    I knew Seth Rich. I know he was the @Wikileaks source. I was involved. https://t.co/MbGQteHhZM

    - Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 20, 2017

    Which was followed up by the following posts on 4Chan's /pol/ subgroup that high-ranking current and former Democratic Party officials are terrified of the Seth Rich murder investigation.

    "Anons, I work in D.C.

    I know for certain that the Seth Rich case has scared the shit out of certain high ranking current and former Democratic Party officials.

    It appears that certain DNC thugs were not thorough enough when it came time to cover their tracks. Podesta saying he wanted to "make an example of the leaker" is a huge smoking gun."

    The post went on to claim that a "smoking gun in this case is out of the hands of the conspirators" which has resulted in near "open panic" in DC circles.

    "The behavior is near open panic. To even mention this name in D.C. Circles [sic] will bring you under automatic scrutiny. To even admit that you have knowledge of this story puts you in immediate danger.

    If there was no smoke there would be no fire. I have never, in my 20 years of working in D.C. Seen [sic] such a panicked reaction from anyone.

    I have strong reason to believe that the smoking gun in this case is out o [sic] the hands of the conspirators, and will be discovered by anon. I know for certain that Podesta is deeply concerned. He's been receiving anonymous calls and emails from people saying they know the truth. Same with Hillary."

    And here is the original tweet:

    An Anon working in DC says that he's seeing people in a panic like never before about #SethRich .

    They know their about to be exposed. pic.twitter.com/wn9FiJ8ZrV

    - /pol/ News Forever (@polNewsForever) May 21, 2017

    Meanwhile, Kim Dotcom has promised more information will be released on his interaction with Seth Rich by tomorrow.

    I'm meeting my legal team on Monday. I will issue a statement about #SethRich on Tuesday. Please be patient. This needs to be done properly.

    - Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 20, 2017

    This raises several questions. First, if Kim Dotcom knew that Seth Rich was, in fact, the WikiLeaks source, why is he just now coming forward with such information ? Second, while Seth Rich may explain the DNC leaks we still don't know who is responsible for the "Podesta Files" which we're certain will continue to be attributed to "Russian hackers."

    Which leads to the most important queistion of all: is this all just another fake news diversion, or is there more to the Seth Rich murder?

    tmosley -> Mr Pink

    >officially confirming, via anonymous FBI sources

    I can't express my hatred of modern journalism with words.

    The_Juggernaut - tmosley , May 22, 2017 10:07 AM

    But Hillary was supposed to win and shield them all. No wonder they're trying so hard to take Trump down.

    Get 'em Orange Jesus!

    BaBaBouy - The_Juggernaut , May 22, 2017 10:08 AM

    JFK is still outstanding, what makes anyone think Rich murder will be solved ???

    JRobby - Countrybunkererd , May 22, 2017 10:26 AM

    Oblivio and the DNC are exposed big time as a result of her loss. They operated wide open assuming Comey would stay in.

    remain calm - JRobby , May 22, 2017 10:32 AM

    Nothing will happen. They got dirt on everyone, and everyone will be black mailed, strong armed into not talking.Just theater, enjoy but remember its all for not.

    Pinto Currency - Quantum Bunk , May 22, 2017 12:06 PM

    ER Doc who operated on Seth Rich said he was okay

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhRw39wMUPk

    Need a source still.

    PrayingMantis - Pinto Currency , May 22, 2017 2:04 PM

    ... >>> "Need a source still" ...

    ... "Proof that owner of bar where Seth Rich was last seen alive visited White House 4 days earlier" >>> https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2017/05/20/proof-that-owner-of-bar-where-seth-rich-was-last-seen-alive-visited-white-house-4-days-earlier/

    ... "ER surgeon at Seth Rich's hospital says his gun wounds were not fatal" >>> https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2017/05/18/surgeon-at-seth-richs-hospital-says-his-wounds-were-not-fatal/

    ... "Murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was alive and conscious when found by police" >>> https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2017/05/17/murdered-dnc-staffer-seth-rich-was-alive-when-found-by-police/

    ... "Newt Gingrich calls murder of Seth Rich an assassination" >>> https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2017/05/21/new-gingrich-calls-murder-of-seth-rich-an-assassination/

    ... four worthwhile reading articles from one source ...

    JSBach1 - Winston Churchill , May 22, 2017 11:32 AM

    MSM preparing the "look over here squirrel" diversion...

    CuttingEdge - Countrybunkererd , May 22, 2017 11:24 AM

    The Prince is a wonderful insight into that which makes the minds of souless cunts like HRC and Soros tick.

    Worth finishing if you ever get the time.

    Countrybunkererd - CuttingEdge , May 22, 2017 12:18 PM

    Agreed. I read it long ago. Decided to do it again and couldn't. One can only take so much evil and deception at a time. Mankind will not change and with that thought, you can easily see howthe book of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation tie in to what we are witnessing - Peace in the middle east? I still have the book, and may read it again but I prefer to focus on good rather than evil knowing full well what evil is capable of and the true war we fight.

    Think about where Trump is and is going. Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Pope, NATO. Egyptian president states Trump may be able to do the impossible. I know we have a lot of thought provoking discussions of all things here and my suggestion is the "Fairy in the sky" types at least read those mentioned books above and consider current events. Even if you don't believe in God, you must admit that evil (define it as needed) exists and always has. If evil exists, why wouldn't God? And off to the races!!!!

    sleigher - remain calm , May 22, 2017 10:56 AM

    "Nothing will happen."

    Not sure about that. Sessions has the contents of Comey's office and computers. Probably why he was fired while in CA. The next few weeks will definitely be interesting.

    [May 21, 2017] Speech of Lavrov at the Military Academy of the General Staff

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Unilateral economic sanctions are definitely a declaration of war, no doubt about it. An information war is underway when slander becomes a mandatory condition for the media. This is an objective fact. These days we talk a lot about Syria. Allegedly, there is a non-governmental organisation called the White Helmets funded by several Western countries and countries in the Persian Gulf. ..."
    "... A film about this organisation won the Oscar for best documentary this year. They present themselves as a humanitarian agency helping people attacked by bombs – particularly, in Syria. On several occasions, they were caught lying and showing staged video clips. For one such clip, they painted a girl with red paint and on camera she was sitting down and allegedly suffering from Russian and Syrian bombs. Several days ago in Geneva, an American journalist presented research in which he proved that the White Helmets are fake and that they only deal with developing falsified and provocative news, while dragging Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and armed forces through the mud. ..."
    "... He also proved that they are providing direct assistance to terrorists and extremists, including medical supplies and equipment, and treating injured members of extremist groups. ..."
    "... Those dealing with information and sharing experience are trying to convince each other that the media must be used not for provocation but to reconcile people. When it comes to the economy, it should be understood – and many have come to realise this – that unilateral sanctions will come back like a boomerang and hit the countries that joined them, especially small countries ..."
    Apr 02, 2017 | thesaker.is
    Speech of Lavrov at the Military Academy of the General Staff The Vineyard of the Saker

    Question: The traditional definition of war is "war is nothing more than an extension of state policy by alternate means." We usually understand "alternate means" as military violence and therefore claim that war always involves military action. Do you think it would be correct to say that the nature of war has changed in contemporary circumstances, that is, now the term includes measures for information, economic, political and psychological impact?

    Sergey Lavrov: You know, in the West they coined the term 'hybrid war.' As a matter of fact, this is the concept they seem to be forming based on their experience. Unilateral economic sanctions are definitely a declaration of war, no doubt about it. An information war is underway when slander becomes a mandatory condition for the media. This is an objective fact. These days we talk a lot about Syria. Allegedly, there is a non-governmental organisation called the White Helmets funded by several Western countries and countries in the Persian Gulf.

    A film about this organisation won the Oscar for best documentary this year. They present themselves as a humanitarian agency helping people attacked by bombs – particularly, in Syria. On several occasions, they were caught lying and showing staged video clips. For one such clip, they painted a girl with red paint and on camera she was sitting down and allegedly suffering from Russian and Syrian bombs. Several days ago in Geneva, an American journalist presented research in which he proved that the White Helmets are fake and that they only deal with developing falsified and provocative news, while dragging Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and armed forces through the mud.

    He also proved that they are providing direct assistance to terrorists and extremists, including medical supplies and equipment, and treating injured members of extremist groups. This is just one example. But anywhere you go, when I just try talking to my Western colleagues, the White Helmets are exempt from any criticism and seem to have a monopoly on the truth. There are many other tricks like that. Certainly, in a wider perspective, cyberspace is an area where there is a material possibility to inflict potentially very serious harm. Cyber forces were created and, apparently, they have some significance. This is exactly why we need forums where these things can be discussed as a single package. The military discusses purely military issues, which now extends to cyberwars.

    Those dealing with information and sharing experience are trying to convince each other that the media must be used not for provocation but to reconcile people. When it comes to the economy, it should be understood – and many have come to realise this – that unilateral sanctions will come back like a boomerang and hit the countries that joined them, especially small countries. It is very short-sighted to impose unilateral sanctions on a country like Russia, with its huge potential, human and natural resources. By encouraging dialogue in each of these areas to build a general understanding, mutually beneficial and generally acceptable approaches, we need a forum where all these issues can be considered in their relation to each other because they all affect the general status of international relations. Except for the UN, there is no other framework like this. This is a very topical issue and we have no doubt that it will be in the centre of very heated and engaging debates for the foreseeable future.

    [May 21, 2017] Rich Shared 44,053 Democrat Emails with WikiLeaks: Report

    Notable quotes:
    "... The exposure of this story takes the mask off the exponents of the Russian conspiracy theory. Their sanity is now in question, as is their loyalty. ..."
    May 21, 2017 | www.unz.com

    May 16, 2017

    85 Comments Reply
    For the past several months, Democrats have based their "Resist 45″ movement on unsubstantiated assertions that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian intelligence officials to undermine the 2016 Presidential Election thereby 'stealing' the White House from Hillary Clinton. Day after day we've all suffered through one anonymously sourced, "shock" story after another from the New York Times and/or The Washington Post with new allegations of the 'wrongdoing'.

    But, new evidence surfacing in the Seth Rich murder investigation may just quash the "Russian hacking" conspiracy theory. According to a new report from Fox News , it was former DNC staffer Seth Rich who supplied 44,000 DNC emails to WikiLeaks and not some random Russian cyber terrorist, as we've all been led to believe.

    According to Fox News, though admittedly via yet another anonymous FBI source, Rich made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, an American investigative reporter and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time. According to Fox News sources, federal law enforcement investigators found 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments sent between DNC leaders from January 2015 to May 2016 that Rich shared with WikiLeaks before he was gunned down on July 10, 2016.

    The Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on July 10 on a Washington, D.C., street just steps from his home had leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks, law enforcement sources told Fox News.

    A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic report detailing the contents of DNC staffer Seth Rich's computer generated within 96 hours after his murder, said Rich made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time.

    "I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and Wikileaks," the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department.

    Then, on July 22, just 12 days after Rich was killed, WikiLeaks published internal DNC emails that appeared to show top party officials conspiring to stop Bernie Sanders from becoming the party's presidential nominee. As we've noted before, the DNC's efforts to block Sanders resulted in Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigning as DNC chairperson.

    Ivy , May 16, 2017 at 11:21 pm GMT

    Expect the Comey-Russia hysteria to escalate as the Seth Rich matter ripens. The DNC is eyeing the 2018 midterm elections and hoping that they can keep the focus off their problems (Hillary, Podesta, ad nauseam). How will they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again? CNN and MSNBC are preparing to levitate over the issues.

    El Dato , May 16, 2017 at 11:31 pm GMT

    made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter

    What did HE die from?

    I thought it was ex-ambassador Craig Murray who did the deed? He even confirmed it:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails-handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html

    The above-reference tabloid is derided by goodthinking Brits but seems to deliver the dirty underwear.

    exiled off mainstreet , May 16, 2017 at 11:32 pm GMT

    The exposure of this story takes the mask off the exponents of the Russian conspiracy theory. Their sanity is now in question, as is their loyalty.

    Tomster , May 17, 2017 at 2:35 am GMT

    @Ivy Expect the Comey-Russia hysteria to escalate as the Seth Rich matter ripens. The DNC is eyeing the 2018 midterm elections and hoping that they can keep the focus off their problems (Hillary, Podesta, ad nauseam). How will they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again? CNN and MSNBC are preparing to levitate over the issues.

    SteveRogers42 , May 17, 2017 at 4:39 am GMT

    Excellent point from Anonymous Conservative: Metro DC is probably wired for surveillance to a degree that would astonish most people, and yet the official line is that "ain't nobody seen nuthin".

    http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/reward-for-seth-richs-murder-up-to-150000/

    Even the police who handled the scene wore body cameras, and Rich was conscious when they arrived. Where are the audio/video records?

    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/05/developing-seth-rich-alive-police-found-police-camera-video-went-missing/

    Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

    https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/792875315920048128/photo/1

    jim jones , May 17, 2017 at 6:32 am GMT

    Credit to The Donald on Reddit for keeping this issue alive, praise Kek.

    Anon , May 17, 2017 at 7:02 am GMT

    DNC Staffer ASSASSINATED for ties to Wikileaks?

    The Alarmist , May 17, 2017 at 7:50 am GMT

    You heard it here first, nearly a year ago just sayin'!

    Ram , May 17, 2017 at 10:39 am GMT

    Three days after the Seth Rich murder Comey had the information (IF he didn't already know) gleaned from Rich's laptop that he had been in correspondence with Wikileaks, yet went along with the canard that the DNC was hacked by the Russians till the very end. Assange's confirmation that Russians had no connection to the LEAK was also ignored, because they wanted Assange painted as a criminal.

    Anonym , May 17, 2017 at 10:52 am GMT

    @The Alarmist You heard it here first, nearly a year ago ... just sayin'!

    anonymous , May 17, 2017 at 11:38 am GMT

    His murder is very troubling. Nothing was taken so it seems he was targeted. Assassinations taking place in the US should be of great concern to everyone. This shouldn't be allowed to go down the memory hole. Does the trail lead to Clinton or other domestic spook groups?

    JackOH , May 17, 2017 at 1:21 pm GMT

    Only scanned the article quickly, but I'm very confident an untold number of political decisions in America are made by political violence and threats of violence, blackmail, bribery, and so on. There are good people in politics, even in my preternaturally corrupt area, but they have to be tough as nails, and that can wear you out. We may be closer to Tinpot-istan in our political culture than Norman Rockwell, but–Chrissake–where are the mainstream media in this Seth Rich case? I'm just a casual reader of the story, but I'd like to know if this was a political assassination.

    Anonymous Nephew , May 17, 2017 at 2:39 pm GMT

    Didn't Podesta say he wanted "an example made" of leakers, even if only suspected?

    The Alarmist , May 17, 2017 at 2:54 pm GMT

    @Anonym I think I was one of the first, maybe the first on here. August 6 2016. And I got the lowdown from the_donald.

    http://www.unz.com/isteve/2016-election-is-driven-by-large-scale-events-happening-or-not-happening/?highlight=seth+rich#comment-1519430

    Jus' Sayin'... , May 17, 2017 at 4:34 pm GMT

    @El Dato


    made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter
    What did HE die from?

    I thought it was ex-ambassador Craig Murray who did the deed? He even confirmed it:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails-handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html

    The above-reference tabloid is derided by goodthinking Brits but seems to deliver the dirty underwear.

    OutWest , May 17, 2017 at 5:06 pm GMT

    I suspect there's as much evidence in the Seth Rich matter as there is in The-Russians-Did-It theory. So let's have congress drop all other business and "investigate" this Rich matter.

    Anon , May 17, 2017 at 7:35 pm GMT

    Wheeler is a Negro.. and Negroes are pathological liars.

    Anonym , May 17, 2017 at 9:24 pm GMT

    @The Alarmist http://www.unz.com/plee/trumputin-and-the-leaks/#comment-1507217

    Got you by a few days

    anon , May 17, 2017 at 9:28 pm GMT

    @Anon Wheeler is a Negro.. and Negroes are pathological liars.

    Corvinus , May 17, 2017 at 9:54 pm GMT

    "According to a new report from Fox News, it was former DNC staffer Seth Rich who supplied 44,000 DNC emails to WikiLeaks and not some random Russian cyber terrorist, as we've all been led to believe."

    Does it occur to Durden that there may be SEPARATE WikiLeaks, one allegedly from Rich and one from another source?

    Corvinus , May 17, 2017 at 9:56 pm GMT

    @Anon Wheeler is a Negro.. and Negroes are pathological liars.

    Alfa158 , May 17, 2017 at 11:57 pm GMT

    @Corvinus "According to a new report from Fox News, it was former DNC staffer Seth Rich who supplied 44,000 DNC emails to WikiLeaks and not some random Russian cyber terrorist, as we've all been led to believe."

    Does it occur to Durden that there may be SEPARATE WikiLeaks, one allegedly from Rich and one from another source?

    Sandy Berger's Socks , May 18, 2017 at 12:09 am GMT

    Trump has been thrown a life line with this.

    This may well be his last chance to pull back the curtain and show us how the deep state handles leaks/dissent.

    Reg Cćsar , May 18, 2017 at 1:01 am GMT

    @SteveRogers42 Excellent point from Anonymous Conservative: Metro DC is probably wired for surveillance to a degree that would astonish most people, and yet the official line is that "ain't nobody seen nuthin".

    http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/reward-for-seth-richs-murder-up-to-150000/

    Even the police who handled the scene wore body cameras, and Rich was conscious when they arrived. Where are the audio/video records?

    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/05/developing-seth-rich-alive-police-found-police-camera-video-went-missing/

    Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

    https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/792875315920048128/photo/1

    APPAF Newsletter 05-18-2017 | APPAF , May 18, 2017 at 1:43 am GMT

    [ ] The Unz Review: Murdered DNC Staffer Seth Rich Shared 44,053 Democrat Emails with WikiLeaks: Report [ ]

    Corvinus , May 18, 2017 at 1:58 am GMT

    @Alfa158 The Wikileaks site shows two batches of leaked e-mails. One is the 44,053 from the DNC and the other 30,000 plus from Hilary's e-mail server. Wikileaks doesn't say on their site specifically what the sources were. They did offer a reward for information on the murder of Seth Rich, which implies, but does not state, that the DNC leaks came from Rich.
    The Hillary e-mails could have been hacked by the Russians, any number of other intelligence sources, or even a skilled amateur.
    Then on top of all that fog, other conflicting information is that the DNC lost control of the e-mails due to Podesta falling for a phishing probe, even after his IT people warned him not to respond to it.
    Yet another journalist claims he was the guy who forwarded the e-mails to Wikileaks and got them from a DNC staffer, but not Rich!
    I think I'll go take a nap for about 5 years and you can wake me up after it is all sorted out.

    Anonymous , May 18, 2017 at 2:08 am GMT

    @SteveRogers42 Excellent point from Anonymous Conservative: Metro DC is probably wired for surveillance to a degree that would astonish most people, and yet the official line is that "ain't nobody seen nuthin".

    http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/reward-for-seth-richs-murder-up-to-150000/

    Even the police who handled the scene wore body cameras, and Rich was conscious when they arrived. Where are the audio/video records?

    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/05/developing-seth-rich-alive-police-found-police-camera-video-went-missing/

    Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

    https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/792875315920048128/photo/1

    Sam McGowan , • Website May 18, 2017 at 2:25 am GMT

    @El Dato


    made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter
    What did HE die from?

    I thought it was ex-ambassador Craig Murray who did the deed? He even confirmed it:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails-handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html

    The above-reference tabloid is derided by goodthinking Brits but seems to deliver the dirty underwear.

    anon , May 18, 2017 at 3:06 am GMT

    Why doesn't Assange release at least some of the e-mails from Seth Rich to Wikileaks?

    jim jones , May 18, 2017 at 8:06 am GMT

    @anon Is there a specific combination on DNA of Negroes that carries the "pathological liar" trait?
    What is that DNA pattern?
    Does it appear only on NEGRO DNA or has its presence been noted on non-Negro DNA?

    A majority of Black callers to C Span declare, with gospel certainty, that "Trump is a liar, has been all his life."
    Does that mean that Trump carries Negro DNA?
    Or that Trump is a Negro?
    Or that the code for lying can be present in non-Negroes?
    Or that Negroes, being "pathological liars," lie about Trump being a liar?

    Is that last statement disproved if it happens that Trump does, indeed, lie?

    My but it does get complicated when blanket, prejudiced generalizations are slung about.

    Ronald Thomas West , • Website May 18, 2017 at 9:23 am GMT

    I'm not impressed. For quite some time there has been a credible witness to the fact of an insider leaked the DNC mails that doesn't require going through anonymous FBI sources or climbing over a Rich family in denial:

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/

    "I know who leaked them. I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things" -wikileaks associate and former British foreign service officer Craig Murray

    So why would 'tyler durden' toss all of this doubt inducing crap from the faux news channel into the stew of it? It's been black & white, case closed for quite some time.

    Seamus Padraig , May 18, 2017 at 10:30 am GMT

    @Anon Wheeler is a Negro.. and Negroes are pathological liars.

    Seamus Padraig , May 18, 2017 at 10:36 am GMT

    @anon Why doesn't Assange release at least some of the e-mails from Seth Rich to Wikileaks?

    Joe Franklin , May 18, 2017 at 11:30 am GMT

    @anon Why doesn't Assange release at least some of the e-mails from Seth Rich to Wikileaks?

    Corvinus , May 18, 2017 at 12:26 pm GMT

    @jim jones I believe the MAOA gene is assumed to be the problem:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2933872/

    Corvinus , May 18, 2017 at 12:34 pm GMT

    @Ronald Thomas West I'm not impressed. For quite some time there has been a credible witness to the fact of an insider leaked the DNC mails that doesn't require going through anonymous FBI sources or climbing over a Rich family in denial:

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/

    "I know who leaked them. I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things" -wikileaks associate and former British foreign service officer Craig Murray

    So why would 'tyler durden' toss all of this doubt inducing crap from the faux news channel into the stew of it? It's been black & white, case closed for quite some time.

    Ronald Thomas West , • Website May 18, 2017 at 1:15 pm GMT

    @Corvinus One can have reasonable doubt that Craig Murray "knows" who leaked them since he has self-interest and self-preservation in mind.

    Mr. Murray made this statement--"A little simple logic demolishes the CIA's claims. The CIA claim they "know the individuals" involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks."

    Except if the "Deep State" is playing for keeps and is hell-bent on removing Trump, then they are going to play it close to the vest in certain matters and wait until they have the absolute goods to nail him to the cross. So it's not as "simple" as Mr. Murray makes it out to be. Arrests and/or extraditions are most likely made when there is hard-core evidence, which is required in this case given Trump status and popularity among his base. They have ONE bullet in their chamber and have to get the KILL SHOT. The CIA has their attack dogs out en masses to smoke out the culprits. If it is revealed that in the two grand juries that Trump's crew are joined at the hip with the Russians and/or engaged in shenanigans, then Republicans will have to think about cutting their ties to Trump given the importance of the mid-term elections.

    Corvinus , May 18, 2017 at 2:17 pm GMT

    @Ronald Thomas West Clearly you're just way too smart for ordinary folk with common sense; kind of like the IQ 180 that believes Jesus will return and straighten everything out. Meanwhile, I'll take Murray at his word.

    Hood Canal Gardner , May 18, 2017 at 2:50 pm GMT

    JHC .. we do it/have been doing it (eg) meddling in foreign elections, wars, whacking the occasional candidate since the Spanish-American War and say "its okay, it's in the national interest."

    What's the point with the supposed Russia-US election bashing? Ie, it's okay and national interest legal for the US to meddle and others not?

    Agent76 , May 18, 2017 at 3:08 pm GMT

    May 17, 2017 The Seth Rich Story Changes Once Again

    Less than 24 hours after Private Investigator Rod Wheeler claimed that "investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks," the story has changed. Wheeler is now claiming that he had no additional evidence to suggest that Seth Rich contacted WikiLeaks prior to his murder.

    Agent76 , May 18, 2017 at 3:14 pm GMT

    14.05.2017 International Cyber Attack: Roots Traced to US National Security Agency

    Over 45,000 ransomware attacks have been tracked in large-scale attacks across Europe and Asia - particularly Russia and China - as well as attacks in the US and South America. There are reports of infections in 99 countries. A string of ransomware attacks appears to have started in the United Kingdom, Spain and the rest of Europe, before striking Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines on May 12. According to Kaspersky Laboratory, Russia, Ukraine, India and Taiwan were hit hardest. Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at the Helsinki-based cybersecurity company F-Secure, called the attack "the biggest ransomware outbreak in history". It is not known who exactly was behind it.

    http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/05/14/international-cyber-attack-roots-traced-us-national-security-agency.html

    Ronald Thomas West , • Website May 18, 2017 at 5:49 pm GMT

    @Corvinus "Clearly you're just way too smart for ordinary folk with common sense...:

    I'm merely offering my analysis from multiple sources.

    "kind of like the IQ 180 that believes Jesus will return and straighten everything out."

    Exactly. It is faith. One can question that belief, but you nor I actually know.

    "Meanwhile, I'll take Murray at his word."

    In order to maintain his narrative, absolutely. But you may be missing key things along the way. We'll see how it all plays out. The two grand juries being convened on the Trump Administration will be telling.

    Anon , May 18, 2017 at 5:51 pm GMT

    @Agent76 May 17, 2017 The Seth Rich Story Changes Once Again

    Less than 24 hours after Private Investigator Rod Wheeler claimed that "investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks," the story has changed. Wheeler is now claiming that he had no additional evidence to suggest that Seth Rich contacted WikiLeaks prior to his murder.

    https://youtu.be/wQRDkppCqNM

    Bill Jones , May 18, 2017 at 8:21 pm GMT

    @Ram Three days after the Seth Rich murder Comey had the information (IF he didn't already know) gleaned from Rich's laptop that he had been in correspondence with Wikileaks, yet went along with the canard that the DNC was hacked by the Russians till the very end. Assange's confirmation that Russians had no connection to the LEAK was also ignored, because they wanted Assange painted as a criminal.

    El Dato , May 18, 2017 at 10:14 pm GMT

    @Anonymous I feel the same way about the plane crashing into the Pentagon on 9/11

    That must be literally the most surveillance heavy facility on the planet -- yet there is no footage of the crash/aftermath?

    The whole system is crooked. Anything that incriminates the power structure simply disappears. And there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to even look into it.

    Sowhat , May 18, 2017 at 11:15 pm GMT

    @Corvinus One can have reasonable doubt that Craig Murray "knows" who leaked them since he has self-interest and self-preservation in mind.

    Mr. Murray made this statement--"A little simple logic demolishes the CIA's claims. The CIA claim they "know the individuals" involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks."

    Except if the "Deep State" is playing for keeps and is hell-bent on removing Trump, then they are going to play it close to the vest in certain matters and wait until they have the absolute goods to nail him to the cross. So it's not as "simple" as Mr. Murray makes it out to be. Arrests and/or extraditions are most likely made when there is hard-core evidence, which is required in this case given Trump status and popularity among his base. They have ONE bullet in their chamber and have to get the KILL SHOT. The CIA has their attack dogs out en masses to smoke out the culprits. If it is revealed that in the two grand juries that Trump's crew are joined at the hip with the Russians and/or engaged in shenanigans, then Republicans will have to think about cutting their ties to Trump given the importance of the mid-term elections.

    Corvinus , May 18, 2017 at 11:29 pm GMT

    @Ronald Thomas West huh. I'd supposed you'd sorted 'faith' with alleles [belly laugh]

    Anonym , May 18, 2017 at 11:58 pm GMT

    @anon Is there a specific combination on DNA of Negroes that carries the "pathological liar" trait?
    What is that DNA pattern?
    Does it appear only on NEGRO DNA or has its presence been noted on non-Negro DNA?

    A majority of Black callers to C Span declare, with gospel certainty, that "Trump is a liar, has been all his life."
    Does that mean that Trump carries Negro DNA?
    Or that Trump is a Negro?
    Or that the code for lying can be present in non-Negroes?
    Or that Negroes, being "pathological liars," lie about Trump being a liar?

    Is that last statement disproved if it happens that Trump does, indeed, lie?

    My but it does get complicated when blanket, prejudiced generalizations are slung about.

    Bill Jones , May 19, 2017 at 12:07 am GMT

    @El Dato That was in 2001.

    Different age. Watch the "X Files" for the tech quality,

    Didn't even have mobile phones with cameras.

    anon , May 19, 2017 at 12:10 am GMT

    one of the key elements of this story is the media completely ignoring the Seth Rich angle

    SteveRogers42 , May 19, 2017 at 3:37 am GMT

    @Anonymous I feel the same way about the plane crashing into the Pentagon on 9/11

    That must be literally the most surveillance heavy facility on the planet -- yet there is no footage of the crash/aftermath?

    The whole system is crooked. Anything that incriminates the power structure simply disappears. And there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to even look into it.

    Eagle Eye , May 19, 2017 at 6:36 am GMT

    @Alfa158 The Wikileaks site shows two batches of leaked e-mails. One is the 44,053 from the DNC and the other 30,000 plus from Hilary's e-mail server. Wikileaks doesn't say on their site specifically what the sources were. They did offer a reward for information on the murder of Seth Rich, which implies, but does not state, that the DNC leaks came from Rich.
    The Hillary e-mails could have been hacked by the Russians, any number of other intelligence sources, or even a skilled amateur.
    Then on top of all that fog, other conflicting information is that the DNC lost control of the e-mails due to Podesta falling for a phishing probe, even after his IT people warned him not to respond to it.
    Yet another journalist claims he was the guy who forwarded the e-mails to Wikileaks and got them from a DNC staffer, but not Rich!
    I think I'll go take a nap for about 5 years and you can wake me up after it is all sorted out.

    Eagle Eye , May 19, 2017 at 6:39 am GMT

    @anon one of the key elements of this story is the media completely ignoring the Seth Rich angle

    Don Bass , May 19, 2017 at 9:30 am GMT

    @Corvinus "The Wikileaks site shows two batches of leaked e-mails. One is the 44,053 from the DNC and the other 30,000 plus from Hilary's e-mail server. Wikileaks doesn't say on their site specifically what the sources were. The Hillary e-mails could have been hacked by the Russians, any number of other intelligence sources, or even a skilled amateur."

    Exactly. So Zerohedge is being a White Knight here for Trump. It is possible that Rich could have supplied those documents, but it is also possible that the Russians was involved. We don't know for sure.

    Don Bass , May 19, 2017 at 9:42 am GMT

    @Seamus Padraig


    Why doesn't Assange release at least some of the e-mails from Seth Rich to Wikileaks?
    According to the standard version of the story, Rich did not email the pilfered DNC data to Wikileaks. Rather, he met in DC with Craig Murray--a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a personal friend of Julian Assange--and gave him the information on a flashdrive of some type. Murray then flew back to Britain and gave the drive to Assange in person.
    Seamus Padraig , May 19, 2017 at 2:02 pm GMT

    @Don Bass ......We don't know for sure.....
    Sure, we do. Wikileaks has stated emphatically and categorically the leaks - and they were leaks, not " hacks", were not sourced from the Russians.
    What also know - for sure - is that the "Russians hacked our elections" psy-op/misdirect was constructed (workshopped) by the Podesta + David Brookes media matters "team" immediately after the HRC election failure.

    Corvinus , May 19, 2017 at 3:04 pm GMT

    @Don Bass ......We don't know for sure.....
    Sure, we do. Wikileaks has stated emphatically and categorically the leaks - and they were leaks, not " hacks", were not sourced from the Russians.
    What also know - for sure - is that the "Russians hacked our elections" psy-op/misdirect was constructed (workshopped) by the Podesta + David Brookes media matters "team" immediately after the HRC election failure.

    OutWest , May 19, 2017 at 4:01 pm GMT

    Well, it must have been the Russians that hacked into the NY Times and published that damning article about Hil and Libya. It was a rather complete exposé of incompetence and savagery. Note; the New York Times! And where did Trump live? Pretty conclusive; Trump and the Russians victimizing poor Hil and the voice of liberals in one dastardly hack.

    Intelligent Dasein , • Website May 19, 2017 at 5:13 pm GMT

    @Anonymous I feel the same way about the plane crashing into the Pentagon on 9/11

    That must be literally the most surveillance heavy facility on the planet -- yet there is no footage of the crash/aftermath?

    The whole system is crooked. Anything that incriminates the power structure simply disappears. And there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to even look into it.

    Dahlia , May 20, 2017 at 2:08 am GMT

    There's been so much smoke and mirrors on this, that it makes one want to throw his hands up

    Before I even start, if anyone reporting on this does not mention Craig Murray, a well-known and respected associate of Julian Assange involved with Wikileaks, and his claim back in December that he personally received the hand-off of the DNC emails from insiders in DC, that person IS A HACK.

    I followed it closely when he came out and was shocked and dismayed that barely anybody (nobody?) in the United States followed up with him. They just ignored him. I guess because he couldn't be dismissed as a hack and what he said torpedoed the "Russians did it" narrative, so just hope nobody heard him.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails-handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html

    Craig Murray did not mention Seth Rich. What the American MSM's ignoring of him shows, though, is that *anything* that casts doubt on the "Russians did it" narrative will be obfuscated, ignored, etc. Expect to be gaslit.
    Anyway

    One issue muddying the waters is that the two major "breakthroughs" come from "FOX": a local affiliate and Fox News.

    I understand that there are problems with the local affiliate, but I gather, NOT the Fox News story Am I wrong?

    If the Fox News reporting is correct, it's huge, and their's was the more substantive to begin with: law enforcement sources said Seth Rich had been in contact with Gavin MacFadyen.
    (if the local guy was bluffing in order to have fresh attention and get people to come forward, it was worth it)

    Gavin MacFadyen seems to have had a relationship with Craig Murray, and both had/have a relationship with Julian Assange. Seth Rich being in contact with Gavin MacFadyen greatly lends credibility to Craig Murray's account.
    (Here, both are mentioned together in the book "Ghost Plane: The True Story Story of the CIA Torture Program" https://books.google.com/books?id=NLzB7YXDHNUC&pg=PA311&lpg=PA311&dq=gavin+macfadyen+craig+murray+cia&source=bl&ots=KKy1_V2atM&sig=1CYGRZjnOxmcRIGk9RNx1iQhWcA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwigk-7br_3TAhXo7oMKHTOrCT0Q6AEIOzAE#v=onepage&q=gavin%20macfadyen%20craig%20murray%20cia&f=false )

    Obviously, the answer to our impasse is: Interview Craig Murray

    We have two questions:

    a. Was Seth Rich involved in leaking to Wikileaks?
    b. Who killed Seth Rich?

    The answer to question "a" greatly changes the odds and focus for question "b". Of course, the DNC could also be the unluckiest organization going in that the guy who destroyed them via leaking had the temerity to go get himself killed by some random thugs who got away!

    I see that Mike Whitney has just written about this, including Craig Murray, at Counterpunch:

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/seth-rich-craig-murray-and-the-sinister-stewards-of-the-national-security-state/

    Dahlia , May 20, 2017 at 2:38 am GMT

    @Dahlia There's been so much smoke and mirrors on this, that it makes one want to throw his hands up...

    Before I even start, if anyone reporting on this does not mention Craig Murray, a well-known and respected associate of Julian Assange involved with Wikileaks, and his claim back in December that he personally received the hand-off of the DNC emails from insiders in DC, that person IS A HACK.

    I followed it closely when he came out and was shocked and dismayed that barely anybody (nobody?) in the United States followed up with him. They just ignored him. I guess because he couldn't be dismissed as a hack and what he said torpedoed the "Russians did it" narrative, so just hope nobody heard him.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails-handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html

    Craig Murray did not mention Seth Rich. What the American MSM's ignoring of him shows, though, is that *anything* that casts doubt on the "Russians did it" narrative will be obfuscated, ignored, etc. Expect to be gaslit.
    Anyway...

    One issue muddying the waters is that the two major "breakthroughs" come from "FOX": a local affiliate and Fox News.

    I understand that there are problems with the local affiliate, but I gather, NOT the Fox News story... Am I wrong?

    If the Fox News reporting is correct, it's huge, and their's was the more substantive to begin with: law enforcement sources said Seth Rich had been in contact with Gavin MacFadyen.
    (if the local guy was bluffing in order to have fresh attention and get people to come forward, it was worth it)

    Gavin MacFadyen seems to have had a relationship with Craig Murray, and both had/have a relationship with Julian Assange. Seth Rich being in contact with Gavin MacFadyen greatly lends credibility to Craig Murray's account.
    (Here, both are mentioned together in the book "Ghost Plane: The True Story Story of the CIA Torture Program"
    https://books.google.com/books?id=NLzB7YXDHNUC&pg=PA311&lpg=PA311&dq=gavin+macfadyen+craig+murray+cia&source=bl&ots=KKy1_V2atM&sig=1CYGRZjnOxmcRIGk9RNx1iQhWcA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwigk-7br_3TAhXo7oMKHTOrCT0Q6AEIOzAE#v=onepage&q=gavin%20macfadyen%20craig%20murray%20cia&f=false)


    Obviously, the answer to our impasse is: Interview Craig Murray
    We have two questions:

    a. Was Seth Rich involved in leaking to Wikileaks?
    b. Who killed Seth Rich?

    The answer to question "a" greatly changes the odds and focus for question "b". Of course, the DNC could also be the unluckiest organization going in that the guy who destroyed them via leaking had the temerity to go get himself killed by some random thugs who got away!

    I see that Mike Whitney has just written about this, including Craig Murray, at Counterpunch:
    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/seth-rich-craig-murray-and-the-sinister-stewards-of-the-national-security-state/

    Dahlia , May 20, 2017 at 2:43 am GMT

    Craig Murray on Seth Rich:

    In reference to the leak of the DNC emails, Murray noted that "Julian Assange took very close interest in the death of Seth Rich, the Democratic staff member" who had worked for the DNC on voter databases and was shot and killed on July 10 near his Washington, D.C., home.

    Murray continued, "WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the capture of his killers. So, obviously there are suspicions there about what's happening and things are somewhat murky. I'm not saying – don't get me wrong – I'm not saying that he was the source of the [DNC] leaks. What I'm saying is that it's probably not an unfair indication to draw that WikiLeaks believes that he may have been killed by someone who thought he was the source of the leaks whether correctly or incorrectly. "

    It may be worth noting that conspiracy theories have sprung up around other Democratic figures, but Julian Assange hasn't brought them up. Just took a strong interest in this one.

    Dahlia , May 20, 2017 at 2:55 am GMT

    Final comment in this string, so readers can check out Craig Murray's site. Maybe Ron Unz can get a hold of him?

    Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling.

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/

    Can't say it enough: Discount anybody who doesn't reference Julian Assange or Craig Murray (and Gavin MacFadyen if the national Fox News stands by its sources and I believe they do) when opining on Seth Rich or the Democratic emails.

    Dahlia , May 20, 2017 at 4:14 am GMT

    I saw that Dave Weigel is planning on writing a piece on the Seth Rich conspiracy

    The #1 thing fueling it is the Media ignoring Assange and his associates emphatically stating that it was insiders, not Russia, involved with the Democratic leaks. These people received them, and long after the election when they have no possible motive, still vehemently deny that it was Russia. Craig Murray spoke out in December. They have perfect credibility, and at this stage, no motive that could be suspect. But they continue to be utterly, completely, ignored while the Russia circus runs on. So, a bona fide Bernie supporter is murdered and Julian Assange took extreme interest How do people *not* question what is going on?

    My spidey sense tells me that Seth Rich was a provider of intelligence to Julian Assange, but he really does not know who killed him. I think Assange holds out some hope that it was a random one-off thug thing, but deep down, suspects it's not. The guilt would be tremendous. But, he doesn't know. Strongly suspects. Tortured with guilt.

    RobinG , May 20, 2017 at 6:37 am GMT

    @Dahlia There's been so much smoke and mirrors on this, that it makes one want to throw his hands up...

    Before I even start, if anyone reporting on this does not mention Craig Murray, a well-known and respected associate of Julian Assange involved with Wikileaks, and his claim back in December that he personally received the hand-off of the DNC emails from insiders in DC, that person IS A HACK.

    I followed it closely when he came out and was shocked and dismayed that barely anybody (nobody?) in the United States followed up with him. They just ignored him. I guess because he couldn't be dismissed as a hack and what he said torpedoed the "Russians did it" narrative, so just hope nobody heard him.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails-handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html

    Craig Murray did not mention Seth Rich. What the American MSM's ignoring of him shows, though, is that *anything* that casts doubt on the "Russians did it" narrative will be obfuscated, ignored, etc. Expect to be gaslit.
    Anyway...

    One issue muddying the waters is that the two major "breakthroughs" come from "FOX": a local affiliate and Fox News.

    I understand that there are problems with the local affiliate, but I gather, NOT the Fox News story... Am I wrong?

    If the Fox News reporting is correct, it's huge, and their's was the more substantive to begin with: law enforcement sources said Seth Rich had been in contact with Gavin MacFadyen.
    (if the local guy was bluffing in order to have fresh attention and get people to come forward, it was worth it)

    Gavin MacFadyen seems to have had a relationship with Craig Murray, and both had/have a relationship with Julian Assange. Seth Rich being in contact with Gavin MacFadyen greatly lends credibility to Craig Murray's account.
    (Here, both are mentioned together in the book "Ghost Plane: The True Story Story of the CIA Torture Program"
    https://books.google.com/books?id=NLzB7YXDHNUC&pg=PA311&lpg=PA311&dq=gavin+macfadyen+craig+murray+cia&source=bl&ots=KKy1_V2atM&sig=1CYGRZjnOxmcRIGk9RNx1iQhWcA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwigk-7br_3TAhXo7oMKHTOrCT0Q6AEIOzAE#v=onepage&q=gavin%20macfadyen%20craig%20murray%20cia&f=false)


    Obviously, the answer to our impasse is: Interview Craig Murray
    We have two questions:

    a. Was Seth Rich involved in leaking to Wikileaks?
    b. Who killed Seth Rich?

    The answer to question "a" greatly changes the odds and focus for question "b". Of course, the DNC could also be the unluckiest organization going in that the guy who destroyed them via leaking had the temerity to go get himself killed by some random thugs who got away!

    I see that Mike Whitney has just written about this, including Craig Murray, at Counterpunch:
    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/seth-rich-craig-murray-and-the-sinister-stewards-of-the-national-security-state/

    SteveRogers42 , May 20, 2017 at 7:44 am GMT

    How common is it for the FBI to seize the computer of a homicide victim and analyze the contents?

    jim jones , May 20, 2017 at 8:17 am GMT

    It looks as if the Seth Rich story has destroyed Reddit, all the Trump supporters are moving to Voat.

    SteveRogers42 , May 20, 2017 at 9:57 am GMT

    Coincidences abound:

    http://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/08/shawn-lucas-cause-of-death-still-unknown-as-clintons-campaign-lawyer-tries-to-move-dnc-lawsuit-into-the-weeds/

    http://truthuncensored.net/julian-assanges-lawyer-found-dead-after-being-struck-by-train-video/

    alexander , May 20, 2017 at 10:19 am GMT

    @Dahlia Final comment in this string, so readers can check out Craig Murray's site. Maybe Ron Unz can get a hold of him?


    Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling.

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/

    Can't say it enough: Discount anybody who doesn't reference Julian Assange or Craig Murray (and Gavin MacFadyen if the national Fox News stands by its sources and I believe they do) when opining on Seth Rich or the Democratic emails.

    JackOH , May 20, 2017 at 10:55 am GMT

    @SteveRogers42 Coincidences abound:

    http://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/08/shawn-lucas-cause-of-death-still-unknown-as-clintons-campaign-lawyer-tries-to-move-dnc-lawsuit-into-the-weeds/

    http://truthuncensored.net/julian-assanges-lawyer-found-dead-after-being-struck-by-train-video/

    Ludwig Watzal , • Website May 20, 2017 at 12:12 pm GMT

    Is Seth Rich the only victim on the bloody Clinton trail? The Clinton company is the only one that should be investigated.

    anon , May 20, 2017 at 3:10 pm GMT

    @Eagle Eye Seth Rich was quite young and perhaps not 100% wise to the ways of the world.

    Is it conceivable that he passed the DNC emails to Comey's FBI FIRST as evidence of criminal wrongdoing, and THEN handed another copy to Wikileaks as backup?

    Perhaps Rich went to Wikileaks only after Comeys' FBI gave him the brush-off?

    Agent76 , May 20, 2017 at 8:10 pm GMT

    @Anon Yeah, I had doubts from the start.

    Never trust a Negro.

    Eagle Eye , May 20, 2017 at 8:13 pm GMT

    @alexander Dahlia,

    You have done some really good work here.

    Thanks for it.

    But I must say something ....Every recent article pertaining to Seth Rich, including Mike's , misses the MEAT of the entire story.

    The MEAT of the story is to be found in Seth Rich's JOB.

    What did he do, Dahlia ?

    He was a VOTER DATA DIRECTOR for the DNC....for gosh sakes!

    If the story begins anywhere, it begins HERE.

    Seth Rich's story begins when we recognize the high probability that Seth came across SUBSTANTIAL and REPEATED irregularities in the VOTER DATA, tilting the outcomes in favor of Hillary.

    This is the crux of the case.

    It is also fair to assume that Seth Rich , given his role as "data director" , was able to COLLECT these voter data discrepancies, and collate them into a fool proof evidentiary format.

    Its the DATA which Seth found , that is the key... ...its the MEAT of the story.

    But the DATA and the repeated systemic irregularities which he became aware of, could have been glitches in the system for all he KNEW.

    This is where we get to ......the POTATOES.

    What are the potatoes?.....the potatoes are the EMAILS which show an INTENTIONALITY behind the DATA irregularities......and expose them not just as "glitches" in the system,but as potentially deliberate and "treasonous" voter fraud.

    A very serious case of multiple felonies by the DNC machine, and its party bosses, could be made if you have both the MEAT (the data)and the POTATOES(the emails) of the case.

    But you need BOTH, one without the other is not enough.

    Givens Seth's JOB, the high probability he had the DATA in HAND, may well be why he was shot in the back at four in the morning on July 10th, 2016.

    If anyone wishes to solve this case..(or prosecute it)..they need to find the DATA CHIP....because
    while the emails may show an "intentionality" to usurp the voters say in the DNC nomination , the DATA provides the PROOF.

    May there be no doubt on this,.... everyone "involved" in these "dirty shenanigans" wants that data "exterminated" for all time, .....and the entire story SHUT DOWN.

    ASAP.

    alexander , May 20, 2017 at 9:45 pm GMT

    @Eagle Eye


    Seth Rich , given his role as "data director" , was able to COLLECT these voter data discrepancies, and collate them into a fool proof evidentiary format.
    This explanation - that Seth Rich had direct evidence of massive vote fraud - has always seemed most likely to me. The leaks are secondary.

    Again, he most likely went to the FBI and/or the U.S. media FIRST, but was betrayed by them leading to his murder. He ALSO passed the data to Wikileaks.

    So let's estimate the NUMBER of fraudulent votes controlled by the DNC. There are several categories:

    (1) Illegal aliens registered to vote through La Raza, SEIU and similar DNC fronts.

    (2) Other spurious voter registrations, e.g. dead voters, double voting (different addresses), completely fictitious voter registrations concocted by complicit SEIU staff at registrars' offices.

    (3) Zombie votes - technically correct voter registration, but the vote is actually cast by the SEIU, e.g. residents of nursing homes, mental hospitals, military votes (which often mysteriously are not delivered to the military voter),

    Given the period of time during which this has been operative, and the need to make a serious nation-wide impact, it seems reasonable to estimate that the DNC controls about 3-7 million illegal votes nationwide .

    The largest number would be in California. Although California overall is a blue state, there are conservative pockets and some conservative candidates came close to the Democratic candidate in statewide and local races.

    FKA Max , May 21, 2017 at 12:23 am GMT

    From Vox Day's blog:

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAE8tcsW0AANXI7.jpg

    DC surgery resident on call the night of Seth Rich's death says Rich's gunshot wounds were non-fatal, access to him by the doctors was blocked by DC police, and no code was called when he died.

    That's not fishy, right?

    http://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/05/and-yet-still-curiouser.html

    JackOH , May 21, 2017 at 2:53 am GMT

    @FKA Max From Vox Day's blog:


    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAE8tcsW0AANXI7.jpg

    DC surgery resident on call the night of Seth Rich's death says Rich's gunshot wounds were non-fatal, access to him by the doctors was blocked by DC police, and no code was called when he died.

    That's not fishy, right?

    - http://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/05/and-yet-still-curiouser.html
    FKA Max , May 21, 2017 at 4:33 am GMT

    @JackOH I read the links. My understanding is that some cops will go rogue without instruction and on their own initiative to jump the queue for advancement. There's not much deep-think to it. The political benefactor won't know any more than something like "the problem was taken care of".

    Seth Rich. Is there someone in the food chain who can apply pressure to find a credible suspect and, if possible, a motive? Again, I'm just a casual reader, but the failure to get to the truth of the Seth Rich killing seems to empower a whole lot of political mischief.

    SteveRogers42 , May 21, 2017 at 4:56 am GMT

    @JackOH SR42, your references are exactly what I was getting at in my comment #12 above.

    I never took seriously the notion that American political decisions are made by violence and other criminal activities until I got a very minor rough-up by a crooked cop for my smalltime local politicking. That cop later got a cushy government job under the influence of a local Mr. Big whom I'd offended. Karma kicked in, and that cop's alcoholism and boorish behavior got him canned. I never quit writing, but I was pretty damn scared for a while.

    JackOH , May 21, 2017 at 12:09 pm GMT

    @SteveRogers42 Until the Clintons came along, LBJ was probably the heavyweight champ of that sort of $#!t:

    http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKwallaceM.htm

    Eagle Eye , May 21, 2017 at 10:31 pm GMT

    @alexander You may be 100% correct ,Eagle eye,

    In all the categories of potential voter fraud you cited.

    But I would imagine the vote "switching" from Bernie to Hillary, or the mysterious "disappearance" of a substantial percentage of "Bernie votes" in key districts and perhaps certain states, too, is what caught Seth's eye.

    But it could be all of it....and more too...for all we know....Without the data to look at..it's all just speculation.

    Eagle Eye , May 21, 2017 at 10:43 pm GMT

    @FKA Max From Vox Day's blog:


    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAE8tcsW0AANXI7.jpg

    DC surgery resident on call the night of Seth Rich's death says Rich's gunshot wounds were non-fatal, access to him by the doctors was blocked by DC police, and no code was called when he died.

    That's not fishy, right?

    - http://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/05/and-yet-still-curiouser.html
    Dahlia , May 21, 2017 at 11:11 pm GMT

    @JackOH Thanks, and also to FKA Max.

    My own experience, which included a failed blackmail attempt against me, and, possibly, the failed solicitation of a bribe, taught me something about American political process. I asked myself why in the hell are a few important local people getting their knickers in a twist over a not very important guy who's doing no more than writing a lot and doing local radio a lot? The only answer I came up with was they believed, falsely , I was staging a run for political office, that I was reasonably persuasive and therefore a threat of some sort, and they wanted me pre-emptively in the bag. BTW-I did consider legal action against some of these slobs, but effective legal process costs money I didn't have.

    FWIW-I'm unhappy, too, about the hair-tearing speculation over the Seth Rich case. The only way I can think of to put much of that speculation to rest is to find the killer and make the case against him.

    Dahlia , May 21, 2017 at 11:53 pm GMT

    Just found something that genuinely stuns me, and is important to know in context of "debunking" articles

    Ali, a political activist involved with the Anthony Weiner contretemps ,

    "How disillusioned would you become if we had and shared evidence with media that #Weiner was after underaged kids and no one acted?"

    and

    "Most of you will never know the extent to the work we did on the Weiner case from the get-go. Media silenced @AndrewBreitbart's facts."

    and

    "Weiner's underage child molesting and sexting 'problem' only became a 'problem' when it ran up against Hillary Clinton's coming presidency."

    Thread here:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/ali/status/866429043595288578

    I'd heard something echoing this a couple days ago, but found it so unbelievable. Then, Dave Weigel, et al., knowing for a fact that statements from Julian Assange, Craig Murray, and the late Gavin MacFadyen are the reasons for interest in Seth Rich's murder, completely write them out. They don't exist.

    Dahlia , May 22, 2017 at 12:42 am GMT

    William Binney, arguably one of the best mathematicians ever to work at the National Security Agency, and former CIA officer Ray McGovern, have argued that the emails must have come from a leak because a hack would be traceable by the NSA.

    I'd forgotten this so many people including Scott Ritter of "Iraq has no WMD" fame have said similar.

    But seriously, if you don't believe Assange or Murray who have firsthand knowledge, William Binney rests the case: leak not hack.

    Doesn't mean the murdered DNC operative was involved with leaks or that even if he was, that's why he was killed, but one can't be closed-minded.

    https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/17/seth-rich-murder-case-stirs-russia-doubts/

    Scott Ritter on DNC emails

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cia-russia-dnc-hacking_us_584f535ee4b0bd9c3dfe722e

    [May 21, 2017] The New Anti-Russian Hysteria by Edward S. Herman

    Notable quotes:
    "... It is sad to see the liberals carried away on the wave of hysteria about the supposed Russian information warfare menace and possible influence over or even capture of the Trump presidency. It is also very dangerous to human welfare as it helps consolidate the power of the military-industrial complex, its war party associates, and the regressive deep state political forces that liberals claim to oppose. These political forces can fix a party line that quickly becomes an incontestible truth in the mainstream media (MSM). ..."
    "... Thus, with the Soviet Union declared an "evil empire" it could be effectively tagged for crimes it did not commit (e.g., organizing the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981), and Saddam Hussein could be found allied with Al Qaeda and in possession of a large stock of weapons of mass destruction in 2003, lies that the MSM had no trouble swallowing. ..."
    "... The steady process of Putin demonization escalated with the Ukraine crisis of 2014 and its sequel of Kiev warfare against East Ukraine, Russian support of the Eastern Ukraine resistance, and the Crimean referendum and absorption of Crimea by Russia. ..."
    "... The Putin connection was given great impetus by the January 6, 2017 release of a report of the Office of Director of National Intelligence, on Background of Assessing Russian Activities and Intention in Recent U.S. Elections This short document spends about half of its space describing the Russian-sponsored RT-TV network which it seems to consider an illegitimate propaganda source as it often reports on and even criticizes U.S. policy and institutions. ..."
    "... RT is allegedly part of Russia's "influence campaign," which consists of reporting on subjects that Russian leaders deem in Russia's interest. "We assess the influence campaign aspired to help President-elect Trump's chances of victory when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to the President-elect. ..."
    "... So the purpose and importance of the Assessment is clear. Thin and even ludicrous though its evidence of a Putin ordered propaganda campaign and Russian e-mail hacks transmitted through WikiLeaks may be, the release and pushing into prominence of this material behind the backs of the incoming administration was a major political action by agencies in principle subordinate to the political leadership. Of course it follows similar tactics by the departing Obama administration, one of whose last acts was expelling 35 Russian Embassy personnel in retaliation for the supposed Russian hacking (which Obama didn't even believe-in his final press conference he referred to "leaks" rather than "hacking"). But the political point of the Assessment seems to have been, at minimum, to tie the Trump administration's hands in its dealings with Russia. ..."
    "... The NYT has run neck-and-neck with the WP in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and improper involvement with Trump. ..."
    Mar 27, 2017 | zcomm.org
    It is sad to see the liberals carried away on the wave of hysteria about the supposed Russian information warfare menace and possible influence over or even capture of the Trump presidency. It is also very dangerous to human welfare as it helps consolidate the power of the military-industrial complex, its war party associates, and the regressive deep state political forces that liberals claim to oppose. These political forces can fix a party line that quickly becomes an incontestible truth in the mainstream media (MSM).

    Thus, with the Soviet Union declared an "evil empire" it could be effectively tagged for crimes it did not commit (e.g., organizing the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981), and Saddam Hussein could be found allied with Al Qaeda and in possession of a large stock of weapons of mass destruction in 2003, lies that the MSM had no trouble swallowing.

    Boris Yeltsin, accommodating to U.S. advice and pressure from 1991-2000, seriously damaged his own people's well-being (Russian GDP fell 50 percent, between 1991-1998), but, while he was also creating an oligarchic and authoritarian economic and political structure he was lauded as a great democrat in the MSM. Yeltsin's election victory in 1996, greatly assisted by U.S. consultants, advice and money, and otherwise seriously corrupt, was "A Victory for Russian Democracy" (NYT, ed,, July 4, 1996). His successor, Vladimir Putin, gradually discarding the Yeltsin-era subservience, became a steadily increasing menace. His reelection in 2012, although surely less corrupt than Yeltsin's in 1996, was treated harshly in the media. No "victory for Russian democracy" here, and the lead NYT article on May 5, 2012 featured "a slap in the face" from OSCE observers, claims of no real competition, and "thousands of antigovernment protesters gathered in Moscow square to chant 'Russia without Putin'" (Ellen Barry and Michael Schwartz, "After Election, Putin Faces Challenges to Legitimacy"). There were no "challenges to legitimacy" reported in the MSM in Yeltsin's corrupt victory in 1996, although it was so corrupt that Yeltsin may actually have lost the election but for a fraudulent count (on February 20, 2012, outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev shocked a small group of visitors by acknowledging that Yeltsin might really have lost the 1996 election to Communist Gennadi Zyuganov).

    The steady process of Putin demonization escalated with the Ukraine crisis of 2014 and its sequel of Kiev warfare against East Ukraine, Russian support of the Eastern Ukraine resistance, and the Crimean referendum and absorption of Crimea by Russia. This was all declared to be "aggression" by the U.S. and its allies and clients, sanctions were imposed on Russia and the U.S.-NATO buildup on the Russian borders increased. Tensions mounted further with the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines MH-17, effectively but almost surely falsely, blamed on the "pro-Russian" rebels and Russia itself (see Robert Parry, "Troubling Gaps in the New MH-17 Report," Consortiumnews.com, September 28, 2016). A further cause of demonization and anti-Russian hostility resulted from escalated Russian intervention in Syria in support of Bashar al-Saddad and against ISIS. The U.S. and its NATO and local Middle East allies had been committing aggression against Syria and in de facto alliance with ISIS and Al-Nusrah, an offshoot of Al Qaeda. Russian intervention turned the tide, the U.S. (etc) goal of removing Saddad was upset and the tacit U.S. ally, ISIS, was also severely weakened. Certainly demonic behavior. The next and ongoing phase of anti-Russian hysteria was based on Russia's purported entry into the 2016 presidential campaign and on the growing role of the CIA and other U.S. security services in hysteria-implementation, in close alliance with the MSM. In the third presidential debate, on October 19, 2016, Clinton declared that Trump would be a Putin "puppet" as president, and her campaign placed great emphasis on this. This emphasis increased after the election, with the help of the media and intelligence services as the Clinton camp sought to explain the election loss and possibly get the election result overturned in the courts or electoral college by blaming it on Russia.

    The Putin connection was given great impetus by the January 6, 2017 release of a report of the Office of Director of National Intelligence, on Background of Assessing Russian Activities and Intention in Recent U.S. Elections This short document spends about half of its space describing the Russian-sponsored RT-TV network which it seems to consider an illegitimate propaganda source as it often reports on and even criticizes U.S. policy and institutions.

    RT is allegedly part of Russia's "influence campaign," which consists of reporting on subjects that Russian leaders deem in Russia's interest. "We assess the influence campaign aspired to help President-elect Trump's chances of victory when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to the President-elect. "

    There is no semblance of proof that there was a planned "campaign" rather than the expression of opinion and associated news judgments. All the logic and proofs of a Russian "influence campaign" could be applied with at least equal force to U.S. media treatment of any Russian election.

    As regards their effort to prove that the Russians intervened more directly in the U.S. electoral process, the authors hedge by saying the report doesn't provide the "full supporting evidence," but it provides no supporting evidence-only assertions, assessments, assumptions and guesses. It states blandly that "We assess that Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2015" designed to defeat Clinton, and "to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process," but it provides no evidence whatsoever for any such order. It also provides no evidence that Russia hacked the DNC, Clinton and Podesta e-mails, or that it gave hacked information to WikiLeaks. Julian Assange and Craig Murray have repeatedly claimed that these sources were leaked by local insiders, not hacked by anybody. And veteran intelligence agency experts William Binney and Ray McGovern also contend that the WikiLeaks evidence was surely leaked, not hacked ("The Dubious Case on Russian 'Hacking'," Consortiumnews.com, January 6, 2017). It is of interest that among the intelligence agencies who signed on to the DNI document, the one with the greatest reservations-only "moderate confidence"--was the NSA, which is the agency that would most clearly be in possession of proof of Russian hacking and transmission to Wiki-Leaks as well as any "orders" from Putin.

    In the immediate aftermath of the election, Clinton blamed FBI head James Comey's reopening and then quickly closing the case on her earlier unauthorized use of a private email server, as the key factor in her election loss ("Clinton Blames FBI Director for Her Defeat," NYT, November 13, 2016). This suggests that even she and her campaigners didn't consider the alleged Russian hacking and WikiLeaks revelations as that important. But the Russian-Putin connection lived on and even escalated further.

    The MSM have given no attention to the politicization of the intelligence agencies in these cases. The more durable and important case involving Russia has been damaging to Trump and any peace prospects that his presidency might have brought. But the FBI-Clinton episode was damaging to Clinton and benefited Trump's electoral chances. One theory is that the FBI leadership favored Trump while the CIA favored Clinton. Another theory is that the intelligence agencies trusted neither candidate, so fatally injured Clinton and then turned their guns on Trump, with the FBI signing on to the joint agencies "Assessment" after having finished with Clinton. (Robert Parry, "A Spy Coup in America?" Consortiumnews.com, December 18, 2016.)

    But the CIA's hostility to Trump has been conspicuous, and their brazen intervention in the election process broke new ground in secret service politicization. Former CIA head Michael Morell had an August 5, 2016 op-ed in the New York Times entitled "I Ran the CIA Now I'm Endorsing Hillary Clinton"; and former CIA boss Michael Hayden had an op-ed in the Washington Post, just days before the election, entitled "Former CIA Chief: Trump is Russia's Useful Fool" (November 3, 2016). These attacks were unrelievedly insulting to Trump and laudatory to Clinton, though interestingly there is no mention of the merits or demerits of the candidates domestic policy programs. It is explicit that Clinton's more pugnacious approach to Syria and Russia is much preferred to Trump's leanings toward negotiation and cooperation with Russia.

    So the purpose and importance of the Assessment is clear. Thin and even ludicrous though its evidence of a Putin ordered propaganda campaign and Russian e-mail hacks transmitted through WikiLeaks may be, the release and pushing into prominence of this material behind the backs of the incoming administration was a major political action by agencies in principle subordinate to the political leadership. Of course it follows similar tactics by the departing Obama administration, one of whose last acts was expelling 35 Russian Embassy personnel in retaliation for the supposed Russian hacking (which Obama didn't even believe-in his final press conference he referred to "leaks" rather than "hacking"). But the political point of the Assessment seems to have been, at minimum, to tie the Trump administration's hands in its dealings with Russia.

    This was also true of the further scandal with Michael Flynn's call from the Russian Ambassador, possibly including exchanges about future policy actions. This was quickly grasped by the outgoing Obama officials and security personnel, with the FBI interrogating Flynn and with widespread expressions of horror at Flynn's action, allegedly possibly setting him up for blackmail. But such pre-inauguration meetings with Russian diplomats have been a "common practice" according to Jack Matlock, the U.S. ambassador to Russia under Reagan and Bush, and Matlock had personally arranged such a meeting for Carter. Obama's own Russia adviser, Michael McFaul, admitted to visiting Moscow for talks with officials in 2008 even before the election. Daniel Lazare makes a good case that the illegality and blackmail threat are implausible, that the FBI's interrogation of Flynn reeks of entrapment, and he asks what is wrong with trying to reduce tensions with Russia? "Yet anti-Trump liberals are trying to convince the public that it's all 'worse than Watergate'." ("Democrats, Liberals, Catch McCarthyistic Fever," Consortiumnews.com, February 17, 2017.)

    One of the few positive features of the Trump campaign had been a refusal to demonize Putin and an indication of a desire to normalize relations with Russia. Given the growth and power of the military-industrial complex, and the security agencies, there were powerful vested interests in continued hostile relations with Russia, manifested in the Assessment and other security agency overt and covert leaks, and the cooperation of the media (as in their publication of the CIA election letters).

    Paralleling the Assessment's stress on the Russian "influence campaign," the MSM became very preoccupied with "fake news," often implicitly or explicitly tied to Russia. An awkward fact in this context is that the disclosures of Clinton, DNC, and Podesta emails allegedly hacked by Russia described facts about electoral manipulations on behalf of the Clinton campaign that might well have affected election results. The focus on the non-existent Russian hacking intrusion helped divert attention from this real electoral abuse. Official and MSM fake news helped bury real news.

    The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence campaign, that was and still is a real anti-Russian disinformation campaign, was the Washington Post's classic by Craig Timberg, "Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say" (November 24, 2016). The article features a report by an anonymous author or authors, PropOrNot, a "group that insists on public anonymity" according to the WP editors. The group claims to have found 200 websites that wittingly or unwittingly, were "routine peddlers of Russian propaganda." While smearing these websites, the "experts" refused to identify themselves allegedly out of fear of being "targeted by legions of skilled hackers."

    As Matt Taibbi says,"You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to your claims? Take a hike." ("The 'Washington Post's 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful and Disgusting," RollingStone.com, November 28, 2016.) But the WP welcomed and featured this smear job, which might well be a product of Pentagon or CIA information warfare (and they are well funded and heavily into the propaganda business).

    The NYT has run neck-and-neck with the WP in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and improper involvement with Trump. They easily confuse fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy, "Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News," February 20, 2017; analyzed, in Robert Parry, "NYT's Fake News about Fake News," Consortium news.com, February 22, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept the CIA's Assessment of the Russian hacking-transmission to WikiLeaks, the dreadfulness of the Flynn case, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and "non-partisan" investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new party line has extended widely in the liberal media (e.g., Robert Reich, Ryan Lizza, Joan Walsh, Rachel Maddow, the AlterNet website, etc.).

    On December 23, 2016 President Obama signed the Portman-Murphy "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act," which will supposedly allow this country to more effectively combat foreign (Russian, Chinese) propaganda and disinformation. It will encourage more government counter-propaganda efforts and provide funding to non-government entities that will help counter propaganda.

    It is clearly a follow-on to the claims of Russian hacking and propaganda, and may even be said to be a follow-on to the listing of 200 knowing or "useful tools" of Moscow featured in the Washington Post. Perhaps PropOrNot will qualify for a subsidy and be able to enlarge its list of 200. Liberals have been quiet on this new threat to freedom of speech, which was signed into law on a Friday, perhaps paralyzed by their fears of Russian-based fake news and propaganda. But they may wake up, even if belatedly, when Trump or one of his successors puts it to work on their own notions of fake news and propaganda.

    Z

    Edward S. Herman is an author, economist, and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy.

    [May 21, 2017] During the Cold War the story was Democracy versus the Commies, traditional "good versus evil" type of stuff. Once the USSR collapsed a new evil adversary had to be found.

    Notable quotes:
    "... Global neo-liberal establishment. Say it three times and click your heels. ..."
    "... You remember last year as clearly as I do, how, suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, the Putin-Nazi menace materialized, and took the place of the "self-radicalized terrorist" as the primary target for people's hatred and fear. ..."
    May 21, 2017 | www.unz.com

    Punchie , Website May 18, 2017 at 4:13 am GMT

    Global neo-liberal establishment. Say it three times and click your heels.

    jilles dykstra , May 18, 2017 at 5:42 am GMT

    Neoliberalism, another word for 'money rules the world'. Draghi visited the Dutch parliament, Baudet, FVD, asked him if, since Draghi had warned Italy that leaving the euro would cost them about 100 billion euro, Ittalians debts, the Netherland would get about 100 billion if we left the euro. 100 billion is what we lent, say, Draghi. His 'answer' was that the euro is irreversible. He apparently does not know that within tn years after the dissolution of the Habsburg empire all the new states ahd created their own money.

    Since all euo zone members still have their central banks, it is quite easy to leave the euro.

    Kiza , May 18, 2017 at 6:33 am GMT

    No one ever went bankrupt because he overestimated the stupidity of the US people, especially the liberal/neoliberal half. Yet, it escapes both the author and me why this dumber liberal half of Americans has the propensity to call itself "intellectual". Maybe intellectual is a synonym for stupid in the New US Speak, you know like War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

    Idiocracy it truly is.

    As to the intellectuals' media it is the usual assortment of The Jew Pork Slimes, The Washington Compost, The Independent from the Truth, The Guardian of the Lies and so on.

    ThereisaGod , May 18, 2017 at 9:50 am GMT

    It is time to start saying it out loud. The west is occupied territory and our occupiers are, unfortunately, largely Jews whose first loyaly is tribal and NOT to the country in which they reside. http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2017/05/16/fake-jews-deceit-and-double-think-in-britains-hostile-elite/

    jilles dykstra , May 18, 2017 at 10:08 am GMT

    @joe webb

    Agent76 , May 18, 2017 at 2:34 pm GMT

    Oct 17, 2015 Paul Craig Roberts on the failure of Neoliberalism

    Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939) is an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and was noted as a co-founder of Reaganomics. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He has testified before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic policy.

    Rurik , Website May 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm GMT

    a bevy of former-East German hookers engaging in Odinist sex magick rituals in an FSB-owned bordello in Moscow

    yes please! great article

    Anon , May 18, 2017 at 2:58 pm GMT

    Ramzpaul's bare-bones description of deep state.

    joe webb , May 18, 2017 at 3:32 pm GMT

    @Agent76 Oct 17, 2015 Paul Craig Roberts on the failure of Neoliberalism

    Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939) is an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and was noted as a co-founder of Reaganomics. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He has testified before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic policy.

    https://youtu.be/73ipVz-6YYs

    Jake , May 18, 2017 at 4:11 pm GMT

    If Hopkins continues to write in this vein, he may eventually produce a truly first rate play. Which will mark him forever as a tool of Russia and the mastermind of all EVIL , Putin.

    Rurik , Website May 18, 2017 at 4:27 pm GMT

    @joe webb one of the characteristic forms of comments here is this: one or two sentences and nothing else. No sustained thought process which can relate X to Y and Z, as in multi-factor analysis, historical parallels, psychology, etc.

    Failure of intelligence. There is nothing like intelligence. (or lack thereof)

    jilles dykstra , May 18, 2017 at 5:14 pm GMT

    @Agent76 Mar 18, 2014 US support of violent neo-Nazis in Ukraine: Video Compilation

    Shocking and insightful videos detailing the neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, ultra-nationalist movement in Ukraine. The videos examine the ongoing US support of these groups, including the Svoboda party and Right Sector.

    https://youtu.be/8-RyOaFwcEw

    RadicalCenter , May 18, 2017 at 5:34 pm GMT

    @Kiza No one ever went bankrupt because he overestimated the stupidity of the US people, especially the liberal/neoliberal half. Yet, it escapes both the author and me why this dumber liberal half of Americans has the propensity to call itself "intellectual". Maybe intellectual is a synonym for stupid in the New US Speak, you know like War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

    Idiocracy it truly is.

    As to the intellectuals' media it is the usual assortment of The Jew Pork Slimes, The Washington Compost, The Independent from the Truth, The Guardian of the Lies and so on.

    Anon , May 18, 2017 at 6:28 pm GMT

    This 'impeachment' thing should really be called JEW COUP. Jews run the media and shape the Narrative. So, the Liberation of Aleppo was called the 'Fall of Aleppo'. So, Alqaeda elements in Syria were called 'moderate rebels'. So, we were fed lies about Libya to have it destroyed. And so much fuss is made about Evil Putin but we hear nothing of what Jewish oligarchs did to Russian economy in the 90s.

    Jews are so powerful they can even convince American Morons that marriage = two men buggering one another. This is not about impeachment. Jews hate Trump because he wants better ties with Russia, a nation that freed itself from total Jewish Control.

    RobinG , May 18, 2017 at 10:43 pm GMT

    @El Dato So what!

    "Intelligence is just a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently" - Larry Niven from "Protector"

    Also,

    You remember last year as clearly as I do, how, suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, the Putin-Nazi menace materialized, and took the place of the "self-radicalized terrorist" as the primary target for people's hatred and fear.
    Not at all. After the awkward "russian reset" attempt by the Clinton-Obama axis of diplomacy, which somehow failed, the intolerance to all things Russian started during Snowden's "Summer of Surveillance" redpilling (i.e. 2013). Systemic shock mode was entered when the Ukraine liberation encountered unsuspected and sudden (and definitely "reactive") pushback in 2014 and Russia started supporting Syria against the ISIS "our temporary friends" clownshow in 2015.

    (The other "primary target for people's hatred and fear", the always good to amuse the hoi polloi cardboard cutout Ghaddafi had sadly shuffled of this mortal coil a bit earlier. So sad! And the bullshit of "Iran's gonna have da bomb next week, this time for sure" stuff going on since the 90s didn't get much traction anymore.)

    annamaria , May 19, 2017 at 4:26 am GMT

    @ThereisaGod It is time to start saying it out loud. The west is occupied territory and our occupiers are, unfortunately, largely Jews whose first loyally is tribal and NOT to the country in which they reside.

    http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2017/05/16/fake-jews-deceit-and-double-think-in-britains-hostile-elite/

    joe webb , May 19, 2017 at 4:42 am GMT

    @Anon single factor analysis. It is not just the jews. The Dems are a coalition of blacks, jews, asians, indians, mexers, and some working class whites who have not left yet for the GOP and Trump, AND White Liberals, mostly professionals, who have sold out to globalism and its One World of Consumers.

    Yes, there is a so-called 'Liberal Coalition' of various groups. But are they equal in power and influence?

    In truth, Jews dominate. For example, Asians have no agency of their own. They just follow the narratives of other. Mexers are happy to be Guillermos and have no interest apart from tacos. Their only politics is calling whites 'gringos', blacks 'negritos', and Asians 'chinos'. Blacks are loud and vocal, but it's all about blacks. Blacks have no knowledge and interest in the larger world. They are very tribal and provincial.

    If not for Jewish Power, NO ONE would be interested in Russia. That is a Jewish thing.
    If blacks ran the Democratic Party, they would fixate on some OTHER ISSUE to get at Trump.
    Blacks jumped on the Russia bandwagon ONLY BECAUSE Jews set the template and the meme. Since that is the Anti-Trump Meme as chosen by Jews, all anti-Trumpers are parroting the same crap. But Russia became the Key Issue because Jews are obsessed with Russia and what it implies. Jews set the Narrative and others play do the Parrotive.
    The Powerful get to decide the Narrative. The less powerful just tag along like dogs and repeat the mantra set by the Powerful. They are parrots with the Parrotive.

    Also, only Jews have the direct power in media, deep state, and finance(owning all politicians through AIPAC) to pull off what is happening.

    Just think. Suppose Asians don't want to go after Trump but Jews want to. What would happen? Jews would decide, and Asians would have choice but to go along.
    Now, suppose Asians want to go after Trump, but Jews don't want to. Could Asians push for impeachment without Jewish support? NO way.

    Or suppose blacks want to go after Trump, but Jews say NO and won't give anti-Trump support in media and Deep State. Would it happen? No.
    Or suppose blacks want to work with Trump but Jews want to go after him. Would it happen? Yes, because Jews get to pull all the strings.

    So, while it is true that there is a Democratic Coalition, Jews have 1000x the power of other groups. I mean consider how most Jews and most Arabs are in the Democratic Camp, but Zionists have far more power than Palestinians/Muslims do.

    This is a Jew Coup because Jews are the single-most powerful element in Democratic Party, GOP, Congress(by buying up politicians), FED, Wall Street, and etc.

    annamaria , May 19, 2017 at 2:35 pm GMT

    @Wally Yeah, sure.

    Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security

    http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/islamophobia-shmislamophobia-97-of-homeland-security-security-grants-go-to-jewish-orgs

    The True Cost of Parasite Israel
    Forced US taxpayers money to Israel goes far beyond the official numbers.

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-true-cost-of-israel/

    How to Bring Down the Elephant in the Room

    http://www.unz.com/tsaker/how-to-bring-down-the-elephant-in-the-room/

    Agent76 , May 19, 2017 at 3:15 pm GMT

    Sep 9, 2016 US-funded Ukrainian army is terrorizing civilians. Russell Bentley is a former US marine, that now fights for the Donbass, Eastern Ukraine, against the US-funded Ukrainian army.

    https://youtu.be/92KfmGY12yQ

    El Dato , May 19, 2017 at 3:51 pm GMT

    @Ace We are awash in lies: race, racism, white privilege, constitutional America, living Constitution, propositional nation, nation of immigrants, American exceptionalism, responsibility to protect (humanitarian war), Assad the Dictator, Islamism/moderate Muslims, our ally Israel, our ally Saudi Arabia, evilevil Putin, the one and only holocaust, right-wing National Socialism, N"A"TO, evil Serbia, Islam's contribution, the Crusades, patriarchy, gender, homosexual marriage, women's suffrage, diversity, multiculturalism, open borders, welfare state, socialized medicine, objective MSM, Saint Abraham, Saint Ze-dong, Obama the natural born citizen, the administrative state, frustrated ghetto rocket scientists, indispensable nation, Gaddafi the Tyrant, Axis of Evil, Judeo-Christianity, the Three Abrahamic religions, globalism, free trade, immigrant monetary contribution doing jobs Americans​won't do, climate change, agw, alternative energy, reasonable gun control, nation building, the glass ceiling, pay inequality, vote suppression, the evil of segregation, black nationalism, private prison oppression, disparity in sentencing, Roe v. Wade, the innocence of Mumia Jaba Jabu, reparations, BLM, debt ceiling, government shutdowns, unemployment, inflation, the "Federal" Reserve, dual citizenship, the EU, refugees, metissage commercials, homosexuality in commercials, white burglars in commercials, POC in commercials. Mexico our friend, GOP principles, bipartisanship, McCarthy the Indecent, Gulf of Tonkin incident, Israel's mistake re the Liberty, the _________ Commission, St. Martin the Patriot, Robert Mueller the FBI Muslim realist, the neocon patriot, Saint Franklin, the New Deal, the "US" Chamber of Commerce Keynesianism, quantitative easing, and St. Hillary the Incorrupt.

    Oh yes. And our desperate need for Nigerians, Syrians, and Somalis​. And Hindu software engineers.

    I'm out of ideas now at which point​ one must say, "And I could go on and on."

    Ace , May 19, 2017 at 8:57 pm GMT

    @El Dato This must be the next basic text for an updated Billy Joel's "We didn't Start the Fire" (clip needs to be updated to have Snowden on 24/7 TV and no-one cares)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g

    joe webb , May 20, 2017 at 4:27 am GMT

    @Agent76 Sorry joe webb I do not partake in any flavor of Kool-aid! DECEMBER 25, 2015 NATO: Seeking Russia's Destruction Since 1949

    In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. president George H. W. Bush through his secretary of state James Baker promised Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev that in exchange for Soviet cooperation on German reunification, the Cold War era NATO alliance would not expand "one inch" eastwards towards Russia.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/25/nato-seeking-russias-destruction-since-1949/

    joe webb , May 20, 2017 at 5:06 am GMT

    @huswa That's a really interesting view about operating on principle vs. on in-group relations. Can you please reply with some relevant articles if you have them?

    I've traveled quite a lot and have seen principled people in all parts of the world. Sometimes they are really drowned out by the masses. I do not think that altruism is specific to whites. The "White Man's Burden" wasn't altruism. Colonizers weren't in it to lift up the world. They wanted money and other resources. As an example they crippled local economies t Of course, they did a lot of good

    [May 21, 2017] Orwellian nature of the USA society

    Notable quotes:
    "... The Goldman Sachs vampires are back in the White House (as they have been for over one hundred years). The post-Cold War destabilization and restructuring of the Middle East is moving forward right on schedule. ..."
    "... The Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, and other non-globalist-ball-playing parties remain surrounded by the most ruthlessly murderous military machine in the annals of history. Greece is being debt-enslaved and looted. And so on. Life is back to normal. ..."
    "... the completely ridiculous "Trump is a Putinist agent" propaganda they'd been relentlessly spewing since he won the election, a significant number of deluded persons, having swallowed their official vomitus (i.e., the vomitus of Blow and Krugman, and other neoliberal establishment hacks) like the hungry Adélie penguin chicks in those nature shows narrated by David Attenborough are convinced (these deluded persons are) that the Russians are waging a global campaign not only to maliciously hack, or interfere with, or marginally influence, free and fair elections throughout the Western world, but to control the minds of Westerners themselves, in some Orwellian, or possibly Wachowskian fashion. ..."
    "... Worse yet, these deluded persons are certain, the Russians are now secretly running the White House, and are just using Trump, and the Goldman Sachs gang, and capitalist centurions like General McMaster, as a front for their subversive activities, like denying Americans universal healthcare and privatizing the hell out of everything ..."
    May 21, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    libezkova , May 20, 2017 at 03:35 PM

    Here is an interesting quote from

    http://www.unz.com/article/invasion-of-the-putin-nazis/

    Invasion of the Putin-Nazis by C.J. Hopkins

    So, here we are, a little over one hundred days into " The Age of Darkness " and the " racially Orwellian " Trumpian Reich , and, all right, while it's certainly no party, it appears that those reports we heard of the Death of Neoliberalism were greatly exaggerated. Not only has the entire edifice of Western democracy not been toppled, but the global capitalist ruling classes seem to be going about their business in more or less the usual manner.

    The Goldman Sachs vampires are back in the White House (as they have been for over one hundred years). The post-Cold War destabilization and restructuring of the Middle East is moving forward right on schedule.

    The Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, and other non-globalist-ball-playing parties remain surrounded by the most ruthlessly murderous military machine in the annals of history. Greece is being debt-enslaved and looted. And so on. Life is back to normal.

    Or OK, not completely normal. Because, despite the fact that editorialists at "respectable" papers like The New York Times (and I'm explicitly referring to Charles M. Blow and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman) have recently dropped the completely ridiculous "Trump is a Putinist agent" propaganda they'd been relentlessly spewing since he won the election, a significant number of deluded persons, having swallowed their official vomitus (i.e., the vomitus of Blow and Krugman, and other neoliberal establishment hacks) like the hungry Adélie penguin chicks in those nature shows narrated by David Attenborough are convinced (these deluded persons are) that the Russians are waging a global campaign not only to maliciously hack, or interfere with, or marginally influence, free and fair elections throughout the Western world, but to control the minds of Westerners themselves, in some Orwellian, or possibly Wachowskian fashion.

    Worse yet, these deluded persons are certain, the Russians are now secretly running the White House, and are just using Trump, and the Goldman Sachs gang, and capitalist centurions like General McMaster, as a front for their subversive activities, like denying Americans universal healthcare and privatizing the hell out of everything.

    [May 20, 2017] Invasion of the Putin-Nazis by C.J. Hopkins

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... So, here we are, a little over one hundred days into " The Age of Darkness " and the " racially Orwellian " Trumpian Reich , and, all right, while it's certainly no party, it appears that those reports we heard of the Death of Neoliberalism were greatly exaggerated. Not only has the entire edifice of Western democracy not been toppled, but the global capitalist ruling classes seem to be going about their business in more or less the usual manner. The Goldman Sachs vampires are back in the White House (as they have been for over one hundred years). The post-Cold War destabilization and restructuring of the Middle East is moving forward right on schedule. The Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, and other non-globalist-ball-playing parties remain surrounded by the most ruthlessly murderous military machine in the annals of history. Greece is being debt-enslaved and looted. And so on. Life is back to normal. ..."
    "... OK, not completely normal. Because, despite the fact that editorialists at "respectable" papers like The New York Times (and I'm explicitly referring to Charles M. Blow and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman) have recently dropped the completely ridiculous "Trump is a Putinist agent" propaganda they'd been relentlessly spewing since he won the election, a significant number of deluded persons, having swallowed their official vomitus (i.e., the vomitus of Blow and Krugman, and other neoliberal establishment hacks) ..."
    "... They are convinced (these deluded persons are) that the Russians are waging a global campaign not only to maliciously hack, or interfere with, or marginally influence, free and fair elections throughout the Western world, but to control the minds of Westerners themselves, in some Orwellian, or possibly Wachowskian fashion. Worse yet, these deluded persons are certain, the Russians are now secretly running the White House, and are just using Trump, and the Goldman Sachs gang, and capitalist centurions like General McMaster, as a front for their subversive activities, like denying Americans universal healthcare and privatizing the hell out of everything. ..."
    "... whomever is responsible for ferreting out the Putin-Nazi infiltrators that "respected" pundits like Blow and Krugman (and stark raving loonies like Louise Mensch) have convinced them are now controlling the government. Weirdly, these same "respected" journalists, the ones who have been assuring the world that The President of the United States is a covert agent working for Russia, have failed to even mention this March for Truth, and are acting like they had nothing to do with whipping these folks up into a frenzy of apoplectic paranoia. ..."
    "... Oh, yeah, and if Russiagate isn't paranoid enough, apparently, the corporate media is now prepared to deploy the "Putin-Nazi Election Hackers" propaganda in any and every election going forward ( as they did in the recent French election , and as they tried to do in the Dutch elections , and presumably will in the German elections, and as The Guardian appears to be retroactively doing in regard to the Brexit referendum ). Any day now, we should be hearing of the "Putin-Nazi-Corbyn Axis," and the "Putin-Nazi-Podemos Pact," and video footage of Martin Schultz and a bevy of former-East German hookers engaging in Odinist sex magick rituals in an FSB-owned bordello in Moscow. Soon, it won't just be elections no, we'll be hearing reports of Russian shipments of rocks, bottles, and pointy sticks to the "Putin-Nazi Palestinian Terrorists," and well, who knows how far they're willing to take this? ..."
    "... You remember last year as clearly as I do, how, suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, the Putin-Nazi menace materialized, and took the place of the "self-radicalized terrorist" as the primary target for people's hatred and fear. OK, sure, at first, there were no Putin-Nazis. It was just that the Brexit folks were fascists, and Trump was Hitler, and Bernie Sanders was some sort of racist hacky sack Communist. But then the Putinists poisoned Clinton , and unleashed their legions of Russian propagandists on the gullible, Oxycodone-addicted denizens of "flyover country," and, as they say, the rest is history. ..."
    "... In any event, here we are now stuck inside this simulation of "reality" where Putin-Nazi hackers are coming out of the woodwork, a partyless neoliberal banker has been elected the President of France, Donald Trump is an evil mastermind or a Russian operative, depending on what day it is (as opposed to just a completely incompetent, narcissistic billionaire idiot), and neoliberal propaganda outfits like The New York Times , The Washington Post , MSNBC, CNN, The Guardian , NPR, et al., are perceived as "respectable" sources of journalism, as if their role in generating and occasionally revising the official narrative weren't so insultingly obvious. ..."
    May 17, 2017 | www.unz.com
    So, here we are, a little over one hundred days into " The Age of Darkness " and the " racially Orwellian " Trumpian Reich , and, all right, while it's certainly no party, it appears that those reports we heard of the Death of Neoliberalism were greatly exaggerated. Not only has the entire edifice of Western democracy not been toppled, but the global capitalist ruling classes seem to be going about their business in more or less the usual manner. The Goldman Sachs vampires are back in the White House (as they have been for over one hundred years). The post-Cold War destabilization and restructuring of the Middle East is moving forward right on schedule. The Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, and other non-globalist-ball-playing parties remain surrounded by the most ruthlessly murderous military machine in the annals of history. Greece is being debt-enslaved and looted. And so on. Life is back to normal.

    Or OK, not completely normal. Because, despite the fact that editorialists at "respectable" papers like The New York Times (and I'm explicitly referring to Charles M. Blow and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman) have recently dropped the completely ridiculous "Trump is a Putinist agent" propaganda they'd been relentlessly spewing since he won the election, a significant number of deluded persons, having swallowed their official vomitus (i.e., the vomitus of Blow and Krugman, and other neoliberal establishment hacks) like the hungry Adélie penguin chicks in those nature shows narrated by David Attenborough.

    They are convinced (these deluded persons are) that the Russians are waging a global campaign not only to maliciously hack, or interfere with, or marginally influence, free and fair elections throughout the Western world, but to control the minds of Westerners themselves, in some Orwellian, or possibly Wachowskian fashion. Worse yet, these deluded persons are certain, the Russians are now secretly running the White House, and are just using Trump, and the Goldman Sachs gang, and capitalist centurions like General McMaster, as a front for their subversive activities, like denying Americans universal healthcare and privatizing the hell out of everything.

    If you think I'm being hyperbolic, check out #MarchforTruth on Twitter, or its anonymous Crowdpac fundraising page , which at first glance I took for an elaborate prank, but which seems to be in deadly earnest about "restoring faith in American government," uncovering Trump's "collusion" with Russia, and reversing his "subversion of the will of the people." The plan is, on June 3, 2017, thousands of otherwise rational Americans are going to pour into the streets "demanding answers" from well, I'm not sure whom, some independent prosecutor, or congressional committee, or intelligence agency, or whomever is responsible for ferreting out the Putin-Nazi infiltrators that "respected" pundits like Blow and Krugman (and stark raving loonies like Louise Mensch) have convinced them are now controlling the government. Weirdly, these same "respected" journalists, the ones who have been assuring the world that The President of the United States is a covert agent working for Russia, have failed to even mention this March for Truth, and are acting like they had nothing to do with whipping these folks up into a frenzy of apoplectic paranoia.

    Incidentally, one of my colleagues contacted Mr. Blow directly and inquired as to whether he'd be vociferously supporting or possibly leading the March for Truth, and was chastised by Blow and his Twitter followers. I found this reaction extremely troubling, and asked my colleague to contact Mensch and suggest she check with her handlers at The Times to make sure the Russians haven't gotten to him. However, just as he was sitting down to do that, the "Comey-firing" brouhaha broke, which seems to have brought Blow back to the fold , albeit in a less hysterical manner than his Rooskie-hunting readers have grown accustomed to. We can only hope that both he and Krugman return to form in the weeks to come as Russiagate builds to its dramatic climax.

    Oh, yeah, and if Russiagate isn't paranoid enough, apparently, the corporate media is now prepared to deploy the "Putin-Nazi Election Hackers" propaganda in any and every election going forward ( as they did in the recent French election , and as they tried to do in the Dutch elections , and presumably will in the German elections, and as The Guardian appears to be retroactively doing in regard to the Brexit referendum ). Any day now, we should be hearing of the "Putin-Nazi-Corbyn Axis," and the "Putin-Nazi-Podemos Pact," and video footage of Martin Schultz and a bevy of former-East German hookers engaging in Odinist sex magick rituals in an FSB-owned bordello in Moscow. Soon, it won't just be elections no, we'll be hearing reports of Russian shipments of rocks, bottles, and pointy sticks to the "Putin-Nazi Palestinian Terrorists," and well, who knows how far they're willing to take this?

    All joking aside, as I've written about previously , what we're dealing with here is more than just a lame attempt by the Democratic Party to blame its humiliating loss on Putin (although of course it certainly is that in part). The global neoliberal establishment is rolling out a new official narrative. It's actually just a slight variation on the one it's been selling us since 2001. I could come up with a sixteen-syllable, academic-sounding name for this narrative, but I'm trying to keep things simple these days so let's call it The Normals versus The Extremists , (the Normals being the neoliberals and the Extremists being everyone else). The goal of this narrative is to stigmatize and otherwise marginalize opposition to Neoliberalism, regardless of the nature of that opposition (i.e., whether it comes from the left, right, or from religious, environmentalist, or any other quarters). Now, as any professional storyteller will tell you, one of the most important aspects of the narrative you're trying to suck people into is to make your protagonist a likeable underdog, and then pit him or her against a much more powerful and ideally incorrigibly evil enemy. During the Cold War, this was easy to do - the story was Democracy versus the Commies , traditional "good versus evil"-type stuff.

    Once the U.S.S.R. collapsed, the concept needed major rewrites, as a new evil adversary had to be found. This (i.e., the 1990s) was a rather awkward and frustrating period. The global capitalist ruling classes, giddy with joy after having become the first ever global ideological hegemon in the history of aspiring global hegemons, got all avant-garde for a while, and thought they could do without an "enemy." This approach, as you'll recall, did not sell well.

    No one quite got why we were bombing Yugoslavia, and Bush and Baker had to break out the Hitler schtick to gin up support for rescuing the Kuwaitis from their old friend Saddam. Fortunately, in September 2001, the show runners got the break they were looking for, and the official narrative was instantly switched to Democracy versus The Islamic Terrorists . This re-brand got extremely good ratings, and would have been extended indefinitely if not for what began to unfold in the latter half of 2016. (One could go back and locate the week when the mainstream media officially switched from the " Summer of Terror " narrative they were flogging to the new "Invasion of the Putin-Nazis" narrative my guess is, it was early to mid-September.) It started with the Brexit referendum, continued with the rise of Trump, and well, I don't have to recount it, do I? You remember last year as clearly as I do, how, suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, the Putin-Nazi menace materialized, and took the place of the "self-radicalized terrorist" as the primary target for people's hatred and fear. OK, sure, at first, there were no Putin-Nazis. It was just that the Brexit folks were fascists, and Trump was Hitler, and Bernie Sanders was some sort of racist hacky sack Communist. But then the Putinists poisoned Clinton , and unleashed their legions of Russian propagandists on the gullible, Oxycodone-addicted denizens of "flyover country," and, as they say, the rest is history.

    In any event, here we are now stuck inside this simulation of "reality" where Putin-Nazi hackers are coming out of the woodwork, a partyless neoliberal banker has been elected the President of France, Donald Trump is an evil mastermind or a Russian operative, depending on what day it is (as opposed to just a completely incompetent, narcissistic billionaire idiot), and neoliberal propaganda outfits like The New York Times , The Washington Post , MSNBC, CNN, The Guardian , NPR, et al., are perceived as "respectable" sources of journalism, as if their role in generating and occasionally revising the official narrative weren't so insultingly obvious. Personally, I am looking forward to the upcoming German elections this Autumn, wherein Neoliberal Party "A" is challenging Neoliberal Party "B" for the right to continue privatizing Greece (and any other formerly sovereign nations the banks can get their hands on) in a demonstration of European unity, and fiscal austerity and, you know, whatever.

    If this is the Death of Neoliberalism, just imagine what awaits us at the Resurrection.

    C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .

    [May 20, 2017] Rosenstein Joins the Posse by Patrick J. Buchanan

    After just 100 days in the office Trump already has a special prosecutor.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Without consulting the White House, he sandbagged President Trump, naming a special counsel to take over the investigation of the Russia connection that could prove ruinous to this presidency. ..."
    "... Rod has reinvigorated a tired 10-month investigation that failed to find any collusion between Trump and Russian hacking of the DNC. Not a single indictment had come out of the FBI investigation. ..."
    "... Yet, now a new special counsel, Robert Mueller, former director of the FBI, will slow-walk his way through this same terrain again, searching for clues leading to potentially impeachable offenses. What seemed to be winding down for Trump is now only just beginning to gear up. ..."
    "... Why did Rosenstein capitulate to a Democrat-media clamor for a special counsel that could prove disastrous for the president who elevated and honored him? Surely in part, as Milbank writes, to salvage his damaged reputation. ..."
    "... Rosenstein had gone over to the dark side. He had, it was said, on Trump's orders, put the hit on Comey. Now, by siccing a special counsel on the president himself, Rosenstein is restored to the good graces of this city. Rosenstein just turned in his black hat for a white hat. ..."
    "... Democrats are hailing both his decision to name a special counsel and the man he chose. Yet it is difficult to exaggerate the damage he has done. As did almost all of its predecessors, including those which led to the resignation of President Nixon and impeachment of Bill Clinton, Mueller's investigation seems certain to drag on for years. ..."
    "... Recall the famous adage that a competent district attorney could successfully indict a ham sandwich. ..."
    "... Political trials are infamously witch hunts, and there isn't a witch hunt that couldn't miraculously find any number of witches to burn. ..."
    "... One has to hand it to the Democrats. This strategy to get the ruling elite class back in both houses of congress and bring forth a shining night in armour for their next candidate is well crafted. The Clintons messed up the Obama Hope and Change Rhetoric. ..."
    "... From the very outset of his presidency, U.S. President D.J. Trump either hired people who were against his presidential campaign all the time of last year or cozied up to perpetual political opponents while distancing himself from the very patriotic people who gave him the electoral college victory last November. ..."
    "... Like Pres. Dick Nixon did, U.S. President D.J. Trump will also politically kill himself with one political misstep after another by giving his political opponents whatever they demand until it will be too late to reverse the course. ..."
    "... "The real power in this country doesn't reside within the ballot box After months of leaks coming from the intelligence agencies, who bitterly oppose the new policy, and a barrage of innuendo, smears, and character assassination in the media, the will of the people has been abrogated: the Deep State has the last word. The denizens of Langley, and the career spooks within our seventeen intelligence agencies, have exercised their veto power – a power that is not written into the Constitution, but is nevertheless very real. Their goal is to not only make détente with Russia impossible but also to overthrow a democratically elected chief executive No matter what you think of Trump, this is an ominous development for all those who care about the future of our republic What we are witnessing is a "regime-change" operation, such as our intelligence agencies have routinely carried out abroad, right here in the United States This pernicious campaign is an attempt to criminalize dissent from the foreign policy "consensus." It is an effort by powerful groups within the national security bureaucracy, the media, and the military-industrial complex to stamp out any opposition to their program of perpetual war The reign of terror is about to begin: anyone who opposes our interventionist foreign policy is liable to be labeled a "Kremlin tool" – and could face legal sanctions. ..."
    "... If Trump wasn't a narcissistic idiot, he could be well on the way to leading a takedown of establishment politics. Should have left Comey in to go nowhere, but Trump is a narcissistic idiot who does not read and his presidency is and will continue to be a miserable failure. Donald J. Trump is a Loser and a Laughingstock, plain and simple. There's nothing to see here. Does he have the ability to do better? Yes. Will he? Doubtful. Firing Comey is not impeachable or even wrong, it's just a blunder of monumental proportions. Trump's continued incompetent "explanations" of the decision raised red flags. This is not Trump Steaks Inc. This is the Presidency of the United States of America. ..."
    May 20, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    "With the stroke of a pen, Rod Rosenstein redeemed his reputation," writes Dana Milbank of The Washington Post .

    What had Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein done to be welcomed home by the Post like the prodigal son?

    Without consulting the White House, he sandbagged President Trump, naming a special counsel to take over the investigation of the Russia connection that could prove ruinous to this presidency.

    Rod has reinvigorated a tired 10-month investigation that failed to find any collusion between Trump and Russian hacking of the DNC. Not a single indictment had come out of the FBI investigation.

    Yet, now a new special counsel, Robert Mueller, former director of the FBI, will slow-walk his way through this same terrain again, searching for clues leading to potentially impeachable offenses. What seemed to be winding down for Trump is now only just beginning to gear up.

    Also to be investigated is whether the president tried to curtail the FBI investigation with his phone calls and Oval Office meetings with FBI Director James Comey, before abruptly firing Comey last week.

    Regarded as able and honest, Mueller will be under media pressure to come up with charges. Great and famous prosecutors are measured by whom they convict and how many scalps they take. Moreover, a burgeoning special counsel's office dredging up dirt on Trump and associates will find itself the beneficiary of an indulgent press.

    Why did Rosenstein capitulate to a Democrat-media clamor for a special counsel that could prove disastrous for the president who elevated and honored him? Surely in part, as Milbank writes, to salvage his damaged reputation.

    After being approved 94-6 by a Senate that hailed him as a principled and independent U.S. attorney for both George Bush and Barack Obama, Rosenstein found himself being pilloried for preparing the document White House aides called crucial to Trump's decision to fire Comey.

    Rosenstein had gone over to the dark side. He had, it was said, on Trump's orders, put the hit on Comey. Now, by siccing a special counsel on the president himself, Rosenstein is restored to the good graces of this city. Rosenstein just turned in his black hat for a white hat.

    Democrats are hailing both his decision to name a special counsel and the man he chose. Yet it is difficult to exaggerate the damage he has done. As did almost all of its predecessors, including those which led to the resignation of President Nixon and impeachment of Bill Clinton, Mueller's investigation seems certain to drag on for years.

    ... ... ...

    Patrick J. Buchanan is a founding editor of The American Conservative and the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever . MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

    Wilfred , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:58 pm
    Any way we can get a Special Counsel to investigate Hillary?
    Fran Macadam , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:56 pm
    Recall the famous adage that a competent district attorney could successfully indict a ham sandwich.

    Political trials are infamously witch hunts, and there isn't a witch hunt that couldn't miraculously find any number of witches to burn.

    Cal , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:58 pm
    Trump set up his own demise -- all the Jews like Rosenstein that he has appointed would really rather have the rabid evangelical Israel supporter Pence as president.
    William Dalton , says: May 19, 2017 at 12:23 am
    The appointment of former director Mueller to take charge of an investigation too hot for Rosenstein or anyone in his department to file a report on, particularly if no prosecution will be recommended, does not presage this affair will continue interminably. Months of work have already been put into the matter by the FBI. Mueller may arrive, ask those agents for a summary of what they have unearthed, say, "I don't see anything here. Do you think further work by you will uncover more?", and if they respond, "No", Mueller might very well take what he is given, file a report saying no prosecution is warranted, just as Jim Comey did in the Clinton matter, and go home.

    The man is retired with honor. He doesn't need to make a name for himself with this or any other case. The last thing he wants to find out is that there is evidence that might result in the impeachment and criminal prosecution of the President of the United States.

    StrategyK , says: May 19, 2017 at 2:59 am
    Wasnt pat a happy supporter of the special counsel investigating Clinton? Now suddenly he is against such counsels? How about some priciples Mr buchanan?
    StrategyK , says: May 19, 2017 at 3:13 am
    And here is a hat tip for you aggrieved folks here. Trump brought this on himself. He could have avoided it all by simply letting Comey do his job. If there really is nothing in the Russia story, then Comey would have come up with nothing.

    Trump has been used to running a family business all his life and a fake TV show as well where his and only his word runs. That is not how the government functions and nor should it be. What happened to the famous negotiator? The one who could make great deals? Who would learn quickly how to navigate the waters and make things happen. This person seems non existent. Lets see some of that please.

    John Gruskos , says: May 19, 2017 at 8:57 am
    Justin Raimondo correctly explains the significance of this development:

    http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/05/18/the-special-counsel-comes-to-town-its-the-moscow-trials-revisited/

    Liam , says: May 19, 2017 at 9:16 am
    Wall Street swooned *not* because Trump's "populist" agenda is endangered but rather because Alt-Trump's bait-and-switch pro-Wall Street agenda is endangered. That Pat Buchanan cannot distinguish these is stunning to behold.
    elizabeth , says: May 19, 2017 at 10:22 am
    And if Hillary Clinton had been inaugurated in January, there wouldn't be a dozen Congressional committees pursuing specious investigations, egged on by right wing media? (Even this comment thread carries one such demand, and she is not in office.)

    This is one outcome of a poisoned body politic. Roger Ailes was there at the beginning, and we are all sickened by his legacy.

    Jack , says: May 19, 2017 at 10:40 am
    Unfortunately, Buchanan seems to have ignored the fact that Rosenstein's decision to appoint a special prosecutor was sparked by Trump's precipitous and unnecessary decision to dismiss Comey. It was a foolish decision and now he's paying a price for it.
    Dan Green , says: May 19, 2017 at 10:53 am
    One has to hand it to the Democrats. This strategy to get the ruling elite class back in both houses of congress and bring forth a shining night in armour for their next candidate is well crafted. The Clintons messed up the Obama Hope and Change Rhetoric.
    ukm1 , says: May 19, 2017 at 10:55 am
    U.S. President D.J. Trump is himself 100% responsible for the political and legal debacles where he is in now and will be in for any foreseeable future!

    From the very outset of his presidency, U.S. President D.J. Trump either hired people who were against his presidential campaign all the time of last year or cozied up to perpetual political opponents while distancing himself from the very patriotic people who gave him the electoral college victory last November.

    Like Pres. Dick Nixon did, U.S. President D.J. Trump will also politically kill himself with one political misstep after another by giving his political opponents whatever they demand until it will be too late to reverse the course.

    Kurt Gayle , says: May 19, 2017 at 10:57 am
    John Gruskos (8:57 a.m.) is right. Justin Raimondo's column today is a "must read":

    "The real power in this country doesn't reside within the ballot box After months of leaks coming from the intelligence agencies, who bitterly oppose the new policy, and a barrage of innuendo, smears, and character assassination in the media, the will of the people has been abrogated: the Deep State has the last word. The denizens of Langley, and the career spooks within our seventeen intelligence agencies, have exercised their veto power – a power that is not written into the Constitution, but is nevertheless very real. Their goal is to not only make détente with Russia impossible but also to overthrow a democratically elected chief executive No matter what you think of Trump, this is an ominous development for all those who care about the future of our republic What we are witnessing is a "regime-change" operation, such as our intelligence agencies have routinely carried out abroad, right here in the United States This pernicious campaign is an attempt to criminalize dissent from the foreign policy "consensus." It is an effort by powerful groups within the national security bureaucracy, the media, and the military-industrial complex to stamp out any opposition to their program of perpetual war The reign of terror is about to begin: anyone who opposes our interventionist foreign policy is liable to be labeled a "Kremlin tool" – and could face legal sanctions.

    http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/05/18/the-special-counsel-comes-to-town-its-the-moscow-trials-revisited/

    Bob K. , says: May 19, 2017 at 11:05 am
    You tell it like it is, Pat! Once someone has sold his soul to the "dark side" his own reputation with it comes before the welfare of the Nation!
    David Smith , says: May 19, 2017 at 11:37 am
    What goes around, comes around. The Republicans did the same thing to Bill Clinton. Remember, if you can do it to them, they can do it to you. Be careful about the precedents you set.
    Adriana I Pena , says: May 19, 2017 at 11:57 am
    Has anyone considered that the opposition from career bureaucrats is due to their past experience as to what works and what doesn't? They can recognize a half-baked plan, concocted by someone who has only a hazy idea of what goes on (the guy who managed to admit that health care was "complicated" after touting on the campaign trail that it was easy). Add to it stubborness and unwillingness to learn, and those bureaucrats may think that they are staring at an accident waiting to happen.

    What would you do in their place?

    Mac61 , says: May 19, 2017 at 12:18 pm
    If Trump wasn't a narcissistic idiot, he could be well on the way to leading a takedown of establishment politics. Should have left Comey in to go nowhere, but Trump is a narcissistic idiot who does not read and his presidency is and will continue to be a miserable failure. Donald J. Trump is a Loser and a Laughingstock, plain and simple. There's nothing to see here.

    Does he have the ability to do better? Yes. Will he? Doubtful. Firing Comey is not impeachable or even wrong, it's just a blunder of monumental proportions. Trump's continued incompetent "explanations" of the decision raised red flags.

    This is not Trump Steaks Inc. This is the Presidency of the United States of America. He will be held to a higher standard until such time as he realizes he cannot run this world's most powerful country like some sham casino operation he let fall into bankruptcy. And @Cal, this is not a Jewish conspiracy. If you can't see that Trump is an incompetent idiot narcissist, you can't see anything.

    [May 19, 2017] Did Seth Rich Contact WikiLeaks

    Notable quotes:
    "... The other story, however, is something our spooks don't want you to even know about. Fox News reported earlier today [Wednesday] that the private investigator hired by the family of Seth Rich – but paid for by a third party – is now saying there's solid evidence that Rich – a former DNC employee, embedded in their computer operations – was in contact with WikiLeaks. ..."
    "... Rich was murdered in the wee hours of July 10, 2016. His wallet, his watch, and valuables were still on him, despite claims it was a botched robbery. Days later, WikiLeaks published the DNC emails. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the capture of his murderers. ..."
    "... "An FBI forensic report of Rich's computer – generated within 96 hours after Rich's murder – showed he made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time, the federal source told Fox News. "'I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,' the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department." ..."
    "... Speaking of WikiLeaks: a largely overlooked email from John Podesta's leaked account has him saying: "I am definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker." It kind of makes you think, doesn't it? ..."
    May 16, 2017 | original.antiwar.com

    Two stories are now dominating the headlines: one is something the Establishment wants you to pay attention to, and the other is something they want to bury. First off, to the former:

    The Washington Beltway is in an uproar over the latest Deep State attempt to tar the President of the United States as a Russian agent: they're claiming Trump gave super-duper Top Secret information –provided, it turns out, by the Israelis – to the Russians during a meeting with the Kremlin's Foreign Minister and their ambassador at the White House.

    There are two problems with this story: if the anonymous former and currently serving "intelligence officials" cited by the Washington Post were really concerned about the damage done to our "sources and methods," they would never have leaked this story in the first place. Secondly, everyone in the room at the time, including National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, denies it.

    Far from proving Trump is either the Manchurian candidate and/or is playing fast and loose with our national security, it merely shows – once again – that the "intelligence community" is out to depose him by any means necessary. Add to this Israel's amen corner, which is now screeching that Trump "betrayed" Israel.

    The other story, however, is something our spooks don't want you to even know about. Fox News reported earlier today [Wednesday] that the private investigator hired by the family of Seth Rich – but paid for by a third party – is now saying there's solid evidence that Rich – a former DNC employee, embedded in their computer operations – was in contact with WikiLeaks.

    Rich was murdered in the wee hours of July 10, 2016. His wallet, his watch, and valuables were still on him, despite claims it was a botched robbery. Days later, WikiLeaks published the DNC emails. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the capture of his murderers.

    Fox News is reporting that Rich's computer shows "44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between DNC leaders" passed between Rich and WikiLeaks. They cite not only Rod Wheeler , a former Washington DC homicide detective hired by the Rich family to solve the case, but also a "federal investigator" who corroborates Wheeler's claims:

    "An FBI forensic report of Rich's computer – generated within 96 hours after Rich's murder – showed he made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time, the federal source told Fox News.

    "'I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,' the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department."

    Speaking of WikiLeaks: a largely overlooked email from John Podesta's leaked account has him saying: "I am definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker." It kind of makes you think, doesn't it?

    I've said from the beginning that 1) There is no convincing evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC, or fooled John Podesta into giving out his email account password, and 2) It was most likely an inside job. While it may be an overstatement to say that this latest story confirms it, it certainly calls the Russian conspiracy theory into serious question.

    Yet both the House and the Senate have launched investigations designed to prove "collusion" between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin – to say nothing of the FBI probe. Will the same attention be paid to the Rich-MacFayden correspondence?

    Of course not.

    The Rich family is denying that there's any evidence their son was in contact with WikiLeaks: but their official spokesman – yes, they have one – is one Brad Bauman , a self-described " crisis consultant " for the Democrats. Which is very appropriate, since these new revelations do indeed constitute a crisis for the Democrats, who have based their entire post-election strategy on a flimsy conspiracy theory that has been debunked by cyber-security experts (the ones who aren't in the pay of the DNC, that is)..

    Wheeler says that a local police officer in Washington "looked me straight in the eye" and told him they had been ordered to "stand down" on Rich's case. As for the "mainstream" media, they don't have to be told to stand down – they're doing it instinctively.

    But no worries! Antiwar.com was founded to blast through the "mainstream" media wall of silence. That's our job, and we've been doing it for over 20 years. But we can't continue to do it without your help. This Russia conspiracy theory is just plain bonkers, and is clearly the creation of political opportunists and Deep State spooks who have a vested interest in pushing it.

    Well, we have a vested interest in the truth. And so do you. That's why supporting Antiwar.com should be near the top of your agenda right now: because a site like this has never been more necessary.

    But it doesn't come free! We depend on you, our readers, to donate the funds we need to continue. So don't let the "mainstream" media pull the wool over America's eyes – make your tax-deductible donation today.

    Postscript: By the way, the Fox News story on the Seth Rich-Wikileaks connection, by reporter Malia Zimmerman, went through several interesting iterations since its original publication. See here .

    [May 19, 2017] The Special Counsel Comes to Town Its the Moscow Trials, Revisted by Justin Raimondo

    Robert Mueller was FBI director on September 11, 2001 (he was appointed on September 4).
    Now Russia is officially a pariah state, any contacts with Russian officials can be a career limited move.
    Notable quotes:
    "... After months of leaks coming from the intelligence agencies, who bitterly oppose the new policy, and a barrage of innuendo, smears, and character assassination in the media, the will of the people has been abrogated: the Deep State has the last word. The denizens of Langley, and the career spooks within our seventeen intelligence agencies, have exercised their veto power – a power that is not written into the Constitution, but is nevertheless very real. ..."
    "... In short, Mueller has virtually unlimited power to expand his investigation, and, given the history of Special Counsels, you can be sure that this one will wander far afield and become a general probe into "Russian influence" on the election – a matter already taken up by at least two congressional committees. ..."
    "... Any politician, especially one who supported Trump, who advocates peaceful and productive relations with Russia is a likely target. The War Party has already got Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) in its sights for his fearless questioning of the anti-Russian propaganda campaign. ..."
    May 19, 2017 | original.antiwar.com

    The Special Counsel Comes to Town: It's the Moscow Trials, Revisited

    The witch-hunt begins

    Donald Trump ran on a platform of improving relations with Russia: his victory was a mandate for that policy. Yet the real power in this country doesn't reside within the ballot box, and that reality was brought home when the Justice Department appointed a "special counsel" to investigate " any links and/or coordination with the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump ."

    After months of leaks coming from the intelligence agencies, who bitterly oppose the new policy, and a barrage of innuendo, smears, and character assassination in the media, the will of the people has been abrogated: the Deep State has the last word. The denizens of Langley, and the career spooks within our seventeen intelligence agencies, have exercised their veto power – a power that is not written into the Constitution, but is nevertheless very real.

    Their goal is to not only make détente with Russia impossible – and Trump's goal of "getting along with Russia" will surely not be implemented now that the regime of the special counsel has trumped him – but also to overthrow a democratically elected chief executive, and perhaps prosecute him for "high crimes and misdemeanors" in the process.

    No matter what you think of Trump, this is an ominous development for all those who care about the future of our republic. Because the warning to our politicians could not be clearer: So you want to effect a fundamental change in US foreign policy? You dare to question the permanence of NATO? Let this be a lesson to you.

    This goes way beyond the Trump administration: the potential targets of the investigation are potentially unlimited. Deputy Attorney General Ron Rosenstein's letter to the Special Counsel – Bush era FBI Director Robert Mueller – also states that the counsel's purview includes "any matters that arose directly from the investigation," as well as "any other matters within the scope of 28 CFR 600.4 (a) ," which refers to anyone who might conceivably be involved in obstructing the Special Counsel's probe.

    In short, Mueller has virtually unlimited power to expand his investigation, and, given the history of Special Counsels, you can be sure that this one will wander far afield and become a general probe into "Russian influence" on the election – a matter already taken up by at least two congressional committees.

    Any politician, especially one who supported Trump, who advocates peaceful and productive relations with Russia is a likely target. The War Party has already got Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) in its sights for his fearless questioning of the anti-Russian propaganda campaign.

    Furthermore, any media outlets that either supported Trump, had a good word to say about Trump, and/or dissented from the Russophobic hysteria that has gripped the "mainstream" media are liable to be scrutinized. Journalists with "Russian ties" – no matter how tenuous – will be caught up in the witch-hunt. The Washington Post gave front page prominence to a group of anonymous "researchers" that calls itself " PropOrNot ," which has compiled a lengthy list of "pro-Russian" media outlets and web sites – including the Drudge Report, and Antiwar.com.

    The dynamics of the witch-hunt will play out in the manner in which it has operated up until this point, only more so: the "mainstream" media will act as the research department of DOJ investigators, "uncovering" the "pro-Russian" network in the US, inviting Mueller to move in for the kill. Politicians, journalists, academics, and even ordinary folks will be targeted by the government in the hunt for "Putin's puppets."

    We haven't seen this kind of thing since the 1950s. Indeed, the history of these political lynchings goes all the way back to the Moscow Trials conducted by Stalin and his henchmen, who consolidated their power by prosecuting "Trotskyite wreckers" and other "enemies of the people" – to the applause of Western "liberals."

    What we are witnessing is a "regime-change" operation, such as our intelligence agencies have routinely carried out abroad, right here in the United States. Yet it is more – and worse – than that.

    This pernicious campaign is an attempt to criminalize dissent from the foreign policy "consensus." It is an effort by powerful groups within the national security bureaucracy, the media, and the military-industrial complex to stamp out any opposition to their program of perpetual war. It is, in effect, political terrorism – that is, an attempt to achieve political-ideological goals by the threat of force, i.e. the threat of State coercion. The police state methods utilized by law enforcement agencies in this country since 9/11 – universal surveillance, and the whole menu of cyber-spying techniques exposed by Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks – will be deployed. And it won't just be our own American spooks doing the eavesdropping.

    The involvement of the British and other European intelligence agencies in this regime-change operation on American soil is well-known : it was a "former" MI6 agent, one Christopher Steele , who authored and circulated the infamous "dirty dossier" on Trump. The Ukrainians, in particular, are in the forefront of this campaign: their targeting of Paul Manafort is out in the open . And a recent article in the Washington Post which relates a conversation between GOP House majority leader Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan, and others, has McCarthy saying he thinks both Trump and Rep. Rohrabacher are "paid by Putin." The exchange took place on Capitol Hill, after a meeting with the Ukrainian envoy – and the Post , in a story datelined Kiev, reports that it was "recorded." So who did the recording? My bet is on the Ukrainians.

    ... ... ...

    [May 19, 2017] Trump is just a one acute symptom of the underling crisis of the neoliberal social system, that we experience. So his removal will not solve the crisis.

    Notable quotes:
    "... When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties, it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as an "occupying force". ..."
    "... That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual". Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections. ..."
    "... The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes. ..."
    "... Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs. ..."
    "... ...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors." That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre." ..."
    "... That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat. ..."
    "... There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself. But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous. ..."
    May 19, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    libezkova, May 19, 2017 at 10:44 AM

    Trump is just a one acute symptom of the underling crisis of the neoliberal social system, that we experience. So his removal will not solve the crisis.

    And unless some kind of New Deal Capitalism is restored there is no alternative to the neoliberalism on the horizon.

    But the question is: Can the New Deal Capitalism with its "worker aristocracy" strata and the role of organized labor as a weak but still countervailing force to corporate power be restored ? I think not.

    With the level of financialization achieved, the water is under the bridge. The financial toothpaste can't be squeezed back into the tube. That's what makes the current crisis more acute: none of the parties has any viable solution to the crisis, not the will to attempt to implement some radical changes.

    When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties, it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as an "occupying force".

    That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual". Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections.

    I think Robert W. Merry analysis of the situation is pretty insightful. In his article in the American Conservative ( http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/removing-trump-wont-solve-americas-crisis/) he made the following observations:

    At least Republican elites resisted the emergence of Trump for as long as they could. Some even attacked him vociferously. But, unlike in the Democratic Party, the Republican candidate who most effectively captured the underlying sentiment of GOP voters ended up with the nomination. The Republican elites had to give way. Why? Because Republican voters fundamentally favor vulgar, ill-mannered, tawdry politicians? No, because the elite-generated society of America had become so bad in their view that they turned to the man who most clamorously rebelled against it.

    ... ... ...

    The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes.

    ... ... ...

    Then there is the spectacle of the country's financial elites goosing liquidity massively after the Great Recession to benefit themselves while slamming ordinary Americans with a resulting decline in Main Street capitalism. The unprecedented low interest rates over many years, accompanied by massive bond buying called "quantitative easing," proved a boon for Wall Street banks and corporate America while working families lost income from their money market funds and savings accounts. The result, says economic consultant David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer , was "the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests in the history of mankind." Notice that these post-recession transactions were mostly financial transactions, divorced from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating, and taking risks-the kinds of activities that spur entrepreneurial zest, generate new enterprises, and create jobs. Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs.

    ...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors." That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre."

    That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat.

    ... ... ...

    There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself. But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous.

    IMHO Trump betrayal of his voters under the pressure from DemoRats ("the dominant neoliberal wing of Democratic Party", aka "Clinton's wing") makes the situation even worse. a real Gordian knot. Or, in chess terminology, a Zugzwang.

    [May 19, 2017] The US hit a combination of Syrian and Iraqi Shia forces, not the SAA alone. The fact is that Syria and Iraq are attempting to reestablish road contacts with another in southern Syria territory

    Notable quotes:
    "... The US hit a combination of Syrian / Iraqi Shi'a forces, not the SAA alone. The fact is that Syria and Iraq are attempting to re-establish road contacts with another in southern Syria territory. ..."
    May 19, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    karl1haushofer , May 18, 2017 at 2:45 pm

    Once again the US Air Force bombs the Syrian military while Russian S-400 remains silent:

    http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/us-coalition-bombs-pro-government-forces-southern-syria/ri19878

    karl1haushofer , May 18, 2017 at 2:46 pm
    I thought Russia was supposed to "strengthen" Syria's air defense capabilities after Trump bombed Syrian troops for the first time?
    Moscow Exile , May 18, 2017 at 10:19 pm
    Yeah, supposed to do

    Clear evidence, if any more were needed, of Russia's weakness and the fact that, despite all its bluster, the place is just a Third World shithole compared with the mighty West under the avuncular leadership of "Uncle Sam".

    Thanks for the timely reminder of the reality of the situation as regards Russian capabilities!

    Jen , May 18, 2017 at 3:31 pm
    Karl, please read that article properly. The US hit a combination of Syrian / Iraqi Shi'a forces, not the SAA alone. The fact is that Syria and Iraq are attempting to re-establish road contacts with another in southern Syria territory. We should be glad that the SAA has got this far in the war that it can plan for and carry out this particular project to secure Syria's southeastern borders. Russian help was absent because the Syrians did not ask for it, they believed they and the Iraqis could do it themselves. They would have prepared for the possibility of being attacked. Please give the Syrians and Iraqis some credit for having got this far despite being under US-coalition attack. (But of course you won't because Ay-rabs are brown people of low IQ in your estimation.)
    Jen , May 18, 2017 at 4:13 pm
    Plus it is not just the US involved in hitting joint Syrian-Iraqi forces at al-Tanf – there are British and Jordanian special forces there as well. So this is a major operation to clean out not just ISIS and other jihadi fighters but the foreigners embedded with them.

    Drutten , May 18, 2017 at 3:05 pm

    Be realistic for once, Russia isn't going to shoot down US (or Israeli, for that matter) aircraft unless Russia's own personnel on site are being threatened. The Russian air defense assets are there to protect Russian troops, not to cover Assads ass everywhere in every way.

    In practice, this means that they're basically never going to be used because both Israel and the US are actively discussing things with Russia and when they strike Syrian regime targets on occasion they pretty much do so with tacit Russian approval, and it means little to the Russian plan.

    Russia isn't there to provide some kind of unconditional full-on support for Assad, again, they're there to kill jihadis from the Caucasus and the Central Asian republics, help the Syrian armed forces just enough so that they do not succumb, and provide Syria with a lot of international diplomatic support in the UNSC and so on, all this in order to get some kind of political solution rolling. Russia has done Assad an incredible favor in this regard, and continue to do so despite increasingly venomous attacks from the West and the other jihadi backers. But Russia can't be expected to do everything for Assad, and they have explicitly said so.

    Drutten , May 18, 2017 at 3:21 pm
    In short, helping Syria stay afloat in the midst of this jihadi-Western onslaught is all good but Russia has its own interests to consider as well, and they have made this abundantly clear from the very beginning. The support is not unconditional and it's not something Russia's going to spend everything it has on, but the fact that they're keeping up the present level of support despite the aforementioned political/diplomatic/economical attacks that grow more vicious by the day shows that they're taking that commitment seriously.

    Now, what follows is some wishful thinking on my part Barring some kind of international agreement on a political solution soon (sounds unlikely even though there's been progress), considering the sheer amount of Chinese Uyghur jihadists in the Idlib region (some say they number in the tens of thousands!) and that China's already taken a lot of steps to stop them from returning, perhaps China could get involved and "relieve" Russia ahead. China's already been helpful in the UNSC on Syria, and their other activities seem to suggest they're somewhat interested in some kind of foreign adventure. Russia can't go on forever on its own fighting the good fight trying to stop or at least slow down the Western wrecking ball It has other issues that require a lot of attention.

    https://ads.pubmatic.com/AdServer/js/showad.js#PIX&kdntuid=1&p=156204
    et Al , May 19, 2017 at 2:46 am
    It's a lesson that the West has taken a long time learning. Again: Aircraft don't take and hold territory, soldiers do.

    It is the special foreskins who are in a weak position here so attacking the Syrian/I-racki guys is a sign of this weakness. If the sf's were heavily manned and supported they wouldn't be bothered. Instead they have to rely on the ever reliable kurds. No wonder they are skittish.

    [May 19, 2017] Removing Trump Wont Solve Americas Crisis by Robert W. Merry,

    Notable quotes:
    "... America is in crisis. It is a crisis of greater magnitude than any the country has faced in its history, with the exception of the Civil War. It is a crisis long in the making-and likely to be with us long into the future. It is a crisis so thoroughly rooted in the American polity that it's difficult to see how it can be resolved in any kind of smooth or even peaceful way. Looking to the future from this particular point in time, just about every possible course of action appears certain to deepen the crisis. ..."
    "... Some believe it stems specifically from the election of Donald Trump, a man supremely unfit for the presidency, and will abate when he can be removed from office. These people are right about one thing: Trump is supremely unfit for his White House job. But that isn't the central crisis; it is merely a symptom of it, though it seems increasingly to be reaching crisis proportions of its own. ..."
    "... The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes. ..."
    "... "Elites" are not necessarily truly unique, "brights" are not necessarily truly bright, "gnostics" do not necessarily have true knowledge, "puritans" are not necessarily truly pure, etc. What is being labeled is not what they truly are, but what they would have us believe they are; the reality is often very much the contrary. ..."
    "... What characterizes "elites" is not really position or power, very much less intelligence or nobility of heart. The defining characteristic of an "elite" is arrogance. ..."
    May 19, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
    America is in crisis. It is a crisis of greater magnitude than any the country has faced in its history, with the exception of the Civil War. It is a crisis long in the making-and likely to be with us long into the future. It is a crisis so thoroughly rooted in the American polity that it's difficult to see how it can be resolved in any kind of smooth or even peaceful way. Looking to the future from this particular point in time, just about every possible course of action appears certain to deepen the crisis.

    What is it? Some believe it stems specifically from the election of Donald Trump, a man supremely unfit for the presidency, and will abate when he can be removed from office. These people are right about one thing: Trump is supremely unfit for his White House job. But that isn't the central crisis; it is merely a symptom of it, though it seems increasingly to be reaching crisis proportions of its own.

    When a man as uncouth and reckless as Trump becomes president by running against the nation's elites, it's a strong signal that the elites are the problem. We're talking here about the elites of both parties. Think of those who gave the country Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee-a woman who sought to avoid accountability as secretary of state by employing a private email server, contrary to propriety and good sense; who attached herself to a vast nonprofit "good works" institution that actually was a corrupt political machine designed to get the Clintons back into the White House while making them rich; who ran for president, and almost won, without addressing the fundamental problems of the nation and while denigrating large numbers of frustrated and beleaguered Americans as "deplorables." The unseemliness in all this was out in plain sight for everyone to see, and yet Democratic elites blithely went about the task of awarding her the nomination, even to the point of employing underhanded techniques to thwart an upstart challenger who was connecting more effectively with Democratic voters.

    At least Republican elites resisted the emergence of Trump for as long as they could. Some even attacked him vociferously. But, unlike in the Democratic Party, the Republican candidate who most effectively captured the underlying sentiment of GOP voters ended up with the nomination. The Republican elites had to give way. Why? Because Republican voters fundamentally favor vulgar, ill-mannered, tawdry politicians? No, because the elite-generated society of America had become so bad in their view that they turned to the man who most clamorously rebelled against it.

    The crisis of the elites could be seen everywhere. Take immigration policy. Leave aside for purposes of discussion the debate on the merits of the issue-whether mass immigration is good for America or whether it reaches a point of economic diminishing returns and threatens to erode America's underlying culture. Whatever the merits on either side of that debate, mass immigration, accepted and even fostered by the nation's elites, has driven a powerful wedge through America. Couldn't those elites see that this would happen? Did they care so little about the polity over which they held stewardship that their petty political prejudices were more important than the civic health of their nation?

    So now we have some 11 million illegal immigrants in America, a rebuke to territorial sovereignty and to the rule of law upon which our nation was founded, with no reasonable solution-and generating an abundance of political tension. Beyond that, we have fostered an immigration policy that now has foreign-born people in America approaching 14 percent-a proportion unprecedented in American history except for the 1920s, the last time a backlash against mass immigration resulted in curtailment legislation.

    And yet the elites never considered the importance to the country's civic health of questions related to assimilation-what's an appropriate inflow for smooth absorption. Some even equated those who raised such questions to racists and xenophobes. Meanwhile, we have "sanctuary cities" throughout Blue State America that are refusing to cooperate with federal officials seeking to enforce the immigration laws-the closest we have come as a nation to "nullification" since the actual nullification crisis of the 1830s, when South Carolina declared its right to ignore federal legislation it didn't like. (Andrew Jackson scotched the movement by threatening to hang from the nearest tree anyone involved in violence stemming from the crisis.)

    Then there is the spectacle of the country's financial elites goosing liquidity massively after the Great Recession to benefit themselves while slamming ordinary Americans with a resulting decline in Main Street capitalism. The unprecedented low interest rates over many years, accompanied by massive bond buying called "quantitative easing," proved a boon for Wall Street banks and corporate America while working families lost income from their money market funds and savings accounts. The result, says economic consultant David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer , was "the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests in the history of mankind." Notice that these post-recession transactions were mostly financial transactions, divorced from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating, and taking risks-the kinds of activities that spur entrepreneurial zest, generate new enterprises, and create jobs. Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs.

    And, though these policies were designed to boost economic growth, they have failed to do so, as America suffered through one of the longest periods of mediocre growth in its history.

    All this contributed significantly to the hollowing out of the American working class-once the central foundation of the country's economic muscle and political stability. Now these are the forgotten Americans, deplorable to Hillary Clinton and her elite followers, left without jobs and increasingly bereft of purpose and hope.

    And if they complain they find themselves confronting the forces of political correctness, bent on shutting them up and marginalizing them in the political arena. For all the conservative and mainstream complaints against political correctness over the years, it was never clear just how much civic frustration and anger it was generating across the country until Donald Trump unfurled his attack on the phenomenon in his campaign. Again, it was ordinary Americans against the elites.

    The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes.

    When Trump, marshaling this anti-elite resentment into a powerful political wave, won the presidential election last November, it was noted that he would be a minority president in the popular vote. But then so was Nixon; so was Clinton; so was Wilson; indeed, so was Lincoln. The Trump victory constituted a political revolution.

    Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy-the status quo ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors." That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre." That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat.

    Ross Douthat, the conservative New York Times columnist, even suggests the elites of Washington should get rid of Trump through the use of the Constitution's 25th Amendment, which allows for the removal of the president if a majority of the cabinet informs the Congress that he is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" and if a two-thirds vote of Congress confirms that judgment in the face of a presidential challenge. This was written of course for such circumstances of presidential incapacity as ill health or injury, but Douthat's commitment to the counterrevolution is such that he would advocate its use for mere presidential incompetence.

    Consider the story of Trump's revelation of classified information to Russia's foreign minister and ambassador to the United States. No one disputes the president's right to declassify governmental information at will, but was it wise in this instance? Certainly, it was reckless if he exposed sources and methods of intelligence gathering. But did he?

    The president and his top foreign policy advisers, who were present during the conversation, say he didn't. The media and Trump's political adversaries insist that he did, at least implicitly. We don't know. But we do know that when this story reached the pages of The Washington Post , as a result of leaks from people around Trump who want to see him crushed, it led to a feeding frenzy that probably harmed American interests far more than whatever Trump may have said to those Russians. Instead of Trump's indiscretion being confined to a single conversation with foreign officials, it now is broadcast throughout the world. Instead of, at worst, a hint of where the intelligence came from, everyone now knows it came from the Israelis. Instead of being able to at least pursue a more cooperative relationship with Russia on matters of mutual interest, Trump is once again forced back on his heels on Russian policy by government officials and their media allies-who, unlike Trump, were never elected to anything.

    Thus is the Trump crisis now superimposed upon the much broader and deeper crisis of the elites, which spawned the Trump crisis in the first place. Yes, Trump is a disaster as president. He lacks nearly all the qualities and attributes a president should have, and three and a half more years of him raises the specter of more and more unnecessary tumult and deepening civic rancor. It could even prove to be untenable governmentally. But trying to get rid of him before his term expires, absent a clear constitutional justification and a clear assent from the collective electorate, will simply deepen the crisis, driving the wedge further into the raw American heartland and generating growing feelings that the American system has lost its legitimacy.

    There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself. But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous.

    Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington, D.C., journalist and publishing executive, is editor of The American Conservative . His next book, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century , is due out from Simon & Schuster in September.

  • Mary Myers , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:24 pm
    If you want to know why things are as bad as they are and why Americans are so ignorant and dumbed down, get the video "Agenda" by Curtis Bower. It explains it all.
    Gregory , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:17 pm
    I agree with your diagnosis, even if the term "elite" is nebulous (aren't you, Mr. Merry, by virtue of your position as a D.C.-based journalist, an "elite"?). Anyway, Gilens and Page found as much.

    https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

    What are some solutions?

    Chairman Moe , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:37 pm
    Yeah this whole "elite" thing is kind of frustrating to hash out in good faith sometimes of course we want "elite" people in charge, in the sense that they're not illiterate imbeciles. The funny thing is how much "democracy" often fails those who are most wont to sing its praises. Those who identify as liberal tend to romanticize the idea of "the people" and their right to have a voice in our government, but then are sorely disappointed when those actual people exercise that voice in the real world. It's why most of the liberal social agenda of the past 50 years has been achieved through the courts, the least democratic institutions in our polity. "The people" wouldn't have voted for most of this stuff.
    Howard , says: May 19, 2017 at 9:38 am
    Since a lot of people are obviously having trouble with this concept: "Elites" are not necessarily truly unique, "brights" are not necessarily truly bright, "gnostics" do not necessarily have true knowledge, "puritans" are not necessarily truly pure, etc. What is being labeled is not what they truly are, but what they would have us believe they are; the reality is often very much the contrary.

    What characterizes "elites" is not really position or power, very much less intelligence or nobility of heart. The defining characteristic of an "elite" is arrogance.

    Devinicus , says: May 19, 2017 at 9:43 am
    Saying "elites are the problem" is NOT to say "let us eliminate all elites" (duh). It is instead to say "let us get ourselves different elites".

    A good elite is one which uses its talents and power to pursue the common good. A bad elite is one which uses its talents and power to pursue the good of elites alone. After deindustrialization and financialization and the Iraq War and the financial crisis and the Great Recession and the White Death combined with the ever growing wealth and power of what Richard Reeves calls the " dream hoarders ", it's pretty clear that we have bad elites.

    This is not to say that the masses are completely off the hook. A republic requires a virtuous elite AND virtuous masses. As Rod Dreher notes endlessly, the American masses aren't too virtuous nowadays, either.

    Jon S , says: May 19, 2017 at 10:48 am
    Cheap, imported labor lowers wages and improves profits. Moving manufacturing to China lowers wages and improves profits. Reducing income from savings forces people into the labor force, lowering wages and increasing profits. Labor's share of national income is at a low-point not seen since the 1920's. Corporate profitability is at an historical high point.

    I don't understand what "crisis" is being spoken of here. Isn't this exactly the scenario we have been attempting to create since Reagan? There is no crisis. This is the fruition of our conservative economic agenda. Isn't this site called "The American Conservative"?

    RRB , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:09 pm
    "Couldn't those elites see that this would happen? Did they care so little about the polity over which they held stewardship that their petty political prejudices were more important than the civic health of their nation?"

    "Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya."

    Good points. Now you may apprehend why we simple people are not so eager to react with panic to the hysteria being drummed up by the same "elite" people and institutions that melt down every time Trump walks out of his office.

    Devinicus , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:12 pm
    Who are these "elites"? This is the central question.

    They seem to be: [1] highly educated [2] in private colleges and universities [3] mainly in the Northeast [4] and as adults [5] employed primarily in professional occupations [6] geographically concentrated in the Boston-Washington corridor, especially in NYC and DC.

    The unparalleled expansion of the (mostly white) educated professional class in the DC area over the past generation should occupy center stage in any conservative critique of the American elite.

    Howard , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:13 pm

    if President Donald J Trump IS supremely unfit to hold the office, does that not logically (in the eyes of the author)not make the xx million American people who voted for him supremely unfit to vote?

    Not at all. It makes them supremely desperate. The most important part of the election takes place before the first primary, when PACs and party officials determine what choices will be put before voters. Their candidates (from both parties) were likewise supremely unfit. I don't care much for either the Libertarians or Abe Lincoln, but Dead Abe Lincoln got one thing right: "Oh, hey America you just got screwed." Frankly, this has been going on for decades, but it is now reaching levels of abject absurdity.

    Michael Saber , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:29 pm
    I'm sorry, who's more elite than our golf club owning, billionaire President and his billionaires and investment bankers filled cabinet?
    KennethF , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:31 pm
    What Bruce said. In addition: who could possibly be so simple-minded as to believe that the removal of Trump will magically fix government? Bottom line is, Trump is dangerously incompetent. There are no doubt some in gov't who would get rid of Trump for the wrong reasons, but there are many (too many) right reasons for doing so. Some of the so-called Deep Staters will be Republicans who understand that Trump's promise to "drain the swamp" was nothing more than an empty talking point - and more importantly, that he's a threat to national security. Getting rid of Trump would be just one step toward fixing gov't, but would be significant nonetheless.
    Donald , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:34 pm
    Actually, Bruce, some of us lefties agree with much, though not all of what Merry says. The elites in both parties have failed and if you want names one can go down a long list. On foreign policy, for instance, leaders in both parties like Clinton and McCain have consistently favored more intervention and more war. The only time Trump has been popular with the elites is when he bombed Syria.

    This post was already pretty long– if Merry had gone into detail on the financial crisis and foreign policy it would have been ten times longer.

    I despise Trump too. The problem is that many of his critics are cynical opportunists.

    Concerned Citizen , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:43 pm
    Thank your for your perspective and sanity in a time of great unrest and paranoia.
    Sandra , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:46 pm
    "So tell me, if the down trodden Working class is so distraught by the elites putting them down, why do they celebrate when the GOP House voted to take away their healthcare by removing rules on pre-existing conditions."

    How you view the policies on pre-existing conditions depends on whether you are looking at premiums or benefits. If you are looking at premiums then removing rules on pre-existing conditions will benefit you. If you are looking at benefits no so much. You can't say that lowering premiums doesn't help working class families. There is also a fairness issue. The pre-existing exclusion only kicks in if there has been a lapse in coverage which encourages some people to not pay into the insurance pool until they get sick. How is that fair to all the folks who paid their premiums even when they didn't avail themselves of healthcare services? The proposed plan only asks those who haven't been paying into the system to pay more to make the system more fair to those who paid all along. It doesn't deny people coverage for pre-existing conditions. They can also avoid the higher payments by making sure their coverage doesn't lapse. Yes there are those who let their coverage lapse due to a financial crisis and we do need to have programs to assist those who truly can't pay.

    John D. King , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:53 pm
    Bruce's comment is nonsense. The elites are not in the least vague and unnamed, plainly referring to the mainstream "news" media and professoriate and GOP and corporate chiefs eager for cheap labor and GOP renegades (most of them warmongers) displeased by being upstaged. He purports to want "real" solutions but is quick to condemn real limits on immigration and trade deficits and racism in the guise of affirmative action and comparable ornaments of "social justice." Then, those who resent the liberal status quo and don't share Bruce's values are child-like and paranoid.
    Such arrogant and abusive views as his scarcely deserve refutation.
    Andy Lord , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:54 pm
    "The elites" aren't the problem, using the phrase "the elites" in political debate is the problem. What elites, exactly, do NOT include Trump, the nepotistic New York billionaire whose father donated a building to get him into Wharton? "Elites" is the code word used by right wing propagandists when they're trying to induce gullible or resentful citizens into acting against their own interests. Anyone using the term is dishonest.
    Dave Poteet , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:56 pm
    If being elite means wanting a President who isn't a loose cannon and acts with some decorum and respect for the office than count me in I'm an elite.
    Wes , says: May 18, 2017 at 1:13 pm
    This was really excellent and sober. Quite a nice change.
    Mark Thomason , says: May 18, 2017 at 1:25 pm
    Trump arose from America's crisis. He is a reaction to it, not the cause.

    The crisis cause is best displayed by Hillary. She was the problem. Trump just was not the cure, even though he is the reaction we got.

    gnirol , says: May 18, 2017 at 1:26 pm
    John D. King contends: " corporate chiefs eager for cheap labor " are among the elites voters shunned when voting for Pres. Trump. Um corporate chief? Donald Trump. Eager for cheap labor? Donald Trump. Elite? Donald Trump? Sending his son to an elite school that costs as much as the school that Obama sent his daughters to? Donald Trump. The only thing about Donald Trump that isn't elite is his drunken boor (even though he doesn't drink) rhetoric and social skills which he uses to mask his elitism. If you want no more than symbolic anti-elitism, Donald Trump is your man, and that's what Donald Trump supporters seem to want: the feeling that they are superior to those whom they feel have put them down for years, instead of the skills enabling them to compete with and perhaps surpass the people they deride as elite. Meanwhile the substance of Donald Trump's life has been elitism since he was in business school about a half century ago. No reason to believe that will change, is there?
    JWJ , says: May 18, 2017 at 1:27 pm
    Bob Halvorsen wrote: "Nixon, Clinton, Wilson,Lincoln all won the popular vote. Why does this article suggest otherwise? The only presidents with a minority of the popular vote are JQ Adams, Hayes, Harrison and Bush."

    The author wrote "minority in the popular vote". To me that means LESS than 50% of the irrelevant national popular vote total. The author is NOT saying that the presidents listed did not get the most votes in the irrelevant national popular vote, just that they received less than 50% of the total.

    Nixon 1968 – 43.4%
    Clinton 1992 – 43%
    Clinton 1996 – 49.2%
    Wilson 1912 – 41.8%
    Lincoln 1860 – 39.8%

    MM , says: May 18, 2017 at 1:28 pm
    Mueller's appointment sounds promising, all powerful politicians should be investigated if there's smoke, if not fire.

    But this discussion of elites conjures up a counter-factual President Hillary, elected President with a Democratically-controlled House, Senate, and solid 5-vote majority on the Supreme Court:

    Given her campaign's numerous contacts with the Russian ambassador last year, along with an ongoing FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation, including but not limited to the Russian uranium agreement, State Dept. pressuring Kazakhstan to sign off, after which donations were made, and Bill's speaking fees going up, other pay-to-play allegations involving some very nasty governments in Africa and the Middle East

    There would be no DOJ investigation, and no Special Counsel appointed. Even had she fired Comey herself on Day One. Impossible to prove, but none of this would be happening. And I doubt the press at large would be clamoring for investigations, because there wouldn't be any leaking going on.

    If elites are good at anything, it's circumventing the rule of law by stonewalling, or burying, all investigations into wrongdoing. The Obama DOJ excelled greatly at that sort of thing

    Kurt Gayle , says: May 18, 2017 at 1:38 pm
    For those of us who elected Donald Trump our President, Mr. Merry, your type of analysis is the most dangerous!

    On the one hand, you point to the root of the problems: "The elites are the problem."

    You correctly identify some of the main reasons why we elected Donald Trump: "[1] The hollowing out of the American working class '[2] the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests in the history of mankind' [3] persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya [4] 11 million illegal immigrants in America, a rebuke to territorial sovereignty and to the rule of law upon which our nation was founded."

    But then – having admitted that "Removing Trump Won't Solve America's Crisis" – you spout the elites' main talking point in their war to overturn the election results and to get rid of Donald Trump. You trumpet the elites' biggest lie. You say: "These people [the elites] are right about one thing: Trump is supremely unfit for his White House job."

    You are wrong, Mr. Merry. Totally wrong! President Trump is supremely qualified, and for these reasons:

    • He was the only presidential candidate with the courage to stand up and identify the real problems that have been destroying America and

    • He was the only candidate with the courage to stand up to the elites and not to back down.

    You say, Mr. Merry, that "three and a half more years of [Trump] raises the specter of more and more unnecessary tumult."

    You're wrong again. The tumult is entirely necessary. In fact the tumult is inevitable because we Americans have finally elected a President who is not afraid to speak to America's real problems. We have finally elected a President who has the guts to stand up to the powerful elites who created these problems. We have finally elected a President who will fight for us – fight for us and not back down!

    The elites don't like what they see. They don't like Trump and they don't like us, because we put Trump in the White House.

    Those of us who elected Donald Trump President because he fights for us are willing and able to fight for him!

    What the elites do to Trump, they do to us!

    "Tumult"? Bring it on!

    San , says: May 18, 2017 at 1:41 pm
    "The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy-the status quo ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America."
    I don't agree at all with this assessment of what the "elites" want or expect.
    I believe that the strong following Bernie Sanders had–and still has– is indicative of the large numbers of Americans who find the the "status quo" a questionable way to proceed.
    This is not an endorsement of Bernie Sanders or a lamentation that he didn't get the nomination, it is just a clarification of terms of "what the elite want" i.e. you're barking up the wrong tree.
    Also not sure who you consider an elite; the whole article seems based on flimsy assumptions.
    Steve in Ohio , says: May 18, 2017 at 1:44 pm
    YES to what Anti Empire wrote at 10:51 am.

    I am thinking more and more that our only hope is partition. If California wants to let half of Mexico in, go for it. Just don't ask Idaho or Montana to send you water when you run out. If New England and New York want to be run by Wall Street capitalists with SJW social views, go for it. Encourage your working class and middle class people to move to the South or the Midwest and you can be just like Brazil! A nice place to vacation run by very rich people, but inhabited by mostly poor people. Another benefit of partition would be that the Ununited States would not have the size or resources to be the world's policeman. Sounds like a win for almost everybody but the neo-cons and the liberal interventionists.

    Mark , says: May 18, 2017 at 2:02 pm
    Thanks! This essay was worth the subscription price.
    EdR , says: May 18, 2017 at 2:20 pm
    To be honest, I don't really agree with the thesis of this article. The idea of elite as pejoratives seems out of place with the usage in other contexts and suggests we need a clearer articulation of what exactly it is we are angry about. This being said, regardless of where the problem lies, these so called "elites" have done an amazing job of turning the political machine to their advantage. We elected them – we elected Trump. I guess the thing I come back to is we need to stop seeking evidence of why we are right and start seeking evidence of why we are wrong – especially when it comes to candidates. I honestly don't know what this would look like or if it would be possible – but I feel like we need to change the way we know and evaluate candidates. It feels clear to me that the things we use as yardsticks fail us and warrants a re-imaging of how we determine fitness for public positions.
    Joe , says: May 18, 2017 at 2:20 pm
    19 paragraphs not a single solution. Yep, American Conservative.
    Jeremy , says: May 18, 2017 at 2:40 pm
    "Think of those who gave the country Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee "

    You mean 16 million primary voters, largely women and minorities? They're hardly elites. Your whole premise falls apart here.

    MEOW , says: May 18, 2017 at 2:43 pm
    Remove Trump? No! Push him to keep his basic promises and not grovel to the warmongers and entrenched.
    Roy Fassel , says: May 18, 2017 at 2:45 pm
    The term "elite" might well mean nothing more than "educated and knowledgeable and experienced." We can see what happens when a rich person seems uneducated in world history, uneducated in our form or government and shows no leadership qualities for running a government. He is not an elite. He is a bozo. Michael Jordan was an "elite" basketball player. Do you want anything less in the top ranks of government?

    The term "elite" has a negative tone for those who do not understand how difficult issues are. As was said "I never knew how complicated health care was." And this bozo was elected.

    Avi Marranazo , says: May 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm
    The elites who have made it their business to replace the American people, with aliens who'll vote them, are the problem.
    Nelson , says: May 18, 2017 at 3:05 pm
    You can only blame the elites so much in a democracy. We elect presidents who appoint judges that say corporations have a constitutional right to give unlimited campaign contributions to politicians who work for them. We often confuse supporting our troops for supporting whatever war they're sent to. We want to cut taxes but we also want more warplanes. We spend more than any other country on healthcare and complain about costs but we reject systems other countries use that are proven more efficient. We spend much time complaining about elites but, with few exceptions, we keep electing them.
    One Man , says: May 18, 2017 at 3:09 pm
    we Americans have finally elected a President who is not afraid to speak to America's real problems"

    Like whining to the Coast Guard about how tough life is!

    Argon , says: May 18, 2017 at 3:09 pm
    Kurt Gayle: "You correctly identify some of the main reasons why we elected Donald Trump: "

    Perfectly valid reasons. Unfortunately, a perfectly wrong candidate and a perfectly wrong party to support. For most of the issues cited (excepting immigration), you'd really want a Progressive. Trump and the GOP were never going to 'clean out the swamp' (he opened the gates to the swamp), never going to try reversing the flow of wealth away from the poor & middle classes, never de-escalate military conflict, and never going to wrest control from "financialists".

    For that work, Trump is unqualified, slow to learn and has demonstrated a disquieting disinterest in actual details.

    I agree with most of the objectives you mention, but Trump was never even close to being right person for the job. Better to wash your hands of this Administration and move on.

    rhine-gold cowboy , says: May 18, 2017 at 3:21 pm
    @ Bruce

    " The term "The Deep State" being latest iteration, allowing anybody to speculate and project their own predjudices and paranoias as to these dark and unnamed forces as well comfortably allowing us each to excuse our own failures as being secretly the fault of some vague and unnamed "them"."

    Deep State theory originated in the New Left as a response to the Kennedy assassination, for instance with the works of Carl Oglesby and Peter Dale Scott, who was using the phrase "deep politics" decades ago not the only way in which the modern GOP base has started to sound like left-wingers from the old days, but one of the more surprising.

    John F LaVoy , says: May 18, 2017 at 3:27 pm
    I could pretty readily contradict some of the article's details, but I will skip that in order to agree with the basic premise. Yes, the Trump and Bernie Sanders phenomena signify a dissatisfaction with elitism. However, solutions not only exist, but abound. One in particular presents itself as not only advisable, but as a necessary condition: I will present only that one possibility here.

    As long as big money can buy elections, elitists will rule and the masses will get shafted. The only way to keep that from happening in perpetuity is to establish a system of public funding for elections.

    Absent that change, there really is no hope. We might not like it, and we might be forced to revisit principles we thought inviolate, but it is a necessary condition of restoring government of, by, and for the people.

    Cash , says: May 18, 2017 at 3:37 pm
    The problem with our elites is they do well when the rest of the country is going down the drain.

    Most of the blame attaches to Republican elites but the Dems are not immune.

    Since Reagan's election and the start of the libertarian takeover of the Republican party, America has shredded the social contract we have with one another. No more we're-in-this-together. No more we-are-our-brother's-keeper.

    Instead of decent middle class jobs with all the benefits, we've moved toward a gig economy where everyone is always hustling for the next job/client. Which the New Yorker recently called the work-until-you-die economy.

    Yes, if you're talented and lucky - the Yankees bringing you up from the minors, Paramount pictures distributing the movie you financed with credit cards, your start-up getting acquired by Microsoft - it is easier than before to become successful.

    But if you're a temporary receptionist at a law firm or driving for Uber . . .

    We've wrecked all the countervailing powers that inhibited capital from overwhelming labor. The share of US income going to capital (dividends, interest, capital gains) versus labor (paychecks) has soared.

    Unions are dead. Infrastructure and other public spending is gone. NAFTA was supposed to come with support for workers whose jobs went to Mexico but Bob Dole didn't believe in coddling losers.

    For-profit education and soaring tuition with bankruptcy law no longer permitting discharge of student load debt. How are those kids ever going to afford to buy the houses older people are counting on to finance their retirements?

    Years without increases in the minimum wage. (Minimum wage is the reference wage for most other wages. Up the minimum wage and everyone earning a paycheck will soon get a raise too.)

    That's what libertarians did to the Republican party and then to America. We stopped caring about the well-being of our fellow citizens because everything is a business deal between two self-interested parties. That's how you think on Wall Street and Silicon Valley. (And in 2008-09, when Wall Street drove the economy off a cliff, ordinary Americans bailed out the bankers.)

    But if you're an out-of-work steelworker addicted to opiates? Your bad choices are not my problem.

    The poster child for elites who no longer care about ordinary Americans is Pete Peterson of Blackstone. Remember his dog and pony show about federal govt's looming fiscal crisis? His solution was to gut entitlement spending that's probably keeping a lot of people alive.

    And here's the kicker: nothing about this fiscal crisis was so severe that a solution would require billionaires like Peterson to tighten their belts.

    Trump and Sanders picked up on the rage and despair that ordinary citizens feel for our elites and what they're doing to our country. Hillary and the rest of the Republican candidates misread the mood.

    Trump is now proposing the same old Republican agenda. Tax cuts for the rich to be financed by gutting Obamacare. More deregulation and less public spending.

    Yes, America is in crisis. Support for democratic norms is razor-thin and declining.

    This country needs to recommit to a social contract. And a social safety net. We're all in this together. The rich can't do well at the expense of everyone else if this country is to live up to our ideals.

    Back in the 1950s, the head of General Motors told a congressional hearing that he always thought that what was good for GM was good for America and what was good for America was good for GM. He got laughed at. But he was right. If he's selling cars, it means people are feeling good about their prospects.

    I'm waiting for a presidential candidate who promises that the rich are going to bear the biggest share of the burden when Americans roll up our sleeves to fix our country. He'll win in a landslide.

    Alex , says: May 18, 2017 at 3:49 pm
    Finally!
    A writer with critical thinking skills!
    PRDoucette , says: May 18, 2017 at 4:06 pm
    If wealth equals power then the only way you are going to limit the power of the elites is by massive campaign reform that would curtail the influence the wealth of the elites currently has over the political process. Neither Republicans or Democrats have shown the slightest interest in meaningful campaign reform for the simple reason that it is easier fund a campaign with millions from the elites who donate directly to a campaign and indirectly through a PAC. Without meaningful campaign reform the US will slowly but surely slip from being a democracy to an oligarchy run by the elites for the benefit of the elites. The crisis in the US is that it seems most citizens seem willing to accept that because of their wealth the elites are more likely to know how to govern. Sadly these citizens are having to learn that being a wealthy elite like Trump does not automatically mean that he knows how to govern.
    Jack Everett , says: May 18, 2017 at 4:32 pm
    I agree the problem is the elites not Trump he is to stupid and psychotic to do so much damage.
    Eric R , says: May 18, 2017 at 5:10 pm
    As a moderate lifelong Republican, I was a NeverTrumper through the primaries where my guy (Rubio) did well in my state, winning the contest. Only after Trump prevailed did I go off for a few hours on a long walk to contemplate what this meant for me, my party and my nation. I concluded that Trump was a necessary evil if we were serious about giving the 100,000,000 working men and women in this country a fair shake at the American Dream. Someone had to be ballsy enough to reconstruct the Federal Bureacracy and anyone less than a guy like Trump would wilt in the heat generated by the left leaning media and left leaning Federal Bureaucracy.

    Let's face it. Had HRC won absolutely nothing would have changed except our acceptance of corruption in our body politic. I still have hope that the Federal Government can be right-sized and the power redistributed to the United States of America not DC.

    Therein lies the fight of our time. We can either concede the fight and let DC make all the decisions (including whether to fix the pot holes on my local streets)to we can ask what each citizen can do for his or her country. It's a binary choice really. You either believe that all the power should reside with the Feds and the dictates and mandates that go with power being held 1000 miles away .or you're in favor of 95% of the decisions that impact you locally and in your state.
    If you need to find out where someone sits on this issue, ask them 2 simple questions.
    1) Who is Joe Biden?

    2) Name just 2 people from all of the following: Who's your Mayor? City Council? County Commission? School Board? State Senator? State Rep? Lt. Governor? School Board?

    Ed , says: May 18, 2017 at 6:06 pm
    The Trump era will be cathartic or emetic. Government operations will be so confused and erratic that people will start to think that maybe elite rule wasn't so bad and will look forward to "the grown-ups" taking over again. Of course, every new administration now claims to be "the grown-ups" reasserting themselves - that's come to be a given - but those pretensions will be taken more seriously when the next administration takes over.

    So are the elites to blame? Well, in a way. They have their agenda, and it's not always shared by ordinary Americans. But ordinary Americans don't agree with each other all that often, and depending on what the issue is, some parts of the general public are closer to the governing elites than they are to other parts of the public. It could be that elites manage to get enough support from non-elite voters to stay in office.

    But also, competence is a factor. There are a lot of conspiracy theories about elites, but much of the energy of governing elites may go into being just well-informed enough to do a half-way credible job of staying on top of events, rather than into deep-laid plans to thwart popular wishes.

    Blueshark , says: May 18, 2017 at 6:08 pm
    "All this contributed significantly to the hollowing out of the American working class-once the central foundation of the country's economic muscle and political stability. Now these are the forgotten Americans, deplorable to Hillary Clinton and her elite followers, left without jobs and increasingly bereft of purpose and hope."

    Nice try.

    Three things led to the "hollowing out" of the American working class, and they have nothing to do with ephemeral vaporings about "divorced from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating, and taking risks."

    1. Automation – and there's just no way around that – the semi-skilled and some skilled jobs giving lower-educated workers a strong middle class life are gone.

    2. "Reagan Democrats" who've been voting staunchly Republican and stood by watching and nodding while conservatives have eviscerated and vilified union jobs that also supported a middle class lifestyle (see, e.g., "right-to-work" states).

    3. Globalization (abetted by both parties) that shipped these jobs overseas – although there's no clear solution to this in an emergent 21st-century global economy.

    Look, I grew up outside of Detroit and knew families and friends who didn't go to college, but went to work on the line and could afford a middle class life. For the reasons listed above, those days are gone forever.

    Hyperion , says: May 18, 2017 at 6:08 pm

    Devinicus

    Who are these "elites"? This is the central question.

    They seem to be: [1] highly educated [2] in private colleges and universities [3] mainly in the Northeast [4] and as adults [5] employed primarily in professional occupations [6] geographically concentrated in the Boston-Washington corridor, especially in NYC and DC.

    Using that definition, the author of this post is an elite. But I bet he claims he is not.

    The thing is, Mr. Merry is a journalist. I'm hearing a lot about how dastardly THEY are from Trump supporters.

    Hyperion , says: May 18, 2017 at 6:15 pm

    John F LaVoy

    As long as big money can buy elections, elitists will rule and the masses will get shafted. The only way to keep that from happening in perpetuity is to establish a system of public funding for elections.

    I agree wholeheartedly. Does anyone who is not rich think that money = speech? What other democracy has an election funding system as bizarre as ours?

    Andy Lord , says: May 18, 2017 at 6:26 pm
    Trump's "populism" is based on the same old demagogue's standbys: xenophobia, scapegoating, racism, anti-intellectualism, economic anxiety, nationalism, and a yearning for an idealized past that never existed. The idea of Trump as some shirt-sleeved populist warrior who is going to correct the inequities of wealth distribution in the U.S. is too laughable to bother with. I would refer anyone to the two health care bills he has championed so far, which were poorly disguised attempts to enrich the wealthy even further, while robbing tens of millions of their ability to afford health insurance.
    Hexexis , says: May 18, 2017 at 7:08 pm
    Sorry, but the problem is not the "elite" but the "elitists": them that's curried favor-always monetary-w/ other elitists in exchange for donations at election time. With Clinton & Trump, we had two elitists that thought they deserved the pres'y & were propelled by the elitists running the campaigns & parties that hoped to gain from either of those two in the W.H.

    Meanwhile, the press worked feverishly to turn Clinton & Trump into viable candidates-w/ ancient, useless labels like "liberal," progressive"; "anti-establishment," "populist"-& convinced voters that they were the "best men" for the job.

    So I ended up voting for our state's Repo. gov.; who in turn voted for his own father, an 88-yr-old former congressman. That was effect elitists had on some of us.

    Brian W , says: May 18, 2017 at 7:13 pm
    April 25, 2017 Ex-spy admits anti-Trump dossier unverified, blames Buzzfeed for publishing

    In a court filing, Mr. Steele also says his accusations against the president and his aides about a supposed Russian hacking conspiracy were never supposed to be made public, much less posted in full on a website for the world to see on Jan. 10. He defends himself by saying he was betrayed by his client and that he followed proper internal channels by giving the dossier to Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, to alert the U.S. government.

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/25/christopher-steele-admits-dossier-charge-unverifie/

    Jeff Fine , says: May 18, 2017 at 7:47 pm
    While we may despise elites ( and just who are they?) the decision to vote for Donald Trump as a solution seems to me to be beyond stupid.
    Ellimist000 , says: May 18, 2017 at 8:00 pm
    "Nixon, Clinton, Wilson,Lincoln all won the popular vote. Why does this article suggest otherwise?"

    Because the author is letting his partisanship relive him of his good sense. Or he is as numerically challenged as his president, who knows?

    These people won PLURALITIES of the popular vote. So did Hillary Clinton. They all received the most votes in an election with three or more candidates but received less votes than the total that voted for some one else. Everyone on the planet besides third-world dictators and Republicans generally describe this phenomenon as "winning an election".

    A plurality is very different from getting a minority of the vote like Trump did. I am sure that Merry knows this. If you don't believe me, go ask the folks who voted Green and Libertarian who they would have voted for as a second choice if they were forced to

    TR , says: May 18, 2017 at 8:29 pm
    Thank you, Nelson, at 3:05 p. m.

    And BTW, a lot of those immigrants (to whom I do not object) are here because of America's fascination with foreign wars and intrusions. Think "boat people," for example, or Iranian refugees or Cuban, etc., etc. Our stupidity produces moral obligations.

    David Naas , says: May 18, 2017 at 8:34 pm
    Contra the demos-fueled hissy-fit over "Elites", I have no problem with Elites running the world. For one thing, they (Elites) always have run the world, and that isn't going to change, except cosmetically.

    Nor do I have a problem with them reasonably rewarding themselves for their efforts.

    Experiments with direct participatory democracy have usually ended in the sort of lynch-mobbing which murdered Socrates.

    I have neither time nor interest in attending to every pettyfrogging detail of running a village government, let alone one of 300 million souls. Even with the Internet, "direct democracy" ends up being run by a few (reference Athens, if any doubt).

    The current outrage-aholic fixation over "elites" is not because they are Elites, but because they are INCOMPETENT Elites. It is said the Brits lost the Empire because they forgot how to govern, and now, it is our turn.

    Eric Hoffer told us how Elites fall back in 1950 (The True Believer), but we were so fat and happy we ignored what he said. Besides, he was a longshoreman, with no credentials. What did he know?

    My preference is for Them to fix Their problem, and to get back running affairs properly.

    Then I can focus on playing with my grandkids, flirting with my wife, and drinking beer in late afternoon with Old Blue at my feet.

    Selah!

    CascadeJoe , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:30 am
    Well, he talks and tweets a lot. But NAFTA is still in force (he learned of downsides of ash canning it), Iran sanctions have not been increased (maybe he thought of jobs related to jet sales important), he is talking with Russia (as opposed to talking about it), and has let all know about his aversion to gassing civilians.

    Let us continue to observe what he does, not what he tweets. I plan to come back in late July and take a look, 100 days just is too short to come to a decision.

    Argon , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:30 am
    Well, at least it wouldn't be a step backwards.
    Fran Macadam , says: May 18, 2017 at 12:33 am
    So true. Another of the few sane voices, with intellectual heft to match that sobriety. Wish Rod Dreher would read and be convinced by your salient analysis, even if against his will. I think too many conservatives genuflect to established hierarchy, whatever its faults, out of a character that is disposed to distrust change, even needed change. I myself do not buy into the reasoning, "better the devil we know." I really think only the relatively well off can sustain such a view, whether in Manhattan or connected to it via the internet in Baton Rouge. The rest of us are too desperate.

    The elites truly are the problem. Just like those who blame Russia, they won't take ownership. They will need one heckuva Homeland Security and clampdown on the population they view as intolerable, once they have their coup against democracy. It is certain to be a pyrrhic victory though, as no elites in history ever gave up their power willingly or peacefully, yet in every case they were forcibly removed in paroxysms of violence by angry mobs of citizens who lost faith in a rigged system that would not allow needed peaceful change.

    Sad!

    RomanCandle , says: May 18, 2017 at 1:45 am
    VERY well said.
    Patricus , says: May 18, 2017 at 1:58 am
    So Trump lacks all the qualities and attributes of a proper President. What exactly are those qualities beyond getting elected? Who are the great examples Trump should imitate? Let's see, the community organizer? The son of a Bush? The man from Hope? Poppy Bush? I am one who admired Reagan but he did run up the debt. The quality these people share is a ludicrous vanity. Can't understand the notion that Trump is far below the rest of these flawed human beings. He seems to be just another one. What the heck, he might turn out to be effective. It is way too early to know.
    Mark Christensen , says: May 18, 2017 at 2:43 am
    Very true. The elites want to turf Trump because he is jeopardising a model that sustains their salaries and prestige, yet of course they can still not offer an alternative to what was there before.

    The elites can't look outside the system, to something beyond the system, because that is, by definition, something they can't control or make false promises about. The deeper problem is they are unwilling to even have this conversation, for fear it would lead to a logical conclusion about the inadequacies of power.

    Rosita , says: May 18, 2017 at 6:58 am
    What a bore and a canard; Trump_vs_deep_state has shown itself in capable of competent and capable public policy; quick on the trigger to tear everything down but in coherent and undisciplined to build anything of consequence to replace it. I'll take the elites any day over nihilism and petulance. Trump is the mirror image of his voters and it gives me great satisfaction to see their political fortunes grind to dust Over their own incompetence.
    Weldon , says: May 18, 2017 at 7:12 am
    Meh. People keep screaming about a "crisis" but aren't able to actually point to one. The economy is doing well. Crime is at historic lows. There are so few actual problems that people are taking to manufacturing them (e.g. opioids).

    I think the real issue here is that the politically-powerful Baby Boom is approaching the final years of its narcissistic, navel-gazing existence, and assumes the entire world disappears when they do.

    Frank , says: May 18, 2017 at 7:14 am
    When in the history of mankind were they not?
    Chris in Appalachia , says: May 18, 2017 at 7:56 am
    This article does a good job stitching together much of the Elites' sins. It is apparent to me that the American government can't be reformed from within by electing reform candidates. If reform is possible, it can't come from the Northeast and West Coast. It will never come from a Harvard, or any other Ivy League school, graduate. It won't come from a Boston Catholic person or New York Jewish-American. It won't come from a Baby Boomer who wishes to continue to prop up the social changes they ushered in the 60s and 70s. I would expect actual reform to come from a young person in the American Heartland, which the bi-coastal elites deride as "Flyover Country." Wasn't it the "Rust Belt" who showed us the way in the 2016 election? And if and when reform (i.e. the non-violent neutering of the Elites' power abuses) comes, the reformers had better be prepared with a total package and not just one candidate. It may be a one-time opportunity, and must be executed with the utmost strategy and determination.
    Paul Roche , says: May 18, 2017 at 8:26 am
    But We Trump supporters are quite happy with his actions so far. We know the press is rigged against him. It is distressing to see the elitist Republicans attack him too though. You are right about the divide, but this may be our last best hope of taking the government back
    AleaJactaEst , says: May 18, 2017 at 8:39 am
    if President Donald J Trump IS supremely unfit to hold the office, does that not logically (in the eyes of the author)not make the xx million American people who voted for him supremely unfit to vote? Startling hubris if you ask me.
    C. L. H. Daniels , says: May 18, 2017 at 8:49 am
    Who's ready to storm the Bastille? Torches, get your torches right here!
    RRDRRD , says: May 18, 2017 at 8:49 am
    Basically agree with the author;s position but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, stop calling elitists, elites. They are not "superior to the rest in terms of ability or qualities" in fact, they are frequently inferior.
    Paul Grenier , says: May 18, 2017 at 8:50 am
    When Sen. Schumer announced, on MSNBC, that a president going against the CIA is 'stupid' because 'they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you,' doesn't that scream 'crisis' from the rooftops? Since when does America, allegedly a democratic republic, assume elected presidents are the subordinates of the CIA? Well, de facto, probably for many years, but to actually openly approve of it?

    But there was no even discussion of his statement! It set off no alarm bells, no demands for reigning in the CIA ('the intelligence "community"'). Why not? Presumably because the short-term interests of too many elites aligned in this case with that of the deep state. The habit of 'whatever works for me, for the moment' won out, once again, further degrading the political culture right at its institutional heart.

    And also because Schumer is right. It isn't smart to criticize the CIA It wouldn't be good for your career, you know what I mean? ('What are ya, a Russian commie or something?').

    Merry is absolutely right. Removing Trump does nothing. It does less than nothing. It drives the disease even further into the body politic. The only solution is honesty and courage. Can we muster it?

    Linen42 , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:00 am
    So tell me, if the down trodden Working class is so distraught by the elites putting them down, why do they celebrate when the GOP House voted to take away their healthcare by removing rules on pre-existing conditions.

    Say what you will about Obama and his
    looking down on the people", but take him on his actions and he has done more to help the lower class through legislation and executive orders than any other president in the past 30 years.

    But wait, he didn't do anything about immigration. So therefore ignore all the laws, ignore the rules changed, just focus on the revamped Know Nothings afraid of 3% of the population.

    Brian W , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:08 am
    Yes indeed so and a very good article.

    May 7, 2017 It Wasn't Russia, How Erdogan Bought Trump and His Neocon Gangsters, the Kosher Nostra

    Learn who Mike Flynn and Rudy Giuliani really work for and why they are stabbing America in the back while Trump smiles.

    http://www.veteranstoday.com/2017/05/07/it-wasnt-russia-how-erdogan-bought-trump-and-his-neocon-gangsters-the-kosher-nostra/

    John Gruskos , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:10 am
    Principled opposition to President Trump's character is limited to this magazine and a tiny handful of like minded pundits and politicians.

    If Trump had run on Hillary Clinton's platform, and if he were ruling in accordance with that platform, waging a war for regime change in Syria, signing TPP or some equivalent, refusing to enforce the immigration laws, granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, and greatly increasing the number of legal immigrants, the Democrats and neocons would be praising him to the skies and supporting him to the hilt.

    If, on the other hand, someone other than Trump, Pat Buchanan for instance, had been elected on Trump's platform, the Democrats and neocons would be attacking him with all the hysterical venom they are now hurling at Trump (remember the brief deranged hysteria that followed Buchanan's 1996 primary win in New Hampshire?) – and I suspect some of those who pass for principled critics of Trump's character would be caught up in this hypothetical anti-Buchanan hysteria, because of their sheer weak-willed yearning for social acceptance.

    Howard , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:24 am
    If you want to really be serious about "fitness to lead", it has been a very long time since the USA has had a president who was fit to lead.

    The fact is, though, that the first rumblings of "impeachment" started before the Electoral College even met, back while Democrats were still hoping to nullify what happened on election night through the Electoral College.

    The whole Russian angle is simply a pretext. No one is saying that Russia hacked into the voting machines and added or subtracted votes; at most they are accused of having done the kind of thing investigative journalists are praised for having done. When, in the midst of the American election, British parliamentarians discussed banning Trump from the UK, **THAT** was much more serious and overt tampering with our election, yet no one cares about that, because the UK is the land of Peter Pan and Mary Poppins, whereas Russia is the bogeyman. Thus we see headlines about Russian jets "buzzing" the coast of Alaska, only to read further down that by "buzzing" we mean they were 20+ miles into international airspace. Apparently it's an outrage that they should come within a thousand miles of American airspace. American spy planes in the Black Sea are a different story: after all, they remained in international air space the whole time!

    It is dangerous to cast Russia unnecessarily in the role of villain, but it is even more dangerous to engineer even the softest of coups. Once that is done, there is no going back. Very likely there would be widespread protests, many of them violent, and a large portion of the public would see the de facto government as not merely corrupt and foolish, but completely invalid. The "authorities" would probably be able to crush dissent, but only by going full-on Stalin. What happens after that, who knows, but this story would not have any happy ending.

    Steve Norton , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:24 am
    As usual, Merry's insights are useful and informed.However, Clinton, warts and all, would have more likely eased the pain of many Americans. Her campaign focused too much on aggrieved minorities and not enough on the pain shared by all but her policies would have more likely checked the manic redistribution of wealth from middle class to elite, ended the health care impasse that cruelly toys with people, made education more accessible and enhanced investments in science and technology that could create jobs in the coming years. With regard to immigration, it is true that adding so many immigrants to the population at a time when decent-paying jobs were being eliminated through technology created a bad optic but the ban or removal of millions of immigrants would not really restore middle class stability. Elites in both parties have made mistakes and been entirely too attentive to those who give the most money but let's not legitimize Trump's mixture of exploiting anger with false promises and pushing policies that will make the plight of working people even more desperate. Clinton might not have shaken up an elitist system she helped create but she would not have shaken our democratic institutions and attacked an already fragile polity the way Trump has and will continue to do for another 3 and half years. Like it or not, elites and disenfranchised will eventually have to work together and Trump has set back this inevitable and urgent collaboration years, if not forever.
    Bob Halvorsen , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:30 am
    Nixon, Clinton, Wilson,Lincoln all won the popular vote. Why does this article suggest otherwise? The only presidents with a minority of the popular vote are JQ Adams, Hayes, Harrison and Bush.
    Michael Powe , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:38 am
    A self-described "publishing executive" who writes magazine/blog articles for a living is a member of the "elite"! Condemned out of his own mouth. By his own vanity, perhaps.

    And the case is hardly made by deliberately misstating facts.

    65 million people voted for Hillary Clinton for President. Is that 65 million "elites," or 65 million "dupes" too stupid to "see through her"? 65 million irresponsible citizens? Are these 65 million the real "deplorables"?

    I don't expect to see any mea culpa statements from the numerous conservative writers and talking heads who made excuses for Trump's selection as candidate prior to the election. Many of those excuses were promulgated through TAC. But a look in the mirror, and a conversation with that "still, small voice" could be therapeutic for many of you.

    Not Hillary Clinton, not the Democratic Party, not the 65 million "deplorables," were responsible for conservatives' decision to go with a manifestly unsuitable candidate. Once again, those declaiming most loudly about "personal responsibility" - lack it.

    mightywhig , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:46 am
    Good piece. Clearly the many leakers aren't concerned about national security consequences. This is only about bringing down Trump. After all, the journalist establishment extolled Snowden for leaking tons of classified information. Trump might help himself by being a little more "political," and learning to fight the right battles.
    SJB , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:47 am
    I hope your article gains a large readership that includes the nevertrump cadre. It is probably a pipe dream to hope they would wake up and become aware of how they and their preference for Hillary look to many of the 63 million people who voted for Trump. They knew he was inexperienced, coarse, and a mixed bag. They also know he's only been in office for 4 months and the obstruction, malicious leaks, and malignant hatred of Trump began long before he took office.

    Too many in the nevertrump cadre come off as self-righteous, smug Pharisees for whom conservatism has become a religion. For some reason, they think their own character, knowledge, and judgement is impeccable with no room for correction by 63 million voters. The vox populi needs the elites to override them. Such hubris. We are well aware that they would rather have had a Hillary presidency. Are they any more mature than the Left in dealing with defeat? Apparently not.

    Glenn Reynolds (professor of law) sums up the situation this way: "The childish response of Democrats - and 'NeverTrump' Republicans - to the 2016 election has done more damage to American politics and institutions than any foreign meddling could do." It would behoove the nevertrumpers to consider what they are sowing and reaping. Has their hatred of Trump and smug self-righteousness made them deaf, dumb, and blind?

    I think Victor Davis Hanson's article (see link below) has articulated the situation best and is best read as a whole instead of excerpted. The National Review's readership fell greatly prior to the election because of the nevertrumpers pomposity, but not the readership of VDH's articles at the NRO. Perhaps instead of silently disagreeing, the vox populi need to intervene and impeach the nevertrumpers.

    The Nightmares and the Realities of Never Trump
    http://amgreatness.com/2017/05/17/nightmares-realities-never-trump/

    Trucker46 , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:47 am
    You elected a chump over all the obvious reasons not to, and he iS going to go before the end of the summer, either for the reasons already in.front of us or for the new ones he will give us in.the next 60 days. Get your stupid saves out of the way now and allow the republic to recover.

    Btw the "you elected" phrase above is predicated on.the idea that the chump really won.the election, Cuz it's quite clear he may not have.

    Marianna Landrum , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:47 am
    The problem is not the elite, but a POTUS who is ignorant and arrogant,who is unqualified and inept and who is a man-child trying to be a leader. He makes his own issues by opening his mouth and saying stupid things and insisting they are true, and doing stupid things and insisting they are good. It is obvious he has no plan for anything and doesn't understand much of what is going on around him. He never talks about anything of substance; on health care, Price had to deal with details, and with the tax plan, it was Cohn who revealed that amazing one page initiative. When he does talk, he stupidly gives intel to our enemies. Trump is an idiot with a pen and that is the problem and it is a problem for this country.
    connecticut farmer , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:56 am
    Excellent article. Can it be possible that the meritocratic oligarchy which runs this country still doesn't "get it?" Do they really believe that getting rid of Trump solves the problem? Can it be possible that they still can't see that absent proof of actual malfeasance, driving Trump out of office could make things even worse, as if things aren't bad already.

    As the days and weeks go by it is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is–yes.

    Tom , says: May 18, 2017 at 9:57 am
    This is, far and away, the best summary of our current situation I have read anywhere. Outstanding!

    One area around immigration could, however, be improved to truly capture why there is so much anger at the elites. On immigration, the article states: "Leave aside for purposes of discussion the debate on the merits of the issue-whether mass immigration is good for America or whether it reaches a point of economic diminishing returns and threatens to erode America's underlying culture. Whatever the merits on either side of that debate, mass immigration, accepted and even fostered by the nation's elites, has driven a powerful wedge through America. "

    While true, this still misses the main point. The point is that the nation has existing laws to control immigration. Because the elites could not change the law through the democratic process, they opted instead to just ignore the laws, with absolutely no consequences except for those who live in the communities impacted.

    In this context, the significance of the Clinton email scandal was magnified as it represented, again, the elites clearly violating the law with no consequences.

    The lawlessness aspect is a critical point that needs to be emphasized. The elite backlash is not just about policy disagreements, its about a class of people (elites) violating/ignoring the law for their own benefit and at the expense of others. The very fact that this could happen exposes how broken the system really is.

    Trucker46 , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:05 am
    And btw.. Tho the author here is a smart and good writer, this whole "elites" thing is a stupid argument.I agree that we democrats were too cowardly to nominate Bernie, whose whole message and absolute unlikelihood was most aligned with the spirit of the times. As a party we thought small and thus became small. But Hillary was so vastly superior to any of the republican candidates that the problem has nothing to do with right wing elites and everything to do with that large swath of the right wing which simply is deplorable. They are deplorable and they deserve to know that the nation as a whole knows them to.be such. There wzz a time when they knew their place– way down a hole with the boot of the nation s conscience firmly on.the top of their head. The right let them emerge from.that hole during the advent of the tea party Cuz it liked the fact that those losers were giving their movement breadth and energy.

    But don't think for a minute that those millions of prejudiced, disgusting people have been redeemed by the chumps supposed victory, they haven't. Maybe Hillary shouldn't have called them.such, idk, but the fact of their existence being a cancer in.the republic is as correct today as it was 400 years ago and in.every generation.to.follow.

    Michael , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:11 am
    With the absolute control the elites have upon the military industrial complex, the traditional media outlets, the bureaucratic "three-letter" departments of governance, as well as the powerful influence over both the judicial and legislative branches of the governmnet, it seems impossible to me that such a group could be thrown off by its citizenry by violent uprising or otherwise. Just watch some of the video of Chaffets lead intelligence committee trying to access information regarding the Clinton servers and you will begin to see the incredible scope of the problem we face in America and the world today. Just as it was God that delivered a rag-tag band of America patriots from the hands of elite-based tyranny at the founding of our country, it will take an act of God to remove the chains and shackles of the Deep State from off the necks of the American people. Unfortunately a growing number of Americans are turning their back on the only real chance of deliverance we have – He who delivered the Hebrews from the Egyptian elites can delver us also.
    BillCarson , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:11 am
    I am more than willing to fight the elites in the streets if necessary to stop them from forcing A duly elected president from office
    Don Wiley , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:18 am
    In the day when we received our news of national and international goings on via newspapers, there was a space for reflection and contemplation, and even some semblance of reasoned debate.

    That ship has sailed, never to return and we are in the day of "Amusing Ourselves to Death"

    It used to take some time and effort to form a proper mob.

    Xenon , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:31 am
    What defines this shadowy type – "elite?" Educated? Financially well off? Aren't you an elite? Or does it only apply to liberals and Democrats? How would you define yourself?
    SJB , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:31 am
    Apologies for a poorly written comment. The vox populi is a reference to a Douthat tweet: "7. But what, in the end, are elites for? What justifies their existence? Some sort of wisdom that the vox populi can lack." Douthat's article, his tweet storm, and the lack of strong repudiation from the nevertrump cadre pretty much ended my patience with all of them. It has become almost impossible to tell the difference between the hysterical Left and the outraged nevertrump cadre. This last week has been such a delightful display of how the media, establishment elites, and nevertrumpers feel about those 63 million unredeemable deplorable Americans who voted for Trump. Thank you for allowing me to comment.
    No to neos , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:35 am
    I agree with this. I voted for Trump and told my wife several times before voting, "I don't think Trump will be a good president. I'm voting for him to send a "f- you" to the elites who run this country.

    When I say elites, I don't mean only the high and mighty. In my hometown, where I have lived all my life, our city council has handed millions of tax dollars to the region's largest car dealer to expand yet again. They pledged $1 million to lure a Hobby Lobby even though it is in direct competition with a Michael's store that has been here for years. They bought property for $1 million, knocked down the building on it, prepared the site for development, then "sold" it to a developer for $10.

    That kind of favoritism has been running wild in my little town - a little town controlled entirely by people who call themselves Republicans.

    jdl51 , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:36 am
    "When a man as uncouth and reckless as Trump becomes president by running against the nation's elites, it's a strong signal that the elites are the problem."

    The problem is the industrialized disinformation machine that continues to spew hatred and lies. One side thinks it's the liberal media, and the other side thinks it's RW talk radio and Fox News. It's easy to figure out which one is the real problem. There are facts and there are internet rumors that are passed off as facts. Both can't be true. And even in the face of clear evidence, primarily one side continues to believe the rumors and lies. Can't argue with delusion.

    Bob K. , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:45 am
    Thank you, Mr. Merry,

    I have been waiting for you to step up to the plate since you took over as editor of "The American Conservative" and you have delivered!

    Anti-Empire , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:51 am
    This article makes some good points. Trump was elected fair and square and the case against him is straight out of fantasy land.
    BUT then there is the snotty rhetoric that Trump is "uncouth," the same sort of rhetoric employed by the elite New York Times.
    Frankly I do not care about Trump's table manners. I do care that he has sought detente 2.0 with Russia and has killed off the TPP, not only a lousy trade deal but also the economic limb of Hillary's military/economic assault (aka pivot) to China.
    So I dismiss charges that Trump is "unfit" or "lacks nearly all the characteristics or attributes that a president should have.". And I have little confidence in a writer who looks at things in such an arrogant way. That he is the new editor of The American Conservative is enough to make me reconsider the contributions I make to this journal. Pat Buchanan and Bill Kauffman, yes. Merry? I wonder.
    Sandra , says: May 18, 2017 at 10:54 am
    I don't think the abundance of evidence that members of the Trump team met with Russian officials during the campaign can be called "minor infractions against the president". These are certainly serious allegations. It was clear early in the Trump presidency that he was not surrounding himself with people capable of carrying out the vision he articulated in his campaign for restoring America's middle class. He made many picks from the ranks of the elites including his Vice President and Attorney General. His selection seemed to favor loyalty rather than building a team that could make the changes he campaigned on. His Treasury pick is straight from Wall Street and his foreign policy team is praised by the elites. Donald Trump is not the agent for change. You can't differentiate him from the elites because he surrounded himself with them.
    Vince Hill , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:01 am
    What the elites don't understand is that there are lot more of us than of them. If they try to take the election away from the people who support President Trump. They will have a war on their hands and not a war of words.
    Anne M Erskine , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:04 am
    Written by a Never-Trump, this article is absolute BS concerning the fact that President Trump is "unfit" for the office of the presidency. The article is, however, absolutely correct about the elites who have thrown their middle finger in the face of WE THE PEOPLE of the CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC of the USA, but WE THE PEOPLE elected President Trump to drain the swamp and he will. The true enemy of the USA is the elected class in D.C. and their cronies like Buffet, Steyer, Gates and the Soros Democrat Marxist Party and the utter traitorous actions by Obama. President Trump has to rid us of all Obamaites and has to slam the RINO traitors to the ground. President Trump is perfectly fit to be president and certainly more so than some community organizer who hates the USA and works to destroy her. Merry's hatred of President trump is boundless and shows him to be among the elites of the "media," a terrible curse on the USA. Thank God for President Trump and for FLOTUS Melanie Trump who has returned dignity, grace, class, and beauty to the White House after eight years of hate-filled, resentful, nasty, and cloddish behavior by Michelle Obama who disrespected the American people, spending millions of American posterity hard-earned money on herself and her family. Where was your article about the corruption of Obama and his breaking of our laws and his utter and disgusting spitting on his oath to our Constitution, Merry?
    Andi Payne , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:07 am
    I am still confused how a billionaire was NOT considered 'elite' to the working class.. Does this not baffle anyone? OK, I get that America on both sides, left and right, is sick of getting screwed over by the elites. But Trump is no friend to the working man. He is only helping all his billionaire elite friends and creating practices that will hurt the working class who elected him, whether via healthcare reform or promising coal miners they can have their jobs back, when everyone knows that sector is dying. The rest of the world is getting ahead of us, in technology, infrastructure, renewable energy sources, etc. The divide between conservatives and liberals has become so ridiculous that no one cares about making the US a better place. Trump's laughable campaign slogan worked miracles in convincing voters, but I think everyone has sobered up to the dangers that Trump poses in so many ways. We might be tired of politicians in Washington, but if most of us are honest, this 'shake-up' is going to do a lot of damage. Maybe it's what we need in the long run to be able to change things, but all the laws and deregulation have only made the elite stronger. It makes companies bigger, and the working man poorly treated and expendable.
    Slugger , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:07 am
    Please help me understand. What remedies are you recommending? The reason I ask is because these accusations against a class of people, the elites, rather than against specific wrongful acts smack of Mao and the Cultural Revolution to me. I sense that some wish to see professors and newspaper editors working in fields with hand tools. I may have misread this posting, but Fran Macadam's comments sound like a call for at least a sharp turn to me.
    Argon , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:17 am
    Reflecting further.

    I'm not buying the "it's the elites" problem. An 'elite', more often than not, is someone who is using power in a way we don't like, along with that person's clique. This is akin to using the term, 'activist judges'.

    Ultimately, a democracy always gets the leaders it deserves. Once in a great while, it gets better leaders than it deserves. There will always be facilitators of our worst instincts but ultimately, people have a choice. If a democracy is dysfunctional, it's not because some 'elites' or 'deep state' have taken over everything. It's because the voters kept electing idiots and representatives that didn't truly represent their interests.

    SDS , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:37 am
    Not sure if Trucker46 is serious, or auditioning to write for "the ONION" ..
    Devinicus , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:38 am
    Regarding the history of immigration in the United States, the Census Bureau says that the post-1850 peak was in 1890 when 14.8% of residents were foreign born, followed closely by 1910 when 14.7% were foreign born.

    Pew estimates that the US will break these records around 2025. Soon we'll have to go back to the mid-1700s to find a period in American history with a level of immigration we will be experiencing in the near future.

    Omar , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:40 am
    Well written article. Thank you.
    bkh , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:41 am
    -Vince Hill said: "What the elites don't understand is that there are lot more of us than of them. If they try to take the election away from the people who support President Trump. They will have a war on their hands and not a war of words."

    Those masses are not relevant to those "Elites" and are cannon fodder. The term "Deplorables" says it all. The masses are not worthy of any consideration. Those "Deplorables" are an obstacle to be eliminated for the greater good. You don't need shadow govt conspiracies to see this kind of stuff anymore. The blatant lies and manipulations from DC and the media originating from Dems and Repubs is there for all to see. The 2016 election cycle was a wake-up call. Neither candidate was fit to be a President. Both are crooked. Yet, the majority of sheep on both sides continue toward their slaughter. Trump may yet get us blown to bits, but I no longer care about saving the status quo. The majority of people have spoken in this this country and we have been broken for many Presidencies. The future of this nation, as is, is ugly, if one exists at all.

    EliteCommInc. , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:44 am
    Mr. Trump is not the issue. And from what I have come to understand about Washington language from top to bottom, his language isn't the issue either, in my view.

    Whether he is unfit cannot even be addressed though I suspect he is, if one examines the long history of the office. I don't have any doubt that Mr Trump is an effective admin as head of state. As a non-politician, there may be some issues. And his policy and social positions may not square with my own. But that alone would not make him unfit. His temperament would not take unfit either. But having to sift through the emotional tantrums of so many in leadership, influence and power to make that assessment is a very tough slog.

    Now we have a secret source that indicates a Mr. Trump did something or other in pressing for an end of needless investigations, as any CEO might, if said investigations were hindering the effectiveness of his tenure. And clearly its a disruptive fire. The seed of which were laid immediately as it became clear that Mr Trump, now Pres Trump was a contender. There was talk of impeachment before the election, and while I appreciated the "heads up", it was disappointing that the agenda for the net four years was to impeachment a man even before he took office.

    I once said that Mr Trump was be given the royal "black treatment" and I stand by those comments. Everything he does, says, is a minefield. There are no mines, but there are explosions from multiple corners. I have to say, even some of the authors on TAC are are straining credulity, credibility with their "end of the world", "doom and gloom" commentary. The minefield, once again has not evidence, but rather, so and so said thus. There's nothing documented that Pres Trump has done anything to hinder anything about Russia or Gen Flynn. This type of scrutiny makes it impossible to do one's job.

    I have been in communication for a long long time. And while my life is but a wreck at the moment. I have had some successes in competitive speech, and coaching. When I did my master's degree, I was unfit for teaching as a grad assistant. Not because of a lack of skill, knowledge or expertise, but because by every measure I had. What made the post a total disaster was the scrutiny as if I I had never done anything of the kind. If you have been teaching a while, there are things you know that a grad just have a clue about. My adviser attempted to fit my roundness into a nonexistent square peg. The entire graduate program was a disaster and a disaster in every way. They simply had no clue how to manage someone who had long past graduate level knowledge or experience. And much to failure, I did, wouldn't, couldn't communicate that fact, though given the internal politics of the place, I doubt it would have mattered. The behaviors were at best dysfunctional at worst criminal. If I wasn't already highly suspicious, by the time I left, I was certainly distrustful. I was asked if I wanted to pursue legal redress - the idea of that mess has always been a route to be avoided, save for defense. "People are people, and sometimes they just do dumb stuff," was my attitude. I was probably incorrect, dumb, innocent or malicious it was deeply beyond the pail.

    Pres. Trump has entered an arena in which he has no respite from the attack or question of every aspect of his being and on every matter. While, a Pres should expect scrutiny, what he has been subjected is over Everest unreasonable and reasoned. The constant hyperbolic crisis mongering from people who supposedly have a better temperament, judiciousness, and higher moral code is a tad bit "funny".

    No. Humorous.

    What is in play and of deep concern are the repeated manufactured crisis to disrupt his tenure Crisis mongering that began shortly after 9/11 and has progressed with increasing speed, oddly enough when actual crisis have subsided. Aside form the economy, the country faces no "real" threat beyond securing the border.

    Given our rather carelessness action in the region of the middle east, we had better obey the security protocols prior to 9/11 any of which would have prevented the attack or severely diminished its success. Checking expired passports would have been helpful – devastating to the attackers.

    In Compton, Detroit, NYC, Tallahassee, Birmingham, there are hard working folks trying to figure out how they are going to compete against the immigrant who's labor is cheaper, who doesn't contribute to the community as much as they draw. They are trying to figure out how to be fair to their issues, without starving their own. They are doing everything possible to avoid being "deplorable" and always have. And yet the representatives of their locals are about dealing with muckraking needlessly.

    -----
    "Sad!"

    Boy. it's not a good sign when you are sad. Stay fiesty!

    Those in opposition made it clear where they stood before the election. And Mr. Trump has just started to climb this long hill.

    EliteCommInc. , says: May 18, 2017 at 11:49 am
    There's no reason for the war to turn violent, we are some distance from that turn and even the suggestion is hard to hear.

    It suggests a state of threat that need not be aired. In many ways, this situation is airing out the problem, for those brave enough to acknowledge it.

    Though avoiding confrontation of any kind hasn't aided me much, I admit.

  • [May 19, 2017] Jingoism and Russophobia in NYT

    Notable quotes:
    "... One keeps surprising us with his capacity for empathy, the other by how much he has become a first-class jerk and thug.... ..."
    "... Let us not mince words: Vladimir Putin is a delusional thug.... ..."
    "... Remember, he's an ex-K.G.B. man - which is to say, he spent his formative years as a professional thug.... ..."
    "... WASHINGTON - Mr. Obama views Mr. Putin as a thug, according to advisers and analysts.... ..."
    "... Mr. Obama considers Mr. Putin a thug, his advisers say.... ..."
    May 19, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    anne , May 19, 2017 at 07:26 AM
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/opinion/david-brooks-snap-out-of-it.html

    September 22, 2014

    Snap Out of It
    By David Brooks

    President Vladimir Putin of Russia, a lone thug sitting atop a failing regime....

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/opinion/thomas-friedman-putin-and-the-pope.html

    October 21, 2014

    Putin and the Pope
    By Thomas L. Friedman

    One keeps surprising us with his capacity for empathy, the other by how much he has become a first-class jerk and thug....

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/thomas-l-friedman-whos-playing-marbles-now.html

    December 20, 2014

    Who's Playing Marbles Now?
    By Thomas L. Friedman

    Let us not mince words: Vladimir Putin is a delusional thug....

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/paul-krugman-putin-neocons-and-the-great-illusion.html

    December 21, 2014

    Conquest Is for Losers: Putin, Neocons and the Great Illusion
    By Paul Krugman

    Remember, he's an ex-K.G.B. man - which is to say, he spent his formative years as a professional thug....

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/thomas-friedman-czar-putins-next-moves.html

    January 27, 2015

    Czar Putin's Next Moves
    By Thomas L. Friedman

    ZURICH - If Putin the Thug gets away with crushing Ukraine's new democratic experiment and unilaterally redrawing the borders of Europe, every pro-Western country around Russia will be in danger....

    anne - , May 19, 2017 at 07:26 AM
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/world/middleeast/white-house-split-on-opening-talks-with-putin.html

    September 15, 2015

    Obama Weighing Talks With Putin on Syrian Crisis
    By PETER BAKER and ANDREW E. KRAMER

    WASHINGTON - Mr. Obama views Mr. Putin as a thug, according to advisers and analysts....

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/opinion/mr-putins-mixed-messages-on-syria.html

    September 20, 2015

    Mr. Putin's Mixed Messages on Syria

    Mr. Obama considers Mr. Putin a thug, his advisers say....

    [May 19, 2017] The witch hunt is an order of magnitude worse than during the runup to the Iraq War by Lambert Strether

    Notable quotes:
    "... Unfortunately, while identifying this past week as the proverbial 'beginning of the end' for Herr Donald's presidency isn't all that hard, untangling precisely why the President won't be able to weather this storm and will eventually be abandoned by the Republican Party is a little more difficult; especially in light of the fact that partisan mainstream liberals are still shouting objectively insane conspiracy theories about Russiagate even though Trump's total lack of respect for his job and fat f*cking mouth have all but handed them his political a** on a platter" ..."
    "... The headline: "Exclusive: Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians: sources" [ Reuters ]. The body: "The people who described the contacts to Reuters said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion between the campaign and Russia in the communications reviewed so far." Ah, the sources are "people." Excellent. We're making real progress, here. I mean, at least they aren't dinosaurs or space aliens. ..."
    "... Leakers From the Deep State Need to Face Criminal Charges" ..."
    May 19, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Lambert Strether of Corrente

    New Cold War

    Well, this ratchets up the hysteria a notch:

    I'm genuinely amazed. The cray cray is an order of magnitude worse than the run-up to the Iraq War. Go ahead and read the article; the thesis is that Russian bots on the Twitter are a bigger threat to the United States than the fake stories the Bush White House planted in the press to start the Iraq War. As always, the scandal is what's normal. Oh, and when did James " Not Wittingly " Clapper emerge as a Hero of The Republic? Did I not get the memo? Presenting Clapper as a defender of "the very foundation of our democratic political system" (his words) is like presenting Jerry Sandusky as a defender of the value of cold showers.

    "More than 10 centrist Republicans over the past 48 hours have criticized Trump for reportedly sharing classified information with Russian officials or allegedly trying to quash an FBI investigation" [ Politico ].

    "Two moderate Senate Republicans suggest the need to consider a special prosecutor" [ WaPo ]. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). This happened well before the Rosenstein announcement; I'm guessing it was the crack in the dam.

    "4 Reasons Why Robert Mueller Is an Ideal Special Counsel" [ The Nation ]. "[Mueller] was among the individuals in the Justice Department who assembled at Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital bedside in 2004 to block the Bush White House's attempt to renew a surveillance policy that Mueller and others, including James Comey, deemed to be illegal." That's good, but 2017 – 2004 = 13 years. That's a long time for a halo to stay buffed (as we saw with Comey).

    "Unfortunately, while identifying this past week as the proverbial 'beginning of the end' for Herr Donald's presidency isn't all that hard, untangling precisely why the President won't be able to weather this storm and will eventually be abandoned by the Republican Party is a little more difficult; especially in light of the fact that partisan mainstream liberals are still shouting objectively insane conspiracy theories about Russiagate even though Trump's total lack of respect for his job and fat f*cking mouth have all but handed them his political a** on a platter" [ Nina Illingworth ]. Maybe Nina will "untangle" this in a later post.

    The headline: "Exclusive: Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians: sources" [ Reuters ]. The body: "The people who described the contacts to Reuters said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion between the campaign and Russia in the communications reviewed so far." Ah, the sources are "people." Excellent. We're making real progress, here. I mean, at least they aren't dinosaurs or space aliens.

    UPDATE "The Media Elite Is Indulging Dangerous Fantasies About Removing Trump From Office"

    [ The Federalist ]. I don't often agree with the Federalist, but I think this is a good perspective. "The country is deeply divided. People have taken to attacking each other in the streets and threatening congressmen when they venture outside Washington. We're still recovering from a presidential election that actually ended marriages and tore families apart. Trump's election was, more than anything else, a giant middle finger to the political establishment, which has lost the confidence of the American people. If now seems like the right time for that establishment to launch an unconstitutional coup to remove the president through a specious application of the 25th Amendment, then I respectfully submit that you're underestimating the precariousness of national life at this moment." Another way of thinking about this: Who, exactly, makes the case to the American people? That somebody would have to be an elected official trusted by the great majority of the American people (and most definitely not a gaggle of long-faced politicians sitting at a big table). Who would that somebody be? Paul Ryan? Joe Lieberman? Jimmy Carter? Oprah? Walter Cronkite is dead. So is Mr. Rogers. So who, exactly? Some general? Which?

    "Leakers From the Deep State Need to Face Criminal Charges" [ FOX News ] and "Kucinich: 'Deep State' Trying to 'Destroy The Trump Presidency'" [ FOX News ]. I juxtapose these to show the vacuity of the term "deep state." Can you imagine FOX saying "ruling class" or "factional conflicts in the ruling class"? No?

    [May 17, 2017] Demonization of Russia that neoliberal DemoRats enjoy is not a policy. This is an attempt to create an alibi for Hillary fiasco

    May 17, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    pgl , May 17, 2017 at 11:28 AM

    Paul Ryan shows zero interest in investigating whether Trump obstructed justice or is in bed with the Russian government. Why? He needs to get these massive tax cuts for the 1% and take away from the "moochers" first.
    libezkova, May 17, 2017 at 07:12 PM
    " in bed with the Russian government."

    Are you a closet neocon ?

    libezkova, May 17, 2017 at 07:37 PM
    Demonization of Russia that people like PGL enjoy is not a policy. This is an attempt to create an alibi for Hillary fiasco.

    And as any witch hunt this is an obstacle to thinking rationally, of having a rational discourse about proper role of Russia in enhancing American national security.

    Which of cause is impossible with imperial pretension of Washington neocons.

    In any case Clinton's attempt to colonize Russia failed and after Yugoslavia war the USA neocons are responsible for the deteriorating relations.

    Taking into account complexity of modern weapon systems and the fact the USA has just 30 min and Russia 10-15 min for reacting to any emerging threat of rocket attack, my impression is that Washington is full of psychopaths, who enjoy walking on the blade edge. Kind of self-selection.

    Public is so successfully brainwashed that even mentioning the fact that Putin probably does not vivisect kittens provokes a strong negative reaction.

    Invoking Goodwin law there were already a country with the population brainwashed to the same extent.

    See Professor Stephen F. Cohen comments at

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/rethinking-russia-a-conve_b_7744498.html

    [May 17, 2017] The corporate media isnt interested in the truth or rationality. Russia is bad and needs to be destroyed is the narrative of the deep state that needs to be perpetuated.

    Hey this is blasphemous non-sense! Putin vivisects kittens for pleasure! We aren't supposed to think rationally about any of this. One of the foremost experts on Russia, Princeton's Stephen F. Cohen is rarely heard in the U.S. because the corporate media isn't interested in the truth or rationality. There is always some narrative of the deep state that needs to be perpetuated.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Professor Cohen, a long-time friend of Mikhail Gorbachev, is one of the most important Russia scholars in the world and a member of the founding board of directors of the American Committee for East-West Accord , a pro-detente organization that seeks rethinking and public discussion of U.S. policy toward Russia. ..."
    "... Despite his impressive credentials and intimate knowledge of Russia and its history, you will rarely hear Cohen's voice in the mainstream press. And it is not for a lack of trying; his views, and those of others like him, are simply shut out of the media, which, along with almost every U.S. politician, has decided to vilify Russian and Putin, irrationally equating Putin with such tyrants as Adolf Hitler. ..."
    "... Even Henry Kissinger - I think it was in March 2014 in the Washington Post ..."
    "... And then I wrote in reply to that: That's right, but it's much worse than that, because it's also that the demonization of Putin is an obstacle to thinking rationally, having a rational discourse or debate about American national security. And it's not just this catastrophe in Ukraine and the new Cold War; it's from there to Syria to Afghanistan, to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to fighting global terrorism. The demonization of Putin excludes a partner in the Kremlin that the U.S. needs, no matter who sits there. ..."
    "... Ukraine had been on Washington's agenda for a very, very long time; it is a matter of public record. It was to that that Putin reacted. It was to the fear that the new government in Kiev, which overthrew the elected government, had NATO backing and its next move would be toward Crimea and the Russian naval base there. ... But he was reacting, and as Kiev began an all-out war against the East, calling it the "anti-terrorist operation," with Washington's blessing. ... ..."
    "... Meanwhile, NATO began escalating its military presence. In each of these stages, a very close examination will show, as I'm sure historians will when they look back, that Putin has been primarily reactive. Now maybe his reactions have been wrong-headed. Maybe they've been too aggressive. That's something that could be discussed. ... ..."
    May 17, 2017 | www.huffingtonpost.com

    Last week I had the honor of interviewing Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics at NYU and Princeton University, where for many years he was director of its Russian Studies program. Professor Cohen, a long-time friend of Mikhail Gorbachev, is one of the most important Russia scholars in the world and a member of the founding board of directors of the American Committee for East-West Accord , a pro-detente organization that seeks rethinking and public discussion of U.S. policy toward Russia.

    Despite his impressive credentials and intimate knowledge of Russia and its history, you will rarely hear Cohen's voice in the mainstream press. And it is not for a lack of trying; his views, and those of others like him, are simply shut out of the media, which, along with almost every U.S. politician, has decided to vilify Russian and Putin, irrationally equating Putin with such tyrants as Adolf Hitler. As Cohen explains:

    Even Henry Kissinger - I think it was in March 2014 in the Washington Post - wrote this line: "The demonization of Putin is not a policy. It's an alibi for not having a policy."

    And then I wrote in reply to that: That's right, but it's much worse than that, because it's also that the demonization of Putin is an obstacle to thinking rationally, having a rational discourse or debate about American national security. And it's not just this catastrophe in Ukraine and the new Cold War; it's from there to Syria to Afghanistan, to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to fighting global terrorism. The demonization of Putin excludes a partner in the Kremlin that the U.S. needs, no matter who sits there.

    And Cohen reminds us that, quite contrary to the common, manufactured perception in this country, we have a very willing and capable potential partner in Moscow right now. As Cohen explains, "Bill Clinton said this not too long ago: To the extent that he knew and dealt with Putin directly, he never knew him to say anything that he, Putin, didn't mean, or ever to go back on his word or break a promise he made to Clinton."

    What's more, as Cohen reminds us, when the 9/11 attacks happened, Putin was the very first international leader to offer help to President Bush:

    Putin called George Bush after 9/11 and said, "George, we're with you, whatever we can do," and in fact did more to help the Americans fight a land war in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban from Kabul. ... Russia still had a lot of assets in Afghanistan, including a fighting force called the Northern Alliance. It had probably better intelligence in and about Afghanistan than any country, and it had air-route transport for American forces to fight in Afghanistan. He gave all this - Putin gave all this - to the Bush administration. Putin's Kremlin, not a member of NATO, did more to help the American land war and save American lives, therefore, in Afghanistan, than any NATO country.

    However, as Cohen explains, Bush strangely repaid Putin by (1) unilaterally withdrawing from the anti-ballistic (ABM) treaty, the "bedrock" of Russia's national security, and (2) launching the second wave of NATO expansion toward Russia.

    And, as Cohen points out, this was not the only case in which the U.S. quite brazenly betrayed Russia in recent decades. Thus he notes that Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama have all violated the very clear agreement that, in return for Gorbachev's allowing the reunification of Germany, the U.S. would not move NATO one inch further east. In addition, the U.S. undermined then-President Medvedev (who we claim to prefer to Putin) by unseating Gaddafi in Libya - with disastrous consequences - despite our promise to Russia that we would do no such thing if Russia agreed to the Security Council resolution approving the no-fly zone over Libya.

    All of this history must be considered when we view the current crisis in Ukraine, which, Cohen warns, is quickly leading to a hot war with Russia. As Cohen relates:

    If you took even the short time frame of the Ukrainian crisis and you began it in November 2013, when the then-elected president of Ukraine, Yanukovych, didn't actually refuse to sign the European Union's offer of a partnership with Europe. He asked for time to think about it. That brought the protesters in the streets. That led to the illegal overthrow of Yanukovych, which, by the way, Poroshenko, the current president, strangely now admits was illegal. ...

    Then comes Putin's annexation or reunification of Crimea, as Russians call it. Then already evolving now in Eastern Ukraine are protests against what's happening in Kiev, because Eastern Ukraine was the electoral base of Yanukovych. Yanukovych was its president in a fundamental way. Then comes the proxy war, with Russia helping the rebel fighters in Eastern Ukraine and the United States and NATO helping the military forces of Kiev. ...

    And so it went, on and on. Now, if you back up and ask who began the aggression, it's my argument - for which I'm called a "Putin apologist," which I am not - ... but the reality is that Putin has been mostly reactive. Let me say that again: reactive. If we had the time, I could explain to you why the reportedly benign European Union offer to Kiev in 2013 was not benign at all. No Ukrainian who wanted to survive could have accepted that. And by the way, it had clauses buried below that would've obliged Kiev to adhere to NATO military security policy. ...

    Ukraine had been on Washington's agenda for a very, very long time; it is a matter of public record. It was to that that Putin reacted. It was to the fear that the new government in Kiev, which overthrew the elected government, had NATO backing and its next move would be toward Crimea and the Russian naval base there. ... But he was reacting, and as Kiev began an all-out war against the East, calling it the "anti-terrorist operation," with Washington's blessing. ...

    This was clearly meant to be a war of destruction. ... Meanwhile, NATO began escalating its military presence. In each of these stages, a very close examination will show, as I'm sure historians will when they look back, that Putin has been primarily reactive. Now maybe his reactions have been wrong-headed. Maybe they've been too aggressive. That's something that could be discussed. ...

    But this notion that this is all Putin's aggression, or Russia's aggression, is, if not 100-percent false, let us say, for the sake of being balanced and ecumenical, it's 50-percent false. And if Washington would admit that its narrative is 50-percent false, which means Russia's narrative is 50-percent correct, that's where negotiations begin and succeed.

    I can only hope that the policy makers in this country will hear the voices of people like Professor Cohen and enter into rational negotiations with Russia in order that we may be spared what is shaping up to be a disastrous war in Europe.

    Follow Dan Kovalik on Twitter: www.twitter.com/danielmkovalik

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    But underlying all of this, and all the furor, is a fundamental assumption. It's a term that's used constantly in the media and by the various political pundits on the media, which is "Russia is our adversary." You have to basically assume that the adversary, Russia, has an antagonistic relationship with the United States, and then underneath all of that, then you have Flynn and Comey investigation and so on. Because if Russia isn't the great adversary, then it's unlikely there'd be such a to-do about all of this.

    You know your opponent is a great master when you realize no one on this side is addressing that assumption.

    The bystanders, like us, are all too busy trying to find out if Trump didn't do this or he did do that.

    RMO May 17, 2017 at 2:53 pm

    We survived the original cold war (just barely and by chance – go ahead and look up how many times we came within a gnat's eyelash of global Armageddon) w don't need another one. The Washington DC elite have gone so far round the bend that General Jack D. Ripper looks calm, sane and trustworthy by comparison.

    Chauncey Gardiner

    Thanks for this informative interview with Robert English. I too share the view that a significant opportunity was squandered in the early to mid-1990s to build a constructive relationship with Russia, with the key actors mostly those who were unable to put the Cold War behind them, and who used the opportunity to debilitate Russia economically and expand U.S. power globally; as well as US and Western European financial and economic interests to a more limited extent.

    That the Trump administration is attempting to move the needle toward a more constructive geopolitical and economic relationship with Russia is a positive development IMO, as I agree with Trump that U.S. and Russian geopolitical, economic and environmental interests are often aligned, albeit not always. However, I remain concerned about global organized crime, oligarchic political and economic control, corruption and impairment of civil liberties, issues which transcend national boundaries and are not unique to Russia; and those politicians and their sponsors in the U.S. who are seeking expanded military conflict.

    I view the conversation reflected in this interview on two levels: Those predominantly interested in preserving (the perception of) U.S. global hegemony, and those primarily seeking to disempower and replace Trump as president, although they are not necessarily mutually exclusive groups. In any event, there is little question who presently has the media megaphone. It has been educational to see how pervasive their narrative can be.

    [May 16, 2017] FBI Agents Say Comey Stood In The Way Of Clinton Email Investigation

    May 16, 2017 | www.eutimes.net
    FBI agents say the bureau is alarmed over Director James Comey deciding not to suggest that the Justice Department prosecute Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information.

    According to an interview transcript given to The Daily Caller, provided by an intermediary who spoke to two federal agents with the bureau last Friday, agents are frustrated by Comey's leadership.

    "This is a textbook case where a grand jury should have convened but was not. That is appalling," an FBI special agent who has worked public corruption and criminal cases said of the decision. "We talk about it in the office and don't know how Comey can keep going."

    The agent was also surprised that the bureau did not bother to search Clinton's house during the investigation.

    "We didn't search their house. We always search the house. The search should not just have been for private electronics, which contained classified material, but even for printouts of such material," he said.

    "There should have been a complete search of their residence," the agent pointed out. "That the FBI did not seize devices is unbelievable. The FBI even seizes devices that have been set on fire."

    Another special agent for the bureau that worked counter-terrorism and criminal cases said he is offended by Comey's saying: "we" and "I've been an investigator."

    After graduating from law school, Comey became a law clerk to a U.S. District Judge in Manhattan and later became an associate in a law firm in the city. After becoming a U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, Comey's career moved through the U.S. Attorney's Office until he became Deputy Attorney General during the George W. Bush administration.

    After Bush left office, Comey entered the private sector and became general counsel and Senior Vice President for Lockheed Martin, among other private sector posts. President Barack Obama appointed him to FBI director in 2013 replacing out going-director Robert Mueller.

    "Comey was never an investigator or special agent. The special agents are trained investigators and they are insulted that Comey included them in 'collective we' statements in his testimony to imply that the SAs agreed that there was nothing there to prosecute," the second agent said. "All the trained investigators agree that there is a lot to prosecuted but he stood in the way."

    He added, "The idea that [the Clinton/e-mail case] didn't go to a grand jury is ridiculous."

    According to Washington D.C. attorney Joe DiGenova, more FBI agents will be talking about the problems at bureau and specifically the handling of the Clinton case by Comey when Congress comes back into session and decides to force them to testify by subpoena.

    DiGenova told WMAL radio's Drive at Five last week, "People are starting to talk. They're calling their former friends outside the bureau asking for help. We were asked to day to provide legal representation to people inside the bureau and agreed to do so and to former agents who want to come forward and talk. Comey thought this was going to go away."

    He explained, "It's not. People inside the bureau are furious. They are embarrassed. They feel like they are being led by a hack but more than that that they think he's a crook. They think he's fundamentally dishonest. They have no confidence in him. The bureau inside right now is a mess."

    He added, "The most important thing of all is that the agents have decided that they are going to talk."

    Source

    [May 16, 2017] The Real Meaning of Sensitive Intelligence by Philip Giraldi

    Notable quotes:
    "... what astonished me was how quickly the media interpreted its use in the hearings to mean that the conversations and emails that apparently were recorded or intercepted involving Trump associates and assorted Russians as "sensitive contacts" meant that they were necessarily inappropriate, dangerous, or even illegal. ..."
    "... The Post is unfortunately also providing ISIS with more information than it "needs to know" to make its story more dramatic, further compromising the source. ..."
    "... McMaster described the report as "false" and informed the Post that "The president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation. At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly." Tillerson commented that "the nature of specific threats were (sic) discussed, but they did not discuss sources, methods, or military operations." ..."
    "... The media will no doubt be seeking to magnify the potential damage done while the White House goes into damage control mode. ..."
    "... In this case, the intelligence shared with Lavrov appears to be related to specific ISIS threats, which may include planned operations against civilian aircraft, judging from Trump's characteristically after-hours tweets defending his behavior, as well as other reporting. ..."
    "... The New York Times , in its own reporting of the story, initially stated that the information on ISIS did not come from an NSA or CIA operation, and later reported that the source was Israel. ..."
    "... And President Trump has one more thing to think about. No matter what damage comes out of the Lavrov discussion, he has a bigger problem. There are apparently multiple leakers on his National Security Council. ..."
    "... You have McMaster himself who categorically denies any exposure of sources and methods – he was there in person and witness to the talks – and a cloud of unknown witnesses not present speculating, without reference to McMaster or Tillerson's testimony, about what might have happened. This is the American Media in a nutshell, the Infinite Circle Jerk. ..."
    "... I am more disturbed how this story got into the press. While, not an ally, I think we should in cooperation with other states. Because the Pres is not familiar with the protocols and language and I doubt any executive has been upon entering office, I have no doubt he may be reacting or overreacting to the overreaction of others. ..."
    "... Here's a word. We have no business engaging n the overthrow of another government that is no threat to the US or her allies, and that includes Israel. Syria is not. And we should cease and desist getting further entangled in the messes of the previous executive, his Sec of State and those organizations who seem to e playing with the life blood of the US by engaging if unnecessary risks. ..."
    "... And if I understand the crumbs given the data provided by the Post, the Times and this article, if one had ill will for the source of said information, they have pretty good idea where to start. ..."
    "... In general I agree with you, but the media was NEVER concerned about the treatment of sensitive material from HRC! ..."
    "... I think he needs to cut back on intelligence sharing with Israel. They do just what the hell they want to do with anything. ..."
    May 16, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
    Intelligence agencies and senior government officials tend to use a lot of jargon. Laced with acronyms, this language sometimes does not translate very well into journalese when it hits the media.

    For example, I experienced a sense of disorientation two weeks ago over the word "sensitive" as used by several senators, Sally Yates, and James Clapper during committee testimony into Russiagate. "Sensitive" has, of course, a number of meanings. But what astonished me was how quickly the media interpreted its use in the hearings to mean that the conversations and emails that apparently were recorded or intercepted involving Trump associates and assorted Russians as "sensitive contacts" meant that they were necessarily inappropriate, dangerous, or even illegal.

    When Yates and Clapper were using "sensitive" thirteen times in the 86 page transcript of the Senate hearings, they were referring to the medium rather than the message. They were both acknowledging that the sources of the information were intelligence related, sometimes referred to as "sensitive" by intelligence professionals and government insiders as a shorthand way to describe that they are "need to know" material derived from either classified "methods" or foreign-liaison partners. That does not mean that the information contained is either good or bad or even true or false, but merely a way of expressing that the information must be protected because of where it came from or how it was developed, hence the "sensitivity."

    The word also popped up this week in a Washington Post exclusive report alleging that the president had, in his recent meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, gone too far while also suggesting that the source of a highly classified government program might be inferred from the context of what was actually revealed. The Post describes how

    The information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said. The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump's decision to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State.

    The Post is unfortunately also providing ISIS with more information than it "needs to know" to make its story more dramatic, further compromising the source. Furthermore, it should be understood that the paper is extremely hostile to Trump, the story is as always based on anonymous sources, and the revelation comes on top of another unverifiable Post article claiming that the Russians might have sought to sneak a recording device into the White House during the visit.

    No one is denying that the president discussed ISIS in some detail with Lavrov, but National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, both of whom were present at the meeting, have denied that any sources or methods were revealed while reviewing with the Russians available intelligence. McMaster described the report as "false" and informed the Post that "The president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation. At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly." Tillerson commented that "the nature of specific threats were (sic) discussed, but they did not discuss sources, methods, or military operations."

    So the question becomes to what extent can an intelligence mechanism be identified from the information that it produces. That is, to a certain extent, a judgment call. The president is able on his own authority to declassify anything, so the legality of his sharing information with Russia cannot be challenged. What is at question is the decision-making by an inexperienced president who may have been showing off to an important foreign visitor by revealing details of intelligence that should have remained secret. The media will no doubt be seeking to magnify the potential damage done while the White House goes into damage control mode.

    The media is claiming that the specific discussion with Lavrov that is causing particular concern is related to a so-called Special Access Program , or SAP, sometimes referred to as "code word information." An SAP is an operation that generates intelligence that requires special protection because of where or how it is produced. In this case, the intelligence shared with Lavrov appears to be related to specific ISIS threats, which may include planned operations against civilian aircraft, judging from Trump's characteristically after-hours tweets defending his behavior, as well as other reporting.

    There have also been reports that the White House followed up on its Lavrov meeting with a routine review of what had taken place. Several National Security Council members observed that some of the information shared with the Russians was far too sensitive to disseminate within the U.S. intelligence community. This led to the placing of urgent calls to NSA and CIA to brief them on what had been said.

    Based on the recipients of the calls alone, one might surmise that the source of the information would appear to be either a foreign-intelligence service or a technical collection operation, or even both combined. The Post claims that the originator of the intelligence did not clear its sharing with the Russians and raises the possibility that no more information of that type will be provided at all in light of the White House's apparent carelessness in its use. The New York Times , in its own reporting of the story, initially stated that the information on ISIS did not come from an NSA or CIA operation, and later reported that the source was Israel.

    The Times is also reporting that Trump provided to Lavrov "granular" information on the city in Syria where the information was collected that will possibly enable the Russians or ISIS to identify the actual source, with devastating consequences. That projection may be overreach, but the fact is that the latest gaffe from the White House could well damage an important intelligence liaison relationship in the Middle East while reinforcing the widely held impression that Washington does not know how to keep a secret. It will also create the impression that Donald Trump, out of ignorance or hubris, exhibits a certain recklessness in his dealing with classified information, a failing that he once attributed to his presidential opponent Hillary Clinton.

    And President Trump has one more thing to think about. No matter what damage comes out of the Lavrov discussion, he has a bigger problem. There are apparently multiple leakers on his National Security Council.

    Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

    This article has been updated to reflect news developments.

    Thymoleontas, says: May 16, 2017 at 12:33 pm

    " The latest gaffe from the White House could well damage an important intelligence liaison relationship in the Middle East "

    On the other hand, it also represents closer collaboration with Russia–even if unintended–which is an improvement on the status quo ante and, not to mention, key to ending the conflict in Syria.

    Dies Irae , says: May 16, 2017 at 12:38 pm
    You have McMaster himself who categorically denies any exposure of sources and methods – he was there in person and witness to the talks – and a cloud of unknown witnesses not present speculating, without reference to McMaster or Tillerson's testimony, about what might have happened. This is the American Media in a nutshell, the Infinite Circle Jerk.
    MM , says: May 16, 2017 at 12:44 pm
    Out of my depth, but was Trump working within the framework, maybe a bit outside if the story is true, of the Joint Implementation Group the Obama administration created last year with Russia?

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2016/07/13/Editorial-Opinion/Graphics/terms_of_reference_for_the_Joint_Implementation_Group.pdf?tid=a_inl

    Also, I recall reading that the prior administration promised Russia ISIS intel. Not sure if that ever happened, but I doubt they'd have made it public or leak anything to the press.

    Brian W , says: May 16, 2017 at 12:57 pm
    Apr 21, 2017 Ike and McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower's Secret Campaign against Joseph McCarthy

    Author David A. Nichols reveals how President Dwight D. Eisenhower masterminded the downfall of the anti-Communist demagogue Senator Joseph McCarthy.

    https://youtu.be/FAY_9aQMVbQ

    EliteCommInc , says: May 16, 2017 at 12:57 pm
    Avoiding the minutia.

    I think it should go without saying that intelligence is a sensitive business and protecting those who operate in its murky waters is important to having an effective agency.

    Of course the Pres of the US has a duty to do so.

    I have not yet read the post article. But I am doubtful that the executive had any intention of putting anyone in harms way. I am equally doubtful that this incident will. If the executive made an error in judgement, I am sure it will be dealt wit in an appropriate manner.

    I do wish he'd stop tweeting, though I get why its useful to him.

    I am more disturbed how this story got into the press. While, not an ally, I think we should in cooperation with other states. Because the Pres is not familiar with the protocols and language and I doubt any executive has been upon entering office, I have no doubt he may be reacting or overreacting to the overreaction of others.

    Here's a word. We have no business engaging n the overthrow of another government that is no threat to the US or her allies, and that includes Israel. Syria is not. And we should cease and desist getting further entangled in the messes of the previous executive, his Sec of State and those organizations who seem to e playing with the life blood of the US by engaging if unnecessary risks.

    Just another brier brushfire of a single tumble weed to add to the others in the hope that setting fires in trashcans will make the current exec go away or at least engage in a mea culpa and sign more checks in the mess that is the middle east policy objective that remains a dead end.

    __________

    And if I understand the crumbs given the data provided by the Post, the Times and this article, if one had ill will for the source of said information, they have pretty good idea where to start.

    Cachip , says: May 16, 2017 at 1:12 pm
    How do you know it wasn't intended as pure misdirection?
    Brian W , says: May 16, 2017 at 1:20 pm
    January 10, 2014 *500* Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is Always Aimed at Crushing Dissent

    No matter which government conducts mass surveillance, they also do it to crush dissent, and then give a false rationale for why they're doing it.

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/500-years-of-history-shows-that-mass-spying-is-always-aimed-at-crushing-dissent/5364462

    Johann , says: May 16, 2017 at 1:54 pm
    Politics is now directly endangering innocent civilians. Because of the leaks and its publication, ISIS for sure now knows that there is an information leak out of their organization. They will now re-compartmentalize and may be successful in breaking that information leak. Innocent airline passenger civilians, American, Russian, or whoever may die as a result. Russia and the US are both fighting ISIS. We are de facto allies in that fight whether some people like it or not. Time to get over it.
    EliteCommInc. , says: May 16, 2017 at 2:44 pm
    Having read the article, uhhh, excuse me, but unlike personal secrets. The purpose of intel is to use to or keep on hand for some-other date. But of that information is related to the security of our interests and certainly a cooperative relationship with Russia is in our interest. Because in the convoluted fight with ISIS/ISIL, Russia is an ally.

    What this belies is the mess of the intelligence community. If in fact, the Russians intend to take a source who provided information that was helpful to them, it would be a peculiar twist of strategic action. The response does tell us that we are in some manner in league with ISIS/ISIL or their supporters so deep that there is a need to protect them, from what is anybody's guess. Because if the information is accurate, I doubt the Russians are going to about killing the source, but rather improving their airline security.

    But if we are in fact attempting to remove Pres Assad, and are in league with ISIS/ISIL in doing so - I get why the advocates of such nonsense might be in a huff. So ISIS/ISISL our one time foe and now our sometimes friend . . .

    Good greif . . .

    Pres Trump is the least of muy concerns when it coes to security.

    Some relevant material on intel:

    http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/327413-how-the-intel-community-was-turned-into-a-political

    http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/intelligence-failures-more-profound-than-president-admits/

    But if I were Pres Trump, I might steer clear of Russia for a while to stop feeding the beast.

    Kurt Gayle , says: May 16, 2017 at 3:28 pm
    Philip, back on July 23, 2014, you explained in "How ISIS Evades the CIA" "the inability of the United States government to anticipate the ISIS offensive that has succeeded in taking control of a large part of Iraq." You explained why the CIA had to date had no success in infiltrating ISIS.

    You continued: "Given U.S. intelligence's probable limited physical access to any actual terrorist groups operating in Syria or Iraq any direct attempt to penetrate the organization through placing a source inside would be difficult in the extreme. Such efforts would most likely be dependent on the assistance of friendly intelligence services in Turkey or Jordan. Both Turkey and Jordan have reported that terrorists have entered their countries by concealing themselves in the large numbers of refugees that the conflict in Syria has produced, and both are concerned as they understand full well that groups like ISIS will be targeting them next. Some of the infiltrating adherents to radical groups have certainly been identified and detained by the respective intelligence services of those two countries, and undoubtedly efforts have been made to 'turn' some of those in custody to send them back into Syria (and more recently Iraq) to report on what is taking place. Depending on what arrangements might have been made to coordinate the operations, the 'take' might well be shared with the United States and other friendly governments."

    You then describe the difficulties faced by a Turkish or Jordanian agent trying to infiltrate ISIS: "But seeding is very much hit or miss, as someone who has been out of the loop of his organization might have difficulty working his way back in. He will almost certainly be regarded with some suspicion by his peers and would be searched and watched after his return, meaning that he could not take back with him any sophisticated communications devices no matter how cleverly they are concealed. This would make communicating any information obtained back to one's case officers in Jordan or Turkey difficult or even impossible."

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-isis-evades-the-cia/

    Notwithstanding how "difficult or even impossible" such an operation would be - and using the New York Times as your only source for a lot of otherwise completely unsubstantiated information – and admitting that "this is sheer speculation on my part" – you say that "it is logical to assume that the countries that have provided numerous recruits for ISIS [Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia] would have used that fact as cover to carry out a seeding operation to introduce some of their own agents into the ISIS organization."

    Back to the New York Times as your only source, you say that "the Times is also reporting that Trump provided to Lavrov 'granular' information on the city in Syria where the information was collected that will possibly enable the Russians or ISIS to identify the actual source, with devastating consequences."

    But having ventured into the far reaches of that line of speculation, you do admit that "that projection may be overreach." Indeed!

    You go on to characterize the events of the White House meeting with the Russians as "the latest gaffe from the White House" – even though there is absolutely no evidence (outside of the unsubstantiated reports of the Washington Post and the New York Times) that anything to do with the meeting was a "gaffe" – and you further speculate that "it could well damage an important intelligence liaison relationship in the Middle East."

    That is, again, pure speculation on your part.

    One valuable lesson that you've taught TAC readers over the years, Philip: That we need to carefully examine the sources of information – and the sources of dis-information.

    KennethF , says: May 16, 2017 at 3:33 pm
    Yet again from Giraldi: the problem isn't that the POTUS is ignorant and incompetent; we should all be more concerned that the Deep State is leaking the proof.
    collin , says: May 16, 2017 at 4:12 pm
    In general I agree with you, but the media was NEVER concerned about the treatment of sensitive material from HRC!
    charley , says: May 16, 2017 at 4:51 pm
    I think he needs to cut back on intelligence sharing with Israel. They do just what the hell they want to do with anything.
    Brad Kain , says: May 16, 2017 at 5:03 pm
    Trump has now essentially confirmed the story from the Post and contradicted the denials from McMaster – he shared specific intelligence to demonstrate his willingness to work with the Russians. Moreover, it seems that Israel was the ally that provided this intelligence. The author and others will defend this, but I can only see this as a reckless and impulsive decision that only causes Russia and our allies to trust the US less.

    [May 15, 2017] Ann Coulter Is Worried The Trump-Haters Were Right

    May 15, 2017 | dailycaller.com
    So there's no wall, and Obama's amnesties look like they are here to stay. Do you still trust Trump?

    Uhhhh. I'm not very happy with what has happened so far. I guess we have to try to push him to keep his promises. But this isn't North Korea, and if he doesn't keep his promises I'm out. This is why we voted for him. I think everyone who voted for him knew his personality was grotesque, it was the issues.

    I hate to say it, but I agree with every line in my friend Frank Bruni's op-ed in The New York Times today. Where is the great negotiation? Where is the bull in the china shop we wanted? That budget the Republicans pushed through was like a practical joke Did we win anything? And this is the great negotiator?

    You said during the election and in columns that if there is no wall it's the end of America.

    Trump was our last shot. I kind of thought it was Romney, and then lo and behold like a miracle Trump comes along. I still believe in Trump_vs_deep_state. I have no regrets for ferociously supporting him. What choice did we have?

    We had no choice. Yeah, I mean, my fingers are still crossed. It's not like I'm out yet, but boy, things don't look good. I've said to other people, "It's as if we're in Chicago and Trump tells us he's going to get us to LA in six days. But for the first three days we are driving towards New York. Yes, it is true he can still turn around and get us to LA in three days, but I'm a little nervous.

    [May 15, 2017] Trump fires FBI director James Comey, Swamp Goes Wild

    May 10, 2017 | www.eutimes.net

    In the political swamp that is Washington, and in the press swamp, motor boats began speeding every which way in the wake of Trump's decision to fire FBI Director Comey.

    People in the boats are holding up signs to explain the reason for the firing.

    The first sign was: COMEY LIED. Comey lied the other day. He lied in testimony before Congress, when he said Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's long-time aide, had sent "hundreds and thousands" of emails to her husband, Anthony Weiner, some of which contained classified information. The truth was, the FBI says, contradicting Comey, a great many of those emails were merely "backed up" on Weiner's laptop via "backup devices." Huh? Does that actually mean something? Weiner obtained those emails out of the sky, delivered by a chariot, and not from Huma? Weiner's laptop was serving as a storage device, a personal little cloud? Somebody not connected to the Hillary campaign was using the social-media's porn star as a backup for classified data? Who would that be? Putin? Putin hacked the Hillary/DNC emails, and sent them to both WikiLeaks and Anthony Weiner? "Hi Anthony. Vlad here. Keep these thousands of emails for posterity."

    The next motor boat running through the swamp featured a sign that said: COMEY SCREWED UP THE HILLARY INVESTIGATION. This sign can be interpreted several ways, depending on who is in the boat. One, Comey didn't press the investigation into Hillary's personal email server far enough last summer and fall. He stalled it. He didn't ask for an indictment. That's why Trump fired him yesterday. Trump didn't fire Comey right after he was elected president, when it would have been a simple bye bye. No, Trump waited five months and then lowered the boom. Sure.

    The other meaning of COMEY SCREWED UP THE HILLARY INVESTIGATION is: Comey improperly told the world (last summer) that the FBI was investigating Hillary. His announcement influenced the election. The FBI is supposed to keep absolutely quiet about ongoing investigations. Comey didn't. Then he publicly closed the book on the investigation, opened it again, and closed it again. That's why Trump just fired him. Again, Trump waited five months after the election and then got rid of Comey. And of course, Trump was morally outraged that Comey exposed Hillary in the first place, when Comey should have remained silent. Sure. That makes a lot of sense.

    The next motor boat speeding across the swamp held up a big sign that said, TRUMP FIRED COMEY TO STOP THE FBI FROM INVESTIGATING THE TRUMP-RUSSIA CONNECTION. You see, for five months, Trump happily left Comey in place, knowing Comey was investigating him, Trump, and yesterday Trump had enough of that, so he fired the FBI director. Right.

    The next motor boat in the swamp held up a sign that said, THIS IS NIXON ALL OVER AGAIN, THIS IS TRUMP'S WATERGATE. The sign refers to the last sign, but ups the ante. And there is another sign that says, in the same vein, NOW WE CAN IMPEACH TRUMP. And another one that says, APPOINT AN INDEPENDENT COUNSEL TO INVESTIGATE THE TRUMP-RUSSIA CONNECTION.

    I'm waiting for Bob Woodward of Watergate fame to step in and say, "It's all right, folks, I'm on the case. I'll handle it. I was just eating lunch and sipping a fine wine in my underground parking garage when a shadowy figure stepped out of the gloom and whispered, 'My throat is deep, and I'll spoon-feed you secrets for the next year, but you'll have to dig up the facts. Everybody is involved in the cover-up. Comey, Sessions, Pence, Bannon, Conway, Ivanka, Putin, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Stalin."

    So why did Trump fire Comey yesterday?

    I don't know, but the short answer might be: Comey's boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, told Trump to get rid of Comey. Sessions made the call.

    Sessions now has a specific plan to make the FBI over in the image he prefers. Sessions wants to shape the Bureau according to his agendas. Sessions has looked into the Bureau and he now knows which people he wants to fire. He wants to get rid of the Obama crowd. He wants loyalists. He doesn't want a Dept. of Justice that is going in one direction, while the FBI is going in another. Sessions wants a predictable FBI. His own.

    Joel Pollak, writing at Breitbart, has a simpler answer to the question, why fire Comey now? Pollak writes :

    "But why fire Comey now? The answer is simple. The day before, President Barack Obama's former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper repeated, under oath, what he told NBC News' Chuck Todd on Meet the Press on March 5 - that he had seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. That gave the Trump administration the breathing room to dismiss Comey - which it simply did not have before."

    In other words, now Trump can't be accused of firing Comey to stop "the truth" emerging about a Trump-Russia collusion, because there isn't any collusion.

    Theoretically, that might be the case-but the spin machine doesn't care about the truth or who is right and who is wrong. The machine keeps running. Those motor boats keep moving across the swamp. Signs come out. People yell and scream.

    Chuck Schumer may soon compare Trump to Benedict Arnold.

    For the past 65 years, the CIA has been infiltrating media and promoting many messages. In certain cases, an op involves promoting CONFLICTING messages, because the intent is sowing discord, chaos, and division. In this instance (Comey/Trump), it's a walk in the park (or a ride in the swamp). All sorts of people on both sides already have steam coming out of their ears, without any nudging or provocation.

    A child could run this spin counter-spin op.

    And we're just getting started.

    Source

    [May 14, 2017] US intervenes in Russian politics but Moscow shrugs it off Asia Times by M.K. Bhadrakumar

    Notable quotes:
    "... The US reaction is prima facie out of sync with President Donald Trump's world view, which he has articulated repeatedly – namely, that it is not the business of the United States to be prescriptive toward other countries on how they ought to handle their domestic issues. ..."
    "... "do not transfer into an obligation to violate its own law." ..."
    Mar 28, 2017 | www.atimes.com
    he Russian-American relationship received a jolt after Washington took exception to the Kremlin's handling of protesters in many Russian cities, including Moscow, at the weekend.

    The US state department's acting spokesman, Mark Toner, told the Russian state news agency TASS in Washington that the US condemned the arrest of the demonstrators – who were protesting against endemic corruption in Russian politics – and demanded that they be released. TASS quoted him as follows:

    "The United States strongly condemns the detention of hundreds of peaceful protesters throughout Russia on Sunday. Detaining peaceful protesters, human rights observers, and journalists is an affront to core democratic values. We were troubled to hear of the arrest of opposition figure Alexei Navalny upon arrival at the demonstration, as well as the police raids on the anti-corruption organization he heads. The United States will monitor this situation, and we call on the government of Russia to immediately release all peaceful protesters."

    The US reaction is prima facie out of sync with President Donald Trump's world view, which he has articulated repeatedly – namely, that it is not the business of the United States to be prescriptive toward other countries on how they ought to handle their domestic issues.

    How far the Trump administration has consciously decided to champion Navalny's political platform, as Barack Obama's administration did, is unclear. More likely, it is holding a can of worms that it has yet to figure out what to do with. Besides, Obama-era holdovers are very much still present in Trump's administration, especially in the foreign policy and intelligence establishment, and they set the pace of day-to-day work.

    Navalny is a prominent Russian opposition figure. He has been lionized in the US, although the Moscow establishment brands him as an agent of foreign powers. Indeed, Radio Liberty & Free Europe, which is US government-funded, has disseminated podcasts espousing Navalny's appeal to the Russian public and highlighting alleged corruption by high state officials. Navalny's main target in recent times has been Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is a close associate of Putin. What needs to be factored in here is that Russia is also heading for a presidential election in March next year.

    To be sure, there is more to these matters than meets the eye. Such intrusive behaviour by the US in Russia's domestic politics has been deeply resented by the Kremlin in the past and has represented, arguably, the biggest bone of contention the Russian-American relationship during the past several years. However, it is striking that the Kremlin reaction to Toner's statement was rather muted.

    The presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov simply shrugged off the American criticism, saying that Russia's international commitments "do not transfer into an obligation to violate its own law." Peskov took the line that the protests were in violation of Russian regulations on public gatherings, which require organizers to receive permission from the authorities "to avoid schedule conflicts and overcrowding."

    Russia has been highly circumspect in its reactions to American provocations in recent months. When the Obama administration declared 35 Russian diplomats personae non gratae at the end of December, President Vladimir Putin held back from retaliating, stating: "Further steps towards the restoration of Russian-American relations will be built on the basis of the policy which the administration of President D. Trump will carry out."

    However, the Trump administration ought to know that Washington has been lionizing a controversial Russian political personality who was once found guilty of embezzlement.

    When the former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton championed anti-establishment protesters in Moscow during the December 2011 presidential election in Russia, Putin's reaction was sharper. "I looked at the first reaction of our US partners," he said then. "The first thing that the secretary of state [Clinton] did was say that they [the elections] were not honest and not fair, but she had not even yet received the material from the observers. She set the tone for some actors in our country and gave them a signal. They heard the signal and with the support of the US State Department began active work."

    In comparison, Peskov simply rejected Toner's statement as inconsequential. The Kremlin does not want to hold the Trump administration as responsible for crossing the "red line" on US-Russia relations. The door is of course open still for a US-Russian détente. Thus, Moscow will exercise strategic patience and let the Pentagon take its time to seek the Russian military's help or cooperation in Syria. Equally, it stands to reason that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will go ahead with his planned visit to Moscow on April 12 .

    [May 14, 2017] The Russia Hacking Fiasco No Evidence Required by Mike Whitney

    Notable quotes:
    "... Whether Russia was involved in the US elections or not, is a matter of pure speculation. But speculation is not sufficient grounds for appointing a special prosecutor, nor are the lies and misinformation that appear daily in our leading newspapers, like the dissembling New York Times, the dissembling Washington Post and the dissembling Wall Street Journal. The call for a special prosecutor is not based on evidence, it is based on politics, the politics of personal destruction. ..."
    "... And that's precisely what the special prosecutor provision is designed to do; it provides the administration's rivals with the weapons they need to conduct a massive fishing expedition aimed at character assassination and, ultimately, impeachment. ..."
    "... Donald Trump had the audacity to win an election that was earmarked for establishment favorite and globalist warmonger-in-chief, Hillary Clinton. That's what this witch hunt is all about, sour grapes. ..."
    "... But why has Russia been chosen as the target in this deep state-media scam? What has Russia done to deserve all the negative press and unsupported claims of criminal meddling? ..."
    "... That's easy. Just look at a map. For the last 16 years, the US has been rampaging across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Washington intends to control critical oil and natural gas reserves in the ME, establish military bases across Central Asia, and remain the dominant player in an area of that is set to become the most populous and prosperous region of the world. It's the Great Game all over again, only this time-around, Uncle Sam is in the drivers seat not the Queen of England. But one country has upset that plan, blocked that plan, derailed that plan. Russia. ..."
    "... For the last quarter of a century– since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union– the world has been Washington's oyster. If the president of the United States wanted to invade a country in the Middle East, kill a million people, and leave the place in a smoldering pile of rubble, then who could stop him? Nobody. But now that's all changed. Now evil Putin has thrown up a roadblock to US hegemony in Syria and Ukraine. Now Washington's landbridge to Central Asia has been split in two, and its plan to control vital pipeline corridors from Qatar to the EU is no longer viable. Russia has stopped Washington dead-in-its tracks and Washington is furious. ..."
    "... The anti-Russia hysteria in the western media is equal to the pain the US foreign policy establishment is currently experiencing. And the reason the foreign policy establishment is in so much pain, is because they are not getting their way. It's that simple. Their global strategy is in a shambles because Russia will not let them topple the Syrian government, install their own puppet regime, redraw the map of the Middle East, run roughshod over international law, and tighten their grip on another battered war-torn part of the world. ..."
    "... So now Russia must pay. Putin must be demonized and derided. The American people must be taught to hate Russia and all-things Russian. ..."
    "... Russia has become the all-purpose punching bag because Washington's plans for global domination have gone up in smoke. ..."
    May 12, 2017 | www.unz.com

    There's no proof that Russia hacked the US elections. There's no proof that Russian officials or Russian agents colluded with members of the Trump campaign.

    There's no proof that Russia provided material support of any kind for the Trump campaign or that Russian agents hacked Hillary Clinton's emails or that Russian officials provided Wikileaks with emails that were intended to sabotage Hillary's chances to win the election.

    So far, no one in any of the 17 US intelligence agencies has stepped forward and verified the claims of Russian meddling or produced a scintilla of hard evidence that Russia was in anyway involved in the 2016 elections.

    No proof means no proof. It means that the people and organizations that are making these uncorroborated claims have no basis for legal action, no presumption of wrongdoing, and no grounds for prosecution. They have nothing. Zilch. Their claims, charges and accusations are like the soap bubbles we give to our children and grandchildren. The brightly-colored bubbles wobble across the sky for a minute or two and then, Poof, they vanish into the ether. The claims of Russia hacking are like these bubbles. They are empty, unsubstantiated rumors completely devoid of substance. Poof.

    It has been eight months since the inception of this unprecedentedly-pathetic and infinitely-irritating propaganda campaign, and in those eight months neither the media nor the politicos nor the Intel agents who claim to be certain that Russia meddled in US elections, have produced anything that even remotely resembles evidence. Instead, they have trotted out the same lie over and over again ad nauseam from every newspaper, every tabloid and every televised news program in the country. Over and over and over again. The media's persistence is nearly as impressive as its cynicism, which is the one quality that they seem to have mastered. The coverage has been relentless, ubiquitous, pernicious and mendacious. The only problem is that there's not a grain of truth to any of it. It is all 100 percent, unalloyed baloney.

    So it doesn't matter how many Democratic senators and congressmen disgrace themselves by lighting their hair on fire and howling about "evil Putin" or the imaginary "threats to our precious democracy". Nor does it matter how many hyperbolic articles appear in media alleging sinister activities and espionage by diabolical Moscow Central. It doesn't matter because there is have absolutely zero solid evidence to support their ludicrous and entirely politically-motivated claims.

    Whether Russia was involved in the US elections or not, is a matter of pure speculation. But speculation is not sufficient grounds for appointing a special prosecutor, nor are the lies and misinformation that appear daily in our leading newspapers, like the dissembling New York Times, the dissembling Washington Post and the dissembling Wall Street Journal. The call for a special prosecutor is not based on evidence, it is based on politics, the politics of personal destruction. The Democrats and the media want this tool so they can rummage through whatever private information or paperwork anyone in the Trump administration might possess. So while they might not dig up anything relevant to the Russia hacking investigation, they will certainly gather enough sordid or suspicious information to annihilate the people in their crosshairs. And that's precisely what the special prosecutor provision is designed to do; it provides the administration's rivals with the weapons they need to conduct a massive fishing expedition aimed at character assassination and, ultimately, impeachment.

    But, why?

    Because Donald Trump had the audacity to win an election that was earmarked for establishment favorite and globalist warmonger-in-chief, Hillary Clinton. That's what this witch hunt is all about, sour grapes.

    But why has Russia been chosen as the target in this deep state-media scam? What has Russia done to deserve all the negative press and unsupported claims of criminal meddling?

    That's easy. Just look at a map. For the last 16 years, the US has been rampaging across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Washington intends to control critical oil and natural gas reserves in the ME, establish military bases across Central Asia, and remain the dominant player in an area of that is set to become the most populous and prosperous region of the world. It's the Great Game all over again, only this time-around, Uncle Sam is in the drivers seat not the Queen of England. But one country has upset that plan, blocked that plan, derailed that plan. Russia.

    Russia has stopped Washington's murderous marauding and genocidal depredations in Ukraine and Syria, which is why the US foreign policy establishment is so pissed-off. US elites aren't used to obstacles.

    For the last quarter of a century– since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union– the world has been Washington's oyster. If the president of the United States wanted to invade a country in the Middle East, kill a million people, and leave the place in a smoldering pile of rubble, then who could stop him? Nobody. But now that's all changed. Now evil Putin has thrown up a roadblock to US hegemony in Syria and Ukraine. Now Washington's landbridge to Central Asia has been split in two, and its plan to control vital pipeline corridors from Qatar to the EU is no longer viable. Russia has stopped Washington dead-in-its tracks and Washington is furious.

    The anti-Russia hysteria in the western media is equal to the pain the US foreign policy establishment is currently experiencing. And the reason the foreign policy establishment is in so much pain, is because they are not getting their way. It's that simple. Their global strategy is in a shambles because Russia will not let them topple the Syrian government, install their own puppet regime, redraw the map of the Middle East, run roughshod over international law, and tighten their grip on another battered war-torn part of the world.

    So now Russia must pay. Putin must be demonized and derided. The American people must be taught to hate Russia and all-things Russian. And, most of all, Russia must be blamed for anything and everything under the sun, including the firing of police-state Reichsführer, James Comey, who -- at various times in his career -- "approved or defended some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration .including torture , warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention." (ACLU)

    This is the ethically-challenged scalawag the Democrats are now defending tooth in nail. It's pathetic. Russia has become the all-purpose punching bag because Washington's plans for global domination have gone up in smoke. The truth is, Putin's done us all a big favor.

    MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] .

    [May 12, 2017] Its all about the money and power struggle within grant-sucking professional civil-rights activists crowd

    Notable quotes:
    "... The abuse of homosexuals in Chechnya has come out of the microwave reheated again today. ..."
    "... Russia reached a peace in Chechnya by letting the Chechens be masters in their own house. It is not on Russia's footsteps what Chechens choose to do with their society. Perhaps NATzO bloody hypocrites can impose order in Chechnya themselves. They can fix up their precious Saudi Arabia too, while they are it. ..."
    "... I don't claim to be as talented and well-connected as Mark Ames, but I had an expose/speculation written about the whole affair. ..."
    "... Bad stuff – Ames is disconnected from the facts on the ground and it shows. He is not present, he does no research on his own, he's either reminiscenting about good ol' days of the printed eXile when he was physically present in Russia, or trusts such rag as "NG" without second thoughts. ..."
    "... Ultimately, his two-parter is not about the issue – it's about settling scores with the NYT and Alexeyev. ..."
    May 12, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    et Al , May 11, 2017 at 8:15 am

    The abuse of homosexuals in Chechnya has come out of the microwave reheated again today.

    Regardless of whether it is fact, fiction or something in between (I think we can agree that there are no 'gay concentration camps' as some of the British media proclaimed a week or so ago), it is I guess a blessing that the Ukraine, in 'Celebrating Diversity'* banned Russia from the contest. Otherwise we would have seen 'pressure on eurovision' etc. to not allow Russia because of events in Chechnya. Kiev rather ruined this latter plan, but ultimately the prepared media storm was still let go despite its main goal having already failed.

    As we have seen, this story has waxed and waned since it was first reported selectively in the western media from Novaya Gazeta, the latest recharging being the deliberate march to deliver a petition to the Kremlin, guaranteed to garner news headlines as the organizers were not interested in asking for official permission. As Mark Ames noted in a recent post at eXiled Online (not to mention the toxic, anti-semitic amoral f/tard Nikolai Alekseyev who I posted about a while ago and not long after the story broke and also saw the same sources Ames quotes), the LGBT crowd is fully signed up to the US agenda even if it means keeping silent about the plight of LGBT in US client or allied states.

    It seems to me that just about everything including the kitchen sink being thrown at Russia. Maybe the neocons and their willing idiots sense they are running out of time and it doesn't matter how outrageous the claims are, best get it in. That's the thing about pendulums. They always swing back, whether you openly recognize it happening or not.

    * This years Eurovision tag line.

    kirill , May 11, 2017 at 8:29 am
    Russia reached a peace in Chechnya by letting the Chechens be masters in their own house. It is not on Russia's footsteps what Chechens choose to do with their society. Perhaps NATzO bloody hypocrites can impose order in Chechnya themselves. They can fix up their precious Saudi Arabia too, while they are it.
    Lyttenburgh , May 11, 2017 at 7:58 pm
    I don't claim to be as talented and well-connected as Mark Ames, but I had an expose/speculation written about the whole affair.

    Tl;dr version – it's all about the money and power struggle within grant-sucking professional "civil-rights activists" crowd, this time – among teh ghays.

    The whole fervor with which both our liberasts and the Westerner decry and discuss this non-issue, based only on a ballsy claim by a shitty news rag, proves once more, that even the people, who claim to be irreligious (i.e. the aformentioned crowd) still need a prothesis for a faith. The conspiracy theories and fake news following is just the thing they want.

    Lyttenburgh , May 11, 2017 at 11:59 pm
    Update: went to the semi-revived eXiled-online, read Ames' two-parter. On the one hand – good stuff about Alexeyev the chubby arch-gay of all Rus (or so he claims). Good links about the collusion between the "professional gays" and the Western (read: USA) powers that be, replete with them shyly not yapping about the conditions of teh ghays in the countries which are "allies". and "strategic partners" of the USA.

    Bad stuff – Ames is disconnected from the facts on the ground and it shows. He is not present, he does no research on his own, he's either reminiscenting about good ol' days of the printed eXile when he was physically present in Russia, or trusts such rag as "NG" without second thoughts.

    Ultimately, his two-parter is not about the issue – it's about settling scores with the NYT and Alexeyev.

    [May 12, 2017] Rapewhistling for Hitler by Anatoly Karlin

    Essentially Hitler Germany attempt of colonization of Russian lands up to Ural mountains was to inspired by the achievements on US colonists as for Indian population with Slavs. "Wiki says 50%-60% of Russians were to be exterminated, another 15% sent to Siberia. (so 65%-75% removed). 75% of Belarussians and 65% Ukrainians were to be removed. No food aid was the be sent to Siberia, to there would be starvation there until a "natural" self-sustaining population of 40 million or so would remain."
    Notable quotes:
    "... Note: I actually think it's considerably less, because sentencing for murder is range constricted by biological ageing. And the homicide problem is usually considered to be worse than the sexual violence one, even though there are usually far fewer of them than there are rapes ..."
    "... There certainly are some neocon Anglos who want to demonise WWII era Russia as much as possible, even if that means making weak arguments that Stalin's treatment of foreigners was worse than Hitler's. Why? because Germany has now denounced nationalism and embraced globalism, while Russia hasn't. Also, while Stalin wasn't as nationalistic as Hitler he was a relatively nationalist despot who killed off a lot of globalist communists (like Trotsky) and still has a significant following among Russian nationalists (if anyone says Trotsky wasn't a bad man that's a tell-tale sign they are a globalist ideologue). ..."
    May 09, 2017 | www.unz.com
    May 9, 2017 157 Comments

    About two thirds of the USSR's 27 million casualties were civilians – that is, almost 10% of its prewar population. Had those percentages been applied to Nazi Germany, it would lost 8 million people – an order of magnitude than the 400,000 civilians it lost due to Allied strategic bombing, and the 600,000 who died during the expulsions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe (the vast majority of which were carried out by local authorities, not the Red Army or the NKVD).

    About 3.3 million out of 5.7 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi custody (compared to 15% of German POWs in the half-starved USSR, and low single digit figures for Allied POWs in Nazi Germany). Had the Soviets treated its 4.2 million German POWs as harshly, with a death rate of 60%, the German number of military dead would have risen from 5.3 million to around 7.3 million. That's not far off the figure of 8.7 million Soviet military deaths (9.2 million taking into account unregistered militia in 1941).

    It's now well known that Nazi long-term plans called for the eventual genocide of about 75% of the Soviet population, and the helotization/expulsion of the rest. If we count probabilities, assuming there was a 50% chance of Nazi victory over the USSR in 1941-42, and a 50% chance of Generalplan Ost being implemented in its full scale, that translates to around 200 million times 25% equals 50 million additional deaths. This means that in the average of all possible timelines, about 75 million Soviet citizens died, or 37.5% of its prewar population. That translates to around 30 million if these percentages are applied to Germany and its East European diaspora.

    And yet for some people – for the most part, the most Rusophobic neocons and Cold Warriors, the more Nazi elements of the Alt Right, and deranged Poles and Balts who don't quite realize what Hitler had in store for them – the Soviet rape of about 2 million women in Eastern Germany at the end of the war is supposed to be a really huge, defining war crime, even something that delegitimizes the overall Soviet victory.*

    How many rapes is one death/murder "worth"? My intuition is that murder is quite a lot worse, perhaps by an order of magnitude if I had to quantify it, and I suspect that most people will agree. It just so happens that so do sentencing guidelines. The typical term for murder in the US is 30 years to life (which might functionally translate to an average of 50 years). The average term for rape is 10 years, of which about 5 are served. This is a differential of five. It also happens to be almost exactly the differential between the murder rate in the US (~5 cases / 100,000 anually) and the rate of rape and sexual assault (~30 / 100,000 annually, as per police records and self-victimization surveys). Let us then provisionally estimate that rape is on average 20% as "bad" as murder. ( Note: I actually think it's considerably less, because sentencing for murder is range constricted by biological ageing. And the homicide problem is usually considered to be worse than the sexual violence one, even though there are usually far fewer of them than there are rapes ).

    Therefore, let's say 2 million rapes translates to 400,000 deaths. Compare this to 27 million Soviet civilian deaths (of which two thirds were civilians) in a war started by Nazi Germany, or the 75 million or so Soviet deaths across all timelines. Even assuming that the worst estimates of the Red Army rapes are accurate – they were still, at most, equivalent to far less than 1% of the Nazi crimes against Russia.

    Now to be sure you can argue that not all "murders" are equal, especially in war. Direct genocide, like the gassings of Jews or the massacres of Belorussian villagers, seems to be worse than deaths incurred by incidental effects of war, such as bombings of industrial facilities or famine incurred due to the stresses of the war effort, which in turn are worse than military deaths, since society tends to consider soldiers as pretty much "fair game" (though it is questionable to what extent this can be applied to conscripts on the Eastern Front, who did not even get the theoretical possibility of opting out by applying for a "conscientious objector" status at the cost of their social reputation, as in the less "total" conflict of World War I). But there are many different types of rapes as well. There were traumatic gang rapes, to military brothels relying on considerable degrees of coercion, to women semi-voluntarily hooking up with one particular soldier in return for security, or just trading their bodies for food.

    "What the Soviet People Fought For" :

    Rape continued, and acquired an organized character. From time to time "hunting groups" ventured out of Wehrmacht positions. "We ventured out to the village near Rozhdestvenno near Gatchina," said Peter Schuber, a private who was at the Seversky airport, "We had orders to bring girls to the officers. We did the operation successfully, surrounding all the houses. We grabbed a truckload of girls. The officers held the girls all night, and gave them to us soldiers in the morning."

    In the large cities, permanent brothels were organized. This was standard Wehrmacht practice. "There were military brothels, called Puff," recalls SS officer Avenir Benningsen, "They were present on almost all fronts. Girls from all Europe, all nationalities, gathered up from all camps. By the way, the two condoms regularly handed out to men and officers were indispensable posessions." But whereas in the European countries the Wehrmacht brothels were staffed more or less voluntarily, in the USSR there were no such considerations. Girls and women were forcibly rounded up, in scenes seared into the memories of people undergoing the occupation. In Smolensk, for instance, women were dragged off by the arms, by the hair, dragged along the pavement, into the officers' brothel in one of the hotels. Those who refused to remain there were shot.

    After Red Army soldiers drove the Germans out of Kerch, they encoutered a terrible sight: "In the courtyard of the prison there was a shapeless heap of naked female bodies, horrifically mutilated by the fascists."

    So even if we are to tally sexual crimes completely separately, the rapes of the Wehrmacht carried an organized, long-term character – similar to the Japanese Army's abuse of Chinese and Korean comfort women – whereas Red Army rapes happened in a concentrated orgy of violence in the last few months of the war. That fury in turn was fueled by a regrettable but very understandable hatred for the death and devastation the Germans had wreaked in the USSR, made all the more inexplicable by the overwhelming prosperity of the Germans relative to the ramshackle poverty of Soviet life.

    Incidentally, soon after the war, as the follow-up to his " toast to the Russian people ," Stalin presided over another famine that took 500,000 Russian lives (more than fifty years after the worst famine of late Imperial Russia, in which a similar number died). Why? Because the USSR was exporting grain to support its new Communist client states, including East Germany. (Functionally, Stalin agreed with the Nazis that German lives were worth more than Russian lives). This one event alone is by utilitarian metrics considerably more horrific than all the Red Army rapes in Germany.

    Parsifal , May 9, 2017 at 8:01 pm GMT

    Another excellent book that kills the "clean Wehrmacht" myth is "Third Reich at War" by Richard Evans. He shows that the German practice of taking local women to serve in brothels or simple outright rape started already in Poland in late 1939. And Evans is no Germanophobe, far from it

    Anatoly Karlin , Website May 9, 2017 at 8:56 pm GMT

    @Glossy Stalin presided over another famine that took 500,000 Russian lives (more than fifty years after the worst famine of late Imperial Russia). Why?

    I don't know where you got this idea that the famine of 1947 was caused by grain supplies to East Germany. I just hope it wasn't SiP, because it's not a good source of info about anything.

    There were famines in many countries after the war. The one in the Netherlands is famous partly because Audry Hepburn experienced it as a kid.

    It would have been surprising if there were no food shortages in the USSR then, after such an ordeal. If such a war befell the UK, there would have been a famine there too.

    Darin , May 9, 2017 at 9:50 pm GMT

    About the famine of 1947, see

    http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/soviet/famine/ellman1947.pdf

    The 1947 Soviet famine and the entitlement approach to famines Michael Ellman

    This paper presents an analysis of the economics of the 1947 Soviet famine, using data from recently declassified archives. It is argued that the best estimate that can currently be given of the number of excess deaths is the range 1·0–1·5 million. The demographic loss was greater. During the famine, surplus stocks in the hands of the state seem to have been sufficient to have fed all those who died of starvation. The famine was a FAD2 (preventable food availability decline) famine, which occurred because a drought caused a bad harvest and hence reduced food availability, but, had the priorities of the government been different, there might have been no famine (or a much smaller one) despite the drought. The selection of victims can be understood
    in terms of the entitlement approach.

    [...]

    Conclusions

    The 1947 (more precisely 1946–8) famine was the fourth and last Soviet famine. It began in July 1946, reached its peak in February–August 1947 and then quickly dimin-ished in intensity, although there were still some famine deaths in 1948.

    The best estimate of excess deaths that can currently be given is the range 1,000,000- 1,500,000. The range is relatively wide because of the uncertain relationship between registered mortality and actual mortality. The largest number of excess deaths was in Russia, followed by Ukraine and Moldova. In percentage terms, the largest number of excess deaths was in Moldova and the smallest in Russia.

    The demographic loss was greater than the number of excess deaths since it also includes the fall in the birthrate compared with what it might have been under non-
    famine conditions. According to a present-day Russian historian, the demographic loss in Russia was three times the number of excess deaths.

    The level of grain stocks at the end of the agricultural year 1946–7 seems to have been in excess of the minimum level of stocks required to maintain the rationing system. Surplus stocks seem to have been sufficient to have fed all those who died of starvation or starvation-induced disease in the agricultural year 1946–7. This was still more the case with the victims who died in the agricultural year 1947–8.

    It is not true that the level of grain stocks in the hands of the state was constant or increased during the famine period. Stocks fell during the main famine period (the
    agricultural year 1946–7). Nor is it true that grain exports increased in the agricultural year 1946–7. They declined then.

    It is not true that the Soviet authorities paid no attention to famine relief. They did undertake some famine relief, but not enough to prevent large scale mortality from starvation and starvation-related diseases. They also permitted substantial foreign help. Nor is it true that they ignored the needs of agriculture. They increased seed loans in 1947 to enable the spring sowing to go ahead smoothly despite the shortage of seed at the farms.

    Glossy , Website May 9, 2017 at 9:53 pm GMT

    @Mr. XYZ @Anatoly Karlin: Also, a bit off-topic, but what would the Soviet Union's population have been in 1991 if it wasn't for World War II and Stalinist collectivization and famines? Would 375 million (as opposed to 290 million) be a plausible estimate for this? Or is that a bit too high?

    anon , May 9, 2017 at 10:05 pm GMT

    Unlike the times of Mongol Conquests and other great invasions/wars that ancient reports are dubious and deaths are less than what historians find out, the World Wars had more accurate ways to calculate deaths and they had more accurate numbers in their reports. But then veiled interests and propaganda at that time and now are even more blatant than in ancient times, with numbers being inflated or diminished.
    .
    Take the Rape of Berlin, for example. Its numbers showed up pretty recently and only taking account the passages of one hospital counting abortions and victims of rape, using that as basis for dubious calculations to reach the 2 million number.
    .
    Or the Holodomor that accounts only ukrainian lands, sometimes ignoring the effects of famine and confiscation in other places inside Russia. Most important, the belief that the most brutal confiscations were straight out enforced instead of a consequence of farmers that were secretly getting rid of most of their grains ahead of time or some of them even destroying it and killing livestock just to not let it get into officers' hands.
    .
    Even the deaths by the secret service in disclosed documents do not mirror the exaggerate numbers gave by mainstream sources.
    .
    There's no doubt that the Soviet Union in war time, given proper research and calculations, is still a system that killed millions unjustly directly or indirectly, but mainstream media likes to inflate numbers to give an extra indignation and make sure people knows how horrible the system is. In fact, no one in World War II is exempt of a large number of deaths (again, be it direct or indirect), even victims like China where its own soldiers would raze villages and take the opportunity to throw more blame on japanese that were already condemned for their own confirmed mass killings against chinese people.

    unpc downunder , May 9, 2017 at 10:27 pm GMT

    There certainly are some neocon Anglos who want to demonise WWII era Russia as much as possible, even if that means making weak arguments that Stalin's treatment of foreigners was worse than Hitler's. Why? because Germany has now denounced nationalism and embraced globalism, while Russia hasn't. Also, while Stalin wasn't as nationalistic as Hitler he was a relatively nationalist despot who killed off a lot of globalist communists (like Trotsky) and still has a significant following among Russian nationalists (if anyone says Trotsky wasn't a bad man that's a tell-tale sign they are a globalist ideologue).

    At the end of the day its all about dissing nationalism and promoting liberalism and internationalism.

    Hector_St_Clare , May 9, 2017 at 11:29 pm GMT

    @unpc downunder There certainly are some neocon Anglos who want to demonise WWII era Russia as much as possible, even if that means making weak arguments that Stalin's treatment of foreigners was worse than Hitler's. Why? because Germany has now denounced nationalism and embraced globalism, while Russia hasn't. Also, while Stalin wasn't as nationalistic as Hitler he was a relatively nationalist despot who killed off a lot of globalist communists (like Trotsky) and still has a significant following among Russian nationalists (if anyone says Trotsky wasn't a bad man that's a tell-tale sign they are a globalist ideologue).

    At the end of the day its all about dissing nationalism and promoting liberalism and internationalism.

    James N. Kennett , May 10, 2017 at 12:01 am GMT

    @Hector_St_Clare Britain actually had a famine on their watch in India during 1943-1944, wasn't that due to forcing Bengal to supply British food needs instead of to feed themselves?

    Daniel H , May 10, 2017 at 1:17 am GMT

    @Wally Anatoly Karlin said:

    "It's now well known that Nazi long-term plans called for the eventual genocide of about 75% of the Soviet population, and the helotization/expulsion of the rest."

    No it's not, and you have no proof.

    AP , May 10, 2017 at 3:17 am GMT

    It's now well known that Nazi long-term plans called for the eventual genocide of about 75% of the Soviet population

    This may be a bit of an exaggeration, though the reality is bad enough.

    Wiki says 50%-60% of Russians were to be exterminated, another 15% sent to Siberia. (so 65%-75% removed). 75% of Belarussians and 65% Ukrainians were to be removed. No food aid was the be sent to Siberia, to there would be starvation there until a "natural" self-sustaining population of 40 million or so would remain.

    reiner Tor , Website May 10, 2017 at 10:57 am GMT

    @James N. Kennett


    Britain actually had a famine on their watch in India during 1943-1944, wasn't that due to forcing Bengal to supply British food needs instead of to feed themselves?
    Yes, unfortunately it is true. Britain imported wheat from India so that bread need not be rationed in Britain. After the war, it was impossible to justify this action, and bread was rationed. A million Indians had died of starvation.

    All combatants in WWII committed war crimes. It is pointless to try to excuse these crimes by saying the Nazis did worse, even to the point of computing how many rapes equal one murder. We did what we did. Let us be honest about our countries' crimes, as well as those of our enemies, in the hope that we will learn never to fight each other again.

    anon , May 10, 2017 at 1:22 pm GMT

    @German_reader


    Actually Churchill proposed such attack on USSR
    Churchill was out of power in 1947/48.
    Gabriel M , May 10, 2017 at 6:02 pm GMT

    It's now well known that Nazi long-term plans called for the eventual genocide of about 75% of the Soviet population, and the helotization/expulsion of the rest.

    Interesting. The basic assumption of the WW2 liberal-democracy foundation myth is that Nazism was an 'evilness spiral', which started off with small stuff, but became inevitably more crazy and evil and would have murdered half the world had it not been stopped. I knew that mainstream zionists shared this assumption, but I hadn't realized that Russian nationalists did too.

    I'm no expert, but I tend more to the view that Nazi crimes were a product of the war, similar in principle – though not scale! – to allied war crimes, and that, had they won, they would have calmed down, much like the SU calmed down after the 1930s. I suspect a Nazi dominated Eastern Europe wouldn't have looked that much different from a Soviet dominated one (including the advantages these had over liberal democracy). A lot depends, I suppose, on the willingness of Nazis who knew Hitler was a colossal whackjob to actually do something about it.

    German_reader , May 10, 2017 at 6:14 pm GMT

    @Gabriel M


    It's now well known that Nazi long-term plans called for the eventual genocide of about 75% of the Soviet population, and the helotization/expulsion of the rest.
    Interesting. The basic assumption of the WW2 liberal-democracy foundation myth is that Nazism was an 'evilness spiral', which started off with small stuff, but became inevitably more crazy and evil and would have murdered half the world had it not been stopped. I knew that mainstream zionists shared this assumption, but I hadn't realized that Russian nationalists did too.

    I'm no expert, but I tend more to the view that Nazi crimes were a product of the war, similar in principle - though not scale! - to allied war crimes, and that, had they won, they would have calmed down, much like the SU calmed down after the 1930s. I suspect a Nazi dominated Eastern Europe wouldn't have looked that much different from a Soviet dominated one (including the advantages these had over liberal democracy). A lot depends, I suppose, on the willingness of Nazis who knew Hitler was a colossal whackjob to actually do something about it.

    German_reader , May 10, 2017 at 6:27 pm GMT

    @Greasy William What do contemporary German nationalists think about Germany's borders? Do they want to regain Germany's lost territories even though Poles are also white? Are German Neo Nazis pro Russia and pro Putin like American Neo Nazis are?

    melanf , May 10, 2017 at 6:57 pm GMT

    @German_reader I actually think there were quite a lot of rapes committed by Red army soldiers at least in Hungary as well which was also regarded as a defeated enemy state by the Soviets (Romania probably much less so because they switched sides). I also seem to recall that some Yugoslav communist (Milovan Djilas) complained to the Soviets about rapes committed by Soviet soldiers in Yugoslavia, and similar in Poland.
    I've never heard of a convincing case that those rapes were ordered from above (instead of being tolerated, which seems to have been Stalin's attitude for some time). It's not like rape is an uncommon phenomenon in war after all, if you don't take disciplinary measures against it, many soldiers will do it. All the more so in a war like WW2 on the Eastern front where soldiers were brutalized and had to live with permanent expectation of their own death (iirc Soviet losses in the battle of Berlin were about as high as American losses in the entire war).

    Lex , May 11, 2017 at 10:08 am GMT

    @Nador Actually, soviets did kidnap people. For example the cousin of my grandfather was kidnapped and taken to a forced labor camp in Siberia. She was about to buy some bread when Soviet soldiers happened to be there collecting people for forced labor. She wasn't even allowed to bring proper clothes with her.

    JL , May 11, 2017 at 11:44 am GMT

    @neutral You are going to have to be more specific here, who is saying this, the neocon propaganda is mostly about how Putin kills journalists, hacks elections and forbids gay pride. Since the (((neocons))) are perfectly happy with German women being raped (then and now), they are not going to raise this as an issue. The only people that really bring up the mass rapes are those that are absolutely opposed to neocons and thus generally have very little access to the megaphones.

    JL , May 11, 2017 at 12:03 pm GMT

    @German_reader I don't really believe anybody in the US and UK cares about German women raped by the Red army or uses that as a prominent argument against Russia. I've always had the impression that the predominant attitude towards dubious actions against German civilians during and after WW2 is "They got exactly what they deserved" (that is except in Germany itself, obviously). You can see this even in recent accounts, e.g. in Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands" whose ultimate chapter has justification of the mass expulsions of Germans after the end of the war as a prominent theme (and Snyder after all is a prominent critic of Putin's Russia).
    It's true however that some people in the West are still pushing the "Stalin's Soviet Union just as bad or even worse than Nazi Germany" narrative, e.g. many American conservatives still throw around Robert Conquest's estimates of many millions killed by Soviet repression - estimates which have long been disproven and been shown to be much too high. That's mostly unconnected to the issue of rape in 1944/45 though.

    German_reader , May 11, 2017 at 12:24 pm GMT

    @JL It seems to me there's been a sea change in the US over the past few years and perhaps you're missing it. Liberals, who were traditionally sympathetic to Russia, are now its fiercest opponents. Some of the old themes that conservatives used during the Cold War are now popping up in propaganda directed at liberals. And, of course, most of the Cold Warrior conservatives have never changed their views, so they are essentially in cahoots. The neocons backed Clinton for President after all.

    Americans are particularly susceptible to propaganda, which is, admittedly, all-consuming and very effective. Do they really, deep down, actually care about German women raped during WW2? Most likely not, but they do to the extent that they are told to care about it and can use it for moral equivalency purposes. As for Snyder, "Bloodlands" came out pretty early on in the Ukraine crisis, before the anti-Russia campaign was in full gear. It took a little while for Jews to get on board with being on the same side as the Nazis.

    AP , May 11, 2017 at 12:41 pm GMT

    @JL Sorry, I should have been more specific, I hear this from people on the other end of the megaphones, i.e. the normies to which I'm exposed during my brief visits to the US (I only spend a few weeks a year there). In my specific case, it's mostly East Coast liberals.

    I don't pay much attention to the US propaganda machine, so I can't name any specific sources. But, there seems to be a consensus formed between neocons, libtards, and cuckservatives vis a vis Russia. Among the ridiculous things I've heard are, "Stalin was responsible for more deaths than Hitler" (whatever that even means) and "most of the Soviet citizens killed in WW2 were Ukrainians." This is coming from college educated, 120+ IQ people. Where they come up with it, who knows?


    Since the (((neocons))) are perfectly happy with German women being raped (then and now), they are not going to raise this as an issue.
    The neocons are monsters who care only about world domination, and the submission of their subjects. To that end, they don't care about anyone raped or killed, even their own (((people))), if it furthers their goals. It's no problem for them to use this as a cudgel with which to beat on Russia. Perhaps you are confusing them with yourself, you think they have principals or that they stand for something. Just look at Ukraine, where Jewish Neocons and Nazis stand, quite literally, hand-in-hand.

    The only people that really bring up the mass rapes are those that are absolutely opposed to neocons and thus generally have very little access to the megaphones.
    Now you are going to have be a bit more specific, who are you talking about here?
    melanf , May 11, 2017 at 1:51 pm GMT

    @AP


    Among the ridiculous things I've heard are, "Stalin was responsible for more deaths than Hitler" (whatever that even means) and "most of the Soviet citizens killed in WW2 were Ukrainians." This is coming from college educated, 120+ IQ people.
    "Stalin responsible for more deaths than Hitler" is false but not ridiculously so. Hitler beat Stalin but about 3 million people but both monsters killed people in the millions and both were far deadlier than anyone who came before, in centuries.

    A lot of college educated Russians with high IQs believe nonsense also, and sometimes even about their immediate neighbor, never mind about a place on the other side of the world.

    JL , May 11, 2017 at 2:27 pm GMT

    @AP


    Among the ridiculous things I've heard are, "Stalin was responsible for more deaths than Hitler" (whatever that even means) and "most of the Soviet citizens killed in WW2 were Ukrainians." This is coming from college educated, 120+ IQ people.
    "Stalin responsible for more deaths than Hitler" is false but not ridiculously so. Hitler beat Stalin but about 3 million people but both monsters killed people in the millions and both were far deadlier than anyone who came before, in centuries.

    A lot of college educated Russians with high IQs believe nonsense also, and sometimes even about their immediate neighbor, never mind about a place on the other side of the world.

    Avery , May 11, 2017 at 2:55 pm GMT

    @RadicalCenter They hate and resent the Germans so much that they are fine with honoring their rapist grandfathers and great-grandfathers. I might feel the same way if I were Russian, but I'm not and I don't.

    Russians would have done the same and worse to all of Germany, and all of western and central Europe, if they had not been so severely damaged by the Germans and then deterred and faced-off by the US.

    anon , May 11, 2017 at 3:03 pm GMT

    This is a very awkward topic as i understand both sides.

    The German attack forced the Bolsheviks to change their policy towards ethnic Russians – what would the Bolsheviks have done to the Russians over time if the Germans hadn't attacked?

    I think it's possible to guess what they would have done by what is happening in the West today – some people want a world of 85 IQ slave cattle so there's no competition.

    So what was the best out of three terrible options?

    1) German attack and victory
    2) Bolshevik victory (no war and eventual genetic mutilation of the ethnic Russians)
    3) German attack weakening Bolsheviks but not winning

    To me the correct analogy is to an autoimmune disease where the body attacks itself because of an infection – where the Bolsheviks were the infection.

    German_reader , May 11, 2017 at 3:38 pm GMT

    @for-the-record


    when many cities in present-day Germany will soon have non-German majorities
    Which are the the first ones likely to be?
    szopen , May 11, 2017 at 4:52 pm GMT

    @melanf


    Hitler beat Stalin but both monsters killed people in the millions and both were far deadlier than anyone who came before, in centuries.
    In the case of Stalin - not millions.

    http://polit.ru/article/2007/12/11/repressii/
    "...In fact, the number of prisoners for political reasons (for "counterrevolutionary crimes") in the USSR in the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. after 33 years was about 3.8 million people... during this period ( 1921 to 1954 ) has been convicted 3 777 380 people, including to capital punishment - 642 980, to the contents in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years and below - 2 369 220, into exile and expulsion - 765 180 people ".

    Of course it's possible to start to count "victims of famine". But in this case, Stalin will be a great humanist, in comparison with the rulers of the British Empire.

    " A cruel tax and trade-usurious exploitation of the peasantry (in India) had caused widespread hunger . If 1825-1850. the famine twice struck the country and claimed 0.4 million human lives, in 1850-1875 famine killed 5 million, in 1875-1900. - 26 million ."
    (ИСТОРИЯ ВОСТОКА IV Восток в новое время (конец XVIII - начало XX в.) Книга 2)

    Remember Mahatma Gandhi: "Hitlerism and Churchillism are in fact the same thing"

    AP , May 11, 2017 at 11:11 pm GMT

    @JL I'm interested in the method of accounting. Whose deaths are we are talking about here? Do, for example, German soldiers during WW2 go into the Hitler column, or the Stalin column? In light of the fact that the person making this case was not only an American, but a Jew, I told him that were the German soldiers' deaths Stalin's responsibility, then he would have to explain why that paints Stalin in a bad light.


    both were far deadlier than anyone who came before, in centuries
    Are you speaking of absolute numbers, or percentages of populations?
    AP , May 11, 2017 at 11:14 pm GMT

    @melanf


    Hitler beat Stalin but both monsters killed people in the millions and both were far deadlier than anyone who came before, in centuries.
    In the case of Stalin - not millions.

    http://polit.ru/article/2007/12/11/repressii/
    "...In fact, the number of prisoners for political reasons (for "counterrevolutionary crimes") in the USSR in the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. after 33 years was about 3.8 million people... during this period ( 1921 to 1954 ) has been convicted 3 777 380 people, including to capital punishment - 642 980, to the contents in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years and below - 2 369 220, into exile and expulsion - 765 180 people ".

    Of course it's possible to start to count "victims of famine". But in this case, Stalin will be a great humanist, in comparison with the rulers of the British Empire.

    " A cruel tax and trade-usurious exploitation of the peasantry (in India) had caused widespread hunger . If 1825-1850. the famine twice struck the country and claimed 0.4 million human lives, in 1850-1875 famine killed 5 million, in 1875-1900. - 26 million ."
    (ИСТОРИЯ ВОСТОКА IV Восток в новое время (конец XVIII - начало XX в.) Книга 2)

    Remember Mahatma Gandhi: "Hitlerism and Churchillism are in fact the same thing"

    Intelligent Dasein , Website May 12, 2017 at 6:02 am GMT

    @JL It seems to me there's been a sea change in the US over the past few years and perhaps you're missing it. Liberals, who were traditionally sympathetic to Russia, are now its fiercest opponents. Some of the old themes that conservatives used during the Cold War are now popping up in propaganda directed at liberals. And, of course, most of the Cold Warrior conservatives have never changed their views, so they are essentially in cahoots. The neocons backed Clinton for President after all.

    Americans are particularly susceptible to propaganda, which is, admittedly, all-consuming and very effective. Do they really, deep down, actually care about German women raped during WW2? Most likely not, but they do to the extent that they are told to care about it and can use it for moral equivalency purposes. As for Snyder, "Bloodlands" came out pretty early on in the Ukraine crisis, before the anti-Russia campaign was in full gear. It took a little while for Jews to get on board with being on the same side as the Nazis.

    Anonymous , May 12, 2017 at 7:40 am GMT

    @AP


    It's now well known that Nazi long-term plans called for the eventual genocide of about 75% of the Soviet population
    This may be a bit of an exaggeration, though the reality is bad enough.

    Wiki says 50%-60% of Russians were to be exterminated, another 15% sent to Siberia. (so 65%-75% removed). 75% of Belarussians and 65% Ukrainians were to be removed. No food aid was the be sent to Siberia, to there would be starvation there until a "natural" self-sustaining population of 40 million or so would remain.

    [May 12, 2017] The War Party is determined to make the offensive permanent, to keep up the pressure on the ultimate targets, Russia and China, The current, rabid anti-Russian hysteria adds another layer of fake news on top of the wholly fictional U.S. War on Terror scenario

    May 12, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    Northern Star , May 11, 2017 at 3:25 pm

    "The War Party is determined to make the offensive permanent, to keep up the pressure on the ultimate targets, Russia and China, until they break or capitulate to U.S. domination of the world. The current, rabid anti-Russian hysteria adds another layer of fake news on top of the wholly fictional U.S. "War on Terror" scenario. But these mega-lies can no longer mask the great obscenity of the 21st century: that the U.S. is allied with al-Qaida, whose jihadists act as imperialism's foot soldiers in the Middle East."

    Absolute take down of the psycho shtstains in Brussels and Washington DC

    https://www.blackagendareport.com/jail_obama_and_trump_for_war_crimes

    Time for global regime change

    ucgsblog , May 12, 2017 at 2:08 pm
    They don't have to, look at the language: "Russia acted to influence"

    It doesn't say that Russia influenced, it says that Russia acted to influence. Did RT broadcast something election related? Did some funds come from Russia? If so, Russia acted to influence the election. As did France. As did the UK. As did any major power.

    "Asked whether they believed" – again they don't have to prove that it happened. They have to show that they believed it happened.

    [May 12, 2017] It doesnt say that Russia influenced, it says that Russia acted to influence

    May 12, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
    Northern Star , May 11, 2017 at 3:16 pm
    "WASHINGTON DC: Six top US intelligence officials told Congress Thursday they agree with the conclusion that Russia acted to influence last year's election, countering President Donald Trump's assertions that the hacking remains an open question."

    https://tribune.com.pk/story/1407409/trumps-intel-bosses-reiterate-russia-meddled-election/

    "Asked whether they believed the intelligence community's January assessment that Russia was responsible for hacking and leaking information to influence the elections was accurate, all six spy and law enforcement bosses appearing before the panel said "yes."
    Trump's firing of FBI director 'domestic matter': Kremlin'"

    Demand these vermin proffer PROOF that Russia F'd with the 2016 election..
    Then Fire every last one of these cckskkers..declare martial law if necessary

    ucgsblog , May 12, 2017 at 2:08 pm
    They don't have to, look at the language: "Russia acted to influence"

    It doesn't say that Russia influenced, it says that Russia acted to influence. Did RT broadcast something election related? Did some funds come from Russia? If so, Russia acted to influence the election. As did France. As did the UK. As did any major power.

    "Asked whether they believed" – again they don't have to prove that it happened. They have to show that they believed it happened.

    [May 10, 2017] Will Trumps Firing of FBI Director James Comey Be His Saturday Night Massacre? (Updated)

    Notable quotes:
    "... More specifically, whether true or not, the Democrats are likely to use this move to claim that Comey was fired for digging too hard into Trump-Russia connections ..."
    "... The official story is that attorney general Jeff Session and his deputy attorney general Rosenstein wanted Comey's head. And since the FBI does report to the Department of Justice, Sessions is within his rights to demand the firing of the head of the FBI and expect the President to respect his request. So if this proves to have been a reckless move, it will reflect Trump's poor judgment in selecting Sessions as his AG, who was a controversial pick from the outset. ..."
    "... I support the firing of Comey, and would have supported it if done by Clinton, Obama, Sanders or Trump. His actions wrt "intent" in handling classified information, and his unilateral (in public at least) decision on leveling charges against Clinton (which was not his job) render him unfit for office. ..."
    "... Both the Right and the Left are disinclined to believe in or care about any scandal involving Russia. And it was actually the Clinton partisans who demanded Comey's head in the first place–and we all know the Clinton history with independent prosecutors. So the Democrats who whine about this or call for an independent prosecutor just end up looking like the partisan hypocrites they are. ..."
    "... What this does, after a few days, is get the Russian hacking investigation out of the news, so everyone can focus firmly on debating how many people need to lose their health care to satisfy the tax-cut gods. ..."
    "... I'm already seeing Twitter Dems doubling down on the Russia stuff. The Russia hysteria is setting us up so that there will be absolutely no political incentive for future Presidents to be friendly with Russia. I wonder if they don't know (or just don't care) that they aren't going to be able to put this genie back in the bottle after Trump is gone. ..."
    "... All it does is reinforce existing bias. Dems are even more convinced about Russian ties, Reps are even more concerned the wheels are off, TrumpNation is even more convinced there's an evil plot out to get their guy. And the media has a click frenzy to drive ad rates. ..."
    "... being anti Russian is in the very DNA of the repubs. Would the repubs turn on Trump because Trump isn't fervently anti Russian enough? I very much think so .they have a good repub vice president that I am sure ALL of them much prefer .. ..."
    "... Its important to remember the disdain the country has for Versailles in general. Trump became President despite universal support for Hillary and to a lesser extent Jeb on the shores of the Potomac.The Republican Id is dedicated to hating Democrats. Bill Clinton and Obama could play Weekend at Bernie's with Reagan corpse and kill Social Security, and Republicans would still hate them. ..."
    "... Communists and other boogeymen of the past are secondary to this drive. The Versailles Republicans, a different breed, could never deliver Republican votes outside of Northern Virginia for one simple reason their base despises Democrats more than they might hate Stalin. They will never give credit to a Democrat. Remember the liberal whining about how Republicans never gave Obama credit for his right wing policy pushes. ..."
    "... The other key point to the GOP voter relationship is Trump WON. He beat Jeb and his sheepdogs and then he beat Hillary (Hillary and the Dems lost). Trump is the their winner so to speak. As long as Trump is denounced by the usual suspects for bizarre reasons, Trump will maintain his hold. ..."
    "... fbi sorta sat on gulen charter school investigation and it would certainly help emperor trompe and prince erdo relationship if Fethu found his old self on an express flight to Ankara considering the bean "kurd" thing recently added on the takeout menu ..."
    "... People are fed up. Savings & Loan mess & Iran Contra & & & & yawn Wall Street destroys the economy & no one goes to jail, Medical Industrial Complex management bloodsuckers insure that sickness leads to penury ..."
    "... I am no fan of Comey. I think his self-righteousness makes him a dangerous FBI Director and a loose cannon. However, people who think this is going to hurt Trump are likely wrong. If Trump knows there's nothing in the Russia story, but he continues to string out the Democrats with it, then they're the ones who are going to look foolish after having invested so much political capital in it. ..."
    "... Since you can't prove a negative, the innuendo can continue ad nauseam. ..."
    "... I suspect the Democrats are unaware they are indirectly insulting the Trump voters by the Russian influence story.. They are in effect saying Trump voters were played by the "evil" Russians into voting for Trump, despite the 1Billion spend by Clinton and her considerable support in the US media. I don't imagine the Trump voters like this message. ..."
    "... If Trump indirectly destroys both the Democratic and Republican parties, he might rank as one of our more important Presidents, quite unintentionally. ..."
    "... Why doesnt he fire the top 10 layers of CIA instead? They are wreaking havoc for real everywhere domestically and abroad. ..."
    "... If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. ( ) ..."
    May 09, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Posted on May 9, 2017 by Yves Smith Trump's sudden and unexpected firing of FBI director James Comey is likely to damage Trump. The question is whether this move will simply serve as the basis for sowing further doubts in the mainstream media against Trump, or will dent Trump's standing with Republicans.

    Comey made an odd practice of making moves that were arguably procedurally improper in his handling of the Clinton e-mail investigation, but some favored Clinton while others were damaging, given an impression of impartiality to the general public via getting both parties riled with Comey at various points in time. And regardless of what one thinks of his political and legal judgment, Comey had a reputation of being a straight shooter.

    And more generally, the director of the FBI is perceived to be a role above the partisan fray. Firing him is fraught with danger; it has the potential of turning into in a Nixonian Saturday Night Massacre, where the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox led the press and public to see Nixon as desperate to stymie an investigation into Watergate charges. It was the archetypal "the coverup is worse than the crime".

    To minimize risk, Trump's would have needed to have engaged in a whispering campaign against Comey, or least have notified some key figures in Congress that this was about to happen and give the rationale for the turfing out. And it appears he did do that to at least a degree, in that (as you will see below), Lindsay Graham, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made a statement supporting the firing. But given the surprised reaction in the press, it looks like any ground-sowing for this move was minimal. Caution and preparation don't rank high as Trump Administration priorities.

    More specifically, whether true or not, the Democrats are likely to use this move to claim that Comey was fired for digging too hard into Trump-Russia connections .

    We'll know more in the coming hours and days. The official story is that attorney general Jeff Session and his deputy attorney general Rosenstein wanted Comey's head. And since the FBI does report to the Department of Justice, Sessions is within his rights to demand the firing of the head of the FBI and expect the President to respect his request. So if this proves to have been a reckless move, it will reflect Trump's poor judgment in selecting Sessions as his AG, who was a controversial pick from the outset.

    From the Wall Street Journal :

    In a letter to Mr. Comey, the president wrote, "It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission."

    Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a statement thanked Mr. Comey for his years of service to the country but said that a change in leadership at the bureau might be the best possible course of action.

    "Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well. I encourage the President to select the most qualified professional available who will serve our nation's interests," said Mr. Graham, a South Carolina Republican.

    Note that Sessions himself had been fired from the attorney general's office in the Clinton Administration. Clinton's attorney Janet Reno, who was the first to engage in large-scale firings of attorneys in the Department of Justice, also fired the head of the FBI. From Bloomberg :

    Comey, who has led an investigation into Russia's meddling during the 2016 election and any possible links to Trump aides and associates, is only the second FBI chief to have been fired. In 1993, President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno dismissed William Sessions.

    Trump's decision means that he will get to nominate Comey's successor while the agency is deep into the Russia inquiry. The move quickly intensified Democratic calls for a special prosecutor.

    Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that Trump "has catastrophically compromised the FBI's ongoing investigation of his own White House's ties to Russia. Not since Watergate have our legal systems been so threatened, and our faith in the independence and integrity of those systems so shaken."

    The Financial Times confirms that the Trump Administration didn't lay much groundwork with Congress :

    Mr Comey's sudden dismissal shocked Republicans and Democrats. Brendan Boyle, a Democratic congressman, said the "stunning" action "shows why we must have a special prosecutor like our nation did in Watergate".

    The proof of the pudding is whether Trump and Sessions will be able to ride out demands for a special prosecutor. Given how much noise and how little signal there has been, I would have though it was possible for Trump to tough this out. With the Democrats having peripheral figures like Carter Page as their supposed smoking guns, all they had was innuendo, amplified by the Mighty Wurlitzer of the media. But that may have gotten enough to Trump and his team to distort their judgment. Stay tuned.

    Update 5/10, 12:15 AM . The Hill reports Dems ask Justice Dept, FBI to 'preserve any and all files' on Comey firing / Despite much howling for blood in the comments section, some readers there were able to provide what I was looking for, which is whether Congress had any basis for getting the info. Here are the two key remarks:

    cm , May 9, 2017 at 7:42 pm

    I support the firing of Comey, and would have supported it if done by Clinton, Obama, Sanders or Trump. His actions wrt "intent" in handling classified information, and his unilateral (in public at least) decision on leveling charges against Clinton (which was not his job) render him unfit for office.

    Anyone opposing this firing should note they share opinions w/ John McCain, which ought to give any non-neocon pause

    WeakendSquire , May 9, 2017 at 7:44 pm

    Both the Right and the Left are disinclined to believe in or care about any scandal involving Russia. And it was actually the Clinton partisans who demanded Comey's head in the first place–and we all know the Clinton history with independent prosecutors. So the Democrats who whine about this or call for an independent prosecutor just end up looking like the partisan hypocrites they are.

    What this does, after a few days, is get the Russian hacking investigation out of the news, so everyone can focus firmly on debating how many people need to lose their health care to satisfy the tax-cut gods.

    Jim Haygood , May 9, 2017 at 8:01 pm

    The Scream:

    Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL) made the biggest impression, going to the Senate floor about an hour after the announcement to clearly outline the stakes.

    "Any attempt to stop or undermine this FBI investigation would raise grave constitutional issues," he told colleagues.

    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article149589289.html#storylink=cpy

    Constitutional issues ? HA HA HA HA

    What is "Senator" Durbin doing about the war escalation in Afghanstan and Syria? My point exactly.

    We've got a problem in politics
    So few Richards, so many dicks

    screen screamer , May 9, 2017 at 8:02 pm

    Interestingly, Fed directors have a term of ten years and since Hoover, there has been only one to make it the full term. That would be Mr. Mueller who went twelve years as director directly following 911.

    I must confess that I do not know why the others were let go or retired. I think it would make an interesting study.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation

    NotTimothyGeithner , May 9, 2017 at 11:02 pm

    FBI Director is one of those jobs where if you do a good job you should suffer burnout regardless of who you are. A 10 year term is bizarre if you expect a quality job. I would expect resignation and early retirement if the job is being taken seriously. Then you have to consider the quality of staff and team work arrangements at any given time and how much workload a FBI Director or Cabinet Secretary has to deal with.

    Matt , May 9, 2017 at 8:06 pm

    I'm already seeing Twitter Dems doubling down on the Russia stuff. The Russia hysteria is setting us up so that there will be absolutely no political incentive for future Presidents to be friendly with Russia. I wonder if they don't know (or just don't care) that they aren't going to be able to put this genie back in the bottle after Trump is gone.

    jo6pac , May 9, 2017 at 8:29 pm

    Thanks I love it and they just don't care and hoping the lame stream corp. owned media will carry their propaganda. Demodogs message is we didn't fail but those looser didn't vote for us the party of corp. Amerika. Double down

    John Zelnicker , May 9, 2017 at 9:51 pm

    @Matt – I don't think the Twitter Dems can conceive of the notion that there is a genie or even a bottle in this situation. They are so caught up in the Russia!, Russia! hysteria that there is no room in their thinking for any kind of rational thought or any consideration of consequences.

    Matt , May 9, 2017 at 10:39 pm

    You're more hopeful that I am. I think the more militaristic among them are so cavalier about conflict with Russia because of the Hitler-level delusions many of them have about the military capacity of Russia.

    "Just kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come down"

    "We'll be greeted as liberators when we defeat the tyrant Putin!"

    Just look at that SNL sketch that aired a few months ago. They think these people are frozen, ignorant peasants.

    marym , May 9, 2017 at 8:08 pm

    Nixon Library weighs in: https://twitter.com/NixonLibrary/status/862083605081862145

    RichardNixonLibrary‏2Verified account? @NixonLibrary
    FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI #FBIDirector #notNixonian

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , May 9, 2017 at 8:37 pm

    Nixon was smart enough to avoid Russia and the USSR, and instead, worked with China that would help suppress US wages for decades.

    AbateMagicThinking but Not mone y , May 9, 2017 at 8:39 pm

    Personally I would be no good at power. My reading has led me to believe that you need a very strong stomach to endure what you have to deal with, whether it be human gore, hypocrisy, or the dark side of any civilization. I don't have that stomach, and if you take Comey's words at face value neither does he.

    So I think you can take that as a thumbs-up.

    JTMcPhee , May 9, 2017 at 10:40 pm

    Nah, ask Obomber. Once you get past a little queasiness, getting "pretty good at killing folks" is a piece of cake. It's just business as usual. Ask any Civil War or WW I general officer, or Bomber Harris, or Lemay or the young guy, farm boy from Iowa who was a door gunner I knew on Vietnam. Just no problem killing gooks. His moral line was killing the water buffalo. "I know how I'd feel if someone blew away my John Deere."

    AbateMagicThinking but Not money , May 9, 2017 at 11:39 pm

    Re: The youg guy with the agricultural machinery sensibilities:

    Although he was the manipulator of terrible power, I see him as a victim (in the scheme of things), not a member of the power-elite. And the other military you mention, were they in the power-elite? Eisenhower should have been on your list, as he straddled the divide.

    Occasional Delurker , May 9, 2017 at 8:49 pm

    I'm curious how this will be interpreted by people who get their news mostly via headlines. (I also wonder what proportion of the voting population that is.)

    The headlines I've seen so far, if they give a reason, just make reference to the Clinton email investigation. I sort of think this will be interpreted by many mostly-headline news gatherers as meaning that Trump fired Comey because he did not, in fact, lock her up. Indeed, even those who dig deeper may still believe that this is the real reason.

    So, like so many things raged about in the media, I'm not sure this really hurts Trump amongst his voters. Probably helps, really.

    And for something completely different, Snowden is not a fan:

    https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/862069019301601281

    Art Eclectic , May 9, 2017 at 9:00 pm

    All it does is reinforce existing bias. Dems are even more convinced about Russian ties, Reps are even more concerned the wheels are off, TrumpNation is even more convinced there's an evil plot out to get their guy. And the media has a click frenzy to drive ad rates.

    Something for everyone.

    fresno dan , May 9, 2017 at 8:54 pm

    "Trump's sudden and unexpected firing of FBI director James Comey is likely to damage Trump."

    How neutral or unconcerned with what the Establishment views as the requisite dogma regarding Russia is Trump? Articles about Trump being unhappy about McMaster gives the impression that Trump still believe he (Trump) is the boss.

    Yes, the dems have ridiculous notions about Russians as an excuse for Hillary. But being anti Russian is in the very DNA of the repubs. Would the repubs turn on Trump because Trump isn't fervently anti Russian enough? I very much think so .they have a good repub vice president that I am sure ALL of them much prefer ..

    Huey Long , May 9, 2017 at 9:00 pm

    You're right, the red party is a virulently anti-red outfit. I can see the die hard GOPers turning on the Trumpster, but will his base stand for it? The Trumpster does have a bit of a cult of personality going on in some circles.

    NotTimothyGeithner , May 9, 2017 at 10:25 pm

    Its important to remember the disdain the country has for Versailles in general. Trump became President despite universal support for Hillary and to a lesser extent Jeb on the shores of the Potomac.The Republican Id is dedicated to hating Democrats. Bill Clinton and Obama could play Weekend at Bernie's with Reagan corpse and kill Social Security, and Republicans would still hate them.

    Communists and other boogeymen of the past are secondary to this drive. The Versailles Republicans, a different breed, could never deliver Republican votes outside of Northern Virginia for one simple reason their base despises Democrats more than they might hate Stalin. They will never give credit to a Democrat. Remember the liberal whining about how Republicans never gave Obama credit for his right wing policy pushes.

    The other key point to the GOP voter relationship is Trump WON. He beat Jeb and his sheepdogs and then he beat Hillary (Hillary and the Dems lost). Trump is the their winner so to speak. As long as Trump is denounced by the usual suspects for bizarre reasons, Trump will maintain his hold.

    Carolinian , May 9, 2017 at 10:13 pm

    They still have to have a case to make and there is none. Impeachment is just as much a fantasy as it was several months ago. In fact they no longer even have the argument that Trump must be stifled and prevented from doing all his crazy promises since they don't seem to be happening anyway.

    Frankly I say good for Trump rather than letting Comey go all Janet Reno on him. If this country is going to be run by the NYT and the WaPo and CNN then we are truly sunk. He had it right when he was attacking this bunch rather than kowtowing to them.

    Huey Long , May 9, 2017 at 8:57 pm

    Although the Mighty Wurlitzer is going to take this firing and run with it, I wonder if anyone's really going to care outside of folks that watch a ton of CNN and MSNBC. I think scalping him at this point in his administration is likely to generate more protests and demonstrations than not scalping him.

    Alex Morfesis , May 9, 2017 at 9:00 pm

    Well don trumpioni may have stepped in it although, maybe this has less to do with russia perhaps fbi sorta sat on gulen charter school investigation and it would certainly help emperor trompe and prince erdo relationship if Fethu found his old self on an express flight to Ankara considering the bean "kurd" thing recently added on the takeout menu

    Can easily imagine potus & his not ready for prime time players wanting to use the hoover building as a bludgeon against people who dont fall in line the blob counterforce

    comey the straight shooter methynx is a bit of a "legend" but even the most slick and corrupt have certain lines they wont cross

    Huey Long , May 9, 2017 at 9:39 pm

    Can easily imagine potus & his not ready for prime time players wanting to use the hoover building as a bludgeon against people who dont fall in line the blob counterforce

    The FBI would be the preferred outfit for this sort of thing due to their many decades of experience bludgeoning those who don't fall in line.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

    alex morfesis , May 10, 2017 at 1:49 am

    oh come one now that stuff never happened all you have is proof how can that stand up to narratives

    oho , May 9, 2017 at 9:18 pm

    "Will Trump's Firing of FBI Director James Comey Be His Saturday Night Massacre?'

    It would be interesting to take a poll on what percentage of citizens know that "Saturday Night Massacre" is not a horror film.

    I'd be willing to bet a beer that this kerfuffle will be confined to the Beltway media and Sunday talk shows and will fade from the news cycle/Facebook feeds rather quickly.

    People are tapped out mentally with political talk.

    seabos84 , May 9, 2017 at 9:41 pm

    People are fed up. Savings & Loan mess & Iran Contra & & & & yawn Wall Street destroys the economy & no one goes to jail, Medical Industrial Complex management bloodsuckers insure that sickness leads to penury

    1973 was 28 years after 1945. 1973 was 44 years ago. The post WW2 psuedo consensus is looooooooong gone.

    I thought we hated Comey cuz of what he did to HRC? Today we hate Trump cuz Comey was going after the Russians? Crap I hate missing the 2 minute hate.

    rmm

    Anonymous , May 9, 2017 at 10:23 pm

    I am no fan of Comey. I think his self-righteousness makes him a dangerous FBI Director and a loose cannon. However, people who think this is going to hurt Trump are likely wrong. If Trump knows there's nothing in the Russia story, but he continues to string out the Democrats with it, then they're the ones who are going to look foolish after having invested so much political capital in it. It may be the Russian story will be proven to be nonsense about October, 2018.

    DJPS , May 9, 2017 at 11:02 pm

    Since you can't prove a negative, the innuendo can continue ad nauseam.

    John Wright , May 10, 2017 at 12:30 am

    I suspect the Democrats are unaware they are indirectly insulting the Trump voters by the Russian influence story.. They are in effect saying Trump voters were played by the "evil" Russians into voting for Trump, despite the 1Billion spend by Clinton and her considerable support in the US media. I don't imagine the Trump voters like this message.

    It is truly remarkable, the Russians spend about 10% of what the USA does on "Defense" and are able to influence a US electorate that is largely unaware and unconcerned about world affairs.

    I believe enough voters know that Clinton played fast and loose with the email server to avoid FOIA and the Clinton Foundation pulled in a lot of money from foreign governments as payment in advance to President Hillary Clinton..

    The harping on the "Russia influenced the election enough to elect Trump" will bite the Democrats as they avoid the jobs, medical and economic issues that actually influenced the voters for Trump.

    If Trump indirectly destroys both the Democratic and Republican parties, he might rank as one of our more important Presidents, quite unintentionally.

    Loblolly May 10, 2017 at 1:11 am

    That would require us to be rational actors rather than the cartoon idiots the media portrays us as.

    djrichard , May 10, 2017 at 1:25 am

    I've taken to using doge speak in my comments on Yahoo articles and WaPo articles. I figure that's about as much intelligence the publishers are investing into the articles and into the audience, that I therefore tune my intelligence accordingly.

    Kim Kaufman , May 9, 2017 at 10:41 pm

    CNN exclusive: Grand jury subpoenas issued in FBI's Russia investigation

    By Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz and Pamela Brown, CNN

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/09/politics/grand-jury-fbi-russia/index.html

    What seems to me to be most problematic for Flynn is not so much Russia but that he was getting paid by Turkey as a lobbyist while heading the NSA.

    Art Eclectic , May 9, 2017 at 10:52 pm

    Nice. Team Trump managed to get out ahead of that story with their own. That's some ninja level media mastery.

    readerOfTeaLeaves , May 9, 2017 at 11:53 pm

    The plot thickens.

    juliania , May 9, 2017 at 11:04 pm

    If it has to do with the Russian electorial witch hunt stupidity, then yes, I think Comey ought to have been fired. For crying out loud, enough already! Delicate matters are being attempted in the Middle East, and there is no sense in pursuing that craziness. I don't understand why that shouldn't be a perfectly acceptable reason to change direction and start attending to real issues with someone in the office who would support Trump's legitimate claim (and Putin's) that there was no there there.

    Wrong Letters , May 9, 2017 at 11:12 pm

    Why doesnt he fire the top 10 layers of CIA instead? They are wreaking havoc for real everywhere domestically and abroad.

    Huey Long , May 10, 2017 at 1:26 am

    I would imagine the CIA/Intel guys are way harder to get rid of. To quote the late, great Sen. Frank Church:

    If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. ( )

    Toolate , May 9, 2017 at 11:27 pm

    So not one poster here thinks the Russia story has any merit whatsoever? With those odds, the contrarian in me says hmmm

    Yves Smith Post author , May 10, 2017 at 12:31 am

    Because people here are smart enough to be skeptical of hysterical MSM headlines with no real goods, you act as if you are some sort of smart contrarian, when you are just echoing a Democratic party/media narrative?

    You do not seem to recognize that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The idea that billionaire, who was already famous in the US by virtue (among other things) of having a TV show that ran for 14 years and got billions of free media coverage during his campaign, is somehow owned by Putin, is astonishing on its face. Trump had to have been the focus of extensive Republican and Democratic party opposition research while he was campaigning.

    And perhaps most important, the night he won, Trump clearly did not expect to win. His longstanding friend Howard Stern stated a view similar to ours, that Trump ran because it would be good PR and the whole thing developed a life of its own. And before you try saying politics doesn't work that way, the UK is now on a path to Brexit for the same reasons.

    All the Dems and the media have come up with are some kinda-sorta connections to Russia. Trump as a very rich man who also has assembled a large team of political types in short order, would have people who knew people in all corners of the world. "X has done business with Y" is hardly proof o of influence, particularly with a guy like Trump, who is now famous for telling people what they want to hear in a meeting and backstabbing them the next day.

    We've been looking at this for months. The best they can come up with is:

    1. Manafort, who worked for Trump for all of four months and was fired. Plus his Russia connections are mainly through Ukraine. Podesta has strong if not stronger Russia ties, is a much more central play to Clinton and no one is making a stink about that. And that's before you get to the Clinton involvement in a yuuge uranium sale to Russia, which even the New York Times confirmed (but wrote such a weedy story that you have to read carefully to see that).

    2. Carter Page, who was even more peripheral

    3. Flynn, again not a central player, plus it appears his bigger sin involved Turkey

    4. The conversation with the Russian ambassador, which contrary to the screeching has plenty of precedent (in fact, Nixon and Reagan did far more serious meddling)

    5. The various allegations re Trump real estate and bank loans. Trump did have a really seedy Russian involved in a NYC development. One should be more worried that the guy was a crook than that he was Russian. Third tier, not even remotely in the oligarch class. There are also vague allegations re money laundering. The is crap because first, every NYC real estate player has dirty money in high end projects (see the big expose by the New York Times on the Time Warner Center, developed by the Related Companies, owned by Steve Ross). But second, the party responsible for checking where the money came from, unless it was wheelbarrows of cash, is the bank, not the real estate owner. Since the NYT expose there have been efforts to make developers/owners responsible too, but those aren't germane to Trump since they aren't/weren't in effect.

    So please do not provide no value added speculation. If you have something concrete, that would be interesting, but I've been looking and I've seen nothing of any substance.

    Huey Long , May 10, 2017 at 1:07 am

    +1 on the Time Warner Center

    Very few condos there are occupied for more than a few days per year, and most of the residents I encountered during my tenure there were not US citizens.

    We were all very entertained when the Times broke the story.

    Just FYI, Ross does not own the TWC outright, he only has a stake in the place albeit a sizable one since aquiring TIme Warner's office/studio unit.

    LT , May 10, 2017 at 1:50 am

    Trump a crook, but not any other oligarchs? The old saying goes something like behind every great fortune is a great crime.

    They clean up the image with a few rewrites and something like public office or foundations. The Presidency is Trump's ca-ching. And the pauses on the promises and the falling in line (bombs away!). He'll be right in the club.

    George Phillies , May 10, 2017 at 12:40 am

    Mr Comey also made some statements recently about Clinton emails and Mr Wiener, statements that seemed to be in need of significant reinterpretation. That might also have been the cause.

    VietnamVet , May 10, 2017 at 12:56 am

    Corporate Government messaging has fallen apart. The description of Anthony Weiner's laptop went from "explosive" to "careless but not criminal" to "just several" Clinton e-mails on it.

    Democrats are generally supported by Wall Street, GOP by military contractors; but, together they are one war party. The new Saturday Night Massacre shows that with Donald Trump's triumph, the government has split apart into nationalist and globalist factions. No doubt the James Comey firing buries the Russian interference investigation. However, with the wars in Syria and Afghanistan re-surging; this episode shows that nothing the government says or the media reports is near the truth.

    Loblolly , May 10, 2017 at 1:25 am

    This is ostensibly the full memo from Deputy AG Rosenthal recommending the removal of Director Comey.

    Link is to an imgur album consisting of three images.

    <

    [May 10, 2017] Trump Fires FBI Boss James Comey - Its About Time

    Notable quotes:
    "... But the political dimension of the dismissal is not about the Clinton email affair at all. It is about the "Russia interfered with the election" nonsense Clinton invented as excuse for her self-inflicted loss of the vote. The whole anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign run by neocons and "Resistance" democrats, is designed to block the foreign policy - detente with Russia - for which Trump was elected. The anti-Russia inquisition is dangerous groupthink . ..."
    "... He could have been sacked early on while the media's attention was focused on Trump's choices to fill the various Cabinet posts. ..."
    "... It's likely the world will witness the POTUS get his wings clipped. Mr. Trump has never been confronted with existential adversity, his wealth has always protected him from that prospect. He is now captive in a golden cage of political power and has neither the personal experience, resources nor the capacity to conduct governance. Be prepared to watch Trump's Götterdämmerung. Put a fork in, Trump is done. ..."
    "... Curiously I've come to the opposite conclusion: Hillary Clinton is done. Mark my words. ..."
    "... This sort of stuff barely registers with me any more, since the one fact we can all rest assured isn't fakey is that long before an apparatchik such as Comey gets anywhere near the top trough, they will have been 'vetted' to ensure that they aren't the type of person to ever place principle ahead of self interest. ..."
    "... But The Demorats -> Schumer in tears , Warren in war paint, et al and Snowden! - all have selective memories and are exceptional hypocrites. ..."
    "... President Clinton today dismissed William S. Sessions, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who had stubbornly rejected an Administration ultimatum to resign six months after a harsh internal ethics report on his conduct. ..."
    "... Who said it will make such a difference who sits in the FBI? A new guy will just show up saying the same stuff Comey have said. Just look at the new leaders at CIA, NSA, same warmongering hysterical stuff as under Obama. ..."
    "... Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge says this is one of the biggest headlines out of the hearing today with the FBI director, pointing out that the FBI had found an email was obtained by Russian hackers that indicated that former DOJ hack Loretta Lynch would do everything she could to protect Hillary from prosecution: (VIDEO) ..."
    "... Of course Comey wouldn't reveal who sent the email and to whom it was sent. But it sounds like it was sent from someone who worked closely with Lynch, and sent to someone who was very worried about Clinton going down in flames, probably someone very close to Clinton. At the end of the segment, Herridge pointed out that Comey suggested he was boxed in by Lynch and here is what she's talking about:[..] ..."
    "... Reminds me of a little passage I read somewhere about a dish served cold. ..."
    "... Some wonder why a guy like Trump, who made his bones telling people mano a mano that they were fired on prime time TV, wouldn't have picked up a phone to advise Comey he was done. Comey learned of his dismissal while giving a speech in LA. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley says that was done so the president's people could access Comey's documents in his office while he was safely out of town. ..."
    "... The assault on the wealth of the working classes will continue unabated. Mr. Trump is here to represent the wealthy elites, and is doing a fine job at that. Welcome to the new age of feudalism. ..."
    "... Comey also gave immunity to 5 of Hillary's closest aids, including Huma. This insulated Hillary as these people could not be pressured to testify against her. ..."
    "... Not to mention, jackrabbit, Hillary was never sworn in during her Saturday interview with the FBI. ..."
    "... Trump fires Comey due to his political meddling but ... Trump won't prosecute Clinton about her email server. ..."
    "... Clinton's Benghazi was treasonous covering up for Islamic terrorist/email means espionage not electronic mail/Clinton Foundation is treason for hire by the Secretary of State (who ruled America during the Great Interregnum when there was no President, 2009-2117, except when John Kerry was Secretary of State but it was still actually Clinton running things because everyone knows the Secretary of State doesn't make foreign policy) fake scandals were kept alive by Comey to intervene in the US election. (Whether it was his eager doing or he was pressured is irrelevant. ..."
    "... Regarding "impromptu meeting b/w Clinton and Lynch on the tarmac", Comey was giving cover "to" Lynch, IMO. "no reasonable prosecutor". He was protecting the deal Lynch had already made with Clintons. ..."
    "... Did you by chance listen/watch his testimony last week? If not, I recommend it as must watch especially after his being fired. He added more detail to the email investigation and his thinking at the time. ..."
    "... The BBC running a live on Comey's end-of-contract?! Color revo any? Lavrov in Washington, guns for the Kurds, the US going for al-Nusra's head scalp... ..."
    "... so treasonable Obama's scumbucket FBI director Comey gets fired. wowie zowie. nevermind the perjury, the obstruction of justice, the accessory to Clinton's sedition... ..."
    "... Does Russia interfere in U.S. politics more than Israel does? ..."
    "... Yes, caught part of the hearings. Just proved to me that deal was in stone before any tarmac meeting took place. And I bet Comey might not have even known Lynch would expose them so stupidly, how dumb was that. Did a FBI person leaked the meeting to the press?? ..."
    "... I've been surprised that Russia doesn't release "white papers" that show what the NED and IRI have done including in places like Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia. ..."
    May 10, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
    President Trump dismissed the Director of the FBI James Comey on recommendation of the Deputy Attorney General, who had served under Obama, and the Attorney General. The dismissal and the recommendation memos can be read here.

    Comey is accused of usurping the Attorney General's authority on several occasions. In July 2016 Comey decided and publicly announced the closing of the Clinton email-investigations without a recommendation of prosecution. He publicly announced the reopening of the investigation in October only to close it again a few days later.

    At the first closing of the investigation Comey held a press conference and said:

    "our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."

    That, by far, exceeded his competency, Since when can a police officer decide how "reasonable" a prosecutor may or may not be, and make public announcements about that? Clinton's running of a private email server broke several laws. Anyone but she would have been prosecuted at least for breaching secrecy and security regulations.

    It is not the job of the police to decide about prosecutions. The police is an investigating agent of the public prosecutors office. It can make recommendations about prosecutions but not decide about them. Recommendations are to be kept confidential until they are decided upon by the relevant authority - the prosecutor. There are additional issues with Comey. His agents used sting or rather entrapment to lure many hapless idiots into committing "ISIS terror acts". A full two third of such acts in the U.S. would not have been though about without FBI help. Comey himself had signed off on Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.

    The formal dismissal of Comey is, in my view, the right thing to do. It should have been done earlier.

    But the political dimension of the dismissal is not about the Clinton email affair at all. It is about the "Russia interfered with the election" nonsense Clinton invented as excuse for her self-inflicted loss of the vote. The whole anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign run by neocons and "Resistance" democrats, is designed to block the foreign policy - detente with Russia - for which Trump was elected. The anti-Russia inquisition is dangerous groupthink.

    There is no evidence - none at all - that Russia "interfered" with the U.S. election. There is no evidence - none at all - that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign. The Democratic Senator Dianna Feinstein, who sits on the Judiciary Committee as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence, recently confirmed that publicly (vid) immediately after she had again been briefed by the CIA:

    Blitzer mentioned that Feinstein and other colleagues from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had visited CIA headquarters on Tuesday to be briefed on the investigation. He then asked Feinstein whether she had evidence, without disclosing any classified information, that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.

    "Not at this time," Feinstein said.

    Jen | May 10, 2017 4:52:32 AM | 1
    It would be interesting to know why James Comey was sacked now and not earlier before the "Russia interfered in the elections" narrative had much chance to damage Trump's presidency. He could have been sacked early on while the media's attention was focused on Trump's choices to fill the various Cabinet posts.
    Formerly T-Bear | May 10, 2017 5:32:00 AM | 4
    It's likely the world will witness the POTUS get his wings clipped. Mr. Trump has never been confronted with existential adversity, his wealth has always protected him from that prospect. He is now captive in a golden cage of political power and has neither the personal experience, resources nor the capacity to conduct governance. Be prepared to watch Trump's Götterdämmerung. Put a fork in, Trump is done.

    Had Madam Clinton won the election, this would not have been possible. The organisation she headed would have taken immediate control of all available power bases and would not have created such opportunity for attack.

    Quentin | May 10, 2017 5:53:23 AM | 5
    @ 4

    Curiously I've come to the opposite conclusion: Hillary Clinton is done. Mark my words.

    Anon | May 10, 2017 5:59:52 AM | 6
    The next one will be "Operation Gaslight ". The storyline will be that Trump is unstable and needs to be removed by his cabinet. Trumps many enemies will never stop. There is too much at stake.
    Debsisdead | May 10, 2017 6:01:23 AM | 7
    All this appointments soap opera is just distraction for the masses. The next appointee will just like Comey, do as he/she is told.

    This sort of stuff barely registers with me any more, since the one fact we can all rest assured isn't fakey is that long before an apparatchik such as Comey gets anywhere near the top trough, they will have been 'vetted' to ensure that they aren't the type of person to ever place principle ahead of self interest.

    If perchance there was any motive other than inspiring yet more vapid chatter, we can be equally certain that is not going to rate a mention from any of the hack pols or their media enablers until long after this storm in a teacup has subsided.

    A | May 10, 2017 6:04:42 AM | 8
    Put a fork in, Trump is done.

    Out of curiosity: does anyone know the very first time this was said about Trump? I'm sure we can all agree this much though: don't hold your breath on it being the last time it's said about Trump..

    likklemore | May 10, 2017 6:23:54 AM | 11
    @FTB 4 and thank you A @ 8

    I endorse b. Excellent.

    Recall Trump was written off through the Primaries as he offed 16 candidates. In the election cycle down to the wire HRC had a 90% chance. Newsweek published edition cover page Madame President. (Dewey anyone?) I dislike that the Trump presidency is a family affair -- Jared Kushner will be the stick and fork; the second high profile firing that should have been done.

    But The Demorats -> Schumer in tears , Warren in war paint, et al and Snowden! - all have selective memories and are exceptional hypocrites.

    Flashback: New York Times - July 19, 1993 -> President William J. Clinton fires FBI Director

    WASHINGTON, July 19- President Clinton today dismissed William S. Sessions, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who had stubbornly rejected an Administration ultimatum to resign six months after a harsh internal ethics report on his conduct.

    Mr. Clinton said he would announce his nominee to replace Mr. Sessions on Tuesday. He was expected to pick Judge Louis J. Freeh of Federal District Court in Manhattan; officials said Judge Freeh had impressed Mr. Clinton favorably on Friday at their first meeting.

    Mr. Clinton, explaining his reasons for removing Mr. Sessions, effective immediately, said, "We cannot have a leadership vacuum at an agency as important to the United States as the F.B.I. It is time that this difficult chapter in the agency's history is brought to a close." Defiant to the End

    But in a parting news conference at F.B.I. headquarters after Mr. Clinton's announcement, a defiant Mr. Sessions -- his right arm in a sling as a result of a weekend fall -- railed at what he called the unfairness of his removal, which comes nearly six years into his 10-year term.

    "Because of the scurrilous attacks on me and my wife of 42 years, it has been decided by others that I can no longer be as forceful as I need to be in leading the F.B.I. and carrying out my responsibilities to the bureau and the nation," he said. "It is because I believe in the principle of an independent F.B.I. that I have refused to voluntarily resign."

    Mr. Clinton said that after reviewing Mr. Sessions's performance, Attorney General Janet Reno had advised him that Mr. Sessions should go. "After a thorough review by the Attorney General of Mr. Sessions's leadership of the F.B.I., she has reported to me in no uncertain terms that he can no longer effectively lead the bureau

    Despite the President's severe tone, he seemed to regret having to force Mr. Sessions from his post. He said he had hoped that the issue could be settled at the Justice Department without the necessity of using his authority to dismiss the Director, who has a 10-year term but may be removed by the President at any time.

    But Mr. Sessions's intransigence had festered into an awkward situation for Mr. Clinton.

    A Republican stranded in a Democratic Administration, Mr. Sessions was appointed to head the F.B.I. by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 amid the turmoil of the Iran-contra affair. Mr. Sessions arrived as a respected judge from San Antonio, but after five and a half years in office, he leaves with his star fallen, his agency adrift and his support at the F.B.I. all but drained away. Troubled Tenure."[.]

    in lieu of the "fake-news" rag content at the fly

    Anon | May 10, 2017 6:47:39 AM | 13
    Who said it will make such a difference who sits in the FBI? A new guy will just show up saying the same stuff Comey have said. Just look at the new leaders at CIA, NSA, same warmongering hysterical stuff as under Obama.

    Trump has a bad temper and demonstrates erratic behavior, like Hillary. The handlers keep it covered up until they no longer keep it covered up. They let it slip that Hillary frequently blew up and used the F word vigorously as she berated her underlings (which are everyone including Clenis). Trump is, likewise, a genuine asshole. He's not faking that part.

    Marko | May 10, 2017 7:30:14 AM | 16
    If McCabe is next to go , as he should be , this could represent a significant swamp-draining accomplishment for Trump. Depending on who replaces them , of course.

    The Rosenstein letter provided considerable legitimacy to Trump's move , considering the bipartisan support Rosenstein achieved. It wouldn't be a bad move for Trump to choose a replacement for Comey that comes with Rosenstein's strong endorsement. A Sessions endorsement would be about one-half as valuable.

    jfl | May 10, 2017 7:46:50 AM | 17
    did, 'All this appointments soap opera is just distraction for the masses. ... '

    well, amend that to are pushed as a distraction for the masses and i'll certainly agree. there are so many levels at "arms' length" now that they're really just filling in the alibis for the 'historians' ... schlesinger types who'll connect all the dots once the deeds are done and show us the tragi-comedy in five acts. the masses are undistracted. people know it's all pure bullshit. that they're being played and sold down the river. it would be really great if we did something about it. just for the hell of it.

    ProPeace | May 10, 2017 8:10:27 AM | 18
    Interesting: Inside Trumps War with Robert David Steele

    Also White House Petition for Unity Act Against the Deep State, Meeting with Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, & Robert Steele

    Hoarsewhisperer | May 10, 2017 8:32:02 AM | 19
    Obama and Hillary, however, addressed us in whole sentences and presented clearly structured concepts and arguments. Trump spits out 140-character tweets at us from the early hours of the morning.
    I see a keen distinction there.
    Posted by: ralphieboy | May 10, 2017 7:23:56 AM | 15

    ... forgetting, of course, that most politicians (and an only slightly smaller proportion of ordinary folks) start talking, or writing, or dialing, before they've decided precisely what they intend to say.Trump, and probably Putin, thinks before he communicates. And if the result isn't worth saying, he shuts up. Same as Putin.

    Anon | May 10, 2017 8:34:53 AM | 20
    ralphieboy

    Then you are naive if you belive that Trump fire people through Twitter. Sure the stupid anti-Trump MSM want us to believe that.

    likklemore | May 10, 2017 8:51:26 AM | 21
    Marko @ 16

    Agree. McCabe should follow Comey out the door. Patience grasshopper, one-at-a- time. If I were Hillary, (thank G-d for small mercies), after reading Rosenstein's Memo for the Attorney General, I 'd be lawyering up with my wet work gang.

    This excerpt is a tell; confirming indeed there was some simmering mutiny within the FBI house. Judge Nap called it.

    [..] As you and I have discussed, however, I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept nearly universal judgement that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the Director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.[.]

    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

    full Memo deserves a re- read. OMG, someone is setting the table for dinner. Comey was cleaning the Clintons' cess-pool and he was helpfully assisted by the not so honorable, Obama's Attorney General, Lowrenta Lynch

    Under-reported: May 03, 2017

    Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge says this is one of the biggest headlines out of the hearing today with the FBI director, pointing out that the FBI had found an email was obtained by Russian hackers that indicated that former DOJ hack Loretta Lynch would do everything she could to protect Hillary from prosecution: (VIDEO)

    Of course Comey wouldn't reveal who sent the email and to whom it was sent. But it sounds like it was sent from someone who worked closely with Lynch, and sent to someone who was very worried about Clinton going down in flames, probably someone very close to Clinton.
    At the end of the segment, Herridge pointed out that Comey suggested he was boxed in by Lynch and here is what she's talking about:[..]

    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

    in the district of criminals, (aka D.C.), we find not only a swamp, but a few deep cess-pools.

    Morongobill | May 10, 2017 9:19:59 AM | 22
    Reminds me of a little passage I read somewhere about a dish served cold.
    peter | May 10, 2017 9:49:52 AM | 23
    So Trump includes in his firing letter that he appreciates the fact that Comey told him personally on three separate occasions that he was not the subject of investigation. What's that doing there?

    Some wonder why a guy like Trump, who made his bones telling people mano a mano that they were fired on prime time TV, wouldn't have picked up a phone to advise Comey he was done. Comey learned of his dismissal while giving a speech in LA. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley says that was done so the president's people could access Comey's documents in his office while he was safely out of town.

    The Senate investigation just got started. This business about six months of investigation failing to produce a shred of evidence and therefore the whole matter should be dropped isn't going to fly. The same people who natter on about how we masses, like mushrooms kept in the dark and nurtured with bullshit, should disregard all this bafflegab about impropriety also say we should accept their conclusion that there's nothing to see here and that it's time to move on. That ain't happening.

    Senator Al Franken, who's insipid alter-ego George Smiley on Saturday Night Live was the epitome of insecurity, has turned out to be a formidable poser of very tough questions to anyone unfortunate to be summoned before the senate panel. These senate guys don't fuck around and will not be stonewalled. We're in for some very interesting television.

    BRF | May 10, 2017 10:00:13 AM | 25
    Comey will land on his feet in some corporate gig, from whence he came. The only interesting aspect is whether or not his replacement will restore any smidgen of credibility to the FBI by acting on a basis of law or if the political games will continue. My guess would be that the plutocracy will see that their candidate is installed as FBI Director and at a minimum this person will remain at least neutral to the plutocracy's rule, silence being consent. That would be the big big silence on the Clinton criminality as it is intertwined with plutocratic rule. More of the same only more so as the FBI and co-conspirators keep the plot to assassinate any public leaders dusted off in case another Martin Luther King, another Occupy movement or some such should arise.
    ben | May 10, 2017 10:46:59 AM | 26
    DiD @ 7 said: "All this appointments soap opera is just distraction for the masses. The next appointee will just like Comey, do as he/she is told."

    Well said, an IMO, absolutely spot on.

    I think there are people above the Law, history proves that. HRC AND Mr. Trump are part of that group. I fully expect that nothing will happen to either. As DiD said, " A distraction for the masses( sheep)."

    The assault on the wealth of the working classes will continue unabated. Mr. Trump is here to represent the wealthy elites, and is doing a fine job at that. Welcome to the new age of feudalism.

    lysias | May 10, 2017 10:54:14 AM | 27
    Was a weekend fall the real reason why William Sessions's arm was in a sling?
    WorldBLee | May 10, 2017 11:21:16 AM | 29
    The musical chairs show in Washington is meaningless. The Democrats hated Comey but now that he's fired they love him because they can use it to attack Trump. It's all political theatre and should be regarded as such. As others have said, another chump willing to take orders will replace Comey and will surely carry out the same bad policies at the FBI.
    Circe | May 10, 2017 12:25:57 PM | 31
    Trump was just in the Oval Office with that imperial criminal punk, Kissinger, ironically, Nixon's NSA and Trump blurted out that he fired Comey because he wasn't doing a good job.

    The pot calling the kettle black is an understatement.

    I don't give a damn one way or another who Trumpster fires; what I do give a damn about is abuse of power and manipulation of the truth and Trump is repeatedly guilty of both.

    No such dictatorial power should ever again be vested in that position and in a person who is prone to exceed his competencies. And that's exactly how I would describe Herr Drumpf, danke!

    Here's a great example of integrity. Try it sometime!:

    https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/862069019301601281

    https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/862067649748119553

    Tinpot Trump:

    https://theintercept.com/2017/05/10/after-james-comeys-firing-who-will-stop-trumps-tinpot-dictatorship/

    This has nothing to do with Comey incompetence or the man himself. This is only about Trump abusing power as he's been doing since DAY ONE. He just took it to the next level...that's all!

    Willy2 | May 10, 2017 12:44:39 PM | 32
    - Wolf Blitzer was once employed by AIPAC.
    - Comey simply stepped on too many (sensitive) toes, both Republican & Democratic. In that regard it was a matter of time that he was fired. It would have happened as well if Hillary Clinton had been elected to become the new president.
    - But I also fear that a new FBI director (as appointed by one Jeff Sessions) will be as rightwing as one Jeff Sessions or even worse.
    SlapHappy | May 10, 2017 1:12:56 PM | 33
    @BRF #25

    I'd add Aaron Swartz, Pat Tillman, and the DC Madam to the list of people who threatened the cabal and were assassinated for their efforts.

    h | May 10, 2017 1:37:10 PM | 34
    Great post, b, and likklemore, your comments are appreciated.

    What is troubling to me with all of this is how politicized Obama's Cabinet/team became. It is becoming more and more obvious his appointments were made to serve him NOT the country and the public is witnessing the fallout from such authoritarian style of leadership.

    Comey is both a victim and beneficiary of this politicization. His testimony last week was more forthcoming than in previous hearings, but what spoke volumes was his reaction to the impromptu meeting b/w Clinton and Lynch on the tarmac in Arizona. He suggested his concerns about Lynch being compromised regarding the Clinton email investigation were confirmed during that meeting while stating it was the last straw so to speak.

    This pattern of politicization was obviously meant to continue under Hillary's leadership by cementing a permanent political class in DC who would serve the president rather than all of us outside of Washington. Some term this as the 'UniParty' - a majority of R and D's working in tandem to re orient DC machinations into a global governing body.

    The neo's - libs and cons - are giddy over resigning the U.S. Constitution and the rest of America's founding papers into the trash heap of history. Their march toward globalization is hindered by those pesky documents. But what these globalists never counted on was a Trump win and, more importantly, conservatives gaining power in 28 states, six states shy of holding a Constitutional Convention.

    Now that Hillary lost, Obama and team are pulling together an organizational structure to stave off wins in those six states while also trying to peel away those few who turned red in 2016.

    This is the new political battleground - conservatives fighting for a constitutional convention and neo's fighting to remain relevant. With Comey being gone, and soon McCabe and et al, the FBI has a shot at shedding the politicization of the department and returning to its investigative roots.

    This is the reason for Robby Mook's 'terrified' comment when learning of Comey's firing. He and his globalist cohorts should be concerned, but it's Hillary who really needs to be terrified.

    From The Hague | May 10, 2017 1:37:54 PM | 35
    #15 ralphieboy
    Obama and Hillary, however, addressed us in whole sentences and presented clearly structured concepts and arguments.

    Oh, that's your definition of lying and warmongering, idiot.

    Jackrabbit | May 10, 2017 1:40:00 PM | 36
    Comey also gave immunity to 5 of Hillary's closest aids, including Huma. This insulated Hillary as these people could not be pressured to testify against her.
    h | May 10, 2017 1:46:44 PM | 37
    Not to mention, jackrabbit, Hillary was never sworn in during her Saturday interview with the FBI.
    Jackrabbit | May 10, 2017 1:54:06 PM | 38
    Trump fires Comey due to his political meddling but ... Trump won't prosecute Clinton about her email server.
    xor | May 10, 2017 2:07:46 PM | 41
    I read that he was fired while giving some speech in Los Angeles or so and when he was asked to comment he thought it was a joke. Now that's funny!
    Anon | May 10, 2017 2:09:54 PM | 42
    Why is it such a big thing? Some people here seems to take talking points from neocon media. He was fired because Trump didnt have confidence in him, simply as that.
    RUKidding | May 10, 2017 2:32:04 PM | 45
    Not sad to see Comey go. I didn't think he was doing a good job, albeit he was put in a position where he had to tread carefully. I guess he did "ok" with that careful treading. Unsure of Trump's motivations to fire him but not that surprised. As others have posited here, Clinton would have done the same. Comey was probably at least partially prepared and possibly has a sinecure lined up as I type this.

    IMO, this isn't the worst of Trump's alleged "offenses" by a long shot. It certainly does provide a distraction from all the other sh*t swirling around Trump, like Kushner selling US citizenships to high priced Chinese gangsters, like Trump's various cabinet picks arresting citizens for questioning them the "wrong way" or laughing at them, like Trump's decisions to ruin the environment and give away public lands to his rich pals, like the travesty of TrumpDon'tCare AHCA (which could end up even worse after the Senate gets done with it - No women on the Senate committee, just great).

    Yes a nifty distraction while Trump and his plutocrat cronies rob us all blind. Duly noted the Democrats engage in their own dog 'n pony sideshow distractions re russia, Russia RUSSIA hysteria. All to avoid having to, you know, DO something about their own disaster of a corporate-bought-off "party" and avoid having to do one d*mn thing that benefits their traditional constituents, as opposed to ensuring that their Plutocratic masters are happy.

    Like Comey's my biggest "concern" du jour... not.

    steven t johnson | May 10, 2017 2:48:34 PM | 46
    Every analysis of any current US political events that says anything about Clinton losing the election is deranged or dishonest. There are no exceptions.

    Clinton's Benghazi was treasonous covering up for Islamic terrorist/email means espionage not electronic mail/Clinton Foundation is treason for hire by the Secretary of State (who ruled America during the Great Interregnum when there was no President, 2009-2117, except when John Kerry was Secretary of State but it was still actually Clinton running things because everyone knows the Secretary of State doesn't make foreign policy) fake scandals were kept alive by Comey to intervene in the US election. (Whether it was his eager doing or he was pressured is irrelevant.) The thing for Comey, and his natural human need to at least pretend to be a genuine human being, is, the Russia hacks the election is exactly the same kind of fake scandal, something arcane with dark, dark hints of treason! treason! Comey can't suddenly discover sanity when the BS is flying at Trump, after having vociferously claimed those were really Clark bars for the years prior.

    The OP doesn't quite have the nerve to explain clearly how the supposed loser has the clout to make Comey dish on Trump. Or the effrontery to clearly avow Benghazi/email server/Clinton cash/pizzagate were all gospel. Nonetheless it is still Trumpery.

    sl | May 10, 2017 3:39:47 PM | 49
    @ h:

    Regarding "impromptu meeting b/w Clinton and Lynch on the tarmac", Comey was giving cover "to" Lynch, IMO. "no reasonable prosecutor". He was protecting the deal Lynch had already made with Clintons.

    Just read about Comey history with Clintons. He has been giving them cover a long time.

    h | May 10, 2017 4:01:37 PM | 50
    sl - Yep, I concur. And I think he had to protect whatever deal was agreed to b/w Lynch, Obama and Clinton. I'm not even sure I'd call it a deal, but rather an order. I'm sure if he didn't adhere there would have been some hefty consequences to pay.

    Did you by chance listen/watch his testimony last week? If not, I recommend it as must watch especially after his being fired. He added more detail to the email investigation and his thinking at the time.

    ProPeace | May 10, 2017 4:04:59 PM | 51
    SlapHappy | May 10, 2017 1:12:56 Add to the long list:

    Seth Rich, sen. Paul Wellstone, JFK jr, princess Diana, Michael Hastings, mysterious deaths of 9/11 witnesses, Phillip Marshall with family, Michael Connell, that policeman from the WTC 1993 bombing investigation, Clinton body count, that German press insider, Gary Webb ...

    Mina | May 10, 2017 4:25:10 PM | 52
    The BBC running a live on Comey's end-of-contract?! Color revo any? Lavrov in Washington, guns for the Kurds, the US going for al-Nusra's head scalp...
    john | May 10, 2017 4:40:17 PM | 55
    so treasonable Obama's scumbucket FBI director Comey gets fired. wowie zowie. nevermind the perjury, the obstruction of justice, the accessory to Clinton's sedition...

    there's probably a multi-million dollar book deal in the pipeline. - Trump DOES have some very "interesting" connections to Russia and some shady Russian persons. But this is the result of his own "wheeling & dealing".

    SlapHappy | May 10, 2017 5:04:12 PM | 60

    Does Russia interfere in U.S. politics more than Israel does?
    sl | May 10, 2017 5:09:13 PM | 61
    @ h. Yes, caught part of the hearings. Just proved to me that deal was in stone before any tarmac meeting took place. And I bet Comey might not have even known Lynch would expose them so stupidly, how dumb was that. Did a FBI person leaked the meeting to the press??
    h | May 10, 2017 7:14:03 PM | 66
    Hey sl - here's a link to a post by RightScoop titled - FBI found email that Lynch would do everything she could to protect Hillary from CRIMINAL CHARGES - Catherine Herridge reported recently on this find - http://therightscoop.com/revealed-fbi-found-email-that-lynch-would-do-everything-she-could-to-protect-hillary-from-criminal-charges/

    Yep, Rosenstein is a law man. I won't be the slightest bit surprised to learn Grand Jury indictments handed down sometime in the coming months for Hillary's arrest. Mr. Comey served as an obstacle to the DOJ to prosecute. Now that Sessions/Rosenstein, both law men, are heading the DOJ nothing will surprise me. Nothing.

    Curtis | May 10, 2017 7:47:42 PM | 68
    SlapHappy 60

    Does Russia interfere in the elections and governing institutions of others as much as the US does?

    I've been surprised that Russia doesn't release "white papers" that show what the NED and IRI have done including in places like Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia.

    [May 10, 2017] Why Was Comey Fired by Philip Giraldi

    It sounds like Hillary Clinton boxed Comey in – in more ways that just that the meeting Lynch had with Bill Clinton. If that new email is any indication, she very likely coerced him directly, pushing him to play the 'no intent' defense for Clinton and her aides.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The first is Comey's unprofessional handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, where he first decided not to prosecute her over the mishandling of classified information and then subsequently revealed to the public that the investigation had been reopened shortly before the election, possibly influencing the outcome. This is a serious matter, as Comey broke with precedent by going public with details of bureau investigations that normally are considered confidential. One might argue that it is certainly an odd assertion for the White House to be making, as the reopening of the investigation undoubtedly helped Trump, but it perhaps should be seen as an attempt to create some kind of bipartisan consensus about Comey having overreached by exposing bureau activities that might well have remained secret. ..."
    "... As for the Russians, we are still waiting for the evidence demonstrating that Moscow intended to change the course of the U.S. election. Further investigation will likely not produce anything new, though it will undoubtedly result in considerable political spin to explain what we already know. It is unimaginable that Michael Flynn, for all his failings, agreed to work on behalf of Russian interests, while other names that have surfaced as being of interest in the case were hardly in a position to influence what the Trump administration might agree to do. There is no evidence of any Manchurian Candidate here. ..."
    "... I am surprised that Dir. Comey didn't resign on his own terms after the election. The only other issue is it would have been less media convulsive and polite to allow him a graceful resignation and some departure time. ..."
    May 10, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
    The statements by the White House and Sessions cite two issues. The first is Comey's unprofessional handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, where he first decided not to prosecute her over the mishandling of classified information and then subsequently revealed to the public that the investigation had been reopened shortly before the election, possibly influencing the outcome. This is a serious matter, as Comey broke with precedent by going public with details of bureau investigations that normally are considered confidential. One might argue that it is certainly an odd assertion for the White House to be making, as the reopening of the investigation undoubtedly helped Trump, but it perhaps should be seen as an attempt to create some kind of bipartisan consensus about Comey having overreached by exposing bureau activities that might well have remained secret.

    The second issue raised by both Sessions and the White House is Comey's inability to "effectively lead the Bureau" given what has occurred since last summer. That is a legitimate concern. When the Clinton investigation was shelved, there was considerable dissent in the bureau, with many among the rank-and-file believing that the egregious mishandling of classified information should have some consequences even if Comey was correct that a prosecution would not produce a conviction.

    And the handling of "Russiagate" also angered some experienced agents who believed that the reliance on electronic surveillance and information derived from intelligence agencies was the wrong way to go. Some called for questioning the Trump-campaign suspects who had surfaced in the initial phases of the investigation, a move that was vetoed by Comey and his team. It would be safe to say that FBI morale plummeted as a result, with many junior and mid-level officers leaving their jobs to exploit their security clearances in the lucrative government contractor business.

    There has been considerable smoke about both the Clinton emails and the allegations of Russian interference in last year's election, but I suspect that there is relatively little fire. As Comey asserted, the attempt to convict a former secretary of state on charges of mishandling information without any ability to demonstrate intent would be a mistake and would ultimately fail. No additional investigation will change that reality.

    As for the Russians, we are still waiting for the evidence demonstrating that Moscow intended to change the course of the U.S. election. Further investigation will likely not produce anything new, though it will undoubtedly result in considerable political spin to explain what we already know. It is unimaginable that Michael Flynn, for all his failings, agreed to work on behalf of Russian interests, while other names that have surfaced as being of interest in the case were hardly in a position to influence what the Trump administration might agree to do. There is no evidence of any Manchurian Candidate here.

    I believe that the simplest explanation for the firing of Comey is the most likely: Donald Trump doesn't like him much and doesn't trust him at all. While it is convenient to believe that the FBI director operates independently from the politicians who run the country, the reality is that he or she works for the attorney general, who in turn works for the president. That is the chain of command, like it or not. Any U.S. president can insist on a national-security team that he is comfortable with, and if Trump is willing to take the heat from Congress and the media over the issue he certainly is entitled to do what he must to have someone he can work with at the FBI.

    Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

    Brian, May 10, 2017 at 10:39 am

    Jul 7, 2016 Justice Vs. "Just Us": Of Course the FBI Let Hillary off the Hook. The only thing that surprises me is that anyone is surprised by this.

    https://youtu.be/tmcox43ErRA

    Investment Watch Blog

    "Mr. Comey's appointment will be for an initial three-year term which, subject to re-election by shareholders, will expire at the conclusion of the 2016 Annual General Meeting."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/10/hillary-clinton-foundation-donors-hsbc-swiss-bank

    "Clinton foundation received up to $81m from clients of controversial HSBC bank"

    It's like a revolving door of money and special projects that the bank and the CF are involved in.

    https://www.clintonfoundation.org/search/node/HSBC

    EliteCommInc. May 10, 2017 at 11:38 am

    " . . . but there was a certain inevitability about it given the bureau's clear inability to navigate the troubled political waters that developed early last summer and have continued ever since."

    I am surprised that Dir. Comey didn't resign on his own terms after the election. The only other issue is it would have been less media convulsive and polite to allow him a graceful resignation and some departure time.

    But that he is gone, I think he was surprised only by the manner certainly not the inevitability.

    Blind sided by the manner certainly not the course.

    Mark Thomason, May 10, 2017 at 12:06 pm

    True. But it is also true that NOBODY likes Comey much or trusts him at all. He has no defenders.

    Trump has attackers. That is very different. They'd attack him for anything he does, they attack every day. This outrage is only the latest, and will be repeated at every hint of opportunity.

    Here they agree the guy needed to be fired and said themselves that Hillary was going to do it. But Trump did it, and that is the problem.

    Kurt Gayle, May 10, 2017 at 12:46 pm

    Please consider the that the explanation for the Comey firing is simpler:

    (1) The Deputy Attorney-General is the FBI Director's boss.

    (2) Trump's nominee for the position of Deputy Attorney-General, Rod Rosenstein, although nominated on January 13th, was only confirmed by the Senate on April 25th. Rosenstein took the oath of office the following day, Wednesday, April 26th, two weeks ago today.

    (3) Immediately upon assuming his duties as the Justice Department official directly responsible for the FBI, Mr. Rosenstein determined that there were major problems concerning the FBI. Rosenstein reported his finding in a letter to his boss, Attorney-General Sessions:

    (4) "Over the past year the FBI's reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage, and it has affected the entire Department of Justice. That is deeply troubling to many Department employees and veterans, legislators and citizens."

    (5) "The director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General's authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement. At most, the Director should have said the FBI had completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors."

    (6) "Compounding the error, the Director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation. Derogatory information sometimes is disclosed in the course of criminal investigations and prosecutions, but we never release it gratuitously "

    (7) "The goal of a federal criminal investigation is not to announce our thoughts at a press conference. The goal is to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify a federal criminal prosecution, then allow a federal prosecutor who exercises authority delegated by the Attorney General to make a prosecutorial decision, and then – if prosecution is warranted – let the judge and jury determine the facts."

    (8) "Concerning his letter to the Congress on October 28, 2016, the Director cast his decision as a choice between whether he would 'speak' about the FBI's decision to investigate the newly-discovered email messages or 'conceal' it. 'Conceal' is a loaded term that misstates the issue. When federal agents and prosecutors quietly open a criminal investigation, we are not concealing anything; we are simply following the longstanding policy that we refrain from publicizing non-public information. In that context, silence is not concealment."

    (9) "My perspective on these issues is shared by former Attorneys General and Deputy Attorneys General from different eras and both political parties."

    (10) "I agree with the nearly unanimous opinions of former Department officials. The way the Director handled the conclusion of the email investigation was wrong. As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions."

    With respect to Deputy Attorney-General Rosenstein's heading of the investigation into possible Russian interference in the November election, the fact that Mr. Rosenstein would head the investigation (Attorney-General Sessions having recused himself) was known to the Senate - and the Senate committee questioned him on his views on the matter - for a full week before the Senate confirmed Mr. Rosenstein by a 94-6 vote.

    MM, May 10, 2017 at 1:00 pm

    I'm pleased to see this vociferous call by high-level Democratic officials for a U.S. Independent Counsel to investigate this matter. It's a relief that these same officials are taking this stance from a position of principled consistency, as they were the loudest in calling for independent investigations of the previous administration's questionable activities.

    For example: NSA mass domestic surveillance, gun-running and associated false statements to Congress, IRS targeting of conservative groups, and influence peddling in the State Department under Secretary Clinton, all of which the Justice Department at the time was either directly involved in or responsible for burying any serious inquiries

    Ellimist000, May 10, 2017 at 2:55 pm

    MM,

    "NSA mass domestic surveillance, gun-running and associated false statements to Congress, IRS targeting of conservative groups, and influence peddling in the State Department under Secretary Clinton "

    You're not wrong, but the reason nothing happened was that stuff of this nature has gone on from both sides since the Cold War started (different names and techniques, of course). If you really wanted the Dems to suddenly see the light, under the 1st black president no less, then I hope you are awaiting the GOP's ethics censure on Trump with great anticipation

    Otto Zeit, May 10, 2017 at 4:02 pm

    What baffles me is, why would the Democrats want the "Russiagate" inquiry to be left in the hands of a man who has already shown himself to be blown by the winds of political partisanship?

    MM, May 10, 2017 at 4:17 pm

    Ellimist000,

    I'd love to see any President censured by Congress, for anything, especially by his or her own party. But even that won't cause the Hypocritical Old Party to see the light. The universal philosophy in a 2-party system like this one is to 1) never admit any wrongdoing of one's own nor hold any objective ethical standard of behavior; and 2) declare the other party pure evil, all the time.

    [May 10, 2017] What seems to me to be most problematic for Flynn is not so much Russia but that he was getting paid by Turkey as a lobbyist while heading the NSA.

    May 10, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Kim Kaufman , May 9, 2017 at 10:41 pm

    CNN exclusive: Grand jury subpoenas issued in FBI's Russia investigation

    By Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz and Pamela Brown, CNN

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/09/politics/grand-jury-fbi-russia/index.html

    What seems to me to be most problematic for Flynn is not so much Russia but that he was getting paid by Turkey as a lobbyist while heading the NSA.

    [May 08, 2017] NYT Mag: Silicon Valley Has Been Transformed into Center of Anti-Trump Resistance

    May 08, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

    The article , written by Farhad Manjoo, is titled "Can Facebook Fix Its Own Worst Bug?" and poses the question: "Mark Zuckerberg now acknowledges the dangerous side of the social revolution he helped start. But is the most powerful tool for connection in human history capable of adapting to the world it created?"

    The article discusses the mood in Silicon Valley days before Donald Trump's inauguration, describing the general mood as "grim." But Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was reportedly quite positive about the future, describing 2016 as an "interesting year for us [Facebook]."

    The article later describes Silicon Valley's detachment from real world events, saying, "In Silicon Valley, current events tend to fade into the background. The Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraq war, the financial crisis and every recent presidential election occurred, for the tech industry, on some parallel but distant timeline divorced from the everyday business of digitizing the world."

    But the election of Donald Trump caused many in Silicon Valley to suddenly take notice of the political world, "Then Donald Trump won. In the 17 years I've spent covering Silicon Valley, I've never seen anything shake the place like his victory," Manjoo writes. "In the span of a few months, the Valley has been transformed from a politically disengaged company town into a center of anti-Trump resistance and fear."

    "A week after the election, one start-up founder sent me a private message on Twitter: 'I think it's worse than I thought,' he wrote. 'Originally I thought 18 months. I've cut that in half,'" Manjoo recalls. "Until what? 'Apocalypse. End of the world.'"

    The description of Silicon Valley as the "center of anti-Trump resistance" is unsurprising, Google employees and executives previously held rallies at Google offices across the United States in protest of President Trump's temporary travel halt from nations associated with terrorism.

    [May 07, 2017] Going Off the Rails by William S. Lind

    Notable quotes:
    "... Unfortunately, on the fourth issue, wars of hegemony, it appears his young administration is already going off the rails. Instead of an innovative foreign and defense policy, what we have seen so far is more of the same. Soon after his first appointments in these areas, we saw his officials race around the world to assure our allies that nothing would change. Those allies are holdovers from the Cold War, and their value is now questionable-especially if, as President Trump promised, we are going to seek better relations with Russia. ..."
    "... During his campaign, the president also said that most of our allies are freeloaders, which they are. We have committed to go to war for them, but they offer little in return. ..."
    "... The key to answering that question is first Russia, then China. Alliances with both are necessary to present an effective front against Fourth Generation War. Unlike our current allies, both have large and capable armed forces. The unique element of candidate Donald Trump's foreign policy was its promise to reach out to Russia, seeking good relations at the least and perhaps even a formal accommodation. Where is that idea now? The Trump administration has taken anti-Russian positions at the UN and elsewhere. The absurd sanctions on Russia over retaking Crimea, historically a part of Russia, continue. ..."
    "... None of this adds up to the new foreign and defense policies we were promised but rather to the old counterproductive policies of the Republican establishment. We are to continue the Cold War, regarding Russia and China as rivals; keep on spending and dying in the Middle East, apparently until doomsday; and lay out a trillion dollars a year on a military that usually loses. Both military reform and a new grand strategy aimed at the Fourth Generation threat have died aborning. ..."
    May 07, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    Four issues got Donald Trump elected president: immigration, free trade, political correctness, and the quest for American world hegemony along with the wars that it spawned. If he is to be reelected, he must deliver on all four.

    Unfortunately, on the fourth issue, wars of hegemony, it appears his young administration is already going off the rails. Instead of an innovative foreign and defense policy, what we have seen so far is more of the same. Soon after his first appointments in these areas, we saw his officials race around the world to assure our allies that nothing would change. Those allies are holdovers from the Cold War, and their value is now questionable-especially if, as President Trump promised, we are going to seek better relations with Russia.

    During his campaign, the president also said that most of our allies are freeloaders, which they are. We have committed to go to war for them, but they offer little in return. Most of their militaries are suited only to the parade ground, and a small parade ground at that; the entire German Army now has only 225 tanks. It would have trouble taking Luxembourg.

    President Trump was the antiwar candidate, but we hear nothing from his White House about ending the wars in Afghanistan or, more broadly, the Middle East. Go ahead and defeat ISIS, at least in the sense of preventing it from holding territory. But what then? Wiser Fourth Generation entities, or non-state forces, such as Hezbollah, will operate within hollowed-out states rather than attempt to become a state. And ISIS, like al-Qaeda, is merely one head of the Fourth Generation hydra. How do we preserve the state system itself in the face of the challenge Fourth Generation War poses?

    The key to answering that question is first Russia, then China. Alliances with both are necessary to present an effective front against Fourth Generation War. Unlike our current allies, both have large and capable armed forces. The unique element of candidate Donald Trump's foreign policy was its promise to reach out to Russia, seeking good relations at the least and perhaps even a formal accommodation. Where is that idea now? The Trump administration has taken anti-Russian positions at the UN and elsewhere. The absurd sanctions on Russia over retaking Crimea, historically a part of Russia, continue.

    None of this adds up to the new foreign and defense policies we were promised but rather to the old counterproductive policies of the Republican establishment. We are to continue the Cold War, regarding Russia and China as rivals; keep on spending and dying in the Middle East, apparently until doomsday; and lay out a trillion dollars a year on a military that usually loses. Both military reform and a new grand strategy aimed at the Fourth Generation threat have died aborning.

    Why? What has led President Trump to surrender to the establishment on foreign policy without even a fight? Several theories are in circulation. One is that the president is less comfortable with foreign-policy and defense issues than with domestic policy, knows he can't do everything, and is tired of media screams that he is going to blow up the world. He has therefore turned foreign and defense policy over to Vice President Pence, who is an establishment thinker, likely under the influence of neoconservatives. One would think that that bunch's spectacular failures under President George W. Bush would have forced them out of town. But that isn't how Washington works. Repeated policy failure is no bar to political success, especially if someone has access to gobs of money, as the neocons do.

    Another theory is that the White House has determined that the so-called deep state makes any real policy change impossible. All the Trump people think they can do is try to expose the deep state in a long-term effort to delegitimize it. If this is true, there are some facts behind it. The deep state-a conglomeration of federal employees, contractors, business allies on Wall Street, and essentially anyone who benefits from the status quo-is powerful in both foreign and defense policy circles. To talk about military reform is to threaten the single largest honey pot on earth. The status quo in foreign policy-which is to say a quest for world hegemony, for Jacobin ideas of democracy and "human rights"-has tremendous ideological backing within the State Department and much of the rest of the government, the media, and academia. Even for a president who enjoys saying, "You're fired," these are hard nuts to crack.

    But if Mr. Trump is to have a successful presidency, he must find a vise for cracking them. Turning foreign and defense policy over to the Republican establishment guarantees more failures of the kind we know all too well. We will start new wars, then lose them. If those wars are with either Russia or China, the scope of the defeats could be historic. We will pour more trillions of dollars into the sand. And the non-state forces of the Fourth Generation will grow, spread, and win.

    At home, by failing to deliver on one of his four most important campaign pledges, President Trump will weaken himself. He won the election because enough people voted against the establishment, both its Republican and Democratic wings, and those voters will not turn out again if he merely puts the Republican establishment in power. To the contrary, those voters will again seek someone who is anti-establishment, this time with the seriousness and persistence to fight the establishment and win. President Trump's success in the 2016 primaries will bring such people into the fray. And the president will, in the end, get trumped.

    William S. Lind is the author, with Lt. Col. Gregory A. Thiele, of the 4th Generation Warfare Handbook.

    [May 07, 2017] Twenty Truths about Marine Le Pen by James Petras

    Notable quotes:
    "... This is why all the economic populists will inevitably be labelled right-wing. The 'left' is incapable of dealing with the crisis of neoliberalism, because the most effective tool of neoliberalism, mass immgration, is now held as utterly sacrosanct by them. ..."
    "... The modern 'left' is totally anti-working class in every dimension. Only they do adore welfare as a form of charity to dull the effects of mass migration (Though it is likely now more an accelerant of it) and corporatists are fine with it because they pay less from tax increases than they make in outsourcing and insourcing. ..."
    "... And the modern left is like this because it is so thoroughly middle class, there are so many reasons for this, but the reality is what it is. So they get confused and ponder why the working class is 'voting against it's own interests'. ..."
    "... The part that irks me the most is their disdain for native working class for various, often exaggerated, PC defects and then praise newcomers who have even worse pathologies. Maybe they don't recognise it, but they hate the native working class because they are of their society and thus a threat whereas outsiders can be safely brought in like strike breakers. (They think) ..."
    May 01, 2017 | www.unz.com
    87 Comments

    Introduction: Every day in unimaginable ways, prominent leaders from the left and the right, from bankers to Parisian intellectuals, are fabricating stories and pushing slogans that denigrate presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

    They obfuscate her program, substituting the label 'extremist' for her pro-working class and anti-imperialist commitment. Fear and envy over the fact that a new leader heads a popular movement has seeped into Emmanuel "Manny" Macron's champagne-soaked dinner parties. He has good reason to be afraid: Le Pen addresses the fundamental interests of the vast- majority of French workers, farmers, public employees, unemployed and underemployed youth and older workers approaching retirement.

    The mass media, political class and judicial as well as street provocateurs savagely assault Le Pen, distorting her domestic and foreign policies. They are incensed that Le Pen pledges to remove France from NATO's integrated command – effectively ending its commitment to US directed global wars. Le Pen rejects the oligarch-dominated European Union and its austerity programs, which have enriched bankers and multi-national corporations. Le Pen promises to convoke a national referendum over the EU – to decide French submission. Le Pen promises to end sanctions against Russia and, instead, increase trade. She will end France's intervention in Syria and establish ties with Iran and Palestine.

    Le Pen is committed to Keynesian demand-driven industrial revitalization as opposed to Emmanuel Macron's ultra-neoliberal supply-side agenda.

    Le Pen's program will raise taxes on banks and financial transactions while fining capital flight in order to continue funding France's retirement age of 62 for women and 65 for men, keeping the 35 hour work-week, and providing tax free overtime pay. She promises direct state intervention to prevent factories from relocating to low wage EU economies and firing French workers.

    Le Pen is committed to increasing public spending for childcare and for the poor and disabled. She has pledged to protect French farmers against subsidized, cheap imports.

    Marine Le Pen supports abortion rights and gay rights. She opposes the death penalty. She promises to cut taxes by 10% for low-wage workers. Marine is committed to fighting against sexism and for equal pay for women.

    Marine Le Pen will reduce migration to ten thousand people and crack down on immigrants with links to terrorists.

    Emmanuel Macron: Macro Billionaire and Micro Worker Programs

    Macron has been an investment banker serving the Rothschild and Cie Banque oligarchy, which profited from speculation and the pillage of the public treasury. Macron served in President Hollande's Economy Ministry, in charge of 'Industry and Digital Affairs' from 2014 through 2016. This was when the 'Socialist' Hollande imposed a pro-business agenda, which included a 40 billion-euro tax cut for the rich.

    Macron is tied to the Republican Party and its allied banking and business Confederations, whose demands include: raising the retirement age, reducing social spending, firing tens of thousands of public employees and facilitating the outflow of capital and the inflow of cheap imports.

    Macron is an unconditional supporter of NATO and the Pentagon. He fully supports the European Union. For their part, the EU oligarchs are thrilled with Macron's embrace of greater austerity for French workers, while the generals can expect total material support for the ongoing and future US-NATO wars on three continents.

    Propaganda, Labels and Lies

    Macron's pro-war, anti-working class and 'supply-side' economic policies leave us with only one conclusion: Marine Le Pen is the only candidate of the left. Her program and commitments are pro-labor, not 'hard' or 'far' right – and certainly not 'fascist'.

    Macron, on the other hand is a committed rightwing extremist, certainly no 'centrist', as the media and the political elite claim! One has only to look at his background in banking, his current supporters among the oligarchs and his ministerial policies when he served Francois Holland.

    The 'Macronistas' have accused Marine Le Pen of extreme 'nationalism', 'fascism', 'anti-Semitism' and 'anti-immigrant racism'. 'The French Left', or what remains of it, has blindly swallowed the oligarchs' campaign against Le Pen despite the malodorous source of these libels.

    Le Pen is above all a 'sovereigntist': 'France First'. Her fight is against the Brussels oligarchs and for the restoration of sovereignty to the French people. There is an infinite irony in labeling the fight against imperial political power as 'hard right'. It is insulting to debase popular demands for domestic democratic power over basic economic policies, fiscal spending, incomes and prices policies, budgets and deficits as 'extremist and far right'.

    Marine Le Pen has systematically transformed the leadership, social, economic program and direction of the National Front Party.

    She expelled its anti-Semites, including her own father! She transformed its policy on women's rights, abortion, gays and race. She won the support of young unemployed and employed factory workers, public employees and farmers. Young workers are three times more likely to support her national industrial revitalization program over Macron's 'free market dogma'. Le Pen has drawn support from French farmers as well as the downwardly mobile provincial middle-class, shopkeepers, clerks and tourism-based workers and business owners.

    Despite the trends among the French masses against the oligarchs, academics, intellectuals and political journalists have aped the elite's slander against Le Pen because they will not antagonize the prestigious media and their administrators in the universities. They will not acknowledge the profound changes that have occurred within the National Front under Marine Le Pen. They are masters of the 'double discourse' – speaking from the left while working with the right. They confuse the lesser evil with the greater evil.

    If Macron wins this election (and nothing is guaranteed!), he will certainly implement his 'hard' and 'extreme' neo-liberal agenda. When the French workers go on strike and demonstrators erect barricades in the streets in response to Macron's austerity, the fake-left will bleat out their inconsequential 'critique' of 'impure reason'. They will claim that they were right all along.

    If Le Pen loses this election, Macron will impose his program and ignite popular fury. Marine will make an even stronger candidate in the next election if the French oligarchs' judiciary does not imprison her for the crime of defending sovereignty and social justice.

    Altai , May 1, 2017 at 11:55 pm GMT

    This is why all the economic populists will inevitably be labelled right-wing. The 'left' is incapable of dealing with the crisis of neoliberalism, because the most effective tool of neoliberalism, mass immgration, is now held as utterly sacrosanct by them. Thus any salves by the 'left' or 'far-left' (Hi Syriza and your blanket amnesty of illegal immigrants at a time of 40% unemployment in Greece!) will be temporary at best. No amount of welfare will make up for increased unemployment, lowered wages, a lack of housing, a lack of affordable family foundation and ethnic displacement. It makes me sick when I see so-called socialists making energetic campaigns to stop failed asylum seekers being deported.

    The modern 'left' is totally anti-working class in every dimension. Only they do adore welfare as a form of charity to dull the effects of mass migration (Though it is likely now more an accelerant of it) and corporatists are fine with it because they pay less from tax increases than they make in outsourcing and insourcing.

    And the modern left is like this because it is so thoroughly middle class, there are so many reasons for this, but the reality is what it is. So they get confused and ponder why the working class is 'voting against it's own interests'. It's painful to watch. One's ethnic group having a majority and centrality in it's homeland is the most valuable thing imaginable. The wealthy whites who sneer pay an exorbitant tax to insulate their children and raise them among their own kind, but don't ever seem to realise.

    The part that irks me the most is their disdain for native working class for various, often exaggerated, PC defects and then praise newcomers who have even worse pathologies. Maybe they don't recognise it, but they hate the native working class because they are of their society and thus a threat whereas outsiders can be safely brought in like strike breakers. (They think)

    Carlton Meyer , May 2, 2017 at 4:32 am GMT

    Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after seeing this short video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting World War III with Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and then asking for a comment:

    watch-v=p_XeQs5n5js

    wayfarer , May 2, 2017 at 5:31 am GMT

    Brother Nathanael, has Marine Le Pen's back!

    jilles dykstra , May 2, 2017 at 6:07 am GMT

    The antisemitism of old Le Pen was just two statements:

    • the gas chambers are just a footnote in history
    • the German occupation was relatively benign.

    Both statements are objectively true.
    Le Pen's crime is denying the unique holocaust.
    He's not the only one, a USA Indian has the same view
    Ward Churchill, 'A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present', San Francisco 1997
    Ward Churchill, a professor of Boulder university, also fell into disgrace.
    Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.

    jilles dykstra , May 2, 2017 at 6:11 am GMT

    @Carlton Meyer Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after seeing this short video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting World War III with Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and then asking for a comment:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=150&v=p_XeQs5n5js

    edNels , May 2, 2017 at 6:50 am GMT

    @Carlton Meyer Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after seeing this short video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting World War III with Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and then asking for a comment:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=150&v=p_XeQs5n5js

    unpc downunder , May 2, 2017 at 7:56 am GMT

    The big issue is why Le Pen's popularity seems to have tanked, even though opinion polls suggest most French people support immigration restrictionism.

    The usual explanation is MSM brainwashing, which no doubt plays a part, but if people are so easily influenced by the media, why haven't they been brainwashed into supporting more immigration?

    In my personal experience, people say they won't vote for nationalist candidates like Le Pen for two reasons:

    1. they're dejected working class people who distrust all politicians (including nationalists) and can't be persuaded to turn up and vote

    2. they're cautious middle-class people who want less immigration but are afraid politically inexperienced outsiders will mess up the economy and social services.

    Anonymous , May 2, 2017 at 10:31 am GMT

    "Le Pen rejects the oligarch-dominated European Union and its austerity programs, which have enriched bankers and multi-national corporations. Le Pen promises to convoke a national referendum over the EU – to decide French submission. Le Pen promises to end sanctions against Russia and, instead, increase trade. She will end France's intervention in Syria and establish ties with Iran and Palestine."

    Do you remember anybody from recent history who also made similar lofty promises, but found himself neutered by invisible rulers?

    France (that hypocrite nation) is a proud part of the western civilisation, which thrives on hegemony. So, LePen-the-cursed will not do anything to change that fundamental world order. Therein lies the rub.

    anonymous , May 2, 2017 at 11:47 am GMT

    Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.

    True but misleading. Most of those deaths were due to accidentally introduced diseases. North America, in particular, was largely emptied out by waves of new diseases that struck down tribes that had never seen or heard of the white man.

    Yes, there was some fighting, though much of it was factional rather than racial - eg, the abused slaves of the Aztecs sided with the Spaniards for good reason . the Spaniards, at least, weren't cannibals (except in the transubstantiational sense.) Yes, there were a few cases where - after the vast accidental wipeout - whites noticed the disease vulnerability of the natives and intentionally exploited it (smallpox tainted blankets).

    But even if none of the deliberate massacres had been done, the demographics wouldn't look much different - a Europe teeming with starving peasants simply wasn't going to stay put while the recently-emptied North America sat mostly idle. Nature abhors a vacuum and adverse-possession laws exist for a reason.

    Today, of course, whites in Europe and America contracept themselves to extinction and then bitch and moan about Moslem and Mexican invasion . silly people. At least the American Indians didn't do it to themselves.

    Avery , May 2, 2017 at 1:02 pm GMT

    @Z-man Amanpour isn't a Neocon, per say, as she isn't genetically a Jew. However since she married and had an offspring with a Jew and from this interview's tone she now qualifies. lol She is also a beast to look at or listen to. (Grin)

    jacques sheete , May 2, 2017 at 2:13 pm GMT

    @jilles dykstra The antisemitism of old Le Pen was just two statements:
    - the gas chambers are just a footnote in history
    - the German occupation was relatively benign.
    Both statements are objectively true.
    Le Pen's crime is denying the unique holocaust.
    He's not the only one, a USA Indian has the same view
    Ward Churchill, 'A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present', San Francisco 1997
    Ward Churchill, a professor of Boulder university, also fell into disgrace.
    Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.

    jilles dykstra , May 2, 2017 at 2:27 pm GMT

    @unpc downunder The big issue is why Le Pen's popularity seems to have tanked, even though opinion polls suggest most French people support immigration restrictionism.

    The usual explanation is MSM brainwashing, which no doubt plays a part, but if people are so easily influenced by the media, why haven't they been brainwashed into supporting more immigration?

    In my personal experience, people say they won't vote for nationalist candidates like Le Pen for two reasons:

    1. they're dejected working class people who distrust all politicians (including nationalists) and can't be persuaded to turn up and vote

    2. they're cautious middle-class people who want less immigration but are afraid politically inexperienced outsiders will mess up the economy and social services.

    [May 06, 2017] Federation Council has called the US intention to control Russian ports a declaration of war

    May 06, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    Moscow Exile , May 5, 2017 at 6:34 am

    Federation Council has called the US intention to control Russian ports a declaration of war
    05.05.2017
    On Thursday, the US Congress approved the introduction of new restrictions against North Korea. The bill, in particular, provides the possibility of controlling of Russian ports in the far East. We are talking about Vladivostok, Nakhodka and Vanino port.

    "This bill will, I hope, never be implemented, because its implementation provides for a power scenario with forced inspection of tall ships by American warships. This kind of power scenario boggles the mind, because it is a Declaration of war" quoted Kosachev, RIA "Novosti".

    In fact, this is a major reason, namely forcibly stopping and inspecting neutral ships, why President Madison declared war against Great Britain in 1812 and why Great Britain in her turn was perilously near declaring war against the USA in 1861 following the "Trent Affair".

    Moscow Exile , May 5, 2017 at 6:36 am
    From "In fact " should not be italicized: those are words that reflect my opinion and not the proof-read by me words of the linked article above.
    kirill , May 5, 2017 at 6:54 am
    Russia needs to slap down these retarded propaganda koolaid drinkers. Clearly the exceptionalism has gone to their heads inducing substantial rot. For starters Russia needs to declare a foreign military asset free zone along its borders, well beyond the 12 nm limit. This FMAFZ is like the AZIZ but with teeth, including an explicit threat to sink any US/NATzO ship that enters it. Let NATzO bleat and wail, it does it already. Time for Russia to live up to its "badness" image and give western fuckers a serious headache. kirill , May 5, 2017 at 6:51 am
    http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/05/04/deep-history-us-britain-never-ending-cold-war-russia.html

    Archives reveal collusion between the Nazi Reich and its nominal enemies in the west.

    When I use "NATzO" instead of "NATO" I am being precise about the nature of this pack of hyenas who have the same agenda as the Nazi Reich against Russia. Reply

    [May 06, 2017] Americas Top Scientists Confirm U.S. Goal Now Is to Conquer Russia

    Notable quotes:
    "... America's NeoCons are a combination of two cultures: Germanic (in Anglo-Saxon form) and Rabbinic Jewish. The cultural Germans always have Gotterdammerrung to fall back on, and the globe nuked would turn that trick. The Jews, even the atheists, always think like Pharisses and assume that if they do something totally insane, that God will send their idea of a messiah to save them. ..."
    "... I think the US elites are incapable of such grandiose strategic thinking. Their policies just happen as a result of general guidelines (like, weaken Russia, strengthen US capabilities relative to Russia, push for wars that might benefit Israel or weaken Russia, etc.), without anyone thinking through what would happen later ..."
    "... A lot of "decisions" are probably made by institutional inertia, for example I find it possible that the whole anti-Russian thing in the 1990s was the result of such. Why did they feel the need to bomb Serbia, when Russia was ruled by Yeltsin? Obviously, it could only have led to the alienation of the Russian elites, which did happen as a result. Did anyone think it through? I don't think so. ..."
    "... Similar thing with immigration. It's obvious that France will be majority nonwhite by the end of the century. It's likely that the UK will be majority nonwhite by that time as well. Germany, probably, too. The US will be minority white by mid-century. Was this policy thought out in terms of how it would affect the power-projection capabilities of these countries? How it would affect their elites? I don't think so. ..."
    "... Considering the role of Russian federation in stopping the ziocons from destroying Syria (and therefore from an immediate annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel), the Israelis do indeed feel somewhat unfriendly towards Russians. There is also a much deeper "dissatisfaction" with Russians on a part of Israelis, which takes its roots in the history of the USSR; for this deeper level you need to read "200 years together." ..."
    May 06, 2017 | www.unz.com
    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published a study, on 1 March 2017 , which opened:

    The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing - boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three - and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.

    It continues:

    Because the innovations in the super-fuze appear, to the non-technical eye, to be minor, policymakers outside of the US government (and probably inside the government as well) have completely missed its revolutionary impact on military capabilities and its important implications for global security.

    This study was co-authored by America's top three scientists specializing in analysis of weaponry and especially of the geostrategic balance between nations: Hans Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, and Theodore Postol. Their report continues:

    This vast increase in US nuclear targeting capability, which has largely been concealed from the general public, has serious implications for strategic stability and perceptions of US nuclear strategy and intentions.
    Russian planners will almost surely see the advance in fuzing capability as empowering an increasingly feasible US preemptive nuclear strike capability - a capability that would require Russia to undertake countermeasures that would further increase the already dangerously high readiness of Russian nuclear forces. Tense nuclear postures based on worst-case planning assumptions already pose the possibility of a nuclear response to false warning of attack. The new kill capability created by super-fuzing increases the tension and the risk that US or Russian nuclear forces will be used in response to early warning of an attack - even when an attack has not occurred.

    The authors explain why an accidental start of World War III or global annihilation would be likeiier from Russia than from the U.S.:

    Russia does not have a functioning space-based infrared early warning system but relies primarily on ground-based early warning radars to detect a US missile attack. Since these radars cannot see over the horizon, Russia has less than half as much early-warning time as the United States. (The United States has about 30 minutes, Russia 15 minutes or less.)

    In other words: whereas Trump would have about 30 minutes to determine whether Putin had launched a blitz-first-strike attack, Putin would have less than 15 minutes to determine whether Trump had - and if at the end of that period, on either side, there is no certainty that no blitz-first-strike attack had been launched by the other, then that person would be obligated to launch a blitz attack against the other, upon the assumption that not to do so would result not only in a toxic planet with nuclear winter and universal starvation, but also in a humiliating and scandalous absence of retaliation against that perpetrator, which would be a humiliation on top of an annihilation, and thus a sharing of blame along with the actual perpetrator, which sharing, for whatever term might remain during that passive party's continued existence, would probably be an unbearable shame and result quickly in suicide, if that national leader's own surviving countrymen don't execute him before he kills himself.

    Inevitably, the strictly personal morality and self-image of a nation's leader in that type of situation are factors other than the very public global consequences that will determine the person's decision; but, with only (at most) 15 minutes to decide on the Russian side, and 30 minutes to decide on the American side, there is an inestimably high chance now, that a nuclear war will terminate the lives of everyone who currently exists and who doesn't soon die from the ordinary causes before then. Even the most dire projections of the dangers from global warming come nowhere close to matching that danger.

    The question, now, then, is: How did the world come to this extraordinarily ominous stage? The co-authors repeatedly refer to the secretiveness at the top of the American government as one essential source, such as " which has largely been concealed from the general public " and " policymakers outside of the US government (and probably inside the government as well) have completely missed ," and these passages refer to an ordinary phenomenon in conspiracies at the top of a large criminal operation such as corporate criminality, where only a very small circle of individuals, commonly a half-dozen or even less, are made aware of the operation's chief strategic objective and of the main tactical means that are being put into place so as to execute the plan. In this particular instance, it wouldn't include the head of every Cabinet department, nor anything nearly so broad as that; but, clearly, since the key decision, to implement the "super-fuze" on "all warheads deployed on US ballistic missile submarines" was made by Obama, he is the principal person reasonably to be blamed for this situation. However, Trump as the person who has inherited this situation from his predecessor has, as yet, given no indication at all of reversing and eliminating the now-operative top U.S. strategic objective of conquering Russia. The more time that passes without Trump's announcing to the public that he has inherited this morally repulsive operation from his predecessor and is removing all of the super-fuses, the more that Trump himself is taking ownership of Obama's plan. Typically in such a situation, the leader who has inherited such a plan will be assassinated if he gives any clear indication of an intention to reverse or cancel it (the key insiders are typically obsessive about 'success', especially at so late a stage in it); and, so, if Trump were to try to do that, he would almost certainly try to hide that fact until the inherited plan has already become effectively deactivated and no longer a threat.

    The key turning-point that led up to the present crisis was the gradual and increasing acceptance, on the American side, of the concept of using nuclear weapons for conquest instead of only for deterrence - the prior system, for deterrence, having been called "MAD" for Mutually Assured Destruction, the idea that if the two nuclear superpowers were to go to war against each other, then the entire world would be destroyed so catastrophically as to make any idea of a 'winner' and a 'loser' in such a conflict a grotesque distortion of the reality: that reality being mutual annihilation and an unlivable planet. A landmark event in the process of reconceptualizing such a war as being 'winnable', was the publication in 2006 of two articles in the two most prestigious journals of international relations, Foreign Affairs and International Security , both formally introducing the concept of "Nuclear Primacy" or the (alleged) desirability for the U.S. to plan a nuclear conquest of Russia . Until those two articles (both of which were co-authored by the same two authors), any such idea was considered wacky, but since then it has instead been mainstream. As the final link above (the article that's linked-to immediately before) explains, the source even prior to George W. Bush goes all the way back to 24 February 1990 when his father, then also the U.S. President, secretly initiated the operation ultimately to conquer Russia, and within that article are links to the ultimate source-documents about that origin of the path toward world-ending nuclear war; so, getting to the original causes of the steady progression after 24 February 1990 in the direction of a conquest of Russia by the U.S. (assisted by its allies) can now be addressed by historians, even though only now is it finally being revealed to the public as news, though 27 years after it had actually begun in a very fateful decision by George Herbert Walker Bush, which has already cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars for no good purpose and resulting perhaps in the ghastliest ultimate end.

    This article is being submitted for publication to all news-media without charge, in the hope that the current U.S. President will comment publicly upon it, even if only to ridicule it so as to avoid being assassinated for referring to it at all. This is an extremely dangerous time in history, and Donald Trump is now on a very hot seat, which any intelligent and accurately informed person recognizes to be the case. If ever the world needed courageous great leadership, now is the time; because, without that, we might all soon be entering hell. To avoid it, starting now 27 years after the U.S. government initiated this path, would be enormously difficult, but not yet totally impossible. This is where we are at the present time; and, ever since the coup in Ukraine in 2014, the purchases of 'nuclear-proof' bunkers have been soaring as a result.

    This extreme danger is the new global reality. If the elimination of the threat does not come from the U.S. White House, the culmination of the threat will - regardless of which side strikes first. The decision - either to invade Russia, or else to cancel and condemn America's decade-plus preparation to do so - can be made only by the U.S. President. If he remains silent about the matter, then Putin can reasonably proceed on the assumption that he'll have to be the one to strike first. He didn't place himself in that position; the U.S. regime did. Let's hope that the U.S. will stand down the threat, now.

    Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .

    Carlton Meyer , Website May 5, 2017 at 4:21 am GMT \n

    100 Words What our media overlooks is that the USA blatantly violated arms agreements with Russia by building missile bases in Poland and Romania with MK-41 launchers, capable of launching nuclear tipped cruise missiles to quickly strike key targets in Russia. The Pentagon promises to only place SM-3 anti-missile missiles in these silos. Trust us, our Generals proclaim! Read More
    Intelligent Dasein , Website May 5, 2017 at 5:16 am GMT \n
    100 Words I do not doubt that the Deep State's objective is to destroy Russia, but I' skeptical that this "super-fuze" amounts to any kind of decisive step in that direction. The Pentagon's claimed effectiveness for its gosh-wow gadgetry has latterly been orders of magnitude above the reality of the situation. We've just spent the better part of two decades being unable to make meaningful progress in freaking Afghanistan , for crying out loud.

    Frankly, I do not think that America's transgendered military could so much as conquer Costa Rica, let alone take on a nuclear armed Russia. Read More

    Miro23 , May 5, 2017 at 6:31 am GMT \n
    300 Words It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.

    Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000′s of civilians in the Middle East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused, and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared to spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender "toilet rights".

    If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would be the same – indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.

    If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really bothered about that either.

    Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest related to the wanton murder of Arabs – calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.

    If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as a crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.

    It seems that Joseph de Maistre wrote, "toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite". Translated, this means "Every country has the government it deserves" but now it's a true disaster for the whole world, not just America. Read More

    van gogh , May 5, 2017 at 8:09 am GMT \n
    I was enjoying the article until I came across the paragraph mentioning "humiliation" as a factor in deciding to launch a nuclear strike. Yeah I can see the point, it's better not to get humiliated but it's okay to destroy the life in our planet in the process. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    El Dato , May 5, 2017 at 8:14 am GMT \n
    200 Words http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/04/trump-nuclear-commanders-237956

    A global coalition of former military leaders and diplomats who had responsibility over nuclear weapons is launching a "shadow security council" to offer advice to world leaders on how to reduce what they consider to be the growing danger of a nuclear conflict fueled by the rhetoric of President Donald Trump and destabilizing moves by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    I wonder what these "destabilizing moves" are. Today we have launch-on-warning, precise nukes, stealth delivery services, hacks in hardware and software, weird stuff in orbit, and "missile defense against Iran" in Europe which can be repurposed in a second to attack Russia. Unless the airheads notice that the "destabilizing moves" come from the US, there won't be much progress.

    We survived the MAD phase only through tremendous luck, there were more computer errors, brown pants moments and lost nukes than one would like to think possible. Let's not waste this break that God has given us.

    Remember that once the missile is out of the silo, it can't be called back. No remote defuse, sorry. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments

    Miro23 , May 5, 2017 at 8:19 am GMT \n
    100 Words Or rather than have the US destroy Russia, or Russia destroy the US, it would be preferable to root out the activist Jewish Neo Bolshevik war party that is behind it all. They have their own agenda, and regard themselves as above the law.

    They gave the US the WMD lies, 9/11 and destroyed the Middle East. They've also taken ownership of the US media to push their war agenda, apart from attacking Anglo America, sowing discord and promoting their financial interest (e.g. forcing the US public to bail out their 2008 loses at full $ while they kept their bonuses).

    If the US public can't wake up soon and deal with this cancer they've had it. Read More Agree: Z-man

    Nils , May 5, 2017 at 8:39 am GMT \n
    200 Words If you think the President makes final decisions on all matters, I have a beach front property to sell you in Iowa. He is the public face of career Pentagon, State Department, and other Deep State proxies. Not a capstone critical thinker but a fall man.

    Nuclear war isn't a reality, it's a game of chess bluffs and the winner defeats the loser when there is only a logical option of loss. Because when supremacy is achieved, and understood by the opponent, you don't suddenly nuke them – you take its periphery (Ukraine, Baltics and E. Europe, and other color revolution hot-spots), you destabilize it's source of income (oil), you cut her off from the financial world (sanctions), you ostracize them politically (media/hacking), and you deny them future income (Syria) while cementing their future (denying the New Silk Road by local animosity – maritime disputes, arming India, etc).

    Real sudden catastrophic loss never materializes because we live in a non-zero sum situation – called living on the same planet – where abrupt destabilization backfires onto you from nuclear fallout and global market failure. It's just a check-mate scenario understood by both parties that begets a slow suffocation due to 'pawn sacrifice'.

    Unless you don't have nuclear weapons then your country and lore is up for the taking on a whim. Read More

    annamaria , May 5, 2017 at 12:02 pm GMT \n
    200 Words Well. Now we know what constitutes the true Obama legacy: "The new kill capability created by super-fuzing increases the tension and the risk that US or Russian nuclear forces will be used in response to early warning of an attack - even when an attack has not occurred."
    This is in addition to the Obama-approved mess on the Russian borders with Ukraine ("ever since the coup in Ukraine in 2014, the purchases of 'nuclear-proof' bunkers have been soaring as a result") and the Israel-pimped war in Syria where Russians have been fighting ISIS along with the legitimate government of Syria, while Israel and the US were caught on helping the ISIS- and Al Qaeda-affiliated "freedom fighters."
    Is there any honest and knowledgeable person in a vicinity of the "deciders" to explain them the consequences of a high-level radiation for their grandkids? The deciders care not about the hundreds of thousands of other-peoples' children that died as a result of US-led "humanitarian interventions," but maybe they could get some resemblance of empathy rush when picturing their own progeny hit by a nuclear force? Idiots. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Quartermaster , May 5, 2017 at 12:10 pm GMT \n
    One does not "conquer" anything with nukes. All you can do is destroy. Read More
    Jake , May 5, 2017 at 12:14 pm GMT \n
    100 Words Is the NeoCon foreign policy establishment, which rules both Democrats and Republicans, insane enough to think it can pull of a nuclear first strike against Russia without any significant damage to the US or the world?

    Probably. Many of the individuals are bluffing, but mob mentality inside military intelligence is the same basic mess it is on the inner city streets.

    America's NeoCons are a combination of two cultures: Germanic (in Anglo-Saxon form) and Rabbinic Jewish. The cultural Germans always have Gotterdammerrung to fall back on, and the globe nuked would turn that trick. The Jews, even the atheists, always think like Pharisses and assume that if they do something totally insane, that God will send their idea of a messiah to save them.

    Put that pair together, and the entire world should fear. Read More

    Randal , May 5, 2017 at 12:53 pm GMT \n
    100 Words The other requirement to make a counterforce first strike viable is missile defences which, although not effective enough to see off a full Russian launch, would be very capable of "mopping up" the much smaller numbers of missiles launched in response to an incomplete disarming first strike.

    So we don't need to worry too much about this kind of improvement to the US capability so long as we don't see the US regime simultaneously installing missile defences everywhere they can on the pretext, say, of defending against non-existent, propagandist third party regional "threats" Read More

    Randal , May 5, 2017 at 12:54 pm GMT \n
    @Quartermaster One does not "conquer" anything with nukes. All you can do is destroy. Go tell it to the Japanese. Read More
    MarkU , May 5, 2017 at 1:25 pm GMT \n
    200 Words A great article by Eric Zuesse, the best I have seen on the subject. A devastating nuclear war is almost inevitable if the situation is allowed to persist. There were several nearly catastrophic incidents in the last cold war when warning times were much more generous. Similar incidents, in the near future would likely be game over for human civilisation and even the human race itself.

    It really doesn't matter whether the US/European oligarchy is really planning to nuke Russia and/or China or not, the situation is just as dangerous either way. The setting up of what is evidently a first strike capability while simultaneously degrading their potential opponents warning times is well nigh suicidal. One could hope that there is someone in the US/NATO military who is not too functionally autistic to see things from the other guys point of view but I doubt it. If such a person existed, they might reflect on the fact that if the roles were reversed, most of their colleagues would be clamouring for a first strike of their own before the missile "defence" is fully operational.

    Finally, it doesn't even matter whether the missile "defence" works or not. Unless both sides know it doesn't work, and can also be sure that the other side knows that it doesn't work, and also that it can't be made to work, it is just as dangerous. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments

    Johann , May 5, 2017 at 1:26 pm GMT \n
    @Miro23 It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.

    Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000's of civilians in the Middle East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused, and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared to spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender "toilet rights".

    If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would be the same - indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.

    If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really bothered about that either.

    Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest related to the wanton murder of Arabs - calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.

    If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as a crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.

    It seems that Joseph de Maistre wrote, "toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite". Translated, this means "Every country has the government it deserves" but now it's a true disaster for the whole world, not just America. Americans, war and mass casualties perfect together. Just keep their beer, drugs and professional sports . Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    annamaria , May 5, 2017 at 1:27 pm GMT \n
    @Miro23 It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.

    Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000's of civilians in the Middle East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused, and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared to spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender "toilet rights".

    If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would be the same - indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.

    If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really bothered about that either.

    Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest related to the wanton murder of Arabs - calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.

    If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as a crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.

    It seems that Joseph de Maistre wrote, "toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite". Translated, this means "Every country has the government it deserves" but now it's a true disaster for the whole world, not just America. "The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility," – yes, this is a bitter truth.
    "Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite," indeed. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    peterike , May 5, 2017 at 1:29 pm GMT \n
    While I don't doubt that the GloboHomo Zio cabal wants very much to destroy Russia, and is crazy and blood thirsty enough to use nukes to do it, this hysteria about "ending all life on earth" is nonsense. Read More Agree: Alden Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Anonymous , May 5, 2017 at 1:36 pm GMT \n
    100 Words Frankly, it's about time "compellence" replaced deterrence in dealing with Russia.

    For all his faults, Putin seems more or less sane, but he's already 64 years old. When Russia has its next succession crisis (they're good at this stuff), the new incumbent may be much less tractable and dangerous.

    The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists likes its Doomsday Clock, but the actual clock is ticking and not counting fictitious minutes before midnight. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments

    another fred , May 5, 2017 at 1:39 pm GMT \n
    100 Words Is this article mis-information or dis-information? I get those two confused.

    We have been able to put a nuke in a 100 ft circle anywhere on earth for a long time. The "super-fuze" has nothing to do with the guidance system or speed of delivery but enhances perhaps the yield and the accuracy (elevation of detonation) of an already devastating weapon.

    How is this destabilizing? How does this yield a first-strike capability? Read More

    Erebus , May 5, 2017 at 1:49 pm GMT \n
    100 Words

    Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!

    Thomas S. Power, CIC, Strategic Air Command

    Apparently, breathing the cold, dry air of madness takes you to the top of Washington's pyramid of skulls. Read More

    Wizard of Oz , May 5, 2017 at 2:11 pm GMT \n
    @Seraphim Conquest of Russia (the 'Heartland' of the 'World-Island') was the single minded obsession, followed with uncanny determination, of the 'Anglo-Zionist' Empire (supposed successor of the not so mythical 'Arthurian Atlantic British Empire') from its bastard birth in the glorious days of the 'Gloriana', the hideous 'Virgin Queen' witch and her 'Magus' John Dee, to the theories of Mackinder ("Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World."), masked by the 'collateral damages' of the 'colonization' (i.e. conquest) of 'The Indies' (America and India proper), steps towards the encirclement of the 'Heartland'. The 'Great Game' the Viking merchant-adventurers cum pirates (financed by the Jewish money lenders and receivers) played against the Powers that blocked their way to the gold and spices of the Eldorado of East Asia and the inexhaustible source of slaves that was 'East Europe'. That block was the Orthodox Russia since the 'betrayal' of the Baptism of the Viking Vladimir. The 'Vikings' and the receivers of stolen goods never forgave it. They realize that as long as the 'Heartland' is not conquered none of their other conquests is secure. Ah, now some of the stranger things you have said become a little less puzzling as you reveal your romantic Russian mythmaking soul. Read More
    Pandos , May 5, 2017 at 2:12 pm GMT \n
    @Miro23 It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.

    Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000's of civilians in the Middle East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused, and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared to spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender "toilet rights".

    If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would be the same - indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.

    If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really bothered about that either.

    Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest related to the wanton murder of Arabs - calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.

    If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as a crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.

    It seems that Joseph de Maistre wrote, "toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite". Translated, this means "Every country has the government it deserves" but now it's a true disaster for the whole world, not just America. Miro23 – Brilliant X! Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Pandos , May 5, 2017 at 2:16 pm GMT \n
    Russia ;and China must target Israel and Saudi as the primary targets in any nuke exchange. It is their fault.

    Russia should release the soviet archives to show the holocaust is a giant exaggeration – a lie. Rip that shield from their hands. Read More

    Kiza , May 5, 2017 at 2:22 pm GMT \n
    200 Words @Intelligent Dasein I do not doubt that the Deep State's objective is to destroy Russia, but I' skeptical that this "super-fuze" amounts to any kind of decisive step in that direction. The Pentagon's claimed effectiveness for its gosh-wow gadgetry has latterly been orders of magnitude above the reality of the situation. We've just spent the better part of two decades being unable to make meaningful progress in freaking Afghanistan , for crying out loud.

    Frankly, I do not think that America's transgendered military could so much as conquer Costa Rica, let alone take on a nuclear armed Russia. I was sceptical about super-fuses until I read a detailed explanation of how they work. Then I realised how dangerous this is. It would not be terribly hard for the Russians and the Chinese to replicate this development, however their possession of the same technology would NOT reduce the likelihood of US using it first.

    In briefest, super-fusing makes the First Strike much more effective and thus likely. The idea of super-fusing is relatively simple – unlike cruise and hypersonic missiles, the ballistic missiles have one huge weakness – once the rocket fuel is spent the ballistic missiles fly like thrown rocks – there is little trajectory correction. Super-fusing activates explosion within a predefined envelope of optimum destruction for the target, thus increasing the likelyhood of destroying the target several times over. For example, instead of the nuclear bomb overshooting the target, it is activated when the closest to the target. Super-fusing against land based silos and mobile launchers, combined with much better ABMD than exists now, especially against submarine launched ballistic missiles, would enable the First Strike with very low payback – in single digit percent. This means a First Strike that could destroy up to 99% of enemy's retaliatory capability and leaving more than enough missiles to threaten direct strikes on enemy's major cities.

    As I explained, ABMD is the weak link in this – it is far from effective yet, but give it unlimited $ printing and another 10 years or so and this scenario could become reality. Read More

    Wizard of Oz , May 5, 2017 at 2:27 pm GMT \n
    100 Words This "investigative historian" confects his bad dream out of very little substance. Quotes from the respectable enough Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists plus a great deal of imagination and major omissions allow him to paint a fantastic picture of raving lunatics thinking of "conquering" or "invading" Russia. (Yes he did use those words despite positing a scenario in which the Dr. Strangeloves would wipe out Rusdia with a first strike! His psychic medium clearly has forgotten to consilt the ghosts of Napoleon and Hitler).

    One major omission is to note what a quick search for "super fuze" immediately discloses, namely that the US Navy's upgrade is already old news and largely complete so far as the increase in capacity that Zuesse describes is concerned.

    Another gigantic hole is the absence of mention of China. This is kid's journalism. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments

    Wizard of Oz , May 5, 2017 at 2:30 pm GMT \n
    @Erebus

    Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!

    Thomas S. Power, CIC, Strategic Air Command

    Apparently, breathing the cold, dry air of madness takes you to the top of Washington's pyramid of skulls. Useless quote without a believable source and still needs to have the context provided. Read More

    Anonymous White Male , May 5, 2017 at 2:37 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Miro23 It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.

    Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000's of civilians in the Middle East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused, and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared to spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender "toilet rights".

    If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would be the same - indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.

    If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really bothered about that either.

    Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest related to the wanton murder of Arabs - calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.

    If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as a crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.

    It seems that Joseph de Maistre wrote, "toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite". Translated, this means "Every country has the government it deserves" but now it's a true disaster for the whole world, not just America. "If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would be the same – indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially."

    Do you actually believe that if the US launched a nuclear strike against Russia that there would be no US casualties? Wouldn't that "physically affect" the idiot masses that apparently you are superior to morally? Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    bluedog , May 5, 2017 at 2:39 pm GMT \n
    @Sebastian Puettmann Well, in their defense, Russia is pretty fascist. And so are we so what's your point? Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Anonymous White Male , May 5, 2017 at 2:39 pm GMT \n
    100 Words I don't understand how after 70 years of using "nuclear weapons" as a bludgeon to keep the mindless slaves of the West in line anyone would actually think that there is any real possibility of a nuclear war. The media has been used to induce fear in people that don't think. Start thinking! Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Anonymous , May 5, 2017 at 2:44 pm GMT \n
    @Miro23 It's hard to disagree with this article but the missing background is the US public.

    Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000's of civilians in the Middle East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused, and show zero empathy for their victims. Also keep in mind that young Americans ARE prepared to spend a lot of time on the rights and wrongs of so called campus "micro-aggression" and transgender "toilet rights".

    If Russia was destroyed overnight and 50 million Russians killed, no doubt the reaction would be the same - indifference. The US public has truly disconnected from moral responsibility , and only has interest in things that affect it directly, either physically or financially.

    If for example, the public had had to pay a supplementary war tax of $2000 per person for each Middle East war, there would no doubt have been a major outcry, and the wars would probably never have happened, but in the event, the FED was there to quietly provide the funding and unobviously put the public in debt. Their grandchildren will pay the bill, and truthfully, they're not really bothered about that either.

    Equally, as an extra precaution, the public is carefully sheltered from the reality of bombed cities and murdered and homeless families. The war party MSM excludes every trace of human interest related to the wanton murder of Arabs - calling them "Terrorists" which the dumb American public accepts while "nuke em" seems to be the even dumber and brainless reaction.

    If a nuclear bomb did actually explode on Washington D.C. the public would be as helpless as a crowd of babies, same as after the New Orleans disaster.

    It seems that Joseph de Maistre wrote, "toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite". Translated, this means "Every country has the government it deserves" but now it's a true disaster for the whole world, not just America. "Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder "

    Apparently you haven't heard of what England, France and other colonial nations had been doing in centuries past, and heck, even up till now (Libya, anyone?).

    Americans are simply following the psychopathic instinct from their European forefathers. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Kiza , May 5, 2017 at 2:55 pm GMT \n
    200 Words @another fred Is this article mis-information or dis-information? I get those two confused.

    We have been able to put a nuke in a 100 ft circle anywhere on earth for a long time. The "super-fuze" has nothing to do with the guidance system or speed of delivery but enhances perhaps the yield and the accuracy (elevation of detonation) of an already devastating weapon.

    How is this destabilizing? How does this yield a first-strike capability? For an explanation, read my previous comment and this one.

    START treaties have limited the number of missiles on both sides, at a time when super-fusing did not exist. This means that each side had enough missiles to destroy a percentage of the missiles of the other side (probably around 40-50%), but not all of them, thus MAD. With super-fusing, the side which strikes first can destroy a much higher percentage of retaliatory missiles on fixed and mobile launchers (90-95%) and still have some left over to threaten civilians in large cities, especially if ABMD can destroy all of the remaining 5-10% of retaliatory missiles.

    The hardest to destroy will remain the submarine launched missiles, but US military feel confident that they are tracking all Russian nuclear missile submarines with their attack submarines (and all the new and noisy Chinese submarines as well) and they could destroy them all on command.

    On top of all this, the US intelligence has been tasked with collecting psychological profiles of all Russian commanders of nuclear missile submarines. The plan is to try convince them not to launch, once the Russian command has been destroyed by the First Strike – once they have no command any more. Read More

    Wade , May 5, 2017 at 3:04 pm GMT \n
    300 Words

    In this particular instance, it wouldn't include the head of every Cabinet department, nor anything nearly so broad as that; but, clearly, since the key decision, to implement the "super-fuze" on "all warheads deployed on US ballistic missile submarines" was made by Obama, he is the principal person reasonably to be blamed for this situation. However, Trump as the person who has inherited this situation from his predecessor has, as yet, given no indication at all of reversing and eliminating the now-operative top U.S. strategic objective of conquering Russia. The more time that passes without Trump's announcing to the public that he has inherited this morally repulsive operation from his predecessor and is removing all of the super-fuses, the more that Trump himself is taking ownership of Obama's plan.

    Reading statements like this one, and other observations by Philip Giraldi, have reluctantly made me into a conspiracy minded person when it comes to politics. After all, does anyone seriously believe that the pretentious, metro-sexual Barry Obama entertained any such "Dr. Evil" like plots to concur the world prior to being sworn in as POTUS? Of course he didn't. He, even less than Trump, probably had no idea what he was getting himself into by running for president. It must've been a shocker for both of these men when they found out just how much potentially damaging intel that the CIA and NSA has on them through perfectly legal NSA spying. Would the CIA assassinate a president who got in the way of America's interests (as defined by them)? Maybe, but why would they need to?

    The Deep State is in complete control of our foreign policy now. Our democracy and freedom were already largely lost due to giant asymmetries in knowledge between the US Citizenry and elected officials on the one hand, and the Deep State on the other. "Knowledge is power" as they say. This state of affairs was gradually imposed on an unsuspecting public through such legislative gems as the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995 and the Patriot Act. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments

    Jake , May 5, 2017 at 3:05 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Pandos Russia ;and China must target Israel and Saudi as the primary targets in any nuke exchange. It is their fault.

    Russia should release the soviet archives to show the holocaust is a giant exaggeration - a lie. Rip that shield from their hands. You have hit upon something that is extremely important, and studiously avoided by most: the Israeli-Saudi alliance. The worst of the Arabs are Saudi Arabians. The worst of the Sunnis are Saudi Arabians (and on average, Sunnis are worse than Shites). No doubt, the worst ruling caab in the Middle East,. whether royal family or political party (such as Likud), is the House of Saud.

    Israel plus the House of Saud, backed by Uncle Sam = potentially endless horrors Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    jilles dykstra , May 5, 2017 at 3:37 pm GMT \n
    200 Words One of the WWII planners was Frankfurter, also the writer of the Lend Lease Law that enabled Roosevelt to give war aid to any country.
    Bruce Allen Murphy, 'The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices', New York, 1983

    After Hitler began deporting jews to concentration camps, one of them escaped, and was smuggled tot the USA, the Vichy France, Spain, Portugal route.
    This jew told Frankfurter what was going on.
    Frankfurter answered 'I do not believe one word you're saying'.

    Much later Frankfurter explained 'I did not say he was lying, I said I did not believe him'.
    In 1939 Hitler threatened jews with 'ausrottung', the exact meaning of this word then is debated, 'if they again started a world war'.

    My interpretation of the Frankfurter statements is that he had not expected Hitler to carry out his threat.

    So I am not all convinced that neocons will not start a nuclear war.
    As Jimmy Carter said 'those that cause wars, expect not to be hurt by it'. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments

    annamaria , May 5, 2017 at 3:38 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Jake Is the NeoCon foreign policy establishment, which rules both Democrats and Republicans, insane enough to think it can pull of a nuclear first strike against Russia without any significant damage to the US or the world?

    Probably. Many of the individuals are bluffing, but mob mentality inside military intelligence is the same basic mess it is on the inner city streets.

    America's NeoCons are a combination of two cultures: Germanic (in Anglo-Saxon form) and Rabbinic Jewish. The cultural Germans always have Gotterdammerrung to fall back on, and the globe nuked would turn that trick. The Jews, even the atheists, always think like Pharisses and assume that if they do something totally insane, that God will send their idea of a messiah to save them.

    Put that pair together, and the entire world should fear. This is a long and passionate anti-war article by Michel Chossudovsky, which includes a nice picture of Bin Laden teaching Brzezinski how to handle a rifle, Afghanistan: http://www.globalresearch.ca/reversing-the-tide-of-war-say-no-to-nuclear-war/21866
    The neocons used the mujahaddins with great success, particularly on the US soil on 9/11.
    In short, "America's biggest foreign policy problem is that the U.S. cannot be trusted." http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-awful-credibility-argument-that-never-dies/ Read More

    Kiza , May 5, 2017 at 3:38 pm GMT \n
    300 Words Here is a simplified First Strike plan by US on Russia and China, in my opinion. China is more of the same as Russia, just at a lower level of military sophistication right now (but advancing in leaps and bouts).

    The First Strike starts with the launch of nuclear tipped cruise missiles from the "ABMD sites" in Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea and any other new ones in the future. These cruise missiles are launched against Russian military communications, command and control sites, as well as early warning radars. The second wave are the ballistic missiles from the silos in US, which target the Russian silo based missiles and the mobile platforms (truck and train based) discovered by US satellites. Simultaneously, the US bombers with nuclear bombs on board are launched, to target any remaining Russian military infrastructure. Also, a command is issued to destroy any on-duty Russian ballistic and cruise nuclear missile submarines. The ABMD sites on land (at least two in Canada in the future) and on ships now switch to defence to try to destroy any Russian missiles that got launched. At the same time US propaganda to dissuade the commanders of the Russian submarines, not destroyed already by the US attack submarines, fills the radio. Apparently, Russia has only eight nuclear missile submarines, and not more than 4-6 would be on active duty at any given time.

    Ok this could be the US plan, but what do Russians have to counter it? The Russians have at least two tools in development. The first is the Bulawa MIRV, which is virtually impossible to shoot down with ABMD. The second are the submarine launched hypersonic cruise missiles, which are also almost impossible to shoot down by ABMD. Neither of these two are ready yet, but nor is the US ABMD. Therefore, the Russian approach is to make ABMD never effective, which would make even a partial retaliatory strike too expensive to US. Read More

    annamaria , May 5, 2017 at 4:00 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Sebastian Puettmann Well, in their defense, Russia is pretty fascist. "Russia is pretty fascist."

    Is this a voice from the Kagans' clan' sinecures (AEI, Brookings) or directly from the land of the "chosen" handlers?
    For your information, even the Israel-occupied US Congress accepted an obvious truth and made a decision re real fascists: " US Congress ends funding for Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion:" https://theduran.com/us-congress-ends-funding-for-ukraines-neo-nazi-azov-battalion/
    One wonders when the US Congress will finally discover that it was a leader of the Ukrainian Jewish Community Mr. Kolomojsky who had been financing the Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion when the Azov's thugs were burning the civilians alive in Odessa: https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1d0_1462104943&comments=1
    Similar to you, The Wall Street Journal (the nest of ziocons) cries in unison with Mrs. Clinton that "Putin is Hitler." The same WSJ published a fawning article about Mr. Kolomojsky, a Ukrainian/Israeli citizen and financier of the neo-Nazis: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-secret-weapon-feisty-oligarch-ihor-kolomoisky-1403886665 Read More

    22pp22 , May 5, 2017 at 4:10 pm GMT \n
    @Seraphim Conquest of Russia (the 'Heartland' of the 'World-Island') was the single minded obsession, followed with uncanny determination, of the 'Anglo-Zionist' Empire (supposed successor of the not so mythical 'Arthurian Atlantic British Empire') from its bastard birth in the glorious days of the 'Gloriana', the hideous 'Virgin Queen' witch and her 'Magus' John Dee, to the theories of Mackinder ("Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World."), masked by the 'collateral damages' of the 'colonization' (i.e. conquest) of 'The Indies' (America and India proper), steps towards the encirclement of the 'Heartland'. The 'Great Game' the Viking merchant-adventurers cum pirates (financed by the Jewish money lenders and receivers) played against the Powers that blocked their way to the gold and spices of the Eldorado of East Asia and the inexhaustible source of slaves that was 'East Europe'. That block was the Orthodox Russia since the 'betrayal' of the Baptism of the Viking Vladimir. The 'Vikings' and the receivers of stolen goods never forgave it. They realize that as long as the 'Heartland' is not conquered none of their other conquests is secure. I wish we Brits really were the evil geniuses we are supposed to be. Read More
    SolontoCroesus , May 5, 2017 at 4:13 pm GMT \n
    200 Words Zuesse's very important essay could be improved immeasurably by identifying the authors of these dire policy statements:

    Keir Lieber, professor in the Edmund Walsh school at Georgetown, is son of Robert Lieber, also a professor of foreign policy studies at Georgetown - For 2 Professors, Like Father, Like Son

    Papa Lieber is one of the driving forces behind creating - rather, demanding that Georgetown agree to create– the department for Jewish Civilizational Studies at Georgetown. https://www.georgetown.edu/center-for-jewish-civilization-launch

    Based on a quick review of Robert Lieber's dozen appearances on C Span, the description, Like Father like Son is apt: the senior Lieber is a an unabashed zionist and Israel firster who has operated behind the scenes to implement neoconservative policies that favor Israel, to be carried out at the expense of American blood and treasure, under the mendacious gloss that they are "in America's interest." Those policies date back at least to the Clinton administration bombing of Kosovo https://www.c-span.org/video/?100370-1/bosnia-russia-gulf-beyond ; then the Persian Gulf war to "liberate" Kuwait https://www.c-span.org/video/?23811-1/anniversary-persian-gulf-war and the war in Afghanistan where "Afghanis welcomed our liberation of Afghanis from the Taliban." https://www.c-span.org/video/?168019-4/postcold-war-conflicts Read More

    Max Payne , May 5, 2017 at 4:22 pm GMT \n
    @Kiza I was sceptical about super-fuses until I read a detailed explanation of how they work. Then I realised how dangerous this is. It would not be terribly hard for the Russians and the Chinese to replicate this development, however their possession of the same technology would NOT reduce the likelihood of US using it first.

    In briefest, super-fusing makes the First Strike much more effective and thus likely. The idea of super-fusing is relatively simple - unlike cruise and hypersonic missiles, the ballistic missiles have one huge weakness - once the rocket fuel is spent the ballistic missiles fly like thrown rocks - there is little trajectory correction. Super-fusing activates explosion within a predefined envelope of optimum destruction for the target, thus increasing the likelyhood of destroying the target several times over. For example, instead of the nuclear bomb overshooting the target, it is activated when the closest to the target. Super-fusing against land based silos and mobile launchers, combined with much better ABMD than exists now, especially against submarine launched ballistic missiles, would enable the First Strike with very low payback - in single digit percent. This means a First Strike that could destroy up to 99% of enemy's retaliatory capability and leaving more than enough missiles to threaten direct strikes on enemy's major cities.

    As I explained, ABMD is the weak link in this - it is far from effective yet, but give it unlimited $ printing and another 10 years or so and this scenario could become reality. This just sounds like an air burst detonation. Is this one of those American things where they relabel something and remarket it? Read More

    jilles dykstra , May 5, 2017 at 4:41 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Kiza Here is a simplified First Strike plan by US on Russia and China, in my opinion. China is more of the same as Russia, just at a lower level of military sophistication right now (but advancing in leaps and bouts).

    The First Strike starts with the launch of nuclear tipped cruise missiles from the "ABMD sites" in Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea and any other new ones in the future. These cruise missiles are launched against Russian military communications, command and control sites, as well as early warning radars. The second wave are the ballistic missiles from the silos in US, which target the Russian silo based missiles and the mobile platforms (truck and train based) discovered by US satellites. Simultaneously, the US bombers with nuclear bombs on board are launched, to target any remaining Russian military infrastructure. Also, a command is issued to destroy any on-duty Russian ballistic and cruise nuclear missile submarines. The ABMD sites on land (at least two in Canada in the future) and on ships now switch to defence to try to destroy any Russian missiles that got launched. At the same time US propaganda to dissuade the commanders of the Russian submarines, not destroyed already by the US attack submarines, fills the radio. Apparently, Russia has only eight nuclear missile submarines, and not more than 4-6 would be on active duty at any given time.

    Ok this could be the US plan, but what do Russians have to counter it? The Russians have at least two tools in development. The first is the Bulawa MIRV, which is virtually impossible to shoot down with ABMD. The second are the submarine launched hypersonic cruise missiles, which are also almost impossible to shoot down by ABMD. Neither of these two are ready yet, but nor is the US ABMD. Therefore, the Russian approach is to make ABMD never effective, which would make even a partial retaliatory strike too expensive to US. "and the mobile platforms (truck and train based) discovered by US satellites."
    Forget about it, the real ones can be parked in any farm, the inflatable ones cannot be distinghuised from the real ones.
    Even in Saddam's Irak USA planes were unable to find Saddam's mobile V2′s.
    Iran's underground silo's are even atomic bomb proof. Read More

    SolontoCroesus , May 5, 2017 at 4:45 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Proud_Srbin US goal is conquest and enslavement of mankind.
    Adolf shared that goal, humanity will prevail, again.
    Russia, China, DPRK are not Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Siria.

    US goal is conquest and enslavement of mankind.
    Adolf shared that goal

    Adolf did NOT "share the goal" of "conquest and enslavement of mankind."
    Adolf's goal was nationalistic, not global; the clue is hidden in plain sight:

    National sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)

    National Socialist German Workers' Party

    US agenda is (among other things) to force other nations to conduct their finances under US-Federal Reserve/fiat-currency – debt-basis; Germany under NSDAP determined to reject that system and established control of its own economy and system of finance. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Sebastian Puettmann , May 5, 2017 at 4:52 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @annamaria "Russia is pretty fascist."

    Is this a voice from the Kagans' clan' sinecures (AEI, Brookings) or directly from the land of the "chosen" handlers?
    For your information, even the Israel-occupied US Congress accepted an obvious truth and made a decision re real fascists: " US Congress ends funding for Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion:" https://theduran.com/us-congress-ends-funding-for-ukraines-neo-nazi-azov-battalion/
    One wonders when the US Congress will finally discover that it was a leader of the Ukrainian Jewish Community Mr. Kolomojsky who had been financing the Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion when the Azov's thugs were burning the civilians alive in Odessa: https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1d0_1462104943&comments=1
    Similar to you, The Wall Street Journal (the nest of ziocons) cries in unison with Mrs. Clinton that "Putin is Hitler." The same WSJ published a fawning article about Mr. Kolomojsky, a Ukrainian/Israeli citizen and financier of the neo-Nazis: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-secret-weapon-feisty-oligarch-ihor-kolomoisky-1403886665 If you ever need money, you'd make a good Russian propagandist. You seem to have internalized every of their talking point. May you have the power to investigate the other side as well, once in a while.

    By the way, maybe you have not noticed that Israel is not talking the Russia to joining their Russian Federation. But Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to joining NATO or the EU. What could be the reason for this, since Russia, according to your oppinion, is not more fascist than the US? Read More

    reiner Tor , Website May 5, 2017 at 5:19 pm GMT \n
    200 Words @Randal The other requirement to make a counterforce first strike viable is missile defences which, although not effective enough to see off a full Russian launch, would be very capable of "mopping up" the much smaller numbers of missiles launched in response to an incomplete disarming first strike.

    So we don't need to worry too much about this kind of improvement to the US capability so long as we don't see the US regime simultaneously installing missile defences everywhere they can on the pretext, say, of defending against non-existent, propagandist third party regional "threats" ...... Even that wouldn't be enough.

    Even if the US government was installing a huge global missile system while simultaneously building a potent first-strike capability, we'd only have to worry if they also had a history of attacking many other countries without provocation. Also if their political elite was pushing for military confrontation with Russia, like proposing to implement no-fly zones in Syria where Russian planes are flying missions (legally), with some members of the US establishment (people like Senator McCain) even calling for the downing of Russian planes if needed to accomplish that. Even in that hypothetical scenario it would only be really really dangerous if in the past some random senior US general (someone like General Wesley Clark) had already proposed to attack Russian troops – otherwise we could rely on the sanity of the generals to prevent such insanity.

    Fortunately, none of the above ever happened. It's all fantasy, folks. Nothing to see here. Read More LOL: Randal Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    reiner Tor , Website May 5, 2017 at 5:27 pm GMT \n
    300 Words I actually think there is no master plan to attack Russia. There is, however, a plan to create capabilities for the US which would enable the US government to attack Russia with the possibility of winning such a war.

    I think the US elites are incapable of such grandiose strategic thinking. Their policies just happen as a result of general guidelines (like, weaken Russia, strengthen US capabilities relative to Russia, push for wars that might benefit Israel or weaken Russia, etc.), without anyone thinking through what would happen later , or what would be the logical consequence of the actions which they take. A lot of "decisions" are probably made by institutional inertia, for example I find it possible that the whole anti-Russian thing in the 1990s was the result of such. Why did they feel the need to bomb Serbia, when Russia was ruled by Yeltsin? Obviously, it could only have led to the alienation of the Russian elites, which did happen as a result. Did anyone think it through? I don't think so.

    Similar thing with immigration. It's obvious that France will be majority nonwhite by the end of the century. It's likely that the UK will be majority nonwhite by that time as well. Germany, probably, too. The US will be minority white by mid-century. Was this policy thought out in terms of how it would affect the power-projection capabilities of these countries? How it would affect their elites? I don't think so.

    The most frightening thought is that they have no idea what they are doing. Read More

    annamaria , May 5, 2017 at 5:35 pm GMT \n
    200 Words "US Congress ends funding for Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion:" https://theduran.com/us-congress-ends-funding-for-ukraines-neo-nazi-azov-battalion/
    Is this "a good Russian propaganda," Sebastian? In his case you need to address your grievances directly to the US Congress.

    " Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to joining NATO or the EU. What could be the reason for this, since Russia, according to your oppinion, is not more fascist than the US?"
    Are you serious? Israel has been caught red-handed on cooperating with ISIS. Following your logic, ISIS is much, much better than Russian Federation. Though in this case you are actually in agreement with Israeli brass.

    " maybe you have not noticed that Israel is not talking the Russia to joining their Russian Federation."
    A truly amazing observation!
    Considering the role of Russian federation in stopping the ziocons from destroying Syria (and therefore from an immediate annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel), the Israelis do indeed feel somewhat unfriendly towards Russians. There is also a much deeper "dissatisfaction" with Russians on a part of Israelis, which takes its roots in the history of the USSR; for this deeper level you need to read "200 years together." Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments

    Che Guava , May 5, 2017 at 5:54 pm GMT \n
    100 Words I am very much appreciating this article and many comments.

    Having some military time, at peace, thankfully, and interest in arcane English words, I am knowing the diff.between material and materiel, fuze and fuse, etc.

    What this article and all of the comments are to lacking is a definition of 'super-fuze'.

    I am suspecting that it is just a mis-use of the word 'fuze'.

    If Mr. Zuess or a commentor could providing a definition, it would be an aid to comprehension. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments

    Alden , May 5, 2017 at 6:02 pm GMT \n
    @Miro23 Or rather than have the US destroy Russia, or Russia destroy the US, it would be preferable to root out the activist Jewish Neo Bolshevik war party that is behind it all. They have their own agenda, and regard themselves as above the law.

    They gave the US the WMD lies, 9/11 and destroyed the Middle East. They've also taken ownership of the US media to push their war agenda, apart from attacking Anglo America, sowing discord and promoting their financial interest (e.g. forcing the US public to bail out their 2008 loses at full $ while they kept their bonuses).

    If the US public can't wake up soon and deal with this cancer they've had it. Absolutely right. Read More

    SolontoCroesus , May 5, 2017 at 6:37 pm GMT \n
    300 Words @22pp22 I wish we Brits really were the evil geniuses we are supposed to be.

    I wish we Brits really were the evil geniuses we are supposed to be.

    From where do you think many Americans internalized the characteristic that Miro23 pegged:

    "Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000′s of civilians in the Middle East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused, and show zero empathy for their victims." http://www.unz.com/article/americas-top-scientists-confirm-u-s-goal-now-is-to-conquer-russia/#comment-1860779

    Britain's Lee Child created superhero Jack Reacher. In "Night School" Child locates Reacher in Hamburg, where he beats up young Germans who call out that they are fed up with being occupied by USA; having delivered the characteristic chops to the face then kick to the nuts, Reacher taunts the downed German patriots, er, neo-Nazis, "how does it feel to lose a war?"

    When, still in Hamburg, Reacher ultimately confronts the head of a group of Germans attempting to revitalize German identity and culture, Reacher shoots him in the heart and then the head, carrying out the ideals he had learned in West Point Military Academy bull sessions. For Reacher - Child - British propagandists - New York publishers, a German who is not fully on board with USA (Anglo-zionist) demands is, by definition, a Nazi deserving only to be extrajudicially exterminated.

    American (Anglo-zionist) popular culture reinforces "lack of remorse" at every turn and by numerous venues –

    We'll put a boot in your eye, It's the American way . . .

    As Ron Unz and Dr. Stephen Sniegoski revealed on this forum, British propaganda has a long history: it was their efforts that lied the American people into World War II

    The Conquest of the United States by Britain with a little help from her friends (by Stephen Sniegoski)

    and

    American Pravda: Alexander Cockburn and the British Spies by Ron Unz

    I can't think of anything more evil than lying to an entire population in order to induce them to hate, and then kill, another entire population.

    "Who sins not with the tongue sins not at all." -

    Anonymous , May 5, 2017 at 6:50 pm GMT \n
    @annamaria This is a long and passionate anti-war article by Michel Chossudovsky, which includes a nice picture of Bin Laden teaching Brzezinski how to handle a rifle, Afghanistan: http://www.globalresearch.ca/reversing-the-tide-of-war-say-no-to-nuclear-war/21866
    The neocons used the mujahaddins with great success, particularly on the US soil on 9/11.
    In short, "America's biggest foreign policy problem is that the U.S. cannot be trusted."

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-awful-credibility-argument-that-never-dies/ Do you read the links you put in your posts? Read More

    Agent76 , May 5, 2017 at 6:55 pm GMT \n
    100 Words Nov 29, 2016 The Map That Shows Why Russia Fears War With USA

    DECEMBER 25, 2015 NATO: Seeking Russia's Destruction Since 1949

    In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. president George H. W. Bush through his secretary of state James Baker promised Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev that in exchange for Soviet cooperation on German reunification, the Cold War era NATO alliance would not expand "one inch" eastwards towards Russia.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/25/nato-seeking-russias-destruction-since-1949/

    El Dato , May 5, 2017 at 7:09 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Sebastian Puettmann If you ever need money, you'd make a good Russian propagandist. You seem to have internalized every of their talking point. May you have the power to investigate the other side as well, once in a while.

    By the way, maybe you have not noticed that Israel is not talking the Russia to joining their Russian Federation. But Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to joining NATO or the EU. What could be the reason for this, since Russia, according to your oppinion, is not more fascist than the US?

    But Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to joining NATO or the EU.

    comedygold.jpg

    NATO brings obligations, and Israel already get all the dough they demand directly from the US without going through the "US occupation forces Europe" gentleman's club. In case of integration, imagine that there would be Israeli forces in islamic countries far away from the homeland? That would be awkward.

    While Israel would be happy to be in some new model European Trading Zone ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_areas_in_Europe ), being "in the EU" is another kettle of fish entirely. First, Israel is not European. And then again, obligations. In particular to stop shooting people held in reservations. Nyet, not happening. Read More

    El Dato , May 5, 2017 at 7:32 pm GMT \n
    @utu Bin Laden teaching Brzezinski ???

    Bin Laden 6'5" Brzezinski 5'5"

    This is not Bin Laden on this picture with Brzezinski! It looks like a guy with Pakistani or Indian paratrooper markings demonstrating the use of Russian RPD machine gun.

    Monsieur Laden would probably only see visitors in one of his construction contractor offices. No need for actual guns except when striking a pose (he was partial to AKS-74U as I remember) Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    jilles dykstra , May 5, 2017 at 7:39 pm GMT \n
    @El Dato

    But Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to joining NATO or the EU.
    comedygold.jpg

    NATO brings obligations, and Israel already get all the dough they demand directly from the US without going through the "US occupation forces Europe" gentleman's club. In case of integration, imagine that there would be Israeli forces in islamic countries far away from the homeland? That would be awkward.

    While Israel would be happy to be in some new model European Trading Zone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_areas_in_Europe), being "in the EU" is another kettle of fish entirely. First, Israel is not European. And then again, obligations. In particular to stop shooting people held in reservations. Nyet, not happening. In fact NATO already trains jointly with Israel, and Israel has narrow ties with the EU.
    Israel also participates in the European Song Contest.
    El Al uses Schiphol, Amsterdam airport, as its main base in Europe. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Joe Wong , May 5, 2017 at 7:43 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Nils If you think the President makes final decisions on all matters, I have a beach front property to sell you in Iowa. He is the public face of career Pentagon, State Department, and other Deep State proxies. Not a capstone critical thinker but a fall man.

    Nuclear war isn't a reality, it's a game of chess bluffs and the winner defeats the loser when there is only a logical option of loss. Because when supremacy is achieved, and understood by the opponent, you don't suddenly nuke them - you take its periphery (Ukraine, Baltics and E. Europe, and other color revolution hot-spots), you destabilize it's source of income (oil), you cut her off from the financial world (sanctions), you ostracize them politically (media/hacking), and you deny them future income (Syria) while cementing their future (denying the New Silk Road by local animosity - maritime disputes, arming India, etc).

    Real sudden catastrophic loss never materializes because we live in a non-zero sum situation - called living on the same planet - where abrupt destabilization backfires onto you from nuclear fallout and global market failure. It's just a check-mate scenario understood by both parties that begets a slow suffocation due to 'pawn sacrifice'.

    Unless you don't have nuclear weapons...then your country and lore is up for the taking on a whim. US is losing military ground in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan to the Russian, while USA is losing economic ground in SE Asia, Africa, South America and North America to the Chinese, are you saying the super-fuze is a fake news? And the American understood they are being check-mated by the Russian and Chinese? Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Kurt van Ghoye , May 5, 2017 at 8:07 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @SolontoCroesus Zuesse's very important essay could be improved immeasurably by identifying the authors of these dire policy statements:

    Keir Lieber, professor in the Edmund Walsh school at Georgetown, is son of Robert Lieber, also a professor of foreign policy studies at Georgetown -- For 2 Professors, Like Father, Like Son

    Papa Lieber is one of the driving forces behind creating -- rather, demanding that Georgetown agree to create-- the department for Jewish Civilizational Studies at Georgetown. https://www.georgetown.edu/center-for-jewish-civilization-launch

    Based on a quick review of Robert Lieber's dozen appearances on C Span, the description, Like Father like Son is apt: the senior Lieber is a an unabashed zionist and Israel firster who has operated behind the scenes to implement neoconservative policies that favor Israel, to be carried out at the expense of American blood and treasure, under the mendacious gloss that they are "in America's interest." Those policies date back at least to the Clinton administration bombing of Kosovo https://www.c-span.org/video/?100370-1/bosnia-russia-gulf-beyond ; then the Persian Gulf war to "liberate" Kuwait https://www.c-span.org/video/?23811-1/anniversary-persian-gulf-war and the war in Afghanistan where "Afghanis welcomed our liberation of Afghanis from the Taliban." https://www.c-span.org/video/?168019-4/postcold-war-conflicts Good to know, SolontoCroesus. I'm sure we'll remember to thank that cuddly pair of parasites when they manage to kill a few tens of millions of Russians to get their 21st century war groove going. It's really too bad about Christianity having bred the spirit of vengeance out of the white man. Do Russians thirst for revenge? Does anyone? Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Randal , May 5, 2017 at 8:44 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @reiner Tor I actually think there is no master plan to attack Russia. There is, however, a plan to create capabilities for the US which would enable the US government to attack Russia with the possibility of winning such a war.

    I think the US elites are incapable of such grandiose strategic thinking. Their policies just happen as a result of general guidelines (like, weaken Russia, strengthen US capabilities relative to Russia, push for wars that might benefit Israel or weaken Russia, etc.), without anyone thinking through what would happen later, or what would be the logical consequence of the actions which they take. A lot of "decisions" are probably made by institutional inertia, for example I find it possible that the whole anti-Russian thing in the 1990s was the result of such. Why did they feel the need to bomb Serbia, when Russia was ruled by Yeltsin? Obviously, it could only have led to the alienation of the Russian elites, which did happen as a result. Did anyone think it through? I don't think so.

    Similar thing with immigration. It's obvious that France will be majority nonwhite by the end of the century. It's likely that the UK will be majority nonwhite by that time as well. Germany, probably, too. The US will be minority white by mid-century. Was this policy thought out in terms of how it would affect the power-projection capabilities of these countries? How it would affect their elites? I don't think so.

    The most frightening thought is that they have no idea what they are doing. Probably correct, but as the events surrounding Able Archer in 1983 highlight it's not whether the Yanks have such intentions that matters, but whether the Russians think they might have them.

    Why did they feel the need to bomb Serbia, when Russia was ruled by Yeltsin? Obviously, it could only have led to the alienation of the Russian elites, which did happen as a result. Did anyone think it through?

    The ones who thought it through, like Kissinger, cautioned against it and were proved correct.

    Though in truth, when it comes to the neocon types who really knows where the incompetence ends and the evil begins? Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    european born , May 5, 2017 at 8:44 pm GMT \n
    in 1999 war against Serbia 7 smart bombs hit Bulgaria[ nato nation] why are you guys so sure if instead of Russia USA nukes Ukraine or Poland.
    [MORE] Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    jacques sheete , May 5, 2017 at 8:50 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Proud_Srbin US goal is conquest and enslavement of mankind.
    Adolf shared that goal, humanity will prevail, again.
    Russia, China, DPRK are not Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Siria.

    Adolf shared that goal, humanity will prevail, again.

    Where did you hear that?

    FYI: "Adolph" faced some real threats, not phony ones like we use as excuses to go to war.

    Since yer on a first name basis with the dude, you oughta know the truth.

    Here's a primer.:

    " this entire myth, so prevalent then and even now about Hitler, and about the Japanese, is a tissue of fallacies from beginning to end. Every plank in this nightmare evidence is either completely untrue or not entirely the truth.
    If people should learn this intellectual fraud about Hitler's Germany, then they will begin to ask questions, and searching questions "

    - Murray Rothbard 1966

    http://mises.org/daily/2592

    Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Agent76 , May 5, 2017 at 8:50 pm GMT \n
    Dec 31, 2013 Edward Bernays called it *PROPAGANDA*

    Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments

    jacques sheete , May 5, 2017 at 8:53 pm GMT \n
    @SolontoCroesus

    I wish we Brits really were the evil geniuses we are supposed to be.
    From where do you think many Americans internalized the characteristic that Miro23 pegged:

    "Americans have shown no remorse whatsoever for the murder of 100.000′s of civilians in the Middle East. They are indifferent to the WMD lies, don't care about the destruction they have caused, and show zero empathy for their victims." http://www.unz.com/article/americas-top-scientists-confirm-u-s-goal-now-is-to-conquer-russia/#comment-1860779
    Britain's Lee Child created superhero Jack Reacher. In "Night School" Child locates Reacher in Hamburg, where he beats up young Germans who call out that they are fed up with being occupied by USA; having delivered the characteristic chops to the face then kick to the nuts, Reacher taunts the downed German patriots, er, neo-Nazis, "how does it feel to lose a war?"

    When, still in Hamburg, Reacher ultimately confronts the head of a group of Germans attempting to revitalize German identity and culture, Reacher shoots him in the heart and then the head, carrying out the ideals he had learned in West Point Military Academy bull sessions. For Reacher -- Child -- British propagandists -- New York publishers, a German who is not fully on board with USA (Anglo-zionist) demands is, by definition, a Nazi deserving only to be extrajudicially exterminated.

    American (Anglo-zionist) popular culture reinforces "lack of remorse" at every turn and by numerous venues --

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9r0haVPDAo

    We'll put a boot in your eye, It's the American way . . .

    As Ron Unz and Dr. Stephen Sniegoski revealed on this forum, British propaganda has a long history: it was their efforts that lied the American people into World War II

    The Conquest of the United States by Britain ... with a little help from her friends (by Stephen Sniegoski)

    and

    American Pravda: Alexander Cockburn and the British Spies by Ron Unz

    I can't think of anything more evil than lying to an entire population in order to induce them to hate, and then kill, another entire population.

    "Who sins not with the tongue sins not at all." -

    As Ron Unz and Dr. Stephen Sniegoski revealed on this forum, British propaganda has a long history: it was their efforts that lied the American people into World War II

    WW1 as well. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    annamaria , May 5, 2017 at 9:12 pm GMT \n
    @Anonymous Do you read the links you put in your posts? What's wrong with these two links?

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/reversing-the-tide-of-war-say-no-to-nuclear-war/21866

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-awful-credibility-argument-that-never-dies/ Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    annamaria , May 5, 2017 at 9:19 pm GMT \n
    200 Words @Sebastian Puettmann If you ever need money, you'd make a good Russian propagandist. You seem to have internalized every of their talking point. May you have the power to investigate the other side as well, once in a while.

    By the way, maybe you have not noticed that Israel is not talking the Russia to joining their Russian Federation. But Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to joining NATO or the EU. What could be the reason for this, since Russia, according to your oppinion, is not more fascist than the US? This post was intended for you, Sebastian:

    "US Congress ends funding for Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion:" https://theduran.com/us-congress-ends-funding-for-ukraines-neo-nazi-azov-battalion/
    Is this "a good Russian propaganda," Sebastian? In his case you need to address your grievances directly to the US Congress.

    " Israel is talking to the Western establishment about the possibility to joining NATO or the EU. What could be the reason for this, since Russia, according to your oppinion, is not more fascist than the US?"
    Are you serious? Israel has been caught red-handed on cooperating with ISIS. Following your logic, ISIS is much, much better than Russian Federation. Though in this case you are actually in agreement with Israeli brass. http://news.antiwar.com/2016/06/21/israeli-intel-chief-we-dont-want-isis-defeated-in-syria/

    " maybe you have not noticed that Israel is not talking the Russia to joining their Russian Federation."
    A truly amazing observation!
    Considering the role of Russian federation in stopping the ziocons from destroying Syria (and therefore from immediate annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel), the Israelis do indeed feel somewhat unfriendly towards Russians. There is also a much deeper "dissatisfaction" with Russians on a part of Israelis, which takes its roots in the history of the USSR; for this deeper level you need to read "200 years together." Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    annamaria , May 5, 2017 at 9:25 pm GMT \n
    @reiner Tor I actually think there is no master plan to attack Russia. There is, however, a plan to create capabilities for the US which would enable the US government to attack Russia with the possibility of winning such a war.

    I think the US elites are incapable of such grandiose strategic thinking. Their policies just happen as a result of general guidelines (like, weaken Russia, strengthen US capabilities relative to Russia, push for wars that might benefit Israel or weaken Russia, etc.), without anyone thinking through what would happen later, or what would be the logical consequence of the actions which they take. A lot of "decisions" are probably made by institutional inertia, for example I find it possible that the whole anti-Russian thing in the 1990s was the result of such. Why did they feel the need to bomb Serbia, when Russia was ruled by Yeltsin? Obviously, it could only have led to the alienation of the Russian elites, which did happen as a result. Did anyone think it through? I don't think so.

    Similar thing with immigration. It's obvious that France will be majority nonwhite by the end of the century. It's likely that the UK will be majority nonwhite by that time as well. Germany, probably, too. The US will be minority white by mid-century. Was this policy thought out in terms of how it would affect the power-projection capabilities of these countries? How it would affect their elites? I don't think so.

    The most frightening thought is that they have no idea what they are doing. "The most frightening thought is that they have no idea what they are doing."

    Their sick psychopathic heads could well contain the "grandiose strategic thinking" for attacking Russia and China with nuclear weaponry, on some opportunistic impulse. Read More

    Realist , May 5, 2017 at 10:26 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Intelligent Dasein I do not doubt that the Deep State's objective is to destroy Russia, but I' skeptical that this "super-fuze" amounts to any kind of decisive step in that direction. The Pentagon's claimed effectiveness for its gosh-wow gadgetry has latterly been orders of magnitude above the reality of the situation. We've just spent the better part of two decades being unable to make meaningful progress in freaking Afghanistan , for crying out loud.

    Frankly, I do not think that America's transgendered military could so much as conquer Costa Rica, let alone take on a nuclear armed Russia. " We've just spent the better part of two decades being unable to make meaningful progress in freaking Afghanistan, for crying out loud."

    The idea is not to win the war in Afghanistan, but to prolong it for ever if possible. Thus making billions for the power elite And in this country of dumb bastards it's a snap. Read More

    Kiza , May 5, 2017 at 11:00 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Max Payne This just sounds like an air burst detonation. Is this one of those American things where they relabel something and remarket it? Not exactly. The super-fuse is an envelope around the target which is underground, in which the explosion results in the destruction of the target even if the missile has not hit the ground within the radius of destruction for its potency. The optimum destruction envelope around the target looks like a church bell, as one would expect. Therefore, it is in air-burst detonation, but this is not the essence of the super-fusing technique. An air-burst too early or too late, still does not destroy the target . The essence is to "save" a missile which would have missed the target and still destroy the underground silo. A computer on-board the missile decides when to detonate the missile for its existing trajectory. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    SolontoCroesus , May 5, 2017 at 11:07 pm GMT \n
    400 Words @El Dato Is this a plot for a new Spielberg movie.

    Is this a plot for a new Spielberg movie.

    No, it's the prequel:

    Mackinder -> Mahan (who taught the theory to West Pointers)

    Walter McDougall on Mahan (among other things - listen to the whole thing (skip the intros)

    In this insightful paper, Walter McDougall explores the options and outcomes facing Japan, Germany, Italy, USA, and the British in their interpretations, or misinterpretations, of Mahan's theories.

    http://www.fpri.org/article/2011/11/history-and-strategies-grand-maritime-and-american/

    The most pertinent quote from McDougall's paper recites that:

    "Thus, Germany's naval program might be a weapon designed to overthrow the world order or a tool to help her forge a larger (responsible) stake in that order. But Sir Thomas Sanderson, a brilliant veteran just retired from Whitehall, responded to Crowe with a sigh. He bade him (and by extension his chief, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Gray) to see world politics from Germany's point of view:

    It has sometimes seemed to me that to a foreigner reading our press ** the British Empire must appear in the light of some huge giant sprawling over the globe, with gouty fingers and toes stretching in every direction, which cannot be approached without eliciting a scream.

    In short, Sanderson argued that Britain's empire and its maritime lifelines could be secured better through accommodation of a rising peer competitor than by arrogant outrage and dogged defense of the status quo. The parallels to the United States and China today are obvious."

    Finally, in the next-best-thing-to-Spielberg, Frank Capra devotes much of the second film in the 7-part Why We Fight series to projecting upon Germany - and Germany alone - the "militaristic" desire to "control the (Mackinder) World Island." Capra succumbed to the British propaganda dominating the American populace as well as agents of influence and decision-makers; in the clutch of the "huge giant sprawling over the globe, with gouty fingers and toes stretching in every direction," Capra responded to competition with amped up "arrogant outrage and dogged defense of the status quo," a status quo that was, by the way, ludicrously sanitized in Capra's saccharine portrayal of the unalloyed virtue of American life.

    { ~4 min, Capra claims that Germany seeks control of the World Island.
    In the first installment of the Why We Fight series, Capra has Germany plotting the conquest of the entire world.)

    ** Once again, the British, masters of propaganda, can't control their tongues – Read More

    Kiza , May 5, 2017 at 11:09 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Anon

    On top of all this, the US intelligence has been tasked with collecting psychological profiles of all Russian commanders of nuclear missile submarines. The plan is to try convince them not to launch, once the Russian command has been destroyed by the First Strike – once they have no command any more.
    I won't even go into the loony ideas of this article or your understanding of the super fuses.

    How the hell do you know what U.S. intelligence is being "tasked with?" Are these intelligence agencies or your personal informers? Have these "tasks" been reported to the general public? And if so where is the intelligence value in such?

    Are you a movie script writer? Have you ever heard of counter-intelligence? Yes, maybe, never?

    Who cares if you "won't even go into the loony ideas of this article or your understanding of the super fuses"? You have made zero contribution to the debate on his topic and I recognise a troll who is too ready for personal insults from the peak of his/her superior knowledge which does not exist.

    My first and last answer to you, I have no time for pompous trolls currently fighting to overwhelm unz commenting section with their sewage. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Kiza , May 5, 2017 at 11:19 pm GMT \n
    200 Words @jilles dykstra "and the mobile platforms (truck and train based) discovered by US satellites."
    Forget about it, the real ones can be parked in any farm, the inflatable ones cannot be distinghuised from the real ones.
    Even in Saddam's Irak USA planes were unable to find Saddam's mobile V2's. Iran's underground silo's are even atomic bomb proof. I do not dispute what you wrote – the Russians would not be keeping their mobile launchers in plain sight, certainly not parading them around the country ready for photo- and video-shoot, just like the BUK battery according to the utterly ridiculous Dutch-lead Investigation of MH17 shoot-down.

    However, the issue is always – how much of "own" damage are the US/NATO leaders ready to accept? Somehow, my feeling is that if the bombs are not falling on Tel Aviv the damage becomes acceptable.

    Lately, there has been a very powerful push in the media to disapprove nuclear winter and radiation damage to the population. Some commenters here are trying the same tack. In other words, if you are not killed by the nuclear explosion, you will be ok , so say the warmongers, those who claim the destruction of the planet are fools , again so say the warmongers. I have no doubt that "someone" is trying to sell the advantages of the nuclear war to the population. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Kiza , May 5, 2017 at 11:37 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @annamaria "The most frightening thought is that they have no idea what they are doing."

    Their sick psychopathic heads could well contain the "grandiose strategic thinking" for attacking Russia and China with nuclear weaponry, on some opportunistic impulse. Let us look at it this way – MAD was a destruction of the two opponents, were the one which strikes first is destroyed say 60% and the one which was struck first is destroyed 90%. This is looking only at the effect of the explosions, not at any residual effects.

    With new technologies, the one which strikes first, under the best case scenario, could be destroyed only 10% or less whilst the enemy struck first is still destroyed 90%. I believe that this is the new strategic proposition acceptable to TPTB. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    KA , May 6, 2017 at 12:16 am GMT \n
    @Anon

    On top of all this, the US intelligence has been tasked with collecting psychological profiles of all Russian commanders of nuclear missile submarines. The plan is to try convince them not to launch, once the Russian command has been destroyed by the First Strike – once they have no command any more.
    I won't even go into the loony ideas of this article or your understanding of the super fuses. How the hell do you know what U.S. intelligence is being "tasked with?" Are these intelligence agencies or your personal informers? Have these "tasks" been reported to the general public? And if so where is the intelligence value in such?

    Are you a movie script writer? I do not understand the technological side . But nobody has lost his shirt by underestimating the intelligence and morality of American leadership .
    Your question – ' have these talks been reported to the general public' tells me . What does it tell ? Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Kiza , May 6, 2017 at 12:41 am GMT \n
    100 Words @SolontoCroesus

    Is this a plot for a new Spielberg movie.
    No, it's the prequel:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYRr5GtcczE

    Mackinder ---> Mahan (who taught the theory to West Pointers)

    Walter McDougall on Mahan (among other things -- listen to the whole thing (skip the intros)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKGSq2rvucQ

    In this insightful paper, Walter McDougall explores the options and outcomes facing Japan, Germany, Italy, USA, and the British in their interpretations, or misinterpretations, of Mahan's theories.
    http://www.fpri.org/article/2011/11/history-and-strategies-grand-maritime-and-american/
    The most pertinent quote from McDougall's paper recites that:

    "Thus, Germany's naval program might be a weapon designed to overthrow the world order or a tool to help her forge a larger (responsible) stake in that order. But Sir Thomas Sanderson, a brilliant veteran just retired from Whitehall, responded to Crowe with a sigh. He bade him (and by extension his chief, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Gray) to see world politics from Germany's point of view:
    It has sometimes seemed to me that to a foreigner reading our press** the British Empire must appear in the light of some huge giant sprawling over the globe, with gouty fingers and toes stretching in every direction, which cannot be approached without eliciting a scream.
    In short, Sanderson argued that Britain's empire and its maritime lifelines could be secured better through accommodation of a rising peer competitor than by arrogant outrage and dogged defense of the status quo. The parallels to the United States and China today are obvious."
    Finally, in the next-best-thing-to-Spielberg, Frank Capra devotes much of the second film in the 7-part Why We Fight series to projecting upon Germany -- and Germany alone -- the "militaristic" desire to "control the (Mackinder) World Island." Capra succumbed to the British propaganda dominating the American populace as well as agents of influence and decision-makers; in the clutch of the "huge giant sprawling over the globe, with gouty fingers and toes stretching in every direction," Capra responded to competition with amped up "arrogant outrage and dogged defense of the status quo," a status quo that was, by the way, ludicrously sanitized in Capra's saccharine portrayal of the unalloyed virtue of American life.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaiXs_e-ekI

    { ~4 min, Capra claims that Germany seeks control of the World Island.
    In the first installment of the Why We Fight series, Capra has Germany plotting the conquest of the entire world.)

    **Once again, the British, masters of propaganda, can't control their tongues -- I would recommend the longest piece of video that you quoted, the one by Walter McDougall. I do not agree with all his explanations of the beginnings of US Imperialism, but it is still a very, very interesting lecture, well worth more than an hour of our time. It helps understand better the non-partisan, non-propagandist US historians and their views.

    Great assembly of proofs of your points, thank you for broadening my perspectives. Read More

    Seraphim , May 6, 2017 at 12:50 am GMT \n
    @22pp22 I wish we Brits really were the evil geniuses we are supposed to be. Why would you? They are sufficiently evil as they are. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Seraphim , May 6, 2017 at 12:56 am GMT \n
    @Wizard of Oz Ah, now some of the stranger things you have said become a little less puzzling as you reveal your romantic Russian mythmaking soul. Again your ignorance of history tricks you into talking nonsense. Read More
    Anon 2 , May 6, 2017 at 1:52 am GMT \n
    300 Words @Carlton Meyer What our media overlooks is that the USA blatantly violated arms agreements with Russia by building missile bases in Poland and Romania with MK-41 launchers, capable of launching nuclear tipped cruise missiles to quickly strike key targets in Russia. The Pentagon promises to only place SM-3 anti-missile missiles in these silos. Trust us, our Generals proclaim! A little history: Despite the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia refused to withdraw from the Kaliningrad Region in the early 1990s, and to this day it effectively remains a Russian colony. Russia also initially refused to withdraw its troops from western Poland, and finally did so in stages until all troops were withdrawn by 1994-5. The conclusion is: Russia cannot be trusted, which, of course, is something that any child in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine learns based on the Russian behavior in the last 300 years.

    The area known today as Kaliningrad Oblast' was conquered by the (predominantly Germanic) Teutonic Knights in the 13th century from Sambians (related to Lithuanians) who were then effectively ethnically cleansed. The upshot is that neither Russia nor Germany can make the original claim to that piece of land (located between Poland and Lithuania). In a sane and rational world the Kaliningrad region would be demilitarized and made into an independent country (with Lithuania perhaps having the greatest claim to the territory) but when was the last time humans behaved rationally in foreign affairs?

    The U.S./NATO has over 300 military installations in Germany, incl. nuclear weapons. It makes little difference whether missiles are in western Poland or eastern Germany. The territory is so small that Berlin lies right next to the Polish border. Russia correspondingly placed Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad which are capable of hitting Berlin. So now we have a balance of terror. This seems to be the highest solution that humans in our current primitive state of consciousness are capable of. To quote Trump: sad Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Intelligent Dasein , Website May 6, 2017 at 1:54 am GMT \n
    @Kiza I was sceptical about super-fuses until I read a detailed explanation of how they work. Then I realised how dangerous this is. It would not be terribly hard for the Russians and the Chinese to replicate this development, however their possession of the same technology would NOT reduce the likelihood of US using it first.

    In briefest, super-fusing makes the First Strike much more effective and thus likely. The idea of super-fusing is relatively simple - unlike cruise and hypersonic missiles, the ballistic missiles have one huge weakness - once the rocket fuel is spent the ballistic missiles fly like thrown rocks - there is little trajectory correction. Super-fusing activates explosion within a predefined envelope of optimum destruction for the target, thus increasing the likelyhood of destroying the target several times over. For example, instead of the nuclear bomb overshooting the target, it is activated when the closest to the target. Super-fusing against land based silos and mobile launchers, combined with much better ABMD than exists now, especially against submarine launched ballistic missiles, would enable the First Strike with very low payback - in single digit percent. This means a First Strike that could destroy up to 99% of enemy's retaliatory capability and leaving more than enough missiles to threaten direct strikes on enemy's major cities.

    As I explained, ABMD is the weak link in this - it is far from effective yet, but give it unlimited $ printing and another 10 years or so and this scenario could become reality. I've already read the spin, thank you. My point was that I do not believe it. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Erebus , May 6, 2017 at 2:08 am GMT \n
    100 Words @Realist " We've just spent the better part of two decades being unable to make meaningful progress in freaking Afghanistan, for crying out loud."

    The idea is not to win the war in Afghanistan, but to prolong it for ever if possible. Thus making billions for the power elite And in this country of dumb bastards...it's a snap. The war in Afghanistan is all about preventing / disrupting Eurasian integration. Afghanistan is a good spot to do that as, in addition to being centrally located it is also militarily weak. It borders the important 'Stans into which disruption could exported, and even offers a corridor to China.

    The US saw success there, but it's fleeting. It did temporarily disrupt Eurasian integration, but this is overshadowed by its failure to set up a political structure capable of sustaining, much less expanding the disruption in its absence. Unless the US invests a politically unacceptable amount of resources, it's stuck there playing a spoiler's game and will continue to do so until something happens to oust it. Read More

    SolontoCroesus , May 6, 2017 at 2:08 am GMT \n
    @Kiza I would recommend the longest piece of video that you quoted, the one by Walter McDougall. I do not agree with all his explanations of the beginnings of US Imperialism, but it is still a very, very interesting lecture, well worth more than an hour of our time. It helps understand better the non-partisan, non-propagandist US historians and their views.

    Great assembly of proofs of your points, thank you for broadening my perspectives. thank you for reading.

    [May 06, 2017] It Is What It Isnt: Fake News Comes of Age as Ideology Trumps Evidence by marknesop

    Notable quotes:
    "... Shaun Walker, The Guardian 's corpulent correspondent in Russia, and his sidekick Roland Oliphant claimed to have seen with their own eyes a convoy of regular Russian Army vehicles and soldiers crossing the border from Russia into Ukraine but neither of them got a photo or a video clip despite their both supposedly being journalists by profession, who understand the maxim, "A picture is worth a thousand words". ..."
    "... It is at this moment that Russia and its president must address the legacy of 1917-the throngs in the streets waving red banners, dragging the emperor from his throne and pumping slugs into him and his kids. "The upcoming centennial of the 1917 revolution that toppled the czar and paved the way for Bolshevik rule promises to put the Kremlin in a tight spot," predicts the (still-) independent Moscow Times. "At the same time, the Kremlin is unwilling to unequivocally condemn the events the revolution set in motion or its Soviet past." ..."
    "... And it is Yeltsin whose deconstruction of the USSR itself is what Olga from the Volga is thankful her red-eyed grandmother did not live to see. (Putin has called it "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.") ..."
    "... Fake news stories in the western media abound, although the west rarely if ever acknowledges them; when FOX News, mouthpiece of the Washington regime-changers, broadcast a story ostensibly about protests in Russia , but featuring footage of rioting in Athens ..."
    "... Al Jazeera broadcast a fake report of the fall of Tripoli in the west's successful regime-change war against Gaddafi; the supposed capture of the city by 'opposition forces' was actually put together in a studio in Doha, Qatar. ..."
    "... This post shows a story originating in the Middle East, about Russian soldiers clearing up bombs left in Syria by Obama's troops. The story was related using first-hand video and personal accounts, and was picked up by major outlets. However, the truth was that this story was completely false - fabricated and framed in such a way that it looked like real news. We'll pull on threads behind this fake news, and find just one small part of what may well be a large, international network that is feeding our Western media. ..."
    May 04, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    Our deeds still travel with us from afar; and what we have been makes us what we are.

    George Eliot, Middlemarch

    We have arrived, in my opinion, upon the moment in the course of human history which marks the nadir of the journalistic profession. I cannot conceive of a situation in which the occupation could become more debased, more wretched than it has become already, and what we refer to as the 'mainstream media' no longer makes any effort to tell the truth, to substantiate what it purports to be true with hard evidence or even any evidence, or to disguise its service in the cut and thrust of political bias and character assassination.

    Shaun Walker, The Guardian 's corpulent correspondent in Russia, and his sidekick Roland Oliphant claimed to have seen with their own eyes a convoy of regular Russian Army vehicles and soldiers crossing the border from Russia into Ukraine but neither of them got a photo or a video clip despite their both supposedly being journalists by profession, who understand the maxim, "A picture is worth a thousand words". But his dinky little cell-phone camera is ever ready to do yeoman service in the pursuit of mocking Russian food on Aeroflot flights , and he has lots of time to arse about on his Facebook group dedicated to what he feels is a Russian obsession with dill . All of his complaining is backed up, it goes nearly without saying, with photographs. Yet he didn't get a picture of the stealth-invading Russian battalions even though he knew the subject was hotly debated, and proof would have made his name a household word. Well, he is a household word, although it's not "Shaun Walker". But you know what I mean.

    Or peruse this piece of rubbish . Among yearning for a repeat of the 1917 revolution on its hundredth anniversary and quoting the Moscow Times' tiresome demand for Russia to 'condemn its Soviet past'

    It is at this moment that Russia and its president must address the legacy of 1917-the throngs in the streets waving red banners, dragging the emperor from his throne and pumping slugs into him and his kids. "The upcoming centennial of the 1917 revolution that toppled the czar and paved the way for Bolshevik rule promises to put the Kremlin in a tight spot," predicts the (still-) independent Moscow Times. "At the same time, the Kremlin is unwilling to unequivocally condemn the events the revolution set in motion or its Soviet past."

    and selectively quoting Putin without context or background,

    And it is Yeltsin whose deconstruction of the USSR itself is what Olga from the Volga is thankful her red-eyed grandmother did not live to see. (Putin has called it "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.")

    so as to imply yet one more time that Putin seeks to recreate the Soviet Union, the author persists with the simpleminded meme that Putin rigged the American presidential election to prevent Hillary Clinton from winning.

    He and his fellow western journalists are aided in this bizarre allegation by the USA's intelligence agencies, who claim to have evidence that points to Russian interference. They can't show anyone, of course – everything the CIA deals with has important national security implications, and if they told the world how Putin hacked American elections, well .well, he might do it again. Or something.

    Consider. What actually happened? Information was released which reported that Mrs. Clinton was using a private email server to conduct government business, as Secretary of State for the Obama government, so as to avoid the law which required all official email traffic to be archived as government property.

    Was this true? While I can't speak to her motivation, her unauthorized use of a private server is a matter of public record, as are testimonials from State Department staff members that they mentioned repeatedly the behavior was not permitted, to which Mrs. Clinton allegedly replied that she had permission. If she said that, it was a lie.

    Then information was released which said the Democratic Party establishment was conspiring to rig the Democratic nomination for Mrs. Clinton by manipulating the process against Bernie Sanders, who enjoyed a significant following and who was assessed by polling results to have the best chance of beating Trump. Was that true? Sure was; the DNC chair, Debbie Wassserman-Shultz, resigned in disgrace – Mrs Clinton promptly promoted her to honorary chair of her presidential campaign, and President Obama rushed out a supportive statement as well, demonstrating that political heavyweights don't really care if you rig elections as long as you're not Russian.

    So what sabotaged the win Hillary Clinton thought she had in the bag was the release of damaging information about her which was true and accurate. It was not a pack of lies, and the suggestion that the truth about such activities should have been kept from voters until after they had cast their ballots would be monstrous. There was absolutely no proof that Russia was responsible for releasing that information, if they even knew it, and they were pretty far down the chain of people in a position to know.

    What are the rigging methods in Russian elections of which the Kremlin is always accused by the morally-superior beacon of democracy? Ballot-stuffing. Carousel voting, a term US State Department spokeshole Jen Psaki was quite comfortable using in the most accusatory fashion, although she had to admit when questioned that she had no idea what it meant . Suppression of opposition candidates and advertising time which disproportionately favours the ruling party. If Vladimir Putin can actually tip elections in foreign countries with such confounding precision without access to any of those tools, why would he rely on such quaint and archaic blunt-instrument methods to rig elections in Russia?

    Fake news stories in the western media abound, although the west rarely if ever acknowledges them; when FOX News, mouthpiece of the Washington regime-changers, broadcast a story ostensibly about protests in Russia , but featuring footage of rioting in Athens, The Daily Telegraph set a new standard for crawling by positing that the channel had just made an innocent mistake, like Athens is a lot like Moscow and people make that mistake all the time. It then proceeded to excoriate the paranoid Russians for imagining that it was done with intent. Al Jazeera broadcast a fake report of the fall of Tripoli in the west's successful regime-change war against Gaddafi; the supposed capture of the city by 'opposition forces' was actually put together in a studio in Doha, Qatar. I've lost track of the number of accounts of Putin's fabulous stolen wealth which he has squirreled away in secret bank accounts somewhere which nobody can find or prove to exist, yet his status as one of the world's wealthiest men remains part of the argot of common wisdom.

    Well, I spent a lot longer on that than I meant to do; but, damn it, that 'Putin stole our election' nonsense just turns my teeth sideways. How could he have done that? Voting machines are not connected to the internet, and there is no realistic suggestion that Russia actually manipulated the vote count. Somebody released true information regarding unlawful and undemocratic behavior by Mrs. Clinton, but not a shred of evidence supporting Russian involvement has been produced, although the CIA maintains that it knows .

    Anyway, I wanted to take you through what is described as a step-by-step analysis of a fake news story , an example of Russian trickery, or manipulation by Putin's international minions. The author is eminently well-qualified to discuss fake news, or at least as well-qualified as one can become in the short interval since caution was thrown to the winds, and fakery in the news went from a hobby to mainstream default mode; he worked for more than three years in Pheme, a multinational online project funded by the European Commission to define, evaluate and model fake news.

    Let's take a look. The story used as an example is a clip about Russian soldiers using the Uran 6 robotic mine-clearance vehicle to demine sites in Aleppo following the victory of Syrian government forces' retaking of the city. I want you to note at the outset that the author claims the story is completely false.

    This post shows a story originating in the Middle East, about Russian soldiers clearing up bombs left in Syria by Obama's troops. The story was related using first-hand video and personal accounts, and was picked up by major outlets. However, the truth was that this story was completely false - fabricated and framed in such a way that it looked like real news. We'll pull on threads behind this fake news, and find just one small part of what may well be a large, international network that is feeding our Western media.

    Please note also the odd choice of words; " bombs left in Syria by Obama's troops". We'll see if anyone actually claims that.

    Mr. Derczynski acknowledges at the starting line that there is nothing untoward with the original clip – it probably does show Russian soldiers in the performance of their duties in Syria, and the vehicle featured probably is the Uran 6.

    Then the token jackass Ukrainian enters the fray, announcing that the item is a fake and the vehicle is actually of Croatian origin. He is quickly shot down by Marcel Sardo. I think most of us know Marcel's work, and I have found him usually pretty accurate; always, where military hardware is concerned, and he seems to be a bit of an aficionado. The author points out that while there is no reason at this point to believe anything is other than what it seems, in fact this is a common tactic, and the good-cop-bad-cop are often on the same side or are even the same person.

    Then the story is picked up by RT, a source Mr. Derczynski tells us many of the Russians he talks with don't really trust. I think you can probably imagine the Russian circles he moves in. He tells us RT claims the Uran 6 is the same robot the Russian military used to help clear Palmyra of explosives left behind by Islamic State (IS). Still possible this is a real story, he says, although he seems to believe RT is setting the stage for something.

    As an aside, Islamic State did in fact take Palmyra, and remained in control of it for long enough to do tremendous damage – some of which appeared to have been wrought just for the sheer deviltry of it and for the grief it would cause, rather than the achievement of a strategic objective. It is difficult to imagine, I think, that the inhabitants of Palmyra left explosive booby-traps for the soldiers who drove out Islamic State – since their rule was unpopular – so it does not seem too much of a stretch that the explosives and mines left behind (a matter of public record) were left by Islamic State. There is apparently nothing thus far to suggest the story is 'fake news', although the author is suspicious about the direction it is heading.

    And then, BAM! The fake hits us like a runaway locomotive.

    Sarah Abdallah joins in on Twitter, attributing the explosives left behind to 'Obama's moderate rebels'. Oh no, you don't, Sarah, you delicious-looking young female trading on your looks and flirting with the camera. This has now just become fake-news propaganda, framing the story so that it reflects badly on the Greatest Democracy That Ever Lived.

    Let's take another pause to reflect. I have no idea if Sarah Abdallah is the real thing, or a Putin shill – I'm not familiar with her and have not seen her before this. But how realistic is her attribution to 'Obama's moderate rebels' of the explosives left behind in Aleppo? Well, the Obama government was fairly well known to be arming the Syrian rebels both overtly (which it admitted) and covertly (which it did not). The U.S. government also admitted, at various points in the conflict, that it had less and less of an idea who was who and who was al Qaeda as things went along. Oftentimes the side the USA supported was blanket-referred to as 'moderate rebels' for the sake of optics, but it is well-established that the USA provided not only arms, but satellite radios which would allow rebel commanders to call in air strikes by US military aircraft . The USA wriggled and squirmed and called for endless ceasefires in Aleppo whenever the Syria government forces appeared about to exploit a vulnerability. It seems pretty clear that Washington supported anyone it thought might get the job of ousting Assad done. It is therefore quite conceivable that explosives left behind in Aleppo with the intent of killing or injuring incoming enemy forces were left behind by 'moderate rebels' . It is also quite conceivable that some, perhaps many of these 'rebels' were supported by the U.S. government.

    Other sources go on to say that departing extremist rebels placed explosives even in children's toys. I have no idea if that is accurate, but considered in the frame of the deliberate murder of many children from the buses leaving Aleppo , lured out with the promise of snacks and then blown up by a suicide bomber, I would have to say it does not seem that far-fetched.

    [May 06, 2017] What the N. Korean Crisis Is Really About by Paul Craig Roberts

    Notable quotes:
    "... People should recall that back in the 1950s, Henry Kissinger wrote a study of the idea of limited nuclear war. As head of Nixon's NSC, Kissinger gave us SALT I, the first and in many respects most successful nuclear arms agreement. SALT I banned ballistic missile defense. It was understood by everyone, that ballistic missile defense is not a "defensive" system, but is part of a first strike weapons package. Ballistic missile defense can never be made good enough to defend against someone else's first strike. Ballistic missile defense can, however, be expected to defend after YOU have launched your own first strike and taken out most of the other side's nuclear forces. ..."
    May 06, 2017 | www.unz.com
    The North Korean "crisis" is a Washington orchestration. North Korea was last at war 1950-53. N. Korea has not attacked or invaded anyone in 64 years. N. Korea lacks the military strength to attack any country, such as South Korea and Japan, that is protected by the US. Moreover, China would not permit N. Korea to start a war.

    So what is the demonization of N. Korea by the presstitutes and Trump administration about?

    It is about the same thing that the demonization of Iran was about. The "Iranian threat" was an orchestration that was used as cover to put US anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia's borders. An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) is intended to intercept and destroy nuclear-armed ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) and prevent them from reaching their targets.

    Washington claimed that the anti-ABM bases were not directed at Russia, but were for the protection of Europe against Iran's nuclear ICBMs. Insouciant Americans might have believed this, but the Russians surely did not as Iran has neither ICBMs nor nuclear weapons. The Russian government has made it clear that Russia understands the US bases are directed at preventing a Russian retalliation against a Washington first strike.

    The Chinese government also is not stupid. The Chinese leadership understands that the reason for the N. Korean "crisis" is to provide cover for Washington to put anti-ballistic missile sites near China's border.

    In other words, Washington is creating a shield against nuclear retalliation from both Russia and China from a US nuclear strike against both countries.

    China has been more forceful in its reply to Washington's efforts than have the Russians. China has demanded an immediate halt to the US deployment of missiles in South Korea. https://www.rt.com/news/386828-china-thaad-south-korea/

    In order to keep Americans confused, Washington now calls anti-ABMs THAAD, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. China understands that THAAD has nothing whatsoever to do with N. Korea, which borders S. Korea, making it pointless for N. Korea to attack S. Korea with ICBMs.

    THAAD in S. Korea is directed against China's retaliatory forces. It is part of Washington's preparations to nuke both Russia and China with minimal consequence to the US, although Europe would certainly be completely destroyed as THAAD or anti-ABMs are useless against Russian nuclear cruise missiles and the Russian air force.

    But no Empire has ever cared about the fate of its vassals, and Washington is uninterested in Europe's fate. Washington is interested only in its hegemony over the world.

    The question is: now that Russia and China understand that Washington is preparing for a preemptive nuclear strike against them in order to remove the two constraints on Washington's unilateral behavior, will the two countries sit there and wait for the strike?

    What would you do?

    On April 27 I posted on this website a column, "Washington Plans to Nuke Russia and China." My column was a report that this was the conclusion of the Russians and Chinese themselves. I quoted Russian Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznikhir, Deputy Head of Operations of the Russian General Staff and provided links for his expression of concern such as: https://www.rt.com/news/386276-us-missile-shield-russia-strike/

    Jus' Sayin'... May 4, 2017 at 9:07 pm GMT

    BTW, I agree entirely with the essential point of this essay, Mr. Roberets. It's obvious to any rational and informed person that the USA is engaged in a geopolitical strategy to surround Russia and China with a coordinated anti-ballistic-missile system. The posting of THAAD in the Korean peninsula is the latest phase of this plan. The USA's establishment seems to be planning a strategic system that they think will give the USA a first-strike capability and the flexibility to start a nuclear war with impunity. This plan is insanely dangerous and puts the entire world at risk of a nuclear conflagration.

    But the poignancy of your message is greatly diminished by the overwrought, paranoid style with which you present it.

    dearieme May 4, 2017 at 10:44 pm GMT

    Are the people who run the US really prepared to gamble on a guaranteed 100% success rate for anti-missile missiles? Won't they die too if they are wrong?

    Still, it's the simplest way to explain their very odd behaviour. Perhaps they think they can frighten the Russians and Chinese into surrender. Sounds awfully risky to me.

    KenH says: May 5, 2017 at 1:57 am GMT • 200 Words

    What I find disturbing in all this is that the U.S. has to know that they can't simultaneously neutralize Russia and China's entire nuclear arsenals and every means of delivery. But if so then this means they are ready and willing to sacrifice a portion of the American landmass and tens of millions of people to nuclear fire just to be the last man standing. Russia has "boomers" or submarines that can fire nuclear missiles from sea. I don't think the Chinese have that capability yet but I haven't been paying close attention.

    Russia has multiple ways to deliver nuclear warheads and even if our nuclear defenses are only partially breached that means a terrible loss of life. It seems the U.S. high command has war gamed every scenario imaginable and thinks we will win with "acceptable" losses which of course doesn't include they or their loved ones.

    We've become as bloodthirsty and psychopathic as the Likud party of Israel. For all intents and purposes the mover and shakers within our government are either real or honorary Likudniks.

    nickels May 5, 2017 at 3:20 pm GMT
    I have to wonder if the South Korean regime change of a few months back wasn't a CIA color revolution designed to put a puppet into government in SK that would be willing to host these missiles.
    It had all the hallmarks:
    -Fancy stage with a visual/audio propaganda machine
    -Highly coordinated crowd (lighters, etc )
    -Trumped up charges
    -Demonization of the 'Church of Eternal Life', which is basically just another wacky protestant op,not a cult. If one looks at the google search results for this church (as opposed to, say bing) it is clear that they are on google's CIA list of organizations to demonize by leading search results to propaganda sites
    -Use of the media to constantly demonize a single individual (Choi Soon) whose father was adviser to Ms Park (sounds like a pretty legit advisor to me)
    -Ms Park had expressed a desire to work with both China and the US

    In Tolkien's Silmarillion he describes the lineage of Sauron as essentially a fallen angel, aka a demon.
    There is no doubt that Washington is run by a host of people who are possessed by demons.

    As far as using real names, the reason I don't spell a full name out is not the desire to be unknown, but to avoid a search engine like google from collating everything I do online into a search result. Its one thing to be known in a certain circle of the internet, another for any bloke to pull everything together without context or participation in the actual discussions.

    Harry Huntington, May 5, 2017 at 3:35 pm GMT

    @Paul Craig Roberts

    Folks who have seriously looked at the subject cannot help but agree with you. People should recall that back in the 1950s, Henry Kissinger wrote a study of the idea of limited nuclear war. As head of Nixon's NSC, Kissinger gave us SALT I, the first and in many respects most successful nuclear arms agreement. SALT I banned ballistic missile defense. It was understood by everyone, that ballistic missile defense is not a "defensive" system, but is part of a first strike weapons package. Ballistic missile defense can never be made good enough to defend against someone else's first strike. Ballistic missile defense can, however, be expected to defend after YOU have launched your own first strike and taken out most of the other side's nuclear forces.

    Of course the Russians have not been standing still with all of this. Their S400 system has capabilities against both US stealth aircraft and ballistic missiles. The Russians make incremental changes to their systems and the Russian S500 system will have full blown ballistic missile defense capabilities. The Russians are also deploying their Topol M ICBM systems, and soon a successor, which is mobile and has multiple maneuverable warheads and penetration aids designed to defeat US ballistic missile defense systems. Most likely, as it seems is always the case, the US neocons will trust too much in US technology and will be unpleasantly surprised by the Russian response to any US nuclear first strike.

    The wildcard of course is that a nuclear war need not be fought entirely with nuclear weapons. US conventional cruise missiles can be launched to target Russian radars. Likewise, however, the Russian Kalibr cruise missiles can directly take on US ballistic missile defense by threatening both US sea based defensive systems and land based THAAD systems.

    It is easy to picture a scenario where in a crisis Russia strikes first using its conventional cruise missiles to target US ballistic missile defense sites. US sea based systems cannot engage in ballistic missile defense if they have to expend all of their missiles defending themselves from conventional attack. Similarly, a THAAD system is of limited use if Russians successfully destroy the missiles on the ground, or if they destroy the radars.

    The US was surprised when the Russians used their Kalibr missiles with great success in Syria. That success created another layer of complexity in the US planning for nuclear war.

    botazefa: May 5, 2017 at 7:16 pm GMT

    It is my understanding that our THAAD deployments are not particularly numerous in comparison to the existing ICBM arsenal. It is also my understanding that THAAD is not particularly accurate.

    If the author is so thin skinned that he cannot handle disagreement, then perhaps he lacks the self awareness to label dissenters as narcissists. To put it more plainly, the inability to take criticism is one of the diagnostic criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. To believe that ones comments are so interesting that they invite active espionage on the part of Mossad and NATO is indicative of grandiose thinking, another diagnostic criteria of NPD.


    alexander says:

    May 5, 2017 at 8:10 pm GMT • 100 Words
    @alexander

    As though perhaps in the final tally we will have hit fifty two of "their" cities and they will only have hit 20 of "ours" .like Seattle , Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Albany , Denver, Boston, Charlotte, San Francisco,Richmond, Trenton, Juneau,Wilmington, Raleigh, Concord,Providence,Detroit, Hartford and Columbia .

    Is this "victory "in your mind , Utu ?

    Can you really be suggesting this ?

    34.Mao Cheng Ji says:

    May 5, 2017 at 8:10 pm GMT • 100 Words
    @utu
    What is the purpose of anti-ABM installations around Russia and China? What is the purpose of claims of inflated abilities of these systems? Certainly not to prepare the first strike. It is to make Russia and China think that they will not win the first strike.

    It's exactly the opposite. Modern ABM systems are useless against the first strike with 1500 nuclear ICBMs among god knows how many decoys. They are useful, however, against a much weaker retaliation strike, provided that most of the enemy's ICBMs have been destroyed (by your first strike) inside their silos. You will probably lose a few cities, but win Total World Domination. And that's the game.

    [May 06, 2017] "Fake news" just means factual news that doesn't follow the propaganda narrative of the American establishment

    Notable quotes:
    "... Neoconesis ..."
    May 06, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
    yalensis , May 5, 2017 at 2:34 pm
    This is a good post, Mark. "Fake news" just means factual news that doesn't follow the propaganda narrative of the American establishment.
    Cortes , May 5, 2017 at 4:23 pm
    I agree entirely.

    The effort to establish acceptable news for public consumption is only just gathering pace if the following piece is any guide:

    https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/02/nyt-cheers-the-rise-of-censorship-algorithms/

    By the by, I'm increasingly impressed with the way that popular fiction is used to reinforce stereotypes helpful to the agendas of our leaders. The supposedly random selection of nefarious Russkie villains in works by the likes of Stieg Larsen, Jo Nesbo and Lee Child made me wonder if it's random at all. The other day I was reading a Lawrence Block novel, "The Burglar on the Prowl" which contains a McGuffin about Soviet repression of Latvian nationalism and began to think that perhaps there's an element of orchestration in generating stories which, oddly enough, coincide with current political orthodoxy.

    J.T. , May 5, 2017 at 7:46 pm
    Hey Cortes, you're definitely on to something.
    You should read Ted Bell's Patriot , which I reviewed here .
    Just kidding. Don't waste your time. It's 10% spy thriller and 90% Neoconesis .

    [May 05, 2017] Jared a billionaire arch-Zionist trust-fund baby

    Some comments are over top, but the term "Kosher Nostra" is pretty interesting. Jared's father sevred a jail term...
    Notable quotes:
    "... 'Jewish-American organized crime emerged within the American Jewish community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been referred to variously in media and popular culture as the Jewish Mob, Jewish Mafia, Kosher Mafia, Kosher Nostra, or Undzer Shtik (Yiddish: אונדזער שטיק‎). The last two of these terms refer to the Italian Cosa Nostra (Italian pronunciation: [kɔza nɔstra]); the former is a play on the word kosher, referring to Jewish dietary laws, while the latter is a direct translation of the phrase (Italian for "our thing") into Yiddish, which was at the time the predominant language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States ..."
    "... In more recent years, Jewish-American organized crime has reappeared in the forms of both Israeli and Jewish-Russian mafia criminal groups, and Orthodox kidnapping gangs ..."
    "... Several notable Jewish American mobsters provided financial support for Israel through donations to Jewish organizations since the country's creation in 1948. Jewish-American gangsters used Israel's Law of Return to flee criminal charges or face deportation ..."
    "... Even the staff at his own Jewish day school were surprised he was accepted at Harvard. ..."
    "... He was described as a lacklustre student his father bought his entry, and they were disappointed that more qualified students from his school didn't make the cut. ..."
    "... They have good reason to hide him – he and his family have some shady business dealings – his father is a x-convict. How did he come into billions of dollars? They say that Jared inherited his money – how did that happen when his father is still living – did they get special tax treatment? ..."
    "... p.s. Jared Kushner is 100% Zionist ..."
    May 05, 2017 | ...

    wayfarer , April 20, 2017 at 10:12 pm GMT

    The problem with fiat money is that if one has enough of it, one can buy just about anything under the sun that they please, including even large parts of a country's political system and government.

    Take for example, Jared (a.k.a. billionaire arch-Zionist trust-fund baby) Kushner

    source: https://www.sott.net/article/348461-The-controversy-of-Jared-Kushner-A-suspected-gangster-within-the-Trump-White-House

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtf6TgQgWr4

    Seraphim , April 20, 2017 at 11:52 pm GMT
    @Talha Kosher Nostra!!!

    Oh man - that was awesome!!!

    Peace. It is not my invention. All From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

    "Jewish-American organized crime":

    'Jewish-American organized crime emerged within the American Jewish community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been referred to variously in media and popular culture as the Jewish Mob, Jewish Mafia, Kosher Mafia, Kosher Nostra, or Undzer Shtik (Yiddish: אונדזער שטיק‎). The last two of these terms refer to the Italian Cosa Nostra (Italian pronunciation: [kɔza nɔstra]); the former is a play on the word kosher, referring to Jewish dietary laws, while the latter is a direct translation of the phrase (Italian for "our thing") into Yiddish, which was at the time the predominant language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States

    In more recent years, Jewish-American organized crime has reappeared in the forms of both Israeli and Jewish-Russian mafia criminal groups, and Orthodox kidnapping gangs .

    Several notable Jewish American mobsters provided financial support for Israel through donations to Jewish organizations since the country's creation in 1948. Jewish-American gangsters used Israel's Law of Return to flee criminal charges or face deportation "

    Anonymous , April 21, 2017 at 3:31 am GMT

    @wayfarer

    Even the staff at his own Jewish day school were surprised he was accepted at Harvard.

    He was described as a lacklustre student his father bought his entry, and they were disappointed that more qualified students from his school didn't make the cut.

    Art , April 21, 2017 at 6:56 pm GMT
    @Alden

    I just read the latest ADL diktat.

    As of today any mention of Jared Kushner is deemed anti Semitic. Consequences will be severe. I just read the latest ADL diktat. As of today any mention of Jared Kushner is deemed anti Semitic. Consequences will be severe.

    They have good reason to hide him – he and his family have some shady business dealings – his father is a x-convict. How did he come into billions of dollars? They say that Jared inherited his money – how did that happen when his father is still living – did they get special tax treatment?

    Hmm?

    Peace - Art

    p.s. Jared Kushner is 100% Zionist

    [May 05, 2017] And in this election, the poor whites have had enough of voting for a party that mocks them, and fucks them economically

    May 05, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
    ucgsblog , May 5, 2017 at 1:04 pm
    Hi Mark,

    Brilliant title and a great article!

    "It Is What It Isn't: Fake News Comes of Age as Ideology Trumps Evidence"

    Love it!

    "All of his complaining is backed up, it goes nearly without saying, with photographs. Yet he didn't get a picture of the stealth-invading Russian battalions even though he knew the subject was hotly debated, and proof would have made his name a household word. Well, he is a household word, although it's not "Shaun Walker". But you know what I mean."

    *Rimshot*

    " the author persists with the simpleminded meme that Putin rigged the American presidential election to prevent Hillary Clinton from winning So what sabotaged the win Hillary Clinton thought she had in the bag was the release of damaging information about her which was true and accurate. "

    What won the election for Trump was the Democratic Treatment of the poor white class, whose votes the Democrats took for granted. Clinton consultant, James Carville, admitted that people vote based on the economy when Bill Clinton won. But when Hillary lost, for Carville it suddenly became about Russia, Russia, Russia, akin to Jan yelling Marcia, Marcia, Marcia on the Brady Bunch. How does an analyst sink to the level of a school girl?

    Because the Democrats ignored nearly all of the warning sings, struggled internally, and needed someone to blame. Russia is an easy target for blame in US politics. Accepting responsibility for the defeat would have meant a purge of the Democratic elite from their party's leadership. When Scott Walker won Wisconsin, the Democrats ignored it. Look at the map of Wisconsin in Walker's Gubernatorial Victory in 2014, and compare that with Trump's Presidential Victory in 2016. They're almost identical. The poorer whites became, the more they voted for Trump.

    The DNC has been ignoring the Rust Belt for decades. That's how Clintons missed Obama's meteoric rise. And in this election, the poor whites have had enough of voting for a party that mocks them, and fucks them economically. They simply needed a leader that could get revenge for them on the DNC. Enter Trump. Did he bullshit? Most certainly, but they did not care. The DNC was focused on getting Virginia, Nevada, making inroads into a few other states; holding their base was simply too plebeian.

    And it was this shift that happened, rather than the leaks, rather than Russia, rather than Comey, rather than anything else, that cost the Democrats the Presidency. This simple shift of a voting block. That's why it wasn't just Pennsylvania; it was Wisconsin and Michigan: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/

    "The theme expresses itself in several ways - primitive vs. advanced, tough vs. delicate, masculine vs. feminine, poor vs. rich, pure vs. decadent, traditional vs. weird. All of it is code for rural vs. urban."

    What held the rust belt states was cities like Chicago, and poor whites turning out. That didn't happen in this election, because"

    "Nothing that happens outside the city matters!" they say at their cocktail parties, blissfully unaware of where their food is grown. Hey, remember when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? Kind of weird that a big hurricane hundreds of miles across managed to snipe one specific city and avoid everything else. To watch the news (or the multiple movies and TV shows about it), you'd barely hear about how the storm utterly steamrolled rural Mississippi, killing 238 people and doing an astounding $125 billion in damage. But who cares about those people, right? What's newsworthy about a bunch of toothless hillbillies crying over a flattened trailer? New Orleans is culturally important. It matters. To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of the elites. "Are you assholes listening now?"

    On Cultural Integration:

    "the racism of my youth was always one step removed. I never saw a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black people we had in town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when they passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city, winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned alive. Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine as long as they acted exactly like us."

    An Issue with Priorities:

    "Blacks riot, Muslims set bombs, gays spread AIDS, Mexican cartels behead children, atheists tear down Christmas trees. Meanwhile, those liberal Lena Dunhams in their $5,000-a-month apartments sip wine and say, "But those white Christians are the real problem!" Terror victims scream in the street next to their own severed limbs, and the response from the elites is to cry about how men should be allowed to use women's restrooms and how it's cruel to keep chickens in cages The foundation upon which America was undeniably built - family, faith, and hard work - had been deemed unfashionable and small-minded. Those snooty elites up in their ivory tower laughed as they kicked away that foundation, and then wrote 10,000-word thinkpieces blaming the builders for the ensuing collapse."

    Most importantly, on the economy:

    "They're getting the shit kicked out of them. I know, I was there. Step outside of the city, and the suicide rate among young people fucking doubles. The recession pounded rural communities, but all the recovery went to the cities. The rate of new businesses opening in rural areas has utterly collapsed. See, rural jobs used to be based around one big local business - a factory, a coal mine, etc. When it dies, the town dies. Where I grew up, it was an oil refinery closing that did us in. I was raised in the hollowed-out shell of what the town had once been. The roof of our high school leaked when it rained. Cities can make up for the loss of manufacturing jobs with service jobs - small towns cannot. That model doesn't work below a certain population density."

    On hopelessness:

    "In a city, you can plausibly aspire to start a band, or become an actor, or get a medical degree. You can actually have dreams. In a small town, there may be no venues for performing arts aside from country music bars and churches. There may only be two doctors in town - aspiring to that job means waiting for one of them to retire or die. You open the classifieds and all of the job listings will be for fast food or convenience stores. The "downtown" is just the corpses of mom and pop stores left shattered in Walmart's blast crater, the "suburbs" are trailer parks. There are parts of these towns that look post-apocalyptic. I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive.

    And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!" Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit, at least politicians act like they care about the inner cities."

    This frustration was built up over decades. Not overnight. Not because of an October Surprise. Not because of leaked emails, and certainly, not because of Russia. And unless the DNC is able to grasp the basics, or the RNC fucks up the economy, Republicans will keep on winning the presidency. It's just that simple.

    Take a look at the early footage on election night. The Democrats thought they were going to win, even after the email release. Even after the scandals, they thought they had the election in the bag. And that's because you don't miss an entire electoral class overnight either. On a final note, there's no such thing as White Privilege; it's a lie made up to take away our Rights, just like certain cities took away the Rights of minorities. The Rights against search and seizure is a Right, not a Privilege.

    Cortes , May 5, 2017 at 3:45 pm
    Thanks for the link to the David Wong article. I'd read it before (possibly linked to at John Michael Greer's Archdruid Report blog) but thoroughly enjoyed reading it again.

    [May 05, 2017] Yeah, cause nothing says resistance like Hillary working with billionaire Wall Street donors to agitate against a sitting president.

    May 05, 2017 | twitter.com

    Sarah Abdallah Independent Lebanese geopolitical commentator.

    Sarah Abdallah @sahouraxo ■ 12h

    Yeah, 'cause nothing says "resistance" like Hillary working with billionaire Wall Street donors to agitate against a sitting president.

    CNN"@CNN

    Hillary Clinton plans to launch а РАС aimed at funding "resistance" groups standing up to Pres. Trump, sources say cnn.it/2pfkOA8

    [May 02, 2017] House Oversight Committee Confirms Flynn Likely Broke Law On Overseas Payments

    Notable quotes:
    "... Chaffetz confirmed that Flynn had failed to reveal the more than $45,000 he was paid to speak at a 2015 gala for RT, the Kremlin-run TV network, as well as the money he was paid by an air freight company and a cybersecurity firm with direct connections to Russia. Chaffetz added that the White House had refused to provide his committee with information and documents related to Flynn's security clearance and payments from organizations tied to the Russian and Turkish governments. The committee made six requests, and the White House cited reasons it could not comply with each of them, Cummings said. ..."
    "... ... $45K? ... lol ... Therapist Bill makes multiple-times more in birthday-bribes from desert ragheads and <nudge-wink> so-called "speeches" ... then smiles into his retirement sunset villa at (((Epstein's))) Isla Lolita ... ..."
    Apr 26, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Former national security adviser Michael Flynn likely broke the law by failing to disclose foreign income he earned from Russia and Turkey , the heads of the House Oversight Committee said Tuesday.

    As The Washington Post reports, committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said they believe Flynn neither received permission nor fully disclosed income he earned for a speaking engagement in Russia and lobbying activities on behalf of Turkey when he applied to reinstate his security clearance, after viewing two classified memos and Flynn's disclosure form in a private briefing Tuesday morning.

    "Personally I see no evidence or no data to support the notion that General Flynn complied with the law," Chaffetz told reporters following the briefing.

    "He was supposed to get permission, he was supposed to report it, and he didn't," Cummings said.

    Chaffetz confirmed that Flynn had failed to reveal the more than $45,000 he was paid to speak at a 2015 gala for RT, the Kremlin-run TV network, as well as the money he was paid by an air freight company and a cybersecurity firm with direct connections to Russia. Chaffetz added that the White House had refused to provide his committee with information and documents related to Flynn's security clearance and payments from organizations tied to the Russian and Turkish governments. The committee made six requests, and the White House cited reasons it could not comply with each of them, Cummings said.

    One has to wonder about the Trump team's vetting process and perhaps more notable is that now that Chaffetz is not running for re-election, he has nothing to fear from political fallout from the White House or GOP in general.

    PrayingMantis -> Ghost of Porky , Apr 25, 2017 1:02 PM

    ... $45K? ... lol ... Therapist Bill makes multiple-times more in birthday-bribes from desert ragheads and <nudge-wink> so-called "speeches" ... then smiles into his retirement sunset villa at (((Epstein's))) Isla Lolita ...

    ... and while "Flynn had failed to reveal the more than $45,000 he was paid to speak at a 2015 gala for RT, the Kremlin-run TV network", the Kremlin-friendly Klinton Krime Kartel gets to pocket more bribes while the Hilarious one, who was SoS for Obumboclot, was able to negotiate a Kremlin-reset-deal to "give" the UraniumOne mines to the Kremlin ... and gets away with it ... go figure ...

    ... fair and balanced ... /s

    Chupacabra-322 -> PrayingMantis , Apr 25, 2017 1:13 PM

    @ Praying,

    Seems as though you've given a perfect example of why the RICO "Satute" was implemented into "Law."

    Doesn't make one iota of difference as the Criminal Fraud UNITED STATES, CORP. INC. is absolutely & completely....

    Lawless.

    "What difference, at this point does it make?" -Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Psychopath Hillary Clinton.

    Never One Roach -> Chupacabra-322 , Apr 25, 2017 1:29 PM

    "breaking the law"....

    That's quaint. No one has gone to jail for the dozens of Crooked Clinton crimes. Huma, Mills, Pedopodesta and so on.

    PrayingMantis -> Chupacabra-322 , Apr 25, 2017 1:43 PM

    >>> "Doesn't make one iota of difference as the Criminal Fraud UNITED STATES, CORP. INC. is absolutely & completely....Lawless. "

    ... exactly, @Chupacabra ...

    ... and while CONgress wastes their time on piddly-little $45K, Kremlin-&-Washington-friend Turkey (who had been allegedly one of Flynn's sources of "no-no" funds), had been supplying "moderate" terrorists with "flour bags" full of C4 explosives ...

    >>> "Syrian Army Finds Turkish 'Flour' Bags Full of C4 - Turkey has been caught before using humanitarian pretexts to smuggle weapons into Syria"

    ... "... claimed that the cargo of the lorries were a 'national secret' " ... LOL!

    >>> http://russia-insider.com/en/syrian-army-finds-turkish-flour-bags-full-c4/ri19667

    Yes We Can. But... -> barysenter , Apr 25, 2017 12:12 PM

    And doubtless up next after them is Obama on 1) his using US intel to spy on opposition during an election, and 2) the demonstrably fraudulent birth certificate he trotted out several years back in response to Trump's barking at him.

    Bastiat -> Yes We Can. But Lets Not. , Apr 25, 2017 12:14 PM

    Oh yeah, sure -- like Obama or Clinton's will be held accountable for anything.

    doomchild -> barysenter , Apr 25, 2017 12:14 PM

    Clintons will not be touched.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvZ6M1dk2c4

    HRClinton -> barysenter , Apr 25, 2017 12:21 PM

    He deserves to be punished for being stupid.

    If you're going to be paid by the Russians, make sure they pay you in gold or cash deposited into an offshore safety deposit box.

    How can 'smart' people in his position be so dumb? If you're gonna be devious, be smart devious not dumb devious.

    meditate_vigorously -> barysenter , Apr 25, 2017 3:23 PM

    (((Chaffetz))) was just forced out of congress for unknown reasons (probably related to corruption or pizzagate and a brokered coverup), and there are sea sponges with a higher IQ than Cummings.

    So whatever these 2 clowns say should not be taken seriously.

    NuYawkFrankie , Apr 25, 2017 12:44 PM

    re "Personally I see no evidence or no data to support the notion that General Flynn complied with the law," Chaffetz told reporters following the briefing.

    And personally I see NO evidence nor data to support the notion that the USSA Knesset has complied with the law since - what seems like - time immemorial!

    Quite the contrary in fact - especially when. in a gross abrogation of Constitutional Duty- it comes to ' Serial Wars Of Aggression' by Presidential Edict!

    DuneCreature , Apr 25, 2017 12:25 PM

    Ooops, Flynn screwed to pooch telling Erdogan about the CIA plot to off him.

    Flynn not owned. ... Trump owned.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcd-yvudYSg

    Ya didn't collect near enough booty for that boo boo did cha, Mike?

    You should have taken the gold and retired.

    Live Hard, Some Spook Intrigue Is More Intriguing And Lucrative Than Other Spook Intrigue, Die Free

    ~ DC v5.0

    whatamaroon , Apr 25, 2017 12:35 PM

    OT; but the clusterfuck continues. Turkey bombs US backed 'rebels' in Syria and Iraq;

    http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/04/25/turkish-jets-bomb-us-backed-forc...

    hooligan2009 , Apr 25, 2017 12:46 PM

    ponders how many other politicians, serving or sacked, have failed to disclose payments received from the dmedia, or apartheid regimes like Israel, or from libtard snowflake universities like Berkeley, or ngo companies like those run by soros or russian uranium companies to the dems/clinton etc.

    does this mean there are another 435 + 100 + 1 + 7 investigations pending for those currently (and their current aides_ serving AND another 800 investigations for ex-politicians and aides to those politicians

    DRAIN THE SWAMP has now morphed into thr need for an independent body to do the investigations into corruption, since self policing just reverts to "neener neener" finger pointing like it's some kind of political game.

    grand jury supported by a team of current/ex-fbi sleuths?

    NordikAvenger , Apr 25, 2017 12:48 PM

    Who fucking cares anymore, really? The whole enterprise is rigged and no one gets punished, ever. They are just shoving it into your face that us proles are losers and they are untouchable.

    Fucked every way you look at it.

    Mzhen , Apr 25, 2017 1:05 PM

    Chaffetz is burned out and is leaving. Or maybe he's getting out of Dodge before revelations of his own. In any case, his statements and assertions are becoming increasingly erratic.

    Since the Flynn talk in Russia occurred in 2015, and Flynn's private lobbying work related to Turkey was for a private company based in the Netherlands, the critical definitions here would be the extent to which these businesses are "tied to" the Russian and Turkish governments. Nothing comes of it.

    Emergency Ward -> Able Ape , Apr 25, 2017 1:55 PM

    ....Or taken a $100MM from the Petro-Wahhabists and another $100MM from the NY banksters. Then he would have absolute IMMUNITY.

    LA_Goldbug , Apr 25, 2017 1:34 PM

    I think this is why they are grilling him.

    Thanks "doomchild"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvZ6M1dk2c4

    GunnyG , Apr 25, 2017 1:39 PM

    Meanwhile Hillary, Podesta Lerner, Gollum at the IRS, Obama, Valerie Jarrett, and the rest of the vermin run around like nothing happened. Hang the lot of them.

    To Hell In A Ha... , Apr 25, 2017 1:58 PM

    This case showcases the complete corruption of Capitol Hill. Flynn is getting fucked while HRC, the Clinton Foundation and associated crooks and liars get a free ride. BURN IT DOWN! Rotten to the core and that includes Trump.

    Cutter , Apr 25, 2017 8:19 PM

    Said it before and will say it again. The political assassination of General Flynn is a travesty. When this is all over, he won't be charged with anything, because there is nothing to charge. At best, anything he is accused of doing is an administrative/security issue, not criminal, and most of the accusations--like violating the law in talking to the Russian Ambassador--are nonsense.

    This is just endless hyperbole from politicians trying to smear General Flynn so they can, by association, smear the President. If President Trump left office tomorrow, the press would never utter the words "General Michael Flynn" again.

    And when the dust settles, how does General Flynn, an American patriot, who served 34 years in the US Army protecting this country, get his good name back? How does he get back the respect he earned over a lifetime?

    There is no decency in this country anymore.

    [May 02, 2017] The New York Times is dead long ago. If we lived in a sane world and not one run by lawless sociopaths, the Times owners and editors would be indicted and stand trial for their aiding and abetting war crimes in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

    Notable quotes:
    "... I am as shocked as many others to experience the demise of the MSM in the West. I used to peruse the NYT and Washington Post on a daily basis. But, now the pandering of the NYT, WAPO, CNN, NBC, and CBS to globalization and Wall Street is so blatant that I don't bother. Indeed, if I notice their bylines, I pass. ..."
    "... My foremost source of news about the world today is RT. Call it propaganda, but as the Soviets plied that trade, at least in the name of credibility you say things that are true even if you favor some coverage and slight others. The MSM has such a disdain for the truth that they have no credibility; they live in and give voice to a counterfactual, fictional world. ..."
    "... The UNZ Review feels like a personal production of Ron Unz, with a rather clunky commenting system but for un-intimidated article quality and insightful comments (hidden among much rubbish) it is probably the best of the lot. Highly recommended and it seems to be building up fast. ..."
    "... When these vile cretins get their war with Russia, it just won't matter how many lies they told to get there. The NYT is merely one small facet of the industrial lie-machine known as Zion, for lack of a more modern term. Their job was always to lie, but not of their own volition. ..."
    "... The decline in standards in the NYT this year has been astonishing. It is often impossible to tell if an article is in the NYT or clickbait Huffington Post if you are just offered a headline. ..."
    "... Alex Gibnev happened to be a person of easy virtues, similar to his brother-in-lies Luke Harding. ..."
    May 02, 2017 | www.unz.com
    CCZ , September 14, 2016 at 5:43 am GMT \n
    Early this year, aggravated by the majority of the content, especially the opinion columns, I canceled delivery of and my on-line access to the New York Times.

    Both articles and opinions seemed to always emphasize racial discord (despite the presence of millions of Hispanics and Asians everything was always portrayed as "black and white"), an inflated concern for Muslim sensitivities ("anti-Islamaphobia"), and "immigration" (and they always called illegal aliens "undocumented" immigrants and had all of these stories about families where a parent "migrated" years ago, left behind children who "migrated" separately years later, had a spouse who also "migrated" subsequently, and now had American born (citizen) children, so how could anyone now be penalized or deported.

    Not that I expected my words to have any impact, but my letter of cancellation included the below:

    Is there any economic inequity or disparity that the NY Times does not attribute to racism? Even when Blacks or Latinos are "disproportionately" affected, why the seemingly immediate jump to the conclusion that racism is responsible for the numbers or the motivation for the supposed "exploitation?" Why not report on the economic inequity as an economic rather than a racial issue? Whatever the racial percentages, economic inequity and "exploitation" ultimately affects poor and working class people of all races. Why does the NY Times almost always describe social and economic disparities as a racial rather than an economic issue? Always emphasizing who suffers by race rather than by economic standing (class) is a strategy that clearly divides rather than unites. The NY Times seems to have adopted the (unacknowledged) motto "All The News That Is Fit To Be Racialized." Agree: Miro23

    Alden , September 14, 2016 at 6:02 am GMT \n
    Didn't the NYSlimes print Al Sharpton's garbage about the false Twana Brawley accusations as though the fraud were the truth? It was a horrible witch hunt against several White men

    My first memory of the Slimes was an adulatory article about Castro right after he took over Cuba. He was going to create paradise in the Carribean. Didn't work out that way.

    Mark Green , September 14, 2016 at 6:27 am GMT \n
    May the pretentious, power-grabbing and corrupt NY TIMES die a slow, agonizing and ignoble death.
    vetran , September 14, 2016 at 10:00 am GMT \n
    The New York Times is dead long ago, being replaced by The Jew York Times.
    Greg Bacon , Website September 14, 2016 at 10:59 am GMT \n
    If we lived in a sane world and not one run by lawless sociopaths, the Times owners and editors would be indicted and stand trial for their aiding and abetting war crimes in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
    berserker , September 14, 2016 at 12:15 pm GMT \n
    Every morning, I skim the headlines of the New Joke Times for my daily dose of humor. The only articles I bother clicking on these days – as with the BBC – appear in the Sports section. The recent profile on Kyrgios was amusing.
    - It is unfortunate that the NYT and especially, the BBC are still taken quite seriously in the developing world.
    TheJester , September 14, 2016 at 2:48 pm GMT \n
    I am as shocked as many others to experience the demise of the MSM in the West. I used to peruse the NYT and Washington Post on a daily basis. But, now the pandering of the NYT, WAPO, CNN, NBC, and CBS to globalization and Wall Street is so blatant that I don't bother. Indeed, if I notice their bylines, I pass.

    My foremost source of news about the world today is RT. Call it propaganda, but as the Soviets plied that trade, at least in the name of credibility you say things that are true even if you favor some coverage and slight others. The MSM has such a disdain for the truth that they have no credibility; they live in and give voice to a counterfactual, fictional world.

    Has this always been the case or, have I been a fool most of my life? (This is important for me to know since I'm 69.) I think there has been a fundamental change in the MSM over the years. Newspapers like the NYT and WAPO used to be owned by independent newspaper families. We also had the USG enforcing a modicum of balance in broadcast news in return for allotting space on the public airways. Now, the MSM is owned by corporations and the USG no longer cares about balance in broadcast news. The MSM voice corporate positions.

    Yes, the NYT, WAPO, etc., are now irrelevant except for the true believers who are already disposed to agree with their coverage. This is to say that the true believers also have nothing to learn from the MSM.

    Anonymous Smith , September 14, 2016 at 3:36 pm GMT \n
    "We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years.

    It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries."

    – David Rockefeller, Speaking at the June, 1991 Bilderberger meeting in Baden, Germany.

    Almost Missouri , September 14, 2016 at 3:49 pm GMT \n
    100 Words

    "during the current election cycle in the United States, The New York Times has so clearly abandoned all rudimentary standards of journalism and alienated its readership so badly, that it has sentenced itself to wither away into irrelevance."

    Actually, it abandoned all that a very long time ago, but better to notice late then never, I suppose.

    Miro23 , September 14, 2016 at 4:52 pm GMT \n
    For what it's worth I have/had digital subscriptions to the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Economist, Washington Post, Takimag and I also read Breitbart and UNZ Review.

    That doesn't really entitle me to speak about the digital version of the New York Times but there are some interesting things happening in online journalism.

    One thing I've noticed is that some journalists and opinion writers don't like to receive critical comments. Maybe it's a house rule that they can't reply to comments in the comments section itself (although they do on UNZ Review and it's no problem), but there's recently been a PC "safe space" type reaction where comments are either completely banned (Telegraph), mostly removed (Guardian) or very heavily censored (New York Times – apparently).

    That leaves the interesting cases of the Washington Post and Breitbart as what might be called leading online publications.

    The Washington Post has a technically great Comments system and their censorship exists but is very light, making some fascinating hyper-articles where a (generally leftist slanted) piece of journalism kicks off 100′s of comments from the well informed and insightful , to rubbish and abuse. They seem to take the attitude that adults can ignore the rubbish in order to sometimes get valuable contrary/additional opinions + some real humour.

    Same at Breitbart who use the pretty good off the shelf Disqus commenting software that can handle comments fast running into the 1000′s. I've sometime counted them coming in at an average of 1 per second. The effect is the same as the Washington Post but on the right of the political spectrum, with both of them being far ahead of the "safe space" crowd in terms of journalistic interest, public involvement and social experience – basically a good party.

    Takimag feels like more of a personal production of Taki Theodoracopulos aiming for a lightness that isn't quite there, but that's maybe because the current chaos in the US is not so light, and he has a very open comments system based on Disqus.

    The UNZ Review feels like a personal production of Ron Unz, with a rather clunky commenting system but for un-intimidated article quality and insightful comments (hidden among much rubbish) it is probably the best of the lot. Highly recommended and it seems to be building up fast.

    Getting back to the article, the New York Times is surely 100% dead in the water (definitive proof- Henry Kissinger thinks that it's a fine publication).

    pyrrhus , September 14, 2016 at 5:06 pm GMT \n
    Of course, the NYT would have disappeared already if it weren't for cash infusions from Mexican criminal (and World's riches man) Carlos Slim, in return for relentlessly defending the "right" of Mexicans to enter the US illegally and remit cash (untaxed) back to the home country.
    Alden , September 14, 2016 at 5:07 pm GMT \n
    @TheJester

    Has this always been the case ... or, have I been a fool most of my life? (This is important for me to know since I'm 69.) I think there has been a fundamental change in the MSM over the years. Newspapers like the NYT and WAPO used to be owned by independent newspaper families. We also had the USG enforcing a modicum of balance in broadcast news in return for allotting space on the public airways. Now, the MSM is owned by corporations and the USG no longer cares about balance in broadcast news. The MSM voice corporate positions.

    Yes, the NYT, WAPO, etc., are now irrelevant except for the true believers who are already disposed to agree with their coverage. This is to say that the true believers also have nothing to learn from the MSM. I'm a bit older than you are. I learned how the newspapers lie and lie back in 1966. My city, San Francisco had a black riot ostensibly because a cop shot a stick up man.
    The local papers were totally in favor of the rioters and against the police. That is when I stopped believing in anything published in a newspaper or "quality" magazine like Atlantic, New Republic Harper's etc.

    I soon went to work for a government agency that was under siege by federally funded radical non profits. I saw that everything published about my agency was a total lie. I also had a friend who was a reporter for the major newspaper in those days. He told me that reporters don't really investigate and write the stories. They just re write handouts from liberal or people

    Of course I am White. From 1960 on the "quality" newspapers and magazines have been solidly anti White. I realized that just out of college.

    The Los Angeles Slimes actually instigated and then justified the Rodney King riots. The Slimes blamed everybody but the black dreck for the riot, especially the police The Wave newspapers are a chain of local community newspapers in the southern Suburbs of Los Angeles. They were mostly black at the time of the Rodney King riots. The Wave papers were a lot more pro police and anti black rioters than the Times.

    How can Whites read the news papers all their lives and not notice that the newspapers totally hate Whites?

    Paul Bennett , September 14, 2016 at 5:25 pm GMT \n
    I haven't seen a NYT newspaper in decades. I know the NYT has a presence on the Internet, but last I checked (years ago) their archives (the only thing the NYT retains of value) are membership only. The NYT might still be a valuable record of historical events that occurred generations past, but most everything I'm looking for has already been extracted and is publicly available elsewhere. It's simply easier to do a Google search than find it on the NYT website (only to discover that to view it requires a subscription). If the link has a NYT in it, I go on to the next.

    When it comes to contemporary news, the last place I would look is the NYT. If I want to hear official lies for myself, then cable TV is the only possible source. The 24/7 news cycle can be recorded and the misstatements extracted later. A few hours later and the news has been purged of the offense, all references removed or left dangling. The NYT is simply not useful to catch glimpses of real events as they happen.

    Finally, when it comes to analysis the NYT has, as you say, deliberately made itself more and more irrelevant. Commentary and analysis is a dime a dozen on the Internet, and almost all of it is of a higher quality than what the NYT prints. The NYT attacks only official enemies, and maintains a passionless hands-off attitude towards the crimes of their powerful allies. Now, why would I bother to read that? My time is valuable and the Internet is full of insightful analysis. Life is too short to read propaganda.

    Lawrence Fitton , September 14, 2016 at 5:52 pm GMT \n
    @Anonymous Smith

    "We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years.

    It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries."

    -- David Rockefeller, Speaking at the June, 1991 Bilderberger meeting in Baden, Germany.

    nice post. thanks.

    i read a long article on the council of foreign relations that would interest you about 3 weeks ago. for the life of me, i can't remember the author or even the site. but, it definitely isn't a fringe site or a pajama blogger.

    i believe the group was established in the 1920′s. the piece stated that every ex-secretary of state, and all but one ex-secretary of defense has joined since the organization's founding.

    the council on foreign relations is also a proponent of a new world order. i suppose, the trilateral commission is too. megalomaniacs are always with us. but attempting to manipulate & control a world population is akin to herding cats. but these three nwo groups have influence.

    Durruti , September 14, 2016 at 6:35 pm GMT \n
    200 Words Mr. Wahlstrom,

    Nicely done. The NY Times was once regarded as America's premier News Outlet. It, was never pristine, but one could squeeze some facts out of its pages.

    Today, the Rag is excruciatingly Boring, (which is usually a by-product of propaganda organs).

    The Wall Street Journal , and Washington Post , and thousands of other print and informational medias, have declined into mind numbing and uninformative outlets.

    It is one thing for a pretend Newspaper, such as the NYT to support imperialism, and exploitation, and the rule of the Oligarchs; the NYT and the others have ever been that. But it is another for them to become (decline into), mere propaganda outlets for Government controlling Oligarchs.

    Some say, "The truth will make us free." Unfortunately, the Truth is often, and lately, increasingly Buried. It is the truth, our Liberties, that have received an Obituary. Orwell believed that sad event happened in 1984 , or, certainly, by then. I believe the obituary began, definitively, on November 22, 1963 , and expanded from there.

    For the Rebirth, we need to restore our Republic!

    Reese MacGruder , September 14, 2016 at 6:45 pm GMT \n
    I wholeheartedly agree with the main argument of the NY Times having lost all vestiges of journalistic integrity and ethical standards. They have ceased to be anything more than a combination; mouthpiece, pr flak and investigative attack dogs for the extended Clinton crime family and their friends on the left.

    That said, it's hard to see this author's work to not be his response to the Times's articles (which he includes here), which have criticized him.

    Whether valid criticism or not, it obviously is the source of Johannes Wahlstrom 's venom and it's impossible to not wonder how much of his subsequent tirade against the Times is a direct result of that animus.

    Ace , September 14, 2016 at 7:10 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @pyrrhus Of course, the NYT would have disappeared already if it weren't for cash infusions from Mexican criminal (and World's riches man) Carlos Slim, in return for relentlessly defending the "right" of Mexicans to enter the US illegally and remit cash (untaxed) back to the home country. It's amazing what roles foreigners play in our national life. We seem to lap it up.

    A digression on remittances: If we imposed a hefty tax on them I bet we'd see a whole lot of self-deportation. Punitive taxation on our own citizens is perfectly OK, such as with cigarettes, so there's no moral objection to collecting punitive income, Medicare, and employment taxes on the back end.

    Of course, the official position is that only Bureau of Prisons buses and RR cattle cars can be used to deport people, who must be rounded up Evian Gonzalez-style.

    nsa , September 14, 2016 at 7:41 pm GMT \n
    @Miro23 For what it's worth I have/had digital subscriptions to the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Economist, Washington Post, Takimag and I also read Breitbart and UNZ Review.

    That doesn't really entitle me to speak about the digital version of the New York Times but there are some interesting things happening in online journalism.

    One thing I've noticed is that some journalists and opinion writers don't like to receive critical comments. Maybe it's a house rule that they can't reply to comments in the comments section itself (although they do on UNZ Review and it's no problem), but there's recently been a PC "safe space" type reaction where comments are either completely banned (Telegraph), mostly removed (Guardian) or very heavily censored (New York Times - apparently).

    That leaves the interesting cases of the Washington Post and Breitbart as what might be called leading online publications.

    The Washington Post has a technically great Comments system and their censorship exists but is very light, making some fascinating hyper-articles where a (generally leftist slanted) piece of journalism kicks off 100's of comments from the well informed and insightful , to rubbish and abuse. They seem to take the attitude that adults can ignore the rubbish in order to sometimes get valuable contrary/additional opinions + some real humour.

    Same at Breitbart who use the pretty good off the shelf Disqus commenting software that can handle comments fast running into the 1000's. I've sometime counted them coming in at an average of 1 per second. The effect is the same as the Washington Post but on the right of the political spectrum, with both of them being far ahead of the "safe space" crowd in terms of journalistic interest, public involvement and social experience - basically a good party.

    Takimag feels like more of a personal production of Taki Theodoracopulos aiming for a lightness that isn't quite there, but that's maybe because the current chaos in the US is not so light, and he has a very open comments system based on Disqus.

    The UNZ Review feels like a personal production of Ron Unz, with a rather clunky commenting system but for un-intimidated article quality and insightful comments (hidden among much rubbish) it is probably the best of the lot. Highly recommended and it seems to be building up fast.

    Getting back to the article, the New York Times is surely 100% dead in the water (definitive proof- Henry Kissinger thinks that it's a fine publication). You want to see serious heavy duty censorship, try posting comments over at the aggressively anti-trump site "the american cuck .er conservative". In between displaying saintly religiosity, they never fail to censor any comment even remotely pro trump or anti jooie hooey ..all with a patina of intellectual superiority. One of them even works at a food bank handing out cans of crap to 300 lb starving afros and white trash in some third world pisshole called Louisiana.

    chris , September 14, 2016 at 7:42 pm GMT \n
    In the final stage, the gray lady is turning tricks for the .gov, and she'll do anything to survive. It's like Hillary at the 911 memorial, they're all desperately trying to keep her alive because she 's TBTF.
    dmaak112 , September 14, 2016 at 8:29 pm GMT \n
    The New York Times practices censorship of opinions that run contrary to their position. I had subscribed to their on-line edition. The paper would permit comments on some of the articles and opinion pieces. You're are limited to 1500 characters plus spaces.

    For a while, my comments were shown alongside others. Then, this September, I found that I could not make comments or even access previous comments. They had cut me off completely. I contacted them and was told that my access had suffered a glitch. They were working on it.

    I checked and saw that others were still able to comment and access this feature. But not me. I believe that the paper deliberately cut me off because I challenged their stories and analysis. I could not believe that they so wanted to control the story that they would ensure that contrary opinions would not appear.

    I have ended my subscription. For all the talk of freedom of expression, it only applies if you follow the line they set.

    DaveE , September 14, 2016 at 8:44 pm GMT \n
    When these vile cretins get their war with Russia, it just won't matter how many lies they told to get there. The NYT is merely one small facet of the industrial lie-machine known as Zion, for lack of a more modern term. Their job was always to lie, but not of their own volition.

    They've followed their mission-plan well. Now the BIG action is with the Mossad boys to implement the war the NYT has so feverishly set up.

    But, like a bad script waiting for the Production Dept. to catch up, they've run their course, in more ways than their tiny brains can even imagine.

    They didn't even know they were writing comedy.

    Chris Chuba , September 14, 2016 at 8:47 pm GMT \n
    200 Words NYT is now part of the U.S. Regime Media.

    The biggest story that Regime Media has failed to report is this, 'the U.S. govt is supporting Al Qaeda aligned rebels in Syria against the Assad govt'. This has been true since at least 2013 and likely true since 2012 yet it has never been reported.

    Instead, Regime Media has merely repeated the position of the U.S. State Dept. without any challenge whatsoever. What happened to the press that was suspicious of the govt narrative that existed during the Vietnam War? It evaporated in Iraq 2002 and is now just a mouthpiece of the govt. Sources exist other than the U.S. State Dept. Anyone who pays attention can easily see where our narrative falls apart.

    I won't go into details over all of the false narratives. I chose the most important example. If I sound bitter, it is because I am.

    Pedro Gama , September 14, 2016 at 8:48 pm GMT \n
    DISGUSTING -- Its becoming very obvious that the so called "mainstream" media is, IN FACT, protecting this or that Agenda ..NO WONDER people are turning to alternative media for RELYABLE information ..WHAT DISGUSTING PIECES OF SHIT -- The New York Time is part of TIME MAgazine? I am subscriber, I can tell you know .I WAS a subscriber .FUCK THEM !!
    Mike1 , September 14, 2016 at 9:19 pm GMT \n
    The decline in standards in the NYT this year has been astonishing. It is often impossible to tell if an article is in the NYT or clickbait Huffington Post if you are just offered a headline. Facts used have gone from being massaged to being outright false. What is weirder is that they don't care if what they are saying is provably false.
    Tim Rupright , September 14, 2016 at 9:50 pm GMT \n
    @TheJester I am as shocked as many others to experience the demise of the MSM in the West. I used to peruse the NYT and Washington Post on a daily basis. But, now the pandering of the NYT, WAPO, CNN, NBC, and CBS to globalization and Wall Street is so blatant that I don't bother. Indeed, if I notice their bylines, I pass.

    My foremost source of news about the world today is RT. Call it propaganda, but as the Soviets plied that trade, at least in the name of credibility you say things that are true even if you favor some coverage and slight others. The MSM has such a disdain for the truth that they have no credibility; they live in and give voice to a counterfactual, fictional world.

    Has this always been the case ... or, have I been a fool most of my life? (This is important for me to know since I'm 69.) I think there has been a fundamental change in the MSM over the years. Newspapers like the NYT and WAPO used to be owned by independent newspaper families. We also had the USG enforcing a modicum of balance in broadcast news in return for allotting space on the public airways. Now, the MSM is owned by corporations and the USG no longer cares about balance in broadcast news. The MSM voice corporate positions.

    Yes, the NYT, WAPO, etc., are now irrelevant except for the true believers who are already disposed to agree with their coverage. This is to say that the true believers also have nothing to learn from the MSM. Both the NY Times and the Washington Post (and other newspapers) were certainly in the pocket of FDR and the pro-war intelligence services of both the US and of Britain since at least the late 1930s. They happily slandered any and all isolationists and planted false stories to manipulate the public just as they have done for the intervening 75 years. They are and have been for decades little more than a mouthpiece for the ruling elite. Let us hope this election finishes them off.

    res , September 14, 2016 at 11:15 pm GMT \n
    @CCZ Early this year, aggravated by the majority of the content, especially the opinion columns, I canceled delivery of and my on-line access to the New York Times.

    Both articles and opinions seemed to always emphasize racial discord (despite the presence of millions of Hispanics and Asians everything was always portrayed as "black and white"), an inflated concern for Muslim sensitivities ("anti-Islamaphobia"), and "immigration" (and they always called illegal aliens "undocumented" immigrants and had all of these stories about families where a parent "migrated" years ago, left behind children who "migrated" separately years later, had a spouse who also "migrated" subsequently, and now had American born (citizen) children, so how could anyone now be penalized or deported.

    Not that I expected my words to have any impact, but my letter of cancellation included the below:

    Is there any economic inequity or disparity that the NY Times does not attribute to racism? Even when Blacks or Latinos are "disproportionately" affected, why the seemingly immediate jump to the conclusion that racism is responsible for the numbers or the motivation for the supposed "exploitation?" Why not report on the economic inequity as an economic rather than a racial issue? Whatever the racial percentages, economic inequity and "exploitation" ultimately affects poor and working class people of all races. Why does the NY Times almost always describe social and economic disparities as a racial rather than an economic issue? Always emphasizing who suffers by race rather than by economic standing (class) is a strategy that clearly divides rather than unites. The NY Times seems to have adopted the (unacknowledged) motto "All The News That Is Fit To Be Racialized." Check out the ~5x increase in the prevalence of the word "racism" in NYT articles between 2011 and 2016:

    http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=racism

    "racist" is similar.


    Fran Macadam , September 14, 2016 at 11:37 pm GMT \n
    The comparison to Pravda is apt. As Solzhenitsyn explained, the propagandists of the old Soviet Union claimed, "we never make mistakes."

    TheBoom , September 15, 2016 at 12:03 am GMT \n
    @Alden I'm a bit older than you are. I learned how the newspapers lie and lie back in 1966. My city, San Francisco had a black riot ostensibly because a cop shot a stick up man.
    The local papers were totally in favor of the rioters and against the police. That is when I stopped believing in anything published in a newspaper or "quality" magazine like Atlantic, New Republic Harper's etc.

    I soon went to work for a government agency that was under siege by federally funded radical non profits. I saw that everything published about my agency was a total lie. I also had a friend who was a reporter for the major newspaper in those days. He told me that reporters don't really investigate and write the stories. They just re write handouts from liberal or people

    Of course I am White. From 1960 on the "quality" newspapers and magazines have been solidly anti White. I realized that just out of college.

    The Los Angeles Slimes actually instigated and then justified the Rodney King riots. The Slimes blamed everybody but the black dreck for the riot, especially the police The Wave newspapers are a chain of local community newspapers in the southern Suburbs of Los Angeles. They were mostly black at the time of the Rodney King riots. The Wave papers were a lot more pro police and anti black rioters than the Times.

    How can Whites read the news papers all their lives and not notice that the newspapers totally hate Whites? The fact that the mainstream media by and large hates whites is one of the main things about it that appeals to the whites on the left.

    annamaria , September 15, 2016 at 1:28 am GMT \n
    @TheJester I am as shocked as many others to experience the demise of the MSM in the West. I used to peruse the NYT and Washington Post on a daily basis. But, now the pandering of the NYT, WAPO, CNN, NBC, and CBS to globalization and Wall Street is so blatant that I don't bother. Indeed, if I notice their bylines, I pass.

    My foremost source of news about the world today is RT. Call it propaganda, but as the Soviets plied that trade, at least in the name of credibility you say things that are true even if you favor some coverage and slight others. The MSM has such a disdain for the truth that they have no credibility; they live in and give voice to a counterfactual, fictional world.

    Has this always been the case ... or, have I been a fool most of my life? (This is important for me to know since I'm 69.) I think there has been a fundamental change in the MSM over the years. Newspapers like the NYT and WAPO used to be owned by independent newspaper families. We also had the USG enforcing a modicum of balance in broadcast news in return for allotting space on the public airways. Now, the MSM is owned by corporations and the USG no longer cares about balance in broadcast news. The MSM voice corporate positions.

    Yes, the NYT, WAPO, etc., are now irrelevant except for the true believers who are already disposed to agree with their coverage. This is to say that the true believers also have nothing to learn from the MSM. " a text by Alex Gibney: "Johannes Wahlstrom, a Swedish journalist who helped to engineer a vilification campaign against the two women who accused Mr. Assange of sexual assaults"

    Alex Gibnev happened to be a person of easy virtues, similar to his brother-in-lies Luke Harding.

    Wizard of Oz , September 15, 2016 at 1:58 am GMT \n
    @dmaak112 The New York Times practices censorship of opinions that run contrary to their position. I had subscribed to their on-line edition. The paper would permit comments on some of the articles and opinion pieces. You're are limited to 1500 characters plus spaces. For a while, my comments were shown alongside others. Then, this September, I found that I could not make comments or even access previous comments. They had cut me off completely. I contacted them and was told that my access had suffered a glitch. They were working on it.
    I checked and saw that others were still able to comment and access this feature. But not me. I believe that the paper deliberately cut me off because I challenged their stories and analysis. I could not believe that they so wanted to control the story that they would ensure that contrary opinions would not appear.

    I have ended my subscription. For all the talk of freedom of expression, it only applies if you follow the line they set. Why might they – or at least some quite junior staff – regard you as important enough or your comments as powerful enough to engage in the censorship which they appear to deny?

    TomSchmidt , September 15, 2016 at 4:14 am GMT \n
    @Miro23 For what it's worth I have/had digital subscriptions to the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Economist, Washington Post, Takimag and I also read Breitbart and UNZ Review.

    That doesn't really entitle me to speak about the digital version of the New York Times but there are some interesting things happening in online journalism.

    One thing I've noticed is that some journalists and opinion writers don't like to receive critical comments. Maybe it's a house rule that they can't reply to comments in the comments section itself (although they do on UNZ Review and it's no problem), but there's recently been a PC "safe space" type reaction where comments are either completely banned (Telegraph), mostly removed (Guardian) or very heavily censored (New York Times - apparently).

    That leaves the interesting cases of the Washington Post and Breitbart as what might be called leading online publications.

    The Washington Post has a technically great Comments system and their censorship exists but is very light, making some fascinating hyper-articles where a (generally leftist slanted) piece of journalism kicks off 100's of comments from the well informed and insightful , to rubbish and abuse. They seem to take the attitude that adults can ignore the rubbish in order to sometimes get valuable contrary/additional opinions + some real humour.

    Same at Breitbart who use the pretty good off the shelf Disqus commenting software that can handle comments fast running into the 1000's. I've sometime counted them coming in at an average of 1 per second. The effect is the same as the Washington Post but on the right of the political spectrum, with both of them being far ahead of the "safe space" crowd in terms of journalistic interest, public involvement and social experience - basically a good party.

    Takimag feels like more of a personal production of Taki Theodoracopulos aiming for a lightness that isn't quite there, but that's maybe because the current chaos in the US is not so light, and he has a very open comments system based on Disqus.

    The UNZ Review feels like a personal production of Ron Unz, with a rather clunky commenting system but for un-intimidated article quality and insightful comments (hidden among much rubbish) it is probably the best of the lot. Highly recommended and it seems to be building up fast.

    Getting back to the article, the New York Times is surely 100% dead in the water (definitive proof- Henry Kissinger thinks that it's a fine publication). I really love the Unz commenting system. The ability to follow a thread through linking, and to trace the history of any commenter, is superb, best I have seen anywhere, and without the "indenting" that Mars other comment systems.

    I give great credit to Unz for his somewhat open-sourced method of adding comments features.

    Found at: https://books.google.com/ngrams

    Sadly, not just the NY Times has been racialized and transgenderized and social warriorized.

    sensor operator , September 15, 2016 at 7:40 am GMT \n
    Rudyard Kipling - 'I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.'

    The other drug dealers will die and go out of business first. The newspapers have an incentive to see them die. The paid death notice.

    sensor operator , September 15, 2016 at 7:46 am GMT \n
    In his next sentence he said, "Not only do words infect, egotize, narcotize, and paralyze, but they enter into and colour the minutest cells of the brain ."

    http://www.truenorthquest.com/rudyard-kipling/

    Run your paper like a drug dealer!

    Miro23 , September 15, 2016 at 2:51 pm GMT \n
    @TomSchmidt I really love the Unz commenting system. The ability to follow a thread through linking, and to trace the history of any commenter, is superb, best I have seen anywhere, and without the "indenting" that Mars other comment systems.

    I give great credit to Unz for his somewhat open-sourced method of adding comments features. I agree, the Unz commenting system just needed some getting used to after the WaPo system and Disqus. It's very good.

    heymrguda , September 15, 2016 at 3:46 pm GMT \n
    @nsa You want to see serious heavy duty censorship, try posting comments over at the aggressively anti-trump site "the american cuck....er conservative". In between displaying saintly religiosity, they never fail to censor any comment even remotely pro trump or anti jooie hooey.....all with a patina of intellectual superiority. One of them even works at a food bank handing out cans of crap to 300 lb starving afros and white trash in some third world pisshole called Louisiana. Yes, I was (apparently) banned from commenting on that site for suggesting that several of their bloggers (some regular contributors, some not) seemed to favor a certain religious denomination as Conservatism's official religion. Didn't seem all that controversial to me. Hats off to Ron Unz for not censoring comments.
    res , September 15, 2016 at 4:31 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @CCZ Interesting that the NY Times has a publicly accessible tool that allows one to graph the newspaper's fixation on certain topics. I applied the term "transgender," those mostly men (males) identifying as women and demanding access to previously women only spaces (bathrooms and locker and shower rooms), and found an almost identical rocket ship rise in the newspaper's fixation on transgenders beginning in 2010-2011 (parallel with and to almost the same extreme heights as the words "racist" and "racism").

    Given the downward trend of using the words racist and racism until the dramatic 5X up tick in 2011, that you noted, I wonder what explains the timing of the change.

    Perhaps the NY Times owners' appointment of New Orleans born African-American / Creole / black journalist Dean Baquet as Managing Editor in September 2011 and his promotion to Executive Editor on May 14, 2014 signaled their intent to dramatically escalate the racial focus. Carlos Slim also bought into the NY Times in 2008 and increased his holdings in 2012.

    The on-line word tracing tool, Google N-Gram Viewer displays a similar dramatic recent rise in the appearance of words like racism and racist and transgender in books. Like the Chronicle.NYTLABS tool that you site, the N-Gram Viewer visually graphs the percent of books using selected words or phrases over a selected time period from the 25 million books scanned and digitized by Google. You can track the use of words in multiple languages from as early as 1700 up to 2009.

    Found at: https://books.google.com/ngrams

    Sadly, not just the NY Times has been racialized and transgenderized and social warriorized. Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Transgender peaks below racism (as you noted), but the rise is much more dramatic–thanks for pointing that one out.

    Google N-Gram Viewer is great, but they don't seem to be updating it so it's less useful for tracking changes since Obama became president.

    Interesting thoughts about NYT changes as causes. I've tended to attribute the "racism" change to Obama's second term and post-Trayvon (early 2012) incitement, but you might have a better explanation. I wonder if the NYT articles database includes details like authors and section of the newspaper. It would be fascinating to see a more detailed analysis of who/what section seem to be driving the changes.

    One fear I have is that publicizing these examples of NYT word frequency will cause the Chronicle tool to disappear.

    annamaria , September 16, 2016 at 3:52 am GMT \n
    The New York Times has soiled its reputation long time ago. But to observe a vulgarization of the previously respectful New Yorker is rather painful; the nest of intellectuals has become a nest of opportunistic half-wits. The New Yorker' pandering to Clinton is beyond ridiculous.
    jeremy lansman , September 18, 2016 at 7:37 pm GMT \n
    "As a Swedish reader of The New York Times, I may be surprised that the paper has ignored election rigging in the governing party of the United States serious enough to cause its top five officials to resign." Governing partey? Now, please explain. Is that the R which is in control of the legislature, or the D in control of the WH? Not to defend the NYT, but I detect this writer has an ax to grind, so has gone a bit overboard. This comment is not a news story. Just my opinion!
    Anonymous , September 19, 2016 at 3:47 pm GMT \n
    The NYTimes receives occult payments from the Clinton foundation. In return of controlling the narrative. I have it from the inside.
    RadicalCenter , December 6, 2016 at 4:46 pm GMT \n
    @Walter Alter The news media in the US, and probably the world, has evolved into a mouthpiece for social engineering, feudal peasant ignorance, crowd control, the tyranny of political correctness, ideological speculation and self-serving congratulatory adulation of globalist liberalism. Following the dictates of the financier oligarchy, they have managed to successfully dash their hierarchical brains against the modern technological imperative and its stepchild, the Internet and peer to peer lateral communication.

    Their ideologically propelled mischaracterizations of Hillary's chances while the rest of us had mouse click access to the raw data, made it apparent EVEN TO THEMSELVES, that they are as blind as a Daniel Quayle potatoe. You seem not to know that he didn't spell the word wrong. Both versions are acceptable.

    Nice ignorant recycling of a rather stupid and childish lefty trope from the late 80s / early 90s.


    [May 01, 2017] Hidden History: The Wall Street Coup Attempt of 1933

    Notable quotes:
    "... Prescott Bush and the Smedley Butler " Business Plot " Bush's Grandfather Planned Fascist Coup In America Nazis, he has praised Hitler, he talked last night in ... ..."
    jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
    I wonder why this is never mentioned in history classes in the US.

    And I wonder why the US media has not frankly discussed what happened. Is it because it would embarrass powerful figures still on the scene today?

    I wonder why there is no frank discussion of the Wall Street interests who helped to finance the fascists in Europe, including the National Socialists in Germany, even during the 1940's?

    When the going gets tough, the moneyed interests seem to invariably reach for fascism to maintain the status quo.

    We keep too many things hidden 'for the sake of the system.' This obsession with secrecy is all too often the cover to hide misdeeds, incompetency, abuses of the system, and outright crimes.

    If some things cannot bear the light of day, the chances are pretty good that they can remain a festering sore and a moral hazard for the future.

    Here is a BBC documentary about what had happened.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o1KwaLa8zTQ

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o1KwaLa8zTQ

    Business Plot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    1. VIDEO]

      General Smedley Butler & the Plot of 1933 · Corporate ...

      Click to view

      1:17:14

      www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq3TumSVpfA
      • By Abel Danger ·
      • 3.9K views ·
      • Added Sep 27, 2013

      Mirrored from TheRapeOfJustice (exceptional channel for large library of relevant historical broadcasts and documentaries) http://www.youtube.com/user ...

    2. [PDF]

      The BBC's "Exposé" of Prescott Bush and Wall Street's ...

      valleyofsilicon.com/00_Google_resume/SmedlyButler-Coup5.pdf

      Prescott Bush and the Smedley Butler "Business Plot" Bush's Grandfather Planned Fascist Coup In America Nazis, he has praised Hitler, he talked last night in ...

    [Apr 30, 2017] Mounting Incitements to War With Russia The Nation

    Notable quotes:
    "...  Nation ..."
    "... do ..."
    "... The National Interest ..."
    "... The American Conservative ..."
    Apr 30, 2017 | www.thenation.com
     Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com ). This installment expands upon last week's, which focused on several highly questionable Washington narratives that imply the necessity of war with Russia. When later asked which of these allegations was the most dangerous, Cohen responds, in this installment, that their number is increasing and with them the risk of war. He itemizes the Cold War narratives, or allegations, now propounded by the US political-media establishment:

    - That Moscow's reaction to the Ukrainian crisis three years ago justifies NATO's highly provocative buildup on Russia's borders today in order to prevent the Kremlin's intended aggression against small East European states.

    - That Russian President Putin's "hijacking" of the 2016 US presidential election to put Donald Trump in the White House was "an act of war against American democracy" that requires a requisite response.

    - That Syrian President Assad's recent use of chemical weapons necessitated Trump's missile attack against Syria, whose leader is closely allied with Russia.

    - That the Kremlin is now directing a massive campaign of cyber-attacks and propaganda at elections across Europe in order to bring to power its favored candidates, such as Marine Le Pen in France, in countries allied with the United States, thereby undermining the trans-Atlantic alliance and even NATO itself.

    - And most recently, that the Kremlin is colluding with the Taliban to defeat the United States in Afghanistan.

    Cohen makes three general points about these Washington narratives:

    - Individually and collectively, they further militarize the new Cold War and generate Russophobic analyses in the American political-media establishment that incite the possibility of actual war.

    - As of now, there is still no actual evidence for several of these allegations. For example, that Putin directed a cyber-hacking operation that abetted Trump's presidential campaign or that he is doing the same on behalf of favored European candidates today. Or that Assad was behind the recent chemical-weapons episode in Syria. Or that Moscow has aggressive military intentions in Eastern Europe. Moreover, to the extent the Kremlin uses propaganda, or "soft power," on behalf of American and European candidates, this is scarcely different from decades of US meddling in elections around the world, including in Russia. In any event, the effect of "Russian propaganda" is wildly exaggerated, assuming as it does that democratic citizens are easily swayed by such "weaponized information," as though they are highly susceptible zombies. (The allegation itself reveals a kind of contempt for the political intelligence of citizens of American and other Western democracies.)

    - And third, in the past, critical, fact-checking US mainstream media acted as a filter between these kinds of politically inspired allegations and their warfare impact on policy-making. For the most part, they no longer do so but instead amplify and promote such narratives. Cohen cites several alternative media outlets that do offer trans-partisan contrarian facts and analyses, among them The Nation , The National Interest , The American Conservative , Consortiumnews , the Intercept , and Tucker Carlson's evening hour on Fox News. (Many of these alternative reports are posted at eastwestaccord.com , the website of the American Committee for East-West Accord, of which Cohen is a board member.) But they scarcely offset the almost monopolistic impact of major establishment newspapers and broadcasts "inside the beltway."

    Cohen concludes with two recent developments that are emerging as additional orthodox narratives in Washington. One involves the longstanding, and largely false, narrative that Moscow alone has prevented implementation of the Minsk Accords for resolving the Ukrainian civil and proxy war. In fact, the US-backed government in Kiev has mainly thwarted the agreement by refusing to implement its obligations. Now, despite the harm done to its own already crippled economy, Kiev is expanding its blockade of Russian-backed rebel territories to include vital energy supplies. Some observers think it is doing so to placate ultra-right forces on which it is politically dependent. Another possibility, Cohen thinks, is to provoke Putin's Kremlin into some drastic political or military action that would revive waning support for Kiev in Washington and in Europe. If so, this too could lead to a US-Russian military conflict.

    The other new allegation is that Moscow is colluding with the Taliban against the very long US war effort in Afghanistan. No doubt, Moscow, like Washington, carries on behind-the-scenes discussions with factions of the Taliban in search of a way to extricate itself from the war or to limit its broader impact. But anyone at all familiar with the Russian national-security elite knows it desperately fears an American military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which would leave Moscow alone to withstand the flow of radical jihadists and heroin into Russia through Central Asia. Indeed, the flood of cheap heroin into Russia, which Washington promised to diminish but has not, has already caused a growing epidemic of addiction and AIDS that is well beyond the government's capacity to cope with it.

    Here too, as with other bipartisan anti-Russian narratives in Washington, there are neither facts nor logic. Historically, such narratives have played a major role in the onset of war between great powers. This may now be unfolding in US-Russian relations. Very few members of Congress, the Trump administration, or the mainstream media have spoken against these warfare narratives, which continue to mount

    [Apr 30, 2017] AngloZionist Empire is at War with Russia

    Notable quotes:
    "... do you really mean to say that ..."
    "... I guess I was really hoping that perhaps Russia, China The BRICS would be a counter force. What I fail to understand is why after all the demonisation by the U.S and Europe doesn't Russia retaliate. The sanctions imposed by the West is hurting Russia and yet they still trade oil in euros/dollars and are bending over backwards to accommodate Europe. I do not understand why they do not say lift all sanctions or no gas. China also says very little against the U.S , even though they fully understand that if Russian is weakened they are next on the list. As for all the talk of lifting the sanctions on Iran that is farcical as we all know Israel will never allow them to be lifted. So why do China and Russia go along with the whole charade. Sometimes I wonder if we are all being played, and this is all one big game , which no chance of anything changing. ..."
    "... the US are engaged into a war against Russia for which the US will fight to the last Ukrainian ..."
    "... if you were Putin ..."
    "... while very much staying in ..."
    "... de facto ..."
    "... we want to turn our enemies into neutrals, we want to turn neutrals into partner and we want to turn partners into friends ..."
    Apr 30, 2017 | www.veteransnewsnow.com
    Of course, it is rather obvious that I meant that FOR THE ANGLOZIONIST EMPIRE the goal has never been the Ukraine or Novorussia, but a war on Russia. All Russia did was to recognize this reality. Again, the words " do you really mean to say that " clearly show that the author is going to twist what I said, make yet another strawman, and then indignantly denounce me for being a monster who does not care about the Ukraine or Novorussia (the rest of the comment was in the same vein: indignant denunciations of statements I never made and conclusions I never reached).

    I have already grown used to the truly remarkable level of dishonesty of the Putin-bashing crowd and by now I consider it par for the course. But I wanted to illustrate that one more time just to show that at least in certain cases an honest discussion is not the purpose at all. But I don't want to bring it all down to just a few dishonest and vociferous individuals. There are also many who are sincerely baffled, frustrated and even disappointed with Russia's apparent passivity. Here is an excerpt of an email I got this morning:

    I guess I was really hoping that perhaps Russia, China The BRICS would be a counter force. What I fail to understand is why after all the demonisation by the U.S and Europe doesn't Russia retaliate. The sanctions imposed by the West is hurting Russia and yet they still trade oil in euros/dollars and are bending over backwards to accommodate Europe. I do not understand why they do not say lift all sanctions or no gas. China also says very little against the U.S , even though they fully understand that if Russian is weakened they are next on the list. As for all the talk of lifting the sanctions on Iran that is farcical as we all know Israel will never allow them to be lifted. So why do China and Russia go along with the whole charade. Sometimes I wonder if we are all being played, and this is all one big game , which no chance of anything changing. In this case the author correctly sees that Russia and China follow a very similar policy which sure looks like an attempt to appease the US. In contrast to the previous comment, here the author is both sincere and truly distressed.

    In fact, I believe that what I am observing are three very different phenomena all manifesting themselves at the same time:

    1) An organized Putin-bashing campaign initiated by US/UK government branches tasked with manipulating the social media.
    2) A spontaneous Putin-bashing campaign lead by certain Russian National-Bolshevik circles (Limonov, Dugin & Co.).
    3) The expression of a sincere bafflement, distress and frustration by honest and well-intentioned people to whom the current Russian stance really makes no sense at all.

    The rest of this post will be entirely dedicated to try to explain the Russian stance to those in this third group (any dialog with the 2 first ones just makes no sense).

    Trying to make sense of an apparently illogical policy

    In my introduction above I stated that what is taking place is a war on Russia, not hot war (yet?) and not quite an old-style Cold War. In essence, what the AngloZionists are doing is pretty clear and a lot of Russian commentators have already reached that conclusion: the US are engaged into a war against Russia for which the US will fight to the last Ukrainian . Thus, for the Empire, "success" can never be defined as an outcome in the Ukraine because, as I said previously, this war is not about the Ukraine. For the Empire "success" is a specific outcome in Russia: regime change. Let's us look at how the Empire plans to achieve this result. A quick look at Putin's record

    As I have written in the past, unlike some other bloggers and commentators, I am neither a psychic not a prophet and I cannot tell you what Putin thinks or what he will do tomorrow.

    But what I can tell you is that which Putin has already done in the past: (in no particular order)

    Putin success

    • broken the back of the AngloZionist-backed oligarchy in Russia.
    • achieved a truly miraculous success in Chechnia (one which nobody, prophets included, had foreseen).
    • literally resurrected the Russian economy.
    • rebuilt the Russian military, security and intelligences forces.
    • severely disrupted the ability of foreign NGOs to subvert Russia.
    • done more for the de-dollarization of the planet than anybody before.
    • made Russia the clear leader of both BRICS and SCO.
    • openly challenged the informational monopoly of the western propaganda machine (with projects like RussiaToday).
    • stopped an imminent US/NATO strike on Syria by sending in a Russian Navy Expeditionary Force (which gave Syria a full radar coverage of the entire region).
    • made it possible for Assad to prevail in the Syrian civil war.
    • openly rejected the Western "universal civilizational model" and declared his support for another, a religion and tradition based one.
    • openly rejected a unipolar "New World Order" lead by the AngloZionists and declared his support for a multi-polar world order.
    • supported Assange (through RussiaToday) and protected Snowden
    • created and promoted a new alliance model between Christianity and Islam thus undermining the "clash of civilization" paradigm.
    • booted the AngloZionists out of key locations in the Caucasus (Chechnia, Ossetia).
    • booted the AngloZionists out of key locations in Central Asia (Manas base in Kyrgyzstan)
    • gave Russia the means to defend her interest in the Arctic region, including military means.
    • established a full-spectrum strategic alliance with China which is at the core of both SCO and BRICS.
    • is currently passing laws barring foreign interests from controlling the Russian media.
    • gave Iran the means to develop a much needed civilian nuclear program.
    • is working with China to create a financial system fully separated form the current AngloZionist controlled one (including trade in Rubles or Renminbi).
    • re-establised Russian political and economic support for Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Nicaragua and Argentina.
    • very effectively deflated the pro-US color-coded revolution in Russia.
    • organized the " Voentorg " which armed the NAF.
    • gave refuge to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
    • sent in vitally needed humanitarian aid to Novorussia.
    • provided direct Russian fire support and possibly even air cover to NAF in key locations (the "southern cauldron" for example).
    • last but not least, he openly spoke of the need for Russia to "sovereignize" herself and to prevail over the pro-US 5th column.

    and that list goes on and on. All I am trying to illustrate is that there is a very good reason for the AngloZionist's hatred for Putin: his long record of very effectively fighting them. So unless we assume that Putin had a sudden change of heart or that he simply ran out of energy or courage, I submit that the notion that he suddenly made a 180 makes no sense. His current policies, however, do make sense, as I will try to explain now.

    If you are a "Putin betrayed Novorussia" person, please set that hypothesis aside for a moment, just for argument's sake and assume that Putin is both principled and logical. What could he be doing in the Ukraine? Can we make sense of what we observe?

    Imperatives Russia cannot ignore

    First, I consider the following sequence indisputable:

    First, Russia must prevail over the current AngloZionist war against her . What the Empire wants in Russia is regime change followed by complete absorption into the Western sphere of influence including a likely break-up of Russia. What is threatened is the very existence of the Russian civilization.

    Second, Russia will never be safe with a neo-Nazi russophobic regime in power in Kiev . The Ukie nationalist freaks have proven that it is impossible to negotiate with them (they have broken literally every single agreement signed so far), their hatred for Russia is total (as shown with their constant references to the use of – hypothetical – nuclear weapons against Russia). Therefore,

    Third, regime change in Kiev followed by a full de-Nazification is the only possible way for Russia to achieve her vital objectives .

    Again, and at the risk of having my words twisted and misrepresented, I have to repeat here that Novorussia is not what is at stake here. It's not even the future of the Ukraine. What is at stake here is a planetary confrontation (this is the one thesis of Dugin which Ifully agree with). The future of the planet depends on the capability of the BRICS/SCO countries to replace the AngloZionist Empire with a very different, multi-polar, international order. Russia is crucial and indispensable in this effort (any such effort without Russia is doomed to fail), and the future of Russia is now decided by what Russia will do in the Ukraine. As for the future of the Ukraine, it largely depends on what will happen to Novorussia, but not exclusively. In a paradoxical way, Novorussia is more important to Russia than to the Ukraine. Here is why:

    For the rest of the Ukraine, Novorussia is lost. Forever . Not even a joint Putin-Obama effort could prevent that. In fact, the Ukies know that and this is why they make no effort to win the hearts and minds of the local population. If fact, I am convinced that the so-called "random" or "wanton" destruction of the Novorussian industrial, economic, scientific and cultural infrastructure has been intentional act of hateful vengeance similar to the way the AngloZionists always turn to killing civilians when they fail to overcome military forces (the examples of Yugoslavia and Lebanon come to mind). Of course, Moscow can probably force the local Novorussian political leaders to sign some kind of document accepting Kiev's sovereignty, but that will be a fiction, it is way too late for that. If not de jure , then de facto , Novorussia is never going to accept Kiev's rule again and everybody knows that, in Kiev, in Novorussia and in Russia.

    What could a de facto but not de jure independence look like?

    No Ukrainian military, national guard, oligarch battalion or SBU, full economic, cultural, religious, linguistic and educational independence, locally elected officials and local media, but all that with Ukie flags, no official independence status, no Novorussian Armed Forces (they will be called something like "regional security force" or even "police force") and no Novorussian currency (though the Ruble – along with the Dollar and Euro – will be used on a daily basis). The top officials will have to be officially approved by Kiev (which Kiev will, of course, lest its impotence becomes visible). This will be a temporary, transitional and unstable arrangement, but it will be good enough to provide a face-saving way out to Kiev.

    This said, I would argue that both Kiev and Moscow have an interest in maintaining the fiction of a unitary Ukraine. For Kiev this is a way to not appear completely defeated by the accursed Moskals. But what about Russia?

    What if you were in Putin's place?

    Ask yourself the following question: if you were Putin and your goal was regime change in Kiev, would you prefer Novorussia to be part of the Ukraine or not? I would submit that having Novorussia inside is much better for the following reasons:

    1. it makes it part, even on a macro-level, of the Ukrainian processes, like national elections or national media.
    2. it begs the comparison with the conditions in the rest of the Ukraine.
    3. it makes it far easier to influence commerce, business, transportation, etc.
    4. it creates an alternative (Nazi-free) political center to Kiev.
    5. it makes it easier for Russian interests (of all kind) to penetrate into the Ukraine.
    6. it removes the possibility to put up a Cold War like "wall" or barrier on some geographical marker.
    7. it removes the accusation that Russian wants to partition the Ukraine.

    In other words, to keep Novorussia de jure , nominally, part of the Ukraine is the best way to appear to be complying with AngloZionist demands while subverting the Nazi junta in power. In a recent article I outlined what Russia could do without incurring any major consequences:

    1. Politically oppose the regime everywhere: UN, media, public opinion, etc.
    2. Express political support for Novorussia and any Ukrainian oppositionContinue the informational war (Russian media does a great job)
    3. Prevent Novorussia from falling (covert military aid)
    4. Mercilessly keep up the economic pressure on the Ukraine
    5. Disrupt as much as possible the US-EU "axis of kindness"
    6. Help Crimea and Novorussia prosper economically and financially

    In other words – give the appearance of staying out while very much staying in .

    What is the alternative anyway?

    I already hear the chorus of indignant "hurray-patriots" (that is what these folks are called in Russia) accusing me of only seeing Novorussia as a tool for Russian political goals and of ignoring the death and suffering endured by the people of Novorussia. To this I will simply reply the following:

    Does anybody seriously believe that an independent Novorussia can live in even minimal peace and security without a regime change in Kiev? If Russia cannot afford a Nazi junta in power in Kiev, can Novorussia?!

    In general, the hurray-patriots are long on what should be done now and very short any kind of mid or long term vision. Just like those who believe that Syria can be saved by sending in the Russian Air Force, the hurray-patriots believe that the crisis in the Ukraine can be solved by sending in tanks. They are a perfect example of the mindset H. L. Mencken was referring to when he wrote "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong".

    The sad reality is that the mindset behind such "simple" solutions is always the same one: never negotiate, never compromise, never look long term but only to the immediate future and use force in all cases.

    But the facts are here: the US/NATO block is powerful, militarily, economically and politically and it can hurt Russia, especially over time. Furthermore, while Russia can easily defeat the Ukrainian military, this hardly would be a very meaningful "victory". Externally it would trigger a massive deterioration of the international political climate, while internally the Russians would have to suppress the Ukrainian nationalists (not all of them Nazi) by force. Could Russia do that? Again, the answer is that yes – but at what cost?

    I good friend of mine was a Colonel in the KGB Special Forces unit called "Kaskad" (which later was renamed "Vympel"). One day he told me how his father, himself a special operator for the GRU, fought against Ukrainian insurgents from the end of WWII in 1945 up to 1958: that is thirteen years! It took Stalin and Krushchev 13 years to finally crush the Ukrainian nationalist insurgents. Does anybody in his/her right mind sincerely believe that modern Russia should repeat that policies and spend years hunting down Ukrainian insurgents again?

    By the way, if the Ukrainian nationalists could fight the Soviet rule under Stalin and Krushchev for a full 13 years after the end of the war – how is it that there is no visible anti-Nazi resistance in Zaporozhie, Dnepropetrivsk or Kharkov? Yes, Luganks and Donetsk did rise up and take arms, very successfully – but the rest of the Ukraine? If you were Putin, would you be confident that Russian forces liberating these cities would receive the same welcome that they did in Crimea?

    And yet, the hurray-patriots keep pushing for more Russian intervention and further Novorussian military operations against Ukie forces. Is it not about time we begin asking who would benefit from such policies?

    It has been an old trick of the US CIA to use the social media and the blogosphere to push for nationalist extremism in Russia. A well know and respected Russian patriot and journalist – Maksim Shevchenko – had a group of people organized to track down the IP numbers of some of the most influential radical nationalist organizations, website, blogs and individual posters on the Russian Internet. Turns out that most were based in the USA, Canada and Israel. Surprise, surprise. Or, maybe, no surprise at all?

    For the AngloZionists, supporting extremists and rabid nationalists in Russia makes perfectly good sense. Either they get to influence the public opinion or they at the very least can be used to bash the regime in power. I personally see no difference between an Udaltsov or a Navalnii on one hand and a Limonov or a Dugin on the other. Their sole effect is to get people mad at the Kremlin. What the pretext for the anger is does not matter – for Navalnyi its "stolen elections" for Dugin it's "back-stabbed Novorussia". And it does not matter which of them are actually paid agents or just "useful idiots" – God be their judge – but what does matter is that the solutions they advocate are no solutions at all, just pious pretexts to bash the regime in power.

    In the meantime, not only had Putin not sold-out, back-stabbed, traded away or otherwise abandoned Novorussia, it's Poroshenko who is barely holding on to power and Banderastan which is going down the tubes. There are also plenty of people who see through this doom and gloom nonsense, both in Russia ( Yuri Baranchik ) and abroad ( M. K. Bhadrakumar ).

    But what about the oligarchs?

    I already addressed this issue in a recent post , but I think that it is important to return to this topic here and the first thing which is crucial to understand in the Russian or Ukrainian context is that oligarchs are a fact of life. This is not to say that their presence is a good thing, only that Putin and Poroshenko and, for that matter, anybody trying to get anything done over there needs to take them into account. The big difference is that while in Kiev a regime controlled by the oligarchs has been replaced by a regime of oligarchs, in Russia the oligarchy can only influence, but not control, the Kremlin. The examples, of Khodorkovsky or Evtushenkov show that the Kremlin still can, and does, smack down an oligarch when needed.

    Still, it is one thing to pick on one or two oligarchs and quite another to remove them from the Ukrainian equation: the latter is just not going to happen. So for Putin any Ukrainian strategy has to take into account the presence and, frankly, power of the Ukrainian oligarchs and their Russian counterparts.

    Rinat Leonidovych Akhmetov

    Rinat Leonidovych Akhmetov

    Putin knows that oligarchs have their true loyalty only to themselves and that their only "country" is wherever their assets happen to be. As a former KGB foreign intelligence officer for Putin this is an obvious plus, because that mindset potentially allows him to manipulate them. Any intelligence officer knows that people can be manipulated by a finite list of approaches: ideology, ego, resentment, sex, a skeleton in the closet and, of course, money. From Putin's point of view, Rinat Akhmetov , for example, is a guy who used to employ something like 200'000 people in the Donbass, who clearly can get things done, and whose official loyalty Kiev and the Ukraine is just a camouflage for his real loyalty: his money. Now, Putin does not have to like or respect Akhmetov, most intelligence officers will quietly despise that kind of person, but that also means that for Putin Akhmetov is an absolutely crucial person to talk to, explore options with and, possibly, use to achieve a Russian national strategic objective in the Donbass.

    I have already written this many times here: Russians do talk to their enemies. With a friendly smile. This is even more true for a former intelligence officer who is trained to always communicate, smile, appear to be engaging and understanding. For Putin Akhmetov is not a friend or an ally, but he is a powerful figure which can be manipulated in Russia's advantage. What I am trying to explain here is the following:

    There are numerous rumors of secret negotiations between Rinat Akhmetov and various Russian officials. Some say that Khodakovski is involved. Others mention Surkov. There is no doubt in my mind that such secret negotiations are taking place. In fact, I am sure that all the parties involved talk to all other other parties involved. Even with a disgusting, evil and vile creature like Kolomoiski. In fact, the sure signal that somebody has finally decided to take him out would be that nobody would be speaking with him any more. That will probably happen, with time, but most definitely not until his power base is sufficiently eroded.

    One Russian blogger believes that Akhmetov has already been "persuaded" (read: bought off) by Putin and that he is willing to play by the new rules which now say "Putin is boss". Maybe. Maybe not yet, but soon. Maybe never. All I am suggesting is that negotiations between the Kremlin and local Ukie oligarchs are as logical and inevitable as the US contacts with the Italian Mafia before the US armed forces entered Italy.

    But is there a 5th column in Russia?

    Yes, absolutely. First and foremost, it is found inside the Medvedev government itself and even inside the Presidential administration. Always remember that Putin was put into power by two competing forces: the secret services and big money. And yes, while it is true that Putin has tremendously weakened the "big money" component (what I call the "Atlantic Integrationists") they are still very much there, though they are more subdued, more careful and less arrogant than during the time when Medvedev was formally in charge. The big change in the recent years is that the struggle between patriots (the "Eurasian Sovereignists") and the 5th column now is in the open, but it is far from over. A nd we should never underestimate these people: they have a lot of power, a lot of money and a fantastic capability to corrupt, threaten, discredit, sabotage, cover-up, smear, etc. They are also very smart, they can hire the best professionals in the field, and they are very, very good at ugly political campaigns. For example, the 5th columnists try hard to give a voice to the National-Bolshevik opposition (both Limonov and Dugin regularly get airtime on Russian TV) and rumor has it that they finance a lot of the National-Bolshevik media (just like the Koch brothers paid for the Tea Party in the USA).

    Another problem is that while these guys are objectively doing the US CIA's bidding, there is no proof of it. As I was told many times by a wise friend: most conspiracies are really collusions and the latter are very hard to prove. But the community of interests between the US CIA and the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchy is so obvious as to be undeniable.

    The real danger for Russia

    So now we have the full picture . Again, Putin has to simultaneously contend with

    1) a strategic psyop campaign run by the US/UK & Co. which combines the corporate media's demonization of Putin and a campaign in the social media to discredit him for his passivity and lack of appropriate response to the West.
    2) a small but very vociferous group of (mostly) National-Bolsheviks (Limonov, Dugin & Co.) who have found in the Novorussian cause a perfect opportunity to bash Putin for not sharing their ideology and their "clear, simple, and wrong" "solutions".
    3) a network of powerful oligarchs who want to use the opportunity presented by the actions of first two groups to promote their own interests.
    4) a 5th column for whom all of the above is a fantastic opportunity to weaken the Eurasian Sovereignists
    5) a sense of disappointment by many sincere people who feel that Russia is acting like a passive punching-ball.
    6) an overwhelming majority of people in Novorussia who want complete ( de facto and de jure ) independence from Kiev and who are sincerely convinced that any negotiations with Kiev are a prelude to a betrayal by Russia of Novorussian interest.
    7) the objective reality that Russian and Novorussian interests are not the same.
    8) the objective reality that the AngloZionist Empire is still very powerful and even potentially dangerous.

    It is very, very, hard for Putin to try to balance these forces in such a way that the resulting vector is one which is in the strategic interest of Russia. I would argue that there is simply no other solution to this conundrum other than to completely separate Russia's official (declaratory) policy and Russia's real actions. The covert help to Novorussia – the Voentorg – is an example of that, but only a limited one because what Russia must do now goes beyond covert actions: Russia must appear to be doing one thing while doing exactly the opposite. It is in Russia's strategic interest at this point in time to appear to:

    1) Support a negotiated solution along the lines of: a unitary non-aligned Ukraine, with large regional right for all regions while, at the same time, politically opposing the regime everywhere: UN, media, public opinion, etc. and supporting both Novorussia and any Ukrainian opposition.
    2) Give Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs a reason to if not support, then at least not oppose such a solution (for ex: by not nationalizing Akhmetov's assets in the Donbass), while at the same time making sure that there is literally enough "firepower" to keep the oligarch under control.
    3) Negotiate with the EU on the actual implementation of Ukraine's Agreement with the EU while at the same time helping the Ukraine commit economic suicide by making sure that there is just the right amount of economic strangulation applied to prevent the regime from bouncing back.
    4) Negotiate with the EU and the Junta in Kiev over the delivery of gas while at the same time making sure that the regime pays enough for it to be broke.
    5) Appear generally non-confrontational towards the USA while at the same time trying as hard as possible to create tensions between the US and the EU.
    6) Appear to be generally available and willing to do business with the AngoZionist Empire while at the same time building an alternative international systems not centered on the USA or the Dollar.

    As you see, this goes far beyond a regular covert action program. What we are dealing with is a very complex, multi-layered, program to achieve the Russian most important goal in the Ukraine (regime change and de-Nazification) while inhibiting as much as possible the AngloZionists attempts to re-created a severe and long lasting East-West crisis in which the EU would basically fuse with the USA.

    Conclusion: a key to Russian policies?

    Most of us are used to think in terms of super-power categories. After all, US President from Reagan on to Obama have all served us a diet of grand statements, almost constant military operations followed by Pentagon briefings, threats, sanctions, boycotts, etc. I would argue that this has always been the hallmark of western "diplomacy" from the Crusades to the latest bombing campaign against ISIL. Russia and China have a diametrically opposed tradition. For example, in terms of methodology Lavrov always repeats the same principle: " we want to turn our enemies into neutrals, we want to turn neutrals into partner and we want to turn partners into friends ". The role of Russian diplomats is not to prepare for war, but to avoid it. Yes, Russia will fight, but only when diplomacy has failed. If for the US diplomacy is solely a means to deliver threats, for Russia it is a the primary tool to defuse them. It is therefore no wonder at all the the US diplomacy is primitive to the point of bordering on the comical. After all, how much sophistication is needed to say "comply or else". Any petty street thug know how to do that. Russian diplomats are much more akin to explosives disposal specialist or a mine clearance officer: they have to be extremely patient, very careful and fully focused. But most importantly, they cannot allow anybody to rush them lest the entire thing blows up.

    Russia is fully aware that the AngloZionist Empire is at war with her and that surrender is simply not an option any more (assuming it ever was). Russia also understands that she is not a real super-power or, even less so, an empire. Russia is only a very powerful country which is trying to de-fang the Empire without triggering a frontal confrontation with it. In the Ukraine, Russia sees no other solution than regime change in Kiev. To achieve this goal Russia will always prefer a negotiated solution to one obtained by force, even though if not other choice is left to her, she will use force. In other words:

    Russia's long term end goal is to bring down the AngloZionis Empire. Russia's mid term goal is to create the conditions for regime change in Kiev.Russia's short term goal is to prevent the junta from over-running Novorussia.Russia's preferred method to achieve these goals is negotiation with all parties involved . A prerequisite to achieve these goals by negotiations is to prevent the Empire from succeeding in creating an acute continental crisis (conversely, the imperial "deep state" fully understands all this, hence the double declaration of war by Obama and Poroshenko.)

    As long as you keep these basic principles in mind, the apparent zig-zags, contradictions and passivity of Russian policies will begin to make sense.

    It is an open question whether Russia will succeed in her goals. In theory, a successful Junta attack on Novorussia could force Russia to intervene. Likewise, there is always the possibility of yet another "false flag", possibly a nuclear one. I think that the Russian policy is sound and the best realistically achievable under the current set of circumstances, but only time will tell.

    I am sorry that it took me over 6400 words to explain all that, but in a society where most "thoughts" are expressed as "tweets" and analyses as Facebook posts, it was a daunting task to try to shed some light to what is turning to be a deluge of misunderstandings and misconceptions, all made worse by the manipulation of the social media. I feel that 60'000 words would be more adequate to this task as it is far easier to just throw out a short and simple slogan than to refute its assumptions and implications.

    My hope that at least those of you who sincerely were confused by Russia's apparently illogical stance can now connect the dots and make better sense of it all.

    Kind regards to all,

    The Saker –
    http://www.vineyardsaker.blogspot.com

    [Apr 27, 2017] Taibbi Putin Derangement Syndrome Arrives

    Apr 27, 2017 | www.rollingstone.com

    Whatever the truth about Trump and Russia, the speculation surrounding it has become a dangerous case of mass hysteria

    Michael Flynn and Donald Trump Credit: John Locher/AP
    So Michael Flynn, who was Donald Trump's national security adviser before he got busted talking out of school to Russia's ambassador, has reportedly offered to testify in exchange for immunity.

    For seemingly the 100th time, social media is exploding. This is it! The big reveal!

    Perhaps it will come off just the way people are expecting. Perhaps Flynn will get a deal, walk into the House or the Senate surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers, and unspool the whole sordid conspiracy.

    He will explain that Donald Trump, compromised by ancient deals with Russian mobsters, and perhaps even blackmailed by an unspeakable KGB sex tape, made a secret deal. He'll say Trump agreed to downplay the obvious benefits of an armed proxy war in Ukraine with nuclear-armed Russia in exchange for Vladimir Putin's help in stealing the emails of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and John Podesta.

    I personally would be surprised if this turned out to be the narrative, mainly because we haven't seen any real evidence of it. But episodes like the Flynn story have even the most careful reporters paralyzed. What if, tomorrow, it all turns out to be true?

    What if reality does turn out to be a massive connect-the-dots image of St. Basil's Cathedral sitting atop the White House? (This was suddenly legitimate British conspiracist Louise Mensch's construction in The New York Times last week.) What if all the Glenn Beck -style far-out charts with the circles and arrows somehow all make sense?

    This is one of the tricks that keeps every good conspiracy theory going. Nobody wants to be the one claiming the emperor has no clothes the day His Highness walks out naked. And this Russia thing has spun out of control into just such an exercise of conspiratorial mass hysteria.

    Even I think there should be a legitimate independent investigation – one that, given Trump's history, might uncover all sorts of things. But almost irrespective of what ends up being uncovered on the Trump side, the public prosecution of this affair has taken on a malevolent life of its own.

    One way we recognize a mass hysteria movement is that everyone who doesn't believe is accused of being in on the plot. This has been going on virtually unrestrained in both political and media circles in recent weeks.

    The aforementioned Mensch, a noted loon who thinks Putin murdered Andrew Breitbart but has somehow been put front and center by The Times and HBO's Real Time , has denounced an extraordinary list of Kremlin plants.

    She's tabbed everyone from Jeff Sessions ("a Russian partisan ") to Rudy Giuliani and former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom (" agents of influence ") to Glenn Greenwald (" Russian shill ") to ProPublica and Democracy Now! (also " Russian shills "), to the 15-year-old girl with whom Anthony Weiner sexted ( really , she says, a Russian hacker group called "Crackas With Attitudes") to an unnamed number of FBI agents in the New York field office (" moles "). And that's just for starters.

    Others are doing the same. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters, upon seeing the strange behavior of Republican Intel Committee chair Devin Nunes, asked "what kind of dossier" the Kremlin has on Nunes.

    Dem-friendly pollster Matt McDermott wondered why reporters Michael Tracey and Zaid Jilani aren't on board with the conspiracy stories (they might be "unwitting" agents!) and noted , without irony, that Russian bots mysteriously appear every time he tweets negatively about them.

    Think about that last one. Does McDermott think Tracey and Jilani call their handlers at the sight of a scary Matt McDermott tweet and have the FSB send waves of Russian bots at him on command? Or does he think it's an automated process? What goes through the heads of such people?

    I've written a few articles on the Russia subject that have been very tame, basically arguing that it might be a good idea to wait for evidence of collusion before those of us in the media jump in the story with both feet. But even I've gotten the treatment .

    I've been "outed" as a possible paid Putin plant by the infamous "PropOrNot" group, which is supposedly dedicated to rooting out Russian "agents of influence." You might remember PropOrNot as the illustrious research team the Washington Post once relied on for a report that accused 200 alternative websites of being "routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season."

    Politicians are getting into the act, too. It was one thing when Rand Paul balked at OKing the expansion of NATO to Montenegro, and John McCain didn't hesitate to say that "the senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin."

    Even Bernie Sanders has himself been accused of being a Putin plant by Mensch. But even he's gotten on board of late, asking , "What do the Russians have on Mr. Trump?"

    So even people who themselves have been accused of being Russian plants are now accusing people of being Russian plants. As the Russians would say, it's enough to make your bashka hurt.

    Sanders should know better. Last week, during hearings in the Senate, multiple witnesses essentially pegged his electoral following as unwitting fellow travelers for Putin.

    Former NSA chief Keith Alexander spoke openly of how Russia used the Sanders campaign to "drive a wedge within the Democratic Party," while Dr. Thomas Rid of Kings College in London spoke of Russia's use of "unwitting agents" and "overeager journalists" to drive narratives that destabilized American politics.

    This testimony was brought out by Virginia Democrat Mark Warner. Warner has been in full-blown "precious bodily fluids" mode throughout this scandal. During an interview with The Times on the Russia subject a month back, there was a thud outside the window. "That may just be the FSB," he said. The paper was unsure if he was kidding.

    Warner furthermore told The Times that in order to get prepared for his role as an exposer of 21st-century Russian perfidy, he was "losing himself in a book about the Romanovs," and had been quizzing staffers about "Tolstoy and Nabokov."

    This is how nuts things are now: a senator brushes up on Nabokov and Tolstoy ( Tolstoy !) to get pumped to expose Vladimir Putin.

    Even the bizarre admission by FBI director (and sudden darling of the same Democrats who hated him months ago) James Comey that he didn't know anything about Russia's biggest company didn't seem to trouble Americans very much. Here's the key exchange , from a House hearing in which Jackie Speier quizzed Comey:

    SPEIER: Now, do we know who Gazprom-Media is? Do you know anything about Gazprom, director?
    COMEY: I don't.
    SPEIER: Well, it's a – it's an oil company.

    (Incidentally, Gazprom – primarily a natural-gas giant – is not really an oil company. So both Comey and Speier got it wrong.)

    As Leonid Bershidsky of Bloomberg noted , this exchange was terrifying to Russians. The leader of an investigation into Russian espionage not knowing what Gazprom is would be like an FSB chief not having heard of Exxon-Mobil. It's bizarre, to say the least.

    Testimony of the sort that came from Warner's committee last week is being buttressed by news stories in liberal outlets like Salon insisting that "Bernie Bros" were influenced by those same ubiquitous McDermott-chasing Russian "bots."

    These stories insist that, among other things, these evil bots pushed on the unwitting "bros" juicy "fake news" stories about Hillary being "involved with various murders and money laundering schemes."

    Some 13.2 million people voted for Sanders during the primary season last year. What percentage does any rational person really believe voted that way because of "fake news"?

    I would guess the number is infinitesimal at best. The Sanders campaign was driven by a lot of factors, but mainly by long-developing discontent within the Democratic Party and enthusiasm for Sanders himself.

    To describe Sanders followers as unwitting dupes who departed the true DNC faith because of evil Russian propaganda is both insulting and ridiculous. It's also a testimony to the remarkable capacity for self-deception within the leadership of the Democratic Party.

    If the party's leaders really believe that Russian intervention is anywhere in the top 100 list of reasons why some 155 million eligible voters (out of 231 million) chose not to pull a lever for Hillary Clinton last year, they're farther along down the Purity of Essence nut-hole than Mark Warner.

    Moreover, even those who detest Trump with every fiber of their being must see the dangerous endgame implicit in this entire line of thinking. If the Democrats succeed in spreading the idea that straying from the DNC-approved candidate – in either the past or the future – is/was an act of "unwitting" cooperation with the evil Putin regime, then the entire idea of legitimate dissent is going to be in trouble.

    Imagine it's four years from now (if indeed that's when we have our next election). A Democratic candidate stands before the stump, and announces that a consortium of intelligence experts has concluded that Putin is backing the hippie/anti-war/anti-corporate opposition candidate.

    Or, even better: that same candidate reminds us "what happened last time" when people decided to vote their consciences during primary season. It will be argued, in seriousness, that true Americans will owe their votes to the non-Putin candidate. It would be a shock if some version of this didn't become an effective political trope going forward.

    But if you're not worried about accusing non-believers of being spies, or pegging legitimate dissent as treason, there's a third problem that should scare everyone.

    Last week saw Donna Brazile and Dick Cheney both declare Russia's apparent hack of DNC emails an "act of war." This coupling seemed at first like political end times: as Bill Murray would say, " dogs and cats, living together ."

    But there's been remarkable unanimity among would-be enemies in the Republican and Democrat camps on this question. Suddenly everyone from Speier to McCain to Kamala Harris to Ben Cardin have decried Russia's alleged behavior during the election as real or metaphorical acts of war: a "political Pearl Harbor," as Cardin put it.

    That no one seems to be concerned about igniting a hot war with nuclear-powered Russia at a time when both countries have troops within "hand-grenade range " of each in Syria other is bizarre, to say the least. People are in such a fever to drag Trump to impeachment that these other considerations seem not to matter. This is what happens when people lose their heads.

    There are a lot of people who will say that these issues are of secondary importance to the more important question of whether or not we have a compromised Russian agent in the White House.

    But when it comes to Trump-Putin collusion, we're still waiting for the confirmation. As Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters put it, the proof is increasingly understood to be the thing we find later, as in, " If we do the investigations, we will find the connections ."

    But on the mass hysteria front, we already have evidence enough to fill a dozen books. And if it doesn't freak you out, it probably should.

    Watch illustrator Victor Juhasz discuss what it means to draw President Donald Trump.

    [Apr 21, 2017] The Reason Behind The Sales-Surge For Nuclear-Proof Bunkers Zero Hedge

    Notable quotes:
    "... On April 17 th , Scott Humor, the Research Director at the geostrategic site "The Saker," headlined "Trump has lost control over the Pentagon" , and he listed (and linked-to) the following signs that Trump is following through with his promise to allow the Pentagon to control U.S. international relations: ..."
    "... March 14 th , the US National Nuclear Security Administration field tested the modernized B61-12 gravity nuclear bomb in Nevada . ..."
    "... April 7, Liberty Passion, loaded with US military vehicles, moored at Aqaba Main Port, Jordan ..."
    "... On April 7 th the Pentagon US bombed Syria's main command center in fight against terrorists ..."
    "... April 10, United States Deploying Forces At Syrian-Jordanian Border ..."
    "... April 11, The US Air Force might start forcing pilots to stay in the service against their will, according to the chief of the military unit's Air Mobility Command. ..."
    "... April 12, President Donald Trump has signed the US approval for Montenegro to join NATO ..."
    "... April 13, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced the alliance's increased deployment in Eastern Europe ..."
    "... On April 13 th , the Pentagon bombed Afghanistan. The US military has bombed Afghanistan with its GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) ..."
    "... April 13, the US-led coalition bombed the IS munitions and chemical weapons depot in Deir ez-Zo r killing hundreds of people ..."
    "... April 14, The Arleigh Burke-class, guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem (DDG 63) has been deployed to the South China Sea ..."
    "... April 14, the US sent F-35 jets to Europe ..."
    "... April 14, Washington failed to attend the latest international conference hosted by Moscow, where 11 nations discussed ways of bringing peace to Afghanistan . The US branded it a "unilateral Russian attempt to assert influence in the region". ..."
    "... April14, the US has positioned two destroyers armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles close enough to the North Korean nuclear test site to act preemptively ..."
    "... On April 16 th , the US army makes largest deployment of troops to Somalia since the 90s. ..."
    "... or there will be WW III. ..."
    Apr 15, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    > Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    On April 15th, Zero Hedge bannered "Doomsday Bunker Sales Soar After Trump's Military Strikes", but this growth in the market for nuclear-proof bunkers is hardly new; it started during the Obama Administration, in Obama's second term, specifically after the Russia-friendly government of Ukraine, next-door to Russia, got taken over in 2014 by a rabidly anti-Russian government that's backed by the U.S. government.

    This boom in nuclear-bunker sales is only increasing now, as the new U.S. President, Donald Trump, tries to out-do his predecessor in demonstrating his hostility toward the other nuclear superpower, Russia, and displaying his determination to overthrow the leader of any nation (such as Syria and Iran) that is at all friendly toward Russia. For earlier examples of feature-articles on this booming market for homes that allegedly would enable buyers to survive the first blast effects, and the most immediate nuclear contaminations, of a Third World War, see here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here.

    This surging demand for nuclear bunkers started right after the U.S. government arranged a coup in Ukraine that replaced the existing Moscow-friendly democratically elected President by installing a rabidly anti-Russian Prime Minister and national-security appointees from Ukraine's two nazi Parties, the Right Sector Party, and the former Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine (which the CIA renamed "Svoboda" meaning "Freedom" so as to enable it to be acceptable to the American public). Then, the intensifying U.S. effort to replace the secular pro-Russian Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad by a sectarian jihadist government that would be dependent upon the Saudi-Qatari-UAE-Turkish-U.S. alliance, has only intensified further the demand for these types of "second homes".

    Whereas all of the purchasers of these bunkers are being kept secret, the U.S. federal government provides, free-of-charge, to top officials, nuclear bunkers, so as to allow the then-dictatorship (continuation of America's current dictatorship) to function, in order, supposedly, to serve their country, which they'd already have destroyed (along with destroying the rest of the world) by their determination to conquer Russia. No one knows what the reality would actually be in such a post-WW-III world, except that there would be no functioning electrical grid, nights would be totally dark for anyone whose sole reliance is on the grid, and all rivers and other water-sources would be intensely radioactive from the fallout, so that groundwater soon would also be unusable - and, of course, the air itself would also be toxic; so, lifespans would be enormously shortened, and excruciating, not to say extremely depressing.

    No one has published a computer-model of a U.S.-Russia nuclear war, because doing that would be unacceptable to the "military-industrial complex" including the U.S. government, but in 2014 a "limited, regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan" was computer-modeled and projected to produce global ozone-depletion and "the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1000 years", which "could trigger a global nuclear famine". But such a war would be only 50 bombs instead of the 10,000+ that would be used in a WW III scenario; and, so, everyone who is paying money in order to survive WW III is simply wasting money.

    But, somehow, there are people who either want a Russia-U.S. war, or else whose preparations for it are directed at surviving in such a world, instead of at ending the current grip on political power in the United States, on the part of the people who are working to bring about this type of (end to the) world. At least the owners of the major U.S. armaments-firms, such as Raytheon Corporation, would have an explosive financial boost during the build-up toward that war, but buying bunkers in order to survive it, would seem to be a dubious follow-up to such an investment-plan. On the other hand, it might appeal to some thrill-seekers who don't even feel the need for a good computer-simulation of a post-WW-III world; maybe they've got money to burn and a craving to experience 'the ultimate thrill', and don't want unpleasant knowledge to spoil the thrill.

    After President Trump threw out his National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and replaced him with the rabidly anti-Russian H.R. McMaster, and then lobbed 59 cruise missiles against the Syrian government (which is protected by the Russian government), the cacophony of press that had been calling for President Trump to be impeached and replaced by his rabidly anti-Russian Vice President Mike Pence, considerably quieted down; and, so, the Obama-Trump market for nuclear bunkers seems now to be established on very sound foundations, for the foreseeable immediate future. And, if anyone in the U.S. federal government has been planning to prepare the U.S. for a post-WW-III world, that has not been publicly announced, and no newsmedia have even been inquiring about it - so, nothing can yet be said about it.

    The general message, thus far, is that, after World War III, everyone will be on his or her own, but that the dictators will (supposedly) be in a far better position than will anyone outside that ruling group. However, if the survivors end up merely envying the dead, it will be no laughing matter, regardless of how silly those nuclear bunkers are. It would be nothing funny at all.

    On April 17th, Scott Humor, the Research Director at the geostrategic site "The Saker," headlined "Trump has lost control over the Pentagon", and he listed (and linked-to) the following signs that Trump is following through with his promise to allow the Pentagon to control U.S. international relations:

    March 14th, the US National Nuclear Security Administration field tested the modernized B61-12 gravity nuclear bomb in Nevada.

    April 7, Liberty Passion, loaded with US military vehicles, moored at Aqaba Main Port, Jordan

    On April 7th the Pentagon US bombed Syria's main command center in fight against terrorists

    April 10, United States Deploying Forces At Syrian-Jordanian Border

    April 11, The US Air Force might start forcing pilots to stay in the service against their will, according to the chief of the military unit's Air Mobility Command.

    April 12, President Donald Trump has signed the US approval for Montenegro to join NATO

    April 13, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced the alliance's increased deployment in Eastern Europe

    On April 13th, the Pentagon bombed Afghanistan. The US military has bombed Afghanistan with its GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB)

    April 13, the US-led coalition bombed the IS munitions and chemical weapons depot in Deir ez-Zor killing hundreds of people

    April 14, The Arleigh Burke-class, guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem (DDG 63) has been deployed to the South China Sea

    April 14, the US sent F-35 jets to Europe

    April 14, Washington failed to attend the latest international conference hosted by Moscow, where 11 nations discussed ways of bringing peace to Afghanistan. The US branded it a "unilateral Russian attempt to assert influence in the region".

    April14, the US has positioned two destroyers armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles close enough to the North Korean nuclear test site to act preemptively

    On April 16th, the US army makes largest deployment of troops to Somalia since the 90s.

    Mr. Humor drew attention to an article that had been published in "The Daily Beast" a year ago, on 8 April 2016, "CALL OF DUTY: The Secret Movement to Draft General James Mattis for President. Gen. James Mattis doesn't necessarily want to be president-but that's not stopping a group of billionaire donors from hatching a plan to get him there". Though none of the alleged "billionaires" were named there, one prominent voice backing Mattis for the Presidency, in that article, was Bill Kristol, the Rupert Murdoch agent who co-founded the Project for a New American Century, which was the first influential group pushing the "regime-change in Iraq" idea during the late 1990s, and which also advocated for the foreign policies that George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump, have since been pursuing, each in his own way. It seems that whomever those "billionaires" were, they've now gotten their wish, with a figurehead Donald Trump as President, and James Mattis actually running foreign policy. Humor also noted that Mattis wants to boost the budget of the Pentagon by far more than the 9% that Trump has proposed. Perhaps Trump knew that even to get a 9% Pentagon increase passed this year would be almost impossible to achieve. First, the unleashed Pentagon needs to place the military into an 'emergency' situation, so as to persuade the public to clamor for a major invasion. That 'emergency' might be the immediate goal, toward which the March-April timeline of events that Humor documented is aiming.

    As regards the military comparisons of the personnel and equipment on both sides of a U.S.-Russia war, the key consideration would actually be not the 7,000 nuclear warheads that Russia has versus the 6,800 nuclear warheads that the U.S. has, but the chief motivation on each of the respective sides: conquest on the part of the U.S. aristocracy, defense on the part of the Russian aristocracy. (Obviously, the U.S. having continued its NATO military alliance after the Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact military alliance ended in 1991, indicates America's aggressive intent against Russia. That became a hyper-aggressive intent when NATO absorbed Russia's former Warsaw Pact allies. NATO even brought in some parts of the former USSR itself, when in 2004, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, entered NATO, and in 2014 U.S. President Obama tried to get Ukraine into NATO, and these five countries hadn't even been Warsaw Pacters, but had instead been parts of the USSR itself. It was as if Russia had grabbed not only America's allies, but some states in the U.S. itself. This constituted extreme aggression, and shows the U.S. aristocracy's obsessive intent for global empire - to include Russia.)

    Any limited war between the two powers would become a nuclear war once the side that's losing this limited war becomes faced with the choice of either surrendering that limited territory (now likely Syria) or else going nuclear. On Russia's side, allowing such military conquest of an ally would be unacceptable; the war would then expand with the U.S. and its allies invading Russian territory for Russia's continuing refusal to accept the U.S.-Saudi and other allies' grabbing of Syria (on 'humanitarian grounds', of course - as if, for example, the Sauds aren't far more brutal than Assad). After the traditional-forces' invasion of Russia, Russia's yielding its sovereignty over its own land has never been part of Russia's culture: If Russia were to be invaded by allies of the U.S., then launching all of Russia's nuclear weapons against the U.S. and America's invasion-allies, would be a reasonably expected result. Here's how it would develop: On America's side, which (very unlike Russia) has no record of any foreign invasion against its own mainland (other than the Sauds' own 9/11 'false flag' attacks), the likely response in the event of Russia's crushing its invaders would be for the U.S. President to seek to negotiate a face-saving end to that limited war, just as the American President Richard Nixon did regarding America's invasion and occupation of Vietnam.

    However, a reasonable question can be raised as to whether, in such a situation, Russia would accept anything less than America's total surrender, much as Franklin Delano Roosevelt in WW II was determined to accept nothing less than Germany's total surrender, at the end of that war. If Trump wants to play Hitler, then Putin (acting in accord with Russian tradition) would probably play both FDR and Stalin, even if it meant the end of the world. For Russia to be conquered, especially by such intense evil as those invaders would be representing, would probably be viewed by Russians as being even worse than ending everything, and this would probably be Putin's view as well. If America did not simply capitulate, Putin would probably nuclear-blitz-attack the U.S. and its allies, rather than give Trump (or Pence) the opportunity to blitz-attack Russia and to sacrifice all of the U.S. side's invading troops in Russia so as to 'win' the overall war and finally conquer Russia. It would be like WW II, except with nuclear weapons - and thus an entirely different type of historical outcome after the war.

    Consequently, either the U.S. will cease its designs on Russia, or there will be WW III. Russia's sovereignty will never be yielded, especially not to the thuggish gang who have come to rule the U.S. (both as "Republicans" and as "Democrats"). The bipartisan neoconservative dream of America's aristocrats (world-conquest) will never be achieved. Russia will never accept it. If America's rulers continue to press it, the result will be even worse than when the Nazis tried. It's just an ugly pipe-dream, but any attempt to make it real would be even uglier. And nobody who buys a 'nuclear-proof bunker' will get what he or she thinks is being bought - safety in such a world as that. It won't exist.

    Shemp 4 Victory -> Crash Overide , Apr 20, 2017 10:56 PM

    Fred Reed knocks one out of the park:

    First Transgender President: Trump Becomes Hillary http://www.unz.com/freed/first-transgender-president-trump-becomes-hillary/

    Luc X. Ifer -> Shemp 4 Victory , Apr 20, 2017 11:24 PM

    False. We have a simulation, and it is far worse than people can even imagine.

    [...

  • Even humans living in shelters equipped with many years worth of food, water, energy, and medical supplies would probably not survive in the hostile post-war environment.

    ...]

    http://www.nucleardarkness.org/warconsequences/hundredfiftytonessmoke/

  • Luc X. Ifer -> Luc X. Ifer , Apr 20, 2017 11:41 PM

    Another reason why USSA is in hurry to have the war with Russia ASAP is that they know that very soon - if not even now in the present, USSA ICBM defense is outdated and 100% ineficient against the newest Russian ICBMs, if by any bad chance Russia launches the 1st strike Disney Land USSA is Bye Felicia without even a chance to retaliate.

    https://www.rt.com/news/340588-hypersonic-warhead-sarmat-tested/

    winged -> Luc X. Ifer , Apr 20, 2017 11:41 PM

    If that time truly comes, make sure you know who's really responsible.

    http://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-truth-about-the-c...

    [Apr 21, 2017] US Rejects Exxon Mobil Bid for Waiver on Russia Sanctions - The New York Times

    Apr 21, 2017 | www.nytimes.com

    HOUSTON - The Trump administration delivered a setback to Exxon Mobil on Friday, announcing that it would not grant the oil giant a waiver from sanctions against Russia that would allow drilling in the Black Sea.

    The decision, reinforcing barriers erected by the United States over Russia's intervention in Ukraine, was another sign that President Trump has been unwilling or unable to improve relations with the Kremlin early in his term, after pledging as a candidate that he would seek a thaw.

    "In consultation with President Donald J. Trump," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a terse, prepared statement, "the Treasury Department will not be issuing waivers to U.S. companies, including Exxon, authorizing drilling prohibited by current Russian sanctions."

    The prospect of a waiver had drawn denunciations from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers. When news of Exxon Mobil's proposal emerged this week , Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, wrote in a Twitter post , "Are they crazy?"

    The matter was complicated by the continuing congressional scrutiny of reports of Russian intervention in support of Mr. Trump in last year's election, and by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson's role as Exxon Mobil's chief executive until the president nominated him for his current position.

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    Exxon Mobil applied for the waiver in 2015, arguing that it could lose its exploration rights in the Black Sea if it did not begin drilling operations by the end of 2017 under its contract with the Russian state oil company Rosneft.

    The Obama administration did not act on the application, but Exxon Mobil hoped that the Trump administration would take a favorable view.

    The company released a brief statement on Friday that did not express regret but explained its argument in favor of the waiver.

    "We understand the statement today by Secretary Mnuchin in consultation with President Trump," the statement said. "Our 2015 application for a license under the provisions outlined in the U.S. sanctions was made to enable our company to meet its contractual obligations under a joint venture agreement in Russia, where competitor companies are authorized to undertake such work under European sanctions."

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    United States and European sanctions were first imposed on Russia in March 2014 in response to Moscow's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Exxon Mobil signed an expansion of its joint venture projects anyway, even after Igor I. Sechin, Rosneft's chief executive, was personally blacklisted in connection with the sanctions.

    The deal was legal, but Exxon Mobil was more fully constrained when tighter sanctions were imposed after Russia was implicated that summer in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine.

    It has become increasingly clear in recent days that relations between the United States and Russia are unlikely to improve any time soon. Mr. Tillerson has used increasingly tough talk to highlight the Trump administration's differences with Russia over its alliance with the Syrian government. He has not suggested that any sanctions be lifted, and the administration has affirmed its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European security.

    Exxon Mobil's hopes to produce new oil in Arctic waters and in Siberian shale fields were delayed indefinitely by the toughened sanctions, which prohibited transfers of drilling technology capable of reaching oil in fields that previously had been virtually inaccessible. The company received a few exceptions to the sanctions, including a waiver in late 2014 that allowed it complete drilling of one exploration well in the frigid Kara Sea that it said would be unsafe to leave half finished. A big oil field was confirmed, but no new oil was produced and exported.

    Exxon Mobil has long argued that it was being put at a disadvantage against some of its European competitors operating in Russia. ENI, the Italian oil giant, plans to drill this year in the Black Sea, a largely untapped area with enormous oil reserve potential.

    European sanctions are somewhat weaker than those imposed by the United States since they exempted some contracts signed before the sanctions were put in place. The American sanctions drew a harder line.

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    Exxon Mobil's drilling rights in the Black Sea were part of a sweeping strategic partnership Exxon Mobil developed with Rosneft in 2011 while Mr. Tillerson was in charge of the American company. The agreement came at a time when the Obama administration was seeking to improve relations with Russia, and several Western oil companies expanded their operations.

    [Apr 21, 2017] First Transgender President Trump Becomes Hillary by Fred Reed

    Apr 20, 2017 | unz.com

    Oh Lord, it's happening–the remanufacture of Trump by the Establishment. During the campaign, Trump and the Basilisk had nothing in common but their hair dye. Now, almost daily, he looks more like her.

    He gets embarrassing. Regarding the alleged gassing in Syria, quoth Donald:

    "When you kill innocent children, innocent babies - babies, little babies - with a chemical gas that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line. And I will tell you, that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much."

    God almighty. Who wrote this–a middle school girl with C's in English, or the President of the United States? Did he retire to his bedroom for a good cry?

    Apparently he ordered his missile strike without bothering to find out what happened. The usual suspects are driving him like a sports car.

    The election was a choice between fetor and a lunatic. We chose the lunatic. Whether this was better than the alternative, we will never know, but Trump is going from bad to worse, or as the Mexicans say, de Guatemala a Guatepeor.

    Does he believe this stuff? Is he naive enough to think that there was something unusually horrible about the attack? Horrible, yes, but not in the least unusual. Do you know what everyday, boring artillery does to children? Five-hundred-pound bombs? Hellfire rockets? Daily Mr. Trump's military and his allies daily drop shrapnel-producing explosives on people, cities, towns, adults, children, weddings and goatherds in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Good draft-dodger that he was, he probably has never seen any of this. Good psychopath that he may be, he may not care.

    This whole gas-attack business smells to high heaven. It looks nicely calculated to force him to attack Assad. Gas was important: Killing babies, little babies with explosives is so routine that no one cares, but we have been programmed to shudder at the thought of Gas!

    Actually artillery has killed several orders of magnitude more people, but never mind.

    Targeting children was a nice touch. Definitely a PR bonus. So Donald goes into his Poor-widdle-fings weep, while Americans weekly kill more children in three to seven countries, depending on the date.

    Is the man consciously a liar? Hasn't got sense enough to think before operating his mouth? Actually believes what he says when he says it?

    Glance at a small part of the record and focus on his changing his tune, not on whether you agree with a particular policy. Erratic, erratic, erratic. He was going to run out the illegals within two years, absurd but he said it. Going to put high tariffs on Mexican goods. Didn't. On Chinese goods. Isn't. Tear up the Iran treaty. Didn't. Declare China a currency-manipulator. Isn't. Ban Muslims. Hasn't. Promote good relations with Russia. Isn't. Get the US out of Syria. Ha. Make NATO pay for itself. Isn't. The man has the steely determination one associates with bean curd. You cannot trust anything the man says.

    Having been reprogrammed as a good neocon, bombing places he promised to get out of, looking for a fight with Russia, he is now butting heads with Fat Thing in North Korea. He his said things closely resembling, "We have run out of strategic patience with the North. If nobody else will take care of it, we will." Grrrr. Bowwow. Woof.

    The problem with growly ultimata made for television is that somebody has to back down–that is, lose face and credibility. If Trump had quietly told Fat Thing, "If you crazy bastards scrap your nuke program, we will drop the sanctions," it might have worked. But no. Negotiations would imply weakness. Thus an ultimatum.

    So now either (a) Fat Thing knuckles under, humiliating himself and possibly endangering his grasp on power or (b) Trump blinks in a humiliating display of the Empire's impotence, possibly endangering his grasp on power.

    Kim Jong Il, or Il Sung Jong, or whatever the the hell the latest one of them is called, shows not the slightest sign of backing down. So does the Donald start an utterly unpredictable war, as usual in somebody else's country, or does he weasel off, muttering, and hope nobody notices?

    Fred's Third Law of International Relations: Never butt heads with a country that has a missile named the No Dong.

    Many of us favored Trump, slightly daft though he was, because he wasn't yet Hillary, wasn't yet a neocon robot, and didn't want war with every country he had heard of, apparently meaning a good half dozen. At least he said he didn't, not yet having been told that he did. In particular, he didn't want war with Russia. But when the neocons control the media and Congress, they can convince a naive public of anything and, apparently, the President.

    Why is the Hillarification of Trump important? The necessary prior question: What is the greatest threat to the neocons' American Empire? Answer: The ongoing integration of Eurasia under Chinese hegemony. The key countries in this are China, Iran, and Russia. (Isn't it curious that, apart from the momentary distraction of North Korea, these countries have been the focus of New York's hostility?) In particular if Russia and, through it, China develop large and very profitable trade with Europe, there goes NATO and with it the Empire.

    Oops.

    Thus the eeeeeeeeeeek! furor about Russia as existential threat and so on. Thus sending a few troops to Baltic countries to "deter" Russia. This was theater. The idea that a thousand garrison troops can stop the Russian army, which hasn't gone silly as ours has, on its doorstep is loony.

    Hillary was on board with the Russia hysteria and the globalization and the immigration and so on. Trump could have screwed the whole pooch by getting along with Russia, so he had to be reconfigured. And was. A work in progress, but going well.

    ORDER IT NOW

    Too much is being asked of him. One man cannot overcome the combined hostility of the media, the political establishment, the neocons, the myriad other special interests that he has threatened. Mass immigration is a done deal. China develops and America, already developed, cannot keep up. The country disintegrates socially. Washington, always depending on war and its threat, faces a new world in which trade is the weapon, and doesn't know what to do. The culture courses. The world changes.

    Yet if only Trump showed some sign of knowing what he is doing, and could remember from day to day, if only he realized that wars are more easily started than predicted, if only he were not becoming an unbalanced Hillary.

    Yet, apparently, he is.

    (Reprinted from Fred on Everything by permission of author or representative)

    [Apr 20, 2017] Bill Binney explodes the Russia witchhunt

    Mar 04, 2017 | www.youtube.com

    He also exposes the NSA penchant for "swindles", such as preventing the plugging of holes in software around the world, to preserve their spying access.

    Frank Oak 3 weeks ago Big Mike's boat 200 tons coke bust n Hussien on the run as cosmic Camelots​ crimes going viral

    Marija Djuric 3 weeks ago Bill Binney should be head of the NSA

    Nancy M 3 weeks ago The Clinton campaign to divert attention to Russia instead of her myriad of crimes that were revealed during the election must be stopped and the alt media needs to start talking about her and Obama's crimes again and demand justice...control the dialogue

    John 3 weeks ago It's almost comical to hear that they lie to each other. No wonder why these retards in the mid-east and every other third world country gets the better of us.

    [Apr 19, 2017] Assessing Russias Military Strength

    Notable quotes:
    "... In layman's lingo, the United States lacks geographic, historic, cultural, economic and technological pressures to develop and have a coherent defensive military doctrine and weapons which would help to implement it. As Michael Lind writes: ..."
    "... At this point, the only locality where the US can hope to "defeat" Russia is in Syria, to reassert, even if for a little while longer, itself as "greatest military in history". But even there the window of opportunities is closing fast since the Russian conventional response in Europe would be devastating. ..."
    "... As Colonel Pat Lang's blog noted : "If Russia decides to call our bluff and escalate things Trump will likely preside over a public humiliation that will explode America's military delusions of grandeur". ..."
    "... US Naval Institute Proceedings ..."
    "... The Unz Review ..."
    "... [AKA "SmoothieX12"] ..."
    "... [AKA "SmoothieX12"] ..."
    "... [AKA "SmoothieX12"] ..."
    "... [AKA "SmoothieX12"] ..."
    "... [AKA "SmoothieX12"] ..."
    "... [AKA "SmoothieX12"] ..."
    "... [AKA "SmoothieX12"] ..."
    "... [AKA "SmoothieX12"] ..."
    Apr 19, 2017 | www.unz.com
    There is a popular point of view in some of Russia's political circles, especially among those who profess monarchist views and cling to a famous meme of 1913 Tsarist Russia development statistics, that WW I was started by Germany to forestall Russia's industrial development which would inevitably challenge Germany's plans on domination of Europe. A somewhat similar argument could be made for the WW II, but, in general, preventive wars are nothing new in human history. While "preventive" argument may or may not be a valid one regarding WW I, there is no doubt that it could be used, among others, when explaining the origins of a war.

    A classic example of such "preventive" war is, of course, US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the mayhem which ensued there when US, as was stated then, "prevented" Saddam from obtaining Weapons of Mass Destruction, that is nuclear weapons, which, of course, he never had and wasn't intent on obtaining . It is becoming increasingly clear that "preventive war" has become a preferred instrument in the hands of Washington establishment, be it Iraq, Libya or Syria.

    But what about Russia, one may ask, or China. Are "preventive wars" against them possible? Taken at face value the question may seem strange-both China, and especially Russia are nuclear armed states which can defend themselves. They do have deterrents and that supposedly should stop any attempt on any kind of war on them. This all is true but only so far. One may consider the current geopolitical situation in which China has all but created a new alternative economic power pole , and in which the US finds herself increasingly in the position of the still extremely important but second and, eventually, even third place player in Eurasian economic development. The United States doesn't like being in second and doesn't take such a reality kindly.

    But for Washington, whose political discourse is based on American exceptionalism and foreign policy now is defined completely in terms of military power, emergence of a "peer" military power is absolutely unacceptable. While China is an economic giant and is now arguably the largest economy in the world, she still has a long way to go until she becomes a true "peer" to the United States militarily. This is not the case with Russia. It becomes also true when one begins to look at doctrinal and technological developments both in the US and Russia. The contrast is startling, even if one considers a very dubious US intelligence analysis on Russia .

    Russia's military doctrine and posture are explicitly defensive. Power Projection in Russian strategic considerations is secondary, if not tertiary, to the defense of Russia proper and her immediate geographic vicinity which can roughly be defined as about 80-85% of territory of the former USSR. This is not the case with the United States who is a consummate expeditionary power and fights wars not on own territory, and whose population and political elites are not conditioned by continental warfare.

    Arthur J. Alexander in his " Decision Making In Soviet Weapons Procurement " came up with quantification of what he called "classes of forces" (or constants) influencing aggregate defense expenditures for USSR. This quantification remains virtually unchanged for modern day Russia. To quote Alexander, two of the most "heavy" constants he mentions are: "History, culture and values–40-50 percent. International environment, threat and internal capabilities–10-30 percent" . Taken by their maxima, 50+30=80%, we get the picture. 80% of Russia's military expenditures are dictated by real military threats, which were, time after time over centuries, realized for Russia and resulted in the destruction and human losses on a scale incomprehensible for people who write US military doctrines and national security strategies. This is especially true for Neocon "strategists" who have a very vague understanding of the nature and application of military power-expeditionary warfare simply does not provide a proper angle on the issues of actual defense. The nation whose 20 th Century losses due to wars from WW I, to Civil War to WW II number roughly in 40-45 million range, would certainly try to not repeat such ordeals. Even famous Russophobe and falsifier, Richard Pipes, was forced to admit that:

    Such figures are beyond the comprehension of most Americans. But clearly a country must define "unacceptable damage" differently from the United States which has known no famines or purges, and whose deaths from all the wars waged since 1775 are estimated at 650,000-fewer casualties than Russia suffered in the 900-day siege of Leningrad in World War II alone. Such a country (Russia) tends also to assess the rewards of defense in much more realistic terms.

    In layman's lingo, the United States lacks geographic, historic, cultural, economic and technological pressures to develop and have a coherent defensive military doctrine and weapons which would help to implement it. As Michael Lind writes:

    The possibility of military defeat and invasion are usually left out of discussion .in the United states and Britain. The United States, if one discounts Pearl Harbor has not suffered a serious invasion from 1812; Britain, though it has been bombed from the air in the (20th century), has been free from foreign invasion even longer .Elsewhere in the world, political elites cannot as easily separate foreign policy and economics.

    Russia lives under these pressures constantly and, in fact, Russians as ethnos were formed and defined by warfare. Russia is also defined by her weapons and it is here where we may start looking for one of the most important rationales for anti-Russian hysteria in Washington which have proceeded unabated sincethe return of Crimea in 2014, in reality even earlier.

    The Western analytical and expert community failed utterly in assessing Russia's both economic and, as a consequence, military potential. The problem here is not with Russia, which offers unprecedented access to all kinds of foreigners, from businessmen and tourists to political and intelligence (overt and covert) professionals. The problem is with Western view of Russia which as late as three years ago was completely triumphalist and detached from Russia's economic realities. That is the reality not defined by meaningless Wall Street economic indices.

    It took a complete and embarrassing failure of the West's economic sanctions on Russia to recognize that the actual size of Russia's economy is about that of Germany, if not larger, and that Russia was defining herself in terms of enclosed technological cycles, localization and manufacturing long before she was forced to engage in the war in Georgia in 2008. Very few people realistically care about Russia's Stock Market, the financial markets of Germany are on the order of magnitude larger, but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can. Germany doesn't have a space industry, Russia does. The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics industry and her military-industrial complex which dwarfs that of any "economic" competitor Western "economists" always try to compare Russia to, with the exception of US and China, and then on bulk, not quality, only. Third or Second World economies do not produce such weapons as Borey-class strategic missile submarines or SU-35 fighter jets, they also do not build space-stations and operate the only global alternative to US GPS, GLONASS system.

    Whether this lesson will be learned by the combined West is yet to be seen. So far, the learning process has been slow for US crowd which cheered on US deindustrialization and invented a fairy tale concept of post-industrial, that is non-productive, virtual economy.

    The Russian economy is not without problems, far from it-it still tries to break with the "heritage" of robbery and deformities of 1990s and still tries to find its way on a path different from destructive ideology of Russia's "young reformers" who still dominate policy formulation, be it from the positions of power or through such institutions as notorious High School of Economics.

    Yet, it seems this economy which was " left in tatters " or was an economy of a " gas station masquerading as a country ", is the only other economy in the world which can produce and does produce the whole spectrum of weapons ranging from small arms to state-of-the-art complex weapon and signal processing systems. No other nation with the exception of the US and Russia, not even China, can produce and procure a cutting edge military technology which has capabilities beyond the reach of everyone else.

    Here, the US establishment, also known as the Neocon interventionist cabal, it seems, has begun to wake up to actual reality, not the fictitious one that the US can allegedly create for itself. Such as the fact that Russia, in a planned and well executed manner, without any unnecessary fanfare, launched a complete upgrade of her naval nuclear deterrent with the state of the art SSBNs of Borey-class (Project 955 and 955A). Three submarines of this type are already afloat while other 5 are in a different stages of completion and this is the program which most of US Russia "analysts" were laughing at 10 years ago. They are not laughing anymore.

    Today it is US Navy which is in dire need for upgrade of its nuclear deterrent, with the youngest of Ohio-class SSBN, SSBN-743 USS Louisiana, being 20 year old. The future replacement of venerable Ohio-class SSBNs, a Columbia-class is slated to go into production in 2021 that is if the R&D will go smoothly. But one has to consider a feature which became defining of US R&D and weapons procurement practices-delays and astronomical costs of US weapons, which, despite constantly being declared "superior", "unrivaled" and "best in the world" are not such at all, especially for the prices they are offered both domestically and abroad. As in the case with above mentioned Columbia-class SSBN, the GAO expects the cost of the whole program to be slightly above 97 billion dollars and that means that the average cost for each sub of this class will be around 8.1 billion dollars. That is much more than the cost of the whole-8 advanced submarines-program of Russia's naval nuclear deterrent.

    And this single example demonstrates well an abyss in fundamental approaches to the war between US and Russia: not only do Russian weapons rival those made in US, they are much-much less expensive and they provide Russia with this proverbial bang for a buck, also known in professional circles which deal with strategy and operation's research as cost/effectiveness ratio. Here, United States is simply no competition to Russia and the gap not only remains, it widens with ever-increasing speed. As Colonel Daniel Davies admitted : " The truth is, the United States is nowhere near as powerful and dominant as many believe ." That brings us to a second issue, of doctrines, operational concepts and weapons themselves.

    A complete inability to see the evolution of Russia's Armed Forces is another failure which not only irritated but continues to irritate US military-political establishment since it proved them completely wrong. Economic "blindness" factored in here very strongly-it was inevitable in a system that looks at the world through a grossly distorted Wall Street monetarist spyglass. Many times it was pointed out that direct linear comparison, dollar-for-dollar, of military budgets is wrong and does not reflect real military, in general, and combat, in particular, potentials in the least.

    While the US Navy was busy spending 420 million dollars per hull on its 26-ship fleet of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), Russian Navy spent two times less per unit on a frigates whose combat capabilities dwarf those of any LCS in any aspect: ASW, Air Defense and Sensors, including the ability to launch supersonic anti-shipping cruise missiles from 600 kilometers and land-attack missiles from 2500. The same goes to much smaller and even much cheaper missile corvettes of Buyan and Karakurt classes which can engage any US Navy's targets, let alone something of LCS caliber.

    Experiences with a technological embarrassment known as F-35 merely confirm the fact that US is being tangled in a bizarre combination of unrealistic doctrinal views, unachievable technological and operational requirements and, in general, a complete failure to follow Sun Tzu's popular dictums of "Know Thy Enemy" and "Know Thy Self". On both counts the US policy makers and doctrine mongers failed miserably.

    As late as two years ago a number of US Russia's military "experts" declared that Russia's ground forces return to division structure was merely "symbolic". Symbolic they were not, with Russia resurrecting both divisions and armies as appropriate operational-tactical and operational-strategic units in order for a large scale combined arms operations. While following closely the evolution of US forces within the framework of initially much touted Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), Russia never changed her focus on the large scale combined arms operations. This came as a nasty surprise on 08/08/2008 when the elements of the supposedly "backward" Russian 58 th Army demolished NATO and Israel trained, and partially equipped, Saakashivili's Army in a matter of 96 hours. Nobody celebrated this victory and Russian Army was subjected, somewhat justifiably, to scathing criticism from many quarters. But it was clear already then that combined arms operations of large army units remain a principle method of the war between peer-to-peer state actors. The issue then, in 2008, was that US didn't consider Russia a peer and even near peer "status" was grudgingly afforded due to Russia's nuclear arsenal.

    Things changed dramatically after the coup in Kiev and junta unleashing a war in Donbass. Brigade and Division size forces there engaged in a full blown combined arms warfare, including head to head armor clashes, employment, especially for LDNR forces, of full C4ISR capabilities and Net-Centric warfare principles. So much so that it created a cultural shock for US military's COIN crowd , which got used to operate in the environment of total domination over its rag-tag lightly armed guerilla formations in Iraq or Afghanistan.

    And it was then, and later, in 2015, demonstrated by Russia's Syria campaign, that the realization of an inability to defeat Russia conventionally began to dawn on many in D.C. establishment. Thus the whole premise of last quarter century "Pax Americana"-alleged conventional military superiority over any adversary-was blown out of the water. American military record of the last quarter century is not impressive for a power which proclaimed herself to be a hyper-power and as having the most powerful military in history. As US Marine Corps Captain Joshua Waddle bitterly admitted :

    "Let us first begin with the fundamental underpinnings of this delusion: our measures of performance and effectiveness in recent wars. It is time that we, as professional military officers, accept the fact that we lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Objective analysis of the U.S. military's effectiveness in these wars can only conclude that we were unable to translate tactical victory into operational and strategic success".

    Delusion, of course, being the fact of US expecting a decisive tactical and technological superiority on the battlefield. Overwhelming empirical evidence tells a completely different story:

    United States military in future conflicts will have to deal, in case of conventional conflict against near-peer, let alone peer, with adversary who will have C4ISR capability either approaching that or on par with that of the US. This adversary will have the ability to counter US military decision cycles (OODA loop) with equal frequency and will be able to produce better tactical, operational and strategic decisions. US real and perceived advantage in electronic means of warfare (EW) will be greatly reduced or completely suppressed by present and future EW means of adversary thus forcing US forces fight under the conditions of partial or complete electronic blindness and with partially or completely suppressed communications and computer networks. US will encounter combat technologies not only on par but often better designed and used , from armor to artillery, to hyper-sonic anti-shipping missiles, than US military ever encountered. Modern air-forces and complex advanced air defense systems will make the main pillar of US military power-its Air Force-much less effective. Last but not least, today the US military will have to deal with a grim reality of its staging areas, rear supply facilities, lines of communications being the target of massive salvos of long-range high subsonic, supersonic and hyper-sonic missiles . The US military has never encountered such paradigm in its history. Moreover, already today, US lower 48 are not immune to a conventional massive missile strike.

    But above all, if to finally name this "peer", which is Russia, and that is who pre-occupies the minds of former and current Pentagon's and National Security brass, in case of conventional conflict Russians will be fighting in defense of their motherland. Here Russia has a track record without equals in human history. Meanwhile, if the current military trends continue, and there are no reasons for them to stop , the window of opportunities for the Neocon cabal to attack Russia conventionally and unleash a preventive war is closing really fast (if it ever existed). That is what drives to a large extent an aggressive military rhetoric and plans, such as National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster's doctrine and war mongering.

    By mid 2020s Russia's rearmament program will be largely complete, which will allow Russia's Armed Forces to field and float a technology which will completely prevent NATO from exercising any illusions about the outcome of any conventional war in Russia's geographic vicinity, including her littoral, and that will mark the end of US designs on Eurasia by military means. It wouldn't matter how many carrier battle groups US will be able to move to forward areas or how many submarines, or how many brigades it will be able to deploy around Russia it will not be able to defeat Russia conventionally. With that, especially when one considers China's growing military potential, comes the end of Pax-Bellum Americana, the one we all hoped for this election cycle.

    At this point, the only locality where the US can hope to "defeat" Russia is in Syria, to reassert, even if for a little while longer, itself as "greatest military in history". But even there the window of opportunities is closing fast since the Russian conventional response in Europe would be devastating.

    As Colonel Pat Lang's blog noted : "If Russia decides to call our bluff and escalate things Trump will likely preside over a public humiliation that will explode America's military delusions of grandeur".

    Today, the United States in general, and her military in particular, still remain a premier geopolitical force, but increasingly they will have to content with the fact that the short-lived era of self-proclaimed superiority in every single facet of modern nation-states' activity is over, if it ever was the case to start with. Will the US "Deep State" unleash a preventive war to prevent Russia from serving US with the pink slip for its position as world's chaos-monger or will it be, rephrasing the magnificent Corelli Barnett: " US Power had quietly vanished amid stupendous events of the 21 st Century, like a ship-of-the-line going down unperceived in the smoke and confusion of battle ". This is the most important question of the 21 st Century so far, but knowing US deep state ignorance of Russia one can never discount its insanity and an acute case of sour grapes.

    Andrei Martyanov has extensive knowledge of naval issues, and has been published in US Naval Institute Proceedings . Using the handle "SmoothieX12," he has written over 130,000 words of comments at The Unz Review , overwhelmingly on Russian and military matters.

    Anonymous , April 17, 2017 at 5:31 am GMT

    • 100 Words Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent 3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.

    Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on the military it will simply go broke.

    Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia is between Mexico and Suriname)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

    Intelligent Dasein , • Website April 17, 2017 at 5:40 am GMT
    • 400 Words I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable consensus among America's Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton, that an all-out war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would, notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.

    I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions. And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out. Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will not be worse than what these people are capable of.

    As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict. Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.

    The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.

    Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.

    • Agree: Amanda , bluedog , Seamus Padraig •
    anon , April 17, 2017 at 5:57 am GMT
    • 100 Words "The US lacks a coherent defensive military doctrine"..

    Which is hardly surprising since its only two bordering countries are very weak and zero military threat. It is also moated by two huge oceans. The USA could spend virtually nothing on its military and (with a sound immigration policy and secure borders) be perfectly safe. But the American political establishment are not content with this. They seek hegemony. It all started with Woodrow Wilson who refused to mind his business and stay out of war in 1917.

    • Agree: Randal •
    Art , April 17, 2017 at 7:30 am GMT
    • 100 Words Russia said it was going to bolster Syria's air defenses.

    If true – what does this mean for Israeli air power over Syria and Lebanon?

    Hezbollah has shown, even with its air force behind it that the IDF is a paper tiger.

    Without its air forces at 100%, Israel is very vulnerable. A war would be very costly. Many Jews want to leave Israel as it is now.

    Peace - Art

    animalogic , April 17, 2017 at 7:48 am GMT
    • 100 Words The US – with its NATO dogs contributing their yaps – has driven Russia & China into an economic & strategic partnership. Such a foreign policy must rate in the top ten of historical blunders. Essentially they have given a very helpful shove towards Eurasian unity - not yet, but forseeable, perhaps probable.
    Russia & China's continuing military advances are just one side of a coin: economic integration & advance is the other.
    If or when the US loses this struggle it need look no futher than classic Greek tragedy for the first causes of its decline: HUBRIS. Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Z-man , April 17, 2017 at 9:27 am GMT
    Hey 'Neocon Cabal' is my phrase!!!!! (wink)
    The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity that scares the Americans and the Jews to death. I hope the Iranians get as many of those SAM's as they need to defend against the Zionist threat! •
    mp , April 17, 2017 at 9:52 am GMT
    • 100 Words It is one thing to let a woman "man" a game console in order to fire a missile, or pilot a killer drone, hundreds (or even thousands) of miles away from the action. But it's another when "boots" hit the ground. I wonder how effective our Americanized, feminized, transgendered, gay friendly, diversified Army and Navy will be when they actually have to storm a beach, somewhere, against a real army–and not some third world outpost. •
    Verymuchalive , April 17, 2017 at 9:57 am GMT
    • 200 Words This is a situation that should never have permitted to arise. The US Federal Deficit is approaching $20 trillion, 2016′s Trade Deficit is $0.5 trillion and the Accumulated Trade Deficit over the last 30 years about $10 trillion. The US is to all intents bankrupt, and bankrupt states quickly lose their empires.
    Of course, America's creditors – China, Japan etc – have rigged the financial sector so that America is still able to afford their goods. Herein, lies the solution. The US dollar is a fiat currency and will collapse sooner or later. It is in Russia and China's interests that they precipitate such a collapse ASAP, even if they themselves suffer negative economic consequences.
    Faced with an imploding economy, and a choice between minimum social welfare measures and a grotesquely expansive military, there can only be one outcome for America. The Neocons will be defanged.
    This form of economic warfare has got to be a lot safer and more effective in achieving its aims than actual warfare. I sincerely hope that the Russians and Chinese have some such plan formulated.
    The era of military confrontation should have been over with the end of the Soviet Union. The Neocons have stolen the Peace, and helped themselves to the Peace Dividend. Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    reiner Tor , • Website April 17, 2017 at 9:58 am GMT
    I think that while it's a grave mistake for Americans to underestimate Russians, it's also a grave mistake for Russians to underestimate Americans.

    Since I cannot claim to be an expert in military technology, I always read such articles with great interest, but never know with how much grain of salt I need to take them – none? a little? a lot? a whole salt mine?

    LondonBob , April 17, 2017 at 10:09 am GMT
    • 100 Words Trump's isolationism and embrace of realpolitik is just a recognition of realities, interestingly this is a viewpoint shared in many European capitals, despite their fulminating over Trump. If Trump isn't co-opted he deserves congratulations for stymieing the traditional imperial overstretch, that is unless recent events in Syria and the Ukraine, perhaps analogous to the Boer War, don't already represent the high points of US power before inevitable decline. Avoiding a WWI type general conflagration will be achievement enough.

    We are both supposed to deride and fear Russia, both can't be true.

    Anatoly Karlin , • Website April 17, 2017 at 10:28 am GMT
    • 400 WordsNEW! Excellent article – and congratulations on your first article here.

    Agree with the general argument here, having said similar things in some of my articles .

    * GDP (PPP) being much more relevant for military comparisons than nominal GDP, let alone stockmarket capitalizations.
    * The Russian military technological gap being smaller than what the Western media tends to posit.
    * The US having predominance in Syria and MENA generally, but with Russia having the capability to successfully respond horizontally in areas where it has the advantage (in Ukraine or even the Baltics).
    * The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit. I think it was Moltke the Younger who said that given a couple of more years Germany would find it much more difficult to fight the Russian Army. That happened to be the date when Russia's military reforms should have come to fruition.
    * You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance in fighting Arabs.

    More skeptical about:

    * " but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can " – Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending), Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending, I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.
    * "The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics industry with the exception of US and China, and then on bulk, not quality, only." Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind in semiconductor process technology (only recently began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the art is now 10nm).
    * It's lagging in the most "futuristic" aspects. It had a huge lag in drones, though it has made that up somewhat with purchases from Israel. Railguns, and associated naval EM systems. In robotics, Boston Dynamics has far more impressive exponents than anything Russia has publicly demonstrated. To be sure this is all pretty irrelevant right now and most likely in 10 years, but not in 20-30 years time.

    NoseytheDuke, April 17, 2017 at 11:06 am GMT
    Having read many, many of SmoothieX12′s knowledgable comments and now this article, I would imagine that his many critics have enough egg on their faces to have their eggs any way they want them, except sunny side up of course.

    Nobody should be surprised by the revelations here nor should they feel disheartened. It is doubtful that Russia has any plans or even thoughts to ever invade or harm the US. The upside could be that the Neocons and the AIPAC crowd might become so disempowered that they will be finally held to account for their many crimes and that would be good for everyone.

    AP , April 17, 2017 at 12:06 pm GMT
    @Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent 3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.

    Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on the military it will simply go broke.

    Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia is between Mexico and Suriname)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Goods and services in Russia are considerably less expensive than in the West (and this includes the cost of producing fighter jets or rockets), so for such purposes GDP PPP is a better indicator than is nominal GDP. In terms of GDP PPP, Russia is of course not on par with the United States but is considerably higher than Mexico. It is in the same neighborhood as places such as Hungary.

    Russia's overall GDP PPP places it slightly below Germany – 6th place in the world:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

    Randal , April 17, 2017 at 12:22 pm GMT
    @anon "The US lacks a coherent defensive military doctrine"..

    Which is hardly surprising since its only two bordering countries are very weak and zero military threat. It is also moated by two huge oceans. The USA could spend virtually nothing on its military and (with a sound immigration policy and secure borders) be perfectly safe. But the American political establishment are not content with this. They seek hegemony. It all started with Woodrow Wilson who refused to mind his business and stay out of war in 1917. I agreed with the main thrust of your comment, but I would just note that I don't agree with the last sentence:

    It all started with Woodrow Wilson who refused to mind his business and stay out of war in 1917.

    The essence of the US was always expansion by military and other means, from its settler colonial origins and the Manifest Destiny to the expansionist wars against Mexico and Spain, the Monroe Doctrine, and colonial expansions into Hawaii, the Philippines and central America, all before Wilson, who admittedly took the opportunity handed to him by the self-destructive warring of the European powers to go for the big one.

    It's just the nature of the beast.

    Lewl42, April 17, 2017 at 12:31 pm GMT
    @Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent 3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.

    Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on the military it will simply go broke.

    Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia is between Mexico and Suriname)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita.

    But the US GDP is of an different structure. Compared it is overblown with pure financial sales and "hedonistic adjustments". More is blown by the culture. In the US much more everyday things relies on money. In case of case they are all worth nothing. Furthermore, if it comes to conflicts than the whole US Infrastructure has to be "revalued", and i doubt that it can withheld some stress tests.

    If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on the military it will simply go broke

    No country that relies on oil ( Russia do not) has made substantial improvements. Normally they are problem states where the problems made by oil are solved by money.

    So from my point of view the opposite is true. Russia has made the big mistake to open itself to the west and was bitten. Now they readjust (with a border to china). Thank's to the US Oligarchs which thrown away that chance for they're primitive Neanderthal tribe thinking.

    reiner Tor, Website April 17, 2017 at 12:33 pm GMT
    @mp It is one thing to let a woman "man" a game console in order to fire a missile, or pilot a killer drone, hundreds (or even thousands) of miles away from the action. But it's another when "boots" hit the ground. I wonder how effective our Americanized, feminized, transgendered, gay friendly, diversified Army and Navy will be when they actually have to storm a beach, somewhere, against a real army--and not some third world outpost. Don't worry, when the going gets tough, suddenly the US military will only send straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality". •
    alexander, April 17, 2017 at 12:36 pm GMT
    Thank you Mr Martyanov, for a highly informative article.

    I am always amazed at the "euphemisms" of our "belligerent war" era, and how they affix themselves, and have affixed themselves, to our mendacious and deceitful behavior.

    Take the idea of a "surge", as was used during the Iraq disaster, as a substitute for the word "escalation" because nobody was comfortable with "escalating the war" once the imminent WMD threat had proven to be phony .so our belligerent elites substituted the word "surge" to ram through funding for the escalation.

    Or lets look at the "euphemisms" of "pre-emptive war" or "preventive war". Do they not function as substitutes for what is , in reality, the greatest crime any nation on earth can commit "War of Aggression"?

    There are other areas too, where we need to take a long, hard look a this " parade of euphemisms" which is constantly inserting itself into the hearts and minds of our citizens .

    For example, lets take a look at the word "propaganda", which is a word that, for the most part, stands on its own ,yet, for arguments sake, does it not function as a "euphemism",( in our ongoing global belligerence) for FRAUD ?

    As we think about these assorted "euphemistic realities" set upon us in our tragic age..we understand the acute distinction between defining something as "war propaganda" versus "WAR FRAUD".

    "War propaganda", however desultory a term, is understood as a legitimate tool within the toolbox of belligerence whereas WAR FRAUD is implicitly understood as a CRIME..which is in need of punishment.

    Have not our euphemistic manipulations , like "preemptive war", or "preventive war",overwhelmed the integrity of our national discourse, and paved the way for heinous murderous behavior which would normally not be tolerated ?,

    Is not their primary purpose to insulate us from our own awareness of the CRIMES we have committed , and will continue to commit ?.

    What a blessing it will be for the whole wide world, once we end this " charade of euphemisms" and start calling things what they truly are.

    Erebus, April 17, 2017 at 12:39 pm GMT
    Yes, thank you for an excellent summation of the situation.

    The owners of the US face an Either/Or moment. Either they abandon their ambitions of Global Hegemony, and retreat to attempt to rule over N. America (with some residual dreams of ruling C. & S. America to sweeten the pot) or they go for broke.

    Unlike Dasein, I have no doubt that any dreams of Global Hegemony will come crashing to ground if any sort of a war breaks out. Putin has made it perfectly plain. Russia will never allow itself to be invaded again. That means something, and what it means is that Russia will take the fight to the enemy when it sees its red lines crossed.

    The continental US can be thrown into socio-political-economic collapse with 3 dozen Kalibrs aimed at critical nodes in the national electrical grid. With no prospect of electricity being revived, the now largely urban population would find itself instantly transported to 1900 with none of the skills and infrastructure that kept a pre-electrified rural society fed and secure. If the subs and/or TU-160s are in place, that's 45-90 minutes without a single nuke fired.

    No mushroom clouds or devastated cities, yet, but the Either/Or moment will become acute indeed. One can hope that we'll be rejoicing that America's owners follow their internationalistic instincts when that moment has passed.

    reiner Tor, Website April 17, 2017 at 12:42 pm GMT
    @Anatoly Karlin Excellent article - and congratulations on your first article here.

    Agree with the general argument here, having said similar things in some of my articles .

    * GDP (PPP) being much more relevant for military comparisons than nominal GDP, let alone stockmarket capitalizations.
    * The Russian military technological gap being smaller than what the Western media tends to posit.
    * The US having predominance in Syria and MENA generally, but with Russia having the capability to successfully respond horizontally in areas where it has the advantage (in Ukraine or even the Baltics).
    * The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit. I think it was Moltke the Younger who said that given a couple of more years Germany would find it much more difficult to fight the Russian Army. That happened to be the date when Russia's military reforms should have come to fruition.
    * You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance in fighting Arabs.

    More skeptical about:

    * " but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can " - Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending), Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending, I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.

    * "The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics industry ... with the exception of US and China, and then on bulk, not quality, only." Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind in semiconductor process technology (only recently began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the art is now 10nm).

    * It's lagging in the most "futuristic" aspects. It had a huge lag in drones, though it has made that up somewhat with purchases from Israel. Railguns, and associated naval EM systems. In robotics, Boston Dynamics has far more impressive exponents than anything Russia has publicly demonstrated. To be sure this is all pretty irrelevant right now and most likely in 10 years, but not in 20-30 years time.

    The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit.

    Czar Nicholas II could've simply told the Serbs to comply with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum. Actually, that was the first reaction of Russian government circles (harboring terrorists was not looked upon very nicely in Russia where the grandfather of the Czar was murdered by similar terrorists), but then they changed their minds.

    In any event, WW1 was a blunder for almost all involved – all countries that participated could've easily stayed out, and with a few exceptions (perhaps Romania and Japan? maybe even China?) none had any significant benefits relative to the enormous costs. Not even the US.

    AP, April 17, 2017 at 12:50 pm GMT
    @Anatoly Karlin Excellent article - and congratulations on your first article here.

    Agree with the general argument here, having said similar things in some of my articles .

    * GDP (PPP) being much more relevant for military comparisons than nominal GDP, let alone stockmarket capitalizations.
    * The Russian military technological gap being smaller than what the Western media tends to posit.
    * The US having predominance in Syria and MENA generally, but with Russia having the capability to successfully respond horizontally in areas where it has the advantage (in Ukraine or even the Baltics).
    * The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit. I think it was Moltke the Younger who said that given a couple of more years Germany would find it much more difficult to fight the Russian Army. That happened to be the date when Russia's military reforms should have come to fruition.
    * You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance in fighting Arabs.

    More skeptical about:

    * " but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can " - Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending), Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending, I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.
    * "The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics industry ... with the exception of US and China, and then on bulk, not quality, only." Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind in semiconductor process technology (only recently began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the art is now 10nm).
    * It's lagging in the most "futuristic" aspects. It had a huge lag in drones, though it has made that up somewhat with purchases from Israel. Railguns, and associated naval EM systems. In robotics, Boston Dynamics has far more impressive exponents than anything Russia has publicly demonstrated. To be sure this is all pretty irrelevant right now and most likely in 10 years, but not in 20-30 years time. I generally agree both with Andrei's article and with your responses. But –

    You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance in fighting Arabs

    Or Russian, on the basis of performance in fighting Georgians or Arabs in Syria. Neither side has really been tested, but a real test would reflect some sort of disaster. US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.

    "but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can" – Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending), Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending, I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment

    But how long would it take? I suspect, at least two decades.

    iffen, April 17, 2017 at 1:07 pm GMT
    This is an interesting and informative article.

    Can you give us your opinion of the F-35 program and to a lesser extent the LCS program? I have no doubt that we get good and reliable information in the US, but just in case, a different perspective on whether the projected capabilities are actually being met by the weapons would be nice to consider.

    Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , • Website April 17, 2017 at 1:14 pm GMT

    @Anatoly Karlin Excellent article - and congratulations on your first article here.

    Agree with the general argument here, having said similar things in some of my articles .

    * GDP (PPP) being much more relevant for military comparisons than nominal GDP, let alone stockmarket capitalizations.
    * The Russian military technological gap being smaller than what the Western media tends to posit.
    * The US having predominance in Syria and MENA generally, but with Russia having the capability to successfully respond horizontally in areas where it has the advantage (in Ukraine or even the Baltics).
    * The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit. I think it was Moltke the Younger who said that given a couple of more years Germany would find it much more difficult to fight the Russian Army. That happened to be the date when Russia's military reforms should have come to fruition.
    * You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance in fighting Arabs.

    More skeptical about:

    * " but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can " - Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending), Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending, I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.
    * "The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics industry ... with the exception of US and China, and then on bulk, not quality, only." Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind in semiconductor process technology (only recently began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the art is now 10nm).
    * It's lagging in the most "futuristic" aspects. It had a huge lag in drones, though it has made that up somewhat with purchases from Israel. Railguns, and associated naval EM systems. In robotics, Boston Dynamics has far more impressive exponents than anything Russia has publicly demonstrated. To be sure this is all pretty irrelevant right now and most likely in 10 years, but not in 20-30 years time.

    Excellent article – and congratulations on your first article here.

    Thank you.

    Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind in semiconductor process technology (only recently began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the art is now 10nm).

    Processing power in military applications is less dependent on 10 or 28 nm, than on mathematics and algorithms. Both architectures are more than sufficient for the whole spectrum of military tasks, be it signal processing or developing firing solutions.

    I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.

    Apples and oranges. Producing a state-of-the-art nuclear sub is on the order of magnitude more complex task than producing even a very good SSK. China now produces very good AIP SSKs of 039A type, she still is not capable to produce a nuke with at least third generation characteristics.

    Railguns, and associated naval EM systems

    Absolutely useless, other than to impress journalists, in combat paradigm where hyper-sonic missiles with ranges of 1000 kilometers begin to rule the day. I think 3M22 Zircon reaching Mach=8 this weekend on trials is by far more impressive and influential on the tactical and even political level than any rail-gun. Zircon is a change in combat paradigm of such a scale that it is even difficult to completely grasp it at this stage. I may elaborate on it in depth at some point of time.

    reiner Tor,Website April 17, 2017 at 1:18 pm GMT
    @AP I generally agree both with Andrei's article and with your responses. But -
    You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance in fighting Arabs
    Or Russian, on the basis of performance in fighting Georgians or Arabs in Syria. Neither side has really been tested, but a real test would reflect some sort of disaster. US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
    "but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can" – Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending), Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending, I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment
    But how long would it take? I suspect, at least two decades.

    US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.

    I think Turkey's military is stronger than either Iran's or North Korea's, so it would be a tougher test for Russia to fight Turkey than for the US to fight North Korea or Iran.

    Avery, April 17, 2017 at 1:24 pm GMT
    @reiner Tor Don't worry, when the going gets tough, suddenly the US military will only send straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality". { suddenly the US military will only send straight white men to die .}

    What happens IF straight white men refuse to go and die?

    [Stunning Evidence that the Left Has Won its War on White Males]

    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/03/stunning_evidence_that_the_left_has_won_its_war_on_white_males__comments.html

    {White males, in large numbers, are simply losing their will to live, and as a result, they are dying so prematurely and in such large numbers that a startling demographic gap has emerged. It is not just the "opioid epidemic" that is killing off white working class males, it is a spiritual crisis, and Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have the numbers to sustain this conclusion.}

    Carlton Meyer, • Website April 17, 2017 at 1:28 pm GMT
    @Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent 3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.

    Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on the military it will simply go broke.

    Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia is between Mexico and Suriname)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Over the years, the Pentagon encouraged Congress to move parts of national security spending out of its budget to the extent that almost half is found outside the DOD. The USA really spends over a trillion dollars a year. For example, nuclear weapons research, testing, procurement, and maintenance is found in the Dept of Energy budget.

    http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/defense-budget/2016/americas-1-trillion-national-security-budget.html

    And as others have noted, GDP is a measure of activity, not prosperity. For example, mortgage refinancing creates lots of GDP, but no real wealth. Hurricanes and arson are good for GDP too!

    Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , • Website April 17, 2017 at 1:45 pm GMT
    @Z-man Hey 'Neocon Cabal' is my phrase!!!!! (wink)
    The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity that scares the Americans and the Jews to death. I hope the Iranians get as many of those SAM's as they need to defend against the Zionist threat!

    The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity

    It is a very complex weapon system, whose actual combat potential is highly classified. From people who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities". Latest modifications of S-300 seem almost tame in comparison and S-300 (PMU, Favorit) is a superb complex. Once S-500 comes online, well–it is a different game altogether from there.

    Randal , April 17, 2017 at 1:48 pm GMT
    An excellent and very useful piece, thanks, even if I don't agree with all of it. Certainly many good and important points are made. I would share most of Anatoly Karlin's points above, both in terms of points of agreement and disagreement.

    But when it comes down to the big picture, I think focussing on technologies and doctrines and even crystallised military capabilities is a mistake if you are trying to see long term trends. Such things come and go, and are always in any event shrouded in uncertainty and ignorance. Nobody except a very few (and they aren't talking) really knows what our own side has, and even they don't really know what the other side has, and neither side really knows how their own systems will perform, or how each side's systems will interact in the crucible of war.

    If we are going to speculate about medium term power trends, then we need to look at the underlying basics, which for military power are economic strength (for which the best, albeit imperfect, measure we have is gdp using ppp) and population. Here are the relevant figures:

    Share of world gdp, ppp:

    US
    2020 14.878%
    2015 15.809%
    2010 16.846%
    2000 20.76%

    China
    2020 19.351%
    2015 17.082%
    2010 13.822%
    2000 7.389%

    Russia
    2020 2.836%
    2015 3.275%
    2010 3.641%
    2000 3.294%

    Source IMF per economywatch.com

    Population (2017):

    China: 1,388,232,693

    US: 326,474,013

    Russia: 143,375,006

    These are the basic sinews of world power, at least as far as fully developed countries are concerned (which Russia and the US certainly are, and China nowadays largely is).

    When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales. That is why China's military capabilities are so far behind their current economic status. It is also why it is all but certain that China's relative military strength will continue to increase dramatically, relative to all rivals, for decades to come.

    To compare with past world power levels, when the US dominated and the Soviet Union was its rival in the mid-C20th (1950), the US accounted for 27.3% of world gdp, and the Soviet Union had around a third of that, with Britain in third place. In 1913 just before the European powers and Britain committed their suicide by world war, the US accounted for 18.9% of world gdp, with the British Empire just behind and Germany and Russia on about half as much each, but the US was in the position of China today with its relative military power lagging behind its growing economic strength (in 1870 the US share of world gdp had been less than half that of the British Empire).

    The trend of the past decades has been for a steady decline of the US's share of world gdp from its 1950 peak of 27% to only 16% today. There's no reason to expect that trend to halt, so it is just a matter of time before the military balance shifts. In the past, this would likely have been uncovered by a catastrophic military defeat at the hands of a rising power, and that might yet happen, but we now live in the dubious shade of the nuclear peace and so things might be different.

    The figures however make it perfectly clear that the only plausible peer rival to the US in the medium term is China, and not Russia, regardless of current military capabilities.

    mushroom, April 17, 2017 at 2:02 pm GMT
    When folks discuss Russia's capabilities they often forget what's blatantly obvious – which is what's not obvious, i.e. what the bear has created and is in it's hidden caves. What happened to that U.S. destroyer in the Black Sea was just a teasing mini-harbinger of this reality!

    So is the genius to create a cavity to eavesdrop, &c If you want to enjoy happy days don't mess with the bear!

    5371, April 17, 2017 at 2:42 pm GMT
    @Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent 3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.

    Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on the military it will simply go broke.

    Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia is between Mexico and Suriname)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Stupid beyond belief. Countries can't go broke doing something, if they control the natural and human resources they need to accomplish it. In addition, you apparently did not read Smoothie's explanation of why just comparing the sums spent is silly. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    anon , April 17, 2017 at 2:45 pm GMT
    @Randal I agreed with the main thrust of your comment, but I would just note that I don't agree with the last sentence:

    It all started with Woodrow Wilson who refused to mind his business and stay out of war in 1917.

    The essence of the US was always expansion by military and other means, from its settler colonial origins and the Manifest Destiny to the expansionist wars against Mexico and Spain, the Monroe Doctrine, and colonial expansions into Hawaii, the Philippines and central America, all before Wilson, who admittedly took the opportunity handed to him by the self-destructive warring of the European powers to go for the big one.

    It's just the nature of the beast. Yes but up until 1898 – the war against Spain – the US actually got something out of its wars. Wars with countries BEYOND the Americas have gained nothing for America. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    5371 , April 17, 2017 at 2:45 pm GMT
    @reiner Tor

    US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
    I think Turkey's military is stronger than either Iran's or North Korea's, so it would be a tougher test for Russia to fight Turkey than for the US to fight North Korea or Iran. Turkey's military has a decent reputation, but I'm not sure that the reputation corresponds with reality any longer. •
    Agent76 , April 17, 2017 at 2:46 pm GMT
    • 100 Words March 19, 2017 Putin Prepares For Invasion of Europe With Massive Cuts to Military Spending

    Russia announces "deepest defense budget cuts since 1990s". Putin must be stopped before it's too late. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world has enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity. Long gone are the days of wasteful military expenditures and no-bid contracts to build airplanes and aircraft carriers that neither fly nor float.

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46686.htm

    Aug 8, 2016 "I want to scare Assad" Mike Morell on Charlie Rose

    Mike Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, discusses the need to put pressure on Syria and Russia. The full conversation airs on PBS on August 8th, 2016.

    Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    ANOSPH , April 17, 2017 at 2:47 pm GMT
    @Andrei Martyanov

    The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity
    It is a very complex weapon system, whose actual combat potential is highly classified. From people who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities". Latest modifications of S-300 seem almost tame in comparison and S-300 (PMU, Favorit) is a superb complex. Once S-500 comes online, well--it is a different game altogether from there. Excellent article. I look forward to many more from you.

    Re: the S400, for those interested, TASS developed an excellent and visually appealing overview on the system in Russian:

    Just keep scrolling down.

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    anon , April 17, 2017 at 2:51 pm GMT
    @reiner Tor

    US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
    I think Turkey's military is stronger than either Iran's or North Korea's, so it would be a tougher test for Russia to fight Turkey than for the US to fight North Korea or Iran. The real point is that Russia and Turkey are almost neighbors while N.K. is about 8,000 miles from the US. In other words the US could ignore Korea. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    5371 , April 17, 2017 at 2:55 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @reiner Tor

    The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit.
    Czar Nicholas II could've simply told the Serbs to comply with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum. Actually, that was the first reaction of Russian government circles (harboring terrorists was not looked upon very nicely in Russia where the grandfather of the Czar was murdered by similar terrorists), but then they changed their minds.

    In any event, WW1 was a blunder for almost all involved - all countries that participated could've easily stayed out, and with a few exceptions (perhaps Romania and Japan? maybe even China?) none had any significant benefits relative to the enormous costs. Not even the US.

    Neither France nor Germany could have stayed out once Russia was in, but then both of them had given their respective allies every encouragement to bring matters to a head. The French had a great increase in self-confidence just in the last two or three years. You are right that Serbia didn't even decide to reject the ultimatum until they heard Russia was already going ahead with pre-mobilisation. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    anon , April 17, 2017 at 2:56 pm GMT
    @reiner Tor Don't worry, when the going gets tough, suddenly the US military will only send straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality". Hopefully at least some of those straight white males will know better. Hopefully.

    Then again people often act contrary to their best interests.

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    Hunsdon , April 17, 2017 at 2:56 pm GMT
    Thank you, sir. Great article. Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , • Website April 17, 2017 at 3:02 pm GMT
    • 300 WordsNEW! @Randal An excellent and very useful piece, thanks, even if I don't agree with all of it. Certainly many good and important points are made. I would share most of Anatoly Karlin's points above, both in terms of points of agreement and disagreement.

    But when it comes down to the big picture, I think focussing on technologies and doctrines and even crystallised military capabilities is a mistake if you are trying to see long term trends. Such things come and go, and are always in any event shrouded in uncertainty and ignorance. Nobody except a very few (and they aren't talking) really knows what our own side has, and even they don't really know what the other side has, and neither side really knows how their own systems will perform, or how each side's systems will interact in the crucible of war.

    If we are going to speculate about medium term power trends, then we need to look at the underlying basics, which for military power are economic strength (for which the best, albeit imperfect, measure we have is gdp using ppp) and population. Here are the relevant figures:

    Share of world gdp, ppp:

    US
    2020 14.878%
    2015 15.809%
    2010 16.846%
    2000 20.76%

    China
    2020 19.351%
    2015 17.082%
    2010 13.822%
    2000 7.389%


    Russia
    2020 2.836%
    2015 3.275%
    2010 3.641%
    2000 3.294%

    Source IMF per economywatch.com

    Population (2017):

    China: 1,388,232,693

    US: 326,474,013

    Russia: 143,375,006

    These are the basic sinews of world power, at least as far as fully developed countries are concerned (which Russia and the US certainly are, and China nowadays largely is).

    When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales. That is why China's military capabilities are so far behind their current economic status. It is also why it is all but certain that China's relative military strength will continue to increase dramatically, relative to all rivals, for decades to come.

    To compare with past world power levels, when the US dominated and the Soviet Union was its rival in the mid-C20th (1950), the US accounted for 27.3% of world gdp, and the Soviet Union had around a third of that, with Britain in third place. In 1913 just before the European powers and Britain committed their suicide by world war, the US accounted for 18.9% of world gdp, with the British Empire just behind and Germany and Russia on about half as much each, but the US was in the position of China today with its relative military power lagging behind its growing economic strength (in 1870 the US share of world gdp had been less than half that of the British Empire).

    The trend of the past decades has been for a steady decline of the US's share of world gdp from its 1950 peak of 27% to only 16% today. There's no reason to expect that trend to halt, so it is just a matter of time before the military balance shifts. In the past, this would likely have been uncovered by a catastrophic military defeat at the hands of a rising power, and that might yet happen, but we now live in the dubious shade of the nuclear peace and so things might be different.

    The figures however make it perfectly clear that the only plausible peer rival to the US in the medium term is China, and not Russia, regardless of current military capabilities.

    When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales.

    Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely from "western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic, contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what they are talking about, even when they have almost unrestricted access to sources. The way US "missed" Russia's military transformation which started in earnest in 2008 and completed its first phase by 2012 (4 years, you are talking about decades) is nothing short of astonishing. Combination of ignorance, hubris and downright stupidity are responsible for all that.

    P.S. No serious analyst takes US GDP as 18 trillion dollars seriously. A huge part of it is a creative bookkeeping and most of it is financial and service sector. Out of very few good things Vitaly Shlykov left after himself was his "The General Staff And Economics", which addressed the issue of actual US military-industrial potential. Then come strategic, operational and technological dimensions. You want to see operational dimension–look no further than Mosul which is still, after 6 months, being "liberated". Comparisons to Aleppo are not only warranted but irresistible. In general, overall power of the state (nation) is not only in its "economic" indices. I use Barnett's definition of national power constantly, remarkably Lavrov's recent speech in the General Staff Academy uses virtually identical definition.

    anon , April 17, 2017 at 3:10 pm GMT
    • 200 Words @reiner Tor

    The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit.
    Czar Nicholas II could've simply told the Serbs to comply with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum. Actually, that was the first reaction of Russian government circles (harboring terrorists was not looked upon very nicely in Russia where the grandfather of the Czar was murdered by similar terrorists), but then they changed their minds.

    In any event, WW1 was a blunder for almost all involved - all countries that participated could've easily stayed out, and with a few exceptions (perhaps Romania and Japan? maybe even China?) none had any significant benefits relative to the enormous costs. Not even the US.

    That is a point I have often tried to make. Had the Tsar just told the Serbs flat out, "You guys are on your own. Comply. Or fight the Central Powers by yourself. We are out of it.",' there would never have been a 'Great' war (WW1). At most the 'war' would have been a minor brawl between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. History would have recorded it as just another Balkan skirmish. It would have been virtually forgotten today. This was the initial assumption of the Kaiser when he issued his 'blank check' of support. The Tsar would have saved millions of lives, including his own and his family too. Just nine years earlier the Tsar had fought and lost a disastrous war with Japan. That defeat led to a revolution that came within a hair of deposing him. He SHOULD have learned his lesson and avoided any future conflict like the plague. Tsar Nicolas was an incredibly stupid man. He deserves far more vilification then the Kaiser does. •
    TG , April 17, 2017 at 3:10 pm GMT
    • 300 Words An interesting article. A few random thoughts.

    1. "Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death" – Otto von Bismarck.

    2. In general I agree and wish that the United States military would be more defensive and waste fewer resources attacking irrelevant nations on the other side of the world. But. It is nevertheless true that "defensive" Russia has been invaded and devastated multiple times, and the United States has not. Perhaps creating chaos on the other side of the world is long-term not quite so ineffective as sitting around waiting for an attack?

    3. The American elites are simply corrupt and insane/don't care about the long-term. At every level – companies taking out massive loans to buy back their stock to boost CEO bonuses, loading up college students with massive unpayable debt so that university administrators can get paid like CEOs, drug prices going through the roof, etc.etc. Military costs will never be as efficient as civilian, war is expensive, but the US has gotten to the point where there is no financial accountability, it's all about the right people grabbing as much money as possible. To make more money you just add another zero at the end of the price tag. At some point the costs will become so inflated and divorced from reality that we will be unable to afford anything And the right people will take their loot and move to New Zealand and wring their hands at how the lazy Americans were not worthy of their brilliant leadership

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    Anonymouse , April 17, 2017 at 3:12 pm GMT
    @Art Russia said it was going to bolster Syria's air defenses.

    If true – what does this mean for Israeli air power over Syria and Lebanon?

    Hezbollah has shown, even with its air force behind it that the IDF is a paper tiger.

    Without its air forces at 100%, Israel is very vulnerable. A war would be very costly. Many Jews want to leave Israel as it is now.

    Peace --- Art You're gloating, Art. Many jews have been leaving Israel for many years for fear of their personal safety. Others remain. Gloating this way reflects a mean spirit. •

    Vendetta , April 17, 2017 at 3:16 pm GMT
    • 200 Words @reiner Tor

    The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit.
    Czar Nicholas II could've simply told the Serbs to comply with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum. Actually, that was the first reaction of Russian government circles (harboring terrorists was not looked upon very nicely in Russia where the grandfather of the Czar was murdered by similar terrorists), but then they changed their minds.

    In any event, WW1 was a blunder for almost all involved - all countries that participated could've easily stayed out, and with a few exceptions (perhaps Romania and Japan? maybe even China?) none had any significant benefits relative to the enormous costs. Not even the US.

    Japan was certainly the greatest beneficiary of the war in economic terms. Their exports ended up tripling to fuel the demand of the wartime European economies and especially to fill in the gap for consumer goods in the East Asian markets whose normal suppliers had redirected their production for the war effort. Shipbuilding in Japan also boomed as a result of wartime demands. Pre-WWI Japan was still importing most of its major warships from Britain; post-WWI Japan was building them all on its own.

    Romania gained a lot in territory but its doubtful whether these gains were worth it in terms of the lives they cost.

    The United States certainly gained in terms of geopolitical power, but that was largely due to the same wartime economic circumstances that had benefited Japan, with the addition of supplanting Britain as the world's leading financial power. These gains, however, would have been won whether or not we'd sent 100,000 of our own to die in France, so their lives ultimately amounted to little more than a sacrifice to Woodrow Wilson's egomaniacal dreams of reshaping the world order into a utopia.

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    5371 , April 17, 2017 at 3:18 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @Anatoly Karlin Excellent article - and congratulations on your first article here.

    Agree with the general argument here, having said similar things in some of my articles .

    * GDP (PPP) being much more relevant for military comparisons than nominal GDP, let alone stockmarket capitalizations.
    * The Russian military technological gap being smaller than what the Western media tends to posit.
    * The US having predominance in Syria and MENA generally, but with Russia having the capability to successfully respond horizontally in areas where it has the advantage (in Ukraine or even the Baltics).
    * The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit. I think it was Moltke the Younger who said that given a couple of more years Germany would find it much more difficult to fight the Russian Army. That happened to be the date when Russia's military reforms should have come to fruition.
    * You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance in fighting Arabs.

    More skeptical about:

    * " but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can " - Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending), Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending, I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment.
    * "The same argumentation goes for Russia's microelectronics industry ... with the exception of US and China, and then on bulk, not quality, only." Russia is a consistent 5-10 years behind in semiconductor process technology (only recently began to produce 28nm, whereas state of the art is now 10nm).
    * It's lagging in the most "futuristic" aspects. It had a huge lag in drones, though it has made that up somewhat with purchases from Israel. Railguns, and associated naval EM systems. In robotics, Boston Dynamics has far more impressive exponents than anything Russia has publicly demonstrated. To be sure this is all pretty irrelevant right now and most likely in 10 years, but not in 20-30 years time. WW1, unlike Barbarossa, didn't start with a German attack on Russia, although in each case the argument was made by some (stronger in retrospective for 1941 than 1914) that Russia would be too strong to take on in a couple of years. The difference is that a number of factors – the ideological conflict, the success of "blitzkrieg", the weak Soviet performance at the start of the Finnish war – created an illusory hope of easy victory for the Germans along with the fear of later defeat. That tipped the balance in favour of attack.
    As I understand it, the claimed regular progress to smaller and smaller chip feature sizes has for some time been a matter of marketing, not reality. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    DannyMarcus , April 17, 2017 at 3:19 pm GMT
    • 200 Words @Intelligent Dasein I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable consensus among America's Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton, that an all-out war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would, notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.

    I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions. And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out. Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will not be worse than what these people are capable of.

    As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict. Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.

    The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.

    Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.

    There is a very important and perhaps most decisive aspect of possible US war with Russia or China, which is completely missing in Andrei Martyanov piece and the related comments.
    Don't you think European NATO countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will loudly resist, when their very well-being and existences is utterly jeopardized by American ambitions for hegemony well beyond its shores?
    I imagine and hope that well before a shooting war breaks out with Russia or China, US' present subservient allies will show enough courage to put the brakes on American designs long before any future global wars involving their vital interest is invoked.
    The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in Seoul, are most likely right now pressing the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy military adventures in North Korea.
    The Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans and the Taiwanese are the best hope of stopping American adventurism because in the final analysis they will refuse to be the sheep marching willingly to the slaughterhouse of a WWIII. •
    Randal , April 17, 2017 at 3:25 pm GMT
    • 200 Words @AP I generally agree both with Andrei's article and with your responses. But -

    You can't say much about US (or Israeli) military effectiveness on the basis of their performance in fighting Arabs
    Or Russian, on the basis of performance in fighting Georgians or Arabs in Syria. Neither side has really been tested, but a real test would reflect some sort of disaster. US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.

    "but Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet, Russia can" – Russia spends 5% of its GDP on the military (esp. once adjusted for hidden spending), Germany just a bit more than 1%. If Germany was to effectively quadruple its real military spending, I have no doubt that the world's second most complex economy would be up to the task. I am sure it will also be able to build world-class nuclear subs (it already has excellent AIP ones) and a global positioning system with that kind of investment
    But how long would it take? I suspect, at least two decades.

    US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.

    Russia would crush Turkey very quickly in a straight one on one conflict, though it would struggle to physically occupy it. The only reason Turkey would have any capability to resist at all is that Turkey has full US backing, both in terms of the NATO alliance and in terms of the military systems and capabilities it fields. Russia's capabilities, in contrast, are wholly indigenous. Individually, the two countries are not remotely in the same class, militarily.

    Likewise for the US versus Iran or NK. The problem would likely not be in defeating the military forces themselves, but in occupying and holding ground longer term, and dealing with problems caused by horizontal escalation.

    These are issues not really of military capabilities, but rather of national political will to apply those capabilities ruthlessly and to inflict and to take the losses required for total victory.

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    gwynedd1 , April 17, 2017 at 3:30 pm GMT
    The US is not worried about Russia. They were worried about the EU and Russia with economic links to China. Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Vendetta , April 17, 2017 at 3:34 pm GMT
    • 200 Words @5371 Turkey's military has a decent reputation, but I'm not sure that the reputation corresponds with reality any longer. Their recent mishaps in Syria certainly cast some doubts on their formidable reputation. However I would hesitate to go so far as to say that Turkey has become a paper tiger.

    I don't know if there's a more professional terminology for this, but I think there is a difference between what you might call weakness the surface level and weakness at the core.

    The Winter War, for example, was a humiliating display of weakness from the Red Army – one which the Germans took (mistakenly) as a sign of weakness at the core.

    America in the years before it became a permanently mobilized state was also prone to this sort of happening in the initial stages of its wars – see the rout at Kasserine Pass in World War II or the initial defeats it suffered to the North Koreans in 1950. The British made "our Italians" jokes after Kasserine, but these had a short shelf life as US performance picked up very quickly afterwards.

    The state of the Turkish military right now seems more likely to be one of surface-level weakness (which would be tempered by exposure to battle) than of core-level weakness (which would be exacerbated by it).

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    Anon , April 17, 2017 at 3:43 pm GMT
    http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/this-cold-war-is-even-crazier-than-the-last/19689#.WPTiK9QrK4Q Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Astuteobservor II , April 17, 2017 at 3:45 pm GMT
    excellent first article on unz. looking forward to more. Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    inertial , April 17, 2017 at 3:54 pm GMT
    • 100 Words A good informative article. Unfortunately it suffers from the typical poor understanding of the economic and financial realities.

    No, "Wall Street economic indices" are not meaningless. And you do have to care about the Russian stock market. Its small size relative to the economy is a cause for concern. In general, Russian financial system is too weak, too small and shallow for an economy of this size. This is not surprising, as it is very new. Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.

    Incidentally, Putin and his government seem to understand these things, even if many others don't.

    • Agree: Kiza •
    Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 4:10 pm GMT
    • 100 Words

    The Winter War, for example, was a humiliating display of weakness from the Red Army – one which the Germans took (mistakenly) as a sign of weakness at the core.

    Mannerheim (Finish Commander in Chief)
    was stressing how fast Soviet Army learned from their experience, trying to counter claim H. Göring who claimed Winter War as biggest military bluf in history.

    Gen. Waldemar Erfuth
    Wermacht Army Attache in Finish General Staff
    from book: Fighting in Hell – German Ordeal on Eastern Front

    reiner Tor , • Website April 17, 2017 at 4:55 pm GMT
    @Ondrej

    The Winter War, for example, was a humiliating display of weakness from the Red Army – one which the Germans took (mistakenly) as a sign of weakness at the core.
    Mannerheim (Finish Commander in Chief)
    was stressing how fast Soviet Army learned from their experience, trying to counter claim H. Göring who claimed Winter War as biggest military bluf in history.

    Gen. Waldemar Erfuth
    Wermacht Army Attache in Finish General Staff
    from book: Fighting in Hell - German Ordeal on Eastern Front

    Mannerheim (Finish Commander in Chief) was stressing how fast Soviet Army learned from their experience, trying to counter claim H. Göring who claimed Winter War as biggest military bluf in history.

    When was it?

    Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 5:01 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @inertial A good informative article. Unfortunately it suffers from the typical poor understanding of the economic and financial realities.

    No, "Wall Street economic indices" are not meaningless. And you do have to care about the Russian stock market. Its small size relative to the economy is a cause for concern. In general, Russian financial system is too weak, too small and shallow for an economy of this size. This is not surprising, as it is very new. Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.

    Incidentally, Putin and his government seem to understand these things, even if many others don't.

    No, "Wall Street economic indices" are not meaningless. And you do have to care about the Russian stock market.

    Try to make following thought experiment, what would happen with SP100 financial valuation of shares GN a Lockheed in case of conflict and what would be impact on with Suchoi and MIG shares and how this would impact real economy instead of economics?

    Luckily there is still plenty of people in Russian companies who were educated in economy instead of economics..

    Incidentally, Putin and his government seem to understand these things, even if many others don't.

    From seeing some discussions in Russian TV channels, I can say people in Russia are in fact disgusted with part of government still trying to apply Western type of economics..

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    Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 5:28 pm GMT
    @reiner Tor

    Mannerheim (Finish Commander in Chief) was stressing how fast Soviet Army learned from their experience, trying to counter claim H. Göring who claimed Winter War as biggest military bluf in history.
    When was it? according to book 4. March 1943

    Mannerheim in front of German General as reaction to some public speech of H. Göring before.

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    bluedog , April 17, 2017 at 5:36 pm GMT
    @Andrei Martyanov

    When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales.
    Russia is a very special case here--this is one of the points which is missed completely from "western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic, contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what they are talking about, even when they have almost unrestricted access to sources. The way US "missed" Russia's military transformation which started in earnest in 2008 and completed its first phase by 2012 (4 years, you are talking about decades) is nothing short of astonishing. Combination of ignorance, hubris and downright stupidity are responsible for all that.

    P.S. No serious analyst takes US GDP as 18 trillion dollars seriously. A huge part of it is a creative bookkeeping and most of it is financial and service sector. Out of very few good things Vitaly Shlykov left after himself was his "The General Staff And Economics", which addressed the issue of actual US military-industrial potential. Then come strategic, operational and technological dimensions. You want to see operational dimension--look no further than Mosul which is still, after 6 months, being "liberated". Comparisons to Aleppo are not only warranted but irresistible. In general, overall power of the state (nation) is not only in its "economic" indices. I use Barnett's definition of national power constantly, remarkably Lavrov's recent speech in the General Staff Academy uses virtually identical definition. Very good article and David Stockman says the same thing on our GDP that its do to very creative accounting much like our BLS report . Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Kiza , April 17, 2017 at 6:18 pm GMT
    • 600 Words Congratulations on the article Andrei. As another commenter said – I do not agree with everything in the article, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

    I also fully support your answers to Karlin, he often barks up a wrong tree.

    Now the main issue with your article that I have is the same old issue that I always had with your comments. You start from the right premise and then you blow it up beyond recognition. In other words, you are too optimistic. For example, it is a very good point that the Russian and US perceptions of war are totally different: for a Russian the war is a fight for survival as an individual and as a nation, for a US person war and killing are just another day in the office. Then you start counting weapons and comparing weapons technology specifications and always conclude that Russian is better and cheaper, even when there is no direct comparison of effectiveness in battle.

    In other words, if your top level goal is to counter the ubiquitous US MIC propaganda with the Russian MIC propaganda, then you are doing a good job. But never forget the Motke's dictum: no wonderful battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I accept that the mercenairy armies, like the US one, are not very good when dying starts, they totally rely on military superiority which does not exist against Russia and soon will not exist against China. But the new generations of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military has not been tested in a recent conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.

    The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies which it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus it lands in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages in an apparently serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put it mildly – Russia has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers are copy artists, China being the master copier.

    Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate some underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these wonderful military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance? Lower Russian wages and US MIC's extraordinary greed still cannot fully explain such huge difference. Is it some amazing corruption-free project management skills inherited from Soviet Union?

    As someone who has had experience with the weaponry of both sides, I have always been a fan of Russian engineering simplicity and reliability in design. Most people are familiar with this design philosophy through experience with Kalashnikov rifle, but this is a general design principle of all Russian weapons, even the sophisticated ones (probably even S500). Admittedly, the Chinese apply a similar principle in their engineering, although not at the same level – I remember well the shock of my Western colleagues when they realised that the Chinese Long March rockets utilised plywood where they utilised (at that time) very expensive carbon fibre and other composites.

    Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , • Website April 17, 2017 at 6:19 pm GMT
    • 300 WordsNEW! @inertial A good informative article. Unfortunately it suffers from the typical poor understanding of the economic and financial realities.

    No, "Wall Street economic indices" are not meaningless. And you do have to care about the Russian stock market. Its small size relative to the economy is a cause for concern. In general, Russian financial system is too weak, too small and shallow for an economy of this size. This is not surprising, as it is very new. Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.

    Incidentally, Putin and his government seem to understand these things, even if many others don't.

    Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.

    So, Facebook's capitalization of 400 billion, that is for company which produces nothing of real value (in fact, is detrimental to mental health of the society) is a true size of economy.

    Mind you–this is for a collection of several buildings, servers and about 200-300 pages of code in whatever they wrote it (C++, C whatever–make your pick).

    Meanwhile, Gazprom, which is an energy monster is about 10 times less.

    https://ycharts.com/companies/OGZPY/market_cap

    Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist. Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products–ask yourself a question whose "capitalization" is more important for economy–of useless Facebook or of the corporation which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual–a collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services. i am not talking, of course, about stock buybacks. As I already stated, nobody of any serious expertise in actual things that matter, treats this whole US "economic" data seriously. The problem here is that many in US establishment do and that is a clear and present danger to both US and world at large because constant and grotesque overestimation of own capabilities becomes a matter of policy, not a one-off accident.

    Jonathan Revusky , • Website April 17, 2017 at 6:40 pm GMT
    • 200 Words I think this is a good article. I say "I think so" because the truth of the matter is that I lack the detailed domain knowledge to be able to evaluate it very well.

    The comment I would make about it (which is not a critique of the article per se ) is that Russia (or the USSR speaking more precisely) did suffer a horrendous defeat from which it is still recovering - I mean, in the Cold War. However, that defeat was not military in nature. It was entirely political/psychological/ideological. (N.B. The complete neocon/zionist takeover of the U.S. and other Western countries also occurred without firing a shot, no?)

    Anyway, no grand battles occurred like Stalingrad or Kursk, yet somehow the USSR was as defeated a nation in the 1990′s as Germany was in 1945! In my view, the AngloZionists would be more interested in repeating that feat, than actually getting into a real hot war. That, also, would be their template for defeating China, as opposed to getting into some land war in Asia.

    I assume the above, because I have the tendency to think they are crazy, but not that crazy. But that said, I don't know for sure either. Maybe they really are that crazy and I just don't want to believe it. After all, it's really terrifying to think they are insane on that level.

    Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    carlos22 , April 17, 2017 at 6:46 pm GMT
    • 100 Words Russia is in the position to be king maker out of China & US.

    Think about it Russia collapses & disintergrates, Siberia goes to China, which with all this land mass, energy reserves and population overtakes the US to become leading superpower. Ask yourself is that what the US wants?

    Or

    China betrays Russia, Russia then goes on to be US bitch, allows US missile defence to encircle China with US bases. China looses a key friend at the UN, when the SHTF in Tibet, Tywan or Hong Kong China finds its self alone. Is that what China wants?

    Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 6:52 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @Kiza Congratulations on the article Andrei. As another commenter said - I do not agree with everything in the article, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

    I also fully support your answers to Karlin, he often barks up a wrong tree.

    Now the main issue with your article that I have is the same old issue that I always had with your comments. You start from the right premise and then you blow it up beyond recognition. In other words, you are too optimistic. For example, it is a very good point that the Russian and US perceptions of war are totally different: for a Russian the war is a fight for survival as an individual and as a nation, for a US person war and killing are just another day in the office. Then you start counting weapons and comparing weapons technology specifications and always conclude that Russian is better and cheaper, even when there is no direct comparison of effectiveness in battle.

    In other words, if your top level goal is to counter the ubiquitous US MIC propaganda with the Russian MIC propaganda, then you are doing a good job. But never forget the Motke's dictum: no wonderful battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I accept that the mercenairy armies, like the US one, are not very good when dying starts, they totally rely on military superiority which does not exist against Russia and soon will not exist against China. But the new generations of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military has not been tested in a recent conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.

    The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies which it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus it lands in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages in an apparently serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put it mildly - Russia has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers are copy artists, China being the master copier.

    Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate some underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these wonderful military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance? Lower Russian wages and US MIC's extraordinary greed still cannot fully explain such huge difference. Is it some amazing corruption-free project management skills inherited from Soviet Union?

    As someone who has had experience with the weaponry of both sides, I have always been a fan of Russian engineering simplicity and reliability in design. Most people are familiar with this design philosophy through experience with Kalashnikov rifle, but this is a general design principle of all Russian weapons, even the sophisticated ones (probably even S500). Admittedly, the Chinese apply a similar principle in their engineering, although not at the same level - I remember well the shock of my Western colleagues when they realised that the Chinese Long March rockets utilised plywood where they utilised (at that time) very expensive carbon fibre and other composites.

    Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more.

    Superb and efficient educational system of USSR. Last generation is in their forties.
    Rules –
    1. push what you can into children when they young and train them properly
    2. Go fast, finish University in 22 – go to production and learn from olders
    3. Go trough Army service (only when you are already extremely good you are exempt)

    This gives you head start, you are conditioned to design things that work.

    Problem with many current – not only military products, that their designers often do not have idea how they are used..

    You simply can not take classes of ergonomic design and design even hammer correctly as it is often case with different innovative gadgets nowadays:-)

    Kiza , April 17, 2017 at 7:07 pm GMT
    • 300 Words @reiner Tor

    The WW1 preemptive war argument does have a lot of merit.
    Czar Nicholas II could've simply told the Serbs to comply with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum. Actually, that was the first reaction of Russian government circles (harboring terrorists was not looked upon very nicely in Russia where the grandfather of the Czar was murdered by similar terrorists), but then they changed their minds.

    In any event, WW1 was a blunder for almost all involved - all countries that participated could've easily stayed out, and with a few exceptions (perhaps Romania and Japan? maybe even China?) none had any significant benefits relative to the enormous costs. Not even the US.

    You and your responders are obviously not Russian, because you exhibit a terribly superficial knowledge of the pre WW1 Europe and Russia. You must have learned your history in US or British schools.

    The situation in Europe in 1914 was much, much more complicated than your simple minds could comprehend. The key factor was the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire and the power vacuum that this has created in the Balkans. This has encouraged all European powers of the time, from U.K., through Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire, all the way to Russia to have designs for the area. Russia actually cultivated most Serbian nationalistic groups to counter the influence of U.K. and Germany/Austria in the Balkans. Therefore, Russia just did not let its Balkan proxies, the Serbs, down when attacked by Austro-Hungary, but it was involved in what was happening in the Balkans even before the war started. Yes, there was internal opposition in Russia against getting involved in the Balkans, but the non-interventionists lost. The U.K. was trying to prop up the dying Turkish Empire to remain an enemy of Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary were trying to acquire as much new territory and population in the Balkans as possible. Russia just could not allow the Catholic Austro-Hungary to strengthen further after the annexation of Bosnia in 1908. France was on the same side. And so on.

    Is it not amazing how most of Western history of WW1 starts with Archduke's assassination in Sarajevo, instead of power vacuum in Southeast Europe and aggressive imperial designs at the turn of the century? It is typical Western bullshit history. Nobody had evil intentions, everybody was just dragged into WW1.

    You can observe that today's Russians are blaming the Germans for sending the half-Jewish Lenin with a trainload of gold to foment Bolshevik (Jewish) revolution in Russia and cause Tsar family's deaths, instead of the Serbs who were defending themselves against an expansionist Catholic Empire. It is mainly the British and US "historians", and their Russian liberals who are blaming the Serbs for WW1, the same old, same old Anglo-Zionist bull.

    Sergey Krieger , April 17, 2017 at 7:35 pm GMT
    @Randal An excellent and very useful piece, thanks, even if I don't agree with all of it. Certainly many good and important points are made. I would share most of Anatoly Karlin's points above, both in terms of points of agreement and disagreement.

    But when it comes down to the big picture, I think focussing on technologies and doctrines and even crystallised military capabilities is a mistake if you are trying to see long term trends. Such things come and go, and are always in any event shrouded in uncertainty and ignorance. Nobody except a very few (and they aren't talking) really knows what our own side has, and even they don't really know what the other side has, and neither side really knows how their own systems will perform, or how each side's systems will interact in the crucible of war.

    If we are going to speculate about medium term power trends, then we need to look at the underlying basics, which for military power are economic strength (for which the best, albeit imperfect, measure we have is gdp using ppp) and population. Here are the relevant figures:

    Share of world gdp, ppp:

    US
    2020 14.878%
    2015 15.809%
    2010 16.846%
    2000 20.76%

    China
    2020 19.351%
    2015 17.082%
    2010 13.822%
    2000 7.389%


    Russia
    2020 2.836%
    2015 3.275%
    2010 3.641%
    2000 3.294%

    Source IMF per economywatch.com

    Population (2017):

    China: 1,388,232,693

    US: 326,474,013

    Russia: 143,375,006

    These are the basic sinews of world power, at least as far as fully developed countries are concerned (which Russia and the US certainly are, and China nowadays largely is).

    When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales. That is why China's military capabilities are so far behind their current economic status. It is also why it is all but certain that China's relative military strength will continue to increase dramatically, relative to all rivals, for decades to come.

    To compare with past world power levels, when the US dominated and the Soviet Union was its rival in the mid-C20th (1950), the US accounted for 27.3% of world gdp, and the Soviet Union had around a third of that, with Britain in third place. In 1913 just before the European powers and Britain committed their suicide by world war, the US accounted for 18.9% of world gdp, with the British Empire just behind and Germany and Russia on about half as much each, but the US was in the position of China today with its relative military power lagging behind its growing economic strength (in 1870 the US share of world gdp had been less than half that of the British Empire).

    The trend of the past decades has been for a steady decline of the US's share of world gdp from its 1950 peak of 27% to only 16% today. There's no reason to expect that trend to halt, so it is just a matter of time before the military balance shifts. In the past, this would likely have been uncovered by a catastrophic military defeat at the hands of a rising power, and that might yet happen, but we now live in the dubious shade of the nuclear peace and so things might be different.

    The figures however make it perfectly clear that the only plausible peer rival to the US in the medium term is China, and not Russia, regardless of current military capabilities. Randal, what do you think happens if neutron star approaches red giant? US GDP contains a lot of things that are irrelevant to fighting wars. Is US going to hit Russia with nice shoes, highly apprised real estate or S&P500? Creative accounting is another thing that makes US GDP larger than it really is. •

    AP , April 17, 2017 at 7:50 pm GMT
    @Andrei Martyanov

    Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
    So, Facebook's capitalization of 400 billion, that is for company which produces nothing of real value (in fact, is detrimental to mental health of the society) is a true size of economy.

    https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap

    Mind you--this is for a collection of several buildings, servers and about 200-300 pages of code in whatever they wrote it (C++, C whatever--make your pick).

    Meanwhile, Gazprom, which is an energy monster is about...10 times less.

    https://ycharts.com/companies/OGZPY/market_cap

    Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist. Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products--ask yourself a question whose "capitalization" is more important for economy--of useless Facebook or of the corporation which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual--a collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services. i am not talking, of course, about stock buybacks. As I already stated, nobody of any serious expertise in actual things that matter, treats this whole US "economic" data seriously. The problem here is that many in US establishment do and that is a clear and present danger to both US and world at large because constant and grotesque overestimation of own capabilities becomes a matter of policy, not a one-off accident.

    While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion.

    Indeed. And Tesla is now "worth" more than Ford, on paper:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/business/tesla-ford-general-motors-stock-market.html?_r=0

    • Agree: Andrei Martyanov •
    syd.bgd , April 17, 2017 at 7:53 pm GMT
    Great article. Thanks. Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Joe Wong , April 17, 2017 at 7:56 pm GMT
    • 200 Words @Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent 3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.

    Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on the military it will simply go broke.

    Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia is between Mexico and Suriname)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures "Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita." this is very funny, how about the 20 trillions of US national debt and it is skyrocketing fast? If you only count asset without counting liability US maybe in the top 10 GDP per capita, but if you count net asset the US is in the negative GDP per capita, a broke nation. Perhaps it is American Exceptionalism logic, claiming credit where credit is not due, living in a world detached from reality.

    "If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on the military it will simply go broke." this is even funnier, Russian does not use USD in Russia, nor Russian government pay its MIC in USD, meanwhile Russian Central Bank can print Ruble thru the thin air just like the Fed, why does oil price have any relationship with Russian internal spending? Another example of "completely triumphalist and detached from Russia's economic realities" which is defined by meaningless Wall Street economic indices and snakeoil economic theories and rhetoric taught in the western universities.

    Art , April 17, 2017 at 8:02 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @Anonymouse You're gloating, Art. Many jews have been leaving Israel for many years for fear of their personal safety. Others remain. Gloating this way reflects a mean spirit. You're gloating, Art. Many jews have been leaving Israel for many years for fear of their personal safety. Others remain. Gloating this way reflects a mean spirit.

    Pointing out the evils of Zionist Israel is not mean – it is crucial.

    Exposing Judaism and Zionism for their backward ways is the only path to a peaceful just world.

    The Kushner White House is now pushing us to war in N Korea.

    Congress must stop this – but they cannot because Jews control them also.

    Peace - Art

    p.s. Good god – Trump is sending two more carrier groups to Korea!

    Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , • Website April 17, 2017 at 8:15 pm GMT
    • 100 WordsNEW! @AP

    While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion.
    Indeed. And Tesla is now "worth" more than Ford, on paper:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/business/tesla-ford-general-motors-stock-market.html?_r=0

    Indeed. And Tesla is now "worth" more than Ford, on paper:

    Faced with the choice between most expensive Tesla and new F-150 truck for free–I would choose Tesla, sell it back to dealership or would find some moron from Redmond/Kirkland area and sell Tesla to him and then would go buy F-150 and would use the rest of the money for other useful purposes, such as donating to animal shelter or will help some family in need. I certainly would make sure that I have the access to a bottle or two of really good bourbon to celebrate my new F-150. I wish, though, that Subaru made trucks.

    • Agree: AP Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Wally , April 17, 2017 at 8:17 pm GMT
    • 100 Words I seriously doubt the author's statement:

    Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet

    Seriously? The technological & industrial genius of Germany could not produce it's own jet fighter?
    After all, they designed & built the world's first fighter jet, the ME 262, 'The Swallow'.

    Laughable.

    Granted, AFAIK, it's current fighters are 'collaborative' with other Europeans.
    IOW, Germany did the heavy lifting.

    Diversity Heretic , April 17, 2017 at 8:25 pm GMT
    @anon "The US lacks a coherent defensive military doctrine"..

    Which is hardly surprising since its only two bordering countries are very weak and zero military threat. It is also moated by two huge oceans. The USA could spend virtually nothing on its military and (with a sound immigration policy and secure borders) be perfectly safe. But the American political establishment are not content with this. They seek hegemony. It all started with Woodrow Wilson who refused to mind his business and stay out of war in 1917. The Spanish-American War was completely unnecessary for U.S. security. The acquisition of the Phillipines put us on a collision course with Japan and even today we suffer the burden of strategically useless economic parasite of Puerto Rico. •

    Art , April 17, 2017 at 8:31 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @DannyMarcus There is a very important and perhaps most decisive aspect of possible US war with Russia or China, which is completely missing in Andrei Martyanov piece and the related comments.
    Don't you think European NATO countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will loudly resist, when their very well-being and existences is utterly jeopardized by American ambitions for hegemony well beyond its shores?
    I imagine and hope that well before a shooting war breaks out with Russia or China, US' present subservient allies will show enough courage to put the brakes on American designs long before any future global wars involving their vital interest is invoked.
    The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in Seoul, are most likely right now pressing the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy military adventures in North Korea.
    The Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans and the Taiwanese are the best hope of stopping American adventurism because in the final analysis they will refuse to be the sheep marching willingly to the slaughterhouse of a WWIII. The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in Seoul, are most likely right now pressing the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy military adventures in North Korea.

    Too late – Trump is sending in two more carrier groups.

    US Deploys Two More Aircraft Carriers Toward Korean Peninsula: Yonhap

    According to a report by South Korea's primary news outlet, Yonhap, the Pentagon has directed a total of three US aircraft carriers toward the Korean Peninsula, citing a South Korean government source.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-17/us-deploys-two-more-aircraft-carriers-toward-korean-peninsula-yonhap

    This is insane – another preventive war like Iraq – but on China and Russia's doorstep.

    Congress must stop this!

    Peace - Art

    Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , • Website April 17, 2017 at 8:35 pm GMT
    • 400 WordsNEW! @Kiza Congratulations on the article Andrei. As another commenter said - I do not agree with everything in the article, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

    I also fully support your answers to Karlin, he often barks up a wrong tree.

    Now the main issue with your article that I have is the same old issue that I always had with your comments. You start from the right premise and then you blow it up beyond recognition. In other words, you are too optimistic. For example, it is a very good point that the Russian and US perceptions of war are totally different: for a Russian the war is a fight for survival as an individual and as a nation, for a US person war and killing are just another day in the office. Then you start counting weapons and comparing weapons technology specifications and always conclude that Russian is better and cheaper, even when there is no direct comparison of effectiveness in battle.

    In other words, if your top level goal is to counter the ubiquitous US MIC propaganda with the Russian MIC propaganda, then you are doing a good job. But never forget the Motke's dictum: no wonderful battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I accept that the mercenairy armies, like the US one, are not very good when dying starts, they totally rely on military superiority which does not exist against Russia and soon will not exist against China. But the new generations of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military has not been tested in a recent conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.

    The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies which it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus it lands in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages in an apparently serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put it mildly - Russia has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers are copy artists, China being the master copier.

    Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate some underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these wonderful military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance? Lower Russian wages and US MIC's extraordinary greed still cannot fully explain such huge difference. Is it some amazing corruption-free project management skills inherited from Soviet Union?

    As someone who has had experience with the weaponry of both sides, I have always been a fan of Russian engineering simplicity and reliability in design. Most people are familiar with this design philosophy through experience with Kalashnikov rifle, but this is a general design principle of all Russian weapons, even the sophisticated ones (probably even S500). Admittedly, the Chinese apply a similar principle in their engineering, although not at the same level - I remember well the shock of my Western colleagues when they realised that the Chinese Long March rockets utilised plywood where they utilised (at that time) very expensive carbon fibre and other composites.

    But the new generations of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military has not been tested in a recent conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.

    Generally legitimate point but it will require a very expanded answer. I will, at some point, elaborate on it–there are some serious nuances.

    The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies which it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus it lands in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages in an apparently serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put it mildly – Russia has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers are copy artists, China being the master copier.

    Largely true. However, in serious signal processing systems such as radar, sonar, combat control (management) systems etc. the main secret are mathematics (algorithms). Just to give you an example, it was impossible for China to copy any software from any Russian-made systems. As an example, Shtil Air Defense complexes which went to China after she bought Project 956 destroyers in 1990s are defended such way that any attempt to tamper with their (and other systems') brains results in a clean slate. It is true today also, actually, especially today. China now is receiving full Russian "version" of SU-35 and of S-400, they still will not be able to copy it. Mimic somewhat? Yes. After all they do have their own S-300 knock offs. Copy? No. They will try, of course but, say, SU-35 engine and avionics is still beyond their reach.

    Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate some underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these wonderful military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance?

    I believe Ondrej made a good, albeit partial case, for you in his response. Let me put it this way–viewing Russia's public schools' 8-9th grade books on math and physics (and chemistry) may create a state of shock in many, even elite, US schools and not among students only I know.

    Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , • Website April 17, 2017 at 8:36 pm GMT
    NEW! @Ondrej

    Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more.
    Superb and efficient educational system of USSR. Last generation is in their forties.
    Rules -
    1. push what you can into children when they young and train them properly
    2. Go fast, finish University in 22 - go to production and learn from olders
    3. Go trough Army service (only when you are already extremely good you are exempt)

    This gives you head start, you are conditioned to design things that work.

    Problem with many current - not only military products, that their designers often do not have idea how they are used..

    You simply can not take classes of ergonomic design and design even hammer correctly as it is often case with different innovative gadgets nowadays:-) Some very good points you made. •

    Sam Shama , April 17, 2017 at 8:39 pm GMT
    • 400 Words @Andrei Martyanov

    When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales.
    Russia is a very special case here--this is one of the points which is missed completely from "western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic, contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what they are talking about, even when they have almost unrestricted access to sources. The way US "missed" Russia's military transformation which started in earnest in 2008 and completed its first phase by 2012 (4 years, you are talking about decades) is nothing short of astonishing. Combination of ignorance, hubris and downright stupidity are responsible for all that.

    P.S. No serious analyst takes US GDP as 18 trillion dollars seriously. A huge part of it is a creative bookkeeping and most of it is financial and service sector. Out of very few good things Vitaly Shlykov left after himself was his "The General Staff And Economics", which addressed the issue of actual US military-industrial potential. Then come strategic, operational and technological dimensions. You want to see operational dimension--look no further than Mosul which is still, after 6 months, being "liberated". Comparisons to Aleppo are not only warranted but irresistible. In general, overall power of the state (nation) is not only in its "economic" indices. I use Barnett's definition of national power constantly, remarkably Lavrov's recent speech in the General Staff Academy uses virtually identical definition.

    Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely from "western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic, contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what they are talking about,

    Hey Smoothie,
    Loved this informative piece.

    On the military aspect, I'll take your assessments without any salt at all, for I do believe the U.S. has been tracking a technologically shallower but cost wise steeper trajectory.

    I think Russians are a highly gifted lot, able to do wonders mostly on account of their deep science & mathematics bench.

    Yet I also think Randal is mostly right about economic strength playing a vital, even decisive role in overall strength in the longer run. There are no countries which can match the U.S. in the department of raw economic endowments.

    China comes closest to exceeding the overall size of the U.S.economy, based on a combination of sheer population, relentless mercantilism combined with extractive labour policies over the last five decades or more. All of which has also propelled them to achieve technological capabilities not far behind many western European states.

    The U.S is eminently capable of really, I mean really increasing military spending without breaking a sweat. But that is not the goal in itself. It needs to come down hard on MIC waste, which if done successfully can change things around very quickly. Imagine a U.S. spending an efficient 7-10% of GDP on this, in which case I see its competitors doing little else besides gearing their entire economies to armaments, and then failing to keep up. I am confident if such a race ensued there'd be a global run to purchase U.S. assets, even as capital controls are put into action.

    The troubles of the U.S have stemmed from a paucity of far-sighted leaders of late. I am still hoping Mr Trump comes through, and there are signs he will. We should be establishing a truly friendly relationship with Russia and focusing our resources on joint goals of a far loftier nature than besting each other on wartime toys.

    AtomAnt , April 17, 2017 at 8:43 pm GMT
    @inertial A good informative article. Unfortunately it suffers from the typical poor understanding of the economic and financial realities.

    No, "Wall Street economic indices" are not meaningless. And you do have to care about the Russian stock market. Its small size relative to the economy is a cause for concern. In general, Russian financial system is too weak, too small and shallow for an economy of this size. This is not surprising, as it is very new. Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.

    Incidentally, Putin and his government seem to understand these things, even if many others don't. That's just bankster propaganda. In truth, anything past 5% (generously) for the financial sector is just parasitism. The US S&P 500 hovers around 30% financial sector. That's just elites extracting resources from productive people. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    anonHUN , April 17, 2017 at 8:47 pm GMT
    • 200 Words @Intelligent Dasein I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable consensus among America's Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton, that an all-out war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would, notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.

    I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions. And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out. Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will not be worse than what these people are capable of.

    As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict. Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.

    The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.

    Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.

    I think the military and intelligence guys (and the big contractors) need Russia as the enemy, the bogeyman, probably many of them were secretly disappointed back then when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Deep State wants an endless race, a race where America is always leading but not by too much. A Cold War with a worthy opponent, not with tinpot third world dictatorships. Many of them don't even hate Russia, even respects it to some extent. Now they are probably happy that the old days are back.

    On the other hand there are of course real Russophobes, who really want to win and finish the "job" that was left unfinished in the 90′s according to their view. They want regime change in Russia and preferably break it up, with all the republics of the RF declaring independence etc. Brzezinski, McCain or the neocons are like that. But they don't want WW3 either, they are not nutcases, just they want to settle an account with Russia badly.

    Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average, the gap didn't close since Soviet times, if anything, it widened in many respects.
    US military might is still unique and unrivaled, on the long run China has the most chance to challenge it. Russia is simply too poor, an economic dwarf compared to China (China is the workshop of the world, Russia mostly exports raw materials), also it's population is probably too small.

    Verymuchalive , April 17, 2017 at 8:49 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @Andrei Martyanov

    Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
    So, Facebook's capitalization of 400 billion, that is for company which produces nothing of real value (in fact, is detrimental to mental health of the society) is a true size of economy.

    https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap

    Mind you--this is for a collection of several buildings, servers and about 200-300 pages of code in whatever they wrote it (C++, C whatever--make your pick).

    Meanwhile, Gazprom, which is an energy monster is about...10 times less.

    https://ycharts.com/companies/OGZPY/market_cap

    Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist. Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products--ask yourself a question whose "capitalization" is more important for economy--of useless Facebook or of the corporation which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual--a collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services. i am not talking, of course, about stock buybacks. As I already stated, nobody of any serious expertise in actual things that matter, treats this whole US "economic" data seriously. The problem here is that many in US establishment do and that is a clear and present danger to both US and world at large because constant and grotesque overestimation of own capabilities becomes a matter of policy, not a one-off accident. The financialisation of the economy has been a disaster in most Western countries, especially for manufacturing companies. I had personal dealings with Pilkingtons, a World-leading British glass company. At the first opportunity, the Banks and other corporate investors sold it to a Japanese competitor. Pilkingtons is now a branch operation and has lost its research base.
    Mr Putin seems to realise the importance of indigenous manufacturing industry- and not only for defence- related purposes. So the capitalisation of such companies has been treated with great caution, e g Gazprom. I could be wrong, of course.
    So I must ask if you think Mr Putin has an Advanced Manufacturing Strategy in place, like Eamonn Fingleton sees in Japan, Korea, Germany etc. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Andrei Martyanov [AKA "SmoothieX12"] , • Website April 17, 2017 at 8:52 pm GMT
    • 200 WordsNEW! @Wally I seriously doubt the author's statement:

    Germany cannot design and build from scratch a state of the art fighter jet ...
    Seriously? The technological & industrial genius of Germany could not produce it's own jet fighter?
    After all, they designed & built the world's first fighter jet, the ME 262, 'The Swallow'.

    Laughable.

    Granted, AFAIK, it's current fighters are 'collaborative' with other Europeans.
    IOW, Germany did the heavy lifting.

    Germany did the heavy lifting.

    Sir, before writing something, at least study subject a bit. Euro Fighter (Typhoon) is a thoroughly British effort initially, with engines being based on Rolls Royce XG-40 and avionics being, for the lack of better word, American, Italian, what have you, but not German. Yes, MTU was involved in some form in developing some Euro Jet EJ200 components but it will take a whole lot of space to explain to you what is "cooperative" effort in military aviation.

    After all, they designed & built the world's first fighter jet, the ME 262, 'The Swallow'.

    Actually:

    Just as the matter of general education, but here is the deal: Chinese invented gun powder, so what? When and if Germany will be able to produce something comparable to MiG-29SMT, forget about SU-35, not to speak of T-50, then we may start looking into German "genius". In order for you to understand what I am trying to convey to you, one has to have understanding of what enclosed technological cycle is. But I am sure, if MTU will be asked they will come up immediately with the fifth generation jet engine, right? After all, it is so simple and I am not talking about such things as designing the air-frames. US has expertise on that on several orders of magnitude than Germany and look where it got US with F-35;)

    Timur The Lame , April 17, 2017 at 9:08 pm GMT
    • 100 Words ,

    There is wisdom to the old adage "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". Your WW1 rant is lacking in accurate facts and the actual facts that you refer to are misapplied subsequently your logic is flawed and you find yourself in the oft quoted IBM construct of GIGO.

    The genesis and the triggers for the eruption of WW1 are broad and complex and could generally be put in the context of the colloquial term " a perfect storm". Your Slavic tinted glasses illuminate only a tip of the tip of the iceberg as it were. I state this in the spirit of constructive criticism.

    Cheers-

    Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 9:14 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @Andrei Martyanov Some very good points you made. Having recent experience in teaching in former socialist country and remembering and comparing with past I must say

    It is quite painful to watch horrors of destruction of once functional educational system of your own country which is trying to mimic current trends in western education.

    I guess in Russia, given by typical Slavic tendency to extremes, is even more horrible. But it looks like they do get it and they have still chance revert this trend.

    First step is always to recognize problem, which is in my opinion given by public discussions such as

    Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    bluedog , April 17, 2017 at 9:33 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @Sam Shama

    Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely from "western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic, contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what they are talking about,
    Hey Smoothie,
    Loved this informative piece.

    On the military aspect, I'll take your assessments without any salt at all, for I do believe the U.S. has been tracking a technologically shallower but cost wise steeper trajectory.

    I think Russians are a highly gifted lot, able to do wonders mostly on account of their deep science & mathematics bench.

    Yet I also think Randal is mostly right about economic strength playing a vital, even decisive role in overall strength in the longer run. There are no countries which can match the U.S. in the department of raw economic endowments.

    China comes closest to exceeding the overall size of the U.S.economy, based on a combination of sheer population, relentless mercantilism combined with extractive labour policies over the last five decades or more. All of which has also propelled them to achieve technological capabilities not far behind many western European states.

    The U.S is eminently capable of really, I mean really increasing military spending without breaking a sweat. But that is not the goal in itself. It needs to come down hard on MIC waste, which if done successfully can change things around very quickly. Imagine a U.S. spending an efficient 7-10% of GDP on this, in which case I see its competitors doing little else besides gearing their entire economies to armaments, and then failing to keep up. I am confident if such a race ensued there'd be a global run to purchase U.S. assets, even as capital controls are put into action.

    The troubles of the U.S have stemmed from a paucity of far-sighted leaders of late. I am still hoping Mr Trump comes through, and there are signs he will. We should be establishing a truly friendly relationship with Russia and focusing our resources on joint goals of a far loftier nature than besting each other on wartime toys.

    Hmm first we would have to rebuild our manufacturing sector seeing most of our goods including military are outsourced out, and I question the raw economics endowment what ever they are, and then you have to retrain the workers for the old class is gone and the new isn't all that inclined to work, and who would want to invest in a hallowed out economy, trillions in debt more trillions in future liabilities trillions in derivitives little to no natural resources left military projects milked to the bone months years overdue I'm afraid your caught in the light on the hill we are exceptional bit but I presume that's to be expected.. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    anon , April 17, 2017 at 9:35 pm GMT
    @DannyMarcus There is a very important and perhaps most decisive aspect of possible US war with Russia or China, which is completely missing in Andrei Martyanov piece and the related comments.
    Don't you think European NATO countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will loudly resist, when their very well-being and existences is utterly jeopardized by American ambitions for hegemony well beyond its shores?
    I imagine and hope that well before a shooting war breaks out with Russia or China, US' present subservient allies will show enough courage to put the brakes on American designs long before any future global wars involving their vital interest is invoked.
    The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in Seoul, are most likely right now pressing the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy military adventures in North Korea.
    The Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans and the Taiwanese are the best hope of stopping American adventurism because in the final analysis they will refuse to be the sheep marching willingly to the slaughterhouse of a WWIII. If these countries really wanted to stop the USA, why not make the American troops leave their countries? Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Corvinus , April 17, 2017 at 9:35 pm GMT
    @Diversity Heretic The Spanish-American War was completely unnecessary for U.S. security. The acquisition of the Phillipines put us on a collision course with Japan and even today we suffer the burden of strategically useless economic parasite of Puerto Rico. "The Spanish-American War was completely unnecessary for U.S. security."

    At the time, yes. In the long run, no.

    "The acquisition of the Phillipines put us on a collision course with Japan "

    Imperialistic ambitions in the Pacific by the U.S. and Japan put our nations on a path to fight.

    Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    colm , April 17, 2017 at 9:36 pm GMT
    @Intelligent Dasein I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable consensus among America's Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton, that an all-out war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would, notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.

    I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions. And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out. Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will not be worse than what these people are capable of.

    As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict. Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.

    The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.

    Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.

    Those who fought for the Entente in the Great War fought for the sake of the Third World.

    Veterans Day should be abolished immediately. Memorial Day is enough.

    Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    anon , April 17, 2017 at 9:43 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @Diversity Heretic The Spanish-American War was completely unnecessary for U.S. security. The acquisition of the Phillipines put us on a collision course with Japan and even today we suffer the burden of strategically useless economic parasite of Puerto Rico. Yes of course, you are right. The 1898 war with Spain was 100% a war of choice for America. Without it, it was certainly possible war with Japan could have been avoided. Also agree that Puerto Rico has proven to be utterly worthless to America. Should be given its independence ASAP. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    martino from barcelona , April 17, 2017 at 9:45 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @DannyMarcus There is a very important and perhaps most decisive aspect of possible US war with Russia or China, which is completely missing in Andrei Martyanov piece and the related comments.
    Don't you think European NATO countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will loudly resist, when their very well-being and existences is utterly jeopardized by American ambitions for hegemony well beyond its shores?
    I imagine and hope that well before a shooting war breaks out with Russia or China, US' present subservient allies will show enough courage to put the brakes on American designs long before any future global wars involving their vital interest is invoked.
    The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in Seoul, are most likely right now pressing the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy military adventures in North Korea.
    The Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans and the Taiwanese are the best hope of stopping American adventurism because in the final analysis they will refuse to be the sheep marching willingly to the slaughterhouse of a WWIII. Eu, japan, taiwaneses, south koreans Their governements are all puppets, whores of washington, the people doesnt matter, we (I am european) have no voice- All westerns politics are the same whores. Countrys and people have no value. Only globalists are going for bussines. Rusia is the great premium: The major land in the world- Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Timur The Lame , April 17, 2017 at 9:46 pm GMT
    • 300 Words @SmoothieX12

    The points you make with respect to capitalization of Facebook and other totally worthless social media constructs in comparison to actual entities that produce something, anything that you could stub your foot on, be it good or not is brilliant in that it exposes the sham of GDP and GNP tabulations.

    Question: I read about 10 years ago of an incident where an American carrier group was sailing on in it's merry way in waters that I can't now recall when a couple of Sukhois came in undetected and screamed over the actual aircraft carrier at mast level at the maximum speed that the altitude would allow. The carrier group immediately did a 180 and got the hell out of Dodge. The Admiral was supposedly called on the carpet afterwards as to why he altered course without prior approval and he stuck to his guns and said that his responsibility was for the safety of his group first and foremost and that was that.

    I have been unable to substantiate this episode. Has it been brushed from the internet or did I fall for a Russian (internet) hoax? I remember mentioning it to some senior Russian officers at a Canadian multi national English language course at an army base close to me and they were non committal in their answers and basically looked guardedly at me as if I were a spook of sorts.

    Any knowledge of this supposed incident from you would be much appreciated. By the way the event that I am referring to is not to be mistaken with the relatively recent Black Sea incident (USS Donald Cook).

    Cheers-

    The Alarmist , April 17, 2017 at 9:51 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @Erebus Yes, thank you for an excellent summation of the situation.

    The owners of the US face an Either/Or moment. Either they abandon their ambitions of Global Hegemony, and retreat to attempt to rule over N. America (with some residual dreams of ruling C. & S. America to sweeten the pot) or they go for broke.

    Unlike Dasein, I have no doubt that any dreams of Global Hegemony will come crashing to ground if any sort of a war breaks out. Putin has made it perfectly plain. Russia will never allow itself to be invaded again. That means something, and what it means is that Russia will take the fight to the enemy when it sees its red lines crossed.
    The continental US can be thrown into socio-political-economic collapse with 3 dozen Kalibrs aimed at critical nodes in the national electrical grid. With no prospect of electricity being revived, the now largely urban population would find itself instantly transported to 1900 with none of the skills and infrastructure that kept a pre-electrified rural society fed and secure. If the subs and/or TU-160s are in place, that's 45-90 minutes without a single nuke fired.

    No mushroom clouds or devastated cities, yet, but the Either/Or moment will become acute indeed. One can hope that we'll be rejoicing that America's owners follow their internationalistic instincts when that moment has passed.

    "The continental US can be thrown into socio-political-economic collapse with 3 dozen Kalibrs aimed at critical nodes in the national electrical grid. With no prospect of electricity being revived, the now largely urban population would find itself instantly transported to 1900 with none of the skills and infrastructure that kept a pre-electrified rural society fed and secure. If the subs and/or TU-160s are in place, that's 45-90 minutes without a single nuke fired."

    You have nut-jobs in Congress talking out hacking being an act of war and planners talking about massive NATO reponse as being appropriate can one seriously believe the US would not repond with nukes in the event of such an attack, even though it is non-nuclear?

    Timur The Lame , April 17, 2017 at 9:54 pm GMT
    My WW1 post was for Kiza. Somehow that got scrubbed Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Ondrej , April 17, 2017 at 10:14 pm GMT
    • 200 Words @Sam Shama

    Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely from "western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic, contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what they are talking about,
    Hey Smoothie,
    Loved this informative piece.

    On the military aspect, I'll take your assessments without any salt at all, for I do believe the U.S. has been tracking a technologically shallower but cost wise steeper trajectory.

    I think Russians are a highly gifted lot, able to do wonders mostly on account of their deep science & mathematics bench.

    Yet I also think Randal is mostly right about economic strength playing a vital, even decisive role in overall strength in the longer run. There are no countries which can match the U.S. in the department of raw economic endowments.

    China comes closest to exceeding the overall size of the U.S.economy, based on a combination of sheer population, relentless mercantilism combined with extractive labour policies over the last five decades or more. All of which has also propelled them to achieve technological capabilities not far behind many western European states.

    The U.S is eminently capable of really, I mean really increasing military spending without breaking a sweat. But that is not the goal in itself. It needs to come down hard on MIC waste, which if done successfully can change things around very quickly. Imagine a U.S. spending an efficient 7-10% of GDP on this, in which case I see its competitors doing little else besides gearing their entire economies to armaments, and then failing to keep up. I am confident if such a race ensued there'd be a global run to purchase U.S. assets, even as capital controls are put into action.

    The troubles of the U.S have stemmed from a paucity of far-sighted leaders of late. I am still hoping Mr Trump comes through, and there are signs he will. We should be establishing a truly friendly relationship with Russia and focusing our resources on joint goals of a far loftier nature than besting each other on wartime toys.

    There are no countries which can match the U.S. in the department of raw economic endowments.

    I will add bit of Central Europe perspective:-)

    Products of US economic endowments which I use in Europe or see some value in them:

    a) Military Complex (waste of money)
    b) Boeing (OK that is serious, not flying much lately)
    c) Hollywod movies (huge industry, some movies are good but mostly rubbish)
    d) Coca-Cola (sometimes nice – but can live without it)
    e) MacDonald (only in rush for their car ride)
    f) Microsoft Windows (I hate it)
    g) Apple products (well I have still preference for them, but they are mostly produced in China anyway)
    h) Harley-Davidson (not any value for me, but it is as American as it can be:-)

    To be honest, I am more interested if I have heated home and electricity runnig, provided in form of nuclear, gas or oil fuel from Russia + some Siemens technology provided by Germany for Electrical Grid regulation and function of PowerPlants..

    inertial , April 17, 2017 at 10:22 pm GMT
    • 300 Words @Andrei Martyanov

    Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
    So, Facebook's capitalization of 400 billion, that is for company which produces nothing of real value (in fact, is detrimental to mental health of the society) is a true size of economy.

    https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap

    Mind you--this is for a collection of several buildings, servers and about 200-300 pages of code in whatever they wrote it (C++, C whatever--make your pick).

    Meanwhile, Gazprom, which is an energy monster is about...10 times less.

    https://ycharts.com/companies/OGZPY/market_cap

    Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist. Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products--ask yourself a question whose "capitalization" is more important for economy--of useless Facebook or of the corporation which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual--a collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services. i am not talking, of course, about stock buybacks. As I already stated, nobody of any serious expertise in actual things that matter, treats this whole US "economic" data seriously. The problem here is that many in US establishment do and that is a clear and present danger to both US and world at large because constant and grotesque overestimation of own capabilities becomes a matter of policy, not a one-off accident. You just illustrated my point. Facebook vs. Gazprom market caps – all that shows is that Facebook has access to vastly larger amounts of capital than Gazprom. Well, duh.

    Market capitalization is determined mostly by institutional investors – mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, etc. – who pool private savings and channel them into various investments. There are massive amounts of such savings available in USA; in Russia, not so much.

    In Russia, the government is just about the only major saver and investor. This works fine in areas where the government must play a role, such as weapons manufacture. In other areas, enterprises that need capital to develop must either accumulate it themselves over the years (which puts limit on growth,) or get the government to help them out, or borrow abroad at usurious rates. That's not good. Ideally, Russian enterprises should enter Russian stock or fixed income market and raise as much capital as they need.

    As for Boeing, yes it's a gem. But it does have some difficulties in raising capital. It's been balancing on the edge of bankruptcy for years and, unlike Facebook, it has huge liabilities. Incidentally, Boeing very much engages in all that "useless" high finance stuff. The buy and sell and issue bonds and short term paper; I don't know if they issue options but they certainly trade them. They don't believe that they are performing "virtual transactions with virtual money;" on the contrary, they consider this and essential part of the business, as important as building engines or whatever. Perhaps they know something you don't?

    Finally, a tip. Any "expert" who doesn't treat US (or other) economic data seriously is an idiot.

    Z-man , April 17, 2017 at 10:23 pm GMT
    @Andrei Martyanov

    The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity
    It is a very complex weapon system, whose actual combat potential is highly classified. From people who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities". Latest modifications of S-300 seem almost tame in comparison and S-300 (PMU, Favorit) is a superb complex. Once S-500 comes online, well--it is a different game altogether from there. Well, it shouldn't be that complicated because it has to be used rapidly. Hopefully it is easy for the user to operate it.
    Thanks for the reply. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Sergey Krieger , April 17, 2017 at 10:28 pm GMT
    @Ondrej

    There are no countries which can match the U.S. in the department of raw economic endowments.
    I will add bit of Central Europe perspective:-)

    Products of US economic endowments which I use in Europe or see some value in them:

    a) Military Complex (waste of money)
    b) Boeing (OK that is serious, not flying much lately)
    c) Hollywod movies (huge industry, some movies are good but mostly rubbish)
    d) Coca-Cola (sometimes nice - but can live without it)
    e) MacDonald (only in rush for their car ride)
    f) Microsoft Windows (I hate it)
    g) Apple products (well I have still preference for them, but they are mostly produced in China anyway)
    h) Harley-Davidson (not any value for me, but it is as American as it can be:-)

    To be honest, I am more interested if I have heated home and electricity runnig, provided in form of nuclear, gas or oil fuel from Russia + some Siemens technology provided by Germany for Electrical Grid regulation and function of PowerPlants..

    You are coming as a very pragmatic sort of a man •
    Cyrano , April 17, 2017 at 10:31 pm GMT
    • 300 Words Any military conflict between Russia and US is bound to degenerate into nuclear war. That's because only degenerates can plan such event and even try to predict "survivability" of such war. I believe only recently US funded a study to explore the outcome of such conflict. You don't have to be military genius to realize that the odds are in Russia's favor.

    How so? Simple. More than half of US population lives in 30 major cities. Russia's population is much more dispersed. I think I read somewhere that during the cold war US had enough nukes to destroy every USSR city of 10 000 and more inhabitants. Still, the Russians can inflict far more casualties targeting far fewer cities than US can.

    For those who think that western weapons are superior because they are more complicated – perfection is always simple.

    One of the most symptomatic examples of what's wrong with American military technology is F35. At the end of the cold war the feeling of omnipotence has spread into their military technology. F35 was supposed to do the job of what previously used to be done by several different planes. It was supposed to be a ground support, vertical takeoff, interceptor, aircraft carrier based, bomber, air superiority fighter plane.

    While they were at it, why they didn't include in their specifications ability to fly to the moon, be used as a cargo plane, awacs, fuel refueling tanker and passenger plane. When something is designed to be universally good at different tasks it usually ends not being particularly good at any of them.

    Congratulations on your first article Andrei, keep up the good work.

    Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    inertial , April 17, 2017 at 10:32 pm GMT
    @Sergey Krieger Randal, what do you think happens if neutron star approaches red giant? US GDP contains a lot of things that are irrelevant to fighting wars. Is US going to hit Russia with nice shoes, highly apprised real estate or S&P500? Creative accounting is another thing that makes US GDP larger than it really is.

    US GDP contains a lot of things that are irrelevant to fighting wars.

    You say it as though it's a bad thing.

    Z-man , April 17, 2017 at 10:33 pm GMT
    @Art You're gloating, Art. Many jews have been leaving Israel for many years for fear of their personal safety. Others remain. Gloating this way reflects a mean spirit.

    Pointing out the evils of Zionist Israel is not mean - it is crucial.

    Exposing Judaism and Zionism for their backward ways is the only path to a peaceful just world.

    The Kushner White House is now pushing us to war in N Korea.

    Congress must stop this - but they cannot because Jews control them also.

    Peace --- Art

    p.s. Good god – Trump is sending two more carrier groups to Korea!

    Korea?, no big deal as far as I'm concerned. Let's bomb that fat boy to submission. It's when we blindly support that dirty little country occupying the Holy Land, that's when I get my blood pressure up! •
    Today,s Thought , April 17, 2017 at 10:42 pm GMT
    [ ] • 3,200 WORDS • 93 COMMENTS • REPLY [ ]
    Z-man , April 17, 2017 at 10:43 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @Andrei Martyanov

    Germany did the heavy lifting.
    Sir, before writing something, at least study subject a bit. Euro Fighter (Typhoon) is a thoroughly British effort initially, with engines being based on Rolls Royce XG-40 and avionics being, for the lack of better word, American, Italian, what have you, but not German. Yes, MTU was involved in some form in developing some Euro Jet EJ200 components but it will take a whole lot of space to explain to you what is "cooperative" effort in military aviation.

    After all, they designed & built the world's first fighter jet, the ME 262, 'The Swallow'.
    Actually:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkhip_Lyulka

    Just as the matter of general education, but here is the deal: Chinese invented gun powder, so what? When and if Germany will be able to produce something comparable to MiG-29SMT, forget about SU-35, not to speak of T-50, then we may start looking into German "genius". In order for you to understand what I am trying to convey to you, one has to have understanding of what enclosed technological cycle is. But I am sure, if MTU will be asked they will come up immediately with the fifth generation jet engine, right? After all, it is so simple and I am not talking about such things as designing the air-frames. US has expertise on that on several orders of magnitude than Germany and look where it got US with F-35;) This reminds me of the line from 'Ice Station Zebra' by the Patrick McGoohan played character 'David Jones of MI6′, "The Russians put our (Brits) camera made by *our* German scientists and your (US) film made by *your* German scientists into their satellite made by *their* German scientists." LOL! Exaggeration of course but funny and somewhat true. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Joe Wong , April 17, 2017 at 10:53 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @DannyMarcus There is a very important and perhaps most decisive aspect of possible US war with Russia or China, which is completely missing in Andrei Martyanov piece and the related comments.
    Don't you think European NATO countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will loudly resist, when their very well-being and existences is utterly jeopardized by American ambitions for hegemony well beyond its shores?
    I imagine and hope that well before a shooting war breaks out with Russia or China, US' present subservient allies will show enough courage to put the brakes on American designs long before any future global wars involving their vital interest is invoked.
    The South Koreans, over 10 million of whom are living in Seoul, are most likely right now pressing the Trump Administration hard to avoid any foolhardy military adventures in North Korea.
    The Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans and the Taiwanese are the best hope of stopping American adventurism because in the final analysis they will refuse to be the sheep marching willingly to the slaughterhouse of a WWIII. There are a lot of nations wanting wars between USA, Russia and China, from top of the list is Japan, India, UK, They believe they will be the next global hegemons standing on the ashes of USA, Russia and China.

    Taiwanese are mentally colonized Japanese wannabes, they will be happy just returning to the Japanese colony status.

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    Sergey Krieger , April 17, 2017 at 10:58 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @inertial

    US GDP contains a lot of things that are irrelevant to fighting wars.
    You say it as though it's a bad thing. No, I am just trying to look at it from the point of view currently discussed. Namely Russian GDP is being mocked as an inadequate to stand up to USA in military terms.
    I am just pointing that what GDP consists of is far more important that nominal size of it.
    Namely, Italy might have a large share of GDP coming from tourist industry and designers shoes and other garments. . How is it relevant to military power?
    US GDP also is full of basically fraudulent valuations. Tesla as it was pointed is just one example and Facebook and others are another. •
    Joe Wong , April 17, 2017 at 11:06 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @anonHUN I think the military and intelligence guys (and the big contractors) need Russia as the enemy, the bogeyman, probably many of them were secretly disappointed back then when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Deep State wants an endless race, a race where America is always leading but not by too much. A Cold War with a worthy opponent, not with tinpot third world dictatorships. Many of them don't even hate Russia, even respects it to some extent. Now they are probably happy that the old days are back.

    On the other hand there are of course real Russophobes, who really want to win and finish the "job" that was left unfinished in the 90's according to their view. They want regime change in Russia and preferably break it up, with all the republics of the RF declaring independence etc. Brzezinski, McCain or the neocons are like that. But they don't want WW3 either, they are not nutcases, just they want to settle an account with Russia badly.

    Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average, the gap didn't close since Soviet times, if anything, it widened in many respects.
    US military might is still unique and unrivaled, on the long run China has the most chance to challenge it. Russia is simply too poor, an economic dwarf compared to China (China is the workshop of the world, Russia mostly exports raw materials), also it's population is probably too small. "still 20 years behind on average?" since you are fabricating thru the thin air, why did you stop at 20 years? Why didn't you say 30 years behind, 40 years behind, ? You should know fake news is always fake new regardless it is a small fake news or a big fake news. •

    martino from barcelona , April 17, 2017 at 11:08 pm GMT
    • 200 Words good post smooty. And good coments also.I have three issues I am thinking some time ago. First: The soviet Union not colapsed, Gorbachev vas not a moron or a traitor. It was 50 years chess-game- The west is in turmoil already. Gorbachev did not do nothing without the approbation of the hundreds of specialists .The same with Trump, as USA has about more than 5 milions of people working in intel or something about. Second misread: Usa did not lost the war in Irak or Afganistan., as is said by journalists. Bush (W) said it in clair: I´ll bring the caos to irak, to stoneage.
    In Afganistan they are for 16 years for run the caos meantime. If they left , te country could go normaly, They cant afford this. Is for future desestabilization of central asia. Three: In the future war, you can see that the europeens are too sweet for go to war against Russia (Don´t talk about the gays, trans and woman of de USA Army) : What about theese 2 milions of refugees (arabs mens in militar age, all men?) All in Germany. This is not an Army for go to fight with russia? Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Anatoly Karlin , • Website April 17, 2017 at 11:17 pm GMT
    • 100 WordsNEW! @Intelligent Dasein I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable consensus among America's Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton, that an all-out war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would, notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.

    I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions. And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out. Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will not be worse than what these people are capable of.

    As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict. Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.

    The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.

    Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.

    that an all-out war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would, notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.

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    Joe Wong , April 17, 2017 at 11:23 pm GMT
    @reiner Tor Don't worry, when the going gets tough, suddenly the US military will only send straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality".

    US military will only send straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality"

    That did not happen during the Korean War and Vietnam War. The straight white men stayed behind and played gook hockey games.

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    DanC , April 17, 2017 at 11:27 pm GMT
    If anyone is interested in the perverse incentives in place in the US military development system, which result in such spectacular failures and misallocation of resources, you could read this:

    http://chuckspinney.blogspot.ca/p/the-defense-death-spiral-why-defense.html

    Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    martino from barcelona , April 17, 2017 at 11:29 pm GMT
    • 100 Words The westerns politics, that works against their own people (starting with Merkel), and are absolute whores or the globalists of washington and elsewere .. (city of London, Rotschilds, Jews,Vatican, , etc) Have learned the trick of the proxys, as they are now in Siria. And conciousness that the european people are against else war, (and dont talk about the gay-trans-woman army of the EEUU) The criminals europeans politics are getting milions of future proxy warriors from muslim countrys. Their job will be the war we are not going. They, the "refugees" will get money, drugs, guns, slave women, alcohol, and will go to war against rusia, and in europe inf they are said. cheers.
    Ahh!.. They give him the blue pill, also, (Are not than macho men?) Reply More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    Wally , April 17, 2017 at 11:43 pm GMT
    @Andrei Martyanov

    Germany did the heavy lifting.
    Sir, before writing something, at least study subject a bit. Euro Fighter (Typhoon) is a thoroughly British effort initially, with engines being based on Rolls Royce XG-40 and avionics being, for the lack of better word, American, Italian, what have you, but not German. Yes, MTU was involved in some form in developing some Euro Jet EJ200 components but it will take a whole lot of space to explain to you what is "cooperative" effort in military aviation.

    After all, they designed & built the world's first fighter jet, the ME 262, 'The Swallow'.
    Actually:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkhip_Lyulka

    Just as the matter of general education, but here is the deal: Chinese invented gun powder, so what? When and if Germany will be able to produce something comparable to MiG-29SMT, forget about SU-35, not to speak of T-50, then we may start looking into German "genius". In order for you to understand what I am trying to convey to you, one has to have understanding of what enclosed technological cycle is. But I am sure, if MTU will be asked they will come up immediately with the fifth generation jet engine, right? After all, it is so simple and I am not talking about such things as designing the air-frames. US has expertise on that on several orders of magnitude than Germany and look where it got US with F-35;) You really need to know what you are talking about:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurofighter_Typhoon

    About "Lyulka"?

    " In 1945-47 he designed the first Soviet jet engine ".

    Hoisted by your own petard.

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    Zzz , April 17, 2017 at 11:44 pm GMT
    @Kiza You and your responders are obviously not Russian, because you exhibit a terribly superficial knowledge of the pre WW1 Europe and Russia. You must have learned your history in US or British schools.

    The situation in Europe in 1914 was much, much more complicated than your simple minds could comprehend. The key factor was the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire and the power vacuum that this has created in the Balkans. This has encouraged all European powers of the time, from U.K., through Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire, all the way to Russia to have designs for the area. Russia actually cultivated most Serbian nationalistic groups to counter the influence of U.K. and Germany/Austria in the Balkans. Therefore, Russia just did not let its Balkan proxies, the Serbs, down when attacked by Austro-Hungary, but it was involved in what was happening in the Balkans even before the war started. Yes, there was internal opposition in Russia against getting involved in the Balkans, but the non-interventionists lost. The U.K. was trying to prop up the dying Turkish Empire to remain an enemy of Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary were trying to acquire as much new territory and population in the Balkans as possible. Russia just could not allow the Catholic Austro-Hungary to strengthen further after the annexation of Bosnia in 1908. France was on the same side. And so on.

    Is it not amazing how most of Western history of WW1 starts with Archduke's assassination in Sarajevo, instead of power vacuum in Southeast Europe and aggressive imperial designs at the turn of the century? It is typical Western bullshit history. Nobody had evil intentions, everybody was just dragged into WW1.

    You can observe that today's Russians are blaming the Germans for sending the half-Jewish Lenin with a trainload of gold to foment Bolshevik (Jewish) revolution in Russia and cause Tsar family's deaths, instead of the Serbs who were defending themselves against an expansionist Catholic Empire. It is mainly the British and US "historians", and their Russian liberals who are blaming the Serbs for WW1, the same old, same old Anglo-Zionist bull.

    Russians blaming the Germans for sending the half-Jewish Lenin with a trainload of gold to foment Bolshevik (Jewish) revolution

    Russian who are blaming the Serbs for WW1

    Are the same people.

    inertial , April 17, 2017 at 11:47 pm GMT
    @Sergey Krieger No, I am just trying to look at it from the point of view currently discussed. Namely Russian GDP is being mocked as an inadequate to stand up to USA in military terms.
    I am just pointing that what GDP consists of is far more important that nominal size of it.
    Namely, Italy might have a large share of GDP coming from tourist industry and designers shoes and other garments. . How is it relevant to military power?
    US GDP also is full of basically fraudulent valuations. Tesla as it was pointed is just one example and Facebook and others are another. I agree with you. I just wish that Russian GDP had a lot more of those non-military components.

    Incidentally, market cap has nothing to do with GDP. I'm pretty sure that Facebook's contribution to GDP is minuscule.

    DanC , April 17, 2017 at 11:48 pm GMT
    • 100 Words One of the most spectacular misallocation of resources has been the US Navy's insistence on building ever-more surface ships of ever-increasing complexity, while allowing their submarine fleet to languish, and neglecting missile & torpedo technology.

    The reason is career path incentives in the Navy, and in the defense contractor corporations, not in rational consideration of the directions naval warfare is developing in the rest of the world.

    I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here: the first time a surface fleet, no matter how modern, how large, even a carrier group, is attacked by a well-commanded, networked battery of modern missles, like the Moskit, Onyx or BrahMos, there will be debacle of historic proportions.

    Thousands of sailors and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of hardware will be headed to the bottom.

    Sergey Krieger , April 18, 2017 at 12:18 am GMT
    • 100 Words @inertial I agree with you. I just wish that Russian GDP had a lot more of those non-military components.

    Incidentally, market cap has nothing to do with GDP. I'm pretty sure that Facebook's contribution to GDP is minuscule. For this I believe nationalization of what was "privatized" in 90′s is needed and new industrialization drive to become more self sufficient and less dependent upon outsiders. Finances also is a matter of concern. Russia has very good experience in how to do it. Political power will is needed though. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Mark Chapman , • Website April 18, 2017 at 12:18 am GMT
    • 200 Words Agreed; the US Navy only continues to pursue railgun technology to use up budget dollars – a peculiarity of western defense budgeting is that if you show efficiency by using less than the full amount allocated for your operations, maintenance and R&D, your budget is likely to be cut by that much next cycle. The USN has gone back to the drawing-board on railgun development, but absent a power-supply breakthrough it is unrealistic except as a vanity project.

    http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/us-navys-railgun-dream-could-be-denied-by-two-big-problems-17301

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/this-is-why-the-navy-cant-have-nice-railguns

    An additional argument in Russia's favour is that many of its systems are built simply to be rugged and easily operated by someone with a minimum of training, like a conscript, although the top end of the air defense systems are still largely operated by specialists. Western systems often are unnecessarily complex – sometimes seemingly just to impress reviewers – and the fiasco of the F-35 nightmare serves as exemplary of what happens when corporatism gets the upper hand on government; any vision of what the F-35 was originally supposed to do has been lost in a blizzard of pork-barreling and design changes.

    As far as the navy goes, I made some of the same points myself some years ago, particularly the gross discrepancy in the cost of the USN's Littoral Combat Ships compared with – in this instance – China's missile corvettes.

    https://marknesop.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/fall-out-and-secure-for-sea-the-2012-sino-russian-naval-exercises/comment-page-1/

    Thanks for a great piece; it was timely, informative, thought-provoking and chock-full of meaty phrases and terminology I cannot wait to borrow.

    Avery , April 18, 2017 at 12:22 am GMT
    • 200 Words @Andrei Martyanov

    The S400 is a great example of Russian simplicity
    It is a very complex weapon system, whose actual combat potential is highly classified. From people who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities". Latest modifications of S-300 seem almost tame in comparison and S-300 (PMU, Favorit) is a superb complex. Once S-500 comes online, well--it is a different game altogether from there. {From people who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities".}

    Until it has proven itself in a real war against a technologically competent adversary, e.g. U.S./NATO, then it's all simulation.
    Its "mind boggling capabilities" are nothing more than engineering specifications.
    No computer simulation anywhere, anytime has been able to come even close to the chaotic, unpredictable conditions of real war.

    To wit: the Patriot worked great on paper, but its performance in the Iraq war against ancient Iraqi Scuds was dismal.
    To wit2: the misnamed 'Iron Dome', which is a supposedly improved copy of the Patriot and which Israelis claim has a hit rate of 90%+, was proven by Prof. Postol of MIT to have a success rate of ~5% against primitive Hamas rockets.

    Let's wait and see if the S-400 has "mind boggling capabilities" .
    I hope it does. (Armenia has 'bought' some S-300s, officially. Maybe Russia gave RoA some S-400s too, unofficially).

    AtomAnt , April 18, 2017 at 12:24 am GMT
    • 200 Words @anonHUN I think the military and intelligence guys (and the big contractors) need Russia as the enemy, the bogeyman, probably many of them were secretly disappointed back then when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Deep State wants an endless race, a race where America is always leading but not by too much. A Cold War with a worthy opponent, not with tinpot third world dictatorships. Many of them don't even hate Russia, even respects it to some extent. Now they are probably happy that the old days are back.

    On the other hand there are of course real Russophobes, who really want to win and finish the "job" that was left unfinished in the 90's according to their view. They want regime change in Russia and preferably break it up, with all the republics of the RF declaring independence etc. Brzezinski, McCain or the neocons are like that. But they don't want WW3 either, they are not nutcases, just they want to settle an account with Russia badly.

    Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average, the gap didn't close since Soviet times, if anything, it widened in many respects.
    US military might is still unique and unrivaled, on the long run China has the most chance to challenge it. Russia is simply too poor, an economic dwarf compared to China (China is the workshop of the world, Russia mostly exports raw materials), also it's population is probably too small. "Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average"

    Dude, you're delusional. The US military is to a large extent a paper tiger. Example: Aircraft carriers are not survivable against Russian or Chinese missiles and subs. They are good for bombing 3rd world countries only, like 19th century gunboats (plus fattening MIC coffers). Example: A Rand report found the F-35 "can't turn, can't climb, isn't fast enough to run away".
    I would argue nothing is as important as missile technology. Russia may be leading in that.
    Furthermore, the US has lower income and less capital now than 20 years ago. Russia has a central bank focused on rational economics rather than milking the country for billionaires' sake. They insist on positive interest rates so savers get the benefit of their money. That's why Russia is growing albeit slowly while the US regresses.
    The US will find fighting Russia is not like fighting Arabs. (Remember what some Israeli general said about fighting Arabs.) The US hasn't fought without air superiority in over 74 years.
    Note the moral dimension, also. The US has to pay its military 2X the equivalent private sector wages, because no one wants to die for Lockheed Martin.

    • Agree: Kiza •
    wayfarer , April 18, 2017 at 12:32 am GMT
    SAR (search and rescue) versus SAD (search and destroy)

    "Disaster of the Kursk"

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    NoseytheDuke , April 18, 2017 at 12:53 am GMT
    • 200 Words @Sam Shama

    Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely from "western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic, contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what they are talking about,
    Hey Smoothie,
    Loved this informative piece.

    On the military aspect, I'll take your assessments without any salt at all, for I do believe the U.S. has been tracking a technologically shallower but cost wise steeper trajectory.

    I think Russians are a highly gifted lot, able to do wonders mostly on account of their deep science & mathematics bench.

    Yet I also think Randal is mostly right about economic strength playing a vital, even decisive role in overall strength in the longer run. There are no countries which can match the U.S. in the department of raw economic endowments.

    China comes closest to exceeding the overall size of the U.S.economy, based on a combination of sheer population, relentless mercantilism combined with extractive labour policies over the last five decades or more. All of which has also propelled them to achieve technological capabilities not far behind many western European states.

    The U.S is eminently capable of really, I mean really increasing military spending without breaking a sweat. But that is not the goal in itself. It needs to come down hard on MIC waste, which if done successfully can change things around very quickly. Imagine a U.S. spending an efficient 7-10% of GDP on this, in which case I see its competitors doing little else besides gearing their entire economies to armaments, and then failing to keep up. I am confident if such a race ensued there'd be a global run to purchase U.S. assets, even as capital controls are put into action.

    The troubles of the U.S have stemmed from a paucity of far-sighted leaders of late. I am still hoping Mr Trump comes through, and there are signs he will. We should be establishing a truly friendly relationship with Russia and focusing our resources on joint goals of a far loftier nature than besting each other on wartime toys.

    The troubles of the US of late have largely stemmed from having an insatiable parasite on its back sucking all that it can from the military and the economy in general whilst simultaneously plotting to undermine it.

    The senseless wars in the ME to provide Israel with "security", the billions of dollars in "loans" that will never be repaid, the vast amounts of military hardware worth billions declared as "scrap" and given to Israel, what a great investment it all has been.

    No doubt millions of Americans will welcome more degradation of their cities and infrastructure in order to field a larger military since it cares for the fruit of their loins so well AND has accomplished so much good in the world with the trillions already squandered at the behest of the Neocon Israel Firsters.

    You sure have your finger on America's pulse Shammy and clearly want nothing but the best for the American people, right? What a tosser!

    NoseytheDuke , April 18, 2017 at 12:58 am GMT
    @anonHUN I think the military and intelligence guys (and the big contractors) need Russia as the enemy, the bogeyman, probably many of them were secretly disappointed back then when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Deep State wants an endless race, a race where America is always leading but not by too much. A Cold War with a worthy opponent, not with tinpot third world dictatorships. Many of them don't even hate Russia, even respects it to some extent. Now they are probably happy that the old days are back.

    On the other hand there are of course real Russophobes, who really want to win and finish the "job" that was left unfinished in the 90's according to their view. They want regime change in Russia and preferably break it up, with all the republics of the RF declaring independence etc. Brzezinski, McCain or the neocons are like that. But they don't want WW3 either, they are not nutcases, just they want to settle an account with Russia badly.

    Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average, the gap didn't close since Soviet times, if anything, it widened in many respects.
    US military might is still unique and unrivaled, on the long run China has the most chance to challenge it. Russia is simply too poor, an economic dwarf compared to China (China is the workshop of the world, Russia mostly exports raw materials), also it's population is probably too small. Did you skip the article and go straight to comments? Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    NoseytheDuke , April 18, 2017 at 1:08 am GMT
    • 100 Words @Z-man Korea?, no big deal as far as I'm concerned. Let's bomb that fat boy to submission. It's when we blindly support that dirty little country occupying the Holy Land, that's when I get my blood pressure up! What if the fat boy (and the NK people) feel that they need those weapons for defensive purposes? After all, it wasn't too long ago that Korea was invaded by the US (plus a few satraps) and millions of Koreans were killed. Who are we in the west to interfere with NK? •
    Erebus , April 18, 2017 at 1:27 am GMT
    • 200 Words @The Alarmist

    "The continental US can be thrown into socio-political-economic collapse with 3 dozen Kalibrs aimed at critical nodes in the national electrical grid. With no prospect of electricity being revived, the now largely urban population would find itself instantly transported to 1900 with none of the skills and infrastructure that kept a pre-electrified rural society fed and secure. If the subs and/or TU-160s are in place, that's 45-90 minutes without a single nuke fired."
    You have nut-jobs in Congress talking out hacking being an act of war and planners talking about massive NATO reponse as being appropriate ... can one seriously believe the US would not repond with nukes in the event of such an attack, even though it is non-nuclear? I understand that there would be great hue and cry to take revenge. That is why I wrote (with a correction in bold):

    One can hope that we'll be rejoicing that America's owners follow ed their internationalistic instincts when that moment has passed.

    America's owners aren't necessarily American. That the civilizational consequences of America's death be limited to the N. American continent is in their interest, and they would make that interest known.
    The geo-political consequences of an attack on the grid in response to a US/NATO attack on Russia would be that the US would instantly cease to be a military/economic power for at least several generations. The Great Game would be over. If the US came back with a nuclear response, they know well that Russia's counter-response would simply extend that timeline. Perhaps to infinity. IOW, other than suicidal madness, there is no geo-political reason to respond, and there'd be every reason to take the hit and try to rebuild.

    Likewise, Russia's politicians would be hard pressed to resist responding to an American nuclear attack in kind, but the fact is that there would be no military purpose to doing so. The US would be finished as a world power. Vaporizing 200M people would be of no military value. Better to keep what's left of your nuclear forces intact so you don't have to rebuild them.

    Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 1:38 am GMT
    • 100 Words @Zzz

    Russians blaming the Germans for sending the half-Jewish Lenin with a trainload of gold to foment Bolshevik (Jewish) revolution

    Russian who are blaming the Serbs for WW1
    Are the same people. I thought I explained that it is the Russian liberals who picked up the Western view of who to blame for WW1, just like they picked up everything else from their Western role models. The Russian nationalists do not blame the Serbs "for dragging them into WW1″ because this is principally a Western idea of how to push discord among Slavic relatives, not that it even matters that it is completely untrue. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 1:48 am GMT
    @Z-man Korea?, no big deal as far as I'm concerned. Let's bomb that fat boy to submission. It's when we blindly support that dirty little country occupying the Holy Land, that's when I get my blood pressure up! You are stupid, are you not? •
    Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 2:04 am GMT
    • 100 Words @Avery {From people who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities".}

    Until it has proven itself in a real war against a technologically competent adversary, e.g. U.S./NATO, then it's all simulation.
    Its "mind boggling capabilities" are nothing more than engineering specifications.
    No computer simulation anywhere, anytime has been able to come even close to the chaotic, unpredictable conditions of real war.

    To wit: the Patriot worked great on paper, but its performance in the Iraq war against ancient Iraqi Scuds was dismal.
    To wit2: the misnamed 'Iron Dome', which is a supposedly improved copy of the Patriot and which Israelis claim has a hit rate of 90%+, was proven by Prof. Postol of MIT to have a success rate of ~5% against primitive Hamas rockets.

    Let's wait and see if the S-400 has "mind boggling capabilities" .
    I hope it does. (Armenia has 'bought' some S-300s, officially. Maybe Russia gave RoA some S-400s too, unofficially).

    Well Scuds were strange beasts. Saddam's Scuds did not have regular ballistic trajectories, probably because they were old and falling apart during flight. Thus, their trajectories became unintentionally unpredictable/random. I agree that the Raytheon's shootdown rate was a boldface lie which professor Postol exposed. But randomised trajectory is the reason why the shootdown rate was so low.

    The Russian MIRV ICBM Bullawa uses exactly the same approach of randomising trajectory of each vehicle intentionally, small but quick completely random maneuvers, which makes it virtually impossible to shootdown. The US would have to place supercooled computers on its interceptors to destroy those babies. Therefore, another relatively cheap but highly effective countermeasure to US ABMD, a beautiful response.

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    Erebus , April 18, 2017 at 2:16 am GMT
    • 200 Words @Joe Wong "Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita." this is very funny, how about the 20 trillions of US national debt and it is skyrocketing fast? If you only count asset without counting liability US maybe in the top 10 GDP per capita, but if you count net asset the US is in the negative GDP per capita, a broke nation. Perhaps it is American Exceptionalism logic, claiming credit where credit is not due, living in a world detached from reality.

    "If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on the military it will simply go broke." this is even funnier, Russian does not use USD in Russia, nor Russian government pay its MIC in USD, meanwhile Russian Central Bank can print Ruble thru the thin air just like the Fed, why does oil price have any relationship with Russian internal spending? Another example of "completely triumphalist and detached from Russia's economic realities" which is defined by meaningless Wall Street economic indices and snakeoil economic theories and rhetoric taught in the western universities.

    Russian Central Bank can print Ruble thru the thin air just like the Fed

    No, it cannot.
    The Russian Central Bank, like all "emerging market" central banks are treaty bound to print local currency only in a prescribed ratio to their "hard currency" reserves. The latter are the USD, the UKP, the EUR, the JPY, and now the CNY.
    As IMF treaties are considered International Treaties, they stand above the law of the land.
    These treaties are the instruments whereby the US' IMF-USD $ystem keeps the dollar in demand, and extracts value from the "3rd world" which are thereby forced to sell raw commodities to print enough currency to develop their internal economies. Of course, they can never really sell enough, and so they stay where they are.
    So, when the USM buys some insanely expensive aircraft carrier, or fighter aircraft, the rest of the world pays for it. In turn, the US uses that same carrier or aircraft to enforce the treaties. A self-reinforcing arrangement that allows the US and its allies to enjoy all the benefits of thievery over honest toil. "Extraordinary privilege", DeGaulle called it.

    The Russian Central Bank is doubly constrained by virtue of its (American authored) constitution which all but prohibits its restructuring.

    You can read a rather lengthy, but eye opening treatise on this subject here:

    http://lit.md/files/nstarikov/rouble_nationalization-the_way_to_russia%27s_freedom.pdf

    Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 2:22 am GMT
    • 100 Words OT, here is some education about North Korea for the stupid people and those who are not stupid but lack information. This is truly worth a read, it will open your eyes. Particularly read the comments, and especially the three comments by "b", the zine owner:

    http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/the-reason-behind-north-koreas-nuclear-program-and-its-offer-to-end-it.html#more

    The reality about North Korea is that the South Korean US puppets apply the same technique on NK defectors that the British US puppets apply on Russian "KGB defectors". These poor defecting souls found themselves in a desperate situation in their new country to which they were attracted by stories of street paved in gold. Thus even just for food they have to invent more and more outrageous stories to feed the propaganda machines of their South Korean/British hosts.

    This is how Kim Jong Un threw his uncle to the 120 starving dogs and how Putin blew up some Russian apartments in Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk, defector's honor!

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    Mark Chapman , • Website April 18, 2017 at 2:27 am GMT
    • 200 Words @Avery {From people who serve on it, and I quote:"mind boggling capabilities".}

    Until it has proven itself in a real war against a technologically competent adversary, e.g. U.S./NATO, then it's all simulation.
    Its "mind boggling capabilities" are nothing more than engineering specifications.
    No computer simulation anywhere, anytime has been able to come even close to the chaotic, unpredictable conditions of real war.

    To wit: the Patriot worked great on paper, but its performance in the Iraq war against ancient Iraqi Scuds was dismal.
    To wit2: the misnamed 'Iron Dome', which is a supposedly improved copy of the Patriot and which Israelis claim has a hit rate of 90%+, was proven by Prof. Postol of MIT to have a success rate of ~5% against primitive Hamas rockets.

    Let's wait and see if the S-400 has "mind boggling capabilities" .
    I hope it does. (Armenia has 'bought' some S-300s, officially. Maybe Russia gave RoA some S-400s too, unofficially).

    In fact, Russia often tests its systems under much more realistic conditions than does the USA and western powers. They want to know if it is going to fail when it is confronted with western jamming, for example, and try to make intercept difficult where the west is obsessed with collecting test data for evaluation, and as a consequence the launch site knows the release time of the target and its initial course and speed, rather than a 'black' release. Not always, but often.

    http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/heres-russias-s-400-missile-system-in-action-and-heres-1746490022

    I guess much of it boils down to how seriously you take Russian accounts of their own tests, but they specify here that the test took place under heavy jamming and yet all four missiles intercepted the target during the midcourse phase. Whatever you believe, the author is correct in pointing out that the S-400 is just a part of a multilayered Integrated Air Defense System (IADS), and it only takes one mobile launcher in an unexpected place to wreck the day for a manned-aircraft element using current tactics.

    It is safe to say without further information that western air forces are very wary of the S-400, and confronting Russia's multilayered IADS would be nothing like taking on Gadaffi's eccentric and janky mismatched collection of air-defense weaponry.

    Carlton Meyer , • Website April 18, 2017 at 2:31 am GMT
    @DanC One of the most spectacular misallocation of resources has been the US Navy's insistence on building ever-more surface ships of ever-increasing complexity, while allowing their submarine fleet to languish, and neglecting missile & torpedo technology.

    The reason is career path incentives in the Navy, and in the defense contractor corporations, not in rational consideration of the directions naval warfare is developing in the rest of the world.

    I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here: the first time a surface fleet, no matter how modern, how large, even a carrier group, is attacked by a well-commanded, networked battery of modern missles, like the Moskit, Onyx or BrahMos, there will be debacle of historic proportions.

    Thousands of sailors and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of hardware will be headed to the bottom. If you care to read my detailed explanation of why carrier strike groups are obsolete against a modern navy:

    If you prefer to watch a 33 second example:

    Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 2:42 am GMT
    • 300 Words @Sam Shama

    Russia is a very special case here–this is one of the points which is missed completely from "western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic, contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what they are talking about,
    Hey Smoothie,
    Loved this informative piece.

    On the military aspect, I'll take your assessments without any salt at all, for I do believe the U.S. has been tracking a technologically shallower but cost wise steeper trajectory.

    I think Russians are a highly gifted lot, able to do wonders mostly on account of their deep science & mathematics bench.

    Yet I also think Randal is mostly right about economic strength playing a vital, even decisive role in overall strength in the longer run. There are no countries which can match the U.S. in the department of raw economic endowments.

    China comes closest to exceeding the overall size of the U.S.economy, based on a combination of sheer population, relentless mercantilism combined with extractive labour policies over the last five decades or more. All of which has also propelled them to achieve technological capabilities not far behind many western European states.

    The U.S is eminently capable of really, I mean really increasing military spending without breaking a sweat. But that is not the goal in itself. It needs to come down hard on MIC waste, which if done successfully can change things around very quickly. Imagine a U.S. spending an efficient 7-10% of GDP on this, in which case I see its competitors doing little else besides gearing their entire economies to armaments, and then failing to keep up. I am confident if such a race ensued there'd be a global run to purchase U.S. assets, even as capital controls are put into action.

    The troubles of the U.S have stemmed from a paucity of far-sighted leaders of late. I am still hoping Mr Trump comes through, and there are signs he will. We should be establishing a truly friendly relationship with Russia and focusing our resources on joint goals of a far loftier nature than besting each other on wartime toys.

    It [US] needs to come down hard on MIC waste, which if done successfully can change things around very quickly.

    Gee Sam, you are totally lost in your understanding of US problems.

    Firstly, US military budget is significantly more than presented because the whole budget has been divided between different government departments. For example, nuclear weapons are under the Department of Energy, the huge ongoing cost of Veterans' health is under Department of Health budget, the free money to Israel is under the Foreign Affairs and so on. Overall, about 40% of the US military budget is hidden, which means that US spends not 2.5% of GDP on the military then probably around 4.5%.

    Secondly, if US were to bump up the military budget to 7-10% this could come only either at the expense of money printing machines running even hotter than super hot QE1,QE2,QE3 (what Trump is doing) or by increasing taxes on a quite depressed economy in which retail spending has almost collapsed. I cannot believe that you are suggesting this, maybe you are too close to your Fed buddies.

    Thirdly, the idea of "coming down hard on MIC waste" is utterly ridiculous because the "MIC waste" is the Deep State profit and we just had an illustration of what happens with those who oppose the Deep State. In other words, only God could come down on US MIC waste, the Presidents can only pretend.

    Since Russia and China started replacing US$ as a reserve and exchange currency, the clock has been ticking for the money printers such as the Fed and Trump. When the amount of US$ returning to US starts exceeding the amount bought by foreigners, then the inflation will explode to the German one of the 1920s. The US$ is still strong, not because of its intrinsic value then thanks to skillful FX market manipulation and thanks to 10-12 aircraft carrier groups.

    Trump is now amassing three carrier groups near North Korea, Russia and China. What do you think would happen to US$ if even one of those carriers gets sunk?

    Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 3:04 am GMT
    • 200 Words @Andrei Martyanov

    But the new generations of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military has not been tested in a recent conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.
    Generally legitimate point but it will require a very expanded answer. I will, at some point, elaborate on it--there are some serious nuances.

    The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies which it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus it lands in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages in an apparently serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put it mildly – Russia has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers are copy artists, China being the master copier.
    Largely true. However, in serious signal processing systems such as radar, sonar, combat control (management) systems etc. the main secret are mathematics (algorithms). Just to give you an example, it was impossible for China to copy any software from any Russian-made systems. As an example, Shtil Air Defense complexes which went to China after she bought Project 956 destroyers in 1990s are defended such way that any attempt to tamper with their (and other systems') brains results in a clean slate. It is true today also, actually, especially today. China now is receiving full Russian "version" of SU-35 and of S-400, they still will not be able to copy it. Mimic somewhat? Yes. After all they do have their own S-300 knock offs. Copy? No. They will try, of course but, say, SU-35 engine and avionics is still beyond their reach.

    Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate some underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these wonderful military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance?
    I believe Ondrej made a good, albeit partial case, for you in his response. Let me put it this way--viewing Russia's public schools' 8-9th grade books on math and physics (and chemistry) may create a state of shock in many, even elite, US schools and not among students only I know. Ok. so the secret of Russian military project effectiveness is that there are no congressional districts and power plays to divvy up the military budget not based on merit and proven capability than based on the power of the district's Congressional and/or Senatorial whore. Then, there are no MIC billionaires to skim the pie. Then the engineers works for reasonable salaries with a highly respected bonus of patriotism. Then there is an excellent well established educational system (for the whites) which puts accent on physics, maths and real technical building skills, supported by mentorship by experienced engineers, instead of putting accent on lying, financial market wizardry (again manipulation), MBAs, whilst training blacks to become engineers and importing engineers from India. Finally, there is the accumulated project experience and cooperative networks from building good weaponry during the days of Soviet Union, in which Russia quickly and effectively replaced sometimes dysfunctional pieces of network which dropped out, especially the important ones from Ukraine. I am truly amazed how quickly the Russian military manufacturing network compensates and adjusts for the loss of any piece.

    Have I answered my own question of how Russia produces on average 5X more bang for the buck (or more precisely, almost the same bang for five times less buck) than the US MIC? Am I missing any other component of success?

    Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 3:48 am GMT
    • 200 Words @Mark Chapman In fact, Russia often tests its systems under much more realistic conditions than does the USA and western powers. They want to know if it is going to fail when it is confronted with western jamming, for example, and try to make intercept difficult where the west is obsessed with collecting test data for evaluation, and as a consequence the launch site knows the release time of the target and its initial course and speed, rather than a 'black' release. Not always, but often.

    http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/heres-russias-s-400-missile-system-in-action-and-heres-1746490022

    I guess much of it boils down to how seriously you take Russian accounts of their own tests, but they specify here that the test took place under heavy jamming and yet all four missiles intercepted the target during the midcourse phase. Whatever you believe, the author is correct in pointing out that the S-400 is just a part of a multilayered Integrated Air Defense System (IADS), and it only takes one mobile launcher in an unexpected place to wreck the day for a manned-aircraft element using current tactics.

    It is safe to say without further information that western air forces are very wary of the S-400, and confronting Russia's multilayered IADS would be nothing like taking on Gadaffi's eccentric and janky mismatched collection of air-defense weaponry. Very good and relevant explanation. I would only add that what Russia has in Syria and what Syria has in Syria are not IADS then stand-alone radars and missiles. What Russia has over Russia is IADS, especially with the new S500 (Russian ABMD). The Russians do not develop separate systems for air-defence and missile-defence, in Russia it is all one integrated multi-sensor system. What is completely unknown is the effectiveness of the Western stealth techniques and jammers against the Russian IADS over Russia. What if, what the Western airforces call the blue line, the entry space which allows you to destroy the airdefense before being detected and destroyed, keeps changing, becomes unpredictable or disappears altogether. What if you cannot overwhelm the airdefense with a barrage of 59 Tomahawks as in Syria, because you would need to fire several hundred or even thousand missiles simultaneously?

    If Russia implements IADS over Syria, which may be what was announced after the US cruise missile attack, then the "blue line" for US and Israeli jets and missiles may disappear.

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    Bayan , April 18, 2017 at 3:51 am GMT
    • 100 Words America and Russia will not go for a direct war.

    The reason is simple: one is crazy the other is nuts. When crazy meets nuts sanity of both is restored. They 'll go for a drink and head home.

    I sort of drove this conclusion from a Russian poem I read years ago.

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    Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 4:09 am GMT
    • 200 Words @Mark Chapman Agreed; the US Navy only continues to pursue railgun technology to use up budget dollars - a peculiarity of western defense budgeting is that if you show efficiency by using less than the full amount allocated for your operations, maintenance and R&D, your budget is likely to be cut by that much next cycle. The USN has gone back to the drawing-board on railgun development, but absent a power-supply breakthrough it is unrealistic except as a vanity project.

    http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/us-navys-railgun-dream-could-be-denied-by-two-big-problems-17301

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/this-is-why-the-navy-cant-have-nice-railguns

    An additional argument in Russia's favour is that many of its systems are built simply to be rugged and easily operated by someone with a minimum of training, like a conscript, although the top end of the air defense systems are still largely operated by specialists. Western systems often are unnecessarily complex - sometimes seemingly just to impress reviewers - and the fiasco of the F-35 nightmare serves as exemplary of what happens when corporatism gets the upper hand on government; any vision of what the F-35 was originally supposed to do has been lost in a blizzard of pork-barreling and design changes.

    As far as the navy goes, I made some of the same points myself some years ago, particularly the gross discrepancy in the cost of the USN's Littoral Combat Ships compared with - in this instance - China's missile corvettes.

    https://marknesop.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/fall-out-and-secure-for-sea-the-2012-sino-russian-naval-exercises/comment-page-1/

    Thanks for a great piece; it was timely, informative, thought-provoking and chock-full of meaty phrases and terminology I cannot wait to borrow.

    Mark, sorry but I have to disagree on the F-35 project. You are right that

    any vision of what the F-35 was originally supposed to do has been lost in a blizzard of pork-barreling and design changes

    But it appears that even that original concept was a pie in the sky sold to the government by a ruthless military almost-monopolistic corporation.

    Firstly, the concept was unrealistic, then also the concept was too ambitious in the wrong direction.

    Unrealistic: to create one frame for different airforce roles with very different requirements I describe as similar to creating a tank which can race on the ground, fly and submerge . I wonder why this has never been done successfully before. But this is what LM promised to USAF and on paper it looked fantastic and when greased with a few corrupt bucks the concept won the decision day. The same frame and 70% of shared components between all versions, ha!

    Too ambitious: instead of focusing on the firepower and maneuverability, it focused on stealth which is relatively easily defeated with multi-sensor IADS. The designers created the best stealth possible but at the expense of the principal plane performance: the firepower and maneuverability.

    LM claims that F-35 is completely new technology and suffers from birthing pains. Although true, this is not the crux of the problem. The whole design is back-to-the-drawing-board level of disaster. Even US & Allies cannot afford a trillion dollars stuff-up and a decade of time lost.

    In essence, the F-35 is again a good weapon only against the thirld-world opponents who cannot defeat stealth.

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    2stateshmoostate , April 18, 2017 at 4:38 am GMT
    • 200 Words I could be wrong, but I am inclined to see a parallel between the US now and the Russian Empire pre-1904.
    After after the surprise attack by the Japanese navy against Port Arthur and ultimate victory by Japan in the Russian-Japanese war that followed back in 1904, the Czarist regime was doomed.
    The Russians were arrogantly confident that they could easily beat down the Japanese forces and got the shit kicked out of them.
    On paper the Russians should have had the advantage, but because there was so much corruption and incompetence in the Czarist military complex they were defeated.
    The result was a the revolution of 1905 and the Czars ultimate demise in 1917.
    I think everything about the US government is a lie and has been for a while. Even though billions are spent on the US military I suspect it is a "paper tiger" because of obvious corruption but also because of the traitorous activity of US government officials with allegiances to a foreign powers.
    Anyway I'd be surprised that the US would prevail (without destroying the entire world with nukes) in a conflict with a adversary like Russia.
    But, I certainly could be wrong. •
    Joe Franklin , April 18, 2017 at 4:42 am GMT
    • 300 Words @mushroom When folks discuss Russia's capabilities they often forget what's blatantly obvious - which is what's not obvious, i.e. what the bear has created and is in it's hidden caves.

    What happened to that U.S. destroyer in the Black Sea was just a teasing mini-harbinger of this reality!

    So is the genius to create a cavity to eavesdrop, &c...

    If you want to enjoy happy days don't mess with the bear! The USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) is a 4th generation guided missile destroyer whose key weapons are Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of up to 2,500 kilometers, and capable of carrying nuclear explosives. This ship carries 56 Tomahawk missiles in standard mode, and 96 missiles in attack mode.

    The US destroyer is equipped with the most recent Aegis Combat System. It is an integrated naval weapons systems which can link together the missile defense systems of all vessels embedded within the same network, so as to ensure the detection, tracking and destruction of hundreds of targets at the same time. In addition, the USS Donald Cook is equipped with 4 large radars, whose power is comparable to that of several stations. For protection, it carries more than fifty anti-aircraft missiles of various types.

    Meanwhile, the Russian Su-24 that buzzed the USS Donald Cook carried neither bombs nor missiles but only a basket mounted under the fuselage, which, according to the Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta [2], contained a Russian electronic warfare device called Khibiny .

    As the Russian jet approached the US vessel, the electronic device disabled all radars, control circuits, systems, information transmission, etc. on board the US destroyer . In other words, the all-powerful Aegis system, now hooked up – or about to be – with the defense systems installed on NATO's most modern ships was shut down, as turning off the TV set with the remote control.

    The Russian Su-24 then simulated a missile attack against the USS Donald Cook, which was left literally deaf and blind. As if carrying out a training exercise, the Russian aircraft – unarmed – repeated the same maneuver 12 times before flying away.

    After that, the 4th generation destroyer immediately set sail towards a port in Romania.

    Since that incident, which the Atlanticist media have carefully covered up despite the widespread reactions sparked among defense industry experts, no US ship has ever approached Russian territorial waters again.

    According to some specialized media, 27 sailors from the USS Donald Cook requested to be relieved from active service.

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    utu , April 18, 2017 at 4:52 am GMT
    • 400 Words The article is not backed up by numbers. There is zero specificity.

    How many S-300 and S-400 are actually deployed? How many missiles/fighter jets would it take to overwhelm this defensive force? Does US/NATO have that many missiles/fighter jets to do this job?

    How many Su-35 were deployed so far and how does this compare to the number of F-22 in service?

    How many submarines US and Russia have currently in the seas?

    What's wrong with Ohio class subs? They are just there to deliver the punch and are perfectly safe as Russia does not have enough killer subs.

    And now this:

    Moreover, already today, US lower 48 are not immune to a conventional massive missile strike.

    What would be the purpose of such a strike? Wasting expensive missile on delivering just singular 500kg explosive? Anybody seriously in Russia's military would consider such an idiocy?

    The bottom line is that Russia is a nuclear power that can annihilate the US. All strategies take this into account. This is the bottom line. Any response or aggression vis a vis Russia must take this into account.

    Russia has conventional defensive capabilities but has negligible ability of projecting its power beyond its borders. Circa 4 dozens of planes in Syria with half a dozen of fighter jets to protect them that all are defended by few dozens of S-300/400 tubes is not very impressive. This force could be overwhelmed in just few hours by Israel AF that has over 400 F-15/16 or Turkey AF that has over 200 F-16.

    I do not believe anybody really wants a war with Russia but certainly they want to conquer Russia to make it to submit to the Washington consensus. But this will not be done with foreign troops on Russian soil or with bombs falling or Russian cities. It will be done with a soft coup d'etat that will depose Putin and his semi-patriotic faction. It all will be done with Russian hands. The attack on Syria by Trump was perfectly timed with president Xi visit who is very familiar with the Chinese proverb: kill the chicken to scare the monkey. Putin was the chicken and Xi was the monkey in this case. Putin lost face and Xi lost face. With every incident of this nature there will be more and more resentment and plotting among various factions in Russia's Deep State. There is no other choice because certainly Russia will not go to the preemptive nuclear war and apart of nuclear war Russia will be humiliated in every conventional skirmish.

    I am taking bets if Putin will be out of power by the end of this summer.

    pogohere , • Website April 18, 2017 at 5:14 am GMT
    • 300 Words @Erebus

    Russian Central Bank can print Ruble thru the thin air just like the Fed
    No, it cannot.
    The Russian Central Bank, like all "emerging market" central banks are treaty bound to print local currency only in a prescribed ratio to their "hard currency" reserves. The latter are the USD, the UKP, the EUR, the JPY, and now the CNY.
    As IMF treaties are considered International Treaties, they stand above the law of the land.
    These treaties are the instruments whereby the US' IMF-USD $ystem keeps the dollar in demand, and extracts value from the "3rd world" which are thereby forced to sell raw commodities to print enough currency to develop their internal economies. Of course, they can never really sell enough, and so they stay where they are.
    So, when the USM buys some insanely expensive aircraft carrier, or fighter aircraft, the rest of the world pays for it. In turn, the US uses that same carrier or aircraft to enforce the treaties. A self-reinforcing arrangement that allows the US and its allies to enjoy all the benefits of thievery over honest toil. "Extraordinary privilege", DeGaulle called it.

    The Russian Central Bank is doubly constrained by virtue of its (American authored) constitution which all but prohibits its restructuring.

    You can read a rather lengthy, but eye opening treatise on this subject here:
    http://lit.md/files/nstarikov/rouble_nationalization-the_way_to_russia%27s_freedom.pdf What international treaties has the Russian Central Bank entered into, if any?

    Re: "The Russian Central Bank is doubly constrained by virtue of its (American authored) constitution which all but prohibits its restructuring."

    Yours is an odd way of interpreting this provision of the Russian Constitution:

    The Constitution of the Russian Federation
    Article 75 (Chapter 3)

    1. The monetary unit in the Russian Federation shall be the rouble. Money issue shall be carried out exclusively by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. Introduction and issue of other currencies in Russia shall not be allowed.
    2. The protection and ensuring the stability of the rouble shall be the major task of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, which it shall fulfil independently of the other bodies of state authority.
    3. The system of taxes paid to the federal budget and the general principles of taxation and dues in the Russian Federation shall be fixed by the federal law.
    4. State loans shall be issued according to the rules fixed by the federal law and shall be floated on a voluntary basis. [emphasis added]

    With reference to this @p36 of the treatise cited:

    "Laws need to be changed. That means that it is necessary to take the State
    Duma under control. That means that a parliamentary majority is required.
    And therefore, a party needs to be created that will win the general elections.
    A political structure which is currently rather popular starts being created.

    The majority party in the Duma now has representation sufficient to enable an amendment to the constitution to change the above provisions, not to mention the laws pursuant to same. Whether that is actually politically feasible is another matter.

    The treatise you cited appears to be somewhat dated with regard to the constraints, if any, on changes to central banking in Russia.

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    Seraphim , April 18, 2017 at 5:44 am GMT
    • 200 Words @anon That is a point I have often tried to make. Had the Tsar just told the Serbs flat out, "You guys are on your own. Comply. Or fight the Central Powers by yourself. We are out of it.",' there would never have been a 'Great' war (WW1). At most the 'war' would have been a minor brawl between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. History would have recorded it as just another Balkan skirmish. It would have been virtually forgotten today. This was the initial assumption of the Kaiser when he issued his 'blank check' of support. The Tsar would have saved millions of lives, including his own and his family too. Just nine years earlier the Tsar had fought and lost a disastrous war with Japan. That defeat led to a revolution that came within a hair of deposing him. He SHOULD have learned his lesson and avoided any future conflict like the plague. Tsar Nicolas was an incredibly stupid man. He deserves far more vilification then the Kaiser does. Tsar Nicholas was not that stupid to not see that the aggression against Serbia was in fact directed at Russia. The Dual Alliance of 1879, coming immediately after the Berlin Congress was directed squarely against Russia. By the time of Nicholas it evolved in the Triple Alliance and I have no doubts that Russians knew that Romania had adhered in secret in 1882. He could not be unaware of the 'Drang nach Osten' mentality which gripped Germany by the end of the 19th century and that the plans for the partition of Russia were on the drawing board. He could not have been unaware that the rejection of his proposals for disarmament has induced Germany to believe that the proposal reflected the weakness of Russia. He could not been unaware of Moltke's proposal in 1912 for a preventive war against Russia. He could not have been unaware that an external war was a precondition of for the revolution.
    War was imposed on Russia. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Blacktail , April 18, 2017 at 6:34 am GMT
    • 200 Words The Russian military is moving in the same direction as the US - toward state-of-the-art obsolescence. While they build tiny numbers of new weapons, many times that number of their predecessors are being retired faster than the new weapons can be built.

    That fancy T-14 Armata Russia started building a few years ago? It replaces over 20000 T-55s and T-62s built early in the Cold War, and 6000 T-64s that were all spontaneously retired in the early 2010s and shipped not to the tank graveyards, but straight to the cutting mills.

    The Borei class Ballistic Missile Submarines mentioned in the article currently number about 5 boats, most of which aren't finished yet. They replace not only the infinitely more powerful and infamous Typhoon class (retired not because of age, but because Russia couldn't afford them), but also some 50 other Cold War era "Boomers".

    And that Su-35 that's all the hype these days? It was back in the mid-1990s as well, and the Su-27 it was meant to replace is being retired faster than Su-35s can be built. The new T-50 isn't much of a threat either, because it's been in development almost as long as the F-35, and it's no closer to being combat-ready.

    These are a metaphor for what Russia has become; a nation so insecure about the wrong things (cutting-edge technology rather than enough weapons to defend itself) that they're over-spending to weakness.

    Ondrej , April 18, 2017 at 6:57 am GMT
    • 100 Words @Sergey Krieger You are coming as a very pragmatic sort of a man ;) Just for your warning – well, bit of cultural and genetical conditioning helps in this case.

    As one of my grandfathers was helping in early stages of establishing

    Unfortunately, I did not have chance to discuss these issues with him.

    Unfortunately, depending on point view, I am not enough pragmatic for current ideologically driven socio-economical society

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    anonHUN , April 18, 2017 at 7:22 am GMT
    • 600 Words @Joe Wong "still 20 years behind on average?" since you are fabricating thru the thin air, why did you stop at 20 years? Why didn't you say 30 years behind, 40 years behind, ... ? You should know fake news is always fake new regardless it is a small fake news or a big fake news. It depends on the area, in some things they are 30 years behind, or even 40. The USSR collapsed in 1991 and for at least 10 years Russia had no money even to pay its soldiers. As the Chechen debacles had shown they were in shambles. Their new projects weren't going much forward, as you can see they resumed their 1980′s projects after 2000 when they had more oil income and Putin made the Russian state working again (well, kind of it is still hindered by corruption, disincentivizes citizens from being entrepreneurial (in a state where the rules can be changed overnight at the ruler's whim (no real rule of law) and you can be a billionaire oligarch but you can't be sure the state doesn't simple take everything from you and throw you in prison overnight, even arranging for your "accidental" death, except the money you siphoned to foreign accounts and real estate abroad etc.) It is mafia state, or a mafia (ex KGB) presenting itself as the state. Of course it is more ore less true everywhere (in the US too of course), deep under the veneer of democracy and rule of law, but in Russia it is almost open and blatant. Also the Russians don't have any traditions of enterpreneurship, private incentive, contrary to China, which is also a very corrupt country with a corrupt and totally nondemocratic regime (contrary to Russia which has token Western-style democratic institutions now), but thanks to the industriousness of the Chinese people they have risen to where they are now. Average Russians still seem to expect the state to provide for them as it was in the USSR, they need a "Father Tsar" which is now Putin, or they are just drinking too much and are in a rut, idk.

    As for the years it was only an estimate of course, but as I said they first had to make up for the lost decade after 1991, like finishing subs that were left unfinished since 1992 and things like that. First really new gadgets were the Armata (and Kurganets) which is still a newcomer, and T-50, still not an operational fighter. Regarding SAM's I must say the Russians always were the fans of SAM's but they were ineffective in the ME and Vietnam too. Didn't stop the enemy from achieving air superiority. I don't doubt that the S-300 /400 is much more advanced than the SAM systems of the 60′s and 70′s were, but they would have to face a much more advanced opponent too. Like low RCS planes that cannot be detected until they are well within the range of their air-to-surface weapons or dozens of targets flying at 20-3o m coming in from multiple directions.
    The F-35 is derided around here, the US spent a fortune on it, true. It has problems (only known because the US is more open, you usually don't read in the media about problems with the new Chinese or Russian planes, sure you think it is because they don't have any with them?) but it's capabilities are something. Stealth is not some scam as some believe. It is serious business when your SAM's or AAM's cannot lock on the damn thing even if you have a monster longwave radar that can detect it from a few dozen miles

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    ondrej , April 18, 2017 at 7:25 am GMT
    • 200 Words @Kiza Ok. so the secret of Russian military project effectiveness is that there are no congressional districts and power plays to divvy up the military budget not based on merit and proven capability than based on the power of the district's Congressional and/or Senatorial whore. Then, there are no MIC billionaires to skim the pie. Then the engineers works for reasonable salaries with a highly respected bonus of patriotism. Then there is an excellent well established educational system (for the whites) which puts accent on physics, maths and real technical building skills, supported by mentorship by experienced engineers, instead of putting accent on lying, financial market wizardry (again manipulation), MBAs, whilst training blacks to become engineers and importing engineers from India. Finally, there is the accumulated project experience and cooperative networks from building good weaponry during the days of Soviet Union, in which Russia quickly and effectively replaced sometimes dysfunctional pieces of network which dropped out, especially the important ones from Ukraine. I am truly amazed how quickly the Russian military manufacturing network compensates and adjusts for the loss of any piece.

    Have I answered my own question of how Russia produces on average 5X more bang for the buck (or more precisely, almost the same bang for five times less buck) than the US MIC? Am I missing any other component of success?

    Am I missing any other component of success?

    Just a possibility – or my hypothesis I am playing lately:-)

    It can be language according Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
    The principle of linguistic relativity that the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view or cognition. Popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle is often defined to include two versions. The strong version says that language determines thought, and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories, whereas the weak version says that linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and decisions.

    and also due to fact that:

    Baltic and Slavic show the common trait of never having undergone in the course of their development any sudden systemic upheaval. [ ] there is no indication of a serious dislocation of any part of the linguistic system at any time. The sound structure has in general remained intact to the present. [ ] Baltic and Slavic are consequently the only languages in which certain modern word-forms resemble those reconstructed for Common Indo-European." ( The Indo-European Dialects [Eng. translation of Les dialectes indo-européens (1908)], University of Alabama Press, 1967, pp.
    59-60).

    Which could explain math skills of Russians and Indian:-) because languages are closely related.

    + learning other languages helps one for recognizing other points of view, if you look at current Russian elites Shoigu, Lavrov and others they speak usually one or more foreign languages fluently.

    anon , April 18, 2017 at 8:18 am GMT
    • 300 Words @Andrei Martyanov

    When relative economic strength is changing, military power lags by decades because many of the systems, technologies and institutions can only be built on such timescales.
    Russia is a very special case here--this is one of the points which is missed completely from "western" discussion. The empirical evidence is in and it overwhelmingly supports my, now academic, contention that "western" metrics for Russia do not work, nor most of the "experts" know what they are talking about, even when they have almost unrestricted access to sources. The way US "missed" Russia's military transformation which started in earnest in 2008 and completed its first phase by 2012 (4 years, you are talking about decades) is nothing short of astonishing. Combination of ignorance, hubris and downright stupidity are responsible for all that.

    P.S. No serious analyst takes US GDP as 18 trillion dollars seriously. A huge part of it is a creative bookkeeping and most of it is financial and service sector. Out of very few good things Vitaly Shlykov left after himself was his "The General Staff And Economics", which addressed the issue of actual US military-industrial potential. Then come strategic, operational and technological dimensions. You want to see operational dimension--look no further than Mosul which is still, after 6 months, being "liberated". Comparisons to Aleppo are not only warranted but irresistible. In general, overall power of the state (nation) is not only in its "economic" indices. I use Barnett's definition of national power constantly, remarkably Lavrov's recent speech in the General Staff Academy uses virtually identical definition. Your main point is well taken. PPP instead of simply GDP captures lower costs in Russia and is a better starting point. Plus, the US military procurement is remarkably inefficient. The combination of the two plus tacit and institutional knowledge regarding spending on military hardware makes analysis based on US spending misleading.

    However, the US is remarkably efficient in many other areas and has had the best performing developed economy since 2008.

    Regarding access to capital markets, the US over the last decade has developed a massive unconventional oil industry. This was done with capital investment of $3 trillion. Which came from capital markets. Not only was this unplanned, but it was done with grudging support from the Obama administration. And it is of enormous geo strategic value. I wish to hell that our defense doctrine would plug this new fact - US has no need for Middle East oil - into their strategy. Not to totally discount its importance, but the idea fighting and dying for a strategic resource that can be bought or drilled for needs to be thought out.

    If we were going to refight WW 2, then we would have some problems with global supply chains, etc. The next major war, if we have one, won't be like WW 2. The logic of a US conventional war with Russia is stupid. Either side with a decisive conventional advantage would simply increase the risk of it going nuclear.

    Russia could, if they were so inclined, forcibly take back some of the former USSR. But why would they want to? Even Crimea is expensive. It has taken what seems like forever to build the Kerch Strait Bridge. They have their Naval Base and the border dispute will keep Ukraine out of NATO. Technically, they could try it, but one of the requirements for membership is that the nation is not involved in conflict. It's held in Georgia and Moldova.

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    DanC , April 18, 2017 at 8:41 am GMT
    • 400 Words @Carlton Meyer If you care to read my detailed explanation of why carrier strike groups are obsolete against a modern navy:

    http://www.g2mil.com/navwar.htm

    If you prefer to watch a 33 second example:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ki2-uyCHOA Great article.

    Concerning wastage of resources, here's what John Patch of the USN had to say:

    The Soviets debated building a significant carrier fleet in the 1960s but determined that large carriers had no place in the nuclear age, partly because of their vulnerability to missiles with nuclear warheads.2 While later choosing to build larger carriers, Moscow always retained the view that carriers remained vulnerable.

    https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/the-carrier-invulnerability-myth.145678/

    It is surely significant that Russia sold or gave away all its cold war-era aircraft carriers and retains only the hybrid aircraft-capable cruiser, Kuznetsov.

    They "get" it that the role of capital surface ships is changing,, and diminishing. This is also indicative of why the Russians will shock the first fleet that tries to engage them. They keep their planners and developers focused on what actually matters, and serious war gaming, rather than rigging things to provide the answer they want for careerist reasons

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

    Note that it took the attacking general about 5 minutes using a swarm of old-generation cruise missiles to sink enough craft to disable the fleet's networked defense and EW capacity, with crew amounting to 20,000 on the ships sunk alone. The remaining ships were sitting ducks for the follow up attacks.

    These were subsonic cruise missiles. A bunch of moskits would have wiped everything out.

    And still these fools keep spending money on carrier groups. it's noteworthy that they restarted the war game and ordered the opposing general to stop making effective attacks. That sums up exactly why the US keeps wasting money and doing stupid things.
    __________________

    As an aside, note that the CGI from the movie of an aircraft carrier attack is not realistic.

    Projectiles travelling at the speeds shown would easily be destroyed or diverted by fleet defense systems.

    The new BrahMos adaptation of the Onyx missile travels at 2,800 mph. By comparison a bullet fired from a high compression hunting rifle travels at 1,700 mph.

    The ballistic missiles such as the Dong feng being developed by the Chinese, will have incoming speeds as high as 5,000 mph.

    The human eye can't actually see objects moving that fast.

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    Joey Zaza , April 18, 2017 at 9:48 am GMT
    @Anonymous Russia spent almost 5.4% of GDP on military spending. The US last year spent 3.3% and with Trump's proposed increase this number will increase by a few decimal points.

    Russia is a middle income country while the US is a rich country, in the top 10 of GDP per capita. If oil prices don't substantially improve and Russia continues to spend the way it does on the military it will simply go broke.

    Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita (Russia is between Mexico and Suriname)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Hopefully the President of Russia will take on board your succinct and informed analysis. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Max Steel , April 18, 2017 at 9:53 am GMT
    @reiner Tor I think that while it's a grave mistake for Americans to underestimate Russians, it's also a grave mistake for Russians to underestimate Americans.

    Since I cannot claim to be an expert in military technology, I always read such articles with great interest, but never know with how much grain of salt I need to take them - none? a little? a lot? a whole salt mine?

    Underestimate Americans in what ? Stupidity ? Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Max Steel , April 18, 2017 at 9:57 am GMT
    @reiner Tor

    US would have a real test in North Korea or Iran, Russia in a war against Turkey.
    I think Turkey's military is stronger than either Iran's or North Korea's, so it would be a tougher test for Russia to fight Turkey than for the US to fight North Korea or Iran. Russians have already defeated Ottomans and Turkey is NOT a tough test for Russia given Turkey invades Russia otheriwse unlike US you don't expect Russia to go launch a war bravado against them. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Seraphim , April 18, 2017 at 10:39 am GMT
    @2stateshmoostate I could be wrong, but I am inclined to see a parallel between the US now and the Russian Empire pre-1904.
    After after the surprise attack by the Japanese navy against Port Arthur and ultimate victory by Japan in the Russian-Japanese war that followed back in 1904, the Czarist regime was doomed.
    The Russians were arrogantly confident that they could easily beat down the Japanese forces and got the shit kicked out of them.
    On paper the Russians should have had the advantage, but because there was so much corruption and incompetence in the Czarist military complex they were defeated.
    The result was a the revolution of 1905 and the Czars ultimate demise in 1917.
    I think everything about the US government is a lie and has been for a while. Even though billions are spent on the US military I suspect it is a "paper tiger" because of obvious corruption but also because of the traitorous activity of US government officials with allegiances to a foreign powers.
    Anyway I'd be surprised that the US would prevail (without destroying the entire world with nukes) in a conflict with a adversary like Russia.
    But, I certainly could be wrong. The war that the Japanese started pushed by the Schiff banking cabal was ended in 1945 by the people they helped to overturn a friend of Japan, the Tsar Nicholas II. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Max Steel , April 18, 2017 at 11:34 am GMT
    @utu The article is not backed up by numbers. There is zero specificity.

    How many S-300 and S-400 are actually deployed? How many missiles/fighter jets would it take to overwhelm this defensive force? Does US/NATO have that many missiles/fighter jets to do this job?

    How many Su-35 were deployed so far and how does this compare to the number of F-22 in service?

    How many submarines US and Russia have currently in the seas?

    What's wrong with Ohio class subs? They are just there to deliver the punch and are perfectly safe as Russia does not have enough killer subs.

    And now this:


    Moreover, already today, US lower 48 are not immune to a conventional massive missile strike.
    What would be the purpose of such a strike? Wasting expensive missile on delivering just singular 500kg explosive? Anybody seriously in Russia's military would consider such an idiocy?

    The bottom line is that Russia is a nuclear power that can annihilate the US. All strategies take this into account. This is the bottom line. Any response or aggression vis a vis Russia must take this into account.

    Russia has conventional defensive capabilities but has negligible ability of projecting its power beyond its borders. Circa 4 dozens of planes in Syria with half a dozen of fighter jets to protect them that all are defended by few dozens of S-300/400 tubes is not very impressive. This force could be overwhelmed in just few hours by Israel AF that has over 400 F-15/16 or Turkey AF that has over 200 F-16.

    I do not believe anybody really wants a war with Russia but certainly they want to conquer Russia to make it to submit to the Washington consensus. But this will not be done with foreign troops on Russian soil or with bombs falling or Russian cities. It will be done with a soft coup d'etat that will depose Putin and his semi-patriotic faction. It all will be done with Russian hands. The attack on Syria by Trump was perfectly timed with president Xi visit who is very familiar with the Chinese proverb: kill the chicken to scare the monkey. Putin was the chicken and Xi was the monkey in this case. Putin lost face and Xi lost face. With every incident of this nature there will be more and more resentment and plotting among various factions in Russia's Deep State. There is no other choice because certainly Russia will not go to the preemptive nuclear war and apart of nuclear war Russia will be humiliated in every conventional skirmish.

    I am taking bets if Putin will be out of power by the end of this summer. S-300 can destroy Israeli warplanes even before they leave their airfields for sky. Do you see Russians doing it ? Why ? Because Russia and Israel have friendly relations and Russia doesn't interfere in Hezbollah and Israelis conflict. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Max Steel , April 18, 2017 at 11:48 am GMT
    • 300 Words @Kiza Congratulations on the article Andrei. As another commenter said - I do not agree with everything in the article, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

    I also fully support your answers to Karlin, he often barks up a wrong tree.

    Now the main issue with your article that I have is the same old issue that I always had with your comments. You start from the right premise and then you blow it up beyond recognition. In other words, you are too optimistic. For example, it is a very good point that the Russian and US perceptions of war are totally different: for a Russian the war is a fight for survival as an individual and as a nation, for a US person war and killing are just another day in the office. Then you start counting weapons and comparing weapons technology specifications and always conclude that Russian is better and cheaper, even when there is no direct comparison of effectiveness in battle.

    In other words, if your top level goal is to counter the ubiquitous US MIC propaganda with the Russian MIC propaganda, then you are doing a good job. But never forget the Motke's dictum: no wonderful battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I accept that the mercenairy armies, like the US one, are not very good when dying starts, they totally rely on military superiority which does not exist against Russia and soon will not exist against China. But the new generations of Russians are becoming softer and softer and Russian military has not been tested in a recent conflict against a peer just like the US one has not.

    The second major disadvantage of the Russian MIC is that US has a huge market of allies which it ruthlessly milks for weapons procurement, whilst when Russia sells an S300 to Cyprus it lands in the hands of the Israelis to be cracked. Even after such experience Russia engages in an apparently serious discussion to sell S400 to Turkey, straight into NATO hands. To put it mildly - Russia has to nurture the BRICS defense market, although most of the customers are copy artists, China being the master copier.

    Having criticised you too much, now I have to admit that I do not understand how Russia can get on average 5X more bang for the buck than US, sometimes more. Does Russian MIC operate some underground former mine facilities in which these engineering slaves design all these wonderful military toys and then build them at the cost of sustenance? Lower Russian wages and US MIC's extraordinary greed still cannot fully explain such huge difference. Is it some amazing corruption-free project management skills inherited from Soviet Union?

    As someone who has had experience with the weaponry of both sides, I have always been a fan of Russian engineering simplicity and reliability in design. Most people are familiar with this design philosophy through experience with Kalashnikov rifle, but this is a general design principle of all Russian weapons, even the sophisticated ones (probably even S500). Admittedly, the Chinese apply a similar principle in their engineering, although not at the same level - I remember well the shock of my Western colleagues when they realised that the Chinese Long March rockets utilised plywood where they utilised (at that time) very expensive carbon fibre and other composites.

    There is a slight flaw in your comment.

    Israeli used Greece's S-300 PMU-1 to prepare their F-16I pilots for potential air strikes on Iran .

    we still don't know which version went to Iran so if they practice on the S-300PMU-1 and Iran gets the S-300VM it will be like practising on a home cat and then going against a tiger.

    Even US and UK had older S-300 models with them. US has S-300PS/PMU systems at Nevada. It has same value as figuring out Turkish F-16 from Egyptian/Pakistan/UAE/Taiwan /Korean.

    But yes earlier S-300 models are not completely protected Israel succeeded where many in NATO failed against even an old system like PMU. Regarding S-300PMU, it has been upgraded substantially in previous years.

    Its guidance system is literally unjammable unless huge resources are dedicated, ie broadband noise jamming of the most powerful kind.

    Though recently Israel announced that it is upgrading its F-16 variants external link to be able to handle the vaunted Russian S-300 anti-aircraft system. Iran is perennially about to receive shipments of the system. But mere intention does not mean they have managed to do so.

    It was the middle of the 1990s and money was nonexistent in Russia . They sold components of an S-300V battery to the US likely the oldest model they had that was incomplete.With the money they made they upgraded the whole system to S-300VM or Antei-2500.So in effect the US paid for the next generation to replace the generation that was compromised.And the S-300V was in service in most former Soviet republics so chances were eventually they would get their hands on it anyway at least this way they got their own funding to develop a replacement system.

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    bb. , April 18, 2017 at 12:01 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @inertial You just illustrated my point. Facebook vs. Gazprom market caps - all that shows is that Facebook has access to vastly larger amounts of capital than Gazprom. Well, duh.

    Market capitalization is determined mostly by institutional investors - mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, etc. - who pool private savings and channel them into various investments. There are massive amounts of such savings available in USA; in Russia, not so much.

    In Russia, the government is just about the only major saver and investor. This works fine in areas where the government must play a role, such as weapons manufacture. In other areas, enterprises that need capital to develop must either accumulate it themselves over the years (which puts limit on growth,) or get the government to help them out, or borrow abroad at usurious rates. That's not good. Ideally, Russian enterprises should enter Russian stock or fixed income market and raise as much capital as they need.

    As for Boeing, yes it's a gem. But it does have some difficulties in raising capital. It's been balancing on the edge of bankruptcy for years and, unlike Facebook, it has huge liabilities. Incidentally, Boeing very much engages in all that "useless" high finance stuff. The buy and sell and issue bonds and short term paper; I don't know if they issue options but they certainly trade them. They don't believe that they are performing "virtual transactions with virtual money;" on the contrary, they consider this and essential part of the business, as important as building engines or whatever. Perhaps they know something you don't?

    Finally, a tip. Any "expert" who doesn't treat US (or other) economic data seriously is an idiot. not treating US data seriously is obviously hyperbole, but incidentally a very on spot one in this case.
    all things being equal, you are right about market formation and capitalization. but these are not normal times. nobody really knows whats going to happen when the shit, which is the US stock market QE fueled ponzi scheme, hits the fan. it is very hard to take the subprime, derivative, QE, buyback economy of the last almost 20 years seriously.
    it is also false to say that zuckerbook is useless. it generates way too much money(compared to twitter or tesla) to make that statement. in general, it is hard to estimate the value and effectiveness of marketing expenses and facebook put a decent metric on it, better than google to some extent. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    AP , April 18, 2017 at 12:40 pm GMT
    • 200 Words @2stateshmoostate I could be wrong, but I am inclined to see a parallel between the US now and the Russian Empire pre-1904.
    After after the surprise attack by the Japanese navy against Port Arthur and ultimate victory by Japan in the Russian-Japanese war that followed back in 1904, the Czarist regime was doomed.
    The Russians were arrogantly confident that they could easily beat down the Japanese forces and got the shit kicked out of them.
    On paper the Russians should have had the advantage, but because there was so much corruption and incompetence in the Czarist military complex they were defeated.
    The result was a the revolution of 1905 and the Czars ultimate demise in 1917.
    I think everything about the US government is a lie and has been for a while. Even though billions are spent on the US military I suspect it is a "paper tiger" because of obvious corruption but also because of the traitorous activity of US government officials with allegiances to a foreign powers.
    Anyway I'd be surprised that the US would prevail (without destroying the entire world with nukes) in a conflict with a adversary like Russia.
    But, I certainly could be wrong.

    I could be wrong, but I am inclined to see a parallel between the US now and the Russian Empire pre-1904.

    Sorry, that's just completely wrong.

    The best rough analogy to Russia of pre-1904 would be China (though China is further along in its development, perhaps it would be Russia of 1914 or later, had Russia not stupidly gotten itself into World War I).

    The US would somehow be analogous to the British Empire in its decline. A key difference, however, is the US' massive population (more than double that of Russia), territory and natural resources compared to that of the British mainland. This probably provides some sort of floor to the American decline that Britain didn't have.

    Also, keep in mind that western Russophobes plus Bolsheviks exaggerated the Tsars' Russia's weakness and incompetence, while there was nobody to defend it. This makes the picture unrealistically negative. During World War I, Russia defeated two of the three Central Powers (compare Russian vs. British performance vs. the Ottoman Empire) and was able to maintain a stable front vs. the third.

    Andrei Martyanov , • Website April 18, 2017 at 12:47 pm GMT
    NEW!

    They sold components of an S-300V battery to the US

    Belarus sold the whole complex to the US, S-300V.

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    Andrei Martyanov , • Website April 18, 2017 at 12:54 pm GMT
    • 100 WordsNEW! @Blacktail The Russian military is moving in the same direction as the US --- toward state-of-the-art obsolescence. While they build tiny numbers of new weapons, many times that number of their predecessors are being retired faster than the new weapons can be built.

    That fancy T-14 Armata Russia started building a few years ago? It replaces over 20000 T-55s and T-62s built early in the Cold War, and 6000 T-64s that were all spontaneously retired in the early 2010s and shipped not to the tank graveyards, but straight to the cutting mills.

    The Borei class Ballistic Missile Submarines mentioned in the article currently number about 5 boats, most of which aren't finished yet. They replace not only the infinitely more powerful and infamous Typhoon class (retired not because of age, but because Russia couldn't afford them), but also some 50 other Cold War era "Boomers".

    And that Su-35 that's all the hype these days? It was back in the mid-1990s as well, and the Su-27 it was meant to replace is being retired faster than Su-35s can be built. The new T-50 isn't much of a threat either, because it's been in development almost as long as the F-35, and it's no closer to being combat-ready.

    These are a metaphor for what Russia has become; a nation so insecure about the wrong things (cutting-edge technology rather than enough weapons to defend itself) that they're over-spending to weakness.

    They replace not only the infinitely more powerful and infamous Typhoon class (retired not because of age,

    Sir, please, don't write things you don't know about. Pacific Fleet's Delta III (Project 667 BDR) SSBNs are in dire need of replacement, while Northern Fleet's SSBNs of Delta IV class (Project 667 BDRM) are nearing the end of life. Remaining Project 941 (Akula-class> not Typhoon) are not even consideration for Borey-class, serving out their lives as test platforms, mostly. Borey (Project 955 and 955A) was created to replace aging Deltas.

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    Andrei Martyanov , • Website April 18, 2017 at 1:10 pm GMT
    • 200 WordsNEW! @Kiza Ok. so the secret of Russian military project effectiveness is that there are no congressional districts and power plays to divvy up the military budget not based on merit and proven capability than based on the power of the district's Congressional and/or Senatorial whore. Then, there are no MIC billionaires to skim the pie. Then the engineers works for reasonable salaries with a highly respected bonus of patriotism. Then there is an excellent well established educational system (for the whites) which puts accent on physics, maths and real technical building skills, supported by mentorship by experienced engineers, instead of putting accent on lying, financial market wizardry (again manipulation), MBAs, whilst training blacks to become engineers and importing engineers from India. Finally, there is the accumulated project experience and cooperative networks from building good weaponry during the days of Soviet Union, in which Russia quickly and effectively replaced sometimes dysfunctional pieces of network which dropped out, especially the important ones from Ukraine. I am truly amazed how quickly the Russian military manufacturing network compensates and adjusts for the loss of any piece.

    Have I answered my own question of how Russia produces on average 5X more bang for the buck (or more precisely, almost the same bang for five times less buck) than the US MIC? Am I missing any other component of success?

    Then, there are no MIC billionaires to skim the pie.

    This is crucial. Sure, Chemezov's or Rahmanov's salaries are huge by Russian standards (well, by Western too) and allows the military-industrial elite to live very comfortably, to put it mildly but the answer is the state's ownership of the whole defense sphere, from industry to doctrinal development. Relationship between Russians and their state are dramatically different from what most Westerners ever experienced in their relations. It was inevitable in the nation with such military history as Russia. As I mentioned Arthur J. Alexander's "spread"–Russia does have this pressure applied to her institutes to, in the end, become this character from Russian anecdote, where he buys a crib for his toddler from one of the former MIC plants and after assembling it at home gets AK-47. Russia is bound to produce (at least mostly) weapons which have to work.

    Here is what Russians do, barn, of course, being a representation of Russian State;)

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    Z-man , April 18, 2017 at 1:20 pm GMT
    @NoseytheDuke What if the fat boy (and the NK people) feel that they need those weapons for defensive purposes? After all, it wasn't too long ago that Korea was invaded by the US (plus a few satraps) and millions of Koreans were killed. Who are we in the west to interfere with NK? Fat boy is developing missiles that will hit the USA, nuff said.
    Ok a little more, he can sell those little nuclear bombs to some terrorist group, now 'nuff said!' Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    Sam Shama , April 18, 2017 at 1:23 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @NoseytheDuke The troubles of the US of late have largely stemmed from having an insatiable parasite on its back sucking all that it can from the military and the economy in general whilst simultaneously plotting to undermine it.

    The senseless wars in the ME to provide Israel with "security", the billions of dollars in "loans" that will never be repaid, the vast amounts of military hardware worth billions declared as "scrap" and given to Israel, what a great investment it all has been.

    No doubt millions of Americans will welcome more degradation of their cities and infrastructure in order to field a larger military since it cares for the fruit of their loins so well AND has accomplished so much good in the world with the trillions already squandered at the behest of the Neocon Israel Firsters.

    You sure have your finger on America's pulse Shammy and clearly want nothing but the best for the American people, right? What a tosser! I shall refrain from returning your predictably dumb insults.

    On the topic of foreign aid and loan guarantees, you aren't well-read nor qualified to render any opinion likely to be worth more than the pixels wasted by your fatuous lines.

    First, understand the difference between actual loans and loan guarantees.

    https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf [pg 25 - 27]

    Second, here is a table for U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel: Total Aid

    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-u-s-foreign-aid-to-israel-1949-present

    It irks you the U.S. sends foreign aid to Israel by an amount which really means not a great deal [average, $1.86b % $310b = 0.006 of GDP], even as U.S. foreign aid finds a much wider set of recipients. That's your emotional prerogative, one which breaches a very, very long tradition observed by powerful nations.

    There is little you or I could do about it. Alea iacta est .

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    Z-man , April 18, 2017 at 1:24 pm GMT
    @Kiza You are stupid, are you not? No, I am smarter than you, and probably better looking. Just a guess, but an educated one, lol! •
    Anon , April 18, 2017 at 2:07 pm GMT
    • 200 Words @Andrei Martyanov

    Hopefully it will grow to its proper dimensions.
    So, Facebook's capitalization of 400 billion, that is for company which produces nothing of real value (in fact, is detrimental to mental health of the society) is a true size of economy.

    https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap

    Mind you--this is for a collection of several buildings, servers and about 200-300 pages of code in whatever they wrote it (C++, C whatever--make your pick).

    Meanwhile, Gazprom, which is an energy monster is about...10 times less.

    https://ycharts.com/companies/OGZPY/market_cap

    Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist. Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products--ask yourself a question whose "capitalization" is more important for economy--of useless Facebook or of the corporation which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual--a collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services. i am not talking, of course, about stock buybacks. As I already stated, nobody of any serious expertise in actual things that matter, treats this whole US "economic" data seriously. The problem here is that many in US establishment do and that is a clear and present danger to both US and world at large because constant and grotesque overestimation of own capabilities becomes a matter of policy, not a one-off accident.

    Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist. Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products–ask yourself a question whose "capitalization" is more important for economy–of useless Facebook or of the corporation which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual–a collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services.

    The above is a classic example of elementalism. It is a flawed perspective. Humans do not need much more than clean air, clean shelter, food, water and perhaps some antibiotics to live perfectly well. Every desire is born of the limbic system, which includes the hippocampus and the amygdala.

    Don't speak so dismissively of Virtual Reality.

    Joe Wong , April 18, 2017 at 2:24 pm GMT
    • 200 Words @Erebus

    Russian Central Bank can print Ruble thru the thin air just like the Fed
    No, it cannot.
    The Russian Central Bank, like all "emerging market" central banks are treaty bound to print local currency only in a prescribed ratio to their "hard currency" reserves. The latter are the USD, the UKP, the EUR, the JPY, and now the CNY.
    As IMF treaties are considered International Treaties, they stand above the law of the land.
    These treaties are the instruments whereby the US' IMF-USD $ystem keeps the dollar in demand, and extracts value from the "3rd world" which are thereby forced to sell raw commodities to print enough currency to develop their internal economies. Of course, they can never really sell enough, and so they stay where they are.
    So, when the USM buys some insanely expensive aircraft carrier, or fighter aircraft, the rest of the world pays for it. In turn, the US uses that same carrier or aircraft to enforce the treaties. A self-reinforcing arrangement that allows the US and its allies to enjoy all the benefits of thievery over honest toil. "Extraordinary privilege", DeGaulle called it.

    The Russian Central Bank is doubly constrained by virtue of its (American authored) constitution which all but prohibits its restructuring.

    You can read a rather lengthy, but eye opening treatise on this subject here:
    http://lit.md/files/nstarikov/rouble_nationalization-the_way_to_russia%27s_freedom.pdf

    The Russian Central Bank, like all "emerging market" central banks are treaty bound to print local currency only in a prescribed ratio to their "hard currency" reserves.

    The above is your fabrication, the link is a write out by an over zealous nationalist with half baked truth, and the link is neither a treaty quoted by you to support your claim nor saying there is such IMF treaty.

    Most nations hardly have any hard currency reserves, yet the amount of local currency they printed proves your "prescribed ratio" a fake news. Even those nations have hard currency reserves, the amount of local currency they prints makes your "prescribed ratio" a Hollywood fantasy.

    Putin has begun de-dollarization Russian economy long time ago, Russian has signed currency SWAP with China, EU and Japan, so that Russian can trade without USD. China also has set up AIIB and Alt-SWIFT for rest of the world to bypass the USD as well. Time has changed, man.

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    Andrei Martyanov , • Website April 18, 2017 at 2:34 pm GMT
    • 300 WordsNEW! @inertial You just illustrated my point. Facebook vs. Gazprom market caps - all that shows is that Facebook has access to vastly larger amounts of capital than Gazprom. Well, duh.

    Market capitalization is determined mostly by institutional investors - mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, etc. - who pool private savings and channel them into various investments. There are massive amounts of such savings available in USA; in Russia, not so much.

    In Russia, the government is just about the only major saver and investor. This works fine in areas where the government must play a role, such as weapons manufacture. In other areas, enterprises that need capital to develop must either accumulate it themselves over the years (which puts limit on growth,) or get the government to help them out, or borrow abroad at usurious rates. That's not good. Ideally, Russian enterprises should enter Russian stock or fixed income market and raise as much capital as they need.

    As for Boeing, yes it's a gem. But it does have some difficulties in raising capital. It's been balancing on the edge of bankruptcy for years and, unlike Facebook, it has huge liabilities. Incidentally, Boeing very much engages in all that "useless" high finance stuff. The buy and sell and issue bonds and short term paper; I don't know if they issue options but they certainly trade them. They don't believe that they are performing "virtual transactions with virtual money;" on the contrary, they consider this and essential part of the business, as important as building engines or whatever. Perhaps they know something you don't?

    Finally, a tip. Any "expert" who doesn't treat US (or other) economic data seriously is an idiot.

    Market capitalization is determined mostly by institutional investors – mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, etc. – who pool private savings and channel them into various investments. There are massive amounts of such savings available in USA; in Russia, not so much.

    Sure, and that is why a company which produces nothing of value "commands" the so called "investments" which are several times larger than those of Boeing who is de facto US national treasure and who, as you stated, has problems with raising "capital". That pretty much says it all. Again, I omit here the trick with stock buybacks. But in the end, you seem to miss completely the point–structure of GDP.

    You may go here and see for yourself how FIRE overtook manufacturing in US in output. What is "output", of course, remains a complete mystery, same as many other services, once one considers the "quality" of education in US public schools which reflects in the most profound way on US labor force which increasingly begins to look like a third world one.

    https://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=51&step=1#reqid=51&step=51&isuri=1&5114=a&5102=15

    In general, we speak here different languages and I may only refer you back to Michael Lind's quote in my text. Judged in a larger, geopolitical framework, one can observe very clearly the process of US literally running out of resources and no amount of "raised capital" can change it. This is not to speak about the whole house of cards of Pax Americana which rested on US military imperial mythology. Once this mythology is debunked (the process which is ongoing as I type it) the house of cards folds.

    • Agree: Sergey Krieger •
    Joe Wong , April 18, 2017 at 2:37 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @Anon

    Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist. Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products–ask yourself a question whose "capitalization" is more important for economy–of useless Facebook or of the corporation which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual–a collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services.
    The above is a classic example of elementalism. It is a flawed perspective. Humans do not need much more than clean air, clean shelter, food, water and perhaps some antibiotics to live perfectly well. Every desire is born of the limbic system, which includes the hippocampus and the amygdala.

    Don't speak so dismissively of Virtual Reality. I guess what Andrei Martyanov was trying to say that virtual is not real, intrinsic or tangible, it is fabricated or created thru the thin air, hence the American economy is not real, intrinsic or tangible, it is fabricated or created thru the thin air. Reply More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Ondrej , April 18, 2017 at 3:01 pm GMT
    • 100 Words @Anon

    Here is a dilemma. Gazprom extracts and delivers energy without which Eurasia can not exist. Facebook? Turn it off tomorrow and bar some impressionable teenagers committing suicide, the world will continue on living just fine. But that is just one example. You will not find, however, such a hi-tech monster as Rostec on any financial market. For a corporate giant which employs half-a-million people and produces state of the art weapon systems and civilian products–ask yourself a question whose "capitalization" is more important for economy–of useless Facebook or of the corporation which produces civilian jet engines. But let me add insult to injury. While Facebook "capitalizes" on almost half-trillion, a gem of the American industry, aerospace giant Boeing barely makes it to 109 billion. Most US economic indices are fraud, the same as most of US economy is virtual–a collection of virtual transactions with virtual money and virtual services.
    The above is a classic example of elementalism. It is a flawed perspective. Humans do not need much more than clean air, clean shelter, food, water and perhaps some antibiotics to live perfectly well. Every desire is born of the limbic system, which includes the hippocampus and the amygdala.

    Don't speak so dismissively of Virtual Reality.

    It is a flawed perspective. Humans do not need much more than clean air, clean shelter, food, water and perhaps some antibiotics to live perfectly well.

    Yes, valid argument which true for GB, Belgium, Holland, with their Gulf Stream protected stable clime, but I would prefer Mediterranean area such as Greece or Balkan for that matter.

    Hmm Olive oil, vine, fishing sounds nice, but anything east of Frankfurt and North of let say Berlin in Europe, will add different perspective. Heating for winter, and shorter summer. Just ask people in Archangelsk or Petersburg

    + Virtual reality need quite a lot of electrical power to run, not only on your computer but in cloud as well.

    Here you can find nice perspective as well..

    https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2015/09/you-call-this-progress/

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    Peripatetic commenter , April 18, 2017 at 3:15 pm GMT
    • 100 Words Strategy page thinks that the S400s in Syria are useless:

    https://strategypage.com/qnd/russia/articles/20170418.aspx

    In reading their article they seem to forget about the Mig-15 and Mig-17 in Korea and Vietnam, respectively, and about the effectiveness of those SAMs in Vietnam as well.

    Didn't that traitor, John McCain get downed by a SAM?

    https://infogalactic.com/info/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-15

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    The Alarmist, April 18, 2017 at 3:43 pm GMT
    @Erebus I understand that there would be great hue and cry to take revenge. That is why I wrote (with a correction in bold):
    One can hope that we'll be rejoicing that America's owners follow ed their internationalistic instincts when that moment has passed.
    America's owners aren't necessarily American. That the civilizational consequences of America's death be limited to the N. American continent is in their interest, and they would make that interest known.
    The geo-political consequences of an attack on the grid in response to a US/NATO attack on Russia would be that the US would instantly cease to be a military/economic power for at least several generations. The Great Game would be over. If the US came back with a nuclear response, they know well that Russia's counter-response would simply extend that timeline. Perhaps to infinity. IOW, other than suicidal madness, there is no geo-political reason to respond, and there'd be every reason to take the hit and try to rebuild.

    Likewise, Russia's politicians would be hard pressed to resist responding to an American nuclear attack in kind, but the fact is that there would be no military purpose to doing so. The US would be finished as a world power. Vaporizing 200M people would be of no military value. Better to keep what's left of your nuclear forces intact so you don't have to rebuild them. The more likely scenario is this: Sensing a number of strategic and tactical indicators of an impending attack, the US launches a bolt out of the blue attack to cripple the Russian forces before they can attack. Russian SLBMs and rail-based missiles get off a few MIRVs that take out DC and a few other major cities (counter-force targetting is pointless after the first-strike), but no-harm no-foul since the JEEP was executed at the time of the first-strike, so everybody who matters was saved from harm and that pesky problem of too many idle hands in the major urban centers was finally taken care of.

    Alternatively, the Russians use EMP weapons already in orbit to take out the US grid. The US NCA execute the SIOP. Outcome: See above.

    Winning move is not to play, but the geniuses running things don't see the extintinction of the little guy as a bug, rather as a feature.

    lastnerve , April 18, 2017 at 3:44 pm GMT
    @Intelligent Dasein I've come to the conclusion that it is the probable consensus among America's Deep State elites, as exemplified by the truly evil Hillary Clinton, that an all-out war with Russia which totally devastates Russia but leaves America just barely standing, would, notwithstanding the rivers of blood and the chaos unleashed, be an acceptable outcome as long as the blasted rump of America, namely the Deep State itself, gets to subsequently enthrone itself as the unchallenged world hegemon. The Deep State views the entirety of America's economic and military might, as well as the lives of its citizens, as merely a means to this end.

    I also believe that Russia's strategists and state-level actors have come to the same conclusion regarding America's designs. This is the strategic situation that Russia is up against, and this is why Russia has wisely prepared itself to fight a defensive war of astonishing proportions. And for the sake of the human race, for the peace of men of good will everywhere, I would advise Russia that when dealing with a cranky, feeble, delusional, and senile Uncle Sam, it is not possible to be too paranoid. You will not be up against a rational actor if and when this war breaks out. Whatever zany, desperate, and counterproductive gambits you can imagine the USA making, they will not be worse than what these people are capable of.

    As an American myself, I would have liked to have been a patriot. If my country must go to war, I would have liked to be on my country's side. But the bitter truth is that my government is something the world would be better off without. Russia has the moral high ground in this conflict. Hopefully that, and the strength of its arms, will be enough.

    The great tragedy of the 20th century was that all the wrong people won the major wars. Whether it was Chiang Kai-shek in China or Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, or the Kaiser and the House of Hapsburg before them, the real heroes, the ones who were however ineffectively and confusedly on the side of Right, suffered defeat at the hands of the evil imperialists. We cannot allow that to happen again. I know who I will be supporting if it comes to war.

    Long live king and country. God bless the patriots, wherever they be. Hail victory.

    I agree with what you write except that the Deep State is but a part of the Globalist (NWO)
    plans for their future world.
    Sam Shama , April 18, 2017 at 3:46 pm GMT
    @Kiza
    It [US] needs to come down hard on MIC waste, which if done successfully can change things around very quickly.
    Gee Sam, you are totally lost in your understanding of US problems.

    Firstly, US military budget is significantly more than presented because the whole budget has been divided between different government departments. For example, nuclear weapons are under the Department of Energy, the huge ongoing cost of Veterans' health is under Department of Health budget, the free money to Israel is under the Foreign Affairs and so on. Overall, about 40% of the US military budget is hidden, which means that US spends not 2.5% of GDP on the military then probably around 4.5%.

    Secondly, if US were to bump up the military budget to 7-10% this could come only either at the expense of money printing machines running even hotter than super hot QE1,QE2,QE3 (what Trump is doing) or by increasing taxes on a quite depressed economy in which retail spending has almost collapsed. I cannot believe that you are suggesting this, maybe you are too close to your Fed buddies.

    Thirdly, the idea of "coming down hard on MIC waste" is utterly ridiculous because the "MIC waste" is the Deep State profit and we just had an illustration of what happens with those who oppose the Deep State. In other words, only God could come down on US MIC waste, the Presidents can only pretend.

    Since Russia and China started replacing US$ as a reserve and exchange currency, the clock has been ticking for the money printers such as the Fed and Trump. When the amount of US$ returning to US starts exceeding the amount bought by foreigners, then the inflation will explode to the German one of the 1920s. The US$ is still strong, not because of its intrinsic value then thanks to skillful FX market manipulation and thanks to 10-12 aircraft carrier groups.

    Trump is now amassing three carrier groups near North Korea, Russia and China. What do you think would happen to US$ if even one of those carriers gets sunk?

    Gee Sam, you are totally lost in your understanding of US problems.

    Hi Kiza,

    I admit I do get lost on occasion, so please feel free to correct me. Are you saying that accounting categorisation, which if reversed might lead to a 2% higher military spending, is an attempt to deceive international bond markets? You clearly think bond investors are stupid. That is an opinion based on what precisely? Experienced results of bond markets? Please enlighten me.

    Secondly, if US were to bump up the military budget to 7-10% this could come only either at the expense of money printing machines running even hotter than super hot QE1,QE2,QE3 (what Trump is doing) or by increasing taxes on a quite depressed economy in which retail spending has almost collapsed. I cannot believe that you are suggesting this, maybe you are too close to your Fed buddies.

    "Hot", as in inflation? If so, the characterisation is a fail, since U.S. inflation and long bond yields have been doing the opposite.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IRLTLT01USM156N

    I have no idea what you mean by "what Trump is doing". Have you noticed the Fed had actually raised short rates? Yet the 10-year bond is at 2.2%?

    Please read what I wrote carefully. Nowhere did I recommend the U.S. pursue the path of yet another Reaganesque star wars race. What I said was, of all nations, she is the most capable of doing so, where an escalation would literally push her "competitors" to engage in little else in their economies. That is all. Yes, I understand that MIC waste ends up in the pockets of the least desirable elements. Do you mean to say that other nations are bereft of this virtue?

    Since Russia and China started replacing US$ as a reserve and exchange currency, the clock has been ticking for the money printers such as the Fed and Trump.

    Gee Kiza, exaggerate much? Replace the USD?

    CNY has been added to the SDR basket as a reserve currency, with very limited international use, as of 2016 BIS data, after having doubled over the last year (but currently moving lower), the Yuan comprises 4% of total international reserve currency use.

    The United States actually wants the Chinese currency to gain much greater acceptance to aid global growth and relieve the pressure on the U.S, but of late the massive capital flows out of China to the U.S. has badly hindered this objective.

    Here is what the Yuan has done: from a managed and swiftly devalued currency pursuant to China's decades-long mercantilist policies (to which the US had given the implicit nod), it rose in value during 2005-2013 as the US/ECB/BoJ/BoC worked in a co-ordinated fashion to modify global savings imbalances, to yet again devalue during 2014-present, mostly as capital outflows gathered force.

    The Rouble is not a reserve currency, so the AIB while a worthy development, does not give the Rouble reserve status, somehow "replacing" the USD/EUR/GBP/JPY/KRW. Can it achieve that status? I think it can, given the deep capabilities of the Russian population. International acceptance of such status requires a far more diversified economy.

    When the amount of US$ returning to US starts exceeding the amount bought by foreigners, then the inflation will explode to the German one of the 1920s.

    Reversing cause and effect. If hyperinflation ever arrives on the shores of the US, you'll have far greater problems globally than worrying about bonds. I've seen this trope play continuously since 2008. I need a date, even an approximate one, or I shall be forced to tell you that I know with certainty that "at some point in the future the Earth will cease to exist".

    Best

    Avery, April 18, 2017 at 3:56 pm GMT
    @Mark Chapman In fact, Russia often tests its systems under much more realistic conditions than does the USA and western powers. They want to know if it is going to fail when it is confronted with western jamming, for example, and try to make intercept difficult where the west is obsessed with collecting test data for evaluation, and as a consequence the launch site knows the release time of the target and its initial course and speed, rather than a 'black' release. Not always, but often.

    http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/heres-russias-s-400-missile-system-in-action-and-heres-1746490022

    I guess much of it boils down to how seriously you take Russian accounts of their own tests, but they specify here that the test took place under heavy jamming and yet all four missiles intercepted the target during the midcourse phase. Whatever you believe, the author is correct in pointing out that the S-400 is just a part of a multilayered Integrated Air Defense System (IADS), and it only takes one mobile launcher in an unexpected place to wreck the day for a manned-aircraft element using current tactics.

    It is safe to say without further information that western air forces are very wary of the S-400, and confronting Russia's multilayered IADS would be nothing like taking on Gadaffi's eccentric and janky mismatched collection of air-defense weaponry. {I guess much of it boils down to how seriously you take Russian accounts of their own tests, but they specify here that the test took place under heavy jamming and yet all four missiles intercepted the target during the midcourse phase. }

    I don't doubt the veracity of the claim in the article. All I was commenting on was this sentence of the author of the article: {From people who serve on it, and I quote:" mind boggling capabilities".}

    Traditionally Soviets/Russians have do spend more of their resources on defense, particularly anti-air. Their anti-air missiles have a solid track record: the highly competent USAF – in personnel, and training, and technology – lost lots and lots of equipment to Soviet SAMs in Viet Nam. Even high-flying B52 were not safe.

    Also, Egyptians shot down lots of Israeli jets with Soviet AAs during the Yom Kippur war .

    So there is no doubt in my mind that S-300/S-400 are very capable systems. But the phrase 'mind boggling' is a bit of a hyperbole.
    What is it based on? engineering specifications and simulated tests.

    I have a bit of a technical background (commercial, not military).
    We'd simulate all sorts real-life conditions in testing the product, but as soon as it was sent out, humans managed to find some sequence that crashed the system. You just can't simulate the randomness of the real world.

    If and when the S-400 is used in anger, then we'll see if its capabilities are 'mind boggling' . Until then, it's just conjecture.

    Seamus Padraig, April 18, 2017 at 4:08 pm GMT
    @LondonBob Trump's isolationism and embrace of realpolitik is just a recognition of realities, interestingly this is a viewpoint shared in many European capitals, despite their fulminating over Trump. If Trump isn't co-opted he deserves congratulations for stymieing the traditional imperial overstretch, that is unless recent events in Syria and the Ukraine, perhaps analogous to the Boer War, don't already represent the high points of US power before inevitable decline. Avoiding a WWI type general conflagration will be achievement enough.

    We are both supposed to deride and fear Russia, both can't be true.

    We are both supposed to deride and fear Russia, both can't be true.

    True, but it can be effective as a propaganda technique nevertheless. Orwell referred to it as 'doublethink'.

    iffen, April 18, 2017 at 4:11 pm GMT
    @Sam Shama
    Gee Sam, you are totally lost in your understanding of US problems.
    Hi Kiza,

    I admit I do get lost on occasion, so please feel free to correct me. Are you saying that accounting categorisation, which if reversed might lead to a 2% higher military spending, is an attempt to deceive international bond markets? You clearly think bond investors are stupid. That is an opinion based on what precisely? Experienced results of bond markets? Please enlighten me.

    Secondly, if US were to bump up the military budget to 7-10% this could come only either at the expense of money printing machines running even hotter than super hot QE1,QE2,QE3 (what Trump is doing) or by increasing taxes on a quite depressed economy in which retail spending has almost collapsed. I cannot believe that you are suggesting this, maybe you are too close to your Fed buddies.
    "Hot", as in inflation? If so, the characterisation is a fail, since U.S. inflation and long bond yields have been doing the opposite.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IRLTLT01USM156N

    I have no idea what you mean by "what Trump is doing". Have you noticed the Fed had actually raised short rates? Yet the 10-year bond is at 2.2%?

    Please read what I wrote carefully. Nowhere did I recommend the U.S. pursue the path of yet another Reaganesque star wars race. What I said was, of all nations, she is the most capable of doing so, where an escalation would literally push her "competitors" to engage in little else in their economies. That is all. Yes, I understand that MIC waste ends up in the pockets of the least desirable elements. Do you mean to say that other nations are bereft of this virtue?

    Since Russia and China started replacing US$ as a reserve and exchange currency, the clock has been ticking for the money printers such as the Fed and Trump.
    Gee Kiza, exaggerate much? Replace the USD?

    CNY has been added to the SDR basket as a reserve currency, with very limited international use, as of 2016 BIS data, after having doubled over the last year (but currently moving lower), the Yuan comprises 4% of total international reserve currency use.

    The United States actually wants the Chinese currency to gain much greater acceptance to aid global growth and relieve the pressure on the U.S, but of late the massive capital flows out of China to the U.S. has badly hindered this objective.

    Here is what the Yuan has done: from a managed and swiftly devalued currency pursuant to China's decades-long mercantilist policies (to which the US had given the implicit nod), it rose in value during 2005-2013 as the US/ECB/BoJ/BoC worked in a co-ordinated fashion to modify global savings imbalances, to yet again devalue during 2014-present, mostly as capital outflows gathered force.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DEXCHUS

    The Rouble is not a reserve currency, so the AIB while a worthy development, does not give the Rouble reserve status, somehow "replacing" the USD/EUR/GBP/JPY/KRW. Can it achieve that status? I think it can, given the deep capabilities of the Russian population. International acceptance of such status requires a far more diversified economy.


    When the amount of US$ returning to US starts exceeding the amount bought by foreigners, then the inflation will explode to the German one of the 1920s.
    Reversing cause and effect. If hyperinflation ever arrives on the shores of the US, you'll have far greater problems globally than worrying about bonds. I've seen this trope play continuously since 2008. I need a date, even an approximate one, or I shall be forced to tell you that I know with certainty that "at some point in the future the Earth will cease to exist".

    Best Yes, I understand that MIC waste ends up in the pockets of the least desirable elements.

    Who gets to define "least desirable"?

    I know that you are not talking about IAM members.

    A good defense industry is vital. In a capitalist economy, what other model for the MIC do you have in mind?

    ThatDamnGood , April 18, 2017 at 4:35 pm GMT
    @Timur The Lame @SmoothieX12

    The points you make with respect to capitalization of Facebook and other totally worthless social media constructs in comparison to actual entities that produce something, anything that you could stub your foot on, be it good or not is brilliant in that it exposes the sham of GDP and GNP tabulations.

    Question: I read about 10 years ago of an incident where an American carrier group was sailing on in it's merry way in waters that I can't now recall when a couple of Sukhois came in undetected and screamed over the actual aircraft carrier at mast level at the maximum speed that the altitude would allow. The carrier group immediately did a 180 and got the hell out of Dodge. The Admiral was supposedly called on the carpet afterwards as to why he altered course without prior approval and he stuck to his guns and said that his responsibility was for the safety of his group first and foremost and that was that.

    I have been unable to substantiate this episode. Has it been brushed from the internet or did I fall for a Russian (internet) hoax? I remember mentioning it to some senior Russian officers at a Canadian multi national English language course at an army base close to me and they were non committal in their answers and basically looked guardedly at me as if I were a spook of sorts.

    Any knowledge of this supposed incident from you would be much appreciated. By the way the event that I am referring to is not to be mistaken with the relatively recent Black Sea incident (USS Donald Cook).

    Cheers- Kitty Hawk.

    http://mobile.wnd.com/2000/12/2254/

    in the middle, April 18, 2017 at 4:50 pm GMT
    @reiner Tor Don't worry, when the going gets tough, suddenly the US military will only send straight white men to die for LGBT and black "equality". Come on! While serving in Africa, I saw the US Marines, and, and, well, not many whites were visible! Mostly minorities, specially Hispanics, and Blacks, so there goes your argument; same for the Army. So Hush! (The AF is the only service with majority whites). The Navy, lots of Philippinos.
    Andrei Martyanov , • Website April 18, 2017 at 5:40 pm GMT
    @Timur The Lame @SmoothieX12

    The points you make with respect to capitalization of Facebook and other totally worthless social media constructs in comparison to actual entities that produce something, anything that you could stub your foot on, be it good or not is brilliant in that it exposes the sham of GDP and GNP tabulations.

    Question: I read about 10 years ago of an incident where an American carrier group was sailing on in it's merry way in waters that I can't now recall when a couple of Sukhois came in undetected and screamed over the actual aircraft carrier at mast level at the maximum speed that the altitude would allow. The carrier group immediately did a 180 and got the hell out of Dodge. The Admiral was supposedly called on the carpet afterwards as to why he altered course without prior approval and he stuck to his guns and said that his responsibility was for the safety of his group first and foremost and that was that.

    I have been unable to substantiate this episode. Has it been brushed from the internet or did I fall for a Russian (internet) hoax? I remember mentioning it to some senior Russian officers at a Canadian multi national English language course at an army base close to me and they were non committal in their answers and basically looked guardedly at me as if I were a spook of sorts.

    Any knowledge of this supposed incident from you would be much appreciated. By the way the event that I am referring to is not to be mistaken with the relatively recent Black Sea incident (USS Donald Cook).

    Cheers- There were many cases of Russian SU-24, TU-142, Tu-22s flying over one of the US carriers. Here is one such case:

    http://freebeacon.com/national-security/two-russian-bombers-buzz-u-s-aircraft-carrier/

    Nothing secret about it. Roger Thompson in his seminal work on US Navy gives a recount of number of such cases:

    https://www.usni.org/store/books/clear-decks-50-90/lessons-not-learned

    There is nothing secret really about it, except for reputational losses. Cases of breaking through US Carrier Battle Groups air defense and ASW screens are very numerous. As per this USS Donald Cook "affair", which continues to dominate many "military" forums–a complete baloney, of course, SU-24 are simply not equipped for alleged "burning of circuits" and "shutting down radars". Here I discuss a little bit the issue.

    http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2016/05/so-much-for-trumps-new-foreign-policy.html

    Z-man, April 18, 2017 at 6:26 pm GMT
    @iffen Nah, you are still the greatest idiot on unz

    And the field of competition is not that weak.

    And a weak sister chimes in. •
    Timur The Lame, April 18, 2017 at 6:52 pm GMT
    @ Smoothiex12,

    Thank you for the information. I shall look up your post regarding the Donald Cook incident. Your take on it would be news to me as it did seem to be disabled, though I only read relatively superficial accounts.

    As ThatDamnGood pointed out (thanks) it was indeed the Kitty Hawk incident that escaped my recollection. I know that these type incidents occur but it was something about the aforementioned case that stuck in my mind, the super low altitude I think.

    Time for a revisit and a memory tonic. But then again even Kasparov eventually lost to Deep Blue.

    Cheers-

    Seminumerical, April 18, 2017 at 9:59 pm GMT
    @AtomAnt "Regarding Russian military they are still 20 years behind on average"

    Dude, you're delusional. The US military is to a large extent a paper tiger. Example: Aircraft carriers are not survivable against Russian or Chinese missiles and subs. They are good for bombing 3rd world countries only, like 19th century gunboats (plus fattening MIC coffers). Example: A Rand report found the F-35 "can't turn, can't climb, isn't fast enough to run away".

    I would argue nothing is as important as missile technology. Russia may be leading in that.

    Furthermore, the US has lower income and less capital now than 20 years ago. Russia has a central bank focused on rational economics rather than milking the country for billionaires' sake. They insist on positive interest rates so savers get the benefit of their money. That's why Russia is growing albeit slowly while the US regresses.
    The US will find fighting Russia is not like fighting Arabs. (Remember what some Israeli general said about fighting Arabs.) The US hasn't fought without air superiority in over 74 years.

    Note the moral dimension, also. The US has to pay its military 2X the equivalent private sector wages, because no one wants to die for Lockheed Martin. Sure the Aircraft carriers are vulnerable. But the US have a disproportionate response prepared for any country that strikes one with a missile or torpedo. So the carriers get to project power despite their vulnerability. •

    inertial, April 18, 2017 at 11:03 pm GMT
    @Andrei Martyanov
    Market capitalization is determined mostly by institutional investors – mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, etc. – who pool private savings and channel them into various investments. There are massive amounts of such savings available in USA; in Russia, not so much.
    Sure, and that is why a company which produces nothing of value "commands" the so called "investments" which are several times larger than those of Boeing who is de facto US national treasure and who, as you stated, has problems with raising "capital". That pretty much says it all. Again, I omit here the trick with stock buybacks. But in the end, you seem to miss completely the point--structure of GDP.

    You may go here and see for yourself how FIRE overtook manufacturing in US in output. What is "output", of course, remains a complete mystery, same as many other services, once one considers the "quality" of education in US public schools which reflects in the most profound way on US labor force which increasingly begins to look like a third world one.

    https://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=51&step=1#reqid=51&step=51&isuri=1&5114=a&5102=15

    In general, we speak here different languages and I may only refer you back to Michael Lind's quote in my text. Judged in a larger, geopolitical framework, one can observe very clearly the process of US literally running out of resources and no amount of "raised capital" can change it. This is not to speak about the whole house of cards of Pax Americana which rested on US military imperial mythology. Once this mythology is debunked (the process which is ongoing as I type it) the house of cards folds. Years ago, I used to make fun of Amazon and later of Google. I learned my lesson. I personally don't have much use for Facebook; I don't have an account there. But I can see that Facebook provides a lot of value both to its users and to its customers (two distinct sets.)

    And then there is the potential. Lots of smart people are working at Facebook; they may well come up with a breakthrough in some unexpected area. Google started with search and now they are working on driverless cars, among other things. I doubt GM or Ford would've come up with driverless cars, as it is more of a software challenge than a car design one. So here is an example how an investment into a "virtual" company like Google worked out better than an investment into the "real" economy like GM.

    Now as for FIRE, and that brings me back to what I said about Facebook. Just because you personally don't need or don't understand a service it doesn't mean that it's "useless," or "virtual," or "fraudulent," or whatever other epithet is being used. Before you slam the FIRE sector you have to understand what services it provides, who needs these services, and why. Are there problems? Of course there are; there are always problems, that's human condition. Is FIRE sector too big? Perhaps, but with all due respect you are not a person to judge, as you have only the vaguest of ideas of what it actually does. The truth is, financial sector supports the "real" economy, which cannot exist without it. And this makes it as "real" as anything.

    Finally. The problem is that you listen to cranks. I used to be there 15-20 years but then I realized that the cranks are full of shit. Sometimes they accidentally may stumble upon a valid point but such cases are few and far between. Mostly they are one note Johnnies. Don't listen to cranks.

    Kiza, April 18, 2017 at 11:14 pm GMT
    @ondrej Am I missing any other component of success?

    Just a possibility - or my hypothesis I am playing lately:-)

    It can be language according Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
    The principle of linguistic relativity that the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view or cognition. Popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle is often defined to include two versions. The strong version says that language determines thought, and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories, whereas the weak version says that linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and decisions.

    and also due to fact that:

    Baltic and Slavic show the common trait of never having undergone in the course of their development any sudden systemic upheaval. [ ] there is no indication of a serious dislocation of any part of the linguistic system at any time. The sound structure has in general remained intact to the present. [ ] Baltic and Slavic are consequently the only languages in which certain modern word-forms resemble those reconstructed for Common Indo-European." ( The Indo-European Dialects [Eng. translation of Les dialectes indo-européens (1908)], University of Alabama Press, 1967, pp.
    59-60).

    Which could explain math skills of Russians and Indian:-) because languages are closely related.

    + learning other languages helps one for recognizing other points of view, if you look at current Russian elites Shoigu, Lavrov and others they speak usually one or more foreign languages fluently.

    learning other languages helps one for recognizing other points of view

    I do not know if this has been scientifically established but I can certainly vouch for it personally because learning every new language gives you a different perspective on existing things. After starting to learn a new language I would think – I had no idea that lego could be arranged this way as well! Therefore, learning new languages broadens one's view of the world but whether it also helps recognize other points of view probably depends on the tolerance of the person. Maybe the key word in your statement is "helps".

    Kiza, April 18, 2017 at 11:27 pm GMT
    @Z-man And a weak sister chimes in. I provided a link about North Korea to a blog which could educate you about it. But you still persisted with your original bull. This is a clear characteristic of an idiot, because the uninformed inform and correct themselves. And yes, there is a strong competition here at unz for the title of King of All Idiots.

    Here it is again, one last time, The Reason for North Korea's Nuclear Program and Its Unrequited Offers to End It : http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/the-reason-behind-north-koreas-nuclear-program-and-its-offer-to-end-it.html#more

    On North Korea, the US chefs cook up their usual menu of bullshit and bombs , whilst the latest chef being the most prolific on both.

    Seraphim, April 19, 2017 at 12:11 am GMT
    @AP
    I could be wrong, but I am inclined to see a parallel between the US now and the Russian Empire pre-1904.
    Sorry, that's just completely wrong.

    The best rough analogy to Russia of pre-1904 would be China (though China is further along in its development, perhaps it would be Russia of 1914 or later, had Russia not stupidly gotten itself into World War I).

    The US would somehow be analogous to the British Empire in its decline. A key difference, however, is the US' massive population (more than double that of Russia), territory and natural resources compared to that of the British mainland. This probably provides some sort of floor to the American decline that Britain didn't have.

    Also, keep in mind that western Russophobes plus Bolsheviks exaggerated the Tsars' Russia's weakness and incompetence, while there was nobody to defend it. This makes the picture unrealistically negative. During World War I, Russia defeated two of the three Central Powers (compare Russian vs. British performance vs. the Ottoman Empire) and was able to maintain a stable front vs. the third.

    Do not forget that Germany made the first declarations of war. It declared war against Russia on the 1st of August 1914 and the next day invades Luxemburg. The declaration of war against France followed on the 3d of August, followed by the violation of Belgium neutrality.
    Russia was far from being defeated in 1916-17. •
    NoseytheDuke, April 19, 2017 at 12:28 am GMT
    @iffen Yes, I understand that MIC waste ends up in the pockets of the least desirable elements.

    Who gets to define "least desirable"?

    I know that you are not talking about IAM members.

    A good defense industry is vital. In a capitalist economy, what other model for the MIC do you have in mind?

    One that focuses on the defence of the nation?
    The Alarmist, April 19, 2017 at 2:51 am GMT
    @Sam Shama
    Gee Sam, you are totally lost in your understanding of US problems.
    Hi Kiza,

    I admit I do get lost on occasion, so please feel free to correct me. Are you saying that accounting categorisation, which if reversed might lead to a 2% higher military spending, is an attempt to deceive international bond markets? You clearly think bond investors are stupid. That is an opinion based on what precisely? Experienced results of bond markets? Please enlighten me.


    Secondly, if US were to bump up the military budget to 7-10% this could come only either at the expense of money printing machines running even hotter than super hot QE1,QE2,QE3 (what Trump is doing) or by increasing taxes on a quite depressed economy in which retail spending has almost collapsed. I cannot believe that you are suggesting this, maybe you are too close to your Fed buddies.

    "Hot", as in inflation? If so, the characterisation is a fail, since U.S. inflation and long bond yields have been doing the opposite.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IRLTLT01USM156N

    I have no idea what you mean by "what Trump is doing". Have you noticed the Fed had actually raised short rates? Yet the 10-year bond is at 2.2%?

    Please read what I wrote carefully. Nowhere did I recommend the U.S. pursue the path of yet another Reaganesque star wars race. What I said was, of all nations, she is the most capable of doing so, where an escalation would literally push her "competitors" to engage in little else in their economies. That is all. Yes, I understand that MIC waste ends up in the pockets of the least desirable elements. Do you mean to say that other nations are bereft of this virtue?


    Since Russia and China started replacing US$ as a reserve and exchange currency, the clock has been ticking for the money printers such as the Fed and Trump.
    Gee Kiza, exaggerate much? Replace the USD?

    CNY has been added to the SDR basket as a reserve currency, with very limited international use, as of 2016 BIS data, after having doubled over the last year (but currently moving lower), the Yuan comprises 4% of total international reserve currency use.

    The United States actually wants the Chinese currency to gain much greater acceptance to aid global growth and relieve the pressure on the U.S, but of late the massive capital flows out of China to the U.S. has badly hindered this objective.

    Here is what the Yuan has done: from a managed and swiftly devalued currency pursuant to China's decades-long mercantilist policies (to which the US had given the implicit nod), it rose in value during 2005-2013 as the US/ECB/BoJ/BoC worked in a co-ordinated fashion to modify global savings imbalances, to yet again devalue during 2014-present, mostly as capital outflows gathered force.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DEXCHUS

    The Rouble is not a reserve currency, so the AIB while a worthy development, does not give the Rouble reserve status, somehow "replacing" the USD/EUR/GBP/JPY/KRW. Can it achieve that status? I think it can, given the deep capabilities of the Russian population. International acceptance of such status requires a far more diversified economy.


    When the amount of US$ returning to US starts exceeding the amount bought by foreigners, then the inflation will explode to the German one of the 1920s.
    Reversing cause and effect. If hyperinflation ever arrives on the shores of the US, you'll have far greater problems globally than worrying about bonds. I've seen this trope play continuously since 2008. I need a date, even an approximate one, or I shall be forced to tell you that I know with certainty that "at some point in the future the Earth will cease to exist".

    Best

    ""Hot", as in inflation? If so, the characterisation is a fail, since U.S. inflation and long bond yields have been doing the opposite."

    US inflation as officially reported is significantly understated. Do a little shopping from time to time and tell me what kind of inflation you actually experience. I come back to the US every few months, and it is hard to not notice how expensive many things have become over the past couple of decades.

    As for bond yields, there is a bit of a vicious and not-so-virtuous cycle going on, as the borrowed money is used to ramp up military spending, which translates to further aggression abroad, which leads to further international destabilisation, which then leads to money flow into US Treasury bonds and other US assets as a so-called flight-to-safety play. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum.

    Kiza, April 19, 2017 at 4:12 am GMT
    @The Alarmist
    ""Hot", as in inflation? If so, the characterisation is a fail, since U.S. inflation and long bond yields have been doing the opposite."
    US inflation as officially reported is significantly understated. Do a little shopping from time to time and tell me what kind of inflation you actually experience. I come back to the US every few months, and it is hard to not notice how expensive many things have become over the past couple of decades.

    As for bond yields, there is a bit of a vicious and not-so-virtuous cycle going on, as the borrowed money is used to ramp up military spending, which translates to further aggression abroad, which leads to further international destabilisation, which then leads to money flow into US Treasury bonds and other US assets as a so-called flight-to-safety play. Lather, rinse, repeat ... ad nauseum.

    As for bond yields, there is a bit of a vicious and not-so-virtuous cycle going on, as the borrowed money is used to ramp up military spending, which translates to further aggression abroad, which leads to further international destabilisation, which then leads to money flow into US Treasury bonds and other US assets as a so-called flight-to-safety play. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum.

    "Ad nauseum" is only until the whole thing collapses. I have been saying for a long time that most markets in the US, and where they flow over into the international markets, are rigged. The number of people needed to rig a market is not large, because it is the same, about a dozen "banks" which dominate almost all markets. The Western Governments are in on the act and their official statistics on every economic measure are perverted jokes: inflation, unemployment, GDP, any and all.

    I lived under socialism/communism as an adult and I remember how my friends and I laughed at government's economic statistics. But this is much worse, this is an entire alternative reality moving on the inertia of the size of its lie .

    Sam asks for an approximate date of the collapse, which is almost like asking for the date when a nuclear war will end humanity. His is the principal fallacy that the past is a continuously good predictor of the future, that discrete events do not exist. Sam, imagine for a moment that Trump somehow manages to regime-change Russia and crush China (without causing a global nuclear war). Russia is the largest country on the planet, with vast unused land and resources, mainly because the technology for their exploitation did not exist in the past (inhospitable land). Now imagine adding this almost virgin land to the banking ledgers full of vapor-assets under the so called "mark-to-market". The market riggers and their governments could live happily ever after for another couple of generations of banksters. Like vampire needs blood, the sick system just needs a massive injection of real assets to survive another 100 years or longer. This is why they are so viciously attacking the Russian leadership. But this is a great example why the moment of collapse is unpredictable and it is unfair to ask for (an even approximate) date.

    Ondrej, April 19, 2017 at 5:19 am GMT
    @Kiza
    learning other languages helps one for recognizing other points of view
    I do not know if this has been scientifically established but I can certainly vouch for it personally because learning every new language gives you a different perspective on existing things. After starting to learn a new language I would think - I had no idea that lego could be arranged this way as well! Therefore, learning new languages broadens one's view of the world but whether it also helps recognize other points of view probably depends on the tolerance of the person. Maybe the key word in your statement is "helps". One could say that to certain degree it is disadvantage for English to be lingua-franca.

    In many ways it is also most abused language in world. All speakers bring to English their language frameworks.

    One could conclude that English native speakers became more accustomed – to be more tolerant for non-precise meanings or statements of others to certain degree – due to many non-native English speakers. Therefore it is not that obvious for them.

    I think, speakers of other languages would often not accept such improper usage of words or grammar in their language – (thinking) because by language we think.

    Combine that with euphemisms and political correctness and you have recepy for disaster in communication.

    Ondrej, April 19, 2017 at 7:40 am GMT
    @inertial Years ago, I used to make fun of Amazon and later of Google. I learned my lesson. I personally don't have much use for Facebook; I don't have an account there. But I can see that Facebook provides a lot of value both to its users and to its customers (two distinct sets.)

    And then there is the potential. Lots of smart people are working at Facebook; they may well come up with a breakthrough in some unexpected area. Google started with search and now they are working on driverless cars, among other things. I doubt GM or Ford would've come up with driverless cars, as it is more of a software challenge than a car design one. So here is an example how an investment into a "virtual" company like Google worked out better than an investment into the "real" economy like GM.

    Now as for FIRE, and that brings me back to what I said about Facebook. Just because you personally don't need or don't understand a service it doesn't mean that it's "useless," or "virtual," or "fraudulent," or whatever other epithet is being used. Before you slam the FIRE sector you have to understand what services it provides, who needs these services, and why. Are there problems? Of course there are; there are always problems, that's human condition. Is FIRE sector too big? Perhaps, but with all due respect you are not a person to judge, as you have only the vaguest of ideas of what it actually does. The truth is, financial sector supports the "real" economy, which cannot exist without it. And this makes it as "real" as anything.

    Finally. The problem is that you listen to cranks. I used to be there 15-20 years but then I realized that the cranks are full of shit. Sometimes they accidentally may stumble upon a valid point but such cases are few and far between. Mostly they are one note Johnnies. Don't listen to cranks.

    The truth is, financial sector supports the "real" economy, which cannot exist without it.

    Obviously false statement. You would need to at least some adjective such as mostly, probably, usually into sentence. Frame it in current prevailing socio-economical system.

    Just ask Soviets if they won ww2 due to strong financial system, or put Sputnik into space for that matter.

    So there is not at all any correlation in between financial sector and real economy;-)

    Kiza, April 19, 2017 at 9:04 am GMT
    @Ondrej
    The truth is, financial sector supports the "real" economy, which cannot exist without it.
    Obviously false statement. You would need to at least some adjective such as mostly, probably, usually into sentence. Frame it in current prevailing socio-economical system.

    Just ask Soviets if they won ww2 due to strong financial system, or put Sputnik into space for that matter.

    So there is not at all any correlation in between financial sector and real economy;-) In theory, the financial system is supposed to ensure the efficient allocation of investments, as opposed to central planning. This is how it us supposed to support the real economy. In reality, the Western financial system, and possibly the Chinese one, have turned into a leach draining blood out of the real economy, much worse than central planning. •

    Frederic Bastiat , April 19, 2017 at 10:52 am GMT
    @inertial Years ago, I used to make fun of Amazon and later of Google. I learned my lesson. I personally don't have much use for Facebook; I don't have an account there. But I can see that Facebook provides a lot of value both to its users and to its customers (two distinct sets.)

    And then there is the potential. Lots of smart people are working at Facebook; they may well come up with a breakthrough in some unexpected area. Google started with search and now they are working on driverless cars, among other things. I doubt GM or Ford would've come up with driverless cars, as it is more of a software challenge than a car design one. So here is an example how an investment into a "virtual" company like Google worked out better than an investment into the "real" economy like GM.

    Now as for FIRE, and that brings me back to what I said about Facebook. Just because you personally don't need or don't understand a service it doesn't mean that it's "useless," or "virtual," or "fraudulent," or whatever other epithet is being used. Before you slam the FIRE sector you have to understand what services it provides, who needs these services, and why. Are there problems? Of course there are; there are always problems, that's human condition. Is FIRE sector too big? Perhaps, but with all due respect you are not a person to judge, as you have only the vaguest of ideas of what it actually does. The truth is, financial sector supports the "real" economy, which cannot exist without it. And this makes it as "real" as anything.

    Finally. The problem is that you listen to cranks. I used to be there 15-20 years but then I realized that the cranks are full of shit. Sometimes they accidentally may stumble upon a valid point but such cases are few and far between. Mostly they are one note Johnnies. Don't listen to cranks.

    Just because you personally don't need or don't understand a service it doesn't mean that it's "useless," or "virtual," or "fraudulent," or whatever other epithet is being used. Before you slam the FIRE sector you have to understand what services it provides, who needs these services, and why.

    The financial sector is a fraud. It is a parasitic industry that only sucks tax payers money in the long run.

    Nassim Taleb is spot on regarding the financial industry:

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/b/69813f49-27b1-431f-8edc-ea892aa96d8d

    Ondrej, April 19, 2017 at 11:36 am GMT
    @Kiza In theory, the financial system is supposed to ensure the efficient allocation of investments, as opposed to central planning. This is how it us supposed to support the real economy. In reality, the Western financial system, and possibly the Chinese one, have turned into a leach draining blood out of the real economy, much worse than central planning.

    In theory , the financial system is supposed to ensure the efficient allocation of investments, as opposed to central planning.

    In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.

    I know theory, but there is empirical evidence that it does not, see Taleb for that matter, or Schumpeter in my comment 165.

    Schumpeter is worth to read , as he argues, logically, in case of market equilibrium = fair prices interest would approach to zero, and it ceases to be incentive for financing innovation. And this leads us back to Marx`s theory of simple reproduction as his main argument in Kapital Volume I. which create a problem for system.

    As for Central economy, you would be probably surprised – at least I was surprised,
    that it was in fact J.V. Stalin who critiqued too much of Central planning. He was warning in 50. that it would block next development of system. in his book Economical problems of socialism.

    You mention your experience with socialistic system, in case you want to refresh your memory or get better than propagandistic (from right or left) view of Marx . I advise David Harwey lectures on youtube.

    Kiza , April 19, 2017 at 12:13 pm GMT
    @Kiza
    As for bond yields, there is a bit of a vicious and not-so-virtuous cycle going on, as the borrowed money is used to ramp up military spending, which translates to further aggression abroad, which leads to further international destabilisation, which then leads to money flow into US Treasury bonds and other US assets as a so-called flight-to-safety play. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum.
    "Ad nauseum" is only until the whole thing collapses. I have been saying for a long time that most markets in the US, and where they flow over into the international markets, are rigged. The number of people needed to rig a market is not large, because it is the same, about a dozen "banks" which dominate almost all markets. The Western Governments are in on the act and their official statistics on every economic measure are perverted jokes: inflation, unemployment, GDP, any and all.

    I lived under socialism/communism as an adult and I remember how my friends and I laughed at government's economic statistics. But this is much worse, this is an entire alternative reality moving on the inertia of the size of its lie .

    Sam asks for an approximate date of the collapse, which is almost like asking for the date when a nuclear war will end humanity. His is the principal fallacy that the past is a continuously good predictor of the future, that discrete events do not exist. Sam, imagine for a moment that Trump somehow manages to regime-change Russia and crush China (without causing a global nuclear war). Russia is the largest country on the planet, with vast unused land and resources, mainly because the technology for their exploitation did not exist in the past (inhospitable land). Now imagine adding this almost virgin land to the banking ledgers full of vapor-assets under the so called "mark-to-market". The market riggers and their governments could live happily ever after for another couple of generations of banksters. Like vampire needs blood, the sick system just needs a massive injection of real assets to survive another 100 years or longer. This is why they are so viciously attacking the Russian leadership. But this is a great example why the moment of collapse is unpredictable and it is unfair to ask for (an even approximate) date.

    Here I quote a funny comment from a guy on zerohedge. This is how the Western economies have been operating:

    You have two cows.
    You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
    The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
    The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release.
    The public then buys your bull.

    AP, April 19, 2017 at 1:14 pm GMT
    @Seraphim Do not forget that Germany made the first declarations of war. It declared war against Russia on the 1st of August 1914 and the next day invades Luxemburg. The declaration of war against France followed on the 3d of August, followed by the violation of Belgium neutrality.
    Russia was far from being defeated in 1916-17.

    Do not forget that Germany made the first declarations of war. It declared war against Russia on the 1st of August 1914 and the next day invades Luxemburg.

    It declared war first, after Russia had mobilized and refused to turn back its mobilization. Germany would not and should not have waited until huge masses of Russian troops had actually crossed its border before declaring war.

    The sad events of the 20th century in some ways can be seen as a tragic, Old Testament style story of sin and brutal retribution. Serbia committed regicide, and lost 25% of its population in the ensuing war. Nicholas II, a decent but foolish man, supported the regicidal regime and was himself murdered, along with his family. The peoples of the Russian Empire didn't stop that crime, and suffered the millions dead under Bolshevism. Wilhelm sent Lenin to Russia and lost his own throne. The peoples of Central Europe abandoned the Habsburgs and suffered decades of Nazism, Communism and war. Such was the sad fate of the former Holy Alliance.

    ANOSPH , April 19, 2017 at 2:26 pm GMT
    @Andrei Martyanov There were many cases of Russian SU-24, TU-142, Tu-22s flying over one of the US carriers. Here is one such case:

    http://freebeacon.com/national-security/two-russian-bombers-buzz-u-s-aircraft-carrier/

    Nothing secret about it. Roger Thompson in his seminal work on US Navy gives a recount of number of such cases:

    https://www.usni.org/store/books/clear-decks-50-90/lessons-not-learned

    There is nothing secret really about it, except for reputational losses. Cases of breaking through US Carrier Battle Groups air defense and ASW screens are very numerous. As per this USS Donald Cook "affair", which continues to dominate many "military" forums--a complete baloney, of course, SU-24 are simply not equipped for alleged "burning of circuits" and "shutting down radars". Here I discuss a little bit the issue.

    http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2016/05/so-much-for-trumps-new-foreign-policy.html Andrei,

    Off-topic, but what do you think about Igor Strelkov's opinion that the entire current Russian system is due for a collapse?

    Part 1: Part 2:

    I realize that he's been saying essentially the same thing for three years, but surely his words are worth at least some consideration given his "contacts in the elites."

    Andrei Martyanov, • Website April 19, 2017 at 2:37 pm GMT
    @Seminumerical Sure the Aircraft carriers are vulnerable. But the US have a disproportionate response prepared for any country that strikes one with a missile or torpedo. So the carriers get to project power despite their vulnerability.

    But the US have a disproportionate response prepared for any country that strikes one with a missile or torpedo

    Not against peer. Dynamics there is very different than it would have been with some adversary as Iran. Unless the "disproportionate" response becomes nuclear, what is a definition of "disproportionate". I can tell you what may happen if one of the CVNs sunk and this is not my idea but of former Chief Of Naval Operations late Admiral Elmo Zumwalt: the psychological demoralizing impact will be overwhelming and that is what may push a political (and suicidal) decision on nuclear response. In purely conventional framework–the game may become very different. To have some (however disagreeable from purely tactical point of view) primer on one of very many scenarios, you may try Naval War College Newport Papers, especially #20.

    https://www.usnwc.edu/Publications/Naval-War-College-Press/-Newport-Papers/Documents/20-pdf.aspx

    I am no fan of US military's war gaming but it will give you at least some general idea on how US Navy wanted to think about itself.

    Andrei Martyanov , • Website April 19, 2017 at 2:50 pm GMT
    @ANOSPH Andrei,

    Off-topic, but what do you think about Igor Strelkov's opinion that the entire current Russian system is due for a collapse?

    Part 1: http://strelkov-i-i.livejournal.com/26121.html
    Part 2: http://strelkov-i-i.livejournal.com/26458.html

    I realize that he's been saying essentially the same thing for three years, but surely his words are worth at least some consideration given his "contacts in the elites."

    Off-topic, but what do you think about Igor Strelkov's opinion that the entire current Russian system is due for a collapse?

    My attitude to Strelkov is similar to my attitude to clowns or not-adequate people. Having said all that, Russia does face some serious economic challenges which are of purely domestic origins and I never hid my reserved attitude to Putin (despite all his achievements) because of the fact him being an economic "liberal" and surrounding himself in economic block with a bunch of Gaidar-worshipping hacks. Medvedev's government is an affront to overwhelming majority of Russian people.

    Sam Shama, April 19, 2017 at 4:29 pm GMT
    @Kiza
    As for bond yields, there is a bit of a vicious and not-so-virtuous cycle going on, as the borrowed money is used to ramp up military spending, which translates to further aggression abroad, which leads to further international destabilisation, which then leads to money flow into US Treasury bonds and other US assets as a so-called flight-to-safety play. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum.
    "Ad nauseum" is only until the whole thing collapses. I have been saying for a long time that most markets in the US, and where they flow over into the international markets, are rigged. The number of people needed to rig a market is not large, because it is the same, about a dozen "banks" which dominate almost all markets. The Western Governments are in on the act and their official statistics on every economic measure are perverted jokes: inflation, unemployment, GDP, any and all.

    I lived under socialism/communism as an adult and I remember how my friends and I laughed at government's economic statistics. But this is much worse, this is an entire alternative reality moving on the inertia of the size of its lie .

    Sam asks for an approximate date of the collapse, which is almost like asking for the date when a nuclear war will end humanity. His is the principal fallacy that the past is a continuously good predictor of the future, that discrete events do not exist. Sam, imagine for a moment that Trump somehow manages to regime-change Russia and crush China (without causing a global nuclear war). Russia is the largest country on the planet, with vast unused land and resources, mainly because the technology for their exploitation did not exist in the past (inhospitable land). Now imagine adding this almost virgin land to the banking ledgers full of vapor-assets under the so called "mark-to-market". The market riggers and their governments could live happily ever after for another couple of generations of banksters. Like vampire needs blood, the sick system just needs a massive injection of real assets to survive another 100 years or longer. This is why they are so viciously attacking the Russian leadership. But this is a great example why the moment of collapse is unpredictable and it is unfair to ask for (an even approximate) date.

    Hey Kiza,

    I base my views on data and economic theory generally accepted in the West. If one summarily dismisses these instruments of analyses then, of course, all conclusions derived are rejectable. Which is what you are doing. Fine.

    Simply deeming our system fraudulent and built on myth amounts to a meaningless unfalsifiable assertion. Unfalsifiable, since the collapse event dangles always in the undefined "future".

    His is the principal fallacy that the past is a continuously good predictor of the future, that discrete events do not exist.

    I thought you were using past experience to assert with high confidence that the West is headed for a repeat of Weimar Has there been a total destruction of productive capacity which eluded my reverie?

    Data for prediction [at least parameter estimation of any system] is always from the past. I am not aware of any data from the future, is anyone? I don't claim a system superior without subjecting it to out-of-sample and live outcomes. Some Western models have failed recently [pure Rational Expectations models, e.g.]while others have succeeded with flying colours [New Keynesian Models]. What good is any theory or claim without corroborating empirical evidence? To me, claims of our economies headed to a collapse, because because well BIG DEBT! WEIMAR! FALSE STATISTICS! etc are just emotional outbursts devoid of any internally consistent theory, let alone the utter absence of evidence since the whole trope started in 2008.

    Alarmist: you stated earlier that inflation stats are misleading. I am perfectly willing to accept that statement if it were supported by facts. If during your visits to supermarkets, shops, online purchases you found your favourite items costing more, that in itself is no reason to conclude inflation is at hand. I do shop, and a great deal in point of fact :-), and I've noticed that prices of computers, e.g. have fallen continuously and dramatically. What about rent inflation? Or transportation? Rent inflation stands at levels much lower than averages from the past 70 years and transportation costs have fallen greatly as well [Air travel as a percentage of median per capita income]. Do you deny these? Trouble arises when people take these things for granted, and only complain about (mostly) food items that have gone up in price ["I hate these prices for eggs! Back in my childhood, a dozen cost only a penny!"]

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEHA#0 [change the graph to go from 1950 and pick the percentage change option]

    If you don't believe in official CPI/Core PCE, look at the MIT Billion Prices Index, which provides one with real-time inflation from literally a billion prices from online markets which operate globally. Those indices substantially tell the same story: inflation has been heading down!

    Sam, imagine for a moment that Trump somehow manages to regime-change Russia and crush China (without causing a global nuclear war).

    How is he going to regime change Russia? It's a pipe dream. Putin is immensely popular and in my reckoning, he is simply negotiating spheres of influence with USA.

    China, well they are joined to the US at the hip!. The U.S. is only looking for China to wean away from its mercantilist stance and start buying our goods and services.

    Russia is the largest country on the planet, with vast unused land and resources, mainly because the technology for their exploitation did not exist in the past (inhospitable land). Now imagine adding this almost virgin land to the banking ledgers full of vapor-assets under the so called "mark-to-market". The market riggers and their governments could live happily ever after for another couple of generations of banksters. Like vampire needs blood, the sick system just needs a massive injection of real assets to survive another 100 years or longer.

    Russia is a vastly endowed nation with a gifted population. The climate isn't all that balmy, shall we say. Her natural resources are the assets of her citizens to do with them as they deem optimal.

    I'll go along with your hypothetical scenario in which Putin is unseated and a new Yeltsin is installed. I would consider that outcome both undesirable and approaching a vanishingly low probability. You'll need to convince me of its plausibility and DT's desire to bring about such an outcome.

    [Apr 19, 2017] Bannons Worldview Dissecting the Message of The Fourth Turning

    This four seasons theory looks to me like some king of amateur dialectics...
    80 years is close to Kondratiev cycles length.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Stephen K. Bannon has great admiration for a provocative but disputed theory of history that argues that the United States is nearing a crisis that could be just as disruptive and catastrophic as the most seminal global turning points of the last 250 years. ..."
    "... This prophecy, which is laid out in a 1997 book, "The Fourth Turning," by two amateur historians, makes the case that world events unfold in predictable cycles of roughly 80 years each that can be divided into four chapters, or turnings: growth, maturation, entropy and destruction. Western societies have experienced the same patterns for centuries, the book argues, and they are as natural and necessary as spring, summer, fall and winter. ..."
    "... In an interview with The Times, Mr. Bannon said, "Everything President Trump is doing - all of it - is to get ahead of or stop any potential crisis." But the magnitude of this crisis - and who is ultimately responsible for it - is an unknown that Mr. Trump can use to his political advantage. This helps explain Mr. Trump's tendency to emphasize crime rates, terrorist attacks and weak border control. ..."
    "... We should shed and simplify the federal government in advance of the Crisis by cutting back sharply on its size and scope but without imperiling its core infrastructure. ..."
    "... One of the authors' major arguments is that Western society - particularly American culture - has denied the significance of cyclical patterns in history in favor of the more palatable and self-serving belief that humans are on an inexorable march toward improvement. They say this allows us to gloss over the flaws in human nature that allow for bad judgment - and bad leaders that drive societies into decline. ..."
    "... The authors envision a return to a more traditional, conservative social order as one outcome of a crisis. They also see the possibility of retribution and punishment for those who resist or refuse to comply with the new expectations for conformity. Mr. Trump's "with us or against us" attitude raises questions about what kind of leader he would be in such a crisis - and what kind of loyalty his administration might demand. ..."
    Apr 19, 2017 | www.nytimes.com

    Stephen K. Bannon has great admiration for a provocative but disputed theory of history that argues that the United States is nearing a crisis that could be just as disruptive and catastrophic as the most seminal global turning points of the last 250 years.

    This prophecy, which is laid out in a 1997 book, "The Fourth Turning," by two amateur historians, makes the case that world events unfold in predictable cycles of roughly 80 years each that can be divided into four chapters, or turnings: growth, maturation, entropy and destruction. Western societies have experienced the same patterns for centuries, the book argues, and they are as natural and necessary as spring, summer, fall and winter.

    Few books have been as central to the worldview of Mr. Bannon, a voracious reader who tends to see politics and policy in terms of their place in the broader arc of history.

    But what does the book tell us about how Mr. Bannon is approaching his job as President Trump's chief strategist and what he sees in the country's future? Here are some excerpts from the book, with explanations from The New York Times.

    'Winter Is Coming,' and We'd Better Be Prepared

    History is seasonal, and winter is coming. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, one commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II. The risk of catastrophe will be high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule.

    The "Fourth Turning" authors, William Strauss and Neil Howe, started using that phrase before it became a pop culture buzzword courtesy of HBO's "Game of Thrones." But, as the authors point out, some winters are mild. And sometimes they arrive late. The best thing to do, they say, is to prepare for what they wrote will be "America's next rendezvous with destiny."

    In an interview with The Times, Mr. Bannon said, "Everything President Trump is doing - all of it - is to get ahead of or stop any potential crisis." But the magnitude of this crisis - and who is ultimately responsible for it - is an unknown that Mr. Trump can use to his political advantage. This helps explain Mr. Trump's tendency to emphasize crime rates, terrorist attacks and weak border control.

    The 'Deconstruction of the Administrative State,' and Much More, Is Inevitable

    The Fourth Turning will trigger a political upheaval beyond anything Americans could today imagine. New civic authority will have to take root, quickly and firmly - which won't be easy if the discredited rules and rituals of the old regime remain fully in place. We should shed and simplify the federal government in advance of the Crisis by cutting back sharply on its size and scope but without imperiling its core infrastructure.

    The rhythmic, seasonal nature of history that the authors identify foresees an inevitable period of decay and destruction that will tear down existing social and political institutions. Mr. Bannon has famously argued that the overreaching and ineffective federal government - "the administrative state," as he calls it - needs to be dismantled. And Mr. Trump, he said, has just begun the process.

    As Mr. Howe said in an interview with The Times: "There has to be a period in which we tear down everything that is no longer functional. And if we don't do that, it's hard to ever renew anything. Forests need fires, and rivers need floods. These happen for a reason."

    'The American Dream Is Dead'

    James Truslow Adams (wrote) of an 'American Dream' to refer to this civic faith in linear advancement. Time, they suggested, was the natural ally of each successive generation. Thus arose the dogma of an American exceptionalism, the belief that this nation and its people had somehow broken loose from any risk of cyclical regress . Yet the great weakness of linear time is that it obliterates time's recurrence and thus cuts people off from the eternal - whether in nature, in each other, or in ourselves.

    One of the authors' major arguments is that Western society - particularly American culture - has denied the significance of cyclical patterns in history in favor of the more palatable and self-serving belief that humans are on an inexorable march toward improvement. They say this allows us to gloss over the flaws in human nature that allow for bad judgment - and bad leaders that drive societies into decline.

    Though he probably did not intentionally invoke Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe, Mr. Trump was channeling their thesis when he often said during his campaign, "The American dream is dead." One of the scenarios the book puts forward is one in which leaders who emerge during a crisis can revive and rebuild dead institutions. Mr. Trump clearly saw himself as one of these when he said his goal would be to bring back the American dream.

    Conform, or Else

    In a Fourth Turning, the nation's core will matter more than its diversity. Team, brand, and standard will be new catchwords. Anyone and anything not describable in those terms could be shunted aside - or worse. Do not isolate yourself from community affairs . If you don't want to be misjudged, don't act in a way that might provoke Crisis-era authority to deem you guilty. If you belong to a racial or ethnic minority, brace for a nativist backlash from an assertive (and possibly authoritarian) majority.

    The authors envision a return to a more traditional, conservative social order as one outcome of a crisis. They also see the possibility of retribution and punishment for those who resist or refuse to comply with the new expectations for conformity. Mr. Trump's "with us or against us" attitude raises questions about what kind of leader he would be in such a crisis - and what kind of loyalty his administration might demand.

    [Apr 19, 2017] Former acting CIA Director Michael Morell: Russian meddling in US election is the political equivalent of 9/11

    Really agitated Hillary supporter and a member of coup d'état against Trump/
    Notable quotes:
    "... "A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life," Morell said. "To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11." ..."
    Dec 12, 2016 | www.businessinsider.com

    Evidence that Russia attempted to sway the outcome of the presidential election with a hacking campaign targeting Democrats "is the political equivalent of 9/11," the former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell, said in an interview published Monday.

    Morell, an intelligence analyst who served as acting director of the CIA twice between 2011 and 2013, told The Cipher Brief that revelations disclosed in a new CIA report about how Russia meddled in the election to help get Donald Trump elected "is an attack on our very democracy."

    "A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life," Morell said. "To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11."

    [Apr 19, 2017] Ex-CIA Director's kill Russians in Syria comment reveals neocon influence

    Looks like the former CIA Director Michael Morell is kind of "inside CIA" chickenhawk. Never was in field operations
    Notable quotes:
    "... Morell has proposed the US change tactics in Syria by targeting President Bashar Assad's allies, adding that killing Russians should be done covertly. ..."
    "... Morell was suggesting to kill Russian and Iranian people – I'm assuming soldiers, even though he wasn't that specific – as payback for their actions in Syria and Iran's actions in Iraq. Apparently Iran was providing supplies and armaments to the people we were fighting there during our occupation. Is this of strategy or tactics the norm or the oddity for the CIA in planning? ..."
    "... What Mike Morell is proposing is quite simply illegal. You just can't wantonly kill people because you don't like their politics. One of the important things that Mike Morell has forgotten or has chosen to ignore is that [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, whether we like him or not, is the internationally recognized leader of a sovereign country. And the Russian military has been invited into that country by its sovereign leader. So it's not up to us to decide we don't like that, and so we are going to start killing people because of it. ..."
    "... What a fraud. A transparent fraud. John knows him better than I do because John dealt with him. ..."
    "... Mike Morell was a golden boy for many years. He was a very young manager and rose quickly through the ranks, and had the most important jobs in the CIA, at least on the analytic side Once he got into the senior intelligence service, he took on a broader role, but that role never involved operations. This is a problem inside the agency. ..."
    "... You have somebody who has never served overseas except in the very final years of his career in a very cushy position. But certainly never operationally. He's never recruited a foreign national to spy for the United States; he's never been involved in difficult or dangerous operations, yet he's advocating putting American lives on the line to kill foreign nationals against whom we have no declaration of war. ..."
    "... Say he gets the chance to implement this great strategy of his which is apparently murdering a bunch of people and blowing up a bunch of stuff around Assad. How does that bring peace to Syria? ..."
    "... The definition of a neocon is somebody who has great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of Israel, on the one hand, and the strategic interests of the United States on the other. Israel wants bedlam in Syria, and they've got it. ..."
    Aug 13, 2016 | www.rt.com
    Op-Edge 'Ex-CIA Director's 'kill Russians in Syria' comment reveals neocon influence' Published time: 13 Aug, 2016 12:53 Edited time: 14:38

    I want to scare Assad Mike Morell (Aug 8, 2016) Charlie Rose

    Former CIA Director Michael Morell sparked uproar when he said in an interview on Charlie Rose that Russians and Iranians should be killed in Syria. Was the provocative statement an effort to promote himself as the new CIA Director under Hillary Clinton?

    Morell has proposed the US change tactics in Syria by targeting President Bashar Assad's allies, adding that killing Russians should be done covertly.

    "We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria, we need to make the Russians pay a price," Morell told a stunned Charlie Rose, who asked if that means killing Iranians and Russians. Morell answered "Yes," saying the killings should be done "convertly" but done in such way that "Moscow would get the message."

    Two former CIA officials turned whistleblowers, Ray McGovern and John Kiriakou, appeared on RT's "Watching the Hawks" program to give their analysis on the disturbing comments, as well as other tantalizing bits of information.

    'Kill Russians and Iranians, threaten Assad,' says ex-CIA chief backing #Clintonhttps://t.co/qd21Klts2Npic.twitter.com/Otcuwniwxw

    - RT America (@RT_America) August 9, 2016

    RT (Tyrel Ventura): Morell was suggesting to kill Russian and Iranian people – I'm assuming soldiers, even though he wasn't that specific – as payback for their actions in Syria and Iran's actions in Iraq. Apparently Iran was providing supplies and armaments to the people we were fighting there during our occupation. Is this of strategy or tactics the norm or the oddity for the CIA in planning?

    John Kiriakou: This is the exception. It's not the norm. Even under George W. Bush when the CIA wanted to initiate or institute a policy or program that would result in the killing of foreign nationals, my God, we went to the UN Security Council and asked for a vote. What Mike Morell is proposing is quite simply illegal. You just can't wantonly kill people because you don't like their politics. One of the important things that Mike Morell has forgotten or has chosen to ignore is that [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, whether we like him or not, is the internationally recognized leader of a sovereign country. And the Russian military has been invited into that country by its sovereign leader. So it's not up to us to decide we don't like that, and so we are going to start killing people because of it.

    Ray McGovern: What a fraud. A transparent fraud. John knows him better than I do because John dealt with him.

    JK: I worked closely with Mike Morell for several years in CIA headquarters. Mike Morell was a golden boy for many years. He was a very young manager and rose quickly through the ranks, and had the most important jobs in the CIA, at least on the analytic side Once he got into the senior intelligence service, he took on a broader role, but that role never involved operations. This is a problem inside the agency. It's emblematic of what has happened with what I like to think is a neoconservative takeover of CIA policy. You have somebody who has never served overseas except in the very final years of his career in a very cushy position. But certainly never operationally. He's never recruited a foreign national to spy for the United States; he's never been involved in difficult or dangerous operations, yet he's advocating putting American lives on the line to kill foreign nationals against whom we have no declaration of war.

    #WatchingTheHawks SoundCloud Episode 44.2 is here of our best segments! @TabethaWatching@TyrelWatchinghttps://t.co/dxYcjCww42

    - RT America (@RT_America) August 13, 2016

    RT (Tabetha Wallace): Say he gets the chance to implement this great strategy of his which is apparently murdering a bunch of people and blowing up a bunch of stuff around Assad. How does that bring peace to Syria?

    JK: It doesn't, it can't and it won't. This whole idea that he espoused on the Charlie Rose show will not come to pass. If Mike Morell were serious about this, if this were something that Hillary Clinton would seriously consider, it would be kept so secret and so private that even inside the CIA 99 percent of employees wouldn't know anything about it. So for him to just go on TV and dramatically say this is what he would do it's just grandstanding.

    This is such an obviously transparent bid by Michael Morell to be the CIA Director under a Hillary Clinton administration... This is a political ploy by him that is not thought through at all - Gareth Porter, investigative journalist, to RT in a separate interview.

    RT (Tyrel Ventura): Why do you think Morell is getting on TV and grandstanding like that? What is his motivation for doing this?

    RM: He's not the only one. There are others who are candidates to be head of the CIA or other high positions. The whole thing is so vacuous. Charlie Rose has had this guy on 11 times in the last two years. They never question the unspoken premises. I mean, Hello? Why does Bashar al-Assad have to go? Is he a threat to the United States? No. Then why does he have to go? It's very simple. The neocons want him to go. Why do the neocons want him to go? The definition of a neocon is somebody who has great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of Israel, on the one hand, and the strategic interests of the United States on the other. Israel wants bedlam in Syria, and they've got it.

    The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

    [Apr 19, 2017] A Lawless Plan to Target Syrias Allies by Ray McGovern

    Notable quotes:
    "... (Emphasis added) ..."
    "... And I think I came across as saying U.S. Special Forces should go in there and start killing Iranians and Russians. I did not say that. ..."
    "... And here I did argue, Charlie, that the U.S. military itself should take some action, and what I would see as valuable is limited, very, very, very limited U.S. airstrikes against those assets that are extremely important to Assad personally. ..."
    "... (Emphasis added) ..."
    "... "Now these issues that I'm talking about here, right, are talked about in the sit room. They're talked about in national security circles all the time, right. These are debates that people have, and I certainly understand that there are people on the other side of the argument from me, right. But I wasn't talking about the U.S. starting a major war with Iran and Russia, and I think that was the way people interpreted it." ..."
    "... Morell is advocating here violates international law, the rules that – in other circumstances, i.e. when another government is involved – the U.S. government condemns as "aggression" or as an "invasion" or as "terrorism." ..."
    Aug 20, 2016 | consortiumnews.com

    Exclusive: Official Washington's disdain for international law – when it's doing the lawbreaking – was underscored by ex-CIA acting director Morell voicing plans for murdering Iranians and maybe Russians in Syria, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern says.

    On Aug. 17, TV interviewer Charlie Rose gave former acting CIA Director Michael Morell a "mulligan" for an earlier wayward drive on Aug. 8 that sliced deep into the rough and even stirred up some nonviolent animals by advocating the murder of Russians and Iranians. But, alas, Morell duffed the second drive, too.

    Morell did so despite Rose's efforts to tee up the questions as favorably as possible, trying to help Morell explain what he meant about "killing" Russians and Iranians in Syria and bombing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into submission.

    Former CIA deputy director Michael Morell.

    In the earlier interview, Morell said he wanted to "make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. make the Russians pay a price in Syria."

    Rose: "We make them pay the price by killing Russians?"

    Morell: "Yeah."

    Rose: "And killing Iranians?"

    Morell: "Yes You don't tell the world about it. But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran."

    In the follow-up interview , some of Rose's fretful comments made it clear that there are still some American non-neocons around who were withholding applause for Morell's belligerent suggestion.

    Rose apparently has some viewers who oppose all terrorism, including the state-sponsored variety that would involve a few assassinations to send a message, and the notion that U.S. bombing Syria to "scare" Assad is somehow okay (as long as the perpetrator is the sole "indispensable" nation in the world).

    Rose helped Morell 'splain that he really did not want to have U.S. Special Forces kill Russians and Iranians. No, he would be satisfied if the U.S.-sponsored "moderate opposition" in Syria did that particular killing. But Morell would not back away from his advocacy of the U.S. Air Force bombing Syrian government targets. That would be "an okay thing" in Morell's lexicon.

    The FBI defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." That would seem to cover Morell's plan.

    But Morell seems oblivious to international law and to the vast human suffering already inflicted in Syria over the past five years by government forces, rebels, terrorists and outside nations trying to advance one geopolitical goal or another.

    What is needed is a serious commitment to peace talks without unacceptable preconditions, such as outside demands for "regime change." Instead, the focus should be on creating conditions for Syrians to make that choice themselves through elections or power-sharing negotiations.

    Morell prefers to think that a few more U.S.-directed murders and some more aerial-inflicted mayhem should do the trick. Perhaps he thinks that's the sort of tough-guy/gal talk that will impress a prospective President Hillary Clinton.

    A Slight Imprecision?

    Charlie Rose begins the "mulligan" segment with the suggestion that Morell might have slightly misspoken: "Tell me what you wanted to say so we understand it Tell me what you meant to say perhaps you did not speak as precisely as you should have or I didn't ask the right questions."

    TV interviewer Charlie Rose.

    Morell responded, "No, no, Charlie, you always ask the right questions," and then he presented his killing plan as a route to peace, albeit one in which the United States dictates "regime change" in Syria: "So there's not a military solution to this, there is only a political solution. And that political solution is, in my view, a transition of power from Assad to a, a, a transitional government that represents all of the Syrian people.

    "That is only going to happen if Assad wants it to happen, if Russia wants it to happen, if Iran wants it to happen. So we need to increase our leverage over those three people and countries, in order to get them more interested in having a conversation about a transition to a new government.

    "And sometimes you use military force for military ends. Sometimes you use military force to give you political leverage. So what I tried to say was, Look, we need to find some ways to put some pressure on Assad, or put some pressure on Russia, and put some pressure on Iran. Now, with regard to Russia and Iran, what I said was, what I wanted to say was: Look, the moderate opposition, which the United States is supporting (everybody knows that, right?), the moderate opposition is already fighting the Syrian government, and they're already fighting Russians and Iranians.

    "So the Syrian military, supported by Russia and the Iranians, is fighting the moderate opposition. And the moderate opposition is already killing Iranians and Syrians. What, what I said is that's an okay thing, right, because it puts pressure on Iran and Russia to try to see some value in ending this thing politically. And what I said is that we should encourage the moderate opposition to continue to do that and perhaps get a lot more aggressive." (Emphasis added)

    Rose: "You weren't suggesting that the United States should do that, but the moderate forces on the ground."

    Morell: "And I think I came across as saying U.S. Special Forces should go in there and start killing Iranians and Russians. I did not say that.

    "So that's Russia and Iran. Now, Assad. How do you put some pressure on Assad, right? And here I did argue, Charlie, that the U.S. military itself should take some action, and what I would see as valuable is limited, very, very, very limited U.S. airstrikes against those assets that are extremely important to Assad personally. So, in the middle of the night you destroy one of his offices; you don't kill anybody, right, zero collateral. You do this with the same rules of engagement we use against terrorists . (Emphasis added)

    "You take out his presidential aircraft, his presidential helicopters, in the middle of the night, right, just to send him a message and get his attention that, that maybe your days are numbered here, just to put some pressure on him to think about maybe, maybe the need to think about a way out of this.

    "Now these issues that I'm talking about here, right, are talked about in the sit room. They're talked about in national security circles all the time, right. These are debates that people have, and I certainly understand that there are people on the other side of the argument from me, right. But I wasn't talking about the U.S. starting a major war with Iran and Russia, and I think that was the way people interpreted it."

    Acts of Illegal War

    Not to put too fine a point on this, but everything that Morell is advocating here violates international law, the rules that – in other circumstances, i.e. when another government is involved – the U.S. government condemns as "aggression" or as an "invasion" or as "terrorism."

    Video of the Russian SU-24 exploding in flames inside Syrian territory after it was shot down by Turkish air-to-air missiles on Nov. 24, 2015.

    Remember, after the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in February 2014, when Russia intervened to allow Crimea to hold a referendum on splitting away from the new regime in Kiev and rejoining Russia, the U.S. government insisted that there was no excuse for President Vladimir Putin not respecting the sovereignty of the coup regime even if it had illegally ousted an elected president.

    However, regarding Syria, the United States and its various "allies," including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel, have intervened directly and indirectly in supporting various armed groups, including Al Qaeda's Nusra Front, seeking the violent overthrow of Syria's government.

    Without any legal authorization from the United Nations, President Barack Obama has ordered the arming and training of anti-government rebels (including some who have fought under Nusra's command structure ), has carried out airstrikes inside Syria (aimed at Islamic State militants), and has deployed U.S. Special Forces inside Syria with Kurdish rebels.

    Now, a former senior U.S. intelligence official is publicly urging bombing of Syrian government targets and the killing of Iranians and Russians who are legally inside Syria at the invitation of the internationally recognized government. In other words, not only does the U.S. government operate with breathtaking hypocrisy in the Syrian crisis, but it functions completely outside international law.

    And, Morell says that in attacking Syrian government targets - supposedly without causing any deaths - the United States would employ "the same rules of engagement we use against terrorists," except those rules of engagement explicitly seek to kill targeted individuals. So, what kind of dangerously muddled thinking do we have here?

    One can only imagine the reaction if some Russian version of Morell went on Moscow TV and urged the murder of U.S. military trainers operating inside Ukraine – to send a message to Washington. And then, the Russian Morell would advocate Russia bombing Ukrainian government targets in Kiev with the supposed goal of forcing the U.S.-backed government to accept a "regime change" acceptable to Moscow.

    A Fawning Audition

    Rather than calls for him to be locked up or at least decisively repudiated, the American Morell was allowed to continue his fawning audition for a possible job in a Hillary Clinton administration by extolling her trustworthiness and "humanity."

    Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressing the AIPAC conference in Washington D.C. on March 21, 2016. (Photo credit: AIPAC)

    Morell offered a heartwarming story about how compassionate Clinton was as Secretary of State when he lost out to John Brennan to be the fulltime CIA Director. After he was un-picked for the job, Morell said he was in the White House Situation Room and Clinton, "sat down next to me, put her hand on my shoulder, and she simply said, 'Are you okay?' There is humanity there, and I think the public needs to know."

    And, Clinton was a straight-shooter, too, Morell explained: "You know, it's interesting, Charlie, I worked with her for four years. Leon Panetta, David Petraeus worked with her for four years. We trusted her word; we trusted her judgment. You know, [CIA] Director Panetta, [CIA] Director Petraeus, I provided her with some of the most sensitive information that the CIA collects and she never gave us one reason to doubt how she was handling that. You know, she spoke to us forthrightly. I trust her word and I trust her judgment."

    Can Morell be unaware that Clinton repeatedly put highly sensitive intelligence on her very vulnerable private email server along with other data that later investigations determined should have been marked SECRET, TOP SECRET, CODEWORD, and/or SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAMS?

    FBI Director James Comey, in announcing that he would not recommend prosecuting Clinton for compromising these secrets, called her behavior "extremely careless."

    For his part, Charlie Rose offered a lament about how hard it is for Clinton to convey her "humanity" and how deserving she is of trust. He riffed on the Biblical passage about those who can be trusted in small matters (like sitting down next to Morell, putting her hand on his shoulder, and asking him if he is okay) can be trusted on big matters, too.

    My Travails With Charlie

    Twelve years ago, I was interviewed by Charlie Rose, with the other interviewee (who participated remotely) James Woolsey, former head of the CIA (1993-95), arch-neocon, and self-described "anchor the Presbyterian wing of JINSA " (the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs).

    The occasion was the New York premier of Robert Greenwald's full-length film version of his documentary, "Uncovered: the Whole Truth About the Iraq War," in which I had a small part and which described the many falsehoods that had been used by President George W. Bush and his neocon advisers, to justify invading Iraq. Woolsey did not like the film, and Greenwald asked me to take the Rose invitation that had originally been extended to him.

    True to form, Charlie Rose knew on which side his bread was buttered, and it wasn't mine. He was his usual solicitous self when dealing with an "important" personage, such as Woolsey. I was going to count the minutes apportioned to me and compare them with those given to Woolsey, but I decided to spare myself the trouble.

    The last time I checked the Aug. 20, 2004 video is available for purchase but I refuse to pay for it. Fortunately, a friend taped and uploaded the audio onto YouTube. It might be worth a listen on a slow summer day 12 years after my travails with Charlie.

    Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990 and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

    [Apr 19, 2017] Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death

    Apr 17, 2017 | www.unz.com

    TG , April 17, 2017 at 3:10 pm GMT \n

    300 Words An interesting article. A few random thoughts.
    1. "Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death" – Otto von Bismarck.
    2. In general I agree and wish that the United States military would be more defensive and waste fewer resources attacking irrelevant nations on the other side of the world. But. It is nevertheless true that "defensive" Russia has been invaded and devastated multiple times, and the United States has not. Perhaps creating chaos on the other side of the world is long-term not quite so ineffective as sitting around waiting for an attack?
    3. The American elites are simply corrupt and insane/don't care about the long-term. At every level – companies taking out massive loans to buy back their stock to boost CEO bonuses, loading up college students with massive unplayable debt so that university administrators can get paid like CEOs, drug prices going through the roof, etc.etc. Military costs will never be as efficient as civilian, war is expensive, but the US has gotten to the point where there is no financial accountability, it's all about the right people grabbing as much money as possible.

      To make more money you just add another zero at the end of the price tag. At some point the costs will become so inflated and divorced from reality that we will be unable to afford anything And the right people will take their loot and move to New Zealand and wring their hands at how the lazy Americans were not worthy of their brilliant leadership

    [Apr 18, 2017] Blame Putin! scheme is much older then recent Presidential elections

    Notable quotes:
    "... Most of the information about the specific instance of the CIA torturing an individual in Lebanon came from a biography on Bob Ames titled The Good Spy (2014) by Kai Bird. Which was a pretty good book. Ames has an interesting history. He forged a relationship which the author characterized as a friendship with high ranking individuals in the Palestinian Liberation Organization at a time when the PLO was labeled as a terrorist organization. It was this back channel connection that formed the basis of American diplomacy for peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. He died in the 1983 embassy bombing. ..."
    "... Similar methods that resulted in the death of prisoners during CIA's systemic torture program during the Bush Administration were used. They'd dump cold water on'em and leave them in a cold cell. Nimr was left in a cell with a fan blowing cold air on them. Hall wasn't present at the time Nimr died. ..."
    "... Besides the embassy bombing Mughniyeh was blamed for a lot of other terrorist acts that I think are based on nothing more than circumstantial evidence. Contemporary analysis suggests it's basically the "Blame Putin!" trope in action. ..."
    Jan 01, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Andrew Watts , December 31, 2016 at 3:03 pm

    *I was in a rush yesterday so this is a follow-up to yesterday's hastily written comment on the torture report. Any fault or errors in that comment can be attributed to my gullibility.

    Most of the information about the specific instance of the CIA torturing an individual in Lebanon came from a biography on Bob Ames titled The Good Spy (2014) by Kai Bird. Which was a pretty good book. Ames has an interesting history. He forged a relationship which the author characterized as a friendship with high ranking individuals in the Palestinian Liberation Organization at a time when the PLO was labeled as a terrorist organization. It was this back channel connection that formed the basis of American diplomacy for peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. He died in the 1983 embassy bombing.

    -The individual who was tortured and died soon afterward was Elias Nimr . A Christian intelligence chieftain who appears to have played every side and angle he could during the Lebanon Civil War.

    -The name of the CIA contractor who tortured Nimr was identified as Keith "Captain Crunch" Hall . He was originally identified by Mark Bowden in his book Road Work: Among Tyrants, Heroes, Rogues, and Beasts. (2007) A former Marine before he joined the CIA and was later a cop in California.

    Similar methods that resulted in the death of prisoners during CIA's systemic torture program during the Bush Administration were used. They'd dump cold water on'em and leave them in a cold cell. Nimr was left in a cell with a fan blowing cold air on them. Hall wasn't present at the time Nimr died.

    -Bob Baer neglects to mention this specific incident of torture in See No Evil but doesn't blame Nimr for the bombing of the embassy. *cough* Appropriately titled book if you ask me. *cough* A part of his theory on the masterminds behind the '83 embassy bombings involves a former PLO turned Hezbollah operative named Imad Mughniyeh . Baer claims that Mughniyeh is was still in contact with his old Fatah contacts when the embassy was bombed.

    Besides the embassy bombing Mughniyeh was blamed for a lot of other terrorist acts that I think are based on nothing more than circumstantial evidence. Contemporary analysis suggests it's basically the "Blame Putin!" trope in action.

    -The name of the alleged defector from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was actually a deputy defense minister and former brigadier general named Ali Reza Asgari . There was and still probably is controversy whether he was kidnapped or defected. The Iranians wouldn't want it known that such a high ranking defector went over to the West hence the kidnapping story.

    Hah! Guess not posting much for a few months finally caught up with me.

    [Apr 17, 2017] US Attack on Syria Cements Kremlins Embrace of Assad

    Apr 17, 2017 | www.nytimes.com

    By championing Mr. Assad and condemning American "aggression," President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia seemed to be burying the idea that he could somehow cooperate with the Trump administration to end the conflict on his terms.

    The solidarity with Damascus is likely to cause problems for Russia in the long run, analysts said, although Mr. Putin probably cannot be persuaded to loosen his embrace any time soon.

    The Russian government often takes its time to react to major world events, but the Kremlin issued a prompt statement early Friday castigating the United States for the missile strike on Al Shayrat airfield in retaliation for Syria's chemical weapons attack.

    The Russian Ministry of Defense vowed to strengthen Syria's air defense systems, sent a frigate on a port call and froze an agreement with the United States to coordinate activity in Syrian air space.

    [Apr 17, 2017] Why North Korea Needs Nukes - And How To End That

    Notable quotes:
    "... Isnt it amazing, the media in the west will always (ALWAYS!) be there for western nations when they want to wage a war, year after year. And then they say that we, who protest and expose them we are somehow the propagandists and disinformation agents?! ..."
    "... The pressure to capitulate to the US government on this issue is immense. The propaganda relentless. For over 64 years the American people have been living the Big Lie. ..."
    "... I cannot see how this ends well for any of us, mainly due to the intransigence and irrationality of the US ruling class, who do not care how much blood they shed. ..."
    "... The USA as representing western elites have never signed off on the Korean War as a truce and cessation of hostilities but not a peace treaty is the current situation. This war continues and is being pursued by other means, mainly financial and with sanctions, by the west and its South Korean proxies. ..."
    "... This on going policy by the west is of course aimed at its geo-political adversaries in China and Russia as allies of the North Korean nation. ..."
    "... No small country is safe from the evil empire (USA) if they don't have nuclear weapons. Witness what happened to Iraq (and others) who had no weapons of mass destruction. (even though USA claimed they did) ..."
    "... There is no other way to declare that China have backed off, otherwhise we wouldn't see this preparation for war by Trump that came after his big China meeting last week. ..."
    "... China will sure remember this idiot stance they have taken when the wars begin, after North Korea, China will be in the cross-hair themselves. ..."
    "... I still wonder why China stayed away from Syria with no talk of supporting Russia. This is/was a golden chance to show solidarity, in my opinion. Both NK and Pakistan are Chinese partners and nuclear powers. With MOAB in Afghanistan and forces around NK, this is a clear message to China. Is China setting a classic trap militarily or they just choosing to fight economically or otherwise? Somehow, Chinese reaction does not add up. ..."
    "... It is utmost stupidity. Trump is parking US war ships in reach of North Korea, Russia and China. Now he depends on them not to do anything. ..."
    "... If you ever ask a local jingoist to list all the countries attacked by North Korea vs a comparable USA list, you will illicit blank stares, followed by anger, followed by the suggestion you go live in North Korea. Putin's analogy of chess with a pigeon comes to mind. ..."
    "... China does not care about the current leadership of North Korea at all. Their concern is to keep US forces no closer to the Chinese border than they are now, and that they will do. ..."
    "... Actually what you are describing is the average westerner today (although, perhaps the average westerner is a jingoist today), they are indoctrinated every day by by the MSM, they have no idea whats going on in the world, its so tragic when you try to explain world events and they always react like you said, anger, hate, accuations etc. ..."
    "... why is the usa here there and everywhere on the planet where their war machines? answer - they are the planets most warmongering nation, hands down.. ..."
    "... This is extremely relevant yet almost never discussed in the US. North Korea is said to be "crazy", and is treated as some kind of rabid, non-human country that threatens the US. Of course, the opposite is more true. ..."
    "... Chinese FM earlier today said 'war might come to Korea any time now', basically, US and allies could attack Korea and we wont do aynthing about it, what a corrupt nature they are show off now, disgusting. ..."
    "... NK has seen what happens when nations give up their WMD's Iraq got invaded and Saddam first tortured, then hanged. Libya got smashed and Qaddafi got a bayonet up his arse. ..."
    "... Now Syria is in the cross-hairs, with much of the nation in ruins, close 500K dead, millions more wounded and millions more homeless, with Assad being fitted for a hemp necktie. ..."
    "... One point he makes is that the Korean war gave Truman a perfect excuse to expand the military and set up the national security complex. One thing he does not say is that US likely has zero interest in defusing the conflict - lest they'd have to leave the area. ..."
    "... I'm now wondering how much worse the Known Entity - the Murderous Bloody Hillary could have been. Trump is a bull in a China Shop. ..."
    "... This is why Trump acting so tough now, he know China+UN+EU+Nato will support his coming war. ..."
    "... Well well well, this is almost getting comical, chinese show its true nature once again, what a backstabbing nation. China will be as complicit in this war on NK as Trump (and other pathetic allies). How many billion dollar deals did the stupid president get by Trump to be able to accept this tremendous blunder? ..."
    "... At this stage, Russia was supposed to be the gas station that produced nothing. Syria should have fallen to US headchoppers. Philippines has pulled out of the pivot on China. ..."
    "... Obama's leading from behind, and proxy wars largely failed. This leaves the US very short on time to take down China, plus they now have to deal with a Russia that has risen from the dead. ..."
    "... Saudi's just formed a NATO-like Sunni force with an ex-Pakistani general as it's head. Now they have a about 20 nation force for basic ground ops and this will help Saudi's in Yemen and may be Syria especially with Pakistan's depth in recruiting regulars and non-regulars. This could not have happened without US approval, imo. ..."
    "... overwhelming majority of US political "elite" is generally an office plankton with law or political "science" (or journalism--which is not a profession or a skill) degrees from Ivy League "humanities" departments and their comprehension of the war is limited to Hollywood. Most difficulties in life they ever experienced was, most likely, being overbooked for the first class seats on the flight to Hawaii (or any other resort). ..."
    "... The #1 reason the Outlaw US Empire gets away with its continuation of massive crimes against humanity is that its citizenry is mostly ignorant--made so purposefully--of the history that matters and are today's equivalent of "Good Germans." ..."
    "... Anyways, cornering Iran is the goal that the US/Israel trying to accomplish, at least from reading the pattern of activities. Slippery slope indeed. ..."
    "... The development of napalm specifically to target civilians ties in the testing of the two US nuclear weapons in Japan. The Japanese target cities were left untouched by conventional air raids throughout, even though they contained valid military targets such a torpedo production plants. ..."
    "... The occupants were so used to seeing US planes pass them by without ill effect, that on the fateful day they stood out in the open watching the planes pass by as normal or so they thought. The two attacks - for different designs of weapon - were designed to test and calibrate the effects of nuclear weapons on undamaged cities and unprotected civilians. They were actual medical and physical experiments on real people. ..."
    "... The difference between now and all the years since WWII, through the cold war and so forth is that the US has very little time left. In trying to think how the US is acting different now to the past, or actually dig up solid points I would probably point to MH17. With MH17 Australia, one of the five eyes gladly sacrificed some people for empire. That shook me. The evidence was the same as the crap dossier on Assad gassing his own people, yet not a word of protest out of any Australian politician. ..."
    "... From US point of view--absolutely. US establishment, yet again, thinks that it can control escalation. ..."
    "... North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered 25 percent of Pyongyang residents to leave the city immediately, according to a Russian news outlet on Friday. The Pravda report said that in accordance with the order, 600,000 people should be urgently evacuated. ..."
    "... If China/Russia were facing imminent War, then they would very probably dump all US reserves and Treasury Bonds first, and pre-emptively trigger economic collapse & rout. Unless it's MAD first strike stuff, where is the industrial and manufacturing base of the US/UK to sustain and win a 'Total War' ? Russia/China/Iran/NK are all militarily self-sufficient ... long-term sanctions do that, somewhat self-defeating, no ? ..."
    "... IF the US collapses without War occurring, the 0.01% driving this will have already relocated in advance to, New Zealand or Iceland, etc ? To live lives of luxury, whilst purchasing collapsed US corporations for pennies on the dollar, perhaps, and wait for the investment to mature, maybe ? Ruthless bastards, citizens of the world ;) ..."
    "... Yet, mistakes & miscalculations can occur unintentionally when even only a sustained 'strategy of tension' goes on and on ... ..."
    "... "The US is going to war. Much thought and training going into fighting peer, or near peer adversary. " Do not see substantive evidence of the former, yet. Re the latter, other than neo-con/lib chickenhawk warmongers and detached from facts/reason/competent analysis & reality stink-tanks, again, see no evidence other than endless PR and rabid rhetoric, MSM abetted. ..."
    "... Have you seen the most recent data/reports on DOD readiness levels, it's not a pleasant read if you're a jingoistic warmonger ... would argue, short version, the opportunity existed prior to 2001, maybe even as late as 2004-2006 at a pinch ..."
    "... Thanks for a great article. It is so good to read truthful information and not the propaganda bullshit the MSM saturates us with. ..."
    "... Who knows, maybe NK will be rehabilitated, as is, and accepted back into the Russia/China 'Axis', openly, as for the then USSR/ChiCom 'Axis' pre and during the Korean war ? After all, given the insane and surreal rabid propaganda in western MSM, what difference would it make re supposed 'image' in the eyes of the supposed 'International Community' (US/UK/Israhell & good time vassals) ... any ? ..."
    "... I'll certainly echo Outraged's point about USA lacking the required industrial capacity and raw material for any such war other than MAD versus China/Russia. One of the main reasons the Lead From Behind strategy was adopted along with using terrorist proxies to destabilize Russia/China is because of that rather stark reality. ..."
    "... ...The figure of 1,800 massacre victims was given...Somebody--presumably in either the American military or government--seems to have made the decision to turn this into a Northern massacre, the characteristic, single atrocity of the entire war. The truth seems inescapable: The worst atrocity of the war was committed by forces acting in the name of the United Nations, and a concerted effort was then made to cover it up by blaming it on the North Korean enemy... ..."
    "... "...On the admission of [U.S.] General Ridgeway's Head Office, more POWs died in United Nations camps than in North Korean camps..." http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.com/2013/05/revisiting-history-of-korea-again-part-4.html?m=0 ..."
    "... China does have limited versions of both Klub-NK and Club-S, those were shorter ones until recently when China started to get her hands on actual Russian versions of such weapons as P-800 Onyx with their ranges of 660 kilometers, add here SU-35 (also in Russian configuration) and S-400, also in Russian configuration, and you have a rather interesting dynamics suddenly. ..."
    "... US MIC armament production ought to be seen/understood as MIC profitmaking scam that happens to produce few usable/battle-worthy assets. There's a very good reason for calling the USA's once mighty industrial heartland the Rust Belt--it's literally rotting away as a ride on Amtrak's Capitol Limited will testify. ..."
    "... It really makes little sense what the US is up to. Are they relying on bluff and bluster to win the day? ..."
    "... Thanks B for the information regarding how the US and South Korea time their military maneuvers to coincide with the rice planting and harvesting periods in North Korea. I had not been aware of this before. ..."
    "... Bill Clinton's offer to North Korea to supply grain and materials for building two new reactors and his later reneging on that do not surprise me at all as these are of a piece with the Clinton Foundation raising hundreds of millions for Haiti's post-quake reconstruction which in the end resulted in the construction of one factory employing 30 people making T-shirts for export. No doubt with the North Korean "offer" the Clintons got something of that. ..."
    "... "Approximately 30 nuclear power plants are operational in South Korea. Several of them could be destroyed even if conventional bombs and shells are used. This could lead to five-six Chernobyl-type disasters on a relatively small area of 99 square kilometers that could instantly turn into a place unsuitable for life," he explained. ..."
    "... I have read although ,in a casual way rather than a study, too much of the history of wars. Often what comes across the insanity of a country starting a war and then is itself destroyed. Nazi Germany - leading edge tech, smart people. Country of sixty million conquered virtually all of Europe with ease then took on Russia. Instead of being content with being a leading country, they were willing to gamble everything to have it all. ..."
    "... This is somewhat where the US is at today. The position is that it has over reached and now needs to pull back and consolidate, but we are not seeing that. instead, we are seeing the US become more threatening. ..."
    "... A primary problem there is that they have convinced at least 20% of those 300M to be human shields in the service of Empire. ..."
    "... In addition nuclear reactors require fossil fuel power plants as backup up they suddenly lose power. In case of an air blast over South Korea the electrical grid would shut down with possible meltdown of reactors which didn't go into standby prior to the nuclear detonation. ..."
    "... it brings a huge conundrum in decision making, if trump doesn't do anything, all countries in asia will switch alliances towards china in the long run, except for broke jokes japan/usa. ..."
    "... "Wag the Dog" scenarios focus on salacious scandals, but the collapse of domestic Presidencies are usually followed by war Presidencies. Trump is largely the idiot he appears to be and is simply grabbing onto the various interests within the borg. Trump will bounce from "enemy" to "enemy" trying to find an issue to get his Presidency back on track. ..."
    "... Something that has struck me as this thread goes on.. WWII never ended. Nazi/imperial Japan quest for empire morphed into US quest for empire that is coming to a climax today. ..."
    "... Wide ranging fascinating interview with former high ranking CIA intelligence officer, Robert David Steele https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8UfYLA7FCqQ ..."
    "... If North Korea, Russia, Iran, China or any other country that resists Zio-U.S. imperialism sent an Armada off the U.S. coast on the fourth of July, the U.S. wouldn't hesitate to sink it immediately, no questions asked. Trump is proving every day that he's a dangerous idiot. ..."
    "... The wars to consolidate the world under one power has been going on for well over a century. Britain took the lead early on before passing the torch to the US once Rhodes plan to recover America was accomplished, sometime between Mckinleys assassination and the and of WWI . Wall Street and the money power in the city of London were always in sync. Albert Pike predicted 3 World Wars would be needed. ..."
    "... we are ruled by idiots, con men, war-mongers, and Neanderthal whackos. Any attack by the US would be a massacre and humanitarian disaster of epic proportions. Plus, I assume, the north korean army that remains would likely shower much of south korea with tens of thousands of rockets, mortars and missiles. http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/14/whackos-in-washington-the-risky-game-of-regime-decapitation/ ..."
    "... Whackos in Washington: the Risky Game of Regime Decapitation by Dave Lindorff ..."
    "... A lot of people do not know that the US bombed the hell out of the entire of north Korea during the war. Like to ashes. The Chinese, and even more so, the Soviet reconstruction project for north Korea was the biggest of its kind post WWII. Even bigger than what actually went to European reconstruction I believe, but don't quote me on that (not in terms of what was earmarked but spent). ..."
    "... ALSO perhaps the biggest crime was bombing the north's huge dams. Unless your a poor farmer you don't know what kind a thing that it is to do. No military value (I heard it was bombed because they ran out of other targets in some way). ..."
    "... Its insane and breeds a toooon of animosity. Plus rejecting all attempts at peace talks. Plus having the media only present it in one way and an attitude of RA RA we don't engage in diplomacy with the terrorist obviously he only listens to force. ..."
    "... The focus seems to be on what DPRK (north), PRC and USA might do. I would like to suggest that closer scrutiny should be applied to what is actually going on in RK (South). I think that this tension is being ratcheted upwards primarily to influence the outcome of the presidential election in the South. ..."
    "... As we all know, Park has recently been impeached. In normal circumstances it could be expected that an opposition figure like Moon Jae-In would be the favourite to win the election. This may not be in the interests of either the US, Japan or the powers-that-be in South Korea. ..."
    "... The election is 9 May 2017, and the US president has just ensured that North Korea will be front and centre in the campaign. ..."
    "... South Korea is clearly benefiting economically (finally) from US support, but also pays a price by being another lapdog to the US and an eternal host for our military presence, willing or not. I suspect it's 'willing' because the US does everything possible to remind South Koreans of their peril by demonizing the North. South Korean press is worse than the US MSM. ..."
    "... who pointed out above that wwii has not yet ended on the korean peninsula. i always knew that the war was 'technically' not over in the sense of no peace treaty's having been signed ... the same obtains between russia and japan, doesn't it? that's an indictment right there of the us. in both cases, as the us still has japan on a short leash. ..."
    "... The main issue will be South Korea's relationship with the US and China. Traditionally South Korea has profited more from the US than from exchange with China. I bet this has already changed. But the US managed to create a security conflict between China and South Korea that ensures increased Chinese military support for North Korea. ..."
    "... South Korean residents and civic group activists on Thursday filed a petition against the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system, which they depicted as unconstitutional. ..."
    "... Seoul and Washington abruptly announced a decision in July last year to install one THAAD battery in the county by the end of this year. Just three days before the announcement, Defense Minister Han Min-koo told lawmakers that he hadn't been informed of any notice about the THAAD installation. ..."
    "... "The THAAD decision did not follow any proper procedure. No effort has been made for dialogue with residents," said Ha Joo-hee, an attorney at Lawyers for a Democratic Society, an advocacy group composed of liberal lawyers. ..."
    "... Yet bet NATO wouldn't be happy. The entire 'containment' policy towards Beijing rests on the surrounding states being hostile to/ scared of China. Already SE Asia has all but 'fallen' (from a western viewpoint), what remains is Japan and SK. Detente? God forbid! ..."
    "... According to US MSM the Chinese are totally on board and only have moved troops to bolster the border and help the US. And Russia and China really aren't conducting military exercises together. ..."
    "... This constant mistranslated rhetoric and literally putting of words into foreign leaders mouths is of course one aspect of the western propaganda arm. Even when the headline or text of the article is updated, corrected or removed the meat of it remains in social media like Facebook. ..."
    "... I do know more than a few Koreans firsthand pissed off at US army personnel behaviour though. Perhaps that can be channelled into meaningful change. They tell me that the impunity from judicial retribution plays a big role in the anger. Certain bases in Japan have had similar problems (I get the sense it cause more anger there though unfortunately). Perhaps this is just the views of a few people I talk to in SK though. ..."
    "... What is real Russian position on this WWIII POTENTIAL STANDOFF. NK only one condemned attack on Syria while if what I hear is true, they want NK disarmed even in face of open US aggression. Also China if awfully quiet while repeating thirty year old equitable solution rejected by US that never looked for any solutions but domination. What's going on? ..."
    "... Don't know about Russia but I have some thoughts re. China. Xi made it clear to Donald that China would support Kim if NK is attacked i.e WW3. ..."
    "... Wikileaks, Podesta email about the Hillary Clinton speech for Goldman Sachs "We don't want a unified Korean Peninsula" because China, not the U.S., would naturally dominate it. The U.S. will do everything it can to prevent reunification. ..."
    "... Would that be Judith Miller, perhaps, or possibly just a hero/role model ? ;) One perfectly reasonable phrase comes to mind, ' Subsequent to good faith negotiations & actual, guarantees '. ..."
    Apr 17, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 9:18:34 AM | 1

    Isnt it amazing, the media in the west will always (ALWAYS!) be there for western nations when they want to wage a war, year after year. And then they say that we, who protest and expose them we are somehow the propagandists and disinformation agents?!

    As b show, North Korea is the rational, but no one in our "free" western media brings these fact up.

    No wonder western populations dont have any faith in their states and media.

    I really hope North Korea put an end to this by standing tall, the pathetic China have backed away apparently..

    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 9:30:57 AM | 2
    Bravo b. Bravo.

    Another key consideration from a strategic military perspective, re the massive extensive military 'exercises' by US/SK annually is such can and have been used historically in war to create a sense of routine & normalcy, so if the Nth should be complacent, and its been going on for decades, a surprise attack can be launched and have devastating effects, even thought the Nth is on 'annual' 'alert'.

    Maintaining heightened readiness, to Stand To! , stand ready for an attack, especially daily before dawn and prior to & after sunset, bayonets fixed, eye-peeled, adrenaline pumping, day after day, when the extended 'exercises' run, year after year after year is very difficult psychologically for the troops involved, corrosive of morale and discipline, and the Empire is very cognizant of this indeed.

    Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 14, 2017 9:50:19 AM | 3
    Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 9:18:34 AM | 1

    I really hope North Korea put an end to this by standing tall, the pathetic China have backed away apparently..

    China doesn't have the option of backing away because a North Korea threatened by AmeriKKKa is also a China threatened by AmeriKKKa. I hope Trump knows what he's doing because the Chinese most certainly do know what they're doing.

    Jeff Kaye | Apr 14, 2017 10:04:05 AM | 4
    Thank you, b!

    The pressure to capitulate to the US government on this issue is immense. The propaganda relentless. For over 64 years the American people have been living the Big Lie.

    The oozing sore of a Cold War that never ended, that was really a Hot War for millions, now threatens to metastasize into Total War. I cannot see how this ends well for any of us, mainly due to the intransigence and irrationality of the US ruling class, who do not care how much blood they shed.

    BRF | Apr 14, 2017 10:07:06 AM | 5
    The USA as representing western elites have never signed off on the Korean War as a truce and cessation of hostilities but not a peace treaty is the current situation. This war continues and is being pursued by other means, mainly financial and with sanctions, by the west and its South Korean proxies.

    The imposition of a state of tension by the west is all the west seems capable of with the result in the current situation and any time a solution is proposed that could lead to a lessening of tensions the west either sabotages or outright rejects the initiative.

    This on going policy by the west is of course aimed at its geo-political adversaries in China and Russia as allies of the North Korean nation. The only fix that I can see is an economic collapse in the west that leads to a pull back from western imperial outposts as they become too expensive to maintain. This can only take place with the demise of the Federal Reserve Note (USD) as the world reserve currency which is printable in any amount the western elites desire in maintaining their grip and domination through imperial dictate over the rest of the world. End this financial death grip and the rest follows very very quickly.

    Mark Stoval | Apr 14, 2017 10:11:29 AM | 6
    No small country is safe from the evil empire (USA) if they don't have nuclear weapons. Witness what happened to Iraq (and others) who had no weapons of mass destruction. (even though USA claimed they did)

    The USA has always believed the myth that WW2 saved the economy from the Great Depression and that the country would have slide back into depression without a war to fight --- hence the cold war and all the CIA wars ever since. Then came the "destroy the middle east" for the sake of Israel. (or oil or whatever)

    The USA remains today the greatest impediment to world peace that there is. The USA may set off nuclear war and the destruction of all civilization at some point.

    God help us all.

    stumpy | Apr 14, 2017 10:13:43 AM | 7
    Dead on, b.

    If you parse Obama's Nobel prize acceptance speech he hints at the theoretical model he used to cut off chances for peace anywhere. With China's premiere in the room, no less.

    Let me also say this: the promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach - and condemnation without discussion - can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door.

    Effing liar. America offers the choice of an open door to North Korea? Ha. We like our indignation without cream and sugar, to maximize purity.

    Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 10:15:53 AM | 8
    Hoarsewhisperer

    There is no other way to declare that China have backed off, otherwhise we wouldn't see this preparation for war by Trump that came after his big China meeting last week.

    China will sure remember this idiot stance they have taken when the wars begin, after North Korea, China will be in the cross-hair themselves.

    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 10:22:50 AM | 9
    @ Posted by: Jeff Kaye | Apr 14, 2017 10:04:05 AM | 4

    All honor & respect to you Invictus , for daunting, tireless & seemingly endless endeavor. Deepest & abiding respect indeed, Sir/Madam. Wishing you & yours safety & joy this Easter. ' Vale, Pax Tecum '.

    Ronak | Apr 14, 2017 10:31:30 AM | 10
    I still wonder why China stayed away from Syria with no talk of supporting Russia. This is/was a golden chance to show solidarity, in my opinion. Both NK and Pakistan are Chinese partners and nuclear powers. With MOAB in Afghanistan and forces around NK, this is a clear message to China. Is China setting a classic trap militarily or they just choosing to fight economically or otherwise? Somehow, Chinese reaction does not add up.
    somebody | Apr 14, 2017 10:35:14 AM | 11
    Chinese way of rebuking Trump
    "On the Korean Peninsula issue, it is not the one who espouses hasher rhetoric or raises a bigger fist that will win," Wang said.

    It is utmost stupidity. Trump is parking US war ships in reach of North Korea, Russia and China. Now he depends on them not to do anything.

    Lysander | Apr 14, 2017 10:39:27 AM | 12
    If you ever ask a local jingoist to list all the countries attacked by North Korea vs a comparable USA list, you will illicit blank stares, followed by anger, followed by the suggestion you go live in North Korea. Putin's analogy of chess with a pigeon comes to mind.
    @ 8, China does not care about the current leadership of North Korea at all. Their concern is to keep US forces no closer to the Chinese border than they are now, and that they will do.

    If Trump actually is dumb enough to strike, the Chinese will happily stand by and watch him hang himself. Just as promised at Mar-a-Lago.

    Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 10:48:53 AM | 14
    Lysander

    +1 on that.
    Actually what you are describing is the average westerner today (although, perhaps the average westerner is a jingoist today), they are indoctrinated every day by by the MSM, they have no idea whats going on in the world, its so tragic when you try to explain world events and they always react like you said, anger, hate, accuations etc.

    stumpy | Apr 14, 2017 11:11:39 AM | 15
    Trump throwing stones at the mother of all hornet nests. Wonder what this all does for Samsung and Hyundai stock prices.
    james | Apr 14, 2017 11:28:04 AM | 16
    thanks b... many good comments already too! thanks folks.. @12 lysander - bang on example of how ignorant most folks remain.. why is the usa here there and everywhere on the planet where their war machines? answer - they are the planets most warmongering nation, hands down..
    WorldBLee | Apr 14, 2017 11:38:51 AM | 18
    Good article, b. This is extremely relevant yet almost never discussed in the US. North Korea is said to be "crazy", and is treated as some kind of rabid, non-human country that threatens the US. Of course, the opposite is more true.

    It's important to note that every country that disagrees with the US is called crazy. Al-Assad is a "butcher", an "animal", a "dictator who kills his own people". Every time the US wants regime change they first vilify the leader of said country to turn him into a non-human entity that should be feared and loathed. This self-justifies the impending destruction of the country, which after all happened "for its own good."

    Tobin Paz | Apr 14, 2017 11:59:34 AM | 19
    If I told you ten years ago that the defacto American diplomat to North Korea Dennis Rodman would get kicked out of the country for getting drunk and taking a shit in a Pyongyang hotel; and that WWE hall of famer and reality TV star Donald Trump would threaten to attack North Korea as POTUS... would you have believed me?
    Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 12:02:37 PM | 20
    Chinese FM earlier today said 'war might come to Korea any time now', basically, US and allies could attack Korea and we wont do aynthing about it, what a corrupt nature they are show off now, disgusting.
    somebody | Apr 14, 2017 12:13:11 PM | 21
    The Huge Moron has got himself into a situation now where China is mediating between the US and Korea.
    likklemore | Apr 14, 2017 12:19:51 PM | 22
    Kudos b putting this together. That was some digging.

    Here is my 2 dumb questions: will the person who did the tallying of the MOAB taking out the 36 in Afghanistan be sent to NK for a similar task? Not to be crass, but given it was the "mother of all bombs" should the Pentagon folks not be embarrassed to release the count? KROI.

    China warns, and this from Her Majesty's paper, The Telegraph.co.uk with video interview:
    LINK

    "World 'on the brink of thermo-nuclear war', as North Korea mulls test that could goad Trump"

    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

    Trump, as we have observed, does not enjoy being goaded - fights back when he is accused of having small hands.

    And Kim Jong-Un? Well never mind.

    ~ ~ ~ ~

    Wish all abundant blessings this Easter. We may not see 2018.

    Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 14, 2017 12:25:07 PM | 23
    Posted by: Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 10:15:53 AM | 8

    Imo, the main reason AmeriKKKa is threatening Korea at this time is because Xi scared them, and their freedom of navigation charade, out of the South China Sea. And now they're adding blackmail to the provocation by putting NK between them. It's cowardly and stupid, which is why I said I hope Trump knows what he's doing, because it doesn't look that way to me.

    A violent conflict in NK will create a NK refugee problem which, as history illustrates, is AOK with AmeriKKKans but no-one else.
    And if Xi has scared AmeriKKKa once, he can do it again.

    likklemore | Apr 14, 2017 12:26:43 PM | 24
    and linked in the article is Democratic-Leader Pelosi 's tweet:

    President Trump's escalation on Syria, Saber-Rattling on North Korea Necessitate Immediate Congressional Scrutiny

    ~ ~ ~ ~
    somewhat late after Congress abandoned it's war powers to the past 4 presidents.

    Greg Bacon | Apr 14, 2017 12:33:42 PM | 25
    Why is NK our problem?

    NK has seen what happens when nations give up their WMD's Iraq got invaded and Saddam first tortured, then hanged. Libya got smashed and Qaddafi got a bayonet up his arse.

    Now Syria is in the cross-hairs, with much of the nation in ruins, close 500K dead, millions more wounded and millions more homeless, with Assad being fitted for a hemp necktie.

    So why should Kim give up his nukes, where's the benefit?

    GoraDiva | Apr 14, 2017 12:36:48 PM | 26
    For anyone even marginally interested in the issue of NK vs SK - please take time to listen to this interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba3dgDUtE9A (actually, 2 2-hr interviews).

    Historian Bruce Cumings looks way back in trying to explain the peninsula and its troubles. One point he makes is that the Korean war gave Truman a perfect excuse to expand the military and set up the national security complex. One thing he does not say is that US likely has zero interest in defusing the conflict - lest they'd have to leave the area.

    fastfreddy | Apr 14, 2017 12:47:00 PM | 28
    Trump is not a huge moron. He is an actor - pretending to be a moron for his moron fan club. He is very convincing. Superb acting. Terrific. An Armada of Stagecraft. Unfortunately, his moronic behavior leads to moronic and zany consequences.

    I'm now wondering how much worse the Known Entity - the Murderous Bloody Hillary could have been. Trump is a bull in a China Shop.

    Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 12:49:02 PM | 29
    Hoarsewhispet

    IMO, if anyone it is Trump that have "scared" the chinese or rather baited the Chinese with good trade deals and have got the word from the chinese that they wont rescue NK nor attack US if US feel like attacking NK. This is why Trump acting so tough now, he know China+UN+EU+Nato will support his coming war.

    E Ring 46Z Vet | Apr 14, 2017 12:51:46 PM | 30
    b, this occasion, your writing is very one-sided. You left out (as did all the commentators to this moment) the decades of brinksmanship by NK, demanding as much as $50 million annually from all the presidents prior to Bush 43, including oil shipments.

    Consider this: (who ever is in charge of the WH now or last time, etc.) does not matter as much as "perhaps" that entire region, and the multiple layers of MIC/Deep State folks/their proxies in Congress in the USA, are finally fed up with the brinksmanship for cash to keep that guy's family and supporters in power, and now that NK lunatic has raised the anti to the nuke level (thanks Bill for helping them out there in the 1990's)... it looks like the Pentagon will work the decisions at their level as we now see in real-time.

    I served a recent tour there. "Ready to Fight Tonight" is not just a motto with South Korea. They have lived it since 1953 and they are really tired of it.

    Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 1:00:32 PM | 31
    30

    Could you rephrase your whole chunk of text, it makes no sense, US dont "pay" North Korea anything and the lunatic is not in NorthKorea but in the White House allied with your dear South Koreans.

    GoraDiva | Apr 14, 2017 1:03:41 PM | 33
    @30
    You've likely absorbed too much MCM (c - corporate) reporting; for a more complex understanding of the subject, pls listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba3dgDUtE9A - that is you're interested in learning, as opposed to just repeating MCM talking points.
    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 1:08:11 PM | 34
    @ Posted by: E Ring 46Z Vet | Apr 14, 2017 12:51:46 PM | 30

    Respectfully, your comments are very one-sided, and you appear to be profoundly ignorant of the entire genesis of the Korean v US conflict and the motivations and conduct of involved parties since the days of the Kuomintang (KMT), Chiang Kai-shek, in the Chinese Civil War starting in 1940 but especially US actions from Sept 1946 and 1949 onward, as well as relevant USSR/Chinese involvement.

    Should you be interested there is significant detail in posts re 'Forgotten & buried History' of which you may be oblivious in the last three threads posts, or not.

    If you served in SK, ' Ready to Fight Tonight ', then why did you not bother to actually learn something of the Korean history, if only the last 70 years, with you and your buddies lives 'on the line', as opposed to merely regurgitating 'kool-aid' propaganda & misinformation ?

    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 1:32:44 PM | 37
    And while we are studying this, the empire is making more plans.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-usa-mattis-idUSKBN17G1C1
    U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Qatar and Djibouti starting on Tuesday, the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday.

    It said Mattis would "reaffirm key U.S. military alliances," and "discuss cooperative effort to counter destabilizing activities and defeat extremist terror organizations" during the April 18-23 tour. In Israel, he will hold talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the statement said.
    .......

    Syria? or Iran? When the above group talk about terrorist organizations they are talking Hezbollah. It is starting to look like the US is about to launch a two front war. Korea/China, Middle East/Russia.

    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 1:33:11 PM | 38
    @ Posted by: From The Hague | Apr 14, 2017 1:20:25 PM | 36

    Have been involved in detailed discussions that have carried thru the last three threads re Korea covering from 1940, to the critical events of Sept 1945, then thru to 1949 and just as important 1949 onwards, PRECEDING the Korean War of '50 ... many extracts, numerous links/sources/references, from multiple participating posters. Hm, suppose start around here:

    b | Apr 14, 2017 1:33:38 PM | 39
    @E Ring 46Z Vet

    I you come here for "neutral" piece that give equal weight and view to all sides you are in the wrong place. No author does that anyway and there are mountains to read that always highly endorse the U.S. side on each and every issue. I am not from the States and have a way more neutral view than you will find in your media. But I am not one sided. I have my moral position, my conscience and I follow it. I know what the U.S. has done to Korea - unnecessarily and for what I consider nefarious reasons.

    I also know that the claim NoKo was "demanding as much as $50 million annually from all the presidents prior to Bush 43, including oil shipments." is stupidly wrong.

    It was only Clinton who made a deal with NoKo which included for the U.S. side the delivery of oil and grain and the building of two civil nuclear reactors in North Korea. North Korea, in exchange, was to stop all nuclear work it had proceeded with including its own building of civil reactors which it urgently needed for electricity. It was a deal. Both side got something out of it.

    It was Clinton who broke that deal. It was Clinton who never delivered on his promises. The delivery of oil and grain was slow and ended early. Only the foundations of the reactors were build (by North Korea). No components were delivered. Bush only officially ended the deal Clinton had already renegaded on.

    chump change | Apr 14, 2017 1:39:08 PM | 40
    "demanding as much as $50 million annually from all the presidents prior to Bush 43"

    Should take lessons from Israel and demand 3 Bil. 50 mil is chump change. How much do you think these annual maneuvers cost? More to the point, isn't it interesting that the US's war budget is practically unlimited, while money spent on peace is always too much.

    You probably support tax cuts for oligarchs while bitching about money squandered upon the poor, homeless and ill.

    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 1:41:42 PM | 41
    Followup to #38

    Also very highly recommend the following article and embedded links/references re Korea and consequences/issues surrounding detailed expert factual analysis re possible war here:

    Posted by: Outraged | Apr 12, 2017 8:38:58 PM | 248, 'Is There A New U.S. Syria Policy? Is There One At All?' thread. Cheers.

    Skip | Apr 14, 2017 1:43:49 PM | 42
    @30

    I wonder how warm and fuzzy the USA would be if NK had 60+ years ago, devastated our population with the bloodlust described by MacArthur, yet still had 50,000 troops stationed all along the Mexican border(DMZ)with nuclear capabilities that in an instant could destroy Houston, Austin, Dallas, Phoenix and Los Angeles??? Somehow I hear screaming and howling coming from the bowels or our esteemed Washington overlords. Kim's behavior is no more foolish.

    Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 1:52:11 PM | 43
    Air China to suspend some flights to North Korea http://presstv.ir/Detail/2017/04/14/518018/Air-China-suspend-flights-North-Korea

    Well well well, this is almost getting comical, chinese show its true nature once again, what a backstabbing nation. China will be as complicit in this war on NK as Trump (and other pathetic allies). How many billion dollar deals did the stupid president get by Trump to be able to accept this tremendous blunder?

    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 1:55:14 PM | 45
    Is the US going the full John McCain? China rising, pivot on Asia behind schedule. Resources Diverted back to Middle East when Obama's headchoppers threatened US oil at Erbil. More resources for the pivot on China with Russia's re entry into the world of hard power.

    At this stage, Russia was supposed to be the gas station that produced nothing. Syria should have fallen to US headchoppers. Philippines has pulled out of the pivot on China.

    Obama's leading from behind, and proxy wars largely failed. This leaves the US very short on time to take down China, plus they now have to deal with a Russia that has risen from the dead.

    So US going full John McCain to make up for time lost / ground lost through the Obama years?

    Ronak | Apr 14, 2017 1:55:59 PM | 46
    @ Posted by: Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 1:32:44 PM | 37

    I still think it's a one-front war. Saudi's just formed a NATO-like Sunni force with an ex-Pakistani general as it's head. Now they have a about 20 nation force for basic ground ops and this will help Saudi's in Yemen and may be Syria especially with Pakistan's depth in recruiting regulars and non-regulars. This could not have happened without US approval, imo.

    SmoothieX12 | Apr 14, 2017 1:57:01 PM | 47
    @37, Peter AU
    Syria? or Iran? When the above group talk about terrorist organisations they are talking Hezbollah.It is starting to look like the US is about to launch a two front war. Korea/China, Middle East/Russia.

    US is in no position to launch any serious military operation as of now, certainly not against Iran, not to speak about Russia. Bombing something? Sure, as long as it is stand-off weapons and no US casualties. Yet, US is under pressure to "perform" something because, as of lately things are not going too well for US in general and her military in particular. Consider all these plans a self-medication. Per China, China is not in the shape to fight US Navy as of now, not does she want to risk losing the access to US markets.

    karlof1 | Apr 14, 2017 2:08:37 PM | 48
    For those wondering what book the page is from, it's Napalm: An American Biography by Robert Neer, Belknap, 2013. Using google, enter this exactly into the search box: macarthur "biblical devastation resulted" hit search and the top result will take you to the page. (The actual url is about 4 lines, so I refrained from posting.) I do suggest reading the next several paragraphs, but they are not for the squeamish as what's described is 100% revolting. If after reading the text you cannot fathom why the North Koreans detest Americans more than anything else, then you'll make a perfect Neocon and ought to join Cheney and Co.

    Thanks b for posting that extract provided by Jeffery Kaye!

    SmoothieX12 | Apr 14, 2017 2:10:57 PM | 49
    No one has forgotten the near genocide and no one in Korea, north or south, wants to repeat the experience.

    Meanwhile, overwhelming majority of US political "elite" is generally an office plankton with law or political "science" (or journalism--which is not a profession or a skill) degrees from Ivy League "humanities" departments and their comprehension of the war is limited to Hollywood. Most difficulties in life they ever experienced was, most likely, being overbooked for the first class seats on the flight to Hawaii (or any other resort).

    somebody | Apr 14, 2017 2:11:06 PM | 50
    46) Not true
    PAKISTAN'S Parliament rejected a Saudi request to dispatch troops to combat Houthi rebels in Yemen, much to the chagrin of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). When Pakistan joined the Saudi led 34 nation military alliance, Iran took offence believing itself to be the target. Pakistan thus found itself between a rock and a hard place. Stung by the sensitivities of both its friends, Pakistan has had to rethink its diplomatic overtures to maintain the right balance between Tehran and Riyadh.
    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 2:14:53 PM | 52
    @ Posted by: Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 1:55:14 PM | 45

    Succinct overview recap, though very pessimistic ;)

    Its occurred to me you may not fully follow, with utmost respect, what I've referred to on occasion as: no key indicators re logistics/materiel mandatory pre-deployments with minimum ~3-6 months lead times, ONCE, a decision to go to War, or an Op that risks War breakout, any War, has been taken and formally committed to, before the War or risk 'of' Operation, can commence ?

    To do so without such pre-deployments well in advance of boots-on-the-ground, ships firing armaments or aircraft launching strikes, ie engaging in Ops that have inherent escalation to War risk, virtually guarantees failure and defeat should a War subsequently breakout ... Lieutenants study tactics, Field officers/Commanders/Generals/Admirals study logistics, to paraphrase numerous famous military commanders, especially smarmy/cheeky/insubordinate military logisticians ;)

    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 2:15:00 PM | 53
    SmoothieX12 47 China is not in the shape to fight US Navy as of now

    That is a good reason for the US to act now. Look up the Rand Corp report - Thinking the Unthinkable. Report finance by the pentagon as a military strategy for taking down China.

    In the report, if the US acts now, they have a good chance. In five years time it will it will be 50/50 and in ten year it is all over for the US. By then China will be militarily superior or at a point when any US force projection against China will be totally destroyed very quickly.

    Rand report here. I had the title wrong in earlier posts. PDF can be read online or downloaded from the Rand Corp link
    Thinking Through The Unthinkable http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1140.html

    Monolycus | Apr 14, 2017 2:27:04 PM | 54
    Thank you, E Ring 46Z Vet @#30 for that.

    I still read this blog from time to time, but this very issue is why I almost never comment anymore. North Korea is to the Left as Israel is to the Right, and it infuriates me. The decades of kidnapping foreign nationals, hijacked planes, international assassination attempts-- basically 70 years of deliberate destabilization and human rights abuses are all justified because... "America" spelled any various number of ways is eeeeeeeevil.

    I live in South Korea and have for the past 15 years. I posted a story here in 2012, shortly after Kim Jong-un came to power, about a defector badmouthing North Korea. B chastised me for believing such propaganda and responded with a linked story about how Kim Jong-un had created an agricultural revolution resulting in a surplus of crops that year and was a hero as a result of it. I am in South Korea.

    Kim Jong-un had been in power for less than a year. The time of year was very, very early Spring and the ground in South Korea was still frozen and no crops of any sort had been planted at all, so I know they could not possibly have been planted yet in the north. Yet I was the one believing in baseless propaganda. There's just no way to have any rational debate when the subject is as sacred a cow to the residents here as North Korea is. You'll catch abuse for your comment daring to suggest any culpability whatsoever for poor, innocent bystander North Korea, but I wanted to reassure you that there do exist a small minority of us who appreciated what you had to say.

    karlof1 | Apr 14, 2017 2:28:49 PM | 55
    The conclusion from a review of the book by SF Gate: "Neer has provided a valuable book that fills in historical gaps and sheds much-needed light on a history that many would rather forget ." [Emphasis mine] http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Napalm-by-Robert-M-Neer-4377836.php

    The #1 reason the Outlaw US Empire gets away with its continuation of massive crimes against humanity is that its citizenry is mostly ignorant--made so purposefully--of the history that matters and are today's equivalent of "Good Germans."

    However, that doesn't excuse the remainder of the planet's citizenry from demanding an end to the criminal actions of the Rogue United States.

    Ronak | Apr 14, 2017 2:29:12 PM | 56
    @ Posted by: somebody | Apr 14, 2017 2:11:06 PM | 50

    Thanks for the link.

    This rejection was a while ago, 2015 or so? Or was there a new one after the general was given the top post? I had assumed things have changed since.

    Anyways, cornering Iran is the goal that the US/Israel trying to accomplish, at least from reading the pattern of activities. Slippery slope indeed.

    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 2:35:49 PM | 57
    @ Posted by: Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 2:15:00 PM | 52

    Thought scenario ... US launches attacks and starts War with China, no virtually 'non-concealable' 6 month mandatory preparation lead-time ... however unlikely, events don't go well for PLA ... China assesses at risk of conventional defeat ... however unlikely, no possibility to continue to conventionally resist or recover for an extended conventional conflict or guerilla campaign... fires a demonstration tactical nuke (no casualties) to send a message re de-confliction/de-escalation, or else ... US either stands down or its MAD. Game Over.

    Alternately US just goes MAD straight up and risks it all with a supposed surprise First Strike (highly improbable to adequately conceal) ... only a few Sino nukes make it to Stateside, yet enough to wipe out 80Million+ instantly and same number in initially non-KIA casualties of varying degrees plus turn to 'glass' half a dozen major cities ... well armed citizens response/reaction to their new post-apocalyptic lives of joy & happiness ?

    Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 2:45:17 PM | 58
    53 / Monolycus

    Thanks for proving how well the South Korean state propaganda work, you are basically calling for war against your own country (or perhaps you are not even a native korean?) and your own people, and you are calling people here crazy?

    Yonatan | Apr 14, 2017 2:47:10 PM | 59
    The 'Big Event' that Kim Jong Un boasted of, and had 'everyone' paralyzed in fear of nuke tests - the grand opening of a new mass residential area in Pyongyang.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxPw26MeviQ

    As others have stated, this whole mess is yet another US creation - the consequence of a 'nukes for oil' deal that the US reneged on - NK would cease nuke development in exchange for eased sanctions.

    somebody | Apr 14, 2017 2:47:13 PM | 60
    Posted by: Ronak | Apr 14, 2017 2:29:12 PM | 55

    Dated April 14, 2017

    Another fresh link - 17 hours ago

    ISLAMABAD: Defence Minister Khawaja Asif on Thursday assured the National Assembly that Pakistan would not become part of any alliance against a Muslim state.

    Responding to a calling attention notice, he said that the terms of reference (TOR) of the Saudi-led military alliance would be unveiled by Saudi authorities next month.

    He said that the TOR of the alliance, which is to be led by former Chief of the Army Staff Gen Raheel Sharif, and its aims and objectives will be presented in parliament before formally deciding whether Pakistan should become part of it or not.

    "We have committed to safeguarding Saudi Arabia's soil for the safety and sanctity of the two holy sites - Makkah and Medina - but we will not become part of any conflict against any Muslim state, including Iran," the defence minister said, responding to the notice moved by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) MNA Dr Shireen Mazari.

    somebody | Apr 14, 2017 2:56:20 PM | 61
    add to 59

    Egypt's cooperation is not that safe either

    In Libya, the three states seem to be in lock step, supporting Khalifa Haftar, for example. In Palestine, a theatre long abandoned by the Arab leaders, Cairo has a deep-seated interest and is backing the anti-Hamas Mohammed Dahlan, who is also very close with the ruling family in the UAE.

    In Yemen, the Egyptian regime has announced its plan to maintain its limited presence, although Cairo's unwillingness to expand this presence is another source of disagreement with Riyadh.

    The issue on which there is the most daylight between Cairo and Riyadh, however, is the most significant conflict affecting the region today: the Syrian war.

    While Riyadh has backed forces opposed to the regime since the outset, Cairo has moved from a position of ambivalence to open support for the regime.

    ...

    Although rumblings of an Egyptian military presence in Syria have not been substantiated, Egyptian rhetoric and diplomatic efforts have firmly supported Assad. Most recently, Cairo abstained from a key vote in a UN Security Council resolution that would have imposed sanctions on the Syrian government, no doubt to the displeasure of the Saudis.

    This position is more consistent with the Egyptian regime's outlook; Sisi rose to power on an anti-Islamist platform and is waging a war against a small scale insurgency in the Sinai. The Trump administration's policy goals in the region seem to align with Sisi's vision of supporting authoritarian regimes against Islamists. This agenda puts both Trump and Sisi into Assad's camp.

    For this reason, it seems that Sisi's dream of a joint Arab military force will not materialise anytime soon, at least not with joint Egyptian and Saudi participation.

    Without agreement on Syria, this endeavor to unify Arab governments under his leadership is dead on arrival, as the Syrian conflict is currently the most significant security threat.

    b | Apr 14, 2017 3:03:08 PM | 62
    The link to the book extract in the post which @karlof1 provided. The book is Napalm: An American Biography by Robert Neer, Belknap, 2013

    The linked pages following the one above are about the extremely cruel effects of Napalm as used in Korea.

    Yonatan | Apr 14, 2017 3:03:41 PM | 63
    Karlof1 @48, @54

    The US laid a similar (though smaller scale) trail of destruction in Germany at the end of WWII.

    The development of napalm specifically to target civilians ties in the testing of the two US nuclear weapons in Japan. The Japanese target cities were left untouched by conventional air raids throughout, even though they contained valid military targets such a torpedo production plants.

    The occupants were so used to seeing US planes pass them by without ill effect, that on the fateful day they stood out in the open watching the planes pass by as normal or so they thought. The two attacks - for different designs of weapon - were designed to test and calibrate the effects of nuclear weapons on undamaged cities and unprotected civilians. They were actual medical and physical experiments on real people.

    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 3:04:29 PM | 64
    @ outraged

    I have been giving your posts a lot of consideration. How to tie the logistics and so forth lead time, to what we are seeing take place?
    create major incident, congress quickly votes for war?

    Can the US deploy faster than we have seen in the past? Most US wars since WWII have been wars of choice, done at leisure, in a time and place of US choosing.

    The difference between now and all the years since WWII, through the cold war and so forth is that the US has very little time left. In trying to think how the US is acting different now to the past, or actually dig up solid points I would probably point to MH17. With MH17 Australia, one of the five eyes gladly sacrificed some people for empire. That shook me. The evidence was the same as the crap dossier on Assad gassing his own people, yet not a word of protest out of any Australian politician.

    The US now have total and complete control over all its vassal. The US can now say and do anything, no matter how obvious, and the bobble heads as Putin calls them, just bobble their heads in agreement.

    I think what we will see in the next few years will be much different to the last 70 or so years. If the US does nothing, it will start to collapse as the power of the dollar is eroded by other currencies taking up market share.

    I believe US will act, and that means taking down China as China is currently the number one threat to the US. China simply continuing the way it is, manufacturing, trading ect will take down the US.

    The US is going to war. Much thought and training going into fighting peer, or near peer adversary. At the same time, China and Russia are working to prevent the US from going to war.

    What you have said about lead time does have to be taken into account to try and work out US strategy. Does the US need another Pearl Harbour to get its population on a war footing for the coming war with China? Sink a few useless aircraft carriers, similar to battleships being sunk at Pearl harbour when WWII was a aircraft carrier war and battle ships were largely obsolete?


    US think tanks like Brookings and Rand. Fronts for the 0.01% ? US policy roughly follows the lines put out by these type think tanks.

    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 3:06:51 PM | 65
    @ Monolycus

    If you truly earnestly believe:

    The decades of kidnapping foreign nationals, hijacked planes, international assassination attempts-- basically 70 years of deliberate destabilization and human rights abuses are all justified because...

    following on from the defeat of Japan at end WWII occurred without any similar actions prior to, concurrent with and subsequent to events of the Korean War, and the issues are purely of Left & Right 'isms', not basic matters of Humanity, then frankly, you're viewpoint/position is wilfully documented counter-factual, IMHO. Have seen no 'abuse' as you assert.

    You live in SK ? Respectfully, please enlighten us as to the history of the island of Jeju from Sept 1945 thru to today, as an example, maybe comment on the abandoned truth & reconciliation inquiries/compensation and the persisting existing community divisions thru to this day, hm ?

    SmoothieX12 | Apr 14, 2017 3:14:00 PM | 66
    @52, Peter AU
    That is a good reason for the US to act now.

    From US point of view--absolutely. US establishment, yet again, thinks that it can control escalation. Conventionally, North Korea is a punching bag. But I also would be very careful with any (I underscore--any) supposedly "reputable" US analytical source assessments of anyone. Overwhelming empirical evidence testifies to the fact that often they have no idea what they are talking about.

    ronny | Apr 14, 2017 3:16:05 PM | 67
    Kim Jong-un orders evacuation of Pyongyang: report

    North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered 25 percent of Pyongyang residents to leave the city immediately, according to a Russian news outlet on Friday. The Pravda report said that in accordance with the order, 600,000 people should be urgently evacuated.

    http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170414000689

    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 3:25:30 PM | 68
    @ Peter AU
    If the US does nothing, it will start to collapse as the power of the dollar is eroded by other currencies taking up market share.

    Stepping back from fundamental military strategy/necessities ...

    If China/Russia were facing imminent War, then they would very probably dump all US reserves and Treasury Bonds first, and pre-emptively trigger economic collapse & rout. Unless it's MAD first strike stuff, where is the industrial and manufacturing base of the US/UK to sustain and win a 'Total War' ? Russia/China/Iran/NK are all militarily self-sufficient ... long-term sanctions do that, somewhat self-defeating, no ?

    IF the US collapses without War occurring, the 0.01% driving this will have already relocated in advance to, New Zealand or Iceland, etc ? To live lives of luxury, whilst purchasing collapsed US corporations for pennies on the dollar, perhaps, and wait for the investment to mature, maybe ? Ruthless bastards, citizens of the world ;)

    Yet, mistakes & miscalculations can occur unintentionally when even only a sustained 'strategy of tension' goes on and on ...

    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 3:31:49 PM | 69
    Another thing to consider now when looking at US actions... US have pinned all their hopes for military dominance on the F-35. Thirty years of R&D, a trillion dollars, and all they have produced is a flying scrapyard. The F-22 is a top aircraft, but they scrapped production to concentrate all resources on the F-35. I read not long ago that production of upgraded Super Hornets is about to kick off again.

    The F-35 has put the US too far behind. By the time they have designed and produced another 5th gen or later version aircraft, it will be all over for the US.

    somebody | Apr 14, 2017 3:37:12 PM | 70
    53/monolycos It is possible your opinion is not shared by South Koreans

    2003, report for congress South Korean Politics and Rising "Anti-Americanism": Implications for U.S. Policy Toward North Korea

    These shifts in the South Korean polity, particularly the rise in anti-Americanism, confront the Bush Administration with a policy dilemma: how to manage the U.S.-ROK alliance while pursuing a more confrontational approach toward North Korea than that favored by many, if not most, South Koreans.
    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 3:40:15 PM | 71
    You make good points Outraged. Will wait and watch, but I have a bad feeling that comes from a lot of small, on their own, seemingly inconsequential events/moves.
    somebody | Apr 14, 2017 3:41:39 PM | 72
    add to 69
    Opinion polls taken over the past few years generally have found that large majorities of respondents favor a partial or total withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea, though most holding this position say they favor a drawdown unless there are improvements in North-South Korean relations; few favor an outright withdrawal.
    SmoothieX12 | Apr 14, 2017 3:41:41 PM | 73
    @68, Peter AU
    The F-35 has put the US too far behind.

    It is not just F-35, it is a combination of factors of strategic, technological and operational nature. Take a look at LCS program or at the cost of SSBN Ohio-class replacement--a single hull for $8.1 billion. This is more than Russia spent on all 8 of her latest state-of-the-art SSBNs of Borey-class (Project 955, 955A)--3 afloat, 5-in different stages of readiness.

    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 3:42:31 PM | 74
    Followup to 67
    The US is going to war. Much thought and training going into fighting peer, or near peer adversary.

    "The US is going to war. Much thought and training going into fighting peer, or near peer adversary. " Do not see substantive evidence of the former, yet. Re the latter, other than neo-con/lib chickenhawk warmongers and detached from facts/reason/competent analysis & reality stink-tanks, again, see no evidence other than endless PR and rabid rhetoric, MSM abetted.

    Have you seen the most recent data/reports on DOD readiness levels, it's not a pleasant read if you're a jingoistic warmonger ... would argue, short version, the opportunity existed prior to 2001, maybe even as late as 2004-2006 at a pinch ... since then, and now, the window has closed and the opportunity lost ... the vassals you refer to have been as suborned as they are now since the late '40's, they just are now led by such incompetents that they don't have the sense to conceal that they are, bought & paid for, bobbleheads. Yet, they are good time opportunists and no guarantee of staying the course should it come to a potential WWIII, see Germany/Italy/etc ...

    Ike | Apr 14, 2017 3:50:58 PM | 75
    Thanks for a great article. It is so good to read truthful information and not the propaganda bullshit the MSM saturates us with.
    If more people read this the outrage would force the fascist US government to back off.
    Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 3:51:40 PM | 76
    And again,

    US successfully test drops nuclear gravity bomb in Nevada https://reportuk.org/2017/04/14/breaking-us-successfully-test-drops-nuclear-gravity-bomb/

    Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 14, 2017 3:56:35 PM | 77
    Of passing interest...according to CGTN World Today, April 15, China and Russia's foreign ministers spoke by telephone on Friday to discus stability on the Korean Peninsula.
    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 4:03:27 PM | 78
    @ Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 14, 2017 3:56:35 PM | 76

    Who knows, maybe NK will be rehabilitated, as is, and accepted back into the Russia/China 'Axis', openly, as for the then USSR/ChiCom 'Axis' pre and during the Korean war ? After all, given the insane and surreal rabid propaganda in western MSM, what difference would it make re supposed 'image' in the eyes of the supposed 'International Community' (US/UK/Israhell & good time vassals) ... any ?

    karlof1 | Apr 14, 2017 4:06:09 PM | 79
    Peter AU--

    Perhaps the most important yet neglected fact related to the build-up for war with China is the lack of preparing the ignorant US citizenry via the sort of dehumanization campaign waged at Islam/Muslims. Heck, just the great preference for Chinese food makes such a campaign more than difficult--the Yellow Peril proclamations of the past long ago ceased to resonate. Plus, I'll certainly echo Outraged's point about USA lacking the required industrial capacity and raw material for any such war other than MAD versus China/Russia. One of the main reasons the Lead From Behind strategy was adopted along with using terrorist proxies to destabilize Russia/China is because of that rather stark reality.

    Yonatan @62--

    Thanks for your reply. Napalm was developed at Harvard and the book was published by one of Harvard's publishing houses. Given its current attitude, I bet Harvard would now call its own published work Fake News, and disallow it from classrooms while removing it from libraries.

    Monolycus--

    The following extracts are from Australian National University Professor Gavan McCormack's Target Korea: Pushing North Korea To The Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe and detail just which side did most of the murdering:

    "At the outbreak of war in 1950, one of the first acts of the [South Korean] Rhee regime was to order the execution of political prisoners, whose deaths were in due course attributed to atrocities by the incoming Northern forces...Declassified U.S. documents indicated that `more than 2,000' political prisoners were executed without trial in the early weeks, hundreds of them were taken out to sea from the port of Pohang and shot, their bodies dumped overboard...Throughout the country, according to Gregory Henderson, then a U.S. Embassy official in Seoul and later a prominent historian of Korea, probably over 100,000 people were killed without trial or legal warrant. Investigations into all this have scarcely begun...

    "When Seoul was recaptured by U.S. and South Korean forces perhaps as many as 29,000 Koreans were executed on suspicion of collaboration with the North...The occupation of Pyongyang and many other cities and villages above the 38th parallel [by South Korean forces] was characterized by atrocities...According to one estimate, 150,000 people were executed or kidnapped...

    "The official U.S. Army report at the end of the [Korean] war gave 7,334 as the figure for civilian victims of North Korean atrocities, a small fraction of those now known to have been executed by [government of South Korean leader] Rhee in the first moments of the war alone...

    "...The Taejon Massacre...became the centerpiece of the U.S. case for North Korean brutality...A U.S. Army report on the massacre, including graphic photographs, was published around the world in October 1953...
    "At Taejon, a town of about 160 kilometers south of Seoul, a massacre undoubtedly occurred...

    "...It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the most brutal North Korean atrocity in the South was actually a Southern atrocity in a brutal ongoing civil war...

    "...The figure of 1,800 massacre victims was given...Somebody--presumably in either the American military or government--seems to have made the decision to turn this into a Northern massacre, the characteristic, single atrocity of the entire war. The truth seems inescapable: The worst atrocity of the war was committed by forces acting in the name of the United Nations, and a concerted effort was then made to cover it up by blaming it on the North Korean enemy...

    "...On the admission of [U.S.] General Ridgeway's Head Office, more POWs died in United Nations camps than in North Korean camps..." http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.com/2013/05/revisiting-history-of-korea-again-part-4.html?m=0

    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 4:10:21 PM | 80
    Re US war manufacturing base. Where is the MIC at now? US is by far the largest manufacturer of military hardware. The assembly of the final product has not been offshored. How much do they import in the way of raw or processed materials? Steel smelting, rolling ect - Aluminium - Titanium?

    Rare earth metals required for high tech military is imported from China, North Korea has the other known large recoverable rare earth reserve. Any US war with China would most likely be a naval missile war, something along the lines of the Rand report?

    Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 4:13:54 PM | 81
    Lawrence Wilkerson, a former U.S. Army colonel: U.S. Creating New Foes, Too Many To Handle
    http://www.mintpressnews.com/former-bush-chief-staff-u-s-creating-new-foes-many-handle/225999/
    SmoothieX12 | Apr 14, 2017 4:21:06 PM | 82
    Any US war with China would most likely be a naval missile war, something along the lines of the Rand report?

    China does have limited versions of both Klub-NK and Club-S, those were shorter ones until recently when China started to get her hands on actual Russian versions of such weapons as P-800 Onyx with their ranges of 660 kilometers, add here SU-35 (also in Russian configuration) and S-400, also in Russian configuration, and you have a rather interesting dynamics suddenly.

    China's very weak spot navy-wise is their submarine force, despite some good SSKs, PLAN's nuclear submarine component is atrocious--a generation or two behind what Russia and US operate. So, for now it is a mixed bag. Plus there is an issue of targeting, I don't know if Russia will make her Liana system available to China. Can China today sink US nuclear carrier? Possibly, In 5-7 years it will become not only possible but highly probable.

    karlof1 | Apr 14, 2017 4:25:05 PM | 83
    Peter AU @79--

    US MIC armament production ought to be seen/understood as MIC profitmaking scam that happens to produce few usable/battle-worthy assets. There's a very good reason for calling the USA's once mighty industrial heartland the Rust Belt--it's literally rotting away as a ride on Amtrak's Capitol Limited will testify.

    It would be far cheaper, saner and moral to obtain rare earth minerals and other goods via trade than expanding industrial capacity, instituting a military draft, outfitting such a force, then waging a war for conquest.

    b | Apr 14, 2017 4:40:02 PM | 84
    @Monolycus

    I tried for some 15 minutes to find the comment you wrote about and can not find it.

    But two remarks:

    byongjin policy ('progress in tandem' or 'move two things forward simultaneously') was developed and implemented years before Kim Jong-un came to power. He (more precise: those who are behind him) made it an official party policy and created the slogan long after the program had started. The first nuclear test in NoKo was 2006 - five years before him. The deterrence effects were already in place as well as a lessened conventional positioning, the economic trend was already positive.

    I may well have berated you about the uncritical quoting of a North Korean defector. These are notorious liars. Their income in South Korea was reported to be paid by the secret service in dependence of the media splash they create.

    There is huge amount of fake horror stories about North Korea in the South Korean (esp. Chosun Ilbo) and global press. Much of it is planted by the South Korean government. U.S. media have thankfully stopped to regurgitate most of the stories for now as too many turned out to be false .

    Kim Jong-un had his dogs maul one of his uncles?
    Stripped naked, thrown into a cage and torn apart by 120 starving dogs: How Kim Jong Un had 'scum' uncle executed
    That story ran one way or another in every bigger western media. It was false. The uncle was executed but after a (sham) trial and with guns by a regular execution command.

    North Korea hacked Sony? No it did not. It was an insider hack by a former Sony IT person. Sony made the "North Korea hack" up to escape culpability and to sell an otherwise unsellable bad movie.

    Kim Jong-un's ex-girlfriend reportedly executed by firing squad
    Bad, bad boy. But later she turns up on live TV , smiling and laughing as ever.

    Kim Jong-Un kills his half brother by having an unprotected person smear highly toxic VX in his face in a very public place in Malaysia? The person who does that gets not hurt one bit? Check the life style of his half brother - girls and drugs and rock&roll - lots of drugs and lots of alcohol. The dude much more likely had a heart infarct and the rest was made up like the other stories above.

    North Korea did and does some outrageous stuff. So did and do other countries. How many alleged "communists" and "sympathizers" did the various dictatorships in South Korea kill under U.S. tutelage? Thousands? Ten thousands? A hundredthousand at least. How many sabotage acts did they engineer in North Korea? How many were hurt by those?

    I am not blind on one eye. But the anti-NoKo propaganda is similar to the propaganda that created the war on Iraq fever. It is now even more important to look from the other side and to write that up, not just some pseudo-concerned "all sides are bad" pieces.

    Looking in vain for the old Monolycus comment I came across a piece I wrote in 2012.

    Therein I quote Tariq Ali from a piece he wrote about his 1970s visit to North Korea. This bit from the end of the piece on the U.S. position under Bush/Obama is enlightening:

    Over lunch I asked her about [the Bush administration] plans for North Korea. She was cogent. 'You haven't seen the glint in the eyes of the South Korean military,' she said. 'They're desperate to get hold of the North's nuclear arsenal. That's unacceptable.' Why? 'Because if a unified Korea becomes a nuclear power, it will be impossible to stop Japan from becoming one too and if you have China, Japan and a unified Korea as nuclear states, it shifts the relationship of forces against us.' Obama seems to agree with this way of thinking.
    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 4:40:46 PM | 85
    SmoothieX12 karlof1

    It really makes little sense what the US is up to. Are they relying on bluff and bluster to win the day? Anon1 @80 put up a good link. It is one of the things that has me worried.

    What we are seeing now, is it bluff and bluster? or is it Doolittle raid/battle of Midway type culture - US can overcome all no matter what?

    Willy2 | Apr 14, 2017 4:43:41 PM | 86
    - North Korea has some good reasons to not trust the US.

    1) In the 1990s they had a deal with the US, in which the US would supply Nort Korea with oil in return for a suspension of their nuclear program. But the US didn't deliver on theri promises.

    2) In 2003 or 2004 the US made some serious movements that did suggest that the US was preparing a MAJOR attack on North Korea. Under secretary Paul Wolfowitz also made some remarks that would suggest such a move.

    3) The G.W.Bush administration (2000-2008) deliberately increased tension with North Korea.

    From The Hague | Apr 14, 2017 4:45:58 PM | 87
    38 41 Outraged

    Thanks!
    Very relevant historical background.

    SmoothieX12 | Apr 14, 2017 4:46:09 PM | 88
    @84, Peter AU.
    What we are seeing now, is it bluff and bluster? or is it Doolittle raid/battle of Midway type culture - US can overcome all no matter what?

    Both. I am not sure that I can correctly estimate a percentage of both. Let me take a wild guess: bluster/bluff-60-65%, Doolittle--35-40%. The foundation of Pax Americana is a mythology of the "best military in the world", without this myth the whole house of cards begins to fold. It was folding with increasing speed since circa 2008 and accelerated tremendously in 2014.

    somebody | Apr 14, 2017 4:47:27 PM | 89
    Shadowbrokers just released NSA hacks for Windows Systems enabling kids to go to work over the Easter Weekend.

    NSA hacks include the Swift System.

    By the way, google "North Korean hackers" and have fun.

    Win | Apr 14, 2017 4:48:24 PM | 90
    @Monolycus

    Great that you swing by every so often. But I am not sure why you are offended when people criticise your point of view. That's what comments are for. And that's why this blog is here. To present an alternative view to mainstream lies. And just because you live in South Korea does not mean you have an objective view of the situation there. In the bigger picture, the mad dogs in the US government do all the things you mention, but no doubt because they are America they are ignored and their actions declared righteous. The agreements are historical and it was not North Korea who backed away, broke them or refused to consider them. North Korea has the tightest sanctions on earth and so b's reporting about the rationale for North Korea's actions is timely. Instead of the insidious propaganda we get from Western media. Enjoy yourself in South Korea. Just remember who invaded who there and who is causing mayhem in the rest of the world. Hint; it is not Kim Yong-Un.

    Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 5:05:51 PM | 91
    @ Peter AU

    An old saw, but a profound truism, 'No Battleplan survives first engagement with the enemy'.

    So Rands 'plan' ain't worth much ... secondly, if you go into combat/war without actually considering the enemies own moves/counters/plans/actions, then you've already lost before the first shot is fired.

    For example, the Chinese have built an autobahn grade highway which ends ~10Kms short of the China-Afghan border, they have 3 combined arms army groups including air divisions from the adjacent Western Military Region they could send over that border pass, after getting the combat engineers, sweating hard and using machinery, to finish the final stretch in a matter of hours ... the remaining army group & numerous Police divisions could secure the military region, as its isolated from potential threats other than Indian border effectively.

    Within 3-4 days forced march, worst case, they've crossed the Iran-Afghan border and the ME is toast ... concurrent and co-ordinated with similar capabilities from Russia, the ME is toast. And in conjunction with Iran free to wipeout the GCC's pathetically unprofessional non-commital 'green' 'parade only' militaries.

    What has the US got, pre-positioned to prevent it ?

    The conventional forces that NATO used to have deployed, pre-positioned and in number to defend a USSR, now RF, multi echelon armored deep penetration into EU, no longer exists ...

    The Bundeswehr is a shadow of its glory days as an armored/mechanized shield during the Cold War, now periodically ridiculed for not having sufficient MGs or ammunition to train with on joint training exercises ... War ready in 2017 ?

    The nuclear and non-nuclear subs of both sides would promptly slaughter each other in a mutual knife-fight, sudden death, whilst taking out the majority of the Carriers, US/UK/FR ... the remainder of the Carrier group escorts exist and are designed/configured to defend/protect & shield the carrier, not very useful once its at the bottom of the ocean along with all the strike aircraft, pilots, support crews and sailors ...

    @ From the Hague

    You are most welcome, a group effort.

    okie farmer | Apr 14, 2017 5:07:18 PM | 92
    link http://eng.tibet.cn/world/1481178463674.shtml
    b | Apr 14, 2017 5:21:19 PM | 93
    For those beating up on China (or applauding it) for suspending flights with NoKo.

    Air China clarifies ticket sales to blame for temporary flight cuts to Pyongyang; no suspension of services

    Jen | Apr 14, 2017 5:23:04 PM | 94
    Thanks B for the information regarding how the US and South Korea time their military maneuvers to coincide with the rice planting and harvesting periods in North Korea. I had not been aware of this before.

    Bill Clinton's offer to North Korea to supply grain and materials for building two new reactors and his later reneging on that do not surprise me at all as these are of a piece with the Clinton Foundation raising hundreds of millions for Haiti's post-quake reconstruction which in the end resulted in the construction of one factory employing 30 people making T-shirts for export. No doubt with the North Korean "offer" the Clintons got something of that.

    Also thanks to Karlof1 for being the tireless terrier that he is in hunting down the information about US-allied atrocities during the Korean War.

    I would like to pose to Monolycus and the other South Korean-based commenter the challenge of explaining how South Korea rapidly recovered from total war devastation in the early 1960s to the point where in 1988 the nation's capital could host the Summer Olympic Games. This all took place in the space of less than 30 years. If you both can do this convincingly and somehow mention Park Chunghee as an enlightened free-market democratic capitalist ideologue, rest assured I will be blown away.

    fastfreddy | Apr 14, 2017 5:33:25 PM | 95
    American Technological progress is probably stymied by the manner in which it is conducted. That is to spread contracts for hardware/software/parts among competing states via state representative congressional bag men. Wasting time and money in the process. Hoping for cost overruns and delays which increase profits. Small wonder the state-of-the-art US warplane is shit.
    Pft | Apr 14, 2017 5:41:44 PM | 96
    I'd have to question Kims sanity if he OK's a missile or nuclear test at this time. Trumps obviously a mad man trying to show how tough he is in order go terrorize countries and maybe his own citizens into submission. However, he has the means to execute the destruction. The MSM will be behind him all the way and Americans love war because God blesses them and they believe they are the good guys fighting evil and making the world safe for liberty and Democracy. American exceptionalism they call it.. The citizens as a group might be the most insane of all of these entities. Certainly the dumbest.
    james | Apr 14, 2017 5:45:36 PM | 97
    b - great responses to the naysayers here.. very informative as well. thank you..
    Jen | Apr 14, 2017 5:49:40 PM | 98
    B @ 92: I should think Air China's flight cuts are due to people suddenly cancelling flight plans after the threats made by the Trump government against Nth Korea.

    Anticipating though that if the US were to make the first move against Nth Korea, Air China's flights back and forth between China and Nth Korea are going to be very full. I believe there are some 2 million Koreans living in China (mainly in Manchuria) and many if not most of them have family in Nth Korea. Beijing must consider preparing for a refugee exodus into China's northeast provinces if there are as yet no plans.

    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 5:52:13 PM | 99
    mmm... well something major is brewing. What is smoke and mirrors and deflection and what is the real US strategy?
    Syria, Korea, Mattis cooking up a plot with GCC+Isreal = Iran
    paul | Apr 14, 2017 6:40:24 PM | 101
    Wow - I'm impressed with this approach from China. But they still need to be a bit stronger about denying the US the right or the chance to attack NK. Even Russia has several times sent a fleet to Syria. China should do this to ward off the Hegemon.
    jfl | Apr 14, 2017 7:00:05 PM | 102
    @or, @p au

    interesting discussion on the likelihood of war, upcoming.

    i think certainly outraged has the 'rational' analysis of war well in hand. but i don't think that war is rational in, literally, the end.

    i think the 'smartest guys in the room' in the us are not military types, but financial types. the same guys who run the hedge funds run the 'rational analysis' and forecast the 'outcomes' of wars, purely imaginary. and they have the rest of the world backing down before the 'overwhelming' might of the us wehrmacht, though a good part of their analysis is based on their own 'funny money' based 'power', which is only as good as everyone else's willing suspension of disbelief. no 'rational actor' would not back down, they say, in double negative. they're reductionists, and their results only hold true in the very much reduced world they've disconnected, bottled, and simulate their 'trades' in.

    i think there is a very real chance that they'll take us all over the edge, especially now that they have the donald himself unequivocally - well for him - on board. we'll see, won't we?

    we won't be safe from all this until after the air has been let out of their financial balloon, for good this time, and they are no longer the 'smartest guys' in the room. and then we'll only be safe if we claim our world and install an alternative management.

    thanks b, for the excellent perspective on the ceaseless grind the us has put the peninsula under over the past six decades. i never noticed their lockstep of stress and torture with the agricultural cycle either. hades and persephone all over again. i guess it never stops.

    karlof1 | Apr 14, 2017 7:01:52 PM | 103
    Jen @94--

    Thanks much for the complement. There are two main credible reporters on the Korean War that I use: IF Stone's The Hidden History of the Korean War was published in 1952 and was excellent for its timely veracity; Bruce Cumings, recently History Chair at University of Chicago, has written extensively on Korea, and his two volume The Origins of the Korean War is the most extensive examination of the conflict. In 2010, he published a very abridged version that looks serviceable, easier to find and much less expensive. This links to a review of Stone's book in doc format, www.ais.org/~jrh/Hidden_History_of_Korean_War.doc Cumins also co-authored Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth about North Korea, Iran, and Syria which is short and very readable. Cumins has also examined and written about the relationship between War and Television within the USA. And here's a website containing many of IF Stone's writings, http://www.ifstone.org/index.php

    Krollchem | Apr 14, 2017 7:13:33 PM | 104
    I am amazed by the depth of the comments on Trump's military threats against North Korea (trolls excepted). I would hope that Trump is just playing Teddy Roosevelt who "carried the big stick" using the white fleet to intimidate Japan:
    http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h942.html

    Unfortunately, would appear that Trump actually wants to degrade North Korea's nuclear program using strategic bombers (B52, B-1b and B2) currently deployed at Guam (a rerun of the US attack on Iraq nuclear reactor?).
    https://reportuk.org/2017/04/14/us-defcon-nuclear-threat-warning-increased-with-north-korea-on-verge-of-war/

    The US has positioned two cruise missile carrying destroyers within 300 miles of the North Korean nuclear test site awaiting the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group including the WC-135 "nuclear sniffer" aircraft.

    U.S. Air Force has also just staged and epic Elephant Walk at Kadena Air Base Japan comprised of HH-60 Pave Hawks, F-15 Eagles, E-3 Sentries and KC-135 Stratotankers as a show of force (see Superstation95 for photos).

    In addition to the thermobaric bomb demonstration in Afghanistan, the US just tested the upgraded B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb (just linked by Anon1)

    Trump's "Big Stick" approach has led to mass movements of:

    (1) China moved 200,000 troops on the border of North Korea;

    (2) Evacuation of about 600,000civilians from Pyongyang;

    (3) Plans by Japan's National Security Council on how to evacuate its nearly 60,000 citizens from South Korea;

    (4) Lots of flights out of South Korea.

    There are reports that China has sent its submarines sent out to sea (setting on the bottom?) and is likely making additional preparations without fanfare.

    North Korea has recently stated that if an attack is perceived a nuclear war will occur. I would expect that the first strike would be an airburst meant to wipe out all electronics not protected by Faraday cages, including unhardened military communications systems.

    I hate to speculate on where the other nuclear bombs will be " delivered". Under a worst-case scenario it could result in some global cooling about 20% of that predicted http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EF000205/full

    On the US West coast it would be wise to stock up on iodine tablets as attacks on nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities will release iodine 131 from fuel rods as well as other biologically hazardous radionuclides including strontium-90, cesium-137, and uranium-234.

    It may be the Make America Great Again is actually represents the Jewish word for combat (MAGA). Such an approach was warned against by General Smedley Butler in his critical essay "War is a Racket". https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

    As a side note the South Korean elections are coming up soon. Does anyone have a point of view?

    dh | Apr 14, 2017 7:15:01 PM | 105
    @104 The hedge fund guys are only good if they make the right bets. What they depend on is inside information, which companies are in trouble, which country is going to get whacked etc. But they don't always get it right. And their thinking is mostly short term.

    'Alternative management' would be nice. Maybe a race of benevolent aliens could take over.

    blues | Apr 14, 2017 7:18:52 PM | 106
    I feel I should simply repeat what I said yesterday on this site. It still seems rather relevant:

    This is where this is going, I would guess:

    US Airstrike on North Korea Risks Leading to '5-6 Chernobyl-Type Disasters' https://sputniknews.com/politics/201704131052612166-us-north-korea-chernobyl/
    /~~~~~~~~~~
    "Approximately 30 nuclear power plants are operational in South Korea. Several of them could be destroyed even if conventional bombs and shells are used. This could lead to five-six Chernobyl-type disasters on a relatively small area of 99 square kilometers that could instantly turn into a place unsuitable for life," he explained.
    \~~~~~~~~~~

    But that's not all we're going to get:
    /~~~~~~~~~~
    The Pentagon "cannot but take into account that in case of an airstrike against North Korea, US-made Tomahawks will fly toward the territory of Russia and China. This is a more dangerous scenario than the show of force in Syria," he said. "Russia will not be able to wait for US missiles to accidentally land on its territory. Moscow will be forced to shoot down the missiles while they are in North Korean airspace."
    \~~~~~~~~~~

    Meanwhile, tens of millions of South Koreans perish, with a few becoming radionuclide refugees. Good job, eh?

    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 7:43:14 PM | 107
    @ blues
    I would guess that SK, Japan, Australia, are all viewed simply as forward military bases by the US, that can be abandoned if required.

    @ jfl

    I have read although ,in a casual way rather than a study, too much of the history of wars. Often what comes across the insanity of a country starting a war and then is itself destroyed. Nazi Germany - leading edge tech, smart people. Country of sixty million conquered virtually all of Europe with ease then took on Russia. Instead of being content with being a leading country, they were willing to gamble everything to have it all.

    This is somewhat where the US is at today. The position is that it has over reached and now needs to pull back and consolidate, but we are not seeing that. instead, we are seeing the US become more threatening.

    So for me that needs to be matched/reconciled to Outraged comments on pre-positioning, indicators ect.

    Piotr Berman | Apr 14, 2017 7:51:15 PM | 108
    TRUMP READY TO REMOVE CRAZED NORTH KOREAN KILLER [GLOBE as observed in my supermarket yesterday, front page reported on-line]

    IN a gutsy move to save the world from global disaster, courageous ­President ­Donald Trump has drawn up a ruthless, top-secret plan to kill North Korean ­warmonger Kim Jong Un before he can push the ­button that would unleash nuclear holocaust!

    D.C. insiders tell GLOBE the iron-willed president is fed up with roly-poly Kim's blustery bull and is determined to squash the pint-sized dictator, who recently launched four intercontinental ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan!

    "Trump has put the elite fighting teams of Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 in Trump has put the elite fighting teams of Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 in South Korea on standby and ordered Tomahawk missiles and nuclear weapons to the North Korean border!" a White House insider tells GLOBE.

    Get all the details and the latest information on the White House's latest moves against the tyrannical North Korean dictator in this week's issue of GLOBE.

    ====

    Piotr: I understand how "top-secrets" can make it to our intrepid GLOBE reporters. But how did they determined who is "iron-willed" and who is "rolly-polly". E.g. it seems to me that Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim have similar BMI. Or how both leaders exhibited iron will firing employees.

    Willy2 | Apr 14, 2017 7:53:30 PM | 109
    - MEDIA MATTERS had a VERY interesting take why we could see a US attack on North Korea:

    https://mediamatters.org/research/2017/04/13/punditry-syrian-airstrikes-encouraging-trump-escalate-tensions-north-korea/216023

    jfl | Apr 14, 2017 8:27:18 PM | 110
    @109 p au

    i agree. no matter what happens, it won't be good ... until the Mother Of All Bubbles has burst. and then it might be but a brief respite indeed if we don't take advantage of the lull in 'play' to 'decapitate' our own 'leadership'. it's our sheer, mere 300 million+ souls (600 million+ soles?) to their 535 caputs ... think we have a chance?

    Dr. Wellington Yueh | Apr 14, 2017 8:39:34 PM | 111
    @jfl #114:

    A primary problem there is that they have convinced at least 20% of those 300M to be human shields in the service of Empire.

    Julian | Apr 14, 2017 8:44:26 PM | 112

    Apologies if this has already been mentioned - but if the USA were to unilaterally launch strikes on North Korea could Russia itself intervene and launch missiles against the ships/fleet at fault - ie - against those who have abrogated their responsibilities to international peace and security? The aggressor nation.

    Could Russia sink the ships with the USS Carl Vinson in the name of maintaining international peace and security??

    What side of Korea is the Carl Vinson and is it closer to the coastline of Russia or Syria?

    frances | Apr 14, 2017 9:02:27 PM | 113

    According to Jim Stone NK has a very formidable 50+ submarine fleet. He also said these subs are of NK manufacture based on their upgrades to Russian 1990's designs. They are nowhere to be seen at the moment and as they run on batteries when still, there is no easy way to detect them if they are on the ocean floor.

    Many are nuclear, have on average 100 mile range and the largest one could travel to and hit the West Coast. So if the Trump armada attacks they may quickly find themselves on the bottom of the South China Sea. And as for a war with China, IMO there is no way the US can win conventionally IMO. And if it looks to go to nuclear, Russia will regretfully reduce us to ash. It appears Trump has turned over management of the military to the generals. I have the same sense of pending disaster that I would have if I, on rounding a corner bumped into 1000 Daleks and with not a Doctor in sight.

    Krollchem | Apr 14, 2017 9:24:28 PM | 115
    A Russia missile cruiser arrived in Korea on April 11th:

    https://already-happened.com/2017/04/11/russian-guided-missile-cruiser-varyag-and-rfs-pechenga-have-arrived-at-port-of-busan-south-korea-today/

    DemiJohn | Apr 14, 2017 9:33:42 PM | 116
    Amazing how Kim Jung-un is demonized. Certainly a bully but there is much worse ... and Erdogan is untouchable.
    Krollchem | Apr 14, 2017 9:43:21 PM | 117
    blues @108

    Good point about the nuclear reactors.

    In addition nuclear reactors require fossil fuel power plants as backup up they suddenly lose power. In case of an air blast over South Korea the electrical grid would shut down with possible meltdown of reactors which didn't go into standby prior to the nuclear detonation.

    An even more critical issue is that a lack of power would shutoff cooling water to the spent nuclear fuel storage ponds. This would result in the water boiling off and

    "Once the fuel is uncovered, it could become hot enough to cause the metal cladding encasing the uranium fuel to rupture and catch fire, which in turn could further heat up the fuel until it suffers damage. Such an event could release large amounts of radioactive substances, such as cesium-137, into the environment."

    http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-waste/safer-storage-of-spent-fuel#.WPF2kI61tt8

    http://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/spent-fuel-damage-pool-criticality-accident

    It is important to remember that there is more spent nuclear fuel in spent fuel rods than in the reactors. There is a DOE computer program for calculating the radionuclide composition of the fuel vs storage time (Origin code). but I cannot find it on the internet. The release of these daughter products and the long term dispersal onto the land would turn Korea into a dead zone for hundreds of years.

    jfl | Apr 14, 2017 10:13:07 PM | 118
    @125 username ... not your real name. my name is john francis lee. i've never understood people who hide behind 'clever' usernames.
    Alaric | Apr 14, 2017 10:17:31 PM | 119
    This is very disturbing but I still believe it is show and that trump is just using theater to intimidate N Korea and actually China to control N Korea.

    i fully expect that China will give him a bogus way of looking tough that will achieve nothing and do little to n Korea. The problem is what happens if n Korea and China call his bluff and give him no way to look tuff.

    Is it possible this is a distraction for further actions in Syria?

    marcus_lepidus | Apr 14, 2017 11:11:46 PM | 120
    Maybe connected.....maybe not? With the election of Trump....word gets out that North Korea is very interested in talks with the incoming administration....and then what happens: Kim Jong-un's brother dies in a spectacularly suspicious fashion. Now that Park has been impeached.......and her likely successor looks to be someone open to talks with North Korea, the US is suddenly on the brink of war with the DPRK. Coincidence...neocon serendipity? Inquiring minds wanna know!
    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 11:12:18 PM | 121
    129
    into sci-fi entertainment much?
    yesu | Apr 14, 2017 11:23:25 PM | 122
    @29 - This is why Trump acting so tough now, he know China+UN+EU+Nato will support his coming war.Posted by: Anon1 | Apr 14, 2017 12:49:02 PM | 29


    ridiculous idea to even contend with. scared of what? the very first place for he n.korean nukes will be US army basesin japan, even before s korea.

    everyone knows the so called armada is a bluff here in asia, on other note, it shows USA doesn't provide security to the freedom of navigation that it keeps on pushing onto others. it does the opposite, it shows all the nations what freedom of navigation really means ..... to push for war instead of protecting trade, of which almost all the trade is coming from china anyways.

    it brings a huge conundrum in decision making, if trump doesn't do anything, all countries in asia will switch alliances towards china in the long run, except for broke jokes japan/usa.

    if trump does do something ridiculous, there won't be much of US/japan influence left in asia as china/russia will be forced to respond, and respond it will not like the fake wars washington is content with nowadays. trump obviously wants to change the tune of the conflicts....... but sending an armada into enemy territory while espousing support from nato..... (pacific nato?) puts so much fear into any nation here, knowing there is no petroleum logistics here for the war lovers.

    where u going to buy oil from Hong kong? singapore? japan? russia?

    NotTimothyGeithner | Apr 14, 2017 11:33:03 PM | 123
    @127 The simple answer is much like Obama, Trump is turning to bumbling around the international stage now that his domestic Presidency is finished. Between the Freedom Caucus and extinction of the Democrats who have been reliable crossover votes, there isn't a working majority in Washington.

    The key event wasn't the chemical weapon false flag or Rachel Maddow's latest Glenn Beck screed but the failure to repeal ACA and the recognition the Republicans don't have a plan to go or much of anything. The budget will be up in a few months, and he still has the same problem he has ACA: Demcorats who cant provide cover and the Freedom Caucus types.

    "Wag the Dog" scenarios focus on salacious scandals, but the collapse of domestic Presidencies are usually followed by war Presidencies. Trump is largely the idiot he appears to be and is simply grabbing onto the various interests within the borg. Trump will bounce from "enemy" to "enemy" trying to find an issue to get his Presidency back on track.

    Kalen | Apr 14, 2017 11:34:00 PM | 124
    One other jewel of US propaganda is why US is there, Keeping peace between NK and SK? Not at all US is there to keep peace between both Koreas and Japan and US stake imperial claim against China.

    Numerous cases of Japanese even minute encroachments on territorial waters of whole Korea were met by SK and NK alike with joint condemnation recalling ambassadors and even small shooting war and that including sharp conflict between both Koreans and Japan over so called disputed islands and waters.

    In fact a claim that US role there is stabilizing the situation cannot be entirely dismissed however the issue is that it is the US THAT CAUSED THIS INSTABILITY IN THE FIRST PLACE pushing regional divisions what amounts to precluding possibility to really end WWII among enemies resolve issues that still remind unresolved like Korea and move on with acknowledgment of reality of Chinese economic and political leadership which would be just return to historical situation just two centuries ago with modern solutions for coexistence.

    But that would spell the end of globalist project under US imperial umbrella, a prospective that is strongly opposed on all sides for diametrically different reasons.

    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 11:47:55 PM | 125
    Something that has struck me as this thread goes on.. WWII never ended. Nazi/imperial Japan quest for empire morphed into US quest for empire that is coming to a climax today.
    Anoncommentator | Apr 14, 2017 11:51:21 PM | 126
    Wide ranging fascinating interview with former high ranking CIA intelligence officer, Robert David Steele
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8UfYLA7FCqQ
    Peter AU | Apr 14, 2017 11:55:22 PM | 127
    continuing from 135

    Russia/USSR won WWII in Vietnam, and Vietnam is now an independent sovereign country. US won WWII in Germany and Germany is still an occupied country. Japan has never been disputed and remains a US occupied country. Korea has never been settled and WWII is still ongoing.

    Krollchem | Apr 14, 2017 11:58:45 PM | 128
    "Deputy Defense Minister General of the Army of Russia, Dmitry Bulgakov has arrived in Khabarovsk Krai near North Korea to inspect troops."

    "Russia also moved military vehicles (Air Def) toward Vladivostok not far from the border with North Korea"

    Link also shows videos of Chinese units moving toward the North Korean border

    http://thesaker.is/news-brief-brics-joint-communique-troops-deployment-near-korean-peninsula/

    Circe | Apr 15, 2017 12:12:39 AM | 129
    If North Korea, Russia, Iran, China or any other country that resists Zio-U.S. imperialism sent an Armada off the U.S. coast on the fourth of July, the U.S. wouldn't hesitate to sink it immediately, no questions asked. Trump is proving every day that he's a dangerous idiot.
    Anoncommentator | Apr 15, 2017 12:31:18 AM | 130
    This is going viral and so it should!!! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rkj9UCHO0Tc
    denk | Apr 15, 2017 1:03:56 AM | 131
    so mark pence is in sk with the troops 'observing easter prayer', what fucking hypocrites , 'god's army' on the way to another killing spree. --

    i wonder if pence's son is with the grunts ? mao sent his son together with the troops to help nk beat back the murkkans, hundreds of thousands never went home, including mao's son.

    but nuthin about the chinese sacrifice was mentioned in the nk war memorial hall, its all about the 'great leader'.
    during the sino/soviet split, nk had no hesitation ditching beijing for the more powerful ussr.

    by all accounts kim jong un would dearly wish to dump beijing for the more powerful unitedsnake...if only washington would accept him.

    wouldnt be surprised if kim is eventually 'cowed' by trump's armada and submit to washington wish.

    then trump would brag 'didnt i tell you all the past prez are pussies, it takes a real man to get things done'

    hehhehe
    =============

    Peter AU | Apr 15, 2017 1:10:32 AM | 132
    @ outraged.
    What would we see for a naval and to a lesser extent air war to blockade China? No ground war component with the massive logistic tail that requires. Obama's pivot on China entailed moving 60% of US naval assets to Asia pacific region.

    Where are US subs located? Where are US missile ships located. What is classified in the way of US naval asset positioning and not available to the public?
    Carriers are smoke and mirrors. A bygone era.

    From what I can make of it, Carter pre-positioned India as a US asset in 2016.

    jfl | Apr 15, 2017 1:20:07 AM | 133
    it may be that b has hit the nail on the head again ...
    "As a first step, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.
    ... what happens is that tee-rump unveils essentially this plan at the 'last minute' and takes credit for it, having exercised us all and directed the attention to his spotlight on the yellow sea.

    i hope that's what happens. we're stuck with this clown for four more years. he has no talent of his own, unless you call this kind of 'performance' talent ... and in fact he seems to have claimed it ... he may be an a**hole but he's the world's biggest a**hole! ... at least we might all live through it, ruled by a 70 year-old enfant terrible. tee-rump will play dummy and putin and xi can alternate as ventriloquists ... smiling and holding the dummy up to take the bows.

    Dr. Wellington Yueh | Apr 15, 2017 1:21:00 AM | 134
    @145: I don't really consider folks here'bouts as peasants. There are trolls and sock puppets. B and the commentators here (you and jfl are high on the list!) comprise a collection of 'reality lenses' that I find useful.

    RE: My initial response to jfl, the 20% I envision as human shields might be splittable, but you're only going to flake off a few %. Also, ignorance/apathy/fear (or incapacity for some other reason) on 'our side' brings the numbers way down. Add to that attrition from whatever course of action Empire attempts, and you have even fewer. Since we seem to be dealing with the 'upset-the-table' kind of losers, I'm sure they'll do something spectacular as a coda.

    Anyway, currently reading "The Shining", "Conquest of the Useless", "Roughing It", "Moby Dick". Just finished Gregory Benford's "Galactic Center" series...that was gripping and depressing for 6 long volumes.

    somebody | Apr 15, 2017 1:30:34 AM | 135
    North Korea's statement names the "Trump's administration serious military hysteria" This description is correct.
    blues | Apr 15, 2017 1:31:08 AM | 136
    Hmmm. Hmmm.

    /~~~~~~~~~~
    Zero Hedge -- Krunch Time for Korean Krackpot Despot, Kim Jong-Un: Missile Crisis Countdown Has Begun -- Apr 14,2017
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-14/krunch-time-korean-krackpot-despot-kim-jong-un-missile-crisis-countdown-has-begun

    Vice President Pence is scheduled to visit Seoul on Sunday, during his first Asian trip. The timing of his visit, after the Day of the Sun, might indicate the US does not plan any pre-emptive strike against North Korea on the Day of the Sun However, while Pence is ostensibly going to South Korea to talk with the government there about North Korea's nuclear development, the White House has also said it has contingency plans for the VP's visit, should North Korea carry out another nuclear test, indicating the possibility of a sudden shift to a war footing if Kim goes ahead with his apparent plans.
    \~~~~~~~~~~

    What if Pence doesn't make it out in time?

    Hmmm.

    jfl | Apr 15, 2017 1:34:21 AM | 137
    @146 denk, 'by all accounts kim jong un would dearly wish to dump beijing for the more powerful unitedsnake...'

    but that's a plan made looking in the rearview mirror ... isn't it? the future is china's. the very recent past is the 'legacy' of the us, burnt-out shooting star. sacrificed to the greed of its ruling class. in this life, at any rate.

    any opportunist worth his wages would go with china at this point in the game. and isn't kim really just the korean version of trump?

    an apprentice working for the apparat that really runs the country as their frontman, to bound about on stage and keep the world's attention on korea?

    Peter AU | Apr 15, 2017 1:40:24 AM | 138
    151
    Ignorance/apathy covers the middle 75% or so. A US manual on special forces hybrid/covert warfare covers that well. Even has a pie chart. Too many home brews at the moment to dig up the link, compounded by the fact that it is nearly time for my nana nap.
    Julian | Apr 15, 2017 1:53:59 AM | 139
    Re: Posted by: Pft | Apr 14, 2017 5:41:44 PM | 97

    If Kim does want to 'provoke' the Americans and test a missile or nuke surely he's most likely to do it a bit later than people think - ie - like Tuesday night Korean time - perhaps just before US markets open for Tuesday after the holidays. Or are they open on Monday? If they are, perhaps 9-10pm Monday night Korean time???

    Try and cause a 'panicked' market crash before Trump can react? Ensuring he will react against the backdrop of a market crash should he choose to react.

    Anyone know - are US markets open on Monday?

    jfl | Apr 15, 2017 2:05:06 AM | 140
    @151 tjk

    i re-read moby dick myself a couple of years ago. found a whale chart to go along with it, which helped bring the voyage to life ... back in the day ... when i was a kid there were always films from africa on tv, millions of gazelles and wildebeasts. i imagine they're all gone now, as are the buffalo, as go the whales.

    i think that, just as the man himself has turned on a dime when confronted with 'reality', so too will we and many of our usian brothers and sisters, many his followers, once we reach the point of personal betrayal required to open our eyes to our real enemies, to forget the scripted 'enemies' our real enemies had taught us to love to hate. but i've never been through a real meltdown and revolution before, so i don't know. that looks to me the way things are headed though. deplored by all sides, yet thought to be well under control, yet we all have our own peculiar 'red lines', and are being pushed, relentlessly toward them. we are many and growing more numerous; they are few and getting fewer, by their own design.

    Pft | Apr 15, 2017 2:29:45 AM | 141
    @135 Peter AU

    The wars to consolidate the world under one power has been going on for well over a century. Britain took the lead early on before passing the torch to the US once Rhodes plan to recover America was accomplished, sometime between Mckinleys assassination and the and of WWI . Wall Street and the money power in the city of London were always in sync. Albert Pike predicted 3 World Wars would be needed.

    The main change has been the form of government envisioned for the future. This has changed from Communism to Fascism. Many supporters of fascism here in the 1930's including FDR. After WWII many of the fascist bankers and industrialists in Germany and Japan got off light and were reintegrated into the global economy where they trained up the next generation of fascists. They joined forces with those likeminded folks in the US and Brits by working together in BIS, various international agencies and groups like the Bilderbergers and Trilaterals to develop strategies to acccomplish their goals in the short and long terms

    This is oversimplistic but time is short

    Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 15, 2017 2:31:02 AM | 142
    ...
    After all, given the insane and surreal rabid propaganda in western MSM, what difference would it make re supposed 'image' in the eyes of the supposed 'International Community' (US/UK/Israhell & good time vassals) ... any ?
    Posted by: Outraged | Apr 14, 2017 4:03:27 PM | 78

    That's a really good question. Imo, Western propaganda often seems to have an influence on the actions and statements of AmeriKKKa's fake enemies. There are two (maybe more?) ways of looking at this.

    1. The fake enemies really are worried about public opinion in the West.
    2. They're not worried, but deem it sensible to pretend that they are, because anything they can do to encourage AmeriKKKa to believe more of its own bullshit should lead to an escalation to the point where it crosses the line dividing the sublime from the ridiculous - which is what seems to have happened this year.

    michaelj72 | Apr 15, 2017 2:40:23 AM | 143
    we are ruled by idiots, con men, war-mongers, and Neanderthal whackos. Any attack by the US would be a massacre and humanitarian disaster of epic proportions. Plus, I assume, the north korean army that remains would likely shower much of south korea with tens of thousands of rockets, mortars and missiles. http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/14/whackos-in-washington-the-risky-game-of-regime-decapitation/

    Whackos in Washington: the Risky Game of Regime Decapitation by Dave Lindorff

    .....But what would the result of such a strike be?

    For one thing, almost certainly it would mean the contamination of part or even much of the country in North Korea with nuclear fallout and radiation. For another it - given the long history of US "precision" targeting going terribly wrong - it would mean much death and destruction for the long-suffering North Korean people.

    It would also mean chaos in a country that for nearly three-quarters of a century has been ruled by one absolute tyrant or another, in which there is simply no organized system of governance at lower levels to handle anything, from delivery of health services to distribution of food. If you think the chaos that followed the US invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the Baathist leadership of Iraq was bad, or that the chaos of the US overthrow of Gaddafy in Libya was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet if North Korea's leader gets offed in a US strike.

    In theory, China, South Korea or Japan could step in with troops, money and civilian personnel to help reestablish some kind of order and peace, while preventing the rise of yet another tyrannical government, but none of that is likely. The Chinese would probably not want to take it on, the Japanese are viewed negatively as a former colonial power, and South Korea may not want the financial burden of rescuing the North, which would be staggering.

    Meanwhile, while the US could relatively easily, and at minimal cost, "take out" North Korea's missiles, nukes and leadership, especially in the case of the Trump administration, there is absolutely no interest in taking on the costs of occupying and subsidizing the rebuilding North Korea following such an ill-conceived attack......

    Peter AU | Apr 15, 2017 2:51:26 AM | 144
    163
    "Any attack by the US would be a massacre and humanitarian disaster of epic proportions."

    Just part of human nature. Very common throughout history.
    As technology increases, the scale increases.

    George Smiley | Apr 15, 2017 3:27:44 AM | 145
    A lot of people do not know that the US bombed the hell out of the entire of north Korea during the war. Like to ashes. The Chinese, and even more so, the Soviet reconstruction project for north Korea was the biggest of its kind post WWII. Even bigger than what actually went to European reconstruction I believe, but don't quote me on that (not in terms of what was earmarked but spent).

    ALSO perhaps the biggest crime was bombing the north's huge dams. Unless your a poor farmer you don't know what kind a thing that it is to do. No military value (I heard it was bombed because they ran out of other targets in some way).

    Its insane and breeds a toooon of animosity. Plus rejecting all attempts at peace talks. Plus having the media only present it in one way and an attitude of RA RA we don't engage in diplomacy with the terrorist obviously he only listens to force.

    Crazy world. And most people can't see past it at a level more deep than "crazy dictator with a bad haircut."

    The world is so fucked up.

    okie farmer | Apr 15, 2017 3:28:25 AM | 146
    The 'mother of all bombs' is big, deadly – and won't lead to peace Medea Benjamin
    "I'm really very good at war. I love war, in a certain way," bragged candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Iowa. This is the same Donald Trump who avoided the Vietnam draft by claiming a bone spur in his foot, a medical problem that never kept him off the tennis courts or golf courses, and miraculously healed on its own.
    But with the escalation of US military involvement in Syria, the record number of drone attacks in Yemen, more US troops being sent to the Middle East and, now, the dropping of a massive bomb in Afghanistan, it looks like Trump may indeed love war. Or at least, love "playing" war.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/14/the-mother-of-all-bombs-big-deadly-ineff

    https://youtu.be/FMArIc5Hn_g

    George Smiley | Apr 15, 2017 3:30:53 AM | 147
    I've also heard the total death toll was between 1/10 and 1/5 of the total population.

    Of the TOTAL population. Imagine knowing no one could name a person not being touched by the violence. Having total families decimated. Breeds a ton of hatred and understandably so. We need to get that its not just as one sided as having everyone "brainwashed" without access to outside culture. Its an insane outlook.

    George Smiley | Apr 15, 2017 3:37:42 AM | 148
    Solo sorry for the triple post, also needed to say that because everyone hates this crazy dictator people never take the anti war position. Its just we should charge in with our guns - or giant missiles - blazing hooorahh.

    No one sees the death and destruction that will take place. The artillery alone not even nukes, would smash Seoul. They can't see beyond the black and white of 'allow dictator nukes' and 'kill him.' There's never room for diplomacy here - its just as bad as 'negotiating with terrorists.' What a crock of shit. And trumps played his hand badly cause he has no wiggle room. Makes Syrian strike looks like a joke. So much for being friendly with China. How about a piece of delicious cake as consolation?

    b | Apr 15, 2017 3:45:16 AM | 150
    @Outraged - deleted a bunch of your comments with long list of military equipment no one is interested in

    provide links to such stuff, don't copy it.

    --

    @all - deleted a bunch of nonsensical one-liners and some sniping at each other that I considered off topic. Go back to kindergarten if you need that.

    George Smiley | Apr 15, 2017 3:45:27 AM | 151
    LOVE B's take on the economics of nuclear might is. Crazy I never heard of those documents. Doesn't help that the North has been straved of food - and more importantly OIL. Means a lot of money when you get down to brass taxes. Worst of all, north Korea NEEDS subsistence farming and its so mountainous you need oil and diesel to blow these hilly as hell fields. When you strave them of oil, you strave them of food again in a way. Without subsistence farming they strave for the most part. And people think that drives people AWAY from a demagogic/personality cult type figure. It only endears them more. It, in a way, is proving the dictator right... That the US IS OUT TO GET US (and it is) and THE US IS STARVING YOU NOT ME (also true).
    b | Apr 15, 2017 4:02:52 AM | 152
    @all - done some housecleaning here for Day of the Sun - Juche 105 (.i.e.today)
    ---

    The parade in North Korea yesterday was quite a show. Lots of new TEL (Transport-Erector-Launch Vehicles) for big intercontinental missiles. We don't know if real missiles were inside but NoKo likes to show new stuff off and only field it a year or two later.

    Video of the 3 hour parade from NoKo TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okxM0AUsh_w The interesting mil stuff starts around 2h 14m with the leg swinging girls (intentionally?)

    Some remarks on the off-road capable TEL North Korea's 2017 Military Parade Was a Big Deal. Here Are the Major Takeaways

    Even though Pyongyang withheld from testing this weekend amid rumors of possible retaliation by the United States, North Korea is still looking to improve its missile know-how. Moreover, the long-dreaded ICBM flight test also might not be too far off now. Given the ever-growing number of TELs - both wheeled and tracked - North Korea may soon field nuclear forces amply large that a conventional U.S.-South Korea first strike may find it impossible to fully disarm Pyongyang of a nuclear retaliatory capability. That would give the North Korean regime what it's always sought with its nuclear and ballistic missile program: an absolute guarantee against coercive removal.
    (will put the above in a post update)
    ashley albanese | Apr 15, 2017 4:31:45 AM | 153
    smoothie X2 82
    Ah -- what lies beneath the waves? . I remember in the early 1970's comments in the Western press that China through budget constraints was putting its 'eggs' into the submarine basket - cost effectiveness - . The article stressed that Chinese strategists deliberately eschewed using non-Chinese designs and 'fast track' technology so as to develop submarine systems that would have unique , secret capabilities honed to Chinese conditions . Perhaps of all weaponary the Chinese sub-mariners may have some surprises in store . Let's hope we never have to find out --
    oneoffposter | Apr 15, 2017 4:38:31 AM | 154
    Dear b and community. I read all of your posts on this topic with interest.

    The focus seems to be on what DPRK (north), PRC and USA might do. I would like to suggest that closer scrutiny should be applied to what is actually going on in RK (South). I think that this tension is being ratcheted upwards primarily to influence the outcome of the presidential election in the South.

    For the past two presidential terms, the South has had Lee Myung-Bak and Park Geun-Hye both of whom took a hardline against North Korea and have killed the Sunshine Policy of their predecessors (Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-Hyun). As we all know, Park has recently been impeached. In normal circumstances it could be expected that an opposition figure like Moon Jae-In would be the favourite to win the election. This may not be in the interests of either the US, Japan or the powers-that-be in South Korea.

    The election is 9 May 2017, and the US president has just ensured that North Korea will be front and centre in the campaign.

    Just a thought. Thanks for everyone's contributions. This is a really good place to gain insight.

    George Smiley | Apr 15, 2017 5:17:39 AM | 155
    @154

    Extremely interesting take. Plus the anti THAAD movement is growing. Incidents between American soldiers in South Korean bases and the locals have been growing and that doesn't help. Remember that Osprey crash a couple months back?

    It all adds up.

    PavewayIV | Apr 15, 2017 5:24:32 AM | 156
    oneoffposter@154 - Thanks for that, oneoffposter. Korea would (supposedly) have been re-unified in the late 90's if it wasn't for US and Japanese efforts to prevent that from happening. I don't have specifics to back that up, but that 'feels' about right with regards to US actions over the years.

    South Korea is clearly benefiting economically (finally) from US support, but also pays a price by being another lapdog to the US and an eternal host for our military presence, willing or not. I suspect it's 'willing' because the US does everything possible to remind South Koreans of their peril by demonizing the North. South Korean press is worse than the US MSM.

    Likewise, the US does everything possible to antagonize North Korean leaders and rattle their cage, making them seem even more insane than they usually are. Resulting, of course, in the South Koreans eagerly approving an eternal US presence for protection and the North Korean leaders sliding further into a black hole of indignation and rage. We didn't create the psychopaths in North Korea, but we're sure good at keeping them in power. They're useful to us.

    I'll be watching the elections in the South with much interest now.

    jfl | Apr 15, 2017 6:15:41 AM | 157
    i wonder how much we really know about the koreans. it's hard for me to imagine that the korean people hate and fear each other. korea is not a settler country, like us five eyes, where the possibility of setting one group against another is so conveniently ready to hand to the oppressors. can either set of koreans hate and fear one of their governments more than the other? i think, as someone else pointed out above, the worst of the terror after the war was undertaken by korean compradors of the japanese, at american instigation. i remember reading about a program to 'allow' southerners to cross the border for family reunions. i think it was terrifically popular.

    who pointed out above that wwii has not yet ended on the korean peninsula. i always knew that the war was 'technically' not over in the sense of no peace treaty's having been signed ... the same obtains between russia and japan, doesn't it? that's an indictment right there of the us. in both cases, as the us still has japan on a short leash.

    treating peoples like objects, we'll be objects of hate ourselves, finally. already are in many quarters, of course. but in far fewer than we 'merit'. i don't see how that cannot change now that we have embraced 'the dark side', as cheney put it, and now the unabashed evil-clown/wicked-witch with trump/clinton in the 2016 coin toss.

    now with mercenaries, cruise missiles, drones, chemical weapons, and none of our own skin in the game ourselves any longer, we really do fit the description of creatures from another planet to our victims. the image of hg wells' aliens in tripods sticks in my mind. that must be just what americans - not even in - drones and cruise missiles must seem to our victims.

    atonement. at-one-ment a friend of mine used to say. with the human race. how long will that take for america and americans, once 'the pride of man' is broken in the dust again.

    V. Arnold | Apr 15, 2017 6:36:59 AM | 158
    Well, it's 19:02m in Korea, on the 15th and no nuke blast. President Loon (my apology to the bird) will have to pack up his toys and go home.
    I wonder how much that hubris cost the US?
    somebody | Apr 15, 2017 6:43:12 AM | 159
    Posted by: oneoffposter | Apr 15, 2017 4:38:31 AM | 154

    From German experience this would not work. Every South Korean knows that war with the North was/would be total desaster.

    It is also clear that North Korea will only open up if they feel safe. The break down of communist systems is over, there is no use to wait for that.

    German Social Democrats had their best election results when promoting a "change by approach" policy.

    The main issue will be South Korea's relationship with the US and China. Traditionally South Korea has profited more from the US than from exchange with China. I bet this has already changed. But the US managed to create a security conflict between China and South Korea that ensures increased Chinese military support for North Korea.

    jfl | Apr 15, 2017 7:14:42 AM | 160
    @159 sb, 'South Korea has profited more from the US than from exchange with China. I bet this has already changed. '

    you win your bet...

    The top export destinations of South Korea are
    China ($131B),
    the United States ($72.7B),
    Vietnam ($26.6B),
    Hong Kong ($26.3B) and
    Japan ($25.5B).

    The top import origins are
    China ($90.1B),
    Japan ($44.6B),
    the United States ($42.7B),
    Germany ($20.2B) and
    Saudi Arabia ($17.7B).

    oneoffposter | Apr 15, 2017 7:54:29 AM | 161
    @160 jfl

    Thanks for posting the figures. I don't know what the present day figures are like (your source seems to be posting figures for 2015).

    Since then, Park Geun-Hye gave the go ahead for THAAD to be installed overriding the objections of the local people. People more informed than I question (to put it mildly) the benefit this gives to South Korea. However, it has already had an impact on the South's economic relationship with China (and I guess, the political relationship too), showing just how important the question of who holds power in South Korea really is.

    Posters here often refer to the US/NATO attempt to split the Russia/China axis. It seems to me that this KOR/CHINA relationship also would not be welcomed.

    The ideas and slow-build towards reunification as evidenced by Kim Dae-Jung & Roh Moo-Hyun (e.g. Sunshine policy and the Truth commissions) were (in my opinion) logical steps to be taken towards first reducing the tensions on the peninsula leading perhaps to reunification talks (you never know). It is impossible to know now where they would have led, but they have been thoroughly discredited at this point and it is difficult to see how they could be restarted.

    somebody | Apr 15, 2017 7:57:38 AM | 162
    S.Koreans file petition with constitutional court against THAAD deployment
    SEOUL, April 6 (Xinhua) -- South Korean residents and civic group activists on Thursday filed a petition against the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system, which they depicted as unconstitutional.

    Residents from Seongju county and Gimcheon city in southeast South Korea and peace activists gathered outside the constitutional court in central Seoul, holding a press conference before submitting the constitutional appeal.

    According to the petition document, the residents and activists said the THAAD deployment violated many of the constitution clauses while failing to follow any appropriate procedures.

    Seoul and Washington abruptly announced a decision in July last year to install one THAAD battery in the county by the end of this year. Just three days before the announcement, Defense Minister Han Min-koo told lawmakers that he hadn't been informed of any notice about the THAAD installation.

    Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se visited a department store when the THAAD deployment decision was announced, indicating no advance discussions between ministers of defense and foreign affairs and the presidential office.

    The petitioners said the decision-making process on THAAD was rough and ready as there was no approval in the cabinet meeting, and that it was unilaterally determined by the national security council of the presidential office.

    "The THAAD decision did not follow any proper procedure. No effort has been made for dialogue with residents," said Ha Joo-hee, an attorney at Lawyers for a Democratic Society, an advocacy group composed of liberal lawyers.

    smuks | Apr 15, 2017 8:17:00 AM | 163
    So much provocation, vilification and preparation of the public...for nothing.

    The Neocons had really hoped that NK would react in some spectacularly 'menacing' way on its national holiday...but no, just a parade with some huge phal...er, missiles. Sad.

    It doesn't really matter *who* starts an aggression, but somebody at some point would surely lose his nerves, no? And NK would make for such a good villain, reminding SK and Japan of how dearly they need all that 'protection'.

    Let's see where the next act will play out. Ukraine once again, or Libya?

    (on that MOAB - looks like a strong message that 'we' are not about to give Afghanistan up, but rather willing to up the ante...)

    col from oz | Apr 15, 2017 8:26:51 AM | 164
    Beautifully written 157 jfl esp NOW
    smuks | Apr 15, 2017 8:32:42 AM | 165
    @ oneoffposter | Apr 15, 2017 7:54:29 AM | 161

    Yet bet NATO wouldn't be happy. The entire 'containment' policy towards Beijing rests on the surrounding states being hostile to/ scared of China. Already SE Asia has all but 'fallen' (from a western viewpoint), what remains is Japan and SK. Detente? God forbid!

    The THAAD deployment places SK (even more) firmly in the cross-hairs of China's missiles. So now, at least they have some reason to fear it and scramble for 'protection'...mission accomplished!

    (President Park didn't approve of this...which is why she was removed.)

    Is there a way out of this? Not really. The US running out of money, maybe.

    Curtis | Apr 15, 2017 8:59:05 AM | 166
    b
    I read the nj.gov link and it does not tend to match your narrative in that paragraph although I agree that official narratives tend to twist the truth. I cannot see the Soviet motives towards Korea as anymore altruistic than Japan's especially in that time period. The Soviets are no more saints in the WWII period than the US.

    I do agree that US maneuvers close to the borders of "opponents" whether Russia or NK are antagonistic and unnecessary. And sometimes stupid action takes place after them like we saw in Georgia 2008. Putin shook a finger at Bush and rightly so. If Mr. "Art of the Deal" really were a deal maker he would meet at Panmunjon with the leaders of NK, SK, Russia, and China and sign an final official end to the Korean war and set the framework for demilitarization of the peninsula and trade/other deals.

    Curtis | Apr 15, 2017 9:01:20 AM | 167
    somebody jfl
    Excellent points. What South Korea wants should be paramount to the issue of what the US should do. Seoul is very vulnerable.
    Anon1 | Apr 15, 2017 9:06:26 AM | 168
    smuks

    For nothing? The american ship have pretty much just arrived, within next 4 weeks we probably will see something happen by the US. He simply cant back now.

    Gravatomic | Apr 15, 2017 9:18:57 AM | 169
    @Hoarsewhisperer

    According to US MSM the Chinese are totally on board and only have moved troops to bolster the border and help the US. And Russia and China really aren't conducting military exercises together.

    This constant mistranslated rhetoric and literally putting of words into foreign leaders mouths is of course one aspect of the western propaganda arm. Even when the headline or text of the article is updated, corrected or removed the meat of it remains in social media like Facebook.

    I have friends who use Facebook, I don't, who constantly say the oddest, incorrect things to me that could only have been fomented there.

    Gravatomic | Apr 15, 2017 9:23:57 AM | 170
    @ oneoffposter

    Yes, when the arm twisting doesn't suffice they remove you, that's part of what the NSA and CIA do. Smear, blackmail and gather corruption evidence, whether real, perceived or planted to keep US puppets in line.

    jfl | Apr 15, 2017 10:29:41 AM | 171
    @161 oop,

    yes, somebody's link had the china-south korea trade at 300 billion, whereas the numbers in the link i found were at ~220 billion. but the the china-south korea trade at 220 billion was just about twice the us-south korea trade in that period. i imagine it ratio was higher, if anything, up until thaad.

    @162, sb,

    maybe the trade value lost due to the thaad deal will make everyone 'notice' its illegality ... now that they're starting to bleed. money speaks louder than the law, in most countries these days.

    @167 curtis

    they'd set the peninsula on fire if they thought it would bring them closer to world domination. the us ruling class cares not a whit for humans of any 'brand', americans included. certainly not for koreans, north or south.

    @170 gravatomic

    i have no proof but that's exactly the thought that ran through my head when park went down : she wasn't 'on board' the thaad train. i suppose it was the memory of the pictures with xi ... and of the vile cia's past actions, all over the world.

    Monolycus | Apr 15, 2017 10:32:57 AM | 172
    @b

    I saw your response earlier about how no writer can represent both sides equally, and I agree. I still lurk here and find no fault with your insights 99% of the time. You know perfectly well that in most situations, I am a staunch non-interventionist. I simply disagree (strongly) on this particular issue. Anyway, I apologize for sounding so hostile--especially at you. This situation just has my nerves pretty frayed right now.

    I don't want to be dragged into a giant tu quoque match, so I won't respond to much more here, except to address George Smiley @155, above. I'm not sure where you read that the anti-THAAD movement is "growing," but that certainly doesn't seem to be the case from here on the ground. I am about 20 minutes from Seongju, and have spoken to many of the anti-THAAD people about their concerns. There's very, very little going on there politically; Seongju is a very poor area which is economically dependent on a particular melon crop they are famous for. Most of the anti-THAAD demonstrators were local farmers who had gotten the idea that the EM radiation coming from the THAAD radar would hurt their crops. In the wake of China's economic retaliation against THAAD, however, a good many of the locals have reversed their opinion and now support it. When the deployment was first announced, there was a lot of buzz about it (nobody wanted it here in their backyard,) but now when the subject is brought up at all (increasingly rarely,) it's usually digging in their heels about how China deserves it for kicking out their K-pop stars and shutting down the Lotteria fast food restaurants unfairly. Public opinion might change again if Moon Jae-in declares a firm position about it instead of waffling back and forth, but at this moment it's only a small but vocal minority that are opposed to it.

    dh | Apr 15, 2017 10:33:07 AM | 173
    @158 The US armada will be off to Pattaya soon for some well deserved R&R.

    The BBC coverage is worth a watch BTW for those who like to read between the lines. Lots of spin of course but the commentator does admit at one point that NK needs its nukes to avoid going the way of Iraq and Libya.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39607343

    jfl | Apr 15, 2017 10:47:18 AM | 174
    @168 anon

    was there ever an 'official' announcement of a nuclear test planned for saturday? or was it just an 'expectation' ... if the latter, maybe the cia fostered it, knowing it wasn't going to happen, so they could thwack tee-rump's rump and have him take a 'victory lap' when it didn't? if they're serious about nukes ... and they should be as long as the us has them in its sights ... the north koreans have got to test more at some point.

    it's really hard for me to imagine any good excuse for a us battle group to be between china and korea in the yellow sea without an invitation. what would the us position be if a chinese - not to mention a russian - battle group showed up in the caribbean, or hudson's bay, concerned about the rogue american state and it's mad leader ?

    denk | Apr 15, 2017 11:03:02 AM | 175
    jfl 137


    here's the oft derided 'unelected' ccp partial plan for 2017,
    'to lift another 10-20m people outta poverty and step up the anti corruption battle'.
    thats in addition to the 70m already bailed out , cited by UN as a text book case of social development.

    whats the vaunted 'elected' leaders of murkka plan for 2017,
    to do 'syria, nk, iran, china, russia.... '?
    350 ships for the 'depleted' USN ?
    'star war' redux ?
    by the guy who got 'elected' on his 'anti deep state' and 'populist' platform --


    denk | Apr 15, 2017 11:09:48 AM | 176

    lots of people say mdm park is a murkkan stooge and she's been removed by people power.

    well like i say many times before, park is a very reluctant 'stooge',
    first off she is a known sinophile who's well versed in chinese culture,
    she had been dragging her feet over the thaad installation for years and china is sk's largest market.
    hence antagonising china must be the last thing on her mind.

    anyone of the above is enough reason for a regime change.
    the last straw was most likely when she defied washington's dictat and join putin in china's ww2 memorial ceremony in 2015.
    mind you, she's the only leader from the murkkan camp with 'cojones'to attend. [1]
    i guess her fate was sealed from that moment.

    so is her ouster yet another color rev masqueraded as 'people power',like the 'arab spring' etc ?

    some observers think so.

    we shall see.

    [1]
    Xi extended a particularly warm welcome to Park, who attended the ceremony over the objections of Japan and the U.S.
    http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/Ties-between-Park-Xi-shape-East-Asia-diplomacy

    Anon1 | Apr 15, 2017 11:27:54 AM | 177
    jfl / 174

    Re: US provocations

    Yes you are of course right, as usual when US does it themselves, it is apparently the fault of the other party (North Korea) according to the useless MSM in the west.

    There are some rumours that NK will test its nuclear tech. again soon and then US will strike.
    China is getting nervous somehow, apparently dont understand what they effectively have giving a green light to:

    China : "We call on all parties to refrain from provoking and threatening each other, whether in words or actions, and not let the situation get to an irreversible and unmanageable stage."
    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/15/nkor-a15.html

    The chinese cant even condemn the foreign aggressor anymore.

    juliania | Apr 15, 2017 12:13:45 PM | 178
    Thank you very much for this important and critical posting, b. I wish for you and all who come here a joyful and rich Springtime holy season to assuage our fears and give us hope for the future.

    Peace to all.

    Rick | Apr 15, 2017 2:37:35 PM | 179
    Sure would be nice to find the original of the comments attributed to MacArthur. I've looked at the references in "Napalm: an American biography" by Robert M. Neer but can't find any original sources online. The footnote for this passage is jumbled, citing seven sources for this passage.

    I did find that at the time MacArthur was advocating far more attacks in Korea, not less, which makes such comments suspect. Why would someone who was losing their job, and likely their career, due to their stance advocating more military action make such comments?

    mauisurfer | Apr 15, 2017 3:14:19 PM | 180

    It's Time for America to Cut South Korea Loose

    From Foreign Policy Magazine (behind the paywall)

    The first step to solving the North Korean problem is removing U.S. troops from the middle of it.

    By Doug Bandow
    April 13, 2017

    It's Time for America to Cut South Korea Loose

    Asia contains the world's two most populous nations, the country with the largest Muslim population, the two largest economies after America, and the next superpower and peer competitor to the United States. But when U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited the continent recently, small, impoverished North Korea nearly monopolized his attention.

    Why is the United States, which dominates the globe militarily, politically, and economically, fixated on this poor, isolated, and distant nation? Because America has gotten entangled where it does not belong.

    Washington has been deeply involved in the Korean Peninsula since the end of World War II. Subsequently, the Cold War gave a zero-sum quality to international relations, with Washington's loss being the Soviet Union's gain. Having invested some 37,000 lives to save South Korea during the Korean War, America's credibility was also at stake. And with the "loss" of China to communism fresh on Americans' minds, nobody was willing to see another Asian nation go red.

    But that world disappeared long ago.

    The Korean Peninsula has lost its geopolitical significance, South Korea its helplessness, and America's Korea commitment its purpose.

    The Korean Peninsula has lost its geopolitical significance, South Korea its helplessness, and America's Korea commitment its purpose. While there is much to criticize in the approach of Donald Trump's administration to the rest of the world, the president correctly sees the need for a foreign policy that more effectively protects America's interests. A good place to start shifting course is the region home to the world's newest and least responsible nuclear power.

    The Koreas are no longer a proxy battleground between superpowers. There was a time when U.S. withdrawal from a confrontation with a Soviet ally in Asia would have, analysts believed, signaled weakness a continent away in Europe. But the Soviets are long gone and the cause for American commitment with them. An inter-Korean war would be tragic and the body count enormous, but absent American involvement the fighting would largely be confined to the peninsula. The continued presence of U.S. forces, by contrast, virtually guarantees the spread of conflict.

    South Korea's defense no longer requires Washington's presence. The South's economy began racing past its northern antagonist during the 1960s. Democracy arrived in the late 1980s. By the 1990s, when mass starvation stalked Pyongyang as Seoul's economy boomed, the gap between the two Koreas was already huge and growing. The South's military potential is correspondingly great though as yet unrealized - in part because dependence on the U.S. presence has affected strategic choices.

    Yet America's military presence has remained sacrosanct. Jimmy Carter's plan to bring home U.S. troops was opposed even by his own appointees. Ronald Reagan pushed a more muscular confrontation with the Soviet Union and other communist states. With the end of the Cold War, his successors expanded alliance commitments, particularly in Europe, but also in Asia. Today, 28,500 troops remain in South Korea, backed up by U.S. forces in Okinawa and other Asian-Pacific bases, and highlighted by periodic decisions to overfly the North with bombers or send aircraft carriers to nearby waters whenever Washington wants to demonstrate "resolve" to Pyongyang.

    So why is America still there?

    One argument, advanced by analyst Robert E. McCoy, is moral, "since it was American ignorance that facilitated the division of the Korean Peninsula in the concluding days of World War II." Some Koreans malign America for this division. But this is the wisdom of hindsight; in the chaotic aftermath of global conflict, no U.S. official wanted to push the Soviets over a faraway peninsula. The alternative was pure inaction, which would have resulted in South Koreans joining their northern neighbors in the Kim dynasty's new Dark Age. Perhaps inadvertently, Washington did a very good deed. For that it deserves praise, not criticism and claims that it must forever police the peninsula.

    More practical is the contention of analysts such as the Heritage Foundation's Bruce Klingner that U.S. backing is "necessary to defend" the South. Yet, in contrast to 1950, there is no reason the South cannot protect itself - if properly motivated to do so by the departure of U.S. conventional forces. With a bigger economy, larger population, and significant technological edge, as well as greater international support, Seoul could construct armed forces capable of deterring and defeating the North. Doing so would be expensive and take serious effort, but so what? The South Korean government's most important duty is to protect its people.

    Taking on that responsibility also would force Seoul to treat Pyongyang more consistently. The "Sunshine Policy" begun under former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung resulted in the transfer of some $10 billion in cash and assistance to the North, even as the latter was developing missiles and nuclear weapons. That approach was viable only because Washington provided a military backstop (and if the new South Korean president, to be elected in May, revives the Sunshine Policy, as some have suggested, there's no telling if the Trump administration would be so forgiving). The South needs to bear both the costs and benefits of whatever approach it takes.

    But even if South Korea couldn't defend itself, the argument would still fall short.

    American soldiers shouldn't be treated as defenders of the earth, deployed here, there, and everywhere.

    American soldiers shouldn't be treated as defenders of the earth, deployed here, there, and everywhere. The United States should go to war only when its most important interests are at stake.

    South Korea's prosperity is not one of those vital interests, at least in security terms. A renewed conflict confined to the two Koreas would be horrific, but the consequences for the United States would be primarily humanitarian and economic, not security. The cost would be high but fall primarily on the region. In contrast, direct U.S. involvement in another Korean War would be much more expensive than the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts, which have cost America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.

    Of course, the North's possession of what we assume to be a growing and at some point deliverable nuclear arsenal skews the peninsula's balance of power. However, this doesn't create a need for a conventional American military presence on the peninsula. Washington could still guarantee massive retaliation against any North Korean use of nuclear weapons, providing a deterrent against the North's threats.

    But it is worth contemplating whether it would be better to allow South Korea to construct its own deterrent. In the late 1970s, South Korean President Park Chung-hee worried about Washington's reliability and began work on a Korean bomb - only to stop under U.S. pressure. Since then, support for reviving such work has periodically surfaced in South Korea. Encouraging such efforts might actually be in the best interests of the United States, even if America has to maintain its nuclear umbrella while the Korean bomb is developed.

    Yes, encouraging nuclear proliferation is a risky path. But the United States would gain from staying out of Northeast Asia's nuclear quarrels. China, fearful that Japan would join the nuclear parade, might take tougher action against Pyongyang in an attempt to forestall Seoul's efforts. The South could feel confident in its own defense, rather than remaining reliant upon U.S. willingness to act.

    A potpourri of broader claims is also made for maintaining U.S. forces. America's presence supposedly constrains China, promotes regional stability, and deters an arms race. Let's consider those claims in order. What sort of constraint is allegedly being posed to China? If the idea is to coerce it into assuming responsibility for North Korea in the event of its collapse, Beijing has shown no interest in attempting to swallow a Korean population likely to prove indigestible. And if the calculation is rather that Washington can persuade South Korea to pressure China on non-Korean matters, it's easy to predict the unfriendly response Seoul's Blue House would give if invited by the White House to join it in warring against China to, say, save an independent Taiwan, counter Chinese moves in the South China Sea - or, horror of horrors, defend Japan. Indeed, absent U.S. protection, South Korea and Japan might feel greater pressure to finally settle historical disputes so often misused by their nationalist politicians.

    As for the idea that the U.S. presence deters a regional arms race, building weapons so others don't have to is not the sort of charity America should engage in. Alliances can deter. But, as dramatically demonstrated by World War I, they also can act as transmission belts of war. Moreover, small nations often act irresponsibly - such as underinvesting in defense - when protected by big powers.

    The U.S. security presence in South Korea is an expensive and dangerous commitment that America can no longer afford. Nor has it ever brought the United States much popularity in the country, where U.S. soldiers are a constant irritant to nationalists. The South is no longer a poor nation in need of protection from the specter of global communism but one more than capable of standing on its own two feet.

    George Smiley | Apr 15, 2017 4:50:38 PM | 181
    @172 That makes me sad to hear. I appreciate a perspective that comes from first hand experience. Its hard to get a proper outloom I feel outside of speaking with Koreans or even knowing the language.

    Perhaps reading articles published by journalists opposed to THAAD has distorted my handle of the situation. Sad the movement doesn't have more traction.

    I do know more than a few Koreans firsthand pissed off at US army personnel behaviour though. Perhaps that can be channelled into meaningful change. They tell me that the impunity from judicial retribution plays a big role in the anger. Certain bases in Japan have had similar problems (I get the sense it cause more anger there though unfortunately). Perhaps this is just the views of a few people I talk to in SK though.

    Any thoughts? I appreciate your response greatly.

    Kalen | Apr 15, 2017 5:01:37 PM | 182
    What is real Russian position on this WWIII POTENTIAL STANDOFF. NK only one condemned attack on Syria while if what I hear is true, they want NK disarmed even in face of open US aggression. Also China if awfully quiet while repeating thirty year old equitable solution rejected by US that never looked for any solutions but domination. What's going on?
    karlof1 | Apr 15, 2017 5:19:16 PM | 183
    Rick @179--

    I wanted to see the footnotes for that section, too, but I don't have a paper copy of the book. However, based upon other readings of same testimony, I believe they were made during Congressional testimony.

    Perhaps the most important element to learn from the aggression waged against the peoples of Korea, Indochina, and Iraq by the Outlaw US Empire is their Genocidal nature, and the additional fact that in their post-war environment the killing and maiming continues unabated: All casualty categories combined add up to well over 10 million and rising, far outperforming Hitler's genocide of jews, gypsies and others.

    Outraged | Apr 15, 2017 5:21:08 PM | 184
    @ b 150

    Apologies. Understood. Will comply.

    Re b @ 152 & post update

    Heres an 8min38Sec Youtube of the military personnel & 'hardware' portion only:

    North Korea Holds Massive Military Parade 'Day of the Sun Parade' in Pyongyang ( Show Case Missile )
    dh | Apr 15, 2017 5:22:19 PM | 185
    @182 Don't know about Russia but I have some thoughts re. China. Xi made it clear to Donald that China would support Kim if NK is attacked i.e WW3.

    At the same time Xi told Kim not to provoke Donald i.e. no nuclear test. Let them think they've won.

    Outraged | Apr 15, 2017 5:42:46 PM | 186
    @ Posted by: dh | Apr 15, 2017 5:22:19 PM | 185

    Fully concur. And the Chinese are 'civilized' re public discourse, just because the are not openly bellicose and full of aggressive rhetoric, does not mean they are push over pussies, exactly the opposite behind the agreeable, diplomatic, ' face '. Talk softly, yet have a big stick ready, just in case.

    jfl | Apr 15, 2017 6:26:20 PM | 187
    @180 mauisurfer

    the foreign policy article extends tee-tump's 'pay for a native implementation of us policy' a la nato to south korea ... and wouldn't it be a good idea if south korea had nukes, too. their summary of us 'involvement' in korea post-wwii is shameful ...

    The alternative was pure inaction, which would have resulted in South Koreans joining their northern neighbors in the Kim dynasty's new Dark Age. Perhaps inadvertently, Washington did a very good deed. For that it deserves praise, not criticism ...
    Depraved foreign policy recommendations from the us foreign policy establishment might as well stay in their echo chamber, behind their paywall, as far as i'm concerned. news of the us foreign policy establishment's depravity is dog bites man.
    smuks | Apr 15, 2017 7:05:05 PM | 188
    @ Anon1 168

    Why should that happen, if no side is willing to fire the first shot? There's been 'increased tensions' many times before, missile and nuclear tests, naval drills...so far it's all just scaremongering to me, and I don't quite see why it should be heating up *now*.

    Peter AU | Apr 15, 2017 7:11:02 PM | 189
    Looks like NK may have done a missile test. Failed apparently.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-missile-idUSKBN17H0NL
    https://sputniknews.com/asia/201704161052679707-north-korea-fails-misile-launch/

    jfl | Apr 15, 2017 8:10:03 PM | 190
    there's a brief summary at the nation of the most germane us-north korean history by Burce Cumings, on 23 March This Is What's Really Behind North Korea's Nuclear Provocations .
    Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 16, 2017 1:21:37 AM | 191
    Other authors sympathetic to the plight of Korea are...
    Gavan NcCormack
    Gregory Elich
    Desaix Anderson, who delivered an address on the US monstrous and systematic betrayal of NK to the Nautilus Institute called Crisis In North Korea. Anderson was the CEO of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO).
    I can no longer find the article on the www but one of the sleuths here may be able to track it down.
    Mr Reynard | Apr 16, 2017 2:44:06 AM | 192
    Actually, all the problems started with the demands that Kim Jong Un made to USA --
    First, he has demanded that USA give up all of its nuclear weapons, that USA stop all nuclear research, that there should be a "regime change" in Washington, plus he had the chutzpah to send assassins to USA to kill the POTUS !! So I'm not surprised at the reaction of D Trump to this provocation ??
    b | Apr 16, 2017 10:11:11 AM | 194
    Had forgotten this when I wrote the post above:

    Wikileaks, Podesta email about the Hillary Clinton speech for Goldman Sachs "We don't want a unified Korean Peninsula" because China, not the U.S., would naturally dominate it. The U.S. will do everything it can to prevent reunification.

    JMiller | Apr 16, 2017 10:26:08 AM | 195
    The NK offer says that they "MAY suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises"

    It does not say that they WILL suspend its nuclear and missile activities.

    Outraged | Apr 16, 2017 10:32:20 AM | 196
    @ JMiller

    Would that be Judith Miller, perhaps, or possibly just a hero/role model ? ;) One perfectly reasonable phrase comes to mind, ' Subsequent to good faith negotiations & actual, guarantees '.

    Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 16, 2017 12:28:22 PM | 197
    Link to Desaix Anderson's Nautilus Institute address Crisis In North Korea.
    http://oldsite.nautilus.org/fora/security/0325A_Anderson.html
    JMiller | Apr 16, 2017 2:39:37 PM | 198
    The NK offer says that they "MAY suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises".

    It does not say that they WILL suspend its nuclear and missile activities, just that they may. It is not surprising that the U.S. turned down the offer since it did not guarantee that NK would do anything.

    Anon1 | Apr 16, 2017 3:08:42 PM | 199
    Jimiller

    Yeah how dare NK offer peaceful ways to solve problems in this world. Yeah no wonder US not accepted it, go figure.

    [Apr 17, 2017] The pot calling the kettle black

    Notable quotes:
    "... As soon as I turned on a television here I wondered if I had arrived through an alt-right wormhole. ..."
    "... On the popular Russian television program "Vesti Nedeli," the host, Dmitry Kiselyov, questioned how Syria could have been responsible for the attack. After all, he said, the Assad government had destroyed all of its chemical weapons. It was the terrorists who possessed them, said Mr. Kiselyov, who also heads Russia's main state-run international media arm. ..."
    "... One of Mr. Kiselyov's correspondents on the scene mocked "Western propagandists" for believing the Trump line, saying munitions at the air base had "as much to do with chemical weapons as the test tube in the hands of Colin Powell had to do with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." ..."
    "... RT, the Russian-financed English-language news service, initially translated Mr. Putin as calling it a "false flag. ..."
    "... As the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia put it, "Apparently it was for good reason Donald Trump called unverified information in the mass media one of the main problems in the U.S." ..."
    "... The author asserts that those who questioned the Assad-did-it narrative were only on the alt-right "fringe". But this is absurd, as anyone who looks at a non-alt right site like https://consortiumnews.com/ can easily confirm. And of course a highly respected MIT scientist, Theodore Postol, has published not one but two notes effectively showing that the White House "Intelligence Report" about the incident was rubbish ("obviously false, misleading and amateurish") - but you are unlikely to read about this in the NYT. ..."
    "... The US media should have learned something about the Iraq war, but it still hasn't. It blindly supports every stupid foreign policy decision wrapped in humanitarian clothes while being unwilling to honestly tell the American people that its a proxy war where all the actors in it are evil. That no one knows for sure what happened because it wasn't investigated. The media in Russia may be a tool of the Kremlin but the US media is the tool of the war profiteers. There is no way to get around that no matter how Rutenberg tries to frame it around what he thinks is the correct opinion. ..."
    "... Israel wants the Syrian war to go on forever. The Saudi and Iranian proxies aren't saints. There are no good guys yet removing Assad is the preferred outcome for the US media. ..."
    "... The good thing about the US corporate media is that it is being put behind paywalls. I just use software to block these sites so I don't even bother wasting my time by clicking and then having to click back. I get "the line" from sources not behind a paywall. Only an idiot would pay to be lied to on behalf of groups that do not have the US interest at heart. ..."
    Apr 16, 2017 | www.nytimes.com

    From: A Lesson in Moscow About Trump-Style 'Alternative Truth' - The New York Times by Jim Rutenberg >

    Mr. Trump had just ordered a Tomahawk strike against Syria's Shayrat air base, from which, the United States said, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria had launched the chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 and sickened hundreds.

    As soon as I turned on a television here I wondered if I had arrived through an alt-right wormhole.

    Back in the States, the prevailing notion in the news was that Mr. Assad had indeed been responsible for the chemical strike. There was some "reportage" from sources like the conspiracy theorist and radio host Alex Jones - best known for suggesting that the Sandy Hook school massacre was staged - that the chemical attack was a "false flag" operation by terrorist rebel groups to goad the United States into attacking Mr. Assad. But that was a view from the fringe.

    Here in Russia, it was the dominant theme throughout the overwhelmingly state-controlled mainstream media.

    On the popular Russian television program "Vesti Nedeli," the host, Dmitry Kiselyov, questioned how Syria could have been responsible for the attack. After all, he said, the Assad government had destroyed all of its chemical weapons. It was the terrorists who possessed them, said Mr. Kiselyov, who also heads Russia's main state-run international media arm.

    One of Mr. Kiselyov's correspondents on the scene mocked "Western propagandists" for believing the Trump line, saying munitions at the air base had "as much to do with chemical weapons as the test tube in the hands of Colin Powell had to do with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

    That teed up Mr. Putin to suggest in nationally televised comments a couple of days later that perhaps the attack was an intentional "provocation" by the rebels to goad the United States into attacking Mr. Assad. RT, the Russian-financed English-language news service, initially translated Mr. Putin as calling it a "false flag." The full Alex Jones was complete.

    When Trump administration officials tried to counter Russia's "false narratives" by releasing to reporters a declassified report detailing Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles - and suggesting to The Associated Press without proof that Russia knew of Mr. Assad's plans to use chemical weapons in advance - the Russians had a ready answer borrowed from Mr. Trump himself.

    As the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia put it, "Apparently it was for good reason Donald Trump called unverified information in the mass media one of the main problems in the U.S."

    It was the best evidence I've seen of the folly of Mr. Trump's anti-press approach. You can't spend more than a year attacking the credibility of the "dishonest media" and then expect to use its journalism as support for your position during an international crisis - at least not with any success.

    While Mr. Trump and his supporters may think that undermining the news media serves their larger interests, in this great information war it serves Mr. Putin's interests more. It means playing on his turf, where he excels.

    Integral to Mr. Putin's governing style has been a pliant press that makes his government the main arbiter of truth.

    While talking to the beaten but unbowed members of the real journalism community here, I heard eerie hints of Trumpian proclamations in their war stories.

    Take Mr. Trump's implicit threat to the owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, during the election campaign. In case you've forgotten, while calling The Post's coverage of him "horrible and false," Mr. Trump warned that if he won the presidency Mr. Bezos's other business, Amazon, would have "such problems." (The Post was undaunted, and the issue hasn't come up again.)

    ... ... ...

    Alexandra Odynova contributed research.

    for-the-record , April 17, 2017 at 6:16 pm GMT \n
    300 Words Is this parody or for real? Everything he cites the Russian press as saying seems to me far more believable than the "alternative" version purveyed by the NYT and other such "respectable" sources.

    To put it mildly, anyone with half a brain would be willing to accept that it was far more likely that the alleged chemical attack was the work of the not-so-moderate rebels, rather than the Syrian Government which had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, from such an attack (assuming that it still had chemical weapons, which even the US previously admitted was no longer the case). That those fighting Assad do indeed possess stocks of chemical weapons is no secret. Regarding Isis, for example, you can learn from Newsweek today (April 17) via Yahoo News:

    ISIS Militants Launch Multiple Chemical Weapons Attacks On Iraqi Troops

    The author tells us that

    Back in the States, the prevailing notion in the news was that Mr. Assad had indeed been responsible for the chemical strike.

    Of course this was and is the prevailing view, a convincing testimony to the effect of the "fake news" that is reported as "fact" by the mainstream media.

    The author asserts that those who questioned the Assad-did-it narrative were only on the alt-right "fringe". But this is absurd, as anyone who looks at a non-alt right site like https://consortiumnews.com/ can easily confirm. And of course a highly respected MIT scientist, Theodore Postol, has published not one but two notes effectively showing that the White House "Intelligence Report" about the incident was rubbish ("obviously false, misleading and amateurish") - but you are unlikely to read about this in the NYT.

    I live outside the US and also have the time and energy to investigate alternative sources. What amazes and pains me is that many friends of mine (US, UK) have swallowed hook, line and sinker the official story, not only about this incident but the general story about what is going on in Syria (and elsewhere, notably vis-ŕ-vis Russia).

    Altai , April 17, 2017 at 8:29 pm GMT \n
    400 Words @for-the-record Is this parody or for real? Everything he cites the Russian press as saying seems to me far more believable than the "alternative" version purveyed by the NYT and other such "respectable" sources.

    To put it mildly, anyone with half a brain would be willing to accept that it was far more likely that the alleged chemical attack was the work of the not-so-moderate rebels, rather than the Syrian Government which had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, from such an attack (assuming that it still had chemical weapons, which even the US previously admitted was no longer the case). That those fighting Assad do indeed possess stocks of chemical weapons is no secret. Regarding Isis, for example, you can learn from Newsweek today (April 17) via Yahoo News:


    ISIS Militants Launch Multiple Chemical Weapons Attacks On Iraqi Troops
    The author tells us that

    Back in the States, the prevailing notion in the news was that Mr. Assad had indeed been responsible for the chemical strike.
    Of course this was and is the prevailing view, a convincing testimony to the effect of the "fake news" that is reported as "fact" by the mainstream media.

    The author asserts that those who questioned the Assad-did-it narrative were only on the alt-right "fringe". But this is absurd, as anyone who looks at a non-alt right site like https://consortiumnews.com/ can easily confirm. And of course a highly respected MIT scientist, Theodore Postol, has published not one but two notes effectively showing that the White House "Intelligence Report" about the incident was rubbish ("obviously false, misleading and amateurish") -- but you are unlikely to read about this in the NYT.

    I live outside the US and also have the time and energy to investigate alternative sources. What amazes and pains me is that many friends of mine (US, UK) have swallowed hook, line and sinker the official story, not only about this incident but the general story about what is going on in Syria (and elsewhere, notably vis-ŕ-vis Russia).

    many friends of mine (US, UK) have swallowed hook, line and sinker the official story, not only about this incident but the general story about what is going on in Syria (and elsewhere, notably vis-ŕ-vis Russia).

    It's unreal to me after everything that has happened the last 15 years that anyone who lived through it could not have learned a thing. It seems to be getting more blatant too. Now the BBC is pushing neocon talking points harder than most US outlets.

    Don't ever trust a western news outlet whenever it goes on a months long crusade to 'expose' a certain regime that is alleged to be doing exactly what our 'allies' do and get no coverage about. I knew little about what was going on in Syria years ago but when the BBC started telling me how horrible 'barrel bombs' were over and over, night after night, making sure to mention Assad in every sentence, my bullshit detector sprang up and I looked at the alt media I trusted. (Which I trusted as taking the narrative from them I was able to better predict and understand the world and this simply can't be said for mainstream media)

    I know a guy who thinks of himself as worldly but reads WaPo and Der Speigel daily. He doesn't understand how I can't believe how good Obama handled the US economy and how low US unemployment is. Any attempt to explain that US unemployment numbers post-1994 are not what he thinks it is is met with a dismissive as though I am full of bullshit.

    I think it might also be generational. I grew up in my teens with Iraq and the explosion of alt middle east commentators and journalists who posted to the net what they'd never get cleared in the MSM. You know exactly the deal with everybody, the anti-war left, the 'alt-right', the counter jihadis and the important motivations and differences between them that colour their commentary on different events, but it still didn't change the fact that what they were posting was news and information that was being deliberately obscured. But for a lot of people in their 40s and older everything non-MSM looks like InfoWars and is scary.

    It must be scary to be plugged into the MSM today. A kind of learned helplessness like this.

    WorkingClass , April 17, 2017 at 9:28 pm GMT \n
    I know it's bullshit. I read it in the New York Times.

    The NYT is an enemy of the human race.

    Assad didn't do it. Just like he didn't do it last time. Just like he will not have done it next time.

    El Dato , April 17, 2017 at 10:19 pm GMT \n
    300 Words @Altai

    many friends of mine (US, UK) have swallowed hook, line and sinker the official story, not only about this incident but the general story about what is going on in Syria (and elsewhere, notably vis-ŕ-vis Russia).
    It's unreal to me after everything that has happened the last 15 years that anyone who lived through it could not have learned a thing. It seems to be getting more blatant too. Now the BBC is pushing neocon talking points harder than most US outlets.

    Don't ever trust a western news outlet whenever it goes on a months long crusade to 'expose' a certain regime that is alleged to be doing exactly what our 'allies' do and get no coverage about. I knew little about what was going on in Syria years ago but when the BBC started telling me how horrible 'barrel bombs' were over and over, night after night, making sure to mention Assad in every sentence, my bullshit detector sprang up and I looked at the alt media I trusted. (Which I trusted as taking the narrative from them I was able to better predict and understand the world and this simply can't be said for mainstream media)

    I know a guy who thinks of himself as worldly but reads WaPo and Der Speigel daily. He doesn't understand how I can't believe how good Obama handled the US economy and how low US unemployment is. Any attempt to explain that US unemployment numbers post-1994 are not what he thinks it is is met with a dismissive as though I am full of bullshit.

    I think it might also be generational. I grew up in my teens with Iraq and the explosion of alt middle east commentators and journalists who posted to the net what they'd never get cleared in the MSM. You know exactly the deal with everybody, the anti-war left, the 'alt-right', the counter jihadis and the important motivations and differences between them that colour their commentary on different events, but it still didn't change the fact that what they were posting was news and information that was being deliberately obscured. But for a lot of people in their 40s and older everything non-MSM looks like InfoWars and is scary.

    It must be scary to be plugged into the MSM today. A kind of learned helplessness like this.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok Nice short film. However, I cannot agree that people are in some kind of "oh dear" mindset. On the contrary, they are easily instrumented into supporting any random "something must be (militarily) done" call for action. Maybe a direct consequence of post-Gulf War 1 triumphalism, when the US was great again and apparently had left behind of trauma of Vietnam for good (that was an actual talking point, believe it or not!). With the Soviet Union no more, poised to rework the world in its own image, the US was!

    It all went south of course. We got the Yougoslavia catastrophe. Taking sides along with Europeans acting according to reflexes harking back to 1914 and dropping bombs didn't go all that well. When bombing started, Serbia was as MSM-tarred as Syria is today. We got 10 years of suppressing Mr. Hussein. Something was happening in Russia and maybe Chechnya and Georgia but no-one was all too certain what or why. We got the surprise Hutu-on-Tutsi massacre after which liberventionists were clamoring that "something should have been done". There was some "cruise missile diplomacy" (i.e. Clinton bombs Sudan). There were noises from Afghanistan with military commanders in particular Ahmad Shah Massoud fighting someone called "Taliban" but nobody cared about that. There was the marginally interesting Israel-Palestinian conflict with neverending talks and the Israelis starting to behave like jerks after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. We got first "hard" terrorism hits: A bombing in the WTC basement, a sarin gas attack in Tokyo, a diplomatic mission in Africa and of course the OKC bombing. Well, I guess those years of practically pre-Internet chaos were when "liberventionism" gelled.

    After the 9/11-Anthrax events it was of course full neocon time and everyone was on the same track for foreign land adventurism. By hook or by crook. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Johnny F. Ive , April 17, 2017 at 11:13 pm GMT \n
    The US media should have learned something about the Iraq war, but it still hasn't. It blindly supports every stupid foreign policy decision wrapped in humanitarian clothes while being unwilling to honestly tell the American people that its a proxy war where all the actors in it are evil. That no one knows for sure what happened because it wasn't investigated. The media in Russia may be a tool of the Kremlin but the US media is the tool of the war profiteers. There is no way to get around that no matter how Rutenberg tries to frame it around what he thinks is the correct opinion.

    Also VIPS had American intelligence contacts in the Middle East who said the Syrians hit something that had chemicals in it. Everyone has their anonymous intelligence sources. Assad isn't going anywhere there could have been a proper investigation. The US media salivated at the bombing of Syria. The US media is the American Empire's id. It tells it to do stupid stuff that is going to get it killed. The US media loves to play nuclear chicken with Russia. I suppose psychopaths need a lot of stimulation and what could be more stimulating than a risk of nuclear war.

    If the US media was doing its job it would not just be after Trump's relationship with Russia. It would be after the whole American establishments cozy relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia. They've turned the US into a banana empire. Of course the US media is tied to weapons producers and Israel gets a welfare check to buy American arms and Saudi Arabia buys American arms. Also Israel no matter what it does is protected because of guilt (which will be its undoing because its bad behavior is not being checked). If Russia bought American arms I bet the US media would love Putin. The US media then would take it upon themselves to support Putin against his enemies.

    Israel wants the Syrian war to go on forever. The Saudi and Iranian proxies aren't saints. There are no good guys yet removing Assad is the preferred outcome for the US media. Its irrational unless you realize who its working for. Its not the American people. Its not even working to keep the US Empire in a position of strength. It demands obedience to the whims of the Empire's global subjects and its domestic war industry. That is what this Russian crap was about Trump. Maybe they tried to interfere. People were going to vote the way they voted anyway because Trump struck an emotional cord with his larger than life personality and the Democrats conspired against the candidate that could have beaten him (Bernie) while making sure no one that could win would run for the Democrat nomination. Also the Israelis are right wing and they get away with stuff the Alt-right could never get away with in the US (and I hope wouldn't want to engage in). What they do to the Palestinians is straight out of Nazi Germany before the holocaust (which is coming for the Palestinians). They loved Trump and voted for him. US media doesn't make a big deal about this. Any reporter who did would risk losing their job.

    The good thing about the US corporate media is that it is being put behind paywalls. I just use software to block these sites so I don't even bother wasting my time by clicking and then having to click back. I get "the line" from sources not behind a paywall. Only an idiot would pay to be lied to on behalf of groups that do not have the US interest at heart. By being whores for war profiteers and their global allies the US media makes Russian government controlled media seem great in comparison. There is no reason why the US should be a whore for unsavory governments and organizations across the world. Its 20 trillion in debt and the US media uses verbal abuse and praise to manipulate the President into making war, while framing the war into simplistic and cartoonish terms. There are some that are extremely wealthy. The Europeans could handle their own security but manipulating the US to do it is easy because of the US media and easily malleable politicians.

    How about the US media find some poor defenseless country and harp up a war and bleed the US Empire dry of its wealth in a fruitless quagmire and call it a day? Some of us do have a self preservation instinct and fighting Russia for the mess in Syria is stupid. If it was me I'd try to get the defense companies to focus on space and space mining. Whoever controls outer space will control humanity's destiny. But go ahead bleed the US dry on these short sided money grabbing crusades so other countries can take over outer space instead.

    [Apr 15, 2017] 'Words Are Also Deeds' Unverified Stories and the Growing Risk of War With Russia

    Apr 15, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info
    'Words Are Also Deeds': Unverified Stories and the Growing Risk of War With Russia

    The US narratives for which there are as of yet no facts could lead to direct military conflict between Washington and Moscow.

    By Stephen F. Cohen

    Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russia Cold War.

    April 13/14, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - " The Nation "- Cohen argues that the American political-media establishment has embraced two fraught narratives for which there is still no public evidence, only "intel" allegations. One, "Kremlingate," as it is being called, is that Russian President Putin ordered a hacking of the Democratic National Committee and disseminated e-mails found there to help put Donald Trump in the White House. The other is that Syrian President Assad, Putin's ally, ordered last week's chemical-weapons attack on Syrian civilians, including young children. A third faith-based narrative, promoted by MSNBC in particular, is now emerging linking the other two: that Trump's recent missile attack on a Syrian military air base was actually a Putin-Trump plot to free the new American president from the constraints of "Kremlingate" investigations and enable him to do Putin's bidding in matters of US national security.

    Cohen points out that in addition to the absence of any actual evidence for these allegations, there is no logic. The explanation that Putin "hated Hillary Clinton" for protests that took place in Moscow in 2011 is based on a misrepresentation of that event. And why would Assad resort to the use of chemical weapons, thereby risking all the military, political, and diplomatic gains he has achieved in the past year and half, and considering that he had Russian air power at his disposal as an alternative? And the emerging sub-narrative that Putin lied in 2013, when he and President Obama agreed that Assad would destroy all of his chemical weapons, is based on another factual misrepresentation. It was the United Nations and its special agency that verified the full destruction of those weapons, not Putin. (This allegation is clearly intended to discredit the one important act of US-Russian cooperation, a vital one, in recent years.)

    The Russian adage "words are also deeds" is proving true, it seems. Trump's missile attack on Russia's ally Syria, despite its ramifying dangers, may have had a domestic political purpose-to debunk the narrative that is crippling his presidency, that he is somehow "Putin's puppet." If so, Cohen adds, the American mainstream media, which has promoted this narrative for months, is deeply complicit. Meanwhile, the Kremlin, which watches closely as these narratives unfold politically in Washington, has become deeply alarmed, resorting to its own fraught words. The No. 2 leader, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, declared that US-Russian relations have been "ruined," a statement Cohen does not recall any previous Soviet or post-Soviet leader ever having made. Medvedev added that the two nuclear superpowers are at "the brink" of war. Considering that Medvedev is regarded as the leading pro-Western figure in Putin's inner circle, imagine what the other side-state patriots, or nationalists, as they are called-is telling Putin. Still more, the Kremlin is saying that Trump's missile attack on Syria crossed Russia's "red lines," with all the warfare implications that term has in Washington as well. And flatly declaring the mysterious use of chemical weapons in Syria a "provocation," Putin himself warned that forces in Washington were planning more such "provocations" and military strikes. In short, while the Kremlin does not want and will not start a war with the United States, it is preparing for the possibility.

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    Cohen and Batchelor ended their broadcast as Trump's new secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, had just arrived in Moscow, before his talks with Russian leaders began the following day. (Whether or not Putin himself would met with Tillerson, or only Foreign Minister Lavrov, was still uncertain. Putin may be an authoritarian leader, the "decider," but influential forces in and around the Kremlin were strongly against Putin meeting with an American secretary of state in the immediate aftermath of such a US "provocation.") Whatever the case, Cohen thinks Tillerson's visit is vitally important, at least for the Russian leadership, and for Putin in particular.

    Tillerson is well known to Putin and other Kremlin leaders. On behalf of ExxonMobil, he negotiated with them one of Russia's largest energy deals, which would grant access to the nation's vast oil resources beneath frozen seas. Putin personally approved the deal, which oil giants around the world sought. He would not have done so had he not concluded that Tillerson was a serious, highly competent man. (For this achievement on behalf of a major American corporation, Tillerson too has been slurred as "Putin's friend" in the American media.) The Kremlin will therefore expect candid answers from Tillerson to these questions related to the looming issue of war or peace. Are the fact-free narratives now prevailing in Washington the determining factor in Trump's policy toward Russia? Are they the reason Trump committed the "provocation" in Syria? Does this mean that Trump no longer shares, or can support, Russia's essential strategic premise regarding the civil and proxy war in Syria-that the overthrow of Assad would almost certainly mean ISIS or another terrorist army in Damascus, an outcome that the Kremlin regards as a dire threat to Russia's own national security? And, most fundamentally, who is making Russia policy in Washington: President Trump or someone else? Putin, it should be recalled, asked the same question publicly about President Obama, when the agreement Putin and Obama negotiated for military cooperation in Syria was sabotaged by the US Department of Defense.

    The answers that the very experienced Tillerson-he had his own corporate global state department and intelligence service at ExxonMobil-gives may do much to determine whether or not the new Cold War moves even closer to the "brink" of hot war, certainly in Syria. Meanwhile, the American mainstream media should return to their once professed practice of rigorously fact-checking their narratives with an understanding that words are indeed also deeds.

    Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com

    Stephen Frand Cohen is an American scholar and professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University.

    The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

    [Apr 15, 2017] SECSTATE TILLERSONS CHIEF OF STAFF MARGARET PETERLIN HAS BEEN MANAGING US CYBER WARFARE OPERATIONS AGAINST RUSSIA FOR YEARS

    Notable quotes:
    "... Stack, who started with family money he incorporated as the Stack Family Office and diversified into computer engineering and IT technology investments, is a decade younger than Peterlin. Both of them have worked on cyber weaponry for US Government agencies. According to the Wikileaks release last month of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) "Vault 7" files, these weapons include UMBRAGE. ..."
    "... The CIA's UMBRAGE operation "collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques 'stolen' from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation. With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the "fingerprints" of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from. UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques." ..."
    "... Reporting on the applications of UMBRAGE lack conclusiveness on whether US Government agents have used UMBRAGE as a "factory for false flag hacking operations" to make the intrusions into the US election campaign, which have subsequently been blamed on Russian cyber operations – blame Tillerson endorsed in his press conference in Moscow yesterday. For that story, read this . ..."
    "... According to another report , "it would be possible to leave such fingerprints if the CIA were reusing unique source code written by other actors to intentionally implicate them in CIA hacks, but the published CIA documents don't say this. Instead, they indicate the UMBRAGE group is doing something much less nefarious." ..."
    "... What Tillerson knows also is that Peterlin has spent most of her career participating in these operations. Whether or not the CIA's Operation UMBRAGE has been used to manufacture the appearance of Russian hacking in the US elections, Peterlin knows exactly how to do it, and where it's done at the CIA, the Pentagon, and other agencies. Peterlin has also drafted the memoranda so that for Americans to do it, it's legal. And for men like Stack, something to boast about. ..."
    Apr 15, 2017 | johnhelmer.net
    Peterlin's appointment to run Tillerson's office was announced more authoritatively by the Washington Post on February 12. There her Texas Republican Party credentials were reported in detail, but not her expertise in signals, codes, and cyber warfare.

    "Peterlin has a wealth of government and private-sector experience. After distinguished service as a naval officer, she graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit [Texas and Louisiana]. She then went to work for House Majority Leader Dick Armey [Republican, Texas], just days before the 9/11 attacks. Afterward, she helped negotiate and draft key pieces of national security legislation, including the authorization for the use of force in Afghanistan, the Patriot Act and the legislation that established the Department of Homeland Security. 'She's very substance- and policy-focused. She's not necessarily a political person,' said Brian Gunderson, a State Department chief of staff for Condoleezza Rice who worked with Peterlin in the House [Armey's office]. Following a stint as legislative counsel and national security adviser for then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Peterlin moved over to the Commerce Department, where she served as the No. 2 official in the Patent and Trademark Office."

    Peterlin's appointment triggered a lawsuit by a group of patent lawyers and investors against the Secretary of Commerce. On July 23, 2007, two months after Peterlin was sworn in, papers filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia charged that Peterlin's appointment violated the Patent Act of 1999 requiring the Director and Deputy Director of the Patent Office to have "professional experience and background in patent or trademark law." Peterlin, the lawsuit charged, "lack[ed] the requisite professional experience and background." The court was asked to order a replacement for Peterlin "who fulfills those requirements." Six months later, in December 2007 Judge James Robertson dismissed the case on several technicalities. Peterlin's lack of professional skill and alleged incompetence were not tested in court. Peterlin didn't last long in her job and left in 2008. Peterlin's career publications focus on computer and internet surveillance, interception, and espionage. She started with a 1999 essay entitled "The law of information conflict: national security in cyberspace." In December 2001, with two co-authors, she published a paper at the Federalist Society in Washington entitled "The USA Patriot Act and information sharing between the intelligence and law enforcement communities". It can be read in full here .

    Peterlin argued "the unalterable need for greater information sharing means that the U.S. no longer has the luxury of simply separating law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Separation is a security risk." Peterlin's conclusion: "Who performs the surveillance may also matter, but the conditions of the performance are of the most critical importance the focus of attention should be principally on the techniques by which intelligence is gathered domestically and not on whether other members of the intelligence community are permitted to view the intelligence gathered as a result of those operations."

    After she left the Patent and Trademark Office in 2008, Peterlin became an employee of the Mars family companies with the job title, "technology strategy officer". That lasted six years, before she went into business for herself at a consulting company she called Profectus Global Corporation. There is almost no trace of that entity on the internet ; it appears unrelated to similarly named entities in Hungary and Australia. Peterlin then joined XLP Capital in Boston in November 2015.

    Peterlin's appointment as managing director of the firm, according to XLP's press release, reveals that when Peterlin was in the US Navy she was a cyber communications specialist. She was also seconded by the Navy to the White House as a Navy "social aide" when Hillary Clinton was First Lady.

    XLP didn't mention that at the time Peterlin was hired, she was also a board member at Draper Labs, the Massachusetts designer, among many things, of US missile guidance systems and the cyber weapons to combat them. According to XLP, one of Peterlin's selling points was "extensive experience with administrative law as well as deep operations exposure to Federal agencies, including the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Defense, and Health and Human Services." For deep operations, read cyber warfare.

    Before Peterlin joined Tillerson two months ago, her employer at XLP Capital was Matthew Stack (below). In his internet resume Stack reports he is "an accomplished computer hacker and cryptanalyst, and has written and advised on state-run network cyber-warfare policy, and agility-based strategic combat. He was recognized in 2009 by Hackaday as one of the top 10 most influential hardware hackers."

    ... ... ...
    Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=71987011&privcapId=302978562

    At Lambda Prime, Stack claims credit for two cyber warfare projects in 2013 – the practical, "weaponized virtual machines with heterogenous nodes for unpredictable and agile offensive fronts" and the theoretical, "Clausewitz, a modern theory of grand strategy for cyber military forces, and the role of guerilla cyber tactics". The following year Stack hosted his first "Annual Hackathon" - "Hackathoners flew in from all across the United States to inhabit a 27 acre, early 1900s mansion that serves as the Lambda Prime corporate headquarters".

    On social media Stack has revealed his involvement in internet hacking operations in Kiev; also which side he was on. "Ominous clouds hang over Kiev's central square, like Russia over its post-Soviet era neighboring Slavic states, " Stack instagrammed to his followers. "The country may be a mess, but Kiev has the fastest internet I've ever clocked – now I know why so many hackers live in Kiev. Thanks to my amazing tour guide @m.verbulya."

    Stack, who started with family money he incorporated as the Stack Family Office and diversified into computer engineering and IT technology investments, is a decade younger than Peterlin. Both of them have worked on cyber weaponry for US Government agencies. According to the Wikileaks release last month of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) "Vault 7" files, these weapons include UMBRAGE.

    This was developed for the CIA's Remote Devices Branch; the leaked files for the UMBRAGE operations date from 2012 to 2016. The CIA's UMBRAGE operation "collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques 'stolen' from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation. With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the "fingerprints" of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from. UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques."

    Some of the UMBRAGE components date from 2012; most from 2014. A leaked memo dated June 19, 2013, reveals one of the UMBRAGE managers telling others: "As far as Stash organization, I would recommend that you create one larger "Umbrage" project, and then create separate repositories within that project for each component. Then there is one central point on the site for 'all things Umbrage'."

    Reporting on the applications of UMBRAGE lack conclusiveness on whether US Government agents have used UMBRAGE as a "factory for false flag hacking operations" to make the intrusions into the US election campaign, which have subsequently been blamed on Russian cyber operations – blame Tillerson endorsed in his press conference in Moscow yesterday. For that story, read this .

    According to another report , "it would be possible to leave such fingerprints if the CIA were reusing unique source code written by other actors to intentionally implicate them in CIA hacks, but the published CIA documents don't say this. Instead, they indicate the UMBRAGE group is doing something much less nefarious."

    Yesterday Tillerson claimed to make "a distinction when cyber tools are used to interfere with the internal decisions among countries as to how their elections are conducted. That is one use of cyber tools. Cyber tools to disrupt weapons programs – that's another use of the tools." With Peterlin prompting by his side during his meetings with Lavrov and Putin, Tillerson knew this was not a distinction US cyber operations against Russia make.

    What Tillerson knows also is that Peterlin has spent most of her career participating in these operations. Whether or not the CIA's Operation UMBRAGE has been used to manufacture the appearance of Russian hacking in the US elections, Peterlin knows exactly how to do it, and where it's done at the CIA, the Pentagon, and other agencies. Peterlin has also drafted the memoranda so that for Americans to do it, it's legal. And for men like Stack, something to boast about.

    Peterlin's and Stack's public records are two reasons why none of this is secret from the Russian services. That's another reason why in Moscow yesterday Lavrov would not look at Tillerson during their press conference - and why Putin refused to be photographed with him.

    [Apr 13, 2017] Russia - PUTIN: 95% of the worlds terrorist attacks are orchestrated by the CIA

    This is not very reliable source belonging to Donbass separatists ...
    Notable quotes:
    "... 95% of the world's terrorist attacks are orchestrated by the CIA T ..."
    "... with this in mind. If the CIA have Russian blood on their hands, they will forever regret stirring the Russian bear from its peaceful slumber." ..."
    "... Putin also suggested that the CIA could have played a hand in the bombing of the St. Petersburg Metro ..."
    "... an expression of the will of world oligarchy and their vision for a New World Order. ..."
    "... The CIA does not work on behalf of the American people or act in their interests ..."
    "... Claremont Review of Books ..."
    "... Wall Street Journal ..."
    "... New York Times Book Review ..."
    "... Financial Times ..."
    "... Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West ..."
    "... fact-based appraisal of Putin and his times ..."
    "... There's a lot to be said for Robert Steele's ideas on Open Source EVERYTHING and Electoral Reform. Mr Steele also claims that Chuck Schumer, Lyndsay Graham, Marco Rubio and John McCain are being blackmailed into going along with deep state policies. ..."
    Apr 13, 2017 | gosint.wordpress.com
    Posted on April 8, 2017 by L

    " 95% of the world's terrorist attacks are orchestrated by the CIA T he St. Petersburg metro bombing must be investigated with this in mind. If the CIA have Russian blood on their hands, they will forever regret stirring the Russian bear from its peaceful slumber."

    Vladimir Putin - President of the Russian Federation

    April 6 2017.

    During an extraordinary meeting, Vladimir Putin - the President of the Russian Federation - has accused "the US 'Deep State' and the radical Islamic groups they sponsor" to destabilize key regions in the world. Putin also suggested that the CIA could have played a hand in the bombing of the St. Petersburg Metro.

    Speaking at a behind closed doors forum for the highest echelons of government and staff in his home city of St. Petersburg, Putin responded to questions about the metro blast. When questioned by a top aide as to whether the '95% figure' was accurate, Putin answered that:

    "The CIA is a rogue element of the deep state, and an expression of the will of world oligarchy and their vision for a New World Order.

    The evidence is everywhere, and I personally have intimate knowledge of their dealings.

    The CIA exists today as part of America but it is certainly not American. The CIA does not work on behalf of the American people or act in their interests ."

    RELATED POST: CIA Director Mike Pompeo - Who Is Who in World Intelligence and Security Agencies?

    RELATED POST: CIA Director Mike Pompeo defends 'State Secrets Privilege' in high profile torture case

    RELATED POST: Michael Morell: Let Us Kill Iranians and Russians in Syria!

    How to think about Putin

    Christopher Caldwell is a graduate of Harvard College. His work has appeared in the Claremont Review of Books , the Wall Street Journal , the New York Times Book Review , the Spectator (London), Financial Times , and numerous other publications. He is the author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West , and is at work on a book about post-1960s America.

    Caldwell has recently penned a very interesting piece - How to Think About Vladimir Putin - which was adapted from a speech he delivered on February 15, 2017, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Phoenix, Arizona. Please, take the time to read this fact-based appraisal of Putin and his times .

    "Let me stress at the outset that this is not going to be a talk about what to think about Putin, which is something you are all capable of making up your minds on, but rather how to think about him. And on this, there is one basic truth to remember, although it is often forgotten. Our globalist leaders may have deprecated sovereignty since the end of the Cold War, but that does not mean it has ceased for an instant to be the primary subject of politics."

    "Putin has become a symbol of national sovereignty in its battle with globalism. That turns out to be the big battle of our times. As our last election shows, that's true even here."

    RELATED POST: Putin tells a KGB joke. A bit dark but funny

    RELATED POST: Why the CIA & MI6 Love to Hate Putin

    RELATED POST: Putin Ridicules CIA Hilarious

    Former CIA Robert Steele: "US Politicians blackmailed by the Deep State"

    There's a lot to be said for Robert Steele's ideas on Open Source EVERYTHING and Electoral Reform. Mr Steele also claims that Chuck Schumer, Lyndsay Graham, Marco Rubio and John McCain are being blackmailed into going along with deep state policies.

    "Our common ennemy is the Deep State."

    REFERENCES

    Putin: '95% Of World Terrorist Attacks Are Orchestrated By The CIA' - Novorossia Today April 6 2007

    [Apr 13, 2017] The USA is treating Russia like Romans treated Carnage

    Notable quotes:
    "... * A Carthaginian peace is the imposition of a very brutal 'peace' achieved by completely crushing the enemy. The term derives from the peace imposed on Carthage by Rome. After the Second Punic War, Carthage lost all its colonies, was forced to demilitarize and pay a constant tribute to Rome and could enter war only with Rome's permission. At the end of the Third Punic War, the Romans systematically burned Carthage to the ground and enslaved its population. ..."
    Apr 13, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Peter K. -> Peter K...., April 13, 2017 at 06:51 AM
    there

    And these "mainstream" economists like Krugman and PGL claim to be followers of Keynes.

    Did they ever read the Economic Consequences of the Peace?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace

    The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) is a book written and published by John Maynard Keynes.[1] Keynes attended the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 as a delegate of the British Treasury and argued for a much more generous peace. It was a best-seller throughout the world and was critical in establishing a general opinion that the Versailles Treaty was a "Carthaginian peace*". It helped to consolidate American public opinion against the treaty and involvement in the League of Nations. The perception by much of the British public that Germany had been treated unfairly in turn was a crucial factor in public support for appeasement. The success of the book established Keynes' reputation as a leading economist especially on the left. When Keynes was a key player in establishing the Bretton Woods system in 1944, he remembered the lessons from Versailles as well as the Great Depression. The Marshall Plan, after the Second World War, was a similar system to that proposed by Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

    --------------------

    Did the Marshall Plan not improve things in Europe!?!?!

    * A Carthaginian peace is the imposition of a very brutal 'peace' achieved by completely crushing the enemy. The term derives from the peace imposed on Carthage by Rome. After the Second Punic War, Carthage lost all its colonies, was forced to demilitarize and pay a constant tribute to Rome and could enter war only with Rome's permission. At the end of the Third Punic War, the Romans systematically burned Carthage to the ground and enslaved its population.

    ---------------------------

    The financial crisis and terrible recovery was a disaster forced on the voters of advanced nations. Is it any wonder that there was a populist backlash? The spoiled, pampered center-left like Krugman, Hillary and PGL have no idea of the suffering that many voters and citizens had to endure, losing their homes, etc.

    [Apr 13, 2017] The problem with handing an ultimatum, is what will the US do when Russia rejects and ignores the ultimatum? More harsh words? More name calling? More sanctions. I think Russia is prepared for any eventuality.

    The problem for Russia is that Trump secured China neutrality in voting in Security council beforehand.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The individual sources may each have to be taken with a grain of salt, but a number of different outlets, including Robert Parry, seem to collaborate each other. Namely, U. S. intelligence analysts knew that Russia's account of the matter was accurate, and that it was also a false flag. ..."
    "... I was confused by the fact that Syria and Russia are sticking to their statement that it was a conventional Syrian airstrike on a rebel warehouse, which, unknown to the SAA or the Russians, contained chemical substances. It didn't seemed to mesh with the numerous and obvious signs of the entire incident being a prearranged false flag. The Saker, too, in his analysis, felt that this version of the events would require one to "believe in coincidence". However, it doesn't have to be coincidence at all, considering what one source claims: ..."
    "... There US and its coalition of lap dogs were supposedly fighting ISIL/Daesh but missed the massive convoys of oil to Turkey that propped them up. ..."
    "... In short, the US is exceptional and no-one is going to succeed bringing it the International Criminal Court because it is not a member and no-one would dare (not even those fearsome fighters for humanitarian law, the Spanish – sic, how are you dealing with Franco's widespread crimes?). The US will continue to ignore anything it doesn't like, but for everyone else particularly in Europe, nope. Even the Brits would be a lot more cautious. ..."
    "... Even if it were true – so what? The United States has intervened any number of times to keep leaders in power in various countries, against the demonstrated will of their populations, so long as it suited American interests. My favourite example is Hosni Mubarak; the Egyptian people loved him so much that they tried to assassinate him six times to show their adoration. ..."
    "... The group which benefited most immediately and strongly was the Muslim Brotherhood, and look what a peaceful and prosperous western-leaning market democracy Egypt is now . ..."
    "... I don't buy for a minute that Russia's primary motive is to keep Assad in power – my take is that Russia's focus is on stopping the United States from carrying out another of its regime-change colour revolutions. It so happens that keeping Assad in power accomplishes that endeavour, and he remains the choice of the majority in Syria. That's where Russian 'intervention' and American meddling differ – Washington does not care if the leader it wants is popular with the people or not. ..."
    Apr 13, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    et Al , April 12, 2017 at 4:52 am

    Neuters: Putin says trust erodes under Trump, Moscow icily receives Tillerson
    http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-russia-idUKKBN17E1AD?il=0

    Just as Tillerson sat down for talks, a senior Russian official assailed the "primitiveness and loutishness" of U.S. rhetoric, part of a volley of statements that appeared timed to maximize the awkwardness during the first visit by a member of Trump's cabinet.

    "One could say that the level of trust on a working level, especially on the military level, has not improved but has rather deteriorated," Putin said in an interview broadcast on Russian television moments after Tillerson sat down with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an ornate hall .

    Moments earlier, Lavrov greeted Tillerson with unusually icy remarks, denouncing the missile strike on Syria as illegal and accusing Washington of behaving unpredictably.

    "I won't hide the fact that we have a lot of questions, taking into account the extremely ambiguous and sometimes contradictory ideas which have been expressed in Washington across the whole spectrum of bilateral and multilateral affairs," Lavrov said.

    "And of course, that's not to mention that apart from the statements, we observed very recently the extremely worrying actions, when an illegal attack against Syria was undertaken."

    Lavrov also noted that many key State Department posts remain vacant since the new administration took office - a point of sensitivity in Washington.

    One of Lavrov's deputies was even more undiplomatic.

    "In general, primitiveness and loutishness are very characteristic of the current rhetoric coming out of Washington. We'll hope that this doesn't become the substance of American policy," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russia's state-owned RIA news agency.

    "As a whole, the administration's stance with regards to Syria remains a mystery. Inconsistency is what comes to mind first of all."
    ####

    I don't see the point of Trump firing TLAMS only to play nicey-nicey with Moscow in public. So in short, are the public and private messages the same? As for Russia, their message should be clear (and it is) " No more 'fun' or WE are done ". The only role the West can play is that of a spoiler , particularly in Syria. They have absolutely nothing to gain even if their tame media claims they do. Everyone should keep their pants on and not be rude – including you NS!

    marknesop , April 12, 2017 at 6:06 pm
    Trump seems to have reasoned that all he had to do was release the dreaded American cruise missiles and Putin would roll over submissively and expose his belly. He has a hell of a lot to learn about foreign policy, and I don't think he's going to have the time to learn it.
    Moscow Exile , April 12, 2017 at 6:12 am
    Her impudence pales into insignificance when compared with that of Tillerson, who has flown to Russia in order to issue an ultimatum to the Russians on their own territory.

    When he finished his speech, Lavrov politely said in English to the impolite United States journalist : "You may shout now".

    It was reported in Russian that he said to her: "Теперь можете кричать, если хотите", which literally translates as "Now you can shout if you want to", which in English sounds less polite (it does to me, anyway) than what he actually said politely but with irony, in that he politely invited someone to continue to act in an uncultured fashion.

    I am pretty sure Mr. Lavrov is aware of the adage that Americans "don't do irony".

    Warren , April 12, 2017 at 2:29 pm
    The problem with handing an ultimatum, is what will the US do when Russia rejects and ignores the ultimatum? More harsh words? More name calling? More sanctions. I think Russia is prepared for any eventuality.

    As regards the impudent US hack that was shouting; I think she is your typical loud, ignorant and obnoxious US hack.

    et Al , April 12, 2017 at 6:46 am
    The Daily Caller: Pentagon Casts Doubt On AP Report Claiming Russia Knew About Syrian Chemical Attack
    http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/10/dod-discredits-associated-press-report-claiming-russia-knew-about-syrian-chemical-attack-in-advance/

    A Department of Defense spokesman discounted an Associated Press report that claimed Russia knew in advance about the chemical weapons attack in Syria last week that left more than 80 people dead.

    "I've seen nothing that corroborates this definitive statement," Major Jamie Davis told the Daily Caller in a statement Monday. "We continue to review the available intelligence surrounding this incident."

    Though Davis noted that the DOD is continuing to assess the details of the situation, he noted they have found nothing so far that could verify the AP story .

    A senior administration official in the White House also cast doubt on the AP report.
    ####

    So unlike the anonymous intelligence source that did not have ' authorization to speak to the media ' quoted by AP, here we have an official sources calling BS. Does that make the AP piece Fake News or 'in the interests of the American public'? F/tards.

    I think it is fairly clear that sensationalist leaking is part of the strategy balanced by later rowing back or dismissing, knowing that the Pork Pie News Networks cannot resist it. It's a balance of sorts that is aimed to keep the PPNN and others off-balance. Again, these are just words, not actions. We also see the same method over the earlier reports that a USN CVBG was steaming towards North Korea, now we are being told that it is not and is just in the general area. It's a pattern:

    Antiwar.com: Mattis: Navy Strike Group Not Headed to North Korea for Any Reason
    http://news.antiwar.com/2017/04/11/mattis-navy-strike-group-not-headed-to-north-korea-for-any-reason/
    ####

    How long it will take the PPNN to cotton on is anybody's guess, but it don't see how this strategy can work in the medium to long term.

    et Al , April 12, 2017 at 6:48 am
    Antiwar.com: Mattis: US-Russia Tensions Won't Spiral Out of Control
    http://news.antiwar.com/2017/04/11/mattis-us-russia-tensions-wont-spiral-out-of-control/

    Secretary of Defense James Mattis sought to downplay the situation, however, saying that he was certain the situation "will not spiral out of control,"* a belief he appeared to rest on the idea that Russia wouldn't dare retaliate against further US attacks against Syria, as they have threatened to.

    "I'm confident the Russians will act in their own best interests," Mattis insisted. Yet he also threatened further US strikes on Syria, and Russia has made clear in recent days that they would respond with force to any additional such US strikes .

    * http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-mattis-idUSKBN17D2L1

    marknesop , April 12, 2017 at 7:02 pm
    Yes, the USA is so firmly in control of global events. I totally believe him.
    et Al , April 12, 2017 at 6:53 am
    Antiwar.com: US Officials Can't Explain Reason for Syria 'Chemical Attack'
    http://news.antiwar.com/2017/04/11/us-officials-cant-explain-reason-for-syria-chemical-attack/

    Administration officials are trying to manufacture one, with an unnamed "senior official" today delivering a briefing* to the media claiming that the Syrian military was afraid of a rebel offensive in the Hama Province, and launched the attack against the rebels' rear support areas for operational purposes

    On top of this, the US narrative's initial premise is faulty, as the Hama offensive had already ground to a halt two weeks prior to the putative Syrian attack, and Syrian forces appeared well on their way to recovering lost territory from the rebels
    ####

    I'm surprise they even bothered with a new narrative. The PPNN had it already well covered with their numerous conspiracy theories so the Administration has only unnecessarily muddied the waters here.

    Chinese American , April 12, 2017 at 6:53 am
    Interesting collection of reports on what happened with the chemical weapons attack on April 4, including Robert Perry, citing sources within U. S. intelligence and military:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-11/intelligence-and-military-sources-who-warned-about-wmd-lies-iraq-war-now-say-assad-d

    The individual sources may each have to be taken with a grain of salt, but a number of different outlets, including Robert Parry, seem to collaborate each other. Namely, U. S. intelligence analysts knew that Russia's account of the matter was accurate, and that it was also a false flag.

    I was confused by the fact that Syria and Russia are sticking to their statement that it was a conventional Syrian airstrike on a rebel warehouse, which, unknown to the SAA or the Russians, contained chemical substances. It didn't seemed to mesh with the numerous and obvious signs of the entire incident being a prearranged false flag. The Saker, too, in his analysis, felt that this version of the events would require one to "believe in coincidence". However, it doesn't have to be coincidence at all, considering what one source claims:

    1. The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at each other) the upcoming operation.

    2. The United States was fully briefed on the fact that there was a target in Idlib that the Russians believes was a weapons/explosives depot for Islamic rebels.

    The dedicated phone line would have been part of the deconfliction agreement between Russia and the U. S., started soon after the Russian began military intervention in fall 2015. If it is true that the U. S. knew about the planned target long ahead of time, then the fact that McCain took a secret trip to Syria recently becomes even more sinister.

    Whatever chemicals (not sarin) were used were planted at the warehouse, or simply released nearby at the time of the airstrike. As for the photos and videos from the White Helmets, etc., those were probably produced ahead of time, on a Saudi or Qatari or Turkish production stage, for all we know.

    This theory would give another dimension to the fact that Russia suspended the deconfliction agreement immediately after the Tomahawk attack.

    Fern , April 12, 2017 at 7:39 am
    This is what I'm inclined to think – that some element(s) within the Trump Administration ensured those charming basket-weaving, flowers-in-the-hair-wearing, kumbaya-singing 'moderate' rebells knew an air-strike was planned and left it to them to arrange the chemical exposure.
    Cortes , April 12, 2017 at 4:47 pm
    Thierry Meyssan apparently agrees:

    http://www.voltairenet.org/article195904.html

    kirill , April 12, 2017 at 8:07 pm
    Exactly. There US and its coalition of lap dogs were supposedly fighting ISIL/Daesh but missed the massive convoys of oil to Turkey that propped them up.

    In fact, the US was bombing to disrupt SAA operations and really protecting ISIL. I do not know why Russia agreed to share any such operational details. This looks like an epic fail by Russia. They just needed real time coordination to prevent collisions in the air.

    et Al , April 12, 2017 at 7:00 am
    Deutscher's Willy: US missile strike on Syria 'a violation of international law'
    http://www.dw.com/en/us-missile-strike-on-syria-a-violation-of-international-law/a-38389950

    The US has called its attack on an airbase in Syria "a strong signal" for the Assad regime. Legal experts, however, criticized the action. In an interview with DW, international law expert Stefan Talmon explains why.
    ####

    More at the link.

    In short, the US is exceptional and no-one is going to succeed bringing it the International Criminal Court because it is not a member and no-one would dare (not even those fearsome fighters for humanitarian law, the Spanish – sic, how are you dealing with Franco's widespread crimes?). The US will continue to ignore anything it doesn't like, but for everyone else particularly in Europe, nope. Even the Brits would be a lot more cautious.

    et Al , April 12, 2017 at 7:05 am
    Neuters: U.S. asks G7 ministers why it should care about Ukraine conflict
    http://www.reuters.com/article/g7-foreign-ukraine-idUSKBN17D1P6

    U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked his European counterparts on Tuesday why American voters should care about the conflict in Ukraine, France's foreign minister said .

    French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Tillerson had openly questioned why "American taxpayers" should be concerned about Ukraine, which has been racked by a separatist conflict for the last three years
    ####

    Another PR stunt designed for domestic consumption.

    marknesop , April 12, 2017 at 7:19 pm
    If God had any sort of a sense of humour at all, G7 leaders would break out in painful boils every time one of them used the phrase 'rules-based international order' in a manner which implied the G7 nations give a flying fuck about obeying international rules which do not permit them to act as they please.
    et Al , April 12, 2017 at 10:19 am
    I just made the mistake of watching 'BBC World News'. There was a report by their Moscow Correspondent Steve Rosenberg who said "Russia intervened in Syria to keep Assad in power". No nuance, no other details such as I-rack, Libya etc. descending into chaos and spreading terrorists, weapons & refugees in to Europe, let alone Chechen and other terrorists who would head back to Russia fully trained or that the IS/ISIS/ISIL/DAESH was allowed to grow on the West watch and Russia intervened long after Syria descended in to hell.

    That the BBC continues to employ a tabloid correspondent like Rosenberg all these years shows how seriously they take their reporting of Russia. Very poorly, very poorly indeed. He's the Luke Harding of the broadcasting news. A f/kwit. And f/k the BBC too.

    marknesop , April 12, 2017 at 7:30 pm
    Even if it were true – so what? The United States has intervened any number of times to keep leaders in power in various countries, against the demonstrated will of their populations, so long as it suited American interests. My favourite example is Hosni Mubarak; the Egyptian people loved him so much that they tried to assassinate him six times to show their adoration.

    Yet the USA propped him up over and over, and no attempts to unseat him enjoyed any kind of success until Washington decided he was no longer useful. Then suddenly the winds of (regime) change began to blow, and *poof*, we had the 'Arab Spring', and all American politicians of whatever stripe suddenly became conscious that the dictator they had propped up for 30 years 'must step down'.

    The group which benefited most immediately and strongly was the Muslim Brotherhood, and look what a peaceful and prosperous western-leaning market democracy Egypt is now .

    I don't buy for a minute that Russia's primary motive is to keep Assad in power – my take is that Russia's focus is on stopping the United States from carrying out another of its regime-change colour revolutions. It so happens that keeping Assad in power accomplishes that endeavour, and he remains the choice of the majority in Syria. That's where Russian 'intervention' and American meddling differ – Washington does not care if the leader it wants is popular with the people or not.

    et Al , April 12, 2017 at 11:34 am
    Vladimir Safronkov rips Matthew Rycroft at the UNSC

    Warren , April 12, 2017 at 2:23 pm
    Hilarious, the Russian Deputy Ambassador doesn't mince words! I look forward to hearing more from him.
    Northern Star , April 12, 2017 at 4:47 pm
    War Crimes and Remembrance

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051

    [Apr 12, 2017] on April 11, 2017 , · at 3:16 pm UTC

    Apr 12, 2017 | thesaker.is
    You are the typical Anglo-Saxxon who has been fed Propaganda, and who thinks he knows what great Fighters are made off. You are wrong, you didn't have any of that sort for a looong, looong time -- Why ? Because you are evil, your wars are evil since a looong, loooong time. There are no great Warriors in the Army of evil, only slime, rubbish, filth. Those who aren't cannot be part of really and usually die a very unkonwn, unspoken of death.

    A Lion, a Wolf know fear, because not having it is bad for survival, as you will soon find out yourselve.
    How old are you ? I guess you are older than twenty. I have bad news for you. If you don't even know such extremly basic fundamentals what else could you know ? 'Know How' probably, which makes you the perfect Slave, Soldier, Ork, Zombie.

    Aggression – Fear are the result of the same mechanism, the examination of a social situation intra- or inter- species. The resultant reaction is usually beneficial for survival, else it will just dissapear over time.

    The Russians know what it means to have a real modern War at hand, an experience which you never had, Your experience comes from phony Hollywood crap. The Russians experienced total War, a term you have no faculties for, only the Germans and Russians have. The Germans were transformed into plastic, jew hailing dolls, while the Russians learned really from the experience. They prepare large underground shelters for the Civilians in the large Metropolitan areas (Having a Subway is also not bad), but more importantly their mind is focused, they ready themselves in the mind. You can see some of it's quality in the civil war in the Donbass. These are men types and women completly alien to a dumbed down Westerner fed up with lies. In comparance to them you are just junk, trash. One of them outweighs 20 of yours easily. Would you know what you are fighting for ? The only feasible reply could be, yes we plan to kill our Leaders. Now that said, do you know where strength comes from, first and foremost ? A pure god abiding soul !!!!!! Any TRUE Warrior will fear war, because he is concerned for the weak, for himself and even for his enemy. The strength you are talking is not strength at all, but weakness. You are the type who at first occurence will use barbaric force onto the innocence (Civilians, Surrendering Enemies) we know you inside out. Your strength is to be brutal and barbaric, only that's no strength at all but weakness. It only makes the enemy stronger, his resolve will increase indefinetly. In a total War that means defeat for you without exception. Your Leaders know this or knew this, thus they planned their wars very carefully in advance, striking only when risk was minimal (WWI & WWII), because you couldn't withstand a prolonged real war spiritually, in war all domestic lies are uncovered the nearer you get to the frontline.

    TYS on April 12, 2017 , · at 1:22 am UTC
    @HDan

    Your posting was literally a poem, a profound one, painfully truthful and excellent.

    The part you where you wrote:

    Now that said, do you know where strength comes from, first and foremost ? A pure god abiding soul !!!!!! Any TRUE Warrior will fear war, because he is concerned for the weak, for himself and even for his enemy.

    Was particularly poignant and reminded me of the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, representing the exact attitude of the main warrior Arjuna on the eve of battle.

    Are you Russian? Did those ideas you wrote down in your post come from the Russian culture and represent a portion of Russian ethos or does it come from some other culture (Chinese or Japanese). It would really be valuable for our understanding if you could answer this.

    With respect, TYS.

    Anonius on April 11, 2017 , · at 3:20 pm UTC
    @Spartan
    You so do not understand a thing. Spartans fought to the last breath, because as someone said they had to protect their land and the families. This is why some people say " Molon Lave – come and get it" they did not say "we run now". They understood that this was their last stand. And this is called "ultimate sacrifice".

    Saker is so correct in what he says, and you do not have to agree with him, because you haven't had to stand when bullets were flying around you. The truth though is: you do not hear the one coming for you. How I know it? From my father who did his share of fighting in WWII.

    [Apr 12, 2017] Russia became strong because of the sanctions. It made Russia concentrate on internal production

    Apr 12, 2017 | thesaker.is
    Russia became strong because of the sanctions. It made Russia concentrate on internal production, on self-reliance. As Putin noted, "Thanks, couldn't have done it without you"

    So, how is this for left field

    I agree, the US and China are economically interdependent.

    Trump wants to make America great again. Wants the jobs and the factories back. So, why not 'fry' China. Nuke Nth Korea, declare war on China after either a false flag or China retaliating.

    Then, as an enemy state, confiscate all China's assets in the US and repudiate any debt to China via Bonds etc. WTF is China going to do?

    Smile a lot???

    America is then forced to make things again, and getting rid of a few trillion in bond debt will help economically I expect.

    Concentrate on internal production and consumption.

    Oh yes, it is all a lot more complicated than that .. but think about it .. interesting scenario

    And it would fit in with Trumps child-like simple view of the world.

    We are still essentially a group of nation states, basically at war because each state only acts in its own interests. Until we can work together as a common humanity, war seems the only way to resolve differences.

    J on April 11, 2017 , · at 6:41 am UTC
    You may need to educate your self with some simple facts: 18.3% of Chinese export goes to US and 15% of US export goes to China. Anything happen to trade with US will hurt, but Chinese can Manage.

    US can frozen Chinese asset, and Chinese will hit where it hurts. There are plenty of American finial products in China and China will have her pick.

    Like Germans said to Trump, "We are not a nation without means, and we will fight back!" I have yet see China fail to retaliate any so called punishment from US.

    I fail to see why a smart people like you running with some one who is not living in this reality.

    Nachtigall on April 11, 2017 , · at 11:00 am UTC
    TYS, you are wrong on one thing: The Chinese political apparatchiks are not idiots like their European, American and Russian liberal counterparts. You forget that credit inflation and deflation can be controlled by the CCB at will. It's a balance sheet operation in the accounting department. Bad debts can be cleared (bonds of economic useful actors can be bailed out – parasites like 90% of bond holders can go tits up) if need be. It's true that in the confines of neoclassical economic thinking an operation like that is unfathomable, but it is still just a technical operation which has to be executed in a planned manner. In contrast to the so called "free market in the West" the Chinese government has the means to get all necessary actors to comply and the ability to get the necessary information. The shadow banking system in China is a much bigger problem, once again not because the assets cannot be restructured, but because of the lack of control and, in some cases, the integral part they play in the Chinese economy.

    Many make the faulty assumption that money is somehow an integral part of our physical reality – it's not. A social unit of account, claim on work, the materialised form of consolidated power, is a necessary illusion to keep humans devided in a hierarchical power structure. This has nothing to do with physical laws, which cannot be manipulated. Humans can do whatever they want with the stored energy in form of atom bonds to electromagnetic radiation. If it means they want to push some electrons in the CB mainframe to get society to keep believing in real or electronic paper, they can do it. BTW the US debt was created though the transfer of reserves at the CB into an interest bearing asset e.g. treasuries. Translation: the Chinese swapped their reserves at the FED for treasuries. The US cannot default on its currency because its the SOLE issuer of it. It stupefies me to no end that the myth of a US default in DOLLAR is still discussed seriously. On the other hand, Chinese assessts in dollars are at a real risk. They CAN drop in value if the US were to create more dollar denominated credit with which it would buy up REAL assessts and not fictional wealth f.e. at the stock market.

    There are no economic laws. There is only an established social system which is very profitable for a few and is the legacy of a previous power struggle.

    nice try on April 11, 2017 , · at 2:15 pm UTC
    @ Nachtigall: Well put! The US put it's neck in the "reserve currency to the world" noose at Bretton Woods. An imperial overstep, the Daffy Duck in Aladdin's Cave moment "MINE MINE, ALL MINE!!!"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJIlCSBfksM

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE0miV8YBBw

    TYS on April 11, 2017 , · at 3:54 pm UTC
    I agree that the Chinese leadership are not idiots, I don't believe I ever said they were.

    I repeat, the Chinese are not going to throw away their ability to gain access to western technology and corporations (or destabilize, any further, their social systems by disrupting their export oriented industries) by doing anything stupid like threatening the US with their current Empire currency & debt holdings. So I agree with you, I don't think the Chinese leadership are reckless idiots: that's my point.

    Have you forgotten that the Chinese economic growth has nearly halved even based on their faked inflated "official" 6.5 % GDP growth figures (their actual growth figure is between 3-4%)? They are not operating from a position of strength.

    Gold reserves, during a trade war, will not give the Chinese access to the Western technologies and assets they desire.

    Someone mentioned a scenario where the US will declare war on China in order to tear up their debt obligations to the Chinese and seize Chinese assets in the West. Why would they need to do that? One can easily make the counter argument: the US can provoke China into doing something wreckless and then default on China. Isn't that what the close shore patrols the US performs along China's coastline designed to underscore?

    Again, a very good point was brought up in the article, President Xi needs to do more than behave like a smiling Buddha: they continue to let Russia does all the heavy lifting (and dying). Let's see if they do finally step up to the plate, – I don't believe they will.

    Nachtigall on April 11, 2017 , · at 6:44 pm UTC
    I agree with you. They are very cautious not to upset their dollar apple card, as you've rightly pointed out: the Chinese worked themselves like slaves to get this mountain of dollar reserves. I once picked up the rumor that the Russians tried to convince the Chinese to drop their dollar reserves on the market in 2008-2009 so as to crash the dollar, but again this would have meant shooting themselves in the foot. The US doesn't give s* about its debt, they don't have to default on anything because its their currency! So you're right the US could provoke China into doing something rash. Indeed China is very much an export driven economy, and they will absolutely do jack to threaten their position by getting into a military confrontations with the US. How do you even, like the Saker points out regularly, deal with war mongering freaks like the US officials? The US is itching to destroy its competitors by any means necessary.

    The crucial point I wanted to make, and this is what I mean by not being idiots, is that they know how they should play the capitalist game of smoke in mirrors, they know that the debt bubble in thw real estate sector is unsustainable, they know that they inflate GDP numbers, but here is the BIG difference (to eurocrats f.e.): If the real estate bubble pops the CB can bail out all useful actors and let the bad ones go bankrupt. It can create yuan at infinitum. It would send initially shock waves through the economy, but depending on the prudent restructuring of all the debts the economy can resume on working again. This is what no Western bureaucrat would dare to think – when they bail out something, it's parasites like JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Goldman and large funds, never small time debtors f.e. home owners. As I recall, Micheal Hudson talked about how Sheila Bair (EX FDIC Chairman) did suggest that you should save real people (depositor's money) instead of bank balance sheets, and that the FED was able to do that (a small summary of her views with a lot weasel words and smoke: https://jrc.princeton.edu/news/sheila-bair-former-fdic-chairman-discusses-financial-crisis ).

    This subject is much more complex than everything said by us, but I understand why Chinese officials refrain from doing the rational thing of restructuring the debts right now; i think they speculate on the fact that as long as the economy is growing they will continue to build cities, ports, planes, buy out western companies and infrastructure till the bell rings. After the process of consolidation I described they will reinflate the credit bubble again. They try everything at the same time. Reining in the shadow banking system, slowing down credit inflation and than restarting it again and letting the economy grow etc. China is trying to establish its very own yuan vacuum cleaner by which they can buy up (real!) assets like mines, factories etc. all over the world.

    That is the perspective of the capitalist class (not to speak of silly name calling like"communists"), take another viewpoint esp. in terms of the eco-system and all of this is a big fat net loss. They once tried to measure their "Green GDP" but quickly stopped doing that after it became apparent how much "natural capital" was destroyed each year.

    All of our terminology, definitions, ethics are sloppy and misleading by design if we talk about who decides what, when and who gets what, when and how much.

    Nachtigall on April 11, 2017 , · at 7:40 pm UTC
    Interesting interview with Michael Hudson about the FIRE=FinanceInsuranceRealEstate sector:

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/15/how-bankers-became-the-top-exploiters-of-the-economy/

    TYS on April 12, 2017 , · at 12:49 am UTC
    @Nachtigall

    Very well put. Thanks for elaborating in detail. I agree the very premise of "currency" based systems are virtualized models and artificial. Hudson's work is very revealing, I agree.

    Evilc on April 11, 2017 , · at 6:32 pm UTC
    @Nachtigall
    Very well put, but may I add that the 'economy' is an expression of energy; past, present and future and we (in the west anyway) have borrowed rather heavily from the future. We can print as much money as we want but we cant print energy, well not yet anyway.
    Little Black Duck on April 11, 2017 , · at 10:40 am UTC
    China has hedged its exposure to US debt by accumulating gold.
    When the US dollar crashes, gold will soar and the effect may well be beneficial to China even if they initiate the crash.
    It's the USA that is between a rock and a hard place.
    nice try on April 11, 2017 , · at 2:27 pm UTC
    Yup, China and Russia are divesting US$-based reserves, using those artificially inflated US$ instruments to buy physical gold at artificially deflated market prices literally hundreds of tonnes/year.

    Meanwhile the US has to buy/steal gold from other countries, bought about 220 tonnes from Canada to give about the same to Netherlands in the "rehypothecated WW2 safe-keeping gold repatriation scam", plus steal from Libya and Ukraine to do the same for Germany and France. The hegemon is in a weak position when the vassal states don't trust them to hold their physical gold and can demand it back.

    Russia and China have already set up an alternate international currency/exchange/trade system, using yuan-renminbi/ruble plus accommodating other local currencies. The only-US$-based WTO/IMF/World Bank/BIS/SWIFT/etc. system can be bypassed if the US/Rothschilds decide to attempt any M.A.D. economic tactics.

    Simon Chow on April 11, 2017 , · at 4:24 pm UTC
    Yes I agree. Accumulating gold seems to be part of their plan. If the USD crash for whatever reasons, the rise in the price of gold will at least cover up for the loss in value of USD assets. I think China has enough gold to be now more than ready to dump USD assets; and the US knows this. This means that China can survive a crash of the USD but USA will not. That's why Trump is talking nice to Xi. Neither will the US survive if the USD is manipulated too high through interest rates by the Fed.
    TYS on April 11, 2017 , · at 5:07 pm UTC
    @ Little Black Duck

    The United States Reserve hold 8 times as much gold as China's. So where does your argument go now?

    If we include the BS internet rumor that China has unofficial holdings of an additional 9000 tonnes raising their total seizable holdings to 10,000 tonnes that is still dwarfed by US private holdings. Europe has comparable reserves in private and central bank hands. Finally, the country with largest gold holdings in both in govt and private hands is India, at approx 20,000 tons.

    So China has no net advantage here.

    Anonymous on April 12, 2017 , · at 3:40 am UTC
    Just look at the yearly production of gold in China, the gold that never reaches the market. The official Chinese reserves of 1,000 tones are nothing compared to it. Coupled with official Swiss mints data of gold export to China in the last 10 years, and you are coming really close to BS internet rumor numbers.

    When was the last time that US gold holdings were audited? Do you know that US had 24,000 tones of gold in 1945? They reduced their holdings for more than 15,000 tones from 1945 to 1971, and after that they didn't reduce it for an ounce?

    Peace on April 11, 2017 , · at 2:45 am UTC
    Saker, a pat on the back for you, excellent job. I don't expect but pray that the anglozionist read this article

    [Apr 12, 2017] Tillerson meets with Putin amid deepening tensions over U.S. missile strikes in Syria by Carol Morello and David Filipov

    www.washingtonpost.com

    The Trump administration on Tuesday said it had collected intelligence that purportedly proved Syrian forces had carried out the deadly chemical weapons attack in the northern Idlib province that led to the U.S. missile strike.

    "We reject any accusations to this effect and would like to remind everyone that Russia has been the only country to demand an unbiased international inquiry into the circumstances of the use of toxic chemicals near Idlib from the very start," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

    The meeting between Tillerson and Russian President Vladimir Putin came after hours of tense exchanges, with both sides staking out positions that were sharply at odds. Russia made it clear it was unwilling to roll back its strategic alliance with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    The talks appeared unlikely to bring any significant breakthroughs after last week's missile strike plunged U.S.-Russian relations to one of the lowest points since the Cold War.

    [U.S. reveals intelligence disputing Russian claim about Syria chemical attack]

    But despite the growing rifts, some general compromises were discussed.

    [Apr 12, 2017] Johnson stung over sanctions against Russia

    Apr 12, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    RGC , April 12, 2017 at 05:45 AM
    Johnson stung over sanctions against Russia

    Sam Coates, Deputy Political Editor | David Charter
    April 12 2017, 12:01am,
    The Times

    One senior Tory described the outcome of the G7 meeting in Italy as a humiliation for Boris Johnson and Britain

    Boris Johnson was left embarrassed last night after his demands for fresh sanctions against Russia over its backing for President Assad of Syria were publicly rebuffed by European allies.

    The final communiqué after a two-day meeting of G7 nations in Lucca, Italy, made no mention of the foreign secretary's proposal to isolate Vladimir Putin and impose sanctions on Russian military figures.

    Italy and France rejected Mr Johnson's position, and one senior Tory described the outcome as a humiliation for Britain.

    The comments came as Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, flew to Moscow to confront the Kremlin over its support for Assad after a gas attack last week that led the US to respond with missile strikes on a Syrian airbase.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/johnson-stung-over-sanctions-against-russia-s925bppx8

    [Apr 12, 2017] Putin Backs Down Meets Tillerson amid Heightened U.S.-Russia Tensions - Breitbart

    Apr 12, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

    Sam Crow 2 hours ago

    Why is it interpreted as 'backing down'??? Sounds to me Putin is the only reasonable grownup in the room and realizes how quickly things can spiral out of control towards war.

    Colonel Bogey Sam Crow an hour ago

    I, too, take issue with the headline "PUTIN BACKS DOWN," but my complaint is with Breitbart. It's as if they're trying to stir things up by acting just like the MSM. It would have been wiser to just say "Putin Reverses, Meets Tillerson." BTW I like the Sam Crow handle.

    WaitYourTurn maganow an hour ago

    You read my mind. Why does Breitbart bash Putin with a headline of "backing down" when Putin meeting with Tillerson is exactly what Trump and Bannon would have wanted? It's important not to beat up on people who are engaging reasonably and diplomatically with our administration.

    pinetreeflag WaitYourTurn 44 minutes ago

    Tillerson and the globalists/neocons/deep state better back off this dismantling of the Assad regime if his boss Trump is saying there won't be any more action in Syria.

    RiseLiberty pinetreeflag 27 minutes ago

    He didn't say no more action. He said no troops. Plenty of action from the air and sea still possible.

    LEEPERMAX RiseLiberty 23 minutes ago

    Needless to say ...

    "Russian State Media" seems more informed than "American State Media"

    David Brainerd WaitYourTurn 36 minutes ago

    Because Breitbart is covering for Trump's new neocon warmonger agenda.

    Voltaire David Brainerd 9 minutes ago

    David I think Trump is going for peace through strength. Obama has turned half of America into apologist pacifists - and just look at the state of the world after Obamas lead-from-behind approach. A MESS !!! Trump is asserting leadership.

    PCM WaitYourTurn 34 minutes ago

    It's also very important no to look like Putin caved in to Trump. He must look strong and "save face" at home to his people. Making him look weak is silly and foolish, childlike.

    Susan Sloate WaitYourTurn 8 minutes ago

    I LOVE that you called it 'our administration '. It's the first time I've seen an administration as 'mine ' in at least 30 years!

    Gordon Geikko 2.0 maganow an hour ago

    It's all about Clicks...
    You have to Create Tension to Create Interest...
    So they create Tension even where there is none...
    Breitbart makes their living selling conflict.
    That's what makes it Interesting
    ""World Peace Achieved -- Everyone is Happy !" doesn't make anyone scared, worried or pissed...not that we will ever see that headline...

    British Bulldog Gordon Geikko 2.0 29 minutes ago

    Yeah, fun for them maybe ... while the rest of us sweat it out

    Dave Tibor Gordon Geikko 2.0 30 minutes ago

    You're probably right, from Breitbart's perspective. That's sad because it's a big mistake. Breitbart readers are annoyed by misleading hype. BTW - love your posts.

    m1a1_79 Gordon Geikko 2.0 7 minutes ago

    breitbart got a lot of free publicity in this last campaign cycle for so roundly supporting trump, now trump's won, and bb is one of the most "trusted" news sources for Trump, even if only via bannon.

    They should really try to elevate themselves above click bait if they want to be taken seriously. And no, not MSM serious, ACTUAL serous. IE: do some damn journalism and stop feeding trolls and generating click bait.

    /rant over

    [Apr 12, 2017] Putin Trust With US Deteriorated After Trump Took Office

    Apr 12, 2017 | news.antiwar.com

    In an interview today, Russian President Vladimir Putin reported that the level of trust with the United States on a day-to-day, working basis began getting worse after Trump took office. This is a surprise, as the Kremlin had welcomed Trump's election and was expressing high hopes for improved relations.

    Of course, those improved ties never came to pass, with the administration abandoning plans to ease sanctions on Russia shortly thereafter, and backed off more or less all the stated plans of shifting US policy in Syria toward a focus on ISIS, which culminated last week in the US attacking the Syrian government outright.

    While the Obama Administration of the last few years was every bit as hostile toward Russia as the Trump Administration is, they never presented themselves as anything but hostile. Putin's comments suggest Russia had high hopes for rapprochement with Trump, and the dramatic reverse by the new administration had badly eroded Russia's trust in anything they say.

    [Apr 12, 2017] Denmark seeks to change law on pipelines amid Nord Stream 2 divisions

    Apr 12, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    et Al , April 10, 2017 at 5:00 am

    Euractiv with Neuters: Denmark seeks to change law on pipelines amid Nord Stream 2 divisions
    http://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/denmark-seeks-to-change-law-on-pipelines-amid-nord-stream-2-divisions/

    Denmark's government is proposing amending legislation to allow it to ban pipeline projects on the grounds of foreign and security policy, due to concerns raised by Russian efforts to build a disputed gas pipeline through Danish waters.

    "We want to have the possibility to say yes or no from a perspective of security and foreign policy," the minister of energy and climate, Lars Christian Lilleholt, told Reuters, adding that it was currently only possible to veto such projects on the grounds of environmental concerns .

    Denmark and Sweden earlier this year requested that the European Commission intervene in Nord Stream 2 before the two states agree on permits for the pipeline to pass through their waters. EU diplomats said there was little scope for either nation to block the plan.

    The current regulatory framework does not allow Denmark to say "no" to the construction of transit pipelines in territorial waters on the basis of foreign policy considerations, the ministry said in a statement .

    EU sources have said the Commission, sensing that there may ultimately be no legal basis to block approval of Nord Stream 2, is delaying it as long as possible .

    Denmark's right-wing minority government would now negotiate with other parties to win support for the proposal.
    ####

    ' sensing that there may ultimately be no legal basis to block approval..' – Well that's quite a polishing of the EU turd when we know that the EU has no legal way to block the pipeline, sic the opinion of the EU's own Legal Service. How delicate the EU stuffed suits are that they cannot just admit it outright. Oh, but that would be a propaganda victory for Russia. They should be grateful because if they had blocked it, it would have been a very clear message that the EU's Rule of Law which it proudly pronounces around the world is barely a fig leaf that is dropped as the slightest political pressure. It's a joke already, but with a project as big as . as it has done with much political decisions

    marknesop , April 10, 2017 at 5:56 am
    While they're creating magic out of whole cloth, why not a law that anyone who discovers significant gas deposits anywhere must immediately hand them over to the EU for their exclusive use and disbursement? Or a law that orders massive new gas deposits be discovered in Denmark?
    et Al , April 10, 2017 at 6:43 am
    I suspect that the government is having a slow news day and as there is absolutely no consequence to Russophobia as it is essentially a free gift that keeps on giving when and wherever is needed, i.e. to distract from domestic politics.

    The Whole G7 'How can we f/k up Russia further' conveniently segues with the improvement of Russia's economy and the continued failure of G7 sanctions against Russia. I'm not really sure what else they can do without shooting themselves in the foot.

    There's already been some whinging that the West's actions have only further driven it in to China's arms, so WTF? I guess they have to come up with something that looks tough, but isn't. After all, they will need to put out a key statement signed by them all. IN short, 'This spade is far too small. Let's go and get another one!'.

    [Apr 12, 2017] Reports of African migrants being bought and sold in Lybia mark a new low in the Lybia West-induced crisis

    Apr 12, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    Warren , April 11, at 7:12 am

    You can thank NATO's aggression against Libya in 2011 for the reintroduction of slavery to the African continent.

    African migrants sold in Libya 'slave markets', IOM says


    Reports of African migrants being bought and sold mark a new low in the crisis

    Africans trying to reach Europe are being sold by their captors in "slave markets" in Libya, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says.

    Victims told IOM that after being detained by people smugglers or militia groups, they were taken to town squares or car parks to be sold.

    Migrants with skills like painting or tiling would fetch higher prices, the head of the IOM in Libya told the BBC.

    Libya has been in chaos since the 2011 Nato-backed ousting of Muammar Gaddafi.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-39567632

    marknesop , April 11, 2017 at 5:07 pm
    Thanks, NATO. Most people would learn from their 'mistakes'. But not NATO – it can't wait for the next empowering liberation in the name of freedom and democracy.

    [Apr 12, 2017] Ukraines central bank chief resigns but not before amassing substnatial personal wealth

    Notable quotes:
    "... Здобулы! ..."
    "... http://vesti-ukr.com/svetskie-vesti/90064-gontareva-ezdit-na-pjati-avto-i-uzhinaet-u-bassejna ..."
    Apr 12, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
    Warren , April 10, 2017 at 4:36 am

    Ukraine's central bank chief resigns

    The governor of Ukraine's central bank, Valeriya Gontareva, has resigned the post after three years, following intense pressure from tycoons whose banks she shut down for conducting illegal transactions and loans.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39551699

    Lyttenburgh , April 10, 2017 at 10:26 am
    Meanwhile her personal wealth after 3 years in chrage of Ukraine's finances (read: of the Western donors money) MYSTERIOUSLY increased to 7 blns of hryvnias and entire squadron of luxury cars (from 3.5 mln hryvnas upwards each). What can I say? Здобулы!

    http://vesti-ukr.com/svetskie-vesti/90064-gontareva-ezdit-na-pjati-avto-i-uzhinaet-u-bassejna

    cartman , April 10, 2017 at 11:15 am
    I wonder if Nabiullina has a pink Barbie car. Probably not to her taste.
    Jen , April 10, 2017 at 10:43 pm
    I think we've found Dave Cameron's soul mate.
    Moscow Exile , April 10, 2017 at 10:47 pm
    You are not suggesting that she resembles Miss Piggy, are you?
    Jen , April 11, 2017 at 12:49 am
    She looks the type to put Call-Me-Dave in his place, which is in a pig sty.
    et Al , April 10, 2017 at 11:18 am
    Neuters: Ukraine president's grip weakens as central bank chief quits
    http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ukraine-crisis-politics-analysis-idUKKBN17C0RU

    If Ukraine's central bank chief needed any more incentive to quit, last week she woke up to find the image of a pig draped in a Russian flag spray-painted onto the wall of her house and a gaggle of young protesters calling her a Russian stooge.

    After a sustained hate campaign that also included a coffin laid at her door, Valeria Gontareva finally quit on Monday.

    Her departure, with no obvious candidate for a successor, leaves President Petro Poroshenko with one fewer ally in power at a time when lenders keeping Ukraine afloat already question his ability to follow through on promised reforms .

    [Apr 09, 2017] Miilitary brass notes only 40% of Tomahawk missiles fired hit targeted Syrian base

    Apr 09, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Damson , April 7, 2017 at 2:04 pm

    And yet more:

    Russian radar data show that the Tomahawk missiles were fired from the US destroyers Porter and Ross in the Mediterranean between 03:42 and 03:56 Moscow time, the general said.
    The Syrian army's air defense system will be reinforced in the near future to protect the most important infrastructure facilities, Konashenkov assured.
    In 2016, several batteries of Russia's air defense system S-300 were moved to the naval logistic facility at Tartus to provide protection for the base and Russian ships off Syria's shores. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said a multi-tier defense system had been created around Tartus and the Hmeymim air base. At the end of November the newest air defense system S-400 was delivered to Syria after a Turkish F-18 fighter shot down Russia's Sukhoi-24 bomber.
    Pantsir systems protect Russian military facilities from low-flying aircraft and missiles. Also, the defense of Russian facilities incorporates the system Bastion, capable of hitting naval and ground targets 350-450 kilometers away. Russia has helped Syria to restore the operation of its S-200 air defense systems that protect Russian bases from potential attacks from the east. Also, the Syrian army uses air defense systems Buk.

    The chemical attack

    The US missile strike in Syria had been planned in advance, while the chemical weapons incident was used just as a pretext, Konashenkov has noted.

    "It is nakedly clear that the attack on a Syrian air base with US cruise missiles had been planned well beforehand," he said.
    "For any specialist it is clear that the decision to conduct the missile strike on Syria had been made in Washington long before the events at Khan Shaykhun, which were used a far-fetched pretext.
    The show of military muscle stemmed exclusively from internal political reasons," the ministry's spokesman added.

    Cooperation with Pentagon
    The Russian Defense Ministry has suspended cooperation with Pentagon on prevention of incidents in Syria.
    "We consider these steps taken by the United States to be a blatant violation of the 2015 Memorandum on preventing military incidents and ensuring security during operations in Syria's air space," the ministry's spokesman said.
    "The Russian Defense Ministry is suspending cooperation with Pentagon aimed at the implementation of the memorandum."
    "To protect the most sensitive facilities of the Syrian infrastructure, a set of measures will be taken in the immediate future to reinforce and raise the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces' air defense system," he added.

    Syria' losses
    US strikes on military airfield in Homs province leave six dead - Syrian armed forces.
    "According to the air base command, two Syrian servicemen went missing, while four were killed and six sustained burn injuries while combating the fire," Konashenkov said.
    At the same time, according to the Syrian army command, the attack killed six people.
    According to the Russian Defense Ministry, six Mikoyan MiG-23 fighter jets, a radar station and other equipment have been destroyed.
    "The strike destroyed a logistics warehouse, a training building, a canteen, six MiG-23 planes in the repair hangars and also a radar station."
    "The runway, taxiways and parked planes of the Syrian Air Force have not been damaged," the spokesman said.

    Trump admits he issued order for missile strike on Syrian airbase

    On Thursday night, at the direction of US President Donald Trump, the US forces fired 59 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles on a Syrian military air base located in the Homs Governorate. The attack came as a response to the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Idlib Governorate on April 4. The US authorities believe that the airstrike on Idlib was launched from that air base.

    [Apr 09, 2017] https://www.yahoo.com/news/not-voted-trump-online-furious-153556876.html

    Notable quotes:
    "... NBC Nightly News ..."
    "... He does not need us anymore, ho ha new friends now. Neocons, Zionists even Clinton. The SWAMP loves him now, he IS the SWAMP now. ..."
    Apr 09, 2017 | www.yahoo.com
    'This Is Not What We Voted For': Trump's Online Base Furious Over Syria Intervention Yahoo View April 8, 2017

    Watch TV shows , movies and more on Yahoo View , available now on iOS and Android .

    In the days since Trump brought the U.S. deeper into that country's six-year-old civil war, his most fervent right-wing supporters have lashed out online, with many saying they feel betrayed.

    NBC Nightly News

    NBC Nightly News

    Watch "NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt," providing reports and analysis of the day's most newsworthy national and international events.

    John 58 seconds ago It's true. Trump has broken his campaign promises, and stabbed his supporters in the back. He has done exactly what I expected Hillary and Jeb to do ... left Obamacare in place and launched a sneak attack on Syria.
    What's the point of voting in 2018? wolf pfizer 1 minute ago It's inter-religion war. Shiait Asad and sunni Rebels. We don't need to get involved except for providing humanitarian assistance. There is a false narrative that is being propagated here in the US about Rebels that somehow they are for democracy. Don't be in any illusion that these Rebels are fighting for democracy. Average Syrian enjoyed more personal freedom under Asad Regime compared to other Arab countries in that part of the world. About the Chemical attack, the Rebels are vicious enough to carry out such attack and pin it on Asad. Let neighboring countries take care of the situation. We should stay out and concentrate on our homeland. We enough problems of our own here. Cory 3 minutes ago As Americans we NEVER like to admit when we get something wrong. We always try to justify things by blaming someone else. The Dems blame the GoP. The GoP blame the Dems. It's always something. The older generation likes to blame the younger and vice- versa. The real fact is everything that is right or wrong in this country is the result of all of us. The past 50 years BOTH parties have had ample opportunity to make changes and neither party has done anything to make changes. Any policy Trump makes now someone else will change down the road, much like Trump has done to Obama. Welcome to the new age of instability. notinmymane 6 minutes ago You Trumpanzees got conned by a snake-oil salesman. Didn't you know that he was a conman before you voted for him? Stuuuuupid! The Hated Stooge 6 minutes ago And The Trump Vaudeville Act circle's the globe with Creepy Kushner leading the way. Kushner will fix everything. scrub 11 minutes ago For every Trump supporter who is upset with his decision to bomb Syria there are a dozen or more who still stand behind him and that decision. Why won't you do an article on that, Yahoo? Have you informed all the readers, pro and anti-Trump alike, that Obama managed to bomb at least one Middle East country every day that he was in office (8 fecking years, and that was over oil, not inhumane treatment of people)? Where's the outrage over that? Gertwise 12 minutes ago This is exactly what they voted for. They were warned, pleaded with, shown facts, and they still voted him into office. You reap what you sow. Alex Verne 12 minutes ago He does not need us anymore, ho ha new friends now. Neocons, Zionists even Clinton. The SWAMP loves him now, he IS the SWAMP now. Edward 20 minutes ago They also think Bannon is still relevant.

    [Apr 09, 2017] Full blown neo-McCartism is now politically correct in the USA

    Apr 09, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Peter K. -> BenIsNotYoda... , April 07, 2017 at 01:39 PM
    If there is some connection, it will come out after some time. Comey said there was an FBI investigation into Russian interference in the election. The former National Security adviser Flynn wants an immunity deal.

    But the liberals like PGL have certainly gone hysterical in that it reminds me of McCarthyism. They'd rather talk about the traitors than why Hillary lost the election to a buffoon. Samantha Bee joked that the Russian hackers who spread fake news in Midwest swing states had a better game plan than Hillary.

    The center-left cant' believe they lost to Trump. So they focus on Russia, the external enemy.

    Kind of like wagging the dog.

    Sanjait -> Peter K.... , April 07, 2017 at 11:37 PM
    The Trump Organization subsisted for years off Russian oligarch money and his campaign and administration are lousy with people paid directly by them for political activities including his son.

    And you wonder "if" there is a connection? Bless your useful heart.

    ilsm -> Sanjait... , April 08, 2017 at 06:48 AM
    while the Clinton

    mob took Sunni

    royals' money

    in exchange for US

    keeping the Shi'a down

    it is different'

    when it is

    slaughter by US'

    puppet masters

    ilsm -> BenIsNotYoda... , April 07, 2017 at 05:36 PM
    What is the difference between Watergate and Obama wire tapping Trump and the GOP?

    Nixon did not trash the US constitution.

    If you think that is peanuts I suggest you look at pictures of US cemeteries in France.

    Sanjait -> ilsm... , April 07, 2017 at 11:38 PM
    I'm going to bet you are a 9/11 truther, and I suspect you're also the type who thinks fluoridated water is some kind of conspiracy.
    ilsm -> Sanjait... , April 08, 2017 at 06:52 AM
    your thinking skills

    are suspect

    what would you

    risk to find out?

    you do well betting?

    as Twain said

    it is difficult

    to argue with

    non "thinkers"

    they bring you

    into their delusion

    and beat you

    with experience

    libezkova -> Sanjait... , April 08, 2017 at 10:29 AM
    "I'm going to bet you are a 9/11 truther"

    I am going to bet that you are Hillary email scandal denier. And worse -- clueless jingoist, who get your all foreign policy information from the CNN and then uncritically regurgitate this neoliberal propaganda here.

    Each of us has a set of positions, and there should be some level of respect of them despite differences, because it is the debate that gets us closer to the truth.

    And it is a required behavior for those, who like you continuously try to show up your university education, despite the evidence to the contrary that that their posts often produce.

    The real sign of the university education is the tolerance toward the opponents. It is badly lacking in your behavior in this forum.

    [Apr 08, 2017] Trump does have a foreign policy strategy. And I can tell you the current Trump strategy. This is: Surrender is an option. By Trump. To neocons.

    Apr 08, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Chris G -> Peter K.... , April 07, 2017 at 07:20 AM
    Missile strike demonstrates American leadership. Always bipartisan support for that. Death chemical warfare agents unacceptable so must do something. Didn't I read a Syrian quoted the other day "I buried my family today. If they had been killed by barrel bombs I could have given Assad a pass but death by chemical weapons is unacceptable."? Did I not read that? That aside, clearly there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to kill civilians. Assad crossed that line and we had to do something.

    PS Real men don't consult Congress before ordering missile strikes on sovereign nations. It'd be un-American to question the wisdom of bombing a butcher like Assad. What downside could there be?

    Chris G said in reply to pgl... , April 07, 2017 at 09:02 AM
    Incompetent hawks are awful. We can at least take some comfort that Schumer and Pelosi called out Trump for acting recklessly... Oh, wait, that was in an alternate reality where they did that. @#$%.

    If it weren't for incompetence and belligerence we would have any foreign policy at all.

    pgl -> Chris G ... , April 07, 2017 at 09:46 AM
    There are some who are asking what is the strategy. Of course Trump has none except what ever he decides to tweet at 3 in the morning.
    libezkova -> pgl... , April 07, 2017 at 05:25 PM
    He does have a strategy. And I can tell you the current Trump strategy. This is: Surrender is an option. By Trump. To neocons.

    [Apr 08, 2017] CIA bluff: Brennan claims that CIA had Evidence of Russian Effort to Help Trump Earlier Than Believed

    Looks like John O. Brennan , then the CIA director was a very important player in creating anti-Russian hysteria. Who put a lot of efforts is fanning the "Russian threat" meme designed to suppress Hillary email scandal and DNC revelations. some senators such as McCain and Reid also played a role: "Mr. Reid fired off another letter on Oct. 30, accusing Mr. Comey of a "double standard" in reviving the Clinton investigation while sitting on "explosive information" about possible ties between Russia and Mr. Trump."
    Apr 08, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    pgl, April 07, 2017 at 11:41 AM

    So on the same night, we sent missiles against an Assad airbase, the New York Times rant this story:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/us/trump-russia-cia-john-brennan.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

    CIA Had Evidence of Russian Effort to Help Trump Earlier Than Believed

    ilsm -> pgl... , April 07, 2017 at 05:47 PM
    No way could Russia have done worse than the crooks in the DNC!

    Besides the Russia Putin canard diverts attention from the DNC trashing of the constitution.....

    libezkova -> ilsm... , April 08, 2017 at 12:31 PM
    I suspect that this is more of an attempt to unite the divided nation (and, especially, the Democratic Party), in which the majority of population now rejects official ideology of neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization. With trust in official institution such as Congress, at dangerously low levels. And rumors (aka "fake news") rampant due to lack of trust in discredited official media channels. Proliferation of rumors ("improvised news") as Tamotsu Shubitani noted in his book ( https://www.amazon.com/Improvised-News-Sociological-Study-Rumor/dp/0672511487 ) is a definitive sign of the crisis of legitimacy of the ruling elite and/or dominant ideology of a given society. Sign of growing level of distrust.

    War hysteria is a proven cure in such circumstances. It also helps to suppress Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Susan A. Brewer is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point book, Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq, told a fascinating history of how the US elite has conducted what Donald Rumsfeld called "perception management" on the US population:

    == quote ==

    10. WE FIGHT TO STOP ANOTHER HITLER. There was only one Hitler, but he lives on in wartime propaganda since World War II.

    9. WE FIGHT OVER THERE SO WE DON'T HAVE TO FIGHT HERE. In this message, America typically is portrayed as a pastoral land of small towns, not as an urban, industrialized and militant superpower.

    8. WE FIGHT CLEAN WARS WITH SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY. This message suggests that U.S. troops will not be in much danger, nor will innocent civilians be killed in what is projected to be a quick and decisive conflict.

    7. WE FIGHT TO PROTECT WOMEN AND CHILDREN. A traditional theme of war propaganda since ancient times, it is accompanied by compelling visuals and heartrending stories.

    6. WE FIGHT BRUTISH, FANATICAL ENEMIES. Another classic, it dehumanizes enemy fighters.

    5. WE FIGHT TO UNITE THE NATION. Here war is shown to heal old wounds and unify the divisions caused by the Civil War, class conflict, racial and ethnic differences, or past failures such as the Vietnam War.

    4. WE FIGHT FOR THE FLAG AND THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS. The trend has been to emphasize the flag over the republic. The more flags on display, the less likely the people's elected representatives will debate foreign policy or exercise their power to declare war.

    3. WE FIGHT TO LIBERATE THE OPPRESSED. When the oppressed resist U.S. help, they appear ungrateful and in need of American guidance especially if they have valuable resources.

    2. WE FIGHT TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. During the Philippine War, for example, this message advised that Uncle Sam knew what was best for the little brown brothers.

    1. WE FIGHT TO PROTECT THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE. Although the American way of life stands for peace, it requires a lot of fighting.

    == end of quote ==

    So it like the real goal of current warmongering hysteria is to unite the nation in general and Democratic Party in particular against the common enemy, using Russian threat as a scapegoat.

    This also helps to preserve the grip of Clinton (neoliberal) wing on Democratic Party, because after Hillary momentous fiasco, in normal circumstances, all of them need to go and be replaced with Sanders wing appointees.

    [Apr 06, 2017] The only pre-election promises that actually will be retained are torture, Guantanamo and stealing their oil. Did you vote for these items? Anyway, that is all you are left with. Get used to it

    Notable quotes:
    "... you like most losers are driven by your own projections. You projected your hopes and wishful thinking on Trump and it worked perfectly for him. He got elected. ..."
    "... now after firing Bannon there is nothing left. He was the last and the only guarantor of your hopes. That's why MSM hated Bannon so much. ..."
    "... torture, Guantanamo and stealing their oil ..."
    "... enjoy your Trump as president ..."
    Apr 06, 2017 | www.unz.com

    utu , April 6, 2017 at 3:43 pm GMTn

    @Buzz Mohawk
    This turn of events is the biggest challenge ever to my support of Trump. If he really goes the way he is indicating, he will lose the support of people like me -- and there may be millions like me. We have no alternative candidate, but we will never again be led down this road.

    If Trump turns, that is the end of everything.

    " we will never again be led down this road." You will, you will because you like most losers are driven by your own projections. You projected your hopes and wishful thinking on Trump and it worked perfectly for him. He got elected.

    But now after firing Bannon there is nothing left. He was the last and the only guarantor of your hopes. That's why MSM hated Bannon so much.

    The only pre-election promises that actually will be retained are torture, Guantanamo and stealing their oil. Did you vote for these items? Anyway, that is all you are left with. Get used to it:

    torture, Guantanamo and stealing their oil

    And enjoy your Trump as president.

    [Apr 06, 2017] Bannon no longer on Trump's National Security Council

    Notable quotes:
    "... "regular attendees" ..."
    "... "Susan Rice operationalized the NSC during the last administration. I was put on to ensure that it was de-operationalized," Bannon said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal. ..."
    "... "General McMaster has returned the NSC to its proper function," he added. ..."
    Apr 06, 2017 | www.rt.com
    President Donald Trump has reorganized the National Security Council, and his Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon is apparently no longer on the Principals Committee, according to a memo that has surfaced. Bloomberg has posted a memo from Trump, dated April 4, reorganizing the National Security Council and updating the list of officials who sit on its Principals Committee. The document shows no role for Bannon and a reduced role for Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert.

    Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, are again considered "regular attendees" of the principals committee.

    In addition to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, the regular attendees will be the secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Energy, Homeland Security and the Attorney General; the national and homeland security advisers; and the US envoy to the UN, as well as the CIA director, in addition to the Joint Chiefs chair and the DNI.

    The White House chief of staff, counsel and deputy counsel for national security, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget are also invited to attend any NSC meeting, the memo says.

    "Susan Rice operationalized the NSC during the last administration. I was put on to ensure that it was de-operationalized," Bannon said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.

    "General McMaster has returned the NSC to its proper function," he added.

    [Apr 06, 2017] Diplomats warn of Russia hysteria

    Apr 06, 2017 | thehill.com
    "That's total horseshit," said Wayne Merry, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council who worked as a U.S. diplomat to Russia and has known Kislyak for decades. "It's a witch-hunt with paranoia and hysteria at its core. Normally it's the Russians who become paranoid and hysterical. That the conspiracy theories and paranoia is coming from Americans makes me very uncomfortable."

    The past two U.S. ambassadors to Russia defended Kislyak in interviews with The Hill: Michael McFaul a fierce Trump critic who was appointed by former President Obama, and John Beyrle, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush but served for three years under Obama.

    Both former ambassadors tell The Hill that the Russian ambassador was merely doing his job and that there is no evidence of any illicit collusion between him and the Trump campaign.

    McFaul and Beyrle say they are extremely troubled by evidence that suggests the Russians interfered in the U.S. election. They support an independent investigation into the matter.

    But allegations and insinuations that Kislyak was the point person for this - and that it could have played out in broad daylight at meetings on Capitol Hill or at Trump campaign events - are preposterous, they say.

    "Kislyak's job is to meet with government officials and campaign people and I think he's good at his job," said McFaul. "People should meet with the Russian ambassador and it's wrong to criminalize that or discourage it. I want the Russian government to be as informed as possible about the American political process. When I was ambassador, it was frustrating how poorly informed the Russian government was. It's a good thing to meet with him, not a bad thing."

    National security experts generally agree that Sessions and other Trump campaign officials have handled the Russia issue poorly.

    Sessions, they say, should have told Congress about his meeting with Kislyak.

    And they say Flynn was reckless and wrong to speak with Russian diplomats about sanctions during the transition period when Obama was still president.

    Still, former diplomats say the atmosphere in Washington over anything that carries even a whiff of Russia is out of control.

    "It's the usual Washington breathlessness that accompanies any story these days about Trump or the Russians," said Beyrle. "That doesn't mean there isn't need for an investigation. There is almost no question that there was Russian interference in the election and there needs to be an investigation. But to conclude from all this that Kislyak was somehow a bad actor is missing the target."

    National security experts say the uproar around Kislyak could have foreign policy reverberations, potentially making life difficult for the current U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Tefft, or his successor, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.

    "The Russian default mode is reciprocity," said Beyrle. "If they feel we're doing it to them, more often than not they'll do it back to us."

    McFaul has experienced this first-hand. He routinely landed on the front page of Russian newspapers, accused of fomenting revolution.

    "I was demonized and called all kinds of things in the Russian press and I don't want Americans to do to Kislyak what the Russian government did to me," McFaul said. "It's not good for U.S. Russian relations. People should be able to meet with him without fear of being called a double-agent. Throwing around loosely, without documentation, that this person is an intelligence officer is dangerous."

    It's damaging to U.S. interests for lawmakers to be skittish about meeting with foreign ambassadors, according to Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor of national security at the U.S. Naval War College.

    From the Russian perspective, Gvosdev is worried that the frenzy around Kislyak will provoke the Russians to shut down diplomatic backchannels needed for the countries to cooperate on even basic levels.

    "Russia is still a major player. We can't not talk to them, " Gvosdev said. "We are really creating issues for future diplomacy with the Russians and this will make it harder when there's an actual major challenge from them."

    Andrey Sushentsov, the head of the Moscow-based Foreign Policy Advisory Group and a program director at the Valdai Club there, says the damage has already been done.

    "It seems that the "Russian question" is becoming one of the issues in America's culture wars," Sushentsov said in an email to The Hill. "By demonizing a foreign partner for a political purposes the U.S. limits it's capability in global governance and diplomacy.

    "Russia was not expecting the relations with the U.S. to improve significantly, but was not striving to worsen them even more. What Russia needs is predictability and stability in its relations with the US - even if this is a negative stability. Current climate in Washington does not permit this." Tags Jeff Sessions

    [Apr 04, 2017] Top Obama Adviser Sought Names of Trump Associates in Intel by Eli Lake

    Apr 04, 2017 | www.bloomberg.com
    White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

    The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's policy on "unmasking" the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like "U.S. Person One."

    The National Security Council's senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was conducting the review, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with Bloomberg View on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice's multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel's office, who reviewed more of Rice's requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.

    The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations -- primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.

    Rice did not respond to an email seeking comment on Monday morning. Her role in requesting the identities of Trump transition officials adds an important element to the dueling investigations surrounding the Trump White House since the president's inauguration.

    Both the House and Senate intelligence committees are probing any ties between Trump associates and a Russian influence operation against Hillary Clinton during the election. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Representative Devin Nunes, is also investigating how the Obama White House kept tabs on the Trump transition after the election through unmasking the names of Trump associates incidentally collected in government eavesdropping of foreign officials.

    Rice herself has not spoken directly on the issue of unmasking. Last month when she was asked on the "PBS NewsHour" about reports that Trump transition officials, including Trump himself, were swept up in incidental intelligence collection, Rice said : "I know nothing about this," adding, "I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that account today."

    Rice's requests to unmask the names of Trump transition officials do not vindicate Trump's own tweets from March 4 in which he accused Obama of illegally tapping Trump Tower. There remains no evidence to support that claim.

    But Rice's multiple requests to learn the identities of Trump officials discussed in intelligence reports during the transition period does highlight a longstanding concern for civil liberties advocates about U.S. surveillance programs. The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything. This suggests Rice's unmasking requests were likely within the law.

    The news about Rice also sheds light on the strange behavior of Nunes in the last two weeks. It emerged last week that he traveled to the White House last month, the night before he made an explosive allegation about Trump transition officials caught up in incidental surveillance. At the time he said he needed to go to the White House because the reports were only on a database for the executive branch. It now appears that he needed to view computer systems within the National Security Council that would include the logs of Rice's requests to unmask U.S. persons.

    The ranking Democrat on the committee Nunes chairs, Representative Adam Schiff, viewed these reports on Friday. In comments to the press over the weekend he declined to discuss the contents of these reports, but also said it was highly unusual for the reports to be shown only to Nunes and not himself and other members of the committee.

    Indeed, much about this is highly unusual: if not how the surveillance was collected, then certainly how and why it was disseminated.

    [Apr 04, 2017] Clear and undeniable case of mass hysteria in the USA -- a new anti-russian witch hunt

    Line was the case during McCartyism, when mass hysteria grips the USA it becomes a powerful and destructive material force. Kind of a new type of explosive device.
    It would be very fanny, if it is not so tragic for a country to descend into some king of pseudo-religious trance...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Whatever the truth about Trump and Russia, the speculation surrounding it has become a dangerous case of mass hysteria ..."
    "... This is one of the tricks that keeps every good conspiracy theory going. Nobody wants to be the one claiming the emperor has no clothes the day His Highness walks out naked. And this Russia thing has spun out of control into just such an exercise of conspiratorial mass hysteria. ..."
    "... But if you're not worried about accusing non-believers of being spies, or pegging legitimate dissent as treason, there's a third problem that should scare everyone. ..."
    "... But on the mass hysteria front, we already have evidence enough to fill a dozen books. And if it doesn't freak you out, it probably should. ..."
    www.rollingstone.com

    Putin Derangement Syndrome Arrives by Taibbi

    Whatever the truth about Trump and Russia, the speculation surrounding it has become a dangerous case of mass hysteria

    • So Michael Flynn, who was Donald Trump's national security adviser before he got busted talking out of school to Russia's ambassador, has reportedly offered to testify in exchange for immunity.
    • Trump has stuffed his Cabinet with tyrants, zealots and imbeciles – all bent on demolishing our government from within
    • For seemingly the 100th time, social media is exploding. This is it! The big reveal!
    • Perhaps it will come off just the way people are expecting. Perhaps Flynn will get a deal, walk into the House or the Senate surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers, and unspool the whole sordid conspiracy.
    • He will explain that Donald Trump, compromised by ancient deals with Russian mobsters, and perhaps even blackmailed by an unspeakable KGB sex tape, made a secret deal. He'll say Trump agreed to downplay the obvious benefits of an armed proxy war in Ukraine with nuclear-armed Russia in exchange for Vladimir Putin's help in stealing the emails of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and John Podesta.

    I personally would be surprised if this turned out to be the narrative, mainly because we haven't seen any real evidence of it. But episodes like the Flynn story have even the most careful reporters paralyzed. What if, tomorrow, it all turns out to be true?

    What if reality does turn out to be a massive connect-the-dots image of St. Basil's Cathedral sitting atop the White House? (This was suddenly legitimate British conspiracist Louise Mensch's construction in The New York Times last week.) What if all the Glenn Beck-style far-out charts with the circles and arrows somehow all make sense?

    This is one of the tricks that keeps every good conspiracy theory going. Nobody wants to be the one claiming the emperor has no clothes the day His Highness walks out naked. And this Russia thing has spun out of control into just such an exercise of conspiratorial mass hysteria.

    Even I think there should be a legitimate independent investigation – one that, given Trump's history, might uncover all sorts of things. But almost irrespective of what ends up being uncovered on the Trump side, the public prosecution of this affair has taken on a malevolent life of its own.

    One way we recognize a mass hysteria movement is that everyone who doesn't believe is accused of being in on the plot. This has been going on virtually unrestrained in both political and media circles in recent weeks.

    The aforementioned Mensch, a noted loon who thinks Putin murdered Andrew Breitbart but has somehow been put front and center by The Times and HBO's Real Time, has denounced an extraordinary list of Kremlin plants.

    She's tabbed everyone from Jeff Sessions ("a Russian partisan") to Rudy Giuliani and former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom ("agents of influence") to Glenn Greenwald ("Russian shill") to ProPublica and Democracy Now! (also "Russian shills"), to the 15-year-old girl with whom Anthony Weiner sexted (really, she says, a Russian hacker group called "Crackas With Attitudes") to an unnamed number of FBI agents in the New York field office ("moles"). And that's just for starters.

    Others are doing the same. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters, upon seeing the strange behavior of Republican Intel Committee chair Devin Nunes, asked "what kind of dossier" the Kremlin has on Nunes.

    Dem-friendly pollster Matt McDermott wondered why reporters Michael Tracey and Zaid Jilani aren't on board with the conspiracy stories (they might be "unwitting" agents!) and noted, without irony, that Russian bots mysteriously appear every time he tweets negatively about them.

    Think about that last one. Does McDermott think Tracey and Jilani call their handlers at the sight of a scary Matt McDermott tweet and have the FSB send waves of Russian bots at him on command? Or does he think it's an automated process? What goes through the heads of such people?

    I've written a few articles on the Russia subject that have been very tame, basically arguing that it might be a good idea to wait for evidence of collusion before those of us in the media jump in the story with both feet. But even I've gotten the treatment.

    I've been "outed" as a possible paid Putin plant by the infamous "PropOrNot" group, which is supposedly dedicated to rooting out Russian "agents of influence." You might remember PropOrNot as the illustrious research team the Washington Post once relied on for a report that accused 200 alternative websites of being "routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season."

    Politicians are getting into the act, too. It was one thing when Rand Paul balked at OKing the expansion of NATO to Montenegro, and John McCain didn't hesitate to say that "the senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin."

    Even Bernie Sanders has himself been accused of being a Putin plant by Mensch. But even he's gotten on board of late, asking, "What do the Russians have on Mr. Trump?"

    So even people who themselves have been accused of being Russian plants are now accusing people of being Russian plants. As the Russians would say, it's enough to make your bashka hurt.

    Sanders should know better. Last week, during hearings in the Senate, multiple witnesses essentially pegged his electoral following as unwitting fellow travelers for Putin.

    Former NSA chief Keith Alexander spoke openly of how Russia used the Sanders campaign to "drive a wedge within the Democratic Party," while Dr. Thomas Rid of Kings College in London spoke of Russia's use of "unwitting agents" and "overeager journalists" to drive narratives that destabilized American politics.

    This testimony was brought out by Virginia Democrat Mark Warner. Warner has been in full-blown "precious bodily fluids" mode throughout this scandal. During an interview with The Times on the Russia subject a month back, there was a thud outside the window. "That may just be the FSB," he said. The paper was unsure if he was kidding.

    Warner furthermore told The Times that in order to get prepared for his role as an exposer of 21st-century Russian perfidy, he was "losing himself in a book about the Romanovs," and had been quizzing staffers about "Tolstoy and Nabokov."

    This is how nuts things are now: a senator brushes up on Nabokov and Tolstoy (Tolstoy!) to get pumped to expose Vladimir Putin.

    Even the bizarre admission by FBI director (and sudden darling of the same Democrats who hated him months ago) James Comey that he didn't know anything about Russia's biggest company didn't seem to trouble Americans very much. Here's the key exchange, from a House hearing in which Jackie Speier quizzed Comey:

    SPEIER: Now, do we know who Gazprom-Media is? Do you know anything about Gazprom, director?
    COMEY: I don't.
    SPEIER: Well, it's a – it's an oil company.

    (Incidentally, Gazprom – primarily a natural-gas giant – is not really an oil company. So both Comey and Speier got it wrong.)

    As Leonid Bershidsky of Bloomberg noted, this exchange was terrifying to Russians. The leader of an investigation into Russian espionage not knowing what Gazprom is would be like an FSB chief not having heard of Exxon-Mobil. It's bizarre, to say the least.

    Testimony of the sort that came from Warner's committee last week is being buttressed by news stories in liberal outlets like Salon insisting that "Bernie Bros" were influenced by those same ubiquitous McDermott-chasing Russian "bots."

    These stories insist that, among other things, these evil bots pushed on the unwitting "bros" juicy "fake news" stories about Hillary being "involved with various murders and money laundering schemes."

    Some 13.2 million people voted for Sanders during the primary season last year. What percentage does any rational person really believe voted that way because of "fake news"?

    I would guess the number is infinitesimal at best. The Sanders campaign was driven by a lot of factors, but mainly by long-developing discontent within the Democratic Party and enthusiasm for Sanders himself.

    To describe Sanders followers as unwitting dupes who departed the true DNC faith because of evil Russian propaganda is both insulting and ridiculous. It's also a testimony to the remarkable capacity for self-deception within the leadership of the Democratic Party.

    If the party's leaders really believe that Russian intervention is anywhere in the top 100 list of reasons why some 155 million eligible voters (out of 231 million) chose not to pull a lever for Hillary Clinton last year, they're farther along down the Purity of Essence nut-hole than Mark Warner.

    Moreover, even those who detest Trump with every fiber of their being must see the dangerous endgame implicit in this entire line of thinking. If the Democrats succeed in spreading the idea that straying from the DNC-approved candidate – in either the past or the future – is/was an act of "unwitting" cooperation with the evil Putin regime, then the entire idea of legitimate dissent is going to be in trouble.

    Imagine it's four years from now (if indeed that's when we have our next election). A Democratic candidate stands before the stump, and announces that a consortium of intelligence experts has concluded that Putin is backing the hippie/anti-war/anti-corporate opposition candidate.

    Or, even better: that same candidate reminds us "what happened last time" when people decided to vote their consciences during primary season. It will be argued, in seriousness, that true Americans will owe their votes to the non-Putin candidate. It would be a shock if some version of this didn't become an effective political trope going forward.

    But if you're not worried about accusing non-believers of being spies, or pegging legitimate dissent as treason, there's a third problem that should scare everyone.

    Last week saw Donna Brazile and Dick Cheney both declare Russia's apparent hack of DNC emails an "act of war." This coupling seemed at first like political end times: as Bill Murray would say, "dogs and cats, living together."

    But there's been remarkable unanimity among would-be enemies in the Republican and Democrat camps on this question. Suddenly everyone from Speier to McCain to Kamala Harris to Ben Cardin have decried Russia's alleged behavior during the election as real or metaphorical acts of war: a "political Pearl Harbor," as Cardin put it.

    That no one seems to be concerned about igniting a hot war with nuclear-powered Russia at a time when both countries have troops within "hand-grenade range" of each in Syria other is bizarre, to say the least. People are in such a fever to drag Trump to impeachment that these other considerations seem not to matter. This is what happens when people lose their heads.

    There are a lot of people who will say that these issues are of secondary importance to the more important question of whether or not we have a compromised Russian agent in the White House.

    But when it comes to Trump-Putin collusion, we're still waiting for the confirmation. As Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters put it, the proof is increasingly understood to be the thing we find later, as in, "If we do the investigations, we will find the connections."

    But on the mass hysteria front, we already have evidence enough to fill a dozen books. And if it doesn't freak you out, it probably should.

    Watch illustrator Victor Juhasz discuss what it means to draw President Donald Trump.

    See also

    Notes From the House Select Intelligence Hearing on RussiaTaibbi: Why the Russia Story Is a Minefield for Democrats and the MediaTaibbi: The Russia Story Reaches a Crisis PointAll Stories

    Taibbi on Trump the Destroyer

    [Apr 04, 2017] Hysteria is to be expected when the privileged in politics and the media feel as though their privileges are at risk

    Notable quotes:
    "... hysteria is to be expected when the privileged in politics and the media feel as though their privileges are at risk. ..."
    Apr 04, 2017 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com

    Just another day in the oligarchy.

    There was an intraday note about the returns of stocks and precious metals year to date posted here .

    Matt Taibbi had a nice article today titled Putin Derangement Syndrome Arrives.

    And on the other hand here is a video with Jimmy Dore and Josh Fox about the breathtaking decline and servile desperation for corporate money of MSNBC here and here .

    Well, hysteria is to be expected when the privileged in politics and the media feel as though their privileges are at risk.

    [Apr 04, 2017] Senate's Russia Hearings Will Lead Nowhere

    Apr 04, 2017 | therealnews.com

    Michael Hudson explains that the Senate hearings on Russia are an effort by Democrats to torpedo improvements in Russia-US relations and lack any real evidence of Russian meddling

    William W Haywood 2 hours ago He builds his story around Clapper being a truth teller? UNBELIEVABLE idiocy when you expect me to believe this crap! Seer • 5 hours ago Two top US experts on Russia, Professor Stephen Cohen and Ray McGovern (ex-CIA analyst) and Robert David Steele (ex-CIA0 and Bill Binney (ex NSA) ALL state the Dems accusations are ALL BOGUS. I tend to believe them rather than mainstream media and wonder if RN is going mainstream soon? Marko 6 hours ago " Russia Hearings Will Lead Nowhere "

    Nowhere involving Russia , perhaps , but they're leading somewhere involving the U.S. :

    http://www.zerohedge.com/ne...

    They're leading to the uncovering of an illegal political witch-hunt , probably on the orders of Obama , though Rice will likely take the fall. Said fall should include jail time , but we all know that elites don't "do" jail in the U.S. , unlike in the less-advanced democracies , like Iceland or S. Korea. Jon Henri Matteau 7 hours ago Really, this collusion is what is harming any US Russian relation, that and the Ukraine issue. If there wasn't an issue, sit back and let the investigations prove it. We had NINE redundant investigations into an exaggerated scandal. what are people afraid of if this is pursued? weilunion 8 hours ago They are designed by the deep state to lead to nowhere but destraction. Octavia Bee • 9 hours ago Oh my--how does Hudson know there is no evidence? Does he have some sort of top-secret security clearance? It's also curious how Hudson is so supportive of Putin, who is a horrific dictator.
    He's obviously another deluded Trumpster. Why would this man be given the role of an expert? Sad! Donatella Octavia Bee 8 hours ago More empty rhetoric from the McCarthyite Democrat party. The Democrat party did not allow the government to inspect the server that was "hacked". Instead they used the information from a private company that depends upon them for income. So we really don't know if it was a hack or a leak by a Democrat insider like Seth Rich. Obama was more of a "horrific" leader killing tens of thousands of innocents than Putin. Anyone calling him a "dictator" is just either parroting talking points or is uninformed. Donatella Wallace 7 hours ago As usual you are mindlessly parroting neocon or Democrats talking points. Putin won his last election with 63% of the votes cast. And yes, the oligarchs stole Russian wealth under Yeltsin with the help of the U.S. Yeltsin would have lost his reelection if it had not been for the intervention of American help. You should take your own suggestion and read some history.

    The only reason Russia has not experienced high growth is because of the U.S. imperial financial sanctions. The U.S. also pushed Russian into a closer alliance with China, which the U.S. will learn to regret. The U.S. is on a long-term decline and the 21st century will see a rising China and Russia.

    And yes, his annexation of Crimea by a 90+ vote by the Crimean voters (majority are Russian) is a good example of Putins populist strengthening of Russia. Better than letting the neo-Nazis in Kiev take over what has been Russian territory and give NATO a military base.

    [Apr 03, 2017] Matt Drudge Warns Trump Surrounded by Traitors, In Crisis Alex Jones Infowars There s a war on for your mind!

    Apr 03, 2017 | www.infowars.com
    "I do think there is a crisis, on many fronts," Drudge admitted.

    "Is some of it of his own making?" he asked before going to calls.

    The DrudgeReport.com founder indeed invoked his former radio host days when he joined Savage in California to celebrate the veteran broadcaster's 75th birthday.

    "We're trying to save this young Trump administration," Drudge declared.

    Drudge claimed Trump single-handedly saved floundering leftist media outlets like the New York Times and Vanity Fair, which seemed destined to fail before the "opposition" party "consolidated."

    "I'm getting a little bit nervous about the media situation. Do you know, the media was near death. The New York Times was hanging on the short hairs. Do you know Vanity Fair was going under. CNN barely had a fraction," Drudge said. "Trump has saved the media."

    The influential news figure also called attention to the president's flagging approval ratings in Rasmussen polls, which he is concerned currently spell danger for the Trump administration.

    [Apr 03, 2017] when I appeal to authority it is the Bible or Einstein not slate

    Apr 03, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    ilsm -> EMichael... , April 01, 2017 at 07:14 AM
    Re slate.com

    when I appeal to authority it is the Bible or Einstein not slate

    [Apr 03, 2017] Russian Foreign Ministry offers election hacking for April Fools' Day - YouTube

    Apr 03, 2017 | www.youtube.com
    Gary Duarte 1 day ago Proof that America is a laughing stock thanks to media and the democrats.

    lissa leggs 1 day ago Gary Duarte Your hero putin needs a history lesson.

    Raoulfr des Roches 1 day ago Gary Duarte You're delusional!!! The FBI and The CIA have both implicated the Russians in interfering in the American political process.

    Deplorable Me 1 day ago I'm just surprised the liberal media even knows it's a joke Natalia Jensen 1 day ago I bet MENSA member, Maxine Waters fell for it.

    Primero Ultimo 14 hours ago I think the Liberal media knows it's all a bunch of nonsense.....

    Geral Hammonds 1 day ago Because EVERYONE knows Russia hacking , interfering, meddling, influencing is a complete joke. Its only the MSM & the democrats that pretend its real. SMH

    206 guy 1 day ago (edited) timmy turner Only a fool would a believe a central intelligence agency just because they're the central intelligence agency. Fucking sheep's. 

    Natalia Jensen 1 day ago timmy turner Not only are you a brainwashed, delusional libtard, you're also a racist. Poor baby. The Alt-Left libtards are a worldwide joke & I love it.

    [Apr 03, 2017] Trump desire to modernise and build up the USA nuclear triad can creeate tensions with Russia

    Notable quotes:
    "... What is being developed in the US under the codename Prompt Global Strike are non-nuclear strategic weapons. ..."
    "... they will be more humane than nuclear weapons, because there will be no radiation, no Hiroshima or Nagasaki effect. However, in terms of military superiority, my friends at the Defence Ministry tell me the effect will be more devastating than from a modern nuclear bomb. ..."
    "... What's more, our American partners are not abandoning the programme of deploying weapons in outer space, and they are essentially alone in voting against the initiatives co-sponsored by us, China and many other colleagues to commit not to do so. ..."
    "... The Americans refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which is also an important strategic stability factor. And of course the global missile defence system has an absolutely direct impact on strategic stability. ..."
    "... Another point: imbalances in conventional weapons, which are also being modernised very quickly. ..."
    thesaker.is
    Question: US President Donald Trump, in a recent statement, unexpectedly proposed revisiting the issue of reducing strategic arms as a platform for bargaining. Should strategic nuclear forces today be a subject of negotiations with the Americans or would it be advisable at this point to put them outside the bounds of Russian-US relations?

    Sergey Lavrov: To a very large extent, President Trump's position on the majority of key issues on the foreign policy agenda, including further steps to limit strategic nuclear weapons as you've mentioned, has yet to be finalized. By the way, if I remember right, Donald Trump mentioned the issue of cooperation with us in this field as an example. He was asked whether he would be prepared to lift sanctions on Russia. I believe that was the way the question was formulated. He responded by saying they should see if there were issues on which they could cooperate with Russia on a mutually beneficial basis in US interests, in particular, mentioning nuclear arms control.

    At the same time, as you know, the US president said the Americans should modernise and build up their nuclear triad. We need to wait until the military budget is finally approved under the new administration and see what its priorities and objectives are and how these funds will be spent.

    As for our further conversation, I briefly mentioned in my address that we are ready for such a conversation but it should be conducted with acknowledgment of all strategic stability factors without exception. Today, those who propose implementing the so-called nuclear zero initiative as soon as possible, banning and destroying nuclear weapons and generally outlawing them absolutely, ignore the fact that since the nuclear bomb was made and this new kind of weapon began to be produced on a large scale in the USSR, the US, China, France and the UK, colossal changes have taken place in military science and technology.

    What is being developed in the US under the codename Prompt Global Strike are non-nuclear strategic weapons. If they are developed (and this work is moving forward very actively, with the objective of reaching any point in the world within an hour), of course, they will be more humane than nuclear weapons, because there will be no radiation, no Hiroshima or Nagasaki effect. However, in terms of military superiority, my friends at the Defence Ministry tell me the effect will be more devastating than from a modern nuclear bomb.

    What's more, our American partners are not abandoning the programme of deploying weapons in outer space, and they are essentially alone in voting against the initiatives co-sponsored by us, China and many other colleagues to commit not to do so.

    The Americans refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which is also an important strategic stability factor. And of course the global missile defence system has an absolutely direct impact on strategic stability.

    Another point: imbalances in conventional weapons, which are also being modernised very quickly. We always begin our dialogue with NATO by stressing the need to restore normal relations. We propose normalisation and agreements on mutual verification measures but before that, it is necessary to sit down and look at what each of us has deployed in proximity to each other, as well as in the entire Euro-Atlantic region. There are a lot of factors that need to be considered if we want not simply to ban nuclear weapons as idealists, but to ensure peace and security in the world and ensure strategic stability that will be sustainable and based on global parity. Everything that I've mentioned needs to be discussed. I may have missed some other factors.

    I should also add that restrictions imposed by Russia and the US on each other have reached a point where it is hard to say that we will be able to do a great deal together anymore. All states that have nuclear weapons should be brought in – importantly, not only those that have them officially but also de facto.

    [Apr 03, 2017] Russias cyberwar against America isnt over - and the real target is democracy

    The article is pure low quality McCarthyism (as one commenter characterized it "Bullshit of the most brainless sort") and signify that Democratic Party brass kointed forces with neocons to undermine Trump. But some comments are interesting
    Notable quotes:
    "... Popycock! Complete and utter drivel! Hillary's credibility has been undermined by many years of attacks by the "legitimate" media, as well as the right-wing conspiracy media. Was James Comey, a right-wing hack himself, a Russian plant? ..."
    "... Secondly, by far most of the Republicans would've voted for Trump regardless. Beyond that he managed to seduce some voters in the key states that he was bringing jobs back. He lied, of course, and everyone knew it, but ti was still more compelling than whatever Hillary was peddling. And let's face it, Clinton just failed to inspire voters. ..."
    "... The Clintoncrats for a start should be purged from the party as expediently as is polite. Like real fucking soon. ..."
    "... What a pathetic display of failed propaganda, Salon. Even Sith Lord Clapper came out and said there's NO EVIDENCE. Piss off and go fight your WW3 alone you warmongers! ..."
    "... That investigation is just beginning. And today, Nunes didn't help Easy D's case. On the other hand, it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Putin does not wrestle bears. ..."
    "... Don't pull that innocent bullshit -- America is complicit in virtually every geopolitical disaster on the planet since the end of WW II. You play with the bull, you get the horn... . ..."
    "... Democrats!! -- Your candidate lost! The Russians didn't steal the election! I know that The Powers That Be need an Enemy, an "Other" to justify America's monstrous defense budget, but enough of the anti-Russia hysteria bullsh*t! ..."
    "... Um, the candidate who ostensibly 'won' is proposing to increase our defense budget at the expense of virtually everything ..."
    Apr 03, 2017 | www.salon.com
    Knowing what we know now, it's no longer a stretch to report that Trump was placed in office by Putin. But it only happened because millions of Americans unknowingly volunteered to serve as enemy combatants, undermining and betraying their own country and their own democratic elections. Make no mistake: Putin's attack was less about electing Donald Trump and more about turning Americans against America. Whether you were suckered by Putin or voted for Trump based on fake news, we all suffer from a skewed view of U.S. elections today. We're all more suspicious about whether our elections are on the level, and we should be. Putin's goal was to goad us into asking the perpetual question: How can we possibly trust the outcomes of future elections knowing that Russia preselected our president years ago and then set about guaranteeing that outcome by turning our people against us?

    This is the next colossal problem to solve. Once we weed out Putin's quislings inside the White House, we have no choice but to pursue a far greater task: re-establishing the integrity of our elections while re-establishing facts and reality as the basis for our decisions. There are too many of us who sadly and disturbingly can't tell the difference between foreign propaganda - fake news - and legitimate news. This has to change or else Putin will have won, and democracy as we know it will cease to exist.

    Bob Cesca is a regular contributor to Salon.com. He's also the host of "The Bob Cesca Show" podcast, and a weekly guest on both the "Stephanie Miller Show" and "Tell Me Everything with John Fugelsang." Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

    Ilya Ratner · Works at APCON Mar 28, 2017 11:10am

    Popycock! Complete and utter drivel! Hillary's credibility has been undermined by many years of attacks by the "legitimate" media, as well as the right-wing conspiracy media. Was James Comey, a right-wing hack himself, a Russian plant?

    Secondly, by far most of the Republicans would've voted for Trump regardless. Beyond that he managed to seduce some voters in the key states that he was bringing jobs back. He lied, of course, and everyone knew it, but ti was still more compelling than whatever Hillary was peddling. And let's face it, Clinton just failed to inspire voters.

    John Stich · Mar 28, 2017 4:34pm

    Southeastern Louisiana University http://www.slate.com/.../the_trump_russia_investigation...

    John Stich · Southeastern Louisiana University Mar 28, 2017 4:37pm

    The DNC is in deep trouble as they look to project all their woeful inadequacies on nefarious Russian hackers. The Clintoncrats for a start should be purged from the party as expediently as is polite. Like real fucking soon.

    Leonardus Caron · Moderator Forum at Gearslutz.com Mar 28, 2017 3:58pm

    What a pathetic display of failed propaganda, Salon. Even Sith Lord Clapper came out and said there's NO EVIDENCE. Piss off and go fight your WW3 alone you warmongers!

    Chris Maley · Freelance Writer at Chris Maley Mar 28, 2017 6:49pm

    That investigation is just beginning. And today, Nunes didn't help Easy D's case. On the other hand, it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Putin does not wrestle bears.

    Manfred Humphries · Works at Self-Employed Mar 28, 2017 9:38am

    Is it possible you have mistaken Russias target? It is not democracy that they are attempting to undermine, because they don't exhibit this kind of animus towards any of the other democracies in the world, with the exception of those that consistently meddle in Russian interests.

    Don't pull that innocent bullshit -- America is complicit in virtually every geopolitical disaster on the planet since the end of WW II. You play with the bull, you get the horn... .

    And he is one smart bull.

    Chester Bridal Mar 28, 2017 11:23am

    Democrats!! -- Your candidate lost! The Russians didn't steal the election! I know that The Powers That Be need an Enemy, an "Other" to justify America's monstrous defense budget, but enough of the anti-Russia hysteria bullsh*t!

    John Stich · Southeastern Louisiana University Mar 28, 2017 4:48pm

    Bullshit of the most brainless sort.

    Dorothy C. Benson · Jersey City, New Jersey

    Um, the candidate who ostensibly 'won' is proposing to increase our defense budget at the expense of virtually everything else so your logic does not track, Comrade. Oh, and have a shot of Putinka on me, Comrade.

    [Apr 02, 2017] How Obama White House Weaponized Media Against Trump

    Notable quotes:
    "... From Nunes's statements, it's clear that he suspects that this information came from NSA intercepts of Kislyak's phone . An Obama official, probably in the White House, "unmasked" Flynn's name and passed it on to Ignatius. ..."
    "... Regardless of how the government collected on Flynn, the leak was a felony and a violation of his civil rights. ..."
    "... The leaking of Flynn's name was part of what can only be described as a White House campaign to hype the Russian threat and, at the same time, to depict Trump as Vladimir Putin's Manchurian candidate. ..."
    "... On Dec. 29, Obama announced sanctions against Russia as retribution for its hacking activities. From that date until Trump's inauguration, the White House aggressively pumped into the media two streams of information: one about Russian hacking; the other about Trump's Russia connection. In the hands of sympathetic reporters, the two streams blended into one. ..."
    "... On Dec. 30, the Washington Post reported on a Russian effort to penetrate the electricity grid by hacking into a Vermont utility, Burlington Electric Department. After noting the breach, the reporters offered a senior administration official to speculate on the Russians' motives. Did they seek to crash the system, or just to probe it? ..."
    "... This infrastructure hack, the story continued, was part of a broader hacking campaign that included intervention in the election. The story then moved to Trump: "He has spoken highly of Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite President Obama's suggestion that the approval for hacking came from the highest levels of the Kremlin." ..."
    "... Especially damaging were the hundreds of Internet addresses, supposedly linked to Russian hacking, that the report contained. The FBI and DHS urged network administrators to load the addresses into their system defenses. Some of the addresses, however, belong to platforms that are widely used by the public, including Yahoo servers. At Burlington Electric, an unsuspecting network administrator dutifully loaded the addresses into the monitoring system of the utility's network. When an employee checked his email, it registered on the system as if Russian hackers were trying to break in. ..."
    "... While the White House was hyping the Russia threat, elements of the press showed a sudden interest in the infamous Steele dossier, which claimed that Russian intelligence services had caught Trump in Moscow in highly compromising situations. The dossier was opposition research paid for by Trump's political opponents, and it had circulated for months among reporters covering the election. Because it was based on anonymous sources and entirely unverifiable, however, no reputable news organization had dared to touch it. ..."
    "... With a little help from the Obama White House, the dossier became fair game for reporters. A government leak let it be known that the intelligence community had briefed Trump on the dossier. If the president-elect was discussing it with his intelligence briefers, so the reasoning went, perhaps there was something to it after all. ..."
    Apr 02, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Authored op-ed by Michael Doran via The Hill,

    Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Adam Schiff have both castigated Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, for his handling of the inquiry into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. They should think twice. The issue that has recently seized Nunes is of vital importance to anyone who cares about fundamental civil liberties.

    The trail that Nunes is following will inevitably lead back to a particularly significant leak . On Jan. 12, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that "according to a senior U.S. government official, (General Mike) Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29."

    From Nunes's statements, it's clear that he suspects that this information came from NSA intercepts of Kislyak's phone . An Obama official, probably in the White House, "unmasked" Flynn's name and passed it on to Ignatius.

    Regardless of how the government collected on Flynn, the leak was a felony and a violation of his civil rights. But it was also a severe breach of the public trust. When I worked as an NSC staffer in the White House, 2005-2007, I read dozens of NSA surveillance reports every day. On the basis of my familiarity with this system, I strongly suspect that someone in the Obama White House blew a hole in the thin wall that prevents the government from using information collected from surveillance to destroy the lives of the citizens whose privacy it is pledged to protect.

    The leaking of Flynn's name was part of what can only be described as a White House campaign to hype the Russian threat and, at the same time, to depict Trump as Vladimir Putin's Manchurian candidate.

    On Dec. 29, Obama announced sanctions against Russia as retribution for its hacking activities. From that date until Trump's inauguration, the White House aggressively pumped into the media two streams of information: one about Russian hacking; the other about Trump's Russia connection. In the hands of sympathetic reporters, the two streams blended into one.

    A report that appeared the day after Obama announced the sanctions shows how. On Dec. 30, the Washington Post reported on a Russian effort to penetrate the electricity grid by hacking into a Vermont utility, Burlington Electric Department. After noting the breach, the reporters offered a senior administration official to speculate on the Russians' motives. Did they seek to crash the system, or just to probe it?

    This infrastructure hack, the story continued, was part of a broader hacking campaign that included intervention in the election. The story then moved to Trump: "He has spoken highly of Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite President Obama's suggestion that the approval for hacking came from the highest levels of the Kremlin."

    The national media mimicked the Post's reporting. But there was a problem: the hack never happened . It was a false alarm - triggered, it eventually became clear, by Obama's hype.

    On Dec. 29, the DHS and FBI published a report on Russian hacking, which showed the telltale signs of having been rushed to publication. "At every level this report is a failure," said cyber security expert Robert M. Lee. "It didn't do what it set out to do, and it didn't provide useful data. They're handing out bad information."

    Especially damaging were the hundreds of Internet addresses, supposedly linked to Russian hacking, that the report contained. The FBI and DHS urged network administrators to load the addresses into their system defenses. Some of the addresses, however, belong to platforms that are widely used by the public, including Yahoo servers. At Burlington Electric, an unsuspecting network administrator dutifully loaded the addresses into the monitoring system of the utility's network. When an employee checked his email, it registered on the system as if Russian hackers were trying to break in.

    While the White House was hyping the Russia threat, elements of the press showed a sudden interest in the infamous Steele dossier, which claimed that Russian intelligence services had caught Trump in Moscow in highly compromising situations. The dossier was opposition research paid for by Trump's political opponents, and it had circulated for months among reporters covering the election. Because it was based on anonymous sources and entirely unverifiable, however, no reputable news organization had dared to touch it.

    With a little help from the Obama White House, the dossier became fair game for reporters. A government leak let it be known that the intelligence community had briefed Trump on the dossier. If the president-elect was discussing it with his intelligence briefers, so the reasoning went, perhaps there was something to it after all.

    By turning the dossier into hard news, that leak weaponized malicious gossip. The same is true of the Flynn-Kislyak leak. Ignatius used the leak to deepen speculation about collusion between Putin and Trump: "What did Flynn say (to Kislyak)," Ignatius asked, "and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions?" The mere fact that Flynn's conversations were being monitored deepened his appearance of guilt. If he was innocent, why was the government monitoring him?

    It should not have been. He had the right to talk to in private - even to a Russian ambassador. Regardless of what one thinks about him or Trump or Putin, this leak should concern anyone who believes that we must erect a firewall between the national security state and our domestic politics. The system that allowed it to happen must be reformed. At stake is a core principle of our democracy: that elected representatives control the government, and not vice versa.

    [Apr 02, 2017] DNI Clapper Statement on Conversation with President-elect Trump

    Notable quotes:
    "... We also discussed the private security company document, which was widely circulated in recent months among the media, members of Congress and Congressional staff even before the IC became aware of it. I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC. The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions. However, part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security. ..."
    Jan 11, 2017 | www.dni.gov
    DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
    WASHINGTON, DC 20511

    January 11, 2017

    DNI Clapper Statement on Conversation with President-elect Trump


    This evening, I had the opportunity to speak with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss recent media reports about our briefing last Friday. I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security.

    We also discussed the private security company document, which was widely circulated in recent months among the media, members of Congress and Congressional staff even before the IC became aware of it. I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC. The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions. However, part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.

    President-elect Trump again affirmed his appreciation for all the men and women serving in the Intelligence Community, and I assured him that the IC stands ready to serve his Administration and the American people.

    James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence

    [Apr 02, 2017] Dr. Nick Begich Why Russia Is A Threat To Globalists

    Apr 02, 2017 | www.youtube.com

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HQbHGFUxHg

    Published on Mar 31, 2017

    Dr. Nick Begich breaks down what he thinks is why the globalists are so afraid of Russia, relating to it's history and it's progress post communism.

    Help us spread the word about the liberty movement, we're reaching millions help us reach millions more. Share the free live video feed link with your friends & family: http://www.infowars.com/show

    [Apr 02, 2017] Democrats claim that Russia Ate Our Homework

    Notable quotes:
    "... A major reason that Democrats have become neo-McCarthyite is to keep the Bernistas at bay. Blaming everything on Putin blocks any accountability for the party's Wall Street leadership. If Masha Gessen is complaining about Democratic overreach (" Don't Fight Their Lies With Lies of Your Own ") then you know something is seriously out of whack. ..."
    "... the chairs and vice-chairs of each state Democratic Party's central committee ..."
    "... by the state Democratic Party committee ..."
    "... a number of elected officials serving in an ex officio capacity ..."
    "... representatives of major Democratic Party constituencies ..."
    Mar 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Democrats: "Russia Ate Our Homework"

    TRUMP increases sanctions on Russia.

    DEMOCRATS: "Putin installed this president! Trump is illegitimate!"

    TRUMP expands wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Syria

    DEMOCRATS: "Russia is out to get us!"

    TRUMP dismantles environmental regulations.

    DEMOCRATS: "White House distracts from Russia investigation!"

    TRUMP kills worker protection, lowers billionaire taxes.

    DEMOCRATS: "Putin's interference cost us the election!"

    TRUMP launches nuclear war with North Korea.

    DEMOCRATS: "Russia ate our homework!"

    Posted by b on March 28, 2017 at 01:15 PM

    Mike Maloney | Mar 28, 2017 1:33:07 PM | 2
    A major reason that Democrats have become neo-McCarthyite is to keep the Bernistas at bay. Blaming everything on Putin blocks any accountability for the party's Wall Street leadership. If Masha Gessen is complaining about Democratic overreach (" Don't Fight Their Lies With Lies of Your Own ") then you know something is seriously out of whack.
    karlof1 | Mar 28, 2017 1:44:52 PM | 3
    b, doesn't a similar dynamic operate in your nation?
    hopehely | Mar 28, 2017 1:48:49 PM | 4
    Scapegoating is the oldest weapon of mass distraction.
    Susan Sunflower | Mar 28, 2017 1:54:52 PM | 5
    Salon's latest appears to blame America ennui and cynicism on deliberate putin ploys ... I suspect he's soon to be blamed for the rising "despair suicide epidemic" (amazed he's been spared blame for the opiate, fentanyl, epidemic)

    Salon: Russia's cyberwar against America isn't over - and the real target is democracy -- The Soviet Union never attacked America as blatantly as Putin has - and we're in danger of losing democracy .

    It would be funny if they weren't deadly serious and if Gessen were not getting thumbs-up retweets and endorsements all over the place from folks who should be wiser.

    The autocratic Russian president, his oligarch allies and his intelligence services, including the Federal Security Service (or FSB) and the GRU, recognized an emerging perfect storm in America that included a convergence of the following:
    1. A distrust in institutions and the news media.
    2. The emergence of almost universal social-media usage.
    3. The willingness to repeat outrageous rumors or fake news to help boost personal social-media branding.
    4. Political polarization and the accompanying emergence of information bubbles, confirmation bias and echo chambers.
    5. The metastasizing of the post-Watergate misconception that anyone can or should be president, leading to the candidacy of a reality-show celebrity named Trump. (Today's folksy "have a beer" qualification nearly supersedes other qualifications.)

    It rained today but I wanted sun ... the cynicism-inducing effects of the "revealed" Obama and Clinton over the last decade not.worth.mentioning.

    Bob In Portland | Mar 28, 2017 2:10:04 PM | 6
    When you are owned by Wall Street and the Deep State you aren't concerned with trivial things that the hoi polloi are dying to have.

    If you want to see how the DNC reacted to last November's total defeat take a look at Jon Ossoff, the guy chosen to run for Tom Price's open seat in the 6th District of Georgia. Georgetown, Madeleine Albright, London School of Economics, propaganda films. The only thing missing in his wikipedia bio is when he signed up with the CIA I'm guessing it was sometime in high school.

    The Democratic Party is dead to Democrats.

    Susan Sunflower | Mar 28, 2017 2:33:37 PM | 7
    The thing I find so insidious in this Russian conspiracy mongering is the underlying helplessness, even defeatism, suggesting that -- "self evidently" -- Putin has already won and we've already lost -- it suggests some upcoming apocalyptic ("which side are you on") day-of-reckoning ... which I (perhaps erroneously) doubt reasonates with most folks who long-ago turned off the fear-mongering press .. perhaps in favor of savoring the present and being surprised when the end comes.
    james | Mar 28, 2017 2:40:37 PM | 8
    lol... good one b! sad kettle of fish for the american people and for the people of the world with a political system that is the laughing stock of the world at this point..
    Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 28, 2017 2:51:22 PM | 9
    It's always fun to hear Right-wing Cranks/Wannabe Masters Of The Universe blaming someone else when one, or more, of their half-baked plots collapses under the weight of the bullshit which made it seem like a good idea.
    Qualtrough | Mar 28, 2017 2:53:06 PM | 10
    If Putin and the Russians are so diabolically clever and successful at subverting US democracy that means that US intelligence agencies have been abject failures. Have any heads rolled over these alleged massive intelligence failures? Rhetorical question.
    Ort | Mar 28, 2017 3:15:21 PM | 11
    @ Susan Sunflower | 5

    "Salon's latest appears to blame America ennui and cynicism on deliberate putin ploys ..."
    _____________________________

    Whether it's genuine Russophobia, or fake Party Line Russophobia, I've noticed that it includes this thread of cultural "soft criticism".

    That is, the US/EU/NATO infoganda artists-- Elected Misrepresentatives and state mass-media consent manufactories-- have made "hard" allegations, albeit based on insinuations and innuendo, that Russia's state-security apparatus has directly and overtly "tampered with" election results, sponsored or colluded with hackers, cultivated "fifth column" sympathizers and de facto operatives to nefariously influence Western public opinion, etc.

    But they also work in the "charge(s)" that the evil, pernicious Russkies have also sought to undermine the public's faith and confidence in government and the electoral process. The charlatans utter this indictment with the gravest, Churchillian high dudgeon and self-righteousness.

    How dare some "outsider" cast aspersions upon the paragons of Modern Democracy represented by the US and EU hegemony! Surely, any radical criticism of these governments and their policies and actions is implicitly false and meritless, and can only be understood and explained as an attempt to undermine and destroy appropriate faith and trust in their political leadership!

    Any discerning observer can see that this impassioned cri de cśur, stripped of its high-flown rhetoric, amounts to whining, "Hey! Those damned Russkies are making us look bad !" It is to laugh!

    This phenomenon induced a feeling of déjŕ vu. Of course, this complaint isn't novel. Conservative Elders have traditionally excoriated iconoclasts for supposedly encouraging social decay and "anarchy" by refuting Panglossian exceptionalism and exposing political leaders' feet of clay.

    Among other precedents, it reminds me of the 1970s reactionary criticisms of writers like Kurt Vonnegut. Indignant wingnuts chastised writers like Vonnegut and Joseph Heller for impermissibly "teaching Youth to be cynical about patriotism and democratic institutions".

    It's no surprise that "Salon", a progressive-liberal lite bastion, echoes this "soft" authoritarian-submissive doctrine.

    aaaa | Mar 28, 2017 3:15:23 PM | 12
    The democrat party is the same as it was before Trump got elected. The DNC are going to maintain their establishment and wait for Trump and the REpublicans to fail miserably at their jobs. I guess that is all they can do
    karlof1 | Mar 28, 2017 4:14:01 PM | 13
    Lavrov's recent lecture at Russia's Military Academy for the General Staff provided some insights in to how Kremlin leaders view the Outlaw US Empire and its "slanderous" campaign against Russia. Here's the passage most relevant to the current discourse:

    "Question: Recent experience shows that, in terms of the damage they cause, aggressive actions in the media at times have consequences similar to the use of weapons of mass destruction. In your opinion, isn't it time, at the UN, in the format of bilateral ties with other states, to move forward with drafting and signing a comprehensive treaty in this field, similar to strategic arms limitation treaties?"

    "Sergey Lavrov: We've been working on this for several years now. Russia put forward an initiative that became known at the UN as International Information Security [Initiative]. It has been a subject of independent resolutions at a number of UN General Assembly sessions. While initially these resolutions were rejected by some of our Western partners, in recent years resolutions related to the UN contribution to international information security have been adopted unanimously.

    "Several years ago, a group of government experts was set up. It drafted a report that was approved by consensus at the UN General Assembly. The General Assembly expressed support for continuing this effort in the context of identifying specific cyberspace risks at present. Another government expert group was also formed, which is beginning to work. It is meant to prepare specific proposals in one and a half years.

    "I'd like to say right away that despite the apparently constructive participation of all states in this discussion, we are aware of the desire [of certain states] to limit themselves to discussions and not reach practical international legal agreements. So, alongside the work that I just mentioned, Russia and its partners, in particular in the SCO, have drafted a document entitled Code of Conduct for Cyberspace. It was also distributed at the UN and is designed to promote targeted dialogue on the legal aspects of this problem. Overall, we believe (and we have already submitted this proposal) that it is time to draft an international convention on cyber security, including the elimination of threats and risks related to hacking. We were the first to propose penalising and banning hacking within the framework of international law. We will see how those who are accusing Russian hackers of seeking to blow up the world in the style of James Bond will respond to this.

    "There is another important topic related to these issues. It concerns internet governance. For several years now a discussion on the democratisation of the internet and internet governance has been ongoing at the International Telecommunication Union. A very serious ideological struggle, if you will, is under way. Some people are upholding free market principles but there are also those who believe that farming out the internet to the free market is tantamount to giving it away to just one country. In this context, serious debate lies ahead.

    "We see all these problems. The majority of countries agree on the need to enforce some generally acceptable order. Focused work is under way but it is too early to expect any results yet."

    There are other points within the Q&A where this topic gets discussed further, although within a somewhat different context than the above. Relative to Hybrid War, Lavrov says: "An information war is underway when slander becomes a mandatory condition for the media. This is an objective fact." Later in response to another question regarding the defense of national interests, Lavrov replies:

    "It's amazing to see how the media in the countries you mentioned and other EU countries come up with absolutely fictional and, most importantly, inept, clumsily written articles and reports about Russia's widespread influence on their electoral processes. I would say they should be ashamed of having election systems they cannot even protect from external interference. I am referring to such major countries as Germany and France, not some small countries. Second, they do not offer a single fact. We constantly remind them about it; President Vladimir Putin regularly communicates with German politicians and business leaders. My German counterpart, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, has visited Russia recently. He met with President Putin and they had a frank discussion of these issues. When you talk to them at our regular meetings, they show no such fanaticism. But obviously, someone really wants this fanaticism to be artificially maintained and whipped up. I could never imagine that these self-respecting media outlets could sink so low – to flagrant slander without even bothering to provide facts."

    As noted above, I again emphasize this lecture is a must read , http://www.mid.ru/en/press_service/video/-/asset_publisher/i6t41cq3VWP6/content/id/2702537

    Anon1 | Mar 28, 2017 4:28:46 PM | 14
    Well one could laugh but this hysteria is sick and dangerous, this is what happens if you question western news today:

    Danish journalist Iben Thranholm: 'Does this make me a Russian agent?':
    The Danish journalist Iben Thranholm is branded as a "pro-Russian propagandist" by EU task force EastStracom.

    https://www.facebook.com/freewestmedia/posts/1874109846198716

    Sabine | Mar 28, 2017 4:33:00 PM | 15
    hang on?

    So he is the one to start world war three? I thought that was the one no one could vote for?

    Surely, one day Trump is gonna be all presidential and bring peace to all of us, together with Russia. xoxoxox

    And can anyone tell us what Jared! and Ivanka! are doing? Nepotism, or is that only for countries that are not US American and Russa?

    fuck me, but seriously this post is bullshit.

    h | Mar 28, 2017 4:43:29 PM | 16
    Jimmy Dore of the Jimmy Dore show agrees with you - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY7CxRO5AkA
    maningi | Mar 28, 2017 6:10:31 PM | 18
    Anyone here read the "Russian Democracy Act 2002" enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America?

    Section 2, Finding and Purposes:

    (3A) Since 1992, United States Government democratic reform programs and public diplomacy programs, including training, and small grants have provided access to and training in the use of the Internet, brought nearly 40,000 Russian citizens to the United States, and have led to the establishment
    of more than 65,000 nongovernmental organizations
    , thousands of independent local media outlets, despite governmental opposition, and numerous political parties
    .
    (Unquote)

    More than 65.000 NG0s established in Russia by the US-Government from 1999-2002? What a crazy number! And how many more NGOs have been created there in the following 15 years till today? In the tens of thousands the figure must be. But how many NGOs have the Russians established in the West meanwhile (the West, not only US)? Its far less than a dozen, as far as I am know.

    Imagine the Russian had tried to installed only 650 Russian NGOs (1% of the numbers above) in the US?
    Link to the public Law Document:

    Petri Krohn | Mar 28, 2017 6:22:15 PM | 19
    I wrote this earlier today:
    WHAT IS HYBRID WAR?

    Hybrid war is somewhere between diplomacy and war. It is like being half-pregnant. Hybrid war is never all-out war. Instead it tries to limit escalation into a real war.

    NATO's definition of Russian hybrid war arises from the short appearance of polite people or the 50 or so unmarked green men at the Simferopol airport on February 28, 2014. Russia could naturally have sent in a whole tank division or moved its 15,000 troops on Crimea from their bases, but that could have resulted in a formal state of war existing between the Russian Federation and the Maidan regime in Kiev. By leaving out national identification markings Russia allowed Kiev to ignore the incident and to maintain diplomatic ties.

    The "Little Green Men" caused huge alarm and hysteria in NATO headquarters. They were suddenly seen as a Russian miracle weapon that could threaten the security of Western Europe. This of course is bullshit!

    The window for the use of "Green Men" and other methods of hybrid warfare arises from the internal weaknesses and conflicts of the target country. These by definition cannot exist in an open society like the democratic West purports to be. The clear exception is the Baltic apartheid states of Estonia and Latvia. They are not democracies but more like ethnic dictatorships and U.S. protectorates.

    Someone more informed on the NATO side wrote an article two years ago debunking the whole narrative. He said that the "hybrid" threat of domestic insurrection as seen in Estonia and Latvia cannot be countered by NATO security guarantees or international intervention, but must be handled by local police and security forces locally.

    Western security looks different if one rejects the notion that Western democracies are open societies and instead sees them as semi-dictatorships controlled by the Anglo-American "Deep State" and by the the fake news and false narratives of the mainstream media. In this scenario the election of Trump as president becomes an act of Russian hybrid war. It was the result of hostile elements of Russian information influence entering the U.S. information space. If one lives in a hybrid war mentality, then everything the "enemy" does or may have done becomes and act of hybrid war.

    The link given by Susan Sunflower @5 proves the point. Bob Cesca of Salon is totally delusional!

    Russia's cyberwar against America isn't over - and the real target is democracy

    Russia declared war on the United States last year, and it's a war that continues to be waged today...

    Millions of our own people, millions of American voters on both sides of the aisle were manipulated into acting as unwitting foot soldiers for Vladimir Putin's invasion...

    Trench by trench, Facebook group by Facebook group, Americans executed Putin's attacks for him...

    Trump was placed in office by Putin. But it only happened because millions of Americans unknowingly volunteered to serve as enemy combatants, undermining and betraying their own country and their own democratic elections. Make no mistake: Putin's attack was less about electing Donald Trump and more about turning Americans against America. Whether you were suckered by Putin or voted for Trump based on fake news, we all suffer from a skewed view of U.S. elections today. We're all more suspicious about whether our elections are on the level, and we should be. Putin's goal was to goad us into asking the perpetual question: How can we possibly trust the outcomes of future elections knowing that Russia preselected our president years ago and then set about guaranteeing that outcome by turning our people against us?

    This is the next colossal problem to solve. Once we weed out Putin's quislings inside the White House...

    Peter AU | Mar 28, 2017 6:25:41 PM | 20
    That many games being played... Political hacks working against Trump, many Presidential appointments still unfilled, Trying to take out those around Trump and Trump himself and concentrating on the fight against Russia.
    Even though Trump was not the anointed, he still has qualities the P-nacker types can work with. Those that write the constant updates to manifest destiny always have Iran and North Korea in their sights.
    If Trump cannot be removed he can be used to try and take out Iran and NK and also take the blame for US boots in bodybags.
    The partitioning of Syria is now going ahead to Rand Corp plans. This will give the US control of a large amount of territory on Irans western border. US has already announced it Will keep military forces in Iraq after ISIS is defeated. Genocide of the people of Yemen is underway as US will need full control of Bab al-Mandab straight before attacking Iran.

    A couple of plays occurring? Political hacks will continue to try and remove or restrict Trump, meantime the powers that be are moving forward with their plans, simply adjusting them to Trump for the moment?

    karlof1 | Mar 28, 2017 6:35:05 PM | 21
    maningi @19--

    That's an excellent example of Cultural Imperialism. Russia is trying to rid itself of those deemed detrimental to its sociocultural being. And Russia is far from the only victim of such.

    Peter AU | Mar 28, 2017 6:44:23 PM | 22
    maningi 19

    Something like that was listed on the US Russian embassy website about two years ago

    At that time the US Syrian embassy website, amongst other things where advertising for American companies to supply and install oil infrastructure in rebel held parts of Syria.

    Most everything the US was doing around the world at that time was blandly in your face listed on their various embassy websites, no tinfoil hat required.

    Tony B. | Mar 28, 2017 6:50:09 PM | 23
    Everyone seems to present this as a Putin v. U.S. war when, in fact, the Brits have been much more vicious against Putin than the U.S. media. The real war here is Putin v. the Rothschild cabal in its City of London. The U.S. and the CIA (CIA has no real U.S. connection, works directly for the cabal) are just the present kneecappers for the cabal.

    Tony B. | Mar 28, 2017 6:56:51 PM | 24
    Correction: CIA has no U.S. OVERSIGHT . . . .

    Frank | Mar 28, 2017 7:00:41 PM | 25
    For some readson i read all of that in Dany Devitos voice which made it all the more funnier. But seriously their Focus on the russian "allegations" is just going to strengthen Trump when the whole thing just blows up in their faces. It kind of reminds me of the Situation back in 2008 when Obama was First elected and panicing republicans called him a commie and claimed that he wad going to fuck up the country. I mean sure they were right, but they could not have possibly known that then. The point is this "ressistance" is a joke, and Trump will probably deliver the punchline soon enough

    Susan Sunflower | Mar 28, 2017 7:57:34 PM | 26
    I keep thinking that this is all fanfare leading up to Hillary Clinton's moment of triumphant return (or something) ... in which she will galvanize the party, which will unify behind her and drive Trump and his minions from Washington (actual method and details to be determined / unspecified) ... "like in a movie" or more likely Hillary's "dream sequence"

    It feels like the sort of noisy loud barking that's heard with over-anxious "guard dogs", who would actually be willing and eager to be called off by their master, but won't stop barking until given permission to stop ... or something.

    Professional Putin hater Gessen is getting kudos galore for point out that the Putin Trump conspiracy theory lacks evidence ... yes, I was glad for the NYRB piece ... but I fear it may mean that she (and her Putin hating) will gain stature and credibility on her next go-around ... Has Gessen displaced Applebaum temporarily? Pussy Riot has been in the news again ... and I'm on the look out for some Michael Khodorkovsky update or editorial, since like the seasons these things seem to follow one another and -- gosh -- Putin is up for reelection this year ... speaking of whom: WAshington Times: Russian dissident hopes Trump will end Putin's power (03/08/2017) .

    jfl | Mar 28, 2017 8:33:12 PM | 27
    TRUMP: increases sanctions on Russia.
    TRUMP: expands wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Syria
    TRUMP: dismantles environmental regulations.
    TRUMP: kills worker protection, lowers billionaire taxes.
    TRUMP: launches nuclear war with North Korea.

    DEMOCRATS: sh*t ... Trump did our homework ... "Trump's a russki-commie-pinko-faggot!"

    whenever the demoblicans loose to the republicrats they make an end-run around them on the right. only now that requires going out of bounds completely, over the edge and into mccarthyism, jingo, fascism and ... shrill irrelevance.

    confusing the democrat party with an opposition to the neolibraconians?

    at this late stage in the 'game'?

    there may be less than a dime's worth of difference between the repbublicrats and demoblicans ... but the salaries of hundreds of thousands / millions of neolibraconian hacks are on the line here ... and trump ain't hirin'!

    what we need to do ... sez i ... is to organize and seriously start firin' ... there are only 546 of them (537, the supremes are not yet elected)! there are 313 million of us!

    replace all the elephants and jackasses with ordinary americans chosen from among ourselves.

    it'll take a decade. no time like the present to begin.

    no citizen denied her/his vote* for any reason => federal recall, referendum, initiative.

    * we citizens register ourselves, authorize and authenticate ourselves, run our paper-ballot polls ourselves, count and store the results ourselves.

    Jonathan | Mar 28, 2017 8:48:52 PM | 28
    I think the only level of disregard that will move Democrats is to respond to their every speech act with a call to literally commit seppuku. Anything else admits of a continued need for them and their performative contrition Rollenspiel.

    Temporarily Sane | Mar 28, 2017 10:03:36 PM | 29
    @16 Sabine

    fuck me, but seriously this post is bullshit.

    What is bullshit about it? The fact that Trump is a fraud and dismantling America while rattling sabers at all and sundry abroad, or the fact that the DNC and its sycophants blame Russia and Putin for, well, everything they dislike?

    Temporarily Sane | Mar 28, 2017 10:06:49 PM | 30
    @ 14 karlof1

    Thanks for this, sir. Best post of the week.

    Circe | Mar 28, 2017 10:32:50 PM | 31
    @30

    You have to ask? They're two corrupt sides of the same coin. I've been repeating this for months now and getting nothing but abuse around here for it. Trump is a CON, a snake oil salesman, i.e. a LIAR, a narcissist i.e. megalomaniac and everything is unfolding as I was convinced it would.

    Peter AU | Mar 28, 2017 10:46:20 PM | 32
    One of Trumps first moves was to kill the TPP, something that would have put all governments signed up to it under the control of the mostly US based multi-national corporations ????

    Jackrabbit | Mar 28, 2017 11:07:49 PM | 33
    It's important to maintain perspective. The "big news" today was that Dick Cheney called Russian meedling in the 2016 Elections an "act of war". McCain had said the same in December but for Cheney to repeat that now - after little, if any, evidence of such interference only shows (again) how much the establishment despises Trump.

    Trump hate is a blind alley. Purposely so. Promoting such thinking does a disservice. We see to think about what comes after Trump (ike jfl above). IMO, a successful Movement that returns power to the people is one that unites the principled left and principled right. I think direct democracy can do that. I encourage everyone to explore the Pirate Party, a Party that provides a form of direct democracy that makes a good start.

    Temporarily Sane | Mar 28, 2017 11:22:29 PM | 34
    @32 Circe

    They're two corrupt sides of the same coin. I've been repeating this for months now and getting nothing but abuse around here for it. Trump is a CON, a snake oil salesman, i.e. a LIAR, a narcissist i.e. megalomaniac

    I agree with you wholeheartedly. That's why I was asking "Sabine", who apparently does not agree, what exactly is "bullshit" about pointing out the failings of Trump and the DNC crowd.

    Temporarily Sane | Mar 28, 2017 11:31:36 PM | 35
    I hope that today's offering indicates "b" has let the scales fall from his eyes regarding Trump and sees the guy for the nefarious danger he and his junta and Goldman Sachs/corporate raider administration are to the United States and the world.

    Anyone who looks into Steve Bannon's background and reads his public comments and still thinks the Chump administration stands for peaceful trade and ending American imperialism is a fool or an idiot.

    Jackrabbit | Mar 28, 2017 11:51:20 PM | 36
    It's important to understand what the establishment dislikes about Trump.

    1) Trump is NOT a proponent of Assad must go! .
    Neocons and their ME sponsors reject any middle-ground/accommodation on Syria. They want total victory for headchoppers because that eliminates Iranian influence and the Hezbolla 'threat to Israel.

    2) Trump is anti-TPP.
    This trade deal is sold as the best way to contain China. But it is actually a means off destroying sovereignty that strengthens the form of Empire that powerful "allies" prefer.

    3) Trump uses the power of his office to connect and communicate with people.
    Obama scolded us and communicated when he had to. Trump trashes the media, former Presidents, etc.

    4) Drain the Swamp
    Trump has instituted tough rules on lobbying. Washington doesn't care for rules that constrain money-making.

    stumpy | Mar 29, 2017 12:01:05 AM | 37
    Historical traditions should also be mentioned among the factors that determine a nation's role in world politics. "History is the memory of States," said Henry Kissinger, the theoretician and practitioner of international relations. By the way, the United States, whose interests Mr Kissinger has always defended, did not aspire to be the centre of the liberal world order for a greater part of its own fairly short history, and did not see that role as its preeminent mission. Its Founding Fathers wanted its leadership and exceptional nature to derive from its own positive example. Ironically, the American elite, which emerged as freedom fighters and separatists anxious to cast off the yoke of the British crown, had transformed itself and its state by the 20th century into a power thirsting for global imperialist domination. The world is changing, however, and – who knows – America might yet purify itself and return to its own forgotten sources.

    Excerpt from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's remarks and answers to questions during a lecture for senior officers of the Military Academy of the General Staff, Moscow, March 23, 2017

    Link [use at your own risk]: http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2702537

    Circe | Mar 29, 2017 12:39:28 AM | 38
    @35

    Why doesn't b just come right out and slam Trump and expose him in every sense for the lying, pretender ass that he is? Right away, the title tells you who he's really blaming; the title says nothing of Trump...but-but the buck stops with Trump. Every criticism is couched by the Democrats are distracted by Russiagate, but isn't everyone??? Which is the bigger elephant in the room: grandpa Trump's pretense at respectability and more laughably, President, or Russia collusion?

    Russia or no Russia Trump is disgusting. One Howard Stern interview is enough proof; it's not rocket science for crying out loud! sleazy and corrupt does Washington, specifically, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; that's the least of it.

    V. Arnold | Mar 29, 2017 12:44:29 AM | 39
    Hmm; is this true? If so, about time.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-28/dnc-asks-entire-staff-resignation-letters

    Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 29, 2017 12:45:08 AM | 40
    ...
    4) Drain the Swamp
    Trump has instituted tough rules on lobbying. Washington doesn't care for rules that constrain money-making.
    Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 28, 2017 11:51:20 PM | 37

    Trump's inaugural Drain The Swamp promise was no accident. It put The Swamp Club on notice which was unnecessarily sporting of him considering their own tactics. He wouldn't have been so upfront about his intentions if he hadn't already written the How To Drain the Swamp Manual long before the Election. Anyone who thinks he expected a smooth run, after such a confrontational start, isn't terribly bright; or grown-up.

    stumpy | Mar 29, 2017 12:48:12 AM | 41
    Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

    Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology-global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle-with liberty at stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

    President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address, January 17, 1961.

    Nick | Mar 29, 2017 1:09:10 AM | 42
    Is Trump destroying the GOOGLE? There is a coordinate boycott ads campaign against them going on. They can lose billions because of this. http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/youtube-advertiser-boycott-extremist-content-cost-google-750m

    For who doesn't know. Google has deep ties with CIA since Stanford days in 1998.

    Circe | Mar 29, 2017 1:11:06 AM | 43
    @42

    Oh yeah Ike was a real authority on peace in the world , he only threatened the Chinese with nuclear weapons and ordered the CIA to overthrow the democratically-elected leader of Iran at the time to install the Shah and conspire with the U.K. to steal Iranian oil and commit atrocities against the people of Iran. From wiki:

    He therefore authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.[174] This resulted in an increased strategic control over Iranian oil by U.S. and British companies.[175]

    Such a nice guy! It's like I always say: actions speak louder than silver-tongued words.

    stumpy | Mar 29, 2017 1:25:43 AM | 44
    Also, I would like to say that if the practice of leaking information that concerns not just the United States but also Russia, which has become a tradition in Washington in the past few years, continues, there will come a day when the media will publish leaks about the things that Washington asked us to keep secret, for example, things that happened during President Obama's terms in office. Believe me, this could be very interesting information.

    h/t Zerohedge -- Briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria , Moscow, March 23, 2017

    Next door to the Lavrov speech @14 karlof1 (Thank you!)

    Let's consider the possibility that Russia has fully penetrated the CIA (not a stretch) (and by transposition the DNC) (laugh if you like) and actually DID run Trump as a presidential stooge. Let's say that the US media accidentally stumbled upon the theoretical truth that Snowden and Assange are in fact operating with/for Russia (who pays their bills?) (Ecuador?)(Iran?)(Soros?)

    Why would Russia agree to keep American secrets as Zakharova implies, and what do we think of the threat of Russia revealing the dirt it has on the MOBama administration? Is Russia playing the USG or is it a pointed insinuation to make fun of the Russophobia?

    Elsewhere in her remarks, Zakharova refers to the assassination in Kiev:

    Note that she condemns Ukraine's reflexive finger-pointing at Moscow yet she herself asserts evidence that it was a contract killing to send a message. How would she know? What evidence? What message?

    The Russians are a sophisticated yet ruthless bunch. Their theme of taking the high road and pointing their condescending finger at anyone who accuses them is fairly consistent. I still wouldn't dismiss the idea that they are in fact pulling some strings along with Turkey, the Saudis, the Izzies, etc. or were they played? The Clintons harvested a lot of cash from folks that wanted favor in the new administration, if you believe the Guccifer leaks. So many leaks, ship sinks, rats swim.

    stumpy | Mar 29, 2017 1:27:34 AM | 45
    Quote:

    Evidence suggests it was a contract killing that, by all indications, was meant to send a message. As soon as the media reported this assassination Moscow hoped that Ukrainian law enforcement agencies would be able promptly to solve this crime and identify the masterminds behind it and of course its perpetrators, without any politicisation[sic] and based on objective data. However, after Ukrainian President Poroshenko announced that this assassination was "an act of terror perpetrated by Moscow," naturally, there was no more hope left that the investigation would be impartial or objective. We have no doubt about that. By all indications, this time as well the "killer regime" (as it is already being referred to) will do its best to make sure that no one will ever know the truth about what happened in Kiev.

    PavewayIV | Mar 29, 2017 1:28:10 AM | 46
    b - too funny.

    Ort@12 - Well said!

    karlof1@14 - Lavrov understands my country better than I do - I always enjoy being educated by him. I have to say that there was one zinger at the very end: What will Russia do about that girl they won't let in Eurovision? Now I know this has outraged many Russians (and rightfully so), but to put this question to the Russian Foreign Minister after THAT lecture? If I were him, I would have said with the most deadpan face I could muster, "We have not taken the option of a pre-emptive nuclear strike off the table at this time." and than just walked off the stage.

    Jackrabbit | Mar 29, 2017 1:32:00 AM | 47
    Trump haters don't talk about what comes after Trump.

    A BIG clue as to what motivates them.

    Peter AU | Mar 29, 2017 1:33:53 AM | 48
    The Eisenhower quote put up by stumpy is interesting... US ingrained culture, manifest destiny, exceptional people ect.

    In looking up the various missiles systems and aircraft over the last few years, something starts to stand out.
    Since WWII Soviet, and now Russian design perimeters are guided by keeping the US out.
    US designs always have had the base perimeter of breaking through Soviet and now Russian defence systems.
    US culture is based on total aggression to any who do not bow to its power.
    No matter the US president is a nationalist or a globalist, this culture will continue until it is destroyed

    stumpy | Mar 29, 2017 1:35:40 AM | 49
    @44, Circe -- yup, hoisted on his own petard. He was the last one who could get away with it being halfway credible. Every president gets more rotten.

    ben | Mar 29, 2017 1:50:17 AM | 50
    Enjoy the theater folks.. Blaming Russia for all that's evil in the world, instead of speaking up for the workers in the U$A, is the Dems newest plan. Trump was elected because he ran as a progressive. We know now, he has no interest in such foolishness. Both parties are the parties of $, and will further the interests of corporate America, over the interests of the people. That means " Full Spectrum Dominance."

    Talk about hypocrisy::

    http://therealnews.com/t2/story:18700:US-Has-Interfered-in-More-Elections-Than-Any-Other-Nation

    Circe | Mar 29, 2017 2:10:18 AM | 51
    Trump haters don't talk about what comes after Trump.

    A BIG clue as to what motivates them.

    Here's a big clue: A jackass who doesn't have to pretend he's not one ergo we can all rally to kick his ass. The thing about Trump is that those who used to fight on the good side moved to the dark side when they were reeled in by Trump.

    So who cares who comes after Trump as long as we all go back to fighting in solidarity the enemy that Trump represents and his successor from the right or left aisle will surely represent as well.

    Julian | Mar 29, 2017 2:12:38 AM | 52
    Re: Posted by: Circe | Mar 29, 2017 12:39:28 AM | 39

    I won't go as far as disagreeing with you about Trump, but I would ask the obvious question given you are just so relentlessly anti-Trump.

    Logically that means a few things.

    1. You would have preferred Hillary Clinton won the Election and became President.

    If you reject that assertion then please remove the scales from your eyes - there was no other choice - it was Clinton or Trump . No one else was going to win that election, saying "I don't like either" isn't an answer and is a failure to acknowledge reality.

    2. You would like Mike Pence to step up and take over from Trump (because Trump is so awful he must be replaced asap).

    Pence is the only person who is going to replace Trump - so logically you would prefer a President Pence to Trump. Fair enough - but is that really your view? Or is your view that they're all awful and we'd be better off with Jill Stein? Or Ralph Nader? Or Ross Perot? Rand Paul? Who? Doesn't matter anyway - because it is again evidence that you are living in a place detached from reality if your argument is NO TRUMP, NO PENCE - someone else!

    Nope. Forget it.

    At the moment your choice is Trump (or Pence) - no one else. So clarify again for me - you prefer Pence then?

    If your answer to all of the above is No, No, No, No, No, we need someone else I'm afraid it is completely pointless to argue with you - What are YOU going to do about it?

    Because I sure as hell am not going to try and find a way to get someone else installed besides Trump, or Pence. Just how would one go about doing that anyway? Not worth thinking about as far as I'm concerned.

    It's called living in an alternate reality, and perhaps it's best if you retire to Patagonia and live out your fantasies far far away from anyone else who might deign to interrupt you.

    Julian | Mar 29, 2017 2:20:49 AM | 53
    Re: Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 29, 2017 1:32:00 AM | 48

    It's interesting isn't it. Trump haters logically want to see President Mike Pence.

    But why this yearning for Pence? On the face of it it would appear that given their complaints about Trump Pence would be even more odious to them, but yet - Pence is exactly what they want!

    Strange isn't it Jack.

    Peter AU | Mar 29, 2017 2:25:43 AM | 54
    Looks like you nailed it Julian.

    Willy2 | Mar 29, 2017 2:29:37 AM | 55
    - The Democrats are looking more and more stupid every day. Keep in mind, I don't get the impression that Trump has the best in mind for the US Joe sixpack as well.

    Circe | Mar 29, 2017 2:32:19 AM | 56
    @53

    Spare me your long-winded cynicism. What's YOUR point if Trump is as corrupt as the rest?

    My point is that its better to fight the system together than divided by a worthless shit like Trump!

    Peter AU | Mar 29, 2017 2:47:11 AM | 57
    Circe you throw tantrums without putting up alternatives. Much like my daughters when they were in a huff.
    Sniff some salts, fan your face, you'll be right.

    Circe | Mar 29, 2017 3:03:59 AM | 58
    @58

    You're ad homs for lack of an argument are predictable. If you have nothing better to write don't *remove all doubt*. You know the saying: better to keep your trap shut and be thought a fool than open it up and...**

    Peter AU | Mar 29, 2017 3:13:27 AM | 59
    Miss/Mrs Circe... by your username I take it you identify as female?

    Address Julian's questions. Who would you prefer as head warmonger
    A) Clinton
    B) Trump
    C) Pence

    Easy peasy. No other options at present time. Put up or shut up.

    For me, I would like to see the US and its culture of manifest destiny totally destroyed. I cannot see that happening in the foreseeable future unless they initiate mutual assured destruction.

    Circe | Mar 29, 2017 3:14:57 AM | 60
    D)

    Peter AU | Mar 29, 2017 3:30:54 AM | 61
    Posted by: Circe | Mar 29, 2017 3:14:57 AM | 61

    Well that was a rational and well thought out reply.
    Reminds me of Wile E Coyote looking down into the chasm, just before he drops.

    One thing I have to say about earlier pre political correctness US. They had some great cartoons.

    Perhaps you are auditioning Circe?

    Lozion | Mar 29, 2017 3:32:11 AM | 62
    D)? Hope that means none of the above..

    Julian | Mar 29, 2017 3:56:47 AM | 63
    Re: Posted by: Circe | Mar 29, 2017 2:32:19 AM | 57

    Re: Posted by: Circe | Mar 29, 2017 3:14:57 AM | 61

    D eh. Once again you fail to answer a simple question. Your response is pointless. It lacks a basis in reality.

    There is no D option. Are you the D option. You seem to think so.

    My point is that its better to fight the system together than divided by a worthless shit like Trump!

    And how exactly are you fighting this system? Writing a few sentences on someone's (admittedly GREAT! Blog) ain't going to get you very far.

    Thanks for the support Peter. I don't think anyone here who supported Trump (over Clinton) was under the illusion Trump was going to be a "Great" President by any stretch of the imagination.

    But it was fairly simple - do you want the proven warmongering maniac, or the egotistical narcissist?

    Easy choice for mine - and like you Peter, I don't get to vote in US Elections so I could hardly make my voice heard at a US ballot box.

    For the record, speaking as someone with libertarian leanings, Rand Paul was my initial choice in the US Primaries Republican/ Democrat. Rand seems eminently sensible on foreign policy issues. Stop expanding NATO, leave the Middle East. Of course Rand (like his father) is roundly ignored by the MSM most of the time.

    Rand even jumped on Tulsi Gabbard's Stop Arming Terrorists Act! Good move for your credibility Rand, bad move if you want higher office.

    Re: Posted by: Lozion | Mar 29, 2017 3:32:11 AM | 63

    I assume D means none of the above as well, but provide the alternative then - a realistic alternative. As far as I can see - there is no D alternative being offered at the moment in reality .

    dumbass | Mar 29, 2017 4:00:20 AM | 64
    Oh, lord. You people ganging up on Circe again? It's beneath your normally good commentary. Irritatingly so.

    Circe's expectations about Trump have so far proven correct. Many of you -- INCLUDING ME! -- who hoped to see more sensible behavior from Trump must admit you're disappointed.

    So far, it seems I -- and many of you -- owe Circe "you told me so". (*Not* like it would've made me change my vote from "Jill Stein" to "Killary" just to try to keep Trump out of office.)

    >> It's interesting isn't it. Trump haters logically want to see President Mike Pence.

    You're not using logic. You're mocking it.

    I, for one, abhor Trump's decisions thus far. Do you really think it's a matter of "logic" that I would prefer Pence's?

    That argument is embarrassing.

    >> Easy peasy. No other options at present time. Put up or shut up.

    People are free to condemn what Trump does without being obligated to "choose" a veritable "s*** sandwich" from your "replacement menu".

    But more importantly, stay civil! I choose to lurk because I rarely have anything (other than "thumbs up" to practically everything from jfl or psychohistorian). But, I read comments fairly regularly and have seen very little hostility from Circe -- except for maybe one understandable comment as a reaction to constant harassment -- that would justify this antagonism, Peter AU.

    Julian | Mar 29, 2017 4:03:08 AM | 65
    In the mean-time we have the Ecuador run-off Presidential Election this week. Sunday April 2, 2017.

    Pro-Assange
    Lenin Moreno

    Anti-Assange
    Guillermo Lasso


    Easy choice for mine. Go Lenin.

    Then we have the French Election (April-June 2017). Viva Le Pen (Destroyer of the EU).

    The German Elections (September 2018). A total non-event. Schulz v Merkel - both as bad as each other.

    The Russian Elections (March-April 2018). Putin to be re-elected assuming he stands.

    The Italian Elections (By May 2018). Can Beppe Grillo win and take Italy out of the Euro and thereby destroy the Europeon project? Perhaps, but I don't trust Grillo as much as Le Pen.

    Unfortuntely, if Le Pen loses, Grillo might be the last hope for a sane resolution to all that ails the world (The West) at the moment.

    If things continue going to plan I foresee Russia/Putin shutting down all gas supplies to the EU either Winter 2018/19 or Winter 2019/20.

    At that point, the election season is completed, and why bother extending chance after chance for the Europeons to wise up? Plus, the TurkStream and pipes to China will be completed by then.

    That's my estimate of when Russian patience with the EU runs out anyway.

    The only question then becomes, does the West collapse economically before then?

    Perhaps, but I see no reason they can't just continue with the tricks of the last decade for another 2 years.

    Peter AU | Mar 29, 2017 4:10:17 AM | 66
    Dunmbass is correct. User name that is.

    Dumbass, come up with an alternative narrative.
    JFL and psychohistorian I have respect for, but I do feel their alternatives are dreamtime stuff.
    What we see is the real world. Human nature at its "finest".

    Constant revolution is perhaps the most applicable to the real world though perhaps not in the intention of the originator.

    Human nature. Does not change with knowledge.


    jfl | Mar 29, 2017 4:11:00 AM | 67
    @40

    Democratic_National_Committee


    The DNC is composed of

    1. the chairs and vice-chairs of each state Democratic Party's central committee ,
    2. two hundred members apportioned among the states based on population and generally elected either on the ballot by primary voters or by the state Democratic Party committee ,
    3. a number of elected officials serving in an ex officio capacity , and
    4. a variety of representatives of major Democratic Party constituencies .


    1. public enemies of the jackass persuasion numbers 1 through 100 ...
    2. like to see the breakdown of 'elected' / appointed ... even when elected, elected by their cronies, no one else knows who they are ...
    3. political hacks given sinecures ... the 'grateful dead' ...
    4. lobbyists for wall street, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, the 'intelligence community', enemies of the people in general ...

    don't imagine these folks will be resigning. they're just killing off the hired hands ... they're the ones who 'ate our homework!' ... right ... the hh's will be replaced by interchangable clones. the dnc are dead men and women walking. and talking, of course.

    @43

    probably a false-flag by the googleplex itself, an alibi for discontinuing 'extremist' postings. 'hey, it's not us! it's our advertizers ... it's just bidnez, g-o-i ...'

    Peter AU | Mar 29, 2017 4:22:14 AM | 68
    Prior to Trumps election, The US/globalist fellow travelers were all walking along nicely. Trump usurped the throne from the anointed one and now the fellow travelers are arguing.
    Some say Trump will take us to a few places on our bucket list, others say say- no Trump has to go.

    Peter AU | Mar 29, 2017 4:33:54 AM | 69
    Oh Where art thou Circe?
    Three choices. A, B, or C. Easy peasy. Or do you have X held back in secrecy?

    Peter AU | Mar 29, 2017 4:40:26 AM | 70
    Miss/Mrs Circe

    My alternative in imagination is total fucking destruction of US and their fucked up culture. What is yours?
    You have never put forth any alternative?

    Sabine | Mar 29, 2017 4:50:29 AM | 71
    @ 35

    the reason i consdier this post to be a load of bullshit is simple.

    the democratic party is so diminised it has not effect on anything the orange turd and his henchmen do.

    So they can whinge about what ever they want to.

    secondly: in general the US American Jane and Joe Do don't give a flying fuck about war. Its the only thing they have going for the, the million plus peoples army of the US and the weapons manufactures. If they don't have the army and the weapons company US unemployemnt would be through the roof and there would be rioting in the streets. Can you imagine the orange turd bringing home his troops from anywhere in Europe if they 'don't pay his bill for Nato"?

    thridly: many of us predicted precisely that. Namely that the orange turd will do as any other US president did before him, war oversees and weapons selling. But oh noes, he is gonna be besties with Putin (who will win the election cause anyone else running will be dead by the time people get to put their fingerprints on a piece of paper)

    fourth: i find it funny how many here over the years are ok with foreign influence in the US election, obviously its ok now to just delegitimze the last little bit of 'influence' people get to have in their countries.

    fifth: i no more rejoice in the forth coming misery for the US American women and children then i do in the ongoing misery for the women of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza, Westbank, Somalia.

    and as another poster said above, there was no real choice for teh US, there was Hillary with all her faults, and then there was the orange turd.

    as for 'sabine' i have used my name as a handle since the time of billmon. and frankly this blog is going to shite. Sadly so.

    Sabine | Mar 29, 2017 4:55:24 AM | 72
    @ 71

    Circe answered, D none of the above.

    Peter AU | Mar 29, 2017 5:07:03 AM | 73
    Sabine.

    D is not an option.

    D more likely refers to duh

    The only option is destruction of the US which can only be put plainly and not as duh, as in imbecile.

    Peter AU | Mar 29, 2017 5:19:23 AM | 74
    @ Circe

    What do you make of Laverov's recent speech?
    Russia has been through both communism and wide open capitalism.

    MadMax2 | Mar 29, 2017 6:09:54 AM | 75
    Lavrov's speech to the military academy sits in nicely behind Putin's speech to the UN Assembly a couple of years ago. Writing the global script with openness, clarity and integrity.

    Makes a great sequel due to the ease and detail of which Lavrov breaks down each and every question. Nothing mealy mouthed as you might expect from a US state department press outing...from the top down the Russians' believe in what they say, mean what they say, and do not mince words because its so much easier to give quick, detailed and direct answers when they are guided by truth and not a forked tongue.

    From him you get a sense that today's Russia has very much evolved from a deep appreciation of it's history and, in a typically strong yet understated fashion, very much understands it's place within it. All the while the west embarrasses itself under the weight of repeatedly failing realities.

    ...the difference between a politician and a statesman.

    fast freddy | Mar 29, 2017 7:07:14 AM | 76
    It is apparent that Pence would be even worse than Trump.

    The Deep State, the CIA and it's media arm wants Pence. The Democrats and most of the Republicans also want Pence.

    Trump the degenerate Orange Turd must be good for something if all that is evil intends to usurp him.

    Curtis | Mar 29, 2017 9:14:20 AM | 77
    aaaa 13
    "It's still rock and roll to me." - Billy Joel
    In the case of the DEMs, it's all about politics and winning. (and not much diff to the GOP). For FDR and the DEMs in 1932 it was more important to let more of the economy (and banks) fail to have a more spectacular loss for Hoover and the GOP. (The Roosevelt Myth) And now the DEMs and the media sycophants are more shrill. Their one-trick pony obsession is Putin (riding a horse without his shirt - ha ha). If they cannot stand up for anything else, it's about time those in the party notice and change things.

    The surprise of FDR was to find out he had no real ideology and simply took on people whose ideas sounded good. Otherwise it was the political machines of NYC, Chicago, and the unions (some dominated by Communists) that propelled him into higher office. He wanted to win and that was all that counted.

    Susan Sunflower | Mar 29, 2017 9:24:33 AM | 78
    Like Gessen, Anne Applebaum is attempting to be the voice of reason and reality:

    WAPO: The critical questions on Russia .

    Russian private money has also played a role in Trump's career. Though Trump has said repeatedly that he has never invested in Russia, Russia has invested in him. Famously, Donald Trump Jr. declared in 2008 that Russian money made up a "pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets." More recently, a Reuters investigation showed that holders of Russian passports invested at least $98 million into seven Trump properties in Florida alone, a number that doesn't include any investors who hid their names behind anonymous shell companies.

    Technically, none of this money had anything to do with the Russian state. But in practice, it likely won goodwill and influence for Russia. Over many years, and long before he became president, Trump repeatedly praised Russia and its president. In 2007, he declared that Putin is "doing a great job." In 2015, he described the Russian president as a "man so highly respected within his own country and beyond."

    Just like Deripaska's payments to Manafort, the "disproportionate" Russian investments in Trump's businesses, which Trump still owns, weren't bribes. They didn't involve the KGB, and they probably didn't include any secret payments either. The question now is whether our political system is capable of grappling with this particular form of modern Russian corruption at all. Congress cannot simply ask the question "was this all legal," because it probably was. Congress, or an independent investigator, needs to find a way to ask, "was this moral," because it surely wasn't, and "does it constitute undue influence," which it surely does.

    Apparently Congress will need to parse the morality of all Russian dealings with, oh hell, about everyone everywhere ... she's implicating pretty much the entire Russian Business class as Putin's water carrying agents of influence ... regardless, in this climate, this appears to be something resembling "a voice of reason and moderation" (or at least goal posts and some definitions of the 5 questoins -- who, what, why, where, when --variety)

    Morongobill | Mar 29, 2017 9:25:57 AM | 79
    Sometimes it occurs to me that what some of the writers(the Salon piece in particular) need is a good ass whipping. Pardon my French please.

    Come to think of it, I feel the same way about some of these anti-Trump protestors.

    Susan Sunflower | Mar 29, 2017 9:32:10 AM | 80
    The Salon article seemed to be echoing Malcolm Nance of last week's fantasy ... part Jules Verne, part really bad third-tier LeCarre knockoff ...

    NotTimothyGeithner | Mar 29, 2017 9:37:34 AM | 81
    @2 The long term effects of recruiting self funding non entities are at play too. Many of these Democrats were recruited at lower levels because they were bland enough to not offend local interests and had the money to upfront the funding for their campaign. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders wasn't entrusted with the budget and veteran committee select spots because he is such a shining star or has leverage with the caucus, he's not joining the GOP. He holds those positions because the Democrats don't have people interested or even capable of those jobs serving in Congress. Russia is a convenient refrain. They know voters want answers, and a good portion of the elected Democrats know so little about policy they can't possibly offer answers.

    JohnThomas | Mar 29, 2017 9:42:53 AM | 82
    The US is whining about how Russia dealt with 100s of people attending unlicensed demonstrations in Russia. Russians are pussies when it comes to dealing with protestors. This is how the US does it.

    http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/203/420/UCDavis_pepperspray.jpg?1321852699

    http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/303385/14835326/1357272278107/scott-olsen.JPG?token=V6gtNZZjC66o%2BDSGDxYcrfFcFZY%3D

    Anon1 | Mar 29, 2017 10:56:38 AM | 83
    US have just accepted Montenegro as a coming member of NATO, you guys think that Nato will come to formally accept Montenegro on the Nato meeting on 31 of march?

    blues | Mar 29, 2017 11:29:00 AM | 84
    /~~~~~~~~~~
    Zero Hedge -- ACLU Actively Assisting With Soros-Driven Protest Organization After Accepting Funds From The Open Society Institute -- Mar 6, 2017
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-06/aclu-...

    The ACLU itself has received massive amounts of funding from George Soros. A February 6th, 2017 article from Zerohedge cited research from LifeZette and the Capital Research Center indicating that Soros's Open Society Institute has sunk over $35 million into the ACLU alone and millions more to other liberal organizations directly involved in filing lawsuits against various policies of Donald Trump all around the country. The massive donation drive is part of Soros' overall effort to "reshape the American justice system" by buying district attorneys in races across the country.
    \~~~~~~~~~~


    /~~~~~~~~~~
    ACLU / People Power -- Join People Power
    https://go.peoplepower.org/signup/join?source=root

    On March 11, the ACLU is holding a Resistance Training. This event will launch People Power, the ACLU's new effort to engage grassroots volunteers across the country and take the fight against Donald Trump's policies not just into the courts, but into the streets. We're organizing grassroots events in communities across the country to watch the livestream together. Please join us!

    Sign up to learn more about People Power and the Resistance Training livestream on March 11 at 5pm ET. We'll follow up with you about opportunities to volunteer and attend events near you.
    \~~~~~~~~~~

    So. George Soros gives the ACLU $35 million and they promptly "take the fight against Donald Trump's policies not just into the courts, but into the streets". Of course, if they dispose of Trump, we get -- Mike Pence as president. He would be so much better? Consider:

    Vice President Mike Pence voted in favor of the Iraq Resolution, which called for the use of military force in Iraq.

    Pence went on a widely condemned trip with Senator John McCain to Iraq in 2007.

    In a 2002 statement on the floor of the House of Representatives (reported in the Congressional Record), Pence told his colleagues "... I also believe that someday scientists will come to see that only the theory of intelligent design provides even a remotely rational explanation for the known universe."

    "[Indiana governor] Mike Pence's time in office has been so toxic that Hoosier Republicans are publicly begging Donald Trump to save their party," [by getting him out of Indiana] said Drew Anderson, [Indiana Democratic] communications director.

    blues | Mar 29, 2017 11:32:55 AM | 85
    I've given up complaining about Circe. Maybe he works for Soros, or is Soros' grandson. Or something. Nearly constant single complaint, no alternatives discussed.

    It's just another of those nutty things.

    Circe | Mar 29, 2017 12:30:47 PM | 86
    @85

    Can't you just leave it at your comment @84 rather than wasting a separate post just to personally attack me by taking a cheap shot with bullshit speculation? You just had to back-up the other 2 offenders; makes you feel big, huh?

    @70

    Yes I have posted my political preferences and leadership preferences that don't include any of the choices you listed. Either you weren't paying attention or you just don't give a damn what I think. I suspect it's the latter, since you pay too much attention as obviously you never fail to deliver with your ad homs each and every time I comment on a topic and you disagree with what I write. I don't have to repeat what I posted previously to live up to your standards or pass some kind of litmus test to meet with your approval.

    peter | Mar 29, 2017 1:10:12 PM | 87
    Here's the acceptable viewpoints as near as I can tell,


    1) it's infallible truth that there's no substance to the awful rumors that the Trump team and the Putin team may have colluded prior to the election.

    2) Putin has been a beacon of integrity and forthrightness with no desire for anything but the nations of the world to live in harmony.

    3) Trump is really on the same page as Putin but the evil forces of the deep state try mightily to derail his plans for our betterment

    4) any attempt at free trade is inherently evil, the machinations of that cabal that seeks to rule the world

    5) we should accept Trump simply because there's nobody that can do any better.


    If you stick to these the no one will flame you. If you don't then you work for Soros. Yeah, fucking right, Trump's the man. we should learn to love him.


    1) love how he's pouring troops and assets into the ME

    2) accept that climate change is bullshit and cheer the deregulation that is currently taking place

    3) accept that the bankers aren't so bad and realize that the regulations placed on them had to go because they were really hurting business and consequently their plans for making America great

    4) accept that Latinos are the root of many of America's problems and cheer the zeal with which they are being rounded up

    5) accept that the poor have only themselves to blame and applaud the way their safety net is being dismantled


    Because Trump likes Putin and Putin likes Trump and that's all that really matters. Well suck me dry and call me Dusty, how could anybody not see that?


    dumbass | Mar 29, 2017 1:28:54 PM | 88
    >> Dunmbass is correct. User name that is.

    Ad hom straight off? Choices...action...habit...character.

    >> Dumbass, come up with an alternative narrative.

    Your "narrative" thus far is to make the same pitch the 2-party duopolists make: choose from the shitty choices we give you. History proves the governments' imperialist policies do not change from one administration/party to another. So, I choose options not on your list. I'm not changing my "narrative" to accommodate your dogmatism.

    >> What we see is the real world.

    Real world? Your choices are not even "real". Here they were:
    >> Address Julian's questions. Who would you prefer as head warmonger
    >> A) Clinton
    >> B) Trump
    >> C) Pence
    >> Easy peasy. No other options at present time. Put up or shut up.

    Those aren't even "real world" choices. They're your own artificial, limited construct. Another election isn't until 2020. Clinton may or may not run. Your choices are stupid and contradict your self-professed "real world" pragmatism.

    By the way, saying your choices are "stupid" and that you contradict yourself isn't ad hominem, though judgments about your comment quality might lead people to draw inferences about you personally.

    Jackrabbit | Mar 29, 2017 2:05:52 PM | 89
    Circe @86

    Circe did post his preference.

    IIRC, he/she supports Kucinich (Democratic Party) as next President.

    karlof1 | Mar 29, 2017 6:18:49 PM | 90
    peter @87--

    "Putin likes Trump"

    There're no grounds for that supposition. All Putin and Lavrov have stated is their willingness to work with whomever was elected. Mr Lavrov just again in an interview published today, 3/29, in National Interest Magazine : "We said what we did, that we are ready to work with any administration, any president who would be elected by the American people. This was our line throughout the electoral campaign, unlike the acting leaders of most European countries who were saying absolutely biased things, supporting one candidate, unlike those who even bluntly warned against the choice in favor of the Republican candidat[sic], and this somehow is considered normal." http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2710445

    Tom in AZ | Mar 29, 2017 10:21:30 PM | 91
    @54

    It is worse than just Pence. It goes Pence, Speaker Ryan, president pro tempore box turtle McConnell, and then Exxon Sec. State Tillerman. And eventually in the cabinet, you would get to Ben Carson. Jesus wept...

    Tom in AZ | Mar 29, 2017 10:32:07 PM | 92
    Peter AU @69

    C'mon Peter. A, Clinton is NOT an option at all. Unless the entire government is overthrown to install her. See my comment above re succession. There is no 'reset' to give her the election. Surely you know this, so why are you trying to make Clinton an option for Circe?

    Tom in AZ | Mar 29, 2017 10:38:13 PM | 93
    @76 fast freddy

    IMO Pence will be an order of magnitude worse than Trump. He will be piously waving his bible while screwing the people of the US more than can be imagined, as he knows all the crazies in Congress and agrees with the most disgusting views of the right wing. He will be more effective in our destruction.

    PavewayIV | Mar 29, 2017 10:43:58 PM | 94
    dumbass@64 - Sir, I have *never* in my life heard a more precise and succinct description of the U.S. perverse election process. Bravo!

    "...People are free to condemn what Trump does without being obligated to "choose" a veritable "s*** sandwich" from your "replacement menu"..."

    I shall steal this for future use, but forgive me if I do not give proper attribution as "the dumbass on MoA"

    Sabine | Mar 30, 2017 12:39:42 AM | 95
    @73

    if you fill out none of the cases in a form, which one will you have choosen?

    you have choosen the one that you left out.

    D. None of the above fuckwits.

    thanks

    denk | Mar 30, 2017 1:30:38 AM | 96
    Julian 52

    *I won't go as far as disagreeing with you about Trump, *

    Hmm

    You agrees with Circe on Trump, --

    But you sides with JR the Trump apologist --

    Can you make up your mind, are you a 'Trump hater', [sic]
    or a 'Trump lover' ?

    dumbass | Mar 30, 2017 1:39:08 AM | 97
    Hey, thanks, Paveway IV.

    Temporarily Sane | Mar 30, 2017 2:05:45 PM | 98
    "b" dude, maybe your playing to your crowd here and cha-ching and all that...but Blowhard Chump and the MSM's crazed rantings about him just aren't that interesting. Ya know? He's not going to bring world peace, detente with Russia or make America great again. Probably quite the opposite. And the media will continue to focus on him and ignore the many failings of the Demosplats et al. Move on is my advice.

    Temporarily Sane | Mar 30, 2017 2:23:39 PM | 99
    Look, I don't like Clinton/Obama, neoliberalism, "free trade" agreements etc. BUT I don't like Trump either. If you thought Obama was bad how can you like Chump? He's a fucking liar and an über-capitalist piece of shit who takes his orders from Darth Bannon. Fuck em' all I say. I am not a Soros agent btw. (but if I was I probably wouldn't tell ya...heheheheh)

    I also think Trump is "better", or at least less terrible, than Pence, McCain/Graham, Hillary or any of the demented fanatics and war mongers waiting in the wings. So while I don't like the guy or his junta/corporate raider administration impeaching him is not cool. And the "Russia did it" crap is seriously insane and there is no evidence Putin "threw" the election.

    The people holding a candle for Chump are like the morons who still maintain O'Bomber did good things for America and the world. You are the other side of that particular coin. That's what you get when you meed a hero figure to worship.

    [Apr 02, 2017] Someone is accused of colluding with a foreign dictator! Oh my!! We do get AIPAC in our elections! And Riyadh pay for play

    Notable quotes:
    "... Someone is accused of foiling the neocon plot to start WWIII. Someone is accused of colluding with a foreign dictator! Oh my!! we do get AIPAC in our elections! And Riyadh pay for play ..."
    Apr 02, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    lsm -> point... , April 01, 2017 at 07:12 AM
    Someone is accused of foiling the neocon plot to start WWIII. Someone is accused of colluding with a foreign dictator! Oh my!! we do get AIPAC in our elections! And Riyadh pay for play

    Someone is accused of colluding with a foreign power to hack

    O my someone helped Assange, someone is accused of putting truth about the CONARTISTS in DNC to the American people

    I have as much basis in facts as NYT!

    O my!

    [Apr 02, 2017] 'Press 2 if hackers needed' Russian FM April Fools voicemail leaves US media unamused

    Notable quotes:
    "... add foreign languages ..."
    "... CNN is the so-called news network that gave questions to Hillary Clinton during the debate. So we shouldn't really take them seriously. When it comes to laughing matters, they are now the laughing stock of the news world ..."
    Apr 02, 2017 | www.rt.com
    On Friday, WikiLeaks released a batch of documents detailing CIA hacking tactics and how the US agency can divert forensic investigators from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to the spy agency. One of the documents revealed that the framework supports the ability to " add foreign languages " to malware, listing Chinese, Russian and Korean in the example code, indicating the potential for the CIA to focus attention on another party to be blamed for the hack.

    CNN, however, decided to not cover the story, Gaunt told RT.

    " CNN is the so-called news network that gave questions to Hillary Clinton during the debate. So we shouldn't really take them seriously. When it comes to laughing matters, they are now the laughing stock of the news world ," the British commentator and politician said.

    [Apr 02, 2017] Liberals are losing their minds over Trump and Russia

    Notable quotes:
    "... in their quest to find a connection - particularly some sort of direct conspiracy between Trump and Putin - some liberals are abandoning good sense and becoming credulous toward nutty thinkers. ..."
    "... I'm reminded in a way of the Second Red Scare. The era of Joseph McCarthy is rightly remembered as a time of deranged witch hunts and fevered anti-Communist paranoia. ..."
    "... In other words, the defining characteristic of McCarthyism was not a false belief that KGB spies had infiltrated the government, because they had. It was paranoia and hysterical panic about such spying, especially in how it was used to further partisan Republican ends. McCarthy was a fool and an incompetent drunk, but other Republican elites tolerated him and his accusations because he whipped up unhinged outrage against Democratic Party elites and policies. ..."
    "... They loved it when he was falsely smearing Dean Acheson and George Marshall as secret Soviet sympathizers, or slagging public housing bills as the first step to Communism. It was only when McCarthy's erratic, diseased thinking, his constant lying and fabrication, and his utter investigative incompetence became undeniable that they began to desert him. ..."
    "... A corollary of this is that McCarthy was an active impediment to anti-espionage efforts. During the Red Scare, it's possible his various lists of supposed Communists included a small fraction of actual Soviet spies . But what tiny truth was there was swamped by the huge number of innocents caught up in the panic. What's more, after McCarthy's downfall the whole idea of Soviet infiltration of the American government was badly tainted by association with his vile methods. ..."
    "... Now, liberals' Trump-Russia fever is not remotely as bad as what struck Republicans during the McCarthy era. There is no full-blown panic, nor any show trials. Yet there is an echo of the basic mechanics. Instead of a Wisconsin senator, we have Louise Mensch, a former Conservative MP and bug-eyed conspiracy hound who has been all over cable news making one unsubstantiated accusation after another - and even somehow got a piece in The ..."
    "... Washington Monthly ..."
    "... The New Republic ..."
    "... Washington Post ..."
    Apr 02, 2017 | theweek.com

    An awful lot of American liberals have become rather possessed by the possibility that President Trump is somehow in league with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The circumstantial evidence that there is some sort of connection is rather strong - Putin very probably helped Trump win in 2016, some Trump associates have a rat's nest of connections with Russia, and Trump himself has been relying on financing from Eastern Europe for many years.

    But definitive proof has yet to surface. So in their quest to find a connection - particularly some sort of direct conspiracy between Trump and Putin - some liberals are abandoning good sense and becoming credulous toward nutty thinkers.

    It's important to avoid this not only because clear thinking is important, but because it is the best way to root out the truth.

    I'm reminded in a way of the Second Red Scare. The era of Joseph McCarthy is rightly remembered as a time of deranged witch hunts and fevered anti-Communist paranoia. Something that is a bit less remembered is that the Soviet Union did indeed have extensive espionage success within the American government, particularly during the Second World War. They penetrated the Manhattan Project, they scooped up all manner of non-nuclear weapons technology, they recruited one of the very top economic policy officials in the country, and on and on.

    In other words, the defining characteristic of McCarthyism was not a false belief that KGB spies had infiltrated the government, because they had. It was paranoia and hysterical panic about such spying, especially in how it was used to further partisan Republican ends. McCarthy was a fool and an incompetent drunk, but other Republican elites tolerated him and his accusations because he whipped up unhinged outrage against Democratic Party elites and policies.

    They loved it when he was falsely smearing Dean Acheson and George Marshall as secret Soviet sympathizers, or slagging public housing bills as the first step to Communism. It was only when McCarthy's erratic, diseased thinking, his constant lying and fabrication, and his utter investigative incompetence became undeniable that they began to desert him.

    A corollary of this is that McCarthy was an active impediment to anti-espionage efforts. During the Red Scare, it's possible his various lists of supposed Communists included a small fraction of actual Soviet spies . But what tiny truth was there was swamped by the huge number of innocents caught up in the panic. What's more, after McCarthy's downfall the whole idea of Soviet infiltration of the American government was badly tainted by association with his vile methods.

    (As an aside, it's important to note that all of this is orthogonal to the question of whether Soviet spying necessitated a hyper-belligerent diplomatic stance towards the USSR. All countries spy, America very much included, and in the end all the espionage probably didn't amount to much - indeed, it may have actually calmed tensions somewhat.)

    Now, liberals' Trump-Russia fever is not remotely as bad as what struck Republicans during the McCarthy era. There is no full-blown panic, nor any show trials. Yet there is an echo of the basic mechanics. Instead of a Wisconsin senator, we have Louise Mensch, a former Conservative MP and bug-eyed conspiracy hound who has been all over cable news making one unsubstantiated accusation after another - and even somehow got a piece in The New York Times . And she is only the most prominent of a cottage industry of instant Russia "experts" who have sprung up to write long tweet threads and create infographics in Microsoft Paint validating liberals' darkest suspicions about Trump.

    ... ... ...

    Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com . His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly , The New Republic , and the Washington Post .

    [Apr 01, 2017] Nunes own intelligence sources informed him that documents showed further collection of information about, and unmasking of, Trump transition officials.

    Apr 01, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    "What Devin Nunes Knows" [Kimberly Strassel, Wall Street Journal ]. Why Nunes left his cab:

    Around the same time, Mr. Nunes's own intelligence sources informed him that documents showed further collection of information about, and unmasking of, Trump transition officials. These documents aren't easily obtainable, since they aren't the "finished" intelligence products that Congress gets to see. Nonetheless, for weeks Mr. Nunes has been demanding intelligence agencies turn over said documents-with no luck, so far.

    Mr. Nunes earlier this week got his own source to show him a treasure trove of documents at a secure facility. Here are the relevant details:

    First, there were dozens of documents with information about Trump officials. Second, the information these documents contained was not related to Russia. Third, while many reports did "mask" identities (referring, for instance, to "U.S. Person 1 or 2") they were written in ways that made clear which Trump officials were being discussed. Fourth, in at least one instance, a Trump official other than Mr. Flynn was outright unmasked. Finally, these documents were circulated at the highest levels of government.

    To sum up, Team Obama was spying broadly on the incoming administration.

    Mr. Schiff's howls about Mr. Nunes's methods are bluster; the Republican was doing his job, and well.

    It would be interesting to know if this was still going on. And from the other side of the aisle:

    Readers, those of you who can endure tweet storms and clicked through, what do you think of these three?

    "The Senate Intelligence Committee turned down the request by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's lawyer for a grant of immunity in exchange for his testimony, two congressional sources told NBC News" [ NBC ].

    "Russians used 'Bernie Bros' as 'unwitting agents' in disinformation campaign: Senate Intel witness" [ Raw Story ]. You knew this was coming, right? The story is just as sloppy and misleading as the headline. For example: "Over time the anti-Clinton online faction became known by the nickname 'Bernie Bros.'" Note lack of agency in "became known"; #BernieBro was in fact propagated by Clinton supporters. And then there's this: "'Senator, I think what they were trying to do was drive a wedge within the Democratic Party between the Clinton group and the Sanders group," said [Retired Gen. Keith Alexander - former director of the National Security Agency]. "And then in our nation between Republicans and Democrats.'" Where to begin? Can Alexander really mean that Sanders and Clinton supporters wouldn't be in conflict if it weren't for the evil Russkis? Or Republicans and Democrats? I hope when Alexander analyzes Lower Slobovia he does a better job.

    [Apr 01, 2017] Red Scare Economic Principals

    Notable quotes:
    "... The Washington Post ..."
    "... Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire ..."
    "... The Chicago Tribune ..."
    "... Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China ..."
    "... The New York Times Magazine ..."
    "... The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy ..."
    Apr 01, 2017 | www.economicprincipals.com
    Red Scare March 5, 2017 - No Comments ↓ | Posted in 2016 elections , Russia Tagged with: Andrew Krepinevich , Andrew Marshall , Barry Watts , David Remnick , Evan Osnos , Joshua Yaffa , The Last Warrior , Valery Gerasimov
    In a week in which Attorney General Jeff Sessions's unremembered visit with the Russian ambassador dominated the news, the most interesting thing I read was a 13,000-word article in The New Yorker . It exemplified all the preconceptions typical of what I have come to think of as reporters of the Generation of '91 .

    David Remnick , b. 1958, was Moscow bureau chief 1988-1992 for The Washington Post , before he moved to the magazine. In 1998 he was named its editor. Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Evan Osnos , b. 1976, joined the magazine from The Chicago Tribune in 2008 and covered China for five years. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China appeared in 2014 and was a Pulitzer finalist. Joshua Yaffa is a journalist based in Moscow. He has written for The Economist and The New York Times Magazine .

    Nothing in the article – Active Measures: What lay behind Russia's interference in the 2016 election – and what lies ahead ? – was quite as punchy as the art that accompanied it. The magazine's traditional anniversary cover featured Vladimir Putin, as a dandy peering through a monocle at a raging butterfly Trump, instead of the customary rendering of Eustace Tilley . That was non-committal enough, though it reminded me of the magazine's 2014 Sochi Olympics cover , a figure-skating Vladimir Putin leaps while five little Putin lookalikes feign disinterest from the judges' stand.

    More alarming was the art opposite the opening page, Saint Basil's Cathedral, in Moscow, administering a jolt of light (a digital illumination ray?) to the White House from the skies above. The caption states, "Democratic National Committee hacks, many analysts believe, were just a skirmish in a larger war against Western institutions and alliances."

    The article was organized in five little chapters.

    In "Soft Targets," Putin orders an unprecedented effort to interfere in the US presidential election. It is a gesture of disrespect, ordered out of pique and resentment of perceived US finagling in the 2012 Soviet election, intended to be highly public.

    In "Cold War 2.0," the Obama administration is caught flat-footed by the campaign and fails to respond effectively. The Russians have adopted a new and deeply troubling offensive posture "that threatens the very international order," a former Obama official states.

    In "Putin's World," a capsule history of the decline of Russian pride during the 1990s is presented alongside an argument for the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Putin's mistrust of democracy at home is described, as well as his recoiling from the US invasion of Iraq. Differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama after the annexation of Crimea are recounted: she sometimes favors the use of military force whereas he does not.

    In "Hybrid War," Russia becomes technically adroit at cyberwarfare and experiments with a digital blitz on Estonian communications after a statue of a Soviet soldier is removed; meanwhile the US unleashes its Stuxnet computer virus on Iran's uranium refinery operations. The Russian Army chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, is introduced, along with his 2013 article, The Value of Science Is in the Foresight , urging "the adoption of a Western strategy," combining military, technological, media, political and intelligence tactics to destabilize a foe, the article having "achieved the status of legend" as the Gerasimov doctrine, following the invasion of Ukraine. An estimated thousand code warriors are said to be working for the Russian government on everything from tapping former Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland's cell phone in Kiev ("a new low in Russian tradecraft") to the forthcoming French and German elections. Finally, the hacking campaign against the Democratic Party is rehashed, and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta says the interaction between Russian intervention and the FBI "created a vortex that produced the result" – a lost election.

    In "Turbulence Theory," Trump is said to be a phenomenon of America's own making, like the nationalist politicians of Europe, both the consequence of globalization and deindustrialization, but Russia likes the policies that are the result: leave Russia alone and don't talk about civil rights. Meanwhile, the hacking campaign may have backfired, and Trump may no longer have the freedom to accommodate Russian ambitions as might have been wished, but at least Russia has come up with a way to make up for its economic and geopolitical weakness, namely inflict turbulence on the rest of the world.

    Three things about this assessment stand out.

    Putin's views of US foreign policy are not integral to the account: they are presented in two widely separate sections, one on the history of US "active measures," the other on changes in his opinion wrought by the war in Iraq.

    Putin is quick to accuse the West of hypocrisy, the authors write, but his opinions, and those of others, especially who compare the invasions of Crimea and Iraq (where the US immediately set out to build an embassy for 15,000 workers) are dismissed as "whataboutism ," exercises in false moral equivalence. NATO expansion is more or less taken for granted. The military alliance's extension to the borders of Russia forms no part of the narrative.

    Second, no attention is paid to Putin's problems, aside from a nod to his suppression of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the rock group Pussy Riot. His plans for a Eurasian Union, which were at the heart of the Ukraine crisis, go unmentioned. There's nothing about the centuries-old struggle between Westernizers and Slavophiles who oppose policies that would tie Russia more closely to the West.

    Third, the history of the Cold War itself gets short shrift. The genesis of the doctrine of "hybrid war," ascribed to Gen. Gerasimov, is described at length in The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy , by Andrew F. Krepinevich and, Barry D. Watts (Basic Books, 2015). Marshall founded the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment. In 1973 he described what would become a dramatic strategic shift:

    In general we need to look for opportunities as well as problems; search for areas of comparative advantage and try to move the competition into these areas; [and] look for ways to complicate the Soviets' problems.

    Many factors led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Active measures," of the sort propounded by Marshall, were prominent among them. You can hardly be surprised that the Russians have sought to master new techniques. The underlying proposition of the New Yorker's article is that the world is, or at least it should be, unipolar, with the US in charge of its democratic values. After all these years, the Russians still don't agree.

    [Apr 01, 2017] Of Tweets And Trade

    Accidently Krugman gave out the reason for Anti-Russian hysterias... Here we can talk about neoliberal junta...
    blogs.nytimes.com

    ...the classic answer of collapsing juntas is the Malvinas solution: rally the nation by creating a foreign confrontation of some kind. Usually this involves a shooting war; but maybe a trade war would serve the same purpose.

    [Apr 01, 2017] My speculation is Flynn doesn't want to have the Logan act hanging over his head

    Notable quotes:
    "... "The Senate Intelligence Committee turned down the request by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's lawyer for a grant of immunity in exchange for his testimony, two congressional sources told NBC News" [NBC]. ..."
    Apr 01, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    djrichard , March 31, 2017 at 4:20 pm

    "The Senate Intelligence Committee turned down the request by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's lawyer for a grant of immunity in exchange for his testimony, two congressional sources told NBC News" [NBC].

    So what's the over/under on this?

    My speculation is Flynn doesn't have anything to say about Trump. He just doesn't want to have the Logan act hanging over his head. But if he's got nothing to contribute, that means Flynn is more valuable to anti-Trump forces if he doesn't open his mouth – gotta keep the other narratives going.

    [Apr 01, 2017] Russians used 'Bernie Bros' as 'unwitting agents' in disinformation campaign

    Apr 01, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    The worst liars are often form intelligence agents. timbers , March 31, 2017 at 2:40 pm

    "Russians used 'Bernie Bros' as 'unwitting agents' in disinformation campaign: Senate Intel witness" [Raw Story].

    Medicare for all and universal single payer healthcare is a Russian plot to divide America and was used to interfere with the election to get Trump elected and steal the Presidency from Hillary, who would have defeated Putin by now if she had won, just like we won in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and lots of other places.

    I think I'm going to try this line out on customers next time I tend bar. Their input should be very helpful especially after they've had several cocktails.

    LT , March 31, 2017 at 2:52 pm

    Of course. The Democratic Party is dismissive of the fact that the institutions they hold so dear are corrupted beyond reformability. They have zero self-awareness no matter how much yoga or meditation they practice and the sooner the party goes extinct the better.

    dontknowitall , March 31, 2017 at 3:21 pm

    So now Bernie Bros are Stalin's unwitting dupes since "Trump is a Putin agent" doesn't seem to be working out. As a Bernie Bro this Russian connection is news to me, I couldn't stand Hillary forever (before Putin even) and even less her hapless cadre of well wishers. If you pile up all the lying and obfuscating that went on with Obama and Bush, I was more than ready to look outside the Beltway for a life raft.

    I tell you when I absolutely decided I was not going to play the 'lesser evil' game and that was when it became patently obvious that Sec State Hillary Clinton was going to approve of the DAPL pipeline by having its environmental impact 'independently' scrutinized by a contractor that was also working for the pipeline's owners. That piece of straw broke the camel's back

    I have yet to figure out why Apple's autocorrect keeps changing Bernie Bros to beriberi

    Alex Morfesis , March 31, 2017 at 3:50 pm

    White russians vs formerfakered russians 100 yrs later, razputin sez read my hips no interference in american election

    but from archangel where about 100 years ago the only americans ever shot by russians died about 20 there and 30 Vladivostok if I have split the 50 killed over two years from actual combat correctly

    America and russia must always be kept apart otherwise europe (and china) will not flourish

    Russia is twice the physical size of the usa with one third its population

    Are there and have there been conflicts between the 2 nations these last 100 years well we invaded them at the end of ww1 just as we (& others) invaded and occupied china for a few decades but yes major countries and with russia spanning three continents(arguing diomide island & Aleutian isles are part of n. America) it is impossible for Russian interests to not involve most northern hemisphere economies

    Just as communism and marxism is not some communicable disease neither is hamiltonianism

    If fearless leader were powerful, the trappings of power(big building we see you erdo ), big posters, big parades & 365247 as talking head would not be necessary

    If pinochet, fidel, marcos, stalin & franco were "powerful" they would not have had to round up and kill "dissidents"

    Who would ever want to be king

    aletheia33 , March 31, 2017 at 4:14 pm

    actually i am worried about this. if they can persistently smear sanders enough with this kind of associated-with-foreign-enemies lie–which they can escalate in various directions from a foundational "russians used bernie"–i can see it taking him out from any further effectiveness. the younger generation may not take it seriously, but knee-jerk patriotism is still quite useful–it's never failed when TPTB want a war, has it?–for directing americans' minds to where TPTB want them to go. i keep thinking of how easy it was for mccarthyism to take hold in the 1950s, and we are now seeing so much that is reminiscent of that. and mccarthyism was very effective in crushing the left, with consequences we are still suffering. the more followers sanders attracts, the more dangerous and frightening to TPTB he will become. they have barely begun to take him seriously as a threat. this is only the beginning of what they will try in their effort to erase it if they see it escalating.

    please correct me, i want to be wrong.

    a different chris , March 31, 2017 at 7:14 pm

    Unfortunately, the only thing you are wrong about is just being worried about "this" so specifically the TPTB will try any and all possible levers to get what they want. It will take more than Sanders to stop them, and they will crush quite a few people along the way. Might include Sanders, but if he's the only resistance then they will certainly crush his movement and will get their war on.

    We need a 1000 flowers to bloom. Every type and in every direction.

    aletheia33 , March 31, 2017 at 7:33 pm

    @a different chris,

    agreed. i am specifically worried about the russia/sanders thing (and not mentioning all the rest that you refer to) because i don't see it being taken seriously now at its inception. i think it's important to call attention at the first emergence of a new disinfo campaign, which often evokes from people, initially, laughter and disbelief.

    HopeLB , March 31, 2017 at 8:31 pm

    I was thinking along the lines of an internet deluge of messages which convey something along the lines of , " Do you actually think you have dumbed us down to the point where we would actually believe this Red Scare Shit? Or are just gauging how much worse you have to make common core education and lead levels to get us there?" Not catchy but something to that effect.

    different clue , March 31, 2017 at 9:13 pm

    Or . . . How long did it take you people to come up with that?

    How much did it cost you to have that focus-grouped?

    Steve , March 31, 2017 at 4:20 pm

    I was reading the comments on the RawStorys piece last night. It was absolutely frightening the hate the majority of commenters have for people who supported Bernie. The fact that almost all of their information is untrue doesn't make any difference to them. They are poorly informed and becoming very unhinged.

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , March 31, 2017 at 4:53 pm

    Wait till 2018.

    The Great Purge will be quite a show.

    NotTimothyGeithner , March 31, 2017 at 5:01 pm

    They were always unhinged.

    Do you remember "battle tested" and boasts about Hillary winning Republicans? Those were just as fantastical. Hillary ran in two elections (2006 doesn't count). She carpet bagged her way into New York where she wound up facing a candidate too extreme for Peter King and only won by 10 points. Gore won by 25. Then she lost to Obama. She polled as a consistent drag on down ticket races.

    The stuff about Obama's soaring rhetoric was absolutely nuts. "We aren't red states or blue states. We are the United states." He was dopey then. This is largely the result of emotional investment in candidates. Admittedly, they are lashing out because their imaginary friends aren't on TV all the time. They remind me very much of Lonzo Ball's old man or crazed sports parents and stage mom's in general.

    Of course, one does wonder about Brock's trolls.

    Big River Bandido , March 31, 2017 at 5:23 pm

    They are completely unhinged. No better than birthers, Tea Partiers, and anti-vaxxers.

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , March 31, 2017 at 5:34 pm

    Unhinged, or just their true selves this is normal for them?

    Is it a bug, or a feature?

    Is it divorce time? Finally knowing there is no changing the two-timer.

    a different chris , March 31, 2017 at 7:26 pm

    *this* - realize the Republican Party, hard to say about Trump himself, but the Rs are literally no more to the right of these people than Sanders is to the left.

    So it's not unhinged to treat him just as badly.

    They are OK with US tax levels because they are comfortably well off, and being more urban they can see the infrastructure and understand that it has to be paid for. They are OK with Obamacare because they aren't subject to it and it "sounds good". They are OK with wars because other people fight them. And so on.

    different clue , March 31, 2017 at 9:15 pm

    I have said before that the millions upon millions of Klinton Koolaid Kultists will be a social problem going forward. They may well become a menace.

    Should Sanders supporters quietly begin forming armed and trained militias to be able to protect themselves and eachother from rioting Clintonite mobs, Clintonite home-invaders, and so forth?

    Vatch , March 31, 2017 at 2:43 pm

    "Russians used 'Bernie Bros' as 'unwitting agents' in disinformation campaign: Senate Intel witness" [Raw Story]. You knew this was coming, right?

    Well, no, I did not know that this was coming. I suppose I should have; I did not realize that I, as a Sanders supporter, was a tool of Russian propaganda. I naively thought that I opposed Clinton because of her immoral family foundation activities, her secret and lucrative speeches to Wall Street firms, her Senate vote for the invasion of Iraq, her vote to make it harder for people to get out of bankruptcy, her votes to create and reauthorize the Patriot Act, her disdain for environmentalists, and all of the bizarre events associated with her private email server. I guess I now better now. (sarc)

    djrichard , March 31, 2017 at 3:48 pm

    That's no excuse. One must strive to not have overlap with the Russian agenda. America depended on us when we were most needed and in our failings we failed America. /sarc

    Cujo359 , March 31, 2017 at 3:51 pm

    Almost as though a term as a US Senator and four years as SoS would give us no idea how she might govern. It was Russian propaganda that made us believe she was going to do no better than give us more of the same

    DJG , March 31, 2017 at 4:10 pm

    Vatchushka: I knew all along that you are a running dog of Russian imperialism. Come on. Admit it.

    Vatch , March 31, 2017 at 4:42 pm

    I didn't even realize that I'm a sleeper agent!

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , March 31, 2017 at 5:28 pm

    A Manchurian sleeper agent.

    Arizona Slim , March 31, 2017 at 4:44 pm

    And to think that my beloved aunt (RIP, Jean!) turned me on to Bernie Sanders. Does that make her a BernieAunt? If so, she'd think that it was hilarious.

    craazyboy , March 31, 2017 at 5:44 pm

    First they come for the Bros, then they come for the LezBros.

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , March 31, 2017 at 6:13 pm

    First the came for the Deplorables.

    Now, they are coming for the Bros.

    Gareth , March 31, 2017 at 5:10 pm

    I take this as meaning that the Queen of Chaos is running again. This time in a leather jacket.

    Marina Bart , March 31, 2017 at 6:22 pm

    Every time she does her leather lesbian routine, I get excited for a brief moment that she's going to come out as bi, which would be one cool progressive thing she could achieve that would cost her nothing (in reality - in her mind, I think she still believes she's going to be President).

    And then I remember the scam about the hot sauce in her purse, and I wonder whose pocket she's trying to pick by doing this.

    [Mar 31, 2017] The Coup Against Trump and Why Russia Must Be Destroyed by Henry Romero

    Notable quotes:
    "... The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik. ..."
    Jan 16, 2017 | sputniknews.com
    The Coup Against Trump and Why Russia 'Must Be Destroyed' © REUTERS/ Opinion 17:04 16.01.2017 (updated 13:51 22.01.2017) Get short URL John Wight 95 36555 208 27 Delenda est Cathargo ("Carthage must be destroyed") are words that come down to us from ancient history. It is said they were spoken by the famed Roman statesman and orator Cato the Elder at the end of his speeches. They remain relevant today in the case of Trump, Russia and a Washington establishment that is intent on destroying both. The Rome of our time is Washington, Russia is Carthage, and today's Cato the Elder is none other than US Senator John McCain, whose quest for conflict with Russia is unbounded. © AP Photo/

    Indeed for Mr. McCain the belief that Russia must be destroyed has been elevated to the status of a self evident and received truth.

    Origins of the 'Dodgy Dossier'

    It was McCain who passed the "dodgy dossier" on Trump to the FBI, after receiving it from former UK ambassador to Russia, Sir Andrew Wood. Contained within the dossier is information purporting to reveal how Trump has been compromised by Russian intelligence over various sexual encounters with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. Compounding the scandal, adding to the lurid nature of it, are reports of the existence of a second Russian dossier on the President-elect.

    The dossier's originator has been revealed as former British MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who now runs a private intelligence company and has, according to reports, gone into hiding in the UK, supposedly fearing assassination by Russian agents.

    The fact that Mr. Steele hasn't set foot in Russia for a number of years and reportedly, on behalf of Trump's enemies within the Republican Party establishment, paid for the information contained in the 35-page dossier, recently released with the caveat that its contents cannot be verified, should have been more than enough to have it instantly dismissed as, well, fake news?

    In an article that appeared on the UK's Independent newspaper website - titled "The dodgy Donald Trump dossier reminds me of the row over Saddam Hussein and his fictitious weapons of mass destruction" - Patrick Cockburn writes, "I read the text of the dossier on Donald Trump's alleged dirty dealings with a scepticism that soon turned into complete disbelief." Later in the same article he observes, "In its determination to damage Trump, the US press corps has been happy to suspend disbelief in this dubious document."

    More significant than the fact this dossier was not immediately dismissed is the timing of its emergence and subsequent publication by the US news site, BuzzFeed. It comes on the very cusp of President-elect Donald Trump's official inauguration as the 45 th President of the United States on January 20th, and the very point at which his cabinet appointees were being grilled over their views of Russia, the threat Russia allegedly poses to the US and the West, during their official Senate confirmation hearings.

    Political Coup Underway Against Trump

    By now most people are aware, or at least should be, of Washington's long and ignoble history when it comes to fomenting, planning, supporting, and funding political and military coups around the world - in Central and Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere the CIA and other US agencies have brought down countless leaders and governments that have refused to toe the line when it comes to serving US interests.

    In unprecedented fashion, what we have in this instance are those same deep state actors, working in conjunction with the US liberal establishment, currently engaged in a coup designed to destroy the Trump presidency - if not before it begins then certainly soon after, with the prospect of impeachment proceedings against him already being mooted in Washington circles.

    During his recent press conference , Trump felt minded to declaim against Washington's bloated intelligence community, accusing it of releasing the dossier to the media, an allegation US intelligence chiefs have denied. The result is an unprecedented open war between the country's next president and his soon-to-be intelligence services that has pitched the country into a political crisis that grows deeper by the day.

    The Power of the Military Industrial Complex

    On the question of why the US deep state and Washington's liberal establishment is so intent on maintaining Russia in the role of deadly enemy, the answer is very simple - money.

    Huge and powerful economic and ideological interests are tied up in the new Сold War of the past few years.

    We're talking the country's previously mentioned gargantuan defense and intelligence budgets, continuing US support and financing of NATO, along with reason for the continued existence and funding of the vast network of political think tanks in Washington and throughout the West, all of which are committed to sustaining a status quo of US hegemony and unipolarity.

    Russia's emergence as a strategic counterweight to the West in recent years has and continues to challenge this hitherto uncontested hegemony, providing lucrative opportunities for organizations, groups, and individuals with a vested interest in the resulting new Cold War. For those of a skeptical persuasion in this regard, I refer you to the chilling warning issued by former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower prior to leaving office in 1960 to make way for his replacement, John F. Kennedy.

    In his televised farewell address to the American people in 1961, Eisenhower said, "We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations."

    He continued:

    "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society."

    Finally, Eisenhower warned the American people how, "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

    Though neoconservatives may no longer be in the driving seat in Washington, neoconservative ideas undoubtedly are. And prime among them is the idea that not only must Russia be destroyed but also anyone who would dare stand in the way of this narrative, up to and including President-elect Donald J. Trump.

    The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.

    [Mar 31, 2017] Russian Disinformation Works Because Donald Trump 'Parrots The Same Lines,' Cyber Expert Testifies The Huffington Post

    Look like Clinton Watt can't (or does not want) to distinguish crisis of neoliberalism in the USA after 2008 and Russian influence. This is definitely pro-Clinton stance. He discredited himself by stating that Trump tower was wired is "fake news." It is not a "fake news". After Snowden revelations this is a plausible hypotheses that needs to be investigated and iether proved or disproved. This "Putindidit" stance is a very convenient smoke screen for Clinton supporters.
    www.huffingtonpost.com

    President Donald Trump aided Moscow's disinformation campaign during the 2016 U.S. election by spreading false information originating from Russian state-sponsored news outlets and internet bots, a cybersecurity expert testified before Congress on Thursday.

    "Part of the reason active measures have worked in this U.S. election is because the commander in chief has used Russian active measures, at times, against his opponents," Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told members of the Senate intelligence committee during the panel's first public hearing on Russian election interference since Trump's inauguration in January.

    The charge from Watts, a former FBI Special Agent who tracks Russian influence operations, came in response to a question from Republican Sen. James Lankford (Okla.), who asked why Russian President Vladimir Putin believed he could get away with interfering in last year's U.S. elections.

    "They parrot the same lines," Watts responded, referring to Trump and Moscow. "[Trump] denies the intel from the United States about Russia. He claimed that the election could be rigged. That was the No. 1 theme pushed by RT, Sputnik news," Watts continued. "He's made claims of voter fraud, that President Obama is not a citizen, that Congressman Cruz is not a citizen."

    In some instances, Trump and his campaign team propagated fake stories they appear to have learned about directly from Russian state media. Last year, then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort accused the U.S. media of failing to cover a terrorist attack against the NATO air base in Incirlik, Turkey. There was no such attack ― but RT, Sputnik and pro-Russian Twitter accounts pushed a series of stories suggesting Incirlik was under threat.

    According to Watts, pro-Russian Twitter accounts noticed Trump's loose relationship with facts and sought to capitalize on it. They "tweet at President Trump during high volumes when they know he's online and they push conspiracy theories," Watts testified.

    The U.S. intelligence community released a public assessment in January concluding that the Russian government used a campaign of false information and cyber hacking efforts to discredit Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and help Trump win the 2016 election. There is an ongoing FBI-led investigation into Moscow's alleged efforts and possible collusion with the Trump team. The House and Senate intelligence committees are conducting their own separate probes into the matter.

    While the Kremlin appeared to favor Trump in the 2016 presidential election, there are indications that Moscow has sought to undermine Republican politicians as well, Watts said Thursday. During the presidential primary races, Russian media outlets "sought to sideline opponents on both sides of the political spectrum with adversarial views towards the Kremlin," Watts said.

    Turning his gaze toward Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a committee member and a GOP presidential candidate last year, Watts said, "Senator Rubio, in my opinion you, anecdotally, suffered from these efforts."

    This past week, Watts continued, social media accounts pushed material discrediting Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis).

    AshLee Strong, a Ryan spokeswoman, said she wasn't familiar with the activity mentioned by Watts but added that it was unsurprising "that foreign adversaries are trying to undermine our efforts."

    Rubio, who did not immediately respond to Watts' claim, later confirmed that former members of his presidential campaign team were targeted by IP addresses that traced back to an unknown location within Russia. According to Rubio, the attempted breaches occurred in July 2016, shortly after he announced he would run for Senate re-election, and again this week, at 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday. Both attempts were unsuccessful, he said.

    It's likely Moscow will turn against Trump as it becomes politically and strategically prudent to do so, Watts warned. "They win because they play both sides," he said.

    Russia began developing its active measures campaign in 2009, with its capabilities progressing all the way up until the 2016 election, Watts said. The U.S. was slow to catch on to the threat, he charged, because the intelligence community has been "over-focused on terrorism" and biased against open-source information.

    "My two colleagues and I use three laptops and we do this at our house," Watts said. "But for some reason, the entire intel apparatus, with billions of dollars, will miss a tweet or a Facebook post that's right in front of them."

    [Mar 31, 2017] US Senators Get Lesson on Twitter Trolls at Costly Russian Interference Hearing

    Mar 31, 2017 | sputniknews.com
    Titled "Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns," the Senate Intelligence Committee's rare public hearing on Thursday was promoted with a promise to provide details on how the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, in his opening remarks, asserted that the hearing would provide a "foundational understanding of the problem."

    Once again, however, evidence primarily consisted of speculation, and appeared to fall short.

    "Russian propaganda outlets like RT and Sputnik successfully produced and peddled disinformation to American audiences" in favor of the campaign of Donald Trump, Vice Chairman Mark Warner asserted in his remarks, as if it was a well documented and proven fact.

    "This Russian 'propaganda on steroids' was designed to poison the national conversation in America."

    FBI Director James Comey, left, joined by National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers, right, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, March 20, 2017, before the House Intelligence Committee hearing on allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election © AP Photo/ Manuel Balce Ceneta Dozen Most Insane Statements From US Congress' Hearing on 'Russian Spying' Eugene Rumer, a former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the US National Intelligence Council, claimed that "fake news" and "trolls" are an "integral part of Russian foreign policy."

    "It is the totality of Russian efforts in plain sight - to mislead, to misinform, to exaggerate - that is more convincing than any cyber evidence. RT, internet trolls, fake news and so on, are an integral part of Russian foreign policy today," Rumer claimed.

    Roy Godson, a former Georgetown University professor still apparently stuck in the Cold War era, continuously referred to Russia as "the Soviets." He did admit that there is little evidence that Russia attempted to change vote tallies.

    Former FBI agent Clinton Watts offered testimony about how "trolls" will push hashtags and stories on Twitter until they make it into the top 10 trending items - forcing mainstream media to cover the topic. Stating the obvious, he explained that once information gets on to Twitter's trending list it will gain organic traction.

    Dick Cheney © Flickr/ Tony Swartz Cheney Seeks to Manipulate Trump 'Splashing Gasoline' Into Election 'Scandal' Watts cited hashtags such as "God," "constitution," "conservative," and "Trump" as examples of hashtags used by "Russian trolls." He also claimed that Kremlin operatives did not stop meddling in American politics after the election, and just this week engaged in a campaign to smear House Speaker Paul Ryan.

    "This past week we observed social media campaigns targeting Speaker of the House Paul Ryan hoping to foment further unrest amongst US democratic institutions," Watts testified.

    Many US Trump supporters took to Twitter following his comments to declare that the former agent was giving Russia credit for their efforts, as prominent supporters of the president have long voiced displeasure with Ryan.

    Watts urged mainstream traditional media to boycott WikiLeaks, so that "Russian influence dies on the vine."

    He also claimed that the efforts did not just target Clinton during the primaries, but other politicians as well - specifically including Senator Marco Rubio, who was sitting on the panel.

    "They were in full swing during both the Republican and Democratic primary season - and may have helped sink the hopes of candidates more hostile to Russian interests long before the field narrowed," Watts claimed. "Senator Rubio, in my opinion, you anecdotally suffered from these efforts."

    'Enter' key Pixabay The 'Democrats' Benghazi': Russian Hacking Saga Continues During the second panel, Rubio shocked the room when he stated that former members of his presidential campaign were "targeted" by people using IP addresses in Russia, first in July, and again on Wednesday.

    "Former members of my presidential campaign team who had access to the internal information of my presidential campaign were targeted by IP addresses with an unknown location within Russia," Rubio said Thursday. "That effort was unsuccessful."

    "I would also inform the committee within the last 24 hours, at 10:45 a.m. yesterday, a second attempt was made, again, against former members of my presidential campaign team who had access to our internal information - again targeted from an IP address from an unknown location in Russia. And that effort was also unsuccessful."

    Following the hearing, Rubio was asked by Sputnik News whether he was able to verify the person was actually in Russia and not just using a VPN to show a Russian address. He paused for an extended moment before answering.

    "I'm going to stay with what I said in the committee and not outline anything further," Rubio told Sputnik News, measuring his words carefully. "We've turned it over to the appropriate authorities and we'll go from there."

    U.S. President Donald Trump reacts after delivering his first address to a joint session of Congress from the floor of the House of Representatives iin Washington, U.S., February 28, 2017 © REUTERS/ Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool Trump 'Takes Advantageous Position,' Accuses Hillary Clinton of Russia Ties Another Senate witness, Thomas Rid, professor in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, strangely asserted that WikiLeaks, Twitter and "over eager journalists" are all "unwitting Russian agents."

    Earlier this month, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Vladimir Putin, told CNN that "hysteria in official Washington and in the American media" is harming relations between the two nations. He also vehemently denied Russian involvement in election-related hacking.

    "This is unimaginable and someone has to say - all this is not true. We have to be sober, let's come to our minds," Peskov added.

    On Tuesday, Burr and Warner spoke to reporters about their investigation.

    Burr, a Republican, announced that seven staffers are working full time on the probe, compared to three on the Benghazi investigation. The smaller investigation into the 2012 attack cost American taxpayers over $7 million.

    "This one's one of the biggest investigations that the Hill has seen in my tenure here," Burr said.

    [Mar 31, 2017] People propagating anti-russian hysteria r emind population of a certain country in the past.

    Mar 31, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    EMichael -> ken melvin... , March 30, 2017 at 08:30 AM
    Russia has owned him for a long, long time.

    "Trump scholars gradually will determine how material was the sales boost in the complicated ups-and-downs of Trump's financial position in those days. For an explication of some of the favors owed, which in one case went back to 1976, see the current article. This much is indelibly clear: the president has seen Russia as a prime source of revenue, if not investment, for twenty years. Again, BBw:

    Simultaneous with when the tower was going up, developer Gil Dezer and his father, Michael, were building a Trump-backed condo project in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. "Russians love the Trump brand," [Dezer] says, adding that Russians and Russian Americans bought some 200 of the 2,000 units in Trump buildings he built. They flooded into Trump projects from 2001 to 2007, helping Trump weather the real estate collapse, he says."

    http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/2017.03.26/1983.html

    libezkova -> EMichael... , March 30, 2017 at 08:27 PM
    My God, what an indoctrinated, completely brainwashed twat you are. Note to Anne: this word is listed by the British Board of Film Classification as an example of "moderate language" for the 12 certificate...

    Incapable (in this particular area) of any independent thinking and like parrots capable only repeat Anti-Russian propaganda from some questionable sources.

    Reminds me population of a certain country in the past.

    I wonder what will happen, if Russia opens archives and show the world the level of greed and corruption of US politicians during 1991-2000 "economic rape of Russia." In this case Wikileaks staff can take a very long vacation.


    [Mar 28, 2017] Trump Asks Why Intelligence Committee Isn t Probing The Clintons

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Why isn't the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech, money to Bill, the Hillary Russian 'reset,' praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!" Trump wrote in two tweets Monday night. ..."
    "... Trump's rhetorical questions come amid a news cycle which as discussed on various occasions today has focused on the Republican chair of the Intel Committee, Nunes, who is under fire for briefing Trump about classified material he reviewed last week without sharing the information with committee Democrats. On Monday it was revealed that Nunes had secretly visited the White House grounds one day before announcing incidental surveillance of President Trump's transition team. His visit raised questions about whether the White House could have been was the source of the intelligence Nunes reviewed. ..."
    "... The republican lawmaker has claimed that his findings had no relevance to the Russia probe, even as the committee examines the unmasking and leaking of surveillance information as part of that investigation. ..."
    "... This whole situation is really beginning to concern me. Is the entire US Government corrupt? Is there no one in the IC and oversight committee who can be trusted? ..."
    "... I am going to bet money that everyone, and I mean everyone. in DC has had their hands in the "CORRUPTION" cookie jar. ..."
    "... CLINTONS are simply a mirror image of the Washington DC establishment. ..."
    "... Oh no. The Clintons are in a class of their own (unless you count the Bush cartel). Plenty of corrupt characters are trying their best to emulate them. ..."
    "... Because they are VIPs...very important pedophiles. ..."
    "... Actually, IIRC, he said, "If I am president, you will be in prison", to Hillary. Lets keep the campaign promise Donalt!! ..."
    Mar 27, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Following a day of drama involving the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, who has been under constant onslaught by Democrats ever since his disclosure last week that Trump had indeed been the object of surveillance, and whose Democrat peer at the Intel panel, Adam Schiff, on Monday night called for Nunes to recuse himself , moments ago Trump waded into the news cycle when he asked on Twitter why the House Intelligence Committee is not investigating the Clintons for various ties of their own to Russia. He then slammed the ongoing anti-Russian witch hunt, saying "the Russia story is a hoax."

    "Why isn't the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech, money to Bill, the Hillary Russian 'reset,' praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!" Trump wrote in two tweets Monday night.

    Why isn't the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech....

    - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017

    ...money to Bill, the Hillary Russian "reset," praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA --

    - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017

    Trump's rhetorical questions come amid a news cycle which as discussed on various occasions today has focused on the Republican chair of the Intel Committee, Nunes, who is under fire for briefing Trump about classified material he reviewed last week without sharing the information with committee Democrats. On Monday it was revealed that Nunes had secretly visited the White House grounds one day before announcing incidental surveillance of President Trump's transition team. His visit raised questions about whether the White House could have been was the source of the intelligence Nunes reviewed.

    Democratic lawmakers have now called on Nunes to recuse himself from the committee's probe into Russia's interference in the United States presidential election. Nunes on Monday evening said the chairman would not step aside from the investigation.

    The republican lawmaker has claimed that his findings had no relevance to the Russia probe, even as the committee examines the unmasking and leaking of surveillance information as part of that investigation.

    ... ... ...

    GUS100CORRINA -> LetThemEatRand , Mar 27, 2017 10:59 PM

    This whole situation is really beginning to concern me. Is the entire US Government corrupt? Is there no one in the IC and oversight committee who can be trusted?

    As someone recently said, President TRUMP needs to take the word GOOD out of his vocabulary when referencing people. GOOD is very clear about His perspective on humanity. None are GOOD, no NOT one!

    I am going to bet money that everyone, and I mean everyone. in DC has had their hands in the "CORRUPTION" cookie jar.

    CLINTONS are simply a mirror image of the Washington DC establishment.

    azusgm -> GUS100CORRINA , Mar 27, 2017 11:02 PM

    Oh no. The Clintons are in a class of their own (unless you count the Bush cartel). Plenty of corrupt characters are trying their best to emulate them.

    The Joker , Mar 27, 2017 10:24 PM

    Because they are VIPs...very important pedophiles.

    Beam Me Up Scotty -> LN , Mar 27, 2017 11:01 PM

    Actually, IIRC, he said, "If I am president, you will be in prison", to Hillary. Lets keep the campaign promise Donalt!!

    MsCreant , Mar 27, 2017 10:28 PM

    I work with smart folks. Today I was listening to a guy go on about how Trump might be guilty of treason. I asked about Hillary and the Clinton Foundation and some of the issues brought up in this article. Crickets...

    I am worried.

    Trump may be a lot of distasteful things. I don't see treason here. But if smart folks buy into this... aw hell we are in for it.

    PoasterToaster , Mar 27, 2017 10:28 PM

    The Democratic Party is the party of White Slavery.

    Ms No , Mar 27, 2017 10:31 PM

    This is the part where he regrets saying that he was going to leave the Clintons alone because they were good people and have been through enough. Our election system needs to be investigated before the next election also. Obviously we need hearings on the CIA, NSA, all of it. Of course who will oversee the hearings? What a joke.

    Yes We Can. But... -> Ms No , Mar 27, 2017 10:46 PM

    Or is this where Trump plays dumb and says "I thought they were good people. But that was before I knew XYZ"?

    Trump knows they're not good people. I mean, he just asked why they aren't under investigation.

    Trump knows Bill is a rapist and a predator. Trump knows why Hillary as SOS refused to use required .gub email, why she set up a secret server with classified info on it, why she wiped 30k+ yoga emails.

    Animal Mother -> Yes We Can. But Lets Not. , Mar 27, 2017 10:49 PM

    Trump personally has to have some things he can point to in order to prove his impartiality when the DOJ finally starts looking into the Bubba Foundation. He can claim that he is impartial and say in a nice tweet, "Hey, I thought they were nice people. Now I see how she fooled all her voters" and still have her sent to Federal Prison along with Bubba and Soetoro too.

    biker , Mar 27, 2017 10:39 PM

    Maxine Waters talks about Obama OFA shared-access amazon cloud secret database on USA citizens/agencies (shadow government) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d69X20HhEQg

    Akzed , Mar 27, 2017 10:41 PM

    "Trump Asks Why Intelligence Committee Isn't Probing The Clintons"

    Nunes is head of the committee. Why didn't Trump think to ask him when he had him over?!

    BitchesBetterRe... , Mar 27, 2017 10:44 PM

    Why isn't the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary........

    Hey Trump - who's in the White house now? YOU !!!! So stop whining, get your team together & Go after them instead of tweeting about it!!!!

    WTF Donald.....

    Cabreado -> BitchesBetterRecognize , Mar 27, 2017 11:02 PM

    The government wasn't designed to work that way. It is a mistake (and it always was) to expect the Presidency to fix-it-all-up. Your sentiments are dangerous, in part because of your expectations, and in part because you give a pass to corrupt points of control.

    But don't feel bad -- nobody here (or anywhere, really) seems to give a damn.

    [Mar 28, 2017] Russia Is Pissed Threatens To Spill Obama Admin Secrets If US Intel Does not Stop Leaking

    Another fake news. this time from Zero Hedge...
    Mar 28, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Russia Is Pissed: Threatens To Spill Obama Admin Secrets If US Intel Doesn't Stop Leaking logical-different , Mar 28, 2017 5:56 PM

    Here's what you have to do Russia

    Tell the American government that they'll have to apply for a VISA before you'll them come into your country. Personally, I don't know why you'd want the bastards to come for a visit. If you think your confused now wait until the inmates from the USA finish with their visit.

    Herdee , Mar 28, 2017 4:36 PM

    Like how the CIA trained these F'n morons?

    https://www.infowars.com/german-mp-erdogan-a-terrorism-godfather/

    NobodyNowhere , Mar 28, 2017 3:59 PM

    Obama was never a world-class leader - not even close. An arguably good speaker but not on topics of state, mostly on ethnic divide, cummunal politics - things that touch heart strings in disadvantaged sections of society (minorities, unemployed whites, etc).

    As a politician he was pedantic (community level); as a statesman, zero.

    Onan_the_Barbarian -> NobodyNowhere , Mar 28, 2017 4:55 PM

    Google for "Obama without teleprompter". Not impressive.

    nobodysfool , Mar 28, 2017 1:44 PM

    It's all about Leverage...

    Don Corleone : Good. Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day - accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day.

    DirtySanchez , Mar 28, 2017 10:44 AM

    Russia and others may be of help.

    The entire world needs verifiable proof of the US war criminal behavior for the past 20+ years.

    Prison sentences are not enough.

    Former US Presidents need to face their accusers for the raping, pillaging, destruction, and murder of several soverign nations.

    God help them.

    dvfco -> DirtySanchez , Mar 28, 2017 2:21 PM

    It's time they nailed everyone in the Obama Administration to the wall, then follow up with every Republican in a former Bush Administration who is a NeverTrump douche and handcuff them to one from Obama's group.

    The only reason there are Republican - Never Trumpers is that they're terrified all their sins will surface.

    Once Trump starts reaming Obama and Clinton, they'll turn on Bush, etc.

    Gonna get fugly!

    LawsofPhysics , Mar 28, 2017 10:32 AM

    Ultimately there is no honor among theives...

    esum , Mar 28, 2017 10:13 AM

    Someone should shit or get off the pot with this Russian stuff... The REAL STORY IS SPYING ON US CITIZENS AND CONGRESS AND OBAMA'S USE OF CLASSIFIED INTEL AND COMEY BRENNAN CLAPPER CRIMES..... Lets get to it

    MrBoompi , Mar 28, 2017 9:00 AM

    There is nothing Russia could divulge that would come as a surprise to most of us here. At this point it would just be a confirmation of the highly corrupt and immoral behavior we've seen this government engage in for decades now. Besides, if we couldn't throw Bush and Cheney in the slammer after what they did, what hope would we have to hold Obama and Clinton accountable? Until further notice, this class of folks is above the law.

    OCnStiggs , Mar 28, 2017 8:39 AM

    The Progressive Liberal Democrats who have been staunch allies with the Russians for nearly 50 years have now turned on them to hide their own failure in running Hillary. Big mistake Mr. Schumer.

    The Russians are looking out for Russia. They will uncork a plethora of very bad news for you, including all the private dealings Progressives have had with them ('ala Ted Kennedy asking Andropov to help screw Reagan during his last election) and the timing couldn't be better for the mid-term elections.

    The Progressives are no friend of America and as the word gets out to mainstream America, the result will be devastating to the Democratic Party. Good. About time.

    MORE INVESTIGATIONS OF DEMOCRATS!!!! FRY HILLARY!!!

    Reaper , Mar 28, 2017 8:07 AM

    Did Putin foolishly expect swine to be honorable?

    d edwards -> Reaper , Mar 28, 2017 8:41 AM

    I bet they do have Hillary's 30k missing emails.

    goober -> d edwards , Mar 28, 2017 1:17 PM

    Just like NSA always has and has never released any of it, why is that ? Do we actually have a legitimate government or simply a giant criminal enterprise control mechanism ? Here are the answers --

    http://www.downtoearththinking.com/our-government-created-google-and-fac...

    http://www.downtoearththinking.com/the-war-against-donald-trump-.html

    The Russians have their own shit to keep secret and when that is less important and damaging then they will release the flood gates of hell on BHO and crew as well as Hillary and the Bushites. Not until, but I suspect that time is approaching or very near. The tangled web of sociopaths and psychopaths that control us, Hey ?

    TheEndIsNear -> PleasedToMeatYou , Mar 28, 2017 8:07 PM

    Most of the American population are so ignorant of the physical laws of nature that they prefer to believe what the government tells them to believe instead of straining their brains to exercise a little common sense. I think the disappearing 757 airliners at the Pentagon and Shanksville are the most blatant of the government lies since they require no knowledge of high-rise building construction. How people can ignore this kind of thing would be a mystery except that almost everyone gets their news from the TeeVee.

    IranContra , Mar 28, 2017 7:08 AM

    Fortunately, liberal thugs have not succeeded in derailing Trump-Putin cooperation, even in the most difficult areas: There is complete Russian-American military coordination in Iraq and Syria, even where Turkey and Iran disagree. Russia is allowing the US to arm the Kurds against ISIS in Syria, and Russia has asked Iran to withdraw its troops and militias from Iraq and Syria, exactly as Trump wants.

    Not Too Important -> PleasedToMeatYou , Mar 28, 2017 1:35 PM

    Russia can pull out of SWIFT any time they want. Europe depends on their gas. Russia can demand payment in rubles, too, or gold.

    Europe's nuclear energy has already gone off a cliff, due to all the bad reactor parts from the French. That makes Russian energy much more valueable, and they don't have enough LNG receiving facilities to buy elsewhere in any significant amounts.

    The only option now for the NWO is a quiet retirement, or mass global nuclear suicide. Any guesses?

    nmewn , Mar 28, 2017 6:45 AM

    "The US Department of State has more than once asked us not to announce planned visits until the last minute. This is not our tradition. We have been operating openly for years, but we have respected the requests we have received from our colleagues in Washington in the past few years . But what happened after that? First, the US Department of State asked us to keep the planned visit quiet and not to announce it until the last possible minute, until we coordinated the date. We did as they asked. But a day or two later the information was leaked by the US State Department and sometimes by the US administration. Frankly, this put Russia and the media in a strange situation, because they didn't know who to believe – the official agencies or the many leaks."

    And as of this moment, the second quietest person in the room just happens to be...John Kerry.

    Anybody seen ole horse face around lately? ;-)

    fleur de lis -> NO QANA , Mar 28, 2017 10:15 AM

    Russia must have a lot of info that they swept up over the years thanks to DC morons.

    They relseased the recording of Icky Vicky Neudelmann because she instigated a war on their border.

    But they must have picked up much more than that, thanks to her obnoxious ego.

    Bastiat -> fleur de lis , Mar 28, 2017 3:20 PM

    Remember when they released the crystal clear recording of Vicky Nuland organizing the Ukraine government? They must have been shocked at the utter indifference of supporters of the Obama regime.

    [Mar 28, 2017] Heres The Story Behind Trumps Podesta-Russia Tweet Zero Hedge

    Mar 28, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    The Daily Caller reports:

    John Podesta, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's 2016 national campaign chairman, may have violated federal law by failing to disclose the receipt of 75,000 shares of stock from a Kremlin-financed company when he joined the Obama White House in 2014, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation's Investigative Group.

    Joule Unlimited Technologies - financed in part by a Russian firm - originally awarded Podesta 100,000 shares of stock options when in 2010 he joined that board along with its Dutch-based entities: Joule Global Holdings, BV and the Stichting Joule Global Foundation.

    When Podesta announced his departure from the Joule board in January 2014 to become President Obama's special counsellor, the company officially issued him 75,000 common shares of stock.

    The Schedule B section of the federal government's form 278 which - requires financial disclosures for government officials - required Podesta to "report any purchase, sale or exchange by you, your spouse, or dependent children of any property, stocks, bonds, commodity futures and other securities when the amount of the transaction exceeded $1,000."

    The same year Podesta joined Joule, the company agreed to accept 1-Billion-Rubles - or $35 million - from Rusnano, a state-run and financed Russian company with close ties to President Vladimir Putin.

    Anatoly Chubais, the company CEO and two other top Russian banking executives worked together with Podesta on the Joule boards. The board met six times a year.

    Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director said because of the Kremlin backing, it was essential Podesta disclose the financial benefits he received from the company.

    "I think in this case where you're talking about foreign interests and foreign involvement, the collateral interest with these disclosure forms is put in the forefront of full disclosure of any foreign interest that you may have," he told TheDCNF in an interview.

    The existence of the 75,000 shares of Joule stock was first revealed by the Government Accountability Institute report issued last year.

    But Podesta didn't pocket all the shares. Correspondence from Podesta to Joule instructed the firm to transfer only 33,693 shares to Leonidio Holdings, a brand-new entity he incorporated only on December 20, 2013, about ten days before he entered the White House.

    Leonidio is registered in Delaware as a limited liability corporation. Podesta listed the address of his daughter, Megan Rouse, in the incorporation papers. His mother and father also appear to be co-owners of Leonidio.

    TheDCNF made multiple inquiries to OGE and received no reply. TheDCNF inquiries to Mr. Podesta were not returned.

    That's not the end of the story though, as John Podesta's brother, Tony, confirmed Russia's largest bank had hired the Podesta Group to lobby for an end to sanctions ...

    JuliaS -> Chris Dakota , Mar 28, 2017 2:23 PM

    Like Ron Paul says - since the government spies on everyone, it's a certainty that the last administration spied on Trump.

    By the same token, since it's guaranteed that there are pedophiles existing in positions of power pretty much everywhere (not just in the Catholic church), one can make a blind guess that there is a pedo ring inside the government and be right.

    My suspicion is that pizzagate conspiracy is invented, but regardless of that fact, real pedophiles in the government are scared shitless that if the authorities begin digging, they'll be discovered. That's why they want pizzagate talk silenced.

    TheGardener -> JuliaS , Mar 28, 2017 2:40 PM

    "pizzagate conspiracy is invented" ? More like pizzagate conspiracy is inverted ..poking a deep state hornest nest is what would

    could have triggered that aggressive counter-action. Pedo-rings as horrible and stomach turning they really are still are old school

    intelligence modes of operation, East Germany had one set up in the West by spies it sent in camouflaged as refugees.

    Tasked at compromising politicians.

    [Mar 26, 2017] Ex-scout Bezrukov USA on the verge of changing course

    Notable quotes:
    "... Russia could potentially pose a problem if it creates a competitive unit that will become the alternative system in terms of security and in terms of the economy. The most serious blow to the US would be the creation of a great Eurasian bloc, such as Russia-Germany. This unit on its resource and military and political power to bring Europe and most of Asia from the control of the American system. Would become the de facto competitor. ..."
    "... Interviewed By Nikolay Surkov ..."
    Mar 26, 2017 | csef.ru
    The former scout-the illegal immigrant, Andrey Bezrukov, has worked a long time in the USA, has told to the correspondent "News" Nikolay Surkov, why the United States needs Ukraine and why Russia got together with China to build greater Eurasia.

    - The cold war ended over 20 years ago. Why the U.S. still refers to Russia as the enemy?

    - Cold war is only an episode in the relations between our countries. There are two levels on which to consider the basis of relationship between the two countries. The first is the level of objective geopolitical realities, the situation of our countries and their role in the world system. The USA declare that their wellbeing depends on the vitality of the global system that they've built. They are a Central part of this system. While it exists, they will be in a privileged position. Their primary national interest - the maintenance of this global system.

    In the cold war the USSR was a geopolitical competitor. He dominated in Eurasia, creating an area in which American influence did not pass. He created a pole for those who were dissatisfied with the American system.

    Russia could potentially pose a problem if it creates a competitive unit that will become the alternative system in terms of security and in terms of the economy. The most serious blow to the US would be the creation of a great Eurasian bloc, such as Russia-Germany. This unit on its resource and military and political power to bring Europe and most of Asia from the control of the American system. Would become the de facto competitor.

    What then should be considered at the second level?

    - The second level is ideological. From our side there is no ideological barrier in relations with the United States. If the U.S. is not trying to impose their way of life and creating problems for our state, we have no problems with them. They, unfortunately, have problems. They relate to the generation that did not devoiles in the cold war. The attitude of the ruling elite towards Russia as an enemy or competitor will not leave. They had no revaluation, for it was not the cause. They consider themselves winners. But because their problem isn't solved, Russia did not become a state that does what they want, they have this element of irritation from the unfinished task.

    In addition, the independent foreign policy of Russia is a challenge the people in the USA who preach American exceptionalism. These are people who not just see themselves as exceptional Americans, and consider it a blessing, ready by force to impose their position on others. This group is very closely related to the cold war. But it is still very closely linked with the principles of the Democratic party that America should be ideals. For this you can to impose their understanding of things to other countries.

    I think in a few years the geopolitical component will remain, and ideological can just move away. Will be rethinking that America no longer has the right nor the capacity to impose their principles on others. After some time, leave those personalities that are now the conductors of the ideology that emerged during the cold war.

    There is an ethnic component. Around the neo-conservatives many people who are ethnically or ideologically associated with anti-Russian diasporas of Eastern European countries, which believe that Russia dominated them. They too will be gone anyway.

    - Why work so hard to fight with Russia? Unless China is now a much more serious competitor?

    - Really, now is not Russia, but China is, from the point of view of the Americans, the main challenge for the global system. China's economy is so large that it attracts all of Asia and the influence of the Americans on these countries and markets is reduced.

    The US is trying to bring China out of the brackets. To fence off a piece of Asia. Through security agreements with the surrounding countries of China. And through the construction of a TRANS-Pacific partnership without China.

    The periods of tension in relations with the US are predetermined and unavoidable?

    - Our interest is to ensure the security around our borders to neighbors no one told that to trade with Russia or not to trade, to war with Russia or not to fight.

    In this sense, the conflict in Ukraine objective. If they need Ukraine as a buffer against us, we need it too, we are ethnically very close, this is pre-Soviet geopolitical space. Its economy is part of our economy. It is our civilizational area. Our interest there is obvious.

    However, the USA is beginning to experience a redefinition of its role in the world. They haven't reached a complete rethinking. They're just starting to see the problems and the inadequacy of its policies. Rethinking will happen in a few years. Then the ideological component in our relationship is minimized. This may be due to the new President, but will not necessarily occur in the period of his reign. American policy is evolving cycles. Now ends the cycle that began with Reagan.

    - That is, in 7-8 years we can count on change?

    Then we may have a completely different relationship between countries. But their and our interests will remain.

    Objectively, Americans want to antagonize China's neighbors - Japan, India, us. Therefore, it is important for us to build long-term non-competitive relationship with China and India.

    Our goal is to provide yourself a quiet life in the greater Eurasia. It is hampered by the lack of security and lack of infrastructure linking Russia's economy with the growing economies of Asia. The policy of pairing the EEU and the silk road in building the economic infrastructure. China and Russia have an interest in stabilizing the greater Eurasia. Then there will be rapid economic growth.

    - What happens to the American political system? Why the Republicans are unable to put any decent presidential candidate?

    In the US there is a problem by. The American people in the face of elites, particularly business elites, was assigned to conduct the political Affairs political superstructure - the Congress, the parties of the ruling class, since the capital itself will not engage in politics. The seller has the job of defending the interests of the customer. For a long time, the ruling group did. But now the ruling group broke away from the understanding of objective tasks. Beginning to act as she wants. In America I understand that policy has become less effective, it does not reach the set goals. If this continued, it will lead to the decline of US influence in the world. The elite do not like it.

    We can say that American politics is like an airplane that flies on autopilot, which was set 30 years ago. But the pilot had already begun to understand that it's time to get back into the cockpit and change course. The request for change by coming from two sides. Trump is the voice of the business elite. Sanders speaks on behalf of the young intellectual elite. Mature change in the political superstructure. The authorities will be renewed at the expense of people who are new understand the situation and can propose a new course.

    Help "Izvestia"

    Andrei Bezrukov was born on 30 August 1960 in the city of Kansk of Krasnoyarsk region. Graduated from Tomsk state University majoring in history. In 2000 he graduated from the School of public management John F. Kennedy, Harvard University with a master's degree. Colonel intelligence retired.

    Together with his wife Elena Vavilova many years spent on illegal intelligence work. Under the name Donald Heathfield led consultancy company specializing in government and corporate strategic forecasting and planning. Was arrested in June 2010 in the U.S. as a result of betrayal.

    He has state awards - the order "For merits before Fatherland" IV degrees, medals. Currently - Advisor to the President of the company "Rosneft". A member of the club "Valdai".

    Interviewed By Nikolay Surkov

    [Mar 26, 2017] There are cliques of employees in all these govt agencies who have political and religious views just like the rest of the world, except they have access to spy satellites, phone tapping, and every other spy tool just like Snowden tried to expose.

    Mar 26, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Korprit_Phlunkie , Mar 25, 2017 6:53 PM

    There are cliques of employees in all these govt agencies who have political and religious views just like the rest of the world, except they have access to spy satellites, phone tapping, and every other spy tool just like Snowden tried to expose. Finally after watching the evil satan worshipping liberals for all these years use these tool to further the NWO thru clintons and hussein, the patriot Christian conservative side is finally leaking info they have access to to TRUMP and he is able to fight back a little. THis is good versus evil, no doubt in my mind. Choose this day whom you will serve. Especially you crossroad demon from hell.

    [Mar 26, 2017] They are an American Taliban: I have never read such a vitriolic comments section. Lots of Americans a seething mad.

    Notable quotes:
    "... The GOP and this administration are overwhelmingly self-avowed Christians yet they try to deny the poor to benefit the rich. This is not Christian but evil pure and simple. ..."
    "... They are an American Taliban, just going about their subversion in a less overtly violent way. ..."
    "... Much like Russian people viewed the country under Bolshevism, outside of brief WWII period. That's probably why we have Anti-Russian witch hunt now. To stem this trend. But it is the US neoliberal elite, not Russians, who drive the country to this state of affairs. By spending God knows how many trillions of dollar of wars of neoliberal empire expansion and by drastic redistribution of wealth up. And now the majority of citizens is facing substandard medical care, sliding standard of living and uncertain job prospects. ..."
    "... US elections have been influenced by anyone with huge money or oil since the Cold War made an excuse for the US' trade empire enforced by half the world's war spending. ..."
    "... The fake 'incidental' surveillance of other political opponents is a gross violation of human rights and the US' Bill of Rights. ..."
    "... The disloyal opposition and its propagandists are running Stalin like show trails in their media... ..."
    Mar 26, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    reason , March 25, 2017 at 03:01 PM
    I just read this:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/25/why-republicans-were-in-such-a-hurry-on-health-care/?utm_term=.590e103e2761

    I have never read such a vitriolic comments section. Lots of Americans a seething mad.

    reason -> reason... , March 25, 2017 at 03:03 PM
    By mad - I mean angry. And at the Republican party more than Trump.
    libezkova -> reason... , March 25, 2017 at 05:10 PM
    I like the following comment:

    Farang Chiang Mai, 7:39 PM EDT

    The GOP and this administration are overwhelmingly self-avowed Christians yet they try to deny the poor to benefit the rich. This is not Christian but evil pure and simple.

    I would love to see this lying, cheating, selfish, crazy devil (yeah, I know I sound a bit OTT but the description is fact based) of a president and his enablers challenged on their Christian values.

    They are an American Taliban, just going about their subversion in a less overtly violent way.

    libezkova -> libezkova... , March 25, 2017 at 05:31 PM
    An interesting question arise:

    Are the people who consider our current rulers to be "American Taliban" inclined to become "leakers" of government activities against the citizens, because they definitely stop to consider the country as their own and view it as occupied by dangerous and violent religious cult?

    Much like Russian people viewed the country under Bolshevism, outside of brief WWII period. That's probably why we have Anti-Russian witch hunt now. To stem this trend. But it is the US neoliberal elite, not Russians, who drive the country to this state of affairs. By spending God knows how many trillions of dollar of wars of neoliberal empire expansion and by drastic redistribution of wealth up. And now the majority of citizens is facing substandard medical care, sliding standard of living and uncertain job prospects.

    ilsm -> libezkova... March 26, 2017 at 05:42 AM

    I see the angst over Sessions talking to a Russia diplomat twice as a red herring.

    US elections have been influenced by anyone with huge money or oil since the Cold War made an excuse for the US' trade empire enforced by half the world's war spending.

    The fake 'incidental' surveillance of other political opponents is a gross violation of human rights and the US' Bill of Rights.

    The disloyal opposition and its propagandists are running Stalin like show trails in their media.....

    [Mar 25, 2017] Maddow has proven herself an indisputable part of "the establishment media going whole-hog on these vague suspicions". That is, she is carrying tubs of water for her Deep State masters.

    Notable quotes:
    "... Any moderately intelligent person who explores the news and history outside the MSM can easily find the OVERWHELMING evidence of the Deep State's crimes, including JFK, 9/11, and Israel. And it's not merely an organizational survival instinct in the CIA The massive, long-standing MSM coverups point to tight control and coordination from a powerful center. As Deep Throat taught us, "Follow the money". ..."
    Mar 25, 2017 | consortiumnews.com
    Jessejean

    March 23, 2017 at 1:04 pm Good history–wonder why Rachel The Mouth Maddow never did it in her time wasting opening segments where she repeats herself over and over to numb our minds and spend her time when she could be saying something insightful. Maybe that's why. PS. Why does she never invite Robert Parry on to comment? Oh. I see. Reply Brian Setzler , March 23, 2017 at 6:43 pm

    Because she's paid $7 million per year to talk about some things, and not others.

    Google "Jill Stein and Russia" and the results will illuminate the Democratic Party Echo Chamber

    JWalters , March 23, 2017 at 8:03 pm

    Maddow has proven herself an indisputable part of "the establishment media going whole-hog on these vague suspicions". That is, she is carrying tubs of water for her Deep State masters.

    Any moderately intelligent person who explores the news and history outside the MSM can easily find the OVERWHELMING evidence of the Deep State's crimes, including JFK, 9/11, and Israel. And it's not merely an organizational survival instinct in the CIA The massive, long-standing MSM coverups point to tight control and coordination from a powerful center. As Deep Throat taught us, "Follow the money".

    [Mar 25, 2017] What Russia Wants - and Expects

    Notable quotes:
    "... Does Russia Have a Future? ..."
    Mar 25, 2017 | consortiumnews.com
    March 22, 2017

    Washington's political infighting has blocked President Trump's plans for a new détente with Russia but also has left the global playing field open for Russian – and Chinese – advances in expanding their influence, explains Gilbert Doctorow.

    By Gilbert Doctorow

    As Democrats and the mainstream U.S. media focus intensely on still unproven charges of Russian election meddling to explain Hillary Clinton's surprising defeat, the furor has forced an embattled President Trump to retreat from his plans to cooperate with Russia on fighting terrorism and other global challenges.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on May 10, 2015, at the Kremlin. (Photo from Russian government)

    Amid the anti-Russian hysteria, Trump's Cabinet members and United Nations ambassador have gone out of their way to reiterate the tough policy positions of the Obama administration with respect to Russia, underlining that nothing has changed. For its part, Congress has plunged into McCarthyistic hearings aimed at Trump supporters who may have met with Russians before the 2016 elections.

    Meanwhile, the Kremlin has duly noted these developments in Washington. In Moscow, the breakthrough in relations that some had hoped for is now dismissed as improbable. On the other hand, while the United States is tearing itself apart in partisan fighting, Russia is getting a much-needed breather from the constant ratcheting up of pressure from the West that it experienced over the past three years.

    We hear from Russian elites more and more how they plan to proceed on the international stage in the new circumstances. The byword is self-reliance and pursuit of the regional and global policies that have been forming over the past couple of years as the confrontation with the United States escalated.

    These policies have nothing to do with some attack on the Baltic States or Poland, the nightmare scenarios pushed by neoconservatives and liberal interventionists in the U.S. and the European Union. The Russian plans also have nothing to do with subversion of elections in France or Germany, the other part of the fevered imaginations of the West.

    Instead, the Russians are concentrating on their domestic defense capabilities and their budding political alliances with China and a host of Asian countries that together can oppose the power of the West. It is important to understand that the Russian vision is a future multi-polar world, not a return to the bipolar Cold War system of two superpowers, which Russian elites see as unattainable given the diffusion of power across the globe and Russia's own more limited resources.

    In other words, the Russians are envisioning a future world order whose contours harken back to the Nineteenth Century. In terms of details, the Russians are now inseparably wed to China for reasons of mutual economic and security interest on the global stage. The same is becoming true of their relationship with Iran at the regional level of the Greater Middle East.

    The Russian elites also take pride in the emerging military, economic and geopolitical relationships with countries as far removed as Libya, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Thailand. News about breakthroughs with each of these countries is heralded on daily television programming.

    Mideast Interests

    Russian elites note that the United States has misunderstood Moscow's position in Syria from the start of the war there. Russia's priority was never to keep the Assad regime in power, but rather to maintain a foothold in the Middle East. Put narrowly, Russia was determined to maintain its naval base at Tarsus, which is important to support Russia's presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. More broadly, Moscow's goal was to restore Russian influence in the strategic region where Russia once was a significant player before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

    In May 2016, Russian marchers honoring family members who fought in World War II. (Photo from RT)

    Russia's loss of Eastern Europe is also not forgotten, though American hegemony there is acknowledged as a reality of the present. But nothing lasts forever, and the Russians expect to be back as a major force in the region, not by military conquest, but by virtue of economic and strategic logic, which favors them in the long term. Though many East European elites have been bought off by the United States and the European Union, many common citizens have been major losers from the American led post-Cold War order, suffering from de-industrialization and large-scale emigration to more developed E.U. countries, reaching as much as 25 percent of the general population in some places. These Eastern European countries have little to offer Western Europe except for tourist destinations, whereas their shared potential for trade with Russia is immense.

    This past weekend, Russian television news carried images of demonstrations in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova that you did not see on Euronews. The object of this popular wrath was billionaire financial speculator George Soros and his "Open Society" affiliates. Russian news commentary explained that these demonstrations - operating under the banner of "Go Home Soros" - became possible now because the Trump administration has dropped U.S. support for him.

    It would be naďve not to see some official Russian assistance to these coordinated demonstrations across a large swath of Eastern Europe, but the Russians were simply giving the United States a taste of its own medicine, since U.S.-sponsored "non-governmental organizations" have been busy subverting legitimate Euro-skeptic governments in these countries in cooperation with Soros's NGOs.

    Not Your Grandfather's Cold War

    But there are key differences between what is happening now and in the Cold War days. The original Cold War was characterized not only by military and geopolitical rivalry of the world's two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It also was an ideological rivalry between – on one side – free market capitalism and parliamentary democracy and – on the other – planned economies and monolithic top-down Communist Party rule.

    President Richard Nixon with his then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972.

    Starting with President Richard Nixon, a policy of détente was put in place, which embodied the principle of co-existence of these competing principles of organizing human society for the sake of world peace. There are those who maintain we have no New Cold War today because the ideological dimension is lacking, although there are obvious differences over principles between the socially liberal U.S./E.U. and the more socially conservative Russia. But those differences hardly constitute a full-blown ideological conflict.

    The real area of contention is in how each side today conceptualizes global governance. On this level, it makes sense to speak of an ideological divide because there is a vast body of thought to underpin the competing views which include: globalization versus sovereign-state; values-based foreign policy versus interests-based foreign policy; a global order established by the all-out victory of liberal democracy over all other forms of national governance versus a balance of forces and respect for local differences; idealism versus realism. The West generally has favored the first of these options while Russia and China lead a bloc of nations generally favoring the second options.

    On the campaign trail and in his Inaugural speech, Donald Trump spoke in Realist terms suggesting that the U.S. would abandon its Idealist ideology of the preceding 25 years, which involved coercive "regime change" strategies to impose Western political values and economic systems around the world. Instead, Trump suggested that he would do business with Russia and with the world at large without imposing U.S. solutions, essentially accepting the principles that the Russians have been promoting ever since they began their public pushback to the United States in 2007.

    However, given Trump's retreat on foreign policy in recent weeks – while under fierce attack from Washington power centers asserting possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia – we may be left with something akin to the re-set that Obama introduced at the start of his rule in 2009 which never went as far as détente/co-existence. It was limited to cooperation in isolated areas where U.S. and Russian interests were deemed to coincide.

    The only difference we might see from the embattled Trump administration is less of a penchant for "regime change" operations and a resumption of some bilateral contacts with Russia that were cut off when Obama decided to penalize Russia for its intervention in Crimea and the Donbass in 2014.

    Assuming that Washington's neocon Republicans and hawkish Democrats don't push Trump into a desperate political corner, he might at least engage Moscow with a more polite and diplomatic tone. That might be better than some of the alternatives, but it is surely not an onset of a new collaborative Golden Age.

    The scaling back in expectations of how far the Trump administration will go in improving relations with Russia makes sense because of another reality that has become clear now that his team of advisers and implementers is filling out, namely that there is no one in his "kitchen cabinet" or in his administration who can guide the neophyte president as he tries to negotiate a new global order and to do a "big deal" with Vladimir Putin, such as Trump may have hoped to strike.

    Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner lacks the experience and depth to be a world-class strategic thinker. Trump's Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has corporate skills from his years at Exxon-Mobil but also lacks a strategic vision. Many other key jobs have gone to military generals who may be competent administrators but have limited political or diplomatic experience. There was talk of guidance coming from Henry Kissinger, but he has not been seen or heard from recently, and it is doubtful that at his advanced age and frailty he could provide consistent counsel.

    As Trump struggles to survive the cumulative attacks on his fledgling administration, he is also distracted from the reality of a rapidly changing world. If and when he does get to concentrate on the geopolitical situation, he may well have to play catch up with Russia and China as they make deals with other regional players and fill the vacuum left by the ongoing American political disorder.

    Assuming Trump can bring on board talented advisers with strategic depth, it would still take enormous vision and diplomatic skills to strike a "big deal" that could begin to end the violent chaos that has swept across much of the world since 2001. If and when that becomes possible, such a deal might look like a "Yalta-2" with a triangular shape involving the U.S., Russia and China.

    Gilbert Doctorow is a Brussels-based political analyst. His latest book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015. Andrew Nichols , March 22, 2017 at 7:26 pm

    Stuff your silly divide and rule. How about live and let live? I presume this is what you do in your private life. I dont feel any threat at all from Russia, Iran or China despite the Chicken Little crap from our media and bought and paid for pollies on a daily basis. So let's all chill out and tell our pollies to shut ..f..k up!

    Kiza , March 22, 2017 at 8:36 pm

    Your words reminded me of what I learned about Hitler. In Europe, all my teachers of history in primary and secondary school emphasised that if Hitler was smart enough to attack one country at a time, he would have won the WW2. For example, when he attacked Poland and Britain declared war on Germany, he should have tried to finish off Britain instead of trying to win it over whilst attacking Soviet Union.

    Perhaps the US/Israeli leadership suffers from the same type of hubris, believing that it can globalize the World by conquering both Russia and China. Of course, the US/Israeli MIC believes that the bigger the enemy the higher the profit.

    Joe Tedesky , March 23, 2017 at 1:35 am

    KIza my hunch is the American Israeli MIC is blinded by money, and what they consider success. Here could have been the moment for America to truly be the that shinning city upon the hill, but instead we took the advice of the Project for a New American 21st Century, a project so evil it surpasses the stupidity of Dr Strangelove and here we are. If the money could see a profit in humanitarian needs, wow wouldn't that be lovely.

    My grandmother always told me the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and America better watch out now it's gonna get it's ass kicked good if it doesn't wise up. I love my country, and that remark I just made isn't a reflection on our uniformed military, but these genius in DC fighting each other, and laying down some really made stuff on Russia, isn't good, and it ain't going to amount to much more than pain in the end. The whole idea of this 21st century America is nothing but a plan to inflict pain.

    This fricking media we have isn't going to stop until Trump gets impeached, or we really do something stupid to Russia. The sense of all of this in my eyes always leads back to that Project for the new American Century piece of crap. America had it all to win over the love of the world, why with just the rhetoric and spirit it was enough to try and strive for, but now ah not so much. It's not too late, but I don't at this moment in time see what good is on the horizon in the meantime I'm going to just try and appreciate whatever it is there is to appreciate take care Joe

    Kiza , March 23, 2017 at 3:35 am

    I agree Joe, as a project of its Dual Citizens PNAC is the root of most evil in US. It is not a true American project. It is a project for global domination of Israel using US, its people and its resources, as means to an end. Who needs to discuss the veracity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, when PNAC is available in plain sight. I am just surprised how few US people understand this. Thanks for your great comment as usual.

    Bob Van Noy , March 22, 2017 at 10:55 am

    "Russians are concentrating on their domestic defense capabilities and their budding political alliances with China and a host of Asian countries that together can oppose the power of the West. It is important to understand that the Russian vision is a future multi-polar world, not a return to the bipolar Cold War system of two superpowers, which Russian elites see as unattainable given the diffusion of power across the globe and Russia's own more limited resources." Gilbert Doctorow

    Again. "The real area of contention is in how each side today conceptualizes global governance. On this level, it makes sense to speak of an ideological divide because there is a vast body of thought to underpin the competing views which include: globalization versus sovereign-state; values-based foreign policy versus interests-based foreign policy; a global order established by the all-out victory of liberal democracy over all other forms of national governance versus a balance of forces and respect for local differences; idealism versus realism." Gilbert Doctorow

    To me the choice, were we ever given a choice as voters, would clearly be: 1) A future multi-polar world and, 2) a balance of forces and respect for local differences. The choice doesn't seem so very controversial? However, the default position of the Neocons and the liberal interventionists has always been to double down rather than negotiate, so I expect more saber rattling aggression

    BannanaBoat , March 22, 2017 at 5:26 pm

    Jimmy Carter stated USA is no longer a democracy, true. Idealism is the opposite of true USA motives, pure machivellian greed.

    backwardsevolution , March 22, 2017 at 3:34 pm

    Brad Owen – that's the way I see it too. I don't think that Trump needs Bannon or his son-in-law to be strategic. Strategic thinking (one-upping your opponent, outsmarting him, taking what's not yours, outright lying, propaganda, coups, trying to control the whole world) has been the policy for too long. I think Trump has a particular vision, and he's, as you say, playing rope-a-dope with the "strategic" thinkers.

    I see Trump as wanting to create free (but FAIR) trade. I see him wanting to stay out of other countries' business, concentrating on the home base, which has been sorely neglected for the last 20 – 30 years.

    I think people totally underestimate Trump.

    This is really a war between those who favor globalism/internationalism thinking (open borders, absence of a nation state or culture, multinational corporations controlling the world, one-world order) and those who favor nation states, culture, borders, fair and open trade with other countries.

    Trump is not a professional politician. He is not a great orator, slick or polished. But I believe he loves his country more than the other bought-and-paid-for politicians who govern according to who is paying them the most money on any given day.

    I think that the way Trump looks at business is if his competitor gets a property on one block, he gets one on the next. Everybody is happy. He doesn't set out to ensure that his competitor is crushed. He doesn't lie about him, try to get others to sanction him, try to bar him from doing business.

    Arseniy Urazov , March 22, 2017 at 9:45 pm

    Hi Brad, nice comment, I think you will like this article in case you missed it https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/14/trumps-quiet-outreach-to-russia/
    And just to add to your comment, Russia and USA are working very close in Syria. Not directly of course, but Syrian army and the Kurds (who are heavily supported by USA from air) are making great progress in the Norther part of Syria. In fact they even cooperated to block further advances of the Turks (NATO member btw). So I think that the RU-USA relationship is better than the media is trying to show us

    Brad Owen , March 23, 2017 at 5:21 am

    I agree,Arseniy. We are two of the three Nations (China being the third Nation) PRIMARILY responsible for securing the peace and guiding development for the entire World we three. This was Roosevelt's vision,ejected by the Anglophile intelligence community the moment he died; recovered fortunately, by our mutual ally China, in the BRI policy. Russia and USA will be the Gateway managers of the World LandBridge (tunnel, spanning Bering Straits with mag-lev rail lines, pipelines, power lines, communication lines) that ties the whole World together. This was thought of in Lincoln's time a way to bypass the powerful British and other European maritime Empires. Russia had the foresight to sell us Alaska towards this end. Russia ALWAYS supported our stand AGAINST European Empires (especially the British Empire), even in the Soviet days. Together with our friend China, AND the rest of the World's Nations we'll continue to progress and grow and move out, into the Solar System to industrialize the moon and Mars and other moons and planets, after we put away these childish, pointless, sinful, wars. Read Executive Intelligence Review website, where these ideas are championed. Remember Krafft Erikhe (spelling?) whose vision of Man the Solar Species inspired our early space program. Our next, centuries-long Era will be our inhabiting of our Solar System, after war has been abolished as obsolete and counter-productive.

    Joe Tedesky , March 22, 2017 at 12:23 pm

    It is a sad day when detente and cooperation is replaced with demonization and belligerence to boot. When will our American leadership finally come to grips that this world isn't flat? Is liberating a nation for the sake of our installing an American fast food chain worth the price of so many innocent lives who get displaced, or worst yet killed by American bombs the price people must pay to join the NWO? Does anyone believe that by doing these things we are making any real and sincere new friends can you say blowback?

    All this fuss over Putin and Russian interference is putting President Trump in a difficult box. Why even Putin critic Masha Gessen is worried ..

    https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2017/03/21/noted-putin-critic-warns-of-confrontation-between-trump-and-russia-not-collaboration/

    Joe Tedesky , March 22, 2017 at 3:11 pm

    Politics is said to make strange bedfellows, and if we include journalist well then Masha Gessen for at least on this Russia-Gate story is making charges similar to those of us who see this witch hunt for what it really is. Now don't blast me for posting a link to Gessen's article but since others are quoting her I thought you may wish to read her own words.

    http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/06/trump-russia-conspiracy-trap/

    After reading what Gessen has to say, then read what Paul Street has to say about her saying it.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/22/russiagate-and-the-democratic-party-are-for-chumps/

    If America can pull through these tough and difficult times all in one piece, and regain some sense of sanity and fairness of values, this moment in time will be shelved along side the McCarthy era of the lowest of times in America.

    Kiza , March 22, 2017 at 9:00 pm

    I would not be as generous to Masha Gessen as you are Joe. Ms Gessen is very anti-Russian and anti-Putin, but she recognises the damage the current DNC policy against her two pet-hates does. After all the US high-tempereture emotional madness blows out, Russia will end up standing even taller because the US Democrats were crying wolf. I have been highlighting this same point for a while now – the Democrats are really working to benefit Russia, they are the really traitorous fifth column they accuse Trump of. This is why Ms Gessen is distancing herself from the mindless bunch.

    Joe Tedesky , March 22, 2017 at 11:46 pm

    KIza please don't read my posting Gessen's article as an endorsement. I only posted it due to the fact that sites like libertblitzkreig and Leftist Paul Street on counterpunch talked about Gessen's concerns. You know how I've mentioned in many of my comments how I think Vladimir Putin is the only adult in the room when it comes to our world's future. I'm all for distributed power, and I am no fan, and never was of the NWO.

    You are on too something though, when you mention to how Masha is no doubt distancing herself away from the awaiting disaster the Democrate's are leading us into. This whole fiasco is troubling when you think of how Hillary's conniving has brought us all to this place. It would be great if Hillary were brought to justice, but then again so much for wishful thinking.

    I'll leave you with this, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

    [Mar 25, 2017] Theyre Like The Praetorian Guard - Whistleblower Confirms NSA Targeted Congress, The Supreme Court, Trump Zero Hedge

    Notable quotes:
    "... "They're taking in fundamentally the entire fiber network inside the United States and collecting all that data and storing it, in a program they call Stellar Wind," Binney said. ..."
    "... "That's the domestic collection of data on US citizens, US citizens to other US citizens," he said. "Everything we're doing, phone calls, emails and then financial transactions, credit cards, things like that, all of it." ..."
    "... "I mean, that's just East German," Tucker responded. ..."
    "... Rather than help prevent terrorist attacks, Binney said collecting so much information actually makes stopping attacks more difficult. ..."
    "... "This bulk acquisition is inhibiting their ability to detect terrorist threats in advance so they can't stop them so people get killed as a result," he said. ..."
    "... "Which means, you know, they pick up the pieces and blood after the attack. That's what's been going on. I mean they've consistently failed. When Alexander said they'd stop 54 attacks and he was challenged to produce the evidence to prove that he failed on every count." ..."
    "... Binney concludes ominously indicating the origin of the deep state... "They are like the praetorian guard, they determine what the emperor does and who the emperor is..." ..."
    Mar 25, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Authored by Chris Menahan via InformationLiberation.com,

    NSA whistleblower William Binney told Tucker Carlson on Friday that the NSA is spying on "all the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as well as the White House."

    Binney, who served the NSA for 30 years before blowing the whistle on domestic spying in 2001, told Tucker he firmly believes that Trump was spied on.

    "They're taking in fundamentally the entire fiber network inside the United States and collecting all that data and storing it, in a program they call Stellar Wind," Binney said.

    "That's the domestic collection of data on US citizens, US citizens to other US citizens," he said. "Everything we're doing, phone calls, emails and then financial transactions, credit cards, things like that, all of it."

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/lkChOSdOgcc

    "Inside NSA there are a set of people who are -- and we got this from another NSA whistleblower who witnessed some of this -- they're inside there, they are targeting and looking at all the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as well as the White House," Binney said.

    "And all this data is inside the NSA in a small group where they're looking at it. The idea is to see what people in power over you are going to -- what they think, what they think you should be doing or planning to do to you, your budget, or whatever so you can try to counteract before it actually happens," he said.

    "I mean, that's just East German," Tucker responded.

    Rather than help prevent terrorist attacks, Binney said collecting so much information actually makes stopping attacks more difficult.

    "This bulk acquisition is inhibiting their ability to detect terrorist threats in advance so they can't stop them so people get killed as a result," he said.

    "Which means, you know, they pick up the pieces and blood after the attack. That's what's been going on. I mean they've consistently failed. When Alexander said they'd stop 54 attacks and he was challenged to produce the evidence to prove that he failed on every count."

    Binney concludes ominously indicating the origin of the deep state... "They are like the praetorian guard, they determine what the emperor does and who the emperor is..."

    Who's going to stop them?

    toady -> Bank_sters Mar 25, 2017 9:22 PM
    I'm continually amazed that anyone thinks they are not being "wiretapped".

    One more time;

    Everyone, from the queen to the homeless guy on the corner, is being tracked, recorded, and data mined to the hilt.

    • Trump was survieled? No shit!
    • Obama was survieled? No shit!
    • Merkel was survieled? No shit!

    I hope people start to REALLY understand this....

    NAV GUS100CORRINA Mar 25, 2017 7:19 PM

    Bringing history more up to date, this is Stalinism, i.e., fascism. As John T. Flynn states, "Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator." Neo-fascism of course is Stalinism-blame Hitler.

    So, is it fascism?

    Yes, says Major Todd Pierce (retired) in an interview with Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss - who says NSA whistle blower Bill Binney has "got to be one of the smartest people in the world, I don't think that's an exaggeration. He was one of the smartest people at the NSA.

    Says Weiss: "And he agrees with me fully. Because he's seen the NSA. We're a more sophisticated form of what I think has to be called fascism. The term fascism was applied to the way the communists and Stalin got on as well. You bring the term fascist to what it really means, and that ultimately is, ultramilitarism and authoritarianism combined with an expansionist foreign policy. And that's us-what you can see us becoming."

    http://mondoweiss.net/2016/09/innocence-worldview-retired/#sthash.XjFDU6km.dpuf

    Rubicon727 -> GUS100CORRINA •Mar 25, 2017 7:38 PM

    The Roman Empire's death was far more complicated than "moral rot" and its "currency devaluation." Read some history books.

    Chris Hedges makes the observation that ALL empires that are scourges of the earth, eventually turn inwards. As the empire begins its fatal decline, the terror they inflicted on outsiders, is then turned against its own citizens.

    We now see that happening in America. Banks, corporations, intel/military, etc. are turning inward: destroying meaningful employment, humane health care, and pilfering billions of $s reserved for the 1%.

    Just Another Vi... -> FriendlyAquaponics •Mar 25, 2017 8:05 PM

    A video worth revisiting......

    Reuters ..........

    ... Obama criticizes Donald Trump endlessly....over Trumps assertions that the election is rigged..,

    telling the candidate to "stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes."

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-idUSKCN12I27L

    HRClinton -> JLee2027 •Mar 25, 2017 8:15 PM

    Who does the NSA work for on the Org Chart?

    That's right, the DOD. They can't go completely rogue, without the explicit or implicit approval of the Secretary of Defense and his Deputies.

    It is rather phoney and hypocritical of any POTUS - including Pres. Thump - to moan about the NSA, without loping off heads at the DOD and NSA. By that, I include all the Deputies, who do the real work and know the real secrets.

    It's time that Thump had a "Come to Jesus" meeting with all these guys. Else he's part of the problem, and no amount of sugar coating can stop a turd being a turd.

    TheReplacement -> HRClinton •Mar 25, 2017 9:42 PM

    In an honest world, sure.

    In reality, no. Like Binney said, they don't have to do anything they don't like because NOBODY can prove they haven't complied with orders. There is nobody who can watch the watchers. They can blackmail anyone.

    'Gosh, I have no idea how that child porn got on my computer.'

    CIA or NSA knows exactly how it got there. They put it there.

    [Mar 25, 2017] Every time the ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California opens his mouth to propagate unsubstantiated allegations against Russia and Russian influence on the last US elections, he makes a reminder, inadvertently, of the First Husband (the philanderer) taking $500.000 from Russians.

    Notable quotes:
    "... Another official US moron has blamed Russia, this time for "supplying Taliban" in Afghanistan. US Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti announced that "it was conceivable that Russia was providing supplies to the Afghan Taliban". ..."
    "... It appears that absolutely any personal or group failure by any US official gets automatically converted into "Russia did it". Little kids are more creative when they say "the dog ate my homework". ..."
    "... He showed the two political parties as 'two wings of the same bird of prey" ..."
    "... 69 percent of the [US] people have been taken in with the Russia bashing ..."
    "... I would trace the transition of the Democrats to a war party, not to the fear of being labeled disloyal after Iraq War 1, but to their being taken over by the zionists. The top ten "donors" to Clinton (Kleinberg) were Jewish, every single one of them! Over $100 million. Obama got over $100 million from a single Jewish "donor." They want those Mideast wars because they are religious fanatics and thieves. Those are the facts of the Democrats. They are owned by zionist traitors. They are Ziocrats. ..."
    "... The simplistic notion that the Democrats have been "taken over by the zionists" is a dangerous illusion that needs debunking. While there is no doubt that Natanyahu's Israel supports a policy in sync with that of neo-con objectives, it is beyond a stretch to attribute that policy to that Israel's exaggerated influence in the US. ..."
    "... Rather, Israel, as well as Israel's Saudi allies, are both instruments of British Empire policy, sometimes called "globalism," which was adopted and embraced by what can be called the Obama faction of the Democratic Party and its backers in the Republican right. ..."
    "... US policy, especially in the post-Soviet era has been determined by a failing attempt to maintain a "unipolar" world that no longer exists and should never have been. The freak-out over Trump's exposure of British Intelligence's GCHQ, heralding a possible rupture in Britain's "special relationship" is an indication of the fear gripping the Anglo-American financial oligarchy that their control over the US is slip-sliding away and that the US will pursue its political and economic self-interest by establishing new relationships to true world powers Russia, China, India and Japan. ..."
    "... The simplistic notion that the Democrats have been "taken over by the zionists" is a dangerous illusion that needs debunking. ..."
    "... Can you share with readers why you used the term "dangerous illusion" and why it needs debunking? According to William Binney, Obama's use of GCHQ was nothing more than standard operating procedure, an everyday mode of business, to avoid breaking American laws – nothing new, so therefore presenting no threat of rupturing U.S.-British "special relationship". ..."
    "... The top ten "donors" to Clinton (Kleinberg) were Jewish, every single one of them! Over $100 million. Obama got over $100 million from a single Jewish "donor." ..."
    "... I can tell you that the atmosphere is such on campus that a social science faculty member needs to be very careful not to be taken for having "sympathies" for either Russia or China. I repeatedly hear comments that are chilling, and just nod and get away. ..."
    "... When did the Democratic Party turn into the post-war war party? At the Democratic convention in 1944 when the establishment did a coup against FDR's right hand man, ..."
    Mar 25, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

    Anna , March 23, 2017 at 4:24 pm

    Every time the ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California opens his mouth to propagate unsubstantiated allegations against Russia and Russian influence on the last US elections, he makes a reminder, inadvertently, of the First Husband (the philanderer) taking $500.000 from Russians. The money was a bribe intended to make a right impression on Mrs. Clinton. Keep going Mr. Schiff. There were also tens of millions of $US dollars delivered to Clintons Foundation by the major sponsors of terrorism. These tens of millions of dollars from Saudis, Qatari, and Moroccans constitute bribing of a State Department official. As a result of these bribes, the US government has violated the US Constitution by supplying the US-made weaponry to the Middle Eastern warmongering despots/sponsors of terrorism. That is indeed a treason. Let Mr. Schiff talk. He has been making a nice rope for his own hanging.

    Skip Scott , March 24, 2017 at 8:02 am

    Great post Anna.

    Kiza , March 24, 2017 at 8:06 am

    Another official US moron has blamed Russia, this time for "supplying Taliban" in Afghanistan. US Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti announced that "it was conceivable that Russia was providing supplies to the Afghan Taliban".

    It appears that absolutely any personal or group failure by any US official gets automatically converted into "Russia did it". Little kids are more creative when they say "the dog ate my homework".

    But what this sick and unintelligent bull does to Russia? It appears that the US coup in Ukraine and its support for Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria have solidified Putin's popularity rating at around an unimaginable 85%. All this in the middle of a fairly serious economic crisis in Russia. There is and there has been no major country in the World where the leader has had such approval rating, for so long and despite the economy in a bad shape. Read all about it: http://johnhelmer.net/the-us-war-has-been-good-for-president-vladimir-putin-and-the-russian-economy-looks-stable-through-the-presidential-election-so-if-you-are-a-us-warfighter-what-is-the-regime-change-opportunity-no/#more-17368

    Therefore, all these US Demopublicans, generals and other assorted officials are obviously all on Putin's payroll, because they keep working to increase his popularity.

    Bill Bodden , March 23, 2017 at 1:32 pm

    Democrats. Republicans. Same old, same old.

    In 1904 Upton Sinclair wrote in The Jungle :

    "The original edition of the novel concluded with its proletarian protagonist attending a mass rally addressed by the American Socialist Party's mesmerizing presidential candidate – Sinclair's fictional representation of Eugene Debs. The candidate, Sinclair wrote:

    "was a man of electric presence, tall and gaunt, with a face worn think by struggle and suffering. The fury of outraged manhood gleamed in him – and the tears of suffering. When he spoke he paced the stage restlessly; he was lithe and eager, like a panther. He leaned over, reaching out for his audience; he pointed into their souls with an insistent finger. His voice was husky from much speaking, but the hall was still as death, and everyone heard him. He spoke the language of workingmen – he pointed them the way. He showed the two political parties as 'two wings of the same bird of prey" [emphasis added]. The people were allowed to choose between their candidates, and both of them were controlled, and all their nominations were dictated by, the same [money] power."

    In a number of essays Walter Karp made similar points backed up by lots of evidence.

    Accidental , March 23, 2017 at 8:04 pm

    That book should be required reading in this country. I suspect most people have never even heard of it despite the fact that it was undoubtedly one of the most influential books of the early 20th century.

    D5-5 , March 23, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    The time is extraordinary in the reckless and naked way the PTB (i.e. the two major parties) are exposing themselves as to NOT serving the people. I was disappointed today to read on RT that 69 percent of the [US] people have been taken in with the Russia bashing (showing I've been wrong lately on my estimates), but I'm hopeful that will not last. More important, Robert's article shows us the dedication of the parties to their deeper playbook, which is obviously controlled by financial interests, not the people's interests. The nakedness of this exposure today is unusual in my experience of watching Washington.

    Recommended: a look at what could be a companion piece to Robert's article from Mike Whitney in today's counterpunch, titled "Will Washington risk WWIII to block an emerging EU-Russia super-state":

    From that article:

    "For the last 70 years the imperial strategy has worked without a hitch, but now Russia's resurgence and China's explosive growth are threatening to break free from Washington's stranglehold. The Asian allies have begun to crisscross Central Europe and Asis with pipelines and high-speed rail that will gather together the far-flung statelets scattered across the steppe, draw them into a Eurasian Economic Union, and link them to an expansive and thriving superstate, the epicenter of global commerce and industry."

    BannanaBoat , March 23, 2017 at 2:01 pm

    Neither the proud Russians nor Chinese will diminish their nation and culture. BRICS is the level of unity they will accept.

    Sam F , March 23, 2017 at 1:36 pm

    I would trace the transition of the Democrats to a war party, not to the fear of being labeled disloyal after Iraq War 1, but to their being taken over by the zionists. The top ten "donors" to Clinton (Kleinberg) were Jewish, every single one of them! Over $100 million. Obama got over $100 million from a single Jewish "donor." They want those Mideast wars because they are religious fanatics and thieves. Those are the facts of the Democrats. They are owned by zionist traitors. They are Ziocrats.

    J. D. , March 23, 2017 at 2:02 pm

    The simplistic notion that the Democrats have been "taken over by the zionists" is a dangerous illusion that needs debunking. While there is no doubt that Natanyahu's Israel supports a policy in sync with that of neo-con objectives, it is beyond a stretch to attribute that policy to that Israel's exaggerated influence in the US.

    Rather, Israel, as well as Israel's Saudi allies, are both instruments of British Empire policy, sometimes called "globalism," which was adopted and embraced by what can be called the Obama faction of the Democratic Party and its backers in the Republican right.

    US policy, especially in the post-Soviet era has been determined by a failing attempt to maintain a "unipolar" world that no longer exists and should never have been. The freak-out over Trump's exposure of British Intelligence's GCHQ, heralding a possible rupture in Britain's "special relationship" is an indication of the fear gripping the Anglo-American financial oligarchy that their control over the US is slip-sliding away and that the US will pursue its political and economic self-interest by establishing new relationships to true world powers Russia, China, India and Japan.

    Brad Owen , March 23, 2017 at 3:15 pm

    Well said. It's also time to get rid of the phony "Special Relationship" (between 1%er oligarchs of The City and The Street), to replace it with the actual Special Relationship, so as to ease UK's transition into the New multi-polar Era dawning: this is tribal, in that dear old "Mother Country" need not worry that Her "Four Children" (Australia, Canada, N.Z., USA) will leave Her out in the cold. THAT is the TRUE special relationship; the far-flung, English-speaking Tribe will see to the General Welfare of ALL of its' members, but without degrading the well-being of the rest of the World. War is obsolete, not conducive to anyone's well-being, Geopolitics & divide & conquer is over, finished.

    Brad Owen , March 23, 2017 at 4:03 pm

    Zionism is a product of Cecil Rhodes' RoundTable Group, which, in concert with the Synarchist Movement for Empire, concerned how to manage African and Middle East colonies and assets belonging mainly to British and French Empires (which also explains WHY the Brits dawdled in North Africa during WWII, much to the chagrin of Stalin and Gen Marshall, who wanted to open up the Western Front ASAP).

    They found the perfect opportunity to implement the strategy post-WWII, and suckered USA, via The City's Wall Street Tories, into guaranteeing the existence of Israel. End of story.

    Check out the tons of articles on the subject at the EIR website. Tarpley covers it well also. Argue your case with them, F Sam. Good luck. You'll need lots of it.

    rosemerry , March 23, 2017 at 4:49 pm

    All the talk of "Russian interference" takes over the media, but the ever-present Israeli connection is just accepted as normal. Saudi Arabia, too, is allowed plenty of influence while Iran is demonized.

    Sam F , March 23, 2017 at 6:12 pm

    Yes, Brad, I agree that Cecil Rhodes and others were involved with the zionists fairly early, although perhaps the greatest British interest was in the Suez canal. Also agree that the US was fooled into taking over the Suez protection and pressuring the UN to create Israel. No doubt there was Wall St interest, although I gather that zionists made direct "donations" to Truman's campaign for the UN pressure.

    No doubt there were British zionists involved. But I think that JD's theory that Brits control US policy in the Mideast is a diversion from the obvious zionist control, whether he knows it or not. I will look again at your EIR website. Did not mean to offend.

    Brad Owen , March 24, 2017 at 4:27 am

    Sam, we just disagree on the location of the REAL enemy. The zionistas are indeed real, and a threat, a real enemy to the USA, but I maintain they are just a weapon wielded by our traditional enemy who has always fought to undermine us here in America; the British Empire (an entity distinct from the Anglo-Celtic people living on the British Isles who are our tribal mates and suffering under the same yoke of Empire as are we).

    Sam F , March 23, 2017 at 3:26 pm

    Completely wrong: it is an obvious fact that the Democrats have been taken over by the zionists. Obama got over $100 million from a single Jewish "donor." Hillary's major campaign sponsors are all Jewish.
    http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/033116/top-10-corporate-contributors-clinton-campaign.asp
    The top 10 contributors to HRCs Superpac were as follows:
    1. Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna: $35 million
    2. Donald Sussman, Paloma Partners: $21,100,000
    3. Jay Robert Pritzker (Mary), Pritzker Group and Foundation: $12,600,000
    4. Haim Saban and Cheryl Saban, Saban Capital Group: $10,000,000
    5. George Soros (Schwartz): $9,525,000 (changed name from Schwartz)
    6. S. Daniel Abraham, SDA Enterprises: $9,000,000
    7. Fred Eychaner (Eichner), Newsweb Corporation: $8,005,400
    8. James Simons (Shimon), Euclidean Capital: $7,000,000
    9. Henry Laufer and Marsha Laufer, Renaissance Technologies: $5,500,000
    10. Laure Woods (Wald), Laurel Foundation: $5 million

    Your suggestion that this is "British empire" policy is way beyond the ridiculous, it is zionist propaganda. The entire UK economy is a small fraction of that of the US, and there is little financial connection.

    I challenge you to deny these facts, or to substantiate the absurd theory of British control. US mass media.

    Sam F , March 23, 2017 at 3:44 pm

    To continue, the US mass media are also controlled by Jews, presumably zionists. About 40-60 percent of US newspapers are controlled by persons of identifiable Jewish surnames, while less than half of Jewish people can be so identified. Most of the rest are indirectly controlled by Jews.

    No further explanation is needed of the mass media craze for Hillary Clinton (Kleinberg). The DNC emails show that she talks to no one but Jews about Mideast policy.

    No further proof is needed of the origins of Democrat policy in the Mideast. It may play to the interests of the MIC and oil companies sometimes, but not in Syria/Libya/Egypt. And we got no special deals on Iraqi oil anyway, and had no reason to expect them.

    Your move.

    JWalters , March 23, 2017 at 8:33 pm

    In support of your points, here is an excellent article at a Jewish-run, anti-Zionist website that points out the huge known influence of Israel on American politics that is being ignored amidst all the speculation about possible Russian influence, "Let's talk about Russian influence"
    http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/about-russian-influence/

    Mondoweiss is a site of news and analysis with high journalistic standards. Like Consortium News it has also been attacked by the Deep State for its honesty.

    Sam F , March 23, 2017 at 9:45 pm

    Thank you; it is very appropriate to note that many Jewish people are strong critics of zionism and Israeli policies. There is some hope that they will assist in liberating Jews as well as Palestinians from the racism of the zionists, as many whites assisted in greatly reducing racism among whites in the US against African-Americans.

    Bill Bodden , March 23, 2017 at 4:02 pm

    The simplistic notion that the Democrats have been "taken over by the zionists" is a dangerous illusion that needs debunking.

    There were references in an earlier post quoting two former Israeli prime ministers saying, in effect, they could take care of U.S. politicians to ensure they would do Israel's bidding. I recall Yitzhak Shamir was one of them. The spectacle of Netanyahu showing contempt for Obama in the way he addressed Congress and the standing ovations Netanyahu got from the senators and Congresspersons who sold their souls to the Israel lobby kind of supports the proposition that "the Democrats have been "taken over by the zionists"" Same thing goes for the Republicans.

    Anna , March 23, 2017 at 6:08 pm

    Have you heard about PNAC? Have you heard about the Lobby?
    http://www.oldamericancentury.org/pnac.htm
    http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/neocons-as-a-figment-of-imagination/#comment-1810991

    Sam F , March 23, 2017 at 9:55 pm

    Thanks for the links. PNAC founders Kristol and Kagan helped harness forces for zionist goals. PNAC signers W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz were principal promoters of Iraq War II, as Wolfowitz installed Israeli spy operatives Perl, Feith, and Wurmser at CIA/DIA/NSA offices to select known-bad "intelligence" to incite the war.

    Jerry Alatalo , March 23, 2017 at 6:50 pm

    J. D.,

    "The simplistic notion that the Democrats have been "taken over by the zionists" is a dangerous illusion that needs debunking."

    Can you share with readers why you used the term "dangerous illusion" and why it needs debunking? According to William Binney, Obama's use of GCHQ was nothing more than standard operating procedure, an everyday mode of business, to avoid breaking American laws – nothing new, so therefore presenting no threat of rupturing U.S.-British "special relationship".

    Can you share the names of major influential figures composing what you describe as the "Anglo-American financial oligarchy" for the benefit of others who pass this way?

    It's hard to explain away Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and so many other U.S. politicians fighting each other to get to the head of the pack in supporting Israel. Bernie Sanders only mentioned that Palestinians suffer human and civil rights deficiencies and the world shook, despite it being only a very minor, tiny critique of Israel. Can we imagine what would have happened – the titanic reaction – had Mr. Sanders blurted out during one of the debates with Ms, Clinton the same conclusion that Professor Virginia Tilley and Professor Richard Falk's report arrived at very recently – that the State of Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid?

    Years ago while Mr. Sanders appeared weekly with Thom Hartmann on "Brunch With Bernie" we redialed the call-in program until finally getting through and asking two questions. The first was a request for a response from Senator Sanders on the trillion-dollar / year global tax haven-evasion industry facilitated by the world's most powerful accounting, legal and banking firms. The second requested response on the suggestion that it was time to "nationalize the privately-owned Federal Reserve". Mr. Sanders responded to the 1st, then suddenly the show went to music and a break – then after the break until show's end nothing about the Federal Reserve.

    My guess is that Mr. Sanders and Mr. Hartmann were aware of a "panic button to break" to be triggered when the live call-in topics became, let's say, "unmanageable". That is just a guess,but another guess is that Mr. Sanders was the recipient of, how shall we put it, very "risky" news during his campaign for president when running against Ms. Clinton. So, long story short, Sanders capitulated because he's fully aware of what happened to JFK, MLK and RFK, Clinton became spoiled goods and unacceptable as America's new CEO, and Donald Trump was selected. Trump's long-time friends include "Lucky" Larry Silverstein, who just happened to avoid being in his Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, breaking his religiously kept routine of breakfast every morning in a restaurant located in the top floors of one of the towers – because his wife fortunately convinced him to keep an appointment with his dermatologist.

    Donald Trump, "Lucky Larry" and Benjamin Netanyahu are long-time friends.

    ***

    Men and women wishing to read, copy, save and disseminate the report on Israel apartheid by Professor Tilley and Professor Falk can find it online at the co-author's internet platform, available at:

    https://richardfalk.wordpress.com

    Bill Bodden , March 23, 2017 at 3:52 pm

    The top ten "donors" to Clinton (Kleinberg) were Jewish, every single one of them! Over $100 million. Obama got over $100 million from a single Jewish "donor."

    In exchange Israel got a $38 BILLION package of US aid. What a deal!! Presumably, the Israel lobby will show its appreciation to Obama with donations to his presidential library probably making that library the most expensive ever.

    Sam F , March 23, 2017 at 6:27 pm

    Yes, there can be little doubt that the zionist campaign money comes at least indirectly from US aid to Israel, and that the aid is intended substantially for that purpose. Investigation of such cashflows might turn up evidence, although there is a quid pro quo economy on both sides that could easily obscure the feedback.

    You may well be right in suggesting that the vast aid flows simply make campaign donations a great investment for those who would otherwise have invested in Israel. But the Dems and Reps know that this aid to Israel is for campaign bribes, pure and simple.

    JWalters , March 23, 2017 at 8:42 pm

    In addition to the carrot bribes, there are also the blackmail sticks. This possibility is consistent with the following segment of a 1998 interview with Kay Griggs, former wife of the U.S. Army's director of assassination training.

    Kay Griggs: "Even when he [General Al Gray] was General he ran an intelligence operation which was a contract organization trying to hook politicians, and get them. What is the word? In other words "

    Interviewer: "In compromising situations?"

    Kay Griggs: "Yes, yes. He had and still has an organization which brings in whores, prostitutes, whatever you want to say, who will compromise politicians so they can be used."

    The above is in Part 2 of the whole interview, starting at 48:00 in the video at
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-SEA9W6pmA

    In Part 1 of the interview she explains the motives behind this.

    Kay Griggs: "I'm talking about the Brooklyn-New Jersey mob. My husband, Al Gray, Sheehan, they're all Brooklyn. Cap Weinberger. Heinz Kissinger – there's the Boston mob, which was shipping weapons back and forth to Northern Ireland. And I don't want to get too deeply involved in that, but it goes – Israel – some of the Zionists who came over from Germany, according to my husband, were – he works with those people – they do a lot of money laundering in the banks, cash transactions for the drugs they're bringing over, through Latin America, the Southern Mafia, the Dixie Mafia, which now my husband's involved with in Miami. The military are all involved once they retire. They're – you know, they go into this drug and secondary weapon sales."

    The above starts soon after 18:00 in the video at
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQNitCNycKQ
    (Part 1 of interview)

    Further on the following exchange occurs.

    Interviewer: "And directly under whose instructions to sell these weapons, do you know that?"

    Kay Griggs: "Yeah."

    Interviewer: "Okay, who would that be?"

    Kay Griggs: "Well, uh, [pause] it's the Israeli-Zionist group in New York."

    The above starts at 1:06:45 in the same video at
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQNitCNycKQ

    Shortly afterward in the same segment is this exchange.

    Kay Griggs: "It's kind of like Monica and Bill. I think they put Monica in there to have something on Bill. That's my own feeling. Sarah McClendon feels the same way. Because "

    Interviewer: "And Linda Tripp was there to guide the situation."

    Kay Griggs: "Absolutely, of course. Linda Tripp was Delta Force. Linda Tripp was trained by Carl Steiner, who's in the diary [her husband's] with my husband. And he [Steiner] tried to trip up Schwarzkopf. I mean, he was trying to take, to take the whole Iraqi thing over because they had been baiting, you know using the Israeli rogues in Turkey. They were having little zig-zag wars. It's all to sell weapons. It's all about weapons sales, it's all about drugs, it's all about funny money."

    A blackmail factor, combined with financial carrots, and especially if backed up with a death threat, could easily explain why a reasonably intelligent and educated person would act uninformed and irrational. The surface inconsistency becomes easy to understand. A strategic system of blackmail of the sort Kay Griggs described could easily explain a phalanx of politicians lying in lockstep to American voters, and voting against America's best interests.

    backwardsevolution , March 24, 2017 at 12:19 am

    JWalters – fascinating! Thanks for posting. Makes sense, doesn't it?

    Sam f , March 24, 2017 at 12:33 pm

    That is fascinating. There must be material on the linkages of secret agencies, ex-military staff, political gangsters, and money-laundering banksters to the drugs and weapons trade. They would be useful tools for false-flag incidents and to supply terror groups.

    Those with connections should contact independent news reporters, who could perhaps train journalism students to investigate further. There may be material in the Wikileaks Vault-7 dump of CIA docs.

    Pablo Diablo , March 23, 2017 at 1:39 pm

    A military buildup=an empire in decline.

    chuck b , March 23, 2017 at 2:25 pm

    before they let their hegemony over humanity collapse, they blow up the planet.

    what's remarkable, for me as an outsider at least, how many insane people are running the show and that's not exclusive to the psychotic right. seeing the mad general at hillary's DNC coronation and the "U!S!A!" chants from the crowd, i'm under the impression that the majority of Americans, that has not yet been marginalized and impoverished, is as deranged as ecstatic Germans cheering on Goebbels and his total war.

    Accidental , March 23, 2017 at 8:29 pm

    Actually what's happening now in the US is more like France in 1848

    Pauline Saxon , March 23, 2017 at 1:50 pm

    I have supported you from the beginning. I would like to understand why you seem to be protecting Trump

    D5-5 , March 23, 2017 at 2:15 pm

    I don't believe Robert Parry or this site are protecting Trump. Questioning the demonizing and slandering of Trump, and efforts to remove him, also do not constitute "protecting."

    Trump was elected legitimately to be the president for better or worse. An assessment means looking at both sides of whatever it is. Trump is obviously not doing well and getting negative evaluations, but some of his views (for one example) that promise toward détente or acceptance of a multi-polar world are worth considering.

    Is he genuinely moving in this direction, or faking for some hidden reason? The jury is still considering. So investigating an attack on Trump that is primarily bogus and motivated as a smoke screen to demonize Russia, and prepare the nation for war, is not protecting Trump, but trying to get at the underbrush of what's really going on behind the headlines.

    Perhaps you could give us some idea of what you see as protecting Trump?

    For myself I'm very critical of Trump. At this time he seems bent on building up ground troops in Syria, but with ISIS already being subdued without this action, we should question why. What's going on. Is he seeking a Ronald Reagan/George W. type of glory moment as One Tough Supreme Commander? Is he now falling in to the neocon overview of controlling the middle east? It's more foolishness in my view, that will not settle the problems and what W uncorked with his phony Iraq war. But this kind of considering doesn't take the heat off the DEM Party for its unconscionable manipulations with Trump and Russia bashing at this time.

    Hayden Head , March 23, 2017 at 7:38 pm

    Well said! You are spot on in your defense of Parry, who has consistently shown himself to be committed to the truth, regardless of whom he is defending or the consequences of his position. Many of us are waiting to see if Trump might, just might, lead us away from endless war to something approaching a rational foreign policy. Is such hope foolishness? Well, hope usually is.

    Bill Bodden , March 23, 2017 at 8:08 pm

    Unfortunately, this site is afflicted with the utterances of sloppy readers who are triggered to hit their keyboard when some sentence gets their attention and causes them to ignore other contradictory commentary.

    Jake G , March 23, 2017 at 2:27 pm

    What are you talking about? There are as many Trump-critic articles from him.

    JWalters , March 23, 2017 at 8:49 pm

    It seems to me Parry is not so much protecting Trump as trying to protect America from another needless war manufactured by the Deep State, e.g. "War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror"
    http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com

    Gina , March 23, 2017 at 1:52 pm

    Excellent article. I am pretty horrified at the direction of the Dems which has become Rethuglican-lite.

    LJ , March 23, 2017 at 2:06 pm

    The Democrats abandoned their core constituency , LABOR, when Clinton got the 1992 nomination promising to sign NAFTA a short time after having been pictured attending a Bilderberg Beer fest, Since then by jumping further under the sheets with High Finance and Tech Billionaires they have continuously bled votes everywhere except the West Coast. Recent Polling you may have noticed has the Democrats declining in favorability even more since the election. Strange Days have found us haven't they?. .when all else fails we can whip the horses eyes and make them sleep and cry .. I say for starters we separate the words Military and Intelligence forever with a Constitutional Amendment .. How then will Senators McCain and Feinstein react? What will they do for God's sake? The rest of the Two Party infrastructure will quickly implode. Sorry. Thank God and the ACA,, the Amazon Drone has just delivered my prescription meds.. Peace in our time.

    chuck b , March 23, 2017 at 2:13 pm

    i think it's safe to say that the democrats have been equally adept at waging war since the nutcase LBJ didn't know if they were shooting at whales in the bay of tomkin and started the American holocaust. obama let his darling Hillary run amok which resulted in a rise of refugees and idp by 50% to over 60 million, in just his first term. you actually live in a country run by Nazis for a very long time. from Kissinger to McCain, they are people in power who have collaborated with Nazis (phoenix, condor) and continue to do so in Ukraine or with Islamic extremists in syria. the prospect of McCain anywhere near the state dept must be avoided by an means necessary.

    Tristan , March 23, 2017 at 2:22 pm

    "[B]ut what good that would do for the American people and the world is hard to fathom." That's it Mr. Parry. That is the key that we need to understand. It is not, not, a priority of either political half of the Republican/Democratic dynamic, to do good for the American people. We are being subjected to the policies which previously were our export, the evisceration of nation(s) to benefit private capital.

    I had previously wondered, back in the 90's when Russia was being subjected to neo liberal economic intervention, why these vultures hadn't descended upon the United States, being the feted calf that it were. But I was blind, they were already descending, it only has take some time and a couple of "opportunities", such as 9/11, the Katrina hurricane, to implement those same measures here.

    We need to understand that our current political structure is indifferent to the well being of the majority of the "citizens" ie; what are now more commonly called consumers. If the prisons stay full and the indebtedness mounts that is part of the program. Stop thinking that our present system is offering anything that would be recognized by a rational and moral human being as something even close to "a government of the People, by the People, for the People; [or] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

    ltr , March 23, 2017 at 2:22 pm

    I can tell you that the atmosphere is such on campus that a social science faculty member needs to be very careful not to be taken for having "sympathies" for either Russia or China. I repeatedly hear comments that are chilling, and just nod and get away.

    Tristan , March 23, 2017 at 2:38 pm

    It is nearly impossible to engage with someone in a political context and advocate for a least a fair mind, some neutrality in examining the domestic political situation and relations with Russia. I have to mute myself unless I am willing to engage in a long and tiring argument/discussion in which my point is lost and I have to defend simple ideas of statesmanship and diplomacy.

    Sheryl , March 23, 2017 at 5:22 pm

    I can relate. The frustrating part is that they think I'm a nut wearing a tinfoil hat.

    Realist , March 23, 2017 at 5:55 pm

    Would you go so far as to say that most such discussions now take place on terrain far removed from the real world? And, if you insist on sticking to facts rather than fantasy, are you immediately branded an enemy of the state, an intellectual exile without friends or influence, and probably someone marked for extinction, at least on the professional level, if this country must repeat the greatest mistakes of the 1930's and 40's, as it seems headed? So glad I am retired, and I worked in the natural sciences, not the more volatile and political social sciences. Now their only leverage against me is my state pension and health benefits, which many do want to make into a political football.

    Tristan , March 23, 2017 at 7:31 pm

    The distinction between the real and the ideological has been blurred in accordance with the principles of public opinion management, ie; propaganda. The prevailing mania, contextualized via the dynamic of globalized free market capitalism masquerading as the promotion of freedom and democracy, is where one finds that the seeds of "treason" are sown wider and wider against heretics.

    Kiza , March 24, 2017 at 8:35 am

    Just reading what all of you guys have written about the prevailing atmosphere in the so called intellectual community, which is much more serious than the atmosphere in the nutty MSM, makes me think of the Decline of the Roman Empire. Many people here are leftists, therefore they will disagree with me, but I see absolutely solid parallels between Russia-hate and AGW. Both have become religion for the vast majority of the Western intellectual class, devoid of the principal tool of the intellectuals – rationality. If you are a doubter, you will be ostracized .

    Enquiring Mind , March 23, 2017 at 2:24 pm

    They have no decency, sir.
    At least McCarthy was right on the commie threat, even though his methods and execution were unsound.

    Miranda Keefe , March 23, 2017 at 3:59 pm

    "At least McCarthy was right on the commie threat."

    The US was the aggressor in the Cold War. The Soviet Union, after the war, wanted to continue to co-exist under the spheres of influence agreed on by the US at Yalta.

    When did the Democratic Party turn into the post-war war party? At the Democratic convention in 1944 when the establishment did a coup against FDR's right hand man, his VP, his chosen future VP and successor, the great Henry Wallace.

    Gregory Herr , March 23, 2017 at 7:52 pm

    Wallace instead of Truman? One of the big "what might have been" turns of history.

    http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/14297-henry-wallace-americas-forgotten-visionary

    [Mar 24, 2017] Democrats Trade Places on War and McCarthyism – Consortiumnews

    Notable quotes:
    "... During his presidency, Clinton deployed so-called "smart power" aggressively, including maintaining harsh sanctions on Iraq even as they led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. He also intervened in the Yugoslavian civil war by bombing civilian targets in Belgrade including the lethal destruction of the Serb TV station for the supposed offense of broadcasting "propaganda." ..."
    "... After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, many leading congressional Democrats – including presidential hopefuls John Kerry, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton – voted to authorize President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. Though they offered various excuses (especially after the Iraq War went badly), the obvious real reason was their fear of being labeled "soft" in Republican attack ads. ..."
    "... Meanwhile, there were many anti-war Democrats who have become deeply uncomfortable with the party's new hawkish persona. In the 2016 election, some peace Democrats voted for third parties or didn't vote at all for president, although it's difficult to assess how instrumental those defections were in costing Clinton the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. ..."
    "... At such a point, that might put the Democrats and Republicans in sync as two equally warmongering parties, but what good that would do for the American people and the world is hard to fathom. ..."
    "... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
    Mar 24, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

    Exclusive: The anti-Russia hysteria gripping the Democratic Party marks a "trading places" moment as the Democrats embrace the New Cold War and the New McCarthyism, flipping the script on Republicans, writes Robert Parry.

    Caught up in the frenzy to delegitimize Donald Trump by blaming his victory on Russian meddling, national Democrats are finishing the transformation of their party from one that was relatively supportive of peace to one pushing for war, including a confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.

    This "trading places" moment was obvious in watching the belligerent tone of Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee on Monday as they impugned the patriotism of any Trump adviser who may have communicated with anyone connected to Russia.

    Ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, acknowledged that there was no hard evidence of any Trump-Russia cabal, but he pressed ahead with what he called "circumstantial evidence of collusion," a kind of guilt-by-association conspiracy theory that made him look like a mild-mannered version of Joe McCarthy.

    Schiff cited by name a number of Trump's aides and associates who – as The New York Times reported – were "believed to have some kind of contact or communications with Russians." These Americans, whose patriotism was being questioned, included foreign policy adviser Carter Page, Trump's second campaign manager Paul Manafort, political adviser Roger Stone and Trump's first national security adviser retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

    In a 15-minute opening statement, Schiff summed up his circumstantial case by asking: "Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible. But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated."

    As an investigative journalist who has covered (and uncovered) national security scandals for several decades, I would never accuse people of something as serious as betraying their country based on nothing more than coincidences that, who knows, might not be coincidental.

    Before we published anything on such topics, the news organizations that I worked for required multiple layers of information from a variety of sources including insiders who could describe what had happened and why. Such stories included Nicaraguan Contra cocaine smuggling, Oliver North's secret Contra supply operation, and the Reagan campaign's undermining of President Carter's Iran-hostage negotiations in 1980.

    For breaking those stories, we still took enormous heat from Republicans, some Democrats who wanted to show how bipartisan they were, and many establishment-protecting journalists, but the stories contained strong evidence that misconduct occurred – and we were highly circumspect in how the allegations were framed.

    Going Whole-Hog

    By contrast, national Democrats, some super-hawk Republicans and the establishment media are going whole-hog on these vague suspicions of contacts between some Russians and some Americans who have provided some help or advice to Trump.

    U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry listens to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a meeting room at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, at the outset of a bilateral meeting on July 14, 2016. [State Department Photo] Given the paucity of evidence – both regarding the claims that Russia hacked Democratic emails and slipped them to WikiLeaks, and the allegations that somehow Trump's advisers colluded in that process – it would appear that what is happening is a political maneuver to damage Trump politically and possibly remove him from office.

    But those machinations require the Democratic Party's continued demonization of Russia and implicitly put the Democrats on the side of escalating New Cold War tensions, such as military support for the fiercely anti-Russian regime in Ukraine which seized power in a 2014 U.S.-backed putsch overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

    One of the attack lines that Democrats have used against Trump is that his people toned down language in the Republican platform about shipping arms to the Ukrainian military, which includes battalions of neo-Nazi fighters and has killed thousands of ethnic Russian Ukrainians in the east in what is officially called an Anti-Terrorism Operation (or ATO).

    The Democratic Party leaders have fully bought into the slanted Western narrative justifying the violent overthrow of Yanukovych. They also have ignored the human rights of Ukraine's ethnic Russian minorities, which voted overwhelmingly in Crimea and the Donbass to secede from post-coup Ukraine. The more complex reality is simply summed up as a "Russian invasion."

    Key Democrats also have pressed for escalation of the U.S. military attacks inside Syria to force "regime change" on Bashar al-Assad's secular government even if that risks another military confrontation with Russia and a victory by Al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists.

    In short, the national Democratic Party is turning itself into the more extreme war party. It's not that the Republicans have become all that dovish; it's just that the Democrats have become all that hawkish. The significance of this change can hardly be overstated.

    Questioning War

    Since late in the Vietnam War, the Democrats have acted as the more restrained of the two major parties on issues of war, with the Republicans associated with tough-guy rhetoric and higher military spending. By contrast, Democrats generally were more hesitant to rush into foreign wars and confrontations (although they were far from pacifists).

    Especially after the revelations of the Pentagon Papers in the 1971 revealing the government deceptions used to pull the American people into the Vietnam War, Democrats questioned shady rationalizations for other wars.

    Some Democratic skepticism continued into the 1980s as President Ronald Reagan was modernizing U.S. propaganda techniques to whitewash the gross human rights crimes of right-wing regimes in Central America and to blacken the reputations of Nicaragua's Sandinistas and other leftists.

    The Democratic resolve against war propaganda began to crack by the mid-to-late 1980s – around Reagan's Grenada invasion and George H.W. Bush's attack on Panama. By then, the Republicans had enjoyed nearly two decades of bashing the Democrats as "weak on defense" – from George McGovern to Jimmy Carter to Walter Mondale to Michael Dukakis.

    But the Democratic Party's resistance to dubious war rationalizations collapsed in 1991 over George H.W. Bush's Persian Gulf War, in which the President rebuffed less violent solutions (even ones favored by the U.S. military) to assure a dramatic ground-war victory after which Bush declared, "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all."

    Fearful of being labeled disloyal to "the troops" and "weak," national Democrats scrambled to show their readiness to kill. In 1992, Gov. Bill Clinton left the campaign trail to return to Arkansas to oversee the execution of the mentally impaired Ricky Ray Rector.

    During his presidency, Clinton deployed so-called "smart power" aggressively, including maintaining harsh sanctions on Iraq even as they led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. He also intervened in the Yugoslavian civil war by bombing civilian targets in Belgrade including the lethal destruction of the Serb TV station for the supposed offense of broadcasting "propaganda."

    After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, many leading congressional Democrats – including presidential hopefuls John Kerry, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton – voted to authorize President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. Though they offered various excuses (especially after the Iraq War went badly), the obvious real reason was their fear of being labeled "soft" in Republican attack ads.

    The American public's revulsion over the Iraq War and the resulting casualties contributed to Barack Obama's election. But he, too, moved to protect his political flanks by staffing his young administration with hawks, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. (and later CIA Director) David Petraeus. Despite receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama also became comfortable with continuing Bush's wars and starting some of his own, such as the bombing war against Libya and the violent subversion of Syria.

    By nominating Hillary Clinton in 2016, the Democratic Party completed its transformation into the Party of War. Clinton not only ran as an unapologetic hawk in the Democratic primaries against Sen. Bernie Sanders – urging, for instance, a direct U.S. military invasion of Syria to create "no fly zones" – but positioned herself as a harsh critic of Trump's hopes to reduce hostilities with Russia, deeming the Republican nominee Vladimir Putin's "puppet."

    Ironically, Trump's shocking victory served to solidify the Democratic Party's interest in pushing for a military confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. After all, baiting Trump over his alleged "softness" toward Russia has become the centerpiece of Democratic hopes for somehow ousting Trump or at least crippling his presidency. Any efforts by Trump to ease those tensions will be cited as prima facie evidence that he is Putin's "Manchurian candidate."

    Being Joe McCarthy

    National Democrats and their media supporters don't even seem troubled by the parallels between their smears of Americans for alleged contacts with Russians and Sen. Joe McCarthy's guilt-by-association hearings of the early Cold War. Every link to Russia – no matter how tenuous or disconnected from Trump's election – is trumpeted by Democrats and across the mainstream news media.

    But it's not even clear that this promotion of the New Cold War and the New McCarthyism will redound to the Democrats' political advantage. Clinton apparently thought that her embrace of a neoconservative foreign policy would bring in many "moderate" Republicans opposed to Trump's criticism of the Bush-Obama wars, but exit polls showed Republicans largely rallying to their party's nominee.

    Meanwhile, there were many anti-war Democrats who have become deeply uncomfortable with the party's new hawkish persona. In the 2016 election, some peace Democrats voted for third parties or didn't vote at all for president, although it's difficult to assess how instrumental those defections were in costing Clinton the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

    More broadly, the Democratic obsession with Russia and the hopes for somehow exploiting those investigations in order to oust Trump have distracted the party from a necessary autopsy into why the Democrats have lost so much ground over the past decade.

    While many Democratic leaders and activists are sliding into full-scale conspiracy-mode over the Russia-Trump story, they are not looking at the party's many mistakes and failings, such as:

    • Why did party leaders push so hard to run an unpopular establishment candidate in a strongly anti-establishment year? Was it the fact that many are beholden to the Clinton cash machine?
    • How can Democrats justify the undemocratic use of "super-delegates" to make many rank-and-file voters feel that the process is rigged in favor of the establishment's choice?
    • What can the Democratic Party do to reengage with many working-class voters, especially downwardly mobile whites, to stop the defection of this former Democratic base to Trump's populism?
    • Do national Democrats understand how out of touch they are with the future as they insist that the United States must remain the sole military superpower in a uni-polar world when the world is rapidly shifting toward a multi-polar reality?

    Yet, rather than come up with new strategies to address the future, Democratic leaders would rather pretend that Putin is at fault for the Trump presidency and hope that the U.S. intelligence community – with its fearsome surveillance powers – can come up with enough evidence to justify Trump's impeachment.

    Then, of course, the Democrats would be stuck with President Mike Pence, a more traditional Religious Right Republican whose first step on foreign policy would be to turn it over to neocon Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, a move that would likely mean a new wave of "regime change" wars.

    At such a point, that might put the Democrats and Republicans in sync as two equally warmongering parties, but what good that would do for the American people and the world is hard to fathom.

    [For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com's " Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon " and " Democrats Are Now the Aggressive War Party .]

    Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

    [Mar 24, 2017] Surveillance State Goes After Trump

    Notable quotes:
    "... Democrats are so eager to take down President Trump that they are joining forces with the Surveillance State to trample the privacy rights of people close to Trump, ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley tells Dennis J Bernstein. ..."
    "... Since Donald Trump's election, former Special FBI Agent Coleen Rowley has been alarmed over how Democratic hawks, neocons and other associates in the "deep state" have obsessed over "resurrecting the ghost of Joseph McCarthy" and have built political support for a permanent war policy around hatred of Russia. ..."
    "... 'Red Scare' fear of Communism" famously associated with legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who collaborated with Sen. Joe McCarthy's hunt for disloyal Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s. ..."
    "... We see a lot of demonization of the Russian T.V. channel. But we have not seen any actual evidence of Russians and there's a lot of reasons to think that this would be illogical. Even if, and I would grant that Comey mentioned this in his testimony, that Putin and other top Russians hated Hillary Clinton. Well, even if you assume that, that they didn't like Hillary Clinton, as much as Donald Trump. They considered Donald Trump their lesser evil, or whatever. Even if you think that, why would they take the risk? Because, at the time Hillary Clinton surprised everyone by everyone thought she was going to win. So it would have been completely illogical for them to have done these things, to take that kind of a risk, when it was presumed that she was going to be the next president. There's just so many things here that don't add up, and don't make sense. ..."
    "... And yet, and yet, because our mainstream media is owned by what? half a dozen big conglomerates, all connected to the military industrial complex, they continue with the scenario of that old movie the Russians are coming! the Russians are coming! And unfortunately the Democrat Party has become the war party, very clearly. They're the ones that don't see the dangers in ginning up this very dangerous narrative of going after Russia, as meddling, or whatever. And they should ask for, we all should ask for the full evidence of this. If this is case, then we deserve to know the truth about it. And, so far, we haven't seen anything. Look at that report. There's nothing in it. ..."
    Mar 24, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

    Democrats are so eager to take down President Trump that they are joining forces with the Surveillance State to trample the privacy rights of people close to Trump, ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley tells Dennis J Bernstein.

    Since Donald Trump's election, former Special FBI Agent Coleen Rowley has been alarmed over how Democratic hawks, neocons and other associates in the "deep state" have obsessed over "resurrecting the ghost of Joseph McCarthy" and have built political support for a permanent war policy around hatred of Russia.

    Rowley, whose 2002 memo to the FBI Director exposed some of the FBI's pre-9/11failures, compared the current anti-Russia hysteria to "the

    'Red Scare' fear of Communism" famously associated with legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who collaborated with Sen. Joe McCarthy's hunt for disloyal Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

    In an interview, Rowley told me that while Trump was wrong about his claim that President Obama ordered a surveillance "tapp" of Trump Tower, the broader point may have been correct as explained by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-California, who described how U.S. intelligence apparently picked up conversations by Trump associates while monitoring other targets.

    Dennis Bernstein: A former high-level FBI whistleblower says Trump is vindicated on his claims of being surveilled by the previous administration. Joining us to take a close look at what's been going on, what's been unfolding in Washington, D.C. is Coleen Rowley. She's a former FBI special agent and division council. She wrote a May 2002 memo to the FBI director that exposed some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures, major failures. She was Time magazine's person of the year in 2002. Help us explain what chairman Nunes reported in terms of the collecting process and Trumps innocence or guilt?

    ... ... ...

    CR: Well, I don't think there has and it's not just myself, it's really most of our veteran intelligence professionals, retired CIA, retired NSA, we've all been conferring for a while on this. And we have asked, we actually put out a memo asking for evidence. Because it's just been assertions and innuendoes, and demonization

    We see a lot of demonization of the Russian T.V. channel. But we have not seen any actual evidence of Russians and there's a lot of reasons to think that this would be illogical. Even if, and I would grant that Comey mentioned this in his testimony, that Putin and other top Russians hated Hillary Clinton. Well, even if you assume that, that they didn't like Hillary Clinton, as much as Donald Trump. They considered Donald Trump their lesser evil, or whatever. Even if you think that, why would they take the risk? Because, at the time Hillary Clinton surprised everyone by everyone thought she was going to win. So it would have been completely illogical for them to have done these things, to take that kind of a risk, when it was presumed that she was going to be the next president. There's just so many things here that don't add up, and don't make sense.

    FBI Director James Comey

    And yet, and yet, because our mainstream media is owned by what? half a dozen big conglomerates, all connected to the military industrial complex, they continue with the scenario of that old movie the Russians are coming! the Russians are coming! And unfortunately the Democrat Party has become the war party, very clearly. They're the ones that don't see the dangers in ginning up this very dangerous narrative of going after Russia, as meddling, or whatever. And they should ask for, we all should ask for the full evidence of this. If this is case, then we deserve to know the truth about it. And, so far, we haven't seen anything. Look at that report. There's nothing in it.

    DB: And, this is the same media who for the last ever since Trump claimed that he was wiretapped using the wrong terminology, these journalists they couldn't stop saying "if he did lie, this is a felony. He did lie. He did accuse the former president of the United States " So, you're saying, based on your long experience and information this was just a confusion of a term of art, and the idea of the possibility of Trump Towers being under investigation, this was all incredibly not strange, not crazy, and totally normal in the context of an investigation.

    CR: Yes, and I again, there could be grounds for legitimate investigation of the periphery of the Trump campaign, certain staffers. And you know what, corruption in Washington, D.C. is quite rampant. And I think many, many of the politicians if they actually put them under the microscope they could find just as you look at foreign leaders, Netanyahu was indicted for corruption, whatever. It's not uncommon to have conflicts of interests, and under the table deals. That's very possible.

    So, that's not what our news is saying. Our mainstream news is saying that, what you said at the beginning, the Russians own Trump, and basically that this has undermined our democracy and our electoral process. That part of it we have seen no evidence of. And, Trump is partially vindicated, because obviously whether he was personally targeted, his campaign at least seems to have been monitored, at least in part.

    DB: Were you amazed that, for instance, the FBI director raised the issue of the Clinton investigation, but not the Trump investigation?

    CR: Well, I've been trying to figure that out. Because back, during when he went public, he was put into the spot because Loretta Lynch should have been the one to be public on these things. But she was tainted because of having met with Bill Clinton on the tarmac. And so my explanation was that that Comey shouldered the burden from Loretta Lynch. He was doing her a favor in a way because he thought it would look like this is more independent and more professional coming from the FBI. Because at the time Loretta Lynch was under a cloud. And I think that is the explanation for why he was so public at the time.

    And, of course, things have developed the summer, if any investigation started during the summer, again, it was not known. It was probably legitimate if they got some information in about some act of corruption, or whatever, it was certainly legitimate. But since this summer what has happened is this whole narrative has just gone on steroids, because of the leaks about the Russians, etc. And the fact that they put out this report, the FBI, the NSA, and the director of National Intelligence. And I think that that's the problem right now is the public just is so confused because there has been so much wrong information out there in the media. And no one knows what to believe.

    Actually, to Comey's credit he did say this a couple of times that these media accounts are not accurate. And, I think that, again, we there's been a lot of "sources" anonymous sources which I do not think are whistleblowers. But these anonymous sources seem to have come from political operatives, and even higher level people. I'm guessing some of this came from the Obama administration appointees, not Obama, of course, personally.

    And, who knows if he knew anything about this, but some of those prior appointees, I think, when all is said and done will be seen as the ones, if they can ever uncover this. It's hard with anonymous sources. But I think they were probably the ones leading this. And maybe over time we can get back to some sanity here without so much of this planted information, and wrongful leaks. And I, again, I'm all for whistle blowing. But, I don't agree with leaks like Scooter Libby's where they were actually using the media to plant false info.

    [Mar 24, 2017] Whether the Soviet union exists or not has nothing to do with it. USA MUST always have an enemy to divert the sheeples attention that their so called American dream is really a nightmare

    Mar 24, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    hoyeru , Mar 24, 2017 9:17 PM

    Whether the Soviet union exists or not has nothing to do with it. USA MUST always have an enemy to divert the sheeple's attention that their so called American dream is really a nightmare. Besides, USA's empire is failing and Russia is getting stronger. of course USA will be pissed off about it.

    daveO -> hoyeru , Mar 24, 2017 9:34 PM

    "Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia." I'm glad to have lived to see them almost fail. When I first read this in 1984, by coincidence, there seemed to be no end in sight. As soon as the USSR failed they replaced it with terrorism(Eastasia)....

    lester1 , Mar 24, 2017 9:21 PM

    Help out of you can. Seth Rich was exposing corruption with the DNC against Bernie Sanders. He was mysteriously shot in the back last summer, but his wallet and watch weren't taken.

    https://www.gofundme.com/SethRich

    xrxs , Mar 24, 2017 9:36 PM

    I still can't figure this Russiophobia out. We went from a path to mutual arms reduction and normalizing relations to the shitstorm in Ukraine and Syria. I think I know who started that whole mess, but I still haven't figured out why other than maintaining friendly control of European petrochemicals.

    We went from Bush II and Vlad fishing and hanging out at the ranch to where we are today. WTF happened?

    HRH Feant -> xrxs , Mar 24, 2017 9:58 PM

    Same here. This new obsession is complete and utter insanity.

    The leftists in the US remind me of the revolutionaries in Bolshevik Russia. They want a revolution and dream of communal living.

    Communal living is my worst nightmare! Anyone that has shared a house with roomies soon understands that one person pays the bills while another eats all the food and one person cleans the toilet while everyone else makes a mess of the entire place. Communal living sounds great, in theory. In practice? It doesn't work.

    shovelhead , Mar 24, 2017 9:39 PM

    Nobodies "Russo-phobic". That's the story they're trying to sell the world.

    That's just a convenient excuse for retaliating on Ukraine, Syria and now Trump. Russia and Putin have become like Mr. Clean in the household.

    Good for every mess you make.

    Cabreado , Mar 24, 2017 9:49 PM

    "This is an American implosion. An historic Made-in-America meltdown. And Russophobia is but a symptom of the internal decay at the heart of US politics."

    More importantly, it is a decay in the electorate and how it relates to the elected (isn't that the real heart of US politics?)

    And so the elected, naturally, have become a corrupt mass of opportunists.

    This is why they ("We") invented Rule of Law. We just have to give a damn like We mean it.

    [Mar 23, 2017] The president-elect requested security clearance for Kushner to attend top-secret presidential briefings

    Mar 23, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

    Trump has described his son-in-law as a "great guy". The president-elect has also reportedly taken the unprecedented step of requesting security clearance for Kushner to attend top-secret presidential briefings, the first one of which was on Tuesday. It's unclear if the request will be approved. It marks an astonishing departure and invites the accusation of nepotism.

    Kushner's options for a White House job are limited given his family ties to the president, Richard Painter, who served as President George W Bush's White House ethics lawyer, told the Associated Press. Congress passed an anti-nepotism law in 1967 that prohibits the president from appointing a family member – including a son-in-law – to work in the office or agency they oversee. The measure was passed after President John F Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert Kennedy, as attorney general.

    But the law does not appear to prevent Kushner from serving as an unpaid adviser, and few doubt that Kushner will play a decisive role in shaping the Trump presidency, acting as policy adviser and gate-keeper. As Trump and Barack Obama met privately at the White House last week, Kushner strolled the mansion's South Lawn, deep in conversation with Obama's chief of staff. As Kushner walked through the bustling West Wing during Trump's visit last week, he was heard asking Obama aides: "How many of these people stay?", apparently blissfully unaware that the entire West Wing staff will leave at the end of Obama's term.

    His contacts already include Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch; he has received foreign ambassadors. Like Trump, Kushner has never had a formal role in government, but he now appears set to be more important than many who do.

    we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but far fewer are paying for it. And advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

    Fund our journalism and together we can keep the world informed.

    [Mar 23, 2017] The FBI did wiretap Trump Tower to monitor Russian activity, but it had nothing to do with the 2016 Presidential election, it has been reported

    Still waiting for any evidence to appear that Russians interfered with the elections or colluded with Trump.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The FBI did wiretap Trump Tower to monitor Russian activity, but it had nothing to do with the 2016 Presidential election, it has been reported. ..."
    "... The Dems who were all for collecting on everyone can't (non-hypocritically) complain about Trump having all that now. I mean, we can never know how far the extremist have penetrated into our government unless we trace where all that Saudi money terrorist influence goes. ..."
    "... The surveillance state bites the politicians that created it in the ass. I love that. They are not happy, I love that too. ..."
    "... It was already a farce when McCain went after Paul. Though it was, before that, a horror film, with the 'ways the intelligence community can get you.' ..."
    "... It is a satire, wrapped in a parody, hidden in slapstick, on top of a farce, buried in a bro-mance between a man with a tower and another man riding a horse without a shirt (and the man isn't wearing a shirt either .) ..."
    "... Revealing this is treason. ..."
    "... People will die. ..."
    "... I agree that everybody is surveilled all the time, especially in the Beltway, where probably there are multiple simultaneous operations run against . well, everybody. ..."
    Mar 23, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    There's also this showing evidence that Trump Tower was specifically monitored during the Obama administration, although the probe was targeting Russian mafia and not Trump and was done well before he declared his candidacy.

    The FBI did wiretap Trump Tower to monitor Russian activity, but it had nothing to do with the 2016 Presidential election, it has been reported.

    Between 2011 and 2013 the Bureau had a warrant to spy on a high-level criminal Russian money-laundering ring, which operated in unit 63A of the iconic skyscraper - three floors below Mr Trump's penthouse.

    Not exactly a confirmation of Trump's rather wild claims, but something. Still waiting for any evidence to appear that Russians interfered with the elections or colluded with Trump.

    uncle tungsten , March 22, 2017 at 9:40 pm

    Ok, so they were just after the Russian mafia, phew I feel better already. So they got the felons and they are all arrested?

    What utter BS! Why is Semion Mogilevitch still at large in Hungary and no extradition process? What about Felix Sater and Steve Wynn and on and on. Why are they incapable of prosecuting mafia mobsters and instead chasing politicians?

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , March 22, 2017 at 5:29 pm

    That said, it was what happening potentially to all citizens, not just Donald Trump. I dislike this intensely, but why should Trump get special dispensation over other citizens? Would like to know the reason for that.

    Like Watergate, it's really about the denial or the lying. "When did you know about the, er, collecting?" For how many days have we ridiculed Trump for his alternative universe imagination?

    Lambert Strether Post author , March 23, 2017 at 3:25 am

    > He can join the other 310 million of us who can be "incidentally collected".

    Didn't your mother tell you that 310 million wrongs don't make a right? Neither party establishment cares about that quaint concept, civil liberties. If Obama's flip flip on FISA reform in July 2008, giving the Telco's retroactive immunity for Bush's warrantless surveillance, didn't convince you, then his 17-city paramilitary crackdown on Occupy should have.

    fritter , March 23, 2017 at 10:38 am

    Not to mention monitoring a politician opens up a whole new can of worms. I'm convinced Trump must pretty clean relatively because the IC hasn't gotten rid of him yet and you know they have all of his communications.

    I'm with Lambert on neither party caring. I knew all I needed to when Obama voted for FISA and the following years just reinforced how corrupt the Dems were. There is an import point here though. I don't think Trump would have thought that all of the surveillance would be applied to him personally. It was just about other people. It was probably a legitimate eye opener. Now Trump is at the head of the surveillance apparatus. Instead of asking Wikileaks to release all of Clintons emails, he should just do it himself.

    The Dems who were all for collecting on everyone can't (non-hypocritically) complain about Trump having all that now. I mean, we can never know how far the extremist have penetrated into our government unless we trace where all that Saudi money terrorist influence goes.

    Code Name D , March 22, 2017 at 3:15 pm

    Not just incidental, in Congressional hearings, Comey flat out says that Trump and his team were investigated for Russian connections, and that none were found. The question now is was the investigations properly secured or not. Something completely in the air.

    But team Dem is still playing the "wire tap" canad.

    Randy , March 22, 2017 at 4:13 pm

    The surveillance state bites the politicians that created it in the ass. I love that. They are not happy, I love that too.

    allan , March 22, 2017 at 5:25 pm

    This is now turning into high comedy low farce:

    Devin Nunes Commits "Felonious Leaking" [Emptywheel]

    and @mkraju:

    WYDEN, member of Senate Intel, says Nunes' statements "would appear to reveal classified information, which is a serious concern."

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , March 22, 2017 at 5:32 pm

    It was already a farce when McCain went after Paul. Though it was, before that, a horror film, with the 'ways the intelligence community can get you.'

    polecat , March 22, 2017 at 7:01 pm

    they're going all Fellini on us now --

    wilroncanada , March 22, 2017 at 9:44 pm

    And here I thought they were only looking through a glass, darkly.

    fresno dan , March 22, 2017 at 7:29 pm

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef
    March 22, 2017 at 5:32 pm

    It is a satire, wrapped in a parody, hidden in slapstick, on top of a farce, buried in a bro-mance between a man with a tower and another man riding a horse without a shirt (and the man isn't wearing a shirt either .)

    Lambert Strether Post author , March 23, 2017 at 3:31 am

    And scripted by Cersei Lannister

    allan , March 22, 2017 at 6:48 pm

    Also, this kind of incidental collection has been known about for years. Here's a Barton Gellman, Julie Tate and Ashkan Soltani article (linked to by Emptywheel)
    from the WaPo in 2014 and based on the Snowden documents:

    In NSA-intercepted data, those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are
    [WaPo]

    Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post.

    Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

    And what was the reaction of many Congresspersons
    (including many Dems, and all of the GOP except maybe Rand Paul and Justin Amash)?
    Revealing this is treason. People will die.
    And Trump's CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, has called for Snowden's execution.

    fresno dan , March 22, 2017 at 7:19 pm

    allan
    March 22, 2017 at 6:48 pm

    Sorry allan – I got all excited at seeing a Nunes article in ZeroHedge and posted a comment – your article is better and it makes for more coherent comment threads to keep them together – I should have looked before I leaped (posted).

    Nunes: "I recently confirmed that, on numerous occasions, the Intelligence Community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.
    Details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration-details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value-were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.
    I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition team members were unmasked.
    To be clear, none of this surveillance was related to Russia or any investigation of Russian activities or of the Trump team."

    ==============================================
    So the worm turns. The hypocrisy espoused by all sides is ..well, 11th dimensional.

    3.14e-9 , March 22, 2017 at 10:35 pm

    fresno dan, this was a major topic of discussion during the committee hearing with Comey and Rogers on Monday. I listened to the whole thing – all five hours and 18 minutes' worth – because I suspected that the corporate media would omit important details or spin it beyond recognition. And so they did.

    The bipartisan divide is being portrayed as Democrats wanting to get to the truth of Russian efforts to snuff out Democracy, and Republicans wanting to "plug leaks" (see Lambert's RCP except above), with some reports suggesting the Rs are advocating stifling free speech, prosecuting reporters for publishing classified information, and the like.

    Republican committee members were indeed focused on the leaks, and there was talk about how to prevent them, but their concern – at least as they expressed publicly on Monday – was specifically related to whether all those current and former officials, senior officials, etc., quoted anonymously in the NYT and WaPo (the infamous "nine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies") violated FISA provisions protecting information about U.S. persons collected incidentally in surveillance of foreign actors.

    Sure, they're playing their own game, and it could be a ruse to divert attention from the Trump campaign's alleged Russian ties or simply to have ammo against the Ds. Even so, after listening to all their arguments, I believe they are on more solid ground than all the Dem hysteria about Russian aggression and Trump camp treason.

    I don't think I'll ever get Trey Gowdy's cringe-worthy performance during the Benghazi hearings out of my head, but he made some pretty good points on Monday, one of which was that investigating Russian interference and possible ties between Trump advisers and Russia is all well and good, but there may or may not have been any laws broken; whereas leaking classified information about U.S. citizens collected incidentally under FISA is clearly a felony with up to 10 years. Comey confirmed that by saying that ALL information collected under FISA is classified.

    And then he repeatedly refused to say whether he thought any classified information had been leaked or existed at all (I counted more than 100 "no comment" answers from Comey, who astonishingly managed to find 50 different ways to say it).

    My beef isn't so much the leak of classified information, but the gross dereliction of duty – if not outright abuse of First Amendment powers – by reporters who collaborate with intelligence agencies and then quote them anonymously, giving everyone cover to say or write whatever they want with zero accountability.

    In fact, there were some interesting comments in Monday's hearing about the possibility that some of what has been reported was fabricated. Then, you might expect Comey to say something like that. For all his talk about not tolerating leaks from his agency, blahblah, it was clear that he'll provide his own people with cover, if necessary. I think that's what Gowdy and a couple other Republicans were getting at.

    It goes without saying, but I'll add that the Dems were hardly even trying to disguise their real goal, which isn't protecting the American People® from the evil Russkies, but taking down Trump.

    fresno dan , March 22, 2017 at 11:56 pm

    3.14e-9
    March 22, 2017 at 10:35 pm

    Thanks for watching the whole thing – the nation owes you a debt of gratitude.

    "My beef isn't so much the leak of classified information, but the gross dereliction of duty – if not outright abuse of First Amendment powers – by reporters who collaborate with intelligence agencies and then quote them anonymously, giving everyone cover to say or write whatever they want with zero accountability."

    First, I a squillion percent agree with you. This is a big, bit deal because essentially the military/IC/neocons is trying to wrest control of the civilian government – the idea that the CIA is some noble institution that wants the best for all Americans is preposterous, yet accepted by the media, which proves how much propaganda we are fed. The sheep like following, the mandatory use of the adjective "murderous thug" before the name of "Putin" just shows that most of the media has been bought off or has lost all their critical thinking faculties.

    But I also don't want to be a hypocrite so I will explain that I don't have too much of a problem with leaks. WHAT I do have a problem with is the purposeful naivete or ignorance of the media that the CIA and/or facets of the Obama administration is trying to thwart rapprochement with Russia. Administrations BEFORE they are sworn in talk to foreign governments – the sheer HYSTERIA, the CRIME of talking to a Russian is beyond absurd. We are being indoctrinated to believe all Russia, all bad

    There is a ton of information about Podesta and the Clintons dealing with Russia for money. If Flynn and whatshisname are just grifting that is pedestrian stuff and everybody in Washington does it (I thing they call it "lobbying"). If there is REAL treason something should have come out by now.

    3.14e-9 , March 23, 2017 at 3:27 am

    Thanks, fd.

    I began covering congressional hearings while I was still in j-school and sat though many like this during my years as a reporter in D.C. Even though I haven't worked as a full-time journalist for many years, I still prefer original sources and am willing to take the time to dig for them or, in this case, to sit through a hearing as though I were covering it as a member of the press – especially when I don't even have to wash my hair or get dressed!

    I didn't mean to imply that I have a problem with leaks. I certainly encouraged enough of them in my time, and I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with publishing leaked material, even certain kinds of classified information. It depends.

    There's the kind of "classified" information that is restricted expressly to keep the public from knowing something they have a right to know, and there's information that's classified to protect individual privacy. The first kind should be leaked early and often. The second kind, close to never (and off the top of my head I can't think of an instance when it would be OK).

    Even though journalists aren't (and shouldn't be) held liable for publishing classified information given to them by a third party, they need to be scrupulous in their decisions to do so. Is it in the public interest? Who or what might be harmed? Would sitting on the information cause more harm than publicizing it? Does it violate someone's constitutional rights?

    These questions can get tricky with someone like Flynn, who's clearly a public figure and thus mostly fair game. However, if I had been reporting that story, I think I would have sat on it until I had more information, even at the risk of getting scooped – unless, of course, I was in cahoots with the leakers and out to get him and his boss.

    At that point, I am no longer an objective journalist committed to fair and accurate reporting, but a participant in a political cause. Although newspapers throughout history have taken sides, and pure "fact-based" journalism is a myth, there's a big difference between having an editorial slant and being an active participant in the story. Evidently, BezPo has decided that the latter is not only acceptable, but advantageous.

    Sorry, didn't mean to ramble on when I'm likely preaching to the converted. I feel very strongly about this issue, and it's disconcerting to me, as a lifelong Democrat, that I agreed more with the Republicans in that hearing. At the same time, the D's propaganda machine is pumping out so much toxic fog that it's shaking my faith in unfettered freedom of the press.

    Exactly what Putin wants, right?

    Lambert Strether Post author , March 23, 2017 at 3:46 am

    > I began covering congressional hearings while I was still in j-school and sat though many like this during my years as a reporter in D.C. Even though I haven't worked as a full-time journalist for many years, I still prefer original sources and am willing to take the time to dig for them

    Hmm. NC needs an in-house emptywheel

    Lambert Strether Post author , March 23, 2017 at 3:38 am

    I agree that everybody is surveilled all the time, especially in the Beltway, where probably there are multiple simultaneous operations run against . well, everybody.

    It doesn't, er, bug me that 70-year-old Beltway neophyte Trump used sloppy language - "wiretap" - to describe this state of affairs. (I don't expect any kind of language from Trump but sloppy.) All are, therefore one is. It does bug me that the whole discussion gets dragged off into legal technicalities about what legal regimen is appropriate for which form of Fourth Amendment-destruction (emptywheel does this a lot). The rules are insanely complicated, and it's fun to figure them out, rather like taking the cover off the back of a Swiss watch and examining all the moving parts. But the assumption is that people follow the rules, and especially that high-level people (like, say, Comey, or Clapper, or Morrel, or Obama) follow the complicated rules. That assumes facts not in evidence.

    Lambert Strether Post author , March 23, 2017 at 3:28 am

    Incidental collection was always a likely scenario.

    We've also seen statements from people like GHCQ that clains they surveilled Trump at Obama's behest were "absurd," but those are non-denial denials. I can't recall a denial denial. Am I missing something?

    [Mar 23, 2017] Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire

    Notable quotes:
    "... to influence our Atlantic Council! ..."
    "... our Atlantic Council! ..."
    Mar 23, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    craazyboy , March 22, 2017 at 8:36 pm

    "Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire" [Politico]. (Furzy Mouse). ZOMG!!!! The Ukrainians were hacking tampering with meddling in seeking to influence our election! Where's that declaration of war I had lying around
    ______________________

    Ukrania IS A NEW WORLD ORDER!!!!!

    Ukrainian World Congress
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_World_Congress

    Members[edit]
    European Congress of Ukrainians (Yaroslava Khortiani)
    Armenia: Federation of Ukrainians of Armenia "Ukraine"
    Belgium: Main Council of Ukrainian Public Organizations
    Bosnia and Herzegovina: Coordination council of Ukrainian associations
    Czech Republic: Ukrainian Initiative in the Czech Republic
    Croatia: Union of Rusyns and Ukrainians of the Republic of Croatia
    Estonia: Congress of Ukrainians of Estonia
    France: Representative Committee of the Ukrainian Community of France
    Georgia: Coordination Council of Ukrainians of Georgia
    Germany: Association of Ukrainian Organizations in Germany
    Greece: Association of the Ukrainian diaspora in Greece "Ukrainian-Greek Thought"
    Hungary: Association of Ukrainian Culture in Hungary
    Italy
    Latvia: Ukrainian Cultural-Enlightening Association in Latvia "Dnieper"
    Lithuania: Community of Ukrainians of Lithuania
    Moldova: Society of Ukrainians of Transnistria
    Norway
    Poland: Association of Ukrainians in Poland (Piotr Tyma)
    Portugal: Society of Ukrainians in Portugal
    Romania: Union of Ukrainians of Romania
    Russia: Association of Ukrainians of Russia
    Serbia
    Slovakia: Union of Rusyn-Ukrainians of the Slovak Republic
    Spain
    Switzerland
    United Kingdom: Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (Zenko Lastowiecki)
    Others
    Australia: Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (Stefan Romaniw)
    Argentina: Ukrainian Central Representation in Argentina
    Brazil: Ukrainian-Brazilian Central Representation
    Canada: Ukrainian Canadian Congress (Paul Grod)
    Kazakhstan: Ukrainians in Kazakhstan
    Paraguay:
    United States: Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (Andriy Futey)
    United States: Ukrainian American Coordinating Council (Ihor Gawdiak) [2]
    Uzbekistan: Ukrainian Cultural Center "Fatherland"

    They also are attempting to influence our Atlantic Council!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council

    Funding[edit]
    In September 2014, the New York Times reported that since 2008, the organization has received donations from more than twenty-five governments outside of the United States, including $5 million from Norway.[34] Concerned that scholars from the organization could be covertly trying to push the agendas of foreign governments, legislation was proposed in response to the Times report requiring full disclosure of witnesses testifying before Congress.[35] Other contributors to the organization include the Ukrainian World Congress, and the governments of Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia.[9][36]

    Plus, Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the famous DNC security firm, CrowdStrike, is a senior fellow of our Atlantic Council!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Alperovitch

    CrowdStrike also has hired some top FBI security professionals. Revolving Door!

    Keep plenty of Declaration of War forms handy. We're gonna need 'em!!!!

    [Mar 23, 2017] Houston, we have a problem

    Notable quotes:
    "... Now we have "synthetic" surveillance. You don't even need a court order. Now all incidental communication intercepts can be unmasked. One can search their huge databases for all the incidental communications of someone of interest, then collect all of the unmasked incidental communications that involve that person and put them together in one handy dandy report. Viola! You can keep tabs on them every time they end up being incidentally collected. ..."
    "... You ever went to an embassy party? Talked to a drug dealer or mafia guy without being aware of it? Correspond overseas? Your communications have been "incidentally" collected too. There is so much surveillance out there we have probably all bounced off various targets over the last several years. ..."
    "... This is what police states do. In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in 2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag. ..."
    "... Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me Monday that he saw the leaks about Flynn's conversations with Kislyak as part of a pattern. ..."
    "... The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc? ..."
    "... But no matter what Flynn did, it is simply not the role of the deep state to target a man working in one of the political branches of the government by dishing to reporters about information it has gathered clandestinely. ..."
    "... It is the role of elected members of Congress to conduct public investigations of alleged wrongdoing by public officials.. ..."
    Mar 23, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    TeethVillage88s , Mar 23, 2017 6:54 PM

    Yes, they have your Apples too:

    Crash Overide -> aloha_snakbar , Mar 23, 2017 7:39 PM

    Maxine Waters: 'Obama Has Put In Place' Secret Database With 'Everything On Everyone'

    Vilfredo Pareto , Mar 23, 2017 7:01 PM

    The rank and file of the IC are not involved in this. So let's not tar everyone with the same brush, but Obama revised executive order 12333 so that communication intercepts incidentally collected dont have to be masked and may be shared freely in the IC.

    Now we have "synthetic" surveillance. You don't even need a court order. Now all incidental communication intercepts can be unmasked. One can search their huge databases for all the incidental communications of someone of interest, then collect all of the unmasked incidental communications that involve that person and put them together in one handy dandy report. Viola! You can keep tabs on them every time they end up being incidentally collected.

    You ever went to an embassy party? Talked to a drug dealer or mafia guy without being aware of it? Correspond overseas? Your communications have been "incidentally" collected too. There is so much surveillance out there we have probably all bounced off various targets over the last several years.

    What might your "synthetic" surveillance report look like?

    Chupacabra-322 , Mar 23, 2017 7:04 PM

    It's worth repeating.

    There's way more going on here then first alleged. From Bloomberg, not my choice for news, but There is another component to this story as well -- as Trump himself just tweeted.

    It's very rare that reporters are ever told about government-monitored communications of U.S. citizens, let alone senior U.S. officials. The last story like this to hit Washington was in 2009 when Jeff Stein, then of CQ, reported on intercepted phone calls between a senior Aipac lobbyist and Jane Harman, who at the time was a Democratic member of Congress.

    Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity.

    This is what police states do. In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in 2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag.

    Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me Monday that he saw the leaks about Flynn's conversations with Kislyak as part of a pattern. "There does appear to be a well orchestrated effort to attack Flynn and others in the administration," he said. "From the leaking of phone calls between the president and foreign leaders to what appears to be high-level FISA Court information, to the leaking of American citizens being denied security clearances, it looks like a pattern."

    @?realDonaldTrump?

    The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc?

    President Trump was roundly mocked among liberals for that tweet. But he is, in many ways, correct. These leaks are an enormous problem. And in a less polarized context, they would be recognized immediately for what they clearly are: an effort to manipulate public opinion for the sake of achieving a desired political outcome. It's weaponized spin.............

    But no matter what Flynn did, it is simply not the role of the deep state to target a man working in one of the political branches of the government by dishing to reporters about information it has gathered clandestinely.

    It is the role of elected members of Congress to conduct public investigations of alleged wrongdoing by public officials.. ..... But the answer isn't to counter it with equally irregular acts of sabotage - or with a disinformation campaign waged by nameless civil servants toiling away in the surveillance state.....

    [Mar 23, 2017] Anti-russian hysteria became a witch hunt which is by-and-large out of control of Democratic leadership, and they feel that they became hostages of it

    Notable quotes:
    "... " The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, R-Calif., does not know "for sure" whether President Donald Trump or members of his transition team were even on the phone calls or other communications now being cited as partial vindication for the president's wiretapping claims against the Obama administration, according to a spokesperson. ..."
    "... I think im1dc along with a couple of other commenters here symbolize perfectly well the problem Democratic leadership got on themselves. ..."
    "... He got the taste of sniffing Russian pants and now he can't stop, despite the fact that all his knowledge of Russia came from US media. Kind of political graphomania, of some sort. Or, incontinence, if you wish. ..."
    "... In other words now in the USA hysteria became detached from the facts and has now its own life. Obtained classic witch hunt dynamics. ..."
    "... "The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies - just as right-wing media polemicists did after both Bill Clinton and Obama were elected - that there are now millions of partisan soldiers absolutely convinced of a Trump/Russia conspiracy for which, at least as of now, there is no evidence. ..."
    "... And they are all waiting for the day, which they regard as inevitable and imminent, when this theory will be proven and Trump will be removed. ..."
    "... Key Democratic officials are clearly worried about the expectations that have been purposely stoked and are now trying to tamp them down. Many of them have tried to signal that the beliefs the base has been led to adopt have no basis in reason or evidence. ..."
    Mar 23, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    im1dc : Reply Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 04:32 PM
    Devin Nunes is unfit to be Intel Chair of the House Committee

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03/23/nunes-now-unsure-if-trump-team-was-surveilled.html

    "Intel chair Devin Nunes unsure if Trump associates were directly surveilled"

    By Mike Levine...Mar 23, 2017...5:24 PM ET

    " The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, R-Calif., does not know "for sure" whether President Donald Trump or members of his transition team were even on the phone calls or other communications now being cited as partial vindication for the president's wiretapping claims against the Obama administration, according to a spokesperson.

    "He said he'll have to get all the documents he requested from the [intelligence community] about this before he knows for sure," a spokesperson for Nunes said Thursday..."

    libezkova -> im1dc..., March 23, 2017 at 07:04 PM

    I think im1dc along with a couple of other commenters here symbolize perfectly well the problem Democratic leadership got on themselves.

    He got the taste of sniffing Russian pants and now he can't stop, despite the fact that all his knowledge of Russia came from US media. Kind of political graphomania, of some sort. Or, incontinence, if you wish.

    In other words now in the USA hysteria became detached from the facts and has now its own life. Obtained classic witch hunt dynamics.

    It became by-and-large out of control of Democratic leadership, and they feel that they became hostages of it. But they can't call the dogs back.

    It was a dirty but effective trick to avoid sacking Democratic Party failed, corrupt neoliberal leadership (Clinton wing of the party). It worked, but it come with a price.

    As Glenn Greenwald noted.

    "The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies - just as right-wing media polemicists did after both Bill Clinton and Obama were elected - that there are now millions of partisan soldiers absolutely convinced of a Trump/Russia conspiracy for which, at least as of now, there is no evidence.

    And they are all waiting for the day, which they regard as inevitable and imminent, when this theory will be proven and Trump will be removed.

    Key Democratic officials are clearly worried about the expectations that have been purposely stoked and are now trying to tamp them down. Many of them have tried to signal that the beliefs the base has been led to adopt have no basis in reason or evidence.

    The latest official to throw cold water on the MSNBC-led circus is President Obama's former acting CIA chief Michael Morell. What makes him particularly notable in this context is that Morell was one of Clinton's most vocal CIA surrogates. In August, he not only endorsed Clinton in the pages of the New York Times but also became the first high official to explicitly accuse Trump of disloyalty, claiming, "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

    But on Wednesday night, Morell appeared at an intelligence community forum to "cast doubt" on "allegations that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia." "On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire at all," he said, adding, "There's no little campfire, there's no little candle, there's no spark. And there's a lot of people looking for it."

    https://theintercept.com/2017/03/16/key-democratic-officials-now-warning-base-not-to-expect-evidence-of-trumprussia-collusion/

    [Mar 23, 2017] The Russian Hacking Story Changes Again Zero Hedge

    Mar 23, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    "Obama's "Russia Hacked The Election" is CODE for "Trump Stole The Election." Any "provable" instance of Russian hacking might also be a false flag operation to justify new round of sanctions. That make Obama to look especially bad as he asked CA to investigate this case, while t might well be that CIA is the agency that needs to be investigated. They now have a lot of friends n Baltic republics and Ukrane to stage also false flag operation attributable to Russia, they wish. Remeber Oswald and JFK assassination.

    Shemp 4 Victory -> Wow72 , Jan 5, 2017 7:46 AM

    In keeping with the theme of providing no proof to the general public, the officials declined to describe the intelligence obtained about the involvement of a third-party in passing on leaked material to WikiLeaks, saying they did not want to reveal how the U.S. government had obtained the information . So just trust them, please.

    Good thing we can completely trust the integrity of 17 Intelligence Agencies ® because this explanation is exactly what a corrupt and politicized institution would use to try to pass off a completely fabricated story as legitimate.

    Tarzan -> Shemp 4 Victory , Jan 5, 2017 8:03 AM

    Would this third party happen to be a disgruntled DNC insider named seth rich?

    MalteseFalcon -> Tarzan , Jan 5, 2017 8:23 AM

    It's like arguing with a teenager.

    You catch them in a lie, and debunk it.

    The teenager processes the debunking and alters the lie to conform with the "new truth".

    The iterations continue until you give up or simply "ground" the punk.

    And who are these 17 intelligence agencies?

    Will they all be called to "Songbird" McCains hearing?

    Will the hearing end before Songbird keels over from old age?

    CuttingEdge -> MalteseFalcon , Jan 5, 2017 8:31 AM

    "Dissolve the CIA"

    The Langley gym swimming pool filled with hydrochloric acid, maybe?

    Works for me, as long as that evil cunt Morell is first in.

    CuttingEdge -> CuttingEdge , Jan 5, 2017 8:41 AM

    Just imagine Friday's meeting if Trump actually knows who lifted the DNC files?

    Only, judging by the way he is playing this thus far in being openly dismissive of anything put forward, that may very well be the case.

    To have the entire combined intel machine by the balls without them knowing, as they project their politicised billion dollar bullshit...now that would be a beautiful thing to behold.

    Joe Davola -> CuttingEdge , Jan 5, 2017 9:03 AM

    Looking at some of the 'information' from previous hacks

    1. Sony - claimed to be North Korea

    2. DNC/Clinton email - claimed to be Russia

    3. Various - claimed to be China

    4. Iranian centrifuges - no claims, but pretty good indication it was CIA/NSA/Israel

    Now, who from that list didn't want HRC to be president. One could make a compelling case that #4, particularly Israel, would go this route and have the wherewithall/foresight to make it look like #2 - and Obama/Kerry allowing the UN vote to go through as punishment. Or, we can believe #2 was sloppy (or intentionally sloppy to send a message/rub our noses in it). Or, it was some 14 year old operating from their parents basement - nah, no 14 year old would think of covering their tracks to make it look like someone else.

    jeff montanye -> Manthong , Jan 5, 2017 3:49 PM

    thought crimes are where you find them, ask the catholic church.

    seriously though, john mccain is an asset of the mossad. no other formation does it justice:

    "We will obviously be talking about the hacking, but the main thing is the whole issue of cybersecurity," the committee's Republican chairman, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said ahead of the hearing. "Right now we have no policy, no strategy to counter cyberattacks."

    check this shit out (my bold): Guilt By Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War

    By Jeff Gates, State Street Publications, 2008, paperback, 320 pp. List: $27.95; AET: $18 (if you really want to understand why this is going on, read.on; others be assured it is true.).

    In his chapter on "John McCain and the Financial Frauds,"ť Gates reviews McCain's unsavory role in the "Keating Five"ť scandal. The following chapter recounts the shameful role of McCain's father in helping to cover up Israel's deliberate attack on the USS Liberty during the 1967 Six-Day War in which 34 of the crew were killed and 294 wounded . "From a game theory perspective,"ť Gates explains, "by covering up the murder of Americans aboard the USS Liberty, a U.S. president (with the aid of Admiral John McCain, Jr. ) confirmed that Israeli extremists could murder Americans without endangering U.S. support."ť

    Reviewed by Andrew I. Killgore

    Books

    GUILT BY Association is an initially confusing masterpiece almost too stuffed with evidence to concentrate on making clear its basic theme. But author Jeff Gates did so in a recent letter to a distinguished retired American diplomat: "The research pivoted off the firsthand experience of "John Doe' whose experience spans 56 years of dealing with a transnational criminal syndicate whose senior operatives share a common ideology in fundamental Judaism and a skill set experienced in displacing facts with beliefs. Thus the common source of the fixed intelligence that took us to war in Iraq. And, thus the same network now being employed to expand this war to Iran."ť

    From 1980 to 1987 Gates served as counsel to the Senate Finance Committee, working with Sen. Russell Long of Louisiana, son of the state's former Gov. Huey Long, who was assassinated at age 42 as he was preparing a presidential campaign. James Farley, postmaster general under President Franklin Roosevelt, had run a "penny postcard"ť poll confirming that if Huey Long actually ran for president, Roosevelt could not be re-elected. Fifty years later Russell Long remained convinced that Roosevelt's people had killed his father.

    At a 2002 speech Gates gave in London, he met "John Doe,"ť related to one of the well-known people who had endorsed two of Gates' earlier books. Soon afterward, Doe assured him that if Gates undertook the research and analysis the results of which appear in Guilt, the evidence would identify who killed Huey Long, and why. The facts Gates assembled point not to Roosevelt's people but to the syndicate identified in Guilt.

    The brilliantly provocative Guilt by Association consists of nine chapters: "Game Theory and the Mass Murder of 9/11"ť; "Organized Crime in Arizona"ť; "John McCain and Financial Frauds"ť; "McCain Family Secret: The Cover-Up"ť; "The Presidency and Russian Organized Crime"ť; "Money, Democracy and the Great Divide"ť; "The New Anti-Semitism"ť; "Would Obama Be Better?"ť; and "The Way Forward."ť

    In the first chapter Gates illustrates the intergenerational sophistication with which neoconservatives "prepared the minds"ť of the American public to invade Iraq in response to 9/11. Academics and think tanks pushed Samuel Huntington's 1996 Clash of Civilizations to promote a "clash consensus"ť-five years before 9/11. That same year Richard Perle along with other neocons such as Douglas Feith wrote "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm"ť for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. This helped lay more "mental threads"ť for removing Saddam Hussain. Then Senators McCain, Joe Lieberman, a Jewish Zionist from Connecticut, and Jon Kyl, a Christian Zionist from Arizona, co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Distracted by the Monica Lewinsky affair, President Bill Clinton signed it.

    Four days after the destruction of the World Trade Towers, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was urging President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. Not only was there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but there was no real connection between Saddam's secular regime and the deeply religious al-Qaeda. At the same time, other Zionists from the U.S. Defense Department under Wolfowitz and, not so coincidentally, Feith were feeding false intelligence to the White House. The war would not be costly, according to Wolfowitz, and the entirely unnecessary and illegal war was launched.

    In the chapter on "The Presidency and Russian Organized Crime,"ť Gates describes a John McCain who was either "ignorant about-or complicit in"ť Russian organized crime. During Boris Yeltsin's first term as president of Russia, a handful of "oligarchs' financially pillaged Russia. Six of the "Big Seven"ť oligarchs, whom Gates terms Ashkenazis, qualify for Israeli citizenship.

    McCain described Mikhail Khodorovsky, the most infamous of Russia's corrupt oil oligarchs, as a "political prisoner."ť Notes Gates: "To claim Khodorovsky as a "political prisoner' requires a closer look at how, at 32 years of age, a single Russian-Ashkenazi citizen amassed state-owned assets worth more than $30 billion."ť Gates goes on to document the widespread criminality involved in Khodorovsky's billions.

    "To solve this systemic criminality,"ť Gates explains, "requires that a broad base of Americans understand how this "fields-within-fields' modus operandi operates unseen yet in plain sight, and how its operations progress working through people whose profiled needs become the means for influencing their behavior."ť

    Guilt describes how Americans were induced to freely choose the very forces that endanger their freedom. Thus the role of those masterful at waging "war by deception"ť (the motto of the Israeli Mossad) by displacing facts with what the "mark"ť (i.e., the U.S.) could be deceived to believe: for example, that Iraq had nuclear weapons and mobile biological weapons laboratories and that the secular Saddam Hussain had ties with the fundamentalists of al-Qaeda.

    Crafted as a wake-up call, the author documents how Tel Aviv wields control over U.S. foreign policy in an environment where lawmakers have been intimidated by the Israel lobby. "U.S. national security,"ť Gates writes, "requires a rejection of the self-deception that Israel operates as a trustworthy ally in an unstable region while ignoring its multi-decade role in provoking and sustaining instability."ť

    As Gates points out, the charge of anti-Semitism is used to misdirect and intimidate. As the criminality he documents becomes transparent, moderate Jews in fact are emerging as allies. The Zionist component-which Gates convincingly portrays as ideology in the service of criminality -has as its goal an extensive, Jews-only realm in an oil-rich region.

    The facts confirm that Tel Aviv will never agree to peace with the Palestinians, as that would preclude their expansionist agenda for a Greater Israel. An oft-employed "entropy strategy"ť remains Israel's means to preclude settlement of the conflict. Indeed, Huntington's Clash of Civilizations is revealed as only the latest in a long series of manipulations-each of which is designed to ensure a plausible evildoer. Meanwhile, fundamentalist Jews catalyze serial conflicts of opposites, while this transnational criminal syndicate profits off the misery of both.

    Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

    America's Defense Line: The Justice Department's Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government

    By Grant F. Smith, Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep), 2008, paperback, 340 pp. List: $14.95; AET: $11.

    Reviewed by Delinda C. Hanley

    Books

    The declassification on June 10, 2008 of long-secret Department of Justice (DOJ) documents is the springboard for Grant F. Smith's latest book revealing the inner workings of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This ground-breaking study spotlights the Israel lobby's key architect, Isaiah L. Kenen, and uncovers how he and subsequent Israel-firsters morphed from being openly registered as foreign agents, who should have remained employees of the Israeli Embassy's Office of Information, into "American"ť domestic lobbyists for Israel, a far more benign, if dishonest, nomenclature.

    Smith's very readable book reproduces and analyzes the highly deceptive Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings Kenen made while he was still an employee of the Israeli government in New York. It proceeds on to the American Zionist Council (ACZ), the precursor organization where AIPAC gestated. Referencing internal DOJ records, the book painstakingly documents previously undisclosed attempts by the Justice Department and dissenting Jewish groups, including the American Council for Judaism, to close down Kenen's Israeli-financed political propaganda operation-or to at least make it openly register and disclose its activities under FARA.

    Thanks to Kenen's efforts, AIPAC's Zionist financial backers succeeded in laundering money, purchasing arms, smuggling stolen U.S. military hardware, and launching Israel's nuclear and military weapons industries. They paid for some of it with tax-exempt "charitable"ť donations, though a far larger percentage came from U.S. tax-dollars-without ever having to come out of the shadows.

    Coming 20 years after Kenen's death, Smith's book is a powerful reminder to readers about the effectiveness of stealth public relations and the importance of framing stories for the mainstream media. (Kenen also launched the Near East Report, AIPAC's biweekly flagship publication, which is still a vital public relations tool for Israel.) This close examination of AIPAC's birth and struggle for power is a valuable lesson about nascent foreign interest lobbies, prosecutorial discretion, and the subversion of the rule of law by political elites.

    America's Defense Line reads like a fascinating spy thriller or "who done it"ť that is hard to put down-until, that is, one remembers that AIPAC and its supporters are still at it-and, usually, getting away with it. (Stay tuned for the espionage trial of former AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.)

    Readers of Smith's book, perhaps alongside Jeff Gates' Guilt By Association, will have all the history and information necessary to loosen AIPAC's grip upon our nation once and for all-but only if we all insist that the rule of law once again become the law of the land.

    Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

    y3maxx -> CuttingEdge , Jan 5, 2017 11:10 AM

    -Clapper is a lying felon.

    DjangoCat -> cali , Jan 5, 2017 10:36 AM

    I call you on the statement "Assange even stated that he received the DNC material from Seth Rich!"

    Wikileaks is dogmatic on the protection of sources. Wikileaks did provide a reward of $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of Seth Rich's murderer, however.

    MrBoompi -> DjangoCat , Jan 5, 2017 10:50 AM

    You're correct, but Assange did offer $20,000 for information on Rich's murder. One could infer this was Assange's way of telling us his murder is related to the leaked emails without technically divulging his source.

    cali -> DjangoCat , Jan 5, 2017 1:07 PM

    Your question is absolutely valid! Assange said that the first batch of documents he published were given to him by a 'democratic staffer from the DNC'. After Seth was murdered - he offered the monies to find the murderer. I should have stated it that way in my comment. Be as it may Assange connected the dots for me when using the verbiage 'democratic staffer - DNC - Seth Rich - murdered. My bad!

    Krungle -> cali , Jan 5, 2017 11:09 AM

    You don't have to wonder since Craig Murray has said the source was domestic. That is the absurdity of this entire affair--we have the intermediary on record, a career diplomat, and no one has publicly questioned him. This whole thing is akin to the cops catching a white guy leaving a house with stolen goods, then they go into the house to investigate and find a dead body and there is another guy standing there with a smoking gun and then they decide not only to ignore the murder, they put out a warrant for a black guy who was nowhere near the crime, letting the original burgler off the hook too. That's how idiotic and off the trail of the important crimes these guys are. I mean why the hell are we not talking about the legit classified docs that Hillary allowed to be pilfered by multiple foreign (and probably domestic) sources anymore? Seems to me that is the actual crime.

    Parrotile -> 847328_3527 , Jan 5, 2017 3:56 PM

    > How about we send Congressional children and cia children first into battle against the Russians if they feel so strongly about it. <

    Well, "someone's children" are already being sent to what could easily be the "Front Line" in a land battle against Mother Russia, and you can safely bet that none of these cannon-fodder will have families "with connections". THEIR children are all assured comfortable office jobs in the Pentagon, or similar.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-05/us-has-begun-amassing-troops-ru...

    ChanceIs -> NoDebt , Jan 5, 2017 9:07 AM

    California just hired Eric "Too Big To Jail" Holder as its point man against Trump deporting the illegals. I am dumbfounded. He is obviously such a whore and incompetent/unethical attorney. I figured he would be smart and stay on the gold course. Shows you how stupid and blindly partisan Californians are.

    Add Holder to the list of those who have lied so much that nobody believes jack shit from them. Dems don't get it. The Clintonistas have gone back to the well about one thousand times too many. They are sooooo old and worn. Incapable of flexing with the wind and forming new ideas.

    Nancy Pelosi is starting to look her age all of the sudden. Put on about ten pounds. And wrinkles and saggy jowels.

    BTW: We don't need new ideas, just the Constitution.

    Krungle -> ChanceIs , Jan 5, 2017 11:20 AM

    This cracked me up since Holder is probably going to spend the next four years defending himself against crimes he committed while in office.

    scrappy -> NoDebt , Jan 5, 2017 12:11 PM

    Alternate - Alternate narrative.

    The Grizzly Steepe report is a mishmash.

    http://www.robertmlee.org/critiques-of-the-dhsfbis-grizzly-steppe-report/

    This instance (DNC Wiki) may have been an insider leak. We need more info to be sure.

    That said, we should not be so niave to think that russia does not ever hack us, of course they do.

    We hack them too.

    That is why we need to be careful about attribution .

    https://www.tenable.com/blog/attribution-is-hard-part-1

    https://www.tenable.com/blog/attribution-is-hard-part-2

    [Mar 23, 2017] The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies

    Mar 23, 2017 | onclick="TPConnect.blogside.reply('6a00d83451b33869e201b8d26ddde2970c'); return false;" href="javascript:void 0">

    JohnH said in reply to Anachronism ... Reply Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 08:38 AM

    Where's the collusion? Even former DNI Director Clapper said there is no evidence.

    Glenn Greenwald explains: "The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies - just as right-wing media polemicists did after both Bill Clinton and Obama were elected - that there are now millions of partisan soldiers absolutely convinced of a Trump/Russia conspiracy for which, at least as of now, there is no evidence. And they are all waiting for the day, which they regard as inevitable and imminent, when this theory will be proven and Trump will be removed.

    Key Democratic officials are clearly worried about the expectations that have been purposely stoked and are now trying to tamp them down. Many of them have tried to signal that the beliefs the base has been led to adopt have no basis in reason or evidence.

    The latest official to throw cold water on the MSNBC-led circus is President Obama's former acting CIA chief Michael Morell. What makes him particularly notable in this context is that Morell was one of Clinton's most vocal CIA surrogates. In August, he not only endorsed Clinton in the pages of the New York Times but also became the first high official to explicitly accuse Trump of disloyalty, claiming, "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

    But on Wednesday night, Morell appeared at an intelligence community forum to "cast doubt" on "allegations that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia." "On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire at all," he said, adding, "There's no little campfire, there's no little candle, there's no spark. And there's a lot of people looking for it."
    https://theintercept.com/2017/03/16/key-democratic-officials-now-warning-base-not-to-expect-evidence-of-trumprussia-collusion/

    Democrats will do just about anything to avoid sacking their failed, corrupt, sclerotic leadership.

    Anachronism said in reply to JohnH... ◾The White House also tweeted that former intelligence director James Clapper was "right" to say there was "no evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump Campaign." But Clapper said he had no such information "at the time," meaning before he left office in January.

    http://www.factcheck.org/2017/03/spinning-the-intel-hearing/

    It further says:

    'No Evidence of Collusion'

    The White House, in a tweet, and Spicer, in his daily press briefing, attempted to dismiss the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials by citing comments made by intelligence leaders in the Obama administration, as well as by Democratic and Republican leaders who have been briefed on the investigation to date.

    But the White House misrepresented the comments of those officials.

    As the attached video shows, the White House tweet left out an important qualifier. Comey said Clapper was "right" to say that there was no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign contained in the declassified report released Jan. 6 on Russian activities during the 2016 presidential election.

    Clapper made his remarks about the report in a "Meet the Press" interview on March 5, when he was asked whether there were "improper contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials."

    "We did not include any evidence in our report, and I say, 'our,' that's NSA, FBI and CIA, with my office, the Director of National Intelligence, that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians," Clapper said. "There was no evidence of that included in our report."

    Clapper went on to say "at the time, we had no evidence of such collusion." But he added, "This could have unfolded or become available in the time since I left the government."

    Clapper also said, "I do think, though, it is in everyone's interest, in the current president's interests, in the Democrats' interests, in the Republican interest, in the country's interest, to get to the bottom of all this."

    "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd asked, "You admit your report that you released in January doesn't get to the bottom of this?"

    "It did - well, it got to the bottom of the evidence to the extent of the evidence we had at the time," Clapper said. "Whether there is more evidence that's become available since then, whether ongoing investigations will be revelatory, I don't know."

    Asked what the Senate intelligence committee could learn through an investigation that Clapper's agency could not, Clapper replied, "Well, I think they can look at this from a broader context than we could."

    So Clapper did not say there was no collusion. He said there was no evidence of collusion "at the time" he left office in January. And he went on to say that he believed a Senate investigation was warranted to clear the air.

    Reply Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 09:56 AM Anachronism said in reply to Anachronism ... And of course, there's this:

    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/key-dem-points-evidence-collusion-between-russia-team-trump/amp

    Key Dem points to evidence of collusion between Russia, Team Trump

    03/23/17 08:00AM - Updated 03/23/17 01:37PM

    By Steve Benen

    . . .

    But on MSNBC yesterday afternoon, the California Democrat again talked to Chuck Todd, and this time he took another step forward when describing the nature of the evidence.


    TODD: But you admit, all you have right now is a circumstantial case?
    SCHIFF: Actually, no, Chuck. I can tell you that the case is more than that. And I can't go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now. So, again, I think -

    TODD: You have seen direct evidence of collusion?

    SCHIFF: I don't to want go into specifics, but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial, and it very much worthy of investigation. So, that is what we ought to do.

    When we contacted the congressman's office, asking if Schiff may have misspoken, and giving him a chance to walk this back, his office said Schiff meant what he said. . . .

    There's some fire along with all the smoke being generated.

    Reply Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 11:12 AM RGC said in reply to Anachronism ... " Info suggests"

    " may have coordinated"

    "possibly coordinate"

    "FBI is investigating"

    "according to one source"

    "now reviewing that information"

    "according to those U.S. officials"

    "raising the suspicions"

    " may have taken place'

    "officials cautioned that the information was not conclusive"

    "investigation is ongoing"

    " began looking into possible coordination"

    "a credible allegation of wrongdoing or reasonable basis to believe"

    "One law enforcement official said the information in hand suggests"

    " it appeared"

    "it's premature to draw that inference"

    " it's largely circumstantial"

    "cannot yet prove that collusion took place"

    "CNN has not confirmed"

    " according to U.S. intelligence agencies"

    " investigations are notoriously lengthy"

    "can make it difficult for investigators to bring criminal charges"

    "Investigators continue to analyze"

    "unverified information"

    "suggested coordination"

    Reply Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 08:43 AM Gerald said in reply to RGC... And what did you expect at this point? A little investigative realism, please. Reply Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 11:33 AM Paine said in reply to Anachronism ... Assume you are a business man looking for experts on Russia tht share your
    Dovish views and your business posture and view point

    Surely you'll scoop up Russian tools and mercenaries etc

    My guess these guys operated beyond trumps awareness and control
    in as Much as they were Russian state contract drones etc

    Reply Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 11:39 AM Paine said in reply to Paine... Trump likes doing business with out castes marginal in the shadows players
    Dark operatives etc

    Criminal corrupt co opted ..whatever

    Why ?


    THEY PAY BETTER THEN MNC outfits

    He instinctively sees
    Opportunities in Russia Iran and china

    Rule one

    Wave a carrot or threaten to kick them in the cubes

    Reply Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 11:43 AM

    [Mar 23, 2017] CNN doubles down on Russia threat hysteria

    Mar 23, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Anachronism : March 23, 2017 at 04:41 AM , 2017 at 04:41 AM
    The story is starting to get interesting:

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/politics/us-officials-info-suggests-trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians/index.html

    US officials: Info suggests Trump associates may have coordinated with Russians

    By Pamela Brown, Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz and Jim Sciutto, CNN

    US officials: Trump associates may have coordinated with Russians 14:11

    Washington (CNN) - The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, US officials told CNN.

    This is partly what FBI Director James Comey was referring to when he made a bombshell announcement Monday before Congress that the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, according to one source.

    The FBI is now reviewing that information, which includes human intelligence, travel, business and phone records and accounts of in-person meetings, according to those U.S. officials. The information is raising the suspicions of FBI counterintelligence investigators that the coordination may have taken place, though officials cautioned that the information was not conclusive and that the investigation is ongoing.

    In his statement on Monday Comey said the FBI began looking into possible coordination between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian operatives because the bureau had gathered "a credible allegation of wrongdoing or reasonable basis to believe an American may be acting as an agent of a foreign power."

    The White House did not comment and the FBI declined to comment.

    White House press secretary Sean Spicer maintained Monday after Comey's testimony that there was no evidence to suggest any collusion took place.

    "Investigating it and having proof of it are two different things," Spicer said.

    One law enforcement official said the information in hand suggests "people connected to the campaign were in contact and it appeared they were giving the thumbs up to release information when it was ready." But other U.S. officials who spoke to CNN say it's premature to draw that inference from the information gathered so far since it's largely circumstantial.

    The FBI cannot yet prove that collusion took place, but the information suggesting collusion is now a large focus of the investigation, the officials said.

    The FBI has already been investigating four former Trump campaign associates -- Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Carter Page -- for contacts with Russians known to US intelligence. All four have denied improper contacts and CNN has not confirmed any of them are the subjects of the information the FBI is reviewing.

    One of the obstacles the sources say the FBI now faces in finding conclusive intelligence is that communications between Trump's associates and Russians have ceased in recent months given the public focus on Russia's alleged ties to the Trump campaign. Some Russian officials have also changed their methods of communications, making monitoring more difficult, the officials said.

    Last July, Russian intelligence agencies began orchestrating the release of hacked emails stolen in a breach of the Democratic National Committee and associated organizations, as well as email accounts belonging to Clinton campaign officials, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

    The Russian operation was also in part focused on the publication of so-called "fake news" stories aimed at undermining Hillary Clinton's campaign. But FBI investigators say they are less focused on the coordination and publication of those "fake news" stories, in part because those publications are generally protected free speech.

    The release of the stolen emails, meanwhile, transformed an ordinary cyber-intrusion investigation into a much bigger case handled by the FBI's counterintelligence division.

    FBI counterintelligence investigations are notoriously lengthy and often involve some of the U.S. government's most highly classified programs, such as those focused on intelligence-gathering, which can make it difficult for investigators to bring criminal charges without exposing those programs.

    Investigators continue to analyze the material and information from multiple sources for any possible indications of coordination, according to US officials. Director Comey in Monday's hearing refused to reveal what specifically the FBI was looking for or who they're focusing on.

    US officials said the information was not drawn from the leaked dossier of unverified information compiled by a former British intelligence official compiled for Trump's political opponents, though the dossier also suggested coordination between Trump campaign associates and Russian operatives.

    kthomas -> Anachronism ... , March 23, 2017 at 04:51 AM
    He's probably bangin' his daughter.
    anne -> kthomas... , March 23, 2017 at 05:54 AM
    He's probably ------- his --------.

    [ This person is continually obscene. This person is continually trying to terrorize and destroy. ]

    kthomas -> anne... , March 23, 2017 at 06:40 AM
    Piss off. Nobody elected you to blog sheriff, you hypocrite.
    Peter K. -> kthomas... , March 23, 2017 at 07:06 AM
    troll.
    anne -> kthomas... , March 23, 2017 at 07:21 AM
    He's probably ------- his --------.

    ---- off.

    Oh look, a new ------- ----------.

    [ This person is continually obscene. This person is continually trying to terrorize and destroy. This person continually threatens others.

    I am afraid of this person. ]

    Gerald -> Anachronism ... , March 23, 2017 at 06:24 AM
    "The story is starting to get interesting."

    There's little doubt in my mind that Trump's team did in fact collude with the Russians, and that the investigation will ultimately come to the same conclusion. That's when the fun begins, if impeachment proceedings can be called fun. Trump will deny, deny, deny that he had any knowledge of the collusion; the fact that he's a serial liar won't prevent most Republicans from voting against his impeachment. Only Trump can save us by doing a Nixon and resigning. He won't though, and we'll be right back where we are, with one huge exception: we'll have a proven traitor sitting in the White House, kept there by a spineless GOP.

    Anachronism -> Gerald... , March 23, 2017 at 06:41 AM
    Agreed. If in fact the FBI can prove substantial ties between the Russians and the Trump team co-ordinating the Wikileak email dump, that has to qualify as "high crimes and misdemeanors".

    And given that, at this point, President Cheeto is so unpopular, plus the FBI's evidence (yet to be proven), they would almost have to vote for impeachment or risk losing re-election in their home districts.

    Go make some popcorn, grab your favorite beverage, sit back and enjoy the sound of them imploding.

    Gerald -> Anachronism ... , March 23, 2017 at 07:18 AM
    "...and enjoy the sound of them imploding." Can't wait to hear it. :)
    JohnH -> Anachronism ... , March 23, 2017 at 07:15 AM
    Like Whitewater, this investigation will take years and may well come up empty.

    Meanwhile, Democrats can obsess about how unfair the election was, deny any notion that Hillary was a lousy candidate, and refuse to figure out how to talk to working people or come up with any kind of coherent economic message.

    Trump-Putin shows that they are willing to do most any distraction to keep from having to keep their eye on the ball!

    As a result, Democrats will mostly likely circle the wagons to foist another mealy mouthed neoliberal on the electorate in 2020 in the tradition of Gore, Kerry, and Hillary, a candidate who will almost certainly assure Trump a second term.

    Despite a string of congressional losses, the sclerotic, corrupt leadership refuses get rid of their losing leadership. It would appear that Democrats have grown to love playing Washington Generals to Republicans' Harlem Globetrotters.

    The current requirement for a duopoly assures that there is always a place for losers.

    JohnH -> Anachronism ... , March 23, 2017 at 08:02 AM
    Mark my words: "The Trump-Putin investigation [will take] years because [investigators can't] find any wrongdoing from [Trump-Putin] and so then continued looking into [Trump-Putin] whenever they could, simply to keep the witch hunt going."

    If they had any evidence beyond innuendo and hearsay, we would have seen some of it by now.

    Trump-Putin has become an elaborate distraction to keep Democrats from looking honestly at their failure, and to keep the American public entertained as Trump guts the remnants of their safety net.

    [Mar 22, 2017] Trumps billionaire coup détat

    Mar 22, 2017 | failedevolution.blogspot.gr

    Donald Trump is about to break the record of withdrawing his promises faster than any other US president in history. It's not only the fact that his administration has been literally taken over by Goldman Sachs, the top vampire-bank of the Wall Street mafia.

    Recently, Trump announced another big alliance with the vulture billionaire, Paul Singer, who, initially, was supposedly against him. It looks like the Trump big show continues.

    The 'anti-establishment Trump' joke has already collapsed and the US middle class is about be eliminated by the syndicate of the united billionaires under Trump administration.

    As Greg Palast told to Thom Hartmann:

    Paul Singer whose nickname is "the vulture", he didn't get that nickname because he is a sweet an honest businessman. This is the guy who closed the Delphi auto plants in Ohio and sent them to China and also to Monterrey-Mexico. Donald Trump as a candidate, excoriated the billionaires who sent Delphi auto parts company down to Mexico.

    Paul Singer has two concerns: one of them is that we eliminate the banking regulations known as Dodd–Frank. He is called 'the vulture' cause he eats companies that died. He has invested heavily in banks that died. He makes his billions from government bail-outs, he has never made a product in his life, it's all money and billions made from your money, out of the US treasury.

    He is against what Obama created, which is a system under Dodd–Frank, called 'living wheels', where if a bank starts going bankrupt, they don't call the US treasury for bail-out. These banks go out of business and they are broken up so we don't have to pay for the bail-out. Singer wants to restore the system of bailouts because that's where he makes his money.

    The Mercers are the real big money behind Donald Trump. When Trump was in trouble in the general election he was out of money and he was out of ideas and he was losing. It was the Mercers, Robert, who is the principal at the Renaissance Technologies, basically investment banking sharks, that's all they are. They are market gamblers and banking sharks, and that's how he made his billions, he hasn't created a single job as Donald Trump himself like to mention.

    Both the vulture and the Mercers, they don't pay the same taxes as the rest. They don't pay regular income taxes. They have a special billionaires loophole called 'carried interest'. They were two candidates who said that they would close that loophole: one was Bernie Sanders and the other, believe it or not, was Donald Trump, it was part of his populist movie, he said ' These Wall Street sharks, they don't build anything, they don't create a single job, when they lose we pay, when they win, they get a tax-break called carried interest. I will close that loophole. ' Has he said a word about that loophole? It passed away.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/z-q5R4k_3rE"

    Take a taste of Paul Singer from Wikipedia :

    His political activities include funding the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and he has written against raising taxes for the 1% and aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act. Singer is active in Republican Party politics and collectively, Singer and others affiliated with Elliott Management are "the top source of contributions" to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

    A number of sources have branded him a "vulture capitalist", largely on account of his role at EMC, which has been called a vulture fund. Elliott was termed by The Independent as "a pioneer in the business of buying up sovereign bonds on the cheap, and then going after countries for unpaid debts", and in 1996, Singer began using the strategy of purchasing sovereign debt from nations in or near default-such as Argentina, ]- through his NML Capital Limited and Congo-Brazzaville through Kensington International Inc. Singer's business model of purchasing distressed debt from companies and sovereign states and pursuing full payment through the courts has led to criticism, while Singer and EMC defend their model as "a fight against charlatans who refuse to play by the market's rules."

    In 1996, Elliott bought defaulted Peruvian debt for $11.4 million. Elliott won a $58 million judgement when the ruling was overturned in 2000, and Peru had to repay the sum in full under the pari passu rule. When former president of Peru Alberto Fujimori was attempting to flee the country due to facing legal proceedings over human rights abuses and corruption, Singer ordered the confiscation of his jet and offered to let him leave the country in exchange for the $58 million payment from the treasury, an offer which Fujimori accepted. A subsequent 2002 investigation by the Government of Peru into the incident and subsequent congressional report, uncovered instances of corruption since Elliott was not legally authorized to purchase the Peruvian debt from Swiss Bank Corporation without the prior approval of the Peruvian government, and thus the purchase had occurred in breach of contract. At the same time, Elliott's representative, Jaime Pinto, had been formerly employed by the Peruvian Ministry of Economy and Finance and had contact with senior officials. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Peruvian government paid Elliott $56 million to settle the case.

    After Argentina defaulted on its debt in 2002, the Elliott-owned company NML Capital Limited refused to accept the Argentine offer to pay less than 30 cents per dollar of debt. With a face value of $630 million, the bonds were reportedly bought by NML for $48 million, with Elliott assessing the bonds as worth $2.3 billion with accrued interest. Elliott sued Argentina for the debt's value, and the lower UK courts found that Argentina had state immunity. Elliott successfully appealed the case to the UK Supreme Court, which ruled that Elliott had the right to attempt to seize Argentine property in the United Kingdom. Alternatively, before 2011, US courts ruled against allowing creditors to seize Argentine state assets in the United States. On October 2, 2012 Singer arranged for a Ghanaian Court order to detain the Argentine naval training vessel ARA Libertad in a Ghanaian port, with the vessel to be used as collateral in an effort to force Argentina to pay the debt. Refusing to pay, Argentina shortly thereafter regained control of the ship after its seizure was deemed illegal by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Alleging the incident lost Tema Harbour $7.6 million in lost revenue and unpaid docking fees, Ghana in 2012 was reportedly considering legal action against NML for the amount.

    His firm... is so influential that fear of its tactics helped shape the current 2012 Greek debt restructuring." Elliott was termed by The Independent as "a pioneer in the business of buying up sovereign bonds on the cheap, and then going after countries for unpaid debts", and in 1996, Singer began using the strategy of purchasing sovereign debt from nations in or near default-such as Argentina, Peru-through his NML Capital Limited and Congo-Brazzaville through Kensington International Inc. In 2004, then first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund Anne Osborn Krueger denounced the strategy, alleging that it has "undermined the entire structure of sovereign finance."

    we wrote that " Trump's rhetoric is concentrated around a racist delirium. He avoids to take direct position on social matters, issues about inequality, etc. Of course he does, he is a billionaire! Trump will follow the pro-establishment agenda of protecting Wall Street and big businesses. And here is the fundamental difference with Bernie Sanders. Bernie says no more war and he means it. He says more taxes for the super-rich and he means it. Free healthcare and education for all the Americans, and he means it. In case that Bernie manage to beat Hillary, the establishment will definitely turn to Trump who will be supported by all means until the US presidency. "

    Yet, we would never expect that Trump would verify us, that fast.

    [Mar 22, 2017] Trump has even lost the support of the WSJ, Karma is biting him in his arse

    Notable quotes:
    "... CNN video 1:08 quoting the WSJ Opinion article today. "WSJ editorial: Most Americans may conclude Trump 'fake president'" ..."
    "... I think the US Presidency is like the Ruler of the universe in Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. Anybody who wants the job is not suitable. ..."
    Mar 22, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    im1dc : March 22, 2017 at 08:35 AM
    Trump has even lost the support of the WSJ, Karma is biting him in his arse . What's comes next a call for his Impeachment from FOX News 'Friends and Family'?

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/politics/donald-trump-wsj-trust/index.html

    CNN video 1:08 quoting the WSJ Opinion article today. "WSJ editorial: Most Americans may conclude Trump 'fake president'"

    By Eugene Scott, CNN...Wed...March 22, 2017...Updated 10:16 AM ET,

    "(CNN)President Donald Trump's repeated lack of "respect for the truth" puts him in jeopardy of being viewed as "a fake President," The Wall Street Journal editorial board says.

    "Two months into his presidency, Gallup has Mr. Trump's approval rating at 39%. No doubt Mr. Trump considers that fake news, but if he doesn't show more respect for the truth, most Americans may conclude he's a fake President," reads the editorial, which appeared online Tuesday night."...

    libezkova said in reply to im1dc... , March 22, 2017 at 03:48 PM
    "Trump has even lost the support of the WSJ"

    Was not WSJ a supporter of Hillary ? Am I missing something ?

    reason -> im1dc... , March 22, 2017 at 09:05 AM
    I think the US Presidency is like the Ruler of the universe in Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. Anybody who wants the job is not suitable.
    Peter K. -> reason ... , March 22, 2017 at 09:14 AM
    Hillary was suitable, but not a very good candidate following on Obama's charm. Can't believe the center-left ran a candidate who lost to Trump.

    Well yes I can. And I can believe they don't want to do a post mortem. Ambitious careerists like PGL are never good at self-criticism or insights.

    libezkova -> Peter K.... , March 22, 2017 at 03:08 PM
    "Hillary was suitable"

    Suitable for whom?

    [Mar 22, 2017] Notes From the House Select Intelligence Hearing on Russia

    Mar 22, 2017 | www.rollingstone.com

    10:05 a.m. It's a small issue in the grand scheme of things, but the effort to describe the Russia Today network as diabolical propaganda without mentioning Voice of America and Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe continues to amaze. Apparently Russia is the only country that funds a media network intended to influence foreign audiences.

    Nunes in his opening statement characterizes RT as a disinformation effort that "traffics in anti-American conspiracies," rivaling Soviet propaganda. Here it is hard not to think of the joint intel report that cited the network's reporting on Occupy Wall Street, "corporate greed" and fracking as evidence of its anti-American nature. It also decried the network's use of the term "surveillance state" to describe the U.S., which will be pretty ironic considering the content of today's hearing.

    Again, it's a small point, but by these standards pretty much any alternative media outlet is "anti-American," and it's alarming to hear Democrats later ape this language in reference to RT.

    10:20 a.m. Schiff delivers a long speech that essentially lays out the Trump-Russia conspiracy. Twitter seems to be unanimous that it's a powerful piece of rhetoric.

    Among other things, he unblinkingly cites the Christopher Steele's "golden showers" dossier as a source. This seems like a pretty intense political calculation given that Michael Morell, who would have been Hillary Clinton's CIA director, basically called the dossier useless just last week. The dossier "doesn't take you anywhere, I think," Morell said. But it's all over this hearing, with multiple Democratic members citing it. What that means, who knows, but it's interesting to see that level of commitment from the Democrats.

    10:32 a.m. Comey creates the big headline of the day by saying, "I have been authorized ... to confirm that the FBI is investigating" the Russia story.

    This both is and isn't big news. Although it's the first time it's been stated publicly, the existence of this investigation has been common knowledge for a long time. Most of the leaked reports on the topic have included this information.

    For instance, The New York Times story from February 14th, about Trump officials having had "contact" with Russian intelligence, spoke definitively of an investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Putin government.

    Still, that doesn't mean Comey had to do what he did today. Is this payback to Trump for accusing the FBI of illegally wiretapping him? Is it a good-faith effort to square the ledger in terms of his previous highly controversial decision to out the Clinton email investigation? It's curious and bold either way. One wonders if Trump might fire him.

    The true newsworthy detail, of course, isn't that Comey disclosed the existence of an FBI investigation into Trump – as Democrats should know better than anyone, that doesn't necessarily mean anything – but that Comey is doing this now and didn't do so earlier, before the election. Obviously, he made a different choice with regard to the Clinton email story, and the Democrats rightfully should be furious about that.

    10:36 a.m. Nunes asks Rogers if Russians hacked vote tallies in Michigan. Rogers answers no, noting that the NSA doesn't do domestic surveillance. Nunes goes on to ask about Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin, knowing Rogers won't answer. It's a totally meaningless exchange, but instantly becomes Twitter fodder:

    This is what these hearings are for, primarily. Except for very rare occasions when mega-careful witnesses like Comey and Rogers decide to give up tidbits, for the most part these hearings are held so that House members can ping-pong talking points off witnesses, and then circulate clips of themselves asking questions to which they already know the answers.

    10:39 a.m. Florida Republican Tom Rooney asks Rogers about incidental collection of data about "U.S. persons" under the Section 702 program. Admiral Rogers' explanation for how they use that data, and how they protect the rights of U.S. companies and citizens – redacting or "masking" identities, for instance – is almost comically non-reassuring.

    Reading between the lines, the NSA seems to have basically unrestricted ability to snoop on foreigners. When their targets are speaking to American persons or communicating with American companies, the agency also seems to have an absurdly permissive mandate to listen to whatever they want to listen to. Only later, it seems, do they figure out how to justify it legally.

    This is an example of how the hyper-partisan nature of these hearings spoils American politics. Liberals especially should be seriously concerned about such surveillance overreach by the intelligence agencies, and also about leaks directed against individuals by intelligence officials. Similarly, conservatives should be mortified by the possibility of foreign interference in our electoral process.

    But because both of these issues are tied in highly specific ways to the political fortunes of Donald Trump, each issue will be ignored by one side and thundered over by the other.

    11:03 a.m. Schiff asks both men if Obama wiretapped Trump as Trump claimed. "I have no information that supports those tweets," Comey says. Asked if he engages in McCarthyism, Comey says he tries "not to engage in any isms of any kind, including McCarthyism." He gets laughs. Comey is a very, very slick witness, difficult to read.

    An interesting development in this hearing is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are treating these witnesses as hostile. And both Comey and Rogers are in their own ways giving both Nunes and Schiff what they want so far. They're allowing members of both parties to make speeches and ask their suggestive questions, while giving them next to nothing.

    11:19 a.m. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, last seen spending two expensive years stepping on his weenie in a pathetic effort to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton through the Benghazi probe, comes on to the delight of, well, nobody. Gowdy is the first to cross over into open unfriendliness. Ominously, he starts trying to get Comey to say reporters could be held criminally liable for disclosing secret information.

    Gowdy later scores a point by getting Comey to explain a hypothetical: how he would go about investigating the leak of a U.S. citizen's name that appears in a newspaper. (He's clearly talking about Flynn.)

    Comey, with the caveat that he's not talking about anyone specific, lays out how he would do that, talking about identifying the "universe" of people with access to that information and then using investigative techniques to further narrow the field. Indirectly, Comey confirms Gowdy's interpretation of a "felonious" disclosure to a newspaper that must be prosecuted. It sets up a demand that Comey investigate and prosecute that leak.

    Gowdy does in fact go on to make such a demand. But Comey cockblocks Gowdy and says he "can't" promise that he will investigate the leaks.

    Gowdy looks like someone just stole his box of Mike and Ikes. He seems surprised, like he didn't expect Comey's answer. Comey smiles and glares at Gowdy like the third-rater he is.

    11:43 a.m. Jim Himes asks Comey if Ukraine used to be part of the Soviet Union. Comey says yes. Glad we cleared that up.

    11:52 a.m. Mike Conaway of Texas points out that determining the source of a hacking campaign is a forensic enterprise, but asks how they determine intent. In the process, he pins down Rogers as saying he had a "lower level" of confidence in the idea that the Russians preferred Trump to Clinton.

    Conaway then plunges into a bizarre metaphor about how his wife went to Texas Tech, so he roots for the Red Raiders and dislikes the Longhorns, or something. Conaway seemed to want to ask if it is possible to root against Texas without liking the Red Raiders, or the opposite, but pretty much everyone watching instantly loses track of whether Hillary Clinton is Texas or Texas Tech in the metaphor.

    Comey confidently goes with it. "Wherever the Red Raiders are playing, you want them to win and their opposition to lose," he says. He goes on to elaborate on the metaphor, talking about how the Russians later in the year knew the Red Raiders were going to lose, "so you hope key people on the other team get hurt so they are not as tough an opponent down the road."

    The substantively interesting thing here is Comey's sly disclosure that the Russians late in the game expected Trump to lose the election. But his deft handling of Conaway's bumbling hypothetical overshadows the answer.

    12:21 p.m. Nunes tries on a new rhetorical line: It's absurd to say Russians prefer Republicans, because Reagan!

    This is silly, of course, because Trump is a different animal from Reagan, but then Comey and Rogers do something equally silly. On the question of whether the Russians preferred Romney or McCain over Obama, they both look at each other like it's crazy to suggest they ever considered the question. Isn't it their job to know things like that? They're clearly dissembling.

    12:25 p.m. Peter King, the most mumbly member on the panel, asks about the report that Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe told Reince Priebus that one of the New York Times stories on Russia was "BS."

    "Is there any way you can comment on whether or not Mr. McCabe told that to Mr. Priebus?" King asks.

    Comey gives a classically Comeyish answer:

    "I can't, Mr. King, but I can agree with your general premise. Leaks have always been a problem. I read over the weekend [about] George Washington and Abraham Lincoln complaining about them. But I do agree in the last six weeks and months there apparently have been a lot of instances of conversations appearing in the media, and a lot of it is dead wrong. Which is one of the challenges, because we don't correct it. It's made it difficult because people are talking, or at least reporters are saying people are talking, in ways that have struck me as being unusually active."

    Translation: blow me, I'm not telling you what McCabe said to Priebus. King basically thanks them both and retreats. King will spend much of the day apologizing for asking perfectly legitimate questions.

    Although the hearing has generated tons of headlines before it hits the halfway mark, it's really a giant tease.

    Both Comey and Rogers indicated from the start that they will reserve their more candid testimony for a later classified hearing with these same members. For the public, this means one thing: we'll continue to get no real answers, and a heavily partisan and politicized version of events, no matter what happens. So long as the investigations aren't closed, and the real information is kept behind closed doors, both parties can pursue their rhetorical campaigns unchecked. And the testimony of people like Comey and Rogers will be useful only for driving interest in the reading of tea leaves.

    There should probably be three entirely separate investigations. One should concern the question of whether, or to what extent, the Russians interfered with the election. That's a non-partisan question, really, one everyone should care about, but Republicans won't do anything about it because they will perceive the entire issue as a partisan attack on Trump.

    A second inquiry could deal with the question of illegal/politicized leaks of secret surveillance data coming from the "IC." Again, in reality this is a non-partisan concern. Were congressional Democrats really interested in getting at whatever the intelligence community has on Trump, a bipartisan inquiry of this nature would be an excellent pressure point.

    Lastly, you could have a completely separate set of hearings into the question of whether or not the Trump campaign engaged in anything untoward in its dealings with Russians last year. If there's anything to this, the public needs to hear it, and it all needs to be public.

    But don't expect answers anytime soon. Hearings like today's only add to the frustrating strangeness of this scandal, and it looks like this will continue for quite some time.

    [Mar 22, 2017] A Breach in the Anti-Putin Groupthink by Gilbert Doctorow

    Anti-Russian campaign is too profitable to be affected by minor setbacks.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Does Russia Have a Future? ..."
    Mar 21, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

    The mainstream U.S. media has virtually banned any commentary that doesn't treat Russian President Putin as the devil, but a surprising breach in the groupthink has occurred in Foreign Affairs magazine, reports Gilbert Doctorow.

    Realistically, no major change in U.S. foreign and defense policy is possible without substantial support from the U.S. political class, but a problem occurs when only one side of a debate gets a fair hearing and the other side gets ignored or marginalized. That is the current situation regarding U.S. policy toward Russia.

    For the past couple of decades, only the neoconservatives and their close allies, the liberal interventionists, have been allowed into the ring to raise their gloves in celebration of an uncontested victory over policy. On the very rare occasion when a "realist" or a critic of "regime change" wars somehow manages to sneak into the ring, they find both arms tied behind them and receive the predictable pounding.

    While this predicament has existed since the turn of this past century, it has grown more pronounced since the U.S.-Russia relationship slid into open confrontation in 2014 after the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and sparking a civil war that led Crimea to secede and join Russia and Ukraine's eastern Donbass region to rise up in rebellion.

    But the only narrative that the vast majority of Americans have heard – and that the opinion centers of Washington and New York have allowed – is the one that blames everything on "Russian aggression." Those who try to express dissenting opinions – noting, for instance, the intervention in Ukrainian affairs by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland as well as the U.S.-funded undermining on Yanukovych's government – have been essentially banned from both the U.S. mass media and professional journals.

    When a handful of independent news sites (including Consortiumnews.com) tried to report on the other side of the story, they were denounced as "Russian propagandists" and ended up on "blacklists" promoted by The Washington Post and other mainstream news outlets.

    An Encouraging Sign

    That is why it is encouraging that Foreign Affairs magazine, the preeminent professional journal of American diplomacy, took the extraordinary step (extraordinary at least in the current environment) of publishing Robert English's article , entitled "Russia, Trump, and a new Détente," that challenges the prevailing groupthink and does so with careful scholarship.

    A wintery scene in Moscow, near Red Square. (Photo by Robert Parry)

    In effect, English's article trashes the positions of all Foreign Affairs' featured contributors for the past several years. But it must be stressed that there are no new discoveries of fact or new insights that make English's essay particularly valuable. What he has done is to bring together the chief points of the counter-current and set them out with extraordinary writing skills, efficiency and persuasiveness of argumentation. Even more important, he has been uncompromising.

    The facts laid out by English could have been set out by one of several experienced and informed professors or practitioners of international relations. But English had the courage to follow the facts where they lead and the skill to convince the Foreign Affairs editors to take the chance on allowing readers to see some unpopular truths even though the editors now will probably come under attack themselves as "Kremlin stooges."

    The overriding thesis is summed up at the start of the essay: "For 25 years, Republicans and Democrats have acted in ways that look much the same to Moscow. Washington has pursued policies that have ignored Russian interests (and sometimes international law as well) in order to encircle Moscow with military alliances and trade blocs conducive to U.S. interests. It is no wonder that Russia pushes back. The wonder is that the U.S. policy elite doesn't get this, even as foreign-affairs neophyte Trump apparently does."

    English's article goes back to the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and explains why and how U.S. policy toward Russia was wrong and wrong again. He debunks the notion that Boris Yeltsin brought in a democratic age, which Vladimir Putin undid after coming to power.

    English explains how the U.S. meddled in Russian domestic politics in the mid-1990s to falsify election results and ensure Yeltsin's continuation in office despite his unpopularity for bringing on an economic Depression that average Russians remember bitterly to this day. That was a time when the vast majority of Russians equated democracy with "shitocracy."

    English describes how the Russian economic and political collapse in the 1990s was exploited by the Clinton administration. He tells why currently fashionable U.S. critics of Putin are dead wrong when they fail to acknowledge Putin's achievements in restructuring the economy, tax collection, governance, improvements in public health and more which account for his spectacular popularity ratings today.

    English details all the errors and stupidities of the Obama administration in its handling of Russia and Putin, faulting President Obama and Secretary of State (and later presidential candidate) Hillary Clinton for all of their provocative and insensitive words and deeds. What we see in U.S. policy, as described by English, is the application of double standards, a prosecutorial stance towards Russia, and outrageous lies about the country and its leadership foisted on the American public.

    Then English takes on directly all of the paranoia over Russia's alleged challenge to Western democratic processes. He calls attention instead to how U.S. foreign policy and the European Union's own policies in the new Member States and candidate Member States have created all the conditions for a populist revolt by buying off local elites and subjecting the broad populace in these countries to pauperization.

    English concludes his essay with a call to give détente with Putin and Russia a chance.

    Who Is Robert English?

    English's Wikipedia entry and biographical data provided on his University of Southern California web pages make it clear that he has quality academic credentials: Master of Public Administration and PhD. in politics from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He also has a solid collection of scholarly publications to his credit as author or co-editor with major names in the field of Russian-Soviet intellectual history.

    Red Square in Moscow with a winter festival to the left and the Kremlin to the right. (Photo by Robert Parry)

    He spent six years doing studies for U.S. intelligence and defense: 1982–1986 at the Department of Defense and 1986-88 at the U.S. Committee for National Security. And he has administrative experience as the Director of the USC School of International Relations.

    Professor English is not without his political ambitions. During the 2016 presidential election campaign, he tried to secure a position as foreign policy adviser to Democratic hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders. In pursuit of this effort, English had the backing of progressives at The Nation, which in February 2016 published an article of his entitled "Bernie Sanders, the Foreign Policy Realist of 2016."

    English's objective was to demonstrate how wrong many people were to see in Sanders a visionary utopian incapable of defending America's strategic interests. Amid the praise of Sanders in this article, English asserts that Sanders is as firm on Russia as Hillary Clinton.

    By the end of the campaign, however, several tenacious neocons had attached themselves to Sanders's inner circle and English departed. So, one might size up English as just one more opportunistic academic who will do whatever it takes to land a top job in Washington.

    While there is nothing new in such "flexibility," there is also nothing necessarily offensive in it. From the times of Machiavelli if not earlier, intellectuals have tended to be guns for hire. The first open question is how skilled they are in managing their sponsors as well as in managing their readers in the public. But there is also a political realism in such behavior, advancing a politician who might be a far better leader than the alternatives while blunting the attack lines that might be deployed against him or her.

    Then, there are times, such as the article for Foreign Affairs, when an academic may be speaking for his own analysis of an important situation whatever the political costs or benefits. Sources who have long been close to English assure me that the points in his latest article match his true beliefs.

    The Politics of Geopolitics

    Yet, it is one thing to have a courageous author and knowledgeable scholar. It is quite another to find a publisher willing to take the heat for presenting views that venture outside the mainstream Establishment. In that sense, it is stunning that Foreign Affairs chose to publish English and let him destroy the groupthink that has dominated the magazine and the elite foreign policy circles for years.

    President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice listens at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

    The only previous exception to the magazine's lockstep was an article by University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer entitled "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault" published in September 2014. That essay shot holes in Official Washington's recounting of the events leading up to the Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Donbass.

    It was a shock to many of America's leading foreign policy insiders who, in the next issue, rallied like a collection of white cells to attack the invasive thinking. But there were some Foreign Affairs readers – about one-third of the commenters – who voiced agreement with Mearsheimer's arguments. But that was a one-time affair. Mearsheimer appears to have been tolerated because he was one of the few remaining exponents of the Realist School in the United States. But he was not a Russia specialist.

    Foreign Affairs may have turned to Robert English because the editors, as insider-insiders, found themselves on the outside of the Trump administration looking in. The magazine's 250,000 subscribers, which include readers from across the globe, expect Foreign Affairs to have some lines into the corridors of power.

    In that regard, the magazine has been carrying water for the State Department since the days of the Cold War. For instance, in the spring issue of 2007, the magazine published a cooked-up article signed by Ukrainian politician Yuliya Tymoshenko on why the West must contain Russia, a direct response to Putin's famous Munich speech in which he accused the United States of destabilizing the world through the Iraq War and other policies.

    Anticipating Hillary Clinton's expected election, Foreign Affairs' editors did not hedge their bets in 2016. They sided with the former Secretary of State and hurled rhetorical bricks at Donald Trump. In their September issue, they compared him to a tin-pot populist dictator in South America.

    Thus, they found themselves cut off after Trump's surprising victory. For the first time in many years in the opening issue of the New Year following a U.S. presidential election, the magazine did not feature an interview with the incoming Secretary of State or some other cabinet member.

    Though Official Washington's anti-Russian frenzy seems to be reaching a crescendo on Capitol Hill with strident hearings on alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election, the underlying reality is that the neocons are descending into a fury over their sudden loss of power.

    The hysteria was highlighted when neocon Sen. John McCain lashed out at Sen. Rand Paul after the libertarian senator objected to special consideration for McCain's resolution supporting Montenegro's entrance into NATO. In a stunning breach of Senate protocol, a livid McCain accused Paul of "working for Vladimir Putin."

    Meanwhile, some Democratic leaders have begun cautioning their anti-Trump followers not to expect too much from congressional investigations into the supposed Trump-Russia collusion on the election.

    In publishing Robert English's essay challenging much of the anti-Russian groupthink that has dominated Western geopolitics over the past few years, Foreign Affairs may be finally bending to the recognition that it is risking its credibility if it continues to put all its eggs in the we-hate-Russia basket.

    That hedging of its bets may be a case of self-interest, but it also may be an optimistic sign that the martyred Fifteenth Century Catholic Church reformer Jan Hus was right when he maintained that eventually the truth will prevail.

    Gilbert Doctorow is a Brussels-based political analyst. His latest book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.

    [Mar 22, 2017] The Rachel Maddow Show on msnbc

    Rachel Maddow looks at the role of Russian bot networks and cyber war tactics during the 2016 U.S. election and notes that those things didn't just go away after the election. She proves to be a talented anti-Russian warmonger. Very impressive piece of propaganda. Classic brainwashing.
    MSNC clearly is in neo-McCarthyism camp and try to capitalize on anti-Russian hysteria. Of cause, Rachel Maddow was and still is a Hillary puppet, so she should have her credibility already destroyed. but people still watching her show and that's a problem. Previously she supported this neocon warmonger, now she became one. The problem with her blabbing is that accounting to FBI Russians have written off Trump in Summer 2016.
    Looks like Democratic party brass can no longer control the anti-Russian hysteria why wiped up, even if they realized that they went too far and the ability to lick thier wound by launching anti-Russian hysteria and getting it to the sky level pitch has some adverse effects in a long run ...
    Notable quotes:
    "... This anti-Russian warmonger Rachel Maddow is a Hillary puppet. That is a known fact. She has been dyed-in-the-wool supported neocon warmonger Hillary Clinton for the duration of the campaign. ..."
    "... A company related to a NATO aligned "think-tank", which is financed by weapon producers and other special interests, raises allegations against Russia that are quite possibly unfounded. These allegations are then used by NATO to build up a public boogeyman picture of "the Russian enemy". In consequence the budgets for NATO militaries and the profits of weapon producers increase. ..."
    "... It is a simple racket, but with potentially very bad consequences for all of us. ..."
    Mar 22, 2017 | www.msnbc.com

    Duration: 20:44

    libezkova -> Peter K .... March 22, 2017 at 04:24 PM

    This anti-Russian warmonger Rachel Maddow is a Hillary puppet. That is a known fact. She has been dyed-in-the-wool supported neocon warmonger Hillary Clinton for the duration of the campaign.

    All her blows were below the belt.

    This selective reporting of pieces of information is actually pretty disingenuous. Anybody using those methods and by selective reporting of bits of information that support your viewpoint can be painted as a Russian agent. Even EMichael :-)

    The problem with her blabbing is that according to FBI Russians have written off Trump in Summer 2016.

    Listening to this show by MSNBC is so disguising, that I lost any respect for it.

    RGC -> EMichael... March 22, 2017 at 04:45 PM
    Fool Me Once ... - Crowdstrike Claimed Two Cases
    Of "Russian Hacking" - One Has Been Proven Wrong

    The cyber-security company Crowdstrike claimed that the "Russia" hacked the Democratic National Committee. It also claimed that "Russia" hacked artillery units of the Ukrainian army. The second claim has now be found to be completely baseless. That same is probably the case with its claims related to the DNC.
    ..........................

    The DNC was likely not hacked at all. Some insider with access to its servers may have taken the emails to publish them. On July 10 2016 the DNC IT administrator Sean Rich was found fatally shot on the streets of Washington DC. To this day no culprit has been found. The crime is unsolved. Five Congressional staffers and IT administrators from Pakistan, some of whom also worked for the DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, are under criminal investigation for unauthorized access to Congressional computers. They had the password of Wasserman-Schultz and may have had access to the DNC servers.

    Crowdstrike's claims of "Russian hacking" have evidently been false with regards to the Ukrainian artillery. Crowdstrike's claims of "Russian hacking" in the case of the DNC have never been supported or confirmed by independent evidence. There are reasons to believe that the loss of control of the DNC's email archives were a case of unauthorized internal access and not a "hack" at all.

    A company related to a NATO aligned "think-tank", which is financed by weapon producers and other special interests, raises allegations against Russia that are quite possibly unfounded. These allegations are then used by NATO to build up a public boogeyman picture of "the Russian enemy". In consequence the budgets for NATO militaries and the profits of weapon producers increase.

    It is a simple racket, but with potentially very bad consequences for all of us.

    http://www.moonofalabama.org/ Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 04:45 PM

    [Mar 22, 2017] New Cold War and anti-Russian hysteria news March 2017 edition

    Notable quotes:
    "... the wrong foreign power ..."
    Mar 22, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    "Devin Nunes is a conservative Republican from the San Joaquin Valley who advised Donald Trump through his transition to the presidency. Adam Schiff is a Los Angeles Democrat who campaigned for Hillary Clinton and isn't shy in his criticisms of the man who defeated her" [ RealClearPolitics ]. Now the two California congressmen find themselves at the center of the political universe, leading a House probe into Russian meddling in American politics . The two have no qualms about expressing disagreements with what they deduce from the same pot of information, but their joint appearances are a vestige of the kind of bipartisanship that has all but disappeared from Washington. And yet, Monday's hearing showed the partisan divide on the issue, with Republican members focused on plugging government leaks of sensitive information and Democrats interested in possible collusion." "Meddling," "collusion." Pretty squishy words

    "Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire" [ Politico ]. (Furzy Mouse). ZOMG!!!! The Ukrainians were hacking tampering with meddling in seeking to influence our election! Where's that declaration of war I had lying around

    "From Russia, with Panic" [Yasha Levine, The Baffler (DG)]. This is an important post. Key point: "But in private conversations, as well as little-noticed public discussions, security professionals take a dimmer view of the cybersecurity complex. And the more I've looked at the hysteria surrounding Russia's supposed hacking of our elections, the more I've come to see it as a case study of everything wrong and dangerous about the cyber-attribution business." For example: "Matt Tait, a former GCHQ analyst and founder of Capital Alpha Security who blogs under the influential Twitter handle @pwnallthethings, found a Word document pilfered from the DNC and leaked by Guccifer 2.0. As he examined its data signatures, he discovered that it had been edited by Felix Edmundovich-a.k.a. Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka. To him, it was proof that Guccifer 2.0 was part of the same Russian intelligence operation. He really believed that the super sophisticated spy group trying to hide its Russian ties would register its Microsoft Word processor in the name of the leader of the infamously brutal Soviet security service."

    "Could the President Spy on His Political Opponents?" [ The American Conservative ]. "But regardless of whether [Trump's "wiretapping"] claims turn out to be completely false, which is all but certain now, they do raise a question that shouldn't be casually dismissed: Could President Obama's administration have surveiled his political opponents under its interpretation of the law? Could President Trump's administration now do the same? The answer, unfortunately, is yes."

    "Report: Paul Manafort Drafted a Plan in 2005 to Influence American Politics for Putin's Benefit" [ Slate ]. I used Slate because "2005" somehow didn't get into the headlines in the other stories. Here's a blow-by-blow from NPR .

    I can well believe that the Democrats are so feckless that they ginned up a Trump scandal with the wrong foreign power :

    on Twitter
    Follow Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled

    One claim in piss-Trump dossier that rang true-Trump happy media focus on his Russia ties rather than his China biz https:// twitter.com/matthewstoller /status/843888616774483968

    2:48 PM - 20 Mar 2017

    Heatlh Care

    "A White House in full-court press mode deployed President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to Capitol

    [Mar 22, 2017] Noted Putin Critic Warns Of Confrontation Between Trump And Russia, Not Collaboration Zero Hedge

    Mar 22, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

    One thing we should have learned over the past year or so is you can take any narrative being pushed by the corporate media and Democrats, and assume that the exact opposite is true . The current Trump-Russia hysteria could very well turn out to be the latest and most embarrassing example of this phenomenon. In fact, well known Putin-critic, Masha Gessen, recently warned in an interview with Politico that her biggest fear is a Trump-Putin conflict, not some imagined alliance.

    Below I provide the excerpts from this lengthy interview which I believe are relevant to the topic.

    From Politico :

    Glasser : I want to talk a little bit about where we are right now. And then back up to why it is, in your life, you've figured out this expecting the unimaginable. But recently, you know, American politics has been consumed by Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. And you wrote something that a lot of people were surprised by the other day, although I was not. And you said, "Beware the conspiracy trap."

    And that, in fact, the Russia scandal that now threatens to engulf President Trump's very new presidency, you wrote, "In effect, could be actually helping President Trump and amount to a sort of a colossal distraction for us." What did you mean by that?

    Gessen : Well, a couple things. One is that, if you look at, you know, what we actually know about the Russia story, which changes every day, but what-at this point, what we actually know suggests that the likelihood that there's going to be a causal link between the Russian interference in the American election and the outcome of the election. The likelihood that was a causal link, and that that causal link can be shown, is basically vanishingly small, right?

    So-and I think that part of the reason-there are basically two reasons that a lot of journalists and a lot of activists have been focusing on Russia is because it serves as a crutch for the imagination. And again, I'm coming back to this topic of imagination, which obsesses me.

    So one way in which it serves as a crutch for the imagination is that it allows us to imagine that, maybe, Trump will be so sullied by this Russia scandal, by this connection, even if he can't prove a cause-causal link, just that the darkness of the scandal will be thick enough of a cloud that he will eventually be impeached by a Republican Congress.

    That's a huge leap. And it also, I think, doesn't take into account the tools-the rhetorical tools that will have to be used to sully Trump in such a way, right? Which are basically xenophobic and, you know, corrosive to the public sphere. And the other way in which it serves as a crutch for the imagination is it also serves to explain how Trump could have happened to us, right? The Russians did it.

    Glasser : That's exactly right; if it's an external thing. And you wrote that very, very early on. Actually, before this latest round, that the real threat to Trump would be to misunderstand where this comes from. And if it's not Americans who voted for him, but somehow, it's a wily, dark conspiracy theory. That leads you down a whole different set of responses to Trump.

    Gessen : Right. Which-

    Glasser : I think that's your point.

    Gessen : That is my point. And also that it's destructive to politics. Politics is what happens out in the open. And there's lots of politics happening, right? There's this endless barrage of frightening bills being filed at this point. There are the Cabinet appointments. There's the, you know, dismantling of the federal government as we have known it for generations.

    All of that is going on out in the open. And we only have so much bandwidth. If we're not talking about what's going on out in the open, if we're talking about conspiracy instead, then we are, by doing that, destroying the politics that we should be preserving, right? I mean, how do we emerge out the other end, when Trump ends, and Trump will eventually end. Everything ends, right?

    If we've engaged in conspiracy theorizing this whole time, instead of engaging in politics-and only by engaging in politics can we actually preserve the political space

    Gessen : I'm worried about Russia. I'm-this is-I mean, we're already out of the honeymoon phase, and it's been less than two months. And I think it's-I mean, the danger of having these two unhinged power-hungry men at their-respective nuclear buttons cannot be overestimated. But-

    Glasser : So you would see them as potential enemies as much as potential friends? That this scenario-

    Gessen : Oh, absolutely.

    Glasser : -we should worry about is Trump versus Putin, not just Trump and Putin uniting?

    Gessen : Right. I'm actually worried about a collision with them.

    She's exactly right. I completely agree that the disaster scenario with Putin and Trump is if and when they actually clash. Once that happens, the corporate media and Democrats will pretend they had nothing to do with it, as they always do. As Mark Ames noted on Twitter:

    All the worst Iraq war liars still have their fat media jobs-where they now tell us public distrust in Establishment is a Kremlin conspiracy

    - Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) March 20, 2017

    Moving on, I want to once again turn to Robert Parry of Consortium News to highlight just how ridiculous the whole "Putin bought off Trump aides" conspiracy is. From yesterday's piece, The Missing Logic of Russia-gate :

    Democrats circulated a report showing that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as President Donald Trump's national security adviser, had received payments from several Russia-related entities, totaling nearly $68,000.

    The largest payment of $45,386 came for a speech and an appearance in Moscow in 2015 at the tenth anniversary dinner for RT, the international Russian TV network, with Flynn netting $33,750 after his speakers' bureau took its cut. Democrats treated this revelation as important evidence about Russia buying influence in the Trump campaign and White House. But the actual evidence suggests something quite different.

    Not only was the sum a relative trifle for a former senior U.S. government official compared to, say, the fees collected by Bill and Hillary Clinton, who often pulled in six to ten times more, especially for speeches to foreign audiences. ( Former President Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin, The New York Times reported in 2015,)

    Yet, besides Flynn's relatively modest speaking fee, The Washington Post reported that RT negotiated Flynn's rate downward.

    Deep inside its article on Flynn's Russia-connected payments, the Post wrote, "RT balked at paying Flynn's original asking price. 'Sorry it took us longer to get back to you but the problem is that the speaking fee is a bit too high and exceeds our budget at the moment,' Alina Mikhaleva, RT's head of marketing, wrote a Flynn associate about a month before the event."

    So, if you accept the Democrats' narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin is engaged in an all-out splurge to induce influential Americans to betray their country, how do you explain that his supposed flunkies at RT are quibbling with Flynn over a relatively modest speaking fee?

    Of course, you'll never hear any of this emphasized in the corporate media, they're too busy pushing for a conflict between the U.S. and Russia. A conflict that once it happens, they will vehemently deny playing any role in propagating.

    [Mar 21, 2017] It has long been a mystery to me why European nations adopt policies that hurt their economies just to pander to the whims of US geopolitics. Cases in point: sanctions on Iran and Russia and support for Israel

    Notable quotes:
    "... Past administrations of both parties have been vigorous supporters of longer and stronger patent and copyright protections. These protections can raise the price of protected items by factors of ten or even a hundred, making them equivalent to tariffs of 1000 and 10,000 percent. These protections lead to the same sorts of economic distortion and corruption that economists would predict from tariffs of this size. ..."
    "... Trump administration officials at a Group of 20 summit rejected concerns about spreading protectionism and made clear that the new administration would seek different approaches to global commerce. ..."
    "... The United States influence over the Group of 20 nations, even when the US is supposedly taking generally unpopular stances is striking and makes me wonder why there is no open dissent. What is supposed to be unpopular may be less so among G20 governments than commonly assumed. ..."
    Mar 21, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    anne : March 20, 2017 at 05:43 AM

    http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/the-united-states-has-been-for-selective-protectionism-not-free-trade

    March 20, 2017

    The United States Has Been for Selective Protectionism, Not Free Trade

    The New York Times might have wrongly lead readers to believe that presidents prior to Donald Trump supported free trade in an article * noting his refusal to go along with a G-20 statement proclaiming the importance of free trade. This is not true.

    Past administrations of both parties have been vigorous supporters of longer and stronger patent and copyright protections. These protections can raise the price of protected items by factors of ten or even a hundred, making them equivalent to tariffs of 1000 and 10,000 percent. These protections lead to the same sorts of economic distortion and corruption that economists would predict from tariffs of this size.

    Past administrations have also supported barriers that protect our most highly paid professionals, such as doctors and dentists, from foreign competition. They apparently believed that these professionals lack the skills necessary to compete in the global economy and therefore must be protected from the international competition. The result is that the rest of us pay close to $100 billion more each year for our medical bills ($700 per family).

    * https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/business/group-of-20-summit-us-trade.html

    -- Dean Baker

    anne -> anne... , March 20, 2017 at 05:45 AM
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/business/group-of-20-summit-us-trade.html

    March 18, 2017

    U.S. Breaks With Allies Over Trade Issues Amid Trump's 'America First' Vows
    By JACK EWING

    Trump administration officials at a Group of 20 summit rejected concerns about spreading protectionism and made clear that the new administration would seek different approaches to global commerce.

    anne -> anne... , March 20, 2017 at 05:47 AM
    https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/843565279359766529

    Ben Norton‏ @BenjaminNorton

    US forced G20 nations in joint statement to drop any mention of climate change, which threatens life on Earth

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/g20-finance-ministers-statement-climate-change-fair-trade-trump-a7636956.html

    Financial officials from the world's biggest economies have dropped from a joint statement any mention of financing action on climate change, reportedly following pressure from the US and Saudi Arabia....

    1:50 PM - 19 Mar 2017

    anne -> anne... , March 20, 2017 at 05:49 AM
    The United States influence over the Group of 20 nations, even when the US is supposedly taking generally unpopular stances is striking and makes me wonder why there is no open dissent. What is supposed to be unpopular may be less so among G20 governments than commonly assumed.
    JohnH -> anne... , March 20, 2017 at 07:43 AM
    It has long been a mystery to me why European nations adopt policies that hurt their economies just to pander to the whims of US geopolitics. Cases in point: sanctions on Iran and Russia and support for Israel.

    [Mar 19, 2017] Russian Parliament Launches Investigation Of CNN And Other American Media

    Mar 18, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    A few days ago Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic Senator from New Hampshire, introduced a piece of legislation that would give the Department of Justice "new authority" to investigate potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act by the 'Russian Times' . Among other things, Shaheen said the legislation was necessary to determine whether "RT News is coordinating with the Russian government to spread misinformation and undermine our democratic process." We won't even bother to touch on the inherent hypocrisy of such a statement, but here is the press release from Shaheen's website :

    Following intelligence reports that RT News operates as a propaganda outlet for the Russian government, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) has introduced legislation that gives the Department of Justice new authority to investigate potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act by RT America.

    "We have good reason to believe that RT News is coordinating with the Russian government to spread misinformation and undermine our democratic process," said Shaheen. "The American public has a right to know if this is the case. RT News has made public statements boasting that it can dodge our laws with shell corporations, and it's time for the Department of Justice to investigate. My bill provides the authority needed to request documentation of RT News and find out who they're accountable to."

    The Director of National Intelligence's recent report titled Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections concluded that RT News officials have structured their affiliate organizations to deliberately circumvent U.S. reporting and disclosure requirements under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Senator Shaheen's Foreign Agents Registration Modernization and Enforcement Act gives the Department of Justice new authority to compel organizations like RT America to produce documentation on funding sources and foreign connections.

    Well, as it turns out, Russian officials have the power to launch meaningless witch hunts in their country as well and have decided to demonstrate that power with the announcement today that they'll launch a similar investigation into all U.S. media currently operating in Russia. Per Reuters :

    [Mar 19, 2017] The benefit of state-media propaganda: government claims shape headlines, no dissent, opposing views included

    Mar 19, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    anne : March 18, 2017 at 10:06 AM , 2017 at 10:06 AM
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/843114192081211394

    Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald

    The benefit of state-media propaganda: government claims shape headlines, no dissent, opposing views included

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39311670

    UK troops in Estonia to deter 'Russian aggression'

    7:57 AM - 18 Mar 2017

    ilsm -> anne... , March 18, 2017 at 04:56 PM
    Maybe if NATO said "we will never close the sea lanes to St Petersburg...'

    US troops in Estonia to keep the Russian minority down........

    Estonia, like Iraq and Turkey, cannot be partitioned like US did Serbia!

    Estonia has land where artillery can shut down St Petersburg shipping........

    ilsm -> geoff ... , March 18, 2017 at 05:01 PM
    Saudi Arabia is the target of many 10's of billions in future arms sales. US needs to keep them burning jet fuel and jettisoning bombs so they buy planes, and other big ticket stuff from US.

    Trump must be listening to the pentagon guys saying we could have won in Vietnam if we had more time and bombs...........

    Maybe the Saudis can 'kill enough of them'!

    US never held back cluster bombs!

    [Mar 19, 2017] Intel Chair No Collusion Between Trump and Russia... Leak Is The Only Crime Zero Hedge

    Mar 19, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Intel Chair: "No Collusion Between Trump and Russia... Leak Is The Only Crime" Shemp 4 Victory , Mar 19, 2017 11:57 AM

    Reason won't matter to snowflakes. They'll cling to the comfort of their illusions.

    Erek -> Shemp 4 Victory , Mar 19, 2017 11:59 AM

    Hmm. It seems the "Intelligence" chair is leaking on the snowflakes.

    Looney -> Erek , Mar 19, 2017 12:01 PM

    ... No evidence of collusion

    But but 0bama said Hillary said 17 intelligence agencies said CNN said

    LetThemEatRand -> Shemp 4 Victory , Mar 19, 2017 11:59 AM

    The Deep State/MSM trots out shit like this precisely because the facts don't matter once the narrative is set. Half the country will go on thinking there's no way the story would have made it this far were there not some there there.

    MsCreant -> chunga , Mar 19, 2017 12:55 PM

    I have wondered if some of the strategy is to keep him on the run, on the defensive, so that if he does go after some of the elite who need to go down for their crimes, that it will be framed as a dictator abusing his power, engaged in partisan politics.

    I wonder if he can go after them at all without looking like Mussolini?

    chunga -> MsCreant , Mar 19, 2017 1:07 PM

    Guys like Schiff, Schumer, and Blitzer will say that but they hate Trump no matter what.

    Trump's deplorable supporters know the score and will criticize if he doesn't go after them hard and now is a perfect opportunity. It was the Dummycrats who demanded this investigation but want the scope restricted to Russia, and Russia only. And the rEpublicans won't bring this up either because they suck too.

    The first rule of Swamp Club is you DO NOT talk about Anthony Weiner's laptop.

    Jubal Early -> chunga , Mar 19, 2017 1:46 PM

    "Guys like Schiff, Schumer, and Blitzer will say that but they hate Trump no matter what."

    This whole "jew media hates Trump" meme is starting to put off a foul stench. For one thing Trump has yet to do anything to stop this war for greater Israel. Or take this latest leak/Russian collusion news. After months of bluster, its a nothing burger. Is Trump really made of that much teflon, or is this all a show for the goyim and all the ignorant jews.

    Just keep on scrolling. It really is starting to look like Trump is a crypto jew:

    http://thezog.info/who-controls-donald-trump/

    Lurk Skywatcher -> kellys_eye , Mar 19, 2017 12:27 PM

    Baseless accusations to try and draw attention away from what the Dems actually DID, with evidence and all.

    Libtards wreck everything they touch, even the hard work of theorists who until recently achieved an amazing level of success in converting conspiracys into fact.

    DaddyO -> Shemp 4 Victory , Mar 19, 2017 12:07 PM

    <- They'll cling to the comfort of their illusions ->

    Isn't delusions a better word choice?

    There's a part of me that wants the tide to change quickly, for the intel and deep state apparatus pendulum to swing back the other way.

    This slow motion train wreck is wreaking havoc on my libertarian leanings. I keep hoping against hope for a dramatic event like indictments and perp walks.

    The best outcome would be the elimination of the many 3 letter agencies that have become pygmalian.

    DaddyO

    Giant Meteor -> DaddyO , Mar 19, 2017 12:41 PM

    Yes, delusion, due to the illusion ...

    Madness .. in short

    Pathologic insanity if ya wanna go clinical

    Giant Meteor -> Canary Paint , Mar 19, 2017 12:24 PM

    Most reasonable people are sickened by this entire shit show, feel they have no say, nor control. As always it is mostly a partisan echo chamber, while the real events take on a life of their own. The great many, the unwashed masses are merely riding on the crazy train, and the reality is could give two shits. Other than that, another percentage spits back up what they are told on the tee vee .

    Yes, this paints a bleak picture, but there you have it.

    Giant Meteor -> Automatic Choke , Mar 19, 2017 1:09 PM

    Sure its been goin on forever. Partisan head games, lying, spying, stealing, cheating, theft, deep state parlor tricks, hat tricks, etc. all that .. I didn't say the game nor human beings were / was invented yesterday, and of course you're spot on about glimpsing past the curtain, thank you interwebs. I am merely saying, the depth of of problem, the extent, is becoming increasingly "larger" by degrees of magnitude, as will the eventual blow off top in my opinion, and also the blowback, I would imagine ..

    Obviously I could be completely wrong on this and things will just swim along such as they are, forever ..

    TheLastTrump -> Shemp 4 Victory , Mar 19, 2017 1:08 PM

    That IS what they say about Trump voters you know ....

    Watched more media this am, Trump kicked their ass into a puddle with this Obama wiretapping charge. Totally bitch slapped them. Now he's made Merkel & the EU & G20 look stupid along with the media.

    post turtle saver -> Shemp 4 Victory , Mar 19, 2017 2:30 PM

    it was a lie from the beginning

    HRC and Soros should be in jail

    if it comes to it, former President Obama should be in jail... probably has too mucn plausible deniability to shield him, but where there's smoke there's fire

    if I were Trump D.C. would be undergoing a serious witch hunt as we speak... the people who did this need to do time and the lying lapdog 'media' needs to be sanctioned

    fbazzrea -> DirtySanchez , Mar 19, 2017 12:29 PM

    should be on the front lines of the war with Russia.

    what war with Russia?

    chubbar -> fbazzrea , Mar 19, 2017 12:43 PM

    We start a war with Russia, we'll all be on the "front line". The retarded snowflakes don't even know that they are supporting this effort to start a war with Russia.

    az_patriot , Mar 19, 2017 12:00 PM

    ...and the liberal snowflakes and their puppets in the "news" media will run from this story like a vampire from garlic. Anything that proves them wrong or might in any way bolster Trump is bad medicine for them...

    [Mar 18, 2017] America (Bombs) First

    Mar 18, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    anne : March 18, 2017 at 10:08 AM , 2017 at 10:08 AM
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/843109953422483458

    Glenn Greenwald‏ @ggreenwald

    Trump Administration Ousts UN Official to Protect Israel From Criticism: a move his own DoD Chief recognizes is dangerous

    https://theintercept.com/2017/03/18/trump-administration-ousts-un-official-to-protect-israel-from-criticism/

    7:40 AM - 18 Mar 2017

    anne -> anne... , March 18, 2017 at 10:09 AM
    https://www.unescwa.org/sites/www.unescwa.org/files/publications/files/israeli-practices-palestinian-people-apartheid-occupation-english.pdf

    2017

    Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid: Palestine and the Israeli Occupation
    By United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia

    Executive Summary

    This report concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law.

    The analysis in this report rests on the same body of international human rights law and principles that reject anti-Semitism and other racially discriminatory ideologies, including: the Charter of the United Nations (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965). The report relies for its definition of apartheid primarily on article II of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973, hereinafter the Apartheid Convention):

    The term "the crime of apartheid", which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.

    Although the term "apartheid" was originally associated with the specific instance of South Africa, it now represents a species of crime against humanity under customary international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, according to which:

    "The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

    Against that background, this report reflects the expert consensus that the prohibition of apartheid is universally applicable and was not rendered moot by the collapse of apartheid in South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia).

    The legal approach to the matter of apartheid adopted by this report should not be confused with usage of the term in popular discourse as an expression of opprobrium. Seeing apartheid as discrete acts and practices (such as the "apartheid wall"), a phenomenon generated by anonymous structural conditions like capitalism ("economic apartheid"), or private social behaviour on the part of certain racial groups towards others (social racism) may have its place in certain contexts. However, this report anchors its definition of apartheid in international law, which carries with it responsibilities for States, as specified in international instruments.

    The choice of evidence is guided by the Apartheid Convention, which sets forth that the crime of apartheid consists of discrete inhuman acts, but that such acts acquire the status of crimes against humanity only if they intentionally serve the core purpose of racial domination. The Rome Statute specifies in its definition the presence of an "institutionalized regime" serving the "intention" of racial domination. Since "purpose" and "intention" lie at the core of both definitions, this report examines factors ostensibly separate from the Palestinian dimension - especially, the doctrine of Jewish statehood as expressed in law and the design of Israeli State institutions - to establish beyond doubt the presence of such a core purpose.

    That the Israeli regime is designed for this core purpose was found to be evident in the body of laws, only some of which are discussed in the report for reasons of scope. One prominent example is land policy. The Israeli Basic Law (Constitution) mandates that land held by the State of Israel, the Israeli Development Authority or the Jewish National Fund shall not be transferred in any manner, placing its management permanently under their authority. The State Property Law of 1951 provides for the reversion of property (including land) to the State in any area "in which the law of the State of Israel applies". The Israel Lands Authority (ILA) manages State land, which accounts for 93 per cent of the land within the internationally recognized borders of Israel and is by law closed to use, development or ownership by non-Jews. Those laws reflect the concept of "public purpose" as expressed in the Basic Law. Such laws may be changed by Knesset vote, but the Basic Law: Knesset prohibits any political party from challenging that public purpose. Effectively, Israeli law renders opposition to racial domination illegal.

    Demographic engineering is another area of policy serving the purpose of maintaining Israel as a Jewish State. Most well known is Israeli law conferring on Jews worldwide the right to enter Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship regardless of their countries of origin and whether or not they can show links to Israel-Palestine, while withholding any comparable right from Palestinians, including those with documented ancestral homes in the country. The World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency are vested with legal authority as agencies of the State of Israel to facilitate Jewish immigration and preferentially serve the interests of Jewish citizens in matters ranging from land use to public development planning and other matters deemed vital to Jewish statehood. Some laws involving demographic engineering are expressed in coded language, such as those that allow Jewish councils to reject applications for residence from Palestinian citizens. Israeli law normally allows spouses of Israeli citizens to relocate to Israel but uniquely prohibits this option in the case of Palestinians from the occupied territory or beyond. On a far larger scale, it is a matter of Israeli policy to reject the return of any Palestinian refugees and exiles (totalling some six million people) to territory under Israeli control.

    Two additional attributes of a systematic regime of racial domination must be present to qualify the regime as an instance of apartheid. The first involves the identification of the oppressed persons as belonging to a specific "racial group". This report accepts the definition of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of "racial discrimination" as "any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life". On that basis, this report argues that in the geopolitical context of Palestine, Jews and Palestinians can be considered "racial groups". Furthermore, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is cited expressly in the Apartheid Convention.

    The second attribute is the boundary and character of the group or groups involved. The status of the Palestinians as a people entitled to exercise the right of self-determination has been legally settled, most authoritatively by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its 2004 advisory opinion on Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. On that basis, the report examines the treatment by Israel of the Palestinian people as a whole, considering the distinct circumstances of geographic and juridical fragmentation of the Palestinian people as a condition imposed by Israel. (Annex II addresses the issue of a proper identification of the "country" responsible for the denial of Palestinian rights under international law.)

    This report finds that the strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people is the principal method by which Israel imposes an apartheid regime. It first examines how the history of war, partition, de jure and de facto annexation and prolonged occupation in Palestine has led to the Palestinian people being divided into different geographic regions administered by distinct sets of law. This fragmentation operates to stabilize the Israeli regime of racial domination over the Palestinians and to weaken the will and capacity of the Palestinian people to mount a unified and effective resistance. Different methods are deployed depending on where Palestinians live. This is the core means by which Israel enforces apartheid and at the same time impedes international recognition of how the system works as a complementary whole to comprise an apartheid regime.

    Since 1967, Palestinians as a people have lived in what the report refers to as four "domains", in which the fragments of the Palestinian population are ostensibly treated differently but share in common the racial oppression that results from the apartheid regime. Those domains are:

    1. Civil law, with special restrictions, governing Palestinians who live as citizens of Israel;

    2. Permanent residency law governing Palestinians living in the city of Jerusalem;

    3. Military law governing Palestinians, including those in refugee camps, living since 1967 under conditions of belligerent occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip;

    4. Policy to preclude the return of Palestinians, whether refugees or exiles, living outside territory under Israel's control....

    geoff : , March 18, 2017 at 10:25 AM
    "America (Bombs) First"

    http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/us-state-department-approves-resumption-of-weapons-sales-to-saudi-arabia-1.1990944


    The proposal from the State Department would reverse a decision made late in the Obama administration to suspend the sale of precision guided munitions to Riyadh, which leads a mostly Arab coalition conducting air strikes against Iran-backed Al Houthi rebels in Yemen.
    Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's approval this week of the measure, which officials say needs White House backing to go into effect, provides an early indication of the new administration's more Saudi-friendly approach to the conflict in Yemen, and a sign of its more hawkish stance on Iran.
    It also signals a break with the more conservative approach of Obama's administration about US involvement in the conflict.
    The move takes place as the Trump administration considers its approach to the Yemeni war, which has pitted US and Saudi-backed Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi against an alliance of ousted Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and Al Houthi rebels.


    ...a winning strategy so far. 15 years into the GWOT, the only light at the end of the tunnel is generated by IEDs.

    [Mar 17, 2017] Sean Spicer just suggested that Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump

    Notable quotes:
    "... Britain is one of the so-called "Five Eyes," a group of five English-speaking countries including the United States, which engage in close and intensive collaboration and intelligence sharing. Even within that context the United States and Britain have an unusually tight relationship. In the words of Stephen Lander, a former head of Britain's MI5, relations are so close that "consumers [of intelligence] in both capitals seldom know which country generated either the access or the product itself." ..."
    "... Some people writing on intelligence and surveillance note that close working relations like this can allow intelligence agencies to evade domestic controls. ..."
    "... The Five Eyes collaboration appears to extend the NSA's surveillance capabilities, giving the agency a way to spy on Americans without technically breaking US laws that would otherwise prohibit such spying. Edward Snowden described the Five Eyes as a "supra-national intelligence organization that doesn't answer to the laws of its own countries." In other words, if US law doesn't protect the privacy rights of British citizens, and British laws don't protect the rights of Americans, then they can just spy on us, we'll spy on them, and our intelligence agencies will just swap information. This evasion of domestic privacy laws would enable essentially unlimited spying unaffected by either collection or usage rules. ..."
    "... President Trump is already engaged in an unprecedented battle with large segments of his own intelligence community. Spicer's statement internationalizes the dispute. ..."
    Mar 17, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    im1dc : March 16, 2017 at 04:45 PM , 2017 at 04:45 PM
    Really? This WH is unhinged from all known and verifiable reality and a clear and present danger to our national security, peace, and prospertiy, imo, of course

    "Sean Spicer just suggested that Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump. Not so much"

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/16/sean-spicer-just-suggested-that-obama-used-british-intelligence-to-spy-on-trump-not-so-much/

    "Sean Spicer just suggested that Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump. Not so much"

    By *Henry Farrell...March 16, 2017...7:12 PM

    "In his daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer just repeated a claim that President Barack Obama had used British spies to surveil President Trump. After laying out a number of different media sources which Spicer suggested supported President Trump's contentions that he was wiretapped, he concluded:

    Last, on Fox News on March 14th, Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement – quote – Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI, and he didn't use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ. What is that? It's the initials for the British intelligence spying agency. So simply by having two people saying to them the president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump's conversations, involving President-elect Trump, he's able to get it and there's no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common sense together, this leads to a lot.

    This is an explosive accusation.

    What's GCHQ?

    GCHQ - Government Communications Headquarters - is Britain's equivalent of the National Security Agency. Like the NSA, it engages in extensive international surveillance. It furthermore has a close relationship with the United States. Britain is one of the so-called "Five Eyes," a group of five English-speaking countries including the United States, which engage in close and intensive collaboration and intelligence sharing. Even within that context the United States and Britain have an unusually tight relationship. In the words of Stephen Lander, a former head of Britain's MI5, relations are so close that "consumers [of intelligence] in both capitals seldom know which country generated either the access or the product itself."

    Close collaboration can lead to temptation

    Some people writing on intelligence and surveillance note that close working relations like this can allow intelligence agencies to evade domestic controls. Jennifer Granick, in her new Cambridge University Press book, American Spies: Modern Surveillance, Why You Should Care, and What To Do About It, notes that Five Eyes countries aren't supposed to spy on each other's citizens. However, she says that the NSA has prepared policies that would allow it to spy on Five Eyes citizens without permission. She furthermore suggests that:

    The Five Eyes collaboration appears to extend the NSA's surveillance capabilities, giving the agency a way to spy on Americans without technically breaking US laws that would otherwise prohibit such spying. Edward Snowden described the Five Eyes as a "supra-national intelligence organization that doesn't answer to the laws of its own countries." In other words, if US law doesn't protect the privacy rights of British citizens, and British laws don't protect the rights of Americans, then they can just spy on us, we'll spy on them, and our intelligence agencies will just swap information. This evasion of domestic privacy laws would enable essentially unlimited spying unaffected by either collection or usage rules.

    Granick notes that if there are rules that would protect Americans from Five Eyes spying, or about the ways that the NSA, FBI or CIA could use information from foreign partners, we haven't seen them.

    But don't jump to conclusions

    Granick's arguments point to some important potential problems in close spying relationships. If there are rules to prevent the abuses that she fears, we don't know what they are. However, her concerns are with surveillance of ordinary citizens. It is wildly unlikely that U.S. and British intelligence agencies would secretly collaborate to monitor a U.S. presidential candidate. The political risks to both sides would be quite enormous. While critics like Granick and Snowden worry that intelligence agencies have too much unchecked power, they happily acknowledge that most members of the intelligence community are motivated by a sincere concern for American well-being. If the United States was really using foreign intelligence as a cut-out to spy illegally on the Republican candidate for president, all it would take would be one sincere objector or one worried conservative to create a scandal that would dwarf Watergate. Nor would British intelligence have any obvious motivation to collaborate in such an arrangement. The British government knows that it will have to deal with both Democratic and Republican administrations, and would have no appetite for an intrigue which would have little obvious benefit to Britain, but which could cripple the U.S.-British relationship for decades.

    Nor is there any actual proof

    Judge Napolitano, a Fox News television personality, does not seem to have good evidence for these extraordinary claims. As he describes it on his own website:

    Sources have told Fox News that the British foreign surveillance service, the Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, most likely provided Obama with transcripts of Trump's calls. The NSA has given GCHQ full 24/7 access to its computers, so GCHQ - a foreign intelligence agency that, like the NSA, operates outside our constitutional norms - has the digital versions of all electronic communications made in America in 2016, including Trump's. So by bypassing all American intelligence services, Obama would have had access to what he wanted with no Obama administration fingerprints.

    This statement is notable both for being strategically vague and for not understanding what the NSA does. Spicer quotes a strong claim by Napolitano on Fox News that Obama "went outside the chain of command" and "used GCHQ." Napolitano is much more cautious in the print version, where he claims that unnamed intelligence sources said that GCHQ "most likely" provided transcripts. That's not a claim as to fact, made by someone who claims to have seen the transcripts or had first-hand knowledge of the relationship. It is a (in my opinion highly dubious) suggestion as to plausibility, made by someone who does not claim to have direct knowledge of what happened.

    Furthermore, Napolitano doesn't seem to have any very strong understanding of the actual controversies between the defenders and critics of modern surveillance law. For example, Napolitano seems to believe that GCHQ is able to generate transcripts because it has "full access" to NSA computers, which in turn " has the digital versions of all electronic communications made in America in 2016, including Trump's." In fact, if the GCHQ were looking for data on American communications, it would be far better advised to look to its own resources than to the NSA. While critics argue that the NSA collects too much 'incidental' data and metadata on Americans, they do not claim that the NSA has "the digital versions" (whatever that means) of all American communications, or anything like it. Napolitano is not a sound source for explosive political claims.

    This statement will hurt intelligence cooperation

    President Trump is already engaged in an unprecedented battle with large segments of his own intelligence community. Spicer's statement internationalizes the dispute. U.S. intelligence partners - in the Five Eyes and elsewhere - are already nervous about sharing sensitive intelligence with the Trump administration, since they do not know how it will be used or who it will be shared with. This accusation will greatly exacerbate these fears, suggesting that the Trump administration does not prioritize continued close collaboration with its intelligence partners. Both critics and defenders of cross-national intelligence collaboration agree that there has been an extraordinarily high level of trust among a few select intelligence agencies since World War II. The "Five Eyes" was a club that other states clamored to get into (during the Snowden controversy, Germany tried to use revelations about U.S. spying as a lever to open the door to German participation in the Five Eyes). Now club members have much less reason to trust each other and membership looks substantially less attractive."

    *Henry Farrell is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He works on a variety of topics, including trust, the politics of the Internet and international and comparative political economy.

    libezkova -> im1dc... , March 16, 2017 at 09:23 PM
    "Sean Spicer just suggested that Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump. Not so much"

    Looks like British and Dutch. And not necessary Obama himself.

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-soft-coup-or-preserving-our-democracy/?mc_cid=2f82659492&mc_eid=32cf78e7e5

    == quote ==
    The campaign to link Trump to Russia also increased in intensity, including statements by multiple former and current intelligence agency heads regarding the reality of the Russian threat and the danger of electing a president who would ignore that reality. It culminated in ex-CIA Acting Director Michael Morell's claim that Trump was "an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

    British and Dutch intelligence were apparently discreetly queried regarding possible derogatory intelligence on the Trump campaign's links to Russia and they responded by providing information detailing meetings in Europe.

    Hundreds of self-described GOP foreign policy "experts" signed letters stating that they opposed Trump's candidacy and the mainstream media was unrelentingly hostile.

    Leading Republicans refused to endorse Trump and some, like Senators John McCain, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, cited his connections to Russia.

    [Mar 17, 2017] The deep state will move to overthrow trump there is a secret agenda to allow a crisis and get rid of the president

    Video
    Mar 17, 2017 | www.shtfplan.com

    [Mar 17, 2017] The Democrats Trump-Russia Conspiracy Campaign Collapses

    Notable quotes:
    "... From MSNBC politics shows to town hall meetings across the country, the overarching issue for the Democratic Party's base since Trump's victory has been Russia, often suffocating attention for other issues. This fixation has persisted even though it has no chance to sink the Trump presidency unless it is proven that high levels of the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Kremlin to manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election - a claim for which absolutely no evidence has thus far been presented. ..."
    "... The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies - just as right-wing media polemicists did after both Bill Clinton and Obama were elected ..."
    "... now millions of partisan soldiers absolutely convinced of a Trump/Russia conspiracy for which, at least as of now, there is no evidence. And they are all waiting for the day, which they regard as inevitable and imminent, when this theory will be proven and Trump will be removed. ..."
    Mar 17, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    Is sanity finally returning? After weeks of ranting and raving about Russian "interference" and Putin-Trump conspiracies, so-called 'intelligence' agencies and high-ranking Democrats are quietly walking back their rhetoric and managing their base's expectations - simply put: there's no 'there', there .

    'Moon of Alabama' reminds us that a while ago Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone warned: Why the Russia Story Is a Minefield for Democrats and the Media :

    If we engage in Times-style gilding of every lily the leakers throw our way, and in doing so build up a fever of expectations for a bombshell reveal, but there turns out to be no conspiracy – Trump will be pre-inoculated against all criticism for the foreseeable future.

    And now, as The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald writes , key Democratic officials are now warning their base not to expect ...

    From MSNBC politics shows to town hall meetings across the country, the overarching issue for the Democratic Party's base since Trump's victory has been Russia, often suffocating attention for other issues. This fixation has persisted even though it has no chance to sink the Trump presidency unless it is proven that high levels of the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Kremlin to manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election - a claim for which absolutely no evidence has thus far been presented.

    The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies - just as right-wing media polemicists did after both Bill Clinton and Obama were elected - that there are now millions of partisan soldiers absolutely convinced of a Trump/Russia conspiracy for which, at least as of now, there is no evidence. And they are all waiting for the day, which they regard as inevitable and imminent, when this theory will be proven and Trump will be removed.

    [Mar 16, 2017] Assange Claims Hillary, Intel Officials Quietly Pushing A Pence Takeover

    Mar 16, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Over the weekend we noted chatter that some saw Mike Pence as "the Deep State's insurance policy," and now, judging by tweets from Wikileaks' Julian Assange, that may well be the Clinton/Intelligence Officials plan...

    Clinton stated privately this month that she is quietly pushing for a Pence takeover. She stated that Pence is predictable hence defeatable.

    - Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 14, 2017

    Adding that...

    Two IC officials close to Pence stated privately this month that they are planning on a Pence takeover. Did not state if Pence agrees.

    - Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 14, 2017

    As The Daily Caller notes, Assange's claims appear to come in response to reports that President Trump authorized the CIA to perform drone strikes on terrorists Monday evening...

    By handing unilateral power to the CIA over its drone strikes at this time White House signals that bullying, disloyalty & incompetence pays

    - Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 14, 2017

    As we concluded previously, if Trump doesn't adopt the Cold War 2.0 approach of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and is forced out of his own administration in the same manner as Flynn, it will become clear why once we learn who would replace him: Mike Pence.

    No matter what one makes of Trump - or his administration and the policies that have been initiated thus far - the fact remains that Trump won the U.S. election. The people working behind the scenes to oust him are not subject to democratic controls, nor are they working in the best interests of the American public. We are left to ask ourselves exactly how renewing relations with Russia – a nuclear power – could possibly endanger American lives.

    Either way, we are more or less left with two paths ahead of us.The firs t path involves Trump giving in and adopting an anti-Russian agenda, as is already apparent in his decision to send more ground troops to Syria alongside Saudi troops , who will intentionally oppose the Syrian regime (a close ally of Russia). The second involves the possibility of another direct coup within the Trump administration, this time one that may ultimately force Trump out of the White House so he can be replaced by Mike Pence, a war hawk who will be more than happy to do the job Hillary Clinton wanted to do.

    froze25 , Mar 14, 2017 12:17 PM

    Groan... Start charging people for sedition already. Although Sessions cleaning house was a good start, we will see where this goes.

    InTheLandOfTheBlind -> froze25 , Mar 14, 2017 12:17 PM

    Assange gets the no shit sherlock award. Hang the traitors

    BullyBearish -> InTheLandOfTheBlind , Mar 14, 2017 12:21 PM

    NOTHING worse than a zionist-enabling evangelical christian neocon...they are the pawns that keep this $hitshow going...

    Logan 5 -> wildbad , Mar 14, 2017 1:41 PM

    "color me VERY doubtful on this scenario playing out"

    Not so fast...

    Unless you haven't noticed, Trump has surrounded himself with Jared Kushner & Goldman types...

    Let's face it, nobody around here wanted HRC to win, but they backed Trump more on a ANYTHING BUT HILLARY notion, plus, a [DRAIN THE SWAMP = HOPE & CHANGE] ideaology.

    Trump is, and always has been, a 'narcissist' in his good moments... It's hard for me to believe he even wants this job... Many of his appointments have been suspect (& the good ones like Flynn have been shown the door)... It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Trump was just 'satisfied that he won' which amounts to a checked box on his personal bucket list.

    I would not be surprised AT ALL to see this scenario have some success... JUNK me all you want... The end result would be that this country is, most truly, fucked beyond all possible return...

    If this were to end up happening, without a resultant uprising & civil war... Then we're truly repeating what Solzhenitsyn warned against.

    chubbar -> NidStyles , Mar 14, 2017 2:43 PM

    Here is another crooked FBI story that is just breaking. If true, Trump needs to clean that outhouse as well!!!!

    http://truepundit.com/exclusive-fbis-own-political-terror-plot-deputy-director-and-fbi-brass-secretly-conspired-to-wage-coup-against-flynn-trump-2/

    "Mere days before Gen. Michael Flynn was sacked as national security advisor, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe gathered more than a dozen of his top FBI disciples to plot how to ruin Flynn's aspiring political career and manufacture evidence to derail President Donald Trump, according to FBI sources.

    McCabe, the second highest ranking FBI official, emphatically declared at the invite-only gathering with raised voice: "Fuck Flynn and then we Fuck Trump," according to direct sources. Many of his top lieutenants applauded and cheered such rhetoric. A scattered few did not.

    This was one of several such meetings held in seclusion among key FBI leaders since Trump was elected president, FBI sources confirm. At the congregation where McCabe went off the political rails and vowed to destroy Flynn and Trump, there were as many as 16 top FBI officials, inside intelligence sources said. No lower-level agents or support personnel were present."..........

    froze25 -> Pinto Currency , Mar 14, 2017 12:31 PM

    I believe you are right and the Military is behind Trump, the military does have a intelligence branch that rivals the CIA my guess is that we are seeing a battle between the Military and the CIA

    Jayda1850 -> froze25 , Mar 14, 2017 12:36 PM

    Then why would Trump give the CIA the power to commit drone strikes, something that was only supposed to be done by the military?

    froze25 -> Jayda1850 , Mar 14, 2017 12:41 PM

    They already had the power, Obama gave it to them. My guess is they came to him, said we have a target of opportunity Trump probably looked to his advisers in his cabinet and they agreed that it should be done and then he said, "do it". My guess is that the CIA is big enough that the people that do the Drone strikes aren't the same agents that are undermining him. Probably not even in the same branch or division.

    Jayda1850 -> froze25 , Mar 14, 2017 12:57 PM

    They didn't have the power, Obama was the one who curtailed it. They could pick targets, but the military were the ones who pulled the trigger. Trump handed over the kill order to the CIA

    http://thehill.com/policy/defense/323808-trump-gives-cia-power-to-launch...

    [Mar 16, 2017] A Soft Coup, or Preserving Our Democracy by Philip Giraldi

    A rare even-handed analysis of Russian leaks and Anti-Trump campaign in mass media. Intelligence agencies became political actors, like is typical for color revolution. The only difference is that now they are acting is concert with neoliberal media against their own elected administration.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Coup or legitimate political pushback depends on which side of the fence one is standing on ..."
    "... the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies plus judicious leaks of classified information and innuendo to the media to sabotage Trump during and after the campaign. This was largely done by spreading malicious claims about the campaign's associates, linking them to criminal activity and even suggesting that they had been subverted to support Russian interests. ..."
    "... The intention of the Obama/Clinton campaign is to explain the election loss in terms acceptable to the Democratic Party, to hamstring and delegitimize the new administration coming in, and to bring about the resignation or impeachment of Donald Trump. ..."
    "... It is in all intents and purposes a coup, though without military intervention, as it seeks to overturn a completely legal and constitutional election. ..."
    "... Also in the summer, a dossier on Trump compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele that was commissioned initially by a Republican enemy of Trump and was later picked up and paid for by the Democratic National Committee began to make the rounds in Washington, though it was not surfaced in the media until January. ..."
    "... It contained serious but largely unsubstantiated allegations about Trump's connection to Russia as a businessman. It also included accounts of some bizarre sexual escapades. ..."
    "... In October, some sources claim that the FBI resubmitted its FISA request in a "narrowed down" form which excluded Donald Trump personally but did note that the server was "possibly related" to the Trump campaign. It was approved and surveillance of the server on national security grounds rather than criminal investigatory grounds may have begun. Bear in mind that Trump was already the Republican nominee and was only weeks away from the election and this is possibly what Trump was referring to when he expressed his outrage that the government had "wiretapped" Trump Tower under orders from the White House. ..."
    "... Trump has a point about being "tapped" because the NSA basically records nearly everything. But as president he should already know that and he presumably approves of it. ..."
    "... Former George W. Bush White House Attorney General Michael Mukasey provided a view contrary to that of Clapper, saying that "there was surveillance, and that it was conducted at the behest of the Justice Department through the FISA court." FBI Director Comey also entered the discussion, claiming in very specific and narrow language that no phones at Trump Tower were "tapped." ..."
    "... The campaign to link Trump to Russia also increased in intensity, including statements by multiple former and current intelligence agency heads regarding the reality of the Russian threat and the danger of electing a president who would ignore that reality. It culminated in ex-CIA Acting Director Michael Morell's claim that Trump was "an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." ..."
    "... British and Dutch intelligence were apparently discreetly queried regarding possible derogatory intelligence on the Trump campaign's links to Russia and they responded by providing information detailing meetings in Europe. ..."
    "... President Obama and the first lady also increasingly joined in the fray as the election neared, campaigning aggressively for Hillary. President Obama called Trump's "flattery" of Vladimir Putin "out of step" with U.S. norms. ..."
    "... Also on January 6, two weeks before the inauguration, Obama reportedly "expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government's 18 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections." This made it easier for derogatory or speculative information on individuals to be shared or leaked. The New York Times interpreted this to be a move intended to "preserve" information relating to the investigation of the Trump campaign's Russian ties. In this case, wide dissemination was viewed as a way to keep it from being deleted or hidden and to enable further investigation of what took place. ..."
    "... Two weeks later, just before the inauguration, The New York Times reported that the FBI, CIA, NSA and the Treasury Department were actively investigating several Trump campaign associates for their Russian ties. There were also reports of a "multiagency working group to coordinate the investigations across the government." ..."
    "... Leaks to the media on February 8 revealed that there had been late December telephone conversations between national security advisor designate Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak. The transcripts were apparently leaked by senior intelligence officials who had access to such highly restricted information, ..."
    "... The Attorney General Jeff Sessions saga, which appeared in the media on March 1, is still ongoing. Sessions is being accused of lying to Congress over two contacts with the Russian ambassador. No one is claiming that he did anything inappropriate with Kislyak and he denies that he lied, arguing that the question was ambiguous, as was his response. He has agreed to recuse himself from any investigation of Russia-Trump campaign ties. ..."
    "... Soon thereafter, also on March 1, The New York Times published a major article which I found frightening due to its revelation regarding executive power . It touched on Sessions, but was more concerned with what was taking place over Russia and Trump. It was entitled "Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking." It confirmed the previous European intelligence service involvement in the Trump-Russia investigation and also exposed the long-suspected U.S. intelligence agency interception of telephone communications of Russian officials "within the Kremlin," revealing that they had been in contact with Trump representatives. ..."
    "... The Times article also described how in early December Obama had ordered the intelligence community to conduct a full assessment of Russian activity relating to the election. Soon thereafter the intelligence agencies acting under White House instruction were pushing Trump-Russia classified information through the system and into analytic documents so it would be accessible to a wide readership after the inauguration while at the same time burying the actual sources to make it difficult to either identify them or even assess the reliability of the information. Some of the information even went to European allies. The State Department reportedly sent a large cache of classified documents relating to Russian attempts to interfere in elections worldwide over to Senator Ben Cardin, a leading critic of Trump and Russia, shortly before the inauguration. ..."
    "... The Times article claimed, relying on anonymous sources, that President Obama was not directly involved in the efforts to collect and disseminate the information on Trump and the Russians. Those initiatives were reportedly directed by others, notably some political appointees working in the White House. I for one find that assertion hard to believe. ..."
    "... Barack Obama is also reported to be setting up a war room in his new home in Washington D.C. headed by former consigliere Valerie Jarrett to "lead the fight and strategy to topple Trump." And Hillary Clinton has been engaged in developing a viable opposition to Trump while still seething about Putin. Two congressional inquiries are pending into the Russian connection and the FBI investigation, insofar as can be determined, is still active. ..."
    "... The actions undertaken by the lame duck Obama administration were certainly politically motivated, but there also might have been genuine concern over the alleged Russian threat. The Obama administration's actions were quite likely intended to hobble the new administration in general as Trump would be nervous about the reliability of his own intelligence and law enforcement agencies while also being constantly engaged in fighting leaks, but they might also have been designed to narrow the new president's options when dealing with Russia. ..."
    "... It should also be observed that all of the investigations by both the government and the media have come up with almost nothing, ..."
    "... I would suggest that if there continue to be damaging leaks coming from inside the government intended to cripple the White House the possibility that there is a genuine conspiracy in place begins to look more attractive. ..."
    "... If, however, it turns out that the intelligence agencies have indeed been actively collaborating with the White House in working against opposition politicians, the whole tale assumes a particularly dangerous aspect as there is no real mechanism in place to prevent that from occurring again. The tool that Obama has placed in Trump's hands might just as easily be used against the Democrats in 2020. ..."
    Mar 16, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
    ... ... ...

    Coup or legitimate political pushback depends on which side of the fence one is standing on. There are two competing narratives to choose from and there is inevitably considerable gray area in between depending on what turns out to be true.

    • One narrative, coming from the Trump camp, is that President Obama used the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies plus judicious leaks of classified information and innuendo to the media to sabotage Trump during and after the campaign. This was largely done by spreading malicious claims about the campaign's associates, linking them to criminal activity and even suggesting that they had been subverted to support Russian interests. As of this date, none of the "Manchurian candidate" allegations have been supported by evidence because they are not true. The intention of the Obama/Clinton campaign is to explain the election loss in terms acceptable to the Democratic Party, to hamstring and delegitimize the new administration coming in, and to bring about the resignation or impeachment of Donald Trump.

      It is in all intents and purposes a coup, though without military intervention, as it seeks to overturn a completely legal and constitutional election.

    • The contrary viewpoint is that team Trump's ties to Russia constitute an existential national security threat, that the Russians did steal information relevant to the campaign, did directly involve themselves in the election to discredit U.S. democracy and elect Trump, and will now benefit from the process, thereby doing grave damage to our country and its interests. Adversarial activity undertaken since the election is necessary, designed to make sure the new president does not alter or eliminate the documentary record in intelligence files regarding what took place and to limit Trump's ability to make serious errors in any recalibration with Moscow. In short, Trump is a dangerous man who might be in bed with an enemy power and has to be watched closely and restrained. Doing so is necessary to preserve our democratic system.

    This is what we know or think we know described chronologically:

    The sources all agree that in early 2016 the FBI developed an interest in an internet server in Trump Tower based on allegations of possible criminal activity, which in this case might have meant suspicion of involvement in Russian mafia activity. The interest in the server derived from an apparent link to Alfa Bank of Moscow and possibly one other Russian bank, regarding which the metadata (presumably collected either by the Bureau or NSA) showed frequent and high-volume two-way communications. It is not clear if a normal criminal warrant was actually sought and approved and/or acted upon but, according to The New York Times , the FBI somehow determined that the server did not have "any nefarious purpose" and was probably used for marketing or might even have been generating spam.

    The examination of the server was only one part of what was taking place, with The New York Times also reporting that, "For much of the summer, the FBI pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats ." The article also noted that, "Hillary Clinton's supporters pushed for these investigations," which were clearly endorsed by President Obama.

    In June, with Trump about to be nominated, some sources claim that the FBI sought a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court to tap into the same Trump Tower server and collect information on the American users of the system. FISA warrants relate to investigations of foreign intelligence agents but they also permit inadvertent collection of information on the suspect's American contacts. In this case the name "Trump" was reportedly part of the request. Even though FISA warrants are routinely approved, this request was turned down for being too broad in its scope.

    Also in the summer, a dossier on Trump compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele that was commissioned initially by a Republican enemy of Trump and was later picked up and paid for by the Democratic National Committee began to make the rounds in Washington, though it was not surfaced in the media until January. The dossier was being worked on in June and by one account was turned over to the FBI in Rome by Steele in July . It later was passed to John McCain in November and was presented to FBI Director James Comey for action. It contained serious but largely unsubstantiated allegations about Trump's connection to Russia as a businessman. It also included accounts of some bizarre sexual escapades.

    At roughly the same time the Clinton campaign began a major effort to connect Trump with Russia as a way to discredit him and his campaign and to deflect the revelations of campaign malfeasance coming from WikiLeaks. In late August, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wrote to Comey and demanded that the "connections between the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign" be investigated. In September, Senator Diane Feinstein and Representative Adam Schiff of the Senate and House intelligence committees respectively publicly accused the Russians of meddling in the election "based on briefings we have received."

    In October, some sources claim that the FBI resubmitted its FISA request in a "narrowed down" form which excluded Donald Trump personally but did note that the server was "possibly related" to the Trump campaign. It was approved and surveillance of the server on national security grounds rather than criminal investigatory grounds may have begun. Bear in mind that Trump was already the Republican nominee and was only weeks away from the election and this is possibly what Trump was referring to when he expressed his outrage that the government had "wiretapped" Trump Tower under orders from the White House.

    Trump has a point about being "tapped" because the NSA basically records nearly everything. But as president he should already know that and he presumably approves of it.

    Several other sources dismiss the wiretap story as it has appeared in the media. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper "denied" on March 5 that there had been a FISA warrant authorizing surveillance of the Trump Tower server. He stated that there had never been any surveillance of Trump Tower "to my knowledge" because, if there had been a FISA warrant, he would have been informed. Critics immediately noted that Clapper has previously lied about surveillance issues and his testimony contradicts other evidence suggesting that there was a FISA warrant, though none of the sources appear to know if it was ever actually used. Former George W. Bush White House Attorney General Michael Mukasey provided a view contrary to that of Clapper, saying that "there was surveillance, and that it was conducted at the behest of the Justice Department through the FISA court." FBI Director Comey also entered the discussion, claiming in very specific and narrow language that no phones at Trump Tower were "tapped."

    The campaign to link Trump to Russia also increased in intensity, including statements by multiple former and current intelligence agency heads regarding the reality of the Russian threat and the danger of electing a president who would ignore that reality. It culminated in ex-CIA Acting Director Michael Morell's claim that Trump was "an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

    British and Dutch intelligence were apparently discreetly queried regarding possible derogatory intelligence on the Trump campaign's links to Russia and they responded by providing information detailing meetings in Europe. Hundreds of self-described GOP foreign policy "experts" signed letters stating that they opposed Trump's candidacy and the mainstream media was unrelentingly hostile. Leading Republicans refused to endorse Trump and some, like Senators John McCain, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, cited his connections to Russia.

    President Obama and the first lady also increasingly joined in the fray as the election neared, campaigning aggressively for Hillary. President Obama called Trump's "flattery" of Vladimir Putin "out of step" with U.S. norms.

    After the election, the drumbeat about Trump and Russia continued and even intensified. There was a 25-page report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on January 6 called "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections . " Four days later, this was followed by the publication of the 35-page report on Trump compiled by British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The ODNI report has been criticized as being long on conjecture and short on evidence while the British report is full of speculation and is basically unsourced. When the Steele dossier first appeared, it was assumed that it would be fact-checked by the FBI but, if that was ever done, it has not been made public.

    Also on January 6, two weeks before the inauguration, Obama reportedly "expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government's 18 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections." This made it easier for derogatory or speculative information on individuals to be shared or leaked. The New York Times interpreted this to be a move intended to "preserve" information relating to the investigation of the Trump campaign's Russian ties. In this case, wide dissemination was viewed as a way to keep it from being deleted or hidden and to enable further investigation of what took place.

    Two weeks later, just before the inauguration, The New York Times reported that the FBI, CIA, NSA and the Treasury Department were actively investigating several Trump campaign associates for their Russian ties. There were also reports of a "multiagency working group to coordinate the investigations across the government."

    Leaks to the media on February 8 revealed that there had been late December telephone conversations between national security advisor designate Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak. The transcripts were apparently leaked by senior intelligence officials who had access to such highly restricted information, presumably hold-overs from the Obama Administration, and Flynn was eventually forced to resign on February 13 for having lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the calls. For what it's worth, some at the CIA, FBI and State Department have been openly discussing and acknowledging that senior officers are behind the leaks. The State Department is reported to be particularly anti-Trump.

    One day after Flynn resigned The Times cited "four current and former officials" to claim that Trump campaign associates had had "repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials," but admitted that there was no evidence that the campaign had in any way been influenced by the Russians.

    The Attorney General Jeff Sessions saga, which appeared in the media on March 1, is still ongoing. Sessions is being accused of lying to Congress over two contacts with the Russian ambassador. No one is claiming that he did anything inappropriate with Kislyak and he denies that he lied, arguing that the question was ambiguous, as was his response. He has agreed to recuse himself from any investigation of Russia-Trump campaign ties.

    Soon thereafter, also on March 1, The New York Times published a major article which I found frightening due to its revelation regarding executive power . It touched on Sessions, but was more concerned with what was taking place over Russia and Trump. It was entitled "Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking." It confirmed the previous European intelligence service involvement in the Trump-Russia investigation and also exposed the long-suspected U.S. intelligence agency interception of telephone communications of Russian officials "within the Kremlin," revealing that they had been in contact with Trump representatives.

    The Times article also described how in early December Obama had ordered the intelligence community to conduct a full assessment of Russian activity relating to the election. Soon thereafter the intelligence agencies acting under White House instruction were pushing Trump-Russia classified information through the system and into analytic documents so it would be accessible to a wide readership after the inauguration while at the same time burying the actual sources to make it difficult to either identify them or even assess the reliability of the information. Some of the information even went to European allies. The State Department reportedly sent a large cache of classified documents relating to Russian attempts to interfere in elections worldwide over to Senator Ben Cardin, a leading critic of Trump and Russia, shortly before the inauguration.

    The Times article claimed, relying on anonymous sources, that President Obama was not directly involved in the efforts to collect and disseminate the information on Trump and the Russians. Those initiatives were reportedly directed by others, notably some political appointees working in the White House. I for one find that assertion hard to believe.

    The turmoil on Capitol Hill is matched by street rallies and demonstrations denouncing the Trump administration, with much of the focus on the alleged Russian connection. The similarities and ubiquity in the slogans, the "Resist" signs and the hashtags #notmypresident have led some to believe that at least a part of the activity is being funded and organized by progressive organizations that want Trump out. The name George Soros, a Hungarian billionaire and prominent democracy promoter, frequently comes up . Barack Obama is also reported to be setting up a war room in his new home in Washington D.C. headed by former consigliere Valerie Jarrett to "lead the fight and strategy to topple Trump." And Hillary Clinton has been engaged in developing a viable opposition to Trump while still seething about Putin. Two congressional inquiries are pending into the Russian connection and the FBI investigation, insofar as can be determined, is still active.

    If one were to come up with a summary of what the government might or might not have been doing over the past nine months concerning Trump and the Russians it would go something like this: FBI investigators looking for criminal activity connected to the Trump Tower server found nothing and then might have sought and eventually obtained a FISA issued warrant permitting them to keep looking on national security grounds. If that is so, the government could have been using the high-tech surveillance capabilities of the federal intelligence services to monitor the activity of an opposition political candidate. Additional information was undoubtedly collected on Trump and his associates' dealings with Russia using federal intelligence and law enforcement resources, and NSA guidelines were changed shortly before the inauguration so that much of the information thus obtained, normally highly restricted, could then be disseminated throughout the intelligence community and to other government agencies. This virtually guaranteed that it could not be deleted or hidden while also insuring that at least some of it would be leaked to the media.

    The actions undertaken by the lame duck Obama administration were certainly politically motivated, but there also might have been genuine concern over the alleged Russian threat. The Obama administration's actions were quite likely intended to hobble the new administration in general as Trump would be nervous about the reliability of his own intelligence and law enforcement agencies while also being constantly engaged in fighting leaks, but they might also have been designed to narrow the new president's options when dealing with Russia. Whether there is any intention to either delegitimize or bring down the Trump White House is, of course, unknowable unless you had the good fortune to be in the Oval Office when such options were possibly being discussed.

    It should also be observed that all of the investigations by both the government and the media have come up with almost nothing, at least insofar as the public has been allowed to see the evidence. Someone, widely presumed but not demonstrated to be in some way associated with the Russian government, hacked into the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The factual information was then passed to WikiLeaks, which denies that it came from a Russian source, and was gradually released starting in July. There has been a presumption that Moscow was either trying to influence the outcome of the election in support of Donald Trump or that it was trying to somehow subvert American democracy, but no unimpeachable evidence has as of yet been produced to support either hypothesis. The two senior Trump officials – Flynn and Sessions – who have been under the gun have not been pummeled because they did anything wrong vis-ŕ-vis the Russians -they did not - but because they have been accused of lying.

    So, whether there is some kind of coup in progress ultimately depends on your perspective and what you are willing to believe to be true. I would suggest that if there continue to be damaging leaks coming from inside the government intended to cripple the White House the possibility that there is a genuine conspiracy in place begins to look more attractive.

    And the possibility of impeachment is also not far off, as Trump is confronted by a hostile Democratic Party and numerous dissidents within the GOP ranks. But if nothing comes of it all beyond an extremely rough transition, the whole business might just be regarded as a particularly nasty bit of new style politics. If, however, it turns out that the intelligence agencies have indeed been actively collaborating with the White House in working against opposition politicians, the whole tale assumes a particularly dangerous aspect as there is no real mechanism in place to prevent that from occurring again. The tool that Obama has placed in Trump's hands might just as easily be used against the Democrats in 2020.

    Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

    [Mar 14, 2017] All Roads Lead Back to Brennan (wiretapping of Trump)

    Notable quotes:
    "... It is "our job," not Trump's, to "control exactly what people think," gasped MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski last month. This week's gasp from the media assumes a slightly different form and can be translated as: It is our job, not Trump's, to push stories about the government investigation of Trumpworld. ..."
    "... For months, the media, drawing upon criminal leaks from Obama holdovers, has been saying in effect: Trumpworld is under investigation for ties to Russia! Then Trump says essentially the same thing on Twitter and the media freaks out. ..."
    "... The Obama holdovers are denying the import of the very stories that they planted. ..."
    "... The Obama administration used half-baked (or, more likely, completely fabricated) information from some "foreign source" as the pretext to launch a clandestine fishing expedition against Trump during the election. ..."
    "... We live in a police state folks under the warrantless eavesdropping program. ..."
    Mar 14, 2017 | freerepublic.com
    From american spectator

    George Neumayr
    Posted on ‎3‎/‎6‎/‎2017‎ ‎4‎:‎42‎:‎04‎ ‎PM by RoosterRedux

    It is "our job," not Trump's, to "control exactly what people think," gasped MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski last month. This week's gasp from the media assumes a slightly different form and can be translated as: It is our job, not Trump's, to push stories about the government investigation of Trumpworld.

    For months, the media, drawing upon criminal leaks from Obama holdovers, has been saying in effect: Trumpworld is under investigation for ties to Russia! Then Trump says essentially the same thing on Twitter and the media freaks out.

    Why does the latter merit condemnation but not the former?

    Notice what is happening here: The Obama holdovers are denying the import of the very stories that they planted. Where did the liberal BBC's story (building on a story first reported by Heat Street) on intelligence agencies receiving a FISA court warrant to investigate Russian-Trumpworld ties come from? It came from a "senior member of the US intelligence community":

    On 15 October, the US secret intelligence court issued a warrant to investigate two Russian banks. This news was given to me by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community. He would never volunteer anything – giving up classified information would be illegal – but he would confirm or deny what I had heard from other sources.
    Notice on the Sunday talk shows that Obama's CIA director John Brennan did not appear. Yet he served as the genesis of this investigation, according to the BBC story:

    (Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...

    To: RoosterRedux

    As the author points out, here is the key:

    The Obama administration used half-baked (or, more likely, completely fabricated) information from some "foreign source" as the pretext to launch a clandestine fishing expedition against Trump during the election.

    Can't wait to see the application paperwork for the requested FISA orders!!

    gibsonguy ‎3‎/‎6‎/‎2017‎ ‎5‎:‎48‎:‎56‎ ‎PM

    To: RoosterRedux Don't want to start a separate thread for this and it is somewhat related.

    Listening to Hannity show today and William Binney was on and interviewed. Binney was a US Intelligence Official with the NSA who resigned in 2001 and turned whistleblower.

    I am paraphrasing but - He says phone, email, test, surveillance is routinely done on everyone with no warrant. He said they can go back for years and pull out the data.

    Please listen to Hannity at the top of the 3rd hour for details.

    We live in a police state folks under the warrantless eavesdropping program.

    [Mar 14, 2017] Trump tweeted earlier this month that President Barack Obama had ordered him to be wiretapped

    Vault 7 revelations now shed some light on the possibilities of a muti-step operations to get the court order. The absurdity of the situation is evident: acting POTUS complains about wiretapping by his predecessor who supposedly used one of intelligence agencies (supposedly CIA) for this operation. Being now a Commander in Chief.
    Ray McGovern who probably knows what he is talking about suggested that Obama might be scared of CIA Director Brennan ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGayl9uNW4A actually this is a very interesting interview)
    The following scheme looks plausible: Scapegoat Russians by hacking into DNC servers; create media hysteria about Russians; implicate Trump in connections to Russians; get court order for wiretapping on this ground
    Notable quotes:
    "... Just hours before he publicly responded last week to the Senate Intelligence Committee report accusing the Central Intelligence Agency of torture and deceit, John O. Brennan, the CIA's director, stopped by the White House to meet with President Obama. Ostensibly, he was there for an intelligence briefing. But the messages delivered later that day by the White House and Mr. Brennan were synchronized, even down to similar wording, and the larger import of the well-timed visit was hardly a classified secret: After six years of partnership, the president was standing by the embattled spy chief even as fellow Democrats called for his resignation. ..."
    "... I'm not tarring Obama with Brennan's war crimes and that of the Agency, copiously documented in the Senate Report on Torture, and instead am suggesting an active partnership-in-war-crimes, Obama, if anything, giving CIA its head of steam under his watch ..."
    "... Obama plucked Brennan to lead the intelligence charge through the interstices of government and military culminating in a permanent war economy and psychosis of vision. ..."
    "... in the 67 years since the CIA was founded, few presidents have had as close a bond with their intelligence chiefs as Mr. Obama has forged with Mr. Brennan. It is a relationship that has shaped the policy and politics of the debate over the nation's war with terrorist organizations, as well as the agency's own struggle to balance security and liberty ..."
    Mar 14, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    libezkova : March 13, 2017 at 06:20 PM , 2017 at 06:20 PM

    Obama and Brennan

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/17/obama-and-brennan/

    Baker-Mazzetti's opener says it all: " Just hours before he publicly responded last week to the Senate Intelligence Committee report accusing the Central Intelligence Agency of torture and deceit, John O. Brennan, the CIA's director, stopped by the White House to meet with President Obama. Ostensibly, he was there for an intelligence briefing. But the messages delivered later that day by the White House and Mr. Brennan were synchronized, even down to similar wording, and the larger import of the well-timed visit was hardly a classified secret: After six years of partnership, the president was standing by the embattled spy chief even as fellow Democrats called for his resignation. " Nothing could be plainer. As one who remembers well the guilt-by-association days of McCarthyism, I'm not tarring Obama with Brennan's war crimes and that of the Agency, copiously documented in the Senate Report on Torture, and instead am suggesting an active partnership-in-war-crimes, Obama, if anything, giving CIA its head of steam under his watch , as in its role in drone assassination at facilities in Pakistan, Brennan himself installed as Director after Valiant Service as national security adviser, all despite questions of favoring waterboarding raised in confirmation hearings. From a pool of gung-ho national-security experts on which to draw, the others still making up his First Team of advisers (include generals, admirals, members of think tanks with partly disguised neocon credentials), Obama plucked Brennan to lead the intelligence charge through the interstices of government and military culminating in a permanent war economy and psychosis of vision.

    Obama is not Brennan's puppet, nor the other way. Both are electrified by mutual contact and support. The reporters note friction between the White House and Langley "after the release of the scorching report," Brennan having "irritated advisers by battling Democrats on the committee over the report during the past year." They do not point out Obama did the same, stalling release, suffocating criticism of CIA hard-ball tactics against the committee, of which later; yet they make up for that with, given that this is NYT, an astonishing statement: "But in the 67 years since the CIA was founded, few presidents have had as close a bond with their intelligence chiefs as Mr. Obama has forged with Mr. Brennan. It is a relationship that has shaped the policy and politics of the debate over the nation's war with terrorist organizations, as well as the agency's own struggle to balance security and liberty ."

    What they don't say is that counterterrorism is part of the larger US position of counterrevolution, issuing in confrontations with Russia and China and regime change wherever American interests are challenged. Nor do they say, the Agency's struggle to balance security and liberty was lost before it had fairly begun, assassination and regime change hardly indicative of liberty, a no-contest battle.

    [Mar 14, 2017] The House intelligence committee says it could resort to subpoenaing the Justice Department if it fails to answer its request for any evidence that President Donald Trump was wiretapped during the election.

    Notable quotes:
    "... The House intelligence committee says it could resort to subpoenaing the Justice Department if it fails to answer its request for any evidence that President Donald Trump was wiretapped during the election. ..."
    "... A spokesman for committee chairman Devin Nunes of California, Jack Langer, says the committee might subpoena the information if the Justice Department fails to answer its questions. ..."
    "... The department had been expected to provide a response by Monday to the House Intelligence Committee, which has made Trump's wiretapping claims part of a bigger investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. ..."
    www.apnews.com

    "WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump (all times EDT):

    7:10 p.m.

    The House intelligence committee says it could resort to subpoenaing the Justice Department if it fails to answer its request for any evidence that President Donald Trump was wiretapped during the election.

    The committee set Monday as the deadline for getting the information, but the Justice Department says it needs more time.

    The committee now says it wants the information in hand before March 20 when it holds its first public hearing on its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

    A spokesman for committee chairman Devin Nunes of California, Jack Langer, says the committee might subpoena the information if the Justice Department fails to answer its questions.

    ___

    6:30 p.m.

    The Justice Department is requesting more time to respond to a congressional inquiry into President Donald Trump's unproven assertion that he was wiretapped by his predecessor.

    The department had been expected to provide a response by Monday to the House Intelligence Committee, which has made Trump's wiretapping claims part of a bigger investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

    But spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores says in a statement Monday that the department has asked for more time to "review the request in compliance with the governing legal authorities and to determine what if any responsive documents may exist."

    [Mar 14, 2017] John Brennan, Obama and the Central Intelligence Agency

    Notable quotes:
    "... Since its inception as the Office of Strategic Services [OSS] at the start of World War II, when it was viewed a somewhat of a gentlemen's club, albeit gentlemen licensed to administer lethal force with great prejudice, to its modern day incarnation as a behemoth with an astounding 21,000 plus employees, there have been rumors of politicization and "cooked" intelligence as well as public demonstrations of same. ..."
    "... According to Foreign Policy Magazine the CIA has had some really serious intelligence failures which caught the agency entirely flat footed: the Yom Kippur War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Soviet Union, Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian Revolution, India's successful nuke test, of course 9/11 and finally, the Iraqi WMD fiasco. [see, The Ten Biggest American Intelligence Failures , FP] ..."
    "... Exhibit one is obvious: Brennan is fearful of what the incoming administration might do to his porcine agency, one replete with desk jockeys rather than actual field agents so attacking the incoming CIC might prove advantageous in repelling the supposedly imminent attack on Brennan's turf. ..."
    "... Bolstering the image of a CIA director willing to grovel to curry favor with the administration, to the detriment of American interests, in 2010 we wrote about what was a firestorm at the time, an address by Brennan, then one of Obama's national security advisors, at an NYU event called, "A Dialogue on our National Security," which was organized by then president of the Hamas linked Islamic Society of North America, Ingrid Mattson. ..."
    Jan 06, 2017 | www.pipelinenews.org

    What we must presume has been a behind the scene conflict between politicized elements of America's rather vast intelligence infrastructure [at least 17 discreet agencies, which doesn't take "dark op" players into account] leading up to and now following the November 8 election, has ingloriously boiled over into a public cat fight.

    If not for the subject matter the scene would be reminiscent of the now semi-ancient but nonetheless still hilarious Mad Magazine cartoon series, Spy vs. Spy it's gotten that bad.

    The basic thesis, doggedly argued by the most politicized of the various intelligence agencies' nodes - John Brennan's CIA – is that Vlad Putin's operatives were responsible for the DNC/John Podesta hack which Hillary supporters believe threw the election into the Dem's nightmare scenario, victory by the Blond Barbarian from New York, Donald J. Trump.

    We have touched upon this topic frequently and quite recently for example [see, A Spiteful And Psychopathic Obama Tries To Start World War III , The Anti-Trump Pushback and Obama Unchained ] so readers should be well aware of our high level of skepticism over the claims - primarily by the CIA - that the election was "hacked."

    Since its inception as the Office of Strategic Services [OSS] at the start of World War II, when it was viewed a somewhat of a gentlemen's club, albeit gentlemen licensed to administer lethal force with great prejudice, to its modern day incarnation as a behemoth with an astounding 21,000 plus employees, there have been rumors of politicization and "cooked" intelligence as well as public demonstrations of same.

    According to Foreign Policy Magazine the CIA has had some really serious intelligence failures which caught the agency entirely flat footed: the Yom Kippur War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Soviet Union, Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian Revolution, India's successful nuke test, of course 9/11 and finally, the Iraqi WMD fiasco. [see, The Ten Biggest American Intelligence Failures , FP]

    To some observers the very idea that a government organization with the charter of the CIA would not INHERENTLY be politicized is foolish:

    "Indeed, when a government agency relies on taxpayer funding, Congressional lawmaking, and White House politics to sustain itself, it is absurd to expect that agency to somehow remain not "politicized." That is, it's a logical impossibility to think it possible to set up a government agency that relies on government policymakers to sustain it, and then think the agency in question will not attempt to influence or curry favor with those policymakers." [source, Has the CIA Been Politicized? , Mises Institute]

    So much for background and generalizations, let's turn to the real matter at hand, John Brennan's performance as Obama's lap dog, parroting [highly questionable at best] the Democrat line that Putin put Trump in the Oval Office and is therefore an illegitimate president.

    This line of attack is so common within the modern progressive/Marxist Democrat Party that it would normally have little effect outside the I95 corridor except for the fact that this one has a very visible [and presumed by many to be beyond reproach] and public champion, John O. Brennan and his war-toy, the Central Intelligence Agency.

    We believe for a number of reasons that in his effort to discredit Mr. Trump, Brennan is acting as an intelligence operative doing [a uniquely narcissistic] president's bidding.

    Exhibit one is obvious: Brennan is fearful of what the incoming administration might do to his porcine agency, one replete with desk jockeys rather than actual field agents so attacking the incoming CIC might prove advantageous in repelling the supposedly imminent attack on Brennan's turf.

    An above the fold feature story in the January 5 edition of the Wall Street Journal reflects this view:

    "President-elect Donald Trump, a harsh critic of U.S. intelligence agencies, is working with top advisers on a plan that would restructure and pare back the nation's top spy agency, people familiar with the planning said advisers also are working on a plan to restructure the Central Intelligence Agency, cutting back on staffing at its Virginia headquarters and pushing more people out into field posts around the world. The CIA declined to comment.

    'The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world has become completely politicized,' said the individual, who is close to the Trump transition. 'They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring the agencies and how they interact.'" [source, Damian Paletta and Julian E. Barnes, Trump Plans Spy Agency Overhaul , Wall St. Journal, January 5, 2017]

    Exhibit two might be a bit less speculative:

    "In telephone conversations with Donald Trump, FBI Director James Comey assured the president-elect there was no credible evidence that Russia influenced the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election by hacking the Democratic National Committee and the e-mails of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign Comey told Trump that James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, agreed with this FBI assessment.

    The only member of the U.S. intelligence community who was ready to assert that the Russians sanctioned the hacking was John Brennan, the director of the CIA, according to sources who were briefed on Comey's conversations with Trump.

    'And Brennan takes his marching orders from President Obama,' the sources quoted Comey as saying." [source, Ed Klein, Comey to Trump: The Russians Didn't Influence the Election ]

    Bolstering the image of a CIA director willing to grovel to curry favor with the administration, to the detriment of American interests, in 2010 we wrote about what was a firestorm at the time, an address by Brennan, then one of Obama's national security advisors, at an NYU event called, "A Dialogue on our National Security," which was organized by then president of the Hamas linked Islamic Society of North America, Ingrid Mattson.

    During the 34 minute speech [video below] Brennan rendered his bizarre - near love affair - with Islam.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/mKUpmFb4h_U

    [approximately 5:40 into the speech]

    "...And as part of that experience, to learn about the goodness and beauty of Islam....I came to see Islam not as it is often misrepresented, but for what it is...a faith of peace and tolerance and great diversity...[breaks into spoken Arabic]

    [approximately 7:30 into the speech]

    "...But I did spend time as an undergraduate at the American University in Cairo in the 1970s. And time spent with classmates from Egypt, from Jordan, from Palestine, and around the world who taught me that whatever our differences of nationality or race or religion or language, there are certain aspirations that we all share. To get an education. To provide for our families. To practice our faith freely. To live in peace and security. And during a 25-year career in government, I was privileged to serve in positions across the Middle East...as a political officer with the State Department and as a CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, I saw how our Saudi partners fulfilled their duty as custodians of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina. I marveled at the majesty of the Hajj and the devotion of those who fulfilled their duty as Muslims by making that privilege [he corrects himself] that pilgrimage. And in all my travels, the city I have come to love most is Al Quds ...Jerusalem, where three great faiths come together..." [see, William Mayer, John Brennan's "Al Quds" NYU Address - Providing Aid and Comfort to the Islamists ]

    The use of the Arabic term - Al Quds - for the capital of Israel, Jerusalem by such a high ranking member of any American administration is really without precedent, leading one to view with great suspicion the allegiance of Brennan as well as raising substantial questions about his boss.

    For our fourth exhibit, we turn simply to the career of Mr. Brennan. He was recruited by the CIA straight out of college, proceeded to then serve for 25 years as a field agent followed by a long list of high level intel type government jobs. It's our judgment that though the CIA director really doesn't come across as the brightest bulb in the box, that persona is a façade hiding a very skilled operator who views his current attack on the incoming president as if it were a clandestine assignment in some godforsaken part of the planet.

    In short Brennan is a man on a mission, Obama's bagman.

    And finally, as our fifth exhibit let's examine the logic, or lack thereof of why someone like Vlad Putin would prefer Trump over Hillary, thus providing him with motive.

    Let us stipulate for the sake of argument that Putin directed a group of Russia's best programmers to hack into the DNC's Internet network knowing that internal email would make Hillary Clinton and the entire Democrat Party look so bad that voters would decide to award the election to Trump.

    What on earth would motivate the wily Russian strongman to prefer Trump over Hillary, consider the facts.

    1. It's common knowledge that Hillary's bathroom server network was hacked at least 5 times by foreign intelligence agencies. Thus, her trading access for money through the Clinton Foundation would be well known to a group of individuals eager to exploit such weaknesses. So it follows that if Putin was clever enough to hack into the DNC which had a more secure computer network than Hillary's, he had at the same time a literal encyclopedia of dirt on the Clintons.

    This of course would make Hillary, as president an obvious target for blackmail.

    Think of what a crafty ex-KGB officer could do with only 1% of the type of information which was so inelegantly stored on the Clinton email server, let alone the whole enchilada.

    It would have made Hillary literally a puppet of Vlad Putin.

    2. Contrast this with Trump's promise to rebuild the military as well as America's infrastructure and take an aggressive stance against America's foes.

    Sorry, it just doesn't fly. The idea of Putin hacking Trump to victory is absurd and just the last in a very long list of excuses why one of the worst candidates for president in modern American history lost on November 8.

    The prosecution rests

    [Mar 13, 2017] Boris and Natasha version of hacking might well be a false flag operation. How about developing Russian-looking hacking tools in CIA? To plant fingerprints and get the warrant for monitoring Trump communications

    Notable quotes:
    "... If you did not noticed Vault 7 scandal completely overtook everything else now. This is a real game changer. ..."
    "... Tell me who stole the whole arsenal of CIA hacking tools with all the manuals? Were those people Russians? ..."
    Mar 13, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    im1dc: March 12, 2017 at 10:14 PM

    Am I alone in thinking that Preet Bharara, the just fired US Attorney for Southern District of New York, would be the ideal Special Prosecutor of the Trump - Russia investigation

    Tom aka Rusty -> im1dc... Sunday, March 12, 2017 at 11:41 AM
    Bharara did not push back against "too big to prosecute" and sat out the biggest white collar crime wave in the history of the world, so why is he such a saint?

    Lots of easy insider trading cases.

    im1dc -> Tom aka Rusty... Sunday, March 12, 2017 at 05:01 PM
    I don't think you considered the bigger picture here which includes in Bharara's case his bosses to whom he would have to had run any cases up the flag pole for approval and Obama and Company were not at the time into frying Wall Street for their crimes b/c they were into restarting the Bush/Cheney damaged, almost ruined, US and global Economy.
    libezkova -> im1dc... Sunday, March 12, 2017 at 09:11 PM
    If you did not noticed Vault 7 scandal completely overtook everything else now. This is a real game changer.

    Just think, how many million if not billion dollars this exercise in removing the last traces of democracy from the USA and converting us into a new Democratic Republic of Germany, where everybody was controlled by STASI, cost. And those money were spend for what ?

    BTW the Stasi was one of the most hated and feared institutions of the East German government.

    If this is not the demonstration of huge and out of civil control raw power of "deep state" I do not know what is.

    If you are not completely detached from really you should talk about Vault 7. This is huge, Snowden size scandal that is by the order of magnitude more important for the country then all those mostly fake hints on connections of Trump and, especially "Russian hacking".

    Tell me who stole the whole arsenal of CIA hacking tools with all the manuals? Were those people Russians?

    If not, you should print your last post, shred is and eat it with borsch ;-).

    libezkova -> libezkova... Sunday, March 12, 2017 at 10:01 PM

    From this video it looks like CIA adapted some Russian hacking tools for their own purposes.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z6XGl_hLnw

    In the world of intelligence false flag operations is a standard tactics. Now what ? Difficult situation for a Midwesterner...

    libezkova -> libezkova...
    Another difficult to stomach hypothesis:

    "Boris and Natasha" version of hacking might well be a false flag operation. How about developing Russian-looking hacking tools in CIA? To plant fingerprints and get the warrant for monitoring Trump communications.

    VAULT 7: CIA Staged Fake Russian Hacking to Set Up Trump - Russian Cyber-Attack M.O. As False Flag

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4CHcdCbyYs

    == quote ==

    Published on Mar 7, 2017

    "The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy. Means are important, as ends. Crisis makes it tempting to ignore the wise restraints that make men free. But each time we do so, each time the means we use are wrong, our inner strength, the strength which makes us free, is lessened." - Sen. Frank Church

    WikiLeaks Press Release

    Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named "Vault 7" by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.

    The first full part of the series, "Year Zero", comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

    Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

    "Year Zero" introduces the scope and direction of the CIA's global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of "zero day" weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.

    Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force - its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency's hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA's hacking capacities.

    [Mar 11, 2017] In the West, its now common for politicians to shout Russian fake news when embarrassing facts come out - as happened with Canadas new foreign minister hiding a Nazi family skeleton

    Notable quotes:
    "... In the West, it's now common for politicians to shout Russian "fake news" when embarrassing facts come out - as happened with Canada's new foreign minister hiding a Nazi family skeleton. ..."
    "... Over the next week, the article entitled "A Nazi Skeleton in the Family Closet" by journalist Arina Tsukanova (which I personally edited and fact-checked) circulated enough that Freeland was asked about it by the Canadian news media. As often happens these days, Freeland chose not to tell the truth but rather portrayed the article as part of a Russian propaganda and disinformation campaign. ..."
    Mar 11, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    anne : March 11, 2017 at 09:25 AM

    https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/09/another-russia-fake-news-red-herring/

    March 9, 2017

    Another Russia 'Fake News' Red Herring

    In the West, it's now common for politicians to shout Russian "fake news" when embarrassing facts come out - as happened with Canada's new foreign minister hiding a Nazi family skeleton.

    By Robert Parry

    On Feb, 27, Consortiumnews.com published an article * describing misrepresentations by Canada's new Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland about her Ukrainian maternal grandfather whom she has portrayed as a hero who struggled "to return freedom and democracy to Ukraine" but left out that he was a Nazi propagandist whose newspaper justified the slaughter of Jews.

    Over the next week, the article entitled "A Nazi Skeleton in the Family Closet" by journalist Arina Tsukanova (which I personally edited and fact-checked) circulated enough that Freeland was asked about it by the Canadian news media. As often happens these days, Freeland chose not to tell the truth but rather portrayed the article as part of a Russian propaganda and disinformation campaign.

    Freeland told reporters, "I don't think it's a secret. American officials have publicly said, and even [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel has publicly said, that there were efforts on the Russian side to destabilize Western democracies, and I think it shouldn't come as a surprise if these same efforts were used against Canada. I think that Canadians and indeed other Western countries should be prepared for similar efforts to be directed at them."

    Though Freeland did not comment directly on the truthfulness of our article, her office denied that her grandfather was a Nazi collaborator.

    Other leaders of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government joined in the counterattack. Citing the danger of Russian disinformation, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, said, "The situation is obviously one where we need to be alert."

    In an article on March 6, Canada's Globe and Mail also rallied to Freeland's defense claiming that she was "being targeted by allegations in pro-Moscow websites that her maternal Ukrainian grandfather was a Nazi collaborator."

    The newspaper also reached out to other experts to add their denunciations of Consortiumnews.com and other news sites that either reposted our story or ran a similar one.

    "It is the continued Russian modus operandi that they have. Fake news, disinformation and targeting different individuals," said Paul Grod, president of the Canadian Ukrainian Congress. "It is just so outlandish when you hear some of these allegations – whether they are directed at minister Freeland or others."

    The Globe and Mail also quoted Ukraine's ambassador to Canada, Andriy Shevchenko, citing our supposedly fake news as "another reason we should realize that Russia is waging a war against the free world. It is not just about Ukraine."

    The ambassador then offered some advice about standing up to the Russians and their disinformationists: "I am absolutely sure they will seek new targets in the free world so I would encourage our Canadian friends to be prepared for that, to stay strong and we will be happy to share our experience in how to deal with all these information wars."

    A Second-Day Story

    The only problem with all these righteous condemnations was that the information about Freeland's grandfather was true – and Freeland knew that it was true.

    In a second-day story, The Globe and Mail had to revisit the issue, reporting that "Freeland knew for more than two decades that her maternal Ukrainian grandfather was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper in occupied Poland that vilified Jews during the Second World War."

    In other words, not only was our story accurate but Freeland knowingly launched a deceptive attack on us and other news outlets to punish us for writing the truth.

    And not only was our story correct but it was newsworthy, given Freeland's fierce support for Ukrainian nationalism and her deep hatred of Russia. Canadians have a right to know what drives those passions in their Foreign Minister. In this case, her worldview derived from her grandparents who sided with Adolf Hitler and who fled to the West as the Soviet Red Army defeated the Nazis.

    Yet, instead of fessing up and acknowledging these facts, Freeland chose to dissemble and slander journalists who were doing their job. And the smears didn't entirely stop.

    Even as the Globe and Mail admitted the reality about Freeland's grandfather, it continued to disparage the journalists who had exposed the facts. The second line of the newspaper's second-day article read: "Ms. Freeland's family history has become a target for Russian forces seeking to discredit one of Canada's highly placed defenders of Ukraine." ...

    * https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/27/a-nazi-skeleton-in-the-family-closet/

    [Mar 11, 2017] The exposé on how Canada's Foreign Minister knowingly lied for 20 years about grandfather's past, now blames Russia

    Mar 11, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    anne : March 11, 2017 at 06:02 AM , 2017 at 06:02 AM
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/840200091394818054

    Glenn Greenwald‏ @ggreenwald

    The exposé on how Canada's Foreign Minister knowingly lied for 20 years about grandfather's past, now blames Russia

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/freeland-knew-her-grandfather-was-editor-of-nazi-newspaper/article34236881/

    Freeland knew her grandfather was editor of Nazi newspaper

    Stories published in pro-Russian websites have said Ms. Freeland's strong stand against Russian aggression in Ukraine is linked to her grandfather's past.

    5:58 AM - 10 Mar 2017

    anne -> anne... , March 11, 2017 at 06:03 AM
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/840199378459607044

    Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald

    Canada's Foreign Minister lied for 20 years about her Ukrainian grandfather being a Nazi collaborator, now blames Russia

    http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/chrystia-freelands-granddad-was-indeed-a-nazi-collaborator-so-much-for-russian-disinformation

    Chrystia Freeland's granddad was indeed a Nazi collaborator – so much for Russian disinformation

    5:55 AM - 10 Mar 2017

    anne -> anne... , March 11, 2017 at 06:03 AM
    https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/839921709230747649

    Paul Krugman‏ @paulkrugman

    The people who brought us Trump now smearing the superb Chrystia Freeland, with mainstream media as useful idiots. Of course.

    http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/full-comment/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/terry-glavin-enter-the-freeland-nazi-conspiracy-and-the-amping-up-of-russias-mischief-in-canada

    Terry Glavin: Enter the Freeland-Nazi conspiracy - and the amping-up of Russia's mischief in Canada

    11:31 AM - 9 Mar 2017

    ilsm -> anne... , March 11, 2017 at 07:39 AM
    East Ukraine [Russians therein] have as much right to independence as Turks left behind in Kosovo.

    When the Red Army sets up a permanent [Camp Bonesteel] armed presence to assure the minority are safe it might look a tiny fraction like of the crimes of the US/NATO.

    Early in the "occupation" of Ukraine Hitler turned down the non Aryan volunteers, by D Day they were killing Americans in Normandy.

    In the case of Russian news I err on the side they are correct compared to the NYT which tells every who could be conned they "tell the neoliberal truth".

    anne : , March 11, 2017 at 06:28 AM
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/840199378459607044

    Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald

    Canada's Foreign Minister lied for 20 years about her Ukrainian grandfather being a Nazi collaborator, now blames Russia

    http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/chrystia-freelands-granddad-was-indeed-a-nazi-collaborator-so-much-for-russian-disinformation

    Chrystia Freeland's granddad was indeed a Nazi collaborator – so much for Russian disinformation

    5:55 AM - 10 Mar 2017


    https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/839921709230747649

    Paul Krugman‏ @paulkrugman

    The people who brought us Trump now smearing the superb Chrystia Freeland, with mainstream media as useful idiots. Of course.

    http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/full-comment/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/terry-glavin-enter-the-freeland-nazi-conspiracy-and-the-amping-up-of-russias-mischief-in-canada

    Terry Glavin: Enter the Freeland-Nazi conspiracy - and the amping-up of Russia's mischief in Canada

    11:31 AM - 9 Mar 2017

    anne -> anne... , March 11, 2017 at 06:35 AM
    Imagine such a Democratic opinion maker having absorbed and been overtaken by Cold War thinking, unable to be self-reflective enough to understand the disdain of a people that is being fostered, how damaging this can be, evidently wishing a return to the fearful 1950s.

    That such a Democratic opinion maker has come to use the language of the 1950s to instill disdain for a people and spread fear in those who would question or dissent from the prejudice continues to be shocking and dismaying.

    ilsm -> anne... , March 11, 2017 at 07:42 AM
    McCarthy bad analogy, he did not use the FBI on opponents to invade their privacy during a presidential campaign!
    kthomas -> ilsm... , March 11, 2017 at 08:31 AM
    Really? How do you know Hoover was not passing information to Sen. McCarthy?

    [Mar 10, 2017] The campaign to frame up and discredit Trump and his associates is characteristic of how a police state routinely operates

    Notable quotes:
    "... The campaign to frame up and discredit Trump and his associates is characteristic of how a police state routinely operates. A national security apparatus that vacuums up all our communications and stores them for later retrieval has been utilized by political operatives to go after their enemies – and not even the President of the United States is immune. This is something that one might expect to occur in, say, Turkey, or China: that it is happening here, to the cheers of much of the media and the Democratic party, is beyond frightening. ..."
    "... We hear all the time that what's needed is an open and impartial "investigation" of Trump's alleged "ties" to Russia. This is dangerous nonsense: does every wild-eyed accusation from embittered losers deserve a congressional committee armed with subpoena power bent on conducting an inquisition? Certainly not. ..."
    "... What must be investigated is the incubation of a clandestine political police force inside the national security apparatus, one that has been unleashed against Trump – and could be deployed against anyone. ..."
    "... This isn't about Donald Trump. It's about preserving what's left of our old republic. ..."
    Mar 10, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Stormcrow , , March 9, 2017 at 9:35 am

    Here is Raimondo's take: Spygate http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/03/07/spygate-americas-political-police-vs-donald-j-trump/

    The campaign to frame up and discredit Trump and his associates is characteristic of how a police state routinely operates. A national security apparatus that vacuums up all our communications and stores them for later retrieval has been utilized by political operatives to go after their enemies – and not even the President of the United States is immune. This is something that one might expect to occur in, say, Turkey, or China: that it is happening here, to the cheers of much of the media and the Democratic party, is beyond frightening.

    The irony is that the existence of this dangerous apparatus – which civil libertarians have warned could and probably would be used for political purposes – has been hailed by Trump and his team as a necessary and proper function of government. Indeed, Trump has called for the execution of the person who revealed the existence of this sinister engine of oppression – Edward Snowden. Absent Snowden's revelations, we would still be in the dark as to the existence and vast scope of the NSA's surveillance.

    And now the monster Trump embraced in the name of "national security" has come back to bite him.

    We hear all the time that what's needed is an open and impartial "investigation" of Trump's alleged "ties" to Russia. This is dangerous nonsense: does every wild-eyed accusation from embittered losers deserve a congressional committee armed with subpoena power bent on conducting an inquisition? Certainly not.

    What must be investigated is the incubation of a clandestine political police force inside the national security apparatus, one that has been unleashed against Trump – and could be deployed against anyone.

    This isn't about Donald Trump. It's about preserving what's left of our old republic.

    Perhaps overstated but well worth pondering.

    [Mar 10, 2017] Obama Spying Whistleblower Doubles Down On Trump Tower Wiretap Claim

    Mar 10, 2017 | radaronline.com
    Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin claims "the evidence is overwhelming" that the Obama administration spied on Donald Trump leading up his inauguration , RadarOnline.com has learned.

    "I'm saying the public record is damning of the Obama administration. It was investigating the campaign of a presidential candidate of an opposing party during the course of the campaign. Its use of FISA, loosening of NSA distribution requirements, husbanding and protecting information at the behest of White House staff on the way out the door, and recent leaks of confidential and perhaps classified information is extraordinary," Levin said in the CNN Reliable Sources newsletter.

    [Mar 10, 2017] Did Obama spy on Trump by Glenn Harlan Reynolds

    Notable quotes:
    "... FISA surveillance has to be approved by a special court, which almost always allows the government to spy on people when asked . But when the Justice Department asked to spy on several of Trump's associates, the court refused permission, according to the BBC . As McCarthy writes, this is notable because "the FISA court is notoriously solicitous of government requests to conduct national security surveillance." ..."
    "... Not taking no for an answer, the Obama administration came back during the final weeks of the election with a narrower request that didn't specifically mention Trump. That narrower request was granted by the court, but reports from the Guardian and the BBC don't mention the tapping of phones. ..."
    "... Former Obama officials issued denials that the former president had anything to do with it, which McCarthy calls "disingenuous on several levels." Others have characterized them as a " non-denial denial ." ..."
    "... The issues are (a) whether the Obama Justice Department sought such surveillance authorization from the FISA court, and (b) whether, if the Justice Department did that, the White House was aware of or complicit in the decision to do so. Personally, given the explosive and controversial nature of the surveillance request we are talking about – an application to wiretap the presidential candidate of the opposition party, and some of his associates, during the heat of the presidential campaign, based on the allegation that the candidate and his associates were acting as Russian agents – it seems to me that there is less than zero chance that could have happened without consultation between the Justice Department and the White House." ..."
    "... Obama's political allies even alleged that his CIA spied on Congress . ..."
    "... Trump has called for a congressional investigation , but what this really needs is a special prosecutor, someone from outside the politically tainted Justice Department, to look into the political abuse of surveillance laws by the Obama administration. ..."
    Mar 10, 2017 | www.thecalifornian.com

    So President Trump set off a firestorm over the weekend with a series of tweets alleging that Obama had tapped Trump Tower. But getting hung up on imprecise language in the president's tweets isn't the right way to look at things. What seems to be true is that the Obama administration spied on some of Trump's associates and we don't know exactly how much information was collected under what authority and who was targeted.

    As former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy summarizes in National Review, the Obama Justice Department considered a criminal investigation aimed at a number of Trump's associates. When they didn't find anything criminal, they converted the investigation into an intelligence probe under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act . Elements of that story have been confirmed by The New York Times, the BBC and McClatchy newspapers.

    FISA surveillance has to be approved by a special court, which almost always allows the government to spy on people when asked . But when the Justice Department asked to spy on several of Trump's associates, the court refused permission, according to the BBC . As McCarthy writes, this is notable because "the FISA court is notoriously solicitous of government requests to conduct national security surveillance."

    Not taking no for an answer, the Obama administration came back during the final weeks of the election with a narrower request that didn't specifically mention Trump. That narrower request was granted by the court, but reports from the Guardian and the BBC don't mention the tapping of phones.

    Former Obama officials issued denials that the former president had anything to do with it, which McCarthy calls "disingenuous on several levels." Others have characterized them as a " non-denial denial ."

    To the Obama camp's claim that the president didn't "order" surveillance of Trump, McCarthy writes:

    "First, as Obama officials well know, under the FISA process, it is technically the FISA court that 'orders' surveillance. And by statute, it is the Justice department, not the White House, that represents the government in proceedings before the FISA court. So, the issue is not whether Obama or some member of his White House staff 'ordered' surveillance of Trump and his associates. The issues are (a) whether the Obama Justice Department sought such surveillance authorization from the FISA court, and (b) whether, if the Justice Department did that, the White House was aware of or complicit in the decision to do so. Personally, given the explosive and controversial nature of the surveillance request we are talking about – an application to wiretap the presidential candidate of the opposition party, and some of his associates, during the heat of the presidential campaign, based on the allegation that the candidate and his associates were acting as Russian agents – it seems to me that there is less than zero chance that could have happened without consultation between the Justice Department and the White House."

    And as journalist Mickey Kaus commented on Twitter, there's a reason why presidents name trusted allies as attorney general. As close as former attorney general Loretta Lynch was to Obama, and as supportive as she was of his political goals, it seems very unlikely that this was some sort of rogue operation.

    It's certainly not impossible to believe that the Obama administration spied on Trump. Obama wouldn't be the first president to engage in illegal surveillance of opposition candidates, and his administration has been noted for its great enthusiasm for domestic spying. In an effort to plug embarrassing leaks, the Obama administration spied on Associated Press reporters and seized the phone records not only of a Fox News reporter but also of his parents. Obama's political allies even alleged that his CIA spied on Congress .

    Nor is it unbelievable that under the Obama administration, supposedly non-partisan civil servants would go after political opponents. After all, the notorious IRS scandal was about exactly that.

    Trump has called for a congressional investigation , but what this really needs is a special prosecutor, someone from outside the politically tainted Justice Department, to look into the political abuse of surveillance laws by the Obama administration. Maybe, upon investigation, it will turn out that nothing improper happened – that this is a lot of smoke, but that there's no fire. But we can't know without an investigation, and if there really were political abuses of the Justice Department and the intelligence surveillance process, those guilty should not simply be exposed but go to jail. Such abuse strikes at democracy itself.

    Note that FISA surveillance is severely limited and requires information from surveillance to be kept very secret or, if not relevant, deleted. If those limits were exceeded, if Obama officials lied to the court, or if the information was – as it appears to have been – excessively shared within the government, or leaked to outsiders, those are all serious crimes, as First Amendment attorney Robert Barnes notes.

    Watergate brought down a presidency, but if the worst suspicions here are borne out, we're dealing with something worse. Hopefully not, but there's no way to tell at this point. As The Washington Post has been saying lately, "Democracy dies in darkness." Let's shine some light on what the Obama administration was doing during this election.

    Glenn Harlan Reynolds , a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of " The New School : How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself," is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors .

    [Mar 10, 2017] Specialist in history writes about network security

    Mar 10, 2017 | www.salon.com
    Judging from comments totally brainwashed part of American electorate conditioned to believe into "Boris and Natasha" stories and unconditionally support DemoRats (not understanding that they are just soft neoliberals and also want to redistribute wealth up, away from ordinary shmucks) is very comfortable being out sync with reality. Middle age starting to replay in the USA. Right here, right now. see https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-the-story-connecting-russia-to-donald-trumps-email-server/
    > As "zackeryzackery" noted , "
    Looks like the libtards will twist any facts to fit their narrative. HEADER
    > " (from his comment on
    Salon.com , ).

    Also from the same thread: "RUSSIA!!!!!. Look guys, RUSSIA! The Obama administration repeatedly broke federal laws, lied about breaking those laws, got caught lying about breaking those laws (thank you "whistle blowers") then said it stopped breaking said laws. Then it got caught lying about saying it stopped breaking laws. "

    [Mar 10, 2017] Why the Russia Story Is a Minefield for Democrats and the Media

    Notable quotes:
    "... At that link, Taibbi goes astray by trusting CNN; I hate to cite a source with the John Birch society on its blogroll, but when they're right, they're right, and CNN sexed up the transcript. ..."
    "... Back to Taibbi. I think this is exactly right, and in today's vicious atmosphere, courageous: ..."
    "... Similarly, Democrats in congress have been littering their Russia speeches with caveats like, "We do not know all the facts," and, "More information may well surface." They repeatedly refer to what they don't know as a way of talking about what they hope to find out. ..."
    "... Reporters should always be nervous when intelligence sources sell them stories. Spooks don't normally need the press. Their usual audiences are other agency heads, and the executive. They can bring about action just by convincing other people within the government to take it. ..."
    "... In the extant case, whether the investigation involved a potential Logan Act violation, or election fraud, or whatever, the CIA, FBI, and NSA had the ability to act both before and after Donald Trump was elected. But they didn't, and we know why, because James Clapper just told us – they didn't have evidence to go on. ..."
    Mar 10, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Trump Transition

    "Why the Russia Story Is a Minefield for Democrats and the Media" [Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone ]. Well worth a read. "There is a lot of smoke in the Russia story . Moreover, the case that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee now appears fairly solid. Even Donald Trump thinks so ."

    At that link, Taibbi goes astray by trusting CNN; I hate to cite a source with the John Birch society on its blogroll, but when they're right, they're right, and CNN sexed up the transcript. Here's the CNN quote: "'I think it was Russia, [1] but I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people. ' Trump said. Putin '[2]should not be doing it. He won't be doing it. Russia will have much greater respect for our country when I am leading it than when other people have led it.'" From the full transcript , [1] shows what CNN deleted, and [2] comes 45 minutes later, in response to a very qualified question. Trump doesn't do nuance well, but I think he was trying to do it here.

    Back to Taibbi. I think this is exactly right, and in today's vicious atmosphere, courageous:

    [T]he manner in which these stories are being reported is becoming a story in its own right. Russia has become an obsession, cultural shorthand for a vast range of suspicions about Donald Trump.

    The notion that the president is either an agent or a useful idiot of the Russian state is so freely accepted in some quarters that Beck Bennett's shirtless representation of Putin palling with Alec Baldwin's Trump is already a no-questions-asked yuks routine for the urban smart set .

    We can't afford to bolster [Trump's] accusations of establishment bias and overreach by using the techniques of conspiracy theorists to push this Russia story. Unfortunately, that is happening.

    One could list the more ridiculous examples, like the Washington Post's infamous "PropOrNot" story identifying hundreds of alternative media sites as fellow travellers aiding Russia, or the Post's faceplant over a report about a hacked utility in Vermont.

    Setting all of that aside, look at the techniques involved within the more "legitimate" reports. Many are framed in terms of what they might mean, should other information surface.

    There are inevitably uses of phrases like "so far," "to date" and "as yet." These make visible the outline of a future story that isn't currently reportable, further heightening expectations.

    Similarly, Democrats in congress have been littering their Russia speeches with caveats like, "We do not know all the facts," and, "More information may well surface." They repeatedly refer to what they don't know as a way of talking about what they hope to find out.

    Reporters should always be nervous when intelligence sources sell them stories. Spooks don't normally need the press. Their usual audiences are other agency heads, and the executive. They can bring about action just by convincing other people within the government to take it.

    In the extant case, whether the investigation involved a potential Logan Act violation, or election fraud, or whatever, the CIA, FBI, and NSA had the ability to act both before and after Donald Trump was elected. But they didn't, and we know why, because James Clapper just told us – they didn't have evidence to go on.

    Thus we are now witnessing the extremely unusual development of intelligence sources that normally wouldn't tell a reporter the time of day litigating a matter of supreme importance in the media. What does this mean?

    [Mar 07, 2017] Obama s wiretap America by Andrew Leonard

    Notable quotes:
    "... The more pertinent question is whether we can trust our government to responsibly seek those court orders, once it is armed with a massive expansion in surveillance power. The evidence there is not encouraging. On the same day that the news broke of the Obama administration's plan to support expanded wiretapping capabilities, CNET's Declan McCullagh reported that, according to documents obtained by the ACLU, the U.S. Department of Justice just doesn't believe that it needs search warrants "to review Americans' e-mails, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and other private files." ..."
    "... FBI Director Robert Mueller has argued for years that the new wiretapping capabilities are necessary to deal with what he calls the "going dark" problem. As we've moved our communications from voice calls to texting and chatting and tweeting, our activities have become less visible to law enforcement. But even that assumption seems highly questionable. We are now generating vastly more data about our activities than ever before, and great swaths of it are available via subpoenas that don't require a judge's approval. One could easily argue that our incredibly detailed digital trails have put more of our lives in the "light" than ever. ..."
    "... So here's why we should be worried about the Obama administration's purported supported for expanded wiretapping. A government that we already know to be overzealous in grabbing our data is using a bogus excuse to justify vastly increased surveillance powers. ..."
    Mar 07, 2017 | www.salon.com
    Did the surveillance state just take another gigantic Big Brotherish step forward? The New York Times and Washington Post are reporting that the Obama administration is planning to support an FBI plan for "a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services."

    Facebook posts, Skype calls, Google chats, Apple's iMessage - under the new plan, every form of Internet communication would have to be accessible to law enforcement wiretapping. Civil libertarians, Internet companies and privacy activists are all understandably unenthused. A blogger at FireDogLake immediately labeled the news proof that Obama intended to support the "end of the 4th Amendment on the Internet."

    That's a little overheated. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure, chiefly by requiring that search warrants be authorized by a judge and supported by probable cause. According to all descriptions of the new FBI wiretapping plan, if law enforcement wants to listen in on your Facebook chats or Apple iMessages, law enforcement will have to get a court order, just at it would if it wants to wiretap your phone. If society is going to grant government the right to listen in to our old-school phone conversations, it's hard to see how, in principle, it can deny the same right with regard to our Skype calls.

    The more pertinent question is whether we can trust our government to responsibly seek those court orders, once it is armed with a massive expansion in surveillance power. The evidence there is not encouraging. On the same day that the news broke of the Obama administration's plan to support expanded wiretapping capabilities, CNET's Declan McCullagh reported that, according to documents obtained by the ACLU, the U.S. Department of Justice just doesn't believe that it needs search warrants "to review Americans' e-mails, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and other private files."

    Now we're talking violation of the Fourth Amendment. And if we combine that kind of cavalier attitude toward our constitutionally mandated protections with vastly expanded technical surveillance capabilities, then we've got a real problem. Civil libertarians have a right to be nervous. Expanded power implies expanded opportunities to abuse that power.

    FBI Director Robert Mueller has argued for years that the new wiretapping capabilities are necessary to deal with what he calls the "going dark" problem. As we've moved our communications from voice calls to texting and chatting and tweeting, our activities have become less visible to law enforcement. But even that assumption seems highly questionable. We are now generating vastly more data about our activities than ever before, and great swaths of it are available via subpoenas that don't require a judge's approval. One could easily argue that our incredibly detailed digital trails have put more of our lives in the "light" than ever.

    So here's why we should be worried about the Obama administration's purported supported for expanded wiretapping. A government that we already know to be overzealous in grabbing our data is using a bogus excuse to justify vastly increased surveillance powers. Yippee.

    Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21.

    [Mar 07, 2017] The Deep State Targets Trump by Patrick J. Buchanan

    Notable quotes:
    "... When Gen. Michael Flynn was forced to resign as national-security advisor, Bill Kristol purred his satisfaction, "If it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state." ..."
    "... To Kristol, the permanent regime, not the elected president and his government, is the real defender and rightful repository of our liberties. Yet it was this regime, the deep state, that carried out what Eli Lake of Bloomberg calls "The Political Assassination of Michael Flynn." ..."
    "... In December, when Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats, Flynn spoke to the Russian ambassador. He apparently counseled the envoy not to overreact, saying a new team would be in place in a few weeks and would review U.S.-Russian relations. ..."
    "... But apparently, this did not sit well with the deep state. For when Vice President Pence told a TV show that Flynn told him that sanctions did not come up in conversation with the Russian ambassador, a transcript of Flynn's call was produced from recordings by intelligence agencies, and its contents leaked to the Washington Post . ..."
    "... The real crime here, however, is not that the incoming national-security advisor spoke with a Russian diplomat seeking guidance on the future president's thinking. The real crime is the criminal conspiracy inside the deep state to transcribe the private conversation of a U.S. citizen and leak it to press collaborators to destroy a political career. ..."
    "... But the deep state is after larger game than General Flynn. It is out to bring down President Trump and abort any move to effect the sort of rapprochement with Russia that Ronald Reagan achieved. ..."
    "... Purpose: stampede the White House into abandoning any idea of a detente with Russia. And it appears to be working. At a White House briefing Tuesday, Sean Spicer said, "President Trump has made it very clear that he expects the Russian government to return Crimea." ..."
    "... Patrick J. Buchanan is a founding editor of ..."
    "... and the author of the book ..."
    "... What has become obvious to me is that the United States government is operating as any regime which fears it's people (but does not fear them enough) operates. ..."
    "... They drum up fears of an outside enemy. In this case, it's Russia. If they succeed, then they can subvert the will of the people as expressed through an elected President. They can prevent peace and prosperity for the benefit of the few who hold power through, as we have seen, blackmail. Trump should pardon Snowden and start firing upper level management in any intelligence agency that behaves insubordinately. They serve at the President's pleasure with Congressional oversight on their activities and bureaucrats need to be reminded of this, frequently. In this case, the record of these intelligence agencies renders the argument that we can't afford to lose the expertise these people represent is moot. Elected officials must take precedence over unelected functionaries and intelligence agencies do not have any business in determining policy. ..."
    Feb 25, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
    When Gen. Michael Flynn was forced to resign as national-security advisor, Bill Kristol purred his satisfaction, "If it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state."

    To Kristol, the permanent regime, not the elected president and his government, is the real defender and rightful repository of our liberties. Yet it was this regime, the deep state, that carried out what Eli Lake of Bloomberg calls "The Political Assassination of Michael Flynn."

    And what were Flynn's offenses?

    In December, when Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats, Flynn spoke to the Russian ambassador. He apparently counseled the envoy not to overreact, saying a new team would be in place in a few weeks and would review U.S.-Russian relations.

    "That's neither illegal nor improper," writes Lake. Vladimir Putin swiftly declared that there would be no reciprocal expulsions and U.S. diplomats and their families would be welcome at the Kremlin's Christmas and New Year's parties. Diplomatic crisis averted. "Great move (by V. Putin)," tweeted Trump, "I always knew he was very smart."

    But apparently, this did not sit well with the deep state. For when Vice President Pence told a TV show that Flynn told him that sanctions did not come up in conversation with the Russian ambassador, a transcript of Flynn's call was produced from recordings by intelligence agencies, and its contents leaked to the Washington Post .

    After seeing the transcript, the White House concluded that Flynn had misled Pence, mutual trust was gone, and Flynn must go. Like a good soldier, Flynn took the bullet.

    The real crime here, however, is not that the incoming national-security advisor spoke with a Russian diplomat seeking guidance on the future president's thinking. The real crime is the criminal conspiracy inside the deep state to transcribe the private conversation of a U.S. citizen and leak it to press collaborators to destroy a political career.

    "This is what police states do," writes Lake.

    But the deep state is after larger game than General Flynn. It is out to bring down President Trump and abort any move to effect the sort of rapprochement with Russia that Ronald Reagan achieved.

    For the deep state is deeply committed to Cold War II.

    Hence, suddenly, we read reports of a Russian spy ship off the Connecticut, Delaware, and Virginia coasts, of Russian jets buzzing a U.S. warship in the Black Sea, and Russian violations of Reagan's INF treaty outlawing intermediate-range missiles in Europe.

    Purpose: stampede the White House into abandoning any idea of a detente with Russia. And it appears to be working. At a White House briefing Tuesday, Sean Spicer said, "President Trump has made it very clear that he expects the Russian government to return Crimea."

    Is the White House serious?

    Putin could no more survive returning Crimea to Ukraine than Bibi Netanyahu could survive giving East Jerusalem back to Jordan.

    How does the deep state go about its work? We have seen a classic example with Flynn. The intelligence and investigative arms of the regime dig up dirt, and then move it to their Fourth Estate collaborators, who enjoy First Amendment immunity to get it out.

    For violating their oaths and breaking the law, bureaucratic saboteurs are hailed as "whistleblowers" while the journalists who receive the fruits of their felonies put in for Pulitzers.

    Now if Russians hacked into the DNC and John Podesta's computer during the campaign, and, more seriously, if Trump aides colluded in any such scheme, it should be investigated.

    But we should not stop there. Those in the FBI, Justice Department, and intelligence agencies who were complicit in a conspiracy to leak the contents of Flynn's private conversations in order to bring down the national-security advisor should be exposed and prosecuted.

    An independent counsel should be appointed by the attorney general and a grand jury impaneled to investigate what Trump himself rightly calls "criminal" misconduct in the security agencies.

    As for interfering in elections, how clean are our hands?

    Our own CIA has a storied history of interfering in elections. In the late '40s, we shoveled cash into France and Italy after World War II to defeat the communists who had been part of the wartime resistance to the Nazis and fascists.

    And we succeeded. But we continued these practices after the Cold War ended. In this century, our National Endowment for Democracy, which dates to the Reagan era, has backed "color revolutions" and "regime change" in nations across what Russia regards as her "near abroad."

    NED's continued existence appears a contradiction of Trump's inaugural declaration: "We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone."

    The president and GOP should get out front here. Let Congress investigate Russia meddling in our election. And let a special prosecutor run down, root out, expose, and indict those in the investigative and intel agencies who used their custody of America's secrets, in collusion with press collaborators, to take down Trump appointees who are on their enemies lists.

    Then put NED down.

    Patrick J. Buchanan is a founding editor of The American Conservative and the author of the book The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority .

    Bob K. , says: February 16, 2017 at 10:38 pm
    It used to be that no one knew what "the deep state" was. Now it has become a common news item.

    Bill Kristol and other people close to it may come to regret their satisfied "purring" about its actions against American democracy.

    Joe , says: February 17, 2017 at 3:31 am
    Is it conclusive that the leak came from the IC?
    Rdevagiri , says: February 17, 2017 at 4:46 am
    Hi – I agree with all you say. As an Australian citizen, I am outraged that the conversation between my Prime Minister and your President was leaked. This leak occurred from within the White House. There were reportedly four people from the Donald Trump admin who were on line. So yes, deep state boogey stuff is sexy, who among the reported President's team – Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer, Michael Flynn or God forbid the president himself leaked? No deep state involvement in a call with the only ally that has fought all wars with the USA since WW2 right?
    John S , says: February 17, 2017 at 7:05 am
    "The real crime is the criminal conspiracy inside the deep state "

    Mr. Buchanan could have written this in his piece "Hillary's High Crimes and Misdemeanors" published just a few short months ago in reference to leaks from the FBI. In that case, for Buchanan, "the people have a right to know." Seems like a double standard to me.

    Mark Thomason , says: February 17, 2017 at 7:16 am
    It is important to expose the American origins of this drive for Cold War II, and its motives.

    Good work.

    Drue Gawel , says: February 17, 2017 at 9:39 am
    Strange how Patrick Buchanan didn't complain about the Deep State when it was leaking information about Hillary. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/hillarys-high-crimes-and-misdemeanors/

    Seems like he is just a partisan as politicians who complained about the FBI leaks.

    With regard to making leaks public, I think Buchanan's comments about Hillary are as true for Trump. "Indeed, it would seem imperative that FBI Director James Comey, even if it violates protocol and costs him his job, state publicly whether what Baier's FBI sources are telling him is false or true."

    I personally think that if Trump has conflicts of interest and can be subject to Russian pressure, the public deserves to know. And as Buchanan suggests, the leakers should take the consequences. Why did Trump not chose transparency and release his Tax Returns and why did he not choose the public's interest and divest himself of his business holdings?

    Sceptic , says: February 17, 2017 at 11:10 am
    What the sniping comments here ignore is context. This is not about just matters of correct process and form - to which it is easy to respond sarcastically to the Trump objections: it's about starting or stopping Cold War II. And let's not forget, Cold War II increases the dangers of the hot kind, which could be quite unpleasant.

    One correction. It is not just about Putin's government, as Mr. Buchanan states. Despite fond dreams inside NED, no conceivable Russian government will 'give back' Crimea - that is, short of WWIII - or, as an outside possibility, the establishment of a neutral zone after the dissolution of NATO and the reordering of the international system.

    Will Harrington , says: February 17, 2017 at 11:46 am
    Ben Stone, Seriously? Boy, you lived in a whole different country 4 months ago than I did.

    What has become obvious to me is that the United States government is operating as any regime which fears it's people (but does not fear them enough) operates.

    They drum up fears of an outside enemy. In this case, it's Russia. If they succeed, then they can subvert the will of the people as expressed through an elected President. They can prevent peace and prosperity for the benefit of the few who hold power through, as we have seen, blackmail. Trump should pardon Snowden and start firing upper level management in any intelligence agency that behaves insubordinately. They serve at the President's pleasure with Congressional oversight on their activities and bureaucrats need to be reminded of this, frequently. In this case, the record of these intelligence agencies renders the argument that we can't afford to lose the expertise these people represent is moot. Elected officials must take precedence over unelected functionaries and intelligence agencies do not have any business in determining policy.

    Seriously, I didn't vote for the guy, but Trump is not the one we need to worry about when it comes to taking away our liberty. If a President can be brought to heel through tactics like this by unelected bureaucrats then we officially live in a police state.

    Will Harrington , says: February 17, 2017 at 11:53 am
    John S

    You make a category error. Hillary Clinton was not an sitting President at the times those leaks were made. Donald Trump is. That makes a very real difference. If you leaked information about a vice president of the company that employed you in an attempt to get him fired and embarrass your CEO, then you should be fired for insubordination.

    Dennis , says: February 17, 2017 at 12:17 pm
    The media and Deep State's obsession with Russia, and desire to fan the flames of war with Russia, is truly mystifying and terrifying. Why are they so obsessed with Russia, and acting as if Russia were still an enemy and we were still in the midst of the Cold War?

    We have more in common with Russia than not, and should work together to promote common interests, particularly in combating ISIS and radical Islam. Russia and Eastern Europe in general are also at the forefront of fighting against the US & Western European liberal monoculture consensus that dominates US & EU media and policy-making elites. On Russia policy Trump's instincts are right, but I fear the Deep State and some of his own advisors are doing their best to undermine those instincts and promote conflict. How else could one make sense of Spicer's idiotic comment the other day that the President expects Russia to give back the Crimea? One can make an historical case that not only the Crimea but all of the Ukraine should be part of Russia, but that is not our problem and we need to stay out of it and focus on areas of agreement where we can make common cause with Russia.

    [Mar 06, 2017] The shadow of JFK assassination: is the US Intelligence community trying to depose Trump ?

    Flynn definitely was compromised deliberately, because he just spoke with Russian ambassador as a private person (but may be on instructions from Trump) and then understanding that lied to the vice president. So releasing his conversations was a part "color revolution" against Trump, launched by neocons in intelligence services. As for the role of Jews in this affair is is naive to consider neocons to be purely ethnically based, although "Israel firster" are an important part of them. So in Fred C. Dobbs post below one needs to replace "Jew" with "Neocon" in Nixon's remarks. You will instantly see the point and it is difficlut nt to agree with Nixon that neocons influence is huge threat to the USA. In this sense Nixon proved again that his was very talented, pretty shred politician...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Looks like "Color revolution" came to the USA and you being the US citizen better to learn what it means. And it means a lot (among other things that means an immediate end of remnants of democracy left; Welcome to the USSR, in other words.) ..."
    "... Tom Clancy eat your heart out, this is as real as Dennis Kucinitch describes it as. The sinister globalist elite will stop at nothing in establishing their Luciferian dreams of the Novus Ordo Seclorum (New World Order). ..."
    "... The old Elites need conflicts, so they can keep power. ..."
    "... Yep. Trillion dollar military industrial complex is a lot of motivation for the establishment to revive the cold war and to keep the IC involved in the Saudi's proxy war via ISIS in the middle east. The CIA isn't interested in peace. It wants power. ..."
    "... Yes, that appears to be their Operandi--to not only keep us distracted and our resources drained to continually feed their purses and purposes (to confiscate more wealth and usurp more power)...so, now that we are aware of this what are we doing to do to put a stop to it since we are Sovereign, and supposed to be in charge (self-governing). It appears we have not been taking our responsibility seriously and trusting our "servants" whilst they have been plotting and scheming against us. ..."
    "... Trump is the last, best hope to disband the US' neolib version of the Gestapo ..."
    "... if Clinton won there would never be a political opponent free from her deep state surveillance ..."
    "... ... "The Jews are all over the government," Nixon complained to his chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, in an Oval Office meeting recorded on one of a set of White House tapes released yesterday at the National Archives. Nixon said the Jews needed to be brought under control by putting someone "in charge who is not Jewish" in key agencies. ..."
    "... Washington "is full of Jews," the president asserted. "Most Jews are disloyal." He made exceptions for some of his top aides, such as national security adviser Henry Kissinger, his White House counsel, Leonard Garment, and one of his speechwriters, William Safire, and then added: ..."
    "... "But, Bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right? ..."
    "... The fact the nation's now-departed senior guardian of national security was unmoored by a scandal linked to a conversation picked up on a wire offers a rare insight into how exactly America's vaunted Deep State works. It is a story not about rogue intelligence agencies running amok outside the law, but rather about the vast domestic power they have managed to acquire within it. ..."
    "... We know now that the FBI and the NSA, under their Executive Order 12333 authority and using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as statutory cover, were actively monitoring the phone calls and reading text messages sent to and from the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. ..."
    "... Although the monitoring of any specific individual is classified TOP SECRET, and cannot be released to foreigners, the existence of this monitoring in general is something of an open secret, and Kislyak probably suspected he was under surveillance. ..."
    "... The way it's supposed to work is that any time a "U.S. person" - government speak for a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, even a U.S. company, located here or abroad - finds his or her communications caught up in Kislyak's, the entire surveillance empire, which was designed for speed and efficiency, and which, we now know, is hard to manage, grinds to a halt. That's a good thing. Even before Snowden, of course, the FBI would "minimize" the U.S. end of a conversation if analysts determined that the calls had no relevance to a legitimate intelligence gathering purpose. A late night call to order pizza would fall into this category. ..."
    "... But if the analyst listening to Kislyak's call hears someone identify himself as an agent of the U.S. government - "Hi! It's Mike Flynn" certainly qualifies - a number of things have to happen, according to the government's own rules ..."
    "... At this stage, the actual audio of the call and any transcript would be considered "Raw FISA-acquired information," and its distribution would be highly restricted. At the NSA, not more than 40 or so analysts or senior managers would be read into the classification sub-sub compartment that contains it, called RAGTIME-A,B,C D or P, where each letter stands for one of five different categories of foreign intelligence. ..."
    Feb 20, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    libezkova -> Fred C. Dobbs... February 18, 2017 at 10:12 PM , 2017 at 10:12 PM
    Is this Intel community trying to undermine Trump's presidency? If so congratulations ask yourself if are living in a modern incarnation of a police state. Intelligence agencies as a pinnacle of political power == police state.

    The swamp lost part of the power and fights back.

    Looks like "Color revolution" came to the USA and you being the US citizen better to learn what it means. And it means a lot (among other things that means an immediate end of remnants of democracy left; Welcome to the USSR, in other words.)

    All standard tricks used to depose governments like Yanukovych in Ukraine are now played against Trump. Media dominance is one essential part. Coordinated series of leaks is a standard scenarios.

    Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) on Gen. Michael Flynn resigning as President Trump's National Security Advisor and the divide between the intelligence community and Trump.

    "Who knows what is truth anymore. It's like a version of Mad magazine". -- Kusinich

    All standard tricks used to depose governments like Yanukovych in Ukraine are now played against Trump.

    Media dominance and hostility of media to the government is one essential part of any color revolution. That's what we have now in the USA. Here is Kucinich warning:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j_ZfKmcnSk

    Defiant Christian Infidels

    Tom Clancy eat your heart out, this is as real as Dennis Kucinitch describes it as. The sinister globalist elite will stop at nothing in establishing their Luciferian dreams of the Novus Ordo Seclorum (New World Order). Death to the Globalist/Islamic/Leftist alliance. Deus Vult!

    Mike V

    In 2009, the Haitian parliament voted unanimously to raise the minimum wage, up to 61 cents per hour. US-based multinational textile corporations such as Hanes and Levi's objected, claiming that paying these workers slightly more would cut into their profits. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton intervened and pressured Haiti to back off - blocking the raise. We only know about this from WikiLeaks.

    How on Earth is that something a communist would do? Communists want workers to unite and fire their bosses. Communists want the workers to run the factories. How on God's green Earth does a Communist - who wants the workers to directly control the means of production - intervene to block a tiny wage increase for those same workers.

    Calling corporate Democrats like Clinton and Obama "communist" and "socialist" is so mindbogglingly stupid that I don't even know how to respond to someone so blinded by partisanship.

    Gg Mo

    See: The Young Hegelians . CRONY Totalitarian "Communism" is the Goal, and the Minions are screaming for it , in their estrogen soaked , Marxist indoctrinated IDIOCY.

    IT WIZARD

    Trump needs to drain the swamp on the Intel community

    Joe

    The old Elites need conflicts, so they can keep power.
    sequorroxx

    Yep. Trillion dollar military industrial complex is a lot of motivation for the establishment to revive the cold war and to keep the IC involved in the Saudi's proxy war via ISIS in the middle east. The CIA isn't interested in peace. It wants power.

    Trisha Holmeide

    Yes, that appears to be their Operandi--to not only keep us distracted and our resources drained to continually feed their purses and purposes (to confiscate more wealth and usurp more power)...so, now that we are aware of this what are we doing to do to put a stop to it since we are Sovereign, and supposed to be in charge (self-governing). It appears we have not been taking our responsibility seriously and trusting our "servants" whilst they have been plotting and scheming against us.

    ilsm -> libezkova... , February 19, 2017 at 04:12 AM
    Trump is the last, best hope to disband the US' neolib version of the Gestapo. As the Japanese Imperial Army noted, never invade America there would be a "rifle behind every blade of grass"
    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , February 19, 2017 at 04:09 AM
    if Clinton won there would never be a political opponent free from her deep state surveillance

    faux media is a tool of 'leftie' oppressors who are okay!

    'leftie' oppressors want to force Christian bakers to make cakes

    Fred C. Dobbs -> ilsm... , February 19, 2017 at 05:06 AM
    In Nixon's day, the Deep State was all about 'Jews in the Guv'mint'. Not gonna happen on Trump's watch, not yet anyway, so that's something. Now, it's 'Progressives', presumably. Call them NeoLiberals if you like.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/oct99/nixon6.htm

    Washington Post - October 6, 1999

    ... "The Jews are all over the government," Nixon complained to his chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, in an Oval Office meeting recorded on one of a set of White House tapes released yesterday at the National Archives. Nixon said the Jews needed to be brought under control by putting someone "in charge who is not Jewish" in key agencies.

    Washington "is full of Jews," the president asserted. "Most Jews are disloyal." He made exceptions for some of his top aides, such as national security adviser Henry Kissinger, his White House counsel, Leonard Garment, and one of his speechwriters, William Safire, and then added:

    "But, Bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right?"

    Haldeman agreed wholeheartedly. "Their whole orientation is against you. In this administration, anyway. And they are smart. They have the ability to do what they want to do--which is to hurt us." ...

    Fred C. Dobbs -> ilsm... , February 19, 2017 at 05:19 AM
    Trump Is Showing How the Deep State Really Works
    http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/15/trump-is-showing-how-the-deep-state-really-works/
    Foreign Policy - Feb 15

    The who, what, where, and why of the Trump administration's first major scandal - Michael Flynn's ignominious resignation on Monday as national security advisor - have all been thoroughly discussed. Relatively neglected, and deserving of far more attention, has been the how.

    The fact the nation's now-departed senior guardian of national security was unmoored by a scandal linked to a conversation picked up on a wire offers a rare insight into how exactly America's vaunted Deep State works. It is a story not about rogue intelligence agencies running amok outside the law, but rather about the vast domestic power they have managed to acquire within it.

    We know now that the FBI and the NSA, under their Executive Order 12333 authority and using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as statutory cover, were actively monitoring the phone calls and reading text messages sent to and from the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak.

    Although the monitoring of any specific individual is classified TOP SECRET, and cannot be released to foreigners, the existence of this monitoring in general is something of an open secret, and Kislyak probably suspected he was under surveillance.

    But a welter of laws, many of them tweaked after the Snowden revelations, govern the distribution of any information that is acquired by such surveillance. And this is where it's highly relevant that this scandal was started by the public leaking of information about Mike Flynn's involvement in the monitoring of Kisylak.

    The way it's supposed to work is that any time a "U.S. person" - government speak for a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, even a U.S. company, located here or abroad - finds his or her communications caught up in Kislyak's, the entire surveillance empire, which was designed for speed and efficiency, and which, we now know, is hard to manage, grinds to a halt. That's a good thing. Even before Snowden, of course, the FBI would "minimize" the U.S. end of a conversation if analysts determined that the calls had no relevance to a legitimate intelligence gathering purpose. A late night call to order pizza would fall into this category.

    But if the analyst listening to Kislyak's call hears someone identify himself as an agent of the U.S. government - "Hi! It's Mike Flynn" certainly qualifies - a number of things have to happen, according to the government's own rules

    At this stage, the actual audio of the call and any transcript would be considered "Raw FISA-acquired information," and its distribution would be highly restricted. At the NSA, not more than 40 or so analysts or senior managers would be read into the classification sub-sub compartment that contains it, called RAGTIME-A,B,C D or P, where each letter stands for one of five different categories of foreign intelligence.

    For anything out of the ordinary - and, again, Flynn's status qualifies - the head of the National Security Division would be notified, and he or she would bring the raw FISA transcript to FBI Director James Comey or his deputy. Then, the director and his deputy would determine whether to keep the part of the communication that contained Flynn's words. The NSA has its own procedures for determining whether to destroy or retain the U.S. half of an intercepted communication.

    In this case, there were three sets of communications between Flynn and Kislyak, at least one of which is a text message. The first occurs on Dec. 18. The last occurs on Dec. 30, a day after sanctions were levied against people that the Russian ambassador knew - namely, spies posing as diplomats.

    The factors FBI Director Comey and his deputy would have had to consider in this case are complex. Flynn was a former senior intelligence official not in power at the time of the communications, though he did have an interim security clearance. Then there was the policy context: The United States wanted to know why Russia decided not to retaliate, according to the Washington Post.

    (Justice Department warned White House that
    Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail,
    officials say https://wpo.st/fthc2 Feb 13)

    But the most important factor would have been that Flynn was talking to the ambassador of a country who has been credibly accused of interfering in the election of his boss. Regardless of the content of Flynn's side of the call, it would be negligent if the FBI decided to minimize, or ignore, these calls, simply because Flynn is a citizen who is not subject to surveillance himself. But what Flynn said in the calls would have played a role in the FBI's determination to keep the transcripts unminimized - a fancy way of saying "unredacted."

    The Justice Department would then decide whether to pursue the matter further. If they thought Flynn was acting as an agent of a foreign government - and there's not a gram of evidence for this - they could apply for a normal surveillance warrant under Title III of the U.S. code.

    It is rare for the FBI or NSA to distribute raw, unminimized FISA material outside of controlled channels. But given the intelligence questions at stake, they would have had an obligation to circulate the Flynn transcripts to the National Security Council, which, during most of January, was peopled with President Obama's staff and detailees from other government agencies.

    Sometime before January 12, the fact that these conversations had occurred was disclosed to David Ignatius, who wrote about them. That day, Sean Spicer asked Flynn about them. Flynn denied that the sanctions were discussed. A few days later, on January 16, Vice President Mike Pence repeated Flynn's assurances to him that the calls were mostly about the logistics of arranging further calls when Trump was President.

    At this moment, we are four days away from Trump's inauguration. The FBI agents and analysts who monitored the calls, as well as some NSC officials in the Obama administration, along with a few senior Justice Department attorneys, all knew with certainty that the content of the calls contradicted Flynn's account of them. The transcript of the Dec. 30 call proved as much.

    For reasons unclear to us, the FBI director, James Comey, did not believe that Flynn's misrepresentations amounted to a sufficient national security risk on January 16 to spring FBI investigators on the Trump team, or even on Flynn. Perhaps he felt that doing so right before the inauguration would have been too unseemly.

    But he did want to know more. In an extraordinary turn, agents were sent to the White House to interview Flynn just a few days after Trump was sworn in, according to the New York Times. We don't know what they learned. But by January 26, Comey had dropped his objections to notifying the White House. (In the interim, Sean Spicer was asked about the calls again, and repeated the Flynn untruth.)

    Acting attorney general Sally Yates informed the White House counsel, Don McGahn, that their account of what Flynn said did not match what Flynn insisted he said.

    McGahn had the clearance to see the transcript, but it's fair to assume that many members of Trump's team probably did not. But that does not explain why it took 11 days for Vice President Pence, who certainly did have such clearance, to learn about the Justice Department warning. And it does not explain what the White House was doing as it mulled over this information for weeks.

    Here we have to leave the realm of reasonable conjecture, but the best explanation might be the easiest: incompetence or ineffectiveness from the White House counsel and an inability to foresee the real world consequences of their own decisions by White House principals. The country's intelligence agencies, by contrast, were far more clear-sighted in the use of their prerogatives and power.

    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , February 19, 2017 at 07:26 AM
    Obama's executive order and an act make it okay to attempt a coup trashing the 4 th amendment.

    The US confirms to the world it is not what it claims.

    [Mar 06, 2017] Russian effect is tiny compared to CIA Vickie Nuland color coup in Kyiv, sodomizing Qaddafi, greenlighting the military coup in Egypt, busting up Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan

    Mar 06, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    DeDude -> libezkova...

    , March 05, 2017 at 04:05 AM
    Yes sure Russians did all they could to get Hillary elected ??

    Now your desperation is becoming pathetic - comrade.

    ilsm -> DeDude... , March 05, 2017 at 07:34 AM
    How fast the loser become take the role of the enemies.

    Russian effect is tiny compared to CIA Vickie Nuland color coup in Kyiv, sodomizing Qaddafi, greenlighting the military coup in Egypt, busting up Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan.......

    There is nothing more than a politicized 'thought experiment' on how the Russians could in their alter reality have kept the career criminal from taking Pa and Wi.


    Their press even rolls out dead journalists against Putin while the 65 dead around the Clinton crime family is 'tin foil hat....'

    They'll fact check Trump on each 140 characters!

    [Mar 05, 2017] Obama says Trump claim he ordered Trump Tower wiretapped is false Fox News

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Had my wires tapped"! Just became the new internet meme. ..."
    "... Trump has enough evidence to put bammy in JAIL ..."
    Mar 05, 2017 | www.foxnews.com
    Former President Obama on Saturday denied President Trump's accusation that Obama had Trump Tower phones tapped in the weeks before the November 2016 election.

    "Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false," said Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for the former president.

    Trump made the claim in a series of early Saturday morning tweets that included the suggestion that the alleged wiretapping was tantamount to "McCarthyism" and "Nixon/Watergate."

    Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

    Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

    6:35 AM - 4 Mar 2017
    "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism," Trump tweeted.

    "Is it legal for a sitting President to be 'wire tapping' a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!" he said in another tweet.

    Trump also tweeted that a "good lawyer could make a great case of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!"

    "How low has President Obama gone to tap (sic) my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergage. Bad (or sick) guy!" the president continued.

    Trump does not specify how he uncovered the Obama administration's alleged wiretapping.

    However, he could be referencing a Breitbart article posted Friday that claimed the administration made two Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) requests in 2016 to monitor Trump communications and a computer server in Trump Tower, related to possible links with Russian banks.

    No evidence was found.

    The article was based on a segment by radio host Mark Levin.

    However, the timelines for each seems to draw from a range of news reports over the last several months, including those from The New York Times and Heat Street.

    Lewis also said Saturday: "A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice."

    wouldsmash

    REOPEN CLINTON EMAIL SERVER INVESTIGATION

    encorezzzzzzz

    GOP lawmaker calls to investigate Obama's $418 million arms deal with Kenya.

    Fox News reported: A North Carolina congressman is calling for a probe into a potential $418 million contract between Kenya and a major U.S. defense contractor announced on President Obama's last day in office -- a deal the lawmaker claims reeks of cronyism. Republican Rep. Ted Budd wants the Government Accountability Office to investigate a deal between the African nation and New York-based L3 Technologies for the sale of 12 weaponized border patrol planes.

    He said he wants to know why a veteran-owned small company in North Carolina – which specializes in making such planes – was not considered as the manufacturer. IOMAX USA Inc., based in Mooresville and founded by a U.S. Army veteran, offered to build Kenya the weaponized planes for roughly $281 million – far cheaper than what its competitor, L3, is selling them for.

    "Something smells wrong here," Budd told Fox News. "The U.S. Air Force bypassed IOMAX, which has 50 of these planes already in service in the Middle East." "They were given a raw deal," Budd said of Kenya, which had requested from the U.S. 12 weaponized planes in its fight against terrorist group Al-Shabaab near its northern border. "We want to treat our allies like Kenya fairly," he said. "And we want to know why IOMAX was not considered."

    ricochetdog

    "Had my wires tapped"! Just became the new internet meme.

    Andrewmag16

    Why are democrats always meeting and dealing with us and then act like its bad if anyone else speaks to Russians?

    evolutionmyths

    Coming from an ... that never spoke any kind of truth . If he said false it means True

    SheSayEh

    Obama was community organizer of Chicago. Look at the mess he left behind there.

    MrChainBlueLightning

    The so called United States experiment should end. It was ultimately a failure. Red and Blue states should merge and form their own countries.

    CLUTCHCARGO1

    DON'T STOP INVESTIGATING. OBAMA NEEDS TO MEET INMATE BUBBA

    wouldsmash

    Trump has enough evidence to put bammy in JAIL

    MickeyQBitskoIII

    Soros would certainly have it done, and Obama and Hillary would be in on whatever "intel" is gathered, but there is NO WAY Soros would allow his favorite Kenyan lap dog to be directly involved in the operation.

    frdm399

    Tucker Carlson exposed Politifact, New York Times, and Washington Post fact checkers as liars last night. You just can't believe anything a democRAT says...

    jconnelly

    The US Govt was spying on Trump during the election. The Russians were spying on Clinton during the election. Which is worse?

    [Mar 04, 2017] There is extremely powerful and influential fifth column of globalization within the country which intends to block Trump efforts to reverse neoliberal globalization

    Notable quotes:
    "... He was elected not for his personal qualities, but despite them, as a symbol of anti-neoliberal movement. As the only candidate that intuitively felt the need for the new policy due to crisis of neoliberalism ("secular stagnation" to be exact) impoverishment of lower 80% and "appropriated" anti-neoliberal sentiments. ..."
    "... And he is expected to accomplish at least two goals: ..."
    "... Stop the wars of expansion of neoliberal empire fought by previous administration. Achieve détente with Russia as Russia is more ally then foe in the current international situation and hostility engineered by Obama administration was based on Russia resistance to neoliberalism ..."
    "... Reverse or at least stem destruction of jobs and the standard of living of lower 80% on Americans due to globalization and, possibly, slow down or reverse the process of globalization itself. ..."
    "... "And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place," ..."
    "... This is anathema for neoliberalism and it is neoliberals who ruled the country since 1980. So it is not surprising that they now are trying to stage a color revolution in the USA to return to power. See also pretty interesting analysis at ..."
    Mar 04, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    cm -> im1dc... March 04, 2017 at 05:59 PM 2017 at 05:59 PM
    The important mission has been accomplished - Trump has become president. What would motivate many people to go out for weekend rallies now?
    libezkova -> cm... , -1
    "The important mission has been accomplished - Trump has become president."

    You are absolutely wrong. Mission is not accomplished. It is not even started.

    Trump IMHO was just a symbol of resistance against neoliberalism that is growing in the USA.

    He was elected not for his personal qualities, but despite them, as a symbol of anti-neoliberal movement. As the only candidate that intuitively felt the need for the new policy due to crisis of neoliberalism ("secular stagnation" to be exact) impoverishment of lower 80% and "appropriated" anti-neoliberal sentiments.

    And he is expected to accomplish at least two goals:

    1. Stop the wars of expansion of neoliberal empire fought by previous administration. Achieve détente with Russia as Russia is more ally then foe in the current international situation and hostility engineered by Obama administration was based on Russia resistance to neoliberalism (despite being neoliberal country with neoliberal President -- Putin is probably somewhat similar to Trump "bastard neoliberal" a strange mixture of neoliberal in domestic politics with "economic nationalist" on international arena that rejects neoliberal globalization, on term favorable to multinational corporations).
    2. Reverse or at least stem destruction of jobs and the standard of living of lower 80% on Americans due to globalization and, possibly, slow down or reverse the process of globalization itself.

    The problem is there is extremely powerful and influential "fifth column" of globalization within the country and they can't allow Trump to go this path. As Senator Dick Durbin said about banks and the US Congress

    == quote ==

    Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has been battling the banks the last few weeks in an effort to get 60 votes lined up for bankruptcy reform. He's losing.

    On Monday night in an interview with a radio host back home, he came to a stark conclusion: the banks own the Senate.

    "And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place,"

    == end of the quote ==

    This is anathema for neoliberalism and it is neoliberals who ruled the country since 1980. So it is not surprising that they now are trying to stage a color revolution in the USA to return to power. See also pretty interesting analysis at

    http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/03/03/done-paul-craig-roberts/

    [Mar 04, 2017] DNC hack is used for fueling the witch hunt in best traditions of Russians are coming

    Notable quotes:
    "... Defense spending in 2016 was $732.3 billion, the president is asking for another $54 billion in 2017, while between 2001 and 2016, $4.79 trillion was spent on or allotted to the cost of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and on Homeland Security. ..."
    "... Curiously there are ever so many people who make a point of always but always understating defense spending by playing all sorts of games from expressly leaving out spending on military field activities as in Afghanistan or Iraq to talking about real or surreal spending so that any ordinary person is made to think spending is tens of billions of dollars less than it actually is. ..."
    "... If we look at %GDP I think US expenditures for the defense account included (not all) declined to about 3.9%. SIPRI is a good source for GDP activity. ..."
    "... There remains a huge amount of (outlay) backlog to expend from FY 2009 through today. ..."
    Mar 04, 2017 | www.newyorker.com

    March 04, 2017 at 05:33 AM

    Game Warden -> ilsm... March 04, 2017 at 05:57 AM

    The dems are like fishermen, baiting the water (and viewership) and then setting the hook to try to land the fish. They are following the old DC approach of pursuing one hot topic if there is any potential for a catch.

    The reps did that with the e-mails during the campaign and it paid off for them. They landed the Hillary carp and found that it rotted from the head anyway.
    The dems will see what type of fish, or old tire, or whatever, they land.
    The Old Man and The Sea it ain't.

    ilsm -> Game Warden...March 04, 2017 at 06:04 AM

    Oh well Clinton was never good with flies.

    My resident Hillary lover foresaw this week's Sessions version of 'the Russians are coming' two weeks ago.

    They should keep the operational schedule for the coup closer.

    libezkova -> ilsm... March 04, 2017 at 02:58 PM

    Those three neocon stooges wrote a really interesting piece. I would say this can qualify as a classic anti-Russian propaganda. All major anti-Russian myths are present.

    But in the sea of standard propaganda drivel and anti-Russian myths there are a couple of interesting admissions (it is difficult to lie all the time ;-)

    Vladimir Putin, who is quick to accuse the West of hypocrisy, frequently points to this history. He sees a straight line from the West's support of the anti-Moscow "color revolutions," in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine, which deposed corrupt, Soviet-era leaders, to its endorsement of the uprisings of the Arab Spring.

    Five years ago, he blamed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow's Bolotnaya Square. "She set the tone for some of our actors in the country and gave the signal," Putin said.

    "They heard this and, with the support of the U.S. State Department, began active work." (No evidence was provided for the accusation.) He considers nongovernmental agencies and civil-society groups like the National Endowment for Democracy, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the election-monitoring group Golos to be barely disguised instruments of regime change.

    ... .. ...

    Initially, members of the Russian élite celebrated Clinton's disappearance from the scene, and the new drift toward an America First populism that would leave Russia alone. The fall of Michael Flynn and the prospect of congressional hearings, though, have tempered the enthusiasm. Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of a leading foreign-policy journal in Moscow, said that Trump, facing pressure from congressional investigations, the press, and the intelligence agencies, might now have to be a far more "ordinary Republican President than was initially thought."

    In other words, Trump might conclude that he no longer has the political latitude to end sanctions against Moscow and accommodate Russia's geopolitical ambitions. As a sign of the shifting mood in Moscow, the Kremlin ordered Russian television outlets to be more reserved in their coverage of the new President.

    ... ... ...

    *An earlier version of this passage wrongly indicated that the U.S. is known to have funded Russian political parties.

    I especially like the last paragraph.

    Paine -> libezkova... March 04, 2017 at 03:39 PM

    The history of uncle Sam's Interference in foreign elections since1946 is a fun house with many many rooms

    anne -> anne... March 04, 2017 at 12:45 PM

    http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2016/Costs%20of%20War%20through%202016%20FINAL%20final%20v2.pdf

    September, 2016

    US Budgetary Costs of Wars through 2016: $4.79 Trillion and Counting
    Summary of Costs of the US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Homeland Security
    By Neta C. Crawford

    Summary

    Wars cost money before, during and after they occur - as governments prepare for, wage, and recover from them by replacing equipment, caring for the wounded and repairing the infrastructure destroyed in the fighting. Although it is rare to have a precise accounting of the costs of war - especially of long wars - one can get a sense of the rough scale of the costs by surveying the major categories of spending.

    As of August 2016, the US has already appropriated, spent, or taken on obligations to spend more than $3.6 trillion in current dollars on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria and on Homeland Security (2001 through fiscal year 2016). To this total should be added the approximately $65 billion in dedicated war spending the Department of Defense and State Department have requested for the next fiscal year, 2017, along with an additional nearly $32 billion requested for the Department of Homeland Security in 2017, and estimated spending on veterans in future years. When those are included, the total US budgetary cost of the wars reaches $4.79 trillion....

    anne -> anne... March 04, 2017 at 01:00 PM

    Defense spending in 2016 was $732.3 billion, the president is asking for another $54 billion in 2017, while between 2001 and 2016, $4.79 trillion was spent on or allotted to the cost of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and on Homeland Security.

    Peter K. -> anne...March 04, 2017 at 01:05 PM

    "Curiously there are ever so many people who make a point of always but always understating defense spending by playing all sorts of games from expressly leaving out spending on military field activities as in Afghanistan or Iraq to talking about real or surreal spending so that any ordinary person is made to think spending is tens of billions of dollars less than it actually is."

    Pinkybum -> anne... March 04, 2017 at 02:55 PM

    Surely you would want to express this number at least as inflation adjusted per-capita dollars (which GDP sort-of captures.)

    ilsm -> pgl... March 04, 2017 at 01:09 PM

    I like the OMB historical tables that reflects outlay/ordering authority that is the checking account to obligate money which might not show up in GDP expenditures for delivery for years.

    Tracking GDP metric is limited in perspective, it shows what was delivered and paid for in the accounting year. It does not show what is on the order books nor what new stuff is added to the order books.

    If we look at %GDP I think US expenditures for the defense account included (not all) declined to about 3.9%. SIPRI is a good source for GDP activity.

    There remains a huge amount of (outlay) backlog to expend from FY 2009 through today.

    Why I am not sure measuring GDP impact without getting some account information on backlog procurements means much for any country.

    2009 was a big year for the peace prize surge!

    [Mar 04, 2017] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war

    Mar 04, 2017 | www.newyorker.com

    The illusion of DNC hack, allegation it is "the Russians are coming:".

    There is not there there! Reply Saturday, March 04, 2017 at 05:33 AM Game Warden said in reply to ilsm... The dems are like fishermen, baiting the water (and viewership) and then setting the hook to try to land the fish. They are following the old DC approach of pursuing one hot topic if there is any potential for a catch.
    The reps did that with the e-mails during the campaign and it paid off for them. They landed the Hillary carp and found that it rotted from the head anyway.
    The dems will see what type of fish, or old tire, or whatever, they land.
    The Old Man and The Sea it ain't. Reply Saturday, March 04, 2017 at 05:57 AM ilsm said in reply to Game Warden... Oh well Clinton was never good with files.

    My resident Hillary lover foresaw this week's Sessions version of 'the Russians are coming' two weeks ago.

    They should keep the operational schedule for the coup closer. Reply Saturday, March 04, 2017 at 06:04 AM libezkova said in reply to ilsm... Those three neocon stooges wrote a really interesting piece. I would say this can qualify as a classic anti-Russian propaganda. All major anti-Russian myths are present.

    But in the sea of standard propaganda drivel and anti-Russian myths there are a couple of interesting admissions (it is difficult to lie all the time ;-)

    == quote ==

    Vladimir Putin, who is quick to accuse the West of hypocrisy, frequently points to this history. He sees a straight line from the West's support of the anti-Moscow "color revolutions," in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine, which deposed corrupt, Soviet-era leaders, to its endorsement of the uprisings of the Arab Spring.

    Five years ago, he blamed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow's Bolotnaya Square. "She set the tone for some of our actors in the country and gave the signal," Putin said.

    "They heard this and, with the support of the U.S. State Department, began active work." (No evidence was provided for the accusation.) He considers nongovernmental agencies and civil-society groups like the National Endowment for Democracy, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the election-monitoring group Golos to be barely disguised instruments of regime change.

    ... .. ...

    Initially, members of the Russian élite celebrated Clinton's disappearance from the scene, and the new drift toward an America First populism that would leave Russia alone. The fall of Michael Flynn and the prospect of congressional hearings, though, have tempered the enthusiasm. Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of a leading foreign-policy journal in Moscow, said that Trump, facing pressure from congressional investigations, the press, and the intelligence agencies, might now have to be a far more "ordinary Republican President than was initially thought."

    In other words, Trump might conclude that he no longer has the political latitude to end sanctions against Moscow and accommodate Russia's geopolitical ambitions. As a sign of the shifting mood in Moscow, the Kremlin ordered Russian television outlets to be more reserved in their coverage of the new President.

    ... ... ...

    *An earlier version of this passage wrongly indicated that the U.S. is known to have funded Russian political parties.
    == and of quote ==

    I especially like the last paragraph.

    Reply Saturday, March 04, 2017 at 02:58 PM
    Paine said in reply to libezkova... The history of uncle Sam's Interference
    in foreign elections since1946
    Is a fun house with many many rooms Reply Saturday, March 04, 2017 at 03:39 PM

    anne said in reply to anne... http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2016/Costs%20of%20War%20through%202016%20FINAL%20final%20v2.pdf

    September, 2016

    US Budgetary Costs of Wars through 2016: $4.79 Trillion and Counting
    Summary of Costs of the US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Homeland Security
    By Neta C. Crawford

    Summary

    Wars cost money before, during and after they occur - as governments prepare for, wage, and recover from them by replacing equipment, caring for the wounded and repairing the infrastructure destroyed in the fighting. Although it is rare to have a precise accounting of the costs of war - especially of long wars - one can get a sense of the rough scale of the costs by surveying the major categories of spending.

    As of August 2016, the US has already appropriated, spent, or taken on obligations to spend more than $3.6 trillion in current dollars on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria and on Homeland Security (2001 through fiscal year 2016). To this total should be added the approximately $65 billion in dedicated war spending the Department of Defense and State Department have requested for the next fiscal year, 2017, along with an additional nearly $32 billion requested for the Department of Homeland Security in 2017, and estimated spending on veterans in future years. When those are included, the total US budgetary cost of the wars reaches $4.79 trillion.... Reply Saturday, March 04, 2017 at 12:45 PM anne said in reply to anne... Defense spending in 2016 was $732.3 billion, the president is asking for another $54 billion in 2017, while between 2001 and 2016, $4.79 trillion was spent on or allotted to the cost of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and on Homeland Security. Reply Saturday, March 04, 2017 at 01:00 PM Peter K. said in reply to anne... "Curiously there are ever so many people who make a point of always but always understating defense spending by playing all sorts of games from expressly leaving out spending on military field activities as in Afghanistan or Iraq to talking about real or surreal spending so that any ordinary person is made to think spending is tens of billions of dollars less than it actually is."

    Yes. I wouldn't trust any info PGL provides without clear links from objective sources.
    Reply Saturday, March 04, 2017 at 01:05 PM Pinkybum said in reply to anne... Surely you would want to express this number at least as inflation adjusted per-capita dollars (which GDP sort-of captures.) Reply Saturday, March 04, 2017 at 02:55 PM ilsm said in reply to pgl... I like the OMB historical tables that reflects outlay/ordering authority that is the checking account to obligate money which might not show up in GDP expenditures for delivery for years.

    Tracking GDP metric is limited in perspective, it shows what was delivered and paid for in the accounting year. It does not show what is on the order books nor what new stuff is added to the order books.

    If we look at %GDP I think US expenditures for the defense account included (not all) declined to about 3.9%. SIPRI is a good source for GDP activity.

    There remains a huge amount of (outlay) backlog to expend from FY 2009 through today.

    Why I am not sure measuring GDP impact without getting some account information on backlog procurements means much for any country.

    2009 was a big year for the peace prize surge! Reply Saturday, March 04, 2017 at 01:09 PM

    [Mar 04, 2017] Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War

    Three neocon stooges wrote a classic propaganda essay. All major anti-Russian myths are present. Comments are borrowed from March 04, 2017 at economistsview.typepad.com
    Notable quotes:
    "... Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of a leading foreign-policy journal in Moscow, said that Trump, facing pressure from congressional investigations, the press, and the intelligence agencies, might now have to be a far more "ordinary Republican President than was initially thought." ..."
    "... *An earlier version of this passage wrongly indicated that the U.S. is known to have funded Russian political parties. ..."
    Mar 04, 2017 | www.newyorker.com

    Vladimir Putin, who is quick to accuse the West of hypocrisy, frequently points to this history. He sees a straight line from the West's support of the anti-Moscow "color revolutions," in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine, which deposed corrupt, Soviet-era leaders, to its endorsement of the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Five years ago, he blamed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow's Bolotnaya Square. "She set the tone for some of our actors in the country and gave the signal," Putin said. "They heard this and, with the support of the U.S. State Department, began active work." (No evidence was provided for the accusation.) He considers nongovernmental agencies and civil-society groups like the National Endowment for Democracy, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the election-monitoring group Golos to be barely disguised instruments of regime change.

    ... .. ...

    Initially, members of the Russian élite celebrated Clinton's disappearance from the scene, and the new drift toward an America First populism that would leave Russia alone. The fall of Michael Flynn and the prospect of congressional hearings, though, have tempered the enthusiasm. Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of a leading foreign-policy journal in Moscow, said that Trump, facing pressure from congressional investigations, the press, and the intelligence agencies, might now have to be a far more "ordinary Republican President than was initially thought."

    In other words, Trump might conclude that he no longer has the political latitude to end sanctions against Moscow and accommodate Russia's geopolitical ambitions. As a sign of the shifting mood in Moscow, the Kremlin ordered Russian television outlets to be more reserved in their coverage of the new President.

    ... ... ...

    *An earlier version of this passage wrongly indicated that the U.S. is known to have funded Russian political parties.

    [Mar 04, 2017] Update on Trumps Pro-Russiaism

    Notable quotes:
    "... Gordon claimed that Trump said he did not "want to go to World War III over Ukraine" during that meeting, Acosta said. ..."
    Mar 04, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    im1dc : March 03, 2017 at 05:45 PM , 2017 at 05:45 PM
    Update re Trump's Pro-Russiaism

    This shows Trump and his highest campaign officials at the time complicit in pro-Russian spin and from those in contact with Russia in the Trump campaign

    Impeachment charge stuff imo

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/jd-gordon-change-story-gop-platform-ukraine-amendment

    "Trump Ally Drastically Changes Story About Altering GOP Platform On Ukraine"

    By Allegra Kirkland....March 3, 2017....2:16 PM EDT

    "In a significant reversal, a Trump campaign official on Thursday told CNN that he personally advocated for softening the language on Ukraine in the GOP platform at the Republican National Convention, and that he did so on behalf of the President.nnb877

    CNN's Jim Acosta reported on air that J.D. Gordon, the Trump campaign's national security policy representative at the RNC, told him that he made the change to include language that he claimed "Donald Trump himself wanted and advocated for" at a March 2016 meeting at then-unfinished Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

    Gordon claimed that Trump said he did not "want to go to World War III over Ukraine" during that meeting, Acosta said.

    Yet Gordon had told Business Insider in January that he "never left" the side table where he sat monitoring the national security subcommittee meeting, where a GOP delegate's amendment calling for the provision of "lethal defense weapons" to the Ukrainian army was tabled. At the time, Gordon said "neither Mr. Trump nor [former campaign manager] Mr. [Paul] Manafort were involved in those sort of details, as they've made clear."

    Discussion of changes to the platform, which drew attention to the ties to a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine that fueled Manafort's resignation as Trump's campaign chairman, resurfaced Thursday in a USA Today story. The newspaper revealed that Gordon and Carter Page, another former Trump adviser, met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the GOP convention.

    Trump and his team have long insisted that his campaign had no contact with Russian officials during the 2016 race, and that they were not behind softening the language on Ukraine in the Republican Party platform."...

    libezkova -> im1dc... , March 03, 2017 at 08:30 PM
    This is not an update re: "Trump's Pro-Russiaism".

    This is an update of your complete lack of understanding of political situation.

    There was a pretty cold and nasty calculation on Trump's part to split Russia-China alliance which does threaten the USA global hegemony. Now those efforts are discredited and derailed. Looks like the US neoliberal elite is slightly suicidal. But that's good: the sooner we get rid of neoliberalism, the better.

    Sill Dems hysteria (in association with some Repugs like war hawks John McCain and Lindsey Graham) does strongly smells with neo-McCarthyism. McCain and Graham are probably playing this dirty game out of pure enthusiasm: Trump does not threatens MIC from which both were elected. He just gave them all the money they wanted. But for Dems this is en essential smoke screen to hide their fiasco and blame evil Russians.

    In other words citing Marx: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. "

    This farce of making Russians a scapegoat for all troubles does make some short-term political sense as it distracts from the fact the Dems were abandoned by its base. And it unites the nation providing some political support for chickenhawks in US Congress for the next elections.

    But in a long run the price might be a little bit too high. If Russian and China formalize their alliance this is the official end for the US neoliberal empire. Britain will jump the sinking ship first, because they do not have completely stupid elite.

    BTW preventing Cino-Russian alliance is what British elite always tried to do (and was successful) in the past -- but in their time the main danger for them was the alliance of Germany and Russia -- two major continental powers.

    Still short-termism is a feature of US politics, and we can do nothing against those forces that fuel the current anti-Russian hysteria.

    The evil rumors at the time of original McCarthyism hysteria were that this was at least partially a smoke screen designed to hide smuggling of Nazi scientists and intelligence operatives into the USA (McCarthy was from Wisconsin, the state in German immigrant majority from which famous anti-WWI voice Robert M. La Follette was elected ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._La_Follette_Sr.))

    So here there might well be also some hidden motives, because everybody, including even you understands that "Trump is in the pocket of Russians" hypothesis is pure propaganda (BTW Hillary did take bribes from Russian oligarchs, that's proven, but Caesar's wife must be above suspicion).

    im1dc -> libezkova... , March 03, 2017 at 07:44 PM
    What we are witnessing is the truth coming out, too slowly for some of us, but it surely will come out eventually despite the best efforts of Trump's WH, Gang, and his Republican lackies to cover it up.
    im1dc -> im1dc... , March 03, 2017 at 08:05 PM
    Serious question, what do you believe to be Director Comey's fingerprints on all of this?
    libezkova -> im1dc... , March 03, 2017 at 08:59 PM
    You probably would be better off sticking to posting music from YouTube then trying to understand complex political events and posting political junk from US MSM in pretty prominent economic blog (overtaking Fred)

    Especially taking into account the fact that English is the only language you know and judging from your posts you do not have degrees in either economics or political science (although some people here with computer science background proved to be shrewd analysts of both economic and political events; cm is one example).

    Although trying to read British press will not hurt you, they do provide a better coverage of US political events then the USA MSM. Even neoliberal Guardian. So if you can't fight your urge to repost political junk please try to do it from British press.

    As for your question: in 20 years we might know something about who played what hand in this dirty poker, but even this is not given (JFK assassination is a classic example here; Gulf of Tonkin incident is another)

    [Mar 03, 2017] Evola framework allows for a shared nationalistic struggle that is simultaneously individualistic and universal in the chivalric sense that true warriors always recognize and respect each other even when serving different causes.

    Notable quotes:
    "... The two thinkers, recently in the news thanks to Steve Bannon, had different views on human nature. ..."
    "... if human nature is universal, cultural convergence seems to be the logical outcome of a globalized world. ..."
    "... Spengler's views can be seen in the context of a movement known as historicism, the idea that human societies were the products of historical and material circumstances, which arose as a result of the universalism propagated by the Enlightenment and spread by the French Revolution. While Spengler makes some valid points, particularly in arguing against the idea that history is goal-oriented and directional, his view denies the very concept of empathy, that one can look at, say, Caesar, and see things through his eyes. ..."
    "... In other words, Evola believed that there was a common core to human beings, a set of higher principles and heroic "traditional" values that lay at the root of every successful civilization. Even when eclipsed, these values remained in a dormant form, waiting to be reactivated. It is not surprising, then, that Evola is popular among nationalists and reactionaries today, because his framework allows for a shared nationalistic struggle that is simultaneously individualistic and universal in the chivalric sense that true warriors always recognize and respect each other even when serving different causes. ..."
    "... The problem is that the mere existence of human nature is no guarantee of its consummation. Human beings may live pathetic or ignoble or fragmentary lives. Evola's concern (whatever one might think of it) was with encouraging the perfection of human nature through political means. That perfection may have little to do with the commonest "material, psychological, and emotional factors"; indeed, it most certainly requires their overcoming. ..."
    "... This is important, because it forms one of the strongest critiques that the far right brings against democratic republics: namely, that they are materialistic and emotionally hollow; that they provide no transcendental or ennobling vision of the life of human beings and the destiny of societies. ..."
    Feb 25, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
    Akhilesh Pillalamarr

    The two thinkers, recently in the news thanks to Steve Bannon, had different views on human nature.

    The apocalyptic worldview promoted by prominent political figures such as Steve Bannon in the United States and Aleksandr Dugin in Russia is premised on the notion that ordinary political and legislative battles are more than just quibbles over contemporary issues. Rather, political debates are fronts in a greater battle of ideas , and everything is a struggle for the meaning of civilization and human nature. Bannon's worldview is preceded by the thought of two early-20th-century thinkers, Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola-and his passing mention of the latter in a 2014 speech has caused some controversy in recent weeks, including a New York Times article entitled "Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists."

    These thinkers wrote at a time when the Western narrative of progress and improvement was shattered after World War I. Interest in both Spengler and Evola has recently revived, though Spengler was always fairly well-known for his thesis that civilizations grew and declined in a cyclical fashion.

    Although both Spengler and Evola shared a pessimism over the direction of modern Western civilization, they differed on human nature. Is there a way to reconcile two vastly different observations?

    The first is that people in different eras and locales display a remarkable degree of behavioral similarity; id est , human nature is universal and constant. However, on the other hand, the peculiarities and differences between some cultures are so great that it is hard to see how these are derived from a common source. This question is really what lies at the root of the current argument between cosmopolitanism and nationalism. For if human nature is universal, cultural convergence seems to be the logical outcome of a globalized world.

    Are there alternatives? Building off of ideas introduced in the early 19th century by Hegel, Spengler argued that the very framework of human experience was limited by the time and the civilization in which the person lived:

    "Mankind" has no aim, no idea, no plan [and] is a zoological expression, or an empty word. But conjure away the phantom, break the magic circle, and at once there emerges an astonishing wealth of actual forms. I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history which can be kept up only by shutting one's eyes to the overwhelming multitier of facts, the drama of a number of mighty Cultures. There is not one sculpture, one painting, one mathematics, one physics, but many, each in its deepest essence different from the others, each limited in duration and self-contained.

    Spengler's views can be seen in the context of a movement known as historicism, the idea that human societies were the products of historical and material circumstances, which arose as a result of the universalism propagated by the Enlightenment and spread by the French Revolution. While Spengler makes some valid points, particularly in arguing against the idea that history is goal-oriented and directional, his view denies the very concept of empathy, that one can look at, say, Caesar, and see things through his eyes.

    Age after age, people look back on history for inspiration, and it is hard to accept this lack of commonality with historical figures: the idea of a common human nature is a compelling concept. It also has the weight of historical, literary, and anthropological evidence behind it. But it does not follow that the idea of a fixed human nature leads to a form of neoliberal universalism.

    One alternative was provided by Evola, who sought to reclaim the idea of human nature from the Enlightenment and reconcile it with the observations described by Spengler and Hegel. Instead of the liberal, convergent universalism championed by the Enlightenment, Evola advocated a traditionalist universalism, because "there is no form of traditional organization that does not hide a higher principle." In an argument that echoes Plato's Theory of Forms, he wrote:

    The supreme values and the foundational principles of every healthy and normal institution are not liable to change. In the domain of these values there is no "history" and to think about them in historical terms is absurd even where these principles are objectified in a historical reality, they are not at all conditioned by it; they always point to a higher, meta-historical plane, which is their natural domain and where there is no change.

    In other words, Evola believed that there was a common core to human beings, a set of higher principles and heroic "traditional" values that lay at the root of every successful civilization. Even when eclipsed, these values remained in a dormant form, waiting to be reactivated. It is not surprising, then, that Evola is popular among nationalists and reactionaries today, because his framework allows for a shared nationalistic struggle that is simultaneously individualistic and universal in the chivalric sense that true warriors always recognize and respect each other even when serving different causes.

    ... ... ...

    Akhilesh Pillalamarri is an editorial assistant at The American Conservative . He also writes for The National Interest and The Diplomat .

    John Bruce Leonard , says: February 21, 2017 at 4:15 pm
    "But the truth is probably a lot simpler: people are motivated by similar and fixed material, psychological, and emotional factors across time and space, not by any liberal or 'meta-historical' purposes."

    Yet it seems to me that everything depends on just who the "people" in question are, and what their relation is to the wellsprings of power. The motivations of the American electorate are not those of a Napoleon; and these motivations in turn are not identical to those those of, say, the Venetian Doge in the Renaissance. The character of the very social order changes dramatically on the basis of the motivations of its rulers.

    The problem is that the mere existence of human nature is no guarantee of its consummation. Human beings may live pathetic or ignoble or fragmentary lives. Evola's concern (whatever one might think of it) was with encouraging the perfection of human nature through political means. That perfection may have little to do with the commonest "material, psychological, and emotional factors"; indeed, it most certainly requires their overcoming.

    This is important, because it forms one of the strongest critiques that the far right brings against democratic republics: namely, that they are materialistic and emotionally hollow; that they provide no transcendental or ennobling vision of the life of human beings and the destiny of societies.

    Until democratic republics can answer that charge, which is a poetic, a spiritual, a philosophical charge, they will remain vulnerable to the peril of "fascist revolt."

    [Mar 03, 2017] America Right or Wrong An Anatomy of American Nationalism

    Notable quotes:
    "... an unwillingness or inability among Americans to question the country's sinlessness feeds a culture of public conformism, ..."
    "... he daringly points out America's "hypocrisy," which also is corroborated by other scholars, among them James Hillman in his recent book "A Terrible Love of War" in which he characterizes hypocrisy as quintessentially American. ..."
    "... The combined resentments lead to a sort of chip on the shoulder patriotism which so characterizes American nationalism. ..."
    "... The book suggests that the Republican Party is really like an old style European nationalist party. Broadly serving the interests of the moneyed elite but spouting a form of populist gobbledygook, which paints America as being in a life and death, struggle with anti-American forces at home and abroad. It is the reason for Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. That is the rhetoric of struggle acts as a cover for political policies that benefit a few and lay the blame for the problems of ordinary Americans on fictitious entities. ..."
    "... The main side effects of the nationalism are the current policies which shackles America to Israel uncritically despite what that country might and how its actions may isolate America from the rest of the world. It also justifies America on foreign policy adventures such as the invasion of Iraq. ..."
    "... " The [U. S.] conduct of the war against terrorism looks more like a baroque apotheosis of political stupidity;" ..."
    "... "One strand of American nationalism is radical...because it continually looks backward at a vanished and idealized national past; " ..."
    "... " [George W.] Bush, his leading officials, and his intellectual and media supporters..., as nationalists, [are] absolutely contemptuous of any global order involving any check whatsoever on American behavior and interests ;" ..."
    "... I find that Mr. Lieven's assessment of both the United States' and Israel's role rings true. While he does not excuse Arab leaders for their misdeeds, he clearly documents a history in which the United States has repeatedly subordinated vital U.S. regional interests in favor of accepting whatever Israel chooses to do. ..."
    Oct 30, 2016 | www.amazon.com
    America Right or Wrong An Anatomy of American Nationalism is one of the best book on American exceptionalism. Here are some Amazon reviews

    From Siegfried Sutterlin March 21, 2006

    ... While there are incontestable civilizing elements to America's nationalism, there are also dangerous and destructive ingredients, a sort of Hegelian thesis and antithesis theme which places a strong question mark in America's historical theme of exceptionalism.

    Unlike in other post-World War II nations, America's nationalism is permeated by values and religious elements derived mostly from the South and the Southern Baptists, though the fears and panics of the embittered heartland provide additional fuel.

    Lieven's book, among other elements, is also a summation of lots of minor observations--even personal ones he made as a student in the small town of Troy, Alabama--and historical details which reflect the grand evolution of America's nationalism. When he says that "an unwillingness or inability among Americans to question the country's sinlessness feeds a culture of public conformism," then he has the support of Mark Twain who said something to the effect that we are blessed with three things in this country, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and, thirdly, the common sense to practice neither one! Ditto when he daringly points out America's "hypocrisy," which also is corroborated by other scholars, among them James Hillman in his recent book "A Terrible Love of War" in which he characterizes hypocrisy as quintessentially American.

    Lieven continues with the impact of the Cold War on America's nationalism and then, having always expanded the theme of Bush's foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, examines with commendable perspective the complex and very much unadmitted current aspects of the U.S.'s relationships with the Moslems, the Iraq War and the impact of the pro-Israeli lobby. It is the sort of assessment one rarely finds in the U.S. media . He exposes the alienation the U.S. caused among allies and, in particular, the Arabs and the EU.

    Lieven wrote this book with passion and commendable sincerity. Though it comes from a foreigner, its advice would without question serve not only America's interest but also provide a substantial basis for a detached and objective approach to solving the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the satisfaction of all involved before worse deeds and more burdens materialize.

    Tom Munro:

    What this book suggests is that a significant number of Americans have an outlook similar to European countries around 1904. A sense of identification with an idea of nation and a dismissive approach to other countries and cultures. Whilst in Europe the experience of the first and second world wars put paid to nationalism in America it is going strong. In fact Europeans see themselves less as Germans or Frenchmen today than they ever have.

    The reason for American nationalism springs from a pride in American institutions but it also contains a deep resentment that gives it its dynamism . Whilst America as a nation has not lost a war there are a number of reasons for resentment. The South feels that its values are not taken seriously and it is subject to ridicule by the seaboard states. Conservative Christians are concerned about modernism. The combined resentments lead to a sort of chip on the shoulder patriotism which so characterizes American nationalism.

    Of course these things alone are not sufficient. Europeans live in countries that are small geographically. They travel see other countries and are multilingual. Most Americans do not travel and the education they do is strong in ideology and weak in history. It is thus easier for some Americans to develop a rather simple minded view of the world.

    The book suggests that the Republican Party is really like an old style European nationalist party. Broadly serving the interests of the moneyed elite but spouting a form of populist gobbledygook, which paints America as being in a life and death, struggle with anti-American forces at home and abroad. It is the reason for Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. That is the rhetoric of struggle acts as a cover for political policies that benefit a few and lay the blame for the problems of ordinary Americans on fictitious entities.

    The main side effects of the nationalism are the current policies which shackles America to Israel uncritically despite what that country might and how its actions may isolate America from the rest of the world. It also justifies America on foreign policy adventures such as the invasion of Iraq.

    The book is quite good and repeats the message of a number of other books such as "What is wrong with America". Probably there is something to be said for the books central message.

    Keith Wheelock (Skillman, NJ USA)

    A Socratic 'America know thyself': READ IT!, August 13, 2010

    Foreigners, from de Tocqueville and Lord Bryce to Hugh Brogan and The Economist's John Micklethwait and Adrian Woodridge, often see America more clearly than do Americans. In the post-World War II period, R. L. Bruckberger's IMAGES OF AMERICA (1958) and Jean -Jacques Servan-Schreiber's THE AMERICAN CHALLENGE (1967) presented an uplifting picture of America.

    Two generations later, Englishman Anatol Lieven paints a troubling picture of a country that is a far cry from John Winthrop's' "city upon a hill."

    Has America changed so profoundly over the past fifty years or is Mr. Lieven simply highlighting historical cycles that, at least for the moment, had resulted in a near `perfect storm?' His 2004 book has prompted both praise [see Brian Urquhart's Extreme Makeover in the New York Review of Books (February 24, 2005)] and brick bats. This book is not a polemic. Rather, it is a scholarly analysis by a highly regarded author and former The Times (London) correspondent who has lived in various American locales. He has a journalist's acquaintance of many prominent Americans and his source materials are excellent.

    I applaud his courage for exploring the dark cross currents in modern-day America. In the tradition of the Delphic oracle and Socrates, he urges that Americans `know thy self.' The picture he paints should cause thoughtful Americans to shudder. Personally, I found his book of a genre similar to Cullen Murphy's ARE WE ROME? THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE AND THE FATE OF AMERICA.

    I do not consider Mr. Lieven anti-American in his extensive critique of American cross currents. That he wrote this in the full flush of the Bush/Cheney post-9/11 era suggests that he might temper some of his assessments after the course corrections of the Obama administration. My sense is that Mr. Lieven admires many of America's core qualities and that this `tough love' essay is his effort to guide Americans back to their more admirable qualities.

    Mr. Lieven boldly sets forth his book's message in a broad-ranging introduction:

    1. " The [U. S.] conduct of the war against terrorism looks more like a baroque apotheosis of political stupidity;"
    2. "Aspects of American nationalism imperil both the nation's global leadership and its success in the struggle against Islamic terror and revolution;"
    3. "Insofar as American nationalism has become mixed up with a chauvinist version of Israeli nationalism, it also plays an absolutely disastrous role in U.S. relations with the Muslim world and in fueling terrorism;"
    4. "American imperialists trail America's coat across the whole world while most ordinary Americans are not looking and rely on those same Americans to react with `don't tread on me' nationalist fury when the coat is trodden on;"
    5. "One strand of American nationalism is radical...because it continually looks backward at a vanished and idealized national past; "
    6. "America is the home of by far the most deep, widespread and conservative religious belief in the Western world;"
    7. "The relationship between the traditional White Protestant world on one hand and the forces of American economic, demographic, social and cultural change on the other may be compared to the genesis of a hurricane;"
    8. "The religious Right has allied itself solidly with extreme free market forces in the Republican Party although it is precisely the workings of unrestricted American capitalism which are eroding the world the religious conservatives wish to defend;"
    9. "American nationalism is beginning to conflict very seriously with any enlightened, viable or even rational version of American imperialism;"
    10. " [George W.] Bush, his leading officials, and his intellectual and media supporters..., as nationalists, [are] absolutely contemptuous of any global order involving any check whatsoever on American behavior and interests ;"
    11. "Nationalism therefore risks undermining precisely those American values which make the nation most admired in the world;" and
    12. "This book...is intended as a reminder of the catastrophes into which nationalism and national messianism led other great countries in the past."

    Mr. Lieven addressed the above points in six well-crafted and thought-provoking chapters that I find persuasive. For some readers Chapter 6, Nationalism, Israel, and the Middle East, may be the most controversial. I am the only living person who has lunched with Gamal Abdel Nasser and David Ben-Gurion in the same week. I have maintained an interest in Arab-Israeli matters ever since. I find that Mr. Lieven's assessment of both the United States' and Israel's role rings true. While he does not excuse Arab leaders for their misdeeds, he clearly documents a history in which the United States has repeatedly subordinated vital U.S. regional interests in favor of accepting whatever Israel chooses to do.

    In 1955 American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote,

    "The most prominent and persuasive failing [of political culture] is a certain proneness to fits of moral crusading that would be fatal if they were not sooner or later tempered with a measure of apathy and common sense."

    I am confident that Professor Hofstadter would agree with me that AMERICA RIGHT OR WRONG is a timely and important book.

    [Mar 03, 2017] Neocons are trying to re-whip anti-Russian hysteria of McCarthy years but do not find as receptive an audience as they used to

    Notable quotes:
    "... I think that there's still a lot of resistance in the US to consider seriously the idea that it could be responsible for assassinating it's own popular president (JFK) and also to consider critically our current activities in places like Ukraine, Libya and Syria. ..."
    Mar 03, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    financial matters , February 27, 2017 at 9:15 am

    It seems that the last worthwhile president we had was JFK. He started out his presidency as a Cold Warrior but at the end saw the futility of being involved in Vietnam and of the cold war in general.

    At the time there was a very strong anti-communist pro-war sentiment in the US which resonated well with the military industrial complex that Kennedy was up against when his views became more conciliatory with Russia. This anti-Russian sentiment is trying to be re-whipped up in the US but isn't finding as receptive an audience.

    Kennedy essentially lost control of his presidency. Trump seems to be facing similar pressures but I don't think he's so isolated in his battles. He has strong allies in both the military and industry and there is a different public sentiment.

    I think that there's still a lot of resistance in the US to consider seriously the idea that it could be responsible for assassinating it's own popular president (JFK) and also to consider critically our current activities in places like Ukraine, Libya and Syria.

    Russia seems to be treating its Arab neighbors with more respect and it would be good if Trump could get on that train. It would also be good to see Trump transition to a more climate friendly attitude such as partnering with China on solar energy.

    [Feb 28, 2017] Noam Chomsky - Neoliberalism the Global Order

    Jan 07, 2014 | youtube.com

    This is the complete talk (excluding the Q&A) of Noam Chomsky speaking at Yale University on February 25, 1997

    San Patch

    Thank you, Noam Chomsky. Sharp, articulate, critical. Reminding us to cross-check our favourite ideologies against the facts. Free markets, my arse. I salute Chomsky's courage, his intellect and his humanity.

    emir yi

    He truly is the face of sheer honesty and intellectual openness. So admirable to be able to be so critical of a system in which otherwise many including himself are subsumed.

    Dimitrios Mavridopoulos

    I strongly recommend his book World Orders: Old and New, where he substantiates all his claims and accusations, in a far more coherent manner. He has a long chapter, where he explains how the principles of free trade and classical economics, have been consistently violated in history by the developed countries (imperial preference, tariffs, state-intervention), while demanding that Third World countries conform to them, through the IMF and the World Bank. Unfortunately he is not a gifted lecturer though he compensates by being a moral titan

    Richard Huza

    10x
    I also tried to collect Chomsky's videos on my site at index:
    http://milisoft.ro/MainPage.php?iditem=a02663aa20b879c3f4cfd508231dfb28fd74945e
    I agree with the spirit of sharing of information

    [Feb 27, 2017] Attack trump, fear Russia, ignore the deep state, scare them about racists and fascists*, there is nothing going to be fixed by the new crooks running the new DNC

    Feb 27, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Peter K, February 24, 2017 at 05:52 AM , 2017 at 05:52 AM
    Nobody wants to talk about the DNC Chair debate. Huh.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/us/democrats-dnc-chairman-trump-keith-ellison-tom-perez.html

    Weakened Democrats Bow to Voters, Opting for Total War on Trump

    By JONATHAN MARTIN and ALEXANDER BURNS
    FEB. 23, 2017

    Reduced to their weakest state in a generation, Democratic Party leaders will gather in two cities this weekend to plot strategy and select a new national chairman with the daunting task of rebuilding the party's depleted organization. But senior Democratic officials concede that the blueprint has already been chosen for them - by an incensed army of liberals demanding no less than total war against President Trump.

    ... ... ...

    ilsm -> Peter K.... , February 24, 2017 at 06:55 PM
    attack trump, fear Russia, ignore the deep state, scare them about racists and fascists*, there is nothing going to be fixed by the new crooks running the new DNC

    * a few of tonight's pity party decorations.........

    [Feb 27, 2017] Whitney believes that Flynn's defenestration was the end of Trump's vaunted reconciliation with Russia policy.

    Feb 27, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    jo6pac , February 24, 2017 at 3:39 pm

    As some one here pointed out. It's Friday time for some Jeffery St Clair.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/24/roaming-charges-exxons-end-game-theory/

    Mike Whitney has a good article there also.

    geoff , February 24, 2017 at 5:59 pm

    Agreed– Whitney believes that Flynn's defenestration was the end of Trump's vaunted (around here anyway) reconciliation with Russia policy. New National Security Advisor McMaster is a Petraeus follower, and has repeatedly called out Russia as an aggressive power which must be contained and deterred with US and NATO military power.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/24/mcmaster-takes-charge-trump-relinquishes-control-of-foreign-policy/

    EndOfTheWorld , February 24, 2017 at 8:31 pm

    He's just an advisor. MacMaster will not make policy. But Trump is finding out, as many presidents have before him, that to a large extent the Pentagon runs itself. The military plans things way ahead of time. As president it's difficult to buck heads with the PTB on foreign policy. The best Trump may be able to do for the time being is stay out of war.

    I would prefer an outright lovefest with Russia. I like their anti-GMO policy. Maybe in a few years.

    [Feb 27, 2017] New York Times 'What Does Steve Bannon Want'

    Notable quotes:
    "... When Mr. Bannon spoke on Thursday of "deconstructing the administrative state," it may have sounded like gobbledygook outside the hall, but it was an electrifying profession of faith for the attendees. It is through Mr. Bannon that Trump_vs_deep_state can be converted from a set of nostalgic laments and complaints into a program for overhauling the government. ..."
    "... Mr. Bannon's film features predictable interviews with think-tank supply siders and free marketers fretting about big government. But new, less orthodox voices creep in, too, from the protectionist newscaster Lou Dobbs to the investment manager Barry Ritholtz. They question whether the free market is altogether free. Mr. Ritholtz says that the outcome of the financial crisis has been "socialism for the wealthy but capitalism for everybody else." ..."
    "... By 2014, Mr. Bannon's own ideology had become centered on this distrust. He was saying such things about capitalism himself. "Think about it," he said in a talk hosted by the Institute for Human Dignity. "Not one criminal charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis." He warned against "the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism," by which he meant "a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people." Capitalism, he said, ought to rest on a "Judeo-Christian" foundation. ..."
    "... If so, this was bad news for the Republican Party. By the time Mr. Bannon spoke, Ayn Rand-style capitalism was all that remained of its Reagan-era agenda. Free-market thinking had swallowed the party whole, and its Judeo-Christian preoccupations - "a nation with a culture" and "a reason for being" - along with it. A business orientation was what donors wanted. ..."
    Feb 27, 2017 | www.breitbart.com
    Weekly Standard senior editor Christoper Caldwell writes at the New York Times :

    President Trump presents a problem to those who look at politics in terms of systematic ideologies. He is either disinclined or unable to lay out his agenda in that way. So perhaps it was inevitable that Mr. Trump's chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who does have a gift for thinking systematically, would be so often invoked by Mr. Trump's opponents. They need him not just as a hate object but as a heuristic, too. There may never be a "Trump_vs_deep_state," and unless one emerges, the closest we may come to understanding this administration is as an expression of "Bannonism."

    Mr. Bannon, 63, has won a reputation for abrasive brilliance at almost every stop in his unorthodox career - as a naval officer, Goldman Sachs mergers specialist, entertainment-industry financier, documentary screenwriter and director, Breitbart News cyber-agitprop impresario and chief executive of Mr. Trump's presidential campaign. One Harvard Business School classmate described him to The Boston Globe as "top three in intellectual horsepower in our class - perhaps the smartest." Benjamin Harnwell of the Institute for Human Dignity, a Catholic organization in Rome, calls him a "walking bibliography." Perhaps because Mr. Bannon came late to conservatism, turning his full-time energy to political matters only after the Sept. 11 attacks, he radiates an excitement about it that most of his conservative contemporaries long ago lost.

    Many accounts of Mr. Bannon paint him as a cartoon villain or internet troll come to life, as a bigot, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, a crypto-fascist. The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, have even called him a "white nationalist." While he is certainly a hard-line conservative of some kind, the evidence that he is an extremist of a more troubling sort has generally been either massaged, misread or hyped up.

    There may be good reasons to worry about Mr. Bannon, but they are not the ones everyone is giving. It does not make Mr. Bannon a fascist that he happens to know who the 20th-century Italian extremist Julius Evola is. It does not make Mr. Bannon a racist that he described Breitbart as "the platform for the alt-right" - a broad and imprecise term that applies to a wide array of radicals, not just certain white supremacist groups.

    Where Mr. Bannon does veer sharply from recent mainstream Republicanism is in his all-embracing nationalism. He speaks of sovereignty, economic nationalism, opposition to globalization and finding common ground with Brexit supporters and other groups hostile to the transnational European Union. On Thursday, at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, he described the "center core" of Trump administration philosophy as the belief that the United States is more than an economic unit in a borderless word. It is "a nation with a culture " and " a reason for being."

    ...

    When Mr. Bannon spoke on Thursday of "deconstructing the administrative state," it may have sounded like gobbledygook outside the hall, but it was an electrifying profession of faith for the attendees. It is through Mr. Bannon that Trump_vs_deep_state can be converted from a set of nostalgic laments and complaints into a program for overhauling the government.

    ...

    Mr. Bannon adds something personal and idiosyncratic to this Tea Party mix. He has a theory of historical cycles that can be considered elegantly simple or dangerously simplistic. It is a model laid out by William Strauss and Neil Howe in two books from the 1990s. Their argument assumes an 80- to 100-year cycle divided into roughly 20-year "highs," "awakenings," "unravelings" and "crises." The American Revolution, the Civil War, the New Deal, World War II - Mr. Bannon has said for years that we're due for another crisis about now. His documentary about the 2008 financial collapse, "Generation Zero," released in 2010, uses the Strauss-Howe model to explain what happened, and concludes with Mr. Howe himself saying, "History is seasonal, and winter is coming."

    Mr. Bannon's views reflect a transformation of conservatism over the past decade or so. You can trace this transformation in the films he has made. His 2004 documentary, "In the Face of Evil," is an orthodox tribute to the Republican Party hero Ronald Reagan. But "Generation Zero," half a decade later, is a strange hybrid. The financial crash has intervened. Mr. Bannon's film features predictable interviews with think-tank supply siders and free marketers fretting about big government. But new, less orthodox voices creep in, too, from the protectionist newscaster Lou Dobbs to the investment manager Barry Ritholtz. They question whether the free market is altogether free. Mr. Ritholtz says that the outcome of the financial crisis has been "socialism for the wealthy but capitalism for everybody else."

    By 2014, Mr. Bannon's own ideology had become centered on this distrust. He was saying such things about capitalism himself. "Think about it," he said in a talk hosted by the Institute for Human Dignity. "Not one criminal charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis." He warned against "the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism," by which he meant "a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people." Capitalism, he said, ought to rest on a "Judeo-Christian" foundation.

    If so, this was bad news for the Republican Party. By the time Mr. Bannon spoke, Ayn Rand-style capitalism was all that remained of its Reagan-era agenda. Free-market thinking had swallowed the party whole, and its Judeo-Christian preoccupations - "a nation with a culture" and "a reason for being" - along with it. A business orientation was what donors wanted.

    But voters never more than tolerated it. It was Pat Buchanan who in his 1992 run for president first called on Republicans to value jobs and communities over profits. An argument consumed the party over whether this was a better-rounded vision of society or just the grousing of a reactionary. After a generation, Mr. Buchanan has won that argument. By 2016 his views on trade and migration, once dismissed as crackpot, were spreading so fast that everyone in the party had embraced them - except its elected officials and its establishment presidential candidates.

    Mr. Bannon does not often go into detail about what Judeo-Christian culture is, but he knows one thing it is not: Islam. Like most Americans, he believes that Islamism - the extremist political movement - is a dangerous adversary. More controversially he holds that, since this political movement is generated within the sphere of Islam, the growth of Islam - the religion - is itself a problem with which American authorities should occupy themselves. This is a view that was emphatically repudiated by Presidents Obama and George W. Bush.

    Mr. Bannon has apparently drawn his own views on the subject from intensive, if not necessarily varied, reading. The thinkers he has engaged with in this area tend to be hot and polemical rather than cool and detached. They include the provocateur Pamela Geller, a campaigner against the "Ground Zero Mosque" who once suggested the State Department was "essentially being run by Islamic supremacists"; her sometime collaborator Robert Spencer, the director of the website Jihad Watch, with whom she heads an organization called Stop Islamization of America; and the former Department of Homeland Security official Philip Haney, who has argued that officials in the Obama administration had compromised "the security of citizens for the ideological rigidity of political correctness."

    Read the complete column at the New York Times .

    [Feb 26, 2017] a textbook illustration how color revolution methods are used to discredit the government. To attack Trump Russia is skillfully painted as Big Satan contact with whom is sin

    Feb 26, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    im1dc : February 24, 2017 at 08:26 PM

    RREAKING NEWS WaPo Exclusive RREAKING NEWS WaPo Exclusive

    "Trump administration sought to enlist intelligence officials, key lawmakers to counter Russia stories"

    Ring any Nixon Bells with anyone???

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-sought-to-enlist-intelligence-officials-key-lawmakers-to-counter-russia-stories/2017/02/24/c8487552-fa99-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html

    "Trump administration sought to enlist intelligence officials, key lawmakers to counter Russia stories"

    By Greg Miller and Adam Entous...February 24, 2017...at 9:34 PM

    "The Trump administration has enlisted senior members of the intelligence community and Congress in efforts to counter news stories about Trump associates' ties to Russia, a politically charged issue that has been under investigation by the FBI as well as lawmakers now defending the White House.

    Acting at the behest of the White House, the officials made calls to news organizations last week in attempts to challenge stories about alleged contacts between members of President Trump's campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, U.S. officials said.

    The calls were orchestrated by the White House after unsuccessful attempts by the administration to get senior FBI officials to speak with news organizations and dispute the accuracy of stories on the alleged contacts with Russia.

    The White House on Friday acknowledged those interactions with the FBI but did not disclose that it then turned to other officials who agreed to do what the FBI would not - participate in White House-arranged calls with news organizations, including The Washington Post."...

    libezkova -> im1dc... , February 26, 2017 at 06:56 AM
    This article is a textbook illustration how "color revolution" methods are used to discredit the government.

    Russia is skillfully painted as "Big Satan" contact with whom is sin for Christians.

    What a despicable scum those presstitutes are...

    [Feb 26, 2017] He approves definition of neoliberalism as socialism for the wealthy but capitalism for everybody else.

    Feb 26, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    libezkova February 26, 2017 at 10:46 AM

    NYT about Bannon "economic nationalism"

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/opinion/what-does-steve-bannon-want.html

    He approves definition of neoliberalism as "socialism for the wealthy but capitalism for everybody else."

    Looks like his views are not very comparable with Republican Party platform (or Clinton wing of Democratic Party platform, being "small republicans" in disguise)

    == quote ==

    "Think about it," he said in a talk hosted by the Institute for Human Dignity. "Not one criminal charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis." He warned against "the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism," by which he meant "a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people." Capitalism, he said, ought to rest on a "Judeo-Christian" foundation.


    == quote ==

    If so, this was bad news for the Republican Party. By the time Mr. Bannon spoke, Ayn Rand-style capitalism was all that remained of its Reagan-era agenda. Free-market thinking had swallowed the party whole, and its Judeo-Christian preoccupations - "a nation with a culture" and "a reason for being" - along with it. A business orientation was what donors wanted.

    [Feb 26, 2017] The flip side of The Church of America the Redeemer, as with any other respectable church is that it needs the "hell", the fear, to better control its flock

    Notable quotes:
    "... The flip side of The Church of America the Redeemer, as with any other respectable church is that it needs the "hell", the fear, to better control its flock. The terrorists that want to kill us for our liberties You should have included this in your article. ..."
    Feb 26, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
    The trend is to Deep State co-opt democracy, and use it overthrow legit goverment and replace it will neoliberal stooges what pray on the altor of democracy-killing Globalism that makes of all governments just enforces for wishes of multinationals. Corporatism does not involves any real democracy, not at all.
  • Sceptic , says: February 23, 2017 at 11:28 am
    Bacevich is one of our very few strategic thinkers. What Bacevich has disclosed here is something far more significant than merely the faults of Brooks' or of neoconservatism generally (and to be fair, where Brooks goes beyond neoconservatism/nationalism, he can be thoughtful).

    What he has disclosed in fact is that America's primary - I emphasize again, primary - strategic threat is not N. Korea, or radical Islam, or Russia, but its own revolutionary, messianic, expansionist ideology. That is the source of our woes, our growing insecurities and looming financial bankruptcy (to say nothing of the sufferings of millions of our victims).

    America's strategic problem is its own mental imprisonment: its self-worship, its inability to view itself - its destructive acts as well as its pet handful of ideas torn from the complex fabric of a truly vibrant culture - with any critical distance or objectivity.

    Joined to that, and as a logical consequence of it - the United States' persistent inability to view with any objectivity its endless, often manufactured enemies.

    Cornel Lencar , says: February 23, 2017 at 11:46 am
    Kudos Mr. Bacevich for an exceptional piece!

    Somehow the current situation in the U.S. reminds me of the end of a TV miniseries, "Merlin", where Sam Neil plays the role of Merlin. At the end, Merlin speaks to his archenemy, Morgana, that she will loose her grip on the people because they will just stop believing in her and her powers. And as he speaks, the group of countrymen surrounding Merlin turn their back one after another at Morgana and after the last one turns her back, Morgana simply vanishes

    The flip side of The Church of America the Redeemer, as with any other respectable church is that it needs the "hell", the fear, to better control its flock. The terrorists that want to kill us for our liberties You should have included this in your article.

    Also, mentioning Jerusalem, a place of madness and fervor, and pain, and strife, that has brought nothing civilizational to the world, as in par with Rome, Athens, Baghdad, Florence, and other cultural centres in Iran, China, India, Japan, is an overstretch

  • [Feb 25, 2017] The Conflictual Relationship Between Donald Trump And The US Deep State - Part 1 Zero Hedge

    Notable quotes:
    "... Finally the most obvious attempt to sabotage the administration can be seen in the events in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, Senators Graham and McCain, two of the deep state's top emissaries, visited Ukraine at the beginning of the year, prompting Ukrainian troops to resume their destructive offensive against the Donbass. ..."
    "... "There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers", Trump said. "Well, you think our country is so innocent?" ..."
    "... What the deep state refuses to accept is that they have lost the leading role in educating the rest of the world on humanitarian issues related to the concept of democracy. The main actors of the deep state clearly understand the negative implications for them personally in economic and financial terms associated with the abandonment of the pursuit of global hegemony. For over a hundred years, no US president has ever placed their country on a par with others, has ever abandoned the concept of a nation (the US) "chosen by God". ..."
    "... "Donald Trump has emerged with in mind a precise foreign policy strategy, forged by various political thinkers of the realist world such as Waltz and Mearsheimer, trashing all recent neoconservative and neoliberal policies of foreign intervention (R2P - Right to Protect) and soft power campaigns in favor of human rights. No more UN resolutions, subtly used to bomb nations (Libya). Trump doesn't believe in the central role of the UN and reaffirmed this repeatedly. ..."
    "... If one wants to place weight on his words during the election campaign, it should be taken into consideration that Trump won the election thanks to the clear objectives of wanting to avoid a further spending spree on destructive wars. This priority was made clear and expressed in every possible way with the adoption of an America First policy, especially regarding domestic policy. ..."
    "... The bottom line is always that Trump has the ability and willingness to be resilient to the pressures of the deep state, focusing on the needs of the average American citizen, rather than caving in to the interests of the deep state such as intelligence agencies, neocons, Israel lobby, Saudi lobby, the military-industrial complex, and many more. ..."
    Feb 25, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Submitted by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    ... ... ...

    The first two weeks of the new presidency have already provided a few significant events. The operation that took place in Yemen, conducted by the American special forces and directed against Al Qaeda, has reprised the previous administration. Being a complex operation that required thorough preparation, the new administration thereby had to necessarily represent a continuation of the old one. Details are still vague, but looking at the outcome, the mission failed as a result of incompetence. The American special forces were spotted before arriving at al Qaeda's supposed base. This resulted in the shooting of anything that moved, causing more than 25 civilian deaths.

    The media that had been silent during the Obama administration was rightfully quick to condemn the killing of innocent people, and harsh criticism was directed at the administration for this operation. It is entirely possible that the operation was set up to fail, intended to delegitimize the operational capabilities of the new Trump team. Given the links between al Qaeda, the Saudis and the neoconservatives, something historically proven, it is not unthinkable that the failure of the operation was a consequence of an initial attempt at sabotaging Trump on a key aspect of his presidency, namely the successful execution of counter-terrorist efforts against Islamist terrorism.

    Another structural component in the attempts to undermine the Trump administration concern the deployment of NATO and US troops on the western border of the Russian Federation. This attempt is obvious and is one of the strategies aimed at preventing a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. The EU persists in its self-defeating policy, focusing its attention on foreign policy instead of gaining strategic independence thanks to the new presidency. It is now even more clear that European Union leaders, and in particular the current political representatives in Germany and France, have every intention of continuing in the direction set by the Obama presidency, seeking a futile confrontation with the Russian Federation instead of a sensible rapprochement.

    Europe continues to insist on failed economic and social policies that will lead to bankruptcy, using foreign-policy issues as diversions and excuses. The consequences of these wrongheaded efforts will inevitably favor the election of nationalist and populist parties, as seen in the United States and other countries, which will end in the destruction of the EU. For the US deep state and their long-term objectives, this tactic has a dual effect: it prevents the proper functioning of the EU as well as significantly halts any rapprochement between the EU and the Russian Federation. The latter strategy looks more and more irreversible given the current European Union elites. In this sense, the UK, thanks to Brexit, seems to have broken free and started to slowly restructure its foreign- policy priorities, in close alignment to Trump's isolationism.

    Finally the most obvious attempt to sabotage the administration can be seen in the events in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, Senators Graham and McCain, two of the deep state's top emissaries, visited Ukraine at the beginning of the year, prompting Ukrainian troops to resume their destructive offensive against the Donbass. The intentions are clear and assorted. First is the constant attempt to sabotage any rapprochement between Moscow and Washington, hoping to engulf Trump in an American/NATO escalation of events in Ukraine. Second, given the critical situation in Europe, is the effort to push Berlin to assume the burden of economically supporting the failing administration in Kiev. Third is the increasing pressure applied to Russia and Putin, as was already seen in 2014, in an effort to actively involve the Russian Federation in the Ukrainian conflict so as to justify NATO's direct involvement or even that of the United States. The latter situation would be the dream of the neoconservatives, setting Trump and Putin on a direct collision course.

    The new American administration has thus far suffered at least three sabotage attempts, and it is the attitude Trump intends to have with the rest of the world that has spurred them. In an interview with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, Trump reiterated that his primary focus is not governed by the doctrine of American exceptionalism, a concept he does not subscribe to anyhow. The religion driving democratic evangelization looks more likely to be replaced with a pragmatic, realist geopolitical stance.

    This is how one could sum up Trump's words to Bill O'Reilly:

    "There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers", Trump said. "Well, you think our country is so innocent?"

    What the deep state refuses to accept is that they have lost the leading role in educating the rest of the world on humanitarian issues related to the concept of democracy. The main actors of the deep state clearly understand the negative implications for them personally in economic and financial terms associated with the abandonment of the pursuit of global hegemony. For over a hundred years, no US president has ever placed their country on a par with others, has ever abandoned the concept of a nation (the US) "chosen by God".

    In an article a few weeks ago, I tried to lay the foundations for a future US administration, placing a strong focus on foreign policy and revealing a possible shift in US historic foreign relations. In a passage I wrote:

    "Donald Trump has emerged with in mind a precise foreign policy strategy, forged by various political thinkers of the realist world such as Waltz and Mearsheimer, trashing all recent neoconservative and neoliberal policies of foreign intervention (R2P - Right to Protect) and soft power campaigns in favor of human rights. No more UN resolutions, subtly used to bomb nations (Libya). Trump doesn't believe in the central role of the UN and reaffirmed this repeatedly.

    In general, the Trump administration intends to end the policy of regime change, interference in foreign governments, Arab springs and color revolutions. They just don't work. They cost too much in terms of political credibility, in Ukraine the US are allied with supporters of Bandera (historical figure who collaborated with the Nazis) and in Middle East they finance or indirectly support al Qaeda and al Nusra front".

    The recent meeting in Washington with Theresa May, the first official encounter with a prominent US ally, revealed, among other things, a possible dramatic change in US policy. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom expressed her desire to follow a new policy of non-intervention, in line with the isolationist strategy Trump has spoken about since running for office. In a joint press conference with the American president, May said: "The era of military intervention is over. London and Washington will not return to the failed policy in the past that has led to intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya".

    During the election campaign, Trump made his intentions clear in different contexts, but always coming from the standpoint of non-interventionism inspired by the concept of isolationism. It is becoming apparent that these intentions are being put into action, though the rhetoric regarding Iran has become alarming. In typical Trump fashion (which contrasts with the Iran issue), the situation in Syria is normalizing and the initial threats directed at China appear to have been put aside. The case of Iran is a different and complex story, requiring a deeper analysis that deserves a separate article. What will gradually be important, as the Presidency progresses, is understanding the necessity to distinguish between words and actions, separating provocations from intentions.

    Conclusions and future questions

    There is a whole list of Trump statements that are seen as threats to other countries, primarily Iran. The next article will further explain the possible strategy to be employed by Donald Trump to fight these attempts to sabotage his administration, a strategy that seems to be based on silences, bluffs and admissions to counter the perpetual attempts to influence his presidency. If one wants to place weight on his words during the election campaign, it should be taken into consideration that Trump won the election thanks to the clear objectives of wanting to avoid a further spending spree on destructive wars. This priority was made clear and expressed in every possible way with the adoption of an America First policy, especially regarding domestic policy.

    The bottom line is always that Trump has the ability and willingness to be resilient to the pressures of the deep state, focusing on the needs of the average American citizen, rather than caving in to the interests of the deep state such as intelligence agencies, neocons, Israel lobby, Saudi lobby, the military-industrial complex, and many more. It is only in the next few months that we will come to understand if Trump will be willing to continue the fight against war or bend the knee and pay the price.

    Mustafa Kemal , Feb 21, 2017 11:21 PM

    " What the deep state refuses to accept is that they have lost the leading role in educating the rest of the world on humanitarian issues related to the concept of democracy."

    This was a strange article, but after reading the above quote I had to laugh and could not find the gumption to continue reading.

    Who could write something like that?

    BarnacleBill , Feb 21, 2017 11:29 PM

    The Deep State ought to have beaten Trump already - one way or another...! But somebody with brains has realised that it's not just Trump. It's the political movement that he heads***. Even if they killed DT tomorrow (and it's certain to have been on their agenda), the Trumpista Party would survive: it's too active and too popular to disappear. So the establishment pretty much has to wrap up the entire movement. They have left things dangerously late, from their point of view.

    *** I know he didn't start it; it's the old Pat Buchanan + Ron Paul gang, but Donald is twice as cunning as those chaps. I really don't think he'll win his war with the bad guys - the War Party - but his influence will be quite long-lasting. And of course he is our last hope to roll back the spectre of "1984".

    [Feb 23, 2017] The American Century Has Plunged the World Into Crisis. What Happens Now?

    Authors outlined important reasons of the inevitability of the dominance of chicken hawks and jingoistic foreign policy in the USA political establishment:
    .
    "...Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our infrastructure crumbles. Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional."
    .
    "...leading presidential candidates are tapping neoconservatives like John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz - who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned."
    .
    "...A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain. "
    .
    "...But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic" and "un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning voices."
    .
    "...The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force in regions thousands of miles from its borders."
    .
    "...The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide, about the same as the British Empire had at its height in 1895.
    .
    The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans have been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were major undertakings: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some were quick "smash and grabs" like Panama and Grenada. Others are "shadow wars" waged by Special Forces, armed drones, and local proxies. If one defines the term "war" as the application of organized violence, the U.S. has engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945."
    .
    "...The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security state to levels that many dictators would envy. The Senate torture report, most of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus that runs the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised."
    .
    "...the U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 "Carter Doctrine" - a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin America - put that strategy in blunt terms vis-ŕ-vis the Middle East:"
    .
    "...In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans agreed that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37 percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State began, those numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46 percent opposed it.
    .
    It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS, disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy.
    "
    Notable quotes:
    "... Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our infrastructure crumbles . Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional. ..."
    "... leading presidential candidates are tapping neoconservatives like John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz - who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned. ..."
    "... A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain . ..."
    "... But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic" and "un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning voices. ..."
    "... The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force in regions thousands of miles from its borders. ..."
    "... As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply racism - the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth - continues to plague our homeland . ..."
    "... The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security state to levels that many dictators would envy. The Senate torture report , most of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus that runs the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised. ..."
    "... the U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. ..."
    "... In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans agreed that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37 percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State began, those numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46 percent opposed it. It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS, disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy. ..."
    Jun 22, 2015 | fpif.org

    U.S. foreign policy is dangerous, undemocratic, and deeply out of sync with real global challenges. Is continuous war inevitable, or can we change course?

    There's something fundamentally wrong with U.S. foreign policy.

    Despite glimmers of hope - a tentative nuclear agreement with Iran, for one, and a long-overdue thaw with Cuba - we're locked into seemingly irresolvable conflicts in most regions of the world. They range from tensions with nuclear-armed powers like Russia and China to actual combat operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

    Why? Has a state of perpetual warfare and conflict become inescapable? Or are we in a self-replicating cycle that reflects an inability - or unwillingness - to see the world as it actually is?

    The United States is undergoing a historic transition in our relationship to the rest of the world, but this is neither acknowledged nor reflected in U.S. foreign policy. We still act as if our enormous military power, imperial alliances, and self-perceived moral superiority empower us to set the terms of "world order."

    While this illusion goes back to the end of World War II, it was the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union that signaled the beginning of a self-proclaimed "American Century." The idea that the United States had "won" the Cold War and now - as the world's lone superpower - had the right or responsibility to order the world's affairs led to a series of military adventures. It started with President Bill Clinton's intervention in the Yugoslav civil war, continued on with George W. Bush's disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and can still be seen in the Obama administration's own misadventures in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and beyond.

    In each case, Washington chose war as the answer to enormously complex issues, ignoring the profound consequences for both foreign and domestic policy. Yet the world is very different from the assumptions that drive this impulsive interventionism.

    It's this disconnect that defines the current crisis.

    Acknowledging New Realities

    So what is it about the world that requires a change in our outlook? A few observations come to mind.

    1. First, our preoccupation with conflicts in the Middle East - and to a significant extent, our tensions with Russia in Eastern Europe and with China in East Asia - distract us from the most compelling crises that threaten the future of humanity. Climate change and environmental perils have to be dealt with now and demand an unprecedented level of international collective action. That also holds for the resurgent danger of nuclear war.
    2. Second, superpower military interventionism and far-flung acts of war have only intensified conflict, terror, and human suffering. There's no short-term solution - especially by force - to the deep-seated problems that cause chaos, violence, and misery through much of the world.
    3. Third, while any hope of curbing violence and mitigating the most urgent problems depends on international cooperation, old and disastrous intrigues over spheres of influence dominate the behavior of the major powers. Our own relentless pursuit of military advantage on every continent, including through alliances and proxies like NATO, divides the world into "friend" and "foe" according to our perceived interests. That inevitably inflames aggressive imperial rivalries and overrides common interests in the 21st century.
    4. Fourth, while the United States remains a great economic power, economic and political influence is shifting and giving rise to national and regional centers no longer controlled by U.S.-dominated global financial structures. Away from Washington, London, and Berlin, alternative centers of economic power are taking hold in Beijing, New Delhi, Cape Town, and Brasilia. Independent formations and alliances are springing up: organizations like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (representing 2.8 billion people); the Union of South American Nations; the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur; and others.

    Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our infrastructure crumbles. Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional.

    Short Memories and Persistent Delusions

    But instead of letting these changing circumstances and our repeated military failures give us pause, our government continues to act as if the United States has the power to dominate and dictate to the rest of the world.

    The responsibility of those who set us on this course fades into background. Indeed, in light of the ongoing meltdown in the Middle East, leading presidential candidates are tapping neoconservatives like John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz - who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned.

    While the Obama administration has sought, with limited success, to end the major wars it inherited, our government makes wide use of killer drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and has put troops back into Iraq to confront the religious fanaticism and brutality of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) - itself a direct consequence of the last U.S. invasion of Iraq. Reluctant to find common ground in the fight against ISIS with designated "foes" like Iran and Syria, Washington clings to allies like Saudi Arabia, whose leaders are fueling the crisis of religious fanaticism and internecine barbarity. Elsewhere, the U.S. also continues to give massive support to the Israeli government, despite its expanding occupation of the West Bank and its horrific recurring assaults on Gaza.

    A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain. Though it's attempted to distance itself from the neocons, the Obama administration adds to tensions with planned military realignments like the "Asia pivot" aimed at building up U.S. military forces in Asia to confront China. It's also taken a more aggressive position than even other NATO partners in fostering a new cold war with Russia.

    We seem to have missed the point: There is no such thing as an "American Century." International order cannot be enforced by a superpower alone. But never mind centuries - if we don't learn to take our common interests more seriously than those that divide nations and breed the chronic danger of war, there may well be no tomorrows.

    Unexceptionalism

    There's a powerful ideological delusion that any movement seeking to change U.S. foreign policy must confront: that U.S. culture is superior to anything else on the planet. Generally going by the name of "American exceptionalism," it's the deeply held belief that American politics (and medicine, technology, education, and so on) are better than those in other countries. Implicit in the belief is an evangelical urge to impose American ways of doing things on the rest of the world.

    Americans, for instance, believe they have the best education system in the world, when in fact they've dropped from 1st place to 14th place in the number of college graduates. We've made students of higher education the most indebted section of our population, while falling to 17th place in international education ratings. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation, the average American pays more than twice as much for his or her education than those in the rest of the world.

    Health care is an equally compelling example. In the World Health Organization's ranking of health care systems in 2000, the United States was ranked 37th. In a more recent Institute of Medicine report in 2013, the U.S. was ranked the lowest among 17 developed nations studied.

    The old anti-war slogan, "It will be a good day when schools get all the money they need and the Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy an aircraft carrier" is as appropriate today as it was in the 1960s. We prioritize corporate subsidies, tax cuts for the wealthy, and massive military budgets over education. The result is that Americans are no longer among the most educated in the world.

    But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic" and "un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning voices.

    The fact that Americans consider their culture or ideology "superior" is hardly unique. But no other country in the world has the same level of economic and military power to enforce its worldview on others.

    The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force in regions thousands of miles from its borders.

    The U.S. currently accounts for anywhere from 45 to 50 percent of the world's military spending. It has hundreds of overseas bases, ranging from huge sprawling affairs like Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo and unsinkable aircraft carriers around the islands of Okinawa, Wake, Diego Garcia, and Guam to tiny bases called "lily pads" of pre-positioned military supplies. The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide, about the same as the British Empire had at its height in 1895.

    The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans have been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were major undertakings: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some were quick "smash and grabs" like Panama and Grenada. Others are "shadow wars" waged by Special Forces, armed drones, and local proxies. If one defines the term "war" as the application of organized violence, the U.S. has engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945.

    The Home Front

    The coin of empire comes dear, as the old expression goes.

    According Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, the final butcher bill for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars - including the long-term health problems of veterans - will cost U.S. taxpayers around $6 trillion. One can add to that the over $1 trillion the U.S. spends each year on defense-related items. The "official" defense budget of some half a trillion dollars doesn't include such items as nuclear weapons, veterans' benefits or retirement, the CIA and Homeland Security, nor the billions a year in interest we'll be paying on the debt from the Afghan-Iraq wars. By 2013 the U.S. had already paid out $316 billion in interest.

    The domestic collateral damage from that set of priorities is numbing.

    We spend more on our "official" military budget than we do on Medicare, Medicaid, Health and Human Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Since 9/11, we've spent $70 million an hour on "security" compared to $62 million an hour on all domestic programs.

    As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply racism - the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth - continues to plague our homeland.

    The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security state to levels that many dictators would envy. The Senate torture report, most of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus that runs the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised.

    Bombs and Business

    President Calvin Coolidge was said to have remarked that "the business of America is business." Unsurprisingly, U.S. corporate interests play a major role in American foreign policy.

    Out of the top 10 international arms producers, eight are American. The arms industry spends millions lobbying Congress and state legislatures, and it defends its turf with an efficiency and vigor that its products don't always emulate on the battlefield. The F-35 fighter-bomber, for example - the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history - will cost $1.5 trillion and doesn't work. It's over budget, dangerous to fly, and riddled with defects. And yet few lawmakers dare challenge the powerful corporations who have shoved this lemon down our throats.

    Corporate interests are woven into the fabric of long-term U.S. strategic interests and goals. Both combine to try to control energy supplies, command strategic choke points through which oil and gas supplies transit, and ensure access to markets.

    Many of these goals can be achieved with standard diplomacy or economic pressure, but the U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 "Carter Doctrine" - a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin America - put that strategy in blunt terms vis-ŕ-vis the Middle East:

    "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

    It's no less true in East Asia. The U.S. will certainly engage in peaceful economic competition with China. But if push comes to shove, the Third, Fifth, and Seventh fleets will back up the interests of Washington and its allies - Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Australia.

    Trying to change the course of American foreign policy is not only essential for reducing international tensions. It's critically important to shift the enormous wealth we expend in war and weapons toward alleviating growing inequality and social crises at home.

    As long as competition for markets and accumulation of capital characterize modern society, nations will vie for spheres of influence, and antagonistic interests will be a fundamental feature of international relations. Chauvinist reaction to incursions real or imagined - and the impulse to respond by military means - is characteristic to some degree of every significant nation-state. Yet the more that some governments, including our own, become subordinate to oligarchic control, the greater is the peril.

    Finding the Common Interest

    These, however, are not the only factors that will shape the future.

    There is nothing inevitable that rules out a significant change of direction, even if the demise or transformation of a capitalistic system of greed and exploitation is not at hand. The potential for change, especially in U.S. foreign policy, resides in how social movements here and abroad respond to the undeniable reality of: 1) the chronic failure, massive costs, and danger inherent in "American Century" exceptionalism; and 2) the urgency of international efforts to respond to climate change.

    There is, as well, the necessity to respond to health and natural disasters aggravated by poverty, to rising messianic violence, and above all, to prevent a descent into war. This includes not only the danger of a clash between the major nuclear powers, but between regional powers. A nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India, for example, would affect the whole world.

    Without underestimating the self-interest of forces that thrive on gambling with the future of humanity, historic experience and current reality elevate a powerful common interest in peace and survival. The need to change course is not something that can be recognized on only one side of an ideological divide. Nor does that recognition depend on national, ethnic, or religious identity. Rather, it demands acknowledging the enormous cost of plunging ahead as everything falls apart around us.

    After the latest U.S. midterm elections, the political outlook is certainly bleak. But experience shows that elections, important as they are, are not necessarily indicators of when and how significant change can come about in matters of policy. On issues of civil rights and social equality, advances have occurred because a dedicated and persistent minority movement helped change public opinion in a way the political establishment could not defy.

    The Vietnam War, for example, came to an end, despite the stubbornness of Democratic and Republican administrations, when a stalemate on the battlefield and growing international and domestic opposition could no longer be denied. Significant changes can come about even as the basic character of society is retained. Massive resistance and rejection of colonialism caused the British Empire and other colonial powers to adjust to a new reality after World War II. McCarthyism was eventually defeated in the United States. President Nixon was forced to resign. The use of landmines and cluster bombs has been greatly restricted because of the opposition of a small band of activists whose initial efforts were labeled "quixotic."

    There are diverse and growing political currents in our country that see the folly and danger of the course we're on. Many Republicans, Democrats, independents, and libertarians - and much of the public - are beginning to say "enough" to war and military intervention all over the globe, and the folly of basing foreign policy on dividing countries into "friend or foe."

    This is not to be Pollyannaish about anti-war sentiment, or how quickly people can be stampeded into supporting the use of force. In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans agreed that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37 percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State began, those numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46 percent opposed it.

    It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS, disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy.

    Making Space for the Unexpected

    Given that there is a need for a new approach, how can American foreign policy be changed?

    Foremost, there is the need for a real debate on the thrust of a U.S. foreign policy that chooses negotiation, diplomacy, and international cooperation over the use of force.

    However, as we approach another presidential election, there is as yet no strong voice among the candidates to challenge U.S. foreign policy. Fear and questionable political calculation keep even most progressive politicians from daring to dissent as the crisis of foreign policy lurches further into perpetual militarism and war. That silence of political acquiescence has to be broken.

    Nor is it a matter of concern only on the left. There are many Americans - right, left, or neither - who sense the futility of the course we're on. These voices have to be represented or the election process will be even more of a sham than we've recently experienced.

    One can't predict just what initiatives may take hold, but the recent U.S.-China climate agreement suggests that necessity can override significant obstacles. That accord is an important step forward, although a limited bilateral pact cannot substitute for an essential international climate treaty. There is a glimmer of hope also in the U.S.-Russian joint action that removed chemical weapons from Syria, and in negotiations with Iran, which continue despite fierce opposition from U.S. hawks and the Israeli government. More recently, there is Obama's bold move - long overdue - to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba. Despite shifts in political fortunes, the unexpected can happen if there is a need and strong enough pressure to create an opportunity.

    We do not claim to have ready-made solutions to the worsening crisis in international relations. We are certain that there is much we've missed or underestimated. But if readers agree that U.S. foreign policy has a national and global impact, and that it is not carried out in the interests of the majority of the world's people, including our own, then we ask you to join this conversation.

    If we are to expand the ability of the people to influence foreign policy, we need to defend democracy, and encourage dissent and alternative ideas. The threats to the world and to ourselves are so great that finding common ground trumps any particular interest. We also know that we won't all agree with each other, and we believe that is as it should be. There are multiple paths to the future. No coalition around changing foreign policy will be successful if it tells people to conform to any one pattern of political action.

    So how does the call for changing course translate to something politically viable, and how do we consider the problem of power?

    The power to make significant changes in policy ranges from the persistence of peace activists to the potential influence of the general public. In some circumstances, it becomes possible - as well as necessary - to make significant changes in the power structure itself.

    Greece comes to mind. Greek left organizations came together to form Syriza, the political party that was successfully elected to power on a platform of ending austerity. Spain's anti-austerity Podemos Party - now the number-two party in the country - came out of massive demonstrations in 2011 and was organized from the grassroots up. We do not argue one approach over the over, but the experiences in both countries demonstrate that there are multiple paths to generating change.

    Certainly progressives and leftists grapple with the problems of power. But progress on issues, particularly in matters like war and peace and climate change, shouldn't be conceived of as dependent on first achieving general solutions to the problems of society, however desirable.

    ... ... ...

    Conn Hallinan is a journalist and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. His writings appear online at Dispatches From the Edge. Leon Wofsy is a retired biology professor and long-time political activist. His comments on current affairs appear online at Leon's OpEd.

    [Feb 21, 2017] David Stockman provides one of the best commentaries on Flynn assassination by deep state and Trymp betrayal of Flynn

    Feb 20, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    David Stockman provides one of the best commentaries on Flynn assassination by deep state and Obama neocon holdovers in the administration. This is a really powerful astute, first class analysis of the situation:

    Flynn's Gone But They're Still Gunning For You, Donald

    http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/february/17/flynns-gone-but-theyre-still-gunning-for-you-donald/

    == quote ==
    ... ... ...
    This is the real scandal as Trump himself has rightly asserted. The very idea that the already announced #1 national security advisor to a President-elect should be subject to old-fashion "bugging," albeit with modern day technology, overwhelmingly trumps the utterly specious Logan Act charge at the center of the case.

    As one writer for LawNewz noted regarding acting Attorney General Sally Yates' voyeuristic pre-occupation with Flynn's intercepted conversations, Nixon should be rolling in his grave with envy:

    Now, information leaks that Sally Yates knew about surveillance being conducted against potential members of the Trump administration, and disclosed that information to others. Even Richard Nixon didn't use the government agencies themselves to do his black bag surveillance operations. Sally Yates involvement with this surveillance on American political opponents, and possibly the leaking related thereto, smacks of a return to Hoover-style tactics. As writers at Bloomberg and The Week both noted, it wreaks of 'police-state' style tactics. But knowing dear Sally as I do, it comes as no surprise.

    Yes, that's the same career apparatchik of the permanent government that Obama left behind to continue the 2016 election by other means. And it's working. The Donald is being rapidly emasculated by the powers that be in the Imperial City due to what can only be described as an audacious and self-evident attack on Trump's Presidency by the Deep State.

    Indeed, it seems that the layers of intrigue have gotten so deep and convoluted that the nominal leadership of the permanent government machinery has lost track of who is spying on whom. Thus, we have the following curious utterance by none other than the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes:

    'I expect for the FBI to tell me what is going on, and they better have a good answer,' he told The Washington Post. 'The big problem I see here is that you have an American citizen who had his phone calls recorded.'

    Well, yes. That makes 324 million of us, Congressman.

    But for crying out loud, surely the oh so self-important chairman of the House intelligence committee knows that everybody is bugged. But when it reaches the point that the spy state is essentially using its unconstitutional tools to engage in what amounts to "opposition research" with the aim of election nullification, then the Imperial City has become a clear and present danger to American democracy and the liberties of the American people.

    As Robert Barnes of LawNewz further explained, Sally Yates, former CIA director John Brennan and a large slice of the Never Trumper intelligence community were systematically engaged in "opposition research" during the campaign and the transition:

    According to published reports, someone was eavesdropping, and recording, the conversations of Michael Flynn, while Sally Yates was at the Department of Justice. Sally Yates knew about this eavesdropping, listened in herself (Pellicano-style for those who remember the infamous LA cases), and reported what she heard to others. For Yates to have such access means she herself must have been involved in authorizing its disclosure to political appointees, since she herself is such a political appointee. What justification was there for an Obama appointee to be spying on the conversations of a future Trump appointee?

    Consider this little tidbit in The Washington Post . The paper, which once broke Watergate, is now propagating the benefits of Watergate-style surveillance in ways that do make Watergate look like a third-rate effort. (With the) FBI 'routinely' monitoring conversations of Americans...... Yates listened to 'the intercepted call,' even though Yates knew there was 'little chance' of any credible case being made for prosecution under a law 'that has never been used in a prosecution.'

    And well it hasn't been. After all, the Logan Act was signed by President John Adams in 1799 in order to punish one of Thomas Jefferson's supporters for having peace discussions with the French government in Paris. That is, it amounted to pre-litigating the Presidential campaign of 1800 based on sheer political motivation.

    According to the Washington Post itself, that is exactly what Yates and the Obama holdovers did day and night during the interregnum:
    Indeed, the paper details an apparent effort by Yates to misuse her office to launch a full-scale secret investigation of her political opponents, including 'intercepting calls' of her political adversaries.

    So all of the feigned outrage emanating from Democrats and the Washington establishment about Team Trump's trafficking with the Russians is a cover story. Surely anyone even vaguely familiar with recent history would have known there was absolutely nothing illegal or even untoward about Flynn's post-Christmas conversations with the Russian Ambassador.

    Indeed, we recall from personal experience the thrilling moment on inauguration day in January 1981 when word came of the release of the American hostages in Tehran. Let us assure you, that did not happen by immaculate diplomatic conception -- nor was it a parting gift to the Gipper by the outgoing Carter Administration.

    To the contrary, it was the fruit of secret negotiations with the Iranian government during the transition by private American citizens. As the history books would have it because it's true, the leader of that negotiation, in fact, was Ronald Reagan's national security council director-designate, Dick Allen.

    As the real Washington Post later reported, under the by-line of a real reporter, Bob Woodward:

    Reagan campaign aides met in a Washington DC hotel in early October, 1980, with a self-described 'Iranian exile' who offered, on behalf of the Iranian government, to release the hostages to Reagan, not Carter, in order to ensure Carter's defeat in the November 4, 1980 election.

    The American participants were Richard Allen, subsequently Reagan's first national security adviser, Allen aide Laurence Silberman, and Robert McFarlane, another future national security adviser who in 1980 was on the staff of Senator John Tower (R-TX).

    To this day we have not had occasion to visit our old friend Dick Allen in the US penitentiary because he's not there; the Logan Act was never invoked in what is surely the most blatant case ever of citizen diplomacy.

    So let's get to the heart of the matter and be done with it. The Obama White House conducted a sour grapes campaign to delegitimize the election beginning November 9th and it was led by then CIA Director John Brennan.

    That treacherous assault on the core constitutional matter of the election process culminated in the ridiculous Russian meddling report of the Obama White House in December. The latter, of course, was issued by serial liar James Clapper, as national intelligence director, and the clueless Democrat lawyer and bag-man, Jeh Johnson, who had been appointed head of the Homeland Security Department.

    Yet on the basis of the report's absolutely zero evidence and endless surmise, innuendo and "assessments", the Obama White House imposed another round of its silly school-boy sanctions on a handful of Putin's cronies.

    Of course, Flynn should have been telling the Russian Ambassador that this nonsense would be soon reversed!

    But here is the ultimate folly. The mainstream media talking heads are harrumphing loudly about the fact that the very day following Flynn's call -- Vladimir Putin announced that he would not retaliate against the new Obama sanctions as expected; and shortly thereafter, the Donald tweeted that Putin had shown admirable wisdom.

    That's right. Two reasonably adult statesman undertook what might be called the Christmas Truce of 2016. But like its namesake of 1914 on the bloody no man's land of the western front, the War Party has determined that the truce-makers shall not survive.

    The Donald has been warned.

    [Feb 21, 2017] Globalisation and Economic Nationalism naked capitalism

    Notable quotes:
    "... Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers', and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation. ..."
    "... From an energy point of view globalisation is a disaster. The insane level of fossil fuels that this current world requires for transportation of necessities (food and clothing) is making this world an unstable world. Ipso Facto. ..."
    "... Those who believe that globalisation is bringing value to the world should reconsider their views. The current globalisation has created both monopolies on a geopolitical ground, ie TV make or shipbuilding in Asia. ..."
    "... Do you seriously believe that these new geographical and corporate monopolies does not create the kind bad outcomes that traditional – country-centric ones – monopolies have in the past? ..."
    "... Then there is the practical issue of workers having next to no bargaining power under globalization. Do people really suppose that Mexican workers would be willing to strike so that their US counterparts, already making ficew times as much money, would get a raise? ..."
    "... Basically our elite sold us a bill of goods is why we lost manufacturing. Greed. Nothing else. ..."
    "... So proof is required to rollback globalization, but no proof was required to launch it or continue dishing it out? It's good to be the King, eh? ..."
    "... America hasn't just gotten rid of the low level jobs. It has also gotten rid of supervisors and factory managers. Those are skills you can't get back overnight. For US plants in Mexico, you might have US managers there or be able to get special visas to let those managers come to the US. But US companies have shifted a ton, and I meant a ton, to foreign subcontractors. Some would put operations in the US to preserve access to US customers, but their managers won't speak English. How do you make this work? ..."
    "... The real issue is commitment. Very little manufacturing will be re-shored unless companies are convinced that it is in their longterm interest to do so. ..."
    "... There is also what I've heard referred to as the "next bench" phenomenon, in which products arise because someone designs a new product/process to solve a manufacturing problem. Unless one has great foresight, the designer of the new product must be aware there is a problem to solve. ..."
    "... When a country is involved in manufacturing, the citizens employed will have exposure to production problems and issues. ..."
    "... After his speech he took questions. I asked "Would Toyota ever separate design from manufacturing?" as HP had done, shipping all manufacturing to Asia. "No" was his answer. ..."
    "... In my experience, it is way too useful to have the line be able to easily call the designer in question and have him come take a look at what his design is doing. HP tried to get around that by sending part of the design team to Asia to watch the startup. Didn't work as well. And when problems emerged later, it was always difficult to debug by remote control. ..."
    "... How about mass imports of cheap workers into western countries in the guise of emigrants to push down worker's pay and gut things like unions. That factor played a decisive factor in both the Brexit referendum and the US 2016 elections. Or the subsidized exportation of western countries industrial equipment to third world countries, leaving local workers swinging in the wind. ..."
    "... The data sets do not capture some of the most important factors in what they are saying. It is like putting together a paper on how and why white men voted in the 2016 US elections as they did – and forgetting to mention the effect of the rest of the voters involved. ..."
    "... I had a similar reaction. This research was reinforcing info about everyone's resentment over really bad distribution of wealth, as far as it went, but it was so unsatisfying ..."
    "... "Right to work" is nothing other than a way to undercut quality of work for "run-to-the-bottom competitive pay." ..."
    "... I've noticed that the only people in favor of globalization are those whose jobs are not under threat from it. ..."
    "... First off, economic nationalism is not necessarily right wing. I would certainly classify Bernie Sanders as an economic nationalist (against open borders and against "free" trade). Syriza and Podemos could arguably be called rather ineffective economic nationalist parties. I would say the whole ideology of social democracy is based on the Swedish nationalist concept of a "folkhem", where the nation is the home and the citizens are the folk. ..."
    "... So China is Turmpism on steroids. Israel obviously is as well. Why do some nations get to be blatantly Trumpist while for others these policies are strictly forbidden? ..."
    "... One way to look at Globalization is as an updated version of the post WW1 Versailles Treaty which imposed reparations on a defeated Germany for all the harm they caused during the Great War. The Globalized Versailles Treaty is aimed at the American and European working classes for the crimes of colonialism, racism, slavery and any other bad things the 1st world has done to the 3rd in the past. ..."
    "... And yes, this applies to Bernie Sanders as well. During that iconic interview where Sanders denounced open borders and pushed economic nationalism, the Neoliberal interviewer immediately played the global guilt card in response. ..."
    "... During colonialism the 3rd world had a form of open borders imposed on it by the colonial powers, where the 3rd world lost control of who what crossed their borders while the 1st world themselves maintained a closed border mercantilist regime of strict filters. So the anti-colonialist movement was a form of Trumpist economic nationalism where the evil foreigners were given the boot and the nascent nations applied filters to their borders. ..."
    "... Nationalism (my opinion) can do this – economic nationalism. And of course other people think oh gawd, not that again – it's so inefficient for my investments- I can't get fast returns that way but that's just the point. ..."
    "... China was not a significant exporter until the 2001 inclusion in WTO: it cannot possibly have caused populist uprisings in Italy and Belgium in the 1990s. It was probably too early even for Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, who was killed in 2002, Le Pen's electoral success in the same year, Austria's FPOE in 1999, and so on. ..."
    "... In the 1930s Keynes realized, income was just as important as profit as this produced a sustainable system that does not rely on debt to maintain demand. ..."
    "... "Although commercial banks create money through lending, they cannot do so freely without limit. Banks are limited in how much they can lend if they are to remain profitable in a competitive banking system." ..."
    "... The Romans are the basis. Patricians, Equites and Plebs. Most of us here are clearly plebeian. Time to go place some bets, watch the chariot races and gladiatorial fights, and get my bread subsidy. Ciao. ..."
    "... 80-90% of Bonds and Equities ( at least in USA) are owned by top 10 %. 0.7% own 45% of global wealth. 8 billionaires own more than 50% of wealth than that of bottom 50% in our Country! ..."
    "... Globalisation has caused a surge in support for nationalist and radical right political platforms. ..."
    "... Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership seems to be a move in that direction. ..."
    "... Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers' ..."
    "... and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. ..."
    "... The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation. ..."
    Feb 21, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    DanielDeParis , February 20, 2017 at 1:09 am

    Definitely a pleasant read but IMHO wrong conclusion: Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers', and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation.

    From an energy point of view globalisation is a disaster. The insane level of fossil fuels that this current world requires for transportation of necessities (food and clothing) is making this world an unstable world. Ipso Facto.

    We need a world where goods move little as possible (yep!) when smart ideas and technology (medical, science, industry, yep that's essential) move as much as possible. Internet makes this possible. This is no dream but a XXIth century reality.

    Work – the big one – is required and done where and when it occurs. That is on all continents if not in every country. Not in an insanely remote suburbs of Asia.

    Those who believe that globalisation is bringing value to the world should reconsider their views. The current globalisation has created both monopolies on a geopolitical ground, ie TV make or shipbuilding in Asia.

    Do you seriously believe that these new geographical and corporate monopolies does not create the kind bad outcomes that traditional – country-centric ones – monopolies have in the past?

    Yves Smith can have nasty words when it comes to discussing massive trade surplus and policies that supports them. That's my single most important motivation for reading this challenging blog, by the way.

    Thanks for the blog:)

    tony , February 20, 2017 at 5:09 am

    Another thing is that reliance on complex supply chains is risky. The book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed describes how the ancient Mediterranian civilization collapsed when the supply chains stopped working.

    Then there is the practical issue of workers having next to no bargaining power under globalization. Do people really suppose that Mexican workers would be willing to strike so that their US counterparts, already making ficew times as much money, would get a raise?

    Is Finland somehow supposed to force the US and China to adopt similar worker rights and environmental protections? No, globalization, no matter how you slice it,is a race to the bottom.

    digi_owl , February 20, 2017 at 10:12 am

    Sadly protectionism gets conflated with empire building, because protectionism was at its height right before WW1.

    Altandmain , February 20, 2017 at 1:35 am

    I do not agree with the article's conclusion either.

    Reshoring would have 1 of 2 outcomes:

    • Lots of manufacturing jobs and a solid middle class. We may be looking at more than 20 percent total employment in manufacturing and more than 30 percent of our GDP in manufacturing.
    • If the robots take over, we still have a lot of manufacturing jobs. Japan for example has the most robots per capita, yet they still maintain very large amounts of manufacturing employment. It does not mean the end of manufacturing at all, having worked in manufacturing before.

    Basically our elite sold us a bill of goods is why we lost manufacturing. Greed. Nothing else.

    Ruben , February 20, 2017 at 3:07 am

    The conclusion is the least important thing. Conclusions are just interpretations, afterthoughts, divagations (which btw are often just sneaky ways to get your work published by TPTB, surreptitiously inserting radical stuff under the noses of the guardians of orthodoxy).

    The value of these reports is in providing hardcore statistical evidence and quantification for something for which so many people have a gut feeling but just cann't prove it (although many seem to think that just having a strong opinion is sufficient).

    Yves Smith Post author , February 20, 2017 at 3:27 am

    Yes, correct. Intuition is great for coming up with hypotheses, but it is important to test them. And while a correlation isn't causation, it at least says the hypothesis isn't nuts on its face.

    In addition, studies like this are helpful in challenging the oft-made claim, particularly in the US, that people who vote for nationalist policies are bigots of some stripe.

    KnotRP , February 20, 2017 at 10:02 am

    So proof is required to rollback globalization, but no proof was required to launch it or continue dishing it out? It's good to be the King, eh?

    WheresOurTeddy , February 20, 2017 at 1:05 pm

    KnotRP, as far as the Oligarchy is concerned, they don't need proof for anything #RememberTheHackedElectionOf2016

    /s

    Yves Smith Post author , February 20, 2017 at 6:48 am

    You are missing the transition costs, which will take ten years, maybe a generation.

    America hasn't just gotten rid of the low level jobs. It has also gotten rid of supervisors and factory managers. Those are skills you can't get back overnight. For US plants in Mexico, you might have US managers there or be able to get special visas to let those managers come to the US. But US companies have shifted a ton, and I meant a ton, to foreign subcontractors. Some would put operations in the US to preserve access to US customers, but their managers won't speak English. How do you make this work?

    The only culture with demonstrated success in working with supposedly hopeless US workers is the Japanese, who proved that with the NUMMI joint venture with GM in one of its very worst factories (in terms of the alleged caliber of the workforce, as in many would show up for work drunk). Toyota got the plant to function at better than average (as in lower) defect levels and comparable productivity to its plants in Japan, which was light years better than Big Three norms.

    I'm not sure any other foreign managers are as sensitive to detail and the fine points of working conditions as the Japanese (having worked with them extensively, the Japanese hear frequencies of power dynamics that are lost on Westerners. And the Chinese do not even begin to have that capability, as much as they have other valuable cultural attributes).

    Katharine , February 20, 2017 at 10:24 am

    That is really interesting about the Japanese sensitivity to detail and power dynamics. If anyone has managed to describe this in any detail, I would love to read more, though I suppose if their ability is alien to most Westerners the task of describing it might also be too much to handle.

    Left in Wisconsin , February 20, 2017 at 10:39 am

    I lean more to ten years than a generation. And in the grand scheme of things, 10 years is nothing.

    The real issue is commitment. Very little manufacturing will be re-shored unless companies are convinced that it is in their longterm interest to do so. Which means having a sense that the US government is serious, and will continue to be serious, about penalizing off-shoring.

    Regardless of Trump's bluster, which has so far only resulted in a handful of companies halting future offshoring decisions (all to the good), we are nowhere close to that yet.

    John Wright , February 20, 2017 at 10:52 am

    There is also what I've heard referred to as the "next bench" phenomenon, in which products arise because someone designs a new product/process to solve a manufacturing problem. Unless one has great foresight, the designer of the new product must be aware there is a problem to solve.

    When a country is involved in manufacturing, the citizens employed will have exposure to production problems and issues.

    Sometimes the solution to these problems can lead to new products outside of one's main business, for example the USA's Kingsford Charcoal arose from a scrap wood disposal problem that Henry Ford had.

    https://www.kingsford.com/country/about-us/

    If one googles for "patent applications by countries" one gets these numbers, which could be an indirect indication of some of the manufacturing shift from the USA to Asia.

    Patent applications for the top 10 offices, 2014

    1. China 928,177
    2. US 578,802
    3. Japan 325,989
    4. South Korea 210,292

    What is not captured in these numbers are manufacturing processes known as "trade secrets" that are not disclosed in a patent. The idea that the USA can move move much of its manufacturing overseas without long term harming its workforce and economy seems implausible to me.

    marku52 , February 20, 2017 at 2:55 pm

    While a design EE at HP, they brought in an author who had written about Toyota's lean design method, which was currently the management hot button du jour. After his speech he took questions. I asked "Would Toyota ever separate design from manufacturing?" as HP had done, shipping all manufacturing to Asia. "No" was his answer.

    In my experience, it is way too useful to have the line be able to easily call the designer in question and have him come take a look at what his design is doing. HP tried to get around that by sending part of the design team to Asia to watch the startup. Didn't work as well. And when problems emerged later, it was always difficult to debug by remote control.

    And BTW, after manufacturing went overseas, management told us for costing to assume "Labor is free". Some level playing field.

    The Rev Kev , February 20, 2017 at 2:00 am

    Oh gawd! The man talks about the effects of globalization and says that the solution is a "a more inclusive model of globalization"? Seriously? Furthermore he singles out Chinese imports as the cause of people being pushed to the right. Yeah, right.

    How about mass imports of cheap workers into western countries in the guise of emigrants to push down worker's pay and gut things like unions. That factor played a decisive factor in both the Brexit referendum and the US 2016 elections. Or the subsidized exportation of western countries industrial equipment to third world countries, leaving local workers swinging in the wind.

    This study is so incomplete it is almost useless. The only thing that comes to mind to say about this study is the phrase "Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" And what form of appropriate compensation of its 'losers' would they suggest? Training for non-existent jobs? Free moving fees to the east or west coast for Americans in flyover country? Subsidized emigration fees to third world countries where life is cheaper for workers with no future where they are?

    Nice try fellas but time to redo your work again until it is fit for a passing grade.

    Ruben , February 20, 2017 at 3:00 am

    How crazy of them to have used generalized linear mixed models with actual data carefully compiled and curated when they could just asked you right?

    The Rev Kev , February 20, 2017 at 4:19 am

    Aw jeez, mate – you've just hurt my feelings here. Take a look at the actual article again. The data sets do not capture some of the most important factors in what they are saying. It is like putting together a paper on how and why white men voted in the 2016 US elections as they did – and forgetting to mention the effect of the rest of the voters involved.

    Hey, here is an interesting thought experiment for you. How about we apply the scientific method to the past 40 years of economic theory since models with actual data strike your fancy. If we find that the empirical data does not support a theory such as the theory of economic neoliberalism, we can junk it then and replace it with something that actually works then. So far as I know, modern economics seems to be immune to scientific rigour in their methods unlike the real sciences.

    Ruben , February 20, 2017 at 4:38 am

    I feel your pain Rev.

    Not all relevant factors need to be included for a statistical analysis to be valid, as long as relevant ignored factors are randomized amongst the sampling units, but you know that of course.

    Thanks for you kind words about the real sciences, we work hard to keep it real, but once again, in all fairness, between you and me mate, is not all rigour, it is a lot more Feyerabend than Popper.

    The Rev Kev , February 20, 2017 at 5:41 am

    What you say is entirely true. The trouble has always been to make sure that that statistical analysis actually reflects the real world enough to make it valid. An example of where it all falls apart can be seen in the political world when the pundits, media and all the pollsters assured America that Clinton had it in the bag. It was only after the dust had settled that it was revealed how bodgy the methodology used had been.

    By the way, Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend sound very interesting so thanks for the heads up. Have you heard of some of the material of another bloke called Mark Blyth at all? He has some interesting observations to make on modern economic practices.

    susan the other , February 20, 2017 at 12:03 pm

    I had a similar reaction. This research was reinforcing info about everyone's resentment over really bad distribution of wealth, as far as it went, but it was so unsatisfying and I immediately thought of Blyth who laments the whole phylogeny of economics as more or less serving the rich.

    The one solution he offered up a while ago was (paraphrasing) 'don't sweat the deficit spending because it is all 6s in the end' which is true if distribution doesn't stagnate. So as it stands now, offshoring arms, legs and firstborns is like 'nothing to see here, please move on'. The suggestion that we need a more inclusive form of global trade kind of begs the question. Made me uneasy too.

    Ruben , February 20, 2017 at 10:58 pm

    Please don't pool pundits and media with the authors of objective works like the one we are commenting :-)

    You are welcome, you might also be interested in Lakatos, these 3 are some of the most interesting philosophers of science of the 20th century, IMO.

    Blyth has been in some posts here at NC recently.

    relstprof , February 20, 2017 at 4:30 am

    "Gut things like unions." How so? In my recent interaction with my apartment agency's preferred contractors, random contractors not unionized, I experienced a 6 month-long disaster.

    These construction workers bragged that in 2 weeks they would have the complete job done - a reconstructed deck and sunroom. Verbatim quote: "Union workers complete the job and tear it down to keep everyone paying." Ha Ha! What a laugh!

    Only to have these same dudes keep saying "next week", "next week", "next week", "next week". The work began in August and only was finished (not completely!) in late January. Sloppy crap! Even the apartment agency head maintenance guy who I finally bitched at said "I guess good work is hard to come by these days."

    Of the non-union guys he hired.

    My state just elected a republican governor who promised "right to work." This was just signed into law.

    Immigrants and Mexicans had nothing to do with it. They're not an impact in my city. "Right to work" is nothing other than a way to undercut quality of work for "run-to-the-bottom competitive pay."

    Now I await whether my rent goes up to pay for this nonsense.

    bob , February 20, 2017 at 11:24 pm

    They look at the labor cost, assume someone can do it cheaper. They don't think it's that difficult. Maybe it's not. The hard part of any and all construction work is getting it finished. Getting started is easy. Getting it finished on time? Nah, you can't afford that.

    Karl Kolchak , February 20, 2017 at 10:22 am

    I've noticed that the only people in favor of globalization are those whose jobs are not under threat from it. Beyond that, I think the flood of cheap Chinese goods is actually helping suppress populist anger by allowing workers whose wages are dropping in real value terms to maintain the illusion of prosperity. To me, a more "inclusive" form of globalization would include replacing every economist with a Chinese immigrant earning minimum wage. That way they'd get to "experience" how awesome it is and the value of future economic analysis would be just as good.

    The Trumpening , February 20, 2017 at 2:27 am

    I'm going to question a few of the author's assumptions.

    First off, economic nationalism is not necessarily right wing. I would certainly classify Bernie Sanders as an economic nationalist (against open borders and against "free" trade). Syriza and Podemos could arguably be called rather ineffective economic nationalist parties. I would say the whole ideology of social democracy is based on the Swedish nationalist concept of a "folkhem", where the nation is the home and the citizens are the folk.

    Secondly, when discussing the concept of economic nationalism and the nation of China, it would be interesting to discuss how these two things go together. China has more billionaires than refugees accepted in the past 20 years. Also it is practically impossible for a non Han Chinese person to become a naturalized Chinese citizen. And when China buys Boeing aircraft, they wisely insist on the production being done in China. A close look at Japan would yield similar results.

    So China is Turmpism on steroids. Israel obviously is as well. Why do some nations get to be blatantly Trumpist while for others these policies are strictly forbidden?

    One way to look at Globalization is as an updated version of the post WW1 Versailles Treaty which imposed reparations on a defeated Germany for all the harm they caused during the Great War. The Globalized Versailles Treaty is aimed at the American and European working classes for the crimes of colonialism, racism, slavery and any other bad things the 1st world has done to the 3rd in the past.

    Of course during colonialism the costs were socialized within colonizing states and so it was the people of the colonial power who paid those costs that weren't borne by the colonial subjects themselves, who of course paid dearly, and it was the oligarchic class that privatized the colonial profits. But the 1st world oligarchs and their urban bourgeoisie are in strong agreement that the deplorable working classes are to blame for systems that hurt working classes but powerfully enriched the wealthy!

    And so with the recent rebellions against Globalization, the 1st and 3rd world oligarchs are convinced these are nothing more than the 1st world working classes attempting to shirk their historic guilt debt by refusing to pay the rightful reparations in terms of standard of living that workers deserve to pay for the crimes committed in the past by their wealthy co-nationals.

    And yes, this applies to Bernie Sanders as well. During that iconic interview where Sanders denounced open borders and pushed economic nationalism, the Neoliberal interviewer immediately played the global guilt card in response.

    Ruben , February 20, 2017 at 3:23 am

    Interesting. Another way to look at it is from the point of view of entropy and closed vs open systems. Before globalisation the 1st world working classes enjoyed a high standard of living which was possible because their system was relatively closed to the rest of the world. It was a high entropy, strongly structured socio-economic arrangement, with a large difference in standard of living between 1st world and 3rd world working classes. Once their system became more open by virtue (or vice) of globalisation, entropy increased as commanded by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics so the 1st world and 3rd world working classes became more equalised. The socio-economic arrangements became less structured. This means for the Trumpening kind of politicians it is a steep uphill battle, to increase entropy again.

    The Trumpening , February 20, 2017 at 3:56 am

    Yes, I agree, but if we step back in history a bit we can see the colonial period as a sort of reverse globalization which perhaps portends a bit of optimism for the Trumpening.

    I use the term open and closed borders but these are not precise. What I am really saying is that open borders does not allow a country to filter out negative flows across their border. Closed borders does allow a nation to impose a filter. So currently the US has more open borders (filters are frowned upon) and China has closed borders (they can filter out what they don't want) despite the fact that obviously China has plenty of things crossing its border.

    During colonialism the 3rd world had a form of open borders imposed on it by the colonial powers, where the 3rd world lost control of who what crossed their borders while the 1st world themselves maintained a closed border mercantilist regime of strict filters. So the anti-colonialist movement was a form of Trumpist economic nationalism where the evil foreigners were given the boot and the nascent nations applied filters to their borders.

    So the 3rd world to some extent (certainly in China at least) was able to overcome entropy and regain control of their borders. You are correct in that it will be an uphill struggle for the 1st world to repeat this trick. In the ideal world both forms of globalization (colonialism and the current form) would be sidelined and all nations would be allowed to use the border filters they think would best protect the prosperity of their citizens.

    Another good option would be a version of the current globalization but where the losers are the wealthy oligarchs themselves and the winners are the working classes. It's hard to imagine it's easy if you try!

    What's interesting about the concept of entropy is that it stands in contradiction to the concept of perpetual progress. I'm sure there is some sort of thesis, antithesis, synthesis solution to these conflicting concepts.

    Ruben , February 20, 2017 at 6:07 am

    To overcome an entropy current requires superb skill commanding a large magnitude of work applied densely on a small substratum (think of the evolution of the DNA, the internal combustion engine). I believe the Trumpening laudable effort and persuasion would have a chance of success in a country the size of The Netherlands, or even France, but the USA, the largest State machinery in the world, hardly. When the entropy current flooded the Soviet system the solution came firstly in the form of shrinkage.

    We need to think more about it, a lot more, in order to succeed in this 1st world uphill struggle to repeat the trick. I am pretty sure that as Pierre de Fermat famously claimed about his alleged proof, the solution "is too large to fit in the margins of this book".

    susan the other , February 20, 2017 at 12:36 pm

    My little entropy epiphany goes like this: it's like boxes – containers, if you will, of energy or money, or trade goods, the flow of which is best slowed down so everybody can grab some. Break it all down, decentralize it and force it into containers which slow the pace and share the wealth.

    Nationalism (my opinion) can do this – economic nationalism. And of course other people think oh gawd, not that again – it's so inefficient for my investments- I can't get fast returns that way but that's just the point.

    Ruben , February 20, 2017 at 10:51 pm

    I like your epiphany susan.

    John Wright , February 20, 2017 at 1:25 pm

    Don't you mean "It was a LOWER entropy (as in "more ordered"), strongly structured socio-economic arrangement, with a large difference in standard of living between 1st world"?

    The entropy increased as a consequence of human guided globalization.

    Of course, from a thermodynamic standpoint, the earth is not a closed system as it is continually flooded with new energy in the form of solar radiation.

    Ruben , February 20, 2017 at 10:49 pm

    Yes, thank you, I made that mistake twice in the post you replying to.

    Hemang , February 20, 2017 at 4:54 am

    The Globalized Versailles Treaty -- Permit me a short laughter . The terms of the crippling treaty were dictated by the victors largely on insecurities of France.

    The crimes of the 1st against the 3rd go on even now- the only difference is that some of the South like China and India are major nuclear powers now.

    The racist crimes in the US are even more flagrant- the Blacks whose labour as slaves allowed for cotton revolution enabling US capitalists to ride the industrial horse are yet to be rehabilitated , Obama or no Obama. It is a matter of profound shame.

    The benefits of Globalization have gone only to the cartel of 1st and 3rd World Capitalists. And they are very happy as the lower classes keep fighting. Very happy indeed.

    DorDeDuca , February 20, 2017 at 1:22 pm

    That is solely class (crass) warfare. You can not project the inequalities of the past to the unsuspecting paying customers of today.

    Hemang , February 20, 2017 at 1:35 pm

    The gorgon cry of the past is all over the present , including in " unsuspecting" paying folks of today! Blacks being brought to US as slave agricultural labour was Globalisation. Their energy vibrated the machinery of Economics subsequently. What Nationalism and where is it hiding pray? Bogus analysis here , yes.

    dontknowitall , February 20, 2017 at 5:40 am

    The reigning social democratic parties in Europe today are not the Swedish traditional parties of yesteryear they have morphed into neoliberal austerians committed to globalization and export driven economic models at any cost (CETA vote recently) and most responsible for the economic collapse in the EU

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/15/austerity-was-a-bigger-disaster-than-we-thought/?utm_term=.e4b799b14d81

    disc_writes , February 20, 2017 at 4:22 am

    I wonder they chose Chinese imports as the cause of the right-wing shift, when they themselves admit that the shift started in the 1990s. At that time, there were few Chinese imports and China was not even part of the WHO.

    If they are thinking of movements like the Lega Nord and Vlaams Blok, the reasons are clearly not to be found in imports, but in immigration, the welfare state and lack of national homogeneity, perceived or not.

    And the beginnings of the precariat.

    So it is not really the globalization of commerce that did it, but the loss of relevance of national and local identities.

    Ruben , February 20, 2017 at 4:41 am

    One cause does not exclude the other, they may have worked synergistically.

    disc_writes , February 20, 2017 at 5:34 am

    Correlation does not imply causation, but lack of correlation definitely excludes it.

    The Lega was formed in the 1980s, Vlaams Blok at the end of the '70s. They both had their best days in the 1990s. Chinese imports at the time were insignificant.

    I cannot find the breakdown of Chinese imports per EU country, but here are the total Chinese exports since 1983:

    http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/exports

    China was not a significant exporter until the 2001 inclusion in WTO: it cannot possibly have caused populist uprisings in Italy and Belgium in the 1990s. It was probably too early even for Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, who was killed in 2002, Le Pen's electoral success in the same year, Austria's FPOE in 1999, and so on.

    The timescales just do not match. Whatever was causing "populism", it was not Chinese imports, and I can think of half a dozen other, more likely causes.

    Furthermore, the 1980s and 1990s were something of an industrial renaissance for Lombardy and Flanders: hardly the time to worry about Chinese imports.

    And if you look at the map. the country least affected by the import shock (France) is the one with the strongest populist movement (Le Pen).

    People try to conflate Trump_vs_deep_state and Brexit with each other, then try to conflate this "anglo-saxon" populism with previous populisms in Europe, and try to deduce something from the whole exercise.

    That "something" is just not there and the exercise is pointless. IMHO at least.

    The Trumpening , February 20, 2017 at 5:05 am

    European regionalism is often the result of the rise of the EU as a new, alternative national government in the eyes of the disgruntled regions. Typically there are three levels of government, local, regional (states) and national. With the rise of the EU we have a fourth level, supra-national. But to the Flemish, Scottish, Catalans, etc, they see the EU as a potential replacement for the National-level governments they currently are unhappy being under the authority of.

    Sound of the Suburbs , February 20, 2017 at 4:28 am

    Why isn't it working? – Part 1

    Capitalism should be evolving but it went backwards. Keynesian capitalism evolved from the free market capitalism that preceded it. The absolute faith in markets had been laid low by 1929 and the Great Depression.

    After the Keynesian era we went back to the old free market capitalism of neoclassical economics. Instead of evolving, capitalism went backwards. We had another Wall Street Crash that has laid low the once vibrant global economy and we have entered into the new normal of secular stagnation. In the 1930s, Irving Fisher studied the debt deflation caused by debt saturated economies. Today only a few economists outside the mainstream realise this is the problem today.

    In the 1930s, Keynes realized only fiscal stimulus would pull the US out of the Great Depression, eventually the US implemented the New Deal and it started to recover. Today we use monetary policy that keeps asset prices up but cannot overcome the drag of all that debt in the system and its associated repayments.

    In the 1920s, they relied on debt based consumption, not realizing how consumers will eventually become saturated with debt and demand will fail. Today we rely on debt based consumption again, Greece consumed on debt. until it maxed out on debt and collapsed.

    In the 1930s Keynes realized, income was just as important as profit as this produced a sustainable system that does not rely on debt to maintain demand. Keynes was involved with the Bretton-Woods agreement after the Second World War and recycled the US surplus to Europe to restore trade when Europe lay in ruins. Europe could rebuild itself and consume US products, everyone benefitted.

    Today there are no direct fiscal transfers within the Euro-zone and it is polarizing. No one can see the benefits of rebuilding Greece, to allow it to carry on consuming the goods from surplus nations and it just sinks further and further into the mire. There is a lot to be said for capitalism going forwards rather than backwards and making the same old mistakes a second time.

    Sound of the Suburbs , February 20, 2017 at 5:25 am

    Someone who has worked in the Central Bank of New York and who Ben Bernanke listened to, ensuring the US didn't implement austerity, Richard Koo:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk

    The ECB didn't listen and killed Greece with austerity and is laying low the Club-Med nations. Someone who knows what they are doing, after studying the Great Depression and Japan after 1989. Let's keep him out of the limelight; he has no place on the ship of fools running the show.

    sunny129 , February 20, 2017 at 6:42 pm

    DEBT on Debt with QEs+ ZRP ( borrowing from future) was the 'solution' by Bernanke to mask the 2008 crisis and NOT address the underlying structural reforms in the Banking and the Financial industry. He was part of the problem for housing problem and occurred under his watch! He just kicked the can with explosive credit growth ( but no corresponding growth in the productive Economy!)and easy money!

    We have a 'Mother of all bubbles' at our door step. Just matter of time when it will BLOW and NOT if! There is record levels of DEBT ( both sovereign, public and private) in the history of mankind, all over the World.

    DEBT has been used as a panacea for all the financial problems by CBers including Bernanke! Fed's balance sheet was than less 1 Trillion in 2008 ( for all the years of existence of our Country!) but now over 3.5 Trillions and climbing!

    Kicking the can down the road is like passing the buck to some one (future generations!). And you call that solution by Mr. Bernanke? Wow!

    Will they say again " No one saw this coming'? when next one descends?

    Sound of the Suburbs , February 20, 2017 at 4:31 am

    Why isn't it working? – Part 2

    The independent Central Banks that don't know what they are doing as can be seen from their track record.

    The FED presided over the dot.com bust and 2008, unaware that they were happening and of their consequences. Alan Greenspan spots irrational exuberance in the markets in 1996 and passes comment. As the subsequent dot.com boom and housing booms run away with themselves he says nothing.

    This is the US money supply during this time:
    http://www.whichwayhome.com/skin/frontend/default/wwgcomcatalogarticles/images/articles/whichwayhomes/US-money-supply.jpg

    Everything is reflected in the money supply.

    The money supply is flat in the recession of the early 1990s.

    Then it really starts to take off as the dot.com boom gets going which rapidly morphs into the US housing boom, courtesy of Alan Greenspan's loose monetary policy.

    When M3 gets closer to the vertical, the black swan is coming and you have an out of control credit bubble on your hands (money = debt).

    We can only presume the FED wasn't looking at the US money supply, what on earth were they doing?

    The BoE is aware of how money is created from debt and destroyed by repayments of that debt.

    http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q1prereleasemoneyc
    reation.pdf

    "Although commercial banks create money through lending, they cannot do so freely without limit. Banks are limited in how much they can lend if they are to remain profitable in a competitive banking system."

    The BoE's statement was true, but is not true now as banks can securitize bad loans and get them off their books. Before 2008, banks were securitising all the garbage sub-prime mortgages, e.g. NINJA mortgages, and getting them off their books. Money is being created freely and without limit, M3 is going exponential before 2008.

    Bad debt is entering the system and no one is taking any responsibility for it. The credit bubble is reflected in the money supply that should be obvious to anyone that cares to look.

    Ben Bernanke studied the Great Depression and doesn't appear to have learnt very much.

    Irving Fisher studied the Great Depression in the 1930s and comes up with a theory of debt deflation. A debt inflated asset bubble collapses and the debt saturated economy sinks into debt deflation. 2008 is the same as 1929 except a different asset class is involved.

    1929 – Margin lending into US stocks
    2008 – Mortgage lending into US housing

    Hyman Minsky carried on with his work and came up with the "Financial Instability Hypothesis" in 1974.

    Steve Keen carried on with their work and spotted 2008 coming in 2005. We can see what Steve Keen saw in 2005 in the US money supply graph above.

    The independent Central Banks that don't know what they are doing as can be seen from their track record.

    Jesper , February 20, 2017 at 4:51 am

    Good to see studies confirming what was already known.

    This apparently surprised:

    On the contrary, as globalisation threatens the success and survival of entire industrial districts, the affected communities seem to have voted in a homogeneous way, regardless of each voter's personal situation.

    It is only surprising for people not part of communities, those who are part of communities see how it affects people around them and solidarity with the so called 'losers' is then shown.

    Seems like radical right is the preferred term, it does make it more difficult to sympathize with someone branded as radical right . The difference seems to be between the radical liberals vs the conservative. The radical liberals are too cowardly to propose the laws they want, they prefer to selectively apply the laws as they see fit. Either enforce the laws or change the laws, anything else is plain wrong.

    Disturbed Voter , February 20, 2017 at 6:31 am

    Socialism for the upper classes, capitalism for the lower classes? That will turn out well. Debt slaves and wage slaves will revolt. That is all the analysis the OP requires. The upper class will respond with suppression, not policy reversal every time. Socialism = making everyone equally poor (obviously not for the upper classes who benefit from the arrangement).

    J7915 , February 20, 2017 at 11:15 am

    Regrettably today we have socialism for the wealthy, with all the benefits of gov regulations, sympathetic courts and legislatures etc. etc.

    Workers are supposed to take care for themselves and the devil take the hind most. How many workers get fired vs the 1%, when there is a failure in the company plan?

    Disturbed Voter , February 20, 2017 at 11:59 am

    The Romans are the basis. Patricians, Equites and Plebs. Most of us here are clearly plebeian. Time to go place some bets, watch the chariot races and gladiatorial fights, and get my bread subsidy. Ciao.

    Sound of the Suburbs , February 20, 2017 at 5:39 am

    Globalization created winners and losers throughout the world. The winners liked it, the losers didn't. Democracy is based on the support of the majority.

    The majority in the East were winners. The majority in the West were losers.

    The Left has maintained its support of neoliberal globalisation in the West. The Right has moved on. There has been a shift to the Right. Democracy is all about winners and losers and whether the majority are winning or losing. It hasn't changed.

    sunny129 , February 20, 2017 at 6:54 pm

    CAPITAL is mobile and the Labor is NOT!

    Globalization( along with communication -internet and transportation) made the Labor wage arbitration, easy in favor of capital ( Multi-Nationals). Most of the jobs gone overseas will NEVER come back. Robotic revolution will render the remaining jobs, less and less!

    The 'new' Economy by passed the majority of lower 80-90% and favored the top 10%. The Losers and the Winners!

    80-90% of Bonds and Equities ( at least in USA) are owned by top 10 %. 0.7% own 45% of global wealth. 8 billionaires own more than 50% of wealth than that of bottom 50% in our Country!

    The Rich became richer!

    The tension between Have and Have -Nots has just begun, as Marx predicted!

    Sound of the Suburbs , February 20, 2017 at 5:50 am

    In the West the rewards of globalisation have been concentrated at the top and rise exponentially within the 1%.

    How does this work in a democracy? It doesn't look as though anyone has even thought about it.

    David , February 20, 2017 at 6:33 am

    I think it's about time that we stopped referring to opposition to globalization as a product or policy of the "extreme right". It would be truer to say that globalization represents a temporary, and now fading, triumph of certain ideas about trade and movement of people and capital which have always existed, but were not dominant in the past. Fifty years ago, most mainstream political parties were "protectionist" in the sense the word is used today. Thirty years ago, protectionism was often seen as a left)wing idea, to preserve standards of living and conditions of employment (Wynne Godley and co). Today, all establishment political parties in the West have swallowed neoliberal dogma, so the voters turn elsewhere, to parties outside the mainstream. Often, it's convenient politically to label them "extreme right", although in Europe some left-wing parties take basically the same position. If you ignore peoples' interests, they won't vote for you. Quelle surprise! as Yves would say.

    financial matters , February 20, 2017 at 8:00 am

    Yes, there are many reasons to be skeptical of too much globalization such as energy considerations. I think another interesting one is exchange rates.

    One of the important concepts of MMT is the importance of having a flexible exchange rate to have full power over your currency. This is fine as far as it goes but tends to put hard currencies against soft currencies where a hard currency can be defined as one that has international authority/acceptance. Having flexible exchange rates also opens up massive amounts of financial speculation relative to fluctuations of these currencies against each other and trying to protect against these fluctuations.

    ""Keynes' proposal of the bancor was to put a barrier between national currencies, that is to have a currency of account at the global level. Keynes warned that free trade, flexible exchange rates and free movement of capital globally were incompatible with maintaining full employment at the local level""

    ""Sufficiency provisioning also means that trade would be discouraged rather than encouraged.""

    Local currencies can work very well locally to promote employment but can have trouble when they reach out to get resources outside of their currency space especially if they have a soft currency. Global sustainability programs need to take a closer look at how to overcome this sort of social injustice. (Debt or Democracy)

    Gman , February 20, 2017 at 6:35 am

    As has already been pointed out so eloquently here in the comments section, economic nationalism is not necessarily the preserve of the right, nor is it necessarily the same thing as nationalism.

    In the UK the original, most vociferous objectors to EEC membership in the 70s (now the EU) were traditionally the Left, on the basis that it would gradually erode labour rights and devalue the cost of labour in the longer term. Got that completely wrong obviously .

    In the same way that global trade has become synonymous with globalisation, the immigration debate has been hijacked and cynically conflated with free movement of (mainly low cost, unskilled) labour and race when they are all VERY different divisive issues.

    The other point alluded to in the comments above is the nature of free trade generally. The accepted (neoliberal) wisdom being that 'collateral damage' is unfortunate but inevitable, but it is pretty much an unstoppable or uncontrollable force for the greater global good, and the false dichotomy persists that you either embrace it fully or pull up all the drawbridges with nothing in between.

    One of the primary reasons that some competing sectors of some Western economies have done so badly out of globalisation is that they have adhered to 'free market principles' whilst other countries, particularly China, clearly have not with currency controls, domestic barriers to trade, massive state subsidies, wage suppression etc

    The China aspect is also fascinating when developed nations look at the uncomfortable 'morality of global wealth distribution' often cited by proponents of globalisation as one of their wider philanthropic goals. Bless 'em. What is clear is that highly populated China and most of its people, from the bottom to the top, has been the primary beneficiaries of this global wealth redistribution, but the rest of the developing world's poor clearly not quite so much.

    Eustache de Saint Pierre , February 20, 2017 at 7:11 am

    The map on it's own, in terms of the English one time industrial Midlands & North West being shown as an almost black hole, is in itself a kind of " Nuff Said ".

    It is also apart from London, where the vast bulk of immigrants have settled.

    The upcoming bye-election in Stoke, which could lead to U-Kip taking a once traditionally always strong Labour seat, is right in the middle of that dark cloud.

    Anonymous2 , February 20, 2017 at 7:51 am

    The problem from the UK 's position, I suggest, is that autarky is not a viable proposition so economic nationalism becomes a two-edged sword. Yes, of course, the UK can place restrictions on imports and immigration but there will inevitably be retaliation and they will enter a game of beggar my neighbour. The current government talks of becoming a beacon for free trade. If we are heading to a more protectionist world, that can only end badly IMHO.

    Eustache de Saint Pierre , February 20, 2017 at 11:30 am

    Unless we get some meaningful change in thinking on a global scale, I think we are heading somewhere very dark whatever the relative tinkering with an essentially broken system.

    The horse is long gone, leaving a huge pile of shit in it's stable.

    As for what might happen, I do not know, but I have the impression that we are at the end of a cycle.

    sunny129 , February 20, 2017 at 7:04 pm

    That 'CYCLE" was dragged on ' unnaturally' with more DEBT on DEBT all over the World by criminal CBers.
    Now the end is approaching! Why surprise?

    Ignacio , February 20, 2017 at 8:15 am

    This is quite interesting, but only part of the story. Interestingly the districts/provinces suffering the most from the chinese import shock are usually densely populated industrial regions of Europe. The electoral systems in Europe (I think all, but I did not check) usually do not weight equally each district, favouring those less populated, more rural (which by the way tend to be very conservative but not so nationalistic). These differences in vote weigthing may have somehow masked the effect seen in this study if radical nationalistic rigth wing votes concentrate in areas with lower weigthed value of votes. For instance, in Spain, the province of Soria is mostly rural and certainly less impacted by chinese imports compared with, for instance, Madrid. But 1 vote in Soria weigths the same as 4 votes in Madrid in number of representatives in the congress. This migth, in part, explain why in Spain, the radical rigth does not have the same power as in Austria or the Netherlands. It intuitively fits the hypothesis of this study.

    Nevertheless, similar processes can occur in rural areas. For instance, when Spain entered the EU, french rural areas turned nationalistic against what they thougth could be a wave of agricultural imports from Spain. Ok, agricultural globalization may have less impact in terms of vote numbers in a given country but it still can be politically very influential. In fact spanish entry more that 30 years ago could still be one of the forces behind Le Penism.

    craazyman , February 20, 2017 at 8:44 am

    I dunno aboout this one.

    All this statistical math and yada yada to explain a rise in vote for radical right from 3% in 1985 to 5% now on average? And only a 0.7% marginal boost if your the place really getting hammmered by imports from China? If I'm reading it right, that is, while focusing on Figure 2.

    The real "shock" no pun intended, is the vote totals arent a lot higher everywhere.

    Then the Post concludes with reference to a "surge in support" - 3% to 5% or so over 30 years is a surge? The line looks like a pretty steady rise over 3 decades.

    Maybe I'm missing sommething here.

    Also what is this thing they're callling an "Open World" of the past 30 years? And why is that in danger from more balanced trade? It makes no sense. Even back in the 60s and 70s people could go alll over the world for vacations. Or at least most places they coould go. If theh spent their money they'd make friends. Greece even used to be a goood place people went and had fun on a beach.

    I think this one is a situation of math runing amuck. Math running like a thousand horses over a hill trampling every blade of grass into mud.

    I bet the China factor is just a referent for an entire constellatio of forces that probably don't lend themselves (no pun intended) partiicularly well to social science and principal component analysis - as interesting as that is for those who are interested in that kind of thing (which I am acctually).

    Also, I wouldn't call this "free trade". Not that the authors do either, but trade means reciprocity not having your livelihood smashed the like a pinata at Christmas with all your candy eaten by your "fellow countrymen". I wouldn't call that "trade". It's something else.

    Ruben , February 20, 2017 at 12:36 pm

    Regarding your first point, it is a small effect but it is all due to the China imports impact, you have to add the growth of these parties due to other reasons such as immigration to get the full picture of their growth. Also I think the recent USA election was decided by smaller percentage advantages in three States?

    Steve Ruis , February 20, 2017 at 9:00 am

    Globalisation is nothing but free trade extended to the entire world. Free trade is a tool used to prevent competition. By flooding countries with our cheaper exports, they do not develop the capacity to compete with us by making their own widgets. So, why are we shocked when those other countries return the favor and when they get the upper hand, we respond in a protectionist way? It looks to me that those countries who are now competing with us in electronics, automobiles, etc. only got to develop those industries in their countries because of protectionism.

    Why is this surprising to anyone?

    craazyman , February 20, 2017 at 10:41 am

    Frank would never have sung this, even drunk! . . . .even in Vegas . .

    Trade Be a Lady

    They say we'll make a buck
    But there is room for doubt
    At times you have a very unbalanced way of running out

    You say you're good for me
    Your pickins have been lush
    But before this year is over
    I might give you the brush

    Seems you've forgot your manners
    You don't know how to play
    Cause every time I turn around . . . I pay

    So trade get your balances right
    Trade get your balances right
    Trade if you've ever been in balance to begin with
    Trade get your balances right

    Trade let a citizen see
    How fair and humane you can be
    I see the way you've treated other guys you've been with
    Trade be a lady with me

    A lady doesn't dump her exports
    It isn't fair, and it's not nice
    A lady doesn't wander all over the world
    Putting whole communities on ice

    Let's keep this economy polite
    let's find a way to do it right
    Don't stick me baby or I'll wreck the world you win with
    Trade be a lady or we'll fight

    A lady keeps it fair with strangers
    She'd have a heart, she'd be nice
    A lady doesn't spread her junk, all over the world
    In your face, at any price

    Let's keep society polite
    Go find a way to do it right
    Don't screw me baby cause i know the clowns you sin with
    Trade be a lady tonight

    Gaylord , February 20, 2017 at 10:56 am

    Refugees in great numbers are a symptom of globalization, especially economic refugees but also political and environmental ones. This has strained the social order in many countries that have accepted them in and it's one of the central issues that the so-called "right" is highlighting.

    It is no surprise there has been an uproar over immigration policy in the US which is an issue of class as much as foreign policy because of the disenfranchisement of large numbers of workers on both sides of the equation - those who lost their jobs to outsourcing and those who emigrated due to the lack of decent employment opportunities in their own countries.

    We're seeing the tip of the iceberg. What will happen when the coming multiple environmental calamities cause mass starvation and dislocation of coastal populations? Walls and military forces can't deter hungry, desperate, and angry people.

    The total reliance and gorging on fossil energy by western countries, especially the US, has mandated military aggression to force compliance in many areas of the world. This has brought a backlash of perpetual terrorism. We are living under a dysfunctional system ruled by sociopaths whose extreme greed is leading to world war and environmental collapse.

    sunny129 , February 20, 2017 at 7:01 pm

    Who created the REFUGEE PROBLEMS in the ME – WEST including USA,UK++

    Obama's DRONE program kept BOMBING in SEVEN Countries killing innocents – children and women! All in the name of fighting Terrorism. Billions of arms to sale Saudi Arabia! Wow!

    Where were the Democrats and the Resistance and Women's march? Hypocrites!

    Anon , February 21, 2017 at 12:12 am

    "Our lifestyle is non-negotiable." - Dick Cheney.

    Ignacio , February 20, 2017 at 2:40 pm

    What happened with Denmark that suddenly dissapeared?

    fairleft , February 21, 2017 at 8:08 am

    Globalisation has caused a surge in support for nationalist and radical right political platforms.
    Just a reminder that nationalism doesn't have to be associated with the radical right. The left is not required to reject it, especially when it can be understood as basically patriotism, expressed as solidarity with all of your fellow citizens.

    Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership seems to be a move in that direction.
    Well, that may be true as far as Trump's motivations are concerned, but a major component (the most important?) of the TPP was strong restraint of trade, a protectionist measure, by intellectual property owners.

    Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers'
    Japan has long been 'smart' protectionist, and this has helped prevent the 'loser' problem, in part because Japan, being nationalist, makes it a very high priority to create/maintain a society in which almost all Japanese are more or less middle class. So, it is a fact that protectionism has been and can be associated with more egalitarian societies, in which there are few 'losers' like we see in the West. But the U.S. and most Western countries have a long way to go if they decide to make the effort to be more egalitarian. And, of course, protectionism alone is not enough to make most of the losers into winners again. You'll need smart skills training, better education all around, fewer low-skill immigrants, time, and, most of all strong and long-term commitment to making full employment at good wages national priority number one.

    and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies.
    Growth has been week since the 2008, even though markets are as free as they've ever been. Growth requires a lot more consumers with willingness and cash to spend on expensive, high-value-added goods. So, besides the world finally escaping the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, exporting countries need prosperous consumers either at home or abroad, and greater economic security. And if a little bit of protectionism generates more consumer prosperity and economic stability, exporting countries might benefit overall.

    The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation.
    Well, yes, the world needs more inclusivity, but globalization doesn't need to be part of the picture. Keep your eyes on the prize: inclusivity/equality, whether latched onto nationally, regionally, 'internationally' or globally, any which way is fine! But prioritization of globalization over those two is likely a victory for more inequality, for more shoveling of our wealth up to the ruling top 1%.

    [Feb 21, 2017] Former CIA Agent Explains Why He Resigned Because Of Trump

    Feb 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    But, as he details below in a letter published by The Washington Post, he has officially resigned "to be clear, my decision had nothing to do with politics," seemingly because the Trump Administration is "tuning out the intelligence professionals."

    Nearly 15 years ago, I informed my skeptical father that I was pursuing a job with the Central Intelligence Agency. Among his many concerns was that others would never believe I had resigned from the agency when I sought my next job. "Once CIA, always CIA," he said. But that didn't give me pause. This wouldn't be just my first real job, I thought then; it would be my career.

    That changed when I formally resigned last week. Despite working proudly for Republican and Democratic presidents, I reluctantly concluded that I cannot in good faith serve this administration as an intelligence professional.

    This was not a decision I made lightly. I sought out the CIA as a college student, convinced that it was the ideal place to serve my country and put an otherwise abstract international-relations degree to use. I wasn't disappointed.

    The CIA taught me new skills and exposed me to new cultures and countries. More important, it instilled in me a sense of mission and purpose. As an analyst, I became an expert in terrorist groups and traveled the world to help deter and disrupt attacks. The administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama took the CIA's input seriously. There was no greater reward than having my analysis presented to the president and seeing it shape events. Intelligence informing policy - this is how the system is supposed to work. I saw that up close for the past three years at the White House, where I worked on loan from the CIA until last month.

    As a candidate, Donald Trump's rhetoric suggested that he intended to take a different approach. I watched in disbelief when, during the third presidential debate , Trump casually cast doubt on the high-confidence conclusion of our 17 intelligence agencies , released that month, that Russia was behind the hacking and release of election-related emails. On the campaign trail and even as president-elect, Trump routinely referred to the flawed 2002 assessment of Iraq's weapons programs as proof that the CIA couldn't be trusted - even though the intelligence community had long ago held itself to account for those mistakes and Trump himself supported the invasion of Iraq.

    Trump's actions in office have been even more disturbing. His visit to CIA headquarters on his first full day in office, an overture designed to repair relations, was undone by his ego and bluster. Standing in front of a memorial to the CIA's fallen officers, he seemed to be addressing the cameras and reporters in the room, rather than the agency personnel in front of them, bragging about his inauguration crowd the previous day. Whether delusional or deceitful, these were not the remarks many of my former colleagues and I wanted to hear from our new commander in chief. I couldn't help but reflect on the stark contrast between the bombast of the new president and the quiet dedication of a mentor - a courageous, dedicated professional - who is memorialized on that wall. I know others at CIA felt similarly.

    The final straw came late last month, when the White House issued a directive reorganizing the National Security Council , on whose staff I served from 2014 until earlier this year. Missing from the NSC's principals committee were the CIA director and the director of national intelligence. Added to the roster: the president's chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who cut his teeth as a media champion of white nationalism.

    The public outcry led the administration to reverse course and name the CIA director an NSC principal, but the White House's inclination was clear. It has little need for intelligence professionals who, in speaking truth to power, might challenge the so-called "America First" orthodoxy that sees Russia as an ally and Australia as a punching bag. That's why the president's trusted White House advisers , not career professionals, reportedly have final say over what intelligence reaches his desk.

    To be clear, my decision had nothing to do with politics, and I would have been proud to again work under a Republican administration open to intelligence analysis. I served with conviction under President George W. Bush, some of whose policies I also found troubling, and I took part in programs that the Obama administration criticized and ended. As intelligence professionals, we're taught to tune out politics. The river separating CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., from Washington might as well be a political moat. But this administration has flipped that dynamic on its head: The politicians are the ones tuning out the intelligence professionals.

    The CIA will continue to serve important functions - including undertaking covert action and sharing information with close allies and partners around the globe. If this administration is serious about building trust with the intelligence community, however, it will require more than rallies at CIA headquarters or press statements. What intelligence professionals want most is to know that the fruits of their labor -- sometimes at the risk of life or limb - are accorded due deference in the policymaking process.

    Until that happens, President Trump and his team are doing another disservice to these dedicated men and women and the nation they proudly, if quietly, serve.

    Has President Trump created an environment that cleanses itself? A self-'draining' swamp?

    smc1982 , Feb 21, 2017 9:32 AM

    presumably he's been ok with the all the CIA drug running for the last 50 years.

    Darktarra -> smc1982 , Feb 21, 2017 9:32 AM

    And that is why I love watching American Dad over Family Guy! :)

    FreezeThese -> Darktarra , Feb 21, 2017 9:36 AM

    Sound decision this ... distance thyself if you seek further employment ... any association with Drumpf is utter suicide atm

    Omni Consumer P... -> FreezeThese , Feb 21, 2017 9:38 AM

    "Central Intelligence Agency" is one of the classic oxymorons, right up there with "Paul Krugman".

    tmosley -> Omni Consumer Product , Feb 21, 2017 9:41 AM

    Trump is a big guy (for him).

    CheapBastard -> Omni Consumer Product , Feb 21, 2017 9:42 AM

    I hear his new vacation house down the road from Bernie is very nice compliments of The Foundation.

    Hilarious that suddenly these dopes feel "demoralized" or whatever after being there and watching Soweeto murder millions of muslims without a peep from them.

    he he he...total hypocrits who hope to find a high-paying job either with a soros NGO terror group or the new Klinton Krime Organization.

    Lone_Star -> CheapBastard , Feb 21, 2017 9:48 AM

    Notice how they're all doing the tell-all, heart-to-heart pieces at the same rags that are pushing VFN.

    Also, now that it's Trump in the WH, the dissenters are all the sudden the credible ones? I'd bet even money that if Wikileaks published something negative to the Trump admin, it would suddenly become the pinnacle of truth.

    Stackers -> Lone_Star , Feb 21, 2017 9:57 AM

    From the tone of the letter and examples used, namely mentioning the Russian hacking letter by "17 intelligence organizations", shows this most certainly was politically driven action on his part.

    SoDamnMad -> CheapBastard , Feb 21, 2017 9:49 AM

    This guy was selling girl scout cookies and thought the profits were shared with the CIA because they both did good work for humanity. After dark he was an assassin and they probably reduced his bonus per kill.

    mind reset -> SoDamnMad , Feb 21, 2017 9:55 AM

    I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... http://bit.ly/2jdTzrM

    Billy the Poet -> Omni Consumer Product , Feb 21, 2017 9:42 AM

    Sure. He quit the Deep State and he's moving to Canada.

    The Merovingian -> Omni Consumer Product , Feb 21, 2017 9:47 AM

    Fuck this guy. What about Obama's last minute butt-fucking of civilian's rights with the expansion of the wire tapping access to 16 agencies from just 1 (NSA). This guy is part of the problem.

    Fuck you dude!

    P.S. Would you trust that guy with your kid?

    wildbad -> The Merovingian , Feb 21, 2017 9:54 AM

    WHAT A CUCK!

    no refutation of the politicized lies of the CIA nothing about the political and anti constitutional methods and presidential abuses using the CIA.

    just whining.

    let the door hit you otwo

    VinceFostersGhost -> wildbad , Feb 21, 2017 9:57 AM

    P.S. Would you trust that guy with your kid?

    No......no I don't think so.

    NumNutt -> The Merovingian , Feb 21, 2017 9:57 AM

    I would say this guy is the "leak" that Trump is looking for. How convienent that they start to seriously rooting out the leak and all the sudden this guy resigns for personnal reasons.

    Keyser -> FreezeThese , Feb 21, 2017 9:39 AM

    Fuck the spooks, just like the MSM, they have dug their own grave... Just how many governments have they overthrown since 1945, is it 81 or 82?

    I woke up -> Keyser , Feb 21, 2017 9:49 AM

    Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself

    The_Juggernaut -> I woke up , Feb 21, 2017 9:53 AM

    I guess he feels lucky.

    SWRichmond -> Keyser , Feb 21, 2017 9:49 AM

    To be clear, my decision had nothing to do with politics,

    right...

    Joe Sichs Pach -> Darktarra , Feb 21, 2017 9:38 AM

    Thank you for leading the charge Mr Price. Now encourage your former coworkers to follow suit!

    DeadFred -> Joe Sichs Pach , Feb 21, 2017 9:48 AM

    Quitting before you're fired is always a good career move.

    Erek -> smc1982 , Feb 21, 2017 9:34 AM

    How intelligent are these so-called "intelligence officials" anyway?

    gmrpeabody -> Erek , Feb 21, 2017 9:35 AM

    The best defense is a good offense...

    Billy the Poet -> gmrpeabody , Feb 21, 2017 9:43 AM

    The CIA is about as offensive as it gets.

    Darktarra -> smc1982 , Feb 21, 2017 9:36 AM

    How the fuck does "so behind you" demoralize you effiminate Maxwell 86 mother fucker!?

    DontGive -> smc1982 , Feb 21, 2017 9:37 AM

    Sounds like he's done some nasty shit if you read between the lines.

    Lordflin -> smc1982 , Feb 21, 2017 9:39 AM

    One down, how many left to go...?

    detached.amusement -> smc1982 , Feb 21, 2017 9:52 AM

    this pile of shit needs a target painted on him

    Darktarra , Feb 21, 2017 9:32 AM

    Fake news! He is one of the leaks and he is getting out before his head gets cut off!

    davinci7_gis -> Darktarra , Feb 21, 2017 9:39 AM

    Get the f*ck out you spook...there is no need for a CIA just a very strong military.

    NoDebt , Feb 21, 2017 9:54 AM

    Bye! Have a beautiful time!

    gatorengineer , Feb 21, 2017 9:32 AM

    Awww look a melted snowflake....

    clade7 , Feb 21, 2017 9:35 AM

    Yeah? Fag alright...lookat that skinny head! Good luck making easy money in the Private sector buddy!...maybe you could get a job jimmying open a locked door? With your skinny head?

    HamFistedIdiot -> clade7 , Feb 21, 2017 9:36 AM

    Probably a "chickenhawk," too. Good riddance.

    Ignatius , Feb 21, 2017 9:32 AM

    There are no words...

    Billy the Poet -> Ignatius , Feb 21, 2017 9:45 AM

    Collaborator? Traitor? Turncoat? Scumbag?

    pine_marten , Feb 21, 2017 9:32 AM

    Stfu you little prick

    Colonel , Feb 21, 2017 9:33 AM

    GTFO!

    cowdiddly , Feb 21, 2017 9:33 AM

    Translation.

    They were going to fire my worthless traitor ass anyway soon, so I decided to go back to consulting.

    wally_12 , Feb 21, 2017 9:34 AM

    Did the door hit him on the way out?

    Winston Churchill , Feb 21, 2017 9:34 AM

    Shame he didn't use a shitgum.

    foodstampbarry , Feb 21, 2017 9:34 AM

    Very good. One less swamp creature.

    buzzsaw99 , Feb 21, 2017 9:35 AM

    fag

    I woke up , Feb 21, 2017 9:36 AM

    They have dirt on him with underage kids

    chunga , Feb 21, 2017 9:36 AM

    A weasel with principles. Pffft

    Evander , Feb 21, 2017 9:40 AM

    The headline should read "Former CIA Agent Tells Us Why He's a Pathetic Loser" He left the criminal underbelly of government so he could start a lucrative career in Fake News. I have to admit, he's off to a good start....

    skbull44 , Feb 21, 2017 9:37 AM

    Cognitive dissonance is a powerful, powerful phenomenon. We are, as author Robert Heinlen argued, rationalizing animals, not rational. We tell ourselves all sorts of stories to keep our egos intact...

    TheAnswerIs42 -> skbull44 , Feb 21, 2017 9:53 AM

    Actually, it looks more like a case of Doublethink .

    Doublethink is the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts . [1] Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy and neutrality . Also related is cognitive dissonance , in which contradictory beliefs cause conflict in one's mind. Doublethink is notable due to a lack of cognitive dissonance - thus the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction.

    The melting snowflakes are more like a case of Cognitive Dissonance.

    Unwashed , Feb 21, 2017 9:37 AM

    CIA agents aren't loyal to the United States, they're loyal to the CIA.

    American Gorbachev -> Unwashed , Feb 21, 2017 9:47 AM

    very true

    but, in their minds, they ARE the United States

    (the rest of us are just visiting)

    [Feb 21, 2017] Sally Yates' warning may have set Flynn's resignation into motion

    Feb 21, 2017 | www.nydailynews.com
    Sally Yates was anything but treacherous in her final days as President Trump's acting Attorney General.

    Her role as a legal canary in the coal mine during a brief role heading the Justice Department may have poised the White House away from National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and inspired his ousting.

    Yates tried insulating the White House from a series of looming controversies - the potentially illegal executive order banning travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries and the latest bombshell that Flynn misled several senior members of the Trump administration about his suspected pre-inauguration talks with a Russian diplomat.

    Despite Flynn's assurances to Vice President Mike Pence that he never discussed dissolving Obama's sanctions against Russia, Yates informed the Trump camp in late January that he lied and it was a violation of the Logan Act. The law prohibits private citizens from influencing foreign government.

    Additionally, Flynn was a prime target for Russian blackmail, the Washington Post reported Yates as saying.

    She wasn't alone in her thoughts. Both former CIA director John Brennan and James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence agreed with Yates, according to the Post.

    [Feb 21, 2017] Michael Flynn Resigns Sally Yates Played a Role in Showing Him Out Fortune.com

    Feb 21, 2017 | fortune.com

    The Post reports that Yates-along with former national intelligence director James Clapper Jr. and CIA director John Brennan-told the incoming administration that "Flynn had put himself in a compromising position" at the end of last year and was vulnerable to blackmail because of his potentially illegal discussions of U.S. sanctions with the diplomat. (At the time of his conversations with the Russian ambassador, he was not yet a member of the administration and so could be in violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from interfering in diplomatic disputes.)

    [Feb 21, 2017] A Look At Sally Yates's Role In The Mike Flynn Investigation WABE 90.1 FM

    Feb 21, 2017 | news.wabe.org

    Late on Monday, the Washington Post was the first to report that former Atlanta U.S. Attorney Sally Yates warned Trump administration officials that then-national security advisor Michael Flynn had not told the truth about the nature of his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the U.S. Yates, who at the time was the acting U.S. attorney general, told the White House general counsel that Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.

    [Feb 21, 2017] Red Hysteria Engulfs Washington

    Feb 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    Submitted by Eric Margolis via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    President Dwight Eisenhower's warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex made half a century ago ring as loud and clear today . The soft coup being mounted against the Trump government by America's 'deep state' reached a new intensity this week as special interests battled for control of Washington.

    The newly named national security advisor, Lt Gen Michael Flynn, was ousted by Trump over his chats with Russia's ambassador and what he may or may not have told Vice President Pence. The defenestration of Flynn appeared engineered by our national intelligence agencies in collaboration with the mainstream media and certain Democrats.

    Flynn's crime? Talking to the wicked Russians before and after the election. Big, big deal. That's what security advisors are supposed to do: keep an open back channel to other major powers and allies. This is also the job of our intelligence agencies.

    There is no good or bad in international affairs. The childish concept of 'good guys' and 'bad guys' comes from the Bush era when simple-minded voters had to be convinced that America was somehow in grave danger from a bunch of angry Mideast goat herds.

    The only nations that could threaten America's very existence are nuclear powers Russia, China, India, France, Britain and Israel (and maybe Pakistan) in that order.

    Russia has thousands of nuclear warheads targeted on the US mainland. Any real war with Russia would invite doom for both nations. Two near misses are more than enough. Remember the 1962 Cuban missile confrontation and the terrifying 1983 Able Archer scare – near thermonuclear war caused by Ronald Reagan's anti-Russian hysteria and Moscow's panicked response.

    Margolis' #1 rule of international relations: make nice and keep on good terms with nations that have nuclear weapons pointed at you. Avoid squabbles over almost all matters. Intelligence agencies play a key role in maintaining the balance of nuclear terror and preventing misunderstandings that can cause war.

    Gen. Flynn was a fanatical anti-Islamic wing nut. He was, to use Trumpese, a bigly terrible choice. I'm glad he is gone. But Flynn's sin was being loopy, not talking on the phone to the Russian ambassador. The White House and national intelligence should be talking every day to Moscow, even 'hi Boris, what's new with you guys? 'Nothing much new here either besides the terrible traffic.'

    The current hue and cry in the US over Flynn's supposed infraction is entirely a fake political ambush to cripple the Trump administration. Trump caved in much too fast. The deep state is after his scalp: he has threatened to cut the $80 billion per annum intelligence budget – which alone, boys and girls, is larger than Russia's entire defense budget! He's talking about rooting waste out of the Pentagon's almost trillion-dollar budget, spending less on NATO, and ending some of America's imperial wars abroad.

    What's to like about Trump if you're a member of the war party and military-industrial-intelligence-Wall Street complex? The complex wants its golden girl Hilary Clinton in charge. She unleashed the current tsunami of anti-Russian hysteria and demonization of Vladimir Putin which shows, sadly, that many Americans have not grown beyond the days of Joe McCarthy.

    As a long-time student of Cold War intelligence, my conclusion is that both sides knew pretty much what the other was up to, though KGB and GRU were more professional and skilled than western special services. It would be so much easier and cheaper just to share information on a demand basis. But that would stop the Great Game.

    It's sickening watching the arrant hypocrisy and windbaggery in Washington over alleged Russian espionage and manipulation. The US has been buying and manipulating foreign governments since 1945. We even tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone. This week Wikileaks issued an intercept on CIA spying and manipulation of France's 2012 election. We live in a giant glass house.

    The Russians are not our pals. Nor are they the evil empire. We have to normalize our thinking about Russia, grow up and stop using Moscow as a political bogeyman to fight our own internal political battles.

    Right now, I'm more worried about the far right crazies in the Trump White House than I am about the Ruskis and Vlad the Bad.

    [Feb 21, 2017] The Did-You-Talk-to-Russians Witch Hunt

    Notable quotes:
    "... Exclusive: Democrats, liberals and media pundits – in their rush to take down President Trump – are pushing a New McCarthyism aimed at Americans who have talked to Russians, risking a new witch hunt. ..."
    "... As Democrats compete to become the new War Party – pushing for a dangerous confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia – some constituents are objecting, as Mike Madden did in a letter to Sen. Amy Klobuchar. ..."
    Feb 21, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    RGC : February 20, 2017 at 05:29 AM , 2017 at 05:29 AM
    The Did-You-Talk-to-Russians Witch Hunt

    February 18, 2017

    Exclusive: Democrats, liberals and media pundits – in their rush to take down President Trump – are pushing a New McCarthyism aimed at Americans who have talked to Russians, risking a new witch hunt.

    By Robert Parry

    https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/18/the-did-you-talk-to-russians-witch-hunt/

    RGC -> RGC... , February 20, 2017 at 05:35 AM
    February 17, 2017

    France: Another Ghastly Presidential Election Campaign; the Deep State Rises to the Surface

    by Diana Johnstone

    As if the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign hadn't been horrendous enough, here comes another one: in France.

    The system in France is very different, with multiple candidates in two rounds, most of them highly articulate, who often even discuss real issues. Free television time reduces the influence of big money. The first round on April 23 will select the two finalists for the May 7 runoff, allowing for much greater choice than in the United States.

    But monkey see, monkey do, and the mainstream political class wants to mimic the ways of the Empire, even echoing the theme that dominated the 2016 show across the Atlantic: the evil Russians are messing with our wonderful democracy.

    The aping of the U.S. system began with "primaries" held by the two main governing parties which obviously aspire to establish themselves as the equivalent of American Democrats and Republicans in a two-party system. The right-wing party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy has already renamed itself Les Républicains and the so-called Socialist Party leaders are just waiting for the proper occasion to call themselves Les Démocrates. But as things are going, neither one of them may come out ahead this time.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/17/france-another-ghastly-presidential-election-campaign-the-deep-state-rises-to-the-surface/

    RGC -> RGC... , February 20, 2017 at 05:53 AM
    Challenging Klobuchar on Ukraine War

    February 19, 2017

    As Democrats compete to become the new War Party – pushing for a dangerous confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia – some constituents are objecting, as Mike Madden did in a letter to Sen. Amy Klobuchar.


    From Mike Madden (of St. Paul, Minnesota)

    Dear Senator Klobuchar, I write with concern over statements you have made recently regarding Russia.

    These statements have been made both at home and abroad, and they involve two issues; the alleged Russian hack of the presidential election and Russia's actions in the aftermath of the February 22, 2014 coup in Kiev.

    U.S. intelligence services allege that President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign to denigrate Hillary Clinton and help elect Donald Trump. The campaign is purported to include the production of fake news, cyber-trolling, and propaganda from Russian state-owned media. It is also alleged that Russia hacked the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, subsequently providing the emails to WikiLeaks.

    Despite calls from many quarters, the intelligence services have not provided the public with any proof. Instead, Americans are expected to blindly trust these services with a long history of failure. Additionally, the former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, and the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, have both been known to lie to the public and to Congress, Mr. Clapper doing so under oath.

    Meanwhile, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange maintains the emails did not come from Russia (or any other state actor) and his organization has an unblemished record of revealing accurate information in the public interest that would otherwise remain hidden. While responsible journalists continue to use the word 'alleged' to describe the accusations, Republicans with an ax to grind against Russia, and Democrats wishing to distract from their own failings in the campaign, refer to them as fact. Indeed, on the Amy in the News page of your own website, Jordain Carney of The Hill refers to the Russian meddling as "alleged".

    A congressional commission to investigate the alleged Russian hacking is not necessary. Even if all the allegations are true, they are altogether common occurrences, and they certainly don't rise to the level of "an act of aggression", "an existential threat to our way of life", or "an attack on the American people" as various Democratic officials have characterized them. Republican Senator John McCain went full monty and called the alleged meddling "an act of war".
    Joining War Hawks

    It is of concern that you would join Senator McCain and the equally belligerent Senator Lindsey Graham on a tour of Russian provocation through the Baltics, Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro. The announcement of your trip (December 28, 2016) on the News Releases page of your website renewed the unproven claim of "Russian interference in our recent election". It also claimed that the countries you were visiting were facing "Russian aggression" and that "Russia illegally annexed Crimea".

    It is unfortunate that these claims have become truisms by sheer repetition rather than careful examination of the facts. Russia has not invaded eastern Ukraine. There are no regular units of the Russian military in the breakaway provinces, nor has Russia launched any air strikes from its territory. It has sent weapons and other provisions to the Ukrainian forces seeking autonomy from Kiev, and there are most certainly Russian volunteers operating in Ukraine.

    However regrettable, it must be remembered that the unrest was precipitated by the February 22, 2014 overthrow of the democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych which, speaking of meddling, was assisted by U.S. State Department, other American government agencies, and one Senator John McCain. The subsequent military and paramilitary operations launched by the coup government against the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk were described by President Putin as "uncontrolled crime" spreading into the south and east of the country. In American parlance, both the interim coup government in Kiev and the current government of President Petro Poroshenko have engaged in "killing their own people".

    https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/19/challenging-klobuchar-on-ukraine-war/

    [Feb 21, 2017] How Sally Yates May Have Gotten The Ball Rolling On Michael Flynn's Resignation

    So the gang that ousted Flynn included Yates, Brennan and unknowm leakers in NSA.
    www.huffingtonpost.com

    Near the end of her short tenure at the head of the Justice Department, Yates reportedly informed the White House that Flynn may have misled senior officials about his calls with the Russian ambassador, according to reports from The Post, which cited unnamed officials:

    The acting attorney general informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail, current and former U.S. officials said.

    The message, delivered by Sally Q. Yates and a senior career national security official to the White House counsel, was prompted by concerns that Flynn, when asked about his calls and texts with the Russian diplomat, had told Vice ­President-elect Mike Pence and others that he had not discussed the Obama administration sanctions on Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, the officials said. It is unclear what the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, did with the information.

    Those concerns were later echoed by James Clapper, President Barack Obama's former director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the former director of the CIA

    Yates made headlines at the end of January after announcing the Justice Department would refuse to defend Trump's controversial executive order on immigration. She was fired within hours, and the White House released a strongly worded statement saying she had "betrayed" the administration.

    [Feb 20, 2017] Russia contacts insinuations by neocons as a ruse

    It was very apt definition. But the reality is that this is not just a trap, this is a multistage covert operation to regain neocon power in Washington...
    Feb 17, 2017 | www.merriam-webster.com
    Lookups for ruse ("a stratagem or trick usually intended to deceive") spiked after the President of the United States used the word while denying the reports of improper communication between his campaign and Russian intelligence. The FBI is investigating whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government to affect the outcome of the presidential election.

    "Russia is a ruse," Mr. Trump said. "I have nothing to do with Russia, haven't made a phone call to Russia in years."
    - cbsnews.com , 16 Feb. 2017

    Ruse comes to English from French, in which language it long ago had the meaning of both "trickery" and "a roundabout path taken by fleeing game." The second of these two definitions had a brief period of use in English during the 15th century, but is now quite obsolete.

    The word is now little used as a hunting term, and primarily is found to refer to some instance of subterfuge .

    [Feb 20, 2017] Trump Chooses General McMaster as National Security Adviser

    Feb 20, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Fred C. Dobbs : , February 20, 2017 at 12:28 PM
    Trump Chooses H.R. McMaster as National
    Security Adviser https://nyti.ms/2lo3mNK
    NYT - PETER BAKER - February 20, 2017

    WASHINGTON - President Trump picked Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, a widely respected military strategist, as his new national security adviser on Monday, calling him "a man of tremendous talent and tremendous experience."

    Mr. Trump made the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago getaway in Palm Beach, Fla., where he has been interviewing candidates to replace Michael T. Flynn, who was forced out after withholding information from Vice President Mike Pence about a call with Russia's ambassador.

    The choice continued Mr. Trump's reliance on high-ranking military officers to advise him on national security. Mr. Flynn was a retired three-star general and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is a retired four-star general. His first choice to replace Mr. Flynn, who turned the job down, and two other finalists were current or former senior officers as well.

    Shortly before announcing his appointment, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter: "Meeting with Generals at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Very interesting!"

    General McMaster is seen as one of the Army's leading intellectuals, first making a name for himself with a searing critique of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for their performance during the Vietnam War and later criticizing the way President George W. Bush's administration went to war in Iraq.

    As a commander, he was credited with demonstrating how a different counterterrorism strategy could defeat insurgents in Iraq, providing the basis for the change in approach that Gen. David H. Petraeus adopted to shift momentum in a war that the United States was on the verge of losing.

    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , February 20, 2017 at 01:38 PM
    He is an armor guy with a Ranger tab!

    Passed over for Brigadier twice but made it by the board run by Petraeus who looked for "combat leaders".

    [Feb 20, 2017] After Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Summers, the Harvard boys and your neoliberal friends put the former Soviet Union through shock therapy in the early 1990s, Russias GDP shrank by 50 percent

    Notable quotes:
    "... Give Putin some credit - he ended the Yeltsin crony capitalism that allowed companies like Yukos to be seized by a small group of Yeltsin's buddies. Of course in ending this reign, it is open question who now owns these rights. These article sheds no light on the real question. ..."
    "... After Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Summers, the Harvard boys and your neoliberal friends put the former Soviet Union through shock therapy in the early 1990s, Russia's GDP shrank by 50 percent. No wonder they turned to a strong man authoritarian. ..."
    "... US spends $5T breaking up Iraq and Afghanistan under the continuum war party and you pick on Putin! There are no differences among politicians when it comes to filling the pentagon trough, except with Trump wanting to back off war with Putin. Putin a dictator yeah but it is not better that the MIC is dictator for life over US spending. ..."
    "... Stop finding strawmen to make war on and deal with the damage already done here, by executives peddling F-35 job programs. ..."
    Feb 20, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    kthomas : February 20, 2017 at 07:14 AM

    For all you Russian cocksuckers:

    http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-02-17/vladimir-putin-could-be-worlds-richest-man-with-200-billion-net-worth-report-says?int=news-rec

    Tom aka Rusty said in reply to kthomas... , February 20, 2017 at 07:41 AM
    totally inappropriate. This is not a Teamsters meeting.
    RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Tom aka Rusty... , February 20, 2017 at 08:37 AM
    :<)
    pgl -> Tom aka Rusty... , February 20, 2017 at 09:20 AM
    Agreed but the article missed the boat:

    "After 14 years in power of Russia, and the amount of money that the country has made, and the amount of money that hasn't been spent on schools and roads and hospitals and so on, all that money is in property, bank -- Swiss bank accounts -- shares, hedge funds, managed for Putin and his cronies," he added.

    Not that Putin couldn't be worth $200 billion. I bet he is. But how did he get this wealth? Oh yea - those Russian oil companies. That is where Russia's main source of wealth lies.

    Give Putin some credit - he ended the Yeltsin crony capitalism that allowed companies like Yukos to be seized by a small group of Yeltsin's buddies. Of course in ending this reign, it is open question who now owns these rights. These article sheds no light on the real question.

    Tom aka Rusty said in reply to pgl... , February 20, 2017 at 10:13 AM
    I do not have a single shred of respect for Putin. I do not have a single shred of respect for the Chinese leaders. But somehow we have to have diplomatic relationships with both.

    And we are tied at the hip with the Chinese economy. And somewhat with the Russians. And we agree some language does not belong here.

    Peter K. -> pgl... , February 20, 2017 at 10:15 AM
    After Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Summers, the Harvard boys and your neoliberal friends put the former Soviet Union through shock therapy in the early 1990s, Russia's GDP shrank by 50 percent. No wonder they turned to a strong man authoritarian.
    RGC -> Peter K.... , February 20, 2017 at 10:29 AM
    amen
    ilsm -> pgl... , February 20, 2017 at 01:09 PM
    US spends $5T breaking up Iraq and Afghanistan under the continuum war party and you pick on Putin! There are no differences among politicians when it comes to filling the pentagon trough, except with Trump wanting to back off war with Putin. Putin a dictator yeah but it is not better that the MIC is dictator for life over US spending.

    Stop finding strawmen to make war on and deal with the damage already done here, by executives peddling F-35 job programs.

    [Feb 20, 2017] Globalisation and economic nationalism

    Notable quotes:
    "... The revival of nationalism in western Europe, which began in the 1990s, has been associated with increasing support for radical right parties. This column uses trade and election data to show that the radical right gets its biggest electoral boost in regions most exposed to Chinese exports. Within these regions communities vote homogenously, whether individuals work in affected industries or not. ..."
    "... "Chinese imports" is only an expression, or correlate, of something else - the neoliberal YOYO principle and breakdown/deliberate destruction of social cohesion ..."
    "... As a side effect, this removes the collective identity, and increased tribalism is the compensation - a large part it is an attempt to find/associate with a group identity, which of course gives a large boost to readily available old identities, which were in the past (ab)used by nationalist movements, largely for the same reasons. ..."
    Feb 20, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    RC AKA Darryl, Ron : February 20, 2017 at 04:15 AM , 2017 at 04:15 AM
    RE: Globalisation and economic nationalism - VoxEU

    [The abstract below:]

    The revival of nationalism in western Europe, which began in the 1990s, has been associated with increasing support for radical right parties. This column uses trade and election data to show that the radical right gets its biggest electoral boost in regions most exposed to Chinese exports. Within these regions communities vote homogenously, whether individuals work in affected industries or not.

    [I am shocked, shocked I say!]

    cm -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , February 20, 2017 at 11:55 AM
    "Chinese imports" is only an expression, or correlate, of something else - the neoliberal YOYO principle and breakdown/deliberate destruction of social cohesion.

    As a side effect, this removes the collective identity, and increased tribalism is the compensation - a large part it is an attempt to find/associate with a group identity, which of course gives a large boost to readily available old identities, which were in the past (ab)used by nationalist movements, largely for the same reasons.

    cm -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , February 20, 2017 at 12:08 PM
    It seems to be quite apparent to me that the loss of national/local identity has not (initially?) promoted nationalist movements advocating a stronger national identity narrative, but a "rediscovery" of regional identities - often based on or similar to the geography of former kingdoms or principalities prior to national unification, or more local municipal structures (e.g. local administrations, business, or interest groups promoting a historical narrative of a municipal district as the village or small town that it descended from, etc. - with the associated idyllic elements).

    In many cases these historical identity narratives had always been undercurrents, even when the nation state was strong.

    cm -> cm... , February 20, 2017 at 12:12 PM
    And I mean strong not in the military or executive strength sense, but accepted as legitimate and representing the population and its interests.

    In these days, national goverments and institutions (state/parties) have been largely discredited, not least due to right wing/elite propaganda (and of course due to observed corruption promoted from the same side).

    ilsm -> cm... , February 20, 2017 at 12:56 PM
    Clinton and Obama have discredited the deep state.... using it for politics and adventuring.
    cm -> ilsm... , February 20, 2017 at 01:36 PM
    I'm not aware that either have discredited any deep state (BTW which Clinton?). The first thing I would ask for is clarification what you mean by "deep state" - can you provide a usable definition?

    Obama has rejected calls for going after US torturers ("we want to move past this").

    ilsm -> cm... , February 20, 2017 at 05:03 PM
    Do not take treason lightly.

    And if you don't know where the 6 months of innuendo about the Russians comes from since Aug 16 you are reading the treasonous agitprop from the democrat wind machine centered in NY, Boston and LA.

    A background:

    http://thefreethoughtproject.com/deep-state-trump-dangerous-washington/

    The most rabid tea partiers were correct about Obama and his placing the deep state attempting to ruin the US.

    cm -> ilsm... , February 20, 2017 at 06:03 PM
    I'm not sure this answers my question, and it seems to accuse me of something I have not said or implied (taking treason lightly) - or perhaps cautioning me against such?

    Are you willing to define the terms you are discussing? (Redirecting me to a google search etc. will not address my question. How exactly do you define "deep state"? You can quote from the internet of course.)

    From a previous life I know a concept of "a state within the state" (concretely referring to the East German Stasi and similar services in other "communist" countries in concept but only vaguely in the details). That is probably related to this, but I don't want to base any of this on speculation and unclear terms.

    [Feb 20, 2017] Culprit Behind Flynn Leaks Could Face Onslaught of Legal Troubles

    Feb 20, 2017 | freebeacon.com


    Culprit Behind Flynn Leaks Could Face Onslaught of Legal Troubles


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    Michael Flynn
    Michael Flynn / AP

    BY: Sam Dorman
    February 18, 2017 8:07 pm

    Whoever leaked intelligence about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's conversation with a Russian official could face decades of jail time if discovered.

    Flynn was asked to resign as President Trump's national security adviser after he did not provide complete information about a phone conversation he had in December with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. The retired three-star general spoke to the ambassador about U.S. sanctions shortly after former President Barack Obama announced them.

    Trump asked Flynn to step down from his post after it became public that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about what was discussed in the call.

    ADVERTISING


    U.S. intelligence officials had wiretapped the call, but the conversation did not become public until information on it was leaked to the Washington Post by "current and former U.S. officials," leading Trump to call the leakers the real wrongdoers in the situation.

    The people behind the leaks violated federal law by disclosing classified information about Flynn's conversation with the Russian ambassador. That violation alone could put someone in prison for 10 years, and force them to pay a fine, under the Espionage Act.

    Flynn's phone call to the ambassador, in particular, was a form of intelligence that was "highly classified" because it was wiretapped by U.S. intelligence officials, according to LawNewz.

    Federal law could add another 10 years and a fine if the culprit(s) gave away "files" or "physical materials"regarding the information in question. In such a situation, law 18 U.S.C. § 641 prohibits people from stealing or releasing "any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency."

    If discovered, those behind the leaks could also face five years in prison for lying about the incident, either through perjury, "false statements, or covering up material facts in a federal investigation."

    LawNewz noted, however, that prosecutions involving these types of laws are rare.

    [Feb 20, 2017] This press conference was not actually about Trump and his dealings with Russia, etc. It was, in a very subtle way, about the crisis of neoliberalism as an ideology

    Feb 20, 2017 | angrybearblog.com
    Joel ,

    February 18, 2017 9:51 am

    @EMichael,

    Well, the Trumpenproletariat is as incurious and narcissistic as their Dear Leader. When they bleat "What scares you, exactly?" it tells you how indifferent they are to facts and evidence.

    Warren , February 18, 2017 7:52 pm

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiIP_KDQmXs

    sammy , February 19, 2017 11:19 pm

    Warren,

    I think that "Joel" is some sort of 'bot unleashed on the blog. He parrots the liberal meme of the hour or day relentlessly. And sprinkles in insults. Any IT pro worth his salt could easily create "Joel"

    likbez , February 20, 2017 12:23 am

    This press conference was not actually about Trump and his dealings with Russia, etc. It was, in a very subtle way, about the crisis of neoliberalism as an ideology.

    What is really important is that subservient to neoliberals presscorps are now viewed by large swats of the US population as traitors of the nation. Trump just reflected this sentiment, sensing it like any good politician. This is a completely new phenomenon and that spells troubles for neoliberals in the forthcoming elections.

    The attempt to stage a color revolution (called Purple revolution by some observers) against Trump by selective and coordinated leaking of damaging information, actually might backfire. Actually Flynn was probably a person who understood the mechanics involved in staging a color revolution and the role leaks and press play in discrediting selected targets pretty well. So in some way it is ironic that he fall as a victim of such a standard attack. Flynn downfall of course is a success for neoliberals, no question about it, but this might be Pyrrhic victory.

    When during the press-conference Trump said "How many times do I have to answer this question But Russia is a ruse." that was all over for the particular presstitute who asked " Not aware of any contact during the course of the election? "

    It is also unclear who will replace Flynn. It may be a person of very similar convictions, or even more hostile to excessive size, influence and the number of the Us intelligence agencies, and no less determined to cut them in size and reestablish the civilian control over those agencies.

    Because leakers broke the law, it is important for Trump now that they pay personal price for this act. If Trump worth to be a President, he now needs to pay very close attention to the finding of the source(s) of leaks and possible made out of one of them a good example of what can happen with others, who might entertain similar thoughts.

    [Feb 19, 2017] The deep state is running scared!

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... ..."Multiple reports show that my former colleagues in the intelligence community have decided that they must leak or withhold classified information due to unsettling connections between President Trump and the Russian Government... ..."
    "... The deep state is running scared! I never+ attribute to coincidence that which is the FBI trampling the bill of rights. It is coincidence the deep state (fbi, nsa, various CIA and DoD spooks) tapped Russia spies who talk to private citizens who have no opportunity at espionage. Then the innuendo is leaked to the Clinton media! ..."
    "... Worse on Trump for calling them out for leaking rather than as a civil liberty trampling Gestapo. Ben Franklin was right, give the democrat run spooks the power to protect you and you lose liberty and protection! ..."
    Feb 19, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    im1dc : February 18, 2017 at 05:32 PM
    This is running now on FoxNews.com, total fabrication especially the last sentence but Trumpers believe this Fake News. I think this is where ilsm gets his intell insights from, phoney former intell officers, they sound exactly like him - check it out for yourself

    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/02/18/im-democrat-and-ex-cia-but-spies-plotting-against-trump-are-out-control.html

    "I'm a Democrat (and ex-CIA) but the spies plotting against Trump are out of control"

    By Bryan Dean Wright...February 18, 2017...Foxnews.com

    ..."Multiple reports show that my former colleagues in the intelligence community have decided that they must leak or withhold classified information due to unsettling connections between President Trump and the Russian Government...

    Days ago, they delivered their verdict. According to one intelligence official, the president "will die in jail."..."

    ilsm -> im1dc... , February 18, 2017 at 06:08 PM
    The deep state is running scared! I never+ attribute to coincidence that which is the FBI trampling the bill of rights. It is coincidence the deep state (fbi, nsa, various CIA and DoD spooks) tapped Russia spies who talk to private citizens who have no opportunity at espionage. Then the innuendo is leaked to the Clinton media!

    Worse on Trump for calling them out for leaking rather than as a civil liberty trampling Gestapo. Ben Franklin was right, give the democrat run spooks the power to protect you and you lose liberty and protection!

    +40 years around the puzzlers.

    [Feb 19, 2017] Most people don't know that after the 134 men died on the Forrestal fire in 1967 McCain was the ONLY person helicoptered off the ship. It was done for his own safety as many on the ship blamed him for causing the fire by wet starting his jet causing a plume of fire to shoot out his plane's exhaust and into the plane behind

    Pretty interesting video...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Pete Hegseth and Jesse Watters discuss the bitter establishment's desperation to manufacture a Trump scandal ..."
    "... Most people don't know that after the 134 men died on the Forrestal fire in 1967 McCain was the ONLY person helicoptered off the ship. It was done for his own safety as many on the ship blamed him for causing the fire by "wet" starting his jet causing a plume of fire to shoot out his plane's exhaust and into the plane behind McCain causing the ordnance to cook off on that jet. McCain then panicked and dropped his own bombs onto the deck making matters much worse. McCain should have ended his career in jail. Oh, wait, he kinda did, maybe karma justice? ..."
    "... FakeStream Media ..."
    "... The very Fake Media has met their match ..."
    Feb 18, 2017 | www.youtube.com
    Pete Hegseth and Jesse Watters discuss the bitter establishment's desperation to manufacture a Trump scandal

    TheBase1aransas 3 minutes ago

    Alvina I think people that believe in freedom is not only the Best thing, but what built it. We finally have Trump to speak for us.

    Christine Lesch 4 hours ago
    McCains a shumuck
    Herbert Stewart 11 minutes ago
    @Christine Lesch

    I feel sorry for Arizona they are stuck with this guy. he needs to change parties he had his turn and LOST1 america first!

    Geoffry Allan

    it appears quite apparent that you people are really sad. trump is above all else, a good american. so.... stop being a moron.

    hexencoff 3 hours ago
    no one gives a shit what John McCain says he's a scumbag!
    hexencoff 3 hours ago
    Jodi Boin i hope so too it's honestly very scary how far we have regressed as a country we are fighting about the same things from 50 years ago everyone has their own beliefs and opinions and some how adult conversation has been thrown away i mean we are still fighting over race relations for crying out loud
    Louis John 2 hours ago
    @hexencoff

    McCain is a trouble maker. supporter of the terrorist and warmonger Iraq Libya Syria he is behind all the trouble scumbag

    Gary M 3 hours ago
    McCain is a globalist
    belaghoulashi 2 hours ago
    (edited) McCain has always been full of horseshit. And he has always relied on people calling him a hero to get away with it. That schtick is old, the man is a monumental failure for this country, and he needs to have his sorry butt kicked.

    ryvr madduck 1 hour ago

    +belaghoulashi

    Most people don't know that after the 134 men died on the Forrestal fire in 1967 McCain was the ONLY person helicoptered off the ship. It was done for his own safety as many on the ship blamed him for causing the fire by "wet" starting his jet causing a plume of fire to shoot out his plane's exhaust and into the plane behind McCain causing the ordnance to cook off on that jet. McCain then panicked and dropped his own bombs onto the deck making matters much worse. McCain should have ended his career in jail. Oh, wait, he kinda did, maybe karma justice?

    Michael Cambo 4 hours ago
    When you start to drain the swamp, the swamp creatures start to show.
    Alexus Highfield 3 hours ago
    @Michael Cambo

    don't they...they do say shit floats.

    Geoffry Allan 41 minutes ago

    @Michael Cambo - Trump has not drained the swamp he has surrounded himself with billionaires in his cabinet who don't give a damn about the working middle class who struggle e eryday to make a living - explain to me how he is draining the swamp

    tim sparks 3 hours ago
    Trump is trying so fucking hard to do a good job for us.
    Integrity Truth-seeker 2 hours ago
    @tim sparks

    He is not trying... HE IS DOING IT... Like A Boss. Thank God Mark Taylor Prophecies 2017 the best is yet to come

    Jodi Boin 3 hours ago
    McCain is a traitor and is bought and paid for by Soros.
    Grant Davidson 4 hours ago
    Love him or hate him. The guy is a frikkin Genius...
    Patrick Reagan 4 hours ago
    FakeStream Media
    Michael Cambo 4 hours ago
    @Patrick Reagan

    Very FakeStream Media

    aspengold5 4 hours ago
    I am so disappointed in McCain.
    orlando pablo 4 hours ago
    my 401k is keep on going up....thank u mr trump....
    Dumbass Libtard 3 hours ago
    McCain is not a Republican. He is a loser. Yuge difference.1
    Mitchel Colvin 3 hours ago
    Shut up McCain! I can't stand this clown anymore! Unfortunately, Arizona re-elected him for six more years!
    robert barham 4 hours ago
    The very Fake Media has met their match
    H My ways of thinking! 3 hours ago
    Why does everyone feel that if they don't kiss McCain's ass, they are being un American? Mccain has sold out to George Soros. He is a piece of shit who is guilty of no less than treason! Look up the definition for treason if you're in doubt!
    Sam Nardo 3 hours ago
    (edited) Mc Cain and Graham are two of the best democrats in the GOP. They are called RINOS
    kazzicup 3 hours ago
    We love and support our President Donald Trump. The media is so dishonest. CNN = Criminal News Network.

    Geoffry Allan 34 minutes ago

    @kazzicup - yeah if you get rid of the media Trump becomes a dictator - is that what you want he will censor everything and tell you what he wants - Trump is still president and he is doing his job and fulfilling his promises even though the media is there and reporting - so what's the problem - I don't want a got damn dictator running this country - if you don't like the media then just listen to Trump - 2nd amendment free speech and the right to bear arms we have to respect it even if we may disagree

    [Feb 19, 2017] The swamp fights back

    The "neoliberal establishment" (aka Washington Swamp) is deeply unpopular with American people. Trump is not that popular, but he definitely less unpopular. Such statements s of "the national media is the enemy" would be unthinkable a decade or two ago.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The National Media is the enemy. They are minor birds, repeaters of what the establishment wants parroted. They can no longer be considered American citizen friendly. They are indeed part of the Swamp to be drained. ..."
    Feb 19, 2017 | www.youtube.com
    Barbara waters 2 days ago (edited)

    The National Media is the enemy. They are minor birds, repeaters of what the establishment wants parroted. They can no longer be considered American citizen friendly. They are indeed part of the Swamp to be drained.

    Like former, despise current president matters not. We are still a nation of laws. The people have spoken. We want the laws followed period. CNN, MSNBC, and others who continue to go after our president will be met with an unbridled wave of conservative determination to restore law and order.

    [Feb 19, 2017] The deep state is running scared!

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... ..."Multiple reports show that my former colleagues in the intelligence community have decided that they must leak or withhold classified information due to unsettling connections between President Trump and the Russian Government... ..."
    "... The deep state is running scared! I never+ attribute to coincidence that which is the FBI trampling the bill of rights. It is coincidence the deep state (fbi, nsa, various CIA and DoD spooks) tapped Russia spies who talk to private citizens who have no opportunity at espionage. Then the innuendo is leaked to the Clinton media! ..."
    "... Worse on Trump for calling them out for leaking rather than as a civil liberty trampling Gestapo. Ben Franklin was right, give the democrat run spooks the power to protect you and you lose liberty and protection! ..."
    Feb 19, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    im1dc : February 18, 2017 at 05:32 PM
    This is running now on FoxNews.com, total fabrication especially the last sentence but Trumpers believe this Fake News. I think this is where ilsm gets his intell insights from, phoney former intell officers, they sound exactly like him - check it out for yourself

    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/02/18/im-democrat-and-ex-cia-but-spies-plotting-against-trump-are-out-control.html

    "I'm a Democrat (and ex-CIA) but the spies plotting against Trump are out of control"

    By Bryan Dean Wright...February 18, 2017...Foxnews.com

    ..."Multiple reports show that my former colleagues in the intelligence community have decided that they must leak or withhold classified information due to unsettling connections between President Trump and the Russian Government...

    Days ago, they delivered their verdict. According to one intelligence official, the president "will die in jail."..."

    ilsm -> im1dc... , February 18, 2017 at 06:08 PM
    The deep state is running scared! I never+ attribute to coincidence that which is the FBI trampling the bill of rights. It is coincidence the deep state (fbi, nsa, various CIA and DoD spooks) tapped Russia spies who talk to private citizens who have no opportunity at espionage. Then the innuendo is leaked to the Clinton media!

    Worse on Trump for calling them out for leaking rather than as a civil liberty trampling Gestapo. Ben Franklin was right, give the democrat run spooks the power to protect you and you lose liberty and protection!

    +40 years around the puzzlers.

    [Feb 19, 2017] How do you like the NKVD libruls afraid of Trump bringing fascism who were running a gestapo (the FBI wiring tapping other countrys Ministers) on US citizens of the opposing party?

    Feb 19, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    ilsm :

    , February 18, 2017 at 04:45 AM
    Vox, what about reporting from a crystal ball requires truth?
    Peter K. -> ilsm... , February 18, 2017 at 07:37 AM
    The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!

    Hide under your bed.

    ilsm -> Peter K.... , February 18, 2017 at 12:42 PM
    Flynn could have said something "inappropriate" by a Clintonista definition of "inappropriate", and he "could" be prosecuted under a law designed to muzzle US citizens, that has never been tried bc a Bill of rights argument would win!

    How do you like the NKVD libruls afraid of Trump bringing fascism who were running a gestapo (the FBI wiring tapping other country's Ministers) on US citizens of the opposing party?

    If the fascists are coming they would keep Obama's FBI!

    [Feb 19, 2017] Pure Evil

    Feb 19, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    knukles , Feb 19, 2017 1:09 PM

    They believe that Trump is acting like a petulant child that they can control with threats and intimidation.

    Dabooda -> Pure Evil , Feb 19, 2017 2:55 PM

    Be worried: maybe they can. Since the hounding of Flynn, Trump has joined the anti-Russia bandwagon, demanding that Russia return to Crimea to Ukraine, and making no mention of removing sanctions. So all the threats and intimidation from the "intelligence community" and the MSM worked , didn't they? Waiting for Trump to show some real guts here. Waiting

    [Feb 19, 2017] Flynn's Head Rolls. Is Trump's Next

    Notable quotes:
    "... Washington Post ..."
    "... Washington Post ..."
    "... Washington Post ..."
    "... Post ..."
    Feb 19, 2017 | www.strategic-culture.org
    Finian CUNNINGHAM | 15.02.2017 | WORLD Flynn's Head Rolls. Is Trump's Next?

    Just three weeks into the Trump presidency, and his political enemies in the Washington establishment have scored big, with the forced resignation of Trump's National Security advisor Michael Flynn. The establishment includes state intelligence agencies and aligned corporate news media, who have been gunning for Trump ever since his shock election last November.

    It's a hugely damaging blow to the inner circle of the Trump White House. The US media reporting on Flynn's resignation this week had the unmistakable air of victory-crowing. Like sharks in a pool, they smell blood.

    Flynn had to go after the Washington Post and others reported that he wasn't telling the truth about phone calls he had been holding with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition to the Trump administration. Flynn hadn't denied the calls in late December, but he had maintained that the subject of US sanctions on Russia were not discussed.

    Persistently the US media did not give up on the charges against Flynn, which shows that their confidence on the subject was underwritten by intelligence sources. Or put another way, this was an intelligence-led witch-hunt which was based on the illegal disclosure of private information.

    Flynn had told the US Vice President Mike Pence that sanctions were not discussed and that the conversation with the Russian diplomat was only about seasonal pleasantries and making arrangements about a forthcoming phone call between President Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin – that call was finally made on January 28.

    Pence stood by Flynn initially, telling media outlets that there was nothing untoward in the phone calls.

    Legally, a private US citizen – which Flynn was at that stage before Trump became inaugurated on January 10 – is not permitted to talk about government policy with a foreign state in a presumptive official capacity.

    Apparently now, as it turns out, sanctions were discussed between Flynn and Kislyak, according to FBI investigators and US officials quoted by the Washington Post . Russia has refused to comment on the nature of the phone calls.

    What was Flynn thinking of? At one stage during the Obama administration, he had served as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency – one of the 16 US federal spy organizations. It seems incredible that given his expertise in matters of US state surveillance practice, Flynn could have been so reckless as to hold phone conversations with Russia's top diplomat in Washington on national security issues outside of his then remit.

    Especially considering too that Flynn was shortly about to assume office as a senior national security advisor to the new president, Donald Trump, who was already under intense media scrutiny over his alleged links to Russia.

    Not only hold phone conversations, but as seems likely, Flynn broached the subject of how US sanctions levied by Obama might be lifted under the Trump administration. For Flynn not to realize that every word would be tapped by US intelligence seems an incredible lapse of judgment on his part.

    The suspect phone contact occurred at the time Obama sanctioned several Russian diplomats over allegations that Russian hackers had interfered in the presidential elections. Those allegations of Russian state-sponsored hacking have never been proven.

    The way the Washington Post tells it, US intelligence officials were surprised when Russian President Vladimir Putin did not reciprocate with Obama's sanctions announced on December 29, instead choosing to respond by wishing Americans a Happy Christmas.

    According to the Post , US intelligence began searching for a possible explanation for Putin's unexpected response, and they found their putative answer in Flynn's call to the Russian ambassador. It is claimed that Flynn indicated to the Russian diplomat that the new sanctions imposed by the outgoing Obama administration would be duly reversed by Trump.

    It seems more plausible, however, that the US intelligence agents did not engage in some retrospective random search for a mole, but rather they had Flynn in their sights all along, having listened into this phone call with the Russian ambassador.

    And as the Washington Post pointedly noted this week, Trump promptly praised Putin for not taking retaliatory action to Obama's sanctions.

    The inference here is that Flynn was acting as mediator with the Russians under instruction from Trump.

    "The current and former officials said that although they believed that [Vice President] Pence was misled about the contents of Flynn's communications with the Russian ambassador, they couldn't rule out that Flynn was acting with the knowledge of others in the transition", reports the Washington Post.

    Trump's administration had already caused deep consternation among the Washington establishment of State Department, foreign policy think-tanks, intelligence-military apparatus and aligned corporate news media. Trump's avowed intentions of normalizing relations with Russia before and after his election on November 8 have collided with Washington's long-term geo-strategic agenda of fomenting hostility with Moscow.

    The forced resignation of Michael Flynn, who was an influential advocate in the Trump White House for normalizing relations with Russia, can be seen as a much-desired blow against Trump over Russia – inflicted by the US Deep State operatives.

    There seems little doubt that Flynn was set up in a sting operation. The only wonder is that he seemed to walk right into the trap.

    It seems very likely that having procured Flynn's scalp, the political enemies of Trump will not stop there. The big prize is Trump himself and his ousting from the presidency through impeachment on charges of conspiring with an enemy state.

    All the hoopla over Flynn in the US media is just the beginning of a campaign to finger Trump as the person who gave him clearance to illicitly contact the Russians.

    A soft coup against Trump by the US Deep State has been speculated for some time now, especially over his "friendly" Russia policy being at odds with the powers-that-be who are hellbent on hostility towards Moscow. And it seems that incompetence within the Trump administration is playing straight into that agenda to oust him from the White House.

    [Feb 19, 2017] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/17/russian-spies-targeted-u-s-sanctions.html

    Feb 19, 2017 | www.thedailybeast.com

    "Russian Spies Targeted U.S. Sanctions"

    'Talking with Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn was one of many ways Moscow tried to get inside information about America's financial war against the Kremlin'

    by Katie Zavadski...02.17.17

    "The last major Russian spy arrested on U.S. soil was busted for seeking the kind of information retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has been accused of dishing out.

    During a White House press conference on Thursday, President Donald Trump defended Flynn, his former national security adviser, for talking about U.S. sanctions against Moscow with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak while Barack Obama was still in office. It's an act that may have put Flynn in legal jeopardy; The Washington Post reported Thursday that Flynn denied to the FBI having such conversations, despite evidence that he did.

    Recently filed court documents show just how important information about sanctions was to Russian intelligence.

    Those documents involve a two-year-old case against Evgeny Buryakov, a Russian bank employee who admitted to being an unregistered agent of Russian intelligence in the U.S. Buryakov pleaded out and the case never went to trial. But case filings show that the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service, was keenly interested in the U.S. government's attempts to use financial sanctions to retaliate against Russian military aggression.

    His handlers asked Buryakov to look for information on the "effects of economic sanctions on our country," according to court documents, and he complied. The FBI sent an undercover operative to keep him interested.

    In August 2014, an undercover agent showed Buryakov a document from the Treasury Department marked "Internal Treasury Use Only," that "contained information regarding Russian individuals subject to sanctions," according to court filings. (It's not clear whether the papers in question were actual internal Treasury Department memos.) Buryakov told the undercover that he wanted more information.

    A few weeks later, the undercover agent and a confidential source fed him another document, telling him that "the Treasury Department was using the document in connection with its deliberations regarding additional sanctions," which Buryakov promptly fed to his handlers at Russia's foreign intelligence service.

    That is exactly the kind of information that would be useful to foreign spies, said Zachary Goldman, a former Treasury and Department of Defense official who's now the executive director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University.

    The U.S. authorized sanctions against Russia relating to its annexation of Crimea in March of 2014 and began a crackdown against individuals and a Russian bank. In the period Buryakov was fishing, then, his overseers would have wanted to know which entities or people would be sanctioned next.

    "In that period, the first half of 2014, the Russian government was very interested in figuring out what we were going to do," Goldman said.

    When Flynn spoke to Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, in December 2016, the Russians would've been in much the same situation.

    The sanctions announced by the Obama administration that month exercised a relatively new authority enacted by the president in April 2015. Obama's order on cyberattacks was originally in response to Chinese attacks on the private sector, and later broadened to be applicable to the Russian attempts to interfere in U.S. elections.

    Finding out who was going to be targeted, and what the policy would be like under the next administration, would have been a top priority for all actors of Russian intelligence. They come in various categories: Some, like Buryakov, conduct espionage in secret while pretending to be an ordinary employee of a foreign company, while others construct alternate identities and lay in wait for years. The third category come here under diplomatic cover, having, in effect, a dual role as diplomats and spies.

    "It seems that the reports are that there was some kind of suggestion that Flynn gave Kislyak, along the lines of, don't worry about these sanctions, when we take office, things will improve significantly," Goldman said. "And undoubtedly, that's something they would want know."

    The point of sanctions is to change another country's behavior, Goldman added.

    "If you were the Russians, you would want to know what the trigger for new sanctions would be, and what the catalyst for the removal of sanctions would be," he said. "Whether that's what Flynn discussed with Kislyak, I have no idea."

    Details about the conversations, and whom Flynn misled about their content, are still emerging. But we know that when the Obama administration exiled 35 diplomats and shut down a Russian compound on Long Island, Russian officials announced they would not be following suit.

    At a press conference on Thursday, however, Trump backed Flynn's right to discuss that matter.

    "Very simple. Mike [Flynn] was doing his job," Trump said. "He was calling countries and his counterparts. So, it certainly would have been OK with me if he did it.

    "I would have directed him to do it if I thought he wasn't doing it," Trump added." Reply Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 02:24 PM libezkova said in reply to im1dc... An alternative view on what Flynn resignation means:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIVrvihtKgE Reply Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 03:39 PM ilsm said in reply to libezkova... libezkova, the US "press" has no more concern for truth than the Nazi papers under Goebbels! Reply Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 05:07 PM im1dc said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... Fred do not get caught up in libezkova's or ilsm's worldview, they do not play with our team USA. Reply Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 10:48 AM libezkova said in reply to im1dc... I can only guess who are the members of your "team USA". With your jingoism and anti-Russian stance, I assume that they include such people:

    Charles Krauthammer
    David Frum
    Douglas Feith
    John McCain
    Lindsey Graham
    Michael Ledeen
    Paul Wolfowitz
    Richard Perle
    Robert Kagan
    Samantha Power
    Scooter Libby
    Susan Rice
    Victoria Nuland
    ... ... ...

    If so, you are in good company... Don't forget to buy M16, ammunition and tickets to Syria. We probably will be able to survive without your posts for some time. Reply Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 02:58 PM ilsm said in reply to im1dc... im1dc, read your 4th amendment, and say wht the FBI etc did to republicans is okay!

    My team USA is not run by neoliberal neocons running an illicit deep state. Reply Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 04:50 PM

    [Feb 19, 2017] Youtube reaction on Flynn resignation

    Feb 19, 2017 | www.youtube.com

    [Feb 19, 2017] The Anti-Trump Deep State Color Revolution Coup Targets Flynn

    Feb 19, 2017 | www.youtube.com
    Published on Feb 15, 2017

    Russian Insider quotes an old joke goes like this: "Question: why can there be no color revolution in the United States?

    Answer: because there are no US Embassies in the United States."

    Funny, maybe, but factually wrong: I believe that a color revolution is being attempted in the USA right now.

    It is a coup. That simple. It's not a leak. It's a coup. Direct from the Deep State. The naive Trump never saw it coming.

    Kucinich says it's a Deep State move to remove Flynn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j_Zf...

    The Anti-Flynn Deep State Coup
    http://thesaker.is/the-anti-flynn-dee...

    A 'Color Revolution' Is Now Underway in the United States
    http://russia-insider.com/en/politics...

    Sign up for Lionel's Newsletter and Truth Warrior manifestos. http://lionelmedia.com/2015/05/04/inf...

    First Amendment3 days ago (edited)

    What Trump did was uncover the deep State by using Flynn as a soldier to ferret-out the deep dark places....what you are seeing is the enemy being uncovered. Trump made this happen and now you will see who is in charge....the deep State has now been exposed. We will now see the eradication of this foul 5th column.

    [Feb 18, 2017] The company of blackmail against Trump continues unabated

    Notable quotes:
    "... The neocons and neoliberals want war. The cia/fbi/nsa wants to take away my freedom. The fake news wants to spread lies. This military industrial complex wants to send hundreds of millions to their deaths. As a nation, we are fucked. I'm guessing lots of innocent people are going to be slaughtered in the name of freedom. ..."
    Feb 18, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    A Medical Theory for Donald Trump's Bizarre Behavior ... Many mental health professionals believe the president is ill. But what if the cause is an untreated STD? ... Al Franken recently raised a provocative question about Donald Trump: Is he mentally ill? On HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher last week, the Minnesota senator claimed that some of his Republican colleagues have "great concern about the president's temperament," adding that "there's a range in what they'll say, and some will say that he's not right mentally. And some are harsher." Two days later, he told CNN's Jake Tapper, "We all have this suspicion that-you know, that he's not-he lies a lot And, you know, that is not the norm for a president of the United States, or, actually, for a human being." - The New Republic

    So according to the The New Republic, President Donald Trump may have syphilis and should explore treatment option as necessary with his personal physician.

    He may have contracted it, according to the magazine, in the 1970s of 1980s when syphilis was on the rise. If he didn't get it treated, it would be far advanced by now. Advanced syphilis, neurosyphilis, and manifest itself in numerous ways, according to the article.

    "Commonly recognized symptoms include irritability, loss of ability to concentrate, delusional thinking, and grandiosity. Memory, insight, and judgment can become impaired. Insomnia may occur. Visual problems may develop, including the inability of pupils to react to the light. This, along other ocular pathology, can result in photophobia, dimming of vision, and squinting. All of these things have been observed in Trump. Dementia, headaches, gait disturbances. and patchy hair loss can also be seen in later stages of syphilis."

    DirtySanchez , Feb 18, 2017 7:01 PM

    The neocons and neoliberals want war. The cia/fbi/nsa wants to take away my freedom. The fake news wants to spread lies. This military industrial complex wants to send hundreds of millions to their deaths. As a nation, we are fucked. I'm guessing lots of innocent people are going to be slaughtered in the name of freedom.

    honest injun , Feb 18, 2017 6:42 PM

    Interesting. When Hillary was followed by an ambulance, had crazy eyes, needed to be carried to her car from time to time, had spasms, was delusional, was irritable, and had a dozen other symptoms of medical problems, the media whores told us that she had pneumonia for one day. Now they tell us that someone who puts them in their place is mentally ill. They are digging their own grave. Soon nobody will believe the retard media.

    Lost in translation , Feb 18, 2017 7:25 PM

    The "mentally ill" narrative was a trademark of the Soviet Regime, which used it to institutionalize its critics and domestic enemies.

    Now, the Neocons and their disciples are resorting to it.

    spooz , Feb 18, 2017 6:07 PM

    Hard to believe the New Republic wasn't being satirical with their "syphilis" theory.

    It seems that psychiatry wishes to make every personality type a disorder, in an effort to convince people that their specialty is based on science and perhaps to drum up business, so Trump has "Narcissistic Personality Disorder".

    Narcissim is pretty common in US presidents, and is seen as a positive trait in many respects.

    Research has estimated that the average US president's narcissism is about a standard deviation beyond the average citizen – and even higher than that of the average reality television star. We also know that narcissism in US presidents is linked to ratings of greatness. Highly narcissistic presidents like Lyndon Johnson are leaders who make big changes. Less narcissistic presidents like Jimmy Carter are rated as mediocre (but, in the case of Carter, also regarded as admired ex-presidents because they are seen as moral and caring).

    http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/don...

    [Feb 16, 2017] Hatchet job ordered by whom? - The New York Times neocons try to destrory Flynn

    Notable quotes:
    "... The Washington Post is complicit in a treasonous betrayal of trust by unelected, arrogant and truly dangerous intelligence agents. It is long past due to have a TOTAL house cleaning of these agencies with dire penalties imposed on such malevolent enemies of democracy. If that then includes the Post itself, let the Post clean up its act. ..."
    "... The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that details the fine and/or imprisonment of unauthorized citizens who negotiate with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States. ..."
    "... This Russian nonsense is not going to fly. Why should anyone believe a word of this story? So what if Flynn discussed sanctions anyway! Who are these traitors in the State Department, and why are they still on the payroll? The majority of the public is not going to buy this nonsense , you are still in denial that you lost the election. ..."
    "... This reminds me of Obama getting caught on a hot mic telling the Russian president, "I'll have more flexibility after the election." Signaling that the hardline against Russia would soften if he won reelection. (Clearly a national security issue.) ..."
    "... But of course, it's only when the perpetually-outraged left don't like somebody holding different views than them that it becomes a 'dire constitutional crisis.' ..."
    "... This is just another Left wing hit job with no real substance, that elevates innuendo and a passing brushed off question to the level of "negotiation". The article uses the requisite obscure language of "officials" who in turn offer little up. This is politics pure and simple. ..."
    Feb 16, 2017 | www.nytimes.com
    Note how skillfully NYT presstitutes present Russians as the next incarnation of Satan, contact with which is prohibited for Christians.
    Who are those nine officials... Looks like Jeff Bezos is just a puppet. Taking on Flynn is a serious game which is far above his head. I do not remember any fuss over Bill Clinton getting Russian money (really outrageous honorarium for the speech) which if you think about it is even more clear violation of Logan act.
    Didn't Obama do a similar thing before running for election?

    From the start, Michael Flynn, a retired army lieutenant general, was a disturbing choice as President Trump's national security adviser. He is a hothead with extremist views in a critical job that is supposed to build consensus through thoughtful, prudent decision-making. The choice is now growing more unnerving every day.

    A conspiracy theorist who has stoked dangerous fears about Islam, Mr. Flynn was fired by the Obama administration as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and led anti-Hillary Clinton chants of "lock her up" at the 2016 Republican Convention. He raised eyebrows by cultivating a mystifyingly cozy relationship with Russia, which the Pentagon considers a major threat.

    Now we have learned that in the weeks before the inauguration, Mr. Flynn discussed American sanctions on Russia, and areas of possible cooperation, with Moscow's ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. They spoke a day before President Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for hacking the Democrats' computers, probably in an effort to sway the election in Mr. Trump's favor.

    Mr. Flynn's underhanded, possibly illegal message was that the Obama administration was Russia's adversary, and that would change under Mr. Trump and that any sanctions could be undone. The result seems to be that Russia decided not to retaliate with its own sanctions.

    We know this not from Mr. Flynn or the administration, but from accounts first provided to The Washington Post (aka CIA Pravda) by nine current and former government officials who had access to reports from American intelligence and law enforcement agencies that routinely monitor the communications of Russian diplomats. Bizarrely, Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday afternoon that he was unaware of the Post report, but would "look into that."

    jburack, 6:01 AM EST

    The Washington Post is complicit in a treasonous betrayal of trust by unelected, arrogant and truly dangerous intelligence agents. It is long past due to have a TOTAL house cleaning of these agencies with dire penalties imposed on such malevolent enemies of democracy. If that then includes the Post itself, let the Post clean up its act.

    ausmth, 2/14/2017 8:02 PM EST

    Who leaked classified telephone intercepts of a foreign diplomat to the Post? Why isn't that person in jail?

    Cecile Pham, 2/14/2017 1:34 PM EST

    Flynn would not dare to go ahead with telling Russia not having to worry about sanctions and that the future would be better with Trump without Trump direction.

    So Flynn's resignation is just an appeasement. The real story is Trump relationship with Russia.

    Mike Mitchell, 8:12 AM EST

    As though Flynn is just an idiot who would have never suspected the NSA was listening in on his phone call to ... a Russian Ambassador. Yeah right.

    SittingOnThePotty, 2/14/2017 12:29 AM EST

    People make reference to the Logan Act and brushing it off as nothing that will be used against Flynn. But the law is on the books, regardless. So I gather now we pick and chose which laws to apply and which not to apply? Am I a bit confused? It was placed as a law for a good reason, just because no one has ever been prosecuted under this law do we dismiss it as "old" and pretend it is not there?

    The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that details the fine and/or imprisonment of unauthorized citizens who negotiate with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States. It was intended to prevent the undermining of the government's position.[2]

    The Act was passed following George Logan's unauthorized negotiations with France in 1798, and was signed into law by President John Adams on January 30, 1799. The Act was last amended in 1994, and violation of the Logan Act is a felony.

    To date, only one person has ever been indicted for violating the act's provisions.[2] However, no person has ever been prosecuted for alleged violations of the act.[2]

    Joe Smith, 2/13/2017 3:00 PM EST

    Yet ANOTHER fake news story based on "anonymous sources". The media is now nothing more than a means for distributing rumors, dressed up to look like "news" by labeling the rumor mongers as "anonymous sources".

    Stan Lippmann , 2/13/2017 2:27 PM EST

    This Russian nonsense is not going to fly. Why should anyone believe a word of this story? So what if Flynn discussed sanctions anyway! Who are these traitors in the State Department, and why are they still on the payroll? The majority of the public is not going to buy this nonsense , you are still in denial that you lost the election.

    moonshadow168, 2/13/2017 5:45 PM EST

    Looks like a preemptive set up so that Obama's historic legacy-building tough-guy sanctions, in response to imaginary "election hacking", will not be touched. If anyone dares question Obama's historic legacy-building tough-guy sanctions, in response to imaginary "election hacking", then they must be "in cahoots" with those darn Russians who "hacked the election".

    Meanwhile, President Trump continues to do good work for all Americans.

    Scott Cog, 2/13/2017 1:30 PM EST

    Americans want to know if kickbacks are/were being offered (by Russians) to Flynn and other Trump-team members in positions to push for rollback of trade sanctions against Russia.

    moonshadow168, 2/13/2017 1:34 PM EST

    "Americans want to know"... you mean like Bill C's "speaking fees" or "donations" (cough-cough) to the family foundation? LOL!

    moonshadow168, 2/13/2017 5:52 PM EST [Edited]

    Is that an attempt to get Hillary off the hook?

    https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-...

    Sure looks like a distraction!

    moonshadow168, 2/13/2017 12:16 PM EST

    Funny how the words of anonymous Obama administration "current and former U.S. officials", apparently fellow Hillary supporters, are treated as unbiased, indisputable and fact.

    Laugh out loud at this, it is revealing: "Those officials were already alarmed by what they saw as a Russian assault on the U.S. election." Just so so you know what planet they are coming from. Hillary lost. You can't blame it on Russia. Get over it.

    In addition to not questioning the words of anonymous Obama administration "current and former U.S. officials" there appears to be obvious discrimination and bias against the Trump administration.

    Typhon , 2/13/2017 3:02 AM EST

    This is going to turn out to be another nothing-burger. All Trump has to do is wait it out for any proof to come up, and if it is just unsubstantiated rumors, then to just write it off as more fake news by frothy Dems ... Regarding Russian "hacking" the election, all Trump has to do is get Brennan and Clapper on the hot seat, and have them talk for hours and hours about John Podesta's Gmail password. Then ask "What else?" only to find that Big Ed at RT TV is a Russian spy!! And so is Tucker Carlson. And probably Mel Gibson too, leading to the conclusion that the Dems are a bunch of loons. Then ask "Who taught you this?" only to find out that Obama ordered an in-depth sabotage of the incoming administration

    wesevans, 2/12/2017 9:33 PM EST

    Didn't Obama do a similar thing before running for election?

    NVCardinalfan , 2/12/2017 3:22 PM EST

    Typical Washington Post, running a story without confirmed sources to back up the story. Just speculation as usual.

    clewish09, 2/12/2017 11:42 AM EST

    Russia hacked the DNC with Iraq's WMDs...

    Tyler.Woods99, 2/11/2017 3:20 PM EST

    This reminds me of Obama getting caught on a hot mic telling the Russian president, "I'll have more flexibility after the election." Signaling that the hardline against Russia would soften if he won reelection. (Clearly a national security issue.)

    But of course, it's only when the perpetually-outraged left don't like somebody holding different views than them that it becomes a 'dire constitutional crisis.'

    JungleTrunks, 2/11/2017 11:17 AM EST

    Approach the logic of the accusation in reverse, any Russian official meeting an American official will be pressed to finding an opening to discuss sanctions. Any American official knows a Russian diplomat will bring sanctions up and have a deflection to handle it. This doesn't represent a "discussion" on a diplomatic level.

    This is just another Left wing hit job with no real substance, that elevates innuendo and a passing brushed off question to the level of "negotiation". The article uses the requisite obscure language of "officials" who in turn offer little up. This is politics pure and simple.

    KingMax, 2/11/2017 11:34 AM EST

    He spoke with Kislyak the same day the sanctions were announced and then lied about what was discussed (oh, right, suddenly "couldn't remember" because, you know, it was over a month ago). But good job rationalizing his deceit.

    JungleTrunks, 2/11/2017 11:50 AM EST

    And yours is the typical cry of left wing malcontents that create as much controversy as you can from what signifies nothing. No reporter ha disclosed what actually was said. It's a virtual certainty that expected overtures were made, and typical brush off language was reciprocated. You know nothing but innuendo backed by a desire of extreme prejudice to prosecute any opportunity to defame anyone in the administration, this much is certain, the only certainty frankly.

    [Feb 16, 2017] Flynn Is Said to Have Talked to Russians About Sanctions Before Trump Took Office by MATTHEW ROSENBERG and MATT APUZZO

    Feb 09, 2017 | nytimes.com

    Federal officials who have read the transcript of the call were surprised by Mr. Flynn's comments, since he would have known that American eavesdroppers closely monitor such calls. They were even more surprised that Mr. Trump's team publicly denied that the topics of conversation included sanctions.

    The call is the latest example of how Mr. Trump's advisers have come under scrutiny from American counterintelligence officials. The F.B.I. is also investigating Mr. Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign; and Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative.

    Prosecutions in these types of cases are rare, and the law is murky, particularly around people involved in presidential transitions. The officials who had read the transcripts acknowledged that while the conversation warranted investigation, it was unlikely, by itself, to lead to charges against a sitting national security adviser.

    But, at the very least, openly engaging in policy discussions with a foreign government during a presidential transition is a remarkable breach of protocol. The norm has been for the president-elect's team to respect the sitting president, and to limit discussions with foreign governments to pleasantries. Any policy discussions, even with allies, would ordinarily be kept as vague as possible.

    "It's largely shunned, period. But one cannot rule it out with an ally like the U.K.," said Derek Chollet, who was part of the Obama transition in 2008 and then served in senior roles at the State Department, White House and Pentagon.

    "But it's way out of bounds when the said country is an adversary, and one that has been judged to have meddled in the election," he added. "It's just hard to imagine anyone having a substantive discussion with an adversary, particularly if it's about trying to be reassuring."

    Adam Goldman and Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.

    [Feb 15, 2017] Flynn Resignation Is a Surveillance State Coup Nightmare

    The globalist mafia is trying to destroy Trump. There might be the same part of intelligence community which is still loyal to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
    Still Flynn discussing sanctions, which could have been a violation of an 18th century law, the Logan Act, that bars unauthorized citizens from brokering deals with foreign governments involved in disputes with the United States.
    Keith Kellogg links with Oracle my be as asset to Trump team.
    Feb 15, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

    As far back as the passage of the Patriot Act after 9/11, civil libertarians worried about the surveillance state, the Panopticon, the erosion of privacy rights and due process in the name of national security.

    Paranoid fantasies were floated that President George W. Bush was monitoring the library cards of political dissidents. Civil libertarians hailed NSA contractor Edward Snowden as a hero, or at least accepted him as a necessary evil, for exposing the extent of Internet surveillance under President Barack Obama.

    Will civil libertarians now speak up for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, whose career has been destroyed with a barrage of leaked wiretaps? Does anyone care if those leaks were accurate or legal?

    Over the weekend, a few honest observers of the Flynn imbroglio noted that none of the strategically leaked intercepts of his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak proved he actually did anything wrong .

    The media fielded accusations that Flynn discussed lifting the Obama administration's sanctions on Russia – a transgression that would have been a serious violation of pre-inauguration protocol at best, and a prosecutable offense at worst. Flynn ostensibly sealed his fate by falsely assuring Vice President Mike Pence he had no such discussions with Kislyak, prompting Pence to issue a robust defense of Flynn that severely embarrassed Pence in retrospect.

    On Tuesday, Eli Lake of Bloomberg News joined the chorus of skeptics who said the hive of anonymous leakers infesting the Trump administration never leaked anything that proved Flynn lied to Pence:

    He says in his resignation letter that he did not deliberately leave out elements of his conversations with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when he recounted them to Vice President Mike Pence. The New York Times and Washington Post reported that the transcript of the phone call reviewed over the weekend by the White House could be read different ways. One White House official with knowledge of the conversations told me that the Russian ambassador raised the sanctions to Flynn and that Flynn responded that the Trump team would be taking office in a few weeks and would review Russia policy and sanctions . That's neither illegal nor improper.

    Lake also noted that leaks of sensitive national security information, such as the transcripts of Flynn's phone calls to Kislyak, are extremely rare. In their rush to collect a scalp from the Trump administration, the media forgot to tell its readers how unusual and alarming the Flynn-quisition was:

    It's very rare that reporters are ever told about government-monitored communications of U.S. citizens, let alone senior U.S. officials. The last story like this to hit Washington was in 2009 when Jeff Stein, then of CQ, reported on intercepted phone calls between a senior Aipac lobbyist and Jane Harman, who at the time was a Democratic member of Congress.

    Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do.

    In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in 2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag.

    While President Trump contemplated Flynn's fate on Monday evening, the Wall Street Journal suggested: "How about asking if the spooks listening to Mr. Flynn obeyed the law?" Among the questions the WSJ posed was whether intelligence agents secured proper FISA court orders for the surveillance of Flynn.

    That s the sort of question that convulsed the entire political spectrum, from liberals to libertarians, after the Snowden revelations. Not long ago, both Democrats and Republicans were deeply concerned about accountability and procedural integrity for the sprawling surveillance apparatus developed by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Those are among the most serious concerns of the Information Age, and they should not be cast aside in a mad dash to draw some partisan blood.

    There are several theories as to exactly who brought Flynn down and why. Was it an internal White House power struggle, the work of Obama administration holdovers, or the alligators of the "Deep State" lunging to take a bite from the president who promised to "drain the swamp?"

    The Washington Free Beacon has sources who say Flynn's resignation is "the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump's national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran."

    Flynn has prominently opposed that deal. According to the Free Beacon, this "small task force of Obama loyalists" are ready to waylay anyone in the Trump administration who threatens the Iran deal, their efforts coordinated by the sleazy Obama adviser who boasted of his ability to manipulate the press by feeding them lies, Ben Rhodes.

    Some observers are chucking at the folly of Michael Flynn daring to take on the intelligence community, and paying the price for his reckless impudence. That is not funny – it is terrifying. In fact, it is the nightmare of the rogue NSA come to life, the horror story that kept privacy advocates tossing in their sheets for years.

    Michael Flynn was appointed by the duly elected President of the United States. He certainly should not have been insulated from criticism, but if he was brought down by entrenched, unelected agency officials, it is nearly a coup – especially if, as Eli Lake worried on Twitter, Flynn's resignation inspires further attacks with even higher-ranking targets:

    This was a major error for @Reince & @mike_pence It's now open season on this administration from without and within. #FlynnResignation

    - Eli Lake (@EliLake) February 14, 2017

    Lake's article caught the eye of President Trump, who endorsed his point that intelligence and law enforcement agencies should not interfere in U.S. politics:

    Thank you to Eli Lake of The Bloomberg View – "The NSA & FBI should not interfere in our politics and is" Very serious situation for USA

    - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017

    On the other hand, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard openly endorsed the Deep State overthrowing the American electorate and overturning the results of the 2016 election:

    Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.

    - Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 14, 2017

    Among the many things hideously wrong with this sentiment is that the American people know absolutely nothing about the leakers who brought Flynn down, and might be lining up their next White House targets at this very moment. We have no way to evaluate their motives or credibility. We didn't vote for them, and we will have no opportunity to vote them out of office if we dissent from their agenda. As mentioned above, we do not know if the material they are leaking is accurate .

    Byron York of the Washington Examiner addressed the latter point by calling for full disclosure:

    Important that entire transcript of Flynn-Kislyak conversation be released. Leakers have already cherrypicked. Public needs to see it all.

    - Byron York (@ByronYork) February 14, 2017

    That is no less important with Flynn's resignation in hand. We still need to know the full story of his downfall. The American people deserve to know who is assaulting the government they voted for in 2016. They deserve protection from the next attempt to manipulate our government with cherry picked leaks.

    They also deserve some intellectual consistency from those who have long and loudly worried about the emergence of a surveillance state, and from conservatives who claim to value the rule of law. Unknown persons with a mysterious agenda just made strategic use of partial information from a surveillance program of uncertain legality to take out a presidential adviser.

    Whether it's an Obama shadow government staging a Beltway insurrection, or Deep State officials protecting their turf, this is the nightmare scenario of the post-Snowden era or are we not having that nightmare anymore, if we take partisan pleasure in the outcome?

    [Feb 15, 2017] Its Over Folks The Neocons The Deep State Have Neutered The Trump Presidency

    Trump wants to tell Russia to do what? ( https://www.rt.com/usa/377346-spicer-russia-return-crimea/ ) ? To return Crimea? Is this what opposition to neocons means in Trumpspeak ???
    Notable quotes:
    "... "It's Over Folks" The Neocons & The "Deep State" Have Neutered The Trump Presidency ..."
    "... For one thing, Flynn dared the unthinkable: he dared to declare that the bloated US intelligence community had to be reformed. Flynn also tried to subordinate the CIA and the Joint Chiefs to the President via the National Security Council. ..."
    "... Put differently, Flynn tried to wrestle the ultimate power and authority from the CIA and the Pentagon and subordinate them back to the White House. ..."
    "... Ever since Trump made it to the White House, he has taken blow after blow from the Neocon-run Ziomedia, from Congress, from all the Hollywood doubleplusgoodthinking "stars" and even from European politicians. And Trump took each blow without ever fighting back. Nowhere was his famous "you are fired!" to be seen. But I still had hope. I wanted to hope. I felt that it was my duty to hope. ..."
    "... It's over, folks, the deep state has won. From now on, Trump will become the proverbial shabbos-goy , the errand boy of the Israel lobby. Hassan Nasrallah was right when he called him 'an idiot '. ..."
    "... The Chinese and Iranian will openly laugh. The Russians won't – they will be polite, they will smile, and try to see if some common sense policies can still be salvaged from this disaster. Some might. But any dream of a partnership between Russia and the United States has died tonight. ..."
    "... Trump, for all his faults, did favor the US, as a country, over the global Empire. Trump was also acutely aware that 'more of the same' was not an option. He wanted policies commensurate with the actual capabilities of the USA. With Flynn gone and the Neocons back in full control – this is over. Now we are going to be right back to ideology over reality. ..."
    "... I am quite sure that nobody today is celebrating in the Kremlin. Putin, Lavrov and the others surely understand exactly what happened. It is as if Khodorkovsy would have succeeded in breaking Putin in 2003. In fact, I have to credit Russian analysts who for several weeks already have been comparing Trump to Yanukovich, who also was elected by a majority of the people and who failed to show the resolve needed to stop the 'color revolution' started against him. But if Trump is the new Yanukovich, will the US become the next Ukraine? ..."
    "... Flynn was very much the cornerstone of the hoped-for Trump foreign policy. There was a real chance that he would reign in the huge, bloated and all-powerful three letter agencies and that he would focus US power against the real enemy of the West: the Wahabis. With Flynn gone, this entire conceptual edifice has now come down. We are going to be left with the likes of Mattis and his anti-Iranian statements. Clowns who only impress other clowns. ..."
    Feb 14, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    "It's Over Folks" The Neocons & The "Deep State" Have Neutered The Trump Presidency

    Submitted and Authored by The Saker

    Less than a month ago I warned that a 'color revolution ' was taking place in the USA . My first element of proof was the so-called "investigation" which the CIA, FBI, NSA and others were conducting against President Trump's candidate to become National Security Advisor, General Flynn. Last night, the plot to get rid of Flynn has finally succeeded and General Flynn had to offer his resignation . Trump accepted it.

    Now let's immediately get one thing out of the way: Flynn was hardly a saint or a perfect wise man who would single handedly saved the world. That he was not.

    However, what Flynn was is the cornerstone of Trump's national security policy . For one thing, Flynn dared the unthinkable: he dared to declare that the bloated US intelligence community had to be reformed. Flynn also tried to subordinate the CIA and the Joint Chiefs to the President via the National Security Council.

    Put differently, Flynn tried to wrestle the ultimate power and authority from the CIA and the Pentagon and subordinate them back to the White House. Flynn also wanted to work with Russia. Not because he was a Russia lover, the notion of a Director of the DIA as a Putin-fan is ridiculous, but Flynn was rational, he understood that Russia was no threat to the USA or to Europe and that Russia had the West had common interests. That is another absolutely unforgivable crimethink in Washington DC.

    The Neocon run 'deep state' has now forced Flynn to resign under the idiotic pretext that he had a telephone conversation, on an open, insecure and clearly monitored, line with the Russian ambassador.

    And Trump accepted this resignation.

    Ever since Trump made it to the White House, he has taken blow after blow from the Neocon-run Ziomedia, from Congress, from all the Hollywood doubleplusgoodthinking "stars" and even from European politicians. And Trump took each blow without ever fighting back. Nowhere was his famous "you are fired!" to be seen. But I still had hope. I wanted to hope. I felt that it was my duty to hope.

    But now Trump has betrayed us all.

    Remember how Obama showed his true face when he hypocritically denounced his friend and pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. ? Today, Trump has shown us his true face. Instead of refusing Flynn's resignation and instead of firing those who dared cook up these ridiculous accusations against Flynn, Trump accepted the resignation. This is not only an act of abject cowardice, it is also an amazingly stupid and self-defeating betrayal because now Trump will be alone, completely alone, facing the likes of Mattis and Pence – hard Cold Warrior types, ideological to the core, folks who want war and simply don't care about reality.

    Again, Flynn was not my hero. But he was, by all accounts, Trump's hero. And Trump betrayed him.

    The consequences of this will be immense. For one thing, Trump is now clearly broken. It took the 'deep state' only weeks to castrate Trump and to make him bow to the powers that be . Those who would have stood behind Trump will now feel that he will not stand behind them and they will all move back away from him. The Neocons will feel elated by the elimination of their worst enemy and emboldened by this victory they will push on, doubling-down over and over and over again.

    It's over, folks, the deep state has won. From now on, Trump will become the proverbial shabbos-goy , the errand boy of the Israel lobby. Hassan Nasrallah was right when he called him 'an idiot '.

    The Chinese and Iranian will openly laugh. The Russians won't – they will be polite, they will smile, and try to see if some common sense policies can still be salvaged from this disaster. Some might. But any dream of a partnership between Russia and the United States has died tonight.

    The EU leaders will, of course, celebrate. Trump was nowhere the scary bogeyman they feared. Turns out that he is a doormat – very good for the EU.

    Where does all this leave us – the millions of anonymous 'deplorables' who try as best we can to resist imperialism, war, violence and injustice?

    I think that we were right in our hopes because that is all we had – hopes. No expectations, just hopes. But now we objectively have very little reasons left to hope. For one thing, the Washington 'swamp' will not be drained. If anything, the swamp has triumphed. We can only find some degree of solace in two undeniable facts:

    1. Hillary would have been far worse than any version of a Trump Presidency.
    2. In order to defeat Trump, the US deep state has had to terribly weaken the US and the AngloZionist Empire. Just like Erdogan' purges have left the Turkish military in shambles, the anti-Trump 'color revolution' has inflicted terrible damage on the reputation, authority and even credibility of the USA.

    The first one is obvious. So let me clarify the second one. In their hate-filled rage against Trump and the American people (aka "the basket of deplorables") the Neocons have had to show they true face. By their rejection of the outcome of the elections, by their riots, their demonization of Trump, the Neocons have shown two crucial things: first, that the US democracy is a sad joke and that they, the Neocons, are an occupation regime which rules against the will of the American people. In other words, just like Israel, the USA has no legitimacy left. And since, just like Israel, the USA are unable to frighten their enemies, they are basically left with nothing, no legitimacy, no ability to coerce. So yes, the Neocons have won. But their victory is removes the last chance for the US to avoid a collapse.

    Trump, for all his faults, did favor the US, as a country, over the global Empire. Trump was also acutely aware that 'more of the same' was not an option. He wanted policies commensurate with the actual capabilities of the USA. With Flynn gone and the Neocons back in full control – this is over. Now we are going to be right back to ideology over reality.

    Trump probably could have made America, well, maybe not "great again", but at least stronger, a major world power which could negotiate and use its leverage to get the best deal possible from the others. That's over now. With Trump broken, Russia and China will go right back to their pre-Trump stance: a firm resistance backed by a willingness and capability to confront and defeat the USA at any level.

    I am quite sure that nobody today is celebrating in the Kremlin. Putin, Lavrov and the others surely understand exactly what happened. It is as if Khodorkovsy would have succeeded in breaking Putin in 2003. In fact, I have to credit Russian analysts who for several weeks already have been comparing Trump to Yanukovich, who also was elected by a majority of the people and who failed to show the resolve needed to stop the 'color revolution' started against him. But if Trump is the new Yanukovich, will the US become the next Ukraine?

    Flynn was very much the cornerstone of the hoped-for Trump foreign policy. There was a real chance that he would reign in the huge, bloated and all-powerful three letter agencies and that he would focus US power against the real enemy of the West: the Wahabis. With Flynn gone, this entire conceptual edifice has now come down. We are going to be left with the likes of Mattis and his anti-Iranian statements. Clowns who only impress other clowns.

    Today's Neocon victory is a huge event and it will probably be completely misrepresented by the official media. Ironically, Trump supporters will also try minimize it all. But the reality is that barring a most unlikely last-minute miracle, it's over for Trump and the hopes of millions of people in the USA and the rest of the world who had hoped that the Neocons could be booted out of power by means of a peaceful election. That is clearly not going to happen.

    I see very dark clouds on the horizon.

    * * *

  • UPDATE1 : Just to stress an important point: the disaster is not so much that Flynn is out but what Trump's caving in to the Neocon tells us about Trump's character (or lack thereof). Ask yourself – after what happened to Flynn, would you stick your neck out for Trump?
  • UPDATE2 : Just as predicted – the Neocons are celebrating and, of course, doubling-down:
  • Son of Captain Nemo , Feb 14, 2017 10:12 PM

    Trump wants to tell Russia to do what? ( https://www.rt.com/usa/377346-spicer-russia-return-crimea/ )

    Here is the REAL United States of America President ( https://www.israelrising.com/bibi-netanyahu-president-trump-see-eye-eye-... ) Booby!!!

    Smell the fetid gas coming out of this "Gluteal Cleft with horns" that owns the U.S. military!

    [Feb 15, 2017] The entirety of tRump's foreign policy doesn't revolve around Flynn's status

    Feb 15, 2017 | thesaker.is
    > Outlaw Historian on February 14, 2017 , · at 5:05 pm UTC
    The entirety of tRump's foreign policy doesn't revolve around Flynn's status. Has tRump decided to reinstate the TTP and TTIP as "trade" policy goals? Decided to not renegotiate/pull out of NAFTA and other so-called trade pacts? Pull back/reconsolidate the Empire of Bases? Attempt to totally disrupt China's OBOR or Russia's EEU through the use of terrorist proxies as HRC's Neocons planned? Then there's Flynn's illogical hatred of Iran and the complications that posed for reestablishing cordial relations with Russia. And those points are just a few of many.

    IMO, Saker and other commentators have reacted in knee-jerk fashion to Flynn's resignation, for he didn't represent the be-all/end-all of tRump's foreign policy agenda. I'm far more disturbed by many of tRump's cabinet choices plus the fact that they were confirmed despite their lies and criminal actions, which is what's provoked most of the resistance to the current national government–congress especially.

    [Feb 15, 2017] The Neocons and the deep state have neutered the Trump Presidency, its over folks! (UPDATED 2x) The Vineyard of the Saker

    Notable quotes:
    "... "It is difficult to avoid the impression that Flynn formed his ideas about Iran as a US intelligence officer during the George W. Bush administration's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both of those wars Iran and the US pursued parallel but often conflicting strategies, with both countries seeking the defeat of fundamentalist Sunni Jihadis in Afghanistan and Iraq, but wanting to prevent the other country from emerging the undisputed victor. The result was what might be called 'duplicitous cooperation', with Iran and the US simultaneously working with and against each other in an often totally ruthless and treacherous way. ..."
    "... Flynn was as much a warmonger as other Neo-Cons, he was just more focused on Iran and friendlier towards Russia. The next goal in the US grand strategy in the mid-east is Iran though, and as such he was the choice Trump went for when picking him. I think the Saker is overreacting a bit here, maybe he was hoping for more of a change under D Trump, which I never expected, so this early ouster to me is not as shocking as to him. ..."
    "... To say the firing of Flynn alone was the breaking point for Trump's administration, vastly over-estimates the president's wilingness or ability to take on the US deep-state. Had he wanted to do so, why pick Pompeo as head of the CIA? Why cosy up to Saudi-Arabia? ..."
    "... Anyway, on the grand chess board of things a pawn just tumbled and fell, because the King would not protect him. But it was just a pawn and the pieces will have to keep on moving. ..."
    "... As i said it from the beginning, this so called trump hype was way over exaggerated and this wishful thinking of Trump-Putin duo saving the world was ridiculous. Putin's Russia is clearly rejecting the very foundation of what is the current USA, the petro $, so unless Putin was planning to return Russia to it's 90's era Zio-colony, there could never have been a common ground between the two. ..."
    "... Besides that there were also other signs like, an ex goldman sachs and soros fund management banker at the head of the secretary treasury, the constant hammering by the media about trump (as contrary to the complete black out on someone like Dr Ron Paul) ..."
    "... At last the truth. I was getting fed up with all the Trump fans. He never did anything to deserve the adulation. Since being in the whitehouse it has been a mess. He had not shown any foresight or strategic thinking. Whatever cards he had to play he wasted them l ..."
    "... He has employed a whole team of neocons and as for any Russian partnership with the USA this was never ever going to happen – I don't even know why anyone would think so, There are too many differences. As for Flynn he was extremely anti Iranian how is that good for Russia ..."
    "... Trump, like Nixon, has awoken the "silent majority" and has done us a great service by attacking political correctness. Trump, like Nixon, had to surround himself with members of the tribe that owns Congress, in order to have a fighting chance of success. Trump, like Nixon will not succeed, because the minefields were laid before he was sworn in. ..."
    "... The fact that outsider Trump has: exposed the internationalists, like Soros, for what they are; shown the "Antifa" hatefest to be ridiculously shallow; and, exposed the political activism of the courts; will pay long term dividends for those who oppose the current system. ..."
    "... I would not put too much significance to this - Trump was never some kind of knight in shining armor, but just the alternative to Clinton. He may still do a few good things here and there, but the general thrust of his ideology - and yes he not simply transactional, because US realism (realpolitik) in itself is an ideology (at the heart of capitalism and empire, in fact). ..."
    "... The deciding reason I voted for Trump is still holding - avoiding nuclear war, and it may yet hold for quite a while despite the neocons, since Clinton is not in the driver's seat. ..."
    "... It's a war and when you realize it really is a war, and there is no easy, quick "peace channel" to switch to, you may as well figure you more than likely won't live through this war, so you're already a dead man or woman walking.. ..."
    "... There is not a no-fly-zone in Syria, and we are not composed of radioactive ash. That's quite significant. The president is not all together but he is not the raging psychopath Clinton is. Let us be thankful for 'small blessings'. I don't recall anyone promising a rose garden. ..."
    "... For those of us with a HCIS (High Cynical Index Syndrome) Trump and his circus clowns were simply a lesser flop than Clinton and her criminal gang. ..."
    "... Flynn was already compromised by the very neocon elements of which you write: Michael Ledeen. ..."
    "... And I would add, the counter argument to your neutered Trump, although I agree reasonable, is the clear signal that "You're fired!" applies to all and everyone. I doubt Pence is 100% bullet proof, nor beyond sacrifice if needs be. ..."
    "... Nasrallah has it right. Trump is a limited character, a one term President at best. Most of us will be only too glad to be fooled again when Ms. Gabbard makes it to position 1 or 2 on the next Democratic Presidential ticket. ..."
    "... Trump is the periphery displacing the centre in a Corporate dictatorship, it is the same when the Grand Council of Fascism ousted Mussolini and arrested him, as Trump did to Hillary Clinton's turn, but the real power exerts itself to reverse the decision. ..."
    "... Trouble is when giants fight little people get squashed. The empire has been squashing people by the millions for half a century (and before that). So I have indifference as to who gets hurt, I just want it to stop. If the US people are the last victims, then so be it. ..."
    "... But we keep calm because we are sure that if amateur analysts could see through the fog of deception, the Russians saw it long before. Be sure that all counter-measures are in place. ..."
    "... Can we get some name recognition for the Russians who were comparing Trump to Yanukovich from the start? Who were they? ..."
    "... You mean Trump is "White People's Obama" ? ..."
    "... It is naive from the get go to think that Trump will undo the Neocons' agenda that started since 911! Trump from the beginning should have made sure the backings of the majority of the American people including the immigrants, remain neutral on Muslim issues, Russia, any policies that the fake liberals would have reason to antagonize him with, in order to minimize protests against him, like the fake Obama and Clintons. Once elected, he could then implement his policies. His administration and presidency campaign may have been sabotaged from the get go so that they have reason to blame him with afterwards. ..."
    "... Flynn's departure is probably a sign of things to come: more neo-conservativism, more empire building, and more neoliberalism: back to the Washington Consensus – which never really disappeared. ..."
    "... I essentially agree with the premise that the conflict between the Establishment and Trump is basically over Trump being elected as someone who didn't rise through, and was not acculturated in a conventional Establishment political milieu. I further agree that Flynn's resignation represents an important Establishment victory. However, the notion that Donald Trump represented the last chance to avert a major US meltdown, that he aspired to significantly change the path our capitalist system is pursuing, is quite frankly, hyperbole. You endow Donald Trump with undeserved importance. ..."
    "... Donald Trump does not represent now, nor did he ever, a challenge to the prevailing neo-liberal system. Even if he had parried Establishment's previous challenges, or goes to ultimately push back successfully against existing and future challenges to his policies, there will not be a historical, significant change to ruling class domestic policies. Any alteration in US foreign policies, would be selective, and would not persist in the long term. Donald Trump, for all his idiosyncrasies, is very much a ruling class individual, possessing ruling class ideology. ..."
    "... Folks, think about it, Trump's campaign had a hole in it from the beginning; the contradiction of Russia Vs Israel. The relationship between those two nations is paradox: Russia contradicts what Israel wants in the ME. Trump can't be pro Russia and pro Israel at the same time. ..."
    "... The trump regime really should be called the pence regime, since it is obvious now that pence manages it and trump is mostly the "showman" mouth and face. ..."
    "... The conversation of flynn and the Russian ambassador being the cause seems to me to be a phony reason. I speculate the real reason is something else. It could be about Russian relations, in which case, maybe flynn was actually more open to warming these, and pence/trump were not (trump having lied). They had a disagreement and flynn left. ..."
    "... It is also possible the israelis ordered flynn's resignation for reasons unknown by me. They've done this before, and this whole scenario has a strong deja vu feel. Remember Andrew Young? They got him fired in almost the exact same manner, hyping a conversation he had with a Palestinian in their zio-gay media and forcing carter to fire him. Only in Young's case, mossad spied on him and leaked info about Young's meeting with Palestinians to the zio-gay media. ..."
    "... It's just a dispute between 2 factions of the Zionist empire with Trump representing the more cautious faction. ..."
    "... I think Flynn was a Trojan horse planted by the neocons himself. His history shows a career full of anti-Iran sentiment and an excessive push for a harsher approach toward that country, I can't seem to see why his removal is necessarily a bad thing ..."
    "... What I don't understand is this. We see and read of the power exerted by the liberal/neocon "deep state" and their abilities to disrupt and damage Trump's presidency. But in order to get where he has gotten to today, Trump must have some powerful backers too. So where are these powerful Trump supporters and what are they doing if anything? ..."
    Feb 15, 2017 | thesaker.is
    bjo on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:36 am UTC
    I don't hold out much hope that enough people in this country will wake up under any circumstances. Essay by Caitlin Johnson (Feb 5) on the enjoyment of "liberals" participating in "fear porn" is interesting in this regard.

    http://www.newslogue.com/debate/323/CaitlinJohnstone

    Laika von old Monkshusen on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:33 pm UTC
    Yes well, these aren't people of course but sheeple. They do not count anyway, otherwise they wouldn't watch JM$M, nor even worry about their totally obvious pack of lies (Caitlin Johnson).

    II completely agree with Saker's point 2, which is all there is to it, anyway. I don't see what is the big deal about this Flynn. He's just a Nazi 'educated' general, not unlike all the rest of them (otherwise they wouldn't be generals). I only once saw him on RT's SophieCo and I didn't like him at all. It (the interview) was a meaningless catastrophe actually.

    As long as Trump isn't assassinated (or poisoned/disabled) things are going just fine. The Roth-child mob is certainly trying to do that. It's been these posonous rats' trademark for centuries. Givi was one of their latest victims.

    Othmar Regin on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:57 pm UTC
    Both Trump and AfD where (are, not so much anymore) possibly the last hope for a peaceful solution.. everything else means civil/war
    AriusArmenian on February 14, 2017 , · at 6:25 pm UTC
    Another round of suffering is in the near term and beyond which is a continuation of the trajectory the US has been on since the end of the Cold War. With the start of the previous three US administrations there was always hope for better but it always ended up worse.

    Why should we not expect more millions to suffer and more death and destruction? The US neocon/neolib ruled Deep State with Wall St and its intelligence agency jackals at it core want more and will kill and destroy to get it and will continue until they run up against a brick wall. It is up to the powers in the East, with Russia and China at its core, to stop the US and its Anglosphere and EU vassals.

    All my hopes for the future depend on the Eastern powers standing up to the US. There is nothing in the West to give me any hope that it can correct itself.

    T1 on February 14, 2017 , · at 7:20 am UTC
    Well said. Can anyone say "President Pence?"
    Mr Pindo on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:00 am UTC
    Indeed, If Trump did everything on Saker's list he would already be dead and Pence would be president in a manner that is more than figurative.
    nice try on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:31 pm UTC
    While the US neocon Deep State as revealed itself to intelligent observers (like Saker and his readers), the US general public is still as clueless as ever, caught in the MSM web of Bernays-ian duopoly identity politics. No, Pence is looking to be the new Dick Cheney, the power behind the buffoon. That way the US public will not see his hand manipulating the Trump-puppet.
    Veritas on February 14, 2017 , · at 2:01 pm UTC
    Dear The Saker,

    https://www.rt.com/news/377282-flynn-resignation-kremlin-usa/

    The end of this RT article states the following: "General Keith Kellogg was appointed as acting national security advisor after Flynn's resignation. "

    Who is Kellogg? Here is his background:

    https://sputniknews.com/us/201702141050662670-keith-kellogg-biography/

    Veritas on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:46 pm UTC
    Wikileaks have claimed the following:

    https://sputniknews.com/us/201702141050674796-wikileaks-flynn-resignation/

    "Former US National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has made a decision to step down as a result of a destabilization campaign by the media, intelligence community and the Democratic party, WikiLeaks said on Tuesday .."

    Another article which puts some perspective:

    http://theduran.com/first-defeat-donald-trump-michael-flynn-resigns/

    Ann on February 14, 2017 , · at 7:07 pm UTC
    well. Cynthia McKinney, on her FB page commented "Good, but for different reasons than they're stating" Flynn was a jerk .good riddance.
    Uncle Bob 1 on February 14, 2017 , · at 7:43 am UTC
    It seems that VP Pence, in league with the deep-state was the driving force behind the Flynn resignation. Trump made a fatal error in picking a Russophobe neo-con for his Vice President. It will most likely end destroying him. If you are going to have a "second in command" who isn't totally loyal to you. At least you pick one you can control. He made the mistake of not doing that. And unlike others in the regime. Even if Trump wanted to, he can't fire his Vice President. He was elected to office,at the same time as Trump. So he's stuck with him.
    AlfaAlfalfa on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:08 am UTC
    Trump did not select Pence anymore than Reagan selected Bush, who later tried to kill him very early in his Presidency. Pence was appointed as an overseer and guarantor of the Necon Deep State interests. If Trump does not play ball he will be eliminated quicker than you can say JFK. The calls for his assasination in MSM, couched as 'predictions,' were too frequent to ignore.
    Frankie on February 15, 2017 , · at 4:39 am UTC
    Trump is pathetic. I never trusted much on him. He's weak and has no idea of strategic play.
    Robert HARNEIS on February 14, 2017 , · at 7:44 am UTC
    Let us hope you are wrong. Perhaps his chief of staff Kellogg and possible sucessor will fulfill the same role as Flynn with less trumpets and drums.
    Kerjean on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:54 am UTC
    CNN and Fox say that they weigh for Petraeus. Yes, it's not a joke .
    Beijing Expat on February 14, 2017 , · at 1:19 pm UTC
    Whenever there is an opening the corporate media shills for a neocon
    Mr Darcy on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:59 pm UTC
    Oddly enough, when I heard about Flynn, the first thing to pop into my head was "Petraeus!" A real snake in the grass.
    albagen on February 14, 2017 , · at 7:47 am UTC
    @ saker: Why did Flynn lie about the content of the conversation?
    The Saker on February 14, 2017 , · at 7:54 am UTC
    I don't think that he did. He had to say that to protect Trump. He "took the bullet". Why would he lie about a totally benign conversation (had it been something important, an ex-Director of the DIA and a Russian Ambassador would not have used on open, insecure, line). No – Trump sacrificed him under political pressure. Disgusting.
    The Saker
    The Kulak on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:09 am UTC
    Dear Saker,

    My friend I do think this is an overreaction. I will be watching in the next few days to see if Flynn goes away quietly. Flynn may take a vacation for a while. But when he's back, probably by the end of March, I expect him to start acting as a Trump surrogate - and going after his Deep State adversaries with both barrels. Watch for leaks of memos warning John Brennan about the rise of ISIS in 2014 or that TOW missiles and other US arms sent to 'moderate rebels' in Syria were flowing to Al Nusra/Qaeda if not ISIS. If there is no pushback or punishment of the neocons in govmt through firings of WaPost/NYT sources and further exposure of neocon complicity in the rise of Daesh, and if all the talk of detente with Russia comes to nought by summer, then I'll agree with this analyses by the Saker.

    I do concur that none of this makes much sense unless Flynn was carrying out his boss's orders to see if he could basically cool off the confrontation Obama was deliberately creating with the Russians. It is hard to be a patriot who does the right thing and has his name dragged through the mud for it, but at least Flynn is still young enough to fight back - together with his son Mike Flynn Jr. who while not the most competent guy seems fiercely loyal to his dad.

    The war to root out the neocons is a long one, and requires patience. If Trump is going to fight back, he needs ammo and allies from within the Deep State prepared to nail some of their colleagues on their soft coup actions and arming of terrorists, among other things. Putin had a critical mass of 'siloviki' who were prepared to do what needed to be done. Does Trump?

    Greg Schofield on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:58 am UTC
    Remember when Varoufakis stepped aside and then what happened to Syriza. These people take no prisoners, obey no rule they just apply pressure, there will be no respite they will pick another and then another. This is the beginning of the final showdown between the corporate powers and the people, by proxy as a factional war, but the Saker is right they lose everything in winning the first battle.
    Greg Schofield on February 14, 2017 , · at 11:51 pm UTC
    Sorry Mr. Dacy I can be cryptic.

    Read it in reverse, that is this group the core of US imperialism has had a minor setback with Trump, they are correcting it, but their blunt force way in which they rule the world is now applied to the home state (the US). It is like using a sledge hammer to crack an egg, it works but the results aren't useful.

    Trump does not have an organisation behind him, he represents a set of interests larger than his associates, but together they form a small faction that orbits the core power group. So Trump has a small tight web which is being pulled apart, and a large popular tendrils from the base up to his group there is no coordinating centre that links these two.

    So Trump is vulnerable and was always vulnerable, he may occasionally act interdependently, but he does not have a powerful base so he looses, he must lose. That part is Obama part 2. However, what is incredible is the ineptness and weakness of the 'powerful hub' that has changed since 2008.

    Excessive hegemonic force spends itself by such complete mobilisation, it looses its coordinating ability by overusing it. People wise up very fast now, illusions simply fall away, The real fight is now on the schedule, between the people's public interest and cabal of private corporate interests.

    If instead of taming or eliminating Trump they used him as a proxy to paper over the big problem,es and patch up the small ones (Obama could not they owned him too well), then the regime would last longer, internally strengthen. Some, if not most of what Trump is saying is not directed at people but at the core power group, he actually is a reformer of their more daft policies - but they are too corrupt for that they only now know the course they are on and anything that suggests change is threat to their control - that is weakness and it is showing internationally.

    The empire is starting to deteriorate internally, the client states are floating away, Australia is so 'Hillary' bound that there has been a US troop increase in Darwin (doubling thew strength) and a continued partisanship against Trump politically and in the media -- we have always been so loyal to every US president until now, and that knot has been severed. This is happening all over.

    Internal to the US the last vestige of of connection between the people, which was the presidential office, and the state has been fatally eroded. Soros has loosed the dogs, and when the participants sober up, they will not go back to their kennels to be released again - forces are being spent recklessly. The media whose standing has been low fro a long time, has become a joke that it cannot recover from, being ridiculed by the public is the last connection (the mainline media was the church of the modern world - it is no longer).

    So regardless of anyone's theory or thoughts, desires or dreams, society, world wide, has divided into two camps.

    The fighting side, the side of apparent strength - "them" - have created "us". The accord that is civil society has been destroyed by them, we are already in a period of civil war. We are many but lack coherence, all our power is potential there is nothing that realises it. Anything they comes up now is new, virginal and can concentrate a lot of latent power. But this will only come about when the old discords that kept us at each other's throats are allowed to fade away.

    The irony is that Trump was their last best chance.

    Beijing Expat on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:41 am UTC
    I agree. Flynn did what all good soldiers do and fell on his sword for the boss. You have to remember, Flynn probably represented the faction of the elite that wanted to bring back reality. That elite is still there and Flynn can work with them behind the scenes. Look at Roger Stone who left the campaign in August and has been working hard behind the scenes, mostly behind the scenes with the alternative media (infowars) to great effect.

    Flynn is a huge loss to Trump and the country. But the battle is not over yet. There were several times during the campaign when I thought it was over but Trump just kept on winning against impossible odds.

    I don't think Trump is tired of winning yet. And don't forget, his support grows a little every day.

    pogohere on February 14, 2017 , · at 6:05 pm UTC
    It's not at all clear that Flynn's fall is such a great loss: Flynn and the colonels have a thing for Iran that will do no one any good:

    The colonels shaping Trump's Middle East policy

    2-9-17

    Underneath the drama and chaos of the Donald Trump White House - the rival power centers, combative press conferences mercilessly mocked on Saturday Night Live, leaked transcripts of Trump's phone calls to allied leaders, and the often inflammatory tweeter-in-chief, fuming over the latest perceived insult while watching "Morning Joe" - a cadre of deeply serious, tested military intellectuals at the National Security Council is shaping Trump's Middle East policies.

    http://tinyurl.com/zt6k4td

    Transcript: Michael Flynn on ISIL

    Read the full transcript of our discussion about the rise of ISIL, the War on Terror, torture and how to deal with Iran.

    13 Jan 2016

    http://tinyurl.com/hww2e4x

    Mr Darcy on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:08 pm UTC
    Most interesting. Thanks for posting. I hope you're right.
    pogohere on February 14, 2017 , · at 5:57 pm UTC
    Your ideas of what constitutes the Deep State have proven to be too shallow. See: http://breskin.com/Inquiramus/2017/01/18/the-deep-state/ There's a reason for Obama to have vacationed in Bariloche, Argentina in 2016. See: http://tinyurl.com/hrd3haw and http://tinyurl.com/zds85no

    Your hopes for the Trump administration were based on sentiment, not on political calculation. Trump is over his head.

    The IMF meets April 21-23 in Wash DC. Quotas are up for review. A fall in the US quota of 16.53% ( https://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.aspx ) below 15% would eliminate the US veto on major actions that requires an 85% majority. The shake up in confidence in the global monetary regime should not be underestimated. April may come in like a lamb, but it may not go out as one.

    The Reshetnikov interview is a gem. Thanks for that. Russia appears to be a civilization pulling itself together and searching for its cultural metaphors, as the man said:

    "An Idea is what always wins, and if we do not offer an Idea but are offering just material values instead, we will only achieve temporary solutions that are essentially failures.
    . . .
    Attempts at resolving the conflicts among the nations or the states using exclusively economic methods are doomed, that's is why we are losing."

    http://thesaker.is/general-reshetnikov-return-to-the-empire-superbly-controversial-interview/

    Avarachan on February 14, 2017 , · at 7:58 am UTC
    Regarding Gen. Flynn and Iran, I recommended this article from "The Duran": http://theduran.com/general-flynn-hate-iran/

    "It is difficult to avoid the impression that Flynn formed his ideas about Iran as a US intelligence officer during the George W. Bush administration's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both of those wars Iran and the US pursued parallel but often conflicting strategies, with both countries seeking the defeat of fundamentalist Sunni Jihadis in Afghanistan and Iraq, but wanting to prevent the other country from emerging the undisputed victor. The result was what might be called 'duplicitous cooperation', with Iran and the US simultaneously working with and against each other in an often totally ruthless and treacherous way.

    It is not difficult to see why against this background General Flynn as a front line intelligence officer might come to see the Iranians as deceitful and treacherous, and conclude that they can't be trusted, and why he might develop an intense loathing for them. Thus his interview with Al-Jazeera is peppered with comments like this

    'I could go on and on all day about Iran and their behaviour, you know, and their lies, flat out lies, and then their spewing of constant hatred, no matter whenever they talk.'"

    Alexander P on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:46 am UTC
    Thank you for this summary Avarachan. Flynn was as much a warmonger as other Neo-Cons, he was just more focused on Iran and friendlier towards Russia. The next goal in the US grand strategy in the mid-east is Iran though, and as such he was the choice Trump went for when picking him. I think the Saker is overreacting a bit here, maybe he was hoping for more of a change under D Trump, which I never expected, so this early ouster to me is not as shocking as to him.

    This doesn't mean there wasn't any infighting in the deep state on organizational matters and raw power, but foreign policy wise, I doubt this move will much alter the very pre-determined course of history. Iran has been singled out, Ryan used the term 'You have been put on notice', after a completely legal missile launch by Teheran and Trump's rhetoric with his Tweets towards Teheran are saying as much. I don't get why anyone can't see that. To say the firing of Flynn alone was the breaking point for Trump's administration, vastly over-estimates the president's wilingness or ability to take on the US deep-state. Had he wanted to do so, why pick Pompeo as head of the CIA? Why cosy up to Saudi-Arabia?

    Anyway, on the grand chess board of things a pawn just tumbled and fell, because the King would not protect him. But it was just a pawn and the pieces will have to keep on moving.

    Riadh on February 14, 2017 , · at 1:11 pm UTC
    As i said it from the beginning, this so called trump hype was way over exaggerated and this wishful thinking of Trump-Putin duo saving the world was ridiculous. Putin's Russia is clearly rejecting the very foundation of what is the current USA, the petro $, so unless Putin was planning to return Russia to it's 90's era Zio-colony, there could never have been a common ground between the two.

    Besides that there were also other signs like, an ex goldman sachs and soros fund management banker at the head of the secretary treasury, the constant hammering by the media about trump (as contrary to the complete black out on someone like Dr Ron Paul)

    Clearly this is a "non événement" and just another nail in the US coffin.

    James lake on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:07 am UTC
    At last the truth. I was getting fed up with all the Trump fans. He never did anything to deserve the adulation. Since being in the whitehouse it has been a mess. He had not shown any foresight or strategic thinking. Whatever cards he had to play he wasted them l

    He has employed a whole team of neocons and as for any Russian partnership with the USA this was never ever going to happen – I don't even know why anyone would think so, There are too many differences. As for Flynn he was extremely anti Iranian how is that good for Russia

    Curmudgeon on February 14, 2017 , · at 5:53 pm UTC
    Trump, like Nixon, has awoken the "silent majority" and has done us a great service by attacking political correctness. Trump, like Nixon, had to surround himself with members of the tribe that owns Congress, in order to have a fighting chance of success. Trump, like Nixon will not succeed, because the minefields were laid before he was sworn in.

    The fact that outsider Trump has: exposed the internationalists, like Soros, for what they are; shown the "Antifa" hatefest to be ridiculously shallow; and, exposed the political activism of the courts; will pay long term dividends for those who oppose the current system.

    My late Vietnam vet cousin predicted another revolution, but not in his lifetime. More of this treachery will only build the pyre waiting for a spark.

    blue on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:14 am UTC
    I would not put too much significance to this - Trump was never some kind of knight in shining armor, but just the alternative to Clinton. He may still do a few good things here and there, but the general thrust of his ideology - and yes he not simply transactional, because US realism (realpolitik) in itself is an ideology (at the heart of capitalism and empire, in fact).

    As for the neocons, one might recall the advice (Sun Tzu?) that one should never intervene when the enemy is making a mistake. The deciding reason I voted for Trump is still holding - avoiding nuclear war, and it may yet hold for quite a while despite the neocons, since Clinton is not in the driver's seat.

    As for the economy, Trump, overall, will still bring it down, if simply by not averting the previously scheduled meltdown, with further deregulation, corporate tax cuts, hand-outs to the rich, destruction of social welfare, and so on.

    It is not so much that it is over as that it was never really there, except as a very remote dream. This is just shifting another deck chair as we hit the iceberg, and all the great forces are still in play, albeit with the Clinton monster exorcised and sporting a necklace of garlic. The situation itself has improved, however, with Trump winning, and with more people more awake than ever in the last century. A lot more people can now see the iceberg.

    Bro 93 on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:45 am UTC
    Nice metaphors, blue! One after the other. And many cool under pressure comments I have read in this thread. That's comforting. I can turn in and sleep soundly. I'm not joking. It's a war and when you realize it really is a war, and there is no easy, quick "peace channel" to switch to, you may as well figure you more than likely won't live through this war, so you're already a dead man or woman walking..

    And just count your blessings if your grim assessment is wrong.

    James lake on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:16 am UTC
    Can we have some some sense analysis now based on what is happening not what people want to happen

    1. Ukraine escalation
    2. NATO on Russia's borders
    3. Exercises in the black sea
    4. Anti Iranian rhetoric and sanctions
    5. The smearing of Syrian govt by amnesty international
    6. Unrest in Iraq – what is going on geolpolitical impact
    7. Afghanistan – smearing or Russia

    There is a whole list of issues that will impact Russia now can we talk about them instead of Trump

    The environment around Russia has not improved and is set to get worse – Russia would be stupid to have relaxed its guard. They need to behave as if Hillary was elected

    blue on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:54 am UTC
    There is not a no-fly-zone in Syria, and we are not composed of radioactive ash. That's quite significant. The president is not all together but he is not the raging psychopath Clinton is. Let us be thankful for 'small blessings'. I don't recall anyone promising a rose garden.
    E on February 15, 2017 , · at 12:05 am UTC
    Trump told Erdogan and the Saudis if they can pay for it the US will back a NFZ in Syria. That's my assumption.
    Anonymous on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:38 am UTC
    Also add:
    8. Bling medals for the Saudi regime.
    9. Unlimited honey pot $$$ for the Israeli apartheid state.
    10. Media back out of Yemen crisis.
    Sam on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:54 pm UTC
    @ james

    Russia would be stupid to have relaxed its guard They need to behave as if Hillary was elected. Agreed, exactly right, James!

    bjo on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:45 am UTC
    So pleased to find this commentary here after having felt pretty sick about this development ever since it was reported tonight. Very grim. Have always thought that Trump did not pick the right close advisors in the beginning to protect him in what they had to know was going to get ugly. Agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. I got nowhere earlier tonight trying to explain my similar take to a few friends and family members. Nothing is going to save the US from its fate in the 11th hour. I find myself sometimes thinking that the collective psyche in this country actually years for its own destruction.
    Anonymous on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:47 am UTC
    Saker,

    " the real enemy of the West: the Wahabis" ? these are the creation of the west. Saker, why not Israel? why not the "zionists"?

    Ann on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:58 am UTC
    the Wahhabis are from Saudi Arabia – although that regime was set up by England, I don't think the Wahhabis were made in the West
    Anonymous on February 14, 2017 , · at 2:56 pm UTC
    That may be, but they were on the receiving of vast pots of excess USD courtesy of Kissingers' creation of the USD monopoly over oil pricing/sales. A cynic would suggest that the subsequent rise of extremist jihadis was forseen and deemed to be useful for the US/Anglo-Zionist Deep State.

    Just to give everyone a laugh. It seems that 250 of the most experienced Ukraine ATO forces have been sent to the Congo – to act as peacekeepers! Orwell is not only turning over in his grave, he is spinning sufficiently rapidly to give us free unlimited energy if we could only harness it.

    Rolf B on February 14, 2017 , · at 6:24 pm UTC
    "Orwell is not only turning over in his grave, he is spinning sufficiently rapidly to give us free unlimited energy if we could only harness it."
    Thank you sir, best comment of the year. :) Yes my friends, this is a war and it's gonna get ugly. Things are not moving in the right direction.
    E on February 15, 2017 , · at 12:12 am UTC
    Israel is also created by the west. The only enemy of the "west" is anybody that opposes them. See Iran, China, Russia, etc. Now enemies of the people, not crooked govs, is a different story. My enemy is NOT Russia, China, Iran but the Zionist and wahabis.
    Redford on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:56 am UTC
    From what I read Trump was mad at Flynn for two reasons. First he thinks in retrospect that the immigration ban he was pushed to sign by his advisors was a botched legal job. I guess that includes Flynn. Second it seems Flynn did lie to Trump about this, and I can't see this flyîg with Trump.

    Key Trump assets are hiring/firing and negociating. Maybe Flynn wasn't up for the job. I'll wait to see who he picks instead before making any call.

    Anonymous on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:46 am UTC
    "I'll wait to see who he picks instead before making any call." Exactly. The Saker is normally 'strategically' a few days/weeks late on response to tectonic shifts here he seems disappointed and early. For those of us with a HCIS (High Cynical Index Syndrome) Trump and his circus clowns were simply a lesser flop than Clinton and her criminal gang.

    Different finger puppets in the kid's burger: same business hand on the till(er), imo.

    Anonymous on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:04 pm UTC
    Happy to disagree with Saker this time – Trump is, thus far, a proven entity. He replaced his campaign director in his " hopeless " campaign with just 4 months left to election day with Bannon and Conway and they knocked it out of the park. Trump has a good eye for talent and I am almost sure he'll find someone like-minded as Kelly in relatively short order.

    The good captain is revealed in the storm. Trump will do what he can. It's up to us to set our jaws and move forward. OK – the deep state has declared war; Molon Labe.

    Peter AU on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:09 am UTC
    Watching the senate hearings for the Trump nominees – all nominees had to express aggression towards at least one country. The US has lived by the sword and will die by the sword.. Sooner the better.
    ioan on February 14, 2017 , · at 12:18 pm UTC
    Hi Peter, I'm glad to find you here again. Regarding the hearings, I have watched them also, my first impression was that they were like some Gestapo hearings in the Third Reich times. And as you said, everyone had to say something to satisfy the Committee in order to get their approval. Actually, all of them have been cornered.
    Cynthia McKinney on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:09 am UTC
    Flynn was already compromised by the very neocon elements of which you write: Michael Ledeen. Also, Flynn isn't the only one who can serve unflinchingly in this position. But, the Trump team will have to look beyond the tight circle of ideologues with no governance experience in order to find a suitable replacement. And yes, I do have some suggestions.
    Redford on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:23 am UTC
    If you're indeed Cynthia McKinney, it's an honor to read you here. Curious about your suggestions, although I'd probably know nothing about them initially.
    Anonymous on February 14, 2017 , · at 11:04 am UTC
    Hey Cynthia !! Great and positive comment – I hope Trump can find his way – Saker's article is pretty convincing and sad.
    sarz on February 14, 2017 , · at 12:18 pm UTC
    I have a feeling all that anti-Iran rhetoric, like the anti-Russia rhetoric by all of Trump's candidates in their hearings (that Trump claimed was just them speaking their own mind, irrespective of his expressed core views), is for getting Trump's team in place without too much resistance by his own Republicans who are, after all, sworn to the neocon/Zionist order. (Who would know that better than you, Dr McKinney?}

    That means Flynn's participation in the book coauthored with Ledeen was perhaps a ruse. Sure, he could subscribe to the theoretical part that condemns Wahhabism in support of traditional Islam (as Ledeen, the neocon, would pretend to do, to look human). But the operative part took issue with not just Iran but also with Russia for their supposed support to 'terrorism'. So it looks like the whole thing was for show. Trump could have stuck it out with support for Flynn. I think there might have been other considerations. (Flynn's son was earlier an embarrassment with his pursuit of Pizzagate.) If the Saker has privileged knowledge about the critical and indispensable role of Flynn, now is the time to come out with it.

    Crosley Bendix on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:55 am UTC
    As usual, if someone wants to understand what is going on in the world, he should look up what Nasrallah has to say. Finkelstein knows the score: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpIYHXHQOzA
    Anonymous on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:03 am UTC
    As I expressed under Redford (February 14, 2017 at 8:56 am UTC) I'll wait to see the next move.

    However, if as the Saker implies, Flynn was a key knight on Trump's board then perhaps he now has other 'duties' and freedoms to work across certain lines. Russians leaving the military to 'free lance' in the south east corners of the Ukraine come to mind.

    In any case, one step back is sometimes a strategic move for another day. And if such a screw up then why isn't John F. Tefft taking some heat for letting the trap be set?

    Trump is muddling along and his approach (so far) reminds me of Deng Xiaoping's "crossing the river by feeling the stones" analogy.

    The task of reforming the corrupt and evil saturated DC swamp can't be any less complicated than transforming China out of state communism.

    I suspect Putin et al are just shrugging their shoulders and knocking another green bottle of the wall.

    And I would add, the counter argument to your neutered Trump, although I agree reasonable, is the clear signal that "You're fired!" applies to all and everyone. I doubt Pence is 100% bullet proof, nor beyond sacrifice if needs be.

    juliania on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:22 pm UTC
    He can't be fired, but he can be assigned other duties. A certain vp Quail comes to mind. Agnew, anyone?
    Larchmonter445 on February 14, 2017 , · at 6:28 pm UTC
    Taking down Agnew was the beginning of the end of Nixon. That's how coups work. Carter: Hamilton Jordan. Reagan: Richard Allen

    JFK: His brother was always in the gunsights. Check your history and you'll see the Deep State patterns. Even Ike had ungodly pressure to drop Dulles.

    Then "mistakes" overseas. And "false flags" to get the wars going big time.

    Louis Robert on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:07 am UTC
    REMINDER "The dangerous deception called the Trump presidency."

    "I state clearly my conviction, and please recall this as Trump Presidency policies unfold after January 20, 2017 to see if I am correct or not: Donald Trump was put into office to prepare America for war, a war the banks of Wall Street and the US military industrial complex are not presently in a position economically or industrially or otherwise, geopolitically, to win. His job will be to reposition the United States for them to reverse the trend to disintegration of American global hegemony, to, as the Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz Project for the New American Century put it in their September, 2000 report, "rebuild America's defenses." " (F. William Engdahl)

    http://journal-neo.org/2016/11/25/the-dangerous-deception-called-the-trump-presidency/

    ***

    In less than a month

    "With Trump broken, Russia and China will go right back to their pre-Trump stance: a firm resistance backed by a willingness and capability to confront and defeat the USA at any level."

    Empire is Empire is Empire

    Robert Ferrin on February 14, 2017 , · at 2:38 pm UTC
    No all empires fall from Rome to Spain to England and we are in the final days of the empire, bankrupt with a stagnant GDP and a 100,000,000 unemployed and poverty on the rise. For the first time since 1960 I didn't bother to vote for the country is not governed by those we elect, but those in the shadows that pull the string's as Chalmers Johnson said in his last book in the series" Dismantling The Empire" that it was "Americas Last Best Hope", and I agree with the Saker that hope is gone and its going to be a very long rough ride to the bottom with wars and rumors of war
    Srbenda Legenda on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:10 am UTC
    Thanks for the great post Mr Saker, insightful as always. Being of Serbian descent I never had a real interest in US politics as nothing would change when it came to our political interests, be they historically or morally correct.

    Naturally I despised the Bushes, especially the Clintons and like many supported Trump despite never truly believing he would succeed. We truly are in a historical moment in time and I share your thoughts regarding the "Color Revolution" currently under way in the US.

    It appears the powers that be are positioning themselves to remove him from office and I sadly predict that President Trump will lose out to the establishment who are hell bent to see his agenda destroyed!

    My optimism that President Trump would bring about true change has been shattered by his somewhat reluctance to challenge those enemies within his own "party" and administration.

    Sadly I only see this going one way and that is with President Trump walking away from this position in the foreseeable future as it is obvious the enemies abroad and within are determined to see him removed. He's clearly over his head and the establishment would happily see VP Pence and the Republican trash continue the neocon agenda and ultimately draw us that step closer to war and destruction.

    I never thought I would share the sympathies with the American people but the recent elections have demonstrated clearly to the world that despite all the posturing and illusions, the US is far from being a beacon of hope, freedom and prosperity. I truly believe President Trump genuinely wishes to "MAGA" but the opposition is too strong and with Flynn's resignation it's clear his team are working covertly to sabotage his presidency.

    For the sake of world peace I pray that President Trump succeeds but my heart tells me he will falter and step aside allowing the enemy to continue to policies of death, suffering and enslavement of the American people.

    In finishing I share your views regarding the unfolding developments and wish you and your family safety and continued success with the site. My apologies for the long post

    Il Discobolo on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:12 am UTC
    All ok what written but, if the stakes are so high, why were general Flynn and the Russian ambassador so naive?
    Nathan on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:22 am UTC
    Trump was brought in to trigger the world wide financial collapse and start war. Earlier Obama was brought in to the chant Hope and Change.
    I would give it a maximum of 4 months time before the earth caves in.
    AlfaAlfalfa on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:23 am UTC
    Well you're right about almost everything here Saker.

    One slight quibble, I suggest Trump has always been setup man for a long planned US colour revolution, though I am fairly certain he was personally unaware of it, just as he was unaware he would win the election.

    Nasrallah has it right. Trump is a limited character, a one term President at best. Most of us will be only too glad to be fooled again when Ms. Gabbard makes it to position 1 or 2 on the next Democratic Presidential ticket.

    Democracy has always been a cloak for the oligarchy.

    Always.

    Suzanne Majo De Kuyper on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:30 am UTC
    I hope that you may be wrong. it feels as if you are right. USA is over then for sure.
    Stalin on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:34 am UTC
    I always knew that hopes in Trump are baseless. I am actually happy about development, we already reach point where the war is the only escape, there's no other way around. It does NOT mean we gonna have a nuclear war, Hitler could use chemical warfare during battle for Stalingrad. He didn't use it., so neocons will not dare either, and if they do, well, a new beginning.
    ioan on February 14, 2017 , · at 12:37 pm UTC
    Well, Stalin, I confess I did have hope and still have some till Trump will meet Putin personally. (a few days ago, Putin said that he would meet Trump in Slovenia – that made to have some bad feelings) . If nothing positive comes out, then the war shall solve all the problems (as continuation of policy with other means )
    Stalin on February 14, 2017 , · at 1:49 pm UTC
    I guess you heard that picture of Russian ambassador's assassination won World Press Photo award. Disgrace!, they deserve the war. They are spoil brats, they will cry like little children. After all is done we send Chechen to clean the swamps.
    Greg Schofield on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:38 am UTC
    Another astute analysis from the Saker.

    Trump is the periphery displacing the centre in a Corporate dictatorship, it is the same when the Grand Council of Fascism ousted Mussolini and arrested him, as Trump did to Hillary Clinton's turn, but the real power exerts itself to reverse the decision.

    Trump appeases because that is all that is allowed him, his victory was measured in days, and so perhaps was Obama's. Probably there have been direct threats, this is common when anybody steps out of line with the empire, blackmail (based on real or fictitious evidence is also common), and bribes - these are not alternatives they come all at once. Being threatened, blackmailed and bribed is a common enough gangster's tactic. Then of course there are the favours, the often fake evidence of misdeeds done by the closet allies, who ride to the rescue their own fifth column having prepared the way for them. None of this excuses Trump, he uses similar but milder tactics.

    The weakness is leadership, relying on it, the saviour complex, that somehow someone will blaze the way forward and change things for us, the beaten and oppressed. It is not happening, either we take the initiative or we fix up the mess once the whole thing has exploded - we get all the danger and all the work no matter what.

    I am an Australian, my country has been run by yours since 1975 after we enjoyed three years of Independence from the US and Britain, after '75 we got US gangster-ism - no velvet glove. so my point of view is so-long as the empire collapses all is well. Trump was a faction, there is civil war in the US between the big and little barons. Let both destroy each other.

    Trouble is when giants fight little people get squashed. The empire has been squashing people by the millions for half a century (and before that). So I have indifference as to who gets hurt, I just want it to stop. If the US people are the last victims, then so be it.

    The alternative is that the people of the US do everyone a favour including themselves and take these fascists out. I use the term in its exact meaning as corporatism (where corporations and the state become a joint enterprise, fostering a class of managers in its wake). I also acknowledge something very few here have heard - this includes social fascists.

    Back in the thirties there were right wing fascists and also left wing 'social' fascists, you might recognise this in George Orwell's 1984. The fact is the liberals (social fascists par excellence) have buried this, while the militant right wing fascists have been distanced from brethren by being described as Nazis. Neo-Nazis are detestable, but strangely enough are not actually fascists so much as criminal gangs (there is a difference).

    Left and right don't make much sense when the enemy has its own left and right. So there are the corporatists (fascists ) and us, the people.

    So without leaders the people need to push and push hard, otherwise the next lot of cannon fodder will be you, not the client states, but the home state of ultra-imperialism. You do the world a favour by doing yourself a favour.

    My suggestion is open rebellion means unsuccessful slaughter, guns are not going to work. The common weapon sounds like a joke, and it is a joke as it now stands - the Law. Make the corporates subject to the law. And the first effort is not the corporates, but the judges - the judicial system needs to be purged first, and from the bottom up.

    Look for corruption, look for tax evasion, conflicts of interests anything that should qualify a judgement for acting in the people's interest and get rid of them. Never mind their sex lives, or opinions, just whether they would be fit to judge cases of corporate fraud, tax fraud, misappropriations of funds, running corporations against the interests of shareholder dividend payout, corruption etc.,

    Start the pressure locally, start with the local collaborators, ignore the higher ups, get to them later. If you are right work with lefties if you're a lefty work with right-wingers, work across the spectrum, but get the judges on the people's side by getting rid of the others - not issue based politics, but on facts, those that hobnob with the local bigwigs instead of the people, of belonging to a club where where business does private deals.

    Start doing the little things that will make local self-organisation possible and the key is not the police, not the politicians, but the judiciary. Gather evidence, and when it sufficient make it public and demand legal remedies, and if none come, then some direct action.

    RMM on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:37 pm UTC
    Your recommendations in the last para are wise. Unfortunately, Trump & team lack the required skill, and they thought they should go for the CIA first. So not, there they are: le bec dans l'eau as the French say
    Greg Schofield on February 15, 2017 , · at 12:00 am UTC
    RMM thanks. Trump could never provide what is needed. My view is that getting things right comes after getting rid of what is wrong. even if Trump was perfect with the perfect team and large coordinated popular support, he could not get things right, because of the attrition of the corrupt, and if these are 'fixed' politically rather than legally society suffers. New laws are basically a political fix.

    Redeploying existing laws, applying them to corporate entities and gaoling offenders is how a civil society works. First reform the lower judiciary, they will deal with rather small corporate misdeeds, but they will arrest criminals, who will be systematically let off by higher courts, which makes them the target for coordinated reform.

    The elimination of corrupt judiciary, the promotion of honest magistrates creates a dual power in the modern world, the old way was to organise force for a showdown, I am suggesting winning a war of attrition, not movement - they are weak there, anything else will be brutally suppressed.

    Kerjean on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:53 am UTC
    Once again, Saker was right
    And I was wrong.

    I feel terribly ill this morning. It's a disaster. Especially when I read, with horror, that Trump consider . PETRAEUS(!!!!!!!!) for the job!! It's amazing.
    Why not Nuland or Kagan as State Secretary and Breedlove as Defens Secretary?

    And what's about Bannon? I can't imagine that and Trump and Bannon are both totaly stupid and unaware.
    Engdhal and Brandon Smith, for month and month warn that Trump is a fake from head to toes. Are they right.
    If it is, we'll soon see new tension with Russia and especially in Donbass. And if it's true, we'll see mainstream medias becoming very nice indulgent with Trump. Then, all the "liberals" and "progressists" who are shouting everywere again "Trump the fascist" will soon realise they're cuckold, the medias batteries will now turn against them and they will very soon test what is the true fascism. It's a tragedy.
    If Trump is sincere, without Flynn to protect him against the services, he's dead. If Trump is a fake

    Franz on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:22 pm UTC
    Trump is the perfect President for America – ignorant, arrogant and lost – but sensing that something is not right. I am at peace since my father always told me: "Remember, even the best of them are snakes."
    WizOz on February 14, 2017 , · at 11:03 am UTC
    Saker's frustration is understandable. Seeing your hopes dashed is always painful. But the few Cassandras (yours truly among them) who had no hope whatsoever that anything good can possibly come out from making "America great again" kept their calm. We took the cold shower and puked in advance. 'We told you so' and in no uncertain terms:

    William Engdahl ("The Dangerous Deception Called The Trump Presidency"):
    "The project called the Trump Presidency has just two months before its formal beginning. Yet already the hopes and fantasies of much of the world are making him into something and someone Donald Trump most definitely is not. Donald Trump is yet another project of the same boring old patriarchs who try again and again to create a one world order that they control absolutely, a New World Order that one close Trump backer once referred to as universal fascism. Ignore the sometimes fine rhetoric in some of his speeches. Talk is cheap. If we consider rather the agenda that's taking form even in these very early days of cabinet naming, we can see that Donald Trump is the same agenda of war and global empire as Obama, as Bush before him, as Bill Clinton and Clinton's "tutor", George H.W. Bush before him. There is no good side to what the world is about to experience with President Trump."

    http://journal-neo.org/2016/11/25/the-dangerous-deception-called-the-trump-presidency/

    And people refuse to see the elephant trumping through the rooms of the Trump Tower (and now of the White House), blinded by the 'glamour' of Ivanka or the 'Sois belle et tais-toi' Melanie (excuse my French).

    But we keep calm because we are sure that if amateur analysts could see through the fog of deception, the Russians saw it long before. Be sure that all counter-measures are in place.

    Olli on February 14, 2017 , · at 12:23 pm UTC
    Remember that Trump has still plenty of options left. The fate of the US or, for that matter, of the world does not depend on mr Flynn whose judgement has shown so wanting that he would not have been the person to take down the bad elements among CIA et al anyhow. I trust in Trump's fighting spirit and resilience, and I expect general Flynn's resignation just to be a jump start to take on neocon elements in US governement and intelligence community seriously and, this time, hard and harsh. With whom in the lead, I don't know, but remember that the US is a vast country with lots of folk competent and willing to accept the job of draining the intelligence part of the swamp.
    Stavros Hadjiyiannis on February 14, 2017 , · at 12:47 pm UTC
    Even though I respect The Saker's opinion to a very high degree, I will have to disagree with some of the assertions made here.

    But first of all, allow me to begin with what I agree with. This is no doubt a major victory for the neocons, the Deep State and the EU. This is a loss for Russia and the USA.

    But, I'm not sure that Trump is done and dusted. From what I realize, Flynn did in fact breach protocol and the Deep State found a perfect opportunity to go on the offensive. It's still within Trump's power to appoint one of his own to replace Flynn. We'll see.

    But my main disagreement with The Saker is this. Trump (and his backers, themselves a minority within the Deep State) is not interested in cutting a deal with Russia due to any concerns about Wahabism, the neocons or any other such. Trump's reason for wanting to withdraw the US from the NATO-GCC-ISR attack on Russia, was because he wanted to divert US power and energies against China and Iran. Trump also believes that the US is not getting anything out of its unconditional support for the EU and wanted to rearrange America's posture.

    The neocons, neoliberals and Eurocrats who oppose Trump so vehemently, believe that the EU project is sacrosanct (because it weakens and undermines Russia) that Iran should be brought on their side and used against Russia (only the most Zio-fanatics are not find of this proposition) and that China can only be faced down after Russia has been annihilated. If Russia cannot be defeated, then China must only be militarily contained (so that the PRC does not turn towards Russia in a serious way) and the "Free World" can only hope that China may collapse under its own contradictions. For the US Deep State, Russia must be fought against to the most bitter end, and on this, the Europeans are in enthusiastic agreement.

    We'll see how this turns out, but this development is nothing but deeply worrying. It would be stupid to sugarcoat this.

    Baerlas on February 14, 2017 , · at 12:47 pm UTC
    I always thought that "The Empire was, is and will be the Empire" and the president is merely the figurehead of this very Empire. That was obvious president after president, "beautifully depicted" by president Obama. To really make any changes you'd need a revolution which is totally outside the mental conceptions of Western peoples today, last not least lacking leading figures who could organize the people. Similarly, dreaming about Trump changing the world for a better one was an illusion right from the start. These who have always driven this ship along will, of course, now drive Trump. So apart from a lot of shallow noise, what has changed? Nothing. And if that is correct it is still the better solution of whatever might be in the offing.
    _smr on February 14, 2017 , · at 12:56 pm UTC
    Trump is a trickster. His job is not to make America great again – an impossible task anyway, as the Masonic project 'America as the New Atlantis' was a con job from the get go and was, like any film set, built primary as an eye candy and for temporarily use only. The ZWO needed the USA as the launch pad, staging ground and propaganda central for almost resistance-less military-industrial subjection of the vast, still virgin goy-lands sprinkled all over planet Earth.

    Who cared about the enslavement of South America, Africa, South East Asia, Bolshevik Russia, Maoist China as long Hollywood kept spinning out blockbuster after blockbuster, as long as NASA made everybody proud with their staged moon landings, as long as CIA lifetime actors like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Jack Nicholson, Ernest Hemingway, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk dazzled our eyes and minds with magic too good to be true.

    Now that the project is almost complete and the USA bankrupt beyond repair, the ZWO faces the tricky task of ushering in a rougher phase, while making sure the blame doesn't fall on them, but on conspiracy theorists!, Nazis!, White Supremacists!, Fake News bloggers!, sexists!, racists! and what not.

    That is where Trump comes in. All he has to do is to upset the apple cart. Saying some right words at wrong time. And some wrong things at the right time. Taking the wrong decisions at appropriate moments. Playing the joker not once, but again and again.

    This is the best we can hope for now. And Trump – Inshallah! – will deliver.

    Mairon on February 14, 2017 , · at 12:56 pm UTC
    I was always cautiously optimistic about Trump. My expectations of his were rather modest. Of course, the very first thing that recommended him was the simple fact he is not Hillary. The second, perhaps, was his unortodox approach and what seems (still in the present, I think) to be a genuine desire to shake the establishment currently pulling the string in Washington.
    He had some profound statements that were previously unthinkable from any US President (we'll stop toppling regimes).

    Taking all of that into consideration, and assuming that Trump has been sincere, there was always a huge problem for him: he is completely alone. He has no reliable allies to help him even start the battle with the power elite governing the US.
    From his first day in office, it was clear they were going to oppose him at every step and Trump has little or no means to fight back.

    I generally appreciate and agree with the Saker, but I think he is overly pessimistic here.
    In my view, Trump has already showed to be willing to fight, but the resistance is too great for one man to handle. And Trump is, more or less, alone.

    J.L.Seagull on February 14, 2017 , · at 1:00 pm UTC
    Can we get some name recognition for the Russians who were comparing Trump to Yanukovich from the start? Who were they?
    ALex on February 14, 2017 , · at 1:08 pm UTC
    You mean Trump is "White People's Obama" ?
    realist on February 14, 2017 , · at 1:10 pm UTC
    It is naive from the get go to think that Trump will undo the Neocons' agenda that started since 911! Trump from the beginning should have made sure the backings of the majority of the American people including the immigrants, remain neutral on Muslim issues, Russia, any policies that the fake liberals would have reason to antagonize him with, in order to minimize protests against him, like the fake Obama and Clintons. Once elected, he could then implement his policies. His administration and presidency campaign may have been sabotaged from the get go so that they have reason to blame him with afterwards.

    Flynn resigned during PM Abe's visit and when N Korea fired the missiles. Could these be the reason for his resignation instead of Russia?

    cortisol on February 14, 2017 , · at 1:31 pm UTC
    Look at the cuckold Trudeau and Trump meeting. Look at Trump when he is being forced to talk for the feminist agenda after 03:00. Just awful. This is total humiliation. He's finished.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqkb-sJ31S4

    Francisco Almeida on February 14, 2017 , · at 1:34 pm UTC
    I deeply admire and respect The Saker. But I think this time you rushed into final conclusions , while the game is just in its first few shots. Trump still has infinite ammo : he can replace the hell out of whoever he wants to. He won't behave as a loser and cower down.

    There'll be counter-attacks , plenty I believe. He's calling the shots, not the neo-cons. Mattis clearly states he hates wars, and he is not a traitor ; he was put there to shield Trump – and he obviously agreed – while "barking war" for domestic consumption towards keeping quiet the warmonger crowd. Smokes and mirrors game. I think the core plan is still in place.

    Gunnar Sivertsen on February 14, 2017 , · at 6:20 pm UTC
    I don't always agree with the Saker, but this time I do. The resignation of Flynn suggests that he was pushed out by the neocons and that Trump was unable – not unwilling – to prevent the push. Flynn's lie, or cover-up is neither here nor there; it's not the reason he had to resign. Trump has been left relatively isolated within his own administration. Unless he sacks some key figures, he will be politically vulnerable. So, Flynn's departure is probably a sign of things to come: more neo-conservativism, more empire building, and more neoliberalism: back to the Washington Consensus – which never really disappeared.
    Katherine on February 14, 2017 , · at 7:19 pm UTC
    "The resignation of Flynn suggests that he was pushed out by the neocons and that Trump was unable – not unwilling – to prevent the push. "

    I agree with this. I don't have evidence. But I think there must be more to the story. As for the telephone call, so what? What about the Iran-Contra meetings in Paris that sank Carter by getting a promise out of the Iranians not to free the hostages until Reagan was being sworn in? Same deal. Has anyone told Trump about that? Why not just say: Hey, there is no difference, guys! If that was OK, so was Flynn's call to Russia to say "hello, and we plan to be friends wijoo." What is, actually, wrong with that?

    There must be some other pressure on Trump. This is probably Trump's last chance to get a powerful loyalist near him. He has made it easy for his enemies on the left and right with the Bannon appointment, immigration ban, and wild words re Iran, etc.

    Katherine

    XL on February 14, 2017 , · at 1:46 pm UTC
    *puts on tinfoil hat

    Didnt Flynn accuse Hillary Clinton of being involved in chip trafficking around the time of the Pizzagate shooter? I've also read that the new media face of the Trump campaign, Stephen Miller is somehow involved with the nonsense going on behind the scenes in the WH. Is it possible these things are related?

    Astraea on February 14, 2017 , · at 1:49 pm UTC
    Trump's daughter Ivanka and his son in law Jared Kushner are apparently Lubavitch Jews. That seems even more relevant to Trump's weakness than Pence or anything much else. It was a group of Lubavitch rabbis who persuaded George Bush Junior to sign the so called "Noahide Laws" into American Law – which I find astounding, to put it mildly.

    These so called "laws" demand the beheading of all people who practice "idolatry" . According to them I think the only religion on Earth which does not allow any kind of idolatry is Islam (perhaps also the Jains). Christianity definitely, according to these sinister people, practices idolatry in the form of The Cross and pictures of Jesus and so forth.

    There have been rumors for years now about "fema camps", but there are also photographs and videos of long white painted trains with UN painted on the sides. They are three storied carriages or cabooses with flat beds in between every few of these. Someone got into these carriages, years ago, and said that there are metal benches in them with ankle irons fixed to the floors.

    On the flat beds guillotines were seen – "made in China".

    Which all makes my blood run cold. These Lubavitch really are as sinister as the original Levites!

    Talks-to-Cats on February 14, 2017 , · at 5:58 pm UTC
    A friend of mine who was in the Secret Service told me that, some years ago, they discovered a tank the "Jewish Defense League" had hidden in a warehouse in Philadelphia.
    WizOz on February 14, 2017 , · at 10:39 pm UTC
    @Ivanka and his son in law Jared Kushner are apparently Lubavitch Jews.

    They definitely are. That was a 'secret' only to the extent that nobody wanted to see it, although the sickening details were all over the place:

    "Trump was raised Presbyterian. Before her wedding, in July 2009, after studying for over a year with Rabbi Elie Weinstock from the Modern Orthodox Ramaz School, she converted to Orthodox Judaism and took the Hebrew name "Yael". She describes her conversion as an "amazing and beautiful journey" and that her father supported her studies from day one, due to his respect for the Jewish religion. She attests to keeping a kosher diet and observing the Jewish Sabbath, saying in 2015: "We're pretty observant It's been such a great life decision for me I really find that with Judaism, it creates an amazing blueprint for family connectivity. From Friday to Saturday we don't do anything but hang out with one another. We don't make phone calls."Trump sends her daughter to kindergarten at a Jewish school in New York City. She says that "It's such a blessing for me to have her come home every night and share with me the Hebrew that she's learned and sing songs for me around the holidays." (Wikipedia)

    "Trump vowed to be an advocate for women and Israel. Regarding her father's support for Israel, Trump said he would be "an unbelievable champion for Israel and for the Jewish people. You will not be disappointed."@http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/10/28/ivanka-trump-at-florida-synagogue-my-father-called-before-jewish-high-holidays-and-said-you-better-pray-hard-for-me/

    "The biblical story of Esther is an imperfect allegory for the Trump family, but as for Ivanka, the comparison isn't half bad. Esther is a Jewish woman who conceals her identity when she becomes the bride of a powerful king. It is only when she reveals who she is that she can save the Jewish people from an evil adviser plotting their destruction.

    Like Esther, Ivanka might appear to be nothing more than a pretty face until she shows that she's the savviest person in the room. Like Esther, Ivanka has a familial, almost accidental position of influence with a powerful gentile political figure. And like Esther, Ivanka's Jewishness is veiled: Something she describes as an important part of her identity and family life-she's an Orthodox convert, but she rarely agrees to talk about her faith-is essentially invisible to those who don't know it's there".She's the Orthodox daughter of David Duke's favorite candidate for president-and a perfect cipher for the anxiety of assimilation.@https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/what-should-american-jews-make-of-ivanka-trump/498476/ So much for David Duke!

    "Ynetnews reports: Businesswoman Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner have purchased a home in Washington DC in preparation for President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. As a practicing Jewish couple, their impending move also necessitated joining a local synagogue. They Chose TheSHUL, a small synagogue run by international the Chabad Jewish community and outreach organization.
    Rabbi Levi Shemtov heads TheSHUL, which has a congregation of 40 – 60 members, among them former senator Joe Lieberman, current Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew as well as several former ambassadors and Israeli dignitaries".

    It was never so 'in your face'. Other overlooked detail: 'World's Largest Jewish Center in Dnepropetrovsk', 'Dnepropetrovsk could be renamed – Jerusalem-on-the-Dnieper'
    Would Trump abandon Ukraine?

    Anonymous on February 14, 2017 , · at 11:13 pm UTC
    And why do you explain that, for example, Scott, who is always researching about Chabad Lubavitch, have overlooked this? And, has been this information just discovered today, or the so much informed people here knew it in advance and, in spite, promoted Trump as if there was not tomorrow, you included?
    eric calderone on February 14, 2017 , · at 1:53 pm UTC
    I essentially agree with the premise that the conflict between the Establishment and Trump is basically over Trump being elected as someone who didn't rise through, and was not acculturated in a conventional Establishment political milieu. I further agree that Flynn's resignation represents an important Establishment victory. However, the notion that Donald Trump represented the last chance to avert a major US meltdown, that he aspired to significantly change the path our capitalist system is pursuing, is quite frankly, hyperbole. You endow Donald Trump with undeserved importance.

    Donald Trump does not represent now, nor did he ever, a challenge to the prevailing neo-liberal system. Even if he had parried Establishment's previous challenges, or goes to ultimately push back successfully against existing and future challenges to his policies, there will not be a historical, significant change to ruling class domestic policies. Any alteration in US foreign policies, would be selective, and would not persist in the long term. Donald Trump, for all his idiosyncrasies, is very much a ruling class individual, possessing ruling class ideology.

    Reorganization of the national security agencies, relegating the power of the CIA to the Executive, bringing some measure of common sense to America's foreign policies vis a vis the Russian Federation, pulling back on America's bloated and unsustainable military engagements, while welcome, would not amount to a material and long-term change to the nature of the American system and its empire.

    Working people would have lived, and will still live, in a society with inadequate and worsening healthcare, housing, education, and public infrastructure,;and with declining unionization rates and collective bargaining power in the workplace. They would and will still pay taxes to a government which would expend those funds on a gargantuan and growing military budget; and on assistance to giant corporations. They would and will continue to be indoctrinated by a government and mass media with neo-liberal and bourgeois ideology. Nothing critical would have, or will change, under a Donald Trump administration.

    Foreign policy is shaped by the economic nature of the beast. America under Donald Trump, or any other candidate of the "two" party system, in the long-term must pursue policies which continue to inject excess revenue into the system. That revenue represents value extracted from other countries. Otherwise, the economic engine of the US will not expand, and the system will soon collapse upon itself. Inevitably, the dynamic of the system engenders conflict with any foreign power or powers which stand in its way. That is why any lessening of conflict with Russia or China or any other major actor on the world stage would be purely temporary, and selective in nature.

    Donald Trump was no one's last hope. Don't bestow upon him a significance he does not deserve.

    blue on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:04 pm UTC
    In other words, Trump is not of the crazies in the basement, but one the crazies on the main floor, as we had before GW Bush.

    The only solution looks to me to be distributed leadership (real anarchy - no chiefs) and not looking for 'leaders' and 'heroes' to save the day. It has parallels with using relational (table driven) databases instead of the older hierarchical databases - a different model of organization.

    Unfortunately, most people can't yet conceive of or understand how this works on large scale - although they use it all the time among a group of friends which do things by consensus, and some people do it in worker-run businesses (which often takes a lot of adjustment for people to get the hang of).

    Monty Pythons explains:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOOTKA0aGI0
    Dennis The Constitutional Peasant

    Texac in Donbass on February 14, 2017 , · at 2:01 pm UTC
    This is an excellent article. Very realistic and precise. The thin hopes on Trump just got "wafer thin", and it looks like we will all be in for a ride. So be it. Better to face the sad truth than fool ourselves. GREAT analysis, I will share.
    Anonymous on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:42 pm UTC
    Hi, Texac
    Please deliver kindest and warmest regards to people in Donbass.
    blue on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:10 pm UTC
    Greetings, and thanks and for work,
    And perhaps it was never really about hope, but about many people just just keeping on working - and if one wants some hope one can find it in all those people who do.
    Robert Draco on February 15, 2017 , · at 1:40 am UTC
    In consolation to Mike Flynn leaving take a look at this: Why Mike Flynn leaving was actually good for Trump by ex-CIA Robert Steele ..(not just a paper pusher he was actually clandestine for 10 of his years in intelligence work) -Robert Steele: Dick Cheney, Not Donald Trump, Orchestrated Firing of Mike Flynn. Flynn Deserved to Be Fired, But Not for Talking to Russians--

    http://phibetaiota.net/2017/02/robert-steele-dick-cheney-not-donald-trump-orchestrated-firing-of-mike-flynn-flynn-deserved-to-be-fired-but-not-for-talking-to-russians/#more-123958

    apna on February 15, 2017 , · at 4:38 am UTC
    Duck Cheney is a known spy working for england. He is an English asset for serving interest of england and anglosaxon cabal of 5 evil eyes.
    Astraea on February 14, 2017 , · at 2:03 pm UTC
    I also want to mention the fantastic new book by the Legendary Dmitri Orlov – and an see why he is spoken of as legendary. It is called "Shrinking the Technocracy." Not to read this book would be a great loss.
    Il Discobolo on February 14, 2017 , · at 2:14 pm UTC
    Let me be clear. If it is true that It is illegal for private citizens to conduct US diplomacy (as BBC writes), then the past December Flynn-Russia's ambassador Kislyak phone conversation should not occur anyway before he was officially appointed National Security Adviser.

    Considering the hysterical activity and agitation of the neocons/deep state and their russophobia, they would not loss any minimal pretext to attack Trump and his collaborators. The question is: was the ambassador aware of that? With no clear benefits from such early talk, it should have appeared as a possible trap, planted for a "delayed" explosion. As indeed it has been. The results is that now Flynn had to resign And Kislyak?

    Lars on February 14, 2017 , · at 2:17 pm UTC
    The problem is that Flynn lied on the highest level. It's not a problem to have a phone conversation with the Russians or be Russian friendly. The problem is when you claim it hasn't happened. Flynn should've known better. His resignation is not a sign of the deep state taking over, but a logic consequence after breaking the trust.
    blue on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:21 pm UTC
    He didn't claim it didn't happen, and he didn't break any trust. As said at the Duran, it's a concoction - a pretense. The main purpose of the call was apparently to start arrangements between Trump and Putin and get some conversation started, and there's nothing wrong with that - except for the 'neo'-crazies who insist on making Russia an enemy. This accusation is abut the same as accusing Russia of invading Crimea. There is a technical term for it in political science: horse-s**t.

    It isn't the deep state trying to take over, BTW, but one of the factions therein. The US is in a political (and cultural) civil war.

    Jeff Chiacchieri on February 14, 2017 , · at 2:20 pm UTC
    I have been saying to everyone I know and posting on FB since Hillary entered the race it looks to me like the globalists could get more of what they want faster with Trump in the Whitehouse than with Hillary because they would have a better chance at destroying/blaming the liberty movement for the fiscal/social collapse planned. The only way to prevent the new administration from avoiding its promise to return power to the people is pro-liberty Americans opposing elected officials that were never drained from the swamp when they embrace globalism for the globalist plan abandoning pro-liberty legislation. How long can President Trump, his administration and America continue to endure so much subversion? There are endless criminal corrupt globalist organizations behind endless subversion's openly against America/Trump

    • CFR & Foundations behind the U.N. Agenda's 21/2030/2050
    • EU parliament
    • Planned Parenthood
    • All population control organizations
    • George Soros and everything he funds
    • The leaders of the global warming/climate change movement
    • The mainstream media in the West that are controlled by global elites.
    • The LGBT/feminist movements backed by the U.N..
    • American public education institutions.
    • The Vatican using Pope Francis openly laying the groundwork for a moral and religious case in favor of population control, all for totalitarian world government control
    • The world's largest corporations and multi-billionaires
    • Militant Islam
    • All of Obama's Czars and thousands of other globalists like Obama working openly and not openly subverting America.

    realist on February 14, 2017 , · at 2:55 pm UTC
    Folks, think about it, Trump's campaign had a hole in it from the beginning; the contradiction of Russia Vs Israel. The relationship between those two nations is paradox: Russia contradicts what Israel wants in the ME. Trump can't be pro Russia and pro Israel at the same time. If he supports Israel fully, he has to oppose Russia's involvement in Syria and Iran. Besides, The encirclement of Russia by NATO also involves Zionists. The irony is that, most Jews in Israel come from Russia and yet, they antagonize Russia. Is being anti Russia from the beginning the work of Zionists or the West? Hope some here can answer this for me. Who benefits from being Anti Russia? I believe Zionists and the West may have huge benefit from elliminating Russia so that they can scramble Russia's resource and land.

    That being said, Trump's base is his supporters, unless they come out in full force to protect him and make neocons back off, he will further be controlled by the Neocons and Zionists. Already, Trump is backing on issues such as One China policy, not having US embassy in Jerusalem (probably a signal for Zionists to oust Trump) .

    Hmm on February 14, 2017 , · at 2:58 pm UTC
    The problem of firing/getting rid of someone for being "too pro-russian" is that this empowers anti-russian paranoia, Mccartism, and you never know who is next. This is a field day for those looking for russians under the beds.

    Trump is an idiot because he endangered himself, as he too can be seen as "too pro russian". He could be next. If Flynn lost his post for being too pro-russian, why not Trump too? He could be next.

    Bro 93 on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:17 pm UTC
    Wrong!

    The deplorables don't want war and on some level (sex, "Christian values") respect Putin as a straight shooter and despise all of our crooked arrows when they make any comparison. If Trump had not said what he said about Russia and Putin during the campaign, he never would have gotten 10% as far as he got. You can't be afraid of your shadow. If you are, you're just a dead man walking, and you may as well jump into your grave and pull the lid over your coffin.

    Keep pushing on "Russia is OK with me" the McCarthy record is already severely scratched and is even a broken record with a lot of Americans, and it's becoming a sad joke to many of them. They're sick of those pulling this mind control chain. It's ridiculous, and more and more Americans realize it every day. Escalate till the chains break on many millions more, whose minds have been weak enough to put up with this nonsense for far too many decades.

    vot tak on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:02 pm UTC
    Saker

    The trump regime really should be called the pence regime, since it is obvious now that pence manages it and trump is mostly the "showman" mouth and face.

    The conversation of flynn and the Russian ambassador being the cause seems to me to be a phony reason. I speculate the real reason is something else. It could be about Russian relations, in which case, maybe flynn was actually more open to warming these, and pence/trump were not (trump having lied). They had a disagreement and flynn left.

    It also could be about something else entirely, other policies flynn was tasked to work on, even a personality clash between flynn and pence.

    It is also possible the israelis ordered flynn's resignation for reasons unknown by me. They've done this before, and this whole scenario has a strong deja vu feel. Remember Andrew Young? They got him fired in almost the exact same manner, hyping a conversation he had with a Palestinian in their zio-gay media and forcing carter to fire him. Only in Young's case, mossad spied on him and leaked info about Young's meeting with Palestinians to the zio-gay media.

    Perhaps mossad has something on flynn, they certainly spied on him. Regardless, perhaps they found out something, not necessarily to do with Russia, they didn't like. With zionazis, pet goys have to be 100% unequivocally loyal or they're out.

    ioan on February 14, 2017 , · at 8:58 pm UTC
    You know where is Netanyahu right now ? in Washington, wanting to meet with Trump.
    Ann on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:35 pm UTC
    vt – didn't you ever see the video interviews of Kay Griggs ? Military Intelligence Wife Whistleblower – look it up –

    Flynn must be involved in some of that cult stuff – its really bad – no one wants to hear about it but there's so much pedophilia of young princes – Saudis – and then they are forever silenced – and Flynn being where he is in the Military Intelligence community – must have at least known it was going on

    He's a creep and we're fortunate he's gone.

    John on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:09 pm UTC
    It's just a dispute between 2 factions of the Zionist empire with Trump representing the more cautious faction. It is good he has been defeated this way so all the fools who think he could make any deals will have those illusions crushed. Even if his faction made deals they would be broken the second his faction is pushed out of power anyway, so such deals are worthless, just like the NATO pact not moving east.
    T.C. on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:10 pm UTC
    From Reuters:

    Michael Flynn resigned late on Monday after revelations he had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump took office and misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

    "It's obvious that Flynn was forced to write the letter of resignation under a certain amount of pressure," Leonid Slutsky, head of the lower house of parliament's foreign affairs committee, was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency.

    Flynn was a strong advocate for the need for softer foreign policy toward Russia and his departure could slow Trump's pledge to improve relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    "The target was Russia-U.S. relations, undermining confidence in the new U.S. administration," Slutsky said, without specifying who he thought was responsible. (MORE)

    https://goo.gl/8mJ1P0

    Peace loving Japanese on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:12 pm UTC
    With all respect, I think the Saker blogger had been little too much in his optimism for late few months. Trump is not gone tonight, but was gone when he turned his words, in admitting "Russians were meddling with the election" right after the brief conference of intelligence agency.
    That was the very moment he surrendered. Not tonight. I was giving up on him since then. Lately he did associate with our awful dictator Shinzo Abe, why? As long as he's "asked", not by Abe, but by the people who can tell what to do to Trump.
    Alan on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:15 pm UTC
    Quite opposing view to Saker at UNZ by Philip Giraldi (Article: Two Uninspiring Choices http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/two-uninspiring-choices/ ). He thinks of Flynn rather differently. He says that "Michael Flynn the National Security Advisor and Nikki Haley as U.N. Ambassador unfortunately did manage to squeak through and will presumably be well placed to wreak havoc over the next four years". Also the same day Elliott Abrams, the certified neocon is dismissed. This tells a lot. I tend to lean towards P.Giraldi. IMO it is NOT a "huge" victory for the neocon cabal but may be quite the contrary.
    juliania on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:39 pm UTC
    Yes, I agree. It is sometimes necessary to see the persons who have said they will support your policies in action. Not only shall I await further developments on the political scene, but also further analysis from Saker. He's not above correcting his assumptions when and if that is needed, and this sudden techtonic shift in the powers that be does need further analysis. The press is rushing to interpret it one way, which has me very leery of theirs. Not for the first time.
    Carmel by the Sea on February 14, 2017 , · at 5:34 pm UTC
    Alan,

    Thank you so much for link. Philip Giraldi has always been one of those I admire greatly. Again, thank you.

    Carmel by the Sea

    Mulk on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:23 pm UTC
    Good thing too. Trump is a efin' disaster. I despise a possible president Pence, but to have someone stable at the US rudder would make me feel just a bit better. Trump is a train wreck running through more and more houses. People think they can control him, but they can't. He wants to be in control, or look like he is, even though he has no idea of what he is doing. You can explain stuff to him, but he won't listen or just doesn't understand. He's no genious, not even a business one. He is heading for tragedy.
    Marek on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:26 pm UTC
    I think Flynn was a Trojan horse planted by the neocons himself. His history shows a career full of anti-Iran sentiment and an excessive push for a harsher approach toward that country, I can't seem to see why his removal is necessarily a bad thing
    Anonymous on February 15, 2017 , · at 12:46 am UTC
    All those with anti-Iran sentiment are working for Israel's interests firstly. Flynn is one of them. As soon as they start anti-Iran rhetoric, you can immediately conclude who is behind them.
    geoff on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:46 pm UTC
    Saker, I am afraid that the only way anything will change is if the PEOPLE rise up and DEMAND change, possibly in a not entirely peaceful manner.

    We cannot expect change from within the USG. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN. Trump is not powerful enough, he is no Putin or even a Kennedy. He is clueless and the only reason he rose to power was because he wasn't Hillary.

    Trump can still be worked with. But someone on "OUR" team must get an in with his administration.

    It is the PEOPLE who must stand and demand change, demand an end to the Neocon infestation, demand an end to Imperialism, and demand an end to all regime change wars. It is the people who must demand that all those who Betrayed Humanity in their disgusting quest for power and self-aggrandizement be Punished for their crimes.

    Do not worry. We will find a way to make it happen. And do not forget – You play a very important role in this process. Maybe you will find that one day, it was kind of like a self fulfilling prophesy.

    -geoff

    Robert Draco on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:48 pm UTC
    You are premature. It will all depend on who Trump replaces him with.

    In fact Flynn had already blundered by blaming Iran for attacking a US war ship, which they didn't and called Iran the world's biggest terror sponsor when it is Saudi Arabia. Flynn could have become a liability eventually and better for him to go now rather than later and I heard ex-CIA guy Philip Giraldi talk about this in this interesting read.
    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/iran-hawks-take-the-white-house/

    twilight on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:49 pm UTC
    Once again I'll state the biggest mistake here was Putin's. Instead of ignoring the mountain of demonising press against Russia and Putin during the election of Trump, Putin allowed it to get to him, and he backed away in the aftermath of Trump's election to 'prove' Trump was his own man.

    But Putin's decision created a vacuum (which was the entire idea behind the propaganda attacks), which Deep State agents all around Trump immediately filled. Putin should have moved heaven and Earth to craft a ***day one*** alliance to "fight ISIS to destruction". Yes I know this would have been just PR nonsense, but that was all Trump had asked for daily on his election trail. With a guy like Trump, you race toward him, grasp him firmly by the hand, and promise him whatever he wants to hear. Putin did not do this.

    Now Putin's chance is dead. Trump is actually being successfully coerced to do and say anti-Russian stuff now. Nothing major, butenough to kill any hope to Trump working with Russia. And worse, the instinct in Trump to put Humanity's greatest killing machine to immediate use is being successfully exploited.

    We know Iran is the real target- not bluster over North Korea. But the bluster sets a tone that "rogue states" should not be allowed to advance their systems of self-defense. And that, of course, is the consistant cry of America against Iran. And for those of you who claim Iran is too 'sneaky' and 'wily' to give the USA an 'excuse'- well sorry you are really clueless as to how this game is played.

    Let me explain. Saddam after Gulf War 1 got down on his knees and begged the Americans to be allowed to offer them whatever they wanted in exchange for resurrecting the alliance America had with Iraq before the 'invasion' of Kuwait. His supply of oil to the USA would have been an economic boon beyond belief, so he did not get what the actual issue was. But we now know. Even tho Iraq was the idea Empire slave state, there were bigger plans in motion. The ***secular*** sunni state had to be destroyed so the skilled civilised sunnis of Iraq could be turned into slaves of the depraved wahhabi state of Saudi Arabia, and made the commanders of SA's new extremist terror hoardes- butchers that we currently know as ISIS.

    Saddam couldn't imagine in a million years that his masters in the West wanted to Middle East to burn and fall to 'sunni' (actually wahhabi) extremist savages. After all the Deep State project, since the 19th century when Britain helped the Turkish Empire to fade away, was to encourage ***secular*** civilised Islamic rule. And those rulers of islamic heritage wanted to be as civilised as their brothers in the West- they didn't want to hark back to medieval values or encourage their people to do the same. Saddam didn't know that Tony Blair and the other demons had ripped up the rule book- and were determined to create hell on Earth within a lifetime.

    PNAC made it clear that the 9/11 false flag would be the road to Iran's ending. History shows their plans slipped- especially since the invaion of Iraq had no possible excuse, creating waves of revulsion amongst the general sheeple that became an anti-war sentiment. Obama was 'accidently' elected over Clinton slowing things down even more, and leading to the acceleration of the wahhabi terror play. Libya was taken out almost pointlessly (because Libya isn't a good source of ISIS cannon fodder) simply because old animosity between the USA and Libya made it too much of a testing ground for the latter use of the same animosity between Iran and the USA.

    For most Americans- Trump above all- Libya was the 'little brother' of Iran, and now the USA has finally 'beaten up' Libya, well it is 'obvious' it is time for Iran to go down as well.

    There is but one issue now. Those Deep State demons that really run the USA have a level of power players beneath them that mostly think attacking Iran is the stupidest move possible. They can now jerk Trump around like a perfect puppet, but anyone Trump tries to use to put together the Iran war plan will hit long standing, well argued resistance. For conventional right-wing hard men, Iran is all lose and no gain. Sure, the racist psychopaths that frequently rule the zionist terror state of Israel are all for war with Iran, but this very fact is used as evidence that such a war would be utterly moronic by the right-wing thinkers of the USA.

    Iran is the immovable object, but the demons are the irresistable force. And Iran only has to make one fatal slip- without even knowing it ***is*** a slip before successful demonising anti-Iranian propaganda takes hold. Of course, the BBC and every other zionist outlet has already tried attacking Iran every which way without success so far, but successful propaganda is as 'trendy' as a pop hit so you never know when a particular mud ball will stick.

    We have a sense of this with the foul Soros HRW attack against Syria today, stating that "Syria used chemical weapons to take Allepo". The Israeli controlled French government immediately demanded UN action against Assad. Of course, the demon play in Syria is done, but anti-Syrian rhetoric is just practise for Iran.

    HRW is Soros and the US State Dept. Amnesty International is MI6. Neither is now trusted to the slightest degree by the informed, but the actions of both show current thinking and strategy of the Deep State.

    Having lost Trump,Putin must now act ***immediately*** to save Iran. Giving weapons to Iran cannot do this. Having a public formal alliaince, with Russians working on the ground in Iran can. Of course the religious leaders who rule Iran distrust Russia, and Putin must do everything he can to point out that it is Russia protection or utter destruction for Iran- and to bluntly state the ***truth** – which is if the West does attack Iran, Russia will back off and leave Iran to its fate. It is prevention or disaster,

    Robert Draco on February 14, 2017 , · at 3:53 pm UTC
    I forgot to add this ex-CIA guy to the first. Robert David Steele ..on Mike Flynn. He thinks he deserved to be fired and he basically liked Flynn.

    http://phibetaiota.net/2017/02/robert-steele-dick-cheney-not-donald-trump-orchestrated-firing-of-mike-flynn-flynn-deserved-to-be-fired-but-not-for-talking-to-russians/#more-123958

    vot tak on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:03 pm UTC
    WikiLeaks chimes in: WikiLeaks Claims Flynn's Resignation Triggered by 'Destabilization Campaign'

    https://sputniknews.com/us/201702141050674796-wikileaks-flynn-resignation/

    "Trump's National Security Advisor Michael Flynn resigns after destabilization campaign by US spies, Democrats, press https://t.co/vKlX1Tqek1
    - WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) 14 февраля 2017 г."

    Just speculation, or do they have something solid?

    vot tak on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:20 pm UTC
    A Russian take: Flynn's Resignation 'Won't Have an Impact' on Russian-US Relations

    https://sputniknews.com/politics/201702141050673917-us-russia-flynn-resignation/

    "The resignation of the US President's National Security Adviser Michael Flynn won't affect Russian-American relations because they are not shaped yet and there is, in fact, nothing to have an impact on," Fyodor Lukyanov told Sputnik.

    The political analyst further explained that it still remains unclear whether Donald Trump wanted to reset the relations with Russia with the help of either Michael Flynn or new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. However, he again reiterated that it is impossible to have an impact on something that does not yet exist.

    The expert explained that the attacks on Trump's National Security Adviser for his alleged pro-Russian position were "something made out of thin air." However he had to resign because he was not careful enough.

    He further noted that there are still chaotic developments in the Trump administration and there might be more resignations coming."

    T.C. on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:23 pm UTC
    "The White House is under attack from elements inside the intelligence community" - Dennis Kucinich

    An important interview:

    http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/02/14/kucinich-pins-flynn-leak-on-intel-community-warns-another-cold-war.html

    erichwwk on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:42 pm UTC
    Kucinich: "Be VERY careful. That's my warning this morning. WAKE UP AMERICA "

    "This isn't about whether you're for or against Donald Trump. Hello! This is about whether the American people are bystanders in a power play inside the intelligence community . and whether we can be forced to go to war with any country. ,,,, A game is being played with the security of our country. I [Dennis Kucinich] don't often share the interviews I do, but ask that you watch and share this one because it's important.

    https://www.facebook.com/denniskucinich/posts/10154592754758218

    Greg on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:34 pm UTC
    What I don't understand is this. We see and read of the power exerted by the liberal/neocon "deep state" and their abilities to disrupt and damage Trump's presidency. But in order to get where he has gotten to today, Trump must have some powerful backers too. So where are these powerful Trump supporters and what are they doing if anything?
    JJ on February 14, 2017 , · at 6:30 pm UTC
    Yup am wondering about the 200 military people said to be having Trump any news of them? Maybe preparing a counter revolution on his behalf?
    Larchmonter445 on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:36 pm UTC
    Saker, as you know very well my warnings that Flynn was the keystone, the means through which reform could come to IC, MIC, Deep State-the wombs of Khazarian Russophobia and Hegemony-I agree with you completely that your analysis is correct. It is over.

    Trump will not be able to control Pompeo or Mattis.
    Trump will not be able to penetrate the Deep State and uproot the warmongers.
    Trump will not be able to end the Hegemony.

    What he presented as stiff opening arguments against Iran and Russia are now weaponized with his signature on them. Ukraine will be on some budget line and kept viable. Syria will be a target again per Wolfowitz-Perle and Bibi.

    Where ceasefire and peace was possible we will get more war and chaos.

    ISIS will not be defeated anywhere soon. Russia will be forced to supply regular troops soon if it intends to clean out ISIS and al Nusra while it can. Or it will be bogged down (US goal for certain.)

    Now, for what we must do: keep exposing the tools and persons who removed Flynn.
    This was all at the surface of the Deep State. Most of the players were visible. No subtle, covert operation this assassination. And from that careful documentation we can keep "outing" the enemy within.

    Trump, sadly, may have bought a one-term Presidency when he let this become a neocon issue.
    His daughter and son-in-law tamping down his instincts to fight have been a huge disservice.
    Bannon, a hegemonic ideologue in foreign policy, certainly would not protect Flynn. Bannon served the Naval Intel world in his career, and nothing good has ever come out of US Naval Intel. They plotted against their own man, JFK.

    We, have, a hard choice. Despair and gnash our teeth, or continue to expose the evil operators inside the US government. Spare the Trump-bashing. He erred hugely. But it was predictable. Flynn was a wild card warrior. He was fearless and reckless in behalf of his mission. Trump sent him to the Russians. They had to know the outcome would be intense heat.

    But what was unknown, the treachery in the inner circle. Pence is fully exposed now. Trump knows this clearly. He can't share that with anyone. His circle is filled with like-minded who would serve Pence more comfortably than Trump himself.

    Pence is Brutus. Watch him as he goes to the Munich meeting. He is pure Neo-Con and a treacherous liar himself.

    No greater threat exists to Peace than a traitor to the nation and the opportunity for Detente being thrown away.

    Trump failed to protect his warrior. But the Intel agencies were withholding approvals of deputies' clearances. They had denied Robin Townley, deputy for Africa a clearance for NSC. This signaled that they would undermine Flynn and Trump every day like the Dems have with the nominations and street riots. It was all Trump could do to try to get control of things. Messaging was scrambled, forward movement was stalled. He had to jettison Flynn. But it was all on him. He didn't control Pence and marginalize him. He faced Pence and blinked.

    Sad. Maybe Tragic. But, Trump has comeback potential. It just won't be with the Intel Community.
    He has to find leverage from elsewhere. Probably, why he's talking to Chris Christie. I suspect DOJ and Sessions is one weapon. Maybe they will bring Christie in to DOJ, if he has a huge role, and use him to prosecute the leakers in Deep State. It's only a guess.

    Listen to Pence, watch Mattis. And know that Pompeo is more of the same in CIA.

    Also, Kelly in DHS is weak and a go-along general. He'll test the wind.

    What has happened is Trump thought he had built a citadel using Flynn and the generals around him, with Mattis and Kelly. It has all been turned into a prison, and Trump is hostage.

    JJ on February 14, 2017 , · at 5:05 pm UTC
    http://theduran.com/these-8-neocons-are-gearing-up-to-destroy-president-trump-and-make-america-bomb-again/

    background to these people

    blue on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:49 pm UTC
    Ahh an article on demonology at the Duran. (Check out pictures of Abrams - clearly a creature from the netherworld.)
    Demons, vampires, goblins and orcs, the occasional ogre.
    Some crazies are made to live in the attic, while these prefer the basement and other underground abodes.
    About the same gang as always.
    (I see dead people. They are everywhere. They walk around like everyone else. They don't even know they are dead. - The living dead - all psychopaths, surviving on human blood, so to speak.)

    When Trump started loading up his cabinet with these ghouls and their associates or rivals it became obvious where it was going. As I said once before, the doctrine that states have no friends but rather interests this was saying the state is run by psychopaths, as that is precisely the mind set of psychopaths, individually or collectively.

    Traits:
    http://www.psych2go.net/10-traits-of-a-psychopath/
    http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/15850/1/Characteristics-of-a-Sociopath.html

    also Forbes article
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-disturbing-link-between-psychopathy-and-leadership/#10c4eca52740
    The Disturbing Link Between Psychopathy And Leadership
    [but the percentages seem to be way too low, and the current system tends to weed out non-psychos: wolves like to hang out with other wolves, not with sheep, whom they munch on for snacks]

    Jean-David on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:36 pm UTC
    If Trump understands this, and its implications, I suppose he will resign in frustration. Does anyone think he will have the political and emotional stamina to persevere?
    anon21 on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:45 pm UTC
    If one follows the logic that the globalist cabal touting the female was bent to attack Russia in early 2017, then the Trump election may has interrupted the schedule, but not, evidently, the plan, the war-plan, itself. They never gave up power

    The implication is that the war was scheduled, and still is.

    Repeat. The implication is that the march to war is ongoing and deliberate.

    Ralph on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:52 pm UTC
    Well Saker, I'm going contrarian, which does not necessarily mean 180 degrees. I viewed Flynn's appointment as plus/negative, positive re Russia, negative re Iran. It's still potentially positive re Russia as Tillerson is still in. To write off Trump so early in his Presidency is really not very helpful, considering the monumental task he has of taking on the very corrupt establishment, did you think there would be no blowback? Also, clearly Trump is inexperienced politically and doesn't know all the ins and outs of the political establishment in DC, so has to find his feet.
    A big plus is that we have moved away from warfare and potentially a nuclear holocaust – if anybody thinks that mere radioactive fallout from exploding warheads is survivable hasn't taken into account something which is far more deadly, how about many more nuclear power reactor failures like Fukushima, or worse?

    Another point which has been overlooked is that he got rid of nuland – or at least she couldn't work under him – either way I see that as major (personally) together with the much less hostile if not almost indifference to the Donbass, with kiev in turmoil. It was reported that a US warship won't now visit Odessa – small but unmistakeable changes happening.

    simon wagstaff on February 14, 2017 , · at 4:54 pm UTC
    There is an old saying; "When you're up to your ass in alligators it's easy to forget your original intention was to drain the swamp."

    The single greatest lesson I learned in a decade of trying (and failing) to change national policy is that success is measured in inches, not miles. Bureaucratic inertia is a highly under-rated force in its own right. Real change can only be generational. Unless and until there is a "b" team of keenly aware and circumspect underlings who see the problems and understand the patience required to make incremental change, there will be no meaningful change.

    Success isn't home runs (although most who desire positive change would welcome the odd one). Real success is bases-on-balls, running out infield hits and bloop singles and advancing runners.

    Trump must remember business 101 under-promise and over-deliver. If he wants to keep the tens of millions who voted for him engaged and positive he must deliver on small promises. I am dismayed that so many here see the "beginning of the end" instead of "the end of the beginning".

    Flynn (more than most) knew the rules going in and he blew it. His sins are sins of over-reach and forgetting the basics of protocol. His sacrifice will encourage others to step up. The dream of untangling the web is not dead. Too many millions (arguably billions) demand meaningful, positive change those who have faith understand it will be a slow and sometimes painful process.

    Dear Saker, don't lose your faith

    Talks-to-Cats on February 14, 2017 , · at 6:22 pm UTC
    Real success is bases-on-balls, running out infield hits and bloop singles and advancing runners.

    @Simon Wagstaff -

    Allow me a moment of comedic relief in this tragic drama ?

    This is true as a general principle. But somebody PLEASE get through to Clint Hurdle (Pittsburgh Pirates Manager) that wasting outs by bunting runners from first to second predictably results in them being stranded at third.

    Small advances are potentially valuable, but when you run out of outs to achieve them they were mistakes.

    Marnie on February 14, 2017 , · at 5:03 pm UTC
    if there is any reason to save the Trump presidency, Pence needs to be isolated asap – w/removal of all Republican loyalists within WH including Priebus. More to come re Pence role on how this all unfolded. All politics is smoke and mirrors ie cabinet appointees – watch what we do; not what we say. Tillerson and Sessions esp forced to grovel by R's and Dems –

    One benefit to all this has been public revelation of Dems as partners with the Deep State parties. The true depth of their betrayal to the country is now undeniable as we already knew R's could not be trusted. ie payback coming re Lizzie Warren's vitriol on Sessions. her poll numbers for 2018 election not looking good.

    Cynthia – if those suggested names are viable, keep to yourself so as to avoid public exposure at this point perhaps best messenger may be Ivanka
    – .

    Outlaw Historian on February 14, 2017 , · at 5:05 pm UTC
    The entirety of tRump's foreign policy doesn't revolve around Flynn's status. Has tRump decided to reinstate the TTP and TTIP as "trade" policy goals? Decided to not renegotiate/pull out of NAFTA and other so-called trade pacts? Pull back/reconsolidate the Empire of Bases? Attempt to totally disrupt China's OBOR or Russia's EEU through the use of terrorist proxies as HRC's Neocons planned? Then there's Flynn's illogical hatred of Iran and the complications that posed for reestablishing cordial relations with Russia. And those points are just a few of many.

    IMO, Saker and other commentators have reacted in knee-jerk fashion to Flynn's resignation, for he didn't represent the be-all/end-all of tRump's foreign policy agenda. I'm far more disturbed by many of tRump's cabinet choices plus the fact that they were confirmed despite their lies and criminal actions, which is what's provoked most of the resistance to the current national government–congress especially.

    Dario on February 14, 2017 , · at 5:11 pm UTC
    yes, and there's more Apparently the media makes their bets on VP Mike Pence very similar to what happened in Brazil same method, anyway

    from Politico.com:

    "Pence molds the government in his own image

    Pence and his team bring an entirely different ethos and set of values to the administration."

    http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/how-does-mike-pence-view-government-234956

    JJ on February 14, 2017 , · at 7:35 pm UTC
    Alexander Mercouris posted article on the Duran believes Trump's nominations cabinet picks will be approved eventually

    [Feb 14, 2017] Deep state is way too strong and Trump rebellion , if such existed, can be squashed with the help of big guns of NYT, Wapo and Bloomberg charged with good old compromat

    Trump has no party behind him. And he is no FDR to hit establishment with the full force of Federal Administration
    Notable quotes:
    "... This not about "how easy to convict Trump". This is about who is the real boss in Washington, DC. ..."
    "... Today's Neocon victory might well as huge event as Trump victory. Now it is Trump defeat. I think it's over for Trump... He did not last long, did he ? From now on he might well be just "yet another puppet". Much like Obama, or Bush II, or Clinton. ..."
    "... Neocons are celebrating. That's for sure. Deep state is way too strong and "Trump rebellion", if such existed, in now squashed with the help of big guns of NYT, Wapo and Bloomberg charged with good old "compromat". ..."
    Feb 14, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    im1dc : February 14, 2017 at 06:56 PM

    Margaret Carlson rips Trump not for lying but for covering up Flynn

    My point confirmed!

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/14/flynn-s-the-first-casualty-of-trump-s-unsustainable-disinformation-campaign.html

    "Flynn's the First Casualty of Trump's Unsustainable Disinformation Campaign"

    'In this White House, honesty is not the best policy but one to be considered among other possibilities"

    by Margaret Carlson...02.14.17...2:06 PM ET

    "General Michael Flynn didn't resign Monday night because he lied about his calls with the Russian ambassador and was vulnerable to blackmail. He resigned because the public found out about the lie and keeping him, at long last, became "unsustainable" for the Trump administration.

    Just a few hours earlier, it was sustainable. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said so. The president, she said Monday afternoon, had "full confidence" in Flynn. Another White House official confirmed this to Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker who reported, also on Monday, that Trump, knowing what he knew, wasn't going to decide about Flynn for a few more days.

    What changed? Throw out the old saw it's the cover-up that gets you. The White House ceded Tuesday that it knew about the cover-up for weeks. It's the dribbling out of the details of Flynn's mission to coddle Russia-in keeping with Trump's policy-that presented a clear and present danger that could only be staunched if Flynn were let go.

    But they want us to believe it was about the lying. At his daily briefing Tuesday, Sean Spicer said it was "plain and simple a matter of trust." But in this whole mess, lying is a lesser included offense, one which this White House is particularly unsuited to cast stones at. Honesty is not the best policy there but one to be considered among other possibilities.

    There would have been no resignation if what Flynn said in the taped calls, and White House knowledge of it, hadn't been exposed late Monday in a Washington Post piece. The White House counsel-and likely others in the Administration-had been told by then Acting Attorney General Sally Yates that Flynn had actually made multiple calls, during the transition and going back to the campaign, to the ambassador of a sworn adversary of the United States. Flynn's message to the ambassador was that President Vladimir Putin might want to hold off on retaliating for sanctions imposed by then President Barack Obama for hacking the U.S. elections. It wouldn't be that bad under the new president.

    Yates' information was reportedly weeks late getting to the White House because FBI Director James Comey, who seems to be everywhere these days, asked her to hold off because of his ongoing investigation into contacts between Trump associates and Russia. But after they'd been told, Spicer put out the opposite of what the Justice Department knew to be true: that Flynn had discussed Christmas greetings, among other things, not sanctions in his calls. With that disinformation (Spicer likely didn't know the truth), Comey's request fell by the wayside and Yates, since fired by Trump for not backing him up on his travel ban but perhaps for this, proceeded to inform Trump White House counsel Donald McGahn. (McGhan, Spicer said Tuesday, immediately informed Trump.)

    Whatever Flynn said, we know Putin took his outreach to heart and let the sanctions pass virtually unnoticed. Since the calls, we might ask who has done more to coddle Russia, Flynn or the president. Trump has kept praising Putin to the point of accusing the country he now leads of killing its own people as Putin has done to his internal enemies. The two countries, in Trump's telling, are morally equivalent.

    To the excuses for why Flynn was let go, add "leaks" which Trump blamed in a tweet for all that's wrong in Washington.

    On TV, Trump surrogates including former military officer Carl Higbee, who's been interviewed for a high level White House job, have dressed up the resignation in the usual nothing's-been-proven talk about how Flynn had become a "distraction" and that this is a "rough town for good people." Actually, that's true but not the case here as few people not on Trump's payroll thought Flynn was the right choice.

    The only reason Flynn got appointed to the most sensitive job in the Administration is that he is a crony of Trump who stuck by him during the campaign and who could be trusted to do his bidding without asking too many questions. If National Security Adviser were a post that required Senate confirmation, Republicans, who have acquiesced to about everything else, would have balked. By a margin even wider than those who dare to question the month-old presidency-that is Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake-Flynn wouldn't have made it.

    With Flynn's ouster, the Wall Trump was actually been able to build around himself may crumble. Until now calls for an independent investigation into the Russian hacking have been rejected. Now, that investigation is likely to proceed, along with McCain's effort to codify Russian sanctions. Speaker Paul Ryan may eventually grow a spine. Amid a running joke at his Tuesday press conference wishing wives of the leadership a Happy Valentine's Day, Ryan was pinned down to admitting Flynn was rightly let go. Look for the heat to be turned up on the inquiry into the ties between Russia and Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

    Just maybe there may be less flagrant lying now from this administration. This last weekend, Trump's anointed wunderkind Stephen Miller was sent out on his first Sunday morning talk show appearances. He regurgitated Trump's insistence that there's rampant voter fraud in the country and a costly investigation should ensue. Miller brought up the fact-free claim that hordes of Massachusetts voters drove to New Hampshire to cast illegal ballots in November. Fresh denunciations of that claim came afterwards from former New Hampshire GOP chair Fergus Cullen and from current New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, a scion of the multigeneration Republican loyalists, who said it was false. Don't think Miller was freelancing.

    The only praise for Miller came from Trump himself who lavished him with it. In this White House, lying is not a firing offense.

    Trump is having a hard time in his public effort to replace Spicer and perhaps his chief of staff in an effort to fine one single person with the experience and maturity to mind the store. That looks easy compared to replacing Flynn. Trump has made it clear he won't hire anyone who's criticized him. In filling the open national security adviser position, that leaves almost no one."

    ilsm -> im1dc... , February 14, 2017 at 07:12 PM
    What "public"? Not the one which elected most of the state governments. Maybe the one which pushed Bernie aside for no convictions Clinton.

    How easy to convict Trump and his while HRC was always innocent and picked upon.....

    ilsm -> im1dc... , February 14, 2017 at 07:12 PM
    What "public"? Not the one which elected most of the state governments. Maybe the one which pushed Bernie aside for no convictions Clinton.

    How easy to convict Trump and his while HRC was always innocent and picked upon.....

    libezkova said in reply to ilsm... , February 14, 2017 at 07:37 PM
    "How easy to convict Trump and his while HRC was always innocent and picked upon....."

    This not about "how easy to convict Trump". This is about who is the real boss in Washington, DC.

    Today's Neocon victory might well as huge event as Trump victory. Now it is Trump defeat. I think it's over for Trump... He did not last long, did he ? From now on he might well be just "yet another puppet". Much like Obama, or Bush II, or Clinton.

    There was a dream that with the election of Trump neocons will be booted from Washington, DC by peaceful means via electoral mechanisms or at least their influence will be cut. It was a high time to do this clean up, anyway. They outlived their usefulness long ago (if they were useful ever). This dream now is probably over. Wolfowitz, Perle, Ledeen, Robert Kagan and Co are back.

    For nationalists and "nationally oriented part of US capitalists" now the choice is very difficult.

    libezkova -> im1dc...
    Neocons are celebrating. That's for sure. Deep state is way too strong and "Trump rebellion", if such existed, in now squashed with the help of big guns of NYT, Wapo and Bloomberg charged with good old "compromat".

    After losing Flint Trump is done.

    The problem that Trump is facing is that now he does not have any viable support to counterbalance neocon dominated faction of intelligence services.

    Essentially Trump task was impossible from the very beginning. Most of the Washington DC neocon nests needed to be cleaned. And that is much more difficult than Hercules clean up of the Augean Stables

    http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/stables.html
    == quote ==
    For the fifth labor, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to clean up King Augeas' stables.

    Hercules knew this job would mean getting dirty and smelly, but sometimes even a hero has to do these things. Then Eurystheus made Hercules' task even harder: he had to clean up after the cattle of Augeas in a single day.

    Now King Augeas owned more cattle than anyone in Greece. Some say that he was a son of one of the great gods, and others that he was a son of a mortal; whosever son he was, Augeas was very rich, and he had many herds of cows, bulls, goats, sheep and horses.
    ... ... ...

    [Feb 14, 2017] Ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times!

    Notable quotes:
    "... Flynn's sin was inferring to the Russian ambassador that senselessly pushing Russia into a corner for Vicky Nuland might end. ..."
    Feb 14, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    There's that notorious ancient Chinese curse: 'May you live in interesting times!'

    Sadly, according to Wikipedia:

    Despite being widely attributed as a Chinese curse, there is no equivalent expression in Chinese. The nearest related Chinese expression is "寧為太平犬,莫做亂離人" (něng wéi tŕipíng quǎn, mň zuň luŕn lí rén), which is usually translated as "Better to be a dog in a peaceful time, than to be a human in a chaotic (warring) period."

    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , February 14, 2017 at 07:00 PM
    It s reputed the Chinese kangji for crisis is: two words 'opportunity and danger'.
    Fred C. Dobbs -> im1dc... , February 14, 2017 at 04:41 PM
    "May you live in interesting times" is an English expression purporting to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. Despite being so common in English as to be known as "the Chinese curse", the saying is apocryphal and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced. ...

    Evidence that the phrase was in use as early as 1936 is provided in a memoir written by Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British Ambassador to China in 1936 and 1937, and published in 1949. He mentions that before he left England for China in 1936 a friend told him of a Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times". ...

    http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/May_you_live_in_interesting_times

    (I'm sure all remember Sir
    Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen.)

    ilsm -> im1dc... , February 14, 2017 at 07:06 PM
    There is a lot of pity party nitpicking going on.

    When Trump gets the peace prize and talks about starting wars to stop unjust peace and nation build with no success.....

    Flynn's sin was inferring to the Russian ambassador that senselessly pushing Russia into a corner for Vicky Nuland might end.

    Why the Russians are doing the new GLCMs is perfectly reasonable from their perspective. It is called looking out for your country, which US is doing with blood all over but US is the exceptional shining city on the hill.

    And if Trump is a war criminal W. and Obama better look out for the Haig coming after them.

    [Feb 12, 2017] Trump is now assigned to be as designated scapegoat for all blunders of three previous neoliberal administrations by three Deep State wholly-owned subsidiaries: Bloomberg, NYT and Wapo

    Notable quotes:
    "... Bloomberg, like WaPo and NYT, is "a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State" ..."
    "... Thank God they stopped their Putin-did-it nonsense. Now they have found something new along the lines Trump-did-it. Both those attempts to control the narrative are false and dishonest. ..."
    "... I understand that Trump is now assigned to be as designated scapegoat for all blunders of three previous neoliberal administrations. ..."
    Feb 12, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    im1dc : February 12, 2017 at 07:44 PM

    The Tax stuff is maybe, this is happening now

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-12/america-s-biggest-creditors-dump-treasuries-in-warning-to-trump

    "America's Biggest Creditors Dump Treasuries in Warning to Trump"

    by Brian Chappatta...February 12, 2017...5:00 PM EST

    > Japanese investors cull U.S. government debt by most since '13

    > Currency-hedged returns were worst on record last quarter

    "In the age of Trump, America's biggest foreign creditors are suddenly having second thoughts about financing the U.S. government.

    In Japan, the largest holder of Treasuries, investors culled their stakes in December by the most in almost four years, the Ministry of Finance's most recent figures show. What's striking is the selling has persisted at a time when going abroad has rarely been so attractive. And it's not just the Japanese. Across the world, foreigners are pulling back from U.S. debt like never before.

    From Tokyo to Beijing and London, the consensus is clear: few overseas investors want to step into the $13.9 trillion U.S. Treasury market right now. Whether it's the prospect of bigger deficits and more inflation under President Donald Trump or higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve, the world's safest debt market seems less of a sure thing -- particularly after the upswing in yields since November. And then there is Trump's penchant for saber rattling, which has made staying home that much easier.

    "It may be more difficult than usual for Japanese to invest in Treasuries and the dollar this year because of political uncertainty," said Kenta Inoue, chief strategist for overseas bond investments at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo. "Treasury yields may rise rapidly again in the near future, which will continue to discourage them from buying aggressively."

    Nobody is saying that foreigners will abandon Treasuries altogether. After all, they still hold $5.94 trillion, or roughly 43 percent of the U.S. government debt market. (Though that's down from 56 percent in 2008.) A significant drawdown can harm major holders like Japan and China as much as it does the U.S.

    And, of course, homegrown demand has of late been able to absorb the pickup in overseas selling..."

    libezkova -> im1dc...
    im1dc,

    Here is the link https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2017-02-12/america-s-biggest-creditors-dump-treasuries-in-warning-to-trump )

    Bloomberg, like WaPo and NYT, is "a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State"

    Thank God they stopped their Putin-did-it nonsense. Now they have found something new along the lines Trump-did-it. Both those attempts to control the narrative are false and dishonest.

    I understand that Trump is now assigned to be as designated scapegoat for all blunders of three previous neoliberal administrations.

    But can you please ask yourself two very simple questions:

    1. Who and how accumulated that much debt?
    2. Who did run the wars of neoliberal empire expansion to the tune of five trillion dollars?

    Was it Trump?

    I would greatly appreciated if you can answer them in the reply to this post. Or, even better, make some pause in posting neoliberal propaganda.

    [Feb 12, 2017] America Versus the Deep State by James Howard Kunstler

    Notable quotes:
    "... Support James Howard Kunstler blog by visiting Jim's Patreon Page -- ..."
    "... The New York Times ..."
    "... Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds ..."
    "... Did the Russians make Hillary Clinton look bad? Or did Hillary Clinton manage to do that herself? The NSA propaganda was designed as a smokescreen to conceal the veracity of the Wikileaks releases. Whoever actually rooted out the DNC and Podesta emails for Wikileaks ought to get the Pulitizer Prize for the outstanding public service of disclosing exactly how dishonest the Hillary operation was. ..."
    "... The story may have climaxed with Trump's Friday NSA briefing, the heads of the various top intel agencies all assembled in one room to emphasize the solemn authority of the Deep State's power. ..."
    "... This hulking security apparatus has become a menace to the Republic. ..."
    "... Whether Trump himself is a menace to the Republic remains to be seen. Certainly he is the designated bag-holder for all the economic and financial depravity of several preceding administrations. When the markets blow, do you suppose the Russians will be blamed for that? Did Boris Yeltsin repeal the Glass-Steagall Act? Was Ben Bernanke a puppet of Putin? No, these actions and actors were homegrown American. For more than thirty years, we've been borrowing too much money so we can pretend to afford living in a blue-light-special demolition derby. And now we can't do that anymore. The physics of capital will finally assert itself. ..."
    "... perhaps it's a good thing that the American people for the moment cannot tell exactly what the fuck is going on in this country, because from that dismal place there is nowhere to go but in the direction of clarity. ..."
    Feb 12, 2017 | kunstler.com

    Support James Howard Kunstler blog by visiting Jim's Patreon Page --

    The bamboozlement of the public is nearly complete. The Deep State has persuaded 80 percent of Americans that all news is propaganda, especially the news emanating from the Deep State's own intel department. They're still shooting for 100 percent. The fakest of all "fake news" stories turns out to be "Russia Hacks Election." It was reported conclusively Saturday on the front page of The New York Times , a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State:

    Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds

    WASHINGTON - President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a vast cyberattack aimed at denying Hillary Clinton the presidency and installing Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office, the nation's top intelligence agencies said in an extraordinary report they delivered on Friday to Mr. Trump.

    You can be sure that this is now the "official" narrative aimed at the history books, sealing the illegitimacy of Trump's election. It was served up with no direct proof, only the repeated "assertions" that it was so. In fact, it's just this repetition of assertions-without-proof that defines propaganda. It can also be interpreted as a declaration of war against an incoming president. The second civil war now takes shape: It begins inside the groaning overgrown apparatus of the government itself. Perhaps after that it spreads to the WalMart parking lots that have become America's new town square. (WalMart sells pitchforks and patio torches.)

    Did the Russians make Hillary Clinton look bad? Or did Hillary Clinton manage to do that herself? The NSA propaganda was designed as a smokescreen to conceal the veracity of the Wikileaks releases. Whoever actually rooted out the DNC and Podesta emails for Wikileaks ought to get the Pulitizer Prize for the outstanding public service of disclosing exactly how dishonest the Hillary operation was.

    The story may have climaxed with Trump's Friday NSA briefing, the heads of the various top intel agencies all assembled in one room to emphasize the solemn authority of the Deep State's power. Trump worked a nice piece of ju-jitsu afterward, pretending to accept the finding as briefly and hollowly as possible and promising to "look into the matter" after January 20 th - when he can tear a new asshole in the NSA. I hope he does. This hulking security apparatus has become a menace to the Republic.

    Whether Trump himself is a menace to the Republic remains to be seen. Certainly he is the designated bag-holder for all the economic and financial depravity of several preceding administrations. When the markets blow, do you suppose the Russians will be blamed for that? Did Boris Yeltsin repeal the Glass-Steagall Act? Was Ben Bernanke a puppet of Putin? No, these actions and actors were homegrown American. For more than thirty years, we've been borrowing too much money so we can pretend to afford living in a blue-light-special demolition derby. And now we can't do that anymore. The physics of capital will finally assert itself.

    What we're actually seeing in the current ceremonial between the incoming Trump and the outgoing Obama is the smoldering wreckage of the Democratic Party (which I'm still unhappily enrolled in), and flames spreading into the Republican party - as idiots such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain beat their war drums against Russia. The suave Mr. Obama is exiting the scene on a low wave of hysteria and the oafish Trump rolls in on the cloudscape above, tweeting his tweets from on high, and perhaps it's a good thing that the American people for the moment cannot tell exactly what the fuck is going on in this country, because from that dismal place there is nowhere to go but in the direction of clarity.

    ... ... ...

    [Feb 10, 2017] Ilargi The Media – Fake and False and Just Plain Nonsense naked capitalism

    Notable quotes:
    "... By Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor of Automatic Earth. Originally published at Automatic Earth ..."
    "... British House of Commons Speaker John Bercow can play that game too. He has loudly advertized his refusal to let Trump address UK politicians in the House of Commons and the House of Lords: "An address by a foreign leader to both houses of Parliament is not an automatic right, it is an earned honor.." It's an honor recently gifted to the likes of China President Xi Jinping and the Emir of Kuwait. Fine and upstanding gentlemen in the tradition Britain so likes, nothing like the American President whom he accuses of racism and sexism. ..."
    "... The political/media black hole exists in many other countries too; we are truly entering a whole new phase in both domestic and global affairs. That is what allows for the Trumps and Le Pens of the world to appeal to people; there is nobody else left that people can have any faith in. The system(s) are broken beyond repair, and anyone perceived as belonging to them will be cast aside. Not all at the same time, but all of them nonetheless. ..."
    "... my favorite dump on trump was the times article about the special ops raid in yemen. the obama team planned it, trump pulled the trigger. now we learn the yemen government is against special ops raid. (yemen has a government?) we also learn from the times that obama wouldn't have gone through with the raid because too risky! So saint obama is the good killer, trump the bad killer. it makes you sympathetic to trump. but i think alot of us thought trump would calm down some once in office. calling judiciary names, saying they can't even understand concepts that a "bad high school student" can, is not, what's the word, adult? and you can't ignore the sinister intent behind the muslim ban–it's based on propaganda and fear–it's provenance is neocon. ..."
    "... In complete agreement with you about the dump trump article praising saint obama to the skies because obama allegedly "refused" to OK the special ops raid on Yemen, but Trump did. LIke, THIS time obama "refused" to do it? Why? Speculation is futile, but my speculation is that Obama held off in order to have it fall on Trump. Then Obama could skippity do dah off into the sunset with his burnished halo in tact. ..."
    "... Following Disturbed Voter's comment above – we can usefully distinguish 3 different levels of dishonesty by how hard they are to detect: ..."
    "... Level 1 – the everyday liar/hypocrite whose dishonesty we notice over time by observing that what they do is not consistent with what they say, ..."
    "... Level 2- the regular criminal who hides his honesty from public view, to profit from it, but can be caught by effective law enforcement, and ..."
    "... Level 3- the State Intelligence agency with extreme levels of funding, novel tech. capabilities, secrecy, & ability to ignore or even control law enforcement and large chunks of the public mass media. ..."
    "... It's the Level 3 category that society has become relatively defenseless against. Alternative media carries report after report on how the Iraq War was phony, how the US created al Qaeda and ISIS, how Cheney planned to invade Iraq and 6 other Middle East nations on Sept. 20, 2 ..."
    "... One word that describes our precious country is incompetence. We have gone from being the 'we-can-do-it' nation that put a man on the Moon to the 'hire a Mexican to do it' nation that cannot find its ass with both hands. The fact of our dysfunction and the country's reliance on migrant labor are what gives form to the efforts of Donald Trump. Yet he acts against himself: he is the lazy-man of American politics who requires others to do his heavy lifting. This does not mean physical labor but instead the struggle to become clear in the mind, to craft out of disparate- and contradictory elements a policy outline or philosophy of governing. This is never attempted, it is too difficult, instead there is the recycling of old, bankrupt memes. The candidate's absence of effort leaves a residue of personality: Trump is a blank page upon which others paint in the sketch, an actor who aims to meet (diminished) public expectations and nothing more, sound and fury significant of nothing in particular. ..."
    "... . But our problem is not called Donald Trump. And we need to stop pretending that it is. We are the problem. We allow our governments to tell our armies to bomb and drone innocent people while we watch cooking shows. We have believed, as long as we've been alive, whatever the media feed us, without any critical thought, which we reserve for choosing our next holiday destination ..."
    Feb 10, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Posted on February 9, 2017 by Yves Smith Yves here. In keeping with the spirit of this post, an Emerson College study found that the American public trusts Trump more than the media . And if I interpret him correctly, Ilargi's post has a small off-key note: a tomato is indeed a fruit.

    By Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor of Automatic Earth. Originally published at Automatic Earth

    Two and a half weeks after the inauguration, and yes it's only been that long, the media still don't seem to have learned a single thing. They help the Trump campaign on an almost hourly basis by parroting whatever things, invariably judged as crazy, he says. One day it's that negative polls are all fake news, the next it's some list of underreported terror events. All of it gets an avalanche of attention provided by the very people who claim to be against Trump, but greatly help his cause by doing so.

    Not a single thing learned. If Trump tweets tomorrow that tomatoes are really fruits and he's going to have someone draw up a law to make them so, or that Lego should be recognized as an official building material in order to have the Danes, too, pay for the wall, it will be on the front page of every paper and the opening item for every TV news show. The crazier he makes them, the more serious they are taken. The echo chamber is so eager to incessantly repeat to itself and all its inhabitants that he's a crazy dude, it's beyond embarrassing.

    And it takes us ever further away, and rapidly too, from any serious discussion about serious issues, the one very thing that the Trump empire desperately calls for. The press should simply ignore the crazy stuff and focus on what's real, but they can't bring themselves to do so for fear of losing ratings and ad revenues. All Trump needs to do, and that's not a joke, is to fart or burp into their echo chamber and they'll all be happy and giddy and all excited and self-satisfied. A spectacle to behold if ever there was one.

    British House of Commons Speaker John Bercow can play that game too. He has loudly advertized his refusal to let Trump address UK politicians in the House of Commons and the House of Lords: "An address by a foreign leader to both houses of Parliament is not an automatic right, it is an earned honor.." It's an honor recently gifted to the likes of China President Xi Jinping and the Emir of Kuwait. Fine and upstanding gentlemen in the tradition Britain so likes, nothing like the American President whom he accuses of racism and sexism.

    The racism part ostensibly is a reaction to Trump's Muslim ban, which, nutty though it is, is not a Muslim ban because most Muslims are not affected by it, and besides, 'Muslim' is not a race. So maybe Bercow would care to explain the 'racism' bit. Has anyone seen the British press pressuring him to do so? Or, alternatively, has anyone seen a thorough analysis of the British role, though its military and its weapons manufacturers, in the premature deaths in the Middle East and North Africa of many thousands of men, women and children belonging to the Muslim 'race'? Not me.

    The 'sexism' accusation refers to Trump's utterances on for instance the Billy Bush tape(s), and by all means let's get the Donald to comment on that. But this comes from a man who speaks as an official representative of the Queen of a country where child sex abuse is a national sport, from politics to churches to football, where literally thousands of children are trying to speak up and testify, after having been silenced, ignored and ridiculed for years, about the unspeakable experiences in their childhood. Surely someone who because of his job description gets to speak in the name of the Queen can be expected to address the behavior of her own subjects before that of strangers.

    Yeah, that Trump guy is a real terrible person. And he should not be allowed to speak to a chamber full of people directly responsible for the death of huge numbers of children in far away sandboxes, for or the abuse of them at home. After all, we're all good Christians and the good book teaches us about "the beam out of thine own eye". So we're good to go.

    What this really tells you is to what extent the political systems in the US and the UK, along with the media that serve them, have turned into a massive void, a vortex, a black hole from which any reflection, criticism or self-awareness can no longer escape. By endlessly and relentlessly pointing to someone, anyone, outside of their own circle of 'righteousness' and political correctness, they have all managed to implant one view of reality in their voters and viewers, while at the same time engaging in the very behavior they accuse the people of that they point to. For profit.

    Child sex abuse has been a staple of British society for a long time, we're talking at least decades. Only now is it starting, but only starting, to be recognized as the vile problem it is. But still many Britons feel entirely justified in demonizing a man who once talked about touching the genitals of grown women. If that did happen against their will, it's repulsive. But still, there's that beam, guys. Read your bible.

    The political/media black hole exists in many other countries too; we are truly entering a whole new phase in both domestic and global affairs. That is what allows for the Trumps and Le Pens of the world to appeal to people; there is nobody else left that people can have any faith in. The system(s) are broken beyond repair, and anyone perceived as belonging to them will be cast aside. Not all at the same time, but all of them nonetheless.

    Whether you call the menu the people have been fed, fake or false or just plain nonsense, it makes no difference. The British House of Commons Speaker may not be such a bad guy inside, he's probably just another victim of the falsehoods, denials and deceit spread 24/7. The difference between them and ordinary citizens is that Her Majesty's representatives in the political field MUST know. They get paid good salaries to represent the Queen's subjects, and looking the other way as children get assaulted and raped does not fit their job description.

    That goes for representatives of the church (i.e. Jesus) just as much of course, and for the execs at the BBC, but about as many of those people are behind bars as there are bankers. For anyone at all at any of these institutions to now speak with great indignation about Trump's alleged racism and sexism is the very core of all of their problems, the very reason why so many turn their backs on them. It shows that the very core or our societies is rotten, and the rot is spreading.

    We are facing a lot of problems, all of us, in many different ways, financially, politically, morally. But our problem is not called Donald Trump. And we need to stop pretending that it is. We are the problem. We allow our governments to tell our armies to bomb and drone innocent people while we watch cooking shows. We have believed, as long as we've been alive, whatever the media feed us, without any critical thought, which we reserve for choosing our next holiday destination.

    The longer this braindead attitude prevails, the worse things will get, and the more Trumps will surface as leaders of their respective countries. And the longer the attitude prevails, the more anger we will spread in those parts of the world that do not belong to our 'chosen' societies. And for that we will have only ourselves to blame. Not Trump.

    Disturbed Voter , February 9, 2017 at 3:14 am

    Citizens and politicians are in a social compact, so it is said. Both sides may have defaulted on the agreement, something the Enlightenment didn't anticipate. In the modern era of triangulation, opposition parties, that used to keep each other relatively honest, no longer do that. In the modern era of media consolidation, opposition newspapers, that used to keep each other relatively honest, no longer do that. Be are being suffocated by de facto bi-partisanship, that is just a shadow play of its former partisanship. The status quo has gone stale.

    geoffrey gray , February 9, 2017 at 3:37 am

    my favorite dump on trump was the times article about the special ops raid in yemen. the obama team planned it, trump pulled the trigger. now we learn the yemen government is against special ops raid. (yemen has a government?) we also learn from the times that obama wouldn't have gone through with the raid because too risky! So saint obama is the good killer, trump the bad killer. it makes you sympathetic to trump. but i think alot of us thought trump would calm down some once in office. calling judiciary names, saying they can't even understand concepts that a "bad high school student" can, is not, what's the word, adult? and you can't ignore the sinister intent behind the muslim ban–it's based on propaganda and fear–it's provenance is neocon.

    RUKidding , February 9, 2017 at 10:43 am

    In complete agreement with you about the dump trump article praising saint obama to the skies because obama allegedly "refused" to OK the special ops raid on Yemen, but Trump did. LIke, THIS time obama "refused" to do it? Why? Speculation is futile, but my speculation is that Obama held off in order to have it fall on Trump. Then Obama could skippity do dah off into the sunset with his burnished halo in tact.

    Gah.

    Agree with the second part of your comment, too. I wish Trump would behave differently. The comment about the judiciary was incredibly wrong and also very stupid. His fervent fans may well clap and cheer for that, but Trump is painting himself into some corners by behaving that way. The Judiciary and lawyers – a powerful group in this nation, for better or worse – simply aren't going to take that laying down. Although I'm sure the judiciary will (mostly) strive for objective impartiality.

    The stupid media would serve themselves, their Oligarch owners, and the nation better if they ignored the bulk of Trump's dumb tweets and focus more closely on what he and his Admin are doing.

    Josh Stern , February 9, 2017 at 3:39 am

    Following Disturbed Voter's comment above – we can usefully distinguish 3 different levels of dishonesty by how hard they are to detect:

    • Level 1 – the everyday liar/hypocrite whose dishonesty we notice over time by observing that what they do is not consistent with what they say,
    • Level 2- the regular criminal who hides his honesty from public view, to profit from it, but can be caught by effective law enforcement, and
    • Level 3- the State Intelligence agency with extreme levels of funding, novel tech. capabilities, secrecy, & ability to ignore or even control law enforcement and large chunks of the public mass media.

    It's the Level 3 category that society has become relatively defenseless against. Alternative media carries report after report on how the Iraq War was phony, how the US created al Qaeda and ISIS, how Cheney planned to invade Iraq and 6 other Middle East nations on Sept. 20, 2001 – not because of any links to US created al Qaeda – and a big chunk of that plan is still being carried out today, 4 Presidential terms later.

    Disturbed Voter , February 9, 2017 at 7:10 am

    While we don't know much about what the intelligence agencies do, by design, we do know a few things. That in the conditions of the early Cold War, and given the mandate against all enemies foreign and domestic (the oath the military takes) that narrative control is a vital weapon. We know that journalists, clergy and even rock stars have been actual agents, so the number of fellow travelers must be considerable. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been necessary, so it was thought by some, to manufacture new enemies on a Vietnam scale. And the exercise and paranoia against domestic enemies has returned to 1960s levels as well. For the old men nostalgic for the 60s, from the neocon side, these last few decades have been sweet.

    Moneta , February 9, 2017 at 7:37 am

    Actually it's the level 1 that leads to level 3.

    Materially, all we really need is to cover and protect our body from the elements and food. Everything else is gravy.

    Psychologically, we need a lot more than what North American society offers most of us today but for some reasons we keep on lying to ourselves thinking that if we had a little more stuff we'd be happier.

    We all have to lie to ourselves thousands of times a day to keep our routines and lifestyles and all these lies make society.

    Jos Oskam , February 9, 2017 at 3:54 am

    Hey Yves, the tomato question does seem to have something to it: "Nix v. Hedden (1893) was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that, under U.S. customs regulations, the tomato should be classified as a vegetable rather than a fruit". From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden .

    Note to Ilargi: re tomatoes, somebody got there before Trump :-)

    Gaylord , February 9, 2017 at 4:24 am

    I think a great number of people in the US and in Europe do not trust the MSM any more, even though they may continue to pay attention as a spectator sport (people do enjoy yelling at their TV sets). Activism is another ball game that is still being played, but in the US it has become nearly futile because of the restrictions and police tactics used to squelch them or shut them down. It can also be impossible to distinguish between genuine protesters, paid participants, and shit-disturbers or agents-provocateurs, which dilutes the message (questionable intent by those who want to promote or discredit the demonstration).

    Having read the comments here and on other independent sites for a long time, I've noticed the tremendous increase in articulate and aware commenters that can see through the tissues of lies from the MSM and take even a lot of the "serious" stuff with a grain of salt, knowing that some things don't change much and people tend to overreact based on shock-value news designed to stir resentment and "us vs. them" divisiveness. This is encouraging because it shows people are wising up, thinking more critically about who is really running the show (it is not Trump by-and-large), and not allowing their views to be manipulated.

    european , February 9, 2017 at 4:57 am

    I think Ukraine was a turning point, as the lying of the media was just way too obvious. That opened a lot of eyes. The reporting on Greece and Merkel/Schäuble's austerity terror was equally bad, but not many people understand that.

    Syria: The Media Coverage on Syria is the Biggest Media Lie of our Time

    KurtisMayfield , February 9, 2017 at 8:10 am

    I believe it was Iraq. When they named the 2003 invasion Operation Iraqi Liberation, or O.I.L. , all the pretense of it being for any legit reason was gone.

    Arizona Slim , February 9, 2017 at 8:35 am

    Ah, yes. The Iraq invasion. Wasn't it supposed to be about our freedom?

    RUKidding , February 9, 2017 at 10:45 am

    We citizens were also supposed to get our Iraqi oil dividend back, which allegedly would pay for that many trillion dollar exercise in futility.

    Guess that got syphoned right up into Dick Cheney's pockets. Ya snooze, ya lose.

    OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , February 9, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    Huh? Iraq? Did I miss something?
    I heard about some thingy where we wasted trillions of dollars and killed millions of people. But all of the people who thought THAT was a good idea are gone now, hiding their heads in shame and hoping they don't get summoned to a war crimes tribunal. Right?

    polecat , February 9, 2017 at 4:35 pm

    No. They HAVE NO shame --

    BeliTsair , February 9, 2017 at 11:42 am

    I believe it was the Gnadenhutten massacre. The 96 Moravian Lenape, brained with mallets, by Washington's Virginia Militia were probably too busy clawing through their former frozen fields, looking for corn kernels to feed their children, to pose much of a threat as terrorists?

    VietnamVet , February 9, 2017 at 4:23 pm

    Yes, what got to me was the Western instigated coup in Ukraine. I voted for Barrack Obama twice but could not vote for Hillary Clinton. I rationalized that the Iraq Invasion was an isolated crazy GOP debacle. Denial is powerful defense mechanism. If the media lies, America is a not so innocent killer, and the Cold War 2.0 with Russia has reignited; we are screwed. Austerity, scapegoating Russia and the flood of millions of refugees into Europe are proof that this is the awful truth.

    running dog lackey , February 9, 2017 at 4:31 am

    It's about ratings people. The president of NBC himself said it during the campaign when someone asked why he was televising everything the Insane Clown was saying. You all need to watch Network again. Nothing's changed. Which means they brought him up and now they will take him down.

    Tom , February 9, 2017 at 6:03 am

    Ratings are to broadcast or print media as shareholder value is to corporation - the overriding metric that blots out any reponsibility to the commons.

    Chris G , February 9, 2017 at 5:45 am

    "The Speaker may not be such a bad guy inside". Ah, not so. Check out this Pat Lang post,

    http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/02/the-mother-of-all-parliaments.html

    and the long trenchant comment by LondonBob including these paras:

    "The Twitter-cheering for John Bercow, the transformation of him into a Love, Actually-style hero of British middle-class probity against a gruff, migrant-banning Yank, could be the most grotesque political spectacle of the year so far. Not because it's virtue-signalling, as claimed by the handful of brave critics who've raised their heads above the online orgy of brown-nosing to wonder if Bercow is really promoting himself rather than parliamentary decency. No, it's worse than that. It's the lowest species of cant, hypocrisy of epic, eye-watering proportions, an effort to erase Bercow's and Parliament's own bloody responsibility for the calamities in the Middle East that Trump is now merely responding to, albeit very badly.

    "Bercow, you see, this supposed hero of the refugees and Middle Eastern migrants temporarily banned from the US, voted for the bombing of Iraq. He green-lighted that horror that did so much to propel the Middle East into the pit of sorrow and savagery it currently finds itself. As his profile on the They Work For You website puts it, 'John Bercow consistently voted for the Iraq War'. On 18 March 2003, he voted against a motion saying the case for war hadn't been made, even though it hadn't. On the same day he voted for the government to 'use all means necessary' to ensure the destruction of Iraq's WMD.

    "As everyone knows now, and as many of us knew back then, Iraq's WMD capacity had been vastly exaggerated by the black propaganda of the New Labour government, by myth and misinformation cynically whipped up to the end of providing Britain's leaders with the thrill of an overseas moral crusade against evil. Bercow voted in favour of these lies. And he voted for the use of 'all means necessary' to tame Saddam's regime. We know what this involved: Britain joined the bombing campaign and courtesy of an ill-thought-through war by Western allies, Iraq was ripped apart and condemned to more than a decade of bloodshed. And refugee crises. Bercow was one of the authors of this calamity, one of the signatories to the Middle East's death warrant, and now we're going to let him posture and preen against Trump's three-month ban on certain Middle Eastern migrants? What is wrong with us?"

    But kudos to kind-hearted Ilargi for willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to one of these preening monsters!

    jackiebass , February 9, 2017 at 6:19 am

    Trump loves any kind of publicity. The media is playing right into his hand by printing all of the garbage he generates.I know many Trump voters and supporters. They all complain that the media is picking on Trump. None of them look seriously at what he says or does. There universal reaction is give him a chance and quit picking on him.The media would be better off focusing on his and congreses policy decisions and how that effect the average person. Turning he's presidency into a big soap opera is actually helping Trump keep his supporters. I have not heard a single Trump voter say they regret voting for Trump.

    Eustache de Saint Pierre , February 9, 2017 at 6:35 am

    Good to see some focus on Britain's version of the Augean stables. In terms of the so called Westminster paedophile ring – the last I heard on this it was that, Ooops .we appear to have lost a substantial amount of vital evidence. I imagine that MI6 have on record most if not all of the disgusting details, which I also imagine are useful assets that can be used to control certain people.

    In my opinion, this is a good explanation from 2015, of the behaviour of the BBC & the Guardian, from journalist Jonathon Cook.

    http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2015-03-03/hsbc-and-the-sham-of-guardians-scott-trust/

    The Trumpening , February 9, 2017 at 7:54 am

    So far Trump has only really accomplished two things: he shut down the TPP and he inspired Lena Dunham to lose some weight. Everything thing else has been more or less noise.

    I've always thought this first two years of Trump's reign will involve him in bringing to heal the establishment GOP (GOPe) Obviously during the confirmation process, Trump has to be on his best behavior. But I don't like the pattern of Trump issuing useless EO's, and then the Democrats going ballistic, and then Trump supporters being satiated by all the Dem whining. That's a recipe for two years of nothing.

    On the Muslim ban, there are two parts to it. The current NeoCon / NeoLib tag-team play is to kill a million Muslims in their nations and then to offer the survivors the weak reach around of letting a million Muslims emigrate to the West. Trump seems to be offering a different deal. The West stops killing Muslims in Muslim nations and in return Muslims stay in Muslim nations and stop coming to the West. We have yet to see if Trump can hold off the temptation to start slaughtering Muslims in their nations like the NeoCons do.

    I get the feeling from Trump's over-the-top reaction to the courts staying his Muslim ban that he actually doesn't want it reinstated. I read on a pro-Trump legal blog that the Justice Department lawyers were super weak in their arguments before the 9th Circuit court, in what should be a super easy case to argue. Activist judges halting the ban means when the inevitable next terrorist attack comes, Trump can blame it on the judges and make some sort of move to purge their power.

    On Iran, Trump has zero leverage and so I do not see how this is going to end well. The only thing we can hope for is this is a bit of Kabuki being regulated by Putin. In the end a US-Russian alliance, as Trump is proposing, means a closer relationship between the US and Iran. Israel will not be pleased.

    My theory on Trump's relationship to Israel is that he is giving them enough rope for them to hang themselves. In Europe particularly the Israeli brand is getting fatally interwoven with the Trump brand. So far the only thing saving Israel is diaspora Jews being able to shame their local populations away from the BDS movement. But the diaspora is 98% anti-Trump. There is currently a huge increase of oxygen being given to the BDS movement, which means it should soon spring back to life.

    Can Trump be allies with Israel and Russia (and Iran)? The only way I can see this happening is a deal where Iran gets to go nuclear and become fully integrated into the global community in exchange for allowing Hezbollah to be wiped out by Israel.

    Trump is at his anti-NeoLiberal best when he is in deep trouble. I was happy when that Access Hollywood tape came out because I knew he would have to double down on Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller and go full-on butch economic nationalist. And it won him the election. Hopefully the seas will get very rough soon and we can all enjoy the spectacle of full combat between Team Trump and the GOPe.

    OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , February 9, 2017 at 3:31 pm

    I like the "offer the survivors a weak reacharound". Reminds me of Vietnam, where we would napalm a village and then fall over ourselves making sure the burn victims all got Band-Aids

    Fiver , February 9, 2017 at 5:09 pm

    The entire Trump military/security team is wildly anti-Muslim, so the thought they are not going to keep on killing Muslims all over the map is just plain silly.

    Bannon is just plain dangerous. Here's a piece on his favorite books. Not surprisingly, he hates Muslims. Also, he appears to imagine himself a brilliant strategist for the ages who just happens to be the right man for 'The Fourth Turning', one of those ideas and books that purports the existence of an historical pattern based on a cycle of generations, each generation of every group of 4 having its own 'character', taken together claiming to explain a long cycle of great crises and/or turning points of US history. He believes we are now in such a critical period. It's one of those notions that has superficial appeal but quickly falls apart when engaged critically:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/02/07/daily-202-five-books-to-understand-stephen-k-bannon/58991fd7e9b69b1406c75c93/

    http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_Strauss_and_Neil_Howe

    Bannon is now running stuff via Briebart's network that will make your hair stand on end:

    http://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/02/06/the-left-hates-you-act-accordingly-n2281602?utm_source=TopBreakingNewsCarousel&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=BreakingNewsCarousel

    As for Israel, there is not the remotest chance Trump will do something Israel doesn't like – even if he doesn't appoint Elliot Abrams to #2 at State.

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/06/politics/elliott-abrams-state-department/

    Here's what Ron Paul thought of that idea:

    http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/february/07/elliott-abrams-to-state-dept-you-cant-be-serious/

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/06/politics/elliott-abrams-state-department/

    Abrams would be an absolute disaster.

    TPP? Globalization? I see no evidence whatever that Trump has any intention of rolling back US-dominated corporate globalization, rather, he wants to create trade flows that are even more wildly skewed in favour of US financial/corporate power internationally even while effectively transferring wealth from the periphery to core of Empire to support some minor job creation – of course in the meantime granting outlandish tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy at large.

    I'm sorry, but Trump et al have played millions and millions of well-meaning Americans like a fiddle.

    UnhingedBecauseLucid , February 9, 2017 at 8:44 am

    The best description of the "Trump Situation" ever written was penned by 'Steve from Virginia' author of the blog Economic Undertow:

    One word that describes our precious country is incompetence. We have gone from being the 'we-can-do-it' nation that put a man on the Moon to the 'hire a Mexican to do it' nation that cannot find its ass with both hands. The fact of our dysfunction and the country's reliance on migrant labor are what gives form to the efforts of Donald Trump. Yet he acts against himself: he is the lazy-man of American politics who requires others to do his heavy lifting. This does not mean physical labor but instead the struggle to become clear in the mind, to craft out of disparate- and contradictory elements a policy outline or philosophy of governing. This is never attempted, it is too difficult, instead there is the recycling of old, bankrupt memes. The candidate's absence of effort leaves a residue of personality: Trump is a blank page upon which others paint in the sketch, an actor who aims to meet (diminished) public expectations and nothing more, sound and fury significant of nothing in particular.

    bbrawley , February 9, 2017 at 9:09 am

    I'm surprised no one seems to see a serious side to the reporting of Trump's antics. Is it not important to keep hammering home that the man is unhinged and that this is something pulling at the social frabric, something crying out to be dealt with? I seriously doubt that we'll be able to address the "real issues" adequately until we find ways come to terms with him not as a buffoon but as a deeply flawed human being.

    Donald , February 9, 2017 at 9:37 am

    Another false note–"Muslim is not a race." True, but being Jewish is not a racial characteristic and yet it is obvious that antisemitism is very similar to racism in its irrationality and hatred. Antisemites a hundred years ago would in some cases point to radicals who were Jewish as their excuse, just as Islamophobes would point to Islamic extremism as theirs. Racists I grew around would point to Idi Amin's Uganda ( yes, I am old) and other African countries with horrible human rights records as proof that American blacks should be grateful to be here.

    This "Islam is not a race" is mainly a tiresome distraction used by bigots and not a prelude to a deeper discussion on the wide varieties of human bigotries. Bigots can use almost any category they wish and concoct pseudo- rational propositions to buttress their hatred. We even have lefties hating blue collar white males as a group for Trump support. We don't have to join the people who use nitpicking phrases not to analyze, but to justify their hatreds. I don't think the writer intends to do this, but he is using a standard Muslim blame cannon phrase.

    After all this, I actually liked the rest of this piece, but that part was nails on a chalkboard to me. I am glad the liberal mainstream is siding with Muslims against Trump. There are some liberals ( Maher, Sam Harris etc..) who have been pushing a Muslim bashing agenda. And yes, as usual the mainstream which is so solicitous of Muslim rights cared little when Obama bombed Muslim countries. But I would rather that liberals be right if hypocritical then consistently wrong.

    Optimader , February 9, 2017 at 10:50 am

    As far as the term Racism, i think https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism oretty well captures contemporary common use.

    You forgot to mention Zionist racism directed toward Palestinians. An equally equivalent contemporary application of the term

    On the subject of Trump i believe his executive order is directed toward travelers from seven countries that the previous Potus identified in an anti-terrorist executive order.
    If I have it correctly, Neither Trump or BHO e orders are directed against muslims or any other religion for thats matter.

    Optimader , February 9, 2017 at 10:56 am

    As well do we need to take a deerpath in the woods debate about the legitimacy of the term race?

    Donald , February 9, 2017 at 12:43 pm

    I agree with you on Zionist racism towards Palestinians.

    On the deep path on the definition of racism, it depends. Given the prevalence of Islamophobia in the US, some of it on the left ( including the kneejerk supporters of Israel), I don't think it is helpful to use the "Islam is not a race" phrase as some sort of rebuttal. Islamophobia is a form of bigotry– whether one wants to nitpick about exactly what form should depend on the circumstances.

    Yves Smith Post author , February 9, 2017 at 1:42 pm

    I do not believe in the corruption of language. Confucius said that the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names.

    Are you by the same sloppy logic going to cal bias against women and gays "racism"?

    Islamophobia is indeed not racist. Arabs, many American and African blacks, Persians (who are not Arabians) and Indonesians among others are followers of Islam.

    We already have perfectly good works, like "bigotry," "bias," and "discrimination".

    Donald , February 9, 2017 at 2:50 pm

    I probably shouldn't have said anything, since the original poster clearly isn't a bigot, but it set me off because in most cases this "Islam is not a race" phrase is used by Islamophibes and they of course do not follow up by pointing out that it is a form of bigotry, like antisemitism. If the poster here only means we should call it bigotry and not racism, I agree.

    But that meme is used a lot and usually by Islamophobes who won't cop to being bigots either. They aren't trying to have a deep conversation about different forms of bigotry. They are trying to argue that it is rational to fear Muslims because Islam is, in their view, an inherently evil ideology. But in practice Islamophobes are not rational or necessarily even consistent. That's why I wrote my comment, pointing out that bigotry in any form is generally not some carefully thought out logical train of thought, but some pseudo- rational set of propositions often garbled together. This is why a Sikh can get beaten up by Islamophobes. It is also why antisemites are often so confused about whether they hate Jews as a religion, as an alleged race, or as some group of scary communist bankers. It's not like racism itself is usually based on a clear understanding of biology.

    So if we are going to push back on Islamophobia as racism, it should be so people see it as like antisemitism, which is what it most closely resembles.

    I have written enough today, so I am going to stop.

    optimader , February 9, 2017 at 3:44 pm

    Re Confucius, George Orwell had his thoughts along those lines. re: intentional corruption of language.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language

    The reality is language evolves, often for the worse making clarity of message a casualty, unless a tedious definition of terms is invoked which can easily end up being a form of deflection from the original point.. ..
    File under :Liberal/Conservative/Neoliberal/Progressive. I find all these Identity Labels can be very loosely applied for reasons other than clarity.

    In the case of the word Race, it is, some would correctly contend, archaic terminology while simultaneously being convenient shorthand for "red meat" identity invectives.

    River , February 9, 2017 at 12:20 pm

    Muslim isn't a race. If the ban had been about Arabs not being allowed in you'd have a point. However, a person from Indonesia is allowed in and that country is almost entirely Muslim.

    Plus, complaining about the US exercising boarder control is ridiculous. That is one the jobs of a nation. No one bat an eye when Japan stated we're not allowing anyone in wrt to any refugee problem. Yet when any Western nation does it, the sky falls and the charges of bigotry come out.

    No one has the right to move to another country.

    Donald , February 9, 2017 at 12:41 pm

    People who live in countries that are bombed by the US or its close allies have the moral right to come here. Yemen, for instance, is bombed by the US and much more heavily by the Saudis with our help and keeping refugees from Yemen out is an extreme form of ugly Americanism. If we don't want the refugees, then we should stop causing or contributing to the chaos and death in the countries which produce the refugees.

    Gorgar Laughed , February 9, 2017 at 1:12 pm

    >People who live in countries that are bombed by the US or its close allies have the moral right to come here.

    And where are these rights enumerated? I don't recognize "moral rights" beyond those associated with copyright (and I am not particularly fond of those, either).

    Donald , February 9, 2017 at 1:17 pm

    So the fact that we are bombing civilians and helping the Saudis plunge Yemen into a famine is something you don't question, just the right of our victims to come here?

    Gorgar Laughed , February 9, 2017 at 1:58 pm

    Not fond of herring, either.

    "Our victims"?

    The legacy of Obama's incompetence in foreign policy does not obligate American citizens to accept - or to foist upon their posterity - changes in the demographic make-up of our populace.

    I'm still interested in learning where you discovered this moral right to move here

    Donald , February 9, 2017 at 2:11 pm

    Not fond of herring either?

    In other words, morality is a matter of preference and your number one moral value in this context is keeping out refugees, people who suffer precisely because of our foreign policy. Demographic balance is somewhere near the top of your own personal list of flavors. Anyway, my notion of moral right involves the crazy idea that if you help destroy a country you have moral obligations to the victims.

    And by the way, Trump is likely to escalate our support for the Saudi war on Yemen.

    OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , February 9, 2017 at 3:37 pm

    LOL it certainly was a matter of preference for our recently departed Drone-Bomber-In-Chief, and for all of the people who (thought/think) he was a really moral and upstanding kind of guy. Just like our former Secretary of State, who threatened to cut off Sweden if they didn't accept Monsanto poison.
    "You're black!" said the pot to the kettle

    Optimader , February 9, 2017 at 1:22 pm

    "People who live in countries that are bombed by the US or its close allies have the moral right to come here."

    Bullsht.
    The US does have the moral obligation not to bomb countries that have not attacked the US and in that case only in a "just war" context if at all

    Donald , February 9, 2017 at 1:57 pm

    Meaningless. The US frequently bombs innocent people or helps others like the Saudis or the Israelis do so. You say it is wrong, as do I, but apparently there are no consequences allowed in your moral universe which might inconvenience us. We really have no moral obligations at all– we can bomb people and if the survivors wish to come here to escape then we have the right to keep them out according to you. All this boils down to is that we have the strongest military. Your views regarding whether we should bomb someone are nothing more than your own idiosyncratic preference and that is using your own standard. The people who control the military want to use it to bomb other countries, so they do. Might makes Right.

    bob , February 9, 2017 at 2:10 pm

    " Your views regarding whether we should bomb someone are nothing more than your own idiosyncratic preference and that is using your own standard."

    "The US does have the moral obligation not to bomb countries that have not attacked the US and in that case only in a "just war" context if at all"

    Can't read, or don't want to?

    Donald , February 9, 2017 at 2:14 pm

    I read it. So what? If we go ahead and bomb countries anyway, creating refugees, we have no obligation to help them. It is like saying that it was wrong for some Wall Street guys to steal people's money, but if they do, they have no obligation to give it back.

    bob , February 9, 2017 at 2:38 pm

    "I read it. So what? If we go ahead and bomb countries anyway"

    If we go ahead and assume that the earth is flat, why shouldn't "we" all relocate another planet?

    It's just that simple, and your keyboard strawmanning is making all the difference, for "we".

    Ground rules- am I arguing with "Donald" or the Royal We, or a heap of straw that you, pardon We(?), keep producing?

    Donald , February 9, 2017 at 2:56 pm

    The US does bomb countries, so your flat earth analogy doesn't really work here. We aren't discussing hypotheticals. There are real refugees from real policies and Trump is likely to continue them or make them worse. We are directly responsible for the misery of vast numbers of people and the numbers are likely to grow. Set aside the internet squabble we are having, because you are so wrapped up in it you are losing touch with what we are arguing about.

    Anyway, as I just wrote upthread, I have written enough.

    bob , February 9, 2017 at 4:06 pm

    "Anyway, as I just wrote upthread, I have written enough."

    That we'll agree on. Maybe another day you can elucidate on why you bother writing when you could find an airbase and stand on the runway, to stop the bombing.

    Anon , February 9, 2017 at 12:49 pm

    No one has the right to move to another country.

    Even after their homeland has been bombed, invaded, population tortured, social structure crushed?

    River , February 9, 2017 at 1:18 pm

    No they don't have that right. It falls under "that's your problem".

    Now, as harsh as that is I think from a humanitarian view and basic decency another nation should show some compassion and allow them succor. However, nations and the people of those nations are under no obligation to do so.

    Moral rights are meaningless. And yes, I do agree that another nation shouldn't create the refugees to begin with. As I find war to be a tool that is to be used as last resort. What has been occurring in the mid-East has been so far from a last resort that I can't even come up with a decent metaphor or simile.

    But that still doesn't change the fact that people do not have the right to enter another nation if the nation decides to say "No".

    Donald , February 9, 2017 at 1:48 pm

    So if we go ahead and bomb Yemen or help the Saudis bomb Yemen, it really doesn't matter at all. We are responsible for war crimes, but we have zero obligation to help the victims.

    You switch back and forth between talk of morality and the law of the strongest. You say we shouldn't bomb other countries for no good reason, but that is as much a meaningless platitude as you say moral rights are in general. Basically you find it distasteful that we bomb other countries, but what really exercises you is the possibility that some refugees might come here. That will not stand.

    Gorgar Laughed , February 9, 2017 at 2:11 pm

    Have you ever heard of the Melian Dialogue?

    There is a nice little re-enactment of it over at the Youtubes

    Donald , February 9, 2017 at 2:18 pm

    Yep. The strong do what they can and the weak do what they must. Nihilistic, but certainly a viewpoint I expect would be popular with the powerful.

    Gorgar Laughed , February 9, 2017 at 2:54 pm

    You miss the point. Realism is not nihilism.

    The Athenians had no good reason to suppose that the Gods would not favor them.

    There was nothing in their laws or beliefs to suggest otherwise.

    Similarly, there is nothing in our laws that requires us to accept population transfers because this or that President drops bombs in a far away country on people of whom we know nothing.

    Yves Smith Post author , February 9, 2017 at 2:20 pm

    Anon is correct. We can be obligated to bomb other countries by treaty. For instance, we bombed France to oust the Nazis as a result of treaty obligations. It is also correct to say that the US has been flagrantly ignoring what were considered to be international norms (pretty much no one notices here, but Russia has been making a stink on a regular basis in the UN).

    PKMKII , February 9, 2017 at 10:16 am

    Any day since 1/20, you could look at the front page of WaPo, NYT, CNN, etc., and see op-eds about how Trump is very very non-professional, sullying the good name of the office of the President. Denigrating the institution and the very very serious role it plays in American society, nay, the world! And yet the same front page will also cover, in-detail, whatever halfbaked Trump tweet or Spicer's performance-art-as-press-conference has been served up that day. They recognize that it's become a farce, but like someone who can't stop poking the tooth that hurts, they present the farce as being very very important news. The establishment press has become too enamored of the pomp and circumstance, the ceremonial of the White House media operation and their visible, although largely pointless, role in the whole thing. They're too scared of giving that up, lest they lose prominence or, le horror, have to do real reporting. So the Washington press corp prop up their end of the ceremony in the vain hopes of a return to the way things were, in denial of how their function is quickly becoming redundant. If all they're going to do is talk about Trump's latest tweet, we might as well just stop reading their sites and just read his tweets ourselves. Social media can just give us the press releases directly, we don't need the press to act as town criers, screeching out Trump's decree in the town squares.

    flora , February 9, 2017 at 10:24 am

    an aside re Yves intro:

    "Emerson College study found that the American public trusts Trump more than the media. "

    The WaPo's attempt to turn readers away from great sites like NC with their "fake news" story has backfired spectacularly. Thanks to NC and others furious initial pushback, including well crafted letters from NC's atty and the recipients responses published on NC, the term "fake news" has become a joke in the court of public opinion. It's become a subject for comedy skits. This is no small thing. Actually, it's a pretty big thing. McCarthist witch hunts live and die in the court of public opinion, imo. See: Joseph Welch, "Have you no sense of decency sir?"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1eA5bUzVjA

    And with that exchange the court of public opinion turned against McCarthy and the witch hunt. Now where was I going with this ?

    john bougearel , February 9, 2017 at 10:51 am

    Ha! How dare ya attack my favorite cooking shows! LOL

    Gorgar Laughed , February 9, 2017 at 12:07 pm

    >After all, we're all good Christians

    Who's "We" Paleface? Bercow's not a Christian.

    And it looks as though we may finally be seeing the worm turn on the kiddie rape: the Rochdale rape gang is now set to be deported to Pakistan.

    Local MP Simon Danczuk: "Foreign-born criminals should not be able to hide behind human rights laws to avoid deportation."

    I suspect this line of thinking is going to be picked up in other countries on the Continent, and sooner rather than later.

    Once we start seeing child sex investigations target the English ruling class, we will know that we are getting somewhere

    Blurtman , February 9, 2017 at 1:03 pm

    Hispanic isn't a race, nor is Latino, but that has not stopped the MSM, bleeding hearts and SJW's from emoting.

    PKMKII , February 9, 2017 at 1:46 pm

    I was a census worker in 2010, and the forms didn't include Hispanic/Latino as a race; rather, it was put as a separate identity category with sub-answers for specific country of ancestral origin. However, 9 times out of 10 Hispanic responds would have me put "Hispanic" in the write-in box for the "Other" race option (the other 10% would have me write-in their ancestral country). The smarties with the degrees can say it's not a race, but if the people say that's their race, who are we to say otherwise?

    Blurtman , February 9, 2017 at 3:25 pm

    Ask Rachel Dolezal. Or perhaps Elizabeth Warren, an undocumented Native American (i.e., Indian). And yes, Pew Research would agree that folks who consider themselves to be Latino consider Latino to be a race. But most are Native American.

    But not anyone can be recognized as Native American in the USA unless they are on a tribal register, which is odd, as the USG seems to subject Native American citizens to a higher level of proof than Native Americans from south of the border.

    Anon y Mouse , February 9, 2017 at 1:32 pm

    " . But our problem is not called Donald Trump. And we need to stop pretending that it is. We are the problem. We allow our governments to tell our armies to bomb and drone innocent people while we watch cooking shows. We have believed, as long as we've been alive, whatever the media feed us, without any critical thought, which we reserve for choosing our next holiday destination." .

    Dear Raul,

    Yes, the media creates distortions in our perceptions. Yes, the orange one plays that terrain like a pro. Yes the British MP is hypocritical. I am with you there.

    "We are the problem." This kind of reasoning may be correct on a cosmic scale but it always seems to run to one of two conclusions. 1) Become a Buddhist and try to improve yourself. 2) Humans are too dumb to survive; wait until nature takes its course and humans kill themselves off playing Russian Roulette.

    I am not sure what your are recommending here. Do we let the orange sacred clown run this imperialist project into the ground? (To be replaced by what?) Or in opposing Trump do we clarify what we do want = i.e. a government that does not torture, a government that does not protect gotcha game mortgage lenders, a government that does not arm the world, a government that does not subsidize old suicidal fossil fuels, a government that is not run by a hysterical 3 AM tweeting 16 year old Marie Antoinette, your issue here .

    I don't know the answer here. The orange bull in the china shop is useful in so far as he reveals certain truths = ex: waterboarding is torture, congressmen are for sale, America has killed a lot of people, etc. If he stops the NeoCon project of invading other countries he might even be a benefit to world peace. But he's also likely to get people killed with his impulsive decisions and his ginning up the rubes.

    Irrational , February 9, 2017 at 2:42 pm

    Not reporting on tweets would free up a lot of time .

    Jeff N , February 9, 2017 at 5:12 pm

    a tomato is a fruit, but you can't use it in "fruit salad" :D

    Waking Up , February 9, 2017 at 5:52 pm

    What this really tells you is to what extent the political systems in the US and the UK, along with the media that serve them, have turned into a massive void, a vortex, a black hole from which any reflection, criticism or self-awareness can no longer escape. By endlessly and relentlessly pointing to someone, anyone, outside of their own circle of 'righteousness' and political correctness, they have all managed to implant one view of reality in their voters and viewers, while at the same time engaging in the very behavior they accuse the people of that they point to. For profit.

    On a recent interview with Donald Trump, Bill O'Reilly stated in regards to Vladimir Putin "But he's a killer". Donald Trump responds with a truth rarely heard in the media today, "There are a lot of killers. Do you think our country is so innocent?"

    I may not be a fan of Donald Trumps, but, how can we put down that level of honesty? Imagine if we actually had an honest nationwide discussion on what we are doing in the rest of the world .

    [Feb 06, 2017] Crazy propaganda from Fedbook, sorry Facebook about Russia oil transportation and discovery

    Notable quotes:
    "... US and EU sanctions only affect Russian offshore projects in the Arctic and development of Russia's tight oil. If sanctions are lifted, projects with foreign participation in these two areas will be able to produce meaningful quantities of oil not before 2025. But these volumes will not be sufficient to flood the market. ..."
    "... Russia is participating in OPEC-non-OPEC supply cuts and certainly is not interested in flooding the market and exerting a downward pressure on prices. ..."
    "... The only Russia's offshore Arctic project is Prirazlomnoye field developed by Gazpromneft without foreign participation (already producing oil). ..."
    "... In general, even if there were no sanctions, Arctic projects would be developed relatively slowly, due to high costs and environmental issues. Russia's long-term energy program anticipates more or less meaningful volumes of oil production in the Arctic offshore only in the 2030s. ..."
    "... Everything in that stuff you wrote is baloney. Russia's Black Sea exports go through Novorossysk and Tuapse. There isn't an oil pipeline going to Crimea. Furthermore, putting an oil loading port in Crimea is nutty (because the oil comes from the East and it makes much more sense to load as far to the East as possible). There used to be some oil loaded in Odessa, but that was never a big deal. ..."
    "... Regarding the Exxon deal, that's also baloney. But I don't feel like trying to explain the basics to somebody who picks up information from Facebook. ..."
    "... From all that I've read, I would conclude that a "flood of oil" out of Russia is about as likely as a "flood of new fracked oil from shales in the United States, not yet drilled." That is, it's rather low on the probability meter. ..."
    "... Why target Russia? Is it because of an impending Seneca cliff in Saudi Arabia? They were supposed to peak 10 years ago but water and nitrogen injections kept them afloat. Now? ..."
    "... Thus, what the United States is playing at here is trying to install a different "regime" in Russia. That being, one that Vladimir Putin does not control or have any influence over. This is easier said than done and the United States knows this. But the stakes are quite a bit higher than controlling the dwindling oil supply in the Middle East. Russia is obviously in control of most of the world's remaining oil reserves. The United States needs a puppet regime in Russia to have access to that oil without paying the correct market price for it. ..."
    "... At some point, this gambit will fail. Russia is not the Middle East. A war with Russia cannot be won or cease-fired out of. Nor can a United States-backed "regime change" succeed over there. This is not the 1990s Russia of Boris Yeltsin. The United States, however, cannot come clean with the truth to the American people. The reason is because if the American people knew the truth, they'd never sleep nights anymore. The truth is this: Our entire economic system is based on petroleum and low-cost petroleum at that. But the actual nightmare is that our entire agricultural system is based on cheap oil." ..."
    Feb 06, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
    Boomer II says: 02/05/2017 at 3:59 pm
    I saw this on Facebook. Can anyone respond?

    "Exxon Mobil, under Rex Tillerson, brokered a deal with Russia in 2013 to lease over 60 million acres of Russian land to pump oil out of (which is five times as much land as they lease in the United States), but all that Russian oil would go through pipelines in the Ukraine, who heavily tax the proceeds, and Ukraine was applying for admission into NATO at the time.

    Putin subsequently invaded Ukraine in 2014, secured the routes to export the oil tax-free by sea, and took control of the port where their Black Sea Naval Fleet is based, by taking the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine by force. This was Hitler style imperialism that broke every international law in the free world.
    After Obama sanctioned Russia for the invasion, Exxon Mobil could only pump oil from approximately 3 of those 60+ million acres. But now Rex Tillerson is soon to be our Secretary of State, and as of today, there's information circulating that Donald Trump will likely unilaterally remove all sanctions against Russia in the coming days or weeks.

    The Russian government's oil company, Rosneft, will make half a trillion (500 Billion) dollars from that much untapped oil, all pumped tax-free through Crimea, stolen from Ukraine, now owned by Russia. Putin may have subverted our government just for this deal to go through."
    ______

    Now, a flood of oil on the market from Russia would likely keep US oil prices down, thus hurting US drillers right?

    If one is conspiracy-minded, could that be part of the deal, too? Russia uses low oil prices to take down US oil production, and then tries assert itself as one of the countries left standing.

    clueless says: 02/05/2017 at 4:53 pm
    In about 1780, Catherine the Great and the Ottoman Empire agreed that the Crimea was a part of Russia. [Yes, there was conflict for years prior (as with any other piece of land in the world).] In 1954, in honor of the 300th Anniversary of the Republic of Ukraine being a part of Russia, Nikita Krushchev "gave" the governance of the Crimea to the Republic of Ukraine. It was not constitutional under the Russian constitution. The UN said nothing about it, nor any other international law body. Krushchev later trumped up an approval without even a quorum.

    So the Republic of Ukraine seceded from Russia and took the Crimea with it. In the US, when states (republics) seceded [having been states for much less than 100 years, let alone over 300 years] the rest of the states killed as many people as they could until they "agreed to rejoin the union." People might not like it, but the vast majority of people living in the Crimea had ties to mother Russia, and they voted to go back to being governed by Russia. So, Putin accepted. And please, let's not get into an argument about the fairness of elections, unless your candidate wins.

    So, what would we do if Obama gave South Carolina to Florida, and then Florida seceded. I guess that the rest of the states would just say "shucks, we lost South Carolina too." Especially if South Carolina had the only warm water port in the US [the Crimea has the only warm water port in Russia]. The rest of the ports are in the North Sea, etc. And, yes, that is a critical military point.

    "This was Hitler style imperialism that broke every international law in the free world." That is a pathetic joke! Okay – let's let the US South secede again, since the Cival War broke every international law in the free world and was exactly the same as Hitler's imperialism.

    AlexS says: 02/05/2017 at 6:12 pm
    clueless, thanks for the answer.

    Just one clarification: the ports in Crimea are not the only warm water ports in Russia.
    Russia has several other ports in the Black Sea and Azov Sea.
    Other ports are in the Baltic Sea, Arctic seas and the Pacific; not in the North Sea

    clueless says: 02/06/2017 at 1:59 am
    Perhaps I am wrong, but are those other ports large enough and deep enough for military use [which I failed to state clearly]? I beleive that Russia still operated their huge military port in the Crimea even after the Ukraine seceded and prior to Russia taking back the Crimea.
    AlexS says: 02/06/2017 at 6:17 am
    Sevastopol, the largest port in Crimea, was founded by Catherine the Great as Russia's main military port in the Black Sea.

    It had special status when Crimea was part of the Soviet Ukraine, and also when Ukraine became independent. Russia had a long-term arrangement with Ukraine for using Sevastopol.

    Russia also has a large military port in Novorossiisk (Russian part of Caucasus); but you are right, Sevastopol is deeper, bigger and more convenient.

    Duncan Idaho says: 02/06/2017 at 9:18 am
    Also, the Russian State originated in the Ukraine.
    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik_dynasty

    Rurik set up rule in Novgorod, giving more provincial towns to his brothers. There is some ambiguity even in the Primary Chronicle about the specifics of the story, "hence their paradoxical statement 'the people of Novgorod are of Varangian stock, for formerly they were Slovenes.'" However, archaeological evidence such as "Frankish swords, a sword chape and a tortoiseshell brooch" in the area suggest that there was, in fact, a Scandinavian population during the tenth century at the latest.[3] The "Rurikid Dynasty DNA Project" of FamilyTreeDNA commercial genetic genealogy company reports that Y-DNA testing of the descendants of Rurikids suggests their non-Slavic origin.

    Kiev was the Capital of Russia when Moscow was still a hunting camp

    AlexS says: 02/05/2017 at 5:38 pm
    Boomer II,

    It's your choice to use Facebook as the main source of information on the oil and gas industry, but please don't repost this BS on the oil-dedicated thread.

    Exxon Mobil didn't lease any land in Russia. It is the operator of the Sakhalin-1 project in Russia' Far East (very far from Ukraine); and oil produced from this project is exported by sea (Pacific ocean).

    Exxon's JV with Rosneft has also found an oil field in Kara Sea (Russian Arctic), but this project was suspended due to the sanctions.

    In the past Russia was exporting a small part of its oil by the "Druzhba" ("Friendship") pipeline through Ukraine and was paying normal transporation fee, not taxes.

    Now all Russian oil is exported via Russian oil terminals near Novorossiisk (Black Sea) and Ust-Luga and Primorsk (on the Baltic Sea). New transporation routes include East-Siberia – Pacific Ocean (ESPO) oil pipeline linking Russian oil fields in Siberia with the ports on Pacific Ocean and with China's Daking; as well as oil terminals in the Arctic (Varandey).

    If US sanctions on Russia are lifted, Rosneft and Exxon will be able to develop their joint project in the Artcic, but oil found there certainly is not worth "half a trillion (500 Billion) dollars', and cannot seriously change the global supply-demand balance.

    clueless gave you a good answer on Crimea

    BTW, 1) there is no oil terminal in Crimea;
    2) Russian oil is taxed in Russia

    Boomer II says: 02/05/2017 at 5:59 pm
    "It's your choice to use Facebook as the main source of information on the oil and gas industry, but please don't repost this BS on the oil-dedicated thread."

    I never use Facebook as a source of information on the oil and gas industry. The topic never comes up among my Facebook friends or my news sources on Facebook. When I want gas and oil info, I use Google to look at legitimate news sources from industry observers.

    I just wanted some people's thoughts on that. Your reaction actually tells me a lot about how you think about it.

    We've had quite a few discussions here about how politics, both domestic and international, shapes oil production, so I was just inquiring about any insight. I'm rather surprised that you are telling me not to even post a question on the subject. Touchy, maybe?

    The relationship between Trump and Russia has triggered some questions, not just among Democrats, but also the GOP. And some people are wondering if there is some tie in about oil.

    I just asked, that's all.

    AlexS says: 02/05/2017 at 6:31 pm
    "some people are wondering if there is some tie in about oil."

    The only "tie in" is Exxon's frozen investments in the Pobeda (Victory) field in the Kara Sea. But that's no secret; you can find information on this project on Exxon's and Rosneft's websites and in international business media.

    The Sakhalin-1 project is not covered by the sanctions and is being successfully developed.

    Boomer II says: 02/05/2017 at 6:08 pm
    And basically what I was asking is this? Will a flood of Russian oil affect US oil prices?

    If you are playing US politics, do you want to put more foreign oil on the market?

    AlexS says: 02/05/2017 at 6:23 pm
    "Will a flood of Russian oil affect US oil prices?"

    US and EU sanctions only affect Russian offshore projects in the Arctic and development of Russia's tight oil. If sanctions are lifted, projects with foreign participation in these two areas will be able to produce meaningful quantities of oil not before 2025. But these volumes will not be sufficient to flood the market.

    Russia is participating in OPEC-non-OPEC supply cuts and certainly is not interested in flooding the market and exerting a downward pressure on prices.

    Boomer II says: 02/05/2017 at 8:56 pm
    So is it possible that the time frame is so far in the future that it's dead to Exxon even if the sanctions are lifted?
    AlexS says: 02/06/2017 at 6:05 am
    I think Exxon could re-enter the project if the sanctions are lifted. If sanctions are not lifted for several years, Rosneft will likely develop this field independently, but it would take more time as Rosneft lacks experience in offshore projects.

    The only Russia's offshore Arctic project is Prirazlomnoye field developed by Gazpromneft without foreign participation (already producing oil).

    In general, even if there were no sanctions, Arctic projects would be developed relatively slowly, due to high costs and environmental issues. Russia's long-term energy program anticipates more or less meaningful volumes of oil production in the Arctic offshore only in the 2030s.

    Watcher says: 02/05/2017 at 5:53 pm
    Politics aside, it's just factually inaccurate.

    "Exxon Mobil, under Rex Tillerson, brokered a deal with Russia in 2013 to lease over 60 million acres of Russian land to pump oil out of (which is five times as much land as they lease in the United States), but all that Russian oil would go through pipelines in the Ukraine"

    Almost all pipelines through Ukraine are nat gas. Not oil. There is some minor oil flow. "All" is just profoundly absurd.

    Russia's oil output is going to Asia and northern Europe via Transneft lines to Poland and Belarus. Not through Ukraine. Haven't looked for where those Exxon leases are, but I'm pretty sure that's the Rosneft joint venture up around the Arctic.

    Nowhere near Ukraine. This is all just completely wrong.

    Boomer II says: 02/05/2017 at 6:10 pm
    Ok. This response is much more helpful.

    Now back to my question about prices. What happens when the sanctions are lifted?

    Duncan Idaho says: 02/05/2017 at 6:45 pm
    Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
    – Alice in Wonderland
    Survivalist says: 02/06/2017 at 12:56 am
    FedBook, er I mean Facebook, is a ghetto of sentimentality. I suggest deleting from it. I joined Facebook once for a very short time and the only thing I learnt from it was that most of my friends are idiots.
    Fred Magyar says: 02/06/2017 at 2:01 pm
    +10
    Duncan Idaho says: 02/06/2017 at 3:06 pm
    Also +10
    One has to be an idiot to be on Facebook
    Fernando Leanme says: 02/06/2017 at 9:36 am
    Everything in that stuff you wrote is baloney. Russia's Black Sea exports go through Novorossysk and Tuapse. There isn't an oil pipeline going to Crimea. Furthermore, putting an oil loading port in Crimea is nutty (because the oil comes from the East and it makes much more sense to load as far to the East as possible). There used to be some oil loaded in Odessa, but that was never a big deal.

    Regarding the Exxon deal, that's also baloney. But I don't feel like trying to explain the basics to somebody who picks up information from Facebook.

    GreenPeople's Media says: 02/06/2017 at 1:14 am
    From all that I've read, I would conclude that a "flood of oil" out of Russia is about as likely as a "flood of new fracked oil from shales in the United States, not yet drilled." That is, it's rather low on the probability meter.

    Again from what I've read (numerous sources) the Russian oil fields are being extracted just about as heavily as they can be at this time, as are the Saudi fields, again relying on a number of different sources.

    Without getting too "tinfoil-hatty" I'd say most of the stories about the global oil markets which promise big bursts of production from (heretofore undisclosed) big new oil fields are in the category of "fake news." These stories serve to boost U.S. consumer confidence and U.S. automobile and light truck sales, but contradict what people in the industry (such as Art Berman, Tadeusz Patzek et al.) are saying about future supply.

    VK says: 02/06/2017 at 7:20 am
    Why target Russia? Is it because of an impending Seneca cliff in Saudi Arabia? They were supposed to peak 10 years ago but water and nitrogen injections kept them afloat. Now?

    https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/jack-perry/?ptype=article

    "I've gotten a couple emails from people who have asked me what I think the "end game" is in regards to Russia. And, indeed, the government is going into extra innings with this whole Russia vilification project. This is worse than someone who has held on to a grudge for years. The government does that, too, but they haven't done it over ideology (as with Cuba) for quite some time now. What, then, is the motive?

    The motive is perfectly clear: Oil. You see, Russia has already eclipsed Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest oil producer. This means the big Saudi oil fields are drying up. And the government knows that, but they can't tell us this because it'll create a panic. One would think this would motivate the United States to get cozier with Russia. However, what the United States government fears is that if we do that, Russia will twig to the motive for it, and realize it has the United States over a barrel. An oil barrel. At which point the price goes up. Not to mention extracting concessions in the global sphere of influence.

    Thus, what the United States is playing at here is trying to install a different "regime" in Russia. That being, one that Vladimir Putin does not control or have any influence over. This is easier said than done and the United States knows this. But the stakes are quite a bit higher than controlling the dwindling oil supply in the Middle East. Russia is obviously in control of most of the world's remaining oil reserves. The United States needs a puppet regime in Russia to have access to that oil without paying the correct market price for it.

    At some point, this gambit will fail. Russia is not the Middle East. A war with Russia cannot be won or cease-fired out of. Nor can a United States-backed "regime change" succeed over there. This is not the 1990s Russia of Boris Yeltsin. The United States, however, cannot come clean with the truth to the American people. The reason is because if the American people knew the truth, they'd never sleep nights anymore. The truth is this: Our entire economic system is based on petroleum and low-cost petroleum at that. But the actual nightmare is that our entire agricultural system is based on cheap oil."

    George Kaplan says: 02/06/2017 at 2:50 pm
    Saudi has had water injection for much longer than ten years on pretty well all it's fields and I don't think they are using nitrogen injection anywhere, there may be some small CO2 EOR projects though. Their production has been maintained by developing three old, heavy oil fields that were mostly dormant (Manifa, Khurais and Shaybah), by using a lot of in-fill drilling and intelligent wells (where water breakthrough can be controlled) on maturing fields and by extensively redeveloping offshore fields with new wellhead platforms and adding artificial lift. I don't think their fields are anywhere near drying up; they may be hitting some limits in surface facilities – probably to do with water injection or treatment of produced water which means they have to continually choke back so as not to damage the reservoirs.

    [Feb 04, 2017] A color revolution is under way in the United States

    Notable quotes:
    "... Question: why can there be no color revolution in the United States? Answer: because there are no US Embassies in the United States. ..."
    "... US intelligence agencies are now investigating their own boss! Yes, according to recent reports , the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and Treasury Department are now investigating the telephone conversations between General Flynn and the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyk. ..."
    "... In other words, his security clearance is stratospherically high and he will soon become the boss of all the US intelligence services. And yet, these very same intelligence services are investigating him for his contacts with the Russian Ambassador. That is absolutely amazing. ..."
    "... Even in the bad old Soviet Union, the putatively almighty KGB did not have the right to investigate a member of the Communist Party Central Committee without a special authorization of the Politburo (a big mistake, in my opinion, but never mind that). ..."
    "... But in the case of Flynn, several US security agencies can decide to investigate a man who by all standards ought to be considered at least in the top 5 US officials and who clearly has the trust of the new President. And that does not elicit any outrage, apparently. ..."
    "... By the same logic, the three letter agencies might as well investigate Trump for his telephone conversations with Vladimir Putin. ..."
    "... This is all absolutely crazy because this is evidence that the US intelligence community has gone rogue and is now taking its orders from the Neocons and their deep state and not from the President and that these agencies are now acting against the interests of the new President. ..."
    "... pussyhat revolution ..."
    "... pussyhat revolution ..."
    "... Make no mistake, such protests are no more spontaneous than the ones in the Ukraine. Somebody is paying for all this, somebody is organizing it all. And they are using their full bag of tricks. One more example: ..."
    "... Remember the pretty face of Nayirah , the Kuwaiti nurse who told Congress that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers tossing our babies from Kuwaiti incubators (and who later turned out to be the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States)? Do you remember the pretty face of Neda , who " died on TV " in Iran? Well, let me introduce you to Bana Alabe, who wrote a letter to President Trump and, of course, the media got hold of the latter and now she is the "face of the Syrian children". ..."
    "... Okay, click here and take a look at a sampling of anti-Trump caricatures and cartoons compiled by the excellent Colonel Cassad. Some of them are quite remarkable ..."
    "... My purpose in listing all the examples above is to suggest the following: far from having accepted defeat, the Neocons and the US deep state have decided, as they always do, to double-down and they are now embarking on a full-scale "color revolution" which will only end with the impeachment, overthrowal or death of Donald Trump. ..."
    "... One of the most amazing features of this color revolution against Trump is the fact that those behind it don't give a damn about the damage that their war against Trump does to the institution of the President of the United States and, really, to the United States as a whole. That damage is, indeed, immense and the bottom line is this: President Trump is in immense danger of being overthrown and his only hope for survival is to strike back hard and fast. ..."
    "... The other amazing thing is the ugly role Britain plays in this process: all the worst filth against Trump is always eventually traced back right to the UK. How come? Simple. Do you recall how, formally at least, the CIA and NSA did not have the right to spy on US nationals and the British MI6 and GCHQ had no right to spy on British nationals. Both sides found an easy way out: they simply traded services: the CIA and NSA spied on Brits, the MI6 and GCHQ spied on Americans, and then they simply traded the data between "partners" (it appears that since Obama came to power all these measures have now become outdated and everybody is free to spy on whomever the hell they want, including their own nationals). The US Neocons and the US deep state are now using the British special services to produce a stream of filth against Trump which they then report as "intelligence" and which then can be used by Congress as a basis for an investigation. Nice, simple and effective. ..."
    "... 9/11 was a collective crime par excellence . A few men actually executed it, but then thousands, possibly tens of thousands, have used their position to execute the cover-up and to prevent any real investigation. They are ALL guilty of obstruction of justice. By opening a new investigation into 911, but one run by the Justice Department and NOT by Congress, Trump could literally place a "political handgun" next to the head of each politician and threaten to pull the trigger if he does not immediately give up on trying to overthrow Trump. What Trump needs for that is a 100% trusted and 100% faithful man as the director of the FBI, a man with " clean hands, a cool head and a burning heart " (to use the expression of the founder of the Soviet Secret Police, Felix Dzerzhinsky). This man will immediately find himself in physical danger so he will have to be a man of great personal courage and determination. And, of course, this "man" could be a woman (a US equivalent of the Russian prosecutor, Natalia Poklonskaia). ..."
    "... First, at the very least, the Trump Presidency itself: the Neocons and the US deep state will not let Trump implement his campaign promises and program. Instead they will sabotage, ridicule and misrepresent everything he does, even if this is a big success. ..."
    "... Second, it appears that Congress now has the pretext to open several different congressional investigations into Donald Trump. If that is the case, it will be easy for Congress to blackmail Trump and constantly threaten him with political retaliation if he does not "get with the program". ..."
    "... Third, the rabid persecution of Trump by the Neocons and the deep state is weakening the institution of the Presidency. For example, the latest crazy notion floated by some politicians is to " prohibit the President of the United States from using nuclear weapons without congressional authorization except when the United States is under nuclear attack ." From a technical point of view, this is nonsense, but what it does is send the following signal to the rest of the planet: "we, in Congress, believe that our Commander in Chief cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons." Never mind that they would trust Hillary with the same nukes and never mind that Trump could use only conventional weapons to trigger a global nuclear war anyway (by, for example, a conventional attack on the Kremlin), what they are saying is that the US President is a lunatic that cannot be trusted. How can they then expect him to be take seriously on any topic? ..."
    "... Fourth, can you just imagine what will happen if the anti-Trump forces are successful?! Not only will democracy be totally and terminally crushed inside the USA, but the risks of war, including nuclear, will simply go through the roof. ..."
    "... will Trump have the intelligence to realize the fact that he is under attack and will he have the courage to strike back hard enough ..."
    Feb 04, 2017 | www.unz.com

    A Russian joke goes like this: " Question: why can there be no color revolution in the United States? Answer: because there are no US Embassies in the United States. "

    Funny, maybe, but factually wrong: I believe that a color revolution is being attempted in the USA right now.

    Politico seems to feel the same way. See their recent cover :

    While I did predict that " The USA is about to face the worst crisis of its history " as far back as October of last year, a month before the elections, I have to admit that I am surprised and amazed at the magnitude of the struggle which we see taking place before our eyes. It is now clear that the Neocons did declare war on Trump and some, like Paul Craig Roberts, believe that Trump has now returned them the favor . I sure hope that he is right.

    Let's look at one telling example:

    US intelligence agencies are now investigating their own boss! Yes, according to recent reports , the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and Treasury Department are now investigating the telephone conversations between General Flynn and the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyk.

    According to Wikipedia, General Flynn is the former

    Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Chair of the Military Intelligence Board Assistant Director of National Intelligence Senior intelligence officer for the Joint Special Operations Command.

    He is also Trump's National Security Advisor. In other words, his security clearance is stratospherically high and he will soon become the boss of all the US intelligence services. And yet, these very same intelligence services are investigating him for his contacts with the Russian Ambassador. That is absolutely amazing.

    Even in the bad old Soviet Union, the putatively almighty KGB did not have the right to investigate a member of the Communist Party Central Committee without a special authorization of the Politburo (a big mistake, in my opinion, but never mind that).

    That roughly means that the top 500 members of the Soviet state could not be investigated by the KGB at all. Furthermore, such was the subordination of the KGB to the Party that for common criminal matters the KGB was barred from investigating any member of the entire Soviet Nomenklatura , roughly 3 million people (and even bigger mistake!).

    But in the case of Flynn, several US security agencies can decide to investigate a man who by all standards ought to be considered at least in the top 5 US officials and who clearly has the trust of the new President. And that does not elicit any outrage, apparently.

    By the same logic, the three letter agencies might as well investigate Trump for his telephone conversations with Vladimir Putin.

    Which, come to think of it, they might well do it soon

    This is all absolutely crazy because this is evidence that the US intelligence community has gone rogue and is now taking its orders from the Neocons and their deep state and not from the President and that these agencies are now acting against the interests of the new President.

    In the meantime, the Soros crowd has already chosen a color: pink. We now are witnessing the " pussyhat revolution " as explained on this website. And if you think that this is just a small fringe of lunatic feminists, you would be quite wrong. For the truly lunatic feminists the "subtle" hint about their " pussyhat revolution " is too subtle, so they prefer making their statement less ambiguous as the image on the right shows.

    This would all be rather funny, in a nauseating way I suppose, if it wasn't for the fact that the media, Congress and Hollywood are fully behind this "100 days of Resistance to Trump" which began by a, quote, "queer dance party" at Mike Pence's house.

    This would be rather hilarious, if it was not for all gravitas with which the corporate media is treating these otherwise rather pathetic "protests".

    Watch how MCNBS's talking head blissfully reporting this event:

    Listen carefully to what Moore says at 2:00. He says that they will "celebrate the fact that Obama is still the President of the United States" and the presstitute replies to him, "yes he is" not once, but twice.

    What are they talking about?! The fact that Obama is still the President?!

    How is it that Homeland Security and the FBI are not investigating MCNBC and Moore for rebellion and sedition ?

    So far, the protests have not been too large, but they did occur in various US cities and they were well covered by the media:

    Make no mistake, such protests are no more spontaneous than the ones in the Ukraine. Somebody is paying for all this, somebody is organizing it all. And they are using their full bag of tricks. One more example:

    Remember the pretty face of Nayirah , the Kuwaiti nurse who told Congress that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers tossing our babies from Kuwaiti incubators (and who later turned out to be the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States)? Do you remember the pretty face of Neda , who " died on TV " in Iran? Well, let me introduce you to Bana Alabe, who wrote a letter to President Trump and, of course, the media got hold of the latter and now she is the "face of the Syrian children".

    Want even more proof?

    Okay, click here and take a look at a sampling of anti-Trump caricatures and cartoons compiled by the excellent Colonel Cassad. Some of them are quite remarkable. From this nauseating collection, I will select just two:

    The first one clearly accuses Trump of being in the hands of Putin. The second one make Trump the heir to Adolf Hitler and strongly suggests that Trump might want to restart Auschwitz. Translated into plain English this sends a double message: Trump is not the legitimate President of the USA and Trump is the ultimate Evil.

    This goes far beyond the kind of satire previous Presidents have ever been subjected to.

    My purpose in listing all the examples above is to suggest the following: far from having accepted defeat, the Neocons and the US deep state have decided, as they always do, to double-down and they are now embarking on a full-scale "color revolution" which will only end with the impeachment, overthrowal or death of Donald Trump.

    One of the most amazing features of this color revolution against Trump is the fact that those behind it don't give a damn about the damage that their war against Trump does to the institution of the President of the United States and, really, to the United States as a whole. That damage is, indeed, immense and the bottom line is this: President Trump is in immense danger of being overthrown and his only hope for survival is to strike back hard and fast.

    The other amazing thing is the ugly role Britain plays in this process: all the worst filth against Trump is always eventually traced back right to the UK. How come? Simple. Do you recall how, formally at least, the CIA and NSA did not have the right to spy on US nationals and the British MI6 and GCHQ had no right to spy on British nationals. Both sides found an easy way out: they simply traded services: the CIA and NSA spied on Brits, the MI6 and GCHQ spied on Americans, and then they simply traded the data between "partners" (it appears that since Obama came to power all these measures have now become outdated and everybody is free to spy on whomever the hell they want, including their own nationals). The US Neocons and the US deep state are now using the British special services to produce a stream of filth against Trump which they then report as "intelligence" and which then can be used by Congress as a basis for an investigation. Nice, simple and effective.

    The bottom line is this: President Trump is in immense danger of being overthrown and his only hope for survival is to strike back hard and fast.

    Can he do that?

    Until now I have suggested several times that Trump deal with the US Neocons the way Putin dealt with the oligarchs in Russia: get them on charges of tax evasion, corruption, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, etc. All that good stuff which the US deep state has been doing for years. The Pentagon and the Three Letter Agencies are probably the most corrupt entities on the planet and since they have never been challenged, never mind punished, for their corruption, they must have become fantastically complacent about how they were doing things, essentially counting on the White House to bail them out in case of problems. The main weapons used by these circles are the numerous secrecy laws which protect them from public and Congressional scrutiny. But here Trump can use his most powerful card: General Flynn who, as former director of the DIA and current National Security Advisor to the President will have total access. And if he doesn't – he can create it, if needed by sending special forces to ensure "collaboration".

    However, I am now beginning to think that this might not be enough. Trump has a much more powerful weapon he can unleash against the Neocon: 9/11.

    Whether Trump knew about it before or not, he is now advised by people like Flynn who must have known for years that 9/11 was in inside job. And if the actual number of people directly implicated in the 9/11 operation itself was relatively small, the number of people which put their full moral and political credibility behind the 9/11 official narrative is immense. Let me put it this way: while 9/11 was a US "deep state" operation (probably subcontracted for execution to the Israelis), the entire Washington "swamp" has been since "9/11 accomplice after the fact" by helping to maintain the cover-up. If this is brought into light, then thousands of political careers are going to crash and burn into the scandal.

    9/11 was a collective crime par excellence . A few men actually executed it, but then thousands, possibly tens of thousands, have used their position to execute the cover-up and to prevent any real investigation. They are ALL guilty of obstruction of justice. By opening a new investigation into 911, but one run by the Justice Department and NOT by Congress, Trump could literally place a "political handgun" next to the head of each politician and threaten to pull the trigger if he does not immediately give up on trying to overthrow Trump. What Trump needs for that is a 100% trusted and 100% faithful man as the director of the FBI, a man with " clean hands, a cool head and a burning heart " (to use the expression of the founder of the Soviet Secret Police, Felix Dzerzhinsky). This man will immediately find himself in physical danger so he will have to be a man of great personal courage and determination. And, of course, this "man" could be a woman (a US equivalent of the Russian prosecutor, Natalia Poklonskaia).

    I fully understand that danger of what I am suggesting as any use of the "9/11 weapon" will, of course, result in an immense counter-attack by the Neocons and the deep state. But here is the deal: the latter are already dead set in impeaching, overthrowing or murdering Donald Trump. And, as Putin once said in an interview, "if you know that a fight is inevitable, then strike first!".

    You think that all is this over the top? Consider what is at stake.

    1. First, at the very least, the Trump Presidency itself: the Neocons and the US deep state will not let Trump implement his campaign promises and program. Instead they will sabotage, ridicule and misrepresent everything he does, even if this is a big success.
    2. Second, it appears that Congress now has the pretext to open several different congressional investigations into Donald Trump. If that is the case, it will be easy for Congress to blackmail Trump and constantly threaten him with political retaliation if he does not "get with the program".
    3. Third, the rabid persecution of Trump by the Neocons and the deep state is weakening the institution of the Presidency. For example, the latest crazy notion floated by some politicians is to " prohibit the President of the United States from using nuclear weapons without congressional authorization except when the United States is under nuclear attack ." From a technical point of view, this is nonsense, but what it does is send the following signal to the rest of the planet: "we, in Congress, believe that our Commander in Chief cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons." Never mind that they would trust Hillary with the same nukes and never mind that Trump could use only conventional weapons to trigger a global nuclear war anyway (by, for example, a conventional attack on the Kremlin), what they are saying is that the US President is a lunatic that cannot be trusted. How can they then expect him to be take seriously on any topic?
    4. Fourth, can you just imagine what will happen if the anti-Trump forces are successful?! Not only will democracy be totally and terminally crushed inside the USA, but the risks of war, including nuclear, will simply go through the roof.

    There is much more at stake here than just petty US politics.

    Every time I think of Trump and every time I look at the news I always come back to the same anguished thought: will Trump have the intelligence to realize the fact that he is under attack and will he have the courage to strike back hard enough ?

    I don't know.

    I have a great deal of hopes for General Flynn. I am confident that he understands the picture perfectly and knows exactly what is going on. But I am not sure that he has enough pull with the rest of the armed forces to keep them on the right side should a crisis happen. Generally, "regular" military types don't like intelligence people. My hope is that Flynn has loyal allies at SOCOM and JSOC as, at the end of the day, they will have the last say as to who occupies the White House. The good news here is that unlike regular military types, special forces and intelligence people are usually very close and used to work together (regular military types also dislike special forces). SOCOM and JSOC will also know how to make sure that the CIA doesn't go rogue.

    Last but not least, my biggest hope is that Trump will use the same weapon Putin used against the Russian elites: the support of the people. But for that task, Twitter is simply not good enough. Trump needs to go the "RT route" and open his own TV channel. Of course, this will be very hard and time consuming, and he might have to begin with an Internet-based only channel, but as long as there is enough money there, he can make it happen. And, just like RT, it needs to be multi-national, politically diverse (including anti-Empire figures who do not support Trump) and include celebrities.

    One of the many mistakes made by Yanukovich in the Ukraine was that he did not dare to fully use the legal instruments of power to stop the neo-Nazis. And to the degree that he used them, it was a disaster (like when the riot cops beat up student demonstrators). After listening to a few interviews of Yanukovich and of people near him during those crucial hours, it appears that Yanukovich simply did not feel that he had a moral right to use violence to suppress the street. We will never now if what truly held him back are moral principles of basic cowardice, but what is certain is that he betrayed his people and his country when he refused to defend real democracy and let the "street" take over replacing democracy with ochlocracy (mob rule). Of course, real ochlocracy does not exists, all mobs are always controlled by behind-the-scenes forces who unleash them just long enough to achieve their goals.

    The forces which are currently trying to impeach, overthrow or murder President Trump are a clear and present danger to the United States as a country and to the US Federal Republic. They are, to use a Russian word, a type of "non-system" opposition which does not want to accept the outcome of the elections and which by rejecting this outcome essentially oppose the entire political system.

    I am not a US citizen (I could, but I refuse that citizenship on principle because I refuse to take the required oath of allegiance) and the only loyalty I owe the USA is the one of a guest: never to deliberately harm it in any way and to obey its laws. And yet it turns my stomach to see how easy it has been to turn millions of Americans against their own country. I write a lot about russophobia on this blog, but I also see a deep-seated "Americanophobia" or "USophobia" in the words and actions who today say that Trump is not their President. To them, they micro-identity as a "liberal" or as a "gay" or as "African-American" means more than the very basic fundamental principles upon which this country has been built. When I see these crowds of Trump-bashers I see pure, seething hatred not of the AngloZionist Empire, or of a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy, but a hatred of what I would call the "simple America" or the "daily America" – the simple people amongst whom I have now lived for many years and learned to respect and appreciate and whom the Clinton-bots only think of as "deplorables

    It amazes me to see that the US pseudo-elites have as much hatred, contempt and fear of the American masses as the Russian pseudo-elites have hatred, contempt and fear of the Russian masses (the Russian equivalent or Hillary's "deplorables" would be a hard to pronounce for English speakers word " быдло ", roughly "cattle", "lumpen" or "rabble"). It amazes me to see that the very same people which have demonized Putin for years are now demonizing Trump using exactly the same methods. And if their own country has to go down in their struggle against the common people – so be it! These self-declared elites will have no compunction whatsoever to destroy the nation their have been parasitizing and exploiting for their own class interest. They did just that to Russia exactly 100 years ago, in 1917. I sure hope that they will not get away with that again in 2017.

    [Jan 30, 2017] Former Obama adviser Rice calls Trump decision on Nat Sec panel stone cold crazy

    Notable quotes:
    "... There has been running tension between the Trump administration and the intelligence community ..."
    "... the President had argued that intelligence services were politically partisan, he dismissed their findings that Russia hacked Democratic targets during the campaign and referred slightingly to the intelligence community by tweeting with the word intelligence in quotes. ..."
    "... In setting out the reorganization, Trump said that "security threats facing the United States in the 21st century transcend international boundaries. Accordingly, the United States Government's decision-making structures and processes to address these challenges must remain equally adaptive and transformative." ..."
    Jan 30, 2017 | www.cnn.com

    Former Obama adviser calls Trump decision on Nat Sec panel 'stone cold crazy'

    President Donald Trump's decision to reorganize the National Security Council in a way that removes the director of intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is "stone cold crazy," former National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Sunday.

    Rice retweeted another Twitter user, P.E. Juan, who said: "Trump loves and trusts the military so much he just kicked them out of the National Security Council and put a Nazi in their place."

    Rice, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, was reacting to an executive order signed by Trump that said that the head of DNI and the nation's most senior military officer would be invited to attend the security meetings "where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed."

    "This is stone cold crazy. After a week of crazy. Who needs military advice or intell to make policy on ISIL, Syria, Afghanistan, DPRK?" Rice tweeted, with DPRK referring to North Korea.

    White House press secretary Sean Spicer told ABC News Rice's comments were "clearly inappropriate language from a former ambassador."

    DNI James Clapper was always included in Obama administration's NSC principals' meetings, CNN confirmed.

    In contrast, Trump's order makes his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, a regular member of the Principals Committee. The committee is Cabinet-level group of agencies that deal with national security that was established by President George H. W. Bush in 1989. Every version of it has included the Joint Chiefs chairman and the director of the CIA or, once it was established, the head of the DNI. The President's chief of staff was typically included as well.

    Bannon's presence reinforces the notion he is, in essence, a co-chief of staff alongside Reince Priebus, and demonstrates the breadth of influence the former head of Breitbart News has in the Trump administration.

    Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, offered praise for the administration's national security team writ large, but expressed concerns about Bannon.

    "I think the national security team around President Trump is very impressive. I don't think you could ask for a better one," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

    "I am worried about the national security council who are the members of it and who are the permanent members of it. The appointment of Mr. Bannon is something which is a radical departure from any national security council in history," he said. "It's of concern this quote reorganization."

    Rice continued her tweetstorm: "Chairman of Joint Chiefs and DNI treated as after thoughts in Cabinet level principals meetings. And where is CIA?? Cut out of everything?"

    And she noted a provision that would allow Vice President Michael Pence to chair NSC meetings if Trump isn't available.

    "Pence may chair NSC mtgs in lieu of POTUS," Rice tweeted. "Never happened w/Obama."

    And she added the observation that Trump's UN ambassador Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was "sidelined from Cabinet and Sub Cab mtgs."

    The NSC is run by National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency until he was asked to step down in 2014 by senior intelligence leaders.

    There has been running tension between the Trump administration and the intelligence community , though during a January 22 visit to the CIA Trump declared that "nobody feels stronger about the intelligence community than Donald Trump," adding that "I love you. I respect you."

    Before then, the President had argued that intelligence services were politically partisan, he dismissed their findings that Russia hacked Democratic targets during the campaign and referred slightingly to the intelligence community by tweeting with the word intelligence in quotes.

    In setting out the reorganization, Trump said that "security threats facing the United States in the 21st century transcend international boundaries. Accordingly, the United States Government's decision-making structures and processes to address these challenges must remain equally adaptive and transformative."

    Regular members of the Principals Committee will include the secretary of state, the treasury secretary, the defense secretary, the attorney general, the secretary of Homeland Security, the assistant to the President and chief of staff, the assistant to the President and chief strategist, the national security adviser and the Homeland Security adviser.

    [Jan 30, 2017] Former Obama adviser calls Trump decision on Nat Sec panel 'stone cold crazy'

    Notable quotes:
    "... There has been running tension between the Trump administration and the intelligence community ..."
    "... the President had argued that intelligence services were politically partisan, he dismissed their findings that Russia hacked Democratic targets during the campaign and referred slightingly to the intelligence community by tweeting with the word intelligence in quotes. ..."
    "... In setting out the reorganization, Trump said that "security threats facing the United States in the 21st century transcend international boundaries. Accordingly, the United States Government's decision-making structures and processes to address these challenges must remain equally adaptive and transformative." ..."
    Jan 30, 2017 | www.cnn.com

    Former Obama adviser calls Trump decision on Nat Sec panel 'stone cold crazy'

    President Donald Trump's decision to reorganize the National Security Council in a way that removes the director of intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is "stone cold crazy," former National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Sunday.

    Rice retweeted another Twitter user, P.E. Juan, who said: "Trump loves and trusts the military so much he just kicked them out of the National Security Council and put a Nazi in their place."

    Rice, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, was reacting to an executive order signed by Trump that said that the head of DNI and the nation's most senior military officer would be invited to attend the security meetings "where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed."

    "This is stone cold crazy. After a week of crazy. Who needs military advice or intell to make policy on ISIL, Syria, Afghanistan, DPRK?" Rice tweeted, with DPRK referring to North Korea.

    White House press secretary Sean Spicer told ABC News Rice's comments were "clearly inappropriate language from a former ambassador."

    DNI James Clapper was always included in Obama administration's NSC principals' meetings, CNN confirmed.

    In contrast, Trump's order makes his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, a regular member of the Principals Committee. The committee is Cabinet-level group of agencies that deal with national security that was established by President George H. W. Bush in 1989. Every version of it has included the Joint Chiefs chairman and the director of the CIA or, once it was established, the head of the DNI. The President's chief of staff was typically included as well.

    Bannon's presence reinforces the notion he is, in essence, a co-chief of staff alongside Reince Priebus, and demonstrates the breadth of influence the former head of Breitbart News has in the Trump administration.

    Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, offered praise for the administration's national security team writ large, but expressed concerns about Bannon.

    "I think the national security team around President Trump is very impressive. I don't think you could ask for a better one," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

    "I am worried about the national security council who are the members of it and who are the permanent members of it. The appointment of Mr. Bannon is something which is a radical departure from any national security council in history," he said. "It's of concern this quote reorganization."

    Rice continued her tweetstorm: "Chairman of Joint Chiefs and DNI treated as after thoughts in Cabinet level principals meetings. And where is CIA?? Cut out of everything?"

    And she noted a provision that would allow Vice President Michael Pence to chair NSC meetings if Trump isn't available.

    "Pence may chair NSC mtgs in lieu of POTUS," Rice tweeted. "Never happened w/Obama."

    And she added the observation that Trump's UN ambassador Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was "sidelined from Cabinet and Sub Cab mtgs."

    The NSC is run by National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency until he was asked to step down in 2014 by senior intelligence leaders.

    There has been running tension between the Trump administration and the intelligence community , though during a January 22 visit to the CIA Trump declared that "nobody feels stronger about the intelligence community than Donald Trump," adding that "I love you. I respect you."

    Before then, the President had argued that intelligence services were politically partisan, he dismissed their findings that Russia hacked Democratic targets during the campaign and referred slightingly to the intelligence community by tweeting with the word intelligence in quotes.

    In setting out the reorganization, Trump said that "security threats facing the United States in the 21st century transcend international boundaries. Accordingly, the United States Government's decision-making structures and processes to address these challenges must remain equally adaptive and transformative."

    Regular members of the Principals Committee will include the secretary of state, the treasury secretary, the defense secretary, the attorney general, the secretary of Homeland Security, the assistant to the President and chief of staff, the assistant to the President and chief strategist, the national security adviser and the Homeland Security adviser.

    [Jan 29, 2017] How Obama Framed Trump with Faux Mortgage Insurance Rate Decrease

    Notable quotes:
    "... By Naked Capitalism reader aliteralmind, aka Jeff Epstein. Jeff, a progressive activist and journalist, was one of only around forty candidates in the county to be personally endorsed by Bernie Sanders, and was a pledged delegate for him at the DNC. Jeff is also currently starring in Feel The Bern-The Musical , which will very soon be performed in New York. Originally posted on Citizens' Media TV ..."
    "... "to be in the tank is to be "lovingly enthralled; foolishly enraptured; passionately bedazzled"" ..."
    "... Today, the President announced a major new step that his Administration is taking to make mortgages more affordable and accessible for creditworthy families. ..."
    Jan 29, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Posted on January 28, 2017 by Yves Smith By Naked Capitalism reader aliteralmind, aka Jeff Epstein. Jeff, a progressive activist and journalist, was one of only around forty candidates in the county to be personally endorsed by Bernie Sanders, and was a pledged delegate for him at the DNC. Jeff is also currently starring in Feel The Bern-The Musical , which will very soon be performed in New York. Originally posted on Citizens' Media TV

    (This is my first issue-opinion video. With thanks especially to Adryenn Ashley and Jimmy Dore for the inspiration. All sources and supporting evidence is below.) Within hours of becoming the 45th President of the United States , one of Donald Trump's first orders of business was to sign an executive order to " raise mortgage insurance rates " on millions of homeowners , by around $500 a year.

    But while it is technically true that Trump did sign the order reversing the decrease, it is a misleading picture. This story is more a negative reflection on President Obama than it is on Trump.

    A Brief Tutorial From Someone Who Is Learning the Subject Right Along With You

    Generally speaking, if you are a first time homebuyer and purchase a house with a down payment of less than 20% of the home's worth, you are required to purchase mortgage insurance. This insurance is to protect the the lender in case you default on your payments.

    Let's use the example of a $200,000 home with a $10,000 (5%) down payment. So you need to borrow $190,000.

    $200,000 * .05 = $10,000
    
    $200,000 - $10,000 = $190,000
    

    Since January 2015 , the upfront MIP ( mortgage insurance premium ) has been 1.75%, with the annual premium at .8%. So when you sign the mortgage, you pay the upfront premium of $3,325.

    $190,000 * .0175 = $3,325
    

    And then every year, you pay the annual premium of $1,520.

    $190,000 * .008 = $1,520
    

    As you pay off your principal, this number goes down.

    The Obama administration's reduction of the annual premium rate is .25 points (the upfront premium remains unchanged). So with the same loan above, your annual premium would instead be $1,045.

    .008 - .0025 = .0055
    
    $190,000 * .0055 = $1,045
    

    That's a savings of $475 a year, or about $40 a month.

    $1,520 - $1,045 = $475
    
    $475 / 12 months = $39.59
    

    Backlash Against Trump

    The criticism of Trump for this move has been unrelenting and, at least in my internet bubble, unanimous. I have not seen any criticism of the Obama administration at all; including by, disappointingly, one of my primary sources of news, The Young Turks. (Can't find the video at the moment, but they briefly criticized Trump for the move, without looking further into the issue.)

    As reported by USA Today :

    Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Friday that Trump's words in his inaugural speech "ring hollow" following the mortgage premium action.

    "In one of his first acts as president, President Trump made it harder for Americans to afford a mortgage," he said. "What a terrible thing to do to homeowners. Actions speak louder than words."

    As reported by Bloomberg :

    "This action is completely out of alignment with President Trump's words about having the government work for the people," said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, through a spokesman. "Exactly how does raising the cost of buying a home help average people?"

    Sarah Edelman, director of housing policy for the left-leaning Center for American Progress, in an e-mail wrote, "On Day 1, the president has turned his back on middle-class families - this decision effectively takes $500 out of the pocketbooks of families that were planning to buy a home in 2017. This is not the way to build a strong economy."

    And one of the many strong criticisms as documented by Common Dreams :

    "Donald Trump's inaugural speech proclaimed he will govern for the people, instead of the political elite," [Liz Ryan Murray, policy director for national grassroots advocacy group People's Action] said. "But minutes after giving this speech, he gave Wall Street a big gift at the expense of everyday people. Trump may talk a populist game, but policies like this make life better for hedge fund managers and big bankers like his nominee for Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, not for everyday people."

    The Full Picture

    To say that Trump took savings away from the neediest of homebuyers is not true, because homebuyers never had the savings to begin with. The rate reduction was not announced until January 9 of this year–11 days before the end of Obama's eight year term–and was not set to take effect until January 27, a full week after Trump was sworn in.

    (Here's the PDF from the FHA, of Trump's suspension announcement .)

    In addition, Obama's reduction decision seems to have been made without any advance notice or even a projection document justifying the decrease. As I understand it , both of these things are unusual with a change of this magnitude.

    Finally, with the announcement made little more than a week before the new administration was to be sworn in, and despite Trump being entirely responsible for implementing this change, the incoming administration was not consulted.

    Now that the timing is clear, Time Magazine's coverage is particularly misleading:

    Trump, who claimed a populist mantle in his first speech as a president, signed the executive order less than an hour after leaving the inaugural stage. It reverses an Obama-era policy.

    "Obama-era policy" implies the reduction was made long ago, and has been in force for much of that time.


    (Rates can't be raised if they were never lowered.)

    Conclusion: It Was a Set Up

    Finally. After eight years of hard work and multiple requests, your boss approaches you on a Monday morning and says, "Good news! Starting in two weeks, I'm giving you a raise. Congratulations."

    Two days later, you find out that he decided to leave the company months ago, and his final day is Friday. Your raise doesn't start until a week after that.

    You ask him about your new boss. "Well, he's a pretty strict guy." He leans in, puts the back of his hand to the side of his mouth, lowers his voice, and continues, "Honesty, I hear he is a bit difficult to work with. Real penny pincher." He sits up, his voice back to its normal cadence, "But don't worry. I'm leaving a note on his desk telling him just how important this raise is to you and your family." He stands up and slaps you on the back as he walks away. "I'm sure he'll keep my word."

    If that were me, I would be upset at my new boss, but I would be furious at my old one. He had eight years to do something.

    This was nothing more than an opportunistic political maneuver by the outgoing president, to set the incoming president up for failure. All while pretending to care about American homeowners. If the President Obama really wanted to help Americans, he would've considered this move–or something similar–long ago. Instead, he told them he was giving them a gift and promised that it would be delivered by Trump, knowing full well that he would never follow through. Lower-income Americans were used as pawns in a cheap political game.

    Further confirming my theory, here is what was said when the reduction was originally announced :

    "The Trump administration would be accused on day one of raising mortgage costs for average Americans if it reverses the FHA move," analyst Jaret Seiberg, managing director at Cowen Group Inc., wrote in a note to clients. "Trump's career has been real estate. It would seem out of character for him to be aggressively negative on real estate in his first week in office." [ ]

    "I have no reason to believe this will be scaled back," [HUD Secretary Julian] Castro told reporters. The premium cut "offers a good benefit to hardworking American families out there at a time when interest rates might well continue to go up."

    It is not Trump's responsibility to keep the promises that Obama makes on his way out the door. It is Obama's responsibility to not promise what is not promiseable.

    There are so many things for progressives to criticize Trump about. This is not one of them.

    So Who Are We Fighting Anyway?

    To paraphrase Jimmy Dore , "The way to oppose Trump is to agree with him when he's right, and to fight him when he's wrong. Anything else delegitimizes you, especially in the eyes of his supporters."

    And again in another of his videos : "We don't need to unite against Trump. We need to unite against corruption and corporatism."

    If Democrats do something wrong, we need to fight them. If Trump does something wrong, we need to fight him. If Trump does something right, we need to stand with him.

    If we can't win with the truth, we don't deserve to win.

    39 0 10 0 1 This entry was posted in Banana republic , Banking industry , Credit markets , Dubious statistics , Guest Post , Media watch , Real estate , Regulations and regulators on January 28, 2017 by Yves Smith . Subscribe to Post Comments 93 comments Lambert Strether , January 28, 2017 at 6:06 am

    "If we can't win with the truth, we don't deserve to win."

    Let's get that tatooed on our foreheads.

    UserFriendly , January 28, 2017 at 7:21 am

    I agree with the sentiment but after watching the D party protest war under Bush, never talk about it under Obama, and then cheerlead for it with Hillary I don't think they actually stand for anything except identity politics.

    jgordon , January 28, 2017 at 7:47 am

    Right, they traded support for real issues for identity politics. Identity politics which is lovingly celebrated on TYT every day by the way. I'm not sure how or why anyone would go to that rancid cesspool of biased disinformation for news, but ok.

    Here is a litmus test: anyone who gave a pro forma endorsement of Hillary OK, understandable, and I can kind of tolerate that. But for the others who were in the tank for Hillary like TYT–all except for Jimmy Dore–those people are persona non grata from here out.

    aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 8:35 am

    Totally disagree that TYT was in the tank for Hillary. Have watched these guys every day since around May. They're all pro-Bernie. They clearly wanted Hillary over Trump during the general (and I did too, but that's waaaaaay not to say I'm pro-Hillary), but I don't think "in the tank for Hillary" is a fair characterization for any of them.

    To me, the best evidence is that I have not witnessed Jimmy Dore being forced to tone his admittedly louder and more vehement anti-Hillary ranting down on any show, including the main show. They even gave him his own show around the end of the primaries where he gleefully goes off (Aggressive Progressives).

    As an aside, The Jimmy Dore Show seems fresher than Aggressive Progressives, I believe because he rehearses the bits on own show first. On TJDS, he is frequently good, and consistently on fire.

    Naked Cap, the entire TYT network, Glenn Greenwald, Le Show, and of course, Bernie Sanders, are among my most important truth tellers.

    Jerry Denim , January 28, 2017 at 2:00 pm

    Sorry for being so clueless, but "TYT", "TJDS" ?

    Anyone care to fill me in on this nomenclature?

    Thanks!

    oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:26 pm

    TYT – The Young Turks
    TJDS – The Jimmy Dore Show

    aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 2:27 pm

    The Young Turks and The Jimmy Dore Show. YouTube shows.

    oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:27 pm

    If you voted for Hillary then you were in the tank for her. There's no such thing as the lesser of the two evils. Sorry! Same goes for TYT.

    dcrane , January 28, 2017 at 3:04 pm

    A relevant definition of "in the tank" from this NY Times Magazine article:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-safire-t.html

    "to be in the tank is to be "lovingly enthralled; foolishly enraptured; passionately bedazzled""

    Yves Smith Post author , January 28, 2017 at 4:59 pm

    It's not that clear cut. For instance, if you are a person of color, there was good reason to be plenty worried about Trump. Violence against immigrants picked up big time in the UK after Brexit, so there's a close parallel. And his appointment of Jeff Sessions as AG is hardly encouraging.

    Brian Daly , January 28, 2017 at 7:43 pm

    But if you're White, you have no good reason to be worried about Trump? That's a rather shabby way to think about folks of all colors.

    Sorry to be snarky. It's just exasperating reading these attempts to define and claim moral purity. In a complex and compromised world.

    integer , January 28, 2017 at 10:17 pm

    Did you see their election day coverage? Here are the highlights: TYT meltdown .
    My favorite part starts at 14m50s, when Kasparian rants about how she has no respect for women who didn't vote for Clinton and calls them "f@#king dumb". Solidarity!

    skippy , January 28, 2017 at 3:30 pm

    What the – ????? – like the right wing is not all about Identity Politics from an ethnic and religious foundations .. errrrrrr .

    Now that the Democrats embraced free market neoliberalism and went off the reservation with non traditional views wrt whom could join the club, being the only thing separating the two, its a bit wobbly to make out like there is some massive schism between the two.

    Disheveled . you can't have a "dominate" economic purview running the ship for 50ish years and then devolve into polemic political warfare ..

    Teejay , January 28, 2017 at 4:42 pm

    jgordon– Identity politics lovingly celebrated on that rancid cesspool of biased disinformation every day. Wow, takes my breath away. I've watched the TYT evening news for ~10 months virtually ever day and I'd guesstimate that I viewed 60 of their You Tube clips. Seems to me you're projecting. Given your strident certitude you should have no trouble provide any links that convinced you of your opinion, buttress your argument. The daily recurrences of "identity politics" put it out there. What convinced you they were "in the tank for Hillary"? It'd be hard to come up with a more inaccurate phrase. They full throatedly endorsed Sanders in the primaries. Cenk announced on the Monday (IIRC) before that he would be voting for HRC so how do you arrive at using "in the tank"? I found your remarks a "rancid cesspool of biased disinformation" long on emotion and very short on facts and evidence. That's why it seems like projection.

    Donald , January 28, 2017 at 10:00 am

    The US support for the Saudi war in Yemen is the most clearcut example of the moral worthlessness of many liberals. Actually, to their credit many Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress have opposed it, but it isn't a big cause because Obama was the one doing it. I imagine Trump will continue the policy, but don't expect anything to change– Trump can be opposed on other issues, so there will be no incentive to criticize him on an issue when the Trump people can say they are just continuing what Obama started.

    It is infuriating to hear liberals mindlessly repeating how disgraceful it is to see Trump cozying up with a dictator who has blood on his hands. It is the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind with these people.

    integer , January 28, 2017 at 10:33 pm

    This tweet (which I found @ActualFlatticus ) sums up the dynamic you are referring to perfectly imo.

    Jen , January 28, 2017 at 7:31 am

    Hear, hear! Thanks to NC that Common Dreams piece set off my bs detector immediately. There's a larger framing question we can add as well: who benefits from PMI?

    Using the example above, the home buyer pays an upfront premium of $3,300 which gives them no additional equity in their home, and somewhere between $1400 and $1500 a year for their premium, which also doesn't increase their equity. And, they continue to pay PMI until they achieve a loan to value ratio of 80%.

    So you buy your 200K house and dutifully pay your mortgage and PMI, which, btw, is also not tax deductible. You finally get to the point where through a combination of paying down your mortgage and increasing home prices, you have 80% equity in your home. Then the housing market tanks, and your 200K home is worth 170K. Your house is worth less than you paid for it and you're stuck paying $1500 a year in fees that don't reduce the amount of your mortgage, that you can't deduct from your taxes, and that you can't get rid of until you have 80% equity in your house.

    Sign me up!

    So who benefits? Certainly not the middle class would be homeowner, who not only gets screwed on the finances, but thanks to inflation of home prices, is getting screwed on the finances so that they can spend 200K on a crappy little ranch that's a 40 minute commute to their job one way on a good day.

    jgordon , January 28, 2017 at 7:56 am

    I also read about this on the Neocon/Neolib pro-war propaganda and general disinformation site for women and manginas Huffington Post, and I have to say that they were spinning really hard to make this look like something horrible Trump had done. But even in the extremely biased article I read they surreptitiously had to admit that this was a rule the Obama regime had put in place the midnight before Obama departed and that Trump was just reversing it. I read this before I knew anything else about t he subject and already had a pretty good idea of what was going on. But the above post helped a lot.

    Baby Gerald , January 28, 2017 at 8:45 am

    'the Neocon/Neolib pro-war propaganda and general disinformation site for women and manginas '

    Thank you, jgordon, for my first hearty laugh of the morning. I'm going to bookmark HuffPo just so I can re-title it this.

    Thanks again to NC for giving me a good link to use against the uninformed masses with whom I frequently have to deal.

    lyman alpha blob , January 28, 2017 at 1:12 pm

    Finance benefits – they get to keep promoting unaffordable mortgages.

    We refused to pay this BS insurance when purchasing our house, since it wan't insuring us against anything but rather we'd be paying for the bank's insurance against ourselves. Seems a lot more like a scam when you frame it that way, considering that the bank is lending you money they just created in the first place.

    Instead we saved up for another year or two until we had the whole 20% down required to avoid the insurance. I do understand that not everyone can afford 20% down depending on their job and where they live however if enough people refused both PMI and to purchase because they couldn't afford 20% down on an overpriced house (and we are in another bubble already, at least in my area), prices would drop until people could really afford them.

    Finance pretends they are just trying to make the American Dream available to everybody and too many have taken the bait to the point where finance as a percentage of GDP is near or at an all time high. The reality is that it's mostly just a scam to benefit finance and turn the population into debt slaves.

    Marcer69 , January 28, 2017 at 2:03 pm

    The home owner was able to purchase a home with less than 20% down. The PMI protects the lender during default, which is considerably higher when borrower has no skin in the game. Also, there are other options such as lender paid mi.

    Marcer69 , January 28, 2017 at 2:11 pm

    Additionally, most of you are confusing PMI – Private Mortgage Insurance- with FHA Upfront and MIP. With the latter being required regardless of the down payment. Secondly, the author was wrong on his facts. MIP is .85 @ 96.5% and .80 @ 30 years. 15 YR.terns offer reduced

    koki , January 28, 2017 at 10:50 pm

    PMI is another insurance company rip-off. Requiring people to escrow taxes with no interest paid to them by the banks using those funds is another rip-off.

    Roger Smith , January 28, 2017 at 10:40 am

    Agreed! Great article Jeff!

    aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 1:24 pm

    Thank you, Roger.

    nonsense factory , January 28, 2017 at 3:12 pm

    Trying to condense this whole article into a tweet is a challenge. . .

    "Obama cuts mortg. ins. rate for <20% down by 25 pts ($500 on $200k home) 11days prior to exit in con artist act sure to be dropped by Trump resulting in bogus media claims about Dem support for working class homeowners."

    Sondra , January 28, 2017 at 4:35 pm

    I agree. If we Progressives are to make any fwd movement, we can't beat up on DJT on any and everything. I am also cautioning friends & family to do so too. If cry "foul" everyou time he acts, that delegitimizes us.

    One recent example is the Trumps' arrivall @ wh b4 the inauguration. A snapshot shows DJT entering WH before the Obamas and Mrs. DJT. Once posted, goes viral and the talk is how ill-mannered, selfish is and how gracious the Obamas are for escorting the Mrs. after her "oafish" husband

    What is not shown is that DJT stops, comes back, and ushers the trio ahead of him. (which you can see on CSPAN ).
    When I saw the truth of what happened, after reading the negative comments, that worried me.

    We REALLY need to be more dis corning and employ critical thinking.

    Have to be careful not to be swayed by bullshit, no matter where it comes from.

    Quiet , January 28, 2017 at 7:01 am

    This explanation, while nice, only serves to make Trump look dumb. He jumped into an obvious trap. Rather than focus on how Obama tricked him, I'm a bit more concerned with what this portends for the future. See, if the president is unable, either for political or personal reasons, to avoid easy pitfalls like this, the odds of his success aren't very high.

    By the way, this reads like one more zing at Obama after he's already left the building. He earned most of the criticism he got, definitely from this site, but I feel like this is overdoing it. Criticizing him for not doing it sooner? Totally valid. Criticizing him for tripping up his successor? Petty.

    Pointing out the hypocrisy of Schumer and Kaine isn't part of that pettiness, though. That will be useful to remember as they cozy up to the Don and claim they're doing it to "help working families."

    aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 8:13 am

    I am admittedly a political newbie (Bernie woke me up never did anything before him but vote), and perhaps I am missing something, but I would be much less upset about it if he didn't screw middle class Americans in the process.

    That this is considered petty, by which I believe you mean normal politics, is exactly the problem.

    JTMcPhee , January 28, 2017 at 11:37 am

    "Screw middle class Americans" exactly how?

    The article makes it pretty clear, if I am reading it and the links and background right, that the screwing is principally in the form of requiring mortgage insurance to insure THE LENDER (or note holder or whoever MERS says gets paid on default). And that the "benefit" you may feel was (according to the spin) "taken away," was not even an "entitlement" because it would not have even been in effect until three weeks AFTER Obama (who has screwed the middle class and everyone else not in the Elite, nine ways from nowhere, for 8 years), and would not change the abuse that is PMI. And would not have "put dollars in the pockets of consumers" anyway for long after that. And how many homeowners are in the category?

    And banksters and mortgage brokers and the rest, gee whiz, we mopes are supposed to be concerned about THEM? About people whose paydays come from commissions on the dollar amount of the loans they write? Where all the "incentives," backed by the Real Economy that undergirds the ability of the US Government to do its fiat money forkovers to lenders that connived to change the policies against prudential lending to inflate the bubble that crashed and burned so many, are all once again being pointed in the direction of making Realtors ™(c)(BS) and lenders even richer on flips and flops and dumb transactions and churning?

    aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 12:08 pm

    He screwed the middle class by teasing them with a rate reduction, knowing that Trump was going to never let it happen.

    JTMcPhee , January 28, 2017 at 3:39 pm

    Just to clarify, and please anyone correct me, this was not any kind of "rate reduction." Rate reductions are what is supposed to happen under the various homeowner "they let you live in their house as long as you pay the rent mortgage" relief programs that never happened except to transfer more money to the Banksters. As in "reduce the unaffordable interest rate on oppressive mortgages." And "mark to market." And PRINCIPAL reductions as a result. And I do know the nominal difference between "title" states and "equitable interest" states - in either, the note holder effectively owns the house and property until the last nickel is paid, and as seen in the foreclosure racket, often not even the. And the "homeowner" gets to pay the taxes and maintain and maybe improve the place, to protect the note holder's equity "Fee simple absolute" is a comforting myth.

    As the article points out, the only potential reduction in money from borrower to lender/loan servicer (since the PMI underwriters seem to have such close financial ties to the insured note holder, there's but slim difference between the parts of the racket) might have been that tiny reduction in the insurance PREMIUM.

    Niggling over terms, maybe, but that's what "the law" is made up of.

    And apologies if I mistook the referent of "he" to be "Trump" rather than Obama and his clan - but nonetheless

    hemeantwell , January 28, 2017 at 8:54 am

    This excellent analytic walkthrough is a model for what must be done to ward off any form of "Obama 2!" as a political battle cry. It must be done relentlessly and without any consideration of being fair to that neoliberal schemer. The Clintonites will claw their way back from the edge of their political grave if they can draw on such sentiments.

    nonsense factory , January 28, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    Exactly, what we need is an FDR approach, which Bernie Sanders Democrats are far more likely to deliver. Instead of bailing out AIG and Goldman Sachs, FDR would have set up a Homeonwers Loan Corporation to buy up all the adjustable rate mortgages and convert them to fixed-rate mortgages, and instead of the zero-interest loans going to Wall Street from the Fed, they'd have gone to homeowners facing foreclosure, who could then stay in their homes and pay them off over time.

    But when Obama came in, he brought in Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, who preached about "not returning to the failed policied of FDR." What a pack of con artists. I prefer your honest hustlers to those guys (i.e. Team Trump, American Hustle 2.0 at least you know what to expect.)

    a different chris , January 28, 2017 at 2:20 pm

    >See, if the president is unable, either for political or personal reasons, to avoid easy pitfalls like this

    How is this a pitfall? Trump puts a hold on a "last minute Obama change", lets it sit for awhile, and then reinstates it or maybe even makes it better. Then Trump owns the reduction, not Obama.

    This isn't even one-dimensional chess.

    Jim Haygood , January 28, 2017 at 7:59 am

    This essay focuses on timing and tactics. Not analyzed is the essential question of What is the appropriate premium for mortgage insurance?

    It's an actuarial question based on prior loss experience. Real estate moves in long cycles. Each trough is different in depth.

    Such questions aside, HUD's annual mortgage insurance premium of 0.8% was in the middle of the typical range of 0.5% to 1.0% charged by private mortgage insurers. Obama's short-lived cut to 0.55% would have put HUD's premium at the low end, on what probably are higher-risk loans.

    Obama's action mirrors what's seen in other gov-sponsored insurance programs, such as pension benefit guarantee schemes which are chronically under-reserved. Cheap premiums look like a free benefit, until the guarantee fund goes bust in a down cycle, and taxpayers get hit with a bailout.

    What's so stupendously silly about Obama's diktat is that it was too late to provide any electoral benefit. Whereas if HUD's mortgage insurance pool later went bust, it could have been blamed on Obama for cutting premiums without any actuarial analysis.

    Perhaps HUD secretary Ben Carson will ask a more fundamental question: what is HUD doing in the mortgage insurance business, anyway? Obama's ham-handed tampering with premiums for political purposes shows why government is not well placed to be in the insurance business - it has skewed incentives. Ditch it, Ben!

    aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 8:49 am

    In researching this story (I have no financial background, and have never owned anything beyond a car), I had a theory that the reduction made no fiscal sense because the Feds raised rates for the first time in 2016, after hovering above near zero for eight years, to .5%. My thinking was that the move was to discourage new borrowers by making loans more expensive, therefore increasing the cost of mortgages and ultimately threatening the solvency of the FHA. I was wrong, which is disappointing because it would have made for a more dramatic ending, in that Trump's revoking the decrease would have been the "correct" thing to do.

    Brian Lindholm , January 28, 2017 at 9:23 am

    Jim,

    Aye. You make an excellent point that essentially everybody in media has ignored. What should the mortgage insurance rate actually be? And the answer is simple: It should be high enough to cover losses incurred by mortgage defaults (plus operating expenses), but no higher.

    I don't know what that rate should have actually been, but if it was 0.55%, then Obama and the FHA should have lowered the rate years ago to avoid overcharging people. And if 0.80% was the right rate, then Obama should never have lowered it at all, given that it would ultimately require a taxpayer bailout. Either way , Obama is incompetent.

    If the only consideration is cost to customers, then the proper rate is 0%. Offer it for free!! But if you want to the program to actually be self-sustaining, so that it doesn't require continuous injection of taxpayer dollars and be a perpetual target for cancellation by Congress, then you have to charge enough to cover losses. Whether the average mortgage rate is 3.5% or 4.0% or 6.2% matters not a whit in this calculation.

    Net conclusion: Obama is either a flaming incompetent who flat-out doesn't understand the concept of insurance, or this was a deliberate attempt to impose a political headache on Trump.

    Jim Haygood , January 28, 2017 at 9:53 am

    An analogy could be made to municipal bond insurance, which like mortgage insurance is intended to protect the lender against loss of principal:

    Municipal bond insurance adds a layer of protection in the rare case of default. However, that protection is dependent on the insurance companies' credit quality.

    Municipal bond insurance used to be commonplace; now it's quite rare. Why is that? As of 2008, nearly half of all newly issued municipal bonds carried some form of insurance. Today, the share is less than 7%.

    The number of municipal bond insurers has also declined and their credit ratings have fallen.

    A number of bond insurers went bust during the Great Recession. Plus, a large default by Puerto Rico has caused many municipal market participants to question the ability of insurance companies to pay on the bonds they insure.

    http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/articles/How-the-Municipal-Bond-Insurance-Market-Has-Changed-Since-the-Great-Recession

    Muni bond insurers were publicly traded, profit seeking companies. But they underpriced their insurance, probably because no one expected a 1930s-style crisis like 2008.

    Obama had no more concept about how to price mortgage insurance than I do about how to perform brain surgery. He was just mindlessly handing out bennies at public expense in the dark of night, before skulking away into well-deserved obscurity.

    shinola , January 28, 2017 at 1:35 pm

    I dunno Jim – perhaps Obama DID know (or was advised) that the rate cut was actuarially unsound thus setting up his successor for problems down the road or bad optics upfront if the cut was reversed.

    Cleverly devious?

    Brian Lindholm , January 28, 2017 at 2:01 pm

    Yep. To quote the White House press release, " Today, the President announced a major new step that his Administration is taking to make mortgages more affordable and accessible for creditworthy families. "

    That's not a valid reason to lower PMI rates. PMI rates must cover losses, and higher interest rates on mortgages may very well mean higher default rates. If so, PMI rates would need to go up as well.

    Now if the press release had talked about PMI overcharges by the FHA, then I might have have bought it. But they didn't. There was no mention of actuarial soundness at all .

    Jack , January 28, 2017 at 10:12 am

    For a good explanation of how mortgage insurance works and the impact of the discussed premium increase/decrease, check out David Dayen's (a frequent contributor to NC) article on the Intercept here . David goes more in depth on the actual numbers and what they mean.

    Optic7 , January 28, 2017 at 12:26 pm

    I did briefly hear some discussion in the news about the FHA mortgage insurance program having been underfunded in the recent past. This could have given an additional reason for Trump to block the lower rate until the numbers could be analyzed. I did a search and found a couple of articles from before either of these decisions that illustrate different perspectives on this issue:

    http://thehill.com/policy/finance/232492-castro-grilled-over-lowering-mortgage-insurance-premiums

    http://www.fhaloanpros.com/2009/01/is-the-fha-under-funded/

    The latter article is from 2009 but includes some interesting details about significant amounts of money being transferred from the fund to the treasury department.

    Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:13 pm

    From the first link, as of 2015: " his recent decision to lower mortgage insurance premiums despite the FHA falling short of its capital reserve requirement." So the fund was out of compliance with the law, and this was a long-running point of contention between the administration and the Republicans in Congress.

    What we don't know yet is whether the fund reached its goal, which would justify lowing the premium. The Congress members were complaining about being lied to.

    DarkMatters , January 28, 2017 at 12:38 pm

    "What is the appropriate premium for mortgage insurance?"

    "Such questions aside, HUD's annual mortgage insurance premium of 0.8% was in the middle of the typical range of 0.5% to 1.0% charged by private mortgage insurers. Obama's short-lived cut to 0.55% would have put HUD's premium at the low end, on what probably are higher-risk loans."

    The argument here seems to be that what is typical is appropriate. By that argument, 0.55% which falls in that range would be ok. The argument that it's too low assumes that the range as it stands is somehow rationally defined, which is another assumption that itself bears scrutiny. To say that 0.5-1.0% is ok is an assumption, and should be examined in detail right along with the 0.55 and 0.8 HUD figures before firmer conclusions could be drawn. The results would give an informed answer to the rhetorical question " what is HUD doing in the mortgage insurance business, anyway?" Absent that, we're reduced to arguments, tainted on both sides by political inclinations. Jeff Epstein's clarification is exemplary.

    oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:51 pm

    " Whereas if HUD's mortgage insurance pool later went bust, it could have been blamed on Obama for cutting premiums without any actuarial analysis."

    Oh Boy! That would really hurt Obama, when he'd be long gone and dancing with the stars!

    Remember, whatever he did during his term he weighed and measured a thousand times.

    flora , January 28, 2017 at 3:33 pm

    "Cheap premiums look like a free benefit, until the guarantee fund goes bust in a down cycle, and taxpayers get hit with a bailout."

    +1.

    Domofdoom , January 28, 2017 at 8:18 am

    Well said. What do you think would be more effective: trying to change the dems or giving up on them and setting up another party?

    WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 3:33 pm

    option 2

    Vatch , January 28, 2017 at 4:37 pm

    One may be more effective, but if it's not feasible, it doesn't matter how effective it would be in theory. See this comment by Martin from Canada a few days ago:

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/bernie-sanders-nails-trumps-pick-health-human-services-directly-wall.html#comment-2747290

    Here's the link that Martin pointed to:

    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/bernie-sanders-democratic-labor-party-ackerman/

    Maybe a viable new progressive party can be created. But it sure won't be easy. If it weren't extremely difficult, don't you think that the Greens would have done it by now? For now, I think that people need to be actively looking for candidates to run in the 2018 Democratic primaries. In a few places, at the state level, this will be happening in 2017. See:

    https://ballotpedia.org/State_legislative_elections,_2017

    "Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia hold elections in odd-numbered years."

    rjs , January 28, 2017 at 8:36 am

    Obama came in off the golf course after Trump was elected and issued dozens of similar diktats i recall wondering at the time that if all those moves were so important, why didn't he make them in the 8 years he had

    oho , January 28, 2017 at 9:39 am

    EZ real issue for Democrats to embrace. Stop the sales tax of food at the state/muni level. Shift that burden (or as much as reasonably possible) to the top income brackets.

    Oh wait, the places where Democrats can do this, always solidly vote D and there's no incentive.

    J.P. Steele , January 28, 2017 at 9:51 am

    There is an art to politics. As anyone who studies the subject knows, one has to be both "Lion & Fox." Lion .for the strength to drive policies, but also a Fox in order to avoid "Snares and Traps." Bannon, who actually has been writing these executive orders, stepped right into this Trap. Rookie mistake. This is what happens when you have ideologues attempting to actually govern. They "step in it." I believe that Jeff is a bit naive and thin skinned here as to "The Game." Obama did indeed set a snare ..but I am a bit more concerned by Steve's arrogance for boldly stepping in it and allowing the opposition a fine platform to grandstand on the issue. Rookie mistake. Arrogance & Stupidity.

    integer , January 28, 2017 at 11:13 pm

    Afaics there are two ways in which this game can be played:

    A)
    1: 0bama sets the trap.
    2: Trump nullifies the reduction in rates while simultaneously denouncing 0bama for setting the trap.
    3: MSMedia circus.

    B)
    1: 0bama sets the trap.
    2: Trump nullifies the reduction in rates.
    3: D-party denounces Trump.
    4: MSMedia circus.
    5: Trump/Bannon denounces 0bama for setting the trap.
    6: MSMedia once again loses credibility, at least in the eyes of Trump supporters.

    Why is option A better than B? Am I missing something here?

    Yves Smith Post author , January 29, 2017 at 12:02 am

    Trump and Bannon will never do 5 and 6. They never fight on the level of detail and timetables.

    Horatio Parker , January 28, 2017 at 10:14 am

    Simple question: why did Trump reverse the cut?

    Craig , January 28, 2017 at 10:53 am

    Excellent question, it has not been answered yet:). Lotsa words tho.

    cm , January 28, 2017 at 2:39 pm

    1. It raised financial risk to the govt.
    2. As the article pointed out many times, it was a sleazy move on Obama's part

    WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 3:41 pm

    Same reason Bush 43 reversed the last-minute reductions to water regulations that Bill Clinton passed, and Obama had to deal with

    Clinton to Bush : President Clinton Signs Midnight Regulations

    Bush to Obama : Bush's Final FU: Last-Minute Regulations That Will Screw America for Years to Come

    Obama to Trump: Mortgage rate (non-)"reduction", likely more to come

    Wiki on "Midnight Regulations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_regulations

    WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:07 pm

    Not a lot of archived stuff from 2001 and before on the nets, oddly. I regret posting the CNN link up there.

    I washed my hands twice afterward.

    ScottW , January 28, 2017 at 10:17 am

    If everyone with less than 20% equity has PMI, why didn't it pay off after the crash and lessen the need for a bailout? Logic would dictate most of the foreclosures were on homes people bought most recently with less than 20% down. Did PMI pay any money during the crash and to whom and for what?

    If it didn't do any good during the last crash to lessen the public bailout, what's the point of requiring it?

    lyman alpha blob , January 28, 2017 at 1:00 pm

    That is a very good question and I don't remember hearing anything about PMI paying out during the crash (but that could just be my memory). In fact it never even crossed my mind but yeah you'd think that should have mitigated some of the losses. Maybe any payout would only benefit the mortgage holder directly and wouldn't carry through to the mortgage-based securities? That seems odd though and if true would be a strong case for severely curtailing if not eliminating at least the more exotic bets.

    Anybody know anything about this?

    oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:55 pm

    I often wondered about the same thing/

    WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:01 pm

    Because it's another BS fee they tack on for no good reason other than greed.

    I was in the mortgage game in 2006-2008. Now matter how many showers I take I still don't feel clean.

    bob , January 28, 2017 at 4:03 pm

    "Logic would dictate most of the foreclosures were on homes people bought most recently with less than 20% down."

    Not banker logic. They were foreclosing on houses with equity to steal. Those houses that were valued above what was mortgaged.

    Jim F , January 28, 2017 at 10:29 am

    What gets me is people who think "shame on Trump" for not recognizing and avoiding the trap. Every single one of those people I avoid like the plague.

    Joel , January 28, 2017 at 10:42 am

    Re: The Young Turks

    I watched a few times until what's his name, the main turk, interrupted and talked over the female co-host too many times for my stomach. There are too many good choices to give clicks to that type of behavior. Hey this is the 21st century.

    Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:03 pm

    Cenk Uygur – the only actual Turk on the show. It IS his show and network, but I see your point.

    jake , January 28, 2017 at 10:42 am

    I don't know . Obama made many policy changes after the election results came.

    It's not as if government is a fast moving engine. This could have been in the works for years and got expedited for obvious reasons. It took years for Obama to start commuting drug sentences, also Chelsea Manning, and there was no political gain in it for him.

    Unless the policy was itself a fraud, it's impossible to know whether it was implemented cynically.

    Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:01 pm

    I made this point below, once it escapes moderation, but basically: 1) the article fails to tell us whether the new rate made sense; and 2) Clinton did the same thing – a bunch of last-minute progressive moves, designed to stroke his legacy and punk his Republican successor. Let's hope the clemency actions are less reversible than the policy moves.

    WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:04 pm

    "It took years for Obama to start commuting drug sentences, also Chelsea Manning, and there was no political gain in it for him."

    It took years for Obama to start commuting drug sentences, also Chelsea Manning,*** BECAUSE*** there was no political gain in it for him.

    There, I fixed it for you.

    John , January 28, 2017 at 11:00 am

    So Trump/Bannon got punked by Obama the first week in office. Looks like to me th e Repubs are realizing Obamacare may be a similar punkjob.

    JamesG , January 28, 2017 at 11:02 am

    "Simple question: why did Trump reverse the cut?"

    To gain time.

    To evaluate the numbers and come up with an accurate rate?

    My simple question: Why did the Ds presume it was simply "to hurt the middle class?"

    Horatio Parker , January 28, 2017 at 12:06 pm

    Because it makes buying a house more expensive.

    It seems that Obama's motives may safely assumed to be deceitful and petty, but we can conclude nothing at all about Trump or his motives.

    I don't see how this "truth" advances any agenda.

    DarkMatters , January 28, 2017 at 12:41 pm

    Maybe Mnuchin protecting his faction? Just another hypothesis.

    NotClairVoyant , January 28, 2017 at 12:12 pm

    The MIP rate reduction was either an ill-advised reaction to the recent spike in mortgage rates or a simple set-up for the incoming administration. I suspect is was a combination of both, and likely designed more for political gain than anything.

    It's hard to take a guy seriously when he professes to be concerned about home affordability when he spent the last 8 years "foaming the runway" for banks as millions of people were foreclosed on their homes, only to watch many of those same homes get gobbled up by Wall Street and rented back out to them.

    Fewer underwater borrowers will at least curtail the path to feudalism in this new echo housing bubble.

    winstonsmith , January 28, 2017 at 12:21 pm

    Another issue is who would have actually benefited from the Obama rate cut. We are supposed to believe it would have been home buyers, but a uniform increase in the spending power of home buyers as a group is to a large extent offset by a corresponding increase in home prices. To that extent it would be sellers (including private equity) and not low income buyers who would benefit.

    yan , January 28, 2017 at 1:14 pm

    Also, as far as I'm concerned, if Obamamometer was serious about helping homeowners there are many more better ways to do it than "foaming the runway" for banks, or preempting any meaningful action through his statewide get out of jail free card settlement, or actually trying to stop his buddies from blowing asset bubble after asset bubble.
    Moreover, if you can´t put up more than 20% up front to buy a house maybe the problem is that wages are shit compared to property prices and people can´t afford anything more than cheap meth or oxycontin to cope with their sorry lives.

    WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:06 pm

    +1

    Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 1:55 pm

    Pardon if this is a duplication, but: Isn't there a very large omission here? Was the premium decrease justified, or not? It's supposed to be government insurance, so the premium should cover the costs. Did it? Would the proposed lower premium cover them? (Yeah, I know, MMT. But apparently the idea here was to have a self-supporting program, so it should be self-supporting unless you announce otherwise.)

    That said: this is part of a pattern. Obama made a number of progressive policy moves at the very last minute, most of them reversible. This is nothing but legacy-stroking, as well as setting a trap for the next Pres. Clinton did the same thing, along with some questionable pardons.

    "So why'd you wait so long?"

    Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:30 pm

    Well, Haygood was the only one to beat me to it.

    oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:21 pm

    I noticed the false headlines on yahoo news (the bastion of fake and worthless news) and I immediately checked it to find that O'Liar had planted this landmine so that it could blow up in Trump's face. Sure enough, when Trump canceled it, he was the bad guy (even though it had never had gone into effect as this article points out). What a cynical move by O'Liar and how cynical can his sycophants be?

    flora , January 28, 2017 at 3:11 pm

    Great post! I saw the headlines when the story came out and instantly thought there was something "off", something a little too pat about the stories. But I wasn't sure what was wrong with the stories, and was left confused. This post of investigative reporting and facts informs me what was actually happening. Thank you.

    aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 4:48 pm

    Nice to hear this. Thanks.

    jake , January 28, 2017 at 4:29 pm

    The reaction here puzzles me to the point of confusion. Absent any argument that the policy didn't offer it's claimed benefits (cost savings for the middle-class), is the left so virtuous that it will reject and refuse to fight for any advance which isn't selflessly arrived at?

    Compare this to "conservatives" who successfully campaigned in 2010 against supposed Medicare cuts related to Obamacare implementation, when they'd love nothing more than to kill the program outright.

    We, by contrast, we won't even fight for what we claim to believe in, if it isn't wrapped in virtue.

    Yves Smith Post author , January 28, 2017 at 5:06 pm

    You are missing that this is insurance, and the cost of losses must be paid for somehow. From Bruce's comment above:

    What should the mortgage insurance rate actually be? And the answer is simple: It should be high enough to cover losses incurred by mortgage defaults (plus operating expenses), but no higher.

    I don't know what that rate should have actually been, but if it was 0.55%, then Obama and the FHA should have lowered the rate years ago to avoid overcharging people. And if 0.80% was the right rate, then Obama should never have lowered it at all, given that it would ultimately require a taxpayer bailout. Either way, Obama is incompetent.

    If the only consideration is cost to customers, then the proper rate is 0%. Offer it for free!! But if you want to the program to actually be self-sustaining, so that it doesn't require continuous injection of taxpayer dollars and be a perpetual target for cancellation by Congress, then you have to charge enough to cover losses. Whether the average mortgage rate is 3.5% or 4.0% or 6.2% matters not a whit in this calculation.

    Net conclusion: Obama is either a flaming incompetent who flat-out doesn't understand the concept of insurance, or this was a deliberate attempt to impose a political headache on Trump.

    jake , January 28, 2017 at 6:56 pm

    Granted, but nobody knows the facts. Bruce wants to damn Obama for not doing it before, or damn him now for doing it. But nothing he either did or didn't do will be deemed acceptable at this point, even if the reduction is fully warranted.

    Have we never heard politics? Process? Delay? Your net conclusion may still prove to be the correct one, though I'm not sure that failure to implement change earlier, assuming it was warranted, could be justly laid at the feet of Obama. But we do know?

    flora , January 28, 2017 at 7:55 pm

    I'm not sure that failure to implement change earlier, assuming it was warranted, could be justly laid at the feet of Obama. But we do know?"

    A Presidential Directive, aka an executive order or executive action, can be laid at the feet of the President. So, yes, we do know. He could have taken the action anytime in the past 8 years. Note the date on this action – Jan 7th, 2017.
    http://www.housingwire.com/articles/32533-its-official-obama-to-direct-fha-to-cut-mortgage-insurance-premiums

    centaur , January 28, 2017 at 5:03 pm

    +1000, jake

    witters , January 28, 2017 at 6:10 pm

    So Obama almost nearly did something that might, maybe, have been a tiny bit useful, but then the US Constitution

    [Jan 28, 2017] Putin said for over two centuries Russia has supported the United States, was its ally during the two world wars, and now sees the United States as a major partner in fighting international terrorism.

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Both sides demonstrated a mood for active, joint work on stabilizing and developing Russian-American cooperation," the Kremlin said in a statement, saying Putin and Trump had agreed to work on finding a possible time and place for a meeting. ..."
    "... The Kremlin said the US President asked his Russian counterpart "to wish the Russian people happiness and prosperity" on his behalf, adding Americans "have warm feelings towards Russia and its citizens." Putin said the feeling was "mutual," stressing that historically, the Russians and the Americans were close allies on more than one occasion. ..."
    "... Putin said "for over two centuries Russia has supported the United States, was its ally during the two world wars, and now sees the United States as a major partner in fighting international terrorism." ..."
    "... Moscow, for its part, has repeatedly suggested fostering closer cooperation between the Russian and US Air Forces in Syria, but blamed the previous Obama administration for failing to adequately respond to its entreaties. Relations between the two countries have been marred in recent years over various issues, including divisions on the Syrian crisis and allegations of Russian meddling into the US elections in November of 2016. US sanctions against Russia - imposed over the crisis in Ukraine - was one of the issues expected to be on the agenda of the Trump-Putin exchange. However, the issue was not mentioned in the Kremlin's statement summarizing the conversation. ..."
    "... Russia has been cautious about the prospects for a potential "reset" with the US under the new administration. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said the country has no "naive expectations" and is under no "illusions." ..."
    Jan 28, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Fred C. Dobbs January 28, 2017 at 01:06 PM

    Putin, Trump, in 'Positive' Call, Say Want to Cooperate in Syria: Kremlin https://nyti.ms/2jIzuKa
    NYT - REUTERS - January 28, 2017

    MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump said in a "positive" phone call on Saturday they favored their two countries cooperating in Syria to defeat Islamic State, the Kremlin said in a statement.

    In an eagerly awaited phone call, the first since Trump's inauguration, the two men stressed the importance of restoring economic ties between the two countries and of stabilizing relations, the Kremlin said.

    U.S.-Russia relations had hit a post-Cold War low under Barack Obama and Trump has made clear he wants a rapprochement with Moscow if he can get along with Putin.

    "Both sides demonstrated a mood for active, joint work on stabilizing and developing Russian-American cooperation," the Kremlin said in a statement, saying Putin and Trump had agreed to work on finding a possible time and place for a meeting.

    There was no mention in the statement that the possibility of Trump easing sanctions on Moscow imposed over the Ukraine conflict had been mentioned, a subject widely expected to be raised.

    The Kremlin said Trump and Putin had agreed to establish "partner-like cooperation" when it came to global issues such as Ukraine, Iran's nuclear program, tensions on the Korean peninsula and the Israeli-Arab conflict.

    Trump's stance on Russia has been under intense scrutiny from critics who say he was elected with help from Russian intelligence, an allegation he denies. His detractors have also accused him of being too eager to make an ally of Putin.

    For Putin, an easing of Western sanctions would be a major coup ahead of next year's presidential election as it would help the economy recover.

    libezkova -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 28, 2017 at 03:58 PM

    Compare the coverage with

    https://www.rt.com/news/375416-putin-trump-telephone-call/

    == quote ==

    In their first phone conversation that lasted nearly an hour, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the new US President Donald Trump have outlined their intent to cooperate on issues ranging from defeating Islamic State to mending bilateral economic ties.

    "Both sides expressed their readiness to make active joint efforts to stabilize and develop Russia-US cooperation on a constructive, equitable and mutually beneficial basis," as well as "build up partner cooperation" on a wide range of international issues, according to a Kremlin statement following their discussion.

    The White House said that the "positive" conversation was "a significant start to improving the relationship between the United States and Russia that is in need of repair."

    "Both President Trump and President Putin are hopeful that after today's call the two sides can move quickly to tackle terrorism and other important issues of mutual concern," the White House statement added.

    After speaking with Chancellor Merkel for 45 minutes @POTUS is now onto his 3rd of 5 head of government calls, speaking w Russian Pres Putin pic.twitter.com/RPAWIgcO2C
    - Sean Spicer (@PressSec) January 28, 2017Q

    "The Presidents have spoken in favor of establishing a real coordination between the US and Russian actions in order to defeat ISIS and other terrorist organizations in Syria," the Kremlin statement said.

    The two leaders also discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as Iran's nuclear program. "Major aspects of the Ukrainian crisis have been also touched upon," the Kremlin announced.

    The leaders of Russia and the US have noted a need to restore economic ties "to stimulate" further development of the relationship between the nations. Putin and Trump also agreed to initiate a process to "work out possible dates and venue of their personal meeting."

    Telephone conversation with US President Donald Trump https://t.co/mjp9Tta1sE
    - President of Russia (@KremlinRussia_E) 28 января 2017 г.Q
    During the conversation the Presidents also expressed their desire to "maintain regular personal contacts," the Kremlin statement said.

    The Kremlin said the US President asked his Russian counterpart "to wish the Russian people happiness and prosperity" on his behalf, adding Americans "have warm feelings towards Russia and its citizens." Putin said the feeling was "mutual," stressing that historically, the Russians and the Americans were close allies on more than one occasion.

    Putin said "for over two centuries Russia has supported the United States, was its ally during the two world wars, and now sees the United States as a major partner in fighting international terrorism."

    U.S. President Donald Trump © Mark MakelaTrump hopes to get along with Russia, 'knock the hell out of ISIS together'

    On Friday, speaking at a joint briefing with British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump said he hoped he would have a "fantastic relationship" with Russia's president, but understands that might not happen. Trump has said previously that he would welcome Moscow's involvement in a joint effort to battle Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

    "I don't know Putin, but if we can get along with Russia that's a great thing. It's good for Russia; it's good for us; we go out together and knock the hell out of ISIS, because that's a real sickness," he said in an interview with Fox News.

    Moscow, for its part, has repeatedly suggested fostering closer cooperation between the Russian and US Air Forces in Syria, but blamed the previous Obama administration for failing to adequately respond to its entreaties. Relations between the two countries have been marred in recent years over various issues, including divisions on the Syrian crisis and allegations of Russian meddling into the US elections in November of 2016. US sanctions against Russia - imposed over the crisis in Ukraine - was one of the issues expected to be on the agenda of the Trump-Putin exchange. However, the issue was not mentioned in the Kremlin's statement summarizing the conversation.

    Citing an unnamed source in the White House, a researcher at the Atlantic Council analytical center, Fabrice Pothier, wrote in a Twitter post on Thursday that the Trump administration "has an executive order ready" to lift the restrictions on Moscow, but Trump said on Friday that it is "very early to be talking about that."

    U.S. House of Representatives in Washington © Gary Cameron Top Dem to propose bill to hamstring Trump in relaxing sanctions on Russia with GOP wingmen

    However, earlier in January, Trump said that he would consider lifting restrictions if Moscow cooperates with Washington on certain issues, such as nuclear arms reduction.

    "They have sanctions on Russia - let's see if we can make some good deals with Russia. For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that's part of it," Trump was quoted as saying by the Times.

    Trump also said in one of his Tweets that "having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing," warning only "fools" would think otherwise. However, several US Senators proposed a bill last week that would make it impossible for the US President to lift restrictions without congressional approval.

    Russia has been cautious about the prospects for a potential "reset" with the US under the new administration. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said the country has no "naive expectations" and is under no "illusions."

    [Jan 24, 2017] The Definitive Demise of the Debunked Dodgy Dossier on The Donald

    Notable quotes:
    "... of Corrente . ..."
    "... Do you see the name of an actual business, owned by Trump? ..."
    "... For Donald Trump, all attempts to gain a foothold in the USSR and then in Russia in 30 years of travel and negotiations failed. Moscow did not have a Trump Tower of its own, although Trump boasted every time that he had met the most important people and was just about to invest hundreds of millions in a project that would undoubtedly be successful. ..."
    "... Trumps' largest business success in Russia was the presentation of a Trump Vodka at the Millionaire Fair 2007 in Moscow. This project was also a cleansing; In 2009 the sale of Trump Vodka was discontinued. ..."
    "... puts his name on stuff ..."
    "... transition ..."
    Jan 23, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    by Lambert Strether of Corrente .

    In the midst of the hysteria about Russian interference in the 2016 election - 52% of Democrat voters believe it's definitely or probably true that "Russia tampered with vote tallies" , a view for which there is no evidence whatever, and which is a depressing testimony to the power of propaganda to produce epistemic closure in liberals as well as conservatives - came Buzzfeed's 35-page "dodgy dossier" on Donald Trump, oppo that the researcher, Christopher Steele , peddled during the election proper, but was unable to sell, not even to an easy mark like Jebbie. (There's a useful debunking of Steele's report in the New York Review of Books , of all places.) Remember the piss jokes? So two-weeks ago Amazingly, or not, a two-page summary to Steele's product had been included in a briefing given to Trump (and Obama). A weary Obama was no doubt well accustomed to the intelligence community's little ways, but the briefing must have been quite a revelation to Trump. I mean, Trump is a man who knows shoddy when he sees it, right?

    In any case, a link to the following story in Hamburg's ridiculously sober-sided Die Zeit came over the transom: So schockiert von Trump wie alle anderen ("So shocked by Trump like everyone else"). The reporter is Alexej Kowaljow , a Russian journalist based in Moscow. Before anyone goes "ZOMG! The dude is Russian !", everything Kowaljow writes is based on open sources or common-sense information presumably available to citizens of any nation. The bottom line for me is that if the world is coming to believe that Americans are idiots, it's not necessarily because Americans elected Trump as President.

    I'm going to lay out two claims and two questions from Kowaljow's piece. In each case, I'll quote the conventional, Steele and intelligence community-derived wisdom in our famously free press, and then I'll quote Kowaljow. I think Kowaljow wins each time. Easily. I don't think Google Translate handles irony well, but I sense that Kowaljow is deploying it freely.

    (1) Trump's Supposed Business Dealings in Russia Are Commercial Puffery

    Here's the section on Russia in Time's article on Trump's business dealings; it's representative. I'm going to quote it all so you can savor it. Read it carefully.

    Donald Trump's Many, Many Business Dealings in 1 Map

    Russia

    "For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia," Trump tweeted in July, one day before he called on the country to "find" a batch of emails deleted from Hillary Clinton's private server. Nonetheless, Russia's extraordinary meddling in the 2016 U.S. election-a declassified report released by U.S. intelligence agencies in January disclosed that intercepted conversations captured senior Russian officials celebrating Trump's win-as well as Trump's complimentary remarks about Russian President have stirred widespread questions about the President-elect's pursuit of closer ties with Moscow. Several members of Trump's inner circle have business links to Russia, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who consulted for pro-Russia politicians in the Ukraine. Former foreign policy adviser Carter Page worked in Russia and maintains ties there.

    Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's incoming national security adviser, has been a regular guest on Russia's English-language propaganda network, RT , and even dined with Putin at a banquet.

    During the presidential transition, former Georgia Congressman and Trump campaign surrogate Jack Kingston told a gathering of businessmen in Moscow that the President-elect could lift U.S. sanctions.

    According to his own son, Trump has long relied on Russian customers as a source of income. "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Donald Trump Jr. told a Manhattan real estate conference in 2008 , according to an account posted on the website of trade publication eTurboNews. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." Back to map .

    Read that again, if you can stand it. Do you see the name of an actual business, owned by Trump? Do you see the name of any businessperson who closed a deal with Trump? Do you, in fact, see any reporting at all? At most, you see commercial puffery by Trump the Younger: "Russians [in Russia?] make up a pretty [qualifier] disproportionate [whatever that means] cross-section [whatever that means] of a lot of [qualifier] our assets."

    Now Kowaljow (via Google Translate, so forgive any solecisms):

    For Donald Trump, all attempts to gain a foothold in the USSR and then in Russia in 30 years of travel and negotiations failed. Moscow did not have a Trump Tower of its own, although Trump boasted every time that he had met the most important people and was just about to invest hundreds of millions in a project that would undoubtedly be successful.

    Trumps' largest business success in Russia was the presentation of a Trump Vodka at the Millionaire Fair 2007 in Moscow. This project was also a cleansing; In 2009 the sale of Trump Vodka was discontinued.

    Because think about it: Trump puts his name on stuff . Towers in Manhattan, hotels, casinos, golf courses, steaks. Anything in Russia with Trump's name on it? Besides the failed vodka venture? No? Case closed, then.

    (2) Zhirinovsky Is The Very Last Person Putin Would Use For A Proxy

    From The Hill's summary of Russian "interference" in the 2016 election:

    Five reasons intel community believes Russia interfered in election

    The attacks dovetailed with other Russian disinformation campaigns

    The report covers more than just the hacking effort. It also contains a detailed list account of information warfare against the United States from Russia through other means.

    Political party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who the report lists as a "pro-Kremlin proxy," said before the election that, if Trump won, Russia would 'drink champagne' to celebrate their new ability to advance in Syria and Ukraine.

    Now Kowaljow:

    The report of the American intelligence services on the Russian interference in the US elections, published at the beginning of January, was notoriously neglected by Russians, because the name of Vladimir Zhirinovsky was mentioned among the "propaganda activities of Russia", which had announced that in the event of an election victory of Trump champagne to want to drink.

    Such a delicate plan – to reach the election of a President of the US by means of Zhirinovsky – ensures a skeptical smile for every Russian at best. He is already seventy and has been at the head of a party with a misleading name for nearly thirty years. The Liberal Democratic Party is neither liberal nor democratic. If their policies are somehow characterized, then as right-wing populism. Zhirinovsky is known for shrill statements; He threatened, for example, to destroy the US by means of "gravitational weapons".

    If, therefore, the Kremlin had indeed had the treacherous plan of helping Trump to power, it would scarcely have been made known about Zhirinovsky.

    The American equivalent would be . Give me a moment to think of an American politician who's both so delusional and such a laughingstock that no American President could possibly consider using them as a proxy in a devilishly complex informational warfare campaign Sara Palin? Anthony Weiner? Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Na ga happen.

    And now to the two questions.

    (3) Why Would Russian Intelligence Agencies Sources Have Talked to Steele?

    Kowaljow:

    But the report, published on the BuzzFeed Internet portal, is full of inconsistencies and contradictions. The problem is not even that there are a lot of false facts. Even the assumption that agents of the Russian secret services are discussing the details with a former secretary of a hostile secret service in the midst of a highly secret operation by which a future President of the US is to be discredited appears strange.

    Exactly. For the intelligence community and Democrat reliance on Steele's dossier to be plausible, you have to assume 10-foot tall Russkis (1) with incredibly sophisticated strategic, operational, and technical capabilities, who have (2) performed the greatest intelligence feat of the 21st and 20th centuries, suborning the President of the United States, and whose intelligence agencies are (3) leakly like a sieve. Does that make sense? (Of course, the devilish Russkis could have fed Steele bad data, knowing he'd then feed it to the American intelligence agencies, who would lap it up, but that's another narrative.)

    (4) How Do You Compromise the Uncompromisable?

    Funny how suddenly the word kompromat was everywhere, wasn't it? So sophisticated. Everybody loves to learn a new word! Regarding the "Golden Showers" - more sophistication! - Kowaljow writes:

    But even if such a compromise should exist, what sense should it have, since the most piquant details have long been publicly discussed in public, and had no effect on the votes of the elected president? Like all the other scandals trumps, which passed through the election campaign, they also remained unresolved, including those who were concerned about sex.

    This also includes what is known as a compromise, compromising material, that is, video shots of the unsightly nature, which can destroy both the political career and the life of a person. The word Kompromat shines today – as in the past Perestroika – in all headlines; It was not invented in Russia, of course. But in Russia in the Yeltsin era, when the great clans in the power gave bitter fights and intensively used the media, works of this kind have ended more than just a brilliant career. General Prosecutor Jurij Skuratov was dismissed after a video had been shown in the country-wide television channels: There, a person "who looks like the prosecutor's office" had sex with two prostitutes.

    Donald Trump went on Howard Stern for, like, decades. The stuff that's right out there for whoever wants to roll those tapes is just as "compromising" as anything in the dodgy dossier, or the "grab her by the pussy" tape, for that matter. As Kowaljow points out, none of it was mortally wounding to Trump; after all, if you're a volatility voter who wants to kick over the table in a rigged game, you don't care about the niceties.

    Conclusion

    It would be nice, wouldn't it, if our famously free press was actually covering the Trump transition , instead of acting like their newsrooms are mountain redoubts for an irrendentist Clinton campaign. It would be nice, for example, to know:

    1) The content and impact of Trump's Executive Orders.

    2) Ditto, regulations.

    3) Personnel decisions below the Cabinet level. Who are the Flexians?

    4) Obama policies that will remain in place, because both party establishments support them. Charters, for example.

    5) Republican inroads in Silicon Valley.

    6) The future of the IRS, since Republicans have an axe to grind with it.

    7) Mismatch between State expectations for infrastructure and Trump's implementation

    And that's before we get to ObamaCare, financial regulation, gutting or owning the CIA (which Trump needs to do, and fast), trade policy, NATO, China, and a myriad of other stories, all rich with human interest, powerful narratives, and plenty of potential for scandal. Any one of them worthy of A1 coverage, just like the Inaugural crowd size dogpile that's been going on for days.

    Instead, the press seems to be reproducing the last gasps of the Clinton campaign, which were all about the evils of Trump, the man. That tactic failed the Clinton campaign, again because volatility voters weren't concerned with the niceties. And the same tactic is failing the press now. Failing unless, of course, you're the sort of sleaze merchant who downsizes the newsroom because, hey, it's all about the clicks.

    [Jan 23, 2017] Karl Roves Prophecy

    Notable quotes:
    "... "that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ..."
    "... "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." ..."
    "... Financial Times ..."
    "... Rush To Judgment ..."
    Jan 23, 2017 | www.unz.com
    by Karel van Wolferen Karl Rove. Credit: Jay Godwin/Wikimedia Commons [We're very pleased to run this provocative new piece by Karel van Wolferen , who has spent decades as one of Holland's most distinguished international journalists.]

    In a famous exchange between a high official at the court of George W. Bush and journalist Ron Suskind, the official – later acknowledged to have been Karl Rove – takes the journalist to task for working in "the reality-based community." He defined that as believing "that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." Rove then asserted that this was no longer the way in which the world worked:

    "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." (Ron Suskind, NYTimes Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004).

    This declaration became popular as an illustration of the hubris of the Bush-Cheney government. But we could also see it as fulfilled prophecy. Fulfilled in a manner that no journalist at that time would have deemed possible. Yes, the neoconservatives brought disrepute upon themselves because of the disaster in Iraq. Sure, opposition to the reality Rove had helped create in that devastated country became a first rung on the ladder that could lead to the presidency, as it did for Barack Obama. But the neocons stayed put in the State Department and other positions closely linked to the Obama White House, where they became allies with the liberal hawks in continuing 'spreading democracy' by overthrowing regimes. America's mainstream news and opinion purveyors, without demurring, accommodated the architects of reality production overseen by Dick Cheney.

    This did not end when Obama became president, but in fact with seemingly ever greater eagerness they gradually made the CIA/neocon-neoliberal created reality appear unshakably substantial in the minds of most newspaper readers and among TV audiences in the Atlantic basin. This was most obvious when attention moved to an imagined existential threat posed by Russia supposedly aimed at the political and 'Enlightenment' achievements of the West. Neoconservatives and liberal hawks bent America's foreign-policy entirely to their ultimate purpose of eliminating a Vladimir Putin who had decided not to dance to Washington's tune so that he might save the Russian state, which had been disintegrating under his predecessor and Wall Street's robber barons.

    With President Obama as a mere spectator, the neocon/liberals could – without being ridiculed – pass off as a popular revolution the coup d'état they fomented in the Ukraine. And because of an unquestioned Atlanticist faith, which holds that without the policies of the United States the world cannot be safe for people of the Atlantic basin, the European elites that determine policy or comment on it joined their American counterparts in endorsing that reality.

    As blind vassals the Europeans have adopted Washington's enemies as their own. Hence the ease with which the European Union member states could be roped into a system of baseless economic sanctions against Russia, much to the detriment of their own economic interests. Layers upon layers of anti-Russian propaganda have piled up to bamboozle a largely unsuspecting public on both sides of the Ocean.

    In the Netherlands, from where I have been watching all this, Putin was held personally responsible in much of the media for the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner flying over the Ukraine, which killed 298 people. No serious investigation was undertaken. The presentation of 'almost definitive' findings by the joint investigation team under Dutch leadership has neither included clues supplied by jet fighter cannon holes in the wrecked fuselage nor eyewitness stories, which would make the government in Kiev the prime suspect. Moscow's challenging the integrity of the investigation, whose agreed-upon rules included publication of findings only if Kiev agreed with them, were met with great indignation by the Dutch Foreign and Prime Ministers.

    As the fighting in Syria reached a phase when contradictions in the official Washington/NATO story demanded a stepping back for a fresh look, editors were forced into contortions to make sure that the baddies stayed bad, and that no matter how cruel and murderously they went about their occupation in Aleppo and elsewhere, the jihadi groups fighting to overthrow the secular Assad government in Damascus remained strictly labeled as moderate dissidents worthy of Western support, and the Russians as violators of Western values. Architects of an official reality that diverges widely from the facts you thought you knew must rely on faits accompli they achieve through military or police violence and intimidation, in combination with a fitting interpretation or a news blackout delivered by mainstream media.

    These conditions have been widely obtained in the Atlantic basin through a gradual loss of political accountability at top levels, and through government agencies protected by venerated secrecy that are allowed to live lives of their own. As a result American and European populations have been dropped into a fantasy world, one under constant threat from terrorists and an evil dictator in Moscow. For Americans the never ending war waged by their own government, which leaves them with no choice but to condone mass murder, is supposedly necessary to keep them safe. For Europeans, at least those in the northern half, the numerous NATO tanks rolling up to the border of the Russian Federation and the massing of troops in that area are an extra guarantee, on top of the missiles that were already there, that Vladimir Putin will restrain his urges to grab a European country or two. On a smaller scale, when every May 4th the 1940-45 war dead are remembered in the Netherlands, we must now include the fallen in Afghanistan as if they were a sacrifice to defend us against the Taliban threat from behind the Hindu Kush.

    Ever since the start of this millennium there has been a chain of realities as prophesied by Karl Rove, enhanced by terrorist attacks, which may or may not have been the work of actual terrorists, but whose reality is not questioned without risking one's reputation. The geopolitical picture that they have helped build in most minds appears fairly consistent if one can keep one's curiosity on a leash and one's sense of contradiction sufficiently blunt. After all, the details of the official reality are filled in and smoothed out all the time by crafty campaigns produced in the PR world, with assistance from think tanks and academia.

    But the question does reappear in one's thoughts: do the politically prominent and the well-positioned editors, especially those known for having once possessed skeptical minds, actually believe it all? Do those members of the cabinet or parliament, who can get hot under their collar as they decry the latest revelation about one or other outrage committed by Putin, take seriously what they're saying? Not all of them are believers, I know that from off the record conversations. But there appears to be a marked difference between the elite in government, in the media, in prominent social positions, and ordinary people who in these recent times of anguish about populism are sometimes referred to as uneducated. Quite a few among the latter appear to think that something fishy is going on. This could be because in my experience the alert ones have educated themselves, something that is not generally understood by commentators who have made their way through the bureaucracy of standard higher education.

    A disadvantage of being part of the elite is that you must stick to the accepted story. If you deviate from it, and have your thoughts run rather far away from it, which is quite inevitable once you begin with your deviation, you can no longer be trusted by those around you. If you are a journalist and depend for your income on a mainstream newspaper or are hired by a TV company, you run the risk of losing your job if you do not engage in self-censorship.

    Consequently, publications that used to be rightly known as quality newspapers have turned into unreadable rags. The newspaper that was my employer for a couple of decades used to be edited on the premise that its correspondents rather than authorities were always correct in what they were saying. Today greater loyalty to the reality created in Washington and Langley cannot be imagined. For much of northern Europe the official story that originates in the United States is amplified by the BBC and other once reliable purveyors of news and opinion like the Guardian , the Financial Times and the (always less reliable) Economist .

    Repetition lends an ever greater aura of truth to the nonsense that is relentlessly repeated on the pages of once serious publications. Detailed analyses of developments understood through strings of false clues give the fictions ever more weight in learned heads and debates in parliament. At the time of writing, the grave concern spread across the opinion pages on my side of the Atlantic is about how Putin's meddling in upcoming European elections can be prevented.

    The realities Rove predicted have infantilized parliamentary debates, current affairs discussion and lecture events, and anything of a supposedly serious nature on TV. These now conform to comic book simplicities of evil, heroes and baddies. They have produced a multitude of editorials with facts upside-down. They force even those who advise against provoking Moscow to include a remark or two about Putin being a murderer or tyrant, lest they could be mistaken for traitors to Enlightenment values or even as Russian puppets, as I have been. Layers of unreality have incapacitated learned and serious people to think clearly about the world and how it came to be that way.

    How could Rove's predictions so totally materialize? There's a simple answer: 'they' got away with momentous lies at an early stage. The more authorities lie successfully the more they are likely to lie again in a big way to serve the purposes of earlier lies. The 'they' stands for those individuals and groups in the power system who operate beyond legal limits as a hydra-headed entity, whose coordination depends on the project, campaign, mission, or operation at hand. Those with much power got away with excessive extralegal use of it since the beginning of this century because systems of holding the powerful to account have crumbled on both sides of the Atlantic. Hence, potential opposition to what the reality architects were doing dwindled to almost nothing. At the same time, people whose job or personal inclination leads them to ferret out truth were made to feel guilty for pursuing it.

    The best way, I think, to make sense of how this works is to study it as a type of intimidation. Sticking to the official story because you have to may not be quite as bad as forced religious conversion with a gun pointed at your head, but it belongs to the same category. It begins with the triggering of odd feelings of guilt. At least that is how I remember it. Living in Tokyo, I had just read Mark Lane's Rush To Judgment , the first major demolishing in book form of the Warren Report on the murder of John F. Kennedy, when I became aware that I had begun to belong to an undesirable category of people who were taking the existence of conspiracies seriously. We all owe thanks to writers of Internet-based samizdat literature who've recently reminded us that the pejorative use of the conspiracy label stems from one of the greatest misinformation successes of the CIA begun in 1967.

    So the campaign to make journalists feel guilty for their embarrassing questions dates from before Dick Cheney and Rove and Bush. But it has only reached a heavy duty phase after the moment that I see as having triggered the triumph of political untruth.

    We have experienced massive systemic intimidation since 9/11. For the wider public we have the absurdities of airport security – initially evidenced by mountains of nail-clippers – reminding everyone of the arbitrary coercive potential that rests with the authorities. Every time people are made to take off their belts and shoes – to stick only to the least inane instances – they are reminded: yes, we can do this to you! Half of Boston or all of France can be placed under undeclared martial law to tell people: yes, we have you under full control! For journalists unexamined guilt feelings still play a major role. The serious ones feel guilty for wanting to ask disturbing questions, and so they reaffirm that they still belong to 'sane' humanity rather than the segment with extraterrestrials in flying saucers in its belief system. But there is a confused interaction with another guilty feeling of not having pursued unanswered questions. Its remedy appears to be a doubling down on the official story. Why throw in fairly common lines like "I have no time for truthers" unless you feel that this is where the shoe pinches?

    You will have noticed a fairly common response when the 9/11 massacre enters a discussion. Smart people will say that they "will not go there", which brings to mind the "here be dragons" warning on uncharted bits of medieval maps. That response is not stupid. It hints at an understanding that there is no way back once you enter that realm. There is simply no denying that if you accept the essential conclusions of the official 9/11 report you must also concede that laws of nature stopped working on that particular day. And, true enough, if you do go there and bear witness publicly to what you see, you may well be devoured; your career in many government positions, the media and even academia is likely to come to an end.

    So, for the time being we are stuck with a considerable chunk of terra incognita relating to recognized political knowledge; which is an indispensable knowledge if you want to get current world affairs and the American role in it into proper perspective.

    Mapping the motives of those who decide "not to go there" may be a way to begin breaking through this disastrous deadlock. Holding onto your job is an honorable motivation when you have a family to maintain. The career motivation is not something to scorn. There is also an entirely reasonable expectation that once you go there you lose your voice publicly to address very important social abuse and political misdeeds. I think it is not difficult to detect authors active on internet samizdat sites who have that foremost in mind. Another possible reason for not going there is the more familiar one, akin to the denial that one has a dreadful disease. Also possible is an honorable position of wishing to preserve social order in the face of a prospect of very dramatic political upheaval caused by revelations about a crime so huge that hardly anything in America's history can be compared to it. Where could such a thing end – civil war? Martial law?

    What I find more difficult to stomach is the position of someone who is worshiped by what used to be the left, and who has been guiding that class of politically interested Americans as to where they can and cannot go. Noam Chomsky does not merely keep quiet about it, but mocks students who raise logical questions prompted by their curiosity, thereby discouraging a whole generation studying at universities and active in civil rights causes. One can only hope that this overrated analyst of the establishment, who helps keep the most embarrassing questions out of the public sphere, trips over the contradictions and preposterousness of his own judgments and crumples in full view of his audience.

    The triumph of political untruth has brought into being a vast system of political intimidation. Remember then that the intimidater does not really care what you believe or not, but impresses you with the fact that you have no choice. That is the essence of the exercise of brute power. With false flag events the circumstantial evidence sometimes appears quite transparently false and, indeed could be interpreted as having been purposeful. Consider the finding of passports or identity papers accidentally left by terrorists, or their almost always having been known to and suspected by the police? What of their death through police shooting before they can be interrogated? Could these be taunting signals of ultimate power to a doubting public: Now you! Dare contradict us! Are the persons killed by the police the same who committed the crime? Follow-up questions once considered perfectly normal and necessary by news media editors are conspicuous by their absence.

    How can anyone quarrel with Rove's prophecy. He told Suskind that we will forever be studying newly created realities. This is what the mainstream media continue to do. His words made it very clear: you have no choice!

    A question that will be in the minds of perhaps many as they consider the newly sworn in president of the United States, who like John F. Kennedy appears to have understood that "Intelligence" leads a dangerously uncontrolled life of its own: At what point will he give in to the powers of an invisible government, as he is made to reckon that he also has no choice?

    Karel van Wolferen is a Dutch journalist and retired professor at the University of Amsterdam. Since 1969, he has published over twenty books on public policy issues, which have been translated into eleven languages and sold over a million copies worldwide. As a foreign correspondent for NRC Handelsblad , one of Holland's leading newspapers, he received the highest Dutch award for journalism, and over the years his articles have appeared in The New York Times , The Washington Post , The New Republic , The National Interest , Le Monde , and numerous other newspapers and magazines.

    [Jan 22, 2017] CIA to be a single organization. It is more like a loose association, conglomerate of several feuding groups each with its own agenda and political goals, which drive the US foreign policy

    Jan 22, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    A Boy Named Sue : , January 21, 2017 at 12:50 AM
    >Under Obama the US has been at war for his entire presidency.

    FFS, grow up. I take back my positive comments about you.

    Do you think he asked for it?

    Plus he tried normalize our relationships with Iran and Cuba.

    ilsm -> A Boy Named Sue... , January 21, 2017 at 04:23 AM
    Yes, the day he became CinC he should have given the order: "mobilize the transports, evacuate the forces".

    That was too hard, it would have reduced the plunder his backers take. It was against his hidden neocon!

    Obama is responsible for as much evil, fraud, waste and murder as W and immensely more than Bill Clinton.

    The Old Testament warning: "Let them stand the judgement".

    libezkova -> A Boy Named Sue... , January 21, 2017 at 09:43 PM
    "Plus he tried normalize our relationships with Iran and Cuba."

    You are trying to change the subject. While in relations with Iran and Cube Obama did achieve some progress, this not the whole story and this is not a major story. The major story is as following: in relations with Russia Obama was a very dangerous neocon warmonger, who actually put even more dangerous warmonger Hillary in charge of his foreign policy for a long four years period. And who has a track record in Ukraine and Syria which is the track record of a typical neocon.

    Both Russia and the USA nuclear forces are now on high alert, while you typing your staff. That means that if something happens (and the sophistication of modern computers chances are higher then before) leaders of the country have less then 20 min to prevent nuclear war. Less for Russia as the USA got way too close and literally encircled Russia. Do you see the problem ? This Nobel Peace Price winner does not give Russia enough time for measured response. Is not his a warmonger with a typical neoconservative ambitions?

    This is what recently Professor Steven Cohen told us. He think that this the current situation is close or even worse then the Cuban Nuclear Crisis.

    He also told a very interesting thing: it is wrong to consider CIA to be a single organization. It is more like a loose association, conglomerate of several feuding groups each with its own agenda and political goals, which can be even in fight with each other and with Pentagon and FBI.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op6Qr7uuMy8

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCMyHJJrdDw

    And they are really ready to put the world on fire for their narrow goals (such as neocon goal of world dominance; or deposing Assad in Syria).

    [Jan 22, 2017] Disruption of neoliberal status quo and sending Hillary and some other neocon warmongers packing is already an imporatn Trump achievement, not matter how successful he might be in domestic economic policy

    Notable quotes:
    "... Trump's success of failure will be measured by one thing: number of factory jobs added or lost, series MANEMP at the St. Louis FRED website.* If he doesn't create at least about 100,000 a year, he's in trouble. ..."
    "... Disruption of neoliberal status quo and sending Hillary and some other neocon warmongers packing is already an achievement, not matter how you slice it. ..."
    "... And a hissy fit that some factions of CIA demonstrated just before inauguration (it should not be considered as a monolithic organization; more like feudal kingdom of competing and often hostile to each other and to Pentagon and FBI factions ) was a reaction to this setback to neoconservatives in Washington. ..."
    "... If Trump does what he promised in foreign policy: to end the wars for the expansion of neoliberal empire and to end of Cold War II with Russia it will be a huge achievement, even if the US economics not recover from Obama's secular stagnation (oil prices probably will go higher this year, representing an important headwind) . ..."
    "... While we are writing those posts nuclear forces of both the USA and Russia are on high alert, and if something happen (and proliferation of computers make this more rather then less likely), the leaders of both countries have less then 20 minutes to decide about launching a full scale nuclear war. Actually Russia now has less time because of forward movement of NATO forces. ..."
    Jan 22, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    New Deal democrat -> Fred C. Dobbs...January 22, 2017 at 07:10 AM
    Trump's success of failure will be measured by one thing: number of factory jobs added or lost, series MANEMP at the St. Louis FRED website.* If he doesn't create at least about 100,000 a year, he's in trouble.

    *assuming the data continues to be reported if it goes south on him, or he doesn't insist that the method of measuring change. Something that is a real fear.

    Slightly OT, there is one well-known wonky government data site I am watching. I think there are better than 50/50 odds it disappears within the next two weeks.

    libezkova -> New Deal democrat... , January 22, 2017 at 09:04 AM
    Disruption of neoliberal status quo and sending Hillary and some other neocon warmongers packing is already an achievement, not matter how you slice it.

    And a hissy fit that some factions of CIA demonstrated just before inauguration (it should not be considered as a monolithic organization; more like feudal kingdom of competing and often hostile to each other and to Pentagon and FBI factions ) was a reaction to this setback to neoconservatives in Washington.

    If Trump does what he promised in foreign policy: to end the wars for the expansion of neoliberal empire and to end of Cold War II with Russia it will be a huge achievement, even if the US economics not recover from Obama's secular stagnation (oil prices probably will go higher this year, representing an important headwind) .

    No further escalation in geopolitical conflicts represents an important tailwind and might help.

    While we are writing those posts nuclear forces of both the USA and Russia are on high alert, and if something happen (and proliferation of computers make this more rather then less likely), the leaders of both countries have less then 20 minutes to decide about launching a full scale nuclear war. Actually Russia now has less time because of forward movement of NATO forces.

    Professor Stephen Cohen thinks that this is worse then Cuban Missile Crisis and he is an expert in this area.

    [Jan 22, 2017] Trumps inaugural speech – promises, hopes and opportunities by the Saker

    Am nteresting thought (replace imperialism with neoliberalism) : "I think that it is possible that Trump has come to the conclusion that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from being the solution to the contradictions of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most self-defeating feature. "
    Revival of far right in Europe also is connected with the crisis of neoliberalism.
    Notable quotes:
    "... This might be something crucial: I cannot imagine Trump trying to simply do "more of the same" like his predecessors did or trying to blindly double-down like the Neocons always try to. ..."
    "... I am willing to bet that Trump really and sincerely believes that the USA is in a deep crisis and that a new, different, sets of policies must be urgently implemented. ..."
    "... I think that it is possible that Trump has come to the conclusion that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from being the solution to the contradictions of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most self-defeating feature. ..."
    "... Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning from past mistakes? I think it is, and a good example of that is 21 st Century Socialism , which has completely dumped the kind of militant atheism which was so central to the 20 th century Socialist movement. In fact, modern "21st Century Socialism" is very pro-Christian. Could 21 st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe. ..."
    "... Furthermore, the Trump inaugural speech did, according to RT commentators, sound in many aspects like the kind of speech Bernie Sanders could have made. And I think that they are right. Trump did sound like a paleo-liberal ..."
    "... Today, when Trump pronounced the followings words " We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first " he told the Russians exactly what they wanted to hear: Trump does not pretend to be a "friend" of Russia and Trump openly and unapologetically promises to care about his own people first, and that is exactly what Putin has been saying and doing since he came to power in Russia: caring for the Russian people first. After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others. ..."
    "... All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears. ..."
    Jan 22, 2017 | www.unz.com
    Just hours ago Donald Trump was finally sworn in as the President of the United States. Considering all the threats hanging over this event, this is good news because at least for the time being, the Neocons have lost their control over the Executive Branch and Trump is now finally in a position to take action. The other good news is Trump's inauguration speech which included this historical promise " We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow ". Could that really mean that the USA has given up its role of World Hegemon? The mere fact of asking the question is already an immensely positive development as nobody would have asked it had Hillary Clinton been elected.

    The other interesting feature of Trump's speech is that it centered heavily on people power and on social justice. Again, the contrast with the ideological garbage from Clinton could not be greater. Still, this begs a much more puzzling question: how much can a multi-billionaire capitalist be trusted when he speaks of people power and social justice – not exactly what capitalists are known for, at least not amongst educated people. Furthermore, a Marxist reader would also remind us that " imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism " and that it makes no sense to expect a capitalist to suddenly renounce imperialism.

    But what was generally true in 1916 is not necessarily true in 2017.

    For one thing, let's begin by stressing that the Trump Presidency was only made possible by the immense financial, economic, political, military and social crisis facing the USA today. Eight years of Clinton, followed by eight years of Bush Jr and eight years of Obama have seen a massive and full-spectrum decline in the strength of the United States which were sacrificed for the sake of the AngloZionist Empire. This crisis is as much internal as it is external and the election of Trump is a direct consequence of this crisis. In fact, Trump is the first one to admit that it is the terrible situation in which the USA find themselves today that brought him to power with a mandate of the regular American people (Hillary's "deplorables") to "drain the DC swamp" and "make America", as opposed to the American plutocracy, "great again". This might be something crucial: I cannot imagine Trump trying to simply do "more of the same" like his predecessors did or trying to blindly double-down like the Neocons always try to.

    I am willing to bet that Trump really and sincerely believes that the USA is in a deep crisis and that a new, different, sets of policies must be urgently implemented. If that assumption of mine proves to be correct, then this is by definition very good news for the entire planet because whatever Trump ends up doing (or not doing), he will at least not push his country into a nuclear confrontation with Russia. And yes, I think that it is possible that Trump has come to the conclusion that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from being the solution to the contradictions of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most self-defeating feature.

    Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning from past mistakes? I think it is, and a good example of that is 21 st Century Socialism , which has completely dumped the kind of militant atheism which was so central to the 20 th century Socialist movement. In fact, modern "21st Century Socialism" is very pro-Christian. Could 21 st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.

    Furthermore, the Trump inaugural speech did, according to RT commentators, sound in many aspects like the kind of speech Bernie Sanders could have made. And I think that they are right. Trump did sound like a paleo-liberal, something which we did not hear from him during the campaign. You could also say that Trump sounded very much like Putin. The question is will he now also act like Putin too?

    There will be a great deal of expectations in Russia about how Trump will go about fulfilling his campaign promises to deal with other countries. Today, when Trump pronounced the followings words " We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first " he told the Russians exactly what they wanted to hear: Trump does not pretend to be a "friend" of Russia and Trump openly and unapologetically promises to care about his own people first, and that is exactly what Putin has been saying and doing since he came to power in Russia: caring for the Russian people first. After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others.

    All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears.

    Then there are Trump's words about " forming new alliances " and uniting " the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth ". They will also be received with a great deal of hope by the Russian people. If the USA is finally serious about fighting terrorism and if they really wants to eradicate the likes of Daesh, then Russia will offer her full support to this effort, including her military, intelligence, police and diplomatic resources. After all, Russia has been advocating for " completely eradicating Radical Islamic Terrorism from the face of the Earth " for decades.

    There is no doubt in my mind at all that an alliance between Russia and the USA, even if limited only to specific areas of converging or mutual interests, would be immensely beneficial for the entire planet, and not for just these two countries: right now all the worst international crises are a direct result from the "tepid war" the USA and Russia have been waging against each other. And just like any other war, this war has been a fantastic waste of resources. Of course, this war was started by the USA and it was maintained and fed by the Neocon's messianic ideology. Now that a realist like Trump has come to power, we can finally hope for this dangerous and wasteful dynamic to be stopped.

    The good news is that neither Trump nor Putin can afford to fail. Trump, because he has made an alliance with Russia the cornerstone of his foreign policy during his campaign, and Putin because he realizes that it is in the objective interests of Russia for Trump to succeed, lest the Neocon crazies crawl back out from their basement. So both sides will enter into negotiations with a strong desire to get things done and a willingness to make compromises as long as they do not affect crucial national security objectives. I think that the number of issues on which the USA and Russia can agree upon is much, much longer than the number of issues were irreconcilable differences remain.

    So yes, today I am hopeful. More than anything else, I want to hope that Trump is "for real", and that he will have the wisdom and courage to take strong action against his internal enemies. Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their internal enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump , I get very, very concerned and I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?". What is certain is that in the near future one of us will soon become very disappointed. I just hope that this shall not be me.

    Mao Cheng Ji , January 21, 2017 at 10:15 am GMT \n

    100 Words

    Could that really mean that the USA has given up its role of World Hegemon?

    Well, another author here, David Chibo, seems to think that the intent is exactly the opposite: for the US (the nation) to become World Hegemon. As opposed to what we have today, to multinational capital being World Hegemon

    Anonymous , January 21, 2017 at 2:17 pm GMT \n
    100 Words

    When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump

    Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so mainstream media like.
    So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography ( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.

    He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white hate groups.

    I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased by seeing him called a "rabid maniac".

    alexander , January 21, 2017 at 4:10 pm GMT \n
    300 Words

    Yes Saker,

    The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.

    The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.

    Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion in 2000.

    Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled from 9.3 trillion in 2000.

    A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its GDP, which happened to us two years ago .and the spread is growing, not tightening.

    If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in serious jeopardy and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.

    I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to save the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency and chart a new course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.

    There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.

    So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over but its really almost ten years to late for this.

    Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising income taxes.

    And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we should be able to dodge the bullet.

    I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which are highly successful.

    It is so important to us all.

    bluedog , January 21, 2017 at 6:08 pm GMT \n
    200 Words @alexander Yes Saker,


    The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.

    The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.

    Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion in 2000.

    Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled from 9.3 trillion in 2000.

    A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its GDP, which happened to us two years ago....and the spread is growing, not tightening.

    If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in serious jeopardy...and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.


    I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to save the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency ...and chart a new course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.

    There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.

    So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over...but its really almost ten years to late for this.

    Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising income taxes.

    And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we should be able to dodge the bullet.


    I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which are highly successful.

    It is so important to us all.

    Guess you didn't watch the debate where Trump said there is a very large bubble over wall street, and its bigger than the housing bubble (my words not Trumps) and our GDP the figures the government puts out as David Stockman Reagan budget director said is very suspect to say the least, for I have seen it stated anywhere from $16 trillion to $18 trillion and change much like the BLS report I suspect.
    Not much wiggle room for Trump a crashing bubble on wall street almost 100,000,000 un-employed per the Lay-Off-List, no that fails to jibe with the figure the government puts out, much like the GDP I suspect, and there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the debt will grow under Trump as he re-builds the military, as more tax dollars are flushed down the drain to keep company with the trillions already there.
    Chalmers Johnson was right in his excellent books from Blowback to The Sorrows of Empire Militarism,Secrecy,and the End of the Republic and our 900+ bases around the globe, can Trump change that close at least half of those bases that cost us billions of dollars we don't have or will it be the status quo I suspect it will be the later

    Dan Hayes , January 21, 2017 at 8:08 pm GMT \n
    100 Words @Anonymous
    When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump
    Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so... mainstream media like.
    So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography ( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.

    He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white hate groups.

    I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased by seeing him called a "rabid maniac".

    Anonymous:

    I can back up Horowitz being termed "a rapid maniac". Some time ago I met him at one of his book signings. At that time I would be regarded as one of his disciples, i.e. his camp followers. That changed once I actually met him. His eyes were those of a crazed man. Enough said!

    Mao Cheng Ji , January 21, 2017 at 8:40 pm GMT \n

    Fuck Horowitz, he certainly is a rabid maniac and a scumbag.

    As for the main topic, there's also this, the Masters of the Universe vs. the deep state:

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/heres-how-the-trump-presidency-will-play-out/5570021

    Anon , January 22, 2017 at 2:29 am GMT \n
    100 Words

    "After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others. All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears."

    But it could mean NOT putting Zionist-Globalist interest first.
    And that's what it's all about.

    Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
    Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way, all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism.

    Beckow , January 22, 2017 at 8:11 am GMT \n
    100 Words

    The problem is that the issues between Russia and US are not that easy to resolve. For example, will US keep the "anti-Iran" missile defense systems in East Europe? Will they continue to state that Ukraine and Georgia will be in NATO? Will the recent NATO troops in Poland, Baltic states and Romania stay? There are a few others, like the Ukraine problem – Crimea, Donbass, economic collapse.

    None of those issues are suitable for a deal. A deal requires things that either side can let go. We don't have that here. Most likely the tensions will recede, some summits will be held, a few common policies will be attempted (e.g. Middle East), but none of the really big issues (missiles, NATO expansion, Crimea, Ukraine) will be addressed. US has gone too far down that road to backtrack now – it is all logistics at this point. And logistics don't change short of something like a war.

    So we are stuck. But at least we are no longer heading towards a catastrophe.

    Miro23 , January 22, 2017 at 8:41 am GMT \n
    200 Words @alexander Yes Saker,


    The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.

    The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.

    Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion in 2000.

    Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled from 9.3 trillion in 2000.

    A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its GDP, which happened to us two years ago....and the spread is growing, not tightening.

    If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in serious jeopardy...and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.


    I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to save the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency ...and chart a new course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.

    There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.

    So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over...but its really almost ten years to late for this.

    Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising income taxes.

    And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we should be able to dodge the bullet.


    I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which are highly successful.

    It is so important to us all.

    I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to save the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency and chart a new course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.

    There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.

    That's an interesting point, the US does have creditors and it has reached its credit limit, and hasn't exactly been making good investments with the money that was borrowed.

    The real issues seem to be making spending efficient (for example US healthcare that costs about 2x the Canadian rate per person for the same result), and rebasing production in the US (more US taxpayers).

    The Socialist UK government was in a similar position in the early 1970′s with a "welfare state" that it couldn't afford, general industrial strife and a "class war". When the UK's creditors saw that things weren't going to change they sold off government bonds and the country got the "Sterling Crisis" with Sterling losing what was left of its Reserve Currency status.

    At least Trump is indicating a political will for change, but he needs to act quickly.

    Realist , January 22, 2017 at 9:07 am GMT \n
    @Anonymous
    When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump
    Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so... mainstream media like.
    So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography ( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.

    He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white hate groups.

    I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased by seeing him called a "rabid maniac".

    For one thing Horowitz is a goofy ass russophobe.

    Timur The Lame , January 22, 2017 at 1:26 pm GMT \n
    100 Words

    I listened to Trump's speech live on headphones while power walking on a country road. Something about that scenario allowed me to give it a focus that I may not have had if I was watching it on the idiot box or reading a transcript.

    If I'm not mistaken, he literally called most of his esteemed guests ( ex-presidents especially) corrupt criminals, frauds and traitors. An unbelievable moment where the mob was reminded that politicians are not to be fawned over. They work for the people.

    The rest of the speech of course was lyrics for a remake of the song 'Dream the Impossible Dream'. But still, if the population wasn't attention deficit affected, that part of his speech could have been right up there with Ike's MIC moment.

    Anatoly Karlin , Website January 22, 2017 at 3:26 pm GMT \n
    200 Words NEW!

    This is a very good article. I agree with it almost entirely.

    Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning from past mistakes? Could 21st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.

    When would it be possible for the anti-imperialist ideological system to dump its core belief that, Lenin's demented (and unoriginal) ramblings to the contrary, capitalism has intrinsically zilch to do with imperialism?

    Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their internal enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump, I get very, very concerned and I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?".

    David Horowitz merely demonstrated that, unlike " renegade Jews " such as the Kristols and the Krauthammers, he is a patriot of his own country (the USA) first and a Jewish nationalist second. I consider that perfectly fine and worthy of respect.

    Seamus Padraig , January 22, 2017 at 3:28 pm GMT \n
    100 Words

    @Chet Roman "drain the DC swamp" and "make America", as opposed to the American plutocracy, "great again"

    While I am hopeful and will give Trump the chance to prove himself. Unfortunately, he like Obama before him, has appointed most the same plutocrats/neoliberal parasites in his administration that are part of what the Saker calls the "AngloZionist Empire". Will they, like the patrician FDR, promote policies against their own class interests? Time will tell but, after the same betrayal by "Hope and Change" Obama I would not bet on it.

    Not that I'm very sanguine about all the Goldman Sachs people in Trump's cabinet either, but if you're looking for reasons for optimism: At least Trump–unlike Clinton, Bush and Obama–hasn't appointed any retreads; i.e., people who've served in previous cabinets. That may indicate that some change is in the offing. Let's hope it's a change for the best.

    alexander , January 22, 2017 at 9:53 pm GMT \n
    400 Words

    Annamaria,

    The key to US solvency and credit worthiness is the "ratio" of Debt to GDP ..Our GDP should ALWAYS be in the plus column, and when its not . it's bad news.

    Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T) it is such bad news our big media has refused to discuss it ..The only person to bring it up , ever, was the Donald.

    The big media does not want to say the wars they lied us into bankrupted our nation because it makes them accountable.

    The scaly truth is that they "are" accountable.

    Ironically,Donald Trump (who knows this too) now has the power as President to generate over two trillion dollars in revenues, literally overnight, and move our Debt to GDP ratio right back in the plus column.

    Do you want to know how ?

    He goes on record that the Iraq War "lies" constituted a defrauding of the American people , our country, and the brave men and women who fought and died there .and he has chosen to recognize this "defrauding " as a supreme terrorist act against the wellbeing of our nation ,our citizenry and the values that make us who we are ..

    He goes on to say that ALL the perpetrators will be held accountable for this despicable act of deception , so that it may never happen again.

    Then he proceeds with operation "Clean Sweep" and takes down all the back room billionaire oligarchs who jockeyed for the war and profited from it .

    Lets say by the time he is done he has arrested 700 belligerent oligarchs and media moguls and seizes all their assets .If they are each worth, on average, 4 billion dollars .

    then 700 x 4 billion = 2.8 trillion dollars

    If this 2.8 trillion goes to paying down the national debt .then "bingo" our Debt to GDP ratio is right back in the" plus column" .

    Our National debt is reduced by 2.8 T and the GDP stays the same ..the new ratio is 17.1 T Debt/ 18.7 T GDP.

    Our credit worthiness, as a nation, is now out of the" danger zone".

    Whatever assets the criminal oligarchs had, are auctioned off and redistributed to all the good people who would never "lie us into war".

    This sends an enormously reassuring message throughout the world that we are able to take care of business at home, and clean house when necessary.

    This would also serve as a much needed tonic within the entire "establishment" community, as they would be intensely fearful of ever defrauding the American people again.

    Would you do it ? ..If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability ?

    Skeptikal , January 22, 2017 at 11:37 pm GMT \n
    300 Words @Anon "After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others. All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears."

    But it could mean NOT putting Zionist-Globalist interest first.
    And that's what it's all about.

    Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
    Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way, all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism.

    "Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
    Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way, all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism."

    That seems to be true.
    I was shocked to read a letter in the current London Review of Books, actually a rebuttal to another letter, by Adam Tooze. Tooze had written a review of a book by Wolfgang Streeck. In his rebuttal Tooze attacked Streeck as an anti-Semite because Streeck had *dared* to write a book that presents arguments for the primacy of the nation-state as opposed to globalist forces. Tooze's argument basically came down to: nation-state = chauvinism = anti-Semitism, where globalization = "Semitism," I suppose, and Tooze actually more or less accused Streeck of anti-Semitism on this basis: that you cannot defend the idea of the nation-state without being in effectively anti-Semitic. He didn't show any other evidence but just this supposed syllogism, all of it theoretical. Interestingly Tooze was the one making the equation of globalism and Jews-not Streeck! But still, Streeck was the guilty one. Tooze spent a lot of breath on the word "Volk" for "people." Of coure, Streeck in German, and that is the German word for "people." Any other overtones "Volk" has acquired in English are the fault of the English, as English has its own second word, "folk," which German does not, and so English speakers didn't have to take over the German word and demonize it. They could have demonized their own word . . . Tooze's pedantry and intellectual sloppiness were quite startling. I look forward to seeing a rebuttal and maybe counterattack from Streeck in the next LRB . . .

    SmoothieX12 , Website January 22, 2017 at 11:40 pm GMT \n
    100 Words

    Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T)

    These are bad news, but the news which are even worse is the fact that of these 18.7 Trillion of nominal GDP, probably third (most likely more) is a virtual GDP–the result of cooking of books and of financial and real estate machinations. Trump knows this, I am almost 99% positive, even 99.9%, on that.

    Skeptikal , January 22, 2017 at 11:42 pm GMT \n
    @Anatoly Karlin

    This is a very good article. I agree with it almost entirely.

    Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning from past mistakes?... Could 21st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.
    When would it be possible for the anti-imperialist ideological system to dump its core belief that, Lenin's demented (and unoriginal) ramblings to the contrary, capitalism has intrinsically zilch to do with imperialism?
    Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their internal enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump, I get very, very concerned and I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?".
    David Horowitz merely demonstrated that, unlike " renegade Jews " such as the Kristols and the Krauthammers, he is a patriot of his own country (the USA) first and a Jewish nationalist second. I consider that perfectly fine and worthy of respect.

    " one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their internal enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. "

    True also of Kennedy and Khrushchev.

    Seraphim , January 23, 2017 at 12:39 am GMT \n
    100 Words @Diogenes

    "Make America Great Again"- is just an empty political slogan like bait on a fishing hook that only dumb fish would be attracted to.

    I suggest readers look at an article by Andrew Levine, a very insightful Jewish American political commentator and regular contributor to Counterpunch.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/20/when-was-america-great/

    "the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth".

    What has ISIS done to America or Trump that he should want to totally obliterate them? Before you denounce or pronounce me as dumb heretical dissenter, read on.

    Sunni Arabs in the Middle East have been exploited and controlled by racially arrogant European interlopers and colonists since the fall of the Ottomans. They have been especially mistreated and ravaged by vengeful Americans since 2001. They also facilitated a revival of Shia-Sunni sectarian conflict in Syria and Iraq. Now the displaced and persecuted Sunni minority want to form their own state, free from foreign interference to practice their chosen religion and way of life. I grant you that they are also vengeful and violent to those who persecuted them by using terrorist methods and that they practiced "ethnic cleansing" but that does not make them "uncivilized", the civilized Americans and Europeans did the same when conquering their settler colonies. So why not let them have their own land, just like the Jewish Europeans were given and make peace with time provided they renounce their goal of spreading Wahhabi Muslim empire by force?

    The Arab states which emerged after the dissolution of the Ottoman Caliphate were not meant to be replaced by an Arab Caliphate. The fight of the Sunnis is not the fight of a 'persecuted' minority, but of the former dominant minority for the re-establishment of their dominant position in the frame of the Caliphate, with wet dreams of world domination. ISIS is but the tip of the iceberg. Their eradication would cool down the overheated minds of the Caliphate dreamers.

    Cloak And Dagger , January 23, 2017 at 1:19 am GMT \n
    400 Words @alexander Annamaria,

    The key to US solvency and credit worthiness is the "ratio" of Debt to GDP.....Our GDP should ALWAYS be in the plus column, and when its not.... it's bad news.

    Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T)...it is such bad news our big media has refused to discuss it .....The only person to bring it up , ever, was the Donald.

    The big media does not want to say the wars they lied us into bankrupted our nation because it makes them accountable.

    The scaly truth is that they "are" accountable.


    Ironically,Donald Trump (who knows this too) now has the power as President to generate over two trillion dollars in revenues, literally overnight, and move our Debt to GDP ratio right back in the plus column.

    Do you want to know how ?


    He goes on record that the Iraq War "lies" constituted a defrauding of the American people , our country, and the brave men and women who fought and died there....and he has chosen to recognize this "defrauding " as a supreme terrorist act against the wellbeing of our nation ,our citizenry and the values that make us who we are.....

    He goes on to say that ALL the perpetrators will be held accountable for this despicable act of deception , so that it may never happen again.

    Then he proceeds with operation "Clean Sweep" and takes down all the back room billionaire oligarchs who jockeyed for the war and profited from it .

    Lets say by the time he is done he has arrested 700 belligerent oligarchs and media moguls and seizes all their assets....If they are each worth, on average, 4 billion dollars .......

    then 700 x 4 billion = 2.8 trillion dollars

    If this 2.8 trillion goes to paying down the national debt....then "bingo" our Debt to GDP ratio is right back in the" plus column" ....

    Our National debt is reduced by 2.8 T and the GDP stays the same .....the new ratio is 17.1 T Debt/ 18.7 T GDP.

    Our credit worthiness, as a nation, is now out of the" danger zone".

    Whatever assets the criminal oligarchs had, are auctioned off and redistributed to all the good people who would never "lie us into war".

    This sends an enormously reassuring message throughout the world that we are able to take care of business at home, and clean house when necessary.

    This would also serve as a much needed tonic within the entire "establishment" community, as they would be intensely fearful of ever defrauding the American people again.


    Would you do it ?.....If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability ?

    Would you do it ? ..If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability

    Not to speak for Anna, but maybe I would – if blessed with balls of titanium, or perhaps by underestimating the capacity of the deep state to slice them off. Being human, one can only hope that Trump will do what I cannot, or could not in his shoes.

    One thing he cannot do is feign ignorance or pretend to be unaware of the critters festering in the swamp – after all, he campaigned on the promise of draining it. Where hope falters is in seeing the cabinet he is building with characters unlikely to do much in the swamp-draining department. Without a strong cadre of testicular fortitude surrounding him in his cabinet, his most sincere attempts at swamp-drainage will be quixotic at best.

    So, where does one place hope lest one becomes a blathering cynic or a nattering nabob of negativity?

    Ego -- That is where my chips are stacked. Nothing defines or motivates Trump more than his self-perception. I believe that it is much more than showmanship that propels his self-promotion, and nothing would be more devastating to the man than to be ridiculed or perceived as a failure. I doubt that Netanyahu could do to him what he did to Obama and survive the retaliatory deluge that would follow. I think Trump's hidden strength is his desire for vengeance against those that wrong him (I expect there to be tribulations in HRC's future). If the deep state doesn't do him in first, there is the strong possibility of damage on the deep state – one that they may never recover from in this world of instant information that wilts night-flowers.

    He may redefine victory on occasion for outcomes that are too difficult for him to accept, but in the end, he will "Make Trump Great Again," and if fortune favors us, help the US benefit in the process, if not the rest of the world.

    That does not rule out that his naiveté may cause him to stumble and fall, perhaps more than once, and he has not always succeeded in business, but it seems that he does build on his failures, and is unlikely to make the same mistake twice.

    Doesn't appear like a lot to cling to, but in this dystopic world, it is the best we have. Is it enough?

    [Jan 22, 2017] Bernie Sanders just said on CBS that he is ready to work with Trump on lowering drug price, infrastrcture projects and better trade deals

    Jan 22, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    BenIsNotYoda : , January 22, 2017 at 07:59 AM
    Bernie Sanders just said on CBS that he is ready to work with Trump on
    1) lowering drug prices by purchasing drugs from abroad and Medicare negotiate prices
    2) infrastructure projects
    3) better trade deals

    Lets see if entrenched interests in the GOP and Democrat party let them work together. My guess is NOT.
    What that would accomplish is lay bare the corruption that is part of both parties.

    Peter K. -> BenIsNotYoda... , January 22, 2017 at 08:31 AM
    Let's see if Trump actually wants to do any of those things Sanders wants. In other words will he "reach across the aisle."

    Let's see if Republicans in Congress cooperate.

    I think it's unlikely although not impossible (as Krugman etc do)

    Trump thinks of himself as a reality TV star. He likes the drama. But he seems to have no interest in the details of policy. He found the border tax his advisers were floating as too complicated.

    [Jan 22, 2017] The policy of imperialism threatens to change the temper of our people, and to put us into a permanent attitude of arrogance, testiness, and defiance towards other nations

    Notable quotes:
    "... Alarmed by the spread of anti-imperialist ideas, Lodge invited his closest friend, Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York, to join him in Boston to launch a counterattack. On Oct. 31, 1899, both spoke to the Republican Club of Massachusetts at the cavernous Music Hall on Winter Street. "We have got to put down the insurrection!" Roosevelt cried. "If we are men, we can't do otherwise!" Lodge portrayed anti-imperialists as not only defeatist, but complicit in the killing of American soldiers. ..."
    "... Tides ran in favor of the expansionist idea. Prominent anti-imperialists lost elections. War in the Philippines slowly reached its bloody end. Americans began focusing on other problems. The United States had leaped from continental empire to overseas empire. ..."
    "... That war - which is actually a war against war - has never ended. The debate over American intervention abroad, which began at Faneuil Hall in 1898, is still raging. It will shape the new administration in Washington and, through it, the world. ..."
    Jan 22, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Fred C. Dobbs :

    How (When?) Boston fought the empire
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/01/22/how-boston-fought-empire/mWNyIXXDIdogeh9guKDnzN/story.html?event=event25
    via @BostonGlobe - Stephen Kinzer - January 22, 2017

    Where better to launch a patriotic uprising than Faneuil Hall in Boston? It is a lodestone of American liberty, a cathedral for freedom fighters. That is why a handful of eminent Bostonians chose it as the place to begin a new rebellion on the sunny afternoon of June 15, 1898.

    Like all Americans, they had been dizzied by the astonishing events of recent weeks. Their country had suddenly burst beyond its natural borders. American troops had landed in Cuba. American warships had bombarded Puerto Rico. An American expeditionary force was steaming toward the distant Philippine Islands. Hawaii seemed about to fall to American power. President William McKinley had called for 200,000 volunteers to fight in foreign wars. Fervor for the new idea of overseas expansion gripped the United States.

    This prospect thrilled some Americans. It horrified others. Their debate gripped the nation. The country's best-known political and intellectual leaders took sides. In the history of US foreign policy, this is truly the mother of all debates.

    When we argue over whether we should depose a government in Iraq or Syria or Libya, whether we should wage war in Afghanistan, whether we should encourage the bombing of Yemen, or whether we should seek to bend Russia to our will, we are arguing the same question that was at the center of this original debate. Every argument about foreign intervention that we make today - on both sides - was first made in the period around 1898. Today's debates are amazingly precise repetitions of that first one. The central question is the same: Should the United States project power into faraway lands? Yes, to guarantee our prosperity, save innocent lives, liberate the oppressed, and confront danger before it reaches our shores! No, intervention brings suffering and creates enemies!

    Boston was the epicenter of that original debate. Bostonians played such a large role in the national debate that one California newspaper called anti-imperialists "the kicking Bostonese." Several hundred of them turned out for the Faneuil Hall meeting. One speaker, the Rev. Charles Ames, a theologian and Unitarian pastor, warned that the moment the United States seized a foreign land, it would "sacrifice the principles on which the Republic was founded."

    The policy of imperialism threatens to change the temper of our people, and to put us into a permanent attitude of arrogance, testiness, and defiance towards other nations. ... Once we enter the field of international conflict as a great military and naval power, we shall be one more bully among bullies. We shall only add one more to the list of oppressors of mankind.

    At the end of that afternoon, one of the meeting's organizers came to the podium and read a resolution. "Resolved, that the mission of the United States is to help the world by an example of successful self-government, and that to abandon the principles and the policy under which we have prospered, and embrace the doctrine and practices now called imperial, is to enter the path which, with other great republics, has ended in the downfall of free institutions," it declared. "Resolved, that our first duty is to cure the evils in our own country." The resolution was adopted by acclamation.

    At the very moment these words were shaking Faneuil Hall, debate on the same question - overseas expansion - was reaching a climax in Congress. It is a marvelous coincidence: The first anti-imperialist rally in American history was held on the same day that Congress voted, also for the first time, on whether the United States should take an overseas colony. The colony in question was Hawaii, but all understood that the real question was immensely greater. It was nothing less than the future of the Republic: whether or not the United States should become a global military power and seek to shape the fate of faraway lands.

    On that day, as expected, the House of Representatives voted to annex Hawaii. Yet the great debate had only begun. Working from offices in Boston, anti-imperialists spent the summer and fall of 1898 writing letters to potential sympathizers across the country.

    Their work came to fruition on Nov. 18, when an eager crowd packed a law office on Milk Street to witness the founding of the Anti-Imperialist League. George Boutwell, who had been a passionate abolitionist as well as a congressman, US senator, and governor of Massachusetts, was chosen by acclimation as the league's first president. In his mind, every abolitionist was a natural anti-imperialist, since anyone who opposed keeping human beings as slaves must also oppose ruling other peoples against their will.

    At the end of 1898, American negotiators forced the defeated Spanish to sign the Treaty of Paris, in which they surrendered Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. On Jan. 4, 1899, President McKinley submitted the treaty for Senate ratification. That set off a monthlong debate over what one senator called "the greatest question that has ever been presented to the American people." The dominant figure on each side was a brilliantly articulate Republican senator from Massachusetts.

    George Frisbie Hoar of Worcester led the anti-imperialist charge. The United States, he insisted, must not "rush madly upon this new career," lest it become "a cheap-jack country raking after the cart for the leavings of European tyranny." He ended his speech in a crescendo: "The poor Malay, the poor African, the downtrodden workman of Europe will exclaim, as he reads this new doctrine: 'Good God! Is there not one place left on earth where, in right of my manhood, I can stand up and be a man?' "

    Hoar's sharpest opponent was Henry Cabot Lodge of Beacon Hill and Nahant. Lodge told the Senate that since many foreign peoples were unequipped to govern themselves wisely, they should submit to American guidance and trust "the American people, who have never failed in any great duty or feared to face any responsibility, to deal with them in that spirit of justice, humanity, and liberty which has made us all that we are today or can ever hope to be."

    From their bustling office on Kilby Street, leaders of the Anti-Imperialist League fed information to friendly senators and heavily lobbied the handful who remained undecided. The league also published a stream of pamphlets, called Liberty Tracts, aimed at bringing its arguments to a larger audience. Often their titles were questions. "Which shall it be, nation or empire?" asked one. Another: "Is it right for this country to kill the natives of a foreign land because they wish to govern themselves?"

    On Feb. 6, 1899, despite these intense efforts, senators ratified the Treaty of Paris - by just one vote more than the required two-thirds majority. Armed rebellion broke out immediately in the Philippines. Tens of thousands of American troops were sent to suppress it. President McKinley faced a difficult task: explain to a divided nation why taking foreign lands was no betrayal of the American idea. He decided to deliver a speech in Boston, home of the Anti-Imperialist League and thus the heart of enemy territory. To assure himself a friendly audience, however, he chose as his platform the Home Market Club, one of the country's most potent agglomerations of corporate power.

    A crowd led by Mayor Josiah Quincy cheered as McKinley emerged from South Station around midday on Feb. 15, 1899. The next night, nearly two thousand guests packed Mechanics Hall for the largest banquet ever staged in the United States. In his speech, McKinley asserted that the essential goodness of the American people is the supreme and sole necessary justification of whatever the United States chooses to do in the world. This goodness, he acknowledged, might not be clear to the "misguided Filipino," but soon the islands would prosper under the rule "not of their American masters, but of their American emancipators."

    "Did we need their consent to perform a great act for humanity?" he asked. "We had it in every aspiration of their minds, in every hope of their hearts."

    These words disgusted the philosopher William James. In an anguished letter to Boston newspapers, he called McKinley's speech a "shamefully evasive" attempt to obscure the central truth of the age: "We are cold-bloodedly, wantonly, and abominably destroying the soul of a people who never did us an atom of harm in their lives. It is bald, brutal piracy."

    Alarmed by the spread of anti-imperialist ideas, Lodge invited his closest friend, Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York, to join him in Boston to launch a counterattack. On Oct. 31, 1899, both spoke to the Republican Club of Massachusetts at the cavernous Music Hall on Winter Street. "We have got to put down the insurrection!" Roosevelt cried. "If we are men, we can't do otherwise!" Lodge portrayed anti-imperialists as not only defeatist, but complicit in the killing of American soldiers.

    "I vote with the army that wears the uniform and carries the flag of my country," he said. "When the enemy has yielded and the war is over, we can discuss other matters!"

    Tides ran in favor of the expansionist idea. Prominent anti-imperialists lost elections. War in the Philippines slowly reached its bloody end. Americans began focusing on other problems. The United States had leaped from continental empire to overseas empire.

    "Well, we are defeated for the time," admitted the Cambridge anti-imperialist Charles Eliot Norton. "But the war is not ended, and we are enlisted for the war."

    That war - which is actually a war against war - has never ended. The debate over American intervention abroad, which began at Faneuil Hall in 1898, is still raging. It will shape the new administration in Washington and, through it, the world.

    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 22, 2017 at 07:23 AM
    Few want Manifest Destiny to stop short of an American world.
    anne -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
    Splendid essay.

    [Jan 22, 2017] The rise of Trump and Isis have more in common than you might think by Patrick Cockburn

    Notable quotes:
    "... In Europe and the US it was right wing nationalist populism which opposes free trade, mass immigration and military intervention abroad. ..."
    "... Trump instinctively understood that he must keep pressing these three buttons, the importance of which Hillary Clinton and most of the Republican Party leaders, taking their cue from their donors rather than potential voters, never appreciated. ..."
    "... The vehicle for protest and opposition to the status quo in the Middle East and North Africa is, by way of contrast, almost entirely religious and is only seldom nationalist, the most important example being the Kurds. ..."
    "... Secular nationalism was in any case something of a middle class creed in the Arab world, limited in its capacity to provide the glue to hold societies together in the face of crisis. ..."
    "... It was always absurdly simple-minded to blame all the troubles of Iraq, Syria and Libya on Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Muammar Gaddafi, authoritarian leaders whose regimes were more the symptom than the cause of division. ..."
    "... Political divisions in the US are probably greater now than at any time since the American Civil War 150 years ago. Repeated calls for unity in both countries betray a deepening disunity and alarm as people sense that they are moving in the dark and old norms and landmarks are no longer visible and may no longer exist. ..."
    "... Criticism of Trump in the media has lost all regard for truth and falsehood with the publication of patently concocted reports of his antics in Russia ..."
    "... But the rise of Isis, the mass influx of Syrian refugees heading for Central Europe and the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels showed that the crises in the Middle East could not be contained. They helped give a powerful impulse to the anti-immigrant authoritarian nationalist right and made them real contenders for power. ..."
    "... One of the first real tests for Trump will be how far he succeeds in closing down these wars, something that is now at last becoming feasible. ..."
    Jan 22, 2017 | www.unz.com

    In the US, Europe and the Middle East there were many who saw themselves as the losers from globalisation, but the ideological vehicle for protest differed markedly from region to region. In Europe and the US it was right wing nationalist populism which opposes free trade, mass immigration and military intervention abroad. The latter theme is much more resonant in the US than in Europe because of Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump instinctively understood that he must keep pressing these three buttons, the importance of which Hillary Clinton and most of the Republican Party leaders, taking their cue from their donors rather than potential voters, never appreciated.

    The vehicle for protest and opposition to the status quo in the Middle East and North Africa is, by way of contrast, almost entirely religious and is only seldom nationalist, the most important example being the Kurds. This is a big change from 50 years ago when revolutionaries in the region were usually nationalists or socialists, but both beliefs were discredited by corrupt and authoritarian nationalist dictators and by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

    Secular nationalism was in any case something of a middle class creed in the Arab world, limited in its capacity to provide the glue to hold societies together in the face of crisis. When Isis forces were advancing on Baghdad after taking Mosul in June 2014, it was a fatwa from the Iraqi Shia religious leader Ali al-Sistani that rallied the resistance. No non-religious Iraqi leader could have successfully appealed to hundreds of thousands of people to volunteer to fight to the death against Isis. The Middle East differs also from Europe and the US because states are more fragile than they look and once destroyed prove impossible to recreate. This was a lesson that the foreign policy establishments in Washington, London and Paris failed to take on board after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, though the disastrous outcome of successful or attempted regime change has been bloodily demonstrated again and again. It was always absurdly simple-minded to blame all the troubles of Iraq, Syria and Libya on Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Muammar Gaddafi, authoritarian leaders whose regimes were more the symptom than the cause of division.

    But it is not only in the Middle East that divisions are deepening. Whatever happens in Britain because of the Brexit vote or in the US because of the election of Trump as president, both countries will be more divided and therefore weaker than before. Political divisions in the US are probably greater now than at any time since the American Civil War 150 years ago. Repeated calls for unity in both countries betray a deepening disunity and alarm as people sense that they are moving in the dark and old norms and landmarks are no longer visible and may no longer exist.

    The mainline mass media is finding it difficult to make sense of a new world order which may or may not be emerging. Journalists are generally more rooted in the established order of things than they pretend and are shocked by radical change. Only two big newspapers – the Florida Times-Union and the Las Vegas Review-Journal endorsed Trump before the election and few of the American commentariat expected him to win, though this has not dented their confidence in their own judgement. Criticism of Trump in the media has lost all regard for truth and falsehood with the publication of patently concocted reports of his antics in Russia, but there is also genuine uncertainty about whether he will be a real force for change, be it good or ill.

    Crises in different parts of the world are beginning to cross-infect and exacerbate each other. Prior to 2014 European leaders, whatever their humanitarian protestations, did not care much what happened in Iraq and Syria. But the rise of Isis, the mass influx of Syrian refugees heading for Central Europe and the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels showed that the crises in the Middle East could not be contained. They helped give a powerful impulse to the anti-immigrant authoritarian nationalist right and made them real contenders for power.

    The Middle East is always a source of instability in the world and never more so than over the last six years. But winners and losers are emerging in Syria where Assad is succeeding with Russian and Iranian help, while in Iraq the Baghdad government backed by US airpower is slowly fighting its way into Mosul. Isis probably has more fight in it than its many enemies want to believe, but is surely on the road to ultimate defeat. One of the first real tests for Trump will be how far he succeeds in closing down these wars, something that is now at last becoming feasible.

    [Jan 22, 2017] Stephen Cohen about Fake News, Neo-McCarthyism, Aleppo, CIA hacking allegations and Rex Tillerson

    As Stephen Cohen noted Kremlin bating was adopted by Hillary campaign -- they wanted to fight again Trump and Putin, instead Trump and Pence. That did not them any good.
    Notable quotes:
    "... 2016 was the year of collapse of western mainstream media. No decent people must now on trust on our western mainstream media. ..."
    "... You have to dig the truth from independent sources. I found this thing much before Iraq War. Even Vietnam War was run by similar lies of media and ruling class (Tonkin Gulf plot). ..."
    www.youtube.com

    DieFlabbergast

    Whether you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Putin, or of Russia in general, it is people like Stephen Cohen - who has studied Russia all his life and actually knows what he's talking about - to whom you should listen. Compared to the media men who have Cohen on their shows, he is like an adult talking to children.

    I hate modern football

    As a Finn i have been forced to learn the history of Russia in perspective of Finland (and Sweden).

    And my conclusion has become more stable that Finland is for Russia nothing more than buffer: a country causing no problems but lots of good things IF THERE ARE NO MILITARY FORCES OF ENEMY GREAT POWER.

    After that basic geopolitical fact it's clear why Finland is not NATO country and hope will never come even there are lots of Finnish media pundits suggesting it.

    Pfirtzer -> I hate modern football

    Well older people have still the idea America liberated them and other uninformed people find Russia to bo the enemy because of MH17 plain that was shot down above Ukraine.

    But in fairness there are many dutch people who want to have a good relation with Russia and having trade with Russia, because it's good to trade, and talk , war is just good for the Rothschilds, Rockefeller, Bushes and co

    Look a booklet https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html War Is a Racket google it, your eyes will open what is going on in the world!

    Jason Roggasch

    No proof no facts JUST assertions from one of the most destructive forces the world has ever known THE CIA

    Patricia Leary

    "It's CLEAR that Russia is meddling in our election" Dude! Clarity without ANY facts? Zero evidence? Seriously??

    Here's what IS crystal clear and is backed by COPIOUS undisputed evidence, and nary a word from corporate neocon Obama or his MSM lapdogs - Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and the Superdelegates criminal, corrupt election fraud, defiling our election integrity, during the primaries, backed by huge corporate interests to ensure that an anti-corporatist like Bernie Sanders, DID NOT gain the nomination.

    Had Sanders been nominated, he would have won the presidency hands down! They knew that! The corporate billionaires ruling the world COULD NOT and WOULD NOT HAVE THAT! Yes. There was meddling but it wasn't a foreign entity. It was the United States of Corporations!

    Susan Joy Worker

    why should anyone believe Clinton and the Globalist-controlled media? They lie about everything.

    The Leaks have revealed extensive crimes - we now need a Full investigation of ALL of those crimes.

    Then Mrs Clinton can explain herself at a fair trial. If that leads to jail or execute, so be it.

    Let us move the discussion on to her crimes, and who conspired with her in those crimes.

    I am tired of the distractions

    Alex Trefall

    As a Polish national I have no great love for Russia. But in recent years I recognized that what I consider "my version of history" may not be the same for someone else.

    Meaning: history is not facts but rather its mostly political fiction mixed with some facts. I don't claim to know who has the proverbial answer, or who is right.

    All I see is that in the last 15 years, if not longer it's the US that invaded more countries and caused countless deaths in the name of their own self interest ( democracy - freedom/slavery to consume whatever we like in whatever quantity ).

    Trying to blame Russia for everything just seems pathetic regardless how good or bad Putin really is.

    B M

    USA governments have been in the pocket of the Globalist Arms Manufacturers because it is worth trillions of dollars to them.Its all about $$$$$$.People are expendable.

    We now have a chance for peace but Trump is in danger for attempting to break this evil establishment.

    ameighable

    Julian Assange has said that the leaks were not from state operatives and definitely not Russsia. A former UK ambassador says that he personally few to DC to personally receive the WikiLeaks material. Julian Assange suggested in an interview with Dutch TV that Seth Rich, a DNC employee who was murdered not long after the leaks, was the leaker.

    Furthermore, the ambassador said that all published information was legally obtained by disgruntled insiders.

    Vlasta Molak

    There are 4 totalitarian, supremacist, apartheid and imperialistic IDEOLOGIES, which had threatened advances of the Western civilization: Communism, Fascism, Nazism and Islam, of which Islam is the most current and dangerous, as it is worst than Nazism. Communism fell under its own weight, Fascism and Nazism were defeated in WWII (although it exists in small enclaves) but Islam is invading the West with the help of treasonous Western politicians, such as b. Hussein Obama, Angela Merkel, EC and even Pope.

    Trump recognizes this and his choice for Secretary of State, Rex Tillleson is a great one, as Mr. Tillerson is a problem solver, just as Trump is, who listens to everybody, including those who opposed him and defamed him. this is a characteristic of a GREAT leader. Putin has a PhD in Economics who lived in Dresden while working for KGB and Putin is aware of the danger of Islam to Western civilization.

    Vlasta Molak

    Wahbis RULE Saudi Arabia, the center of Islam in Mecca and therefore are just like the war lord Mohamed role models for ALL Muslim men who have to come for Hajj at least once in a lifetime. It is the IDEOLOGY of Islam that is the ROOT cause of terrorism and violence nowadays.

    444suse

    2016 was the year of collapse of western mainstream media. No decent people must now on trust on our western mainstream media.

    You have to dig the truth from independent sources. I found this thing much before Iraq War. Even Vietnam War was run by similar lies of media and ruling class (Tonkin Gulf plot).

    Russia Good

    World Disorder in the New Year, By Stephen F. Cohen https://player.fm/series/the-john-batchelor-show/1-year-ago-world-disorder-in-the-new-year-stephen-f-cohen-nyu-princeton-eastwestaccordcom

    Susan Joy Worker

    Brian on NYT: "There are other points of view, including the point of view of Donald Trump, that do get on their pages."
    LOL, This made me laugh aloud. "On their pages" - to be misreported and ridiculed. The NY Times is definitely part of the problem and is a key part of the spin machine. I was happy to hear that they will let enough employees go to free up 8 floors. May the shrinking continue in 2017. It will save the "good guys" from nuking the place and all who work there.


    [Jan 22, 2017] Obama Admits Gap in Russian Hack Case – Consortiumnews

    Notable quotes:
    "... Oops. Did President Barack Obama acknowledge that the extraordinary propaganda campaign to blame Russia for helping Donald Trump become president has a very big hole in it, i.e., that the U.S. intelligence community has no idea how the Democratic emails reached WikiLeaks? For weeks, eloquent obfuscation – expressed with "high confidence" – has been the name of the game, but inadvertent admissions now are dispelling some of the clouds. ..."
    "... "the conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked ..."
    "... He offered a similarly designed comment at a Dec. 16, 2016 press conference when he said: "based on uniform intelligence assessments, the Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC. the information was in the hands of WikiLeaks." ..."
    "... Obama does not bridge the gap because to do so would represent a bald-faced lie, which some honest intelligence officer might call him on. So, he simply presents the two sides of the chasm – implies a connection – but leaves it to the listener to make the leap. ..."
    "... Former U.K. Ambassador Craig Murray, a close associate of Assange, has made clear that the two separate batches of Democratic emails – one from the DNC and the other from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta – also were leaks from insiders, not hacks from outsiders. ..."
    "... "In his final press conference, beginning around 8 minutes 30 seconds in, Obama admits that they have no evidence of how WikiLeaks got the DNC material. This undermines the stream of completely evidence-free nonsense that has been emerging from the US intelligence services this last two months, in which a series of suppositions have been strung together to make unfounded assertions that have been repeated again and again in the mainstream media. ..."
    "... "Most crucially of all Obama refers to 'The DNC emails that were leaked.' Note 'leaked' and not 'hacked.' I have been repeating that this was a leak, not a hack, until I am blue in the face. William Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA, has asserted that were it a hack the NSA would be able to give the precise details down to the second it occurred, and it is plain from the reports released they have no such information. Yet the media has persisted with this nonsense 'Russian hacking' story." ..."
    "... For whatever reason Obama finally decided to steer clear of the moronic "Russia Connection" BS. At least for the final record. ..."
    "... Very true. The stories of risks from other great powers are based upon absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing, and the subsidy of wars of aggression for Israel and Saudi Arabia is insanity and corruption to the point of treason. The US has no interest in war at all except bribery from MIC/Israel/KSA. The warmongers should all be in Club Fed Guantanamo for good. ..."
    "... Perjury .Any president of the USA is continuously under oath from day one The only thing is USA citizens are cowards. They allow the elite money changers to sway the law ..."
    "... The oath thing is effectively a Hitlerian Big Lie. Presidents (and most people, good and bad) lie as naturally as breathing. ..."
    "... In his final press conference, beginning around 8 minutes 30 seconds in, Obama admits that they have no evidence of how WikiLeaks got the DNC material. ..."
    "... Obama has used his speaking skills to take us all down the long garden path, beginning as a campaigner who was apparently anti-war and becoming one of the worst of the pro-war presidents. He can claim he never promised he was anti-war during his 2008 campaign because is is "so rhetorically eloquent at . obfuscation" and he very carefully creates "his oratorical constructs." ..."
    "... Well, Donald Trump is our president. It is hard to imagine how he will rid the world of the Cold War and it's hard to miss his shift from talking about it directly to the war against Muslim extremism. While we hope it would, working with Russia on ISIS does not mean that the taunting by our Generals or by NATO will disappear. The President has bridled at the behavior of the CIA but will he be able to reduce its power. Ditto the military that he praises as all presidents do and speaks of making it even bigger. ..."
    "... His positions on trade will run up against the power of investors who want to freely move their money where the profits are. Arguments like the second world war was a result of our protectionists policies after the Depression hit will surface and the public will be reminded that advanced countries simply don't behave the way he proposes. ..."
    "... The choice of one word by Obama is not a strong argument, nor is there a case that "almost certainly" Russia hacked the DNC email, versus China or the US or a private hacker. The US certainly did so, as it has far greater resources and is known to have the ability. So the most likely government hacking source is a US agency like NSA. And the most likely source is the disaffected, resigned, and murdered DNC staffer Mr. Rich. ..."
    "... The issue s/n/b "who" leaked "what", it s/b =>why, should information<= about "salaried, elected 527 actor [and appointee] activities" be allowed any privilege of privacy or secrecy. Obviously, those who need to be best informed in a democracy, about the activities and exploits of those in or near to power, are those furtherest from the seats of power, the members of the voting public. Privilege of secret or privacy belongs to those furtherest from the seats of power. Seat occupants possess no privilege or secret to any aspect of their activities and exploits. ..."
    "... Hillary Clinton was not trusted. She was a weak candidate whose allegiance was to a tiny sliver of powerful wealthy people. everybody knew that. She cost herself the election. The argument her defenders are using trying to blame the Russians, the FBI, blah blah blah is that if only the truth could have been kept from the voters their candidate would have won. That is a very weak position and does not help their credibility. They play a dangerous game trying to inflame passions against Russia instead of cleaning their own house. ..."
    "... Sorry folks, this smacks of W. Bush maintaining "we have no direct evidence that Osama Bin Laden attacked the World Trade Center on 9/11" fully knowing that the majority of Americans had already been successfully programmed to the contrary. The big admission Obama is lacking here is the admission that the whole "Putin hacked" scenario was scripted in the bowels of the American security state otherwise known as the fourth branch of our government. ..."
    "... Thank Obama for "dispelling . . . obfuscation"? Obama called for a thorough investigation back in December then almost immediately made statements to the effect that "nothing much happens without Putin knowing it" and "the Russians are capable of doing this" (the essence of his remarks). Massaging the hysteria nicely, wasn't he? Now he states "conclusions are not conclusive." Once again here he is the spinmaster on his silver toe defending his ego. Too kind, Ray, much too kind and generous for this kind of behavior. ..."
    "... The NYT will preserve it's reputation as the "toilet paper of record" a remarkably accurate quip from that, All American, Gerald Celente of Trends Research. ..."
    "... The apocalyptic visions of George Orwell's warnings "Big Brother is Watching You," have now come to pass. Let us re-examine the classic works of that master of propaganda, Edward Bernays and his modern day student, Philip D. Zelikow. ..."
    Jan 20, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

    The hole in the U.S. intelligence community's "high confidence" about Russia "hacking" Democratic emails has always been who gave the material to WikiLeaks, as President Obama admitted, notes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

    Oops. Did President Barack Obama acknowledge that the extraordinary propaganda campaign to blame Russia for helping Donald Trump become president has a very big hole in it, i.e., that the U.S. intelligence community has no idea how the Democratic emails reached WikiLeaks? For weeks, eloquent obfuscation – expressed with "high confidence" – has been the name of the game, but inadvertent admissions now are dispelling some of the clouds.

    Does the Russian government hack, as many other governments do? Of course. Did it hack the emails of the Democratic National Committee? Almost certainly, though it was likely not alone in doing so. In the Internet age, hacking is the bread and butter of intelligence agencies. If Russian intelligence did not do so, this would constitute gross misfeasance, especially since the DNC was such easy pickings and the possibility of gaining important insights into the U.S. government was so high. But that is not the question.

    It was WikiLeaks that published the very damaging information, for example, on the DNC's dirty tricks that marginalized Sen. Bernie Sanders and ensured that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic nomination. What remains to be demonstrated is that it was "the Russians" who gave those emails to WikiLeaks. And that is what the U.S. intelligence community doesn't know.

    At President Obama's Jan. 18 press conference, he admitted as much: "the conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked ." [Emphasis added}

    It is necessary to carefully parse Obama's words since he prides himself in his oratorical constructs. He offered a similarly designed comment at a Dec. 16, 2016 press conference when he said: "based on uniform intelligence assessments, the Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC. the information was in the hands of WikiLeaks."

    Note the disconnect between the confidence about hacking and the stark declarative sentence about the information ending up at WikiLeaks. Obama does not bridge the gap because to do so would represent a bald-faced lie, which some honest intelligence officer might call him on. So, he simply presents the two sides of the chasm – implies a connection – but leaves it to the listener to make the leap.

    WikiLeaks Account

    As I suggested to RT viewers right after the last press conference, the reason WikiLeaks might have been "not witting" could be that it was quite sure it was not a "conduit" for "hacking" by the Russians or anyone else. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has stated that the Russian government was not the source and it's significant that President Obama stopped short of contradicting him. It is also clear that WikiLeaks, in the past, has obtained LEAKED information from U.S. whistleblowers, such as Chelsea Manning.

    Former U.K. Ambassador Craig Murray, a close associate of Assange, has made clear that the two separate batches of Democratic emails – one from the DNC and the other from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta – also were leaks from insiders, not hacks from outsiders.

    After the Jan. 18 press conference - what Murray called the "Stunning Admission from Obama on Wikileaks" - Murray wrote:

    "In his final press conference, beginning around 8 minutes 30 seconds in, Obama admits that they have no evidence of how WikiLeaks got the DNC material. This undermines the stream of completely evidence-free nonsense that has been emerging from the US intelligence services this last two months, in which a series of suppositions have been strung together to make unfounded assertions that have been repeated again and again in the mainstream media.

    "Most crucially of all Obama refers to 'The DNC emails that were leaked.' Note 'leaked' and not 'hacked.' I have been repeating that this was a leak, not a hack, until I am blue in the face. William Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA, has asserted that were it a hack the NSA would be able to give the precise details down to the second it occurred, and it is plain from the reports released they have no such information. Yet the media has persisted with this nonsense 'Russian hacking' story."

    So I suppose we should thank Barack Obama for dispelling at least some of the obfuscation at which he is so rhetorically eloquent, while our lame "mainstream" media take steno and regurgitate ad nauseam .

    Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst for a total of 30 years and now servers on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

    Sally Snyder , January 20, 2017 at 6:57 pm

    Here is an interesting look at an essay written by Barack Obama when he was a student at Columbia University:

    http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2017/01/a-young-barack-obama-and-his-ironic.html

    It is so ironic that he is now the only POTUS to serve his full term in a state of war, yet another inconsistency in his persona.

    Bob Van Noy , January 20, 2017 at 8:05 pm

    Thanks for the link Sally Snyder. They can't be the same person. Can they?

    Zachary Smith , January 20, 2017 at 7:33 pm

    "So I suppose we should thank Barack Obama for dispelling at least some of the obfuscation at which he is so rhetorically eloquent, while our lame "mainstream" media take steno and regurgitate ad nauseam."

    Not me. In my opinion Obama has been "playing nice" for his final few days and hours in the hope citizens and historians will make that "leap" and conclude he was a nice guy at heart after all.

    The Moon of Alabama site had this viewpoint:

    The DNC emails "that were leaked" – not "hacked" or "stolen" but "leaked".

    One wonders if this is a parting shot is primarily aimed at the involved Intelligence Agencies led by James Clapper and John Brennan. Or is dissing Hillary Clinton and her narrative the main purpose?

    That blogger could be right and I might be wrong. For whatever reason Obama finally decided to steer clear of the moronic "Russia Connection" BS. At least for the final record.

    Robert E. Moran , January 20, 2017 at 7:40 pm

    William Binney was right. A leak, not a hacked was done to the DNC.

    Bob Van Noy , January 20, 2017 at 7:43 pm

    Thank you Ray McGovern and The VIPS for keeping us informed about this most important event. It has the potential to expose much wrongdoing affecting our fragile democracy. Watching it being "played out" in real time is a great asset of this remarkable site where truth and decent conversation are carried out on a daily basis

    backwardsevolution , January 20, 2017 at 7:51 pm

    Ray McGovern – another great article! Keep up the good work. Can't wait to find out what Trump says to the CIA tomorrow. Maybe Trump needs to take along Craig Murray.

    Bob Van Noy , January 21, 2017 at 12:59 pm

    backwardsevolution, please see my comment below about Craig Murray.

    Arby , January 21, 2017 at 6:08 pm

    That would be awesome! It won't happen of course. But it would be awesome.

    Dr. Ibrahim Soudy , January 20, 2017 at 8:37 pm

    what i find truly fascinating is that nobody is giving any attention to the FACT that the DNC cheated to make Hillary the nominee in the general elections!! That is not hacking or leaking, it is CHEATING which should be treated accordingly ..even B.S. himself, should have raised hell about that but he lined up like a sheep dog behind Hillary go figure

    Joe Tedesky , January 21, 2017 at 6:03 pm

    Ah Doctor now you are talking. The hacking, leaking , and anything else along those line keep us from talking about the real problem. That problem being Hillary's cheating. Good that you brought it up.

    Arby , January 21, 2017 at 6:13 pm

    The question then, is, Did those fools kill two birds with one stone? Or did they flub twice and have the contents of two eggs on each of their faces? They thought that they could count on the foundation of the doctrinal system, and people's having been marinated in it's bullcrap, when they tossed out the 'Putin did it line'. They did all the evil that Wikileaks revealed and only added to it with that nonsense that much (most?) of the public now disbelieves.

    Arby , January 21, 2017 at 6:21 pm

    I have not had the time to look into this the way I want to and I regret that. It's not just that I haven't had the time to examine something important and interesting. I have been misled by Craig Murray's own account, not intentionally I'm sure. Neverthless. I took from one of his blog posts the idea that he met the leaker, full stop. Then, as I perused comments by others (Off Guardian I believe), I realized that it wasn't that simple. Craig met someone acting as a courier for the leaker or leakers, apparently. The difference is not unimportant. Craig can say that he knows that the info that Wikileaks obtained here was not 'hacked', based on his having received it from the leaker or his or her courier. That's fair. But if that's how it went down, then I don't want to say that Murray 'met' the leaker. I wish people would be honest. It's important.

    Yes, l know all about the other stuff. William Binney's explanations for why it wasn't a hack etc.. That's all good. But it's not my focus here. I was misled and then I misled others and my credibility could be impacted by something like this. If my efforts to educate others is important, then that credibility problem is important.

    bob , January 20, 2017 at 8:40 pm

    It appears to me Barack and Hillary simply conspired to destroy Bernie's candidacy and populism. It is and always forever shall be about cash.

    Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia infinitum.

    Our military is an ocean of unaccounted, bloody cash. One Nation Under God. I can tell you this.

    I guarded B-52's, F-4 Phantoms, C-5 A's, the secret Black Sheep Squadron of C-130's with no external insignias jammed with electronics to spy on European nations etcetera. No one in their right mind can send these gigantic machines to bomb defenseless little girls who can't even see them they fly so high and be sane. Toys for the insatiably insane. Absolute lunacy and we glorify it because we're trained like rats.

    Sam F , January 21, 2017 at 7:33 am

    Very true. The stories of risks from other great powers are based upon absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing, and the subsidy of wars of aggression for Israel and Saudi Arabia is insanity and corruption to the point of treason. The US has no interest in war at all except bribery from MIC/Israel/KSA. The warmongers should all be in Club Fed Guantanamo for good.

    Aristotle warned of these tyrants over democracy, causing foreign wars to create fear and to demand power as false protectors, and to accuse their opponents of disloyalty. Our Constitutional Convention failed to protect the tools of democracy, mass media and elections, from the economic concentrations that did not then exist. The US needs constitutional amendments to restrict funding of mass media and elections to limited registered individual contributions, and to improve checks and balances.

    John , January 20, 2017 at 8:45 pm

    Perjury .Any president of the USA is continuously under oath from day one The only thing is USA citizens are cowards. They allow the elite money changers to sway the law

    Arby , January 21, 2017 at 6:26 pm

    The oath thing is effectively a Hitlerian Big Lie. Presidents (and most people, good and bad) lie as naturally as breathing.

    Presidents' lies definitely do more damage than little people's lies, not to excuse any of it. (I don't lie, big or white)

    To get an idea how much of liar Barack Obama is (which was known early on; See the book "Hopeless – Barack Obama And The Politics Of Illusion" edited by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank) just give Seymour Hersh's book "The Killing Of Osama bin Laden" a read.

    The book is unbalanced, in that it's as much about Syria (and the lies told, and not told, about that) as it is about bin Laden. But it's very good, although Hersh, who isn't as independent of the establishment as some believe him to be, unfathomably believes that Obamacare was a plus for Obama's legacy.

    Bill , January 20, 2017 at 8:52 pm

    So you're almost certain that the Russian government hacked the DNC? Based on what, a guess? The whole story has had a bad smell to it from the beginning. Assumptions don't cut it, we need proof.

    Bill Bodden , January 20, 2017 at 10:07 pm

    In his final press conference, beginning around 8 minutes 30 seconds in, Obama admits that they have no evidence of how WikiLeaks got the DNC material.

    If "they" had practiced a daily habit of reading Consortium News "they" would have known how Wikileaks got the information.

    Call A Spade , January 21, 2017 at 4:11 am

    No US citizen would have taken that into account they are emotive they do not vote on evidence otherwise there would have been two different choices.

    Tom , January 20, 2017 at 10:53 pm

    Eh idk about this. There have been reports that the intel community already identified the russians who gave wikileaks the data. It just hasnt been disclosed in the unclassified reports. And what obama said there has to be looked at carefully. I dont think he's disspelling the narrative, i think he's just saying that Wikileaks might not have known they were being used by Russia as a conduit and means of getting the data published. Who knows though

    Charlie M. , January 20, 2017 at 11:11 pm

    Bro. Ray, thank you for giving us clarity. We will need more of it. Keep up the Good Fight.

    paul , January 21, 2017 at 12:47 am

    hi, the hack is easy to figure. mr. PODESTA used a soft easy password so that anyone could hack it. he wanted people to find the clinton email with DEPLORABLES in it. so that it would go viral. he regarded it as having racial tones & he was pissed off at hillary about it. sanders voters were blacks gays & hispanics etc. OBAMA & all the democrats know this but they wont mention it because it reflects on them. i-e therefor /ergo russia the scapegoat bogeyman.or the truth would make them look foolish.–beware the TALENT ACT /circa january 2017 .

    BART GRUZALSKI PROF. EMERITUS , January 21, 2017 at 1:34 am

    Great piece, Ray. What I especially appreciated were your comments on Obama's understated great skill in using language.

    For example, you write:

    "It is necessary to carefully parse Obama's words since he prides himself in his oratorical constructs."

    and later:

    "the obfuscation at which he is so rhetorically eloquent."

    Obama has used his speaking skills to take us all down the long garden path, beginning as a campaigner who was apparently anti-war and becoming one of the worst of the pro-war presidents. He can claim he never promised he was anti-war during his 2008 campaign because is is "so rhetorically eloquent at . obfuscation" and he very carefully creates "his oratorical constructs."

    Great job, Ray. Showing that Obama not only was screwing around with innuendo on the issue of Russian hacking, but that Obama's been screwing around with our minds beginning with his statements as a Senator and continuing right until his most recent statements as POTUS.

    Joe , January 21, 2017 at 3:28 am

    Thank god the election is over and it's time to change wall-hangings and furniture. Civilians also get a change in themes that have preoccupied journalists, such as the Democrats' acute case of McCarthyism.

    But now that there is a Republican in the WH, what are you guys going to write about? It's been getting a little old .

    Call A Spade , January 21, 2017 at 4:05 am

    How would the 2017 Australia of the year possibly be involved isn't he under house arrest in London?

    Herman , January 21, 2017 at 4:07 am

    Well, Donald Trump is our president. It is hard to imagine how he will rid the world of the Cold War and it's hard to miss his shift from talking about it directly to the war against Muslim extremism. While we hope it would, working with Russia on ISIS does not mean that the taunting by our Generals or by NATO will disappear. The President has bridled at the behavior of the CIA but will he be able to reduce its power. Ditto the military that he praises as all presidents do and speaks of making it even bigger.

    His positions on trade will run up against the power of investors who want to freely move their money where the profits are. Arguments like the second world war was a result of our protectionists policies after the Depression hit will surface and the public will be reminded that advanced countries simply don't behave the way he proposes.

    On education reform he will find himself pilloried for trying to destroy public education, and suggesting that parents should have choices will be derided as a violation of our Constitution and its freedom of religion First Amendment and other charges piled upon those.

    Touching preferential treatment because of race will be shouted out of the room.

    In addition to those barriers to getting anything done there is the calls for America first, which is fine except it must include a willingness to deal constructively with world problems. For example, it is disappointing when talking about borders and immigrants, he did not connect our role in the destruction of Middle East countries with the mass exodus from the region. Why not point to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, even on the borders of Russia and China as places where such extremism exists and changing our own behavior is important to combat it.

    On health care, good luck. Obama gave us something which setting the move toward universal coverage back years by creating a monster which helped those who see universal care as a threat to their profits and power. Announcing a plan for universal coverage is far removed from the vision Trump creates for our country of greater "freedom" and unleashing the constructive power of free enterprise. Universal health coverage and opening up the health system to innovation could work together but doubtful that Trump would have the power to make it happen even if he saw it as helping the people.

    So Trump, already pilloried, marginalized and boxed in, will have a hard time getting anything done, and the interests that oppose anything progressive will not hesitate to unite, scratching each others' back and help each other defeat whatever Trump proposes.

    Trump the maverick, Trump the reformer. Would it be so.

    Anon , January 21, 2017 at 7:20 am

    The choice of one word by Obama is not a strong argument, nor is there a case that "almost certainly" Russia hacked the DNC email, versus China or the US or a private hacker. The US certainly did so, as it has far greater resources and is known to have the ability. So the most likely government hacking source is a US agency like NSA. And the most likely source is the disaffected, resigned, and murdered DNC staffer Mr. Rich.

    Let's refuse to play the corrupt DNC game of distraction from the email contents. The story here is that the DNC is controlled by big money and foreign powers Israel and KSA.

    There is no other story on this subject, and this constant harping on the distraction story suggests complicity in the diversion of public attention from the DNC corruption.

    fudmier , January 21, 2017 at 9:56 am

    The issue s/n/b "who" leaked "what", it s/b =>why, should information<= about "salaried, elected 527 actor [and appointee] activities" be allowed any privilege of privacy or secrecy. Obviously, those who need to be best informed in a democracy, about the activities and exploits of those in or near to power, are those furtherest from the seats of power, the members of the voting public. Privilege of secret or privacy belongs to those furtherest from the seats of power. Seat occupants possess no privilege or secret to any aspect of their activities and exploits.

    Democracy demands an inverse relationship between government actors closet to "centralized power" and the "privilege" of secrecy or privacy.

    evelync , January 21, 2017 at 10:46 am

    you're absolutely correct, fudmier. Bernie was trusted by Dems, Independents and Republicans because he spoke the plain truth about our sorry state of affairs. He would've won.

    The DNC, corrupt, dishonest, did not serve the large majority of people in their own party.

    They conspired to disrupt Bernie's candidacy from the beginning starting with the first primary in the Southeast when they tried to discredit Bernie with that letter from the DNC chairs of the southern block.

    It is important for VIPS to demand the proof of the so called hack.

    Hillary Clinton was not trusted. She was a weak candidate whose allegiance was to a tiny sliver of powerful wealthy people. everybody knew that. She cost herself the election. The argument her defenders are using trying to blame the Russians, the FBI, blah blah blah is that if only the truth could have been kept from the voters their candidate would have won. That is a very weak position and does not help their credibility. They play a dangerous game trying to inflame passions against Russia instead of cleaning their own house.

    Joel Kabakov , January 21, 2017 at 11:31 am

    Sorry folks, this smacks of W. Bush maintaining "we have no direct evidence that Osama Bin Laden attacked the World Trade Center on 9/11" fully knowing that the majority of Americans had already been successfully programmed to the contrary. The big admission Obama is lacking here is the admission that the whole "Putin hacked" scenario was scripted in the bowels of the American security state otherwise known as the fourth branch of our government.

    D5-5 , January 21, 2017 at 12:22 pm

    Thank Obama for "dispelling . . . obfuscation"? Obama called for a thorough investigation back in December then almost immediately made statements to the effect that "nothing much happens without Putin knowing it" and "the Russians are capable of doing this" (the essence of his remarks). Massaging the hysteria nicely, wasn't he? Now he states "conclusions are not conclusive." Once again here he is the spinmaster on his silver toe defending his ego. Too kind, Ray, much too kind and generous for this kind of behavior.

    Mark Thomason , January 21, 2017 at 12:48 pm

    Thank you. Good points well expressed. This has been buried by those who know better, as partisanship has overtaken truth.

    Trump bashing is an expression of the shock of 9:00 pm Election Night returns that were "impossible." It is the political expression of Hillary's drunken ravings that night.

    We see Stages of Grief in place of intelligence reports.

    Bob Van Noy , January 21, 2017 at 12:55 pm

    backwardsevolution, (Responding on Saturday). I thought you'd appreciate what Craig Murray had to say about President Trump today and note the commentary because it's primarily European

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk

    Bill Bodden , January 21, 2017 at 1:12 pm

    Thank you, Bob, for that excellent link.

    evelync , January 21, 2017 at 2:40 pm

    Yes, thank you Bob!

    Craig Murray's solid piece is very welcome!!
    So glad that there are well informed and honest writers determined to reveal the difference between our words and our actions as a country.

    elmerfudzie , January 21, 2017 at 2:03 pm

    Ray, the media propaganda that signaled another world war has now passed? I'd love to think so FDR was quoted as saying "you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people all the time" and IKE's, now famous or rather infamous (he did nothing to stop the momentum) warning about the size and growth of our military industrial congressional complex.

    Yet, politicians and citizen proles alike seem to dismiss these words of wisdom. Humanity continues to be dragged towards an inevitable disaster.

    Trump announced that he will INCREASE military spending while rebuilding our infrastructure?-already he's BS-ing us.

    The NYT will preserve it's reputation as the "toilet paper of record" a remarkably accurate quip from that, All American, Gerald Celente of Trends Research.

    The apocalyptic visions of George Orwell's warnings "Big Brother is Watching You," have now come to pass. Let us re-examine the classic works of that master of propaganda, Edward Bernays and his modern day student, Philip D. Zelikow.

    It is here we will find the current societal Mission of George Orwell's, Ministry of Truth(s), that is, all three branches of our federal government.

    Information gatekeepers of the new Ministry of Propaganda have assumed the shape of, and taken full control of, most of the Western Occident cable and newsprint media. These facts serve to amplify my WW III fears and warnings. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote: "The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses." This same oratory is the "new" yet at the same time, terribly old, politic of the new POTUS.

    [Jan 22, 2017] Can a new geopolitical alliance arise consisting of Russia, the new ottoman and the US.

    Notable quotes:
    "... "But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." ..."
    "... Moscow-Ankara-Washington axis........ How about a Beijing-Moscow-Berlin axis, what have the Turks got to offer? ..."
    "... Clinton was to solve global warming with nuclear winter. Sheesh! read Obama's neocon anthem aka the speech he gave in Stockholm where he conned the Nobel committee. ..."
    "... Putin's 'interventions' are minimalist and defensive, the Clinton neocons would push NATO up to Smolensk with feckless disregard for any entity in the way of US empire. ..."
    "... Neoliberal is starting wars because the empire sees "unjust peace" as excuse to engage with shock and awe despite the dbody count. ..."
    "... Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has questions the whole "Putin did it" narrative, demanding evidence: "we strongly suspect that the evidence your intelligence chiefs have of a joint Russian-hacking-WikiLeaks-publishing operation is no better than the "intelligence" evidence in 2002-2003 – expressed then with comparable flat-fact "certitude" – of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." ..."
    Jan 22, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 21, 2017 at 07:28 AM
    Not in touch with Tunis.

    The rest of spring time for jihadis are known bollux: Libya, Egypt*, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan...... Lebanon outside spring time for jihadis it is under Shiite wraps not so bollux.

    *CIA and generals jailed the jihadis to keep Camp David bribes coming.

    JF -> Ben Groves... , January 21, 2017 at 08:21 AM
    I am terribly worried that a move of the US embassy to Jerusalem is part if a set of provocations leading to US military interventions to eliminate the threats as this group defines them to be (radical islamists). This would immediately make the US and Russian oil industries more valuable as the middle east becomes enflamed.

    A new axis arises: Russia, the new ottoman and the US.

    I just cant help thinking that this is the plan, you will be measured on your patriotism and allegiances here. Dismaying.

    EMichael -> JF... , January 21, 2017 at 08:29 AM
    I know you and I both hope you are wrong.

    But it does go hand in hand with this "America First" schtick.

    "But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

    ― Hermann Göring

    im1dc -> JF... , January 21, 2017 at 08:41 AM
    I don't think you are wrong.
    Peter K. -> JF... , January 21, 2017 at 09:32 AM
    "I am terribly worried that a move of the US embassy to Jerusalem is part if a set of provocations leading to US military interventions to eliminate..."

    You could be right, but most of Trump's campaign talk was isolationist, if contradictory. The Iraq adventurism was a disaster, etc.

    He doesn't like diplomacy, like the Iran deal, so there could be more brinkmanship which is dangerous. But a war would be very unpopular. Again he may not care since war could be used as a distraction.

    Authoritarian allies like the Arab dictatorships are happy in that a Trump administration won't criticize them about human rights violations or freedom of the press. Russia and China will be happy about that as well.

    Trump is basically a real-estate developer/tax fraud etc. I don't see war as a foregone conclusion.

    JF -> Peter K.... , January 21, 2017 at 10:25 AM
    He used the word 'to protect' in his inaugural. That is definitely not isolationism especially after declaring that he will eliminate radical Islam from the earth (close to a direct quote, I'm pretty sure).

    And isn't he the one who said during the campaign that we ought to just sieze the oilfields?

    So just provoke a few things, a few will do, then announce the alliance wuth russia to settle this in the region, once and for all, so we are protected.

    Who indeed will step up and say no, they will not do this type of thing?

    ilsm -> JF... , January 21, 2017 at 11:53 AM
    Moscow-Ankara-Washington axis........ How about a Beijing-Moscow-Berlin axis, what have the Turks got to offer?

    US dumb* to ignore and be left out!

    *neocon PNAC bat$#1^ crazy

    ilsm -> JohnH... , January 21, 2017 at 04:19 AM
    Clinton was to solve global warming with nuclear winter. Sheesh! read Obama's neocon anthem aka the speech he gave in Stockholm where he conned the Nobel committee.

    Putin's 'interventions' are minimalist and defensive, the Clinton neocons would push NATO up to Smolensk with feckless disregard for any entity in the way of US empire.

    Neoliberal is starting wars because the empire sees "unjust peace" as excuse to engage with shock and awe despite the dbody count.

    Clinton would be mobilizing to crush Russia using the exploded the image of a few suffering Balts to tilt with nuclear winter.

    JohnH -> JohnH... , January 21, 2017 at 07:06 AM
    Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has questions the whole "Putin did it" narrative, demanding evidence: "we strongly suspect that the evidence your intelligence chiefs have of a joint Russian-hacking-WikiLeaks-publishing operation is no better than the "intelligence" evidence in 2002-2003 – expressed then with comparable flat-fact "certitude" – of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
    http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/another_demand_for_russian_hacking_20170119

    But this JohnH-come-lately drinks whatever Kool-Aid the establishment gives him...

    JohnH -> JohnH... , January 21, 2017 at 07:16 AM
    Obama starts to walk back his claim that 'Putin did it:' https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/20/obama-admits-gap-in-russian-hack-case/
    ilsm -> JohnH... , January 21, 2017 at 07:29 AM
    Con artist, the super party hack*.

    *low techie

    im1dc -> JohnH... , January 21, 2017 at 08:45 AM
    When ilsm agrees with you then you are wrong.

    Russia did hack to influence the election. Whether they were decisive or not no one can say.

    More likely imo Comey's violation of the Hatch Act 6 days before the Election knocking Hillary's Poll lead from 12 to 5 cost her the election.

    Comey will pay for his treachery.

    Accept and move on.

    JohnH -> im1dc... , January 21, 2017 at 09:59 AM
    "Does the Russian government hack, as many other governments do? Of course. Did it hack the emails of the Democratic National Committee? Almost certainly, though it was likely not alone in doing so. In the Internet age, hacking is the bread and butter of intelligence agencies. If Russian intelligence did not do so, this would constitute gross misfeasance, especially since the DNC was such easy pickings and the possibility of gaining important insights into the U.S. government was so high. But that is not the question.
    It was WikiLeaks that published the very damaging information, for example, on the DNC's dirty tricks that marginalized Sen. Bernie Sanders and ensured that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic nomination. What remains to be demonstrated is that it was "the Russians" who gave those emails to WikiLeaks. And that is what the U.S. intelligence community doesn't know."
    https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/20/obama-admits-gap-in-russian-hack-case/

    Democrats want to blame Russia for their ineptitude and their lousy candidate.

    Democrats want to blame Russia for exposing the DNC's rigging of the primaries...by blaming Russia for rigging the general elections [abject hypocrisy.]

    Neither Democrats nor the intelligence services know who gave the documents to WikiLeaks or, if they do, they don't want you to know who it was.

    ilsm -> im1dc... , January 21, 2017 at 12:11 PM
    im1dc,

    You don't have to agree, we have diverse experiences.

    when did Podesta and Wasserman Schultz, those crooks, become "the election". Even if it was the Russians!!!

    As to Comey: let the new AG do his or her duty on the crimes of a cabinet officer, with a jury and judge.

    My training and experience suggest Clinton will do time.

    I am reminded of Job38-41: "Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?....."

    Chatham House Rule -> libezkova... , January 21, 2017 at 09:39 AM

    reject all war. We are all extremely fortunate that Hillary Clinton will not be taking office this weekend. Had Hillary been elected we would be facing a crisis over Syria. Hillary wants to overthrow the
    "

    Her victims are our cousins. Each of us emanates from the same living cell. Within Minkowski-time-space we remain connected as one animal. No!

    We cannot open up our American hospitality to suspected terrorists. What we can do is open up our homeland to foreigners who are moving over to make space for her victims. Ceu

    When South Africa takes in Syrians, we can take in an equal number of South Africans or other foreigners who are demonstrating their love for our cousins, our cousins now victimized by our own Mama-War-Bucks. Tell me something!

    Was the HRC-email-server moved to her private home so that SWH, Slick Willie himself could control the World? Hey!

    Americans

    are not
    blind --

    El Chapo Guapo -> Chatham House Rule... , January 21, 2017 at 11:04 AM

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-dimensional_space#/media/File:8-cell-simple.gif

    [Jan 22, 2017] Weepy Globalist To Be Replaced By Rumbustious Working Class Hero At Noon Friday by John Derbyshire

    An interesting quote: "So, given that the US is under GLOB occupation, Americans should welcome ANY foreign interference that loosens this grip and empowers the historical white majority. "
    Notable quotes:
    "... the antecedent for "it" seems to be the danger to us from terrorism and foreign dictators–JD ..."
    "... Watch: 'You Have Made Me Proud' – President Obama's Farewell Speech Is a Powerful Road-Map for Upholding Democracy , ..."
    "... Donald Trump's News Conference: Full Transcript and Video, ..."
    "... On the suggestion that Vladimir Putin helped Trump get elected: ..."
    "... On the allegations in the BuzzFeed file about stuff he had paid those honey-trap hookers to do in Moscow: ..."
    "... On whether he thinks the American public is concerned about him not releasing his tax returns: ..."
    "... On Lindsey Graham proposing a bill for tougher sanctions on Russia: ..."
    "... That's the Trump we know and love. So was his reaction when a CNN reporter kept demanding to ask a question: "Don't be rude. No, I'm not going to give you a question You are fake news! " ..."
    "... One of the reasons low-income Americans admire rich people is that they are do-ers who seem to live gilded lives, and not on the backs of the poor. It's the professional classes they don't like-the lawyers and doctors and teachers, who invade their lives with bills and lectures. The people who look and sound like Hillary Clinton. Trump was showing that he, too, was under the cosh of the miserable lawyers-he even had one come to the podium. ..."
    "... Bad news, Trump haters: This bonkers show has made him even MORE popular, writes JUSTIN WEBB. He played to the gallery with something bordering on genius , ..."
    "... Watch your back, Mr. President-Elect. Richard Nixon was way less rumbustious than you are; but they took down Nixon . ..."
    "... BBC is still in nonstop 'take down Trump' mode, every other day the headline starts 'Donald Trump has provoked outrage' . ..."
    "... From time to time I make a resolution never to vote for any person who has shed tears in public. ..."
    "... Yes, but you and your wife are IMMIGRANTS. Unwanted. Undesired. Doesn't matter if you are white or non-white. ..."
    "... All this talk of Russian hacking and Russian interference emanating from the Progs misses the point. I don't believe in most of it. But surely Russians did what they could to favor Trump. But what's wrong with that, at least from our perspective? ..."
    "... The fact is the US is not ruled by Americans but by the GLOB, or Globalist Tyranny. Though the GLOB is a diverse bunch of globalist-elites, the top dogs are Zionists, homos, and Anglo-Cuck-Collaborators. And these people have ZERO feeling for the historical white majority of the Americans. Anglo-Collaborators are too cucked out to have any white sentiments. They are like Joe Biden who will sell his ma down the river for his cookies and creams. These cucks are willing to turn all historically white nations into EU and US into non-white majority nations AS LONG AS they and their children are assure of privilege and power in the New Order. They are globo-quislings. ..."
    "... So, given that the US is under GLOB occupation, Americans should welcome ANY foreign interference that loosens this grip and empowers the historical white majority. ..."
    "... Now, the Russian role in 2016 was nothing like French role in the War of Independence, but it may have tipped the balance. White Americans should rejoice and thank the Russians. ..."
    "... American Media are not American. It is mostly GLOB. And it means that as long as US is under Glob power, it is under alien tyranny. Indeed, even with Trump as president, the most powerful force in the US is Jewish-Glob power. ..."
    "... Trump's tweets are an act of genius. He has rocked the whole liberal establishment by stating his own opinions and speaking directly to those who have been ignored for years. ..."
    "... This is revolutionary, Trump could never have survived a Presidential run in the past, he would have been unable to fight back, no one would be able to hear him. ..."
    "... Who would have thought that a President could ignore and ridicule major media players in an age where careers are destroyed by the media because they disagree with gay marriage... ..."
    "... The Zionists, CIA and FBI could finish with Trump in no time at all, but the problem is that it's not just Trump, he's only riding a wave. Eliminate Trump and they could get something much worse, so they probably calculate that it's better to try to corrupt Trump ( he's a dealmaker) despite his connection to the thing that they fear the most i.e. Radical Anglo Nationalism. ..."
    "... Americans are generally aware of the founders of this country. However, immigrants like the Irish, Italians, and Slavs were considered to be "garbage" by nativists at various points in time. Millions of immigrants who came to the States had little money, but a strong work ethic and the willingness to embrace our customs and our political traditions. ..."
    Jan 21, 2017 | www.unz.com

    Credit: VDare.com

    This is the Week of the Two Presidents- Donald Trump succeeds Barack Obama at noon on Friday January 20. Both men recently addressed major gatherings: Barack Obama made his official farewell to the nation, Donald Trump held his first formal press conference since being elected. Each event was highly characteristic. My take: I for one am glad we have heard the last of Obama. And Trump's rumbustiousness is thrilling .

    Obama stepped out in front of a huge audience in Chicago and delivered a long, gassy speech-51 minutes and 10 seconds. That's 10 minutes longer than the Farewell Addresses of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan combined .

    Bush 41 did not technically give a farewell address, although his speech to West Point cadets, the last of his presidency, is sometimes cited as such. I don't know its duration, but the transcript runs to 3,300 words. The transcript of Obama's farewell address is just short of 5,000 words, so he left Poppy Bush in the dust, too. This is a guy who really likes the sound of his own voice.

    The gold standard in political speeches, so far as I'm concerned, was the one Calvin Coolidge delivered to the Massachusetts Senate 102 years ago, after being elected President of that body. It consisted of forty-four words, thus :

    Honorable Senators: My sincerest thanks I offer you. Conserve the firm foundations of our institutions. Do your work with the spirit of a soldier in the public service. Be loyal to the Commonwealth and to yourselves, and be brief; above all things, be brief.

    That makes the Gettysburg Address , at 272 words, look positively flabby. It makes Obama's farewell address look morbidly obese.

    What did Obama's speech actually contain? Well, there was lots of "hope" and "change": five "hopes" and sixteen "changes" by my count. I couldn't actually pin down anything declarative about "hope", but there was definitely a consistent theme on "change." Change is good! Don't be afraid of change! -

    Constant change has been America's hallmark; that it's not something to fear but something to embrace It [ the antecedent for "it" seems to be the danger to us from terrorism and foreign dictators–JD ] represents the fear of change; the fear of people who look or speak or pray differently

    If you fear change you are a bad person!

    I'm sorry, Mr. President, but that is inane. Some change is good, some isn't. Saying, "Change is good!" makes as much sense as saying, " Weather is good!" or "Vegetation is good!" If an asteroid were to strike the earth and wipe out the human race, that would be a major change, wouldn't it? Not many of us would consider it good, though.

    And just as change is not necessarily good, fear is not necessarily bad. We have the fear instinct for a very good reason: to preserve ourselves against dangers. We may argue about whether some one particular phenomenon is or is not dangerous, but fear itself is useful and valuable, not a failing or a weakness .

    Take for example that "fear of people who look or speak or pray differently." If people who look different from me in some one particular way have a homicide rate seven times that of people who look the same as me, and a robbery rate thirteen times, isn't fear of those people rational? If violent acts of terrorism against innocent civilians are almost exclusively committed by people who pray a certain way, is not fear of people who pray that way justified?

    And look at Obama's illogical assumptions:

    If we're unwilling to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don't look like us, we will diminish the prospects of our own children-because those brown kids will represent a larger and larger share of America's workforce.

    Note the patronizing conflation of "immigrants" with "brown kids." I'm an immigrant; my wife is an immigrant; neither of us is brown.

    Note also the meteorological approach to immigration. It's like the weather! Can't do anything about it! In fact immigration is just a policy, that we can change at will. We could, without any offense to the Constitution, stop all immigration and require all noncitizens to leave our territory.

    How would that be for "change"! To fear it would, of course, be weak and un-American.

    And then there are Obama's characteristic weaselly little half-truths:

    I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans who are just as patriotic as we are.

    I have no problem with the first half of that. I too reject discrimination against American citizens who are Muslims.

    At the same time, and without any inconsistency I can see, I think we have all the Muslims we need. Islam doesn't fit comfortably into non-Muslim nations. It creates problems that we'd be wise to avoid. Let's stop all further settlement of Muslims in the U.S.A.

    Again, I don't know of any constitutional reason why we can't do that.

    But the second half, Obama's assertion that Muslims are just as patriotic as we are, is open to question. It's true in the sense that some Muslims, like some non-Muslims, are patriotic, while others aren't. The proportions in each case bears examining. The non-patriotism of Muslim non-patriots is of a seriously different kind from the non-patriotism of Episcopalian, Catholic, Baptist, Congregationalist, Unitarian, Jewish, agnostic, atheist, and Wiccan non-patriots.

    This slippery sleight of mouth is very Obamaesque. And personally, I could do without all the girlish emoting that Obama went in for towards the end of the speech. By the time he'd gotten through gushing over all the hope and change he'd generated, and over his wife and daughters, etc., there was, as several news outlets noted, not a dry eye in the house.[ Watch: 'You Have Made Me Proud' – President Obama's Farewell Speech Is a Powerful Road-Map for Upholding Democracy , Black Entertainment Television, January 11, 3017]

    From time to time I make a resolution never to vote for any person who has shed tears in public. Then I recall that this is somewhat un-American of me, and feel a bit ashamed. My fellow Americans mostly like that kind of thing, and I ought to yield to their taste.

    I just can't, though. I'm from a nation and a time that admired reserve, fortitude, and the stiff upper lip. "I have lost my leg, by God!" Lord Uxbridge told the Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo, as cannonballs whizzed by. "By God, and have you!" replied the Duke.

    Those are my people. They're dead now, or old, even in the Mother Country. But they had something that's been lost, and the loss of which I regret very much.

    Trump's presser was comparable in wordage to Obama's speech.

    The questions and answers, not counting the nested presentation by Trump's lawyer, were seventy-four hundred words, of which by far the majority were Trump's. So chances are Trump spoke more words than Obama. And they were pure Trumplish: unfiltered, demotic, boastful, pugnacious in self-defense, hyperbolic in praise, brutal in scorn, sometimes contradictory, occasionally nonsensical.

    When he didn't want to answer a question he just blustered. Would Obamacare guarantee coverage for current beneficiaries? Trump:

      You're gonna be very, very proud of what we put forth having to do with health care We're going to be submitting, as soon as our secretary's approved, almost simultaneously, shortly thereafter, a plan. It'll be repeal and replace. It will be essentially, simultaneously. It will be various segments, you understand, but will most likely be on the same day or the same week, but probably, the same day, could be the same hour. So we're gonna do repeal and replace, very complicated stuff. And we're gonna get a health bill passed, we're gonna get health care taken care of in this country The plan will be repeal and replace Obamacare. We're going to have a health care that is far less expensive and far better.

    Donald Trump's News Conference: Full Transcript and Video, NYT, January 11, 2017

    The information content of that answer is, let's be frank, zero. You could in fact, in the spirit of Coolidge, you could make an economical translation of that 430-word answer from Trumplish into Coolidgean using just three words: "Wait and see."

    That's OK, though. Donald Trump is by no means the first President to answer a reporter's question with blustery evasion-by no means.

    It was Trump's style and demeanor at the presser that had us Trumpians clapping along with him. Those, and his one-liners. Four sample one-liners:

      On the suggestion that Vladimir Putin helped Trump get elected: "If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what, folks? That's called an asset, not a liability." On the allegations in the BuzzFeed file about stuff he had paid those honey-trap hookers to do in Moscow: "I'm also very much of a germaphobe, by the way, believe me." On whether he thinks the American public is concerned about him not releasing his tax returns: "No, I don't think they care at all." On Lindsey Graham proposing a bill for tougher sanctions on Russia: "I hadn't heard Lindsey Graham was going to do that. Lindsey Graham. I've been competing with him for a long time. He is going to crack that one percent barrier one day."

    That's the Trump we know and love. So was his reaction when a CNN reporter kept demanding to ask a question: "Don't be rude. No, I'm not going to give you a question You are fake news! " Similarly with BuzzFeed, which Trump said is, quote, "a failing pile of garbage." Along the lines of the old joke about Harry Truman and the word "manure," I guess America should be glad he used the word "garbage."

    Of all the commentary on Trump's presser, I think the one that got to the heart of the matter was Justin Webb's in the Daily Mail , January 12th, pertaining to the point in the presser where Trump brought up his lawyer to explain about his business interests:

    One of the reasons low-income Americans admire rich people is that they are do-ers who seem to live gilded lives, and not on the backs of the poor. It's the professional classes they don't like-the lawyers and doctors and teachers, who invade their lives with bills and lectures. The people who look and sound like Hillary Clinton. Trump was showing that he, too, was under the cosh of the miserable lawyers-he even had one come to the podium.

    And he was demonstrating that, despite this, he had admirably emerged with his businesses intact. I am no psychology professor, but this seemed to me to be playing to the gallery-i.e. those "ordinary" Americans who are so fed up with the political class-with something bordering on genius.

    Bad news, Trump haters: This bonkers show has made him even MORE popular, writes JUSTIN WEBB. He played to the gallery with something bordering on genius , By Justin Webb, The Daily Mail, January 13, 2017

    Mail man Webb then goes on to warn that Trump might be too combative, too much the Alpha Male, for the suits in D.C. to put up with for long, so that they will find a way to force him out. Webb concludes:

    If they succeed, it would be a bitter blow to the millions of working-class Americans who voted for Trump, folk who felt he alone among politicians understood their aspirations, and who would have been thrilled by his extraordinary, rumbustious performance this week. It would again confirm their view that the political establishment looks after its own-while the "little people" are brushed aside.

    I don't think I count as working-class. My hands are rather soft , and I only wear boots for hiking or shoveling snow . I'll admit that I was thrilled by Trump's performance, though, just as much as Justin Webb's hypothetical working-class Americans.

    And yes, like Webb, I worry that Trump's don't-give-a-damn rumbustiousness may be too much for the seat-warmers and log-rollers of Washington, D.C.-among which category I would include our intelligence agencies -to the degree that they will find some way to unseat him. Watch your back, Mr. President-Elect. Richard Nixon was way less rumbustious than you are; but they took down Nixon .

    And in case you're wondering, listeners, "rumbustious" is indeed a word- I looked it up .

    John Derbyshire [ email him ] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him. ) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books . He's had two books published by VDARE.com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT ( also available in Kindle ) and From the Dissident Right II: Essays 2013 . His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com .

    (Reprinted from VDare.com by permission of author or representative)

    jivilov , January 17, 2017 at 8:40 am GMT

    Another great article by El Derbo. BTW an alternate version of Wellington's reply to Uxbridge goes, "By Jove, so you have!" Whatever his merits the Duke was not strong on empathy. But if he was, w0uld he have been such a winning general?

    Anonymous Nephew , January 17, 2017 at 10:18 am GMT

    Justin Webb was the BBCs US correspondent for years ( as was his father ) . He's also one of the presenters of the R4 Today programme.

    ( BBC is still in nonstop 'take down Trump' mode, every other day the headline starts 'Donald Trump has provoked outrage' . Today on R4 we had the Observer's literary editor in conversation about Trump with Malcolm Gladwell – I wonder if that was positive or negative?)

    polistra , January 17, 2017 at 11:40 am GMT

    I'm somewhat less worried about Fort Marcy. Important difference between Trump and Nixon or Reagan: Trump has his own security forces, both physical and cyber. He doesn't have to rely on the Deepstate-owned Secret Service.

    He clearly understands how these things work, as demonstrated by his discussion of paper messages vs email. He's been 'controversial' for decades and he's been watching his back effectively for decades.

    TomSchmidt , January 17, 2017 at 2:01 pm GMT

    I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans who are just as patriotic as we are.

    Perhaps he accepts discrimination against Muslim Americans whose patriotism differs, or is less than, "us," whoever that is? It's a slimy, unctuous, political phrase.

    Randal , January 17, 2017 at 2:28 pm GMT

    Another good piece that ought to be gracing the pages of the Spectator and the Telegraph, if those publications were still traditionalist conservative and weren't firmly in the grip of pc censorship and neoconnery.

    From time to time I make a resolution never to vote for any person who has shed tears in public. Then I recall that this is somewhat un-American of me, and feel a bit ashamed. My fellow Americans mostly like that kind of thing, and I ought to yield to their taste

    I agree entirely, and I don't have the burden of having to try to assimilate to a foreign country's culture, so I can say so without qualification. I don't like men who openly display sentimentality and don't respect them as leaders.

    Women are a different matter, but with a few unusual exceptions they don't make good leaders anyway.

    By the way, here's a matter that affects both your country of origin and your adopted one: how remarkable is it that supposedly serious people ("Theresa May's advisers") are reported as putting David Cameron forward as a candidate for Secretary General of NATO? The man who repeatedly displayed his complete unsuitability for any role in strategic decision making by not only pushing the disastrous destruction of Libya's government in 2011 but, only two years later and with the costs of that earlier blunder in full view, actually wanted to do the same to Syria! Worse, not only did he evidently want to do it, but he lacked the competence to manage a compliant Parliament into giving him the required rubber stamp!

    Of course, it's not all that remarkable if one ditches the naďve idea that those "advising May" are not either incompetent themselves or acting out of ulterior motives that are incompatible with any genuine British national interest.

    An optimist might suggest that perhaps clever subversion rather than stupidity is the explanation here. What better way to further undermine an institution that has long outlived its original purpose and has become a vehicle for troublemaking and disorder, yet has such deep institutional roots and serves such a useful role for nefarious US deep state purposes that it cannot be rooted out, than to put at its helm an individual so patently unsuited to such a role?

    But that is surely hopelessly optimistic. Most likely the obvious explanation is correct, that it is just another instance of the trademarked mix of incompetence and evil that seems to have been running US sphere foreign policy since the 1990s.

    Anonymous , January 17, 2017 at 2:38 pm GMT

    Weepy Globalist to be Replaced By Rumbustious Working Class Hero At Noon Friday Can D.C. Suits Stand It?

    One of the best headers ever. (Answer: yes, but barely. "It could be the end of think tanks as we know them", they have been heard soughing.)

    Bragadocious , January 17, 2017 at 3:54 pm GMT

    If we're unwilling to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don't look like us "

    This is precisely the error made by progressives immersed in the scuzzy identity politics bathtub. I don't want to "invest" in the children of Irish illegal immigrants either. And they look a lot like me. Their parents are likely to be moronic leftists who arrived here with disdain and contempt for rule of law, no different than the parents of MS-13 gangbangers in Brentwood. Very basically, if you can't stand in line like everyone else, you're not worth investing in.

    WorkingClass , January 17, 2017 at 4:52 pm GMT
    @polistra

    There will likely be gunplay at the Inaugural. At Maidan snipers shot people on both sides of the conflict. Maidan is the model for the coup against Trump. Either there will be an Erdogan style purge, or Trump will be impeached, imprisoned or martyred.

    Corvinus , January 17, 2017 at 6:36 pm GMT

    @War for Blair Mountain

    "Secession is just around the corner it's a comming."

    That is a pipe dream. Now, Derby "This is a guy who really likes the sound of his own voice." Pot, meet kettle.

    "Note the patronizing conflation of "immigrants" with "brown kids." I'm an immigrant; my wife is an immigrant; neither of us is brown."

    Yes, but you and your wife are IMMIGRANTS. Unwanted. Undesired. Doesn't matter if you are white or non-white.

    "At the same time, and without any inconsistency I can see, I think we have all the Muslims we need."

    Why should an Englishman and a Chinese woman (race mixing, I thought that was a big no-no) be allowed to enter the United States? We already have too many of your kind already!

    "But the second half, Obama's assertion that Muslims are just as patriotic as we are, is open to question. It's true in the sense that some Muslims, like some non-Muslims, are patriotic, while others aren't. The proportions in each case bears examining.

    Indeed, the proportions in each case bears examining. How many American Muslims committed acts of terrorism on American soil prior to 911?

    "The non-patriotism of Muslim non-patriots is of a seriously different kind from the non-patriotism of Episcopalian, Catholic, Baptist, Congregationalist, Unitarian, Jewish, agnostic, atheist, and Wiccan non-patriots."

    This is gooblygook. Either a person is loyal or disloyal. Now, using Derbs logic, the non-patriotism of Jew non-patriots is also noteworthy for being a "different kind". Because Jews cause all kinds of havoc, right?

    "Richard Nixon was way less rumbustious than you are; but they took down Nixon."

    Nixon took himself down by enabling his posse to spy on Democrats and use campaign money to buy the silence of those who were caught at Watergate. Certainly, Woodward and Bernstein and others employed questionable means during their investigation, but the LARGER issue was to expose the lies of an administration. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden merely copied the strategies of these two reporters, yet somehow they are lionized for their uncovering despite their covert means to obtain information?

    rienzi , January 17, 2017 at 7:42 pm GMT

    Strangely enough, Trump has already done more to improve the lives of ordinary Americans by saving some jobs in Indianapolis, before he even takes office, than the last three presidents have accomplished in 24 years in office.

    Forbes , January 17, 2017 at 10:14 pm GMT

    The disgrace (conundrum?), as it were, is that plenty of 30- and 40- and 50-something Americans find Obama's shtick appealing, whether the self-referential I, me, my, or the weepiness–it's not just dopey Millennials without the experience of time. They've all been inculcated with the idea that it's the feelz that matters.

    Anon , January 17, 2017 at 11:00 pm GMT

    All this talk of Russian hacking and Russian interference emanating from the Progs misses the point. I don't believe in most of it. But surely Russians did what they could to favor Trump. But what's wrong with that, at least from our perspective?

    After all, didn't the French welcome the American role in driving out German Occupation during WWII? Didn't Philippines welcome the Americans in driving out the Japanese?

    The fact is the US is not ruled by Americans but by the GLOB, or Globalist Tyranny. Though the GLOB is a diverse bunch of globalist-elites, the top dogs are Zionists, homos, and Anglo-Cuck-Collaborators. And these people have ZERO feeling for the historical white majority of the Americans. Anglo-Collaborators are too cucked out to have any white sentiments. They are like Joe Biden who will sell his ma down the river for his cookies and creams. These cucks are willing to turn all historically white nations into EU and US into non-white majority nations AS LONG AS they and their children are assure of privilege and power in the New Order. They are globo-quislings.

    So, given that the US is under GLOB occupation, Americans should welcome ANY foreign interference that loosens this grip and empowers the historical white majority.

    Any people who are under alien tyranny should welcome other alien forces to counter-balance the alien force currently in power.
    It's like the American Revolution wouldn't have been possible without the crucial help of the French. The British were too powerful, and most of the major battles won by the Americans were actually fought by the French.

    Now, the Russian role in 2016 was nothing like French role in the War of Independence, but it may have tipped the balance. White Americans should rejoice and thank the Russians.

    After all, there are parallels. In the 90s, the globalists took over Russia and totally looted and plundered that country.

    It was nationalism that restored Russian sovereignty somewhat(though it still has long way to go).

    So, white Americans need to look to Russia and Russian-Americans. Indeed, just as Jewish-Americans feel closer to Russian-Jews and French Jews than to white gentile Americans(whom most Jews despise), white gentile Americans should feel closer to white gentiles all over the world than with Jews or other elements of the GLOB. White Americans and white Russians should regard one another as brothers. After all, white Russians don't want to destroy White America. It is the Jewish globalists who have that agenda.

    Pan-Zionism and Pan-Jewish-ism govern Jewish mindset and power. Jewish Americans feel closer to Israeli-Jews, Hungarian Jews, French Jews, and British Jews than with gentile Americans.

    So, white gentiles need a pan-white-ism. If Jewish-Americans and Russian Jews work together to plunder both Russian gentiles and American gentiles, then gentiles in both nations should work together to defend themselves from avaricious globalist Jewish power. Why should only Jews have the right to create tribal networks all over the world?

    I say white gentiles also need to create pan-white or pan-European networks all over. They need to bury the hatchet because they face similar threats in both US and EU.

    If someone is holding you hostage, and another person saves you from your captor, should you blame the other person for having saved you? No, of course not. You should thank him.

    So, if Russia played a role in helping white Americans liberate themselves from the tyranny of the Glob, white Americans should be grateful.

    Jewish GLOB would like us to believe that their power & control is 'American as bagel and cream cheese and lox', but their power is alien and anti-American. After all, globalism is a neo-imperialist war directed at ALL nations. So, if alien Russian influence was crucial in 2016, it was in helping knock out the alien Jewish influence. While there are good decent patriotic Jewish Americans, most of Jewish Power in the US is not patriotic or nationalist but GLOBO-IMPERIALIST and committed to destroying the national sovereignty of all white nations. Consider what Jews tried to do to Hungary and Poland.

    They tried to force those nations to surrender to non-stop Muslim and African invasions caused by wars fomented by Neocons and their cuck-whores.

    Besides, even now, Russian influence in the US is minuscule compared to the power of the GLOB. Glob elites are just a tiny percentage of US population, but they control 90% of media, Wall Street, Hollywood, academia, and much else. The fact that such a small minority controls so much of American Power should be the real scandal.

    American Media are not American. It is mostly GLOB. And it means that as long as US is under Glob power, it is under alien tyranny. Indeed, even with Trump as president, the most powerful force in the US is Jewish-Glob power.

    So, gentile Americans should welcome ANY foreign/alien help to weaken the power of the alien GLOB that controls most of the institutions in America. Look how the whores of Congress pledge their main loyalty to Israel, Israel, and Israel.

    Agree: Autochthon
    Svigor , January 18, 2017 at 1:19 am GMT

    And in case you're wondering, listeners, "rumbustious" is indeed a word-I looked it up.

    Ha! Now you know how it feels!

    Skeptikal , January 18, 2017 at 3:46 am GMT

    @Corvinus

    "Nixon took himself down by enabling his posse to spy on Democrats and use campaign money to buy the silence of those who were caught at Watergate. "

    Don't be silly. Read Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker, for the real story. The relevant chapters are available online at WhoWhatWhy.

    Authenticjazzman , January 18, 2017 at 12:46 pm GMT

    @Binyamin

    " His cabinet appointees are almost exclusively wealthy ( actually extremely wealthy) white men"

    So it would have made you feel better if he had appointed a cabinet made up exclusively of poor people of color, right.
    I am thinking that you are German because your viewpoints are identical with the german leftist " Gutmensch" SJW worldview, and you simply do not comprehend that average Americans are not jealous or spiteful of "Wealthy" folks, on the contrary, they respect them and congratulate them for their status.
    You guys have no problem with wealthy "Old white men" as long as they are leftists, such as BC or B Sanders or WB, or BG.
    Myself I am an "Old white man" and I am not ashamed to be an "Old white man", so put that in your "Gutmensch" pipe and smoke it.

    Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member of forty-plus years and pro jazz artist.

    El Dato , January 18, 2017 at 11:45 pm GMT
    • 100 Words

    I do think the "the fear of change" is a healthy element to have in a world that looks like "The Shockwave Rider" come true.

    Master Soda , "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to statism. Statism leads to blank checks for politicians. Blank checks for politicians leads to welfare/warfare and micromanagement and control freakshows sold as progressivism."

    Jay Igaboo , January 19, 2017 at 1:10 am GMT
    • 300 Words

    Mr. Derbyshire writes that "Saying, "Change is good!" makes as much sense as saying, "Weather is good!" or "Vegetation is good!"

    I have made the same point, but about different, more contentious words, for decades.
    Two of the words I said were silly to regard as good or bad were " intolerance" and "discrimination", words that for at least 30 years have, in the minds of many politicians, educators, executives and the brainwashed, morphed into synonyms for "bad!", which is a truly dumb and gutless surrender of language, it's and meaning and power of independent thought.

    A society, any society, anywhere on earth, falls by what it chooses wisely to discriminate against and what it refuses to tolerate. Sometimes these choices are contentious and harder to justify against the slogans and sound-bites that we have been relentlessly force-fed for a half century.

    Just mooting, that discrimination or intolerance are, of themselves, not necessarily bad, prompts the Pavlovian reflex of sharp intakes of breath and dutiful frowns from many listeners. Dare moot that "racism", sexism or homophobia (a ridiculous word etymologically) of any of the other proscribed -isms and –obiahs are, in their milder degrees, sensible social phenomena, and vitriol flows from the mouths of PC believers as reason departs as readily as it does from believers of the ROP when their cult is challenged logically. One is labelled as irredeemably evil despite, and I repeat, ANY society, anywhere on earth, falls by what it chooses to discriminate against and what it refuses to tolerate just as much as it rises by what it encourages.

    What we choose to encourage or discriminate against is far too important to be treated as dogma.

    The rules that govern society should be open to rigorous debate and examination, not, as is the case here in the UK and most of Europe, "defended" by a cowed and complicit Fourth Estate, and enforces by imprisonment for so-called "hate speech."

    Good luck America, I hope that Trump grows into the job and proves a much better President than the tactically-weepy O'Bummer.

    Agree: dfordoom
    Jay Igaboo , January 19, 2017 at 1:18 am GMT
    @El Dato

    Never heard of "The Shockwave Rider" but it's true about how fear can be manipulated, although it's not just Lefty pols who exploit it.
    According to their creed, pols ramp up fears or damp down reasonable and prudent ones, according to their agenda.

    Jay Igaboo , January 19, 2017 at 3:45 am GMT

    @Anon

    That is indeed a well-informed comment, unsurprisingly made under anonimity. If I published the same comment under my own name here in the UK, it would be off to the gulag for me, as we do not have the admirable First Amendment of The US contitution.

    If you published this under your own name in America, it would "only" be punishable by a media hounding, career death and the sort of public vilification seen during The Cultural Revolution.

    Carlton Meyer , Website January 19, 2017 at 5:23 am GMT

    Obama, the master liar. Today, he stated:

    "And it is important for the United States to stand up for the basic principal that big countries don't go around and invade and bully smaller countries."

    That was so bizarre I had to laugh, but noted the corporate press softball pitchers at this "news" conference didn't even smile at that absurd statement. No need for a "fact check" news story. Hell, the USA don't just bully and invade, it destroys and lays waste to entire nations on a yearly basis. Obama had dozens of foreigners murdered via drones and snipers each week, but perhaps that's not considered a bully tactic.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/politics/obama-final-press-conference.html?_r=0

    Agree: Mark Green , dfordoom
    Kyle McKenna , January 19, 2017 at 5:40 am GMT

    "fear of people who look or speak or pray differently."

    Typical SJW gobbledygook. First of all, no one looks, speaks, or prays like I do, so that's right out the window. It may look that way to you, but that's because you're ignorant, racist, jealous, and un-American.

    Second, and much more important: It's not fear that causes me to resist the trashing of my country. It's love. I'm not remotely fearful of third-world refuse, but I'm definitely disgusted with the way the country I love seems to be circling the drain, and I'll do just about anything I can to prevent it.

    That most definitely includes supporting a 'rumbustious' president who–despite offering genuine causes for concern–has made all the right enemies. Even if I agreed with him about nothing, I'd support him for that reason alone. What's that? They're threatening war? Nonsense. The war has been going on for half a century. But we have only begun to fight.

    larry lurker , January 19, 2017 at 5:42 am GMT

    On whether he thinks the American public is concerned about him not releasing his tax returns: "No, I don't think they care at all."

    My favorite part of the whole press conference came right before this:

    Reporter: But every president since the '70s has [released his tax returns] - Trump (sarcastically): Gee, I've never heard that. I've never heard that before.

    Mr. Anon , January 19, 2017 at 6:57 am GMT

    @Corvinus

    "Pot, meet kettle."

    Nonsense. Derb is an engaging and entertaining writer. You, on the other hand, are a tiresome bore.

    "Yes, but you and your wife are IMMIGRANTS. Unwanted. Undesired. Doesn't matter if you are white or non-white."

    Derb and his family are okay by me. You, however – I'd have no problem having you summarily deported.

    "Why should an Englishman and a Chinese woman (race mixing, I thought that was a big no-no) be allowed to enter the United States? We already have too many of your kind already!"

    No, we have too many of your kind, whatever your kind may be.

    "Indeed, the proportions in each case bears examining. How many American Muslims committed acts of terrorism on American soil prior to 911?"

    Prior to 911? What's so special about that day? Gosh, what might have happened on that particular date. How many countries did Hitler invade before Czechoslovakia?

    "This is gooblygook. Either a person is loyal or disloyal."

    No, they can simply be uninterested. I.e., America really isn't their country, it's just a place they happen to be.

    "Nixon took himself down by enabling his posse to spy on Democrats and use campaign money to buy the silence of those who were caught at Watergate."

    You are a fool – a contemptible and stupid fool. Nixon was no dirtier than either Johnson or Kennedy. He was taken down because the Washington Press Corps, the Democratic party (which he had humiliated), and elements of the Civil Service wanted him gone.

    Wizard of Oz , January 19, 2017 at 9:46 am GMT

    @Carlton Meyer

    To be fair (why you might ask? But let me slide on) Obama did speak of not bullying small countries. I am not aware of any drone strikes on people who were government officials or otherwise representative of their small countries. Are you? Or of any other assassinations. Trade sanctions?

    Anon , January 19, 2017 at 9:49 am GMT

    One good thing about Trump presidency is the anti-war Left will be activated once again. Hopefully, they will prevent future wars.

    Autochthon , January 19, 2017 at 11:03 am GMT
    @Binyamin

    For the first time in history we will have a [sic] oligarch in the White House .

    Despite my having voted for him and supported his campaign, I have my suspicions and reservations about the man as well (I'm a cynic and a pessimist), but the statement above is complete horse-shit.

    Pat the rat , January 19, 2017 at 12:51 pm GMT

    Trump's tweets are an act of genius. He has rocked the whole liberal establishment by stating his own opinions and speaking directly to those who have been ignored for years.

    This is revolutionary, Trump could never have survived a Presidential run in the past, he would have been unable to fight back, no one would be able to hear him.

    Who would have thought that a President could ignore and ridicule major media players in an age where careers are destroyed by the media because they disagree with gay marriage...

    Agent76 , January 19, 2017 at 1:41 pm GMT

    Nov 21, 2016 Trump Is An Inside Job

    "Statists are always gonna state and absolute power always corrupts absolutely. Trump is merely the right's version of Obama. If you really thought the left-right paradigm was abandoned, that the powers-that-be would let an actual outsider not only run for president but win well, I suggest you spend more time researching the new world order and less time voting for some power-hungry individual who claims to make everything great again." – Dan Dicks

    https://youtu.be/VLHVikUN73s

    macilrae , January 19, 2017 at 3:02 pm GMT

    Thanks for a lively piece Mr Derbyshire. As we gain experience in life we realize that there are probably twenty 'good talkers' for every 'do-er' jockeying for acceptance in positions of power – and we still get taken in by the talkers, even though they almost invariably have an insignificant track-record for the desired position. They end up departing with little accomplished, still talking: Obama being a perfect text book example.

    You say:

    And just as change is not necessarily good, fear is not necessarily bad. We have the fear instinct for a very good reason: to preserve ourselves against dangers. We may argue about whether some one particular phenomenon is or is not dangerous, but fear itself is useful and valuable, not a failing or a weakness.

    I remember, when running a company, there came one of those fashionable (and short-lived) management crazes promoting the ideas of W. Edwards Deming, an American whose philosophy helped to bring about a massive change in Japanese industry. Deming asserted that 'quality' had to be instilled into everything in the workplace and he had fourteen points for management – mostly sound common sense except, I could never get along with point number eight "abolish fear in the workplace". Now, this sounds terrific and who could oppose it?

    Except that without a little bit of fear/uncertainty/insecurity, no organization can run well – people just get too comfortable and secure and discipline declines. But how the Hell can you ever admit to that in public? Or in a book? Of course you can't!

    Che Guava , January 19, 2017 at 4:33 pm GMT

    Congrats USA. Nice article as always Mr. Derb,, but I think you are too optimistic. We will have to wait and see. From what little I know of USA polititcs, Trump is great because so many of his attackers are arseholes. Myths floating about the pallets of cash to Iran:simply a retum of stolen money, Much more to say. Too tired.

    Rurik , January 19, 2017 at 5:13 pm GMT

    @Binyamin

    The dirt poor white middle Americans whose factories have closed and communities decimated, voted for him in droves and where are they now? . I expect the poor whites who voted for him will soon realize that they have been mugged.

    yea, we'd have been so much better off with Hillary, huh?

    but you're forgetting one thing about Trump's victory regardless of all of that-
    and that's how great it makes us deplorables all feel at watching Obama and Michelle and people like you going through your butt-hurt, existential crisis. Your angst and dread exhilarates us all and reminds us how wonderful the political process can be. How, in a word; satisfying .. it can be.

    so as your knickers are twisting over your equivocating gender bits, we're buoyed by your tears. In fact, I'd like to see a veritable ocean of your collective tears, and maybe sail a huge, obnoxious yacht from Texas to Kalingrad on it, flying a proud confederate, rebel battle flag. And I'll even name the ship The Deplorables, and when I've had my fill of Budweiser beer, Sherriff Joe and Vlad and I'll (I'd invite him too) relieve our white male piss into your ocean of tears, and watch as the salt mingles with the diversity. I'd be fun, no?

    Just watching Van Jones and Michelle and all those Hollywood snowflakes and SJW and castrating Maddow dykes and sodomites and race hustlers and La Raza pendejos and Kristol war pigs and entrenched ticks in DC- sucking the blood of the republic, and all the assorted butt-hurt losers and haters that have languished in smug certitude at the destruction of my kind, just seeing them all desolate and inconsolable, just that, makes the Donald Trump win a precious moment to savor and cherish.

    So please do keep posting, and telling us all how bad it's going to be. How indeed, calamitous and catastrophic! this all is. Where else can I relish such delicious and tasty morsels of sweet schadenfreude, than right here on the UR?

    Agree: woodNfish
    woodNfish , January 19, 2017 at 7:16 pm GMT

    @Binyamin

    His cabinet appointees are almost exclusively wealthy (actually, extremely wealthy) white men.

    Obviously you are a dumbass racist or you would know that white people, especially white men are extremely smart and capable. Don't want to believe me? Pull your head out of your ass for a second and look around you – we created almost everything you see or use. Your modern world doesn't exist at all without us because WE created it from the constitutional laws you live by to the car you drive, cell phone you play Angry Birds on, to the computer and the software that runs it and lets you post to this site. Oh yeah – we also created the Internet. Yeah, that's right – White Men – the best thing that ever happened to this world and your shitty life. Get over yourself, racist!

    woodNfish , January 19, 2017 at 7:17 pm GMT
    @attilathehen

    A white man who married a brownish-yellow Asian woman cannot tell his Asian offspring that they cannot date or associate with blacks.

    Many Asians, maybe even most, consider blacks to be sub-human.

    woodNfish , January 19, 2017 at 7:24 pm GMT

    @macilrae

    W. Edwards Deming, an American whose philosophy helped to bring about a massive change in Japanese industry.

    Deming went to Japan to sell his ideas because American manufacturing wouldn't listen to him. His quality ideas are now instituted in the ISO requirements which every manufacturer adheres to if they want to sell internationally.

    macilrae , January 20, 2017 at 12:40 am GMT
    @woodNfish

    Certainly – but at least you don't see fellow management saluting you in the corridor with fourteen fingers anymore – it came and went in US as a fad lasting approximately two years but required more than ten for full implementation.

    dfordoom , Website January 20, 2017 at 2:17 am GMT
    @Anon

    One good thing about Trump presidency is the anti-war Left will be activated once again.

    Hopefully, they will prevent future wars.

    One would like to think that. However the entity that calls itself the Left has become remarkably fond of war. They've discovered that war could be a useful tool for imposing transgender bathroom rights on the entire planet.

    If Trump (God forbid) looked like starting a war with Russia would there be any opposition from an anti-war Left?

    woodNfish , January 20, 2017 at 2:46 am GMT
    @macilrae

    I have no idea what you mean by "saluting with 14 fingers", but ISO is not a fad. Drive around any area with manufacturing and you will see companies touting their ISO 9000 certification because of Deming. His ideas were good and he has had a lasting effect on manufacturing across the globe.

    Agree: Dan Hayes
    Crawfurdmuir , January 20, 2017 at 5:06 am GMT

    @Corvinus

    It's the country of those immigrants who are naturalized, either recently or in the past. That fact is undeniable.

    It's quite deniable. The founding stock of this country were not "immigrants" – they were colonists. They never left the realms of the British monarch. They simply moved to his dominions beyond the seas. Thus they never had to be naturalized, since they were already his subjects. When they declared their independence, they made themselves citizens of their own country. Again, no act of naturalization was necessary.

    As Steve Sailer has often remarked, the story of these founders and patriots as colonists, frontiersmen, and pioneers has been allowed to fade from the public consciousness in favor of the narrative of the "wretched refuse of [the old world's] teeming shore " Yet immigrants past and present enjoy American liberty and prosperity only because of the efforts of the original settlers to win them, and their willingness to share those blessings with deserving newcomers.

    bunga , January 20, 2017 at 7:07 pm GMT

    Immigrant issue is the fig leaf under which certain brand of conservatives hide their frustration at the fact that the elite,the military-industrial complex , the colonizers of new age globalist and expansionist have not been to continue to provide them with the certainties and the beauties of creature comfort at a reduced affordable way as was the case until may be 1990 .

    Now they have to work like anyone else New age slavery has not exempted them from rigor of life and work as have been before. This current scenario also appeared during great depression They ,then did not have the fig leaf of blaming the immigrants to cover their naked butts that personify their mental make up and intellectual understanding of their current situation. . They went for Roosevelt's They supported New Deal. They still love free stuffs and goodies Just look at the demands for Federal emergency relief program to get their butt out of the natural disasters .

    Jeff77450 , January 20, 2017 at 7:22 pm GMT

    Mr. Derbyshire's finger-crossing aside, I predict that we haven't heard the last of Barack Hussein Obama.

    Miro23 , January 20, 2017 at 9:24 pm GMT

    Honorable Senators: My sincerest thanks I offer you. Conserve the firm foundations of our institutions. Do your work with the spirit of a soldier in the public service. Be loyal to the Commonwealth and to yourselves, and be brief; above all things, be brief.

    It's nice to see a reference to Calvin Coolidge, IMHO Americas finest post 1900 President.

    He was Progressive when it meant things like women's suffrage, opportunity for minorities and universal health care, but at the same time was a Conservative in the truest sense of the word with a great respect for the Constitution and the Founders of the US.

    He also had this really useful idea that most proposals for legislation derived from Special Interests (and needed to be excluded ), and that any legislation that did go forward had to have its downsides thoroughly checked beforehand.

    Thales the Milesian , January 20, 2017 at 10:57 pm GMT

    Barak Hussein Obama has not returned the Nobel Peace (Piss) Prize. This demonstrates he lacks decency and self-respect. The warmongers Obama and Hitlery are THE fascists!!! Bush II, Obama and Hitlery to Nuerenberg! Long live PRESIDENT TRUMP!

    Miro23 , January 20, 2017 at 11:11 pm GMT

    @polistra

    He clearly understands how these things work, as demonstrated by his discussion of paper messages vs email. He's been 'controversial' for decades and he's been watching his back effectively for decades.

    The Zionists, CIA and FBI could finish with Trump in no time at all, but the problem is that it's not just Trump, he's only riding a wave. Eliminate Trump and they could get something much worse, so they probably calculate that it's better to try to corrupt Trump ( he's a dealmaker) despite his connection to the thing that they fear the most i.e. Radical Anglo Nationalism.

    Wizard of Oz , January 20, 2017 at 11:58 pm GMT

    @Hibernian

    The trouble is Pascal's wager implies contradictions because it is simultaneously valid for any and every god or system that promises (infinite) rewards and most of those religions don't allow for the others to be true. Anyway the concept of one's sentient self without a body has surely been impossible to believe in for several generations at least.

    Wizard of Oz , January 21, 2017 at 12:13 am GMT

    @bunga

    Why hasn't Keynes's 1930 "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" worked out? With birth control and technologucal advances since 1930 all Americans could be living in great material comfort and with plenty of leisure time for most of their lives. Is it just the crude insatiability of most human beings untamed by the more ascetic traditions? Is it status seeking by too many? (That might include enjoying the greatest locations which can't be added to with more storeys). Is it widespread criminality and its costs? Or .?

    Corvinus , January 21, 2017 at 4:40 am GMT

    @Crawfurdmuir

    "It's quite deniable. The founding stock of this country were not "immigrants" – they were colonists."

    I wasn't debating nor disputing this point. Mr. Anon pointed out that there are immigrants by which "America really isn't their country, it's just a place they happen to be." He is other than accurate in his assessment. Those groups who emigrated here and are now citizens are part of this country. It is their country as well if they went through the process legally.

    "As Steve Sailer has often remarked, the story of these founders and patriots as colonists, frontiersmen, and pioneers has been allowed to fade from the public consciousness in favor of the narrative of the "wretched refuse of [the old world's] teeming shore "

    Americans are generally aware of the founders of this country. However, immigrants like the Irish, Italians, and Slavs were considered to be "garbage" by nativists at various points in time. Millions of immigrants who came to the States had little money, but a strong work ethic and the willingness to embrace our customs and our political traditions.

    "Yet immigrants past and present enjoy American liberty and prosperity only because of the efforts of the original settlers to win them, and their willingness to share those blessings with deserving newcomers."

    Those original settlers included the British, the Dutch, and the Spanish, among others, who also forcibly removed tribal groups from their settled areas, as well as invaded the world and invited the world by instituting slavery in the Thirteen Colonies.

    [Jan 21, 2017] The most dangerous moment in the US-Russia relations

    Interesting thought: there is no intelligence community, there is not CIA, there are different groups within CIA unbrella with different, often conflicting interests and political agenda.
    Notable quotes:
    "... This business that, Russia is the number one existential threat has been unfolding this false drama at the expense of US national security, maybe for a decade, but it certainly intensified under the Obama administration. ..."
    "... In the intelligence community, there are groups of different political impulses, different vested interest in these organizations, and often, they've been at war among themselves within, say the CIA We're seeing that now with the hacking allegations. And, all likelihood, later we will discover, this was a war within the CIA itself. The FBI tried not to get involved. ..."
    Jan 21, 2017 | failedevolution.blogspot.gr

    The most dangerous moment in the US-Russia relations Leading scholar on US-Russia relations addresses the claim being trumpeted by politicians and media on both sides of the political spectrum that Russia is now the "number one" threat to the United States. Given the proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine, Dr. Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and New York University, tells host of 'The Empire Files', Abby Martin, that the real alarming danger today is "a new, multi-front Cuban missile crisis."

    This business that, Russia is the number one existential threat has been unfolding this false drama at the expense of US national security, maybe for a decade, but it certainly intensified under the Obama administration.

    Meanwhile, Russia was of course in the person of Putin, repeatedly, almost begging the US to join it in an alliance against terrorism, not only in Syria, but in a kind of global war. I don't know if the global war against terrorism is possible as a separate issue, but Russia wanted to partner with the US. Obama was inclined very briefly in Sep. 2016, but that was killed by the US department of defence when they attacked those Syrian troops.

    In the intelligence community, there are groups of different political impulses, different vested interest in these organizations, and often, they've been at war among themselves within, say the CIA We're seeing that now with the hacking allegations. And, all likelihood, later we will discover, this was a war within the CIA itself. The FBI tried not to get involved.

    There are very different views about Washington's policy toward Russia, inside the intelligence community. This may be the single most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations.

    The Cuban missile crisis is always said to have been the turning point in our awareness of how dangerous the Cold War was. And that, after we avoided nuclear Armageddon, both sides became wise, and the Cold War continued, but there was a code of contact. Everybody understood where the danger lines were. There was a code of conduct between the Soviet Union and the United States. It doesn't exist today. After the Cuban missile crisis in '62, the two sides began to develop interactive cooperation, student exchanges, scientific exchanges, hot lines, constant talks about nuclear weapons, nuclear reductions, trade agreements. That has come to an end along with communication.

    There are now three fronts in the new Cold War that are fought with the possibility of actual war. There's the Baltic region and Poland, where NATO unwisely building up its military presence. There is, of course, Ukraine which could exploded any moment, and, of course, there is Syria, where you got Russian and American aircraft. So, you got a multi-front potential Cuban missile crisis.

    Meanwhile, in the United States, this hysterical reaction to alleged - because there is no proof been produced - that somehow Putin put Trump in the White House, this combination of demented public discourse, engrave danger abroad, at least comparable to the Cuban missile crisis.

    It's been said that the European Union offered Ukraine a very benign economic relationship. That wasn't a benign agreement, about a thousand pages long. There is a section called 'military security issues' and it's very clear, that any country that signs this so-called eastern partnership agreement with the EU, is obliged to adhere to NATO security policies. By signing that, you become a de facto member of NATO. And this was just more of the attempt by Washington to get Ukraine in the NATO, if not openly, through the back door, and they're still at it.

    The decision to expand NATO, all the way, including Ukraine and Georgia, has created a situation in which none of us is safe. And they call that 'national security'?

    Full interview: watch-v=Op6Qr7uuMy8

    [Jan 21, 2017] For the first time in the lives of just about all of you we are all less likely to see the most powerful nation on earth overthrow another government in the Middle East.

    Notable quotes:
    "... A farce wherein a capitalist aristocracy is dressed in the torn and soiled fabric of democracy, proclaiming its will to represent the people. ..."
    "... I don't like farce. It's pointlessly cruel to the characters; that's not stuff I usually find amusing. ..."
    "... For the first time in the lives of just about all of you we are all less likely to see the most powerful nation on earth overthrow another government in the Middle East. From 1991 to 2016 the United States has been bombing nations in the Middle East as part of US foreign policy. Americans love bombing other countries – dropping bombs on people in the Middle East is one of America's favorite methods of bringing peace to the world. ..."
    "... I reject all war. We are all extremely fortunate that Hillary Clinton will not be taking office this weekend. Had Hillary been elected we would be facing a crisis over Syria. Hillary wants to overthrow the Assad government by threatening to shoot down airplanes over Syria. Putin supports Assad. The only airplanes flying over Syria are Russian, or Syrian. Do any of you want a war with Russia? Does shooting down Russian airplanes sound like a good plan to you? ..."
    "... Americans helped overthrow the elected government of the Ukraine. Americans have been bombing countries in the Middle East for decades. Under Obama the US has been at war for his entire presidency. We don't know what will happen, but for the first time in a very long time Americans elected a president who wants to trade with everyone. He wants to do deals with Kim, with Putin, with China. ..."
    Jan 21, 2017 | crookedtimber.org

    b9n10nt 01.20.17 at 8:47 pm

    Nah, Reagan was tragedy, this one is farce. A farce wherein a capitalist aristocracy is dressed in the torn and soiled fabric of democracy, proclaiming its will to represent the people.
    Layman 01.20.17 at 9:24 pm ( 17 )

    Has anyone noticed the creepy banner CNN is using for their coverage? Two general's stars on a red ribbon? I was struck by it, so I went to CNN's archive to see what they did for the last two inaugurations. I couldn't find anything like it.

    And of course there is the story that his team wanted a military vehicle parade, e.g. Tanks, mobile missile launchers, etc. How long before the Don dons a uniform?

    Collin Street 01.20.17 at 11:51 pm ( 20 )
    Actually, second time as farce.

    I don't like farce. It's pointlessly cruel to the characters; that's not stuff I usually find amusing.

    kidneystones 01.21.17 at 12:23 am
    What I told my own first-year students yesterday:

    For the first time in the lives of just about all of you we are all less likely to see the most powerful nation on earth overthrow another government in the Middle East. From 1991 to 2016 the United States has been bombing nations in the Middle East as part of US foreign policy. Americans love bombing other countries – dropping bombs on people in the Middle East is one of America's favorite methods of bringing peace to the world.

    I reject all war. We are all extremely fortunate that Hillary Clinton will not be taking office this weekend. Had Hillary been elected we would be facing a crisis over Syria. Hillary wants to overthrow the Assad government by threatening to shoot down airplanes over Syria. Putin supports Assad. The only airplanes flying over Syria are Russian, or Syrian. Do any of you want a war with Russia? Does shooting down Russian airplanes sound like a good plan to you?

    Americans helped overthrow the elected government of the Ukraine. Americans have been bombing countries in the Middle East for decades. Under Obama the US has been at war for his entire presidency. We don't know what will happen, but for the first time in a very long time Americans elected a president who wants to trade with everyone. He wants to do deals with Kim, with Putin, with China.

    He's not interested in what goes on in other people's countries. He wants to mind his own business. He wants to get rich and become as famous as possible. We don't know what will happen, but for the first time in a very long time Americans have elected a president who does not want to attack other countries.

    We are not looking at a new US war in the Middle East for the first time in a very long time. That doesn't mean the war won't happen. Americans love bombing people. But I'm immensely pleased Hillary Clinton is not fighting more wars in the Middle East, and that for the first time in a very long time Americans seem to have decided to leave the rest of us live our lives in peace.

    God bless everyone.

    [Jan 21, 2017] Trump will struggle to find a face-saving retreat from these unnecessary conflicts and shut his ears to the siren songs of the war party and deep state which just failed to stage a soft coup to block his inauguration

    Notable quotes:
    "... Each new president inherits a sea of problems from his predecessor. Donald Trump's biggest legacy headaches and priority will be in the Mideast, a disaster area on its own but made far, far worse by the bungling of the Obama administration and its dimwitted attempts to put the US and Russia on a collision course. ..."
    "... Thanks to George W. Bush – who dared show his face at the inauguration – and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama, Trump inherits America's longest war, Afghanistan, with our shameful support of mass drug dealing, endemic corruption and war crimes. Add the crazy mess in Iraq and now Syria. ..."
    "... Trump should be reminded that the 9/11 attackers cited two reasons for their attack: 1. Occupation of Saudi Arabia by the US; 2. Continued US-backed occupation of Palestine. Persistent attacks on western targets that we call terrorism are, in most cases, acts of revenge for our neo-colonial actions in the Muslim world, the 'American Raj' as I term it. ..."
    Jan 21, 2017 | www.unz.com

    What I found most impressive this time was the reaffirmation of America's dedication to the peaceful transfer of political power. This was the 45th time this miracle has happened. Saying this is perhaps banal, but the handover of power never fails to make me proud to be an American and thankful we had such brilliant founding fathers.

    This peaceful transfer sets the United States apart from many of the world's nations, even Britain and Canada, where leaders under the parliamentary system are chosen in a process resembling a knife fight in a dark room. The US has somehow managed to retain its three branches of government in spite of the best efforts of self-serving politicians to wreck it.

    Each new president inherits a sea of problems from his predecessor. Donald Trump's biggest legacy headaches and priority will be in the Mideast, a disaster area on its own but made far, far worse by the bungling of the Obama administration and its dimwitted attempts to put the US and Russia on a collision course.

    Thanks to George W. Bush – who dared show his face at the inauguration – and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama, Trump inherits America's longest war, Afghanistan, with our shameful support of mass drug dealing, endemic corruption and war crimes. Add the crazy mess in Iraq and now Syria.

    This week US B-2 heavy bombers attacked Libya. US forces are fighting in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and parts of Africa. For what? No one is quite sure. America's foreign wars, fueled by its $1 trillion military budget, have assumed a life of their own. Once a great power goes to war, its proponents insist, 'we can't be seen to back down or our credibility will suffer.'

    Trump will struggle to find a face-saving retreat from these unnecessary conflicts and shut his ears to the siren songs of the war party and deep state which just failed to stage a 'soft' coup to block his inauguration. Waging little wars against weak nations is a multi-billion dollar national industry in the US. America has become as addicted to war as it has to debt.

    If President Trump truly wants to bring some sort of peace to the explosive Mideast, he will have to reject the advice of the hardline Zionists with whom he has chosen to surround himself. Their primary interest is Greater Israel, free of Arabs, not in a Greater America. Trump is too smart not to know this. But he may also listen to his blood and guts former generals who lost the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Trump appears to have been gulled into believing the canard that Mideast-origin violence is caused by what he called in his inaugural speech, radical Islamic terrorism. This is a favorite device promoted by the hard right and Israel to de-legitimize any resistance to Israel's expansion and ethnic cleansing. The label of 'terrorism' serves the same purpose.

    Trump should be reminded that the 9/11 attackers cited two reasons for their attack: 1. Occupation of Saudi Arabia by the US; 2. Continued US-backed occupation of Palestine. Persistent attacks on western targets that we call terrorism are, in most cases, acts of revenge for our neo-colonial actions in the Muslim world, the 'American Raj' as I term it.

    Unfortunately, President Trump is unlikely to get this useful advice from the men who now surround him, with the possibly exception of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Let's hope that Tillerson and not Goldman Sachs bank ends up steering US foreign policy.

    (Reprinted from EricMargolis.com by permission of author or representative)

    [Jan 21, 2017] Transcript And Analysis President Trump's Inauguration Speech NPR

    Notable quotes:
    "... For too long, a small group in our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. ..."
    "... Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation's Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. ..."
    Jan 21, 2017 | www.npr.org
    Some clearly anti-establishment paragraphs.
    The following is the complete text of President Donald J. Trump's inaugural address delivered on January 20, 2017.

    Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: thank you.

    We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people.

    Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come.

    We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done.

    Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent.

    Today's ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.

    For too long, a small group in our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.

    Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation's Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

    That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.

    It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America.

    This is your day. This is your celebration.

    And this, the United States of America, is your country.

    What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

    January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.

    The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

    Everyone is listening to you now.

    You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.

    At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.

    Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves.

    These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.

    But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

    This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

    We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.

    The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.

    For many decades, we've enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry;

    Subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military;

    We've defended other nation's borders while refusing to defend our own;

    And spent trillions of dollars overseas while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

    We've made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.

    One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.

    The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.

    But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future.

    We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.

    From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.

    From this moment on, it's going to be America First.

    Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.

    We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.

    I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, ever let you down.

    America will start winning again, winning like never before.

    We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams.

    We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation.

    We will get our people off of welfare and back to work – rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.

    We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and Hire American.

    We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.

    We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.

    We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones – and unite the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.

    At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.

    When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

    The Bible tells us, "how good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity."

    We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity.

    When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.

    There should be no fear – we are protected, and we will always be protected.

    We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we are protected by God.

    Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger.

    In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving.

    We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action – constantly complaining but never doing anything about it.

    The time for empty talk is over.

    Now arrives the hour of action.

    Do not let anyone tell you it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America.

    We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again.

    We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.

    A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.

    It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag.

    And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator.

    So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words:

    You will never be ignored again.

    Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.

    Together, We Will Make America Strong Again.

    We Will Make America Wealthy Again.

    We Will Make America Proud Again.

    We Will Make America Safe Again.

    And, Yes, Together, We Will Make America Great Again. Thank you, God Bless You, And God Bless America.

    [Jan 21, 2017] The billionaire Warren Buffett to Trump: "I feel that way no matter who is president, the CEO -- which I am -- should have the ability to pick people that help you run a place."

    Jan 21, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Peter K. : January 20, 2017 at 11:50 AM

    Billionaires have to stick together.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-20/buffett-says-he-supports-trump-s-cabinet-picks-overwhelmingly?bcomANews=true

    Buffett Supports Trump on Cabinet Picks 'Overwhelmingly'

    by Amanda L Gordon and Noah Buhayar

    January 19, 2017, 8:19 PM EST January 20, 2017, 10:12 AM EST

    Warren Buffett said he "overwhelmingly" supports President-elect Donald Trump's choices for cabinet positions as the incoming commander-in-chief's selections face confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate.

    "I feel that way no matter who is president," the billionaire Berkshire Hathaway Inc. chairman and chief executive officer said Thursday in New York at the premiere of a documentary about his life. "The CEO -- which I am -- should have the ability to pick people that help you run a place."

    "If they fail, then it's your fault and you got to get somebody new," Buffett said. "Maybe you change cabinet members or something."

    Buffett, 86, backed Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, stumping for her in Omaha, Nebraska, and headlining fundraisers. The billionaire frequently clashed with Trump and scolded him for not releasing income-tax returns, as major party presidential candidates have done for roughly four decades.

    Trump's cabinet picks include Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker; former Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state; and retired Marine Corps General James Mattis as Defense secretary.

    Since the election, Buffett has struck a more conciliatory tone toward Trump and called for unity. In an interview with CNN in November, he said that people could disagree with the president-elect, but ultimately he "deserves everybody's respect."

    Trump's Popularity

    That message hasn't resonated. Trump's popularity is the worst for an incoming president in at least four decades, with just 40 percent of Americans saying they have a favorable impression of him, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll published Tuesday. Buffett said on Thursday that the low approval ratings won't matter much.

    "It's what you go out with that counts -- 20, 50 years later what people feel you've achieved," Buffett said.

    The president-elect has continued his pugnacious style during the transition, picking fights on Twitter with news outlets, automakers, defense contractors, intelligence agencies, Hollywood actress Meryl Streep and civil rights hero-turned-U.S. Congressman John Lewis.

    ...

    JohnH -> Peter K.... , January 20, 2017 at 12:05 PM
    Class warfare at its finest...
    sanjait -> Peter K.... , January 20, 2017 at 12:54 PM
    I wondered how you'd synthesize a way to disagree with Krugman on this one, given how seemingly commonsense and obvious are Krugman's points.

    Here's the answer it seems: talk about something else.

    John M -> sanjait... , January 20, 2017 at 01:14 PM
    The Bush team went further than that, actively sabotaging FBI field agents' investigations of possible upcoming attacks.

    Need it be stated that 9/11 did wonders for the Bush Administration?

    John M -> pgl... , January 20, 2017 at 01:35 PM
    Wonders for the Bush Administration:

    * It solved the problem of Democrats beginning to get a spine and going after the Felonious Five (or at least the three with major conflict of interest).

    * It bumped Bush's approval rating from 40% to 80%.

    * It greatly lowered opposition to Bush's anti-civil-liberties policies, such as creating "1st Amendment Zones".

    * It made passage of the Patriot Act possible.

    * People were able to smear opposition to the Bush team policies as treasonous.

    * It rendered torture, aggressive war, and barbaric imprisonment without due process of law respectable.

    Bush Administration sabotaged investigation:

    Remember Coleen Rowley who claimed that an FBI superior back in DC rewrote her request for a warrant, to make it less likely that it would be approved? There was also the FBI agent in Arizona who wanted to investigate certain pilot students, but was prohibited.

    pgl -> sanjait... , January 20, 2017 at 01:20 PM
    Remember the DeLenda Plan? Once we knew the USS Cole was Al Qaeda, it should have been executed. As in the spring of 2001. Alas, it was deferred to after 9/11. Most incompetent crew ever and the Twin Towers fell down taking 3000 people with because of their utter incompetence.
    ilsm -> sanjait... , January 20, 2017 at 03:09 PM
    Obama presided over 8 more years of Bushco organized murder and good profits for the war mongers.

    [Jan 21, 2017] James Mattis confirmed as secretary of defense

    Jan 20, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

    The Senate confirmed the appointment of retired general James Mattis as secretary of defense on Friday, making him the first member of Donald Trump's cabinet cleared to take office.

    The Senate vote was passed by 98-1 after Trump signed a waiver making Mattis exempt from a law that blocks senior officers from taking the defense secretary job within seven years of retirement. Mattis has been out of uniform for three years.

    The single vote against his confirmation was from Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, a Democrat who argued the bar should remain in place on the grounds that civilian control of the military was a fundamental principle of US democracy.

    [Jan 21, 2017] Donald Trump Introduced To The Audience At Swearing In Ceremony - YouTube

    Jan 21, 2017 | www.youtube.com
    David B 3 hours ago (edited) Alright Trump, you're in office now, drain the Swamp, you can start with the federal Reserve, and CIA, oh and the justice department as well.

    [Jan 21, 2017] The Trump Speech That No One Heard by Mike Whitney

    Notable quotes:
    "... Here's an excerpt from the speech Trump delivered in Cincinnati on December 1, that presents Trump's views on the topic: ..."
    "... "We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments . Our goal is stability not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country [the United States] We will partner with any nation that is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism In our dealings with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good will." ..."
    "... This is why none of the major media published Trump's comments. The corporate bosses who own the media have nothing to gain by promoting the views of a populist executive who wants to minimize the carnage by working cooperatively with foreign leaders the media has already designated as 'enemies of the state', like Vladimir Putin. How does that advance the media's agenda? ..."
    "... But the Washington power-elite know what Trump said, and they have acted accordingly. They have put together a plan that is designed to undermine Trump's credibility, back him into a corner and remove him from office. That's the plan, regime change in the USA. ..."
    "... This is why CIA Director John Brennan took the unprecedented step of appearing on FOX News Sunday. Brennan and the other heads of the Intelligence Community have taken a leading role in the desperate character assassination campaign that is intended to obliterate public confidence in Trump in order to foil his attempts at resetting relations with Russia. ..."
    "... lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] . ..."
    Jan 19, 2017 | www.unz.com

    Donald Trump wants to fundamentally change U.S. foreign policy. The President-elect wants to abandon the destabilizing wars and regime change operations that have characterized US policy in the past and work collaboratively with countries like Russia that have a mutual interest in fighting terrorism and establishing regional security. Here's an excerpt from the speech Trump delivered in Cincinnati on December 1, that presents Trump's views on the topic:

    "We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments . Our goal is stability not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country [the United States] We will partner with any nation that is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism In our dealings with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good will."

    Trump's approach to foreign policy may seem commendable given the disastrous results in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq, but it is also a dramatic departure from the last 70 years of activity during which time the United States has either overthrown or attempted to overthrow 57 foreign governments. (According to author William Blum) This is why the political class and their wealthy constituents are so worried about Trump, it's because they don't want the new president mucking-around in a process he doesn't understand, a process that has reshaped the world in a way that clearly benefits US mega-corporations while reinforcing Washington's iron grip on global power. The bottom line is that "violence works" and any deviation from the present policy represents a direct threat to the people whose continued power and prosperity depend on that violence.

    This is why none of the major media published Trump's comments. The corporate bosses who own the media have nothing to gain by promoting the views of a populist executive who wants to minimize the carnage by working cooperatively with foreign leaders the media has already designated as 'enemies of the state', like Vladimir Putin. How does that advance the media's agenda?

    It doesn't, which is why they'd rather the public remain in the dark about what Trump actually said.

    But the Washington power-elite know what Trump said, and they have acted accordingly. They have put together a plan that is designed to undermine Trump's credibility, back him into a corner and remove him from office. That's the plan, regime change in the USA.

    This is why CIA Director John Brennan took the unprecedented step of appearing on FOX News Sunday. Brennan and the other heads of the Intelligence Community have taken a leading role in the desperate character assassination campaign that is intended to obliterate public confidence in Trump in order to foil his attempts at resetting relations with Russia. The CIA's involvement in the coups in Ukraine and Honduras, as well as the agency's funding, arming and training of Sunni militants in Libya and Syria, attest to the fact that Brennan does not see peace and reconciliation as compatible with US foreign policy objectives. Like his elitist paymasters, Brennan is committed to perpetual war, regime change, and mass annihilation. Trump offers some relief from this 70 year-long nightmare policy. Check out this quote from Vice President-elect, Mike Pence on FOX News Sunday:

    "I think the president elect has made it very clear that we have a terrible relationship with Russia right now. And that's not all our own doing, but really is a failure of American diplomacy in successive administrations. And what the president elect has determined to do is to explore the possibility of better relations. We have a common enemy in ISIS, and the ability to work with Russia to confront, hunt down and destroy ISIS at its source represents an enormously important priority of this incoming administration. But what the American people like about Donald Trump is that he's someone who can sit down, roll his sleeves up and make a deal. And what you're hearing in his reflections whether it be with Russia, or China or other countries in the world, is that we're going to reengage. We're going to put America first, we're going to reengage in a way that advances America's interests in the world and that advances peace."

    Vice President-elect Mike Pence, FOX News Sunday

    "Better relations" with Russia?

    Not on your life. US elites and their think tank lackeys would never allow it, not in a million years. Even now, after six years of death and destruction in Syria, elites at the Council on Foreign Relations are still resolved to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. (Re: "Aleppo's Sobering Lessons," Project Syndicate, by Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations) The same is true at the Brookings Institute where chief strategist Michael O' Hanlon leads the charge for splitting up the battered country so Washington can control vital pipeline corridors, establish military bases in the east, and eliminate a potential threat to Israeli expansion. Here's a clip from a recent piece by O' Hanlon that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The author admits that the US goal is to splinter to country into multiple parts transforming it into a failed state:

    "To achieve peace, Syria will need self-governance within a number of autonomous zones. One option is a confederal system by which the whole country is divided into such zones. A less desirable but minimally acceptable alternative could be several autonomous zones within an otherwise still-centralized state-similar to how Iraqi Kurdistan has functioned for a quarter-century .

    Many Syrians will not like the idea of a confederal nation, or even of a central government controlling half the country with the other half divided into three or four autonomous zones. But the broad vision should be developed soon." (Wall Street Journal)

    "Autonomous zones" in a "confederal system" is a sobriquet for a broken, Balkanized failed state run by tribal elders, disparate warlords and bloodthirsty jihadists. O' Hanlon's vision for Syria is a savage dysfunctional dystopia run by homicidal fanatics who rule with an iron fist. Is it any wonder why the Syrian people have fought tooth and nail to fend off the terrorist onslaught?

    The United States is entirely responsible for the bloody decimation of Syria. It is absurd to think that either the Saudis, the Qataris or the Turks would have launched a war on a strategically-critical nation like Syria without a green light from Washington. The conflict is just the latest hotspot in Washington's 15 year-long war of terror. The ultimate goal is to remove all secular Arab leaders who may pose a threat to US imperial ambitions, open up the region to US-dominated extractive industries, and foment enough extremism to legitimize a permanent military presence.

    Russia's intervention into the Syrian conflict in September 2015, has cast doubt on Washington's ability to prevail in the six year-long war. The election of Donald Trump has further complicated matters by affecting a seismic shift in policy that could end the fighting and lead to improved relations between the US and Russia. Naturally, that is not in the interests of the vicious neocons or their liberal interventionist counterparts who see the proxy war in Syria as a pivotal part of their plan to clip Russia's wings, discredit Putin in the eyes of the international community, and lay the groundwork for regime change in Moscow. Washington's ultimate plan for Russia hews closely to that of Zbigniew Brzezinski who– in an titled "A Geostrategy for Eurasia"– had this to say:

    "Given (Russia's) size and diversity, a decentralized political system and free-market economics would be most likely to unleash the creative potential of the Russian people and Russia's vast natural resources. A loosely confederated Russia - composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic - would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with its neighbors. Each of the confederated entitles would be able to tap its local creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow's heavy bureaucratic hand. In turn, a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization." (Zbigniew Brzezinski, A Geostrategy for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs, 76:5, September/October 1997)

    Nice, eh? In other words, Washington's plan for Russia is no different than its plan for Syria. Both countries will be chopped up into smaller bite-size chunks eliminating the possibility of a strong nationalist government rising up and resisting Washington's relentless exploitation and repression. It's divide and conquer writ large.

    "A loosely confederated Russia" also fits perfectly with Washington's top priority to spread military bases across Asia, control crucial energy supplies, open up financial markets, impose Washington's neoliberal economic policies, and maintain a stranglehold on China's explosive growth. It's the Great Game all over again, and Washington is "In it to win it."

    Here's an excerpt from a speech Hillary Clinton gave in 2011 titled "America's Pacific Century". The speech underscores the importance that elites attach to the "rebalancing" plan contained in the term "pivot to Asia". The strategy relies on the opening up of new markets to US corporations and Wall Street, controlling critical resources, and "forging a broad-based military presence" across the continent. Washington intends to be the main player in the world's most prosperous region. Here's Clinton:

    "The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action . One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment - diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise - in the Asia-Pacific region

    Harnessing Asia's growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests and a key priority for President Obama. Open markets in Asia provide the United States with unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology ..American firms (need) to tap into the vast and growing consumer base of Asia The region already generates more than half of global output and nearly half of global trade. As we strive to meet President Obama's goal of doubling exports by 2015, we are looking for opportunities to do even more business in Asia."

    ("America's Pacific Century", Secretary of State Hillary Clinton", Foreign Policy Magazine, 2011)

    Onward, to Asia, the next great US battlefield! The killing never ends.

    As we noted earlier, the pivot to Asia is Washington's top priority. Clinton merely confirms what geopolitical strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski laid out in his 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. Here's a short excerpt from the book:

    "For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia (p.30) .. Eurasia is the globe's largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. .About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31)

    For Washington to achieve its foreign policy objectives, it must eliminate or defeat all emerging threats to its dominance. In practical terms, that means the Russo-Sino plan to transform Europe and Asia into a giant free trade zone that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok– must be sabotaged by any means possible. The State Department's coup in Kiev as well as aggressive efforts to restrict the flow of Russian gas to the EU via Nord Stream and South Stream, have temporarily succeeded in undermining Moscow's plan for accelerated economic integration. Had Hillary won the election, the US would have stepped up its provocations, its sanctions, its military buildup on Russia's borders, its gas war, its attacks on Russia's markets and currency, and its proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine. But now that Trump has been thrown into the mix, anything is possible. Even a fundamental change in the policy.

    The question is whether the deep state powerbrokers –who have already launched a number of attacks on Trump in the media - will throw in the towel and allow Trump to develop his own independent foreign policy or take steps to have him removed from office.

    Early indications suggest that a coup is already underway.

    MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] .

    Diogenes , January 19, 2017 at 4:16 pm GMT • 200

    Trump to date has been "all talk and no action" and as we know "actions speak louder than words".
    The voters who put their trust in Trump rather than Hillary now expect actions and Trump to deliver on his election "plank".
    Needless to say politicians tend to "talk the walk" but not "walk the walk". So unless he delivers he is going to be another big disappointment for his supporters. I and many other cynics have maintained he is not going to deliver.
    But, what do I know? However the American Establishment probably knows a lot more than me and if they are worried about Trump and want him out of power then they feel threatened by him and his supporters may have really voted for a change that challenges the status quo.
    A purge of the Neo -liberal Globalist Establishment is long over due and much to be desired BUT we don't know who and what will replace them. Trump may be an "existential threat" to the malevolent swamp creatures that dwell in Washington but he might also be a threat to the whole country. We hope for a benevolent outcome; "Time will tell".

    Beckow , January 19, 2017 at 4:39 pm GMT • 200

    But none of it has worked. Brzezinski, or whoever, can write books, can dream big, can play with maps after dinner at Georgetown parties – but it is has not worked. The 'divide and conquer' ended up dividing the world more, and conquering almost nothing. It is a mess, and the coming consequences were going to be dire.

    Results matter. Trump is not just an emotional reaction to the crazy globalist neocon-liberal idiocy, he is also a reaction to failure. If Clinton took over and doubled down on the same policies (she was going to), there simply would be a lot more failure. And there is no way to dress up failures as 'good for us'. Neo-cons/liberals have had everything on their side – power, academia, media, all institutions – except results.

    Trump might fail, or he might succeed, but by coming in at this time, he is in effect saving the failing policies – they don't have to answer for the obvious and accelerating failures that these interventions have caused. The authors will avoid consequences and will very quickly shift into 'we were betrayed', or 'if we just had 10 more years', the usual escapist nonsense that failed ideologues always use. (The communist ideologues still claim that the problem was that 'they should had tried harder, had 'purer' communism', blabla .and same is true about other failed ideologies).

    And they will be back. Whether in 'a year or two' as Kerry just said at Davos, or in 2020, 2024, they will be back. This mental state is incurable. (But if we get a few years break, well, let's be thankful for that.)

    TG , January 19, 2017 at 9:47 pm GMT • 200

    An interesting and well-reasoned post. Indeed, it's kind of shocking when you think about it just how much our government is doing running around the world messing in the affairs of nations that really shouldn't be our concern

    About whether Trump means what he said during the campaign, well yes, there is always the danger that he will 'pull an Obama' and stab his constituents in the back – talk is cheap. And yet, if that were the case then, as with Obama, we would expect the elites to make nice with him. Instead the elites are if anything ramping up their attacks.

    Now the enemy of my enemy is not always a friend – Trump could yet be a disaster. But the war that the deep state is waging on him is perhaps not a bad sign.

    And for those who find his tweets repellent, well, that's the only mechanism he has to avoid letting the corporate press completely shut him out and control the dialog. Trump's genius (or luck) is that by being outrageous he has, unlike Nader or Perot or Dean etc., been unable to be silenced by the corporate press. Although in the long run it can't be a sustainable system I would say that breaking up the big corporate industrial/press cartels should be a prime aim. No more news outlets owned by (for example) tech titans with a zillion dollars in CIA contracts and numerous other non-press business interests, you get the idea.

    Robert Magill , January 20, 2017 at 10:40 am GMT

    For Washington to achieve its foreign policy objectives, it must eliminate or defeat all emerging threats to its dominance. In practical terms, that means the Russo-Sino plan to transform Europe and Asia into a giant free trade zone that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok– must be sabotaged by any means possible.

    Too late. In December the last remaining Sharia objections to trade in gold were resolved. One billion plus Muslims can now bypass paper money at will and trade in gold. (Gaddafi attempted to do that in Africa and it cost him his life) China has begun to purchase oil with gold all over the mideast. Bye bye petro dollars. Hello breadlines in the former empire.

    http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

    alexander , January 20, 2017 at 3:13 pm GMT • 300

    Mike,

    It is well worth considering the possibility that were our perpetual war making to finally end, our "deep state neocon warmongers " might find themselves on the receiving end of a very robust "reckoning" for the titanic criminal catastrophes they have inculcated.

    Please tell me where is it written that they shouldn't be ?

    The prodigious assault to disinherit President Trump may well reflect not only their contempt at the thought he might be ending their "evil" wars, but the very real fear in their hearts, they may be held to account, for starting them in the first place.

    One cannot overstate the level of absolute impunity our Neocons have enjoyed over the last decade, for committing some of the most horrific crimes the world has seen, since WWII.

    Nor can one discount their imperial need of a win for Queen Hillary as being, first and foremost, a lock on that very impunity.

    Her loss at the ballot box had very little to do with the voters rejection of her projected veneer of "progressive " values, but a frank realization by the electorate that Ms. Clinton was nothing more than a belligerent neocon warmonger in a phony "liberal" pantsuit.

    This "unraveling" has left them all twisting in the wind.

    How could it not ?

    After all, Donald Trump, is a billionaire oligarch who not only wants "peace", but has been highly articulate and cuttingly accurate as to how (and why) our wars have been total disasters.

    This presents quite an unsettling conundrum for all the back room billionaire oligarchs who have always been able to buy their wars as well as the Presidents ( and the Press ) willing to start them.

    The fact they might, now, find themselves out of their hegemonic "drivers seat" .and in the criminals "hot seat", as targets for "bone-crushing" war crimes tribunals, . could have them all frantically climbing the walls.

    Anonymous , January 20, 2017 at 9:36 pm GMT • 100

    Well, even if he does a little of what he promised – such as deport those illegals that have a criminal record – that alone will be good. If he could also do something for the Millennials to be able to move out of their parents' homes, that would be good too.

    [Jan 21, 2017] Truthdig - Chris Hedges on How the 'Deep State' Will Influence the Trump Presidency

    Notable quotes:
    "... "It's about shutting down the voices of the dissidents," Hedges says. He explains that America always needs an enemy and that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "easier to demonize" than someone like FBI Director James Comey, who was initially seen as the enemy when Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election. ..."
    Jan 21, 2017 | www.truthdig.com

    Chris Hedges on How the 'Deep State' Will Influence the Trump Presidency

    http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/chris_hedges_the_deep_state_will_influence_the_trump_presidency_20170117/

    Posted on Jan 17, 2017


    By Chris Hedges

    In a new episode of his RT show "Redacted Tonight (https://www.rt.com/shows/redacted-tonight-summary/373661-deep-state-trump-presidency/) ," host Lee Camp sits down with Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges (https://www.truthdig.com/staff/chris_hedges) to discuss the "collapse of the mainstream media and the continued rise of [the] deep state."

    The two examine recent headlines over alleged Russian hacks (http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/experts_arent_convinced_by_fbi_and_homeland_security_20161230) during the 2016 election. Hedges condemns the mainstream media for "hyperventilating" over the alleged hacks, adding that the media fervor about Russia has "insidious" roots.

    "It's about shutting down the voices of the dissidents," Hedges says. He explains that America always needs an enemy and that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "easier to demonize" than someone like FBI Director James Comey, who was initially seen as the enemy when Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election.

    Hedges notes that there are also economic factors at play. The "war machine," he says, needs to "demonize Russia" because it "is earning billions of dollars in Eastern Europe with the expansion of NATO."

    Camp asks how Donald Trump, who presented himself as a political outsider, will handle these economic and political forces when he becomes president. Hedges responds:


    I'm not sure Trump has any fixed beliefs. And it's clear that the deep state-the security and surveillance apparatus, the war machine-all sectors of the deep state, Democrat and Republican, are going to put the screws on him to ratchet up or continue this aggressive posture towards Russia. Partly because there are large sections of the U.S. economy, i.e., the defense industry, for whom this is a huge profit-making venture.

    The two also discuss how dissidents will be handled by the Trump administration and whether American society has anything to hope for.

    Watch the full video below.

    [Jan 21, 2017] Political sciences Theory of Everything on the 2016 US Election - The Unz Review

    Notable quotes:
    "... "the high military, the corporation executives, the political directorate have tended to come together to form the power elite of America." ..."
    "... He describes how the power elite can be best described as a "triangle of power," linking the corporate, executive government, and military factions: "There is a political economy numerously linked with military order and decision. This triangle of power is now a structural fact, and it is the key to any understanding of the higher circles in America today." ..."
    "... During the election campaign the power elite's military faction under Trump confounded all political pundits by outflanking and decisively defeating the power elite's political faction. ..."
    "... At the time this was the highest level internal US intelligence confirmation of the theory that western governments fundamentally see the Islamic State as their own tool for regime change in Syria. The military faction began a steady stream of "one-sided" leaks to Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh who published one article after another that undermined the political (Obama administration) and corporate (CIA and intelligence) factions of the power elite, while painting the military faction in a positive light. ..."
    "... The first article entitled Whose Sarin? was published on 19 December, 2013 and concerned the East Ghouta sarin gas attack of August 21, 2013. Hersh documents a clear campaign within the power elite's military faction to "foot-drag" and hopefully block the planned US retaliation for crossing President Obama's "red line": "[S]ome members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were troubled by the prospect of a ground invasion of Syria as well as by Obama's professed desire to give rebel factions non-lethal support. In July, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, provided a gloomy assessment, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee in public testimony that 'thousands of special operations forces and other ground forces' would be needed to seize Syria's widely dispersed chemical warfare arsenal, along with 'hundreds of aircraft, ships, submarines and other enablers'." ..."
    "... A cornered Obama welcomed a draft UN resolution calling on the Assad government to get rid of its chemical arsenal. The political faction's step-down pleased many senior military officers, explains Hersh: "One high-level special operations adviser told me that the ill-conceived American missile attack on Syrian military airfields and missile emplacements, as initially envisaged by the White House, would have been 'like providing close air support for al-Nusra'." ..."
    "... General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs had irritated many in the Obama administration by repeatedly warning Congress over the summer of the danger of American military involvement in Syria. The military faction also had the advantage of a British intelligence report of a sample of sarin, recovered by Russian military intelligence operatives, proving it was not from the Syrian army. Further suspicions were aroused within the military faction when more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with two kilograms of sarin. Hersh quotes his internal military source: "'We knew there were some in the Turkish government,' a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, 'who believed they could get Assad's nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.'" ..."
    "... Further revelations included how the Obama administration, through the CIA, had by early 2012 created a "rat line", a back channel highway into Syria, used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to jihadists, some of them affiliated with Al-Qaeda. ..."
    "... Hersh's source explains how a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the assault by a local militia on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others in September 2012, revealed a secret agreement for the "rat line" reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations: "By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi's arsenals into Syria." ..."
    "... After Washington abruptly ended the CIA's role in the transfer of arms from Libya the "rat line" continued and became more ominous: "'The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,' the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels." ..."
    Jan 21, 2017 | www.unz.com

    The corporate-deep-state theory

    In a recent UNZ article titled: Political science's "theory of everything" a concise map of the US establishment, both the visible and invisible government was mapped. Based on this map a theory emerged that showed how the visible government has been subverted by an invisible unelected government that was described as a corporate-deep-state. The levels of the US establishment were identified as a power elite conspiratorial leadership overseeing a corporatocracy and directing a deep state that has gradually subverted the visible US government and taken over the "levers of power."

    The power elite

    The invisible rulers of the US establishment were revealed by Professor C. Wright Mill in his article titled, The Structure of Power in American Society (The British Journal of Sociology, March 1958), in which he explains how, "the high military, the corporation executives, the political directorate have tended to come together to form the power elite of America."

    He describes how the power elite can be best described as a "triangle of power," linking the corporate, executive government, and military factions: "There is a political economy numerously linked with military order and decision. This triangle of power is now a structural fact, and it is the key to any understanding of the higher circles in America today."

    The 2016 US election, like all other US elections, featured a gallery of pre-selected candidates that represented the three factions and their interests within the power elite. The 2016 US election, however, was vastly different from previous elections. As the election dragged on the power elite became bitterly divided, with the majority supporting Hilary Clinton, the candidate pre-selected by the political and corporate factions, while the military faction rallied around their choice of Donald Trump.

    During the election campaign the power elite's military faction under Trump confounded all political pundits by outflanking and decisively defeating the power elite's political faction. In fact by capturing the Republican nomination and overwhelmingly defeating the Democratic establishment, Trump and the military faction not just shattered the power elites' political faction, within both the Democratic and Republican parties, but simultaneously ended both the Clinton and Bush dynasties.

    During the election campaign the power elite's corporate faction realised, far too late, that Trump was a direct threat to their power base, and turned the full force of their corporate media against Trump's military faction, while Trump using social media bypassed and eviscerated the corporate media causing them to lose all remaining credibility.

    As the election reached a crescendo this battle between the power elite's factions became visible within the US establishment's entities. A schism developed between the Defense Department and the highly politicized CIA This schism, which can be attributed to the corporate-deep-state's covert foreign policy, traces back to the CIA orchestrated "color revolutions" that had swept the Middle East and North Africa.

    The covert invasion of Syria

    A US Pentagon, DIA report, formerly classified "SECRET//NOFORN" and dated August 12, 2012, was circulated widely among various government agencies, including CENTCOM, the CIA, FBI, DHS, NGA, State Dept., and many others.

    Astoundingly, the declassified report states that for "THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME ".

    The document shows that as early as 2012, US intelligence predicted the rise of the Salafist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a US strategic asset.

    At the time this was the highest level internal US intelligence confirmation of the theory that western governments fundamentally see the Islamic State as their own tool for regime change in Syria. The military faction began a steady stream of "one-sided" leaks to Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh who published one article after another that undermined the political (Obama administration) and corporate (CIA and intelligence) factions of the power elite, while painting the military faction in a positive light.

    Whose sarin?

    The first article entitled Whose Sarin? was published on 19 December, 2013 and concerned the East Ghouta sarin gas attack of August 21, 2013. Hersh documents a clear campaign within the power elite's military faction to "foot-drag" and hopefully block the planned US retaliation for crossing President Obama's "red line": "[S]ome members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were troubled by the prospect of a ground invasion of Syria as well as by Obama's professed desire to give rebel factions non-lethal support. In July, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, provided a gloomy assessment, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee in public testimony that 'thousands of special operations forces and other ground forces' would be needed to seize Syria's widely dispersed chemical warfare arsenal, along with 'hundreds of aircraft, ships, submarines and other enablers'."

    A cornered Obama welcomed a draft UN resolution calling on the Assad government to get rid of its chemical arsenal. The political faction's step-down pleased many senior military officers, explains Hersh: "One high-level special operations adviser told me that the ill-conceived American missile attack on Syrian military airfields and missile emplacements, as initially envisaged by the White House, would have been 'like providing close air support for al-Nusra'."

    The Red Line and the Rat Line

    The second article titled The Red Line and the Rat Line was published on 17 April, 2014 and explains why Obama delayed and then relented on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya: "The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration (political faction) who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous."

    General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs had irritated many in the Obama administration by repeatedly warning Congress over the summer of the danger of American military involvement in Syria. The military faction also had the advantage of a British intelligence report of a sample of sarin, recovered by Russian military intelligence operatives, proving it was not from the Syrian army. Further suspicions were aroused within the military faction when more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with two kilograms of sarin. Hersh quotes his internal military source: "'We knew there were some in the Turkish government,' a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, 'who believed they could get Assad's nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.'"

    Further revelations included how the Obama administration, through the CIA, had by early 2012 created a "rat line", a back channel highway into Syria, used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to jihadists, some of them affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

    Hersh's source explains how a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the assault by a local militia on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others in September 2012, revealed a secret agreement for the "rat line" reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations: "By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi's arsenals into Syria."

    After Washington abruptly ended the CIA's role in the transfer of arms from Libya the "rat line" continued and became more ominous: "'The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,' the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels."

    The Killing of Osama bin Laden

    The third article titled The Killing of Osama bin Laden was published on 17 April, 2014. The Obama administration needed a public relations win on the eve of his second term election and according to Hersh's military source: "'the killing of bin Laden was political theatre designed to burnish Obama's military credentials.'"

    Hersh's article goes on to systematically debunk the Obama administration's entire clumsy cover story while implicating the Saudis and Pakistanis who financed and protected Osama bin Laden. He goes on to reveal that once he had outlived his usefulness, to the Pakistanis, he was traded to the Americans who murdered him in cold blood and tossed his mutilated body parts over the Hindu Kish mountains.

    The article further reveals how the Senate Intelligence Committee's long-delayed report on CIA torture, released in December 2013 concluded that the CIA lied systematically about the effectiveness of its torture programme in gaining intelligence that would stop future terrorist attacks in the US.

    Military to Military

    Hersh's fourth article titled Military to Military was published on 7 January 2016, and details how an exasperated military faction continued to repeat warnings that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to Libyan style chaos and, potentially, to Syria's takeover by jihadi extremists. They were continuously ignored by both the political faction and the intelligence services: "[A]lthough many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming General Dempsey and his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff kept their dissent out of bureaucratic channels, and survived in office. General Michael Flynn did not. 'Flynn incurred the wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria,' said Patrick Lang, a retired army colonel who served for nearly a decade as the chief Middle East civilian intelligence officer for the DIA. 'He thought truth was the best thing and they shoved him out. He wouldn't shut up.' Flynn told me his problems went beyond Syria. 'I was shaking things up at the DIA – and not just moving deckchairs on the Titanic. It was radical reform. I felt that the civilian leadership did not want to hear the truth. I suffered for it, but I'm OK with that.'"

    Hersh's paper further highlights a rebellion under the leadership of Joint Chiefs of Staff that was then led by General Martin Dempsey. He began to send a flow of US intelligence through allied militaries to the Syrian Arab Army and he orchestrated a deliberate plan to downgrade the quality of the arms being supplied to the rebels by the CIA The military's indirect pathway to Assad disappeared with Dempsey's retirement in September 2015. The political faction then replaced Dempsey, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, with General Joseph Dunford who advocated a "hard line" on Russia.

    The power elite's military faction realised that radical reform could not begin until the military faction had full political support behind them.

    Rise of the Generals

    In the 2016 US election Trump with the full weight of the military faction behind him pulled off a stunning victory against the entire political faction – defeating both the Democratic and Republican Party machines – and the corporate media.

    The cornerstone of the corporatocracy, the Wall Street lobby, due to the sheer amount of fiat petrodollar based money it generates, and the influence it has over the US establishment was officially dethroned. The locus of power within the power elite had suddenly and dramatically shifted from Wall St to the Pentagon.

    Although the situation is very fluid on the eve of the Trump presidency a map highlighting the US establishment entities supporting either Trump or his defeated opponent Clinton can be arguably mapped below.

    Trump quickly named security hardliners including past and present generals and FBI officials, to key security and intelligence positions while the corporate media accused Trump of having a starry-eyed fascination with the brass of America's losing wars.

    Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who was forced from his position as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, will be President-elect Donald Trump's national security adviser. Army retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg will be serving in a supporting capacity to Flynn as chief of staff of the National Security Council (NSC).

    Trump selected retired General James Mattis to lead the Department of Defense. Mattis, a documented war criminal , had helped cover up the 2005 Haditha massacre of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians by US soldiers. His soldiers also directly committed war crimes in the US sieges of Fallujah in 2004, when his forces not only used white phosphorus but fired on and killed up to 5,000 innocent civilians. General Mattis has called for a "new security architecture for the Mideast built on sound policy Iran is a special case that must be dealt with as a threat to regional stability, nuclear and otherwise." On a positive Mattis also got Trump to reconsider his stance on torture stating, "'I've never found it to be useful."

    General John Kelly, another long-serving Marine with a reputation for bluntness, has been picked to head the Department of Homeland Security. He is the most senior US officer to have lost a child in the "war on terror". His son Robert, a first lieutenant in the marines, was killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2010. He therefore strongly opposed efforts by the Obama administration to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, claiming that the remaining detainees were "all bad boys," both guilty and dangerous.

    And in selecting career military men like Flynn, Mattis and Kelly as his senior civilian advisers on military matters, Trump is in essence strengthening defense while creating rival intelligence entities that will remain loyal to his military faction.

    Meanwhile Big Oil's Rex Tillerson - the former CEO of world's largest oil company, ExxonMobil - is to be Secretary of State. He has a two-decade relationship with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, who awarded Tillerson the Order of Friendship in 2013.

    Mindful of others who defied the US establishment, Trump's supporters delivered an ominous warning to rival power elite factions that should Trump be assassinated then a civil war would follow. In reality an assassination in today's climate, without the support of the corporatocracy's now discredited media, would usher in martial law and further ensconce the military faction within their seat of power.

    Playing chess like Putin

    Trump and his military faction appear to greatly admire Putin personally, and in September 2016 during the NBC Commander-in-Chief Forum Trump stated: "I will tell you that, in terms of leadership, he's getting an 'A' and our president is not doing so well." Trump's military faction, unlike the other two factions sees Russia as more of a partner than an adversary and he is deeply committed to reorienting American foreign policy in a pro-Russian direction.

    Trump knows Putin's history well and appears intent on following in his footsteps. Putin took office by striking a deal with Russia's political elite to protect former Russian President Yeltsin and his family from prosecution in exchange for Putin becoming Prime Minister and later President.

    Then on July 28, 2000, after they had funded his election campaign, Vladimir Putin gathered the 18 most powerful businessmen (corporatocracy) in Russia and denounced the corporate elite as creators of a corrupt state. During the transition from Communism in the 1990s these oligarchs – the majority Jewish – had taken control of every single lever of power in Russia including the central bank, the mass media and even the Kremlin.

    In a second meeting on January 24, 2001, Vladimir Putin met with 21 leading oligarchs and stressed that the Russian state had no plans to re-nationalize the economy, but added that they should have "a feeling of responsibility [to] the people and the country" and asked them to donate $2.6 million to a fund he was setting up to help families of soldiers wounded or killed in action.

    True to his word the oligarchs that complied were allowed to keep the money they had looted from the Russian people. Those that didn't comply, like Berezovsky and Gusinsky, Russia's two most infamous and hated oligarchs, were gradually pushed out, and in some cases even imprisoned.

    After defeating the oligarchs and gaining control of their media Putin then began to methodically cleanse the Russian government and the Kremlin of corporate influence.

    Corporatocracy

    Professor Jeffry Sachs calls the US corporate conspiracy The Rigged Game in which the political system has come to be controlled by powerful corporate interest groups – the "corporatocracy" – who dominate the policy agenda. Sachs explains how "[a] healthy economy is a mixed economy, in which government and the marketplace both play their role. Yet the federal government has neglected its role for three decades."

    President Trump appears to have taken a page from Sach's book and, even before taking office, is signalling that his government will not neglect its role.

    During an interview with Fortune on April 19, 2016, Donald Trump explicitly explained how he planned on taking back the economic "levers of power" from Wall Street's Federal Reserve by supporting: "proposals that would take power away from the Fed, and allow Congress to audit the U.S. central bank's decision making."

    On December, 6, 2016 it was the military industrial complex's Boeing that felt the brunt of his attack when President-elect Donald Trump called for the scrapping of multi-billion dollar plans for Boeing to build a new Air Force One, calling the costs "ridiculous and totally out of control." He then followed this up on December 12, 2016, when he took on the Lockheed Martin by attacking the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter on Twitter, saying the cost of the next-generation stealth plane is "out of control," stating: "Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th."

    In an early December interview with TIME ahead of his selection as TIME's Person of the Year, Trump railed against the Healthcare lobby when he stated that he doesn't "like what's happened with drug prices" and that he will "bring down" the cost of prescription medication.

    Even earlier, on January 2016, at Liberty University, Trump had startled Silicon Valley when he promised to punish companies that offshore production by placing tariffs on their imports coming back to the US: "We're going to get Apple to build their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries."

    The Big Oil lobby, initially ambivalent, now appears to have put its weight behind Trump. There are signs that the Big Oil lobby may have fallen out with the corporatocracy over the economic sanctions on Russia and access to its vast untapped oil fields, as well as Saudi Arabia's two years of flooding the global market with cheap crude in order to drive oil prices down and economically damage the Russian economy. This policy had made both US shale oil and US energy independence unsustainable.

    While the corporatocracy will survive, the days of crony capitalism appear to be coming to an end.

    The death of neoliberalism

    The Trump election, much like Brexit before it, signals an entirely new development not witnessed since the shift towards neoliberalism under President Reagan over 40 years ago. Trump has promised to end the neoliberal, hyper-globalisation ideology in which the interests of the working class have been sacrificed in favour of the corporatocracy that has been encouraged to invest around the world depriving Americans of their jobs.

    The global financial crisis of 2008, the worst since the great depression of 1931, saw Wall Street bailed out by the taxpayers while the responsible bankers were not prosecuted for their crimes. Under the Obama administration this was further compounded by rejecting bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing inequality, militarisation, covert operations and the facilitating of overseas war crimes.

    Meanwhile, nine years on, the neoliberal practice of quantitative easing has failed to revive the economic patient who remains on "life support." This after effect of the global financial crisis has served to undermine the peoples' faith and trust in the competence of the power elite's political faction and the corporate media. Trump's ascendency thus signals the beginning of the end of the neoliberal era.

    Trumps promise to, "Put America first," pulls the plug on neoliberalism's economic life support and imposes a new era of economic nationalism. The military faction will abandon unfettered capitalism, free trade agreements and globalisation in favour of de-globalisation, economic nationalism, rebuilding of infrastructure, the middle class and manufacturing.

    The table below is fluid but is based on current policy details, revealed by Trump, and details how the current neoliberal policies may gradually shift to policies of economic nationalism.

    Government departments Masses' Policies Neo-Liberal Policies Economic nationalism Policies Corporatocracy lobbies
    Dept. of State Establishment of friendly relations with other nations. Maintenance of the petrodollar through the support of compliant authoritarian nations or covert funding of unstable extremists to overthrow non-compliant nations Maintenance of the petrodollar through the support of compliant authoritarian nations. Multilateral approach of working with Russia while continuing to isolate China and Iran Wall Street-Washington complex
    Dept. of the Treasury Lower and fairer tax system that incentivises workers and savers Financialisation, corporate subsidies, tax loopholes and overseas tax havens. nationalisation, cutting of corporate subsidies, closing of tax loopholes and overseas tax havens.
    Dept. of Commerce Open trade and protection of key industries "Free" trade Agreements (Inc. TTP & TTIP), Economic sanctions protectionism, tariffs, economic sanctions
    Dept. of Justice Universal human rights, equal justice and fair trials Non-prosecution of criminal bank leaders, with prosecution of deep state whistle blowers. Prosecution of corporate crime, Non-prosecution of military and police crimes, continued prosecution of deep state whistle blowers.
    Dept. of Housing & Urban Development Affordable and easily accessible housing. Financialisation, housing speculation and homelessness. Removal of "red tape", opening up of land for building
    Dept. of Defense Security and Defense of citizens against foreign enemies Maintenance of the petrodollar, full spectrum dominance, exceptionalism, war on terrorism and the militarization of foreign policy . Maintenance of the petrodollar, full spectrum dominance, multi-polarity, war on terrorism military-industrial complex
    Dept. of Veterans Affairs Support and subsidies for veterans Cheap outsourced care facilities and abandoned veterans. Renationalisation of care facilities and housing, medical and mental care for war veterans.
    Dept. of Transport Electric vehicles, subsidised transport and easily accessible transportation grid. Subsidised car-centric policies and urban planning. Subsidised car-centric policies and urban planning. Big Oil-transport-military complex
    Dept. of Energy Environmental protection, reliable and nationalised mostly renewable energy supply. Subsidised fossil fuel energy dependence and debunking of climate change. Subsidised fossil fuel energy dependence and debunking of climate change.
    Dept. of the Interior Management and conservation federal land and natural resources. Waiving of environmental protection, access for sea lanes, pipelines, mining and resource extraction. Waiving of environmental protection, access for sea lanes, pipelines, mining and resource extraction.
    Dept. of Health & Human Services Subsidised and universal Healthcare. mandatory healthcare and privatisation. privatised healthcare Healthcare industry
    Dept. of Homeland Security Security and Privacy. Mass Surveillance and copyright enforcement. Mass Surveillance Silicon Valley
    Dept. of Agriculture Healthy, nutritious and affordable food. Food monopolisation and dependence through patented GMOs. Breaking up of monopolies, increased competition. Big Ag (Monsanto)
    Dept. of Education Subsidised and universal education. Class-based privatisation and outsourcing. Increased investment in education. Organised Labor
    Dept. of Labor Jobs and decent wages. Outsourcing, mass immigration to lower wages, commodification of Labor, deregulation, deindustrialisation, under employment and unemployment. Reshoring, border controls to boost wages, return of skilled labor, reregulation, reindustrialisation, full employment, lower taxes All lobbies

    Monetary hegemony strategy

    The power elite's monetary hegemony petrodollar strategy will remain unchanged under Trumps' military faction. However, Trump's foreign policy signals the end of America's unipolar moment, the period that was called the "new world order" by George Bush after the collapse of the former USSR and the US's 1991 Gulf War victory.

    It took the actions of former rogue CIA operatives, called Al Qaeda, to give the US an excuse to invade and conquer key economic chokepoints and geopolitical pivot nations, in the heart of the world's oil reserves that would give the power elite global economic and military dominance. These power elite plans were given to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the time, and documented in a memo that a puzzled senior staff officer showed to General Wesley Clark:"[W]e're going to take out seven countries in five years , starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran."

    The Republican-led neoconservative "war on terror" phase, that took place from 2001 to 2011, symbolised the overt US invasion, occupation and destruction of primarily Afghanistan and Iraq. When worldwide condemnation combined with Iraqi military resistance proved too great, the power elite were forced to switch to more covert means.

    Under the new Obama administration, a Democratic-led, CIA-orchestrated "Arab Spring" took place from 2011-2016 and symbolised the covert invasion of Libya and Syria using reconstituted terrorist death squads. The power elite had not only used the 9/11 attack conducted by elements of their rogue terrorist death squads to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, but they were now going to reconstitute a compliant group of the same terrorists and use them to covertly invade Libya and Syria.

    With the Syrian government's capture of Aleppo in late 2016, it became apparent to all observers that both the overt and covert US invasions were soundly defeated primarily by heroic resistance forces in Iraq and Syria, respectively.

    With the barbaric US invasions blunted, the Trump administration now represents a rear-guard attempting to hold onto key nations in the heart of the world's global energy reserves and maintain the US's petrodollar monetary hegemony backing, while Trump transitions his economy from a financial to an industrial economy. Trump will thus continue to secure the GCC nations, especially Saudi Arabia, provided they reign in their terrorist death squads, plaguing the Middle East. Israel will also be fully supported and used to maintain the current Middle Eastern stalemate against Iran.

    It is however Trump's détente with Russia that is truly significant as it signals the end of the unipolar "new world order." Russia will once again be allowed its own "sphere of influence." This will most likely see Crimean reunification accepted the return of economically plundered Ukraine to Russian influence and the Russian presence in Syria acknowledged.

    In return the military faction wants to desperately break up the tripartite strategic Eurasian team of Russia-China-Iran. The military faction wants Russia to help block China's rise in the South China Sea and to contain Iran. The military faction appears to have been inspired by documented war criminal, Henry Kissinger, who at the Primakov lecture in February 2016 stated: "The long-term interests of both countries call for a world that transforms the contemporary turbulence and flux into a new equilibrium which is increasingly multipolar and globalized ..Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States." Draining the swamp?

    For the first time in memory the US establishment, consisting of the visible US Government and the invisible corporate-deep-state that has subverted it, have had a dramatic schism. Contrary to corporate media hand-wringing, the 2016 US election for the masses was never about a choice for Trump over Clinton, it was in reality a choice of, the same united power elite maintaining the same US establishment under President select Clinton, versus a divided power elite led by Trump's military faction.

    This seminal moment represents a change of both US strategy and tactics that have been used to maintain the US's economic and military power.

    Strategically, while the power elite have finally abandoned America's unipolar moment, they will now maintain the US as a multipolar global hegemon receiving its petrodollar tribute. Their plans are to finally grant Russia, but not China, its own "sphere of influence" and to cleave it away from its Eurasian and Middle Eastern allies.

    Economically and tactically neoliberalism, as an ideology, is now officially dead. The power elite's corporatocracy (corporate faction) will be tamed and replaced by a protectionist, localised, rebuilding of America's manufacturing base.

    While not exactly "draining the swamp," the new Trump administration plans on "fencing off some of the alligators" that have devoured so many innocents during 40 years of neoliberalism at home and militarism abroad.

    To listen to a podcast by the author explaining how the political science's "theory of everything" may help to predict the new Trump administration select the following link:

    https://www.patreon.com/posts/around-empire-5-7795251?utm_campaign=postshare&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

    [Jan 21, 2017] US neocons try to enforce the continuation of neocon foriegh policy with Trump administration

    Notable quotes:
    "... Running up the flag in Estonia is a Kagan Clinton affair. ..."
    "... No Putin is not the Tsar incarnate nor is the US inheriting England and France 1856 protection of Turks in the Balkans. ..."
    "... Making a neocon moral point and tripping with WW III over Estonia is neocon war mongering insane. ..."
    Jan 21, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    ilsm -> im1dc... , January 20, 2017 at 04:41 PM
    After the new AG does what should have been done with HRC.

    Then Trump can fire the CIA for the muck up in the middle east.

    And pull the Mech brigade out of the Balts.

    ilsm -> pgl... , January 20, 2017 at 04:43 PM
    you are transferring the neocon enterprise on Trump.

    Running up the flag in Estonia is a Kagan Clinton affair.

    No Putin is not the Tsar incarnate nor is the US inheriting England and France 1856 protection of Turks in the Balkans.

    ilsm -> sanjait... , January 20, 2017 at 03:16 PM
    Making a neocon moral point and tripping with WW III over Estonia is neocon war mongering insane.

    Who are Balts?

    Why would US put a brigade of to defend Estonia? What is the strategic significance of Estonia?

    There are as few people in Estonia as in New Hampshire and a large number are Russian speaking.

    [Jan 21, 2017] Krauthammer: They're Quaking in Their Boots in Foreign Capitals

    Jan 21, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

    Krauthammer said, "I wanted to make a point about the speech. A part that we overlooked but I am sure is not being overlooked around the world. There are two audiences obviously for inaugural address-domestic and foreign. I guarantee you that they are quaking in their boots in foreign capitals, particularly of our allies and trading partners. The way that Trump spoke about the outside world was the most aggressive, most sort of hyper nationalist and in some ways, most hostile of any inaugural address I think since the second World War. What Trump pointed out, what he drew was a picture of a zero-sum world where what we've done for the world, they have been stealing from us. He says for decades we have enriched foreign industry at the expense of our American industry, subsidized others' military at the expense of the weakening of our army."

    "We've made others rich while becoming poor. Then this scattering sense that the wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed around the world. In other words, the other guys, "the other," including friends. Kennedy spoke harshly about the communist world. This is about our allies," he continued.

    "They have been stealing from us, our corrupt ruling class has taken the money of the middle-class and sent it around the world. That is the exaggerated anti-globalist view. I can understand a lot of the sentiments, but imagine how this has been heard in East Asia, in Europe, in other places, and then he ends up with a phrase that may not be as a resonant here, he says we are going to have one principle, "America First." It is capitalized in the version that you get printed out, and capitalized in the name of the isolationist party from the 1930s that fought to keep us out of any entanglements abroad, i.e., out of the second World War, led by Charles Lindbergh and others that dismantled a week after Pearl Harbor. For many people around the world, the British in particular, that is quite a resonant phrase, and it says to them, to the free world, since Harry Truman and Eisenhower, we constructed a world where we carried a lot of you-economically, militarily, etc. That game is over, you are on your own. That is an amazing message for an inaugural address. We heard it on the campaign, but that is policy now and it's going to have a huge effect around the world."

    [Jan 20, 2017] Transcript And Analysis President Trump's Inauguration Speech NPR

    Jan 20, 2017 | www.npr.org
    Some clearly anti-establishment paragraphs.

    For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left. And the factories closed.

    The establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. That all changes starting right here and right now. Because this moment is your moment. It belongs to you.

    [Jan 20, 2017] I don't think much of Trump but it is kind of amusing to see the elites, who screwed over most of the population, now having nervous breakdowns.

    Jan 20, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Tom aka Rusty -> Fred C. Dobbs... The elites are wetting their pants.

    I don't think much of Trump but it is kind of amusing to see the elites, who screwed over most of the population, now having nervous breakdowns.

    Therapists in Manhattan and Hollywood will do a booming business. Reply Friday, January 20, 2017 at 07:05 AM Peter K. -> Tom aka Rusty... , January 20, 2017 at 07:14 AM

    yeah the elites are getting a taste of the fear regular folks get over losing a job and financial disaster.

    The thing is, Trump is very unpopular.

    EMichael -> Tom aka Rusty... , January 20, 2017 at 07:20 AM
    So, which elites are you talking about?

    Just give me an example or two.

    Y'know, it is possible to be successful and still spend a lot of time doing the right things for people not as successful as you.

    Peter K. -> EMichael... , January 20, 2017 at 07:36 AM
    Summers and Krugman. See their most recent columns. I think more of the level-headed elites are thinking/hoping that Trump will be 4 years and out and it will all blow over.
    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , January 20, 2017 at 07:38 AM
    The really clever ones recognize that their is a populist upsurge worldwide against elite policymaking as Thoma discussed in his column on Davos man.
    Tom aka Rusty -> EMichael... , -1
    Yes, there are a few of those. I;ve been impressed by some of the things I have heard from the Steyer brothers.

    But then there is Bill and Hill, Soros, the Trump cabinet, Rubin/Corzine/Rattner/Summers and a whole unheavenly host.

    But not all that many impress me, particularly in Manhattan and California.

    [Jan 18, 2017] The Insanity of a New Cold War: A Top Russian Scholar Sounds the Alarm

    Jan 18, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    RenoDino , January 15, 2017 at 9:16 am

    The Insanity of a New Cold War: A Top Russian Scholar Sounds the Alarm Truthdig

    At the conclusion of the article, the Russian Scholar disavows any fondness for Putin.
    "By the way, I've never voted for Putin as a Russian, and I'm not a Putin supporter."

    For those of you playing the home game, this is now a required loyalty oath for anyone opposed to nuclear war. More points are awarded for those willing to categorically state that "Putin is a War Criminal" and "I want to punch Putin in the face when I see him."

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , January 15, 2017 at 2:02 pm

    "I have never read War and Peace. I don't like those people at all."

    "Yeah, but you tried, only failing to read it because of its length."

    "No, seriously. I did not even get to page 1."

    Susan C , January 15, 2017 at 3:28 pm

    Really – taking out Tolstoy? Such broad strokes. That is the best book I ever read.

    witters , January 15, 2017 at 6:32 pm

    And Anna Karenina is the best novel ever written. Ever.

    [Jan 18, 2017] What happens if Trump and co decide to purge intelligence agencies of individuals they consider undesirable?

    Jan 18, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    jonny bakho -> reason ...

    Do allies refuse to share intel with the US due to Trump-Russia
    The Great Game has turned. Reply Monday, January 16, 2017 at 08:02 AM ilsm -> jonny bakho... , January 16, 2017 at 09:46 AM
    US could do with a little better assessments and a lot less from many "allies".

    Do you mistrust US allies?

    Like I do!

    Chris G -> jonny bakho... , -1
    $20 says "Yes."

    And what happens if Trump and co decide to purge intelligence agencies of individuals they consider undesirable? I have no idea but I'm guessing they won't go flip burgers at McDonalds. (See also disbanding the Iraqi army ca. 2003.) Will they exhibit an entrepreneurial spirit? If so then what form will it take?

    [Jan 18, 2017] M of A - It Cant Happen Here - Color Revolution By Force

    Jan 15, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
    "It Can't Happen Here" - Color Revolution By Force

    The "Donald Trump likes Russia" and "Russia bad" strategy was propagated by the Clinton election campaign. It build on constant U.S. incitement against Russia after the U.S. coup in Ukraine partially failed and after the Russian intervention on the side of the government in Syria. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State was the main force behind the original anti-Russian campaign. When Clinton lost the election to Trump the theme connecting Trump and Russia was continued and fanned by parts of the U.S. intelligence community.

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI published a propaganda report claiming nefarious Russian cyber activities during the election without providing any evidence. The report came together with the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats by the Obama administration. The DHS then planted a false story of Russian cyber-intrusion into a Vermont utility with the Washington Post.

    The Director of National Intelligence Clapper followed up with a "report" of alleged Russian interference with the election. Even the Putinphobe Masha Gessen found that to be a shoddy piece of implausible propaganda. The DNI then helped to publish an MI6 "report" of fakes asserting Russian influence on Trump. In an unprecedented threat escalation the Pentagon sends a whole brigade and other assets to the Russian border.

    Now the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, warns the President elect to " watch his tongue ". Is there any precedence of some "intelligence" flunky threatening a soon to be President?

    This has been, all together, a well though out propaganda campaign to reinforce the scheme Clinton and her overlords have been pushing for quite some time: Russia is bad and a danger. Trump is aligned with Russia. Something needs to be done against Trump but most importantly against Russia.

    Propaganda works. The campaign is having some effects :

    Americans are more concerned than they were before the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign began about the potential threat Russia poses to the country, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Friday. The Jan. 9-12 survey found that 82 percent of American adults, including 84 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans, described Russia as a general "threat" to the United States. That's up from 76 percent in March 2015 when the same questions were asked.

    Such extensive and expensive campaigns are not run by chance. They have a larger purpose.

    Originally the campaign was only directed against Russia with the apparent aim of reigniting a (quite profitable) cold war. Seen from some distance the campaign now looks more like the preparation for a typical CIA induced color-revolution :

    In most but not all cases, massive street protests followed disputed elections, or requests for fair elections, and led to the resignation or overthrow of leaders considered by their opponents to be authoritarian.

    What is missing yet in the U.S. are the demonstrations and the large civilian strife.

    Unlike the earlier CIA launched color revolutions in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and elsewhere, all recent U.S. instigated "color-revolutions", i.e. putsch attempts, have been accompanied by the use of force from the side of the "peaceful protesters". Such color-revolutions by force were instigate in Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

    A common denominator of these was the primary use of violence occurred from the "good side" against the "bad side" while the propagandists claimed that it was the "bad side" that started the shooting and strife. The "good site" is inevitably "demonstrating peacefully" even when many policemen or soldiers on the "bad side" die. Thus was the case in Libya where the U.S. and its Gulf proxies used al-Qeada aligned Jihadis from Benghazi as "peaceful demonstrators" against the government, in Syria where the NATO and Gulf supported Muslim Brotherhood killed policemen and soldiers during "peaceful demonstrations" in Deraa and in Ukraine where fascist sharpshooters killed demonstrators and policemen from a hotel roof in the hand of the opposition. All three happened while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

    There have been claims of an upcoming color-revolution in the U.S. from different extremist sides of the political spectrum. Before the election Neocon Jackson Diehl claimed that "Putin" was preparing a color-revolution against a President-elect Clinton to enthrone Donald Trump. But as Trump won fair and square and Clinton lost that plot did not make it to the stage. After the election the conspiracy peddler Wayne Madsen immediately " discovered " that Clinton and George Soros were launching a color-revolution against Trump.

    Remnants of the Clinton campaign have called for a large anti-Trump demonstration during the inauguration on January 20 in Washington DC.

    Mass shootings in the United States by this or that type of lunatics happen every other month. There are no wild conspiracy theories or nefarious plots necessary to consider some what-if questions around such an event.

    So what happens after some "Trump supporter" on January 20 starts to shoot into the demonstrating masses (and also into the police cordons)?

    What if the CIA, DHS and DNI then detect and certify that the ensuing "massacre" was a "Russian plot"?

    Posted by b on January 15, 2017 at 12:28 PM | Permalink

    Comments next page " Anon | Jan 15, 2017 12:30:39 PM | 1
    Tyranny abroad leads to tyranny at home.

    The Greeks knew it and so do we.

    I am amazed and scared how easily propaganda works in democracies, while no one, NO ONE ever deal or mentions it! Western populations are truly naive and swallow anything. No wonder Hitler could amass millions of germans.

    Posted by: Test | Jan 15, 2017 12:42:17 PM | 2

    I am amazed and scared how easily propaganda works in democracies, while no one, NO ONE ever deal or mentions it! Western populations are truly naive and swallow anything. No wonder Hitler could amass millions of germans.

    Posted by: Test | Jan 15, 2017 12:42:17 PM | 2

    Yonatan | Jan 15, 2017 12:43:14 PM | 3
    What will happen? A good question?

    The signs are not good. The veteran journalist Claire Hollingworth has just died at 105. Finian Cunningham comments on her death and the current amnesia over the significance of the 1000's of NATO tanks massing in east Europe :

    "A measure of this apparent collective amnesia can be gleaned from the passing of veteran English newspaper journalist Clare Hollingworth, who died this week at the age of 105. Hollingworth published the "scoop of the century" in 1939 when she first reported Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, which then sparked the Second World War. The headline of her original report in Britain's Daily Telegraph on August 29, 1939, read: "1,000 tanks massed on Polish frontier."

    Amid media tributes to the deceased journalist, reference to contemporary events was absent. In the same week that Clare Hollingworth passed away, tanks were again rolling into Poland from Germany, this time driven by American troops. But Western media outlets made no such connection."


    From The Hague | Jan 15, 2017 12:59:29 PM | 4
    Advice for the USA to simplify things: Cut out the middle man and inaugurate Putin on the 20th.

    Bob In Portland | Jan 15, 2017 1:08:57 PM | 5
    One thing to understand is that, since 1963, the President is no longer fully a President in the US. The CIA has constructed a system of control within Congress, the military, and the intelligence services to direct US policy. When Jimmy Carter's CIA Director Stansfield Turner tried to eliminate a lot of the ops side of intelligence (the agents and the plots that always seem to be nearby other course corrections (like Dallas, Watergate) the ops side created an oil crisis and a hostage crisis in Iran. Reagan had been a spokesman for the Congress For Freedom, a CIA operation that imported fascists, to include a large group of Ukrainian OUN-B residua. Those people and their children became the backbone of the US reinsertion of fascism in Eastern Europe and Russia.

    Since Reagan, all Presidents seem to have deep intelligence backgrounds. Of course, George Bush was former CIA Director (and undoubtedly an agent prior to his political career), and his son was his son. Some of Dubya's pre-Presidential failed business dealings appear to have been money laundering, likely for the CIA Since they burst upon the national scene there are hints that the Clintons probably were recruited for intelligence work in the late sixties, prior to even meeting each other.

    Obama, with SOS Clinton looking over his shoulder, was mostly a Deep State ally.

    Clinton was supposed to win. In fact, there are indications that Clinton and her Deep State allies worked to make Trump her opponent. She succeeded that far, but not enough to win the electoral college. Trump is certainly anathema to most working class Americans. His problem with the Deep State is that he wants friendly relations with Russia.

    What the world is witnessing is how the Deep State negotiates hardball with Trump.

    Krollchem | Jan 15, 2017 1:09:34 PM | 6
    Using techniques of her mentor, Hillary and her allies appear to be planning a purple revolution in the US:
    http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/11/11/clintons-and-soros-launch-america-purple-revolution.html

    james | Jan 15, 2017 1:14:12 PM | 7
    valid speculation on your part b... the propaganda has gotten so thick, your scenario sounds like a ripe idea..

    the usa appears to be imploding in on itself... i didn't realize how bad the folks in power wanted clinton to be president.. relevant article..

    time2wakeupnow | Jan 15, 2017 1:15:05 PM | 8
    "Advice for the USA to simplify things: Cut out the middle man and inaugurate Putin on the 20th"

    Or, rephrased to correctly reflect the true nature of the who's really in charge in this country: Advise for the cosmetic US government and the corporate infotainment: cut out the middle man and inaugurate the head of the Deep State on the 20th.

    ProPeace | Jan 15, 2017 1:20:29 PM | 9
    It's astounding that Fecesbrook and other social media control outlets support calls for assassination of the President-elect, by not removing them. This is gonna be an explosive January, Spring and year.

    Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald Discuss Deep State War Vs. Trump, While Ex-Spook Hints At Assassination

    Mysterious snipers have been deadly present in many "peaceful revolutions":

    Land Destroyer: Color Revolution's Mystery Gunmen

    Unknown Snipers and Western backed "Regime Change"

    More 'Mysterious Snipers' Responsible For Latest Ukraine Escalation?

    The snipers of Black October

    "Yeltsin's 'Red October II'"- TiM GW Bulletin 98/3-10

    Anon | Jan 15, 2017 1:24:18 PM | 10
    5:

    I think there is a factional civil war going on in the deep state.

    Clinton who would have kept the party going was supported by the CIA, with many of their guys endorsing her.

    Trump seems to be the candidate of a less reckless faction. Remember, he was endorsed by a few hundred senior officers. It seems the army is tired of cleaning up the CIA messes.

    Recall the CIA and Army were fighting each other by proxy in Syria.

    Remember, Trump has Flynn on his side. And the army. And the FBI, and every patriot in the IC.

    In 5 days he will hold the reins of power.

    Trump wins.

    Curtis | Jan 15, 2017 1:26:39 PM | 11
    Anon 1
    "I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it."
    Robert E Lee to Lord Acton, 1866

    CHRISTINNE RADU | Jan 15, 2017 1:29:06 PM | 12
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/what-is-the-reality-of-syrias-popular-revolution-which-sparked-six-years-of-violence/5568564

    ProPeace | Jan 15, 2017 1:29:45 PM | 13
    Ukraine: Israeli Special Forces Unit under Neo-Nazi Command Involved in Maidan Riots?

    Camouflaged Israeli soldiers on Maidan Square


    According to the Israeli website alyaexpress-news.com, a unit of 35 armed and masked men and women on Maidan square is commanded by four former Israeli Army officers, who wear a kippah under their helmets.

    The site claims that these former officers, who live today in Ukraine, joined the movement since the beginning of the events alongside the Freedom Party (Svoboda), although the latter has a reputation for being virulently anti-Semitic.

    With the help of the Israeli Embassy, this intervention force reportedly also handled the transfer of 17 seriously injured persons to Israel for treatment.

    The presence of Israeli units had been reported in a similar scenario in Georgia, both in during the "Rose Revolution" (2003) that in the war against South Ossetia (2008).


    john | Jan 15, 2017 1:35:08 PM | 14
    gosh b, the spectre of dread you raise is downright cinematographic!

    Anonymous | Jan 15, 2017 1:40:34 PM | 15
    CIA chief warns Trump to watch what his words
    http://presstv.com/Detail/2017/01/15/506327/US-Trump-Nazis-Russia-Putin

    Where do these people come from? Here we have a intelligence chief that blast Trump but tell to Trump that he cant blast them!

    Have deep-state/CIA ever meddled in their own nation like this before? These people are nuts.

    Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 1:46:01 PM | 16
    I think b describes well why a color revolution is plausible. But some traditional 'color revolution' tactics, like the use of snipers, may not be necessary because:
    (1) Pence appears to be much more friendly to the Clinton/CIA establishment; and

    (2) there are other means of removing Trump: impeachment or 25th Amendment

    Anti-Trump organizations have stated their intention to disrupt the inauguration. The likelihood of street violence seems high. This "resistance" and Russian tensions will weigh on the minds of Congressman and frighten the public.

    The de-legimization campaign seems likely to culminate with Trump's impeachment for violations of the Logan act (see below) and/or VP Pence invoking the 25th Amendment. As President, Pence would choose a VP. One possible choice is Hillary - winner of the popular vote - thereby creating a 'unity' government. Democrats have already labeled such unity as = PURPLE =. Republican Party RED combined with Democratic Party BLUE.

    This trajectory helps to explain the consternation with FBI Dir. Comey. Democrats believe that Comey helped Trump in the last days of the campaign. The FBI is said to be investigating the Clintons. And Comey refused to discuss with Congress (in closed hearing) details of any possible investigation into Russian interference into US elections. Comey is now himself under investigation by DOJ's Inspector General (an Obama appointee) .

    <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

    Team Trump: Flynn called Russia ambassador, no sanction talk 'plain and simple'

    It's not unusual for incoming administrations to have discussions with foreign governments before taking office. But repeated contacts just as Obama imposed sanctions raised questions about whether Trump's team discussed -- or even helped shape -- Russia's response .

    Reuters reports that Flynn and Kislyak talked several times on Dec. 29.

    Putin unexpectedly did not retaliate against the U.S. for the move, a decision Trump quickly praised.

    More broadly, Flynn's contact with the Russian ambassador suggests the incoming administration has already begun to lay the groundwork for its promised closer relationship with Moscow.

    That effort appears to be moving ahead, even as many in Washington, including Republicans, have expressed outrage over intelligence officials' assessment that Putin launched a hacking operation aimed at meddling in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump.

    . . .

    Trump has been willing to insert himself into major foreign policy issues during the transition, at times contradicting the current administration and diplomatic protocol.

    He accepted a call from Taiwan's president, ignoring the longstanding "One China" policy that does not recognize the island's sovereignty. Asked about that Friday by the Journal, he responded, "Everything is under negotiation."

    He also publicly urged the U.S. to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements , then slammed the Obama administration for abstaining and allowing the measure to pass.

    47 | Jan 15, 2017 1:58:11 PM | 17
    @2, Test

    It works everywhere the same way; that is, the method is not re-invented, just repeated. People only need a period of convincing that the enemy of the day is out there to get them. Here is a short note on landscapes of fear: http://www.zokpavlovic.com/conflict/the-landscape-of-fear-paranoia-and-galvanization-of-masses/

    AriusArmenian | Jan 15, 2017 2:11:36 PM | 18
    We are in a time as dangerous as the early 1960's.
    Then they wanted war in Vietnam and got rid of JFK to get it.
    Now they want a bigger war with Russia as the target.
    Anything can happen in the next few weeks.

    Anonymous | Jan 15, 2017 2:27:33 PM | 19
    Its interesting too that the debate should be about why Democrats lost why Hillary didnt generate enough votes, no, instead they start a hysteria about Trump and Russia.

    NemesisCalling | Jan 15, 2017 2:31:38 PM | 20
    Well, if a color revolution does transpire to dethrone Trump, one thing is FOR certain: Circe and Chipnik will say, "see, I told you that Trump was at the center of the plot to give the government fully to our fascist-ponzi-overlords," without even a twinge of irony.

    jo6pac | Jan 15, 2017 2:49:18 PM | 21
    #5
    Nailed it and now they come out from behind behind the curtain to do the work under the propaganda arm the so-called liberal press own by the elite who really don't like change except when they win.

    #2, Amerika hasn't been a D in a long time if ever.

    Thanks b

    jayc | Jan 15, 2017 2:51:43 PM | 22
    Polling tends to reflect a wag-the-dog effect, i.e. the media runs a saturation campaign based on a particular premise, then polls are taken which generally support the premise. What is mildly surprising is that the alleged Russian threat perception has only increased six percentage points after all the crazy headlines of the past few weeks.

    The American public may be too polarized for a successful colour revolution. The Russia/Trump freak-out is localized in the Beltway establishment, Democratic Party, and the mainstream media - which, when united, represents a formidable force in concentrating and saturating a message across consensus reality, but the degree to which the message has actually been internalized by the public-at-large may be far less than it may appear. But the stakes are obviously very very high for the deep state faction which desires the confrontation with Russia, and therefore a dramatic false flag event is unfortunately extremely possible if it is determined that the impeachment gambit might not work. (the impeachment concept might not work, at least not immediately, because, like the electoral college, it would be too obviously a reversal of the election and a large portion of the public would reject it)

    likklemore | Jan 15, 2017 2:53:13 PM | 23
    Thanks b. One typo (it's Wayne Madsen)

    The Timeline is spot on. Right after the election, Soros held a meet-up in Washington said to be a planning session and to re-assess. Short weeks thereafter both Hill and Bill appeared sporting purple dress-up. Notice also in the ensuing weeks other Hill/Bill supporters sporting purple ties.
    Soros' underwriting revolutions is coming home to USA. He should be brought before the ICJ.

    Conspiracy theory becomes a fact.

    January 20 may ignite the spark. Bikers for Trump assembled; J20 gang; 5000 national guards and security people providing 360 barricade. What could go wrong?

    Some 4 years ago I read at the GEAB.eu LEAP's website, that they anticipated the USA would become ungovernable in year 2016.. Cue it up.
    (GEAB, France, a French Think-Tank most articles by subscription)

    ~ ~ ~ ~

    Death Threats:
    To a blind person?

    1. "Death Threats Force Opera Star Bocelli To Pull Out Of Inauguration Performance"

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-15/death-threats-force-opera-star-bocelli-pull-out-inauguration-performance

    "Andrea is very sad to be missing the chance to sing at such a huge global event but he has been advised it is simply not worth the risk..." according to a source close to blind opera singer Bocelli who had been determined to 'press ahead' and sing at Donald Trump's inauguration.

    2. Will The CIA Assassinate Trump? Ron Paul Warns Of "More Powerful, Shadow Government"
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-14/will-cia-assassinate-trump-ron-paul-warns-more-powerful-shadow-government

    ~ ~ ~ ~

    RT had this piece from Clapper, not covered by lame-stream US media.

    Published time: 14 Jan, 2017 20:32
    Edited time: 15 Jan, 2017 16:31

    " Intelligence insiders call Russian dossier 'complete fraud' – Trump
    https://www.rt.com/usa/373708-trump-us-russian-dossier-fake/

    On Thursday, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a rare statement, saying that he met with Trump to express his "profound dismay" over the dossier.
    "This document is not a US intelligence community (IC) product and I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC," Clapper said.

    ~ ~ ~ ~
    You would think Clapper's statement would be covered by MSM, No?:

    chipnik | Jan 15, 2017 2:56:40 PM | 24
    'Mass shootings' is a bit of a specious reach. Americans are psychologically and emotionally 'bleached'. The 'mass shootings' are largely juveniles on Aderal and Prozac, mentally bleached by the State. The vast majority of 'mass' shootings are collectively in the gun states, as here: https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/50060317/police_shootings.0.0.png, and that's just the State shootings of citizens.

    You won't see the victorius Trumpeteers shooting into crowds, you'll see massive civil and union actions against each new Jesuit-Jew SCOTUS decision, but the Trump State will remain so opaque, and the poodled Fourth Estate so pandered and Java-Script clik-bait revenue-driven, only blogs like MoA will post the truth...if they can absent themselves fron the Two-Party Conspiracy-State Koolaid drinking.

    There is only the One Party of Mil.Gov.Fed, which survives and undermines every Administration, and metastasizes on every new law and every specious blog-post about post-inauguration 'mass-shootings'.

    SOW, my PC is now in the shop, after visiting a Breitbart Jerusalem article, and watching a proxy-script malware drop down, that froze out internet access, even after I bleached my cookies and did a Foxfire uninstall and re-install. We are far more likely to 'go dark' under Trump and his Breitbart Zook propaganda machine, than see any Red-on-Blue.

    Denis | Jan 15, 2017 3:02:15 PM | 25
    Just a couple of loose (meaning bordering on idiotic) thoughts:

    1. Mina says we need to drop this whole Trump thing. And she's right. Just b/c the world is going to end on Friday doesn't mean we should be preoccupied. Besides SNL has it covered, as usual.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V8TO6y0IR4

    2. The "MI6 Report?" A bit of a misnomer isn't it? I haven't seen any allegations that MI6 itself was involved, making the term "MI6 Report" itself inferential propaganda fluff. Better name: "Steele Report"

    Bob | Jan 15, 2017 3:02:53 PM | 26
    The 2004 "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine and the 2000 overthrow of Milosevic didn't rely on the use of violence.

    The slick youth oriented campaigns from Otpor! and the Ukrainian follow up, along with heavy support from outside actors such as the US, were enough.

    I doubt there is a need for violence to get rid of Trump if this was the strategy they intended to use. Catchy slogans amd symbols along with the support of the media could be enough to instigate some kind of proceedings leading to his removal from office.

    Anonymous | Jan 15, 2017 3:03:55 PM | 27
    No need for a color revolution, the coup have already been made right in front of us, = Trump's image have been smeared and his policy on Russia wont work.

    laserlurk | Jan 15, 2017 3:05:28 PM | 28
    That is one good b.'s assumption and it is not far fetched at all.

    Some sort of an American Spring is looming, if things fall in place next week.
    Would it be a sort of Maidan's effect, unrest etc. remains to be seen, but I doubt it.
    What is lacking there is a critical mass. And that is people.
    Their psyche is right now not for Trump and against Clinton. It is a bit of schizophrenic situation atm. and ideals worth fighting and dying for are not too high. Or their conviction.

    What and how this is envisaged by IC might be as well a long and a painful processes of "legal" threading through various investigative hearings, commissions and panels followed by legislative votings on different issues that might come up, as impeachments, scandals and all the arsenal of "soft" torture where expected result is that Americans are kept enchanted, asleep and hypnotised, thus neutralised.
    Like the rest of us are supposed to be.

    Quickest way to jump into prevention of Trump's presidency would be to quickly build up a false flag set of events and start a big conflict with Russia or with one of their interest zones. That would set the spotlight away from Washington while fractions IC would have enough time to clear its ranks and prepare the actual coup.
    What they do not understand is that nobody ever goes to war with Russia. Ever.

    So, maybe better outcome for everybody would be wishful thinking scenario of a Designated Survivor Kiefer Sutherland's TV-series .

    rg the lg | Jan 15, 2017 3:07:00 PM | 29
    The fun thing about revolutions is that once they start it is hard to figure out where they are going to end up.

    Alas, the BEST we can hope for is a new set of oligarchs. Democracy will never happen ... it is a cover for what is now referred to as the deep state.

    In my (admittedly jaundiced) view ... a nuclear holocaust seems infinitely better than the status quo, or what might emerge from the looming conflict.

    With a nuclear Armageddon, maybe life can restart and NOT create something as vile as people: you, me and all the rest!

    Jan Sammer | Jan 15, 2017 3:11:53 PM | 30
    There is actually much more abundant evidence of British interference in the US election, than there is for Russian interference. The MI6 smear memo is a glaring example, but on top of that is the state-owned BBC constant stream of anti-Trump propaganda, the petition against allowing Trump to visit Britain, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson called Trump "clearly out of his mind", accused him of "quite stupefying ignorance" that makes him "unfit for office" and said he would not visit New York because of the "real risk of meeting Donald Trump". Where is the outrage, where is the congressional committee investigating this blatant foreign interference in our democratic process? By our ex-colonial masters to boot. Are they still nursing grudges from the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812?

    Bob | Jan 15, 2017 3:13:13 PM | 31
    @Myself 26

    For a start you could have a supposedly 200,000 strong women's march all wearing " pussy hats ".

    "The Pussy Revolution"

    chipnik | Jan 15, 2017 3:15:31 PM | 32
    16

    Purple is a reminder of the One Party of Mil.Gov.Fed, the Purple State Apparatchik that holds the reins of power, a 99.4% unappointed, unelected, civil and military unionized Purple Gog-Magog that just raised USArya's debt limit by $10 TRILLION, and uses Red-Blue Tinfoil the way the Jesuits and Jews always have since they first rose to power in 1917. That 100 Centeniary is Trump, the Orange Jesuit with the Jesuit-Jew SCOTUS at his Right Hand, Global Business Mafias at his Left Hand, and poodled Congress at his feet.

    We are all Purple Zeks now.

    Clueless Joe | Jan 15, 2017 3:16:19 PM | 33
    Well, thing is, in the US, the bulk of people with guns, knowing how to use them, and ready to use them, is on Trump's side, when it was more split on Ukraine, Syria or Libya. So this leaves the US Army to do most of the fighting on Clinton's (or the Borg's) behalf. Not sure the troopers would do it gladly. I mean, the Civil War traumatized the US way more than even WWII.
    At this point, one has to wonder if for such a coup to succeed, a cause uniting the people wouldn't be required, like, say, a significant foreign war that would need the support of US people coming together, which would both unite it to the point of reducing the will of NRA people to resist the takeover, and which would focus the attention somewhere else. Having some hot war on Russian border could maybe do the trick.
    Though in such a case, the Borg better make it work inside the US, because the military would be quite busy in Europe, so if Trump supporters still took arms to protest the coup, it just couldn't deal with all threats.
    Very speculative, of course. I still think they don't plan that well and will do a half-assed job that will backfire, and will try to undermine Trump in the long run rather than trying to take him down right now.

    Harry | Jan 15, 2017 3:18:10 PM | 34
    @ Denis | 25

    2. The "MI6 Report?" A bit of a misnomer isn't it? I haven't seen any allegations that MI6 itself was involved, making the term "MI6 Report" itself inferential propaganda fluff. Better name: "Steele Report"

    Steele requested permission of high ranking officials to go through with this report and he got the green light. Also he has very influential friends in MI6 and was involved in MAJOR propaganda campaigns before, like Litvinenko's.

    Therefore it wasnt a "solo" campaign, and UK will have to do serious mea culpas to fix the relationship with Trump.

    Louis Proyect | Jan 15, 2017 3:21:56 PM | 35
    This is really funny stuff. A government that festooned with Goldman-Sachs bankers has to worry about being toppled in a coup?

    fast freddy | Jan 15, 2017 3:23:11 PM | 36
    Trump can fire Brennan just as JFK fired Allan Dulles. How'd that work out?

    s | Jan 15, 2017 3:26:39 PM | 37
    "So what happens after some 'Trump supporter' on January 20 starts to shoot into the demonstrating masses (and also into the police cordons)?"

    Trump has already made his own funeral arrangements: Pence is the gravedigger, not the media or color conspiracies. A massacre of protesters against Trump would just make Trumpists horny. If Trump really pisses of enough of his peers in the owner class, their minions will impeach him. Hell, picking Pence was like Trump handing in an undated resignation letter, just to set their minds at ease.

    "What if the CIA, DHS and DNI then detect and certify that the ensuing 'massacre' was a 'Russian plot'?"

    If the police massacre protesters, then no conservative will believe it was a Russian plot. If a nobody massacres protesters, and the CIA etc. say it was a Russian plot, then Trump will get shirty with Putin. But then the whole point of this campaign is to force his hand on Russia policy, not this BS about a color revolution. If the CIA accuse the dead protesters of being part of a Russian plot, then and only then is when you'll know they're getting serious (about either an immediate war with Russia or forcing Trump to step down.)

    Gross misstatements in the OP? 1) Clinton was not the main driver of foreign policy for the conclusive reason no Secretary of State has been the main driver in foreign policy since John Foster Dulles. And that was only because Eisenhower was a general who treated his cabinet like a military staff. 2) Trump did not win the vote at all, he won the Electoral College, which isn't "fair and square," as everybody knew since the controversies over the actual Electoral College votes during the lifetimes of the Founding Fathers themselves. The Electoral College is unfair and slanted, on purpose, and everybody who cares to know, knows it. There is a point when there's being stupid, and there's being a liar. Neither is a good place to be.

    When Trump tries to take Putin to the cleaners, which is what he means when talks about making a deal with Russia, either Putin crawls (my guess, but I'm not a mind reader, but Putin's got no principles, no plan and very little power,) or he signs on to the cold (or surface of the sun hot) war with China. At this point, these people are just bad cop to Trump's good cop. His tinpot Orthodox God had better help Putin if he thinks these anybody in this government is anything but an enemy.

    Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 3:28:49 PM | 38
    Louis 'the clown' Proyect passes gas @35.

    Very funny indeed.

    s | Jan 15, 2017 3:40:50 PM | 39
    PS 1) Forgot to mention the belief that an official from the previous administration isn't allowed to criticize Trump really betrays something uncomfortably close to servility. Trump's a twitter-pated nitwit. He knew Godwin's Law means you lose if you mention Nazis. Turning Brennan's perfectly normal use of Trump's internet gaffe into a threat on Trump's life and/or the nation itself? Why not rant about the threat to motherhood and apple pie, too?

    2) Curtis@11 tells us Trumpery looks up to Robert E. Lee, a traitor and a slaver (literally, seizing blacks on the Gettysburg campaign as slaves,) and a wretched buffoon like Acton. So much the worse for Trumpists!

    Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 15, 2017 3:53:40 PM | 40
    ...
    So what happens after some "Trump supporter" on January 20 starts to shoot into the demonstrating masses (and also into the police cordons)?
    What if the CIA, DHS and DNI then detect and certify that the ensuing "massacre" was a "Russian plot"?
    b.

    Trump came into this election with his eyes wide open.
    During the campaign he once said "I know things most people don't know."

    If one of the things Trump knows is that CIA color revolutions are started by enhancing Gene Sharp's Non-violent Protest playbook with guns, then he'll have that possibility covered most likely by the 200 military officers whom he claims have offered their support for a Trump Presidency.

    I find it bizarre that the name Chuck Hagel (the man who never lies) hasn't been mentioned at all since campaigning began.

    DavidKNZ | Jan 15, 2017 4:03:26 PM | 41
    Behind these toxic allegations are deadly alligators.
    They just don't like having their swamp drained
    :-)

    Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 15, 2017 4:04:45 PM | 42
    Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 15, 2017 3:53:40 PM | 40

    Apologies for CIA typo. It should read State Department color revolutions. State Dept runs US Ambassadors and, thereby, color revolutions.

    VietnamVet | Jan 15, 2017 4:13:15 PM | 43
    The only mass movement is the one that elected Donald Trump stop the depredation of mid-America. The intelligence community coup attempt is strictly inside the Beltway. The death knell of the Democratic Party is their support of a war with Russia to hide their incompetence and corruption. We are watching one gang of oligarchs fight another for control of the pirate plunder; globalists verses nationalists. Government by and for the people was flushed down the toilet in 2000. The USA is not a sovereign state, it is an Empire in decline. If Mike Pence takes the reins, the purple Clinton/Obama/Bush corporate globalists won.

    Perimetr | Jan 15, 2017 4:43:20 PM | 44
    Russian Foreign Ministry: "Obama Still Has A Few Days Left To Destroy The World"

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-15/russian-foreign-ministry-obama-administration-stil-has-few-days-left-destroy-world

    Michael McNulty | Jan 15, 2017 4:48:30 PM | 45
    The main difference between Hitler and today's America is Hitler built a police state at home to take war abroad while the US took war abroad to build a police state at home. The results will be the same; a fearful, murderous Nazism of "enemies" abroad and "undesirables" and at home.

    From The Hague | Jan 15, 2017 5:00:25 PM | 46
    Trump can fire Brennan just as JFK fired Allan Dulles. How'd that work out?
    Posted by: fast freddy | Jan 15, 2017 3:23:11 PM | 36

    Ever heard of Mike Pompeo?

    likklemore | Jan 15, 2017 5:14:39 PM | 47
    @ s 37
    1) Clinton was not the main driver of foreign policy for the conclusive reason no Secretary of State has been the main driver in foreign policy since John Foster Dulles. And that was only because Eisenhower was a general who treated his cabinet like a military staff. 2) Trump did not win the vote at all, he won the Electoral College, which isn't "fair and square," as everybody knew since the controversies over the actual Electoral College votes during the lifetimes of the Founding Fathers themselves. The Electoral College is unfair and slanted, on purpose, and everybody who cares to know, knows it. There is a point when there's being stupid, and there's being a liar. Neither is a good place to be.

    1. Reminder since you may have missed the leaked emails and important events during Hillary Clinton's tenure as SoS: the force behind the push in Lybia

    (a) Lybia - Get the gold
    (b) "we came, we saw, he died." Cackles.
    (c) Ditto the lies surrounding Stevens – the arms smuggling to AQ in Syria

    2. Suggest some read up on the Constitution and structure of the Republic of The United States of America. The Electoral College is designed to balance small states vs large states; the same rationale for the Senate.
    3. On Election day, November 8, the voters selected the Electors to the Electoral College who then vote for the President and VP. Smart presidential candidates craft their campaign with the Electoral College's target, 270 votes. MSM polls showing Clinton having a 95% chance of winning, (Newsweek Madame President) so she disappeared during the last three weeks in October.
    4. Newsflash: Clinton's so-called national popular vote win by "millions" is a fraud. Millions of illegals voted in California, placing the so-called popular vote in her column. Never mind California. How about Wayne County, Detroit, Michigan's recount that was aborted? One example; a sealed ballot box had Clinton with 306 votes and when opened, the count was only 50. Other ballot boxes had similar anomalies.
    5. Trump won by a landslide; where it counts ---in the Counties --- 302 votes in the Electoral College for the final count.


    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

    The Electoral College is unfair! Then so is the make-up of the Senate: regardless of population the 50 states x 2 senators each = 100. Get over it.
    Trump may be a skillful deal-maker but he won't be taking Putin to the Cleaners. Ask Rex Tillerson.

    juliania | Jan 15, 2017 5:24:46 PM | 48
    jayc@22:

    ". . . the degree to which the message has actually been internalized by the public-at-large may be far less than it may appear. . ."

    This sensible comment goes to the 'polls' taken - haven't we recently seen the worth of polls? These are the same polls that gave us Hillary as a sure bet.

    You have to have a trusting public somewhat unaware of the forces in play to work a color revolution, and even the one in Ukraine has not worked. People will know, enough people will know, what is happening. If it's tried there will most assuredly be support for anything Trump and his followers may do in response. There's no slam dunk here, CIA We don't love you; we don't even trust you. Try something at your own peril.

    If Americans want anything at this point, they do want an orderly change of government. They may not have high hopes for the incoming crowd but they don't want chaos. They do not want to be the next Syria. And even if they don't know precisely who's doing what in the days before the inauguration, they'll be suspicious of anyone who tries to start something.

    When 9/11 events were underway, remember the passengers on the plane in Pennsylvania? There'll be good citizens ready to put out any fire even at the cost of their own lives; I'm betting on them.

    karlof1 | Jan 15, 2017 5:34:54 PM | 49
    Hmmm.... The intrigue is fascinating!! BUT! We must recall the primary goal/motivation for the Deep State's Outlaw US Empire since 1990 has been to acquire Full Spectrum Domination of the planet and its people, to which it's had fairly solid success--except with Russia, China and their few allies, the numbers of which are growing slowly. It's said by Putin and Xi that there's no ideological battle akin to the Cold War, but I don't think that's true: Both Putin, Xi, and their nation's economic plans for Eurasian integration are based on Win/Win aims for all involved, whereas the stated ideological goal of the Outlaw US Empire is stated above--enslaving the Hydra (Hydra being the global masses). The current "strategy" was to attack both Russia and China simultaneously, with an emphasis on Russia; Trump and his crew, however, are proposing a different approach based on the tried and true Divide and Conquer concept that's worked so well to now, but is no longer effective thanks to Neoliberalcon behavior allowing an understanding--and thus countermoves--to be gained of their modus. Clearly, Neoliberalcons are miffed that the ball is being taken from them regarding Imperial policy--note there's very little (elite) bickering about what the Republican controlled congress is doing to domestic policy, where most Mass Resistance to Trump/Congress is occurring. From a domestic POV, it seems like Trump's most likely to alienate those who thought he'd improve their standing because of his unwillingness to confront the Republican Congress's destruction of critical social and ecological programs.

    Trump's election outcome seems to mimic what was predicted to occur if a Third Party won and had to confront an antithetical congress having its own plans/policies to implement, adding the assumption that the Deep State would oppose such a Party as a matter-of-course, doing everything it could to delegitimize the incoming administration. If a Color Revolution's planned, then I'd expect to see a big rise in Tea Party activity, as most Soros-sponsored US-ngos are already at odds with Congress, not Trump's as yet unknown Imperial policy direction.

    Banger | Jan 15, 2017 5:54:56 PM | 50
    We are seeing some deep divisions not just within the State but in the public. We are now seeing the healthy growth of "alternative" Narratives which are far more compelling and based more on objective truth than the mainstream Narratives which means, over the long haul, they should win out unless those Narratives are rigorously suppressed. The only chance the authorities have to suppress these competing points of view and a lurch towards reality is to create an external enemy. Now we see the Democrats and "moderate" Republicans joining forces with the National Security State and the mainstream media to create the utterly fictional Russian "threat" in the same way they've created all the phony threats of the past. Will it work? I don't know--what I do know is that the majority of the population "wants" to believe in scapegoats and an enemy because it radically simplifies life and allows people to join together in virtual "two minutes of hate." This kind of thing usually works when you have "progressvies" and "leftists" joining in along with the usual warmongers in howling for blood. What I call the "Stasi left" is now showing itself for the CIA minions (people don't really know how "liberal" most of the CIA actually is) they are and perhaps have been or at least wannabe.

    I had for some time wanted to dissociate myself from the left but am now ready to do so not because I'm no longer on the left but because "the left" seem no longer to be on the left. I know it's time to move away from those divisions which are mainly just part of the mind-control regime we've been under since 1917. We have to choose. Continue to research what is the truth as best we can or join in the tribal wars that may well end in mutual destruction and certainly a possible civil war.

    I know Trump is attempting to placate those who might murder him--we'll see how it works. From where I sit it seems unlikely that Trump will put a dent in the ongoing Imperial project and the criminals it harbors.

    ALberto | Jan 15, 2017 5:58:03 PM | 51
    @47

    "Electoral College is unfair and slanted, on purpose, and everybody who cares to know, knows it."

    Electoral College = United States

    Popular Vote = United State

    12th Amendment so simple a preteen can grasp its main thrust.

    Circe | Jan 15, 2017 5:59:46 PM | 52
    You forgot to include the green revolution in Iran instigated by CIA and Mossad operatives with the help of Jundallah and MEK. Since it could be attempted again during Trump's Presidency; let's not sweep it under the rug and out of the pages of infamous recent history. Although, I believe Trump and his cabal will take more hostile and aggressive measures against Iran than instigating a color revolution.

    That being said; permit me to change the title to: Planting the Bad Seed. I'm not sure if you did this intentionally or not, but the pen is a mighty sword that you use skilfully therefore I should assume it was deliberate.

    I don't think I've yet read such artful, crafty and not to overuse, Machiavellian false equivalency as I just did now with this piece first introducing it with an outline of nefarious machinations against Trump, followed by a synopsis of fake revolutions to get to the grain. So in other words you're saying that the CIA or present state enemies of Trump would use the unsuspecting, and I'm not being facetious-innocent- leftist masses for their end. This is not to say that Neolibs are not lurking in there to sabotage this Presidency exploiting legitimate and justified dissent and dissenters as tools to use against Trump.

    Moreover, the only one doing the sabotaging here ; no, I won't go that far. Maybe you'll re-evaluate how this piece comes off, so let me give you the benefit of doubt while I still condemn it and its author who has yet to reconsider and join the good fight instead. If there are nefarious machinations in the works to sabotage Trump, then you are similarly busy working the Trump side with equally nefarious propaganda by raising a conspiracy spectre intended as an influence manoeuvre to crush all LEGITIMATE DISSENT against Trump that includes, more importantly, dissent against the cabal that brought him to power, by smearing such dissenters with the same brush you're using against those who would use them. Therefore in my opinion you are just as exploitive as Trump, his enemies and the deep state cabal that surrounds him and that he fully, absolutely represents.

    So let's say Chipnik is right, that at some point in time, which may not be during the inauguration, the Trump fascist squad aggressively lean on protesters or as Chip writes, start shooting into the crowd. Your angle is to first plant the seed, that it won't necessarily be the Trump squad that is or would be responsible for such a heinous act, but other forces meant to make Trump look like the fascist; never mind, that this is who he REALly is.

    So you're trying to delegitimize the revolution before it even starts. This is pretty devious; if not ugly; I'm being kind. As a matter of fact, it feels kind of sinister to suppress with twisted assumption, before it even gets started, the inevitable uprising you know Trump will ignite with his repressive regime. Is this not resorting to goebbel hasbara for an end you imagine is justified; a highly questionable, even wicked means to what YOU imagine will be a beneficial end like perhaps détente with Russia? What an intangible, sorry excuse that would be to extinguish real and enduring change BY THE PEOPLE that might end up benefitting your cause as well.

    What the hell are you trying to pull with this piece? Are you trying to crush growing and overwhelming legitimate dissent by planting a conspiracy theory that whatever revolution Trump accelerates with his wrongful actions will be illegitimate and fraudulent because it isn't inspired by justified dissent against him or better yet against the system that spawned Trump , but instigated by nefarious forces conspiring to overthrow him?

    Let me tell you something; the Revolution has been a long time simmering BEFORE Trump appeared on the political scene. If Trump is the accelerant that will finally make it explode then that's too bad for your own 'justified' goal and Trump for continuing the deep state subornation and subversion of democracy! Your goal (if honourable) should regrettably be the necessary, hopefully, temporary casualty of the rebellion against Trump's dangerous deception to quote an Engdahl phrase that best describes him.

    Trump is an asterisk in the reasons for the Revolution that should have happened after 9/11; and that you would try to delegitimize it this way planting a seed that might spread like poison to kill it, is reprehensible. The Revolution, my friend, won't and shouldn't be strictly limited to Trump. The Revolution will be about the entire two-faced monopoly and the evil forces sustained by this monopoly that brought Trump to power and repeatedly suborn leadership and subvert the people's power. People deserve to have this long-awaited Revolution, and if you, with your grain of conspiracy, propagate a theory that delegitimizes this Revolution making it only about a coup against Trump, then you are no better than the cabal you pretend to expose.

    Propaganda works. Then stop using it to kill the Revolution.

    Circe | Jan 15, 2017 6:20:42 PM | 53
    @24 chipnik

    'Mass shootings' is a bit of a specious reach.

    True, but sarcastically, symbolically or not, you, yourself, did reference there would be 'shootings on crowds after Trump assumes office' in several previous posts.

    Circe | Jan 15, 2017 6:25:27 PM | 54
    Trump can fire Brennan just as JFK fired Allan Dulles. How'd that work out?
    Posted by: fast freddy | Jan 15, 2017 3:23:11 PM | 36

    Ever heard of Mike Pompeo?

    Posted by: From The Hague | Jan 15, 2017 5:00:25 PM | 46

    Yeah. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

    Circe, because there can only be one revolution at a time, Soros is Calvinistically the most righteous and therefore has priority? Get over this liberal conceit of righteous pitched battle. In the meantime, talk to my filter.

    Posted by: Jonathan | Jan 15, 2017 6:25:55 PM | 55

    Circe, because there can only be one revolution at a time, Soros is Calvinistically the most righteous and therefore has priority? Get over this liberal conceit of righteous pitched battle. In the meantime, talk to my filter.

    Posted by: Jonathan | Jan 15, 2017 6:25:55 PM | 55

    Trump should order further investigation on Hillary and send her to jail where she belongs.
    No one plays with Donald Trump without bearing consequences

    Posted by: virgile | Jan 15, 2017 6:29:43 PM | 56

    Trump should order further investigation on Hillary and send her to jail where she belongs.
    No one plays with Donald Trump without bearing consequences

    Posted by: virgile | Jan 15, 2017 6:29:43 PM | 56

    From The Hague | Jan 15, 2017 6:39:27 PM | 57
    Yeah. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.
    Posted by: Circe | Jan 15, 2017 6:25:27 PM | 54

    Meet the new boss: Circe, the man who kwows the past and the future.

    terry | Jan 15, 2017 6:49:43 PM | 58
    Looks like there is going to be a big turnout . I think that these people had mentioned that they would put themselves in between any protesters of Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1qlkIXja6U

    x | Jan 15, 2017 6:51:01 PM | 59
    ZH reports:

    "... CIA Director Brennan Warns Trump To "Watch What He Says"

    "There is no basis for Mr Trump to point fingers at the intelligence community for 'leaking' information... "

    So the head of the Ministry for Dis-Information complains that there is 'no basis' (aka 'no facts') for this allegation. When did lack of evidence ever bother the CIA?

    And Brennan does not like comparison by his new boss (who's not like the old boss):

    "What I do find outrageous is equating intelligence community with Nazi Germany," Brennan said. "I do take great umbrage at that."

    This is the gangster-in-chief running the Afghan opium trade and any number of odious regime change programs that have killed and mained tens of millions now demanding 'evidence' when the finger is pointed his way.

    "Hypocrite" is the word for this type of odious person. And Trump had better watch his back. These types are worse than nazi Germans.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-15/scathing-attack-cia-director-brennan-warns-trump-watch-what-he-says

    Circe | Jan 15, 2017 7:06:46 PM | 60
    @55

    Soros can kiss my ass; and Trump can kiss his.

    Mina | Jan 15, 2017 7:08:00 PM | 61
    If you watch Podesta speech on the n7ght of the election wgen he called the few remaining ppl in the room to go to sleep and wait for more in the morning it seems pretty clear they were already planning. Let s hope for some significant leaks.

    dh | Jan 15, 2017 7:14:29 PM | 62
    Trump made some interesting comments in an interview with the Times today. They seem to be aimed at disaffected Europeans and there are lots of those these days.

    "Merkel made a catastrophic mistake (letting a million refugees in)"

    "Countries want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity,"

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38632485

    jfl | Jan 15, 2017 7:21:16 PM | 63
    @10 unnamed, 'In 5 days he will hold the reins of power'

    that's my expectation. despite the cinamatography @14 john

    @15 yet another unnamed, 'These people are nuts'

    i certainly hope you're right! that brennan and the rest are immediately shown the door and the deconstruction of the vile, 'unamerican' cia begins on saturday, in the pale afternoon.

    @19 ya unnamed, '... Hillary didnt generate enough votes ...'

    hillary won the popular vote ... if the elctronic tally system is to be believed. not

    @22 jayc, 'The Russia/Trump freak-out is localized in the Beltway establishment, Democratic Party, and the mainstream media ...'

    that's my feeling too. i think this is a media tempest in a media teapot. the good news is they are alienating ordinary americans, just as their choice of hillary for empress did. i hope the tnc msm go down along with republicrat/demoblican party ... and the vile cia.

    @23 likklemore, 'You would think Clapper's statement would be covered by MSM, No?'

    no. it's a perfunctory cover-the-ass-of-the-nsa/cia-combine statement. clapper put the more than 'dodgy dossier' in the obama/trump briefing in order for it to be leaked. now he's decrying others' - fully intended - use of his more than dodgy inclusion. the tnc msm know what he's done and what he's doing and are acting accordingly. his statement is a footnote for the history books.

    @35 lp, 'This is really funny stuff. A government that festooned with Goldman-Sachs bankers has to worry about being toppled in a coup?'

    even a blind pig can smell the acorns ... or g-sax truffles?

    @36 ff, 'Trump can fire Brennan just as JFK fired Allan Dulles'

    and he'd better. and he'd better finish the job: kill the cia. or the cia will certainly kill him. one way or another.

    @37, @39 s

    with the exception of your assessment of russia and china and their leadership - and your nasty, supercilious tone - i agree, think most of what you say is about right. why should anyone care what i think?

    @42 hw, 'State Department color revolutions. State Dept runs US Ambassadors and, thereby, color revolutions'

    yeah, but now State is a condominium of the cia/pentagon. mostly the cia.

    @45 mm, 'the difference between Hitler and today's America is Hitler built a police state at home to take war abroad while the US took war abroad to build a police state at home'

    well put.

    @47 likkelmore, 'The Electoral College is designed to balance small states vs large states; the same rationale for the Senate.'

    The Electoral College was designed to balance slave states vs non-slave states; the same rationale for the Senate.

    'so is [was] the make-up of the Senate'

    check.

    @48 juliana, 'If Americans want anything at this point, they do want an orderly change of government'

    i think that's the word.

    Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 7:28:50 PM | 64
    juliania @48:
    haven't we recently seen the worth of polls?
    The're sinister when used to cement the reality that the propaganda is meant to create. In which case, most Americans believe .... could well be reworded as: most of your fellow citizens have accepted our disinformation - you should too!

    <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

    karlof1 @49:

    Divide and Conquer
    No doubt Russia and China are aware of this possible strategy. It leads to the question of whether it is better for our globally-linked human society that Russia integrate with the West or join with China as counterweight.

    <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

    Banger @50:

    ... deep divisions not just within the State but in the public.
    Sadly, public divisions don't seem to mean much except when exploited by a powerful elite faction. Thus public divisions become a resource for elite maneuvering.

    Kudos: You were early in anticipating a leader like Trump who would exploit the discontent.

    Narratives which are far more compelling and based more on objective truth ...
    I think narratives that spin truth around accepted myths are most compelling (and what we see all-too-often).
    "moderate" Republicans
    I wouldn't call McCain, Graham, Rubio, and Company "moderates". William Banzai depicts them as American Jihadis!

    <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

    Circe @52

    WTF! b has previously spoken of the desireability of a real resistance to Trump, saying:

    Trump should and must be fought but that fight should be about important economic and social issues for which people care and of which there are plenty.... Every attempt to accuse Trump of this or that "Russia" outrage that has nothing to do with the average voter's life simply fails. These pseudo scandals waged within the "elite" media against him just makes him stronger.
    Please try to keep up.

    chipnik | Jan 15, 2017 7:37:59 PM | 65
    64

    To quote George Carlin, 'They (One Party of Mil.Gov.Fed) don't give a fuck about you! '

    Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 7:38:52 PM | 66
    x @59
    "Hypocrite" is the word for this type of odious person.
    No, the word is " sociopath " - a person with impaired conscience (aka "moral compass").

    Circe | Jan 15, 2017 7:55:08 PM | 67
    @55

    Oh, and while I'll admit my conviction may come off as conceit; you, OTOH, are at the height of arrogant cynicism masking who knows what ideological Z-aberration known for its hubris.

    Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 7:59:28 PM | 68
    @ b
    Bravo.

    Though we must not forget the same tactic used against Chavez in Venezuela, in ' The coup that failed, stillborn ? , or much more recently another unsuccessful rehash against Maduro.

    These are merely the newest, latest refined & distilled, incarnation of methods & technique, we have used against foreign governments since the 1800's!(two centuries of refinement). The latest methods are designed to maximize Plausible-Deniablility and maximize supposed credibility of the proxies, and create a foundation for continuing attempts should it not be successful (not - all or nothing), whilst always presenting Faux arguments/justifications in the latest 'methods', re Democracy, Rule of Law, Rights, Oppression, Dis=Enfranchised ... whilst launching a foreign State sponsored, instigated, financed, managed, resourced, Coup!

    From 1887 Samoa, 1893 Hawaii thru to 1953 Mossadegh (Iran), 1954 Guatemala, 1958 Lebanon, thru to 1973 Allende (Chile), 1991 Haiti and then thru to today.

    All our chickens have come home to roost. :(

    @ Posted by: Bob In Portland | Jan 15, 2017 1:08:57 PM | 5

    The CIA is not the 'entire' Deep State, nor is the CIA or the Deep State (think all aspects and scale and scope of GLADIO) the actual drivers/deciders. The CIA and other such entities 150 years before the CIA was legally born, are mercenaries acting upon the directions/instructions they receive , in actions such as these. YMMV

    mischi | Jan 15, 2017 8:02:51 PM | 69
    dh, not only did he say that Merkel had made a big mistake, Trump also told Bild that the EU was built to give the Germans primacy in Europe and for the EU to give the US a trading rival. He applauded Brexit, saying that everyone wanted to keep their identity and wanted a quick trading deal with the UK. Interesting times we live in.

    Peter AU | Jan 15, 2017 8:04:00 PM | 70
    The 9/11, WMD, MH17 crew are still out and about so it will be interesting to see what happens in the near future.
    I wouldn't like to be part of the cannon fodder brigade the US has moved to Russia's borders. They are starting to look like sacraficial goats for the good cause of geo-politics at this stage.

    86'd | Jan 15, 2017 8:11:40 PM | 71
    Color Revolutions are diplomacy by other means? If so, looking back a decade in Iran is just a start.
    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GG06Ak03.html
    Perhaps review of centuries is needed.
    England 1689 France 1789 1989 USSR...

    Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 8:12:56 PM | 72
    @ Posted by: Denis | Jan 15, 2017 3:02:15 PM | 25

    You jest assuredly ... who controls the ' Sole Remaining Superpower ', which spends more on its Military, let alone Intelligence/Proxy/NGO entities/forces, than the next largest 13 nations COMBINED, in a domestic US counter-election Coup is, ... not of significance ... everything re our rapacious actions on the people of Terra may be affected by these events, let alone domestically, for good of bad, or not.

    2. The "MI6 Report?" A bit of a misnomer isn't it? I haven't seen any allegations that MI6 itself was involved, making the term "MI6 Report" itself inferential propaganda fluff. Better name: "Steele Report"
    again, given the well documented & corroborated, FACTS, throughout these threads, you jest, yes ?

    86'd | Jan 15, 2017 8:19:49 PM | 73
    Russia is still dominated by the Oligarchs- and who are they? Dual nationals of the same Little Horn as the dual nationals that run USA. And Iran. And China and Trump.

    Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 8:21:38 PM | 74
    The only REAL, committed, passionate, mass united group of citizens is the 'Bag-of-Depplorables', most of the assets being burnt up in this Psyop campaign are 'False' or long ago 'Bought & Paid for'.

    Will those of the US citizenry who identify with or are misled/deceived by 'Identity Politics' and 'Fake Left' 'R2P', etc narratives be prepared to step up and put it all, 'On the Line'? Somewhat doubt it.

    Given what they openly say in comments and the twitts, etc, one doubts they, the 'Deplorables' who won the election for the Trumpster, will stand by passively should this continue to escalate beyond the 20th. No doubt at all.

    Circe | Jan 15, 2017 8:33:00 PM | 75
    @64

    Geez, I have to break my rule with you; this one time, 'coz you probably didn't read my comment (56) in response to the post you quote 'b' from where I compared him to Lt. Col. Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai, (decent guy; but thoroughly misdirecting his genius to assisting the enemy). Here is the excerpt where I address that part of his post you quoted.:

    At times reading this; I thought I had entered the twilight zone of Breitbart, and only when I got to this disclaimer, was relieved to see that there is still a glimmer of hope that you will return to the side fighting the good fight.

    But the war against Trump is not over. In my view Trump should and must be fought [no kidding!] but that fight should be about important economic and social issues for which people care and of which there are plenty. Trump has his own cabal, libertarian billionaires like the Koch brothers, several generals in his cabinet and arch Zionists like Adelson. But that cabal's henchmen are not yet installed throughout the government. It is important to hinder such infestation.

    Yes, I do recognize a glimmer of hope, understated, but promising. You might yet blow up that bridge you've magnificently engineered, but I'd like to make these adjustments: the fight will and should not be restricted to economic and social issues. Do you really believe that the intended repression and exploitation will be limited to the U.S. alone???

    And allow me to correct this sentence by adding my two cents in square parenthesis:

    But that cabal's henchmen are not yet [ALL] installed throughout the government.

    Have you looked at his cabinet and entourage lately?

    Therefore, it is YOU, jr, that failed to keep up. Don't try to bait me; I'm so bored with your spin.

    Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 8:33:28 PM | 76
    @ Posted by: VietnamVet | Jan 15, 2017 4:13:15 PM | 43

    Got it in one, VietnamVet.

    Interesting also is how the false narratives/dissembling is strong and responsive, in this thread, from particular posters, so quickly and in great quantity ...

    The simple question is: If Trump is not perceived as the greatest threat in at least ~71 years to the Military-Industrial-Corporate-Complex, and, more importantly their ultimate owners, the puppet-masters behind the curtain, the 0.01% owners thereof. Hence, why are we seeing these very events unfurl before our very eyes ?

    This is no charade or deceptive play to distract, amuse or entertain. That is bullshit.

    Circe | Jan 15, 2017 8:43:01 PM | 77
    @73

    Add UK and maybe France, Canada and Australia to the list and leave Iran and China out. They haven't been Z-infested yet; except maybe with spies and operatives.

    Kalen | Jan 15, 2017 8:43:48 PM | 78
    In every country under so called color revolution the underlying theme was imminent economic collapse that elites not only were unable to prevent but even actively pursuited and used the phony revolution to cover up their own theft and introduction global banking thieves into local economy under exigency of crisis, by selling land and state monopolies.
    If b is right preplaned economic crisis in the US is about to happen and a scape goat is about to be sworn in.
    That is the position of many independent economists recognizing that FED is covering up already ongoing depression that needs to be blamed on somebody but the establishment.

    Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 8:46:16 PM | 79
    Posted by: Circe | Jan 15, 2017 8:33:00 PM | 75

    Lt. Col. Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai, (decent guy; but thoroughly misdirecting his genius to assisting the enemy)

    An entirely false, fantasy, fiction, perpetrated in a movie FICTION!

    Veterans were and still are incensed. Let alone those who survived the industrialized torments/tortures, forced labor, starvation, neglect/disease and Death Marches, as well as their families who struggle with those survivors, to this very day .

    And it is used as a reference, for support ?! WTF! Have you ever personally met any of the survivors, and talked with them ?! A few still endure, many were only 17-20 at the time ...

    Have you no decency left, to try that one on, none at all ?

    Words fail me.

    Circe | Jan 15, 2017 8:51:39 PM | 80
    @71

    There was the real Revolution in Iran deposing the Shah and then there was an attempt at a fake one orchestrated by CIA and Mossad; the green revolution.

    Just want to emphasis that I was referring to the later fake one in my own post @52 above.

    Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 8:58:46 PM | 81
    @ Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 7:38:52 PM | 66

    Sociopaths & psychopaths, sometimes both, in dedicated service to their Patrons, the ultimate Psychopathic Sociopaths, the soulless, inhuman, rapacious, 'Old Grey Men', of the 0.01%.

    The 0.01% who steered and enabled, incrementally, their tools, such as the NSA (created by Presidential Executive Order, Not thru an Act of Legislation), to ' Collect it all/Process it all '.

    Which is merely a reflection of the 0.01%s desires ... re Terra and all that is on it and populate it.

    Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 9:19:38 PM | 82
    @Circe

    Well, I stand corrected! Your vitriol wasn't a lapse, it was vomiting on our host.

    You have yet to suggest anything constructive.

    Supporting Obama-Hillary's Democratic Party against Trump is a NON-STARTER. The Democratic Party has proven to be thoroughly corrupt, and is more 'Zionist' than you care to admit (because that is adverse to your mission) .

    I think most independent thinkers have decided that a better starting point for change is Trump's in-your-face MAGA tyranny because the MSM-fueled globalist stab-you-in-the-back tyranny is more dangerous. The sheep are too willing to sleepwalk into the latter.

    So we CHEER when Trump puts down MSM because they are a tool that is used against the people, but you GROAN because he's gaining ground.

    Its clear that you are not here to be constructive. Your mission is to De-legitimize Trump.

    guest77 | Jan 15, 2017 9:22:15 PM | 83
    Glad to see Louis Proyect still comes around like a little mouse, pooping in the corner and scurrying away.

    P Walker | Jan 15, 2017 9:22:33 PM | 84
    likklemore@47

    And where are the charges from the DoJ from all this illegal voting? Republicans have been screaming out this "problem" for sixteen years and yet can never offer up such evidence. How many cases were brought up during the Bush years? This is one of those far-right fake news stories like the Vince Foster murder or Pizzagate. There's as much evidence of this electoral fraud as there is of Russian hacking of the election.

    You get "insiders" speaking about things like same-day no-ID registrations allowing people to vote. They're being very, very deceptive. These people get provisional ballots, which basically are not ever counted in just about every state that has them. Same with absentee ballots. The problem with absentee ballots is that they so easily disqualified over trivialities (i.e., stray pencil marks) and voters are left with this idea that their vote was counted. Why is there an explosion in absentee ballots? Because minority communities, the same communities that have their names purged from voting roles by GOP state governments, not to mention reduce machines for voting day and limit open hours, but absentee ballot voters think that it's better to send in absentee votes than wait in crazy lines on voting day.

    Democrats lost because they couldn't muster the vote from the plurality and conservatives ALWAYS come out to vote; they are the only reliable voting group out there. That's why the win Congress and at the state level. They win because their opposition are a bunch of out-of-touch elitist morons more concerned about get the "firsts". The first woman president, the first black president, the first hispanic senator, and so on and that is purely a reflection on the Democratic Party establishment's cosmopolitan champagne socialism obsession. They *are* out of touch which is why 50% of the population no longer votes. There's no point voting Democrat anymore.

    Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 9:22:48 PM | 85
    Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 9:19:38 PM | 82

    No! Please, Say it is not so ? ;)

    And he/she ... is not alone ...

    Peace.

    Circe | Jan 15, 2017 9:23:14 PM | 86
    @79

    For crying out loud! I wasn't making any statement on whether or not the film fictionalized the actual events. I was using that character's role in the film to make an analogy here. Now go lecture and scream at someone else for a change.

    Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 9:24:23 PM | 87
    Outraged @81

    I would think "sociopath!" every time Hillary spoke of "making tough choices".

    s | Jan 15, 2017 9:45:25 PM | 88
    likklemore@47 Illegals voting by the millions, like the hint about blacks somehow rigging the voting in urban areas, really is nothing but race baiting. OF course you talk about the Republic, that's practically a certificate of mad dog reaction. No, one man one vote is equal, the Electoral College is not. Even worse for you, if you really want to go the inequality route, you're the one who is inferior, being someone who upholds the equality of states rather than the equality of people, and mindlessly repeat lame slanders about the dark hordes somehow cheating at the polls and deranged irrelevancies instead of arguments. I suggest you more than most benefit from the proposition that all should have equal rights, because if they had to earn them, you lose.

    And lest I forget, your lame unthinking babble. You think the Senate is fair and square? No, you don't. When it's called the UN General Assembly, you know to the marrow of your bones it's not. Before you start ranting about what you think, you really need to have actual thoughts first.

    Trumpists are not the defenders of the people, Trumpists are the leaders in the attack on the people.

    Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 9:54:26 PM | 89
    @ Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 9:24:23 PM | 87

    One always saw and still, sees, the classical middle ages ' Grim Reaper' (image), standing and speaking in her stead, gesturing, enticingly ...

    Same same for Obama, Bush the Younger, too.

    86'd | Jan 15, 2017 9:55:33 PM | 90
    Circe: Even Islamic Revolution of 1979 was US backed. They wanted the Shah out. He had become "undependable" starting back around the time he threw his multi million $ celebration of 2500 Years of Persian Empire stuff- crowning himself Shah han Shah etc
    French were well aware he had cancer- they were treating him.
    Like the West has installed the MBros jihadis across the region to take down secular regimes of Gadaffi, Mubarak, Saddam, Assad. West had no hesitation installing an Islamic one to take out secular Shah. In Hegelian fashion, it began the Pike Program of "West vs Islam" phase of the Three World Wars. Or "Clash of Civilizations" or "War on Terror". The list above re: SNIPERS is interesting, as this motif also occurred in Tehran during the protests in Ferdowsi Sq w/ mysterious gunmen shooting into demos to incite the crowd.
    As for China not being dominated by the Zios? Afraid so. David Rockefeller had a vise grip via Chase Manhattan Bank very early on, and never forget that Trotsky "Lev Bronstein" was trained, equipped and prepped while living in in high style the Bronx on his way to Bolshevik Rev.

    Circe | Jan 15, 2017 9:59:06 PM | 91
    Just to be clear; I'll repeat this for the literacy challenged and bald-faced liar who wrote I support Democrats.:

    The Revolution will be about the entire two-faced monopoly and the evil forces sustained by this monopoly that brought Trump to power and repeatedly suborn leadership and subvert the people's power.

    Where does this indicate affiliation with one party or another??? Trump and Hillary belong to the two-faced monopoly. I am an equal opportunity dissenter; I don't give a rat's ass about either party or their chosen change messiah-con, Trump being the latest, that the deep-state cabal use to lure the servitude into believing they live in a democracy with equal opportunity for all and things are gonna change.

    Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 10:05:33 PM | 92
    We're not buying it Circe. How many times do we need to tell you that? We've seen this before.

    Attacking Trump relentlessly while claiming that it is in the service of some super-high noble and unattainable rationale?

    What else ya got?

    Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 10:05:49 PM | 93
    @ Posted by: s | Jan 15, 2017 9:45:25 PM | 88

    Do you support the Constitution as it stands, the Laws of the United States, Federal & State or not ?

    Or only when it conveniently suits your argument/narrative/position ... regardless of facts ?

    This is why Intelligence Analysts (ultimately realists doing a job) for example, in the main, and most of the Military and a surprising number of citizens, are staying out of it, neutral, and incrementally ever so slowly pushing back against the screed and leaning towards the new POTUS/Administration. Why ?

    But, hey, he won the election, she lost! What is going on here ?

    Generations of belief in unreal myths re Democracy, etc, are, in effect, working against the Coup plotters Psyop campaign narrative.

    Denis | Jan 15, 2017 10:14:12 PM | 94
    Harry | Jan 15, 2017 3:18:10 PM | 34
    Steele requested permission of high ranking officials to go through with this report and he got the green light. Also he has very influential friends in MI6 and was involved in MAJOR propaganda campaigns before, like Litvinenko's.

    Sorry, Harry, but I can't decipher the above. Having a link to your source[s] might help.

    For instance, what do you mean by Steele got "permission" from "high ranking officials"?? Even if the assertion is factual, "high ranking officials" does not necessarily mean MI6. Officials where? US, UK, Ru ??? And having friends in MI6 has nothing to do with your assertion that Steele "requested permission" to do a dirty like this one.

    Let's presume you have a source that says Steele got "permission" from MI6. Do you see the implications of that? The report was initially commissioned by an as yet unidentified Republican candidate. But that person dropped out before the investigation really got started. So Steele shopped the project to Hillary's bunch of bums. And so what you are saying is that Steele went to some "high ranking official" I presume you mean in the UK, and further, within the context of the comment, you mean MI6 – and from that high ranking MI6 person came a green-light for Steele to do a hit-piece on a US presidential candidate. IOW, you are accusing the UK in precisely the same way the MSM and Obama are accusing Russia/Putin.

    Accepted wisdom has it that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and yet I see no proof here of any sort. Please pass me a link to a reliable source that says Steele asked for and rec'd permission from MI6. That would be very hot.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~

    Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 8:12:56 PM | 72

    You jest assuredly ... who controls the 'Sole Remaining Superpower', which spends more on its Military, let alone Intelligence/Proxy/NGO entities/forces, than the next largest 13 nations COMBINED, in a domestic US counter-election Coup is, ... not of significance ... everything re our rapacious actions on the people of Terra may be affected by these events, let alone domestically, for good of bad, or not.

    I have absolutely no earthly idea what you are talking about. Is that "paragraph" supposed to be a response to my comment #25? Are we on the same page? Planet? What does the "Sole Remaining Superpower" have to do with any of this?

    To review: The topic is whether MI6 is eye-balls deep in the Steele Report. If it is, then calling it the "MI6 Report" makes sense. If not, then "MI6 Report" is a misleading misnomer and propaganda in its own right.

    again, given the well documented & corroborated, FACTS, throughout these threads, you jest, yes ?

    OK, that's better. I can understand that one. I noticed you capitalized "FACTS." Now we're talkin' the same language, dude.

    See my response to Harry, above. Same goes for you: Can you give me a link to a reliable source saying MI6 signed off on this attack on a US presidential candidate? Throw some FACTS my way. . .

    Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 10:15:27 PM | 95
    As long as the money flows, Democratic Party and sympathetic establishment operatives will try to derail Trump.

    At some point, a real resistance with some integrity will spring up once the Democratic Party and its lackeys have failed so miserably that they are a laughing stock.

    86'd | Jan 15, 2017 10:17:38 PM | 96
    Circe,
    Got it. Agree 100%. Until we take out the ventriloquists, we will be forever trapped in the fake left-right paradigm arguing over the Elite's puppet du jour- but never taking on the Deep State puppeteers. Seems we'd rather be manipulated by them, and persist in bickering w/ each other.

    Peter AU | Jan 15, 2017 10:19:57 PM | 97
    93 "Generations of belief in unreal myths re Democracy, etc, are, in effect, working against the Coup plotters Psyop campaign narrative."

    Spot on. The powers that be have to, over a very short period, try to turn this narrative around. It seems than now they will be impaled on their own democratic sword.

    Julian | Jan 15, 2017 10:25:23 PM | 98
    Hello Civil War!

    Although Pence-Clinton might be enough to mollify the population.

    This is exactly why Trump must go after the Clinton Foundation full throttle on January 20.

    There is no time to waste to neutralise this threat

    Circe | Jan 15, 2017 10:32:46 PM | 99
    What else ya got?

    Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 15, 2017 10:05:33 PM | 92

    Oh gee, I dunno...how about this?!

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/05/3b/50/053b50e784c7bfc634dfac7f574adb06.jpg

    Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 10:44:53 PM | 100
    @ Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 15, 2017 4:04:45 PM | 42

    Apologies for CIA typo. It should read State Department color revolutions. State Dept runs US Ambassadors and, thereby, color revolutions.

    Respectfully, the CIA through the 'Local Station'(CIA), local Company technical/support sections & assets & agents, sources & proxies (NGOs/Associations/Union/Business elements), AND

    The State Department, through Diplomats/Officers and CIA under Official Cover(OC)(Diplomatic), also interacting with and managing the previous, though mostly focused on High level political, corporate entities/assets,

    ... simultaneously ... concurrently ... run the Coups and 'faux' revolutions/uprisings/'Arab Springs' ...

    To a varying lesser or greater degree there of, limited and/or competing co-operation/conflict.

    The Agency(CIA) and the State Department are not a monolithic entity ... there are common and partially overlapping interests and objectives, sometimes more, others less so ... yet they have never acted as one, as a 'Borg'.

    Phil Agee's published diary, to corroborate my brief explanation above in excruciating detail, is an accessible, open, unclassified insight re how this all actually works, for ant interested reader at MOA.

    Full text of 'Inside-the-Company-CIA-diary-Philip-aAgee.pdf" (Direct PDF doenload)

    There are no blanks in Philip Agee's Inside the Company: CIA Diary. This densely detailed expose names every CIA officer, every agent, every operation that ...

    ...

    Philip Agee discusses his experiences inside the CIA

    Philip Agee was a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who served in Latin America. After resigning from the CIA he lectured and wrote on the Agency's clandestine operations. His activities were not unnoticed. Ex-CIA Director and later President Bush the first called Agee "a traitor to our country." He is the author of Inside the Company: CIA Diary and On the Run. He died in Cuba in January 2008.

    Cheers.

    [Jan 18, 2017] Trump's (and Putin's) Plan to Dissolve the EU and NATO.

    Jan 18, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    im1dc : January 15, 2017 at 06:05 PM , 2017 at 06:05 PM
    Everyone will want to read this:

    "Trump's (and Putin's) Plan to Dissolve the EU and NATO."

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-s-and-putin-s-plan-to-dissolve-the-eu-and-nato

    "Trump's (and Putin's) Plan to Dissolve the EU and NATO."

    By Josh Marshall...January 15, 2017...8:12 PM EDT

    "Most people in this country, certainly most members of the political class and especially its expression in Washington, don't realize what Donald Trump is trying to do in Europe and Russia. Back in December I explained that Trump has a plan to break up the European Union. Trump and his key advisor Steve Bannon (former Breitbart chief) believe they can promise an advantageous trade agreement with the United Kingdom, thus strengthening the UK's position in its negotiations over exiting the EU. With such a deal in place with the UK, they believe they can slice apart the EU by offering the same model deal to individual EU states. Steve Bannon discussed all of this at length with Business Week's Josh Green and Josh and I discussed it in great detail in this episode of my podcast from mid-December.

    Now we have a rush of new evidence that Trump is moving ahead with these plans.

    One point that was clear in Green's discussions with Bannon and Nigel Farage is that Trump wants to empower Farage as its interlocutor with the United Kingdom. Given Farage's fringe status in the UK, on its face that seems crazy. But that is the plan. And it is a sign of how potent Farage's guidance and advice has become for Trump's view of Europe, the EU and Russia.

    Two days ago, the United States out-going Ambassador to the EU gave a press conference in which he opened up about Farage's apparently guiding role in the Trump world and what he's hearing from EU Member states.

    From the The Financial Times (sub.req.) ...

    ... Donald Trump's transition team have called EU leaders to ask "what country is to leave next" with a tone suggesting the union "is falling apart" this year, according to the outgoing US ambassador to the bloc.

    ... In a pugnacious parting press conference, Anthony Gardner warned of "fringe" voices such as Nigel Farage, the former UK Independence party leader, holding influence in Washington over Mr Trump's team.

    ... Speaking days before leaving office, Mr Gardner said it would be "lunacy" and "the height of folly" for the US to ditch half a century of foreign policy in order to support further EU fragmentation or become a "Brexit cheerleader" in Brussels.

    ... "I was struck in various calls that were going on between the incoming administration and the EU that the first question is: what country is about to leave next after the UK?" he said.

    ... "The perceived sense is that 2017 is the year in which the EU is going to fall apart. And I hope that Nigel Farage is not the only voice being listened to because that is a fringe voice."

    Today in a new interview with the Germany's Bild and the Times of London Trump expanded on these goals dramatically. Trump leveled a series of attacks on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, suggesting he'd like to see her defeated for reelection and saying she'd hurt Germany by letting "all these illegals" into the country. Trump also called NATO "obsolete", predicted other countries would soon leave the EU, and characterized the EU itself as "basically a vehicle for Germany."

    Trump and Bannon are extremely hostile to Merkel and eager to see her lose. But what is increasingly clear is that Trump will make the break up of the EU a central administration policy and appears to want the same for NATO.

    My own view is that Trump and Bannon greatly overestimate America's relative economic power in the world. Their view appears to be that no European country will feel it is able to be locked out of trade with a US-UK trade pact. An America eager to break up the EU seems more likely to inject new life into the union. However that may be, Trump and Bannon clearly want to create a nativist world order based on the US, Russia and states that want to align with them. The EU and NATO are only obstacles to that goal."

    [Jan 18, 2017] In Stunning Pair Of Interviews, Trump Slams NATO And EU, Threatens BMW With Tax; Prepared To Cut Ties With Merkel Zero Hedg

    Jan 16, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    In two separate, and quite striking, interviews with Germany's Bild ( paywall ) and London's Sunday Times ( paywall ), Donald Trump did what he failed to do in his first US press conference, and covered an extensive amount of policy and strategy, much of which however will likely please neither the pundits, nor the markets.

    Among the numerous topics covered in the Bild interview, he called NATO obsolete, predicted that other European Union members would join the U.K. in leaving the bloc and threatened BMW with import duties over a planned plant in Mexico, according to a Sunday interview granted to Germany's Bild newspaper that will raise concerns in Berlin over trans-Atlantic relations. Furthermore, in his first "exclusive" interview in the UK granted to the Sunday Times, Trump said he will offer Britain a quick and "fair" trade deal with America within weeks of taking office to help make Brexit a "great thing". Trump revealed that he was inviting Theresa May to visit him "right after" he gets into the White House and wants a trade agreement between the two countries secured "very quickly".

    Trump told the Times that other countries would follow Britain's lead in leaving the European Union, claiming it had been deeply ­damaged by the migration crisis. "I think it's very tough," he said. "People, countries want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity."

    Elsewhere, quoted in German from a conversation held in English, Trump predicted Britain's exit from the EU will be a success and portrayed the EU as an instrument of German domination with the purpose of beating the U.S. in international trade. For that reason, Trump said, he's fairly indifferent whether the EU breaks up or stays together, according to Bild. According to Bloomberg , Trump's comments "leave little doubt that he will stick to campaign positions and may in some cases upend decades of U.S. foreign policy, putting him fundamentally at odds with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on issues from free trade and refugees to security and the EU's role in the world."

    Trump then attacked another carmarker, previosuly unnoticed by the president-elect, when he warned the United States will impose a border tax of 35 percent on cars that German carmaker BMW plans to build at a new plant in Mexico and export to the U.S. market . A BMW spokeswoman said a BMW Group plant in San Luis Potosi would build the BMW 3 Series starting from 2019, with the output intended for the world market. The plant in Mexico would be an addition to existing 3 Series production facilities in Germany and China. Trump said BMW should build its new car factory in the United States because this would be "much better" for the company.

    He went on to say Germany was a great car producer, borne out by Mercedes Benz cars being a frequent sight in New York, but there was no reciprocity. Germans were not buying Chevrolets at the same rate, he said, making the business relationship an unfair one-way street. He said he was an advocate of free trade, but not at any cost. The BMW spokeswoman said the company was "very much at home in the U.S.," employing directly and indirectly nearly 70,000 people in the country.

    Going back to foreign policy, Trump discussed his stance on Russia and suggested he might use economic sanctions imposed for Vladimir Putin's encroachment on Ukraine as leverage in nuclear-arms reduction talks, while NATO, he said, "has problems."

    "[ NATO] is obsolete, first because it was designed many, many years ago ," Bild quoted Trump as saying about the trans-Atlantic military alliance. "Secondly, countries aren't paying what they should" and NATO "didn't deal with terrorism."

    While those comments expanded on doubts Trump raised about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during his campaign, he reserved some of his most dismissive remarks for the EU and Merkel, whose open-border refugee policy he called a "catastrophic mistake." He further elaborated on this stance in the Times interview, where he said he was willing to lift Russian sanctions in return for a reduction in nuclear weapons.

    When asked about the prospect of a nuclear arms reduction deal with Russia, Trump told the newspaper in an interview: "For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that's part of it."

    Additionally, Trump said Brexit will turn out to be a "great thing." Trump said he would work very hard to get a trade deal with the United Kingdom "done quickly and done properly".

    Trump praised Britons for voting last year to leave the EU. People and countries want their own identity and don't want outsiders to come in and "destroy it." The U.K. is smart to leave the bloc because the EU "is basically a means to an end for Germany," Bild cited Trump as saying. " If you ask me, more countries will leave ," he was quoted as saying.

    While Trump blamed Brexit on an influx of refugees he said that Britain was forced to accept, the U.K.'s number of asylum applications in 2015 was a fraction of the 890,000 refugees who arrived in Germany that year at the peak of Europe's migrant crisis.

    With Merkel facing an unprecedented challenge from the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany as she seeks a fourth term this fall, Trump was asked whether he'd like to see her re-elected. He said he couldn't say, adding that while he respects Merkel, who's been in office for 11 years, he doesn't know her and she has hurt Germany by letting "all these illegals" into the country.

    Among Trump's other comments to Bild::

  • the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq may have been the worst in U.S. history;
  • that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, is a natural talent who will bring about an accord with Israel
  • Trump plans to keep using social media including Twitter once he's in the White House to sidestep the press and communicate directly with his followers
  • People entering the U.S. will face "extreme" security checks, possibly including some European nationals
  • But perhaps the most troubling, if only to legacy US diplomatic relations, was that, as the Times noted, "despite all of Mr Trump's expressions of admiration for Mr Putin and Mrs Merkel, he revealed that he was prepared to cut ties with both: "Well, I start off trusting both - but let's see how long that lasts. It may not last long at all."

    It is unclear if this litany of strategic and tactical announcements, many of which quite shocking in their audacity and scope, is merely meant to serve as a launching pad for further negotiations, something Trump has proven quite adept at doing by stunning his counterparties into a state of abrupt silence, or if these are actually meant to serve as a basis for future US policy; if it is the latter, when US markets reopen they may have a distinct case of indigestion because while the market had desperately hoped for more clarity out of Trump on his policies, what emerged in these two interview is hardly it.

    [Jan 17, 2017] I'll sell myself out in a lot of different ways, but I will never sell myself out for a check from BuzzFeed

    Jan 17, 2017 | washingtonbabylon.com

    See, I'm not surprised that BuzzFeed would do something as shady and unethical as exposing this Trump dossier that alleges he paid Russian sex workers for a golden shower show. Nope, literally nothing this loathsome, pathetic excuse for a "news" site does could ever surprise me. I can't understand why anyone would take a site seriously that posts things they admit cannot be verified.

    [Jan 17, 2017] Lavrov US diplomats frequently took part in Russian opposition rallies - RT News

    Notable quotes:
    "... If we talk about recruitment techniques, we did not publicize the full statistics on that. But most recently, in the past few years, especially during the second term of Obama's administration, that unfriendly activity towards our diplomats has been growing in scale ..."
    "... In addition to spying, US Embassy diplomats have repeatedly been seen taking part in the rallies of opposition, anti-government forces, unauthorized rallies, including times when they wore disguise. Do the math yourselves ..."
    "... absolutely the opposite ..."
    "... They [the US diplomats] go to Kaliningrad, Leningrad, Murmansk, Voronezh regions. They were seen repeatedly in Novorossiysk, in the Chechen Republic, along the border with Donbas [Eastern Ukraine], traveled literally up and down the country, ..."
    "... We've curbed intelligence activities of US officials who were working under diplomatic cover. There was the famous episode when a disguised diplomat wearing a wig and false eyebrows penetrated the building of the US embassy, refusing to present identification to the security officer and hitting the officer," ..."
    "... "All these have been traced, ..."
    "... "agents of American security services. ..."
    "... We contacted the US State Department at once, ..."
    "... "When [Secretary] John Kerry learned about it, they were terrified. It was a frame-up of the State Department! ..."
    "... time was lost" ..."
    "... This information has not yet been made public ... It is not customary to do so, but if there is such an aggressive, unfriendly rhetoric from the outgoing US administration, of course, it would not be superfluous to remind the public that such incidents have occurred repeatedly – attempts to pressure our diplomats and attempts to recruit them for different reasons and in different situations," ..."
    "... this indicates that Russian missions abroad really are under constant pressure, that there is constant work to gather intelligence [against us], and often conducted very aggressively. ..."
    "... This shows quite a hostile line towards Russia. We regret that Washington resorted to such methods, and we hope that in our bilateral relations in the future we will still be able to establish a higher level of mutual trust and mutual respect," ..."
    Jan 17, 2017 | www.rt.com

    US intelligence agencies have been actively trying to recruit senior Russian diplomats over the past several years, according to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who also said that US diplomats in Russia have engaged in espionage and took part in opposition rallies. " If we talk about recruitment techniques, we did not publicize the full statistics on that. But most recently, in the past few years, especially during the second term of Obama's administration, that unfriendly activity towards our diplomats has been growing in scale ," Lavrov said at a news conference on Tuesday.

    #Lavrov : US has increased efforts to recruit Russian diplomats in recent years - LIVE NOW https://t.co/cOq6cPjwfB https://t.co/SPlTpHqxKY pic.twitter.com/nJoM5XGpep

    - RT (@RT_com) January 17, 2017

    According to the minister, US diplomats have also engaged in espionage in Russia and actively participated in the rallies staged by Russian opposition forces.

    " In addition to spying, US Embassy diplomats have repeatedly been seen taking part in the rallies of opposition, anti-government forces, unauthorized rallies, including times when they wore disguise. Do the math yourselves ," Lavrov stated.

    Lavrov dismissed allegations made by the Obama administration, which complained that the US Embassy in Russia was forced to work under allegedly intolerable conditions, with the US Ambassador " cut off " from all contacts, saying that evidence shows the situation was " absolutely the opposite " – that the diplomats' movements were never restricted.

    " They [the US diplomats] go to Kaliningrad, Leningrad, Murmansk, Voronezh regions. They were seen repeatedly in Novorossiysk, in the Chechen Republic, along the border with Donbas [Eastern Ukraine], traveled literally up and down the country, " he said.

    Lavrov also said that the authorities have been able to thwart US diplomats trying to spy on Russia on a number of occasions.

    Read more US intel may have contributed to Russian ex-Foreign Minister Primakov's death – Zakharova

    " We've curbed intelligence activities of US officials who were working under diplomatic cover. There was the famous episode when a disguised diplomat wearing a wig and false eyebrows penetrated the building of the US embassy, refusing to present identification to the security officer and hitting the officer," Lavrov noted, while mentioning several other episodes involving US diplomats wearing disguises, including some when men dressed as women.

    "All these have been traced, " the minister stressed.

    To illustrate the damage that can be caused by the spy-wars being waged by the US intelligence community, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova revealed a scandal that took place in 2015 which may have been among the causes of death of legendary Russian statesman Evgeny Primakov. In an interview with Rossiya 1 TV on Sunday, Zakharova described an alleged attempt by US intelligence services to recruit a Russian diplomat that resulted in a delay in the delivery of a rare American medicine needed for Primakov's treatment.

    According to Zakharova, as a favor to its former chief, the Russian Foreign Ministry organized the purchase of the drug through a practicing US doctor. An embassy employee was supposed to pick up the package and deliver it to Moscow through diplomatic channels. However, he was stopped by people whom Zakharova described as "agents of American security services. " The diplomat was detained, and then eventually let go, but the drug was confiscated. When the unnamed intelligence agency didn't even repay the cost of the drug, which was about $10,000, the Foreign Ministry decided to complain to US authorities.

    " We contacted the US State Department at once, " Zakharova said. "When [Secretary] John Kerry learned about it, they were terrified. It was a frame-up of the State Department! "

    Zakharova said that, although Primakov lived for some time following the incident, precious " time was lost" due to the gaffe.

    The spokeswoman said the story shows the disarray in the Obama administration, while noting that she believes the American security services have been deliberately trying to undermine all diplomatic ties between the US and Russia.

    According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the unfriendly rhetoric of the outgoing US authorities is to blame for Tuesday's disclosure of US pressure techniques on Russian diplomats.

    " This information has not yet been made public ... It is not customary to do so, but if there is such an aggressive, unfriendly rhetoric from the outgoing US administration, of course, it would not be superfluous to remind the public that such incidents have occurred repeatedly – attempts to pressure our diplomats and attempts to recruit them for different reasons and in different situations," Peskov told the press.

    He added that " this indicates that Russian missions abroad really are under constant pressure, that there is constant work to gather intelligence [against us], and often conducted very aggressively.

    " This shows quite a hostile line towards Russia. We regret that Washington resorted to such methods, and we hope that in our bilateral relations in the future we will still be able to establish a higher level of mutual trust and mutual respect," Peskov stated.

    [Jan 17, 2017] US F-16 Photographed In Mock Dogfight With Russian Su-27 Above Area 51

    Jan 17, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    King Tut , Jan 17, 2017 9:56 PM

    After the fall of the Soviet Union all kinds of their military hardware went "missing" - "Lord of War" (a great movie) showed the sleazier side of the international arms trade.

    [Jan 17, 2017] If we assume that Trump is a narcissist he might go not after China, but after national security parasites who tried to pull J. Edgar Hoover on him.

    Jan 17, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Dan Kervick : , January 16, 2017 at 07:08 PM
    Whether Trump is seen by most of the public in the end as a "legitimate" president will be determined primarily by perceptions of his job performance.
    Chris G -> Dan Kervick... , January 16, 2017 at 07:28 PM
    He's got a lot of options for catastrophic failure - potential conflict with China coming to the forefront over the past week or so.* If he decides to have a go with them that will have an adverse effect on people's ability to buy cheap shit at WalMart. It could well adversely affect their ability to feed themselves. If that happens then I predict it will adversely affect his popularity.

    Trump is a narcissist. Popularity is of foremost importance to him. That noted, I'm skeptical that he's self-aware enough to recognize what actions he might take that people - as in essentially all of us, not just the ones who didn't vote for him - would hate him for. If given enough rope will he hang himself? Perhaps more significantly, how many of us will hang first?

    *Next week it'll be something new. Iran's probably due for a turn in the headlines before the winter is out. Perhaps a dust up with Putin in the spring?

    libezkova -> Chris G ... , January 16, 2017 at 08:30 PM
    If we assume that Trump is a narcissist, your analysis is all wrong. In this case he might go not after China, but after security parasites who tried to play J. Edgar Hoover on him. And try to destroy this scum.
    libezkova -> Dan Kervick... , -1
    Dan,

    "Whether Trump is seen by most of the public in the end as a "legitimate" president will be determined primarily by perceptions of his job performance."

    I am not so sure. People fought to block Hillary not to elect Trump. Hillary was the chosen candidate of the deep-state and international finance capital. They actually don't care if politician belong to 'D' or 'R' branch of the establishment party. They are only concerned how well they will serve the US led global neoliberal empire.

    That means that Trump deserves the "Benefit of the Doubt" in evaluation of his performance -- most people understand that he will be fighting on two fronts, with the deep state being one.

    [Jan 17, 2017] I'll sell myself out in a lot of different ways, but I will never sell myself out for a check from BuzzFeed

    Jan 17, 2017 | washingtonbabylon.com

    See, I'm not surprised that BuzzFeed would do something as shady and unethical as exposing this Trump dossier that alleges he paid Russian sex workers for a golden shower show. Nope, literally nothing this loathsome, pathetic excuse for a "news" site does could ever surprise me. I can't understand why anyone would take a site seriously that posts things they admit cannot be verified.

    [Jan 17, 2017] Hillary was the chosen candidate of the deep-state and international finance capital. They actually don't care if politician belong to 'D' or 'R' branch of the establishment party. They are only concerned how well they will serve the US led global neoliberal empire

    Jan 17, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Dan Kervick : January 16, 2017 at 07:08 PM

    Whether Trump is seen by most of the public in the end as a "legitimate" president will be determined primarily by perceptions of his job performance.

    Chris G -> Dan Kervick... , January 16, 2017 at 07:28 PM

    He's got a lot of options for catastrophic failure - potential conflict with China coming to the forefront over the past week or so.* If he decides to have a go with them that will have an adverse effect on people's ability to buy cheap shit at WalMart.

    It could well adversely affect their ability to feed themselves. If that happens then I predict it will adversely affect his popularity.

    Trump is a narcissist. Popularity is of foremost importance to him. That noted, I'm skeptical that he's self-aware enough to recognize what actions he might take that people - as in essentially all of us, not just the ones who didn't vote for him - would hate him for. If given enough rope will he hang himself? Perhaps more significantly, how many of us will hang first?

    *Next week it'll be something new. Iran's probably due for a turn in the headlines before the winter is out. Perhaps a dust up with Putin in the spring?

    libezkova -> Dan Kervick... , -1
    Dan,

    "Whether Trump is seen by most of the public in the end as a "legitimate" president will be determined primarily by perceptions of his job performance."

    I am not so sure. People fought to block Hillary not to elect Trump. Hillary was the chosen candidate of the deep-state and international finance capital. They actually don't care if politician belong to 'D' or 'R' branch of the establishment party. They are only concerned how well they will serve the US led global neoliberal empire.

    That means that Trump deserves the "Benefit of the Doubt" in evaluation of his performance -- most people understand that he will be fighting on two fronts, with the deep state being one.

    Jas11 -> libezkova... , January 16, 2017 at 08:40 PM
    The market reaction to Trumps surprise win pretty clearly indicates that Hillary was not the finance industries choice.

    If your that far off on this one, I'd bet your just as far off on the 'deep state', whatever that means.

    libezkova -> Jas11... , January 16, 2017 at 09:08 PM
    I agree that it is strange that we have "Trump rally" and that this rally somewhat contradicts my hypothesis (although not much if we analyze S&P 500 by sector, for example oil industry definitely should rally, no question about it).

    You forgot a very important nuance that S&P500 as a whole did much better that financial industry ETFs.

    People made a lot of money based on this recently.

    In any case, thank you for pointing this out.

    Ben Groves -> libezkova... , January 16, 2017 at 09:35 PM
    Trumps ties to de Rothschild is where you don't get it. Oh, what did Donald do in 2008 that got him in bad trouble..............GS left the Morgans in 2009 and finally that truth is coming out of the closet. My guess when Democrats come back into the WH, GS gets hurt bad bad bad.
    sanjait -> libezkova... , January 16, 2017 at 11:14 PM
    "You forgot a very important nuance that S&P500 as a whole did much better that financial industry ETFs."

    This is the exact opposite of what actually happened.

    Seriously, go look it up. The finance sector has been *by far* the biggest beneficiary of Trump's election, in terms of stock price movement.

    Seriously, go look it up. XLF, for example, vs S&P 500.

    libezkova -> sanjait... , January 17, 2017 at 03:20 AM
    Yes, from election day I am deeply wrong. For 2017, I am right.
    Dan Kervick -> libezkova... , January 17, 2017 at 04:59 AM
    Trump will likely do something bold militarily, very early in his administration, most likely directed against ISIS and related jihadi groups. He will partner with Russia in doing this.

    If it goes reasonably well, Putin will be our new best buddy in the war on terror. The media herd, responding with the usual America at War televised info-frenzy, will ramble en masse away from it's current obsession with Russian spying and hacking, and will instead be covering the war theater with embedded journalists in flak jackets and helmets. They will be interviewing, among others, Russian pilots and generals, newly discovered to be likable and sturdy vodka-slugging war heroes, and our allies against terrorists, not diabolical villains. They will regale the public with background stories about heroic Russian deeds of the past, including how they stopped Hitler in the snows of western Russia. Nobody will care any more about the details of the 2016 election, and the sad dead-enders who can't let it go.

    On the other hand, if it goes poorly, this will give the public even more opportunity to indulge conspiracy theories about false flags, Russian and American "deep state" subversion, crony-capitalist bribery, election meddling and the illegitimacy of the 2016 outcome, Russian state television propaganda, left-wing fifth columnists and traitors, etc.

    So that's what I mean when I say that Trump's perceived legitimacy will depend on how things go.

    Chris G -> Dan Kervick... , -1
    That sounds about right.

    [Jan 17, 2017] Get Paid Fighting Against Trump - Ads Across American Cities Reportedly Offer Money To Inauguration Agitators

    Standard color revolution methods came to the USA...
    Notable quotes:
    "... "Get Paid Fighting Against Trump" - Ads Across American Cities Reportedly Offer Money To Inauguration Agitators ..."
    "... Creation Date: 2016-12-02T00 ..."
    Jan 17, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    "Get Paid Fighting Against Trump" - Ads Across American Cities Reportedly Offer Money To Inauguration Agitators

    President-elect Donald Trump has complained about paid activists both before and after the 2016 presidential campaign, and as The Washington Times reports, he may have a point.

    Job ads running in more than 20 cities offer $2,500 per month for agitators to demonstrate at this week's presidential inauguration events.

    Demand Protest, a San Francisco company that bills itself as the "largest private grassroots support organization in the United States," posted identical ads Jan. 12 in multiple cities on Backpage.com seeking "operatives."

    "Get paid fighting against Trump!" says the ad.

    "We pay people already politically motivated to fight for the things they believe. You were going to take action anyways, why not do so with us!" the ad continues. "We are currently seeking operatives to help send a strong message at upcoming inauguration protests."

    The job offers a monthly retainer of $2,500 plus "our standard per-event pay of $50/hr, as long as you participate in at least 6 events a year," as well as health, vision and dental insurance for full-time operatives.

    An example of one of the ads...

    Source: Tulsa.backpage.com

    While there have been "fake" ads in the past, as The Washington Times notes , if the Demand Protest ads are ruses, however, someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to sell the scam.

    The classifieds are running in at least two dozen cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas and Houston, and the company operates a slick website that includes contact information.

    A San Francisco phone number listed on the website was answered with a voice-mail message identifying the company by name. A request for comment left Monday evening was not immediately returned.

    The website, which says that the company has provided 1,817 operatives for 48 campaigns, promises "deniability," assuring clients that "we can ensure that all actions will appear genuine to media and public observers."

    "We are strategists mobilizing millennials across the globe with seeded audiences and desirable messages," says the website. "With absolute discretion a top priority, our operatives create convincing scenes that become the building blocks of massive movements. When you need the appearance of outrage, we are able to deliver it at scale while keeping your reputation intact."

    A search by the Washington Times showed the Backpage.com ads also ran in Austin, Charlotte, Colorado Springs, Columbus, Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Fort Worth, Jacksonville, Oakland, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tulsa, and Washington, D.C.

    Bollixed -> Captain Chlamydia , Jan 17, 2017 7:36 PM

    Looks like they're full...

    https://www.demandprotest.com/recruitment/

    Dormouse -> Bollixed , Jan 17, 2017 7:44 PM

    Sounds like these groups could be easily infiltrated. Unless there's a useful-idiot IQ test before hand.

    evoila -> Dormouse , Jan 17, 2017 7:46 PM

    Can't these people be busted under RICO or something?

    Ignatius -> evoila , Jan 17, 2017 7:59 PM

    "Hey, dad, I got a job!"

    Malaka -> Dormouse , Jan 17, 2017 7:50 PM

    https://www.demandprotest.com/

    Domain Name: demandprotest.com Registry Domain ID: Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.google.com Registrar URL: https://domains.google.com Updated Date: 2017-01-04T00:00:00Z

    Creation Date: 2016-12-02T00:00:00Z

    Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2017-12-02T00:00:00Z Registrar: Google Inc. Registrar IANA ID: 895 Registrar Abuse Contact Email: Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.8772376466

    Domain Status: ok https://www.icann.org/epp#ok Registry Registrant ID: Registrant Name: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 124951702 Registrant Organization: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 124951702 Registrant Street: 96 Mowat Ave Registrant City: Toronto Registrant State/Province: ON Registrant Postal Code: M4K 3K1 Registrant Country: CA Registrant Phone: +1.4165385487 Registrant Phone Ext: Registrant Fax: Registrant Fax Ext: Registrant Email:

    http://www.disruptj20.org/

    Prank Time! A Deplorable Favorite Pasttime!

    J S Bach -> WTFMOFO , Jan 17, 2017 7:27 PM

    Trump needs to become his own George Soros (forgive the comparison, Donald) and fund his own "Get Paid For Fighting FOR Trump" campaign.

    bobbbny -> J S Bach , Jan 17, 2017 7:29 PM

    It appears thatDJT has never had to pay his supporters anything.

    nmewn -> bobbbny , Jan 17, 2017 7:38 PM

    lmao!!!..."All our operatives have access to our 24/7 phone help desk in addition to in-person support at events."

    HELLO? HELP! I GOT LOST I'M GETTING MY ASS MUGGED BY THREE BLACK DUDES ONLY FIVE BLOCKS FROM THE WH!

    "What? Who is this? How did you get this number? You sound like a racist Trump supporter!"

    (click)...lol.

    1980XLS d WTFMOFO •Jan 17, 2017 7:32 PM

    Fuck unemployment. Sue them for unjust termination after the Jig is Over.

    Mazzy d Mazzy •Jan 17, 2017 7:27 PM

    For example:

    $17 per hour (makes it seem more real than a common number such as 15) for operative/protestor. Bus transportation will be provided. Paid half upon arrival at destination, half upon return.

    Bus will be located at address xxxx on yyyyy street (in front of local democrat councilman's house, or local university professor...be creative, make it hilarious).


    nmewn -> Mazzy •Jan 17, 2017 7:28 PM

    I like the way you think...lol.

    Mazzy -> nmewn •Jan 17, 2017 7:32 PM

    Or just tell them to meet on the Quad/Square/Commons of the local college/university. Say that they will be meeting some professor of 'whatever', just look it up and come up with something plausible.

    Say that the bus will transport them to the nearest city or nearest larger city or the state capitol or whatever. Again, be plausible and convincing. Be creative and cross check before you post. I think we can pull this off.

    Think of the hilarity when a bunch of Hilary fems/mancucks or hundreds of angry Obama's sons show up and there's no payment.....

    MASTER OF UNIVERSE •Jan 17, 2017 7:33 PM

    Participatory Democracy has improved with monetary inducements for those that demonstrate, but when demonstrators make the same pay grade as the Police Officers hired by the State we will have equality of opportunity without disparity between protagonists & antagonists which would likely be better than what we see now.

    Fake Capitalism ain't worth minimum wage, motherfuckers!

    Sinnycool •Jan 17, 2017 8:20 PM

    Just imagine if the situation was reversed and the Trump camp was advertising for paid goons to prevent President-Elect-Hillary's inauguration.

    The media outcry would be heard on Mars and the National Guard if not the army would be deployed to detain and charge them.

    Trump himself would be at least threatened with the crime of aiding and abetting treason and his close associates would be placed in preventative detention for six months.

    It is hard to avoid the conclusion that having now de-legitimised Trump's election win, the "powers that be" are working up to openly carry out a public coup against the president-elect of their own country. As their attempts have been failing they have been escalating their methodology.

    They have become so used to doing it to other countries and their rationalisation is the same: what we define as evil can and will be destroyed using whatever means are necessary.

    [Jan 17, 2017] Is Politically Correct or Jingoistic Reporting Fake News - The Unz Review

    Jan 17, 2017 | www.unz.com
    What Russia's crime consisted of, by the most damaging interpretation, was hacking into a private server belonging to a political party and possibly allowing the admittedly factual but embarrassing material obtained to make its way into the media. Excuse me, but that is what intelligence agencies do routinely to justify their multiple billion dollar budgets. The United States is the world leader in such activity as revealed by Jim Bamford's books on the subject and also through the revelations obtained in the Snowden papers. Now Russia is being condemned for possibly doing some of the same, though no evidence is being provided, and the story is being framed as if we are by definition the good guys and Vladimir Putin is the devil incarnate.

    What I am saying is that the United States mainstream media is the primary source of fake news due to its inbuilt biases on what is acceptable and what is not. It actually hurts black people by its attempts to be protective and its unwillingness to consider a news story through the eyes of the other party for chauvinistic reasons means that Americans are particularly uninformed about what is going on in the world. To suggest that all of this is particularly dangerous, both in terms of domestic tranquility and possible foreign threats, would be an understatement.

    [Jan 16, 2017] Who is blackmailing the president ? by Eric Zuesse

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Democrats can only turn this decade-long collapse around by not being who they appeared to be in the last three election cycles." He yet again is a Democratic-Party sucker by his bald assumption that it wasn't "who they appeared to be," it's instead what they were and still are, which is disgusting and which was overwhelmingly supported by Democrats supporting Obama -- they even voted for his war against Russia, and backed almost 100% his bloody coup which overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine -- right next door to Russia. ..."
    "... What would we Americans think if Russia had perpetrated a coup in Mexico? ..."
    Jan 16, 2017 | www.washingtonsblog.com
    Eric Zuesse 2 days ago

    This article caused me to lose respect for 'Gaius Publius', because of his statements so prejudicial and presumption-laden, so trusting in what liars (including especially Trump) have said, as, "As horrible and as monstrous as this incoming administration is - and it will prove to be the worst in American history" -- which presumes that Trump will certainly turn out to have been even worse than George W. Bush and Barack Obama, which means that 'Gaius Publius' doesn't understand what the competition for that title, "the worst in American history," really is and how vile and evil and harmful they were, such as Obama's having tried to push Russia to the very brink of war (and Hillary Clinton would have pushed it beyond the brink, by her insisting upon establishing a "no-fly zone" in Syria, shooting down Russian planes and forcing Russia to shoot down American planes there). 'Gaius Publius' is a Democratic Party sucker there, blind to Obama's (and especially Clinton's) evil. Then he says:

    "Democrats can only turn this decade-long collapse around by not being who they appeared to be in the last three election cycles." He yet again is a Democratic-Party sucker by his bald assumption that it wasn't "who they appeared to be," it's instead what they were and still are, which is disgusting and which was overwhelmingly supported by Democrats supporting Obama -- they even voted for his war against Russia, and backed almost 100% his bloody coup which overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine -- right next door to Russia.

    What would we Americans think if Russia had perpetrated a coup in Mexico? Would we feel safe from their missiles? How blind can Democrats be? It's why I quit the Party.

    'Gaius Publius' is just a fool, someone who can't get rid of his assumptions once they've become false. How is he any smarter than Republicans, who are long-infamous for being precisely such fools?

    This article has some true parts, but the person who wrote it is a fool. Lots of fools mix falsehoods in with truths, instead of believe only falsehoods. Those fools are harder to detect, but that also makes even more important the reader's being on guard against believing what such 'over-educated' fools say or write. 'Gaius Publius' hasn't absorbed the reality of the Clinton-Obama-led Democratic Party. It's disgusting.

    [Jan 16, 2017] Has the imperator surrounded himself with the wrong praetorians?

    Notable quotes:
    "... Define unprecedented. What are your standards for a "major western nation"? Any moral standard? Do they include blowing up countries, using militarized spooks with unlimited secret funding? ..."
    "... In tilting with the CIA, Trump is a saint. ..."
    "... The meme that Trump will "get US into war" is a Clinton loser-whiner meme! Delusional and misleading; the neocon Clinton would have done Putin first CIA fictional, regime change excuse the yellow press could spread. ..."
    Jan 16, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    reason : January 16, 2017 at 02:25 AM
    Just as an aside - not really economics, but I am really worrying about what the war between the future white house team and the CIA that seems to be brewing. I don't see good solutions to this. It is sort of unprecedented in a major western country. Can you think of a similar case (where the intelligence services - and perhaps the military as well regarded there own government head as an enemy agent)?
    reason -> reason ... , January 16, 2017 at 03:02 AM
    Perhaps MI5 and Wilson?
    Fang__z -> reason ... , January 16, 2017 at 04:03 AM
    Canaris and Hitler. :p
    ilsm -> reason ... , January 16, 2017 at 04:41 AM
    Henry VI Pt2

    dems playing Yorks

    put the CIA in

    the Tower

    CIA been the neocon

    payroll too long

    who told you Soviets

    were never going

    tp collapse

    ilsm -> reason ... , January 16, 2017 at 04:49 AM
    Define unprecedented. What are your standards for a "major western nation"? Any moral standard? Do they include blowing up countries, using militarized spooks with unlimited secret funding?

    If you side with the devil what are you?

    In tilting with the CIA, Trump is a saint.

    jonny bakho -> reason ... , January 16, 2017 at 05:03 AM
    Don't worry. Be happy. Nothing can be done now.The voters wanted someone to "shake things up"
    Trump will be applying creative destruction to government
    Obama failed to drive the NeoCons out of government. Trump may do so, but the replacement might be fundamentally more corrupt.

    As with Obamacare, the idea is to destroy it and replace it with something better.
    Most revolutions find it easy to destroy and very much harder to build
    Most sane leaders recognize this difficulty and modify the existing rather than destroy and never getting around to replacement or find the replacement to be worse than the existing.

    Looters on the other hand love destruction. The resulting chaos affords them more opportunity to get windfalls. Trump will give the voters the radical change they think they want. But Trump will use the destruction as an opportunity for personal gain. The public will be left with a gutted government that will need to be rebuilt before it will function again

    Chris G -> jonny bakho... , January 16, 2017 at 05:06 AM
    One quibble: The destruction he applies will not be creative. It will be thorough but entirely unimaginative.
    reason -> jonny bakho... , January 16, 2017 at 07:24 AM
    I don't believe in "creative destruction", I believe in "destructive creation" which is something quite different. But that is not the point. This is not about the government as such, it is about the security apparatus in itself. It could get very nasty if that ends up either totally alienated or politicized.
    Chris G -> reason ... , January 16, 2017 at 05:03 AM
    If I were President, provoking an organization whose specialty is covert operations and which has track record of bringing about the demise of insufficiently agreeable leaders would not be high on my to-do list.
    ilsm -> Chris G ... , January 16, 2017 at 05:20 AM
    Has the imperator surrounded himself with the wrong praetorians?
    Peter K. -> reason ... , January 16, 2017 at 05:37 AM
    Why do you think a war is brewing? What do you think is going to happen?

    They'll give him bad intel like they did with Bush?

    ilsm -> Peter K.... , January 16, 2017 at 05:44 AM
    The meme that Trump will "get US into war" is a Clinton loser-whiner meme! Delusional and misleading; the neocon Clinton would have done Putin first CIA fictional, regime change excuse the yellow press could spread.
    Peter K. -> ilsm... , January 16, 2017 at 05:54 AM
    Trump is an isolationist who repeatedly said the Iraq war was a disaster, which it was.

    If the CIA is going after Trump they're doing a bad job. The worst they could come up with is some unverified accounts that Trump likes pee-pee parties.

    reason -> Peter K.... , January 16, 2017 at 07:29 AM
    Because they are already reportedly telling some of their contacts not to trust the government with information in case it ends up with hostile governments. Maybe using the word "war" is misleading. Maybe "cold war" is more accurate, but in general I mean a state of mutual distrust.

    [Jan 16, 2017] Gaius Publius analysys of who is blackmailing the president is so prejudicial and presumption-laden that trusting it would be unwise by Eric Zuesse

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Democrats can only turn this decade-long collapse around by not being who they appeared to be in the last three election cycles." He yet again is a Democratic-Party sucker by his bald assumption that it wasn't "who they appeared to be," it's instead what they were and still are, which is disgusting and which was overwhelmingly supported by Democrats supporting Obama -- they even voted for his war against Russia, and backed almost 100% his bloody coup which overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine -- right next door to Russia. ..."
    "... What would we Americans think if Russia had perpetrated a coup in Mexico? ..."
    Jan 16, 2017 | www.washingtonsblog.com
    Eric Zuesse 2 days ago

    This article caused me to lose respect for 'Gaius Publius', because of his statements so prejudicial and presumption-laden, so trusting in what liars (including especially Trump) have said, as, "As horrible and as monstrous as this incoming administration is - and it will prove to be the worst in American history" -- which presumes that Trump will certainly turn out to have been even worse than George W. Bush and Barack Obama, which means that 'Gaius Publius' doesn't understand what the competition for that title, "the worst in American history," really is and how vile and evil and harmful they were, such as Obama's having tried to push Russia to the very brink of war (and Hillary Clinton would have pushed it beyond the brink, by her insisting upon establishing a "no-fly zone" in Syria, shooting down Russian planes and forcing Russia to shoot down American planes there). 'Gaius Publius' is a Democratic Party sucker there, blind to Obama's (and especially Clinton's) evil. Then he says:

    "Democrats can only turn this decade-long collapse around by not being who they appeared to be in the last three election cycles." He yet again is a Democratic-Party sucker by his bald assumption that it wasn't "who they appeared to be," it's instead what they were and still are, which is disgusting and which was overwhelmingly supported by Democrats supporting Obama -- they even voted for his war against Russia, and backed almost 100% his bloody coup which overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine -- right next door to Russia.

    What would we Americans think if Russia had perpetrated a coup in Mexico? Would we feel safe from their missiles? How blind can Democrats be? It's why I quit the Party.

    'Gaius Publius' is just a fool, someone who can't get rid of his assumptions once they've become false. How is he any smarter than Republicans, who are long-infamous for being precisely such fools?

    This article has some true parts, but the person who wrote it is a fool. Lots of fools mix falsehoods in with truths, instead of believe only falsehoods. Those fools are harder to detect, but that also makes even more important the reader's being on guard against believing what such 'over-educated' fools say or write. 'Gaius Publius' hasn't absorbed the reality of the Clinton-Obama-led Democratic Party. It's disgusting.

    [Jan 16, 2017] Gaius Publius Who is Blackmailing the President Why Arent Democrats Upset About It by Gaius Publius,

    Highly recommended!
    Recommended !
    Notable quotes:
    "... The CIA and NSA (the largest part of the "national security state") were intruding politically in the other direction , by endorsing Clinton and demonizing Trump ..."
    "... For months , the CIA, with unprecedented clarity, overtly threw its weight behind Hillary Clinton's candidacy and sought to defeat Donald Trump. ..."
    "... It is not hard to understand why the CIA preferred Clinton over Trump. Clinton was critical of Obama for restraining the CIA's proxy war in Syria and was eager to expand that war , while Trump denounced it . ..."
    "... This is not a game, even at the electoral level. It has nation-changing, anti-democratic consequences. Democratic voters fear a coup, or a kind of coup, led by the Trump administration, and for good reason. But there's another coup in the making as well, and Democrats are cheering it. ..."
    "... Yet the following actually did happen (Greenwald again, my emphasis): "Just last week, Chuck Schumer issued a warning to Trump, telling Rachel Maddow that Trump was being 'really dumb' by challenging the unelected intelligence community because of all the ways they possess to destroy those who dare to stand up to them ." And yet there was no shock or fear, at least from Maddow or her viewers. ..."
    "... And Schumer really did use the phrase "they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you." The video is embedded here . Is that how Democrats plan to defeat Trump? Is it better, more comforting, if a Democrat makes that threat and appears to side with the security agencies' (the deep state's) strong-arm tactics? ..."
    "... A coup in the making - not the one we fear, which may also occur - but a coup nonetheless. This really is not a game, and both sides are playing for keeps. ..."
    Jan 16, 2017 | www.washingtonsblog.com

    The CIA and NSA (the largest part of the "national security state") were intruding politically in the other direction , by endorsing Clinton and demonizing Trump (my emphasis):

    For months , the CIA, with unprecedented clarity, overtly threw its weight behind Hillary Clinton's candidacy and sought to defeat Donald Trump.

    In August, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell announced his endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed that "Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." The CIA and NSA director under George W. Bush, Gen. Michael Hayden, also endorsed Clinton, and went to the Washington Post to warn , in the week before the election, that "Donald Trump really does sound a lot like Vladimir Putin," adding that Trump is "the useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited."

    It is not hard to understand why the CIA preferred Clinton over Trump. Clinton was critical of Obama for restraining the CIA's proxy war in Syria and was eager to expand that war , while Trump denounced it .

    Now Trump is president and the pro-war national security forces are at it again, leaning again on Trump in yet another intrusion into the political process .

    So who again tried to tilt the field for or against Clinton or Trump? Including Russia, the administration, Comey, agents of the FBI and NY police, the CIA and national security forces, I count five groups. This is a lot of political intrusion, regardless of which candidate you favored - all within the last year - and we're still not done. I'm sure we're only halfway through this extended drama.

    The Selective Blindness of the Democratic Party

    Third, with all this political interference, where are the Democrats? Do they condemn it all, praise it all, or pick and choose?

    Bottom line: They see what they want to see, not what's in front of us all and in plain sight. Which is not only unprincipled, it's dangerous for them as well as us.

    Again, they did not see Obama's original declarations of Clinton's innocence as political intrusion. But they did see Comey's eventual "won't indict, but will condemn" speech, and his and other investigators' pre-election actions, as political intrusion. They did not see the "pro-war" security apparatus' endorsement of Clinton and trashing of Trump as intrusions. But they do see Russian interference as intrusion. And they absolutely don't see the security services' present blackmail threats against a duly elected president as political interference.

    They see what they want to see, what they think helps them politically and electorally, and they're blind to the rest. This is highly unprincipled. And again, it's dangerous as well.

    After all, one reason the institutional Democratic Party nearly lost to Sanders, a highly principled man - and did lose to Trump, a man who pretended to be principled - is that plenty of voters in key states were just tired of being taken for a ride by "say one thing, do another" Democrats. Tired, in other words, of unprincipled Democrats - tired of job-promising. job-killing trade deals pushed hard by both Democratic presidents, tired of the bank bailout that made every banker whole but rescued almost no mortgagees , tired of their reduced lives , their mountain of personal debt , tired of the overly complex, profit-infected, still-unsolved medical care system - tired of what 16 years of Democrats had done to them, not for them.

    If Democrats want to start winning again, not just the White House, but Congress and state houses, they can't continue to be these Democrats - unprincipled and self-serving. They must be those Democrats, Sanders Democrats, principled Democrats instead.

    Does the above litany of complaint about political interference when it suits them, and non-complaint when it doesn't, look like principled behavior to you?

    Which brings me to the end of this part of the discussion. If some people see this party behavior as self-serving hypocrisy, you can bet others do as well. Democrats can only turn this decade-long collapse around by not being who they appeared to be in the last three election cycles. They have to attract the Sanders voters who stood aside in the general election and see them very negatively. Yes, Democrats will continue to get votes - some people will always vote Democratic. But in the post-Sanders, post-Trump era, will they get enough votes to turn the current tide, which runs heavily against them?

    I'm not alone in thinking, not a chance.

    But this is the long form of what I wanted to say. For the elevator speech version, just read the three tweets at the top. I think they capture the main points very nicely.

    Glenn Greenwald: "The Deep State Goes to War with the President-Elect, and Democrats Cheer"

    Greenwald's take is very similar to mine, and there's much more research in his excellent piece . Writing at The Intercept , he says (emphasis in original):

    The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer

    In January, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction's power even further.

    This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as "Fake News."

    Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party , seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing - eager - to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.

    You can see where this is going. The "deep state," the CIA, NSA and the rest of the unelected national security apparatus of the U.S., is going to war with an elected president even before he takes office, and Democrats are so eager for a win that they're siding with them.

    Did Russia attempt to interfere in the U.S. election? Of course, and Democrats condemned it. Did the agents of the FBI et al attempt to interfere in the U.S. election? Of course, and Democrats condemned it. Is the national security state today interfering in the outcome of a U.S. election, by trying to destabilize and force its will on the incoming administration? Of course, and Democrats are cheering it.

    As horrible and as monstrous as this incoming administration is - and it will prove to be the worst in American history - who would aid the national security apparatus in undermining it?

    Apparently, the Democratic Party. Greenwald continues:

    The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.

    But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth - despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie - is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.

    And Greenwald agrees that this tactic is not just craven; it's also dangerous:

    Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?

    All of this, don't forget, rests on the one document mentioned above , the material summarized in an appendix to the classified version of the security services' report on Russia (emphasis mine):

    the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump , accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.

    I'll send you to the Greenwald piece for much more of this detail. As I said above, this story has seemed muddy until now, but it just came clear.

    A Coup in the Making

    This is not a game, even at the electoral level. It has nation-changing, anti-democratic consequences. Democratic voters fear a coup, or a kind of coup, led by the Trump administration, and for good reason. But there's another coup in the making as well, and Democrats are cheering it.

    If a Republican elected official had publicly warned Obama not oppose a policy the Republicans and the CIA/NSA favored because "they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you," what would - what should - our response to that be? Mine would be horror and shock that a Republican had dared make that threat, followed by fear that he, and the agencies behind him, will make good on it. At which point, it's farewell democracy, likely for a long long time.

    Yet the following actually did happen (Greenwald again, my emphasis): "Just last week, Chuck Schumer issued a warning to Trump, telling Rachel Maddow that Trump was being 'really dumb' by challenging the unelected intelligence community because of all the ways they possess to destroy those who dare to stand up to them ." And yet there was no shock or fear, at least from Maddow or her viewers.

    And Schumer really did use the phrase "they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you." The video is embedded here . Is that how Democrats plan to defeat Trump? Is it better, more comforting, if a Democrat makes that threat and appears to side with the security agencies' (the deep state's) strong-arm tactics?

    A coup in the making - not the one we fear, which may also occur - but a coup nonetheless. This really is not a game, and both sides are playing for keeps.

    By Gaius Publius, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius, Tumblr and Facebook. GP article archive here. Originally published at DownWithTyranny

    [Jan 16, 2017] If DNI Clapper is telling the truth, then the ICA was prepared in a manner that violated the very tradecraft regarding the preparation of intelligence community analytical products

    Notable quotes:
    "... The implication inherent in DNI Clapper's revelation is that the classified information relied upon by the Intelligence Community was so specific as to its nature, and so critical and central to the judgments made in the ICA, that it could not be worked around to the extent necessary to shield its specific source from the analysts in the INR. ..."
    "... If DNI Clapper is telling the truth, then the ICA was prepared in a manner that violated the very tradecraft regarding the preparation of intelligence community analytical products he proudly cited to underpin the credibility of the ICA. It also implies that the intelligence community was comfortable with excluding from one of the most important assessments of Russian intent in modern times the very agency, the Department of State, that deals with the Russians on a broad spectrum of issues on a daily basis, and as such would be ideally positioned to weigh in on issues such as Russian intent – especially that of its leader, Vladimir Putin. ..."
    Jan 16, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    fresno dan , January 15, 2017 at 8:29 am

    Exposing The Man Behind The Curtain Scott Ritter, Huffington Post (Fiver). Important.

    "We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election." This statement was false when it was made by Hillary Clinton, on October 9, 2016, referring to the aforementioned October 7 joint statement by DHS and the ODNI; as was the case for the Russian ICA, the joint statement drew upon only three of the 16 agencies (the 17th is the ODNI, which is a coordinating body, not a separate intelligence agency), the only intelligence agencies involved in crafting the underlying assessments and judgments were the FBI, CIA and NSA.

    When one dissects the nuts and bolts that hold the Russian ICA together, the framework is actually quite weak. The FBI, the sole agency responsible for intelligence derived from a domestic source (i.e., the DNC server and John Podesta) has acknowledged that it has had no direct access to the servers involved, and was compelled to carry out its investigation based upon the technical report of a private cyber security company, Crowdstrike, brought in by the DNC in April 2016***.
    ..
    It was interesting to note that DNI Clapper told the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, in open session on January 10, 2016, that the State Department, in particular its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was excluded from participating in the preparation of the classified ICA because of "sensitivity of sources." This seems to be a unique circumstance, as the Senator who asked the question noted; INR analysts possess the highest level of security clearances that grant them access to a broad range of highly classified sources of intelligence.

    The implication inherent in DNI Clapper's revelation is that the classified information relied upon by the Intelligence Community was so specific as to its nature, and so critical and central to the judgments made in the ICA, that it could not be worked around to the extent necessary to shield its specific source from the analysts in the INR.

    This exclusion, however, would cut across the entire intelligence community, given the "need to know" caveats attached to most, if not all, sensitive information of this nature. If this was, indeed, the standard applied, then it would also exclude from participation in preparation of the ICA many of the CIA's own analysts, and most, if not all, of the academics recruited to fill positions within the National Intelligence Council, the arm of the ODNI responsible for overseeing the production of multi-agency assessments like the ICA on Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.

    If DNI Clapper is telling the truth, then the ICA was prepared in a manner that violated the very tradecraft regarding the preparation of intelligence community analytical products he proudly cited to underpin the credibility of the ICA. It also implies that the intelligence community was comfortable with excluding from one of the most important assessments of Russian intent in modern times the very agency, the Department of State, that deals with the Russians on a broad spectrum of issues on a daily basis, and as such would be ideally positioned to weigh in on issues such as Russian intent – especially that of its leader, Vladimir Putin.

    ==================================================================
    It may seem like a small lie, 3 bureaucracies instead of 17, but it is is an innate characteristic of these institutions and individuals. They spread a lot of disinformation. And than of course, the lying by omission.

    Its a complete and thorough "assessment" .except for the fact that all those cynics, skeptics, and anyone with the expertise to refute the dubious assumptions and obvious biases of the CIA were excluded.

    So, the CIA says "WE ALL AGREE" – does anyone know of a MSM that has pointed out that the "intelligence report" is a consensus ONLY because anybody who disagreed was left off???

    ***
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-penetrated-dnc-stole-opposition-research-on-trump/2016/06/14/cf006cb4-316e-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?utm_term=.c9e570cc61fc

    One group, which CrowdStrike had dubbed Cozy Bear, had gained access last summer and was monitoring the DNC's email and chat communications, Alperovitch said.

    The other, which the firm had named Fancy Bear, broke into the network in late April and targeted the opposition research files. It was this breach that set off the alarm. The hackers stole two files, Henry said. And they had access to the computers of the entire research staff - an average of about several dozen on any given day.

    The computers contained research going back years on TRUMP. "It's a huge job" to dig into the dealings of somebody who has never run for office before, Dacey said.

    CrowdStrike is not sure how the hackers got in. The firm suspects they may have targeted DNC employees with "spearphishing" emails. These are communications that appear legitimate - often made to look like they came from a colleague or someone trusted - but that contain links or attachments that when clicked on deploy malicious software that enables a hacker to gain access to a computer. "But WE DON'T HAVE HARD EVIDENCE," Alperovitch said.

    ===================================
    Soooo .the DNC is mad that Russia got all their Trump Opo dirt for free?

    HBE , January 15, 2017 at 10:42 am

    Great detailed piece, and on huffpo no less.

    Then I checked the comments (only 12 in 3 days), of which all were of the "OMG Russians" or "the IC must be trusted" variety.

    It appears huffpo buried this affront to it's general narrative somewhere deep, so as not risk a distortion to it's well manicured bubble.

    Not that they needed to, as the few comments on the buried piece illustrate the bubble has become self sustaining.

    WJ , January 15, 2017 at 10:59 am

    Ritter's piece is unfortunately too detailed and informative–too accurate, in a word–for the vast majority of the screen-reading populace, the credentialed among whom are much dumber and less cultured than their working-class forebears. It's much less taxing to read Jeff Bezos's Blog while ordering your no-whip vanilla latte than trying to work through the far-reaching implications of Ritter's analysis.

    fresno dan , January 15, 2017 at 11:51 am

    WJ
    January 15, 2017 at 10:59 am

    Poor Ritter – doomed to be this era's Cassandra. Or maybe poor us (poor "US" as in USA) – doomed to ignore the truthful and listen to the liars ..

    and the population all composed of Hamilton Burgers*

    *Hamilton Burger was the rather obtuse District Attorney who charged the clients of Perry Mason with crimes, when week after ween, month after month, year after year the clients would be exonerated*** Most people would have long ago figured out not to charge people Perry Mason was defending, but this DA never learned .

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Mason_(TV_series)
    ***When asked by a fan why Perry Mason won every case, Burr told her, "But madam, you see only the cases I try on Saturday."[61]:590
    Mason is known to have lost, in some form or manner, three cases-"The Case of the Terrified Typist", "The Case of the Witless Witness", and "The Case of the Deadly Verdict".[72]

    polecat , January 15, 2017 at 12:32 pm

    Why read Ritter . when you can just 'turn on' to Mara liasson ,or lachml Singh, or any of the assorted stenographic heathers on N P R ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

    I don't see Scott tossing out tote bags to the rabble

    Montanamaven , January 15, 2017 at 5:07 pm

    Yeh, but Ritter also inserts this into the piece.

    These failures are furthered when one incorporates the shortcomings of American intelligence analysis behind the failure to accurately predict the Russian actions against Georgia in 2008, the annexation of the Crimea in 2014, and the intervention in Syria in 2015 – in short, the track record of the very intelligence community that produced the ICA addressing allegations of a Russian influence campaign targeting the 2016 US Presidential election is not impressive.

    lyman alpha blob , January 15, 2017 at 8:23 pm

    I took that to mean that the IC was too stupid to figure out that Russia would not just sit back and do nothing while the US interfered in their sphere of influence, not necessarily that Russia was the instigator.

    susan the other , January 15, 2017 at 10:56 am

    Why hasn't anybody demanded to see CrowdStrike's pedigree beyond its vague vetting (?) by the DNC? A private company that has remained anonymous except for its name – well that makes no sense. Or rather, it makes the DNC look even worse.

    Pat , January 15, 2017 at 11:13 am

    Not to mention that one thing that no one seems to be disputing is that DNC cyber security was terrible to non-existent, so their judgment in this area can be considered weak at best.

    Katniss Everdeen , January 15, 2017 at 11:30 am

    That would be the function of a "principled press," the position of which can be summarized as "Trump and Putin sittin' in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G."

    Still, I can't help but wonder if the "principled" press and the "intelligence" community have not painted themselves into a corner. With Trump and Putin portrayed as locked in a loving embrace and isis seemingly dropped off the face of the earth, should Trump meet with a tragic "accident," whom will the public blame?

    craazyboy , January 15, 2017 at 11:32 am

    Because Alperovitch is also on the Atlantic Council(neocons-NATO) and also has very close ties to Ukraine Nationals? Reaching across the aisle and bi-partisian support, methinks.

    craazyboy , January 15, 2017 at 11:18 am

    CrowdStrike is fullokrap

    "spearphishing" – See Podesta dump for screenshots of phishing site asking for Podesta to enter his id and password.

    The so called "unique" Russian exploit techniques are old, and can be done by many other reasonably competent hackers.

    Surprising to me is that no one yet has mentioned that a real state hacker would hide her IP behind probably multiple large VPN networks. There might be some way of setting up "spoof servers" too, but I'm nowhere competent enough in this subject to say anything with much certainty. Other than CrowdStrike is full of crap.

    Katniss Everdeen , January 15, 2017 at 11:33 am

    Maybe "crowdstrike" is the hacking version of "correct" the record.

    Arizona Slim , January 15, 2017 at 12:41 pm

    Spearphishing? Welcome to my e-mail in box!

    If I'm not getting e-mails urging me to update some password or the other, I'm getting tales of woe regarding package delivery or something going wrong with an account of a bank I've never used.

    Do I respond? Nope. Do I click on the links or open the attachments in these e-mails? Uh-uh.

    So, am I now in the running for a position at the DNC?

    craazyboy , January 15, 2017 at 1:26 pm

    Possibly a DNC IT guru?

    Oregoncharles , January 15, 2017 at 4:57 pm

    No, you're specifically disqualified.

    How else are they going to lose to Trump, of all people, next time?

    cnchal , January 15, 2017 at 12:48 pm

    Here is the damning part, economics unwise.

    Errors have been made by the Intelligence Community in the past and, given the punishing reality of a fair and open society, and the scrutiny of a free press contained within, these failures have been exposed – sometimes ruthlessly so – for all the world to see. From the reversal of the Intelligence Community's stance on the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program, underestimating the scope and reach of the threat of the Islamic State, and the exaggeration of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the shortcomings of the intelligence assessments and estimates conducted by the IC over the past two decades – the period spanning the careers of those who continue to provide the analysis that underpinned these highlighted erroneous conclusions and findings – the public history of the failures of the judgment of the American intelligence community is extensive and uncomplimentary.

    This represents massive overhead that can't even be ditched as sunk costs. Keeping this "intelligence" enterprise going is embedded in the government's budget, and the results of these massive errors have caused thousands of untold lives to be destroyed, even the ones still alive, and wasted trillions of dollars, which is ongoing. Meanwhile the rest of the country crumbles.

    "You're fired", directed at upper management of the "intelligence" community can't come fast enough from President Trump's mouth.

    John Parks , January 15, 2017 at 2:46 pm

    "the shortcomings of the intelligence assessments and estimates conducted by the IC over the past two decades"

    This article comes awfully close to equating "assessment" with "wild ass guess" but doesn't quite go that far. (probably deemed unprofessional)
    The misplaced dedication shown by our IC goes further back ..probably even further back than when the FBI spent two years studying the lyrics of "Louie, Louie"

    Goyo Marquez , January 15, 2017 at 2:03 pm

    So the chain of evidence for Trump oppo is:
    DNC>Russians>MI6>John McCain>CIA>Buzzfeed?
    Wow well played.

    LT , January 15, 2017 at 2:33 pm

    Thinking back, the Democrats and Beltway insiders were still believing their computers' predictions of a Hillary at the time the "Russians are coming" mantra began.
    Something tells me this was expected to be the pretext for a Clinton administration led conflict with Russia they just didn't want to let Trump winning stop their plans.
    So it's coming off very clumsily. Lots lost in the improvisation.

    NotTimothyGeithner , January 15, 2017 at 7:21 pm

    Campaign internals. The appearance schedule, reports of polls asking about opinions of Michelle, and Obama hitting the campaign trail when he would ideally like to make a grand gesture such as fraudulent peace talks was a sign the campaign was in trouble.

    There is a good chance the vaunted "data" people noticed the Republicans they expected to win weren't abandoning Trump and registration efforts over the Summer didn't pan out due to lack of effort.

    Russia is the new Nader, war President, and how Bush out spent Kerry on ads excuses from previous campaigns to excuse the same old Clinton ideas and people leading to the usual disaster. I believe the Green Party moved to recount mode so swiftly to blunt being turned into the villain.

    allan , January 15, 2017 at 8:31 am

    To ruin your Sunday morning, listen (if you have the stomach) to Council on Foreign Relations head Richard Haas
    on the Tavis Smiley show
    . Doubling down on the Washington consensus, and clearly trying to talk up
    an intervention in Venezuela. Because R2P can not fail – it can only be failed.

    Pat , January 15, 2017 at 9:50 am

    True believer, or cynic who knows it is hard to sell a book to people telling them their ideas and goals are bull, you decide.

    I realoy don't know anymore who is just delusional, and who wants their slice of other people's pie regardless of who they have to damage.

    fresno dan , January 15, 2017 at 8:42 am

    The Russian Dossier Reminds Me of the Row Over Saddam's WMDs Counterpunch

    "Speaking to a trusted compatriot in June 2016 sources A and B, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry and a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin respectively, [said that] the Russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting US Republican presidential candidate, Donald TRUMP, for at least FIVE YEARS."

    ==========================================================
    Dang those guys are prescience .I wanna ask them what stocks to buy (Hot Octopuss? are masturbatoriums the coming thing???), or better yet, what lottery numbers to pick ..

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , January 15, 2017 at 11:22 am

    FIVE YEARS?

    Those Euro-Asians are patience and they think long term.

    In the 1963 movie, Bye Bye Birdie, Dick Van Dyke played Al Peterson, whose song, The Last Kiss, to by sung by the just-drafted Conrad (or was it Comrade) Birdie, on the Ed Sullivan Show, was going to make him rich enough to take care of his mother and marry his girl friend. The plan was spoiled by those scheming Russian ballet dancers whose number was going to run too long that Ed Sullivan had to eliminate the song. So, the attack on American freedom went way, way back.

    Moreover, Van Dyke, being a Ph.D. in biochemistry, had invented a pill to 'speed up' animals and humans as well. The girl friend, posing as a photo-journalist, was able to slip a speed-up pill into the conductor Borov's milk, in order to 'speed up' their show, and restore Birde's lost minutes. While this successful patriotic plan was unfolding, you can see a mad Russkie official clutching a shoe, as if he was ready to hit something with it.

    That, there, was the subliminal message to all future shoe-throwers who are now plaguing our world these days.

    And, comrades, that's long-range planning five years is nothing.

    craazyboy , January 15, 2017 at 12:37 pm

    Initially, the devious rooskies were grooming Trump to take down Vince McMahon and totally flatten the Rosie Threat. When they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams is when things went to their heads and they got too big for their britches.

    Now they're coming after our super stars. Those rooskies need to be taken down a notch or two.

    integer , January 15, 2017 at 8:59 am

    Although I was aware of Schumer's recent comment to Maddow ("You take on the intelligence community? They have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you") I did not get around to watching the exchange until today.

    What struck me when watching it was that Schumer is saying, on the record, that establshment politicians are subservient to the intelligence agencies because it is considered an accepted fact that their careers will be at risk if they do not give these agencies the freedom to act however they see fit. That is an incredibly dangerous dynamic, and what's worse is that it has been normalized and accepted by cowardly and/or corrupt politicians who purport to serve their constituents.

    I for one am grateful that Trump has enough spine to stand firm wrt putting these agencies back in their place (especially the CIA ), which is, after all, to serve and protect the citizens of the US.

    fresno dan , January 15, 2017 at 12:54 pm

    integer
    January 15, 2017 at 8:59 am

    the fact that it did not elicit a firestorm tells you all you need to know about how the US government is really run .

    Nechaev , January 15, 2017 at 1:24 pm

    "their careers" – or given not-so-recent-yet-not-so-ancient USian history – indeed even their lives could/ would be at risk
    the schumer-maddow exchange can certainly be –chillingly– interpreted in a number of ways.

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , January 15, 2017 at 2:05 pm

    That's Schumer's "My Struggle" moment – foretelling what is and what will be happening.

    It's all there, years before it becomes reality.

    "It's impossible. All of them? Too big to imagine. Too big to fail, check that, too big to apprehend. They don't dare."

    alex morfesis , January 15, 2017 at 2:55 pm

    The blob is all powerful ?? or people like Schumer are afraid of their own shadow sadly methinx it is the later The blob is able to function since characters sit in the seats of power instead of real men ( & not enough women).

    In much like how the mafia slowly brings someone to the dark side by having them do small indiscretions and crimes over a period of time until the victim becomes the victimizer, the blob will attempt to reel one in by burping out national security or just dumping natsec "non disclosures" or luring in someone close to you or finding someone close to you who they already have in their pockets

    If one resists too much, then the existing wimps in charge make sure you get stuck in some subcommittees handling bipartisan egg rolls on the whitehouse lawn

    Get along or get along now(scoot)

    It is getting near the end of the movie and toto has pulled back the curtain .

    shall we ignore the little men behind the curtain

    polecat , January 15, 2017 at 4:05 pm

    I guess this means Chucky won't be calling any .. uh .. 'plumbing contractors' .. to his house anytime soon, unless they're members of Conniving .. Instigators .. Associates --

    OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , January 15, 2017 at 3:04 pm

    Schumer is no lightweight, if he says/believes this then we have a whole lot to be worried about. Thank goodness for Trump.
    (For the record, I voted McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Obama)

    EndOfTheWorld , January 15, 2017 at 3:25 pm

    Schumer has never been accused of being overly intelligent. He is still miffed because HRC went down in flames. She was supposed to be his partner in crime for eight years.

    NotTimothyGeithner , January 15, 2017 at 7:13 pm

    And he was supposed to be Senate Majority Leader and get a really cool office instead of the crummy basement one. Given the seats up for reelection in 2018, he will have to wait until January 2021.

    Susan C , January 15, 2017 at 7:47 pm

    When I watched that exchange the other evening in real time, it seemed ominous to me, very dark. I think he was trying to instill real fear into the heart of Trump. I wonder if someone like a Trump has ever felt fear. It makes you wonder. Or if Trump has ever dealt with anyone more powerful than he believes himself to be.

    neo-realist , January 15, 2017 at 3:52 pm

    What struck me when watching it was that Schumer is saying, on the record, that establshment politicians are subservient to the intelligence agencies because it is considered an accepted fact that their careers will be at risk if they do not give these agencies the freedom to act however they see fit. That is an incredibly dangerous dynamic, and what's worse is that it has been normalized and accepted by cowardly and/or corrupt politicians who purport to serve their constituents

    Well hasn't this been pretty much the case since the incident in Dallas 50 plus years ago?

    mad as hell. , January 15, 2017 at 9:38 am

    I hope Booker wears that pharmaceutical vote around his neck for the rest of his life or at least until 2020.

    Annotherone , January 15, 2017 at 10:29 am

    Yes, indeed! It'll go well with the mantle he appears to be taking over as the "more effective evil".

    craazyboy , January 15, 2017 at 12:55 pm

    Leaked tapes from DNC Strategy Room meeting.

    DNC Chair – But Black worked?

    DNC Political Strategist – Yes

    DCN Chair – But Women failed

    DNC Political Strategist – As a strategy, Yes

    DCN Chair – So Black then?

    DNC Political Strategist – We could conclude that, yes

    Haiku politics

    John Wright , January 15, 2017 at 11:08 am

    I'm somewhat surprised Booker did not pull a Nancy Pelosi type vote on this bill.

    From what I remember, on the TPP Fast Track, Pelosi worked behind the scenes to get Fast Track through, and then, with enough votes to assure it would pass without her vote, voted against the very action she had promoted.

    Of course, Pelosi's constituents were opposed to the TPP and she "supported" them.

    Booker could have quietly, privately, assured his big Pharma funders he was in the tank for them while still voting in support of the drug importation bill, because if his vote had moved to the supporting side, the count would have been 47-51 and the bill would still fall the way the big Pharma wanted.

    Maybe other senators in the 46 "supporters" were playing the cynical Pelosi optics type of game and Booker had to fall on his sword to show both his loyalty to big Pharma and give them cover?

    Possibly Booker also priced in that there are about 4 years before the next presidential election and this vote could fall into the dustbin of history.

    NotTimothyGeithner , January 15, 2017 at 11:19 am

    Dems have gotten away with a lot, hiding behind Obama or Hillary and using the rotating villain strategy, and now they don't have a leader to protect them. Booker doesn't have the cult of personality Obama had, and there won't be an echo chamber to shut down dissent. I don't believe Democrats have a handle on their status.

    mad as hell. , January 15, 2017 at 12:31 pm

    No it was Russia's fault. Now we must circle the wagons and destroy Russia. Ya better be with me cause we are soon going to war to protect democracy and if you ain't with me you are a ( fill in the blank). The Democratic party does not make mistakes. The rag tag voters make mistakes! Now send us some money so we can stop Trump!

    Will this b******t ever end. It is driving me nuts.

    uncle tungsten , January 15, 2017 at 5:20 pm

    Me too MaH. The imitation democracy that is the USA is just a pathetic sideshow and brutally overpriced.

    The only interesting aspect right now is how Trump responds to the unintelligence community for their transparent insubordination and abuse of power. Time will tell.

    Pat , January 15, 2017 at 12:31 pm

    Dems have had the delusional idea since they caught the car bumper and had both Houses of Congress and the Presidency that just one of those is good, and preferably the Presidency. Hence their lack of panic as they lost the House, the Senate and most of the state legislatures and Governorships in the nation.

    Having now lost the one thing they were determined to win, they are going to slowly find out that there is no place to hide when their constituents are going to expect them to use all the same levers the Republicans did to obstruct all that stuff Obama wanted to do. They can't do the rotating villain thing, they can't NOT block things AND when that doesn't work the myth that Obama was hamstrung by Republicans is going to fall apart. Oops.

    Mind you the Republicans are going to have the problem of needing to pass the things they promised and living with those consequences.

    It is going to be interesting. And terrifying especially with the IC and MIC having tantrums that would do two year olds proud.

    John Wright , January 15, 2017 at 2:57 pm

    One fear of the Democrats might be they could be now be viewed as a useless appendage to the political process and unworthy of financial support by TPTB.

    That could hit them hard as Democratic think tanks lose funding and the NPV of the future lobbying potential of a current Democratic politician drops off dramatically.

    The Dems might actually feel a personal recession as they lose the ability to place their friends and relatives in well-paid politically related jobs.

    TPTB can simply support a handful of Blue-dog Democrats to buy a voting cushion on legislation that matters to them.

    Why pay more than necessary for Democratic support when it is largely irrelevant?

    OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , January 15, 2017 at 3:32 pm

    And the Dem reaction, of course, will be to suck up even harder to their money masters they've already concluded from the election that they weren't far enough to the right, this should mesh quite nicely. We've had one party in the country for decades, Obama's populist words (while pushing neo-con corporo-fascist actions) bamboozled for two terms, now we will get absolute unity in pushing the 1% agenda. Then we can do 1776 redux and take back our country.

    Pat , January 15, 2017 at 3:44 pm

    People really are loathe to admit that Obama has been an utter freakin' disaster. I was telling someone about how close the ALEC owned state houses were to getting their Constitutional convention and blamed Obama. I was lectured about how he came into a mess and that he was obviously not the problem it was people like Wasserman Schultz. I had to explain about the President and the DNC and that both Kaine and DWS were Obama's hand picked heads, that he moved grass roots organizing to OFA AND that over the course of his leadership of the party they had gone from having the Presidency, the House, the Senate, a majority of Governorships and an almost equal number of state legislative houses to exactly the opposite. Suffice it to say I left them speechless.

    And none of that should have been all that revelatory to a supposed political junkie. But to recognize that he wasn't interested in Democrats winning who were not named Obama is to understand he didn't care that he would not be in a position to get anything Democratic voters want

    NotTimothyGeithner , January 15, 2017 at 7:09 pm

    In one sense, Obama's failure was not in our stars but in ourselves, not me personally. If the Obots who cared so much for Obama and politics had torn themselves away from the latest insipid episode of X and called their Congressman or Senator instead of "liking" a cool meme about Obama, he might have been under enough pressure to not be completely terrible. Obama's evolution on gay rights only came after public outrage.

    The Obama followers have to understand this and simply don't want to admit their own complicity preferring to blame their plumber who may or may not have voted.

    HotFlash , January 15, 2017 at 7:21 pm

    Obama's evolution on gay rights only came after public outrage gay big-dollar donors slammed their wallets shut.

    Fixed it for ya.

    NotTimothyGeithner , January 15, 2017 at 3:37 pm

    Example 1: Krugthullu's recent craziness.
    Example 2: Greta Van Susteren and noted racist, Megan Kelly both scored gigs at NBC. Were no Dems available? Or at least someone who didn't have a meltdown over a black Santa?
    Example 3: the CGI shutting down despite all the good they do (snark)

    Pat , January 15, 2017 at 3:47 pm

    Well that may be their strategy going ahead, but if you looked at the last couple of elections, they just were not interested in winning elections. Money was thrown at people who didn't really need it, token amounts to others. People were chosen to run who had lost in the past, or the usual suspects owed. There was little or no recruitment, the former Republicans they supported pretty much fell in their laps.
    No they are going to have to seriously attempt to win even on a limited manner, and I don't think they have clue how anymore.

    Pat , January 15, 2017 at 12:24 pm

    Both Schumer and Gillibrand voted against this the first two times it came up. They voted for it this time. Works for the rotating villain theory

    marym , January 15, 2017 at 12:35 pm

    Same for Durbin 2009 (N) 2012 (N) 2017 (Y)

    polecat , January 15, 2017 at 12:57 pm

    Who knows .. Maybe the Donald with bring about a presidential decree, thereby forcing our reps & senators to don 'advertizing' as per Nascar race cars --

    Then it would be apparent to all as to whose loyalties they actually cater to .

    Carla , January 15, 2017 at 10:58 am

    Don't hold your breath. They're Democrats.

    Arizona Slim , January 15, 2017 at 12:46 pm

    This Zonie was amazed to learn that Senators McCain and Flake voted FOR this bill.

    NotTimothyGeithner , January 15, 2017 at 1:29 pm

    Flake's on the ballot in November, and McCain does do his rotating hero strategy, he's on the side of good when it doesn't matter. He does have a huge senior population who like that desert air.

    Vatch , January 15, 2017 at 12:04 pm

    There are two Senators scheduled to be at this event: Booker and Menendez, and they both voted against the Klobuchar/Sanders amendment to allow Americans to buy medicine from Canada! Clearly this event was scheduled before the vote occurred. I wonder what kinds of discussions about this have been occurring behind the scenes?

    Rhondda , January 15, 2017 at 4:08 pm

    Speaking of Amy Klobuchar - I saw in the noooze that she was one of McCain's compatriots on that holiday jaunt to Ukraine

    Klobuchar, McCain, Graham in Ukraine, Baltic States, and Georgia to
    http://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/ /klobuchar-mccain-graham-in-ukraine-baltic-states-and-.. .
    Dec 28, 2016 – WASHINGTON, DC – This week, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar is in Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Georgia to reinforce support for the North
    Minnesota Sen. Klobuchar Spends New Year's Eve in Ukraine – Amy
    http://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/ /minnesota-sen-klobuchar-spends-new-year-s-eve-in-uk.. .
    Dec 31, 2016 – U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar spent New Year's Eve day with the president of Ukraine and marines fighting Russian aggression in that country.

    Did you know that there is a Senate Ukraine Caucus? News to me.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Ukraine_Caucus
    The Senate Ukraine Caucus is a bipartisan caucus of the United States Senate that was Ron Johnson (R-WI); Amy Klobuchar (D-MN); Mark Kirk (R-IL); James Inhofe (R-OK); Chris Murphy (D-CT). Gary Peters (D-MI); Rob Portman (R-OH)

    OIFVet , January 15, 2017 at 4:23 pm

    It's OK when Ukraine manipulates US politics. The US has always found nazis to be useful in its anti-Russian efforts, from Reinhard Behlen to Wernher von Braun, with a few Ukie Banderites thrown in for the truly dirty work.

    UserFriendly , January 15, 2017 at 7:44 pm

    She's always been about as far right as she can get away with in this state.

    [Jan 16, 2017] Mainstream Medias Russian Bogeymen by Gareth Porter

    DHS security honchos want to justify their existence. There is not greater danger to national security then careerists in position of security professionals. Lying and exaggerating the treats to get this dollars is is what many security professionals do for living. They are essentially charlatans.
    Notable quotes:
    "... In the middle of a major domestic crisis over the U.S. charge that Russia had interfered with the US election, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) triggered a brief national media hysteria by creating and spreading a bogus story of Russian hacking into US power infrastructure. ..."
    "... Even more shocking, however, DHS had previously circulated a similar bogus story of Russian hacking of a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011. ..."
    "... Beginning in late March 2016, DHS and FBI conducted a series of 12 unclassified briefings for electric power infrastructure companies in eight cities titled, "Ukraine Cyber Attack: implications for US stakeholders." The DHS declared publicly, "These events represent one of the first known physical impacts to critical infrastructure which resulted from cyber-attack." ..."
    "... That statement conveniently avoided mentioning that the first cases of such destruction of national infrastructure from cyber-attacks were not against the United States, but were inflicted on Iran by the Obama administration and Israel in 2009 and 2012. ..."
    "... Beginning in October 2016, the DHS emerged as one of the two most important players – along with the CIA-in the political drama over the alleged Russian effort to tilt the 2016 election toward Donald Trump. Then on Dec. 29, DHS and FBI distributed a "Joint Analysis Report" to US power utilities across the country with what it claimed were "indicators" of a Russian intelligence effort to penetrate and compromise US computer networks, including networks related to the presidential election, that it called "GRIZZLY STEPPE." ..."
    "... according to Robert M. Lee, the founder and CEO of the cyber-security company Dragos, who had developed one of the earliest US government programs for defense against cyber-attacks on US infrastructure systems, the report was certain to mislead the recipients. ..."
    "... "Anyone who uses it would think they were being impacted by Russian operations," said Lee. "We ran through the indicators in the report and found that a high percentage were false positives." ..."
    "... The Intercept discovered, in fact, that 42 percent of the 876 IP addresses listed in the report as having been used by Russian hackers were exit nodes for the Tor Project, a system that allows bloggers, journalists and others – including some military entities – to keep their Internet communications private. ..."
    "... Instead, a DHS official called The Washington Post and passed on word that one of the indicators of Russian hacking of the DNC had been found on the Burlington utility's computer network. The Post failed to follow the most basic rule of journalism, relying on its DHS source instead of checking with the Burlington Electric Department first. The result was the Post's sensational Dec. 30 story under the headline "Russian hackers penetrated US electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, US officials say." ..."
    "... DHS official evidently had allowed the Post to infer that the Russians hack had penetrated the grid without actually saying so. The Post story said the Russians "had not actively used the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter," but then added, and that "the penetration of the nation's electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability." ..."
    "... The electric company quickly issued a firm denial that the computer in question was connected to the power grid. The Post was forced to retract, in effect, its claim that the electricity grid had been hacked by the Russians. But it stuck by its story that the utility had been the victim of a Russian hack for another three days before admitting that no such evidence of a hack existed. ..."
    "... Only days later did the DHS reveal those crucial facts to the Post. And the DHS was still defending its joint report to the Post, according to Lee, who got part of the story from Post sources. The DHS official was arguing that it had "led to a discovery," he said. "The second is, 'See, this is encouraging people to run indicators.'" ..."
    "... The false Burlington Electric hack scare is reminiscent of an earlier story of Russian hacking of a utility for which the DHS was responsible as well. In November 2011, it reported an "intrusion" into a Springfield, Illinois water district computer that similarly turned out to be a fabrication. ..."
    "... The contractor whose name was on the log next to the IP address later told Wired magazine that one phone call to him would have laid the matter to rest. But the DHS, which was the lead in putting the report out, had not bothered to make even that one obvious phone call before opining that it must have been a Russian hack. ..."
    Jan 16, 2017 | original.antiwar.com

    The mainstream hysteria over Russia has led to dubious or downright false stories that have deepened the New Cold War

    In the middle of a major domestic crisis over the U.S. charge that Russia had interfered with the US election, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) triggered a brief national media hysteria by creating and spreading a bogus story of Russian hacking into US power infrastructure.

    DHS had initiated the now-discredited tale of a hacked computer at the Burlington, Vermont Electricity Department by sending the utility's managers misleading and alarming information, then leaked a story they certainly knew to be false and continued to put out a misleading line to the media.

    Even more shocking, however, DHS had previously circulated a similar bogus story of Russian hacking of a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011.

    The story of how DHS twice circulated false stories of Russian efforts to sabotage US "critical infrastructure" is a cautionary tale of how senior leaders in a bureaucracy-on-the-make take advantage of every major political development to advance its own interests, with scant regard for the truth.

    The DHS had carried out a major public campaign to focus on an alleged Russian threat to US power infrastructure in early 2016. The campaign took advantage of a US accusation of a Russian cyber-attack against the Ukrainian power infrastructure in December 2015 to promote one of the agency's major functions - guarding against cyber-attacks on America's infrastructure.

    Beginning in late March 2016, DHS and FBI conducted a series of 12 unclassified briefings for electric power infrastructure companies in eight cities titled, "Ukraine Cyber Attack: implications for US stakeholders." The DHS declared publicly, "These events represent one of the first known physical impacts to critical infrastructure which resulted from cyber-attack."

    That statement conveniently avoided mentioning that the first cases of such destruction of national infrastructure from cyber-attacks were not against the United States, but were inflicted on Iran by the Obama administration and Israel in 2009 and 2012.

    Beginning in October 2016, the DHS emerged as one of the two most important players – along with the CIA-in the political drama over the alleged Russian effort to tilt the 2016 election toward Donald Trump. Then on Dec. 29, DHS and FBI distributed a "Joint Analysis Report" to US power utilities across the country with what it claimed were "indicators" of a Russian intelligence effort to penetrate and compromise US computer networks, including networks related to the presidential election, that it called "GRIZZLY STEPPE."

    The report clearly conveyed to the utilities that the "tools and infrastructure" it said had been used by Russian intelligence agencies to affect the election were a direct threat to them as well. However, according to Robert M. Lee, the founder and CEO of the cyber-security company Dragos, who had developed one of the earliest US government programs for defense against cyber-attacks on US infrastructure systems, the report was certain to mislead the recipients.

    "Anyone who uses it would think they were being impacted by Russian operations," said Lee. "We ran through the indicators in the report and found that a high percentage were false positives."

    Lee and his staff found only two of a long list of malware files that could be linked to Russian hackers without more specific data about timing. Similarly a large proportion of IP addresses listed could be linked to "GRIZZLY STEPPE" only for certain specific dates, which were not provided.

    The Intercept discovered, in fact, that 42 percent of the 876 IP addresses listed in the report as having been used by Russian hackers were exit nodes for the Tor Project, a system that allows bloggers, journalists and others – including some military entities – to keep their Internet communications private.

    Lee said the DHS staff that worked on the technical information in the report is highly competent, but the document was rendered useless when officials classified and deleted some key parts of the report and added other material that shouldn't have been in it. He believes the DHS issued the report "for a political purpose," which was to "show that the DHS is protecting you."

    Planting the Story, Keeping it Alive

    Upon receiving the DHS-FBI report the Burlington Electric Company network security team immediately ran searches of its computer logs using the lists of IP addresses it had been provided. When one of IP addresses cited in the report as an indicator of Russian hacking was found on the logs, the utility immediately called DHS to inform it as it had been instructed to do by DHS.

    In fact, the IP address on the Burlington Electric Company's computer was simply the Yahoo e-mail server, according to Lee, so it could not have been a legitimate indicator of an attempted cyber-intrusion. That should have been the end of the story. But the utility did not track down the IP address before reporting it to DHS. It did, however, expect DHS to treat the matter confidentially until it had thoroughly investigated and resolved the issue.

    "DHS wasn't supposed to release the details," said Lee. "Everybody was supposed to keep their mouth shut."

    Instead, a DHS official called The Washington Post and passed on word that one of the indicators of Russian hacking of the DNC had been found on the Burlington utility's computer network. The Post failed to follow the most basic rule of journalism, relying on its DHS source instead of checking with the Burlington Electric Department first. The result was the Post's sensational Dec. 30 story under the headline "Russian hackers penetrated US electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, US officials say."

    DHS official evidently had allowed the Post to infer that the Russians hack had penetrated the grid without actually saying so. The Post story said the Russians "had not actively used the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter," but then added, and that "the penetration of the nation's electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability."

    The electric company quickly issued a firm denial that the computer in question was connected to the power grid. The Post was forced to retract, in effect, its claim that the electricity grid had been hacked by the Russians. But it stuck by its story that the utility had been the victim of a Russian hack for another three days before admitting that no such evidence of a hack existed.

    The day after the story was published, the DHS leadership continued to imply, without saying so explicitly, that the Burlington utility had been hacked by Russians. Assistant Secretary for Pubic Affairs J. Todd Breasseale gave CNN a statement that the "indicators" from the malicious software found on the computer at Burlington Electric were a "match" for those on the DNC computers.

    As soon as DHS checked the IP address, however, it knew that it was a Yahoo cloud server and therefore not an indicator that the same team that allegedly hacked the DNC had gotten into the Burlington utility's laptop. DHS also learned from the utility that the laptop in question had been infected by malware called "neutrino," which had never been used in "GRIZZLY STEPPE."

    Only days later did the DHS reveal those crucial facts to the Post. And the DHS was still defending its joint report to the Post, according to Lee, who got part of the story from Post sources. The DHS official was arguing that it had "led to a discovery," he said. "The second is, 'See, this is encouraging people to run indicators.'"

    Original DHS False Hacking Story

    The false Burlington Electric hack scare is reminiscent of an earlier story of Russian hacking of a utility for which the DHS was responsible as well. In November 2011, it reported an "intrusion" into a Springfield, Illinois water district computer that similarly turned out to be a fabrication.

    Like the Burlington fiasco, the false report was preceded by a DHS claim that US infrastructure systems were already under attack. In October 2011, acting DHS deputy undersecretary Greg Schaffer was quoted by The Washington Post as warning that "our adversaries" are "knocking on the doors of these systems." And Schaffer added, "In some cases, there have been intrusions." He did not specify when, where or by whom, and no such prior intrusions have ever been documented.

    On Nov. 8, 2011, a water pump belonging to the Curran-Gardner township water district near Springfield, Illinois, burned out after sputtering several times in previous months. The repair team brought in to fix it found a Russian IP address on its log from five months earlier. That IP address was actually from a cell phone call from the contractor who had set up the control system for the pump and who was vacationing in Russia with his family, so his name was in the log by the address.

    Without investigating the IP address itself, the utility reported the IP address and the breakdown of the water pump to the Environmental Protection Agency, which in turn passed it on to the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, also called a fusion center composed of Illinois State Police and representatives from the FBI, DHS and other government agencies.

    On Nov. 10 – just two days after the initial report to EPA – the fusion center produced a report titled "Public Water District Cyber Intrusion" suggesting a Russian hacker had stolen the identity of someone authorized to use the computer and had hacked into the control system causing the water pump to fail.

    The contractor whose name was on the log next to the IP address later told Wired magazine that one phone call to him would have laid the matter to rest. But the DHS, which was the lead in putting the report out, had not bothered to make even that one obvious phone call before opining that it must have been a Russian hack.

    The fusion center "intelligence report," circulated by DHS Office of Intelligence and Research, was picked up by a cyber-security blogger, who called The Washington Post and read the item to a reporter. Thus the Post published the first sensational story of a Russian hack into a US infrastructure on Nov. 18, 2011.

    After the real story came out, DHS disclaimed responsibility for the report, saying that it was the fusion center's responsibility. But a Senate subcommittee investigation revealed in a report a year later that even after the initial report had been discredited, DHS had not issued any retraction or correction to the report, nor had it notified the recipients about the truth.

    DHS officials responsible for the false report told Senate investigators such reports weren't intended to be "finished intelligence," implying that the bar for accuracy of the information didn't have to be very high. They even claimed that report was a "success" because it had done what "what it's supposed to do – generate interest."

    Both the Burlington and Curran-Gardner episodes underline a central reality of the political game of national security in the New Cold War era: major bureaucratic players like DHS have a huge political stake in public perceptions of a Russian threat, and whenever the opportunity arises to do so, they will exploit it.

    Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book is Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare . He can be contacted at [email protected] .

    Reprinted from Consortium News with the author's permission.

    [Jan 15, 2017] United States sends 4000 troops to Poland, a fraction of a brigade. It is what some call a tripwire, in case of war a forlorn hope! When that forlorn hope is snuffed the nukes come out!

    Jan 15, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    anne : January 14, 2017 at 04:22 PM
    https://twitter.com/vijayprashad/status/819954419735334912

    Vijay Prashad‏ @vijayprashad

    United States sends troops to Poland. This is of course not to threaten Russia......imagine Russian troops being deployed to Mexico?

    9:09 AM - 13 Jan 2017

    im1dc -> anne... , January 14, 2017 at 05:16 PM
    Vijay Prashad, that is an Apples-Oranges comparison with no validity, not to mention sans geopolitical reality and treaty obligations to USA Allies in Europe.
    ilsm -> im1dc... , January 14, 2017 at 07:22 PM
    The radical right wing runs Poland.......

    Actually 4000 troop is a fraction of a brigade. It is what some call a tripwire, in case of war a forlorn hope! When that forlorn hope is snuffed the nukes come out!

    anne : , January 14, 2017 at 04:23 PM
    https://twitter.com/vijayprashad/status/820360129572913153

    Vijay Prashad‏ @vijayprashad

    US, which sent 4k troops to the Russian border, now sends the Vinson Carrier Group into the South China Sea.

    12:01 PM - 14 Jan 2017

    ilsm -> anne... , January 14, 2017 at 07:23 PM
    Dr. King would be raging!

    The money should make Flint's water good.

    [Jan 15, 2017] CIA careerists are likely upset at the prospect of being shipped abroad, hence their outrage at Trump and Michael Flynn.

    Notable quotes:
    "... I like the use of "careerist" ; it should be used more often, as it describes the motivation of a rather large number of decision-makers I've met. ..."
    "... I would hate to see it used more often. I have heard of its being applied to a grad student who–wait for it!–actually hoped to have an academic career and recognized the forms that had to be gone through to achieve that. There are places where it is an appropriate description, but it is one of those vogue words (like narcissistic) which become void of meaning through overuse. ..."
    Jan 15, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    nonsense factory , January 14, 2017 at 3:30 pm

    CIA careerists are likely upset at the prospect of being shipped abroad, hence their outrage at Trump and Michael Flynn.
    Foreign Policy Blogy 1/07 CIA restructuring proposed

    Team Trump is working on a plan "to restructure the Central Intelligence Agency, cutting back on staffing at its Virginia headquarters and pushing more people out into field posts around the world,"

    And the main reason Clinton Democrats are jumping on this bandwagon is that they want to blame their gross electoral failure on "external forces", not their own terrible record of sabotaging the middle class in favor of elite Wall Street interests. Their current fear is progressive Sanders Democrats kicking them out of the DNC and other party organization leadership positions (which just happened in California); hence their willingness to get behind bogus claims on DNC hacking and Russians running Trump.

    As far as the FBI's Comey, notably he acted to protect Clinton when the great fear was that she'd be defeated by Sanders; notably the FBI didn't access DNC servers to look for evidence of a hack (it was probably an internal leak), and Comey's refusal to recommend criminal charges for Clinton during the primary was a service to the Clinton Democrats.

    And the DNC was just so sleazy, no wonder they alienated all the Sanders supporters for the general election:

    It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.- DNC CFO Brad Marshall

    TedHunter , January 14, 2017 at 2:33 am

    The argument is convincing.

    I like the use of "careerist" ; it should be used more often, as it describes the motivation of a rather large number of decision-makers I've met.

    Katharine , January 14, 2017 at 10:37 am

    I would hate to see it used more often. I have heard of its being applied to a grad student who–wait for it!–actually hoped to have an academic career and recognized the forms that had to be gone through to achieve that. There are places where it is an appropriate description, but it is one of those vogue words (like narcissistic) which become void of meaning through overuse.

    [Jan 15, 2017] At that point the Deep State can set-up or take down anyone. They've presented the American people and world with the perfect lose-lose: instead of Trump and no showdown with Russia, it's Trump with a showdown with Russia, or Pence with a showdown with Russia. And not matter what, the consolidated IC now has legal authority to run the country

    Notable quotes:
    "... I very much doubt that will happen, even should Trump survive and demand it. Just as the 9/11 Commission was a farce, just as the craven non-investigations of global financial disaster-spawning Wall Street crimes or grotesque Bush war crimes utterly hollowed-out the rule of law, the gigantic stake through the heart of US democracy that was this disastrous political fiasco just happens to advance and further empower the very worst interests operating in the US. ..."
    "... And as Snowden reports, Obama, on top of everything else gifted Trump (or Pence) in terms of Executive power has also given the entire US Intel Community access to NSA information. That's it. At that point the Deep State can set-up or take down anyone. They've presented the American people and world with the perfect lose-lose: instead of Trump and no showdown with Russia, it's Trump with a showdown with Russia, or Pence with a showdown with Russia. And not matter what, the consolidated IC now has legal authority to run riot. ..."
    "... Excellent post. Many of us are appropriately disinterested in the specific allegations made in that dossier. Yet this rather bizarre behavior by the Deep State is frightening. Given these circumstances, it is not too surprising the man has selected Gen. Mad Dog Mattis to run his defense. He would be well-advised to clean house among the upper echelon of the nation's intelligence apparatus as quickly as possible. I don't much care for Mr. Trump, but carry much more animosity toward the Deep State. ..."
    "... The intelligence apparatus now has immense power and has developed it own objectives outside of political control. It needs to be broken up and reined in, ensuring it is tightly controlled. Particularly, the intelligence community cannot have the tools, such as mass internal NSA surveillance, allowing it to interfere in our internal political processes. I imagine Trump now has the incentive to take on the intelligence community. Whether he will be successful or not, only time will tell. ..."
    "... The gloves come off and the plutocracy shows its true self for all those whose eyes are open. ..."
    "... Like falsifying evidence to wage war in Iraq and before that Vietnam, this is a mark against the US intelligence agencies. This is also a mark on the Democrats, who are trying to use these as a distraction for facing up to the reality of losing to Trump. ..."
    Jan 15, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Fiver , January 14, 2017 at 3:18 am

    Here's an account by Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector on the Iraq WMD investigation. It certainly appears to me from this and a number of sources that what we have is a scandal of mammoth proportions that would suck in the senior leadership of both Parties, the Intelligence Community, the State Department, the White House and of course all of the various surrogates throughout media, were this all subject to an independent, credible investigation.

    I very much doubt that will happen, even should Trump survive and demand it. Just as the 9/11 Commission was a farce, just as the craven non-investigations of global financial disaster-spawning Wall Street crimes or grotesque Bush war crimes utterly hollowed-out the rule of law, the gigantic stake through the heart of US democracy that was this disastrous political fiasco just happens to advance and further empower the very worst interests operating in the US.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/exposing-the-man-behind-the-curtain_us_5877887be4b05b7a465df6a4

    And as Snowden reports, Obama, on top of everything else gifted Trump (or Pence) in terms of Executive power has also given the entire US Intel Community access to NSA information. That's it. At that point the Deep State can set-up or take down anyone. They've presented the American people and world with the perfect lose-lose: instead of Trump and no showdown with Russia, it's Trump with a showdown with Russia, or Pence with a showdown with Russia. And not matter what, the consolidated IC now has legal authority to run riot.

    https://theintercept.com/2017/01/13/obama-opens-nsas-vast-trove-of-warrantless-data-to-entire-intelligence-community-just-in-time-for-trump/

    olga , January 14, 2017 at 11:07 am

    Ritter's piece is quite exhaustive

    steelhead23 , January 14, 2017 at 2:00 pm

    Excellent post. Many of us are appropriately disinterested in the specific allegations made in that dossier. Yet this rather bizarre behavior by the Deep State is frightening. Given these circumstances, it is not too surprising the man has selected Gen. Mad Dog Mattis to run his defense. He would be well-advised to clean house among the upper echelon of the nation's intelligence apparatus as quickly as possible. I don't much care for Mr. Trump, but carry much more animosity toward the Deep State.

    Jagger , January 14, 2017 at 4:43 pm

    He would be well-advised to clean house among the upper echelon of the nation's intelligence apparatus as quickly as possible

    The intelligence apparatus now has immense power and has developed it own objectives outside of political control. It needs to be broken up and reined in, ensuring it is tightly controlled. Particularly, the intelligence community cannot have the tools, such as mass internal NSA surveillance, allowing it to interfere in our internal political processes. I imagine Trump now has the incentive to take on the intelligence community. Whether he will be successful or not, only time will tell.

    Altandmain , January 14, 2017 at 3:53 am

    The gloves come off and the plutocracy shows its true self for all those whose eyes are open.

    We've got multiple wrongs here. The Democratic Establishment, the Intelligence agencies, and the Pravda-like media form the Deep State, which is really controlled by the very rich. They are trying to cling to power here and extract rent from society for the very rich. In return, its political servants are themselves rewarded with wealth.

    Then there's Trump. While I think he's a very unsavory person and he will do some very damaging things to society, making up accusations of Russian hacks is not the way to go. So far not a shred of evidence has been provided that Russia was hacking. I doubt we will get any. That does not, as the article notes mean that Russia is guiltless, but so fa the Democrats are pulling lies out of a hat and hoping desperately it sticks.

    Like falsifying evidence to wage war in Iraq and before that Vietnam, this is a mark against the US intelligence agencies. This is also a mark on the Democrats, who are trying to use these as a distraction for facing up to the reality of losing to Trump.

    The sad part is that America is going to continue its decline unless this whole mess stops. It is likely that anyone truly principled would have to clean house in both parties and in many senior leadership positions across the US government. Then there is the matter of corporate America and its agenda of rent seeking.

    [Jan 14, 2017] Reflections on a Post Election Soft Coup: Fake News , CIA Intervention, US-NATO Militarization on Russia s Doorstep

    Jan 13, 2017 | www.globalresearch.ca
    All this brings to mind the report that Trump is considering a realignment of the intel agencies including staff reductions and reassignments as it compares with JFK's experience when he fired CIA Director Allen Dulles. Kennedy replaced Dulles for lying to him about the Bay of Pigs debacle with an inept outsider named John McCone who was easily snookered by CIA staff. Kennedy did not fully realize the depth of Dulles' betrayal as he continued to meet with senior CIA staff at his home on a regular basis where they discussed, debated and decided CIA policy.

    What Trump needs to understand is that certain cats, especially the neo-con variety, have more than nine lives and will hang on to their power base with every fiber of their being - and we know how that worked out for JFK.

    Enrique Ferro's insight: Observing the President since the November 8th election, his reactions reveal an aggressiveness rarely, if ever seen in an outgoing President's closing days, and has become a fascinating study in human dynamics.

    Obama is clearly experiencing more than a normal reluctance to hand over his @POTUS twitter account as perhaps the reality has only just hit home that it is far too late to create a new, improved legacy.

    One explanation may be that the President's carefully constructed veneer of personality, never convincing for those who have long sought the 'real' Barak Obama, has cracked under the pressure of the 2016 losses.

    [Jan 14, 2017] Pretty sure they call it deep state for a reason .... its the known unknowns you have to worry about

    Notable quotes:
    "... "With Goldman Sachs and neocon advisors filling up his administration, Trump may be simply nudged in the right direction. But the intelligence community is not willing to take many chances – and there are clearly contingencies in place." ..."
    "... Assasinate, NO. Exposed, Setup, Patsy, Blamed, ABSOLUTELY ..."
    Jan 14, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    ml8ml8 , Jan 14, 2017 10:23 PM

    If Trump is worried about the existence of some "deep state" his first act in office should be to demand a complete list of every intelligence sector employee, and the budgets, and dig in and inform himself. They all work for him now.

    Croesus -> ml8ml8 , Jan 14, 2017 10:41 PM

    Assassinating Trump would be a VERY bad idea:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-14/his-first-foreign-trip-presiden...

    Escrava Isaura -> Croesus , Jan 14, 2017 10:44 PM

    CIA for dummies:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXcL5o55q8s."#t=20s "

    remain calm -> Chris Dakota , Jan 14, 2017 10:59 PM

    The Bush family will have him killed.

    Chris Dakota -> remain calm , Jan 14, 2017 11:01 PM

    Those Pedo Bush's don't have the power to do this anymore.

    JFK was a lesson. Trump very well knows not to make the same mistakes.

    Chupacabra-322 -> Chris Dakota , Jan 14, 2017 11:04 PM

    The fact that we all have to worry about the CIA killing a President Elect simply because the man puts America first, really says it all.

    The Agency is Cancer. Why are we even waiting for them to kill another one of our people to act? There should be no question about the CIA's future in the US.

    Dissolved & dishonored. Its members locked away or punished for Treason. Their reputation is so bad and has been for so long, that the fact that you joined them should be enough to justify arrest and Execution for Treason, Crimes Against Humanity & Crimes Against The American People.

    Arrest Hillary & Bill Clinton. Freeze their assets. RICO The Clinton Foundation & bring down the Satanic Global Crime Syndicate.

    This will de facto Drain the Swamp. Then, immediately End the Fed.

    These Scum Fuck Occultist have been "Illuminated" and forced out into the light. This opportunity to peacefully "Drain the Swamp" cannot be squandered.

    Scuba Steve -> ml8ml8 , Jan 14, 2017 10:49 PM

    um, pretty sure they are deep state for a reason .... its the "known unknowns" you have to worry about

    GUS100CORRINA -> ml8ml8 , Jan 14, 2017 10:53 PM

    I AGREE with complete audit of all intelligence personnel and the entire intelligence apparatus.

    This is really a question of FAITH versus FEAR. i choose FAITH over FEAR. Things will work out according to a divine plan.

    While I appreciate the patriotism and intelligence of the individuals WHO contributed to this article, this article is bordering on FEAR MONGERING.

    We need to be discerning when reading articles like this one because they create a spirit of FEAR. The DEEP STATE has been with us since GENESIS 3:15.

    Paul Kersey -> ml8ml8 , Jan 14, 2017 10:49 PM

    From the above article:

    "With Goldman Sachs and neocon advisors filling up his administration, Trump may be simply nudged in the right direction. But the intelligence community is not willing to take many chances – and there are clearly contingencies in place."

    Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is both a Goldmanite and, like his convict father, a neocon. It is Jared Kushner who chose all the Goldmanites and Neocons in Trump's Cabinet, just as it was Kushner who got rid of Gov. Chris Christie, the former NJ Prosecutor who put Jared's dad, Charles Kushner, in Federal prison.

    Consequently, there will be no Trump assassination, because Kushner and his Goldmanites will not allow it. VP-Elect Mike Pence may be a lot of things, but a Goldmanite is not one of them. The Goldmanites, historically, were not his campaign contributors, and they do not want him in the Presidency. Trump will be protected BY Deep State and won't need to be protected FROM Deep State.

    NoWayJose , Jan 14, 2017 10:24 PM

    Didn't know the fired CIA guy ended up on the Warren 'coverup' Commission.

    socalbeach , Jan 14, 2017 10:31 PM

    The CIA has plenty of experience in overthrowing foreign governments. All they have to do is turn their expertise inwardly.

    Radical Marijuana -> socalbeach , Jan 14, 2017 10:55 PM

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-03/more-confessions-economic-hit-man-time-they're-coming-your-democracy

    More Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man: "This Time, They're Coming For Your Democracy"

    "...Perkins has just reissued his book with major updates. The basic premise of the book remains the same, but the update shows how the economic hit man approach has evolved in the last 12 years. Among other things, U.S. cities are now on the target list. The combination of debt, enforced austerity, underinvestment, privatization, and the undermining of democratically elected governments is now happening here" ... "Things have just gotten so much worse in the last 12 years since the first Confessions was written.

    Economic hit men and jackals have expanded tremendously, including the United States and Europe. Back in my day we were pretty much limited to what we called the third world, or economically developing countries, but now it's everywhere. And in fact, the cancer of the corporate empire has metastasized into what I would call a failed global death economy. This is an economy that's based on destroying the very resources upon which it depends, and upon the military. It's become totally global, and it's a failure."

    Son of Captain Nemo , Jan 14, 2017 10:40 PM

    Not with this announcement ( http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-14/his-first-foreign-trip-presiden... ) and a repeat for detente wiping the slate clean!...

    And if he is assassinated?...

    Plan on a "treasure hunt" that will result in the likes of POTUS "transvestitus" John "winter soldier" Kerry and John "demonic" Leprechaun Brennan being FOUND, SKINNED and put on display in front of their respective places of work!...

    SO HELP ME GOD!!! THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT!!!!!

    Scuba Steve -> Son of Captain Nemo , Jan 14, 2017 10:56 PM

    see, i agree with this.

    If something happens to Trump, I'm thinking there are going to be a lot of big names hanging from trees for all of Facebook to pass around.

    CC Lemon , Jan 14, 2017 10:35 PM

    What's frightening is that as the elites had NO IDEA hillary would lose so bad, they might have equally NO IDEA of the massive blowback should they go through with anything like this.

    JarMyMetric , Jan 14, 2017 10:36 PM

    Don't worry Trump will start magically singing in key very soon after inauguration or Pence will sing for him.

    dogismycopilot , Jan 14, 2017 10:37 PM

    A lot of US spooks are on the gravy train. Do you know how many Orlando McMansions and DC Colonials have been bought with black bag money? There are Billions flowing in a river through the Middle East.

    Also, these fuckers don't know how to do anything but destroy value and kill people. They know this is the only job they can get. They are incompetent in the private market. Look at the MI6 idiot who writes worse than a high school kid.

    CIA isn't going to give that up without a fight. They are cornered rats. When Putin is in Iceland I hope he can relate this survival story to President Trump:

    https://jppreston.com/2010/12/23/the-six-most-interesting-excerpts-from-...

    Following World War II, in which his father served with the Russian secret police, his parents move into a communal apartment in St. Petersburg where they eventually give birth to Putin (1952). Because Russia is facing major poverty and is still recovering from the war, the apartment is, in the words of Putin's school teacher, "horrid without any conveniences" (10). Although he goes on to explain his experiences with the other families in the commune, none of whom had any children, he briefly tells a story of the first time he learned "the meaning of the word cornered."

    There, on that stair landing, I got a quick and lasting lesson in the meaning of the word cornered. There were hordes of rats in the front entryway. My friends and I used to chase them around with sticks. Once I spotted a huge rat and pursued it down the hall until I drove it into a corner. It had nowhere to run. Suddenly it lashed around and threw itself at me. I was surprised and frightened. Now the rat was chasing me. It jumped across the landing and down the stairs. Luckily, I was a little faster and managed to slam the door shut in its nose. (10)

    matermaker , Jan 14, 2017 11:00 PM

    I call bullshit, Slavo. I feel certain Mr. T. fully understands the deep state and watched Ike's last address. There is an equally powerful 'state' in this nation and it is not born out of the government. Even the negroes will rally to his side if they feel he's a better populist alternative to the deep state.

    I'm sure that I would giggle to read who is getting interviewed for T's personal security. He's not going to go driving in chicago with the top down. Kennedy pissed off all sides of power.

    I do not see T having a really bad day while traveling or flying. Kennedy was arrogant in a much different way. This time 'round, it's more like Adolf choosing sides with Earnst Rhom and brown shirts over the Gestapo.

    And if 'they' are listening, as they usually are... safe drivers are rewarded with auto insurance. Getting yearly full on check ups should drop bucks on your insurance. No penalties for being unhealthy, but rewards for being healthy. It's called health care, not sick care. Get a camera shoved up your ass every ten years after 50? discount! oh... and that shouldn't cost 15k

    Rebel yell , Jan 14, 2017 10:49 PM

    If the central idiots assassinate Trump, there should be massive wildcat strikes and refusal to buy anything, and the military should refuse to follow all military commands! Don't fight the terrorists aka CIA war!

    kanoli , Jan 14, 2017 10:56 PM

    The fact that it is so plainly stated that the intelligence apparatus run the country and none dare stand against them is evidence that it is high time for a president and the people to take them down.

    Saul Alinsky's Rule #1 is to appear more powerful than you are in order to cultivate fear in your enemies. The American intelligence community and military-industrial complex are rotten and termite-eaten by corruption.

    Every successful revolution is merely the kicking in of a door that is already rotten. . I'm not sure Trump is the guy for it, but I'd sure like to see him try.

    NobodyNowhere , Jan 14, 2017 11:01 PM

    " military industrial complex base of ultimate power in the United States"

    MIC is NOT the ultimate power in the US. Certain Bankster dynasties are. MIC is just one of their profit centers.

    JailBanksters , Jan 14, 2017 11:06 PM

    Assasinate, NO. Exposed, Setup, Patsy, Blamed, ABSOLUTELY

    There's too many Eyes, and everybody will know who planned it and who did it, so he won't be Assassinated by physical means, just Politically Assassinated.

    [Jan 14, 2017] Will The CIA Assassinate Trump Ron Paul Warns Of More Powerful, Shadow Government

    Very questionable assessment.
    Notable quotes:
    "... In a truly remarkable bit of honesty and candor regarding the U.S. national-security establishment, new Senate minority leader Charles Schumer has accused President-elect Trump of "being really dumb." for taking on the CIA and questioning its conclusions regarding Russia. ..."
    "... "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you . He's being really dumb to do this." ..."
    "... No president since John F. Kennedy has dared to take on the CIA or the rest of the national security establishment ..."
    "... Kennedy After the Bay of Pigs, he vowed to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds. He also fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, who, in a rather unusual twist of fate, would later be appointed to the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy's murder. ..."
    Jan 14, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

    It isn't just that Donald Trump routinely thumbs his nose at the establishment, insults media figures he sees as unfair and bucks conventional wisdom.

    It is that President-elect Trump is defying the will of the deep state, military industrial complex base of ultimate power in the United States. That is why he is treading dangerous waters, and risks the fate of JFK.

    Trump publicly dissed the intelligence community assessments on Russian hacking; they retaliated with a made up dossier about the alleged Trump-Putin 'golden shower' episode .

    Russians have compromising footage of Donald Trump paying prostitutes to piss on a bed ???? #GoldenShowerGate https://t.co/AdQGhE2y06

    - Loco Goose ???????????????? (@CrazyGoose) January 11, 2017

    While it may be a silly falsehood, it may also be serving as a final warning that they get to script reality, not him.

    Perhaps they want Trump to feel blackmailed and controlled by alluding to fake dirt, while reminding him of the real dirt they hold on his activities (whatever it may be).

    Insulting the credibility of the intelligence community in a public way – as the man elected to the highest office in the land – is liable to ruffle a few feathers, and it could provoke a serious response.

    Trump knows the power of the people he is taunting, but he may not be aware of where the line is between play in political rhetoric and actually irritating and setting off those who control policy.

    There is plenty of Trump misbehavior that can be simply written off, or trivialized, but cutting into the war and statecraft narrative of the shadow government steering this deep state is a deviation too far.

    It is one thing to play captain, but another to imagine that you steer the ship. They are happy for Trump to take all the prestige and privileges of the office; but not for him to cut into the big business of foreign conflict, the undercurrent of all American affairs, the dealings in death, drugs, oil and weapons, and the control of people through a manipulation of these affairs.

    If President Trump takes his rogue populism too far, he will suffer the wrath of the same people who took out Kennedy there are some things that are not tolerated by those who are really in charge. And now leaders in the Senate are warning President-elect Trump about the stupidity of going against the national-security establishment.

    As Jacob G. Hornberger warns :

    In a truly remarkable bit of honesty and candor regarding the U.S. national-security establishment, new Senate minority leader Charles Schumer has accused President-elect Trump of "being really dumb." for taking on the CIA and questioning its conclusions regarding Russia.

    "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you . He's being really dumb to do this."

    [ ]

    No president since John F. Kennedy has dared to take on the CIA or the rest of the national security establishment [ ] They knew that if they opposed the national-security establishment at a fundamental level, they would be subjected to retaliatory measures.

    Kennedy After the Bay of Pigs, he vowed to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds. He also fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, who, in a rather unusual twist of fate, would later be appointed to the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy's murder.

    Kennedy's antipathy toward the CIA gradually extended to what President Eisenhower had termed the military-industrial complex, especially when it proposed Operation Northwoods, which called for fraudulent terrorist attacks to serve as a pretext for invading Cuba, and when it suggested that Kennedy initiate a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.

    [ ]

    Worst of all, from the standpoint of the national-security establishment, [Kennedy] initiated secret personal negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro , both of whom, by this time, were on the same page as Kennedy.

    [ ]

    Kennedy was fully aware of the danger he faced by taking on such a formidable enemy.

    And to the extent that President Kennedy consciously stood up to the system, he paid the price for his attempt at independent wielding of power from the Oval Office.

    It is a shuddering thought. A sharp lesson in history that must not be misinterpreted.

    The implications for Trump are quite clear. If his refusal to take intelligence briefings, or follow CIA advice is serious, then serious consequences will follow. If Trump is serious about peace with Putin when they insist on war, there will be a problem.

    There are several powers behind the throne that have wanted to ensure that presidents don't let the power go to their head, or try to change course from the carefully arranged crisis-reaction-solution paradigm.

    True peace is not good for military industrial complex business; true peace, without the persistence of grave threats, and plenty of sparks of chaos to back it up, cannot be tolerated.

    As things have progressed today, making friendly with Putin, and calling off the war with Russia may simply be impermissible. If Trump is attempting to negotiate his own peace – and sing along with Frank Sinatra's "My Way" at the inauguration, then he is in for a very rude awakening.

    If, on the other hand, he is the Trump card being played by this very same establishment, then things may develop according to the same ultimate objectives, albeit through a 'wild card' path styled after the ego of President Trump.

    With Goldman Sachs and neocon advisors filling up his administration, Trump may be simply nudged in the right direction. But the intelligence community is not willing to take many chances – and there are clearly contingencies in place.

    As SHTF has previously reported, the continuity of government "Doomsday" command-and-control planes were brought out after the election as a public show of power to Trump and the American people. The shadow government is real, and for now, maintains dominance.

    "Mysterious" plane circling over Denver was "just" an E-6B Mercury "doomsday" plane https://t.co/SqJlBkdIqg pic.twitter.com/oE0BBWrhFL

    - The Aviationist (@TheAviationist) November 17, 2016

    Former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul warned of the shadow government taking control of President Trump's administration before it was even formed:

    [Jan 14, 2017] Reflections on a Post Election Soft Coup: Fake News , CIA Intervention, US-NATO Militarization on Russia s Doorstep

    Jan 13, 2017 | www.globalresearch.ca
    All this brings to mind the report that Trump is considering a realignment of the intel agencies including staff reductions and reassignments as it compares with JFK's experience when he fired CIA Director Allen Dulles. Kennedy replaced Dulles for lying to him about the Bay of Pigs debacle with an inept outsider named John McCone who was easily snookered by CIA staff. Kennedy did not fully realize the depth of Dulles' betrayal as he continued to meet with senior CIA staff at his home on a regular basis where they discussed, debated and decided CIA policy.

    What Trump needs to understand is that certain cats, especially the neo-con variety, have more than nine lives and will hang on to their power base with every fiber of their being - and we know how that worked out for JFK.

    Enrique Ferro's insight: Observing the President since the November 8th election, his reactions reveal an aggressiveness rarely, if ever seen in an outgoing President's closing days, and has become a fascinating study in human dynamics.

    Obama is clearly experiencing more than a normal reluctance to hand over his @POTUS twitter account as perhaps the reality has only just hit home that it is far too late to create a new, improved legacy.

    One explanation may be that the President's carefully constructed veneer of personality, never convincing for those who have long sought the 'real' Barak Obama, has cracked under the pressure of the 2016 losses.

    [Jan 14, 2017] Is Trump Already Finished - The Unz Review

    Jan 14, 2017 | www.unz.com
    It did not take long before we knew there was no hope of change from President Obama. But at least he went into his inauguration with an unprecedented number of Americans on the Mall showing their support for the President of Change. Hope was abundant.

    But with Trump, we are already losing faith, if not yet with him, at least with his choice of those who comprise his government even before Trump is inaugurated.

    Trump's choice for Secretary of State not only sounds like the neoconservatives in declaring Russia to be a threat to the United States and all of Europe, but also sounds like Hillary Clinton in declaring the South China Sea to be an area of US dominance. One would think that the chairman of Exxon was not an idiot, but I am no longer sure. In his confirmation hearing, Rex Tillerson said that China's access to its own South China Sea is "not going to be allowed."

    Here is Tillerson's statement: "We're going to have to send China a clear signal that first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands also not going to be allowed."

    I mean, really, what is Tillerson going to do about it except get the world blown up. China's response was as pointed as a response can be:

    Tillerson "should not be misled into thinking that Beijing will be fearful of threats. If Trump's diplomatic team shapes future Sino-US ties as it is doing now, the two sides had better prepare for a military clash. Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories."

    So Trump is not even inaugurated and his idiot nominee for Secretary of State has already created an animosity relationship with two nuclear powers capable of completely destroying all of the West for eternity. And this makes the US Senate comfortable with Tillerson. The imbeciles should be scared out of their wits, assuming they have any.

    One of the reasons that Russia rescued Syria from Washington's overthrow is that Russia understood that Washington's next target would be Iran and from a destroyed Iran terrorism would be exported into the Russian Federation. There is an axis of countries threatened by US supported terrorism-Syria, Iran, Russia, China.

    Trump says he wants to normalize relations with Russia and to open up business opportunities in the place of conflict. But to normalize relations with Russia requires also normalizing relations with Iran and China.

    Judging from their public statements, Trump's announced government has targeted Iran for destabilization. Trump's appointees as National Security Advisor, Secretary of Defense, and Director of the CIA all regard Iran incorrectly as a terrorist state that must be overthrown.

    But Russia cannot allow Washington to overthrow the stable government in Iran and will not allow it. China's investments in Iranian oil imply that China also will not permit Washington's overthrow of Iran. China has already suffered from its lost investments in Libyan oil as the result of the Obama regimes overthrow of the Libyan government.

    Realistically speaking, it looks like the Trump Presidency is already defeated by his own appointees independently of the ridiculous and completely unbelievable propaganda put out by the CIA and broadcast by the presstitute media in the US, UK, and Europe. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and BBC have lowered themselves below the National Enquirer.

    Possibly, as I wrote earlier today ( http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/01/13/the-establishment-is-trying-to-steal-the-presidency-from-trump-paul-craig-roberts/ ), these statements from Trump's appointees are nothing but what is required to be confirmed and are not operational in any sense. However, it is possible to stand up to the bastards in confirmation hearings. I stood up in my confirming hearing, and the embarrassed Democrats requested that the entire hearing be deleted from the record.

    If the Chairman of Exxon and a Lt. General are not capable of standing up to the imbecilic Congress, they are unfit for office. That they did not stand up is an indication that they lack the strength that Trump needs if he is to bring change from the top.

    If Trump is unable to change US foreign policy, thermonuclear war and the destruction of Earth are inevitable.

    [Jan 14, 2017] Comey Letter on Clinton Email Is Subject of Justice Dept. Inquiry

    NYT tries to hide one interesting nuance: whether emails in Huma computer contained the set of emails deleted by Hillary from her.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The inspector general's office said that it was initiating the investigation in response to complaints from members of Congress and the public about actions by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department during the campaign that could be seen as politically motivated. ..."
    "... Republicans, who made her use of a private email server a centerpiece of their campaign against Mrs. Clinton, attacked Mr. Comey after he decided there was not sufficient evidence she had mishandled classified information to prosecute her. ..."
    "... In the end, the emails that the F.B.I. reviewed - which came up during an unrelated inquiry into Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of a top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin - proved irrelevant to the investigation's outcome. ..."
    "... Inspectors general have investigated F.B.I. directors before, but rarely. The most high-profile example was the investigation of William S. Sessions, who was fired by President Bill Clinton after an internal inquiry cited him for financial misconduct. In recent years, the inspector general has investigated accusations of wrongdoing by the F.B.I. involving some of its most sensitive operations, including a number of surveillance and counterterrorism programs. ..."
    "... Mr. Horowitz said he would also investigate whether the Justice Department's top congressional liaison, Peter Kadzik, had improperly provided information to the Clinton campaign. A hacked email posted by WikiLeaks showed that Mr. Kadzik alerted the campaign about a coming congressional hearing that was likely to raise questions about Mrs. Clinton. ..."
    "... Investigators will be helped in gathering evidence by a law that Congress passed just last month, which ensures that inspectors general across the government will have access to all relevant agency records in their reviews. ..."
    "... Mr. Trump has not indicated whether he intends to keep Mr. Comey in his job. When he cleared Mrs. Clinton of criminal wrongdoing during the campaign, Mr. Trump accused him of being part of a rigged system. ..."
    Jan 14, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    Peter K. : January 13, 2017 at 06:17 AM

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/james-comey-fbi-inspector-general-hillary-clinton.html

    Comey Letter on Clinton Email Is Subject of Justice Dept. Inquiry

    By ADAM GOLDMAN, ERIC LICHTBLAU and MATT APUZZO
    JAN. 12, 2017

    WASHINGTON - The Justice Department's inspector general said Thursday that he would open a broad investigation into how the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, handled the case over Hillary Clinton's emails, including his decision to discuss it at a news conference and to disclose 11 days before the election that he had new information that could lead him to reopen it.

    The inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, will not look into the decision not to prosecute Mrs. Clinton or her aides. But he will review actions Mr. Comey took that Mrs. Clinton and many of her supporters believe cost her the election.

    They are: the news conference in July at which he announced he was not indicting Mrs. Clinton but described her behavior as "extremely careless"; the letter to Congress in late October in which he said that newly discovered emails could potentially change the outcome of the F.B.I.'s investigation; and the letter three days before the election in which he said that he was closing it again.

    The inspector general's office said that it was initiating the investigation in response to complaints from members of Congress and the public about actions by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department during the campaign that could be seen as politically motivated.

    For Mr. Comey and the agency he heads, the Clinton investigation was politically fraught from the moment the F.B.I. received a referral in July 2015 to determine whether Mrs. Clinton and her aides had mishandled classified information. Senior F.B.I. officials believed there was never going to be a good outcome, since it put them in the middle of a bitterly partisan issue.

    Whatever the decision on whether to charge Mrs. Clinton with a crime, Mr. Comey, a Republican former Justice Department official appointed by President Obama, was going to get hammered. And he was.

    Republicans, who made her use of a private email server a centerpiece of their campaign against Mrs. Clinton, attacked Mr. Comey after he decided there was not sufficient evidence she had mishandled classified information to prosecute her.

    The Clinton campaign believed the F.B.I. investigation was overblown and seriously damaged her chances to win the White House and resented Mr. Comey's comments about Mrs. Clinton at his news conference. But the campaign was particularly upset about Mr. Comey's two letters, which created a wave of damaging news stories at the end of the campaign, when Mrs. Clinton and her supporters thought they had put the email issue behind them.

    In the end, the emails that the F.B.I. reviewed - which came up during an unrelated inquiry into Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of a top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin - proved irrelevant to the investigation's outcome.

    The Clinton campaign said Mr. Comey's actions quite likely caused a significant number of undecided voters to cast ballots for President-elect Donald J. Trump.

    F.B.I. officials said Thursday that they welcomed the scrutiny. In a statement, Mr. Comey described Mr. Horowitz as "professional and independent" and promised to cooperate with his investigation. "I hope very much he is able to share his conclusions and observations with the public because everyone will benefit from thoughtful evaluation and transparency," Mr. Comey said.

    Brian Fallon, the former press secretary for the Clinton campaign and the former top spokesman for the Justice Department, said the inspector general's investigation was long overdue.

    "This is highly encouraging and to be expected, given Director Comey's drastic deviation from Justice Department protocol," he said. "A probe of this sort, however long it takes to conduct, is utterly necessary in order to take the first step to restore the F.B.I.'s reputation as a nonpartisan institution."

    Mr. Horowitz has the authority to recommend a criminal investigation if he finds evidence of illegality, but there has been no suggestion that Mr. Comey's actions were unlawful. Rather, the question has been whether he acted inappropriately, showed bad judgment or violated Justice Department guidelines. It is not clear what the consequences would be for Mr. Comey if he was found to have done any of those things.

    The Justice Department and the F.B.I. have a longstanding policy against discussing criminal investigations. Another Justice Department policy declares that politics should play no role in investigative decisions. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have interpreted that policy broadly to prohibit taking any steps that might even hint at an impression of partisanship.

    Inspectors general have investigated F.B.I. directors before, but rarely. The most high-profile example was the investigation of William S. Sessions, who was fired by President Bill Clinton after an internal inquiry cited him for financial misconduct. In recent years, the inspector general has investigated accusations of wrongdoing by the F.B.I. involving some of its most sensitive operations, including a number of surveillance and counterterrorism programs.

    As part of the review, the inspector general will examine other issues related to the email investigation that Republicans have raised. They include whether the deputy director of the F.B.I., Andrew G. McCabe, should have recused himself from any involvement in it.

    In 2015, Mr. McCabe's wife ran for a State Senate seat in Virginia as a Democrat and accepted nearly $500,000 in political contributions from Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a key ally of the Clintons. Though Mr. McCabe did not assume his post until February 2016, months after his wife was defeated, critics both within the agency and outside of it felt that he should have recused himself.

    The F.B.I. has said Mr. McCabe played no role in his wife's campaign. He also told his superiors she was running and sought ethics advice from F.B.I. officials.

    Mr. Horowitz said he would also investigate whether the Justice Department's top congressional liaison, Peter Kadzik, had improperly provided information to the Clinton campaign. A hacked email posted by WikiLeaks showed that Mr. Kadzik alerted the campaign about a coming congressional hearing that was likely to raise questions about Mrs. Clinton.

    Investigators will be helped in gathering evidence by a law that Congress passed just last month, which ensures that inspectors general across the government will have access to all relevant agency records in their reviews.

    The law grew out of skirmishes between the F.B.I. and the Justice Department inspector general over attempts by the F.B.I. to keep grand jury material and other records off limits. The new law means Mr. Horowitz's investigators should have access to any records deemed relevant.

    Mr. Trump has not indicated whether he intends to keep Mr. Comey in his job. When he cleared Mrs. Clinton of criminal wrongdoing during the campaign, Mr. Trump accused him of being part of a rigged system.

    Although the president does not need cause to fire the F.B.I. director, a critical inspector general report could provide justification to do so if Mr. Trump is looking for some.

    [Jan 14, 2017] Unconvincing Forgery, The Alleged Donald Trump Manchurian Candidate : The Steele Dossier or the Hitler Diaries Mark II

    This was pretty dirty provocation by Hillary Clinton close circle, as we now know who paid money for it.
    Notable quotes:
    "... A private company had minute by minute intelligence on the Manchurian Candidate scheme and all the indictable illegal activity that was going on, which the CIA/NSA/GCHQ/MI6 did not have, despite their specific tasking and enormous technical, staff and financial resources amounting between them to over 150,000 staff and the availability of hundreds of billons of dollars to do nothing but this. ..."
    "... A private western company is able to run a state level intelligence operation in Russia for years, continually interviewing senior security sources and people personally close to Putin, without being caught by the Russian security services – despite the fact the latter are brilliant enough to install a Manchurian candidate as President of the USA. This private western company can for example secretly interview staff in top Moscow hotels – which they themselves say are Russian security service controlled – without the staff being too scared to speak to them or ending up dead. They can continually pump Putin's friends for information and get it. ..."
    "... The editors of the Washington Post and the Guardian are guilty of pushing as blazing front page news the most blatant forgery to serve their own political ends, without carrying out the absolutely basic journalistic checks which would easily prove the forgery. Those editors must resign. ..."
    "... The Guardian has published a hagiography in which it clarifies he cannot travel to Russia himself and that he depends on second party contacts to interview third parties. It also confirms that much of the "information" is bought. ..."
    "... Highly paid contacts, through also paid third parties, were inventing intelligence to sell. ..."
    "... There is of course an extra level of venial inaccuracy here because unlike an MI6 officer, Steele himself was then flogging the information for cash. Nobody in the mainstream media has asked the most important question of all. What was the charlatan Christopher Steele paid for this dossier? ..."
    Jan 13, 2017 | www.globalresearch.ca

    The mainstream media's extreme enthusiasm for the Hitler Diaries shows their rush to embrace any forgery if it is big and astonishing enough.

    For the Guardian to lead with such an obvious forgery as the Trump "commercial intelligence reports" is the final evidence of the demise of that newspaper's journalistic values.

    We are now told that the reports were written by Mr Christopher Steele, an ex-MI6 man, for Orbis Business Intelligence. Here are a short list of six impossible things we are asked to believe before breakfast:

    1) Vladimir Putin had a five year (later stated as eight year) plan to run Donald Trump as a "Manchurian candidate" for President and Trump was an active and knowing partner in Putin's scheme.

    2) Hillary Clinton is so stupid and unaware that she held compromising conversations over telephone lines whilst in Russia itself.

    3) Trump's lawyer/adviser Mr Cohen was so stupid he held meetings in Prague with the hacker/groups themselves in person to arrange payment, along with senior officials of the Russian security services. The NSA, CIA and FBI are so incompetent they did not monitor this meeting, and somehow the NSA failed to pick up on the electronic and telephone communications involved in organising it. Therefore Mr Cohen was never questioned over this alleged and improbable serious criminal activity.

    4) A private company had minute by minute intelligence on the Manchurian Candidate scheme and all the indictable illegal activity that was going on, which the CIA/NSA/GCHQ/MI6 did not have, despite their specific tasking and enormous technical, staff and financial resources amounting between them to over 150,000 staff and the availability of hundreds of billons of dollars to do nothing but this.

    5) A private western company is able to run a state level intelligence operation in Russia for years, continually interviewing senior security sources and people personally close to Putin, without being caught by the Russian security services – despite the fact the latter are brilliant enough to install a Manchurian candidate as President of the USA. This private western company can for example secretly interview staff in top Moscow hotels – which they themselves say are Russian security service controlled – without the staff being too scared to speak to them or ending up dead. They can continually pump Putin's friends for information and get it.

    6) Donald Trump's real interest is his vast financial commitment in China, and he has little investment in Russia, according to the reports. Yet he spent the entire election campaign advocating closer ties with Russia and demonizing and antagonizing China.

    Michael Cohen has now stated he has never been to Prague in his life. If that is true the extremely weak credibility of the entire forgery collapses in total. What is more, contrary to the claims of the Guardian and Washington Post that the material is "unverifiable", the veracity of it could be tested extremely easily by the most basic journalism, ie asking Mr Cohen who has produced his passport. The editors of the Washington Post and the Guardian are guilty of pushing as blazing front page news the most blatant forgery to serve their own political ends, without carrying out the absolutely basic journalistic checks which would easily prove the forgery. Those editors must resign.

    The Guardian has published a hagiography in which it clarifies he cannot travel to Russia himself and that he depends on second party contacts to interview third parties. It also confirms that much of the "information" is bought. Contacts who sell you information will of course invent the kind of thing you want to hear to increase their income. That was the fundamental problem with much of the intelligence on Iraqi WMD. Highly paid contacts, through also paid third parties, were inventing intelligence to sell.

    There is of course an extra level of venial inaccuracy here because unlike an MI6 officer, Steele himself was then flogging the information for cash. Nobody in the mainstream media has asked the most important question of all. What was the charlatan Christopher Steele paid for this dossier?

    As forgeries go, this is really not in the least convincing.

    It was very obviously not written seriatim on the dates stated but forged as a collection and with hindsight. I might add I do not include the golden showers among the impossible aspects. I have no idea if it is true and neither do I care. Given Trump's wealth and history,

    I think we can say with confidence that he has indulged whatever his sexual preferences might be all over the world and not just in Russia. It seems most improbable he would succumb to blackmail over it and not brazen it out. I suppose it could be taken as the sole example of trickledown theory actually working.

    [Jan 14, 2017] Is Trump Already Finished - The Unz Review

    Jan 14, 2017 | www.unz.com
    It did not take long before we knew there was no hope of change from President Obama. But at least he went into his inauguration with an unprecedented number of Americans on the Mall showing their support for the President of Change. Hope was abundant.

    But with Trump, we are already losing faith, if not yet with him, at least with his choice of those who comprise his government even before Trump is inaugurated.

    Trump's choice for Secretary of State not only sounds like the neoconservatives in declaring Russia to be a threat to the United States and all of Europe, but also sounds like Hillary Clinton in declaring the South China Sea to be an area of US dominance. One would think that the chairman of Exxon was not an idiot, but I am no longer sure. In his confirmation hearing, Rex Tillerson said that China's access to its own South China Sea is "not going to be allowed."

    Here is Tillerson's statement: "We're going to have to send China a clear signal that first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands also not going to be allowed."

    I mean, really, what is Tillerson going to do about it except get the world blown up. China's response was as pointed as a response can be:

    Tillerson "should not be misled into thinking that Beijing will be fearful of threats. If Trump's diplomatic team shapes future Sino-US ties as it is doing now, the two sides had better prepare for a military clash. Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories."

    So Trump is not even inaugurated and his idiot nominee for Secretary of State has already created an animosity relationship with two nuclear powers capable of completely destroying all of the West for eternity. And this makes the US Senate comfortable with Tillerson. The imbeciles should be scared out of their wits, assuming they have any.

    One of the reasons that Russia rescued Syria from Washington's overthrow is that Russia understood that Washington's next target would be Iran and from a destroyed Iran terrorism would be exported into the Russian Federation. There is an axis of countries threatened by US supported terrorism-Syria, Iran, Russia, China.

    Trump says he wants to normalize relations with Russia and to open up business opportunities in the place of conflict. But to normalize relations with Russia requires also normalizing relations with Iran and China.

    Judging from their public statements, Trump's announced government has targeted Iran for destabilization. Trump's appointees as National Security Advisor, Secretary of Defense, and Director of the CIA all regard Iran incorrectly as a terrorist state that must be overthrown.

    But Russia cannot allow Washington to overthrow the stable government in Iran and will not allow it. China's investments in Iranian oil imply that China also will not permit Washington's overthrow of Iran. China has already suffered from its lost investments in Libyan oil as the result of the Obama regimes overthrow of the Libyan government.

    Realistically speaking, it looks like the Trump Presidency is already defeated by his own appointees independently of the ridiculous and completely unbelievable propaganda put out by the CIA and broadcast by the presstitute media in the US, UK, and Europe. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and BBC have lowered themselves below the National Enquirer.

    Possibly, as I wrote earlier today ( http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/01/13/the-establishment-is-trying-to-steal-the-presidency-from-trump-paul-craig-roberts/ ), these statements from Trump's appointees are nothing but what is required to be confirmed and are not operational in any sense. However, it is possible to stand up to the bastards in confirmation hearings. I stood up in my confirming hearing, and the embarrassed Democrats requested that the entire hearing be deleted from the record.

    If the Chairman of Exxon and a Lt. General are not capable of standing up to the imbecilic Congress, they are unfit for office. That they did not stand up is an indication that they lack the strength that Trump needs if he is to bring change from the top.

    If Trump is unable to change US foreign policy, thermonuclear war and the destruction of Earth are inevitable.

    [Jan 13, 2017] Mystery Hackers Blow Up Secret NSA Hacking Tools in 'Final F--k You'

    Notable quotes:
    "... The message was accompanied by a parting gift...an apparently complete NSA backdoor kit targeting the Windows operating system. The kit is comprised of 61 malicious Windows executables, only one of which was previously known to antivirus vendors... ..."
    Jan 13, 2017 | www.thedailybeast.com
    by Kevin Poulsen

    "A mysterious hacking group has been bedeviling the U.S. intelligence community for months, releasing a tranche of secret National Security Agency hacking tools to the public while offering to sell even more for the right price. Now with barely a week to go before Donald Trump's inauguration, the self-styled "Shadow Brokers" on Thursday announced that they were packing it in.

    "So long, farewell peoples. TheShadowBrokers is going dark, making exit," the group wrote on its darknet site... The message was accompanied by a parting gift...an apparently complete NSA backdoor kit targeting the Windows operating system. The kit is comprised of 61 malicious Windows executables, only one of which was previously known to antivirus vendors...

    ... ... ...

    The Shadow Brokers emerged in August with the announcement that they'd stolen the hacking tools used by a sophisticated computer-intrusion operation known as the Equation Group, and were putting them up for sale to the highest bidder. It was a remarkable claim, because the Equation Group is generally understood to be part of the NSA's elite Tailored Access Operations program and is virtually never detected, much less penetrated.

    ... ... ...

    Released along with the announcement was a huge cache of specialized malware, including dozens of backdoor programs and 10 exploits, two of them targeting previously unknown security holes in Cisco routers-a basic building block of the internet. While Cisco and other companies scrambled for a fix, security experts pored over the Shadow Brokers tranche like it was the Rosetta Stone. "It was the first time, as threat-intelligence professionals, that we've had access to what appears to be a relatively complete toolkit of a nation-state attacker," says Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec. "It was excitement in some circles, dismay in other circles, and panic and a rush to patch if you're running vulnerable hardware."

    [Jan 12, 2017] Chuck Todd Excoriates Buzzfeed s Editor in Chief YOU PUBLISHED FAKE NEWS

    Jan 12, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Chuck Todd Excoriates Buzzfeed's Editor in Chief: 'YOU PUBLISHED FAKE NEWS'

    Rudolph Steiner Jan 12, 2017 3:17 PM

    You cannot make this up! As a NEWS purveyor today you say anything you like, from any credible or not credible person or organization on the planet, and then claim it is up to your readers to decide if it is true or not. Yikes. The American Fourth Estate is beginning to look like a one flight up gentleman's parlor on old Times Square.

    inosent Jan 12, 2017 12:17 PM

    a lot of homosexual practitioners like ben smith produce this kind of garbage. the aggressive promotion of homosexualized America, and Europe as well, has been very bad news indeed. That is a political agenda that needs to meet some serious resistance.

    dizzyfingers Jan 12, 2017 12:07 PM

    Isn't 99.99% of tv "news" fake? That's if you add in commercials... :-)

    worbsid Karl Marxist Jan 12, 2017 1:06 PM

    Chuck Todd is doing exactly was he is being paid to do. Just like you, me, and every one else. Not that he is especially good at what he is supposed to be doing though. Tucker is much better.

    chunga Jan 12, 2017 10:56 AM

    Carlson blowing up Mark Ingram last night was pretty funny too.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7FZ6dJGoJ4

    [Jan 12, 2017] The Neocons declaration of war against Trump

    Notable quotes:
    "... The allegation that " The dossier is controlled by Kremlin spokesman, PESKOV, directly on PUTIN'S orders " is beyond laughable. Clearly the author of this fake has no idea how the Russian intelligence and security services work (hint: the Presidential spokesman has no involvement in that whatsoever) On page 2 there is this other hilarious sentence " exploit TRUMP's personal obsession and sexual perversion in order to obtain suitable 'kompromat' (compromising material) on him ." ..."
    "... this is an attempt at removing Donald Trump from the White House. This is a political coup d'etat. ..."
    "... Third, within one short week we went from allegations of "Russian hacking" to "having a traitor sitting in the White House". We can only expect a further Tsunami of such allegations to continue and get worse and worse every day. It is interesting that Buzzfeed has already preempted the accusation of this being a smear and demonization campaign against Trump by writing that " Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government. " as if most Americans had the expertise to immediately detect that this document is a crude forgery! ..."
    "... Fourth, unless all the officials who briefed Trump come out and deny that this fake was part of their briefing with Trump, it will appear that this document has the official imprimatur of the senior US intelligence officials and that would give them a legal, probatory, authority. This de-facto means that the "experts" have evaluated that document and have certified it as "credible" even before any legal proceedings in court or, worse, in Congress. I sure hope that Trump had the foresight to audio and video record his meeting with the intelligence chiefs and that he is now able to threaten them with legal action if they now act in a way contradicting their behavior before him. ..."
    "... Fifth, the fact that CNN got involved in all this is a critical factor. Some of us, including yours truly, were shocked and disgusted when the WaPo posted a list of 200 websites denounced as "fake news" and "Russian propaganda", but what CNN did by posting this article is infinitely worse: it is a direct smear and political attack on the President Elect on a worldwide level (the BBC and others are already posting the same crap). This again confirms to be that the gloves are off and that the Ziomedia is in full state of war against Donald Trump. ..."
    "... In spite of the image which Hollywood likes to give of them, most Americans are peaceful and non-violent people, but if they are pushed too far they will not hesitate and grab their guns to defend themselves, especially if they lose all hopes in their democracy. ..."
    "... just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they are not after you ..."
    "... I watched the press-conference just now, and I get the impression that this latest episode is the best thing (for Trump) recently. ..."
    "... Apparently it was so inane that it was immediately refuted, and it's now accepted in all quarters that it was a fake accusation. Which gives Trump an opportunity to 1. claim victimhood, 2. attack the media and US 'intelligence' services, and 3. talk about it every time he's asked any question about his mythical 'Russian connections'. It's a huge win for him. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised me if this whole thing was his own design (well, of his operatives). ..."
    "... There needs to be a mass housecleaning at the CIA and other intelligence agencies, and, in a serious country, ..."
    "... His enemies are like a pack, in both parties, in both chambers, in the economic and financial establishment, the media, Hollywood. He'll have to trad carefully. And yet, he is courageous and outspoken, as he has shown right away, by strongly denouncing the media and "intelligence community" for their forgeries. ..."
    "... I'm afraid the conspiracy will get nastier and nastier, and sooner or later, they will remove him, even violently, very violently. I fear the Inauguration ceremony will be historic, and not for the best. Cross your fingers. The humanity's fate is at the stake. ..."
    "... To finish the power of the oligarchs, Trump must separate the politics from the business and start a serious reform of CIA. If he will be able to do it, we all may enjoy much safer World. ..."
    "... The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke. And such hyper-overreaction as this post represents suggests an instability of mind. That anyone took the document seriously per se speaks of utter unseriousness. ..."
    "... despite the fact that Trump has lately wrapped himself in a prodigious portion of Establishment Mantle, the Powers That Be are terrified, and the brick bats have just begun. ..."
    "... Additionally: the accuracy, legitimacy, and/or professionalism of their attacks may prove irrelevant. Facts aren't really what it's about when you control the Narrative...When you control the Production of Truth. It's no accident that the stranglehold on the MSM is guarded so viciously. Control of the Media is Control of Everything. ..."
    "... The point is not that these allegations can be used as direct grounds for impeachment, but that they create a climate in which Congressmen and Senators, especially Republicans, can block Trump's personnel and policies, especially on Russia, and if and when the opportunity arises, justify voting against party lines on an impeachment motion. ..."
    "... There are plenty of establishment Republican who would vote to impeach in a heartbeat, regardless of the merits of the case, if they thought their careers would survive it, This kind of furore is designed to create political circumstances in which they might hope for their careers to survive such a betrayal. ..."
    "... It's useful to understand who the Neocons are. They're mostly the Zionist section of US Jewry, but even this isn't so clear since US Jews have a problem defining themselves racially. They are ethnically more European than Semitic, and their cultural affinity is wholly European rather than Semitic Middle Eastern. Also, they are not so religious, with the decline in practicing Judaism mirroring the decline in Christian Church attendance among Europeans and Americans in general. ..."
    "... So it could be more informative to see US Jewry as something more like a private corporation. ..."
    "... Like any other large corporation, it's transnational, sets up lobbying organizations to help client Congressmen get elected, guides their research, helps with their expenses and gets favourable legislation in return. This reality seems to build naturally out of the Jewish European background in international commerce (rather than national government administration) so a Neoliberal economic environment is much more congenial with very little input from a nominal national identity. The key is the corporate identity. ..."
    "... "Trumps problem (if it is a problem for him) is that he is dealing with a ...corporate "deep state" that sees the US mostly in economic terms, as a market to be exploited for maximum profit" ..."
    "... I tell you – you are right. The stakes are very high indeed. If the establishment will lose political power, many of them may finish their lives in prison. ..."
    "... It was a hoax. It also allowed Trump to find out where leaks are coming from. Anyone who understands the type of man Trump is would have placed such a report in the hoax category straightaway. That the "intelligence community" did not, says a lot about them. Under Obama, they have simply become a partisan tool. ..."
    "... The McCains and Wilsons and the responsible editors at Buzzfeed and CNN all wanted to believe it to be true so they posted it as true. Collaborator McCain is a despicable creature. ..."
    "... McCain of "Tokyo rose" fame. The older McCain of the USSLiberty scandalous coverup and insult to the USSLiberty victims and veterans fame. Seems that there something that runs in the McCain family. ..."
    "... I am amazed by the brazen nature of the attacks. The most interesting part is that at least the most lurid claims seem to have been spoonfed to the earlier idiot in the US as part of the flow by 4chan trolls, and this continued through the former MI6 loon, both the UK and US mnrons shopped the lies around for months. ..."
    "... The CNN man at the press-conference was really arrogant and aggressive. I think, if Trump will exclude CNN from his future press-conferences, people would accept it with understanding. Anyway we will have interesting times. ..."
    Jan 12, 2017 | www.unz.com

    After several rather lame false starts, the Neocons have now taken a step which can only be called a declaration of war against Donald Trump.

    It all began with CNN published an article entitled " Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him " which claimed that:

    Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN. The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible ( ) The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.

    The website Buzzfeed then published the full document . Here it is in full.

    When I first read the document my intention was to debunk it sentence by sentence. However, I don't have the time for that and, frankly, there is no need for it. I will just provide you here with enough simple straightforward evidence that this is a fake. Here are just a few elements of proof: The document has no letterhead, no identification, no date, no nothing. For many good technical and even legal reasons, sensitive intelligence documents are created with plenty of tracking and identification information. For example, such a document would typically have a reference to the unit which produced it or an number-letter combination indicating the reliability of the source and of the information it contains. The classification CONFIDENTIAL/SENSITIVE SOURCE is a joke. If this was a true document its level of classification would be much, much higher than "confidential" and since most intelligence documents come from sensitive sources there is no need to specify that.

    The allegation that " The dossier is controlled by Kremlin spokesman, PESKOV, directly on PUTIN'S orders " is beyond laughable. Clearly the author of this fake has no idea how the Russian intelligence and security services work (hint: the Presidential spokesman has no involvement in that whatsoever) On page 2 there is this other hilarious sentence " exploit TRUMP's personal obsession and sexual perversion in order to obtain suitable 'kompromat' (compromising material) on him ."

    Nobody in a real intelligence document would bother to clarify what the word "kompromat" means since both in Russian and in English it is obviously the combination of the words "compromising" and "materials". Any western intelligence officer, even a very junior one, would know that word, if only because of the many Cold War era espionage books written about the KGB entrapment techniques. The document speaks of "source A", "source B" and further down the alphabet. Now ask yourself a simple question: what happens after "source Z" is used? Can any intelligence agency work with a potential pool of sources limited to 26? Obviously, this is not how intelligence agencies classify their sources.

    I will stop here and submit that there is ample evidence that this is a crude fake produced by amateurs who have no idea of what they are talking about.

    This does not make this document any less dangerous, however.

    First, and this is the really crucial part, there is more than enough here to impeach Trump on numerous grounds both political and legal . Let me repeat again – this is an attempt at removing Donald Trump from the White House. This is a political coup d'etat.

    Second, this documents smears everybody involved: Trump himself, of course, but also the evil Russians and their ugly Machiavellian techniques. Trump is thereby "confirmed" as a sexual pervert who likes to hire prostitutes to urinate on him. As for the Russians, they are basically accused of trying to recruit the President of the United States as an agent of their security services. That would make Trump a traitor, by the way.

    Third, within one short week we went from allegations of "Russian hacking" to "having a traitor sitting in the White House". We can only expect a further Tsunami of such allegations to continue and get worse and worse every day. It is interesting that Buzzfeed has already preempted the accusation of this being a smear and demonization campaign against Trump by writing that " Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government. " as if most Americans had the expertise to immediately detect that this document is a crude forgery!

    Fourth, unless all the officials who briefed Trump come out and deny that this fake was part of their briefing with Trump, it will appear that this document has the official imprimatur of the senior US intelligence officials and that would give them a legal, probatory, authority. This de-facto means that the "experts" have evaluated that document and have certified it as "credible" even before any legal proceedings in court or, worse, in Congress. I sure hope that Trump had the foresight to audio and video record his meeting with the intelligence chiefs and that he is now able to threaten them with legal action if they now act in a way contradicting their behavior before him.

    Fifth, the fact that CNN got involved in all this is a critical factor. Some of us, including yours truly, were shocked and disgusted when the WaPo posted a list of 200 websites denounced as "fake news" and "Russian propaganda", but what CNN did by posting this article is infinitely worse: it is a direct smear and political attack on the President Elect on a worldwide level (the BBC and others are already posting the same crap). This again confirms to be that the gloves are off and that the Ziomedia is in full state of war against Donald Trump.

    All of the above further confirms to me what I have been saying over the past weeks: if Trump ever makes it into the White House (I write 'if' because I think that the Neocons are perfectly capable of assassinating him), his first priority should be to ruthlessly crack down as hard as he legally can against those in the US "deep state" (which very much includes the media) who have now declared war on him. I am sorry to say that, but it will be either him or them – one of the parties here will be crushed.

    [Sidebar: to those who wonder what I mean by "crackdown" I will summarize here what I wrote elsewhere: the best way to do that is to nominate a hyper-loyal and determined FBI director and instruct him to go after all the enemies of Trump by investigating them on charge of corruption, abuse of power, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and all the other types of behavior which have gone on forever in Congress, the intelligence community, the banking world and the media. Deal with the Neocons like Putin did with the Russian oligarchs or how the USA dealt with Al Capone – get them on tax evasion. There is no need to open Gulags or shoot people when you can get them all on what is their normal daily behavior :-)]

    I sincerely hope that I am wrong, and I admit that I might be, but I don't have the gut feeling that Trump has what it takes to hit hard enough at those who are using any and every ugly method imaginable to prevent him from ever making it into the White House or to have him impeached if he tries to deliver on his campaign promises. I cannot blame him for that either: the enemy has infiltrated all the level of power in the US polity and there are strong sign that they are even represented in Trump's immediate entourage. Putin could do what he did because he was an iron-willed and highly trained intelligence officer. Trump is just a businessman whose best "training" to deal with such people would probably be his exposure to the mob in New York. Will that be enough to allow him to prevail against the Neocons? I doubt it, but I sure hope so.

    As I predicted it before the election , the USA are about to enter the worst crisis in their history. We are entering extraordinarily dangerous times. If the danger of a thermonuclear war between Russia and the USA had dramatically receded with the election of Trump, the Neocon total war on Trump put the United States at very grave risk, including civil war (should the Neocon controlled Congress impeach Trump I believe that uprisings will spontaneously happen, especially in the South, and especially in Florida and Texas). At the risk of sounding over the top, I will say that what is happening now is putting the very existence of the United States in danger almost regardless of what Trump will personally do. Whatever we may think of Trump as a person and about his potential as a President, what is certain is that millions of American patriots have voted for him to "clear the swamp", give the boot to the Washington-based plutocracy and restore what they see as fundamental American values. If the Neocons now manage to stage a coup d'etat against Trump, I predict that these millions of American will turn to violence to protect what they see as their way of life, their values and their country.

    In spite of the image which Hollywood likes to give of them, most Americans are peaceful and non-violent people, but if they are pushed too far they will not hesitate and grab their guns to defend themselves, especially if they lose all hopes in their democracy. And I am not talking only about gun-toting hillbillies here, I am talking about the local, state and county authorities, who often care much more about what their local constituents think and say than what the are up to in DC. If a coup is staged against Trump and some wannabe President ŕ la Hillary or McCain gives the order to the National Guard or even the US Army to put down a local insurrection, we could see what we saw in Russia in 1991: a categorical refusal of the security services to shoot at their own people. That is the biggest and ultimate danger for the Neocons: the risk that if they give the order to crack down on the population the police, security and military services might simply refuse to take action. If that could happen in the "KGB-controlled country" (to use a Cold War cliché) this can also happen in the USA.

    I sure hope that I am wrong and that this latest attack against Trump is the Neocon's last "hurray" before they finally give up and leave. I hope that all of the above is my paranoia speaking. But, as they say, " just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they are not after you ".

    So please tell me I am wrong!

    (Reprinted from The Vineyard of the Saker by permission of author or representative)

    Mao Cheng Ji , January 11, 2017 at 7:34 pm GMT • 100 Words

    I watched the press-conference just now, and I get the impression that this latest episode is the best thing (for Trump) recently.

    Apparently it was so inane that it was immediately refuted, and it's now accepted in all quarters that it was a fake accusation. Which gives Trump an opportunity to 1. claim victimhood, 2. attack the media and US 'intelligence' services, and 3. talk about it every time he's asked any question about his mythical 'Russian connections'. It's a huge win for him. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised me if this whole thing was his own design (well, of his operatives).

    @Mikhailovich
    "this whole thing was his own design" - you mean it is possible that Trump somehow has control over CNN, BBC etc. In such case - why he would attack them? And other question - why they worked so hard against him in time of the election campaign?
    Seamus Padraig , January 11, 2017 at 9:05 pm GMT

    Looks like CNN and Buzzfeed got trolled hard by 4Chan: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-11/archived-posts-prove-4chan-trolled-cia-trump-golden-shower-story-entire-russian-hack

    dearieme ,January 11, 2017 at 9:44 pm GMT

    If the pis-en-lit putsch fails, there will be another along in a minute. "Lock 'em up" is going to have to be applied by the thousands.

    @pyrrhus
    Indeed. There needs to be a mass housecleaning at the CIA and other intelligence agencies, and, in a serious country, a number of people at the CIA would be shot for treason.
    Enrique Ferro , January 11, 2017 at 10:16 pm GMT • 200 Words

    Saker, Putin's crack down the oligarchs took him some years, the time to gather forces and get them in disarray. He was very clever and cautious, he didn't go after them overnight. And Putin had decisive connections. Besides it was never so dramatic, and his succession was smooth The problem with Trump, as you say, is that he is quite new in town, and a forlorn fighter.

    His enemies are like a pack, in both parties, in both chambers, in the economic and financial establishment, the media, Hollywood. He'll have to trad carefully. And yet, he is courageous and outspoken, as he has shown right away, by strongly denouncing the media and "intelligence community" for their forgeries.

    I'm afraid the conspiracy will get nastier and nastier, and sooner or later, they will remove him, even violently, very violently. I fear the Inauguration ceremony will be historic, and not for the best. Cross your fingers. The humanity's fate is at the stake.

    @Mikhailovich
    Russian oligarchs had about 5% support of Russian people. They needed Putin themselves. Alternative was the communists and the nationalisation of everything.

    Putin gave them choice: carry on with your business, but not interfere in the politics or leave the country. Khodorkovsky tried to resist and failed miserably. The regime change from the oligarchs to Putin took about four years.

    After election 2004, it was clear who control the country. In US, the establishment, in their struggle against Trump, has support of almost half of US people, including all minorities (Jews too). To finish the power of the oligarchs, Trump must separate the politics from the business and start a serious reform of CIA. If he will be able to do it, we all may enjoy much safer World.

    Robert Magill , January 11, 2017 at 10:59 pm GMT • 200 Words

    This is excerpted from a futurist short story that was never published and hopefully would never be acted upon. Today's madness make it almost a possibility.

    Rescuing the Republic From Itself /or How 50 Men, Women and Children Could Save our Bacon.

    One thing still trumps all others in America. It isn't wealth, nor power, it's not the myth of our uniqueness under Heaven no. It's a lot more basic and powerful than those. It even trumps celebrity which is a close second. No, fundamental as those are in the national psyche they pale in comparison to Number One racism. Added to this ancient plague is a relative newcomer. Only about a century old; it is a formidable competitor and looks like it's here to stay. (If the money holds out.) Big drum roll ..ForeverWar!

    Secret Plan: Your Eyes Only. Need-To-Know Established. Emergency use only! Not to be attempted until things are so bad nothing else is feasible.The basis of the Secret Plan is to use racism against racism. more https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/how-our-republic-was-finally-rescued-from-itself-or/

    http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

    @Lemurmaniac
    Racism is in group preference based upon common descent. It's how you create a stable polity as De Tocqueville elaborated - one people and one culture settled the United States. Ethnic solidarity allows us to cooperate to produce public goods in the common interest.
    Forbes , January 12, 2017 at 2:54 am GMT • 100 Words

    The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke. And such hyper-overreaction as this post represents suggests an instability of mind. That anyone took the document seriously per se speaks of utter unseriousness.

    What's been referred to as the mainstream media has effectively lost all credibility, as they play the role of the partisan opposition. There's no reason to believe their reporting beyond yesterday's high and low temperature.

    @Kyle McKenna
    It's tempting to treat this analysis as paranoid and even a tad hysterical, but I fear it's nothing more than the unvarnished truth. Trump is a wrench in the works of the Establishment, and a bit of a loose cannon besides.

    However, despite the fact that Trump has lately wrapped himself in a prodigious portion of Establishment Mantle, the Powers That Be are terrified, and the brick bats have just begun. While it's a pleasure to see them on the run for once, it'd be a fatal error to underestimate them.

    Additionally: the accuracy, legitimacy, and/or professionalism of their attacks may prove irrelevant. Facts aren't really what it's about when you control the Narrative...When you control the Production of Truth. It's no accident that the stranglehold on the MSM is guarded so viciously. Control of the Media is Control of Everything.

    Anon , January 12, 2017 at 5:35 am GMT • 100 Words

    Does blackmail work?

    Didn't J. Edgar Hoover have all sorts of tapes of MLK acting like Fartin Poother Bling? Drunkeness, orgies, blasphemy, hitting women around, and acting like some rapper thug?

    Well, it didn't do any good, and MLK is now revered as some kind of god.

    And Monica's dress failed to topple Billy Boy Clinton.

    BBC reports that it was some British Intelligence that got this news. But I don't know if we should trust that stuff. Didn't British intelligence spread false rumors to drag the US into both WWI and WWII?

    Well, if Russia does have the incriminating tape and had planned to blackmail Trump, that possibility is gone since the beans have been spilled.

    PS. Was there any truth to the rumor that Obama had 'gay' affairs with rich powerful men? Now, that would explain a lot.

    @Eagle Eye
    Was there any truth to the rumor that Obama had 'gay' affairs with rich powerful men?
    Senator Frist was mentioned as a Barry worshiper. Barry loves humiliating and lying to white men, probably still acting out early childhood trauma over having been ditched by 3 parents (father - whoever he was, mother, and stepfather), perhaps a lot of other unpleasantness that tends to befall unprotected boys. ,
    @Dr. X
    Well, it didn't do any good, and MLK is now revered as some kind of god.
    Yeah, because a Federal judge sealed his FBI records from being FOILed for fifty years, so that TPTB could create a Magic Negro myth about him and make him more important than George Washington.
    The Alarmist , January 12, 2017 at 6:27 am GMT

    "There is no need to open Gulags ."

    There's still plenty of room at Gitmo, and it would only be fitting to bring the neocons face to face with their old friends and henchmen.

    Kyle McKenna , January 12, 2017 at 7:00 am GMT • 100 Words
    @Forbes
    The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke. And such hyper-overreaction as this post represents suggests an instability of mind. That anyone took the document seriously per se speaks of utter unseriousness.

    What's been referred to as the mainstream media has effectively lost all credibility, as they play the role of the partisan opposition. There's no reason to believe their reporting beyond yesterday's high and low temperature.

    It's tempting to treat this analysis as paranoid and even a tad hysterical, but I fear it's nothing more than the unvarnished truth. Trump is a wrench in the works of the Establishment, and a bit of a loose cannon besides.

    However, despite the fact that Trump has lately wrapped himself in a prodigious portion of Establishment Mantle, the Powers That Be are terrified, and the brick bats have just begun. While it's a pleasure to see them on the run for once, it'd be a fatal error to underestimate them.

    Additionally: the accuracy, legitimacy, and/or professionalism of their attacks may prove irrelevant. Facts aren't really what it's about when you control the Narrative When you control the Production of Truth. It's no accident that the stranglehold on the MSM is guarded so viciously. Control of the Media is Control of Everything.

    @Anonymous
    "even a tad hysterical"

    it's anutha showa --

    Ned Resnikoff

    Nov 12 2016 -- 4 days after the election of Donald Trump

    Wanted to share an experience from earlier today. This afternoon, I had a plumber over to my apartment to fix a clogged drain. He was a perfectly nice guy and a consummate professional. But he was also a middle aged white man with a southern accent who seemed unperturbed by this week's news. And while I had him in the apartment, I couldn't stop thinking about whether he had voted for Trump, whether he knew my last name is Jewish, and how that knowledge might change the interaction we were having inside my own home. I have no real reason to believe he was a Trump support or an anti-Semite, but in my uncertainty I couldn't shake the sense of potential danger. I was rattled for some time after he left.

    I'm very privileged insofar as this sense of range is unfamiliar to me. And I know I feel it much less acutely than a lot of other people right now. I'm still a straight, white guy who can phenotypically pass for gentile. Plus my first name is pretty WASP-y.

    But today was a reminder that ambiguous social interactions now feel unsafe and unpredictable in a way that they never did before. And even if Trump is gone in four years, I don't expect to ever reclaim that feeling of security. That's just one more thing you voted for, if you voted for him."

    https://twitter.com/Thomasismyuncle/status/818117574466699264

    anon , January 12, 2017 at 7:18 am GMT • 100 Words

    I am of the opinion that the dossier, even if true, is at most embarrassing but not an impeachable offense. Impeachment is for offenses committed while in office, not for alleged misdeeds before the office starts when the person was a private citizen. The process of election, is a judgement on fitness to hold office. He can be impeached only for things he will do after Jan. 20.

    All voters who voted for him knew he is not strong on personal or business morality or ethics. He was elected in spite of that. That should take away all the sting out of the dossier allegations.

    Impeachment and Removal by CRS

    https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44260.pdf

    @Randal
    The point is not that these allegations can be used as direct grounds for impeachment, but that they create a climate in which Congressmen and Senators, especially Republicans, can block Trump's personnel and policies, especially on Russia, and if and when the opportunity arises, justify voting against party lines on an impeachment motion.

    There are plenty of establishment Republican who would vote to impeach in a heartbeat, regardless of the merits of the case, if they thought their careers would survive it, This kind of furore is designed to create political circumstances in which they might hope for their careers to survive such a betrayal.

    Miro23 , January 12, 2017 at 7:34 am GMT • 500 Words

    The Neocons' Declaration of War Against Trump,

    It's useful to understand who the Neocons are. They're mostly the Zionist section of US Jewry, but even this isn't so clear since US Jews have a problem defining themselves racially. They are ethnically more European than Semitic, and their cultural affinity is wholly European rather than Semitic Middle Eastern. Also, they are not so religious, with the decline in practicing Judaism mirroring the decline in Christian Church attendance among Europeans and Americans in general.

    So it could be more informative to see US Jewry as something more like a private corporation.

    You either belong to the corporation or you don't, and it's not essential to have a Jewish connection either (e.g. top executives Hillary Clinton and John McCain) with the general idea being to run the enterprise for the mutual benefit of its members.

    Like any other large corporation, it's transnational, sets up lobbying organizations to help client Congressmen get elected, guides their research, helps with their expenses and gets favourable legislation in return. This reality seems to build naturally out of the Jewish European background in international commerce (rather than national government administration) so a Neoliberal economic environment is much more congenial with very little input from a nominal national identity. The key is the corporate identity.

    Corporations are not too concerned if their competitors go bankrupt, it's just part of the business, and in fact it's positive, since it shows that your corporation can capture a market and exploit it more profitably. If your competitors are Gentile businesses then there are various ways to remove them, the most popular being to gain leadership positions in Gentile Corporation "G" while still holding loyalty to Jewish Corporation "J". Corporation "G" can them be incorporated in Corporation " J" and the top executives replaced.

    Trump's problem (if it is a problem for him) is that he is dealing with a Corporate "J" run "deep state", that sees the US in mostly economic terms, as a market to be exploited for maximum profit. Putin faced a similar problem when he came to power in Russia (also Corporation "J" ), and slowly resolved it by blocking their attempts to gain political power (arrest on tax charges of Khodorkovsky) and emphasizing national interests and identity over corporate interests.

    Trump could follow a similar line by blocking all special interest access to Congress, or more aggressively suspend all CIA and FBI non-disclosure agreements, giving past and present agents immunity to prosecution and inviting them to present documentation in confidence to a Presidential Commission regarding any activities that in their opinion were conducted against the interests of the United States.

    Alternatively he could accept the presidency of Corporation "J", take the tremendous benefits, and be hailed by the MSM as America's Greatest Leader, but as the article says, face a backlash from his base who will see that he has sold them out.

    @alexander
    "Trumps problem (if it is a problem for him) is that he is dealing with a ...corporate "deep state" that sees the US mostly in economic terms, as a market to be exploited for maximum profit"


    "Exploited" Miro23 ?

    This has got to be the "understatement" of the decade.... Lets just take a look at the numbers, shall we?..

    Let us say for a moment that I placed you (or myself ) on a street corner in New York City with the specific intention of handing out a $1,000,000 cashiers check to each and every person who walks by ........ Do you know how many people you would have to hand the check to...in order to EQUAL the amount of tax dollars this "deep state" VACUUM has "sucked" from the taxpayers pockets, in a mere decade and a half ?......

    14,300,000 people.!

    That's right !... the entire Population of Manhattan.. TIMES TWO.

    This is not the total in "spending" , mind you..No, No....this is the total in... "overspending".

    Our national debt has BALLOONED from 5.7 trillion in 2000 to a whopping 20 trillion in just sixteen years...

    A "bone crunching" $14.3 million, million dollars --

    This level of "assault" on our nations balance sheet is wholly unprecedented in history.

    Its absolutely "mind -numbing"

    Its obscene.

    And what can nearly all of this humongous debt, foisted on the backs of 320 million Americans, be attributed to ....

    BANKING FRAUD as in....triple A rating worthless subprime junk
    TERROR FRAUD as in ....it was "Saddam's Anthrax" in Senators Leahy's office
    WAR FRAUD as in.....imminent threat of "mushroom clouds" ,WMD's, and "Yellow Cake from Niger".

    This kind of behavior is simply unacceptable.

    Yet for some reason, there has been ZERO accountability......ZERO.

    This cannot continue.

    The people voted in the Donald to "Drain the Swamp"....because if he doesn't do something..we are all SUNK.

    And if the "swamp doesn't want to be drained"...well.... too bad......Because the American people have put their foot down on this....and they ain't gonna budge --

    Throw the whole lot in Guantanamo Bay, Mr. President, if need be.....Just get it done --

    Enough is enough.

    Mikhailovich , January 12, 2017 at 7:40 am GMT

    I tell you – you are right. The stakes are very high indeed. If the establishment will lose political power, many of them may finish their lives in prison.

    @annamaria
    Agree. The establishment's hysterics and histrionics betray the fear of loosing money and power. But what a pitiful imagination, what a consistent incompetence the "deciders" have been showing: Nothing but banality and half-wit... clear signs of degradation.
    @Mao Cheng Ji
    I watched the press-conference just now, and I get the impression that this latest episode is the best thing (for Trump) recently.

    Apparently it was so inane that it was immediately refuted, and it's now accepted in all quarters that it was a fake accusation. Which gives Trump an opportunity to 1. claim victimhood, 2. attack the media and US 'intelligence' services, and 3. talk about it every time he's asked any question about his mythical 'Russian connections'. It's a huge win for him. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised me if this whole thing was his own design (well, of his operatives).

    "this whole thing was his own design" – you mean it is possible that Trump somehow has control over CNN, BBC etc. In such case – why he would attack them? And other question – why they worked so hard against him in time of the election campaign?

    @Mao Cheng Ji
    No. What I meant is that, seeing how insane the MSM are these days, perhaps it would makes sense for the Trump team to secretly manufacture some juicy red-meat fake scandal for them -- in hope that they mindlessly grab it and run with it -- and then get burned when it's proven a ludicrous fake. But maybe it's just my devious mind... ,
    @squf
    No, "by design" would refer to the original document being hoaxed, not that Trump has complete control over the Cathedral's media wing.
    n230099 , January 12, 2017 at 12:20 pm GMT • 100 Words

    "And I am not talking only about gun-toting hillbillies here, I am talking about the local, state and county authorities, who often care much more about what their local constituents think and say than what the are up to in DC"

    One of the oft heard cliches of the gun control crowd is that the armed among the unwashed are silly to think they could stand against the might of the government. But as the writer here implies, this notion relies on the authorities staying with the program. But these folks are still family people for which their service is just a job. The notion that they're all part of a unified goon squad may be in error.

    Ram , January 12, 2017 at 12:29 pm GMT • 100 Words

    " one of the parties here will be crushed."

    I sure hope it won't be Trump. However, his promise to drain the swamp has NOT happened, and the State Department is still completely controlled by the ZioCons and the foreign policy is controlled from Tel Aviv. The recent attempt to further subvert British politics by the Israeli embassy in London was exposed but what will the consequence be.? Not very much I guess.

    War for Blair Mountain , January 12, 2017 at 12:29 pm GMT • 100 Words

    The Civil War will be in fact an all-out-race-war. They didn't take this into account when the 1965 Immigration Reform Act was passed. We are already in a low-level .maybe not so low-level race war. Barack Obama will spend his time in retirement with very aggressive racial grievance agitation.

    The basement of the US has been filled to the brim with gasoline ..we are one match away .one match

    @george strong
    I hope you are correct. All decent white men have many scores to settle.
    Quartermaster , January 12, 2017 at 12:40 pm GMT • 100 Words

    It was a hoax. It also allowed Trump to find out where leaks are coming from. Anyone who understands the type of man Trump is would have placed such a report in the hoax category straightaway. That the "intelligence community" did not, says a lot about them. Under Obama, they have simply become a partisan tool.

    @annamaria
    Agree. The "intelligent" community's big shots showed themselves to be intellectual whimpers. ,
    @Eagle Eye
    Yep, the more lurid parts are definitely a hoax, with some other parts cobbled together from open sources to lend volume and credibility to this threadbare effort.

    The weird fascination with the person of Obama is a dead giveaway. Only an Obama worshiper would feel that the highest/lowest form of sexual perversion is to commit sacrilege against a BED that the Holy One and his consort had slept in.

    Whatever Trump's personal predilections, they are most unlikely to revolve around the person of Barry Obama.

    On the other hand, anyone with eyes to see will have encountered the type of fervid, manic, glassy-eyed Barry worshiper (mostly gay or female) with the characteristic combination of sexual arousal and religious fervor, leavened with vicious bitchiness during depressive phases.

    War for Blair Mountain , January 12, 2017 at 12:58 pm GMT • 100 Words

    Dear Saker

    The term "hillbillies" is a slur against the People of Appalachia. It is a slur that is used in comedy skits on SNL written by the East Coast Rootless Cosmopolitan SNL Comedy Writers. For the record Tina Fey is not Jewish niether is Samantha Bee -- but they are Rootless Cosmopolitan Filth.

    CK , January 12, 2017 at 1:05 pm GMT • 100 Words

    The McCains and Wilsons and the responsible editors at Buzzfeed and CNN all wanted to believe it to be true so they posted it as true.
    Collaborator McCain is a despicable creature.

    Rick Wilson is a moral degenerate as is his son whose web site is a storehouse of perversity.

    Imagine what kind of mental aberration you have to hold to believe that hiring prostitutes and having them urinate on new linen somehow invalidated or harms someone who might have slept in that room months previously.

    That is the level of aberration that runs from Pizzagate to the highest levels of American Journalism and the American Democratic party ( but I repeat myself). Sympathetic magic maybe?

    @annamaria
    McCain of "Tokyo rose" fame. The older McCain of the USSLiberty scandalous coverup and insult to the USSLiberty victims and veterans fame. Seems that there something that runs in the McCain family.
    Che Guava , January 12, 2017 at 1:08 pm GMT • 200 Words

    I am amazed by the brazen nature of the attacks. The most interesting part is that at least the most lurid claims seem to have been spoonfed to the earlier idiot in the US as part of the flow by 4chan trolls, and this continued through the former MI6 loon, both the UK and US mnrons shopped the lies around for months.

    Hanoi Hilton collaborator and Lord Haw Haw of the US in Vietnam, John McCain decided to dash it out again. Having never logged on to 4chan, but been an admin on a site they invaded, I know and at times enjoy their troll style. That supposedly serious 'intelligence' agencies push that entertaining crap, as disinfo without a second thought is mystifying

    It also raises my estimation of the Donald, never heard his speaking voice before, but it is quite good,
    .
    Trump needs to clean their Augean stables.

    They are cleary sn.

    If the disinfo against hm iis so bad, he must be doing many things right.
    . . .

    Anonymous , January 12, 2017 at 2:36 pm GMT • 100 Words

    I'm amazed at how incompetent the CIA is in its war against Trump but, then, I look at its historical track record since its founding and note this has always been the case. Like petulant children, the CIA tends to be present oriented in extremis . It discounts the future and is therefore constitutively unprepared for exposure, consequences, and blowback. The CIA knows how to make a mess of things but not much else.

    I would not trust any intelligence coming from the CIA It doesn't appear to be staffed with very intelligent people. The KGB (now the SFB/SVR) is running circles around them.

    @annamaria
    "...incompetent CIA.."
    Decades of selection in favor of opportunists and sycophants, while, at the same time, weeding out the principled and competent professionals.
    Is not the result grand? - CIA as a senescent, gossiping madame. ,
    @Realist
    "I'm amazed at how incompetent the CIA is in its war against Trump but, then, I look at its historical track record since its founding and note this has always been the case."

    Exactly right. The CIA has never done anything to better the US for the common man. From it's inception it was the muscle for the power elite. It's purpose was to manipulate foreign governments to provide wealth and power to the power elite/deep state, which ever you prefer. And occasionally to eliminate threats to it'self.

    DaveE , January 12, 2017 at 3:06 pm GMT • 100 Words

    The zionists have lost and they know it. BUT, they still have their"trump-card" (sorry!) left to play: a nuclear false flag attack on America, to be blamed on Russia.

    No-one could stop war at that point, regardless of belief of culpability. Although Saker is right, such a stunt would involve some SERIOUS repercussions for the Israelites.

    Are they crazy enough to risk self-annihilation to prove their superiority, once and for all?

    Trump certainly doesn't have the guts to say, "Hey folks, the zionists did it .." Hell, he won't even publicly admit they did 9/11, although there's plenty of evidence he knows they did. But Obama on the other hand would help them plant the nukes and take a train outa town.

    If I were a zionist contemplating such a stunt, I'd get it over with before next Friday.

    @CanSpeccy
    War between Russia and NATO would be the ultimate civil conflict among the European people, leading to the elimination of the white race as a significant component of the future world population and the end of Christendom.

    That, apparently, is what the NeoCons, President Obama, and their Treason Party allies, the likes of Senator McCain at home, and Canada's witless Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau abroad, want.

    alexander , January 12, 2017 at 3:37 pm GMT • 400 Words
    Agent76 , January 12, 2017 at 4:16 pm GMT • 100 Words

    They are the cancer that needs to be radiated and removed in both wings of the War party!

    Mar 2, 2014 Jeremy Scahill: The One Party State, The War Party

    Is the United States of America an Oligarchy? During the 2014 ISFLC, Jeremy Scahill speaks on the fact that in today's world behemoth corporations are able to buy off politicians and pull the strings to impact legislature. Washington, D.C. is a town that operates by campaign contributions and legal bribery in the form of campaign finance. What can the American people do to get their political representatives to represent them as opposed to the mega corporations. When will the people's voice be heard?

    @Realist
    Jeremy is wrong at least one thing. McCain is a member in good standing with the deep state. Just too stupid to be elected.
    Mao Cheng Ji , January 12, 2017 at 4:27 pm GMT • 100 Words
    @Mikhailovich
    "this whole thing was his own design" - you mean it is possible that Trump somehow has control over CNN, BBC etc. In such case - why he would attack them? And other question - why they worked so hard against him in time of the election campaign?

    No. What I meant is that, seeing how insane the MSM are these days, perhaps it would makes sense for the Trump team to secretly manufacture some juicy red-meat fake scandal for them - in hope that they mindlessly grab it and run with it - and then get burned when it's proven a ludicrous fake. But maybe it's just my devious mind

    @Mikhailovich
    The CNN man at the press-conference was really arrogant and aggressive. I think, if Trump will exclude CNN from his future press-conferences, people would accept it with understanding. Anyway we will have interesting times.
    @anonymous
    They'd probably bite on anything.

    I look at the CNN webpage once in a while, and I get the distinct impression that the people staffing the place are simply not very bright.

    There may be too many diversity hires? It seems like a group of actors and SJWs pretending to be journalists. They aren't serious people, and you'd like to not have to take them seriously but since they control the information flow of the nation you kind of have to.

    CanSpeccy , • Website January 12, 2017 at 4:31 pm GMT • 100 Words
    @DaveE
    The zionists have lost and they know it. BUT, they still have their"trump-card" (sorry!) left to play: a nuclear false flag attack on America, to be blamed on Russia.

    No-one could stop war at that point, regardless of belief of culpability. Although Saker is right, such a stunt would involve some SERIOUS repercussions for the Israelites.

    Are they crazy enough to risk self-annihilation to prove their superiority, once and for all?

    Trump certainly doesn't have the guts to say, "Hey folks, the zionists did it....." Hell, he won't even publicly admit they did 9/11, although there's plenty of evidence he knows they did. But Obama on the other hand would help them plant the nukes and take a train outa town.

    If I were a zionist contemplating such a stunt, I'd get it over with before next Friday.

    War between Russia and NATO would be the ultimate civil conflict among the European people, leading to the elimination of the white race as a significant component of the future world population and the end of Christendom.

    That, apparently, is what the NeoCons, President Obama, and their Treason Party allies, the likes of Senator McCain at home, and Canada's witless Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau abroad, want.

    Abelard Lindsey , January 12, 2017 at 4:35 pm GMT

    I can assure you that, if Trump is prevented from taking office, or is removed from office after being sworn in, millions of us WILL treat it as a coup d'etat and will respond appropriately, and this does not necessarily involve violence.

    I can also tell you our feelings are not limited to the South and Texas. Many of us in the Western U.S. feel the same way.

    @anonymous
    So many options. Take a page from the leftists and block highways and ports -- but on a grand scale.

    Simply stop paying taxes. Stop funding the entire machine -- the sports, shops, colleges. Just stop it all.

    If there is a coup, it'll more than past time for it all to be stopped. It will be time to implode the whole thing and hit the reset button.

    Thales the Milesian , January 12, 2017 at 5:08 pm GMT

    USA: numero uno!

    Every patriotic American should support president Trump, all the way.

    Long live President Trump!

    annamaria , January 12, 2017 at 5:12 pm GMT
    @Mikhailovich
    I tell you - you are right. The stakes are very high indeed. If the establishment will lose political power, many of them may finish their lives in prison.

    Agree. The establishment's hysterics and histrionics betray the fear of loosing money and power. But what a pitiful imagination, what a consistent incompetence the "deciders" have been showing: Nothing but banality and half-wit clear signs of degradation.

    @Mikhailovich
    The difference between the corporate interests of the financial-political elite and the interests of the nation became too obvious. So they are failing to persuade American Nation that they are acting in the national interest.

    [Jan 12, 2017] The Neocons declaration of war against Trump

    Notable quotes:
    "... The allegation that " The dossier is controlled by Kremlin spokesman, PESKOV, directly on PUTIN'S orders " is beyond laughable. Clearly the author of this fake has no idea how the Russian intelligence and security services work (hint: the Presidential spokesman has no involvement in that whatsoever) On page 2 there is this other hilarious sentence " exploit TRUMP's personal obsession and sexual perversion in order to obtain suitable 'kompromat' (compromising material) on him ." ..."
    "... this is an attempt at removing Donald Trump from the White House. This is a political coup d'etat. ..."
    "... Third, within one short week we went from allegations of "Russian hacking" to "having a traitor sitting in the White House". We can only expect a further Tsunami of such allegations to continue and get worse and worse every day. It is interesting that Buzzfeed has already preempted the accusation of this being a smear and demonization campaign against Trump by writing that " Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government. " as if most Americans had the expertise to immediately detect that this document is a crude forgery! ..."
    "... Fourth, unless all the officials who briefed Trump come out and deny that this fake was part of their briefing with Trump, it will appear that this document has the official imprimatur of the senior US intelligence officials and that would give them a legal, probatory, authority. This de-facto means that the "experts" have evaluated that document and have certified it as "credible" even before any legal proceedings in court or, worse, in Congress. I sure hope that Trump had the foresight to audio and video record his meeting with the intelligence chiefs and that he is now able to threaten them with legal action if they now act in a way contradicting their behavior before him. ..."
    "... Fifth, the fact that CNN got involved in all this is a critical factor. Some of us, including yours truly, were shocked and disgusted when the WaPo posted a list of 200 websites denounced as "fake news" and "Russian propaganda", but what CNN did by posting this article is infinitely worse: it is a direct smear and political attack on the President Elect on a worldwide level (the BBC and others are already posting the same crap). This again confirms to be that the gloves are off and that the Ziomedia is in full state of war against Donald Trump. ..."
    "... In spite of the image which Hollywood likes to give of them, most Americans are peaceful and non-violent people, but if they are pushed too far they will not hesitate and grab their guns to defend themselves, especially if they lose all hopes in their democracy. ..."
    "... just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they are not after you ..."
    "... I watched the press-conference just now, and I get the impression that this latest episode is the best thing (for Trump) recently. ..."
    "... Apparently it was so inane that it was immediately refuted, and it's now accepted in all quarters that it was a fake accusation. Which gives Trump an opportunity to 1. claim victimhood, 2. attack the media and US 'intelligence' services, and 3. talk about it every time he's asked any question about his mythical 'Russian connections'. It's a huge win for him. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised me if this whole thing was his own design (well, of his operatives). ..."
    "... There needs to be a mass housecleaning at the CIA and other intelligence agencies, and, in a serious country, ..."
    "... His enemies are like a pack, in both parties, in both chambers, in the economic and financial establishment, the media, Hollywood. He'll have to trad carefully. And yet, he is courageous and outspoken, as he has shown right away, by strongly denouncing the media and "intelligence community" for their forgeries. ..."
    "... I'm afraid the conspiracy will get nastier and nastier, and sooner or later, they will remove him, even violently, very violently. I fear the Inauguration ceremony will be historic, and not for the best. Cross your fingers. The humanity's fate is at the stake. ..."
    "... To finish the power of the oligarchs, Trump must separate the politics from the business and start a serious reform of CIA. If he will be able to do it, we all may enjoy much safer World. ..."
    "... The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke. And such hyper-overreaction as this post represents suggests an instability of mind. That anyone took the document seriously per se speaks of utter unseriousness. ..."
    "... despite the fact that Trump has lately wrapped himself in a prodigious portion of Establishment Mantle, the Powers That Be are terrified, and the brick bats have just begun. ..."
    "... Additionally: the accuracy, legitimacy, and/or professionalism of their attacks may prove irrelevant. Facts aren't really what it's about when you control the Narrative...When you control the Production of Truth. It's no accident that the stranglehold on the MSM is guarded so viciously. Control of the Media is Control of Everything. ..."
    "... The point is not that these allegations can be used as direct grounds for impeachment, but that they create a climate in which Congressmen and Senators, especially Republicans, can block Trump's personnel and policies, especially on Russia, and if and when the opportunity arises, justify voting against party lines on an impeachment motion. ..."
    "... There are plenty of establishment Republican who would vote to impeach in a heartbeat, regardless of the merits of the case, if they thought their careers would survive it, This kind of furore is designed to create political circumstances in which they might hope for their careers to survive such a betrayal. ..."
    "... It's useful to understand who the Neocons are. They're mostly the Zionist section of US Jewry, but even this isn't so clear since US Jews have a problem defining themselves racially. They are ethnically more European than Semitic, and their cultural affinity is wholly European rather than Semitic Middle Eastern. Also, they are not so religious, with the decline in practicing Judaism mirroring the decline in Christian Church attendance among Europeans and Americans in general. ..."
    "... So it could be more informative to see US Jewry as something more like a private corporation. ..."
    "... Like any other large corporation, it's transnational, sets up lobbying organizations to help client Congressmen get elected, guides their research, helps with their expenses and gets favourable legislation in return. This reality seems to build naturally out of the Jewish European background in international commerce (rather than national government administration) so a Neoliberal economic environment is much more congenial with very little input from a nominal national identity. The key is the corporate identity. ..."
    "... "Trumps problem (if it is a problem for him) is that he is dealing with a ...corporate "deep state" that sees the US mostly in economic terms, as a market to be exploited for maximum profit" ..."
    "... I tell you – you are right. The stakes are very high indeed. If the establishment will lose political power, many of them may finish their lives in prison. ..."
    "... It was a hoax. It also allowed Trump to find out where leaks are coming from. Anyone who understands the type of man Trump is would have placed such a report in the hoax category straightaway. That the "intelligence community" did not, says a lot about them. Under Obama, they have simply become a partisan tool. ..."
    "... The McCains and Wilsons and the responsible editors at Buzzfeed and CNN all wanted to believe it to be true so they posted it as true. Collaborator McCain is a despicable creature. ..."
    "... McCain of "Tokyo rose" fame. The older McCain of the USSLiberty scandalous coverup and insult to the USSLiberty victims and veterans fame. Seems that there something that runs in the McCain family. ..."
    "... I am amazed by the brazen nature of the attacks. The most interesting part is that at least the most lurid claims seem to have been spoonfed to the earlier idiot in the US as part of the flow by 4chan trolls, and this continued through the former MI6 loon, both the UK and US mnrons shopped the lies around for months. ..."
    "... The CNN man at the press-conference was really arrogant and aggressive. I think, if Trump will exclude CNN from his future press-conferences, people would accept it with understanding. Anyway we will have interesting times. ..."
    Jan 12, 2017 | www.unz.com

    After several rather lame false starts, the Neocons have now taken a step which can only be called a declaration of war against Donald Trump.

    It all began with CNN published an article entitled " Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him " which claimed that:

    Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN. The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible ( ) The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.

    The website Buzzfeed then published the full document . Here it is in full.

    When I first read the document my intention was to debunk it sentence by sentence. However, I don't have the time for that and, frankly, there is no need for it. I will just provide you here with enough simple straightforward evidence that this is a fake. Here are just a few elements of proof: The document has no letterhead, no identification, no date, no nothing. For many good technical and even legal reasons, sensitive intelligence documents are created with plenty of tracking and identification information. For example, such a document would typically have a reference to the unit which produced it or an number-letter combination indicating the reliability of the source and of the information it contains. The classification CONFIDENTIAL/SENSITIVE SOURCE is a joke. If this was a true document its level of classification would be much, much higher than "confidential" and since most intelligence documents come from sensitive sources there is no need to specify that.

    The allegation that " The dossier is controlled by Kremlin spokesman, PESKOV, directly on PUTIN'S orders " is beyond laughable. Clearly the author of this fake has no idea how the Russian intelligence and security services work (hint: the Presidential spokesman has no involvement in that whatsoever) On page 2 there is this other hilarious sentence " exploit TRUMP's personal obsession and sexual perversion in order to obtain suitable 'kompromat' (compromising material) on him ."

    Nobody in a real intelligence document would bother to clarify what the word "kompromat" means since both in Russian and in English it is obviously the combination of the words "compromising" and "materials". Any western intelligence officer, even a very junior one, would know that word, if only because of the many Cold War era espionage books written about the KGB entrapment techniques. The document speaks of "source A", "source B" and further down the alphabet. Now ask yourself a simple question: what happens after "source Z" is used? Can any intelligence agency work with a potential pool of sources limited to 26? Obviously, this is not how intelligence agencies classify their sources.

    I will stop here and submit that there is ample evidence that this is a crude fake produced by amateurs who have no idea of what they are talking about.

    This does not make this document any less dangerous, however.

    First, and this is the really crucial part, there is more than enough here to impeach Trump on numerous grounds both political and legal . Let me repeat again – this is an attempt at removing Donald Trump from the White House. This is a political coup d'etat.

    Second, this documents smears everybody involved: Trump himself, of course, but also the evil Russians and their ugly Machiavellian techniques. Trump is thereby "confirmed" as a sexual pervert who likes to hire prostitutes to urinate on him. As for the Russians, they are basically accused of trying to recruit the President of the United States as an agent of their security services. That would make Trump a traitor, by the way.

    Third, within one short week we went from allegations of "Russian hacking" to "having a traitor sitting in the White House". We can only expect a further Tsunami of such allegations to continue and get worse and worse every day. It is interesting that Buzzfeed has already preempted the accusation of this being a smear and demonization campaign against Trump by writing that " Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government. " as if most Americans had the expertise to immediately detect that this document is a crude forgery!

    Fourth, unless all the officials who briefed Trump come out and deny that this fake was part of their briefing with Trump, it will appear that this document has the official imprimatur of the senior US intelligence officials and that would give them a legal, probatory, authority. This de-facto means that the "experts" have evaluated that document and have certified it as "credible" even before any legal proceedings in court or, worse, in Congress. I sure hope that Trump had the foresight to audio and video record his meeting with the intelligence chiefs and that he is now able to threaten them with legal action if they now act in a way contradicting their behavior before him.

    Fifth, the fact that CNN got involved in all this is a critical factor. Some of us, including yours truly, were shocked and disgusted when the WaPo posted a list of 200 websites denounced as "fake news" and "Russian propaganda", but what CNN did by posting this article is infinitely worse: it is a direct smear and political attack on the President Elect on a worldwide level (the BBC and others are already posting the same crap). This again confirms to be that the gloves are off and that the Ziomedia is in full state of war against Donald Trump.

    All of the above further confirms to me what I have been saying over the past weeks: if Trump ever makes it into the White House (I write 'if' because I think that the Neocons are perfectly capable of assassinating him), his first priority should be to ruthlessly crack down as hard as he legally can against those in the US "deep state" (which very much includes the media) who have now declared war on him. I am sorry to say that, but it will be either him or them – one of the parties here will be crushed.

    [Sidebar: to those who wonder what I mean by "crackdown" I will summarize here what I wrote elsewhere: the best way to do that is to nominate a hyper-loyal and determined FBI director and instruct him to go after all the enemies of Trump by investigating them on charge of corruption, abuse of power, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and all the other types of behavior which have gone on forever in Congress, the intelligence community, the banking world and the media. Deal with the Neocons like Putin did with the Russian oligarchs or how the USA dealt with Al Capone – get them on tax evasion. There is no need to open Gulags or shoot people when you can get them all on what is their normal daily behavior :-)]

    I sincerely hope that I am wrong, and I admit that I might be, but I don't have the gut feeling that Trump has what it takes to hit hard enough at those who are using any and every ugly method imaginable to prevent him from ever making it into the White House or to have him impeached if he tries to deliver on his campaign promises. I cannot blame him for that either: the enemy has infiltrated all the level of power in the US polity and there are strong sign that they are even represented in Trump's immediate entourage. Putin could do what he did because he was an iron-willed and highly trained intelligence officer. Trump is just a businessman whose best "training" to deal with such people would probably be his exposure to the mob in New York. Will that be enough to allow him to prevail against the Neocons? I doubt it, but I sure hope so.

    As I predicted it before the election , the USA are about to enter the worst crisis in their history. We are entering extraordinarily dangerous times. If the danger of a thermonuclear war between Russia and the USA had dramatically receded with the election of Trump, the Neocon total war on Trump put the United States at very grave risk, including civil war (should the Neocon controlled Congress impeach Trump I believe that uprisings will spontaneously happen, especially in the South, and especially in Florida and Texas). At the risk of sounding over the top, I will say that what is happening now is putting the very existence of the United States in danger almost regardless of what Trump will personally do. Whatever we may think of Trump as a person and about his potential as a President, what is certain is that millions of American patriots have voted for him to "clear the swamp", give the boot to the Washington-based plutocracy and restore what they see as fundamental American values. If the Neocons now manage to stage a coup d'etat against Trump, I predict that these millions of American will turn to violence to protect what they see as their way of life, their values and their country.

    In spite of the image which Hollywood likes to give of them, most Americans are peaceful and non-violent people, but if they are pushed too far they will not hesitate and grab their guns to defend themselves, especially if they lose all hopes in their democracy. And I am not talking only about gun-toting hillbillies here, I am talking about the local, state and county authorities, who often care much more about what their local constituents think and say than what the are up to in DC. If a coup is staged against Trump and some wannabe President ŕ la Hillary or McCain gives the order to the National Guard or even the US Army to put down a local insurrection, we could see what we saw in Russia in 1991: a categorical refusal of the security services to shoot at their own people. That is the biggest and ultimate danger for the Neocons: the risk that if they give the order to crack down on the population the police, security and military services might simply refuse to take action. If that could happen in the "KGB-controlled country" (to use a Cold War cliché) this can also happen in the USA.

    I sure hope that I am wrong and that this latest attack against Trump is the Neocon's last "hurray" before they finally give up and leave. I hope that all of the above is my paranoia speaking. But, as they say, " just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they are not after you ".

    So please tell me I am wrong!

    (Reprinted from The Vineyard of the Saker by permission of author or representative)

    Mao Cheng Ji , January 11, 2017 at 7:34 pm GMT • 100 Words

    I watched the press-conference just now, and I get the impression that this latest episode is the best thing (for Trump) recently.

    Apparently it was so inane that it was immediately refuted, and it's now accepted in all quarters that it was a fake accusation. Which gives Trump an opportunity to 1. claim victimhood, 2. attack the media and US 'intelligence' services, and 3. talk about it every time he's asked any question about his mythical 'Russian connections'. It's a huge win for him. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised me if this whole thing was his own design (well, of his operatives).

    @Mikhailovich
    "this whole thing was his own design" - you mean it is possible that Trump somehow has control over CNN, BBC etc. In such case - why he would attack them? And other question - why they worked so hard against him in time of the election campaign?
    Seamus Padraig , January 11, 2017 at 9:05 pm GMT

    Looks like CNN and Buzzfeed got trolled hard by 4Chan: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-11/archived-posts-prove-4chan-trolled-cia-trump-golden-shower-story-entire-russian-hack

    dearieme ,January 11, 2017 at 9:44 pm GMT

    If the pis-en-lit putsch fails, there will be another along in a minute. "Lock 'em up" is going to have to be applied by the thousands.

    @pyrrhus
    Indeed. There needs to be a mass housecleaning at the CIA and other intelligence agencies, and, in a serious country, a number of people at the CIA would be shot for treason.
    Enrique Ferro , January 11, 2017 at 10:16 pm GMT • 200 Words

    Saker, Putin's crack down the oligarchs took him some years, the time to gather forces and get them in disarray. He was very clever and cautious, he didn't go after them overnight. And Putin had decisive connections. Besides it was never so dramatic, and his succession was smooth The problem with Trump, as you say, is that he is quite new in town, and a forlorn fighter.

    His enemies are like a pack, in both parties, in both chambers, in the economic and financial establishment, the media, Hollywood. He'll have to trad carefully. And yet, he is courageous and outspoken, as he has shown right away, by strongly denouncing the media and "intelligence community" for their forgeries.

    I'm afraid the conspiracy will get nastier and nastier, and sooner or later, they will remove him, even violently, very violently. I fear the Inauguration ceremony will be historic, and not for the best. Cross your fingers. The humanity's fate is at the stake.

    @Mikhailovich
    Russian oligarchs had about 5% support of Russian people. They needed Putin themselves. Alternative was the communists and the nationalisation of everything.

    Putin gave them choice: carry on with your business, but not interfere in the politics or leave the country. Khodorkovsky tried to resist and failed miserably. The regime change from the oligarchs to Putin took about four years.

    After election 2004, it was clear who control the country. In US, the establishment, in their struggle against Trump, has support of almost half of US people, including all minorities (Jews too). To finish the power of the oligarchs, Trump must separate the politics from the business and start a serious reform of CIA. If he will be able to do it, we all may enjoy much safer World.

    Robert Magill , January 11, 2017 at 10:59 pm GMT • 200 Words

    This is excerpted from a futurist short story that was never published and hopefully would never be acted upon. Today's madness make it almost a possibility.

    Rescuing the Republic From Itself /or How 50 Men, Women and Children Could Save our Bacon.

    One thing still trumps all others in America. It isn't wealth, nor power, it's not the myth of our uniqueness under Heaven no. It's a lot more basic and powerful than those. It even trumps celebrity which is a close second. No, fundamental as those are in the national psyche they pale in comparison to Number One racism. Added to this ancient plague is a relative newcomer. Only about a century old; it is a formidable competitor and looks like it's here to stay. (If the money holds out.) Big drum roll ..ForeverWar!

    Secret Plan: Your Eyes Only. Need-To-Know Established. Emergency use only! Not to be attempted until things are so bad nothing else is feasible.The basis of the Secret Plan is to use racism against racism. more https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/how-our-republic-was-finally-rescued-from-itself-or/

    http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

    @Lemurmaniac
    Racism is in group preference based upon common descent. It's how you create a stable polity as De Tocqueville elaborated - one people and one culture settled the United States. Ethnic solidarity allows us to cooperate to produce public goods in the common interest.
    Forbes , January 12, 2017 at 2:54 am GMT • 100 Words

    The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke. And such hyper-overreaction as this post represents suggests an instability of mind. That anyone took the document seriously per se speaks of utter unseriousness.

    What's been referred to as the mainstream media has effectively lost all credibility, as they play the role of the partisan opposition. There's no reason to believe their reporting beyond yesterday's high and low temperature.

    @Kyle McKenna
    It's tempting to treat this analysis as paranoid and even a tad hysterical, but I fear it's nothing more than the unvarnished truth. Trump is a wrench in the works of the Establishment, and a bit of a loose cannon besides.

    However, despite the fact that Trump has lately wrapped himself in a prodigious portion of Establishment Mantle, the Powers That Be are terrified, and the brick bats have just begun. While it's a pleasure to see them on the run for once, it'd be a fatal error to underestimate them.

    Additionally: the accuracy, legitimacy, and/or professionalism of their attacks may prove irrelevant. Facts aren't really what it's about when you control the Narrative...When you control the Production of Truth. It's no accident that the stranglehold on the MSM is guarded so viciously. Control of the Media is Control of Everything.

    Anon , January 12, 2017 at 5:35 am GMT • 100 Words

    Does blackmail work?

    Didn't J. Edgar Hoover have all sorts of tapes of MLK acting like Fartin Poother Bling? Drunkeness, orgies, blasphemy, hitting women around, and acting like some rapper thug?

    Well, it didn't do any good, and MLK is now revered as some kind of god.

    And Monica's dress failed to topple Billy Boy Clinton.

    BBC reports that it was some British Intelligence that got this news. But I don't know if we should trust that stuff. Didn't British intelligence spread false rumors to drag the US into both WWI and WWII?

    Well, if Russia does have the incriminating tape and had planned to blackmail Trump, that possibility is gone since the beans have been spilled.

    PS. Was there any truth to the rumor that Obama had 'gay' affairs with rich powerful men? Now, that would explain a lot.

    @Eagle Eye
    Was there any truth to the rumor that Obama had 'gay' affairs with rich powerful men?
    Senator Frist was mentioned as a Barry worshiper. Barry loves humiliating and lying to white men, probably still acting out early childhood trauma over having been ditched by 3 parents (father - whoever he was, mother, and stepfather), perhaps a lot of other unpleasantness that tends to befall unprotected boys. ,
    @Dr. X
    Well, it didn't do any good, and MLK is now revered as some kind of god.
    Yeah, because a Federal judge sealed his FBI records from being FOILed for fifty years, so that TPTB could create a Magic Negro myth about him and make him more important than George Washington.
    The Alarmist , January 12, 2017 at 6:27 am GMT

    "There is no need to open Gulags ."

    There's still plenty of room at Gitmo, and it would only be fitting to bring the neocons face to face with their old friends and henchmen.

    Kyle McKenna , January 12, 2017 at 7:00 am GMT • 100 Words
    @Forbes
    The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke. And such hyper-overreaction as this post represents suggests an instability of mind. That anyone took the document seriously per se speaks of utter unseriousness.

    What's been referred to as the mainstream media has effectively lost all credibility, as they play the role of the partisan opposition. There's no reason to believe their reporting beyond yesterday's high and low temperature.

    It's tempting to treat this analysis as paranoid and even a tad hysterical, but I fear it's nothing more than the unvarnished truth. Trump is a wrench in the works of the Establishment, and a bit of a loose cannon besides.

    However, despite the fact that Trump has lately wrapped himself in a prodigious portion of Establishment Mantle, the Powers That Be are terrified, and the brick bats have just begun. While it's a pleasure to see them on the run for once, it'd be a fatal error to underestimate them.

    Additionally: the accuracy, legitimacy, and/or professionalism of their attacks may prove irrelevant. Facts aren't really what it's about when you control the Narrative When you control the Production of Truth. It's no accident that the stranglehold on the MSM is guarded so viciously. Control of the Media is Control of Everything.

    @Anonymous
    "even a tad hysterical"

    it's anutha showa --

    Ned Resnikoff

    Nov 12 2016 -- 4 days after the election of Donald Trump

    Wanted to share an experience from earlier today. This afternoon, I had a plumber over to my apartment to fix a clogged drain. He was a perfectly nice guy and a consummate professional. But he was also a middle aged white man with a southern accent who seemed unperturbed by this week's news. And while I had him in the apartment, I couldn't stop thinking about whether he had voted for Trump, whether he knew my last name is Jewish, and how that knowledge might change the interaction we were having inside my own home. I have no real reason to believe he was a Trump support or an anti-Semite, but in my uncertainty I couldn't shake the sense of potential danger. I was rattled for some time after he left.

    I'm very privileged insofar as this sense of range is unfamiliar to me. And I know I feel it much less acutely than a lot of other people right now. I'm still a straight, white guy who can phenotypically pass for gentile. Plus my first name is pretty WASP-y.

    But today was a reminder that ambiguous social interactions now feel unsafe and unpredictable in a way that they never did before. And even if Trump is gone in four years, I don't expect to ever reclaim that feeling of security. That's just one more thing you voted for, if you voted for him."

    https://twitter.com/Thomasismyuncle/status/818117574466699264

    anon , January 12, 2017 at 7:18 am GMT • 100 Words

    I am of the opinion that the dossier, even if true, is at most embarrassing but not an impeachable offense. Impeachment is for offenses committed while in office, not for alleged misdeeds before the office starts when the person was a private citizen. The process of election, is a judgement on fitness to hold office. He can be impeached only for things he will do after Jan. 20.

    All voters who voted for him knew he is not strong on personal or business morality or ethics. He was elected in spite of that. That should take away all the sting out of the dossier allegations.

    Impeachment and Removal by CRS

    https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44260.pdf

    @Randal
    The point is not that these allegations can be used as direct grounds for impeachment, but that they create a climate in which Congressmen and Senators, especially Republicans, can block Trump's personnel and policies, especially on Russia, and if and when the opportunity arises, justify voting against party lines on an impeachment motion.

    There are plenty of establishment Republican who would vote to impeach in a heartbeat, regardless of the merits of the case, if they thought their careers would survive it, This kind of furore is designed to create political circumstances in which they might hope for their careers to survive such a betrayal.

    Miro23 , January 12, 2017 at 7:34 am GMT • 500 Words

    The Neocons' Declaration of War Against Trump,

    It's useful to understand who the Neocons are. They're mostly the Zionist section of US Jewry, but even this isn't so clear since US Jews have a problem defining themselves racially. They are ethnically more European than Semitic, and their cultural affinity is wholly European rather than Semitic Middle Eastern. Also, they are not so religious, with the decline in practicing Judaism mirroring the decline in Christian Church attendance among Europeans and Americans in general.

    So it could be more informative to see US Jewry as something more like a private corporation.

    You either belong to the corporation or you don't, and it's not essential to have a Jewish connection either (e.g. top executives Hillary Clinton and John McCain) with the general idea being to run the enterprise for the mutual benefit of its members.

    Like any other large corporation, it's transnational, sets up lobbying organizations to help client Congressmen get elected, guides their research, helps with their expenses and gets favourable legislation in return. This reality seems to build naturally out of the Jewish European background in international commerce (rather than national government administration) so a Neoliberal economic environment is much more congenial with very little input from a nominal national identity. The key is the corporate identity.

    Corporations are not too concerned if their competitors go bankrupt, it's just part of the business, and in fact it's positive, since it shows that your corporation can capture a market and exploit it more profitably. If your competitors are Gentile businesses then there are various ways to remove them, the most popular being to gain leadership positions in Gentile Corporation "G" while still holding loyalty to Jewish Corporation "J". Corporation "G" can them be incorporated in Corporation " J" and the top executives replaced.

    Trump's problem (if it is a problem for him) is that he is dealing with a Corporate "J" run "deep state", that sees the US in mostly economic terms, as a market to be exploited for maximum profit. Putin faced a similar problem when he came to power in Russia (also Corporation "J" ), and slowly resolved it by blocking their attempts to gain political power (arrest on tax charges of Khodorkovsky) and emphasizing national interests and identity over corporate interests.

    Trump could follow a similar line by blocking all special interest access to Congress, or more aggressively suspend all CIA and FBI non-disclosure agreements, giving past and present agents immunity to prosecution and inviting them to present documentation in confidence to a Presidential Commission regarding any activities that in their opinion were conducted against the interests of the United States.

    Alternatively he could accept the presidency of Corporation "J", take the tremendous benefits, and be hailed by the MSM as America's Greatest Leader, but as the article says, face a backlash from his base who will see that he has sold them out.

    @alexander
    "Trumps problem (if it is a problem for him) is that he is dealing with a ...corporate "deep state" that sees the US mostly in economic terms, as a market to be exploited for maximum profit"


    "Exploited" Miro23 ?

    This has got to be the "understatement" of the decade.... Lets just take a look at the numbers, shall we?..

    Let us say for a moment that I placed you (or myself ) on a street corner in New York City with the specific intention of handing out a $1,000,000 cashiers check to each and every person who walks by ........ Do you know how many people you would have to hand the check to...in order to EQUAL the amount of tax dollars this "deep state" VACUUM has "sucked" from the taxpayers pockets, in a mere decade and a half ?......

    14,300,000 people.!

    That's right !... the entire Population of Manhattan.. TIMES TWO.

    This is not the total in "spending" , mind you..No, No....this is the total in... "overspending".

    Our national debt has BALLOONED from 5.7 trillion in 2000 to a whopping 20 trillion in just sixteen years...

    A "bone crunching" $14.3 million, million dollars --

    This level of "assault" on our nations balance sheet is wholly unprecedented in history.

    Its absolutely "mind -numbing"

    Its obscene.

    And what can nearly all of this humongous debt, foisted on the backs of 320 million Americans, be attributed to ....

    BANKING FRAUD as in....triple A rating worthless subprime junk
    TERROR FRAUD as in ....it was "Saddam's Anthrax" in Senators Leahy's office
    WAR FRAUD as in.....imminent threat of "mushroom clouds" ,WMD's, and "Yellow Cake from Niger".

    This kind of behavior is simply unacceptable.

    Yet for some reason, there has been ZERO accountability......ZERO.

    This cannot continue.

    The people voted in the Donald to "Drain the Swamp"....because if he doesn't do something..we are all SUNK.

    And if the "swamp doesn't want to be drained"...well.... too bad......Because the American people have put their foot down on this....and they ain't gonna budge --

    Throw the whole lot in Guantanamo Bay, Mr. President, if need be.....Just get it done --

    Enough is enough.

    Mikhailovich , January 12, 2017 at 7:40 am GMT

    I tell you – you are right. The stakes are very high indeed. If the establishment will lose political power, many of them may finish their lives in prison.

    @annamaria
    Agree. The establishment's hysterics and histrionics betray the fear of loosing money and power. But what a pitiful imagination, what a consistent incompetence the "deciders" have been showing: Nothing but banality and half-wit... clear signs of degradation.
    @Mao Cheng Ji
    I watched the press-conference just now, and I get the impression that this latest episode is the best thing (for Trump) recently.

    Apparently it was so inane that it was immediately refuted, and it's now accepted in all quarters that it was a fake accusation. Which gives Trump an opportunity to 1. claim victimhood, 2. attack the media and US 'intelligence' services, and 3. talk about it every time he's asked any question about his mythical 'Russian connections'. It's a huge win for him. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised me if this whole thing was his own design (well, of his operatives).

    "this whole thing was his own design" – you mean it is possible that Trump somehow has control over CNN, BBC etc. In such case – why he would attack them? And other question – why they worked so hard against him in time of the election campaign?

    @Mao Cheng Ji
    No. What I meant is that, seeing how insane the MSM are these days, perhaps it would makes sense for the Trump team to secretly manufacture some juicy red-meat fake scandal for them -- in hope that they mindlessly grab it and run with it -- and then get burned when it's proven a ludicrous fake. But maybe it's just my devious mind... ,
    @squf
    No, "by design" would refer to the original document being hoaxed, not that Trump has complete control over the Cathedral's media wing.
    n230099 , January 12, 2017 at 12:20 pm GMT • 100 Words

    "And I am not talking only about gun-toting hillbillies here, I am talking about the local, state and county authorities, who often care much more about what their local constituents think and say than what the are up to in DC"

    One of the oft heard cliches of the gun control crowd is that the armed among the unwashed are silly to think they could stand against the might of the government. But as the writer here implies, this notion relies on the authorities staying with the program. But these folks are still family people for which their service is just a job. The notion that they're all part of a unified goon squad may be in error.

    Ram , January 12, 2017 at 12:29 pm GMT • 100 Words

    " one of the parties here will be crushed."

    I sure hope it won't be Trump. However, his promise to drain the swamp has NOT happened, and the State Department is still completely controlled by the ZioCons and the foreign policy is controlled from Tel Aviv. The recent attempt to further subvert British politics by the Israeli embassy in London was exposed but what will the consequence be.? Not very much I guess.

    War for Blair Mountain , January 12, 2017 at 12:29 pm GMT • 100 Words

    The Civil War will be in fact an all-out-race-war. They didn't take this into account when the 1965 Immigration Reform Act was passed. We are already in a low-level .maybe not so low-level race war. Barack Obama will spend his time in retirement with very aggressive racial grievance agitation.

    The basement of the US has been filled to the brim with gasoline ..we are one match away .one match

    @george strong
    I hope you are correct. All decent white men have many scores to settle.
    Quartermaster , January 12, 2017 at 12:40 pm GMT • 100 Words

    It was a hoax. It also allowed Trump to find out where leaks are coming from. Anyone who understands the type of man Trump is would have placed such a report in the hoax category straightaway. That the "intelligence community" did not, says a lot about them. Under Obama, they have simply become a partisan tool.

    @annamaria
    Agree. The "intelligent" community's big shots showed themselves to be intellectual whimpers. ,
    @Eagle Eye
    Yep, the more lurid parts are definitely a hoax, with some other parts cobbled together from open sources to lend volume and credibility to this threadbare effort.

    The weird fascination with the person of Obama is a dead giveaway. Only an Obama worshiper would feel that the highest/lowest form of sexual perversion is to commit sacrilege against a BED that the Holy One and his consort had slept in.

    Whatever Trump's personal predilections, they are most unlikely to revolve around the person of Barry Obama.

    On the other hand, anyone with eyes to see will have encountered the type of fervid, manic, glassy-eyed Barry worshiper (mostly gay or female) with the characteristic combination of sexual arousal and religious fervor, leavened with vicious bitchiness during depressive phases.

    War for Blair Mountain , January 12, 2017 at 12:58 pm GMT • 100 Words

    Dear Saker

    The term "hillbillies" is a slur against the People of Appalachia. It is a slur that is used in comedy skits on SNL written by the East Coast Rootless Cosmopolitan SNL Comedy Writers. For the record Tina Fey is not Jewish niether is Samantha Bee -- but they are Rootless Cosmopolitan Filth.

    CK , January 12, 2017 at 1:05 pm GMT • 100 Words

    The McCains and Wilsons and the responsible editors at Buzzfeed and CNN all wanted to believe it to be true so they posted it as true.
    Collaborator McCain is a despicable creature.

    Rick Wilson is a moral degenerate as is his son whose web site is a storehouse of perversity.

    Imagine what kind of mental aberration you have to hold to believe that hiring prostitutes and having them urinate on new linen somehow invalidated or harms someone who might have slept in that room months previously.

    That is the level of aberration that runs from Pizzagate to the highest levels of American Journalism and the American Democratic party ( but I repeat myself). Sympathetic magic maybe?

    @annamaria
    McCain of "Tokyo rose" fame. The older McCain of the USSLiberty scandalous coverup and insult to the USSLiberty victims and veterans fame. Seems that there something that runs in the McCain family.
    Che Guava , January 12, 2017 at 1:08 pm GMT • 200 Words

    I am amazed by the brazen nature of the attacks. The most interesting part is that at least the most lurid claims seem to have been spoonfed to the earlier idiot in the US as part of the flow by 4chan trolls, and this continued through the former MI6 loon, both the UK and US mnrons shopped the lies around for months.

    Hanoi Hilton collaborator and Lord Haw Haw of the US in Vietnam, John McCain decided to dash it out again. Having never logged on to 4chan, but been an admin on a site they invaded, I know and at times enjoy their troll style. That supposedly serious 'intelligence' agencies push that entertaining crap, as disinfo without a second thought is mystifying

    It also raises my estimation of the Donald, never heard his speaking voice before, but it is quite good,
    .
    Trump needs to clean their Augean stables.

    They are cleary sn.

    If the disinfo against hm iis so bad, he must be doing many things right.
    . . .

    Anonymous , January 12, 2017 at 2:36 pm GMT • 100 Words

    I'm amazed at how incompetent the CIA is in its war against Trump but, then, I look at its historical track record since its founding and note this has always been the case. Like petulant children, the CIA tends to be present oriented in extremis . It discounts the future and is therefore constitutively unprepared for exposure, consequences, and blowback. The CIA knows how to make a mess of things but not much else.

    I would not trust any intelligence coming from the CIA It doesn't appear to be staffed with very intelligent people. The KGB (now the SFB/SVR) is running circles around them.

    @annamaria
    "...incompetent CIA.."
    Decades of selection in favor of opportunists and sycophants, while, at the same time, weeding out the principled and competent professionals.
    Is not the result grand? - CIA as a senescent, gossiping madame. ,
    @Realist
    "I'm amazed at how incompetent the CIA is in its war against Trump but, then, I look at its historical track record since its founding and note this has always been the case."

    Exactly right. The CIA has never done anything to better the US for the common man. From it's inception it was the muscle for the power elite. It's purpose was to manipulate foreign governments to provide wealth and power to the power elite/deep state, which ever you prefer. And occasionally to eliminate threats to it'self.

    DaveE , January 12, 2017 at 3:06 pm GMT • 100 Words

    The zionists have lost and they know it. BUT, they still have their"trump-card" (sorry!) left to play: a nuclear false flag attack on America, to be blamed on Russia.

    No-one could stop war at that point, regardless of belief of culpability. Although Saker is right, such a stunt would involve some SERIOUS repercussions for the Israelites.

    Are they crazy enough to risk self-annihilation to prove their superiority, once and for all?

    Trump certainly doesn't have the guts to say, "Hey folks, the zionists did it .." Hell, he won't even publicly admit they did 9/11, although there's plenty of evidence he knows they did. But Obama on the other hand would help them plant the nukes and take a train outa town.

    If I were a zionist contemplating such a stunt, I'd get it over with before next Friday.

    @CanSpeccy
    War between Russia and NATO would be the ultimate civil conflict among the European people, leading to the elimination of the white race as a significant component of the future world population and the end of Christendom.

    That, apparently, is what the NeoCons, President Obama, and their Treason Party allies, the likes of Senator McCain at home, and Canada's witless Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau abroad, want.

    alexander , January 12, 2017 at 3:37 pm GMT • 400 Words
    Agent76 , January 12, 2017 at 4:16 pm GMT • 100 Words

    They are the cancer that needs to be radiated and removed in both wings of the War party!

    Mar 2, 2014 Jeremy Scahill: The One Party State, The War Party

    Is the United States of America an Oligarchy? During the 2014 ISFLC, Jeremy Scahill speaks on the fact that in today's world behemoth corporations are able to buy off politicians and pull the strings to impact legislature. Washington, D.C. is a town that operates by campaign contributions and legal bribery in the form of campaign finance. What can the American people do to get their political representatives to represent them as opposed to the mega corporations. When will the people's voice be heard?

    @Realist
    Jeremy is wrong at least one thing. McCain is a member in good standing with the deep state. Just too stupid to be elected.
    Mao Cheng Ji , January 12, 2017 at 4:27 pm GMT • 100 Words
    @Mikhailovich
    "this whole thing was his own design" - you mean it is possible that Trump somehow has control over CNN, BBC etc. In such case - why he would attack them? And other question - why they worked so hard against him in time of the election campaign?

    No. What I meant is that, seeing how insane the MSM are these days, perhaps it would makes sense for the Trump team to secretly manufacture some juicy red-meat fake scandal for them - in hope that they mindlessly grab it and run with it - and then get burned when it's proven a ludicrous fake. But maybe it's just my devious mind

    @Mikhailovich
    The CNN man at the press-conference was really arrogant and aggressive. I think, if Trump will exclude CNN from his future press-conferences, people would accept it with understanding. Anyway we will have interesting times.
    @anonymous
    They'd probably bite on anything.

    I look at the CNN webpage once in a while, and I get the distinct impression that the people staffing the place are simply not very bright.

    There may be too many diversity hires? It seems like a group of actors and SJWs pretending to be journalists. They aren't serious people, and you'd like to not have to take them seriously but since they control the information flow of the nation you kind of have to.

    CanSpeccy , • Website January 12, 2017 at 4:31 pm GMT • 100 Words
    @DaveE
    The zionists have lost and they know it. BUT, they still have their"trump-card" (sorry!) left to play: a nuclear false flag attack on America, to be blamed on Russia.

    No-one could stop war at that point, regardless of belief of culpability. Although Saker is right, such a stunt would involve some SERIOUS repercussions for the Israelites.

    Are they crazy enough to risk self-annihilation to prove their superiority, once and for all?

    Trump certainly doesn't have the guts to say, "Hey folks, the zionists did it....." Hell, he won't even publicly admit they did 9/11, although there's plenty of evidence he knows they did. But Obama on the other hand would help them plant the nukes and take a train outa town.

    If I were a zionist contemplating such a stunt, I'd get it over with before next Friday.

    War between Russia and NATO would be the ultimate civil conflict among the European people, leading to the elimination of the white race as a significant component of the future world population and the end of Christendom.

    That, apparently, is what the NeoCons, President Obama, and their Treason Party allies, the likes of Senator McCain at home, and Canada's witless Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau abroad, want.

    Abelard Lindsey , January 12, 2017 at 4:35 pm GMT

    I can assure you that, if Trump is prevented from taking office, or is removed from office after being sworn in, millions of us WILL treat it as a coup d'etat and will respond appropriately, and this does not necessarily involve violence.

    I can also tell you our feelings are not limited to the South and Texas. Many of us in the Western U.S. feel the same way.

    @anonymous
    So many options. Take a page from the leftists and block highways and ports -- but on a grand scale.

    Simply stop paying taxes. Stop funding the entire machine -- the sports, shops, colleges. Just stop it all.

    If there is a coup, it'll more than past time for it all to be stopped. It will be time to implode the whole thing and hit the reset button.

    Thales the Milesian , January 12, 2017 at 5:08 pm GMT

    USA: numero uno!

    Every patriotic American should support president Trump, all the way.

    Long live President Trump!

    annamaria , January 12, 2017 at 5:12 pm GMT
    @Mikhailovich
    I tell you - you are right. The stakes are very high indeed. If the establishment will lose political power, many of them may finish their lives in prison.

    Agree. The establishment's hysterics and histrionics betray the fear of loosing money and power. But what a pitiful imagination, what a consistent incompetence the "deciders" have been showing: Nothing but banality and half-wit clear signs of degradation.

    @Mikhailovich
    The difference between the corporate interests of the financial-political elite and the interests of the nation became too obvious. So they are failing to persuade American Nation that they are acting in the national interest.

    [Jan 12, 2017] Chuck Todd Excoriates Buzzfeed's Editor in Chief 'YOU PUBLISHED FAKE NEWS'

    Jan 12, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Chuck Todd Excoriates Buzzfeed's Editor in Chief: 'YOU PUBLISHED FAKE NEWS'

    Rudolph Steiner Jan 12, 2017 3:17 PM

    You cannot make this up! As a NEWS purveyor today you say anything you like, from any credible or not credible person or organization on the planet, and then claim it is up to your readers to decide if it is true or not. Yikes. The American Fourth Estate is beginning to look like a one flight up gentleman's parlor on old Times Square.

    inosent Jan 12, 2017 12:17 PM

    a lot of homosexual practitioners like ben smith produce this kind of garbage. the aggressive promotion of homosexualized America, and Europe as well, has been very bad news indeed. That is a political agenda that needs to meet some serious resistance.

    dizzyfingers Jan 12, 2017 12:07 PM

    Isn't 99.99% of tv "news" fake? That's if you add in commercials... :-)

    worbsid Karl Marxist Jan 12, 2017 1:06 PM

    Chuck Todd is doing exactly was he is being paid to do. Just like you, me, and every one else. Not that he is especially good at what he is supposed to be doing though. Tucker is much better.

    chunga Jan 12, 2017 10:56 AM

    Carlson blowing up Mark Ingram last night was pretty funny too.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7FZ6dJGoJ4

    [Jan 12, 2017] Kahn is completely clueless as for origin of rumors

    What a completely naive, completely pseudoscientific nonsense. The guy is completely clueless about driving forces of rumors.: it is the distrust to the official channels that drives them
    Notable quotes:
    "... Think of headlines such as "Elvis is Alive". This is an old example of fake news. ..."
    "... "Fake News" has no social consequences in cases #1 or case #4. Case #3 will feature no strategic element. This is just Tiebout sorting in ideological space. For example, climate change deniers say the world isn't warming and climate deniers go to this website and read this and the echo continues. ..."
    "... What is it about the demanders that they don't recognize the "fake news" when they read it? Are they dumb? Are they eager to see stories that confirm their prior worldview? What is the source of this heterogeneity parameter related to their "susceptibility" to be infected? ..."
    "... Most of the time what people believes is not truth. Fake news is pervasive. ..."
    "... I choose to believe the fake news from WikiLeaks before I believe the fake news from Langley. It is all fake. Through the Looking Glass! Who are the traitors? ..."
    "... Though it's impossible for an average U.S. citizen to know precisely what the U.S. intelligence community may have in its secret files, some former NSA officials who are familiar with the agency's eavesdropping capabilities say Washington's lack of certainty suggests that the NSA does not possess such evidence. ..."
    "... For instance, that's the view of William Binney, who retired as NSA's technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and who created many of the collection systems still used by NSA. ..."
    "... Binney, in an article co-written with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, said, "With respect to the alleged interference by Russia and WikiLeaks in the U.S. election, it is a major mystery why U.S. intelligence feels it must rely on 'circumstantial evidence,' when it has NSA's vacuum cleaner sucking up hard evidence galore. What we know of NSA's capabilities shows that the email disclosures were from leaking, not hacking." ..."
    "... However, Clapper's own credibility is suspect in a more relevant way. In 2013, he gave false testimony to Congress regarding the extent of the NSA's collection of data on Americans. Clapper's deception was revealed only when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the NSA program to the press, causing Clapper to apologize for his "clearly erroneous" testimony. ..."
    "... "Clapper's own credibility is suspect". Fool me once shame on you...fool me twice shame on me. How long did the national security state really think it could get away with their BS? ..."
    "... Well, they've owned every president since Reagan; they own all the think tanks; they own 90% of congress; they own all the major media; they endow all the "elite" private universities - why shouldn't they think they could get away with it? ..."
    "... Kahn is completely clueless. The main driving force behind the spread of rumors (which now are called "fake news") is the distrust of the official channels. Yes, it is a sign of sickness of the social organism, but only in a sense that fish rots from the top. And actually the same forces that facilitate spread of rumors push people to alternative news channels: official channels are viewed too compromised. So nobody believe anything published in them, even if they publish truth. libezkova -> libezkova... January 08, 2017 at 06:59 AM Tamotsu Shibutani viewed rumors as a process of collective problem-solving in ambiguous situations. His old book "Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor"(1966) had received some press in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and it should be studied now too. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672511487 It is a much deeper study than incoherent thoughts of Professor Kahn on the topic. You might be surprised by the relevance of his work to current neoliberal MSM crusade against rumors. They feel that they lost trust and now are losing relevance; and they are adamant to do something to reverse this process. But they are barking to the wrong tree. ilsm -> libezkova... Truth is a rare commodity. The "press" in the US has always been owned. In the 1830's it was owned by slave holders in one section and factory owners in another. One opposed to tariffs and the central government growing strong from manufactures. The other for tariffs and weakening the slave economy which funded the anti tariff regime. It is rarely 'news' it is indoctrination. ..."
    "... The press in the usa was always "owned" but at one time it was far more socialized/regulated than it was today: (1) Our government stopped trust-busting media conglomerates. (2) The fairness doctrine was gutted and repealed. (3) Right wing political appointees were placed in leadership roles at the CPB (PBS and NPR) and opened them to funding by large corporations. ..."
    "... Obvious propaganda and distortion should be illegal in much the same way financial fraud is (should be) illegal. ..."
    "... "Normal people" in a neoliberal society, like "normal people" in the USSR are those who are adapted to life in official "fake news" aquarium, created by neoliberal MSM. And resigned to this, because they value the society they live in and can't image any alternative. Remember Matrix. ..."
    "... Yurchak's Master-idea is that the Soviet system was an example of how a state can prepare its own demise in an invisible way. It happened in Russia through unraveling of authoritative discourse by Gorbachev's naive but well-meaning shillyshallying undermining the Soviet system and the master signifiers with which the Soviet society was "quilted" and held together. ..."
    "... This could a cautionary tale for America as well because the Soviet Union shared more features with American modernity than the Americans themselves are willing to admit. ..."
    "... The Soviet Union wasn't "evil" in late stages 1950-1980s. The most people were decent. The Soviet system, despite its flaws, offered a set of collective values. There were many moral and ethical aspects to Soviet socialism, and even though those values have been betrayed by the state, they were still very important to people themselves in their lives. ..."
    "... These values were: solidarity, community, altruism, education, creativity, friendship and safety. Perhaps they were incommensurable with the "Western values" such as the rule of law and freedom, but for Russians they were the most important. ..."
    "... Yurchak demolishes the view that the only choices available to late Soviet citizens were either blind support (though his accounts of those figures who chose this path are deeply chilling) or active resistance, while at the same time showing how many of the purported values of Soviet socialism (equality, education, friendship, community, etc) were in fact deeply held by many in the population. ..."
    "... his basic thesis is that, for most Soviet people, the attitude toward the authorities was "They pretend to make statements that corresponded to reality, and we pretend to believe them." ..."
    "... People were expected to perform these rituals, but they developed "a complexly differentiating relationship to the ideological meanings, norms, and values" of the Soviet state. "Depending on the context, they might reject a certain meaning, norm or value, be apathetic about another, continue actively subscribing to a third, creatively reinterpret a fourth, and so on." (28-29) ..."
    "... The result was that, as the discourse of the late Soviet period ossified into completely formalist incantations (a process that Yurchak demonstrates was increasingly routinized from the 1950s onwards), Soviet citizens participated in these more for ritualistic reasons than because of fervent belief, which in turn allowed citizens to fill their lives with other sources of identity and meaning. ..."
    "... All of which is to say that the book consists of a dramatic refutation of the "totalitarianism" thesis, demonstrating that despite the totalitarian ambitions of the regime, citizens were continually able to carve out zones of autonomy and identification that transcended the ambitions of the Authoritative discourse. ..."
    "... "And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace." ..."
    "... Then review Orwell. See who decides what is "justice"! The US became prosecutor, lawyer, jury and executioner anywhere it pleased, to anybody who could not fight back. ..."
    "... Yes exactly, from the ashes into the fire. As bad as the official channels sometimes can be, the unofficial are much worse. The 30 years of Faux news and "think tanks" has done a lot more long-term harm to society than most people realize. ..."
    "... Just like trying to determine the lesser of two evils in political campaigns. Oh, I forgot! Most politicians' official positions are just lies anyway...as we know from Obama's 2008 campaign and his subsequent behavior. ..."
    Jan 08, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    The Economics of Fake News Environmental and Urban Economics

    I see that Paul Krugman is talking abou t the consequences of Fake News so I will enter this market and supply some thoughts. I will define fake news as stories that are "juicy" but not true.

    Think of headlines such as "Elvis is Alive". This is an old example of fake news.

    ... ... ...

    There are four cases to consider.

    • Case #1: Both the supplier and demander know that the story is false. Think of the National Enquirer stories stating that Elvis is on Mars.
    • Case #2: The supplier knows the story is false but the demander believes the story is true.
    • Case #3: The supplier believes the story is true and the demander believes the story is true.
    • Case #4: The supplier believes the story is true and the demander believes the story is false.

    "Fake News" has no social consequences in cases #1 or case #4. Case #3 will feature no strategic element. This is just Tiebout sorting in ideological space. For example, climate change deniers say the world isn't warming and climate deniers go to this website and read this and the echo continues.

    I believe that Dr. K is mainly concerned with Case #2. What % of all suspect stories fall into this category? Dr. K has a cynical model in mind in which sophisticated agents (think of Trump and Putin) manipulate the gullible public with messages and then the Facebook and Internet accelerate this information throughout the system as it infects billions and influences real events.

    Case #2 raises some deep issues, I will state them as questions;

    1. What is it about the demanders that they don't recognize the "fake news" when they read it? Are they dumb? Are they eager to see stories that confirm their prior worldview? What is the source of this heterogeneity parameter related to their "susceptibility" to be infected?

    2. In public health, we quarantine those who may spread contagion. Is Dr. K. calling for a messaging quarantine of the "susceptible people" or is he proposing ending free speech for those who spread the contagion?

    3. If there is objective reality, do those who are susceptible to "fake news" update their beliefs as this reality changes over time?

    4. In a world featuring heterogeneous news consumers, and profit maximizing news sellers what are pareto improving government interventions? When I taught at the Fletcher School, one student suggested that there should be a constitutional amendment requiring people to watch the PBS News Hour each night.

    5. In a world featuring heterogeneous news consumers, and Russian propagandist news suppliers, what are pareto improving government interventions for the nations that Russia is targeting with this news? So, the U.S is fighting a war on terror ---- will we now open up a "second front" as we start a "war on foreign propaganda"?

    6. Why has "fake news" become an issue now? What is it about 2016? Has Facebook made communication "too cheap"? Has Russia recognized this opportunity and increased its supply of fake news? In the old days, Pravda was filled with such news.

    ... ... ...

    ilsm : January 08, 2017 at 04:30 AM

    On Kahn's analysis of fake news.

    Most of the time what people believes is not truth. Fake news is pervasive.

    ilsm -> ilsm... , January 08, 2017 at 04:54 AM
    On Assange:

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/wikileaks-criticizes-obama-administration-in-rather-ironic-way-173523707.html

    The guys who leak documents for a living pointing out the establish leaks them to sway opinion!

    I choose to believe the fake news from WikiLeaks before I believe the fake news from Langley. It is all fake. Through the Looking Glass! Who are the traitors?

    RGC -> ilsm... , January 08, 2017 at 06:03 AM
    US Report Still Lacks Proof on Russia 'Hack' , January 7, 2017
    ................
    Though it's impossible for an average U.S. citizen to know precisely what the U.S. intelligence community may have in its secret files, some former NSA officials who are familiar with the agency's eavesdropping capabilities say Washington's lack of certainty suggests that the NSA does not possess such evidence.

    For instance, that's the view of William Binney, who retired as NSA's technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and who created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.

    Binney, in an article co-written with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, said, "With respect to the alleged interference by Russia and WikiLeaks in the U.S. election, it is a major mystery why U.S. intelligence feels it must rely on 'circumstantial evidence,' when it has NSA's vacuum cleaner sucking up hard evidence galore. What we know of NSA's capabilities shows that the email disclosures were from leaking, not hacking."

    There is also the fact that both WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and one of his associates, former British Ambassador Craig Murray, have denied that the purloined emails came from the Russian government. Going further, Murray has suggested that there were two separate sources, the DNC material coming from a disgruntled Democrat and the Podesta emails coming from possibly a U.S. intelligence source, since the Podesta Group represents Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments.

    In response, Clapper and other U.S. government officials have sought to disparage Assange's credibility, including Clapper's Senate testimony on Thursday gratuitously alluding to sexual assault allegations against Assange in Sweden.

    However, Clapper's own credibility is suspect in a more relevant way. In 2013, he gave false testimony to Congress regarding the extent of the NSA's collection of data on Americans. Clapper's deception was revealed only when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the NSA program to the press, causing Clapper to apologize for his "clearly erroneous" testimony.
    ....................
    https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/07/us-report-still-lacks-proof-on-russia-hack/

    JohnH -> RGC...
    "Clapper's own credibility is suspect". Fool me once shame on you...fool me twice shame on me. How long did the national security state really think it could get away with their BS?

    Well, they've owned every president since Reagan; they own all the think tanks; they own 90% of congress; they own all the major media; they endow all the "elite" private universities - why shouldn't they think they could get away with it?

    libezkova -> ilsm... , January 08, 2017 at 06:20 AM

    Kahn is completely clueless. The main driving force behind the spread of rumors (which now are called "fake news") is the distrust of the official channels.

    Yes, it is a sign of sickness of the social organism, but only in a sense that fish rots from the top.

    And actually the same forces that facilitate spread of rumors push people to alternative news channels: official channels are viewed too compromised. So nobody believe anything published in them, even if they publish truth.

    libezkova -> libezkova... January 08, 2017 at 06:59 AM

    Tamotsu Shibutani viewed rumors as a process of collective problem-solving in ambiguous situations.

    His old book "Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor"(1966) had received some press in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and it should be studied now too.

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672511487

    It is a much deeper study than incoherent thoughts of Professor Kahn on the topic.

    You might be surprised by the relevance of his work to current neoliberal MSM crusade against rumors. They feel that they lost trust and now are losing relevance; and they are adamant to do something to reverse this process. But they are barking to the wrong tree.

    ilsm -> libezkova...
    Truth is a rare commodity. The "press" in the US has always been owned. In the 1830's it was owned by slave holders in one section and factory owners in another. One opposed to tariffs and the central government growing strong from manufactures. The other for tariffs and weakening the slave economy which funded the anti tariff regime. It is rarely 'news' it is indoctrination.

    Peace and freedom are not valued in the US or many other places.

    yuan -> ilsm.. .
    The press in the usa was always "owned" but at one time it was far more socialized/regulated than it was today: (1) Our government stopped trust-busting media conglomerates. (2) The fairness doctrine was gutted and repealed. (3) Right wing political appointees were placed in leadership roles at the CPB (PBS and NPR) and opened them to funding by large corporations.

    Obvious propaganda and distortion should be illegal in much the same way financial fraud is (should be) illegal.

    libezkova -> ilsm... January 08, 2017 at 11:09 AM
    "It is rarely 'news' it is indoctrination."

    Exactly. That's why those people who question MSM coverage, and who try to get the "second opinion" on the current events from blogs, and other alternative channels are considered to be traitors.

    Neoliberal MSMs are major producer of fake news as in foreign coverage they are guided by State Department talking points. What they are adamantly against is "somebody else" fake news. They want full monopoly on coverage.

    What they trying to tell us during this McCarthyism compaign is the following: "Unapproved, rogue fake news of questionable origin are evil, only State Department approved fakes are OK".

    This is another, slightly more interesting, variant of "political correctness" enforcement in a given society.

    "Normal people" in a neoliberal society, like "normal people" in the USSR are those who are adapted to life in official "fake news" aquarium, created by neoliberal MSM. And resigned to this, because they value the society they live in and can't image any alternative. Remember Matrix.

    There is a special term for the psychological condition of the large part of the USSR population who adapted to live such an "artificial, fake reality" and even may protest if they are provided with a more objective picture as this created a cognitive dissonance. It is Stockholm Syndrome. The condition common among the members of "high demand" cults.

    The same happened in the USA. This neoliberal ideological captivity with its own set of myths and falsehood reminds me USSR Bolshevism ideology, which was an official, dominant ideology for Soviet people. Indoctrination was obligatory.

    The net results was the same as now in the USA -- the dead ideology burdens, like a nightmare, the minds of the living.

    As Marx noted: "history repeats itself, the first as tragedy, then as farce"

    Alexei Yurchak's 2006 book "Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation" called this condition of ideological Stockholm syndrome "hypernormalization"

    https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Forever-Until-More-Formation/dp/0691121176

    He argues that during the last 20 or so years of the Soviet Union, everyone in the USSR knew the system wasn't working, but as no one has real alternative and both politicians and citizens were resigned to pretending that the can should be kicked down the road. A typical attitude of Hillary supporters.

    This "constant pretending" was accepted as normal behavior and the fake reality thus created was accepted as necessary evil, nessesary for normal functining of the society. The whole society reminded me large "high demand" cult from which members can't escape.

    While Yurchak called this effect "hypernormalisation." in reality this probably should be called "ideological Stockholm syndrome". Stockholm syndrome is a psychological condition that causes hostages to develop sympathetic sentiments towards their captors, often sharing their opinions and acquiring romantic feelings for them as a survival strategy during captivity.

    Looking at events over the past few years, one would notice that the neoliberal society is experiencing the same psychological condition.

    Here are a couple of insightful reviews of the book

    == quote ==

    Igor Biryukov on November 1, 2012

    A cautionary tale

    In America there was once a popular but simplistic image of the Soviet Russia as the Evil Empire destined to fall, precisely because it was unfree and therefore evil. Ronald Reagan who advocated it also once said that the Russian people do not have a word for "freedom". Not so fast -- says Alexei Yurchak.

    He was born in the Soviet Union and became a cultural anthropologist in California. He employs linguistic structural analysis in very interesting ways. For him, the Soviet Union was once a stable, entrenched, conservative state and the majority of Russian people -- actually myself included -- thought it would last forever. But the way people employ language and read ideologies can change. That change can be undetectable at first, and then unstoppable.

    Yurchak's Master-idea is that the Soviet system was an example of how a state can prepare its own demise in an invisible way. It happened in Russia through unraveling of authoritative discourse by Gorbachev's naive but well-meaning shillyshallying undermining the Soviet system and the master signifiers with which the Soviet society was "quilted" and held together.

    According to Yurchak "In its first three or four years, perestroika was not much more than a deconstruction of Soviet authoritative discourse".

    This could a cautionary tale for America as well because the Soviet Union shared more features with American modernity than the Americans themselves are willing to admit.

    The demise of the Soviet Union was not caused by anti-modernity or backwardness of Russian people.

    The Soviet experiment was a cousin of Western modernity and shared many features with the Western democracies, in particular its roots in the Enlightenment project.

    The Soviet Union wasn't "evil" in late stages 1950-1980s. The most people were decent. The Soviet system, despite its flaws, offered a set of collective values. There were many moral and ethical aspects to Soviet socialism, and even though those values have been betrayed by the state, they were still very important to people themselves in their lives.

    These values were: solidarity, community, altruism, education, creativity, friendship and safety. Perhaps they were incommensurable with the "Western values" such as the rule of law and freedom, but for Russians they were the most important.

    For many "socialism" was a system of human values and everyday realities which wasn't necessarily equivalent of the official interpretation provided by the state rhetoric.

    Yurchak starts with a general paradox within the ideology of modernity: the split between ideological enunciation, which reflects the theoretical ideals of the Enlightenment, and ideological rule, which are the practical concerns of the modern state's political authority. In Soviet Union the paradox was "solved" by means of dogmatic political closure and elevation of Master signifier [Lenin, Stalin, Party] but it doesn't mean the Western democracies are immune to totalitarian temptation to which the Soviet Union had succumbed.

    The vast governmental bureaucracy and Quango-state are waiting in the shadows here as well, may be ready to appropriate discourse.

    It is hard to agree with everything in his book. But it is an interesting perspective.

    ... ... ...

    Nils Gilmanon April 23, 2014

    A brilliant account of the interior meaning of everyday life for ordinary soviet citizens

    Just loved this -- a brilliant study of how everyday citizens (as opposed to active supporters or dissidents) cope with living in a decadent dictatorship, through strategies of ignoring the powerful, focusing on hyperlocal socialities, treating ritualized support for the regime as little more than an annoying chore, and withdrawal into subcultures.

    Yurchak demolishes the view that the only choices available to late Soviet citizens were either blind support (though his accounts of those figures who chose this path are deeply chilling) or active resistance, while at the same time showing how many of the purported values of Soviet socialism (equality, education, friendship, community, etc) were in fact deeply held by many in the population.

    While his entire account is a tacit meditation on the manifold unpleasantnesses of living under the Soviet system, Yurchak also makes clear that it was not all unpleasantness and that indeed for some people (such as theoretical physicists) life under Soviet socialism was in some ways freer than for their peers in the West. All of which makes the book function (sotto voce) as an explanation for the nostalgia that many in Russia today feel for Soviet times - something inexplicable to those who claim that Communism was simply and nothing but an evil.

    The theoretical vehicle for Yurchak's investigation is the divergence between the performative rather than the constative dimensions of the "authoritative discourse" of the late Soviet regime. One might say that his basic thesis is that, for most Soviet people, the attitude toward the authorities was "They pretend to make statements that corresponded to reality, and we pretend to believe them."

    Yurchak rightly observes that one can neither interpret the decision to vote in favor of an official resolution or to display a pro-government slogan at a rally as being an unambiguous statement of regime support, nor assume that these actions were directly coerced. People were expected to perform these rituals, but they developed "a complexly differentiating relationship to the ideological meanings, norms, and values" of the Soviet state. "Depending on the context, they might reject a certain meaning, norm or value, be apathetic about another, continue actively subscribing to a third, creatively reinterpret a fourth, and so on." (28-29)

    The result was that, as the discourse of the late Soviet period ossified into completely formalist incantations (a process that Yurchak demonstrates was increasingly routinized from the 1950s onwards), Soviet citizens participated in these more for ritualistic reasons than because of fervent belief, which in turn allowed citizens to fill their lives with other sources of identity and meaning.

    Soviet citizens would go to cafes and talk about music and literature, join a rock band or art collective, take silly jobs that required little effort and thus left room for them to pursue their "interests." The very drabness of the standardizations of Soviet life therefore created new sorts of (admittedly constrained) spaces within which people could define themselves and their (inter)subjective meanings. All of which is to say that the book consists of a dramatic refutation of the "totalitarianism" thesis, demonstrating that despite the totalitarian ambitions of the regime, citizens were continually able to carve out zones of autonomy and identification that transcended the ambitions of the Authoritative discourse.

    ilsm -> libezkova ... Sunday, January 08, 2017 at 12:20 PM

    You should read the whole of Obama's Nobel peace prize lecture:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-acceptance-nobel-peace-prize

    "And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace."

    Then review Orwell. See who decides what is "justice"! The US became prosecutor, lawyer, jury and executioner anywhere it pleased, to anybody who could not fight back.

    JohnH -> yuan... January 08, 2017 at 12:08 PM

    yuan never had the pleasure of watching the mainstream media promote the official Kool-Aid during the Vietnam War...until the lies finally became untenable.

    DeDude -> libezkova... January 08, 2017 at 11:38 AM

    "the same forces that facilitate spread of rumors push people to alternative news channels: official channels are viewed too compromised"

    Yes exactly, from the ashes into the fire. As bad as the official channels sometimes can be, the unofficial are much worse. The 30 years of Faux news and "think tanks" has done a lot more long-term harm to society than most people realize.

    Being a knowledgeable person who spend half a lifetime studying a subject, seems to be worse than being a regular ignorant guy confidently pulling stuff out of his ass. We are living in interesting times.

    JohnH -> DeDude...

    "As bad as the official channels sometimes can be, the unofficial are much worse." Wow! Trying to judge the more credible liar.

    Just like trying to determine the lesser of two evils in political campaigns. Oh, I forgot! Most politicians' official positions are just lies anyway...as we know from Obama's 2008 campaign and his subsequent behavior.

    [Jan 12, 2017] Lessons From the Demise of the TPP naked capitalism

    Notable quotes:
    "... The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost Hillary Clinton the presidency ..."
    "... No doubt. But the Wall St. Dems are going to keep blaming Bernie Bros and the Russians. And they'll keep helping themselves to that sweet corporate payola. ..."
    "... Talk about pushing ahead with TPP, this piece is jaw dropping. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/tpp-how-obama-traded-away_b_13872926.html?section=us_politics ..."
    "... I see it as karma. TPP may have been the worst thing ever tried by a US President, to date. I didn't realize that so many people understood it though, at least I didn't get that impression in central California. ..."
    "... And not just Hillary Clinton. The whole Democratic party. Obama has been a disaster for Democrats. There is a piece in the WAPO by Matt Stoller today discussing just this issue. ..."
    "... Excellent point. Basically will corporations pass along increased costs to consumers? ..."
    "... Take a look at what happened when the price of oil spiked. Corporations that had healthy profit margins in general didn't pass on to consumers their increased costs when oil was part of their COGS (cost of good sold). Though in contrast, airlines did. At the time Airlines had low profit margins. But I suspect their pricing power is less elastic regardless – their 10Ks show their entire business model is metric'd on the price of fuel. ..."
    "... Offshoring isn't about lower consumer goods prices. The cost of labor in a mass-produced product is small, often trivial. That's what mass production is designed to do. ..."
    "... The addiction to foreign trade is for the money in it. The importer doubles his money, the wholesaler doubles his money, the distributor doubles his money and the retailer gets what he can. The Chinese manufacturer is satisfied but most of the street cost goes to the intermediaries. ..."
    "... In this case, "sovereignty" means the power to regulate commerce. Insofar as the signatories are democracy, it also means democracy – the ability to carry out the decisions of representative bodies. ..."
    "... Countries without an internationally traded currency will not willingly sign up for specious 'trade in money' sections. Galbraith the Younger wrote a famous paper on the subject that clearly established there is no such thing as a trade in money. Every way I look at it, its a rip-off, facilitated by a useful idiot in the country's central bank. ..."
    "... ISDS is nothing more than a scheme to enable direct foreign attacks on the legislative process itself – even more direct and invasive than influencing elections by hacking, propaganda or whatever ..."
    Jan 12, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    ... ... ...

    By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development. Originally published at Inter Press Service and cross posted from Triple Crisis

    President-elect Donald Trump has promised that he will take the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) on the first day of his presidency. The TPP may now be dead, thanks to Trump and opposition by all major US presidential candidates. With its imminent demise almost certain, it is important to draw on some lessons before it is buried.

    Fraudulent Free Trade Agreement

    The TPP is fraudulent as a free trade agreement, offering very little in terms of additional growth due to trade liberalization, contrary to media hype. To be sure, the TPP had little to do with trade. The US already has free trade agreements, of the bilateral or regional variety, with six of the 11 other countries in the pact. All twelve members also belong to the World Trade Organization (WTO) which concluded the single largest trade agreement ever, more than two decades ago in Marrakech – contrary to the TPPA's claim to that status. Trade barriers with the remaining five countries were already very low in most cases, so there is little room left for further trade liberalization in the TPPA, except in the case of Vietnam, owing to the war until 1975 and its legacy of punitive legislation.

    The most convenient computable general equilibrium (CGE) trade model used for trade projections makes unrealistic assumptions, including those about the consequences of trade liberalization. For instance, such trade modelling exercises typically presume full employment as well as unchanging trade and fiscal balances. Our colleagues' more realistic macroeconomic modelling suggested that almost 800,000 jobs would be lost over a decade after implementation, with almost half a million from the US alone. There would also be downward pressure on wages, in turn exacerbating inequalities at the national level.

    Already, many US manufacturing jobs have been lost to US corporations' automation and relocation abroad. Thus, while most politically influential US corporations would do well from the TPP due to strengthened intellectual property rights (IPRs) and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, US workers would generally not. It is now generally believed these outcomes contributed to the backlash against such globalization in the votes for Brexit and Trump.

    Non-Trade Measures

    According to the Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE), the US think-tank known for cheerleading economic liberalization and globalization, the purported TPPA gains would mainly come from additional investments, especially foreign direct investments, due to enhanced investor rights. However, these claims have been disputed by most other analysts, including two US government agencies, i.e., the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS) and the US International Trade Commission (ITC).

    Much of the additional value of trade would come from 'non-trade issues'. Strengthening intellectual property (IP) monopolies, typically held by powerful transnational corporations, would raise the value of trade through higher trading prices, not more goods and services. Thus, strengthened IPRs leading to higher prices for medicines are of particular concern.

    The TPP would reinforce and extend patents, copyrights and related intellectual property protections. Such protectionism raises the price of protected items, such as pharmaceutical drugs. In a 2015 case, Martin Shkreli raised the price of a drug he had bought the rights to by 6000% from USD12.50 to USD750! As there is no US law against such 'price-gouging', the US Attorney General could only prosecute him for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme.

    "Medecins Sans Frontieres" warned that the agreement would go down in history as the worst "cause of needless suffering and death" in developing countries. In fact, contrary to the claim that stronger IPRs would enhance research and development, there has been no evidence of increased research or new medicines in recent decades for this reason.

    Corporate-Friendly

    Foreign direct investment (FDI) is also supposed to go up thanks to the TPPA's ISDS provisions. For instance, foreign companies would be able to sue TPP governments for ostensible loss of profits, including potential future profits, due to changes in national regulation or policies even if in the national or public interest.

    ISDS would be enforced through ostensibly independent tribunals. This extrajudicial system would supercede national laws and judiciaries, with secret rulings not bound by precedent or subject to appeal.

    Thus, rather than trade promotion, the main purpose of the TPPA has been to internationally promote more corporate-friendly rules under US leadership. The 6350 page deal was negotiated by various working groups where representatives of major, mainly US corporations were able to drive the agenda and advance their interests. The final push to seek congressional support for the TPPA despite strong opposition from the major presidential candidates made clear that the main US rationale and motive were geo-political, to minimize China's growing influence.

    The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost Hillary Clinton the presidency as she came across as insincere in belatedly opposing the agreement which she had previously praised and advocated. Trade was a major issue in swing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where concerned voters overwhelmingly opted for Trump.

    The problem now is that while the Obama administration undermined trade multilateralism by its unwillingness to honour the compromise which initiated the Doha Development Round, Trump's preference for bilateral agreements benefiting the US is unlikely to provide the boost to multilateralism so badly needed now. Unless the US and the EU embrace the spirit of compromise which started this round of trade negotiations, the WTO and multilateralism more generally may never recover from the setbacks of the last decade and a half.

    ifthethunderdontgetya™ł˛®© , January 11, 2017 at 11:49 am

    The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost Hillary Clinton the presidency

    No doubt. But the Wall St. Dems are going to keep blaming Bernie Bros and the Russians. And they'll keep helping themselves to that sweet corporate payola.

    Marley's dad , January 11, 2017 at 1:05 pm

    Talk about pushing ahead with TPP, this piece is jaw dropping. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/tpp-how-obama-traded-away_b_13872926.html?section=us_politics

    B1whois , January 11, 2017 at 2:37 pm

    I see it as karma. TPP may have been the worst thing ever tried by a US President, to date. I didn't realize that so many people understood it though, at least I didn't get that impression in central California.

    Oregoncharles , January 11, 2017 at 3:32 pm

    Lori Wallach doing a rather ironic victory dance. Worth spreading around the Dempologist sites: "here's the real reason."

    Left in Wisconsin , January 12, 2017 at 2:13 am

    Lori Wallach is no dummy. She should run for president in 2020. As a Democrat. No kidding. She is way better than Bernie. Said it here first.

    Jack , January 12, 2017 at 9:43 am

    And not just Hillary Clinton. The whole Democratic party. Obama has been a disaster for Democrats. There is a piece in the WAPO by Matt Stoller today discussing just this issue.

    Dave , January 11, 2017 at 11:49 am

    Not knowing what he does not know may be beneficial. To be freed from the straitjacket of political sophistry that has led to previous disasters for American workers is, perhaps, a positive.

    I'd be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk as I do now.

    Corporations, Hollywood, Big Pharma and Silicon Valley will be hurt? Tough luck, they are there to make profits and are no friend of American workers. Might as well say it, because of their behavior, they are the enemy of progress for workers.

    Short version:
    Trump has done more for American workers and has obtained more net benefit out of the car companies, before he's even sworn in than the Clintons did in ten collective years of 'public service'.

    a different chris , January 11, 2017 at 12:09 pm

    >I'd be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk as I do now.

    And I don't think you would even have to every time you can manage to look at what it costs* to make something in China instead of the USA, and compare it to the retail price, you get a real "whoa".** The price is just enough less to drive the US manufacturer themselves out of business, most of the money *does* stay in the US but it goes to the top 0.1%.

    This is more about control of the proles than economics, sometimes I think.

    *like anybody can totally figure it out given the Chinese state's involvement in everything, but we can make decent guesses

    **I know that American mfg cost is generally 1/2 of retail price and sometimes as low as 1/3. I'm talking about 1/10 to 1/20th for Chinese goods.

    djrichard , January 11, 2017 at 12:30 pm

    Excellent point. Basically will corporations pass along increased costs to consumers?

    Take a look at what happened when the price of oil spiked. Corporations that had healthy profit margins in general didn't pass on to consumers their increased costs when oil was part of their COGS (cost of good sold). Though in contrast, airlines did. At the time Airlines had low profit margins. But I suspect their pricing power is less elastic regardless – their 10Ks show their entire business model is metric'd on the price of fuel.

    scraping_by , January 11, 2017 at 1:36 pm

    Offshoring isn't about lower consumer goods prices. The cost of labor in a mass-produced product is small, often trivial. That's what mass production is designed to do.

    It's more about dropping more of the top line to the bottom line. Along with the fake aristo disdain for wage earners that seems to be a requirement for corporate managers.

    Dave , January 11, 2017 at 6:33 pm

    That 35% tariff sure equals a lot of profits lost on cars made in Mexico. Therefore, they will be made in America. Due to the competitive nature of auto sales, the lack of interest in teenagers in buying cars, I think Detroit will not raise prices to match the labor cost difference. Also, there will be even less demand for U.S. made cars as most of the Mexican factories will possibly remain open for the Latin American market, which means even fewer exports of American made cars. A scarcity of markets means lower prices.

    RBHoughton , January 11, 2017 at 7:20 pm

    The addiction to foreign trade is for the money in it. The importer doubles his money, the wholesaler doubles his money, the distributor doubles his money and the retailer gets what he can. The Chinese manufacturer is satisfied but most of the street cost goes to the intermediaries.

    The Chinese governments interest for many years was simply receiving the foreign money payments and paying out the exchange in RMB.

    Phil , January 11, 2017 at 3:51 pm

    Notwithstanding your comment about the Clintons:

    Trump hasn't done a thing for American workers. Indiana taxpayers (American workers) are on the hook for Carrier taking on roughly 700 jobs of the 2000 that Trump said he would "save". We don't even know the deep details of that "deal". If anyone thinks that Carrier signed off on that deal without the permission of Carrier's parent, United Technologies (a pure defense firm), I have a bridge to sell them. What future "deal" did the American taxpayer (worker) get subjected to when this "deal" was made behind closed doors to a defense contractor whose *only* means of revenue is from the American taxpayer (worker)?

    What about the citizens (workers) of Indiana who are going to carry the financial and social burden of the 1300 Carrier workers that Trump promised (early on in his campaign) whose jobs he would save. The carrier deal, in fact, was virtually the same deal that Pence had put on the table a year ago.

    United Technologies has *three* air conditioning brands; their Mexican lines are still open, and the 700 jobs that Trump said he "saved" are not committed to any kind of permanent status in the USA. Again, the Mexican manufacturing lines remain open, operating, and ready to accept those jobs when Carrier thinks it's appropriate.

    As for the auto companies? Please. Trump did NOTHING that wasn't already planned, or that wasn't already inspired by market forces and in the works.

    FORD on the cancelled Mexican plant:
    http://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2017/01/04/we-didnt-cut-a-deal-with-trump-ford-on-canceled-mexican-plant
    "'To be clear, Ford is still moving its production of small vehicles to Mexico. The Ford Focus will still be produced in Mexico, just at an existing Mexican plant instead of the canceled plant. "[T]he reason we are canceling our plant in Mexico, the main reason, is because we are seeing a decline in demand for small vehicles here in North America.."

    CHRYSLER-FIAT
    https://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/fiat-chrysler-smacks-down-trumps-boasts-president-elect-not-involved-in-companys-job-creation/
    "Jodi Tinson, a spokeswoman for FCA told ThinkProgress, "This plan was in the works back in 2015. This announcement was just final confirmation." Tinson also confirmed that neither politics nor the presidential election was at all related to the company's expansion"

    Trump is a fraud and an overt liar; he's a pure clinical narcissist who doesn't work for anyone but his frail ego – ever seeking out his next source of narcissistic supply – a supply he has been able to control from his early days from the happy accident of inherited wealth – going on from there to use his inheritance to enrich himself at the expense of others.

    Yes, American workers have been screwed over, but they have been screwed over mostly by Plutocrats who have owned both parties for decades. Ironically (in the face of all the anti-immigration talk), the vast majority of those Plutocrats have been *white, male* CEOs.

    Anyone looking at Trump's early appointments and Cabinet nominees – not to mentioned his unhinged comments and tweets – who is not scared stiff by the presence of this goon in the White House – is suffering from a serious case of confirmation bias.

    different clue , January 11, 2017 at 8:50 pm

    Why would you be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk? Especially if it were still junk? If I were going to pay twice as much for something, I would rather that something be American not-junk rather than Chinese junk.

    bmiller , January 11, 2017 at 9:49 pm

    Given the reality that the most modern manufacturing capacity in the world is Chinese when it comes to consumer durables, it is racist to assume that "American" products are automatically better. The disinvestment in American manufacturing would take decades to replace.

    tegnost , January 11, 2017 at 10:12 pm

    last night listening to some folks opine re starbucks as a ubiquitous bad, the defense was they generally treat their employees ok, better than mcdonalds certainly, homeless people are given a little space before they get cleared out after a few hours if they are civil, which seemed to make the "striving to be good consumers, attempting to be socially responsible" lean towards well maybe they guessed it might be ok to go there. They all have i phones, however, and I didn't say it as I like my job, but was thinking "how many suicide nets does starbucks have in their global domain?" To call that racist makes me wonder about your comment, maybe if you had said is it racist, but no further, and in direct relation to that, china got manufacturing because suicide nets are a solution for apple that would not go over well around here. Maybe that's why they produce there, and not because the chinese are better at manufacturing?

    different clue , January 11, 2017 at 10:49 pm

    You can only play the race card but so many times before you wear it out. And it is pretty thin.

    I assume that American-made Science Diet dog food won't have poison in it the way I have to assume Chinese dog food may have. I assume that American-made sheet rock won't offgas sulfur dioxide gas which turns into sulfuric acid in moist air ( as in Florida), and destroys household appliances in a year or less. The way some Chinese high-sulfur sheetrock did at least once in Florida. I assume an American-made Oakland-Bay-Bridge at twice the price would not now be already having the decay and bad-build problems which the Cheap China Crap Construction bridge is already having.

    Shall I go on?

    You sound like a Free Trade Treason hasbarist for China. In fact, I think you are.

    You still want to call me racist? Well . . . kiss me, I'm deplorable.

    a different chris , January 11, 2017 at 12:00 pm

    >Trump's plan to enter into bi-lateral trade deals (after supposedly tearing up extant pacts)

    Well we never know what the frell he is actually going to do, sure can't judge by what he says. If he did start with and modifies "extant pacts", that would actually make a lot of sense and maybe even go decently well at a more-than-glacial speed.

    Of course – I hate when people speculate, and especially when they speculate that somebody is going to do literally the opposite of what they said they were going to do, yet here I am doing exactly that. My only excuse is that his personality is not to get that deep into anything, so it just seems more likely that he would simply focus on whatever specific aspect of a given treatry is problematical, wack a bit at that (for better or worse), and move on.

    Dude is going to make us all crazy.

    Ignacio , January 11, 2017 at 12:14 pm

    Bi-lateral trade deals can focus on relatively narrow trade areas and in this case those needn't so much time to get negotiated and passed. I don't know if that is Trump's strategy.

    susan the other , January 11, 2017 at 12:38 pm

    This is a great summary of the recent fate of the TPP and the reasons for it. It may not be dead yet – even though it has been unceremoniously tossed on the cart of the dead (monty python). But the thinking behind it is terminal. Why no one ever discussed the military aspect of the TPP can be attributed to its strict secrecy. It was obvious to lots of people that the TPP was NATO for the Pacific and China was the target, and equally obvious that it was bad policy from any perspective. Bilateral trade will survive this debacle and world trade will continue – but trade will not be such a military tool, hopefully. It will be a good thing.

    different clue , January 11, 2017 at 8:53 pm

    It was not obvious to me. It is still not obvious to me. "China" was the excuse advanced for TPP late in the day when the Tradesters discovered that popular sentiment was turning against the Corporate Globalonial Plantationist purpose of the TPP, and hence against the TPP itself.

    Fiver , January 12, 2017 at 6:24 pm

    First, she is much closer to correct than you re the purpose of TPP. Secondly, why would you argue that the 'Tradesters' had to resort to 'China' in order to attempt to sell their putrid deal if 'China' was not viewed by said 'Tradesters' as a word loaded with a host of negative associations, most of which are based on typical US foreign policy jingoistic nonsense rooted in what is certainly a classic case of US/Western supremacist nonsense, if not the more obvious, overt racism now making a rather spectacular comeback?

    John k , January 11, 2017 at 1:00 pm

    Lesson learned is to avoid electing corrupt candidates that call it a gold standard right away you know who is receiving, and who is paying, the gold.
    And then there are sitting elected officials pushing the crap with all their might, anticipating their gold shares maturing as soon as they leave office

    B1whois , January 11, 2017 at 2:26 pm

    Trade was a major issue in swing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where concerned voters overwhelmingly opted for Trump.

    Bravo! "Concerned voters" is a much better descriptor than "deplorables", "working class whites" or even, in this case, "working class voters" as there were also sovereignty issues.

    bmiller , January 11, 2017 at 9:51 pm

    The statistics show it was more the middle class and upper middle classes, especially evangelicals. Sexism played a big role.

    Outis Philalithopoulos , January 11, 2017 at 11:08 pm

    The wording of your comment is rather ambiguous – are you stating that "statistics show" that "sexism played a big role" in the swing states? Where do you situate yourself relative to Lambert's discussion of the subject?

    different clue , January 12, 2017 at 3:16 pm

    The sexism card is wearing about as thin as the racism card is wearing. Clinton lost support in the Midwest when she revealed herself to be a Free Trade Traitor against America by stating that she would put her husband, NAFTA Bill, in charge of the economic recovery when she got elected.
    That expression of support for anti-American Trade Treason guaranteed her loss right there.

    Statistics show . . . that figures lie when liars figure.

    Oregoncharles , January 11, 2017 at 2:43 pm

    " trade agreements take a long time to negotiate, typically because they also include services, and those take way longer to sort out than the physical goods side."
    My first reaction: good. Services shouldn't be in trade pacts. And if they take a long time to get done, all the better. The fetish for "trade pacts" is mostly destructive.

    Fundamentally: they're superfluous. People have always traded, mostly without "pacts." When it comes to "absolute advantage," literally trading apples for oranges, everybody really does benefit and barriers melt away. Under modern conditions. "comparative advantage" is a falsehood, as a close look at the conditions Ricardo set for it will show. It requires that labor and capital don't move at all freely between countries – true in his day, but certainly not in ours. Bizarrely, his theory is being used, dishonestly, to promote the destructive free movement of capital, and that's what "services" mostly means.

    The point that trade agreements take a long time is probably true, as well as not an objection; but it isn't an argument for multilateral agreements like the TPP; it's an argument for the WTO, if it had been done right. The plan was to set up an overarching, worldwide structure for trade. But it should have been done under the UN, and it shouldn't include attacks on sovereignty like the tribunals. The real reason for other agreements is that the requirement for consensus in the WTO put up a dead end sign: thus far, and no farther. So the "Washington Consensus" tried for work arounds. But the consensus model makes sense, and the rules should be universal.

    The real gist of Ricardo is that trade is NOT an unmitigated good. It easily becomes more or less subtle forms of imperialism. Furthermore, low trade barriers make sense. Diversity depends on barriers. They encourage a modicum of self-reliance and provide firewalls so that a financial collapse in one country doesn't automatically go world-wide. We probably had it right in the 50s and 60s, when the economy was far healthier. Granted, there were still a lot of actual colonies then, so it's hard to tell how that translates to modern conditions.

    I don't think I'm saying anything that isn't very familiar here. We should beware of capitalist ideologies.

    different clue , January 11, 2017 at 8:55 pm

    The fetish for Multilaterialism is also destructive. Multilateralism is just "french" for Corporate Globalonial Plantationist trade pacts designed to exterminate sovereignty for dozens of countries at a time.

    Oregoncharles , January 11, 2017 at 2:48 pm

    " Our colleagues' more realistic macroeconomic modelling suggested that almost 800,000 jobs would be lost over a decade after implementation, with almost half a million from the US alone. There would also be downward pressure on wages, in turn exacerbating inequalities at the national level."

    Yes, that's what these "trade agreements" are FOR. You don't think the PTB take bullshit economics seriously, do you?

    ChrisPacific , January 11, 2017 at 4:09 pm

    As an aside, I never particularly liked the sovereignty argument against TPP (which I note is omitted from this article) because I felt it painted with an overly broad brush. More specifically, I would argue that it can sometimes be a good thing if nation-states collectively agree to be bound by rules that supersede national legislation. The Geneva Convention is one example.

    TPP would have been bad not because it compromised national sovereignty, but because of the reasons for which it did so. Overriding national legislation to protect human rights is one thing. Overriding it to grant multinational corporations more power over workers, consumers and governments is quite another.

    marblex , January 11, 2017 at 5:10 pm

    I believe the sovereignty provisions are the most dangerous ones.

    witters , January 11, 2017 at 7:48 pm

    "I would argue that it can sometimes be a good thing if nation-states collectively agree to be bound by rules that supersede national legislation. The Geneva Convention is one example."

    There is the general point, and there is your example and there is the US: http://baltimorechronicle.com/geneva_feb02.shtml

    Oregoncharles , January 11, 2017 at 8:28 pm

    In this case, "sovereignty" means the power to regulate commerce. Insofar as the signatories are democracy, it also means democracy – the ability to carry out the decisions of representative bodies.

    RBHoughton , January 11, 2017 at 9:57 pm

    The Pacific Rim countries might approve "needless suffering and death" if it keeps them in the west's good books.

    Countries without an internationally traded currency will not willingly sign up for specious 'trade in money' sections. Galbraith the Younger wrote a famous paper on the subject that clearly established there is no such thing as a trade in money. Every way I look at it, its a rip-off, facilitated by a useful idiot in the country's central bank.

    These agreements, whether global or bilateral, are an invitation to central bankers to become traitors to their own country; an attempt to take over a nation without firing a shot, a blast from a future that permits only trade blocks and no countries.

    I am convinced what the world really wants is a debate on the shape of world government. I do not agree that the chap with the most printed money calls the shots. We are better than that.

    Minnie Mouse , January 12, 2017 at 4:24 pm

    ISDS is nothing more than a scheme to enable direct foreign attacks on the legislative process itself – even more direct and invasive than influencing elections by hacking, propaganda or whatever . Imagine if Vladimir Putin were to accomplish a legislative objective in the U.S. simply by launching an ISDS extortion suit via a Russian state owned enterprise and a willing ISDS tribunal outside the U.S. court system and not at all accountable to U.S. interests. What would the pro TPP corporate Dems have to say then?

    different clue , January 12, 2017 at 5:37 pm

    Here's what they'd say.

    " Where's our money? We want our share of the Big Tubmans!"

    [Jan 12, 2017] I know a lot of people who dislike Trump, and none of them seem to believe the buzzfeed story

    The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke.
    Notable quotes:
    "... People who already dislike Trump will believe the allegations while people who like Trump will hate the press and intelligence agencies (?) even more for attacking him unfairly in their minds. ..."
    "... People are making jokes about it, the puns are just too easy, but nobody seems to actually believe it. ..."
    "... People don't talk about it like "did you hear trump did X" "oh yea" "yea there was a story". Its like "there was a very dubious story that trump did x" "". The way people talk about a Saturday Night Live sketch about Trump. ..."
    "... "This is a huge embarrassment to Democrats, the mainstream media and those intelligence officials who have all been piling on Trump. It hurts their credibility, which can ill afford to take yet another hit." ..."
    "... It's just partisan warfare. ..."
    "... "Today Clapper denounced media leaks..." Is that the same Clapper who lied to Congress about how the NSA was spying on law-abiding citizens en mass? Yeah he's trustworthy. ..."
    "... CNN was the first to report what Buzzfeed revealed. Trump was mad at them. Who else? ..."
    "... Glenn Greenwald explains the whole vendetta against Trump based on sham data. https://theintercept.com/2017/01/11/the-deep-state-goes-to-war-with-president-elect-using-unverified-claims-as-dems-cheer/ ..."
    "... With release of the buzz feed data, they overplayed their hand, destroyed their narrative, embarrassed themselves, and ultimately strengthened Trump. ..."
    "... "they damn well better have the goods...and the goods need to PO the deplorables." nothing will change their minds. They just see it as cynical attacks on their man. ..."
    "... The long knives will come out during the next recession ..."
    "... This reminds me of how the Bush campaign got Dan Rather to release some bogus information about Bush43 as a draft dodger. ..."
    "... In that case, I think the narrative of Bush as a draft dodger was correct, but its usefulness for Democrats got destroyed the moment Rather's source was revealed as bogus. ..."
    "... In this case, Hillary's assertions of Trump as a Putin stooge have been highly suspect, though she made a big deal of them in her campaign. Now that narrative has been crippled by the buzz feed overreach. ..."
    "... Exactly! "Democrats don't want to do a post-mortem about why they lost. It may prove that Bernie Sanders was right. They'd rather change the subject," which is where the 'everything is Putin's fault' narrative comes in. ..."
    "... Reminds me of the 'everything is Republicans fault' narrative that Democrats used to justify Obama's failure to jail bankers, his austerity, and his proposals to cut Social Security. ..."
    "... Democrats are masters of denial and victimization...just like Republicans. It's all very sick. ..."
    "... There is, and always was, a better Putin narrative. Trump is an FSB mole is both too far and too specific. ..."
    "... the election should never been about Putin. It should have been about swing state voters' economic anxieties, something that Hillary could never wrap here head around. ..."
    "... Now it looks like the Trump-Putin narrative is blowing up in their faces---purveyors of fake news should not accuse others of purveying fake news. ..."
    Jan 12, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 06:57 AM
    The thing about Trump is that people can imagine he's the kind of guy who would enjoy being urinated on by Russian prostitutes, even if the allegations are untrue. He is so into gold and into women.

    People who already dislike Trump will believe the allegations while people who like Trump will hate the press and intelligence agencies (?) even more for attacking him unfairly in their minds.

    jeff fisher -> Peter K.... , January 12, 2017 at 10:10 AM
    I know a lot of people who dislike Trump, and none of them seem to believe the buzzfeed story. People are making jokes about it, the puns are just too easy, but nobody seems to actually believe it.

    People don't talk about it like "did you hear trump did X" "oh yea" "yea there was a story". Its like "there was a very dubious story that trump did x" "". The way people talk about a Saturday Night Live sketch about Trump.

    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 06:59 AM
    "This is a huge embarrassment to Democrats, the mainstream media and those intelligence officials who have all been piling on Trump. It hurts their credibility, which can ill afford to take yet another hit."

    Kind of like Comey was a huge embarrassment to Republicans? I don't think so. It's just partisan warfare.

    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 07:01 AM
    So leaks are good when Wikileaks do them but bad when intelligence officials do them?

    We know Trump will never be consistent, but you can try to have single standards.

    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 07:06 AM
    "Today Clapper denounced media leaks..." Is that the same Clapper who lied to Congress about how the NSA was spying on law-abiding citizens en mass? Yeah he's trustworthy.
    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 07:28 AM
    "This is a huge embarrassment to Democrats, the mainstream media and those intelligence officials who have all been piling on Trump. It hurts their credibility, which can ill afford to take yet another hit."

    CNN was the first to report what Buzzfeed revealed. Trump was mad at them. Who else?

    JohnH -> Peter K.... , January 12, 2017 at 07:44 AM
    Glenn Greenwald explains the whole vendetta against Trump based on sham data.
    https://theintercept.com/2017/01/11/the-deep-state-goes-to-war-with-president-elect-using-unverified-claims-as-dems-cheer/

    With release of the buzz feed data, they overplayed their hand, destroyed their narrative, embarrassed themselves, and ultimately strengthened Trump.

    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 07:50 AM
    Like Trump doesn't use "sham data" and innuendo. Who cares? Poetic justice. Trump is just going to waste his time pursuing vendettas against those who sullied his good name.

    Maybe that drama will "crowd out" some of his plans to enact Paul Ryan's agenda. Maybe it will cause a backlash among those Americans interested in a free press and democratic norms.

    Like I said some of your ideas are good, but they are tarnished by some of the really stupid things you say by association.

    JohnH -> Peter K.... , January 12, 2017 at 08:21 AM
    We already know that Trump has a Teflon shield. If the establishment is going to get him, they damn well better have the goods...and the goods need to PO the deplorables. Trumped up charges won't cut it.
    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 08:32 AM
    "We already know that Trump has a Teflon shield."

    via DeLong:

    http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/01/should-read-josh-marshall-_what-you-didnt-see_-what-may-be-the-most-significant-news-of-the-day-barely-made-a-ri.html#more

    Should-Read: Josh Marshall: What You Didn't See: "What may be the most significant news of the day barely made a ripple...

    ...Donald Trump, ten days from becoming President, has an approval rating of 37%. Most presidents seldom get so low. Some never do. For ten days away from inauguration it's totally unprecedented.... Each of the last three presidents had approval ratings of at least 65% during their presidential transitions.... Curiously absent from press coverage [has been that] Trump, his agenda and his party are deeply unpopular... [and have] gotten steadily more unpopular over the last four weeks..."

    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 08:34 AM
    "they damn well better have the goods...and the goods need to PO the deplorables." nothing will change their minds. They just see it as cynical attacks on their man.
    JohnH -> Peter K.... , January 12, 2017 at 09:39 AM
    The long knives will come out during the next recession, when Trump will have proven his incompetence. Pretense for impeachment is unknowable, but it better be good!
    JohnH -> Peter K.... , January 12, 2017 at 07:56 AM
    This reminds me of how the Bush campaign got Dan Rather to release some bogus information about Bush43 as a draft dodger.

    In that case, I think the narrative of Bush as a draft dodger was correct, but its usefulness for Democrats got destroyed the moment Rather's source was revealed as bogus.

    In this case, Hillary's assertions of Trump as a Putin stooge have been highly suspect, though she made a big deal of them in her campaign. Now that narrative has been crippled by the buzz feed overreach.

    Democrats should have focused on voters' economic concerns, not the Trump-Putin narrative.

    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 08:08 AM
    There was an interesting movie about the Rather case staring Robert Redford and Cate Blanchette. Trump is engaging in the same thuggish behavior as Republicans used against Rather and his producer in that case. Or course CBS folded because they had regulatory changes about affiliate ownership before the Bush administration.

    We can expect the same cowardice from our corporate media regarding the Trump administration.

    JohnH -> Peter K.... , January 12, 2017 at 08:19 AM
    It would be interesting to know if Trump had something to do with release of the buzz feed report. It would make Trump smarter than I think he really is. My understanding is that John McCain, who hates Trump, was behind circulation of the report before buzz feed released it.
    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 08:40 AM
    "My understanding is that John McCain, who hates Trump, was behind circulation of the report before buzz feed released it." A lot of people knew about it. The eight leading congress people on the intelligence committees knew about it. David Corn reported about it in October in Mother Jones.
    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 08:27 AM
    "Democrats should have focused on voters' economic concerns, not the Trump-Putin narrative."

    I'll agree with you on this. Obama went more positive in 2008 and 2012 than Hillary did in 2016 and was successful at the polls. Negative campaigning works but seems like too much of it depresses turnout.

    Part of it is that establishment Democrats don't want to do a post-mortem about why they lost. It may prove that Bernie Sanders was right. They'd rather change the subject.

    JohnH -> Peter K.... , January 12, 2017 at 09:06 AM
    Exactly! "Democrats don't want to do a post-mortem about why they lost. It may prove that Bernie Sanders was right. They'd rather change the subject," which is where the 'everything is Putin's fault' narrative comes in.

    Reminds me of the 'everything is Republicans fault' narrative that Democrats used to justify Obama's failure to jail bankers, his austerity, and his proposals to cut Social Security.

    Democrats are masters of denial and victimization...just like Republicans. It's all very sick.

    jeff fisher -> JohnH... , January 12, 2017 at 10:35 AM
    There is, and always was, a better Putin narrative. Trump is an FSB mole is both too far and too specific.

    The Republican's policy ideas are awful. Trump will be a terrible president. Putin wants us weak, and the Republican party will deliver just as it did during the Bush presidency.

    We will make little progress on our important problems, and make massive blunders that cost us for decades.

    Global warming will continue to improve the Russian Climate. Progress on renewable energy will be slowed, improving the market for Russian oil and gas. The US will worsen its healthcare problems. The US will exacerbate its inequality. The toxic republican attitude toward the institutions of democracy will come from all three branches of the federal government, and most state governments.

    Peter K. -> jeff fisher... , January 12, 2017 at 10:42 AM
    Putin doesn't like Hillary. At the time, she said Putin's election was rigged. And they were pushing Russia on all fronts. Trump is an isolationist who doesn't care about human rights or freedom of the press.

    Simple as that.

    jeff fisher -> Peter K.... , January 12, 2017 at 11:02 AM
    That's too specific. Not a good campaign narrative. It is reasonably true.

    But remember, Putin is supporting awful right wing parties in various nations. It wasn't just Clinton.

    JohnH -> jeff fisher... , January 12, 2017 at 12:08 PM
    Agreed. There were probably better Putin narratives, and the election should never been about Putin. It should have been about swing state voters' economic anxieties, something that Hillary could never wrap here head around.

    Now it looks like the Trump-Putin narrative is blowing up in their faces---purveyors of fake news should not accuse others of purveying fake news.

    [Jan 12, 2017] And now bottom feeders from BBC join the chorus

    This Paul Wood. is very funny "I understand the CIA believes it is credible..." The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke. But despite this Paul wood provided a good (albeit very dirty) hatchet job. Looks like neocons declared the open war on Trump. And as they are just a flavor of Trotskyites they are are capable of everything as they preach " the end justifies the means"... with their global neoliberal revolution under threat they can do as low as gangsters. Fake evidence is OK form in the best the "end justified the means" way.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Claims about a Russian blackmail tape were made in one of a series of reports written by a former British intelligence agent, understood to be Christopher Steele ..."
    "... As a member of MI6, he had been posted to the UK's embassy in Moscow and now runs a consultancy giving advice on doing business in Russia. He spoke to a number of his old contacts in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, paying some of them for information. ..."
    "... Mr Trump's supporters say this is a politically motivated attack. The president-elect himself, outraged, tweeted this morning: "Are we living in Nazi Germany?" ..."
    "... He said the memo was written by "sick people [who] put that crap together". ..."
    "... The opposition research firm that commissioned the report had worked first for an anti-Trump superpac - political action committee - during the Republican primaries. ..."
    "... Then during the general election, it was funded by an anonymous Democratic Party supporter. ..."
    "... At his news conference, Mr Trump said he warned his staff when they travelled: "Be very careful, because in your hotel rooms and no matter where you go you're going to probably have cameras." ..."
    Jan 12, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    im1dc : January 12, 2017 at 09:06 AM , 2017 at 09:06 AM
    Adding the BBC's reporting on the compromising of Donald Trump to the above posts that got off-track, imo, from the issue

    "Theatre of the absurd"

    Took my breath away...

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38589427

    "Trump 'compromising' claims: How and why did we get here?"

    By Paul Wood...BBC News...Washington...1-12-2017...47 minutes ago

    "Donald Trump has described as "fake news" allegations published in some media that his election team colluded with Russia - and that Russia held compromising material about his private life. The BBC's Paul Wood saw the allegations before the election, and reports on the fallout now they have come to light.

    The significance of these allegations is that, if true, the president-elect of the United States would be vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.

    I understand the CIA believes it is credible that the Kremlin has such kompromat - or compromising material - on the next US commander in chief. At the same time a joint taskforce, which includes the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating allegations that the Russians may have sent money to Mr Trump's organisation or his election campaign.

    Claims about a Russian blackmail tape were made in one of a series of reports written by a former British intelligence agent, understood to be Christopher Steele.

    As a member of MI6, he had been posted to the UK's embassy in Moscow and now runs a consultancy giving advice on doing business in Russia. He spoke to a number of his old contacts in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, paying some of them for information.

    They told him that Mr Trump had been filmed with a group of prostitutes in the presidential suite of Moscow's Ritz-Carlton hotel. I know this because the Washington political research company that commissioned his report showed it to me during the final week of the election campaign.

    The BBC decided not to use it then, for the very good reason that without seeing the tape - if it exists - we could not know if the claims were true. The detail of the allegations were certainly lurid. The entire series of reports has now been posted by BuzzFeed.

    [Image of Trump's Tweet]

    Mr Trump's supporters say this is a politically motivated attack. The president-elect himself, outraged, tweeted this morning: "Are we living in Nazi Germany?" Later, at his much-awaited news conference, he was unrestrained. "A thing like that should have never been written," he said, "and certainly should never have been released."

    He said the memo was written by "sick people [who] put that crap together".

    The opposition research firm that commissioned the report had worked first for an anti-Trump superpac - political action committee - during the Republican primaries.

    Then during the general election, it was funded by an anonymous Democratic Party supporter. But these are not political hacks - their usual line of work is country analysis and commercial risk assessment, similar to the former MI6 agent's consultancy. He, apparently, gave his dossier to the FBI against the firm's advice.

    [Photo of Trump in Moscow, 2013 w/beauty contestants]

    And the former MI6 agent is not the only source for the claim about Russian kompromat on the president-elect. Back in August, a retired spy told me he had been informed of its existence by "the head of an East European intelligence agency".

    Later, I used an intermediary to pass some questions to active duty CIA officers dealing with the case file - they would not speak to me directly. I got a message back that there was "more than one tape", "audio and video", on "more than one date", in "more than one place" - in the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and also in St Petersburg - and that the material was "of a sexual nature".

    'Be very careful'

    The claims of Russian kompromat on Mr Trump were "credible", the CIA believed. That is why - according to the New York Times and Washington Post - these claims ended up on President Barack Obama's desk last week, a briefing document also given to Congressional leaders and to Mr Trump himself.

    Mr Trump did visit Moscow in November 2013, the date the main tape is supposed to have been made. There is TV footage of him at the Miss Universe contest. Any visitor to a grand hotel in Moscow would be wise to assume that their room comes equipped with hidden cameras and microphones as well as a mini-bar.

    At his news conference, Mr Trump said he warned his staff when they travelled: "Be very careful, because in your hotel rooms and no matter where you go you're going to probably have cameras." So the Russian security services have made obtaining kompromat an art form.

    One Russian specialist told me that Vladimir Putin himself sometimes says there is kompromat on him - though perhaps he is joking. The specialist went on to tell me that FSB officers are prone to boasting about having tapes on public figures, and to be careful of any statements they might make.

    A former CIA officer told me he had spoken by phone to a serving FSB officer who talked about the tapes. He concluded: "It's hokey as hell."

    Mr Trump and his supporters are right to point out that these are unsubstantiated allegations.

    But it is not just sex, it is money too. The former MI6 agent's report detailed alleged attempts by the Kremlin to offer Mr Trump lucrative "sweetheart deals" in Russia that would buy his loyalty.

    Mr Trump turned these down, and indeed has done little real business in Russia. But a joint intelligence and law enforcement taskforce has been looking at allegations that the Kremlin paid money to his campaign through his associates.

    Legal applications

    On 15 October, the US secret intelligence court issued a warrant to investigate two Russian banks. This news was given to me by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community. He would never volunteer anything - giving up classified information would be illegal - but he would confirm or deny what I had heard from other sources.

    "I'm going to write a story that says " I would say. "I don't have a problem with that," he would reply, if my information was accurate. He confirmed the sequence of events below.

    Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was - allegedly - a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.

    It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States. The CIA cannot act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created.

    The taskforce included six agencies or departments of government. Dealing with the domestic, US, side of the inquiry, were the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Justice. For the foreign and intelligence aspects of the investigation, there were another three agencies: the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency, responsible for electronic spying.

    Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application. They took it to the secret US court that deals with intelligence, the Fisa court, named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks.

    Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day.

    Neither Mr Trump nor his associates are named in the Fisa order, which would only cover foreign citizens or foreign entities - in this case the Russian banks. But ultimately, the investigation is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States, each one, if proved, a felony offence.

    A lawyer- outside the Department of Justice but familiar with the case - told me that three of Mr Trump's associates were the subject of the inquiry. "But it's clear this is about Trump," he said.

    I spoke to all three of those identified by this source. All of them emphatically denied any wrongdoing. "Hogwash," said one. "Bullshit," said another. Of the two Russian banks, one denied any wrongdoing, while the other did not respond to a request for comment.

    The investigation was active going into the election. During that period, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid, wrote to the director of the FBI, accusing him of holding back "explosive information" about Mr Trump.

    Mr Reid sent his letter after getting an intelligence briefing, along with other senior figures in Congress. Only eight people were present: the chairs and ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, and the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress, the "gang of eight" as they are sometimes called. Normally, senior staff attend "gang of eight" intelligence briefings, but not this time. The Congressional leaders were not even allowed to take notes.

    'Puppet'

    In the letter to the FBI director, James Comey, Mr Reid said: "In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and co-ordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government - a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Mr Trump praises at every opportunity.

    "The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information."

    The CIA, FBI, Justice and Treasury all refused to comment when I approached them after hearing about the Fisa warrant.

    It is not clear what will happen to the inter-agency investigation under President Trump - or even if the taskforce is continuing its work now. The Russians have denied any attempt to influence the president-elect - with either money or a blackmail tape.

    If a tape exists, the Russians would hardly give it up, though some hope to encourage a disloyal FSB officer who might want to make some serious money. Before the election, Larry Flynt, publisher of the pornographic magazine Hustler, put up a million dollars for incriminating tape of Mr Trump. Penthouse has now followed with its own offer of a million dollars for the Ritz-Carlton tape (if it exists).

    It is an extraordinary situation, 10 days before Mr Trump is sworn into office, but it was foreshadowed during the campaign.

    During the final presidential debate, Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump a "puppet" of Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin. "No puppet. No puppet," Mr Trump interjected, talking over Mrs Clinton. "You're the puppet. No, you're the puppet."

    In a New York Times op-ed in August, the former director of the CIA, Michael Morell, wrote: "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr Putin had recruited Mr Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

    Agent; puppet - both terms imply some measure of influence or control by Moscow.

    Michael Hayden, former head of both the CIA and the NSA, simply called Mr Trump a "polezni durak" - a useful fool.

    The background to those statements was information held - at the time - within the intelligence community. Now all Americans have heard the claims. Little more than a week before his inauguration, they will have to decide if their president-elect really was being blackmailed by Moscow."

    [Jan 11, 2017] Remarks of Stephen Bannon at a Conference at the Vatican

    See http://the-american-catholic.com/2016/11/18/remarks-of-stephen-bannon-at-a-conference-at-the-vatican
    Notable quotes:
    "... Dugin is positively millenarian: "We must create strategic alliances to overthrow the present order of things, of which the core could be described as human rights, anti-hierarchy, and political correctness – everything that is the face of the Beast, the anti-Christ." ..."
    Jan 11, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    anne -> Julio ... , January 10, 2017 at 10:20 AM
    Again, I know nothing about Steve Bannon but the column of David Brooks does not seem to be connected to the Vatican speech referred to:

    http://the-american-catholic.com/2016/11/18/remarks-of-stephen-bannon-at-a-conference-at-the-vatican/

    Fred C. Dobbs -> anne... , January 10, 2017 at 10:53 AM
    Putin and Trump could be on the same side in this troubling new world order https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2016/dec/19/trump-putin-same-side-new-world-order
    The Guardian - Matthew d'Ancona - Dec 19

    Russian hacking, White House warnings, angry denials by Vladimir Putin's officials: we are edging towards a digital Cuban crisis. So it is as well to ask what is truly at stake in this e-conflict, and what underpins it.

    To which end, meet the most important intellectual you have (probably) never heard of. Alexander Dugin, the Russian political scientist and polemicist, may resemble Santa's evil younger brother and talk like a villain from an Austin Powers movie. But it is no accident that he has earned the nickname Putin's Rasputin. ...

    The purpose of operations like the hacking of the US election has been to destabilize the Atlantic order generally, and America specifically. And on this great struggle, Dugin is positively millenarian: "We must create strategic alliances to overthrow the present order of things, of which the core could be described as human rights, anti-hierarchy, and political correctness – everything that is the face of the Beast, the anti-Christ."

    anne -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 10, 2017 at 12:03 PM
    I do appreciate the reference, but the language of the column portion is too much for me. I stopped reading a few words after "Santa's."
    Julio -> anne... , January 10, 2017 at 11:27 AM
    At the end of your linked article there is a link to the full speech, including the Q&A. It takes you here:
    https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world?utm_term=.wn06r4OX5#.eqzLQEa5M

    In the Q&A he discusses Russia and Putin; his comments include this: "I'm not justifying Vladimir Putin and the kleptocracy that he represents, because he eventually is the state capitalist of kleptocracy. "

    John San Vant -> Julio ... , January 10, 2017 at 11:26 AM
    Bannon is a zionist shill and always will be. He has tried to blur that point away. But that kind of crap is pure zionism. Putin's ties with Ashkenazi jews is well well known. He has had much support from the extreme wings of the Lukud for years, yet the idiots don't pay attention. Putin sold himself and they bought it up. The myth he purged the Oligarchs from Russia cracks me up. He made sure the winners power was firmly planted.

    From a "conservative revolutionary" (Renee Guenon aka real traditionalism) pov, this is pure bunk. Nationalism is semitic by its very nature and collectivist. What they want is a global plutocracy with the bible as its whip. Now, not everybody agrees with that version of "plutocracy". Thus comes the adversaries, the Jesuits.

    anne -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 10, 2017 at 09:58 AM
    http://the-american-catholic.com/2016/11/18/remarks-of-stephen-bannon-at-a-conference-at-the-vatican/

    2014

    Remarks of Stephen Bannon at a Conference at the Vatican

    [Jan 11, 2017] Intelligence Agencies Ask Americans to Trust, Don t Verify in New Cold War

    Jan 11, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    anne : January 10, 2017 at 05:50 AM

    http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/intelligence-agencies-ask-americans-to-trust-don-t-verify-in-new-cold-war

    January 9, 2017

    Intelligence Agencies Ask Americans to "Trust, Don't Verify" in New Cold War
    By Mark Weisbrot

    Just as the first casualty of war is said to be the truth, the first casualty of the New Cold War is irony. Our most prominent journalists seem to have missed the Orwellian irony of Senator John McCain asking Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper at Friday's Senate hearings if Julian Assange has any credibility. Assange has maintained that the hacked or leaked emails of Democratic Party officials did not come from the Russian government, or any other government.

    As is well known, Clapper lied to Congress about a serious violation of the constitutional rights of tens of millions of Americans. This lie is a crime for which he actually could have been prosecuted.

    In March 2013, Clapper falsely answered, "No, sir" to the question, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?" He later admitted that his answer was untrue.

    Clapper lied again in Friday's testimony, saying that Assange was "under indictment" for "a sexual crime." In fact, Assange has not been indicted for anything, and the government of Sweden has never even charged him with a crime. In reality, he is a political prisoner, and the United Nations Working Group on arbitrary detention has found that he has been arbitrarily detained since 2010 by the UK and Sweden, and ordered his release and compensation. He has offered from the beginning of his political persecution to co-operate with the Swedish authorities in any investigation, and to be interviewed at any time in London. He could not safely return to Sweden without guarantees that he would not be sent to the US, where he currently faces a high likelihood of imprisonment (even before any trial) for having published leaked documents that exposed US war crimes and other embarrassments. For years, neither Sweden nor the UK would agree to that because, it appears, their foreign ministries are collaborating with the US government to keep him imprisoned.

    For anyone on a jury who had to weigh the testimony of Clapper against that of Assange, it would be a no-brainer. Not only is Clapper a proven and serial liar, but in 10 years of WikiLeaks revelations, Assange has never been shown to have lied about anything.

    That said, it is entirely possible the Russian government was involved in the hacking of emails here, and that Assange and WikiLeaks would not necessarily be able to identify the original source of the leaks, which is very difficult to do. However, We the People have yet to be presented with evidence that Russian hacking is what actually happened.

    But the media has become so distracted with the festivities at America's new 1950's theme party, hating on Putin and Russia like there's no tomorrow, that the lack of evidence has become almost irrelevant to the big media conversation. The DNI report released on Friday, supposedly to provide the public with evidence that the Russian government had indeed hacked emails in order to influence the US elections, contained no actual evidence that they did so. There was a lot of evidence that Trump was the preferred candidate of Putin and his government. But we didn't need evidence for this; pure logic would have sufficed. What government wouldn't favor a candidate who promises better relations with them?

    About half of the report was littered with a long rant against Russian-sponsored media, including the television station Russia Today. Here is another deep irony: the media that swung the election for Trump was not Russian but American, despite the fact that most of these journalists and editors found the candidate repellent. Trump's huge advantage in free publicity not only won him the primary, but continued into the general election. It was the US media that made the Comey letter so important, because the broadcast media used it to displace Trump's scandals, including the allegations of sexual assaults, in the crucial last 11 days when millions of voters made up their minds.

    Another irony: The US has been hacking elections (and toppling governments) around the world for more than a century. How many hundreds of millions of people, from Indonesia to Chile and dozens of countries in between, wish that all the United States did to their elections was what Russia is accused of doing here in 2016? Of course that is no justification for any foreign intervention here, but it is part of the current story if we want to understand it. Washington's intervention in Ukraine, for example, helped push that country into a civil war that became the main cause of the current state of Cold War between the US and Russia....

    Fred C. Dobbs -> anne... , January 10, 2017 at 07:01 AM
    'The US has been hacking elections (and toppling governments) around the world for more than a century. How many hundreds of millions of people, from Indonesia to Chile and dozens of countries in between, wish that all the United States did to their elections was what Russia is accused of doing here in 2016?'

    Indeed. However, we may insist (feebly) that
    this is NOT something which Great Powers do
    to one another.

    JohnH -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 10, 2017 at 08:10 AM
    Russia is very familiar with foreign meddling in their elections: "President Bill Clinton meddled in Russian affairs in the 1990s and helped Boris Yeltsin get elected to a second term, political analyst Dick Morris told Newsmax TV."
    http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/bill-clinton-advise-boris-yeltsin-dick-morris/2016/09/08/id/747327/

    I don't like Dick Morris. But he was a top Clinton advisor at the time...he was an eye witness, so he is an excellent source.

    Payback is a bitch!

    kthomas -> JohnH... , January 10, 2017 at 08:21 AM
    Pink hands.
    Peter K. -> JohnH... , January 10, 2017 at 08:21 AM
    The US once invaded Russia, which our goo-goo liberals seem to forget.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War

    "The Allied intervention was a multi-national military expedition launched during the Russian Civil War in 1918. The initial goals were to help the Czechoslovak Legion, secure supplies of munitions and armaments in Russian ports, and re-establish the Eastern Front. After winning World War I, the Allies militarily backed the anti-Bolshevik White forces in Russia. Allied efforts were hampered by divided objectives, war-weariness after they just finished greater conflict, and a lack of domestic support. These factors, together with the evacuation of the Czechoslovak Legion, compelled the Allies to withdraw from North Russia and Siberia in 1920, though Japanese forces occupied parts of Siberia until 1922 and the northern half of Sakhalin until 1925.[3]"

    [Jan 11, 2017] Masha Gessen on the new McCarthyism

    Notable quotes:
    "... Agree that is the real reason they don't want to take responsibility. It would mean that the Establishment would be discredited. ..."
    "... It is easy to read the report and understand how the CIA concluded that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction – you start with what you want to conclude and than you can find evidence. Likewise for Russian hacking . ..."
    "... If you like, see this link to Mish – a blogger sometimes in the NC links. Mish does the thought experiment of whether Israel undermined Hillary (and a whole lot more) – but it shows that Israel is just as plausible as Russia if you apply CIA type reasoning . ..."
    "... Masha Gessen is deeply antiputinitic. So if she finds the "Putin diddit" narrative unconvincing, it must be weak indeed. ..."
    Jan 11, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Masha Gessen hardly can be called a sympasizer of Putin;-). Actually the reverse is very true.
    The New McCarthyism

    "Russia, Trump & Flawed Intelligence" [Masha Gessen, New York Review of Books ]. "On Friday, when the report appeared, the major newspapers came out with virtually identical headlines highlighting the agencies' finding that Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered an "influence campaign" to help Donald Trump win the presidency-a finding the agencies say they hold 'with high confidence.'

    A close reading of the report shows that it barely supports such a conclusion. Indeed, it barely supports any conclusion."

    And: "That is the entirety of the evidence the report offers to support its estimation of Putin's motives for allegedly working to elect Trump: conjecture based on other politicians in other periods, on other continents-and also on misreported or mistranslated public statements." A massive takedown, from the heart of the Manhattan intelligentsia.

    Class Warfare

    [A study published late last month by the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA)] released Dec. 20, said the jobs of between 1.34 million and 1.67 million truck drivers would be at risk due to the growing utilization of heavy-duty vehicles operated via artificial intelligence. That would equal 80 to 100 percent of all driver jobs listed in the CEA report, which is based on May 2015 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a unit of the Department of Labor. There are about 3.4 million commercial truck drivers currently operating in the U.S., according to various estimates" [DC Velocity]. "The Council emphasized that its calculations excluded the number or types of new jobs that may be created as a result of this potential transition. It added that any changes could take years or decades to materialize because of a broad lag between what it called "technological possibility" and widespread adoption."

    Altandmain , January 10, 2017 at 2:05 pm

    The report on Friday in regards to the Russian hack:

    https://www.extremetech.com/internet/242370-governments-public-evidence-falls-short-proving-russian-involvement-dnc-hack

    The government has failed to provide the solid proof that is necessary to make such a bold accusation.

    For those who haven't read it, here's the Intercept's take as well (also in the article linked from ET):
    https://theintercept.com/2017/01/06/underwhelming-intel-report-shows-need-for-congressional-investigation-of-dnc-hack/

    What I'm disappointed in the DNC and the Party as a whole is rather than admit their failings, they want to conjure up Russia as a distraction. I'm not saying that Putin's a great guy (he seems to be an oligarch), but the Democrats need to take responsibility for 2016.

    If not, 2020 might end up like 2016 again. If they think Trump will fail no matter what, take a hard look at what happened to Kerry in 2004. Stop underestimating Trump. He's got a base and the Democrats screwed up big time.

    NotTimothyGeithner , January 10, 2017 at 2:34 pm

    If Democrats take "responsibility" for 2016, the courtesan class will be wiped out, and many elected Dems who dream of a spot on the ticket in 2020 will have to accept they are going no where. Andy Cuomo sees himself in 2020 running. He's like Hillary without the charisma.

    Altandmain , January 10, 2017 at 3:10 pm

    Agree that is the real reason they don't want to take responsibility. It would mean that the Establishment would be discredited.

    One question though, Clinton had charisma? Are we talking about the same candidate here? I though that Clinton was a wooden stump. You could tell that what she said was forced. Apparently one of the Wikileaks leaks said that she hated the American people.

    PottedFrog , January 10, 2017 at 3:34 pm

    http://ibankcoin.com/flyblog/2016/10/11/wikileaks-reveals-hillary-hates-everyday-americans/

    fresno dan , January 10, 2017 at 3:56 pm

    Altandmain
    January 10, 2017 at 2:05 pm

    It is easy to read the report and understand how the CIA concluded that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction – you start with what you want to conclude and than you can find evidence. Likewise for Russian hacking .

    If you like, see this link to Mish – a blogger sometimes in the NC links. Mish does the thought experiment of whether Israel undermined Hillary (and a whole lot more) – but it shows that Israel is just as plausible as Russia if you apply CIA type reasoning .

    Waldenpond , January 10, 2017 at 3:05 pm

    The new McCarthyism . when the IC report came out it was noted the numbers on the RT/CNN comparison report were inaccurate. Someone looked and it turned out the numbers were from several years ago . and the person criticized the report for including a 4 to 5 year old criticism of RT to pad the length of the report.

    Rosario , January 10, 2017 at 3:12 pm

    I wonder how long the mainstream media (see CNN above) can sustain the left's jouissance WRT Bernie until it blows up in their face? It seems like the elite liberal class is finding his "voice" a far more useful resistance to Trump compared to the overly simplified identity narrative or pathetic "foreign" threat narrative, but how long can they play with that fire. The fact is, Bernie really does talk about issues and policy, in a concrete way, in a demonstrable way. Those perspectives with class consciousness, and a dash of populist passions and you have political nitro far more threatening to the establishment than anything Trump can dish out. I'm all for it though I am very suspicious. I'm wondering what they (liberal elites) are cooking up.

    different clue , January 10, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    Masha Gessen is deeply antiputinitic. So if she finds the "Putin diddit" narrative unconvincing, it must be weak indeed.

    3.14e-9 , January 10, 2017 at 4:06 pm

    Re: Obama's extraordinary, aimless presidency [The Week]

    Nope, it was Putin's fault. Although, in fairness, Linker doesn't claim it was Obama's fault, only that he "helped prepare the way for the anti-establishment, populist wave " Master propagandist Putin knows a good opportunity when he sees one:

    Moscow is pushing populist movements to bring 'real security threats to Europe,' new report says [McClatchy]

    "Moscow is encouraging a wave of populism that extends from the election of President-elect Donald Trump through Brexit and rise of nationalist politics in France and Germany to bring about 'real security threats to Europe,' " according to a report in a new NATO journal."

    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article125396679.html

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , January 10, 2017 at 4:45 pm

    Populists are just proletarians in different clothing.

    alex morfesis , January 10, 2017 at 4:08 pm

    Don trumpioni and his capos are gonna woyk on keepyn the nayburhood nice again kapeesh ??

    As to the new McCarthyism, despite the capacity of fartspace and garggle to have algorithms filter certain "thoughts", the problems for the death spiral media are not going away and the death of myspace is a perfect example of the capacity of the blob to choke on its own vomit same for the rise and fall of the aol reich it was everywhere and then it was nothing

    Some self stylized masters of the universe imagine their luck as genius Cuban andreesson

    when all they are good at(which is good for their own pocket) is selling as soon as the griddle gets hot and the sound of the searing begins

    The internet of no-things and self krashing kars are well designed pitches but the details

    getting a virus or giving a virus to your over inquisitive refrigerator should deal with the all seeing pinkman brigade

    last I checked, customer service was not exactly the top issue concerning wall street

    Money isnt being spent on the infrastructure that exists today all this big blobber nonsense will require a tenfold increase in maintenance

    or are the folks who could not or would not program a vcr to reset the time automaticaly when there was a power outage suddenly all qualify to be mensa members

    [Jan 11, 2017] Washington Invented Hacking and Interfering in Elections

    Jan 11, 2017 | www.unz.com

    Weaponized hacking all began with Stuxnet

    Is the United States the victim of an unprovoked cyber and media attack by Russia and China or are the chickens coming home to roost after Washington's own promotion of such activity worldwide? On Thursday Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asserted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that while no foreign government had been able to interfere with actual voting machines, "U.S. agencies are more confident than ever that Russia interfered in America's recent presidential election. And he called the former Cold War foe an 'existential threat' to the nation." Pressed by Senator John McCain whether the "attack" constituted an "act of war," Clapper demurred, saying that it would be a "very heavy policy call" to say so. He also said that he could not judge if the election outcome had been changed due to the claimed outside interference.

    Clapper also claimed that the Russian effort included including the creation and dissemination of fake stories, explaining that " While there has been a lot of focus on the hacking, this is actually part of a multifaceted campaign that the Russians mounted." Clapper singled out Russian state funded TV channel RT, previously called Russia Today. "Of course RT was very, very active in promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system." [Full disclosure: I have been on RT numerous times.]

    Apart from the nonsense about foreign broadcasters being part of a conspiracy to "disparage our system" and destroy our democracy, I confess that I was willing to be convinced by what seemed to be the near-unanimous intelligence and law enforcement agency verdict but, any such expectations disappeared when the 17 page report on the hack was actually released on Friday. Entitled Declassified Intelligence Community Assessment of Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections , the report is an exercise in speculation minus evidence indicting alleged Russian interference in the recent election. It even came with a significant caveat, "Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact."

    So I am still waiting to see the actual evidence for the Russian direct involvement and have to suspect that there is little to show, or possibly even nothing. Saying that Russian government agents were employed in passing the stolen emails from the DNC server to WikiLeaks raises more questions than it answers, particularly as it is now clear from media leaks that the parties involved were using what is referred to as cut-outs to break the chain of custody of the material being passed. Does the intelligence community actually know exactly who passed what to whom and when or is it engaged in reconstructing what it think happened? Does it really believe that intercepted unencrypted phone calls among Russian officials expressing pleasure over the election result equate to an actual a priori conspiracy to determine the outcome? And based on what evidence do they know that conspiracy was "ordered" by President Vladimir Putin as is now being alleged? Or are the only assuming that it must have been him because he is head of state?

    ... ... ...

    When I was in Europe with CIA the U.S. government regularly interfered with elections, particularly in Italy, Spain, France and Portugal, all of which had active communist parties. The Agency would fund opposition parties directly or indirectly and would manage media coverage of the relevant issues to favor the non-communists. The end result was that the communists were indeed in most cases kept out of government but the resulting democracy was frequently corrupted by the process. Italy in particular suffers from that corruption to this day.

    The United States has directly interfered in Russia, using proxies, IMF loans and a media controlled by the oligarchs to run the utterly incompetent Boris Yeltsin's successful campaign in 1996 and then continuing with more aggressive "democracy promotion" projects until Putin expelled many of the NGOs responsible in 2015. More recently there have been the pastel revolutions in Eastern Europe and the upheaval in Ukraine, which came about in part due to a $5 billion investment by the United States government in "democracy building" supplemented by regular visits from John McCain and the State Department's activist Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.

    [Jan 09, 2017] Who Will Donald Trump Turn Out To Be?

    Notable quotes:
    "... Trump has ideas that he is not disclosing. He is new and the bureaucracy will run him instead of the other way around. Much will be half implemented because neither Trump nor GOP policies are popular. ..."
    "... MinWage increases is one of the most popular policies but one the GOP is least likely to pass ..."
    "... Domestic policy? Trump might act pseudo-magnanimous and come out for single payer, or something like that. The politically smartest next move would be to buy-off some progressive Berniecrats, while sticking it to Wall Street (in a phony, visual way). ..."
    "... But more likely it will be Reaganoid business as usual. Why? Because: ..."
    "... The system is complicated, and every thread you pull on, unravels something else. That's systems theory, folks! ..."
    "... The power of the Presidency is limited, and overrated by partisans on both sides. ..."
    "... A President's information is restricted to what comes in through his advisors, and this bunch are looking like, kwite a kwazy krew. ..."
    "... Trump's low cognition and narcissism will result in short-sighted moves and more foreign policy quagmires for the US: "Look at the black eye the US gave itself, with the Bush-Cheney War! -- Let's make America stupid again!" ..."
    "... On trade? Trump is setting up the conditions where the richest people can plunder what's remains of the U.S., before getting out of the country: ..."
    "... The new global slogan will be, "Trade with China -- We're the Crooks You Can TRUST!" ..."
    "... Meanwhile Trump will give big tax cuts to the richest Americans, because his knuckleheaded voters believe all the "makers vs. takers" baloney; they haven't been schtupped up the keister enough... ..."
    "... Then the rich will slowly start taking that money out of the U.S. to some other country that gets a higher global ROI under the new Chinese trade rules, because U.S. exporters under protectionism won't be nearly as profitable. ..."
    "... The bureaucracy is too massive for any one person to control. Change requires action from the top or its business as usual. Trump does not have enough trusted aids and insiders to manage the government ..."
    "... Right now it's hard to know if Trump's administration really wants to deliver change. Its cabinet-level staffing is hard to read. It is full of establishment types who could deliver change if that is really their mission. They are not beholden to anyone for their positions and they are not in need of lucrative employment after cabinet service that might otherwise make them tend to curry favor with interests they affect in office. ..."
    "... Tillerson became CEO of Exxon and has been successful there, nontrivial achievements both. He is not a professional foreign service officer, neither was HRC. For many oil-producing countries, their most important foreign patron is Exxon. Tillerson is very familiar with the inside game in the Middle East where all kinds of shit has been hitting the fan for the past 25 years without the US having much success there. HRC and Kerry have been particularly ineffective and had far less accomplishments in life before assuming SoS office than Tillerson. ..."
    "... Mnuchin got rich in Hollywood because he knew what people wanted from Hollywood. he was also chief of the NY bond desk for GS and was CIO for GS for five years. That is CIO of the most technologically sophisticated investment bank in the world. ..."
    "... Mnuchin knows the technology and how it can be used to execute or hide chicanery better than anyone else in the industry. If he aims to reform the TBTF banks, he is better equipped than anyone who has been Treasury secretary over the 25 years during which computer technology assumed a key role in skulduggery in the industry. ..."
    "... Marine nicknames are often ironic. "Mad Dog" Mattis probably reflects recognition of his intellect and coolness by his Marine colleagues. ..."
    "... Mattis has been well known to be a smart, tough, effective achiever. If pentagon reform is really the goal, he would be hard to beat. ..."
    "... These men have all been very successful at running large organizations. Let's see what direction they try to take the government and how they do at it. Should be interesting. ..."
    "... History without context is meaningless. ..."
    "... Wars play too great a role in history as taught. Neither of the Bushes, with their limited thinking, like the generals above, should have ever been allowed near hammers ..."
    "... Colonialism took a bit too long to die, but Archduke Ferdinand was indeed about the dying throws of monarchies. ..."
    Jan 09, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Brad DeLong:
    Who Will Donald Trump Turn Out To Be? :

    We have very little indication of what policies Donald Trump will try to follow or even what kind of president he will be. The U.S. press corps did an extraordinarily execrable job in covering the rise of Trump--even worse than it usually does. Even the most sophisticated of audiences--those interested in asset prices and how they are affected by government policies--have very little insight into Trump's views or those of his key associates.

    Will Donald Trump turn out to be the equivalent of Ronald Reagan -- someone who comes into office from the world of celebrity with a great many unfixed policy intuitions, but no consistent plan?

    Will he turn out to be the equivalent of Silvio Berlusconi, who regards the presidency as an opportunity to wreak his kleptocratic will on the country?

    Or will he turn out to be someone worse than Berlusconi?

    I would say that Trump could be any of four figures...
    jonny bakho -> pgl... January 09, 2017 at 03:20 AM , 2017 at 03:20 AM
    DeLong's guess is as good as anyones.

    Trump has ideas that he is not disclosing. He is new and the bureaucracy will run him instead of the other way around. Much will be half implemented because neither Trump nor GOP policies are popular.

    MinWage increases is one of the most popular policies but one the GOP is least likely to pass

    Congress has power but they must shift from opposition mode to governing mode. I expect much overreach and 'creative' destruction

    Lee A. Arnold -> jonny bakho... , January 09, 2017 at 03:43 AM

    Domestic policy? Trump might act pseudo-magnanimous and come out for single payer, or something like that. The politically smartest next move would be to buy-off some progressive Berniecrats, while sticking it to Wall Street (in a phony, visual way).

    But more likely it will be Reaganoid business as usual. Why? Because:

    1. The system is complicated, and every thread you pull on, unravels something else. That's systems theory, folks!
    2. The power of the Presidency is limited, and overrated by partisans on both sides.
    3. A President's information is restricted to what comes in through his advisors, and this bunch are looking like, kwite a kwazy krew. 4. There is a mid-term election less than 2 years from now.

    Foreign policy? Putin wanted Trump to win, but NOT to make the U.S. stronger. He wants a weaker US. Why? Because the Russians hate the US for screwing them economically after the Iron Curtain fell, with trying to impose a bunch of free-market fundamentalist ignorance...

    Were that not bad enough, the US slapped on oil sanctions recently, after Putin tried shoring-up his borders against NATO expansion and against Islamic terrorists.

    ... ... ...

    Whether you yourself think it's good or bad to oppose Russia -- and whatever you think of Putin's tactics in response -- is not the point here. Fact is, Putin hates the US. Therefore, Putin is not going to help anyone whom he thinks will make the US stronger or more respected in the world.

    Russian psych profiling may suggest that Trump's low cognition and narcissism will result in short-sighted moves and more foreign policy quagmires for the US: "Look at the black eye the US gave itself, with the Bush-Cheney War! -- Let's make America stupid again!"

    On trade? Trump is setting up the conditions where the richest people can plunder what's remains of the U.S., before getting out of the country: Trump wants to tear up the big trade deals and make every country go into bilateral negotiations with his trade team... BUT those countries are all going to say, "Forget it! We just spent 6 years negotiating, and we know we can't trust the US anymore!"...

    Then, they are going to turn around and join China's new global trade organization, which was suddenly announced the DAY AFTER Trump's election (funny, that, after years of planning, building forward military bases in the Pacific, etc.) The new global slogan will be, "Trade with China -- We're the Crooks You Can TRUST!"

    Meanwhile Trump will give big tax cuts to the richest Americans, because his knuckleheaded voters believe all the "makers vs. takers" baloney; they haven't been schtupped up the keister enough... Then the rich will slowly start taking that money out of the U.S. to some other country that gets a higher global ROI under the new Chinese trade rules, because U.S. exporters under protectionism won't be nearly as profitable.

    "...And golly, honey, there's plenty of pretty places over there to build new mansions, for both you, AND the mistress..." Meanwhile, back in the U.S., voters will continue walking around with their thumbs up their butts, & trying to prevent other Americans from getting healthcare, trying to prevent them from voting, etc... To get cash, the U.S. can join into a big flea market with the Brexiters, and we can all swap old Beatles vinyl...

    Get behind Bernie, NOW!!!

    JF -> jonny bakho... , January 09, 2017 at 04:24 AM
    The bureaucracy will run things? This is not going to happen, governance will stall or cease.

    Let me see, a party that says our form of govt is the problem. A party who has obstructed matters to cause dysfunction in govt on purpose, and who is entertaining nominees to head these agencies who do not care that they exist, bills introduced already to allow pay even to the individual to be cut , and to smooth firing processes, with an incoming group who surfaces transition-team surveys for the purposes of chilling efforts with the agencies even before they take control, on climate change for instance, well, the bureaucracy is demoralized, and threatened. The dysfunction of the American 'experiment' in self government will be harmed, perhaps accomplished finally.

    And when they get their legs about them with new judiciary appointments they then should thread cases via these courts so holdings they get won't be appealed, giving them full control, with still the purpose being dysfunction for what has been the generally applicable law before. Ok with them, it would seem.

    jonny bakho -> JF... , -1
    The bureaucracy is too massive for any one person to control. Change requires action from the top or its business as usual. Trump does not have enough trusted aids and insiders to manage the government
    anne -> pgl... , January 09, 2017 at 07:35 AM
    "Reagan did not campaign for and enter the presidency thinking that he was going to push the value of the dollar up by 70%..."

    -- Brad DeLong

    [ The real trade-weighted price of the dollar increased by about 45% between 1980 and March 1985 and then declined and finished the Reagan presidency about 5% below the level of 1980. ]

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , January 09, 2017 at 07:56 AM
    [I set the Way-back machine to Links for 12-31-16 and copied what mrrunangun said to me then. From my experience mrrunangun is a more reliable source than the MSM, but then so is my wife and over half of the random strangers that I meet in Walmart.]

    http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2016/12/links-for-12-31-16.html

    mrrunangun -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

    Right now it's hard to know if Trump's administration really wants to deliver change. Its cabinet-level staffing is hard to read. It is full of establishment types who could deliver change if that is really their mission. They are not beholden to anyone for their positions and they are not in need of lucrative employment after cabinet service that might otherwise make them tend to curry favor with interests they affect in office.

    Tillerson became CEO of Exxon and has been successful there, nontrivial achievements both. He is not a professional foreign service officer, neither was HRC. For many oil-producing countries, their most important foreign patron is Exxon. Tillerson is very familiar with the inside game in the Middle East where all kinds of shit has been hitting the fan for the past 25 years without the US having much success there. HRC and Kerry have been particularly ineffective and had far less accomplishments in life before assuming SoS office than Tillerson.

    Mnuchin got rich in Hollywood because he knew what people wanted from Hollywood. he was also chief of the NY bond desk for GS and was CIO for GS for five years. That is CIO of the most technologically sophisticated investment bank in the world.

    Many of the big errors in banking over the past 20 years have been due to inadequate supervision of trading units. Traders learn to hide losses using the computer systems of the banks and clearing houses. The Barclay's Singapore disaster, the London whale, the UBS fiasco, the DB bond desk fiasco all got out of hand because traders' losing positions went undetected by the traders' supervisors who lacked the technical sophistication necessary to provide adequate supervision. Mnuchin knows the technology and how it can be used to execute or hide chicanery better than anyone else in the industry. If he aims to reform the TBTF banks, he is better equipped than anyone who has been Treasury secretary over the 25 years during which computer technology assumed a key role in skulduggery in the industry.

    Marine nicknames are often ironic. "Mad Dog" Mattis probably reflects recognition of his intellect and coolness by his Marine colleagues. In the movie Full Metal Jacket, a dark-skinned black man was named "snowball" and, after getting slapped around for smiling at the DI's jokes, the main character was named "Joker". Victor Krulak, a Marine general during the VietNam war, got the name Brute because of his diminutive size. He became probably the only five foot four-inch Marine general of the twentieth century. Mattis has been well known to be a smart, tough, effective achiever. If pentagon reform is really the goal, he would be hard to beat.

    These men have all been very successful at running large organizations. Let's see what direction they try to take the government and how they do at it. Should be interesting.

    Reply Saturday, December 31, 2016 at 12:18 PM

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , January 09, 2017 at 06:33 AM
    Suri never really makes his case against belligerent deterrence because his historical references are inconsistent with his thesis. As much as I agree with TR's "Walk soft and carry a big stick" even that is a superficial take on Teddy Roosevelt's approach to diplomatic engagement, which was a superior way to conduct foreign policy even compared to Taft's dollar diplomacy.

    Taft's way was more readily assessable to the mediocre men that would normally lead our country though, which is why Kissinger as Secretary of State held to it dearly. Buying peace is much cheaper than waging war.

    ken melvin -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , January 09, 2017 at 06:01 AM
    History without context is meaningless. War is but a consequence. Generals shouldn't be allowed hammers.
    RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> ken melvin... , January 09, 2017 at 06:58 AM
    Understood. Woodrow Wilson was a pacifist and the US during his administration was isolationist. That hardly sounds like a case of belligerent deterrence going wrong, but more like the opposite.

    Suri's point was that circumstances can dictate significant reversals from original intentions though. WW-II did not seem like our choice and certainly was reluctant more like WW-I rather than a case of belligerent deterrence going wrong.

    The US entered the Korean War because its presidents, first Truman and then Eisenhower were more afraid of Joe McCarthy than China, also not a case of belligerent deterrence, just domino theory.

    Kennedy and Johnson just feared the anti-communist Republican hawks that remained after McCarthy died more than they feared China, just more domino theory there too.

    When we finally got a POTUS that did the full court press on belligerent deterrence, Reagan, then peace broke out.

    By this time Suri's case is getting real weak. The first Bush war, the daddy Bush war, was just a reaction function and limited at that. The next two Bush wars, the baby Bush wars, were finally belligerent deterrence on steroids, but also a reaction function or an over-reaction function to 9/11.

    Suri stands empty handed on his history, but that does not mean that he is wrong on his prognostications, just unconvincing in his larger historical based argument aside from the notion of unintended consequences. That alone may however be Donald Trumps undoing, but just as easily so from domestic policy as foreign policy. Only time will tell. I prefer not to guess this one out too far myself, unintended consequences being what they are and all.

    ken melvin -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , January 09, 2017 at 07:42 AM
    Quite a lot; where to start? The world as it is vs. our wishful perceptions? I think remembering that most problems requiring governmental action are really quite complicated and often have more than one possible answer is essential. It's the simple arsed responses, so loved by the many, that get us into some of the worst messes. The urge to tear it down and start anew, another source of grief, again linked to the simple arsed, our most current response.

    See Reagan and Ike as being dependent to a fault on their advisers (in the case of Reagan, we really lucked out with Baker, Schultz, Deaver); Bush II as being dumb enough to think he was smart when, in fact, he was too dumb for the job; and Drumpf, I suspect/fear, being of the same ilk as Bush II.

    For WWI context, I see: the swell of the industrial age, the vying for raw materials and markets, all in a period when one saw the dying throes of colonialism and monarchies whilst no one seem to grasp the reality of what was going on (bout where we find ourselves). Wars play too great a role in history as taught. Neither of the Bushes, with their limited thinking, like the generals above, should have ever been allowed near hammers

    RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> ken melvin... , January 09, 2017 at 08:06 AM
    Colonialism took a bit too long to die, but Archduke Ferdinand was indeed about the dying throws of monarchies.

    Relative to Suri's argument there was nothing about US foreign policy activism that got us into WWI unless you want to consider the negative. Had the US been more involved in European diplomacy in a cogent and persuasive manner then it may have averted the Prussian brinksmanship that ignite WW-I. Theodore Roosevelt may have been capable of that, but not Taft nor Wilson.

    [Jan 09, 2017] Russian Interference in the Election is A Media Hoax

    Notable quotes:
    "... Referring to Putin and the Russian hackers, Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson contends: "Their hacking - as interpreted by both the CIA and the FBI - qualifies as state-sponsored aggression. It does jeopardize our way of life. It undermines the integrity of our political institutions and popular faith in them. More than this, it warns us that our physical safety and security are at risk. Hostile hackers can hijack power grids, communication networks, transportation systems and much more." [17] Even criticizing the position of the CIA-an institution American liberals, not too long ago, looked upon as a force for evil–is now considered a threat to American democracy. As establishment liberal E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post pontificates: "That Trump would happily trash our own CIA to get Putin off the hook is disturbing enough . . . . That he would ignore the risks our intelligence agents take on so many fronts to protect us is outrageous ..."
    "... The Washington Post was enraged when, in 2015, Russia shut down the U.S. government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), relying on a law that "bans groups from abroad who are deemed a 'threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation, its defense capabilities and its national security.'" The Washington Post wrote: "The charge against the NED is patently ridiculous. The NED's grantees in Russia last year ran the gamut of civil society. They advocated transparency in public affairs, fought corruption and promoted human rights, freedom of information and freedom of association, among other things. All these activities make for a healthy democracy but are seen as threatening from the Kremlin's ramparts." [20] Presumably, such things as "transparency in public affairs," fighting corruption, and "freedom of information," are vital for creating a "healthy democracy" in Russia when promoted by a foreign organization but are a grave danger to democracy if a foreign entity should try to do the same thing in the United States. ..."
    "... The mainstream media has acted as if Russian efforts to influence American policy are something novel, that this had never happened to the U.S. before. And "policy" is used here rather than "election" because affecting policy is apparently Putin's motive, not simply putting Trump in the White House with U.S. policy toward Russian unchanged. It is quite understandable that Putin would view Trump as a better President from the standpoint of Russian interests than Hillary Clinton since Trump advocated improving relations with Russia while Clinton was oriented toward exacerbating them. ..."
    "... In making major foreign policy decisions, Obama's modus operandi has often been one of reacting to pressure-usually, but not always, from elite opinion-which has caused him to take positions contrary to his own, often more non-interventionist and pacific, inclination. This seems to have been the case regarding Obama's policy toward Libya, Syria, Israel (his obeisance to the Israel Lobby until the very end of his presidency), and even Russia, where he initially sought a "reset" to achieve friendlier relations. ..."
    "... By penalizing Russia, Obama makes it difficult for President Trump to establish a more cordial relationship with Russia. There is extensive support in Congress from both Democrats and Republicans for taking strong action against Russia. As the title of an article in Roll Call, which focuses on the activities of the U.S. Congress , puts it: "Obama's Russia Sanctions Put Trump, Hill GOP on Collision Course." The author of this article, John T. Bennett, opines that Trump's opposition to Obama's retaliation against Russia "will immediately pit him against the hawkish wing of the Republican party." [29] ..."
    "... While Trump could overturn Obama's anti-Russian measures, which are based on an executive order, his doing so would almost certainly be countered by legislation put forth by Democrats and some Republicans-the latter led by McCain and Graham, who have already said that they will introduce Russian sanction legislation. ..."
    "... To conclude, the Russian interference narrative did not serve to prevent Trump from becoming president but it does seem that it will cause serious problems for his presidency and for American foreign relations as well, as America will drift further into Cold War II, which is something that Trump, if not facing obstruction, could have possibly prevented. ..."
    "... CNN Caught Using Video Game Image In Fake Russian Hacking Story ..."
    "... It looks like CNN Has tried to pull the wool over our eyes once again. This time, they used a screenshot from the Fallout 4 Video game to paint the picture of Russian Hacking. To bad that's not what a real hacking screen looks like. And an image you will only find in the video game! Nice Try Clinton News Network! ..."
    "... Obama's petty and stupid response to the current unproven allegations against Russia will haunt his legacy and Hillary's bizarre contention that Putin personally "had it in for her" is yet another sign of her mental instability. ..."
    Jan 09, 2017 | www.unz.com
    The mainstream media's narrative that the Russian government interfered with the United States election, and that this interference invalidated, or at least tainted, Trump's election has culminated in President Obama taking a series of measures against Russia, which consist of: imposing sanctions on the GRU and the FSB (the two major Russian intelligence organizations), four officers of the GRU, and two Russian individuals who allegedly used "cyber-enabled means to cause misappropriation of funds and personal identifying information;" expelling 35 diplomats and intelligence officials; and closing two Russian compounds in Maryland's Eastern Shore and Long Island, New York. These actions were said to have been taken not only because of Russian interference in the election but for a number of other instances of Russian malfeasance that go back in time and are unrelated to alleged election interference. And there was no evidence provided that showed, or even claimed to show, that the particular individuals and entities covered by these measures had anything to do with the alleged election interference. [1]

    Like other common memes-such as anti-Semitism, racism, and sexism-used to silence debate, the exact meaning of Russian interference in the election is unclear-and Obama's inclusion of a number of extraneous issues in his explanation for taking retaliatory action against Russia muddles the issue even more. The reference to Russian interference in the election includes a composite of alleged Russian misdeeds-"fake news," computer hacking, and manipulating voting machines [2] –which are usually lumped together but are actually quite different and should be analyzed separately since the combination approach only serves to obfuscate the issue. Of course-and this probably would not be shocking to most readers of this essay-many of those who promote the idea of Russian culpability are not really concerned about pursuing a Socratic search for truth but instead want to anathematize Putin's Russia and/or delegitimize Trump's election victory.

    First, let me take care of the most extreme claim-that Russian hackers manipulated election results to make Trump president. This would be a nearly impossible task since voting machines are not attached to the Internet, and it was never pointed out how the Russians could do this on any significant scale. [3] Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton was urged by "a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers" to demand a recount in three states-Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania-in which Clinton seemed to be slightly ahead in pre-election polls but which were won by Trump by narrow margins. The group claimed to have statistical evidence that the vote had been altered. [4] The basis of this claim, however, was quite flimsy since it simply rested on an analysis that showed that in Wisconsin counties with electronic voting machines, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes than in counties with paper ballots or optical scanners. It was then assumed that the same thing could have occurred in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

    There was a recount in Wisconsin in which Trump increased his victory margin by 131 votes; a total of 2.976 million ballots were cast. The recount was requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein who covered the estimated $3.5 million cost of the endeavor. [5] Similar efforts by Stein to get recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania were blocked in the state courts because of her lack of standing by the laws of those states-not having any chance of winning herself, she could not be considered an "aggrieved party." Hillary Clinton's campaign did not make official efforts to get recounts in any states. With Trump's victory in Wisconsin surviving the recount, he had garnered a majority of the electoral votes, which would make him President unless there were a far higher number of faithless electors than turned out to be the case. Nonetheless, half of Clinton's voters still think Russia hacked the election day voting. [6]

    Now to consider the ramifications of Russia's hacking the emails of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, and the reception and release to the public of this Russian-hacked information by WikiLeaks. While this is assumed to be incontestably true by the mainstream media, neither one of these allegations is rock solid at the moment. The alleged consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies is that there is sufficient evidence that Russia hacked the aforementioned emails, but the evidence for this has not been made available to the public nor is there proof that WikiLeaks relied on emails derived from Russian hacks. Given the fact that America's intelligence agencies are not noted for being honest with the public, one would think that the mainstream media would give some attention to the critics of the dominant narrative.

    Reacting to these allegations, WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, claims that his organization did not release any information provided to it by Russia or a Russian proxy. And Assange does have a vested interest in being truthful in order to maintain WikiLeaks' credibility, which has so far been impeccable. Confirming Assange's contention is Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Assange, though not an official member of the WikiLeaks staff. Murray stated: "As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks." He goes on to claim: "Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling." Murray alleges that the two sets of emails-from the DNC and from Podesta–came from American insiders but from different sources. [7]

    Obviously, the security agencies should provide the public with detailed evidence and describe the actual sources. As Pat Buchanan suggests: "The CIA director and his deputies should be made to testify under oath, not only as to what they know about Russia's role in the WikiLeaks email dumps but also about who inside the agency is behind the leaks to The Washington Post designed to put a cloud over the Trump presidency before it begins." [8]

    Now it should be pointed out that the actual content of the emails released by WikiLeaks, which the U.S. claims to have been obtained by Russian hacking, has not been falsified. The information harmful to Hillary Clinton included the DNC's behind-the-scenes support for her over Bernie Sanders (which included then DNC chair Donna Brazile's feeding answers to Clinton before the latter's debate with Bernie Sanders); Clinton's unpublicized paid speeches-on foreign policy and the economy– to wealthy business executives and bankers revealing views diametrically opposed to her campaign positions; the collusion of mainstream media reporters with the DNC. For example, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank requested and got the DNC to do the research for a negative column he wrote about Trump.

    ORDER IT NOW

    If the WikiLeaks information were completely fallacious, it would not have been derived from hacking or even from leaks, but simply fabricated. Nonetheless, this defense is being made. The logical form of this argument is that hacking took place but that the released emails were doctored to make them damaging. But this is based on the fact that it is possible to doctor emails, rather than any evidence that the WikiLeaks' emails were altered. The assumption being made was that Russia was capable of doctoring the emails, therefore, the emails must be doctored. For example, Jamie Winterton, director of strategy for Arizona State University's Global Security Initiative, was quoted as saying: "I would be shocked if the emails weren't altered," and went on to say that Russia was well-known to have used this technique in the past. ix Similarly, Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin asserted: "We are not going to confirm the authenticity of stolen documents released by Julian Assange, who has made no secret of his desire to damage Hillary Clinton." He referred to doctored emails that supposedly appeared on websites linked to Russian intelligence as proof that "documents can be faked as part of a sophisticated Russian misinformation campaign," although Caplin did not say that the emails concerning Clinton's speeches had been faked. x According to James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the spreading of false information by intelligence services "is a technique that goes back to Tsarist times." Among his examples, he referred to the Soviet-spread rumor that the U.S. government developed the AIDS virus. Needless to say, this, too, had nothing to do with WikiLeaks much less the emails it released on Clinton and the DNC. [11]

    MSNBC's terrorist analyst and a former intelligence officer, Malcolm Nance, tweeted a message, shortly after WikiLeaks' October release of some of Podesta's emails, that these emails were "riddled with obvious forgeries," without ever providing evidence. [12] If any emails released by WikiLeaks were "obvious forgeries," it would seem quite easy for U.S. intelligence agencies to point this out without using any secret, super-high tech methods, and thus substantiate the case being made.

    Interestingly, Nance was also quoted as taking the opposite position: "We have no way of knowing whether this is real or not unless Hillary Clinton goes through everything they've said and comes out and says it cross-correlates and this is true." [13] Here, Nance seems to be saying that WikiLeaks' could only be considered accurate if Hillary would show this to be the case. Since Hillary is not going to indict herself, this is not going to happen. However, the burden of proof should be on those who claim that the emails were altered to point out the discrepancies between the emails released by WikiLeaks and the DNC's and Podesta's actual emails. It would not be necessary to go through the whole tranche but simply focus on the detrimental emails. If this is not done, then claims that the WikiLeaks provides specious information should be dropped. So far, however, there seems to be little effort to show that the damaging information was untrue. [14]

    Actually, it seems that much of the hostility to the WikiLeaks' information has little to do with it being false but rather that the emails were pilfered and made public. Adam Schiff, a Democratic congressman from California, who serves as the ranking member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Jane Harman, who is currently the president of the Wilson Center and a former ranking Democratic member of the same House committee state: "Russia's theft and strategic leaking of emails and documents from the Democratic Party and other officials present a challenge to the U.S. political system unlike anything we've experienced." [15] Note that these writers charge Russia not only with illicitly obtaining the emails but also of "strategic leaking," which was obviously the work of WikiLeaks, and for which no evidence whatsoever exists that Russia determined when the materials would be leaked.

    The New York Times Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman writes that "[t]he pro-Putin tilt of Mr. Trump and his advisers was obvious months before the election . . . . By midsummer the close relationship between WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence was also obvious, as was the site's growing alignment with white nationalists." Krugman goes on to blame the mainstream media for giving attention to WikiLeaks. "Leaked emails, which everyone knew were probably the product of Russian hacking, were breathlessly reported as shocking revelations, even when they mostly revealed nothing more than the fact that Democrats are people." [16] However, if nothing harmful was revealed, it is hard to maintain that Russian hacking had a significant effect on the election. If harm were done to the Democrats, it was presumably caused by the media, which falsely implied that serious revelations were being made by WikiLeaks.

    Referring to Putin and the Russian hackers, Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson contends: "Their hacking - as interpreted by both the CIA and the FBI - qualifies as state-sponsored aggression. It does jeopardize our way of life. It undermines the integrity of our political institutions and popular faith in them. More than this, it warns us that our physical safety and security are at risk. Hostile hackers can hijack power grids, communication networks, transportation systems and much more." [17] Even criticizing the position of the CIA-an institution American liberals, not too long ago, looked upon as a force for evil–is now considered a threat to American democracy. As establishment liberal E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post pontificates: "That Trump would happily trash our own CIA to get Putin off the hook is disturbing enough . . . . That he would ignore the risks our intelligence agents take on so many fronts to protect us is outrageous . [18]

    Michael Daly of the liberal millennials–oriented "Daily Beast" writes: "Russians went from simply gathering our secrets to then making them public in such a way as to influence American public opinion and therefore the course of our democracy. Putin must marvel at the fervently patriotic, flag-waving Americans who shrug at the near certainty that a foreign power had subverted the electoral process that is at the heart of America's true greatness." [19]

    It is not apparent how receiving accurate information regarding political issues-which is what WikiLeaks seems to have provided-could really have a negative impact on American democracy; rather it would seem that it would actually improve democracy. The purpose of Voice of America is supposed to be to provide such information to foreign countries and especially to those where the governments prevent the facts from reaching their inhabitants. The idea is that people in foreign countries should know the truth about their own government and about other governments, as well.

    The Washington Post was enraged when, in 2015, Russia shut down the U.S. government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), relying on a law that "bans groups from abroad who are deemed a 'threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation, its defense capabilities and its national security.'" The Washington Post wrote: "The charge against the NED is patently ridiculous. The NED's grantees in Russia last year ran the gamut of civil society. They advocated transparency in public affairs, fought corruption and promoted human rights, freedom of information and freedom of association, among other things. All these activities make for a healthy democracy but are seen as threatening from the Kremlin's ramparts." [20] Presumably, such things as "transparency in public affairs," fighting corruption, and "freedom of information," are vital for creating a "healthy democracy" in Russia when promoted by a foreign organization but are a grave danger to democracy if a foreign entity should try to do the same thing in the United States.

    The mainstream media has acted as if Russian efforts to influence American policy are something novel, that this had never happened to the U.S. before. And "policy" is used here rather than "election" because affecting policy is apparently Putin's motive, not simply putting Trump in the White House with U.S. policy toward Russian unchanged. It is quite understandable that Putin would view Trump as a better President from the standpoint of Russian interests than Hillary Clinton since Trump advocated improving relations with Russia while Clinton was oriented toward exacerbating them.

    While the mainstream media implies that what Russia was allegedly attempting to do had never happened before, foreign countries had actually tried to shape American policies since the George Washington administration [21] when the ambassador from revolutionary France, popularly known as Citizen Genet, came to the United States in 1793 and sought to generate popular support to get the United States to modify its strict neutrality policy to one that would be helpful to France in its war with Great Britain. Genet even commissioned privateers to attack British shipping. Ultimately, however, President Washington and his Cabinet, angered by Genet's activities that violated American sovereignty, demanded his recall. Genet simultaneously fell from favor in France as more radical Jacobins led by Robespierre took power and fearing he might face the guillotine if he returned to France, Genet requested and received asylum in the United States.

    In 1867-1868, the Russian ambassador to the U.S. resorted to bribing lobbyists, newspapers, and members of Congress in order to make sure that the U.S. Congress would provide the funds for the treaty already signed by Secretary of State Seward (and approved by the Senate) to purchase Alaska.

    In World War I both Germany and England were relying heavily on propaganda in the U.S.-the British goal to get the U.S. into the war on its side; the German goal to keep the U.S. out of the war. In 1917, Britain Illicitly intercepted and decoded what became known as the Zimmerman Telegram, which was a message from the German foreign ministry to its ambassador in Mexico instructing him to inform the Mexican government that Germany would, if the United States joined the war against it, support a Mexican effort to regain its former territory taken by the United States (though technically purchased) as a result of the Mexican-American War. [22] After Britain turned the information over to the U.S. government, the publication of the telegram in March 1917 may have played a supporting role in America's entrance into World War I in April 1917.

    In World War II, British intelligence closely cooperated with the Roosevelt administration and the American interventionists-actually setting up pro-interventionist front groups–and engaged in efforts to destroy the non-interventionists. [23] Soviet agents were also trying to shape American foreign policy during World War II and its aftermath in order to advance the interests of Stalinist Russia. [24] And Israel (and the Zionist agency before Israel's founding) and its American supporters have played a role in shaping America's policy in the Middle East policy since World War I. [25]

    Finally, let us explore the reasons for Obama's retaliation against the alleged Russian interference in the election, which included activities-mostly, but not only, involving spying-that had been going on for years. An obvious question is: why didn't Obama take action earlier?

    It should be pointed out that it is commonplace for spies to pose as diplomats. And it is likewise commonplace that a host country does nothing to stop the spying unless it goes too far or if the host country wants to send a message that it is concerned about some other matter and does so by expelling officials for spying who were not necessarily involved in the issue of concern. Obama's expulsion edict fit the second category and was meant to show the U.S. government's ire regarding the alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election. [26] Therefore, Obama's retaliation against individuals and entities not involved in the matter of concern was not unconventional and if there had not been any alleged interference in the U.S. election, they likely would have been left alone.

    Furthermore, it would appear that Obama chose to take action for political reasons: in order to appeal to the Democratic base and the mainstream media, afflicted as those two groups are by Trump Derangement Syndrome, [27] and also to hardline opponents of Russia who loom large in the Republican Party and have become a significant force among the Democratic elite (e.g. Brookings Institution).

    In making major foreign policy decisions, Obama's modus operandi has often been one of reacting to pressure-usually, but not always, from elite opinion-which has caused him to take positions contrary to his own, often more non-interventionist and pacific, inclination. This seems to have been the case regarding Obama's policy toward Libya, Syria, Israel (his obeisance to the Israel Lobby until the very end of his presidency), and even Russia, where he initially sought a "reset" to achieve friendlier relations.

    Although it has been claimed that Obama had entertained issuing punitive measures against Russia before the election, but opted against this to avoid possible Russian retaliation that could affect the voting, it is not apparent that Obama would have taken comparable retaliatory action if Clinton had won a clear-cut electoral victory. [28] While Republican hardliners, such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham, might have wanted such action, the Democrats would be satisfied with their victory, and Clinton and her foreign policy advisers, even though they might be anti-Putin, would not want their hands tied by such measures. While Obama is not a fan of Hillary Clinton, he did want her to be his successor, since that would have made him look good; there would have been no reason to antagonize her, her supporters, or the Democratic Party elite.

    By penalizing Russia, Obama makes it difficult for President Trump to establish a more cordial relationship with Russia. There is extensive support in Congress from both Democrats and Republicans for taking strong action against Russia. As the title of an article in Roll Call, which focuses on the activities of the U.S. Congress , puts it: "Obama's Russia Sanctions Put Trump, Hill GOP on Collision Course." The author of this article, John T. Bennett, opines that Trump's opposition to Obama's retaliation against Russia "will immediately pit him against the hawkish wing of the Republican party." [29]

    While Trump could overturn Obama's anti-Russian measures, which are based on an executive order, his doing so would almost certainly be countered by legislation put forth by Democrats and some Republicans-the latter led by McCain and Graham, who have already said that they will introduce Russian sanction legislation. In the past few years, an overwhelming majority in Congress has voted for sanctions legislation against Russia, which makes it likely that there would be a veto-proof majority to stymie Trump on this issue. [30]

    To conclude, the Russian interference narrative did not serve to prevent Trump from becoming president but it does seem that it will cause serious problems for his presidency and for American foreign relations as well, as America will drift further into Cold War II, which is something that Trump, if not facing obstruction, could have possibly prevented.

    Beckow , < > January 6, 2017 at 7:08 pm GMT • 200 Words

    Great article, the key question remains: why is there an obsession for a large part of Washington bipartisan elite to have a horrible relationship with Russia?

    It is on its face self-defeating: Russia poses no real threat as a peaceful neighbor, it has lots of resources and the largest consumer market in Europe. Russia is also generally secular, relative socially liberal, and shares many of the same policies as US, e,g. fighting Islamic terrorism, checking China's influence, etc

    So why the hostility? It makes West weaker, not stronger. It hurts global economy, it increases risks of a nuclear confrontation. It also cannot really achieve much beyond continued hostility and shouting at each other.

    Unless I am missing something, the hostility with Russia has no conceivable – and realistic – final outcome . Russia is not about to collapse, and it is not about to revert to a Western-run 90′s 'liberal' utopia. Any actual and realistic threat to Russia's existence could trigger a nuclear war – no winners there.

    The disputes – from Crimea to Syria, from 'hacking' to Pussy Rioters – are oversimplified and intentionally misrepresented by the West. All of these issues are more complex, less clear-cut, and there is a valid and rational point of view on Russia's side.

    So why this unrelenting drive for more and more hostility? Can anyone explain this? Are there some deep emotional issues among the Washington elite? What's the point?

    @dearieme
    "What's the point?" I don't know but the usual point of US foreign policy is to let US corporations win new markets. ,
    @CK
    Putin has reversed the Yeltsin era oligarchy that was bent on looting everything moveable in Russia. In doing so he pissed off some very connected Americans and Israelis. They want to get back to the loot trough. Sometimes it is as simple as evil men wanting to steal the wealth of others and hating those who stop them. ,
    @Harry107
    Are you kidding? Russia represents everything the Anglo-Zionist empire hates and fears:

    - Russia is sovereign and not under the control of financial interests. It is not possible to financially strip-mine Russia. For example, the Russian central band keeps real interest rates above 3%, allowing savers to keep the benefit of their savings, unlike in the West.

    - The Russian state under Putin has overthrown financial oligarch control, and the people know this. This accounts for his extraordinary popularity.

    - Russia is a Christian country which has built or reopened an astounding 30,000 churches in the last three years. They do not allow gay marriage and are about as socially conservative as the US was in the 70's. Jews are not allowed to dominate the national conversation or have inordinate control.

    - Russia manufactures their own armaments and is a strong arms export competitor. The Russian state gets much more bang for their armament buck than we do, being effectively equal to us with 1/10 the military spending. This is more evidence of the independence of the state from financial oligarchs. Currently, Russian jets and missiles are markedly superior to American ones. (Don't believe me? Google "F-15's in Syria" The Pentagon responded to Russia bringing advanced jets to Syria by transferring a squadron of F-15E's to Syria. The F-15 entered service in 1974. Each successive generation of US fighter jets since then has had inferior performance to its predecessor. This is disgraceful.)

    - The very existence of Russian independence is a mortal threat to the evil Anglo-Zionist empire. Look at Snowden, still walking and breathing and calling bullshit on American retrogression. The existence of one free country holds out a dangerous example to all other nations. ,

    @Cato
    You ask the question I've been asking myself. I don't have an answer, but I've wondered if it could be any of these:

    * inertia (the old guys running things might still be stuck in Cold War I)
    * anti-homophobia (gays have a big influence on public opinion, and they hate Putin)
    * profits (the Military-Industrial Complex has settled on Russia as the threat that will justify the weapons systems they want to sell)
    * Europe (Russia is the only power that could draw away our European vassal states--the Germans were particularly cozy with Putin right before Ukraine blew up; the Gulenist coup happened just weeks after Erdogan got friendly with Russia)
    * petroleum (can't quite see how that fits here, but oil and gas are usually involved in Deep State machinations)

    But it could be all or none of these... ,

    @Bill Jones
    War, cold or hot, sells weapons
    The warmongers own the politicians.
    You've never figured this out? ,
    @NoseytheDuke
    The backers of HRC seek global domination and they know that time is against them. They have over-reached and now find themselves on the back foot. They are ruthless and desperate so this is why their actions make little sense if viewed through the lens of what is good for the ZUSA. ,
    @Fran Macadam
    Follow the money. ,
    @Connecticut Famer
    What's the point?

    There is a deep-seated, visceral need for an Enemy, that's the point. Any kind of an enemy. At present the Flavor of The Month is Russia, with China waiting in the wings.

    As a footnote--and I wish could remember his name-- but earlier this week O'Reilly had some guy on his show who was a retired USMC "intelligence expert" who said in one breath that the CIA had "proof" that the Rooshians hacked the emails then in the next breath said that the CIA can't release the information as it would compromise their operatives. Yeah, right! ,

    @Je Suis Omar Mateen
    "So why this unrelenting drive for more and more hostility? Can anyone explain this? Are there some deep emotional issues among the Washington elite? What's the point?"

    Many or perhaps most Washington elites, including Congressmen, US Supreme Court justices (Kagan, Sotormayor, and Roberts), and the former president are sodomites and pederasts. President Putin's refusal to celebrate their alternative deathstyle INFURIATES them.

    Period. ,

    @DES
    Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the M-I complex faced a big problem: how to maintain huge defense budgets when the main enemy had suddenly disappeared. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 provided them with a temporary solution, as did 9-11. What we are witnessing now is the latest chapter of this saga. Ross Perot was right: follow the money. ,
    @jacques sheete
    What's the point?
    It depends on your point of view. From we schmucks who have to pay for it all, it's worse than pointless. From the rulers' point of view, there are many of them as shown by the other replies.

    To understand their points, here are a few primers.

    Why, my fellow citizens, is there any man here or any woman, let me say is there any child here, who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? The real reason that the war that we have just finished took place was that Germany was afraid her commercial rivals were going to get the better of her, and' the reason why some nations went into the war against Germany was that they thought Germany would get the commercial advantage of them. The seed of the jealousy, the seed of the deep-seated hatred was hot, successful commercial and industrial rivalry.

    -Woodrow Wilson, Speech at the Coliseum in St. Louis, Missouri, on the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations (5 September 1919)

    In an effort to PREVENT the war that Churchill called "unnecessary," (WW2,) this 2 time Medal of Honor recipient wrote...

    " I spent most of my [33 years in the Marine Corps] being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.

    In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for [crony] capitalism."

    Major General Butler USMC, War is a Racket, 1935

    http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

    Randolph Bourne left an unfinished, unpaginated draft of The State when he died during the flu pandemic of 1918. The draft was published posthumously, with some material incorrectly ordered, in Untimely Papers (1919). Nevertheless, The State , answers your question in detail.
    With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again. The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war.

    For the benefit of proud and haughty citizens, it is fortified with a list of the intolerable insults which have been hurled toward us by the other nations; for the benefit of the liberal and beneficent, it has a convincing set of moral purposes which our going to war will achieve; for the ambitious and aggressive classes, it can gently whisper of a bigger role in the destiny of the world.

    -Randolph Bourne, The State, From Untimely Papers (1919).


    http://fair-use.org/randolph-bourne/the-state/

    ,
    @ZVD
    Same reason as for hostility toward Serbs! The Serbs did not pose any treat to the Washington "elite", yet they were demonized and destroyed. It was the thirst for Serb blood, and it is the thirst for Russian blood that is the driving force behind the polices of the Washington "elite". Simply put: RUSSOPHOBIA. ,
    @annamaria
    OffGuardian on participation of the Guardian in the anti-Russian folly: https://off-guardian.org/2017/01/06/34553/

    "The Guardian's anti-Putin propaganda has gotten into the bizarre. The editors have lost touch with sanity."

    Why the insanity? - Money.

    "The Guardian and Soros-connected New East Network run anti-Putin and anti-Russia propaganda daily. There is no shortage of pro-Ukraine propaganda either. That propaganda spills over onto the Guardian website. This is a sinister conflict of interest for the Guardian. It should make a full disclosure of the financial arrangements between itself and Soros.

    George Soros has made his fortune on currency speculation, regime change, coups and vulture capitalism. His current venture of destruction is Ukraine. Soros financed NGO's that fueled the US led coup against the elected government of Ukraine and installed a cabal of fascists. Soros is a major backer of anti-Putin NGO's in Russia. Soros constantly lobbies the US and the EU to bail out Ukraine with Billions of dollars, of which he would be a big beneficiary. Soros lobbies the US and the EU to destabilize Russia, which again would benefit him in Billions of dollars (here)."

    Peace is not profitable for the warmongers and financial speculators.

    @USAMNESIA
    Policy wonks reinforcing existing delusional ideology....for example....in September, the Atlantic Council, a mainstream US geopolitical think tank, published a report that predicted a Hobbesian world "marked by the breakdown of order, violent extremism [and] an era of perpetual war". The new enemies were a "resurgent" Russia and an "increasingly aggressive" China. Only heroic America can save us.

    Two highly recommended reads:

    The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government

    THE CIA AS ORGANIZED CRIME How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World

    dearieme , January 6, 2017 at 7:39 pm GMT
    @Beckow

    .... ... ...

    "What's the point?" I don't know but the usual point of US foreign policy is to let US corporations win new markets.

    @Mao Cheng Ji
    to let US corporations win new markets
    In the case of Russia, it's more like natural resources. Also, to weaken a potential geopolitical competitor, to force obedience.

    Also, they need a boogieman, always. The 'Osama bin Laden' character had expired, and so they needed a new face for their hate-weeks. ,

    @Sean
    The only part of the Washington elite that wants to treat Russia as no threat is the part that articulates the views of corporations who want to sell US shale gas technology to Russia, which will sell cheap and clean energy to China so they can destroy American manufacturing jobs. The time has come to try and slow China's growth down. ,
    @annamaria
    Agree. "...the usual point of US foreign policy" is thievery of mineral resources and gold reserves in the hapless countries that were selected to experience the US/NATO "humanitarian interventions" and "democracy on the march"
    Here is a great paper by Robert David Steele, "The Russians Did Not "Hack" the US Election – a Few Facts from a Former CIA Spy:" http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-russians-did-not-hack-the-us-election-a-few-facts-from-a-former-cia-spy/5567215
    Steele gives a well-deserved black eye to the "perfumed princess and princesses" at the State Dept and CIA He simply calls them traitors. Refreshing.
    "Steele served in the Marine Corps as an 0203 Ground Intelligence Officer. After serving 4 years he joined CIA where he served for 10 years (3 tours overseas focused on extremist and terrorist targets). He resigned CIA to accept an invitation from the Marine Corps to stand up the Marine Corps Intelligence Center...." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_David_Steele
    Mao Cheng Ji , January 6, 2017 at 8:35 pm GMT • 100 Words
    @dearieme
    "What's the point?" I don't know but the usual point of US foreign policy is to let US corporations win new markets.

    In the case of Russia, it's more like natural resources. Also, to weaken a potential geopolitical competitor, to force obedience.

    Also, they need a boogieman, always. The 'Osama bin Laden' character had expired, and so they needed a new face for their hate-weeks.

    Sean , January 6, 2017 at 9:07 pm GMT
    @dearieme

    "What's the point?" I don't know but the usual point of US foreign policy is to let US corporations win new markets.

    The only part of the Washington elite that wants to treat Russia as no threat is the part that articulates the views of corporations who want to sell US shale gas technology to Russia, which will sell cheap and clean energy to China so they can destroy American manufacturing jobs. The time has come to try and slow China's growth down.

    CK , January 6, 2017 at 9:59 pm GMT • 100 Words

    @Beckow

    Great article, the key question remains: why is there an obsession for a large part of Washington bipartisan elite to have a horrible relationship with Russia?

    It is on its face self-defeating: Russia poses no real threat as a peaceful neighbor, it has lots of resources and the largest consumer market in Europe. Russia is also generally secular, relative socially liberal, and shares many of the same policies as US, e,g. fighting Islamic terrorism, checking China's influence, etc...

    So why the hostility? It makes West weaker, not stronger. It hurts global economy, it increases risks of a nuclear confrontation. It also cannot really achieve much beyond continued hostility and shouting at each other.

    Unless I am missing something, the hostility with Russia has no conceivable - and realistic - final outcome . Russia is not about to collapse, and it is not about to revert to a Western-run 90's 'liberal' utopia. Any actual and realistic threat to Russia's existence could trigger a nuclear war - no winners there.

    The disputes - from Crimea to Syria, from 'hacking' to Pussy Rioters - are oversimplified and intentionally misrepresented by the West. All of these issues are more complex, less clear-cut, and there is a valid and rational point of view on Russia's side.

    So why this unrelenting drive for more and more hostility? Can anyone explain this? Are there some deep emotional issues among the Washington elite? What's the point?

    Putin has reversed the Yeltsin era oligarchy that was bent on looting everything moveable in Russia. In doing so he pissed off some very connected Americans and Israelis. They want to get back to the loot trough. Sometimes it is as simple as evil men wanting to steal the wealth of others and hating those who stop them.

    @Wally
    Indeed, Putin actually prosecuted some Chosenites. An unforgivable sin for a goy to engage in. Then Putin put the kabosh on Israeli plans for Syria.

    Hence the absurd hacking claims promoted in the Zionist media.

    Harry107 , January 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm GMT • 300 Words
    @Beckow

    Are you kidding? Russia represents everything the Anglo-Zionist empire hates and fears:

    - Russia is sovereign and not under the control of financial interests. It is not possible to financially strip-mine Russia. For example, the Russian central band keeps real interest rates above 3%, allowing savers to keep the benefit of their savings, unlike in the West.

    - The Russian state under Putin has overthrown financial oligarch control, and the people know this. This accounts for his extraordinary popularity.

    - Russia is a Christian country which has built or reopened an astounding 30,000 churches in the last three years. They do not allow gay marriage and are about as socially conservative as the US was in the 70′s. Jews are not allowed to dominate the national conversation or have inordinate control.

    - Russia manufactures their own armaments and is a strong arms export competitor. The Russian state gets much more bang for their armament buck than we do, being effectively equal to us with 1/10 the military spending. This is more evidence of the independence of the state from financial oligarchs. Currently, Russian jets and missiles are markedly superior to American ones. (Don't believe me? Google "F-15′s in Syria" The Pentagon responded to Russia bringing advanced jets to Syria by transferring a squadron of F-15E's to Syria. The F-15 entered service in 1974. Each successive generation of US fighter jets since then has had inferior performance to its predecessor. This is disgraceful.)

    - The very existence of Russian independence is a mortal threat to the evil Anglo-Zionist empire. Look at Snowden, still walking and breathing and calling bullshit on American retrogression. The existence of one free country holds out a dangerous example to all other nations.

    @Beckow
    I am not 'kidding', I am quite serious. You make good points - and the points about resources, obedience and pure anger at losing the 90's opportunity to steal, all of that is true. But it really doesn't explain the recent rapid escalation to an almost irrational hostility in Washington. Why escalate now? What has changed?

    It also clearly doesn't work, and it cannot work - one cannot wish reality away and Russia is not going to be defeated by these silly temper tantrums. I am assuming that we are dealing with grown-up, serious people in Washington (and Brussels, Paris, Berlin, London), they must know that the screaming and demonization do nothing to weaken Russia. If this is an infantile anger at recent setbacks, it will blow over. But I would think that advanced Western societies have their resident infantilism under control. (Or do they?)

    So what if this is not just infantile screaming by people who lost their toys and want to show their anger. What if this is the way the Washington grown-ups are today? What if they genuinely lost it and truly believe all this insane stuff: "Putin wanted to influence the sacred election - it is an act of war!!!!" - where would you even start a rational discussion on this?

    Civilizations collapse when their rational core is replaced by ambitious morons who can no longer tell the difference between reality and their own "narrative", and even worse they don't much care for reality. ,

    @Abbybwood
    Also Russia has banned GMO's and they are giving safe haven to Edward Snowden.
    Beckow , January 7, 2017 at 2:20 am GMT • 200 Words
    @Harry107
    Are you kidding? Russia represents everything the Anglo-Zionist empire hates and fears:

    - Russia is sovereign and not under the control of financial interests. It is not possible to financially strip-mine Russia. For example, the Russian central band keeps real interest rates above 3%, allowing savers to keep the benefit of their savings, unlike in the West.

    - The Russian state under Putin has overthrown financial oligarch control, and the people know this. This accounts for his extraordinary popularity.

    - Russia is a Christian country which has built or reopened an astounding 30,000 churches in the last three years. They do not allow gay marriage and are about as socially conservative as the US was in the 70's. Jews are not allowed to dominate the national conversation or have inordinate control.

    - Russia manufactures their own armaments and is a strong arms export competitor. The Russian state gets much more bang for their armament buck than we do, being effectively equal to us with 1/10 the military spending. This is more evidence of the independence of the state from financial oligarchs. Currently, Russian jets and missiles are markedly superior to American ones. (Don't believe me? Google "F-15's in Syria" The Pentagon responded to Russia bringing advanced jets to Syria by transferring a squadron of F-15E's to Syria. The F-15 entered service in 1974. Each successive generation of US fighter jets since then has had inferior performance to its predecessor. This is disgraceful.)

    - The very existence of Russian independence is a mortal threat to the evil Anglo-Zionist empire. Look at Snowden, still walking and breathing and calling bullshit on American retrogression. The existence of one free country holds out a dangerous example to all other nations.

    I am not 'kidding', I am quite serious. You make good points – and the points about resources, obedience and pure anger at losing the 90′s opportunity to steal, all of that is true. But it really doesn't explain the recent rapid escalation to an almost irrational hostility in Washington. Why escalate now? What has changed?

    It also clearly doesn't work, and it cannot work – one cannot wish reality away and Russia is not going to be defeated by these silly temper tantrums. I am assuming that we are dealing with grown-up, serious people in Washington (and Brussels, Paris, Berlin, London), they must know that the screaming and demonization do nothing to weaken Russia. If this is an infantile anger at recent setbacks, it will blow over. But I would think that advanced Western societies have their resident infantilism under control. (Or do they?)

    So what if this is not just infantile screaming by people who lost their toys and want to show their anger. What if this is the way the Washington grown-ups are today? What if they genuinely lost it and truly believe all this insane stuff: "Putin wanted to influence the sacred election – it is an act of war!!!!" – where would you even start a rational discussion on this?

    Civilizations collapse when their rational core is replaced by ambitious morons who can no longer tell the difference between reality and their own "narrative", and even worse they don't much care for reality.

    @RudyM
    But it really doesn't explain the recent rapid escalation to an almost irrational hostility in Washington. Why escalate now? What has changed?
    Why now? Because in Syria, Russia got in the way of Zionist plans to fragment any countries in Israel's immediate area that posed a potential threat to Israel's regional domination (and perhaps an expanded greater Israel project). That looks like the best explanation to me. ,
    @SmoothieX12
    But I would think that advanced Western societies have their resident infantilism under control.
    1. LOL.
    2. What is so "advanced" about such shitholes as Marseilles or Malmo? ,
    @utu
    "But it really doesn't explain the recent rapid escalation to an almost irrational hostility in Washington. Why escalate now? What has changed?"

    I am glad you are persistent in asking these questions and being satisfied by answers being offered. I do not have answer either. But I may ask more questions.

    What was the true objective of 2009 Reset? Was it trap? Who really sabotaged it?

    Perhaps we must go back to 2009 and the Reset that Hillary and Obama started with Russia. In Sept. 2009 Obama cancelled the defensive shield in Poland and Czech Republic and then in April 2010 they signed START treaty in Prague. What Obama wanted to get from Russia in return? What else Russia wanted? Or was it trap? But the relations remained good even after Polish president and all Polish NATO generals got killed in Smolensk in April 2010 three days after signing the START treaty.

    There are various theories about the crash in Smolensk. One of them is that it was a false flag intending to implicate Russia and destroy the Reset and possibly it was a part of a coup against Putin.

    Who was behind it? The hawks and neocons (in cooperation with Russia's GRU elements) wanted to proceed with the operation against Iran while Obama and Putin were against it? After Smolensk the de facto no-fly zone was imposed over the whole Europe (Eyjafjallajökull volcano) when perhaps the fate of relationship with Russia and perhaps the fate of the world was being decided. Did Putin find out who was really behind the Smolensk crash? Anyway the Reset was then preserved. Who had to bend over backwards more: Obama or Putin? In later part of 2010 a major shake up in GRU took place and several generals ended up having accidents and some units of GRU were reassigned to FSB.

    Things started going sour in 2012 when the operation in Libya started. Medvedev who was then a president must have been asleep at the switch and did not veto it in UN. Putin watched the video of Qaddafi being murdered several times and allegedly vowed to never let anything like this happen again. He also became president that year, The US was meddling in the election process against him. In parallel with Libya the operation in Syria started. Fighters and weapons were moved between the two countries. It was happening as if against the will of Obama. In Sept. 2013 Putin kind of saved Obama's ass who clearly did not want to go ahead with bombing of Syria by having Assad giving up his chemical weapons. Neocons were furious.

    One reason I am very interested in this is because I am looking for reasons to like Obama. And Syria in 2013 might be one of these reasons. But after that not much has changed. Money and support for rebels was flowing from the US and other countries. This tells you that the colossus like America has its momentum and policies that will not easily change regardless of will and beliefs of some people in power. Hersh wrote article on how gen. Dempsey and DIA was sabotaging CIA in Syria by sending defective weapon supplies to rebels supposedly to gain credibility in the eyes of Assad to keep the communication channels open with Damascus via Berlin, Tel Aviv and Moscow.

    Then in 2014 the anti-Russian coup was engineered in Ukraine (some thing it was neocon's revenge for Putin's meddling in their meddling in Syria) that forced Russia to annex Crimea. He had no choice. And this is how Putin became a new Stalin and Hitler. The war against Putin and Putin's Russia was in the open.

    In winter 2014/2015 a brand new project called IS/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh was unveiled with saturated media campaign of their self-advertised atrocities. I think that many videos of executions were staged. And what was their purpose? It allowed the US to create a coalition to start bombing the ISIS also in Syria. Lots of countries joined it: Denmark, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and later Australia in 2015 and France. But their bombings were anemic at least as ISIS in Syria was concerned. Did they bomb Syrian forces? The coalition did not have a mandate for the no-fly zone as they had in Libya that if they had it, it would finish Assad off.

    I like to think that the next stage in attempt to escalate crisis in Syria was the refugee crisis in 2015. Somebody organized it. Somebody cut off UN funding to refugee camps in Turkey. Somebody took care of logistics. Lots of money. Maps to Germany in Arabic. It was not Germany doing it, was it? Was it to get the public opinion of Europe behind the final solution of Syrian crisis by destroying Assad? Would the escalation in Syria where Iranian troops were fighting destroy the deal Obama was working with Iran? Was Merkel's decision to embrace the invaders a way to diffuse the crisis and avert calls for no-fly zone? Did her decision give Putin extra few weeks to prepare Russia's engagement in Syria?

    Did Trump in June 2015 know about the impeding refugee crisis in Europe. His speech about illegals, border and wall preceded pictures of marching columns of young men approaching Hungarian and then Slovenian (Melania's home country) borders by about six weeks. Who was Trump's source? Our military or Netanyahu? Those who engineered that crisis?

    In all this it beats me what was Netanyahu's role. Surely he wanted to attack Iran. Surely he wanted to have Syria destroyed and destabilized. So why he was so nice to Putin? What took place between him and Putin in Moscow in summer 2015? Then he went there two more times. A bromance? Why Israel was so obliging to Russia engagement in Syria in which Russia used small and inferior force? Just four dozens of planes with one dozen of fighter planes while Israel itself has over 400 F-15 and F-16 and Turkey over 200?

    Why are they so afraid of Putin? What kind of goods Putin has on them? Certainly it is not because of Russia's military strength. ,

    @annamaria
    "What if this is the way the Washington grown-ups are today?"
    It is a vicious hatred of expropriators towards any resistance to their thieving-thuggish advances. They want these mineral resources now. They want this gold reserve now. The cognitive cacophony among the "deciders" is beyond comprehension: they are afraid of truth like vampires are afraid of light. This seems like a consequence of weeding out the principled and competent among the highest echelons of US government. Instead, as the propornot story shows, there is a triumph of DC career opportunists who would say anything and would do anything to get their money and to maintain their power. Rather scary.
    Cato , January 7, 2017 at 2:31 am GMT • 100 Words
    @Beckow

    You ask the question I've been asking myself. I don't have an answer, but I've wondered if it could be any of these:

    * inertia (the old guys running things might still be stuck in Cold War I)
    * anti-homophobia (gays have a big influence on public opinion, and they hate Putin)
    * profits (the Military-Industrial Complex has settled on Russia as the threat that will justify the weapons systems they want to sell)
    * Europe (Russia is the only power that could draw away our European vassal states–the Germans were particularly cozy with Putin right before Ukraine blew up; the Gulenist coup happened just weeks after Erdogan got friendly with Russia)
    * petroleum (can't quite see how that fits here, but oil and gas are usually involved in Deep State machinations)

    But it could be all or none of these

    RudyM , January 7, 2017 at 3:24 am GMT • 100 Words @Beckow
    I am not 'kidding', I am quite serious. You make good points - and the points about resources, obedience and pure anger at losing the 90's opportunity to steal, all of that is true. But it really doesn't explain the recent rapid escalation to an almost irrational hostility in Washington. Why escalate now? What has changed?

    It also clearly doesn't work, and it cannot work - one cannot wish reality away and Russia is not going to be defeated by these silly temper tantrums. I am assuming that we are dealing with grown-up, serious people in Washington (and Brussels, Paris, Berlin, London), they must know that the screaming and demonization do nothing to weaken Russia. If this is an infantile anger at recent setbacks, it will blow over. But I would think that advanced Western societies have their resident infantilism under control. (Or do they?)

    So what if this is not just infantile screaming by people who lost their toys and want to show their anger. What if this is the way the Washington grown-ups are today? What if they genuinely lost it and truly believe all this insane stuff: "Putin wanted to influence the sacred election - it is an act of war!!!!" - where would you even start a rational discussion on this?

    Civilizations collapse when their rational core is replaced by ambitious morons who can no longer tell the difference between reality and their own "narrative", and even worse they don't much care for reality.

    But it really doesn't explain the recent rapid escalation to an almost irrational hostility in Washington. Why escalate now? What has changed?

    Why now? Because in Syria, Russia got in the way of Zionist plans to fragment any countries in Israel's immediate area that posed a potential threat to Israel's regional domination (and perhaps an expanded greater Israel project). That looks like the best explanation to me.

    @Beckow
    "fragment any countries in Israel's immediate area"
    Clearly that is the strategic goal. But it has already succeeded in Syria - it doesn't matter that Assad is staying, Syria is fragmented. Since the goal has been achieved, why would the symbolic defeat in Aleppo trigger this level of hostility?

    I agree about gays, that is a secondary driver for the hate campaign. They are a derivative ally.

    The problem with the Brzezinski explanation is that it only partially fits the facts: the early Obama administration genuinely tried to have better relations with Russia. And Brzezinski for all his Russo-phobic reputation is actually a realist and has spoken out against the excesses in the last few years. There is the usual 'neo-con grandkids of pogrom refugees' - yes, many are, but there are also many who are from the same background who are not obsessive Russia haters, often just the opposite.

    "the old guys running things might still be stuck in Cold War I"
    There are some old Cold Warriors and some still angry at Vietcong (McCain), but the recent energy in the Attack-Russia crowd comes from the younger people - often millennials and recent Ivy League graduates in the media and in Washington. They are post Cold War and their hatred seems fresh and genuine. How does one explain that phenomenon?

    The military spending goes on and on - the need for an excuse is hard to document. There is almost no chance that some program would get cancelled because there are not "sufficient enemies" - so that explanation also seems secondary.

    It is a puzzle, there doesn't seem to exist any adequate explanation. Maybe it really is just stupidity - ambitious people who are where they are because they know how to take tests, how to write 'memos', and how to please their elders. But they don't know or care about much else. It is an elevated form of shallowness and mental lazyness. But it remains a puzzle. How can an advanced society drop its intellectual standards so quickly? ,

    @Anonymous
    Why now? Because in Syria, Russia got in the way of Zionist plans to fragment any countries in Israel's immediate area that posed a potential threat to Israel's regional domination (and perhaps an expanded greater Israel project). That looks like the best explanation to me.
    The foaming-at-the-mouth Russophobia and the Victoria Nuland & CIA-orchestrated coup in the Ukraine occurred after Russia intervened in Syria re: the red line issue (and chemical attack staged by Turks and CIA). ,
    @Anonymous
    Why now? Because in Syria, Russia got in the way of Zionist plans to fragment any countries in Israel's immediate area that posed a potential threat to Israel's regional domination (and perhaps an expanded greater Israel project). That looks like the best explanation to me.
    The foaming-at-the-mouth Russophobia and the Victoria Nuland & CIA-orchestrated coup in the Ukraine occurred after Russia intervened in Syria re: the red line issue (and chemical attack staged by Turks and CIA).
    RudyM , January 7, 2017 at 3:27 am GMT

    * anti-homophobia (gays have a big influence on public opinion, and they hate Putin)

    In my view, this is not the driving force for the anti-Russian policy. It is instead a way to whip up some popular liberal support for it.

    @Randal
    In my view, this is not the driving force for the anti-Russian policy. It is instead a way to whip up some popular liberal support for it.
    Cato's approach of looking for a range of reasons is clearly the right one, since there is no one authority driving policy, but rather a range of groups whose interests converge in one policy direction on a particular issue. This is true for any substantial state and for any sufficiently significant policy area, and especially so for US foreign policy. Looking for one single reason why any major policy direction is pursued is futile.

    As such, the homosexual lobby is clearly one of the forces driving anti-Russian policy in US sphere countries, if not necessarily the most powerful. I think it should not be too blithely underestimated, though, as a part of the general globalist/antinationalist/social radical ideological alliance that dominates the US sphere media and political high ground.

    That said, you are clearly also correct that US regime frustration with Russian involvement in defeating their regime change project in Syria is also clearly very significant, although anti-Russian sentiment in the US regime long predates that particular issue.

    RudyM , January 7, 2017 at 3:32 am GMT • 300 Words

    I think these remarks from Frances Boyle are worth considering, as well, although this sometimes sounds like it might have been translated from English into Russian and back again, or something of that sort:

    I regret to say what we are seeing here in the Unites States are the ascendancy of two factions in this country who are against Russia and the Russians. First is Brzezinski, who was Obama's mentor when Obama was a college student in Columbia, and Brzezinski in 2008 ran all the foreign affairs and defence policies of the Obama presidential campaign and has stacked his administration with advisor on Russia at the National Security Council comes from the Brzezinski's outpoll CSIS there in Washington D.C. I graduated from the same Ph.D. programme at Harvard that produced Brzezinski before me.

    He is a die-hard Russian hater, he hates Russia, he hates the Russian, and he wants to break Russia up into its constituent units, and, unfortunately, he has his people, his proteges in the Democratic Party and in this Administration. Second faction lining against Russia are the neo-conservatives, for e.g. this latest Brookings Institute report calling for arming the Ukrainian military in these Nazi formations which is now reflected in this latest bill just introduced into the Congress yesterday, and the neoconservatives feel exactly the same way against Russia and the Russians.

    I went to school with large numbers of these neoconservatives at the University of Chicago, Wolfowitz and all the rest of them. Many of them are grandchildren of Jewish people, who fled the pogroms against Jews, and they have been brainwashed against Russia and the Russians. So you have two very powerful factions here in the United States against Russia and the Russians who are driving this policy, and I regret to report there are very few voices opposing this.

    http://www.pravdareport.com/news/world/16-02-2015/129834-brzezinski_russia-0/

    But again, to the question why now? I would point to Russia's interferene with attempts to overthrow Assad and shatter Syria.

    @Wally
    "Many of them are grandchildren of Jewish people, who fled the pogroms against Jews, and they have been brainwashed against Russia ... "

    What pogroms? Got proof or just Zionist talk?

    Why have supremacist Jews have been marketing the '6,000,000' lie since at least 1869?

    http://i1117.photobucket.com/albums/k598/WhiteWolf722/TheSixMillionMyth.jpg

    Joe Franklin , January 7, 2017 at 3:41 am GMT

    Obama and his professional disinformation minions concocted a Russia-hacking-DNC BS story to rationalize to the public their desires to punish Russia for thwarting their evil plans in Ukraine and Syria.

    Fran Macadam , January 7, 2017 at 4:04 am GMT

    All I have to say about the liars who will say and do anything to ramp up war in the world, for fun and profit, is:

    Sad!

    SmoothieX12 , • Website January 7, 2017 at 4:24 am GMT
    @Beckow

    But I would think that advanced Western societies have their resident infantilism under control.

    1. LOL.
    2. What is so "advanced" about such shitholes as Marseilles or Malmo?

    Bill Jones , January 7, 2017 at 5:10 am GMT

    What sort of moron ever doubted it was a hoax?

    @Olorin
    Morons like these:

    http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/

    Who comprise about half of those who voted on Nov. 8.

    I have found it hard to reserve even shallow attention for the hacking/interference allegations, never mind apply deep reasoning to it. So I appreciate pieces like this.

    I have assumed from the get-go that these narratives' sole purpose was for the Dems--or more specifically their funders/puppetmasters--to stay in the headlines by any means necessary. "Stay in the headlines" means "work the system to maintain the position to keep telling stories." As any PR or advertising or marketing specialist can tell you, the most important part of a PR or ad or marketing campaign is to stay on message. The message doesn't have to make sense or be true, because its mere repetition is the point, not its content.

    These stories serve to keep that voter base paying attention and emotionally mobilized. The stories don't have to make sense or be true. This isn't reason playing out, it's secular-religious hysteria.

    The Dems appeal to a chunk of the electorate that operates from emotionalism, messianic zeal that flips over to destructive rage, virtue signaling, and a desire to feel like heroes for rebelling against whatever whatever.

    Beckow , January 7, 2017 at 5:10 am GMT • 300 Words
    @RudyM
    But it really doesn't explain the recent rapid escalation to an almost irrational hostility in Washington. Why escalate now? What has changed?
    Why now? Because in Syria, Russia got in the way of Zionist plans to fragment any countries in Israel's immediate area that posed a potential threat to Israel's regional domination (and perhaps an expanded greater Israel project). That looks like the best explanation to me.

    "fragment any countries in Israel's immediate area"

    Clearly that is the strategic goal. But it has already succeeded in Syria – it doesn't matter that Assad is staying, Syria is fragmented. Since the goal has been achieved, why would the symbolic defeat in Aleppo trigger this level of hostility?

    I agree about gays, that is a secondary driver for the hate campaign. They are a derivative ally.

    The problem with the Brzezinski explanation is that it only partially fits the facts: the early Obama administration genuinely tried to have better relations with Russia. And Brzezinski for all his Russo-phobic reputation is actually a realist and has spoken out against the excesses in the last few years. There is the usual 'neo-con grandkids of pogrom refugees' – yes, many are, but there are also many who are from the same background who are not obsessive Russia haters, often just the opposite.

    "the old guys running things might still be stuck in Cold War I"

    There are some old Cold Warriors and some still angry at Vietcong (McCain), but the recent energy in the Attack-Russia crowd comes from the younger people – often millennials and recent Ivy League graduates in the media and in Washington. They are post Cold War and their hatred seems fresh and genuine. How does one explain that phenomenon?

    The military spending goes on and on – the need for an excuse is hard to document. There is almost no chance that some program would get cancelled because there are not "sufficient enemies" – so that explanation also seems secondary.

    It is a puzzle, there doesn't seem to exist any adequate explanation. Maybe it really is just stupidity – ambitious people who are where they are because they know how to take tests, how to write 'memos', and how to please their elders. But they don't know or care about much else. It is an elevated form of shallowness and mental lazyness. But it remains a puzzle. How can an advanced society drop its intellectual standards so quickly?

    @RudyM
    Clearly that is the strategic goal. But it has already succeeded in Syria – it doesn't matter that Assad is staying, Syria is fragmented. Since the goal has been achieved, why would the symbolic defeat in Aleppo trigger this level of hostility?
    I was thinking of "now" in terms of a larger time-frame, going back at least to the Sochi olympics, which is when I started to especially take notice of the anti-Russia rhetoric. So I wasn't thinking of Aleppo specifically, but going back to Russia's negotiation to thwart an attack on Syria in response to the chemical attack which was being blamed on the Syrian government. That seems to be when things really started heating up.

    Syria is fragmented, but it's not over yet. I think it may be made more whole in the future. Additionally, it hasn't been fragmented to the extent originally desired.

    And there must be some anger that Russia would step in and intervene at all, even if much of what was desired has already been accomplished.

    Brzezinski has at times expressed more moderate opinions, but most of what I've seen, even in recent years, has been quite anti-Russian. Maybe I've missed some statements, but what I've seen from him has been pretty consistent in treating the situation in the Ukraine as a case of Russian aggression, deserving sanctions at least. And the "reset" under Obama I would need to go back and look at more closely. Is it possible it was a feint of some sort? I have to admit I wasn't following US-Russian policy very closely at the time.

    And I'm not sure about the bitter Jewish pogrom-survivor angle. I don't know enough about that history or what the average intellectual with Russian Jewish ancestry thinks about Russia.

    [B]ut the recent energy in the Attack-Russia crowd comes from the younger people – often millennials and recent Ivy League graduates in the media and in Washington. They are post Cold War and their hatred seems fresh and genuine. How does one explain that phenomenon?
    This may be lazy but I'd say that in many cases it's because it's the Zionist line right now. The LGBT angle also makes it easy to whip up opposition toward Russia. In general, Russia has come to represent in many westerners' minds the anti-liberal. ,
    @anonymous
    It is a puzzle, there doesn't seem to exist any adequate explanation. Maybe it really is just stupidity – ambitious people who are where they are because they know how to take tests, how to write 'memos', and how to please their elders.
    One interpretation might be that American capitalism is based upon the need for constant expansion and in the course of that expansion obstacles along the way must be overcome. If it can no longer grow and expand it'll implode upon itself. This is the inner dynamic forcing it's outward movement. Russia has risen from the wreckage of twenty-five years ago and is now ascendant and represents a barrier. It has sabotaged US schemes in Ukraine and Syria and is asserting it's own sphere of interest. An implosion of the US balloon would be disastrous since there is no ethnic, political or cultural cohesiveness within it to soften the impact.
    The leadership has become divorced from everyday reality. Most are theorists with no real-world experience and all come out of the same 3-4 universities. In late stage empires that crumble the leadership class are often absorbed in petty rivalries, become decadent hedonists and distrust their own population. Incompetent and uncaring, they're prone to rashness and taking the empire down with them. The US seems to be at that point.
    Bill Jones , January 7, 2017 at 5:11 am GMT
    @Sean
    The Russians are treating Trump like an imbecile, they're yet again announcing they're pulling out of Syria

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/russia-withdraw-armed-forces-syria-aircraft-carrier-group-civil-war-ceasefire-assad-regime-ally-a7512541.html

    Whatever they did or didn't do, Trump has been made to look small, and that is the one thing he cannot stand. Putin will soon be wishing that Hillary had won.

    FOAD, TROLL

    Bill Jones , January 7, 2017 at 5:13 am GMT
    @Beckow

    ... ... ...

    So why this unrelenting drive for more and more hostility? Can anyone explain this? Are there some deep emotional issues among the Washington elite? What's the point?

    War, cold or hot, sells weapons. The warmongers own the politicians. You've never figured this out?

    Carlton Meyer , • Website January 7, 2017 at 5:54 am GMT

    The insanity continues as "liberal" Senator Chuck Schumer (D-Israel) suggested that the Intelligence agencies will "get back" at President Trump, and that all Americans should praise their secret and mostly illegal, unconstitutional, and inhuman efforts. The few remaining true progressives/liberals in America must have gagged at his comments.

    @El Dato
    Wow.

    Did I just watch an eager underling and an oozing mobster discuss the next brilliant, brilliant hit to get back on top?

    "We need the Intelligence Community. Without them we wouldn't have discovered the Russian hacking".

    Really.

    NoseytheDuke , January 7, 2017 at 6:08 am GMT • 100 Words
    @Beckow

    The backers of HRC seek global domination and they know that time is against them. They have over-reached and now find themselves on the back foot. They are ruthless and desperate so this is why their actions make little sense if viewed through the lens of what is good for the ZUSA.

    Giuseppe , January 7, 2017 at 6:27 am GMT

    If Russian hackers did not exist, it would be necessary for the CIA to invent them. The Empire's geopolitical agenda of putting Russia in its place is thereby advanced, the truth of the allegations is irrelevent.

    WorkingClass , January 7, 2017 at 6:55 am GMT • 200 Words

    That Trump is a Russian agent is a big fat stupid naked lie riding on the back of an even bigger lie. The lie that Russia is a threat to the U.S. Its a pity that so many man hours must be devoted to refuting it. The lie is perpetrated by imperialists who intend to rule the world by force of arms. They are psychotic and extremely dangerous to the people of earth. Bubba, Dubya and Obama have been happy to serve them. Hillary was to be the fourth horseman.

    The fourth horseman is mentioned in Revelation 6:8, "I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. "

    Trump is not an imperialist. He is not one of them. He is his own man. He is a nationalist. He would be a player in a multi-polar world. He is a threat to their insane plans. They have tried and are trying to neutralize him with lies and slander and have failed. Now they must deal with him or martyr him. Which will it be?

    @El Dato
    I always thought the "Whore of Babylon" was a better fit for She Who Must Be Elected.
    Diversity Heretic , January 7, 2017 at 6:58 am GMT • 100 Words

    I have read with interest the various explanations about why the United States's foreign policy seems so pointlessly anti-Russian. There are a lot of reasons, ably articulated by the commenters. It seems to me that, to put it bluntly, the United States, or at least a good portion of its leadership, is in the midst of a national nervous breakdown, brought on by Donald Trump's unexpected election.

    I would counsel Russia and its leadership to be very careful in dealing with the U.S. -- you simply can't tell what an irrational person/nation might do.

    @Olorin
    Good point...though I'm guessing that the Russians got a whiff of your closing point sometime in 2008. :)
    Harry107 , January 7, 2017 at 7:16 am GMT • 200 Words

    Allow me to propose another cause for the mysterious Anglo-Zionist hostility toward Russia.

    That is, the instability of the empire. The huge military spending supports the Petrodollar system. The petrodollar system keeps the dollar as reserve currency. Then dollar creation by the federal reserve taxes all users of the dollar, or the world. This tax helps finance the military spending. And so on, ad infinitum. This positive feedback loop holds the status quo in the current state.

    But if the petrodollar system is broken, the US will have to pay its own way. The US tax cows would rebel, then bye bye to the empire. Imagine if Germany and Russia joined in a trade zone, let alone a gold standard union. The US standard of living would drop like a rock overnight. We'd have to relearn to produce stuff. Perhaps US oligarchs would lose control in the resulting social disruption.

    So to avoid this scenario, the US deep state whips up anti-Russian hysteria aimed at both US and European sheeple.

    @Bill
    Great comment. It's worth noting, though, that the US standard of living in the intermediate to long run would not drop for the middle and working classes. It's the looter class (and their clients in the underclass and the bureaucracies to serve them) which would lose out in a really big way.
    edNels , January 7, 2017 at 7:18 am GMT • 200 Words

    Well they couldn't put the Pantsuit into the President suite. Even when they got the best bunch of ducks in a row ever! Almost the perfect storm of idiots all in sink to force or cram the worst of the evils, two or more) even against unlikely DT, and with the PTB & company jumping ship from the Republicans enmasse, still they got beat.

    The Democrats almost had the thing, But they are myopic special issue, (needs) Identity politics people, and not of sufficient caliber to be involved in international diplomacy etc.

    I see several commenters have mentioned dumb and stupid, as reasons, I agree, these nitwits are way out of their element, and as to why they pick on Russia now, because they are naive enough to think they can snub, insult, push with impunity, and they seem to be getting away with it. But they hurt America, for having such low grade fools representing it. A bunch of cretinous egotists who are run secretly by puppeteers, and backed up by brute force.

    utu , January 7, 2017 at 7:23 am GMT • 1,000 Words
    @Beckow

    "But it really doesn't explain the recent rapid escalation to an almost irrational hostility in Washington. Why escalate now? What has changed?"

    I am glad you are persistent in asking these questions and being satisfied by answers being offered. I do not have answer either. But I may ask more questions.

    What was the true objective of 2009 Reset? Was it trap? Who really sabotaged it?

    Perhaps we must go back to 2009 and the Reset that Hillary and Obama started with Russia. In Sept. 2009 Obama cancelled the defensive shield in Poland and Czech Republic and then in April 2010 they signed START treaty in Prague. What Obama wanted to get from Russia in return? What else Russia wanted? Or was it trap? But the relations remained good even after Polish president and all Polish NATO generals got killed in Smolensk in April 2010 three days after signing the START treaty.

    There are various theories about the crash in Smolensk. One of them is that it was a false flag intending to implicate Russia and destroy the Reset and possibly it was a part of a coup against Putin.

    Who was behind it? The hawks and neocons (in cooperation with Russia's GRU elements) wanted to proceed with the operation against Iran while Obama and Putin were against it? After Smolensk the de facto no-fly zone was imposed over the whole Europe (Eyjafjallajökull volcano) when perhaps the fate of relationship with Russia and perhaps the fate of the world was being decided. Did Putin find out who was really behind the Smolensk crash? Anyway the Reset was then preserved. Who had to bend over backwards more: Obama or Putin? In later part of 2010 a major shake up in GRU took place and several generals ended up having accidents and some units of GRU were reassigned to FSB.

    Things started going sour in 2012 when the operation in Libya started. Medvedev who was then a president must have been asleep at the switch and did not veto it in UN. Putin watched the video of Qaddafi being murdered several times and allegedly vowed to never let anything like this happen again. He also became president that year, The US was meddling in the election process against him. In parallel with Libya the operation in Syria started. Fighters and weapons were moved between the two countries. It was happening as if against the will of Obama. In Sept. 2013 Putin kind of saved Obama's ass who clearly did not want to go ahead with bombing of Syria by having Assad giving up his chemical weapons. Neocons were furious.

    One reason I am very interested in this is because I am looking for reasons to like Obama. And Syria in 2013 might be one of these reasons. But after that not much has changed. Money and support for rebels was flowing from the US and other countries. This tells you that the colossus like America has its momentum and policies that will not easily change regardless of will and beliefs of some people in power. Hersh wrote article on how gen. Dempsey and DIA was sabotaging CIA in Syria by sending defective weapon supplies to rebels supposedly to gain credibility in the eyes of Assad to keep the communication channels open with Damascus via Berlin, Tel Aviv and Moscow.

    Then in 2014 the anti-Russian coup was engineered in Ukraine (some thing it was neocon's revenge for Putin's meddling in their meddling in Syria) that forced Russia to annex Crimea. He had no choice. And this is how Putin became a new Stalin and Hitler. The war against Putin and Putin's Russia was in the open.

    In winter 2014/2015 a brand new project called IS/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh was unveiled with saturated media campaign of their self-advertised atrocities. I think that many videos of executions were staged. And what was their purpose? It allowed the US to create a coalition to start bombing the ISIS also in Syria. Lots of countries joined it: Denmark, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and later Australia in 2015 and France. But their bombings were anemic at least as ISIS in Syria was concerned. Did they bomb Syrian forces? The coalition did not have a mandate for the no-fly zone as they had in Libya that if they had it, it would finish Assad off.

    I like to think that the next stage in attempt to escalate crisis in Syria was the refugee crisis in 2015. Somebody organized it. Somebody cut off UN funding to refugee camps in Turkey. Somebody took care of logistics. Lots of money. Maps to Germany in Arabic. It was not Germany doing it, was it? Was it to get the public opinion of Europe behind the final solution of Syrian crisis by destroying Assad? Would the escalation in Syria where Iranian troops were fighting destroy the deal Obama was working with Iran? Was Merkel's decision to embrace the invaders a way to diffuse the crisis and avert calls for no-fly zone? Did her decision give Putin extra few weeks to prepare Russia's engagement in Syria?

    Did Trump in June 2015 know about the impeding refugee crisis in Europe. His speech about illegals, border and wall preceded pictures of marching columns of young men approaching Hungarian and then Slovenian (Melania's home country) borders by about six weeks. Who was Trump's source? Our military or Netanyahu? Those who engineered that crisis?

    In all this it beats me what was Netanyahu's role. Surely he wanted to attack Iran. Surely he wanted to have Syria destroyed and destabilized. So why he was so nice to Putin? What took place between him and Putin in Moscow in summer 2015? Then he went there two more times. A bromance? Why Israel was so obliging to Russia engagement in Syria in which Russia used small and inferior force? Just four dozens of planes with one dozen of fighter planes while Israel itself has over 400 F-15 and F-16 and Turkey over 200?

    Why are they so afraid of Putin? What kind of goods Putin has on them? Certainly it is not because of Russia's military strength.

    @Mao Cheng Ji
    some think it was neocon's revenge
    I'm not a fan of assigning human motivations (like revenge) to institutions (like the US establishment), but if I was trying to explain the recent escalations by the revenge motive, then I would probably put sheltering Snowden front and center.

    I don't think the crash in Smolensk is an issue; it has always been clear what happened there, and it's nothing sinister. ,

    @Randal
    One reason I am very interested in this is because I am looking for reasons to like Obama. And Syria in 2013 might be one of these reasons.
    I've never liked Obama, and I'm not looking for reasons to like him, but Syria 2013 is certainly a strongly arguable point in his favour.

    Apart from that, it's hard not to admire his glorious parting middle finger to the Israel lobby with the recent UN resolution. ,

    @Bill
    Good stuff. ,
    @RudyM
    In general outline, this is pretty close to how I see it. I remember realizing that ISIS/Daesh was being used as an excuse to go into Syria. I don't think I realized immediately that it was also just another proxy force used to overthrow Assad. So, typically, it was used for two purposes, just as Al Qaeda has been used to target governments the US wants to weaken, while also being blamed for attacks on western interests (9/11 being the most spectacular) and used as an excuse for war. It's an elegantly multi-purpose operation. ,
    @Capn Mike
    Maybe Bibi's affection for Russia has a domestic component. There is a huge influx of Russians into Israel and I presume they vote.
    Fran Macadam , January 7, 2017 at 8:00 am GMT
    @Beckow

    So why this unrelenting drive for more and more hostility? Can anyone explain this? Are there some deep emotional issues among the Washington elite? What's the point?

    Follow the money.

    Wally , • Website January 7, 2017 at 8:31 am GMT
    @RudyM

    I think these remarks from Frances Boyle are worth considering, as well, although this sometimes sounds like it might have been translated from English into Russian and back again, or something of that sort:

    I regret to say what we are seeing here in the Unites States are the ascendancy of two factions in this country who are against Russia and the Russians. First is Brzezinski, who was Obama's mentor when Obama was a college student in Columbia, and Brzezinski in 2008 ran all the foreign affairs and defence policies of the Obama presidential campaign and has stacked his administration with advisor on Russia at the National Security Council comes from the Brzezinski's outpoll CSIS there in Washington D.C. I graduated from the same Ph.D. programme at Harvard that produced Brzezinski before me.

    He is a die-hard Russian hater, he hates Russia, he hates the Russian, and he wants to break Russia up into its constituent units, and, unfortunately, he has his people, his proteges in the Democratic Party and in this Administration. Second faction lining against Russia are the neo-conservatives, for e.g. this latest Brookings Institute report calling for arming the Ukrainian military in these Nazi formations which is now reflected in this latest bill just introduced into the Congress yesterday, and the neoconservatives feel exactly the same way against Russia and the Russians.

    I went to school with large numbers of these neoconservatives at the University of Chicago, Wolfowitz and all the rest of them. Many of them are grandchildren of Jewish people, who fled the pogroms against Jews, and they have been brainwashed against Russia and the Russians. So you have two very powerful factions here in the United States against Russia and the Russians who are driving this policy, and I regret to report there are very few voices opposing this.

    http://www.pravdareport.com/news/world/16-02-2015/129834-brzezinski_russia-0/

    But again, to the question why now? I would point to Russia's interferene with attempts to overthrow Assad and shatter Syria.

    ... ... ...

    @RudyM
    Wally, I was just quoting what Francis Boyle had to say, not necessarily endorsing every part of it. I don't know that much about Russian history. (Sorry, I don't know much about anything.) As for the 6,000,000, yeah, it's very dubious, to put it mildly. I have serious doubts about the official Holocaust story, but I haven't dug into it enough to make a strong assertion about it one way or another. I'll just say the arguments against it are much stronger than I ever expected before I started looking.
    animalogic , January 7, 2017 at 8:55 am GMT • 100 Words

    Agree with most reasons given for the current hyped hostility to Russia. Two extra points:

    1. Trump publicly "aligned" himself with a more "open" policy towards Russia. When the leaks occurred it made sense to the DNC to link & tar BOTH Trump & Russia with every evil under the sun (two for price of one). And naturally the anti-trump forces continue with the farce.(Imagine charging a president-elect with treason as some in the msm have done : mind-boggling !)

    2. Hyping up the Russia-hate is handy for any future false flags, provocations etc to justify retaliation.

    Timur The Lame , January 7, 2017 at 10:01 am GMT • 200 Words

    There are many plausible reasons for the anti-Russian dialogue specifically the alleged vote hack scenario but one cannot discount a very obvious one and that is the destroyed credibility of the MSM in the mob's eyes.

    How else to explain that they all walked in lockstep and some major ones were predicting a Gorgon landslide and equally the statistical impossibility of a Trump win right up to election night only to have major ostrich egg on their collective faces the next morning. "Hell hath no fury like fake news outlets scorned" as Francis Bacon might say.

    So now the implication would be that they were right (as always) but some evil elf in the Kremlin changed the tally. Lame for sure but we are dealing with lamestream media. The top honchos know that their days of influence are numbered. Only a collective ignorance can delay their demise.

    A small point I wish to make taken from the body of the article is that whenever someone states that a controversial document ( perhaps The Protocols) are a forgery, it is incumbent for someone disagreeing to state "a forgery of what?" A forgery is not the same as a fake document created out of whole cloth.

    Cheers-

    Olorin , January 7, 2017 at 10:25 am GMT • 100 Words
    @Bill Jones
    What sort of moron ever doubted it was a hoax?

    Morons like these:

    http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/

    Who comprise about half of those who voted on Nov. 8.

    I have found it hard to reserve even shallow attention for the hacking/interference allegations, never mind apply deep reasoning to it. So I appreciate pieces like this.

    I have assumed from the get-go that these narratives' sole purpose was for the Dems–or more specifically their funders/puppetmasters–to stay in the headlines by any means necessary. "Stay in the headlines" means "work the system to maintain the position to keep telling stories." As any PR or advertising or marketing specialist can tell you, the most important part of a PR or ad or marketing campaign is to stay on message. The message doesn't have to make sense or be true, because its mere repetition is the point, not its content.

    These stories serve to keep that voter base paying attention and emotionally mobilized. The stories don't have to make sense or be true. This isn't reason playing out, it's secular-religious hysteria.

    The Dems appeal to a chunk of the electorate that operates from emotionalism, messianic zeal that flips over to destructive rage, virtue signaling, and a desire to feel like heroes for rebelling against whatever whatever.

    Olorin , January 7, 2017 at 10:32 am GMT
    @Diversity Heretic
    I have read with interest the various explanations about why the United States's foreign policy seems so pointlessly anti-Russian. There are a lot of reasons, ably articulated by the commenters. It seems to me that, to put it bluntly, the United States, or at least a good portion of its leadership, is in the midst of a national nervous breakdown, brought on by Donald Trump's unexpected election. I would counsel Russia and its leadership to be very careful in dealing with the U.S.--you simply can't tell what an irrational person/nation might do.

    Good point though I'm guessing that the Russians got a whiff of your closing point sometime in 2008. :)

    Brás Cubas , January 7, 2017 at 11:34 am GMT • 100 Words

    Excellent piece. Congratulations to Ron Unz for hiring such a superb mind!

    As for what lays ahead, Trump's resourcefulness, which seemed endless during the campaign, may surprise us yet again during his term.

    However this turns out, it will be fun to watch (for me, anyway, from outside the U.S.A.)

    Robert Magill , January 7, 2017 at 11:46 am GMT • 100 Words

    Things are crawling out of the woodwork. This election cycle for no intended reason has become an accidental fumigator of creepy crawlies.

    It has also started a sort of political trench warfare between the two principal creeper nests.

    We've known of the existence of the so called 'deep state' but now, at last, we realize how shallow it really is.

    more https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2017/01/07/jeepers-creepers/

    Randal , January 7, 2017 at 11:52 am GMT • 300 Words

    What I am interested in is what will be the Trump regime's response to this comedic but open assault by the politicised US intelligence establishment. The Democrats are gloating that the US security elite are far too dangerous for any mere elected official to tangle with , but it seems to me Trump can't hope to rule effectively if he lets this pass.

    He will have to frame any action within loud support for protecting America's security, but it seems to me he must have ways of responding. It will be interesting to see if he uses them. I am not all that familiar with the ins and outs of the top levels of the US security bureaucracy, but here's the view of someone who is:

    I would think that the Trump Administration will go through the ranks of the SES/SIS position holders at CIA/DIA/NSA, etc. like a scythe. These folks, of whom I was one (SES-4) are not career protected like the lower members of the federal civil service. In return for their elevated rank (equivalent to military flag officers) they lack actual legal job security and can be much more easily removed. They are usually highly politicized schemers and enablers for their presidential appointee bosses at the very top of the food chain. But who will run things!? Well, pilgrims there are lots of eager beaver GS-15s awaiting their turn and eager to prove their loyally to the administration.

    Surely this will have to be the first item on Trump's action list once in office? I mean, the dangers to him of leaving these people in place are obvious.

    @Diversity Heretic
    Can SESes appeal adverse personnel actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board? I also think that SESes can be hired outside the normal civil service process -- one of the original purposes of the program was to draw on outside talent.

    GS-15s might not be all that useful -- they're more likely to be thinking of their careers in four years if Trump isn't re-elected (in the toilet). It's bureaucratic "inside baseball" things like this that Trump needs to be made aware of so that he can clean house in the intelligence establishment.

    It is obviously hostile to him.

    Randal , January 7, 2017 at 11:56 am GMT • 100 Words
    @utu

    I've never liked Obama, and I'm not looking for reasons to like him, but Syria 2013 is certainly a strongly arguable point in his favour.

    Apart from that, it's hard not to admire his glorious parting middle finger to the Israel lobby with the recent UN resolution.

    Randal , January 7, 2017 at 12:09 pm GMT • 200 Words
    @RudyM
    * anti-homophobia (gays have a big influence on public opinion, and they hate Putin)
    In my view, this is not the driving force for the anti-Russian policy. It is instead a way to whip up some popular liberal support for it.

    In my view, this is not the driving force for the anti-Russian policy. It is instead a way to whip up some popular liberal support for it.

    Cato's approach of looking for a range of reasons is clearly the right one, since there is no one authority driving policy, but rather a range of groups whose interests converge in one policy direction on a particular issue. This is true for any substantial state and for any sufficiently significant policy area, and especially so for US foreign policy. Looking for one single reason why any major policy direction is pursued is futile.

    As such, the homosexual lobby is clearly one of the forces driving anti-Russian policy in US sphere countries, if not necessarily the most powerful. I think it should not be too blithely underestimated, though, as a part of the general globalist/antinationalist/social radical ideological alliance that dominates the US sphere media and political high ground.

    That said, you are clearly also correct that US regime frustration with Russian involvement in defeating their regime change project in Syria is also clearly very significant, although anti-Russian sentiment in the US regime long predates that particular issue.

    @Bill
    Yes, the over-representation of gays in DC is not as striking as the over-representation of Jews, but it is striking nonetheless.
    Franks Batts , January 7, 2017 at 12:15 pm GMT • 100 Words

    Brilliant analysis revealing the sad state of affairs currently existing in America. The ongoing propaganda is having its intended effect influencing a good portion of the citizens (e.g.: over 50% of Americans during George Bush's second campaign still believed Iraq and Saddam were involved in 911!) What is one to do?

    @Agent76
    You are correct they are watching the CIA mockingbird media and do not read books or know how to research anything for the most part. So do please share this with them SIMPLE.

    September 07, 2016 - September 11, 2001: The 15th Anniversary of the Crime and Cover-up of the Century "What Really Happened"?

    WTC Building exploding into fine dust (it is not burning down) by pre-planted explosives in an obvious controlled demolition.

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/september-11-2001-the-15th-anniversary-of-the-crime-and-cover-up-of-the-century/5544414 ,

    @Agent76
    If those who were elected at the state level are real this would be my strategy.

    Dec 30, 2015 Nullification in One Lesson

    "When the federal government violates our rights, we're not just supposed to sit idly by and wait for the federal government to stop itself."

    https://youtu.be/k3L0U9EcP0Y

    "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." James Madison

    Anonymous , January 7, 2017 at 1:00 pm GMT • 100 Words
    @RudyM
    But it really doesn't explain the recent rapid escalation to an almost irrational hostility in Washington. Why escalate now? What has changed?
    Why now? Because in Syria, Russia got in the way of Zionist plans to fragment any countries in Israel's immediate area that posed a potential threat to Israel's regional domination (and perhaps an expanded greater Israel project). That looks like the best explanation to me.

    Why now? Because in Syria, Russia got in the way of Zionist plans to fragment any countries in Israel's immediate area that posed a potential threat to Israel's regional domination (and perhaps an expanded greater Israel project). That looks like the best explanation to me.

    The foaming-at-the-mouth Russophobia and the Victoria Nuland & CIA-orchestrated coup in the Ukraine occurred after Russia intervened in Syria re: the red line issue (and chemical attack staged by Turks and CIA).

    Faraday's Bobcat , January 7, 2017 at 1:00 pm GMT

    No patriot wants any foreign power influencing a US election. Therefore, I'd like to see the actions of China, Israel, Mexico and the EU investigated with vigor equal to that brought to bear on Russia.

    Diversity Heretic , January 7, 2017 at 1:30 pm GMT • 100 Words
    @Randal
    As I said, I've only a vague and general idea of how the US security bureaucracy works at the top levels. I don't know how the various SIS arrangements relate to the wider SES, or what the protections etc are, so I'm totally dependent on those who do know more for clues as to how things might play out when Trump takes office.

    Common sense alone, though, surely suggests some sort of thorough purge, doubtless dressed up as reform and improving fitness for purpose, must happen now, no? Presumably that might mean something of a turf war between the Executive and the Legislative branches, since the old establishment is still strong in the latter.

    Perhaps a few Executive Orders might be needed.

    GS-15s might not be all that useful–they're more likely to be thinking of their careers in four years if Trump isn't re-elected (in the toilet).
    That's a sensible point, but iirc there are limits on bringing in outsiders, at least as far as SES is concerned.
    It's bureaucratic "inside baseball" things like this that Trump needs to be made aware of so that he can clean house in the intelligence establishment. It is obviously hostile to him.
    Indeed. I'm sure there are plenty of people advising him in detail on all this. For the rest of us, it's a spectator sport, from a distance.
    Agent76 , January 7, 2017 at 2:10 pm GMT • 100 Words

    Jan 2, 2017 BOOM! CNN Caught Using Video Game Image In Fake Russian Hacking Story

    It looks like CNN Has tried to pull the wool over our eyes once again. This time, they used a screenshot from the Fallout 4 Video game to paint the picture of Russian Hacking. To bad that's not what a real hacking screen looks like. And an image you will only find in the video game! Nice Try Clinton News Network!

    @El Dato
    But that's just one of the useless "filler photos" (aka "artist's impression"), it's not like someone claims having stood behind a Russian Hacker and photographed his screen.
    Agent76 , January 7, 2017 at 2:16 pm GMT • 100 Words
    @Franks Batts

    Brilliant analysis revealing the sad state of affairs currently existing in America. The ongoing propaganda is having its intended effect influencing a good portion of the citizens (e.g.: over 50% of Americans during George Bush's second campaign still believed Iraq and Saddam were involved in 911!) What is one to do?

    You are correct they are watching the CIA mockingbird media and do not read books or know how to research anything for the most part. So do please share this with them SIMPLE.

    September 07, 2016 – September 11, 2001: The 15th Anniversary of the Crime and Cover-up of the Century "What Really Happened"?

    WTC Building exploding into fine dust (it is not burning down) by pre-planted explosives in an obvious controlled demolition.

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/september-11-2001-the-15th-anniversary-of-the-crime-and-cover-up-of-the-century/5544414

    macilrae , January 7, 2017 at 2:16 pm GMT • 200 Words

    This whole business is so infantile and it is demeaning to the dignity of the United States.

    Of course, as we have clearly seen over the years, the intelligence agencies of all states attempt to covertly gather sensitive information about each other – indeed, even when they are not antagonists. Consider the US hacking of Angela Merkel's phone or Israel's spies Jonathan Pollard and Lawrence Franklin.

    Those in possession of state secrets have an obligation to secure them and, if they are penetrated, the blame is to them alone. The DNC and Podesta emails were not even state secret material either!

    Obama's petty and stupid response to the current unproven allegations against Russia will haunt his legacy and Hillary's bizarre contention that Putin personally "had it in for her" is yet another sign of her mental instability.

    I saw yesterday that the fact of the Russians celebrating Trump's victory was taken as further proof of their complicity in Hillary's downfall – how could they possibly be expected to behave otherwise? Give me a break!

    @MarkinLA
    This whole business is so infantile and it is demeaning to the dignity of the United States.

    But keeping with the kind of people the US has always had in positions of power.

    Bill , January 7, 2017 at 3:11 pm GMT
    @Mao Cheng Ji
    the Russian interference narrative did not serve to prevent Trump from becoming president but it does seem that it will cause serious problems for his presidency and for American foreign relations
    Not necessarily. He may be able to discredit their narrative, and to replace it with his own narrative. After all, he's done plenty of that during the campaign... And this time he'll have the 'bully pulpit', so it should be easier....

    Yes. The chutzpah patrol only knows how to double down / pick up nickels in front of a steamroller. That strategy looks fine right up until it blows up completely. It could easily happen that they beat Trump. It could also easily happen that they blow themselves up.

    @annamaria
    Another Guardian' presstitute, Nick Cohen, is going insane with Russophobia:

    https://off-guardian.org/2017/01/08/neo-liberal-paranoia-is-extreme-and-it-is-everywhere/#comments

    The ziocon is upset hysterically with "Russian treachery" https://www.theguardian.com/profile/nickcohen

    The same Nick Cohen on his Hebraic enlightenment: "Why I'm becoming a Jew and why you should, too"

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/19/why-i-am-becoming-a-jew-and-you-should-too

    Who owns the Guardian? - "The Guardian and its parent groups participate in Project Syndicate, established by George Soros"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian

    Che Guava , January 7, 2017 at 3:19 pm GMT • 400 Words

    Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton was urged by "a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers" to demand a recount in three states-Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania-in which Clinton seemed to be slightly ahead in pre-election polls but which were won by Trump by narrow margins.

    That is not quite true, Hillary pretended to be above it all, and used 'Green Party' candidate Jill Stein as a proxy.

    Which raises its own questions.

    who covered the estimated $3.5 million cost of the endeavor.

    Again, not true, she 'crowd-sourced' the money, perhaps a small portion of the cash was left over from Stein's own campaign.

    Raising so much so quickly indicates a plutocratic contribution.

    the Soviet-spread rumor that the U.S. government developed the AIDS virus.

    It was not a rumour, and has never been convincingly refuted. There was much scientific analysis behind the claim, connected to related viruses.

    The Americans came up with the 'African Green monkey' bullshit, claimed to have found earlier cases in Africa, there are many auto-immune-system collapse disorders, there has never been any convincing evidence for the claimed (and very few) earlier cases of auto-immune deficiency found in old colonial health records, and claimed to be evidence of an Africa origin of AIDs, having been related to HIV.

    The fact is, patient zero and all of the early cases were in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the Fire Island scene in Noo Yawk. Wikipedia even misidentifies the real patient zero, with some spreader of the disease that they say was patient O.

    I am never part of those scenes, often bullied as straight, as often treated nicely as accepting, although I have had good friends who were same-sex lovers, but the phenomenom of interpretation of HIV-AIDS, as opposed to other auto-immune syndromes, it has really become wild propaganda.

    Patient zero was certainly a homosexual Nord-Amerique man.

    Propaganda to divert people's attention from this is very strong, another example of the disconnection between pre-mass-'net paper info and now.

    I do not want to write at length on this, now, but am making a very good case.

    Your article is alright, but not very good, my comments before the AIDs-related ones may assist you to write a little better.

    the spreading of false information by intelligence services "is a technique that goes back to Tsarist times."

    No shit Sherlock? I goes way farther back than that, I read the rest of the article, wow, a dim bulb struggling to be bright. You may get there, writing is not all bad.

    @El Dato
    > the Soviet-spread rumor that the U.S. government developed the AIDS virus.

    It was not a rumour, and has never been convincingly refuted. There was much scientific analysis behind the claim, connected to related viruses.

    That made no sense in the 80s and makes no sense today.

    The only "development" of a virus that had happened at that time was the development of the spanish flu in the trenches of WWI (and we still don't know how that worked, really).

    Hell, most of the stuff related to retroviruses still had to be written. Gallo was checking out Leukemia-causing retrovirus. Remember the grainy, bad photos that the Institut Pasteur published of "LAV"? Yeah. Grainy. That was the kind of tech back then.

    At some point wrong structure diagrams appeared in Scientific American and Nature. PCR was in its infancy. Computers were basically useless for deep data crunching. "Developing a virus" was just not possible. Germans coming up with fully functional ICBMs in 1914 sounds more likely.

    Just no.

    @RobinG
    " but going back to Russia's negotiation to thwart an attack on Syria in response to the chemical attack which was being blamed on the Syrian government. That seems to be when things really started heating up."
    EXACTLY. That began with the frenzy over "Will gay Olympians be safe in Sochi?" nonsense in US Big Media. Also when Code Pink and progressive media (aka Big Media's little brother) got all hot and bothered about Pussy Riot. (Did Vice News even understand the reference to chickens at the end of this video?)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFrZfluKDrc
    Pussy Riot Gets Whipped in Sochi

    Plus the obligatory slandering of Sochi facilities construction. All spite and sour grapes over Syria.

    As for "...the bitter Jewish pogrom-survivor angle" that would be Fucktoria Nuland, et al. Plenty of them find it useful to nurse their Russia hatred.

    Connecticut Famer , January 7, 2017 at 3:53 pm GMT • 100 Words
    @Beckow

    As a footnote–and I wish could remember his name– but earlier this week O'Reilly had some guy on his show who was a retired USMC "intelligence expert" who said in one breath that the CIA had "proof" that the Rooshians hacked the emails then in the next breath said that the CIA can't release the information as it would compromise their operatives. Yeah, right!

    KA , January 7, 2017 at 4:01 pm GMT • 400 Words

    "Nonetheless, half of Clinton's voters still think Russia hacked the election day voting.[6]"

    There are so many things that are wrong with the country . Some are transients some are less important and some could be brushed aside as angry response from the loser but also a fundamental shift could be seen in the dogged persuasion of the stupidities and visceral attachment to the absurd despite the inconsistencies,contradictions,and presence of collectively motivated misrepresentation ,among both party's loyal supporters . These are loyal to party irrespective of the political social economic faiths and known behaviors of the candidates . Because they have sunk their own daily existential identities with that of a party, they find it difficult to move away from any party position . It is a religion and the arguments and the information are fixed and formatted to suit that unidirectional unyielding emotional intellectual existence . but it produces inertia , extinguishes curiosity, stifles the resistance ,reinforces the stagnation , and eventually reduces the power of the intellectual forces to guide the debate and the fate of the country. It does so by bringing out and giving prominence to the most vocal sentimental ignorant intellectually passive segment who dislike more intellectually inquisitive challenging neutral minded citizen and supporters with openness to new possibilities and ideas .

    Nuances don't matter . Blind belief becomes synonymous with resolve and steadfastness .

    Bush Cheney destroyed the GOP Now Clinton is doing same with ample help from those whose interests she would serve best .( It is doubtful if Bush or Cruz or Huckabee or Graham or Rubio were the winner, we would be seeing this remonstration . So basically people are being schooled to follow certain official positions and lines Those positions are also the positions of the elite irrespective of the party affiliation .Party works for the elite that roam across the aisle . In this situation , the presence of thinking and discerning minds pose a risk . The zeitgeist is best preserved by the vocal assertive and effective presence of the sheeple dyed in different colors who would fight for the preservation of the colors and for nothing else .

    Does it portend a decline of average IQ over times? If it does then the western civilization is digging its own grave . Even if it doesn't in this particular route , the route that is being offered through stifling of any logical rational openness ,suppression of any kind of questioning and insistence on one kind of idea,value, and analysis leads to the same fate .

    @RudyM
    If anyone has missed this, leaked audio of Kerry admitting Daesh was allowed to grow:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3KfmjdviHM

    (I think the US role was less passive than that, but it's still pretty damning.)

    (Oops, this was not @ anyone in particular.) ,

    @edNels
    Does it portend a decline of average IQ over times? If it does then the western civilization is digging its own grave .
    The new left vs right, or a new kind of opposition politics based less on ''issues'', and more on what kind of Bull shit you are vulnerable to. The various Catapulted Propogandar.

    Cartoon images, or more realistic stuff? Not that cartoons need to be less insightful than movies.

    But, what I am gett'n at: politics between the two sides of the Bell Curve, more and more.

    [Jan 09, 2017] State Department Says Presenting Evidence Of Russian Hacking Would Be Irresponsible

    Jan 09, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    Yellow cake story No.2 ? Probably he implies that the release of Stuxnet, Flame and similar worms was responsible. What they can hide after Snowden revelations? The fact that they collect all inbound and outbound traffic ?
    One recurring lament throughout the theatrically dramatic campaign involving reports and emotional appeals by US intelligence agencies such as the CIA (whose primary function is the creation of disinformation) to ordinary Americans, that Russia had "hacked the US presidential election" is that for all the bluster and "conviction", there has been zero evidence.

    And, as it turns out, there won't be any, because according to the US State Department, US intelligence agencies were right to not reveal evidence of their proof that Russia interfered in US elections, and comparisons with intelligence reports that Iraq had WMDs were not relevant in the current year.

    Asked by RT's Gayane Chichakyan if Friday's public intelligence report should have contained any proof of Russian intervention, State Department spokesman John Kirby said that no one should be surprised that US intelligence agencies were keeping evidence secret in order to protect sources and methods.

    "Most American people understand that they have the responsibility to protect their sources and methods," Kirby said, adding it would be "irresponsible" to do otherwise. Actually, with the Iraq WMD fiasco strill fresh in "American people's" minds, it is irresponsible to think most Americans are still naive idiots who will believe whatever the "intelligence agencies" will tell them.

    ... ... ...

    When Chichakyan brought up the 2003 intelligence assessment on the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – invoked by the Bush administration to justify the US invasion and occupation of that country – Kirby said the comparison was irrelevant, since that was a long time ago. "We have moved on. We have learned a lot from those mistakes," he said. Ironically, somehow much of America ended up with the opposite conclusion.

    Bunghole -> 07564111 •Jan 9, 2017 9:59 PM

    Didn't State claim Ambassador Stevens was killed over a youtube video? ... ... ...

    Dame Ednas Possum -> 07564111 •Jan 9, 2017 10:14 PM

    I agree with Kirby unreservedly when he stated: 'I think, er... well, I don't think...' These blind fools cannot fathom that an increasing number of others don't simply regurgitate the narrative thoughtlessly. We apply rational thought, particularly in considering what the implications are to the innocents e.g. 500,000 dead civilians in Iraq. It's good in a way as it simply brings society closer to the demise of this evil sooner. Unfortunately this may require us passing through a period of intense turmoil, upheaval, pain and suffering. As Jim Morrison said: 'they've got the guns, but we got the numbers... TAKING OVER... C'MON'

    philipat -> BullyBearish •Jan 9, 2017 9:59 PM

    So let me see if I get this straight. Either, there IS no evidence, OR the US is doing precisely the same things that the Russians are accused of? Neither is an attractive admission by .gov if the propaganda is to be effective. Repeat after me, it was the Russians......

    07564111 -> philipat •Jan 9, 2017 10:12 PM

    OR the US is doing precisely the same things that the Russians are accused of?

    For your viewing pleasure http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21013087

    Zen Xenu •Jan 9, 2017 9:41 PM

    "Trust us, we know best." - Anonymous Intelligence Official (speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make statements).

    Reaper •Jan 9, 2017 9:53 PM

    We ought thank Putin for revealing the corruption of Clinton, if he truly did it. Intel presents an argument for fools. If Putin likes chocolate, should we hate it? The logical fallacy: guilt by association.

    https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/10/Ad_H ...

    [Jan 08, 2017] Clappers own credibility is suspect. It looks like NSA does not possesses the evidence of Russian hacking

    Notable quotes:
    "... Though it's impossible for an average U.S. citizen to know precisely what the U.S. intelligence community may have in its secret files, some former NSA officials who are familiar with the agency's eavesdropping capabilities say Washington's lack of certainty suggests that the NSA does not possess such evidence. ..."
    "... Binney, in an article co-written with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, said, "With respect to the alleged interference by Russia and WikiLeaks in the U.S. election, it is a major mystery why U.S. intelligence feels it must rely on 'circumstantial evidence,' when it has NSA's vacuum cleaner sucking up hard evidence galore. What we know of NSA's capabilities shows that the email disclosures were from leaking, not hacking." ..."
    "... In response, Clapper and other U.S. government officials have sought to disparage Assange's credibility, including Clapper's Senate testimony on Thursday gratuitously alluding to sexual assault allegations against Assange in Sweden. ..."
    "... However, Clapper's own credibility is suspect in a more relevant way. In 2013, he gave false testimony to Congress regarding the extent of the NSA's collection of data on Americans. Clapper's deception was revealed only when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the NSA program to the press, causing Clapper to apologize for his "clearly erroneous" testimony. ..."
    Jan 08, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    RGC -> ilsm... January 08, 2017 at 06:03 AM

    US Report Still Lacks Proof on Russia 'Hack'
    January 7, 2017

    https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/07/us-report-still-lacks-proof-on-russia-hack/

    ... ... ...

    Though it's impossible for an average U.S. citizen to know precisely what the U.S. intelligence community may have in its secret files, some former NSA officials who are familiar with the agency's eavesdropping capabilities say Washington's lack of certainty suggests that the NSA does not possess such evidence.

    For instance, that's the view of William Binney, who retired as NSA's technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and who created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.

    Binney, in an article co-written with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, said, "With respect to the alleged interference by Russia and WikiLeaks in the U.S. election, it is a major mystery why U.S. intelligence feels it must rely on 'circumstantial evidence,' when it has NSA's vacuum cleaner sucking up hard evidence galore. What we know of NSA's capabilities shows that the email disclosures were from leaking, not hacking."

    There is also the fact that both WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and one of his associates, former British Ambassador Craig Murray, have denied that the purloined emails came from the Russian government. Going further, Murray has suggested that there were two separate sources, the DNC material coming from a disgruntled Democrat and the Podesta emails coming from possibly a U.S. intelligence source, since the Podesta Group represents Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments.

    In response, Clapper and other U.S. government officials have sought to disparage Assange's credibility, including Clapper's Senate testimony on Thursday gratuitously alluding to sexual assault allegations against Assange in Sweden.

    However, Clapper's own credibility is suspect in a more relevant way. In 2013, he gave false testimony to Congress regarding the extent of the NSA's collection of data on Americans. Clapper's deception was revealed only when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the NSA program to the press, causing Clapper to apologize for his "clearly erroneous" testimony.

    [Jan 08, 2017] Once You Can Fake News, Youve Got It Made (A Walk Down Memory Lane)

    Notable quotes:
    "... By Lambert Strether of Corrente . ..."
    Jan 08, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Posted on January 8, 2017 by Lambert Strether By Lambert Strether of Corrente .

    "It took me a long time to discover that the key thing in acting is honesty. Once you know how to fake that, you've got it made." –Actor in Peyton Place, 1970

    So the news is like sincerity (and honesty) ? Or not? Interestingly, the epigraph comes from the start of the neoliberal dispensation, but let's not go down a rathole of meta. Or rather, let's go down another rathole of meta by quoting defeated Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who seems to have been the (self-infected) Patient Zero for the "fake news" moral panic when she spoke these words ( C-SPAN ) at the unveiling of Harry Reid's portrait, December 8, 2016:

    [CLINTON:] Let me just mention briefly one threat in particular that should concern all Americans, Democrats, Republicans and independents alike, especially those who serve in our Congress: the epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year . It's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences . This isn't about politics or partisanship. Lives are at risk, lives of ordinary people just trying to go about their days, to do their jobs, contribute to their communities.

    IIt's a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly. Bipartisan legislation is making its way through Congress to boost the government's response to foreign propaganda , and Silicon Valley is starting to grapple with the challenge and threat of fake news . It's imperative that leaders in both the private sector and the public sector step up to protect our democracy and innocent lives."

    (Presumably that "bipartisan" - dread word - legislation was the "Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act," discussed at NC in detail here .) Parsing this verbiage, we find it unusually sloppy and dishonest, even for Clinton. What, for example, is the distinction between "malicious fake news" and "so-called fake news"? Is sincerely meant (not "malicious") and/or genuine (not "so-called") fake news not really fake? And how is it that we start with "false propaganda" and end with "foreign propaganda"? Obviously, whatever "danger" is to be "addressed" can't be from "fake news" as such, since conceptually there's no there there. Democrat establishment lapdog Paul Krugman makes Clinton's agenda more clear:

    Still, none of this would work without the complicity of the news media. And I'm not talking about "fake news," as big a problem as that is becoming; I'm talking about respectable, mainstream news coverage.

    So, "fake news" just doesn't happen in "respectable, mainstream news" outlets (showing Yves was quite right to cite to independent, alternative media , like Naked Capitalism, as being under the blame cannons). But Krugman's vulgar institutionalism gets us no forrader on "fake news" conceptually, does it? Here's the best taxonomy of "fake news" that I've been able to find. From Matthew E. Kahn's blog, Environmental and Urban Economics, "The Economics of Fake News":

    There are four cases to consider.

    Case #1: Both the supplier and demander know that the story is false. Think of the National Enquirer stories stating that Elvis is on Mars.

    Case #2: The supplier knows the story is false but the demander believes the story is true.

    Case #3: The supplier believes the story is true and the demander believes the story is true.

    Case #4: The supplier believes the story is true and the demander believes the story is false.

    "Fake News" has no social consequences in cases #1 or case #4. Case #3 will feature no strategic element. This is just Tiebout sorting[1] in ideological space.

    Tellingly, the articles listed at the Snopes "fake news" tag (e.g., "Did a Man Lock His Daughter in a Cage for Overusing a Snapchat Filter?" [FALSE]) fall primarily into Case #1 (that is, no social consequence, since both supplier and demander know the fake news is fake). And the "malicious" "foreign" WikiLeaks, DCLeaks, and Guccifer Democrat email leaks are Case #3: The supplier believes the story is true, and the demander believes the story is true.[2]. Case #4 (the supplier believes the story is true, and the demander believes the story is false) may end up applying to us all, if current trends continue , but again, let's not go down the rathole.

    So the interesting case is Case #2: The supplier knows the story is false but the demander believes the story is true. And the nice thing about Kahn's taxonomy is that it abstracts away from institutions, so we don't have to accept Krugman's silly, and self-serving, notion that "mainstream publications" don't produce "fake news." Here's the definition of "fake" from my Oxford English Dictionary:

    fake [adjective & noun(2)] /feɪk/ Orig. slang. l18. [ORIGIN: Rel. to fake verb2.] A. adjective. Spurious, counterfeit, sham. l18. Glasgow Herald Fake whisky..the symptoms following consumption are similar to those of gastric poisoning.

    I mean, come on. Nobody ever said that alternative, independent, small distilleries are the only institutions that every produced fake whiskey, right?

    Before I dig more deeply into Case #2, I'd like to introduce an additional case:

    Case #5: The supplier knows the story is true, but the demander knows nothing about it at all

    (This introduces a pleasing element of informational asymmetry into Kahn's model, enabling it to conform more closely to the real world. The example I have in mind comes from Operative K's employer, the New York Times. From FAIR :

    By any standard, the New York Times ' story of December 16 was a blockbuster: Reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that following the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration initiated warrantless wiretaps on hundreds of people within the U.S.–including U.S. citizens–even though a federal law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, expressly forbids the government from doing so. This program was legal only if one accepts the administration's contention that the executive branch has essentially unlimited powers during "wartime" (even though Congress has not declared war).

    The Times story would be an outstanding example of how the First Amendment works to protect liberty–were it not for the ninth paragraph:

    The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

    The reasoning is absurd on its face. As Times executive editor Bill Keller noted in a statement released on December 16 explaining his decision to publish the story, "The fact that the government eavesdrops on those suspected of terrorist connections is well-known." But this was as obvious a year ago as it is today. As for the government's spying being "jeopardized," placing illegal and unconstitutional programs in jeopardy is the whole point of the First Amendment ( Extra! Update , 12/05 ).

    But Keller's statement revealed that the Times does not see itself as competent to watch out for illegal government activity. In explaining the delay, Keller stated that the administration had "assured senior editors of the Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions." Keller went on to say that "it is not our place to pass judgment on the legal or civil liberties questions involved in such a program, but it became clear those questions loomed larger within the government than we had previously understood."

    In other words, Keller believes it is the Times ' "place" to accept officials' own evaluation of the legality of their behavior.

    What FAIR delicately omits to mention is that the Times had and then spiked the story before election 2004 , and therefore suppressing it until Bush was safely elected might well have affected the (very close) Presidential race, which everybody is so concerned that fake news does, right?

    Now, is Case #5 - suppressed news - really news ? I would argue that is it is. The replaced pages in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia were surely part of that Encyclopedia, and in less well-regulated polities than our own, censored news is simply printed as blank columns:

    Back to Case #2, which I'd argue should be refined, again through the introduction of information asymmetry. On the supplier side, we need to introduce the possiblity of delusion as opposed to malevolence, and on the demander side, "Cassandras" (a minority) as opposed to believers (the great majority)[3]. The case study I have in mind is Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in the case of the Iraq War.

    I remember the WMD case of fake news - news that is "spurious, counterfeit, sham" as the OED has it - well, because it happened in my very first year of blogging, in 2003. (Cue the "I'm so old, I remember ______" snowclone jokes.) The justifications for Saddam's WMDs came thick and fast: The aluminum tubes, the white powders, the yellowcake uranium, the mobile biological laboratories, the drones, the atropine, the "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." As soon as one story was debunked - which foul-mouthed bloggers of the left using open sources could do quite easily, within hours - another story would pop up. Only later did we learn that it didn't just feel like playing whack-a-mole; it was playing whack-a-mole; The Bush White House was planting stories in the press (through a process, for those who came in late, very similar to what the Clinton campaign used, as shown in the Wikileaks Podesta email dump).

    The long-forgotten Sam Gardiner, Colonel, USAF (Retired)[4], interviewed by Kevin Zeese in Counterpunch , describes the supplier side:

    [GARDINER:]As the war unfolded, I became increasingly uneasy about what was being reported out of the White House, Pentagon and Central Command. I was hearing things that just did not make sense with what I knew and what my intuition was telling me. I began tracking some of the stories. It was just a matter of going over what we were told and connecting that with the truth as it emerged later.

    There is absolutely no question that the White House and the Pentagon participated in an effort to market the military option. The truth did not make any difference to that campaign. To call it fixing is to miss the more profound point. It was a campaign to influence. It involved creating false stories; it involved exaggerating; it involved manipulating the numbers of stories that were released; it involved a major campaign to attack those who disagreed with the military option. It included all the techniques those who ran the marketing effort had learned in political campaigns.

    We [know] the WMD story fairly well. We know the story of the uranium from Niger. We know about the aluminum tubes that were not for uranium enrichment. We know the biological labs Powell showed to the UN did not exist.

    [ZEESE:] Is the media being fooled by the Administration or is it complicit in this effort to misinform the public?

    [GARDINER:]The media have been fooled. They have been lazy. They have lost sight of the historic calling of journalism. Journalists have been replaced on television by cheerleaders.

    [ZEESE:] How much did this campaign of misinformation cost?

    [GARDINER:] Tough question, Kevin. I don't think it possible to get a total handle on the effort. I have read one estimate that put the marketing at $200 million. That cost is trivial, however, to the collateral damage that has been done to democracy.

    And on the demand side, some may actually have believed their own bullshit. Former White House insider Richard Clarke , interviewed in 2004:

    [GUARDIAN]: Do you believe the administration believed the intelligence on Iraqi WMD?

    [CLARKE]: We all believed Saddam had WMD.

    And Bush Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice in 2007 :

    [RICE:] We all believed the intelligence was strong. It wasn't just a problem with intelligence in the United States, it was an intelligence problem worldwide. Services across the world thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."

    So, give Rice and Clarke the benefit of the doubt, and put them in the delusional bucket on the supplier side, as opposed to the malevolent bucket. That said, those in the malevolent bucket were the drivers supporting policy, as we knew ( in 2005 ) from The Downing Street Memo. Quoting it :

    SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL – UK EYES ONLY

    DAVID MANNING

    From: Matthew Rycroft

    Date: 23 July 2002

    S 195 /02

    .C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy . The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

    Gardiner's estimate of $200 million would buy rather a lot of "fixed" facts, eh? Even at Beltway rates.

    * * *

    So that's my walk on memory lane on fake news. The utter effrontery of Clinton, and her lapdog, yammering about fake news from Macedonian teenagers on social media, after fake news from the mainstream press - very much including the Times' own infamous Judy Miller - helped foment the Iraq War just boggles the mind. And all those faraway brown people blown to pink mist make Clinton's "lives are at risk" especially nauseating. I'm gobsmacked by the "fake news" moral panic, hornswoggled, beyond flummoxed. Or I would be, if only Clinton blaming fake news for her loss weren't just another example of Democrats never holding themselves responsible for anything.

    Oh, and at some point I should propose some solutions. Obviously, the whole fact-checking paradigm is wrong; I'm so old I remember when we had editors and reporters to do that, so returning to those days would be a start, at least. So, whatever public policy it would take to get more local newspapers going again is something we should think about. We should also think about breaking up ginormous media monopolies; after all, epidemics spread more easily in a monoculture. And then there's Facebook; maybe they shouldn't be in the algorithmic newsfeed business at all; after all, the most reliable parts of a program are the ones that aren't there. And Facebook, too, is an enormous monopoly. Perhaps there should be more power centers in social media, as well. Just some thoughts.[5] Readers?

    NOTE

    Bud from legal insists that I say this post solely represents the views of "Lambert Strether," and does not represent the views of Naked Capitalism.

    NOTES

    [1] "Tiebout sorting refers to the sorting of households into neighborhoods and communities according to their willingness and ability to pay for local public goods," via Encyclopedia of Education Economics & Finance . Here is an NBER paper: "Tiebout Sorting and Neighborhood Stratification" (PDF).

    [2] The "demanders" in the Clinton campaign would disagree, but the Rice-Davies Rule applies. None of that mail has even debunked, despite false claims by the Clinton campaign . Whether the mail had no strategic consequence, especially at the margin, is another issue entirely.

    [3] Leaving aside, again, the dystopia where demanders believe all stories are false.

    [4] Gardiner's paper, "Truth from These Podia," suffers from serious link rot. And so we lose our history.

    [5] Also, some kind soul should fund deliberative debate in the schools and for adults at the rate of, oh, $10 million a year or so. It would't take much. I guarantee we'd see improvement in discourse in as little as three years, as varsity debaters came up and started to show the critical thinking skills they gained at the podium in public policy discussion. Incidentally, historically black colleges and universities have done very well recently in debate, so do let's make sure all the debate money doesn't go to the already credentialed burbclaves, mkay?

    0 0 0 0 0 This entry was posted in Guest Post , Media watch , Politics on January 8, 2017 by Lambert Strether . About Lambert Strether

    Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and doing system administration 24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress. Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs about rhetoric, software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics, international travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de plume "Lambert Strether" comes from Henry James's The Ambassadors: "Live all you can. It's a mistake not to." You can follow him on Twitter at @lambertstrether. http://www.correntewire.com

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    Subscribe to Post Comments 27 comments Synoia , January 8, 2017 at 1:56 pm

    The whole "fake news" narrative is not about "fake news," or propaganda, or agitprop.

    It is about taking control away from, and by implication devaluing the analysis, of these who debunk the propaganda, or agitprop from the "legitimate (aka: fake official)" news outlets. Examples of this are Naked Capitalism, Ian Welsh, Marcy Wheeler and Zero Hedge.

    It is both a monopolistic action of the "legitimate (aka: fake official)" news outlets, and the powers in Washington, enabling this monopolistic behavior for both parties self interest.

    This comment solely represents the views of "ME" and does not represent the views of anyone else. (OK Bud?)

    Waldenpond , January 8, 2017 at 2:34 pm

    The fake news chant is just an addition to the Russia, Russia, Russia bs. The goal is always delegitimizing any voice other than far right capitalists and war mongers. Media has collapsed/flipped. The media being promoted as legitimate is outright lies and never ending propaganda. They occasionally slip in facts but they are meaningless to the discussion. The alternative sites are the only ones attempting to distribute facts and discuss issues based on facts.

    I won't be surprised to see legitimate news sites blocked from accessing ad revenue and payment systems. No ads, no facebook, no twitter, no paypal for those deemed to be disseminating facts.

    Webstir , January 8, 2017 at 6:47 pm

    A friend of my mine stated the other day, "Don't mistake gaslighting for a genuine concern that you might, in fact, be crazy."

    To which I replied:

    "The age of modern advertisement (think Mad Men) was kicked off by behavioral psychology professor John B. Watson who is most popularly known for the "Baby Albert" experiments. What is not widely known is that he was kicked out of John Hopkins for having an affair with his research assistant shortly after said experiments. Where did he take his talents? You guessed it: Advertising - where he popularized the notion of selling "sex appeal" rather than a product. In mu opinion, the rest the western world's economic and political history, then, are all "gaslighting" footnotes to the recently discovered ability to psychologically manipulate people to create demand where there was none previously."

    My point being, it is worth considering the impact media creating ideological demand where there was none before.

    craazyman , January 8, 2017 at 2:38 pm

    This problem is so old it's ludicrous. They're talking about it like it was just discovered! LOL.

    I think these quotes are true, but I didn't know Thomas Jefferson and I did not carry on a literary correspondence with him. It would have been a pleasure! Despite his flaws. He was a man of his time, but a brilliant one.

    Here are some more Thomas Jefferson quotes about newspapers. I think he would have been in the peanut gallery railing at the mainstream media just like the rest of us.

    #2 below is my favorite "the violence and malignity of party spirit" Whoa!:

    1. "The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." ~Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:225

    2. "I deplore the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them These ordure's are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief This has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit." ~Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones, 1814. ME 14:46

    3. "As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers." Thomas Jefferson to Barnabas Bidwell, 1806. ME 11:118

    4."Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." ~Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1819. ME 15:179

    5. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."

    source: http://www.fourwinds.com (I Googled a string of words about Jefferson and newspapers, since I knew of his opinion there.)

    lyle , January 8, 2017 at 5:25 pm

    I grew up in Detroit during the Vietnam war. In Detroit you could listen to the news from Canada and hear the elements of Propaganda in the US news (or fake news to use the modern term). It was as if two different wars were happening depending on which side of the river the news was broadcast from. Back then from the US news perspective Pravda was one big sheet of fake news (propaganda) . Back then you could also buy a shortwave radio and listen to the BBC as well as Radio Moscow (which had strong signals in the US).
    So back then one had to learn to take all news with a very large grain of salt because the folks putting the news together influenced how news was reported. It is just now that it appears that younger generations have tumbled to the fact that news organizations pursue a point of view and report news skewed to support that point of view.
    For another example back then the Socialist workers party had a newspaper that to the US mainstream point of view was propaganda,but from their point of view was the truth.

    JF , January 8, 2017 at 5:38 pm

    In large part this is also why the Framers put together a United States Republic, "wherein the legislative authority necessarily predominates."

    Democracy was too susceptible so reliance was placed on the two-house, separately elected sources, to provide thoughtful discourse via indpendent legislators. Ideally these people were to be thoughtful people who tried.

    This too has become a department-of-thought (the others are judicial and executive) that is lacking thought, well at least in one party, the one that also denies scientific fact and believes we can not govern ourselves because we are the problem. But their richtung is clear, no need to think too much about how to vote.

    hunkerdown , January 8, 2017 at 7:04 pm

    The Framers were the very same class of idle oligarchs that we are attempting to do battle with today. Jeremy Belknap's famous Supplication, that we should submit to the "enlightened" (i.e. freed from having to actually work to the order of others) rule of liberal dispensationalist Rescuers, is a bipartisan stipulation.

    Surely you didn't forget Hamilton Electors so quickly? Or Becky Fischer interviewed in Jesus Camp : "excuse me, but we have the truth!" Or which class and which interests are in fact running the press, and at whose interests' expense? People who vend noble lies klike liberalism or Belknap's learned helplessness tend to be discredited rather quickly.

    susan the other , January 8, 2017 at 2:40 pm

    The disastrous world that Hillary built is coming apart. She said in the 90s that she saw no way to save labor and prevent offshoring and being killed by cheap imports: "There's just no way to stop it." She came from the left and became the biggest free marketeer there ever was. Yet, her behavior has been so pious. She, as much as any tool who ever graced the halls of Washington DC, is to blame for shamelessly securing her own position by destroying the country. While the rest of us were lamenting the disappearance of truth, the neoliberals were attacking that idealism with a term coined by Steve Colbert: "truthiness" and everybody had a good chuckle until the truthiness was on the other foot – now they demand an end to "fake news". What about just tolerating all the "fakiness" And the "newsiness" with a fake smile? C'mon Hill, I know you can do it.

    hunkerdown , January 8, 2017 at 7:08 pm

    Worse, Obama demanded "truthiness". That's code, to me. There is a malicious design afoot.

    BeliTsari , January 8, 2017 at 3:19 pm

    As one by one, well known lefty blog aggregators got all 'et up by David Brock's CTR, it was difficult to miss their trolls & sock-puppets were all using Rick Berman's playbook http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/24/1519540/-Paid-Clinton-Troll-Speaks-out-I-was-aghast-at-what-I-saw Dissidents were entitled, gullible. basement-dwelling millennial, or misogynistic, racist agents provocateurs, spreading discordant enemy agitprop. They used Hill + Knowlton Strategies' decades-old buzz-words from tobacco, asbestos, fracking & bio-engineering scams, to discredit anybody questioning Debbie, Robby and John's stomping down loyal, lifelong Keynesian Democrats and handing the presidency to Trump, the states to ALEC and Judiciary, regulatory agencies & Congress to leering, smirking, up-front drooling Fascists. http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/06/resistance-2/

    BeliTsari , January 8, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    Wow people still READ The Guardian? Bloomberg spews the same crap for FREE!

    Gaylord , January 8, 2017 at 3:33 pm

    Another aspect of this is the obfuscation of true news. An example of this is the news blackout and dismissal of any significance pertaining to the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns, fallout, and continuing emissions of dangerous radioactive isotopes into the environment. This is an institutionalized conspiracy borne of complacency and self interest.

    The worst part of this is there are typically no judgments or consequences against the perpetrators of false information that is explicitly used to gain support for and acquiescence to policies that result in criminal actions and grave harm - i.e. war, exploitation & impoverishment, mass displacement, confiscation of resources, deleterious pollution & ecocide, etc. The justice system is as irredeemably corrupt as the rest of the political system.

    Paul Tioxon , January 8, 2017 at 3:42 pm

    http://www.ucpress.edu/blog/23963/

    This lucky coincidence is from the UC Press. They have a blog about different books they put out. And this one's relevant and timely. There is a brief overview of Watergate and The Kennedy/Nixon TV debates of 1960 and the ongoing myths surrounding them.

    Debunking Media Myths, Those Prominent Cases of Fake News

    by W. Joseph Campbell, author of 'Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism'.

    "The mainstream media's recent angst and hand-wringing about a surge of "fake news" has tended to ignore that the media themselves have often been purveyors of bogus tales and dubious interpretations.

    "Fake news" has plenty of antecedents in mainstream media - several cases of which are documented in my book, Getting It Wrong, a new, expanded edition of which was published recently.

    The book examines and debunks media-driven myths, which are well-known stories about and/or by the news media that are widely believed and often retold but which, under scrutiny, dissolve as false or wildly exaggerated. Think of them as prominent cases of "fake news" that have masqueraded as a fact for years. Decades, even."

    oho , January 8, 2017 at 4:14 pm

    Don't forget that the entertainment divisions all of MSM's parent companies rely on quid pro quo "fake reviews" to juice positive buzz for movies/TV series.

    And often those fake reviews are spun as real news.

    Steve H. , January 8, 2017 at 4:19 pm

    Just checking, since I took a crack at the Reuters disclaimer, is the Bud from legal thing irony? 'Cause I cain't tell no more.

    'Cause if that's the case, that's a Case-1. And that means NC is a purveyor of fake news.

    But Wait! Is it weasel-words to say 'does not represent the views of (institution)'? Where is the agency? The DNC has a platform with explicit, well what are they, the DNC says 'political rhetoric' as opposed to actual positions. Wouldn't it be better to say 'the views of the owners of' or 'the editors of'? But are you then saying that Yves does not share this view? Or are you an editor and don't agree with yourself? Well, you get the idea.

    Anyway, I'd say let's kill all the lawyers, but let's leave legal Bud alone.

    Edward , January 8, 2017 at 4:30 pm

    One comment I would make about the WMD reporting was that the international press, including some British papers, were debunking the propaganda. It was as if America and the rest of the world were in separate realities. Many Americans were reading the Guardian to obtain independent news. The WMD claims of the Bush administration were debunked in congressional speeches, but the pro-war lawmakers didn't seem to care.

    ambrit , January 8, 2017 at 6:14 pm

    That's what's scary now. The pro war legislators don't seem to care now as well. Last time, it was Iraq, no push over, but not "really" dangerous. Now, it's Russia, which is truly dangerous. There's a significant difference between IEDs and ICBMs.

    Edward , January 8, 2017 at 6:54 pm

    This is why I almost voted for Trump. I ended up voting for Stein, but I dithered for a while.

    ambrit , January 8, 2017 at 7:19 pm

    I know that dither feeling. Many of us, and I include myself, are going to be very upset when we're dithered.

    Bugs Bunny , January 8, 2017 at 4:35 pm

    Seems to me that enforcement of existing Anti-trust law would go a long way in remedying the blob opinion that characterizes MSM reporting. I'm no neoliberal but competition law forces competition and from competition comes diversity in media strategy, reporting and publishing.

    Sorry I said competition three times. I tend to harp on this subject since I was at the center of some pretty tough Anti-trust fights back in the day when the DOJ did its job.

    ekstase , January 8, 2017 at 5:04 pm

    Questions I'm asking myself:

    " put them in the delusional bucket on the supplier side, as opposed to the malevolent bucket."
    1) Could someone, theoretically, be put in both buckets?

    2) If Elvis is not on Mars, then where is he?

    H. Alexander Ivey , January 8, 2017 at 5:38 pm

    He has left the building, that's all I know.

    ambrit , January 8, 2017 at 6:18 pm

    The answer to question 1) is quantum based. Whichever bucket you look in, there "they" are. I suspect the answer to question 2) is also quantum based. Schrodingers Blue Suede Shoes anyone?

    Persona au gratin , January 8, 2017 at 5:04 pm

    "News" – aka storytelling/myth making about "real" recent events – has always been "fake" to some degree or another. The question is, to what degree? However, I doubt most of any political stripe would contest the fact that lately it's become simply out of control. Welcome to the "information age!"

    NotSoSure , January 8, 2017 at 5:04 pm

    Does the following scenario: "The supplier knows the story is true, but the demander wants to believe it's true/false" falls under the scenario of "The supplier knows the story is true, but the demander knows nothing about it at all"

    Or how about: "The supplier wants to believe the story is true, and the demander wants to believe it's true"? Sounds a bit like religion (probably not "fake news").

    nonsense factory , January 8, 2017 at 5:42 pm

    Was the 2013 Syrian gas attack stories blaming the Syrian government fake news?
    http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-12-06/anti-fraud-experts-launch-news-accuracy-site-find-us-probably-blamed-wrong-side-for-syria-chemical-attack

    Very likely so.

    But this is right in line with Hillary Clinton's "public vs. private" position claims. It's okay to be dishonest about it because intervening to overthrow Assad is obviously "the greater good" just as overthrowing Gaddafi "we came we saw he died ha ha ha!" was a good idea. Unintended consequences? We'll just cook up some more propaganda to make it look like it's all going well. Image matters, not substance. If we tell everyone we're going to win the election, then we're sure to win the election; we just have to believe, get everyone on message, tell the right story. . .

    Reminds me of a William Gibson quote from Neuromancer:
    "I mean, these guys are all batshit in here, like they got luminous messages scrawled across the inside of their foreheads or something."

    XonX , January 8, 2017 at 6:34 pm

    Bud from legal insists that I say this post solely represents the views of "Lambert Strether," and does not represent the views of Naked Capitalism.

    OK, but is Bud part of the problem or part of the solution? Does Naked Capitalism have a view? I thought NC was a forum of views, not a person or a corporation-"person" (and so what if it was).

    So why does Bud need you to say that? What good or bad thing does this enable or prevent because you have now followed Bud's advice?

    Just curious I guess. I took the time to read it, so now I'd like to know why I did.

    [Jan 08, 2017] Russians Mock, Ridicule Charge They Helped Trump Win Zero Hedge

    Jan 08, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Franz Klintsevich, the first deputy chairman of the Defense and Security Committee of the Russian parliament's upper house, added fuel to the fire, saying the U.S. intelligence community made unfounded allegations of Russia-sponsored hacker attacks, in favor of the outgoing US presidential administration and made a fool of itself.

    Speaking to RIA Novosti , the senator said that the allegations "simply make no sense. The main reason is that no one can interfere with the electoral process in such country as the United States," he pointed out. "Acting in favor of the outgoing presidential administration, the US intelligence community laid itself open to ridicule."

    Other Russians agreed such as Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, a state-funded television network that broadcasts in English, who is cited repeatedly in the report, posted her own message on Twitter scoffing at the American intelligence community's accusations. "Aaa, the CIA report is out! Laughter of the year! Intro to my show from 6 years ago is the main evidence of Russia's influence at US elections. This is not a joke!" she wrote.

    Even Russians who have been critical of their government voiced dismay at the United States intelligence agencies' account of an elaborate Russian conspiracy unsupported by solid evidence. Alexey Kovalyov, a Russian journalist who has followed and frequently criticized RT, said he was aghast that the report had given so much attention to the television station. "I do have a beef with RT and their chief," Mr. Kovalyov wrote in a social media post, "But they are not your nemesis, America. Please chill."

    The Kremlin, which has in the past repeatedly denied any role in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer system, had no immediate response to the declassified report. Putin instead made a show of business as usual, attending a church service to mark the start of Orthodox Christmas.

    His composure was understandable because as the NYT again remarkably notes, " The report provides no new evidence to support assertions that Moscow meddled covertly through hacking and other actions to boost the electoral chances of Donald J. Trump and undermine his rival, Hillary Clinton, but rests instead on what it describes as Moscow's long record of trying to influence America's political system ."

    In other words, speculation and innuendo. Curiously, the NYT's bashing of the report continued:

    The public report did not include evidence on the sources and methods used to collect the information about Mr. Putin and his associates that intelligence officials said was in a classified version.

    The NYT also cited Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian intelligence agencies at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, who said he was skeptical of the accusation that Putin had ordered the hacking. All the same, he added, Russian spies, like their Soviet predecessors, "don't just collect information but try to assert influence." United States intelligence operatives, he said, have often done the same thing but the Russians, convinced that the United States orchestrated protests in Ukraine in 2014 that toppled the pro-Moscow president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, and other popular uprisings in former Soviet lands, "have a more aggressive approach to meddling in other people's politics."

    The NYT continued: "Galeotti, the intelligence expert in Prague, cautioned that this mission to influence foreign politics was not a uniquely Russian phenomenon but had also been embraced in the past by the CIA, which, in the 1950s, sought to shape and subvert politics in countries like Iran and Guatemala ."

    Actually, and this is the real punchline, there is an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to US involvement in overthrowing foreign regimes. Here are just the examples since World War II (* indicates successful ouster of a government)

  • China 1949 to early 1960s
  • Albania 1949-53
  • East Germany 1950s
  • Iran 1953 *
  • Guatemala 1954 *
  • Costa Rica mid-1950s
  • Syria 1956-7
  • Egypt 1957
  • Indonesia 1957-8
  • British Guiana 1953-64 *
  • Iraq 1963 *
  • North Vietnam 1945-73
  • Cambodia 1955-70 *
  • Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
  • Ecuador 1960-63 *
  • Congo 1960 *
  • France 1965
  • Brazil 1962-64 *
  • Dominican Republic 1963 *
  • Cuba 1959 to present
  • Bolivia 1964 *
  • Indonesia 1965 *
  • Ghana 1966 *
  • Chile 1964-73 *
  • Greece 1967 *
  • Costa Rica 1970-71
  • Bolivia 1971 *
  • Australia 1973-75 *
  • Angola 1975, 1980s
  • Zaire 1975
  • Portugal 1974-76 *
  • Jamaica 1976-80 *
  • Seychelles 1979-81
  • Chad 1981-82 *
  • Grenada 1983 *
  • South Yemen 1982-84
  • Suriname 1982-84
  • Fiji 1987 *
  • Libya 1980s
  • Nicaragua 1981-90 *
  • Panama 1989 *
  • Bulgaria 1990 *
  • Albania 1991 *
  • Iraq 1991
  • Afghanistan 1980s *
  • Somalia 1993
  • Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
  • Ecuador 2000 *
  • Afghanistan 2001 *
  • Venezuela 2002 *
  • Iraq 2003 *
  • Haiti 2004 *
  • Somalia 2007 to present
  • Honduras 2009
  • Libya 2011 *
  • Syria 2012
  • Ukraine 2014 *
  • Perhaps the reasons behind the rushed, and frankly humiliating, report is that US intelligence was scrambling to respond to the first ever case of someone doing to it what the US had done to the rest of the world for decades without any fear of retaliation.

    As for Galeotti, he said the United States intelligence report on Russian meddling in the November election had gone too far in projecting Cold War attitudes onto today's reality. He said it was a mistake to suppose that Mr. Putin had from the start conducted "a Machiavellian conspiracy" aimed at bringing Mr. Trump to power.

    More likely, he added, was that Mr. Putin was not involved or even informed about initial efforts to hack into the D.N.C. computer system but, informed after the fact about what had been done, "decided to act opportunistically" and make use of the hacker's harvest of emails to try to tilt the election.

    His conclusion: "I don't think the Russians believed for a minute that Trump could really be elected," Galeotti said. "They were convinced that U.S. elites would ensure that one of their own would win. They thought they had a chance to do a bit of mischief but I think they were amazed, even aghast, at what happened. "

    Why? Here is perhaps the biggest reason, also known as the real fake news courtesy of Reuters ...

    the New York Times ...

    And, of course, the Washington Post.

    So yeah, it was Putin's fault:

  • None
  • China
  • New York Times
  • Donald Trump
  • Germany
  • Iran
  • Twitter
  • Reuters
  • Bulgaria
  • Australia
  • Iraq
  • Obama Administration
  • Ukraine
  • Afghanistan
  • Greece
  • Somalia
  • Reality
  • France
  • Twitter
  • Printer-friendly version
  • Jan 7, 2017 6:26 PM
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    alexcojones Jan 7, 2017 6:34 PM

    Must be hundreds of reasons why we Americans preferred Trump.

    I can think of dozens right off the bat - Arkancide - the huge list of people who trusted the Clintons. And died

    Clinton Body Count - Zpub.com
    Ralph Spoilsport alexcojones Jan 7, 2017 6:41 PM

    The Russians are laughing! The Russians are laughing!

    (Better than The Russians are Coming!)

    Ignatius Ralph Spoilsport Jan 7, 2017 6:43 PM

    Good and timely title for a movie (comedy). Write it.

    Ralph Spoilsport Ignatius Jan 7, 2017 6:48 PM

    Surely you remember this little gem from 1966?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Russians_Are_Coming,_the_Russians_Are_...

    Ignatius Ralph Spoilsport Jan 7, 2017 6:51 PM

    Saw it in the theatre. I was 10.

    Ralph Spoilsport Ignatius Jan 7, 2017 6:58 PM

    Geez, I was 13 and also saw it with my parents at "the movies". You old fart. :-)

    BTW, if your handle has anything to do with the book, I've read Confederacy of Dunces 3 times. You seem like the kind of person who would like that book, if you don't mind me saying,er...just sayin' or whatever they fucking say these days.

    xythras Ralph Spoilsport Jan 7, 2017 6:59 PM

    Well, what do you expect when you base your accusations on FEELINGS. And old Russian TV/web shows :

    http://dailywesterner.com/intelligence-report-that-claims-russia-was-beh...

    MOAR LIBTARD TEARS. MOAR MOAR !!!

    Occident Mortal xythras Jan 7, 2017 7:23 PM

    The problem in the 2016 election was that the establishment had gotten so arrogant that it didn't even bother to hide the glaring across-the-board favouritism lavished on Hillary Clinton...

    The American people are the one who saw an opportunity to be mischievous and boy did they reach for it.

    Drink your own Koolaid you greedy bastards.

    beemasters Occident Mortal Jan 7, 2017 7:54 PM

    Putin/Russians would be better off suing WaPo for defamation! Two cases: the election hack and the electrical grid hack.

    monk27 Occident Mortal Jan 8, 2017 3:26 AM

    The problem with our "intelligence" ( really ??) agencies is the fact that their collective IQ has been reduced to match Obozo's IQ (which ain't too high...); hence, the recently witnessed Jerry Springer kind of shit show...

    Ralph Spoilsport Ralph Spoilsport Jan 7, 2017 7:06 PM

    Ignatius, I just looked at your profile. "Never mind".

    My current goal in life is to not become a montage of all the main characters in that book.

    xythras Ignatius Jan 7, 2017 6:59 PM

    ...

    SubjectivObject Ignatius Jan 7, 2017 7:16 PM

    Please to get off da strit

    Ralph Spoilsport SubjectivObject Jan 7, 2017 7:31 PM

    "I think you a communiss."

    -- Claude Robichaux

    Ignatius Ralph Spoilsport Jan 7, 2017 8:32 PM

    "Woo-hoo, I be callin' a po-lice office man a communiss my ass be in Angola." -- Jones

    Fathead Slim SubjectivObject Jan 7, 2017 8:46 PM

    "Egermancy. Evribuddy to clear from stritt".

    consider me gone Ralph Spoilsport Jan 7, 2017 8:47 PM

    I remember watching that movie was a big deal in our family. Did they come and leave without stopping in to say hello?

    Croesus Ralph Spoilsport Jan 7, 2017 6:55 PM

    Best quote:

    "Mountain gave birth to a mouse".....

    LMFAO.

    @ Russia:

    Keep ridiculing the American government, please! They deserve it.

    GUS100CORRINA alexcojones Jan 7, 2017 6:43 PM

    America is the laughing stock of the world!!! Looking forward to TRUMP/PENCE team taking charge to "FIX THE MESS".

    As a dide note, Damascus, Syria is a "ruinous heap" along with the rest of Syria. Who is to blame for this tragedy?

    AMERICA!!!!!! America dropped over 50,000 bombs under CLINTON/OBAMA leadership that destroyed Syrian infrastructure. UNBELIEVABLE!!!

    May the GOD of the Bible have mercy on America for Her SINs.

    are we there yet GUS100CORRINA Jan 7, 2017 7:02 PM

    Americas SIN's

    S - Stupid I - Idiot N - Neocons

    Robert Trip are we there yet Jan 7, 2017 7:14 PM

    Fuck you too.

    are we there yet are we there yet Jan 7, 2017 10:17 PM

    Ok N -Neocons and Neolibs

    RagaMuffin Jan 7, 2017 6:33 PM

    Yeah Putin is going to aid and abet the candidate who will pump oil until the US is one foot below sea level. Oil the life blood of Russia...

    Vageling RagaMuffin Jan 7, 2017 7:08 PM

    You can actually live below sealevel you knew that? You just need to keep the water "managed". You'll be fine ;)

    RagaMuffin Vageling Jan 7, 2017 7:12 PM

    According to garmin, lord of the satelites, much of eastern NC is below sea level already...

    Guderian Vageling Jan 8, 2017 12:38 AM

    A god part of the Netherlands (=lowlands) is below sea level. The windmills are actually groundwater pumps.

    The Dhanakil is also beow sea level -if not for very muc longer...

    Arnold Guderian Jan 8, 2017 8:29 AM

    Death Valley.

    http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_elevation_of_death_valley

    Most Cities with a population over 100,000 are underwater already, if that helps.

    francis soyer Jan 7, 2017 6:33 PM

    Good read Tyler

    Ignatius Jan 7, 2017 6:34 PM

    Hey, any of you younger guys, how many times did you see that list of US coups on the chalkboard in high school?

    peddling-fiction Ignatius Jan 7, 2017 6:53 PM

    In a U.S. college I was taught that conspiracy theories do not exist.

    Yes, Dear Leader, they do not exist. *zombie eyes*

    Implied Violins peddling-fiction Jan 7, 2017 8:47 PM

    I actually experienced the opposite, as my very first college class featured a history professor who told us the real meat behind the writing of the Constitution (language written to protect white male land owners, etc.). From then on I have had my eyes open...but of course, that was 1981. Another world entirely.

    peddling-fiction Implied Violins Jan 7, 2017 9:05 PM

    We all have had a great teacher or two in our lives that made a difference.

    I went to college in 1987 in Penn State, but out of main campus.

    Philly, no thank you.

    Vageling Ignatius Jan 7, 2017 7:11 PM

    Zero. Too busy parroting how zee Amerikansky decided to finally come. US history btw is not on the menu.

    Killdo Ignatius Jan 7, 2017 10:30 PM

    never in Yugoslavia back in 70s

    but they used to tell us Americans are stupid, socially disconnected, they don't care about their parents and are obsessed with money. Also that American education sucks

    FredFlintstone Jan 7, 2017 6:34 PM

    We have become a joke. Thanks Obama.

    runswithscissors FredFlintstone Jan 7, 2017 6:48 PM

    who is this "We"? The progressives and thier liberal media mouthpieces are the joke.

    anti-republocrat runswithscissors Jan 7, 2017 11:03 PM

    There's nothing "progressive" about Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama, just as there was nothing "conservative" about George W Bush or Mitt Romney. Millions of "leftists" stayed home on Nov. 8, which is why Hillary lost. Why are you trying to divide the American people?

    BarkingCat FredFlintstone Jan 7, 2017 8:10 PM

    It is Obama that is a joke.

    A very bad joke.....and almost over.

    GreatUncle FredFlintstone Jan 7, 2017 9:42 PM

    American people are not the joke, their leaders sadly are.

    You cannot make an honest vote without the truth, you allowed the liars to rule you like we did in Britain.

    That is why we ended up in this fucking mess ... the lie? HELLLLL FUCKINGGGGGGG NOOOOOOOOOO!

    The liars that decieve and rule over us.

    Allow the liar to live you get a stream of lies just like you got, kill the liar it ends no mouth churning out more lies.

    anti-republocrat FredFlintstone Jan 7, 2017 11:07 PM

    It's been 70 years coming. The CIA was created in the Truman Administration, though it was Eisenhower who let it get truly out of control under Allen Dulles.

    TheBigCluB Jan 7, 2017 6:35 PM

    Trump cant win it is written in the stars!

    TheBigCluB Jan 7, 2017 6:36 PM

    More beatings bitchez

    moral improving yet?

    nmewn Jan 7, 2017 6:35 PM

    1. So, when will Hillary and Debbie Wassername-Schultz be charged with interfering in "our democracy"? The emails were not forged, they were authentic.

    2. Scott Foval & Robert Creamer hiring mentally deficient homeless people to incite riots...any charges forthcoming...LowRenta? ;-)

    shovelhead nmewn Jan 7, 2017 6:39 PM

    Can you prosecute a duck?

    peddling-fiction shovelhead Jan 7, 2017 6:43 PM

    I have heard that duck liver makes good pate.

    Ralph Spoilsport shovelhead Jan 7, 2017 6:44 PM

    I don't know about a duck but you can apparently prosecute a ham sandwich.

    https://qz.com/303017/the-bizarre-tale-of-the-indict-a-ham-sandwich-judg...

    Bay of Pigs nmewn Jan 7, 2017 6:44 PM

    Indeed. And where is Eric Braverman? The entire CF, HRC campaign and DNC narrative is complete bullshit.

    nmewn Bay of Pigs Jan 7, 2017 7:01 PM

    At a time when "federal law enforcement" (such as it is...lol) is investigating the Clinton Foundation for what can only be called BRIBERY & CORRUPTION ...the MSM Fake News agencies are oddly silent on the fate of Eric Braverman aren't they?

    No op-eds. No "journalistic curiosity" standing behind their shredded shield of "freedom of the press". Saying. Nothing. Seeing. Nothing. Leading to moar lack of their journalistic integrity which they bemoaningly write about...endlessly...in op-eds. No Bernsteins & Woodwards in sight. Not even one.

    Complete...utter...group-think...silence.

    Why, what could it all possibly mean? ;-)

    Ralph Spoilsport nmewn Jan 7, 2017 7:19 PM

    I started paying attention to TV news in the early 60s and remember Walter Cronkite going on about the Viet Nam War and the family was all ears because my brother got drafted and I would be up in a few years. What Cronkite said we agreed with because we literally had skin in the game and we were still hurting from losses from the Korean War. Now they are saying the newscasters back then were full of shit and were shaping people's opinions. You never heard about any victories, just a lot of negativity and hopelessness accompanied by grisly but expertly edited war footage. No wonder people took drugs.

    Having said that, what we got now is a hundred times worse and your opinion of today's press and media is pretty much what I think too. Well said.

    Hulk nmewn Jan 7, 2017 6:58 PM

    Exactly. This Clownshow of Obama and the CIA is making me sick. Illustrates why our country is in such bad shape. Morons and an affirmative action Whitehouse and every other shit ass who rode the shortbus are running the country.

    Prosecute the real interferers and then let the War Crimes trials begin !!!

    [Jan 08, 2017] In polemics neoliberals like Trotskyites typically restort to dirty tricks

    Notable quotes:
    "... I have some friends who seem to hold out the fantasy that these corporations will forbear from "normalizing" Trump, presumably by turning their news broadcasts into some version of America Held Hostage for the duration of the Trump presidency. But this is fairly ridiculous. The audience for that kind of treatment of the administration is relatively small, and so that's not the treatment major new organizations are likely to produce. ..."
    "... talking to the progressive neoliberals here is a waste of time. Their heads are fully up their behinds. ..."
    "... Their competent, knowledgeable establishment candidate lost to a laughable reality TV star clown. They're still in shock. Waste of time. ..."
    "... Other tilts include the ad hominem, the red herring, false equivalent, the halo, and so forth. ..."
    "... Does exhibiting several of the top ten logic fallacies qualify for HFUTB? ..."
    Jan 06, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Dan Kervick -> EMichael... January 05, 2017 at 10:02 AM
    Well, that's capitalism. NBC News is a a division of Comcast, a large capitalist firm. They are in the business of making money by attracting consumer/viewer eyeballs to their output and out-competing their competitors for market share. Therefore they can always be expected to continually modify and redesign that output in the direction of perceived changes in audience tastes.

    I have some friends who seem to hold out the fantasy that these corporations will forbear from "normalizing" Trump, presumably by turning their news broadcasts into some version of America Held Hostage for the duration of the Trump presidency. But this is fairly ridiculous. The audience for that kind of treatment of the administration is relatively small, and so that's not the treatment major new organizations are likely to produce.

    Peter K. said in reply to Dan Kervick... , January 05, 2017 at 11:33 AM

    NBC's The Apprentice made Trump well-known to a large public. They've already profited off of him.

    But talking to the progressive neoliberals here is a waste of time. Their heads are fully up their behinds.

    Their competent, knowledgeable establishment candidate lost to a laughable reality TV star clown. They're still in shock. Waste of time.

    ilsm -> Peter K.... , -1
    I rather observe we have a lot intent on sorting* the evidence to support their beliefs+.

    Other tilts include the ad hominem, the red herring, false equivalent, the halo, and so forth.

    Does exhibiting several of the top ten logic fallacies qualify for HFUTB?

    * deduction is not reasoning

    + they might use thumb screws....... on the non believer

    [Jan 08, 2017] The value of RT for critical thinking

    Jan 07, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs ...

    January 07, 2017 at 03:20 PM

    (In future, such analysis will be outsourced.)

    Russians Ridicule US Charge That Kremlin
    Meddled to Help Trump http://nyti.ms/2i4mL60
    NYT - ANDREW HIGGINS - January 7, 2017

    ... Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, a state-funded television network that broadcasts in English, who is cited repeatedly in the report, posted her own message on Twitter scoffing at the American intelligence community's accusations.

    "Aaa, the CIA report is out! Laughter of the year! Intro to my show from 6 years ago is the main evidence of Russia's influence at US elections. This is not a joke!" she wrote.

    Even Russians who have been critical of their government voiced dismay at the United States intelligence agencies' account of an elaborate Russian conspiracy unsupported by solid evidence. ...

    EMichael -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 07, 2017 at 03:30 PM
    Yeah, I'll believe anything that appears in the Russian press.

    "Sitting next to Putin was RT's 36-year-old editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, a raven-haired former state television reporter who took over RT when she was 25. She is a feisty defender of her network, often lashing out against critics-and there are many-who say RT is little more than a weapon in a Russian information war against the West. Secretary of State John Kerry calls the network a "propaganda bullhorn" for Putin; it has been a subject at House and Senate foreign affairs hearings; and, in mid-March, two U.S. senators introduced the Countering Information Warfare Act, which is aimed in part at the network. Simonyan almost seems to enjoy battling RT's legions of critics. When a BuzzFeed reporter asked her in 2014 about alleged Kremlin influence, Simonyan unleashed a mocking reply. "[W]e just read the latest Kremlin press releases on camera. It is much more efficient that way," she wrote on RT's website, adding sardonically that the network "unleash[es] the KGB on anyone who dares to leave." And yet, Simonyan does in fact keep a yellow telephone with no dial pad on her desk, which Simonyan conceded to a Time reporter last year is a secure line to the Kremlin.

    In his remarks at the dinner, Putin showed obvious pride in the network, saying its efforts reminded him of the way hardworking Russian sailors tear the shirts off their backs. He most decidedly wasn't mentioning that hotline to the Kremlin on Simonyan's desk or Kerry's scathing dismissal of his "bullhorn." Far from it. "Your greatest strength is presenting information freely and independently," Putin told the crowd, who sipped wine in translucent chairs around white-clothed tables. "We do not control you. and we do not meddle," Putin said. He also boasted that RT has a reach of 700 million viewers, though he conceded they had no idea how many people actually watch; U.S. officials say the American viewership is much lower than RT's estimate of 8 million per week on cable systems like Comcast, Time Warner and Dish Network. (They are also skeptical of RT's claim to have a budget of only $250 million worldwide. In March, Republican Senator Rob Portman cited reports saying the cost of the network's Washington bureau alone could be $400 million, though RT adamantly denies that, and the original source of the report is unclear.)

    Putin did hint at RT's role in the political war Russia finds itself waging with the West, referring to the "complicated" state of global politics and "distortions of events," including in Ukraine and Syria, and saying that RT can describe "the true events" to a growing global audience yearning for unbiased facts.

    But Putin's comments are at odds with how the network operates in practice, according to interviews with people who closely watch or have worked at RT, and my own hours of monitoring the network and its website. One former RT staffer in Washington told me that she left her job, along with others who have also spoken to the media, after seeing the network's Moscow-based editors instruct journalists to make their coverage hew to the Moscow-approved political line. Such concerns erupted into full view a couple years ago when Russia marched into neighboring Ukraine to annex the Crimean Peninsula, leading a 28-year-old RT presenter named Liz Wahl to quit on-air, declaring, "I cannot be a part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin."

    Just under the surface is a bought-and-paid-for propaganda vehicle trying to nudge viewers toward Russia's side of the story at a time when Moscow has increasingly become an international pariah.

    Today, it's clear RT operates less as the free and independent news source Putin touted, and more as a vehicle that increasingly uses the available tools of the digital revolution-from viral videos ("Animated Genitals," "Lawnmower Explodes") to entertainingly snarky tweets-to promote Russia's message. It's positioning itself as a scrappy dissenter to the old Western media's monopoly on information, a theme Simonyan emphasized to me in a statement for this story. Americans, she said, watch RT for "stories, views and analysis they won't find in the mainstream media." As for criticism of RT's coverage of the United States and the 2016 campaign, she sounded a positively Trumpian theme, saying RT's critics are "mostly members of the U.S. political establishment, who are uncomfortable with losing the longtime monopoly on information."

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump-2016-russia-today-rt-kremlin-media-vladimir-putin-213833

    libezkova

    Politico missed the point.

    RT has value in present circumstance similar (but less) to what BBC and Voice of America has for Soviet people before that.

    The fact that it is propaganda outlet of Russian government does not change this simple fact.

    Soviet people also understood very well that the BBC and Voice of America are far from impartial and propagate the point of view of corresponding governments. That understood all to well that some information will be lies and disinformation and it provided by people who escape and hold grudges against the USSR. Still they wanted "the second opinion" so badly that this consideration overweighs all others. Even if in some cases they will be taken for a ride.

    I think a very similar situation exists now in the USA. Neoliberal MSM were disgusting during Presidential complain. As Trump supporter I simply could not read them.

    And it is not surprising for them that now the US MSM are not trusted and people want a second opinion on the MSM coverage of foreign and (increasingly) domestic events.

    RT fills this niche and that's probably partially explains its popularity.

    I personally seldom use it (and find some of its shows are quite annoying) as blogs and alternative media such as therealnews.com unz.com, antiwar.com, counterpunch.org, etc can fill the same role. I would like them to give Snowden a role of an independent security commentator. He probably understands the current McCarthyism witch hunt better then others. And he has real technical knowledge necessary for covering those events.

    But some articles it published are good or even excellent and provide a decent insight into the events in question.

    [Jan 08, 2017] Will Trump presidency ever be considered legitimate?

    Jan 08, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Fred C. Dobbs : January 07, 2017 at 10:55 AM

    Paul Krugman✔ @paulkrugman

    Seriously: how will this presidency ever be considered
    legitimate? And what happens to America when it isn't?

    12:37 PM - 7 Jan 2017

    NYT headline, Jan 7

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1ldCgzUsAAftK0.jpg

    Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to
    Aid Trump, Report Finds http://nyti.ms/2jbXCV1
    NYT - MICHAEL D. SHEAR and DAVID E. SANGER - Jan 6

    WASHINGTON - President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a vast cyberattack aimed at denying Hillary Clinton the presidency and installing Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office, the nation's top intelligence agencies said in an extraordinary report they delivered on Friday to Mr. Trump.

    The officials presented their unanimous conclusions to Mr. Trump in a two-hour briefing at Trump Tower in New York that brought the leaders of America's intelligence agencies face to face with their most vocal skeptic, the president-elect, who has repeatedly cast doubt on Russia's role. The meeting came just two weeks before Mr. Trump's inauguration and was underway even as the electoral votes from his victory were being formally counted in a joint session of Congress.

    Soon after leaving the meeting, intelligence officials released the declassified, damning report that described the sophisticated cybercampaign as part of a continuing Russian effort to weaken the United States government and its democratic institutions. The report - a virtually unheard-of, real-time revelation by the American intelligence agencies that undermined the legitimacy of the president who is about to direct them - made the case that Mr. Trump was the favored candidate of Mr. Putin.

    (Intelligence Report on Russian
    Hacking http://nyti.ms/2i1xVbI )

    The Russian leader, the report said, sought to denigrate Mrs. Clinton, and the report detailed what the officials had revealed to President Obama a day earlier: Mr. Trump's victory followed a complicated, multipart cyberinformation attack whose goal had evolved to help the Republican win.

    The 25-page report did not conclude that Russian involvement tipped the election to Mr. Trump.

    The public report lacked the evidence that intelligence officials said was included in a classified version, which they described as information on the sources and methods used to collect the information about Mr. Putin and his associates. Those would include intercepts of conversations and the harvesting of computer data from "implants" that the United States and its allies have put in Russian computer networks. ...

    Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump,
    Report Finds http://nyti.ms/2jbXCV1 Reply Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 10:55 AM Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 07, 2017 at 11:09 AM

    Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman

    Remember, Trump's subservience
    to Putin has been obvious all along

    11:18 AM - 7 Jan 2017

    https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/817767303911788544

    Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate http://nyti.ms/29PPyc2
    NYT - Paul Krugman - JULY 22, 2016

    If elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin's man in the White House? This should be a ludicrous, outrageous question. After all, he must be a patriot - he even wears hats promising to make America great again.

    But we're talking about a ludicrous, outrageous candidate. And the Trump campaign's recent behavior has quite a few foreign policy experts wondering just what kind of hold Mr. Putin has over the Republican nominee, and whether that influence will continue if he wins.

    I'm not talking about merely admiring Mr. Putin's performance - being impressed by the de facto dictator's "strength," and wanting to emulate his actions. I am, instead, talking about indications that Mr. Trump would, in office, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy, at the expense of America's allies and her own self-interest.

    That's not to deny that Mr. Trump does, indeed, admire Mr. Putin. On the contrary, he has repeatedly praised the Russian strongman, often in extravagant terms. For example, when Mr. Putin published an article attacking American exceptionalism, Mr. Trump called it a "masterpiece."

    But admiration for Putinism isn't unusual in Mr. Trump's party. Well before the Trump candidacy, Putin envy on the right was already widespread.

    For one thing, Mr. Putin is someone who doesn't worry about little things like international law when he decides to invade a country. He's "what you call a leader," declared Rudy Giuliani after Russia invaded Ukraine. ...

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 07, 2017 at 11:14 AM
    'when Mr. Putin published an article attacking American exceptionalism, Mr. Trump called it a "masterpiece."'

    Vladimir Putin has a plan for destroying
    the West-and it looks a lot like Donald Trump
    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/07/vladimir_putin_has_a_plan_for_destroying_the_west_and_it_looks_a_lot_like.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top via @slate

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 07, 2017 at 11:21 AM
    Slate: Trump's devotion to the Russian president has been portrayed as buffoonish enthusiasm for a fellow macho strongman. But Trump's statements of praise amount to something closer to slavish devotion. In 2007, he praised Putin for "rebuilding Russia." A year later he added, "He does his work well. Much better than our Bush." When Putin ripped American exceptionalism in a New York Times op-ed in 2013, Trump called it "a masterpiece."

    What Putin Has to Say to Americans
    About Syria http://nyti.ms/1eFFMCQ
    NYT - VLADIMIR V. PUTIN - SEPT. 11, 2013

    Donald J. Trump✔ @realDonaldTrump

    Putin's letter is a masterpiece for Russia and a disaster for the U.S. He is lecturing to our President.Never has our Country looked to weak

    6:26 AM - 12 Sep 2013

    https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/378102285001576448

    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 07, 2017 at 11:24 AM
    Not going to war with Putin might hurt all of their feelings! Maybe the pocketbook of war profiteers.

    Duality: Clinton had no animus in breaking the law concerning lost public records and mishandling security information, but Putin is evil!

    What they gave Trump is an 'assessment', appeal to authority all Krugman wants.

    Same kind of 'assessment' that gave you Iraq.

    The main plea coming from the media, war corporatists and the distraught is: we cannot ignore the spook's assessments.

    Neolibs are different than their equals in the GOP because they care about the feelings of war mongers and cannot keep them from their wars of profit.

    Fred C. Dobbs -> ilsm... , January 07, 2017 at 03:32 PM
    You may have been right in thinking that
    the need to seem hawkish when chasing the
    presidency is no longer essential, at least
    with regard to Russia.

    Now I have secretly believed all along that
    US and them have been 2 sides of the same coin,
    brash, arrogant, yada yada. Perhaps we can do
    some bizness together, yes?

    Maybe they could use a half-decent missile
    defense system, priced to sell.

    DeDude -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 07, 2017 at 11:43 AM
    I don't think that you will ever find that a broad consensus emerge that an elected candidate is legitimate.

    Bill Clinton was attacked from day one and considered illegitimate by the right because their (two) candidates had gotten more votes.

    Bush II was considered illegitimate by the left because he was appointed by a right wing supreme court that refused to wait and actually count the votes in Florida.

    Obama was considered illegitimate by the right because of birth certificates (yes sometimes they just make up shtuff to allow themselves to believe) - and later because he used and expanded the executive powers Bush had pushed at the end.

    Ultimately a substantial number of people from the opposite side of the political spectrum will question the legitimacy of the elected president, whether there are legitimate questions or not. The consequences for America is what we have lived with since 1992; a super-charged partisanship that is getting worse not better.

    Peter K. -> DeDude... , January 07, 2017 at 12:22 PM
    Obama has high approval ratings as he leaves office, unlike Hillary Clinton or Trump who were two of the most unpopular candidates in history.
    Fred C. Dobbs -> DeDude... , January 07, 2017 at 12:45 PM
    Legitimacy as suggested by election results:

    Obama - 2008:
    52.9% of the popular vote, 365 electoral votes
    whereas McCain got 45.7% & 173 ev; 58.2% turnout

    Bush Sr - 1988:
    53.4% & 426 ev vs. Dukakis with 45.6% & 111 ev;
    50.2% turnout

    Reagan, 2nd term - 1984:
    58.8% & 525 ev vs 40.6% & 13 ev for Mondale; 53.3% turnout

    Trump - 2016:
    46% of the popular vote, 304 electoral votes
    vs 48% & 227 ev for Clinton; 55.3% turnout.

    All were 'legitimate' - putative Russian influence
    aside, arguably. 'Mandates' can be asserted
    only for the first three, IMO. Possibly excepting
    Bush, due to low turnout.

    Winning the electoral vote while losing the
    popular vote makes this one a 'squeaker'.

    Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 07, 2017 at 03:20 PM
    (In future, such analysis will be outsourced.)

    Russians Ridicule US Charge That Kremlin
    Meddled to Help Trump http://nyti.ms/2i4mL60
    NYT - ANDREW HIGGINS - January 7, 2017

    ... Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, a state-funded television network that broadcasts in English, who is cited repeatedly in the report, posted her own message on Twitter scoffing at the American intelligence community's accusations.

    "Aaa, the CIA report is out! Laughter of the year! Intro to my show from 6 years ago is the main evidence of Russia's influence at US elections. This is not a joke!" she wrote.

    Even Russians who have been critical of their government voiced dismay at the United States intelligence agencies' account of an elaborate Russian conspiracy unsupported by solid evidence. ...

    EMichael -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
    Yeah, I'll believe anything that appears in the Russian press.

    "Sitting next to Putin was RT's 36-year-old editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, a raven-haired former state television reporter who took over RT when she was 25. She is a feisty defender of her network, often lashing out against critics-and there are many-who say RT is little more than a weapon in a Russian information war against the West. Secretary of State John Kerry calls the network a "propaganda bullhorn" for Putin; it has been a subject at House and Senate foreign affairs hearings; and, in mid-March, two U.S. senators introduced the Countering Information Warfare Act, which is aimed in part at the network. Simonyan almost seems to enjoy battling RT's legions of critics. When a BuzzFeed reporter asked her in 2014 about alleged Kremlin influence, Simonyan unleashed a mocking reply. "[W]e just read the latest Kremlin press releases on camera. It is much more efficient that way," she wrote on RT's website, adding sardonically that the network "unleash[es] the KGB on anyone who dares to leave." And yet, Simonyan does in fact keep a yellow telephone with no dial pad on her desk, which Simonyan conceded to a Time reporter last year is a secure line to the Kremlin.

    In his remarks at the dinner, Putin showed obvious pride in the network, saying its efforts reminded him of the way hardworking Russian sailors tear the shirts off their backs. He most decidedly wasn't mentioning that hotline to the Kremlin on Simonyan's desk or Kerry's scathing dismissal of his "bullhorn." Far from it. "Your greatest strength is presenting information freely and independently," Putin told the crowd, who sipped wine in translucent chairs around white-clothed tables. "We do not control you. and we do not meddle," Putin said. He also boasted that RT has a reach of 700 million viewers, though he conceded they had no idea how many people actually watch; U.S. officials say the American viewership is much lower than RT's estimate of 8 million per week on cable systems like Comcast, Time Warner and Dish Network. (They are also skeptical of RT's claim to have a budget of only $250 million worldwide. In March, Republican Senator Rob Portman cited reports saying the cost of the network's Washington bureau alone could be $400 million, though RT adamantly denies that, and the original source of the report is unclear.)

    Putin did hint at RT's role in the political war Russia finds itself waging with the West, referring to the "complicated" state of global politics and "distortions of events," including in Ukraine and Syria, and saying that RT can describe "the true events" to a growing global audience yearning for unbiased facts.

    But Putin's comments are at odds with how the network operates in practice, according to interviews with people who closely watch or have worked at RT, and my own hours of monitoring the network and its website. One former RT staffer in Washington told me that she left her job, along with others who have also spoken to the media, after seeing the network's Moscow-based editors instruct journalists to make their coverage hew to the Moscow-approved political line. Such concerns erupted into full view a couple years ago when Russia marched into neighboring Ukraine to annex the Crimean Peninsula, leading a 28-year-old RT presenter named Liz Wahl to quit on-air, declaring, "I cannot be a part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin."

    Just under the surface is a bought-and-paid-for propaganda vehicle trying to nudge viewers toward Russia's side of the story at a time when Moscow has increasingly become an international pariah.

    Today, it's clear RT operates less as the free and independent news source Putin touted, and more as a vehicle that increasingly uses the available tools of the digital revolution-from viral videos ("Animated Genitals," "Lawnmower Explodes") to entertainingly snarky tweets-to promote Russia's message. It's positioning itself as a scrappy dissenter to the old Western media's monopoly on information, a theme Simonyan emphasized to me in a statement for this story. Americans, she said, watch RT for "stories, views and analysis they won't find in the mainstream media." As for criticism of RT's coverage of the United States and the 2016 campaign, she sounded a positively Trumpian theme, saying RT's critics are "mostly members of the U.S. political establishment, who are uncomfortable with losing the longtime monopoly on information."

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump-2016-russia-today-rt-kremlin-media-vladimir-putin-213833

    [Jan 08, 2017] The Intercept has been very good on this whole Russian hacking issue.

    Notable quotes:
    "... The Intercept has been very good on this whole Russian hacking issue. They are not denying the claims of the intelligence agencies (in fact, their opinion is that they are probably right). But they keep pointing out that the agencies' unclassified reports keep reaching the same conclusions but provide flimsy or no evidence. ..."
    "... Their attack on the Post on the PropOrNot misinformation is similar. They argue that many papers and journalists echo someone's opinion without any corroborating facts. As they point out, this is particularly insidious when the perpetrator is a widely quoted source like the Post; soon, the misinformation becomes a "fact" that "everyone knows". Retractions are usually late, small, and cannot undo the damage. ..."
    Jan 08, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Julio -> JF... , January 07, 2017 at 03:43 PM
    The Intercept has been very good on this whole Russian hacking issue. They are not denying the claims of the intelligence agencies (in fact, their opinion is that they are probably right). But they keep pointing out that the agencies' unclassified reports keep reaching the same conclusions but provide flimsy or no evidence.

    So, the public is being asked to take the agencies on faith. The Intercept says that given the agencies' record, journalists should at least point this out, and not treat these allegations as settled fact.

    Their attack on the Post on the PropOrNot misinformation is similar. They argue that many papers and journalists echo someone's opinion without any corroborating facts. As they point out, this is particularly insidious when the perpetrator is a widely quoted source like the Post; soon, the misinformation becomes a "fact" that "everyone knows". Retractions are usually late, small, and cannot undo the damage.

    EMichael -> Julio ... , January 07, 2017 at 04:15 PM
    I do not disagree with this at all. We both realize there is a limit to the info that can be released, but that should not make us comfortable at this point.

    I will point out two things.

    First, the FBI is on line with the consensus. Comey's actions from this summer, when he went way off the reservation to scold Clinton, to the clusterf!ck before the election ( I believe that is a clear violation of the Hatch Act) shows clearly that the FBI was no impartial.

    Second, the "agencies' record" that is oft mentioned, seems to place the blame on the Iraq war on those agencies. As I remember (and I fought against people thinking bush's actions were justified back then), there was no such consensus among the intelligence community on the existence of WMDs. Rather, there was strong doubts in some of the groups.

    None of that means this consensus is correct, but it does seem to be totally agreed to by all of the community.

    This attack on the Intel community itself, with absolutely no contra info from outside the community (which certainly existed regarding WMD info before Iraq) reminds me of people laying blame on Clinton for invading Iraq. That was not her call, but somehow she bears the blame with some people.

    Most importantly, this is not about who the POTUS will be. That is a fact. ANd I have seen no calls at all to cancel the results of the election(nor should there be).

    At the same time, this issue needs to be investigated thoroughly, and if the allegations are true, Russia needs to be punished for their actions.(oh, and I am not talking about military actions).

    If true, Putin should be sanctioned for another ten years(or until he leaves) and we should take actions against those who do not take actions against him. I mean, it is not like there is not prior offenses by him in this area. He is a threat to the stability of countries in eastern europe, the middle east, europe, and now the US.


    ilsm -> EMichael... , January 07, 2017 at 01:00 PM
    Shorter: lined up your fallacies to support what? Regime change, war in Europe, nuclear holocaust....

    longer:

    Blood on Putin's hands! He is a pacifist compared to Obama, even considering his military spends less than 7% what the US wastes to kill people all over the world.

    It is only in the past 8 years that the neocon, faux democrat, neolibs have used NATO to threaten regime change on Russia.

    Poland and Hungary "joined" NATO when?*

    All the blood on Obama's hands with the instigation of the neocon Clinton's gang! Who is evil, certainly not the exceptional Obama, the fascists in Ukraine nor the [neocons of the] CIA trained jihadi proxies.

    Putin rich, same as the Clintons rising from taking White House flat wear in 2001. Besides CIA says Putin is a dot com genius running hacks and all.......

    *1997 Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary, 1999 was the Baltic states and several other "eastern" nations, the last "enlargement" #6 Albania [got their county of Kosovo from NATO in 1997] and Croatia was 2009.

    So much for you.

    [Jan 08, 2017] Krugman and Haffintonpost are blowing the DNC hack all out of proportion. The FBI warned the incompetents at the DNC about the hackers months before and they did nothing about it.

    Jan 08, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Jay : January 07, 2017 at 08:19 AM , 2017 at 08:19 AM
    An accurate description...

    https://theintercept.com/2017/01/06/underwhelming-intel-report-shows-need-for-congressional-investigation-of-dnc-hack/

    Pure propaganda...
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/intelligence-report-russia-hack-election_us_586fed0fe4b02b5f8588b94a

    Jay -> Jay... , January 07, 2017 at 08:37 AM
    We can see why the left wanted Clinton elected. A Clinton presidency could lead to their desired war with Russia (Putin). The left is inflamed that Trump won't act so quick on such war-mongering, although there is other war-mongering he will likely engage in (Middle East).

    If we are going to engage in regime change could we at least pick a dictator that is economically starving their population (Maduro)?

    Pinkybum -> Jay... , January 07, 2017 at 11:25 AM
    "A Clinton presidency could lead to their desired war with Russia (Putin)."

    And how would that happen exactly?

    EMichael -> Pinkybum... , January 07, 2017 at 11:38 AM
    That wasn't my question.

    Mine was, who on the left wants a war with Russia?

    Peter K. -> EMichael... , -1
    The people who are blowing the DNC hack all out of proportion.

    The FBI warned the incompetents at the DNC about the hackers months before and they did nothing about it.

    Hillary's private email server was another classic f up.

    In 2008 Krugman was all down on Obama and said Hillary was the better candidate.

    Obama got through 8 years without a major scandal. Hillary couldn't get through the election without one.

    Funny how wrong Krugman is when it comes to politics.

    [Jan 08, 2017] How worse than the neocon neolib of the past 8 years can Trump be?

    Jan 04, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    ilsm -> Peter K.... , -1
    How worse than the neocon neolib of the past 8 years can Trump be?

    If the US president has done well the past 30 the standards need adjustment.

    How many dead for the prosperity of the empire and its satellites?

    Libezkova -> ilsm... , January 03, 2017 at 10:08 PM
    Exactly --

    Brainwashed part of commentariat here does not understand that the fact the USA escaped the danger to be ruled by Clinton mafia is a blessing, not a curse. Trump does not matter in this respect. The fact of escape matters a lot.

    None of them would ever agree that the benefits to be ruled by a 69 years old health handicapped (probably Parkinson stage II) neocon warmonger for the USA population might be highly questionable.

    More so then for Trump, who also represents some dangers. That's for sure.

    And there are quite a few such people here who uncritically repeat neoliberal propaganda: The more educated they are, the more gullible and brainwashed ( if not plain vanilla evil ) they might be in political issues. Probably a side effect of overspecialization.

    Take for example a group of people here who claim that Putin is a kleptocrat. If so he obviously should put his money in Western banks like any self-respecting kleptocrat ;-). But nobody has found such a bank. And that includes a dozen of the USA intelligence agencies, which so easily determined that government connected Russian hackers penetrated DNC stole emails and submitted them to Wikileaks to influence the USA presidential election.

    The fact that bank with his billions was never found, makes it more plausible that he is just a moderate Russian nationalist (with some neoliberal tendencies -- he brought Russia into WTO) and not a kleptocrat like neoliberal propaganda machine in the USA and GB proclaim.

    But tell them that Hillary is a classic kleptocrat (and she clearly is taking bribes, sorry donations and speaking fees, left and right) and they will do such a hissy fit that you will regret that you touched this theme.

    As for hacking hysteria tell them that it looks more and more plausible that some part of US elite now is definitely interested in reviving "Red scare" to improve manageability and social stability of neoliberal society, which with the election of Trump got into the second crisis after 2008, with the population no longer believing neoliberal myths and you will be declared Putin stooge (Putin stooge for some commenters here is any person with whom they disagree; how convenient).

    They are also very sensitive to political correctness rules. Just mention Building 7 and your instantly become 9/11 truther. But, at the same time, most of them never watched 30 sec video of building 7 collapse ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mamvq7LWqRU ) and do not understand elementary physics.

    [Jan 07, 2017] Can Trump and Putin Avert Cold War II

    Notable quotes:
    "... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." ..."
    "... It is salutary that Buchanan, the cofounder of the American Conservative magazine, is in essential agreement with Steve Cohen, a senior editor of The Nation magazine, for the necessity for a Trump/Putin political approachment! ..."
    "... This is another excellent article. Obviously, survival beats absurd confrontation on behalf of jihadi thugs, which has become the democratic program since they jumped the shark a few years ago. Even the ACLU has been publishing material from that proven islamofascist Khizr Khan, Clinton's pet jihadi, defending the Iraq war as based on the defense of the concept of the rule of law. As Buchanan indicates, the Russians are supporting the civilized element in Syria, for instance, and it was "western" influence which broke up the Ukraine and the Russians are only defending their own people in Ukraine, South Ossetia and elsewhere. Meanwhile, even the Washington Post has had to admit that the rumors of Russian influence on the election voting are false. Soon the canard that the Russians released DNC and Podesta documents will also be revealed as false. This should totally discredit all of those involved, and their motives should be fully investigated. ..."
    "... Russia, it is said, is supporting right-wing and anti-EU parties. But has not our National Endowment for Democracy backed regime change in the Balkans as well as in former Soviet republics? ..."
    "... We appear to be denouncing Putin for what we did first. ..."
    "... "When I returned to Russia in 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped. Admittedly, this was caused not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda. ..."
    "... The real bad guy is borderless Rothschild monetarism. Those greedy thugs have no loyalty to any place on the Earth. They are working to make a cashless world where all transactions must flow through them. They want to skim every human interaction that involves money. It will be a world were dollars and pounds are meaningless. Everyone will be churned into an indebted zombie. ..."
    "... The merely educated (the obrazovanshchina) are the perfect product of indoctrination. They constitute the majority of the so-called educated people. The ones who manage to transcend it face the uphill battle because at first they must to unlearn what they were taught and since usually it is done not in a formal setting they are often a prey of silly ideas that may end up with being truly deplorable. I do not exclude the possibility that the silly ideas are planted there on purpose (like Cass Sustein infiltration) to distract them and send them astray, so their awakening amounts to nil. ..."
    Jan 04, 2017 | www.unz.com
    Pat Buchanan In retaliation for the hacking of John Podesta and the DNC, Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and ordered closure of their country houses on Long Island and Maryland's Eastern shore.

    Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that 35 U.S. diplomats would be expelled. But Vladimir Putin stepped in, declined to retaliate at all, and invited the U.S. diplomats in Moscow and their children to the Christmas and New Year's party at the Kremlin.

    "A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger," reads Proverbs 15:1. "Great move," tweeted President-elect Trump, "I always knew he was very smart!"

    Among our Russophobes, one can almost hear the gnashing of teeth.

    Clearly, Putin believes the Trump presidency offers Russia the prospect of a better relationship with the United States. He appears to want this, and most Americans seem to want the same. After all, Hillary Clinton, who accused Trump of being "Putin's puppet," lost.

    Is then a Cold War II between Russia and the U.S. avoidable?

    That question raises several others.

    Who is more responsible for both great powers having reached this level of animosity and acrimony, 25 years after Ronald Reagan walked arm-in-arm with Mikhail Gorbachev through Red Square? And what are the causes of the emerging Cold War II?

    Comes the retort: Putin has put nuclear-capable missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave between Poland and Lithuania.

    True, but who began this escalation?

    George W. Bush was the one who trashed Richard Nixon's ABM Treaty and Obama put anti-missile missiles in Poland. After invading Iraq, George W. Bush moved NATO into the Baltic States in violation of a commitment given to Gorbachev by his father to not move NATO into Eastern Europe if the Red Army withdrew.

    Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, says John McCain.

    Russia did, after Georgia invaded its breakaway province of South Ossetia and killed Russian peacekeepers. Putin threw the Georgians out, occupied part of Georgia, and then withdrew.

    Russia, it is said, has supported Syria's Bashar Assad, bombed U.S.-backed rebels and participated in the Aleppo slaughter.

    But who started this horrific civil war in Syria?

    Was it not our Gulf allies, Turkey, and ourselves by backing an insurgency against a regime that had been Russia's ally for decades and hosts Russia's only naval base in the Mediterranean?

    Did we not exercise the same right of assisting a beleaguered ally when we sent 500,000 troops to aid South Vietnam against a Viet Cong insurgency supported by Hanoi, Beijing and Moscow?

    That's what allies do.

    The unanswered question: Why did we support the overthrow of Assad when the likely successor regime would have been Islamist and murderously hostile toward Syria's Christians?

    Russia, we are told, committed aggression against Ukraine by invading Crimea.

    But Russia did not invade Crimea. To secure their Black Sea naval base, Russia executed a bloodless coup, but only after the U.S. backed the overthrow of the pro-Russian elected government in Kiev.

    Crimea had belonged to Moscow from the time of Catherine the Great in the 18th century, and the Russia-Ukraine relationship dates back to before the Crusades. When did this become a vital interest of the USA?

    As for Putin's backing of secessionists in Donetsk and Luhansk, he is standing by kinfolk left behind when his country broke apart. Russians live in many of the 14 former Soviet republics that are now independent nations.

    Has Putin no right to be concerned about his lost countrymen?

    Unlike America's elites, Putin is an ethnonationalist in a time when tribalism is shoving aside transnationalism as the force of the future.

    Russia, it is said, is supporting right-wing and anti-EU parties. But has not our National Endowment for Democracy backed regime change in the Balkans as well as in former Soviet republics?

    We appear to be denouncing Putin for what we did first.

    Moreover, the populist, nationalist, anti-EU and secessionist parties in Europe have arisen on their own and are advancing through free elections.

    Sovereignty, independence, a restoration of national identity, all appear to be more important to these parties than what they regard as an excessively supervised existence in the soft-dictatorship of the EU.

    In the Cold War between Communism and capitalism, the single-party dictatorship and the free society, we prevailed.

    But in the new struggle we are in, the ethnonational state seems ascendant over the multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial, multilingual "universal nation" whose avatar is Barack Obama.

    Putin does not seek to destroy or conquer us or Europe. He wants Russia, and her interests, and her rights as a great power to be respected.

    He is not mucking around in our front yard; we are in his.

    The worst mistake President Trump could make would be to let the Russophobes grab the wheel and steer us into another Cold War that could be as costly as the first, and might not end as peacefully.

    Reagan's outstretched hand to Gorbachev worked. Trump has nothing to lose by extending his to Vladimir Putin, and much perhaps to win.

    Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority."

    Copyright 2016 Creators.com.

    Carlton Meyer says: • Website Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 5:37 am GMT • 200 Words

    Since 97% of Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia in 2014 when Kiev was in chaos after a CIA funded coup, I would not refer to its Russian reannexation as a silent coup. The vote was watched by international observers and nearly all ethnic Russians, who are the majority in Crimea voted to rejoin, as well as most ethnic Ukrainians there.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014

    Russian forces didn't invade Crimea since 20,000 troops were based there as they had been for a century. For those who think NATO's promise not to expand and move forces eastward was just a verbal agreement, read about the 2009 "Founding Act" that Obama's warmongers trashed.

    http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm

    I often hear Americans say that "Putin is a thug". I ask if they've ever met him, or read any of his articles. I ask if they speak Russian or have lived there recently. They are stunned at such questions, and are unable to explain why they think he is a "thug". They cannot understand they have been fooled by propaganda, especially if they consider themselves "educated."

    • Agree: Mao Cheng Ji , Realist , Randal , Che Guava , jacques sheete • Replies:

    @Mao Cheng Ji

    For those who think NATO's promise not to expand and move forces eastward was just a verbal agreement
    But what it was a verbal agreement - how is that a reason for breaking it? ,

    @MEexpert

    I often hear Americans say that "Putin is a thug". I ask if they've ever met him, or read any of his articles. I ask if they speak Russian or have lived there recently. They are stunned at such questions, and are unable to explain why they think he is a "thug". They cannot understand they have been fooled by propaganda, especially if they consider themselves "educated."
    That is the key word "educated." These people have been educated from the neocon school of international studies. They get daily lessons from New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and FOX news. They are too lazy to do some research and broaden their knowledge. They are used to learning things from the "For Dummies" series of books which the above publication represent. ,

    @Cagey Beast Re: Putin being a "thug".

    I wonder too how people can believe Putin is a thug and tyrant when we can all view dozens of hours of Putin interacting with the Russia public and press, anytime we choose to, via the web? Just look at his marathon press conferences and ask oneself if this is a room full of cowed and frightened people and whether Putin acts like a bully or a good sport throughout? ,

    @CanSpeccy Re: Educated Americans who think Putin is a thug.

    Higher Education:

    [A] political racket whereby Democrats fork endless cash to tuition extortionists, and lousy scholars impart insane ideas to debt-strapped students who are made dysfunctional citizens in the process.

    Source: Reply

    Pat Buchanan is wise and prophetic like few other political observers. He deserves a special place among Trump's inner circle. If not as Secretary of State, Pat should be given the position of National Security Advisor.

    Trump's team would benefit greatly by Buchanan's judgement and experience, as would our nation.

    • Agree: Realist • Replies: @sturbain Agree wholeheartedly. Trump should take advantage of Pat's remarkable historical knowledge and wisdom.
    Dan Hayes says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 6:41 am GMT

    It is salutary that Buchanan, the cofounder of the American Conservative magazine, is in essential agreement with Steve Cohen, a senior editor of The Nation magazine, for the necessity for a Trump/Putin political approachment!

    exiled off mainstreet says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 6:46 am GMT • 200 Words

    This is another excellent article. Obviously, survival beats absurd confrontation on behalf of jihadi thugs, which has become the democratic program since they jumped the shark a few years ago. Even the ACLU has been publishing material from that proven islamofascist Khizr Khan, Clinton's pet jihadi, defending the Iraq war as based on the defense of the concept of the rule of law. As Buchanan indicates, the Russians are supporting the civilized element in Syria, for instance, and it was "western" influence which broke up the Ukraine and the Russians are only defending their own people in Ukraine, South Ossetia and elsewhere. Meanwhile, even the Washington Post has had to admit that the rumors of Russian influence on the election voting are false. Soon the canard that the Russians released DNC and Podesta documents will also be revealed as false. This should totally discredit all of those involved, and their motives should be fully investigated.

    Mao Cheng Ji says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 7:11 am GMT

    @Carlton Meyer Since 97% of Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia in 2014 when Kiev was in chaos after a CIA funded coup, I would not refer to its Russian reannexation as a silent coup. The vote was watched by international observers and nearly all ethnic Russians, who are the majority in Crimea voted to rejoin, as well as most ethnic Ukrainians there.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014

    Russian forces didn't invade Crimea since 20,000 troops were based there as they had been for a century. For those who think NATO's promise not to expand and move forces eastward was just a verbal agreement, read about the 2009 "Founding Act" that Obama's warmongers trashed.

    http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm

    I often hear Americans say that "Putin is a thug". I ask if they've ever met him, or read any of his articles. I ask if they speak Russian or have lived there recently. They are stunned at such questions, and are unable to explain why they think he is a "thug". They cannot understand they have been fooled by propaganda, especially if they consider themselves "educated."

    For those who think NATO's promise not to expand and move forces eastward was just a verbal agreement

    But what it was a verbal agreement – how is that a reason for breaking it?

    • Replies: @Avery {But what (if) it was a verbal agreement – how is that a reason for breaking it?}

    Agree.

    At that State level of actors, a verbal agreement is also a contract.
    But the link to a written contract provided by [Carlton Meyer] should shut down any illogical arguments or objections about the verbal contract that Neocon warmongers throw out to justify their aggression against Russia.

    MEexpert says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 7:45 am GMT • 100 Words

    @Carlton Meyer Since 97% of Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia in 2014 when Kiev was in chaos after a CIA funded coup, I would not refer to its Russian reannexation as a silent coup. The vote was watched by international observers and nearly all ethnic Russians, who are the majority in Crimea voted to rejoin, as well as most ethnic Ukrainians there.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014

    Russian forces didn't invade Crimea since 20,000 troops were based there as they had been for a century. For those who think NATO's promise not to expand and move forces eastward was just a verbal agreement, read about the 2009 "Founding Act" that Obama's warmongers trashed.

    http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm

    I often hear Americans say that "Putin is a thug". I ask if they've ever met him, or read any of his articles. I ask if they speak Russian or have lived there recently. They are stunned at such questions, and are unable to explain why they think he is a "thug". They cannot understand they have been fooled by propaganda, especially if they consider themselves "educated."

    I often hear Americans say that "Putin is a thug". I ask if they've ever met him, or read any of his articles. I ask if they speak Russian or have lived there recently. They are stunned at such questions, and are unable to explain why they think he is a "thug". They cannot understand they have been fooled by propaganda, especially if they consider themselves "educated."

    That is the key word "educated." These people have been educated from the neocon school of international studies. They get daily lessons from New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and FOX news. They are too lazy to do some research and broaden their knowledge. They are used to learning things from the "For Dummies" series of books which the above publication represent.

    • Replies: @jacques sheete
    That is the key word "educated."
    I agree with your comments as well as the original one and would like to emphasize that the key word is not only "educated," but that the word is in quotes.

    They are not one bit educated in the true sense. They are morons; blockhead adolescents at best. Spoiled, petulant, supercilious, self absorbed one-trick ponies with no ability to think outside the box if they have any ability to think at all.

    They are too lazy to do some research and broaden their knowledge.
    Indeed. Too lazy and too arrogant. Typical brats.

    Thank goodness Putin consistently acts like an adult.

    Randal says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 9:22 am GMT • 400 Words

    Russia, it is said, is supporting right-wing and anti-EU parties. But has not our National Endowment for Democracy backed regime change in the Balkans as well as in former Soviet republics?

    We appear to be denouncing Putin for what we did first.

    Indeed, though comparing Russia's trivial efforts in this direction with the untold billions poured into "democracy promotion" (ie subversion) by the US and its various proxies, to say nothing of direct and indirect military action, is inherently absurd.

    The irony is that US sphere policy created the very political climate in Russia that ultimately ensured the democratic mandate and imperative for the Russian resistance we have seen in the past decade.

    In the words of Solzhenitsyn in 2007:

    "When I returned to Russia in 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped. Admittedly, this was caused not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda.

    This mood started changing with the cruel NATO bombings of Serbia. It's fair to say that all layers of Russian society were deeply and indelibly shocked by those bombings. The situation then became worse when NATO started to spread its influence and draw the ex-Soviet republics into its structure. This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc.

    So, the perception of the West as mostly a "knight of democracy" has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals."

    SPIEGEL Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn

    And here is what Kissinger said about the Kosovo war:

    "The rejection of long-range strategy explains how it was possible to slide into the Kosovo conflict without adequate consideration of its implications

    The transformation of the NATO alliance from a defensive military grouping to an institution prepared to impose its values by force undercut repeated American and allied assurances that Russia had nothing to fear from NATO expansion."

    Anonymous says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 10:24 am GMT

    Russians live in many of the 14 former Soviet republics that are now independent nations.

    They should go back to Russia, like when the French left Algeria. Instead of using these Russians to destabilize non-Russian countries.

    • Replies: @Cagey Beast That may be fair in the case of the Baltic states but what about Ukraine? The ethnic Russians of the south and east were included in modern Ukraine thanks to lines drawn on the map by Lenin and Stalin. If anything, the militant Ukrainian nationalist regions of the far west should go ahead and separate from the rest of what's now Ukraine and let the rest of the country can get along with Russia. , @Verymuchalive When the USSR broke up, it broke up along the borders decided by the Bolsheviks mainly in the period 1922-24. The top Bolsheviks were overwhelmingly non-Russian ( Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky etc ) and anti-Russian. As punishment, they put many millions of ethnic Russians into the administrative areas of other ethnic groups in a policy of internal divide and rule. As late as 1954, Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Ukrainian, arbitrarily transferred Crimea from Russia to the Ukraine. Crimea had been Russian since 1783.

    As a result of this malicious carve-up, many millions of ethnic Russians find themselves outside the borders of Russia. Many of these areas were regarded as integral parts of Mother Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution. Many have been overwhelmingly Russian for hundreds of years, long before the upstart American republic was founded.

    These people - please note, I do not include recent Russian immigrants to parts of the former USSR not historically Russian - have a right to secede from the country they are now in and join Russia. In several instances ( the border areas of the Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan ) this is what is likely to happen long term.

    It should be emphasized that secession movements in the Ukraine were entirely peaceful until the West helped overthrow the legitimate government and enabled the new regime to physically attack and kill ethnic Russians.

    The North Ossetia war of 2008 was also incited by the West and used their local proxies in Georgia.

    Ethnic Russians in the other former Republics of the Soviet Union live overwhelmingly in historic Russian lands, which will over time be returned to Russia for the most part. , @Ondrej

    They should go back to Russia, like when the French left Algeria. Instead of using these Russians to destabilize non-Russian countries.
    Well, do you really mean ethnic Russians (Slavic)?

    They actually they lived there for centuries, former soviet republics where established what was originally part of different gubernias of Russian Empire.

    Or you just speaking about those Russians without actually knowing you should speak-of 100+ ethnicties and nationalities. Which are usually not recognized by Western observer and they are just called those Russians.. :-)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia

    alexander says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 11:12 am GMT • 100 Words

    Excellent article Mr Buchanan.

    Not only is it absolutely clear that nearly ALL Americans want peace and prosperity over the continued debacle of war and insolvency .we are also quite perturbed by our dishonest leaders who have robbed us blind by initiating them.

    You might find yourself speaking for over 300 million Americans who not only wish our leaders to cease and desist from this grotesque escapade of perpetual, belligerent war making, but we ALL want our 14.3 trillion in obscene war debt clawed back to US , for having been "deceived" into these conflicts in the first place.

    Americans do not ENJOY being defrauded out of all their dough to go murder people that never attacked us.

    We don't like it AT ALL.

    Tell President Trump what Americans really want ..is OUR MONEY BACK --

    He should make it his TOP priority to go get it --

    Cagey Beast says: • Website Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 11:30 am GMT • 100 Words

    @Carlton Meyer Since 97% of Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia in 2014 when Kiev was in chaos after a CIA funded coup, I would not refer to its Russian reannexation as a silent coup. The vote was watched by international observers and nearly all ethnic Russians, who are the majority in Crimea voted to rejoin, as well as most ethnic Ukrainians there.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014

    Russian forces didn't invade Crimea since 20,000 troops were based there as they had been for a century. For those who think NATO's promise not to expand and move forces eastward was just a verbal agreement, read about the 2009 "Founding Act" that Obama's warmongers trashed.

    http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm

    I often hear Americans say that "Putin is a thug". I ask if they've ever met him, or read any of his articles. I ask if they speak Russian or have lived there recently. They are stunned at such questions, and are unable to explain why they think he is a "thug". They cannot understand they have been fooled by propaganda, especially if they consider themselves "educated."

    Re: Putin being a "thug".

    I wonder too how people can believe Putin is a thug and tyrant when we can all view dozens of hours of Putin interacting with the Russia public and press, anytime we choose to, via the web?

    Just look at his marathon press conferences and ask oneself if this is a room full of cowed and frightened people and whether Putin acts like a bully or a good sport throughout?

    jacques sheete says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 12:04 pm GMT • 100 Words

    Off topic a bit, but I think I may have just become a Trump fan.
    I don't mean to be critical, but I think it would have been even sweeter for him to have "escort" the dude out in person instead of using security.

    Trump kicks biographer off golf course
    Harry Hurt, who was golfing with David Koch, had written a critical book about the president-elect.

    http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-biographer-golf-course-233092

    Cagey Beast says: • Website Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 12:05 pm GMT • 100 Words

    Mr. Buchanan has consistently done a great job covering this topic. I'd reinforce his arguments by pointing out Crimea had a unique status within Ukraine as an Autonomous Republic with its own parliament, unlike the other regions. Crimea always had one foot out the door; it was Vicky Nuland and the colour revolution gang who pushed them all the way out.

    I'd also add that it's well worth watching the hours of video footage collected during and after the Euromaidan revolution and available at YouTube under the title "Roses Have Thorns".

    Che Guava says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 12:08 pm GMT • 300 Words

    and let us not forget the extremely violent events in Mariupol and Odessa, clearly coordinated by the coup leaders who assembled the 'Euromaidan' under Obama regime direction.

    In itself, the coup d'etat against the elected pres. was extremely violent, almost all from the side of the US- and EU-supported coup makers, along with a contingency of mercenaries who just shot people to ramp it up (an idea strongly supported by mainstream press reports at the time).

    However, everyone is supposed to having the attention span of a gnat, in the face of celeb. bullshit, everybody is supposed to forget all in the glory of Kim Kardashian's gigantic plastic-surgery-augmented bum, and her stepfather's strangely late decision to fake being a woman, we can all be sure that Bruce Jenner has demonstrated his lack of belief in the 'I am really a woman' narrative by only having silicone tits inserted, and facial surgery to grind away part of his jaw bones.

    The primary sexual characteristics remain intact, not a bad idea on the part of Bruce.

    I am not saying the above two paras. represent part of a conspiracy, but it was surely a useful distraction in the mass-media at the time of the Obama regime making trouble in the Ukraine. Not that I think that was his idea, From what we know of his record, he was rather a dim bulb, benefitting from affirmative action, and never acknowledging the fact that he was dumped on his white grandparents by his slut mother, and his impregnate-and-abandon father.

    Dreams of My Father indeed, his father dumped him, as cuckoo birds do, in the nests of other birds.

    • Replies: @Alden Squirt and scram is what I call impregnate and abandon.

    I read Dreams of My Father a couple years before he ran for President. His hatred of Whites was obvious. But all the useful idiots I know read it and gushed and worshipped as they had been instructed to by The Atlantic, New Republic, etc.

    He was the triumph of a breeding program begun by the communist party of the USA back in the 1930s. The idea was to encourage the young women of the far left to marry and have kids with black men. The children would be raised far left and brought along to high public office.

    They finally got Obama. I'm pretty sure his father was Frank Marshall Davis, married, head of the communist party of Hawaii and best friend of grandpa Dunham.

    Sometimes I feel like the little kid in the Emperor's New Clothes story. The more educated they are, the more gullible and brainwashed people are.

    jacques sheete says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 12:15 pm GMT • 100 Words @MEexpert
    I often hear Americans say that "Putin is a thug". I ask if they've ever met him, or read any of his articles. I ask if they speak Russian or have lived there recently. They are stunned at such questions, and are unable to explain why they think he is a "thug". They cannot understand they have been fooled by propaganda, especially if they consider themselves "educated."
    That is the key word "educated." These people have been educated from the neocon school of international studies. They get daily lessons from New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and FOX news. They are too lazy to do some research and broaden their knowledge. They are used to learning things from the "For Dummies" series of books which the above publication represent.

    That is the key word "educated."

    I agree with your comments as well as the original one and would like to emphasize that the key word is not only "educated," but that the word is in quotes.

    They are not one bit educated in the true sense. They are morons; blockhead adolescents at best. Spoiled, petulant, supercilious, self absorbed one-trick ponies with no ability to think outside the box if they have any ability to think at all.

    They are too lazy to do some research and broaden their knowledge.

    Indeed. Too lazy and too arrogant. Typical brats.

    Thank goodness Putin consistently acts like an adult.

    Cagey Beast says: • Website Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 12:25 pm GMT • 100 Words @Anonymous
    Russians live in many of the 14 former Soviet republics that are now independent nations.
    They should go back to Russia, like when the French left Algeria. Instead of using these Russians to destabilize non-Russian countries.

    That may be fair in the case of the Baltic states but what about Ukraine? The ethnic Russians of the south and east were included in modern Ukraine thanks to lines drawn on the map by Lenin and Stalin. If anything, the militant Ukrainian nationalist regions of the far west should go ahead and separate from the rest of what's now Ukraine and let the rest of the country can get along with Russia.

    Renoman says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 12:26 pm GMT

    Vlad Putin is the leader of the free World we should respect and deal fairly with him.
    Another great article!

    Verymuchalive says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 1:13 pm GMT • 300 Words @Anonymous
    Russians live in many of the 14 former Soviet republics that are now independent nations.
    They should go back to Russia, like when the French left Algeria. Instead of using these Russians to destabilize non-Russian countries.

    When the USSR broke up, it broke up along the borders decided by the Bolsheviks mainly in the period 1922-24. The top Bolsheviks were overwhelmingly non-Russian ( Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky etc ) and anti-Russian. As punishment, they put many millions of ethnic Russians into the administrative areas of other ethnic groups in a policy of internal divide and rule. As late as 1954, Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Ukrainian, arbitrarily transferred Crimea from Russia to the Ukraine. Crimea had been Russian since 1783.

    As a result of this malicious carve-up, many millions of ethnic Russians find themselves outside the borders of Russia. Many of these areas were regarded as integral parts of Mother Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution. Many have been overwhelmingly Russian for hundreds of years, long before the upstart American republic was founded.

    These people – please note, I do not include recent Russian immigrants to parts of the former USSR not historically Russian – have a right to secede from the country they are now in and join Russia. In several instances ( the border areas of the Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan ) this is what is likely to happen long term.

    It should be emphasized that secession movements in the Ukraine were entirely peaceful until the West helped overthrow the legitimate government and enabled the new regime to physically attack and kill ethnic Russians.

    The North Ossetia war of 2008 was also incited by the West and used their local proxies in Georgia.

    Ethnic Russians in the other former Republics of the Soviet Union live overwhelmingly in historic Russian lands, which will over time be returned to Russia for the most part.

    Quartermaster says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 1:36 pm GMT • 200 Words

    But Russia did not invade Crimea. To secure their Black Sea naval base, Russia executed a bloodless coup, but only after the U.S. backed the overthrow of the pro-Russian elected government in Kiev.

    This is risible. There was no coup in Ukraine. Yanukovich decided to order the Berkut to open fire on the protesters on the Maidan, and he ran to escape justice. He was removed from office, constitutionally when he abandoned the office and ran for Russia.

    By the Pat, I was part of the "Brigades" when you ran for President, but you're getting senile. Russia did invade Crimea. That there were already troops there is irrelevant. They left their posts and took over the peninsula. That constitutes an invasion in any book. The "no invasion" business is pure manure.

    As for Putin's backing of secessionists in Donetsk and Luhansk, he is standing by kinfolk left behind when his country broke apart. Russians live in many of the 14 former Soviet republics that are now independent nations.

    Putin is not standing by anyone. He tried to steal a "land bridge" to Crimea across southeastern Ukraine. No one was being persecuted for speaking Russian, nor was anyone threatened. The majority of the Russian speakers have no desire to be ruled from Moscow, and that fact is testified to by the fact that even with the addition of Russian Army regulars, the quislings in SE Ukraine weren't able to get any further.

    Che Guava says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 1:38 pm GMT • 300 Words

    @jacques sheete Off topic a bit, but I think I may have just become a Trump fan.
    I don't mean to be critical, but I think it would have been even sweeter for him to have "escort" the dude out in person instead of using security.

    Trump kicks biographer off golf course
    Harry Hurt, who was golfing with David Koch, had written a critical book about the president-elect.


    http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-biographer-golf-course-233092

    Saw that too, it was funny, the Koch bro. connection made it doubly so!

    You are right, personal escort off the course with a security guard in tow would have been better, but it would not be possible at this point, with only such a small time before the inaugaration.

    Imagine the hysteria if it had been!

    Even funnier if surveillance camera footage of the reaction appears.

    Suspect the Donald would stop short of allowing that. OTOH, a rogue security guard in the monitoring room

    The 'fine, we'll play golf at a superior course nearby' talk was also a laugh. If the nearby course was so superior, why did they not go there first?

    Trump should really get Ted Nugent to do a grinding guitar solo on your anthem, even if brief, but I would guess his advisors already advised against it.

    It would be the best since Jimi Hendrix.

    I don't participate on any 'social media', but if those who do would be interested, a Nugent solo would be brilliant, start the support tags up!

    Hope Trump will do will do well by the US and by its wider influence, still having serious doubts, and only as a non-US person, but for sure, at worst the lesser of two evils.

    Hillary would have been leading the rush to WWIV, I am counting the Cold War and its outlying conflicts as WWIII, as we should.

    Really, there is an absolute continuum from WWI to now, no time of peace, except in some places, at some times, I think the UK and USA definitions of 'WWI' and 'WWII' are useless as definitions.

    WWIII has already happened, if we are to accepting those terms.

    • Replies: @jacques sheete
    Really, there is an absolute continuum from WWI to now

    Not a shred of doubt about that.

    Quartermaster says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 1:42 pm GMT • 200 Words

    @Carlton Meyer Since 97% of Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia in 2014 when Kiev was in chaos after a CIA funded coup, I would not refer to its Russian reannexation as a silent coup. The vote was watched by international observers and nearly all ethnic Russians, who are the majority in Crimea voted to rejoin, as well as most ethnic Ukrainians there.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014

    Russian forces didn't invade Crimea since 20,000 troops were based there as they had been for a century. For those who think NATO's promise not to expand and move forces eastward was just a verbal agreement, read about the 2009 "Founding Act" that Obama's warmongers trashed.

    http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm

    I often hear Americans say that "Putin is a thug". I ask if they've ever met him, or read any of his articles. I ask if they speak Russian or have lived there recently. They are stunned at such questions, and are unable to explain why they think he is a "thug". They cannot understand they have been fooled by propaganda, especially if they consider themselves "educated."

    Since 97% of Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia in 2014 when Kiev was in chaos after a CIA funded coup, I would not refer to its Russian reannexation as a silent coup.

    It certainly wasn't a "silent coup" by anyone's imagination. It was an invasion, then a referendum was held under the guns of an occupying power. Almost no one recognizes the referendum as legit.

    That it wasn't silent is about all you got right.

    I often hear Americans say that "Putin is a thug".

    Putin is a thug. He has jailed or killed anyone that he sees as a threat to his regime. The man is a KGB product, and it tells in the way he conducts himself. One does not have to meet him to be able to judge what he is from his actions.

    They cannot understand they have been fooled by propaganda, especially if they consider themselves "educated."

    Yes, you've been fooled by Putin's propaganda. He's as bad at it as any KGB thug. But they still get the ear of stupid people who won't think for themselves.

    • Replies: @Marcus
    Putin is a thug. He has jailed or killed anyone that he sees as a threat to his regime. The man is a KGB product, and it tells in the way he conducts himself. One does not have to meet him to be able to judge what he is from his actions.
    Sources please. Russia has opposition parties and orgs aplenty, more than you can say for many US allies.
    Putin is not standing by anyone. He tried to steal a "land bridge" to Crimea across southeastern Ukraine. No one was being persecuted for speaking Russian, nor was anyone threatened. The majority of the Russian speakers have no desire to be ruled from Moscow, and that fact is testified to by the fact that even with the addition of Russian Army regulars, the quislings in SE Ukraine weren't able to get any further.
    He chose not to support the separatists (earning the ire of many of them), the Ukrainian oligarch army had no desire to fight, with thousands deserting or fleeing conscription (to Russia among other places) , @Avery { It was an invasion, }

    No it wasn't: one cannot invade one's own land.
    Crimea was part of Russia for a couple of centuries.
    Part of Russia SSR during USSR.
    Khrushchev, an un-elected Soviet dictator, on a whim, without asking the people of Crimea, transferred the administration of Crimea to Ukriane SSR.
    An illegal act.
    In 1991, as USSR was crumbling, people of Crimea ran a referendum on sovereignty. It passed by 94%. Kiev ignored it.
    Since USSR no longer existed, Ukraine SSR had no legal claim to Crimea, even _if_ for a moment we consider Khrushchev's illegal act 'legal' (sic).

    When neo-Nazis overthrew the legally and democratically elected administration of Yanukovych, a coup financed by Soros (he admitted as much to Fareed Zakaria of CNN), and aided&abetted by anti-American US Neocons (Nuland), and started pogroms of ethnic Russians (e.g. Massacre of Odessa), ethnic Russians of Crimea saw what was coming and wisely chose not to get massacred.
    Done.


    {Putin is a thug. He has jailed or killed anyone that he sees as a threat to his regime.}

    The label 'thug' is used by the real thugs in US, anti-American agents of foreign interests, to smear a leader whose allegiance is to his own country.

    Unlike the thugs and gangsters in US Gov who serve foreign interests.
    Who are eager to expend American blood and treasure to advance the interests of anti-American globalists.

    Putin must be demonized, because Putin is a bad example for these reptilian foreign organisms which have infested the US body politic, because suddenly American people might see the light and elect someone whose first allegiance is to America First - imagine that.



    {Yes, you've been fooled by Putin's propaganda.}

    No, you have been.
    Or more likely, you are the purveyor of anti-American propaganda.

    {But they still get the ear of stupid people who won't think for themselves.}
    Stop gloating about yourself: it is impolite. Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Ondrej says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 2:06 pm GMT • 100 Words @Anonymous
    Russians live in many of the 14 former Soviet republics that are now independent nations.
    They should go back to Russia, like when the French left Algeria. Instead of using these Russians to destabilize non-Russian countries.

    They should go back to Russia, like when the French left Algeria. Instead of using these Russians to destabilize non-Russian countries.

    Well, do you really mean ethnic Russians (Slavic)?

    They actually they lived there for centuries, former soviet republics where established what was originally part of different gubernias of Russian Empire.

    Or you just speaking about those Russians without actually knowing you should speak-of 100+ ethnicties and nationalities. Which are usually not recognized by Western observer and they are just called those Russians.. :-)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia

    • Replies: @Anonymous
    They actually they lived there for centuries, former soviet republics where established what was originally part of different gubernias of Russian Empire.
    Not in the Baltic states. Some of the Russian migrants came as late as the 1980s, so just 5 years before the independence. In the pre-WWII Baltic states there were less than 10% ethnic Russians, some of them Old Believers.

    Russia has been attempting to destablize these countries for years through their 5th column. Not gonna work, there will be no uprising there. But if something bigger happens, and Pat Buchanan and Trump start harping about how Russia has some mystical "rights" to defend its "countrymen", that will turn the US into an official enemy of the Baltic states.

    Marcus says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 2:29 pm GMT • 100 Words @Quartermaster
    Since 97% of Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia in 2014 when Kiev was in chaos after a CIA funded coup, I would not refer to its Russian reannexation as a silent coup.
    It certainly wasn't a "silent coup" by anyone's imagination. It was an invasion, then a referendum was held under the guns of an occupying power. Almost no one recognizes the referendum as legit.

    That it wasn't silent is about all you got right.

    I often hear Americans say that "Putin is a thug".
    Putin is a thug. He has jailed or killed anyone that he sees as a threat to his regime. The man is a KGB product, and it tells in the way he conducts himself. One does not have to meet him to be able to judge what he is from his actions.
    They cannot understand they have been fooled by propaganda, especially if they consider themselves "educated."
    Yes, you've been fooled by Putin's propaganda. He's as bad at it as any KGB thug. But they still get the ear of stupid people who won't think for themselves.

    Putin is a thug. He has jailed or killed anyone that he sees as a threat to his regime. The man is a KGB product, and it tells in the way he conducts himself. One does not have to meet him to be able to judge what he is from his actions.

    Sources please. Russia has opposition parties and orgs aplenty, more than you can say for many US allies.

    Putin is not standing by anyone. He tried to steal a "land bridge" to Crimea across southeastern Ukraine. No one was being persecuted for speaking Russian, nor was anyone threatened. The majority of the Russian speakers have no desire to be ruled from Moscow, and that fact is testified to by the fact that even with the addition of Russian Army regulars, the quislings in SE Ukraine weren't able to get any further.

    He chose not to support the separatists (earning the ire of many of them), the Ukrainian oligarch army had no desire to fight, with thousands deserting or fleeing conscription (to Russia among other places)

    • Replies: @Corvinus Putin, like Hillary, benefitted from the public till for his personal enjoyment.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/vladimir-putin-corruption-five-things-we-learned-about-the-russian-presidents-secret-wealth-a6834171.html

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/katiasavchuk/2016/03/30/how-vladimir-putins-son-in-law-became-russias-youngest-billionaire/#59accd0b4bc3 Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Agent76 says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 2:33 pm GMT

    Nov 29, 2016 The Map That Shows Why Russia Fears War With USA – Mike Maloney

    Agent76 says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 2:39 pm GMT • 100 Words

    October 29, 2016 Video: US-NATO are Beating the Drums of War. "The US is Threatening Every Country on Planet Earth"

    The Debate: Michel Chossudovsky and Ian Williams By Press TV and Prof Michel Chossudovsky Press TV 27 October 2016

    NATO says it is going ahead with its plans to deploy thousands of troops and military hardware to three Baltic States and Poland that all border Russia. The military alliance claims that the measure is a response to a Russia's military build-up and increased activity around NATO's borders. The Russian president, however, has denounced NATO's expansion in Eastern Europe. President Putin has blamed the military alliance for global instability. NATO's latest venture to encircle Russia & its repercussions, in this edition of the Debate.

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/video-us-nato-are-beating-the-drums-of-war-the-us-is-threatening-every-country-on-planet-earth-michel-chossudovsky/5553678

    WorkingClass says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 3:25 pm GMT

    In retaliation for the hacking of John Podesta and the DNC, Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and ordered closure of their country houses on Long Island and Maryland's Eastern shore.

    It wasn't a hack. It was a leak.

    Avery says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 3:30 pm GMT • 100 Words @Mao Cheng Ji
    For those who think NATO's promise not to expand and move forces eastward was just a verbal agreement
    But what it was a verbal agreement - how is that a reason for breaking it?

    {But what (if) it was a verbal agreement – how is that a reason for breaking it?}

    Agree.

    At that State level of actors, a verbal agreement is also a contract.
    But the link to a written contract provided by [Carlton Meyer] should shut down any illogical arguments or objections about the verbal contract that Neocon warmongers throw out to justify their aggression against Russia.

    sturbain says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 3:54 pm GMT

    @Mark Green Pat Buchanan is wise and prophetic like few other political observers. He deserves a special place among Trump's inner circle. If not as Secretary of State, Pat should be given the position of National Security Advisor.

    Trump's team would benefit greatly by Buchanan's judgement and experience, as would our nation.

    Agree wholeheartedly. Trump should take advantage of Pat's remarkable historical knowledge and wisdom.

    Agent76 says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 4:28 pm GMT • 100 Words

    January 01, 2017 52,369 Killed in Iraq during 2016; 3,174 Killed During December

    In December, at least 3,174 people were killed and 1,939 were wounded. Of these, 798 were civilians killed. Another 1,658 civilians were injured. Security forces lost 154 personnel, while another 177 were wounded. At least 2,181 militants were killed, and 104 were injured. Also, at least 41 Kurdistan Workers Party (P.K.K.) members were killed in Turkish airstrikes within Iraqi territory. These figures are likely to be low estimates.

    http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2017/01/01/52369-killed-in-iraq-during-2016-3174-killed-during-december/

    Corvinus says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 4:51 pm GMT @Marcus
    Putin is a thug. He has jailed or killed anyone that he sees as a threat to his regime. The man is a KGB product, and it tells in the way he conducts himself. One does not have to meet him to be able to judge what he is from his actions.
    Sources please. Russia has opposition parties and orgs aplenty, more than you can say for many US allies.
    Putin is not standing by anyone. He tried to steal a "land bridge" to Crimea across southeastern Ukraine. No one was being persecuted for speaking Russian, nor was anyone threatened. The majority of the Russian speakers have no desire to be ruled from Moscow, and that fact is testified to by the fact that even with the addition of Russian Army regulars, the quislings in SE Ukraine weren't able to get any further.
    He chose not to support the separatists (earning the ire of many of them), the Ukrainian oligarch army had no desire to fight, with thousands deserting or fleeing conscription (to Russia among other places)

    Putin, like Hillary, benefitted from the public till for his personal enjoyment.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/vladimir-putin-corruption-five-things-we-learned-about-the-russian-presidents-secret-wealth-a6834171.html

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/katiasavchuk/2016/03/30/how-vladimir-putins-son-in-law-became-russias-youngest-billionaire/#59accd0b4bc3

    • Replies: @Marcus No doubt, Russia is still corrupt to the core, Putin hasn't done much to change this, though the lot of the average Russian has undoubtedly improved since he took charge. , @bluedog My God is that the best you can do parroting items from the Independent and Forbes, both noted for their propaganda I have done many search's on Putin's billions and came up empty every time, perhaps you can post a creditable site rather than the two you posted...
    Marcus says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 5:16 pm GMT

    @Corvinus Putin, like Hillary, benefitted from the public till for his personal enjoyment.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/vladimir-putin-corruption-five-things-we-learned-about-the-russian-presidents-secret-wealth-a6834171.html

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/katiasavchuk/2016/03/30/how-vladimir-putins-son-in-law-became-russias-youngest-billionaire/#59accd0b4bc3

    No doubt, Russia is still corrupt to the core, Putin hasn't done much to change this, though the lot of the average Russian has undoubtedly improved since he took charge.

    • Replies: @Anonymous "..the lot of the average Russian has undoubtedly improved since he took charge..."

    Life has improved all over the former Soviet space since the late 1990s. It could only go up from there. Life has improved in places like Belarus and the Baltics were longevity, income per capita, birth rates are rising (1.7 per woman which is above the European average), in Kazakhstan which is now flourishing and has built fantastic modern cities such as Astana. Putin has good qualities but the improvement of life in former USSR is an objective, historic process.

    Russia is not a free country, however. It's possible that it's even less free than what it was in the late 1980s.

    jacques sheete says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 5:56 pm GMT

    @Che Guava Saw that too, it was funny, the Koch bro. connection made it doubly so!

    You are right, personal escort off the course with a security guard in tow would have been better, but it would not be possible at this point, with only such a small time before the inaugaration.

    Imagine the hysteria if it had been!

    Even funnier if surveillance camera footage of the reaction appears.

    Suspect the Donald would stop short of allowing that. OTOH, a rogue security guard in the monitoring room ...

    The 'fine, we'll play golf at a superior course nearby' talk was also a laugh. If the nearby course was so superior, why did they not go there first?

    Trump should really get Ted Nugent to do a grinding guitar solo on your anthem, even if brief, but I would guess his advisors already advised against it.

    It would be the best since Jimi Hendrix.

    I don't participate on any 'social media', but if those who do would be interested, a Nugent solo would be brilliant, start the support tags up!

    Hope Trump will do will do well by the US and by its wider influence, still having serious doubts, and only as a non-US person, but for sure, at worst the lesser of two evils.

    Hillary would have been leading the rush to WWIV, I am counting the Cold War and its outlying conflicts as WWIII, as we should.

    Really, there is an absolute continuum from WWI to now, no time of peace, except in some places, at some times, I think the UK and USA definitions of 'WWI' and 'WWII' are useless as definitions.

    WWIII has already happened, if we are to accepting those terms.

    Really, there is an absolute continuum from WWI to now

    Not a shred of doubt about that.

    anon says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 5:58 pm GMT • 200 Words

    We have no inherent conflicts with Russia. The USSR was a godless, communist imperial state with expansionist aspirations. We beat them. Over. We WON.

    Russia is our natural ally against China. In terms of the bigger picture, NATO is disturbing, and we needlessly provoked Russia by mindless expansion. However, NATO has led to European nations 'cheating' on their commitment to spend 2% of GDP on their military. This cheating has effectively disarmed Europe. And, in fact - we have kept Germany on a short leash. Which is hugely advantageous to Russia.

    But aside from all that - there simply isn't a serious reason to mix it up with Russia. Does anyone in the West really care about the Black Sea?

    As far as the notion that Russia wants go Imperial and start taking territory - get real. Russia invading Ukraine and annexing the entire country makes as much sense as the US invading and annexing Mexico. Ukraine was (is) a customer for its natural gas. A profit center, if you will. After an invasion, it would simply be an expense. Ukraine is poorer, and it would be expensive to integrate the into Russia. And as far as the 'breadbasket' of Eurasia, Russia now exports grain.

    So - why shouldn't Trump and Putin chill out?

    The biggest problem is that the US can't seem to take YES for an answer. Or Victory as sufficient. We see it over and over and over. And then take the wasted resources and pass them out to US citizens. Give us our peace dividend.

    Agent76 says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 6:35 pm GMT • 100 Words

    01.01.2017 How a United Iran, Russia and China are Changing The World – For the Better

    The two previous articles have focused on the various geopolitical theories, their translations into modern concepts, and practical actions that the United States has taken in recent decades to aspire to global dominance. This segment will describe how Iran, China and Russia have over the years adopted a variety of economic and military actions to repel the continual assault on their sovereignty by the West; in particular, how the American drive for global hegemony has actually accelerated the end of the 'unipolar moment' thanks to the emergence of a multipolar world.

    http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/01/01/how-united-iran-russia-china-changing-world-better.html

    • Replies: @Sean Multi polar has more permutations, and more things to go wrong.
    Sean says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 7:02 pm GMT • 100 Words

    If the US had given meaningful support to the rebels, then the Assads would have fallen. The Assads may think they have defeated the US plot against them, but Russia only came in after the US shown iftself unable to act coherently.

    What Trump has to lose by not confronting Putin is only his most valuable asset: his power to make others start worrying about what US powe might do with him at the helm. Trump is an intimidator, an enforcer , he has already shown his true colours to the motor industry and Russia would be wise to emulate Ford.

    • Replies: @Realist Why should the US be involved in Syria?

    "What Trump has to lose by not confronting Putin is only his most valuable asset: his power to make others start worrying about what US powe might do with him at the helm."

    This is a stupid post even by your standards. , @Marcus The US support for the rebels, plus that contributed by its allies (Turkey, Saudi, etc.) was more than adequate. Erdogan has even said that the US aided IS.

    Sean says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 7:09 pm GMT

    @Agent76 01.01.2017 How a United Iran, Russia and China are Changing The World - For the Better

    The two previous articles have focused on the various geopolitical theories, their translations into modern concepts, and practical actions that the United States has taken in recent decades to aspire to global dominance. This segment will describe how Iran, China and Russia have over the years adopted a variety of economic and military actions to repel the continual assault on their sovereignty by the West; in particular, how the American drive for global hegemony has actually accelerated the end of the 'unipolar moment' thanks to the emergence of a multipolar world.

    http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/01/01/how-united-iran-russia-china-changing-world-better.html

    Multi polar has more permutations, and more things to go wrong.

    Realist says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 7:46 pm GMT • 100 Words

    "Putin does not seek to destroy or conquer us or Europe. He wants Russia, and her interests, and her rights as a great power to be respected.

    He is not mucking around in our front yard; we are in his."

    Excellent points. Great article.

    Trump could do no better than to put you in a position of power and advice in his administration.

    Realist says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 7:53 pm GMT • 100 Words

    @Sean If the US had given meaningful support to the rebels, then the Assads would have fallen. The Assads may think they have defeated the US plot against them, but Russia only came in after the US shown iftself unable to act coherently.

    What Trump has to lose by not confronting Putin is only his most valuable asset: his power to make others start worrying about what US powe might do with him at the helm. Trump is an intimidator, an enforcer , he has already shown his true colours to the motor industry and Russia would be wise to emulate Ford.

    Why should the US be involved in Syria?

    "What Trump has to lose by not confronting Putin is only his most valuable asset: his power to make others start worrying about what US powe might do with him at the helm."

    This is a stupid post even by your standards.

    utu says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 8:10 pm GMT • 200 Words

    "If the US had given meaningful support to the rebels, then the Assads would have fallen. The Assads may think they have defeated the US plot against them, but Russia only came in after the US shown iftself unable to act coherently."

    I think you might be correct. There was no unity of purpose. DOD was not on the same wavelength as CIA Gen. Dempsey of DIA even sabotaged weapon delivery by CIA to rebels and kept open channels to Assad via Tel Aviv, Berlin and Moscow (Seymour Hersh):

    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military#onepass

    Obama was dragging his feet. In 2013 he allowed to defuse the crisis with the help of Putin and avoided introducing the no-fly zone, though Putin paid for it dearly with Ukraine in 2014.

    Whatever was Obama motive (Wanted to have clean hands?, Earn that Peace Nobel Price?), I reluctantly give him a credit for not escalating Syria though still I blame him for letting the civil war in Syria happen on his watch in the first place. After all it was a part of Libyan operation when weapons and rebels were moved between the two countries. Still Obama even among his critics is presented that he reacted only to Libya while the proactive part was done by Hillary, CIA, French and British.

    Jason Liu says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 8:28 pm GMT • 100 Words

    Cold War II will be with China, not Russia, sadly. Western neo-nationalists fail to recognize that China is just as tribalistic and anti-SJWism as Russia, if not more - and is in a better position to undermine postmodernist bullshit on a global scale.

    The South China Sea issue is less of an affront to the west geographically than Russia's actions in Ukraine, which leads me to believe that western nationalists who use this excuse are not ideological nationalists, they're just acting out tribalism in the simplest ways, using China as the next archrival.

    A more sensible thing to do is for the nationalists of the world to turn their collective energies on the egalitarian left, and root out their beliefs in every society. Infighting between nationalists always gives the left the advantage.

    • Replies: @CanSpeccy
    Cold War II will be with China, not Russia
    Yes, the only question is whether to (a) smash Russia and install US military bases in the various stans around China's Northern border, while the latter are looted by Soros and co. with the aid of Poroshenkite puppets, or (b) play the traditional balance of power game, abandoning the Kissinger-inspired tilt toward China of the Nixon era, which served to counter a dominant Soviet Union, for a Kissinger-inspired tilt toward an intact but much weakened Russia to counter today's rapidly rising China.
    Seamus Padraig says: • Website Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 8:32 pm GMT • 100 Words

    Unlike America's elites, Putin is an ethnonationalist in a time when tribalism is shoving aside transnationalism as the force of the future.

    Putin may be a national sovereigntist –i.e., against the new world order–but he really doesn't strike me as much of an "ethnonationalist". He has never opposed all the immigration into Russia from the Caucasus or Central Asia, nor has he annexed any ethnic-Russian enclaves in the former SSRs, apart from Crimea, of course.

    bluedog says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 8:35 pm GMT

    @Corvinus Putin, like Hillary, benefitted from the public till for his personal enjoyment.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/vladimir-putin-corruption-five-things-we-learned-about-the-russian-presidents-secret-wealth-a6834171.html

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/katiasavchuk/2016/03/30/how-vladimir-putins-son-in-law-became-russias-youngest-billionaire/#59accd0b4bc3

    My God is that the best you can do parroting items from the Independent and Forbes, both noted for their propaganda I have done many search's on Putin's billions and came up empty every time, perhaps you can post a creditable site rather than the two you posted

    • Replies: @Corvinus "My God is that the best you can do parroting items from the Independent and Forbes..."

    You have to refute their findings with counter evidence rather than disqualify the sources entirely.

    "both noted for their propaganda..." "perhaps you can post a creditable site rather than the two you posted "

    As is this website. As is Vox Day. As in all sites have an element of propaganda. Your point?

    "I have done many search's on Putin's billions and came up empty every time..."

    That would be a False News Story. There are a number of sources that discuss how he "earned" his money. Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Corvinus says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 9:13 pm GMT • 100 Words @bluedog My God is that the best you can do parroting items from the Independent and Forbes, both noted for their propaganda I have done many search's on Putin's billions and came up empty every time, perhaps you can post a creditable site rather than the two you posted...

    "My God is that the best you can do parroting items from the Independent and Forbes "

    You have to refute their findings with counter evidence rather than disqualify the sources entirely.

    "both noted for their propaganda " "perhaps you can post a creditable site rather than the two you posted "

    As is this website. As is Vox Day. As in all sites have an element of propaganda. Your point?

    "I have done many search's on Putin's billions and came up empty every time "

    That would be a False News Story. There are a number of sources that discuss how he "earned" his money.

    • Replies: @bluedog That would be a False News Story.There are a number of sources that discuss how he "earned" his money.

    List them please so we can all check them, out otherwise your simply spreading some more propaganda about how Putin is worth a few more stolen billions..

    Marcus says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 9:17 pm GMT @Sean

    If the US had given meaningful support to the rebels, then the Assads would have fallen. The Assads may think they have defeated the US plot against them, but Russia only came in after the US shown iftself unable to act coherently.

    What Trump has to lose by not confronting Putin is only his most valuable asset: his power to make others start worrying about what US powe might do with him at the helm. Trump is an intimidator, an enforcer , he has already shown his true colours to the motor industry and Russia would be wise to emulate Ford.

    The US support for the rebels, plus that contributed by its allies (Turkey, Saudi, etc.) was more than adequate. Erdogan has even said that the US aided IS.

    Art says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 9:19 pm GMT • 100 Words

    Unlike America's elites, Putin is an ethnonationalist in a time when tribalism is shoving aside transnationalism as the force of the future.

    Sorry – Tribalism and transnationalism are both bad for humanity.

    The real bad guy is borderless Rothschild monetarism. Those greedy thugs have no loyalty to any place on the Earth. They are working to make a cashless world where all transactions must flow through them. They want to skim every human interaction that involves money. It will be a world were dollars and pounds are meaningless. Everyone will be churned into an indebted zombie.

    Heaven knows that national tribalism is also bad for humanity. We must return to local ownership and identity. America started out as individual local states where things were voted on by local people. Local people owned the land and the businesses. Localism is the heart of a stable society.

    CanSpeccy says: • Website Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 10:23 pm GMT @Carlton Meyer

    Since 97% of Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia in 2014 when Kiev was in chaos after a CIA funded coup, I would not refer to its Russian reannexation as a silent coup. The vote was watched by international observers and nearly all ethnic Russians, who are the majority in Crimea voted to rejoin, as well as most ethnic Ukrainians there.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014

    Russian forces didn't invade Crimea since 20,000 troops were based there as they had been for a century. For those who think NATO's promise not to expand and move forces eastward was just a verbal agreement, read about the 2009 "Founding Act" that Obama's warmongers trashed.

    http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm

    I often hear Americans say that "Putin is a thug". I ask if they've ever met him, or read any of his articles. I ask if they speak Russian or have lived there recently. They are stunned at such questions, and are unable to explain why they think he is a "thug". They cannot understand they have been fooled by propaganda, especially if they consider themselves "educated."

    Re: Educated Americans who think Putin is a thug.

    Higher Education:

    [A] political racket whereby Democrats fork endless cash to tuition extortionists, and lousy scholars impart insane ideas to debt-strapped students who are made dysfunctional citizens in the process.

    Source:

    • Agree: jacques sheete Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
    CanSpeccy says: • Website Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 10:33 pm GMT • 100 Words @Jason Liu Cold War II will be with China, not Russia, sadly. Western neo-nationalists fail to recognize that China is just as tribalistic and anti-SJWism as Russia, if not more -- and is in a better position to undermine postmodernist bullshit on a global scale.

    The South China Sea issue is less of an affront to the west geographically than Russia's actions in Ukraine, which leads me to believe that western nationalists who use this excuse are not ideological nationalists, they're just acting out tribalism in the simplest ways, using China as the next archrival.

    A more sensible thing to do is for the nationalists of the world to turn their collective energies on the egalitarian left, and root out their beliefs in every society. Infighting between nationalists always gives the left the advantage.

    Cold War II will be with China, not Russia

    Yes, the only question is whether to (a) smash Russia and install US military bases in the various stans around China's Northern border, while the latter are looted by Soros and co. with the aid of Poroshenkite puppets, or (b) play the traditional balance of power game, abandoning the Kissinger-inspired tilt toward China of the Nixon era, which served to counter a dominant Soviet Union, for a Kissinger-inspired tilt toward an intact but much weakened Russia to counter today's rapidly rising China.

    Je Suis Omar Mateen says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 10:35 pm GMT • 100 Words

    Everybody relax.

    Now that America again has a real man of normal sexuality at the helm, relations with Russia will normalize. President Putin reminds the former president, little Barry Sotero, that he's a sissy, and it infuriates little Barry and the Democrats that President Putin will not genuflect to the GayKK. Buchanan's masterly geopolitical analysis aside, refusal to celebrate LGBTQWERTY is the wellspring of the Left's Russophobia.

    The fakestream media will continue demonizing President Putin, but President Trump will drop all sanctions against Russia and individual Russians, and Cold War II will be handily averted.

    Bank.

    lavoisier says: • Website Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 10:47 pm GMT • 100 Words

    Pat Buchanan is truly a great man. Look at how he has made so many accurate predictions of what was to come. He is a scholar, a realist, and a genuine patriot–unlike Bush, McCain, and Romney. He was an unusually talented man in our corrupted world.

    He was and is a far better man than Donald Trump, although Trump at least has an inkling of what it means to be patriotic. It was a tremendous tragedy that the majority of the American people failed to recognize his greatness when he ran for president. I recognized it, but I knew he was doomed because he was considered to be anti-semitic. His cause faltered, and we suffered as a people.

    We are in a far more precarious state today because we failed him. I believe that if we had the good sense to elect him president at the time, our world today would be far better than it is now.


    Anonymous says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 11:13 pm GMT • 100 Words

    @Marcus No doubt, Russia is still corrupt to the core, Putin hasn't done much to change this, though the lot of the average Russian has undoubtedly improved since he took charge.

    "..the lot of the average Russian has undoubtedly improved since he took charge "

    Life has improved all over the former Soviet space since the late 1990s. It could only go up from there. Life has improved in places like Belarus and the Baltics were longevity, income per capita, birth rates are rising (1.7 per woman which is above the European average), in Kazakhstan which is now flourishing and has built fantastic modern cities such as Astana. Putin has good qualities but the improvement of life in former USSR is an objective, historic process.

    Russia is not a free country, however. It's possible that it's even less free than what it was in the late 1980s.

    • Replies: @CanSpeccy
    Russia is not a free country, however. It's possible that it's even less free than what it was in the late 1980s.
    It is certainly true that the United States "is even less free than what it was in the late 1980s." , @Marcus There was nothing inevitable about it: how is Ukraine doing? There was only one legal party in the USSR, so your comparison can't even be entertained. Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Anonymous says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 3, 2017 at 11:24 pm GMT • 100 Words

    So last night I was watching one of the Russian political talk shows and one of the separatists from Ukraine was saying things like "We're waiting for you, for your help" and a few Moscovite Russians from the audience (expert and the moderator) were like "Er, you should be able to take care of your own self, we don't wanna pay for you!". So there's that. So much for the "countrymen".

    Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments
    CanSpeccy says: • Website Show Comment Next New Comment January 4, 2017 at 12:02 am GMT

    @Anonymous "..the lot of the average Russian has undoubtedly improved since he took charge..."

    Life has improved all over the former Soviet space since the late 1990s. It could only go up from there. Life has improved in places like Belarus and the Baltics were longevity, income per capita, birth rates are rising (1.7 per woman which is above the European average), in Kazakhstan which is now flourishing and has built fantastic modern cities such as Astana. Putin has good qualities but the improvement of life in former USSR is an objective, historic process.

    Russia is not a free country, however. It's possible that it's even less free than what it was in the late 1980s.

    Russia is not a free country, however. It's possible that it's even less free than what it was in the late 1980s.

    It is certainly true that the United States "is even less free than what it was in the late 1980s."

    Anonymous says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 4, 2017 at 12:03 am GMT • 100 Words @Ondrej
    They should go back to Russia, like when the French left Algeria. Instead of using these Russians to destabilize non-Russian countries.
    Well, do you really mean ethnic Russians (Slavic)?

    They actually they lived there for centuries, former soviet republics where established what was originally part of different gubernias of Russian Empire.

    Or you just speaking about those Russians without actually knowing you should speak-of 100+ ethnicties and nationalities. Which are usually not recognized by Western observer and they are just called those Russians.. :-)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia

    They actually they lived there for centuries, former soviet republics where established what was originally part of different gubernias of Russian Empire.

    Not in the Baltic states. Some of the Russian migrants came as late as the 1980s, so just 5 years before the independence. In the pre-WWII Baltic states there were less than 10% ethnic Russians, some of them Old Believers.

    Russia has been attempting to destablize these countries for years through their 5th column. Not gonna work, there will be no uprising there. But if something bigger happens, and Pat Buchanan and Trump start harping about how Russia has some mystical "rights" to defend its "countrymen", that will turn the US into an official enemy of the Baltic states.

    Marcus says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 4, 2017 at 12:43 am GMT

    @Anonymous "..the lot of the average Russian has undoubtedly improved since he took charge..."

    Life has improved all over the former Soviet space since the late 1990s. It could only go up from there. Life has improved in places like Belarus and the Baltics were longevity, income per capita, birth rates are rising (1.7 per woman which is above the European average), in Kazakhstan which is now flourishing and has built fantastic modern cities such as Astana. Putin has good qualities but the improvement of life in former USSR is an objective, historic process.

    Russia is not a free country, however. It's possible that it's even less free than what it was in the late 1980s.

    There was nothing inevitable about it: how is Ukraine doing? There was only one legal party in the USSR, so your comparison can't even be entertained.

    • Replies: @Anonymous Wait, you're saying that Russia is the only post-Soviet state where life has improved since 2000? You are simply delusional. Living standards have improved in several post-Soviet states. Just look at Kazakhstan, as I said. How has Nazarbayev done less of a splendid job than Putin?

    Even Ukraine has seen an increase in birth rates, in particular in the Western parts. , @Anonymous

    There was only one legal party in the USSR, so your comparison can't even be entertained.
    I just don't think people like Artemy Troitsky, who spoke freely in the late 80s, should have criminal cases opened against them and be forced out of the country just because they openly expressed their dislike of Putin. A leader who has the support of 80% of the population can't handle a little bit of criticism?
    Alden says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 4, 2017 at 1:37 am GMT • 200 Words

    @Che Guava ... and let us not forget the extremely violent events in Mariupol and Odessa, clearly coordinated by the coup leaders who assembled the 'Euromaidan' under Obama regime direction.

    In itself, the coup d'etat against the elected pres. was extremely violent, almost all from the side of the US- and EU-supported coup makers, along with a contingency of mercenaries who just shot people to ramp it up (an idea strongly supported by mainstream press reports at the time).

    However, everyone is supposed to having the attention span of a gnat, in the face of celeb. bullshit, everybody is supposed to forget all in the glory of Kim Kardashian's gigantic plastic-surgery-augmented bum, and her stepfather's strangely late decision to fake being a woman, we can all be sure that Bruce Jenner has demonstrated his lack of belief in the 'I am really a woman' narrative by only having silicone tits inserted, and facial surgery to grind away part of his jaw bones.

    The primary sexual characteristics remain intact, not a bad idea on the part of Bruce.

    I am not saying the above two paras. represent part of a conspiracy, but it was surely a useful distraction in the mass-media at the time of the Obama regime making trouble in the Ukraine. Not that I think that was his idea, From what we know of his record, he was rather a dim bulb, benefitting from affirmative action, and never acknowledging the fact that he was dumped on his white grandparents by his slut mother, and his impregnate-and-abandon father.

    Dreams of My Father indeed, his father dumped him, as cuckoo birds do, in the nests of other birds.

    Squirt and scram is what I call impregnate and abandon.
    I read Dreams of My Father a couple years before he ran for President. His hatred of Whites was obvious. But all the useful idiots I know read it and gushed and worshipped as they had been instructed to by The Atlantic, New Republic, etc.

    He was the triumph of a breeding program begun by the communist party of the USA back in the 1930s. The idea was to encourage the young women of the far left to marry and have kids with black men. The children would be raised far left and brought along to high public office.

    They finally got Obama. I'm pretty sure his father was Frank Marshall Davis, married, head of the communist party of Hawaii and best friend of grandpa Dunham.

    Sometimes I feel like the little kid in the Emperor's New Clothes story. The more educated they are, the more gullible and brainwashed people are.

    • Replies: @utu "The more educated they are, the more gullible and brainwashed people are." -

    Revolutionaries were aware of this. Bolsheviks hated peasants because they were impregnable to their propaganda and they had often had property that was making them self sufficient and most of all because they were Christian. To get peasants to act you had to give them tangible rewards like participation in the loot from houses of aristocracy or to deprave them and bring the most animalistic nature to surface. The Protestant revolution in 16 century went along the same lines. It was looting the property of Catholic Church that sustained it but when the peasants organized themselves (Thomas Muntzer) because they wanted power from the new Protestant masters they were mercilessly massacred. Revolutions proceed to educate masses and start with eradicating illiteracy because this makes indoctrination easier. Tocqueville observed that Americans already in 1830s were exceptionally proud of America and of being Americans and believed in American exceptionalism and superiority. He attributed it to indoctrination carried out in schools.

    The merely educated (the obrazovanshchina) are the perfect product of indoctrination. They constitute the majority of the so-called educated people. The ones who manage to transcend it face the uphill battle because at first they must to unlearn what they were taught and since usually it is done not in a formal setting they are often a prey of silly ideas that may end up with being truly deplorable. I do not exclude the possibility that the silly ideas are planted there on purpose (like Cass Sustein infiltration) to distract them and send them astray, so their awakening amounts to nil. Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

    Anonymous says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 4, 2017 at 1:59 am GMT • 100 Words

    @Marcus There was nothing inevitable about it: how is Ukraine doing? There was only one legal party in the USSR, so your comparison can't even be entertained.

    Wait, you're saying that Russia is the only post-Soviet state where life has improved since 2000? You are simply delusional. Living standards have improved in several post-Soviet states. Just look at Kazakhstan, as I said. How has Nazarbayev done less of a splendid job than Putin?

    Even Ukraine has seen an increase in birth rates, in particular in the Western parts.

    Anonymous says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 4, 2017 at 2:22 am GMT • 100 Words

    @Marcus There was nothing inevitable about it: how is Ukraine doing? There was only one legal party in the USSR, so your comparison can't even be entertained.

    There was only one legal party in the USSR, so your comparison can't even be entertained.

    I just don't think people like Artemy Troitsky, who spoke freely in the late 80s, should have criminal cases opened against them and be forced out of the country just because they openly expressed their dislike of Putin. A leader who has the support of 80% of the population can't handle a little bit of criticism?

    jacques sheete says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 4, 2017 at 2:55 am GMT • 100 Words

    The more educated they are, the more gullible and brainwashed people are.

    That's because they're not educated; only brainwashed.

    It's even worse with the rich, pampered, bored, simple minded, punks who jump onto every perverse bandwagon that comes along for the thrills of momentarily appearing "hip," "cool" "defiant" and "fashionable."

    bluedog says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 4, 2017 at 3:03 am GMT

    @Corvinus "My God is that the best you can do parroting items from the Independent and Forbes..."

    You have to refute their findings with counter evidence rather than disqualify the sources entirely.

    "both noted for their propaganda..." "perhaps you can post a creditable site rather than the two you posted "

    As is this website. As is Vox Day. As in all sites have an element of propaganda. Your point?

    "I have done many search's on Putin's billions and came up empty every time..."

    That would be a False News Story. There are a number of sources that discuss how he "earned" his money.

    That would be a False News Story. There are a number of sources that discuss how he "earned" his money.

    List them please so we can all check them, out otherwise your simply spreading some more propaganda about how Putin is worth a few more stolen billions..

    utu says: Show Comment Next New Comment January 4, 2017 at 3:51 am GMT • 300 Words

    @Alden Squirt and scram is what I call impregnate and abandon.

    I read Dreams of My Father a couple years before he ran for President. His hatred of Whites was obvious. But all the useful idiots I know read it and gushed and worshipped as they had been instructed to by The Atlantic, New Republic, etc.

    He was the triumph of a breeding program begun by the communist party of the USA back in the 1930s. The idea was to encourage the young women of the far left to marry and have kids with black men. The children would be raised far left and brought along to high public office.

    They finally got Obama. I'm pretty sure his father was Frank Marshall Davis, married, head of the communist party of Hawaii and best friend of grandpa Dunham.

    Sometimes I feel like the little kid in the Emperor's New Clothes story. The more educated they are, the more gullible and brainwashed people are.

    "The more educated they are, the more gullible and brainwashed people are." –

    Revolutionaries were aware of this. Bolsheviks hated peasants because they were impregnable to their propaganda and they had often had property that was making them self sufficient and most of all because they were Christian. To get peasants to act you had to give them tangible rewards like participation in the loot from houses of aristocracy or to deprave them and bring the most animalistic nature to surface. The Protestant revolution in 16 century went along the same lines. It was looting the property of Catholic Church that sustained it but when the peasants organized themselves (Thomas Muntzer) because they wanted power from the new Protestant masters they were mercilessly massacred. Revolutions proceed to educate masses and start with eradicating illiteracy because this makes indoctrination easier. Tocqueville observed that Americans already in 1830s were exceptionally proud of America and of being Americans and believed in American exceptionalism and superiority. He attributed it to indoctrination carried out in schools.

    The merely educated (the obrazovanshchina) are the perfect product of indoctrination. They constitute the majority of the so-called educated people. The ones who manage to transcend it face the uphill battle because at first they must to unlearn what they were taught and since usually it is done not in a formal setting they are often a prey of silly ideas that may end up with being truly deplorable. I do not exclude the possibility that the silly ideas are planted there on purpose (like Cass Sustein infiltration) to distract them and send them astray, so their awakening amounts to nil.

    [Jan 07, 2017] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1ldCgzUsAAftK0.jpg

    Jan 07, 2017 | pbs.twimg.com

    Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to
    Aid Trump, Report Finds http://nyti.ms/2jbXCV1
    NYT - MICHAEL D. SHEAR and DAVID E. SANGER - Jan 6

    WASHINGTON - President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a vast cyberattack aimed at denying Hillary Clinton the presidency and installing Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office, the nation's top intelligence agencies said in an extraordinary report they delivered on Friday to Mr. Trump.

    The officials presented their unanimous conclusions to Mr. Trump in a two-hour briefing at Trump Tower in New York that brought the leaders of America's intelligence agencies face to face with their most vocal skeptic, the president-elect, who has repeatedly cast doubt on Russia's role. The meeting came just two weeks before Mr. Trump's inauguration and was underway even as the electoral votes from his victory were being formally counted in a joint session of Congress.

    Soon after leaving the meeting, intelligence officials released the declassified, damning report that described the sophisticated cybercampaign as part of a continuing Russian effort to weaken the United States government and its democratic institutions. The report - a virtually unheard-of, real-time revelation by the American intelligence agencies that undermined the legitimacy of the president who is about to direct them - made the case that Mr. Trump was the favored candidate of Mr. Putin.

    (Intelligence Report on Russian
    Hacking http://nyti.ms/2i1xVbI )

    The Russian leader, the report said, sought to denigrate Mrs. Clinton, and the report detailed what the officials had revealed to President Obama a day earlier: Mr. Trump's victory followed a complicated, multipart cyberinformation attack whose goal had evolved to help the Republican win.

    The 25-page report did not conclude that Russian involvement tipped the election to Mr. Trump.

    The public report lacked the evidence that intelligence officials said was included in a classified version, which they described as information on the sources and methods used to collect the information about Mr. Putin and his associates. Those would include intercepts of conversations and the harvesting of computer data from "implants" that the United States and its allies have put in Russian computer networks. ...

    Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump,
    Report Finds http://nyti.ms/2jbXCV1 Reply Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 10:55 AM Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... Paul Krugman ✔ @paulkrugman

    Remember, Trump's subservience
    to Putin has been obvious all along

    11:18 AM - 7 Jan 2017

    https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/817767303911788544

    Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate http://nyti.ms/29PPyc2
    NYT - Paul Krugman - JULY 22, 2016

    If elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin's man in the White House? This should be a ludicrous, outrageous question. After all, he must be a patriot - he even wears hats promising to make America great again.

    But we're talking about a ludicrous, outrageous candidate. And the Trump campaign's recent behavior has quite a few foreign policy experts wondering just what kind of hold Mr. Putin has over the Republican nominee, and whether that influence will continue if he wins.

    I'm not talking about merely admiring Mr. Putin's performance - being impressed by the de facto dictator's "strength," and wanting to emulate his actions. I am, instead, talking about indications that Mr. Trump would, in office, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy, at the expense of America's allies and her own self-interest.

    That's not to deny that Mr. Trump does, indeed, admire Mr. Putin. On the contrary, he has repeatedly praised the Russian strongman, often in extravagant terms. For example, when Mr. Putin published an article attacking American exceptionalism, Mr. Trump called it a "masterpiece."

    But admiration for Putinism isn't unusual in Mr. Trump's party. Well before the Trump candidacy, Putin envy on the right was already widespread.

    For one thing, Mr. Putin is someone who doesn't worry about little things like international law when he decides to invade a country. He's "what you call a leader," declared Rudy Giuliani after Russia invaded Ukraine. ...
    Reply Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 11:09 AM Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... 'when Mr. Putin published an article attacking American exceptionalism, Mr. Trump called it a "masterpiece."'

    Vladimir Putin has a plan for destroying
    the West-and it looks a lot like Donald Trump
    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/07/vladimir_putin_has_a_plan_for_destroying_the_west_and_it_looks_a_lot_like.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top via @slate Reply Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 11:14 AM Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... Slate: Trump's devotion to the Russian president has been portrayed as buffoonish enthusiasm for a fellow macho strongman. But Trump's statements of praise amount to something closer to slavish devotion. In 2007, he praised Putin for "rebuilding Russia." A year later he added, "He does his work well. Much better than our Bush." When Putin ripped American exceptionalism in a New York Times op-ed in 2013, Trump called it "a masterpiece."

    What Putin Has to Say to Americans
    About Syria http://nyti.ms/1eFFMCQ
    NYT - VLADIMIR V. PUTIN - SEPT. 11, 2013

    Donald J. Trump✔ @realDonaldTrump

    Putin's letter is a masterpiece for Russia and a disaster for the U.S. He is lecturing to our President.Never has our Country looked to weak

    6:26 AM - 12 Sep 2013

    https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/378102285001576448 Reply Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 11:21 AM ilsm said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... Not going to war with Putin might hurt all of their feelings! Maybe the pocketbook of war profiteers.

    Duality: Clinton had no animus in breaking the law concerning lost public records and mishandling security information, but Putin is evil!

    What they gave Trump is an 'assessment', appeal to authority all Krugman wants.

    Same kind of 'assessment' that gave you Iraq.

    The main plea coming from the media, war corporatists and the distraught is: we cannot ignore the spook's assessments.

    Neolibs are different than their equals in the GOP because they care about the feelings of war mongers and cannot keep them from their wars of profit. Reply Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 11:24 AM Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to ilsm... You may have been right in thinking that
    the need to seem hawkish when chasing the
    presidency is no longer essential, at least
    with regard to Russia.

    Now I have secretly believed all along that
    US and them have been 2 sides of the same coin,
    brash, arrogant, yada yada. Perhaps we can do
    some bizness together, yes?

    Maybe they could use a half-decent missile
    defense system, priced to sell. Reply Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 03:32 PM libezkova said in reply to ilsm... Neocons just dusted off Senator McCarthy play book and changed "communists" into "Russian agents."

    The fact that Krugman would eventually join neo-McCarthyism witch hunt was given. What else would you expect? Working for NYT carries certain obligations. Add to this his former cheerleading for Hillary. So Krugman's behavior as a political commentator is far from surprising. He just carries water for the US neocons.

    "Russians are coming" is now the rallying cry of the neocons/neolibs in Washington. Who are concerned not about the country and it security against foreign intelligence efforts (many of then are "Israel first" types), but about losing their lucrative sinecures.

    Some suggested that McCarthy witch hunt (the crusade against communist subversives) which started in February 9, 1950, was a smoke screen to suppress questions about large influx of former Nazi specialists into the USA, and also the way to prepare the US population to possible war with the USSR, which was on the drawing boards since 1945.

    The plans to bomb with A-bombs key Soviet sites while Soviets do not have nuclear bombs to retaliate were created even the end of WWII.

    == quote ==
    Interestingly enough, then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had ordered the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff to develop a strategy targeting the USSR months before the end of the Second World War. The first edition of the plan was prepared on May 22, 1945. In accordance with the plan the invasion of Russia-held Europe by the Allied forces was scheduled on July 1, 1945.

    ...The plan, dubbed Operation Unthinkable, stated that its primary goal was "to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire.

    ... ... ...

    The British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff underscored that the Allied Forces would win in the event of

    1) the occupation of such metropolitan areas of Russia so that the war making capacity of the country would be reduced to a point to which further resistance would become impossible";

    2) "such a decisive defeat of the Russian forces in the field as to render it impossible for the USSR to continue the war."

    ... ... ...

    ...after the United States "tested" its nuclear arsenal in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Churchill and right-wing American policy makers started to persuade the White House to bomb the USSR.

    A nuclear strike against Soviet Russia, exhausted by the war with Germany, would have led to the defeat of the Kremlin at the same time allowing the Allied Forces to avoid US and British military casualties, Churchill insisted.

    Needless to say, the former British Prime Minister did not care about the death of tens of thousands of Russian peaceful civilians which were already hit severely by the four-year war nightmare.

    "He [Churchill] pointed out that if an atomic bomb could be dropped on the Kremlin, wiping it out, it would be a very easy problem to handle the balance of Russia, which would be without direction," an unclassified note from the FBI archive read.
    ... ... ...
    Unthinkable as it may seem, Churchill's plan literally won the hearts and minds of US policy makers and military officials. Between 1945 and the USSR's first detonation of a nuclear device in 1949, the Pentagon developed at least nine nuclear war plans targeting Soviet Russia, according to US researchers Dr. Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod.

    In their book "To Win a Nuclear War: the Pentagon's Secret War Plans," based on declassified top secret documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the researchers exposed the US military's strategies to initiate a nuclear war with Russia.

    "The names given to these plans graphically portray their offensive purpose: Bushwhacker, Broiler, Sizzle, Shakedown, Offtackle, Dropshot, Trojan, Pincher, and Frolic. The US military knew the offensive nature of the job President Truman had ordered them to prepare for and had named their war plans accordingly," remarked American scholar J.W. Smith ("The World's Wasted Wealth 2").

    These "first-strike" plans developed by the Pentagon were aimed at destroying the USSR without any damage to the United States.

    The 1949 Dropshot plan envisaged that the US would attack Soviet Russia and drop at least 300 nuclear bombs and 20,000 tons of conventional bombs on 200 targets in 100 urban areas, including Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In addition, the planners offered to kick off a major land campaign against the USSR to win a "complete victory" over the Soviet Union together with the European allies. According to the plan Washington would start the war on January 1, 1957.
    http://russia-insider.com/en/history/1945-49-us-and-uk-planned-bomb-russia-stone-age/ri9530

    == end of the quote ===

    I think neocons are extremely worried about possible changes in foreign policy, Trump administration might implement. And they have quite a lot to hide, which might come into clear after Trump enters White House. And this time much more is in stake, then Obama birth certificate. So they want some kind of "immunity deal." similar to what Trump already (and probably prematurely) promised to Clintons.

    That's why they now work overtime to delegitimize Trump. Obama action with the expulsion of Russian diplomats belongs to the same category. He was trying to force Trump hand and protect his neoliberal "legacy" (and associated skeletons in the closet) in very Machiavellian way.

    What is also not surprising is that those intelligence agencies conveniently forget the USA behavior in Russian Presidential elections of 2011-2012 when they tried to stage a color revolution (called "While revolution").

    Ambassador McFaul was involved as well as all major US NGO such as NED. McFaul left the country soon after elections, NED was kicked out.

    Of course, neither NYT, nor WaPo would ever mention this skeleton in the closet.
    Reply Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 05:19 PM

    [Jan 07, 2017] https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/washpost-is-richly-rewarded-for-false-news-about-russia-threat-while-public-is-deceived/

    Jan 07, 2017 | theintercept.com

    January 4, 2007

    WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived
    By Glenn Greenwald

    IN THE PAST six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on how Russia is behind a massive explosion of "fake news," the other on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a humiliating editor's note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the story were fiction: The first note was posted a full two weeks later to the top of the original article; the other was buried the following day at the bottom.

    The second story on the electric grid turned out to be far worse than I realized when I wrote about it on Saturday, when it became clear that there was no "penetration of the U.S. electricity grid" as the Post had claimed. In addition to the editor's note, the Russia-hacked-our-electric-grid story now has a full-scale retraction in the form of a separate article admitting that "the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility" and there may not even have been malware at all on this laptop.

    But while these debacles are embarrassing for the paper, they are also richly rewarding. That's because journalists - including those at the Post - aggressively hype and promote the original, sensationalistic false stories, ensuring that they go viral, generating massive traffic for the Post (the paper's executive editor, Marty Baron, recently boasted about how profitable the paper has become).

    After spreading the falsehoods far and wide, raising fear levels and manipulating U.S. political discourse in the process (both Russia stories were widely hyped on cable news), journalists who spread the false claims subsequently note the retraction or corrections only in the most muted way possible, and often not at all. As a result, only a tiny fraction of people who were exposed to the original false story end up learning of the retractions.... Reply Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 07:40 AM Peter K. said in reply to anne... Since the Washington Post was bought by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, it's nice to see that the quality of their journalism hasn't improved.

    In fact they fired Harold Meyerson who used to be a good quality lefty.

    Apparently he criticized progressive neoliberalism too much and had to go.
    Reply Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 07:46 AM ilsm said in reply to anne... Putin has to be evil, all the phony evidence* points to it!

    The Russia run by Putin have to be evil because if they are not then the CIA is lying, US cannot have the spooks who run up jihadis against nations and see yellow cake seen as less than crusaders for the empire.

    Worse if Putin is not evil the US should not run NATO up to Moscow!

    The MSM is building a case to do Putin like the one to do Assad.

    Nothing to see here!

    *Smart sounding fallacies (deduction with prejudice) of logic are the basis of propaganda. Reply Saturday, January 07, 2017 at 10:49 AM

    [Jan 07, 2017] The fake image is what the neocons want us to believe about the dire threat from Putin!

    Jan 07, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    ilsm : January 07, 2017 at 06:40 AM , 2017 at 06:40 AM
    Barry Ritholtz does a service linking us to a propaganda piece in politico:

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/putins-real-long-game-214589

    The service is an example of propaganda using "deductive reasoning"; a journalist interviewing lots of propagandists and using their spin to support an hypothesis that is Clinton Mrs Kagan/Nuland neocon bat crazy!

    The fake image is what the neocons want us to believe about the dire threat from Putin!

    At least once a year Barry posts the cheat sheet, then he sets out hundreds of examples in his reads.

    [Jan 06, 2017] Trump to revamp intelligence agencies: report

    I am actually surprised by the amount of Trump hating comments to this article.... What is so criminal in trying to reorganize two of 12 Us intelligence agencies. Which might become too bloated and deviate from their original purposes. Is not how restructuring is used in business world ? And the number of commenters blaclmpousing Putin and Russia create great alarm. Looks like the US MSM managed to brainwash the US population like in 50th during "Red Scare". Some comments looks like hate sessions from 1984.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 - Amends the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 to authorize the Secretary of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to provide for the preparation and dissemination of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United States, including about its people, its history, and the federal government's policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures, the Internet, and other information media, including social media, and through information centers and instructors. ..."
    "... This use of propaganda on the American public effectively nullified the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion. ..."
    "... The NDAA in its current form allows the State Department and Pentagon to go beyond manipulating mainstream media outlets to directly disseminate campaigns of misinformation to the U.S. public. ..."
    "... They refused to brief Congress. They were never allowed to release their findings publicly, because they still haven't. They leaked their conclusions. All to attempt to undermine the stability of their own country. And you don't see this. ..."
    "... This is why Wikileaks exists. What the MSM can no longer deliver (the TRUTH and credible news), Wikileaks can deliver to the American people. ..."
    "... Are you claiming the US hasn't done all it can to destabilize and destroy Russia? ..."
    "... This blame Russia frenzy is a loser strategy. The sole purpose is to deligitimize Trump's victory. Can't wait for Trump to start firing a**es. ..."
    Jan 06, 2017 | thehill.com

    "The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world [is] becoming completely politicized," an individual close to Trump's transition operation said. "They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring agencies and how they interact."
    Trump is targeting the CIA and the ODNI as he publicly wars with the U.S. intelligence community over its conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

    Trump wants to shrink the ODNI, as he believes the agency established in 2004 as a response to the 9/11 terror attacks has become bloated and politicized.

    Guest sikaniska 2 hours ago
    Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 - Amends the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 to authorize the Secretary of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to provide for the preparation and dissemination of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United States, including about its people, its history, and the federal government's policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures, the Internet, and other information media, including social media, and through information centers and instructors.

    The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 passed Congress as part of the NDAA 2013 on December 28, 2012.

    The NDAA Legalizes The Use Of Propaganda On The US Public http://www.businessinsider.com...

    This use of propaganda on the American public effectively nullified the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion.

    The NDAA in its current form allows the State Department and Pentagon to go beyond manipulating mainstream media outlets to directly disseminate campaigns of misinformation to the U.S. public.

    But the US public learned quickly and they are not buying the misinformation anymore.

    hmg, Jr. 4 hours ago
    is this the revelation due early this week that he promised us?
    JacksonEuler 4 hours ago
    Trump knows better:

    1) Renewables:
    "I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth." - April 2016

    2) Social media
    "I understand social media. I understand the power
    of Twitter. I understand the power of Facebook maybe better than almost
    anybody, based on my results, right?" - November 2015

    3) Debt
    "Nobody knows more about debt. I'm like the king. I love debt." - May 2016

    4) Taxes, again
    "I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe
    in the history of the world. Nobody knows more about taxes." - May 2016

    I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has
    ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them. #failing@nytimes
    - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2016

    don Jody 4 hours ago
    They refused to brief Congress. They were never allowed to release their findings publicly, because they still haven't. They leaked their conclusions. All to attempt to undermine the stability of their own country. And you don't see this.
    Guest 2 hours ago

    This is why Wikileaks exists. What the MSM can no longer deliver (the TRUTH and credible news), Wikileaks can deliver to the American people.

    Trump University 5 hours ago
    OBL caused 9/11 -- and it happened on Dubya's watch. He was expressly warned OBL wanted to do it -- and he laughed and let it happen.
    Vegas DB Pro Alex Cross 4 hours ago
    Are you claiming the US hasn't done all it can to destabilize and destroy Russia?
    DoILookAmused2u ? Vegas DB Pro 4 hours ago
    No, we haven't. Putin, United Russia, and his buddies in organized crime sure have though.
    Vegas DB Pro DoILookAmused2u ? 4 hours ago
    Really? We've been interfering in theirs, and many other countries, affairs for decades, same as they've done to us. Learn some history, dummy.
    DoILookAmused2u ? Vegas DB Pro 3 hours ago
    No, we haven't, and we didn't. In fact, his former boss -- Yeltsin -- hired Republican political consultants to help his campaign.

    Putin would like the world to believe that Russians fed up with bribery, extortion, the fall of the ruble, and the fact that their votes don't count rising up and protesting was about outside meddling, but it was internal.

    And he responded by making protests illegal, getting rid of the election of governors (he appoints them now), closing down critical reporting outlets, and some journalists were murdered.

    Uncle Keef Vegas DB Pro 4 hours ago
    So? whose side are you on?
    Don't be like Trump. Stand with the U.S.
    Vegas DB Pro Uncle Keef 4 hours ago
    You moron, I served the US for 20 years in the military, but facts are facts and we need to butt the he!! out of other countries business, and until we do, they will continue to come after us. How long were you in?
    Mohammad Izzaterd 4 hours ago
    This blame Russia frenzy is a loser strategy. The sole purpose is to deligitimize Trump's victory. Can't wait for Trump to start firing a**es.

    [Jan 06, 2017] Trump Splits With 'Senior Advisor' Former CIA Chief Woolsey Zero Hedge

    Jan 06, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Trouble in paradise? Following his comments earlier in the week that it was not just the Russians (but China and Iran maybe) that hacked US and that Trump "may be playing us ," former CIA Director James Woolsey has parted ways with the president-elect and will no longer be a Senior Advisor .

    Woolsey did not appear to be toeing the company-line completely...

    Former CIA director James Woolsey: Possibility that more than one country is involved in hacking is there. https://t.co/cxZqeyNvOI

    - New Day (@NewDay) January 3, 2017

    As we noted previously, The Hill reports , Woolsey, who was a senior advisor to President-elect Donald Trump , said:

    "I don't think people ought to say they know for sure there's only one. I don't think they're likely to be proven correct. It shouldn't be portrayed as one guilty party,"

    "It's much more complicated than that. This is not an organized operation that is hacking into a target. It's more like a bunch of jackals at the carcass of an antelope ."

    Woolsey suggested China and Iran could be behind cyber breaches in the U.S.

    "Is it Russian? Probably some," he said. "Is it Chinese and Iranian? Maybe. We may find out more from Mr. Trump coming up today."

    This follows Trump's comments on Sunday hinting he would reveal new information about alleged Russian hacking during a New Year's Eve celebration at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.

    "[I know] things that other people don't know," he said. "I just want them to be sure because it's a pretty serious charge. I think it's unfair if they don't know."

    To which Woolsey contentiously also commented:

    "There's a possibility that he is [playing us] a little bit."

    But as is clear, Woolsey's belief that the Russians "were in there" still goes further than what Trump has said about the hacks ... which may be why Woolsey has announced in a formal statement

    "Effective immediately, Ambassador Woolsey is no longer a Senior Adviser to President-elect Trump or the transition," Woolsey's spokesman, Jonathan Franks, wrote in a statement that was first reported by CNN's Jeremy Diamond.

    "He wishes the President-elect and his Administration great success in their time in office."

    Furthermore, The Washington Post's Philip Rucker reports, Woolsey resigned after being cut out of intelligence talks with Trump and his national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

    nmewn PT Jan 5, 2017 8:51 PM

    So yeah, Russian hackers.

    Here we go, this is from Buzzfeed so according to the NYT's and Washington Post this source would qualify as "fake news"...lol...but!...

    "The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI's Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice's National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney's Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC's computer servers," Eric Walker, the DNC's deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed News in an email."

    ...but!...just looky here...we've got an actual non-anonymous, real life, people-type person who is not speaking from the shadows in an underground parking garage its, Eric Walker, the DNC's deputy communications director.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/the-fbi-never-asked-for-access-to-h...

    Oh my ;-)

    847328_3527 xythras Jan 5, 2017 9:42 PM

    I still think it is independent patriots assited by patriotic insiders who exposed the DNC's criminal activity.

    Anyway, when do we get the criminal investigation into the contents of the leaks? That's where the meat is. Not that someone exposed the crimes; they deserve a medal.

    fleur de lis ElTerco Jan 5, 2017 8:44 PM

    Shit on Woolsey.

    He went out of his way to get that traitorous vermin Jonathan Pollard out of jail.

    He accused the whole country of anti-semitism just because Pollard got busted giving secrets away to the Israelis for years.

    As if the Israelis don't get enough as it is.

    http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Former-CIA-director-accuses-...

    Why didn't someone on Trump's team ask him about that.

    And they had better start doing some real due dilligence on these remora types.

    Where there's one Israeli mole there's ten.

    Woolsey thinks Pollard's release is overdue.

    http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/James-Woolsey-Jonathan-Pollard-release...

    A very, very close look at Woolsey is overdue.

    And his associations, bank books, phone calls, etc.

    How dare he advise any of us about security after that.

    Woolsey is a Mossad crack ho.

    He needs a major smackdown.

    Paul Kersey localsavage Jan 5, 2017 8:25 PM

    Former CIA Director James Woolsey, was a vocal advocate of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq who promoted allegations that Saddam Hussein harbored illegal weapons of mass destruction.

    [Jan 06, 2017] Trump and Hegel concept of the Irony of History.

    Notable quotes:
    "... It was possible to say, before Warren G. Harding was elected, that he wasn't particularly well-qualified to be president. And he did turn out as president to have, as we say nowadays, some issues. But his administration was stocked with (mostly) well-qualified men who served with considerable distinction. ..."
    "... But how Hegelian it would be if the thesis of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, followed by the antithesis of a Trump victory over first a Bush and then a Clinton in 2016, were to produce an unanticipated synthesis: a Trump administration marked by the reconstruction of republican normalcy in America. In its own way, that would be a genuine contribution to making America great again. ..."
    "... Kristol is mad Trump lambasted the Iraq war. Was Putin against the Iraq war? I think the whole world was except for the "Coalition of the Willing." You'll never see the UK back another war like that. ..."
    "... "Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom" of American capitalism vis-ŕ-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone explains, referring to the former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should support her. She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism." ..."
    "... Of course the progressive neoliberals in this forum regularly resort to ad hominem to any ideas or facts that don't line up with the agreed-upon party line. ..."
    Jan 06, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Fred C. Dobbs : January 05, 2017 at 07:40 AM , 2017 at 07:40 AM
    (Harding redux?)

    The Trump Administration
    http://tws.io/2iFd3rC
    via @WeeklyStandard
    Nov 28, 2016 - William Kristol

    Who now gives much thought to the presidency of Warren G. Harding? Who ever did? Not us.

    But let us briefly turn our thoughts to our 29th president (while stipulating that we're certainly no experts on his life or times). Here's our summary notion: Warren G. Harding may have been a problematic president. But the Harding administration was in some ways an impressive one, which served the country reasonably well.

    It was possible to say, before Warren G. Harding was elected, that he wasn't particularly well-qualified to be president. And he did turn out as president to have, as we say nowadays, some issues. But his administration was stocked with (mostly) well-qualified men who served with considerable distinction.

    Andrew Mellon was a successful Treasury secretary whose tax reforms and deregulatory efforts spurred years of economic growth. Charles Dawes, the first director of the Bureau of the Budget, reduced government expenditures and, helped by Mellon's economic policies, brought the budget into balance. Charles Evans Hughes as secretary of state dealt responsibly with a very difficult world situation his administration had inherited-though in light of what followed in the next decade, one wishes in retrospect for bolder assertions of American leadership, though in those years just after World War I, they would have been contrary to the national mood.

    In addition, President Harding's first two Supreme Court appointments -- William Howard Taft and George Sutherland -- were distinguished ones. And Harding personally did some admirable things: He made pronouncements, impressive in the context of that era, in favor of racial equality; he commuted the wartime prison sentence of the Socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs. In these ways, he contributed to an atmosphere of national healing and civility.

    The brief Harding administration-and for that matter the eight years constituting his administration and that of his vice president and successor, Calvin Coolidge-may not have been times of surpassing national greatness. But there were real achievements, especially in the economic sphere; those years were not disastrous; they were not dark times.

    President-elect Donald J. Trump probably doesn't intend to model his administration on that of President Warren G. Harding. But he could do worse than reflect on that administration's successes-and also on its failures, particularly the scandals that exploded into public view after Harding's sudden death. These were produced by cronies appointed by Harding to important positions, where they betrayed his trust and tarnished his historical reputation.

    Donald Trump manifestly cares about his reputation. He surely knows that reputation ultimately depends on performance. If a Trump hotel and casino is successful, it's not because of the Trump brand-that may get people through the door the first time-but because it provides a worthwhile experience thanks to a good management team, fine restaurants, deft croupiers, and fun shows. If a Trump golf course succeeds, it's because it has been built and is run by people who know something about golf. The failed Trump efforts-from the university to the steaks-seem to have in common the assumption that the Trump name by itself would be enough to carry mediocre or worse enterprises across the finish line.

    To succeed in business, the brand only gets you so far. Quality matters. To succeed in the presidency, getting elected only gets you so far. Governing matters.

    It would be ironic if Trump's very personal electoral achievement were followed by a mode of governance that restored greater responsibility to the cabinet agencies formally entrusted with the duties of governance. It would be ironic if a Trump presidency also featured a return of authority to Congress, the states, and to other civic institutions. It would be ironic if Trump's victory led not to a kind of American Caesarism but to a strengthening of republican institutions and forms. It would be ironic if the election of Donald J. Trump heralded a return to a kind of constitutional normalcy.

    If we are not mistaken, it was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (though sadly unaware of the phenomena of either Warren G. Harding or Donald J. Trump) who made much of the Irony of History.

    But how Hegelian it would be if the thesis of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, followed by the antithesis of a Trump victory over first a Bush and then a Clinton in 2016, were to produce an unanticipated synthesis: a Trump administration marked by the reconstruction of republican normalcy in America. In its own way, that would be a genuine contribution to making America great again.

    (Harding-Coolidge-Hoover were a disastrous triumvirate that ascended to power after the Taft & Wilson administrations, as the GOP - then the embodiment of progressivism - split apart due to the efforts of Teddy Roosevelt.)

    Peter K. -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
    Kristol is mad Trump lambasted the Iraq war. Was Putin against the Iraq war? I think the whole world was except for the "Coalition of the Willing." You'll never see the UK back another war like that.
    ilsm -> Peter K.... , January 05, 2017 at 03:35 PM
    It is the neocon's taking a back seat!

    Kristol is co-founder of PNAC along with a Clinton mob long time foggy bottom associate's husband..

    Trump is somewhat less thrilled with tilting with Russia for the American empire which is as moral as Nero's Rome.

    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
    Prescient: dumping Kristol's PNAC will strengthen the republic.
    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , January 05, 2017 at 07:52 AM
    "Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom" of American capitalism vis-ŕ-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone explains, referring to the former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should support her. She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism."

    Is it better to ignore this fault line and try to paper it over or is it better to debate the issues in a polite and congenial manner?

    Of course the progressive neoliberals in this forum regularly resort to ad hominem to any ideas or facts that don't line up with the agreed-upon party line.

    [Jan 06, 2017] Trump Aims To Cut The Neocon Deep State Off At The Knees

    Jan 06, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    I have long held that America's Deep State --the unelected National Security State often referred to as the Shadow Government-- is not a unified monolith but a deeply divided ecosystem in which the dominant Neocon-Neoliberal Oligarchy is being challenged by elements which view the Neocon-Neoliberal agenda as a threat to national security and the interests of the United States.

    I call these anti-Neocon-Neoliberal elements the progressive Deep State.

    If you want a working definition of the Neocon-Neoliberal Deep State, Hillary Clinton's quip-- we came, we saw, he died --is a good summary: a bullying, arrogance-soaked state-within-a-state pursuing an agenda of ceaseless intervention while operating a global Murder, Inc., supremely confident that no one in the elected government can touch them.

    Until Trump unexpectedly wrenched the presidency from the Neocon's candidate. The Neocon Deep State's response was to manufacture a mass-media hysteria that Russia had wrongfully deprived the Neocon's candidate (Hillary Clinton) of what was rightfully hers: the presidency. (The Neocons operate their own version of the divine right of Political Nobility .)

    The Neocon-Neoliberals' strategy was to delegitimize Trump's victory by ascribing it to "Russian Hacking," a claim that remains entirely unsubstantiated. Now that this grasping-at-straws Hail Mary coup attempt by a politicized CIA and its corporate media mouthpiece has failed, the Neocon Deep State is about to find out the Progressive Deep State finally has a president who is willing and able to cut the Neocon-Neoliberals off at the knees.

    Trump Is Working On A Plan To Restructure, Pare Back The CIA And America's Top Spy Agency .

    If you want documented evidence of this split in the Deep State--sorry, it doesn't work that way. Nobody in the higher echelons of the Deep State is going to leak anything about the low-intensity war being waged because the one thing everyone agrees on is the Deep State's dirty laundry must be kept private.

    As a result, the split is visible only by carefully reading between the lines, by examining who is being placed in positions of control in the Trump Administration, and reading the tea leaves of who is "retiring" (i.e. being fired) or quitting, which agencies are suddenly being reorganized, and the appearance of dissenting views in journals that serve as public conduits for Deep State narratives.

    I have also long held that Wall Street's political dominance is part and parcel of the Neocon-Neoliberal ideology , and the progressive elements in the Deep State also want to (finally) limit the power of the big banks and the rest of the Wall Street crowd.

    Is the Deep State Fracturing into Disunity? (March 14, 2014)

    The split in the Deep State is a reflection of the profound political disunity that is occurring in the U.S. In other words, it isn't just disunity in the masses or the political elites--it's a division in all levels of our society.

    The cause is not difficult to discern: the concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of the few is generating levels of inequality that threaten democracy, the social order and the vitality of the economy:

    As someone who has studied the Deep State for 40 years, I find it ironic that so many self-identified "progressives" do not understand that the U.S. military is now the Progressive element and it's the civilian leadership--the Neocon-Neoliberals-- who are responsible for leading the nation into quagmires and handing the keys to the chicken coop to the wolves of Wall Street.

    When military leaders such as Eric Shinseki questioned the Neocon's insane "strategy" in Iraq--essentially a civilian fantasy of magical-thinking--the Neocons quickly cashiered him (Shinseki was a wounded combat veteran of Vietnam who rose through the ranks--the exact opposite of the coddled never-get-my-hands-dirty Elites in the civilian Neocon-Neoliberal leadership.)

    To the degree that the U.S. has become a Third World Oligarchy owned and controlled by a financial-political Elite, then the U.S. military is one of the few national institutions that hasn't been corrupted by top-down politicization and worship of Wall Street.

    Shinseki et al. did not amass a fortune from Wall Street like Bill and Hillary Clinton. The simple dictum-- follow the money --maps the lay of the land rather neatly.

    The Neocon-Neoliberals have run the nation into the ground. They must be fired and put out to pasture before they do any more harm. That includes the Fake-"Progressives" and the fake-"Conservatives" alike who have enriched themselves within the Neocon-Neoliberal Oligarchy.

    If you are surprised that the Democratic Party, the CIA and Wall Street are all hugging each other in the same cozy Neocon-Neoliberal Oligarchic embrace, you shouldn't be. Open your eyes.

    Could the Deep State Be Sabotaging Hillary? (August 8, 2016)

    stizazz Jan 5, 2017 10:39 PM

    W Bush: "Dad, what's a neocon?" HW Bush: "You want names or description?" W: "Description." HW: "Israel."

    Chopping down the neocon deep state is to cut down Israel. Trump won't, though he should.

    techies-r-us stizazz Jan 5, 2017 10:42 PM

    All of America's problems in the MidEast is because of these Israel-first neocons.

    Mano-A-Mano bamawatson Jan 5, 2017 10:56 PM

    Why is it that no one wants to describe who the neocons are?

    Which lends credence to the fact that in the Israeli-occupied West you can't criticize Israel, no matter the evil they inflict on the Middle East.

    fleur de lis J S Bach Jan 5, 2017 10:56 PM

    The problem is that the deep state owns most if not all the wet workers.

    They will do whatever the DS says since their paychecks depend upon it.

    Best thing would be to ID the wet workers and give them X amount of time to come in from the cold, then give them the choice of taking a payoff and staying out of trouble or getting their wings clipped for violating parole, or turning state's evidence in exchange for a job or getting their spawn into good schools/jobs.

    If they miss the deadline they default into "problems" and get dealt with accordingly.

    Rebel yell Jan 5, 2017 10:53 PM

    If Trump can cut the neo-fascist deep-state off at the knees, America can be great again!

    The Spanish-American Inquisition : Mexican propaganda was the reason that people voted for Hillary Clinton. NYT largest shareholder is Carlos Slim who has lost 40% of his net worth in the last 2 years as a result of the peso. Trump would diminish his own personal empire by further devaluation of the peso and by reducing Mexican manufacturing.

    The Mexican propaganda was not merely limited to the NYT. Telemundo also played a large part in this. The infiltration of Mexican spies and propagandists through telemundo owned by Comcast, the country's largest media organization has completely compromised Comcast! All of their companies endorsed Hillary in order to benefit the Mexican economy!

    Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in order to spread Cuban propaganda. His adopted father was from Cuba. Since Jeff Bezos purchased WaPo, Obama has restored relations with Cuba. Coincidence?! We think not!!!

    CNN is Chilean propaganda -- What lengths will they go to in order to mislead the public as the Chilean president owns Chilevisian which is a Time Warner subsidiary and Time Warner owns CNN?! Trump's plan of rewriting NAFTA would be less favorable to Chile than it is in its current form! CNN is trying to get people to put the needs of the Chilean people above the needs of American people!

    Congress has the right to declare war, but the president is the commander in chief. Let congress declare war on Russia and go and fight the Russians themselves. They can declare war, but there will be nobody to fight it, unless they do it themselves!

    Paul Kersey Jan 5, 2017 10:53 PM

    The Fed and the TBTF banks run Deep State, and according to the latest article in the WSJ, Trump is beyond indebted to the TBTF banks. If true, this is scary and gives Trump a pretty serious reason for putting so many Goldmanites in positions of power in his Administration.

    (Wall Street Journal)

    "More than 150 financial institutions hold debt from President-elect Donald Trump's businesses or businesses in which he is at least a 30 percent stakeholder, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

    That amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in potential conflicts of interest as Trump prepares to begin his presidency.

    When Trump submitted a required financial disclosure form with the Federal Election Commission in May 2015, he listed 16 loans, collectively worth $315 million in debt, that his businesses had received from 10 companies, according to the newspaper.

    The Journal's analysis goes beyond those loans and includes debt held by companies in which Trump is at least a 30 percent stakeholder, including, for example, the companies which control 1290 Avenue of the Americas.

    That building, owned by a partnership of companies that is 30 percent owned by Trump, received $950 million in loans in 2012 from UBS Group AG, Bank of China, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank, according to the report.

    Deutsche Bank, a German institution, is currently under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for its equity trading with wealthy Russian clients.

    In the case of Goldman Sachs, the bank now counts several its former employees among the highest levels of the incoming Trump administration, including former bank president Gary Cohn, who was appointed director of Trump's National Economic Council."

    DirtySanchez Jan 5, 2017 10:56 PM

    "The Neocon-Neoliberals have run the nation into the ground. They must be fired and put out to pasture before they do any more harm. That includes the Fake-"Progressives" and the fake-"Conservatives" alike who have enriched themselves within the Neocon-Neoliberal Oligarchy."

    My ass!!!!! Mr Trump is the right man at the right time to send these war criminals to hell where they belong! HW, W, Bozo,Their globalists war cabinets,Their corrupt underlings, #MAGA #Drain the Swamp

    cheech_wizard Jan 5, 2017 11:20 PM

    Trump needs to distract them quickly. So I have given this a few quick moments of thought and came up with what should be Trump's first executive order. Congress and all Federal employees are now required to use Obamacare as their health plan.

    Standard Disclaimer: Aside from watching Congressional critter's heads explode, the disaster known as Obamacare would be either repealed or fixed in a NY minute.

    [Jan 06, 2017] If we consider two possibilities: GOP establishment chew up Trump and Trump chew up GOP establishment it is clear that possibility is more probable.

    Jan 06, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Peter K. -> Chris G ... , January 05, 2017 at 11:59 AM
    I've heard otherwise. The progressive neoliberals are just putting out disinformation.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html

    "At every point of the race, Mr. Trump was doing better among white voters without a college degree than Mitt Romney did in 2012 - by a wide margin. Mrs. Clinton was also not matching Mr. Obama's support among black voters."

    "Mrs. Clinton's gains were concentrated among the most affluent and best-educated white voters, much as Mr. Trump's gains were concentrated among the lowest-income and least-educated white voters."

    Peter K. -> Chris Lowery ... , January 05, 2017 at 07:30 AM
    Trump won the Republican primary and general election.

    ""Trump dominated - in the primary and general elections - those districts represented by Congress's most conservative members," Tim Alberta wrote in National Review (he is now at Politico):

    They once believed they were elected to advance a narrowly ideological agenda, but Trump's success has given them reason to question that belief.

    Among these archconservatives, who in the past had been fanatical in their pursuit of ideological purity, the realization that they can no longer depend on unfailing support from their constituents has provoked deep anxiety."

    These archconservatives who say that Trump's flimsy mandate is just based on just 80,000 votes in the rustbelt are in for a rude awakening. He won the primary. In Northern States. In Southern States. Everywhere.

    It's hilarious that the progressive neoliberals like DeLong, Krugman, Drum, Yglesias etc have said exactly nothing about Trump's tweets at Congressional Republicans over the independent ethics committee.

    Silence.

    JF -> Chris Lowery ... , January 05, 2017 at 09:02 AM
    There is a propaganda technique where you describe straw-person characterizations then undermine them. When in fact the whole longwinded campaign depends on readers and listeners not bothering or too tired to focus and see the mischaracterizations in the straw.

    This whole thing is an apologia, for propaganda purposes, as I see it.

    We all need to take care. It takes a lot of money and effort to organize such propaganda exercises. Please take care in using and reusing these type things.

    Libezkova -> Chris Lowery ... , January 05, 2017 at 09:49 AM
    "Trump has converted the G.O.P. into a populist, America First party" is an overstatement. He definitely made some efforts in this direction, but it is premature to declare this "fait accompli".

    If we consider two possibilities: "GOP establishment chew up Trump" and "Trump chew up GOP establishment" it is clear that possibility is more probable.

    Theoretically that might give Democrats a chance, but I think the Clintonized Party is too corrupt to take this chance. "An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought." ;-)

    In any case, 2018 elections will be very interesting as I think that the process of a slow collapse of neoliberal ideology and the rise of the US nationalist movements ("far right") will continue unabated.

    This is the same process that we see in full force in EU.

    [Jan 06, 2017] Trump and Hegel concept of the Irony of History.

    Notable quotes:
    "... It was possible to say, before Warren G. Harding was elected, that he wasn't particularly well-qualified to be president. And he did turn out as president to have, as we say nowadays, some issues. But his administration was stocked with (mostly) well-qualified men who served with considerable distinction. ..."
    "... But how Hegelian it would be if the thesis of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, followed by the antithesis of a Trump victory over first a Bush and then a Clinton in 2016, were to produce an unanticipated synthesis: a Trump administration marked by the reconstruction of republican normalcy in America. In its own way, that would be a genuine contribution to making America great again. ..."
    "... Kristol is mad Trump lambasted the Iraq war. Was Putin against the Iraq war? I think the whole world was except for the "Coalition of the Willing." You'll never see the UK back another war like that. ..."
    "... "Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom" of American capitalism vis-ŕ-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone explains, referring to the former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should support her. She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism." ..."
    "... Of course the progressive neoliberals in this forum regularly resort to ad hominem to any ideas or facts that don't line up with the agreed-upon party line. ..."
    Jan 06, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Fred C. Dobbs : January 05, 2017 at 07:40 AM , 2017 at 07:40 AM
    (Harding redux?)

    The Trump Administration
    http://tws.io/2iFd3rC
    via @WeeklyStandard
    Nov 28, 2016 - William Kristol

    Who now gives much thought to the presidency of Warren G. Harding? Who ever did? Not us.

    But let us briefly turn our thoughts to our 29th president (while stipulating that we're certainly no experts on his life or times). Here's our summary notion: Warren G. Harding may have been a problematic president. But the Harding administration was in some ways an impressive one, which served the country reasonably well.

    It was possible to say, before Warren G. Harding was elected, that he wasn't particularly well-qualified to be president. And he did turn out as president to have, as we say nowadays, some issues. But his administration was stocked with (mostly) well-qualified men who served with considerable distinction.

    Andrew Mellon was a successful Treasury secretary whose tax reforms and deregulatory efforts spurred years of economic growth. Charles Dawes, the first director of the Bureau of the Budget, reduced government expenditures and, helped by Mellon's economic policies, brought the budget into balance. Charles Evans Hughes as secretary of state dealt responsibly with a very difficult world situation his administration had inherited-though in light of what followed in the next decade, one wishes in retrospect for bolder assertions of American leadership, though in those years just after World War I, they would have been contrary to the national mood.

    In addition, President Harding's first two Supreme Court appointments -- William Howard Taft and George Sutherland -- were distinguished ones. And Harding personally did some admirable things: He made pronouncements, impressive in the context of that era, in favor of racial equality; he commuted the wartime prison sentence of the Socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs. In these ways, he contributed to an atmosphere of national healing and civility.

    The brief Harding administration-and for that matter the eight years constituting his administration and that of his vice president and successor, Calvin Coolidge-may not have been times of surpassing national greatness. But there were real achievements, especially in the economic sphere; those years were not disastrous; they were not dark times.

    President-elect Donald J. Trump probably doesn't intend to model his administration on that of President Warren G. Harding. But he could do worse than reflect on that administration's successes-and also on its failures, particularly the scandals that exploded into public view after Harding's sudden death. These were produced by cronies appointed by Harding to important positions, where they betrayed his trust and tarnished his historical reputation.

    Donald Trump manifestly cares about his reputation. He surely knows that reputation ultimately depends on performance. If a Trump hotel and casino is successful, it's not because of the Trump brand-that may get people through the door the first time-but because it provides a worthwhile experience thanks to a good management team, fine restaurants, deft croupiers, and fun shows. If a Trump golf course succeeds, it's because it has been built and is run by people who know something about golf. The failed Trump efforts-from the university to the steaks-seem to have in common the assumption that the Trump name by itself would be enough to carry mediocre or worse enterprises across the finish line.

    To succeed in business, the brand only gets you so far. Quality matters. To succeed in the presidency, getting elected only gets you so far. Governing matters.

    It would be ironic if Trump's very personal electoral achievement were followed by a mode of governance that restored greater responsibility to the cabinet agencies formally entrusted with the duties of governance. It would be ironic if a Trump presidency also featured a return of authority to Congress, the states, and to other civic institutions. It would be ironic if Trump's victory led not to a kind of American Caesarism but to a strengthening of republican institutions and forms. It would be ironic if the election of Donald J. Trump heralded a return to a kind of constitutional normalcy.

    If we are not mistaken, it was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (though sadly unaware of the phenomena of either Warren G. Harding or Donald J. Trump) who made much of the Irony of History.

    But how Hegelian it would be if the thesis of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, followed by the antithesis of a Trump victory over first a Bush and then a Clinton in 2016, were to produce an unanticipated synthesis: a Trump administration marked by the reconstruction of republican normalcy in America. In its own way, that would be a genuine contribution to making America great again.

    (Harding-Coolidge-Hoover were a disastrous triumvirate that ascended to power after the Taft & Wilson administrations, as the GOP - then the embodiment of progressivism - split apart due to the efforts of Teddy Roosevelt.)

    Peter K. -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
    Kristol is mad Trump lambasted the Iraq war. Was Putin against the Iraq war? I think the whole world was except for the "Coalition of the Willing." You'll never see the UK back another war like that.
    ilsm -> Peter K.... , January 05, 2017 at 03:35 PM
    It is the neocon's taking a back seat!

    Kristol is co-founder of PNAC along with a Clinton mob long time foggy bottom associate's husband..

    Trump is somewhat less thrilled with tilting with Russia for the American empire which is as moral as Nero's Rome.

    ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
    Prescient: dumping Kristol's PNAC will strengthen the republic.
    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , January 05, 2017 at 07:52 AM
    "Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom" of American capitalism vis-ŕ-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone explains, referring to the former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should support her. She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism."

    Is it better to ignore this fault line and try to paper it over or is it better to debate the issues in a polite and congenial manner?

    Of course the progressive neoliberals in this forum regularly resort to ad hominem to any ideas or facts that don't line up with the agreed-upon party line.

    [Jan 06, 2017] Hannity Julian Assange Interview

    Jan 06, 2017 | www.youtube.com
    Published on Jan 3, 2017

    Tonight we were presented with the one-on-one interview between Sean Hannity and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In the first segment that Hannity showed, Assange stated that Rushua was not involved in providing WikiLeaks with the hacked emails from the DNC or John Podesta, and neither was a state party. Assange, who is confined to the Ecuadorean embassy in London due to a warrant for sexual assault in Sweden, was asked if President Barack Obama was lying when claiming Rushuaans were behind the hacks since Assange is saying Rushua wasn't involved. "Well, he is acting like a lawyer," he noted. "If you look at most of his statements he doesn't say that. He doesn't say WikiLeaks obtained its information from Rushua, worked with Rushua." Later on, when describing why Obama had a dramatic response to Rushua via sanctions, Assange says he is "trying to delegitimize the Trump Administration as it goes into the White House."Hannity Julian Assange FULL Interview 1/3/17. Sean Hannity gave us a preview of his revealing exclusive interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, which will air on Fox News Channel tonight at 10pm ET. Assange spoke for about 90 minutes at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has remained for four-and-a-half years under threat of arrest. Hannity said they discussed "the state of journalism" in the United States and what was not covered by the media when it came to the contents of the hacked emails. Spc Garza 19 hours ago This guy is way to smart for the government lol!!! Stay safe Jakareh75 17 hours ago Julian Assange has more integrity in one fingernail than does the entire mainstream media. And that is why he's under a bogus indictment for rape by Sweden, the same country that allows Muslim subhumans scores of their women every day with impunity. The rotten liberals who run Sweden go after Julian Assange but not their Muslim pets. Alex Phillips 16 hours ago as a fellow Australian i find it absolutely fucking disgraceful that our government isn't fighting tooth and nail to clear Julian's name. .....stand strong Julian. ....walk with your head held high. ....keep on doing what you are doing. ....god bless you and keep you safe. Arisen Hemloc 21 minutes ago Alex: I wouldn't call us Fascist. Fascist governments are hard to fully achieve because they require so many attributes in comparison to other extremes like Communism. It needs to be Nationalistic (which, let's face, we're not at the moment), a dictatorship (which, we're not yet), Authoritarian to the extreme (we're VERY close to that), and quite a few other qualities. But regardless, Australia is clamped down by regulations and laws which choke business, a moron who wants a Carbon Tax (useless. Doesn't even help Climate Change if you believe in it), Emissions Trading Scheme (Again, worthless) and has the political sense of a rock, stupid Socialist departments that aren't working (Centrelink) because the economy is so blotto, we've got gun laws that will probably lead to us all getting machine gunned down by some Islamic with an AK and slowly our borders are becoming less and less secure. We're at the point of America at the moment, not Germany or France yet, but getting there. Only our Ocean protects us from that. Under Rudd and Gillard, we were moving heavily Socialist. Under Abbot, in an attempt to fix the damage they did, he shoved us too far the other way. We need a Trump now and I get a feeling it'll come from a coalition between Hansen and Bernardi. Bernardi is considering, if he hasn't already, leaving the Liberals and starting a real Conservative Party for the people, but to get into power he'll need a coalition. Either that or someone in the Liberals will need to get rid of Turnbull and fix our system. We can't trust Labor because they have that Union boss creep Shorten as their leader and he's nuttier than Rudd. It's sad, but Assange will not be allowed back into Australia or helped by Australia while our current cycle of nut job politics keep on going. We need Howard or Menzies back. Also, for you Americans, our politicians aren't as corrupt as yours (the Labor maybe), but ours are just incompetent 75% of the time. Stacey Johnson 21 hours ago This was a great interview. Hopefully now that Assange has established for the millionth time that Russia did not hack, we (as in all truth media outlets like RT, Hannity, etc) need to stop focusing on and talking about who did the hacking. Its time to start investigating, talking about and exposing the actual content of the emails, all of them not just the ones that expose the media and campaign corruption. Yet RT, Hannity, etc are not talking about it or asking the questions that need to be asked or investigating it. Why isn't anyone asking about the Clinton foundation and its link to human trafficking or why Monica Peterson was found dead while investigating it?? Why isn't anyone asking Podesta to explain all the strange and suspicious code talk that is factual signs, symbols and code words for pedophilia used over and over in these emails? Why aren't they asking about the ties and connections to occult rituals? Why aren't they asking about the sickening art collections? Why aren't they asking about the strange and inappropriate happenings that go on at Ping Pong Pizza? The flight logs of the Lolita express, which is owned by a convicted sex offender, to "orgy island"? Clinton's reasons for going there without secret service detail on numerous occasions? The deaths of so many people connected to the Clinton's?? I still don't understand why these things are still not being talked about?!?! PopTartsAndCinemax 7 hours ago Saudi Arabia bankrolled HRC's campaign but please, tell us how the Russians are interfering in the election... lol... John S 5 hours ago SA is using US $$ and weapons via Hillary's state department to bankroll ISIS. But please, more Russia!! Paul X 11 hours ago Hannity worries about where Assange draws the line, and whether his releases might endanger human lives (those of spies, I suppose). The problem with that line is that human lives are endangered no matter what! If Assange releases information, some lives are endangered. If he doesn't, other lives are endangered. Let's face it, Madeleine Albright said that it was "worth it" if half a million Iraqi people were killed in the pursuit of American imperialist ambitions. And let's face it, if spies' lives are endangered, well they signed up for that danger. It's part of their job to deal with it. If the release of truth endangers them, then maybe they are doing something they shouldn't be doing. I don't for a second believe the American (or any other) ruling class gives a rat's ass about the lives of ordinary peons being endangered. Cam Smith 1 hour ago Great interview by Mr. Hannity! And thank you Mr. Assange for your dedication to the truth! Jolly Froster 2 hours ago Assange created wikileaks to give more info to voters to stop wars. Hillary and the neocons wanted war with Russia through her no fly zone so the Saudis could get their pipeline in Syria. Hilary was stopped. So now they are using wikileaks to try and start the war. Gary McAleer 1 hour ago Everyone in the msm calls Julian Assange a liar when he emphatically said that Russia was not the source of the Clinton or Podesta emails. I'll take Julian's impartial word over the politically selfish interests here in America. Frankly, I'm sick and tired of all the disinformation Americans have been fed. Deliberate liars will be met with fire on "the resurrection of damnation." "The wicked shall perish: and shall be as the fat of lambs: into smoke shall they consume away." Ps.37. So many in this country lie as easily as they breathe. Their lies will be their ruin. Michael Snow 2 hours ago Tonight, on PBS Nightly Business Report (NBR) produced by CNBC, the reference to 'Russian hacking' smeared Julian Assange as a 'fugitve from criminal justice' in the USA. Rod Ruger 11 hours ago True, proven information is anathema to governments that seeks tyranny. The goal of such governments is to befuddle, misinform, instill fear, and otherwise keep citizens in a fog. George G 19 hours ago WOW Assange is so much more credible than Obama and his cooked up Intel narrative. The only facts that truly point to a crime is that WIKILEAKS revealed crimes committed by the democrate which included Obama and it needs to be prosecuted AFTER HE LEAVES OFFICE! AntonBatey 11 hours ago I have always supported Julian Assange. I do not like Sean Hannity and disagree with him roughly 90 percent of the time. If Julian Assange attempted to sabotage Donald Trump (and by default helping Hillary Clinton) and continued to expose the war crimes and internal emails exposing America's imperialist interests, Hannity would brush him off as a traitor and would claim that nothing he said should be trusted or believed. But he helped Trump and (appropriately) exposed Hillary Clinton was a warmongering corporate shill who helped sabotage Bernie Sanders, so Hannity lends his words as credible. Barbara Mowrey 20 hours ago Like a lawyer, means, double talk . To seem legit through actions and talk, alone, with no evidence, hoping the action, or subpoena to make act, (send diplomats out of the country) is that "tangible" evidence when it is not even close! Double talk. Keep em guessing to stay legit, again. Make evidence when none exists. Laine Gordon 15 hours ago (edited) podesta's own email said the clinton foundation leak was eric braverman, missing for months now. and in podesta's own words, he fingered braverman as the leak. you really have to be willfully blind at this point to think otherwise Laine Gordon 15 hours ago he looks good..healthy considering what TPTB are doing to him, for providing a legitimate platform for whistleblowers ,...how much clearer could he have been? a LEAK, not a HACK,...an individual unrelated to russian state. and since he hinted during a netherlands interview last year that the source ( which he has always refused to name , to protect the integrity and safety of the source) was seth rich, not to mention the ex ambassador admitting he received material from the whistleblower in a park near AU, the Dems' trying to start WW3 with russia seems like theatre of the absurd Gamer Boy 5 hours ago HOLD UP HOLD UP HOLD UP Will someone look at the first question Julian answers about "did he think Trump would win" He says someone hacked/leaked it who wanted to get more donations for her to win, because if the people thought she was losing that more money would come in upwards of 5 Billion and she had only gotten 1.5 billion so far!!! So she needed that push to put her down in the polls for more money to come in. so it could have been someone in the Media industry as he says who wanted more for money, the DNC... I don't know but someone smart please look into this. Did Russia need money from her? who wanted to get her donations up to 5 billion. Watch his very first answer over and over it's right there! lets figure it out!!

    [Jan 05, 2017] The Democratic Party nomenklatura is embarked on a massive media campaign to divert and reframe the election issues away from the economic and inequality concerns expressed by the Sanders campaign.

    Notable quotes:
    "... The US nomenclatura is embarked on a massive media campaign to divert and reframe the election issues away from the economic and inequality concerns expressed by the Sanders campaign. No "break up the banks", no "free public college", no "medicare for all", no campaign funding reform. ..."
    "... At the moment, the Democratic Party is structurally fragile and its members have shied away from the kind of radical upheaval Republicans have been forced to embrace. Nonetheless, Democrats will soon face enormously risky decisions. ..."
    "... I do wonder how years went by with no one in the Obama administration wavering from their belief that they couldn't prosecute any of the banksters. These didn't just make bad loans. They stole homes. If you're going to steal, steal big, has long been the lesson. ..."
    Jan 05, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    RGC : Reply Thursday, January 05, 2017 at 08:16 AM
    The US nomenclatura is embarked on a massive media campaign to divert and reframe the election issues away from the economic and inequality concerns expressed by the Sanders campaign. No "break up the banks", no "free public college", no "medicare for all", no campaign funding reform.

    For a while we had the Russian hacking accusations, which have suddenly gone dormant (will we ever get proof?). Now we have divide and conquer identity issues. But no proposed alternatives to Trump for curing our economic malaise along the lines suggested by Sanders.

    We are headed back to business as usual, with the right fighting the so-called center left (our two neoliberal factions) for dominance. Apparently conditions have not deteriorated enough yet for a populist uprising. How much more does it take before we reach a critical mass?

    Dan Kervick -> RGC... , January 05, 2017 at 10:07 AM
    Some change is happening. Even Cuomo is now seeking the seal of approval from Bernie for supporting a new college tuition plan for families making less than $125,000.

    It's going to be a slow process though. There is a group within the Democratic Party that is on the way out historically, and they want to do nothing other than turn the Party's politics into nothing but vendettas, distraction and obstruction.

    pgl -> Dan Kervick... , January 05, 2017 at 10:14 AM
    This is classic Cuomo. Give a bit to the right - then a bit to the left. Of course the ultra-rich Uppity East Siders are whining we can't afford this while the Green Party is upset it does not also cover food and rent. You can't win in NYC politics no matter what you do.
    Peter K. : , January 05, 2017 at 08:20 AM
    From Thomas Edsall's NYTimes column:

    " At the moment, the Democratic Party is structurally fragile and its members have shied away from the kind of radical upheaval Republicans have been forced to embrace. Nonetheless, Democrats will soon face enormously risky decisions.

    Does the party move left, as a choice of Keith Ellison for D.N.C. chairman would suggest? Does it wait for internecine conflict to emerge among Republicans as Trump and his allies fulfill campaign promises - repealing Obamacare, enacting tax reform and deporting millions of undocumented aliens?"

    It's funny how there has been no discussion of the DNC chair contest, and yet the progressive neoliberals here still whine that the forum isn't an echo chamber which reflects their views. And then they fantasize about banning people with whom they disagree.

    Denis Drew : , January 05, 2017 at 08:27 AM
    State governments famously (or infamously) give away billions in tax breaks to lure in firms that make jobs. 19 Republican governors -- by rejecting Medicaid expansion -- have rejected TAKING IN federal tax money to generate good medical jobs, not to mention the multiplier effect of new spending ...

    .. and it's the states' own money that they sent to the federal government that they don't want to TAKE BACK ...

    ... oh, almost forgot; it's good for uninsured poor people too (almost forgot about that).

    pgl -> Denis Drew ... , January 05, 2017 at 09:05 AM
    Nice point. My DINO governor (Cuomo) was smart enough to take the Medicaid funding but he gives all sorts of stupid supply-side breaks to businesses.
    im1dc -> pgl... , January 05, 2017 at 09:30 AM
    I am under the belief that Gov. Cuomo and NY Governers generally give those tax breaks to keep businesses from moving to lower tax States.

    Am I wrong to believe that NY State is a High Tax State compared to those in the South?

    pgl -> im1dc... , January 05, 2017 at 09:38 AM
    Yes but he is given them a complete tax holiday.
    JF -> pgl... , January 05, 2017 at 09:38 AM
    There was a reason why the Annapolis Convention that led almost directly to the Constitutional convention was organized on the need to stop interjurisdictional competition in the favoring of commercial interests so as to favor uniform commerce rules across the US, should the national legislature exercise on the matter.

    I sure like competition, recognize the federal system as a having great socio-political value, even appreciate non-uniformity until it grabs the attention of more thoughtful view (experimentation), but more and more I think Congress should enact the law to proscribe these crony actions by States. Many politicians, and I've worked with many at the State level would appreciate it if these pandering and favoring pleadings just went away.

    Peter K. : , January 05, 2017 at 08:39 AM
    http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/business/economy/federal-reserve-minutes-interest-rates.html

    Fed Officials See Faster Economic Growth Under Trump, but No Boom

    By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
    JAN. 4, 2017

    "Ms. Yellen has warned that fiscal stimulus, like a tax cut or a spending increase, could increase economic growth to an unsustainable pace in the near term, resulting in increased inflation. The Fed quite likely would seek to offset such policies by raising interest rates more quickly."

    Progressive neoliberalism...

    And Alan Blinder said Hillary's fiscal plans wouldn't be large enough to cause the Fed to alter its path of rate hikes.

    And Trump promised more better infrastructure like clean airports.

    And Trump won.

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , January 05, 2017 at 08:41 AM
    I'm now thinking that Trump will have conflict with the Fed.

    He lives for conflict and drama.

    pgl : , January 05, 2017 at 09:04 AM
    An update on the Chevy Cruze controversy. US consumption was 194,500 vehicles with 190,000 made here in the US. That's 97.7% of them being produced locally. Tweet that.
    Peter K. : , January 05, 2017 at 09:30 AM
    http://www.eschatonblog.com/2017/01/the-early-days.html

    THURSDAY, JANUARY 05, 2017

    The Early Days

    I do wonder how years went by with no one in the Obama administration wavering from their belief that they couldn't prosecute any of the banksters. These didn't just make bad loans. They stole homes. If you're going to steal, steal big, has long been the lesson.

    by Atrios at 09:30

    Peter K. -> Peter K.... , January 05, 2017 at 09:31 AM
    who paid for Hillary Clinton's speeches?
    JF -> Peter K.... , January 05, 2017 at 09:45 AM
    Can you spend time on the republicans too? Just asking for a little balance. You and I both share a dismay about the last eight years and the presidential campaign. Your energy focused on the party in power now, even a bit, would probably be helpful.

    [Jan 04, 2017] False Prophets and False News - The Unz Review

    Jan 04, 2017 | www.unz.com
    shutterstock_543410059 Introduction: There are deep flaws in the blogs, media reports, and official statements, which purport to describe world historic events and changes.

    These so-called 'up-to-date' reports of major world events undergo repeated revisions in hours, days or weeks as the story is being 'played out'. What might start out as a 'scoop' for the upwardly mobile journalist is transformed into a by-word for a 'critical blogger' rewriting mainstream reports by simply substituting negatives for pluses (or vice versa).

    'Immediacy' trumps historical context and structural understanding. Protagonist or antagonists of the moment are demonized , slandered and scandalized, or lauded , praised and iconized.

    The practice of deep falsification involves magnifying transient trivia and glossing over world-historic change. The false prophets substitute superficiality for deep understanding.

    Soon after proclaiming a 'major systemic transformation', which fail to occur, a series of modifications or reversals take over, and the initial 'great prophesy' is forgotten – as if the readers of news were afflicted with an epidemic of dementia.

    Most political parties, left, right and center, have their own unchanging warped world view to frame everyday minutiae.

    For example, on the Left, it is the 'imminent collapse of capitalism' or the 'perpetual stagnation of the capitalist state', 'the collapse of democracy' or 'the emergence of fascism'. In the absence of any real empirical or historical findings to support their hypotheses, they add escape clauses about 'tendencies'.

    The Center has its own historic narrative, which includes 'threats from the Left and Right', and the 'dangers posed by populists to democratic values'. They cite the overwhelming responsibility to 'defend Western values' everywhere, from threats, past, present and future and especially from independent nations, like Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran and other 'emerging' powers, as a pretext to escalate militarism and to bolster support for vassal states.

    The Center repeatedly point to the 'resilience of Western liberal democratic institutions' even as police state edicts are dictated to counter dissenting voices, while false prophets predict that China's robust economy is on the verge of collapse; that democratic Russia is an unstable autocracy; and that the Ukraine is an emerging democracy – while its 'Right Sector' and 'Azov Battalions' runs amok amidst a kleptocratic, neo-fascist regime

    The Right frames its world-historic ideology by stressing the need to (1) revive the Cold War to counter the US global decline; (2) confront the world-wide wave of 'populism' threatening 'liberal' democracies; (3) portray Brexit as a sign of the European Union's collapse; (4) equate Trump's victory with the rise of fascism in the US; (5) emphasize the ascent of bigotry, racism and anti-Semitism, based on the result of a single election ; (6) denounce Leftists 'conspiracy' writers who 'falsely' blame rising class inequalities to free-market monopolies; and (7) explain that cuts in social expenditures, tax cuts to big capital, increased work hours and decreased pensions are ultimately rewarding the masses.

    These mega- narratives lead 'prophetic academics' to insist on their infallible insight into the future direction of the world economy, global politics and class relations.

    False prophets maintain a veneer of authenticity, by presenting the future in unspecified, ambiguous, general and distant terms, to allow for any or all outcomes – like professional fortune tellers.

    Academic and media prophets are enveloped in a mystique of expertise, which allows them to rehash yesterday's news as deep strategic insights.

    False Prophets: Trump

    Contrary to the wailings of the Right, Center and Left, Donald Trump is not a fascist, or a nationalist or a populist. An objective assessment of his most recent policies and cabinet appointments show that he is a free-market politician with a propensity to appoint militarists to security positions.

    Trump's populist demagogy most closely resembles President Obama – although the appeal is to a different audience. Trump speaks to impoverished, displaced, skilled workers in the rust belt with campaign promises of a renaissance in manufacturing, upscale suburbanites, and downwardly mobile working women, while appointing billionaire bankers and global business executives to run the economy and set policy. Obama appealed to poor minorities, middle class urbanites and the same business elite.

    Like Obama, Trump is an imperialist committed to protecting and projecting US global power. He differs from Obama in emphasis. Obama and his predecessors pursued a primarily military-driven imperialism while Trump will shift the emphasis to economic imperialism.

    Trump's 'double discourse', of talking to the masses during the campaign while working for the elite once in office, reflects a long-standing American Presidential tradition.

    Editorial writers' descriptions of Donald Trump lack historical and empirical depth.

    Powerful systemic constraints define the rate and scope of any long-term, large-scale changes that Trump might propose. Trump can only introduce minor incremental changes in the behavior of the biggest banks and five hundred most powerful global multi-nationals. Trump might re-negotiate around the edges of some bilateral trade agreements, but he cannot convert the US into a closed self-sufficient economy.

    Contrary to the 'end of the world' hysteria, promoted by the mass media, Trump has never made any pact with white racists and anti-Semites. There are no major Jewish organizations currently engaged in a struggle against Trump's 'fascist hordes'. The KKK is not preparing to burn Goldman Sachs. Since Trump's election the stock market has jump over a thousand points. Like all of his predecessors from both parties, Trump appointed prominent Jews to key economic and policy positions, including Treasury Secretary. Many editorialists, who rely on selected excerpts of campaign rhetoric and gossip, have presented an unrealistic picture of the trajectory of the US state and economy.

    ORDER IT NOW

    False Prophets: China

    The US prophets and self-described 'experts' describe China in inflated terms of either its impending doom or its relentless drive toward world supremacy. They rely on the minutiae of the moment or distorted extrapolations, uncertainties and contingent systemic changes. Rigorous analytical accounts are in short supply.

    China, according to the free-market financial prophets of doom, suffers from a declining growth rate, shrinking work force, massive capital flight, deep-seated corruption and an impending intra-elite war. According to the prophets of doom, this sets the stage for an economic collapse and a military confrontation with the US empire.

    Many of these pronouncements are easily dismissed. For the last 30 years, China's economy has exceeded 6% and it is steadily developing its high technological work force and scientific innovations. China's emphasis is on diversifying its production and consumption to domestic and overseas markets. The challenge of its aging work force is met by the increasing development of robotics and computerized productive systems.

    China has applied capital controls and limits on capital flight. The national campaign against corruption and real estate speculation in real estate has led to the arrest of over 200,000 officials and executives for fraud, bribery and money laundering via overseas banks.

    In other words, the false prophets, parading about as 'China experts', have consistently made nonsensical predictions of doom and collapse. Faced with factual refutations, they merely repeat and recycle their prophecies by projecting longer time frames, up to infinity, for the coming of the inevitable catastrophe.

    On the other hand, some progressive writers peddle prophesies of China's endless progress predicting its inevitable emergence as a supreme global power. They convert China's 30-year pattern of economic growth into a formula guaranteeing 'harmonious development', which they claim is based on China's correct handling of emerging challenges and contradictions. Their predictions of stable future growth assume ever-expanding markets while ignoring the threat of military confrontations with rival imperial powers.

    China's prophets of global power ignore contingencies: Skilled and innovative workers, who are necessary for economic growth, have their own vision of the social structure in which they play a leading role in advancing society.

    While robots can substitute for human labor power, it is worker knowledge and initiative that design, produce and adjust the robotic manufacturing system.

    Harmony, free markets and mutually beneficial trade alliances are relations that are always changing; only interests remain constant. As China moves from investing in commodities to manufacturing and technology, customers can turn into competitors.

    As China emerges as a global power, the outflow of capital and arms and technology increases, and the risks of global rivalry and domestic instability, challenging the Chinese ruling class likewise increase.

    Prophecies or predictions depend on (1) the stability of incremental changes in the structure of power; (2) the uncertainty of elite outcomes in world markets and (3) the volatility of domestic class relations.

    False Prophets: Latin America

    Latin America is almost universally regarded as unstable – a region, where revolutions and counter-revolutions alternate, and electoral regimes rise and fall among neo-liberal, populist and nationalist leaders.

    The long-term reality is actually quite different. Latin America has been one of global capitalism's most stable regions. With few exceptions, property-ownership has remained stable for decades, with entrenched oligarchical elite families enjoying wealth, multiple-luxury properties throughout the world and their own perpetuation.

    Electoral regimes may frequently change but the underlying state structures endure for decades. Bureaucratic, military and financial institutions set the margins of change. Neo-liberal, post-neo-liberal and anti-neo-liberal policies come and go, but large-scale mining, export agricultural and banking structures ultimately set the conditions for the growth of economies and demise of governments.

    There is a tendency for some academic prophets and writers to use metaphors from astronomy and geology to divide the world. They describe a 'world-system' composed of 'a core, a semi-periphery and a periphery'. Adding and subtracting, multiplying and dividing quantities of productive resources, the false prophets solemnly predict how the entire world system will function 'ad infinitum'.

    While data, derived from observations in space, provide scientists with insights into the movements of distant galaxies and the fate of planets, extrapolation to socio-economic and political 'bodies' is risky.

    On the real planet Earth, the so-called 'periphery' of the 'world system' subsumes countries, economies, social structures, states and inter-state relations with entirely distinct composition, behavior and histories. Cuba, a 'peripheral state', differs in every respect from Haiti, Guatemala and scores of other likewise categorized nations. And among the 'core' countries, the US invades, occupies and plunders dozens of countries every decade, while China engages in 'trade'. Iran, among the 'semi-peripherals', has not invaded any neighbor for two centuries, while Israel, a fellow 'semi-peripheral', has ravaged a dozen countries in the past 50 years.

    ORDER IT NOW

    False Prophets: Russia

    Western prophets on the right and left predicted that the break-up of the USSR would augur a period of harmony, democracy and widespread prosperity. The true believers claimed 'anything was better than Stalinism' while ignoring the fact that Stalin was dead for a half-century.

    Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev oversaw the transformation of the USSR's allied nations into pillaged satellites of the Western imperial powers. He blindly accepted US Presidents Bush and Ronald Reagan's promises that the US would not expand NATO and would not transform the newly emerging post-Soviet nations into military bases. What emerged was a crippled and encircled Russia, which had been converted into a Beggar-State of oligarchs and swindlers who seized over a trillion dollars of public property, wealth, land and resources in less than ten years. Gangsters murdered their way into public office through US-manipulated sham elections, celebrated by the Western press. Living standards for millions of post-Soviet citizens collapsed, resulting in the greatest decline of life expectancy, health, culture, science and education in peacetime history.

    Contrary to the predictions of Western prophets Russia rebuilt its state and economy. The new political leadership, headed by Vladimir Putin, replaced the dipsomaniac puppet President and mobsters favored by Washington. Living and health standards have vastly improved; production, agriculture, exports, national security, science and culture have recovered.

    The angry false prophets, then promoted a new pseudo-scientific assertion that the re-emergence of the Russian state and its recovering economy led inexorably to autocratic rule by a former KGB official, who violated 'Western values' by . jailing swindler billionaires and self-made oil mobsters and re-appropriating vital national assets.

    Western editorialists ceaselessly denounce the popularly elected President Putin for his crime of refuting the bankruptcy of their prophecies.

    Despite reams of reports by the 'experts', despite their wide circulation in the mass media and their citations by top Western officials, the Russian state and economy, just like the Chinese, are not on the verge of collapse nor are they declining or facing popular revolts.

    False Prophets: The Left

    The shallow, self-serving Left prophets of progressive governments in Latin America, as well as admirers of Putin's Russia and Xi Jinping's China, fail to recognize the structural, historical and class constraints that determine and limit policies.

    First and foremost, they fail to recognize the socio-economic continuities within these states. In all three regions, elites and oligarchs continue to control the commanding heights of the economies, despite occasional expropriations and sporadic reforms.

    Secondly, even the most 'progressive' regimes rely on Western markets and investors limiting their long-term growth.

    Thirdly, the long-term dependence on extractive exports, global demand and fragile mono-culture economies weakens the long-term stability of Russia and Latin America.

    The absence of a socialist democratic alternative to the brutal capitalist restoration in China undermines the optimistic perspective of progressive prophets.

    Conclusion

    The debate among experts, regarding the rise or decline of the Imperial West or the progressive forces in China, Russia and Latin America, fails to consider their 'hidden resources and liabilities'. These include the untapped scientific discoveries, the failure to develop alternative resources and innovations, as well as the ongoing repression of skilled workers. The Western prophets underestimate how the reliance on the paper economy has squandered immense social and productive value.

    The ongoing cultural deformations, perversions and falsifications of information and analysis at the behest of established power centers, has clouded any real understanding of everyday life and greatly reduced our chances for a future without barbaric wars and social exploitation.

    Culture is an everyday phenomenon determining how economies and states, rulers and ruled see the world, exercise power or are forced to submit.

    We have witnessed the spread of cultural squalor into language and life, with only an occasional respite, when people overcome their everyday stupor and create a momentary burst of creative political, economic, social and cultural energy, which can lead to transformations.

    Humdrum incremental changes, left and right, and the reality of continuities, limit and ultimately reverse social reforms and corrupt language to serve the ruling powers. We must move forward against the flatulence of everyday life by rejecting the false prophets and by writing, speaking and acting against crackpot sages. Our progress toward a new order must be firmly rooted in our everyday struggles writ large.

    (Reprinted from The James Petras Website by permission of author or representative)

    [Jan 04, 2017] Donald Trump sure seems like he's serious about starting some trade wars

    Jan 04, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    Peter K. : January 04, 2017 at 09:50 AM

    http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/4/14153514/trump-trade-war

    Donald Trump sure seems like he's serious about starting some trade wars

    Wall Street should take Trump more literally.

    Updated by Matthew Yglesias

    Jan 4, 2017, 8:30am EST

    Many people are in the habit of not taking Donald Trump literally, and that appears to include investors on Wall Street who have responded to Trump's election with the sort of stock price boom you would have expected from the election of a completely orthodox free marketer like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio.

    Trump has said, many times, that he favors a drastic revision of American trade policy aimed at making it much more difficult for companies to manufacture products in foreign markets (especially China) and then sell them to American consumers. This would, if he pulled it off, be a huge deal for the American economy - dramatically boosting the fortunes of some companies, but potentially crippling others, raising prices of many goods and inviting retaliatory measures that would harm American exports.

    As much as Wall Street appears to believe this is just talk, Trump is putting his words quietly into action. Appointments to a range of lower-profile executive branch positions strongly suggest that he is likely to pursue a fairly aggressive policy of trade protectionism.

    He even appears to be thinking seriously about how to structure the policymaking process. In the context of a Republican Party that remains mostly invested in a pro-business approach to trade policy, this is exactly what Trump would need to do to unleash a protectionist agenda. Trade wars, in short, are almost certainly coming soon - though the actual consequences are difficult to project.

    [Jan 04, 2017] The Seven Stages of Establishment Backlash

    Jan 04, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

    anne -> Dan Kervick... January 04, 2017 at 11:14 AM

    https://theintercept.com/2016/01/21/the-seven-stages-of-establishment-backlash-corbynsanders-edition/

    January 21, 2016

    The Seven Stages of Establishment Backlash: Corbyn/Sanders Edition
    By Glenn Greenwald

    The British political and media establishment incrementally lost its collective mind over the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the country's Labour Party, and its unraveling and implosion show no signs of receding yet. Bernie Sanders is nowhere near as radical as Corbyn; they are not even in the same universe. But, especially on economic issues, Sanders is a more fundamental, systemic critic than the oligarchical power centers are willing to tolerate, and his rejection of corporate dominance over politics, and corporate support for his campaigns, is particularly menacing. He is thus regarded as America's version of a far-left extremist, threatening establishment power.

    For those who observed the unfolding of the British reaction to Corbyn's victory, it's been fascinating to watch the D.C./Democratic establishment's reaction to Sanders' emergence replicate that, reading from the same script. I personally think Clinton's nomination is extremely likely, but evidence of a growing Sanders movement is unmistakable. Because of the broader trends driving it, this is clearly unsettling to establishment Democrats - as it should be.

    A poll last week found that Sanders has a large lead with millennial voters, including young women; as Rolling Stone put it: "Young female voters support Bernie Sanders by an expansive margin." The New York Times yesterday trumpeted that, in New Hampshire, Sanders "has jumped out to a 27 percentage point lead," which is "stunning by New Hampshire standards." The Wall Street Journal yesterday, in an editorial titled "Taking Sanders Seriously," declared it is "no longer impossible to imagine the 74-year-old socialist as the Democratic nominee."

    Just as was true for Corbyn, there is a direct correlation between the strength of Sanders and the intensity of the bitter and ugly attacks unleashed at him by the D.C. and Democratic political and media establishment. There were, roughly speaking, seven stages to this establishment revolt in the U.K. against Corbyn, and the U.S. reaction to Sanders is closely following the same script:

    • STAGE 1 : Polite condescension toward what is perceived to be harmless (we think it's really wonderful that your views are being aired).
    • STAGE 2 : Light, casual mockery as the self-belief among supporters grows (no, dears, a left-wing extremist will not win, but it's nice to see you excited).
    • STAGE 3 : Self-pity and angry etiquette lectures directed at supporters upon realization that they are not performing their duty of meek surrender, flavored with heavy doses of concern trolling (nobody but nobody is as rude and gauche online to journalists as these crusaders, and it's unfortunately hurting their candidate's cause!).
    • STAGE 4 : Smear the candidate and his supporters with innuendos of sexism and racism by falsely claiming only white men support them (you like this candidate because he's white and male like you, not because of ideology or policy or contempt for the party establishment's corporatist, pro-war approach).
    • STAGE 5 : Brazen invocation of right-wing attacks to marginalize and demonize, as polls prove the candidate is a credible threat (he's weak on terrorism, will surrender to ISIS, has crazy associations, and is a clone of Mao and Stalin).
    • STAGE 6 : Issuance of grave and hysterical warnings about the pending apocalypse if the establishment candidate is rejected, as the possibility of losing becomes imminent (you are destined for decades, perhaps even generations, of powerlessness if you disobey our decrees about who to select).
    • STAGE 7 : Full-scale and unrestrained meltdown, panic, lashing-out, threats, recriminations, self-important foot-stomping, overt union with the Right, complete fury (I can no longer in good conscience support this party of misfits, terrorist-lovers, communists, and heathens).

    Britain is well into Stage 7, and may even invent a whole new level (anonymous British military officials expressly threatened a "mutiny" if Corbyn were democratically elected as prime minister). The Democratic media and political establishment has been in the heart of Stage 5 for weeks and is now entering Stage 6. The arrival of Stage 7 is guaranteed if Sanders wins Iowa.

    It's both expected and legitimate in elections for the campaigns to harshly criticize one another. There's nothing wrong with that; we should all want contrasts drawn, and it's hardly surprising that this will be done with aggression and acrimony. People go to extremes to acquire power: That's just human nature.

    But that doesn't mean one can't find meaning in the specific attacks that are chosen, nor does it mean that the attacks invoked are immune from critique (the crass, cynical exploitation of gender issues by Clinton supporters to imply Sanders support is grounded in sexism was particularly slimy and dishonest given that the same left-wing factions that support Sanders spent months literally pleading with Elizabeth Warren to challenge Clinton, to say nothing of the large numbers of female Sanders supporters whose existence was nullified by those attacks).

    People in both parties, and across the political spectrum, are disgusted by the bipartisan D.C. establishment. It's hardly mysterious why large numbers of adults in the U.S. want to find an alternative to a candidate like Clinton who is drowning both politically and personally in Wall Street money, who seems unable to find a war she dislikes, and whose only political conviction seems to be that anything is justifiably said or done to secure her empowerment - just as it was hardly a mystery why adults in the U.K. were desperate to find an alternative to the craven, war-loving, left-hating Blairites who have enormous amounts of blood stained indelibly on their hands.

    But the nature of "establishments" is that they cling desperately to power, and will attack anyone who defies or challenges that power with unrestrained fervor. That's what we saw in the U.K. with the emergence of Corbyn, and what we're seeing now with the threat posed by Sanders. It's not surprising that the attacks in both cases are similar - the dynamic of establishment prerogative is the same - but it's nonetheless striking how identical is the script used in both cases.

    Reply Wednesday, January 04, 2017 at 11:14 AM anne -> Dan Kervick... , January 04, 2017 at 11:31 AM
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bill-clinton-jeremy-corbyn-maddest-person-speech-wikileaks-hack-a7404641.html

    November 8, 2016

    Bill Clinton branded Jeremy Corbyn 'maddest person in the room', leaked speech reveals
    By Joe Watts

    Bill Clinton branded Labour's Jeremy Corbyn the "maddest person in the room" in a speech he gave explaining the resurgence of left-wing politics in Europe and America.

    Documents released by Wikileaks show the former President joked that when Mr Corbyn won his leadership contest, it appeared Labour had just "got a guy off the street" to run the party.

    He compared Mr Corbyn's rise to the success of Alexis Tsipras in Greece and Bernie Sanders in US primaries.

    In one section of the speech, Mr Clinton said Labour had disposed of one potentially successful leader, David Miliband, because they were "mad at him for being part of Tony Blair's government in the Iraq War".

    He went on: "They moved to the left and put his brother in as leader because the British labor movement wanted it.

    "When David Cameron thumped him in the election, they reached the interesting conclusion that they lost because they hadn't moved far left enough, and so they went out and practically got a guy off the street to be the leader of the British Labor Party [sic]."

    Mr Clinton added: "But what that is reflective of – the same thing happened in the Greek election – when people feel they've been shafted and they don't expect anything to happen anyway, they just want the maddest person in the room to represent them." ...

    [Jan 04, 2017] What Does Donald Trump Actually Intend to Do About Trade?

    Notable quotes:
    "... The problem for US workers has not been that our trade negotiators are not smart; the problem is that they have a different agenda. ..."
    "... This raises the question of the agenda that Donald Trump wants to pursue in trade deals. If his goal is first and foremost to regain manufacturing jobs by reducing the size of the trade deficit, then the top priority should be lowering the value of the dollar against the currencies of China and other trading partners. ..."
    "... While it is not possible to get back the 5 million manufacturing jobs we have lost in the last two decades, plausible reductions in the trade deficit could bring back 1-2 million manufacturing jobs. This would have a noticeable impact on the labor market for workers without college degrees. ..."
    "... While he railed about currency "manipulation" in the election campaign, he also complained that other countries didn't grant our companies adequate market access or respect the patents and copyrights of US companies. ..."
    "... These are conflicting agendas, and it remains to be seen whether Trump pursues a trade agenda that will increase manufacturing jobs, or one that will further enrich corporate America. With the top two economic posts in the Trump administration going to Goldman Sachs alums, the money is betting on the corporate agenda.... ..."
    Jan 04, 2017 | cepr.net

    anne said...

    http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/what-does-donald-trump-actually-intend-to-do-about-trade

    January 2, 2016

    What Does Donald Trump Actually Intend to Do About Trade?
    By Dean Baker

    Shortly after Donald Trump enters the White House, we should get an answer to a key question from his campaign: What does he actually intend to do about trade? Trade was one of his main issues when he campaigned in the key industrial states that he won in November.

    Trump argued that past presidents of both parties had failed the country's workers by signing bad trade deals. He said that the negotiators were "stupid" and that he would instead appoint "smart" negotiators who wouldn't let Mexico, China and other trading partners beat us at the negotiating table.

    Trump is correct in identifying trade as a force that has caused enormous economic damage to millions of people in these states, but he is wrong that the problem was "stupid" negotiators. The vast majority of people who have been given the responsibility for negotiating trade deals are smart, ambitious and hard-working.

    The large trade deficits we have been running in the last two decades are not due to negotiators. We run large trade deficits because securing manufacturing jobs in the United States has not been a priority for our negotiators.

    When our trade negotiators sit down with Mexico, China and other trading partners, they have a long list of items on their agenda. For example, they want longer and stronger patent protection for our drugs and copyright protection for Microsoft's software. They also want better market access for our financial, telecommunications and retail industries. Our trade negotiators have been quite successful in these areas.

    Furthermore, the trade deficit is not a bad thing for everyone in the United States. Many of the items that we import from Mexico, China and other developing countries were actually produced by US companies. They wanted to take advantage of low cost labor to get an edge on their domestic competition. Similarly, Walmart and other major retailers are happy to have low-cost suppliers in the developing world.

    The US manufacturers that took their operations overseas and the retailers that benefit from low-cost supply chains did not lose from recent trade deals, they got rich. The problem for US workers has not been that our trade negotiators are not smart; the problem is that they have a different agenda.

    This raises the question of the agenda that Donald Trump wants to pursue in trade deals. If his goal is first and foremost to regain manufacturing jobs by reducing the size of the trade deficit, then the top priority should be lowering the value of the dollar against the currencies of China and other trading partners.

    A lower valued dollar will make US exports cheaper for people living in other countries leading them to buy more of our exports. It will also make imports more expensive for people in the United States. That will cause US consumers to substitute domestically produced items for imports. The net effect would be a smaller trade deficit and more jobs in manufacturing.

    While it is not possible to get back the 5 million manufacturing jobs we have lost in the last two decades, plausible reductions in the trade deficit could bring back 1-2 million manufacturing jobs. This would have a noticeable impact on the labor market for workers without college degrees.

    However, it is not clear that Trump plans to pursue a trade policy focused on getting back manufacturing jobs. While he railed about currency "manipulation" in the election campaign, he also complained that other countries didn't grant our companies adequate market access or respect the patents and copyrights of US companies.

    These are conflicting agendas, and it remains to be seen whether Trump pursues a trade agenda that will increase manufacturing jobs, or one that will further enrich corporate America. With the top two economic posts in the Trump administration going to Goldman Sachs alums, the money is betting on the corporate agenda....

    [Jan 02, 2017] The Same Idiots Who Pushed the Iraq War Are Now Stirring Up Hysteria About Russia

    Jan 01, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    The propaganda about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction was one of the most blatant examples of "fake news" in American history.

    Now, many of the same idiots who pushed the Iraq war lies are stirring up hysteria about Russia.

    For example, the Washington Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt cheerleaded for the Iraq war. Now, the Washington Post under Hiatt's leadership has been the main source of the most breathless anti-Russian hysteria .

    ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd – chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney '04 presidential campaign – was a big booster for the Iraq war. Now, Dowd Tweets that you're only a patriot if you blindly accept what President Obama and the intelligence services claim without any proof.

    George W. Bush's speechwriter David Frum – who pushed many of the biggest lies about the Iraq war – is now trying to ridicule anyone who doesn't accept the evidence-less claims that Russia hacked the Democratic party as a Kremlin stooge.

    Similarly, Jonathan Chait championed the Iraq war. And now he's ridiculing those asking for evidence before jumping headlong into anti-Russia hysteria.

    These guys all have a track record of pushing false stories which get us into disastrous wars why should we listen to them now?

    CRM114 •Jan 2, 2017 12:27 PM

    I was at the sharp end of the Cold War, defending against a REAL Soviet threat. I am well acquainted with psyops and insidious means of destabilizing a state.

    The idea that Russia is behind this is just total BS.

    Any attack on this supposed scale produces evidence, and whilst much of it cannot be directly revealed (to protect sources), there would be quite sufficient to be presented, if it existed. It doesn't.

    And whilst we are at it, the arguments for the Invasion of Iraq were BS also, and that was clear to many in the military despite being cheerled by the MSM.

    ronaldwilsonreagan , Jan 2, 2017 12:09 PM
    There is much at stake for the Neo-cons, they will not give up easy. I would consider them armed and dangerous.
    scraping_by ronaldwilsonreagan , Jan 2, 2017 12:58 PM
    There's no cost involved. They are advisors and propagandists nputting ideas into the heads of people with real authority. If they had to repay the price others paid for their slogans, or even more, had to put on BDUs and go put them into action, we'd hear a lot less of them.
    Xena fobe , Jan 2, 2017 11:37 AM
    Almost all comments on MSM are anti Russia. These comments are at a higher level of writing and intellect than the typical SJW post. Someone is financing this social media campaign. People aren't stupid but we do have a herd mentality. If everyone around me believes X, they must be correct, right. Thank God for ZH.
    Northern Flicker , Jan 2, 2017 11:15 AM
    The ziocons are pissed, they had Russia all wrapped for the NWO 10 years ago and blew it. Now they want it back to finish their plans and are willing to sacrifice the rest of us for it.
    iAmerican3 Northern Flicker , Jan 2, 2017 11:18 AM
    Ziocons are just fronting the Roman Anti-Christ, just as their Khazar ancestors were doing the actual hammering of the impalement stake up through the Body of Our Lord on Golgotha.

    The "good cop/bad cop" satanic psychopathy's got it going on for thousands of years: the Seventh Head of the Beast.

    Time for the Beast to be cast down as the Apocalypse is already upon True Israel, America, but to Satan's liars and pedophile homosexuals. #Pizzagate

    pine_marten , Jan 2, 2017 10:39 AM
    Let's compile a list of Hillary supporting, MIC shill, G.O.P. turncoats:

    Paul Ryan

    John McCain

    Lindsey Graham

    scraping_by , Jan 2, 2017 10:33 AM
    Ah, yes. Stupid, crazy, or evil.

    Stupid is the usual fallback position, as in How Could We Have Been So Wrong? Good-hearted by soft-headed. We all make mistakes, don't we?

    Crazy is out there, even after all these years, seeing Commies under every bed. Spy movies tell the honest truth.

    Evil is pretty much everything else. Simply taking it as a position to be promoted is, in the end, the same thing as thinking up the lies. Thinking of it as just a move in a game. Enjoying chaos for its own sake.

    Stupid, crazy, or evil.

    YHC-FTSE , Jan 2, 2017 9:57 AM
    There's a website called "Right Web" that purports to track militarists' efforts to influence US foreign policy and it's another resource to do research on individuals ( http://rightweb.irc-online.org )

    The Council on Foreign Relations, with notable exceptions, is a who's who of neocon zionist warmongers, a list of movers and shakers of every war and crime against humanity. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_Council_on_Foreign_Relations )

    So, let's see who these liars, psychopaths and criminals mentioned are:

  • Fred Hiatt - Ashkenazi Jew - Member of the Council on Foreign Relations
  • Matthew Dowd - divorced Catholic - Useful minion of both neocons, neolibs, anyone in power. CFR guest speaker. Pundit on supporting Israel.
  • David Frum - Jewish - Editor of Atlantic, contributor to CFR, Board member of Republican Jewish Coalition, coined the term "Axis of Evil" for G.W.Bush
  • Jonathan Chait - Jewish - Writer for New York Magazine, on CFR website "Must read list", recently called for the assassination of Donald Trump.

  • ~ DC v4.0
    MrBoompi DuneCreature , Jan 2, 2017 11:43 AM
    They use the same old lies because they work.

    ====

    They do work. Most of the population ignores all of this. Many who attempt to pay attention believe the government lies. That leaves the rest of us who believe the government and their media mouthpieces are full of shit. The lies work on us too, in the sense that even if they know we know they're full of shit, what the fuck can we do about it? They are at the point where they truly believe they can get away with anything.

    Reaper , Jan 2, 2017 9:14 AM
    The Russian hacking is a fallacious argument appealing to an authority. http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/appeals/appeal-to-authority/ Worse, the specific person of the authority is not identified. Worse, the authority is known as a purveyor of lies.

    The Exceptionals believe an exceptionally fallacious argument?

    SmallerGovNow2 , Jan 2, 2017 8:33 AM
    Why indeed? Like John McStain and Lefty Lindsey who were out this weekend calling for even tougher sanctions on Russia. War mongering neocons...
    HowdyDoody SmallerGovNow2 , Jan 2, 2017 9:41 AM
    Dont forget (((Adam Schiff))). He's up for more sanctions as well.
    overmedicatedun... , Jan 2, 2017 8:28 AM
    thanks GW..these idiots (clever and smart as they are)..see a NWO bankster run one world .gov..and Trump USA with Russia..is a big threat to that..Putin and Trump can see this as well as anyone of us..what they do about it? in the old days hang em high..traitors to the constitution deserve harsh ends. Justice has been denied far far too long..
    VideoEng_NC , Jan 2, 2017 7:52 AM
    Let me see if I have this visual correct, A bunch of former W staff folks are promoting fake news so that 0bama can maintain his "...it's the Russians!" narrative. All I need to see now is 0bama pointing at their propaganda for one more, "...see?!...but Bush!" to close out his "legacy" as president.
    Taint Boil , Jan 2, 2017 7:48 AM

    I'm perplexed about all the focus on the hacked / leaked emails by the "Russians" but not a peep about what's in the emails. Not one word (that I know of) about how the information is not true, faked or doctored. So, the only thing the email leak did was expose the truth about a group.

    Just can't make this shit up. That is like being outraged because a pedophile has been exposed by some email leak. What is wrong with exposing the truth? This isn't a group that that is entitled to privacy and no scrutiny like a regular citizen if anything they should be subject to scrutiny with all their public affairs; what they do in private is a different story.

    Ask yourself why are they so upset – for exposing their real colors and the truth? Too funny.

    SmallerGovNow2 Taint Boil , Jan 2, 2017 8:41 AM
    Blatant cover up of the democratic parties manipulation of the primary process...
    jeff montanye Taint Boil , Jan 2, 2017 8:08 AM
    well one reason the legacy media is outraged is it makes even more apparent how little investigative journalism is being done by them on their slowly clocking out watch.

    they are just better at stenography done in really nice restaurants and at taking sides: it pays better and it's more fun.

    scraping_by jeff montanye , Jan 2, 2017 12:11 PM
    And don't forget covering up real stories. Their silence is golden.
    Bay Area Guy nah , Jan 2, 2017 9:50 AM
    I can't quite recall. Was it Russia that overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine and replaced it with a government led, in large part, by NAZIS?

    Oh, now I remember. No. No, it wasn't Russia that did that. That was the good old USA.

    InTylerWeTrust , Jan 1, 2017 8:39 PM
    Let's not forget John "Bombs Away" Bolton. That bimbo eruption and his moustache can't wait to start the next war for the glory of Pax Americana.
    Mandel Bot InTylerWeTrust , Jan 2, 2017 8:22 AM
    Calling these people 'idiots' is being too kind.

    They are traitorous warmongers.

    xavi1951 Mandel Bot , Jan 2, 2017 10:35 AM
    You left out the CIA It was the CIA that started both lies.
    jeff montanye InTylerWeTrust , Jan 2, 2017 8:01 AM
    it is not for pax americana it is for Eretz Yisrael Hashlemah, greater or entire israel.

    [Jan 02, 2017] The Same Idiots Who Pushed the Iraq War Are Now Stirring Up Hysteria About Russia

    Jan 01, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

    The propaganda about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction was one of the most blatant examples of "fake news" in American history.

    Now, many of the same idiots who pushed the Iraq war lies are stirring up hysteria about Russia.

    For example, the Washington Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt cheerleaded for the Iraq war. Now, the Washington Post under Hiatt's leadership has been the main source of the most breathless anti-Russian hysteria .

    ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd – chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney '04 presidential campaign – was a big booster for the Iraq war. Now, Dowd Tweets that you're only a patriot if you blindly accept what President Obama and the intelligence services claim without any proof.

    George W. Bush's speechwriter David Frum – who pushed many of the biggest lies about the Iraq war – is now trying to ridicule anyone who doesn't accept the evidence-less claims that Russia hacked the Democratic party as a Kremlin stooge.

    Similarly, Jonathan Chait championed the Iraq war. And now he's ridiculing those asking for evidence before jumping headlong into anti-Russia hysteria.

    These guys all have a track record of pushing false stories which get us into disastrous wars why should we listen to them now?

    CRM114 •Jan 2, 2017 12:27 PM

    I was at the sharp end of the Cold War, defending against a REAL Soviet threat. I am well acquainted with psyops and insidious means of destabilizing a state.

    The idea that Russia is behind this is just total BS.

    Any attack on this supposed scale produces evidence, and whilst much of it cannot be directly revealed (to protect sources), there would be quite sufficient to be presented, if it existed. It doesn't.

    And whilst we are at it, the arguments for the Invasion of Iraq were BS also, and that was clear to many in the military despite being cheerled by the MSM.

    ronaldwilsonreagan , Jan 2, 2017 12:09 PM
    There is much at stake for the Neo-cons, they will not give up easy. I would consider them armed and dangerous.
    scraping_by ronaldwilsonreagan , Jan 2, 2017 12:58 PM
    There's no cost involved. They are advisors and propagandists nputting ideas into the heads of people with real authority. If they had to repay the price others paid for their slogans, or even more, had to put on BDUs and go put them into action, we'd hear a lot less of them.
    Xena fobe , Jan 2, 2017 11:37 AM
    Almost all comments on MSM are anti Russia. These comments are at a higher level of writing and intellect than the typical SJW post. Someone is financing this social media campaign. People aren't stupid but we do have a herd mentality. If everyone around me believes X, they must be correct, right. Thank God for ZH.
    Northern Flicker , Jan 2, 2017 11:15 AM
    The ziocons are pissed, they had Russia all wrapped for the NWO 10 years ago and blew it. Now they want it back to finish their plans and are willing to sacrifice the rest of us for it.
    iAmerican3 Northern Flicker , Jan 2, 2017 11:18 AM
    Ziocons are just fronting the Roman Anti-Christ, just as their Khazar ancestors were doing the actual hammering of the impalement stake up through the Body of Our Lord on Golgotha.

    The "good cop/bad cop" satanic psychopathy's got it going on for thousands of years: the Seventh Head of the Beast.

    Time for the Beast to be cast down as the Apocalypse is already upon True Israel, America, but to Satan's liars and pedophile homosexuals. #Pizzagate

    pine_marten , Jan 2, 2017 10:39 AM
    Let's compile a list of Hillary supporting, MIC shill, G.O.P. turncoats:

    Paul Ryan

    John McCain

    Lindsey Graham

    scraping_by , Jan 2, 2017 10:33 AM
    Ah, yes. Stupid, crazy, or evil.

    Stupid is the usual fallback position, as in How Could We Have Been So Wrong? Good-hearted by soft-headed. We all make mistakes, don't we?

    Crazy is out there, even after all these years, seeing Commies under every bed. Spy movies tell the honest truth.

    Evil is pretty much everything else. Simply taking it as a position to be promoted is, in the end, the same thing as thinking up the lies. Thinking of it as just a move in a game. Enjoying chaos for its own sake.

    Stupid, crazy, or evil.

    YHC-FTSE , Jan 2, 2017 9:57 AM
    There's a website called "Right Web" that purports to track militarists' efforts to influence US foreign policy and it's another resource to do research on individuals ( http://rightweb.irc-online.org )

    The Council on Foreign Relations, with notable exceptions, is a who's who of neocon zionist warmongers, a list of movers and shakers of every war and crime against humanity. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_Council_on_Foreign_Relations )

    So, let's see who these liars, psychopaths and criminals mentioned are:

  • Fred Hiatt - Ashkenazi Jew - Member of the Council on Foreign Relations
  • Matthew Dowd - divorced Catholic - Useful minion of both neocons, neolibs, anyone in power. CFR guest speaker. Pundit on supporting Israel.
  • David Frum - Jewish - Editor of Atlantic, contributor to CFR, Board member of Republican Jewish Coalition, coined the term "Axis of Evil" for G.W.Bush
  • Jonathan Chait - Jewish - Writer for New York Magazine, on CFR website "Must read list", recently called for the assassination of Donald Trump.

  • ~ DC v4.0
    MrBoompi DuneCreature , Jan 2, 2017 11:43 AM
    They use the same old lies because they work.

    ====

    They do work. Most of the population ignores all of this. Many who attempt to pay attention believe the government lies. That leaves the rest of us who believe the government and their media mouthpieces are full of shit. The lies work on us too, in the sense that even if they know we know they're full of shit, what the fuck can we do about it? They are at the point where they truly believe they can get away with anything.

    Reaper , Jan 2, 2017 9:14 AM
    The Russian hacking is a fallacious argument appealing to an authority. http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/appeals/appeal-to-authority/ Worse, the specific person of the authority is not identified. Worse, the authority is known as a purveyor of lies.

    The Exceptionals believe an exceptionally fallacious argument?

    SmallerGovNow2 , Jan 2, 2017 8:33 AM
    Why indeed? Like John McStain and Lefty Lindsey who were out this weekend calling for even tougher sanctions on Russia. War mongering neocons...
    HowdyDoody SmallerGovNow2 , Jan 2, 2017 9:41 AM
    Dont forget (((Adam Schiff))). He's up for more sanctions as well.
    overmedicatedun... , Jan 2, 2017 8:28 AM
    thanks GW..these idiots (clever and smart as they are)..see a NWO bankster run one world .gov..and Trump USA with Russia..is a big threat to that..Putin and Trump can see this as well as anyone of us..what they do about it? in the old days hang em high..traitors to the constitution deserve harsh ends. Justice has been denied far far too long..
    VideoEng_NC , Jan 2, 2017 7:52 AM
    Let me see if I have this visual correct, A bunch of former W staff folks are promoting fake news so that 0bama can maintain his "...it's the Russians!" narrative. All I need to see now is 0bama pointing at their propaganda for one more, "...see?!...but Bush!" to close out his "legacy" as president.
    Taint Boil , Jan 2, 2017 7:48 AM

    I'm perplexed about all the focus on the hacked / leaked emails by the "Russians" but not a peep about what's in the emails. Not one word (that I know of) about how the information is not true, faked or doctored. So, the only thing the email leak did was expose the truth about a group.

    Just can't make this shit up. That is like being outraged because a pedophile has been exposed by some email leak. What is wrong with exposing the truth? This isn't a group that that is entitled to privacy and no scrutiny like a regular citizen if anything they should be subject to scrutiny with all their public affairs; what they do in private is a different story.

    Ask yourself why are they so upset – for exposing their real colors and the truth? Too funny.

    SmallerGovNow2 Taint Boil , Jan 2, 2017 8:41 AM
    Blatant cover up of the democratic parties manipulation of the primary process...
    jeff montanye Taint Boil , Jan 2, 2017 8:08 AM
    well one reason the legacy media is outraged is it makes even more apparent how little investigative journalism is being done by them on their slowly clocking out watch.

    they are just better at stenography done in really nice restaurants and at taking sides: it pays better and it's more fun.

    scraping_by jeff montanye , Jan 2, 2017 12:11 PM
    And don't forget covering up real stories. Their silence is golden.
    Bay Area Guy nah , Jan 2, 2017 9:50 AM
    I can't quite recall. Was it Russia that overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine and replaced it with a government led, in large part, by NAZIS?

    Oh, now I remember. No. No, it wasn't Russia that did that. That was the good old USA.

    InTylerWeTrust , Jan 1, 2017 8:39 PM
    Let's not forget John "Bombs Away" Bolton. That bimbo eruption and his moustache can't wait to start the next war for the glory of Pax Americana.
    Mandel Bot InTylerWeTrust , Jan 2, 2017 8:22 AM
    Calling these people 'idiots' is being too kind.

    They are traitorous warmongers.

    xavi1951 Mandel Bot , Jan 2, 2017 10:35 AM
    You left out the CIA It was the CIA that started both lies.
    jeff montanye InTylerWeTrust , Jan 2, 2017 8:01 AM
    it is not for pax americana it is for Eretz Yisrael Hashlemah, greater or entire israel.

    [Jan 02, 2017] After releasing to the surprised world Flame and Stuxnet the USA should not be shy to disclose how they trace Russian hackers

    Slightly edited for clarity....
    Notable quotes:
    "... This kind of stuff has been going on for YEARS. Multiple countries, multiple blogs, news sites, Facebook and Twitter accounts. The US does it too. Corporations do it; political parties do it; David Brock does it; and people in other countries do it. It may or may not be state coordinated, in any given case. And it's probably not actually illegal in most of these cases. Yes, of course people in other countries have preferences about who wins our elections. We live in a big new internet-connected world, where all kinds of folks are constantly trying to influence outcomes of various kinds in other countries. Grow up. ..."
    "... After releasing to the surprised world Flame ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_%28malware%29 ) and Stuxnet ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet ) not much was left to disclose. ..."
    "... Add to this Snowden revelations and you have the situation when you can be almost completely open about methods you use (the most interesting part is how multiple levels of indirection are traced -- Snowden used this NSA program against Chinese hackers -- so it's existence is no longer secret staff. Simplifying you need something like traceroute via VPN channels ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traceroute ). But there can be proxies in the middle so the whole thing is very complex. ..."
    "... Yeah, sounds a whole lot like that Nigerian uranium and Saddam's weapons. I was told back then also that the intelligence was just too sensitive to reveal. Sources and methods and all that. ..."
    "... Good to see Matt Bruenig, Noah Smith and few others keeping their heads on their shoulders and trying to put the focus on policy. ..."
    "... Do you really assume that the amount of "compromat" that Russia has on Clintons (and especially Clinton Foundation, which is a real ticking bomb) is less valuable that Trump fuzzy desire to normalize relations, which can change any time (and may be dictated by the desire to drive a wedge in Russia relations with China). ..."
    "... Clinton is "the devil that we know" for Russia. Trump is "the devil that we don't". ..."
    "... It is also unclear to what extent Presidents, being now to a certain extent just ceremonial figureheads legitimizing the existence of "deep state" can change the foreign policy course, which remains remarkably consistent for the last six US administrations (Clinton+Bush+Obama x 2 ). ..."
    Jan 02, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
    Now everybody can study them and learn from the masters of Cyberwarfare

    sanjait -> Dan Kervick...

    The US isn't going to release intelligence sources but it's really really easy to see who Russia favored in the election and evidence of their efforts to influence it.

    DeDude -> sanjait... , January 02, 2017 at 02:02 PM

    Exactly - even a moron (without a political agenda) will look at the publicly available information and concluded that we are already past any "reasonable doubt".

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/russia-hack-election-dnc.html?_r=0

    Then there is all the additional material that simply cannot be released because it would help the adversaries plug certain channels of counter intelligence.

    It is a fact that the hackers were Russian. It is a fact that the only viable motive to release that material the way it was (timed to inflict maximum damage on HRC) would be to lower the chances of Hilary being elected. It is a fact that nobody in Russia would dare to challenge Putin's authority and release this material without his knowledge.

    However, tomorrow the great Orange will be informed about the facts and it will not make him change his conclusion that the facts are wrong and he the great Trump and his great inside (from Kremlin) sources have proven that it was not Russia. The Trump bobbleheads and associated clowns will agree not because Trump had any evidence but because he told them what they wanted to hear.

    sanjait -> DeDude... , January 02, 2017 at 02:37 PM
    True.

    Though for me the most compelling evidence was the simple observation that paid commenters (with only moderate English speaking capability and no comment history, often from brand new Facebook accounts) appeared with such frequency in comment sections of sites like WAPO and other major news organizations, and the associated reporting with first person non-anonymous accounts of how Russia ran farms for such paid comments.

    The strangest part of this is how many useful idiots (in the classic sense) like Kervick exist out there with various forms of apologetics for these actions.

    Dan Kervick said in reply to sanjait... , January 02, 2017 at 03:52 PM
    This kind of stuff has been going on for YEARS. Multiple countries, multiple blogs, news sites, Facebook and Twitter accounts. The US does it too. Corporations do it; political parties do it; David Brock does it; and people in other countries do it. It may or may not be state coordinated, in any given case. And it's probably not actually illegal in most of these cases. Yes, of course people in other countries have preferences about who wins our elections. We live in a big new internet-connected world, where all kinds of folks are constantly trying to influence outcomes of various kinds in other countries. Grow up.
    cal -> Dan Kervick... , January 02, 2017 at 06:55 PM
    "Grow up."

    Not that one is short and just needs to plow into those Cheerios, but this is a parent speaking to their child(ren), yes?

    Deplorable(s).

    This too, is part of the same exchange: not merely commander to commanded, but deaf to any other view that might be characterized as a dialog between adults who are interested in the best path.

    As if any dialog could take place between one person with a microphone and public relations team on the command side and a flock of fans on the other, but I digress.

    My favorite is "Suck it up Buttercup" at the sign of any resistance, or reluctance, or indifference that might indicate you are nothin but a fading flower...sorta blows air in your face twice.

    So Dan, I hear you and read most of your posts. And Sanjait's too. And both worth reading among still others...my standards aren't terribly high.

    Your note that the US does it too, might be the understatement of the year. And Sanjait's suggestion that just as there is an adult-age limit there should be a senility limit too. As close as this election was, the less capable adults (MCI is easily more than the 3M difference.) explains the poor polls and the worse outcome.

    ilsm -> DeDude... , January 02, 2017 at 04:52 PM
    Aside from how crooked the DNC and Clinton are what did the CIA WMD screamers say the Russians released?

    You all should stop whining!

    It is getting unseemly.

    like poor pk.

    likbez -> DeDude... , January 02, 2017 at 08:05 PM
    You are funny.

    After releasing to the surprised world Flame ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_%28malware%29 ) and Stuxnet ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet ) not much was left to disclose.

    Now everybody can study them and learn from the masters of Cyberwarfare ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare )

    Add to this Snowden revelations and you have the situation when you can be almost completely open about methods you use (the most interesting part is how multiple levels of indirection are traced -- Snowden used this NSA program against Chinese hackers -- so it's existence is no longer secret staff. Simplifying you need something like traceroute via VPN channels ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traceroute ). But there can be proxies in the middle so the whole thing is very complex.

    So when they suggest that certain IPs signify Russian hacking they are insulting average computer literate person intelligence.

    There are some posters in this group who really understand this staff. I don't.

    They can probably comment further.

    Dan Kervick said in reply to sanjait... , January 02, 2017 at 03:46 PM
    Yeah, sounds a whole lot like that Nigerian uranium and Saddam's weapons. I was told back then also that the intelligence was just too sensitive to reveal. Sources and methods and all that.

    And at the end of the day, the only credible charge is not that Russia hacked "the election", but that they hacked John Podesta's email.

    Anyway, it's water under the bridge. Meanwhile, Donald Trump and the radical Republican Congress have a reactionary legislative agenda all lined up, and Democrats have done close to squat to build and articulate a clear, unified and compelling counter-agenda. They are off on a crazy Russian goose chase. So the Republicans are probably going to pass a lot of their agenda, because Democrats are putting nothing on the table.

    Good to see Matt Bruenig, Noah Smith and few others keeping their heads on their shoulders and trying to put the focus on policy.

    anne -> Dan Kervick... , January 02, 2017 at 03:59 PM
    http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/06WILS.html

    July 6, 2003

    What I Didn't Find in Africa
    By JOSEPH C. WILSON 4th

    WASHINGTON -- Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?

    Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

    For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and Săo Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.

    It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.

    In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake - a form of lightly processed ore - by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

    After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the CIA paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.

    In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.

    The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq - and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.

    I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

    Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired....

    Joseph C. Wilson 4th, United States ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995.

    likbez -> sanjait... , January 02, 2017 at 07:01 PM
    If you have Ph.D you should really be ashamed writing such nonsense.

    Do you really assume that the amount of "compromat" that Russia has on Clintons (and especially Clinton Foundation, which is a real ticking bomb) is less valuable that Trump fuzzy desire to normalize relations, which can change any time (and may be dictated by the desire to drive a wedge in Russia relations with China).

    Clinton is "the devil that we know" for Russia. Trump is "the devil that we don't".

    It is also unclear to what extent Presidents, being now to a certain extent just ceremonial figureheads legitimizing the existence of "deep state" can change the foreign policy course, which remains remarkably consistent for the last six US administrations (Clinton+Bush+Obama x 2 ).

    Or do you really think that Bolton in State Department is different from Victoria Nuland?

    [Jan 02, 2017] The War Against Alternative Information

    Notable quotes:
    "... The legislation was initiated in March 2016, as the demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia was already underway and was enacted amid the allegations of "Russian hacking" around the U.S. presidential election and the mainstream media's furor over supposedly "fake news." Defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton voiced strong support for the bill: "It's imperative that leaders in both the private sector and the public sector step up to protect our democracy, and innocent lives." ..."
    "... The new law is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least because it merges a new McCarthyism about purported dissemination of Russian "propaganda" on the Internet with a new Orwellianism by creating a kind of Ministry of Truth – or Global Engagement Center – to protect the American people from "foreign propaganda and disinformation." ..."
    "... The law also is rife with irony since the U.S. government and related agencies are among the world's biggest purveyors of propaganda and disinformation – or what you might call evidence-free claims, such as the recent accusations of Russia hacking into Democratic emails to "influence" the U.S. election. ..."
    "... Despite these accusations - leaked by the Obama administration and embraced as true by the mainstream U.S. news media - there is little or no public evidence to support the charges. There is also a contradictory analysis by veteran U.S. intelligence professionals as well as statements by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and an associate, former British Ambassador Craig Murray , that the Russians were not the source of the leaks. Yet, the mainstream U.S. media has virtually ignored this counter-evidence, appearing eager to collaborate with the new "Global Engagement Center" even before it is officially formed. ..."
    "... In more recent decades, the U.S. government has adopted an Internet-era version of that formula with an emphasis on having the State Department or the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy supply, train and pay "activists" and "citizen journalists" to create and distribute propaganda and false stories via "social media" and via contacts with the mainstream media. The U.S. government's strategy also seeks to undermine and discredit journalists who challenge this orthodoxy. The new legislation escalates this information war by tossing another $160 million into the pot. ..."
    "... There's a real love fest for Trump on this site and I believe you are all going to be bitterly disappointed in the end. ..."
    "... Putin obviously has something on Trump ..."
    "... I'm well aware of the propaganda from our government but if you believe it will be better under Trump, you are living in a fairy tale. ..."
    "... The Police State requires each person to believe their lies. Paraphrasing a comment attributed to a former CIA operative: "When the only narrative available is ours, we will have done our job". ..."
    "... While everyone was enjoying the holidays president Obama signed the NDAA for fiscal year 2017 into law which includes the "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" ..."
    "... this new law is tantamount to "The Records Department of the Ministry of Truth" in George Orwell's book 1984. ..."
    Jan 01, 2017 | consortiumnews.com
    The U.S. government is creating a new $160 million bureaucracy to shut down information that doesn't conform to U.S. propaganda narratives, building on the strategy that sold the bloody Syrian "regime change" war, writes Rick Sterling.

    The U.S. establishment is not content simply to have domination over the media narratives on critical foreign policy issues, such as Syria, Ukraine and Russia. It wants total domination. Thus we now have the " Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act " that President Obama signed into law on Dec. 23 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017 , setting aside $160 million to combat any "propaganda" that challenges Official Washington's version of reality.

    ... ... ...

    The new law mandates the U.S. Secretary of State to collaborate with the Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence and other federal agencies to create a Global Engagement Center "to lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests." The law directs the Center to be formed in 180 days and to share expertise among agencies and to "coordinate with allied nations."

    The legislation was initiated in March 2016, as the demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia was already underway and was enacted amid the allegations of "Russian hacking" around the U.S. presidential election and the mainstream media's furor over supposedly "fake news." Defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton voiced strong support for the bill: "It's imperative that leaders in both the private sector and the public sector step up to protect our democracy, and innocent lives."

    The new law is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least because it merges a new McCarthyism about purported dissemination of Russian "propaganda" on the Internet with a new Orwellianism by creating a kind of Ministry of Truth – or Global Engagement Center – to protect the American people from "foreign propaganda and disinformation."

    As part of the effort to detect and defeat these unwanted narratives, the law authorizes the Center to: "Facilitate the use of a wide range of technologies and techniques by sharing expertise among Federal departments and agencies, seeking expertise from external sources, and implementing best practices." (This section is an apparent reference to proposals that Google, Facebook and other technology companies find ways to block or brand certain Internet sites as purveyors of "Russian propaganda" or "fake news." )

    Justifying this new bureaucracy, the bill's sponsors argued that the existing agencies for " strategic communications " and " public diplomacy " were not enough, that the information threat required "a whole-of-government approach leveraging all elements of national power."

    The law also is rife with irony since the U.S. government and related agencies are among the world's biggest purveyors of propaganda and disinformation – or what you might call evidence-free claims, such as the recent accusations of Russia hacking into Democratic emails to "influence" the U.S. election.

    Despite these accusations - leaked by the Obama administration and embraced as true by the mainstream U.S. news media - there is little or no public evidence to support the charges. There is also a contradictory analysis by veteran U.S. intelligence professionals as well as statements by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and an associate, former British Ambassador Craig Murray , that the Russians were not the source of the leaks. Yet, the mainstream U.S. media has virtually ignored this counter-evidence, appearing eager to collaborate with the new "Global Engagement Center" even before it is officially formed.

    Of course, there is a long history of U.S. disinformation and propaganda. Former CIA agents Philip Agee and John Stockwell documented how it was done decades ago, secretly planting "black propaganda" and covertly funding media outlets to influence events around the world, with much of the fake news blowing back into the American media.

    In more recent decades, the U.S. government has adopted an Internet-era version of that formula with an emphasis on having the State Department or the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy supply, train and pay "activists" and "citizen journalists" to create and distribute propaganda and false stories via "social media" and via contacts with the mainstream media. The U.S. government's strategy also seeks to undermine and discredit journalists who challenge this orthodoxy. The new legislation escalates this information war by tossing another $160 million into the pot.

    ... ... ...

    Rick Sterling is an independent investigative journalist. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and can be reached at [email protected]

    Skip Scott , January 1, 2017 at 12:55 pm

    Here comes the Ministry of truth.

    War is Peace
    Freedom is Slavery
    Ignorance is Strength

    Big Brother is watching us.

    Abe , January 1, 2017 at 10:21 pm

    The information war against reputable independent investigative journalism has been in full swing for years. $160 million is just the latest shake of piddle.

    In addition to the army of paid journalists in mainstream media, "pro-democracy" and "human rights" NGOs, and assorted limited hangouts we are all too familiar with, there is the new Propaganda 3.0 species of "open source intelligence" scammers, bogus "independent researchers", and corporate-funded fake "citizen investigative journalists" like Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat, all busily churning out fake news.

    Uncritical journalists have ignored the deeper layer of deception underlying the Washington Post / PropOrNot imbroglio.

    Some "useful idiots" have gone so far as to actively promote the illusion that Bellingcat and other PropOrNot "Related Projects" are "professional" information sources.

    In reality, Google-funded Bellingcat is directly allied with the Washington Post and New York Times, the two principal mainstream media organs for "regime change" propaganda, via the Google's new Ministry of Truth: The First Draft Coalition "partner network".

    Note that it was the Washington Post that catapulted PropOrNot to prominence.

    True independent investigative journalism is the declared enemy of Google's new Minitrue.

    In a triumph of Orwellian Newspeak, this Propaganda 3.0 coalition has already demonstrated its ability to "work together to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the verification process" of Western propaganda narratives.

    The devil's hands are very busy.

    Peter Loeb , January 2, 2017 at 6:44 am

    MUST READ .

    Tom Anderson: THE DIRTY WAR ON SYRIA

    (Global Research, 2016)

    (Available at Amazon and probably elsewhere.)

    This well documented book explores the arguments presented in
    Rick Sterling's excellent article above in detail. The book is in defense
    of Syria.It includes many references (in English), most available on line.

    ---------

    NOTE: See requests elsewhere in the Defense Appropriation Act of 2017.
    As always, an APPROPRIATION of amounts is required.

    -------

    A basic issue can be raised involving any commitment of the
    next President of the United States to policies of this
    Administration and Congress. It is well-known that Donald
    Trump has not previously shared many of the views on which this
    legislation is based.

    Senator John McCain, primary sponsor, D-Ariz, does share
    these views. It needs reminding that that being said, much
    of this GOP interest was under the assumption that
    Hillary Clinton's election was a foregone conclusion.

    Though Senator McCain is the sole sponsor of the entire
    bill in his role as Chairman of the Armed Services
    Committee of the Senate, many Democrats joined in the
    many amendments. were co-sponsored by Democratic
    Senators.

    Regarding Syria, many of the issues are dealt with
    in Tom Anderson's book noted above.

    --Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA

    Linda Doucett , January 1, 2017 at 11:28 pm

    a lot of Soros schills on this thread :)

    exiled off mainstreet , January 2, 2017 at 2:13 pm

    That is it exactly. The yankee regime has gone over into fascist control of the narrative. Erstwhile "leftists" like Amy Goodman have jumped the shark and joined the imperialist propaganda push. Even the ACLU is sponsoring islamofascists like Khisr Khan, who is an apologist for el qaeda spouting that the Iraq war, a war crime by any objective definition, was 'in defense of constitutional values. Since courts no longer hold the regime accountable, the fact this is blatantly unconstitutional and contrary to the rule of law does not seem to mean much. Hopefully, the new administration, despite the reputation of its leadership, will be less autocratic in practice. As far as I'm concerned, they all have jumped the shark and the last shreds of legitimacy have disappeared. The entire existing regime and its acolytes are war criminals and traitors to the rule of law.

    Bill Cash , January 1, 2017 at 12:56 pm

    You don't watch Democracy Now much. I've seen all points of view presented there. Perhaps you should examine with a more open mind.
    I never supported getting involved in Syria but there was a lot of pressure to do so. It was a big mistake. The history I know says that climate change had much to do with what happened there. A severe drought made conditions untenable for the farmers and they started to revolt. Assad handled what was happening very badly. It was a terrible situation. Assad wan't going to help them but he generally had the support of the rest of the people. Getting involved there was stupid. There was no way for intervention to be successful unless it was humanitarian like helping them to help the farmers Of course intervention is seldom humanitarian and when it is, it's seen as weak an ineffective by the powerful forces that oppose it.

    There's a real love fest for Trump on this site and I believe you are all going to be bitterly disappointed in the end. Putin obviously has something on Trump and you should be shouting for his tax returns so we can understand that relationship. We know he's received a lot of money from Russia.
    Everyone, including you discount David Corn's research about that relationship. No one wants to hear it.

    David Ecklein , January 1, 2017 at 1:43 pm

    Bill Cash- "We know he's [Trump} received a lot of money from Russia."

    There is possibly a malicious insinuation here. Was that to support Trump's political campaign, or was that from business deals – which Trump has in any number of countries?

    Bill Cash- "Everyone, including you discount David Corn's research about that relationship [Trump/Russia]."

    Include me in your "everyone". If you mean Corn's article in Mother Jones, it is not "research" but forwarded innuendos.

    As to whether anyone will be "bitterly disappointed" with Trump, that is beside the point – many of us are deeply concerned with other possible aspects of the coming administration. I am just glad to see Trump or any prominent US political commentator buck the knee-jerk attempt to blame Russia for our own troubles. Jerks like that can be hazardous to our health and possibly our continued existence.

    Bill Cash , January 1, 2017 at 2:10 pm

    You think climate change is a problem? Trump thinks it's a hoax. Will climate change provoke many Syria's around the world?
    Is Trump building a government of, by and for the very rich?
    Putin obviously has something on Trump which all of you are ignoring. Now Trump is saying he knows more about hacking than everyone else. There's too much in that relationship to be ignored but you are ignoring it and it will come back to bite us.
    Trump wants to dismantle the epa, medicare and social security. That should really help the country.
    Enjoy Trump while you can. Keep protecting him.

    Skip Scott , January 1, 2017 at 2:44 pm

    What proof do you have that Putin has "something" on Trump? It could be that Trump sees opportunities for business with Russia if there are improved relations. Russia has a lot of natural resources waiting to be exploited. The military/security/industrial complex is at odds with that idea because they need their boogeyman.

    And why does it always have to be one or the other between Hillary and the Donald? I think they both suck. My only hope is that he disrupts the power of the deep state warmongers and cleans house at the CIA And even there, it is only a hope. I am not blindly optimistic.

    I doubt there are many of us here at Consortium news that are enjoying or protecting Trump, but Hillary would have been a disaster as well. Bill Cash is blind not to see that. There was no lesser of two evils in this election, just two different evils.

    Bill Cash , January 1, 2017 at 3:15 pm

    Get Trump to release his tax returns. Why is he afraid to do that? There is something there h doesn't want us to see.
    We know he's received a lot of money from Russia, That's well documented and Putin doesn't allow that without strings. We know he's had dealings with both the mafia and the Russian mob.
    You should be screaming for his tax returns but instead you assume his innocence.
    You know nothing about me. I do believe Hillary would be better because she believes in global warming but I was a Bernie supporter.
    If you know anything about Trump, you know he only acts to help himself, for his own enrichment. If you don't know that, I can't talk to you. You'd have to give me examples of him ever thinking outside himself. There has to be something in the Putin relationship that's good for Trump.
    Get his tax returns!!!!!

    Blahblahblah , January 1, 2017 at 9:41 pm

    Heh, I'm Russian from Russia. 1. Russia is not building any ministry of truth, many western channels like France 24, BBC, EuroNews and Fox News are part of standard cable TV package here (at least in Moscow and other major cities). 2. Not sure what image you have of our president, but blackmailing leaders of other states is America's thing, that's not what Russians do (we send tanks, threaten or negotiate) – you should stop thinking the whole world acts the same way America does. 3. I doubt Trump got money from Russia, at least not more than Clinton got from Saudi Arabia and others, including Ukraine (the latter donated about US$30 million, the former could have donated up to US$500 million // could you name the amount given by Russia to Trump, which you speak about?). Anyway, is it really okay that future American president are for sale internationally, regardless if it's Trump or Clinton? 4. I doubt Russians hacked you since there's still no single proof (What CIA says and "everyone knows" is not a proof. If you like this type of justice, I suggest you abolish your whole legal system and replace it with Lynch courts). 5. Lastly, you suggest that the U.S. s almost uninvolve din Syria. Is it really so? Who are you supplying weapons to then? Turkish president (Turkey is still NATO member, ally of the U.S.) said he has proof U.S. is supporting terrorists, mainly ISIL and Al Quaida. Al Quaida were the guys who organized 9/11. I hope you're proud to be American and of Obama and Clinton.

    ????????, ?????? ?? ??? ???????? ??? 8 ??? ?????, ?? ?????????? ????? ?????.

    ? ??????? ?? ?????? :-)

    Jessejean , January 2, 2017 at 12:56 am

    Blah x3: that was beautiful. It makes me so sick to my stomach that these things can be said about my country and that I know they are true. For years I blamed the FBI. Or Nixon. Or Ronnie, or Col. North and Iran Countra, or the Rethugs. Or the CIA Or DIck and Bush. But when Hillary tried to force herself down our throats in a kind of female felacio (sorry, don't know how to spell that) and Thomas Frank went after Slick Willy with a cleaver and Matt Taibbi exposed Obama's financial machinations and Little Debbie Shitz kneecapped the progressives, I finally saw what the world has been seeing for decades. I love my country, and all I was taught she stood for, and I know you love your country and her amazing history. I don't like Trump, but if he's the poison it takes to heal my country so we can get along with yours, here's to poison. Dos vee donya. ( terrible speller. Sorry)

    Zachary Smith , January 1, 2017 at 11:57 pm

    Trump and climate change = Trump an ignoramus.
    Hillary and Obama on climate change equaled lots of grand speech-making, no effective actions.
    I don't see a significant difference here. And at least in theory, ignorance can be corrected more easily than cynical indifference chasing the easy money..

    Trump building a government of, by and for the very rich? That's right.
    Hillary and the TPP meant government would be handed to corporations.

    Trump wants to dismantle the epa, medicare and social security. Probably.
    Obama was itching for 8 years to strike a Grand Bargain with the Republicans to dismantle Social Security. If I was to waste time looking at Hillary and Social Security, I'd expect to find weasel lawyer talk giving her the same leeway.

    Putin obviously had something on Trump. Is this in the same class of "reality" as the Russians obviously stealing the 2016 election and preparing to destroy the electrical systems in Vermont?

    David Corn: I looked at his archives at Mother Jones. He was always frothing at the mouth against whoever it was who was in the lead in the Republican primary. Mention of Hillary was always a side factor except in one piece which had this title.

    You Go to War With the Hillary Clinton You Have

    I examined the piece, and found it summarizes as 'the woman isn't worth a crap, but she's all we've got.' Corn was a little more explicit about Hillary's faults in 2008. From one of his pieces then:

    I, too, have huffed about Obama's staffing decisions. It remains a mystery to me why Obama would want to bring into his Big Tent the Clinton circus, which frequently features excessive spin, backstabbing, leaking and messy melodrama. Sen. Clinton is a smart woman who has stature and globetrotting experience. But as health-care czar in her husband's administration, she set back that cause, which is near and dear to the hearts of progressives, by nearly two decades.

    That's right – Hillary wasn't worth a crap back in 2008 either, only back then Corn was a bit more truthful. I've seen that with others – in their 2008 blog posts they were doing to Hillary what they're doing to Trump now – making an all-out assault. How those people convinced themselves that 2008 totally evil Hillary was transformed into 2016 Saint Hillary still confounds me.

    exiled off mainstreet , January 2, 2017 at 2:19 pm

    Trump, if he proves as bad on climate change as feared, can be reversed. If the harpy had gotten in, she would have said the right words on climate change, but put policies via the "trade pacts" under extra-legal corrupt corporate arbitration courts who would have been able to sideline the rule of law in this area and would have established an irreversible corporate regime on climate change. Since courts long ago ceased to hold to rule of law standards basing their decisions on extra-legal state secrets and anti-free-speech considerations, and since such extra-legal "trade pacts" have not even been questioned in US courts, the reality is that this would have meant the end of serious climate change work. This seems to me to be much more concerning than Trump's rhetoric on climate change issues, since, whatever the talk, the factual result of the policy would have been far more odious.

    Lin Cleveland , January 1, 2017 at 2:21 pm

    " There's a real love fest for Trump on this site "

    Me thinks you infer what we do not imply!

    D5-5 , January 1, 2017 at 3:07 pm

    I watched Democracy Now for over a decade–until recently. I tried to tolerate its bias on Syria and wrote to the site several times to no avail. Coverage of Syria was consistently a fairy tale of Assad the evil Hitler versus the good rebels–essentially a Washington Post view. This program has declined. I'm sorry to say it. It is now so unreliable I can no longer watch it. I believe the writer here is accurate and fair on this evaluation.

    Gregory Kruse , January 2, 2017 at 11:02 am

    That's what happens when a site has "Democracy" in its name. The term no longer has any coherent meaning.

    JohnMMorgan , January 2, 2017 at 12:28 pm

    I agree, the role Democracy Now played in paving the way for the destruction of Libya and now Syria is shameful. Given how divided the left is on Syria, the least DN could and should have done is have weekly debates between top advocates of the different narratives to expose their listeners to both sides. Instead they gave constant repetition of the official propaganda line with only very rarely a little of the other side.

    On U.S., Russia and Ukraine it has been more like DN has been MIA.

    I think it is entirely appropriate for Rick Sterling to challenge DN in this excellent article.

    Bill Bodden , January 1, 2017 at 3:32 pm

    There's a real love fest for Trump on this site and I believe you are all going to be bitterly disappointed in the end.

    I read Consortium News practically every day, but somehow I missed the "love fest" comments. Can you share an example or two. There were several articles clearly exposing Hillary Clinton's defects, but it would take lots of stretching of points to interpret them as pro-Trump. I and others have made comments along the lines of "when it comes to Clinton and Trump there is no lesser evil." I don't recall anyone challenging comments like that.

    Similarly, I and others have made the point that we might escape Hillary Clinton's frying pan but we will land in Donald Trump's fire. Or, another version, we might have dodged Hillary Clinton's bullet but Donald Trump will be the price we will have to pay.

    Putin obviously has something on Trump

    In this bizarre era of world politics that may or may not be true. It is, however, unlikely to be obvious either way to many visitors to this site. Can you share what causes you to believe it is obvious?

    Gregory Herr , January 1, 2017 at 4:08 pm

    Severe drought and sanctions that go back to the Bush Administration certainly created some economic hardships. But the conflict in Syria is hardly the outgrowth of a farmers' revolt. The people of Syria are generally educated and politically astute. Naturally occurring political activity not unlike what we sometimes see here in the States (with "movements" such as Occupy) did not have an insurrectionist flavor and few Syrian citizens had armed revolt in mind. Many were simply keen for Assad to step up the pace of the political reform he was a part of. The armed "revolt" that you somehow think Assad handled badly was managed by foreign provocateurs. Assad and the Syrian Arab Army and the Russian Air Force have been protecting the citizens of Syria from vile terrorist mercenaries.

    John P , January 1, 2017 at 6:54 pm

    In support of some your comments Bill Cash, see – Putin's friendly response to the expulsion of his US diplomats – shown on the British Independent newspaper site. In it they state:
    "The President-elect's nomination of Rex Tillerson, chief of ExxonMobil, as Secretary of State, will if confirmed mean that Putin has someone whom he knows well, and has personally awarded the Russian Order of Friendship, in charge of US foreign policy. As for his own business interests, he signed an agreement last summer (just one, it should be said, of several attempts to do so) to build a Trump Tower in Moscow."

    Also interesting to read is Mondoweiss: "Why Obama waited 8 years to take on Netanyahu"

    Happy New year everybody and lets hope we don't get Trumped --

    John P , January 1, 2017 at 7:04 pm

    The web address for the first article above is :

    http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/putin-trump-obama-russia-us-new-cold-war-two-diplomacy-editorial-a7502631.html

    I'm with you Bill Cash

    Adrian Engler , January 1, 2017 at 9:19 pm

    I find this idea that better relationships between the US and Russia would be bad for Central and Western Europe very strange. Of course, there are a few neocon hawks in Europe, as well, but mostly, Europeans are very sceptical about strongly anti-Russian US policies in recent years (in many European countries US power and influence is seen as a similar or bigger threat than Russia, see http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/06/13/europeans-see-isis-climate-change-as-most-serious-threats/epw-russia-china-u-s-threats-web-version/ ). US pressure was needed for the EU to pass sanctions against Russia (of course, Poland and Angela Merkel were in favor, but since there is little popular support for these sanctions outside Poland and the Baltic states, that would hardly have sufficed without US pressure). In Europe, the simplified, dumbed-down presentations of conflicts like the one in Ukraine that are meant to use such complex situations for a one-sided demonization of Russia are less widely accepted. I think there are far more Europeans who saw the constant US pressure for worsening relationships with Russia as a significant threat than people who think that a rapprochement of the US and Russia would be dangerous.
    Of course, there are a few very vocal European journalists who belong to "Atlantic" neocon associations who will scream when someone threatens to ease tensions with Russia, but they only represent a very small part of Europeans.

    Vera , January 1, 2017 at 1:08 pm

    Now we will really get a "taste" of fake news

    Zachary Smith , January 1, 2017 at 1:18 pm

    As part of the effort to detect and defeat these unwanted narratives, the law authorizes the Center to: "Facilitate the use of a wide range of technologies and techniques by sharing expertise among Federal departments and agencies, seeking expertise from external sources, and implementing best practices ." (This section is an apparent reference to proposals that Google, Facebook and other technology companies find ways to block or brand certain Internet sites as purveyors of "Russian propaganda" or "fake news.")

    I suspect "best practices" will include more than simply blocking the alternative information sites like this and Naked Capitalism and the others on the BS PROPORNOT list. Expect other schemes to be tried, each one with effectively unlimited funding.

    They're going to do what the murderous twit George "dumbya" Bush spoke of:

    "See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

    I and many others voted for Obama in 2008 because of our utter disgust with the Texas Torturer. The master psychologists who selected Obama knew that would happen, and his fancy talking along with his black skin caused some people I KNEW were racists to vote for him too – just to prove to themselves they weren't. ( a task eased by the alternative of McCain and Palin)

    Obama has his fingerprints all over the endless crap discussed in this splendid essay, and the sooner people recognize he is a Bush-Level President the better.

    Here is a good introduction to that theme.

    http://www strategic-culture.org/news/2016/12/31/obama-failed-presidency.html

    My main complaint about the essay at the link is that at the end of it author Eric Zuesse was still in a "defense" mode for the disaster which has been the Obama years.

    doray , January 1, 2017 at 1:43 pm

    The cartoon that should result from this action would be to show Obama and every member of Congress who voted for this insanity taking a giant steaming dump on the First Amendment. We have arrived at the Fourth Reich.
    Will they just block the alternative news, or criminalize those who try and post it?

    J'hon Doe II , January 1, 2017 at 1:53 pm

    Alt-Info vs. this Letter to America.

    http://www.terrain.org/2016/guest-editorial/letter-to-america-golden/

    ::
    wherefore does your sincerity
    lie?
    sincerity in heart is truth.

    stan , January 1, 2017 at 2:16 pm

    You can read chapter 6 of Mein Kampf to learn the power and techniques of war propaganda. I started watching the propaganda in 1989 when George Bush Sr. invaded panama to capture his buddy Noriega. There was a story about how the U.S. military had found womens panties and cocaine in Noriegas hideout. After he was captured and reporters asked for proof of this, the U.S. military said they could not find the underwear in question and the cocaine turned out to be baking soda. Of course it was all fabrication.

    During the leadup to the bombing of Iraq in 1991, the story was that the Iraqi soldiers had gone in a hospital and thrown babies out of their incubators "onto the cold hard floor". Of course, this was a total lie also. Even our president kept repeating it, so he was either stupid or lying. Guess which.

    But these are the stories to incite the murderous rage of a people, and prevent people from questioning the attack. When you hear of the smear – someone hiding in a "spider-hole", or someone caught trying to sneak away wearing women's clothing, then you know it is part of the smear campaign and a total lie. It is just a smear, which psychologically makes you not protest the attack, because, well, it could be true, and who wants to stand up in public to protect a sex pervert or a coward.

    But the real power of propaganda is in controlling the narrative. Here is the true narrative of our murderous rampage in the middle east.

    The wars of the U.S. are the empires fighting over control of territory, with all of the benefits and privileges thereof – take the resources, collect taxes, and control terms of commerce and trade to benefit yourself. Big wars begin when empires fall. This also happens when an elephant falls in the jungle. The lions, hyenas, vultures, etc. all try to grab a piece. Governments do this too, as do crime syndicates and mobsters. Mobsters are always trying to muscle in on the territory of other gangs, and police know that when a powerful mobster falls, there will be wars between the gangs fighting for turf and control of territory and markets.

    The U.S. began the destruction of Iraq with the murderous bombing of that country as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. This attack was planned and prepared for during the Regan military buildup of the 1980s. The U.S. knew the soviet union was going to fall, and they prepared for it. It was decided to "pivot" from the U.S. military defeat in southeast asia to begin an invasion of southwest asia. Zbigniew Brezinsky was the architect of the plan to destablize Afghanistan. The U.S. military would not have done that without a follow up plan, and it takes years to plan and prepare an armada for an invasion. In the time since, we have basically invaded and militarily conquered the middle east, africa, southwestern asia and parts of the old soviet union in eastern europe. It is a war between empires (very large business syndicates). All the day-to-day happenings are trivial irrelavancies in terms of reasons for U.S. foreign policy and military actions. Our future foreign policy to again invade asia was decided before 1980. Think of the president as the CEO, and the board of directors tells him what to do. The board of directors has not changed.

    backwardsevolution , January 1, 2017 at 5:46 pm

    stan – very good post!

    Dwight , January 1, 2017 at 9:32 pm

    Amnesty International lent its name to the incubator baby propaganda, playing an important role in helping Bush Sr. get Senate approval for the 1991 Gulf War. Amnesty International along with Human Rights Watch also played an important role in legitimizing the 1999 Kosovo war by timely, uncritical, and grossly irresponsible parroting of claims about killings at the village of Racak.

    Fritz , January 1, 2017 at 11:17 pm

    I hate to say: 'well said', generally, because it implies that I am in a position to give you a grade, like a teacher would.

    But here I must say "well said" to your post --

    Lin Cleveland , January 1, 2017 at 2:19 pm

    "the Ministry of Truth!" Yes indeed, Mr. Sterling, that's what we're seeing here. The stench of hypocrisy wafting from the East is overwhelming, isn't it? To boot Obama signed this bit of government overreach on my birthday claiming this legislation is to protect "national security interests" and "to protect the American people from 'foreign propaganda' and disinformation." Most U.S. citizens know that politicians tell whoppers on the campaign trail. Remember in 2008 when heroic Hillary told about arriving in Bosnia "under a hail of bullets"? That never happened!

    No surprise she supports the bill. "Hillary Clinton voiced strong support for the bill: "It's imperative that leaders in both the private sector and the public sector step up to protect our democracy, and innocent lives." Let's understand what the lady means by "our democracy." She refers to the democracy of the few, the political elites in cahoots with Wall Street who meet behind a curtain to decide U.S. policy. Anyway, as long as we look to "leaders" we'll continue to live in a hierarchy based in money and power–and that is not a democracy! Innocent lives? No, this bill protects the guilty from public scrutiny.

    The law also is rife with irony since the U.S. government and related agencies are among the world's biggest purveyors of propaganda and disinformation – or what you might call evidence-free claims, such as the recent accusations of Russia hacking into Democratic emails to "influence" the U.S. election.

    O yea! the irony is palpable. One section of the bill stipulates that information "experts" appointed by the government will train prospective journalists. Gee, you mean we don't already have that with ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC? The term "The Fourth Estate" for a free and open press dates back to Edmond Burke in 1875. Of course all along those in power have worked overtime to propagate our own citizens, but the idea of government-trained journalists is a slap in the face to "freedom of the press." All of us who post our fact-based opinions qualify as press. From now on, however, a journalist must have a stamp of approval from the government!

    On another not-so "fake news" site I found an article by a retired professor well versed in computer language. Dr. Spring challenges the Russian hacking story, but I don't know enough to understand it all Some of you might.


    Was Claim by Department of Homeland Security and FBI About Russian Hacking Fake News?
    by David Spring

    Bart in Virginia , January 2, 2017 at 9:30 am

    "One section of the bill stipulates that information "experts" appointed by the government will train prospective journalists."

    Maybe Palin's 'FEMA Camps' could be used for this purpose.

    Kent , January 1, 2017 at 2:36 pm

    Funny how they never mention the plans for competing pipelines, re: Syria.

    http://wordpress.redirectingat.com/?id=725X1342&site=willyloman.wordpress.com&xs=1&isjs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fi0.wp.com%2Fwww.strategic-culture.org%2Fimages%2Fmyfls%2Foct2016%2Fzuss24101604.jpg&xguid=2e57ce35a8601dd695623b4d3e3dfa17&xuuid=8c1d9d73fc5e8f18a3ea1dbf15a2f510&xsessid=922426a0b3f7b6513a1608d74aa1b9b8&xcreo=0&xed=0&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwillyloman.wordpress.com%2Fpage%2F4%2F&xtz=300&abp=1

    backwardsevolution , January 1, 2017 at 9:45 pm

    Kent – re competing pipelines. I used to think that was the main reason for the war in Syria. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote an article entitled "Syria: Another Pipeline War". I'm sure the pipeline from Qatar up through Syria is part of the reason, but another poster commented that he didn't buy this, mainly because the pipeline could have gone up through Iraq and then across Turkey. I looked at a map and, yes, he was correct. It would cost more money, but could easily have been done. No, he contended that there was a much greater reason for the war: Israel.

    Joe Tedesky , January 1, 2017 at 10:50 pm

    I'm leaving you something to read see link below, where the author talks about an energy alliance between Turkey, Israel, and Russia is being discussed between these three countries. The U.S. is not included in these discussions.

    Personally I have thought for quite awhile now that this Middle East American NATO driven war has been more about destabilizing Israel's neighbors (Yinon Plan, Clean Break), as opposed to routing energy pipelines.

    Read this .

    http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/25/russia-turkey-israel-and-a-new-balance-of-power/

    Kent , January 2, 2017 at 10:42 am

    Excellent info there,Joe. Demonstrating once again that Putin is a far better, more creative, and less deluded strategic thinker than our best and brightest. I suspect that Turkey's turn toward a Russian alliance on the energy front is sparked the CIA's (failed) Gulenist coup attempt last summer.

    And of course Israel is always Israel.

    The recent bizarre assassination of the Russian ambassador in Turkey by the 'security' guy yelling 'this is for Aleppo' was also a tell regarding the US's support, arming, and funding of the proxy mercenaries Daesh/Isis/al Nusra/al Quaeda.

    Losing's a bitch, especially when it requires treason and you STILL lose. The Masters of the Universe take a hit and I actually see a small glimmer of hope in that.

    Joe Tedesky , January 2, 2017 at 12:41 pm

    Yes the deception and intrigue makes one get dizzy trying to figure out who is really behind all of it. The U.S. needs a new strategy, but it fails to acknowledge it, and with that nothing will change for the good.

    Kent , January 2, 2017 at 10:51 am

    BWE- True enough about the alternate route, through the new and improved 'Kurdistan' but that would have still left the Syrian/Russian legal alliance in place as a competitor for EU business.

    I also think that since Syria was 'on the list' from the get/go, our 'thinkers' in the MI$S complex Mafia weren't creative enough to pivot and adapt. Plus, it would have still left competition noted above.

    CitizenOne , January 1, 2017 at 2:39 pm

    I was watching the news. It is all about the Russians. The Expulsions, the sanctions, the democrats and the republicans are united against their common enemy the Russians. More sanctions are on the way. If a family member recently passed away you can be assured the Russians murdered them! Why don't they just declare war with Russia and get all the niceties over and done so we can get right down to the war?

    Nowhere in this uni-polar single topic narrative of how Russia and Russia alone rigged the election is there a mention of any possible other source of influence on the election. What about the glacially paced multi year investigation into Benghazi? What about Comey's October Surprise with Anthony Wiener's Laptop? What about any other foreign power? What about voter ID laws? What about gerrymandering? What about black box voting? What about Citizens United vs. FEC and McCutcheon vs. FEC and dark money in politics?

    These are just some of the things that have dominated all the previous narratives before now on how elections might be rigged minus the foreign hacks by the Russians which was never a concern. Now, all those things are forgotten. Never happened, not a problem. All washed away in an instant with an entirely new theory out of a clear blue sky. The one single question posed by the politicians and the media might just as well be why are we not loading weapons on boats and planes, dropping them off all along Russia's borders and reinstating the draft right now?

    There is a word for this. This is Propaganda. The law is a perversion of its alleged purpose of defense of the truth by claiming it will weed out lies. It actually seeks to preserve complete control of the narrative a.k.a., propaganda by shutting out anyone else with a different opinion. They need to go after foreign sources because obviously, there is no need for worry or concern that our domestic media might actually do its job. It is clearly already deep inside the belly of the beast.

    Mr. Obama has 20 days left and they cannot possibly go by fast enough as he salts the political landscape in order to tie the incoming administrations hands.

    This has to be one of the scariest and damnable things Obama signed into law. Hopefully, it will shortly be rescinded but it seems even the republicans like Mitch McConnell are all on board with preserving the military industrial complex at all costs. War is their stock and trade and there are trillions of dollars at stake here. The Defense Industry needs enemies not friends.

    What we are seeing is the Neo-Con Cabal wringing their hands with anxiety that the next war with Russia might be on hold and doing everything they can to make that happen. This is what Eisenhower warned us about. But it is an old problem.

    Here are some quotes:

    I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.

    Abraham Lincoln – In a letter written to William Elkin less than five months before he was assassinated.

    The money power preys on the nation in times of peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.

    Abraham Lincoln

    A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world – no longer a Government of free opinion no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men .

    Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

    Woodrow Wilson – In The New Freedom (1913)

    The fact is that there is a serious danger of this country becoming a pluto-democracy; that is, a sham republic with the real government in the hands of a small clique of enormously wealth men, who speak through their money, and whose influence, even today, radiates to every corner of the United States.

    William McAdoo – President Wilson's national campaign vice-chairman, wrote in Crowded Years (1974)

    When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

    Frederic Bastiat – (1801-1850) in Economic Sophisms

    The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.

    Prof. Carroll Quigley in Tragedy and Hope

    In a small Swiss city sits an international organization so obscure and secretive .Control of the institution, the Bank for International Settlements, lies with some of the world's most powerful and least visible men: the heads of 32 central banks, officials able to shift billions of dollars and alter the course of economies at the stroke of a pen.

    Keith Bradsher of the New York Times, August 5, 1995

    The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is eager to enter into close relationship with the Bank for International Settlements .The conclusion is impossible to escape that the State and Treasury Departments are willing to pool the banking system of Europe and America, setting up a world financial power independent of and above the Government of the United States .The United States under present conditions will be transformed from the most active of manufacturing nations into a consuming and importing nation with a balance of trade against it.

    Rep. Louis McFadden – Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency quoted in the New York Times (June 1930)

    backwardsevolution , January 1, 2017 at 9:53 pm

    CitizenOne – great post!

    D5-5 , January 1, 2017 at 3:18 pm

    Thank you for this excellent analysis. Particularly disturbing to me is the success of the propaganda in places I wouldn't expect it, as with Democracy Now, and my neighbors, who seem decent, intelligent people, but entirely done in by the false impressions. I have the feeling the critical views expressed here and in this excellent Consortium site, plus similar sites, represent a small minority of the American public? Or is an awakening in progress causing this newest repressive move, a growing skepticism threatening "national security"? I did read a comment somewhere that fifty percent of the American public is not taken in by the current Russia blaming, but I don't know if this is true.

    junius , January 2, 2017 at 12:38 pm

    How about Rolling Stone's October article praising Hillary Clinton as a champion of feminism? I just cancelled my subscription to the New Yorker because the quality of its great cartoons no longer outweighs the ugly rightward shift in its editorial policy.

    We seem to be witnessing the completion of the project begun a century ago this year, in 1917, with the establishment of the Committee on Public Information. Also known as the Creel Commission, it was the government agency tasked with convincing the American people that it was a good idea to support one faction in Europe's Great War and to take arms against the other. As laughably naive as that propaganda effort seems now, it was the beginning of the end of independent journalism, which in truth had always been on shaky ground in this country. The Founders were among the most cynical of men. It's not hard to picture them laughing in their sleeves over the farcical First Amendment for well they knew from colonial experience that the "freedom" to publish belongs only to those who can afford the price of a printing press, ink, and paper, and who, most importantly, curry favor from government and business. It remains to be seen what effect the internet will have – and how easily it can be silenced

    Bill Cash , January 1, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    I'm well aware of the propaganda from our government but if you believe it will be better under Trump, you are living in a fairy tale. As Bernie said, he's a pathological liar.

    Whatever benefits Trump determines what he will say. Look under the covers and you find Steve Bannon who runs the trump campaign. If you think the propaganda is bad now, wait until he's in control.

    Trump isn't the answer and we need his tax returns. I can see him creating an alliance with Putin and undermining Western Europe.

    Bill Bodden , January 1, 2017 at 3:49 pm

    I'm well aware of the propaganda from our government but if you believe it will be better under Trump, you are living in a fairy tale.

    Bill Cash: I'm with you on this point, but your reasoning above in other posts was very sloppy making facts out of speculation. Speculation, even if it is plausible, does not qualify as fact. I also agree with other commentators suggesting Trump will probably make Obama look good despite negative opinions of Obama.

    Skip Scott , January 1, 2017 at 4:23 pm

    How would creating an alliance with Putin undermine western Europe? You are right that I don't know much about you, but I am with Bill Bodden that you are guilty of shoddy reasoning. As for Global warming, I am sure that it is a serious problem. But Hillary's foreign policy would have had me concerned about nuclear winter. And Hillary is a pathological liar who thinks only of herself and talks out both sides of her mouth. And she is a slave to the deep state and wall street. I think you are dead right about Trump's character, but I think you may be underestimating much of the horrors of the Clintons. How about foreign alliances via the Clinton Foundation- it's pay to play scenario, and the possible impacts on foreign policy? Look at the utter mayhem in the Middle East and the refugee crisis in Europe. Hillary would have promised us more of the same as president.

    I was a Bernie supporter as well, but he lost me when he gave up the fight.

    Jessejean , January 2, 2017 at 1:20 am

    Skip–Bernie didn't give up the fight. He did what he had promised to do and supported the nominee. In other words, he kept his word, even tho it clearly cost him. You abandoned him when the fight became tough, when it wasn't so glamorous, when it shifted over to the hard slog of grassroots organizing and door to door work for some school board member–you know, the kind of work Stokley Charmicheal did for years to help build the Panthers. Don't blame Bernie for your lacking of true heart. It's you.

    Skip Scott , January 2, 2017 at 9:00 am

    When Bernie discovered proof thru wikileaks that the DNC was actively working against him, he should have fought for the nomination at the convention, instead of caving to all the corruption (super delegates, etc etc.) If he had failed there, he could have topped the green party ticket with Jill Stein to run as VP. Then he would have succeeded in blowing up the entirely corrupt two party system, if nothing else. He would have had the 15% to make the national debates. He may have even won. Where was the slog of grassroots organizing after he quit the fight? It's come to naught. I had the true heart to stay with him if he hadn't caved. Bernie even supported some faux democrats against genuine
    progressive greens in down ballot races. This is not a game, it's real life. It is time for people to stand strong for the issues they care about.

    Brad Owen , January 2, 2017 at 10:44 am

    I agree Skip. Bernie was the man of the hour. He had the perfect tool to smash the two-party/Wall Street/deep state Establishment: millions of independent citizen donors. Then he threw it all away to actively campaign for the queen of chaos and the Establishment War Party. I was so disgusted and mad that I went Green and never looked back. I now donate 10$ a month, every month, to the Greens hoping to see recreated the Tool that Bernie threw away (and still trying to lasso to the D-side of the Establishment War Party): millions of independent citizens donating 10$ or 20$ a month to the Green Party to build up a war chest to challenge both wings of the Establishment War Party.

    Adrian Engler , January 1, 2017 at 6:59 pm

    Certainly Trump should not be trusted, among the two very bad (in my view) candidates, I considered Trump the greated evil for domestic US policy, but probably the lesser evil in foreign policy compared to Hillary Clinton's more aggressive neocon policies.

    In what ways should a good collaboration of Trump and Putin undermine Western Europe? According to surveys (e.g. http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/06/13/europeans-see-isis-climate-change-as-most-serious-threats/epw-russia-china-u-s-threats-web-version/ ), apart from Poland, relatively few Europeans see Russia as a big threat, and in many countries, US power and influence is actually seen as a similar or even bigger threat than Russia.

    I think the demonization of Russia and the presentation of the Russian government as a big threat also has to do with the goal of keeping a strong US influence in Western Europe – and for supporting the influence of US-linked European interest groups. But I doubt that this is going to work. It might work on the US public, but apart from Poland and the Baltic states, demonizing Russia is much more difficult in Europe, and the percentage of people who know more about the conflicts in which Russia is involved than the simplified depictions that are popular in the US is probably much bigger.

    John P , January 1, 2017 at 7:05 pm

    In support Bill, see:

    http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/putin-trump-obama-russia-us-new-cold-war-two-diplomacy-editorial-a7502631.html

    James lake , January 1, 2017 at 10:31 pm

    You do realise who owns that news paper you are quoting. It's owned by the Ledbedev family who are oligarchs in the fine tradition. Stole money ran to the west claiming persecution by Putin. It's an anti Putin paper. They are purely online now as the print version of the paper ceased to make a profit.

    The only writers worth reading are Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn

    Kalen , January 1, 2017 at 3:23 pm

    Just a note for DN lovers. Since before 2008 the Pacifica Fundation running DN was taken over by Goldman Sachs. Many local stations rebelled and were cut off from money, forcing them into turmoil and like KPFA and KPFK throwed the management off, cut the fat and went fully listener funded. All that while GS bought Amy Goodman a new TV studio with audience who after the show for $2000 had a chance to go to dinner with Amy.

    All in the midst of 2008 ensuing collapse. When DN subsequently ignored Puerto Rico general strike and a quarter million street demonstration. I stopped watching and listening DN on radio after 15 years.

    I guess they are not doing better now.

    ger , January 1, 2017 at 3:24 pm

    The Police State requires each person to believe their lies. Paraphrasing a comment attributed to a former CIA operative: "When the only narrative available is ours, we will have done our job". The problem for the Police State is even if there is only one person left to speak truth to their lies. that truth will need to be snuffed out. It will take a lot more than $160,000,000.

    Tristan , January 1, 2017 at 3:27 pm

    This article does well to point out the impending doom of our intellectual discourse regarding the nature of the U.S. gov't and its relationship with the citizenry. Already the citizens of the U.S. are more commonly referred to as consumers, thus it follows that the more equal of the equal should control what the consumers are fed.

    The dystopian nature of free market globalized capitalism is now finding, or is near to, the apex of what capitalism unfettered can accomplish. Resulting in the frantic "marketing" that this form of capitalism relies on to "sell" itself as the only way to survive this ugly planet. War is the product, propaganda is the marketing, we fools, consumers, are forced to buy the product from afar and those who receive the product pay a price that no human ought to bear.

    Since we must recognize the complete corruption of such a condition, those that wish to continue to profit from this are forced to act in ways which protect this profit. If this includes an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, as the CFPDA intends, then that's the remedy that is needed because profit, you know, money, power, ad nauseum. That's it. If there were some greater underpinning to the destruction of whole societies and nations and regions that made some sense in the fabric of improving the well being of the planet's humans, perhaps we could accede to the years of long sacrifice and struggle. But no, this is only about wealth and the accumulation of power that this now provides in our modern world.

    The narratives which counter the prevailing religion in the West, the religion of Capitalism unfettered and rapacious, are not given voice. Many don't even understand that there a different ways of organizing a society or a nation that serves the need and well being of its citizens.

    This bullshit machine being funded by "our own" government is ensuring just that, that people are not even provided an opportunity to discuss an alternative to the present state of things. Try not to buy the products that this machine produces, as even if we dream of something else, this too is contrary to the designs of the machine. Next is the Ministry of Thought, or perhaps it was first. And the Ministry of Truth is just now only the second to appear manifest.

    Brian , January 1, 2017 at 3:46 pm

    Dec 27, 2016 "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" Signed Into Law! (NDAA 2017)

    It is true there is breaking news today but you certainly won't hear it from the mainstream media. While everyone was enjoying the holidays president Obama signed the NDAA for fiscal year 2017 into law which includes the "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" and in this video Dan Dicks of Press For Truth shows how this new law is tantamount to "The Records Department of the Ministry of Truth" in George Orwell's book 1984.

    https://youtu.be/A7_kD2D-eaU

    Bill Bodden , January 1, 2017 at 3:55 pm

    John McCain has long been recognized as a warmonger eager to attack foreign nations. Many Americans will be surprised to learn he is now waging war on the American people. Many other Americans won't have a clue of what this bill means – or even of its existence.

    Liam , January 1, 2017 at 4:03 pm

    Regarding all the major propaganda narrative relating to the Syrian War, I put together a massive compendium of photos, videos and linked evidence related to the White Helmets and other ruses. Links here:

    Extensive links to important JPR posts exposing the White Helmet terrorists .

    Please bookmark and save this large amount of info related to the US/UK backed White Helmets as it is extensive proof that the officials of the aforementioned countries are supporting a fake group that is directly linked to terrorism. The White Helmets killed the real Syrian Civil Defense in east Aleppo, Syria in 2013. The videos and research throughout these posts, which is primarily conducted by UK investigative reporting outfit 21st Century Wire and Venessa Beeley, exposes one of the greatest war lies over told, a massive propaganda effort meant to deceive and coerce the populations of western countries into believing that al-Qaeda linked terrorists are civil humanitarians that save little children.

    Bob Van Noy , January 2, 2017 at 3:31 pm

    Thank you Liam, wonderful

    J'hon Doe II , January 1, 2017 at 4:04 pm

    depth of depraved indifference revealed in the below regarding the US hired interrogator of the captured Saddam.

    the segment ought to inform you of critical justice. And Truth.

    https://www.democracynow.org/2016/12/28/part_2_cia_interrogator_reveals_saddam

    Michael Rohde , January 1, 2017 at 4:58 pm

    So we have our own Pravda now. Way to go obama. I voted for him twice and this is how he leaves us? Not the ending I envisaged.

    Skip Scott , January 1, 2017 at 5:21 pm

    I voted for Obama twice as well. I believe in both those cases, he was the lesser of two evils. McCain knows of no problem that sufficient bombing can't fix, and Romney thought the entire American public should become vulture capitalists like himself. Who knows what kind of pressure Obama was under from the deep state. They may well have taken him to the woodshed and told him what he needed to do if he loved living, and loved his wife and daughters.

    Joe Tedesky , January 2, 2017 at 2:34 am

    Michael, Skip, don't beat yourself so up to bad, it wasn't as though our choices of candidates are ever that good. I blame that on a money driven media system, and a public controlled by a constant narravative void of any critical thinking. This past years election was nothing but immature on zingers and never about having an intelligent debate. So, don't be to hard on yourself, you and I never stood a chance with what we had, or rather didn't have to work with. Our candidate never runs nor do they win. Have a great New Years, I mean that.

    F. G. Sanford , January 1, 2017 at 5:10 pm

    "Defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton voiced strong support for the bill: "It's imperative that leaders in both the private sector and the public sector step up to protect our democracy, and innocent lives.""

    "Facilitate the use of a wide range of technologies and techniques by sharing expertise among Federal departments and agencies, seeking expertise from external sources, and implementing best practices."

    " the U.S. government's new "Global Engagement Center" will seek to ensure that the censorship is even more complete with its goal to "counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation.""

    So Hillary supports the bill, but people still think she's a progressive, let alone a Democrat? This should solidify the concept that both parties are beholden to a deeper agenda which has decidedly fascist overtones. When they implement those "best practices", I wonder where book-burning and smashing printing presses will shake out in that "wide range of techniques". I can already imagine where they'll go to get that "external expertise". Probably the same place where they're currently getting "expert training" for our police forces.

    These developments contain hallmarks of an empire in decline, clutching at any figment of its imagination to control the narrative and retain its legitimacy. But on the bright side, I'm curious to know how far $160 million could really go to prop up failing entities like the NYT, WaPo, CNN and MSNBC. Wolf Blitzer, Christianne Amanpour, Jill Dogherty, Rachel Maddow, Jake Tapper, Michael Smerconish, Anderson Cooper, Fareed Zakaria, Ben Wedeman, John King, Gloria Borger and Dana Bash are just a few of the faces that can make me instantly change the channel. I used to think Phyllis Bennis, Amy Goodman and Paul Jay were on the level, but they too frequently pull their punches when the truth REALLY needs to be told. Fox news is just totally hopeless. Most of these people are shameless liars, and I don't think I'm the only person who notices. They have "phony" written all over their faces. In the end, free market economics may go a long way to hamper any benefit a mere $160 million transfusion can pump into the dying corpse of mainstream media. And, if they try to shut down Black Agenda Report, I wonder whose side the ACLU will pick? Lots of Ph.D theses and Supreme Court cases are on the horizon from this one! It's still pretty hard to sell a horse with a wooden leg even with skillful marketing.

    In the meantime though, the U.S. Government's "Goebbels Engagement Center" is definitely a scary thought. Giddayup, Nellybell, here comes the lynch mob!

    Regina Schulte , January 1, 2017 at 5:18 pm

    The enormity of our government's hypocrisy in all of this defies a sane person's ability to comprehend the current stance we are now placing before the rest of the world. The long list of our spying, regime changes, executions, unwarranted secret operations, destruction of national economies, and the myriad of ongoing other secrecies is a measure of our hubris in thinking that the rest of the world is our oyster. Despite all of our own sins, we dare to accuse other leaders of invading our empirical rights!!!

    Josh Stern , January 1, 2017 at 5:34 pm

    It would be very interesting to learn more about some of the main mechanisms through which current day US propaganda is scheduled to lead, with nothing bleeding – or even interesting – at mainstream media outlets. Are those decisions coming from the executive editors or from the media owners? I'm not going to hold my breath for the media to report on itself in that capacity, but perhaps some investigative journalists on those staffs will put their anonymously sourced mouths where their sourced mouths usually go and act as informants to allow independent reporters to get the scoop on how this works. Who at NYT, WaPo, CNN, etc. decided to make no true evidence, probably a false story, missing the big picture, no-harm Russian hacking a main story almost every day, giving support fir bloviating idiots in US Congress to declare that Russia must be punished for the things they have previously declared "every nation does".

    Gary Hare , January 1, 2017 at 5:45 pm

    It is quite possible that MSM is sometimes accurate in its reporting, and objective in its analysis. But it has been shown too often to be purveyors of pure propaganda, ignorant of facts that counter such propaganda and cheerleaders for US/NATO aggression, that it has lost all credibility, and so we must question virtually everything it says regarding world affairs. The actions of lawmakers regarding "fake news", and the Obama, Clinton, DMC "we woz robbed" by Putin storyline, is kindergarden stuff, farcical and petulant, and should be treated as such by objective journalists.
    Will Trump be any better? I believe there is reason to expect he and his administration to be even worse, but I wait in hope that I am wrong. The world's only "superpower" has become the world's leading laughing stock. Are there any grown-ups in US/NATO politics?

    F. G. Sanford , January 1, 2017 at 6:23 pm

    I just gotta say something about that "love fest for Trump" comment. Here's how I see it. Trump says stuff, and it may not be true. But he really believes it. Hillary tells lies, but she knows she's lying. She tells them anyway, and insists they're true. I don't have anything but hope. Deep down, I'm relatively optimistic. Hillary's lies could start WWIII. Trump's blustering probably wont. If there's even a shred of a chance he'll listen to reason, he has the coglioni to make some needed changes. Hillary was the puppet. Trump, admittedly, is a bull in a china shop, but with him, I think we still have a future. And, it could be a very bright one if he plays his cards right. It's that simple.

    Bill Bodden , January 1, 2017 at 6:31 pm

    The War Against Alternative Information

    In a war there are two sides – the aggressors and their targets.

    There are two sides to the targets – those who surrender and collaborate and those who resist to defend their homeland.

    Pick a side.

    W Hajicek , January 1, 2017 at 6:43 pm

    Seriously? Defending Mideast dictatorships because things were orderly?

    I am dismayed at the prospect of more propaganda coming from the government. However, a more pertinent and enlightening critique of this development would be to inform readers of the history of our government's use of propaganda, and how this new funding, etc., impacts what the government is already doing. That is wholly missing from this article. Instead there is an inexplicable defense of authoritarian regimes, in particular going on for paragraph after paragraph about Syria.

    And what was your point? Are you actually just debating recent U.S. focus on regime change, a la Bush? I don't agree with that, but I wouldn't defend Assad or Putin, nor dismiss their use of propaganda.

    Adrian Engler , January 1, 2017 at 7:44 pm

    Who claims that everything was alright in the dictatorships like Iraq and Libya? It is just very likely that there would have been much less violence and suffering if these governments had not been toppled by force. Claiming that there were allegedly good intentions certainly does not justify the suffering and violence that was caused by these interventions.

    Likewise, of course, those who arm and finance jihadist militias in Syria can claim that their goal is improving the human rights situation. But is there any credibility of the claim that human rights will improve when the Syrian government is toppled and Islamist extremist groups like the Al Nusra Front (Al Qaeda), Al Zenki and Ashrar Al Sham take power in the parts of Syria that are not already under the control of Daesh? Or should we believe some fairytales like that, after taking power in Syria, Wahhabi militias would step aside and hand over power to some liberal pro-democratic intellectual who had been in exile? The point is that it is certainly not good enough to point out human rights violations of the Assad government to justify policies that would, if they were successful, probably bring to power forces that have even less respect for human rights.

    Furthermore, if the fact that the government of a country can be called a dictatorship should be a sufficient reason for overthrowing it (whichever forces come to power afterwards), what should be the criteria? After all, dictatorships are not really rare in many parts of the world, especially the Middle East. Why has the US turned on one secular dictatorship after the other, but never attacked theocratic Sunni regimes like Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that have an abysmal human rights record? Obviously, the criteria are not based on whether a government is an autocracy or how much it violates human rights, but something else (probably some geostrategic interests).

    I think the main points of criticism of the idea that the fact that a government is autocratic gives an outside country like the US the right to topple it are:

    1. "Humanitarian" justifications of interventions are worthless when they are likely to lead to more violence and suffering than if the intervention had not been made.

    2. Toppling a dictator in a country without a long democratic tradition is not likely to lead to a functioning democracy afterwards. In Western countries, democracy has also taken a long time to develop, it can hardly be brought about by some bombs. In many cases, toppling a dictator either leads to long-term armed fights between competing groups and/or a new dictatorship sooner or later.

    3. When we look at autocracies that were toppled and others that were not toppled by the US, it is hardly plausible that the criterion was how autocratic the government was, how much it violated human rights or how low the standard of living was. Since the "humanitarian" arguments are not the real criteria for the decision about which autocracy should be attacked (otherwise, it would be hard to explain why, for instance, Saudi Arabia has not been attacked), it would make more sense to discuss the real reasons for the attacks, whatever they are, than the justifications that are brought forward when the decision to topple a country has been taken.

    4. If the idea of the illegality of wars of aggression in international law (except extraordinary circumstances authorized by the UN Security Council) is given up, this could lead to dangerous wars in many regions. Which countries should have the right to attack countries that are determined to be autocracies by the attacker? Would the US tolerate it if India or Russia decided to topple pro-Western autocracies that violate himan rights (e.g. Saudi Arabia)?

    Sam F , January 1, 2017 at 8:49 pm

    Yes, the same US propaganda reasoning applied to the US oligarchy, which is a set of autocrats, would require that the US use subversion and military force to remove the Republicans, Democrats, warmongers, AIPAC, imperialist financiers etc..

    Starting with drone attacks on mass media, party operatives, bank HQ etc. Then some "shock and awe" and an invasion to subdue its military forces, greeted by the people of the US dancing in the streets. Then denial of employment to all who worked for the US regime, followed by founding a true democracy where money does not buy mass media or elections.

    Something tells me that the dark state will not reach that conclusion. So I guess that democracy was never the objective of regime change by the US.

    Blahblahblah , January 1, 2017 at 9:48 pm

    Judging by your name, you have Czech origin. Why are you supporting democracy all over the world from the U.S.? Shouldn' t you be saving the Czech Reublic from bad Zeman? There's no communism there anymore

    Bill Bodden , January 1, 2017 at 10:56 pm

    One of the problems with regime change whether practices by an outside agency such as the United States and Iraq, Libya, etc. or through an internal revolution is the risk of the cure being worse than the disease.

    Oleg , January 1, 2017 at 8:23 pm

    It is funny and indeed troubling that the US is busy copycatting the practices of the recent foe that went down exactly because these practices were grossly inefficient. I of course mean the Cold War 1.0 and the former Soviet Union. I remember listening to Voice of America in my youth in search for truth. I never imagined that only a few years later during my lifetime Americans will be looking for truth in Russian news outlets and the US will create "the Global Engagement Center – to protect the American people from "foreign propaganda and disinformation." In fact, resorting to such practices is a huge sign of weakness and decline. It is a pity really that the US are getting that weak that fast. I am not really pro-American but I still remember things that America used to champion around the world (yes, the Freedom of Speech too!), and we all still need these things as much as ever. Too bad they are under threat in the US themselves now. Hopefully Trump will indeed be able to make America great again and stop all this nonsense.

    Blahblahblah , January 1, 2017 at 9:46 pm

    What is most sad is that many American rally for this "the Global Engagement Center". See Bill Cash here.
    I see it the same way you do, sinc eI was also born in the USSR.

    Joe Tedesky , January 1, 2017 at 10:33 pm

    Oleg read this link I'm providing, and see if you feel as does the Russian who wrote this magnificent article .

    https://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/24/the-russia-they-lost/

    Bill Bodden , January 1, 2017 at 11:05 pm

    Great link, Joe. Thank you for sharing.

    John , January 1, 2017 at 8:36 pm

    these are just semi clever diversions leading the average away from the Prime Agenda ..Lol ..ask Merkel she knows

    Adrian Engler , January 1, 2017 at 8:46 pm

    What I find scary is how much the dominance of the propaganda discourse has increased. Before the Iraq war, there was widespread dissent, and in most of Europe, support for the war was a minority position. But in the case of Libya and, even more Syria, dissent is tolerated less and almost all media strictly follow the official propaganda line. I find this even more striking because, after all, this is a position that should be rather hard to sell to the public. One should think that it should not be so easy to spread the idea that mostly jihadist militias that were (and mostly still are) allied with Al Qaeda are the good guys that should be supported with money and arms. That even such a difficult position could reach such a dominant position in the Western media discourse shows how effective the propaganda is. I am beginning to think that if the line that Sweden is the biggest threat to world peace was spread, people would sign petitions on change.org for finally occupying Sweden, and there would be talking points about the inaction of the US president because Sweden still has not been occupied by US troops although everyone recognizes that it is an enormous threat to humanity. I am probably exaggerating a bit, but if the relevant interest groups are successful in making many people believe that anyone who does not support jihadist allies of Al Qaeda who behead "traitors" and bombing anti-air defences all over the country is heartless towards Syrians, there are probably many other things that seem absurd and extreme now that could be promoted in a way that soon anyone who does not agree with it is depicted as a bad person.

    I find the role of Snopes particularly worrying. Of course, I cannot judge whether everything Eva Bartlett says is true. But her reports are detailed and connected to evidence, while the Snopes texts that dismiss her are written in a sloppy and superficial way. This would not be a problem if Snopes was just one more website where a point of view is expressed (accidentally or not so accidentally one that is very close to the position of the US government). But since it is planned that Snopes should be one of the arbiters with a higher authority that should decide what is true and what is not, this is worrysome. It is not too hard to predict that Snopes would hardly ever flag articles from the Washington Post or the New York Times that are close to the US government as "disputed" even if they are speculative and based on flimsy evidence, but other texts contradicting them will probably regularly be flagged as "disputed". The only question is whether this will be effective or if people will just ignore the "disputed" flags if they are biased in a way that is too obvious (which also means that the flags would be ineffective against real fake news) and, if Facebook starts hiding such "disputed" stories, just move over to other networks.

    Oleg , January 1, 2017 at 9:24 pm

    Regarding Sweden and propaganda: Wag the Dog. 1997 movie. All said then. Sadly, still more true than ever.

    Stefan , January 1, 2017 at 8:54 pm

    Democracy Later is more dangerous than the other big propaganda organs.

    While the latter ones require very little scrutiny by the observant to recognize as the warmongers that they are

    the former (democracy now[sic] ) tries to lure the the careful reader and critic into its well crafted trap of deception – to gather your trust where it matters the least, and couches it's warmongering where it matters the most, most recently in regards to Syria.

    Kent , January 2, 2017 at 11:33 am

    Stefan,

    'Democracy Later' I like that.

    Look at DN's funding structure it's not hard to figure out.

    http://www.newsofinterest.tv/_sam_noitv/politics/media_issues/bias/left_gatekeepers_smaller.jpg

    Eddie , January 2, 2017 at 2:19 pm

    Kent – The link to a supposed 'flow chart' looks suspicious, since there's no links/attributions to sources, and the 'newsofinteterest' website (apparently inactive for ~5 yrs?) didn't appear to be particularly credible in my experience (ie; links to 911 truthers, Laetrile cancer proponents, etc). And to regard Noam Chomsky's political views as somehow significantly influenced by corporate money/government coercion (as the diagram does at the bottom) is laughable - the guy has been a strong, vocal, prolific critic of US imperialism, condemning it since the c1960.

    Decades ago he stopped paying a portion of his taxes as a protest against military spending, and subsequently has had his wages garnished by the government. While I don't necessarily agree with all of Chomsky's prescriptions of what to do (e.g.; his judgement that it was best to vote for HC), his descriptions of what HAS happened have been accurate, nuanced, and documented.

    David F., N.A. , January 1, 2017 at 10:49 pm

    This says it all:

    But the U.S. government's near total control of the message doesn't appear to be enough. Apparently even a few voices of dissent are a few voices too many.

    The illusions of "freedom" hates us for our First Amendment. Isn't this the true premise behind our bought-and-paid-for government's multinational oligarchs' enactment of all these new Patriot Acts (NDAAs and other laws)?

    For over a year and a half prior to the election several liberal websites started mimicking the msm with their Trump bashing. To me, all these bashings were backhanded endorsements for Clinton. I swear, most, if not all, of the liberal topics, talking points and phrases were exactly identical to the msm's. As apparent as it was this election, this showed that the bluedogs in-charge had been influencing the liberals for quite some time. This is probably why the duopoly issue wasn't strongly addressed back when Nader spoiled Gore's chances in 2000 (hold on, hold on, I have a legitimate excuse: a foundation paid me to say that).

    Bill Bodden , January 1, 2017 at 11:12 pm

    Obama did promise hope and change, but it is highly unlikely anyone outside the neocon and proto-fascist cabals hoped for this change setting up a Ministry of Truth. What a legacy!!!

    Elizabeth Hanson , January 2, 2017 at 12:14 am

    What a great essay. Thank you to the writer. So many links to explore. I agree wholeheartedly in the analysis. I wrote a very simple essay for my own website which comes to the same conclusions. I include a list of headlines from main stream media regarding the "Russian hacking" and then the headlines from independent media. It was quite stark. Someone is lying.

    https://turningpointnews.org/exposing-political-corruption/why-we-need-independent-media

    Keep up the great work Consortium news!

    Joe Tedesky , January 2, 2017 at 2:16 am

    I agree Elizabeth we do need Independent Media. I wish our news was more International Independent, and I think that maybe coming. I see people posting comments on this site from International Countries, so it's already happening. I read some foreign sites myself, but I hope that if allowed to continue that this average person may be able to interact with other peoples of the world, and make some sense of all of this. Maybe I'm a dreamer, but a person can dream can't they?

    This 2017 New Years Americans are permitted to blame Vladimir Putin for they're getting obnoxiously drunk while bringing in the New Year with a couple a bottles of Stolichnaya .this maybe void in Vermont, considering.

    This Russian hacking scare is scaring some Americans for real, and that ain't good, because with the hysteria comes the loss of more freedoms. Each episode of terror or security related troubled matters comes America's way, means the end of a Right. Our grandchildren of this new century will assume there always was a Homeland Security, because it's always been there as long as they can remember. The most pathetic part of all of this is that it all began to be set in motion over Hillary's loss. I'll end it here, but your essay was spot on and intelligent on top of that.

    Brian , January 2, 2017 at 9:37 am

    "Who controls the issuance of money controls the government!" Nathan Meyer Rothschild

    June 13, 2016 Which Corporations Control The World?

    A surprisingly small number of corporations control massive global market shares. How many of the brands below do you use?

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44864.htm

    jo6pac , January 2, 2017 at 11:51 am

    Then there's this.

    http://variety.com/2016/film/news/george-clooney-white-helmets-rescuers-syria-1201945608/

    The great noise machine never sleeps.

    Zachary Smith , January 2, 2017 at 1:09 pm

    I just ran into a little essay which suggests to me that The War Against Alternative Information is actually one of many campaigns in a much larger conflict. Regarding the link, the author is somebody I've never heard of, and I hope and pray he doesn't turn out to be a neo-nazi or some similar kind of nut.

    Trump sensing Obama's resort to violent retaliation against Russia, and the likelihood he would turn the gun to 'Putin's accomplice', the President-elect decided to take precautionary measures, he replaced Obama's secret service by his private security guards.

    ... ... ...
    There is little doubt that the murder of the Russian Ambassador will be the beginning of a cycle of violent assassinations. It is certain that Putin and Trump will take the appropriate defensive measures.

    I don't follow Roman Catholic affairs, but last I heard the current Pope hadn't moved into the Vatican. It's my opinion that's the only reason the man is still alive. Still an opinion, but his hyper-caution is something other people ought to imitate.

    http://www ..unz.com/jpetras/portrait-of-an-assassin-obamas-revenge/

    Brian , January 2, 2017 at 1:31 pm

    Jan 1, 2017 2017: TRUTH RISING - Melissa & Aaron Dykes

    Aaron and Melissa Dykes are truth researchers, truth journalists and truth filmmakers. Their excellent website Truthstreammedia com and You Tube channel by the same name are two must visit destination for anyone who wants to be informed about the REAL issues we face. Truthstreammedia is the antithesis to the "fake news" you'll get from CNN and mainstream media outlets.

    https://youtu.be/jFwyxR7oh3I

    Stephen , January 2, 2017 at 2:57 pm

    I believe the war criminals past and present are terrified that the sleeping masses might finally wake up. Therefore, they are attempting to shut down alternative voices, and continuing their propaganda via their corporate hand maidens.

    "There is overwhelming evidence that wars on a number of countries were planned. Yet, this evidence is censored and covered up by many of the so-called "searchers for truth," in the "investigative media." The TV "news" parrots propaganda daily and the "newspapers" do likewise "
    [read more at link below]
    http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/12/the-propaganda-peddlers-war-criminals.html

    [Jan 02, 2017] How George Soros Destroyed The Democratic Party

    Notable quotes:
    "... George Soros saw America in terms of its centers of economic and political power. He didn't care about the vast stretches of small towns and villages, of the more modest cities that he might fly over in his jet but never visit, and the people who lived in them. Like so many globalists who believe that borders shouldn't exist because the luxury hotels and airports they pass through are interchangeable, the parts of America that mattered to him were in the glittering left-wing bubble inhabited by his fellow elitists. ..."
    "... Trump's victory, like Brexit, came because the neoliberals had left the white working class behind. Its vision of the future as glamorous multicultural city states was overturned in a single night. The idea that Soros had committed so much power and wealth to was of a struggle between populist nationalists and responsible internationalists. But, in a great irony, Bush was hardly the nationalist that Soros believed. Instead Soros spent a great deal of time and wealth to unintentionally elect a populist nationalist. ..."
    "... Soros fed a political polarization while assuming, wrongly, that the centers of power mattered, and their outskirts did not. He was proven wrong in both the United States of America and in the United Kingdom. He had made many gambles that paid off. But his biggest gamble took everything with it. ..."
    "... They sold their souls for campaign dollars and look what it got them. lmfao. ..."
    "... I wouldn't give Soros that much credit. Sure, he helped, but face it, mainstream corporate media is now the Ministry of Truth. And both the Democrat and Republican elites have been working overtime in the last 16 years to dismantle the Constitution and Bill of Rights. ..."
    "... The Deplorables at least understand they have been betrayed by BOTH parties. ..."
    "... I'm guessing that even without the billionaire polarizing meddler Soros, the limousine liberal group, made up of the crooked Clintons, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Washerwoman-Schitz, Chuck 'the fuck' Schumer and the Obamas, was more than enough to sink a very divided, primary election-rigged Democrat Party ..."
    "... Neoliberal lobbyists have successfully co-opted the policies & talking points of the center-left over the last two decades, and in so doing, poisoned progressive politics with a deep affinity for Wall Street, financialization, and free trade. Under neoliberalism, equality for all took a back seat to representational diversity within Western popular culture, redistribution was repurposed to include corporate welfare programs & taxpayer funded bail-outs for banks, and tolerance became increasingly subdued by identity politics. ..."
    "... It was the takeover by neoliberalism that heralded the beginning of the end for Social Democracy. Nothing else. The consequences of this neoliberal-sized myopia, stupidity & hubris include historically low levels of trust in public institutions, and a rapidly rising tide of right-wing populism & ethnic nationalism across the West. Neoliberal policy is responsible for the current state of affairs in our societies; ergo, its advocates & pundits are to be held accountable for such events as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. This fully includes legally accountable. ..."
    "... Neoliberals control by divide and conquer tactics. ..."
    "... I make a salient point about the detrimental influence of neoliberal & corporate lobbying on society, and soon after a troll appears to try divert attention away from the class struggle, and channel it right back to identity politics and the scapegoating of ethnic/religious minorities. It brings to mind the following quote, actually: ..."
    "... " Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacificsts for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. " - Hermann Goering ..."
    "... It makes one wonder what else neoliberals and the far-right might have in common beyond the mutual adoration for corporate welfare & racial hierarchy. ..."
    "... Your corporate & neoliberal sponsors are the inheritors & beneficiaries of these " American legacies". And judging by the events of the 2008 financial crisis, they are far from being done with destroying the lives of people they somehow deem inherently "inferior". ..."
    "... And, if you were to give any kind of balance to your comments, you'd refer to "leftists" like Brzezinski, Carter, Rubin, Billary Clinton, Summers and Jay Rockefeller as neoliberals. ..."
    "... yep, soros is finishing the job begun by Scoop Jackson and the DLC. "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican parties" - G. Wallace 1968. He was right then, even more correct in 2014 ..."
    "... Please. He was 14 and a half when the Nazis surrendered in Budapest (where he lived). Soros may be pernicious, but drop this "Nazi collaborator" bullshit. ..."
    "... The Dems a party of "radical leftists"?? Are you kidding me? they are a bunch of corrupt liars at every party level that has even a slight real influence on state or national policies, by and large. The same ist true for the republicans. ..."
    "... Oh, and Soros is no leftist billionaire either. He is a globalist, elitist NWO world government crook who wants to enslave mankind for his own personal enrichment no matter what. ..."
    "... His "open society" and "reflexivity" bullsh!t is just some empty talk and blabbering to fool and deceive people. ..."
    "... His only "principle" and "ideology" is "Soros first". he has more money than he can ever spend in his remaining life span, yet he still cannot grab enough $$. Leftist? Not! ..."
    "... Soros did a great job helping Oblivio and Hillary obliterate the Democratic Party. ..."
    "... And nobody seems to discuss how Putin became Public Enemy Number One in the minds of the Dems after Russia put out a warrant on Soros. Coincidence? ..."
    "... Soros was only part of the problem for the democrats, Mostly the blame falls on the ones that let it go into ruin. So blinded by the money, couldn't see the obvious. ..."
    "... "They have financed both sides of every war since Napoleon. They own your news, the media, your oil and your government. Yet most of you don't even know who they are. ..."
    "... The corrupt avarice of the Clintons and the Chicago Mafia were all that was needed to complete the complete destruction. ..."
    "... I can think of no finer display of corrupt pettiness than how they have acted since the election. And to think they almost ended up running this country. It does appear as if the Fortunes shine upon us. Time will tell. ..."
    "... Kinda like all the "russian hacking" nonsense. The neoliberals bitches and moans about foreign interference in our election, but their entire national strategy relies upon same. ..."
    "... Also funny how the democrat party has allowed itself to become the big money, corporate party. They rely on billionaire money to operate. All that money spend and they still couldn't get killery her crown. I never thought Id say this, but it looks like we all owe old georgie a big thank you for what he did. I doubt the germans would feel the same, but him destroying the neoliberals trying to remake it in his imagine did us a big favor this time around. ..."
    "... Destroying political parties is the easiest thing on the world, as they are completely populated by greedy sociopaths. ..."
    "... The neoliberals needs demons as they don't have an actual platform that is economically feasible. Unfettered immigrants coming in coupled with jobs leaving isn't sustainable. The old saying "we make it up in volume" applies. ..."
    "... The Washington Post is now referred to as Bezos' Blog. Get with the program, man. ..."
    "... If Trump is moderately successful in draining the swamp I think that bodes poorly for the neocon warmongering old guard wing of the party. And that is a good thing if it happens. ..."
    "... The neocons can easily move over to the Democratic Party. Some of them already are. The Democrats would welcome them. ..."
    "... Actually, that is where they came from. Bill Kristol sr., Perle, etc. were democrats until democrats became the anti war party in the 60's of George McGovern, they couldn't abide with that so they moved to the republican party which was historically more isolationist and anti war, because war was bad for business. ..."
    "... Funny how you forgot the military-industrial complex, wall street, healthcare scam etc. That's where most of it goes, but they keep the sheeple blaming the poor. ..."
    Jan 02, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Submitted by Daniel Greenfield via FrontPageMag.com,

    It was the end of the big year with three zeroes. The first X-Men movie had broken box office records. You couldn't set foot in a supermarket without listening to Brittney Spears caterwauling, "Oops, I Did It Again." And Republicans and Democrats had total control of both chambers of legislatures in the same amount of states. That was the way it was back in the distant days of the year 2000.

    In 2016, Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states. That's up from 16 in 2000.

    What happened to the big donkey? Among other things, the Democrats decided to sell their base and their soul to a very bad billionaire and they got a very bad deal for both.

    ... ... ...

    Obama's wins concealed the scale and scope of the disaster. Then the party woke up after Obama to realize that it had lost its old bases in the South and the Rust Belt. the neoliberals had hollowed it out and transformed it into a party of coastal urban elites, angry college crybullies and minority coalitions.

    Republicans control twice as many state legislative chambers as the Democrats. They boast 25 trifectas , controlling both legislative chambers and the governor's mansion. Trifectas had gone from being something that wasn't seen much outside of a few hard red states like Texas to covering much of the South, the Midwest and the West.

    The Democrats have a solid lock on the West Coast and a narrow corridor of the Northeast, and little else. The vast majority of the country's legislatures are in Republican hands. The Democrat Governor's Association has a membership in the teens. In former strongholds like Arkansas, Dems are going extinct. The party has gone from holding national legislative majorities to becoming a marginal movement.

    ... Much of this disaster had been funded with Soros money. Like many a theatrical villain, the old monster had been undone by his own hubris. Had Soros aided the Democrats without trying to control them, he would have gained a seat at the table in a national party. Instead he spent a fortune destroying the very thing he was trying to control.

    George Soros saw America in terms of its centers of economic and political power. He didn't care about the vast stretches of small towns and villages, of the more modest cities that he might fly over in his jet but never visit, and the people who lived in them. Like so many globalists who believe that borders shouldn't exist because the luxury hotels and airports they pass through are interchangeable, the parts of America that mattered to him were in the glittering left-wing bubble inhabited by his fellow elitists.

    Trump's victory, like Brexit, came because the neoliberals had left the white working class behind. Its vision of the future as glamorous multicultural city states was overturned in a single night. The idea that Soros had committed so much power and wealth to was of a struggle between populist nationalists and responsible internationalists. But, in a great irony, Bush was hardly the nationalist that Soros believed. Instead Soros spent a great deal of time and wealth to unintentionally elect a populist nationalist.

    ... ... ...

    Soros fed a political polarization while assuming, wrongly, that the centers of power mattered, and their outskirts did not. He was proven wrong in both the United States of America and in the United Kingdom. He had made many gambles that paid off. But his biggest gamble took everything with it.

    "I don't believe in standing in the way of an avalanche," Soros complained of the Republican wave in 2010.

    But he has been trying to do just that. And failing.

    "There should be consequences for the outrageous statements and proposals that we've regularly heard from candidates Trump and Cruz," Soros threatened this time around. He predicted a Hillary landslide.

    He was wrong.

    ... ... ...

    The_Juggernaut -> Normalcy Bias , Jan 1, 2017 5:56 PM

    They sold their souls for campaign dollars and look what it got them. lmfao.
    AlaricBalth -> Croesus , Jan 1, 2017 6:31 PM
    Where is the outrage concerning Soros' attempted hack of the 2016 election?
    Perimetr -> AlaricBalth , Jan 1, 2017 6:34 PM
    I wouldn't give Soros that much credit. Sure, he helped, but face it, mainstream corporate media is now the Ministry of Truth. And both the Democrat and Republican elites have been working overtime in the last 16 years to dismantle the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

    The Deplorables at least understand they have been betrayed by BOTH parties.

    Paul Kersey -> two hoots , Jan 1, 2017 7:11 PM
    I'm guessing that even without the billionaire polarizing meddler Soros, the limousine liberal group, made up of the crooked Clintons, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Washerwoman-Schitz, Chuck 'the fuck' Schumer and the Obamas, was more than enough to sink a very divided, primary election-rigged Democrat Party
    tazs -> For Ages We Shall Reign , Jan 1, 2017 9:17 PM
    Soros also financed the entire conflict with Russia.

    http://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-truth-about-the-c...

    weburke -> tazs , Jan 1, 2017 9:26 PM
    he is under the control of others

    also, the clinton group is and has been regular murderers.

    cheka -> weburke , Jan 1, 2017 10:04 PM
    a few decades ago the dims were viewed as the party of the working man

    they ditched the working man to court the various hate groups - nyc skype, gay, black, illegal, globalist warmers, etc

    apparently the hate groups don't have the time to vote their dim masters into office

    Eirik Magnus Larssen -> cheka , Jan 2, 2017 4:27 AM
    " they ditched the working man to court the various hate groups - nyc skype, gay, black, illegal, globalist warmers, etc "

    Inclusive politics are not at the root of the crisis which the center-left is now experiencing on both sides of the Atlantic. Neoliberalism is.

    Neoliberal lobbyists have successfully co-opted the policies & talking points of the center-left over the last two decades, and in so doing, poisoned progressive politics with a deep affinity for Wall Street, financialization, and free trade. Under neoliberalism, equality for all took a back seat to representational diversity within Western popular culture, redistribution was repurposed to include corporate welfare programs & taxpayer funded bail-outs for banks, and tolerance became increasingly subdued by identity politics.

    Today, we witness this phenomenon across all major center-left parties & their associated media pundits. A prominent example would be the vocal support that mainstream neoliberal outlets, such as the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and The Economist, are consistently offering to the Social Democratic parties & candidates. These neoliberal platforms take on a public profile of social radicalism on key social issues, while they relentlessly advocate for unfettered free trade and a form of laissez faire capitalism at the same time.

    It was the takeover by neoliberalism that heralded the beginning of the end for Social Democracy. Nothing else. The consequences of this neoliberal-sized myopia, stupidity & hubris include historically low levels of trust in public institutions, and a rapidly rising tide of right-wing populism & ethnic nationalism across the West. Neoliberal policy is responsible for the current state of affairs in our societies; ergo, its advocates & pundits are to be held accountable for such events as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. This fully includes legally accountable.

    Paul Kersey -> Eirik Magnus Larssen , Jan 2, 2017 5:37 AM
    Erik, when haven't England and the US been governed by neoliberals? Neoliberals control by divide and conquer tactics. In the US, elections have always been rural vs city, young vs old, white vs non-white. Even when Obama won, he didn't win the white vote, the rural vote or the old vote. Brexit, too, was about young vs old, rural vs city and white vs non-white.

    In the big national elections, it comes down to which sides get out the vote. In the case of the Presidential election, the Democrats, who couldn't have picked a more entitled, crooked and repulsive candidate, just couldn't get out enough of their own vote out her. In the case of the Brexit election, it was the fear of the non-urban whites being over run by immigrants, that made the difference.

    Eirik Magnus Larssen -> fleur de lis , Jan 2, 2017 8:09 AM
    How much do your corporate sponsors pay for each attempt at disrupting public criticism of neoliberalism?
    Eirik Magnus Larssen -> fleur de lis , Jan 2, 2017 9:22 AM
    I make a salient point about the detrimental influence of neoliberal & corporate lobbying on society, and soon after a troll appears to try divert attention away from the class struggle, and channel it right back to identity politics and the scapegoating of ethnic/religious minorities. It brings to mind the following quote, actually:

    " Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacificsts for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. " - Hermann Goering

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_G%C3%B6ring

    It makes one wonder what else neoliberals and the far-right might have in common beyond the mutual adoration for corporate welfare & racial hierarchy.

    Eirik Magnus Larssen -> fleur de lis , Jan 2, 2017 9:24 AM
    The irony is thick:

    1) https://www2.stetson.edu/library/green/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/prize_...

    2) https://intercontinentalcry.org/colonialism-genocide-and-gender-violence...

    Your corporate & neoliberal sponsors are the inheritors & beneficiaries of these " American legacies". And judging by the events of the 2008 financial crisis, they are far from being done with destroying the lives of people they somehow deem inherently "inferior".

    Perhaps the legacies of class warfare & racial hierarchy should end.

    Paul Kersey -> Eirik Magnus Larssen , Jan 2, 2017 10:10 AM
    EML, would it kill you to be a bit more balanced in your comments? You always end up with a rant about the "far-right" and "identity politics". Do you deny that the far left constantly disparages Jews and working class whites, who these leftists refer to as "white trash" and "trailer trash"?

    And, if you were to give any kind of balance to your comments, you'd refer to "leftists" like Brzezinski, Carter, Rubin, Billary Clinton, Summers and Jay Rockefeller as neoliberals. Try not being such a polarizing one-trick pony, or at least save yourself time by using the term, 'ditto' for your posts, since most of your posts appear to be redundant pleas for negative attention.

    Hermann Goering, please. Now you are resorting to Godwin's Law. How pathetic.

    Eirik Magnus Larssen -> shovelhead , Jan 2, 2017 9:40 AM
    "I would suggest, rather than a take-over by this shadowy "Neo-Liberals", that the facts are that normal people don't want to be associated with..."

    Are these the "normal people" you are referring to?

    https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/15/dakota-access-pipeline-fake-twitte...

    American Gorbachev -> cheka , Jan 2, 2017 8:40 AM
    yep, soros is finishing the job begun by Scoop Jackson and the DLC. "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican parties" - G. Wallace 1968. He was right then, even more correct in 2014

    in 2017 ??? time will tell

    JungleCat -> tazs , Jan 2, 2017 9:54 AM
    "...former Nazi collaborator" ??

    Please. He was 14 and a half when the Nazis surrendered in Budapest (where he lived). Soros may be pernicious, but drop this "Nazi collaborator" bullshit.

    fx -> For Ages We Shall Reign , Jan 2, 2017 4:02 AM
    The Dems a party of "radical leftists"?? Are you kidding me? they are a bunch of corrupt liars at every party level that has even a slight real influence on state or national policies, by and large. The same ist true for the republicans.

    Oh, and Soros is no leftist billionaire either. He is a globalist, elitist NWO world government crook who wants to enslave mankind for his own personal enrichment no matter what.

    His "open society" and "reflexivity" bullsh!t is just some empty talk and blabbering to fool and deceive people.

    He sold out his fellow jews to the Nazis back in the dark times of the 1930s/1940s; he virtually delivered them to the Nazio slaughterhouse and never ever regretted it. He is doing and always will do the same to everybody else.

    His only "principle" and "ideology" is "Soros first". he has more money than he can ever spend in his remaining life span, yet he still cannot grab enough $$. Leftist? Not!

    JRobby -> Paul Kersey , Jan 1, 2017 7:31 PM
    Soros did a great job helping Oblivio and Hillary obliterate the Democratic Party.

    Oblivio - Obliterate - Oblivion

    WestVillageIdiot -> JRobby , Jan 1, 2017 7:38 PM
    And nobody seems to discuss how Putin became Public Enemy Number One in the minds of the Dems after Russia put out a warrant on Soros. Coincidence?
    strannick -> WestVillageIdiot , Jan 1, 2017 7:42 PM
    Putin showed the world that you could aspire towards Christian nationhood, and take yourselves out from under the debt enslaved thumb of Zoinist Rothchild Bankers. For that he must be stopped.
    cheka -> strannick , Jan 1, 2017 10:05 PM
    if Russia would start taking 3rd world 'refugees' they could get back in skype good graces
    buttmint -> cheka , Jan 2, 2017 2:21 AM
    cheka...good point, you forgot the:

    /sarc

    strannick -> Paul Kersey , Jan 1, 2017 7:39 PM
    Dear Democrats;

    Next time, dont sell your soul to a very bad billionaire. Instead, listen to Putins Christmas speech

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-26/vladimir-putin%E2%80%99s-christ...

    OneEyedJack -> Perimetr , Jan 1, 2017 7:01 PM
    Soros was only part of the problem for the democrats, Mostly the blame falls on the ones that let it go into ruin. So blinded by the money, couldn't see the obvious.
    Amun -> Blankone , Jan 1, 2017 8:51 PM
    "They have financed both sides of every war since Napoleon. They own your news, the media, your oil and your government. Yet most of you don't even know who they are."

    http://www.infowars.com/mr-burns-declares-war/

    RiverRoad -> OneEyedJack , Jan 1, 2017 8:44 PM
    The Clinton Machine took them all down, riding over anything and anyone who got in their way.
    Theosebes Goodfellow -> Perimetr , Jan 2, 2017 12:19 AM
    ~"I wouldn't give Soros that much credit."~

    Actually, I find this post to be a very accurate summation of what the 2016 election turned out to be. It is true that it was not Soros alone who created the evil that was done, but he was the money bags behind it.

    The corrupt avarice of the Clintons and the Chicago Mafia were all that was needed to complete the complete destruction. What is disturbing is how incapable those whose guilt is writ in this fiasco are of coming to terms with their very own failures. All you see them do is try to blame others for their iniquities.

    I can think of no finer display of corrupt pettiness than how they have acted since the election. And to think they almost ended up running this country. It does appear as if the Fortunes shine upon us. Time will tell.

    greenskeeper carl -> AlaricBalth , Jan 1, 2017 6:57 PM
    Since it came from Soros, Its "good" influence. Its only bad when such things hurt democrats. Kinda like all the "russian hacking" nonsense. The neoliberals bitches and moans about foreign interference in our election, but their entire national strategy relies upon same.

    They import millions of foreigners who overwhelmingly vote democrat. They wouldn't stand a chance in a national election without a shitload of non americans voting. How exactly that isn't defined as 'foreign interference in our elections' is beyond me.

    Also funny how the democrat party has allowed itself to become the big money, corporate party. They rely on billionaire money to operate. All that money spend and they still couldn't get killery her crown. I never thought Id say this, but it looks like we all owe old georgie a big thank you for what he did. I doubt the germans would feel the same, but him destroying the neoliberals trying to remake it in his imagine did us a big favor this time around.

    New World Chaos -> greenskeeper carl , Jan 1, 2017 8:14 PM
    Also have to thank Soros for Black Lives Matter. When the revolution comes, there will be a bunch of cops on our side, and most of the angry nutbags who kill random cops will be black, which means there will be even more cops on our side.

    Within a few years maybe we will thank Soros for a fascist Europe and the giant enema which will follow. And the Farce will come full circle for this devil who got his start betraying his own people to the Nazis so he could steal their shit.

    Amun -> New World Chaos , Jan 1, 2017 9:01 PM
    "Zionists Sacrificed Jews to the Holocaust

    The word "Holocaust" is a Biblical term for "burnt sacrifice." Why refer to genocide as "a sacrifice"? - See more at: https://www.henrymakow.com/2013/11/Zionists-Sacrificed-Jews-in-Holocaust...

    "Excerpts from Perfidy are printed below. We begin with Adolf Eichmann's testimonial to Kastner's activities, which Hecht quoted from "Eichmann's Confessions" published in the November 28 and December 5, 1960 editions of LIFE magazine.

    In Hungary my basic orders were to ship all the Jews out of Hungary in as short a time as possible. . . . In obedience to Himmler's directive, I now concentrated on negotiations with the Jewish political officials in Budapest . . . among them Dr. Rudolf Kastner, authorized representative of the Zionist Movement. This Dr. Kastner was a young man about my age, an ice-cold lawyer and a fanatical Zionist. He agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation -- and even keep order in the collection camps -- if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine.

    It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price . . . was not too high for me ....We trusted each other perfectly. When he was with me, Kastner smoked cigarets as though he were in a coffeehouse. While we talked he would smoke one aromatic cigaret after another, taking them from a silver case and lighting them with a silver lighter. With his great polish and reserve he would have made an ideal Gestapo officer himself.Dr. Kastner's main concern was to make it possible for a select group of Hungarian Jews to emigrate to Israel. . . .

    As a matter of fact, there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the S.S. and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist leaders . . . . I believe that Kastner would have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal. . . . "You can have the others," he would say, "but let me have this group here." And because Kastner rendered us a great service by helping to keep the deportation camps peaceful, I would let his group escape. After all, I was not concerned with small groups of a thousand or so Jews. . . . That was the "gentleman's agreement" I had with the Jews. (p.261) - See more at: https://www.henrymakow.com/2013/11/Zionists-Sacrificed-Jews-in-Holocaust...

    SoDamnMad -> Croesus , Jan 2, 2017 3:18 AM
    I would love for him to get "snatched" and dropped into the land of hackers. I am sure he would find the justice he deserves.

    I wonder why the Simon Weisenthal Center never went after him.

    Dennisen -> Normalcy Bias , Jan 1, 2017 5:57 PM
    Sadly, everyone has a price. And he has the checkbook.
    Oldwood -> Dennisen , Jan 1, 2017 6:31 PM
    And he ain't done yet. The question is...how desperate will they become?
    SWRichmond -> Oldwood , Jan 1, 2017 8:06 PM
    Everyone, especially politicians. Destroying political parties is the easiest thing on the world, as they are completely populated by greedy sociopaths. As long as they are getting rich they are "winning".
    Moe Hamhead -> NoWayJose , Jan 1, 2017 7:25 PM
    I think Obama deserves a share of the credit. And Hillary, yes, of course Hillary deserves to take a bow as well.

    And...., well Soros certainly was Executive Producer though.

    insanelysane -> dogfish , Jan 1, 2017 6:51 PM
    The Koch brothers stayed out of the fray as they do not like Trump. The neoliberals tried to make the Kochs a demon but no one was buying the bullshit. The neoliberals needs demons as they don't have an actual platform that is economically feasible. Unfettered immigrants coming in coupled with jobs leaving isn't sustainable. The old saying "we make it up in volume" applies.
    dexter_morgan -> VWAndy , Jan 1, 2017 8:05 PM
    Not this year really. They were not behind Trump, supported HRC if I am not mistaken, after Trump won the nomination.

    Thing about the Krotch brothers that is different from Soros is they try to influence thing to benefit themselves financially, not necessarily to destroy the country, where Soros is flat out anti traditional American values and US constitution. The constitution is the only thing that has kept us from being a full blown totalitarian state run by global government so far, so it has to be destroyed in his mind.

    I could be wrong, but don't think the Krotch brothers are out to destroy the constitution, just obscenely enrich themselves bordering on illegally.

    WestVillageIdiot -> uncle_disgusting , Jan 1, 2017 7:40 PM
    The Washington Post is now referred to as Bezos' Blog. Get with the program, man.
    Yog Soggoth -> Midas , Jan 1, 2017 6:49 PM
    Russians put the weeds in your lawn ... at night. Soros has always been a major problem for the entire world, and that is why the news will be very interesting this year, because everyone knows. Happy new year.
    stant , Jan 1, 2017 5:58 PM
    And now the Dems big donors want a audit of the 1.5 bill lost on the election. Looking at the carnage they won't be so generous in the future
    Jacksons Ghost , Jan 1, 2017 6:00 PM
    Hell has a special spot for this vermin, may he go there soon.
    chosen , Jan 1, 2017 6:01 PM
    Goodbye, Democratic Party. See you maybe in 16 years, but I doubt it. My guess is a different party will be formed to challenge the Republicans in 2032, and the Democrats will go the way of the Bull Moose Party, as in extinction.
    dexter_morgan -> chosen , Jan 1, 2017 7:58 PM
    The status of the national part of the Republican party seems a little up in the air to me. If Trump is moderately successful in draining the swamp I think that bodes poorly for the neocon warmongering old guard wing of the party. And that is a good thing if it happens.
    chosen -> dexter_morgan , Jan 1, 2017 9:13 PM
    The neocons can easily move over to the Democratic Party. Some of them already are. The Democrats would welcome them.
    dexter_morgan -> chosen , Jan 1, 2017 11:17 PM
    Actually, that is where they came from. Bill Kristol sr., Perle, etc. were democrats until democrats became the anti war party in the 60's of George McGovern, they couldn't abide with that so they moved to the republican party which was historically more isolationist and anti war, because war was bad for business.

    Then the self perpetuating MIC that Eisenhower warned of became ascendant and then war was even more of a racket than it always was. Their influence came to the fore with Bush Sr.

    Reagan had some in his administration, but he fired many or moved them out of positions of power when it came to his attention they were following their own agenda. And yet, he had enough to convince him of the Iran contra stuff.

    red1chief -> ILIKEMITTENS , Jan 1, 2017 7:02 PM
    Funny how you forgot the military-industrial complex, wall street, healthcare scam etc. That's where most of it goes, but they keep the sheeple blaming the poor.

    [Jan 02, 2017] Angela Merkel, Russia's Next Target by Jochen Bittner

    Looks like panic among German neocons. Merkel might lose, being wounded by refugees fiasco.
    www.nytimes.com

    Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ms. Merkel has been the most consequential voice for punishing Russia. The next year, she welcomed a million refugees into Germany, and pushed the rest of Europe to do the same - thus, in the view of Russian ethno-nationalists, diluting European culture. And she still believes in a united, integrated European Union, a bastion of liberal values and, at least implicitly, a political and economic bulwark against Russia.

    ... ... ...

    Here, we can draw valuable lessons from the Cold War. What Russia does today is very much the digital version of what we Germans, before 1989, termed "Zersetzung." The term is hard to translate, but it's best described as the political equivalent of what happens when you pour acid on organic material: dissolution and disintegration.

    The methods of Zersetzung are to cast doubt on the basic norms of the Western liberal order and its institutions; to distort and thereby discredit the purposes of the European Union, NATO and the free-market economy; to erode the credibility of the free press and free elections. The means of Zersetzung include character assassination and, through the spreading of lies and fake news, the creation of a gray zone of doubt in which facts struggle to survive.

    ... ... ...

    Jochen Bittner is a political editor for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a contributing opinion writer.

    [Jan 02, 2017] If There Really Was Evidence Of Russian Hacking, The NSA Would Have It Zero Hedge

    Jan 01, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Submitted by David Spring via TurningPointNews.org,

    On December 29, 2016, the Hill posted an article discussing a 13 page report by the FBI and DHS claiming that their 13 page report was "evidence" of Russian hacking in US elections.
    http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking

    Wikileaks has repeatedly stated that the source of its leaks was a disgruntled Democratic Party insider.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails-handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html

    However, President Obama issued a press release on December 29 2016 using the DHS-FBI report to justify increasing sanctions against Russia.
    https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/12/29/statement-president-actions-response-russian-malicious-cyber-activity

    I therefore decided to see what the evidence was of Russian involvement in US Elections. The Hill article linked to this 13 page government press release as its proof of Russian hacking.
    https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR_16-20296.pdf

    The government press release written by DHS-FBI did not mention Wikileaks in its report. Nor did the report provide any evidence of Russian hacking in the US elections. Instead, the press release stated that "technical indicators" of Russian hacking were in the "CSV file and XML file attached with the PDF." However, there was no CSV or XML file or link attached with the PDF. I was eventually able to find these two files at this link.
    https://www.us-cert.gov/security-publications/GRIZZLY-STEPPE-Russian-Malicious-Cyber-Activity

    To see the evidence of Russian hacking first hand, I downloaded the CSV file and converted it into a spreadsheet. The CSV file and the XML file both contained the same data. Here is the XML link to this data which can be viewed online in a web browser.
    https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR-16-20296.xml

    Both files provide a list of 895 "indicators" of Russian Hacking. Unfortunately, nearly all of these indicators are simply IP addresses. In other words, it is a list of 895 servers from from more than 40 countries around the world. But the list also includes a few website domain names. (Domain names are simply the name of the website such as Youtube.com). I looked up these website domain names with the the following tool which tells us who owns the domain names and where they are located:
    https://www.whois.net/

    My review of these domain names confirmed that none of these domain names have any relationship to Russian government hackers. Here are the results for four of the domain names provided by the DHS and the FBI as evidence of Russian hacking:

    ritsoperrol.ru is not in use. It is registered to a private person. The named server hosting the domain is nserver: ns0.xtremeweb.de. This is a German web hosting and consulting company whose address and phone number are publicly listed on their website. It is highly unlikely that Russian hackers would use a public German web host to register and host their domain names.

    littlejohnwilhap.ru is not in use and is available to be purchased. It is unlikely that Russian hackers would use a domain name like this to launch a cyber attack on the US.

    wilcarobbe.com is taken and is not in use. It is registered to Arsen Ramanov in Groznenskaya Russia. His address, phone number and email address are all publicly listed. It is highly unlikely that Russian hackers would use a domain name that was publicly listed. Hackers are not idiots.

    one2shoppee.com is taken and is registered with GoDaddy.com. It is not currently in use. But it is highly unlikely that Russian Hackers would register their domain names with GoDaddy – which is a US server. In fact, it is very unlikely that Russian hackers would ever use any US servers. They would only use their own servers.

    How did these four domain names get on a list of Russian hackers? It is possible that some unknown agents took over these domain names and may have used them for some kind of hacking activity. However, the agents could have just as easily been from the US as from Russia. In fact, it is not likely that these domain names were taken over by Russian hackers for the simple reason that Russian hackers are way to smart to be using these silly tactics.

    None of the 885 IP addresses have any confirmed relationship to Russian Government Hackers

    An IP address is simply a numerical designation for a server. The 885 IP addresses listed in the DHS – FBI CSV file were even more interesting. The IP addresses were located on servers from the US and more than 40 nations around the world including more than 30 IP addresses supposedly located in China. Here are a few of the IP addresses

  • 167.114.35.70
  • 185.12.46.178
  • 46.102.152.132
  • 178.20.55.16
  • I looked up several of these IP addresses using the following tool:
    http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip-lookup

    Here are a four examples of IP addresses in the DHS-FBI report:

    167.114.35.70 is a Canadian Corporate server specializing in the promotion of Bitcoin. They are within a few miles of the US border.

    185.12.46.178 is a Swiss corporate server associated with the domain name leavesorus.com. The domain name leavesorus.com is currently available to be purchased. This indicates that this is a fake domain name and likely a fake corporation.

    46.102.152.132 is another Swiss corporate server this one specializing in emails and associated with the domain name maxsultan.xyz which is a fake domain name. This also indicates that this is another fake corporation.

    178.20.55.16 is a proxy server with no known location but has been used as a TOR router exit node. A proxy server is another name for a mirror or server used to bounce information from one server to another in order to hide the true location of the original server. This proxy server is associated with the domain name nos-oignons.net. This domain name was registered on December 31 2012 and is valid until December 31 2017. In other words, whoever got this domain name paid for its use for 5 years. But they did registered the domain name anonymously. The website associated with this server appears to be a group in France promoting the TOR router. They became an association in May 2013 – 5 months after getting the domain name. The group currently has 5 members and it costs one Euro to join this group. Their website was reported 9 days ago as having been infected with the Zues virus. This infection does not leave tracks on server logs. So it is difficult to tell where it came from. Removal of this virus requires a complete rebuild of the server. In short, some agency decided to take out this server and then use it to make a cyber attack on some US government agency and thus have the IP address listed on the DHS-FBI list as one of 895 indicators of Russian hacking.

    Many of the IP addresses yielded the same dead end or otherwise highly suspicious result - meaning that some very large agency is using hundreds of servers in various countries around the world as a front for hacking attacks. I recently researched a series of attacks on my personal websites from hundreds of IP addresses using hundreds of servers that were supposedly located in the Ukraine. I was able to confirm the exact location in the Ukraine that was supposedly being used to launch literally thousands of attacks on my websites. However, it is not credible that anyone in the Ukraine has the millions of dollars needed to be running hundreds of servers in a remote Ukrainian location. Nor is it likely that anyone in rural Ukraine would even have the knowledge to take care of hundreds of servers even if they did have the millions of dollars needed to plow into buying these servers. Nor are they likely to have the knowledge needed to be running very complex cyber attacks. Ukraine is just not a good location for servers. This experience convinced me that attacks were being launched from other locations and were merely being routed through Ukraine in order to mislead people about where the attacks were really coming from.

    Next, the CSV file provided by DHS-FBI listed the physical location of all 885 IP addresses. What is most ironic is that, only two of the 885 IP addresses were from servers in Russia. The most common location of the hacking servers was the United States. Over 30 of the servers were supposedly located in China. But it is known that the NSA has the ability to use satellite mirrors to hide the locations of their servers – making folks believe that the attacks are coming from China (or Ukraine or Mongolia) when in fact they are coming from servers located in the US.

    ... ... ...

    Actually, there were two Russian servers located on lines 259 and 261. Here are the IP addresses.

  • 93.171.203.244
  • 95.105.72.78
  • Here is more information about each of these:

    93.171.203.244 This is a clean broadband server located near Ufa which is a city in Russia with one million people. It is associated with an organization called Miragroup Ltd. The website is rxbrothers.ru. Naturally, this is a fake domain name which is available to be purchased. Miragroup is actually a corporation located in Great Britain.

    95.105.72.78 is another clean broadband server located near Ufa. The organization is JSC Ufanet and the website is ufanet.ru which is a public broadband service started in 1997. Someone apparently is using this broadband service to hack the US government. Could this be the smoking gun that the Russian government is attacking the US? Think about it. If you were a Russian hacker, would you really use a public server located in some Russian town? I don't think so. This is more like evidence that some hacker was using the local public library.

    Imagine someone launching a cyber attack from the Seattle Public library – and then our government declaring that they have evident that the mayor of the City of Seattle was responsible for the attack because "nothing happens in Seattle without the approval of the Mayor!". This is worse than a silly accusation. It is ridiculous. It is irresponsible.

    Real Russian Hackers do not use Windows Servers

    Only three of the servers provided in the DHS/FBI report included detailed information (despite the fact that the IP addresses provided information on all 895 servers and that DHS/FBI certainly have detailed information on all of the servers). All three servers listed in the report were Windows servers. It is highly unlikely that Russian hackers or Chinese hackers would be using Windows servers. Instead, all real hackers use Linux servers because Linux servers are much more secure than Windows servers.
    https://techlog360.com/top-15-favourite-operating-systems-of-hackers/

    If there really was evidence of Russian hacking, the NSA would have it

    Former NSA leader turned whistleblower William Binney recently stated that if the Russians really did hack the Democratic Party servers, the NSA would certainly have real evidence (not the nonsense put out in the DHS-FBI CSV file). Here is his quote from a December 29 2016 article by Glenn Greenwald: "The bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any "hacked" emails from the DNC, HRC or any other servers were routed through the network. This process can sometimes require a closer look into the routing to sort out intermediate clients, but in the end sender and recipient can be traced across the network."
    https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/top-secret-snowden-document-reveals-what-the-nsa-knew-about-previous-russian-hacking/

    Edward Snowden has not only confirmed that the NSA has this ability – but that he himself used an NSA program called XKEYSCORE to monitor such attacks.
    https://theintercept.com/2016/07/26/russian-intelligence-hack-dnc-nsa-know-snowden-says/

    Anyone with any kind of technical background in defending against hacker attacks would understand that what Binney, Snowden and Greenwald are saying is true. The evidence of their truth – most of which was supplied by Snowden from NSA documents – is overwhelming.

    Conclusion

    An important research principle is to follow the money. People around the world need to ask themselves who has the money and technical ability to be running hundreds and perhaps thousands of real servers and real IP addresses from fake corporations using fake websites in fake locations in more than 40 nations around the world?

    What agency has already been proven to be running mass surveillance on billions of people in more than 40 nations all around the world? Whose military cyber budget is more than 10 times larger than the cyber warfare budget of the rest of the world combined? There is certainly an elephant in the room – but it is not a Russian elephant.

    At a televised press conference on April 2016, former NSA agent, Edward Snowden asked the Russian leader Vladimir Putin if the Russian government engaged in mass surveillance of millions of people in a manner similar to the NSA. Putin replied that Russian law prohibited the Russian government from engaging in mass surveillance. Putin then pointed out that the Russian military budget was less than 10% of the US military budget. So even if they wanted to engage in mass surveillance, they simply did not have the money.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/apr/17/snowden-putin-russia-surveillance-phone-in-video

    People also need to ask themselves why the FBI DHS chose to place their evidence in a CSV file and XML file rather than a normal document or spreadsheet. If this were real evidence, it would have been placed directly in the PDF report for everyone to read – not hidden away in a file the general public has little ability to read.

    Finally, for the FBI or the DHS to claim that the XML-CSV file contains evidence or even indicators of Russian hacking is simply a false statement. It is a perfect example of fake news. Any news agency promoting this claim without doing even the most basic of research that would easily confirm it is false, should be listed as a fake news agency.

    The real question that we should all be asking is why the DHS and FBI would destroy their reputation by posting such a fake report?

    Several years ago, our CIA claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. We now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction – meaning that we went to war and spent over a trillion dollars on a fake report. Is this new fake report a pretext for launching a cyber war against Russia? Is it intended to justify increasing US military spending?

    It is hard to say what the real purpose of this fake DHS-FBI report is. But the fact that this silly list of IP addresses was the best evidence they could provide should be a strong indication that there really is no evidence of Russian hacking. Instead, it is more likely that Wikileaks is telling the truth in stating that they got the emails from a disgruntled Democratic Party insider. J S Bach bamawatson , Jan 1, 2017 8:47 PM

    The DHS and FBI have no reputation to destroy. They are part of the cancerous system and thus infamously corrupt. Look at the way they handled the Hillary emails. Total proof of treason and they chose to ignore it. Do we expect any more honesty or competency from such a den of snakes?
    tazs Draybin Deffercon III , Jan 1, 2017 9:12 PM
    Russian Hacking is a politically-correct way of saying Trump stole the election.

    https://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/views-of-news/#presidenttrump

    TBT or not TBT bamawatson , Jan 1, 2017 8:44 PM
    John Podesta fell for a phishing attack. So they got all of his emails. Which were embarrassing. And Huma stupidly used Carlos Danger's perving PC for government business. Shit like that. Oh, and SecState email was kept on an unsecure server in some guy's bathroom and places like that. And could not be FOIAed. Or secured. And got copied around to non-cleared persons pretty heavily and carelessly.
    Crash Overide TBT or not TBT , Jan 1, 2017 9:03 PM
    This shit's getting ridiculously ridiculous.
    TBT or not TBT Crash Overide , Jan 1, 2017 9:24 PM
    And who fucking cares whether the hacker who hit the jackpot happened to be Russian or to know Russians or to have even seen Dr Zhivago or admired Baryshnykov's dancing crotch meat back in the day?

    Everyone with an email account has received phishing emails. This is not sophisticated cloak and dagger or supercomputers or signal intercepts.

    Its a typical old mean white guy Dem grandee who let ALL his email fly into the wind. His real thoughts and feelings and plans and reactions thereto by other old mean lefties. Which were embarrassiing.

    DuneCreature Crash Overide , Jan 1, 2017 10:08 PM
    From Planet Ridiculo

    Barry started the hacking wars:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of...

    The NSA may have hacked the DNC with a bot released and intended for someone else. ...... That can happen very easily. ..... Just ask Barry and The Israelites

    Live Hard, STUXNET Is Still In The Wild Doing Mischief To This Day, Die Free

    ~ DC v4.0

    Dr. Bonzo , Jan 1, 2017 8:32 PM
    Great write-up. While I never had any doubt the DNC-hacks were 100% an inside job, simple deductive reasoning leads to very few other conclusions, it's nice to see a thorough parsing of the gubmint's smoke and mirrors job.
    uhland62 Dr. Bonzo , Jan 1, 2017 8:44 PM
    It's all about incompetence.

    Iraq - fail. Libya - fail. Syria - fail. Constructing war against Russia using this tool - fail. I like the glass ceiling, for another little while.

    dwboston , Jan 1, 2017 8:34 PM
    "If this were real evidence, it would have been placed directly in the PDF report for everyone to read – not hidden away in a file the general public has little ability to read."

    Anyone with Excel (which is basically anyone with a Windows PC) can open a CSV file. Of course the "hacking" claims are BS, but there's no need for hyperbole when the facts are so obvious.

    SantaClaws , Jan 1, 2017 8:36 PM
    " The real question that we should all be asking is why the DHS and FBI would destroy their reputation by posting such a fake report?"

    Why? Because the most important thing to Obama is to spread his lies and other propaganda by whatever means necessary. No one should take any DHS or FBI report seriously after 8 years of Obama (and James Comey, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, and dozens of other agency chiefs).

    uhland62 , Jan 1, 2017 8:41 PM
    My respect for this work - totally impressive, even though It's mostly beyond me. If the NSA has every keystroke that anyone makes, then they'd have everything, of course.

    The Dems and all the McCain's men are just rattled that their war against Russia could be slipping away. Their next tool will be to turn Trump or impeach him.

    Don't enlist or you could find yourself in a war against Russia, dead, or a damaged veteran. Don't let them use you.

    Kirk2NCC1701 , Jan 1, 2017 8:46 PM
    As I wrote on Dec. 12, 2016: "Riddle me this, CIA..

    1. Is it possible to hack into a computer, and not leave a trail or unique fingerprint that leads back to You? Especially if the hack is physically initiated from outside the location (country, company or building) from where the attack is shown to originate? E.g. initiate hack from Macao or US. Is it possible? YES or NO?

    2. Do you think that the Russian government, any other major Power or "Mr. Robot" hacker have the ability to do #1? YES or NO?

    If the answers are Yes to both these critical questions, then you got Nothing, Zip, Zilch, Zero, Nada, Babkuss on "the Russians". At best, all you have is Conjecture or a Staged Trail.

    Next "Fake Issue"?"

    Reference: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-12/fbi-disputes-cias-fuzzy-and-amb...

    Kirk2NCC1701 LetThemEatRand Dec 12, 2016 3:51 PM

    p.s. As I wrote some days later, if it were me, I'd take a fresh "Burner Laptop" and initiate a hack attack from some Asian country, or even from within the US. The CIA, DNC and Obama are so full of shit, that it reeks to the moon.

    TBT or not TBT Kirk2NCC1701 , Jan 1, 2017 9:28 PM
    The Podesta emails were obtained from a simple phishing attack that the evil old fuck fell for. This is the "hacking" that made any difference.
    deja , Jan 1, 2017 8:50 PM
    "However, it is not credible that anyone in the Ukraine has the millions of dollars needed to be running hundreds of servers in a remote Ukrainian location."

    I guess the author has never heard of botnets...

    any_mouse , Jan 1, 2017 8:59 PM
    Smart hackers use bots to hide behind.

    That is the point of the bot networks.

    I still fail to see the logic where by the release of actual emails indicating unethical, criminal actions of a group (DNC) results in accusations that "Russians hacked the election".

    "Russian hackers" is the new "because 9/11" mantra.

    A cyber-TSA will be soon groping you as you surf the web.

    You will need a gov approved identification device to connect.

    Randomly your connection will be paused while a cyber-LEO avatar pops up and asks for your id and some questions about what you are doing.

    Because ... you know why.

    captain-nemo , Jan 1, 2017 9:30 PM

    Finally a proper analyzes of the report. Thanks a lot. I am still wondering why nobody has done the same. Having read this article it's obvious they got nothing.

    I bet that Obama and the deep state are gambling on that the fakestream media will do their job and misinform the sheeple and that decades of old mistrust and fake propaganda against the Russians will do the rest.

    It does not matter if the evidence are fake, when most people already has bought it, and the fakestream media keeps backing it up. Hell. Even republicans have swallowed the bate.

    So why did they do it?. Perhaps Obama, the deep state and the FBI and all those other agencies already knows that their days are numbered. They might as well producing just another fake report before it's over.

    If Trump wants to stop and reverse this, it's not enough to clean out the FBI and all those other agencies, he has to do something with the fakestream media too, because what they are doing is strait out criminal.

    Yen Cross , Jan 1, 2017 9:38 PM
    Lot's of Chinese IP addresses on those lists.

    WE gotta find the ISP's <sarc>

    If the NSA is so good, they should have MAC numbers on those machines, and trace the serial numbers.

    monad Yen Cross , Jan 1, 2017 10:19 PM
    What you do son, is block the Chinese IP blocks at your firewall. Blook 'em all. Some hackers will complain and give you their addresses when they do. Then you show up at their house with 6 football players and they never, ever do that again.

    To anybody. Ever.

    DuneCreature , Jan 1, 2017 9:39 PM
    The NSA has the to and from metadata for sure and copies of the data content going in both directions as a bonus. This is a false flag dog and pony show to use as an excuse to expel Russian diplomats and maybe start WW III if 'somebody somewhere' deems it necessary.

    Consider it magic 'yellow cake' or a Polish radio station. ... It won't go away because you have iron clad evidence that it was never there to begin with.

    This is the New World Odor where things are what you are told they are and if it kills a few million people then just get over it and be Dog Blamed glad it didn't eat your homework and kill you too.

    Live Hard, It Is Hard To Argue With Rock Solid Reasoning Like That, Die Free

    ~ DC v4.0

    TruthBeforeAll , Jan 1, 2017 9:43 PM
    Speaking of the NSA, somebody has a sense of humor in my neighborhood. I've never noticed it before tonight.

    http://i.imgur.com/2IgHRsX.png

    I tried logging in with "Password" but it didn't work. Go figure.

    Bay Area Guy , Jan 1, 2017 9:52 PM
    If the Russian hackers are so damn good at what they do, it seems ludicrous that they would leave great big arrows pointing towards themselves. Why, it's almost like a guy that drives a truck into a crowd leaving his identity card in the cab of the truck. Or it's like a bunch of guys that hijacked planes and flew them into buildings using their real names and their indestructible passpoorts to board the planes. ZH had an article yesterday quoting that hard-hitting political publication Rolling Stone magazine saying that this entire Russian hacking report has all the earmarks of a repeat of Bush the Lesser's WMD in Iraq report. I gotta agree with Rolling Stone. If a hacker is really good, and we keep getting force-fed how good the Russians are, they AIN'T going to leave their calling card in the server(s) they've hacked.
    Dilluminati , Jan 1, 2017 10:14 PM
    yep!

    Similar to spy satellites there is a level of clarity and transparency that many advanced nations have.

    That is why Hillary is such a ridiculous cunt for using a private server to perform her clinton foundation and day to day operations upon and why the US government "explicitly prohibits it."

    The leaks originated and were targeted at that ridiculous cunt Hillary and she made us all less safe by being corrupt, stupid, and unethical in her office of trust.

    NSA also has all.. ALLLL the emails that that criminal cunt Hillary sent.

    I really do think we need a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of all of this.

    a C&C command and control server could be anywhere, often these servers are used by cyber squating

    http://www.thewindowsclub.com/cybersquatting-and-typosquatting

    The domain at that point in time might be different than it is now.

    That is why MD5 and chain of custody is required to illsutrate what the conditions were.

    petroglyph , Jan 1, 2017 10:12 PM
    Somewhere in this monster bureaucracy imitating a government "for the people" is somebody[s] collecting a fat paycheck and bennies to make damn sure our election didn't get hacked by Russians. Could somebody please fire the fucker if we were actually hacked.

    I am suffering from bullshit burnout. I just want the election to be over for awhile, my god what an inept bunch of hacks running the country, [into the ground].

    Phillyguy , Jan 1, 2017 10:29 PM
    The entire Russian "hacking" saga was nonsense from day 1 and indicative of severe structural problems confronting US capitalism and raging battles going on between competing factions within the financial elite controlling US foreign policy. These divisions have become more pronounced following: 1) Trump's upset victory in November and 2) the military debacle for the US/NATO in Syria. Trumps victory notwithstanding, expect these divisions to become increasingly ferocious as the economic vice continues tightening. Very dangerous times ahead.
    Dutch1 , Jan 1, 2017 11:01 PM
    Any hacker good enough to work for a big government agency would be good enough to not get caught. All big governments spy and hack eachother. They may know they've been hacked and even speculate who may have done it, but there is no so called definitive "evidence" at that level.Evidence of a hack probably, evidence of who.... no fucking way. Here the government goes again trying to create a boogeyman to promote some rich people's agenda. Pretty sure the NSA spys and hacks eeeevverryyybody.... hypocrites.

    [Jan 02, 2017] Trump Hints At Russian Hacking Revelations In Coming Days I Know Things Other People Dont

    www.zerohedge.com
    Asked what that information included, the Republican President-elect said, " You will find out on Tuesday or Wednesday ." He did not elaborate.

    Trump also reiterated his belief that others might be responsible for the cyberattacks: "I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don't know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation."

    "I think it's unfair if we don't know. It could be somebody else," Reuters cited Trump as telling the media.

    He also added that computers are a risky form of communication. "It's very important, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old fashioned way because I'll tell you what, no computer is safe," Mr. Trump added. "I don't care what they say, no computer is safe. I have a boy who's 10 years old, he can do anything with a computer. You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have it sent by courier."

    HoserF16 , Jan 1, 2017 9:51 AM
    Yeah like "The Russians Didn't Do It!"
    chunga HoserF16 , Jan 1, 2017 9:54 AM
    His name was Seth Rich.
    CuttingEdge chunga , Jan 1, 2017 10:02 AM
    Methinks Langley is in for a bit of Trump bulldozing if he has an inkling they are trying to fuck him over.
    Looney CuttingEdge , Jan 1, 2017 10:04 AM

    0bama's predecessors, at least, used to put some effort into False Flags and Spook-Ops.

    0bama comes up with a lie, without any evidence , and just keeps repeating it like a broken Jukebox.

    What a lazy-ass squirrel-bitch!

    Looney

    [Jan 01, 2017] Washington Post Caught Spreading More Fake News About Russian Hackers Zero Hedge

    Jan 01, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
    Readers of the Washington Post received some alarming news yesterday when the paper published a story alleging that those pesky "Russian hackers" were up to their no good tricks again and had managed to "penetrate the U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont." The full headline read as follows:

    The opening paragraph of WaPo's story directly linked the "hack" of the Vermont utility to the same "Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe" that the Obama administration has blamed for the DNC and John Podesta email hacks . Vermont's Governor, Peter Shumlin, told WaPo that " Americans should be both alarmed and outraged" by these actions perpetrated by " one of the world's leading thugs, Vladimir Putin," before seemingly calling for further retaliatory actions from the Obama administration.

    Vermonters and all Americans should be both alarmed and outraged that one of the world's leading thugs, Vladimir Putin, has been attempting to hack our electric grid, which we rely upon to support our quality-of-life, economy, health, and safety. This episode should highlight the urgent need for our federal government to vigorously pursue and put an end to this sort of Russian meddling.

    Moreover, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy took the rhetoric to a whole new level by asserting a diabolical Russian plot to shut down the U.S. electrical grid in the middle of winter ...a move that would most certainly kill off half the state's population in an instant.

    Of course, it didn't take long for the New York Times and ABC to latch on to the story since it fits their "2016 election hacking" narrative so perfectly.

    Our Russian "friend" Putin attacked the U.S. power grid. https://t.co/iAneRgbuhF

    - Brent Staples (@BrentNYT) December 31, 2016

    NEW: "One of the world's leading thugs, [Putin] has been attempting to hack our electric grid," says VT Gov. Shumlin https://t.co/YgdtT4JrlX pic.twitter.com/AU0ZQjT3aO

    - ABC News (@ABC) December 31, 2016

    Alas, there was just one minor problem, namely that the entire article was completely fabricated. Apparently the esteemed "journalists" of the Washington Post didn't even bother to contact the Burlington Electric Department to confirm their bogus story...and why should they...it fit the "Russian hacking" narrative so perfectly therefore it must be true, right?

    Well, apparently not. The quick spread of WaPo's "fake news" story forced the Burlington Electric Department to issue a clarifying statement assuring worried residents that, indeed, their electricity grid had not been hacked, but rather a single "laptop not connected" to the grid had been found to have a malware virus.

    Which forced the embarrassed Washington Post to quickly tone down their provocative headline...

    ...and supplement their original article with the following "Editor's Note" admitting the entire premise of their original story was nothing more than "fake news."

    Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid.

    Which drew quick reactions from twitter...

    1) Not an infiltration of the power grid.
    2) "Russian" malware can be purchased online by anyone.
    3) See 1 & 2. https://t.co/bVIG8zQBsk

    - Dell Cameron (@dellcam) December 31, 2016

    Pretty amazing how badly the Post appears to have mangled this one. You didn't call the Vermont utility regulator before publishing?

    - Eric Geller (@ericgeller) December 31, 2016

    ...and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept , who blasted WaPo for their " irresponsible and sensationalist tabloid behavior."

    THIS MATTERS not only because one of the nation's major newspaper once again published a wildly misleading, fear-mongering story about Russia. It matters even more because it reflects the deeply irrational and ever-spiraling fever that is being cultivated in U.S. political discourse and culture about the threat posed by Moscow.

    The Post has many excellent reporters and smart editors. They have produced many great stories this year. But this kind of blatantly irresponsible and sensationalist tabloid behavior – which tracks what they did when promoting that grotesque PropOrNot blacklist of U.S. news outlets accused of being Kremlin tools – is a by-product of the Anything Goes mentality that now shapes mainstream discussion of Russia, Putin and the Grave Threat to All Things Decent in America that they pose.

    Ironically, a few weeks ago we noted that The Washington Post was all too happy to promote an anonymous website that described Zerohedge as "'dark gray' propaganda, systematically deceiving its civilian audiences for foreign political gain" (see " Washington Post Names Drudge, Zero Hedge, & Ron Paul As Anti-Clinton 'Sophisticated Russian Propaganda Tools' "), all while presenting exactly zero evidence to support their preposterous claim. Perhaps it's time for WaPo to dedicate a bit more of its time to self-reflection.

    dlweld , Dec 31, 2016 9:32 PM
    If WAPO is a business they're going to be having major problems - the CEO should be on the case.

    Reality:

    an older, out of date, commercially available virus was discovered on an employee's laptop. A single laptop, not connected to anything. Similar situation to many older computers around the world. A total non-event.

    Headline:

    Russian Hackers penetrated US electricity grid! Not an iota of reality here, but which then led to folks who still trust the WAPO, to all get in a tizzy and propose that the US blast the evil Russian ogres! What we used to call highly irresponsible reporting.

    So it was all a self-generated fantasy - why should we trust the WAPO on anything? If credibility is their capital, they're burning through it at a great rate.

    tazs SWRichmond , Dec 31, 2016 11:24 PM
    "Russian Hackers" is a more palatable way of saying TRUMP STOLE the election.

    https://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/views-of-news/#presidenttrump

    J S Bach peddling-fiction , Dec 31, 2016 8:35 PM
    The Washington Post IS the new National Inquirer. The difference is... the original NI used to have obviously laughable headlines. There is absolutely NOTHING funny about the lies spewed from the WaPo sewer pipe. Their absurd headlines are a brazen attempt to lure the <80 IQ readership into senseless rage over make-believe effronteries of a potential Russian adversary. It is criminal and all of those responsible for the evil propaganda should be tried and executed. Their time is over... no more crying "fire" in our theaters... no more screaming as they stab US in the back. They must be overtly called out without fear of ostracism.
    Mr Pink peddling-fiction , Dec 31, 2016 9:11 PM
    That cuck Bezos got his orders at the Bilderberg meeting years ago.

    Time to put this blimp warehouse, drone army fuckwad out of business

    #BOYCOTTAMAZON

    css1971 , Dec 31, 2016 8:27 PM
    It occurs to me that by creating the "Fake News" meme, they've just given us a stick to beat them with.

    Recommend we do exactly that. Hard and repeatedly, to the point that the first thing anyone thinks of when the words Washington Post, and New York Times are mentioned is "Fake News".

    nmewn css1971 , Dec 31, 2016 8:31 PM
    Repeatedly and with gusto ;-)
    auricle nmewn , Dec 31, 2016 8:36 PM
    All of this narrative building, when does the false flag hit?
    Socratic Dog auricle , Dec 31, 2016 9:16 PM
    It just did, in Instanbul. CIA/Mossad has gone to war. Trying to drive wedge beween new Turkey/Russia relationship, new since the <<failed>> CIA/Mossad coup attempt.

    Don't think I'll be partying anywhere public tonight. One is way overdue in the US.

    I was reading Freddie's link, Dave McGowan's work on the Laurel Canyon music and murder scene, last night. It really got me thinking....has the CIA really been a Mossad operation since the 60's? Who benefitted from the 60's flowerchild bullshit? I'd say, jews. Israel. That shit really took traditional western values off the rails.

    Akzed Socratic Dog , Dec 31, 2016 9:31 PM
    Dave McGowan (RIP) pretty much nails it in Weird Scenes from the Canyon.
    DeadFred auricle , Dec 31, 2016 11:20 PM
    I have dibs on the 6th... just because.
    grunk nmewn , Dec 31, 2016 8:42 PM
    'til they bleed.
    Nobodys Home grunk , Dec 31, 2016 9:13 PM
    Hard and repeatedly with gusto til they bleed laughing maniacally! MWaHahaHAhahhahhhh!!!!
    Akzed nmewn , Dec 31, 2016 9:28 PM
    ˇCon mucho gusto!
    Stu Elsample , Dec 31, 2016 8:26 PM
    What difference does it make now?? DNC 'journalism' at its finest...no shame, no sense of guilt.
    balz , Dec 31, 2016 8:25 PM
    Are people still buying the Washington Post? I mean: why would you pay for an old lying dinosaur?
    refill6times balz , Dec 31, 2016 11:15 PM
    Regardless of the paper, I remember being a "paperboy" in the early 70's

    I delivered the Quincy Patriot Ledger, and proudly. There were many malcontents on my route, but I gave them top service regardless. The paper had to be folded only trice, never quad, and had to be laid with the banner up. Quad folding was easier, and banner up meant placing by hand, I never understand the idea of throwing a newspaper., like, how do get it to show the customer the name/title?

    Every customer had a passion, never this, always that, I remembered it all and still do.

    The older shut in's wold love to catch me, talk my head off, I swear they doubled my route time, but to this day I recall it and it taught me empathy.

    Another year passes, and yes balz, why would anyone pay for an old dino.

    nmewn , Dec 31, 2016 8:30 PM
    ABC News ? @ABC

    NEW: "One of the world's leading thugs, [Putin] has been attempting to hack our electric grid," says VT Gov. Shumlin http:// abcn.ws/2ihEeZu

    12:01 AM - 31 Dec 2016

    ...sooo, ummm...some "official" who finally wished to NOT remain anonymous, managed to throw himself under the bus along with a fake nuuuz organization...lol.

    Oh, well done ;-)

    Holy hand grena... nmewn , Dec 31, 2016 8:34 PM
    Shumlin's father, George J. Shumlin, a third-generation American, was Jewish and descended from Russian immigrants

    same shit, different day

    Reaper nmewn , Dec 31, 2016 8:53 PM
    Schumlin is a lame duck being replaced by a Republican. Calling Putin a thug signals his toughness.
    refill6times Reaper , Dec 31, 2016 10:52 PM
    It will be a tough job being Gov of that state.

    Half the youth are strung out on heroin, as are more than half of the adults, there are no industry but tourisim, and ski resorts, The infrasructure gets destroyed every three years by storms that create what is called "freshetts", little streams that go wild with all the water and wipe out anything in its way. I've seen that up close, no where to hide. when the mountain gives up it's water, watch out.

    Its a beutiful place. The west has its skyline far away, you survay it from a distance. Vermont makes you hold it close, you can drive up a canyon with towering trees inches beside you, a cliff wall pouring water just feet from a major roadway, and if you find a vista, it just shows row upon row of more hills.

    But what do you do with it?

    The new Governor has his work cut out for him.

    Bay of Pigs , Dec 31, 2016 8:31 PM
    It's hard to believe how bad the WaPo, NYT, CNN, MSNBC, and the BlowHorn [CNBC] have all become. They have all hit new all time lows 2016.
    Holy hand grena... , Dec 31, 2016 8:32 PM
    Bezos should have just bought the National Enquirer (oh wait, did I get the 2 mixed up)?
    Pigeon Holy hand grenade of Antioch , Dec 31, 2016 8:51 PM
    The Enquirer is the honest publication. That should help you.
    peddling-fiction Pigeon , Dec 31, 2016 9:27 PM
    Imagine waking from a 30 year coma and then this crap?
    refill6times Holy hand grenade of Antioch , Dec 31, 2016 10:10 PM
    Interesting. You know, if the Enquirer could score a few authentic true news storys, I might just be liken to buy a copy, you know, for the articles and such.

    But the Rothchild would move in and fix it back for the fake shit. Fuckers.

    Cherubim , Dec 31, 2016 8:35 PM
    We truly live in an era that we had visited once before. There is a boogeyman Russian spy under every bed. Familiar?

    Google "McCarthyism" if you don't know what it means. The Democratic establishment and their media along with a good number of misguided Republicans in Congress are on a witch hunt.

    Some day in the future they will look back at this time in history and wonder at the anti-Russian hysteria.

    Intelligence_In... Cherubim , Dec 31, 2016 8:40 PM
    misguided republicans? Missy Grahm and john mcsame?
    Akzed Cherubim , Dec 31, 2016 9:32 PM
    Yeah but McCarthy was right.
    refill6times Cherubim , Dec 31, 2016 10:00 PM
    The hysteria began in Sept 1945.
    flaminratzazz , Dec 31, 2016 8:37 PM
    now i am wondering.. is this shit going to keep up after Trump is in office, or is he going to tell them to stifle?
    refill6times flaminratzazz , Dec 31, 2016 9:57 PM
    Great comment.

    but is it he, or who?

    If it continues, then the NWO is pissed and has lost control.

    If it stops, or lessons, then we will know who is in control.

    The FED/Rothchilds must end

    grunk , Dec 31, 2016 8:37 PM
    Somebody was surfing porn on Burlington Electric Department's laptop.
    Zarbo , Dec 31, 2016 8:41 PM
    I want to know the affiliation of the person owning (using) the utility's laptop. That would be very interesting -- how did that malware get on the laptop with such effective timing?
    dogsandhoney2 , Dec 31, 2016 9:05 PM
    bezos = bilderberg = western capitalism on the verge of collapse. economists and bankers are not the most creative folks. but they can be vile and abusive.
    New_Meat , Dec 31, 2016 10:15 PM
    Y'know, Bezos has been taking a (well deserved) beating for the WaPo's positions and "authentic" news, etc. But, puleeze, let us not forget dear old Marty Barron. Last seen driving the Boston Globe on a trajectory that cost the NY Times 95% of their "investment". Marty is the "proximate cause" of this crap and is skating under the radar, cuz Bezos doesn't have a clue as to fucking up the paper that badly. Marty, on the other hand, has experience in spades.

    Happy New Year,

    - Ned

    nevertheless , Dec 31, 2016 11:42 PM
    My only point of contention is calling the Washington Post "liberal", since when was pushing for war liberal, or Wall Street. FYI. Clinton and Obama are not and were not liberals, they are globalists, Zionists.

    It shocks me at the generalization placed in organisations and individuals who could not be further from the population.

    Historically liberals were progressives, but the Zionist media does a little trick: They call people like Obama and Clinton "left or liberal", thus everything they then do is considered liberal or of the left. Like open borders, war on Syria/Libya, Russia, and supporting wall street.

    We all need to be smarter than the WaPo, and not put everything into neat little boxes. These are globalists!

    Wild E Coyote , Jan 1, 2017 12:24 AM
    The MSM continue to this methods of instigating panic, hate, war. Nothing is done to stop them.

    Are they completely free to continue their acts of terrorism?

    I hope Trump remembers the MSM and do something.

    [Jan 01, 2017] Russias response to Obama is frankly the most damaging and embarrassing answer we could receive

    Notable quotes:
    "... The BSC didn't just recruit journalists or influence newspapers in it's operation to tilt public opinion towards the Allied cause. They engaged in misinformation/disinformation campaigns against people they perceived as their enemies; anti-New Dealers, isolationists, and right-wing Republicans. ..."
    "... They had sympathetic journalists plant false new stories in their papers that attempted to incite legal action, death threats, and in at least one instance an eviction notice from the target's home through intimidation of the landlord. ..."
    Jan 01, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Andrew Watts , December 31, 2016 at 2:42 pm

    RE: Russia's response to Obama 'is frankly the most damaging and embarrassing answer we could receive' Business Insider

    I don't think Putin and Lavrov are playing good cop/bad cop. As per the rules of diplomacy Lavrov expects to answer every tit with a retaliatory tat. Putin is different. His professional experience is formerly of counter-intelligence. Which means he probably realizes what's happening and Russia isn't the actual target in this propaganda war.

    Consider the following

    RE: Something About This Russia Story Stinks Rolling Stone. Matt Taibbi

    Taibbi and his friends in the media are right. They have every reason to be worried. After all they're the primary target in this propaganda war. It took me awhile to figure out what was happening even though something seemed familiar after the Washington Post story about fake news and the slandering of Naked Capitalism. I finally figured out why and the reason the CIA was taking the lead in promoting the "Russia election hacks!" story. But then I remembered the stories about the British Security Coordination (BSC)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Security_Coordination

    The BSC didn't just recruit journalists or influence newspapers in it's operation to tilt public opinion towards the Allied cause. They engaged in misinformation/disinformation campaigns against people they perceived as their enemies; anti-New Dealers, isolationists, and right-wing Republicans.

    They had sympathetic journalists plant false new stories in their papers that attempted to incite legal action, death threats, and in at least one instance an eviction notice from the target's home through intimidation of the landlord.

    What the CIA is doing now reeks of the BSC. Up to and including inciting the country into a war. After all the CIA's predecessor agency the OSS learned everything they knew at their feet.

    [Jan 01, 2017] Putin's Real Long Game by Molly K. McKew

    How low Politico fall by publishing this neocon trash. Which probably belongs to some major neocon publications which publish Kagan and like.
    As Robert Parry noted "Neocons want a new Cold War – all the better to pick the U.S. taxpayers' pockets – but this reckless talk and war profiteering could spark a nuclear war and leave the world to the cockroaches" Trading Places Neocons and Cockroaches – Consortiumnews
    This "bloodthirsty Molly" is not a vampire. She is yet another female warmonger, a neocon of the mold of Hillary Clinton, who lost her plush job with the ousting of Saakashvili in Georgia and desperately wants it back even if American start ding for this "noble purpose".
    Her article might be considered a classic in neocon demonization of Putin. Complete detachment from the reality of collapsing neoliberal ideology and inability of the USA to maintain its global neoliberal empire despite recent success in Ukraine (as well as Brazil and Argentina), the success which pushed the majority of Ukrainian population on Central African standard of living with income less then two dollars a day. And pensioners dying from hunger in cities, and lack of medical care in rural areas, just to satisfy the US imperial ambitions. And they replaced corrupt and criminal neoliberal government of Yanukovich with even more corrupt and more neoliberal Provisional Government first (which literally was ready to privatize Ukraine state access to Western companies for pennies on the dollar) and then Poroshenko which drive the economy even lower breaking all ties with its former major market -- Russia -- for the ideological reasons, of course. The country became the debt salve of the West, another neo-colony.
    The author is right the the West in now at war -- Cold War II, but he is lying that it sinot recognized by Western government. It was launched by Western government to colonize Russia as neoliberalism needs market expansion and cheap oil to sustain neoliberal globalization, and Russian is one of the few countries on the Earth which not fully colonized (it was under Yeltsin).
    Notable quotes:
    "... Political warfare is meant to achieve specific political outcomes favorable to the Kremlin: it is preferred to physical conflict because it is cheap and easy. The Kremlin has many notches in its belt in this category, some of which have been attributed, many likely not. It's a mistake to see this campaign in the traditional terms of political alliances: rarely has the goal been to install overtly pro-Russian governments. Far more often, the goal is simply to replace Western-style democratic regimes with illiberal, populist, or nationalist ones ..."
    "... Third, information warfare is not about creating an alternate truth, but eroding our basic ability to distinguish truth at all. It is not "propaganda" as we've come to think of it, but the less obvious techniques known in Russia as " active measures " and " reflexive control " . Both are designed to make us, the targets, act against our own best interests. ..."
    www.politico.com

    Increasingly, people in Russia's sphere of influence were deciding that the values that were supposed to bind the West together could no longer hold. That the world order Americans depend on had already come apart.

    ... ... ...

    What both administrations fail to realize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not. It may not be a war we recognize, but it is a war. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our values, our democracy, and our institutional strength; to dilute our ability to sort fact from fiction, or moral right from wrong; and to convince us to make decisions against our own best interests.

    ... ... ...

    Those on the Russian frontier, like my friends from Ukraine and Estonia, have already seen the Kremlin's new toolkit at work. The most visible example may be "green men," the unlabeled Russian-backed forces that suddenly popped up to seize the Crimean peninsula and occupy eastern Ukraine. But the wider battle is more subtle, a war of subversion rather than domination. The recent interference in the American elections means that these shadow tactics have now been deployed – with surprising effectiveness – not just against American allies, but against America itself. And the only way forward for America and the West is to embrace the spirit of the age that Putin has created, plow through the chaos, and focus on building what comes next.

    ... ... ...

    First, it is a war. A thing to be won, decisively - not a thing to be negotiated or bargained. It's all one war: Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, the Baltics, Georgia. It's what Vladislav Surkov, Putin's 'grey cardinal' and lead propagandist, dubbed "non-linear war" in his science fiction story "Without Sky," in 2014.

    Second, it's all one war machine. Military, technological, information, diplomatic, economic, cultural, criminal, and other tools are all controlled by the state and deployed toward one set of strategic objectives.

    This is the Gerasimov doctrine, penned by Valery Gerasimov, the Russian Chief of the General Staff, in 2013.

    Political warfare is meant to achieve specific political outcomes favorable to the Kremlin: it is preferred to physical conflict because it is cheap and easy. The Kremlin has many notches in its belt in this category, some of which have been attributed, many likely not. It's a mistake to see this campaign in the traditional terms of political alliances: rarely has the goal been to install overtly pro-Russian governments. Far more often, the goal is simply to replace Western-style democratic regimes with illiberal, populist, or nationalist ones.

    Third, information warfare is not about creating an alternate truth, but eroding our basic ability to distinguish truth at all. It is not "propaganda" as we've come to think of it, but the less obvious techniques known in Russia as "active measures" and "reflexive control". Both are designed to make us, the targets, act against our own best interests.

    Fourth, the diplomatic side of this non-linear war isn't a foreign policy aimed at building a new pro-Russian bloc, Instead, it's what the Kremlin calls a "multi-vector" foreign policy, undermining the strength of Western institutions by coalescing alternate - ideally temporary and limited - centers of power. Rather than a stable world order undergirded by the U.S. and its allies, the goal is an unstable new world order of "all against all." The Kremlin has tried to accelerate this process by both inflaming crises that overwhelm the Western response (for example, the migration crisis in Europe, and the war in eastern Ukraine) and by showing superiority in 'solving' crises the West could not (for example, bombing Syria into submission, regardless of the cost, to show Russia can impose stability in the Middle East when the West cannot).

    This leads to the final point: hard power matters. Russia maintains the second most powerful military in the world, and spends more than 5 percent of its weakened GDP on defense. Russia used military force to invade and occupy Georgian territory in 2008 to disrupt the expansion of NATO, and in 2013 in Ukraine to disrupt the expansion of the EU. They have invested heavily in military reform, new generations of hardware and weapons, and expansive special operations training, much of which debuted in the wars in Ukraine and Syria. There is no denying that Russia is willing to back up its rhetoric and policy with deployed force, and that the rest of the world notices.

    How did we reach this point? After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western security and political alliances expanded to fill the zone of instability left behind. The emerging Russian security state could only define this as the strategic advance of an enemy. The 9/11 attacks shattered Western concepts of security and conflict and expanded NATO's new mission of projecting security. When Putin offered his assistance, we effectively responded "no thanks," thinking in particular of his bloody, ongoing, scorched-earth war against the Chechens. We did it for the right reasons. Nonetheless, it infuriated Putin. This was the last moment when any real rapprochement with Putin's Russia was possible.

    ... ... ...

    Molly K. McKew (@MollyMcKew) advises governments and political parties on foreign policy and strategic communications. She was an adviser to Georgian President Saakashvili's government from 2009-2013, and to former Moldovan Prime Minister Filat in 2014-2015.

    [Jan 01, 2017] Washington Post Retracts Story About Russian Hackers Penetrating US Electricity Grid

    Notable quotes:
    "... Those anonymous U.S. officials who reported Russian hacking code had been found "within the system" of a Vermont power utility must've been surprised to learn the code was on a laptop that wasn't actually connected to the grid . ..."
    "... [Was "the penetration of the nation's electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability."] ..."
    "... [was "penetration"] ..."
    "... Our posture is fucking horrific. We support Israel even when they blatantly violate international law. We've long sided with Saudi Arabia, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. We overthrew Iraq, creating ISIS. We're largely responsible for arming a good chunk of the terrorists in the world. Yeah, Russia does shitty things, but our problems are big enough that our first concern should be fixing our own problems. Not understand that, along with the unbelievable hubris of the Clintonites, is why the Democrats got their asses kicked in this election, and why they've been getting their asses kicked for so long. ..."
    "... The U.S. government has killed, or caused the death of, an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war. War is extremely profitable for some corporations. ..."
    "... Exactly, bullshit. It sounds to me like an employee used his laptop to visit an infected website, or answered a general phishing mail. Hardly an attack aimed at the grid, and volume cranked up to 11 by WP as a part of the general current panic to glorify Obama and what his administration has done, and undermine the incoming administration. ..."
    "... In some ways it is a success story. The Government put out a warning for a specific malware and how to detect it. The company appropriately scanned based on that warning, found the malware on a isolated laptop (which was isolated from grid systems), and appropriately reported it. ..."
    "... Security experts have been warning of possible foreign hacking for decades . But why this sudden spate of "Russia hacked X" stories now? Why not back when our Secretary of State was running an illegal, private, unsecured email server through which she transmitted classified information [politifact.com]? ..."
    "... Simple: The Washington Post wanted Hillary to win the Presidential election, and reminding people how her action made it easier for Russian hackers to gain access to classified information wouldn't have helped her. ..."
    "... But publishing it now helps support the false narrative [theintercept.com] that the Russians were behind the DNC leaks, not disgruntled Democratic Party staffers [washingtontimes.com], and thus supposedly harms President-elect Donald Trump, whom the Washington Post and it's employees almost universally loath. That's the entire reason the story is being written and published now. ..."
    "... NSA has failed us again. Instead protecting America, they are wasting their and our time by mass collecting data on citizens. Instead of making sure exploits are fixed to keep our systems secure, they hold onto them so they can use them against us and other countries. ..."
    Jan 01, 2017 | yro.slashdot.org
    (washingtonpost.com) 388

    Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 01, 2017 @05:12PM from the power-play dept.

    Those anonymous U.S. officials who reported Russian hacking code had been found "within the system" of a Vermont power utility must've been surprised to learn the code was on a laptop that wasn't actually connected to the grid .

    The Washington Post has updated their original story, which now reports that "authorities" say there's no indication that Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. electric grid. The Post's newly-edited version appears below (with their original, now-deleted text preseved inside brackets).

    A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility , according to U.S. officials. While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter, the discovery underscores the vulnerabilities of the nation's electrical grid... [Was "the penetration of the nation's electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability."] American officials, including one senior administration official, said they are not yet sure what the intentions of the Russians might have been. The incursion [was "penetration"] may have been designed to disrupt the utility's operations or as a test by the Russians to see whether they could penetrate a portion of the grid... According to the report by the FBI and DHS, the hackers involved in the Russian operation used fraudulent emails that tricked their recipients into revealing passwords. The Vermont utility does report that they'd "detected suspicious Internet traffic" on the laptop, but they believe subsequent news coverage got the story wrong. "It's unfortunate that an official or officials improperly shared inaccurate information with one media outlet, leading to multiple inaccurate reports around the country."

    king neckbeard ( 1801738 ) writes: on Saturday December 31, 2016 @12:14PM ( #53584935 )

    Re:Tit for tat ( Score: 5 , Insightful)

    Our posture is fucking horrific. We support Israel even when they blatantly violate international law. We've long sided with Saudi Arabia, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. We overthrew Iraq, creating ISIS. We're largely responsible for arming a good chunk of the terrorists in the world. Yeah, Russia does shitty things, but our problems are big enough that our first concern should be fixing our own problems. Not understand that, along with the unbelievable hubris of the Clintonites, is why the Democrats got their asses kicked in this election, and why they've been getting their asses kicked for so long.

    As it stands right now, the best thing that could happen for world peace is for the US to go down in flames. I would rather that not happen, but if we listen to people like you instead of behaving like adults, the rational choice for the world at large is to get rid of us.

    Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) December 31, 2016 @12:27PM ( #53585001 ) Homepage
    Evaluate the U.S. government? No, too many secrets ( Score: 5 , Insightful)

    "... the US's general posture in the world is wildly preferable..."

    The U.S. government has many secret and semi-secret agencies. No one, literally no one, knows all of them, or which are badly managed. As we've seen, the secret and semi-secret U.S. government agencies often hire outside consulting companies that often have areas of sloppy management. The U.S. government is, by some measures, such as money spent, the most violent in the world.

    The U.S. government has killed, or caused the death of, an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war. War is extremely profitable for some corporations.

    See the book, House of Bush, House of Saud [amazon.com], by Craig Unger.

    Bush and Cheney started a war that was profitable for them. The U.S. has the largest percentage of its citizens in prison, of any country, in any century. The prison system is hugely profitable for prison corporations.

    Two of the many articles: ACLU:

    dilvish_the_damned ( 167205 ) December 31, 2016 @11:28AM ( #53584771 ) Journal
    Re:Tit for tat ( Score: 4 , Interesting)

    While the phishing attack may have originated in Russia, I find it disingenious to portray everything as state sponsored when the evidence is weak at best. To me its something akin to suggesting we need to retaliate against Australia every time Julian Assange takes a leak.

    LTIfox ( 4701003 ), December 31, 2016 @10:43AM ( #53584561 )
    Countermeasures ( Score: 3 , Interesting)

    Some organizations started to inject fake phishing emails into their communication systems. All employees who clicked get their heads bashed with a rock.

    Anonymous Coward, December 31, 2016 @10:44AM ( #53584563 )
    Bullshit ( Score: 5 , Informative)

    One laptop not on the network had malware. Fuck the washington post.

    http://boingboing.net/2016/12/31/no-russia-didnt-hack-vermon.html

    Velox_SwiftFox ( 57902 ), December 31, 2016 @11:23AM ( #53584745 )
    Re:Bullshit ( Score: 5 , Interesting)

    Exactly, bullshit. It sounds to me like an employee used his laptop to visit an infected website, or answered a general phishing mail. Hardly an attack aimed at the grid, and volume cranked up to 11 by WP as a part of the general current panic to glorify Obama and what his administration has done, and undermine the incoming administration.

    Or the WP feels it is simply unimportant to get proper attribution and any of the details right. Reply to This Parent Share

    Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) writes: on Saturday December 31, 2016 @01:08PM ( #53585217 )
    Re:Bullshit ( Score: 2 )

    In some ways it is a success story. The Government put out a warning for a specific malware and how to detect it. The company appropriately scanned based on that warning, found the malware on a isolated laptop (which was isolated from grid systems), and appropriately reported it.

    Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) writes: on Saturday December 31, 2016 @01:05PM ( #53585199 )
    Re:Bullshit ( Score: 2 )

    It should be deeply concerning, but that's effectively the result of the complete lack of care regarding OpSec and vital infrastructure. We've had reasons to be deeply concerned about that for years, if not decades, but now seems like an awfully convenient time to trot out a fact that would likely have applied at just about any point in time if we did an audit of our power grid.

    What is deeply concerning? The bullshit false headline?

    mattwarden ( 699984 ) writes: on Saturday December 31, 2016 @10:56AM ( #53584631 ) Homepage
    Re:1 laptop, not connected to the grid ( Score: 5 , Informative)

    I'm very happy to come to the comments section and find mostly mocking and people who looked beyond the headline. Would have been nice if the editors did that.

    Here is the full takedown on The Intercept of this BS-vending from WaPo: https://theintercept.com/2016/... [theintercept.com]

    Streetlight ( 1102081 ) writes: on Saturday December 31, 2016 @11:17AM ( #53584721 ) Journal
    Re:has to be asked ( Score: 5 , Informative)

    According to an earlier post the laptop that was allegedly infected was not connected to the electric company's grid control system. That conclusion answered my first question. Any vital utility system should absolutely never have it's control system of computers connected to the Internet. If somehow that's the case, those responsible need a very long prison sentence. There also needs to be other security measures to prevent folks having direct access to these control systems from sabotaging them.

    HornWumpus ( 783565 ) writes: on Saturday December 31, 2016 @01:05PM ( #53585195 )
    Re:has to be asked ( Score: 5 , Informative)

    Worked in the industry for a decade. Wrote simulation shells that did short term forecasts based on on system conditions, did data reductions etc (e.g. This unit IS going down for unscheduled maintenance, how much will it cost to shut it down RTF now vs after afternoon peak?) Went on to 'tech lead' for significant energy trading/risk management platform. Ran on many traders and grid operators desks...don't ask, won't tell. Did once see a bug because grand total on printable VAR only had room for 10 digits plus sign. Assigned to Brahmin coder, week later I fixed it myself, I digress.

    What you say isn't really possible. What they typically do have is a secure network, which runs operations, staffed with lots of ex-military actual Engineering school grads. That network is being monitored by redundant data integrators which present integrated (by some time interval, usually hours/half hours or minutes, back when I was up to my nose in it) system data to a second less secure (but still as secure as any corporate) network where routine operations run. That server is usually locked down tight, read only from the less secure network; but that is only software. They also like to run diverse OSs, lots of 'big iron' and Unixes and home brewed binary data formats. These things were mostly architected before Windows was common, particularly on the secure side it's still loaded with 'legacy', likely to remain so until they have a complete staff turnover. Old Dilbert with neckbeard flipping a nickle at Wally and telling him to get a better computer, that's the dude.

    Routine operations need access to internet based facilities. To schedule transmission line capacity, trade power, get closing prices from grid operators, weather forecasts and unit availability from neighbors (lots of VPNs). But that part of the operations could more or less crash and burn and it will only cost money (and extra CO2). Operations, more or less, ignores trading at the minute by minute level. Trading gives them trade schedules and operations will try their best. But if 'shit happens' they keep the lights on and let the accountants worry about reconciling to 'what should have happened'. Which is sometimes a bitch of a computational problem, fortunately most everybody involved are engineers and close enough is close enough. Pennies aren't statistically significant; try and explain that to an accountant. Don't recommend it, just say 'not a material difference' and get on with your life, I'm digressing again.

    Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ), on Saturday December 31, 2016 @12:42PM ( #53585053 ) Homepage
    One example of U.S. government mismanagement: ( Score: 2 )

    Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it [arstechnica.com].

    Nova Express ( 100383 ) , Saturday December 31, 2016 @11:20AM ( #53584729 ) Homepage Journal
    Hey look! It's another MSM Russian Hacking Story! ( Score: 5 , Insightful)

    Security experts have been warning of possible foreign hacking for decades . But why this sudden spate of "Russia hacked X" stories now? Why not back when our Secretary of State was running an illegal, private, unsecured email server through which she transmitted classified information [politifact.com]?

    Simple: The Washington Post wanted Hillary to win the Presidential election, and reminding people how her action made it easier for Russian hackers to gain access to classified information wouldn't have helped her.

    But publishing it now helps support the false narrative [theintercept.com] that the Russians were behind the DNC leaks, not disgruntled Democratic Party staffers [washingtontimes.com], and thus supposedly harms President-elect Donald Trump, whom the Washington Post and it's employees almost universally loath. That's the entire reason the story is being written and published now.

    Further reading here [battleswarmblog.com] and here [battleswarmblog.com].

    What do you think the under/over is for MSM "Russian Hacking" stories between now and January 20?

    Nyder ( 754090 ), December 31, 2016 @11:21AM ( #53584731 ) Journal
    NSA has failed us again ( Score: 2 , Interesting)

    NSA has failed us again. Instead protecting America, they are wasting their and our time by mass collecting data on citizens. Instead of making sure exploits are fixed to keep our systems secure, they hold onto them so they can use them against us and other countries.

    If am I to believe this Russian hacking our systems like the Government is pushing, then the blame goes straight on the NSA and those who backed them.

    Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ), December 31, 2016 @12:43PM ( #53585055 )
    No Grid Penetration ( Score: 5 , Informative)

    The headline is complete bullshit. Can the author not even read? The grid was not penetrated, hacked, or comprimised. No report says it was. This is totally a fabrication from the reporters.

    "We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization's grid systems."

    Billly Gates ( 198444 ) writes:
    Re: ( Score: 2 )
    The headline is complete bullshit. Can the author not even read? The grid was not penetrated, hacked, or comprimised. No report says it was. This is totally a fabrication from the reporters.

    "We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization's grid systems."

    So other sources [cnn.com] say more than just a laptop and last I checked a power station is part of the grid

    colin_faber ( 1083673 ), December 31, 2016 @05:00PM ( #53586147 )
    Re:No Grid Penetration ( Score: 5 , Insightful)

    CNN ceased being a credible news organization after the wikileaks revolutions

    NotAPK ( 4529127 ), December 31, 2016 @12:44PM ( #53585061 )
    Re:An avalanche of bullshit... ( Score: 2 )

    And what can we do? Hope it doesn't degrade into WW3?

    Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ), December 31, 2016 @01:00PM ( #53585159 ) Homepage
    Amazon's CEO owns the Washington Post. ( Score: 3 )

    Amazon's Jeff Bezos Explains Why He Bought The Washington Post [nytimes.com].

    In my opinion, a good indication of Jeff Bezos's management ability is any Amazon web page. Amazon web pages distract you from buying something by trying to sell other things.

    [Jan 01, 2017] Vladimir Putin: I am inviting all children of the US diplomats in Russia to the NewYear's and Christmas celebration in the Kremlin

    Notable quotes:
    "... In August 1999, Barack Obama strolled amid the floats and bands making their way down Martin Luther King Drive on Chicago's South Side. Billed as the largest African-American parade in the country, the summer rite was a draw over the years to boxing heroes like Muhammad Ali and jazz greats like Duke Ellington. It was also a must-stop for the city's top politicians. ..."
    "... Back then, Mr. Obama, a state senator who was contemplating a run for Congress, was so little-known in the community's black neighborhoods that it was hard to find more than a few dozen people to walk with him, recalled Al Kindle, one of his advisers at the time. Mr. Obama was trounced a year later in the Congressional race - branded as an aloof outsider more at home in the halls of Harvard than in the rough wards of Chicago politics. ..."
    "... But by 2006, Mr. Obama had remade his political fortunes. He was a freshman United States senator on the cusp of deciding to take on the formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton and embark on a long-shot White House run. When the parade wound its way through the South Side that summer, Mr. Obama was its grand marshal. ..."
    "... A tight-knit community that runs through the South Side, Hyde Park is a liberal bastion of integration in what is otherwise one of the nation's most segregated cities. Mayor Washington had called it home, as did whites who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wealthy black entrepreneurs a generation removed from the civil rights battles of the 1960s. ..."
    "... At its heart is the University of Chicago; at its borders are poor, predominately black neighborhoods blighted by rundown buildings and vacant lots. For Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii to a white Kansan mother and an African father and who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, it was a perfect fit. ..."
    "... "He felt completely comfortable in Hyde Park," said Martha Minow, his former law professor and a mentor. "It's a place where you don't have to wear a label on your forehead. You can go to a bookstore and there's the homeless person and there's the professor." ..."
    "... If the Russians messed with an election, that's enough on its own to warrant a massive response miles worse – than heavy-handed responses to ordinary spying episodes. ..."
    "... I have no problem believing that Vladimir Putin tried to influence the American election. He's gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything. ..."
    "... Meanwhile, a number of IT specialists that have analyzed the code and other evidence published by the US government are questioning whether it really proves a Russian connection, let alone a connection to the Russian government. Wordfence, a cybersecurity firm that specializes in protecting websites running WordPress, a PHP-based platform, published a report on the issue on Friday. ..."
    "... Wordfence said they had traced the malware code to a tool available online, which is apparently funded by donations, called P.A.S. that claims to be "made in Ukraine." The version tested by the FBI/DHS report is 3.1.7, while the most current version available on the tool's website is 4.1.1b. ..."
    "... s committed to stabilising its CO2 emissions "around 2030 ". ..."
    "... "Russia at first pledged, darkly, to retaliate, then backed off. The Russian press today is even reporting that Vladimir Putin is inviting "the children of American diplomats" to "visit the Christmas tree in the Kremlin," as characteristically loathsome/menacing/sarcastic a Putin response as you'll find." "He's gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything." ..."
    "... "Russia at first pledged, darkly, to retaliate, then backed off. The Russian press today is even reporting that Vladimir Putin is inviting "the children of American diplomats" to "visit the Christmas tree in the Kremlin," as characteristically loathsome/menacing/sarcastic a Putin response as you'll find." "He's gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything." ..."
    "... *I was in a rush yesterday so this is a follow-up to yesterday's hastily written comment on the torture report. Any fault or errors in that comment can be attributed to my gullibility. ..."
    "... The Good Spy (2014) ..."
    "... Road Work: Among Tyrants, Heroes, Rogues, and Beasts. (2007) ..."
    "... "Russia at first pledged, darkly, to retaliate, then backed off. The Russian press today is even reporting that Vladimir Putin is inviting "the children of American diplomats" to "visit the Christmas tree in the Kremlin," as characteristically loathsome/menacing/sarcastic a Putin response as you'll find." "He's gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything." ..."
    Jan 01, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Jim Haygood , December 31, 2016 at 8:18 am

    Vladimir #Putin: I am inviting all children of the #US diplomats in #Russia to the #NewYear's and #Christmas celebration in the #Kremlin

    When Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, he stood 6 ft 1 in tall. As he exits, his stature has diminished to about 6 inches.

    Google adds that his daughter Malia has the same 6 ft 1 in height as her dad. If she ends up following the unwritten but almost universally observed rule that a woman's partner should at least equal her height, it's going to really restrict the candidate pool. Only 11 percent of males 20-29 years old are 6 ft 1 in or more, according to the Census Bureau.

    Katniss Everdeen , December 31, 2016 at 8:24 am

    Maybe that's why obama "pals" around with a lot of basketball players. Might be one of his more shrewd moves–who knew?

    Emma , December 31, 2016 at 1:44 pm

    With regards to parenting, Barack and Michelle Obama are doing the right thing ie. ensuring a supportive learning environment at home so their kids develop their own critical thinking skills and are better equipped to make their own way in the world as they mature (similar to the Deutschers with their daughter Alma, likewise those of two other child music prodigies, Emily Bear and Jay Greenberg.)
    So, Malia will know as and when required to run hoops around any basketballer (!), on the other hand, the young girl in the following family may well, in some instances, actually require a few basketballers run hoops around her father and his misplaced parenting priorities/concerns! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/31/girl-9-faces-shunned-ultra-orthodox-jewish-group-eating-mcdonalds/

    Plenue , December 31, 2016 at 4:11 pm

    What a gray, joyless life Orthodox men must lead, prevented from socializing with girls and women, with only their dusty old tomes of Judaic law for company.

    Tom Bradford , December 31, 2016 at 8:12 pm

    Well they must occasionally socialize with girls or women, or the breed would go extinct.

    Oregoncharles , December 31, 2016 at 11:11 pm

    Arranged marriages, probably.

    ProNewerDeal , December 31, 2016 at 8:32 am

    Now that 0bama is about to exit as US Pres, perhaps it is time to revisit the Who Is Worse: Bush43 v 0bama question.

    Conventional wisdom among "Progressive" pundits, even good ones like SecularTalk, seems to be "yes, 0bama is better than Bush43, but that is a very low bar, & not a real accomplishment. 0bama still sucks".

    IMHO, 0bama's relentless pursue of 1 Grand "Bargain" Ripoff & 2 TPP, may alone make him Even Worse than Bush43, as far as to damage inflicted on USians had 0bama been successful in getting these 2 policies. 0bama tried for years getting these 2 policies enacted, whereas Bush43 tried quickly to privatize SS but then forgot it, & IIRC enacted small trade deals (DR-CAFTA ?). Bush43 focus seemed to be on neocon regime change & War On Terra TM, & even then IIRC around ~2006 Bush43 rejected some of Darth Cheney's even more extremish neocon policy preferences, with Bush43 rejecting Cheney's desired Iran War.

    IMHO both policies would've incrementally killed thousands of USians annually, far more than 1S1S or the Designated Foreign Boogeyman Du Jour TM could ever dream of. Grand Ripoff raising Medicare eligibility age (IIRC 67 to 69+ ?) would kill many GenX & younger USians in the future. TPP's pharma patent extensions would kill many USians, especially seniors. These incremental killings might exceed the incremental life savings from the ACA (mainly ACA Adult Medicaid expansion). Furthemore, 0bama could've potentially achieved MedicareForAll or Medicare Pt O – Public Option in ~2010 with Sen & House D majorities, & 0bama deliberately killed these policies, as reported by FDL's Jane Hamsher & others.

    Bush43 indirectly killed USians in multiple ways, including Iraq War, War On Terra, & failing to regulate fin svcs leading to the 2008 GFC; however it would seem that 0bama's Death Toll would have been worse.

    "What do you think?!" (c) Ed Schultz

    How do Bush43 & 0bama compare to recent Presidents including Reagan & Clinton? What do you expect of Trump? I'd guesstimate that if Trump implements P Ryan-style crapification of Medicare into an ACA-like voucher system, that alone could render Trump Even Worse than 0bama & the other 1981-now Reganesque Presidents.

    It does seem like each President is getting Even Worse than the prior guy in this 21st Century. #AmericanExceptionalism (exceptionally Crappy)

    timbers , December 31, 2016 at 9:14 am

    You hit the right priority of issues IMO, and would add a few bad things Obamanation did:

    1). Bombing more nations than anyone in human history and being at war longer than any US President ever, having never requested an end but in fact a continuation of a permanent state of war declared by Congress.

    2). The massive destruction of legal and constitutional rights from habeas corpus, illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of all people, to asserting the right to imprison, torture, and assassinate anyone anytime even America children just because Obama feels like doing it.

    3). Austerity. This tanked any robust recovery from the 2008 recession and millions suffered because of it, we are living with the affects even now. In fact Obamanation's deep mystical belief in austerity helped defeat Clinton 2016.

    Pat , December 31, 2016 at 9:18 am

    HAMP. And not just ignoring bank mortgage fraud, but essentially enabling it and making it the norm.
    Deporting more people than Presidents before him.
    Passing the Korea and Columbia free trade pacts, even lying about what the pact did to get the Columbian one passed. KORUS alone made our trade deficit with Korea soar and lost an estimated 100,000 jobs in the US (and not those part time ones being created).
    Had the chance to pass a real infrastructure repair/stimulus package, didn't.
    Had the chance to put the Post Office in the black and even start a Postal Bank, didn't. Didn't even work to get rid of the Post Office killing requirement to fund its pension 75 years out.
    Furthering the erosion of our civil rights by making it legal to assassinate American citizens without trial.
    Instead of kneecapping the move to kill public education by requiring any charter school that receives federal funding to be non-profit with real limits on allowable administrative costs, expanded them AND expanded the testing boondoggle with Common Core.
    Libya.
    Expansion of our droning program.

    While I do give him some credit for both the Iran deal and the attempt to rein in the Syria mistake, I also have to take points away for not firing Carter and demoting or even bringing Votel before a military court after their insubordination killing the ceasefire.

    Should I continue. Bush was evil, Obama the more effective one.

    John Wright , December 31, 2016 at 10:15 am

    Bush's Iraq war will cost an estimated $3 trillion per Joseph Stiglitz.

    That does not count all the damage done to Iraq/Afghanistan people and property and American's reputation.

    Iraq's excess deaths due to the war were estimated at 500K to 655K.

    On a population adjusted basis, this would be equivalent to the USA losing 5 to 6.55 million people to a foreign, unprovoked, power.

    Bush scores quite high on being an effective evil, especially when viewed from outside the USA

    I score him the winner vs Obama on total damage done to the USA and the world

    j84ustin , December 31, 2016 at 10:52 am

    Absolutely.

    Pat , December 31, 2016 at 12:02 pm

    Was that a disastrous choice? Certainly and it is a big one, but it also ignores how much of the disastrous choices attached to that decision Barack H. Obama has either continued or expanded upon. It also ignores how that war continues under Obama. Remember when we left Iraq? Oh, wait we haven't we just aren't there in the previous numbers.

    http://time.com/4298318/iraq-us-troops-barack-obama-mosul-isis/

    And what about Libya? You remember that little misadventure. Which added to our continued Saudi/Israeli determined obsession with Syria has led to a massive refugee crisis in Europe. How many were killed there. How much will that cost us fifteen years on?

    https://www.ft.com/content/c2b6329a-9287-11e4-b213-00144feabdc0

    I get that the quagmire was there before Obama. I also get that he began to get a clue late in his administration to stop listening to the usual subjects in order to make it better. But see that thing above about not firing people who undermined that new direction in Syria, and are probably now some of the most pressing secret voices behind this disastrous Russia Hacked US bull.

    But I think only focusing on the original decision also ignores how effective Obama has been at normalize crime, corruption, torture and even assassination attached to those original choices – something that Bush didn't manage (and that doesn't even consider the same decriminalization and normalization done for and by the financial industry). Bush may have started the wheel down the bumpy road, but Obama put rubber on the wheel and paved the road so now it is almost impossible to stop the wheel.

    TedWa , December 31, 2016 at 12:50 pm

    Pat – don't forget about him putting banks above the law – unconstitutional and e v i l

    JCC , December 31, 2016 at 12:40 pm

    As mentioned, Bush is a very low bar for comparison, and if that's the best presidential comparison that can be made with Obama, then that says it all.

    OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , December 31, 2016 at 5:48 pm

    Mr. O long ago received my coveted Worst_President_Ever Award (and yes the judging included Millard Fillmore and Andrew Johnson).
    Handed the golden platter opportunity to repudiate the myriad policy disasters of Bush (which as cited above cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives) he chose instead to continue them absolutely unchanged, usually with the same personnel. Whether it was unprosecuted bank crime in the tens of billions, foreign policy by drone bomb, health care mega-bezzle, hyper-spy tricks on everyday Americans, and corporo-fascist globalist "trade" deals, Mr. O never disappointed his Big Wall St, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and Big Surveillance-Industrial Complex constituents. Along the way he reversed the polarity of American politics, paving the way for a true corporo-fascist to say the slightest thing that might be good for actual workers and get into the White House. History will remember him as the president who lost Turkey and The Philippines, destroyed any remaining shreds of credibility with utterly specious hacking claims and war crime accusations of other nations, and presided over an era of hyper-concentration of billionaire wealth in a nation where 70% of citizens would need to borrow to fund a $400 emergency. Those failures are now permanently branded as "Democrat" failures. The jury is unanimous: Obama wins the award.

    crittermom , December 31, 2016 at 12:29 pm

    "HAMP. And not just ignoring bank mortgage fraud, but essentially enabling it and making it the norm."
    Exactly. That is #1 on my list making him worst president ever.

    Katharine , December 31, 2016 at 1:00 pm

    I would question "ever" simply because I know I don't know enough about the history of previous presidents, and I doubt any of us do; even historians who focus on this kind of thing, supposing we had any in our midst, might be hard put to it to review all 44 thoroughly.

    witters , December 31, 2016 at 7:47 pm

    I like your epistemology! You don't know, but you do know others don't know either, even historians who clearly know a lot more on this than you.

    Ed , December 31, 2016 at 1:23 pm

    Declining empires tend to get entire series of bad kings.

    Tom Bradford , December 31, 2016 at 8:08 pm

    Cause or effect?

    Ray Phenicie , December 31, 2016 at 12:54 pm

    I vote the mortgage fraud situation (see Chain of Title by David Dayen -not really a plug for the book) as the worst aspect of the Obama Administration. What to say about it? Regular readers of this site are well versed in the details but one aspect of it needs to be expounded upon; stand on the housetops and shout it kind of exposition: the mortgage fraud worked on millions (3, 5, 7, maybe 12 million) shows that rule of law is now destroyed in the land. Dictionary .com says this about the phrase

    Rule of Law: the principle that all people and institutions are subject to and accountable to law that is fairly applied and enforced; the principle of government by law.

    The World Justice Project has several pages on the topic and starts off with this:

    * The government and its officials and agents as well as individuals and private entities are accountable under the law.
    * The laws are clear, publicized, stable, and just; are applied evenly; and protect fundamental rights, including the security of persons and property and certain core human rights.
    * The process by which the laws are enacted, administered, and enforced is accessible, fair, and efficient.
    * Justice is delivered timely by competent, ethical, and independent representatives and neutrals who are of sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect the makeup of the communities they serve.

    I would invite the reader to take a moment and apply those principles to what is known about the situation concerning mortgage fraud worked on millions of homeowners during the past two decades.

    The Justice Department's infamous attempts to cover up horribly harmful schemes worked by the mortgage industry perpetrators involved the cruel irony of aiding and abetting systemic racism. Not a lot was said in the popular press about the subject of reverse redlining but I'm convinced by the preponderance of evidence that overly complicated mortgage products were taken into the neighborhoods of Detroit (90% Black or Latin American, Hispanic) and foisted off on unsuspecting homeowners. Those homeowners did not take accountants and lawyers with them to the signing but that's how those schemes should have been approached; then most of those schemes would have hit the trashcan. Many a charming snake oil salesman deserves innumerable nights of uncomfortable rest for the work they did to destroy the neighborhoods of Detroit and of course many other neighborhoods in many other cities. For this discussion I am making this a separate topic but I realize it is connected to the overall financial skulduggery worked on us all by the FIRE sector.

    However, let me return to the last principle promulgated by the World Justice Project pertaining to Rule Of Law and focus on that: "Justice is delivered timely by competent, ethical, and independent representatives and neutrals who are of sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect the makeup of the communities they serve." Now hear this: "are of sufficient number" for there, and gentle reader, please take this to bed with you at the end of your day: we fail as a nation. But look to the 'competent, ethical and independent' clause; we must vow to not sink into despair. This subject is a constant struggle. Google has my back on this: Obama, during both campaigns of '08 and '12, took millions from the very financial sector that he planned to not dismay and then was in turn very busy directing the Attorney General of The United States, the highest law officer in the country, to not prosecute. These very institutions that were in turn very busy taking property worth billions. 12 million stolen homes multiplied times the average home value = Trillions?

    Finally, my main point here (I am really busy sharpening this ax, but it's a worthy ax) is the issue of systemic racism- that the financial institutions in this country work long hours to shackle members of minority neighborhoods into monetarily oppressive schemes in the form of mortgages, car loans, credit cards and personal loans (think pay day scammers) and these same makers of the shackles have the protection of the highest officials in the land. Remember the pitchforks Obama inveighed? Irony of cruel ironies, two black men, both of whom appear to be of honorable bearing, (Holder moved his chair right directly into the financiers, rent takers of Covington & Burling ) work to cement the arrangements of racist, oppressive scammers who of course also work their playbooks on other folks.

    To finalize, the subject of rule of law that I have worked so assiduously to sharpen, applies to all of the other topics we can consider as failures of the Obama Presidency. So besides racism and systemic financial fraud we can turn to some top subjects that make '09 to '17 the nadir of the political culture of the United States of America. Drone wars, unending war in the Middle East, attempts to place a cloak of secrecy on the workings of the Federal Government, the reader will have their own axes to sharpen but I maintain if the reader will fervently apply and dig into the four principles outlined above, she, he, will agree that the principles outlining Rule of Law have been replaced by Rule of the Person.

    Ray Phenicie , December 31, 2016 at 1:02 pm

    (3, 5, 7. 12 million) should be 3, 5, 7, maybe 12 million

    Ray Phenicie , December 31, 2016 at 1:22 pm

    Here's one of many scholarly articles that reviews the subject of systemic racism in the finance and mortgage industries.
    Am Sociol Rev. 2010 October 1; 75(5): 629–651. doi:10.1177/0003122410380868
    Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis
    Jacob S. Rugh and Douglas S. Massey
    Office of Population Research, Princeton University

    Ray Phenicie , December 31, 2016 at 1:24 pm

    Arghhh, the server is apparently napping-more caffeine please for the cables.
    Here's one of many scholarly articles that reviews the subject of systemic racism in the finance and mortgage industries.
    Am Sociol Rev. 2010 October 1; 75(5): 629–651. doi:10.1177/0003122410380868
    Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis
    Jacob S. Rugh and Douglas S. Massey
    Office of Population Research, Princeton University

    hreik , December 31, 2016 at 2:22 pm

    The book deserves to be plugged. I thought it was great. A fast and infuriating read. And very well written.

    Yves Smith , December 31, 2016 at 6:58 pm

    I have to tell you it is inaccurate in material respects, and many of the people who played important roles in the fight were written out entirely or marginalized.

    Christopher Fay , December 31, 2016 at 7:35 pm

    This one's a keeper. I have to take notes including writer's name, post title, dates. Good summary.

    Ed , December 31, 2016 at 1:16 pm

    GW Bush sort of had two administrations. The first two years and the last two years was sort of a generic Republican but sane administration, sort of like his father's, and was OK. The crazy stuff happened in the middle four years, which maybe not coincidentally the Republicans had majorities in both house of Congress.

    Obama signed off on the Big Bailout (as did GW Bush, but my impression is that the worst features of the Big Bailout were on Obama's watch(), and that defined his administration. Sometimes you get governments defined by one big thing, and that was it. But I suspect he may have prevented the neocons from starting World War III, but that is the sort of thing we won't know about until decades have passed, if we make it that long.

    tongorad , December 31, 2016 at 1:31 pm

    Obama promised hope and change and delivered the exact opposite – despair and decline. Obama should be remembered as the Great Normalizer. All of the shitty things that were around when he was inaugurated are now normalized. TINA to the max, in other words.
    It should be no shock to anyone that Trump was elected after what Obama did to American politics.

    Jess , December 31, 2016 at 3:09 pm

    "It should be no shock to anyone that Trump was elected after what Obama did to American politics."

    Bingo. Hit that one dead solid perfect, right in the ten-ring.

    Jess , December 31, 2016 at 3:12 pm

    "It should be no shock to anyone that Trump was elected after what Obama did to American politics."

    Bingo. You can say that again. Right in the ten-ring, dead solid perfect.

    Montanamaven , December 31, 2016 at 4:14 pm

    You got it. Obama was hired to employ "The Shock Doctrine" and he did. He was and is "a Chicago Boy"; the term Naomi Klein used for the neoliberals who slithered out of the basements of U of Chicago to visit austerity on the masses for the enhancement of the feudal lords. It is laughable that he said last week that he could have beaten Trump. As always, He implied that it was the "message" not the policy. And that he could "sell" that message better than Hilary. For him it was always about pitching that Hopey Changey "One America" spleel that suckered so many. The Archdruid calls this "the warm fuzzies". But the Donald went right into the John Edwards land of "The Two Americas". He said he came from the 1%; but was here to work for the 99% who had been screwed over by bad deals. We will see if the Barons will stand in his way or figure out that it might be time to avoid those pitchforks by giving a little to small businesses and workers in general. Like FDR, will they try to save capitalism?

    The Donald has the bad trade deals right, but looks like he doesn't know what havoc Reagan wreaked on working people's household incomes and pension plans by breaking any power unions had and by coming up with the 401K scam; plus the Reagan interest rates that devastated farmers and ranchers and the idea of rewarding a CEO who put stock price above research and development and workers' salaries. But again, I believe it was a Democratic congress and a Democratic president Carter who eliminated the Usury law in 1979. From then on with stagnating wages, people began the descent into debt slavery. And Jimmy started the Shock Doctrine by deregulating the airlines and trucking. But he did penance. Can't see Obama doing that.

    LT , December 31, 2016 at 6:13 pm

    And once usary laws went away, credit cards were handed out to college students, with no co-sign, even if students had no work or credit history and were unemployed.
    It took until just a few years ago before they revisted that credit card policy to students.

    alex morfesis , December 31, 2016 at 6:22 pm

    dont want to burst your bubble(or anyone elses) but obama is not and was not the power to the throne it was michelle and val jar (aka beria) it was a long series of luck that got that krewe anywhere near any real power mostly, it comes from the Univ of Chicago hopey changee thingee was a nice piece of marketing by david axelrod..

    the grey lady

    5-11-2008

    In August 1999, Barack Obama strolled amid the floats and bands making their way down Martin Luther King Drive on Chicago's South Side. Billed as the largest African-American parade in the country, the summer rite was a draw over the years to boxing heroes like Muhammad Ali and jazz greats like Duke Ellington. It was also a must-stop for the city's top politicians.

    Back then, Mr. Obama, a state senator who was contemplating a run for Congress, was so little-known in the community's black neighborhoods that it was hard to find more than a few dozen people to walk with him, recalled Al Kindle, one of his advisers at the time. Mr. Obama was trounced a year later in the Congressional race - branded as an aloof outsider more at home in the halls of Harvard than in the rough wards of Chicago politics.

    But by 2006, Mr. Obama had remade his political fortunes. He was a freshman United States senator on the cusp of deciding to take on the formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton and embark on a long-shot White House run. When the parade wound its way through the South Side that summer, Mr. Obama was its grand marshal.

    but to capture the arrogance of hyde park (read the last line)

    A tight-knit community that runs through the South Side, Hyde Park is a liberal bastion of integration in what is otherwise one of the nation's most segregated cities. Mayor Washington had called it home, as did whites who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wealthy black entrepreneurs a generation removed from the civil rights battles of the 1960s.

    At its heart is the University of Chicago; at its borders are poor, predominately black neighborhoods blighted by rundown buildings and vacant lots. For Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii to a white Kansan mother and an African father and who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, it was a perfect fit.

    "He felt completely comfortable in Hyde Park," said Martha Minow, his former law professor and a mentor. "It's a place where you don't have to wear a label on your forehead. You can go to a bookstore and there's the homeless person and there's the professor."

    also note how the lib racist grey lady can not bring themselves to name the parade it is the

    bud billiken parade

    peaceful, fun, successful

    heaven forbid the world should see a giant event run by black folk that does not end in violence might confuse the closet racists

    RudyM , January 1, 2017 at 12:17 am

    There are enough examples of such things for it to be a reasonable expectation.

    The parade also hasn't always gone without a hitch:

    The 2003 parade featured B2K.[9] The concert was free with virtually unlimited space in the park for viewing. However, the crowd became unruly causing the concert to be curtailed. Over 40 attendees were taken to hospitals as a result of injuries in the violence, including two teenagers who were shot.[38] At the 2014 parade, Two teenagers were shot after an altercation involving a group of youths along the parade route near the 4200 block of King Drive around 12:30 pm.[39][40]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Billiken_Parade_and_Picnic#Violence

    dcrane , December 31, 2016 at 10:43 pm

    On balance this one should go on the "Good" list for Bush 43:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President's_Emergency_Plan_for_AIDS_Relief

    Yes, the abstinence-education dimension probably wasn't worth much, but that took up only a minority share of the funds.

    Oregoncharles , December 31, 2016 at 11:14 pm

    Yes, they've been getting steadily worse (more right-wing) since Carter, without regard to party. That's at least 30 years now.,

    Cry Shop , December 31, 2016 at 8:49 am

    Jerri-Lynn, do all these last minute moves by Obama fit the pattern you observed Obie-the-wan perform at Harvard?

    Oregoncharles , December 31, 2016 at 11:15 pm

    Clinton did it, too. I think it's a general pattern resulting from term limits – but in the case of sole executives, term limits do make sense.

    jgordon , December 31, 2016 at 8:49 am

    From the "self-drive get cars will exacerbate organ shortages" article, my first thought was that it surely is a shame that fewer healthy vehicle drivers/passengers will end up as accident victims, thus denying their delicious organs to the deathly ill. There must be something we can do to rectify this impending catastrophe.

    Jim Haygood , December 31, 2016 at 9:03 am

    Use Microsoft Windows as the self-drive operating system. Problem solved. :-)

    Mel , December 31, 2016 at 12:29 pm

    A few other ways out:
    1) Flying cars will bring the injury rate back up.
    2) Breeding program to make up the shortfall.
    3) Proliferating superbugs will make surgery dangerous again, so that people won't want organ transplants.

    hunkerdown , December 31, 2016 at 5:17 pm

    Just raise a clone for parts (IMDB). All the really important people do! ;)

    RenoDino , December 31, 2016 at 8:50 am

    I agree, Tabbi in his Rolling Stone piece is now, finally, after his Trump induced psychosis, back on form. Something about the Russian Story does stink. Summing up, if the Russians did steal the election why the weak response now? Or is it just a good excuse for losing to Trump and/or is Obama is trying to protect his legacy by delegitimizing Trump? Either way, Obama looks to be underplaying or overplaying his hand.

    I wonder if this is really Obama, who is out the door, talking or is the national security state, who is not going anywhere? If it's the latter, then things start to make sense. It says to me, they are not happy with the new direction in foreign policy that Trump represents. In fact, they refuse to accept it and him.

    How is this tension is resolved is the single most important question in the weeks ahead.

    Arizona Slim , December 31, 2016 at 9:30 am

    And let's just say that the Russian Story isn't ringing true with the IT community. Data point:

    https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hack/

    Key point from the conclusion of this article:

    "The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes.

    "The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website."

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 11:58 am

    http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2013/03/how-many-cyberattacks-hit-united-states-last-year/61775/

    'll leave you with some additional recent numbers on cyberintrusions, as reported by various actors:

    The energy company BP says it suffers 50,000 attempts cyberintrusion a day.

    The Pentagon reports getting 10 million attempts a day.

    The National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Energy Department, also records 10 million hacks a day.

    The United Kingdom reports 120,000 cyberincidents a day.

    That's almost as many as the state of Michigan deals with.

    Utah says it faces 20 million attempts a day - up from 1 million a day two years ago.
    =============================================================
    WOW!!!! Seems like a really big F*cking deal!!!!
    Kinda makes me wonder how many laws and regulations have been enacted forcing internet companies and software companies to make their stuff more secure .

    Long story short – not too many
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-security_regulation

    {{{{{{ In July 2012, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 was proposed by Senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins.[15] The bill would have required creating voluntary "best practice standards" for protection of key infrastructure from cyber attacks, which businesses would be encouraged to adopt through incentives such as liability protection.[16] The bill was put to a vote in the Senate but failed to pass.[17]}}}}}}

    And of course (I don't want to over link so you have to look it up yourself) there are the laws that ALLOW intrusion by the US government into your computer, of course makes computer systems LESS SECURE .

    So, almost makes me think Trump, OF ALL PEOPLE, was actually CORRECT when he said:
    "I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I'm not sure we have the kind the security we need. But I have not spoken with the senators and I will certainly will be over a period of time."
    And how much the above is being mocked, by people without the presence of mind to ask, "how long, and how many hacks have already occurred, and WHAT WAS DONE ABOUT IT?"

    Hacking, that happens millions upon millions of times a year now for near a decade, but apparently only a BIG F*CKING DEAL when an incompetent dem SAYS she has LOST the presidency due to hacking .

    Grebo , December 31, 2016 at 3:01 pm

    Over 40 million 'attacks' a day, on just three entities.
    Bollocks. 'Attack' is far too dramatic a word for a port probe.

    Vatch , December 31, 2016 at 3:39 pm

    Did you say probe? I guess that settles it. The election tamperers were the four foot tall gray space aliens with big eyes.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 4:00 pm

    Vatch
    December 31, 2016 at 3:39 pm

    Probes? I have never heard that used without being preceded by alien anal .
    So .a lot of anuses are going to have to be checked???

    RenoDino , December 31, 2016 at 2:47 pm

    Craig Murray asks why is there no evidence from the NSA:

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/exit-obama-cloud-disillusion-delusion-deceit/

    NotTimothyGeithner , December 31, 2016 at 9:56 am

    The Russia hacking story goes back to early October with wiki leaks. Who is at fault for Trump? Sherrod Brown, Senator of a state where Hillary lost and prominent Clinton supporter despite his previous support for good policy, DWS, Tim Kaine, Donna Brazille, or Russians? Plenty of people are invested in not being held accountable for 2000. The front runner for DNC chair is a Muslim, Sanders supporter because even Democrats are growing upset, but one of the perks of Washington is celebrity. My guess is going forward Dems will be under greater scrutiny and will find significantly less brown nosers. Hillary is possibly the worst serious candidate ever. Emails and speeches aside, she was a disaster with no business running for President after her prominent national career. This was obvious to any sane and decent human being. The lesson of 2016 is even the "good Democrats" such as Sherrod Brown and Liz Warren need short leashes. In 2020, all these people have to go to Iowa (very close), New Hampshire (a blowout), and Nevada (openly rigged by former Senator Reid). How does a candidate push their "progressive" credentials after throwing in with Hillary? Hillary primary voters have the unfortunate age issue.

    Then of course, there are people who don't want to believe they bought this bs when Hillary should have been dumped ages ago.

    Montanamaven , December 31, 2016 at 4:44 pm

    The DNC is not the government. It's a private entity called a political party. Phishing or hacking it is not interfering with our government whoever does it.

    And will somebody explain to me how Putin and his henchmen made Hillary say "basket of deplorables"? Was it an earwig they snuck in her ear? Did they sneak into her room and hypnotize her to say that horrible statement? Did they plan for Obamacare to become a major f**k up in October? I'm pretty sure Russia and China were really pissed at her adventure in Libya; so that escapade was not something they got her to do.

    I negotiate for a living. I would not call the person I'm dealing with a thug like Hitler. I would not poke the guy/bear with pompous statements. That's just stupid. Maybe we do need people in charge who actually know how to negotiate to get the best possible deal without having things blow up in our faces.
    All those Dems you named are mediocre managers without anything interesting or innovative to say. Even if the Russians did expose the DNC and Podesta emails, The Russians did not make these courtiers mediocre.

    timbers , December 31, 2016 at 10:25 am

    How is this tension is resolved is the single most important question in the weeks ahead.

    Sometimes the simplest "solutions" are the ones we never think of – Assassination of Trump by the Deep State, the Blob, whatever you call it. But this may take more that just weeks ahead to materialize if at all.

    If you believe President Kennedy was killed by the Deep State (I'm agnostic on that due to never researching it), and if Trump does deal with the bi-partisan War Party Deep State Blob elements by standing them down as he did his Republican primary challengers and Apprentice guests . then this may be the logical way to put an end to the threat Trump represents to the establishment. And there is so much that is threaten by Trump of the established order.

    Trillions of war armament purchase orders from NATO and the US military hinge in the balance by continued US and NATO belligerence towards Russia. Add to that the gas pipeline thru Syria that will be less likely to happen under Trump. The lost looting if no regime change in Russia like we did in Ukraine – all that lost oil and natural resource the global elites will be denied. All the lost military spending. The lost boogyman to instill fear for more surveillance of the citizenry. The Deep State, Blob, War Party will be furious.

    That's a lot of trillions.

    tgs , December 31, 2016 at 9:05 am

    Re Taibbi:

    Yes, it is positive that he openly expresses skepticism in the current environment. But why this?

    If the Russians messed with an election, that's enough on its own to warrant a massive response miles worse – than heavy-handed responses to ordinary spying episodes.

    Leaking emails would require a 'massive response'? Has he seen Zero Days? What kind of response would be appropriate for hacking a nuclear plant? Assassinating nuclear scientists? Is he aware that we have 'hacked' elections for years? Not to mention overthrown legal governments.

    And this:

    I have no problem believing that Vladimir Putin tried to influence the American election. He's gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything.

    Would Taibbi ever use similar language to describe Obama? So many in the media and other elite circles are suffering from Putin Derangement Syndrome.

    Bugs Bunny , December 31, 2016 at 9:27 am

    IIRC, the US helped elect Boris Yeltsin when it looked like he was going to lose?

    Eureka Springs , December 31, 2016 at 9:50 am

    How many countries have Obama /Clinton attempted regime change to covert/direct interference in elections/leadership? I would imagine the answer is far more than my quick list below. We couldn't hack/leak internal emails among the players because our bloody hypocritical hands would be all over them.

    As for Russia if all they did was expose truths via party emails, well I thank them for that. And considering what Clinton said and did to Russia over the years it would be irresponsible for a Russian leader to sit by idly and do nothing. Even though we seem to be destroying ourselves quite well enough on our own, we have and continue to threaten the rest of the world, beginning with Russia with nuclear holocaust.

    If Taibbi can call Putin all those things, then what the heck are Obama Clinton?

    Ukraine
    Russia
    Syria
    Venezuela
    Honduras
    Egypt
    Yemen
    Iraq
    Palestinians
    Libya
    Paraguay
    Turkey?
    Brazil?
    Argentina?
    Thailand?
    Hong Kong?

    hunkerdown , December 31, 2016 at 5:36 pm

    Taibbi has some personal journalistic history with previous Putin governments. It's understandable that he'd cast side-eye Putin's way, though none too healthy in this deranged environment (just wait until some corporate Dem tries to use him as a Surprising Validator). Let's keep Taibbi on turn watch though.

    It seems the need to celebrate some leader is less conntected to said leader's performance than to some perceived need to be led, to believe that the very concept of hierarchy is just.

    annie , December 31, 2016 at 9:57 am

    I used to read and respect articles from Matt Taibbi.

    This one is a revelation and what it reveals is that I have been mistaken.

    I will skip his contributions in the future.

    UserFriendly , December 31, 2016 at 12:00 pm

    I do not understand this attitude at all. A writer who generally does good work says something that I disagree with so I will never read them again. It's tantamount to saying I refuse to read critically. I don't want to see anything I don't agree with 100%. It's petty.

    annie x , December 31, 2016 at 1:08 pm

    interesting! someone has hijacked my user name to post an inane comment.

    the real 'annie' says.

    Outis Philalithopoulos , December 31, 2016 at 2:22 pm

    Hi, new annie.

    It's true that the other annie has been posting comments on the site for a while, so it would be less confusing if you were to modify your handle so that people can tell you two apart.

    On the other hand, don't take any of the comments from people who were concerned personally – obviously it's easy enough for two people to share the same name, and the software doesn't flag when you are using a name that has been used before.

    Steve H. , December 31, 2016 at 10:14 am

    – Putin Derangement Syndrome.

    I heard a report that Lindsey McCain et al have armstwisted Trump into hearing the CIA report on the Russian hack. What are they going to say? 'You won the election because of teh Russians!'

    "Good gracious me! You're the CIA, find me out what his favorite liquor is so I can send him a bottle!"

    So they'll tell him to his face he wasn't competent to win the election himself? My guess is says brief me again when I'm President, they walk in the door and he properly fires them. And his face will be like this .

    Cry Shop , December 31, 2016 at 11:31 am

    "warrant" and "executing/capable of carrying out" are two different things.

    As Putin has shown, Obama's capability threshold so low that it's rather moot to discuss warrant. It's now up to Congress to do something magnificently stupid, violent and utterly worthless, or rather worthy of the great American tradition.

    witters , December 31, 2016 at 8:02 pm

    And what on earth is the journalistic point of saying "I have no problem in believing something for which there seems to be no credible evidence and which is being pushed by obvious partisan interests?" I think Taibbi is 'normalising' fast.

    hreik , December 31, 2016 at 9:09 am

    I dunno. President Obama is not great but the comments here make me feel like it's time for me to skedaddle. Thinking he might be worse than Shrub? 6″ tall, smh

    Pat , December 31, 2016 at 9:31 am

    Oh I admit it can be a tough choice, but you might really want to add up the good and the bad for both. Not surprisingly there is little good and a whole lot of long ongoing damage inflicted by the policies that both either embraced, adapted to or did little or nothing to stop. Even if the list of bad was equal, I have to give Obama for the edge for two reasons. First because Bush pretty much told us what he was going to do, Obama campaigned on change and vague promises, but still change. Instead he normalized atrocities that most of us had been screaming about in the Bush administration AND he didn't just squander the opportunities he had to change our course domestically because of the crash and the majorities in Congress, no he couldn't throw those away fast enough.

    Your position is obviously different.

    And I don't give a damn what height either of them are, both are small people.

    Lost in OR , December 31, 2016 at 11:14 am

    Indeed. Bush was a known quantity. "Compassionate conservatism" was was blatantly hollow jingoism. My only surprise under W was how virulently evil Cheney was.

    The big O, though, was handed the opportunity to change the course of history. He took power with Wall Street on its knees. The whole world hungered for a change in course. Remember "never let a crisis go to waste". O turned Hope into blatantly hollow jingoism.

    In the end, the black activist constitutional lawyer turned his back on all that he seemed to be. Feint left, drive right.

    With W we got what we expected. With O we got hoodwinked. What a waste.

    ambrit , December 31, 2016 at 9:32 am

    Look, if you don't like some of the comments you see, say so. We have some thick skinned people here. A little rancorous debate is fine. If some reasoned argumentation is thrown in, the comments section is doing it's job. (I know, I know, "agency" issues.)
    Obama can be legitimately described as worse than Bush 43 because Obama ran as a "progressive" and flagrantly broke almost all of his promises and governed like a "Moderate" Republican. At the least, Bush, Sr. and Jr. ran as right wing politicos. The people basically got what they voted for with them.
    Finally, " it's time for me to skedaddle." WTF? I'm assuming, yes, I do do that, that you are a responsible and thoughtful person. That needs must include the tolerance of and engagement with opposing points of view. Where do you want to run to; an "echo chamber" site? You only encourage conformation bias with that move. The site administrators have occasionally mentioned the dictum; "Embrace the churn." The site, indeed, almost any site, will live on long after any of we commenters bite the dust. If, however, one can shift the world view of other readers with good argumentation and anecdotes, our work will be worthwhile.
    So, as I was once admonished by my ex D.I. middle school gym teacher; "Stand up and face it. You may get beat, but you'll know you did your best. That's a good feeling."

    craazyboy , December 31, 2016 at 11:47 am

    Picking the #1 Worst Prez is a fallacy inherent in our desire to put things on a scale of 1 to 10. It's so we can say, in this case, #1 was the WORST, and then forget about #2 thru #10.

    It's like picking the #1 Greatest Rock Guitar Player. There are too many great guitar players and too many styles. It's just not possible.

    Even so, I'd like to see the Russian citizen ranking of Putin vs. Yeltsin. Secret ballot, of course.

    ambrit , December 31, 2016 at 12:48 pm

    America will be lucky if it avoids something similar to the earlier Russian people's ranking of Tsar Nicholas versus Karensky and subsequent events.

    hreik , December 31, 2016 at 1:16 pm

    I like your response. Thanks.

    I don't think he's worse than Bush but I agree he was horribly dishonest to run as a progressive. He's far from progressive.

    I think the ACA, deeply flawed as it is, was/is a good thing. It wasn't enough and it was badly brought out. I hope many thousands don't get tossed off health insurance.

    My major criticism of him and most politicians is that he has no center. There is nothing for which he truly stands and he has a horrible tendency to try to make nice w the republicans. He's not progressive. Bernie, flawed also stands for something always has, always will.

    Vatch , December 31, 2016 at 3:46 pm

    Obama is highly deceptive, but I think that Bush (43) was worse. I doubt that Obama would have performed many of his worst deeds if Bush hadn't first paved the way. But we'll never know for sure, so it's possible to argue on behalf of either side of the dispute.

    ambrit , December 31, 2016 at 5:05 pm

    Sorry if I came across as harsh. I enjoy your arguments, so, I tried to encourage you to hang in there.
    Happy New Year

    hunkerdown , December 31, 2016 at 5:40 pm

    In other words, Obama's a Kissingerian realist, or a businessperson (but I repeat myself): only permanent interests.

    Happy New Year, and try to don't run off so easy. :)

    Yves Smith , December 31, 2016 at 7:11 pm

    The ACA was not badly thought out. It was written by insurance industry lobbyists. And Obama thought that was just ducky.

    wtf , December 31, 2016 at 10:02 am

    Agreed.

    Putin's such a sweetheart to invite those children to the Kremlin. /s

    ambrit , December 31, 2016 at 10:58 am

    Well, it is a real recruiting opportunity.

    wtf , December 31, 2016 at 10:03 am

    Agreed.

    Putin's such a sweetheart to invite those children to the Kremlin.

    Steve C , December 31, 2016 at 10:51 am

    The liberals have so much invested in Obama they can't bear to admit he's a backstabbing failure. There is no sugar coating Bush's awfulness. There also is no denying things now are worse than they were in 2007, before the Great Recession began. The liberals like to say things are better than they were when Obama took office. But that's a comically low bar. Rock bottom of the Great Recession. We have not recovered.

    Obama isn't gaudy bad like Bush. Obama's pathologies are smoother, like his desperation for establishment approval.

    Arizona Slim , December 31, 2016 at 12:20 pm

    The liberals like to say that things are better than they were when Obama took office. Sorry to share this tidbit, but I must:

    On Friday, March 18, I was among the 7,000 people who heard Bernie Sanders speak at the Tucson Convention Center Arena. Guess what he said.

    And, to my utter and total amazement, the audience burst into applause. I couldn't believe it. Much of Sanders' appeal was based on how lousy the economy still was for so many people. Including Yours Truly.

    My response to Sanders' praise of Obama's handling of the economy was a slow clap. A few minutes later, I left the rally.

    polecat , December 31, 2016 at 12:31 pm

    "Obama's pathologies are smoother"

    Like a glass of fine bourbon downed with a shot of arsenic.

    Jeff , December 31, 2016 at 12:49 pm

    So criticism of Obama isn't acceptable? Would it be better to let his poor decisions/actions just go unnoticed?

    Or are you referring to something else?

    hreik , December 31, 2016 at 1:54 pm

    Of course it's acceptable. It's even important, vitally. But his height? I know I know it was not really an ad hom, but why even mention it?

    He fetishized making nice w the rethugs to our and the country's detriment. He had 2 years to get something done. And honestly I have no idea if it would have been different w a less hostile congress. My complaint is he didn't really try. Everything was half measures, pablum.

    Plenue , December 31, 2016 at 3:47 pm

    Far too generous. He did try to get Republican policies enacted. He wasn't a weak Democrat, he was a driven Republican who was only thwarted by a comically, stupidly hostile GOP that sabotaged things like the Grand Bargain/Great Betrayal because they had such a virulent hatred of the black guy.

    reslez , December 31, 2016 at 7:16 pm

    If Obama had enacted the agenda he ran on– even in part - the Democrats would not have lost Congress in 2010. Obama's "only having two years" is thoroughly on himself and his party.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 4:49 pm

    hreik
    December 31, 2016 at 9:09 am

    The site would be poorer and I would be sadder for the loss of your comments.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-30/can-this-political-union-be-saved
    Shortly before I got married, I received a piece of sterling advice that I have been mulling a lot over the last year: "You have a big decision to make: Do you want to be married, or do you want to be right?"
    .
    The more determined you are to win every battle, the more likely you are to lose what's important: the person you love so much that you have chosen to spend the rest of your life with them. And so every time you have a real disagreement - the kind that cannot be finessed by agreeing that tonight you'll order Indian, and next time you'll get Chinese - you have to think carefully before you decide to have that fight. Is this really the hill that you're willing to let your marriage die on?
    ..
    While traveling a few months back, I ended up chatting with a divorce attorney, who observed that what we're seeing in America right now bears a startling resemblance to what he sees happen with many of his clients. They've lost sight of what they ever liked about each other; in fact, they've even lost sight of their own self-interest. All they can see is their grievances, from annoying habits to serious wrongs. The other party, of course, generally has their own set of grievances. There is a sort of geometric progression of outrage, where whatever you do to the other side is justified by whatever they did last. They, of course, offer similar justifications for their own behavior.

    ======================================================
    Every friend, every association we make, every relationship with a relative, every political entity can be dissolved. One can insist one is correct on every matter, and live a long life with ever fewer associations until maybe one has none at all.

    As to which president is worse, your all wrong. Supposedly , 99 senators believe Russia hacked us. Our country apparently is composed entirely of imbeciles without regard to race, creed, sex, or party .

    reslez , December 31, 2016 at 7:06 pm

    If you can't bear to encounter comments that contradict your political opinion then you should probably also skip Thanksgiving dinner and other family get-togethers.

    Whether you read the comments here is up to you, but I'd suggest continuing to visit for the articles at least. You won't find the same level of analysis elsewhere. The MSM is heavily invested in pushing their "narrative" whether or not it's true. I believe we have a duty as citizens to seek out the best sources of information. NC is on that list.

    reslez , December 31, 2016 at 7:08 pm

    If you can't bear to encounter comments that contradict your political opinion then you should probably also skip Thanksgiving dinner and other family get-togethers.

    I believe we have a duty as citizens to seek out the best sources of information, even if that results in encountering opinions that are uncomfortable to us. NC is one of those sources. Whether you read the comments here is up to you, but I'd suggest continuing to visit for the articles at least. You won't find the same level of analysis elsewhere. The MSM is heavily invested in pushing their "narrative" whether or not it's true.

    Montanamaven , December 31, 2016 at 10:21 pm

    The DNC is not the government. It's a private entity called a political party. Phishing or hacking it is not interfering with our government whoever does it.

    And will somebody explain to me how Putin and his henchmen made Hillary say "basket of deplorables"? Was it an earwig they snuck in her ear? Did they sneak into her room and hypnotize her to say that horrible statement? Did they plan for Obamacare to become a major f**k up in October? I'm pretty sure Russia and China were really pissed at her adventure in Libya; so that escapade was not something they got her to do.

    I negotiate for a living. I would not call the person I'm dealing with a thug like Hitler. I would not poke the guy/bear with pompous statements. That's just stupid. Maybe we do need people in charge who actually know how to negotiate to get the best possible deal without having things blow up in our faces.
    All those Dems you named are mediocre managers without anything interesting or innovative to say. Even if the Russians did expose the DNC and Podesta emails, The Russians did not make these courtiers mediocre.

    Montanamaven , December 31, 2016 at 10:23 pm

    bye bye!

    timbers , December 31, 2016 at 9:16 am

    You hit the right priority of issues IMO, and would add a few things Obamanation did:

    1). Bombing more nations than anyone in human history and being at war longer than any US President ever, having never requested an end but in fact a continuation of a permanent state of war declared by Congress.

    2). The massive destruction of legal and constitutional rights from habeas corpus, illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of all people, to asserting the right to imprison, torture, and assassinate anyone anytime even America children just because Obama feels like doing it.

    3). Austerity. This tanked any robust recovery from the 2008 recession and millions suffered because of it, we are living with the affects even now. In fact Obamanation's deep mystical belief in austerity helped defeat Clinton 2016.

    polecat , December 31, 2016 at 12:31 pm

    "Obama's pathologies are smoother"

    Like a glass of fine bourbon downed with a shot of arsenic.

    Bugs Bunny , December 31, 2016 at 9:22 am

    Facts on the ground in Mumbai re demonitization and how the poor are coping.

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/demonetization-survey-k-west-ward-slums-mumbai-how-urban-krishnan?trk=prof-post

    beth , December 31, 2016 at 2:08 pm

    I think the following quote summarizes the article and the writer's attitude toward those experiencing this tragedy:

    Conclusion:

    For the group as a whole, there was only a 10% loss in income in November. However, the impact on certain types of occupations was high, with income loss up to 44% among the self-employed.

    Dita , December 31, 2016 at 9:25 am

    Re Something About This Russia Story Stinks, I feel like Obama's weak response is a passive aggressive way of telegraphing that he doesnt believe The Russians Did It either.

    NotTimothyGeithner , December 31, 2016 at 9:41 am

    Since the NSA not the CIA would be the main actor involved with cyber security and Obama has instructed the CIA to take action and noted his CIA reports, it's clear "OMG Russia" was always red meat to help Hillary with Republicans. The problem is the Dems told such an incredulous lie in early October many of their own voters and donors believed it because "Obama wouldn't make something up."

    Obama needs to do enough to soothe Democrats who believe this nonsense while not gaining the ire of the sane. Obama will never utter the truth or do the right thing. Polling indicates his Russian story isn't catching on. When Congressmen go home to their districts, they might not be so eager to discuss Russia when they find the voters don't care Podesta's emails were leaked.

    Certain Dems especially Clinton connected ones who swore Hillary was a tolerable candidate and the msm after being in the tank for Hillary for so long are desperate to regain credibility. Admitting the Russian story was an obvious sham means acknowledging complicity or being a mark. See how easy it is. It's not my fault. It's the foreign leader you have no control over who was at fault.

    Rhondda , December 31, 2016 at 7:19 pm

    I think "Russia hacked the election" is a (seemingly pretty successful) psyop to inoculate as many as they can against being willing to hear anything about charges for Hillary's basement server State Dept. They're sweeping hacks and leaks of different types and kinds into one big dust bunny and stuffing it under a rug misleadingly called "Russia hacked the election" - rather than "Russia hacked Hillary's illegal basement server" which would of course be a big legal problem for some people. Those people and their cadre don't want anyone saying that or even able to think it. Squirrel!! FakeNews!! Resist!!

    LT , December 31, 2016 at 1:30 pm

    Obama knows he beat Hillary in 2008, when she was also expected to be crowned.
    And he knows he beat her for the same reason Trump did: people wanted anyone who wasn't perceived (emphasis on perceived) to be if the long time political establishment.

    It's funny that no reporter, if they really nelieve this, has asked Obama how far back the intelligence committe was investigating "Putin's interference". Russia knew both Clinton and McCain had their hawkish sites set. The Clinton campaign was a leaky mess back then and no one once cried "hacking."
    Imagine the hilarity if it were true and Russia helped elect Obama.

    Lemmy , December 31, 2016 at 1:47 pm

    I think you're right.
    On the one hand, we are told to believe our intelligence agencies' assertions that Russia directly influenced the results of our Presidential election - in other words, that they intentionally subverted our democratic process (such as it is) in order to ensure the election of their preferred candidate. That's pretty heavy stuff.

    So what is the official U.S. response? We're gonna send some Russian folks home right before Christmas really screw up their holiday plans!

    Well played Obama - that will totally make them think twice before installing the next puppet president.

    Rhondda , December 31, 2016 at 6:59 pm

    I think "Russia hacked the election" is a (seemingly pretty successful) psyop to inoculate as many as they can against being willing to hear anything about charges for Hillary's basement server State Dept. They're sweeping hacks and leaks of different types and kinds into one big dust bunny and stuffing it under a rug misleadingly called "Russia hacked the election" - rather than "Russia hacked Hillary's illegal basement server" which would of course be a big legal problem for some people. Those people and their cadre don't want anyone saying that or even able to think it. Squirrel!! FakeNews!! Resist!!

    Rhondda , December 31, 2016 at 7:20 pm

    Sorry for the doublepost. Comment system is acting strange.

    tgs , December 31, 2016 at 9:28 am

    The Russians are at it again. The Washington Post

    Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say

    And Rt:

    Meanwhile, a number of IT specialists that have analyzed the code and other evidence published by the US government are questioning whether it really proves a Russian connection, let alone a connection to the Russian government. Wordfence, a cybersecurity firm that specializes in protecting websites running WordPress, a PHP-based platform, published a report on the issue on Friday.

    Wordfence said they had traced the malware code to a tool available online, which is apparently funded by donations, called P.A.S. that claims to be "made in Ukraine." The version tested by the FBI/DHS report is 3.1.7, while the most current version available on the tool's website is 4.1.1b.

    The Report by Wordfence

    The Washington Post seems to have a fake news problem.

    Mariah , December 31, 2016 at 10:01 am

    I can't read the Washington Post story because of the paywall, but here is what VTDigger has to say about this story. While I didn't read the Post story, the difference in headlines is interesting. VTDigger's headline is "Russians Penetrated Burlington Electric Department Computer" which seems less alarmist than the Post's "Russian Operation Hacked a Vermont Utility, Showing Risk to U.S. Electrical Grid Security, Officials Say."

    https://vtdigger.org/2016/12/30/russians-penetrated-computer-burlington-electric-dept/

    Aside from the hysterical quote by our outgoing governor Peter Shumlin, the Vermont officials seem fairly calm about the incident. I would also note that Shumlin's failure to keep his promise on universal health care probably endangers more Vermont lives than the Russian hack attempt.

    Cry Shop , December 31, 2016 at 10:39 am

    the Russian hack attempt.

    at this point, any claim of agency by this administration is almost proof of the opposite.

    marym , December 31, 2016 at 10:56 am

    The govt released a report of "evidence" for the alleged DNC hacks. Arizona Slim at 9:30 am here posted a link to a critique of this "evidence." Meanwhile, utilities and other entities started checking their systems for similar "evidence." Burlington found an instance on a laptop unconnected to the grid.

    Here's a summary from emptywheel – she's actually somewhat of a believer in a Russian DNC hack, but not in this grid story.

    NotTimothyGeithner , December 31, 2016 at 11:02 am

    The problem with the DNC hack story is "who cares?" The Democrats are a private organization* with very poor cyber security as evidenced by Hillary's basement server.

    Podesta was not a government official conducting government business. Hacking and releasing his emails is simply not interfering with the election.

    *They made this claim in the primaries. The Democratic Party is in no way part of the U.S, government. They warrant as much attention as a local business as they don't receive defense contracts.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 11:13 am

    NotTimothyGeithner
    December 31, 2016 at 11:02 am

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chinese-hack-of-government-network-compromises-security-clearance-files/2015/06/12/9f91f146-1135-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html?utm_term=.4b8cea31c097

    Do you remember the Chinese hack of USA! USA! USA! SECURITY CLEARANCES!!!!!!! TOP SECRET STUFF!!!!

    Do you remember the uproar and all the consequences to China?
    All the trade sanctions???
    The Chinese import restrictions???
    DEF CON superduper ONE or what ever number they use for top DEF CONS now a days
    How the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war and total global annihilation because of this ACT OF WAR????

    Yeah ..neither do I.

    NotTimothyGeithner , December 31, 2016 at 11:49 am

    Arms manufacturers have an interest. The Russia is too small and too distant to overwhelm most countries outside of the Baltics and the Caucuses. The Chinese if they are let in can overwhelm most countries through soft power. Why change U.S. shackles for Chinese ones? The Russians offer many of the same weapon and tech options as the U.S. and China without the soft power threat of being overwhelmed.

    Part of the neoconservative rationale back in the day was the state of defense tech advancement would neutralize our wunder weapons and soldiers on the ground would matter again. We needed to block the Chinese and Russians by destroying or assimilating anyone who wasn't 100% loyal or could move into the Moscow sphere or cut into profit margins. The neoliberals pushed the U.S. would dominate free trade because the US. would run defense, tech, and finance. Russia and China are threats to every neoliberal promise.

    marym , December 31, 2016 at 11:02 am

    Another summary from Greenwald.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 11:26 am

    marym
    December 31, 2016 at 11:02 am

    There was no "penetration of the U.S. electricity grid." The truth was undramatic and banal. Burlington Electric, after receiving a Homeland Security notice sent to all U.S. utility companies about the malware code found in the DNC system, searched all their computers and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid.

    Apparently, the Post did not even bother to contact the company before running its wildly sensationalistic claims, so they had to issue their own statement to the Burlington Free Press which debunked the Post's central claim (emphasis in original): "We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop NOT connected to our organization's grid systems."

    So the key scary claim of the Post story – that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid – was false. All the alarmist tough-guy statements issued by political officials who believed the Post's claim were based on fiction.
    ========================================
    Thanks for that marym!
    I guess – no, I now KNOW it was just idiotic of me and a naive and foolish belief in "progress" that I thought people could no longer be manipulated, like Americans in the 50's with the Red Scare. If anything, it seems the mechanism for ginning up mass hysteria is more effective now than it was than .

    Arizona Slim , December 31, 2016 at 12:14 pm

    If I may be permitted to comment on my comment, permit me to say this about my article link's origin:

    The writer of said article runs a company called WordFence. Its flagship product is a WordPress plugin that protects websites against hacking.

    If you ever get the opportunity to manage a WordPress-powered website that has WordFence among its plugins, be forewarned. You are going to be a very busy site manager.

    Why? Because you'll get frequent e-mailed admonitions from WordFence. Better update this plugin, your WordPress installation, your website theme, or some combination of these things. Yeah, it's annoying at times, but the good news is that WordFence is a very vigilant plugin.

    So, heed those admonitions and do those updates. Now!

    Carl , December 31, 2016 at 9:56 am

    Wow that Putin guy is smart. Brokering a cease-fire in Syria and brushing off Obama in one week. Forget the 11th dimensional chess, this guy's the real chess player. Really knows how to make a countermove. His exposing our failed policies is really what's driving the heated anti-Russian rhetoric by the political establishment, imo.

    dcblogger , December 31, 2016 at 10:00 am

    French workers win legal right to avoid checking work email out-of-hours

    lyman alpha blob , December 31, 2016 at 10:34 am

    Yesterday I mentioned having taken a class in Assyrian archaeology. Turns out the city I studied, Nimrud, has been turned to rubble by the Islamic state .

    Katniss responded with a comment about it being harder to rewrite history if people were actually aware of it. Really at a loss for words as to how people could do something like this. You'd think these ISIS ass***es would revere the Assyrians, being fellow head choppers and all but instead they raze the place.

    The city of Nimrud in northern Iraq is in pieces, victim of the Islamic State group's fervor to erase history. The remains of its palaces and temples, once lined in brilliant reliefs of gods and kings, have been blown up. The statues of winged bulls that once guarded the site are hacked to bits. Its towering ziggurat, or step pyramid, has been bulldozed.

    Funny thing is most of the good stuff from these sites was pillaged by the Brits 150 years ago and a lot of the best reliefs can be found scattered through small New England liberal arts colleges. Always thought they should be repatriated. Love to see these slabs lowered back into place in Iraq someday especially if there are some Bush era neocons and ISIS types underneath them when it happens.

    ewmayer , December 31, 2016 at 6:07 pm

    Remember the "bridge of death" scene near the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where after seeing Knight #1 walk safely across the bridge after getting 3 really easy questions from the bridge troll, Knight #2 excalims "that's easy!", rushes to the front of the queue, and after getting 2 easy questions, is stumped by "what is the capital of Assyria?" Funnily enough, I actually knew that one – Nineveh. Or thought I did, because doing a quick lookup just now I see Nineveh was the oldest city in Assyria and its ancient capital until its destruction in 612 BC, but Nimrud was an earlier capital, from 879–722 BC. So the correct answer is in fact, "it depends."

    Very sad what IS did to Nimrud, though.

    Jeff , December 31, 2016 at 10:39 am

    Hi,

    Is there an update on the demands from NC towards WP and associated liars about the fake news stories?
    Just saw a tweet mentioning the editorial WP added to their original stuff, but couldn't see an update in any of the ~posts here on NC.

    Thanks,

    Paid Minion , December 31, 2016 at 10:42 am

    2016 Post Mortem

    Can somebody please kill this fantasy that Clinton I was "eight years of peace and prosperity"?

    For many of us, it was the beginning of 25 years of working harder and making less. And of hacked government stats to make the economy look better than it actually was.

    Lupemax , December 31, 2016 at 3:29 pm

    Clinton 1, the best repug in the dem party, gave us
    1) Haiti – a failed state
    2) telecommunications bill that has given us the 5 corporations that offer the worst lamestream media in the industrial world that lies endlessly.
    3) end of the safety net (welfare as we know it) for those with the least increase in corporate welfare
    4) Glass-Steagall and corruption on Wall Street and all white collar crime actually that goes completely unpunished
    5) continuation of massive, runaway inequality
    6) Hillary Clinton
    7) NAFTA
    8) increase in childhood poverty
    9) sick care insurance that doesn't cover anyone for healthcare at all
    10) and he also provided privatized social security with Newt Gingrich but Monica (good for her) intervened.

    Webstir , December 31, 2016 at 10:59 am

    While making no excuses for the ineptitude of our current establishmentarian politicos, I think many of the commenters on here who seem in awe of Putin's political savvy forget an important point: He's an autocrat. Whatever the U.S.'s current political failings, there is still a generally effective system of checks and balances. Putin, as an autocrat, does not face these challenges. He is free to shape his statecraft as he pleases and to implement tactics at the drop of a hat. Our political system does not (and lord help us under the trump regime - should not) enjoy this luxury. Whether you feel like the hacking is a ginned up conspiracy or not, cozying up to an autocrat like Putin is an existential threat to all democratic nations.

    "11 dimensional chess" give me a break.

    HBE , December 31, 2016 at 1:32 pm

    "Whether you feel like the hacking is a ginned up conspiracy or not, cozying up to an autocrat like Putin is an existential threat to all democratic nations."

    But what about about an oligarchy?

    Our "democracy" has been dead for awhile for anyone not in the top 10%. You can't really be an "existential threat" to something that doesn't exist.

    Webstir , December 31, 2016 at 2:38 pm

    Thus my statement: "Whatever the U.S.'s current political failings, there is still a GENERALLY effective system of checks and balances." And yes, it can (and most likely will) get worse, before it gets better. I'm not blind to the US's frailties. However, I feel there is still a "chance" that we can step back from the brink of utterly destroying this 200 year experiment in representative democracy. The closer we step to abiding autocracy as a matter of course, though, the closer we step to the brink of not being able to reverse the considerable mistakes we have made.

    alex morfesis , December 31, 2016 at 2:00 pm

    No one anywhere ever is an autocrat no king, no dictator, no president, no fearless leader and certainly not raz-putin and no one has ever been that is a pedestrian image of what it takes to run an enterprise not castro, not saddam, not mao, not stalin .no one

    Webstir , December 31, 2016 at 2:47 pm

    Fine. I'll play the semantic game.

    Your statement does not; however, negate my assertion. Putin's ability to maneuver politically (within whatever system you'd like to call it) is substantially less hampered by checks and balances than ours. Our absolute polarization in this country has opened the door for "autocraticish" world leaders to seriously undermine our "admittedly weakened by oligarchic influences" system of representative democracy.

    hunkerdown , December 31, 2016 at 5:50 pm

    Our checks and balances were designed to serve the oligarchy. For some reason, you don't seem to have a problem with things that are unfit for purpose as long as they demand attention.

    Webstir , December 31, 2016 at 7:13 pm

    I address the first sentence of your reply alone, because the second makes no sense.

    So great, it's always been an oligarchy. I've read Zinn. But since you append no solution, am I left to believe that the solution is let Putin destroy said oligarchy and replace it with autocracy? Seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me. But I get it. Some people just want to see the world burn.

    hunkerdown , January 1, 2017 at 12:27 am

    The world is not debate club and it is not a business. You are not entitled to a solution. I believe it's arrogant of you to believe that you are.

    What's more, you're not ready to overlap your solution space with that of the people. Like I said, the world is not debate club. This is an attempt to meet minds, not to pray like a Pharisee.

    Let's start with this principle: does human welfare "net out"?

    hunkerdown , January 1, 2017 at 12:33 am

    Adding, I understand that "world burm" stuff is on today's meme list, as I've seen it in plenty of comment boxes around the Web, so you can stop pretending you're not on assignment. I want to watch liberals' world burn for their arrogance, and I defy you to tell me why they don't deserve that or worse.

    witters , December 31, 2016 at 8:19 pm

    Forgive me Webstir, but isn't Russia a capitalist democracy? Doesn't the UN etc get to monitor their elections? Putin gets voted in in the usual way. If that is a problem, then it is a problem for 'Democracy' generally. And remind me, these "checks and balances" – is that the CIA versus the FBI? Is it the the DOJ and financial crime? What is it?

    Carl , December 31, 2016 at 6:55 pm

    I guess that comment was directed to one of mine. Sorry, but I was just trying to express how inept Putin makes our war-mongering political establishment look (probably because they are) just by making a few strategic moves. If that came across as "cozying up" to the man, well, you might be reading too much into it. And the 11th dimensional chess remark was /sarc.

    Jeremy Grimm , December 31, 2016 at 7:28 pm

    "Cozying up to an autocrat like Putin is an existential threat to all democratic nations." Huh!????? Not maintaining "amicable relations" with Putin and Russia is an existential threat to ALL nations of the world.

    And how is it cozying up to Putin to question the plainly false assertions by our Security Industrial Complex or admire some clever but relatively straightforward responses to Obama's "retaliations"?

    Do you believe the President of United States has no capacity to control and direct the actions of the Executive Branch? The President has considerable autocratic power - little or not mitigated by "checks and balances" - as the head of the Executive Branch of the United States.

    Jeremy Grimm , December 31, 2016 at 7:34 pm

    "Cozying up to an autocrat like Putin is an existential threat to all democratic nations." Not maintaining "amicable relations" with Putin and Russia is an existential threat to ALL nations of the world.

    How is it cozying up to Putin to question the plainly false assertions by our Security Industrial Complex or admire some clever but relatively straightforward responses to Obama's "retaliations"?

    Do you believe the President of United States has no capacity to control and direct the actions of the Executive Branch? The President has considerable autocratic power - little or not mitigated by "checks and balances" - as the head of the Executive Branch of the United States.

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , December 31, 2016 at 11:01 am

    The Aurochs, back from the dead.

    Now, we can feel better about finishing of those bees, because we can bring always bring them back later.

    More enabling of Nature-abusing, should it become a part of cost-benefit analysis – the cost of preserving a species, versus letting it die now and bringing it back 50 years later – because we humans know exactly what we're doing. Having more options is always better.

    In the mean time, get the award ready for another display of superior intelligence.

    flora , December 31, 2016 at 1:49 pm

    I don't disagree.
    For me, teading the story brought up this segue:

    The general appearance of the auroch bull is similar to the smaller Spanish fighting bull. Which reminds me, there are several kinds of bull fighting. Portuguese bull fighting isn't featured in movies but wow is it something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS4bGwA0QSc

    There's the ancient /modern sport of bull-leaping. Sport in some form goes back at least 3500 years judging from Minoan frescos.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AukHt8_N1zs

    jhallc , December 31, 2016 at 2:10 pm

    Look on the bright side. They might be developing a superior supply of rodeo bulls to ride. However, the clowns may need some extra padding.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 11:02 am

    Is Obama using Russia to force a wedge between Trump and his party? Guardian

    Having compromised national security in order to defeat Hillary Clinton, the Republican leadership may now see Trump as expendable. After all, he chose a standard rightwing Republican, the Indiana governor, Mike Pence, as his running mate, which means McConnell and Ryan can always arrange to have Trump impeached if he becomes too much trouble.

    For Obama, Russia is thus a uniquely effective wedge issue, with the potential to divide the president-elect from his party. If Trump tries to remove the new sanctions, he could face blowback from Congress; if he doesn't, his friendly relationship with Putin could be damaged.
    ===================================================================
    If Trump is truly not fervently anti Russian, than he was gonna have problems with the repubs soon enough. As I commented yesterday, to me the issue is Trump strong enough to resist the many and varied forms of persuasion that will be marshaled by the MIC and associated hangers on to continue the very lucrative cold war funding.

    I saw a retrospective on the Trump campaign, and the part where Trump got sat down and questioned on abortion. Trump finally answered the question, "do you think women who have abortions should be punished?"
    Trump's answer of yes reveals two things to me:
    1. Yes, of course he is a politician and gives an answer that he believes his base wants to hear. It took him a while to learn the standard inconsistent but repub politically correct answer.
    2. I doubt very much, to the extent Trump has "core beliefs" that Trump was against abortion. But Trump, maybe more than most, will change to mollify the base.

    Now, I don't think the repub base actually gives a rat's as* about spending money to contain Russia, but I think the modern elites can sure make it seem like they do. I am hoping, but I doubt Trump, has the backbone, skill, and intellect to really counter a sustained effort to keep us at the status quo ante (i.e., keep us knee jerk anti Russian).

    The question is: are there REALLY 99 senators who believe Russia hacked the election or same difference, 99 who will vote that Russia hacked us?
    And you know what that means? It means that we are governed in mass, by seriously incompetent people with ideological blinders on – Trump is the least of our problems .

    Foppe , December 31, 2016 at 11:53 am

    Fancy that, Harvard still has a "cold war center" with nitwits who sell this as "analysis"?

    Mark Kramer, the program director for the Project on Cold War Studies at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, told Business Insider in an email Friday that Putin's "conspicuous announcement today was intended in part to give the impression that Obama's measure are weak and inconsequential (as indeed they largely are) and do not deserve a response."

    "Putin can thus depict himself as taking the high road," Kramer added, "and undoubtedly will be praised in European and Third World countries that are always eager to condemn the United States."

    HotFlash , December 31, 2016 at 4:50 pm

    If Trump is truly not fervently anti Russian, than he was gonna have problems with the repubs soon enough.
    ========================================

    I dunno. Mr. Trump, excuse me, President-Elect Trump, has a real gift for knowing what the people want, or at least what they want to hear. And the R's are conditioned (by the Tea Part et al) to fear their base. May it be that the Repubs (elites) will have problems with Trump? As for the Demos, Demo-friendly pundits and the vast "left wing conspiracy", I keep having the feeling that all this Putin-blaming stuff is because "Empress Hillary said so" and the DC/Demo-apparatus does not dare (yet) pile on the Trump wagon. See what happens on Jan 21.

    petal , December 31, 2016 at 11:15 am

    A correction to the OvaScience story-Jon Tilly is not at BU, he's been at Northeastern since leaving MGH. I was in the little Center when that work was done(by colleagues/friends). There were 3 groups that shared space.

    petal , December 31, 2016 at 11:20 am

    A correction to the OvaScience story-Jon Tilly is not at BU, he's been at Northeastern since leaving MGH . I was in the little Center when that work was done(by colleagues/friends). There were 3 groups that shared space.

    Cry Shop , December 31, 2016 at 11:35 am

    It's going to be a hot time in the hard town tonight.

    capacity by an estimated 250 million tonnes this year and to reduce the share of coal in its energy mix to 62.6 percent by 2016. The country also intends to modernise its coal-fired power plants by 2020 to reduce emissions of "major pollutants" by 60 percent and i s committed to stabilising its CO2 emissions "around 2030 ". Environmental NGOs are nonetheless cautious, worried in particular about the unbridled construction of new coal-fired power plants in China, at the rate of almost two new projects per week in 2015 alone – even though there may ultimately be little need for the extra capacity. (AFP)

    Say Goodnight, Gracie.

    Brian , December 31, 2016 at 11:57 am

    Hacking and leaking; something one does when the flu is in town?
    The government claims the Russians hacked something not connected to the internet and expect everyone to believe it. All that is waiting now is the 200,000 IT specialists that could read the code and would disagree.
    this time, the big lie is going to be dispelled in every coffee shop, workplace and wifi hotspot in the land. The IT folks are going to be asked by their friends and customers if it is true or not, and it will all unravel.
    Why would our government make claims so easy to demolish?

    knowbuddhau , December 31, 2016 at 12:58 pm

    Why? Because they work. And once people act on them, it becomes almost impossible to get them to admit they were hugely and publicly wrong. Propaganda and advertising are similar in that the message doesn't have to make sense, it just has to achieve the intended result.

    I don't share your faith in the power of facts to dispel beliefs that confirm cherished myths. ISTM that beliefs, world views, come first, and "facts" are noticed, selected, and accepted relative to their support thereof.

    It's a fact that genocide of native Americans was official US policy. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." It's a fact that treaties were "negotiated" at gunpoint. It's a fact that we broke them anyway. It's a fact that we stole millions of acres. It's a fact that we have no intention of returning stolen property.

    It's a fact that freedmen were promised "40 acres and a mule." It's a fact that that promise is still unfulfilled.

    It's a fact that the Tonkin Gulf "incident" did not happen as reported. Still, many, maybe even most Americans believe we were attacked, and further, that we had to stop the dreaded "domino effect."

    It's a fact that the invasion of Iraq was based on lies. It was an illegal war of aggression. And still is. Nevertheless, anyone who participates in uniform is a "hero." And anyone who reveals exactly how effed up was our prosecution of that illegal war is, in "fact," a most scurrilous villain. Just try defending Manning or Snowden to diehard American Exceptionalists.

    It's a fact that US forces tortured people in black sites all over the world. It's a fact that the Convention Against Torture demands investigation and prosecution. It's a fact that our constitutional scholar-president looked "forward, not backward," putting our government in breach of the CAT. Where are the impeachment proceedings for this high crime?

    I could go on and on. It'd be nice if facts controlled politics. Fact is, beliefs do.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 1:38 pm

    knowbuddhau
    December 31, 2016 at 12:58 pm

    Unfortunately, you are exactly right. It seems humans are just hard wired to be cheerleaders for their own team, tribe, country .beliefs come first, and than cherry picked facts, or facts too good to check that support the beliefs.

    I have said it a million times, I believe the most difficult thing for a human to do is admit they were wrong about something.

    knowbuddhau , December 31, 2016 at 8:12 pm

    Thanks, fd, glad you agree. I (almost ;) always enjoy your comments.

    I'm not so sure "unfortunately" is the word I'd use, though. More like "naturally." I don't regret being more belief-driven than data-driven. I think it's only natural. I think if people were honest, they'd admit they are, too. Or am I supposed to think they're Mr. Data? That's what makes us human, right? I think the mythological is a realm of human experience just as natural as is the psychological.

    It'd be nice if facts controlled politics. But first we'll have to come to a more universal agreement as to exactly what world/universe/multiverse we're living in. I think it'd behoove us to take into consideration the world views of those we oppose. We can't assume we're living in the same world. ISTM we're often bringing facts to faith-based arguments. And that even we, who have faith in the scientific method, make them, too.

    All the data in the world won't move people unless it's in a narrative and/or symbolic form that speaks to people directly, no thought required, like art does. Ask climate change scientists.

    The scary thing is, as Red Scare 2.0 shows, or Trump's entire campaign, the opposite is true, too. If you hit the right notes, it doesn't even have to make sense. Works almost as well as the flashy thing (neuralizer) in Men In Black. Not because we're stupid "sheeple" (how I hate that phrase!), but because we're "human, all too human."

    Men In Black in 5 seconds
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymSEibHKOgo

    PS: Regarding admitting mistakes. You won't mind, then, if I point out that you often use "than" when I think you mean "then." I like it when others kindly point out my mistakes, so in that spirit.

    annie , December 31, 2016 at 12:26 pm

    there is an 'annie' commenting above on the taibbi piece who is not me! and does not express my sentiments at all.
    i'd thought that one's user name was sacrosanct here. i've been using 'annie' for many years on n.c.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 1:23 pm

    annie
    December 31, 2016 at 12:26 pm

    I was spoofed ONCE on this site – I was gonna change my moniker to the "realfresnodan" but through sheer laziness, I never got around to it and it ?never? happened again. I don't know, but I imagine software that verifies your address has to allow a different address or computer at least once, otherwise one would have to change your moniker every time you bought a new computer or changed your internet provider, etc.
    Plus, when the new secret police come to get me, I will always have the defense, "its documented that I am being spoofed!!!" I LOVE OBAMA/TRUMP/BUSH!!! – I can't decide who I love more!!!! (need I say sarc?)

    ProNewerDeal , December 31, 2016 at 1:27 pm

    HillaryB0ts & 0bamabots would say Putin is falsely impersonating you.

    Sorry, some gallows humor. Hopefully the impostor gets banned

    Outis Philalithopoulos , December 31, 2016 at 1:33 pm

    We'll look into the general issue. Of course deliberately impersonating another commenter isn't okay, but sometimes two people take the same user name simply by accident.

    ewmayer , December 31, 2016 at 6:18 pm

    Outis, is it possible to tweak the registration/post-processing setup so each commenter's profile is stored as a unique UID/email-address pair, and someone attempting to use a UID already linked to a different e-mail gets a "sorry, this userid is already taken" error message? Seems like a pretty basic anti-spoofing measure for any halfway-decent comments system to support.

    JTMcPhee , December 31, 2016 at 8:36 pm

    That will cause me problems, since my personal situation has me using three different devices, no, five counting computers where I now only occasionally work, to participate here. But it's not my space, so it goes. Protect the discourse. Besides, no one seems to think it worth spoofing me .

    Outis Philalithopoulos , December 31, 2016 at 10:21 pm

    If the proposed system included information about the device, it would be unworkable for precisely the reason you mention. I can imagine a way to work around that, but it may or may not be feasible - it will depend on the flexibility of the back end. I'll try to look into it.

    JTMcPhee , December 31, 2016 at 9:07 pm

    From the multiple posts of the same msg by several people, I get the feeling that others are having the same experience I am: I scribble, click "post comment," and then get a white screen rather than a return to a posted, moderated or disappeared comment in the thread. I refresh the page, which then warns me that "this comment has already been posted" on a white screen. I re-load NC, search out my insert point, and maybe the note is there, maybe not. And if I pick the option offered in a text box when refreshing from the white screen, to 're-send the form,' it usually results in a multiple post of the same text. I have tried refreshing the screen and even re-booting, same thing happens. Just offering my experience with the site lately. This started a couple of days ago.

    Mel , December 31, 2016 at 9:30 pm

    I saw the same thing this morning:
    December 31, 2016 at 12:29 pm

    Browser is Firefox on a Raspberry Pi..
    In case this helps.

    Outis Philalithopoulos , December 31, 2016 at 10:15 pm

    Thanks for letting us know, I'll forward on this information.

    Katharine , December 31, 2016 at 1:47 pm

    Whoa! Good luck getting that straightened out! I should think it would feel really creepy to see alien sentiments under your local identity.

    jo6pac , December 31, 2016 at 1:09 pm

    I guess we know were Putin's comment on I won't get into kitchen politics came from.

    http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/12/30/alleged-russian-spies-told-to-leave-sf-include-consulates-chef/

    The is truly evil but maybe di-fi and dick will invite everyone from the Russian Embassy to the mac-mansion for the holiday cheer;)

    Pat , December 31, 2016 at 1:11 pm

    Even though I have weighed in, the truth is that who was worse for the country Obama or Bush really won't be decided until more time has passed after Obama has left office. Think of it this way, we didn't have a clear view of how many disastrous choices/decisions/terrible legislation was part of the Clinton administration until years after he left. The full force of NAFTA hadn't been felt, the devastation of Welfare Reform would only get deeper and deeper, and then there was the repeal of Glass Steagall and the Gramm Bliley Leach atrocity that in reality has been a leading component in the world wide Depression we are still dealing with (and with no FDR unfortunately some of us are waiting for crash pt. 2). Just think how much worse it would have been if he hadn't been impeached and got his entitlement reform. I have to give the Tea Party the Monica Lewinsky Earned Benefit Savior Award for managing to derail Obama's multiple attempts at the same, but similar to Bill it will merely be a "and it could have been worse foot note" to his history. But whatever else the last three Presidents do have one thing in common all have ended their terms with a lot of Americans, probably even most demanding change.

    Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and while it is more likely that Trump will just accelerate the descent this country has been on for over three decades that part of me still sings that it might not be that way and sees chance for sanity and humanity to triumph over greed, selfishness and corruption. Unlike Dickinson's my version was abashed for most of the last six years, and it could become dormant and silent in even less time for Trump. But it still exists, still beats and still sings and will again for Americans do not give up on change, someday we will get it in the manner we really want.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 1:30 pm

    Pat
    December 31, 2016 at 1:11 pm

    " give the Tea Party the Monica Lewinsky Earned Benefit Savior Award "

    THAT IS RICH!!!
    hmmmmm .was the sloppiness of the fore mentioned young lady uh, hiding the evidencedue to her being a repub "undercover" agent? Hmmmmmm ..

    OIFVet , December 31, 2016 at 5:55 pm

    There but for a sloppy BJ and a cigar Says a lot about the precariousness of what was once called the "Third Rail" of politics.

    JTMcPhee , December 31, 2016 at 10:26 pm

    Seems to me it doesn't matter, except as a debating point or for bragging rights or tribal supremacy, or other inconsequentialisms, which figurehead was "worse for the country. " Seems to me there's not much of a "country" remaining. And from the standpoint of this one ordinary person, GWB/BHO are just file tabs in the Rulers' great cabinet of horrors.

    But may I offer the obligatory and mostly sincere traditional wishes to all here, that you have a peaceful and kindly New Year!

    hunkerdown , January 1, 2017 at 12:38 am

    Indeed, isn't the obsession with ranking a major driver of the emptiness of liberalism as the game is played? It's learned, I'm certain; I'm as certain it can be unlearned, given stern enough measures.

    aab , December 31, 2016 at 11:50 pm

    Coming back hours after I read it to say I love this comment, and I love the extention of the Dickinson metaphor. Let us sing and beat our wings until the vibration cracks the bars on our cage.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 1:15 pm

    http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/312307-washington-post-raises-dark-suspicions-about-trumps-russia

    "Why is Mr. Trump so dismissive of Russia's dangerous behavior? Some say it is his lack of experience in foreign policy, or an oft-stated admiration for strongmen, or naivete about Russian intentions. But darker suspicions persist."

    The editorial concluded by connecting the president-elect's "odd behavior" toward Russia with his lack of transparency when it comes to his business empire.

    "Are there loans or deals with Russian businesses or the state that were concealed during the campaign? Are there hidden communications with Mr. Putin or his representatives?" The newspaper speculated.

    "We would be thrilled to see all the doubts dispelled, but Mr. Trump's odd behavior in the face of a clear threat from Russia, matched by Mr. Putin's evident enthusiasm for the president-elect, cannot be easily explained."

    ==========================================================
    SO it begins ..

    I was thinking my impeachment hypothesis was premature, given Trump hasn't even been sworn in ..but now I don't think so.

    DJG , December 31, 2016 at 1:25 pm

    The recording of the chant in the virtual Ayia Sofia embedded in the American Conservative story is indeed beautiful. There has also been considerable speculation about the acoustics in San Marco in Venice, which is also a modified Byzantine layout. One writer points out that more than one choir was stationed in San Marco, so as to enhance the polyphony. I wonder if this was the case in Ayia Sophia, with its gigantic galleries.

    I was reminded of the importance of the tradition of chanting (no musical instruments) among the Orthodox Christians and the Churches of the East. It is a distinctive tradition not much known in the U S of A, where people like to make claims that unimportant splinter groups like the Seventh Day Adventists have universal appeal. (But so much of "American religion" is so thoroughly parochial–and we are sure to be treated to much much much more of its certainties in the Trump cabinet.) Ayia Sofia, the church of the holy and divine wisdom is a cautionary tale about universal appeals, as is its new, thoroughly iconoclatic decor.

    Ayia Sofia is indeed a contraditory place, as the article notes. It is suffused with the Istanbul melancholy that Orhan Pamuk describes. Not so far away, in the Fatih neighborhood, and higher up, the Suleimaniye mosque (built by the Sinan the convert) also glows in contradictory splendor.

    Jay M , December 31, 2016 at 1:50 pm

    Taibbi making his serious journo bones?
    "Russia at first pledged, darkly, to retaliate, then backed off. The Russian press today is even reporting that Vladimir Putin is inviting "the children of American diplomats" to "visit the Christmas tree in the Kremlin," as characteristically loathsome/menacing/sarcastic a Putin response as you'll find."
    "He's gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything."
    I realize the Crimea/Sudetenland parallel makes Putin out to be Hitler . . .
    And 0bama to Chamberlain? Oh wait!

    Jay M , December 31, 2016 at 1:52 pm

    Taibbi making his serious journo bones?
    "Russia at first pledged, darkly, to retaliate, then backed off. The Russian press today is even reporting that Vladimir Putin is inviting "the children of American diplomats" to "visit the Christmas tree in the Kremlin," as characteristically loathsome/menacing/sarcastic a Putin response as you'll find."
    "He's gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything."

    I realize the Crimea/Sudetenland parallel makes Putin out to be Hitler . . .
    And 0bama to Chamberlain? Oh wait!

    Jay M , December 31, 2016 at 1:54 pm

    Taibbi making his serious journo bones?
    "Russia at first pledged, darkly, to retaliate, then backed off. The Russian press today is even reporting that Vladimir Putin is inviting "the children of American diplomats" to "visit the Christmas tree in the Kremlin," as characteristically loathsome/menacing/sarcastic a Putin response as you'll find."
    "He's gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything."

    I realize the Crimea/Sudetenland parallel makes Putin out to be Hitler . . .
    And 0bama to be Chamberlain? Oh wait!

    Pespi , December 31, 2016 at 2:04 pm

    I have a question for anyone who's been around a little while. Has political/media rhetoric always been as inflated and over the top as it is now? ie Washpost calling Russian hacking "cyber pearl harbor."

    Is this old hat or something caused by the attention economy?

    Katharine , December 31, 2016 at 2:52 pm

    This is way worse than it used to be. There was something to be said for stodgy journalism. Even when it misrepresented reality, it did so in terms that sounded comparatively measured and adult, not like hysterical kids on a playground.

    Susan C , December 31, 2016 at 8:24 pm

    I agree – I have never seen journalism like this before. Have been watching a lot of MSNBC and CNN during the past few weeks and I can't believe how over the top they are about the Russian hacking story – it goes on for hours. And the papers too. Is it that it is a slow news period and they have to keep their audiences shocked and awed all the time? I have no idea why this is going on about the Russian hacking unless the media is trying very hard to change people's opinions about Russia, and if they are, why? What's the objective? And the 99 senators too are in on this? They make it sound very serious and yet it seems everyone is being hacked all the time anyway.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 3:38 pm

    Pespi
    December 31, 2016 at 2:04 pm

    Good question Pespi. I don't know, but it seems worse to me. But its kinda like asking a fish if its drier than it used to be – we live in a media world, and its not so much the answers they give, but the questions they ask. I'm so old I remember when Obama MOCKED Ronmey for asserting the Russians were a threat ..But no one asks Obama how the harmless Russkies became a threat on his watch .

    AND I am old enough to remember when the the press was considered leftish because of Vietnam and cynicism about government pronouncements. So this belief by the press in the virtue of the CIA is something that I have a tough time processing .

    Aumua , December 31, 2016 at 3:43 pm

    I offer my subjective opinion, not backed up by anything other than that I've been around for 4+ decades.

    The level of brazenly open propagandizing is unprecedented. It was over the top through much of the election cycle, and now it's gone completely off the rails. The credibility of a) the politicians, b) the news agencies, and c) the 3 letter agencies behind the current balls-to-the-wall effort is at risk of being completely destroyed. Apparently they think the stakes are that high that they are all in on this.

    Waldenpond , December 31, 2016 at 5:30 pm

    I think it has to do with repealing the law that put some limits on the ability of the govt to propagandize it's own people. Journalists now print whatever bs some anonymous official sends them, no questions ask, or alternately sit on twitter.

    JTMcPhee , December 31, 2016 at 8:43 pm

    You folks need to go back in time to the 18th and 19th and early 20th Centuries in America, when political invective was both more colorful, vicious, and inventive than the fairly bland Bernaysian sauce and tribal butt-baring and chest-thumping that's au courant.

    Andrew Watts , December 31, 2016 at 2:13 pm

    RE: Russia Reaches Syria Cease-Fire Pact With Turkey- and the U.S. Had Nothing to Do With It

    Why would Iran and Hezbollah go along with it? The only plausible answer I can think of is that neither believe this cease fire will last. Already there are unconfirmed reports of renewed jihadi-rebel in-fighting and hostilities between pro-government forces and the not-so-moderate rebels.

    Tom , December 31, 2016 at 2:29 pm

    Re: Brexit vote sparks rush of British Jews seeking Portuguese passports

    Amusingly, Jews in Britain actually voted as a majority in favor of Brexit. Perhaps the press is furthering anti-semitic stereotypes which claim that Jews seek internationalism and consolidation of power at the expense of local governance? You might consider posting articles on this sensitive subject which are more than just a description of an event followed by pointing and sputtering.

    hunkerdown , December 31, 2016 at 6:01 pm

    Linkage is not endorsement. It may be difficult for those that prize bourgeois loyalty and tribal exceptionalism - you know, Americans - to understand, but there it is.

    It's a big Internet, paid Democrat troII. There are many places for you to ply your trade where you would be welcome.

    Andrew Watts , December 31, 2016 at 2:42 pm


    RE: Russia's response to Obama 'is frankly the most damaging and embarrassing answer we could receive'

    I don't think Putin and Lavrov are playing good cop/bad cop. As per the rules of diplomacy Lavrov expects to answer every tit with a retaliatory tat. Putin is different. His professional experience is formerly of counter-intelligence. Which means he probably realizes what's happening and Russia isn't the actual target in this propaganda war.

    Consider the following

    RE: Something About This Russia Story Stinks

    Taibbi and his friends in the media are right. They have every reason to be worried. After all they're the primary target in this propaganda war. It took me awhile to figure out what was happening even though something seemed familiar after the Washington Post story about fake news and the slandering of Naked Capitalism. I finally figured out why and the reason the CIA was taking the lead in promoting the "Russia election hacks!" story. But then I remembered the stories about the British Security Coordination (BSC)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Security_Coordination

    The BSC didn't just recruit journalists or influence newspapers in it's operation to tilt public opinion towards the Allied cause. They engaged in misinformation/disinformation campaigns against people they perceived as their enemies; anti-New Dealers, isolationists, and right-wing Republicans. They had sympathetic journalists plant false new stories in their papers that attempted to incite legal action, death threats, and in at least one instance an eviction notice from the target's home through intimidation of the landlord.

    What the CIA is doing now reeks of the BSC. Up to and including inciting the country into a war. After all the CIA's predecessor agency the OSS learned everything they knew at their feet.

    Bernard , December 31, 2016 at 3:01 pm

    inverted totalitarianism, or a police state, whatever you call America today, America is run by the rich, for the rich and by the rich. Checks and Balances designed to "safeguard" Government are working to insure the Rich keep their control.

    Naivete/Willful Ignorance is such a frightening mindset. Watching others, who have no clue, speak about how much better our Banana Republic (America) is, say, compared to Mother Russia's version proves how well American have been "trained." American Exceptionalism! Because America!!!

    scary, absolutely scary to see the endless displays of ignorance; no matter the cause, watching the fruits of Fascism/Inverted Totalitarianism flow unchecked and unchallenged is not something I can stomach. a wince here and an "oh no" there. the descent into Fascism is really awful. no matter what you call it.

    Waldenpond , December 31, 2016 at 5:32 pm

    It isn't just apparent the parties have morphed, the base of the parties have also. It looks like about the same number of Rs believed at one time O was born in Kenya as Ds believe Russia, Russia, Russia took the win from their beloved oligarch Clinton (52%).

    Trixie from Dixie , December 31, 2016 at 5:33 pm

    the future we leave for our children. Will they forgive us? Can we forgive ourselves? How'd that hope and change work out? No worry, rump to the rescue! Happy New Year everyone! And thanks to NC for all you do!

    Andrew Watts , December 31, 2016 at 3:03 pm

    *I was in a rush yesterday so this is a follow-up to yesterday's hastily written comment on the torture report. Any fault or errors in that comment can be attributed to my gullibility.

    Most of the information about the specific instance of the CIA torturing an individual in Lebanon came from a biography on Bob Ames titled The Good Spy (2014) by Kai Bird. Which was a pretty good book. Ames has an interesting history. He forged a relationship which the author characterized as a friendship with high ranking individuals in the Palestinian Liberation Organization at a time when the PLO was labeled as a terrorist organization. It was this back channel connection that formed the basis of American diplomacy for peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. He died in the 1983 embassy bombing.

    -The individual who was tortured and died soon afterward was Elias Nimr . A Christian intelligence chieftain who appears to have played every side and angle he could during the Lebanon Civil War.

    -The name of the CIA contractor who tortured Nimr was identified as Keith "Captain Crunch" Hall . He was originally identified by Mark Bowden in his book Road Work: Among Tyrants, Heroes, Rogues, and Beasts. (2007) A former Marine before he joined the CIA and was later a cop in California.

    Similar methods that resulted in the death of prisoners during CIA's systemic torture program during the Bush Administration were used. They'd dump cold water on'em and leave them in a cold cell. Nimr was left in a cell with a fan blowing cold air on them. Hall wasn't present at the time Nimr died.

    -Bob Baer neglects to mention this specific incident of torture in See No Evil but doesn't blame Nimr for the bombing of the embassy. *cough* Appropriately titled book if you ask me. *cough* A part of his theory on the masterminds behind the '83 embassy bombings involves a former PLO turned Hezbollah operative named Imad Mughniyeh . Baer claims that Mughniyeh is was still in contact with his old Fatah contacts when the embassy was bombed.

    Besides the embassy bombing Mughniyeh was blamed for a lot of other terrorist acts that I think are based on nothing more than circumstantial evidence. Contemporary analysis suggests it's basically the "Blame Putin!" trope in action.

    -The name of the alleged defector from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was actually a deputy defense minister and former brigadier general named Ali Reza Asgari . There was and still probably is controversy whether he was kidnapped or defected. The Iranians wouldn't want it known that such a high ranking defector went over to the West hence the kidnapping story.

    Hah! Guess not posting much for a few months finally caught up with me.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 3:42 pm

    Andrew Watts
    December 31, 2016 at 3:03 pm

    Thanks for the comments – very elucidating!

    megamie , December 31, 2016 at 3:12 pm

    Fascinating:
    When Finnish Teachers Work in America's Public Schools
    There are more restrictions to professional freedom in the United States, and the educators find the school day overly rigid.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/11/when-finnish-teachers-work-in-americas-public-schools/508685/?utm_source=atlfb&single_page=true

    JEHR , December 31, 2016 at 3:17 pm

    Re: Canadian Hemisphere: I have always been ashamed of Canadian mining and resources extractors who work in other countries, especially Latin America. Most Canadians think of themselves as fair and judicious but that is not always true when it comes to mining in foreign countries. Canadian mining companies have despoiled land, water and air while exploiting workers' human rights. It is a depressing aspect of Canadian resource imperialism which is every bit as destructive as any other "imperial" adventure.

    Here is one description of such despicable Canadian behaviour.

    Bernard , December 31, 2016 at 3:18 pm

    inverted totalitarianism, or a police state, whatever you call America today, America is run by the rich, for the rich and by the rich. Thanks to Congress, Republican and Democrats, Partners in Crime. All those "Checks and Balances" designed to "safeguard" Government are working,for sure, but now working to insure the Rich keep their control. The Republican and the Vichy Party/Democrats make sure "Government" does whatever Business wants. Who need competition when you own The US Government! not Capitalism!, that's for sure. or as i've heard, Capitalism can only be failed. Like Conservatism. The age old scam of stealing from the Poor to give to the Rich.

    Watching others, who offer platitudes, speak about how much better our Banana Republic (America) is, say, compared to Mother Russia's version, proves how well Americans have been "trained." American Exceptionalism! Because America!!! I know very little about Russia, but i know a lot more about how we/Americans are being scammed. That is what Congress is for.

    scary, absolutely scary to see the endless displays of ignorance; no matter the cause, watching the fruits of Fascism/Inverted Totalitarianism flow unchecked and unchallenged is not something I can stomach. a wince here and an "oh no" there. the descent into Fascism is really awful. no matter what you call it.
    of course, then again, i can see who is stealing what from whom, and it ain't pretty to watch it go on, year after year. Thanks to Congress and the American Voter, we have reaped the whirlwind.

    Trixie from Dixie , December 31, 2016 at 8:10 pm

    it makes one physically ill Not to mention psychologically ill.
    Maybe lots of red wine is needed . I heard it is good for health?

    Plenue , December 31, 2016 at 3:54 pm

    >The Virtual Hagia Sophia The American Conservative

    "The sense of tragedy over the fate of the great cathedral is unlike anything I've ever felt."

    Hahaha. Ahhhhh, Christians. "This giant Church being converted into a Mosque dedicated to the same Abrahamic God is a great tragedy." Get over yourselves. It's a poncy over-enginereed shrine.

    hunkerdown , December 31, 2016 at 6:05 pm

    Abrahamic Exceptionalism is insufferable. How do we do it every day.

    Vatch , December 31, 2016 at 8:24 pm

    I'm rather partial to the Bagan Hindu temple complex in Myanmar/Burma, to the Buddhist temples in Borobudur, Java,and to the Abu Simbel temples in southern Egypt. It's a pity the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, are gone.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 3:56 pm

    https://theoutline.com/post/351/valley-of-the-dolts

    Let us state the obvious: None of these men are Roman Emperors, and they haven't got the wherewithal to "blow up" anything but a stock market bubble. They are not Lex Luthors or Gandalfs or Stalins. Their products do not bring about revolutions. They are simply robber barons, JP Morgans and Andrew Mellons in mediocre T-shirts. I have no doubt that many are preternaturally intelligent, hardworking people, and it is a shame that they have dedicated these talents to the mundane accumulation of capital. But there is nothing remarkable about these men. The Pirates of Silicon Valley do not have imperial ambitions. They have financial ones.
    The vast majority of Silicon Valley startups, the sort that project lofty missions and managed improbably lucrative IPOs despite never having graced the cover of The Economist or the frontal cortex of the president, work precisely like any other kind of mundane sales operation in search of a product: Underpaid cold-callers receive low wages and less job security in exchange for a foosball table and the burden of growing a company as quickly as possible so that it can reach a liquidation event. Owners and investors get rich. Managers stay comfortable. The employees get hosed. None of this is particularly original. At least the real robber barons built the railroads.
    ==============================
    Why IS Facebook, a not nearly as crappy email system, worth so much money?
    Thats like asking why do intestinal parasites want to eat your sh*t? No, they want to eat YOU .

    cnchal , December 31, 2016 at 8:43 pm

    The Fed works in mysterious ways.

    Elizabeth Burton , December 31, 2016 at 4:20 pm

    Considering part of the original Cold War mania was devised to cover up the fact the US was importing a slew of former Nazis for varied and sundry reasons, not to mention allowing them to slip into hiding without any real effort made to find them, one does have to wonder at the coincidence that we are now engaging in neo-Cold War rhetoric just as the "alt-right" neo-Nazis have been granted dispensation to go public.

    Of course, one could believe the idea that all those former Nazis were really just poor souls who only worked for the Third Reich out of fear for their families and were, therefore, only too happy to embrace the joys of American freedom. One could, were it not for the other coincidence that similar fascist organizations have arisen almost simultaneously to public attention throughout Europe.

    But never mind. That's tinfoil-hat stuff. We trounced all that Nazi scum, and besides most of the people weren't really Nazis and didn't believe all that stuff. Right?

    Jay M , December 31, 2016 at 4:38 pm

    (to beat this dead horse a little more)
    Taibbi making his serious journo bones?
    "Russia at first pledged, darkly, to retaliate, then backed off. The Russian press today is even reporting that Vladimir Putin is inviting "the children of American diplomats" to "visit the Christmas tree in the Kremlin," as characteristically loathsome/menacing/sarcastic a Putin response as you'll find."
    "He's gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything."

    I realize the Crimea/Sudetenland parallel makes Putin out to be Hitler . . .
    And 0bama to be Chamberlain? Oh wait!

    Jay M , December 31, 2016 at 4:44 pm

    sorry about multiple posts, I kept getting a screen that NC page wasn't working, and remembered about the site update finally
    don't think my comment was that wonderful, and happy new year

    petal , December 31, 2016 at 4:50 pm

    Same thing happened to me but I didn't think it was during the time window. My apologies for the double post!

    ambrit , December 31, 2016 at 5:12 pm

    Me two!

    sd , December 31, 2016 at 5:27 pm

    Over at Jesses Cafe Americaine, a radio interview with Thomas Frank.

    How the Democratic Party Failed By Repudiating Their Legacy as 'The Party of the People'
    http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2016/12/how-democratic-party-failed-by.html

    ewmayer , December 31, 2016 at 5:37 pm

    o "Why Google co-founder Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars | Vox" - Because haedlines about such squillionaire "thought leader" pipe dreams keep his name in the news and help to goose Google's share price? Nah, that couldn't be it

    o "Self-Driving Cars Will Make Organ Shortages Even Worse | Slashdot (Chuck L)" - Because they'll kill off all the bicyclists in Year 1, leading to a donor-organ boom/bust?

    o "Scientists edge closer to bringing back from the dead the fabled aurochs, giant wild cattle that once roamed Europe's forests | Telegraph" - Without a roamable forest for the critters to live in, what's the point - more animal cruelty?

    Waldenpond , December 31, 2016 at 5:52 pm

    AVs and people will have to be kept separate once the market has benefited from the needed short term boom in organs. AVs can't even handle fixed red lights let alone moving objects. Perhaps pedestrian overpasses or simply ban cars on every fourth street and designate to bikes and pedestrians.

    Profit! There will be a market for aurochs . canned hunting expeditions on private property and niche meat like they do with bison provided they don't carry brucellosis
    .

    hunkerdown , December 31, 2016 at 8:19 pm

    They gotta foam the roadway, man. Set quotas and stuff like that. And, hey, when it's time for David Rockefeller to get heart #11, he can just Uber it.

    AdelleChattre , December 31, 2016 at 6:40 pm

    Happy New Year's Eve, and better luck next year, folks! I'll just leave this here
    Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition . By Alnoor Ladha, Martin Kirk.

    Jay M , December 31, 2016 at 8:14 pm

    I see the chef at the Russian consulate in SF was sacked by the 0bama credo.
    No doubt the microfiche was secreted in the crab in season.

    [Jan 01, 2017] New Russian Hacks ? No, Old Ukrainian Malware Found.

    Notable quotes:
    "... For any American leader, an attempt to subvert U.S. democracy ought to be unforgivable - even if he is the intended beneficiary. Some years ago, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned of a "cyber-Pearl Harbor," and the fear at the time was of a cyberattack collapsing electric grids or crashing financial markets. Now we have a real cyber-Pearl Harbor, though not one that was anticipated. ..."
    "... Pearl Harbor was followed by the U.S. entry into a world war. Do the editors want to repeat that when alluding to it? ..."
    "... I suspect that the pushing of the Vermont hack was also an attempted hit against Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont who was scammed out of the Democratic candidacy by the Clinton aligned Democratic National Council. He would now either have to jump on the "Russian hacking->bad Putin->bad-Trump" train or could be blamed of pro-Russian, pro-Putin and pro-Trump tendencies. All such tendencies are of course bad in the view of the pseudo-liberal Washington establishment which is busy promoting the New Red Scare . ..."
    "... But back to that malware. DHS and FBI had published a " report " (pdf) which again attempted to blame Russia of hacking the Democratic National Council while again providing zero actual evidence of such a hack (hint: there is none). The 13 pages include 2 with amateur graphics of a trivial hack architecture and 7 with amateur advice on how to protect a network. Of interest in it were samples and checksums of moduls of the hacking software it attributed to Russia and a list of IP addresses through which it claims the DNC hack was made. Of special interest is also what it does not say . ..."
    "... The whole bogus "Russian hacking" and "Putin did it" claims are issued to lock the coming President Trump into an anti-Russian position. Peace with Russia means less plausible "imminent threat" claims and thereby lower budgets and management prestige for the defense and cybersecurity industry and government organizations. That again would mean lower advertisement income for the Washington Post and less money for its staff, editors and owner. ..."
    "... These people would rather have Word War III than to endure that. ..."
    "... b, 'Peace with Russia means less plausible "imminent threat" claims and thereby lower budgets and management prestige for the defense and cybersecurity industry and government organizations. ...' ..."
    "... so they have decided to preemptively make their own 'imminent threat' claims less plausible by endlessly crying 'wolf! wolf!' themselves when there is no wolf. the neo-con brain trust ... idiots and fools. this all goes hand in hand with obama's childish dismissal of the russians in new york and maryland, and appears as foolish as did obama himself in the light of putin's disdain for the lamest of lame ducks who cannot simply learn to lose. ..."
    "... tee-rump's reply to putin's exercise of restraint together with his previous allusion ... these are the same guys who brought us wmds and the shocking, awful wars in afghanistan, iraq, libya, ukraine and syria ... have shown that he is not affected by their bluff ... that he knows he has the support of the fossil-fuelers, at least, probably of the financiers as well ..."
    "... the neo-con hyperventilation ... including that of bibi netanyahoo ... betrays their recognition of their own collapse. the thousand year reich lasted 9 years, the plan for a new american century lasted 15 ... good riddance to bad rubbish, as we used to say in the schoolyard as children, for that's the level the bezos' blog and the neo-cons shrieking behind the curtain. ..."
    "... while just 14% of their self-identifying republicrats - the new, majority party in the us federal government - take the overall 'the russians are coming' scam seriously, fully 50% of those self-identifying as demoblicans - the new, minority party in the us federal government - do so. ..."
    "... VP Pence is a friend of McCain's, supports Syrian 'no-fly' zones, and supports the TPP (aka "Obamatrade"). He voted for the Iraq War and agreed with Hillary's deposing Qaddafi. ..."
    "... that certainly paints a target on tee-rump's back, doesn't it? tee-rump really needs to kill the cia in the pale afternoon of 20 january 2017, or they'll surely kill him! ..."
    "... "It is therefore inconceivable that the NSA would not have detected and traced those particular data flows . . ." ..."
    "... It must be a job to continue debunking the childish lies of Barack Obama and his gang of ineptitude officials. It is unfortunately that human beings are dumb, otherwise there would have been no need to respond to the stream of idiotic pronouncements of the White House and the Anglo American mainstream media. ..."
    "... I predict that Barack Obama and his wife will check into therapy as soon as they remove their baggage from the White House. Crooked Clintons seem to have got a lock on them, so they are ready to leave office in disgrace just to please the disgraceful Clinton family. ..."
    "... Now let's have some more holier-than-thou talk from WaPo and NYT about "fake news" on the internet. The WaPo has become a cess-pool of lies and misinformation ever since Bezos took it over and started turning it into a tabloid. ..."
    "... Sen. John McCain said Friday that Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election amounted to an "act of war." The Arizona Republican, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also has scheduled a hearing for next week on foreign cyberthreats to the US, which will also focus on Russian cyberhacking, a committee aide told CNN earlier Friday. McCain, who is one of Washington's most prominent foreign policy hardliners, has criticized the recent sanctions and expulsions announced by the Obama administration this week as insufficient and belated. He made his latest comments in Ukraine, a nation threatened by a resurgent Russia, after meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. ..."
    "... Obama isn't a dingbat. He is devious. ..."
    "... I kept insisting that the DNC hacking was a False Flag, and idem on this one; but keep on guessing who's behind it. I expect there will be yet more False Flags to move the U.S. in the right direction. ..."
    "... Obama went berserk, he went insane showed himself as a puny vindictive partisan weasel not worthy presidency in the first place regardless of his murderous and imperial policies and utter submission to Wall Street thieves, with despicable character that shows itself in his childlike temper tantrum rants unworthy of any federal employee not to mention POTUS. ..."
    "... Once, in less insane times, had some government been found to have tampered with elections, the heads of the agencies responsible for protecting against that would now be testifying before Congress and trying to explain how they let that happen. ..."
    "... Some of the officials would resign in disgrace, some would no doubt have been found to have lied and to have tried to cover up their incompetence, and probably at least someone would have gone to jail. ..."
    "... These stories reflect the demonize Russia as the latest enemy and throw as much "evidence" at the wall that will stick. ..."
    Jan 01, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

    All recent claims of "Russian hacking" are either outright false or are based on "evidence" that only shows run-of-the-mill attacks by some anonymous basement hacker.

    The year 2016 saw the person elected U.S. president who Jeff Bezos' propaganda rag, the Washington Post, hated most. To celebrate the end of this very bad year its writers and editors decided to put more egg on their faces. It first published the piece promoted on the left and some three hours later the fundamentally "corrected" one on the right .

    The claim in the first piece, based on anonymous "officials", was that Russia hacked into the U.S. electricity grid through a utility company in Vermont. But then the utility companies in question, Burlington Electric, issued a statement that a recent scan of its IT systems had found only one laptop with some malware and that the laptop in questions was not connected to its networks at all. There was nothing found on any net-connected system. It had reported the find to the federal U.S. government. (Some very shortsighted "officials" immediately abused the confidential company information to miss-inform the Washington Post.) The utility company found the malware by scanning for a malware signature published in a lame recent assessment by Homeland Security and the FBI.

    Dubious claims of foreign hacking of the electricity grid have already been made in 2009 . Its an old trick of the Obama administration to achieve some political aims. The Washington Post was obviously so eager to publish another of its daily "Russian hacking" fakes that it did not even ask the two Vermont utilities in question before pushing the stenographed piece out of the door. That may well have been because the lead editorial of that day was warning of Putin hacking the U.S. electricity network and (again) hitting at Trump:

    For any American leader, an attempt to subvert U.S. democracy ought to be unforgivable - even if he is the intended beneficiary. Some years ago, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned of a "cyber-Pearl Harbor," and the fear at the time was of a cyberattack collapsing electric grids or crashing financial markets. Now we have a real cyber-Pearl Harbor, though not one that was anticipated.

    Pearl Harbor was followed by the U.S. entry into a world war. Do the editors want to repeat that when alluding to it?

    The editorial also pushed a bunch of wholly invented conspiracy theories:

    Why is Mr. Trump so dismissive of Russia's dangerous behavior? Some say it is his lack of experience in foreign policy, or an oft-stated admiration for strongmen, or naivete about Russian intentions. But darker suspicions persist. Mr. Trump has steadfastly refused to be transparent about his multibillion-dollar business empire. Are there loans or deals with Russian businesses or the state that were concealed during the campaign? Are there hidden communications with Mr. Putin or his representatives? We would be thrilled to see all the doubts dispelled, but Mr. Trump's odd behavior in the face of a clear threat from Russia , matched by Mr. Putin's evident enthusiasm for the president-elect, cannot be easily explained .

    During the election campaign WaPo was the news paper with the most anti-Trump screeds on its neoconned editorial page. That actually helped Trump by making him the obvious anti-Neocon candidate. But "Pearl Harbor" comparisons and "darker suspicions" beat even the most stupid earlier pieces on him.

    I suspect that the pushing of the Vermont hack was also an attempted hit against Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont who was scammed out of the Democratic candidacy by the Clinton aligned Democratic National Council. He would now either have to jump on the "Russian hacking->bad Putin->bad-Trump" train or could be blamed of pro-Russian, pro-Putin and pro-Trump tendencies. All such tendencies are of course bad in the view of the pseudo-liberal Washington establishment which is busy promoting the New Red Scare .

    But back to that malware. DHS and FBI had published a " report " (pdf) which again attempted to blame Russia of hacking the Democratic National Council while again providing zero actual evidence of such a hack (hint: there is none). The 13 pages include 2 with amateur graphics of a trivial hack architecture and 7 with amateur advice on how to protect a network. Of interest in it were samples and checksums of moduls of the hacking software it attributed to Russia and a list of IP addresses through which it claims the DNC hack was made. Of special interest is also what it does not say .

    Several well known IT security experts have said earlier , like me , that such "reports" and claims are bullshit. A few more add to that:

    • Jonathon Zdziarski :

      Any antivirus company doing any amount of threat intelligence would be able to come up with more solid indicators than FBI released.

    • John McAfee (now often nutty but right in this):

      If it looks like the Russians did it I can guarantee you it wasn't the Russians.

    • Matt Tait :

      My money's on this all turns out to be commodity malware and not even APT28/APT29 and everyone jumping on the bandwagon will look v silly

    All, and especially Matt Tait, are right.

    Wordfence, also a reputed IT security company, took a detailed look at the samples and tables in the new DHS/FBI "report" and concludes:

    The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors , especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes.

    The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian . It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website.

    There is your "Russian hack" the DHS and FBI claim hit the DNC servers and WaPo falsely claimed hit the U.S. electricity grid. A run-of-the-mill hack through freely available servers with old Ukrainian malware just like the hundred-thousand others that happen each day.

    ... ... ...

    But if you, like me, believe the word of former British ambassador Craig Murray who works with Wikileaks, there was no hack at all. The DNC data came via an insider who had direct access to them. They were handed to Craig for publishing by Wikileaks.

    The whole bogus "Russian hacking" and "Putin did it" claims are issued to lock the coming President Trump into an anti-Russian position. Peace with Russia means less plausible "imminent threat" claims and thereby lower budgets and management prestige for the defense and cybersecurity industry and government organizations. That again would mean lower advertisement income for the Washington Post and less money for its staff, editors and owner.

    These people would rather have Word War III than to endure that.

    Oui | Dec 31, 2016 11:27:04 AM | 1
    The old con-man McCain calling in from the Ukraine:

    Russian cyberattacks 'an act of war'

    Ghostship | Dec 31, 2016 11:51:44 AM | 2
    rather have Word War III
    The current version of Microsoft Word (365 or whatever) is so shite, I'd nuke Redmond if I was Trump.
    WorldBLee | Dec 31, 2016 11:54:10 AM | 3
    There really are no words for the stupidity, small-mindedness, and mendacity of the Washington Post, NYT, and CNN (to name but three of the hacks that report on behalf of the powers-that-be) these days. I mean, they were always bad but they are continually striking new lows as if they were the inverse of the US stock market.
    kraus | Dec 31, 2016 12:18:38 PM | 6

    ...For those who missed the REAL hacking story: not covered by the lying fake news msm!
    "US government hackers attacked russian electric grid"
    https://www.rt.com/usa/372347-russian-hackers-power-grid/

    kraus | Dec 31, 2016 12:28:16 PM | 7
    Soon a laptop will appear in the white house, sigh this crazy desinformation is getting ugly.

    Last month US actually hacked russian grid systems!
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-government-military-hackers-dnc-homeland-security-nsa-clinton-election-day-a7398881.html

    mauisurfer | Dec 31, 2016 12:47:57 PM | 8
    Exit Obama in a Cloud of Disillusion, Delusion and Deceit 100
    31 Dec, 2016 in Uncategorized by craig

    I had promised myself and my family that on this holiday I would do nothing but relax. However events have overtaken my good intentions. I find myself in the unusual position of having twice been in a position to know directly that governments were lying in globe-shaking events, firstly Iraqi WMD and now the "Russian hacks".

    Anybody who believes the latest report issued by Obama as "proof" provides anything of the sort is very easily impressed by some entirely meaningless diagrams. William Binney, who was Technical Director at the NSA and actually designed their surveillance capabilities, has advised me by email. It is plain from the report itself that the Russian groups discussed have been under targeted NSA surveillance for a period longer than the timeframe for the DNC and Podesta leaks. It is therefore inconceivable that the NSA would not have detected and traced those particular data flows and they would be saved. In other words, the NSA would have the actual hack on record, would be able to recognise the emails themselves and tell you exactly the second the transmission or transmissions took place and how they were routed. They would be able to give you date, time and IP addresses. In fact, not only do they produce no evidence of this kind, they do not even claim to have this kind of definite evidence.

    Secondly, Bill points out that WikiLeaks is in itself a top priority target and any transmission to WikiLeaks or any of its major operatives would be tracked, captured and saved by NSA as a matter of routine. The exact route and date of the transmission or transmissions of the particular emails to WikiLeaks would be available. In fact, not only does the report not make this information available, it makes no claim at all to know anything about how the information was got to WikiLeaks.

    Of course Russian hackers exist. They attack this blog pretty well continually – as do hackers from the USA and many other countries. Of course there have been attempted Russian hacks of the DNC. But the report gives no evidence at all of the alleged successful hack that transmitted these particular emails, nor any evidence of the connection between the hackers and the Russian government, let alone Putin.

    There could be no evidence because in reality these were leaks, not hacks. The report is, frankly, a pile of complete and utter dross. To base grave accusations of election hacking on this report is ludicrous. Obama has been a severe disappointment to all progressive thinkers in virtually every possible way. He now goes out of power with absolutely no grace and in a storm of delusion and deceit. His purpose is apparently to weaken Trump politically, but to achieve that at the expense of heightening tensions with Russia to Cold War levels, is shameful. The very pettiness of Obama's tongue out to Putin – minor sanctions and expelling some diplomatic families – itself shows that Obama is lying about the pretext. If he really believed that Russia had "hacked the election", surely that would require a much less feeble response. By refusing to retaliate, Russia has shown the kind of polish that eludes Obama as he takes his empty charisma and presentational skills into a no doubt lucrative future in the private sector.
    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/exit-obama-cloud-disillusion-delusion-deceit/comment-page-1/#comments

    jfl | Dec 31, 2016 2:01:29 PM | 9
    b, 'Peace with Russia means less plausible "imminent threat" claims and thereby lower budgets and management prestige for the defense and cybersecurity industry and government organizations. ...'

    so they have decided to preemptively make their own 'imminent threat' claims less plausible by endlessly crying 'wolf! wolf!' themselves when there is no wolf. the neo-con brain trust ... idiots and fools. this all goes hand in hand with obama's childish dismissal of the russians in new york and maryland, and appears as foolish as did obama himself in the light of putin's disdain for the lamest of lame ducks who cannot simply learn to lose.

    tee-rump's reply to putin's exercise of restraint together with his previous allusion ... these are the same guys who brought us wmds and the shocking, awful wars in afghanistan, iraq, libya, ukraine and syria ... have shown that he is not affected by their bluff ... that he knows he has the support of the fossil-fuelers, at least, probably of the financiers as well, two out of three of the f*ked up f's, against the fusiliers.

    the neo-con hyperventilation ... including that of bibi netanyahoo ... betrays their recognition of their own collapse. the thousand year reich lasted 9 years, the plan for a new american century lasted 15 ... good riddance to bad rubbish, as we used to say in the schoolyard as children, for that's the level the bezos' blog and the neo-cons shrieking behind the curtain.

    may 2017 be the year of their abject collapse and may they all, including especially their nobel peace prize laureate, live forever in infamy.

    jfl | Dec 31, 2016 2:03:14 PM | 10
    @8 mauisurfer

    thanks for sharing the insights of william blinney ... please ask him if you may share his email with the moon and the world!

    jfl | Dec 31, 2016 2:25:11 PM | 11
    b, 'Of special interest is also what it does not say .'

    the vermont utility scam is just that. the last link within that quoted above points to a graphic from politico that is very informative : while just 14% of their self-identifying republicrats - the new, majority party in the us federal government - take the overall 'the russians are coming' scam seriously, fully 50% of those self-identifying as demoblicans - the new, minority party in the us federal government - do so. in other words, only the scammers themselves claim to 'believe' their own scam.

    the tnc msm : sound and fury signifying nothing. officially.

    Jackrabbit | Dec 31, 2016 2:26:22 PM | 12
    What's behind the anti-Russia hysteria?
    1) Cover for Democratic Party failure?

    2) Cover for fall of Aleppo / Russian success?

    3) "Boxing in" the Trump Administration? (spoiling the supposed Trump-Putin love fest)

    4) Another ploy to unseat Trump? Does trumped-up conflict with Russia mean that the supposed Trump-Putin love fest causes an inability to discharge office of President as per the 25th Amendment ?

    5) All of the above?

    6) Something else?

    <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

    Note: VP Pence is a friend of McCain's, supports Syrian 'no-fly' zones, and supports the TPP (aka "Obamatrade"). He voted for the Iraq War and agreed with Hillary's deposing Qaddafi.

    jfl | Dec 31, 2016 2:35:15 PM | 13
    @11 jr, 'VP Pence is a friend of McCain's, supports Syrian 'no-fly' zones, and supports the TPP (aka "Obamatrade"). He voted for the Iraq War and agreed with Hillary's deposing Qaddafi.'

    that certainly paints a target on tee-rump's back, doesn't it? tee-rump really needs to kill the cia in the pale afternoon of 20 january 2017, or they'll surely kill him!

    let us hope that we can all soon stand over the cia's collective graves till we're sure that they're dead.

    may the cia not reach their three score and ten.

    jfl | Dec 31, 2016 2:41:40 PM | 14
    b,

    great graphic in the last link from ' what it does not say '

    the demoblicans and the tnc msm : the new minority making great sounds and demonstrating great fury yet eating their own dog food and signifying nothing.

    boilo | Dec 31, 2016 2:49:13 PM | 16
    at #8 thank you for this post plus highlight/emphasizing:

    "It is therefore inconceivable that the NSA would not have detected and traced those particular data flows . . ."

    jfl | Dec 31, 2016 2:54:01 PM | 17
    @10, maui wowee

    sorry, due to your unconventional posting style i had thought it was yourself and not craig murray who was in contact with william blinney. i see my error now.

    stumpy | Dec 31, 2016 2:55:51 PM | 18
    The faked news phenom is IMO the result of the US higher education culture finally producing the critical mass of self-entitled narcissistic punks to flood the airwaves with "useful" tripe. Put profit before performance and this is what you get. The only thing I use print media for is lining rabbit cages.

    May the new year be safe and prosperous for fellow bar-dwellers and friends. Bottoms up.

    ToivoS | Dec 31, 2016 3:05:46 PM | 19
    The Guardian is continuing with the claims that Russia is responsible for the malware found in that laptop by adding a little detail that the malware contained code used by the Russians. They do at least tell the reader that the laptop was not connected to the grid.

    This anti-Russian propaganda is getting more extreme by the day. greenwald is collecting many examples on his twitter feed.

    Steve | Dec 31, 2016 3:13:52 PM | 20
    Happy New Year to all. It must be a job to continue debunking the childish lies of Barack Obama and his gang of ineptitude officials. It is unfortunately that human beings are dumb, otherwise there would have been no need to respond to the stream of idiotic pronouncements of the White House and the Anglo American mainstream media.

    I predict that Barack Obama and his wife will check into therapy as soon as they remove their baggage from the White House. Crooked Clintons seem to have got a lock on them, so they are ready to leave office in disgrace just to please the disgraceful Clinton family.

    Denis | Dec 31, 2016 3:38:47 PM | 22
    The WaPo's deceit on this story can't be over-emphasized. The original report by Juliet Eilperin and Adam Entous was dated Dec30. Then their lies about hacking the grid were exposed and they re-wrote the article.

    The WaPo did not just publish a correction with an update date, they republished the article under the new headline and under a new date, Dec31. At the bottom of the current article there is an editor's note referring to an "earlier version" of the article and acknowledging the lie about penetrating the grid. But the significance of the re-write is not obvious from the editor's note or the new headline. Compare the second paragraphs of each version, for instance.

    Now let's have some more holier-than-thou talk from WaPo and NYT about "fake news" on the internet. The WaPo has become a cess-pool of lies and misinformation ever since Bezos took it over and started turning it into a tabloid.

    Jackrabbit | Dec 31, 2016 3:53:57 PM | 23
    followup @11:

    Pence's friend McCain: Russian cyberintrusions an 'act of war'

    Sen. John McCain said Friday that Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election amounted to an "act of war."

    The Arizona Republican, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also has scheduled a hearing for next week on foreign cyberthreats to the US, which will also focus on Russian cyberhacking, a committee aide told CNN earlier Friday.

    McCain, who is one of Washington's most prominent foreign policy hardliners, has criticized the recent sanctions and expulsions announced by the Obama administration this week as insufficient and belated. He made his latest comments in Ukraine, a nation threatened by a resurgent Russia, after meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

    Jackrabbit | Dec 31, 2016 3:57:25 PM | 24
    Steve @18

    Obama isn't a dingbat. He is devious. When I see him acting like a dingbat, I ask: what's he really up to?

    Circe | Dec 31, 2016 4:04:11 PM | 25
    I kept insisting that the DNC hacking was a False Flag, and idem on this one; but keep on guessing who's behind it. I expect there will be yet more False Flags to move the U.S. in the right direction.
    Jackrabbit | Dec 31, 2016 4:33:01 PM | 27
    How John McCain and Mike Pence created a high value target
    rg the lg | Dec 31, 2016 4:37:29 PM | 28
    Back door to war ... the way Roosevelt got us into WWII ... along with a whole string of alleged attacks on the most aggressive and hate filled empire the world has ever known. The Kahns of central Asia, the Romans at their most vicious, could have learned a lot of pure nastiness from the long string of American 'wars for empire' going from the New England and Virginia plantations to the present.

    We hack, that is good. They (might have) hacked, that is bad. Sick ...

    Jennifer | Dec 31, 2016 4:40:57 PM | 29
    The chaos is cover for deep criminality that includes dems, repugs, dictators, respectable people, and criminals on many levels.

    This guy seems to be on the right track as to what's really going on.

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrQ-wHKVi0JDWjQGcuoYnew

    Here are some key videos, it is a complicated puzzle.

    DAY 65 - Where is Eric Braverman? Part 1, The Crime
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UVkkLCrj3w
    DAY 65 - Where is Eric Braverman? Part 2, Coverup
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjhfXhTVjJ4
    Day 65 - Where is Eric Braverman? Part 3, Researcher Version
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvW4k3hDfLQ

    I urge all of you to take a look at this ongoing expose and judge for yourself.

    You will probably be shocked and disgusted at the ugliness of it all.

    Download key videos, just in case it is taken down, and share.

    Here are the latest video.
    Day 68 - Where is Eric Braverman? Part 1
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUvoOVYjNuE
    Day 68 - Where is Eric Braverman? Part 2
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTNPN0snwEU

    Earlier Videos

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfEgn8oXojIJQHhokupVf9w

    How to investigate – lots of tips in these two

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBqX5FiinYM

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K0k84CXkRM

    We must confront these criminals if we are to have a future.

    Happy New Year

    Kalen | Dec 31, 2016 5:58:33 PM | 30
    Obama went berserk, he went insane showed himself as a puny vindictive partisan weasel not worthy presidency in the first place regardless of his murderous and imperial policies and utter submission to Wall Street thieves, with despicable character that shows itself in his childlike temper tantrum rants unworthy of any federal employee not to mention POTUS.

    I, as a harsh critic of Trump incoherent style must admit that Obama's abhorrent behavior made Trump look like statesman.

    Obama unnecessarily, senselessly, horribly embarrassed the office of POTUS and destroyed any chance for another African American to be near the WH for another century. And what for?

    For sore looser claims that elections were rigged against Hillary because of Podesta email hack? That's the nonsense, the only document rigging attempt was DHS in few states.

    People must understand that any information could influence a voter but as long it is true it is legal and acceptable element of electoral process. It is an act of due influence performed by all candidates themselves, their campaigns as well as supporting special interests, investigative journalists and independent bloggers who work to reveal true picture of a candidate in relation to their qualifications, skills, experience and moral values that would inform his/her choices in office.

    Only proliferated lies may be construed as "unduly" influencing public but only if not countered by the publishing the truth and evidence for it.

    Podesta emails told the truth about Hillary and her insidious or even illegal manipulation of the primaries and her attitude of entitlement informed by her imperial hubris and likely illegal money manipulation. So told the truth disclosed of Trump scandals with Trump University or sexual harassment or bankruptcies.

    And for that reason alone [the truth in Podesta emails] there could be no connection between elections outcome and alleged Russia hacks.

    Hacks themselves even if true but no evidence presented as of yet, would have been a minor episode, worth of a brief headline especially when it is US and Israel who are real cyber aggressors.

    Ken Nari | Dec 31, 2016 5:58:40 PM | 31
    Once, in less insane times, had some government been found to have tampered with elections, the heads of the agencies responsible for protecting against that would now be testifying before Congress and trying to explain how they let that happen.

    Some of the officials would resign in disgrace, some would no doubt have been found to have lied and to have tried to cover up their incompetence, and probably at least someone would have gone to jail.

    That the U.S. is helpless in the face for foreign technology that information would be kept top secret while a huge effort would be initiated to catch up. The vulnerability would not be broadcast, you can be sure.

    Probably nowhere has critical thinking been more effectively stamped out than in the American public. Gradually, however -- I think -- people in the U.S. are slowly beginning to awake from their comfortable stupor.

    rm | Dec 31, 2016 10:04:40 PM | 33
    Proviso to the 'intelligence' report : (DHS) "does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information
    contained within" (JAR_16-20296)
    Peter AU | Dec 31, 2016 10:14:56 PM | 34
    RM 31
    The disclaimer shows straight away it was written up as a political report. Nothing to do with intelligence in either sense of the word.
    ALberto | Dec 31, 2016 10:47:00 PM | 35
    The alleged Russian US hack is plainly a straw man distraction designed to divert the inquiring public.s attention away from the actual contents of the KKKLinton, DNC, Podesta, et al, emails. Same goes for the alleged Russian hacking of the US Presidential Election. Another childish misdirection play.

    Alternate medias have taken the bait hook, line unt sinker. Rather than concentrate on the actual contents of the emails which reveal immense crimes including war crimes, crimes against humanity and Treason the so called independent medias waste their time like dogs chasing their own tails pursing information that to a computer literate audience would find laughable. THERE WAS NO HACK OF THE GRID.

    Get on to the publishing and dissemination of these emails rather than dancing for the self appointed 'Chess Masters' of the Great Game.

    Just me opinion

    MadMax2 | Dec 31, 2016 11:02:01 PM | 36
    Great post B. MSM born #Fakenews is the gift that just keeps on giving. So much mileage left. Viewing decay has never been so enjoyable.

    @8 mauisurfer
    Fantastic reading. Indeed, if Trump wants to win back public faith in the NSA, he'll get on his hands and knees and grovel to bring back a true yank patriot in Binney

    Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 1, 2017 12:00:11 AM | 37
    Amid the cornucopia of persuasive evidence that the barking mad neocons are barking up the wrong tree, this one pushes all the right buttons for me (given that only idiots allow themselves to think that Russians are incompetent fools).

    John McAfee (now often nutty but right in this):

    "If it looks like the Russians did it I can guarantee you it wasn't the Russians".

    Q.E.D.
    In 16 words.

    kraus | Jan 1, 2017 4:09:02 AM | 38
    Trump says he knows something..

    Trump questions claim of Russia hacking DNC, says he 'knows things other people don't'
    https://www.rt.com/usa/372400-trump-doubts-russia-hacking/

    A5 | Jan 1, 2017 7:29:31 AM | 39
    They want and must have war with Russia.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlC0vM0QvHo
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvj0v0W6yjk
    Ghostship | Jan 1, 2017 9:43:19 AM | 40
    >>>> CHRISTINNE RADU | Dec 31, 2016 6:12:33 PM | 32
    The Daily Mail featured on the World at One on the BBC today starting at about 23:28 in.
    There is also a snippet at 16:10 about ISIS's avowed aim the break up the EU. Which is more important to the US? A stable EU or pushing regime change in Moscow. Putin has made it very clear that he wants a stable EU. So what's the problem?
    Curtis | Jan 1, 2017 10:59:07 AM | 41
    These stories reflect the demonize Russia as the latest enemy and throw as much "evidence" at the wall that will stick.

    However, it is obvious that the operating systems are not secure and cybersecurity efforts are not working.

    While it looks like the DNC/email thing is the result of leaks not hacks and that Seth Rich may have been murdered for this, the reality is that govt/banking/businesses have endangered us by making our information vulnerable and then blaming those who get in when they leave the door open.

    After the OPM data thefts, I asked my congressmen why such important data was put on the internet when they know they cannot protect it. I received form letters saying they took cybersecurity seriously and they believe the Chinese did it.

    A non-answer if ever there was one. Back then I didn't care if a govt went after Microsoft as a monopoly when it should go after it for providing vulnerable systems to the govt (and the rest of us) in the first place.

    In the internet's startups and non-profits, security was not taken as seriously as just getting some kind of system to work.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/10/the_dyn_ddos_attack_shows_how_vulnerable_we_ve_made_ourselves.html

    "In the late 1990s, when the utilities' vulnerabilities first came to light, Richard Clarke, then the White House counterterrorism chief, proposed imposing mandatory cybersecurity requirements on all industries connected to critical infrastructure. The companies lobbied against his plan, as did President Bill Clinton's economic advisers, who warned that the measures would cripple these companies' competitiveness in the global market. Clarke also suggested putting the government and critical-infrastructure industries on a parallel internet, which would be wired to certain agencies that could detect intrusions. This plan was leaked and denounced as 'Orwellian.'"

    This current accusation of Russians hacking US utilities may be so much BS and propaganda. But the US/Israeli STUXNET attack on Iran proved that some things should be protected.

    anon | Jan 1, 2017 1:38:41 PM | 42
    wow, friendly relations with other countries and potential business interests are bad? and would lead to a flaky electric grid in Vermont... because... ??
    our electric grids suck because of the friendly f-ing relations with our own bloodthirsty companies right here in the US. same for our lousy failing healthcare that only feeds the fat faces of the private owners...

    our freeways in Silicon Valley are lined with homeless people right now who are freezing at night, in a city that would shut off the outdoor outlets near city hall so that homeless disabled people will push their wheelchairs someplace else. the Bezos bozos are so out of touch. we know who to blame.

    Yonatan | Jan 1, 2017 2:14:22 PM | 43
    The report is clearly a fake. The authors are totally incompetent. They claim that CHOPSTICK is a Russian Intelligence Service Actor. It is so blatanly clear to anyone with any knowledge of international security threats that CHOPSTICK is Chinese.

    /sarc

    Yonatan | Jan 1, 2017 2:18:01 PM | 44
    Christinne Radu @32, Ghostship @40

    Nott has form. His wife was highly placed in the Institute of Strategic Studies (a connected thinktank), and she now runs the Nott Foundation, a charity which finances and organises training in disaster medicine. I wonder if they get a good deal on bulk purchases of white helmets?

    fredjc | Jan 1, 2017 2:41:10 PM | 46
    Is Obama dumb enough to attempt an executive order, which might, for example, claim that Russia had significantly affected the presidential elections and falsely maintain his own presidency?
    Yonatan | Jan 1, 2017 3:03:12 PM | 47
    fredjc @46

    So an actual coup? Everything the US does abroad works its way back home eventually, so I would not put it past his handlers to try it. The alternative would be to murder Trump. Either way, the US could then go into Ukraine-style meltdown.

    [Jan 01, 2017] Has political/media rhetoric always been as inflated and over the top when for example Washpost calling Russian hacking "cyber Pearl Harbor."

    Jan 01, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Release of Flame and Stuxnet against Iran was probably the real cyber Perl Habor. In this case the USA and allied played the role of Imperial Japan. Stuxnet Computer worm opens new era of warfare - CBS News

    Pespi , December 31, 2016 at 2:04 pm

    I have a question for anyone who's been around a little while.

    Has political/media rhetoric always been as inflated and over the top as it is now? ie Washpost calling Russian hacking "cyber pearl harbor."

    Is this old hat or something caused by the attention economy?

    Katharine , December 31, 2016 at 2:52 pm

    This is way worse than it used to be. There was something to be said for stodgy journalism. Even when it misrepresented reality, it did so in terms that sounded comparatively measured and adult, not like hysterical kids on a playground.

    Susan C , December 31, 2016 at 8:24 pm

    I agree – I have never seen journalism like this before. Have been watching a lot of MSNBC and CNN during the past few weeks and I can't believe how over the top they are about the Russian hacking story – it goes on for hours. And the papers too. Is it that it is a slow news period and they have to keep their audiences shocked and awed all the time? I have no idea why this is going on about the Russian hacking unless the media is trying very hard to change people's opinions about Russia, and if they are, why? What's the objective? And the 99 senators too are in on this? They make it sound very serious and yet it seems everyone is being hacked all the time anyway.

    [Jan 01, 2017] Part of the original Cold War mania was devised to cover up the fact the US was importing a slew of former Nazis for varied and sundry reasons

    Jan 01, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
    Elizabeth Burton , December 31, 2016 at 4:20 pm

    Considering part of the original Cold War mania was devised to cover up the fact the US was importing a slew of former Nazis for varied and sundry reasons, not to mention allowing them to slip into hiding without any real effort made to find them, one does have to wonder at the coincidence that we are now engaging in neo-Cold War rhetoric just as the "alt-right" neo-Nazis have been granted dispensation to go public.

    Of course, one could believe the idea that all those former Nazis were really just poor souls who only worked for the Third Reich out of fear for their families and were, therefore, only too happy to embrace the joys of American freedom. One could, were it not for the other coincidence that similar fascist organizations have arisen almost simultaneously to public attention throughout Europe.

    But never mind. That's tinfoil-hat stuff. We trounced all that Nazi scum, and besides most of the people weren't really Nazis and didn't believe all that stuff. Right?

    [Jan 01, 2017] FBI, DHS release report on Russia hacking TheHill

    Jan 01, 2017 | thehill.com

    From thehill .com - December 29, 2016 10:07 PM Enrique Ferro's insight: Who can believe them? Why is NSA silent? Their "evidence" is flimsy, based on hearsay. Obama's cybernetic false flag has been created to sway over Trump's future foreign policy at best, seeking to perpetuate the neocons' Russophobic approach. Or worse to delegitimize Trump's election. Obama/Clinton's game is to reverse one way or another the electoral result. With this stratagem now they intend to rally the die-hard warmongers in the Republican party, and set the frame for an impeachment. Disgusting.

    [Jan 01, 2017] Obama is trying to protect his legacy by delegitimizing Trump

    Re: Something About This Russia Story Stinks by Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone. Looks like Tabbi is on something. Obama has a lot to hide to the fact that Trump will enter White house in 2017 is really disconcerting for him. So attempt to tie Trump into anti-Russian hysteria might be kind of Hail Mary pass.
    Notable quotes:
    "... "The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes. ..."
    "... "The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website." ..."
    "... Over 40 million 'attacks' a day, on just three entities. Bollocks. 'Attack' is far too dramatic a word for a port probe. ..."
    "... Hillary is possibly the worst serious candidate ever. Emails and speeches aside, she was a disaster with no business running for President after her prominent national career. ..."
    "... The DNC is not the government. It's a private entity called a political party. Phishing or hacking it is not interfering with our government whoever does it. ..."
    "... And will somebody explain to me how Putin and his henchmen made Hillary say "basket of deplorables"? Was it an earwig they snuck in her ear? Did they sneak into her room and hypnotize her to say that horrible statement? Did they plan for Obamacare to become a major f**k up in October? I'm pretty sure Russia and China were really pissed at her adventure in Libya; so that escapade was not something they got her to do. ..."
    "... I negotiate for a living. I would not call the person I'm dealing with a thug like Hitler. I would not poke the guy/bear with pompous statements. That's just stupid. Maybe we do need people in charge who actually know how to negotiate to get the best possible deal without having things blow up in our faces. All those Dems you named are mediocre managers without anything interesting or innovative to say. Even if the Russians did expose the DNC and Podesta emails, The Russians did not make these courtiers mediocre. ..."
    "... If the Russians messed with an election, that's enough on its own to warrant a massive response miles worse – than heavy-handed responses to ordinary spying episodes. ..."
    "... I have no problem believing that Vladimir Putin tried to influence the American election. He's gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything. ..."
    "... Meanwhile, a number of IT specialists that have analyzed the code and other evidence published by the US government are questioning whether it really proves a Russian connection, let alone a connection to the Russian government. Wordfence, a cybersecurity firm that specializes in protecting websites running WordPress, a PHP-based platform, published a report on the issue on Friday. ..."
    "... Wordfence said they had traced the malware code to a tool available online, which is apparently funded by donations, called P.A.S. that claims to be "made in Ukraine." The version tested by the FBI/DHS report is 3.1.7, while the most current version available on the tool's website is 4.1.1b. ..."
    Jan 01, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    RenoDino , December 31, 2016 at 8:50 am

    I agree, Tabbi in his Rolling Stone piece is now, finally, after his Trump induced psychosis, back on form. Something about the Russian Story does stink. Summing up, if the Russians did steal the election why the weak response now? Or is it just a good excuse for losing to Trump and/or is Obama is trying to protect his legacy by delegitimizing Trump? Either way, Obama looks to be underplaying or overplaying his hand.

    I wonder if this is really Obama, who is out the door, talking or is the national security state, who is not going anywhere? If it's the latter, then things start to make sense. It says to me, they are not happy with the new direction in foreign policy that Trump represents. In fact, they refuse to accept it and him.

    How is this tension is resolved is the single most important question in the weeks ahead.

    Arizona Slim , December 31, 2016 at 9:30 am

    And let's just say that the Russian Story isn't ringing true with the IT community. Data point:

    https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hack/

    Key point from the conclusion of this article:

    "The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes.

    "The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website."

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 11:58 am

    http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2013/03/how-many-cyberattacks-hit-united-states-last-year/61775/

    'll leave you with some additional recent numbers on cyberintrusions, as reported by various actors:

    • The energy company BP says it suffers 50,000 attempts cyberintrusion a day.
    • The Pentagon reports getting 10 million attempts a day.
    • The National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Energy Department, also records 10 million hacks a day.
    • The United Kingdom reports 120,000 cyberincidents a day.
    • That's almost as many as the state of Michigan deals with.

    Utah says it faces 20 million attempts a day - up from 1 million a day two years ago.
    =============================================================
    WOW!!!! Seems like a really big F*cking deal!!!!
    Kinda makes me wonder how many laws and regulations have been enacted forcing internet companies and software companies to make their stuff more secure .

    Long story short – not too many

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-security_regulation

    {{{{{{ In July 2012, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 was proposed by Senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins.[15] The bill would have required creating voluntary "best practice standards" for protection of key infrastructure from cyber attacks, which businesses would be encouraged to adopt through incentives such as liability protection.[16] The bill was put to a vote in the Senate but failed to pass.[17]}}}}}}

    And of course (I don't want to over link so you have to look it up yourself) there are the laws that ALLOW intrusion by the US government into your computer, of course makes computer systems LESS SECURE .

    So, almost makes me think Trump, OF ALL PEOPLE, was actually CORRECT when he said:

    "I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I'm not sure we have the kind the security we need. But I have not spoken with the senators and I will certainly will be over a period of time."

    And how much the above is being mocked, by people without the presence of mind to ask, "how long, and how many hacks have already occurred, and WHAT WAS DONE ABOUT IT?"

    Hacking, that happens millions upon millions of times a year now for near a decade, but apparently only a BIG F*CKING DEAL when an incompetent dem SAYS she has LOST the presidency due to hacking .

    Grebo , December 31, 2016 at 3:01 pm

    Over 40 million 'attacks' a day, on just three entities. Bollocks. 'Attack' is far too dramatic a word for a port probe.

    RenoDino , December 31, 2016 at 2:47 pm

    Craig Murray asks why is there no evidence from the NSA:

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/exit-obama-cloud-disillusion-delusion-deceit/

    NotTimothyGeithner , December 31, 2016 at 9:56 am

    The Russia hacking story goes back to early October with wiki leaks. Who is at fault for Trump?

    Sherrod Brown, Senator of a state where Hillary lost and prominent Clinton supporter despite his previous support for good policy, DWS, Tim Kaine, Donna Brazille, or Russians?

    Plenty of people are invested in not being held accountable for 2000. The front runner for DNC chair is a Muslim, Sanders supporter because even Democrats are growing upset, but one of the perks of Washington is celebrity.

    My guess is going forward Dems will be under greater scrutiny and will find significantly less brown nosers.

    Hillary is possibly the worst serious candidate ever. Emails and speeches aside, she was a disaster with no business running for President after her prominent national career.

    This was obvious to any sane and decent human being. The lesson of 2016 is even the "good Democrats" such as Sherrod Brown and Liz Warren need short leashes. In 2020, all these people have to go to Iowa (very close), New Hampshire (a blowout), and Nevada (openly rigged by former Senator Reid). How does a candidate push their "progressive" credentials after throwing in with Hillary? Hillary primary voters have the unfortunate age issue.

    Then of course, there are people who don't want to believe they bought this bs when Hillary should have been dumped ages ago.

    Montanamaven , December 31, 2016 at 4:44 pm

    The DNC is not the government. It's a private entity called a political party. Phishing or hacking it is not interfering with our government whoever does it.

    And will somebody explain to me how Putin and his henchmen made Hillary say "basket of deplorables"? Was it an earwig they snuck in her ear? Did they sneak into her room and hypnotize her to say that horrible statement? Did they plan for Obamacare to become a major f**k up in October? I'm pretty sure Russia and China were really pissed at her adventure in Libya; so that escapade was not something they got her to do.

    I negotiate for a living. I would not call the person I'm dealing with a thug like Hitler. I would not poke the guy/bear with pompous statements. That's just stupid. Maybe we do need people in charge who actually know how to negotiate to get the best possible deal without having things blow up in our faces.
    All those Dems you named are mediocre managers without anything interesting or innovative to say. Even if the Russians did expose the DNC and Podesta emails, The Russians did not make these courtiers mediocre.

    timbers , December 31, 2016 at 10:25 am

    How is this tension is resolved is the single most important question in the weeks ahead.

    Sometimes the simplest "solutions" are the ones we never think of – Assassination of Trump by the Deep State, the Blob, whatever you call it. But this may take more that just weeks ahead to materialize if at all.

    If you believe President Kennedy was killed by the Deep State (I'm agnostic on that due to never researching it), and if Trump does deal with the bi-partisan War Party Deep State Blob elements by standing them down as he did his Republican primary challengers and Apprentice guests . then this may be the logical way to put an end to the threat Trump represents to the establishment. And there is so much that is threaten by Trump of the established order.

    Trillions of war armament purchase orders from NATO and the US military hinge in the balance by continued US and NATO belligerence towards Russia. Add to that the gas pipeline thru Syria that will be less likely to happen under Trump. The lost looting if no regime change in Russia like we did in Ukraine – all that lost oil and natural resource the global elites will be denied. All the lost military spending. The lost boogyman to instill fear for more surveillance of the citizenry. The Deep State, Blob, War Party will be furious.

    That's a lot of trillions.

    tgs , December 31, 2016 at 9:05 am

    Re Taibbi:

    Yes, it is positive that he openly expresses skepticism in the current environment. But why this?

    If the Russians messed with an election, that's enough on its own to warrant a massive response miles worse – than heavy-handed responses to ordinary spying episodes.

    Leaking emails would require a 'massive response'? Has he seen Zero Days? What kind of response would be appropriate for hacking a nuclear plant? Assassinating nuclear scientists? Is he aware that we have 'hacked' elections for years? Not to mention overthrown legal governments.

    And this:

    I have no problem believing that Vladimir Putin tried to influence the American election. He's gangster-spook-scum of the lowest order and capable of anything.

    Would Taibbi ever use similar language to describe Obama? So many in the media and other elite circles are suffering from Putin Derangement Syndrome.

    Bugs Bunny , December 31, 2016 at 9:27 am

    IIRC, the US helped elect Boris Yeltsin when it looked like he was going to lose?

    Eureka Springs , December 31, 2016 at 9:50 am

    How many countries have Obama /Clinton attempted regime change to covert/direct interference in elections/leadership? I would imagine the answer is far more than my quick list below. We couldn't hack/leak internal emails among the players because our bloody hypocritical hands would be all over them.

    As for Russia if all they did was expose truths via party emails, well I thank them for that. And considering what Clinton said and did to Russia over the years it would be irresponsible for a Russian leader to sit by idly and do nothing. Even though we seem to be destroying ourselves quite well enough on our own, we have and continue to threaten the rest of the world, beginning with Russia with nuclear holocaust.

    If Taibbi can call Putin all those things, then what the heck are Obama Clinton?

    Ukraine
    Russia
    Syria
    Venezuela
    Honduras
    Egypt
    Yemen
    Iraq
    Palestinians
    Libya
    Paraguay
    Turkey?
    Brazil?
    Argentina?
    Thailand?
    Hong Kong?

    hunkerdown , December 31, 2016 at 5:36 pm

    Taibbi has some personal journalistic history with previous Putin governments. It's understandable that he'd cast side-eye Putin's way, though none too healthy in this deranged environment (just wait until some corporate Dem tries to use him as a Surprising Validator). Let's keep Taibbi on turn watch though.

    It seems the need to celebrate some leader is less conntected to said leader's performance than to some perceived need to be led, to believe that the very concept of hierarchy is just.

    annie , December 31, 2016 at 9:57 am

    I used to read and respect articles from Matt Taibbi.

    This one is a revelation and what it reveals is that I have been mistaken.

    I will skip his contributions in the future.

    UserFriendly , December 31, 2016 at 12:00 pm

    I do not understand this attitude at all. A writer who generally does good work says something that I disagree with so I will never read them again. It's tantamount to saying I refuse to read critically. I don't want to see anything I don't agree with 100%. It's petty.

    annie x , December 31, 2016 at 1:08 pm

    interesting! someone has hijacked my user name to post an inane comment.

    the real 'annie' says.

    Outis Philalithopoulos , December 31, 2016 at 2:22 pm

    Hi, new annie.

    It's true that the other annie has been posting comments on the site for a while, so it would be less confusing if you were to modify your handle so that people can tell you two apart.

    On the other hand, don't take any of the comments from people who were concerned personally – obviously it's easy enough for two people to share the same name, and the software doesn't flag when you are using a name that has been used before.

    Steve H. , December 31, 2016 at 10:14 am

    – Putin Derangement Syndrome.

    I heard a report that Lindsey McCain et al have armstwisted Trump into hearing the CIA report on the Russian hack. What are they going to say? 'You won the election because of teh Russians!'

    "Good gracious me! You're the CIA, find me out what his favorite liquor is so I can send him a bottle!"

    So they'll tell him to his face he wasn't competent to win the election himself? My guess is says brief me again when I'm President, they walk in the door and he properly fires them. And his face will be like this .

    Cry Shop , December 31, 2016 at 11:31 am

    "warrant" and "executing/capable of carrying out" are two different things.

    As Putin has shown, Obama's capability threshold so low that it's rather moot to discuss warrant. It's now up to Congress to do something magnificently stupid, violent and utterly worthless, or rather worthy of the great American tradition.

    witters , December 31, 2016 at 8:02 pm

    And what on earth is the journalistic point of saying "I have no problem in believing something for which there seems to be no credible evidence and which is being pushed by obvious partisan interests?" I think Taibbi is 'normalising' fast.

    hreik , December 31, 2016 at 9:09 am

    I dunno. President Obama is not great but the comments here make me feel like it's time for me to skedaddle. Thinking he might be worse than Shrub? 6″ tall, smh

    Pat , December 31, 2016 at 9:31 am

    Oh I admit it can be a tough choice, but you might really want to add up the good and the bad for both. Not surprisingly there is little good and a whole lot of long ongoing damage inflicted by the policies that both either embraced, adapted to or did little or nothing to stop. Even if the list of bad was equal, I have to give Obama for the edge for two reasons. First because Bush pretty much told us what he was going to do, Obama campaigned on change and vague promises, but still change. Instead he normalized atrocities that most of us had been screaming about in the Bush administration AND he didn't just squander the opportunities he had to change our course domestically because of the crash and the majorities in Congress, no he couldn't throw those away fast enough.

    Your position is obviously different.

    And I don't give a damn what height either of them are, both are small people.

    Lost in OR , December 31, 2016 at 11:14 am

    Indeed. Bush was a known quantity. "Compassionate conservatism" was was blatantly hollow jingoism. My only surprise under W was how virulently evil Cheney was.

    The big O, though, was handed the opportunity to change the course of history. He took power with Wall Street on its knees. The whole world hungered for a change in course. Remember "never let a crisis go to waste". O turned Hope into blatantly hollow jingoism.

    In the end, the black activist constitutional lawyer turned his back on all that he seemed to be. Feint left, drive right.

    With W we got what we expected. With O we got hoodwinked. What a waste.

    ambrit , December 31, 2016 at 9:32 am

    Look, if you don't like some of the comments you see, say so. We have some thick skinned people here. A little rancorous debate is fine. If some reasoned argumentation is thrown in, the comments section is doing it's job. (I know, I know, "agency" issues.)
    Obama can be legitimately described as worse than Bush 43 because Obama ran as a "progressive" and flagrantly broke almost all of his promises and governed like a "Moderate" Republican. At the least, Bush, Sr. and Jr. ran as right wing politicos. The people basically got what they voted for with them.
    Finally, " it's time for me to skedaddle." WTF? I'm assuming, yes, I do do that, that you are a responsible and thoughtful person. That needs must include the tolerance of and engagement with opposing points of view. Where do you want to run to; an "echo chamber" site? You only encourage conformation bias with that move. The site administrators have occasionally mentioned the dictum; "Embrace the churn." The site, indeed, almost any site, will live on long after any of we commenters bite the dust. If, however, one can shift the world view of other readers with good argumentation and anecdotes, our work will be worthwhile.
    So, as I was once admonished by my ex D.I. middle school gym teacher; "Stand up and face it. You may get beat, but you'll know you did your best. That's a good feeling."

    craazyboy , December 31, 2016 at 11:47 am

    Picking the #1 Worst Prez is a fallacy inherent in our desire to put things on a scale of 1 to 10. It's so we can say, in this case, #1 was the WORST, and then forget about #2 thru #10.

    It's like picking the #1 Greatest Rock Guitar Player. There are too many great guitar players and too many styles. It's just not possible.

    Even so, I'd like to see the Russian citizen ranking of Putin vs. Yeltsin. Secret ballot, of course.

    ambrit , December 31, 2016 at 12:48 pm

    America will be lucky if it avoids something similar to the earlier Russian people's ranking of Tsar Nicholas versus Karensky and subsequent events.

    hreik , December 31, 2016 at 1:16 pm

    I like your response. Thanks.

    I don't think he's worse than Bush but I agree he was horribly dishonest to run as a progressive. He's far from progressive.

    I think the ACA, deeply flawed as it is, was/is a good thing. It wasn't enough and it was badly brought out. I hope many thousands don't get tossed off health insurance.

    My major criticism of him and most politicians is that he has no center. There is nothing for which he truly stands and he has a horrible tendency to try to make nice w the republicans. He's not progressive. Bernie, flawed also stands for something always has, always will.

    Vatch , December 31, 2016 at 3:46 pm

    Obama is highly deceptive, but I think that Bush (43) was worse. I doubt that Obama would have performed many of his worst deeds if Bush hadn't first paved the way. But we'll never know for sure, so it's possible to argue on behalf of either side of the dispute.

    ambrit , December 31, 2016 at 5:05 pm

    Sorry if I came across as harsh. I enjoy your arguments, so, I tried to encourage you to hang in there.
    Happy New Year

    hunkerdown , December 31, 2016 at 5:40 pm

    In other words, Obama's a Kissingerian realist, or a businessperson (but I repeat myself): only permanent interests.

    Happy New Year, and try to don't run off so easy. :)

    Yves Smith , December 31, 2016 at 7:11 pm

    The ACA was not badly thought out. It was written by insurance industry lobbyists. And Obama thought that was just ducky.

    wtf , December 31, 2016 at 10:02 am

    Agreed.

    Putin's such a sweetheart to invite those children to the Kremlin. /s

    ambrit , December 31, 2016 at 10:58 am

    Well, it is a real recruiting opportunity.

    wtf , December 31, 2016 at 10:03 am

    Agreed.

    Putin's such a sweetheart to invite those children to the Kremlin.

    Steve C , December 31, 2016 at 10:51 am

    The liberals have so much invested in Obama they can't bear to admit he's a backstabbing failure. There is no sugar coating Bush's awfulness. There also is no denying things now are worse than they were in 2007, before the Great Recession began. The liberals like to say things are better than they were when Obama took office. But that's a comically low bar. Rock bottom of the Great Recession. We have not recovered.

    Obama isn't gaudy bad like Bush. Obama's pathologies are smoother, like his desperation for establishment approval.

    Arizona Slim , December 31, 2016 at 12:20 pm

    The liberals like to say that things are better than they were when Obama took office. Sorry to share this tidbit, but I must:

    On Friday, March 18, I was among the 7,000 people who heard Bernie Sanders speak at the Tucson Convention Center Arena. Guess what he said.

    And, to my utter and total amazement, the audience burst into applause. I couldn't believe it. Much of Sanders' appeal was based on how lousy the economy still was for so many people. Including Yours Truly.

    My response to Sanders' praise of Obama's handling of the economy was a slow clap. A few minutes later, I left the rally.

    polecat , December 31, 2016 at 12:31 pm

    "Obama's pathologies are smoother"

    Like a glass of fine bourbon downed with a shot of arsenic.

    Jeff , December 31, 2016 at 12:49 pm

    So criticism of Obama isn't acceptable? Would it be better to let his poor decisions/actions just go unnoticed?

    Or are you referring to something else?

    hreik , December 31, 2016 at 1:54 pm

    Of course it's acceptable. It's even important, vitally. But his height? I know I know it was not really an ad hom, but why even mention it?

    He fetishized making nice w the rethugs to our and the country's detriment. He had 2 years to get something done. And honestly I have no idea if it would have been different w a less hostile congress. My complaint is he didn't really try. Everything was half measures, pablum.

    Plenue , December 31, 2016 at 3:47 pm

    Far too generous. He did try to get Republican policies enacted. He wasn't a weak Democrat, he was a driven Republican who was only thwarted by a comically, stupidly hostile GOP that sabotaged things like the Grand Bargain/Great Betrayal because they had such a virulent hatred of the black guy.

    reslez , December 31, 2016 at 7:16 pm

    If Obama had enacted the agenda he ran on– even in part - the Democrats would not have lost Congress in 2010. Obama's "only having two years" is thoroughly on himself and his party.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 4:49 pm

    hreik
    December 31, 2016 at 9:09 am

    The site would be poorer and I would be sadder for the loss of your comments.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-30/can-this-political-union-be-saved
    Shortly before I got married, I received a piece of sterling advice that I have been mulling a lot over the last year: "You have a big decision to make: Do you want to be married, or do you want to be right?"
    .
    The more determined you are to win every battle, the more likely you are to lose what's important: the person you love so much that you have chosen to spend the rest of your life with them. And so every time you have a real disagreement - the kind that cannot be finessed by agreeing that tonight you'll order Indian, and next time you'll get Chinese - you have to think carefully before you decide to have that fight. Is this really the hill that you're willing to let your marriage die on?
    ..
    While traveling a few months back, I ended up chatting with a divorce attorney, who observed that what we're seeing in America right now bears a startling resemblance to what he sees happen with many of his clients. They've lost sight of what they ever liked about each other; in fact, they've even lost sight of their own self-interest. All they can see is their grievances, from annoying habits to serious wrongs. The other party, of course, generally has their own set of grievances. There is a sort of geometric progression of outrage, where whatever you do to the other side is justified by whatever they did last. They, of course, offer similar justifications for their own behavior.

    ======================================================
    Every friend, every association we make, every relationship with a relative, every political entity can be dissolved. One can insist one is correct on every matter, and live a long life with ever fewer associations until maybe one has none at all.

    As to which president is worse, your all wrong. Supposedly , 99 senators believe Russia hacked us. Our country apparently is composed entirely of imbeciles without regard to race, creed, sex, or party .

    reslez , December 31, 2016 at 7:06 pm

    If you can't bear to encounter comments that contradict your political opinion then you should probably also skip Thanksgiving dinner and other family get-togethers.

    Whether you read the comments here is up to you, but I'd suggest continuing to visit for the articles at least. You won't find the same level of analysis elsewhere. The MSM is heavily invested in pushing their "narrative" whether or not it's true. I believe we have a duty as citizens to seek out the best sources of information. NC is on that list.

    reslez , December 31, 2016 at 7:08 pm

    If you can't bear to encounter comments that contradict your political opinion then you should probably also skip Thanksgiving dinner and other family get-togethers.

    I believe we have a duty as citizens to seek out the best sources of information, even if that results in encountering opinions that are uncomfortable to us. NC is one of those sources. Whether you read the comments here is up to you, but I'd suggest continuing to visit for the articles at least. You won't find the same level of analysis elsewhere. The MSM is heavily invested in pushing their "narrative" whether or not it's true.

    Montanamaven , December 31, 2016 at 10:21 pm

    The DNC is not the government. It's a private entity called a political party. Phishing or hacking it is not interfering with our government whoever does it.

    And will somebody explain to me how Putin and his henchmen made Hillary say "basket of deplorables"? Was it an earwig they snuck in her ear? Did they sneak into her room and hypnotize her to say that horrible statement? Did they plan for Obamacare to become a major f**k up in October? I'm pretty sure Russia and China were really pissed at her adventure in Libya; so that escapade was not something they got her to do.

    I negotiate for a living. I would not call the person I'm dealing with a thug like Hitler. I would not poke the guy/bear with pompous statements. That's just stupid. Maybe we do need people in charge who actually know how to negotiate to get the best possible deal without having things blow up in our faces.
    All those Dems you named are mediocre managers without anything interesting or innovative to say. Even if the Russians did expose the DNC and Podesta emails, The Russians did not make these courtiers mediocre.

    Montanamaven , December 31, 2016 at 10:23 pm

    bye bye!

    timbers , December 31, 2016 at 9:16 am

    You hit the right priority of issues IMO, and would add a few things Obamanation did:

    1). Bombing more nations than anyone in human history and being at war longer than any US President ever, having never requested an end but in fact a continuation of a permanent state of war declared by Congress.

    2). The massive destruction of legal and constitutional rights from habeas corpus, illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of all people, to asserting the right to imprison, torture, and assassinate anyone anytime even America children just because Obama feels like doing it.

    3). Austerity. This tanked any robust recovery from the 2008 recession and millions suffered because of it, we are living with the affects even now. In fact Obamanation's deep mystical belief in austerity helped defeat Clinton 2016.

    polecat , December 31, 2016 at 12:31 pm

    "Obama's pathologies are smoother"

    Like a glass of fine bourbon downed with a shot of arsenic.

    Bugs Bunny , December 31, 2016 at 9:22 am

    Facts on the ground in Mumbai re demonitization and how the poor are coping.

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/demonetization-survey-k-west-ward-slums-mumbai-how-urban-krishnan?trk=prof-post

    beth , December 31, 2016 at 2:08 pm

    I think the following quote summarizes the article and the writer's attitude toward those experiencing this tragedy:

    Conclusion:

    For the group as a whole, there was only a 10% loss in income in November. However, the impact on certain types of occupations was high, with income loss up to 44% among the self-employed.

    Dita , December 31, 2016 at 9:25 am

    Re Something About This Russia Story Stinks, I feel like Obama's weak response is a passive aggressive way of telegraphing that he doesnt believe The Russians Did It either.

    NotTimothyGeithner , December 31, 2016 at 9:41 am

    Since the NSA not the CIA would be the main actor involved with cyber security and Obama has instructed the CIA to take action and noted his CIA reports, it's clear "OMG Russia" was always red meat to help Hillary with Republicans. The problem is the Dems told such an incredulous lie in early October many of their own voters and donors believed it because "Obama wouldn't make something up."

    Obama needs to do enough to soothe Democrats who believe this nonsense while not gaining the ire of the sane. Obama will never utter the truth or do the right thing. Polling indicates his Russian story isn't catching on. When Congressmen go home to their districts, they might not be so eager to discuss Russia when they find the voters don't care Podesta's emails were leaked.

    Certain Dems especially Clinton connected ones who swore Hillary was a tolerable candidate and the msm after being in the tank for Hillary for so long are desperate to regain credibility. Admitting the Russian story was an obvious sham means acknowledging complicity or being a mark. See how easy it is. It's not my fault. It's the foreign leader you have no control over who was at fault.

    Rhondda , December 31, 2016 at 7:19 pm

    I think "Russia hacked the election" is a (seemingly pretty successful) psyop to inoculate as many as they can against being willing to hear anything about charges for Hillary's basement server State Dept. They're sweeping hacks and leaks of different types and kinds into one big dust bunny and stuffing it under a rug misleadingly called "Russia hacked the election" - rather than "Russia hacked Hillary's illegal basement server" which would of course be a big legal problem for some people. Those people and their cadre don't want anyone saying that or even able to think it. Squirrel!! FakeNews!! Resist!!

    LT , December 31, 2016 at 1:30 pm

    Obama knows he beat Hillary in 2008, when she was also expected to be crowned.
    And he knows he beat her for the same reason Trump did: people wanted anyone who wasn't perceived (emphasis on perceived) to be if the long time political establishment.

    It's funny that no reporter, if they really nelieve this, has asked Obama how far back the intelligence committe was investigating "Putin's interference". Russia knew both Clinton and McCain had their hawkish sites set. The Clinton campaign was a leaky mess back then and no one once cried "hacking."
    Imagine the hilarity if it were true and Russia helped elect Obama.

    Lemmy , December 31, 2016 at 1:47 pm

    I think you're right.
    On the one hand, we are told to believe our intelligence agencies' assertions that Russia directly influenced the results of our Presidential election - in other words, that they intentionally subverted our democratic process (such as it is) in order to ensure the election of their preferred candidate. That's pretty heavy stuff.

    So what is the official U.S. response? We're gonna send some Russian folks home right before Christmas really screw up their holiday plans!

    Well played Obama - that will totally make them think twice before installing the next puppet president.

    Rhondda , December 31, 2016 at 6:59 pm

    I think "Russia hacked the election" is a (seemingly pretty successful) psyop to inoculate as many as they can against being willing to hear anything about charges for Hillary's basement server State Dept. They're sweeping hacks and leaks of different types and kinds into one big dust bunny and stuffing it under a rug misleadingly called "Russia hacked the election" - rather than "Russia hacked Hillary's illegal basement server" which would of course be a big legal problem for some people. Those people and their cadre don't want anyone saying that or even able to think it. Squirrel!! FakeNews!! Resist!!

    Rhondda , December 31, 2016 at 7:20 pm

    Sorry for the doublepost. Comment system is acting strange.

    tgs , December 31, 2016 at 9:28 am

    The Russians are at it again. The Washington Post

    Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say

    And Rt:

    Meanwhile, a number of IT specialists that have analyzed the code and other evidence published by the US government are questioning whether it really proves a Russian connection, let alone a connection to the Russian government. Wordfence, a cybersecurity firm that specializes in protecting websites running WordPress, a PHP-based platform, published a report on the issue on Friday.

    Wordfence said they had traced the malware code to a tool available online, which is apparently funded by donations, called P.A.S. that claims to be "made in Ukraine." The version tested by the FBI/DHS report is 3.1.7, while the most current version available on the tool's website is 4.1.1b.

    The Report by Wordfence

    The Washington Post seems to have a fake news problem.

    Mariah , December 31, 2016 at 10:01 am

    I can't read the Washington Post story because of the paywall, but here is what VTDigger has to say about this story. While I didn't read the Post story, the difference in headlines is interesting. VTDigger's headline is "Russians Penetrated Burlington Electric Department Computer" which seems less alarmist than the Post's "Russian Operation Hacked a Vermont Utility, Showing Risk to U.S. Electrical Grid Security, Officials Say."

    https://vtdigger.org/2016/12/30/russians-penetrated-computer-burlington-electric-dept/

    Aside from the hysterical quote by our outgoing governor Peter Shumlin, the Vermont officials seem fairly calm about the incident. I would also note that Shumlin's failure to keep his promise on universal health care probably endangers more Vermont lives than the Russian hack attempt.

    Cry Shop , December 31, 2016 at 10:39 am

    the Russian hack attempt.

    at this point, any claim of agency by this administration is almost proof of the opposite.

    marym , December 31, 2016 at 10:56 am

    The govt released a report of "evidence" for the alleged DNC hacks. Arizona Slim at 9:30 am here posted a link to a critique of this "evidence." Meanwhile, utilities and other entities started checking their systems for similar "evidence." Burlington found an instance on a laptop unconnected to the grid.

    Here's a summary from emptywheel – she's actually somewhat of a believer in a Russian DNC hack, but not in this grid story.

    NotTimothyGeithner , December 31, 2016 at 11:02 am

    The problem with the DNC hack story is "who cares?" The Democrats are a private organization* with very poor cyber security as evidenced by Hillary's basement server.

    Podesta was not a government official conducting government business. Hacking and releasing his emails is simply not interfering with the election.

    *They made this claim in the primaries. The Democratic Party is in no way part of the U.S, government. They warrant as much attention as a local business as they don't receive defense contracts.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 11:13 am

    NotTimothyGeithner
    December 31, 2016 at 11:02 am

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chinese-hack-of-government-network-compromises-security-clearance-files/2015/06/12/9f91f146-1135-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html?utm_term=.4b8cea31c097

    Do you remember the Chinese hack of USA! USA! USA! SECURITY CLEARANCES!!!!!!! TOP SECRET STUFF!!!!

    Do you remember the uproar and all the consequences to China?
    All the trade sanctions???
    The Chinese import restrictions???
    DEF CON superduper ONE or what ever number they use for top DEF CONS now a days
    How the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war and total global annihilation because of this ACT OF WAR????

    Yeah ..neither do I.

    NotTimothyGeithner , December 31, 2016 at 11:49 am

    Arms manufacturers have an interest. The Russia is too small and too distant to overwhelm most countries outside of the Baltics and the Caucuses. The Chinese if they are let in can overwhelm most countries through soft power. Why change U.S. shackles for Chinese ones? The Russians offer many of the same weapon and tech options as the U.S. and China without the soft power threat of being overwhelmed.

    Part of the neoconservative rationale back in the day was the state of defense tech advancement would neutralize our wunder weapons and soldiers on the ground would matter again. We needed to block the Chinese and Russians by destroying or assimilating anyone who wasn't 100% loyal or could move into the Moscow sphere or cut into profit margins. The neoliberals pushed the U.S. would dominate free trade because the US. would run defense, tech, and finance. Russia and China are threats to every neoliberal promise.

    marym , December 31, 2016 at 11:02 am

    Another summary from Greenwald.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 11:26 am

    marym
    December 31, 2016 at 11:02 am

    There was no "penetration of the U.S. electricity grid." The truth was undramatic and banal. Burlington Electric, after receiving a Homeland Security notice sent to all U.S. utility companies about the malware code found in the DNC system, searched all their computers and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid.

    Apparently, the Post did not even bother to contact the company before running its wildly sensationalistic claims, so they had to issue their own statement to the Burlington Free Press which debunked the Post's central claim (emphasis in original): "We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop NOT connected to our organization's grid systems."

    So the key scary claim of the Post story – that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid – was false. All the alarmist tough-guy statements issued by political officials who believed the Post's claim were based on fiction.
    ========================================
    Thanks for that marym!
    I guess – no, I now KNOW it was just idiotic of me and a naive and foolish belief in "progress" that I thought people could no longer be manipulated, like Americans in the 50's with the Red Scare. If anything, it seems the mechanism for ginning up mass hysteria is more effective now than it was than .

    Arizona Slim , December 31, 2016 at 12:14 pm

    If I may be permitted to comment on my comment, permit me to say this about my article link's origin:

    The writer of said article runs a company called WordFence. Its flagship product is a WordPress plugin that protects websites against hacking.

    If you ever get the opportunity to manage a WordPress-powered website that has WordFence among its plugins, be forewarned. You are going to be a very busy site manager.

    Why? Because you'll get frequent e-mailed admonitions from WordFence. Better update this plugin, your WordPress installation, your website theme, or some combination of these things. Yeah, it's annoying at times, but the good news is that WordFence is a very vigilant plugin.

    So, heed those admonitions and do those updates. Now!

    Carl , December 31, 2016 at 9:56 am

    Wow that Putin guy is smart. Brokering a cease-fire in Syria and brushing off Obama in one week. Forget the 11th dimensional chess, this guy's the real chess player. Really knows how to make a countermove. His exposing our failed policies is really what's driving the heated anti-Russian rhetoric by the political establishment, imo.

    dcblogger , December 31, 2016 at 10:00 am

    French workers win legal right to avoid checking work email out-of-hours

    lyman alpha blob , December 31, 2016 at 10:34 am

    Yesterday I mentioned having taken a class in Assyrian archaeology. Turns out the city I studied, Nimrud, has been turned to rubble by the Islamic state .

    Katniss responded with a comment about it being harder to rewrite history if people were actually aware of it. Really at a loss for words as to how people could do something like this. You'd think these ISIS ass***es would revere the Assyrians, being fellow head choppers and all but instead they raze the place.

    The city of Nimrud in northern Iraq is in pieces, victim of the Islamic State group's fervor to erase history. The remains of its palaces and temples, once lined in brilliant reliefs of gods and kings, have been blown up. The statues of winged bulls that once guarded the site are hacked to bits. Its towering ziggurat, or step pyramid, has been bulldozed.

    Funny thing is most of the good stuff from these sites was pillaged by the Brits 150 years ago and a lot of the best reliefs can be found scattered through small New England liberal arts colleges. Always thought they should be repatriated. Love to see these slabs lowered back into place in Iraq someday especially if there are some Bush era neocons and ISIS types underneath them when it happens.

    ewmayer , December 31, 2016 at 6:07 pm

    Remember the "bridge of death" scene near the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where after seeing Knight #1 walk safely across the bridge after getting 3 really easy questions from the bridge troll, Knight #2 excalims "that's easy!", rushes to the front of the queue, and after getting 2 easy questions, is stumped by "what is the capital of Assyria?" Funnily enough, I actually knew that one – Nineveh. Or thought I did, because doing a quick lookup just now I see Nineveh was the oldest city in Assyria and its ancient capital until its destruction in 612 BC, but Nimrud was an earlier capital, from 879–722 BC. So the correct answer is in fact, "it depends."

    Very sad what IS did to Nimrud, though.

    Jeff , December 31, 2016 at 10:39 am

    Hi,

    Is there an update on the demands from NC towards WP and associated liars about the fake news stories?
    Just saw a tweet mentioning the editorial WP added to their original stuff, but couldn't see an update in any of the ~posts here on NC.

    Thanks,

    Paid Minion , December 31, 2016 at 10:42 am

    2016 Post Mortem

    Can somebody please kill this fantasy that Clinton I was "eight years of peace and prosperity"?

    For many of us, it was the beginning of 25 years of working harder and making less. And of hacked government stats to make the economy look better than it actually was.

    Lupemax , December 31, 2016 at 3:29 pm

    Clinton 1, the best repug in the dem party, gave us
    1) Haiti – a failed state
    2) telecommunications bill that has given us the 5 corporations that offer the worst lamestream media in the industrial world that lies endlessly.
    3) end of the safety net (welfare as we know it) for those with the least increase in corporate welfare
    4) Glass-Steagall and corruption on Wall Street and all white collar crime actually that goes completely unpunished
    5) continuation of massive, runaway inequality
    6) Hillary Clinton
    7) NAFTA
    8) increase in childhood poverty
    9) sick care insurance that doesn't cover anyone for healthcare at all
    10) and he also provided privatized social security with Newt Gingrich but Monica (good for her) intervened.

    Webstir , December 31, 2016 at 10:59 am

    While making no excuses for the ineptitude of our current establishmentarian politicos, I think many of the commenters on here who seem in awe of Putin's political savvy forget an important point: He's an autocrat. Whatever the U.S.'s current political failings, there is still a generally effective system of checks and balances. Putin, as an autocrat, does not face these challenges. He is free to shape his statecraft as he pleases and to implement tactics at the drop of a hat. Our political system does not (and lord help us under the trump regime - should not) enjoy this luxury. Whether you feel like the hacking is a ginned up conspiracy or not, cozying up to an autocrat like Putin is an existential threat to all democratic nations.

    "11 dimensional chess" give me a break.

    HBE , December 31, 2016 at 1:32 pm

    "Whether you feel like the hacking is a ginned up conspiracy or not, cozying up to an autocrat like Putin is an existential threat to all democratic nations."

    But what about about an oligarchy?

    Our "democracy" has been dead for awhile for anyone not in the top 10%. You can't really be an "existential threat" to something that doesn't exist.

    Webstir , December 31, 2016 at 2:38 pm

    Thus my statement: "Whatever the U.S.'s current political failings, there is still a GENERALLY effective system of checks and balances." And yes, it can (and most likely will) get worse, before it gets better. I'm not blind to the US's frailties. However, I feel there is still a "chance" that we can step back from the brink of utterly destroying this 200 year experiment in representative democracy. The closer we step to abiding autocracy as a matter of course, though, the closer we step to the brink of not being able to reverse the considerable mistakes we have made.

    alex morfesis , December 31, 2016 at 2:00 pm

    No one anywhere ever is an autocrat no king, no dictator, no president, no fearless leader and certainly not raz-putin and no one has ever been that is a pedestrian image of what it takes to run an enterprise not castro, not saddam, not mao, not stalin .no one

    Webstir , December 31, 2016 at 2:47 pm

    Fine. I'll play the semantic game.

    Your statement does not; however, negate my assertion. Putin's ability to maneuver politically (within whatever system you'd like to call it) is substantially less hampered by checks and balances than ours. Our absolute polarization in this country has opened the door for "autocraticish" world leaders to seriously undermine our "admittedly weakened by oligarchic influences" system of representative democracy.

    hunkerdown , December 31, 2016 at 5:50 pm

    Our checks and balances were designed to serve the oligarchy. For some reason, you don't seem to have a problem with things that are unfit for purpose as long as they demand attention.

    Webstir , December 31, 2016 at 7:13 pm

    I address the first sentence of your reply alone, because the second makes no sense.

    So great, it's always been an oligarchy. I've read Zinn. But since you append no solution, am I left to believe that the solution is let Putin destroy said oligarchy and replace it with autocracy? Seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me. But I get it. Some people just want to see the world burn.

    hunkerdown , January 1, 2017 at 12:27 am

    The world is not debate club and it is not a business. You are not entitled to a solution. I believe it's arrogant of you to believe that you are.

    What's more, you're not ready to overlap your solution space with that of the people. Like I said, the world is not debate club. This is an attempt to meet minds, not to pray like a Pharisee.

    Let's start with this principle: does human welfare "net out"?

    hunkerdown , January 1, 2017 at 12:33 am

    Adding, I understand that "world burm" stuff is on today's meme list, as I've seen it in plenty of comment boxes around the Web, so you can stop pretending you're not on assignment. I want to watch liberals' world burn for their arrogance, and I defy you to tell me why they don't deserve that or worse.

    witters , December 31, 2016 at 8:19 pm

    Forgive me Webstir, but isn't Russia a capitalist democracy? Doesn't the UN etc get to monitor their elections? Putin gets voted in in the usual way. If that is a problem, then it is a problem for 'Democracy' generally. And remind me, these "checks and balances" – is that the CIA versus the FBI? Is it the the DOJ and financial crime? What is it?

    Carl , December 31, 2016 at 6:55 pm

    I guess that comment was directed to one of mine. Sorry, but I was just trying to express how inept Putin makes our war-mongering political establishment look (probably because they are) just by making a few strategic moves. If that came across as "cozying up" to the man, well, you might be reading too much into it. And the 11th dimensional chess remark was /sarc.

    Jeremy Grimm , December 31, 2016 at 7:28 pm

    "Cozying up to an autocrat like Putin is an existential threat to all democratic nations." Huh!????? Not maintaining "amicable relations" with Putin and Russia is an existential threat to ALL nations of the world.

    And how is it cozying up to Putin to question the plainly false assertions by our Security Industrial Complex or admire some clever but relatively straightforward responses to Obama's "retaliations"?

    Do you believe the President of United States has no capacity to control and direct the actions of the Executive Branch? The President has considerable autocratic power - little or not mitigated by "checks and balances" - as the head of the Executive Branch of the United States.

    Jeremy Grimm , December 31, 2016 at 7:34 pm

    "Cozying up to an autocrat like Putin is an existential threat to all democratic nations." Not maintaining "amicable relations" with Putin and Russia is an existential threat to ALL nations of the world.

    How is it cozying up to Putin to question the plainly false assertions by our Security Industrial Complex or admire some clever but relatively straightforward responses to Obama's "retaliations"?

    Do you believe the President of United States has no capacity to control and direct the actions of the Executive Branch? The President has considerable autocratic power - little or not mitigated by "checks and balances" - as the head of the Executive Branch of the United States.

    MyLessThanPrimeBeef , December 31, 2016 at 11:01 am

    The Aurochs, back from the dead.

    Now, we can feel better about finishing of those bees, because we can bring always bring them back later.

    More enabling of Nature-abusing, should it become a part of cost-benefit analysis – the cost of preserving a species, versus letting it die now and bringing it back 50 years later – because we humans know exactly what we're doing. Having more options is always better.

    In the mean time, get the award ready for another display of superior intelligence.

    flora , December 31, 2016 at 1:49 pm

    I don't disagree.
    For me, teading the story brought up this segue:

    The general appearance of the auroch bull is similar to the smaller Spanish fighting bull. Which reminds me, there are several kinds of bull fighting. Portuguese bull fighting isn't featured in movies but wow is it something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS4bGwA0QSc

    There's the ancient /modern sport of bull-leaping. Sport in some form goes back at least 3500 years judging from Minoan frescos.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AukHt8_N1zs

    jhallc , December 31, 2016 at 2:10 pm

    Look on the bright side. They might be developing a superior supply of rodeo bulls to ride. However, the clowns may need some extra padding.

    fresno dan , December 31, 2016 at 11:02 am

    Is Obama using Russia to force a wedge between Trump and his party? Guardian

    Having compromised national security in order to defeat Hillary Clinton, the Republican leadership may now see Trump as expendable. After all, he chose a standard rightwing Republican, the Indiana governor, Mike Pence, as his running mate, which means McConnell and Ryan can always arrange to have Trump impeached if he becomes too much trouble.

    For Obama, Russia is thus a uniquely effective wedge issue, with the potential to divide the president-elect from his party. If Trump tries to remove the new sanctions, he could face blowback from Congress; if he doesn't, his friendly relationship with Putin could be damaged.
    ===================================================================
    If Trump is truly not fervently anti Russian, than he was gonna have problems with the repubs soon enough. As I commented yesterday, to me the issue is Trump strong enough to resist the many and varied forms of persuasion that will be marshaled by the MIC and associated hangers on to continue the very lucrative cold war funding.

    I saw a retrospective on the Trump campaign, and the part where Trump got sat down and questioned on abortion. Trump finally answered the question, "do you think women who have abortions should be punished?"
    Trump's answer of yes reveals two things to me:
    1. Yes, of course he is a politician and gives an answer that he believes his base wants to hear. It took him a while to learn the standard inconsistent but repub politically correct answer.
    2. I doubt very much, to the extent Trump has "core beliefs" that Trump was against abortion. But Trump, maybe more than most, will change to mollify the base.

    Now, I don't think the repub base actually gives a rat's as* about spending money to contain Russia, but I think the modern elites can sure make it seem like they do. I am hoping, but I doubt Trump, has the backbone, skill, and intellect to really counter a sustained effort to keep us at the status quo ante (i.e., keep us knee jerk anti Russian).

    The question is: are there REALLY 99 senators who believe Russia hacked the election or same difference, 99 who will vote that Russia hacked us?
    And you know what that means? It means that we are governed in mass, by seriously incompetent people with ideological blinders on – Trump is the least of our problems .

    Foppe , December 31, 2016 at 11:53 am

    Fancy that, Harvard still has a "cold war center" with nitwits who sell this as "analysis"?

    Mark Kramer, the program director for the Project on Cold War Studies at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, told Business Insider in an email Friday that Putin's "conspicuous announcement today was intended in part to give the impression that Obama's measure are weak and inconsequential (as indeed they largely are) and do not deserve a response."

    "Putin can thus depict himself as taking the high road," Kramer added, "and undoubtedly will be praised in European and Third World countries that are always eager to condemn the United States."

    HotFlash , December 31, 2016 at 4:50 pm

    If Trump is truly not fervently anti Russian, than he was gonna have problems with the repubs soon enough.
    ========================================

    I dunno. Mr. Trump, excuse me, President-Elect Trump, has a real gift for knowing what the people want, or at least what they want to hear. And the R's are conditioned (by the Tea Part et al) to fear their base. May it be that the Repubs (elites) will have problems with Trump? As for the Demos, Demo-friendly pundits and the vast "left wing conspiracy", I keep having the feeling that all this Putin-blaming stuff is because "Empress Hillary said so" and the DC/Demo-apparatus does not dare (yet) pile on the Trump wagon. See what happens on Jan 21.

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    [Oct 11, 2017] Russia witch hunt is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working class

    [Oct 09, 2017] After Nine Months, Only Stale Crumbs in Russia Inquiry by Scott Ritter

    [Oct 03, 2017] Russian Ads On Facebook A Click-Bait Campaign

    [Sep 30, 2017] Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet by Glenn Greenwald

    [Sep 26, 2017] Is Foreign Propaganda Even Effective by Leon Hadar

    [Sep 25, 2017] I am presently reading the book JFK and the Unspeakable by James W.Douglass and it is exactly why Kennedy was assassinated by the very same group that desperately wants to see Trump gone and the rapprochement with Russia squashed

    [Sep 24, 2017] Mark Ames When Mother Jones Was Investigated for Spreading Kremlin Disinformation by Mark Ames

    [Sep 23, 2017] The Exit Strategy of Empire by Wendy McElro

    [Sep 23, 2017] Welcome to 1984 Big Brother Google Now Watching Your Every Political Move

    [Sep 20, 2017] The Politics of Military Ascendancy by James Petras

    [Sep 18, 2017] Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish partnerships with military contractors like SAIC, Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.

    [Sep 18, 2017] How The Military Defeated Trumps Insurgency

    [Sep 18, 2017] The NYT's Yellow Journalism on Russia by Rober Parry

    [Sep 17, 2017] The So-called Russian Hack of the DNC Does Not Make Sense by Publius Tacitus

    [Aug 25, 2017] Some analogies of current events in the USA and Mao cultural revolution: In China when the Mao mythology was threatened the Red Guard raised holy hell and lives were ruined

    [Aug 08, 2017] The Tale of the Brothers Awan by Philip Giraldi

    [Jul 30, 2017] the Ukrainingate emerging from the evidence on Hillary campaign sounds like a criminal conspiracy of foreign state against Trump

    [Jul 29, 2017] Ray McGovern The Deep State Assault on Elected Government Must Be Stopped

    [Jul 28, 2017] Perhaps Trump asked Sessions to fire Mueller and Sessions refused?

    [Jul 17, 2017] Tucker Carlson Goes to War Against the Neocons by Curt Mills

    [Jul 13, 2017] Progressive Democrats Resist and Submit, Retreat and Surrender by James Petras

    [Jul 12, 2017] Stephen Cohens Remarks on Tucker Carlson Last Night Were Extraordinary

    [Jul 06, 2017] The Great Power Shift A Russia-China Alliance by Ray McGovern

    [Jul 01, 2017] MUST SEE video explains the entire 17 Intelligence Agencies Russian hacking lie

    [Jun 26, 2017] The Soft Coup Under Way In Washington by David Stockman

    [Jun 15, 2017] Comeys Lies of Omission by Mike Whitney

    [May 23, 2017] Trumped-up claims against Trump by Ray McGovern

    [May 21, 2017] Speech of Lavrov at the Military Academy of the General Staff

    [May 20, 2017] Invasion of the Putin-Nazis by C.J. Hopkins

    [Feb 19, 2017] The deep state is running scared!

    [Mar 05, 2019] The Shadow Governments Destruction Of Democracy

    [Feb 19, 2017] The deep state is running scared!

    [Jan 16, 2017] Gaius Publius Who is Blackmailing the President Why Arent Democrats Upset About It by Gaius Publius,

    [Dec 30, 2018] RussiaGate In Review with Aaron Mate - Unreasoned Fear is Neoliberalism's Response to the Credibility Gap

    [Dec 29, 2018] -Election Meddling- Enters Bizarro World As MSM Ignores Democrat-Linked -Russian Bot- Scheme -

    [Dec 22, 2018] British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft by Craig Murray

    [Dec 22, 2018] If Truth Cannot Prevail Over Material Agendas We Are Doomed by Paul Craig Roberts

    [Dec 21, 2018] Virtually no one in neoliberal MSM is paying attention to the fact that a group of Pakistani muslims, working for a Jewish Congresswoman from Florida, had full computer access to a large number of Democrat Representatives. Most of the press is disinterested in pursuing this matter

    [Dec 16, 2018] The 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation, Disguised As Charity, To Create The Russian Threat

    [Dec 14, 2018] MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given

    [Dec 14, 2018] Vetting NYT materials by CIA reflects full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the neoliberal MSM

    [Dec 14, 2018] The dirty propaganda games NYT play

    [Dec 10, 2018] One thing that has puzzled me about Trump methods is his constant tweeting of witch hunt with respect to Mueller but his unwillingness to actually disclose what Brennan, Clapper, Comey, et al actually did

    [Dec 09, 2018] Die Weltwoche Weltwoche Online – www.weltwoche.ch Tucker Carlson Trump is not capable Die Weltwoche, Ausgabe 49-2018

    [Dec 05, 2018] Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is wailing loudly against a Trump threat to reveal classified documents relating to Russiagate by Philip Giraldi

    [Dec 02, 2018] Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Wins 2018 Sam Adams Award by Ray McGovern

    [Dec 02, 2018] Muller investigation has all the appearance of an investigation looking for a crime

    [Nov 27, 2018] 'Highly likely' that Magnitsky was poisoned by toxic chemicals on Bill Browder's orders

    [Nov 27, 2018] US Foreign Policy Has No Policy by Philip Giraldi

    [Nov 24, 2018] MI6 Scrambling To Stop Trump From Releasing Classified Docs In Russia Probe

    [Nov 24, 2018] Anonymous Exposes UK-Led Psyop To Battle Russian Propaganda

    [Nov 24, 2018] British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns

    [Nov 24, 2018] When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots psyops, you tend to come up with plots for psyops . The word entrapment comes to mind. Probably self-serving also.

    [Nov 23, 2018] Sitting on corruption hill

    [Nov 12, 2018] The Best Way To Honor War Veterans Is To Stop Creating Them by Caitlin Johnstone

    [Nov 12, 2018] Obama s CIA Secretly Intercepted Congressional Communications About Whistleblowers

    [Nov 12, 2018] Protecting Americans from foreign influence, smells with COINTELPRO. Structural witch-hunt effect like during the McCarthy era is designed to supress decent to neoliberal oligarcy by Andre Damon and Joseph Kishore

    [Oct 25, 2018] DNC Emails--A Seth Attack Not a Russian Hack by Publius Tacitus

    [Oct 25, 2018] Putin jokes with Bolton: Did the eagle eaten all the olives

    [Oct 20, 2018] I am most encouraged by the apparent Putin's realisation that the First Strike is possible now if not even likely. If the Russians expect an attack they are much less likely to be totally surprised, as usual. In fact, never in history was such attack by the West more likely than now, for various reasons which would take a while to explain.

    [Oct 20, 2018] Cloak and Dagger by Israel Shamir

    [Oct 08, 2018] Hacking and Propaganda by Marcus Ranum

    [Oct 04, 2018] Brett Kavanaugh's 'revenge' theory spotlights past with Clintons by Lisa Mascaro

    [Oct 02, 2018] I m puzzled why CIA is so against Kavanaugh?

    [Sep 23, 2018] UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited Grave Concerns Over Steele Involvement

    [Sep 21, 2018] One party state: Trump's 'Opposition' Supports All His Evil Agendas While Attacking Fake Nonsence by Caitlin Johnstone

    [Sep 16, 2018] Looks like the key players in Steele dossier were CIA assets

    [Sep 16, 2018] Perils of Ineptitude by Andrew Levin

    [Sep 15, 2018] Why the US Seeks to Hem in Russia, China and Iran by Patrick Lawrence

    [Sep 15, 2018] BBC is skanky state propaganda

    [Sep 09, 2018] DNC Papadopoulos s UK contact may be dead

    [Sep 07, 2018] New York Times Undermining Peace Efforts by Sowing Suspicion by Diana Johnstone

    [Sep 07, 2018] Sarah Huckabee Sanders has a legitimate request to neoliberal MSM - Stop Bugging Me About The New York Times' Trump Op-Ed

    [Sep 02, 2018] Open letter to President Trump concerning the consequences of 11 September 2001 by Thierry Meyssan

    [Sep 02, 2018] Bill Browder (of Magnitsky fame) broke all these rules while pillaging Russia.

    [May 11, 2019] Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia

    [Aug 24, 2018] The priorities of the deep state and its public face the MSM

    [Aug 22, 2018] The CIA Owns the US and European Media by Paul Craig Roberts

    [Aug 18, 2018] Pentagon Whistleblower Demoted After Exposing Millions Paid To FBI Spy Halper, Clinton Crony

    [Aug 17, 2018] What if Russiagate is the New WMDs

    [Aug 14, 2018] I think one of Mueller s deeply embedded character flaw is that once he decides on burying someone he becomes possessed

    [Aug 14, 2018] US Intelligence Community is Tearing the Country Apart from the Inside by Dmitry Orlov

    [Aug 11, 2018] President Trump the most important achivement

    [May 11, 2019] Christopher Steele, FBI s Confidential Human Source by Publius Tacitus

    [Aug 08, 2018] Ten Bombshell Revelations From Seymour Hersh's New Autobiography

    [Aug 05, 2018] Cooper was equally as unhinged as Boot: Neoliberal MSM is a real 1984 remake.

    [Jul 31, 2018] Is not the Awan affair a grave insult to the US "Intelligence Community?

    [Jul 28, 2018] American Society Would Collapse If It Were not For These 8 Myths by Lee Camp

    [Jul 23, 2018] Chickens with Their Heads Cut Off, Coming Home to Roost. The "Treason Narrative" by Helen Buyniski

    [Jul 22, 2018] Tucker Carlson SLAMS Intelligence Community On Russia

    [Jul 20, 2018] Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community by Ilana Mercer

    [Jul 20, 2018] So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don t question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven t been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax

    [Jul 20, 2018] What exactly is fake news caucus99percent

    [Jul 20, 2018] Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community by Ilana Mercer

    [Jul 20, 2018] Is President Trump A Traitor Because He Wants Peace With Russia by Paul Craig Roberts

    [Jul 17, 2018] I think there is much more to the comment made by Putin regarding Bill Browder and his money flows into the DNC and Clinton campaign. That would explain why the DNC didn t hand the servers over to the FBI after being hacked.

    [Jul 13, 2018] False flag operation covering DNC leaks now involves Mueller and his team

    [Jul 16, 2018] Putin Claims U.S. Intelligence Agents Funneled $400K To Clinton Campaign Zero Hedge

    [Jul 16, 2018] Five Things That Would Make The CIA-CNN Russia Narrative More Believable

    [Jul 15, 2018] What Mueller won t find by Bob In Portland

    [Jul 15, 2018] Sic Semper Tyrannis HILLARY CLINTON S COMPROMISED EMAILS WERE GOING TO A FOREIGN ENTITY – NOT RUSSIA! FBI Agent Ignored Evide

    [Jul 15, 2018] Peter Strzok Ignored Evidence Of Clinton Server Breach

    [Jul 15, 2018] Something Rotten About the DOJ Indictment of the GRU by Publius Tacitus

    [Jul 15, 2018] As if the Donald did not sanctioned to death the Russians on every possible level. How is this different from Mueller's and comp witch hunt against the Russians?

    [Jul 03, 2018] Russia has a lot of information about Lybia that could dig a political grave for Hillary. They did not release it

    [Jul 03, 2018] Musings II The "Intelligence Community," "Russian Interference," and Due Diligence

    [Jul 03, 2018] When you see some really successful financial speculator like Soros or (or much smaller scale) Browder, search for links with intelligence services to explain the success or at least a part of it related to xUSSR space , LA and similar regions

    [Jun 09, 2018] Spooks Spooking Themselves by Daniel Lazare

    [Jun 09, 2018] Still Waiting for Evidence of a Russian Hack by Ray McGovern

    [Jun 17, 2018] Mattis Putin Is Trying To Undermine America s Moral Authority by Caitlin Johnstone

    [Jun 17, 2018] the dominant political forces in EU are anti-Russia

    [Jun 13, 2018] How False Flag Operations Are Carried Out Today by Philip M. GIRALDI

    [Jun 12, 2018] The real reason for which 'information apocalypse' terrifies the mainstream media

    [Jun 06, 2018] Why Foreign Policy Realism Isn't Enough by William S. Smith

    [May 31, 2018] Journalists and academics expose UK's criminal actions in the Middle East by Julie Hyland

    [May 29, 2018] Guccifer 2.0's American Fingerprints Reveal An Operation Made In The USA by Elizabeth Lea Vos

    [May 24, 2018] Most probably Veselnitskaya was a false flag operation to entrap Trump campaign played by British intelligence

    [May 27, 2018] America's Fifth Column Will Destroy Russia by Paul Craig Roberts

    [May 27, 2018] Northwestern University roundtable discusses regime change in Russia Defend Democracy Press

    [May 24, 2018] Most probably Veselnitskaya was a false flag operation to entrap Trump campaign played by British intelligence

    [May 24, 2018] The diversion of Russia Gate is a continuation of former diversions such as the Tea Party which was invented by the banksters to turn public anger over the big banking collapse and the resulting recession into a movement to gain more deregulation for tax breaks for the wealthy

    [May 23, 2018] Mueller role as a hatchet man is now firmly established. Rosenstein key role in applointing Mueller without any evidence became also more clear with time. Was he coerced or did it voluntarily is unclear by Lambert Strether

    [May 23, 2018] If the Trump-Russia set up began in spring 2016 or earlier, presumably it was undertaken on the assumption that HRC would win the election. (I say "presumably" because you never can tell..) If so, then the operation would have been an MI6 / Ukrainian / CIA coordinated op intended to frame Putin, not Trump

    [May 14, 2018] You will never see a headline in WSJ which reads something like FBI spy infiltrated the Trump campaign .

    [May 04, 2018] Media Use Disinformation To Accuse Russia Of Spreading Such by b

    [May 03, 2018] Mueller's questions to Trump more those of a prosecuting attorney than of an impartial investigator by Alexander Mercouris

    [May 03, 2018] Skripal case British confirm they have no suspect; Yulia Skripal vanishes, no word of Sergey Skripal by Alexander Mercouris

    [May 03, 2018] Despite all the propaganda, all the hysterical headlines, all the blatantly biased coverage, the British haven't bought it

    [Apr 24, 2018] The Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice

    [Apr 21, 2018] On the Criminal Referral of Comey, Clinton et al by Ray McGovern

    [Apr 18, 2018] The Great American Unspooling Is Upon Us

    [Apr 15, 2018] The Trump Regime Is Insane by Paul Craig Roberts

    [Mar 27, 2018] Perfidious Albion The Fatally Wounded British Beast Lashes Out by Barbara Boyd

    [Mar 24, 2018] Assange Suggests British Government Was Involved In Plot To Bring Down Trump by Steve Watson

    [Mar 23, 2018] Skripal Poisoning a Desperate British Attempt To Resurrect Their American Coup by Barbara Boyd

    [Apr 02, 2018] Russophobia Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy by A. Tsygankov

    [Apr 01, 2018] Big American Money, Not Russia, Put Trump in the White House: Reflections on a Recent Report by Paul Street

    [Apr 01, 2018] Does the average user care if s/he is micro-targetted by political advertisements based on what they already believe?

    [Mar 31, 2018] FBI Director Mueller testified to Congress that Saddam Hussein was responsible for anthrax attack! That was Mueller's role in selling the "intelligence" to invade Iraq.

    [Mar 27, 2018] Indian Punchline - Reflections on foreign affairs by M K Bhadrakumar

    [Mar 27, 2018] The Stormy Daniels scandal Political warfare in Washington hits a new low by Patrick Martin

    [Mar 27, 2018] Let's Investigate John Brennan, by Philip Giraldi

    [Mar 25, 2018] A truly historical month for the future of our planet by The Saker

    [Mar 25, 2018] Cambridge Analytica Scandal Rockets to Watergate Proportions and Beyond by Adam Garrie

    [Mar 24, 2018] Why the UK, the EU and the US Gang-Up on Russia by James Petras

    [Mar 24, 2018] Did Trump cut a deal on the collusion charge by Mike Whitney

    [Mar 22, 2018] If it's correct, the Brits made a very nasty error that shows the true nature of their establishment.

    [Mar 22, 2018] Vladimir Putin: nonsense to think Russia would poison spy in UK

    [Mar 21, 2018] Former CIA Chief Brennan Running Scared by Ray McGovern

    [Mar 21, 2018] Whataboutism Is A Nonsensical Propaganda Term Used To Defend The Failed Status Quo by Mike Krieger

    [Mar 16, 2018] Corbyn Calls for Evidence in Escalating Poison Row

    [Mar 14, 2018] UNSC holds urgent meeting over Salisbury attack

    [Mar 13, 2018] The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party by Patrick Martin

    [Mar 12, 2018] State Department's War on Political Dissent

    [Mar 10, 2018] Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko s death.

    [Mar 10, 2018] There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this

    [Mar 08, 2018] Mueller determines the US foreign policy toward Russia; The Intel Community Lies About Russian Meddling by Publius Tacitus

    [Mar 11, 2018] Washington s Century-long War on Russia by Mike Whitney

    [Mar 11, 2018] Reality Check: The Guardian Restarts Push for Regime Change in Russia by Kit

    [Mar 11, 2018] The Elephant In The Room by Craig Murray

    [Mar 10, 2018] Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in Obama policy and HRC campaign long before any Steele s Dossier. This was a program ofunleashing cold War II

    [Mar 10, 2018] There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this

    [Mar 10, 2018] They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.

    [Mar 08, 2018] We don t have the evidence yet because Mueller hasn t found it yet! is a classic argument from ignorance, in that is assumes without evidence (there s that pesky word again!) that there is something to be found

    [Mar 08, 2018] Cue bono question in Scripal case?

    [Mar 08, 2018] In recent years, there has been ample evidence that US policy-makers and, equally important, mainstream media commentators do not bother to read what Putin says, or at least not more than snatches from click-bait wire-service reports.

    [Mar 08, 2018] Given the CrowdStrike itself is a massively compromised organization due to its founder and CEO, those "certified true images" are themselves tainted evidence

    [Mar 08, 2018] A key piece of evidence pointing to 'Guccifer 2.0' being a fake personality created by the conspirators in their attempt to disguise the fact that the materials from the DNC published by 'WikiLeaks' were obtained by a leak rather than a hack had to do with the involvement of the former GCHQ person Matt Tait.

    [Mar 08, 2018] Mueller determines the US foreign policy toward Russia; The Intel Community Lies About Russian Meddling by Publius Tacitus

    [Mar 06, 2018] Is MSNBC Now the Most Dangerous Warmonger Network by Norman Solomon

    [Mar 06, 2018] The U.S. Returns to 'Great Power Competition,' With a Dangerous New Edge

    [Mar 06, 2018] The current anti-Russian sentiment in the West as hysterical. But this hysteria is concentrated at the top level of media elite and neocons. Behind it is no deep sense of unity or national resolve. In fact we see the reverse - most Western countries are deeply divided within themselves due to the crisis of neolineralism.

    [Mar 04, 2018] Generals who now are running the USA foreign policy represents a great danger. These men seem incapable of rising above the Russophobia that grew in the atmosphere of the Cold War. They yearn for world hegemony for the US and to see Russia and to a lesser extent China and Iran as obstacles to that dominion for the "city on a hill

    [Mar 02, 2018] The main reason much of the highest echelons of American power are united against Trump might be that they're terrified that -- unlike Obama -- he's a really bad salesman for the US led neoliberal empire. This threatens the continuance of their well oiled and exceedingly corrupt gravy train

    [Mar 02, 2018] Fatal Delusions of Western Man by Pat Buchanan

    [Mar 02, 2018] Contradictions In Seth Rich Murder Continue To Challenge Hacking Narrative

    [Feb 28, 2018] Perjury traps to manufacture indictments to pressure people to testify against others is a new tool of justice in a surveillance state

    [Feb 26, 2018] It looks like Christopher Steele's real role was laundering information which had been obtained through continued Inquiries of the NSA mega-file by our Ambassador to the UN

    [Feb 26, 2018] Democrat Memo Lays Egg by Publius Tacitus

    [Feb 26, 2018] Why one war when we can heve two! by Eric Margolis

    [Feb 25, 2018] Russia would not do anything nearing the level of self-harm inflicted by the US elites.

    [Apr 17, 2019] Deep State and the FBI Federal Blackmail Investigation

    [Feb 23, 2018] NSA Genius Debunks Russiagate Once For All

    [Feb 22, 2018] Bill Binney explodes the rile of 17 agances security assessment memo in launching the Russia witch-hunt

    [Feb 20, 2018] For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia

    [Feb 20, 2018] Russophobia is a futile bid to conceal US, European demise by Finian Cunningham

    [Feb 19, 2018] Nunes FBI and DOJ Perps Could Be Put on Trial by Ray McGovern

    [Feb 19, 2018] The Russiagate Intelligence Wars What We Do and Don't Know

    [Feb 18, 2018] This dangerous escalation of tensions with Russia is extremely lucrative for the war profiteers, the retired generals intelligence members who prostitute themselves as media pundits, the members of Congress who get $$$ from the war profiteers, and the corporate media which thrives on links to the war profiteers as well as on war reporting

    [Feb 16, 2018] A Dangerous Turn in U.S. Foreign Policy

    [Feb 16, 2018] The Deep Staters care first and foremost about themselves.

    [Feb 12, 2018] I am wondering why it is that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing

    [Feb 15, 2018] Trump's War on the Deep State by Conrad Black

    [Feb 14, 2018] Recused Judge in Flynn Prosecution Served on FISA Court

    [Feb 14, 2018] The Anti-Trump Coup by Michael S. Rozeff

    [Feb 14, 2018] The FBI and the President – Mutual Manipulation by James Petras

    [Feb 12, 2018] The Age of Lunacy: The Doomsday Machine

    [Feb 12, 2018] Too many sport disciplines, too much cheating, too much money and too many politics involved in the Olympic

    [Feb 12, 2018] Ike's Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex Is Alive and Very Well by William J. Astore

    [Feb 12, 2018] I am wondering why it is that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing

    [Feb 08, 2018] Try Googling Riggs Bank – a lot of interesting information emerges, on matters such as their involvement with Prince Bandar. So, what we are dealing with is a joint Anglo-American attempt to create a comprador oligarchy who could loot Russia s raw materials resources

    [Feb 11, 2018] How Russiagate fiasco destroys Kremlin moderates, accelerating danger for a hot war

    [Feb 11, 2018] British spy who meddled in US elections disappears

    [May 11, 2019] CIA Paid $100,000 To Shadowy Russian For Dirt on Trump, Including Sex Video by Chuck Ross

    [Feb 10, 2018] More on neoliberal newspeak of US propaganda machine

    [Feb 09, 2018] Professor Stephen F. Cohen Rethinking Putin – A critical reading, by The Saker - The Unz Review

    [Feb 08, 2018] Control of narrative means that creation of the simplistic picture in which the complexities of the world are elided in favor of 'good guys' vs. 'bad guys' dichotomy

    [Feb 04, 2018] DNC collusion with Ukrainian IT Security company Crowdstrike tied to the Atlantic Council to push false narrative of DNC hack and malware to influence US election

    [May 11, 2019] Nunes Memo Details Weaponization of FISA Court for Political Advantage by Elizabeth Lea Vos

    [Feb 03, 2018] The FISA Memo, Obama, And The Election that Almost Was not by Tom Luongo

    [Feb 03, 2018] Sic Semper Tyrannis Habakkuk on 'longtime' sources

    [Jan 22, 2018] The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump's associates appear compromised

    [Jan 31, 2018] Will Congress Face Down the Deep State by Ray McGovern

    [Jan 30, 2018] Washington Reaches New Heights of Insanity with the "Kremlin Report" by Paul Craig Roberts

    [Jan 30, 2018] The Unseen Wars of America the Empire The American Conservative

    [Jan 28, 2018] Russiagate Isn t About Trump, And It Isn t Even Ultimately About Russia by Caitlyn Johnstone

    [Jan 28, 2018] The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Russiagate Isn't About Trump, And It Isn't Even Ultimately About Russia by Caitlyn Johnstone

    [Jan 27, 2018] The Rich Also Cry by Israel Shamir

    [Jan 27, 2018] As of January 2018 Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, is starting to look like something Trump should have done sooner.

    [Jan 27, 2018] In a Trump Hunt, Beware the Perjury Trap by Pat Buchanan

    [Jan 26, 2018] Warns The Russiagate Stakes Are Extreme by Paul Craig Roberts

    [Jan 25, 2018] Russiagate as Kafka 2.0

    [Jan 25, 2018] vidence of FBI Conspiracy Grows by Publius Tacitus

    [Jan 24, 2018] Destroying, suppressing evidence is FBI standard procedure by James Bovard

    [Jan 24, 2018] The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate by Ray McGovern

    [Jan 24, 2018] Whistleblower Confirms Secret Society Meetings Between FBI And DOJ To Undermine Trump

    [Jan 24, 2018] Brazen Plot To Exonerate Hillary Clinton And Frame Trump Unraveling, Says Former Fed Prosecutor

    [Jan 23, 2018] Operation Condor – How NSA Director Mike Rogers Saved The U.S. From a Massive Constitutional Crisis by sundance

    [Jan 22, 2018] Joe diGenova Brazen Plot to Frame Trump

    [Jan 22, 2018] Pentagon Unveils Strategy for Military Confrontation With Russia and China by Bill Van Auken

    [Jan 22, 2018] Clapper may have been the one behind using British intelligence to spy on Trump.

    [Jan 22, 2018] Not Only Did Loretta Lynch Know in Advance Of Comey's Findings On Hillary the DOJ Helped Comey Write His Memo by streiff

    [Jan 22, 2018] The Associated Press is reporting that the Department of Justice has given congressional investigators additional text messages between FBI investigator Peter Strzok and his girlfriend Lisa Page. The FBI also told investigators that five months worth of text messages, between December 2016 and May 2017, are unavailable because of a technical glitch

    [Jan 19, 2018] #ReleaseTheMemo Extensive FISA abuse memo could destroy the entire Mueller Russia investigation by Alex Christoforou

    [Jan 17, 2018] Neoconning the Trump White House by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

    [Jan 16, 2018] The Russia Explainer

    [Jan 14, 2018] Sic Semper Tyrannis The Trump Dossier Timeline, A Democrat Disaster Looming by Publius Tacitus

    [Jan 14, 2018] The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate by Ray McGovern

    [May 11, 2019] Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart -- Say Hello to Fancy Bear

    [Jan 13, 2018] The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate by Ray McGovern

    [Jan 13, 2018] Peter Strzok committed treason with anti-Trump texts, president says by Dave Boyer

    [Jan 12, 2018] The DOJ and FBI Worked With Fusion GPS on Operation Trump

    [Jan 12, 2018] There are strong suspecions that Fusion GPs was CIA front company

    [Jan 08, 2018] Someone Spoofed Michael Wolff s Book About Trump And It s Comedy Gold

    [Jan 08, 2018] Was Flynn Framed? by Tim Suereth

    [Jan 07, 2018] CONFIRMED: CLINTON OPERATIVES IN FBI MANUFACTURED RUSSIAGATE by Roger Stone

    [Jan 06, 2018] Russia-gate Breeds Establishment McCarthyism by Robert Parry

    [May 11, 2019] Doug Ross @ Journal A TIMELINE OF TREASON How the DNC and FBI Leadership Tried to Fix a Presidential Election [Updated]

    [Jan 01, 2018] British Intervention into 2016 U.S. Election

    [Jan 02, 2018] The Still-Missing Evidence of Russia-gate by Dennis J. Bernstein

    [Jan 02, 2018] Some investigators ask a sensible question: "It is likely that all the Russians involved in the attempt to influence the 2016 election were lying, scheming, Kremlin-linked, Putin-backed enemies of America except the Russians who talked to Christopher Steele?"

    [Jan 02, 2018] What We Don t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking by Jackson Lears

    [Jan 02, 2018] Jill Stein in the Cross-hairs by Mike Whitney

    [Jan 02, 2018] Who Is the Real Enemy by Philip Giraldi

    [Dec 31, 2017] What Happens When A Russiagate Skeptic Debates A Professional Russiagater

    [Dec 31, 2017] Where's the Collusion

    [Dec 31, 2017] EXCLUSIVE FBI s Own Political Terror Plot; Deputy Director and FBI Brass Secretly Conspired to Wage Coup Against Flynn Trump

    [Jul 13, 2019] Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling by Larry C Johnson

    [Jul 09, 2019] Ex-FBI, CIA Officials Draw Withering Fire on Russiagate by Ray McGovern

    [Jul 06, 2019] Why is Iran such a high priority for US elite? Because Iran successfully booted out the CIA and CIA-imposed regime out of their country and successfully remained independent since then

    [Jul 06, 2019] Mueller Report Gets the Trump Tower Meeting Wrong; Promotes Browder Hoax by Lucy Komisar

    [Jun 30, 2019] USG's Bizarre Change of Position in the Roger Stone Case by Larry C Johnson

    [Jun 29, 2019] Latest Weapon Of US Imperialism Liquified Natural Gas

    [Jun 26, 2019] Opinion - NY Times admits it sends stories to US government for approval before publication

    [Jun 21, 2019] America's Confrontation With Iran Goes Deeper Than Trump by Trita Parsi

    [Jun 21, 2019] Russia accuses U.S. of pushing Iran situation to brink of war RIA - Reuters

    [Jun 19, 2019] Investigation Nation Mueller, Russiagate, and Fake Politics by Jim Kavanagh

    [Jun 16, 2019] Rule of law in Murrika is kaput

    [Jun 14, 2019] With Russiagate, we Soviet immigrants were finally forced to reckon with the bigotry of America's elite

    [Jun 09, 2019] The looming 100-year US-China conflict by Martin Wolf

    [Jun 05, 2019] Do Spies Run the World by Israel Shamir

    [May 30, 2019] Whatever you may think of Trump, the people who set out to 'get him' are the scum of the Earth

    [May 29, 2019] With Russiagate, we Soviet immigrants were finally forced to reckon with the bigotry of America's elite by Yasha Levine

    [May 28, 2019] Any time you read an article (or a comment) on Russia, substitute the word Jew for Russian and International Jewry for Russia and re-read.

    [May 22, 2019] NATO has pushed eastward right up to its borders and threatened to incorporate regions that have been part of Russia's sphere of influence -- and its defense perimeter -- for centuries

    [May 20, 2019] "Us" Versus "Them"

    [May 19, 2019] How Russiagate replaced Analysis of the 2016 Election by Rick Sterling

    [May 19, 2019] Intel agencies of the UK and US are guilty of fabricating evidence, breaking the laws (certainly of the targeted countries, but also of the UK and US), providing fake analysis and operating as evil actors on the dark side of humanity

    [May 16, 2019] The Disinformationists by C.J. Hopkins

    [May 15, 2019] Russia-gate s Monstrous Offspring

    [May 14, 2019] The Propaganda Multiplier How Global News Agencies and Western Media Report on Geopolitics

    [May 13, 2019] Angry Bear Senate Democratic Jackasses and Elmer Fudd

    [May 13, 2019] In defense of Maria Butina Spectator USA by Michael Tracey

    [May 13, 2019] US Foreign Policy as Bellicose as Ever by Serge Halimi

    [May 12, 2019] Charting a Progressive Foreign Policy for the Trump Era and Beyond

    [May 11, 2019] Whitney Judgment Day Looms For John Brennan

    [May 11, 2019] Leaked USA s Feb 2018 Plan For A Coup In Venezuela

    [May 11, 2019] Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they discovered later

    [May 11, 2019] Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart -- Say Hello to Fancy Bear

    [May 11, 2019] Intel and Law Enforcement Tried to Entrap Trump by Larry C Johnson

    [May 11, 2019] Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia

    [May 11, 2019] Doug Ross @ Journal A TIMELINE OF TREASON How the DNC and FBI Leadership Tried to Fix a Presidential Election [Updated]

    [May 11, 2019] Christopher Steele, FBI s Confidential Human Source by Publius Tacitus

    [May 11, 2019] Nunes Memo Details Weaponization of FISA Court for Political Advantage by Elizabeth Lea Vos

    [May 11, 2019] CIA Paid $100,000 To Shadowy Russian For Dirt on Trump, Including Sex Video by Chuck Ross

    [May 10, 2019] Biden is up to neck in Spygate dirt by Jeff Carlson

    [May 10, 2019] Mueller Report - Expensive Estimations And Elusive Evidence by Adam Carter

    [May 10, 2019] Obama administration raced to obtain FICA warrant on Carter Page before Rogers investigation closes on them and that was definitely an obstruction of justice and interference with the ongoing investigation

    [May 10, 2019] What was the meaning of the term "insurance policy" in Stzok messages to Lisa Page

    [May 10, 2019] The Battle Between Rosenstein and McCabe

    [May 09, 2019] Trump DID commit obstruction of justice... he refused to force HIS Dept of Justice to indict Hillary, Comey, Brennan and Clapper

    [May 08, 2019] Obama Spied on Other Republicans and Democrats As Well by Larry C Johnson

    [May 07, 2019] Look! A whale!

    [May 07, 2019] Chris Hedges: The Demonization of Russia is Driven by Defense Contractors

    [May 05, 2019] The Left Needs to Stop Crushing on the Generals by Danny Sjursen

    [May 05, 2019] Did Mueller substituted Russia for Israel in his report

    [May 03, 2019] Former high-ranking FBI officials on Andrew McCabe's alarming admissions

    [May 03, 2019] Andrew McCabe played the key role in the appointment of the special prosecutor

    [May 03, 2019] The Wheels Of Real Justice Are In Motion Now Kunstler Fears The Desperate Resistance Next Move...

    [May 02, 2019] Checkmate - How President Trump s Legal Team Outfoxed Mueller by Will Chamberlain

    [Apr 29, 2019] The Mueller Report Indicts the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory by Aaron Maté

    [Apr 28, 2019] The British Role in Russiagate Is About to Be Fully Exposed

    [Apr 28, 2019] Tit For Tat: Why Did Mueller Let Trump Off the Hook by Mike Whitney

    [Apr 28, 2019] Breath of fresh air--real journalism again! Have so much respect for Chris Hedges and Aaron Mate, great work!

    [Apr 28, 2019] On Contact Russiagate Mueller Report w- Aaron Mate

    [Apr 26, 2019] Mueller investigation was launched in order to investigate the obstruction of his investigation

    [Apr 26, 2019] Jared Kushner, Not Maria Butina, Is America's Real Foreign Agent by Philip Giraldi

    [Apr 26, 2019] Intelligence agencies meddling in elections

    [Apr 22, 2019] FBI top brass have been colluding with top brass of CIA and MI6 to pursue ambitious anti-Russian agenda

    [Apr 22, 2019] Current Neo-McCarthyism hysteria as a smoke screen of the UK and the USA intent to dominate European geopolitics and weaken Russia and Germany

    [Apr 21, 2019] Makes me wonder if this started out as a standard operation by the FBI to gain leverage over a presidential contender

    [Apr 21, 2019] Muller report implicates Obama administration in total and utter incompetence, if not pandering to the foreign intervention into the USA elections. The latter is called criminal negligence in legal speak.

    [Apr 21, 2019] John Brennan's Police State USA

    [Apr 21, 2019] Special Counsel Mueller -- Disingenuous and Dishonest by Larry C Johnson

    [Apr 21, 2019] Whenever someone inconveniences the neoliberal oligarchy, the entire neoliberal MSM mafia tells us 24 x7 how evil and disgusting that person is. It's true of the leader of every nation which rejects neoliberal globalization as well as for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

    [Apr 20, 2019] Trump has certainly made the world safer

    [Apr 20, 2019] Sure, blame those guys over there for Hillary fiasco and hire Mueller to get the goods . That s the ultimate the dog ate my homework excuse.

    [Apr 17, 2019] The media's interest in the well-being of a foreign population is directly proportional to the West's interest in toppling its government, while editorial standards are inversely proportional to its enemy status

    [Apr 17, 2019] Six US Agencies Conspired ...

    [Apr 17, 2019] Deep State and the FBI Federal Blackmail Investigation

    [Apr 16, 2019] CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump

    [Apr 13, 2019] Russophobia, A WMD (Weapon Of Mass Deception) by Jean Ranc

    [Apr 12, 2019] Putin was KGB agent crowd forgets that Bush Sr was long time senior CIA operative and the director of CIA

    [Apr 10, 2019] Habakkuk on cockroaches and the New York Times

    [Apr 08, 2019] Aaron Maté Was Also Right About Russiagate

    [Apr 07, 2019] Nunes The Russian Collusion Hoax Meets An Unbelievbable End

    [Apr 06, 2019] The Magnitsky Act-Behind the Scenes ASEEES

    [Apr 04, 2019] Was John Brennan The Russia Lie Ringleader

    [Apr 04, 2019] TEST IT YOURSELF, THE 2-SECOND-ROUNDING FACT PATTERN IN THE DNC EMAILS By William Binney and Larry Johnson

    [Apr 03, 2019] Jewish Power Rolls Over Washington by Philip Giraldi

    [Apr 02, 2019] Requiem to Russiagate by CJ Hopkins

    [Apr 02, 2019] 'Yats' Is No Longer the Guy by Robert Parry

    [Apr 01, 2019] Amazon.com War with Russia From Putin Ukraine to Trump Russiagate (9781510745810) Stephen F. Cohen Books

    [Mar 31, 2019] Because of the immediate arrival of the Russia collusion theory, neither MSM honchos nor any US politician ever had to look into the camera and say, I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump

    [Mar 31, 2019] A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco by James W Carden

    [Mar 31, 2019] What is the purpose of Russiagate hysteria?

    [Mar 30, 2019] The US desperately needs Venezuelan oil

    [Mar 30, 2019] The Real Costs of Russiagate

    [Mar 30, 2019] You don't like Trump? Bolton? Clinton? All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is quite real and extends to the entire population.

    [Mar 25, 2019] Russiagate was never about substance, it was about who gets to image-manage the decline of a turbo-charged, self-harming neoliberal capitalism by Jonathan Cook

    [Mar 25, 2019] Meet The Kushners First Couple In-Waiting by Ilana Mercer

    [Mar 25, 2019] Spygate The True Story of Collusion (plus Infographic) by Jeff Carlson

    [Mar 25, 2019] Nuland role in Russiagate

    [Mar 25, 2019] Another SIGINT compromise ...

    [Mar 24, 2019] The accountability that must follow Mueller's report

    [Mar 24, 2019] "Russia Gate" investigation was a color revolution agaist Trump. But a strnge side effect was that Clintons have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug to the status of some kind of martyr.

    [Mar 24, 2019] With RussiaGate Over Where's Hillary

    [Mar 24, 2019] One could wish that DOJ IG Horowitz could investigate and sanction British Intelligence for its use of official and non-official officials in starting this debacle.

    [Mar 24, 2019] The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.

    [Mar 24, 2019] One thing left out is the ability of readers to call BS on a story i.e. a robust comment section for debates.

    [Mar 23, 2019] Brennan pipe dream obliterated. The color revolution against Trump failed

    [Mar 23, 2019] Mueller stopped following the money the moment he realized it was all leading back to Israel.

    [Mar 22, 2019] Glenn Greenwald on Twitter The Mueller investigation is complete and this is a simple fact that will never go away

    [Mar 18, 2019] Journalists who are spies

    [Mar 18, 2019] Doublethink and Newspeak Do We Have a Choice by Greg Guma

    [Mar 18, 2019] The Why are the media playing lapdog and not watchdog – again – on war in Iraq?

    [Mar 17, 2019] Mueller uses the same old false flag scams, just different packaging of his forensics-free findings

    [Mar 17, 2019] VIPS- Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings

    [Mar 14, 2019] Manafort's Ukrainians were actually pro-West? - Habakkuk

    [Mar 11, 2019] Bruce Ohr, Liar or Moron by Larry C Johnson

    [Mar 06, 2019] Disinformation destroys reality

    [Mar 06, 2019] American Meddling in the Ukraine by Publius Tacitus

    [Feb 22, 2019] Neo-McCarthyism is used to defend the US empirical policies. Branding dissidents as Russian stooges is a loophole that allow to suppress dissident opinions

    [Feb 21, 2019] The Empire Now or Never by Fred Reed

    [Feb 19, 2019] Tulsi Gabbard kills New World Order bloodbath in thirty seconds

    [Feb 19, 2019] Warmongers in their ivory towers - YouTube

    [Feb 18, 2019] Do You Believe in the Deep State Now by Robert W. Merry

    [Feb 17, 2019] Trump is Russian asset memo is really neocon propaganda overkill

    [Feb 16, 2019] MSM Begs For Trust After Buzzfeed Debacle by Caitlin Johnstone

    [Feb 16, 2019] Death Of Russiagate: Mueller Team Tied To Mifsud s Network

    [Feb 13, 2019] MoA - Russiagate Is Finished

    [Feb 13, 2019] Stephen Cohen on War with Russia and Soviet-style Censorship in the US by Russell Mokhiber

    [Feb 09, 2019] Did The Department Of Justice Protect Brenda Snipes From Prosecution For Ballot Destruction by Elizabeth Lea Vos

    [Feb 08, 2019] To understand Steele and the five eyes involvement in the Russia hoax you need to go to the library

    [Feb 04, 2019] Trump s Revised and Rereleased Foreign Policy: The World Policeman is Back

    [Jan 22, 2019] War with Russia From Putin Ukraine to Trump Russiagate

    [Jan 21, 2019] Beyond BuzzFeed The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing US Media Failures On The Trump-Russia Story by Glenn Greenwald

    [Jan 20, 2019] Doctor, nurse, Chief Nursing Officer of the Army, whatever.

    [Jan 19, 2019] Coincidence - Chief Nurse Of British Army Was First Person To Arrive At Novichoked Skripal Scene

    [Jan 15, 2019] Apparently, the FBI, and not the CIA, are the real government.

    [Jan 13, 2019] As FBI Ramped Up Witch Hunt When Trump Fired Comey, Strzok Admitted Collusion Investigation A Joke

    [Jan 12, 2019] Tucker Carlson Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But for everyone else, it's infuriating Fox News

    [Jan 12, 2019] Tucker Carlson has sparked the most interesting debate in conservative politics by Jane Coaston

    [Jan 11, 2019] New Documents Reveal a Covert British Military-Intelligence Smear Machine Meddling In American Politics by Mark Ames

    [Jan 11, 2019] Facts does not matter in the current propoganda environment, the narrative is everything

    [Jan 08, 2019] Shock Files- What Role Did Integrity Initiative Play in Sergei Skripal Affair- - Sputnik International

    [Jan 08, 2019] Skripal spin doctors- Documents link UK govt-funded Integrity Initiative to anti-Russia narrative

    [Jan 06, 2019] British elite fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies.

    [Jan 02, 2019] Russian bots - How An Anti-Russian Lobby Creates Fake News

    [Jan 02, 2019] The Only Meddling "Russian Bots" Were Actually Democrat-Led "Experts" by Mac Slavo

    [Jan 02, 2019] Did Mueller Patched Together Much of His Indictment from 2015 Radio Free Europe Article ?

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